11555	----	OUR FARM OF FOUR ACRES AND THE MONEY WE MADE BY IT. Miss Coulton _From the Twelfth London Edition._ WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PETER B. MEAD, EDITOR OF THE HORTICULTURIST. 1860 Preface to the Twelfth London Edition. This little volume has been received with so much favor, both by the public and the press, that I cannot refrain from expressing my gratitude for the kind treatment I have experienced. From many of the criticisms which have appeared respecting "Our Farm of Four Acres," I have received not only complimentary remarks, but likewise some useful hints on the subjects of which I have written. With the praise comes some little censure; and I am charged by more than one friendly critic with stupidity for not ordering the legs of our first cow to be strapped, which would, they consider, have prevented both milk and milker from being knocked over. Now this was done, but the animal had a way of knocking the man and pail down with her side; every means was tried, but nothing succeeded till her calf was parted with. We have been asked whether we had to keep gates, hedges, &c., in repair, or whether it was done at the expense of the landlord. As far as regarded the gates and buildings, that gentleman was bound by agreement to keep them in order, and as for hedges we have none. A stream runs round the meadows, and forms the boundary of our small domain. Since our little work was written we have had nearly eighteen months' further experience, and have as much reason now as then to be satisfied with the profits we receive from our four acres. I must add a few words concerning our butter-making. Some doubts have been expressed relative to our power of churning for four hours at a time. Now it certainly was not pleasant, but it was not the hard work that some people imagine: fatiguing certainly; but then H. and myself took it, as children say, "turn and turn about." We did not entrust the churn to Tom, because he was liable to be called away to perform some of his many duties. Had we not had the toil, we should not have acquired the knowledge which now enables us to complete our work in three-quarters of an hour. We have been pitied for being always employed, and told that we can never know the luxury of leisure. We answer this remark with the words of "Poor Richard," that "leisure is the time for doing something useful." INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. This little volume will possess rare interest for all who own a "four-acre farm," or, indeed, a farm of any number of acres. Its chief value to the American reader does not consist in its details of practice, but in the enunciation and demonstration of certain principles of domestic economy of universal application. The practice of terra-culture must be varied to meet the different conditions of soil and climate under which it is pursued; but sound general principles hold good everywhere, and only need the exercise of ordinary judgment and common sense for their application to our own wants. This is now better understood than heretofore, and hence we are better prepared to profit by draughts from the fount of universal knowledge. We would not be understood as intimating, however, that only the general principles set forth in this little book are of value to us; the details of making butter and bread, feeding stock, etc., are just as useful to us as to the English reader. The two chapters on making butter and bread are admirable in their way, and alone are worth the price of the book. So, too, of domestics and their management; we have to go through pretty much the same vexations, probably a little intensified, as there is among us a more rampant spirit of independence on the part of servants; but many of these vexations may be avoided, we have no doubt, by following the suggestion of our author, of procuring "country help" for the country. Domestics accustomed to city life not only lack the requisite knowledge, but are unwilling to learn, and will not readily adapt themselves to the circumstances in which they are placed; in fact, the majority of them "know too much," and are altogether too impatient of control. A woman, however, must be mistress in her own house; this is indispensable to economy and comfort; and the plan adopted by our author will often secure this when all others fail. We have not deemed it advisable to add anything in the way of notes; we have made a few alterations in the text to adapt it better to the wants of the American reader, and for the same reason we have altered the English currency to our own. In other respects the work remains intact. In some works of this kind notes would have been indispensable, but in the present case we have thought we could safely trust to the judgment of the reader to appropriate and adapt the general principles set forth, leaving the application of details to the shrewdness and strong common sense characteristic of the American mind. The object of the work is rather to demonstrate a general principle than to furnish all the minutiae of practice, though enough of these are given to serve the purpose of illustration. The American reader will not fail, of course, to make due allowance for the difference of rent, prices, etc., between this country and England, and the matter of adaptation then becomes a very simple affair. In conclusion we present the work as a model in style. It is written with a degree of simplicity which makes it readily understood, and is a fine specimen of good old Anglo-Saxon. Portions of it are fully as interesting as a romance. It is written by a lady, which fact gives it an additional interest and value as a contribution to the economy of country life, in which it may be admitted that women are our masters. The incidents connected that women are our masters. The incidents connected with hiring "our farm of four acres" are related in a life-like manner, and will be appreciated by our own May-day hunting country-women, who, we trust, will also appreciate the many important facts set forth in this little volume, which we heartily commend to them and to all others, with the wish that it may be as useful and popular as it has been at home. P.B.M. CHAP. I.--WHERE SHALL WE LIVE? II.--OUR FIRST DIFFICULTY. III.--OUR SECOND COW. IV--HOW TO MAKE BUTTER. V.--WHAT WE MADE BY OUR COWS. VI.--OUR PIGS. VII.--OUR POULTRY. VIII.--OUR LOSSES. IX.--OUR PIGEONS. X.--HOW WE CURED OUR HAMS. XI.--OUR BREAD. XII.--OUR KITCHEN-GARDEN. XIII--THE MONEY WE MADE. XIV.--THE NEXT SIX MONTHS. XV.--OUR PONY. XVL.--CONCLUSION. OUR FARM OF FOUR ACRES. CHAPTER I. WHERE SHALL WE LIVE? "Where shall we live?" That was a question asked by the sister of the writer, when it became necessary to leave London, and break up a once happy home, rendered desolate sudden bereavement. "Ah! Where, indeed?" was the answer. "Where can we hope to find a house which will be suitable for ourselves, six children, and a small income?" "Oh," answered H., "there can be no difficulty about that. Send for the 'Times' and we shall find dozens of places that will do for us." So that mighty organ of information was procured, and its columns eagerly searched. "But," said I, "what sort of place do we really mean to take?" "That," replied H., "is soon settled. We must have a good-sized dining-room, small drawing-room, and a breakfast-room, which may be converted into a school-room. It must have a nursery and five good bed-chambers, a chaise-house, and stable for the pony and carriage, a large garden, and three or four acres of land, for we must keep a cow. It must not be more than eight miles from 'town,' or two from a station; it must be in a good neighborhood, and it must--" "Stop! Stop!" cried I; "how much do you intend to give a-year for all these conveniences:" "How much?" Why, I should say we ought not to give more than $250." "We ought not," said I, gravely, "but I greatly fear we shall for that amount have to put up with a far inferior home to the one you contemplate. But come, let us answer a few of these advertisements; some of them depict the very place you wish for." So after selecting those which, when they had described in bright colors the houses to be let, added, "Terms very moderate," we "presented compliments" to Messrs. A., B., C., D., and in due time received cards to view the "desirable country residences" we had written about. But our hopes of becoming the fortunate occupants of any one of those charming abodes were soon dashed to the ground; for with the cards came the terms; and we found that a "very moderate rental" meant from $600 to $750 per annum. We looked at each other rather ruefully; and the ungenerous remark of "I told you so" rose to my lips. However, I did not give it utterance, but substituted the words, "Never mind, let us send for another 'Times,' and only answer those advertisements which state plainly the rent required." This time we enlarged our ideas on the subjects of rent and distance, and resolved that if that beautiful place _near_ Esher would suit us, we would not mind giving $300 a-year for it. In a few days arrived answers to our last inquiries. We fixed on the one which appeared the most eligible, but were a little dismayed to find that "near Esher" meant six miles from the station. "Never mind," said H., resolutely, "the pony can take us to it in fine weather, and in winter we must not want to go to London." We started the next morning by rail, and found the "Cottage" almost as pretty as it had appeared on paper. But, alas! it been let the day previous to our arrival, and we had to return to town minus five dollars for our expenses. The next day, nothing daunted,--indeed, rather encouraged by finding the house we had seen really equal to our expectations,--we set off to view another "villa," which, from the particulars we had received from the agent, appeared quite as attractive. This time we found the place tenantless; and, as far as we were concerned, it would certainly remain so. It had been represented as a "highly-desirable country residence, and quite ready for the reception of a family of respectability." It was dignified with the appellation of "Middlesex Hall," and we were rather surprised when we found that this high-sounding name signified a mean-looking place close to the road; and when the door was opened for our admission, that we stepped at once from the small front court into the drawing-room, from which a door opened into a stone kitchen. The rest of the accommodation corresponded with this primitive mode of entrance; the whole place was in what is commonly called a "tumble-down" condition: there was certainly plenty of garden, and two large meadows, but, like the rest of the place, they were sadly out of order. When we said it was not at all the house we had expected to find from reading the advertisement, we asked what sort of house we expected to get for $300 with five acres of land. Now that was a question we could not have answered had we not seen the pretty cottage with nearly as much ground at Esher; however, we did not give the owner the benefit of our experience, but merely said that the house would not suit us, and drove back four miles to the station, rather out of spirits with the result of our day's work. For more than a fortnight did we daily set forth on this voyage of discovery. One day we started with a card to view "a delightful Cottage Ornee, situated four miles from Weybridge;" this time the rent was still higher than any we had previously seen. When we arrived at the village in which the house was represented to be, we asked for "Heathfield House," and were told that no one knew of any residence bearing that name; we were a little perplexed, and consulted the card of admittance to see whether we had brought the wrong one--but no; there it was, "Heathfield House," four miles from Weybridge, surrounded by its own grounds of four acres, tastefully laid out in lawn, flower and kitchen-gardens, &c, &c. Rent only $350. We began to imagine that we were the victims of some hoax, and were just on the point of telling the driver to return to the station, when a dirty-looking man came to the carriage, and said, "Are you looking for Heathfield House?" "Yes," said we. "Well, I'll show it to you." "Is it far?" we asked; as no sign of a decent habitation was to be seen near us. "No; just over the way," was the answer. We looked in the direction he indicated, and saw a "brick carcase: standing on a bare, heath piece of ground, without enclosure of any kind. "That!" cried we; "it is impossible that can be the place we came to see!" "Have you got a card from Mr.--?" was the query addressed to us. "Yes," was the reply. "Very well; then if you will get out I'll show it to you." As we had come so far we thought we might as well finish the adventure, and accordingly followed our guide over the piece of rough muddy ground which led to the brick walls before us. We found them on a neared inspection quite as empty as they appeared from the road; neither doors nor windows were placed in them, and the staircases were not properly fixed. It was with much trouble we succeeded in reaching the floor where the bed-chambers were to be, and found that not even the boards were laid down. We told our conductor, that the place would not suit us, as we were compelled to remove from our present residence in three weeks. "Well, if that's all that hinders your taking it, I'll engage to get it all ready in that time." "What! get the staircases fixed, the doors and windows put in, the walls papered and painted?" "Yes," was answered, in a confident tone, which expressed indignation at the doubt we had implied. We then ventured to say, that, "Allowing he could get the house ready by the time we required to move, we saw no sign of the coach-house and stable, lawn or flower-garden, kitchen or meadow." "As for the coach-house and stable," said the showman, "I can get your horses put up in the village." We hastened to disclaim the _horses_, and humbly confessed that our stud consisted of one pony only. "The less reason to be in a hurry for the stable, for you can put one pony anywhere; and as for the lawn and gardens, they will be laid out when the house is let; and the heath will be levelled and sown for a meadow, and anything else done for a good tenant that is in reason." We were likewise assured that wonders had been done already, for that four months ago the ground was covered with furze. We got rid of our talkative friend with the promise that we would "think of it;" and indeed, we _did_ think, that Mr.--, who was a very respectable house-agent, ought to ascertain what sort of places were place in his hands before he sent people on such profitless journeys. The expense attending this one amounted to nearly eight dollars. Another week as passed in a similar manner, in going distances varying from ten to twenty-five miles daily in pursuit of houses which we were induced to think must suit us, but when seen proved as deceptive a those I have mentioned. We gained nothing by our travels but the loss of time, money, and hope. At last the idea entered our heads of going to some of the house-agents, and looking over their books. Our first essay was at the office of Mr. A. B., in Bond street. "Have you any houses to let at such a distance from town, with such a quantity of land, such a number of rooms?" &c. "Oh, yes madam," said the smiling clerk, and immediately opened a large ledger; "what rent do you propose giving?" "From $250 to $350 yearly," answered we, and felt how respectable we must appear in the opinion of the smart gentleman whom we addressed; how great then was our surprise when he closed his large volume with a crash, and with a look of supreme contempt said, "_We_ have nothing of that kind in _our_ books." To use one of Fanny Kemble's expressions, "we felt mean," and left the office of this aristocratical house-agent half ashamed of our humble fortunes. I fear I should tire the patience of the reader, did I detail all our "adventures in search of a house," but we must entreat indulgence for our last journey. We once more started on the South-Western line, to see a house which, from the assurances we had received from the owner, resident in London, must a last be _the_ house, and for which the rent asked was $350; but once more were we doomed to disappointment by finding that the "handsome dining and drawing-rooms" were two small parlors, with doors opening into each other; and that "five excellent bed-chambers" were three small rooms and two wretched attics. From the station to this place was four miles; and, as weary and hopeless we were returning to it, it occurred to H. to ask the driver if he knew of any houses to let in the vicinity. He considered, then said he only knew of one, which had been vacant some time, and that parties who had been to see it would not take it because it was situated in a bad neighborhood. At the commencement of our search that would have been quite sufficient to have deterred us from looking at it, but we could not now afford to be fastidious. Our own house was let, and move from it we must in less than a fortnight; so we desired the driver to take us into this bad neighborhood, and were rewarded for the additional distance we travelled by finding an old-fashioned, but very convenient house, with plenty of good-sized rooms in excellent repair, a very pretty flower-garden, with greenhouse, good kitchen-garden of on acre, an orchard of the same extent well stocked with fine fruit-trees, three acres of good meadow-land, an excellent coach-house and stabling, with houses for cows, pigs, and poultry, all in good order. The "bad neighborhood" was not so very bad. The cottages just outside the gates were small, new buildings; and once inside, you saw nothing but your own grounds. It possessed the advantage of being less than two miles from a station, and not more than twelve from London. "This will do," we both exclaimed, "if the rent is not too high." We had been asked $600 for much inferior places; so that it was with great anxiety we directed our civil driver to take us to the party who had the disposal of the house. When there, we met with the welcome intelligence, that house, gardens, orchard, meadows, and buildings, were all included in a rental of $370 per annum. We concluded the bargain there and then, and on that day fortnight took possession of "Our Farm of Four Acres." Before we close this chapter, we will address a few words to such of our readers as may entertain the idea that houses in the country may be had "for next to nothing." We had repeatedly heard this asserted, and when we resolved to give $300 a year, we thought that we should have no difficulty in meeting with a respectable habitation for that sum, large enough for our family and with the quantity of land we required, as well as within a moderate distance of London. We have already told the reader how fallacious we found this hope to be. Houses within forty or fifty miles of London, in what are called "good situations," are nearly, if not quite as high rented, as those in the suburbs, and land worth quite as much. If at any time a "cheap place" is to be met with, be quite sure that there is some drawback to compensate for the low price. In our pilgrimages to empty houses, we frequently found some which were low-rented, that is from $200 $250 per annum; but either they were much smaller than we required, or dreadfully out of repair, or else they were built "Cockney fashion," semi-detached, or, as was frequently the case, situated in a locality which for some reason or other was highly objectionable. We always found rents lower in proportion to the distance from a station. We one day went to Beaconsfield to view a house, and had a fly from Slough, a drive of several miles. The house was in the middle of the town, large and convenient, with good garden and paddock; the whole was offered us for $200 yearly; and we should have taken it, had it not been in such a dismantled condition that the agent in whose hands it was placed informed us that though he had orders to put it in complete repair, he would not promise it would be fit for occupation under several months. The office of this gentleman was next door to Mr. A. B.'s, in Bond street; and we are bound to state, that though we said that we did not wish to give more than $300, we were treated with respect; and several offered us under these terms, though attended with circumstances which prevented our availing ourselves of them. The house we at last found was not, as regarded situation, what we liked; not because of the cottages close to the entrance, but for the reason that there was no "view," but from the top windows; as far as the lower part of the house was concerned, we might as well have been in the Clapham Road. It is true we looked into gardens, front and back, but that was all; and we had to go through two or three streets of the little town in which we were located whenever we left the house for a walk. Still we were, on the whole, well pleased with our new home, and in the next chapter will tell the reader how we commenced a life so different to that we had been accustomed to lead. CHAPTER II. OUR FIRST DIFFICULTY. Once fairly settled in our new habitation, and all the important affairs attending the necessary alterations of carpets, curtains, etc., being nearly finished, we began to wonder what we were to do with "Our Farm of Four Acres." That we must keep a cow was acknowledged by both; and the first step to be taken was to buy one. The small town in which our house was situated boasted of a market weekly, and there we resolved to make the important purchase. Accordingly, we sent our man-of-all-work to inspect those offered for sale. Shortly he returned, accompanied by a small black cow, with a calf a week old. We purchase these animals for $50; and it was very amusing to see all the half-dozen children running into the stable-yards, with their little cups to enjoy the first-fruits of their country life. But what proved far more of a treat than the new milk was the trouble of procuring it, for the cow proved a very spiteful one, and knocked the unfortunate milker, with his pail, "heels-over-head." AS he was not in the least hurt, the juveniles were allowed to laugh as long as they pleased; but H. and myself looked rather grave at the idea having the milk knocked down as soon as there was about a quart in the pail. We were, therefore, greatly reassured when told that "Madam Sukey" would be quiet and tractable as soon as her calf was taken away. "Then why not take it at one?" said I; but was informed that we must not deprive her of it for a week. However, I am bound to confess that our first week's farming turned out badly, for the cow would not be milked, quietly, and every morning we were informed that two men were obliged to be called in to hold her while she was milked. At the end of the week we sold the calf for five dollars, and after a month the cow became on quite friendly terms with her milker, and has proved ever since very profitable to our small diary. We did not contemplate making butter with one cow, as we thought so large a household would consume all the milk. Very soon, however, "nurse" complained that "the milk was 'too rich' for the children; it was not in the least like London milk; it must either be watered or skimmed for the little ones: but she would rather have it skimmed." That was done, and for a whole fortnight H. and myself used nothing but cream in our tea and coffee. At first this was a great luxury, and we said continually to each other, how delightful it was to have such a dainty in profusion. Soon, like the children, we began to discover it was "too good for us," and found that we liked plenty of new milk much better for general use; besides, consume as much as we would, we had still more than was wanted: so we invested fifteen dollars in a churn and other requisites, and thought with great satisfaction of the saving we should effect in our expenses by making our own butter. But now arose a difficulty which had not previously occurred to us: Who was to make it? Our domestic servants both declared that they could not do so; and the elder one, who had been many years in the family, was born and bred in London, and detested the country and everything connected with it, gave her opinion in the most decided manner, that there was quite enough "muck" in the house already, without making more work with butter-making, which she said confidently, would only be fit for the pig when it was made. Here was a pretty state of things! What were we to do? must we give up all hope of eating our own butter, and regard the money as lost which we had just expended for the churn, etc.? After a few minutes' bewilderment, the idea occurred to both of us at the same moment: "Cannot we make the butter, and be independent of these household rebels?" "But," said I, dolefully, "we don't in the least know how to set about it." "What of that?" replied H.: "where was the use of expending so much money in books relative to a country life as you did before we left town, if they are not to enlighten our ignorance on country matters? But one thing is certain, we cannot make butter till we have learnt _how_; so let us endeavor to obtain the requisite knowledge to do so to-morrow." We accordingly devoted the remainder of the day to consulting the various books on domestic and rural economy we had collected together previous to leaving London. Greatly puzzled we were by them. On referring to the subject ob butter-making, one authority said, "you must never was the butter, but only knock it on a board, in order to get the buttermilk from it." Another only told us to "well cleanse the buttermilk from it," without giving us an idea how the process was to be accomplished; while the far-famed Mrs. Rundle, in an article headed "Dairy," tells the dairy-maid to "keep a book in which to enter the amount of butter she makes," and gives butt little idea how the said butter is to be procured. Another authority said, "after the butter is come, cut it in pieces to take out cow-hairs;" this appeared to us the oddest direction of all, for surely it was possible to remove them from the cream before it was put into the churn. We were very much dissatisfied with the amount of practical knowledge we gleaned from our books; they seemed to us written for the benefit of those who already were well acquainted with the management of a dairy, and consequently of very little service to those who wished to acquire the rudiments of the art of butter-making. The next morning we proceeded to make a trial, and the first thing we did was to strain the cream through a loose fine cloth into the churn, then taking the handle we began to turn it vigorously;* [Ninety times in a minute is the proper speed with which the handle should be turned.] the weather was hot, and after churning for more than an hour, there seemed as little prospect of butter as when we commenced. We stared at each other in blank amazement. Must we give it up? No; that was not to be thought of. H. suddenly remembered, that somewhere she had heard that in warm weather you should put the churn in cold water. As ours was a box one, we did not see how we could manage this; but the bright idea entered her head, that if we could not put the water outside the churn we might _in_: so we pumped a quart of spring-water into it and churned away with fresh hopes: nor were we disappointed; in about a quarter of an hour we heard quite a different sound as we turned the handle, which assured us that the cream had undergone a change, and taking off the lid--(how many times had we taken it off before!)--we saw what at that moment appeared the most welcome sight in the world--some lumps of rich yellow butter. It was but a small quantity, but there it was: the difficulty was overcome so far. But now there arose the question of what we were to do with it in order to clean if from the butter milk, for all our authorities insisted on the necessity of this being done, though they did not agree in the mode of doing it. One said, that "if it was washed, it would not keep good, because water soon became putrid, and so would the butter." We were told by another book, "that if it was _not_ washed it would be of two colors, and dreadfully rank." We thought that it would be easier not to wash it, and it was bad enough to justify the term "muck," which was applied to it by the kitchen oracles, who rejoiced exceedingly in our discomfiture. We left the dairy half inclined to abjure butter-making for the future. In a day or two we began to reflect, that as we had a "Farm of Four Acres," we must mange to do something with it, and what so profitable to a large family as making butter? So, when we had collected sufficient cream, we tried again, and this time with great success. We commenced as before, by straining the cream, and then taking the handle of the churn we turned it more equally than we had done before; in half an our we heard the welcome sound which proclaimed that the "butter was come." This time we washed it well; it was placed in a pan under the pump, and the water suffered to run on it till not the least milkiness appeared in it; we then removed it to a board that had been soaking for some time in cold water, salted it to our taste, and afterwards, with two flat boards, such as butter-men use in London shops, made it up into rolls. It was as good as it could be, and we were delighted to think that we had conquered all the difficulties attending its manufacture: but we had yet to discover the truth of the proverb, that "one swallow does not make a summer." CHAPTER III. OUR SECOND COW. We soon found that we could not expect to supply our family with butter from one cow, and we thought that, as we had to perform the duties of dairy-women, we might as well have the full benefit of our labor. We, therefore, purchased another cow; but before doing so, were advised not this time to have Welsh one, but to give more money and have a larger animal. This we did, and bought a very handsome strawberry-colored one, for which, with the calf, we gave $75; and here it will be as well to say that we think it was $25 thrown away, for in respect did she prove more valuable than the black one, for which we had given but $50. For a small dairy, we think the black Welsh cow answers as well, or better, than any other. The price is very small, and, judging from our own, they are very profitable. They are also much hardier than those of a larger breed, and may be kept out all winter, excepting when snow is on the ground. After our new cow had been in our possession just a week, we received one morning the unwelcome intelligence that the "new cow" was very bad. We went into the meadow, and saw the poor creature looking certainly as we had been told, "very bad." We asked our factotum what was the matter with her. To this he replied, that he did not know, but that he had sent for a man who was "very clever in cows." In a short time this clever man arrived, bringing with him a friend, likewise learned in cattle. He went to see the patient, and returned to us looking very profound. "A bad job!" said he, with a shake of the head worthy of Sheridan's Lord Burleigh. "A sad job, indeed! and you only bought her last market-day. Well, it can't be helped." "But what ails her?" said I. "What ails her! why, she's got the lung disease." "But what it is that? said I. "What's that! why, it's what kills lots of cows; takes 'em off in two or three days. You must sell her for what she'll fetch. Perhaps you may get $10 for her. I'll get rid of her for you." "But," said H., "if she has the 'lung disease' you talk of, you tell us she must die." "Yes; she'll die, sure enough." "Well, then, who will buy a cow that is sure to be dead to-morrow or next day?" "Oh, that's no concern of yours! _You_ get rid of her, that's all." To this dictum we rather demurred, and resolved to send for a cow-doctor, and see if she could be cured; if not, to take care she was not converted after her death into "country sausages," for the benefit of London consumers of those dainties. Our friendly counsellor was very indignant at our perversity in not getting rid of a cow with "the lung disease," and stumped out of the yard in a fit of virtuous indignation. With proper treatment the cow soon got well. We still had occasional trouble with our butter-making; sometimes it would come in half an hour, sometimes we were hard at work with the churn for two or three hours, and then the butter was invariably bad. We tried to procure information on the subject, and asked several farmer's wives in the neighborhood "how long butter ought to be in coming." We always received the same answer:-- "Why, you see, ma'am, that depends." "Well," we asked, "what does it depend on?" "Oh, on lots of things." "Well, tell us some of the things on which it depends." "Why, you see it's longer coming in hot weather, and it's longer coming in cold weather; and it depends on how long the cow has calved, and how you churn, and on lots beside." We found we must endeavor to discover for ourselves the reason why we were half an hour in getting it one day, and the next, perhaps, two or three hours. As the weather became colder we found it more troublesome, and one frosty day we churned four hours without success. We put in cold water, we put in hot we put in salt, we talked of adding vinegar, but did not; we churned as fast as we could turn the handle, and then as slowly as possible, but still no butter. At the end of more than four hours our labors were rewarded. The butter came; strong, rank stuff it was. We determined before the next churning day to try and find out the reason of all this trouble. We once more took to our books, but were none the wiser, for none of them told us anything about the particular thing we searched for. After many experiments we tried the effect of bringing the cream into the kitchen over night, and see if warmth would make any difference. It was guess-work for two or three churnings, but the discovery was made at last, that we were always sure of our butter in half an hour, provided the cream was, when put into the churn, at a temperature of from 50' to 60'.* [We kept a small thermometer for the purpose of plunging into the cream-pot. If it was lower than 55' we waited till it reached that degree: if the weather was very warm, and it rose higher than we have specified, we did not attempt to churn till by some means we had lowered it to the proper temperature.] No matter how long the cow had calved, how hot or how cold the weather, if we put the cream into the churn at that degree of heat the butter was sure to come, in as near as possible the time we have specified. This, in the winter, was effected by bringing the cream-pot into the kitchen over night, and if the weather was very cold, placing it on a chair a moderate distance from the fire for about a quarter of an hour in the morning: boiling water was likewise put into the churn for half an hour before it was used. Now, no doubt, a regular dairymaid would "turn up her nose" at all these details; but I do not write for those who know their business, but for the benefit of those ladies who, as is now so much the custom, reside a few miles from the city or town in which the business or profession their husbands may be situated. In many cases they take with them town-bred servants to a country residence; and then, like ourselves, find they know nothing whatever of the duties required of them. To those who have several acres of pasture land, of course this little book is all "bosh." They employ servants who know their work and perform it properly; but most "suburbans" require the cook to undertake the duties of the dairy, and unless they are regular country servants they neither do their work well nor willingly. If any lady who has one or two cows will instruct her servant to follow our directions, she will always be sure of good butter, with very little trouble. All that is required is a churn, milk-pans (at the rate of three to each cow), a milk-pail, a board (or, better still, a piece of marble), to make the butter up on, a couple of butter-boards, such as are used in the shops to roll it into form, and a crock for the cream. In the next chapter we will give, as concisely as we can, the whole process that we ourselves used in our dairy. CHAPTER IV. HOW TO MAKE BUTTER. Let the cream be at the temperature of 55' to 60'; if the weather is cold, put boiling water into the churn for half an hour before you want to use it: when that is poured off, strain in the cream through a butter-cloth. When the butter is coming, which is easily ascertained by the sound, take off the lid, and with one of the flat boards scrape down the sides of the churn; and do the same to the lid: this prevents waste. When the butter is come, the buttermilk is to be poured off and spring-water put in the churn, and turned for two or three minutes: this is to be then poured away, and fresh added, and again the handle turned for a minute or two. Should there be the least appearance of milkiness when this is poured from the churn, more is to be put. This we found was a much better mode of extracting all the buttermilk than placing it in a pan under the pump, as we did when we commenced our labors. The butter is then to be placed on the board or marble, and salted to taste; then, with a cream-cloth, wrung out of spring-water, press all the moisture from it. When it appears quite dry and firm, make it up into rolls with the flat boards. The whole process should be completed in three-quarters of an hour. We always used a large tub which was made for the purpose, and every article we were going to use was soaked in it for half an hour in boiling water; then that removed, and cold spring-water substituted; and the things we required remained in it till they were wanted. This prevents the butter form adhering to the boards, cloth, &c., which would render the task of "making it up" both difficult and disagreeable. In hot weather, instead of bringing the cream-crock into the kitchen it must be kept as cool as possible; for as it is essential in the winter to raise the temperature of the cream to the degree I have stated, so in the summer it must be lowered to it. Should your dairy not be cool enough for the purpose, it is best effected by keeping the cream-pot in water as cold as you can procure it, and by making the butter early in the morning, and placing cold water in the churn some time before it is used. By following these directions you will have good butter throughout the year. The cows should be milked as near the diary as possible, as it prevents the cream from rising well if the milk is carried any distance.* [In very cold weather the milk-pans must be placed by the fire some time before the milk is strained into them, or the cream will not rise.] It should be at once strained into the milk-pans, and not disturbed for forty-eight hours in winter, and twenty-four in summer. In hot weather it is highly important that the cream should be perfectly strained from the milk, or it will make it very rank. Half a dozen moderate-sized lumps of sugar to every two quarts of cream tend to keep it sweet. In summer always churn twice a week. Some persons imagine that cream cannot be "too sweet," but that is a mistake; it must have a certain degree of acidity, or it will not produce butter, and if put into the churn without it, must be beaten with the paddles till it acquires it. The cream should, in the summer, be shifted each morning into a clean crock, that has first been well scalded and then soaked in cold water; and the same rule applies to all the utensils used in a dairy. The best things to scrub the churn and all wooden articles with, are wood ashes and plenty of soap. In some parts of the country, the butter made by the farmers' wives for sale is not washed at all; they say, "It washes all the taste away." They remove it from the churn, and then taking it in their hands, dash it repeatedly on the board; that is what they call "smiting" it. The butter so made is always strong, and of two colors, as a portion of the buttermilk remains in it: if any of it were put into a cup, and that placed in hot water, for the purpose clarifying, there would, when it was melted, be found a large deposit of buttermilk at the bottom of the cup. We have tried the butter made our way, and there was scarcely any residuum. Besides, this "smiting" is a most disgusting process to witness. In warm weather the butter adheres to the hands of the "smiter," who puffs and blows over it as if it were very hard work. Indeed, I once heard a strong-looking girl; daughter of a small farmer in Kent, say she was never well, for "smiting" the butter was such dreadful hard work it gave her a pain in her side. After this "smiting" is over, it is put on a butter-print, and pressed with the hands till it is considered to have received the impression. It is then, through a small hole in the handle, blown off the print with the _mouth_. I don't think I shall ever again eat butter which appears at table with the figures of cows, flowers, &c., stamped on it. I should always think of the process it has gone through for the sake of looking pretty. Nearly all the fresh butter which is sold in London is made up in large rolls, and, like that we make ourselves, need not be touched by the fingers of the maker. CHAPTER V. WHAT WE MADE BY OUR COWS. Every week we kept an account of the milk and butter we consumed, and entered it in our housekeeping-book at the price we should have paid for it, supposing we had purchased the articles. We did not put down London prices, but country ones: thus, we charged ourselves with milk at 6 cents the quart, and butter 27 cents the pound; at the end of six months we made up our accounts, and found we should have paid for milk from the 14th to the 24th of January, $44, and $66 for butter. The food for the cows during this period cost us but $4 50, which we paid for oil-cake, of which, when the weather became cold, they had two pounds each daily. We do not reckon the value of the hay they consumed during winter, because we included the land in our rent. We mowed three acres, which produced rather more than six loads of hay.* [We always had good crops, as the land had been always well kept. It was not "upland" hay, but our man said it had good "heart" in it for the cows.] Getting in the crop and thatching it cost, as nearly as possible, $15, and this quantity was quite sufficient to supply the two cows--with the calf of the Strawberry, which we reared--and the pony. An acre of grass is usually considered sufficient to support a cow during the year. If that had to be rented apart from the house, the average price would be about $25. Supposing we place that value on our land, the accounts for six months would stand thus: EXPENSES. Land at $25 the acre, for half a year, . . . . . . . . . $25 00 Oil-cake, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 50 Half the expense of getting the hay, . . . . . . . . . . 7 50 $37 00 PRODUCE. Value of milk and butter, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $116 50 Leaving a balance in our favor, at the end of six months of $79 50. At the commencement of the winter, a cow-keeper in the neighborhood told our man that we should give our cows a little mangel-wurzel. We inquired, Why? and were told that we should "keep our cows better together;" so we paid a guinea for a ton of that vegetable. The first time we made butter after they had been fed with it, we found it had a very strong, bitter taste. Still, we did not condemn the mangel-wurzel, but tried it another week. The butter was again bad, so we abandoned the roots, and resolved to give the animals nothing but hay. When they were quite deprived of green food the milk began to decrease; and as we had heard that oil-cake was given to cattle, we thought we would try some. We did so, and with complete success; we had plenty of milk, and the butter was as good as in the middle of summer, and nearly as fine a color. We did not make so much as when the cows had plenty of grass,--besides, it was now several months since the black cow had calved,--but we had sufficient for the consumption of the family. The children, it is true, did not have so many tarts as when the fruit and butter were more plentiful. We hope that we have made all our statements clearly, and that the reader will have no difficulty in following us through this narrative of "buttermaking." Of one thing we are quite sure, that it is false economy to feed cows during the winter on anything but what we have mentioned. Grains from the brewer and distiller are extensively used by cow-keepers in large towns, but they cannot be procured in the country; and we have been told that cows fed with grains, though they may yield plenty of milk, will not make much butter. One winter, when hay was scarce, we found that they did very well with carrots occasionally, and that they did not impart any unpleasant taste to the butter. They are likewise found of potatoes unboiled; but these things are only required when you keep more stock than your land can support,--a fault very common to inexperienced farmers on a small scale. CHAPTER VI. OUR PIGS. We had every reason to be satisfied with the profit we had derived from our dairy, and next proceeded to examine the accounts we had kept of our pigs for six months. We commenced by purchasing, on the 14th of July, one for which we paid $7 50. For the first month it had nothing but the wash from the house, the skim-milk from the dairy, and greens from the garden. When we began to dig the potatoes, we found we could not hope to save the whole crop from the disease; we had, therefore, a quantity boiled and put in the pig-tub, and upon these it was fed another month. At the end of that time we began to give it a little meal and a few peas. It was killed three months after we had purchased it, and the cost for meal and peas was just $250. Thus, altogether, we paid for it $10, and when killed it weighed thirteen stone (182 pounds). This we reckoned worth $1 37½ the stone, which made the value of the meat $17 87½; we had, therefore, a clear profit of $7 87½. Of course, it would have been very different had we bought all the food for it; but the skim-milk, and vegetables from the garden would have been wasted, had we been without a pig to consume them: as it was, the profit arose from our "farm of four acres." These particulars are given for the reason that the writer has frequently heard her friends in the country say, "Oh, I never keep either pigs or poultry: the pork and the fowls always cost twice the price they can be purchased for." This we could never understand, when the despisers of home-cured hams and home-fed poultry used to assert it. Supposing there was no actual profit, still it seemed strange that those who had the option of eating pork fed on milk and vegetables, and fowls which were running about the meadows a few hours before they were killed, should prefer those which are kept in close confinement and crammed with candle-graves and other abominations, till they are considered what dealers call "ripe" enough to kill; and as for pork, much of that which is sold in towns is fed on the offal from the butchers' shops, and other filth. It is well known that pigs will eat anything in the shape of animal food; and for myself, I would much rather, like the Jew and the Turk, abjure it altogether, than partake of meat fed as pork too commonly is. How few people can eat this meat with impunity! but they might do so if the animal had been properly fed. It is a great mistake to make pork so fat as it usually is: it is not only great waste, but deters many persons from partaking of it. Servants will not eat it, and those who purchase it, as well as those who kill their own pigs, may be certain that the surplus fat finds its way into the "wash-tub," for the benefit of a future generation of "piggies." Our next venture proved equally fortunate. We bought three small pigs, for which we gave $3 each; and as we wished to have pickled pork and small hams, they were killed off as we required them. The first cost $2 for barley-meal and peas, and weighed six stone, which, at $1 37½ a stone, was worth $8 25. As the cost of the pig and the food came to just $5, we had a profit of $3 25; but we considered we had no right to complain: the meat was delicious, and partaken of by the children as freely as if it had been mutton. We kept the other pigs somewhat longer, and they cost us no more for food; for, as I have already stated, they were entirely kept with the produce of our "four-acre farm," till about three weeks before they were killed. About a bushel and a half of barley meal and a peck of peas was all that was purchased for them. The best way to ensure the healthy condition of the animals is to let them have the range of a small meadow; they should likewise be occasionally well scrubbed with soap and water. If they are thus treated, how much more wholesome must the meat be than when the poor creatures are shut up in dirty styes, and suffered to eat any garbage which is thrown to them! We always had all their food boiled. At first there was a great deal of opposition to the "muck" being introduced into the scullery; but in a little time that was overcome, and a "batch" of potatoes used to be boiled in the copper about once a month. When the skim-milk was removed from the dairy, it was taken to the "trough," and some of it mixed with a portion of the boiled potatoes, and with this food they were fed three times daily. We have been told by a practical farmer on a larger scale, that when potatoes are not to be procured, a pig of thirty-five stone may be fattened in ten days on something less than two hundred weight of carrots. We intend to try if this is the case, and have half an acre of our orchard (which is arable) sown with carrot-seed, and feed our "stock" in the winter with the produce. With the surplus milk of two cows we find we can always keep three pigs with very little expense. Of course, if we did not plant plenty of potatoes, we must purchase more meal for them; but as we have an acre of kitchen-garden, we can very well spare half of it to grow roots for the cows and pigs. We do not reckon labor in our expenses, as we must have had a gardener, even if we had not so much spare ground, for our flower-garden and greenhouse require daily work. We hope we have convinced those who may think of having a "little place" a few miles from town, that it may be made a source of profit as well as of amusement, and that any trouble which may be experienced by the lady superintending her own dairy and farm will be repaid by having her table well supplied with good butter, plenty of fresh eggs, (of the poultry-yard we shall speak presently,) well-cured hams, bacon, delicate and fresh pork, well-fed ducks, and chickens. All those country dainties are easily to be procured on a "farm of four acres." Nor must another item be omitted--health; for if you wish to be fortunate in your farming, you must look after things yourself, and that will necessitate constant exercise in the open air. We think that we have given full particulars for the management of the cow and pig. In the next chapter we will relate our experience of the poultry-yard. CHAPTER VII. OUR POULTRY. We commenced stocking our poultry-yard in July, by purchasing twenty-eight chickens and twenty ducks, for which we paid $16 58 in the market. Some of them were too young for the table at the time we purchased them, but were all consumed at the end of four months, with the exception of seven hens and a cock, which we saved for "stock." Thus in the time I have mentioned we killed ten couple of ducks, and the same of fowls. These we entered in our housekeeping expenses at $1 37 a couple, though they were larger and better than could have been purchased in a London shop for $1 75. We must now proceed to reckon what they cost for food, and then see if any balance remained in our favor. They consumed during the time they were getting in order for the table, three bushels of barley, at $1 25 the bushel, one bushel of meal at the same price, and one hundred weight of what is called "chicken rice," at $3 00. The cost of the barley and meal was, . . . . $5 00 Rice, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 00 Cost of poultry, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 58 Making the total price, $24 58 Ten couple of ducks, and the same number of chickens, would amount to, $27 50 Thus, at the first sight, it would appear that we gained but $2 92 by four months' trouble in attending to our fowl-yard; but we have now to take from the purchase money the value of the eight we saved for stock, and likewise to deduct from the barley and rice the quantity consumed by them in the four months. Now these eight were large fowls when bought, and well worth 50 cents each. We must allow for their food at least a fourth part of that consumed. We have then to take off $4 00 from the first cost of the poultry, and $2 00 from the value of the food, which will add $6 00 to the $2 92, leaving on the whole transaction a profit of $8 92. We have still another small item to add. One of the hens we saved began to lay in the middle of September, and by the time the four months were expired had given us two dozen eggs, which at that time of year, even in the country, were not to be procured under 37½ cents the dozen; so that we have to add 75 cents to $8 92, making a clear profit in four months of $9 67. It was a source of great amusement to ourselves, as well as to the children, by whom it was always considered a treat to run in the meadows, with barley in their little baskets, to the "coobiddies." When we first had the poultry we kept them in the stable-yard; but we soon found they did not thrive: they had been taken from a farm where they had the free range of the fields, and drooped in confinement, and from want of the grass and worms which they had been accustomed to feed on. We had a house constructed for them in the meadow nearest the house, and soon found that they throve much better, and did not require so much food. We had no trouble with them, except in seeing that the house was cleaned out daily. Through the fields flowed a stream of clean water, consequently our ducks throve well. The bushel of meal which figures in our accounts was for them; they used to have a little mixed in hot water once a day. We soon left it off, for we found the rice boiled in skim-milk was equally good for them, and much cheaper. Poultry of all kinds are very fond of "scraps;" the children were always told to cut up pieces of potatoes, greens, or meat, which they might leave on their plates at the nursery dinner; and when they were removed to the kitchen, they were collected together and put into the rice-bowl for the chickens. We always fed them three times daily: in the morning with rice, in the middle of the day with "scraps," and in the evening they had just as much barley thrown to them as they cared to pick up eagerly. We have heard some persons complain of the great expense attending a poultry-yard, but this arises from the person who has the charge of them throwing down just as much again grain as the fowls can consume. We have ourselves often seen barley trodden into the ground, if occasionally we left the task of feeding to the lad. It must, of course, be impossible at all times for a lady to go into the fields for the purpose of feeding her chickens; the only plan to prevent waste is to have a meal-room in the house, and as much given out daily as is considered necessary for the consumption of the poultry. This is some little trouble, but will be well repaid by having at all times cheap and wholesome fowls, etc. We have hitherto only spoken of the profit which may be obtained from a fowl-yard, when the stock is purchased. The farmer's wife, from whom we bought _ours_, of course gained some money by their sale. When we reared our own chickens from our own eggs, we received much more emolument from our yard; but in this little volume it is my purpose to show how a person should _commence_, who leaves London or any other large town for a suburban residence. It must always be borne in mind, that nothing will prosper if left wholly to servants; the country proverb of "the master's eye fattens the steed," is a very true one, and another is quite as good: "the best manure you can put on the ground is the foot of the master." As a proof of our assertion we will, in the next chapter, detail the disasters we experienced when we left the charge of rabbits to the superintendence of a servant. CHAPTER VIII. OUR LOSSES. Our young people were very anxious to add some rabbits to their playthings, and as we always like to encourage a love of animals in children, we consented that they should become the fortunate share-holders in a doe and six young ones. These were bought early in September, and, as long as the weather would allow, the children used to take them food; by and by, however, one died, and then came the complaint that Master Harry had killed it by giving it too much green meat. The young gentleman was thereupon commanded not to meddle with them for the future, but the rabbits did not derive any benefit from his obedience; two or three times weekly we heard of deaths taking place in the hutch, till at last the whole half-dozen, with their mamma, reposed under the large walnut-tree. One day the lad who had attended to them knocked at the drawing-room door, and on entering with a large basket, drew from it a most beautiful black-and-white doe, and held it up before our admiring eyes; this was followed by the display of seven young ones, as pretty as the mother. "Please, ma'am," said Tom, "these are the kind of rabbits you ought to have bought. My brother keeps rabbits, and these are some of his; I'll warrant they won't die!" Willing once more to gratify the children, as well as to solve the enigma of whether it must be inevitable to lose by keeping these animal, we became the possessors of these superior creatures, with the understanding that no one was to have anything to do with them but Tom, the said Tom saying, with perfect confidence, that "he would 'warrant' they should weigh five pounds each in six weeks." Not being learned in rabbits, we trusted to his experience and promises that we should always from that have a brace for the table whenever we wished for them. What was our disappointment, then, when a week after we heard of the death of one of them! This was soon followed by another, and another, till the whole seven little "bunnies" shared the grave under the walnut-tree, and in a day or two the doe likewise departed: I concluded she died of grief for the loss of her offspring. In vain did we endeavor to discover the reason of this mortality; it could not have been for want of food, for they consumed nearly as many oats as the pony. At last Tom thought of the hutch, or "locker," as he called it. "It must," said he, gravely, "have had _the_ disease." So what that fatal complaint among rabbits is, remains a profound mystery to us. Now this hutch was made of new wood, in a carpenter's shop, at a cost of nearly $10, and how it could have become infected with this fearful complaint we could not comprehend. However, from that time we abandoned rabbit-keeping, and resolved not, for the future, to keep any live stock which we could not look after ourselves. We did not attempt to do so in this case, because we were frightened at the responsibility Tom threw on our shoulders, if we looked at them the doe always eating her young ones was one of the evils to be dreaded by our interference. I suppose profit is to be made by keeping them, or tame rabbits would not be placed in the poulterers' shops by the side of ducks and chickens, but we are quite at a loss to know how it is accomplished. It did not much matter in a pecuniary point of view, as it was very doubtful if the children's pets would ever have died for the benefit of the dinner-table, and I only insert this chapter for the purpose of proving what I stated, viz.; that if a lady wishes her stock of any kind to prosper, she must look after it herself. When I say prosper, I mean without the expense being double the value of the produce she would receive from her "four-acre farm." We did not enter these disasters in our housekeeping book, it went under the title of children's expenses. For my own part, I am disposed to think that it must always be expensive to keep live stock of any kind for which all the food has to be purchased. Had we continued to keep our fowls in the yard, I am convinced they would have brought us little or no profit; but the grass, worms, and other things they found for themselves in the field, half supplied them in food, as well as keeping them healthy. We had not one death among our poultry from disease in the six months of which I have been relating this experience of our farming. Our next venture proved more prosperous than the rabbits, and will be related in the following chapter. CHAPTER IX. OUR PIGEONS. After we had been a few months in the country, a friend, who was a great pigeon-fancier, wished to add some new varieties to his cote, and offered to send us, as a present, seven or eight pairs of those he wished to part with. We were greatly pleased with his offer, and at once set the carpenter at work to prepare a house for them. As soon as it was ready we received sixteen beautiful pigeons. For the first fortnight the pigeon-holes were covered with net, that the birds might be enabled to survey at a distance their new abode, and become accustomed to the sight of the persons about the yard. When the net was removed, they eagerly availed themselves of their freedom to take flights round and round the house. One couple, of less contented disposition than the others, never came back, nor did we ever hear that they had returned to their old home. Our number was not, however, lessened by their desertion, for we received, at nearly the same time, from another friend, a pair of beautiful "pouters." As we resolved to keep a debtor-and-creditor account of all the things we kept, we found that our eighteen pigeons consumed in every seven weeks. Two pecks of peas . . . . . . . . . . . $0 75 One peck of tares . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Ditto maize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 $1 45 In the first fourteen weeks we kept them, we received but two pairs of young ones, which were most mercilessly slaughtered for a pie. The price of these in the market would have been 37 cents per pair, so that we were losers on our stock; but we must say that we did not receive them till nearly the end of September, and we were agreeably surprised at finding we had young ones fit the table at Christmas. From that time we have been well recompensed for our peas, tares, and maize, as each couple produces on an average a pair every six weeks; thus the produce was worth $3 00, while the cost was something less than $1 50. Even had there been no profit derived, we should still have kept them, as we consider no place in the country complete without these beautiful and graceful little creatures. It was a subject of never-failing delight to the children, watching them as they wheeled round and round the house of an evening, and it was always considered a great privilege to be allowed to feed them. At first the food was kept in the stable, and Tom was the feeder; but we were soon obliged to alter this, as we never went into the yard without treading on the corn. It was afterwards removed to the back kitchen, round the door of which they used to assemble in a flock, till one of the servants threw them out their allowance. They were considered "pets," by all the household, and were so tame that they would allow themselves to be taken in the hand and stroked. As for the young ones, who were doomed to the _steak_, we never saw them till they made their appearance in the pie. They were taken from the nest as soon as they were fledged. I mention this, because we were sometimes accused by our visitors (for whose especial benefit the young ones were sometimes slain) of cruelty, in eating the "pretty creatures;" but we never found that they had any scruples in partaking of them at dinner. It was usually as they were watching of a summer evening the flight of the parent birds that we were taxed with our barbarity. We were one day much amused by a clergyman of our acquaintance, who kept a great number of these birds in a room, and who, in default of children to pet, made pets of his pigeons. At dinner, a pigeon-pie made part of the repast. This was placed opposite a visitor, who was requested to carve the dainty. He did so, and sent a portion of it to his host. The reverend gentleman looked at the plateful sent him attentively, and then said with a sigh, "I will trouble you to exchange this for part of the other bird. _This_ was a peculiar favorite, and I always fed it myself. I put a mark on the breast after it was picked, for I could not bear to eat the little darling!" We always thought that this sentimental divine had better either not have had the "little darling" put into the pie, or have swallowed his feelings and his favorite at the same time. This dish seems to occasion wit as well as sentiment, for we were once asked by a facetious friend, "Why is a pigeon in a pie like Shakspeare's Richard III?" We "gave it up," and were told, "Because it was bound unto the steak (stake), and could not fly." This may perhaps be a worn-out jest, but it was fresh to the writer, and so perhaps it may be to some of her readers. We will say a few words on the management of pigeons before we conclude this chapter. It is necessary that a pan of water should be place in their house each day for them to wash in, and that a large lump of bay-salt should likewise be kept there. It should be occasionally cleaned out, and this is all the trouble attending keeping them. Feed them three times a day; and never throw more down than they pick up at a meal. As I have said nothing of the profit derived from chickens when they are _reared_ by the owner, so I now say nothing of the saving in keeping pigeons, when we came to sow a large patch of Indian corn, as well as some tares. We did so successfully in the acre of ground called the Orchard; and though we had abundance of fine fruit from it, the trees were not planted so thickly as to prevent any kind of crop from flourishing. But we repeat, this little book is a manual for the use of the beginner; and to such we hope it may prove both useful and encouraging. CHAPTER X. HOW WE CURED OUR HAMS. I have now recounted our experience in keeping cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and pigeons; and with everything but the rabbits we were amply satisfied with the return we received for our labor. We had a constant supply of milk, butter, eggs, ducks, chickens, and pork, not only fresh, but in the shape of good hams and bacon. I do not know whether it is not presumptuous, in the face of Miss Acton, Mrs. Rundle, and so many other authorities, not forgetting the great Alexis Soyer, to give "our method of curing" the last-mentioned dainties; but we think we may as well follow up the history of our pigs, from the sty to the kitchen. I always found that the recipes usually given for salting pork contained too much saltpetre, which not only renders the meat hard, but causes it to be very indigestible. The following is the manner in which they were cured by ourselves: For each ham of twelve pounds weight: Two pounds of common salt. Two ounces of saltpetre. ¼ pound of bay salt. ¼ pound of coarse sugar. The hams to be well rubbed with this mixture, which must be in the finest powder. It is always the best plan to get your butcher to rub the meat, as a female hand is hardly heavy enough to do it effectually; they are then placed in a deep pan, and a wine-glass of vinegar is added. They should be turned each day; and for the first three or four should be well rubbed with brine. After that time it will be sufficient, with a wooden or iron spoon, to well ladle it over the meat. They should remain three weeks in the pickle. When removed from it, they must be well wiped, put in brown-paper bags, and then smoked the _wood_ smoke for three weeks. We once had nearly a whole pig spoiled by its being taken to a baker's, where it was _dried_, but not smoked. When it came back it resembled very strong tallow. In villages it is usual to send bacon and hams to be dried in the chimneys of farm-houses where wood is burnt, in the old-fashioned manner, on dogs; but if resident in or near a small town, there is always a drying-house to be met with, where we believe sawdust is used for fuel. We have had our own dried in this manner, and always found them excellent. We used the same pickle for twenty-four pounds' weight of bacon, with the exception that we allow two pounds more of common salt, and when it is turned the second time the same quantity of salt is rubbed into it. Some persons make a pickle of water, salt, sugar, and saltpetre, boiled together, and when cold put in the hams, etc., without any rubbing. We have never tried that way for meats that are to be dried, but can strongly recommend it for salt beef, pork, or mutton. The following is the pickle always used in our kitchen: Three gallons of _soft_ water. One pound of coarse sugar. Two ounces of saltpetre. Three pounds of common salt. Boil together, and let it be well skimmed; then, when cold, the meat to be well wiped and put into it. It will be fit to cook in ten days, but may be kept without injury for two months, when the pickle should be reboiled and well skimmed. The meat should be covered with brine and the pan have a cover. We have put legs of mutton into this pickle, and can assure the reader it is an excellent mode of cooking this joint; and as it is one which frequently makes its appearance at table where the family is large, it is sometimes a pleasant method of varying the dish. It is the best way of any we know of, for curing tongues; it has the great advantage of being always ready for use, and you are not fearful of the carelessness of servants, who not unfrequently forget to look to the salting-pans. We can recommend a dish not often seen at table, and that is a sirloin of beef put into this pickle for about a fortnight. It is infinitely superior either to the round or edgebone, and certainly not so extravagant as the last-named joint. A friend has told us that we should procure some juniper-berries to put into our ham-pickle, but there were none to be purchased in our neighborhood, and as we were quite ignorant of the flavor they might impart, we did not trouble ourselves to get them. I am fond of old proverbs, and as our hams and bacon were always good, we determined to "let well alone." CHAPTER X1. OUR BREAD. Any lady who thinks of trying a country residence, should see that it possess a small brick oven, for "home-made" bread ought always to be considered indispensable in the country. We did not discover that our new home was without one till after we entered it. We were laughed at by our landlord when we mentioned our want of this convenience. "Why!" cried he, "there is a baker's shop not five minutes walk from the house." "Never mind," said I, "how near the baker's shop may be; we mean to have all our bread made at home. It will be, we are sure, better to do so, both on the score of health and economy." "But I really," said the gentleman, "cannot afford to build you an oven; it would cost me $100 at the least." At this, H., who had resided for a short time in a house where the bread was made at home, laughed, and said, "Really, Mr. L., you need not fear that we wish to put you to so much expense, and it is perhaps but fair that we should meet you half-way in the matter; so if you will find labor we will find materials: or reverse it, if you please." Mr. L. remembered that he had in some outhouse a quantity of "fire bricks," and it was arranged that we should pay for the labor of constructing a three-peck oven. This occasioned on our part an outlay of $10, and this small sum was the source of considerable saving to us yearly. We were more fortunate with our bread than with our butter-making, for Mary was a capital baker; our bread was always made from the best flour. We all liked it much better than bakers' bread, and it was much more nourishing. Indeed, when I was once in Kent during "hopping," and saw that the women who resided in the neighborhood always gave up half a day's work weekly for the purpose of going home to bake, I used to wonder why they did not purchase their bread from a baker in the village. I was informed by one of them to whom I put the question, "Lord, ma'am, we could not work on bakers' bread, we should be half-starved; it's got no _heart_ in it." To a small family, perhaps, the saving might not be considered an object, but any one who has for a few months been accustomed to eat home-made bread, would be sorry to have recourse to the baker's; the loaves purchased are usually spongy the first day, and dry and harsh the second. It is not only that other ingredients than flour, yeast, and water are mixed in the dough, but it is seldom sufficiently baked; bread well made at home and baked in a brick oven for a proper time, is as good at the end of a week as it is the second day. I have heard several persons say, "I should like home-made bread if it were baked every day, but I don't like eating stale bread four or five days out of the seven." If they stayed with us a day or two, they became convinced that bread which had been made three or four days did not deserve the epithet of "stale." I will now proceed to show the reader how much flour was consumed in our household, consisting of thirteen persons. We used to bake weekly twenty-eight pounds of flour, of the best quality; this produced _forty-two_ pounds of bread. I will give in the most explicit manner I can directions for making it, which I imagine any servant will be able to comprehend: Place in a large pan twenty-eight pounds of flour; make a hole with the hand in the centre of it like a large basin, into which strain a pint of yeast from the brewer's; this must be tasted, and if too bitter a little flour sprinkled in it, and then strained directly; then pour in two quarts of water, of the temperature of 100', that is, what is called blood-heat, and stir the flour round from the bottom of the hole you have formed with the hand, till that part of the flour is quite thick and well mixed, though all the rest must remain unwetted; then sprinkle a little flour over the moist part, and cover with a cloth: this is called "sponge," and must be left half an hour to rise. During this time the fire must be lighted in the oven with fagots, and the heat well maintained till the bread is ready to enter it. At the end of the half-hour add four quarts of water, of the same heat as the previous two quarts, and well knead the whole mass into a smooth dough. This is hard work, and requires strength to do it properly. It must be again covered and left for one hour. In cold weather both sponge and dough must be placed on the kitchen-hearth, or it will not rise well. Before the last water is put in, two table-spoonfuls of salt must be sprinkled over the flour. Sometimes the flour will absorb another pint of water. When the dough has risen, it must be made up into loaves as quickly as possible; if much handled then, the bread will be heavy. It will require an hour and an half to bake it, if made into four-pound loaves. While the dough is rising the oven must be emptied of the fire, the ashes swept from it, and then well wiped with a damp mop kept for the purpose. To ascertain if it is sufficiently heated, throw a little flour into it, and if it brown _directly_, it will do. I think I have stated every particular necessary to enable a novice to make a "batch" of good bread. I will sum up the articles requisite to produce forty-two pounds of the best quality: Flour, 28 pounds. Water at 100', 12 or 13 pints. Two table-spoonfuls of salt. Yeast, 1 pint. Bake one hour and a half. The quantity made was ten and a half quarterns, or four-pound loaves; and, as I have said, supplied our family of thirteen persons for the week. For the same number, when we were residing in town, the baker used to leave _thirteen_ quarterns weekly. One day, in the country, when, from the accidental absence of the bread-maker, we had to be supplied from the baker, we were surprised to hear that at the nursery-breakfast the children (six) and nurse consumed more than a two-pound loaf, and then were complaining of being "so hungry" two hours after. I thought of the words of the Kentish hopper, "that there was no heart in bakers' bread." The servant who has the management of the oven should be instructed to take care that the wood-ashes are not thrown into the dust-hole with the ashes from the grates. They are always valuable in the country; and, as I have mentioned, the wooden articles used in the dairy should always be scrubbed with them. Should the water which is used in the house be hard, and any washing done at home, they should be place in a coarse cloth over a tub, and water poured over them several times to make lye, which softens the water, and saves soap much more than soda, and is likewise better for the linen. The brick oven will often prove a source of great convenience, independent of bread-making. It is just the size to bake hams or roasting pigs, and will, when dinner-parties are given, frequently prove much more useful to the cook than an extra fire. The fagots are sold by the hundred, and the price is usually $6 25 for that quantity. CHAPTER XII. OUR KITCHEN-GARDEN. As I wish to make this little work a complete manual to the "farm of four acres," I must insert a few remarks on the management of the kitchen-garden. Ours consisted of an acre; and, large as our family was, we did not require more than half of it to supply us with vegetables, independent of potatoes. We strongly advise any one who may have more garden than they may want for vegetables, to plant the surplus with potatoes. Even if the "disease" does affect part of the crop, the gain will still be great, providing you keep animals to consume them; for they must indeed be bad if the pigs will not thrive on them when boiled. Poultry, likewise, will eat them in preference to any other food. We had something more than half an acre planted one year when the disease was very prevalent; the crop suffered from it to a considerable extent, but the yield was so large that we stored sufficient to supply the family from September till the end of April, and had enough of those but slightly affected to fatten four pigs, beside having a large bowlful boiled daily for the poultry. The worst parts were always cut out before they were boiled, and neither pigs nor poultry were allowed to touch them raw. It is much the best plan to consume all the potatoes you may grow, rather than save any of them for seed. It will be but a slight additional expense to have fresh kinds sent from quite a different locality, and they will thrive better, and not be so liable to the disease. They should always be dug before the slightest appearance of frost, and place on straw in a dry place, where they can be conveniently looked over once a fortnight, when any that show symptoms of decay should be removed and boiled at once for the pigs. By this method very few will be wholly wasted; instead of eating potatoes you will eat pork, that is, if you have plenty of skim-milk. I do not at all know how pigs would like them without they were mixed up with that fluid. We have tried, with great success, planting them in rows alternately with other vegetables. When they are all together, the haulms in wet seasons grow so rankly that they become matted together; and then, as the air is excluded from the roots, it renders them liable to disease. We have tried cutting the haulm off to within a few inches of the ground; but this, the gardener said, proved detrimental to the roots. We afterwards tried a row of potatoes, then cabbages, then carrots, and then again came the potatoes. We once planted them between the currant and gooseberry bushes, but it was as bad, or worse, than when a quantity of them were by themselves; for when the trees made their midsummer shoots the leaves quite shut out air and light from the potatoes, and when dug they proved worse than any other portions of the crop. We always found that the deeper the sets were placed in the ground the sounder were the roots: We tried every experiment with them; and as our gardener was both skilful and industrious, we were usually much more fortunate with our produce than our neighbors. Carrots rank to the "small farmer" next in value to the potatoes; not only pigs and cows are fond of them, but likewise horses. The pony always improved in condition when he was allowed to have a few daily. Our arable acre was a model farm on a very small scale. We grow in it maize for the poultry, tares for the pigeons, lucerne for the cows, and talked of oats for the pony. This our gardener objected to, so the surplus bit of ground was sown with parsnips, which turned out very profitable, as both pigs and cows liked them. We have told the reader that we reared the calf of the Strawberry cow, and it cost us hardly anything to do so, for it was fed in the winter with the roots we had to spare. The first winter it had to consume the greater part of the ton of mangel-wurzel we had bought "to keep our cows together." Some we had boiled with potatoes for the pigs, and they liked it very well. An acre of land may appear a laughably small piece of ground to produce such a variety of articles, but if well attended to the yield will astonish those who are ignorant of gardening. The one important thing to be attended to is, to see that all seed-crops are well thinned out as soon as they are an inch above the surface. In very few kitchen-gardens is this attended to, and for want of this care a dozen carrots, parsnips, or turnips, are allowed to stand where one would be sufficient. The one would prove a fine root; the dozen are not worth the trouble of pulling, as they can get neither air nor room to grow. To be well done they should be thinned by hand, and that being a tedious "job," gardeners seldom can be induced to perform the work properly. As our ground became productive we added another cow, and more pigs and poultry, but I shall not now say with what success. This little book in only intended for the novice in farming, and details only the results of the first six months of our "farm of four acres." Perhaps I should have called it _five_ acres, as nearly the whole of the acre of kitchen-garden was devoted to the cultivation of food for our "stock." We had a very broad sunny border at the back of the flower-garden, which grew nearly all the spring and summer vegetables we required: such as seakale, early potatoes, peas cauliflowers, and salads. We have not yet said anything of the money we saved by our kitchen-garden, but we must add to the profits of our six months' farming the average amount we should have paid to a green-grocer for fruit and vegetables. Twenty-five cents a day to supply thirteen persons with these necessary articles is certainly not more than must have been expended. Still, $90 per annum is a considerable item of household expenditure, and scanty would have been the supply it would have furnished; as it was we had a profusion of fruit of all kinds, from the humble gooseberry and currant to the finest peaches, nectarines, and hothouse grapes, as well as an abundant supply of walnuts and filberts. Had we bought all the produce of our garden, the value would have more than paid our gardener's wages. Nor must I omit the luxury of having beautiful flowers from the greenhouse throughout the winter; these superfluous items did not figure in our accounts. We should have purchased but bare necessaries, and therefore entered but twenty-five cents a day for "garden stuff" in our housekeeping book. Those only who have lived in the country can appreciate the luxury of not only having fruit and vegetables in abundance, but of having them fresh. Early potatoes fresh dug, peas fresh gathered, salad fresh cut, and fruit plucked just before it makes its appearance at table, are things which cannot be purchased by the wealthiest residents in a great city. Not far from our residence there were large grounds, which were cultivated with fruit and vegetables for the London market. I have frequently seen the wagons packed for Covent Garden. The freshest that can be procured there would be considered "stale" in the neighborhood in which they were grown. Any fruit or vegetables in that far-famed market must have been gathered twenty-four hours before they could find their way into the kitchen of the consumer; and it is not only the time which has elapsed, but the manner in which they are packed, which so much deteriorates their quality. Have any of our readers ever seen the densely-loaded wagons which enter that market? The vegetables are wedged as closely together as they can be pressed, which very soon causes, in warm weather, cabbages, greens, &c., to ferment and become unwholesome. I have often seen them so loaded in the middle of the day before they reached London. They are left in the hot sun till the time arrives, when the horses are placed in them, and they begin their slow journey towards town. This is seldom till late at night when the distance does not exceed a dozen miles. The finer kinds of fruit such as peaches, grapes, etc., do not injure so much by being kept a few days before the are eaten; indeed, _ripe_ peaches and nectarines are seldom gathered for sale: they would spoil too quickly to enable the fruiterer to realize much profit. They are plucked when quite hard, and then placed in boxes till they gradually _soften_; but the flavor of fruit thus treated is very inferior to that of a peach or nectarine ripened by the sun. Seed-fruits, such as strawberries, come very vapid in four or five hours after they have been picked, if they were then quite ripe. I know that the last few pages have nothing to do with "the money we made" by our farm, but I wish to show the reader all the advantages which a country residence possess over a town one. Some persons, who cannot live without excitement, think that nothing can compensate for the want of amusement and society. I was once speaking of the pleasure I experienced from residing in the country, and placed _health_ among its many advantages, when I was answered, "It is better to die in London than live in the country!" I think I have said enough to cause my lady readers to wish that the time may not be far distant when they may, like ourselves,--for we did all sorts of "odd jobs" in our garden,--cut their own asparagus, and assist in gathering their own peas. It is indeed impossible to over-estimate the value of a kitchen-garden in a large family which numbers many children among its members. CHAPTER XIII. THE MONEY WE MADE. Some time ago we showed our first six months' accounts to a friend, who was very sceptical as to the profit we always told him we made by our farming. After he had looked over our figures, he said,-- "Well! And after all, what have you made by your butter-making, pig-killing, and fowl-slaughtering?" "What have we made?" said I, indignantly. "Why, don't you see that, from July to January, we realized a profit of $9 50 from our cows, $11 12 from our pigs, $9 67 from our poultry-yard, and $45 at the least from our kitchen-garden, which, altogether, amounts to no less a sum than $145 29; and all this in our 'salad-days, when we were green in judgment?' What shall we not make now that we have more stock, our ground well cropped, and, better still, have gained so much experience?" "Well," said our friend, "the more 'stock,' as you call it, you have, the more money you will lose." At this rejoinder, H. looked at the speaker as if she thought he had "eaten of the insane root, which takes the reason prisoner." "_Lose more money_!" when you can yourself see, by looking at this book, that in our first six months we have cleared $145 29! And, indeed, it was absurd of A. to put down so little, for she has allowed $25 for the land; and if she take that off the rent, she ought to enter it as profit from the "farm." Besides, think of only putting down a shilling a day for fruit and vegetables! Very few puddings would the children get at that rate, supposing we were in London." "If we were in London," interrupted I, "you know that $90 yearly would be as much as we could afford to expend for that item in our family. I have made out all our farming accounts as fairly as I can. I am as well aware as you can be that a shilling a day would not give us the luxuries of the garden as we now have them; and though that plenty may form one of the advantages of residing in the country, we have no right to put down as a saving of money the value of articles we should never have thought of purchasing." "I must allow," said Mr. N., "that you appear to have been strictly honest in your entries as regards the value of the produce you have received, but you do not appear to have put down your losses. You keep a one-sided ledger. You have the credit, but not the debit entry. You say nothing of the money you have lost by pigeons and rabbit-keeping." Now the utmost we had lost by our pigeons in the six months was $2 25, and he knew perfectly well how profitable they had since been to us. He used jokingly to say, that we fed our guest with them in every mode of cookery so frequently, that they would alter the old grace of "for rabbits hot," &c., and substitute the word "pigeon" in its place; so we thought it was ungenerous to reproach the poor birds with the scanty number they gave us the first few weeks they were in our dove-cote. Silenced on that point, he returned to our unfortunate rabbit speculation, and complained that we had kept no account of the money we had lost by them. Here H. stopped him saying, "Pray, Mr. N., did you not purchase your children a pony, and did it not catch cold and die in a month afterwards? I suppose Mrs. N. did not enter that in her housekeeper's book as meat at so much a pound, and why should we put down the cost of the rabbits in our farming accounts? No; of course it was entered among the 'sundries.'" "But you must allow," said Mr. N., "that if you had done as I advised you, and taken a house in a street leading into one of the squares, you would have lived more cheaply than here. Why, your gardener's wages must more than swallow up any profit which you may _think_ you make from your farm. You must acknowledge you would have saved that expense." "Granted," said I; "but we should most likely have paid quite as much to a doctor. We never got through a year in town without a heavy bill to one; and we must have had all the expense and trouble of taking the children out of town during the hot weather, while the have had excellent health ever since they have been here; and with the exception, when some kind friend like yourself has asked one of them on a visit, neither of them has left home since we came here. Of one thing I am quite sure, that we are much happier than we should have been in London; and that in every point of view, as regards expenditure, we are gainers. I have not entered any profit arising from baking at home, though the difference is just three four-pound loaves weekly; and Mrs. N. will tell you what must be the saving by our having our own laundry." "Enough! enough!" said Mr. N., laughingly; "your evidence is overwhelming. You almost force me to believe that I could live in the country, feed my own pork, and drink my own milk, without paying half a crown a pound for the one or a shilling a quart for the other, and this was what I never before believed possible; and I am quite sure, that if I were to put the assertion in a book, no one would believe me." "Then," exclaimed I, "it shall be asserted in a book whenever I can find time to transcribe all the particulars from my diary; and I hope that I may be able to convince my readers--should I be fortunate enough to obtain any--not only that they may keep cows, pigs, and poultry without loss, but that they may derive health, recreation, and profit from doing so. None know better than yourself how worn-out in health and spirits we were when we came to this place; how oppressed with cares and anxieties. Without occupation, we should most likely have become habitual invalids, real or fancied; without some inducement to be out of doors, we should seldom have exerted ourselves to take the exercise necessary to restore us to health and strength. But you will lose your train, if I keep you longer listening to the benefits we have experienced by our residence in this place. Give the fruit and flowers to Mrs. N. with our love; and tell her, that with God's blessing we have improved in 'mind, body, and estate,' by occupying ourselves with 'our farm of four acres.'" CHAPTER XIV. THE NEXT SIX MONTHS. It was not my intention when I commenced this little work to do more than give our first six months' experience in farming our four acres of land; but as perhaps the reader may think that time hardly sufficient to form a correct opinion of the advantages to be derived from a residence in the country, I think it as well to add some particulars relating to the following six months. In the spring came a new source of profit and amusement. We commenced our labors in the poultry-yard in February, by setting a hen on thirteen eggs, which, early in March, produced the same number of chickens: these were all ready for the table in the middle of May. At that time we could not have purchased them under $1 50 the couple. The cost of thirty-eight chickens till ready to kill was $4 37. We always knew exactly the expense attending the poultry, because we had a separate book from the miller, in which every article was entered as it came into the house; and as the chickens were kept distinct from the other fowls, I could tell the exact sum they had cost us when they made their appearance at table. The first thing that was given them to eat was egg, boiled quite hard, chopped very fine, and mixed with bread-crumbs. After that they had groats. I find they consumed: Three quarts of whole groats . . . . . $ 37 Two bushels of barley . . . . . . . . 2 25 One bushel of middlings . . . . . . . 1 12 Twenty-five lbs. of chicken-rice . . . 63 Making altogether . . . . $4 37 The reader must be told that those thirty-eight chickens had other things to eat than those I have put down; they had nearly all the scraps from the house, consisting of cold potatoes, bits of meat, pudding, &c., and any pieces of bread which were left at table were soaked in skim-milk; and the rice was also boiled in it. O course, in a smaller family there would not have been so many "scraps" for them; but, however strict you may be with children, you cannot prevent their leaving remnants on their plates, all of which would have been wasted had it not been for the chickens and pig-tub. We were not so fortunate with the ducks. We did not keep any through the winter, consequently we had to purchase the eggs, which were placed under hens; for those eggs we paid four cents each, and out of thirteen, which was the number given to each hen, we never reared more than eight ducks. Thus, in the first instance, they cost us six cents each; and they were likewise more expensive to feed than the chickens. They were never fit for the table till they had cost us sixty-three cents the couple. One reason of this was, that as the chickens had all the waste bids, they had nothing but what was bought for them; but then they were such ducks as could not have been purchased at the poulterers'. We never killed one unless it weighed four pounds; they used to be brought in at night, and placed in the scale: if it was the weight I have mentioned it was killed, if not it was respited till it did so. At first we tried cooping them to fatten, but found it did not answer, as they moped and refused to eat by themselves; so we abandoned that plan, and were content to let them run in the meadows till fit to kill, which was not till they were three months old. They were never "fat," but very meaty, and fine flavored,--not in the least like those which are bought, which, however fat they may appear before they are cooked, come to table half the size they were when put down to the fire. I remember being rather puzzled once when resident in London. I wanted a particularly fine couple of ducks for a "company dinner," and went myself to the shop where I dealt to order them. "Now, Mrs. Todd," said I, "the ducks I require are not fat ducks, but meaty ones; the last I had from you had nothing on them when they came to table, though they looked so plump when you sent them." "Oh, yes, ma'am," was the rejoinder. "I know just what you want; but they are very difficult to get: you want _running_ ducks." I was obliged to ask what she meant by the term _running_, and was then informed that the ducks for the London market were put up to fatten, and as they were crammed with grease to hasten the process, the fat all went into the dripping-pan. Now a _running_ duck was one well fed, and allowed to roam or _run_ till it was killed. I am now able from experience to say, that they are incomparably superior to their fattened brethren. The novice in poultry-rearing must be told that it is almost useless to set a hen in very hot weather. As we had more eggs than were required, we did so during part of June, July, and August, but had very bad fortune with them; the hen seldom hatching more than three or four, and those puny little creatures. There is an old Kentish proverb which says, "Between the sickle and the scythe, Whatever's born will never thrive;" and as it was just between the hay and corn-harvest that we tried to rear our ducks and chickens, I am induced to believe that, like many other old saws, it was founded on experience. They may be reared in September, though they require great care, and must not be allowed to run on the grass, which at that season is seldom dry. A friend once told me she reared a brood of seventeen chickens, which were hatched the last week in September; they were placed in an empty greenhouse, and were consequently kept warm and dry. March is _the_ month for poultry; the hatches are better, and they grow much more rapidly than at any other time. I am quite sure that a poultry-yard may be made very profitable to any one who will bestow a little trouble on it. Great care must be taken with the young chickens at night; the hen should be securely cooped with them: for want of this precaution we in one night lost eight, when they were a few days old, being, as we supposed, carried off by the cats. The best food for ducks when first hatched is bread and milk; in a few days barley-meal, wetted with water into balls about as big as peas, should be given to them. It is usual, as soon as both ducks and chickens come out of the shell, to put a pepper-corn down their throats. I don't know that it is really of service to them, but it is a time-honored custom, and so perhaps it is as well to follow it. As for our butter-making, it continued to prosper; we had some little trouble with it in the spring, when the weather set in suddenly very hot. It was certainly much more difficult to reduce the temperature of the cream to 55' than it was to raise it to that degree. I often thought with vain longing of the shop in the Strand, where we used to purchase Wenham Lake Ice: how firm would the butter have come, could we have had a few lumps to put in the churn half and hour before we required to use it! Farmers' wives tell us, that to get firm butter in very hot weather they get up at three o'clock in the morning, in order that it may be made before the sun becomes powerful. Now this is a thing that would not have suited H. or myself at all, and therefore we never mustered up courage to attempt it. One day in March--and this is the last disaster I have to record concerning our butter--we were particularly anxious to have it good, as we expected visitors, to whom we had frequently boasted of our skill as dairywomen: the day was very warm, and the cream appeared much thicker than usual; we churned for more than an hour without its appearing to undergo any change; we frequently removed the lid to see if there was any sign of butter coming, but each time we were disheartened when we discovered it looked just the same as when placed in the churn. At last the handle went round as easily as if no cream were in it, and presently it began to run over the top of the churn. When we looked in a curious sight presented itself: the cream had risen to the top, just as milk does when it boils! We were greatly astonished. In nine months' butter-making we had seen nothing like it. Tom, who milked the cows was supposed to know something of the art of churning; he was, therefore, called into the dairy: as soon as he saw the state of the matter he exclaimed, "Why, the cream's gone to sleep!" "The cream gone to sleep!" What in the world could that mean? Such a propensity we had never discovered in cream before; we could gain no solution of the mystery from Tom; all he said was, that we must go on churning till it "waked up." H. and myself had been hard at work for two hours, so willingly yielded to his request that he might be allowed to rouse the cream from its slumber. He, the cook, and housemaid, churned away by turns till seven in the evening, but the sleep of the cream remained unbroken, and as it was then considered a hopeless affair, the slothful fluid was consigned to the pig-tub. Now we have never felt quite sure of our butter since. Every time we churn there is a lurking fear that the cream may choose to take a nap; however, it is as yet the first and last time in our experience. I can give no advice to my readers on the subject, because I am wholly ignorant on the subject, though I have consulted every farmer's wife in the neighborhood on the matter. They all say that cream will go to sleep sometimes, though it usually wakes up after a few hours.* [I have since been told by an old woman conversant with sleepy cream, that a quart of milk nearly boiling hot will wake it up.] Perhaps, after all, we were too impatient, and should not have given in after _only_ nine hours' churning. With this solitary exception our butter-making progressed as favorably as we could desire. I do not quite know how to believe the stories I am told of wonderful cows which my friends are fortunate enough to possess. One gentleman has informed me that he has one which gives fifteen pounds of butter weekly. Now we have had several, but never made more on the average than eight pounds per week. I believe that a great deal depends on the manner in which they are milked, and once in the hands of a beginner in that art the cows decreased in milk so rapidly, that we did not get more than a gallon daily from both animals; after they had been three weeks under his management we changed the milker, but did not get anything like the proper quantity again till after they had calved. I believe the usual average is one pound of butter from every ten quarts of milk. Ours used to give us thirteen or fourteen quarts each daily, and yet we never made more than eight pounds. We used about two quarts of new milk, so that if ten quarts will give a pound of butter, we did not get so much as we ought. Still we were very well satisfied with the produce we received. There requires management with two cows, in order that one may always be in full milk when the other calves. If you rear a calf for the butcher, it will require the whole of the milk for six or seven weeks, which is about the age they are killed for fine veal. We once--it was in the winter--received $26 for one. With two cows this may usually be done, and its is more profitable than making butter. Where only one is kept, it is better to part with the calf when a few days old, and then the price is $5. If a lady wishes her dairy to be very nicely finished, she should have all the articles she requires of glass, instead of wood and earthenware. Everything for the diary of that material can be purchased in Leicester Square, and certainly, if expense had been no object to us, we should much have preferred a glass churn, pans, &c. They have the great advantage of being kept beautifully clean with very little labor; but they are so liable to be broken, that they should never be used unless servants are very careful. A marble table is, however, in every respect better than a board to make the butter upon. It is expensive at first, but will, with ordinary care, last several generations of butter-makers. Whilst on the subject of the dairy, I must say a few words respecting the great care required in washing the articles used in it. As soon as the butter was taken from the churn I was in the habit of half filling it with boiling water, into which I had put some lumps of soda, and then turning the handle a few times, in order that it might be well washed round. It was then left till it was convenient for "cook" to cleanse all the utensils we had used. From some cause or other I neglected for two or three weeks to do this, and one day, when the freshmade butter was brought to table, there were complaints that it was _cheesy_; it certainly had a peculiar and very unpleasant taste, for which we could not account. The next time it was made it had the same fault; and it then occurred to me that it might be the churn. I accordingly returned to my old mode of washing it, and never after was there a complaint of any unpleasant flavor in the butter. I mention this to show the amateur dairywoman how very essential is cleanliness in every article she uses. A regular dairymaid would have known this, but a town-servant thinks that if she washes a thing it is sufficient: but more than mere washing is required; every article must be _scrubbed_ with soap, wood-ashes, and soda, and then placed for hours in the open air. Now glass is much easier kept sweet and clean, and for that reason is greatly to be preferred; but I am writing for those who may wish to reap profit from their "farm of four acres," and I fear little would be gained if nothing but glass were used in the dairy. Our land turned out better the second summer than the first. We made nearly two tons and a half of hay from each acre. We were enabled to mow the whole three acres, as we had "common rights" in our neighborhood, where the cows could pasture during the spring. Had we been without this privilege we could have mown only two acres, and as hay was $21 the load, the additional acre was worth $50 to us, with the exception of $3 75 for making it. We were advised to have an after-crop, but did not; it would have made the land very poor for the next year, so that what we gained in hay we must have expended in manure. We were well satisfied with the profit we derived from our pigs during this second six months. All the summer we kept four, at an expense of fifty-eight cents weekly, which was expended for two bushels of fine pollard (bran and meal). We had such an abundance of vegetables from the garden and orchard, that we must have wasted cartloads, if we had not kept pigs to consume them. As soon as the hay was carried they were turned into the meadows, and suffered to remain there till they were put up to fatten; a process which pigs must go through, though ducks can dispense with it. I have already stated the expense of fattening them, and we never found it vary more than a shilling or two in a pig. We always found for our family that a bacon pig of sixteen stone (244 pounds) was the best size, and for porkers about eight (112 pounds). Our fruit was as plentiful as our vegetables,--indeed we might have sold the surplus for many dollars; but we soon found that to do so was to lose _caste_ in the neighborhood. One piece of extravagance we were guilty of the first winter and spring we passed at A. The gardener had a little fire in the grapery during the severe weather, because he had placed some plants in it. We were told we could continue it till the grapes ripened for a "mere nothing." Now "mere nothings" mount up to a "considerable something." The coal and coke consumed before they were ripe cost $20. It is true we had them in July instead of September, but we should have liked them quite as well in that month. It was a bad grape year, too,--at least with us. I don't think we cut more than twenty pounds weight. Hothouse grapes are not dear at $1 the pound; but we should have had them equally good by waiting two months later, when they would have cost us nothing. Had we purchased the produce we received from our garden during the year, it would have been worth two guineas weekly. Our peaches, apricots, and nectarines, were abundant, and very fine. We had two splendid walnut-trees, and a mulberry-tree of immense size, which was an object of special abhorrence to "nurse," as for more than two months in the summer the children's frocks, pinners, &c., were dyed with the juice of the fruit. They could hardly pass near it in the season without some of the ripe berries falling on their heads, and it was hardly possible to prevent them escaping from her to pick them up. Mulberry-pudding made its appearance often on the nursery-table, and jars of mulberry-jam were provided to secure the same dainty through the winter. The luxury of a good garden can hardly be appreciated till you have been in possession of one, more especially where there are many children. The way we used to preserve currants, gooseberries, plums, damsons, and, indeed, almost every description of fruit, was this: The wide-mouth bottles which are sold for the purpose were filled with fruit, six ounces of powdered loaf-sugar was shaken in among it; the bottles were then tied down as closely as possible with bladder, and placed up to the neck in a copper, or large saucepan, of cold water, which was allowed to come slowly to the boil. They remained in it till the water was quite cold, when they were taken from the water and wiped quite dry. Before placing them in the store-room the bottle was turned upside down, in order to see that they were perfectly air-tight, for on this depends the fruit keeping good. The fruit will sink down to about the middle of the bottle, and we once tried to fill them up with some from another, but opening them admitted the air, and the contents did not keep well. If properly done, they will be good at the end of a year. If any lady undertake the management of a four-acre farm, she must expect it to occupy a great deal of her time; if she leaves it to servants, however honest, she will lose by it. It is not that things are stolen, but that they are wasted, unless the mistress herself knows what quantities of barley, oats, etc., her poultry and pigs consume; and unless she look daily into her dairy and see that the mild is well skimmed, half the cream will be thrown into the wash-tub. A six-months' longer experience of the country only confirmed my sister and myself in the conviction that we had in every way made a most desirable change when we quitted London for our small farm; but if we had been too fine or too indolent to look after our dairy and poultry-yard, I believe that our milk, butter, eggs, poultry, and pork, would have cost us quite as much as we could have purchased them for in town. All the good things we were daily consuming in the country would have come to us in London, "Like angels' visits, few and far between." I know that many of our old friends were really shocked when we told them, laughingly, of our new pursuits, and that the butter they so much praised, and the apricot-cheese they ate with so much gust, were manufactured by our own hands. We were "poor-thinged" to our faces in a very pitying manner, but we always laughed at these compassionate people, and endeavored to convince them we spoke the truth in sober earnest, when we assured them we found great amusement in our new pursuits. They shook their heads and sighed in such a manner, that we knew perfectly well that, as soon as we were out of ear-shot, they would say, "Poor things! It is very sad, but they are quite right to try and make the best of it." I believe some of them thought that it was impossible we could have "souls above butter;" for a lady who called one day, taking up one of Mudie's volumes from the table, said,-- "It is possible you care to subscribe to Mudies's?" "And why should we not care to do so?" replied H. "Why," was the answer, "I do not see any connection between a love of reading and a love of butter-making." Now I do not think that either of us had any love of butter-making; and if we could have afforded to give $100 a year to a dairymaid, no doubt we should have left all to her management; but as it was we were obliged to buy it--and very bad it was in our town--or make it ourselves: nor do either my sister or myself regret our resolution to do so. At first we were quite proud of our skill, and told every one of our success with great triumph. Now--for womanhood is weak--we are content to hear our dairymaid praised for her beautiful butter by our acquaintance, and Tom extolled for his care of the chickens. It is only our friends, among whom I reckon my readers, who know that the butter is made, and the chickens fed, by the mistresses of "the four-acre farm." CHAPTER XV. OUR PONY. I have been told by several friends that, in order to render this little book complete, I should add a chapter detailing the expenses we incurred by keeping a pony and carriage. Some persons imagine that this is an article of luxury which may well be dispensed with; but, though it may not be and absolute necessary, the expense attending one is so slight, in comparison with the comfort and pleasure derived from its possession, that I believe such of my readers as may contemplate residing in the country will readily agree with me, when I have told them the amount it will cost them to keep it,--that if it is a luxury, it is one of the very cheapest in which they can indulge. Without such a convenience a carriage must be hired every time any member of the family has occasion to go to the railway station; and besides that, it is useful for bringing home a variety of articles which in the country are frequently purchased at places five or six miles from home. Then it is a great pleasure to be able to meet your friends at the station, whenever they are kind enough to leave London for the purpose of passing a few days with you in the country. My sister and myself contrived to extract profit as well as pleasure from our little equipage. During the summer months we frequently drove up to London; the short journey was very pleasant, and this mode of making it possessed the great advantage of costing nothing but 63 cents for the pony, and 12 cents for turnpikes. Not that we had the temerity to drive through London. We always left the pony two miles before we reached town, with strict orders to the civil ostler to whose care we confided him to great care of him, and be sure and give him a "good feed." We then proceeded on our way in a cab, which cost us no more than we should have paid for one from the station. Where there is a gentleman in the family, a dogcart is the most convenient vehicle which can be kept; but as that would not be suitable for a lady, we contrived to make the back seat of the carriage do duty for the well of the dog-cart, and it was astonishing how many light packages we managed to "stow away" in it. I will not dilate on the pleasant drives through quiet lanes, of the delight afforded to the children when allowed to have a ride on "Bobby," nor of the great facility it gave us of being out of doors in winter, when, as was very frequently the case, the state of the roads was such as to render walking an impossibility; still, I hope I have stated sufficient to give my readers a good idea of the great pleasure they will derive from keeping a pony; and I will now, with the bills of the miller and farrier before me, proceed to show the sum for which it may be kept. Our pony cost for food, from the 4th of January to the 24th of December in the same year, $46.66. He consumed during that period five quarters of oats, at $8 the quarter, and five bushels of beans, which cost $6.66. The farrier's bill for the same time amounted to $5.91. Perhaps it will be as well to copy this account, as it will clearly show how often it is requisite to change the shoes of a horse. Of course a great deal must depend on the quantity of work he does; ours was certainly not spared, though we do not deserve the character so usually given to ladies, of being unmerciful to horses: "running them off their legs," "thinking they can never get enough out of the poor beasts," "driving them as if they thought they could go for ever," are accusations brought against the ladies of a family where horses are kept. The following is a copy of the bill for our pony's shoes for twelve months:-- Feb. 24. Four removes $0.33 March 22. Four shoes .75 April 20. Four removes .33 May 5. Two shoes .37 1/2 June 9. Four shoes .75 July 8. Four shoes .75 Aug. 9 Four shoes .75 Sept. 1. Four shoes .75 Oct. 11. Two shoes .37 1/2 Oct. 25. Two shoes .37 1/2 Dec. 24. Two shoes .37 1/2 $5.91 Add to this the miller's bill $46.66 $52.57 and we have the whole expense of keeping a pony for one year. "Oh! but," some one may exclaim, "you have put down nothing for straw and hay, and horses require a great deal of both." Quite true; but then in the country, if you do not keep a horse, you must buy manure for your garden, and that will cost you quite as much as if you purchased straw; and as for the hay, did it not come off the "four-acre farm?" It is one of the great advantages of the country that nothing is lost, and thus the straw which figures so largely in the bill of a London corn-chandler, and which, when converted into manure, is the perquisite of your groom, becomes in the country the means of rendering your garden productive. Before I resided in the country the pony cost me more than four times the sum I have mentioned; the stable was apart from the house, and I knew nothing for months of the bills run up on his account. I had once a bill sent in for sugar! "Why, George, what can the pony want with sugar?" "Why, ma'am, you said some time ago that the pony looked thin, so lately I have always mixed sugar with his corn; nothing fattens a horse like sugar." Now what could I complain of? This man had been recommended to me as a "treasure," and one who would do his duty by the pony, which, I may mention, was a very beautiful one, and a great pet; so if George considered sugar good for him, what could I do but pay the bill, and say, "Let him have sugar, by all means?" Not that "Bobby" was a bit the fatter or better for having his corn sweetened. An intimate friend of mine, who always kept three or four horses, laughed outright when I told him that the pony had consumed such a quantity of sugar, and expressed his opinion that very little of that article had ever been in his manger. Under the same superintendence "Bobby" wore out four times the number of shoes; and as at that time I had to purchase hay and straw as well as corn, all on the same scale of magnitude, the expense of keeping the little carriage really did cost more than the convenience attending it was worth; and had not the pony been the gift of a beloved friend, we should have parted with it when we quitted London, as at that time we were ignorant how cheaply it could be maintained in the country. There we had a servant who was content with his wages, and did not seek to make them greater by combining with tradesmen to defraud his employers. If any of my readers commence keeping a pony in the country, they may rely that it need not cost them a penny more than I have put down. Of course they must have the hay from their own grounds, and neither reckon the cost of the straw nor the labor of the man who attends to the pony. Ours did all the "jobs" about the place--cleaned the knives and shoes, milked the cows, fed the pigs and poultry, helped in the gardens, and, in short, made himself "generally useful." Now, a servant who is able and willing to do all this, besides properly attending to a pony and carriage, is very difficult to be met with, but he is absolutely necessary for a place in the country where economy has to be studied. Something must be allowed yearly for the wear and tear of carriage, harness, etc., but it need not be much. Any gentleman can easily calculate the sum which may fairly be allowed for these items; I only think it my part to show the expense attending a pony in the country; and though those who have been in the habit of keeping horses in London, either in a livery or private stable, may think it impossible to maintain one for $52.57 yearly, let them leave town for a four-acre farm, and they will find that I have spoken the truth on this point, as well as on all the other subjects of which I have given my experience in this little volume. CHAPTER XVI. CONCLUSION. It is with considerable diffidence the writer ventures to give the public this slight sketch of her experience in farming four acres of land. When she finally resolved to fix her residence in the country, she was wholly ignorant how she ought to manage, so that the small quantity of land she rented might, if not a source of profit, be at least no loss. She was told by a friend, who for a short time had tried "a little place" at Chiselhurst, that it was very possible to lose a considerable sum yearly by under taking to farm a very small quantity of land. "Be quite sure," said the friendly adviser--"and remember, I speak from experience--that whatever animals you may keep, the expense attending them will be treble the value of the produce you receive. Your cows will die, or, for want of being properly looked after, will soon cease to give any milk; your pigs will cost you more for food than will buy the pork four times over; your chickens and ducks will stray away, or be stolen; your garden-produce will, if worth anything, find its way to Covent Garden; and each quarter your bills from the seedsman and miller will amount to as much as would supply you with meat, bread, milk, butter, eggs, and poultry, in London." Certainly this was rather a black state of things to look forward to; but the conviction was formed, after mature reflection, that a residence some miles from town was the one best suited to the writer's family. She was compelled to acknowledge to those friends who advised her to the contrary, her ignorance on most things appertaining to the mode of life she proposed to commence, but trusted to that often-talked-of commodity, common sense, to prevent her being ruined by farming four acres of land. She thought, if she could not herself discover how to manage, she might acquire the requisite knowledge from some of the little books she had purchased on subjects connected with "rural economy." They proved, however, quite useless. They appeared to the writer to be merely compilations from larger works; and, like the actors in the barn, who played the tragedy of "Hamlet," and omitted the character of the hero, so did these books leave out the very things which, from the title-pages, the purchaser expected to find in them. Some time after experience had shown how butter could be made successfully, a lady, who had been for years resident in the country, said, during a morning call, "My dairy-maid is gone away ill, and the cook makes the butter; but it is so bad we cannot eat it: and besides that nuisance, she has this morning given me notice to leave. She says she did not 'engage' to 'mess' about in the dairy." "Well," said the writer, "why not make the butter yourself, till you can suit yourself with a new servant?" "I have tried," said the visitor, "but cannot do it. My husband is very particular about the butter being good, so I was determined to see if I could not have some that he could eat; therefore I _pored_ over Mrs. Rundle, and other books, for a whole day, but could not find how to begin. None of them told me how to _make_ the butter, though several gave directions for potting it down when it was made. I made the boy churn for more than three hours yesterday morning, but got no butter after all. _It would not come!_ The weather was very cold, and it occurred to the listener to ask the lady _where_ the boy churned, and where the cream had been kept during the previous night. "Why, in the dairy, to be sure," was the answer; "and my feet became so chilled by standing there, that I can hardly put them to the ground since. Cook could not succeed more than I did, and said, the last time she made it, it was between four and five hours before the butter came; and then, as I have told you, it was not eatable." The writer explained to her friend that the reason why she could not get the butter, as well as why cook's was so bad, was on account of the low temperature of the cream when it was put into the churn. She then gave her plain directions how to proceed for the future, and was gratified by receiving a note from her friend, in a couple of days, containing her thanks for the "very plain directions;" and adding, "I could not have thought it was so little trouble to procure _good_ butter, and shall for the future be independent of a saucy dairymaid." I believe that a really clever servant will never give any one particulars respecting her work. She wraps them up in an impenetrable mystery. Like the farmers' wives, who, to our queries, gave no other answer than, "Why, that depends," they take care that no one shall be any the wiser for the questions asked. The reader may safely follow the directions given in these pages; not one has been inserted that has not been tested by the writer. To those who are already conversant with bread-making, churning, etc., they may appear needlessly minute; but we hope the novice may, with very little trouble, become mistress of the subjects to which they refer. Even if a lady does keep a sufficient number of servants to perform every domestic duty efficiently, still it may prove useful to be able to give instructions to one who may, from some accidental circumstance, be called on to undertake a work to which she has been unaccustomed. A friend of the writer's, a lady of large fortune, and mistress of a very handsome establishment, said, when speaking of her dairy, "My neighborhood has the character of making very bad butter; mine is invariably good, and I always get a penny a pound more for it at the 'shop' than my neighbors. If I have occasion to change the dairymaid, and the new one sends me up bad butter, I tell her of it. If it occurs the second time, I make no more complaints; I go down the next butter-day, and make it entirely myself, having her at my side the whole time. I find I never have to complain again. She sees how it is made, and she is compelled to own it is good. I believe that a servant who is worth keeping will follow any directions, and take any amount of trouble, rather than see 'missus' a second time enter the kitchen or dairy to do her work." Perhaps the allusion this lady made to the "shop" may puzzle the London reader, but in country places, where more butter is made in a gentleman's family than is required for the consumption of the household, it is sent to--what is frequently--_the_ "shop" of the place, and sold for a penny per pound less than the price for which it is retailed by the shopkeeper. The value of the butter is set off against tea, sugar, cheese, and various other articles required in the family in which the butter is made. When the writer purchased a third cow, it was in anticipation of sending any surplus butter to "shop," and receiving groceries in exchange, nor has she been disappointed. Every month's additional experience strengthens her conviction of the advantages to be derived from living in the country; and she takes farewell of her readers, in the hope that she has succeeded in conving them that a "farm of four acres" may be made a source of health, profit, and amusement, though many of their "town" friends may threaten them with ruin, should they be rash enough to disregard their advice to take a house in a "nice quiet street," leading into one of the squares. 
12022	----	Proofreading Team. A START IN LIFE. =A Journey Across America.= FRUIT FARMING IN CALIFORNIA. BY C.F. DOWSETT, _Author of "Striking Events in Irish History," etc., etc_. * * * * * LONDON: DOWSETT & Co., 3, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. * * * * * PRICE ONE SHILLING. A START IN LIFE. * * * * * _Plans, Maps, Views, Books, Samples of Fruits, Soils, etc., etc., of Land at Merced, in California, may be seen at the Offices of MESSRS. DOWSETT & CO., 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, where also further particulars and introductions to the owners at Merced may be obtained._ CONTENTS. A Suggestion to Persons Seeking a Start in Life Special Advantages Comparison and Warning Across America-- London to Chicago Chicago to San Francisco San Francisco to Now Orleans New Orleans to London Information About California Currency Merced Price of Land American Surveys Special Instruction Provided Various Estimates as to what could be done with Various Amounts of Capital Price of Fruit Trees When Fruit Trees Pay Position of a Settler Cost of Board and Lodging Raisin Culture Irrigation Olive Culture Special Openings Potato Growing Cost of Provisions, etc., at Merced Cost of Journey by Sea and Land Analysis of Merced Soils Position of the Vendors [Illustration: Map of North America with Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. _The dotted lines across America, indicate my journey, the Northern one going, the Southern one returning. C.F.D._] =A Start in Life.= I have entitled this little book "A Start in Life," because it conveys information which would enable any person possessing a small capital, with some industry, patience, and steady habits, to make a start in life which, humanly speaking, could not fail of success. The old countries of Europe contain a superabundant population; every branch of professional and commercial life is so overcrowded, that there exists a competition so keen, as to reduce the incomes of the largest, and, in many cases, to prevent the smallest workers, in whatever sphere, from getting a remunerative return for the activities of brain, muscle, and money. To inform the public, therefore, how a young man may make a first start in life, or an older man a fresh start in life, is offering an advantage which, I doubt not, will be appreciated by many who read these pages. I am prepared to hear the objection that, in the proposals set forth herein, I am seeking a personal advantage as Agent for the sale of the lands at Merced, in California, that I refer to, and I meet it with this statement: Let the objector consider his prospects of success in the place where he now is, and if they are reasonably good, let him stay there; if they are not, then let him intelligently consider what his capabilities are--whether he has any special or technical knowledge, and, if so, in what place he can expect the best return for a full use of his talents. If any opening appears probable in any of the old countries, he will, perhaps, first consider that; but if he can see no opening at home, then let him consider, by careful investigation, the more distant fields; let him learn all he can about all the British Colonies, and other countries, and especially Canada and the United States, as being nearest to Great Britain. Having learnt something generally of these distant places, then, having regard to his own abilities and capital, and his personal desires as to distance from the Old Country, climate, &c., he should make his choice as to which of the places he has read of seems most likely to give him a fair prospect of success; and then, having come to this decision, he should learn all he can about that particular place. I admit that I shall receive a personal benefit by persons settling at Merced, in California; but--I say this with great confidence--if, after an intelligent consideration of other places, any person, desiring a start in life, comes to the conclusion that Fruit culture in California is an occupation, and a country, that would suit him, then let him consider all the places in California where openings for this occupation are presented, and let him choose which of them he considers most suitable; and, at the risk of appearing invidious, I would add that he should not believe all he reads, but should make his examination and inquiries for himself, on the spot. I do not ask him blindly to believe what is set forth in these pages, but if he thinks that California is a suitable place of settlement for him, then I do say, with great emphasis, that he should not settle upon anything in California until he has been to Merced, and proved for himself that the statements are credible. After he has been to Merced, I have little doubt that he will be convinced that that place presents an opening which would be worth his decision. If he proceed to California by the Southern Pacific Railway, he could break his journey at the various other places of Fruit culture settlement, and inspect them, reaching Merced last, as the nearest to the great centre of San Francisco. A careful comparison of the various fields of Fruit culture enterprise will, I am assured, show him that Merced possesses peculiar advantages. It is well known that the great drawback of California is want of water; and intending settlers must not be satisfied by the statements of agents, or owners, that their lands have water advantages, but they must satisfy themselves that they can have water by irrigation (not by the expensive, laborious process of pumping it up from uncertain springs), and in such a quantity as to be permanent. At some places lands now supplied by irrigation will fall short presently, when the owners carry the water on to thousands of adjoining acres; therefore, a full and permanent supply of water is an essential. THE SPECIAL ADVANTAGES my clients offer settlers at Merced are:-- 1. A permanent supply of Water, for a perpetual water right accompanies every lot of land sold. 2. Contiguity to a Railway Station on the main line, and to a Town, with commercial, professional, educational, social and religious advantages. 3. Instruction in Fruit culture gratis by a specialist, who is paid by my clients to instruct settlers on their lands. 4. A rich Soil, of which, on another page, an analysis is given. 5. A ready Market for produce. Buyers come round the country and purchase the crops as they are on the trees, taking upon themselves the picking and packing. The Continent of North America is a sufficient market in itself for all time especially considering that its population increases nearly a million and a half a year. 6. The prices range from 75 dollars to 150 dollars per acre. At some other places in California, land is offered at a less price, but I can sell some land at even 10 dollars per acre; yet that at 100 dollars per acre is far cheaper, having regard to its advantages. Our land at 150 dollars per acre will favourably compare with lands fetching much higher prices. 7. Free Conveyances will be given, with a perfectly clear and satisfactory title. 8. Two-thirds of the purchase-money may remain on mortgage. 9. Merced is only 14 days from London. 10. A liberal competence may be secured by a reasonably industrious settler. 11. Merced is a very healthy locality, and is nearer to San Francisco than other Fruit growing centres. 12. My clients, the owners, are well-known gentlemen of wealth and position in California, and not irresponsible land speculators, members of a syndicate with an unknown personality. COMPARISON AND WARNING. I have already said that applicants should verify for themselves the statements made by persons who, like myself, would be personally benefited by their settling upon the lands offered for sale. Letters sent to this country, and advertised by agents as a guarantee of advantages, written by persons soon after arrival in California, and who have not compared the place of their location with other places, can scarcely be a sufficient recommendation. Some parts of California advertised in this country for sale have not a permanent water supply; are too hot; are swept by winds; are at a considerable distance from a railway station; have a poor, sandy soil, some even mixed with alkali; and some are so situated as to be "notoriously unhealthy," and produce chills, fevers, and general malaria, and, in one case, I have heard of an embarrassed title: therefore, I say that intending settlers should remember there is a California and a California--that it is not all gold which glitters, and that they should, personally and intelligently, investigate for themselves, on the spot, the statements made by those who, at a distance, offer the lands for sale. CAPITAL REQUIRED. It is recommended that settlers intending to establish Fruit farms, should have a capital of from £600 upwards; but those who have a smaller capital--say, £300, or even £100--may, in other ways, find some opening for employing it, if accompanied with intelligent, industrious, persevering work. =A Start in Life.= To ensure the stability of a building the foundation ought to be substantial, so in like manner a good start in life goes a great way towards ensuring a successful career. By success I do not mean the making of a rapid fortune by leaps and bounds of prosperity, but I do mean an ultimate prosperity, acquired through patient, persevering, and intelligent labour. To make a large fortune quickly it is necessary to have command of the requisite knowledge of the business in hand, the requisite capital, untiring energy, and a trait of genius. Beyond these it would be necessary to have the mind absorbed in the one thing, and therefore, supposing one possessed the requisites, would it be worth while to sacrifice all else to the mere accumulation of money? To live for mere money making is a grovelling existence, and utterly unworthy the aim of any man possessing the finer instincts of human nature and the intelligence with which it is endowed. No, I am not pretending to offer the means of making a rapid fortune--such accidents fall to the lot of but few out of the millions of our species--but I do claim to be able to offer to men willing to live a steady industrious life, the opportunity of acquiring, on easy terms, a small freehold estate, into which they can put the golden seed of their own mental and physical effort with the certainty of reaping a golden harvest proportionate to their area, their ability, and their industry; for when once a Fruit farm is planted it increases in value every year. To own a freehold estate of 20, 40, or 100 acres, with a comfortable house and buildings, and the land well stocked with choice Fruits, with a ready market, presents a prospect, by the use of a small capital, with the addition of muscle and brains, of future competence. When such a property is fully matured, labour can be hired, and one's own personal energies may be diverted, if preferred, into other channels, or continued in the same with largely accumulating benefits. I ask my readers requiring for themselves, or others in whom they are interested, a start in life, to read these pages carefully, for I do not know any calling, in the old or new world, where a small capitalist fond of country life could find an occupation more congenial than the one I offer at Merced, in California, and which is described herein. Residence near to a young town, which will probably increase rapidly in value, and which now possesses extensive commercial, locomotive, social and religious advantages, a climate than which the surface of this globe scarcely presents one more desirable, a fortnight's journey from London, and a soil pregnant with inherent virtue, are amongst the considerations of importance which will determine thoughtful investors to settle at Merced. I am prepared to show to applicants samples of the soils and fruits, and also views, books, maps, &c., and to answer questions, if they will call personally upon me, at my offices-- 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, so that they may have every assistance in enabling them to come to a decision as to whether the start in life I offer them at Merced, in California, is one suitable in respect of their inclination, capital, abilities, and energy. WITHIN A FORTNIGHT OF LONDON. To prove the convenient access of this land, called "British Colony" from London, I may say that on November 22nd, 1890, I left Liverpool in the Cunard steamer "Etruria," which reached New York on the following Saturday evening, just too late for the Custom-house officers to examine the luggage, so that we could not go on shore till the next morning. I stayed over the Sunday (26 hours) in New York, leaving on Monday by the first overland train, and after calling at innumerable stations, and staying 14 hours at Chicago and Council Bluffs, to "make connections" (_i.e._, catch other trains), and staying 52 hours at San Francisco, I arrived at Merced at 10.23 on Monday night, December 8th, _i.e._, say 16 days 6 hours after leaving Liverpool. Had I have left Liverpool by the Wednesday instead of the Saturday steamer, I should not have needed to have stayed over Sunday in New York, and, of course, there would be no necessity for a settler to stay at San Francisco (I had to meet my clients there); therefore, deducting these two stoppages of 78 hours, or 3-1/4 days, it would give 13 days to Merced in the _winter_ season. In fine weather the journey could be made in less time; some steamers, in the summer and autumn months, have crossed from Liverpool to New York in about six days, so that the journey _could_ be made, in favourable circumstances, in say 12 to 13 days, but we may safely put it at 14 days. I went by the Northern Prairies and Rocky Mountains, and returned by the longer route of Southern California, the Desert of Arizona, the Plains of Texas, through the sugar and cotton districts of the Southern States, and thence, viâ New Orleans and Washington, back to New York. Thus, after remaining eight days at Merced, where I was fully engaged each day in inspecting the lands for sale and the country around for many miles, and after allowing for stoppages on the return journey over Sundays, and waiting three days at New York for the Cunard steamer "Servia," I reached Liverpool on January 4th, and was back again in my office on Monday, January 5th, being six weeks, one day and 22 hours from the time I rose from my chair in my office to the time I was sitting in it again. =Across America.= LONDON TO CHICAGO. Travelling in generations past was an important event in one's life, but now a journey across an ocean and a continent is a very commonplace affair. Books of travel used to be read with avidity, but now that so many persons travel, and the wires keep us in touch with all the world every day, the history of a journey is a small event, and one which to those not specially interested would scarcely perhaps be read; nevertheless, as some of my readers may have to go over some of the ground I have recently traversed, I have no doubt that a reference to my journey to California and back would be of interest to them, and therefore I will give up some time and space to the subject. This little record of my journey may perhaps be better received if I state that I am not a novice in travel, and that before I had turned twenty-one years of age I had been to Australia (calling _en route_ at Pernambuco in South America), and that while in Australia I visited Melbourne, Sydney, Geelong, King George's Sound, besides various inland towns and gold fields, including Bendigo, Castlemaine, Tarrangower, Fryer's Creek, Forest Creek, Campbell's Creek, Tarradale, Maryborough, etc., and various other places, and sheep and cattle stations. From Australia I went to Aden (the inland town) and up the Red Sea to Suez, returning to Australia, and thence to England. Since I commenced business in England, in 1859, I went in 1862 to St. Thomas' in the West Indies, thence to Aspinwall, across the Isthmus to Panama, thence to Acapulco in Mexico, on to San Francisco in California, and thence to Vancouver Island, returning by the same route as far as Aspinwall, whence I went to New York. In 1865 I went on business to Russia. Arriving at the ancient city of Pskov, I proceeded across country to the estate of my client, the Count Bogouschefsky, at one time private Secretary to the Emperor Nicholas (grandfather of the present Czar). Some of these travels were attended with a good deal of adventure; but my recent journey from England to California and back, 13,774 miles, in six weeks (including all stoppages), was all work, for my time was occupied continuously in reading up the country, learning from old settlers, and making notes of what I saw, some of which I have found room for in the following pages. On November 22nd, 1890, I was at work in my office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, whence a cab depositing me at Euston, the 10.10 express train soon ran me down to Liverpool (201 miles), whence a steam "tender" took me from the landing-stage to the Cunard steamship "Etruria," some two miles off, where I was soon comfortably located in my "state room" (No. 42). It was nearly 5 o'clock before we got away, and the next day found us at Queenstown Harbour, where we lost considerable time in waiting for the mail. At length the mail, which was a heavy one, was safely on board, and off we went, head on to the Atlantic. During that night of the 23rd we experienced a heavy gale; big seas broke over the forecastle, and flooded the decks below, through the ventilators. The A.B.'s declined venturing on the forecastle to unship these great ventilators, and so the engines had to be slowed down, and the ship stopped; the ventilators were then unshipped, and we proceeded. The night was a bad one, and the next morning we had not got through it, and as a consequence the decks were like lagoons; but presently we had run through it, or it had run away from us, or had expended its energy, and we were in comparatively smooth waters, and had a comfortable run to New York. Nothing of particular interest occurred during the passage. I sought and found the old American settlers amongst the passengers, and obtained from them all the information I could of the country, and especially the State to which I was going. I read "General" Booth's "Darkest England," and wrote a review of it, which duly appeared in the "Land Roll." The "Etruria" is a fine ship. She has a commodious saloon, music and reading room, plenty of deck space for exercise, comfortable cabins, bath rooms, etc. On the 29th we made Sandy Hook Lighthouse, which is about 20 miles from New York Dock, but we got in too late for the Custom-house officers to look at our baggage, so we lay all night in the harbour, and next morning commenced the tedious process of creeping up, yard by yard, into our berth at the dock. The run from Liverpool was thus:--Liverpool to Queenstown, on the 22nd and 23rd, 240 miles; 24th, at noon, 330 miles; 25th, 454; 26th, 462; 27th, 475; 28th, 480; 29th, 471; distance to Sandy Hook Lighthouse, 130 miles; so that the run totals up to 3,042, and with the 20 miles added, 3,062 miles. I had been recommended by a passenger to go to the Hotel St. Stephen, 46 to 52, East Eleventh Street, New York, whence I drove in a cab perhaps a mile and a half, for which the cabman wanted 2 dollars (equal to 8s. 4d.); he got 1-1/2, which was half-a-dollar too much. Passengers should drive to their hotel, and then ask the proper fare before paying. New York has many large hotels--this is comparatively a small one. All the waiters are coloured men, and this seems pretty general throughout America. I stayed over the 30th (Sunday) in New York, by which I secured a quiet day and an opportunity to attend Divine service. In my bedroom was a coil of stout Manilla rope screwed into the floor, near a window, so that an escape might be secured in the event of fire. The towels provided are a kind of compromise between a duster and a pocket handkerchief--rather disappointing to one accustomed to his "tub." New York is great in tram-cars, worked by horses, mules, and electricity, also elevated railways--that is, railways running down the streets on huge tressels or scaffolding--so that the vehicles go underneath them, and the passengers in the train look straight into the first-floor windows of the houses on the other side. There is an immense development of electricity all over America, and in tram-cars, railway-cars, hotels, houses, everything and everywhere, is the electric light prominent. Many of the streets are unevenly paved. Blacking boots is a profession in America--in many hotels a special charge is made for it, or else the visitors are left to their own devices thereon--and boot-blacks have shops and nooks fitted with high, huge easy chairs, elevated like thrones, where their clients can comfortably repose during the operation of polish. The next morning, December 1st, I was up early, and made enquiries at the various offices representing the railway lines to Chicago, with the result that I took a ticket by the Pennsylvania route, and left New York at 10 o'clock a.m. The train service between New York and Chicago is one of the best, if not _the_ best, in America. The cars are elegantly fitted; they are about the length of the Pullman cars we have in England. The best cars are those fitted with sleeping accommodation, and travellers having tickets for a "sleeper" have the privilege of using the sleeping car during the day. The sleeping cars are divided into squares capable of seating four persons, but the space is accorded to two only, as only two beds or berths can be made up in the space; the lower berth (which is always the favourite) is formed of the two double seats (the space for four seats), filled up in the centre by special fittings and mattresses, hidden during the day inside the seats; the upper berth is pulled down from the sloping roof of the car, and in the receptacle between the slope and the square are contained the bedding and the fittings. A curtain falls down over both the upper and lower berths, and, so far as one can, the dressing has to be done with the curtain hanging round one as one stands within it; and if on both sides of the car passengers happen to stand behind their respective curtains at the same time, they would touch one another and so block the passage-way. The dressing accommodation is so inconvenient that only partial undressing is adopted. The outside of the slope is polished mahogany, and in the daytime bears no indication whatever of what it really is, but looks like a handsome sloping polished mahogany roof. These cars are luxuriously fitted. Another car on the train is a handsome dining saloon, with kitchen attached, where you can order as good a dinner as you could obtain at an hotel. The cars are also fitted liberally with lavatories and water-closets, separate ones for ladies and for gentlemen. On this train is also a bath-room and a barber's shop. There are also one or two small private rooms, which can be hired separately. This train has also a recent addition, being what is called a drawing-room or observation car; this is the last on the train, and the end is fitted with glass, so that in riding along passengers in this car enjoy an uninterrupted view of the country they are leaving behind. On this special train a ladies' maid is provided for the convenience of ladies, and a stenographer, with his type-writing machine, occupies a seat in the vestibule of the drawing-room car to take down any urgent letters which business men may desire to post _en route_. The observation car is supplied with a library for the use of passengers, and is fitted with plate-glass windows and easy chairs. It has a platform where one can breathe the fresh air outside if desired. There is also a smoking-room car. On this special train the Stock Exchange reports of the New York and Philadelphia Exchanges are received and posted on the bulletin boards three times a day, and the weather reports are also posted. The whole of the train is thoroughly well heated by steam pipes, and lighted by electricity. The person in charge of a "sleeper" car is called the "porter;" he occupies a position, not like a porter on an English railway, but analagous to a steward on board ship. On leaving New York I noticed that the suburbs contained many very small wooden houses, and the country had the appearance of many Colonial scenes I have witnessed--the land looked like reclaimed prairie, which it probably is; and after passing many homesteads and villages we ran into Philadelphia at 12.20. Philadelphia is the largest city, as to area, in the United States. It is situate on the west bank of the Delaware River. It is 22 miles long, and from 5 to 8 broad, comprising an area of 1,294 square miles. It has over 900 miles of paved streets. Philadelphia was founded by the celebrated William Penn, who went from England to America in 1682 A.D., and purchased the site of this great city from the Indians. William Penn's character was remarkable for his high sense of honour, and if the same principle had obtained throughout the history of the United States with the Indians, we should never have heard of any "Indian Difficulty." Penn presented the city with a charter in 1701. The city, built upon lands honestly and liberally bought from the Indians, prospered greatly, and its population continued to increase until it now reaches something approaching 900,000. Its chief source of wealth is from its manufactures, which embrace locomotives, and all kinds of ironware, ships, carpets, woollen and cotton goods, shoes, umbrellas, and books. It has more buildings than any other city in that country, and, in point of commerce, ranks fourth among the cities of the United States. I noticed that the suburbs of Philadelphia contained many handsome stone and brick residences. I felt much interested in the connection with William Penn, because he is one of the ancestors of the Penn-Gaskells of England, who for many years have been valuable and much-respected clients of mine, and in numerous transactions I have noticed in them that beautiful trait of strict honour which gave William Penn a world-wide character, and has descended from him to them. Passing by many farm homesteads, villages, and towns, all having a prosperous kind of appearance, and described as "one of the richest agricultural districts in America," we ran into Harrisburg, which is the capital of Pennsylvania, and situate on the east bank of the Susquehanna River. About five miles above Harrisburg we crossed the Susquehanna River on a bridge 3,670 feet long, from the centre of which I am told there is a fine view, but I lost it, as a snowstorm was raging while I was crossing. We stopped at Altoona, a large city lying at the foot of the Alleghanies, and in ascending the Alleghanies fine scenery and great engineering feats are discernible. From this we ran on to Pittsburg, which claims to be the best lighted city in America, the streets being brilliantly illuminated by arc and incandescent electric lights. Nine bridges cross the Allegheny, and five the Monongahela rivers. Pittsburg has been called the "iron city," and "smoky city"; it has immense glass, steel and iron manufactures, and in these three interests alone employs over 50,000 persons. Then we proceed till, presently, we catch sight of Lake Michigan, and know that Chicago is not far off. We skirt the shore of this busy water, with its wharves, etc. On arrival (December 2nd) we drive through the city from the Pennsylvania to the North-Western terminus. Chicago is 912 miles from New York: it is the greatest city in Illinois, and during the past 50 years has grown from a small Indian trading station into a metropolis. Chicago extends some 20 miles along the shores of Lake Michigan, and goes back from the lake to a depth of about four miles, thus embracing about 80 square miles; beyond these confines of the city proper the suburbs extend to some 6 to 10 miles in every direction. It will be remembered that in 1871 Chicago had a great fire, which burned an area of 3-1/8 square miles, destroyed 17,450 buildings, made 98,500 persons homeless, and killed outright about 200 more. The loss of property was estimated at 190,000,000 dollars, of which only 30,000,000 dollars were recovered from insurances, and this bankrupted some of the insurance companies. In 1874 another fire consumed 5,000,000 dollars' worth of property. Chicago is the great central depôt for grain, lumber and live stock. In 1888 there were packed at Chicago 4,500,000 hogs, and about 1,600,000 cattle. Chicago has also extensive iron, steel, wheel, car, flour, furniture, boot and shoe and tannery manufactures. In driving through I noticed one long street, to the right and left of the street I was traversing, thickly occupied with tradesmen's carts, backed on the kerb in the usual fashion, being loaded from the stores (or shops): there must have been a few hundred of them; I never saw so many in one street at one time anywhere in any part of the world. Chicago was cased in frozen snow, and thus was not very attractive; but I noticed many very fine buildings, and was much struck with the cosmopolitan character of the inhabitants. During the interval of waiting for the train on the North-Western to start I was able to see a little of the place, and found that some persons I spoke to could not speak English. They came apparently from all parts of the continent of Europe. CHICAGO TO SAN FRANCISCO. The train was due at Chicago (December 2nd) at 9.45 a.m., being exactly a 23 hours and 45 minutes' run from New York. Having crossed Chicago from one terminus to another, I found that three trains left Chicago by which I could travel to San Francisco--two were slow trains, and one a fast train; but, by whichever train I went, it would make no difference as to the time I left Omaha, and consequently no difference to the time I should arrive at San Francisco, so I went on by one of the slow trains, as I wanted to see Council Bluffs. This train was similarly fitted to the other, except that it had no drawing-room car, nor stenographer, etc., nor were the platforms connecting the carriages enclosed; so that, in passing to the dining car, or any other car, the sudden change from a hot car to a shower of snow was not pleasant. The distance from Chicago to Omaha is 492 miles, and the country between the two places formed a part of the great prairie region, which, 50 years ago, had no other inhabitant than the Indian and the trapper, but now is a succession of homesteads, villages, and towns, bearing evidence of prosperity. At Creston, and many other stations, I noticed that there is no protection whatever from the railway; the line is unfenced, and the train runs through the town as openly as a coach would; there is generally a rough board put up here and there with the words, crudely painted on them, "Look out for the cars!" We were due at Council Bluffs the next morning (December 3rd) at 7.23, but we arrived some half-hour late. Council Bluffs Station is four miles from Omaha Station, but the towns adjoin. The former has a population of over 35,000, and the latter of over 110,000. They are divided by the great Missouri River, which is crossed by two bridges, one being 2,750 feet long, and the other 2,920 feet long. Having had breakfast at the station, I went up to the town by the "motor," that is, the electrical tram-car. The motor cars, like the railway cars, are heated. I noticed a large number of detached wooden cottages, "standing in their own grounds," of about one-eighth of an acre, and I learned that these are owned by labourers. Mr. Day, an agent there, told me that the cottage would cost 500 dollars, and the land 400 dollars, _i.e.,_ £100 for the house, and £80 for the land. An eighth of an acre for £80 would be £640 per acre, and this quite out in the suburbs; and I was told that good business blocks in the town itself would fetch £32,000 (not dollars, but pounds) per acre. In the large cities, such as New York, Chicago, etc., prices in the principal streets would compare with prices in the City of London. Returning to the station, I joined the express train, and crossing the Missouri River to Omaha, we proceeded west. The river was frozen at its sides, and presented no attractions worth notice. On we go through hundreds of fields of maize, always called "corn" in America; other grain crops, such as wheat, etc., are called by their own names, but the crop known only as "corn" in America is maize. The rich clusters of corn are gathered, and the stalks, something in appearance between a wheat stalk and a sugar cane, are left standing for the cattle to pick over. Forty years ago _this_ part was uninhabited by white men, and was the home of countless buffaloes; now these animals are extirpated, and everywhere we see nothing, for mile upon mile, but corn, corn, corn. One of my fellow travellers was Mr. H.C. Jacobs, of Chicago, whose father-in-law was one of the pioneers, and who gave me much information. The next day (December 4th), we traverse the great rolling prairies of Nebraska, and see many herds of horses and cattle, and here and there ranch homes and cowboys. Having run through Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, we commence the State of Wyoming as we pull up at the City of Cheyenne, where, in the far distance, we see, with its peaks well clothed in snow, the grand range of the Rocky Mountains. Soon after leaving Cheyenne, we commence the ascent of the Rockies--not, of course, the actual summit range itself, but the foot hills and high lands stretching away from, and forming part of it--and as we climb the ascent terminating at Sherman, where we have gained an elevation of 8,247 feet, we pass through very wild, grand scenery. At this altitude we look down upon floating clouds, and see in the distance Long's Peak, 14,000 feet high, towering above them. All along, at intervals, are portable fences, placed to catch the snow as it drifts, to prevent it blocking the line; and also what are called snow sheds, which are rough timber tunnels built up to protect the rails from the great drifts arising out of heavy snowstorms. At the highest point is a pyramid, commemorating a certain Mr. Oakes Ames, which looked 20 feet high and very near the line; it is however, 75 feet high and half-a-mile off. The air is so rarefied that distances are most deceiving. As our descent proceeds, we catch sight, in the distance, of a herd of wild elk, and where these rolling prairies have better herbage, we see herds of horses with ranch buildings here and there. We pass the ranch of William Cody, who, by virtue of his being a Senator of the State of Nebraska, is called Honourable, but who was known in London, a short time ago, at Mr. Whitley's "Wild West" show as "Buffalo Bill." As we pass Fort Laraime, one of the forts erected by the United States Government as a protection against the Indians, I was told some stories of Cody's exploits against the Indians. In former days, emigrants traversing these great prairies to found a home in this Wild West, were often harassed by Indians, and the soldiers at the fort had to protect them. Buffalo Bill has been in many a skirmish, and, if rumour is true, many redskins have succumbed to him; the Government took counsel with him in all Indian difficulties in that part of the country, and the day before I passed his ranch he had been sent for by the authorities that they might confer with him as to the outbreak which then existed, and which cost "Sitting Bull" his life. We passed a house cut clean in two by the wind, great herds of horses and cattle, beautiful specimens of the bald and other eagles and vultures, some deer, and a very fine grey wolf about the size of a Newfoundland dog. The distant mountain scenery at times is very grand, and everywhere snow-capped. The air is very pure and keen. I much enjoyed the society of two fellow travellers over this part of my journey, Mr. Lee, of General Lee's family, of Virginia, and Mr. Hurley, Solicitor to the Directors of the line we were traversing. We passed the "Divide of the Continent" at an altitude of 7,100 feet, which is the dividing line of the running of water; that running east empties into the North Platte River, thence into the Missouri, thence into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean; that running west empties into the Green River, thence into the Colorado, thence into the Pacific Ocean. In the early morning of December 5th we ran into Ogden, which is near Salt Lake, at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, which are snow-capped, and have some very fine peaks. Salt Lake is 126 by 45 miles, and on it is situate the great City of the Mormons. On the more fertile parts of the prairies I gathered, at Humboldt Wells, some of the sage grass which used to be the food of the buffaloes when they existed; at other places I gathered samples of herbage on less favoured soils. As we proceed, we see an encampment of Indians with red paint on their faces, which was put on to show sympathy with, and, if necessary, take part with other tribes of Indians, then commencing a "war" with the United States soldiers. This district was not far, as distances go in America from the scene of action. Presently we commence our run through the great barren alkali plains, emerging from which we get into a more fertile country, and, at Cedar Pass, notice the great ranch of Messrs. Sparks and Tinnin, who are reputed to have 100,000 head of cattle. Mr. Byrne, of Elko, Nevada, also the owner of a large ranch, was on board the cars, and gave me some useful information. He said that cattle raising is very profitable, as they double in number every four years, _i.e._, a profit of 25 per cent.; thus, if a man start with a 1,000 head of stock cattle, he will have 4,000 head in four years. If a thousand head of stock cattle were purchased off a ranch, they would be sold just as they run, without any selection whatever--steers, heifers, cows, calves, bulls, yearlings, both sexes and all ages, but calves which still suck their mothers are not counted, and go for nothing. Many head of cattle perish in the winter, when the land is covered with snow, as on many large ranches no food is given them. I urged that it would pay to have stock-yards and give food during the snow time, and Mr. Byrne said that he always did so himself, and that the great ranch men were having their eyes opened to this necessity. We passed various other encampments of Indians, and far from any encampment or habitation saw an Indian on the track carrying a small light bundle, and following him a long way behind was his squaw, labouring under a very heavy burden. During this day we ran through ranges of uneven mountains, rising one above another in broken undulations and with ever-varying tops, such as table lands, sharp conical peaks, rounded heads, and broken indentations. The distant mountains are enveloped in snow, upon which gleams a resplendent setting sun, presenting a prospect which only such a region could produce. From the dazzling whiteness of one range we look upon the dense darkness of another, as being out of the sun's influence. The lights and shades, the gorges, the fissures, the striations in the range upon range, with their intervals of plains and valleys, here and there opening up peeps of great tracts of country, and then again shutting all in to the circumference of their gigantic heads, interspersed with the brilliance of rich gold, tingeing some tops and revealing dark recesses, some ruby tints and fantastic shadows,--all combine to reflect a glory which lifts the mind beyond the great heights of hills to a height, greater still, whence originated all natural grandeur. We had run through Utah and Nevada, and were now approaching the northern part of California. In the very early morning of December 6th I awoke and found that the train was at a standstill. Thinking that we were at a station I tried to sleep again, but, finding that we continued motionless, I went out on to the platform connecting our car with the next and found all around was deep snow, and that another train on the other metals had broken down, and that our men were apparently helping to get it off. We were then two miles from Truckee, and at an elevation of nearly 6,000 feet. After a long delay we got away and ran into Truckee. The scenery on this day was also of a truly grand character: precipices, declivities, chasms; and in one very romantic spot, of weird and wild mountain sides, graduating to narrow gullies, with pine and other trees, some perfect, others broken by the wind was one great wreck of a forest monster--a tree rudely snapped asunder by wind or lightning, about 40 feet from the ground, and stripped of every branch, so that it looked like a broken column; on its top sat a great vulture in the well-known attitude of its kind, as motionless as rock, and apparently meditating on the incongruity of a noisy, vulgar bit of machinery, with its train of cars, invading such a nook of Nature's solitudes. As we proceeded we came upon the succession of Placer gold diggings, known as the hydraulic mines, which were then for the most part abandoned, and these brought to my remembrance many similar spots I had seen in Australia. The _débris_ of the mines had stopped up, or diverted, or otherwise interfered with the Sacramento River, the Bear River, and other rivers, to the great detriment of agriculture, horticulture, stock rearing, etc., whereupon the State Legislature of California passed an Act to prohibit all interference with the water, for without water the miners could not wash their dirt, and so had to abandon the diggings. All around this part, ravine followed ravine, with beautiful vistas between, affording a continuous luxury of scenic gratification. Presently we reached what is called by many the grandest scenery on the American Continent, known as Cape Horn; it is where the train winds round a mountain side, on a narrow ledge, and at such a height, that to hold one's hand out of the window would be to hold it over a sheer precipice of 2,500 feet. The train runs along the ledge or narrow roadway cut in the face of the mountain rock, and all around is presented a spectacle of the majesty of Nature, which only such a range of mountains as the Sierra Nevada could produce. About 14 miles from Truckee, we reach a station called "Summit," which lies at an elevation of 7,017 feet, and is the highest point on the Sierra Nevada Mountains reached by railroads, but the granite peaks rise up to an altitude of over 10,000 feet. Grizzly bears, and other wild creatures, find their homes in the recesses of these fastnesses. On leaving these mountains we make a rapid descent, and in an hour feel that we are in another country. At Colfax I bought fruit; at Arlington the temperature was like summer. At Rockling Station I saw some very fine orange trees, full of splendid fruit. Now we have entered the fertile plains of North California, and run through cultivated lands, till we reach Sacramento, the capital of the State. It is a great change: from desert, alkaline plains, miles of snow sheds, snow-covered mountains, a semi-civilization, and a freezing atmosphere, we find ourselves in a warm, genial climate, cultivated farms, vineyards, gardens, and orchards of nectarines, pears, apples, and the rest. Arriving at Oakland, we crossed the Bay in the great ferry-ship, or floating wharf, "Piedmont." The weather was charming--the bay dotted about with islands and surrounded by hills. The temperature was the more enjoyable from the fact that only a few hours before we were surrounded by deep snow. On arriving at San Francisco (on Saturday, December 6th), I went straight to the Palace Hotel, and my first effort was to get a bath, for a continuous day and night run from New York of 3,367 miles, makes one who is accustomed to the use of plenty of water to look for a good ablution as the first refresher. The Palace Hotel claims to be the "model hotel of the world." Its architect visited the leading hotels of Europe so as to produce a hotel superior to any. As to size, it occupies a complete block--that is, it has a street traversing each side of it. It rises to a height of 120 feet, and covers an area 350 feet by 275 feet--that is, 96,250 square feet, or nearly 2-3/4 acres, and, with sub-sidewalk extensions, exceeds three acres. The lower story is 27 feet high, the uppermost one 16 feet high. The foundation wall is 12 feet thick, and the principal materials are stone, iron, brick, and marble. Every partition wall throughout is stone and brick. It is fire and earthquake proof, the walls being additionally tied by iron bands. It has four artesian wells, yielding 28,000 gallons of water an hour, a 630,000 gallon reservoir, and tanks holding 130,000 gallons more. The water is served by three large steam fire pumps, which throw the water above the roof. There are five patent safety-catch hydraulic elevators (or lifts). Immense precautions have been taken against fire. The dining-rooms are 150 feet by 55 feet, and 100 feet by 50 feet. The public rooms are very numerous, and are of immense size. The rooms for guests are principally 20 feet by 20 feet; none are less than 16 feet by 16 feet; all are well furnished. The corridors are like streets--space, elegance, solidity, and comfort are apparent everywhere; the whole being lighted by gas and electricity. Each bedroom has a bath-room, with hot and cold water services; w.c., coat-closet, and lavatory closet, with hot and cold water services to itself, and which can only be used by the occupant of the bed-room. The hotel, of course, has a barber's shop, and as I expected my client to call I was anxious to get through my toilet quickly; so I rang for one of the barber's assistants to come to my bed-room to cut my hair preparatory to the bath. This did not take long, and I asked the price, when, to my surprise, a dollar and a-half, _i.e.,_ 6s. 3d., was required. I thought it was barbarism indeed! I left San Francisco on Monday, December 8th, and during my short stay I saw something of the town; but it was not the same place as I remembered it from my two visits to it in 1862. It is full of life and activity, has many wealthy men, 50 of whom, it is said, are millionaires. It has a large number of grand buildings, fine shops, extensive markets, beautiful private residences, and an immense development of electricity for motion, light, sound, etc. The tram-cars run in constant succession everywhere; but the most remarkable cars are those worked by an endless cable. In the city are works with immense steam power, and from these works endless cables revolve throughout the city, under the roads, in various directions. In the bed of the tramway is a groove, under which is the cable, revolving at a great speed. The driver of the car lets down his grip, which tightly holds the cable, and, of course, the car starts at full speed, and is carried along by the cable. When the driver wants to stop, he lets go his grip on the cable and applies his brake. Some of the hills in San Francisco are very steep, and the first sensation in riding on the outside front seat, while going full speed down a sharp declivity, is certainly novel, with no apparent motive power, and no apparent means of stopping. The speed, of course, is always the same, whether up or down hill, or on level ground. Telegraph Hill is 394 feet high, Clay Street Hill 376 feet, and Russian Hill 360 feet. A San Francisco Sunday is painful to one accustomed to our English ways; travelling in every form, and buying and selling are very prevalent. The Y.M.C.A. have a large building there, and get large meetings. I attended one gathering, which I addressed shortly. San Francisco is described as having "the mildest and most equable climate known to any large city in the world." January is the coldest month, and the mean temperature then is stated to be 50°. September is the hottest month, and the mean temperature then is stated to be 58°. Thus only 8° difference between the coldest and warmest months, and the average for the whole year is 54°. San Francisco has a population of about 300,000 (including some 40,000 Chinese), is the principal city of the State of California, and the principal commercial centre on the Pacific coast. I must not, however, dwell longer on this part of my journey. On Monday, December 8th, I left San Francisco with one of my clients, Mr. C.H. Huffman, for Merced, by the 4 p.m train. The sun was shining gloriously, producing a charming effect upon the placid waters of the Bay and its beautiful surrounding hills. SAN FRANCISCO TO NEW ORLEANS. The train reached Merced at 10.23 on Monday night, December 8th, 1890, where I was met, and in a spacious family buggy, drawn by a pair of good horses, I was very soon at the residence of my client, Mr. C.H. Huffman. The continuous day and night travelling by rail, and the taking of voluminous notes all along, had caused a constant excitement which told upon the nerves, and for two days I felt as though I needed absolute rest, but, remembering that I had already been long absent from my office, I commenced my work at Merced the next morning. The town of Merced is the capital of the county of that name; it is not many years old, but it has a striking difference to many new small towns I have seen in the Colonies, in that it has several very good buildings and residences. It has seven churches and chapels of various denominations, some good shops, medical men, society, schools, gas, water, electricity, and a station on the main Great Southern Pacific Railway. It is undoubtedly a town which must rapidly increase in value, for this reason: My clients, Messrs. Crocker and Huffman, at a cost of some two million dollars, have tapped the Great Merced River 25 miles off, and brought water down to the town and irrigated the country round. They have formed a reservoir 640 acres in extent. Hitherto the rich lands around the town of Merced have not been irrigated, and consequently were not suitable for growing the Fruits for which California is so famous; but, now that a system of canals, formed by my clients, has irrigated their estate, extending over some 50,000 or 60,000 acres, the whole of this great area is changed in value, and is available, and will eventually be used, for the production of choice Fruits. Thus, Merced will become a centre, like other parts of California, and, being so much nearer than those other parts to San Francisco, will benefit additionally by that advantage alone. Merced is only 152 miles from San Francisco, while Fresno is 207, Bakersfield 314, and Los Angeles, 483 miles. It is rumoured that another line of railway will also be formed in connection with the present main line, and Merced would then be an important railway junction. I drove out every day with Mr. Huffman, and inspected the country for some miles around the town, including the Merced River, 25 miles off. The land designated British Colony, is, at its commencement, only two miles from the Merced Railway Station, hotel, and shops. Mr. Huffman has a most comfortable residence, and has excellent stables, well filled with first-class buggy horses, so that travelling was always an easy matter. Being a lay preacher in England, I took advantage of offers made me, and preached on the Sunday I was at Merced in two of the churches at the morning and evening services. I left Merced on Tuesday night, December 16th, by the 10.23 train, having stayed there eight days. I immediately "turned in," and next morning (December 17th) was up as usual at 6.30, and much enjoyed the splendid scenery through which we were passing--in a mountainous country, grandly diversified with all the alternations of heights and depths, lights and darks, rich and barren, including many evidences of engineering skill--as we coursed along, now looking high up, now looking low down, and presently winding along the celebrated "loop," described as the "greatest engineering feat in the world," by which the train goes through mountain passes, creeping along the tops of eminences, then returning, crosses under itself at a low level, then, ascending, crosses over itself at a higher level, so that in its meandering course you now look down at your side on the line you have just traversed, and anon look up at your side at the line you are about to traverse. We passed through the Mojava (pronounced Moharvie) desert, where the yucca palm is plentiful. A fellow passenger, and old settler, enlivened the time by some relations of his experiences thus: He once shot a grizzly bear which weighed 1,500 lbs. Some are much larger than this. Everything of weight in America is generally reckoned by pounds, not cwts. or tons. On another occasion he slew a Californian lion. He had killed a bullock, and the carcase was hanging in his house at the back, where was an aperture like a small window without glass, and under this opening outside stood an empty case. The lion scenting the carcase, and hearing no sound from within, approached the house, and was endeavouring to creep through the aperture when, in its efforts to do so, it kicked the case away, and the poor animal was stuck fast, having its head and shoulders inside. My fellow traveller, on returning home, was surprised to find his visitor, and so despatched him with an axe, and has for years used the skin, which is 9 feet 8 inches long. The temperature was charming, although in the distance we could see the snow-capped mountains. We run through the antelope valley, gather some juniper plant, see a skunk, see natural oil wells at Saugus, pass the head of the Santa Clara Valley, see the San Fernando mountains, go through the greatest tunnel in America--the San Fernando tunnel, 6,967 feet long, go by Burbank, where there is a land boom, and arrive at Los Angeles, where during the two hours of waiting I have a look at the town and a pleasant chat with Mr. White Mortimer, the British Consul, whom I called upon. The next day (December 18th) we were on the desert of Arizona, where we saw Indian camps at places which were somewhat oases as to plant life. Speaking generally, nothing grows on a great part of this desert but cactus, of which I am told there are some 200 varieties, from the dwarf kind to trees 40 feet high. This plant has a strange if not a weird appearance. Here and there, like solitary sentinels, stands out a tall cactus, with perhaps two or three heads or branches, growing perpendicularly with itself. The mountains on either side look as if they had their origin in volcanic eruptions. Some parts of the desert are covered with a dwarf kind of evergreen shrub. We see large numbers of prairie dogs, which are of a size between a rat and a rabbit; they live in holes like rabbits. There are also gophers, skunks, prairie rats, rattlesnakes, and hawks, which feed on snakes and rats. We pass tribes of Yuma Indians, Aztec Indians and Gila (pronounced Heela) Indians. On reaching a part where is some grass we see some cattle, which are straying on the line; the engine whistle shrieks, the cattle run, and some coyote wolves are startled from their lairs and run, too; large numbers are here, and the preceding night their yells aroused some passengers from sleep. As we proceed, quail are seen, and wild cats something like a lynx. Arriving at Tucson (pronounced Tewsohn), I enquired for a gentleman to whom I had an introduction, but learned that he was up at his gold mine. This Tucson is an ancient city, having been founded by the Jesuits in 1560 A.D. It does a large business in exporting gold dust, wool, and hides. I expect that these mountains of Arizona contain much value in minerals. The Indians in this part of the country are the Apaches, and were described to me as the most treacherous of all the American Indians, that they are cowardly and will never fight in the open. A gentleman who entered the train at Tucson gave me many instances of this. In the evening we saw "cow-boys" round their fire camping out in the open, and also a camp of freighters resting on their journey across the desert. The next morning early (December 19th) we arrived at El Paso, a most interesting Mexican town situate on the borders of Old Mexico, New Mexico and Texas, where I bought the skin of a Mexican tiger, and other things. In travelling for some days in a train continuously one feels the need of exercise, and this I obtained by getting in and out of many of the railway stations and walking up and down. Between San Francisco and New Orleans there are 322 stations, and I should suppose the number of stations on both the Northern and Southern routes I traversed would probably amount to nearly 700. We are now commencing to cross the great plains of Texas. At first the plains are desert, with mountains skirting our view; the scenery is less interesting than the Arizona desert, because there are no cacti. This desert has probably been under salt water at some time. The rocky hills appear to have a volcanic origin. As we go on, we reach a poor kind of pasture, growing out of a scrubby kind of shrub, with some occasional cacti, many hills and mountains like barren rocks, with not a bird or an animal to be seen. The weather has been warm since leaving Merced, but now, so far south as we are, it is hot on this December day. I had read in the short telegrams given by American papers, that the winter was very severe in England, and I pictured often to myself, friends and clients in England muffled up amidst frost and snow, whilst I was revelling in glorious sunshine, so warm that no greatcoat could be worn. Had I returned by the route I went (the Northern Prairies), I might have been delayed by snow drifts, but by this, the Southern route, there was no snow, but a continuous, cheerful, delightful sunshine, not too hot anywhere, but simply delightful. I should certainly recommend anyone going from England to California in the winter season, to go by the Southern route. Amongst the objects of interest, we notice in the distance a small herd of 14 wild antelope trotting along; cattle, coyote wolves, and, at many places, the well-picked bones of animals which had dropped dead, or, when weak, had been killed or eaten by carnivora or reptiles. We saw large numbers of prairie dogs; they sit outside their holes like a squirrel, on their haunches, with their fore paws up; they are very quick, and most difficult even to shoot. More antelopes and coyotes. At a station called Alpine were several cowboys, all armed with revolvers and cartridge belts, and some with dagger knives too; their mustangs were hitched up close by. These cowboys are some old and some young men, some wild and some cultivated, some never educated, some have gone through Harvard, or Oxford, or Cambridge, some the sons of English county gentlemen and noblemen--but all cowboys, _i.e.,_ men who live on ranches where large herds of cattle or horses are bred, and whose duty it is to ride over the wild rough country to know where the herds of cattle and horses are feeding, so that if they need to be ridden up for cutting or branding, or selling, they may be found. I was told that this was one of the "hardest" places for a cowboy, _i.e.,_ one of the wickedest, meaning that when they visit it, it is for a "spree," and they get drunk, and fights and murders follow. I was pointed to a little cemetery on a hill, enclosed by a white fence, and was told that it contained 150 bodies, and that only 50 had died a natural death; the others had been shot or otherwise murdered in drunken frays and other ways. Many strange little histories were told me about these men, but which I have no time to record here. In some parts of the country where water was very scarce, there seemed to be no vegetation, and the cattle seemed to wander solitarily along, a mere heap of hide and bone. At many stations I had quite a considerable interval for running about, such as when a wheel caught fire, which happened two or three times, or some freight had to be taken in, or taken out, etc. When the train again starts, the conductors shout "All aboard," and there is a general rush. The next day (December 20th) was again a brilliant day of sunshine; we see many buzzards, and breakfast at San Antonio. The railway stations along this country have two roofs, one being two or three feet above the other, so that air between should keep the building cool. At breakfast, I read the San Antonio _Daily Express_, which informed me "severe storms prevailed everywhere in Great Britain," and my thoughts were naturally much occupied with the Old Country. The day was sultry, but sunshine is always a great treat to me, and it was never too hot. Now we are running into civilization again, and I catch sight of a man ploughing; he has a pair of mules, and is holding the reins in his teeth. As we proceed, it is a continuous succession of cotton fields, cotton fields, cotton fields. We see many bales; these weigh from 475 to 600 lbs. each. At a station called Sequin, I obtained lots of cotton seeds, and gathered some cotton in the fields as we went along. The scavengers of this country are Turkey buzzards, which are protected by law because of their usefulness. I could not refrain from writing several times in my note-book, "glorious sunshine." Hitherto we have had mountains continuously in sight, but now they are out of vision. This being Saturday we see markets at the towns we go through; at Habwood and Flatonia especially was this noticeable. The population seemed almost altogether negro. I observed a negro and his wife, well dressed, riding on horseback in the old English pillion style; another negro and his wife, and about twelve children, in a capacious kind of wagon-buggy, and many negroes and negresses, the latter dressed in white and gay colours, standing at their pretty verandahed cottages. We now pass a spot where a train was stopped and the passengers robbed some time ago, by Jesse and Frank Jeames and the Ford Brothers. The _modus operandi_ is for all the men to be secreted but one, who stands on the line holding up a red flag which indicates danger; the engineer then stops and the men spring aboard; some hold revolvers to the heads of the engineers, and others go through the train and rob the passengers. The robbers shout out "hands up," and one man points his weapon at the passenger's head, whilst another rifles his pockets. If a passenger fails to hold up his hands he is shot down. A passenger on the Northern Prairies told me of a fellow passenger, who under such circumstances having a revolver, aimed at a robber and pulled the trigger, but it missed fire, and he was instantly shot down. But these attacks are now more rare, and the officials are more prepared for them. Sometimes the robbers get on board the train as passengers, and act suddenly in concert. All along the country now we pass the cabins of the slaves, familiarised to us by "Uncle Tom's Cabin." These cabins are pleasant little houses with verandahs, and I reflected how favourably they compared with the "homes" of many of the London poor, and how happy the slaves might have been but for the knowledge that at any time they were liable to be sold like a mule or a bullock. Now we pass sugar, cotton and rice plantations, and go through such cultivations all through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia. I gathered sugar and cotton going along at places, saw a racoon in a stream fishing for crawfish, and go through a country, in which are plenty of alligators. On the early morning of Sunday (December 21st), we go through swamps, such as we used to read of as the hiding-places of runaway slaves. All through these Southern States we saw everywhere sugar and cotton, sugar and cotton, sugar and cotton; these, with rice, are the principal products; sugar mills, cotton yards, etc., etc. We soon reach Algiers, and cross the grand Mississippi River, then land at New Orleans. The actual city of New Orleans covers an area of about 41 square miles, but the statutory limits of the city embrace nearly 150 square miles. It is situate on both banks of the Mississippi River, and from 1,000 to 1,500 steamers and other vessels, from all parts of the world, may frequently be seen lying there. New Orleans is the chief market in the world for cotton. The site of the city was surveyed in 1717 by De la Tour, and it was settled in 1718, but abandoned in consequence of overflows, storms, and sickness; it was resettled in 1723, held by the French till 1729, then by the Spaniards till 1801, by the French again till 1803, and then, with the Province of Louisiana, was ceded to the United States. The present population is about 250,000. There are 33 cemeteries, and they are remarkable, inasmuch as the bodies are buried above ground, in vaults like tiers of ovens; the ground is too wet for burial. I attended Trinity Church in the morning, had some black bear for dinner at my hotel, the "Hotel St. Charles," and then attended the Y.M.C.A., where I gave the address in the afternoon, which was followed by a very solemn after meeting. I went to bed very early, and was up very early the next morning (Monday, December 22nd). I had to draw the mosquito curtains in the night, but not till after some of these insects had left their mark. The principal ground floor of the hotel was on the first floor level, and the actual ground floor was of secondary importance; the front part was occupied by stone steps and a colonnade, and the rear was a liquor bar and a large hall. This hall used to be one of the principal auction rooms of the city, where slaves were sold by auction; and as I entered the now rather desolate-looking place, which is partly circular in shape and constructed with many pillar supports, I pictured to myself the emotional agonies, the tempests of passion, the lust of greed, the calm, subdued, resistless attitude of despair which at times found expression, as domestic circles were for ever broken, tenderest sympathies for ever sundered, closest friendships for ever separated--yea, even the most sacred relationships of life ruthlessly shattered, by the sale of mothers or fathers, brothers or sisters, wives or husbands, sweethearts or friends. Of this I will give just two illustrations: Our porter on the train crossing the Northern Prairies was a coloured man named Farrell; he told me that his mother had seven boys, and that they were all sold away from her, and that it had been his life-work to try to find his brothers. He had shipped to Australia as a seaman, had worked in hotels, and on wharves and rivers, and now was working on the railway cars endeavouring to find his brothers; he had advertised for them in the newspapers, but he had never heard of one of them. When this family was broken up, Farrell and his brothers were only boys; for it will be remembered that the date of the official announcement of the total abolition of slavery in the United States was made on the 18th December, 1862, when upwards of 4,000,000 slaves were legally declared free men. Another coloured man engaged at this hotel, who was born a slave, remembered walking with his father, who was also a slave, and his father's anxiety to get home before nine o'clock at night, as no coloured man was allowed to be in the streets after that hour unless he possessed a sufficient authority from his owner. This man told me that at an auction of slaves at this hotel (auctions of slaves were held in New Orleans at different places three times a week) a very fine intelligent young man was sold by auction for 2,100 dollars to a lawyer who was known to be a cruel man. My informant told me that his name was--well, it sounded like Rumo, possibly Roumeaux, as most of the wealthy settlers were of French origin, that he lived in St. James' Ward, and that when he bought slaves and sent them down to his plantations, they each received twenty-five lashes as they entered his gates, as an example, of what they would receive if they did not please him. Well, when the hammer fell and this slave knew that he belonged to an owner whose cruelty was common talk, he exclaimed, "You have lost your money." This slave was sent down with others to the steamer on the Mississippi (which is only some ten minutes' walk from the hotel), for shipment to this owner's plantations. The poor fellow was not even allowed to say good-bye to his people, but was sent on board. When he arrived there, he repeated to the man in charge of the slaves, "Mr. Rumo will lose his money," and shortly after he took advantage of a favourable moment, and, folding his arms, he threw himself backward into the river, and was drowned. A few minutes' walk from my hotel is the Henry Clay monument, where the mob was addressed last month by Mr. Parkerson, who incited them to proceed to the prison and force an entrance, and then to take the lives of a number of Italian murderers by lynch law. On this monument some memorable words are inscribed which Mr. Clay uttered, and which T copied. They are as follows:--"If I could be instrumental in eradicating this deep stain, slavery, from the character of our country, I would not exchange the proud satisfaction which I should enjoy for the honour of all the triumphs ever decreed to the most successful conqueror." That deep stain was removed in 1862, and slaves were raised from the condition of cattle to that of men, who could thenceforward rejoice in the freedom of being masters of their own bodies. NEW ORLEANS TO LONDON. On leaving New Orleans we run through swamps, and presently skirt the Gulf of Mexico and travel on. The next day (December 23rd), we feel it perceptibly colder, for we are going north. The country is cultivated in sugar, cotton, rice, grass, etc. We breakfast at Atlanta, and after leaving that place, the scenery puts me more in mind of England. In going through Georgia, I was told that the same black families which now occupy many of the small wooden houses, or "cabins," which I see, are the same families who occupied them before the abolition of slavery. Although many slaves suffered cruelties through enforced separations and hard treatment, yet very many had most comfortable homes, considerate masters, and light work. I sat much during this day on the platform at the end of the end car, observing the country. At one station some little black urchins came to gaze, and I said to one boy, apparently seven years old, "What is your name?" He said, "Willie Matthews." I said, "How old are you? " He said, "I ain't old enough to know how old I are." And his genuine simplicity delighted me. We are now passing through cultivated lands, farms, and estates, and these continue right on to New York. At Greers was a very large collection of cotton. At Spartanville are large cotton mills, such as one sees in Lancashire. The next day (December 24th), we notice ice on the ponds. We cross the Potomac River, and near Washington, sight the Capitol--or, as we should say in England, the Houses of Parliament. Washington City is the political capital of the United States. Its size is about 4-1/2 miles by 2-1/2 miles. The Capitol is described by the Americans as the most magnificent public edifice in the world. It is 352 feet long and 121 feet deep, with two wings each 238 by 140 feet. Its entire length is 751 feet 4 inches, and it covers an area of more than 3-1/2 acres. It is of costly construction, and stands in grounds of about 50 acres. We proceed, and stop at Baltimore, cross the Bush and Gunpowder Rivers, again come near the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers, various smaller rivers, and run on until we reach New York. On arrival, I immediately went to the Cunard office and secured my berth in the "Servia." The next morning (Christmas Day), it was very cold, and snowing. I had a fire lit in my bed-room, and there wrote the article which appeared in the January _Land Roll_. In the afternoon I walked in the Central Park, but it was so bitterly cold, I was satisfied with less than two hours of exercise, and returned to the hotel to dinner, and finished up the day writing in my bed-room till midnight. The Central Park, in genial weather, would be an attractive resort. I observed large natural rocks, lawns, wide promenades, seats, lakes, menageries, swings, and various such like attractions for juveniles, overground and underground roads--a kind of "Rotten Row," &c., but being so cold scarcely a person was to be seen. On December 26th, New York was deep in snow. I visited a few shops for some necessaries, and went on board the "Servia" during the afternoon, thinking that I might have difficulty in getting a cabman to drive to the docks after dark if the snow drifted deeply. New York City is the metropolis of the United States. In 1880 its population was 1,206,590. Its site was discovered in 1524. It was in 1609 that Hudson, an Englishman, ascended the river which was named after him. In 1614 some Dutchmen settled there. In 1648 its population was 1,000, and in 1700 it had increased to 6,000. In 1684 it was captured by the Duke of York, and was henceforth called "New York." In 1711 a slave market was established in Wall Street. On December 27th, about 5 o'clock in the morning, we began to clear out of the dock, and in a few hours were again on the broad Atlantic. The next day (Sunday, December 28th), we had service on board, conducted by the doctor in the saloon: all on board not actually on duty may attend. We left New York in a blizzard, and our decks were coated with frost and snow, but after two days this was all cleared away, and we had a splendid run in genial weather, so that one day I could comfortably walk on deck without a greatcoat. Our run was--from Sandy Hook Lighthouse (45 miles) to noon of December 28th, 373 miles; noon of December 29th, 379 miles; December 30th, 375 miles; December 31st, 878 miles; January 1st, 1891, 372 miles; January 2nd, 362 miles; January 3rd, 371 miles; thence, to Queenstown, 169 miles; and from Queenstown to Liverpool, 240 miles; making a total of 3,064 miles. The passage in the "Etruria," going out, was 3,062 miles. The "Servia" is a fine ship, but much older than the "Etruria," and her engines, consequently, are not capable of the speed of a newer vessel. Her cargo capacity is 6,500 tons, with 1,800 tons of coal and 1,000 tons of water ballast. Her horse-power is equal to 10,500. The saloon is 74 by 49 feet, and is capable of seating 350 persons. The "Servia" has cabin accommodation for 500 saloon and 600 steerage passengers, besides a crew of 200 officers and men. When there are more than 350 saloon passengers, each meal has to be served in two relays. An interesting incident occurred during the passage: I discovered that our captain (now commanding the "Aurania") was a shipmate of mine in 1855, when I was a midshipman. I reached my office in Lincoln's Inn Fields at 8 o'clock on the morning of January 5th, having been absent just about six weeks. The distances were as follows:-- Liverpool to New York 3,062 miles. New York to Chicago 913 " Chicago to Council Bluffs 488 " Council Bluffs to San Francisco 1,867 " San Francisco to Merced 152 " Merced to New Orleans 2,344 " New Orleans to Washington 1,144 " Washington to New York 228 " New York to Liverpool 3,064 " London to Liverpool 201 " Liverpool to London 201 " Journeys in buggies, tram-cars, &c. 110 " -------- 13,774 " I must conclude with some general remarks:-- The _Times_ recently published a series of ten articles on the "Negro Question in the United States," and from them it appears that the position of that country is very serious in this relation. These articles commenced after I had started on my journey, so that I only saw one or two of the concluding ones and the _Times_ leader upon the whole, but I was not surprised to see them, because in passing through the States which are principally peopled by negroes, I heard something about the matter from a thoughtful man, who regarded the subject with great gravity. The _Times_ has shown that the attitude of one race to the other is that of "antagonism, discontent, and perpetual danger." The negroes have the same constitutional privileges as the whites, and their overpowering numbers in certain places give the power into their hands, which, regarded in relation to racial hatred, renders them to be an object of danger to the country. It is proposed to emigrate the negroes to some part of Africa. It would be more consistent for certain Americans to interest themselves in solving this problem of their own rather than encouraging Irish agitators, and so assisting to prevent England solving her dark problem across St. George's Channel. The proportion of coloured people to white in the three states of Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama, is about equal, that is, there are as many coloured people as white. The population of coloured people throughout the whole of the United States is about 7,000,000 of coloured people to 59,000,000 of white people, but it is a sad fact, as stated in the _Times_ of March 7th last, that a Government return, dated June 1st, 1890, showed that there were 45,233 convicts in the prisons of the United States, and that of this number no less than 14,687, or one-third were coloured people, and that out of these coloured people only 237 were Chinese, 3 Japanese, and 180 Indians, so that 14,267 were negroes. As the whites, counting all the States, are eight times as numerous as the coloured people, and yet the coloured convicts are one-third of the whole, it speaks badly for the morals of the negro race in America. I was much struck with the immense development of electricity. Steamers, railway carriages, tramcars, hotels, shops, towns, villages, and railway stations, even those in remote places, with scarcely a building near to them, were all well lighted by electricity. Railways run on scaffoldings down the centre of the streets, and horses with their vehicles run underneath them. The railway trains are well heated throughout by hot water pipes (every class), and reflect a grave reproach on our country, where, in the severest weather, it is difficult to get a foot warmer, except by certain main line trains, and, even then, one is expected to "tip" the attendant. Poor persons travelling in thin garments and poorly fed, in severe weather, scarcely ever dare to ask for a foot warmer unless they are prepared to fee someone, and, whether rich or poor, no one can get a foot warmer at any of our country stations. When we consider that railways originated in this country, and that some of the parts of America I passed through were, some 50, some 40, and some even 30 years ago, only known to the trapper and the Indian, it shows the increase of enterprise exhibited by our cousins over the Atlantic. Tramcars are worked by electricity, by steam, by horses and mules, and by revolving endless cables. Telephones are everywhere. The railway journeys in America often occupying several days, the tickets are a kind of succession of coupons, parts of which have to be given up at various stages. Caution is exercised in selling railway tickets for long journeys--thus, you are required to sign the ticket, and observations are made of you, such as your height, probable age, colour of your eyes, hair, etc. Some of the lines of railway are not fenced in, not even in towns, so that the train runs through a town as openly as does an omnibus. I may convey some idea of some of the large American systems of agriculture, by referring to the estate of one of my clients, Mr. C.H. Huffman, of Merced, California. This gentleman has fields ranging from 1,000 to 15,000 acres each. He can plough 400 to 500 acres a day. By his traction engine he can strike 12 furrows at a time. He can put 70 teams (of eight mules or horses each) to work at one time. Each harvester will cut, thrash, and sack an average of 50 acres a day. The front part of the machine faces the standing wheat in the field, in the centre of the machine it is thrashed and winnowed, and at the rear it is thrown out in sacks ready for market. Mr. Huffman can sit in his study at home, and by his telephone talk to his clerks at Merced (he is the banker there), as well as to the foremen at his various ranches for 25 miles round the country. I particularly noticed one of his fields of wheat, comprising 2,000 acres, as level and clean as a well-kept lady's flower garden in England. The Americans have a greater variety of foods served at their meals than we do, but I never got the flavour of meat cut from a joint to equal that which, when really well roasted and served, we get in England. As to bread, I never tasted bread worth the name, from the time I left London to the time I returned to it. Alike on the Cunard steamers, cars, hotels, etc., you can get no wholemeal bread. French and Vienna breads, and other very white abortions of that kind are obtainable in abundance, and even a kind of brown bread, and "Graham's" bread, but good honest wholemeal bread, containing all the properties of the full kernel of the wheat, it is impossible to get, and this to me was a very great deprivation, as my _principal_ article of food is _real_ wholemeal bread. The system of the custody of letters at the large American hotels appeared to me rather unsafe. A visitor asks for letters, whereupon there are handed to him all the letters in the pigeon-hole marked with the initial of which the visitor's name commences. The visitor then proceeds to look through them, and takes what he chooses, and hands the rest back. The official is too busy, or it is not customary for him, to look through them for the visitor, or even to watch the visitor in his process of selection. I noticed one gentleman with a packet of letters, I should think considerably over a hundred, every now and then slip one into his breast pocket and give a furtive glance, which did not inspire confidence, but probably this is a well accustomed habit of the people, and the letters, perhaps, are as safe as the newspapers I frequently saw deposited on the tops of the street letter boxes (outside the boxes), because they were too large to be put inside; of course anyone could have taken them, but the custom not to touch them is probably honourably recognized. The street letter boxes are quite small square boxes, not large pillar boxes as are ours in this country. I should like to have remarked more generally on America, but both time and space fail me. Of course, as most people know, the (to us) disgusting practice of spitting is common in America; spittoons are universally provided in public and private places. At Merced Court House is this notice: "Gentlemen will not, and others should not spit upon the floors." Huge spittoons are provided there. The awful guttural which precedes the constant expectoration of Americans is most trying. It excites in persons near them and who are unaccustomed to it, a sensation of necessity to vomit, as it conveys a fear that your neighbour is about to vomit over you. It is not the excusable expectoration arising from an accumalation in the air passages, but a continuous fusilade of saliva. It is a disgusting practice, and I believe will die out in America as its citizens travel more in the old countries and become used to manners more refined than such a one as this. I observed that my clients in California, who have travelled in Europe, and other travelled Americans, are not guilty of this odious practice. I would say to Englishmen travelling in America, don't condescend to the "guessing" and other loose styles of expression, and don't affect the nasal twang. Americans, with all their boast of one man being as good as another, are greatly pleased to entertain or travel with Englishmen having a title, and they pay a marked respect to Britishers who speak in a classical style, and who, while being devoid of foppishness, bounce, or vulgarity, conduct themselves with a genial dignity. =California.= I will now say something about California, and then proceed to describe the lands for sale, and the prospects of those who will settle upon them. California lies on the genial coast of the Pacific Ocean, midway between the too cold regions of the North and the too hot regions of the South. To be exact, the mean temperature in San Francisco in the month of January, averages about 49°. It has varied from 53° to 39°. The record of 32 years shows that between sunrise and sunset it has not been so low as 32° on more than 10 days. Snow is sometimes seen to fall, but it melts immediately. California has a bright, genial climate, and is described as "pre-eminently a sunny land." The early spring, commencing about the middle of February and lasting about six weeks, is a very pleasant part of the year, but April is described as the "cheeriest." December and January are the least pleasant, because it is the rainy and winter season. Thunderstorms are rare, and no hurricane has ever been known there. The rainfall of California is about twenty inches, and the rainy days number about sixty in the year, or about half the number of rainy days experienced in the Atlantic States or Central Europe. Amongst the fruits grown in abundance are the orange, grape, peach, apricot, plum, cherry, apple, nectarine, fig, lemon, lime, olive, date, and all the berries of value. Besides the immense growth of choice and luscious Fruits, for which California is famous all over the globe, it claims to have the largest milk, butter, and cheese dairies in the world. It is also renowned for its mineral riches, its immense mercantile business, its manufacturing industries, its production of wool, its gigantic timber, its wealth of beauty in flowers, its fast horses, its grand scenery, embracing lofty mountains, deep valleys, expansive fertile plains, and all the variations of a beautiful country, with many rivers, and a magnificent sea coast, whilst the "coast range" and the slopes of the "Sierra" offer to the sportsman such game in abundance as grizzly and cinnamon bears and Californian lions. There are also deer, hare, rabbit, quail, large flocks of wild ducks and geese, and the rivers afford such fish as salmon and trout, and the deep sea splendid fishing. San Francisco has been called "a city of 100 hills." It has a population of nearly 300,000 inhabitants, amongst whom are no less than 50 _millionaires_. Its harbour is known all over the globe as the "Golden Gate," and it has answered well to its name, for an entrance to its vast resources has made the fortune of multitudes of people, and many going there now are laying the foundations for future wealth. The lands of California have the two essentials for successful culture--a rich soil and genial climate, with plenty of sun, yet never too hot and never too cold for out-door work, and most of its domestic animals are never housed, and require no food but wild herbage. FRUIT CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. Our lands at Merced, in California, offer to gentlemen wishing to make a first or a fresh start in life a really good opportunity. It is difficult to conceive how men with energy, enterprise, and a little capital, can be content to sit in an office in foggy, blocked-up London, "quill driving" from year's end to year's end, when a prospect is afforded them, such as we now offer, of establishing a pleasant home in a luxurious land, with a sunny, genial climate, and within about a fortnight's travel of England, and where they would have the liberty of being their own masters, and lay the foundation of a future competency. CURRENCY. As the currency in California is dollars, not pounds, we must ask our readers to accustom themselves to dollars. A dollar is 100 cents, and, roughly speaking, a cent is equivalent to a halfpenny, so that a dollar would be worth, of our money, four shillings and twopence. Its value, however, varies a few cents according to the place where it is exchanged. Bank of England notes or pounds are never worth less than four shillings and twopence, _i.e.,_ 480 cents or halfpennies, which, of course, is four dollars and 80 cents, there being 100 cents in a dollar. The decimal currency is extremely simple when once understood. Never less than 4.80 is given for an English pound, but sometimes 4.82 and 4.85 is obtained. MERCED. The lands I have for sale are situate in the County of Merced, in California, about 150 miles by rail from the City of San Francisco, They are designated "British Colony," and at the nearest point are just one mile from the boundary of the town of Merced, and two miles from the railway station, hotel, shops, etc. Merced town is lighted by gas and electricity, has water laid on, telephones, telegraphs, Court House, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church, Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Methodist Church, South Methodist Church, Baptist Church, and Catholic Church, two schools, shops of various kinds; two railroads, the main one running up to San Francisco, and down to Los Angeles and on to New Orleans, etc., and the other, a branch line to Stockton, Sacramento, etc. Merced is 175 feet above the level of the sea; it is a pleasant little town, affords some congenial society, and I firmly believe will, before many years have passed, become an important centre, because my clients have brought water from the Merced River more than twenty miles off, by a system of canals, and have formed a reservoir of 640 acres in extent, with an average depth of 30 feet, and thus have given facilities for irrigating the country round the town. It is certain to become a great Fruit-growing district, as its soil is so fully adapted for the purpose. It is much nearer to San Francisco than Los Angeles, and is nearer also than Fresno and other districts which have already made themselves a name for Fruit culture. The country around Merced has a natural fall, and is drained by many creeks, which are dry in summer, but contain more or less water in winter. THE LANDS FOR SALE. Merced is situated in the celebrated San Joaquin Valley (pronounced San Wharkeen), which is an immense level of fertile land, the soil generally being of a rich sandy loam, but in some districts, such as that I am now offering for sale, of a deep rich black loam of a highly productive nature, in fact, it is the decomposed vegetation and alluvial deposits of past ages, than which nothing could be more fertile. We have good evidence that the land is especially suited for the production of prunes, apricots, pears, peaches, olives, plums, small Fruit, such as strawberries, blackberries, sweet and common potatoes, garden stuff, and alfalfa. Alfalfa (or lucerne) is a great crop in America in places where there are no old meadow lands for the cows. The land is, of course, suited for all cereal crops, too. All the Fruits named can be dried in the sun without artificial heat. The lands are about 160 to 165 feet above the level of the sea, and, in common with all the country round, they command a view on the one side of the grand snow-capped Sierra Nevada Mountains, and on the other of the mountains known as the Coast Range. Immense flocks of wild geese and ducks (principally geese), are often on the land. There are also "rabbits" on the land (so called), but they more resemble hares in their size and habits and run. There are some excellent Fruit orchards and gardens at Merced. In the grounds around the Court House are some very fine orange trees, full of fruit, and also in the gardens of private residents. One gentleman kindly sent a bough of oranges, and other gentlemen sent other Fruits, which may be seen at our offices. At the Buhach Colony, near the town of Merced, are extensive orchards of Californian Fruits. Mr. Atwater's gardens and orchard, a few miles from the town, are worth inspection. He has two magnificent olive trees, nine or ten years' old, which bear heavy crops, and which are used for the production of olive oil; his vineyard and orange orchard, his lemon and persimmon trees, all look very prosperous. He would gladly show any settler how he has cultivated them. He has a corn and stock farm, and has only gradually cultivated these Fruits, which occupy some eleven acres. PRICE OF THE LAND. The prices of the land for sale are 75, and 100, and 150 dollars per acre, according to position. Two-thirds of the purchase-money may remain on mortgage as long as the interest is paid at 8 per cent, per annum, which is the lowest interest payable in California. The mortgagor is liable to the Government for the taxes, which amount to 1-1/2 to 2 per cent, per annum, so that he would really only receive 6 to 6-1/2 per cent, interest. All mortgages are publicly recorded, and so the property is vested in the mortgagor till he is paid off, and when that is done it also is publicly recorded. These taxes embrace all known to us in England as rates and taxes, except a road tax of 2 dollars a head per annum, chargeable to every male over twenty-one years of age. This tax may be paid for in labour on the road if desired. A free conveyance will be given, but the cost of recording the transaction in the county office (there is no stamp duty), about 1-1/2 dollars, must be paid by the purchaser. The recording of a mortgage would probably be 3-1/4 dollars because it is longer. The record is a public acknowledgment of the title of the owner to the land made in the county books. Foreigners can hold freehold property in California, but they have no right to vote--indeed, they would have no right to vote until they had resided five years in the country, and had become naturalized; then a resident has before him the possibility of becoming Governor of the State to which he belongs, or, indeed, Secretary of the Interior, which corresponds with the position of the Premier in England. AMERICAN SURVEYS. According to the American surveys the country is arranged in squares, as shown on all the maps. A "section" is a square mile, or 640 acres. A "township" is 36 sections, _i.e.,_ six miles on each of its four sides. A quarter section is 160 acres, and the lands are so arranged that a roadway is reserved around each quarter section 60 feet wide, and the land for such roadway is taken from each side, so that each owner has to contribute 30 feet to such road, and, of course, he has the benefit of the frontage to it. A 20 acre lot would be an eighth of a quarter section. On some of the lots for sale at "British Colony," are one or two houses and some buildings. These may be purchased thus: One house and buildings, 1,000 dollars; another house and buildings, 1,000 dollars; another house and buildings (N.E.), 600 dollars; but if one purchaser bought four lots of 20 acres, each adjoining so that one house and buildings should come near the centre, then such house and buildings would be given in. SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE OF FRUIT CULTURE. Few settlers would have the requisite special knowledge of Fruit culture without some instruction, and, therefore, the owners of the land have engaged the services of Professor Eisen, at a fixed salary, so that all settlers on their lands may have the benefit of the Professor's instruction, _free of charge_. Professor Eisen is well known as a specialist in horticulture in California. He has just published a book on the raisin industry in California, which may be seen at our offices. The culture of grapes for raisins, and plums for prunes, would be remarkably successful on the lands for sale. CANNED FRUITS. Wholesale buyers come round the country to buy the Fruit crops while on the trees. An enormous trade is done in America in canned Fruits; the hotels, steamers, railway cars, and private families use them largely at all meals, and America itself seems to be a sufficient market for ages to come for all the Fruit and vegetables its State of California can produce. ESTIMATES. How to start with a capital of 20,000 dols. dols. 80 acres of land, 12,000 dols., half cost 6,000 Trees, such as orange, olive, fruit, etc. 2,000 House and barn 2,500 Horses 400 Cow 50 Poultry 25 Furniture, etc. 600 Waggon, tools, etc. 400 Labour, per year, 3 men, etc., for, 3 years, including living 4,000 Interest on 6,000 dols. at 8%--480 dols. per year, 3 years 1,440 ------ dols. 17,415 Leaving a balance of 2,585 dols. for first payment of land, or for other improvements and unforeseen expenses. Profit the fourth year should be about 4,000 to 5000 dols. at the lowest. How to start with a capital of 10,000 dols., i.e., say £2,000. dols. dols. 40 acres of land .. .. .. .. 6,000 House and barn .. .. .. .. 1,200 Well and pump .. .. .. .. 100 Horses .. .. .. .. 200 Waggon and tools .. .. .. .. 350 Furniture, etc .. .. .. .. 500 Cow .. .. .. .. 50 Trees, etc. .. .. .. .. 1,200 Seed, etc. .. .. .. .. 100 .. .. .. .. ---- 9,700 Living one year, etc.; incidentals .. 300 .. .. .. .. ----- dols. 10,000 PROFITS. dols. dols. _First year_.--Land between the trees, cultivated in potatoes, vegetables, etc. .. .. .. .. 500 Poultry, eggs, etc. .. .. .. .. 150 --- 650 (Eggs and poultry pay for groceries. Many families are doing this now.) dols. dols. _Second year_.--The same as above .. 650 _Third year_.--The same as above .. 650 Yield from Fruit, 10 dols. per acre .. 400 ---- 1,050 _Fourth year_.--The same from poultry, etc. 650 From Fruit trees, 50 dols. per acre .. 2,000 ---- 2,650 _Fifth year_.--The orchard is now in good bearing, and should pay from 100 to 250 dols. per acre; say the lowest .. 4,000 (No time to attend to any but Fruit trees unless a man is employed, so only the return of Fruit trees is given). _Sixth year_.--The orchard now pays, if properly attended to, from 150 to 350 dols. per acre; say the lowest .. 6,000 _Seventh year_.--The orchard pays, if properly cared for, from 200 to 450 dols. per acre; say the lowest .. 8,000 This clear after expenses have been deducted. The farmer can take care of 20 acres himself, with occasional help. With 40 acres he requires one man more, his son or hired help. The first three years he will only make his living ordinarily so; after that time he will make money. Poultry, and vegetables should, during the first year pay for all expenses at least, and in many instances leave a large surplus. All this depends upon the capacity of the settler. With good land such as this 100 dollars or more could be made from vegetables the first season by a capable and experienced man. At least it has been done repeatedly. If poultry is properly cared for, a family will make its living by selling eggs and chickens until the trees come in bearing. =How to start with a capital of 8,000 dols., i.e., say £1,600.= dols. Land, 40 acres, 6,000 dols., half cost.. .. 3,000 House and barn .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1,500 Horses .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 200 Cows and chickens .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 75 Waggon and tools .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 200 Sundries, tools, etc. .. .. .. .. .. .. 400 Trees, etc. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1,200 Well and pump .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 100 Or windmill and tank .. .. .. .. .. .. 250 Interest on 3,000 dols. at 8 % for three years .. 780 Sundries for living, etc. .. .. .. .. .. 295 ----- dols. 8,000 The fourth and fifth years there should be a gross profit of at least 2,650 dols. a year, enough to pay for the balance due on land. How to start with, a capital of 5,000 dols., i.e., say £1,000. dols. Land, 20 acres, 3,000 dols., half cost .. .. 1,500 House and barn, etc. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1,000 Trees .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 600 Horses .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 200 Cow .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 50 Household furniture .. .. .. .. .. .. 100 Waggon and tools .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 200 Well and pump .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 100 (If tank and windmill required, from 250 dols. upwards extra). Seed, etc. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 50 Sundry expenses and chickens .. .. .. .. 300 Interest for three years on balance of land at 8% .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 360 Capital on hand to pay for part of the land.. 840 ----- dols. 5,300 What some people have started with, and come out all right. dols. dols. Land, 3,000 dols., cash, balance credit 1000 House and barn 500 Horses 150 Cow 50 Poultry 25 ___ 225 Provisions, sundries, etc 100 Furniture and tools 150 Sundry expenses 100 Waggon and horses 150 _____ dols. 2,225 But ordinarily, this is too little, as the planting of the land cannot be proceeded with at once, and work must be procured among the neighbours, etc. The estimates, were furnished us by Professor Eisen, who remarked that, probably, in giving estimates all persons would vary somewhat, but these, and other estimates which he gave, are really more than estimates, because they are the actual results of past experiences. PROFESSOR EISEN'S OPINION. Received January 20th, 1891. Professor Eisen writes:--"I am of opinion that these lands (British Colony, Merced) are amongst the very best in the State for raisins; still, as I explained to you, I do not advise any one to put his whole interest in the raisin industry, as the market for this Fruit is limited. For other dried fruit, especially for prunes (French plums), apricots, peaches, and nectarines, the market is practically unlimited, and as our population increases yearly 1,500,000 people, it will be seen that our markets must extend as well, even after we have driven all foreign Fruits out of our home markets. As regards the adaptability of the land of British Colony for various Fruits, I can say that they are especially adapted to the prune (French plums) and peaches for drying and canning, olives for olive oil and pickling; also for oranges. You can see how the orange thrives in the city of Merced and surroundings, or in localities exactly like those of British Colony lands, and there can be no doubt that oranges and lemons will prove very profitable in British Colony. Olives will especially do well there. The British Colony lands I consider as exceptionally rich and fertile, and there are few, if any, equal to them in this State or anywhere else." PRICE OF FRUIT TREES. The prices in California of young Fruit trees for planting, for the season 1890-91, are given as follows:-- dols. Prunes (like French plums) 25 to 30 per 100 Plums and other prunes 15 " Apricots 20 " Peaches, from 15 to 17.50 " Olives (layers) 20 " Olives, grafted 40 to 60 " Pears 18 " Oranges, best kinds 70 to 100 " Shade trees 50 " Grape-vines (raisins) 12 " Persimmons 15 " Walnuts, from 15 to 35 " WHEN FRUIT TREES PAY. The Fruit trees enumerated above would begin to bear the second year, but only the fourth year would they bear any considerable amount; the fifth and sixth years they would come into good bearing, and should then yield a profit of, say, from 100 to 350 dollars per acre. At seven years the orchard should be in full bearing, and never yield less than 150, and, possibly, 450 dollars per acre. Instances have been known when prunes, peaches, and pears have produced from 750 to 1,500 dollars per acre clear profit. POSITION OF A SETTLER. The position of a settler, then, is that for the first three years he cannot depend upon his crop of Fruit to maintain him, but must either have sufficient capital to support him during that time, or else earn his living in some other way. To be idle, and live on capital, would not, of course, suit any man who meant to succeed, and therefore he would fill up his time in cultivating garden and poultry produce, for which there is always a demand, or in getting some occasional employment. COST OF BOARD AND LODGING. At Merced railway station is a very large hotel, and the cost of board and lodging for emigrants is only 25 dollars, _i.e.,_ say, £5 per month; to usual visitors it is 60 dollars a month. RAISIN CULTURE. The _Pacific Rural Press_, referring to the raisin vineyards in the San Joaquin Valley, California, states:-- "What is especially interesting to the home-seeker in connection with this information, is the fact that everyone of these vineyardists is prosperous. No other horticultural industry is so profitable as the culture of the raisin grape, in no other is the work so pleasant, and no other yields a return so quickly." An acre of Muscat vines in full bearing will yield from two to three tons of grapes on good heavy soil. At 5-1/2 cents a pound in the sweat-box, this means from 225 to 325 dollars per acre, gross. Numerous instances are known, however, where the yield of an acre of Muscats amounted to as much as 450 dollars, this being the result of careful cultivation and favourable circumstances. Some grapes are borne on the vines when they are one-year old, while two-year old's have been known to bear a crop. At three years the vines pay the expenses and interest on the money invested, and at four years from planting they bring the first large paying crop. The _Merced Argus_ says of raisin culture:-- "One of the great charms of raisin culture is the extreme simplicity of its operations. WHAT CAN BE MORE SIMPLE than to pick a bunch of Muscat grapes from the vine, and lay it on the ground. In six days the bunch of grapes, without being meanwhile touched, has assumed the appearance of a bunch of raisins, and has flattened out as if it had been pressed. It is then carefully turned over, so as to expose the underside to the direct action of the sun. In eight days more it is a perfect bunch of raisins, and no act of man can improve it even in appearance. All the operations of fancy packing are so simple, that a child may learn them in a day. A single acre of raisin vines in a Merced Colony lot means handfuls of bright, golden double eagles to the bright-eyed children of the Merced farmer in the near future. _Harper's Magazine_ for January, 1891, contains an article on California, which all persons interested in that State would do well to read. I extract a few statements:-- IRRIGATION. "A piece of land at Riverside, below the flow of water, was worth 300 dollars an acre. Contiguous to it was another piece not irrigated, which would not sell for 50 dollars an acre. By bringing water to it, it would quickly sell for 300 dollars, thus adding 250 dollars to its value. As the estimate at River side is that one inch of water will irrigate five acres of Fruit land, five times 250 dollars would be 1,250 dollars per inch, at which price water for irrigation has actually been sold at Riverside. "The standard of measurement of water in Southern California is the miner's inch under four inches pressure, or the amount that will flow through an inch-square opening under a pressure of four inches measured from the surface of the water in the conduit to the centre of the opening through which it flows. This is nine gallons a minute, or, as it is figured, 1,728 cubic feet or 12,960 gallons in 24 hours, and 1/50 of a cubic foot a second. This flow would cover 10 acres about 18 inches deep in a year; that is, it would give the land the equivalent of 18 inches of rain, distributed exactly when and where it was needed, none being wasted, and more serviceable than 50 inches of rainfall as it generally comes. This, with the natural rainfall, is sufficient for citrous Fruits and for corn and alfalfa, in soil not too sandy, and it is too much for grapes and all deciduous fruits. "But irrigation, in order to be successful, must be intelligently applied. In unskilful hands it may work more damage than benefit. Mr. Theodore S. Van Dyke, who may always be quoted with confidence, says that the ground should never he flooded; that water must not touch the plant or tree, or come near enough to make the soil bake around it; and that it should be let in in small streams for two or three days, and not in large streams for a few hours. OLIVE CULTURE. "The growth of the olive is to be, it seems to me, one of the leading and most permanent industries of Southern California. It will give us, what it is nearly impossible to buy now, pure olive oil, in place of the cotton seed and lard mixture in general use. It is a most wholesome and palatable article of food. Those whose chief experience of the olive is the large, coarse, and not agreeable Spanish variety, used only as an appetizer, know little of the value of the best varieties as food, nutritious as meat, and always delicious. Good bread and a dish of pickled olives make an excellent meal. A mature olive grove in good bearing is a fortune. I feel sure that within 25 years this will be one of the most profitable industries of California, and that the demand for pure oil and edible fruit in the United States will drive out the adulterated and inferior present commercial products." SPECIAL OPENINGS. There are now at Merced special openings for a nurseryman and a dairyman; the latter would be by growing alfalfa (lucerne) and raising poultry for at present the Merced people often have to get poultry and eggs from San Francisco, 150 miles off. POTATO GROWING. A settler might make a really good return out of potatoes while his Fruit trees are maturing, which is a food more in use in America than in England. Potatoes are not only served at luncheon and dinner, but also at breakfast everywhere, and, if every settler planted his land with potatoes, there would be no fear of overstocking the market. Mr. Eisen states that potatoes yield from 50 to 400 sacks to the acre, and sell at prices varying from 90 cents to 2 dollars per sack. If only 50 sacks were grown to the acre, it would show a scarce year, when prices would range higher, but the crop is never a failure in California. Two crops can be grown in a year; the first crop is planted at the end of February, if warm, or else in March, or indeed any time till the middle of May, and dug three months after; the second crop is planted in August or September, and dug three months after. To put in the potatoes a settler would need the help of a labourer, to whom he would have to give one dollar per day and his board, or, if the labourer be a Chinaman, one dollar and a quarter per day without his board. If the potatoes occupied ten acres, and they produced say 200 sacks to the acre, and fetched 1 dollar per sack, that would yield 2,000 dollars, or for the two crops 4,000 dollars, or, say, £800. This sounds a large sum, but the land is exceedingly rich, as may be seen from the samples I have brought back, and large results may be expected from it if properly worked, for, of course, in any undertaking the result depends upon the way it is worked. The following paragraph is from an important paper or periodical of 20 pages, known as the _Pacific Rural Press_, of December 13th, 1890, and although the crop it mentions was not grown in California, it shows at least what can be done on good ground:-- "Nearly 1,000 bushels of potatoes, or, to be exact, 974 bushels and 48 pounds, have been grown on one acre of land in Johnson County, Wyoming, the past season. This crop wins the first prize of several hundred dollars offered by the _American Agriculturist_ for the largest yield of potatoes on one exact acre. It was grown on virgin soil without manure or fertilizer, but the land was rich in potash, and the copious irrigation was of water also rich in saline material. There were 22,800 hills on one acre, and 1,560 pounds of sets, containing one, two, and three eyes, were planted of the early Vermont and Manhattan varieties. The profit on the crop on this first prize acre was 714 dollars, exclusive of 500 dollars in prizes." Thus, this one acre would have produced £142 worth of potatoes. I do not mention it as an example of what a settler may or may not do at Merced, but as the land at Merced which I am offering for sale is of the richest quality, rich results may certainly be expected. COST OF GOODS, &c., AT MERCED. per lb. Beef (to boil), 8 to 10 cents Beef (steak), 10 cents Beef (shoulder), 10 cents Beef (choice), 12-1/2 cents Beef (porterhouse and tenderloin), 15 cents Veal, 10 to 15 cents Mutton, 10 to 12-1/2 cents Pork, 10 to 12-1/2 cents Sausages, 12-1/ to 15 cents Corned beef, 8 to 10 cents Bacon, 12-1/2 cents Hams, 15 cents Tongues, 10 cents Flour, 4-1/2 to 5 dollars for a barrel weighing 200 lbs. Tea, 25 cents to 1 dollar Coffee, 24 to 45 cents Candles, 15 to 20 cents Chocolate, 25 cents Cod fish, 10 cents Corn meal, 3 to 4 cents Cocoa, 50 to 60 cents Cracker biscuits, 8 to 10 cents Graham flour, 3 to 5 cents Macaroni, 15 cents Oatmeal, 5 cents Rolled oats, 6 cents Rice, 5-1/2 to 8 cents Salt, 1 to 2 cents Soda, 4 cents Starch, 10 cents Sugar, 7 to 8 cents Sugar (house), 6-1/2 to 7-1/2 cents Butter, 25 to 40 cents Eggs, 15 to 40 cents per dozen, according to season Coal oil, 1.40 per 5-gallon can. One of my clients recently visited England with his family, and says that one can live cheaper at Merced than in England. The cost of a twelve-roomed house is 3,000 to 4,000 dollars, according to finish, _i.e.,_ from £600 to £800. Most of the houses are built of wood, and such a house could be built in twenty to thirty days, if necessary. Stabling for two horses, with room for buggy, wagon, harness, and hay, would cost 250 dollars or £50. A ten-roomed house would cost from 2,500 to 3,500 dollars, according to finish. An eight-roomed house would cost from 2,000 to 2,500 dollars. A six roomed house would cost about 2,000 dollars. A four-roomed house would cost about 1,200 dollars. Live poultry cost about 6 dollars per dozen. Cows, 25 to 50 dollars each. Horses, 75 to 150 dollars each. Sheep, 3 to 4 dollars each. Cultivators cost from 7 to 15 dollars each. Ploughs and harrows about the same price. A riding cultivator, 45 to 50 dollars. Pruning shears, 3 dollars. Day labour costs 1 dollar per day and board; but, in harvest time, 1-1/2 dollar per day and board. Carpenters, 2-1/2 dollars per day, sometimes with and sometimes without board. Fencing costs 500 dollars (_i.e_., £100) a mile. To fence a 20-acre lot would cost 350 dollars (_i.e_., £70); but if the eight forming the quarter section joined together, it would cost each about 130 dollars (_i.e_., £26). The fence would be a 6-inch board at bottom, then 30 inches of wire netting to keep out rabbits, then another 6-inch board and a barbed wire at top. Firewood costs 6 to 7 dollars a cord of hard wood, or 5 to 6 dollars of willow wood; a cord of wood is 4-ft. by 4-ft. by 8-ft. TAKE CLOTHING AND BRIC-A-BRAC. All kinds of clothing are dear. A good suit would cost £7 to £8, or, if ready made, £5. Settlers should therefore take with them plenty of clothes, sufficient, say, to last for five years, including boots, blankets, linen, etc.; also _bric-a-brac,_ and anything to add cheerfulness and refinement to the home, but they should not take furniture nor animals. Guns they might take, but not tools nor implements. SEA PASSAGE FROM ENGLAND. Steamships run from Liverpool and Southampton at the following rates:-- 1.--Cunard Company's Line. Liverpool to New York. During the summer months-- 1st class. 2nd class. 3rd class. From £12 12s. to £26 5s. £7 £4. During the winter months-- 1st class. 2nd class. 3rd class. £10 10s. to £25 £7 £4. The third-class passengers are provided with a free ticket from London to Liverpool. 2.--Inman Line. Liverpool to New York-- First class fares from £10 10s. to £25. Second class fares from £6 10s. to £7 7s. Third class fares £4. The third class includes a free ticket from London to Liverpool. 3.--The "White Star" Line. Liverpool to New York 1st class. 2nd class. 3rd class. Summer season--£15 to £28 £7 to £9 £4. Winter season--£10 10s. to £18 £6 10s. to £8 £4. The third class passengers are provided with a free ticket from London to Liverpool, and free tickets, if required, from New York to Boston or Philadelphia. 4.--North German Lloyd Company. Southampton to New York-- First class, £14 to £23. Second class, £10. 5.--The American Line. Liverpool to New York-- Second class, £6. Third class, £3 16s. Steamers leave Southampton, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Queenstown, thus being convenient respectively for passengers from the north or south of England, from Scotland, or from Ireland. Steamers run from this country to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Baltimore, but New York is the best port for Merced. THE LAND JOURNEY FROM NEW YORK TO MERCED, CALIFORNIA. _Copy of Letter from the Southern Pacific Railroad Company._ "Our fares from New York to Merced, _viâ_ New Orleans, are:--1st class, unlimited, £19 19s. 0d.; limited, £18 4s. 7d.; 2nd class, £12 8s. 4d.; 3rd class, £12 2s. 9d., all rail; £11 1s. 11d. by steamer to New Orleans, and thence rail, food, and sleeping berth on steamer included. The charges for sleeping car berths are:--1st class, 22 dollars; 2nd class from New Orleans, 3 dollars. There are no 2nd class sleepers to New Orleans, except on the fortnightly excursion trains from Cincinnati, leaving that city January 7th and 21st, February 4th and 18th; March 4th and 18th; April 8th and 22nd, etc. The charge from Cincinnati is 4 dollars 50 cents. Third class passengers can travel in 2nd class sleepers upon payment of the usual charge. The fares from New Orleans to principal Californian points, including Merced, are:--1st class, unlimited, £14. 1s. 3d.; 2nd class, £8. 17s. 1d.; 3rd class, none. Sleeping cars--1st class, 13 dollars; 2nd class, 3 dollars. Tickets may be obtained through Messrs, DOWSETT and Co., 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, direct from Liverpool to California, or any other State _en route_. ANALYSIS OF MERCED SOILS. Having fitted up a portion of one of my offices with all the requisites for carrying out quantitative analyses of surface soils, I requested Professor Lobley, F.G.S., etc., to analyse the four samples of soils which I brought with me from Merced. A general analysis of four samples of soil from Merced, California, has given the following results:-- SAMPLE A. Organic matter (Humus) 5.5 Soluble inorganic matter 11.75 Insoluble silica and silicates 82.75 -------- 100.00 SAMPLE B. Organic matter (Humus) 4.25 Soluble inorganic matter 14.45 Insoluble silica and silicates 81.30 -------- 100.00 SAMPLE C. Organic matter (Humus) 5.25 Soluble inorganic matter 16.75 Insoluble silica and silicates 78.00 -------- 100.00 SAMPLE D. Organic matter (Humus) 3.5 Soluble inorganic matter 12.0 Insoluble silica and silicates 84.5 -------- 100.00 The organic matter is available for plant growth. The inorganic matter, soluble in dilute hydrochloric acid, is (with the exception of the alumina it may contain) composed of fertilising material. The substances found in the soluble inorganic matter of soils are lime, magnesia, alumina, silica, phosphoric acid, oxide of iron, oxide of manganese, potash and soda. The insoluble mineral matter is nearly all silica. There is very little clayey matter in any of the soils--not more than about five per cent. All the soils are remarkably free from stones or pebbles, or even coarse sand. From the above it will be seen that these soils, while possessing a large amount of matter available for plant growth, are exceedingly friable, and would be very easily worked. They would absorb heat quickly, and from their porosity would require little drainage, and so would be both warm and dry soils, and form fertile land suitable for almost all kinds of agricultural and horticultural produce. THE POSITION OF MY CLIENTS, THE VENDORS. My clients, the owners of the land called "British Colony," at Merced, are well-known persons--well-known as men of great wealth, and as gentlemen of undoubted integrity, the Hon. Charles Crocker and Mr. C.H. Huffman, whose enterprises in railway, canal, and other public works, have been of gigantic proportions. I have every confidence myself in dealing with these gentlemen, and I submit that my friends, clients, and the general public, who may be willing to take up any of this "British Colony" land at Merced, may have full confidence, too, that they will at least be treated justly, and more than that is not expected from strangers in business; but I believe that I might add they would be treated liberally if necessity arose, and I have ground for this statement from what I have heard of their treatment of other persons who have settled in one of their other "Colonies." CALIFORNIA, MERCED. I have for sale besides the estate designated "British Colony," a tract of land belonging to a well-known merchant in the City of London, who has owned it for 13 years. It comprises 5,084 acres, and has a registered Government title. Price 30 dollars per acre, and 7 years' credit would be given if 20 per cent. is paid down. Part of it is well suited for Fruit growing, but as yet the water from the canals belonging to my other clients has not been taken to it. It has, however, some creeks upon it, but they are frequently dry. The land is of a rolling prairie character, and is now let at a nominal rent of 25 cents per acre for sheep farming. The soil is varied; some of it is a good loam, some of a clayey nature, and some stony; there is a shepherd's house, with barn and yard. The taxes upon it are about 15 to 20 cents per acre. One half of the land would be sold separately, but it must be the half farthest from the side where the canals are. The situation is an attractive one as the undulations really form the first foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, of which there is a grand view. This land is well worth buying, as when water is obtained, the price will then be increased to that asked for other irrigated Fruit lands. A plan may be seen at my offices, 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. FINIS. * * * * * London: Printed by Vincent Brooks, Day & Son, Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. TO OWNERS OF LANDS AND HOUSES. REQUIRED TO PURCHASE. _Messrs. Dowsett & Co. have applications for Landed Estates, Country Houses, Town Houses, Farms, Villa Farms, Building Lands, Cheap Sections of Land for the People, Ground Rents, Colonial Lands, and General Land and House Investments. Messrs. Dowsett & Co, invite owners wishing to sell, and who have not yet employed an Agent, to employ them: they do not appreciate instructions which are sent to several Agents, but they are prepared to give careful, intelligent, personal attention to the Sale of Property which is placed in their hands. They prefer giving personal attention to a few properties rather than having on their books a mass of particulars of which they have no personal knowledge, and which are to be found in many Agents' lists. Messrs. Dowsett & Co., personally inspect Properties for Sale, because a personal knowledge greatly facilitates success, and for this they make a nominal charge of sixpence per mile; they then prepare careful particulars so as to introduce the matter advantageously to the public. Owners of Property may obtain a printed statement of charges for Valuing, or for Selling by Auction, or privately, all kinds of Real and Personal Estate, Furniture Live and Dead Stock, Stocks-in-Trade, Timber, Growing Crops, etc. Messrs. Dowsett & Co. are prepared to make Geological Reports of Soils and Minerals, and give Quantitative Analyses of Soils. They are assisted, when special needs require, by experts in Agricultural and Architectural Science, and also in every branch of professional and commercial enterprise. Messrs. Dowsett & Co., undertake any branch of these varied services in London or any part of England, Scotland, Ireland, the Colonies, America, or other Countries, and personally visit other countries on agreed terms. Messrs. Dowsett & Co, Auctioneers, Surveyors, Valuers, Estate Agents, etc., 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London._ LANDS AND RESIDENCES FOR SALE. _Country Houses, Town Houses, Landed Estates, Farms, Building Lands, Ground Rents, and Investments generally in Lands and Houses, See "The Land Roll," which for one penny may be obtained of Messrs, Dowsett & Co., 3, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London._ 
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17512	----	PRAIRIE FARMER A Weekly Journal for THE FARM, ORCHARD, AND FIRESIDE. ESTABLISHED IN 1841. ENTIRE SERIES: VOL. 56--NO. 1. CHICAGO, SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1884. PRICE, $2.00 PER YEAR, IN ADVANCE. [Transcriber's Note: Some pages in the original had the corner torn off. Missing text has been marked [***].] [Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was originally located on page 8 of the periodical. It has been moved here for ease of use.] THE CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. AGRICULTURE--Tall Meadow Oat-Grass, Page 1; The Barbed-Wire Business, 1-2; A Rambler's Letter, 2; Let Us Be Sociable, 2; Seed Corn Again, 2; Field and Furrow, 3. LIVE STOCK--Mr. Grinnell's Letter, Page 14; Prices of 1883, 4; Docking Horses, 4; Items, 4. THE DAIRY--Lessons in Finance for the Creamery Patron, Page 5. VETERINARY--Fever, Page 5. HORTICULTURE--Ill. Hort. Society, Page 6; A Short Sermon on a Long Text, 6; Prunings, 6-7. FLORICULTURE--Gleanings by an Old Florist, Page 7; Am I a Scot or am I Not, Poetry, 7; Primitive Northwest, 7. EDITORIAL--Items, Page 8; Seed Samples, 8; The Pork Question in Europe, 8; Corn, Wheat, and Cotton, 8; Chicago in 1883, 9; Strong Drink, 9; Questions and Answers, 9; Wayside Notes, 9; Champaign Letter, 9. POULTRY NOTES--Chat With Correspondents, Page 10; Feather Ends, 10. THE APIARY--Keep Bees, Page 10; The New Bees, 10; Hive and Honey Hints, 10. SILK CULTURE--Women In Silk Culture, Page 11. HOUSEHOLD--The Schoolmarm's Story, Poem, Page 12; A Chat About the Fashions, 12; A Kitchen Silo, 12; Items, 12. YOUNG FOLKS--Talk about the Lion, Page 13; A Jack-knife Genius, 13; Little Johnny, 13. BOOK NOTICES--Page 13. LITERATURE--Robin, Dear Robin, Poetry, Page 14; Mrs. Wimbush's Revenge, 14. HUMOROUS--The Carpenter's Wooing, Poetry, Page 15; Where the Old Maids Come From, 15; Items, 15. NEWS OF THE WEEK--Page 16. MARKETS--Page 16. TALL MEADOW OAT-GRASS. Prof. John W. Robson, State Botanist of Kansas, sends THE PRAIRIE FARMER an extract from his last report, concerning a tame grass for hay and pasturing which is new to that State. The grass has been on trial on an upland farm for two years, during which time he has watched it very closely. The Professor says, "It possesses so many excellent qualities as to place it in the front rank of all cultivated grasses." He enumerates from his notes: 1st. The seed will germinate and grow as easily as common oats. 2d. It maintains a deep green color all seasons of the year. 3d. Its roots descend deeply into the subsoil, enabling this grass to withstand a protracted drouth. 4th. Its early growth in spring makes it equal to rye for pasturage. 5th. In the next year after sowing it is ready to cut for hay, the middle of May--not merely woody stems, but composed in a large measure of a mass of long blades of foliage. The crop of hay can be cut and cured, and stowed away in stack or barn, long before winter wheat harvest begins. 6th. It grows quickly after mowing, giving a denser and more succulent aftermath than any of the present popular tame grasses. For several years, he says, we have been looking for a grass that would supply good grazing to our cattle and sheep after the native grasses have become dry and tasteless. In the early portion of 1881, his attention was called to a tame grass which had been introduced into the State of Michigan from West Virginia. This forage plant was causing some excitement among the farmers in the neighborhood of Battle Creek. So he entered into a correspondence with a friend living there, and obtained ten pounds of seed for trial. The result has been satisfactory in every respect. The seed was sown April 1, 1881. It germinated quickly, and the young plants grew vigorously. During the whole summer they exhibited a deep-green color, and did not become brown, like blue-grass, orchard grass, or timothy. As soon as the spring of 1882 opened, growth set in rapidly, and continued till the latter end of May, at which period it stood from three to four feet high. At this time it was ready for the mower; but as the production of seed was the object in view, it was not cut till the second week in June. The plot of ground of about half an acre, on which ten pounds of seed were sown, produced three barrels of seed. He exhibited a little sheaf of this grass at the semi-annual meeting of the Kansas State Horticultural Society, where it excited much attention--the height, softness of the stem, length of blade, and sweet aroma surprised every one present. On the last day of August, he went into the plot with a sickle, and cut two handfuls of aftermath which measured twenty inches in growth. This he tied to a sheaf of the June cutting, and exhibited the same at the State Fair, where it attracted much attention and comment. Here, then, we have, he continues, a grass that will insure a "good catch" if the seed is fresh; that can endure severe drouth; that produces an abundant supply of foliage; that is valuable for pasture in early spring, on account of its early and luxuriant growth; that makes a valuable hay; that shoots up quickly after being cut; and affords a fine crop of aftermath for grazing during the late fall and winter months. The Professor is very anxious that the farmers of Kansas should test this grass during the season of 1883. Still, his advice is not to invest too largely in the experiment. Purchase from five to ten pounds of seed, and give it a fair trial, and he is confident that the experiment will be satisfactory. The name given to this valuable grass in the State of Michigan is "Evergreen," but this is only a local synonym. Its scientific name is Avena elatior; its common name, "Tall Meadow Oat-grass." Fearing that he might be mistaken in its nomenclature, he sent a specimen to Professor Carruth, State Botanist. This is his reply: "Mr. J.W. Robson--Dear Sir: Yours mailed on the 22d, I received last evening. I do not get my mail every day. The specimen of grass you sent agrees perfectly with the Avena elatior, of Wood, and the Arrenatherrum avenaceum, of Gray; but I have never seen this grass before. I agree with you in the scientific name, and also in the common name, 'Tall Meadow Oat-grass.' Yours truly, J.H. CARRUTH." The ground should be plowed in the fall, and early in the spring, as soon as the soil is in good tilth; sow broadcast two bushels (or twenty-eight pounds) of seed to the acre; cover well with the harrow, both lengthways and across the piece of ground sown. Should the ground prove weedy, cut the weeds down with the mowing machine in June, and leave them upon the surface, and they will afford shade to the young plants. This grass is extensively grown in Eastern Tennessee, and is very popular in that portion of the State. In some portions of Western Virginia it is largely grown for hay and for grass. It is known as tall meadow oat-grass in each of the States we have mentioned above. * * * * * The main building for the New Orleans Cotton Centennial Exposition next year will be 1,500 feet long and 900 feet wide, with 1,000,398 square feet of floor space, including Music Hall in the center, with a seating capacity of 12,000 persons. The design also provides for main offices, telegraph office, newspaper department, fire department, police, hospital, waiting-rooms, and life saving apparatus. The building will be the largest exposition building ever erected, except the one in London in 1862. The design adopted was the work of G.M. Jorgenson, of Meridian, Mississippi. There were ten competitors. JOSEPH F. GLIDDEN. The Barb-Wire Industry--Some Facts in its Early History not Generally Known--Its Growth. Joseph Farwell Glidden, "the Father of the Barb-Wire Business" of this country, is now a hale and hearty man of seventy-one. He was born at Charleston, N.H. When about one year old the family came West, to Clarendon, Orleans county, New York, and engaged in farming. The young lad, besides mastering the usual branches taught in the common schools, gave some time to the higher mathematics and Latin, intending to take a college course, an idea that he finally abandoned. He taught in the district schools for a few terms. In 1842 he came to Illinois and purchased a quarter section of land a mile west of what is now the site of the pleasant and prosperous town of DeKalb. With the exception of three years his life since then has been passed upon this farm and at DeKalb. He has from time to time added to his homestead, his farm now embracing 800 acres. His land is under excellent cultivation, a considerable portion of it having been thoroughly tiled, and his farm buildings are first-class. Mr. Glidden has been twice married. Two children were born of the first union, both dying in infancy. By his second marriage he has one daughter, now the wife of a Chicago merchant. [Illustration: JOSEPH FARWELL GLIDDEN.] Mr. Glidden has held several local offices of trust and honor and enjoys in a marked degree the esteem and confidence of the citizens of his neighborhood and county. The rapid accumulation of property of late years, through his barb-wire patents and business, gave him the means to gratify his feelings of public spirit, and in consequence the town of DeKalb has benefited greatly at his hands. Its leading hotel and many other buildings are the work of his enterprise. Mr. Glidden has never lost the simple manners of the farm. He is unostentatious, quiet, genial, and at his hotel makes everybody feel as much at home as though enjoying the hospitalities of his private house. His kindly, firm, and intelligent face is well shown in the accompanying portrait, though, as is usually the case, the hand of the artist has touched his features more lightly than has the hand of time. * * * * * Few names are now more widely known among the land holders of the country than that of Joseph F. Glidden, the unpretending gentleman whose life we have briefly sketched. It was his fortune to seize upon an idea, and push it to development, which has not only given him fame and fortune, but which has enriched many others and saved many millions of dollars to the farmers of America. He has not only founded a mammoth industry, but he has revolutionized an economic system of the world. By his ingenuity and perseverance the fencing system of a pastoral continent has been reduced to a minimum of expense and simplicity. Not that he individually has accomplished all this, but as the patentee of the first really successful barb-wire fence, he laid the solid foundation for it all. * * * * * The first application for a patent for the Glidden barb was filed October 27, 1873. For some weeks previous to this date Mr. Glidden had had in his mind the idea of a barb of wire twisted about the main wire of the fence, leaving two projecting points on opposite sides. He made some of these by hand with the aid of pinchers and hammer. He strung two wires between two trees and twisted them together with a stick placed between them. A pair of cutting nippers was the next addition to his "kit" of tools. His next means for twisting the two wires together was the grindstone--attaching one end of the wire to shaft and crank, the others being fastened to the wall of the barn. And here, as in most things great and small in this world, woman furnished the motor power. The strong arm of the good helpmeet, Mrs. Glidden, turned the grindstone that twisted the first wire that made the first Glidden barb fence that kept stock at bay in Illinois or the world. Then followed a device for twisting and barbing, and the application of horse power. Business expanded, and steam took the place of the horse, and inventive genius modified and improved the entire machinery, it being estimated that at least the sum of $1,000,000 has been expended in bringing the machinery for barb-wire making to its present state of perfection. * * * * * At about the same time that Mr. Glidden was wrestling with his ideas and devices, Mr. I.L. Ellwood was experimenting to accomplish a like result with a thin band of metal, the barbs cut and curved outward from the strip. In the meantime Mr. Glidden had put up a few rods of his hand-made barb-wire along the roadside at his farm. And here again the good genius of woman enters upon the scene. One Sunday Mr. Ellwood and his wife were driving along this road and attracted by the wire fence stopped to examine it. Mrs. Ellwood, much to the chagrin of her husband, remarked: "This seems to me a better device than your own, don't it to you?" It did not then, for the remark disappointed and angered him. But it set him to thinking and before the next morning he was of the same opinion. The two men meeting the next day it did not take long to compromise and unite. Mr. Ellwood dropped his own plans and accepted a half interest in the Glidden patents, and assumed the management of the business end of the concern, in which position he developed ability and tact possessed by few business men in this country. * * * * * The barb-wire fence met an unexpected and general demand. We know of few things like it in the history of manufactures. From this small beginning, scarce ten years ago more than fifty large establishments are now turning out this wire to meet an ever insatiate demand. The establishment of I.L. Ellwood (making the Glidden wire) at DeKalb is the most complete and extensive of them all. The building is 800 feet in length, and is supplied with about 200 machines for twisting and barbing the wire. It gives, when running full force, employment to about 400 men, and turns out a car-load of wire each hour for ten hours per day, on an average, though this amount is considerably increased at certain times of the year. These figures, though not given us by Mr. Ellwood, we are satisfied do not overstate the production of this one factory. The progress of the barb-wire industry of the whole country is shown by the following record of the past nine seasons. In 1874 there were 10,000 lb made and sold. 1875 there were 600,000 lb made and sold. 1876 there were 2,840,000 lb made and sold. 1877 there were 12,863,000 lb made and sold. 1878 there were 26,655,000 lb made and sold. 1879 there were 50,337,000 lb made and sold. 1880 there were 80,500,000 lb made and sold. 1881 there were 120,000,000 lb made and sold. 1882 there were about 180,000,000 lb. The record for 1883 is not yet made up, but will probably show a corresponding increase. In 1876 Mr. Glidden disposed of his half interest in the concern of Glidden & Ellwood to the Washburn & Moen (wire) Manufacturing Company, of Massachusetts, receiving therefor $60,000 in cash and a royalty on the future goods manufactured, Mr. Ellwood retaining his interest. The new concern began the purchase of prior unused and conflicting patents involving itself in extensive litigation, but, sustained by the courts, soon gained control of almost the entire barb-wire business of the country. Nearly all wire-making companies are now running under license from the parent concern. The following is a list of the licensees of last year: Pittsburg Hinge Co.--Limited, Beaver Falls, Pa. H.B. Scutt & Co., Buffalo, N.Y. Hawkeye Steel Barb Fence Co., Burlington, Iowa. James Ayers and Alexander C. Decker, Bushnell, Ill. Indiana Wire Fence Co., Crawfordsville, Ind. Cedar Rapids Barb Wire Co., Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Cincinnati Barbed Wire Fence Co., Cincinnati, Ohio. Cleveland Barb Fence Co., Cleveland, Ohio. Ohio Steel Barb Fence Co., Cleveland, Ohio. Edwin A. Beers & Co., Chicago, Ill. Crandal Manufacturing Co., Chicago, Ill. Chicago Galvanized Wire Fence Co., Chicago, Ill. Lyman Manufacturing Co., Chicago, Ill. Daniel S. Marsh, Chicago, Ill. Oscar F. Moore, Chicago, Ill. National Wire Co., Chicago, Ill. Herman E. Schnabel, Chicago, Ill. Aaron K. Stiles and John W. Calkins, Chicago, Ill. Thorn Wire Hedge Co., Chicago, Ill. Baker Manufacturing Co., Des Moines, Iowa. Superior Barbed Wire Co., DeKalb, Ill. Jacob Haish, DeKalb, Ill. Frentress Barbed Wire Fence Co., East Dubuque, Ill. Grinnell Manufacturing Co., Grinnell, Iowa. Janesville Barb Wire Co., Janesville, Wis. Iowa Barb Wire Co., Johnstown, Pa. William J. Adam, Joliet, Ill. Lock Stitch Fence Co., Joliet, Ill. Lambert & Bishop Wire Fence Co., Joliet, Ill. Alfred Van Fleet & A.H. Shreffler, Joliet, Ill. David G. Wells, Joliet, Ill. Southwestern Barb Wire Co., Lawrence, Kan. Arthur H. Dale, Leland, Ill. Union Barb Wire Co., Lee, Ill. Lockport Wire Fence Co., Lockport, Ill. Norton & DeWitt, Lockport, Ill. Iowa Barb Steel Wire Fence Co., Marshaltown, Iowa. Omaha Barb Wire Co., Omaha, Neb. H.B. Scutt & Co.--Limited, Pittsburg, Pa. Missouri Wire Fence Co., St. Louis, Mo. St. Louis Wire Fence Co., St. Louis, Mo. J.H. Lawrence & Co., Sterling, Ill. North Western Barb Wire Co., Sterling, Ill. Novelty Manufacturing Co., Sterling, Ill. Sandwich Enterprise Co., Sandwich, Ill. Robinson & Hallidie, San Francisco, Cal. The Hazard Manufacturing Co., Wilkes Barre, Pa. Worcester Barb Fence Co., Worcester, Mass. * * * * * When Glidden & Ellwood first began the sale of the Glidden fence, which was confined to the vicinity of DeKalb, they received 25 cents per pound for the barbed wire. Since then, as production has increased and the facilities for manufacturing have been multiplied and perfected, the price has gradually dropped, until now a farm can be well fenced for forty-five cents, or less, per rod, and to the incalculable advantage of the country over fencing by posts and boards, hedges or rails, as any one may see by a simple dollar and cent comparison of materials at his own door. * * * * * Barb-wire has done much for the city of DeKalb. It has built its fine business blocks and residences, and it has peopled it with industrious, thrifty citizens. It has made a home market for many of the products of the country 'round about. It should give a new name, "Barb City," to the bustling, busy town. There are three concerns now making barb-wire at this point. The one spoken of is the largest. Next is that of Jacob Haish, an extensive establishment, turning out an excellent wire, and the Superior, run by Mr. Hiram Ellwood, Mr. Glidden having a considerable interest in it. * * * * * Mr. I.L. Ellwood is the owner of some 2,600 acres of land in the vicinity of DeKalb. Much of this land is naturally low and wet. The proprietor, with his accustomed energy and intelligence, has set vigorously to work to reclaim it. To this end he has already laid eighty miles of tile. He last year expended nearly $15,000 in this work. His poorest land is rapidly becoming his most productive. Mr. Ellwood has also turned his attention somewhat to horse-breeding, and he is now the owner of a fine stud of draft-horses, the equal of many better-known establishments of the kind in the State. Of his drainage operations we hope to speak more in detail in a future number. * * * * * Mr. Glidden told the writer that his first trial of his fence with stock was not undertaken without some misgivings. But he thought to himself, "It will stop them, at any rate, whether it kills them or not." So he took down an old board fence from one side of his barn-yard, and towards night when his stock came up, turned them into the yard as usual. The first animal to investigate the almost invisible barrier to freedom was a strong, heavy grade Durham cow. She walked along beside the wires for a little put her nose out and touched a barb, withdrew it and took a walk around the yard, approached the wires again and gave the barbs a lap with her tongue. This settled the matter, and she retired, convinced that the new-fangled fence was a success. * * * * * Barb-wire is now sent from this country to Mexico, South America, and Australia. It is also being manufactured in England under American auspices. * * * * * Mr. Glidden, associating with himself a Mr. Sanborn, a young man of push and enterprise, has opened up an extensive cattle ranch in Potter and Randall counties, Texas. They have fenced with wire a tract thirty miles long by about fifteen miles broad, and have now upon it 14,000 head of cattle. Two twisted No. 11 wires were used for this fence, and the posts are the best that could be procured. The wire was taken 200 miles on wagons. The total cost of the completed fence was about $36,000. * * * * * Messrs. Glidden & Ellwood put up the first barb-wire ever used by a railway company--the Northwestern. So great was the caution of the company that the manufacturers built it themselves, agreeing to remove it if it proved unsatisfactory. The railway folks feared it would injure stock, the damages for which they would be forced to pay. It is needless to say that the fence was not removed. More than one hundred railway companies are now using the Glidden wire, and it stretches along many thousands of miles of track. A RAMBLER'S LETTER. I would like to call your attention to the fact that there is considerable cholera among swine in Dewey township, Ill., west from Joliet. Mr. Cooter lost about 130 hogs. Other farmers have suffered equally. I have been looking over the stock in this part of the country and find it excellent, as a general thing. Many of the farmers are breeders of fine Hereford cattle. They also own first-class horses. Some of them whom I called upon would like to know the address of State Veterinary Surgeon Dr. Paaren, and I should be pleased if you will give it in THE PRAIRIE FARMER.[A] I have often thought, Why is it that so many sons of wealthy farmers leave their homes for the purpose of either studying in some classical college, to learn a trade, or to become book-keepers and clerks in mercantile business. I think if farmers would take more interest in agricultural papers, instead of having their children fooling away their time on novels or comic stories and pictures, it would be better for both old and young. Let the parents buy a microscope and let the young folks examine insects and fungi of all kinds, and let them write their experiences down in a book whenever there is leisure time. Or let them write to THE PRAIRIE FARMER something in the line of farming, be it agriculture, horticulture, or about raising and caring for stock. In so doing the boys of our farming country will become proud of their noble profession and of their homes. They will gradually be, as every farmer should be, educated up to the times. There are few farmers who can afford to let their sons study in an agricultural university, but every one can surely afford to subscribe for an agricultural paper, it being one of the most profitable investments for himself and family. The ground is covered with snow to a small extent, and the roads are in a fine condition. The crops are all good here except corn, which is very poor indeed, even the crop in most cases is small. Farmers are not at all satisfied, and times are not at all encouraging. H.A.P. WEISSBERGER. WILL CO., ILL. [A] 355 Western Avenue (south), Chicago. A FARMER'S LIBRARY. As this is the season to make up our list of papers and magazines for the ensuing year, I will take a glance around my own cosy room set apart for a library. It is here that I do the most of my reading, writing, and planning; and although I pretend to be deeply engaged while ensconced in the large willow rocker, strictly forbidding entrance to my farmer office, yet the children and "Spot," my Gordon setter, will intrude, making things lively for awhile, driving my thoughts wool-gathering and breaking many a thread of thought that I had fondly hoped would place my name high on the roll of scribblers. It is a good thing to have the little innocent children and the dog to blame for these shortcomings, as they can not take issue with us on the question. But I started to talk about a farmer's library; and taking my own for a small sample, let us see how it looks. For the purpose of keeping my papers in order, I have prepared thin laths of tough wood dressed with the draw knife to a thin edge, the back being one fourth of an inch thick, leaving the lath one and a quarter inch broad; these are cut in lengths to suit the paper they are intended to hold. Take for instance THE PRAIRIE FARMER. I cut the lath just two inches longer than the paper is long, then cut notches half of an inch from each end, in which I tie the ends of a cord; this forms a loop to hang up the file. In this I file each paper so soon as read, by which means they are never lost or mislaid. When at the end of each three months the papers are taken from off the file, the oldest number is laid face down on a broad piece of plank and the number that follows laid face down on the top of the first, then they are squared evenly and a strong awl pierces three holes in the back edge through which a strong twine string is laced and tied firmly; this finishes the job, and the book thus simply and quickly made is placed on the shelf with its mates. This done the file is returned to its hook to await the next number. This is a simple plan for filing papers of any size, and any farmer can do it, there being no expense or outlay for material. On glancing up from the stand on which I am writing, the first objects that attract my notice are my breach loader, cartridge belt, and game-bag hanging on the wall; then by the side of the stove hangs the file of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, within easy reach of my left hand; next it swings the Country Gentleman, then comes the Forest and Stream, then Colman's Rural World, then the Drainage Journal; next Harper's Weekly, then Harper's Bazar. This is my wife's paper and she persists in hanging it among mine. Then comes Harper's Monthly and the Century, not forgetting the Sanitary Journal. On the other side of the room we find the Inter Ocean, Democrat, and several other political papers fairly representing both sides, also some standard books of valuable information; and last but not least, the PRAIRIE FARMER Map which you sent for my club. Now, this may be considered a pretty large outlay for a common farmer to make, but outside of life insurance, I consider it my best investment. In this selection I get the cream of all matters of practical importance to the farmer. From THE PRAIRIE FARMER I get the latest and most reliable information of the great central ruling markets of the West Chicago, which has saved me sundry times from three to five cents per bushel on wheat, sometimes paying the price of the paper twenty times over in one transaction. From the C.G. I get the Eastern markets, while Colman gives the St. Louis; and by a close study of the three a farmer can always make enough to pay for twenty or thirty dollars worth of good current literature for the use of his family. Then the F. and S. is always full of delightful reading for the boys, refining their cruel propensities, and teaching them to be kind to the feathered tribe which are the farmer's friends. By reading it they soon lay aside their traps, nets, and snares, with which they capture whole covies of the dear little Bob-whites, and disdain to touch a feather, only when on the wing, and then with their light, hammerless breach loader. Such reading as that ties the farmer's boys to country life, and makes them contented under the parental roof-tree until they are ready to build up homes of their own. The Journal tells them all about tile making and drainage, a very necessary accomplishment when they get their own homestead. The pictures in H.W. furnish a fountain of amusement for the little folks, and teach them--with a little help--many things that will be useful to them in life. As a matter of course the "Bezar" is for mother and the girls, and [***] consultations [***] before the fair, a [***] daughters, your [***] good when she insisted [***] be put on the list. A boy or a girl with [***] the Century in their hands, [***] room, with a bright clear lamp [***] has no thought of city life, or [***] In those bright pages the [***] outer world painted in all its various [***] so interesting and so fascinating [***] have no desire to see it in reality; in [***] they bring the brightest and best thought, [***] historic, and romantic to our hearth and home; furnishing food for the youthful minds, leaving no room for evil or discontented thoughts to enter. Then I say to every farmer who has children, get the magazines for them, they will save you a mountain of trouble. Then to balance things have one or two spicy news papers, which picture in horrid colors the blackest side of human life. This is necessary to guard the young against the riff-raff of humanity, such as tramps, sharpers, sewing machine and book agents, the lightning rod man, and a dozen other sharp swindlers that prey on the farmer and his family for an existence. The Sanitary Journal treats of health, purity, and cleanliness, and ought to be read and studied by all. Ah, I had almost forgotten THE PRAIRIE FARMER Map which hangs by the door. What can I say about it? that it is a handsome ornament for a living room or library? yes, but that is not all, it is useful. When it arrived I took it to the railroad office and compared it with the best map they had, also with a map made by the U.S. land office. I came away satisfied that it was reliable; it ought to be in the home of every farmer in this great country of ours, so that their children can learn and know what a grand heritage they have got. There is no excuse for being without it, as a few pounds of butter or dozens of eggs will procure it and a paper that will gladden the hearts of both old and young. ALEX ROSS. CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO. LET US BE SOCIABLE. A happy new year to all of the readers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, and may your labors of 1884 be crowned with success. Mr. Granger, what are you doing these long winter evenings? Can't you find time to write a few lines to the readers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER? You can send a little report from your county, at least. Come, let us be a little more sociable and talk more to each other through the columns of our paper. We can learn something by reading each other's views on different subjects. In my next I shall try and tell some of the careless fellows how to run a farm to make it pay. If I fail to give a little light on the subject perhaps some one else will try it. We are having what you might call winter, now. Snow is about six inches deep, but the weather is not very cold. The thermometer has not been below zero but once. Nearly all of the corn is gathered; only about one-third of the crop is sound enough to keep until next summer. Farmers are feeding their soft corn to hogs and cattle. In that way the soft corn will pay pretty well after all, for fat stock brings a good price. Stock cattle are wintering well, for feed in the fields is good, and most farmers have got plenty of good hay. The weather was so nice the first part of this month that the farmers did a large amount of plowing. Potatoes are plenty and cheap; worth from 30 to 40 cents. Apples are scarce, and good ones bring a big price. Butter is worth from 25 to 30 cents. S.O.A. KNOX CO., ILL. SEED CORN AGAIN. There has been much complaint of soft corn in this section on account of planting foreign seed last spring, but it is all solid since the late cold spell. Those who planted seed of their own raising and got a stand have fair corn, while much of that which was raised from Kansas and Nebraska seed was caught by the frost when in the milk. Now we will be in just the same "fix" about seed next spring that we were last. This county has lost thousands of dollars this year in the corn crop alone, all of which might have been avoided by going through the fields before freezing weather and selecting seed and properly drying it before it froze. And now right here I want to say that the great secret of good farming is simply being punctual in attending to the small matters, and I "guess" Fanny Field would say the same about poultry. Z.L. THOMPSON. IROQUOIS CO., ILL. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * FIELD AND FURROW. Says the Iowa Register: One hundred bushels of corn will shrink to ninety in the crib, and to an extent more than that, depending on the openness of the crib and the honesty of the neighbors. The agricultural editor of the New York Times says that no doubt many farmers who are intending to underdrain their farms would save money by employing an expert at the first to lay out the whole system and make a good beginning, and so avoid any possible mistake, which might cost ten dollars for every one paid for skilled advice. The New York Times says that lime seems to be a preventive of rot in potatoes in the cellar. Some potatoes that were rotting and were picked out of a heap of forty or fifty bushels were put into a corner and well dusted with air-slaked lime. They stopped rotting at once, and the decayed parts are now dried up. There is no disagreeable smell about them. Cincinnati Gazette: It is remarked that when young hogs are fed mainly on corn they stop growing at an early age and begin to grow fat; but that green food makes them thriftier and larger than dry grain. In fact, it is better to prevent all domestic animals from becoming very fat until they have attained a fair natural size, particularly breeding animals. A member of the Elmira Farmers' Club recently expressed the opinion that bad results would always be found with wheat sown on land into which the green growth of any crop had just been turned, although it was believed that buckwheat was the worst green manure. All green growth incorporated with the soil near the time of seeding will in all cases be found prejudicial to wheat. It is announced that Robert Clarke, of Cincinnati will have ready, in February, an extensive work on sorghum, containing the results of the latest experiments and experience of the most successful growers, as to the best varieties and their culture, and also the details of the latest and best machinery used in the economical manufacture of sirups and sugars therefrom. The work is by Prof. Peter Collier, whose name is a guarantee of the value of the book. It will be very fully illustrated. A Michigan man writes the Michigan Farmer: I have noticed tarred twine and willows recommended for binding corn stalks. I think I can propose a better substitute than either for those who are using a twine binder: save the strings from straw stacks this winter. They are less trouble than grass and never slip. Tie a knot in the end of the twine with your knee on the bundle, then slip the other end through in the form of a bow, take off your knee and the spring of the bundle will draw the knot tight. Pull the bow and use again. "Human labor," says Dr. Zellner, of Ashville, Ala., "is the most costly factor that enters into the production of cotton, and every consistent means should be adopted to dispense with it." And then the doctor, who has the reputation of having raised some of the finest samples ever grown in the South, describes how, by planting at proper distances, in checks five by three apart, one-half of the after labor of cultivating may be saved. About the same amount of plow work is said to be necessary, but not more than one-fourth as much work with the hoe as is required by cotton in drills. Prof. J.W. Sanborn: "Deep tillage in times of drought of surface-rooted crops, like corn, is an erroneous practice, founded on erroneous views. 'Plowing out corn' not only involves too deep tillage in drought but adds to the mischief by severing the roots of corn, needed at such times. Our double-shovel plows work too deeply. Our true policy, in drought, for corn is frequent and shallow tillage. For this we now have after the corn gets beyond the smoothing harrow, no suitable implement on our markets, with a possible exception." Correspondent New York Tribune: Of the use of oatmeal for cows mention is not often made in this country; but when spoken of it is always with praise. That it is better than corn meal there can be no doubt; it is richer in both albuminoids and fat; and the usefulness of these two nutriments, and especially the former, for making milk is shown not only by the results of numerous careful experiments, but by the acknowledged usefulness of oil-cake meal. Where this meal is used freely there would be less use for oatmeal; but under some circumstances it might be advantageously substituted for the bran in the favorite mixture for cows of Indian meal and bran. The following paragraph appears in an English cotemporary: The introduction of a new industry connected with farming into Ireland will be hailed by everybody, and therefore we rejoice to learn that a company has been formed with the design of purchasing or renting nearly a million and a quarter acres of land in Ireland, and devoting them to beet culture, from which the sugar will be extracted in a manufactory erected on the land. The promoters of the new company expect that from the 120,000 acres which they propose cultivating they will produce 400,000 tons of sugar in the year. Immense quantities of sugar extracted from the beet-root are manufactured on the continent and imported into these countries, and there is no reason whatever why Ireland should not have her finger in the sugar pie. In a paper before the Oxford (Ohio) Farmers' Club, on the subject "The Morality of the System of Grain Gambling," Mr. Wetmore said: There is a difference between speculation and investment. Putting money into an established industry is an investment. Putting it into a doubtful or untried business, with the hope of gaining much or risk of losing all, is speculation. The latter is infatuating as it increases the risk and yet turns to profit. Investments pay no high per cents. Speculations may pay much or lose all. Hence it is unsafe; and the farmer who makes his gains only by a yearly turn of his crops, should not try speculation, but may judiciously invest his surplus year by year in things of real value, as land or chattels. Invest the last dollar, but speculate only with loose change. No man can safely invest in a business with which he is not familiar. A lawful wire fence in Georgia is described by legislative enactment as composed of not less than six horizontal strands of barbed wire tightly stretched from post to post. The first wire no more than four and a half nor less than three and a half inches from the ground; the second wire not more than nine and a half nor less than eight and a half inches from the ground; the third wire not more than fifteen and a half nor less than fourteen and a half inches from the ground; the fourth wire not more than twenty-two and a half nor less than twenty-one and a half inches from the ground; the fifth wire not more than thirty-two nor less than thirty-one inches from the ground; the sixth wire not over fifty-five nor less than fifty-three inches from the ground. Posts to be not over ten feet apart, and every alternate post to be securely set in the ground. Provided, a plank not less than ten inches wide shall be used instead of two strands of wire at bottom of fence, it is also required that a railing shall be placed at equal distance between the two top wires, which shall answer the same purpose as a wire, and to extend from post to post in like manner. Correspondent Country Gentleman: I notice that your journal recently gave currency to the "saltpetre method" of extracting stumps, and W.H. White also recommends it in your columns. His method is to bore a hole in the stump in the fall of the year, fill in the hole with saltpetre, plug up till the following summer, then fill the hole with kerosene and fire the stump. It is alleged that the saltpetre and kerosene will so saturate the stump that it will be entirely consumed, roots and all. This recipe has been floating around the press for years. It is usually credited to the Scientific American, but that paper has several times denied its paternity. The uselessness of the process can easily be learned by trial. There are few more inflammable substances than pitch and turpentine. The roots of pine stumps are saturated with these, but it is impossible to burn them out. The addition of saltpetre would not help much. Yet there are seasons when the soil and air are so dry that hard wood stumps may be burned out without either saltpetre or kerosene. We had such a year in 1881, when corn and clover standing uncut in the field were burned. In some instances the curbing was burned out of wells during terrible forest fires that raged in Michigan. If tried in such a season the recipe would undoubtedly be successful. In any ordinary season it is "no good." * * * * * No matter how wretched a man may be, he is still a member of our common species, and if he possesses any of the common specie his acquaintance is worth having. * * * * * [Illustration] FARM MACHINERY, Etc. GREAT SAVING FOR FARMERS. THE Lightning Hay Knife! (WEYMOUTH'S PATENT.) [Illustration] Awarded "FIRST ORDER OF Merit" at Melbourne Exhibition, 1880. Was awarded the FIRST PREMIUM at the International Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876, and accepted by the Judges as SUPERIOR TO ANY OTHER KNIFE IN USE. It is the BEST KNIFE in the _world_ to cut _fine feed_ from bale, to cut down _mow_ or _stack_, to cut _corn-stalks_ for feed, to cut _peat_, or for ditching in marshes, and has no equal for cutting ensilage from the silo. TRY IT. IT WILL PAY YOU. Manufactured only by HIRAM HOLT & CO., East Wilton, Me., U.S.A. _For sale by Hardware Merchants and the trade generally_ * * * * * SEDGWICK STEEL WIRE FENCE [Illustration] IT is the only general-purpose Wire Fence in use, being a STRONG NET WORK WITHOUT BARBS. It will turn dogs, pigs, sheep and poultry, as well as the most vicious stock, without injury to either fence or stock. It is just the fence for farms, gardens stock ranges, and railroads, and very neat for lawns, parks, school lots and cemeteries. Covered with rustproof paint (or galvanized) it will last a life time. It is SUPERIOR TO BOARDS or BARBED WIRE in every respect. We ask for it a fair trial, knowing it will wear itself into favor. The SEDGWICK GATES, made of wrought iron pipe and steel wire, DEFY ALL COMPETITION in neatness, strength, and durability. We also make the best and cheapest ALL IRON AUTOMATIC OR SELF-OPENING GATE, also CHEAPEST AND NEATEST ALL IRON FENCE. BEST WIRE STRETCHER AND POST AUGER. For prices and particulars ask hardware dealers, or address, mentioning paper, SEDGWICK BROS. Manf'rs. Richmond. Ind. * * * * * [Illustration] CHICAGO SCALE CO. 2 TON WAGON SCALE, $40. 3 TON, $50. 4 Ton $60, Beam Box Included. 240 lb. FARMER'S SCALE, $5. The "Little Detective," 1/4 oz. to 25 lb. $3. 300 OTHER SIZES. Reduced PRICE LIST FREE. FORGES, TOOLS, &c. BEST FORGE MADE FOR LIGHT WORK, $10, 40 lb. Anvil and Kit of Tools. $10. Farmers save time and money doing odd jobs. Blowers, Anvils, Vices & Other Articles AT LOWEST PRICES, WHOLESALE & RETAIL. * * * * * FIVE-TON WAGON SCALES $60 [Illustration] All Iron and Steel, Double Brass Tare Beam. Jones _he_ pays the freight. All sizes equally low, for free book, address JONES OF BINGHAMTON, Binghamton, N.Y. * * * * * [Illustration] THE PROFIT FARM BOILER is simple, perfect, and cheap; the BEST FEED COOKER; the only dumping boiler; empties its kettle in a minute. OVER 5,000 IN USE; Cook your corn and potatoes, and save one-half the cost of pork. Send for circular. D.R. SPERRY & CO., Batavia, Illinois. * * * * * FARM IMPLEMENTS, Etc. THE CHICAGO DOUBLE HAY AND STRAW PRESS [Illustration] Guaranteed to load more Hay or Straw in a box car than any other, and bale at a less cost per ton. Send for circular and price list. Manufactured by the Chicago Hay Press Co., Nos. 3354 to 3358 State St., Chicago. Take cable car to factory. Mention this paper. * * * * * Sawing Made Easy Monarch Lightning Sawing Machine! Sent on 30 Days test Trial. A Great Saving of Labor & Money. [Illustration] A boy 16 years old can saw logs FAST and EASY. MILES MURRAY, Portage, Mich. writes, "Am much pleased with the MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE. I sawed off a 30-inch log in 2 minutes." For sawing logs into suitable lengths for family stove-wood, and all sorts of log-cutting, it is peerless and unrivaled. Illustrated Catalogue, FREE. AGENTS WANTED. Mention this paper. Address MONARCH MANUFACTURING CO., 163 N. Randolph St., Chicago, Ill. * * * * * BEST MARKET PEAR. [Illustration: KIEFFER] 99,999 PEACH TREES All _best varieties_ of new and old Strawberries, Currants, Grapes, Raspberries, etc. EARLY CLUSTER New Blackberry, early, hardy, good. Single hill yielded 13 quarts at one picking. Send for FREE Catalogue. J.S. COLLINS, Moorestown, N.J. * * * * * CHAMPION BALING PRESSES. [Illustration] A Ton per Hour. Run by two men and one team. Loads 10 to 15 tons in car. Send for descriptive circular with prices, to GEHRT & CO., 216, 218 and 220 Maine St., Quincy, Ill. * * * * * "THE BEST IS THE CHEAPEST." ENGINES SAW MILLS, THRESHERS, HORSE POWERS, (For all sections and purposes.) Write for FREE Pamphlet and Prices to The Aultman & Taylor Co., Mansfield, Ohio. * * * * * NOW READY FOR DISTRIBUTION. VOLUMES ONE AND TWO OF THE NATIONAL REGISTER NORMAN HORSES The most reliable, concise, and exhaustive history of the horse in general, and by far the most complete and authentic one of the Norman horse in particular, ever published in the United States. PRICES: Volume I.........................................$ 2.00 Volume II........................................ 1.50 When the two volumes are sent in one package to one address, $3.00. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price. Address your orders to PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago * * * * * THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. CONTAINING Practical Observations on the Causes Nature and Treatment of Diseases and Lameness in Horses, by GEO. H. DADD, M.D. Will be sent upon receipt of price, $1.50; or free to any sender of three subscribers to this paper, at $2 each, by PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. DIAMONDS FREE! We desire to make the circulation of our paper 250,000 during the next six months. To accomplish which we will give absolutely free a genuine FIRST WATER Diamond Ring, and the Home Companion for one year, for only $2.00. Our reasons for making this unprecedented offer are as follows; A newspaper with 200,000 subscribers can get 1c. per line per 1,000 of circulation for its advertising space, or $5,000 per issue MORE than it costs to produce and mail the paper. With but 10,000 or 20,000 subscribers, its advertising revenues do not pay expenses. Only the papers with mammoth circulations make fortunes for their owners, DERIVED FROM ADVERTISING SPACE. For these and other reasons, we regard 100,000 subscribers as being of more financial benefit to a paper than the paper is to the subscribers. With 100,000 or 200,000 bona-fide subscribers, we make $100,000 to $200,000 a year clear profit from advertising, above cost of publishing. Without a large circulation, we would lose money. Therefore, to secure a very large circulation, and thus receive high rates and large profits from advertising space, this ONLY EQUITABLE plan of conducting business is adopted. THE FIRST QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED IS,--is the diamond pure--a genuine stone? OUR ANSWER IS YES. The stone is GUARANTEED to be no Alaska Diamond, Rhine Pebble, or other imitation, but a WARRANTED GENUINE AND PURE DIAMOND. If it is not found so by the most careful and searching tests, we will refund the money, enter the subscriber's name on our list, and have the paper mailed to him free during its existence. To the publisher of this paper has been sent a guarantee from the manufacturing Jeweler, from whom we obtain these rings, that they are just as represented, so that readers may rely upon the promises being fulfilled to the letter. The second question is, IS THE PAPER A DESIRABLE FAMILY JOURNAL? YES. It contains contributions from the first writers of the times: fiction, choice facts, intellectual food of the most interesting, instructive and refined character. It is one of the LEADING PAPERS OF THE PROGRESSIVE WEST. We are determined to make it the most desirable and reliable paper in the United States; will spare no effort or money to achieve that object. Sample Copies sent free on application. Remit by draft, express, or new postal note, to THE HOME COMPANION. N.W. Cor. Fourth and Race Streets, Cincinnati, O. Don't fail to name the paper in which you see this advertisement. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1884; $2.00 pays for it from this date to January 1, 1885. For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * LIVE STOCK DEPARTMENT. [Illustration] Stockmen. Write for Your Paper. MR. GRINNELL'S LETTER. Last week we briefly noted the fact that Hon. J.B. Grinnell, of Iowa, Secretary of the Committee of the National Cattle-Growers' Convention, appointed to secure legislation for the protection of live stock from contagious diseases, had issued a circular letter to the public. In this letter he discusses with his usual intelligence and ability the important question in hand. As it will form the basis of Congressional discussion and prove an important factor in shaping legislation, we give the letter space in our columns. Mr. Grinnell says: To find a legitimate market for our surplus products is a question of grave concern. After meeting home demands the magnitude of foreign consumption determines in a large degree the net profits of production. It thus becomes the especial concern of the American agriculturist and statesman to find the best market for meat products. The profits in grain-raising for exportation, which impoverishes the soil, are exceptional, while our animal industries enrich it, augmenting the rural population in the line of true economy, the promotion of good morals, and the independence and elevation of the citizen. Under the laws of domestic animal life gross farm products and rich, indigenous grasses are condensed into values adapted to transportation across oceans and to various climes with little waste or deterioration; thus the brute a servant, becomes an auxiliary to the cunning hand of his master, blending the factors which determine our facilities for acquisition in rural life, and attractions which stimulate enterprise, adventure, individual independence, and contribute to National wealth. THE MEAT PRODUCTS. No nation has so large a relative portion of its wealth in domestic animals, and none can show such strides in material advancement during the present century. But what is our foreign trade? The exports of provisions from the United States during the last fiscal year were in value about $107,000,000. Those in 1882 amounted to $120,000,000, equal to a falling off in a single year of $13,000,000. Our exports of manufactured articles for the last year aggregate $211,000,000, against $103,000,000, a gain of $108,000,000 in a single year. It was a reasonable expectation that our animal exports would have increased in like ratio as the manufactures, which would have enhanced the value of all domestic animals and furnished, instead of a mortifying fact, a proud exhibit. The causes of a decline are not found in high prices at home nor in inferior product; rather in suspicions of diseases, and the clamor of interested parties which led to arbitrary restrictions, oppressive quarantine regulations, and forbidding beeves which were ripened for the highest markets to pass beyond the shambles; and the egress of young immature cattle on the English pastures. Pork products up to the Chicago meeting were prohibited by France, and they are inhibited now from Germany, our long-time valuable customer. It was their whims, caprices, jealousies, commercial restrictions and bans which decreased our exports and led the Commissioner of Agriculture to call the Chicago meeting of November. The convention developed facts and was fruitful in results: That there were solitary cases of pleuro-pneumonia, and limited to the eastern border States; that Western herdsmen had just cause of alarm on account of the shipment of young stock West from the narrow pastures and dairy districts of the East. It was shown that across the ocean there was a morbid appetite for suspicions and facts which would justify severe restrictions and an absolute inhibition of our products. The Cattle Commission formed by the Treasury Department gave decided opinions and imparted valuable information, but they were constrained to admit that they were powerless in an emergency to stop the spread of contagious diseases, and that it was a vain hope that there would be an increased foreign demand for our cattle and meat without radical Congressional enactment. Skilled veterinarians, fancy breeders, political economists, and savants from the East met the alarmed ranchmen, enterprising breeders, and delegations and officials from many agricultural and State associations, representing millions of cattle and hundreds of millions of dollars, resolved that a meeting should be held at Washington, and a committee was appointed to secure appropriate legislation. In the discharge of duties assigned to the Secretary I at once repaired to Washington for consultation and to gather pertinent facts. The heads of the State Treasury and Agricultural Departments were awake to the necessity of early and radical legislation. President Arthur evinced great cordiality, and gave good proof of his interest by calling attention in the annual message to the approaching meeting in Washington, which I have called the 10th of January. FACTS. I have sent out in a circular to the committee the following "head-land" facts of startling import, which should be well considered: 1. That there is an investment of $1,008,000,000 in cattle as estimated by the Department of Agriculture, representing 41,171,000 animals. That of swine is $291,000,000, representing over 43,000,000 animals. 2. That losses annually on exportation of cattle and beef, consequent upon restrictive regulations and the decreased relative consumption of our beef, aggregates many millions of dollars. We reach an approximate estimate by these facts relative to our foreign trade as follows: The exports of 1880-81 were 368,463 animals. Those of 1882-83 were 212,554--a loss of 155,009 animals, and in value a loss of $11,506,000 in two years. The exports of fresh beef for two years were less by 40,071,167 pounds, and by a value of $2,191,190. The value of pork products decreased in the same time to the extent of $35,679,093. This shows a falling off of about $25,000,000 per annum for two years, as compared with the receipts for the two preceding years. CONTAGION TO BE AVERTED. It should be known that the pleuro-pneumonia often mentioned as a scare or a myth by the thoughtless and optimist is a stern reality. Its journeys and track of destruction among cattle have been as marked as that of small pox and cholera--contagious diseases which have so tearfully decimated the human family. Lung diseases of the modern type were known before the Christian era, and were considered by Columella and other Latin writers. Australia resigned her great herds to flocks of sheep, as did South Africa, never yet recovered from the blow to her cattle industries. England has been tardy in the publication of her losses by lung-fever, yet it is a fact which forbids secrecy that calamity has reached the enterprising breeders, and colossal fortunes have been swept away by the cattle-plague. In our own country it has been no more the policy of secretive owners to publish facts than that of city authorities to proclaim the prevalence of small-pox in the town. Still, startling facts have sprung from original sources of inquiry. A town meeting is called in the State of Connecticut, terror-stricken owners in New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania meet for council. Massachusetts had a Governor twenty years ago bold in telling truth, which led to searching investigations by experts and officers of the State. With autocratic power they made a diagnosis of diseases, which led to the stamping out of the infection by law, and a truthful proclamation that the plague was stayed. The sacrifice of 1,000 brutes at a cost to the Commonwealth of about $70,000 was a trivial sum compared to the perils that beset a State valuation of $7,000,000, for bovines, and the cattle of the Nation, numbering 40,000,000, and worth nearly $1,100,000,000. The monarchies of the Old World have set us an example; even Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have pioneered for the world by sagacious acts and the stern enforcement of law in prevention. AN AMERICAN POLICY worthy of us is not secrecy, but boldness--sacrifice commensurate with exposure. This will lead to the formulation of a bill by the Washington Convention, which Congress will enact in the interest of individuals, the State, and for the National protection. If State-Rights theorists bring objections, the law may be so equitable to the States that its ratification may be asked on the ground of a just National policy and a right which inheres to the General Government under the Constitution in the regulation of commerce between the States. This implies a power to destroy a contagious disease which if allowed to spread would arrest all commerce in bovines between the States. A State may and ought to waive the question of damage if it is fixed by a neutral Commissioner, and the General Government and not the State meets the losses to which unfortunate cattle owners maybe subject. This will be the touchstone--trust by the State and statesmanlike generosity by the Nation--that means courage for the now fearful ranchman of the unfenced domain, and the furnishing of a "clean bill of health" for our products seeking a foreign market. Having evinced zeal in doing justice, it can ask for justice--that the rights of our meat-producers be respected under our COMMERCIAL TREATIES. Commerce means a mutual exchange, and having performed our home duty will be in no mood to tolerate a whim or a caprice. Non-intercourse has been proposed in Congress. That may be a final resort when a conference, practical discussion, and even arbitration have failed. A graver subject measured by dollars may yet engage the statesman diplomat than the Geneva arbitration, and we shall have no fair status in discussion or arbitration until our meat and cattle are made healthy by prevention and the best sanitary laws known to civilized countries. THE TIME IS AUSPICIOUS. Cattle-raising as an attractive and profitable vocation is now exciting a deep interest. A lull in politics forbids the wants of our agriculturists, numbering 60 per cent of the population, being waived out of notice and their voiced demands drowned by partisan clamor. The treasury has hundreds of millions in its vaults and a fraction of 1 per cent of our surplus will only be required, under a just disbursement, to isolate and destroy the diseases which fetter our commerce and repress home enterprise. A full and able convention at Washington is assured by the responsive letters received. The State of Iowa will make her requests to Congress by fine-stock meeting and other associations, as becomes the State with $100,000,000 invested in domestic animals. Who can be indifferent in the face of our great perils, and recounting the losses by foreign restrictions and inhibition? We are emphatically a Nation of beef-eaters, and by the extent of our domain and healthful climate are justly entitled to the honored designation of the first producer among civilized nations. It is the question of healthful food for the masses, of profitable tonnage for the railways, and of deep concern in cultivating fraternal relations abroad, not less than a question for the political economist in maintaining a good trade balance-sheet. If we can impress our Congressional delegations with the necessity of early and decisive legislation, we shall have accomplished a noble work and have earned the warm commendation of millions of citizens whose interests have been neglected and whose vocation and property have been imperiled. For the committee by request of the Chicago Convention. J.B. GRINNELL. * * * * * During the first eleven months of 1883, no less than 411,992 animals in Great Britain were attacked by by foot-and-mouth disease. December opened with a greater number of ailing animals than did November. * * * * * An Iowa farmer is experimenting with steamed clover hay for feeding hogs. PRICES OF 1883. The average price of Short-horns at the public sales in this country in 1883, as reported by the auctioneers, was $205.56. The Breeder's Gazette figures up the number of cattle of the different breeds disposed of at public sales as follows: Breeds. | Number. | Totals. | Average. Short-horns | 3,284 | $ 675,057 | $205.56 Herefords | 112 | 53,330 | 476.61 Aberdeen-Angus | 300 | 154,885 | 516.28 Galloways | 263 | 111,200 | 422.81 Angus and Galloways | 44 | 16,865 | 383.13 Holsteins | 239 | 89,290 | 373.60 Jerseys | 1,688 | 690,405 | 409.01 Guernseys | 52 | 12,090 | 232.50 Red Polled | 15 | 4,435 | 295.70 ------------------------------------- Totals | 5,997 |$1,807,557 | $301.41 Of the above Short-horns, 1,609 were sold in Illinois, 541 in Kentucky, and 1,134 in other States. In Illinois the average price received was $222.23; in Kentucky, $271.01, and in other States, $149.73. Of the beef breeds there were sold $4,018, the total receipts were $1,015,772, making the general average $253.80. Of the dairy breeds 1,979 were sold at an average of $400.10. It will be seen that the average for Short-horns is less than that for either of the other breeds though, of course, the number sold is greatly in excess of the others. In 1882 the average for Short-horns was but $192.10, and in 1881 but $158, so that on the whole the breeders are perfectly satisfied with the way the business is running. The dairy breeds did remarkably well in 1883, the Holsteins coming up well to the Jerseys, but the latter leads greatly in point of numbers. The pure bred cattle business of the country as indicated by these sales is exceedingly prosperous. In Great Britain the Short-horn sales were less numerous than last year, or, in fact, any year since 1869, but the average was better than since 1879. In 1880 the average for 1,738 head was $225, while in 1881 and 1882 the average further declined to $175. In 1883 the average was close upon $230, but, upon the other hand, the number of animals sold fell to 1,400. The highest price paid was 1,505 guineas, for a four-year-old cow of the fashionable Duchess blood, which was purchased by the earl of Bective at the sale of Mr. Holford's herd in Dorsetshire. The Australians purchased largely at the Duke of Devonshire's annual sale in 1878, and this year American and Canadian buyers bid briskly for animals of the Oxford blood. These were the only two sales at which the average reached three figures, the next best being that of a selection from Mr. Green's herd in Essex, when forty-one lots averaged $360 each, or less than half secured by the Duke of Devonshire's Short-horns. DOCKING HORSES. An English veterinary society has lately been discussing the question of docking the tails of horses. The President looked upon docking as an act of cruelty. By docking, the number of accidents from the horse holding the rein under the tail was greatly increased, for the horse has less power of free motion over the tail. If a short dock is put over the rein, the animal has so little control of the tail that he can not readily liberate the rein. The "stump" is sensitive, the same as the remaining part of an amputated finger. In the majority of cases he considered docking entirely unnecessary. On the contrary, Doctor Axe (rather a suggestive name for an advocate of docking) thought the practice improved the looks of a horse, thus rendering it more salable. His sentimentality did not allow him to argue this question of increased value. He did not think docking increased accidents. Statistics, not assertions, were needed to establish facts of this kind. As to the remark of the President, that the shortened tail could not be so easily freed from the rein, he said it would depend on who was driving; an expert would more quickly disengage the rein from a docked tail. It may be true, he said, that there was more flexibility in an uncut tail because its more flexible portion had not been removed; but the docked tail had not the same power of covering and fixing down the rein that the long tail possessed. The long retention of a certain degree of sensibility after amputation was a known fact, but neither this, nor the operation itself, involved much pain. He detailed the structures divided, and said that they possessed a low degree of sensation. He would be glad to see horses have the free use of all their members, if practicable, and would leave them their tails if the removal of them could not increase the animal's comfort, value, or power of being safely used, but he would not do anything to lessen the value of horses without good reason. It seems that prosecutions for docking, under the cruelty to[***] common in England [***] convictions are not [***] in the discussion [***] vigorous prosecutions are [***] We notice that with [***] and docking are on the increase [***] of this country. Fortunately [***] beasts, public sentiment in this [***] against the barbarous act; still [***] is it that fashion has not yet so [***] the taste of the majority of people [***] convince them that docking adds to [***] beauty of the noble animal. But the rage is now to imitate the English in nearly all manners and customs, and it may not be long before the miserable fashion will gain new headway with us. * * * * * Too much care can hardly be taken in packing pork so as to have it keep through the season. The chief requisites are pure salt and freeing the meat from every taint of blood. The pieces of pork should be packed as closely as possible. After a few weeks if any scum rises on the surface of the brine it should be cleaned out and the brine boiled so that all impurities may be removed. If pork is to be kept all summer twice boiling the brine may be necessary. For some reason a barrel that has once held beef will never do for a pork barrel, though the rule may be reversed with impunity. * * * * * One of the firm of Galbraith Brothers Janesville, Wis., is now in Scotland to make selection for an early spring importation of Clydesdales. While making mention of this we may say that Messrs. Galbraith though disposing of twenty-one head of Clydesdales at the late sale in Chicago, have yet on hand an ample supply of superior horses of all ages from sucklings upward. They will be pleased to receive a visit from intending purchasers of this class of stock, and from all interested in the breed. * * * * * The first lot of Dr. W.A. Pratt's Holsteins, from quarantine, recently arrived at Elgin. The Doctor informs us that the animals are in prime condition and choice in every respect. He says he is preparing to open a ranch near Manhattan, Kansas, for the breeding of high grade Holsteins and Short-horns. He will also keep on this ranch a choice herd of pure-bred Holsteins for supplying the growing Western demand for this very popular dairy stock. PUBLICATIONS. _The Free Seed Distribution alone of the Rural New Yorker is worth at catalogue prices more than $3.00. This journal and the Rural, including its Seed Distribution, will be sent for $3.00. For free specimen copies, apply to 34 Park Row, New York. The Rural New-Yorker is the Leading National Journal of Agriculture and Horticulture._ * * * * * _The Rural New-Yorker has over 600 contributors, among them the most distinguished writers of America and England. It is the complete Journal for the country home and for many city homes as well. Free specimen copies 34 Park Row, N.Y._ * * * * * THE RURAL NEW-YORKER The great national farm and garden journal of America, with its Celebrated Free Seed Distribution, and THE PRAIRIE FARMER one year, post-paid, all for only $3.00. It is a rare chance. Specimen copies cheerfully sent gratis. Compare them with other rural weeklies, and then subscribe for the best. Apply to 34 PARK ROW, NEW YORK. * * * * * THE DAIRY. Dairymen, Write for Your Paper. LESSONS IN FINANCE FOR THE CREAMERY PATRON.[A] Any business to be permanent must make reasonable returns for the capital employed and give fair compensation for the labor bestowed upon it, otherwise it will be abandoned, or if continued at all it will be done under the protest of economic law. In addition to the ordinary circumstances attaching to business enterprise, the creamery business is essentially and peculiarly co-operative. It thrives with the thrift of all concerned--owner and patrons. It fails only with loss to all. The conditions of success, therefore, to the patrons are included in the conditions of success to the creamery, and vice versa. The object of this paper is to suggest some of these conditions and some of the instances of violation of them. It is hardly necessary to discuss the case in which peculiarity of soil or climate, the greater profitableness of some other kind of industry, or other reason, would so restrict the size and number of dairy herds as to make the locality a barren dairy region. Notwithstanding the splendid achievements of the dairy industry it is safe to say that it may not be profitable in any and every locality. Given the soil, the climate, the water, the people intelligent and disposed toward the exacting duties of this business, there are still many questions to be considered and many mistakes to be avoided. It has been a pet idea in this country that competition is the corrective of all industrial evils. Competition without doubt holds an important place among the industrial forces, but may be carried so far as to defeat the very objects it is adapted to subserve, when intelligently encouraged. Carried to the extent of employing two persons or more to do the work of one, of absorbing capital without the full employment of it, it becomes destructive and expensive. We find, for instance, in many towns, a large number of commercial establishments doing business at an immense profit on single transactions, but the transactions are so few and so divided up among struggling competitors, that neither secures a profitable, nor even a respectable, business. With choice cuts of meat from twelve to eighteen cents a pound and butcher's stock at three and four cents, we often see butcher shops multiply, but the price of meat usually remains the same. Indeed, the very increase of middle man establishments beyond the employment of these to their full capacity, and the consequent full utilization of the capital and labor employed, is a sure loss to somebody, and if it does not all go to the producer it is almost always shared by him. One of the greatest burdens which the creamery business has to carry to-day is the excessive number of its creameries beyond legitimate demands. The co-operative idea, so far as it enters into this business, implies the most profitable use possible of the resources employed in it both of patron and creamery owner, and a fair and equitable distribution of the profits. Said a large creamery owner to me recently, "I find the comparative value of my butter steadily decreasing from year to year. I have the same territory, the same butter-makers, the same patrons, substantially, but my butter is not up in quality and price as it used to be. I ascribe it to the excessive competition prevailing in it, i.e., it is one of its results. I have lost my influence over patrons in securing the best quality of cream. If I make any criticism of their modes or practices they say to me, 'Mr. ----, if you do not want my cream I will let the other creamery have it. Do just as you like about it; take it or leave it.'" But the loss of one or two cents a pound on the net proceeds of a season means five or ten per cent of its value, or of the entire season's results enough difference to make any community in a few years rich or poor, thrifty or unthrifty, according to the circumstances in the case. Further: the idea of co-operation implies the doing of equal and exact justice to all included within the co-operative limits. This, an excessive and unprincipled competition greatly interferes with. It can properly be demanded by every fair and honest patron of a creamery that every other patron should be as fair and honest as himself. Indeed, this is an essential part of the implied contract. But in the case of excessive competition no restraints can be imposed and no penalties can be made to follow attempts to violate the principles of equity, except the possible inconvenience of changing from one creamery to another. The straight and honorable patron is powerless; the owner of the creamery is powerless; and the co-operative element is rendered a nullity. Further: the co-operative element, in the relations of creamery and patrons, requires that the price of milk or cream shall vary with the market price of the finished product. Contracts for the future are mere speculation, as a rule. If the transaction is large and the turn of the market unfavorable to the creamery, ruin is liable to come to the business, and loss and disaster follow to all concerned. If the turn of the market should be the other way, among the numerous patrons there is sure to be more or less dissatisfaction and a more or less breaking up of the condition of friendly reciprocity which should exist between creamery and patron. Patrons may damage their own interest by exacting too much from the creamery as well as by accepting too little, and a greedy grasping after an unreasonable share of the profit on the part of the creamery owner is sure to bring retaliation, disturb cordiality of feeling, and bring loss to all concerned. The remedy for most of these evils can only come from intelligent and wise action on the part of the creamery patrons of a given locality. They should study to prevent an unseemly and expensive competition. They, as the encouraging source, will surely in the end pay the expense of it. It has been said that no people in the world enjoy paying taxes like Americans, provided they are only indirect, sugar coated, and with some plausible pretense. It would seem, however, that even American dairymen could see that the maintenance of superfluous creameries, superfluous teams for hauling cream and milk, superfluous men for manufacturing and handling the product is an extra expense of which they will surely bear their full share; if not at once, they will do so before the outcome is reached. Another thing the patrons of creameries may properly take note of is that the expense of manufacturing butter in all well regulated creameries is nearly the same, and the value of the product does not widely differ. When a creamery therefore claims large and peculiar advantages, and offers a price for milk or cream markedly above the ordinary price paid for it by other creameries, you may be sure there is something illegitimate about it. It may be done to drum up business, to beat a rival, or it may be a downright swindle, it surely will not be lasting, and the operator intends at some time to recoup for himself. It is to be remembered that the dairy business is not one which can be taken up and laid down hastily without greater or less inconvenience, expense, and loss. Like most other branches of agriculture, it must be engaged in with the purpose of a steady, long, strong pull in order to be a success. It has the advantage of springing directly from the earth without fictitious help, props, or governmental protection, so-called. It taxes no other industry for its own benefit, and has expanded to its present magnificent proportions in spite of the burdens laid upon it from outside sources. But it is written "And Satan came also." Nothing could more aptly describe the full influence of adulteration which has come upon this industry. It has come clothed in deceit and fraud, the very habiliments of the devil. It can be exterminated no more than sin itself. It must be fought by exposing its nature; by stamping upon it its own features. Wise legislation, I believe, will be in the direction of Government inspection and the sure and prompt punishment of fraud. The interest of the creamery patron is more deeply involved in this matter than that of any other class, just as in other branches of production the perils and losses by fraud, deterioration, and adulteration ultimately fall back upon the producer of the raw product. The apathy now existing among the producers of milk and cream is ominous of evil, and discouraging to those who are working in the interest of unadulterated goods. We have no doubt that the time will come when not only the adulteration of butter, but the adulteration of other food products as well, will only be carried on under the stamp and inspection of Government supervision. The thoughts I have presented are intended to be suggestive rather than dogmatic, and I leave the subject with the hope that the intelligence of the average dairyman may be as active in tracing and comprehending the subtler principles of trade and commerce relating to the products of his labor as he is in comprehending the more immediate facts of his calling, such as breeding, seeding, and the handling of the raw products of his herd. [A] Paper read before the Illinois Dairymen's Convention by C.C. Buell, of Rock Falls. VETERINARY. FEVER. Many kinds of horse fevers have been described by antiquated veterinary writers; but most exist only in the imagination of the writers, or have been manufactured out of the mistaken analysis of human fevers. All the real fevers of the horse may be comprised in two,--the idiopathic, pure or simple fever, constituting of itself an entire disease, and the symptomatic fever, occasioned by inflammatory action in some particular part of the body, and constituting rather the attendant of a disease than the disease itself. Though idiopathic fever is comparatively infrequent in occurrence, it unquestionably meets the attention of most persons who have extensive stable management of horses, and its general tendency to degenerate into local inflammation and symptomatic fever, seems to arise far less from its own nature than from foul air, vicissitudes of temperature, and general bad management. If idiopathic fever is not easily reduced, the blood accumulates in the lungs, the viscera, or some other internal part of the body, and provokes inflammation; or, if a horse, while suffering under this fever, be kept in a foul or ill-ventilated stable, or be exposed to alternations of heat and cold, he speedily becomes locally inflamed from the action of the filth or exposure. The symptoms of idiopathic fever are shivering, loss of appetite, dejected appearance, quick pulse, hot mouth, and some degree of debility; generally, also, costiveness and scantiness of urine; sometimes, likewise, quickness of breathing, and such pains of the bowels as accompany colic. Idiopathic fever, if it does not pass into inflammation, never kills, but is generally always curable. Cattle are subject to both idiopathic and symptomatic fever, very nearly in the same manner as the horse, and require, when suffering them, to be very similarly treated. The idiopathic fever of cattle has, in many instances, an intermitting character, which may easily be subdued by means of ordinary care; and, in other instances, has a steady and unintermitting character, and is exceedingly liable to resolve itself into pleurisy, enteritis, or some other inflammatory disease. The symptomatic fever of cattle is strictly parallel to the symptomatic fever of horses, and is determined by the particular seat and nature of the exciting inflammation. But besides these fevers, cattle are subject to two very destructive and quite distinct kinds of fever, both of an epizootic nature, the one of a virulent and the other of a chronic character,--the former inflammatory and the latter typhoid. Numerous modifications of these fevers, or particular phases of them, are more or less extensively known among our readers as black-leg, bloody murrain, etc. The fever which in many instances follows parturition, particularly in the cow, is familiarly known as calving fever, or milk fever; and the ordinary fevers of sheep, swine, dogs, upon the whole, follow the same general law as the ordinary fevers of the horse, and are classifiable into idiopathic and symptomatic. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. [Illustration] YOUR NAME printed on 50 Cards ALL NEW designs of _Gold Floral. Remembrances, Sentiment, Hand Floral_, etc., with _Love, Friendship_, and _Holiday Mottoes_, 10c. 7 pks. and this elegant Ring, 50c., 15 pks. & Ring, $1. [Illustration] 12 NEW "CONCEALED NAME" Cards (name concealed with hand holding flowers with mottoes) 20c. 7 pks. and this Ring for $1. Agents' sample book and full outfit, 25c. Over 200 new Cards added this season. Blank Cards at wholesale prices. NORTHFORD CARD CO. 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Send for circular and terms to the TWOMBLY KNITTING MACHINE CO., 163 Tremont Street, Boston, Mass. * * * * * 500 VIRGINIA FARMS & MILLS FOR SALE AND EXCHANGE. Write for free REAL ESTATE JOURNAL. R.B. CHAFFIN & CO., Richmond, Virginia. * * * * * THE BIGGEST THING OUT. ILLUSTRATED BOOK SENT FREE. (NEW) E. NASON, & CO., 120 Fulton St., New York. * * * * * A MYSTERY OF THE SEA. THE FATE WHICH OVERTOOK THE "CITY OF BOSTON."--CAPTAIN MURRAY'S IDEAS AND EXPERIENCES. A few years ago, the City of Boston sailed from harbor, crowded with an expectant throng of passengers bound for a foreign shore. She never entered port. The mystery of her untimely end grows deeper as the years increase, and the Atlantic voyager, when the fierce winds howl around and danger is imminent on every hand, shudders as the name and mysterious fate of that magnificent vessel are alluded to. Our reporter, on a recent visit to New York, took lunch with Captain George Siddons Murray, on board the Alaska, of the Guion line. Captain Murray is a man of stalwart built, well-knit frame and cheery, genial disposition. He has been a constant voyager for a quarter of a century, over half of that time having been in the trans-Atlantic service. In the course of the conversation over the well-spread table, the mystery of the City of Boston was alluded to. "Yes," remarked the Captain, "I shall never forget the last night we saw that ill-fated vessel. I was chief officer of the City of Antwerp. On the day we sighted the City of Boston a furious southeast hurricane set in. Both vessels labored hard. The sea seemed determined to sweep away every vestige of life. When day ended the gale did not abate, and everything was lashed for a night of unusual fury. Our good ship was turned to the south to avoid the possibility of icebergs. The City of Boston, however, undoubtedly went to the north. Her boats, life-preservers and rafts were all securely lashed; and when she went down, everything went with her, never to re-appear until the sea gives up its dead." "What, in your opinion, Captain, was the cause of the loss of the City of Boston?" "The City of Limerick, in almost precisely the same latitude, a few days later, found the sea full of floating ice; and I have no doubt the City of Boston collided with the ice, and sunk immediately." Captain Murray has been in command of the Alaska ever since she was put in commission and feels justly proud of his noble ship. She carries thousands of passengers every year, and has greatly popularized the Williams & Guion line. Remarking upon the bronzed and healthy appearance of the Captain, the reporter said that sea life did not seem to be a very great physical trial. "No? But a person's appearance is not always a trustworthy indication of his physical condition. For seven years I have been in many respects very much out of sorts with myself. At certain times I was so lame that it was difficult for me to move around. I could scarcely straighten up. I did not know what the trouble was, and though I performed all my duties regularly and satisfactorily, yet I felt that I might some day be overtaken with some serious prostrating disorder. These troubles increased. I felt dull and then, again, shooting pains through my arms and limbs. Possibly the next day I would feel flushed and unaccountably uneasy and the day following chilly and despondent. This continued until last December, when I was prostrated soon after leaving Queenstown, and for the remainder of the voyage was a helpless, pitiful sufferer. In January last, a friend who made that voyage with me, wrote me a letter urging me to try a new course of treatment. I gladly accepted his counsel, and for the last seven months have given thorough and business-like attention to the recovery of my natural health; and to-day I have the proud satisfaction of saying to you that the lame back, the strange feeling, the sciatic rheumatism which have so long pursued me, have entirely disappeared through the blood purifying influence of Warner's Safe Rheumatic Cure which entirely eradicated all rheumatic poison from my system. Indeed, to me, it seems that it has worked wonders, and I therefore most cordially commend it." "And you have no trouble now in exposing yourself to the winds of the Atlantic?" "Not the least. I am as sound as a bullet and I feel specially thankful over the fact because I believe rheumatic and kidney disease is in the blood of my family. I was dreadfully shocked on my last arrival in Liverpool to learn that my brother, who is a wealthy China tea merchant, had suddenly died of Bright's disease of the kidneys, and consider myself extremely fortunate in having taken my trouble in time and before any more serious effects were possible." The conversation drifted to other topics, and as the writer watched the face before him, so strong in all its outlines, and yet so genial, and thought of the innumerable exposures and hardships to which its owner had been exposed, he instinctively wished all Rheumatic Cure which entirely eradicated who are suffering from the terrible rheumatic troubles now so common might know of Captain Murray's experience and the means by which he had been restored. Pain is a common thing in this world, but far too many endure it when they might just as well avoid it. It is a false philosophy which teaches us to endure when we can just as readily avoid. So thought the hearty captain of the Alaska, so thinks the writer, and so should all others think who desire happiness and a long life. * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION ONE YEAR, $3 FOR THE TWO. It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB. CO., 150 Monroe Street, Chicago. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * HORTICULTURAL Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper. ILLINOIS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. The ad-interim committee of the Illinois State Horticultural Society for the northern part of the State reported through Mr. O.W. Barnard and Arthur Bryant, Jr. Mr. Barnard had found the orchards thrifty and healthy. The yield of apples had not been large this season, but orchardists generally felt encouraged in regard to the future of their orchards. He had found the high clay soils preferable for the apple. Mr. Bryant reported the apple crop small. Some orchards had borne good crops, especially of the Ben Davis. In others, this variety had failed. ORCHARD CULTURE. Mr. W.T. Nelson, of the committee on orchard culture, recommended the planting of orchards on high, sloping ground. In the rather low and level country in which he lived (Will county) orchard trees lasted but fifteen or twenty years. But few varieties seem to do well in any locality. He would advise men about to set out orchards to ascertain what varieties do well in their particular locality, and then plant no others. He would not prune young orchards. He recommended the tiling of orchards. HIGH OR LOW, LAND. Mr. Nelson's report opened up the subject of high or low lands for orchards. Mr. Robinson got more apples from trees on low lands than from elevated sites. Prof. Budd did not commit himself to either theory, but remarked that some varieties do best on low lands, while others preferred the higher situations. Parker Earle thought that this theory of low lands for our apple orchards was contrary to the past teachings of the society. In his opinion high grounds are preferable. The subject was a complicated one for Prof. Burrill. He had seen many low ground orchards that bore good crops this year. There are many modifications that effect the crop. It is not merely the elevation of orchard sites. It was his belief that high ground, all things considered, is the best. Mr. Robinson was not enthusiastic about the tile drainage of orchards. Our trees need more water than they usually get. They do not suffer from too much water, but from dry summers and rolling land. Mr. Spalding, of Sangamon county, had found his nursery trees poorest when planted on a depressed surface. He tiled extensively. His subsoil was a clay loam. Nine years ago he laid tile 3-1/2 feet deep and 30 feet apart. He did not believe in manuring young trees. Too rapid growth is not wanted. Trees in Illinois grow as much in one year as they do in two years in the State of New York, where they raise more fruit than we do. The most rapid growing trees are the tenderest. He does not force the growth of his orchard trees. He is satisfied nurserymen have manured their young stock too much. The question of high or low land was not settled. It was hard for members to give up the old theory that high lands are best for orchards in Illinois; but it may be set down as a fact that the matter, as first brought to public discussion through THE PRAIRIE FARMER by B.F. Johnson, Esq., of Champaign, is having wide discussion among our fruit men. It will result in close future observation and closer scrutiny of past results. Without doubt this is the leading new horticultural question of the day. It requires a careful collection of facts and a broad generalization. The theories and teachings of the past are nothing if facts are opposed to them. FRUIT GROWERS AND FRUIT SELLERS. Mr. Ragan, of Indiana, read a suggestive paper upon the relation of the fruit-grower to the commission man and the transportation companies. The paper led to considerable discussion. Mr. Earle always sells his fruit through a commission house. Without the commission men market-fruit growers could not do business. He found no difficulty in getting honorable men to do business with. When he got a good man he stuck to him. The commission man is just as important a factor in the fruit business as the grower or consumer. He believes in a liberal percentage for commissions. Dealers can not do an honest business for nothing. He is willing to pay ten per cent to the man who sells his fruit to the best possible advantage, and who makes prompt and honest returns. The cheap commission man is to be avoided. The proper handling of fruit by intelligent dealers at fair rates is what we want. He ships small fruits in full quart boxes. Uses new boxes every time. Wants no returned crates. To get best returns we must have neat packages. Stained drawers, baskets, old barrels, and the like do not help to sell fruit. He would advise shipping black and red raspberries in pint boxes; blackberries and strawberries in quart boxes. He picks his berry plantations every day during the ripening season. Sundays not excepted. No man who is not prepared to work seven days in the week during the picking season, or who can not get help to do the same, will succeed in the raising and marketing of small fruits. He has this year paid two cents per quart for picking blackberries and strawberries, and the same for pints of raspberries. It requires from five to ten pickers to the acre. He likes women or grown-up girls to do this work. As to varieties he likes Longfellow and Sharpless. They ripen slowly and everyday picking is not so necessary. Mr. Pearson said the apple growers in his locality find that judgment must be used in marketing apples. The Lord made little apples and we must do the best we can with them. A neighbor had small apples and the shippers grumbled at them. The neighbor would not stand this and shipped his apples to Chicago and had them sold on their merits. The result was satisfactory. An Iowa buyer came down there and offered 50 cents per bushel for apples without regard to size, etc., and he got them and shipped them in boxes to Muscatine where they were made into jelly, dried fruit, etc. We can have no cast iron rules in regard to marketing, but must be governed by circumstances. This year it was better for his people to sell as they come, without the trouble of hand picking, sorting, and careful packing. We must act like intelligent men in this business as in all others. Circumstances alter cases. Good common sense is a prime requisite. Mr. Miller agreed with Mr. Earle about packages for marketing fruit. He uses white wood boxes from Michigan. MULCHING AND MANURING. Mr. Earle was questioned about the use of castor bean pomace for strawberries. He uses it mixed with wood ashes. It is capital on poor land. He likes unleached ashes in both strawberry and orchard culture. He pays six cents per bushel for them. The castor bean pomace is good for anything in the poor soils of Southern Illinois. He uses about half a ton to the acre. Spreads with a Kemp spreader. Five hundred pounds per acre will show excellent results. Has tried a tablespoonful of the mixture to the strawberry plant when setting out. Has tried salt to kill grubs in asparagus beds, but found it to kill the weeds and most of the asparagus, while the grubs seemed to enjoy the application. Did not find it of much value as a manure. Bone dust had shown no particular results. Superphosphates acted much like the bean pomace. Does not think coal ashes of much value. He uses the pomace as early in the spring as possible. Sometimes he plows it under and sometimes applies after the plants are set, and cultivates it in. One application answers for two years' cropping. He fruits a strawberry plantation but two years, and he sometimes thinks one year sufficient. He does not agree with some of his neighbors that mulching has resulted unfavorably. Does not think the mulch has increased the noxious insects. Knows of a plantation not mulched at all, that suffered more than any other this year from the tarnished plant bug. CENTRAL DISTRICTS. Mr. Vickroy reported for Central Illinois. In August of the present year he visited the orchards in the vicinity of Champaign, among them the noted Hall fruit farm, near Savoy. He found the orchards in fair condition. Many were sheltered by belts of trees. He observed that in the lower or bottom land he found in connection with drainage, the best orchards and the healthiest trees, and that on the more rolling or higher grounds the trees were not as hardy nor did not bear as well. His observations led him to believe in the draining of orchards, although it was opposed to his previous education and of the teachings he had received in this society. He regarded the experimental orchard which he visited at Champaign a failure, for the very reason that it was on too high ground; that the trees were dying, and many were not bearing. There were, however, some varieties that showed good fruit. In his visit referred to, he found the following varieties of apples did well in this latitude: Fall Varieties--First, Snow; second, Standard; third, Maiden Blush; fourth, Colvert; fifth, Baker Sweet; sixth, Pound Sweet; seventh, Fall Romanite. Winter Varieties--First, Minkler; second, Rawles' Genet; third, Willow Twig; fourth, Little Romanite; fifth, English Russet; sixth, Ben Davis; seventh, Michael Henry Pippin; eighth, Jonathan; ninth, Gravenstein; tenth, Rome Beauty. In varieties in pears he gave the Howell and the Bartlett. In grapes he recommended the Martha in white grapes. GRAPES. Mr. E.A. Riehl, of Alton, read a very exhaustive and complete report on grapes and grape culture, including the so-called grape rot. The suggested remedies were bagging and training vines up on elevated wires, so the sun and air could get freely to the fruit. This point was combated by Dr. Shroeder. Grapes ripen best in the shade. Another gentleman suggested that with the wire system as suggested by Mr. Riehl, the grapes are shaded by the foliage in all the hottest part of the day. INSECTS. Prof. Forbes gave a learned and scientific dissertation on contagious diseases of insects, and a number of germinal diseases, and experimental and successful attempts to kill them. The Professor showed that nausea is contagious and may be transferred by diseased worms, and that therefore the spread of disease in worms would considerably lessen the danger to plants and fruits from their inroads. These facts, said the Professor, give us reason to hope that we have discovered another means of defense from destructive insects. Mr. Earle will try pyrethrum next season for the tarnished bug. Prof. Budd gave a brief sketch of latest methods of killing off noxious insects as followed by J.N. Dixon, of the State of Iowa, one of the greatest fruit farmers in that State or in the Northwest. He destroys the insect by sprinkling the trees with water diluted with arsenic, using one pound of white arsenic to 200 gallons of water. This has proven a great success and is not at all expensive. Some members objected to the use of arsenic on account of its poisonous properties. London-purple or Paris-green were recommended by some. Some members did not like to have hogs running in their orchards; others found them a benefit if but few were permitted. They did a good work. If the orchard is overstocked with them they do harm. They root about the trees and rub against them. It is not an uncommon thing for them to kill the trees in the course of a couple of years. FRUIT COMMITTEES. Dr. Schroeder, member of the committee on pear culture, made no formal report, but in brief remarks urged the general planting and raising of the kind of fruit as being profitable and productive. Mr. Samuel Edwards, of Mendota, chairman of committee on currants, read a very interesting report on currants and gooseberries, in which it appeared that the cultivation of this fruit was neglected and was on the decline. Dr. A.L. Small, of Kankakee, made a report on plums, in which he recommended the general planting of this fruit, he making a specialty of plum trees, and regarded the plum as a fruit that was coming more in demand and popular, and one that readily adapts itself to the many kinds of climates and soils. Mr. Weir also read a paper on plums and plum culture. He recommended the Chickasaw because it is hardy and not liable to have its blossoms injured by a late spring, like many fruits. He named the Newman and Wild Goose among other so-called seedlings that were very good. He expressed the opinion that there was but one distinct species of plum in the United States. FLORICULTURE. Mrs. Mary J. Barnard, of Manteno, from the committee on floriculture, strongly urged the cultivation of house-plants, not only as beautifiers, but to give the most pleasant occupation to every lady of the family. She referred to the earlier flowers of summer especially--the crocus, snow-drop, lily of the valley, tulips. Next to these came the annuals; with little trouble these could be had for months. The wild flowers of the prairies were spoken of, and she suggested that we should obtain seed of the flowers and raise such as we wish. The paper was a good one and was well received. Mr. Baller, a florist of Bloomington, said that of late the demand for plants had fallen off. The reason given was that there was an increased general knowledge among the people. At the present, the chief demands are for hot-house, cut flowers, and monthlies. The reason given for the falling off of the demand for plants was the fact that plants were more easily raised since the introduction of base-burners. This, he thought, could be still further increased by having a double sash, and the building of bay windows on the south and east of the houses. He reported, however, that there was still a good market for hot-house flowers among the rich for decorating purposes, funerals, etc. THE PRAIRIE FARMER will, from time to time, consider other papers and discussions at this meeting, for there was much more of interest said and done than can be condensed into a simple running report. We advise farmers to send one dollar to the Secretary and receive therefor a copy of the Transactions when issued. A SHORT SERMON ON A LONG TEXT. The text will be found in Leviticus 16: 21-22-23; but whether its application can be found is uncertain. Horticulturists are prone to find scape-goats to carry their sins of omission and commission; and they load these--a great burden--upon them, and send them off to be lost in the wilderness. Providence is most usually chosen by them for this purpose. Most of their mistakes and failures--sins, let us call them--are ascribed to Providence; and He is expected to carry the burden. But I strongly urge they remain our own after all. I am led to these conclusions by the fact that among the many failures in fruit culture there are some splendid successes; and that these successes occur with those, as a rule, who are guiltless of these sins; and that just in proportion to the magnitude of the guilt is the success insured. In other words--that almost invariably are our failures to be attributed to our own want of skill and our neglect--most generally the latter. Here and there we note cases of marked success--of heavy crops and large returns for care and labor invested. These are mostly on a small scale; as for instance, one man produces from at the rate of 200 to 300 bushels of strawberries per acre, on a few rods of ground. Another, his neighbor, gets about as many quarts. The conditions of soil and climate are about the same. Now is Providence to be charged with this disparity? Certainly not. The same care, the same intelligent management, and the same amount of labor bestowed, would have produced as favorable results in the one case as in the other. And so, as to larger tracts. I hold that what my neighbor can do on a dozen square rods, he and I both ought to be equally able to do on five or ten, or twenty times as large a tract. But, you say, these large yields are the results of extraordinary care. True, they are; and that proves my theory--that extraordinary care will produce extraordinary results. What one man can do once, he can do again and all the time; and we all can do the same. Extraordinary care may be defined as the care necessary to produce good results, and if that care were always applied it would cease to be extraordinary. I myself saw in my neighbor's field a crop of strawberries, on two rows, which at the safest and closest calculation I could make, yielded at the rate of over 300 bushels per acre. He had but the two rows; had given them extraordinary care--had kept them clear of grass and weeds--and the ground mellow--and had mulched them with forest leaves. Those two rows were in a field of several acres in size. The same care in planting, in cultivating, in mulching, and the whole tract would have produced corresponding results. That same year, my crop, on soil equally as good, reached a yield of less than one-fifth in amount. Why this difference? Providence favored him and didn't favor me, I might say, if I felt disposed to make a scape-goat of Providence for my misdeeds. But I do not believe that Providence did anything of the sort. The fault was my own; and I have no right to attempt to shift the responsibility. And it was not want of knowledge either. We, none of us, do as well as we know how. Our failures are mostly the results of sheer neglect. Mistakes, we incline to call them. Let us call them sins, and repent of them; and not endeavor to do as Aaron did, pack them off into the wilderness. When we bring ourselves to thus correct our mistakes, our crops will be increased threefold, and Providence will no longer be made a scape-goat for us. T.G. PRUNINGS. The strawberry was introduced into England from Flanders in 1530. Gardeners in London, England, are always ready to buy toads. The regular market price for them ranges from $15 to $25 per hundred. Soap-suds are a valuable fertilizer for all forms of vegetation; especially serviceable for small fruits, and in the fruit garden proper will never be wasted. An Italian claims to have discovered that by drenching the foliage of grapevines with a solution of soda the filaments of the mildew fungus will be shriveled, while the leaves will remain uninjured. A Wisconsin nurseryman, however, advises the use of flowers of sulphur, which he believes a good remedy, also, when applied to the vines and when added to the soil surrounding them. A correspondent of the Germantown Telegraph says that he has found salt a valuable remedy for rust on blackberry vines, and concludes: "I have applied two or three handfuls on the surface of the ground, immediately over the roots, when the plants were badly rusted; in two or three weeks the disease had disappeared, and the plants had made a good growth. I believe moderate applications of salt, sown broadcast over a blackberry patch, would be of great benefit as a fertilizer and health renewer." Gardener's Monthly: In the discussions on forest culture, little is said of the willow, which forms a very interesting department. The white willow, Salix Candida, is often used for coarse work. S. Vinnunatis and S. Russelliana, are the most commonly used in the Eastern United States, under the name of Osier, or basket willow, and S. Forbyana, a variety of S. rubra, or the red willow is often used for fine work. In the Editor's recent visit to the Northwest a number of fine species were noted which would evidently be worth introducing for basket-making purposes. The Germantown Telegraph says: "To grow good crops of blackberries the soil should be good and especially deep, for the roots run down wonderfully when possible for them to do so; and as the growing fruit requires its greatest nourishment in the usually dry month of August, it is an advantage to have deep soil for the roots to draw a supply from. A deep, sandy soil will generally grow the best crop of berries, while a clay soil tends to produce rust. Good cultivation, good soil, and a judicious use of manure make stout and vigorous canes, with a crop of berries in increased ratio." Indiana correspondent Orange County Farmer: I have had a good deal of experience in propagating currants. I always plant my currant cuttings in the fall as soon as the leaves fall off. They will make durable roots two to four inches long the same fall, while the buds remain dormant. They will make double the growth the next season if set in the fall, and they should be set in ground that will not heave them out by the effects of frost and should be covered just before winter sets in with coarse litter. Remove the covering early in the spring and examine the cuttings to see if any of them hove, and if so, press them down again. Should they heave up an inch or more, if well pressed down, they will start and make better growth than cuttings set in the spring. In either case, however, the cuttings should always be made in the fall. A Rural New Yorker correspondent gets down to the real art of grape eating. Hear him tell how to manipulate the fruit: No! the man who holds the grape between his thumb and dexter finger and squeezes or shoots the pulp into his throat, does not know how to enjoy the fruit, and is not likely to appreciate the good qualities of a fine grape. Let the berries follow each other into the mouth in rapid succession until three or four are taken, while with each insertion the teeth are brought together upon the seeds without breaking them. The acid of the pulp is thus freed to mingle with the saccharine juice next the skin, and a slight manipulation by the tongue separates the seeds and skins from the delicious winey juices; after this has tickled the palate, skins and seeds may be ejected together. Close to the skin lies a large part of the good flavor of the grape. On the subject of protecting trees from mice, R.W. Rogers, in Ohio Farmer says: "As the season is near at hand when farmers will have to look to the protection of their young fruit trees from ground mice, I send you my method if you deem it worthy of publishing. It is as follows: Take old tin fruit cans, put them on the fire until the parts that are soldered have become heated, when they will come apart. Take the body of the can and encircle it around the tree, letting the sides lap each other, and press firmly in the ground before it has become frozen. The mice coming in contact with the tin will turn them in another direction. It is far better than mounding up or tramping snow about them. Most any farmer can gather up enough for a good sized orchard, and make them pay compound interest, which otherwise would be a nuisance or pitched out of the back window." FLORICULTURE. Gleanings by an Old Florist. ARTIFICIAL MANURES AND OTHER MATTERS. The successful raisers of many kinds of flowers use, more or less, some kind of what might be called artificial stimulants other than the ordinary manuring of the soil at the time the plant is set out, whether it be in pot culture or in the open benches. This is no new thing under the sun; not a few who have been in the habit, and found great results, have tried to keep a monopoly, and have been more or less close-mouthed in the matter. Perhaps one of the oldest forms of this feeding extra stimulants to their pets was in the form of liquid manure made from various materials, as horse, sheep, cow, and other manures. They are sometimes prepared with ever so much mystery in the matter of quantity, time of preparation, quantity given, etc., all of which was supposed to have its influence. Of one thing, however, there was certain, tangible evidence that many of these persons managed, if for exhibition, to carry off the best premiums; and if for the market were pretty sure to command the best prices, and what is more, obtain the greater results financially. Soot, guano, ammonia, and in later years, material obtained from the immense slaughter-houses, such as blood and other offal in a highly concentrated form, find, perhaps, nowadays, more advocates; principally because the first-mentioned list contains articles that give off very offensive odors while being applied, so that the more fastidious are loath to use them. What may not be very offensive to the plodding florist would be highly so to the more refined, or when the general public comes more into contact with the crops while being so applied. In almost all of the cases where the ingredients mentioned are used they are diluted with a large quantity of water, except in the case of the droppings of the animals; the latter are often used by florists in the form of a very heavy mulch, depending upon the ordinary watering to carry down to the roots such parts of the dressing as would dissolve in the water, and thus give extra stimulant, and at a time when it would do the most good, because, ordinarily, the more water necessary the greater the growth going on, and vice versa, if plants are in a state of rest, either from a finished growth or from lowness of temperature, but little water would be needed, and but little benefit from the mulch, except such as undoubtedly arises from the ammonia itself in the manure permeating the atmosphere, which again, however, would be the most active when heavy watering was necessary, simply because of the high and humid temperature. For obvious reasons the votaries of window gardening will use those giving off little or no unpleasant odors. Others again make the soil so rich in the first instance that much less of what may be called artificial manures are required during growth. But without some skill in this matter it is not safe, for if much of the material is not thoroughly decayed (which, however, has then lost most of its volatile ingredients) it is, in the common vernacular of the gardener, too rank to give good growth and results, whether it be in fruits, flowers, or foliage. For example, in Henderson's horticulture he recommends, as the best soil for potting, loam and hops. He says, "Not the least simple of these operations is the preparation of our potting soil. We have, we may say, only one heap--a big one it is--but it contains only two ingredients, rotted sods, from a loamy pasture, and rotted refuse hops from the breweries, in about the proportion of two of the sods to one of hop. One-year-old rotted manure, if the hops cannot be obtained." It is evident upon its face that so large a proportion as one-third of a fresh manure or hops would be disastrous; but well rotted, and with care otherwise in temperature and other desiderata, it would be a highly stimulating soil. This was in 1869. We well recollect the commotion the hop business caused in the horticultural world at the time, as Henderson recommended it for plunging pots in, setting pots on mulching outdoors, and almost every purpose. And did he not grow the best of stuff and himself practice what he preached. Spent hops in this city were eagerly sought after and used, apparently with great success, in almost every florist's establishment as well as market garden. What before was a nuisance to the breweries was eagerly sought after; like most things, however, it had its day, and is now seldom seen again. We might, however, say that its decline undoubtedly arose from its unpleasant features, as it drew myriads of insects in its train and often emitted a very unpleasant odor. Its great value consists in that it is the seed of the hop plant, all seeds contributing by far the greatest value in manures. In the green-house the object aimed at, is the greatest possible results from limited area. Of the atmosphere the gardener has almost absolute control--no siroccos, biting frost, or destructive winds interfere. He can beat nature all to pieces in growing plants faultless in shape and in quantity of flowers, but his soil is of limited extent for the roots to wander in. To counteract this, he can give in other forms just as much and no more nutrition as is necessary to effect his purpose, and here comes in this artificial supply of manurial agents. Mr. DeVrey, the successful superintendent of Lincoln Park, uses horn shavings. This is the cleanest and most pleasant material that we ever recollect to have seen used for the purpose, it is the refuse in the factories where the horns from the slaughterhouse are steamed and manipulated into the numerous objects they are applied to, not the least being into knife and fork handles, and the like. It is in the form of thin shaving of half an inch to an inch in length, quite dry and light, entirely free from odor. He takes all they make, and this year has a ton of the material for which he pays at the rate of three cents per pound. The method of using is simply to mix with the soil at the time of potting, giving it, to the common eye, as oil specked all through with a white flaky substance. Its effect is very visible in a clear, healthy growth, given off gradually, and as it is quite common where vast quantities of plants are required to be grown in small pots, when there appears to be a necessity of some new stimulant, it should be given by the amateur in a larger pot. This is done by shaking nearly all the soil from the roots and re-potting again if possible in the same sized pots, thus doing away with all artificial watering, and yet having healthy, luxuriant growth all the time. A pound of the material, which is light, will be enough for a wheelbarrow of potting soil. After all, the question is not so much the exact material employed of a number of similar agents, as it is with the intelligence brought to bear so as to apply at the right time the right quantity, and under the best possible circumstances. EDGAR SANDERS. SCIENTIFIC. AM I A SCOT, OR AM I NOT? If I should bring a wagon o'er From Scotland to Columbia's shore, And by successive wear and tear The wagon soon should need repair: Thus, when the tires are worn through, Columbia's iron doth renew; Likewise the fellies, hubs, and spokes Should be replaced by Western oaks; In course of time down goes the bed, But here's one like it in its stead. So bit by bit, in seven years, All things are changed in bed and gears, And still it seems as though it ought To be the one from Scotland brought; But when I think the matter o'er, It ne'er was on a foreign shore, And all that came across the sea Is only its identity. I came, a Scotchman, understand, By choice, to live in this free land, Wherein I've dwelt, from day to day, 'Till sixteen years have passed away. If physiology be true, My body has been changing too; And though at first it did seem strange, Yet science doth confirm the change; And since I have the truth been taught, I wonder If I'm now a Scot? Since all that came across the sea Is only my identity. --_Wm. Taylor, in Scientific American._ PRIMITIVE NORTHWEST. Mr. C.W. Butterfield contributes an article on the Primitive Northwest, to last number of the American Antiquarian. He says that early in the seventeenth century French settlements, few in number, were scattered along the wooded shores of the river St. Lawrence in Canada. To the westward, upon the Ottowa river, and the Georgian bay, were the homes of Indian nations with whom these settlers had commercial relations, and among some of whom were located Jesuit missionaries. In the year 1615, Lake Huron was discovered. To it was given the name of the Fresh Sea (Mer Douce). But, as yet, no white man had set foot upon any portion of what now constitutes the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Eastern Minnesota. And thereafter, for nearly a score of years this whole region remained, so far as the visitation of white men was concerned, an undiscovered country; and such it continued down to the year 1684. However, previous to this date, something had been learned by the French settlers upon the St. Lawrence, of this (to them) far off land; but the information has been obtained wholly from the Indians. This knowledge was of necessity crude and, to a considerable extent, uncertain. Such of it as has been preserved is properly treated of under the following heads: First, as to what had been gleaned concerning the physical aspects of the country; second, as to what had been brought to light relative to the various tribes inhabiting this region. Previous to 1634, nothing had been learned of Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair, or Lake Michigan although it was understood there was some kind of a water-way connecting the Fresh Sea (Lake Huron) with Ontario. A little knowledge had been gained of a great body of fresh water lying beyond the "Mer Douce," "a grand lac," so called by the French--now known as Lake Superior. The length of this superior lake with that of the Fresh Sea (Lake Huron), the Indians declared was a journey of full thirty days in canoes. At the outlet of the great lake was what was described by the savages, as a considerable rapid, to which the French gave the name of "Sault de Gaston," the present Sault St. Marie, in the St. Mary's river, the stream, which, it is well known, flows from Lake Superior into Lake Huron. Accounts also had been received from the Indians prior to the year last mentioned, of a lake of no great size, through which flowed a river discharging its waters into the Fresh Sea (Lake Huron). These were reports of Lake Winnebago and Fox river, in what is now the State of Wisconsin. As the French upon the St. Lawrence had no knowledge as yet of Lake Michigan, they imagined the location of this small lake, and its river was beyond, and to the northwest of Lake Huron and that they emptied into it; Green Bay into the head of which Fox river really flows, being (like Lake Michigan) wholly unknown to them. It had further been reported by the Indians before this date that there was a mine of copper on an island in what has been mentioned as probably Lake Winnebago; doubtless, however, this island should have been located in Lake Superior. A specimen of native copper had as early as 1610, been exhibited by an Indian to an interested Frenchman upon the St. Lawrence, and an account given by him as to the rude method employed by the savages in melting that metal. But other islands besides the one containing the copper mine had been brought to the knowledge of the French settlers. A large one southeast of the "Sault de Gaston" being described, and two smaller ones, to the south of it. These islands were, it is suggested, the Great Manitoulin, Drummond, and Little Manitoulin, of the present day. * * * * * Dr. Leeds has said that spices were adulterated to a great extent, but only such substances were added as were purely non-poisonous. Mustards were never found to be pure. Vinegars were also highly adulterated. Competent officers, who shall be specialists, should be appointed in each State to examine manufactured and natural foods to detect adulteration. So far these examinations have been made by college professors. The State Boards of Health should take the matter in hand and see that it has the proper attention. * * * * * A French periodical, La Culture, gives the following simple method for testing the purity of water. In an ordinary quart bottle three parts filled with water dissolve a spoonful of pure white sugar, cork it well and put it in a warm place. If at the end of forty-eight hours the water becomes turbid and milky there can be no doubt of its impurity, but if it remains limpid it may be considered safely drinkable. * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION ONE YEAR, $3 FOR THE TWO It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB. CO., 150 Monroe Street Chicago. * * * * * Political talk is generally very eloquent, but it lacks the insignificant element of truthfulness. A great deal of the buncombe of politics reminds us of the lines of Lord Neaves, not long since deceased: [Transcriber's note: This is where the article ends in the original and the lines in question are not to be found in the rest of the periodical.] PUBLISHERS' NOTICE. _THE PRAIRIE FARMER is printed and published by The Prairie Farmer Publishing Company, every Saturday, at No. 150 Monroe Street._ _Subscription, $2.00 per year, in advance, postage prepaid. Subscribers wishing their addresses changed should give their old as well as new addresses._ _Advertising, 25 cents per line on inside pages; 30 cents per line on last page--agate measure; 14 lines to the inch. No less charge than $2.00._ _All Communications, Remittances, etc., should be addressed to_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY, _Chicago, Ill._ * * * * * The Prairie Farmer ENTERED AT THE CHICAGO OFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER. CHICAGO, JANUARY 5, 1884. * * * * * [Transcriber's Note: Original location of Table of Contents.] * * * * * RENEW! RENEW!! Remember that every yearly subscriber, either new or renewing, sending us $2, receives a splendid new map of the United States and Canada--58 � 41 inches--FREE. Or, if preferred, one of the books offered in another column. It is not necessary to wait until a subscription expires before renewing. * * * * * 1841. 1884. The Prairie Farmer PROSPECTUS FOR 1884. SEE INDUCEMENTS OFFERED SUBSCRIBE NOW. For forty-three years THE PRAIRIE FARMER has stood at the front in agricultural journalism. It has kept pace with the progress and development of the country, holding its steady course through all these forty-three years, encouraging, counseling, and educating its thousands of readers. It has labored earnestly in the interest of all who are engaged in the rural industries of the country, and that it has labored successfully is abundantly shown by the prominence and prestige it has achieved, and the hold it has upon the agricultural classes. Its managers are conscious from comparison with other journals of its class, and from the uniform testimony of its readers, that it is foremost among the farm and home papers of the country. It will not be permitted to lose this proud position; we shall spare no efforts to maintain its usefulness and make it indispensable to farmers, stock-raisers, feeders, dairymen, horticulturalists, gardeners, and all others engaged in rural pursuits. It will enter upon its forty-fourth year under auspices, in every point of view, more encouraging than ever before in its history. Its mission has always been, and will continue to be-- To discuss the most approved practices in all agricultural and horticultural pursuits. To set forth the merits of the best breeds of domestic animals, and to elucidate the principles of correct breeding and management. To further the work of agricultural and horticultural organization. To advocate industrial education in the correct sense of the term. To lead the van in the great contest of the people against monopolies and the unjust encroachments of capital. To discuss the events and questions of the day without fear or favor. To provide information concerning the public domain, Western soil, climate, water, railroads, schools, churches, and society. To answer inquiries on all manner of subjects coming within its sphere. To furnish the latest and most important industrial news at home and abroad. To give full and reliable crop, weather, and market reports. To present the family with pure, choice, and interesting literature. To amuse and instruct the young folks. To gather and condense the general news of the day. To be, in brief, an indispensable and unexceptionable farm and home companion for the people of the whole country. The style and form of the paper are now exactly what they should be. The paper used is of superior quality. The type is bold and clear. The illustrations are superb. The departments are varied and carefully arranged. The editorial force is large and capable. The list of contributors is greatly increased, and embraces a stronger array of talent than is employed on any similar paper in this country. We challenge comparison with any agricultural journal in the land. THE PRAIRIE FARMER is designed for all sections of the country. In entering upon the campaign of 1884, we urge all patrons and friends to continue their good works in extending the circulation of our paper. On our part we promise to leave nothing undone that it is possible for faithful, earnest work--aided by money and every needed mechanical facility--to do to make the paper in every respect still better than it has ever been before. * * * * * SPECIAL NOTICE To each Subscriber who will remit us $2.00 between now and February 1st, 1884, we will mail a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER FOR ONE YEAR, AND ONE OF OUR NEW STANDARD TIME COMMERCIAL MAPS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA--showing all the Counties, Railroads, and Principal Towns up to date. This comprehensive map embraces all the country from the Pacific Coast to Eastern New Brunswick, and as far north as the parallel of 52 deg., crossing Hudson's Bay. British Columbia; Manitoba, with its many new settlements; and the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, completed and under construction, are accurately and distinctly delineated. It extends so far south as to include Key West and more than half of the Republic of Mexico. It is eminently adapted for home, school, and office purposes. The retail price of the Map alone is $2.00. Size, 58 � 41 inches. Scale, about sixty miles to one inch. * * * * * READ THIS. Another Special Offer. [Illustration] "The Little Detective." Weighs 1/4 oz. to 25 lbs. Every housekeeper ought to have this very useful scale. The weight of article bought or sold may readily be known. Required proportions in culinary operations are accurately ascertained. We have furnished hundreds of them to subscribers, and they give entire satisfaction. During January, 1884, to any person sending us THREE SUBSCRIBERS, at $2.00 each, we will give one of these scales, and to each of the three subscribers Ropp's Calculator, No. 1. * * * * * A meeting of farmers interested in ensilage will be held at 55 Beekman street, New York, Wednesday, January 23, at 12 o'clock. All interested in the subject are invited to attend. The Iowa State Horticultural Society will hold its annual meeting at Des Moines, January 15-18. Prof. J.L. Budd, Ames, will forward programmes on application. The usual reductions in railway and hotel fares are expected. Professor S.R. Thompson, Superintendent of the Nebraska Agricultural College farm, has been chosen to represent Nebraska at the meeting to be held at Washington, D.C., next week, for the purpose of taking action in regard to contagious diseases of cattle. He requests stock men and all others interested in the cattle industries of his State to correspond with him, and make such suggestions as they may think proper for guidance at the meeting. Since its organization in 1853 to 1882 inclusive, the managers of the Illinois State Fair have offered the following amounts in premiums for live stock: Cattle, $70,406; horses and mules, $81,825; sheep, $24,450; swine, $25,320; poultry, $8,214;--total $210,215, which must be considered pretty substantial encouragement. The total offered in premiums for all classes of exhibits has been $303,961. Thus a little more than two thirds of the entire amount has been given to the breeders and importers of stock. The officers of the Northwestern Dairymen's Association say that every indication warrants the conclusion that the coming convention at Mankato, Minn., commencing February 12, will prove the grandest success in the history of the association. A full array of the best dairy talent of the entire Northwest will be present. The purpose is both in the arrangement of the programme and in the conduct of the discussions, to make of the coming convention an institute for study and instruction which no intelligent and progressive farmer can afford to miss. The Missouri State Board of Agriculture asks the aid of one competent man in every township in the State to give it estimates of crops, etc., in his vicinity. The aim is to give as full and reliable statistics for crop reports as it is possible to collect. The State provides but $1,250 for the general expenses of the Board, and it is thus dependent upon voluntary aid in the matter. The Board will defray all expenses of postage and stationery. Competent persons willing to undertake this work for the public good should address J.W. Sanborn, Secretary, Columbus, Mo. Such persons will receive, free, the monthly and annual reports of the Board. In March of last year Secretary Fisher, of the Illinois State Board of Agriculture, submitted his report for 1882 to Gov. Hamilton. This report has just made its appearance. It has taken the State printer ten months to get the volume printed and bound for distribution, a work that any respectable job office in Chicago would have turned out in four weeks without any extra exertion. The report is valuable, of course, but it would have been worth a deal more had it appeared last April. Such papers as the report of Prof. Forbes, State Entomologist, for instance, might have been of immense benefit to the people of the State if the information it contains regarding noxious insects had reached them in early spring. SEED SAMPLES. We have letters from several parties desiring us to publish an offer they make to send packages of seed corn and other seeds to any one applying and inclosing stamps to pay for trouble and postage. Some of these parties also send samples of the seed. There is one great difficulty in the way of publishing this class of communications. Once we begin, the door is open to the practice of petty frauds upon our readers which we have no right to encourage or allow. Now we are almost certain that all these writers, thus far, are honorable men, who wish to confer a favor upon their brother farmers, and who do not wish to gain a farthing in the transaction. But some of them are personally unknown to us, and we do not feel like vouching for their responsibility, still less so because it is difficult to tell who will next propose a similar scheme. There is to be a brisk trade in seed corn during the next four months, and parties having a well tested article will find no difficulty in disposing of it at good prices, providing they can convince people they have exactly what they claim. The way to do is to advertise the seed corn in the regular way, giving as references such men as the postmaster, justice of the peace, banker, etc., as may be most convincing and convenient. We are as anxious as any one can be to see the people supplied with well ripened and well cared-for corn grown in the proper latitude, and we are equally anxious to guard them against imposition. THE PORK QUESTION IN EUROPE. The question of admitting American pork into France is not yet settled. The Corps Legislatif is again "all tore up" by rash statements made by member M. Paul Bert, who has published a letter at Paris in which he argues that the use of our pork must result in disease, and that a general outbreak may be feared at any moment, so long as the products of diseased swine are offered in French markets. He endeavors to strengthen his position by pretending to quote from Dr. Detmers, Department of Agriculture Inspector at the Chicago Stock Yards. He alleges that Detmers has reported that diseased and dying hogs are sold daily in Chicago, and then shipped as pork, bacon, and lard to Havre and Bordeaux. To this audacious or mendacious charge Dr. Detmers replies as follows: The statement made by M. Paul Bert, as contained in a cable dispatch from Paris, is not only a perversion of facts, but a falsehood cut from whole cloth. I never certified, wrote, or said that dead hogs are shipped to packing-houses, or that these carcasses are shipped abroad. All I ever said in regard to transportation of diseased or dead hogs is contained in my official reports to the Commissioner of Agriculture, Washington, and can be found in his annual reports of 1878 and 1879, on pages 355 and 418 respectively, where it is accessible to everyone. I simply called attention to the transportation of diseased and dead hogs to the rendering tanks--entirely distinct from packing houses--as affording a means of spreading the then prevailing disease--swine plague, or so-called hog cholera. M. Paul Bert seems to be a true demagogue, otherwise he would not resort to a falsehood to please his constituents. I never in any manner, directly or indirectly, stated or intimated that packers are or ever were in collusion with dealers in diseased live stock. Moreover, the laws and regulations of the Chicago Stock Yards are such as to render it absolutely impossible that a dead hog should be smuggled into them, and if an animal should die while in the yards it is at once delivered to a soap-grease rendering establishment outside of the Stock Yards, and can not possibly get into a packing-house. This reply came too late to have any effect upon French legislation, and the decree of prohibition has been re-enacted. So far we notice no marked effect upon the prices of pork products in this country, but later it must result in depression. We notice the leading papers of the United States are advocating the retaliatory measures proposed months ago by THE PRAIRIE FARMER against European States interdicting the importation of our meat products. We refer to the prohibition of French and German adulterated and poisonous wines and liquors, and dry goods and silk goods colored with poisonous dyes. It must come to this at last if such totally unreasonable legislation against American products is to continue in those countries. CORN, WHEAT, AND COTTON. The preliminary crop estimates by the Statistician of the Department of Agriculture have been completed. He says the average yield of corn per acre for 1883 was within a fraction of twenty-three bushels, which is 12 per cent less than the average for a series of several years past. The quality is another thing. It is doubtless true, Mr. Dodge says, that the quality of the corn north of parallel forty is worse than for many years, increasing practically the amount of shortage indicated by the number of bushels. As the whole corn grown in 1883 in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Dakota, added to half that grown in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, would make 400,000,000 bushels only--a fourth of the whole crop--so that the possible depreciation of 40 per cent in all of it would be equivalent to a 10 per cent reduction in the value of the entire crop. The Illinois Department agents make the quality 31 per cent less than the average in this State. An effort will be made later, after the worst of the crop has been fed, to ascertain the feeding value of the year's product. It is not proposed, however, to reduce the product to the equivalent of merchantable corn, or "sound" corn, as no crop ever is free from immaturity or imperfection. There always are some Northern fields caught by frost, some neglected acres, some choked with weeds or flooded by over-flows, and so on--corn, which is mainly "nubbins." What is intended without reference to panic or exaggeration is to find out the exact truth and then tell it. There is nothing gained, be it to farmers or consumers, the Statistician adds, in suppressing truth on the one hand or exaggerating the losses on the other. One feature of corn-growing in 1883 should prove a lesson to the farmers of the country; that is, the general use of seed corn in the West, grown in lower latitudes. The planting of Nebraska seed in Minnesota and Kansas seed in Illinois, has demonstrated the folly of attempting to acclimatize the Southern maize in the more Northern districts. Much loss from frost would have been avoided had the seed been carefully selected from the best corn grown in the immediate neighborhood. The wheat crop is estimated, as before, slightly in excess of 400,000,000 bushels. The cotton product, as shown by the December returns, is about 6,000,000 bales. There will be another investigation after the close of the cotton harvest and the shipment of a large portion of the crop, when precise results will be approached more nearly than has been possible hitherto. The Department evidently feels a little "nettled" over the criticisms that have been made upon its estimates of the last two corn crops. Again we must protest that the amount of harvested corn in the West will fall considerably below Mr. Dodge's figures. Whether or not the Department sees fit to "reduce the product to the equivalent of merchantable corn" such an estimate would be of interest, and when it gives the result of the feeding quality of the corn, there will be something of a basis furnished for such a calculation, especially as we shall have by that time a pretty accurate account of the exported corn of the crop of 1883 and the amount "in sight," as the grain merchants say. It is true that there is nothing gained to consumers by "suppressing truth on the one hand or exaggerating losses on the other" but there is something lost to consumers by overestimating yields at about the time the harvest is ready and when speculators can use Government estimates to force down prices. The statistical machinery of the Department of Agriculture is far from perfect, but it is the best the Government has supplied it with, and it is not wise or fair to criticise its estimates too severely, based, as they often must be, upon inadequate returns. The most that can be said is that the Department should be exceedingly careful not to err on the side that may result in injury to the producers, for, as we understand it, it was created solely to advance their interests. CHICAGO IN 1883. Compared with the other great cities of the Union, and even with previous years in her own history, Chicago had a prosperous business year in 1883. The total trade of the year foots up $1,050,000,000, which is a slight gain over that of 1882. The receipts of flour were 4,403,982 barrels; wheat, 20,312,065 bushels; corn, 74,459,948 bushels; oats, 37,750,442 bushels; rye, 5,662,420; barley, 10,591,619. Of cattle there were received 1,878,944 head; hogs, 5,640,625; sheep, 749,917; horses, 15,255; dead hogs, 55,656. Of seeds, 122,582 tons; broom corn, 15,038 tons; butter, 53,987 tons; hides, 34,404 tons; wool, 20,122 tons; potatoes, 13,000,000 bushels; coal, 4,042,356 tons; hay, 50,000 tons; lumber, 1,848,817,000 ft.; shingles, 1,154,149 M.; salt, 1,096,587 barrels; cheese 23,590 tons. The total value of farm products of all kinds is estimated at $402,000,000, which is $20,000,000 above the valuation of that of 1882. The products of Chicago manufactures are valued at $325,000,000. In 1881 the receipts of hogs amounted to 6,474,844 head, and in 1882, 5,817,504 head. The wholesale mercantile trade has fallen off somewhat, as it has all over the country, owing to depression that seems to be universal. In manufactures the city is making wonderful development. In growth she is still unchecked and without a rival in the world among large cities and business centres. STRONG DRINK. We often see in the papers the amount in dollars and cents, that strong drink costs the people of this country. Some one has been making out similar statistics for Great Britain, and finds that if the total house rent is added to the rent of farms in the three divisions of the Kingdom the total is $30,000,000 less than is usually spent for drink. Add together the cost of the linen goods, cotton goods, coal, tea, coffee, sugar, milk, butter and cheese and the total is only $45,000,000 in excess of the sum spent in drink. And this is only the direct cost. The indirect expense of drink--the crime and misery entailed, the cost of prisons and almshouses, criminal courts and trials, the loss from idleness, incapacity, blunders, sickness--towers above these figures in colossal magnitude. Counting all these things it may be said of both countries that strong drink costs more than sufficient to supply the personal needs--food, clothing, and homes--of all the people. It is indeed a fearful showing. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. CHARLES DE LONG, Artesia, Miss.--THE PRAIRIE FARMER has the reputation of knowing all about the prairies, north and south, and, therefore, I appeal to it to tell me whether the Japan persimmon will be likely to be hardy in this section, some portions of which is, as you probably know, a prairie country? ANSWER.--The Japan persimmon, Diospyros kaki, is, as we understand it, an evergreen of sub-tropical origin, and will not be likely to fruit satisfactorily far north of the region of the orange. Like the fig, in your latitude, it may stand what frosts you have and, like it, attain considerable growth, but you will seldom get a crop. We know enterprising nurserymen are telling us it will grow and fruit as far north as Washington; but we were told the same story about the eucalyptus, which proved to be no more hardy than the orange. Our authorities for these opinions may be regarded as first-class--no less than LeBon Jardinier, who says it can not be grown and successfully fruited outside the region of the orange. Recently, at a horticultural exhibition at Nice, France, there was a fine show of the kakis contributed by a gardener in the vicinity of Toulon, of which the official report gives this account: "Among the newer exotics were the kakis, of Japan, grown at Toulon. The fruit is about the size of an average apple, a bright, orange-red in color, and the tree is very productive. The Japanese make a great account of it, both as a fruit, when ripe, and as a source for obtaining tannin, in its green state. It appears to accommodate itself remarkably well to the climate of Provence, and especially merits to be introduced into Algeria, where it will even do better in all reasonable probability.". In respect to the appearance of the fruit, it more nearly resembles in shape and size a bell pepper, than an apple, but the color is orange-red, as described. It is pretty sure to cut a great figure among the fruit products of Florida, where its successful cultivation will lend additional attractions to that already seductive State. MRS. SARAH Y. STAPLES, DALLAS, TEXAS.--I do not ask you for a remedy for the roup, with which my fowls have been recently affected; but for a course of treatment to follow to prevent its return? ANSWER--The roup may be brought upon healthy fowls if they are shut up in narrow and unventilated quarters at night, and of days turned out in cold or wet weather. And it will almost certainly follow if they are confined under glass, as they sometimes are in winter, in abandoned green-houses. In the first place, see fowls have a dry and airy roosting place, but where they will be out of a draft or cold currents. Feed once daily in the morning, the following compounded rations. Raw onions one part, pork-cracklins one part, and bread or boiled potatoes one part, chopped tolerably fine, but do not wet the mixture before feeding. If you can substitute a few bits of garlic for twice the measure of onions, it will be all the better for the health of the fowls, but they might taint the taste of the eggs. If fowls are fed this mixture once daily, it don't matter much what the other food is, whether corn or small grain, though for laying mill-screenings or shrunken wheat is best. ASA GRAY, ROCKFORD, ILL.--I have seen it stated the daily rations of the cowboys of the Southwest, in certain sections and during some months, was confined to raw beef, rock salt, and red peppers. How is it? ANSWER.--We don't know. Will someone familiar with cowboys and their manner of living report. However, all things considered, the ration is not a bad one, for the reason that raw beef digests in half the time of beef well cooked, and the large, sweet pepper of the Southwest deprived of its seeds is not near as hot in the mouth as it is commonly represented. R. ROOT, CLARKSVILLE, IOWA. 1. Does the basket willow have to be cultivated like a field crop? 2. Is there more than one kind, and if so which is best? 3. What kind of soil is best adapted to its cultivation? ANSWER.--1. In some respects, yes; the land having to be given over to them exclusively. In France the cuttings are planted from twelve to fifteen inches apart in order to obtain long and slender shoots. 2. There are half a dozen cultivated in Europe, the best two being the Salix rubra or red Osier, and the Salix vitellina or yellow Osier. But a hardier variety, Salix viminalis, is commonly preferred in this country where the cultivation, though often undertaken, has never been very successful, from the fact that American labor can not compete with the labor of women and children in Europe. 3. In cool climates having a moist atmosphere the Osier willow is successfully grown where ordinary crops thrive, but in warmer and drier sections low and moist land must be chosen. Indeed the whole tribe of willows love cool, moist situations, and the richer the soil the stronger and quicker the growth. We should be glad to hear from correspondents who cultivate, or who live where the Osier is grown and prepared for market, the details of the whole industry. B.F.J. WAYSIDE NOTES. BY A MAN OF THE PRAIRIE. I don't know that I really ought to take any credit to myself for it, but I hope I have done something toward increasing the number of farmer correspondents for the hale old PRAIRIE FARMER. I can't help noticing, as I do with pleasure, that the number is increasing. Furthermore, the correspondents all write well, I mean, simply; they seem to have something to say, and say it in a manner that can be readily understood. Their writings are instructive, too. Well, I hope this writing fever, like most others, will prove highly contagious, and have a run through the entire PRAIRIE FARMER family. I know from experience the malady is not a dangerous one. At least it don't do the writers any harm; if the readers can stand what I say, I am satisfied. The editor may boil down our communications, or chop them up and serve them in any style he chooses, so that he presents all the good we mean to say, and we will be satisfied. Will we not, fellow-contributors? * * * * * Rufus Blanchard, for many years a leading map publisher of Chicago, told me the other day, that in 1838 he was farming in Union county, Ohio. That year he grew about 1,000 bushels of oats, some 250 bushels of wheat, and raised 100 hogs. He sold his oats for eleven cents per bushel, his wheat for twenty-five cents, and his hogs for one cent and a quarter per pound. He hauled his grain to Columbus, forty miles, to market, and took his pay in salt. I remarked that this was pretty rough farming. "On the contrary," said he, "in those days we were happy as clams. We had all the pork we wanted without cost, for our hogs fattened themselves on the mast of the woods. We paid by toll for grinding our wheat into flour. The woods supplied us with deer, turkeys, and many other kinds of game. Our clothing was homespun. We had plenty of corn meal and cheaply grown vegetables, and helped each other in sickness or accident. If a neighbor's log house burned down, we all joined together in putting him up a better one than he had before. We had pretty good schools and interesting religious meetings without expensive pew rents or style in dress. We visited each other and had plenty of sound amusement. I never was so happy or so well contented in my life," he added, and I believe him, for his face is wrinkled with care and saddened by misfortune. It don't do, you see, to get too far removed from this simple, natural life. * * * * * I am looking out for a little colder weather. The pond is not yet frozen sufficiently for us to cut ice as we want it. But both my neighbor and myself have gotten all things in readiness for the harvest. I like an open winter pretty well, but I do want ice. * * * * * It seems to me that Dr. Detmers is always going off "half-cocked." He once did the foreign cattle shipping interest great harm by an ill-advised and unwarranted dispatch concerning the prevalence of pleuro-pneumonia at the Chicago Stock Yards, and now I notice that his alleged statements regarding diseased hogs and the disposal of them at the same point have furnished the French Corps Legislatif an excuse for enacting the decree prohibiting the introduction of American pork products into France. Isn't it about time the Department of Agriculture at Washington sat a little down on this man who writes too much with his pen? Not that I would silence any man who sticks to facts, no matter whose soap-bubble he pricks; but a simple alarmist who rushes into print mainly for the pleasure it gives him to see his name in print, and to know that he is talked about, deserves to be squelched. For aught I know, though, Dr. Detmers has been misrepresented by the wily Frenchmen. What has Dr. Loring to say on the subject? * * * * * But, after all, as I think the editor of THE PRAIRIE FARMER himself said some months ago, this foreign agitation of the live stock question may result in great good, inasmuch as it must lead to proper legislation in this country against the introduction and spread of contagious diseases among animals. It is without doubt the basis of the proceedings at the Chicago cattle-growers' convention in November last, and of the present movement for immediate Congressional action upon the matter. The difficulty abroad will, I believe, prove short-lived. LETTER FROM CHAMPAIGN. With the exception of two days, the 22d and 23d, which were stormy and gave us ten to twelve inches of snow, followed by a little sleet and rain, the latter half of December has been as delightful as the first half was, though a good deal colder. The sleighing since the 17th has never been better; and as there is ten inches to a foot of solid snow now lying on the ground, it is likely to last some time longer. The sleet and rain formed a crust an inch and a half thick, and though it is not very strong, it, together with the compact snow, makes getting down to the grass beneath quite out of the question, and stock have to depend on the stalk fields or be fed hay and corn. * * * * * This will make a heavier draft upon the grain and hay in reserve than has been anticipated by those who depend on carrying their stock through mostly on grass, and be sure to lessen the surplus and raise the price of corn, oats, and hay accordingly. Corn in the field is drying out so fast under the influence of the dry, cold weather, stock do not refuse soft corn as they did after the first sharp frost in November and December. It is now seen that it would have been better to have left all the soft and some of the immature corn in the field, than to have husked and cribbed it as many did and lost more than would be believed, if reported, by mould and rot. * * * * * At any rate the fall wheat is safe so long as the present covering of snow lasts, and this more than compensates for the loss of winter pasture. The snow, as near as I can learn, covers all Illinois, except a few counties on the west, and as usual, is quite as heavy in the timbered regions of which Vandalia is near the center, as in Northern Illinois. So far the cold season considerably resembles the winter of 1878-79, and let us hope it will continue to the end, that we may have light snows and many of them, good sleighing and moderate temperature through January and February. * * * * * It has mystified me, as I have do doubt it has many others, why European Governments have had so much to say about trichinæ in the hog, of which we have had scarcely any, and so little of hog cholera, of which we have had a good deal. But the mystery is now cleared up. The sickness and losses from hog cholera, have either by error or intention been reported to the several European Governments as results of almost universal trichiniasis, and they have acted accordingly. That it should be so, seems surprising, but that it is so, we have the proof in the following paragraph from a late number of the Journal D'Agriculteur Pratique. The writer, Dr. Hector George, one of the regular contributors, in a long article opposing rescinding the order prohibiting the importation of American pork products into France, first quotes the report of the Chicago Board of Health, that 8 per cent of hogs slaughtered in Chicago are afflicted with trichinæ, goes on to say: "This per cent, however considerable it may be, is far inferior to the reality if we judge from an official dispatch addressed to Earl Granville by Mr. Crump, English Consul at Philadelphia." in 1880 trichiniasis destroyed 700,000 hogs in Illinois alone. According to an official report by Dr. Detmers to the Government of the United States, the hogs sick or dead from trichiniasis are hurried to the packing houses and are thereafter prepared and immediately sent off to Europe. * * * * * M. Paul Bert, from whom we have recently heard on the same subject and in the same strain, no doubt got his inspiration from the article in the Journal D'Agriculteur Pratique after which he probably read the official report of Dr. Detmers, to whom he refers, and like Dr. George, either did not understand or intentionally misconstrued it for political purposes. Perhaps what Dr. Detmers did report was bad enough and extravagant enough, but it had exclusive reference to hog cholera then prevalent, as any one can satisfy himself who will turn to the reports or the Department of Agriculture for the several years 1879, 1880, and 1881. B.F.J. * * * * * A RECORD OF UNFASHIONABLE CROSSES IN SHORT-HORN CATTLE PEDIGREES; a book of 240 pages; the only work of the kind in existence. Send for a circular. F.P. & O.M. HEALY, Bedford, Taylor Co., Iowa. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * POULTRY NOTES Poultry-Raisers. Write for Your Paper. CHAT WITH CORRESPONDENTS. Notwithstanding the fact that I have repeatedly said I would not answer questions unless they came through THE PRAIRIE FARMER the people who, by ways and means best known to themselves, have managed to obtain my address, keep right on asking questions by mail at a rate that would drive me frantic if anything could. But nothing ever troubles me long at a time, so I take your disregard of my wishes good naturedly, as I take everything else that I can't help, and in the future I will answer all questions whether they come through THE PRAIRIE FARMER or not, sometime. To be sure "sometime" is not very definite, but it is the best I can do. My poultry letters are "too numerous to mention" and it requires no small amount of time to answer them all; but I won't growl about that if you will only be patient and not grumble if you don't get an answer "by return mail," or "in the next paper." All questions of general interest will be answered in these columns as soon as possible, while those that require an immediate answer will be attended to by mail. Poultry raisers who desire information that I can give, and who have not my address, can address THE PRAIRIE FARMER. However, let me ask you not to write except when necessary, and then please put your questions as plainly as possible, and "be as brief as the nature of the subject will permit." And when you are writing to me don't use postal cards. Postal cards are only intended for the briefest of business messages, but lots of people use them for nearly all their correspondence. I know one man who writes love letters on postal cards. Most women and some men manage to make one side of a 5 � 3 inch postal card do duty for four pages of commercial note. They will write up and down and across lots and on the bias until the whole thing is so hopelessly mixed and tangled up that if the mystery of a woman's ways, or the fate of Charlie Ross were solved upon one of these cards all the "experts" in the world could not unravel it. A penny saved may be as good as a penny earned, and I have no objections to your saving it in a legitimate way, but when it comes to saving it at the expense of my time, patience, and eye-sight, I object most decidedly. Hereafter I will not answer postals; I will not even read them. An Iowa woman writes: "If it is true that vaccination prevents chicken cholera, how does it happen that fowls which had the genuine chicken cholera last season took the disease again this season and died from the effects of it? This happened on our place." I have puzzled my brains on the same thing but I am not scientific enough to explain things that I don't know anything about, so I leave that conundrum to be answered by some of the learned people who have the whole theory of chicken cholera at their tongues' end. Several correspondents want to know how to get rid of rats in poultry-houses. One man says that he firmly believes that there are more rats than chickens in his poultry-house, and although he has tried half a dozen different kinds of rat-traps he rarely catches anything in them. I never found rat-traps much good; some of them would catch one or two, but after that the rest of the tribe would fight shy of all such devices for their undoing. A well trained rat terrier proved to be the best rat-trap we ever had on the premises, and for the poultry raiser who likes dogs a good ratter would be a good investment. Or you can use some one of the "exterminators" that may be obtained at the drug stores. Remove your fowls to some other building, prepare the poison according to directions, and place it in the poultry-house. The best kinds to use are those that make the rats thirsty and cause them to die immediately after drinking; water can then be left in the hen house and the dead rats will be found close by. When you have rat poison in the house see that it is properly marked and put out of reach of children and careless hired girls; and always see that all remnants of bait are taken care of. A Nebraska man wants to know why his hens don't lay. Says they are mostly early pullets, have a fairly comfortable poultry house, all the grain they will eat twice a day, and plenty of fresh water at all times. It seems to me that "all the grain they will eat twice a day" is rather overdoing the grain business. Have some of that grain ground, mix with boiled vegetables and feed warm every morning; also give green food and raw bone, and my word for it your hens will soon "lay like sixty." FANNY FIELD. FEATHER ENDS. Plymouth Rock pullets are not always early layers, for they often grow for ten or twelve months before laying, though some say as early as six months after being hatched. The best plan the keep Plymouth Rocks is to get the pullets hatched as early as possible. April is as late as should be desired, but a Plymouth Rock cock crossed on common hens will produce pullets that may be hatched later. N.Y. Times: A poultry-house should be large enough to be airy, but if it is kept strictly clean and sweet it will do no harm to be somewhat crowded. A house 24 feet long, 10 feet wide, 5 feet high behind and 8 feet in front, and having four roosting poles, all on a level and only a foot from the floor, will hold 60 to 80 fowls. This manner of arranging the roosts prevents a good deal of quarreling to get on the top perch. Poultry-rearing for export appears to be largely on the increase in Germany; and Rummelsburg, near Berlin, boasts of the largest goose market probably in the world. There arrive daily at that station on an average forty cars with geese and ducks. Every car contains about 1,500, thus making about 400,000 birds shipped every week, or an annual total of 20,000,000. The largest portion of these birds are reared and fattened in the surrounding provinces, and thence dispatched to all parts of Germany, England, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and other European countries. Farmers' Call: Turkeys do not require as warm quarters in winter as do other fowls. They will rest on a cherry tree when the mercury is frozen solid in the thermometer bulb, and then fly down in the morning and wade through the snow to cool off. This is a hint to the turkey raiser. Do not confine the turkeys in quarters too warm and close, and be sure that they have three or four hours' exercise each day in the open air. The turkey is really a hardy fowl and easily wintered if you do not pet it too much. Be a little unkind to it in cold weather. About all the shelter they will need is a wind-break. Give them plenty of highly nutritious food. Mr. Harrison Weir writes: "What the farmers should do is this--they should produce their poultry of the finest quality, poultry of the stamp of the old Dorking--plump birds, thick-skinned birds, small-boned birds, and birds with little offal--fat them well, truss them well, and send them to market. The white-legged beauties would take the highest price, and, if well seen to, would very soon drive the foreign fowls from our markets, and English gold would gladden the home of the English henwife. I may mention that a neighboring farmer intends rearing 3,000 chickens next spring, all to be off his ground before the beginning of May, when the cattle will come out. He expects to get 75c. a head, and I believe he will, and it will pay him if he does." Poultry houses should be whitewashed inside and out. For the inside we add two tablespoonfuls of carbolic acid or a pound of sulphur to a pailful of the wash (to kill vermin); do not be afraid of putting on too much, but apply the wash to every corner and crevice in the building. If you have plank floors, clean them off nicely and put on three or four inches of fresh earth. Dirt floors should be dug up the depth of one foot. Wash your windows (if you have any in your house, and if not you ought to have them), so that the fowls can see daylight, and in bad weather they will enjoy the confinement of the poultry houses much better. Wash off the roosts with kerosene oil at least once a week. Take every nest box and wash inside and out, and put in clean straw, sprinkling upon it some sulphur or loose tobacco. Observe these rules, and your fowls will do better and keep healthier. We find this good advice floating about and do not know its source. The hints are worth remembering. * * * * * THE THROAT.--"_Brown's Bronchial Troches_" act directly on the organs of the voice. They have an extraordinary effect in all disorders of the throat. * * * * * THE APIARY [Illustration] KEEP BEES. The beginning of the new year is a general time of settling accounts and making resolutions for the future. The head of many a family is overcast with gloom as he ascertains the true state of his affairs, and perceives how little he has to show from the past year of toil. His family may have been industrious in a general way, and yet been consumers only, and not producers. We knew a farmer's family where there were three daughters just budding into womanhood. On inquiring of the mother what she had to sell to clothe her daughters with, she answered, Not a thing. Have you no butter, eggs, fowls, honey, or bees-wax to sell from this good farm? No, nothing. These girls were not idle! Oh no. They pounded the organ, and the result was music as sweet as filing a saw; crocheted, darned lace, and helped mother. When their father went to town they asked him to bring them a pair of shoes, a bustle, or a necktie, with no thought or care. And all the while the neighbors said "he was hard run." There are few farmers' families that are so situated that they can not care for a few colonies of bees. They not only need the sweets they gather, but these industrious insects help to fertilize the bloom of their orchards and meadows. Nature has appointed this insect, and it alone, to do this work for her. Honey can be used in many ways as a substitute for sugar--in canning fruit, making cookies, and for other culinary purposes. We would advise all those contemplating bee-keeping to start on a small scale, if they have had no previous training. Two colonies are plenty, and then let their knowledge increase in the same ratio as do their bees. The next thing in order, after purchasing bees, should be a good standard work on apiculture; and study it well. A person should be full of theory, and then they are ready for practice. Those who are energetic, willing to work, intelligent and willing, eager to learn, observing, persevering, and attentive to their work, will rarely ever fail in apiculture. We have heard farmers say that bees will not flourish with the same care given to other farm stock, and that they have not time to attend to them. We would recommend to all such to try the experiment of procuring a colony or two of beautiful Italians, in some good movable frame hive, and present them to the family, with abundance of bee literature, and see if they are not taken care of, especially if the almighty dollar puts in an appearance. MRS. L. HARRISON. THE NEW BEES. Prof. Cook, at the late Michigan Convention of Bee-keepers, spoke in this wise on the topic of the New Bees: "I have had no experience with the Cyprian bees, but I think more and more of the Syrian. I find no trouble to handle them, and take my large class of students, new to the business, right into the apiary. These thirty or forty students daily manipulate the bees, doing everything that the bee-keeper ever needs to do, and rarely ever get stung. I find that the comb honey of the Syrians is excellent, that the bees go readily into the sections. We did not get all our sections so that they could be crated without the use of the separators; but I am not sure but that it was more our fault than the fault of the bees. They are very prolific, breeding even when there is no nectar to gather, and they often gather when other bees are idle. I have this fall secured from Mr. Frank Benton a Carniolan queen, and shall try crossing the Carniolans with the Syrians. Perhaps we can thus secure a strain with the amiability of the Carniolan, and the business of the Syrians." HIVE AND HONEY HINTS. Mr. Willingford, of Carlingford, Ontario, who had a crop of several tons of honey this year, has taken it to England for sale. Manufacturers of tobacco, of pickles, of cakes and cookies, confectioners, and pork-packers are now using honey more extensively than ever in the preparation of their specialties. A singular instance of bee-swarming occurred a short time ago in Singapore harbor, on board the British steamer Antonio, which at the time was lying entirely outside the shipping in the roads. A swarm of wild bees from the shore suddenly located themselves directly under the sternpost of a boat lying above the deck, and all attempts to drive them away proved unavailing, the chief officer being very severely stung in endeavoring to get rid of them. They held to their position for several days, and were eventually destroyed after the steamer had hauled alongside the wharf. Rev. L.L. Langstroth recently said: When I commenced bee-keeping, a sting caused much swelling, but in time this trouble passed away. Several years passed, during which I handled no bees, and when I again attempted it, I found myself more susceptible to the poison than ever, but by continuing to work with the bees, disregarding the stings, my former indifference returned. Ohio bee-keepers will discuss the following questions at the Columbus meeting on the 14-16: How to winter bees successfully. How many brood-frames are necessary in one hive? What can be done to prevent adulteration of honey? How to create a home market for honey. How many colonies can be kept in one locality? Can we do without separators? What shall we do with second swarms? Which is the most salable section--one-half, one, or two pounds? Which are best--deep or shallow frames? Is it advisable to have a standard-size frame for all bee-keepers? Many are inquiring the proper way to let bees out on shares, so as to have both parties satisfied. I do not know any such way, for the most I have known in regard to letting bees out on shares resulted in both parties being dissatisfied. But it all depends on what the agreement is; and perhaps you had better have it down in writing. One case I have recently heard of, the agreement was to divide the profits. Well, it so happened that there was no profit, but there was a pretty big loss; and as no provision had been made for this state of affairs, each one felt disposed to put the loss on to the shoulders of the other. I decided it would be about fair to divide the loss; but very likely circumstances might make this not the right way after all. So says the editor of Gleanings. It strikes us that he is all right, but if he had said to bee-keepers "use the same common sense as to contracts that people do in other kinds of business," he would have covered the whole ground. * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION ONE YEAR, $3 FOR THE TWO. It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB. CO., 150 Monroe Street, Chicago. * * * * * RAILROADS. [Illustration] A MAN WHO IS UNACQUAINTED WITH THE GEOGRAPHY OF THIS COUNTRY WILL SEE BY EXAMINING THIS MAP THAT THE CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND & PACIFIC R'Y By the central position of its line, connects the East and the West by the shortest route, and carries passengers, without change of cars, between Chicago and Kansas City, Council Bluffs, Leavenworth, Atchison, Minneapolis and St. Paul. It connects in Union Depots with all the principal lines of road between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Its equipment is unrivaled and magnificent, being composed of Most Comfortable and Beautiful Day Coaches, Magnificent Horton Reclining Chair Cars, Pullman's Prettiest Palace Sleeping Cars, and the Best Line of Dining Cars in the World. Three Trains between Chicago and Missouri River Points. Two Trains between Chicago and Minneapolis and St. Paul, via the Famous "ALBERT LEA ROUTE." A New and Direct Line, via Seneca and Kankakee, has recently been opened between Richmond Norfolk, Newport News, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Augusta, Nashville, Louisville, Lexington, Cincinnati Indianapolis and Lafayette, and Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Paul and intermediate points. All Through Passengers Travel on Fast Express Trains. Tickets for sale at all principal Ticket Offices in the United States and Canada. Baggage checked through and rates of fare always as low as competitors that offer less advantages. For detailed information, get the Maps and Folders of the GREAT ROCK ISLAND ROUTE, At your nearest Ticket Office, or address R.R. CABLE, Vice-Pres. & Gen'l M'g'r, E. ST. JOHN, Gen'l Tkt. & Pass. Agt. CHICAGO. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885: For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * SILK CULTURE. WOMEN IN SILK CULTURE. The feminine portion of our population is getting to be mighty independent. Instead of waiting, Micawber-like, for something (a man) to turn up they are going to work to turn it up themselves. They would rather make a living for themselves than have a man to make it for them. They are teaching schools, operating telegraph instruments and telephones, clerking, keeping books of account, type-writing, doing short-hand reporting, lecturing, preaching, practicing law, and some have so far fallen from grace as to be editing papers. But many of these occupations present closed doors to our country girls and women. Many of these can not leave their country homes, and these occupations, with the exception of school teaching, can not be carried on in the country. Others, who could leave home, are chary of braving the wiles and temptations of the city, and their friends are still more loth to have them go. The great need is some work, light, respectable, and yet fairly remunerative, which our country lassies can carry on at home. School teaching is possible, but teaching country district schools is the most thankless of all drudgery, and, besides, a majority of our young women are not able to endure the worry and close confinement. If it can be made successful, sericulture offers by far the best opportunity to country girls to earn their own pin money, or even their own living. It can be engaged in at home; it is light, pleasant, and interesting work; and there is no doubt that American silk can be produced of such a quality that there will be a brisk demand for it at good prices. But if all this be true the question at once presents itself, Why have not American women engaged largely in sericulture? The answer is that they have been appalled at the very outset by the alleged expense of the undertaking. The promoters of the enterprise took to writing books. There was an excuse for this amounting almost to a necessity. To engage in silk culture, a person must be possessed of some special knowledge. It is no harder than poultry or bee-keeping, but a person to succeed at these must have some expert knowledge, and as sericulture was a new thing, beginners must have books containing what they needed. But these authors made the business much more difficult and expensive than it should be. First of all, they laid it down as one of the Medes and Persian laws of sericulture, that the worms must have mulberry leaves to subsist upon. Mulberry sprouts are costly to begin with; then the trees must grow at least two years, and should grow five years, before the leaves are used. This, of itself, was enough to deter but a very few from silk culture. But they made it appear, also, that very expensive appliances for a cocoonery were necessary, and only the most costly breeds of worms should be used, entailing greater expense and difficulty. The books were, and for that matter are, filled with dry scientific details of the internal construction of the worm and of its habits--details which only confused the learner and which, though giving an author material from which to deduce rules of instruction, should have been omitted from the book and their place supplied with the rules deduced. In short, it seemed to be the prime object to make sericulture as hard and forbidding as possible, and to deter the people from it rather than to induce them to engage in the work. For this very reason there has been considerable popular indifference to it, and from the agricultural press it has not received that attention which so promising an industry deserves. I would not be so unjust as to leave the reader to infer that all authors on sericulture have been thus guilty. There have been some very few who from the very start have presented it in as easy and practicable a light as was consistent with successful work. Nor would I be ready to assert that those who have said it could not be made financially profitable without mulberry groves, fancy priced worms, and expensive appliances, have done so from base motives. Yet it would appear as if not a few could be justly indicted of this; for they have mulberry sprouts, fancy priced worms, and costly appliances to sell. And perhaps it occurred to them that if they deterred the people generally from taking hold of it, they would have less opposition and competition. But be this as it may, the fact is that it is not necessary to have mulberry groves, costly appliances, or even fancy priced worms (though good worms only should be reared), in order to profitably engage in sericulture. I know of no business presenting so promising an opening that requires less capital. And I say this, having no axe to grind in any way, simply for the sake of those girls and women who might make money by it, and who would do so if they only knew the facts. I have no book, no sprouts, no worms, nothing whatever, to sell. I have said that the leaves of the mulberry are not essential to silk growing. If this be true the greatest obstacle in the way of sericulture becoming a great national industry will have been removed. And that it is true is proven by the experience of not a few practical silk-growers. Without exception those who have tested the matter say that the leaves of the Osage-orange are equal to those of the mulberry, and some say they are better. My position brings me into correspondence with the leading specialists in agricultural pursuits, and among others with many practical silk-growers. To-day I received letters from three silk-growers, one in Illinois, one in Kansas, and one in California. Each had fed the leaves of the Osage-orange exclusively for the last two years, and with the best results. One said there was no doubt that they were at least equal to the leaves of the mulberry, and the other two pronounced them superior. One of our best authorities on sericulture, Prof. Barricelli, has shown by means of chemical analyses and other scientific data, that as nourishment for silk-worms the Osage is superior to the mulberry. In fact, nine-tenths of the practical silk-growers of the West, those who are making it not only practicable but profitable, are now feeding Osage leaves exclusively. This should be known by the people at large. There can be no monopoly of the Osage-orange. No one can demand of the expectant silk culturist exorbitant prices for Osage sprouts. In very few localities will it be necessary to plant the Osage even. We have an abundance of Osage hedges, particularly in the West. In such localities the silk culturist will be at no expense whatever for food for the worms, and will not be under even the necessity of waiting a couple of years for it to grow. When this is more fully understood by the girls and women of the country, we may expect silk culture to assume the importance of a profitable national industry. JOHN M. STAHL. * * * * * MEDICAL. Weak Nervous Men [Illustration:] Whose DEBILITY, EXHAUSTED POWERS, premature decay and failure to perform LIFE'S DUTIES properly are caused by excesses, errors of youth, etc., will find a perfect and lasting restoration to ROBUST HEALTH and VIGOROUS MANHOOD in THE MARSTON BOLUS. Neither stomach drugging nor instruments. This treatment of NERVOUS DEBILITY and PHYSICAL DECAY is uniformly successful because based on perfect diagnosis, NEW AND DIRECT METHODS and absolute THOROUGHNESS. Full information and Treatise free. Address Consulting Physician of MARSTON REMEDY CO., 46W. 14th St., New York. * * * * * TWO LADIES MET ONE DAY. One said to the other "By the way how is that Catarrh of yours?" "Why it's simply horrid, getting worse every day." "Well, why don't you try 'DR. SYKES' SURE CURE,' I know it will cure you!" "Well, then I will, for I've tried everything else." Just six weeks afterward they met again and No. 1 said. "Why, how much better you look, what's up! Going to get married, or what?" "Well, yes, and it's all owing to 'DR. SYKES' SURE CURE FOR CATARRH;' oh, why didn't I know of it before? it's simply wonderful." Send 10 cents to Dr. C.R. Sykes, 181 Monroe street, Chicago, for valuable book of full information, and mention the "Two Ladies." * * * * * 30 DAYS' TRIAL DR. DYE'S [Illustration] ELECTRO VOLTAIC BELT, and other ELECTRIC APPLIANCES. We will send on Thirty Days' Trial, TO MEN, YOUNG OR OLD, who are suffering from NERVOUS DEBILITY, LOST VITALITY, and those diseases of a PERSONAL NATURE resulting from ABUSES and OTHER CAUSES. Speedy relief and complete restoration to HEALTH, VIGOR and MANHOOD GUARANTEED. Send at once for Illustrated Pamphlet free. Address VOLTAIC BELT CO., MARSHALL, MICH. * * * * * CONSUMPTION. I have a positive remedy for the above disease; by its use thousands of cases of the worst kind and of long standing have been cured. In deed, so strong is my faith in its efficacy, that I will send TWO BOTTLES FREE, together with a VALUABLE TREATISE on this disease, to any sufferer. Give Express & P.O. address. DR. T.A. SLOCUM, 181 Pearl St., N.Y. * * * * * PUBLICATIONS THE YOUTH'S COMPANION FOR 1884. THE COMPANION presents below the Announcement of its Fifty-Seventh Volume. Its unusual character, both in the range of its topics, and its remarkably brilliant list of Contributors, will, we trust, be accepted as a grateful recognition of the favor with which the paper has been received by more than 300,000 subscribers. * * * * * Illustrated Serial Stories. A Story of English Rustic Life, by Thomas Hardy. The Foundling of Paris, by Alphonse Daudet. A Boys' Story, by J.T. Trowbridge. The Covenanter's Daughter, by Mrs. Oliphant. A Story of Adventure, by C.A. Stephens. My School at Orange Grove, by Marie B. Williams. * * * * * Science and Natural History. Eccentricities of Insanity, by Dr. W.A. Butler. Common Adulterations of Food, by Dr. J.C. Draper. The Home Life of Oysters, and other Natural History Papers, by Arabella B. Buckley. Wonders in Ourselves; or the Curiosities of the Human Body, by Dr. Austin Flint, Jr. Insect Enemies of the Garden, the Orchard and the Wheat-Field, by A.S. Packard, Jr. Demons of the Air and Water. A fascinating Series of Papers on Sanitary Science, by R. Ogden Doremus. The Youth Of the Brain, "Speech in Man," "Animal Poisons and their Effects," and Other Papers, by Dr. W.A. Hammond. Strange Ways Of Curing People. A Description of Curious Sanitaria,--the Peat, Mud, Sand, Whey, and Grape Cures, by William H. Rideing. * * * * * Encouragement and Advice. Hints for Poor Farmers, by C.E. Winder. The Failures of Great Men, by James Parton. A Dietary for Nervous People, by Dr. W.A. Hammond. Hints for Country House-Builders, by Calvert Vaux. The Gift Of Memory, and Other Papers, giving Instances of Self-Help, by Samuel Smiles. A New Profession for Young Men. The Opportunities for Young Men as Electrical Engineers, by Thomas A. Edison. At the Age Of Twenty-One. A Series of Papers showing what Great Men had accomplished, and what they proposed doing, at that period of their lives, by Edwin P. Whipple. * * * * * Original Poems. BY ALFRED TENNYSON, VICTOR HUGO, THE EARL OF LYTTON, J.C. WHITTIER, T.B. ALDRICH, DR. CHARLES MACKAY, And Many Others. * * * * * Illustrated Adventure and Travel. Shark-Hunting, by T.B. Luce. Four Amusing Stories, by C.A. Stephens. Outwitted. An Indian Adventure, by Lieut. A. Chapin. A Honeymoon in the Jungle, by Phil. Robinson. Wrecked Upon a Volcanic Island, by Richard Heath. Stories of the Cabins in the West, by E.J. Marston. Adventures in the Mining Districts, by H. Fillmore. The Capture of Some Infernal Machines, by William Howson. Breaking in the Reindeer, and Other Sketches of Polar Adventure, by W.H. Gilder. An American in Persia, by the American Minister Resident, Teheran, S.G.W. Benjamin. China as Seen by a Chinaman, by the Editor of the Chinese American, Wong Chin Foo. Stories Of Menageries. Incidents connected with Menagerie Life, and the Capture and Taming of Wild Beasts for Exhibition, by S.S. Cairns. Boys Afoot in Italy and Switzerland. The Adventures of two English boys travelling abroad at an expense of one dollar a day, by Nugent Robinson. * * * * * Reminiscences and Anecdotes. Stage-Driver Stories, by Rose Terry Cooke. Stories of Saddle-Bag Preachers, by H.L. Winckley. My First Visit to a Newspaper Office, by Murat Halstead. Queen Victoria's Household and Drawing-Rooms, by H.W. Lucy. Child Friendships of Charles Dickens, by his Daughter, Mamie Dickens. Our Herbariums; Adventures in Collecting Them, by A Young Lady. My Pine-Apple Farm, with incidents of Florida Life, by C.H. Pattee. Bigwigs of the English Bench and Bar, by a London Barrister, W.L. Woodroffe. At School with Sir Garnet Wolseley, and the Life of a Page of Honor in the Vice-Regal Court of Dublin, by Nugent Robinson. Student Waiters. Some Humorous Incidents of a Summer Vacation in the White Mountains, by Child McPherson. * * * * * THE EDITORIALS OF THE COMPANION, without having any bias, will give clear views of current events at home and abroad. THE CHILDREN'S PAGE will sustain its reputation for charming pictures, poems, and stories for the little ones. ISSUED WEEKLY. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, $1.75. SPECIMEN COPIES FREE. SPECIAL OFFER.--To any one who subscribes now, and sends us $1.75, we will send the Companion free to January 1st, 1884, and a full year's subscription from that date. Address, PERRY MASON & CO., 41 TEMPLE PLACE, BOSTON, MASS. _Please mention where you read this Advertisement._ * * * * * HOUSEHOLD. For nothing lovelier can be found In woman than to study _household_ good.--_Milton._ THE SCHOOL-MARM'S STORY. A frosty chill was in the air-- How plainly I remember-- The bright autumnal fires had paled, Save here and there an ember; The sky looked hard, the hills were bare, And there were tokens everywhere That it had come--November. I locked the time-worn school-house door, The village seat of learning. Across the smooth, well trodden path My homeward footstep turning; My heart a troubled question bore, And in my mind, as oft before, A vexing thought was burning. "Why is it up hill all the way?" Thus ran my meditations: The lessons had gone wrong that day And I had lost my patience. "Is there no way to soften care, And make it easier to bear Life's sorrows and vexations?" Across my pathway through the wood A fallen tree was lying; On this there sat two little girls, And one of them was crying. I heard her sob: "And if I could, I'd get my lessons awful good, But what's the use of trying?" And then the little hooded head Sank on the other's shoulder. The little weeper sought the arms That opened to enfold her. Against the young heart, kind and true, She nestled close, and neither knew That I was a beholder. And then I heard--ah! ne'er was known Such judgment without malice, Nor queenlier council ever heard In senate, house or palace!-- "I should have failed there, I am sure, Don't be discouraged; try once more, And I will help you, Alice." "And I will help you." This is how To soften care and grieving; Life is made easier to bear By helping and by giving. Here was the answer I had sought, And I, the teacher, being taught The secret of true living. If "I will help you" were the rule. How changed beyond all measure Life would become! Each heavy load Would be a golden treasure; Pain and vexation be forgot; Hope would prevail in every lot, And life be only pleasure. --_Wolstan Dixey._ A CHAT ABOUT THE FASHIONS. Although the lady readers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER have probably by this time made up the heavier part of their winter wardrobe, still a few suggestions may not be out of place, for the "fashions" is a subject of which we seldom tire. In discussing the subject of silk and silk-culture at the late Woman's Congress, Mrs Julia Ward Howe said that "although silk is said to be depreciating in value, and is not quite as popular as formerly, yet we must confess it lies very near the feminine heart," at which statement an audible smile passed over the audience, as each one acknowledged to herself its truth. We are glad to see that wrappers are becoming quite "the thing" for afternoon home wear, and a lady now need not feel at all out of place receiving her callers in a pretty, gracefully made wrapper. The Watteau wrapper is made of either silk or brocaded woolen goods, conveniently short, the back cut square at the neck, and folded in a handsome Watteau plait at the center, with a full ruche effect. A yolk portion of silk fills in the open neck and is sewed flatly underneath to the back. The side seams are curved so that a clinging effect is produced at the sides. Jabbots of lace extending down the front, and a prettily bowed ribbon at the right shoulder, with a standing collar at the neck, and a linen choker collar give the finishing touches to the toilette. Velvets and velveteens seem to be taking the place of silk, and are really quite as cheap. In fact, velveteens are cheaper, as they are so much wider. A suit of velveteen is fashionable for any occasion--for receptions, church or street costume. The redingote or polonaise is very stylish and pretty, especially for a tall, rather slight person. For a young miss the close-fitting frock coat, with pointed vest effectively disclosed between the cut-away edges of the coat fronts, is much worn. The latter curve away from the shoulders and are nicely rounded off at their lower front corners. An underarm dart gives a smooth adjustment over each hip, and in these darts are inserted the back edges of the vest. Buttons and buttonholes close the vest, but the coat fronts do not meet at all. The coat and long-pointed overskirt can be made of any heavy material, but the vest should be of silk; a deep box-plait on the bottom of the underskirt made of silk to match the vest will make the suit very stylish and pretty. There ought to be great satisfaction among the wearers of bonnets and hats this season, because they can so easily have what they want--big or little, plain or decorated, as they please. For a person with dark hair, gold braid loosely put around the edge of a velvet capote is very becoming. Bunches of tips are worn much more than the long, drooping plumes, though both are fashionable; while birds--sometimes as many as three on a hat--are often preferred to either. We notice upon the street a great many elegantly dressed ladies with but a single band of wide velvet ribbon fastened somewhat carelessly around the bonnet and tied in a bow under the chin. Unique it may be, but undoubtedly the taste of the wearer, would be the verdict of the passer by. In fact, one can scarcely be out of the fashion in the choice of a bonnet or hat, but care should be taken that it be just the thing for the wearer, and that it be properly put on. I firmly believe in the doctrine that "good clothes tendeth toward grace." What woman can not talk better when she knows she looks well? She can then forget herself and lose all self-consciousness, which is a state most devoutly to be desired by all women--particularly our young women. So, girls, study your costumes, especially the "superfluities," or "furbelows," as they are wont to be called; make yourselves look as pretty as you possibly can--and then forget yourselves. I wish all our lady readers might have been here the holiday week, for the stores were perfect bowers of beauty. It was a pretty sight in itself to watch the crowds of happy-faced children, with their little pocket-books in their hands, at the various counters buying presents for father, mother, brothers, and sisters. Children always enjoy Christmas more when they can make, as well as receive, presents. So I hope all our little readers were made happy by both giving and receiving. I am sorry I could not give you a more satisfactory talk on the fashions, but our space is limited this week. I hope the ladies will not forget that our "Household" department is open to them, and that they will contribute anything that may be of interest to the others. MARY HOWE. A KITCHEN SILO. The farmer's wife in the Netherlands has long been using a sort of a silo. Probably she had been doing so for long years before M. Geoffrey began experimenting with preserved stock food in France. The Netherland housewife's silo consists of an earthenware jar about two feet tall. Into one of these jars in summer time she places the kidney bean; in another shelled green peas; in another broad beans, and so on. Making a layer about six inches deep in each. She sprinkles a little salt on top and presses the whole firmly down. Then she adds another layer and more salt. She leaves a light weight on top to keep all well pressed down and exclude the air, in the intervals between pickings for often the harvest of a single day will not fill the jar. When full, she puts on a heavier weight, and covers all with brown paper. She thus has green vegetables preserved for winter. The ensilage is said to be "more or less good, according to taste." * * * * * CHICKEN SALAD: Two common sized fowls, one teacup of good salad oil, half a jar of French sweet mustard, the hard-boiled yolks of ten eggs, half a pint of vinegar, one teaspoonful of cayenne pepper, eight heads of celery, one teaspoon of salt or a little more if required. Cut and mix the chicken and celery and set away in a cool place. Mash the eggs to a paste with the oil, then add the vinegar and other things, mix thoroughly, but do not pour it over the salad until about half an hour before serving, as the celery may become wilted. * * * * * SOFT GINGERBREAD: One cup butter and two cups sugar well worked together, three eggs well beaten in, one cup New Orleans molasses, one cup good sweet milk and five cups of flour into which has been stirred one teaspoonful baking powder, not heaped, two tablespoonfuls ground cinnamon and one tablespoonful ground ginger. Bake in small dripping pans not too full, as they will rise. * * * * * Mixture of two parts of glycerine, one part ammonia, and a little rose water whitens and softens the hands. * * * * * OUR BOOKS. BOOKS FREE! Good books are valued by intelligent men and women more than silver and gold. They are treasures in every home. They are to the mind what light and heat are to plants. They _STORE THE MIND WITH USEFUL KNOWLEDGE_; the mind directs the hands. An intelligent man has an advantage over one who is ignorant, whether he is a farmer, or mechanic, or merchant, and is surer of success in his occupation. Think how _LOSSES OF TIME AND MONEY MAY BE SAVED_ by having some book at hand containing just the information desired in some line of the rural industries. We offer an excellent opportunity for any one to obtain BOOKS FREE for himself or family, and also for societies, farmers' clubs, and associations to make additions to a library, or to start one. These books comprise standard works, and the latest and best books for Farmers, Stockmen, Dairymen, Fruit-Growers, Gardeners, Florists, Poultrymen, Apiarists, Silk-Culturists, Housekeepers, Architects, Etc., Etc. THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY will give to any person, association, or club, who will obtain and send subscribers to THE PRAIRIE FARMER (including both new subscribers and renewals), at the regular price of the paper ($2) each, any of the books contained in our Book List on the following terms: For THREE subscribers, books to the amount of $1.50. For FOUR subscribers, books to the amount of $2.00. For FIVE subscribers, books to the amount of $2.50. For SIX subscribers, books to the amount of $3.00. For SEVEN subscribers, books to the amount of $3.50. For EIGHT subscribers, books to the amount of $4.00 For TEN subscribers, books to the amount of $5.00. _FOR TWELVE SUBSCRIPTIONS AND UPWARD_, A DOLLAR'S WORTH OF BOOKS FOR EVERY TWO SUBSCRIPTIONS SENT AT $2.00 EACH. All books given under these offers will be delivered at our office, No. 150 Monroe street. If it is desired that they shall be forwarded by express, they will be packed and delivered at the express office by us, the receiver to pay cost of carriage. Sent by mail to any part of the United States or Canada, the postage will be seven cents on each dollar's worth of books. It is necessary that parties to whom the books are given shall remit us the postage before the books are sent. * * * * * A Dictionary Free! This is no catchpenny affair, but a valuable lexicon. It is the popular AMERICAN DICTIONARY, on the basis of Webster, Worcester, Johnson, and other eminent American and English authorities. It contains over 32,000 words, with accurate definitions, proper spelling, and exact pronunciation; to which is added a mass of valuable information. It is enriched with 400 illustrations. REMEMBER, every subscriber at the regular price of THE PRAIRIE FARMER gets this Dictionary FREE, if preferred to our commercial map. * * * * * HERE IS ANOTHER. ROPP'S CALCULATOR And Account Book for 1884. This is the most useful thing in the way of a memorandum book and calculator ever issued. It is a work of nearly 80 pages of printed matter and an equal number of blank leaves, ruled, for keeping accounts. The contents include a vast array of practical calculations, 100,000 or more in number, arranged for reference like a dictionary, so that a farmer or business man may turn to the figures, and find the answer to any problem in business. There are three kinds. We use No. 3. Full leather; assorted colors, with flap, slate pocket, and a renewable account book, ruled with divisions or headings especially adapted to farmers' use. The retail price of this book in leather is $1. We will send it FREE to every subscriber to THE PRAIRIE FARMER who sends us $2. Or we will send THREE copies of No. 1, the cheaper issue. * * * * * AND YET ANOTHER. AMERICAN ETIQUETTE AND RULES OF POLITENESS. It is the latest and best standard work recommended and endorsed by all who have read it. The acknowledged authority. Beautifully and appropriately illustrated; handsomely and substantially bound. It contains 38 chapters, treating on all subjects relating to etiquette. We send this book--plain edition, to any subscriber desiring it who sends $2.00 for THE PRAIRIE FARMER year, or for two subscribers to THE PRAIRIE FARMER at $2 each, we will send American Etiquette bound in English cloth, burnished edges. Our large and varied premium list will be issued in a few days. Send for it. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. TO PRESERVE THE HEALTH Use the Magneton Appliance Co.'s MAGNETIC LUNG PROTECTOR! PRICE ONLY $5. They are priceless to LADIES, GENTLEMEN, and CHILDREN with WEAK LUNGS; no case of PNEUMONIA OR CROUP is ever known where these garments are worn. 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Go to your druggist and ask for them. If they have not got them, write to the proprietors, enclosing the price, in letter at our risk, and they will be sent to you at once by mail, post paid. Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical Treatment WITHOUT MEDICINE," with thousands of testimonials, THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 State Street, Chicago, Ill. NOTE.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our Magnetic Appliances. Positively _no cold feet where they are worn, or money refunded._ * * * * * CLUB RATES. To Our Readers. THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the OLDEST, MOST RELIABLE, and the LEADING AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST, devoted exclusively to the interests of the Farmer, Gardener, Florist, Stock Breeder, Dairyman, Etc., and every species of Industry connected with that great portion of the People of the World, the Producers. Now in the Forty-Second Year of its existence, and never, during more than two score years, having missed the regular visit to its patrons, it will continue to maintain supremacy as a STANDARD AUTHORITY ON MATTERS PERTAINING TO AGRICULTURE AND KINDRED PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRIES, and as a FRESH AND READABLE FAMILY AND FIRESIDE JOURNAL. It will from time to time add new features of interest, securing for each department the ablest writers of practical experience. THE PRAIRIE FARMER will discuss, without fear or favor, all topics of interest properly belonging to a Farm and Fireside Paper, treat of the most approved practices in AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, BREEDING, ETC.; the varied Machinery, Implements, and improvements in same, for use both in Field and House; and, in fact, everything of interest to the Agricultural community, whether in FIELD, MARKET, OR HOME CIRCLE. IT WILL GIVE INFORMATION UPON THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, WESTERN SOILS, CLIMATE, ETC.; ANSWER INQUIRIES on all manner of subjects which come within its sphere; GIVE each week, full and RELIABLE MARKET, CROP, AND WEATHER REPORTS; PRESENT the family with choice and INTERESTING LITERATURE; amuse and INSTRUCT THE YOUNG FOLKS: AND, in a word, aim to be, in every respect, AN INDISPENSABLE AND UNEXCEPTIONABLE FARM and fireside COMPANION. Terms of Subscription and 'Club Rates': ONE COPY, 1 YEAR, postage paid $ 2.00 TWO COPIES, " " " 3.75 FIVE " " sent at one time 8.75 TEN " " sent at one time, and one to Club getter 16.00 TWENTY " " sent at one time, and one to Club getter 30.00 Address The Prairie Farmer Publishing Co., Chicago. Ill. * * * * * SELF CURE FREE Nervous Lost Weakness Debility Manhood and Decay A favorite prescription of a noted specialist (now retired.) Druggists can fill it. Address DR. WARD & CO., LOUISIANA, MO. * * * * * OUR YOUNG FOLKS A TALK ABOUT THE LION. We wonder how many of THE PRAIRIE FARMER boys and girls have seen the lion, "king of beasts," as he is called. Perhaps not all of you as yet, though many of you doubtless will as the years roll on--and, by the way, you will find that the older you grow the more quickly will they speed away. So be careful in this, the beautiful springtime of your lives, to so cultivate and make ready the garden of your minds that the coming manhood and womanhood may not only find you with well developed arms and limbs and muscles, ready to face the world and to help lift some of its burdens, but also with a mind that has kept even pace with the body--because of constant _growth_. We think we will have to depart from our usual natural history articles some day, and have a talk with the boys and girls on this subject of growth--growth in its largest, broadest sense, the mind, soul, and body all growing together into the stature of a perfect man. But to return to the lion. This animal is the largest of the cat family and is found, only in Asia and Africa. The Asiatic lion is not so large nor so fierce as the African, and has a much smaller mane. The mane of the African lion is long and thick, and gives the animal a very noble appearance; the female, however, has no mane. The lion is always of one color, that is, without spots or stripes, generally tawny, though the mane is dark sometimes nearly black. The lion gets its full growth when seven or eight years old, and lives usually about twenty-five years, though some have been known to live much longer in menageries. These animals see much better in the night than in the day, so they generally hide away during the day and search for food in the gray dawn of the morning. They feed chiefly on antelopes, zebras, giraffes, and wild cattle. It is said that the lion rarely attacks man, only in cases of extreme hunger; indeed, they seem somewhat afraid of man. Dr. Livingstone says that when the lion meets a man in daylight it will stop two or three seconds to stare at him, then turn slowly round and walk off a few steps, looking over its shoulder, then begin to trot, and when at last he thinks he is no longer seen will bound away like a hare. The Doctor says also, that the roar of the lion is very like the cry of the ostrich, but the former roars only at night, however, while the latter cries only by day. Did you not think it wonderful when you saw for the first time, perhaps, a keeper walk boldly into the lions' cage, when in their natural state they are so very fierce and wild? Well, we think it is wonderful, although the keepers tell us that they are easily tamed. In ancient times they were used in many more ways than they are now. Hanno, the Carthaginian general, had a lion to carry his baggage, and Mark Antony often rode through the streets of Rome in a chariot drawn by lions. A short time ago we read a story of a slave named Androclus, who, while hiding away from his master in the deserts of Africa, cured a lion of lameness by pulling a thorn out of its foot. The slave was afterward caught, carried to Rome, and condemned to be eaten by the wild beasts. He was thrown into a lion's den, but the beast, instead of killing him fawned upon him and showed the greatest delight at seeing him; Androclus was surprised to find that it was the same lion whose foot he had cured in the desert. The Emperor, it is said, was so much pleased at the sight that he gave the slave his pardon, and presented him also with the lion, after which he used to lead the great beast tamely through the streets, held simply by a little chain. In modern times, also, lions have been known to exhibit strong friendship for man. In 799, two lions in the Jardin des Plantes (Garden of Plants), at Paris, became so fond of their keeper that when he was taken sick they gave signs of the greatest sorrow, and when he recovered and came back to them they rushed to meet him, roaring with joy, meanwhile licking his hands and face. Perhaps you have read of Theodorus, King of Abyssinia (he killed himself in 1868), who used to keep several tame lions in his palace and treated them almost like dogs. Travelers tell us, too, that these great animals often show fondness for other animals, as, for instance, an old lioness belonging to the Dublin Zoological Gardens was taken sick, and was greatly annoyed by the rats. At last a little terrier dog was put into the cage, but was received by the lioness with a surly growl; finally when the old animal saw the little dog could kill her enemies, the rats, she coaxed him to her, and petted and fondled him, so that they soon became great friends. The lion is a mammal of the order carnivora, or flesh-eating animals. The word lion comes from the Latin leo, Greek leon, lion. Would you like me to tell you next week about a bear I saw upon the hills of Nova Scotia, near the scene of Longfellow's beautiful Evangeline, a few months ago? MARY HOWE. A JACK-KNIFE GENIUS. St. Louis Post-Dispatch: William Yohe claims to be the champion jack-knife artist of the day, although he was born in St. Louis and not Yankeedom. A reporter heard of this professional lacerator of pine sticks and sought him out. It was not until the inside of an unused Methodist church at Kirkwood, this county, was reached that Mr. Yohe and his knife was cornered. The knife was slashing cigar-boxes to pieces at railway speed when the reporter opened up with: "Are you the man who makes an automatic world's fair and St. Louis Exposition with a knife?" "No, that isn't what I call it. I am making what I call the Missouri Pacific and Strasburg Cathedral Automatic Wonder, with the Golden Ark of the Covenant. It will contain over 180,000 pieces and will have 1,100 moving and working figures." All around the gaunt and dismantled church were piles of cigar-boxes and laths and myriads of nicely-carved pieces of wood, apparently portions of models of buildings. The whittler was a small man, with keen eyes and ready tongue and about thirty-six years of age. In the course of an hour's conversation he said in substance: "I didn't know that I was anything extra of a whittler until about 1869, when, in a small way, I made some models. I was in Texas working at millwrighting. The first large piece I ever made was a model of a Bermuda castle. Afterward I made Balmoral Castle, Bingen Castle, Miramar Castle, and the Texas State Capitol at Austin. Solomon's Temple contained 12,268 pieces and had 1,369 windows. It is now on exhibition in Texas. The Austin Capitol Building has 62,844 pieces and 561 moving people. Every room and department in the building was given, with all the officers and legislators. Everybody was represented, down to the man sawing wood in the basement for the furnaces. All the figures were moved by a wooden engine, which was run by sand falling on an overshot wheel. I made this piece at odd moments in 1881. "I have just hired this church and begun steady work. I shall sleep and eat in this church until about May 1, next. The material? Yes, it does take considerable. I have already used up 967 cigar boxes and 300 laths. It will take in all 1,800 cigar boxes, 500 laths, and 500 feet of lumber. The cigar boxes I get for one cent each. I used no tools except my knife." * * * * * Little Johnny Botts found a garter snake in the park the other day and he brought it home and hid it in the piano. When his sister's young man opened the instrument that evening to play "For Goodness Sake" he thought he had 'em and yelled like a Piute on the war-hath. They won't believe in Johnny's innocence somehow, and his father said that after dinner he'd attend to his case. When the family sat down to table Johnny solemnly entered the room in his stocking feet and carrying a pillow which he placed on his chair before sitting down. "What new monkey shine is that?" growled old Botts. "S-s-s-h, pa," said Johnny anxiously; "I was playing fireworks with Billy Simson this afternoon and I swallowed a torpedo." "Did, eh?" "Yes, and if anything should touch me kinder hard I might go off and all bust up." * * * * * THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS in prizes is offered by the YOUTH'S COMPANION for the best short stories either for boys, for girls, humorous stories, or stories of adventure, to be sent them before May 20th, 1884. The terms and conditions of the competition are issued in a circular--for which all who desire to compete are invited to send. * * * * * Sin is very much like the ordinary North American mule. It may be very tame and docile at the front, but in the rear there is always a sly kick hidden away and you'd better be on your guard. OUR BOOK TABLE BOOKS RECEIVED. ARIUS THE LIBYAN: AN IDYL OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. Author unknown. NEW YORK: D. Appleton & Co. CHICAGO: Jansen, McClurg & Co. 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. This is a romance of the church in the latter part of the third and the beginning of the fourth centuries. The scene is laid near Cyrene, A.D. 265. It is an exquisitely written idyl of primitive Christian life, and can not fail to attract a great deal of attention, especially now that the public mind is being turned in the direction of early church history. It deals in a powerful, yet simple, manner with that subtle question, the Trinity of the Godhead, and gives the reader many new thoughts in connection with it. The characters portrayed awaken an unusual degree of interest, being as they are, persons eminent in history, both secular and religious. As one follows the story to its close he can not but agree with the author, that Arius, the hero and arch-heretic of the Nicene age, was "one of the grandest, purest, least understood, and most systematically misrepresented characters in human history." The latter portion of the book brings out, prominently, the real character of Constantine, stigmatized by Arius as "that unbaptised pagan, the flamen of Jupiter." The noble plan of the book and the grave importance of the questions that agitate the characters, combine to make it a valuable production to both believer and skeptic. THE ORGANS OF SPEECH. By G.H. Von Meyer, Professor In Ordinary of Anatomy at the University of Zurich. NEW YORK: D. Appleton & Co. CHICAGO: Jansen, McClurg & Co. 12 mo. Cloth. Price $1.75. This book is the forty-sixth volume in the international scientific series, and needs no better introduction than the well-known name of the author. The subject of the organs of speech and their application in the formation of articulate sounds is treated in a masterly and exhaustive manner. The object of the author has been not merely "to enter into the field of discussion upon the various modifications of sounds, * * but to bring forward a sufficient number of examples in confirmation of the laws explained," in which purpose he has most admirably succeeded. The work contains forty-seven wood cuts, and will be a valuable addition to any library. We would recommend it especially to teachers of vocal music and declamation. FIFTY YEARS' RECOLLECTIONS. By Jeriah Bonham PEORIA, ILL.: J.W. Franks & Sons. Sold by subscription. This is a carefully compiled work, giving the author's observations and reflections on the historical events of Illinois for the past fifty years, it also gives very interesting and full biographical sketches of many of the prominent men who have, during this time, figured in the affairs of the State, so far as Mr. Bonham's personal acquaintanceship and recollections extend. The sketches, condensed, yet complete, of the sixteen Governors of Illinois, from Shadrach Bond, the first Governor, down to the present time are especially interesting. The book will be enjoyed by the old settlers of the State on account of its personal reminiscences, which are all true, not drawn from the imagination. * * * * * The Youth's Companion, Boston, is another famous, and deservedly so, American juvenile publication. It has attained an immense circulation. Among its contributors are a score or more of the most talented American authors. It is edited with great care and ability. See advertisement on another page. * * * * * From W.D. Hoard, a report of the proceedings of the eleventh annual Dairymen's Association of Wisconsin, held at Elk Horn, January 31 and February 1-2, 1883. The pamphlet was compiled by D.W. Curtis, Secretary of the association, Fort Atkinson, Wis. The second edition of Bee-Keeping for Profit: A New System of Bee Management, by Mrs. Lizzie E. Cotton, West Gorham, Me. Illustrated. Price, $1.00. Seventeenth annual report of the Northwestern Dairymen's Association, with addresses and discussions delivered at the meeting held at Mankato, Minn., February 14-16, 1883. R.P. McGlincy, Secretary, Elgin, Ill. The Florida Annual. Edited by C.K. Munroe, 140 Nassau st., New Fork. Price, 50 cts. How to Become a Good Mechanic. The Industrial Publication Co., New York. Price, 15 cents. Tennessee Crop Report for November, 1883, with the report of the Tennessee Weather Service. 49 South Market st., Nashville, Tenn. From C.V. Riley, Bulletin No. 3 of U.S. Department of Agriculture: Division of Entomology. Contains reports of observations and experiments in the practical work of the Division, made under the direction of the entomologist. With plates. Landreth's Rural Register and Almanac. Philadelphia, Penn. * * * * * BREEDERS DIRECTORY. The following list embraces the names of responsible and reliable Breeders in their line, and parties wishing to purchase or obtain information can feel assured that they will be honorably dealt with: CATTLE. Jersey. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois HORSES. Clydesdales. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois SWINE. Berkshire. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois Chester Whites. W.A. Gilbert......................Wauwatosa Wis. SHEEP. Cotswold. Mills, Charles F. ............. Springfield, Illinois * * * * * LIVE STOCK, Etc. DR. W.A. PRATT. IMPORTER AND BREEDER OF THOROUGHBRED HOLSTEIN CATTLE 100 head on hand Oct. 1st. DR. W.A. PRATT, Elgin, Ill. * * * * * SCOTCH COLLIE SHEPHERD PUPS, --FROM-- IMPORTED AND TRAINED STOCK --ALSO-- NEWFOUNDLAND PUPS AND RAT TERRIER PUPS. Concise and practical printed instruction in Training young Shepherd Dogs, is given to buyers of Shepherd Puppies; or will be sent on receipt of 25 cents in postage stamps. For Printed Circular, giving full particulars about Shepherd Dogs, enclose a 3-cent stamp, and address N.H. PAAREN, P.O. Box 326, CHICAGO. ILL. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. I CURE FITS! When I say cure I do not mean merely to stop them for a time and then have them return again, I mean a radical cure. I have made the disease of FITS, EPILEPSY or FALLING SICKNESS a life-long study. I warrant my remedy to cure the worst cases. Because others have failed is no reason for not now receiving a cure. Send at once for a treatise and a Free Bottle of my infallible remedy. Give Express and Post Office. It costs you nothing for a trial, and I will cure you. Address Dr. H.G. ROOT, 183 Pearl St., New York. * * * * * 80 CARDS BEST QUALITY. New designs in Satin and Gold finish, with name, 10 cts. We offer $100 for a pack of cards any nicer work, or prettier styles. _Samples free._ Eagle Card Works, New Haven, Ct. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. SEEDS FOR THE GARDEN, FARM & FIELD. ESTABLISHED 1845. Our Annual Catalogue, mailed free on application, published first of every January, contains full description and prices of RELIABLE VEGETABLE, TREE, FIELD AND FLOWER SEED, SEED GRAIN, SEED CORN, SEED POTATOES, ONION SETS, ETC; ALSO GARDEN DRILLS, CULTIVATORS, FERTILIZERS, ETC., with full information for growing and how to get our Seeds. Address PLANT SEED COMPANY, Nos. 812 & 814 N. 4th St., ST. LOUIS, MO. * * * * * FAY GRAPES CURRANT HEADQUARTERS ALL BEST NEW AND OLD. SMALL FRUITS AND TREES. LOW TO DEALERS AND PLANTERS. STOCK First-Class. Free Catalogues. GEO. S. JOSSELYN, Fredonia, N.Y. * * * * * LITERATURE [Illustration] ROBIN, DEAR ROBIN! Robin, dear Robin, could you come back to me, Back to the hame you'll never mair see, Could you sit down at evening and crack wi' me, Oh, what a proud, happy woman I'd be! On the white hearth the fire should burn clearly, Nothing of comfort or rest you should lack, And I would always be kindly and cheery, Could you come back to me--could you come back. Oh, Robin, Robin, I've miss'd you fu' sairly, Morning, and evening, and a' the day long; Many have treated me unca unfairly: O for your arm so tender and strong: If once again in your love I could hide me, Little I'd care though all else I should lack Sairly I'm needing your wisdom to guide me, Oh, my lost darling, if you could come back! Never again with frowns would I greet you; Never again to your love be unkind; Ever with kisses and smiles I would meet you; Oh, in the days that are gone I was blind! Oh, I was selfish, and foolish, and fretful, Now I remember--remember in vain; But I would never be cross or forgetful, Could you come back to me, darling, again! No, you will never come back to me--never! But I shall come to you, Robin, some day. Then you will ken a' my loving endeavor, Just to grow better since you went away. Yes, you will ken, in that happy to-morrow, I hae been true to you, darling--sae true! Asked my heart always, in joy or in sorrow, "Will it please Robin, the thing that I do?" Oh, in that wonderfu', wonderfu' meeting, What shall I say to him? what will he say? We shallna weary life's story repeating, Seeing the end o' the sorrowfu' way. With such a hope, then, how could I say truly, "Robin, dear Robin, come back unto me!" Heart, answer the thought sae wild and unruly, "Robin, dear Robin, I shall come unto thee!" --_Harper's Weekly._ MRS. WIMBUSH'S REVENGE. (_Concluded from last week._) It was a large picnic party. Mr. Charles Brookshank had drawn Mrs. Wimbush's arm through his own, and strolled away from the rest. "How delightful it would be if one could know the language of birds, as folks did in the old Hindu fairy tales! Would it not, Mr. Brookshank?" "My dear Mrs. Wimbush, they do nothing the whole day long but make love and cry 'Sweet, sweet!' I would I were a bird, to make love in music." The widow sighed, but it was more like a purr of pleasure. "What did I know of love till you came here?" continued Mr. Charles. "Absolutely nothing--except," he added, with reservation, "in a professional way. And then we lawyers generally see the dark side of the picture--the damages and the decrees nisi. But your visit has brightened my whole life. O Mrs. Wimbush, you can not have been blind to my secret! You have seen it written legibly in my face, and have not interposed to check its development. I see you understand me, just as by intuitive fine feeling you can penetrate the meaning of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words. Mrs. Wimbush, you have already far advanced toward learning the birds' language. I may rely upon your consent?" "Charles, this happiness is indeed too much," ejaculated the widow. "You need never be separated from your daughter Carry. A home for one is a home for both; and I will cherish her while I live." "But, Charles dear, she may marry." "Marry, ma'am? Bless my soul, of course she will! She will marry me! She has said so, don't you see?" Mrs. Wimbush never said another word, but fell flat down upon the grass. "What on earth has got the woman?" thought Mr. Charles. "She couldn't have taken it worse if I had proposed to murder her daughter." In their walk they had strayed through the trees close to the outskirts of another picnic party. Mr. Charles immediately ran to ask some fair volunteer to come to the assistance of Mrs. Wimbush, who had fainted. At hearing the name, an active middle-aged lady sprang up and followed him. It was Mrs. Marrables. The sight of her mother brought Mrs. Wimbush round quicker than any smelling bottle could have done. She sat up. "Mother, Mr. Brookshank; Mr. Brookshank, my mother, Mrs. Marrables." They bowed. "Have the goodness to leave us together, Mr. Charles." He bowed and obeyed. "Mother," said Mrs. Wimbush, "what on earth brought you here? I thought you were at Taunton." "No, dear. I have been at Bournemouth three weeks, I came merely for change. Only last week I heard of your being here, and should have called, but have been so much occupied, and I felt sure of meeting you somewhere, and thought the surprise might be the more agreeable. We've had a most delightful picnic with the Mount Stewart folks. But what was all this fainting about? One would think Mr. Brookshank had been proposing to you." "He certainly made me a proposal mother, but I was quite unprepared for it, and was overcome." "What an imaginative and sensitive-minded girl you must be, Matilda! You make me feel quite young. When will you be old enough to attend to business? You will accept him, of course? Well, do as you please; you may reckon on my consent, you know. But I must get back to my party, and perhaps you had better rejoin yours. Ta-ta." Jilted for her daughter! It wasn't pleasant. When Mrs. Wimbush got home, she blew up Carry for being so sly. "Well, mamma," said Carry, "of course I thought you knew all about it. I never made any secret of the affair. I knew very well that you had rejected Mr. Tom, but I could not possibly suppose that was any reason why I should refuse Charles. Of course he is older than I am, but he is only five-and-thirty, and has a good position; and I am sure we shall always give you a welcome; Charles said so." "Well," thought Mrs. Wimbush, "he has money, and it will be all in the family; that's at least a comfort." The effect of the little episode of the last chapter was that the brothers were made friends, and Tom recovered his spirits, and could laugh heartily at what he had before supposed was his brother's rivalry. Mrs. Wimbush repented her that she had rejected Mr. Tom. Her repentance produced a salutary desire on her part to make atonement for the past. She would have him yet. When a widow says so much as that about a man, let him 'ware hawk. A month went by, and behold Mrs Wimbush and Mr. Tom Brookshank seated tete-a-tete at an evening party, where the music which was going on was sufficiently loud to render private conversation inaudible save to those to whom it was addressed. "I fear," said the widow, affecting an absent manner, "I treated you very unkindly, Mr. Tom. You took me so entirely by surprise, that, really, I--hardly know what I said. I have been very unhappy about it--very." "Forgotten and forgiven," whispered Mr. Tom. "How generous of you! you make me so glad! because now that your brother Charles is going to marry my daughter, we shall be in some sort related, and I could not bear you to think unkindly of me." "No," said Mr. Tom, fidgeting a little, "I shall never do that." "How droll!" said the widow. "Let me see, what will the relationship be? You will be my son-in-law's brother, and consequently I shall be your mother-in-law once removed. You will have a mother younger than yourself, Mr. Tom. I hope you will not presume upon her youth to be a bad boy." "All this is very true," he answered; "but I see the relationship in a far different light. I shall be your father-in-law, and consequently my own brother's grandfather-in-law." "You mistake, Mr. Tom. Don't you see that Carry--" "No mistake at all about it, ma'am, for I've promised to marry your mother, Mrs. Marrables!" "Monster!" cried Mrs. Wimbush aloud, and went off shrieking. The music stopped, and there was a great fuss. But above all the others was heard the voice of Mrs. Marrables. "Don't be alarmed, pray. She is subject to it; she went off just like that the other day at a picnic. Poor young thing, a very little upsets her. Let me come to my little gu-url, then." They moved her into another room. Presently Mrs. Wimbush opened her eyes. "Mother! how dare you come near me! Go away, do! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, at your time of life!" "My time of life! Why, I'm only fifty-four--about ten years older than Tom. How can you talk so to your mother!" "Mother, if you don't leave the room, I will. It's really disreputable to have you for a mother. You've never done me any credit." "My dear, I am so glad to think you feel well enough to leave the room that I will remain." Mrs. Wimbush got up and went home. Jilted, first for her daughter, and next for her mother! This was too much. Mrs. Wimbush went to church as regularly as any one, but revenge, after all, is very sweet. Six weeks afterward Mrs. Wimbush recovered sufficient fortitude to go and call on her mother. "Well, child, I'm glad you are going to be friendly; there is nothing like harmony in a family circle. Let us consider the relationships into which we are about to enter, that we may rightly judge of our responsibilities and duties. I and my granddaughter are going to marry two brothers--the consequence is, she and I will be sisters-in-law. But as you are mother of my sister-in-law, you will nearly be my mother-in-law, which is a very singular relationship for a daughter to sustain toward her mother, especially when she is not the wife of one's father-in-law. Now, as"-- "Wait a moment, dear mamma; I've news for you; I'm going to marry old Unguent! Old Mr. Brookshank has asked me to be his wife, and I've consented. The consequence is, I shall be head of the family, and bona-fide mother-in-law to you all. I don't think we need trouble about harmony, for we shall be a united family, more so than any I know of." Before her marriage, Mrs. Marrables set to work to draw up a table of the relationships involved by the three weddings. It is an extensive work in three volumes, and when our readers see The Brookshank Family advertised, they will know what it means. * * * * * OUR New Clubbing List FOR 1884. THE PRAIRIE FARMER IN CONNECTION WITH OTHER JOURNALS. We offer more liberal terms than ever before to those who desire to take, in connection with THE PRAIRIE FARMER, either of the following weekly or monthly periodicals. In all cases the order for THE PRAIRIE FARMER and either of the following named journals must be sent together, accompanied by the money; but we do not require both papers to be sent to the same person or to the same post-office. We send specimen copies only of THE PRAIRIE FARMER. Our responsibility for other publications ceases on the receipt of the first number; when such journals are not received within a reasonable time, notify us, giving date of your order, also full name and address of subscriber. WEEKLIES. Price of The two the two. for Harper's Weekly $6 00 $4 60 Harper's Bazar 6 00 4 60 Harper's Young People 3 50 2 55 New York Tribune 4 00 2 50 Toledo Blade 4 00 2 20 Chicago Times 3 25 2 50 Chicago Tribune 3 50 2 50 Chicago Inter-Ocean 3 15 2 50 Chicago Journal 3 25 2 50 Peck's Sun 3 75 3 00 Milwaukee Sentinel 3 00 2 50 Western Farmer (Madison, Wis.) 3 00 2 00 Burlington Hawkeye 4 00 3 00 The Continent (Weekly Magazine) 6 00 4 00 Detroit Free Press, with Supplement 4 00 2 50 Detroit Free Press, State edition 3 50 2 20 Louisville Courier-Journal 3 75 3 00 St. Louis Globe-Democrat 3 00 2 15 St. Louis Republican 3 00 2 15 Scientific American 5 20 4 15 Interior (Presbyterian) 4 50 3 60 Standard (Baptist) 4 70 3 60 Advance (Congregational) 5 00 3 35 Alliance 4 00 3 00 New York Independent 5 00 4 00 Christian Union 5 00 4 00 Boston Pilot (Catholic) 4 50 3 50 American Bee Journal 4 00 3 00 Florida Agriculturist 4 00 2 75 Breeder's Gazette 5 00 3 50 Witness (N.Y.) 3 50 3 00 Methodist (N.Y.) 4 00 3 50 Chicago News 3 00 2 50 Globe (Boston) 3 00 2 75 Youth's Companion 3 75 3 00 Weekly Novelist 5 00 4 25 Ledger (Chicago) 3 00 2 90 MONTHLIES. Harper's Monthly $6 00 $4 50 Atlantic Monthly 6 00 4 50 Appleton's Journal 5 00 4 25 The Century 6 00 4 50 North American Review 7 00 5 50 Popular Science Monthly 7 00 5 50 Lippincott's Magazine 6 00 4 50 Godey's Lady's Book 4 00 3 00 St. Nicholas 5 00 3 50 Vick's Illustrated Magazine 3 25 2 25 Am. Poultry Journal (Chicago) 3 25 2 75 Gardener's Monthly 4 00 3 00 Wide Awake 4 50 3 00 Phrenological Journal 4 00 3 00 American Agriculturist 3 50 2 50 Poultry World 3 25 2 75 Arthur's Home Magazine 4 00 3 00 Andrews' Bazar 3 00 2 40 Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly 5 00 4 00 Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine 5 00 4 00 Frank Leslie's Ladies' Magazine 4 50 4 00 Our Little Ones 3 50 3 00 Peterson's Magazine 4 00 3 30 Art Amateur 6 00 5 00 Demorest's Magazine 4 00 3 00 Dio Lewis' Monthly 4 50 3 50 For clubbing price with any publication in the United States not included in the above list send us inquiry on postal card. * * * * * NOW Is the time to Subscribe for THE PRAIRIE FARMER. Price only $2.00 per year. It is worth double the money. * * * * * PUBLICATIONS. MARSHALL M. KIRKMAN'S BOOKS ON RAILROAD TOPICS. DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A RAILROAD MAN IF YOU DO, THE BOOKS DESCRIBED BELOW POINT THE WAY. The most promising field for men of talent and ambition at the present day is the railroad service. The pay is large in many instances, while the service is continuous and honorable. Most of our railroad men began life on the farm. Of this class is the author of the accompanying books descriptive of railway operations, who has been connected continuously with railroads as a subordinate and officer for 27 years. He was brought up on a farm, and began railroading as a lad at $7 per month. He has written a number of standard books on various topics connected with the organization, construction, management and policy of railroads. These books are of interest not only to railroad men but to the general reader as well. They are indispensable to the student. They present every phase of railroad life, and are written in an easy and simple style that both interests and instructs. The books are as follows: "RAILWAY EXPENDITURES--THEIR EXTENT, OBJECT AND ECONOMY."--A Practical Treatise on Construction and Operation. In Two Volumes, 850 pages. $4.00 "HAND BOOK OF RAILWAY EXPENDITURES."--Practical Directions for Keeping the Expenditure Accounts. 2.00 "RAILWAY REVENUE AND ITS COLLECTION."--And Explaining the Organization of Railroads. 2.50 "THE BAGGAGE PARCEL AND MAIL TRAFFIC OF RAILROADS."--An interesting work on this important service; 425 pages. 2.00 "TRAIN AND STATION SERVICE"--Giving The Principal Rules and Regulations governing Trains; 280 pages. 2.00 "THE TRACK ACCOUNTS OF RAILROADS."--And how they should be kept. Pamphlet. 1.00 "THE FREIGHT TRAFFIC WAY-BILL."--Its Uses Illustrated and Described. Pamphlet. .50 "MUTUAL GUARANTEE."--A Treatise on Mutual Suretyship. Pamphlet. .50 Any of the above books will be sent post paid on receipt of price, by PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., 150 Monroe St. CHICAGO, ILL. Money should be remitted by express, or by draft check or post office order. * * * * * FREE! FREE!! TO ANY ADDRESS IN THE WORLD! "THE RED RIVER VALLEY" "ILLUSTRATED." AN ELEGANT EIGHT-PAGE PAPER Full of the Most Desirable Information. Send for "Publication P" to JAMES B. POWER, LAND COM'R St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Ry., St. PAUL. MINNESOTA * * * * * MAPS. RAND, McNALLY & CO.'S NEW RAILROAD --AND-- COUNTY MAP --OF THE-- UNITED STATES --AND-- DOMINION OF CANADA. Size, 4 � 2-1/2 feet, mounted on rollers to hang on the wall. This is an ENTIRELY NEW MAP, Constructed from the most recent and authentic sources. --IT SHOWS-- _ALL THE RAILROADS,_ --AND-- EVERY COUNTY AND PRINCIPAL TOWN --IN THE-- UNITED STATES AND CANADA. A useful Map in every one's home, and place of business. PRICE, $2.00. Agents wanted, to whom liberal inducements will be given. Address RAND, McNALLY & CO., Chicago, Ill. By arrangements with the publishers of this Map we are enabled to make the following liberal offer: To each person who will remit us $2.25 we will send copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER One Year and THIS MAP POSTPAID. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * DRAINAGE. PRACTICAL FARM DRAINAGE. WHY, WHEN, and HOW TO TILE-DRAIN --AND THE-- MANUFACTURE OF DRAIN-TILE. By C.G. ELLOITT and J.J.W. BILLINGSLEY PRICE, ONE DOLLAR. For sale by THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., 150 Monroe St., Chicago, Ill. * * * * * THE SHEPHERD'S MANUAL A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE SHEEP. Designed Especially for American Shepherds BY HENRY STEWART. Finely Illustrated PRICE, $1.50, by mail, postpaid. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago. * * * * * HUMOUROUS [Illustration] THE CARPENTER'S WOOING. "Oh, beam my life, my awl to me!" He cried, his flame addressing-- "If I 'adze such a love as yours, I'd ask no other blessing!" "I am rejoist to hear you speak," The maiden said with laughter-- "For tho' I hammer guileless girl, It's plane what you are rafter. Now if file love you just a bit, What further can you ax me? Can--will you be content with that, Or will you further tacks me?" He looked handsaw her words were square-- "No rival can displace me-- Yes, one more favor I implore, And that is, dear Em, brace me!" She came full chisel to his arms; It really made him stair To have her make a bolt for him Before he could prepare. He tried to screw his courage up, And did his level best To nail the matter then and there, While clasped unto her breast. Says he: "It augers well for me, All seems to hinge on this; And, what is mortise plane to see The porch child wants a kiss." He kissed her lip, he kissed her cheek, And called her his adoored-- He dons his claw-hammer next week, And she will share his board. _--Detroit Free Press._ WHERE THE OLD MAIDS COME IN. "Do you know, sir," inquired an American tourist of his companion, while doing England, "can you inform me the reason for the fresh, healthful appearance of the English people? Their complexion is far superior to ours, or our countrymen over the herring pond." "Well, I know what Prof. Huxley says." "And what reason does he advance?" "Well, Huxley says it is owing to the old maids." "Owing to old maids! You surprise me." "Fact. Huxley figures it out this way. Now, you know the English are very fond of roast beef." "But what has that to do with old maids?" "Go slow. This genuine English beef is the best and most nutritious beef in the world, and it imparts a beautiful complexion." "Well, about the old maids?" "Yes, you see the excellence of this English beef is due exclusively to red clover. Do you see the point?" "All but the old maids. They are still hovering in the shadows." "Why, don't you see? This red clover is enriched, sweetened, and fructified by bumble bees." "But where do the old maids come in?" said the inquisitive American, wiping his brow wearily. "Why, it is as plain as the nose on your face. The only enemy of the bumble bee is the field-mouse." "But what have roast beef, red clover, bumble-bees, and field-mice got to do with old maids?" "Why, you must be very obtuse. Don't you perceive that the bumble-bees would soon become exterminated by the field-mice if it were not for--" "Old maids?" "No, if it were not for cats, the old maids of Old England keep the country thoroughly stocked up with cats, and so we can directly trace the effects of the rosy English complexions to the benign cause of English old maids, at least that's what Huxley says about it, and that's just where the old maids come in. Science makes clear many mysterious things." * * * * * "Those picture cards I brought back from Boston," remarked Mrs. Partington, in a pensive mood. "They are momentums of the Art Loan Imposition." Don't give up in despair, girls. Naomi didn't marry until she was five hundred and eighty years old--and then she was sorry she hadn't waited a century longer. "Is you gwine to get an overcoat this winter?" asked a darkey of a companion. "Well I dunno how dat's gwine to be," was the reply. "I'se done got my eye on a coat, but de fellah dat owns it keeps his eye on it too." Her nephew had just come home from his day school. "What have you been learning this morning?" asked Mrs. Ramsbottom. "Mythology, aunt," answered the little man, "all about the heathen gods and goddesses." "Then I must brush up my memory," said Mrs. Ramsbottom, "and ask you a question or two. Now, first, who was Juniper?" "What is a limited monarchy, Johnny?" "Well, my idea of a limited monarchy is, where the ruler don't have much to rule." "Give an example?" "An example! Lemme see! Well, if you was bossin' yourself, for instance." It was at the close of the wedding breakfast. One of the guests arose, and, glass in hand, said: "I drink to the health of the bridegroom. May he see many days like this." The intention was good, but the bride looked as though something had displeased her. * * * * * ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD. The elegant equipment of coaches and sleepers being added to its various through routes is gaining it many friends. Its patrons fear no accidents. Its perfect track of steel, and solid road-bed, are a guarantee against them. * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION One year, $3 for the two. It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB CO., 150 Monroe Street. Chicago. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. ONE CENT invested in a postal card and addressed as below WILL give to the writer full information as to the best lands in the United States now for sale; how he can BUY them on the lowest and best terms, also the full text of the U.S. land laws and how to secure 320 ACRES of Government Lands in Northwestern Minnesota and Northeastern Dakota. ADDRESS: JAMES B. POWER, Land and Emigration Commissioner, ST. PAUL, MINN. * * * * * AGENTS WANTED, Male and Female, for Spence's Blue Book, a most fascinating and salable novelty. Every family needs from one to a dozen. Immense profits and exclusive territory. Sample mailed for 25 cts in postage stamps. Address J.H. CLARSON, P.O. Box 2296, Philadelphia, Pa. * * * * * MEDICAL. DISEASE CURED Without Medicine. _A Valuable Discovery for supplying Magnetism to the Human System. Electricity and Magnetism utilized as never before for Healing the Sick._ THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO.'s MAGNETIC KIDNEY BELT! FOR MEN IS WARRANTED TO CURE _Or Money refunded_, the following diseases without medicine:--_Pain in the Back, Hips, Head, or Limbs, Nervous Debility, Lumbago, General Debility, Rheumatism, Paralysis, Neuralgia, Sciatica, Diseases of the Kidneys, Spinal Diseases, Torpid Liver_, GOUT SEMINAL EMISSIONS, IMPOTENCY, ASTHMA, HEART DISEASE, DYSPEPSIA, CONSTIPATION, ERYSIPELAS, INDIGESTION, HERNIA OR RUPTURE, CATARRH, PILES, EPILEPSY, DUMB AGUE, ETC. When any debility of the GENERATIVE ORGANS occurs, LOST VITALITY, LACK OF NERVE FORCE AND VIGOR, WASTING WEAKNESS, and all those Diseases of a personal nature, from whatever cause, the continuous stream of Magnetism permeating through the parts, must restore them to a healthy action. There is no mistake about this appliance. TO THE LADIES:--If you are afflicted with LAME BACK, WEAKNESS OF THE SPINE, FALLING OF THE WOMB, LEUCORRHOEA, CHRONIC INFLAMMATION AND ULCERATION OF THE WOMB, INCIDENTAL HEMORRHAGE OR FLOODING, PAINFUL, SUPPRESSED, AND IRREGULAR MENSTRUATION, BARRENNESS, AND CHANGE OF LIFE, THIS IS THE BEST APPLIANCE AND CURATIVE AGENT KNOWN. For all forms of FEMALE DIFFICULTIES it is unsurpassed by anything before invented, both as a curative agent and as a source of power and vitalization. Price of either Belt with Magnetic Insoles, $10, sent by express C.O.D., and examination allowed, or by mail on receipt of price. In ordering send measure of waist, and size of shoe. Remittance can be made in currency, sent in letter at our risk. The Magneton Garments are adapted to all ages, are worn over the under-clothing (NOT NEXT TO THE BODY LIKE THE MANY GALVANIC AND ELECTRIC HUMBUGS ADVERTISED SO EXTENSIVELY), and should be taken off at night. They hold their POWER FOREVER, and are worn at all seasons of the year. Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical treatment WITHOUT MEDICINE," with thousands of testimonials. THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 STATE STREET. CHICAGO, ILL. NOTE.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our other Magnetic Appliances. Positively no cold feet when they are worn, or money refunded. * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the Cheapest and Best Agricultural Paper published. Only $2.00 per year. * * * * * SCALES. U.S. STANDARD SCALES, MANUFACTURED EXPRESSLY FOR THE PRAIRIE FARMER _Every Scale Guaranteed by the Manufacturers, and by Us, to be Perfect, and to give the Purchaser Satisfaction._ The PRAIRIE FARMER Sent Two Years Free To any person ordering either size Wagon Scale at prices given below. [Illustration] 2-Ton Wagon or Farm Scale (Platform 6 � 12 feet), $35; 3-Ton (7 � 13), $45; 5-Ton (8 � 14), $55. Beam Box, Brass Beam, Iron Levers, Steel Bearings, and full directions for setting up. THE PRAIRIE FARMER SENT 1 YEAR FREE! To any person ordering either of the following Scales, at prices named below. [Illustration] The Housekeeper's Scale--$4.00 Weighing accurately from 1/4 oz. to 25 lbs. This is also a valuable Scale for Offices for Weighing Mail Matter. Tin Scoop, 50c. extra; Brass 75c. extra. [Illustration] The Family Scale--$7.00. Weighs from 1/4 oz. to 240 lbs. Small articles weighed in Scoop, large ones on Platform. Size of Platform, 10-1/2 � 13-1/2 in. [Illustration] The Prairie Farmer Scale--$10.00 Weighs from 2 oz. to 320 lbs. Size of Platform 14 � 19 inches. A convenient Scale for Small Farmers, Dairymen, etc. [Illustration] Platform Scales--4 Sizes. 400 lbs., $15; 600 lbs., $20; 900 lbs., $24; 1,200 lbs., $28; Wheels and Axles, $2 extra. In ordering, give the Price and Description given above. All Scales Boxed and Delivered at Depot in Chicago. Give full shipping directions. Send money by Draft on Chicago or New York Post Office Order or Registered Letter. Address THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY, CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS [Illustration] THE STANDARD REMINGTON TYPE-WRITER is acknowledged to be the only rapid and reliable writing machine. It has no rival. These machines are used for transcribing and general correspondence in every part of the globe, doing their work in almost every language. Any young man or woman of ordinary ability, having a practical knowledge of the use of this machine may find constant and remunerative employment. All machines and supplies, furnished by us, warranted. Satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded. Send for circulars. WYCKOFF, SEAMANS & BENEDICT, 38 East Madison St, Chicago, Ill. * * * * * GIVEN AWAY $10,000 IN PREMIUMS TO AGENTS Ladies or Gentlemen, selling our NEW BOOK For particulars write for Circular C. RAND, McNALLY & CO., CHICAGO. * * * * * SEEDS ALBERT DICKINSON, Dealer in Timothy, Clover, Flax, Hungarian, Millet, Red Top, Blue Grass, Lawn Grass, Orchard Grass, Bird Seeds, &c. POP CORN. Warehouses {115, 117 & 119 Kinzie St. {104, 106, 108 & 110 Michigan St. OFFICE. 115 Kinzie St. CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * GENERAL NEWS. The Emma Bond case has been given to the jury. Queen Victoria will go to Baden Baden in February. The war feeling in France against China is increasing. Four colored men were lynched at Yazoo, Miss., on Saturday last. Serious trouble is threatened between the Orangemen and the Catholics of Ireland. The works of the Lambert & Smith Wire Fence Company, at Joliet, Ill., burned last week. Mr. Villard is sick from nervous prostration. Rumor says he is financially embarrassed. It is expected that the Directors of the Suez Canal Company will pay a dividend of 18 per cent this year. John D. Leslie, a grain-dealer of Elkhart, Indiana, was ruined by handling corn which failed to pass inspection. Gen. Grant fell upon the sidewalk in New York, the other day, and hurt his hip severely. He is recovering. N.G. Ordway, Governor of Dakota, is charged with accepting bribes in making appointments of County Commissioners. Holloway, the great pill man of England, is said to be worth $25,000,000. He spends $250,000 per year in advertising. The extensive sewerage system which Boston has been several years in constructing is at last finished, at a cost of $4,500,000. Bradner Smith & Co, and the National Printing Company, Chicago, were partially burned out on Sunday. Loss about $200,000. Among the distinguished dead of the year may be mentioned Chambord, Gambetta, Gortschakoff, Alexander H. Stephens, Karl Marx, Schultze-Delitzsche, Turgeneff, and Prof. Anthon. It is reported that the Salters' Company, one of the largest and most successful of the London guilds, has decided to dispose of its Irish lands, and is now offering them to tenants on twenty years' time. During the year 1883, up to the close of business Saturday night, 7,243,969 gallons of spirits were produced in the Chicago distilleries. The total receipts of internal revenue in the first district of Illinois for the year were $8,774,890. The outcry over the houses of the poor has spread to Paris. Alarming statistics are published of the increase of overcrowding and the consequent spread of disease, and no less than 650 schemes of reform have been presented to the Municipal Council. The deaths between 1870 and 1883 have increased per 100,000 inhabitants from 48 to 96 in typhoid-fever, from 53 to 101 in diphtheria, from 11 to 74 in small-pox, from 30 to 43 in measles, and from 7 to 18 in scarlet-fever. Alarm has been created in French commercial circles by rumors that the American Congress will make reprisals for the prohibition by France of the importation of American salted meats by passing a law increasing the duties on French wines or providing for the seizure of French adulterations. The National, of Paris, says: "France must expect that the Reprisals bill now before Congress, which was first directed against Germany, will now be turned against France." P.T. Barnum has just made his will. In order that there might be no question as to his sanity upon which to ground contests after his death, he had eminent physicians examine him, and secured their attestation that he was of sound mind. The will and its codicils cover more than 700 pages of legal cap, closely written, and disposes of real estate and personal property of the value of $10,000,000 to twenty-seven heirs. The property is in New York, Brooklyn, Bridgeport, Colorado, and several other places. Mr. Barnum values his interest in the Barnum and London Shows at $3,500,000. He gives largely to charitable institutions. The number of lives lost by the more noticeable accidents of last year give a total of 125,000, or over 342 for each of the 365 days of 1883. These colossal figures are attained principally through the results of three calamities--Ischia, Java, and Syria. Aside from the earthquakes the year was unequaled in shipwrecks, cyclones, fire-scenes, and mining horrors. Over thirty people were killed for each day in January, the Newhall fire, the Russian circus horror, and the Cimbria shipwreck being the principal of thirty calamities during the month. Three hundred and ninety-eight people went down in the Cimbria alone. Two hundred and seventy people burned in the circus at Berditcheff. The panic later on at Sunderland, England, caused the death of 197 children and 150 workmen were drowned like rats in the tub called the Daphne on the Clyde. There were 1,697 murders, 107 executions, 135 lynchings, and 727 suicides. MARKETS MARKET REPORTS. OFFICE OF THE PRAIRIE FARMER, CHICAGO. Jan. 2, 1884. FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL. The general bank business of Chicago last week was rather dull. But few new business contracts were made as everyone was waiting for the New Year to begin before extending business. In the loan market money was quoted throughout the week at 6@7 per cent interest. Eastern exchange opened Saturday at 25c off between banks, but subsequently sales were made at 25c per $1,000 premium. The market closed at 25@30c per $1,000 premium. Railway stocks in New York with the exception of Northern Pacific were firm on Saturday. Government securities remain unchanged at last week's quotations. 4's coupons. 1907 Q. Apr. 123 4's reg., 1907 Q. Apr. 122 4-1/2's coupon, 1891 Q. Mar. 114 4-1/2's registered, 1891 Q. Mar. 114 3's registered Q. Mar. 100 GRAIN AND PROVISIONS. More was done on the Board of Trade in corn and hog products at the close of the week than in wheat and other grains. The bears had decidedly the best of it on Saturday. Wheat receipts were liberal and everybody seemed willing to sell. Outside orders to purchase were exceedingly light. There were many transactions in corn but prices showed a gradual decline. FLOUR was quiet at about the following rates. Choice to favorite white winters $5 25@5 50 Fair to good brands of white winters 4 75@5 00 Good to choice red winters 5 00@5 50 Prime to choice springs 4 75@5 00 Good to choice export stock, in sacks, extras 4 25@4 50 Good to choice export stock, double extras 4 50@4 65 Fair to good Minnesota springs 4 75@5 25 Choice to fancy Minnesota springs 5 50@5 75 Patent springs 6 50@7 00 Low grades 2 25@3 50 WHEAT.--Red winter, No. 2 99@95c: car lots of spring, No. 2, sold at 93-3/4@97-3/4c; No. 3, do, 77-1/2@81c. CORN.--Fluctuating but active. Car lots No 2, 57-3/4@58c; rejected, 46-1/2; new mixed, 48@48-1/4c. OATS.--No. 2 in store, closed 32@33. RYE.--May, in store 54@59. BARLEY.--No. 2, 66@67c; No. 3, 44c. FLAX.--Closed at $1 41. TIMOTHY.--$1 23 per bushel. Little doing. CLOVER.--Quiet at $5 90@6 15 for prime. PROVISIONS.--Mess pork, January $14 02-1/2 per bbl; May, $14 52. Green hams, 8-3/8c. per lb. Short ribs, $7 40 per cwt. LARD.--January, $8 75; February, $9 07-1/2. LUMBER. Lumber unchanged. Quotations for green are as follows: Short dimension per M $ 9 50@10 00 Long dimension, per M 10 00@11 50 Boards and strips, No. 2 11 00@13 00 Boards and strips, medium 13 00@16 00 Boards and strips, No. 1 choice 16 00@20 00 Shingles, standard 2 10@ 2 20 Shingles, choice 2 25@ 2 30 Shingles, extra 2 40@ 2 60 Lath 1 65@ 1 70 COUNTRY PRODUCE. NOTE.--The quotations for the articles named in the following list are generally for commission lots of goods and from first hands. While our prices are based as near as may be on the landing or wholesale rates, allowance must be made for selections and the sorting up for store distribution. BEANS.--Hand picked mediums $2 10@2 15. Hand picked navies. $2 20@2 25. BUTTER.--Dull and without change. Choice to extra creamery, 32@35c per lb.; fair to good do 26@30c; fair to choice dairy, 25@30c; common to choice packing stock fresh and sweet, 20@25c; ladle packed 10@13c; fresh made, streaked butter, 9@11c. BRAN.--Quoted at $11 87-1/2@13 50 per ton; extra choice $13. CHEESE.--Choice full-cream cheddars 12-1/2@13c per lb; medium quality do 9@10c; good to prime full cream flats 13@13-3/4c; skimmed cheddars 9@10c; good skimmed flats 6@7c; hard-skimmed and common stock 3@4c. EGGS.--In a small way the best brands are quotable at 26@27c per dozen; 24@25c for good ice house stock; 16@20c per pickled. HAY.--No 1 timothy $8 50@9 50 per ton; No 2 do $7 50@8 00; mixed do $6 50; upland prairie $8 00@9 50; No 1 prairie $5 50@6 50; No 2 do $4 50@5. Small bales sell at 25@50c per ton more than large bales. HIDES AND PELTS.--Green-cured light hides 8c per lb; do heavy cows 8c; No 2 damaged green-salted hides 6c; green-salted calf 12@12-1/2 cents; green-salted bull 6 c; dry-salted hides 11 cents; No. 2 two-thirds price; No. 1 dry flint 14@14-1/2c. Sheep pelts salable at 28@32c for the estimated amount of wash wool on each pelt. All branded and scratched hides are discounted 15 per cent from the price of No. 1. HOPS.--Prime to choice New York State hops 22@26c per lb; Pacific coast of 23@26c; fair to good Wisconsin 15@20c: Wisconsin 1882's 8@12c. POULTRY.--Prices for live lots were: Turkeys 12@13c per lb; chickens, 7@8c; ducks 8@10c per lb.; geese 8@10c per lb. for full feathered. Dressed turkeys sell at 1@2c per lb more than live offerings. POTATOES.--Good to choice 35@40c per bu. on track; common to fair 25@30c. Illinois sweet potatoes range at $3@3 50 per bbl for yellow. Baltimore stock at $2 25@2 75, and Jerseys at $5. Red are dull and nominal. TALLOW AND GREASE.--No 1 country tallow 7@7-1/4c per lb; No 2 do 6-1/4@6-1/2c. Prime white grease 6@6-1/2c; yellow 5-1/4@5-3/4c; brown 4-1/2@5. VEGETABLES.--Cabbage, $8@12 per 100; celery, 35@40c per per doz bunches; onions, $1 00@1 25 per bbl for yellow, and $1 for red; turnips, $1 35@ 1 50 per bbl for rutabagas, and $1 00 for white flat. WOOL.--from store range as follows for bright wools from Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan Indiana, and Eastern Iowa--dark Western lots generally ranging at 1@2c per lb. less. Coarse and dingy tub 25@30 Good medium tub 31@34 Unwashed bucks' fleeces 14@15 Fine unwashed heavy fleeces 18@22 Fine light unwashed heavy fleeces 22@23 Coarse unwashed fleeces 21@22 Low medium unwashed fleeces 24@25 Fine medium unwashed fleeces 26@27 Fine washed fleeces 32@33 Coarse washed fleeces 26@28 Low medium washed fleeces 30@32 Fine medium washed fleeces 34@35 Colorado and territory wools range as follows: Lowest grades 14@16 Low medium 18@22 Medium 22@26 Fine 16@24 Wools from New Mexico: Lowest grades 14@16 Part improved 16@17 Best improved 19@23 Burry from 2c to 10c off; black 2c to 5c off. LIVE STOCK MARKETS. The total receipts and shipments for last week were as follows: Received. Shipped. Cattle 27,295 11,368 Hogs 89,505 22,450 Sheep 9,417 4,856 CATTLE.--The above figures show a falling off of 18,850 head from the previous week's receipts. This contraction on the part of shippers is said to have been on account of advice from the commission men who argue that the unusual demand during Christmas week following the previous large supply would not be very large. Dressed-beef operators bought freely and there was a general advance in prices. The quality of the beef was not first-class. The highest price paid for the best was $6 65 per cwt. Sales were principally at $5@6. Common lots brought $4 25@4 95. Some poor ones went at $4. Cows for butchers sold at $3@4, and inferior lots at $2@2 90. Bulls brought from $2 to $4 75. A few car loads of Texans sold at $3 50@4 50 per cwt. Veal calves brought $4@7 for 100 lbs. Milch cows were lower as the supply has been large. There was a falling off of about $10 per head; they sold for $25 to 55 per head. HOGS.--During the past week they formed a strong combination to break the market, all the 20 packing houses doing business here agreeing to buy only a stipulated number of hogs each day. The plan worked as was anticipated, and although the receipts for the week dropped to 89,000 against 187,470 during the previous week, there was a steady decline from day to day. Shippers were good buyers, taking on an average 5,500 hogs daily, but city packers bought only about 11,000 or 12,000, leaving at times upwards of 28,000 or 30,000 unsold at the close of the day. Choice hogs declined only moderately, but other descriptions were very weak. Up to date there have been packed in the West this season about 100,000 head more than to same time last year. The market closed on Saturday at $4 65@5 90 for heavy; $4 60@5 30 for light, and $3 25@4 60 for skips and culls. Note.--All sales of hogs are made subject to a shrinkage of 40 lbs for piggy sows and 80 lbs for stags. Dead hogs sell for 1-1/2c per lb for weights of 200 and over and [Transcriber's Note: blank in original] for weights of less than 100 lbs. SHEEP.--The demand has been brisk and prices for good lots advanced fully 25c per cwt. The receipts have fallen off greatly. Sales were made of common to choice at $2 50@4 65. No fancy droves were received, and they were nominal at $4 75@5. * * * * * COMMISSION MERCHANTS. J.H. WHITE & CO., PRODUCE COMMISSION 106 S. Water St., Chicago. Refers to this paper. MISCELLANEOUS. GOLD MEDAL, PARIS, 1878. [Illustration] BAKER'S BREAKFAST COCOA. Warranted _absolutely pure Cocoa_, from which the excess of Oil has been removed. It has _three times the strength_ of Cocoa mixed with Starch, Arrowroot or Sugar, and is therefore far more economical. It is delicious, nourishing, strengthening, easily digested, and admirably adapted for invalids as well as for persons in health. SOLD BY GROCERS EVERYWHERE. W. BAKER & CO., Dorchester, Mass. CHEAP FARMS. NEAR MARKETS. The State of Michigan has more than 4,500 miles of railroad and 1,600 miles of Lake transportation, schools and churches in every county, public buildings all paid for, and no debt. Its soil and climate combine to produce large crops, and it is the best fruit State in the Northwest. Several million acres of unoccupied and fertile lands are yet in the market at low prices. The State has issued a NEW PAMPHLET containing a map and descriptions of the soil, crops and general resources of _every county_ in the State, which may be had free of charge by writing to the COMM'R OF IMMIGRATION, Detroit. Mich. MONEY TO LOAN TO FARMERS in Illinois on Mortgage security at 6 per cent interest, with privilege of yearly payments. Call on or address BURNHAM, TREVETT & MATTIS, Champaign, Ill. PATENT Procured or no charge. 40 p. book patent-law free. Add. W.T. FITZGERALD, 1006 F St., Washington, D.C. EDUCATIONAL. UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK AMERICAN VETERINARY COLLEGE, 141 WEST 54TH ST., NEW YORK CITY. The regular course of lectures commences in October each year. Circular and information can be had on application to A. LIAUTARD, M.D.V.S., Dean of the Faculty. SEWING SILK. CORTICELLI SEWING SILK, [Illustration] LADIES, TRY IT! THE BEST SEWING SILK MADE. EVERY SPOOL WARRANTED. FULL LENGTH, SMOOTH AND STRONG. Ask your storekeeper for Corticelli Silk. MISCELLANEOUS. BUIST'S SEEDS ARE THE BEST. WARRANTED TO GIVE SATISFACTION OR MONEY RETURNED, SPECIAL-INDUCEMENTS FOR MARKET GARDENERS. OUR VALUABLE CATALOGUE OF 192 PAGES FREE TO ALL. SEED GROWER ROBERT BUIST, JR. PHILADELPHIA, PA. "FACTS ABOUT Arkansas and Texas." A handsome book, beautifully illustrated, with colored diagrams, giving reliable information as to crops, population, religious denominations, commerce, timber, Railroads, lands, etc., etc. Sent free to any address on receipt of a 2-cent stamp. Address H.C. TOWNSEND, GEN. PASSENGER AGT., ST. LOUIS, MO. [Illustration: FERRY'S SEED ANNUAL FOR 1884] Will be mailed FREE TO ALL applicants and to customers of last year without ordering it. It contains illustrations, prices, descriptions and directions for planting all Vegetable and Flower Seeds, Plants, etc. INVALUABLE TO ALL. D.M. FERRY & CO. DETROIT, Mich. [Illustration] LYON & HEALY State & Monroe Sts., Chicago. Will send prepaid to any address their BAND CATALOGUE, for 1883, 600 pages, 210 Engravings of Instruments, Suits, Caps, Belts, Pompons, Epaulets, Cap-Lamps, Stands, Drum Major's Staffs, and Hats, Sundry Band Outfits, Repairing Materials, also includes Instruction and Exercises for Amateur Bands, and a Catalogue of Choice Band Music. KNABE PIANOFORTES. UNEQUALLED IN Tone, Touch, Workmanship and Durability. WILLIAM KNABE & CO. Nos. 204 and 206 West Baltimore Street, Baltimore. No. 112 Fifth Avenue, N.Y. AGENTS make over ONE hundred per cent. profit selling the REFLECTING SAFETY LAMP which can be sold in every family. Gives more light than three ordinary lamps. SAMPLE LAMP SENT FOR FIFTY CENTS IN STAMPS. We have other household articles. Send for circulars. FORSEE & MCMAKIN, CINCINNATI, O. SEEDS! PLANTS--Catalogue Free. A.E. SPALDING, AINSWORTH, IOWA. PIG EXTRICATOR To aid animals in giving birth. Send for free circular to WM. DULIN, Avoca, Pottawattamie Co., Ia. FREE _By return mail_, Full Description MOODY'S NEW TAILOR SYSTEM of Dress Cutting MOODY & CO. CINCINNATI, O. CARDS 50 SATIN FINISH CARDS, New Imported designs, name on and Present Free for 10c. Cut this out. CLINTON BROS. & Co., Clintonville, Ct. 
17683	----	PRAIRIE FARMER A Weekly Journal for THE FARM, ORCHARD, AND FIRESIDE. ESTABLISHED IN 1841. ENTIRE SERIES: VOL. 56--NO. 2. CHICAGO, SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 1884. PRICE, $2.00 PER YEAR, IN ADVANCE. [Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was originally located on page 24 of the periodical. It has been moved here for ease of use.] THE CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. AGRICULTURE--Dew and Soil Moisture, Page 17; Specialty in Farming, 17; Public Squares in Small Cities, 17-18; Farm Names, 18; Diogenes In His Tub, 18; Field and Furrow, 18-19; Agricultural Organizations, 19; Didn't No. 38 Die Hard, 19; A Grange Temple, 19. LIVE STOCK--Items, Page 20; Swine Statistics, 20; Iowa Stock Breeders, 20; The Horse and His Treatment, 20; Items, 20-21. THE DAIRY--Winter Feed for Cows, Page 21; Churning Temperature, 21; Seas of Milk, 21. VETERINARY--About Soundness, Page 21; Questions Answered, 21. HORTICULTURE--The Hedge Question, Page 22; Young Men Wanted, 22; Possibilities of Iowa Cherry Growing, 22-23; Prunings, 23. FLORICULTURE--Gleanings by an Old Florist, Page 23. EDITORIAL--Items, Page 24; Illinois State Board, 24-25; Sorghum at Washington, 25; The Cold Spell, 25; American Ash, 25; Wayside Notes, 25; Letter from Champaign, 25. POULTRY NOTES--A Duck Farm, Page 26. THE APIARY--Apiary Appliances, Page 26; What Should be Worked For, 26. SCIENTIFIC--The Star of Bethlehem, Page 27. HOUSEHOLD--How the Robin Came, Poem, Page 28; After Twenty Years, 28; Will Readers Try It, 28; The Secret of Longevity, 28; How the Inventor Plagues His Wife, 28; Recipes, 28; Pamphlets, etc., Received, 28. YOUNG FOLKS--The City Cat, Poem, Page 29; Amusing Tricks, 29; Bright Sayings, 29; Compiled Correspondence, 29. LITERATURE--The Wrong Pew, Poem, Page 30; Yik Kee, 30-31. HUMOROUS--"A Leedle Mistakes," Page 31; Sharper Than a Razor, 31; A Coming Dividend, 31. NEWS OF THE WEEK--Page 31. MARKETS--Page 32. DEW AND SOIL MOISTURE. Bulletin No. 6 of Missouri Agricultural College Farm is devoted to an account of experiments intended to demonstrate the relation of dew to soil moisture. Prof. Sanborn has prosecuted his work with that patience and faithfulness characteristic of him, and the result is of a most interesting and useful nature. The Professor begins by saying that many works on physics, directly or by implication, assert that the soil, by a well-known physical law, gains moisture from the air by night. One author says "Cultivated soils, on the contrary (being loose and porous), very freely radiate by night the heat which they absorb by day; in consequence of which they are much cooled down and plentifully condense the vapor of air into dew." Not all scientific works, however, make this incautious application of the fact that dew results from the condensation of moisture of the air in contact with cooler bodies. Farmers have quite universally accepted the view quoted, and believe that soils gain moisture by night from the air. This gain is considered of very great importance in periods of droughts, and is used in arguments favoring certain methods of tillage. Professor Stockbridge, in 1879, at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, carried on very valuable and full experiments in test of this general belief, and arrived at results contradictory of this belief. He found, in a multitude of tests, that in every instance, save one, for the months from May to November, that the surface soil from one to five inches deep, was warmer than the air instead of cooler, as the law requires for condensation of moisture from the air. That exception was in the center of a dense forest, under peculiar atmospheric conditions. After noting these facts, ingenious methods were employed to test more directly the proposition that soil gains moisture from the air by night, with the result that he announced that soils lose moisture by night. Professor Stockbridge's efforts met with some criticism, and his conclusions did not receive the wide acceptance that his view of the question justifies. In reasoning from observation, Professor Stockbridge noted that the bottom of a heap of hay, during harvesting, would be wet in the morning, the under side of a board wet in the morning, and so of the other objects named. In the progress of tillage experiments related in his Bulletins Nos. 3 and 5, Prof. Sanborn's attention was again called to this question, resulting in the prosecution of direct tests of the soil moisture itself. When completed it is thought that there will then no longer be occasion to reason from assumed premises regarding the matter. The trials were begun late, and under disadvantages; and are to be understood as preliminary to more complete tests during 1884. The experiments were all conducted upon a soil bare of vegetation. Prof. Sanborn concludes from his experiments thus far that the surface gains moisture from soil beneath it by capillary action, but gathers nothing from the air. This is made strongly probable, if not shown; first, because the soil is warmer by night than the air. (He relies upon other facts than his own for this assertion.) 2nd. Because he found more moisture in the soil when covered over night than when left bare. 3d. Because when hoed, thereby disturbing capillary action, he found less moisture than when unhoed, in surface soil. Finally, he concludes the position proven, for, when he shut off the upward flow of water to the surface of the soil, he found not only less moisture above the cut off or in the surface soil than where no disturbance of capillary action had been made, but actually less moisture in the surface soil than the night before. Strongly corroborating this conclusion is the fact that all of the tests conspire to show that the gain of moisture in the surface of the soil by night is traceable to one source, and only one source. [Illustration: AMERICAN ASH.--See Page 25.] The facts of this bulletin accord with the previous ones in showing that mulching and frequent shallow tillage economize the moisture of the soil and add new proof of this to those already given. SPECIALTY IN FARMING. This subject in my estimation should begin to attract attention, especially among the large land owners and farmers of the West. If we study the whole catalogue of money-making enterprises and money-making men, we find that the greatest success has been attained where there has been the greatest concentration on a special line of work. True, it is, that specialists are subject to unexpected changes of the times, and if thrown out of their employment are not well prepared for other work, and yet their chances for success as compared with the "general idea" man are as ten to one. For an example look at science. How has it advanced? Is it not by the invaluable aid of men who have given their whole lives to the solution of some special problem? It could not be otherwise. If every scientist had attempted to master the majority of scientific truths before he was contented to concentrate his time on some special branch of science, science would have progressed little or none at all. Linnæus opened the way in botany, and the world profited by his blunders. But to be brief--it seems to me that the most successful farmer in the future is to be the man who can so arrange his work that he is led into the deepest research on some one branch of farming. He must be a specialist. He must thoroughly master the raising of fine stock for breeding purposes, for practical profit and the shambles. Attend stock associations, and hear witnesses testify on every hand to the difficulties connected with properly rearing calves for breeding purposes. The honest breeder, though full of ideas, acknowledges he knows but very little on breeding. His time in farm life, for twenty years or more has been devoted to too many things. Is not the expert swine-grower the successful man? Books are something, but practical experience is something more. It matters little however practical the author of a work on agricultural science may be, unless the man who reads has some practical experience, his application of the author's truths will be a total failure. We insist, therefore, that the successful farmer must be a specialist. He must devote his time to special more than to general farm work. You ask me to outline in detail the idea thus advanced. You somewhat question its practicability. To attempt it might lead to endless discussion, but let us reduce to example. Farmer A. raises cattle, hogs, and sheep for breeding purposes, devotes some attention to fine horses, and keeps thirty-six cows for dairy purposes. Farmer B. devotes his entire attention to dairying and has invested in dairy cows as much money as A. has in all his stock. Is it not evident that though each farmer began life the same year, the latter man will make the most money, providing the section he is in demands dairy work? It seems to me so. And if we further place limit on the dairyman's work, we should say he can not afford, with fifty or seventy-five cows, to give as much attention to the manufacture of cheese and butter as that work necessarily demands. Even though he employs a specialist in creamery work, he himself must be a specialist to some extent. We say to investing farmers do not put $500 into horses, $500 into fine cattle, and $500 into swine, but concentrate on one class of stock, and give that your time. J.N. MUNCEY, Asst. Ag. Expts. Ag. Col., Ames, Iowa. PUBLIC SQUARES IN SMALL CITIES. BY H.W.S. CLEVELAND. A respectable looking, middle-aged gentleman called upon me not long since and told me he was a resident of an interior city of some eight or ten thousand inhabitants, and at a recent public meeting had been appointed chairman of a committee on the improvement of a small park, which it was thought might be made an attractive ornamental feature of the town. On further inquiry I learned that the proposed park was simply a public square with a street on each of its four sides, on which fronted the principal public buildings, stores, etc. It was a dead level, with no natural features of any kind to suggest the manner of its arrangement, but they thought it might be made to add to the beauty of the town, and he had called to ask my advice in regard to it. As the arrangement of such areas had occupied my thoughts a good deal in a general way, it occurred to me that this was a good opportunity to ventilate some opinions I had formed in regard to prevalent errors in their management, and accordingly I addressed him substantially as follows: "It is very rare that the people of any town show a just appreciation of the value of such an area for ornamental use. Such a piece of ground as you describe in the very business center of a town must of course possess great pecuniary value, and the fact that it has been voluntarily given up and devoted for all time to purposes of recreation and ornament would lead us to expect that they would at least exercise the same shrewdness in securing their money's worth, that they do in their private transactions. They have given this valuable tract for the object of ornamenting the town by relieving the artificial character of the buildings and streets by the refreshing verdure of trees and grass and shrubbery, and that it may afford a place for rest and recreation for tired wayfarers and laborers, and nurses with their children, and a pleasant resort for rest and refreshment when the labors of the day are at an end. "Its arrangement, therefore, should be such as to set forth these objects so obviously that no one could look upon the scene without perceiving it. The trees should be so arranged in groups and in such varieties as would afford picturesque effects when seen from the principal points of approach. The paths and open areas should be so arranged as to prevent the possibility of saving time by a short cut across, and so provided with seats under the shade of the trees as to invite to repose, instead of this, in nine cases out of ten, the trees (if any are planted) are simply set in rows at equal distances, without the faintest attempt at picturesque effect, and the paths are carried diagonally across from corner to corner for the express purpose of affording an opportunity for a short-cut to every one who is hastening to or from his business. The consequence is that at certain hours the paths are filled by a hurrying throng whose presence would alone suffice to banish the effect of repose which should be the ruling spirit of the place, while at all other times it is comparatively deserted. "Perhaps these ideas might not be satisfactory to your people, and I have therefore set them forth somewhat at length in order that you may understand what I conceive should be the ruling principle of arrangement." I perceived that my visitor was somewhat disturbed and it was not till he had told me, in a kind of half apologetic way, that he did not know "but what I was pretty nigh right," that he finally informed me that the square in question was already divided in the manner I described, by diagonal paths, and moreover that the paths were lined on each side by rows of well-grown trees. I could not help inquiring what further laying out it required, and it then came out that there had been no thought of a re-arrangement of the component elements of the park in order to give it an expression of grace or beauty, but they had thought I might be able to make it attractive by the introduction of rustic arbors and gateways, or perhaps a fountain or "something of that sort to give it a stylish look." I gave him an advertising pamphlet containing designs and prices of garden ornaments, and told him they could select and order whatever they liked from the manufacturers,--but declined to give any advice which should connect my name with the work. I have told this story as the readiest means of setting forth my ideas of the capabilities of such public areas, and also as an illustration of prevailing errors in regard to landscape gardening, which most people seem to think consists solely of extraneous, artificial decoration, by means of which any piece of ground can be made beautiful, however stiff and formal may be the arrangement of the trees, shrubbery, and lawns which give expression to its character as truly as the features of a human face. Such squares as I have described are the most common and simple forms of public parks, and they might and should in all cases constitute not only a chief ornament of the town, but a most attractive place of resort for rest and refreshment. Nothing beyond the materials which nature furnishes is needed for the purpose, but it is essential that these should be gracefully dispersed, and that they should exhibit a luxuriant, healthy growth. Above all we should avoid the introduction of artificial decorations which are intended to "look pretty." If arbors or rests are needed, let them be placed at the points where they are obviously required, and be made of graceful patterns; but do not put elaborate structures of rustic work where no one will ever use them, and where in a few years they will be only dilapidated monuments of a futile effort at display. The Village Improvement Societies which are everywhere springing up should devote their earliest efforts to the tasteful arrangement and care of these public ornamental areas, which should form the nucleus and pattern of the graceful expression which should pervade the streets. FARM NAMES. Since the call of THE PRAIRIE FARMER for "something new" I have been afraid to follow any of the old beaten paths so long traveled by agricultural writers; and have been on the lookout for the "something new." Something that does not appear in our agricultural papers, yet of interest to the fraternity. It matters little how trifling the subject may be, if it begets an interest in farm or country life; anything that will make our homes more attractive, more beautiful, and leave a lasting impression on the minds of the boys and girls that now cluster around the farmers' hearths throughout this vast country of ours. There is a beautiful little song entitled, "What is Home Without a Mother?" which could be supplemented with another of equal interest, to wit: "What is Home Without a Name?" I answer, a dreary waste of field and fence, there being nothing in the mind of the absent one to remind him of his distant home but a lone farm-house, a barn, long lines of fences, and perhaps a few stunted apple trees; and when he thinks of it, his whole mind reverts to the hot harvest field, the sweat, the toil, and the tiresomeness of working those big fields! Nothing attractive, no pleasant memory. Nothing to draw the mind of the youth to the roof that sheltered his childhood. No wonder boys and girls yearn for a change. Then what are we to do to change this for the better. I say give your country homes a name, no matter how homely or isolated that home may be. Give each one a name, and let those names be appropriate and musical, short, sweet, and easily remembered and pronounced, and then, when you go to visit a neighbor, either on business or pleasure, instead of saying, I am going to Jones', or to Brown's, or Smith's, let it be, I am going over to "The Cedars," or, to "Hickory Grove," or, to "Holly Hill." How much pleasanter it would sound. There would be no mistake about your destination, there being perhaps half a dozen Jones, Browns, or Smiths within five miles of your home, but only one "Hickory Hill." Then, when young folks make up their surprise parties during the long, cold, winter evenings, in place of notifying each other that they are going to surprise the James', the Jones', or the Jackson's, it would be, we are going to surprise "Pleasant Valley" "Viewfield" or "Walnut Hill." Every member of the surprise party would know the place intended, and the squads and companies of sleighs with their closely packed loads of laughing girls, and well filled baskets of good things would begin to marshal on the several roads that lead towards the trysting place; and when the merry-makers reach the well trimmed walnut grove from which the farm takes its name, and march up to the dwelling, instead of shouting: Mrs. Brown, we greet you, or Uncle Brown, etc., it would be: "Walnut Hill" we greet you, which would include all the Browns, old and young. One of the brightest spots in my memory is the remembrance of "Rose Valley" my childhood's happy home. Every pleasant occurrence of my boyhood clusters around that never-to-be forgotten name. It has acted like a guide, a land mark for me through my life; and my great aim in life has been to make my own home just like dear "Rose Valley." To begin the work, I have set my own house in order; and the following names given to the farms under my care will practically illustrate my plan. -----------------+-------------------------+----------------------------- FORMER OWNERS. | FARM NAMES. | PRESENT TENANTS. -----------------+-------------------------+----------------------------- Thompson Place | Hickory Ridge | A. Maddox Home " | Elmwood | Mr. Houck's home Doutey " | South Elmwood | D.Q. Renfrue Horroll " | Gravel Hill | T.H. Miller Conran " | Cedar Grove | A. Miller Casebolt " | Millbrook | C. Blettner Harness " | Burnside | A. Tunge Heller " | Pleasant Hill | J.H. Kempf Lewis " | Woodlawn | W. Lewis Oaks' " | Castle Rock | Noah Neff Held " | The Glade | W. Reubelman Jackson " | Beechwald | G. Edwards Bottom " | Deerfield | . . . . . . . . . . . . Benna " | The Mound | R. Oliver Williams " | Blacklands | W. Mitchel McGee " | Lone Tree | Tom Miller Johnson " | South Park | Owen Bush New Land | Cedar Cliff | Peter Heller " " | Cypress Grove | Geo. Surlett Old Homestead | Middle Park | Johd Meintz West of City | West Park | Dave Meintz East of R. By. | Spring Park | Jas. Ballinger Manning Place | Longview | Aug. Klemme Cox " | Meadow Hill | H. Stinehoff Davis " | Lilypond | Chas. Davis Renfroe " | Beechfield | I. Renfroe Ruble " | Sycamore Springs | Mrs. Sarah Miller Bair | Clover Hill | W. Gunter Edmonson " | Riverside | J.H. Relley New " | Cotton Grove | W.H. Henson Garaghty " | Wheatland | J.H. Relley Price " | Roundpond | W. Miller Jordan " | Parsonage | Wm. Jackson Bird " | Richwood | Mrs. Jackson Laseley " | Richland | W. Lackey New " | Lakeside | D. Edmunson New " | The Island | Geo. Laseley Sexton " | Beech Hill | J.H. Irving Martin " | Creekfield | Joe Bair Miss Co " | Catalpa Grove | Geo. Burns Cramer " | Hubbleside | . . . . . . . . . . . . Miller " | Spring Grove | A. Miller Brown " | East Gravel Hill | J.H. Miller ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I give these as samples to guide my brother farmers in selecting names for their homes. Every one of those farms can be identified by some local peculiarity, prominent and visible. For instance, Davis place is situated close to a large pond covered with white lilies. Standing on the doorsteps of the Manning place you can view a ten-mile stretch of the Mississippi river, while Mr. Relley's place is situated on the banks of that great stream. Such names can be multiplied to an indefinite extent, and duplicated in each county. If such names were generally in use, it would greatly assist postmasters in their difficult task of knowing which Smith or Brown was intended. Now brother farmers, I have moved the adoption of appropriate names for every farm in the land; who will second the motion? Give your wives and daughters a chance to name the homestead, and my word for it, it will be both musical and appropriate. Let us give our children something pleasant to think of after they have left the dear old home. To afix the name, paint it on a large board and nail it over your front gate. ALEX ROSS, CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO. DIOGENES IN HIS TUB. Allow me, Messrs. Editors, to give you notes of what I see, and hear, and learn, and cogitate, and endeavor to inculcate, from my snug little home in my Tub--will you not? Well--having your assent, I begin by wishing you all--editors, correspondents, typos, and "devils"--a Happy New Year, and your excellent paper unlimited success in 1884, and a long life thereafter. Next, permit me to advert to the contents of some RECENT NUMBERS. First, to the pro and con of pasturing corn-stalks. That is a subject, like many others, on which much can be said on both sides. Mr. Stahl (in No. 50) quotes Prof. Sanborn as saying that a ton of corn fodder, "rightly cured and saved," is worth two-thirds of a ton of good timothy hay. That may be true; but to be rightly cured and saved it must be protected from the rains and snows as the hay is; otherwise it will be as worthless as the corn left standing in the field. Most people who have cut their corn and left it standing in the shock during the fall rains, know by experience that large portions of it are rendered useless. And if we deduct the waste of corn by wet, and by rats and mice, and the waste of fodder, added to the cost of cutting, it would seem that a "Subscriber" (in No. 52) has at least a strong side of the argument. But these men are both right, in a degree. In the East in cases where the crop is not large, or in the West, and where the producer has large barns or sheds in which to store his fodder, it had doubtless best be cut and utilized in that way. But where no such facilities exist and the crop is large, as usual in the West, I can conceive of no better way to utilize the product than to feed it where it grew. HOW TO RAISE WHEAT. Prof. Hamilton (see No. 52) has hit the nail squarely on the head in his essay. I doubt if there has been a more valuable article on wheat-growing in the public prints, for many a day. It gives a new view of the question, and in my opinion illustrates, at least in part, why it was that in the early days of wheat-growing throughout the prairie States, the crops were so much better than now. Wheat was then sown for the most part on newly broken prairie sod, and its character was such that the grain could not be deeply covered, nor could the ground be heaved so much as in later sowings, when it has been mellowed by deeper culture. Prof. Hamilton's essay ought to be read by every wheat-grower in the country. Other valuable articles in No. 52 are those of J.H., on Corn, Prof. Hall's lecture on Schools, and many others--not omitting what the two talented ladies say about hens and bees. COUNTS AND BARONS IN AMERICA. Some alarm has been manifested in certain quarters, and Congress been inquired of, concerning the fact that divers European noblemen have been purchasing large bodies of lands in our public domain. There are no laws, I believe, to prevent foreign noblemen from acquiring lands in large or small quantities in our Territories; but it is clearly contrary to public policy to permit these, or our own capitalists or syndicates to do this thing. The public lands should be held for actual settlers, and for them alone; and it is to be hoped that Congress will so amend the laws as to prevent English or European lords, or American lords, from acquiring large bodies of land. The Government has been generous--too generous--to the railroads in the gift of lands; and that policy ought now to cease, and the roads required to fulfil their side of the contract to the letter. MONOPOLY--AGRARIANISM. In connection with the above, it will do to say, that as monopolies increase and gain strength, agrarianism also is extending. Legislation should be so shaped as to check the one, and give no cause for the other. Good government and strict regard for the rights and interests of the masses, are the surest means of checking agrarian and nihilistic tendencies. Had the French monarchy and governing classes been just, the revolution would have been impossible. TO CONCLUDE. It does seem to me that your magnificent offer of your Standard Time or Commercial Map--worth $2 itself--in connection with THE PRAIRIE FARMER, all for $2, ought to bring you hosts of subscribers, and that it does is the hope of DIOGENES. FIELD AND FURROW. The best temperature to preserve apples, potatoes, turnips, or any other roots or fruits stored in the cellar, is just above the freezing point. Stiff, hard clays intended for tillage in the spring ought, by all means, to be broken up in the fall. A light, sandy soil should, on the contrary, be suffered to remain unbroken. A wholesale drug house in Indianapolis, tells the editor of the Drainage Journal that tile drainage has reduced the sale of quinine and other fever and ague medicines nearly sixty per cent. The American Cultivator says that if barley has not germinated the fact of its having been slightly stained by wet is no actual detriment whatsoever; the grain is not really injured and ought to bring to the farmer just as much as the bright samples of equal plumpness. Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant, reporting in Bulletin LXXII. of the State Experiment Station his hybridizing tests during the past season with 135 different kinds of corn, incidentally mentions that "the red ears have a constancy of color which is truly remarkable; where sweet corn appears upon red pop and red dent ears the sweet corn partakes of the red color." An esteemed exchange suggests, if farmers would go to the barn on a wet day and spend their time in making an eaves-trough for the barn or stable, and thereby carry away the drip which would otherwise fall on the manure pile, causing a waste of the elements of plant food contained therein, they will make more money that day than they could any fine day in the field. American Cultivator: In winter, while the ground is covered with snow and the soil is frozen deeply, it is sometimes curious to note the effect of openings leading down to deep underdrains. The snow will be melted away by the warm air coming up from the unfrozen earth. Even in an uncovered drain three feet deep, a little straw or loose earth will generally protect the bottom from severe freezing. Cincinnati Gazette: There are so many excellencies about the cow pea, and it is good for so many uses, that we advise our Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky farmers to be sure and cultivate it this year. Next spring, when all danger of frost is over, sow, plant, or drill more or less of these valuable peas, and, in the language of the elder Weller, "you'll be glad on it arterwards," and so will your live stock. New England Homestead: Nearly level culture, hand-hoeing and slightly hilling but once, and keeping the cultivator running, was recommended at the Waterbury meeting as the best culture for potatoes. It was said that the second hilling induced a second growth of roots higher up on the plant which produced small tubers. If this is not done the additional growth will make large potatoes. Cincinnati Gazette: During sundry recent visits to Tennessee, we noticed that a considerable share of the immigrants arriving were from Michigan. They are mostly of the second generation from the settlers from the East in that State--men in the prime of life, who are seeking cheap lands in a genial climate, where the pastoral, dairy, and fruit-raising pursuits to which they are accustomed may be pursued with perfect success. Michigan farmers are usually intelligent, practical workers, who understand their profession and like it. They, and such as they, appreciate the advantages they will enter upon in their new homes at the South. New England Farmer: Prof. Goessmann, as Director of the State Experiment Station, has been analyzing a sample of rye hay, sent to the Station by Secretary Russell of the State Board of Agriculture. The sample was not cut till in full bloom, but Prof. Goessmann finds it compares well in nutritive value with a medium good quality of meadow hay. This agrees with our own estimate of well cured rye hay, judged by its effect in practical feeding to stock. Animals usually have to learn to eat it heartily, as they do many other kinds of coarse fodder which are inferior to the best hay. Rye should be cut before it comes in full bloom, to obtain the greatest feeding value from the fodder. It is then liked better, and a larger per cent will be digested. Republican, Manhattan, Kan.: In traveling through a considerable portion of the country this week, we noticed that the wheat looked exceedingly promising. The contrast between the green fields and the dry grass and naked trees was cheering to behold. Cattle are in good condition; most of the farmers are provided with sheds or shelter of some sort to protect the animals, but we saw some small bunches of young cattle standing in unprotected enclosures shivering from the north wind; it is cruel to take them through the winter without so much as a wind break to turn off the scorching blasts. Surely every farmer can afford to build a wind break, at least a pile of brush and old hay, around the stock yards. The cost would be more than made up in the saving of feed. They are growing some pretty heavy crops of wheat in New Hampshire. The Lebanon Free Press reports that Harlan Flint, of Hanover, raised this year eighty bushels of wheat on five acres of ground, and Uel Spencer, of the same town, 206 bushels from four and a half acres, while the town farm crop averaged forty-three bushels per acre. That raised by Mr. Flint was winter wheat, and Spencer's White Russian. A Meredith correspondent of the Laconia Democrat says that eight farms adjoining each other, in that town, have produced this year 524 bushels of wheat. Reports from all sections of the State show that a great yield of wheat has been secured wherever the crop has been sown. Perhaps by the time the prairie skinners of the Northwest have spread over all the wheat bearing land this side of the Rocky Mountains, they may begin the New England States and travel the continent over again. Correspondent Farm and Fireside: There is nothing so much needed about many houses as good walks in paths that must be used daily. There is hardly an excuse for not having them when either brick, gravel, or timber can be had. A good walk through muddy yards can be easily and cheaply made by placing poles side by side, a short distance apart, and then filling the intervening space with gravel, or with broken corn cobs, or with sawdust. Oak planks will last many years, if turned over occasionally, and this also counteracts warping. One of the best of walks through a level barn-yard can be made by cutting off short pieces from logs, a foot or more in diameter, and setting them upon end in a shallow trench. Such a walk from the barn to the kitchen will always be clean, and there will be less to disturb the temper of the women folks of the household, to say nothing of the good effect upon the men folks who take pleasure in lightening the labor required to keep everything neat and tidy within doors. AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS. [_Officers and members of farmers' organizations of all kinds are invited to send for publication in this department notices of meetings, time of holding fairs, and other pertinent information. We desire to make of it a weekly bulletin that shall be looked for with interest by members of clubs, granges, fair associations, and agricultural and horticultural societies._] The Maine State Grange has elected the following officers: Master, Frederick Robie, of Gorham; Overseer, H.E. Gregory, of Hampden; Lecturer, D.H. Thing, of Vernon. At a meeting of the Wisconsin State Grange resolutions were passed requesting the Legislature to separate the State Agricultural Experiment Farm from the State University, and to locate it in an agricultural district. At the Vermont State Grange's annual meeting at Brattleboro, December 13-14, 1883, 72 granges were represented. For the first time since the organization of the grange its doors were opened to the public, and the State Board of Agriculture met with it. Worthy Master Franklin's address revealed a healthy condition of the Order in Vermont. The meeting of the Massachusetts State Grange was an excellent one. Master Draper was again re-elected. The committees' reports and discussions revealed a hearty interest in and sympathy with the experimental station and the agricultural college, but the present system by which the college trustees perpetuate themselves was sharply criticised, and a change in the law was recommended. It was also "Resolved, that as Patrons of Husbandry, we recommend such a change in the law as will withhold the State bounty from all societies that permit liquor selling or gambling at their annual fairs." The annual meeting of the Michigan Grange last month was largely attended. The Secretary's report showed the grange to be in good condition. The committee on the agricultural college recommended the admission of girls to that institution. Reports were adopted recommending the restoration of the duty on wool, so that it shall equal that on manufactured woolen articles; urged that taxpayers be required to make oath to their assessments; recommended the continued fostering of the sorghum industry; condemned the extortionate practices of many millers in the State, urging co-operative mills if necessary to remedy the same, and asks the appointment of a committee to draft a bill similar to the Reagan bill to remedy some of the evils of transportation. DIDN'T NO. 38 DIE HARD! New England Homestead: "The eminent men"--George B. Loring, Daniel Needham, Charles L. Flint, Benjamin P. Ware, and George Noyes--composing the late Massachusetts grange No. 38, couldn't appreciate what had happened to them when the State Master's action in revoking the charter of their grange was sustained by the National Grange tribunal. So Brother Ware hied him to Barre, last week, to bring the matter up before the State Grange at its annual session. No doubt the "eminent men" supposed that the presence of the Hon. Mr. Ware would alone be sufficient to cause the State Grange to tremble and humbly beg pardon for their Master's action in disturbing the serenity of this mutual admiration society. Alas, pride must have a fall! Judge of the consternation of these "eminent men" when the State Grange unanimously refused admittance to Brother Ware because he was a suspended member! Now if the honorable delegate from No. 38 deceased had known when he was "set on," he would have silently packed his grip sack and returned to the secrecy of the obscure agricultural newspaper office at 45 Milk street, Boston, the "headquarters" of the corpse of No. 38. But like all "eminent men" he made a grave mistake. At a subsequent session he induced a friend to move that he be given a hearing, but the grange again voted against taking any further action in the matter. This double rebuff was effectual. With his hopes dashed to the ground, the honorable suspended brother crept sadly away to the depot, and when last seen was trying to derive some consolation from his flattering picture as it appeared in the Homestead of December 15. As our able contemporary, the Maine Farmer remarks, it was a triumph of principle, proving that the grange recognizes no aristocracy. Thus may it ever be! A GRANGE TEMPLE. At its last meeting the National Grange determined to enter upon the work of erecting, in Washington city, a building in which the records and archives of the Order may be preserved. It is proposed to raise the money needful to erect such a building in a way which shall enlist the brotherhood at large, and yet not to be burdensome to even the least wealthy of the members. The National Grange asks each subordinate grange to solicit from every name on its roll a contribution of not less than fifty cents. The money so collected is to be kept separate from all other funds, and is to be used for no other purpose than the building of a Grange Home in Washington. The treasurer of the National Grange is directed to procure a book in which the names of all contributors, and the sums contributed, shall be properly entered. In due time a building-fund certificate will be prepared, containing an engraving of the building, and such other devices as may be agreed upon, and a copy of the same will be sent to every individual who donates the sum of fifty cents or more. * * * * * CLUB RATES. TO OUR READERS. THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the OLDEST, MOST RELIABLE, and the LEADING AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST, devoted exclusively to the interests of the Farmer, Gardener, Florist, Stock Breeder, Dairyman, Etc., and every species of industry connected with that great portion of the People of the World, the PRODUCERS. Now in the Forty-Fourth Year of its existence, and never, during more than two score years, having missed the regular visit to its patrons, it will continue to maintain supremacy as A STANDARD AUTHORITY ON MATTERS PERTAINING TO AGRICULTURE AND KINDRED PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRIES, and as a FRESH AND READABLE FAMILY AND FIRESIDE JOURNAL. It will from time to time add new features of interest, securing for each department the ablest writers of practical experience. THE PRAIRIE FARMER will discuss, without fear or favor, all topics of interest properly belonging to a Farm and Fireside Paper, treat of the most approved practices in AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, BREEDING, ETC.; the varied Machinery, Implements, and improvements in same, for use both in Field and House; and, in fact, everything of interest to the Agricultural community, whether in FIELD, MARKET, OR HOME CIRCLE. IT WILL GIVE INFORMATION UPON THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, WESTERN SOILS, CLIMATE, ETC.; ANSWER INQUIRIES on all manner of subjects which come within its sphere; GIVE each week, full and RELIABLE MARKET, CROP, AND WEATHER REPORTS; PRESENT the family with choice and INTERESTING LITERATURE; amuse and INSTRUCT THE YOUNG FOLKS; AND, in a word, aim to BE, in every respect, AN INDISPENSABLE AND UNEXCEPTIONABLE farm and fireside COMPANION. Terms of Subscription and 'Club Rates': ONE COPY, 1 YEAR, postage paid $ 2.00 TWO COPIES, " " " 3.75 FIVE " " sent at one time 8.75 TEN " " sent at one time, and one to Club getter 16.00 TWENTY " " sent at one time, and one to Club getter 30.00 Address The Prairie Farmer Publishing Co., Chicago. Ill. * * * * * THE SHEPHERD'S MANUAL A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE SHEEP. Designed Especially for American Shepherds BY HENRY STEWART. Finely Illustrated PRICE, $1.50, by mail, postpaid. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago. * * * * * FARM MACHINERY, ETC. NICHOLS' CENTENNIAL WIND MILL. [Illustration] Contains all the valuable features of his old "Nichols' Mills" with none of their defects. This is the only balanced mill without a vane. It is the only mill balanced on its center. It is the only mill built on correct scientific principles so as to govern perfectly. ALL VANES Are mechanical devices used to overcome the mechanical defect of forcing the wheel to run out of its natural position. A wind wheel becomes its own vane if no vane is used, hence, vanes--save only to balance the wheel--are useless for good, and are only useful to help blow the mill down. This mill will stand a heavier wind, run steadier, last longer, and crow louder than any other mill built. Our confidence in the mill warrants us in offering the first mill in each county where we have no agent, at agents' prices and on 30 days' trial. Our power mills have 25 per cent more power than any mill with a vane. We have also a superior feed mill adapted to wind or other power. It is cheap, durable, efficient. For circulars, mills, and agencies, address NICHOLS & DAGGETT, ELGIN, ILL. (Successors to the Batavia Manf. Co., of Batavia, Ill.) * * * * * CHICAGO SCALE CO. 2 TON WAGON SCALE, $40. 3 TON, $50. 4 TON $60, BEAM BOX INCLUDED. 240 lb. FARMER'S SCALE, $5. The "Little Detective," 1/4 oz. to 25 lb. $3. 300 OTHER SIZES. Reduced PRICE LIST FREE. FORGES, TOOLS, &c. BEST FORGE MADE FOR LIGHT WORK, $10. 40 LB. ANVIL AND KIT OF TOOLS, $10. FARMERS SAVE TIME AND MONEY DOING ODD JOBS. Blowers, Anvils, Vices & Other Articles AT LOWEST PRICES, WHOLESALE & RETAIL. * * * * * THE PROFIT FARM BOILER is simple, perfect, and cheap; THE BEST FEED COOKER; the only dumping boiler; empties its kettle in a minute. OVER 5,000 IN USE; Cook your corn and potatoes, and save one-half the cost of pork. Send for circular. D.B. SPERRY & CO., BATAVIA, ILLINOIS. * * * * * EVAPORATING FRUIT FULL TREATISE on improved methods, yields, profits, prices and general statistics, free. AMERICAN M'FG CO. WAYNESBORO FRANKLIN COUNTY, PA. * * * * * HOOSIER AUGER TILE MILL. [Illustration: Mills on hand. Prompt delivery.] FOR PRICES AND CIRCULARS, ADDRESS NOLAN, MADDEN & CO., RUSHVILLE, IND. * * * * * "THE BEST IS THE CHEAPEST." ENGINES SAW MILLS, THRESHERS, HORSE POWERS, (For all sections and purposes.) Write for FREE Pamphlet and Prices to The Aultman & Taylor Co., Mansfield, Ohio. * * * * * THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. CONTAINING Practical Observations on the Causes Nature and Treatment of Diseases and Lameness in Horses, by GEO. H. DADD, M.D. Will be sent upon receipt of price, $1.50; or free to any sender of three subscribers to this paper, at $2 each, by PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago. * * * * * MAPS. RAND, McNALLY & CO.'S NEW RAILROAD --AND-- COUNTY MAP --OF THE-- UNITED STATES --AND-- DOMINION OF CANADA. Size, 4 × 2-1/2 feet, mounted on rollers to hang on the wall. This is an ENTIRELY NEW MAP, Constructed from the most recent and authentic sources. --IT SHOWS-- _ALL THE RAILROADS,_ --AND-- EVERY COUNTY AND PRINCIPAL TOWN --IN THE-- UNITED STATES AND CANADA. A useful Map in every one's home, and place of business. PRICE, $2.00. Agents wanted, to whom liberal inducements will be given. Address RAND, McNALLY & CO., Chicago, Ill. By arrangements with the publishers of this Map we are enabled to make the following liberal offer: To each person who will remit us $2.25 we will send copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER One Year and THIS MAP POSTPAID. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * DRAINAGE. PRACTICAL FARM DRAINAGE. WHY, WHEN, and HOW TO TILE-DRAIN --AND THE-- MANUFACTURE OF DRAIN-TILE. By C.G. ELLOITT and J.J.W. BILLINGSLEY PRICE, ONE DOLLAR. For sale by THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., 150 Monroe St., Chicago, Ill. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. [Illustration: FERRY'S SEED ANNUAL FOR 1884] Will be mailed FREE TO ALL applicants and to customers of last year without ordering it. It contains illustrations, prices, descriptions and directions for planting all Vegetable and Flower Seeds, Plants, etc. INVALUABLE TO ALL. D.M. FERRY & CO. DETROIT, MICH. * * * * * AGENTS make over ONE hundred per cent. profit selling the REFLECTING SAFETY LAMP which can be sold in every family. Gives more light than three ordinary lamps. SAMPLE LAMP SENT FOR FIFTY CENTS IN STAMPS. We have other household articles. Send for circulars. FORSEE & MCMAKIN, CINCINNATI, O. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS SEED CORN FOR SALE. A large quantity of first-class, selected Iowa seed corn, in large or small quantities. Address _MITCHELL VINCENT,_ Onawa, Iowa. Please state you saw ad in this paper. * * * * * The Great Musical Wonder of the Age. A STEM-WINDING MUSICAL WATCH. Each Watch is finely made, silver plated, and a _complete and sweet-toned Musical Instrument_. Size and shape of an ordinary Watch, and has a Music Box attachment concealed within, so arranged that when wound at the stem plays one of the following tunes: "Wait till the Clouds Roll By," "Carnival of Venice," "Blue Bells of Scotland," "Home, Sweet Home," "Coming Through the Rye," "Swanee River," Waltz, Polka, Schottische, etc. The notes, time, and tones are correct. It will please both old and young, and is truly the _Greatest Novelty_ ever offered to the American public. OUR SPECIAL OFFER. In order to introduce our large Illustrated Family Story Paper entitled YOUTH into every home in the Union where it is not a visitor, we are making this extraordinary offer: Upon receipt of 40 CENTS (or 20 two-cent postage stamps), we will send our paper for the next THREE MONTHS on trial, and this _Musical Watch_ as an absolute _Free Gift_. Just think of it! A _Music Box_ and our large 16 page paper _three months_ for _only_ 40 cents. For a club of 3 and $1.00 will send three subscriptions and three _Musical Watches_. This is a chance of a life-time. Write to-day. Address, YOUTH PUBLISHING CO., 27 DOANE ST., BOSTON, MASS. * * * * * HOPE FOR THE DEAF. PECK'S PATENT TUBULAR CUSHIONED EAR DRUMS cure Deafness in all stages. Recommended by scientific men of Europe and America. Write for _illustrated descriptive book_ and testimonials from doctors, judges, ministers and prominent men and women who have been cured, and who _take pleasure in recommending them_. They are unseen while in use, comfortable to wear, and make a permanent cure. Address.--WEST & CO., 7 MURRAY ST., NEW-YORK, AGENTS FOR SOUTH AND WEST. * * * * * FAY GRAPES Currant HEAD-QUARTERS. ALL BEST, NEW AND OLD. SMALL FRUITS AND TREES. LOW TO DEALERS AND PLANTERS. Stock First-Class. Free Catalogues. GEO. S. JOSSELYN, Fredonia, N.Y. REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * [Illustration] LIVE STOCK DEPARTMENT. Stockmen, Write for Your Paper. Hon. A.M. Garland is expected home from Australia about the first of February. * * * * * Col. J.W. Judy & Son, the popular thoroughbred cattle auctioneers of Tallula, Ill., last year sold 2,057 head of cattle for $500,620. * * * * * Ohio Jersey cattle-breeders will hold a convention at Columbus, on the 15th. The Short-horn breeders of the State will meet at the same city on the same day. * * * * * Mr. C. Huston, Blandinsville, Ill., has gone to Scotland to purchase Clydesdale horses. He expects to be gone about half the year, and will make several shipments. * * * * * Wm. Yule, Esq., the well-known Short-horn breeder, of Somers, Kenosha county, Wisconsin, names, through THE PRAIRIE FARMER, March 19th prox., for his public sale for 1884. * * * * * At the annual meeting of the American Guernsey Cattle Club, held at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, December 20th, Dr. J. Nelson Borland, New London, Conn., was re-elected President; Edward Norton was chosen Secretary and Treasurer. * * * * * Three new cases of pleuro-pneumonia were recently discovered near West Chester, Penn. Thus far the disease has been confined to three dairy herds. All infected animals are promptly appraised, condemned, killed and paid for by the State. The disease was introduced there by cows purchased at Baltimore. * * * * * The twenty-ninth volume of the new series of Coates' Short-horn Herd-Book has just been published by the English Short-horn Society. It contains the pedigrees of bulls ranging from (47311) to (48978). The larger half of the volume is devoted to the entry of cows with their produce. Each breeder's entries of females are recorded together under his own name. Her Majesty the Queen heads the list, followed by the Prince of Wales. * * * * * The offices of the American Short-horn Breeders' Association in Chicago were badly damaged by fire on Sunday, December 30. Some 1,500 pedigrees were destroyed and many others partially destroyed. Pedigrees received previous to December 20th, were saved. It will take time and work to restore these pedigrees and the loss must cause some delay in the work of the office. It will be remembered that the records of the association had a narrow escape at the time the Evening Journal office burned. * * * * * The following are the officers of the National Chester-White Swine Record Co. for 1883: Hon. Jack Hardin, Pleasureville, Ky., President; H.W. Tonkins, Fenton, Mo., Vice-President; W.B. Wilson, Eminence, Ky., Treasurer; E.R. Moody, Eminence, K., Secretary. The capital stock of the company is $5,000, in shares of $10 each. Fees are charged as follows: Book of 100 blank pedigrees, with stub for private record and instructions for filling, $1; for entry in Record, each pedigree, $1; stockholders, 75 cents; Record will be furnished at cost of publication. * * * * * At the late meeting of the American Merino Sheep Register Association at Burlington, Wis., the following officers were chosen: President, C.S. Miller, Caldwell, Wis.; First Vice-President, Daniel Kelly, Wheaton, Ill.; Second Vice-President, F.C. Gault, East Hubbardton, Vt.; Secretary, A.H. Craig, Caldwell, Wis.; Treasurer, George Andrews, Mukwonago, Wis.; Directors, C.A. Dingman, Troy Center, Wis.; G.B. Rhead, Norvell, Mich.; George Peck, Geneva, Ill.; E. Campbell, Pittsfield, Ohio; S.D. Short, Honeoye, N.Y.; John S. Goe, Brownsville. Pa.; F.C. Gault, East Hubbardton, Vt.; E.F. Gilman, Farmington, Me.; Ward Kennedy, Butler, Ind.; A. Wilson, Richfield, Minn.; Fayette Holmes, Russell, Kan.; H.J. Chamberlain, Davilla, Tex. Registering committee, T.W. Gault, Waterford, Wis.; C.A. Dingman, Troy Center, Wis.; Perry Craig, Caldwell, Wis. * * * * * Here is an excellent prize winning record: S.H. Todd, of Wakeman, Ohio, won on Chester-Whites and Poland-Chinas in 1883 as follows: At the Tri-State Fair, at Toledo, O., sweepstakes for best herd of Poland-Chinas, and the same on Chester-Whites. At the Michigan State Fair he took sweepstakes on Chester-White boar; at the Illinois State Fair, sweepstakes, for best Poland-China sow; do. for Chester-White sow, and the grand sweepstakes of $50 for the best herd on the ground regardless of breed. He also won in breeders' ring the prize for best herd of Chesters, and the prize for best boar with five of his get; also first and second prizes for sow with five of her pigs. Besides these notable premiums Mr. Todd's stock won for him nearly 100 class prizes at various leading fairs. SWINE STATISTICS. One of the Chicago dailies recently made the point that this city should be the center of the swine and pork statistics of the country on the ground that here is the center of trade in these products. The point is a good one. Some years ago the bulk of the hogs of the West was marketed at Cincinnati. At that time the Price Current of Cincinnati with commendable enterprize established itself as an authority in swine and pork statistics, and it has held the position from that day to this, despite the fact that Chicago has for several years received and packed several times as many hogs annually as has the original porkopolis. And this year, as usual, the Chicago press is dependent upon Cincinnati for packing statistics throughout the extensive swine-growing regions of the country. Of course it makes no real difference to merchants or producers where the figures emanate from so that they are comprehensive and reliable. It is only a bit of local pride that suggests the idea that here should the records be kept and the statistics compiled. If there is not sufficient enterprize here to capture the business, there is no ground for complaint. We should not have alluded to the matter, probably, but for the fact that the Cincinnati Price Current, with its hog-packing statistics, for the season of 1883 has just brought it to notice. Here the figures are compared with those of last year: Cities. 1883-84. 1882-83. Chicago, packed 1,405,000 1,500,000 Kansas City 254,059 233,336 Cincinnati 301,000 300,000 St. Louis 200,000 207,000 Indianapolis 181,700 183,000 Milwaukee 185,000 197,000 Louisville, Ky. 142,000 118,000 Cedar Rapids, Iowa 91,618 86,965 Cleveland, O. 62,280 42,352 Keokuk, Iowa 28,601 31,411 IOWA STOCK BREEDERS. The Iowa State Improved Stock Breeders' Association had a good attendance at its annual meeting at Ames, last month. SHEEP. Hon. J. Kennedy read a paper on the subject "Will Sheep Breeding Pay." Viewed from a financial point of view, he thought there had been no better financial results from any commodity than from the sheep--the wool and mutton--when given proper care and attention. Speculators and traffickers in wool and woolen goods were failing all over the country, but he attributed this to want of fitness for the business in which they were engaged. Though the present depression in the wool market was somewhat due to tariff tinkering, was more the result of over-production--greater supply than demand. Mr. Grinnell said that at one time he was the owner of a flock of 6,000 sheep, but wool went down in price, and he did not think it profitable to keep so large a flock, and sold out. Col. Lucas believed the owner of 160 acres of land could not do better than to put upon the tract at least 100 sheep. Hon. E. Campbell had found the business profitable where flocks were fairly dealt with. He thought Iowa one of the best places in the world in which to raise sheep. He believed that both sheep and cattle could be profitably kept upon the same farm. His favorite cross is Cotswold and Merino. The average weight of fleece in his own flock was over six pounds. SWINE. Col. John Scott introduced the subject of swine by reading a compilation of historical facts regarding them. He presented drawings, showing the different breeds and the improvements made in them, in form and size. Mr. Failor spoke of the Jersey-Reds as his favorite breed for docility and other essentials. Prof. Knapp said the most profitable hogs are those with sound constitutions, good muscular systems, of early maturity, and in general made to resist diseases which prevail from time to time, all over the country. Mr. Young said that when we want an animal for the farm, we must first look to soundness of constitution. Breed is not of so much consequence. A breed should not be run after merely because it is novel. He breeds Poland-Chinas. In order to gain the most prolific breeding, the sows of this breed should not be allowed to get too fat before dropping the first litter; simply keep them in good condition. C.R. Smith thought early breeding injurious to the swine interests of the country. H.W. Lathrop asserted that the forcing system of putting on meat had injured the constitutions of many of our breeds of hogs. In times past, when less pampering was in vogue and hogs were allowed wide range, there was less disease than now. CATTLE. Mr. Clarkson, of Des Moines, read a paper entitled "Plain and Practical Thoughts for Common Farmers." It treated of the breeding and care of cattle. Mr. Roberts said the more care there is bestowed upon cattle, the more profitable they are. He had bred up from a good Short-horn bull. Other members agreed upon the necessity of improving the grade of cattle. The best demand is always for the best stock. Hon. J.B. Grinnell read his paper upon the extent of the cattle interest and the necessity of protecting our cattle from contagious diseases, in this connection, the following resolutions were passed: Resolved, That we earnestly urge upon Congress, in view of the fact, the cattle interest is one of the most important industries, the justice and expediency of passing laws providing for an effectual eradication of pleuro-pneumonia from the entire territory of the United States, and also preventing the introduction of all contagious diseases in the future. This is the only authority to which we can go for the power for this purpose, as Congress has the exclusive power to regulate commerce with other nations, as well as among the several States; and, as there is now no law in any of the States to prevent any man who has a herd infected with a malignant, contagious disease, from taking them anywhere he pleases to the herds of any of the States; to prevent which, there must be a law more comprehensive in territorial power and extent than any State has. Therefore, it is of the most vital importance that the authority to regulate inter-State commerce should promptly act to protect our great cattle interest from total annihilation. Resolved, That the Legislature of Iowa, as a police regulation, should put the power in some hands, carefully and wisely guarded from abuse and wasteful extravagance, to arrest by isolation and destruction, if necessary, any contagious disease which may suddenly be developed in any neighborhood. This, however, not to include any of doubtful contagious character, such as hog cholera; and that we respectfully ask the Governor to call the especial attention of the Legislature to this subject, though there is no pleuro-pneumonia in our State now, nor has there ever been any, but we need laws to arrest it if any should be introduced. Resolved, That nations, as well as individuals, who ask justice should do justice, therefore, we insist that our Government should as carefully and vigilantly seek to prevent the exportation of contagious cattle diseases as to prevent their importation. This policy would create a feeling of national comity, and an effort to eradicate the scourge of nations (the cattle diseases). WOLVES, DOGS, SHEEP. The committee on resolutions submitted the following, which was adopted: Whereas, It has become impossible to keep sheep in safety in many parts of this State, owing to the loss occasioned by the ravage of wolves and dogs: therefore, be it Resolved, That this association petition the State Legislature to increase the bounty on wolves and the tax on dogs. Resolved, That the President of this association be requested to appoint a committee to draft a bill embodying the sense of this meeting in reference to a wolf and dog law. BUSINESS. The next meeting of the Association will be held at Ottumwa, commencing the first Tuesday in December next. Col. Scott is to prepare and publish the proceedings of this meeting. The edition will be 5,000 copies. The following are the officers for 1884: President, C.F. Clarkson; Vice-presidents, H.C. Wheeler, B.F. Elbert, R. Stockdale, H. Wallace, W.H. Jordan, E.W. Lucas, and P. Nichols; Secretary and Treasurer, Fitch B. Stacy. THE HORSE AND HIS TREATMENT. NUMBER ONE. History chronicles no improvement in the horse made by the agency of man. The horses of the days of Pharaoh, or of Homer, have their superiors in no part of the civilized world to-day. The Arabs have for ages been noted for the excellence of their horses, but that excellence was not created, nor has it been increased by the arts of man. Since the time of Cromwell the horses of England have steadily degenerated. Those most conversant with the matter say that this degeneracy has been the most marked and rapid during the last fifty years. The horses of this country lack the value of their ancestors of the Revolutionary period. Nowhere, or at no time, can man boast of improving the horse by the arts of breeding. What is the reason of this? The horse, the ox, the hog, and the sheep comprise the four great classes of domesticated farm animals. In certain directions man has improved these three last. These improvements have made them more valuable. The ox has been bred to make more flesh from the same amount of food, and to lay on fat at an earlier age; the cow has been bred to give instead of a supply of milk barely large enough to sustain her young, a bountiful yield, and of a richer quality; the hog has been bred into a veritable machine to convert food into pork; the sheep has been bred to yield more wool, and of a finer texture, and to make more mutton. All these changes have been beneficial because the value of the animal lay in its production of beef, milk, pork, wool, or mutton, as the case might be. It is true that these changes have been accomplished at the expense of vigor and endurance. These two qualities are important in the hog, ox, or sheep, but those that have been developed so far overshadow their lessening that on the whole we can say that the arts of man have improved our kine, swine, and sheep. But it is not so with the horse. Its value does not depend upon the quantity and quality of its flesh, milk, or bodily covering. Unlike the others its value depends upon the work it can do. Hence vigor and endurance are the prime essentials of a good horse. But as man has lessened the vigor and endurance of the hog, ox, and sheep, so he has of the horse. This is the invariable result of human art. Whenever man tampers with the work of nature he is certain to lessen bodily vigor. It could not be otherwise. For the course of nature, undisturbed and undeflected, is always towards the greatest health. Man changes the course of nature and the result is lessened vigor and endurance. Man has improved some qualities of the horse. He has increased its speed, perhaps, but only for short distances. Our race horses of to-day would make a sorry record with those of days no longer past than those of the "pony express," to say nothing of the couriers of centuries ago, because they have been made to deteriorate in vigor and endurance. We have ponderous, heavy horses to-day; but they can not do as much work before the plow or dray as those of the eighteenth century. We can not point anywhere to horses produced by breeding that are the equals of the horses of the days of chivalry. They lack not only in vigor and hardihood, but in intelligence. As the perfect symmetry of development by the course of nature has been destroyed by man the intelligence of the animal lessened. Whenever the hand of man has touched his equine friend it has been only to mar. This decrease in the excellence of the horse can not be shifted from man to time. One instance alone demonstrates the unfairness of this. The Andalusians are now mere ponies, yet they are the descendants of those noble beasts ridden to victory by the Spanish chivalry in the days when the valor of the horse was as important as the valor of the knightly rider. Taken from their hills and valleys to serve in the haunts of men, and to be subjected to the arts of breeding, they have sadly degenerated. But the horses of the Spanish explorers of both North and South America escaped, and to-day the descendants of these same Spanish horses are, under the nurture of nature and nature's ways, the superb wild horses of the new world. They are the work of nature; the Andalusian ponies are the work of man's art. As this degeneracy is the necessary co-existent of man's breeding, so far as it is produced by this cause it can not be escaped. But a good part of the evil is not the necessary sequence of breeding per se. It is also attributable to errors in treatment so palpable and easy of correction that it behooves us to note and avoid them. In my next I shall briefly mention a few of the most important of these. * * * * * Breeder and Sportsman: The old story of the countryman and his deceptive plug was recently repeated in Jersey, where people are supposed to have their eye-teeth cut. It was an old gray pacer this time, attached to a dilapidated wagon by cords and odd ends of harness. The astute hotel proprietor refused to give $20 for the outfit. Owner then replied that he would pace the horse over a good track in three minutes. Landlord bets $100 to $50 that he can't do it. Money was then put up, and owner wanted to draw, as the track was a good way off, and he could not spare the time to attend to the matter. Landlord insisted that the horse must pace or pay forfeit. A sulky and harness were borrowed, and judge placed in the stand, according to Hoyle. Owner claims the right to three trials, according to National Association rules. Point conceded. Old crowbait is scored up and given the word. Works off the mile very slick in 2:43. Landlord feels small, and $100 goes into owner's pocket. Another greenhorn bets $100 that horse can't beat 2:43. Rips off another mile 2:42, and owner pockets the money. Landlord feels better; owner better yet. Latest advices: same old side-wheeler won two or three hundred same way at Flemington, some more at Paterson, and has had a little pacing circuit all to himself. "What fools these mortals be!" * * * * * The following by Richard White in the New York Sun, might very properly have been dedicated to those trichinæ-frightened twins, Bismarck and Paul Bert. Sing, heavenly muse, the noble quadruped, Whom Orientals oft presume to scorn, Who glorifies the food that he is fed, Extracting carbon from convenient corn. Peaceful his life, his death almost sublime, His end a grand effect of modern art; Scarce has he bid a sharp adieu to time, When he is packed and ready for the mart. He goes abroad, our land to represent; The earth, from pole to tropic, is his range; He fills the bill for use and ornament, Greases the world, and regulates exchange. Though ministers abroad may lightly treat The rights that only appertain to men, They must protect our Western corn-fed meat, Defending our four-footed citizen. If Bismarck bars our barrels, tubs, or cans, Forcing our pork to make its way incog, Upset his schemes, and overthrow his plans, And clear a pathway for the native hog. * * * * * Dr. Detmers, V.S., stationed at the Union Stock Yards at Chicago, by the Department of Agriculture for the purpose of inspecting swine, alleges that during the last four months he has examined at one packing-house not less than four thousand hogs and has seen at least ten times that number, but has not seen the slightest trace of disease, as he certainly should if any had existed. During the last two years but very little swine plague has prevailed anywhere, and, as far as he knows, no diseased hogs have been shipped; nearly if not all the small rendering tanks having been closed. * * * * * M. Pasteur, the eminent French scientist, says epizootic hog-cholera, even of the most virulent type, can be prevented by inocculation with the attenuated virulent virus. He also says it is proven that the period of immunity is more than a year; that, consequently, this is long enough for the requirements of hog-raising, since the period of fattening does not generally exceed a year. Yet, in spite of these happy results, I repeat that the question of the use of vaccination for different breeds needs new investigation, so that the vaccination of swine may be made general. THE DAIRY Dairymen, Write for Your Paper. WINTER FEED FOR COWS. The increasing demand for milk in our cities and villages, and for gilt-edged butter during the winter season, is leading some of our most intelligent farmers to study more carefully the problem of winter dairying. "It costs more to make butter in winter than in summer," says the American Agriculturalist, "but if a select class of customers in cities or elsewhere, are willing to pay for the increased cost of producing it fresh in zero weather, then there is no good reason why they should not be gratified. Its feasibility is already established on a small scale, and there seems to be no discernible limit to the demand for a first-class article during the six months when the pastures are barren. The farmer who has the capital can readily provide a barn that will make his cows nearly as comfortable and healthy in winter as in summer, and shelter all the food they need to keep up a constant flow of rich milk. We have not attained, perhaps, all the information necessary to secure the best rations for winter milking, yet we are approximating toward that knowledge. Some think they have found in ensilage the one thing needful. Yet, some of the parties dealing in gilt-edge butter begin to complain of that made from rations consisting largely of ensilage. We shall probably have to put down early cut hay with the flavor of June grass in it as an essential part of the winter rations for first-class butter. We doubt if the bouquet of the June made article can be found elsewhere. Another ration will be Indian meal, our great national cereal, which is abundant and cheap and likely to continue so. Then we want green, succulent food with the dry fodder to sharpen the appetite and help the digestion. This suggests roots as another ration. We have carrots, mangolds and sugar beets; all easily raised, and cheaply stored in barn cellars or pits. And from our own experience in using them during several winters in connection with dry feed, we judge them to be a safe ration in butter-making. Cabbage also is available, and in districts remote from large markets, might be grown for this purpose. Near cities it is probably worth more for human food than for fodder. The whole subject is yet in the tentative state, and all are looking for further light!" CHURNING TEMPERATURE. A correspondent of the New England Homestead found difficulty in making the butter "come" from cream raised in the Cooley Creamer. In a later issue several correspondents tried to help her through the difficulty. One said: First of all be sure your cream is ready to come before you churn it. If you have no floating thermometer, please get one right away. Deep set cream needs not only to be ripened, but the temperature must be right--not less than 62 degrees, and 65 degrees is better. Don't guess at it, but be sure. Mix each skimming with the others thoroughly, and keep the cream pail in a warm place at all times. Another said: Keep the cream at 60 degrees to 65 degrees all the time before it goes into the churn. Take care to thoroughly mix the different skimmings. Sometimes in cold weather the butter will nearly come, and then hold on without any advance. In such cases, put into a thirty-quart churning, half a cupful of salt and four quarts of water heated to 55 degrees; it will cut the butter from the buttermilk in five minutes. My butter sells for fifty cents a pound and this is the way I manage. Another: Sour your cream before churning and have it as near 62 degrees as you can, and you will have no trouble. The first fall we had the Cooley we had one churning that would not come into butter. I found it was perfectly sweet. Since then I have been particular to have it ripe and have had no trouble. SEAS OF MILK. A newspaper correspondent contributes the following which is of course made up of a mixture of facts and guesses. But as it is somewhere near the truth, as a general thing, we do as all the rest of the papers are doing, print it. "There are nearly $2,000,250,000 invested in the dairying business in this country," said an officer of the Erie Milk Producers' Association yesterday. "That amount is almost double the money invested in banking and commercial industries, it is estimated that it requires 15,000,000 cows to supply the demand for milk and its products in the United States. To feed these cows 60,000,000 acres of land are under cultivation. The agricultural and dairy machinery and implements in use are worth over $200,000,000. The men employed in the business number 700,000 and the horses nearly 1,000,000. The cows and horses consume annually 30,000,000 tons of hay, nearly 90,000,000 bushels of corn meal, about the same amount of oat-meal, 275,000,000 bushels of oats, 2,000,000 bushels of bran, and 30,000,000 bushels of corn, to say nothing of the brewery grains and questionable feed of various kinds that is used to a great extent. It costs $400,000,000 to feed these cows and horses. The average price paid to the laborers necessary in the dairy business is probably $20 a month, amounting to $168,000,000 a year. "The average cow yields about 450 gallons of milk a year, giving a total product of 6,750,000,000 gallons. Twelve cents a gallon is a fair price to estimate the value of this milk at, a total return to the dairy farmer of $810,000,000. Fifty per cent of the milk is made into cheese and butter. It takes twenty-seven pounds of milk to make one pound of butter, and about ten pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese. There is the same amount of nutrition in three and one half pounds of milk that there is in one pound of beef. A fat steer furnishes fifty per cent of boneless beef, but it would require about 24,000,000 steers, weighing 1,500 pounds each, to produce the same amount of nutrition as the annual milk product does." VETERINARY. ABOUT SOUNDNESS. It may be supposed that the hackneyed term "sound" is so explicit as to need no comment,--and most people conceive it to be so; but the term "sound" really admits of as much contrariety of opinion as the word "tipsy;" one man considers another so if, at ten at night, he is not precisely as cool and collected as he was at one in the day. Another one calls a man so when he lies on the floor and holds himself on by the carpet. So,--as to soundness, some persons can not see that a horse is unsound, unless he works his flanks like the drone of a bagpipe, or blows and roars like a blacksmith's bellows; while some are so fastidious as to consider a horse as next to valueless because he may have a corn that he never feels, or a thrush for which he is not, nor likely to be, one dollar the worse. So far as relates to such hypercritical deciders on soundness, we will venture to say that, if they brought us twenty reported horses in succession, we would find something in all of those produced that would induce such persons to reject them, though, perhaps, not one among the lot had anything about him of material consequence. To say the least, we will venture to assert that nine-tenths of the horses now in daily use are more or less unsound. We make no reservation as to the description of horse, his occupation, or what he may be worth. We scarcely ever had, indeed scarcely ever knew, a horse that had been used, and tried sufficiently to prove him a good one, that was in every particular unequivocally sound. We have no doubt that there are thousands of owners of horses who will at once say we are wrong in this assertion, and would be ready to produce their own horses as undeniable proofs, whereby to back their opinion and refute ours. They may, perhaps, say that their horses are never lame--perhaps not; that is, not lame in their estimation or to their eye; but we daily see horses that go to a certain degree indubitably lame, while their owners conceive them to be as indubitably sound. These horses, perhaps, all do their work perfectly well, are held as sound by owners, servants, acquaintances, and casual observers; but a practical eye would detect an inequality in their going, as a watchmaker would do the same in the movement of a watch, though we might look for a week, or listen for the same length of time, without being able to either see or hear the variation. The watch might, however, on the average keep fair time; but it would not be a perfect one; and what matters, if it answers all the purposes for which we want it? A really bad watch that can not keep time is a different affair;--it is pretty much the same with a horse. If the unsoundness is such as to render him unable to do his work, or even to do it unpleasantly to himself or owner, or if it is likely to bring him to this, our advice is to have nothing to do with him. If, however, this is not the case, or likely to be so,--if you like him--buy him. It is not improbable that a man may say, I begin to believe that few horses that have done work are quite sound; but a sound one I will have; I will, therefore, buy a four-year old, that has never done a day's work. We will acknowledge that if he does so, he may probably get his desideratum; but do not let him make too sure of this. There are such things as four-year olds, unsound, as well as worked. But, supposing him to have got this sound animal; what has he got? An animal that he has to run the risk of making useful, so far as teaching him his business goes; and by the time this is effectually done, and the colt has arrived at a serviceable age, he will probably be quite as unsound as many of those he has rejected; independent of which, and supposing him to continue sound, the breeder of this horse must have better luck or better judgment in breeding than his neighbors, if more than one in five or six that he does breed turn out desirable horses in every respect. If he turns out but a middling sort of beast, it is but small satisfaction to know that he is sound; in fact, so little satisfaction should we feel, that, if we were compelled to keep and use him, so far from rejoicing that he was sound, we should only regret that he was not dead. In relations to the doings of dealers in horses, it is not our present object to expose the tricks of the trade, or to prejudice the unsophisticated buyer against all horse dealers. There are honest horse dealers, and there are dishonest ones; and we are sorry to say that, in numbers, the latter predominate; that honesty in horse dealing is not proverbial. But horse dealers, like other mortals, are apt to err in judgment; and all their acts should not be set down as willful wrong-doings. However, be their acts what they may, the general verdict is against their motives. Therefore, supposing we could bring any person or number of persons to believe the fact that a man conversant with horses might sell, as a sound horse, one that might, on proper inspection, be returned as unsound, all that we could say or write, would never convince the majority of persons that a dealer could innocently do the same thing. If his judgment errs, and leads him into error as to the soundness of his horse, it is set down, not as willful or corrupt perjury as to oath, but most undoubtedly as to his word and honesty. QUESTIONS ANSWERED. Glanders, Chronic Catarrh, and "Horse Distemper."--H.P.W., Peotone, Ill.--Query--What are the symptoms whereby a person may know the difference between glanders, catarrh, and ordinary horse distemper? Reply--Among the prominent symptoms of glanders may be mentioned a discharge of purulent matter from one or both nostrils; one or both glands on the inside of the lower jaw bones are more or less swollen, hard and knotty. One or both nostrils are sometimes swollen and glued up by a sticky, unhealthy looking pus, sometimes streaked with blood. On opening the nostrils, pustules and ulcers are seen on the inner surface. The nose may sometimes bleed. The eyes are often prominent and watery; the coat rough and staring if the horse is in lean condition; and the voice more or less hoarse. The appetite is not often impaired. Sooner or later, farcy buds may appear on the head, neck, body or limbs, generally along the inner side of the thighs. In chronic nasal catarrh or so-called gleet, the glands between the jaw bones are very slightly, if at all, enlarged; they are loose, not hard and knotty, as in glanders. This ailment, which is apt to persist for months, unless properly treated, may leave an animal in an unthrifty state, with a staring coat, disturbed appetite, dullness at work, cough and discharge from one or both nostrils; but there are no pustules or ragged sores or ulcers within the nose, as in glanders. Chronic nasal gleet, however, is apt to run into glanders; and, as there is no telling when the beginning is, such a horse, with chronic discharge from the nose, should always be looked upon with suspicion, and be kept away from other horses. The difference between glanders and influenza or ordinary horse distemper, is so marked that a mistake is not easily made. The more prominent symptoms of distemper are as follows: With signs more or less prominent of a general febrile condition, there is great dullness and debility, frequent and weak pulse, scanty discharge of high-colored urine, costiveness, loss of appetite, and a yellow appearance of the membranes of the mouth and the eyes. The eyes appear more or less sunken, upper lid drooping and lips hanging, giving the animal a sleepy look; there is cough, soreness of the throat, and labored breathing; the mouth is filled with frothy slime, the legs are cold and sometimes more or less swollen below the knees and hocks. In the advanced stages of distemper, there is a free discharge from both nostrils. Brittle Hoofs.--I.F.C., Camden, Ill. If the animal is shod, the shoes should be removed and reset at least once a month, to allow the feet to be properly pared and trimmed. If habitually brittle, it will be proper to keep such feet off from much moisture, and instead provide dry floor of whatever kind. Once or twice a week such feet should be given an ample coat of some simple hoof ointment, such as equal parts of tar, tallow and beeswax, carefully melted together, and stirred till cold. Lung Disease in Swine.--A.J.T., Emery, Ill. Most internal diseases of swine, especially inflammation of the lungs, which is often given the wrong name of thumps, are very intractable and apt to prove fatal when occurring during the winter months. Prevention is the sheet anchor for these troubles, and it must be a poor farmer indeed who can not manage to provide clean, comfortable and dry housing for his live stock during this season, or who can not comprehend that such is necessary for the well-doing of animals as well as of himself. Any animal, even a hog, will of course suffer more, or less severely when constantly exposed to chilly winds, draft of cold air, wet ground and damp surroundings, icy or frozen drink or food, etc. Blindness After Lockjaw.--M.J.G., Los Angeles, Cal. Let the animal go loose in a comfortable, roomy, well-bedded shed, from which strong light is excluded. Apply, once daily, to the hollow space above the orbit of the eyes, a small portion of fluid extract of belladonna. Give food which does not require much hard chewing. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ HORTICULTURAL [Illustration] Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper. THE HEDGE QUESTION. At one of the December meetings of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society a prize essay from the pen of John J. Thomas, of Union Springs, N.Y., was read on the subject "Hedge Plants and Hedges." The subject of the essay was proposed in the form of a question, "Are live hedges to be recommended either for utility or ornament, and if they are, what plants are most suitable?" The answer to this question was given from the experiments of the essayist during the last forty years. The deciduous plants tried were the buckthorn, Osage orange, honey-locust, privet and barberry. The evergreens were the Norway spruce, hemlock, and American arbor-vitæ. The buckthorn has the advantage of great hardiness, thick growth, and easy propagating and transplanting, and requires but a moderate amount of cutting back. But the growth is not stout enough to resist unruly animals, unless in very rich soils, and even a moderate amount of cutting back is an objection to farmers. The cost of buckthorn hedges, including the preparation of a strip of soil five feet wide, purchase of plants, setting, and occasional horse cultivation on each side, was about twenty-five cents a rod the first year. The yearly cultivation and cutting back, until the hedge had reached full size, was three or four cents a rod. Though the buckthorn has nearly passed out of use on account of its inefficiency, it is not impossible that it may be extensively planted when cultivators find that it may be converted into an efficient barrier by inclosing two or three barbed wires extending its length through the interior--these wires, supported on occasional posts, being successively placed in position as the hedge increases in height, the branches growing around the wires and holding them immovably in position. Galvanized wire should be always used, on account of its durability. Osage orange hedges require more care than buckthorn, in assorting plants of equal size and vigor, and the rejection of feeble plants. Like all other hedge plants, they should be set in a single line, and eight inches apart is a suitable distance. For the first few years the ground must be kept well cultivated. It is partly tender and will not endure the winters at the North, unless on a well-drained soil. Hence the importance of placing a good tile drain parallel to the hedge and within a few feet of it. Thus protected, good hedges have stood for twenty-five years where the thermometer has often shown ten or twelve degrees below zero, and sometimes lower. No hedge is more commonly mismanaged than the Osage orange. It is planted in imperfectly prepared ground; vigorous and feeble plants are planted indiscriminately, cultivation and pruning are omitted or not done thoroughly, resulting in broken and irregular lines. When more care is given, the hedge is nearly spoiled by being pruned too wide at the top, the heavy shade above causing meagre growth and openings below. It should be pruned in wedge shape, but shearing is objectionable as causing a thick and short growth of leaves at the exterior, excluding light from the inside and causing bare branches there. Cutting back more irregularly with a knife allows the growth of interior foliage, and gives more breadth to the hedge. The sheared hedge presents an unnatural stiffness in ornamental grounds; but skillfully cut back with the knife it has more of the beauty of natural form. The manner of pruning is very important, both as regards utility and beauty. For farm barriers hedges do not require so elaborate care. Another mode of treatment has been adopted in the Western States. The trees are trimmed and the main stems trained upright for a few years. They are then cut half off at the ground and bent over at an angle of thirty degrees with the ground, a tree being left upright at distances of four or five feet, and the inclined ones interwoven among them, a straight line of trees being thus formed. The tops are then cut off about three feet high. New shoots spring up in abundance and form an impenetrable growth, as many as fifty having been counted from a single plant the first year. The top is cut to within a few inches each year of its previous height. Hedges made in this way have no gaps. A similar treatment may be adopted when a hedge becomes too high by long years of growth. The trees are first partly trimmed with a light axe or hook with a long handle, and then half cut off at the ground and bent over. A new growth will spring up and form a new hedge. This course was adopted by the essayist with a hedge planted twenty-eight years ago, and which has been a perfect farm barrier for more than twenty years. The cost of this hedge was about twenty-five cents a rod the first year, and the three subsequent cuttings for sixty rods cost about twenty dollars, averaging less than a dollar a year. But it was usually too tall and shaded, and occupied too much ground, to be recommended where land is valuable. Ninety rods of Osage orange hedge, properly trimmed, cost about the same for the first four years of cultivation, but more for annual cutting back. It was planted twenty-four years ago, and has been a perfect barrier for about twenty years. The yearly cost of pruning was about four cents a rod for ten or twelve years, and since it has become larger and higher nearly double. For cutting back a stout hook with a handle two and a-half feet long or a stout scythe was used. Hedge shears are too slow except for ornamental hedges, and even for these the knife is preferable. The Honey locust has been extensively used for hedges of late years on account of its hardiness. Seed should be selected from the most thorny trees. The trees have a tall, slender, and not hedgy growth, and require thorough cutting back to secure a thick mass of branches at the bottom, and very few have received this treatment when young. The care in planting and rearing is similar to that required by the Osage orange. Many hedges have been injured or even destroyed by pruning after the summer growth has commenced. The pruning must be done in spring before the buds swell, if vigorous growth is to be preserved. But strong-growing hedges, that are likely to become too high, may be checked by summer pruning. Though the cost of planting and starting a hedge is less than that of building a good board fence, they are not adapted to farmers who will not give them the continued care required to keep them in good order. This conclusion is justified by observing how few have succeeded with hedges, and many have allowed them to be ruined by neglect. The evergreens which have been employed have been exclusively for ornamental screens, and not for farm barriers. The Norway spruce may be placed at the head on account of its rigid growth, hardiness, and the freedom with which it may be cut back, it will bear more shade than many other evergreens, and hence the interior of the screen is green with foliage. The cutting back should be done with a knife, and not with shears. Next to the Norway spruce is the hemlock, which excels the former in its livelier green in winter, while it is unsurpassed for retaining interior foliage. It will bear cutting back to an almost unlimited extent in spring before growth commences. But it is not so stiff as the Norway spruce as a barrier. The American arbor-vitæ, though much used, becomes destitute of foliage inside, and is browned by winter. By the introduction of barbed wire an important change is likely to take place in planting hedges. Barbed wire makes a cheaper fence for its efficiency than any other material. A serious objection to it is the danger of animals being lacerated against it, the wires being nearly invisible. This objection may be obviated by inclosing the wires in visible hedges. Efficiency may also be thus imparted to small-growing hedge plants, such as privet, barberry and small evergreens, which will require but little labor in pruning and would become handsome ornaments. The purple barberry, for example, would present an attractive appearance during a large portion of the year. A new value may thus be given to hedges by rendering moderate growers and those easily kept in shape efficient barriers for farm and fruit gardens. YOUNG MEN WANTED. Perhaps one of the greatest needs of horticulture at the present day, is young men to engage in the work--intelligent, patient, energetic young men, who will begin and make it a life-labor and study. What nobler employment in which young men can engage? What field for study and investigation can be found for them which offers a more gratifying and pleasant pursuit, and promises richer and more substantial results? There are so many open questions connected with the science; so many points that need investigation, so many problems to be solved; so much to learn that is yet unknown--that the needs for more laborers are great and pressing; and the wonder is that more of our young men are not entering upon the work. That young men are needed, rather than the old or middle aged, is because many of the investigations to be undertaken require a lifetime to perfect, and can only be brought to a profitable issue in a long series of years. Such, for instance, as the production of new varieties of fruits; the relative hardiness and longevity of trees; the effects of soil and climate, heat, cold, etc., upon plant life; the degeneracy of species, etc.;--all of which require a long series of experiments to determine. Older men, here and there, are engaged in these investigations; but they are passing away in the midst of their work only partially accomplished, and their labors are thus in a degree lost. Our farmers' sons--stout, healthy, energetic young men--are the ones upon whom this labor and high duty more properly devolves. To them belongs, or should belong, the honor and glory of pushing forward this noble work. Many of these, however, are mistakenly leaving the farms to engage in trade and speculation; while others who remain at home mostly incline to other branches. The agricultural colleges are doubtless developing a few faithful workers for these too neglected fields; but these munificently endowed institutions are believed to fall far short of their duty in this respect. I will close by recommending this matter to the thoughtful consideration of the young readers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, who, as a class, I believe to be as capable and intelligent as the country affords, and with the remark that I know of no business in life to which I would sooner urge any young friend of my own to devote his talents and his energies. T.G. POSSIBILITIES IN IOWA CHERRY GROWING. Prof. Budd, of Iowa, sends THE PRAIRIE FARMER the following copy of his address before the Eastern Iowa Horticultural Society, remarking that its appearance in this paper may lead the Bloomington nurserymen to look up this very important line of propagation: The topic assigned me is, as usual, experimental horticulture. I select the division of the work implied in the heading for the reason that it is, as yet, mainly an unoccupied field of inquiry. If the idea occurs that my treatment of the question is speculative rather than practical permit me to suggest that thought and investigation must always precede the work of adapting fruits to a newly occupied country, especially if that country is as peculiar in climate and soil as the great Northwest. In the summer of 1882, I was fortunate in having a fine opportunity for studying the varieties and races of cherries in Continental Europe. The fruit was ripening when we were in the valley of the Moselle in France, and as we went slowly northward and eastward it continued in season through Wirtemberg, the valleys and spurs of the Swabian Alps to Munich in Bavaria, through the passes of the Tyrol in Saltzburg to Austria, Bohemia, Siberia, Poland, and Southwestern Russia. Still farther north of St. Petersburg and Moscow we met the cherries from Vladimir on every corner, and our daily excursions to the country permitted the gathering of the perfectly ripened fruit from the trees. Still again when we passed six hundred miles east of Moscow we had opportunities for picking stray cherries of excellent quality from trees standing near the 56th parallel of north latitude. To undertake to tell of the varieties of the fruit and the relative hardiness of the trees--as estimated from the behavior of varieties we knew something of--of the many varieties and races we studied on this extended trip would make too long a story. On the plains of Silesia, north of the Carpathian mountains we first began to be intensely interested in the cherry question. Here the cherry is the almost universal tree for planting along division lines and the public highways. As far as the eye could reach over the plains when passing over the railways, the cherry tree indicated the location of the highways and the division of estates. As we passed the highways running at right angles with the track we could get a glimpse down the avenues to a point on the plain where the lines seem to meet, and we were told that unbroken lines along the highways were often found thirty to fifty miles in length. As a rule these street and division trees are of a race wholly unknown in this country excepting a few trees of the Ostheim in Iowa and Minnesota. They are classed in the books as Griottes with colored juice and long, slender, drooping branches. The trees are smaller than our English Morello with low stems, and neat round tops. While some other races are hardy on this plain as far north as Warsaw in Poland and Russia the Griottes are grown for three main reasons. (1) The trees are deep rooted and so small in size that they do little shading of the street or cultivated fields. (2) They rarely fail to bear full crops as the fruit buds are hardier and the fruit buds expand later than the Kentish and the other and more upright forms of the Morello. (3) The fruit is less acid and richer in grape sugar than the Kentish forms making it more valuable for dessert, culinary use, and above all for making the celebrated "Kirsch wasser" which here takes the place of wine. Some of the thin twigged Griottes with dark skins and colored juice are as large in size as our Morello and nearly or quite as sweet. That they will prove hardy and fruitful with us we can hardly doubt as they grow on the dry plains of Northeast Europe where the Kentish forms utterly fail. Why have they not been introduced? I once asked this question of Mr. George Ellwanger, of Rochester, N.Y. He replied that in the early days of their nursery some varieties of the Weichel type were introduced in their collection. But the Eastern demand ran in the line of the Heart cherries and the Dukes, and if sour cherries were wanted for pies the Kentish forms with uncolored juice seemed to be preferred. I suspect the difficulty of propagation and the inferior look of the little thin twigged trees in the nursery had something to do with the ignorance of our people of the merits of this hardy and fruitful race. In the trying climate of the Swabian Alps, the Tyrol, and the east plain of Silesia, Hungary, Poland, and South Russia, the trees are on their own roots mainly, and the sprouts are used for propagation. When small they are placed in the nursery with the tops and roots cut back in the form of root-grafts. For the use of methodic growers and or planting on private grounds where sprouts are not wanted the trees are budded or inarched on Prunus Padus. How will we propagate this valuable race of the cherry? The scions are too small for profitable grafting, and budding on our Morello seedlings hardly answers, as the slow-growing top favors sprouting from the root. Perhaps we shall find that our bird cherry (Prunus Pennsylvanica) is best suited for our use. The question of propagation of this race is important, as the cherries grown in immense quantities in the Province of Vladimir, one hundred and fifty miles east of Moscow, and in all the provinces of the upper Volga are of this thin twigged race. Beyond all doubt it is the coming cherry for universal use in Central and Northern Iowa, and even in Dakota and the far Northwest. Yet it is not the only race of the cherry which will thrive on our prairies and prove longer-lived, more fruitful, and far better in quality than any we now have. * * * * * On the grounds of the Pomological Institute, at Proskau, Silesia, we saw many varieties of the Amarelle and Spanish cherries that will bear more summer heat, an aridity of air, and a lower summer temperature than our Richmonds or English Morello. In leaf and habit of growth these Amarells of Austria and South Russia are much like our Carnalion, but some of the varieties bear large fruit, as nearly sweet as is desirable for dessert use. The race known as Spanish bears sweet fruit, much like our tall growing Hearts and Bigarreaus, but the leaves are smaller, firmer, and thicker, and the habit of the tree is nearly as low and spreading as that of the Amarells. In Austria we are told that the original stock of these round-topped, sweet cherries came from Spain, but as we went east to Orel, Veronish, and Saratov we met varieties of this race on the grounds of amateurs and proprietors who told us that the race was indigenous to Bokara and other parts of Central Asia. While these varieties are hardier than the Richmond the trees are lightly protected with straw during the winter for protection of the fruit buds, when paying crops are secured. North of Orel the Griottes alone are grown on the bush plan, with from three to six stems springing up from the crown. In Vladimir tens of thousands of acres are covered with these bush cherry orchards, producing many train loads annually of fruit of surprising excellence, considering the far northern and inland location of the plantations. On the college farm we have some specimens growing of the Ostheim, Vladimir, double Natte, and other forms of the Griottes, and a few specimens from Orel and Veronish of the Amarells and the Spanish races. We have now orders out, of which we have received a part, for perhaps fifty other varieties from Austria, Poland, and South Russia. For the present these will be planted in experimental orchard with a view to noting their behavior in our climate. Until scions are grown here we can not make much advance in propagation. The work is necessarily slow, but it can not fail, I think, to finally demonstrate that so far we have been on the wrong track in attempting to grow cherries on the prairies of the Northwest. PRUNINGS. If turnips or other vegetables to be fed to stock become frosted, place them in a cool cellar, cover lightly with straw, and let them remain frozen. If they do not thaw they will be little harmed for feeding. Snow should not be allowed to accumulate on evergreens. If so, and it partly thaws and then freezes, it can not be removed, but will catch the snow and wind, often to the entire destruction of the tree. A frost proof vegetable house is described as made with walls fifteen inches thick, double boarded, the space between the boards being filled with sawdust. The ceiling is also boarded, with about ten inches of sawdust between the boards. New England Homestead: The early black cranberry is the popular early berry on Cape Cod. It escapes the early frosts and so the crop produces better prices. A larger, lighter and longer berry is the James P. Howley, which is being introduced in Essex county. The latter variety is not so early as the former, but bears well, and in the protected bogs along shore is frequently preferred. Northwest Farmer: Mr. Edison Gaylord, of Floyd county, Iowa, advocates setting trees in a leaning posture, to prevent them from being killed by the combined effects of the wind and sun on their southwest side. Prof. J.L. Budd, of the Iowa Agricultural College, says, in confirmation of Mr. Gaylord's view, he saw hundreds of the finer cherry and plum trees in Russia planted at an angle of forty-five degrees towards the one o'clock sun. He says that only for a short time will trees thus set have an awkward appearance. The most convenient boxes in which to start seeds and cuttings are those known as "flats" among gardeners. A good size for the kitchen garden in which to start tomato seeds, etc., or for the ordinary conservatory, is two feet long, sixteen inches wide, and three inches deep. These shallow boxes are easy to handle, take up little room, and allow of much better drainage to the young plants. Salt or soap boxes can be easily cut up into three or four boxes three inches deep. Neat leather handles on each end of the box will increase its handiness. The bottom is better if made of several pieces of board, as the cracks insure good drainage. James Vick's plan of catching slugs is as follows: "Take some pieces of slate, or flat stones, or flat pieces of tin, and lay them about in the garden among the plants, distributing them very liberally; just at sundown go out and place a teaspoonful of bran on each piece of slate or tin, and the slugs will soon become aware of it, and begin to gather and feed on it. In about two hours, when it is dark, go out again with a lantern and a pail containing salt and water, and pick up each piece on which the slugs are found feeding, and throw slugs and bran into the brine, where they instantly die. It is well, also, to go around in the morning, and many slugs will be found hiding under the pieces of slate, and can be destroyed in the brine. By following up this method persistently for a few weeks the garden may be effectually rid of the nuisance." A correspondent of the Iowa Register advises us as to the proper manner of performing this operation: "To heel trees in properly, a trench should be dug on high, dry ground from two and a half to three feet deep; one side of which should slope from the bottom at an angle of 35 to 45 degrees. The trees should then be set against the sloping side of the trench and sufficiently apart to allow of fine earth being brought in close contact with every part of every root. When the roots and bodies of the trees are carefully covered, the trench should not only be filled but rounded up so as to form a mound over them. When air spaces are left among the roots they are liable to mould and rot. And very frequently, when they have not been buried sufficiently deep, the outside bark becomes detached from them and will slip off when they are being taken from the trench." A correspondent of Gardening Illustrated (England), says this is the way to make an asparagus bed: Trench the soil at once two spits deep, and work in stable manure as the work proceeds, or if procurable, seaweed and plenty of sand, or any gritty substance, such as road scrapings. It should be left as rough as possible on the surface until April next, when the young plants will be in the best condition for planting, viz., with shoots a few inches long; then draw wide drills, and spread the roots of the plants out, covering with fine sandy soil, leaving the tips of the shoots just peeping through the soil, and if mild showery weather prevails the growth will be rapid. Put some pea-sticks to support the growth and keep it from suffering by wind waving. Merely keeping from weeds is all the other attention required until November, when the old tops may be cut off, and a dressing of rotten manure spread on the surface of the bed, to be lightly forked in during the following spring. The Rural New Yorker says as follows: We plant the Cuthbert raspberry for late, the Hansel for early--both are of a bright red color, and suitable for market as well as for home use. For a yellow plant the Caroline. It is hardy and productive, though not of the first quality. For canning, or for table use, if you like a fruit full of raspberry flavor though a little tart, Shaffer's Colossal. It is rather dark in color for market, and perhaps a little soft. For a hardy, early, red raspberry that is sweet and delicious for home use, plant the Turner. For a raspberry that is excellent in every way, plant the new Marlboro. For the earliest and most productive of blackcaps, plant the Souhegan. For a larger and later blackcap, plant the Gregg. For currants, plant the Fay's Prolific for red, and the White Grape currant for white. For grapes, plant the Lady for earliest white, Moore's Early and Worden for early black. For later, plant the Victoria or Pocklington, for light colored; the Vergennes, Jefferson. Brighton or Centennial for red, and the Wilder, Herbert or Barry for black. For strawberries, try the Cumberland Triumph, Charles Downing, Sharpless, Manchester (pistillate), Daniel Boone, James Vick, Mount Vernon, Hart's Minnesota, and Kentucky. You can not select a better list for trial unless by experience you know already what varieties will succeed best on your land. FLORICULTURE Gleanings by an Old Florist. PROPAGATING HOUSES AND OTHER THINGS. In the days of our boyhood the propagating house was, in the more pretentious nurseries, a very sacred place, under lock and key, and some of its mysteries supposed to be so profound that prying eyes of other establishments were not welcome. Bell glasses in those days were thought to be indispensable, and some of the plants desired to be propagated were found to require months, sometimes nearly a year, before they could be transferred from the cutting pots. The hot-water tanks, and other bottom heat appliances of the present day were then unknown; and these appliances have resulted in greater simplicity of management. Still we are bound to admit that the demands here generally embrace a class of plants that, as a rule, are found to root the most readily, while those that have always been known to tax the propagator's skill, as the Heaths, New Holland, and others called hard wooded plants, are but little called for in this market. At that time nearly everything was placed in pots of almost pure white sand, surrounded by the ordinary atmosphere of the house; while nowadays the establishment must be small indeed if it does not contain some place where the bed is so arranged that the heat at the bottom is from ten to fifteen degrees above that of the house proper. Here lies the whole secret as to whether it is a part of a single green-house or a house devoted exclusively to propagating purposes. For the purpose of being able at all times to control the temperature of the top, the propagating house has often a northern exposure, except in the very dead of winter. With a bright, clear sun above it is almost impossible in the daytime to keep down the temperature of the house sufficiently to prevent the young cuttings from wilting, after which disaster is very likely to follow in their final rooting. Given a top temperature never above 55 or 65 degrees, with a bottom always from 10 to 15 degrees higher, if the cuttings are in good shape it is a simple matter to root them in from seven to fifteen days; though the time it takes depends, of course, upon the plant and condition of the wood. At first efforts used to be contrived to get this bottom heat by means of the old flue system, with plenty of material covering the bricks, to break, in part, the dry burning nature of the heat. Then hot water came in and furnished what was thought the acme of a propagator, and tanks of elaborate workmanship, and made of the finest material down to the commonest wood, were made so a circulation of hot water was kept up over as large an area as the necessity of the owner might require. The results seemed excellent, but lo, every now and again, disastrous failures would occur. A material would spread all around called by the florist the cutting bench fungus, that would sweep through his crop like a plague; all sorts of theories would be given, and numberless articles appear in the horticultural periodicals of the day on its cause and cure. Presently it was found that those who did not use a tank of water, but had inclosed a space to be heated by hot water pipes, did not seem to suffer so much from the invidious foe. Much moisture was found an excellent remedy for the enemy, though it might have been its first cause, as it could be best warded off by dousing with the once praised hot water tank. Whether a house is used exclusively or not, the ordinary hot water pipes are simply inclosed in a brick or wood space, with ventilators that may be opened to let off part of the confined heat into the house at pleasure. The front benches used are about two feet six inches to three feet in width, over, say four 4-inch pipes, up to within eighteen inches or two feet of the glass. On this is a platform over which three to six inches of sand is put, and in this bed are placed the cuttings where, with the differences before mentioned, they are kept as uniform as possible, and the sand kept decidedly wet. Almost everything we called soft wooded, or that can be got from the soft wood, even including most of our hardy shrubs, can be rooted with almost unerring certainty in the larger establishments by the hundreds of thousands. As modern ideas demand large propagating, even in the summer, when it is next to impossible to keep these proportions of top and bottom heat, if in an ordinary propagating house, such firms as Miller & Hunt, strike out with another idea to overcome the difficulty. This is none other than instead of glass, they have a muslin canvas-covered house, in which they have again pits, where mild bottom heat can be obtained by the use of spent hops, tan bark, manure, or other material. Of course, it would be idle to talk of a summer bottom heat of 60 deg., but instead of that, they get one of about 80 deg., and depend upon a close, uniform, high, moist temperature to carry out the same results. With this, rose plants can be and are raised by the hundreds of thousands from the single eye to a cutting, with a loss of not five per cent in the aggregate, and often not one per cent. It is very evident that with new or scarce plants this is an enormous average, as by its means firms can import the new European plants in the spring, at perhaps very high rates, start them into immediate, rapid growth, and from half a dozen plants to work on, maybe in the next spring markets have hundreds for sale. This is all new as managed by us old 'uns in former times, but he who expects to be up with the present day and cater for that class of patronage, must take the new and not the old way of doing things, or he will, in the vernacular of the streets, "get left." As we are on this particular topic, however, and as the amateur window plant-grower may want to propagate some little stock as well, even if not on these "high-falutin" ways, it might not be amiss to say that beyond the methods of "slipping" here and there cuttings in and among others growing in pots, or, mayhap, in a pot all by themselves, they can readily root lots of plants in a water and sand bath, which is nothing more than taking a deep saucer, putting half an inch of sand in the bottom, filling up the saucer full of water, and keeping it full; stick your cuttings into this, place right in the sunniest spot of your window, and they will grow about as certain, many of them, as if treated by the florist's more portentious method. Likely the reason of all this is, the water keeps the cuttings from wilting long enough for them to put forth their efforts for existence in the shape of new roots, obtained from the stored up material in the cuttings, and as soon as this is done they become new individual plants, requiring only to be transferred into a suitable medium of earth to go on as an independent, but similar existence to the plant from which they were obtained. EDGAR SANDERS. * * * * * OUR NEW CLUBBING LIST FOR 1884. THE PRAIRIE FARMER IN CONNECTION WITH OTHER JOURNALS. We offer more liberal terms than ever before to those who desire to take, in connection with THE PRAIRIE FARMER, either of the following weekly or monthly periodicals. In all cases the order for THE PRAIRIE FARMER and either of the following named journals must be sent together, accompanied by the money; but we do not require both papers to be sent to the same person or to the same post-office. 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Or, if preferred, one of the books offered in another column. It is not necessary to wait until a subscription expires before renewing. * * * * * 1841. 1884. THE PRAIRIE FARMER PROSPECTUS FOR 1884. SEE INDUCEMENTS OFFERED SUBSCRIBE NOW. For forty-three years THE PRAIRIE FARMER has stood at the front in agricultural journalism. It has kept pace with the progress and development of the country, holding its steady course through all these forty-three years, encouraging, counseling, and educating its thousands of readers. It has labored earnestly in the interest of all who are engaged in the rural industries of the country, and that it has labored successfully is abundantly shown by the prominence and prestige it has achieved, and the hold it has upon the agricultural classes. Its managers are conscious from comparison with other journals of its class, and from the uniform testimony of its readers, that it is foremost among the farm and home papers of the country. 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This comprehensive map embraces all the country from the Pacific Coast to Eastern New Brunswick, and as far north as the parallel of 52 deg., crossing Hudson's Bay. British Columbia; Manitoba, with its many new settlements; and the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, completed and under construction, are accurately and distinctly delineated. It extends so far south as to include Key West and more than half of the Republic of Mexico. It is eminently adapted for home, school, and office purposes. The retail price of the Map alone is $2.00. Size. 58x41 inches. Scale, about sixty miles to one inch. * * * * * READ THIS. ANOTHER SPECIAL OFFER. [Illustration] "THE LITTLE DETECTIVE." WEIGHS 1/4 OZ. TO 25 LBS. Every housekeeper ought to have this very useful scale. The weight of article bought or sold may readily be known. Required proportions in culinary operations are accurately ascertained. We have furnished hundreds of them to subscribers, and they give entire satisfaction. During January, 1884, to any person sending us THREE SUBSCRIBERS, at $2.00 each, we will give one of these scales, and to each of the three subscribers Ropp's Calculator, No. 1. * * * * * The sorghum-growers of Kansas are invited to meet at Topeka, the second Wednesday in February. The Kansas wool-growers meet on the 15th of this month. Do not forget the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society meeting at Kansas City, January 22-25. This will prove one of the important horticultural events of the year. If any of our friends have Vols. I to XIV, and the years 1861, 1863 to 1873, and 1875 to 1883, of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, they would like to dispose of, we should be glad to hear from them. The fifteenth annual exhibition of the Montana Agricultural, Mineral and Mechanical Association, will be held at Helena, September 8th-13th, 1884. President, S.H. Crounse; Francis Pope, Secretary. The twenty-fifth annual fair of the Linn County (Iowa) Agricultural and Mechanical Society will be held on the fair grounds at Cedar Rapids, September 9, 10, 11, and 12, 1884. C.G. Greene, Secretary, Cedar Rapids. If you are in need of a first-class wind mill, find out all about the Nichols' Centennial as advertised in our columns by Nichols & Daggett, and see if you do not think it just fills the bill. It is strong, durable, steady, and it takes and uses all the wind there is going. Hon. E.B. David, member of the Illinois State Board of Agriculture from Mercer county, made a brief call at THE PRAIRIE FARMER office last week. From him we gathered the facts regarding the late meeting of the Board mentioned elsewhere. Mr. David has long been a staunch friend of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, and his call was a very welcome one. Immigration at the port of New York fell off last year to the amount of 66,405 persons, or about 14-1/2 per cent from that of 1882. The total number landed this last year was 388,342. The greatest decrease was from Sweden and Russia. From England came 30,818; Ireland, 52,555; Germany, 164,036; Italy, 24,101; Norway, 11,536; Hungary, 11,448; Switzerland, 9,447; Denmark, 7,770; Bohemia, 4,652. Last year the arrivals were 182,893. It is not unlikely that there will be a greater falling off this year for times are not sufficiently promising here to greatly stimulate emigration from Europe. The Crystal Palace Company, of London advertise the holding for six months, from April 3 next, of an "exhibition of arts, manufactures, and scientific, agricultural, and industrial products," and invite the participation of American exhibitors. A court in a central position on the main floor has been set aside for expected American contributions, and the ordinary charge for space is two shillings per square foot. This will probably seem a trifle steep to American exhibitors who are not accustomed to pay for space in their own exposition buildings. Last year was not a very surprising one in the matter of railway extension within the limits of Illinois. The report of the Railway and Warehouse Commissioners will show that but 135 miles of track were laid. But there are 10,456 miles of track in use in the State. The companies among these lines numbering sixty-four, operate 29,370 miles of road or nearly 20,000 miles outside of Illinois. The total net income of these companies was $81,720,256 and the dividends amounted to $36,374,474. In 1882 the dividends amounted to but $29,000,000. The average freight charges in 1883 were 1.09 cents per mile, while the year before they averaged 1.20 cents, hence it must follow that the amount of traffic greatly increased over that of 1882. A lecture course for farmers at the Nebraska Agricultural College, will be given from February 4-15, by the regular instructors in the college. One or more lectures will be given on the following topics: Breeds of cattle and swine; breeding, improving, and care of stock; care of farm machinery; health on the farm; adulteration of food; economical farming; tame grapes; ensilage; what to feed; meteorology and plant growth; sorghum-growth and manufacture; horticulture; principles of pruning; the digestive organs of domestic animals; injurious insects. A number of leading farmers of the State have been invited to lecture upon their specialties. All the facilities of illustration and study owned by the college will be at the disposal of the students attending the course. These include several compound microscopes, a good agricultural library, meteorological apparatus, six breeds of cattle and four of swine, orchard, nursery, arboretum, vineyard, etc., etc. A limited number will be boarded at the college farm for a price not to exceed three dollars per week. Persons attending will be aided in securing cheap board in the city. Persons expecting to attend or desiring further information should write to S.R. Thompson, Dean Agricultural College, Lincoln, Neb. Some of our readers may wish to paste this item in their scrap books. It cost to run the United States Government last year the sum of $251,428,117, expended as follows: To supply deficiencies, $9,853,869; legislative, executive, and judicial expenses, $20,332,908; sundry civil expenses, $25,425,479; support of the army, $27,032,099; naval service, $14,903,559; Indian service, $5,219,604; rivers and harbors, $18,988,875; forts and fortifications, $375,000; military academy, $335,557; post-office department, $1,902,178; pensions, $116,000,000; consular and diplomatic service, $1,256,655; agricultural department, $427,280; expenses District of Columbia, $3,496,060. The interest on the public debt amounted to $59,160,131 and the amount of principal paid off was $134,178,756. The receipts from internal revenue were $144,720,368, and from custom duties $214,706,496. The Minnesota State Horticultural Society will hold its seventeenth annual meeting at the College of Agriculture, Minneapolis, four days, beginning with January 15th, and with the Minnesota State Forestry Association on the 18th. A cordial invitation is given to all persons interested in horticulture and forestry to be present. A large number of papers and reports are to be read, followed by discussions. These reports are by persons who possess a thorough practical acquaintance with the subjects presented, including such men as Peter M. Gideon, J.C. Plumb, Dr. T.H. Hoskins, Prof. C.W. Hall, Prof. J.L. Budd, Dr. F.B. Hough, H.J. Joly, J.F. Williams, and others. A number of premiums are offered for apples, grapes, plants, and flowers, vegetables, seeds, and miscellaneous objects. John S. Harris, of La Crescent, is President, and Oliver Gibbs, Jr., of Lake City, is Secretary. ILLINOIS STATE BOARD. The Illinois State Board of Agriculture held a business session in Springfield last week. All the members were present at one time or another during the meeting. The premium list was revised for the fair of 1884. The premiums for speed were somewhat increased over last year. In cattle sweepstakes classes it was decided that no animals can be allowed to compete except the winners of a first prize in other classes in which they had been entered, except in the case of the grand sweepstakes, to which will be permitted animals not previously entered for any prize. The Board is to make a laudable attempt to stimulate corn culture and to benefit the corn growers of the State. It offers $100 for the best bushel (ears) of corn grown in each of the three grand divisions of the State, and a second prize of $50 for the next best sample in the three divisions. The premium samples are to become the property of the Board, and the winners of prize premiums must deliver on cars directed to the agricultural rooms, Springfield, twenty-five bushels (ears) of same variety that shall equal in merit the premium bushel. The winners of the second premiums must send the samples and fifteen bushels of same variety and of equal quality. The premiums will not be paid until the comparisons of the premium corn with the larger lots are made by a committee of the Board at its winter meeting in January next. The corn thus donated to the Board will be distributed to farmers throughout the State for planting in 1885. Premiums are to be offered for tools, implements and appurtenances used in the coal mining and handling industry of the State. Premiums for poultry have been increased, and an expert will be selected to do all the judging in the poultry department. The chicken exhibit at the Fat Stock Show will not be continued. The committee of dairymen appointed at the late meeting of the Illinois Dairymen's Association did not present themselves at the State Board meeting to confer about holding a dairy exhibit either at the State Fair or the Fat Stock Show, as instructed to do. No explanation of the failure was made. The State Board, however, to leave nothing undone to establish its desire to meet the dairymen half way or more, appointed a committee consisting of Messrs. David, Chester, and Griffith, to confer with the DeKalb committee, in Chicago, at some convenient time to be agreed upon. It was decided to hold the next Illinois State Fair at Chicago the week beginning September 8th, and the Fat Stock Show at the Exposition Building, Chicago, beginning November 11th. SORGHUM AT WASHINGTON. Prof. Wiley, of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, will soon issue his report upon the sorghum business of 1883. Newspaper correspondents have been permitted to make a digest of the report. He pronounces erroneous the prevalent impression that every farmer may become his own sugar-maker. Sorghum, unlike sugar beet, contains various non-crystallizable sugars, the separation of which demands much skill and scientific knowledge. Sorghum-sugar will have to be made in large factories. The existing factories have shown that it can be made, but how profitably or unprofitably can not be stated by Prof. Wiley, who suggests that farmers near factories may, in effect, make their own sugar by raising the cane and trading it at factories for sugar. Cane giving sixty pounds of sugar per ton ought to bring the farmer thirty-five pounds, the rest of the sugar and molasses going to the manufacturer to pay expenses and yield profit. The profitableness of making sugar from sorghum depends largely on utilizing all waste products. The scums and sediments make manure hardly inferior to guano. Bagasse, or crushed cane, can be turned into manure by being thrown into hog-pens, as at Rio Grande, N.J., or it will make a fair quality of printing paper. It is not economical to burn it. If the manufacture of sorghum-sugar is proved to be profitable, it will result in supplying to a large extent our demand for sugar, but as sorghum makes a great deal more molasses in proportion to sugar than sugar-cane does, the Professor concludes that when there is enough sugar there will be a great deal more molasses than can be disposed of. Prof. Wiley has made experimentally some fair samples of rum and alcohol from sorghum molasses. Under favorable circumstances one gallon of molasses weighing eleven pounds would give 2.75 pounds absolute alcohol, 3.03 pounds of 90 per cent, and 5.5 whisky or rum. Thus each gallon of molasses would give nearly half a gallon of commercial alcohol and two thirds of a gallon of whisky or rum. As it has been abundantly proved, he says, that sugar can be made from sorghum, the Government should make no further experiments in this direction. Prof. Wiley has tried the diffusion process, and finds it yields 20 per cent more sugar, but at a somewhat higher cost than grinding. The Government, he thinks, should purchase machinery for large experiments in the diffusion process, and should raise its cane somewhere else than near Washington, as land there is expensive and not adapted to the purpose. The Government should also make arrangements with agricultural colleges or other agencies in various States for experimenting with sorghum-culture to determine what parts of the country are most favorable to the culture of sugar-producing plants. Prof. Wiley suggests in each State the trial of two acres divided into ten plots--five for sorghum, four for beets, and one for corn--to test for purposes of comparison the general fertility of the soil and the character of the season. The Government ought to carry on for a series of years the process of selection of sorghum seed in order to secure an improvement in the quality of the cane. THE COLD SPELL. The cold weather of last week seems to have extended over nearly the entire North American Continent. Nothing for severity has been known to equal it during a long series of years. East, West, North, and South it was all the same, differing in degree of course, but uniformly colder than scarce ever known in the same latitude. The greatest loss to stock so far as heard from was in that in transit to market. On some of the roads the losses were heavy. A dispatch from Independence, Mo., says a train of fifteen cars, loaded with mules from Texas via the Iron Mountain and Southern road, arrived there on the 5th, when it was discovered that at least 100 of the mules had frozen to death, and the others were in a freezing condition. The mules were two years old and direct from grass. They had been three days without food. Many trains arriving at Chicago had scores of frozen animals. No great disaster is yet reported from the far West or from Minnesota and Dakota. Still there must have been great suffering not only among the dumb brutes, but among human beings as well. It is fortunate that polar waves do not visit us more frequently. The effect upon fruit, buds, trees, and shrubs is not yet ascertained. It will be a marvel if many localities are not barren of fruit of nearly all kinds next year. THE PRAIRIE FARMER will be very glad if its readers will favor it with their ideas and the results of their observations in regard to the damage of all sorts done by the intense cold of the first week of the year. QUESTIONS ANSWERED. William Miller and F. Myrick, Peotone, Ill.--1. What are the laws in regard to drainage passed by the last Legislature? 2. Who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and who his associates? Answer--1. This is a question probably neither lawyers nor judges in Illinois are competent to answer. It you doubt it procure from the clerk of your County Court a copy of the public laws of 1883 and read the fifteen pages relating to drainage. 2. The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court is M.R. Waite, and his associates are S.F. Miller, S.J. Field, J.P. Bradley, J.M. Harlan. W.B. Woods, S. Mathews, H. Gray, and S. Blatchford. Samuel Snodgrass, Meade Co., Ky.--1. I have some large, old, and apparently healthy, apple trees, but they are comparatively barren. What can I do for them? 2. I have others which appear to be going to decay and will soon die. Had I better anticipate their death by cutting them down, or try to save them as I would like to do, for their associations with the past. Answer--1. We know no better course for you to take than to dig a deep ditch all around the trees, say three feet wide and as many deep, and just within the outer reach of the limbs, and fill this in with half the earth removed and the other half made up of vegetable matter, ashes, road dirt, and such manure from the barn and stable as you can spare. Having done this make an arrangement about each tree that will retain all the rainfall which comes down to the earth beneath and collect as much more from the open spaces about as possible. 2. Your old and decaying trees may be saved if decay has not gone too far. But the remedy is an heroic one, and rather expensive as you will find. First treat the decaying trees as described for the healthy ones, with the exception you add a greater proportion of fertilizers and manure when you fill in the ditch with half new material. Then (and all this work should be done, as it can readily be done, in your latitude during the cold months when vegetation is at a stand) give the old trees a thorough pruning, even going as far as to remove 90 per cent of all the leaf and fruit buds on the tree. Then wait for results, looking for nothing more than a new growth of wood the first year, but fruitfulness thereafter and a new lease of life. But remember as in the first place, care must be taken to supply abundant water, indeed as much more as the average rainfall, so much being absolutely necessary to afford the roots the amount of manurial plant food, in solution, the new departure demands. Every fruit-grower knows when a dwarf pear has borne a certain number of crops, fruit buds cease to form and the tree becomes nearly barren. If at this stage the dwarf is deprived of every bud, whether fruit or leaf, and the limbs are left to resemble bare sticks, and at the same time the earth about the roots is fortified with wood ashes and well rotted manure, a handsome growth of branches will be made the first year and a crop of fruit result the second. This, the writer has tried with perfectly satisfactory results twice on the same dwarfs, and has others which, having been submitted to this course of treatment, in the fall of 1882, made a handsome growth in 1883, and have set fruit buds for a good crop in 1884. The life of an average apple tree in Illinois is scarcely more than 35 or 40 years; but there is no doubt if, when they begin to show signs of decrepitude or decay, they are treated as above, they may be made to live and bear fruit for perhaps a hundred years. AMERICAN ASH. There are five well-known species of this genus (Fraxinus Americana), and they occupy an important place as valuable timber trees. This is especially true of the white ash, more commonly called the American ash. Of this tree the late Arthur Bryant, Sr., said in his Book on Trees: "It is one of the most valuable and worthy of culture for the quality of its wood and the rapidity of its growth. When full grown it is one of the largest of the trees of our forests. * * * * The prairie soils of Iowa and Central and Northern Illinois are well adapted to the growth of the white ash." WAYSIDE NOTES. BY A MAN OF THE PRAIRIE. It is a strange and almost an unheard of thing for any one to say a good word for the "tree peddler" but I am going to say it if it breaks the heart of every horticultural baby in the land. Since a time to which the memory of man runneth not back, the poor "tree peddler" has been abused and maligned by horticultural speakers and writers. In conventions he has been ridiculed and denounced. Every cross-road nursery-man not possessed of stock sufficient to warrant a line of advertising even in his local paper, nor business force enough to send an agent through his own neighborhood to take orders for trees, has spoken in a horticultural meeting or written a letter to his favorite paper, warning the farmers against the wiles of the oily tongued fellow with colored fruit plates, specimens of preserved fruits, and an order book for trees, shrubs, and vines. And I think I have known of some of the big fish in the nursery business who with one end of their tongues have lashed some other big fish in the same business for employing irresponsible agents to sell stock for them, while with the other end they were commanding a small army of the same class of agents to go forth into all the world and preach the gospel of tree planting and--sell trees. Others have sold and continue to sell trees to peddlers without limit, for cash, and of any and all varieties called for, while they denounced the system of peddling in unmeasured terms. Now it is just as possible for a tree peddler to be an honest man as it is for the man who grows trees to sell to be honest. I do not say that all men belonging to either class are honest. It would be equally absurd to say that all of either class are dishonest. I despise the quack, the liar, the deceiver in any business, and I have no respect or love for the man who will sell worthless varieties of trees or wrongly named varieties, knowingly. Honesty here as elsewhere is the best policy. But here is a fact, as I believe: It is better to plant an inferior tree than none at all, and I know of neighbors who would go down into their graves without ever planting a tree if some persuasive peddler had not talked it into them to do so, and these same neighbors now have quite respectable orchards. Here is another fact: One half the orders sent to nursery-men by farmers during the past twenty years have called for varieties utterly worthless for the localities in which they were to be planted. And the tree peddler often gratifies the purchaser by pretending to sell to him a sort which he has made up his mind to have because he knows it was good in his old home a thousand miles away. But the peddler, not having this variety, and knowing that if he did have it it would prove worthless, substitutes a Ben Davis or some other approved variety, and it goes into the ground and in due time produces an abundance of excellent fruit. In this case the peddler does a really good thing. If nursery-men will stop propagating everything but varieties adapted to the country and the markets, and many of them are doing this, the tree peddler will be powerless for mischief--will in fact become a great public benefactor. But so long as nursery-men will continue to grow and sell worthless varieties, and so long as the people will remain in ignorance regarding adaptability, so long will the dishonest peddler remain an unmitigated nuisance and fraud. In brief these three things are wanted: Intelligent and honest nurserymen; orchard planters who either know what varieties are best for them to have, or who are willing to trust the selection to the afore-mentioned intelligent and honest nursery-men; and third, first-class talkers, intelligent as to varieties and methods of culture, who buy only of the intelligent and honest nursery-men, to go through the country and sell trees. It is unfortunate that it takes so many words to express what I wanted to say, but I am done at last. * * * * * I have got it! Yes, all the ice I want is now white for the harvest in our "artificial" pond. It is the only thing that reconciles me to this fierce visit of polar weather. As soon as a trifle milder wave gets along our way we shall carefully store away sufficient for the year's use. By the way, where are the poor deluded woodchucks, muskrats, and Old Settlers, who told us we were to bask in mild etherialness all winter long? I am disgusted this morning, with the mercury at 30 degrees below zero, and still going down, at the whole batch of them, and with Vennor and Hazen, and all professionally weatherwise men and things. I have heard of little real suffering in my neighborhood from the cold, among either humans or brutes. Doubtless, when the weather moderates and people get out to tell each other all about the cold spell, there will be many true tales of intense suffering and more than the usual romancing about the terrible week. And then the Oldest Inhabitant will thaw out, and with all the self-satisfaction that superior age and experience crown him with, will tell how much colder it was in such and such a year, until we wish this little spell had sealed his memory and mouth, for we do all take a great pride in living in a time that excels all other times, albeit, if it be only in a storm or a freeze. But in these things the early times of the Old Settler can never be excelled, no matter in what century he flourishes. He is always master of the situation. His experiences are like those of no other settler that ever lived and died. With him, imagination has gradually usurped the place of experience and its isothermal dips and dodges carry him through hotter and through colder seasons than are marked down in any Standard Time PRAIRIE FARMER, or any other map or chart in existence. But for this weather business I should like to live next door to the Old Settler, for he is generally truthful, good, kind, full of practical knowledge and common sense. LETTER FROM CHAMPAIGN. We are having some very sharp winter weather, and sleighing as uninterruptedly good since the 20th of December as I ever remember. This morning, January 5th, the mercury reported 28 degrees below zero at 5:30 A.M., and 20 degrees below at 10 o'clock. This is the coldest since January 29th, 1873, when 36 degrees below was recorded at the Industrial University here, and 42 degrees below by the spirit thermometer at one of the Jacksonville institutions. But the wind was west at that date, and it is so to-day, showing our coldest weather comes from that direction rather than from the northwest or north. The explanation I suppose to be, those great fountains of cold storage, the Colorado mountains, lie west and southwest of us, and are several hundred miles nearer than the lower peaks and ranges northwest. * * * * * It is an interesting and important truth to know at this time that an unexpected source for seed corn has been discovered here at home. It has been ascertained by experiment and investigation that the early frosted corn, which has been allowed to stand in the field, has a sound germ, and though shrunken, will make fairly good seed, whereas corn which was not frosted till late in October, and ripened in most respects, save drying out, is wholly unfit for seed, having had the cells of the kernels ruptured by the freezings it has been subjected to. This rupture of cells the grain of the frosted corn escaped, having parted with the surplus water of vegetation before hard weather set in. However, the early frosted and shrunken cane fit for seed may be confined to this county or neighborhood, or a narrow area, and therefore I advise every one who thinks of making use of it to ascertain for himself, by the usual methods, whether the germ is sound or not. * * * * * Several parties have written me--one from Missouri, another from Indiana, and a third from Kentucky, that they have seed corn for sale, cheap and in quantity. I have no doubt of it, and I have accordingly advised each to advertise it in THE PRAIRIE FARMER, if they are really desirous of selling, stating briefly what variety, where grown, and at what price. I should be glad to advertise it for them gratuitously, but the contract of THE PRAIRIE FARMER with its contributors contains a clause to the effect that "they shall neither use its columns to grind their own axes nor the axes of anybody else." With the recourse of early frosted corn to go to, and the assistance of appropriately selected seed from abroad, the gross mistakes and disappointments of 1883 are pretty certain to be avoided in 1884. * * * * * No doubt many who are more or less familiar with the Reports on Hog Cholera in the official publication of the Department of Agriculture, ask themselves why Dr. Detmers is singled out by Frenchmen as the sole authority on swine diseases, when his colleagues of the commission, Dr. Salmon and Laws went nearly as far as he did in their extravagant statements. But the prominence Dr. Detmers has obtained in the estimation of Frenchmen is now explained in this: At a late sitting of the French Academy of Sciences that eminent savant, Pasteur, referred to him and his investigations in flattering terms. Giving an account of the discovery of the microbe which causes the rouget of swine in France, Pasteur said: "Respect for historic truth compels me to state, however, that in the month of March, 1882, the microbe of the rouget was discovered at Chicago, in America, by Professor Detmers, in a series of investigations which did great honor to their author." With the indorsement of one of the most eminent scientists in the world, before a body equally distinguished, Dr. Detmers may find some compensation in being singled out as the scape goat for an unfortunate commission which has cost the country many millions. B.F.J. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ POULTRY NOTES. Poultry-raisers. Write For Your Paper. A DUCK FARM. You will not find it on the map because it is not mentioned there, and I shall not tell you where it is because I promised the little woman who owns it, and who gave me permission to tell other women what she had done, that I would not mention her name or the name of the place where she lives and works. How did I happen to find her? I didn't find her; it just happened--i.e., if anything ever happens in this queer old world of ours. We bumped our heads together once in a railway accident, and we have been firm friends ever since. Her farm is only a bit of land, some thirty acres, but for the last five years she has made from ten to twelve hundred dollars a year from it, and most of the money came from the ducks. She sells eggs for hatching, and ducks for breeding and for exhibition, but the main object is ducks and feathers for market. She thinks ducks are less trouble and quite as profitable as hens. She keeps twenty-four stock ducks, eight males and sixteen females, through the winter. The ducks commence laying from the middle of February to the first of March, and lay from 100 to 125 eggs each in a season. The first laid eggs are set to get ducks to sell for breeding stock and for the early summer market. For this purpose the eggs from the ducks that are two or three years old are used, and when hatched the ducklings from those eggs are marked by punching a small round hole in the web of the feet. She thinks, and rightly, too, that the eggs from the older ducks procure larger and more vigorous birds than the first eggs from the young ducks. As soon as the weather gets warm enough to ship without danger of chilling on the way, she sells eggs for hatching at $3 per dozen, and finds no difficulty in disposing of as many as she cares to spare at that price. Her sales of eggs for hatching amount to about $100 yearly. Besides the eggs used and sold for hatching she generally sends a twenty-four-dozen case to New York just before Easter. These large, finely-shaped, pure white eggs sell readily for Easter eggs, and bring from forty to fifty cents per dozen. From the eggs set on her own place during the season she raises from ten to twelve hundred ducks each year. The ducklings are hatched from the first of April up to about the first of August. Most of the ducklings are raised by hen mothers, and she keeps some fifty hens for that purpose. The hens are all pure Buff Cochins, and are kept until they are two years and a half old. Besides raising two broods of ducks each season, each hen pays her owner an average profit of seventy-five cents a year from the sale of eggs for market. When fattened for market at the end of the second season, these Cochin hens are large and heavy, and the carcass of the old fowl generally sells for enough to pay for a pullet to take her place. No chickens are raised on the farm; the pullets are bought of a neighbor who keeps the Buff Cochins. She aims to set several hens and the incubator at the same time; when the eggs hatch the incubator ducklings are divided up among the hens; one hen will care for twenty ducklings until they are old enough to care for themselves. The eggs hatch well--those in the incubator quite as well as those under hens, and when the incubator ducklings are once mixed up with the others she finds it impossible to distinguish "which from 'tother." When the ducklings are ten or twelve hours old they are moved with the mother hen to coops and safety runs, which are placed in an orchard near the house. This orchard contains about four and a half acres, and the coops are scattered over it a few rods apart. On the side of the orchard that leads to the "pond lot," the bottom board of the fence is a foot wide and comes close to the ground in order to keep the ducklings from taking to the water too early in life. When the ducklings are four weeks old the hens are taken away, but the ducklings are kept in the orchard until they are six weeks old, or until they are well feathered on the breast and under part of their bodies, when they are turned into the pond lot, where they "take to the water like ducks." The pond lot contains nearly thirteen acres, five of which are covered with water. Originally, this lot was a piece of low, rocky, bushy pasture land, between two low ranges of hills. A stream of clear, sparkling water, a famous trout brook, ran through the center. The woman who proposed to raise ducks saw at once the advantage of such a situation, and had a dam constructed near the upper end of the lot, and later another was made lower down, so that the lot contained two large ponds. Where the fences which separate my friend's land from that of her neighbor cross the stream, water-gates are put in, which keep the ducks from swimming out with the water; and the bottom boards of the fence around the rest of the lot keep them from getting out that way. Two well-trained dogs guard this lot at night, and woe to the two-footed or four-footed prowler who intrudes. The duck houses are simply long, low sheds--with the exception of the one where the breeding stock is wintered, which is inclosed--placed on the slope a few rods back from the water. They were built of refuse lumber, and the cost was comparatively trifling. Connected with the house for the breeding-stock is a small yard where the ducks are shut in at night through the laying season. From the time when they are twelve hours old till within twenty-four hours of the time when they are killed for market, the ducklings are well fed with a great variety of food. From the first meal until they are turned into the pond lot they are fed every two hours between daylight and dark. "Little and often," is the motto. Before they take to the water the ducklings are fed a little cooked meat once each day, and doubtless this ration of meat has much to do toward making the fine large ducks that my friend has a reputation for raising. After they are turned into the pond lot the ducklings are fed but three times a day till within two or three weeks of the time when they are to be marketed; then they are confined in the fattening yards and fed oftener. The fattening yards are situated between the two ponds, and so arranged as to inclose a portion of the stream. The ducklings are marketed as fast as they reach a suitable age and size. She commences sending them to market about the middle of June and keeps it up till about the middle of September, when she quits till near the middle of January. These prime young ducks, getting into market at a time when such poultry is scarce, bring good prices--from 22 to 25 cents a pound, dressed. By the time the price begins to decline she has marketed all the earlier ones that she cares to spare, and the later-hatched she keeps growing till mid-winter, when fine ducks are again scarce and the price goes up. At Thanksgiving and during the holidays when the markets are crowded with poultry of all kinds, she holds on to her ducks, unless she has an order at an extra price. At first my friend kept the Rouens; then she tried the Aylesburys, but now she keeps only the pure Pekins, and is so well satisfied with them that she has no desire to change for anything else. She says, "For laying qualities, quick growth, great size, fine flesh and fine feathers, the Pekins can not be excelled." On her place I have seen six-weeks old Pekins that weighed six pounds a pair alive, and those that dressed from three to four pounds each at ten or twelve weeks. At five and six months her ducks dress from six to eight pounds each. For the feathers, the best and finest of which are carefully saved by themselves, my friend obtains forty cents per pound. All the work connected with the duck-raising, except now and then some heavy work which is necessary in the pond lot, is now performed by my friend and her three children, a boy of fifteen, and two girls of thirteen and eighteen. There is a moral to this, but if you can't find it it will not do you one bit of good. FANNY FIELD. * * * * * CONSUMPTION CURED. An old physician, retired from practice, having had placed in his hands by an East India missionary the formula of a simple vegetable remedy for the speedy and permanent cure of Consumption, Bronchitis, Catarrh, Asthma and all throat and Lung Affections, also a positive and radical cure for Nervous Debility and all Nervous Complaints, after having tested its wonderful curative powers in thousands of cases, has felt it his duty to make it known to his suffering fellows. Actuated by this motive and a desire to relieve human suffering, I will send free of charge, to all who desire it, this recipe, in German, French, or English, with full directions for preparing and using. Sent by mail by addressing with stamp, naming this paper. W.A. NOYES, _149 Power's Block, Rochester, N.Y._ * * * * * A GUILT frame--the prison window. THE APIARY. APIARY APPLIANCES. In the last issue of THE PRAIRIE FARMER the "Italian and German Bees" were described true as life, by that prince of writers, L.L. Langstroth. After a careful perusal of the article named, in which the good and bad traits of each race are delineated, any person ought to be able to choose intelligently which bee is best, all things taken into consideration, for him to procure. In starting an apiary, there is another item of equal importance, and that is what kind of dwellings should be erected for the occupants of this future city. The wants of the future tenants should be considered; provide them with all modern conveniences, as to pantry and larder, and don't forget, as some architects do, that abodes should be ventilated as well as warm. Some bee-masters prefer houses that are high between ceilings, others low; some prefer large houses, many again those that are smaller. The size has to be made according to the frame chosen. There are five different sizes of movable frames now in use among bee-keepers, and those are equally successful who use either size. The Langstroth is more in common use than any other. Some object to it, claiming that it is too shallow. [Illustration] In looking at the plates of the five different sizes of frames, an idea is gained how minds differ. Each one has its advocates, and its votaries claim that the frame they use is the very best for all purposes. We were once looking out of the window of a friend's house on her neat, well-kept apiary, and remarked what baby hives. And we found no fault with the baby, when this lady showed us her beautiful white sections of comb-honey, and ate her delicious peaches, canned, with extracted honey for sweetening. It must be fun to handle the little Gallup, but the Langstroth has an advantage over all others; it consists in this: that it is most used, and if a person desires to sell his hives and frames, he can more readily do so. It is also easily obtained, as it is kept in stock by supply dealers, and can be quickly sent forward when ordered, but if it was an off size wanted, a delay would occur; some change might have to be made in the machinery, and it would cost more, as well as the delay occasioned, which, if in the midst of the honey harvest, might cause great loss. Other appliances of the apiary, to suit this frame, are kept by supply dealers; such as extractors, comb-baskets, uncapping cans, etc. With any of these frames a hive can be made large or small, by regulating the number of frames. If the hives are bottomless, as many make them, a tall hive can be made by tiering up, as is practiced by those who work for extracted honey. The Adair frame was formerly used in a hive called the "New Idea, or Non-swarming Hive." Its non-swarming qualities consisted in its being a long hive, and if empty frames were always kept in front, so that the bees had to pass through empty space to reach the brood nest, they would not swarm. Frames should be placed in a hive an inch and one-half from center to center, and should have three-eighths of an inch space between them and the hive. This last item was considered of enough importance to have a patent issued for it. If the distance from the top of the frames to the honey board, or between the frames and the hive, is less than three-eighths of an inch, the bees will propolis it together, and if it is more, they will build comb between. MRS. L. HARRISON. WHAT SHOULD BE WORKED FOR. As publishers, says the Weekly Bee Journal, we should, 1. Encourage planting bee-pasturage, that there may be, every season, a crop of honey to gather, in order to make apiculture a certain occupation. 2. Foster district and local societies to afford mutual instruction, and strengthen fraternization. 3. Institute large and attractive honey and apiarian exhibits at all fairs, to educate the community to the desirableness of a superior product. 4. Cultivate a discriminating domestic market, to encourage superiority and excellence. 5. Sell at all times, and in all places, an honest article under an honest name. * * * * * BROWN'S BRONCHIAL TROCHES for Coughs and Colds: "I do not see how it is possible for a public man to be himself in winter without this valuable aid."--_Rev. R.M. Devens, Pocasset, Mass._ * * * * * The Prairie Farmer and Youth's Companion One Year, $3 for the two. It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB. CO., 150 Monroe Street, Chicago. * * * * * RAILROADS. A MAN WHO IS UNACQUAINTED WITH THE GEOGRAPHY OF THIS COUNTRY WILL SEE BY EXAMINING THIS MAP THAT THE [Illustration] CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND & PACIFIC R'Y By the central position of its line, connects the East and the West by the shortest route, and carries passengers, without change of cars, between Chicago and Kansas City, Council Bluffs, Leavenworth, Atchison, Minneapolis and St. Paul. It connects in Union Depots with all the principal lines of road between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Its equipment is unrivaled and magnificent, being composed of Most Comfortable and Beautiful Day Coaches, Magnificent Horton Reclining Chair Cars, Pullman's Prettiest Palace Sleeping Cars, and the Best Line of Dining Cars in the World. Three Trains between Chicago and Missouri River Points. Two Trains between Chicago and Minneapolis and St. Paul, via the Famous "ALBERT LEA ROUTE." A New and Direct Line, via Seneca and Kankakee, has recently been opened between Richmond, Norfolk, Newport News, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Augusta, Nashville, Louisville, Lexington, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Lafayette, and Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Paul and intermediate points. All Through Passengers Travel on Fast Express Trains. Tickets for sale at all principal Ticket Offices in the United States and Canada. Baggage checked through and rates of fare always as low as competitors that offer less advantages. For detailed information, get the Maps and Folders of the GREAT ROCK ISLAND ROUTE, At your nearest Ticket Office, or address R.R. CABLE, Vice-Pres. & Gen'l M'g'r, E. ST. JOHN, Gen'l Tkt. & Pass. Agt. CHICAGO. * * * * * STANDARD BOOKS. NOW READY FOR DISTRIBUTION. VOLUMES ONE AND TWO OF THE NATIONAL REGISTER NORMAN HORSES The most reliable, concise, and exhaustive history of the horse in general, and by far the most complete and authentic one of the Norman horse in particular, ever published in the United States. PRICES: Volume I.........................................$ 2.00 Volume II........................................ 1.50 When the two volumes are sent in one package to one address, $3.00. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price. Address your orders to PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago * * * * * REMEMBER _that_ $2.00 _pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year and, the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ SCIENTIFIC. THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. "We have seen his star in the East," said the wise men. From what remote region of antiquity may we suppose that this fancy came, that important events to the world of man were heralded by marvelous phenomena of the heavens? To the ignorant man, there can never be any world outside of that with which he is concerned. So the primitive man had no use for planets, comets, and the like, that were not in some way concerned with his destiny. And we no doubt own our magnificent modern science of astronomy to the quack system of astrology, which was only a device to induce the heavenly bodies to minister to the importance and conceit of man. The accepted Scriptures tell us that the birth of the Savior of mankind was heralded by the appearance of a remarkable star in the sky. Taking this assertion to be true, it might be a matter of some interest to consider what explanations have been made of this phenomenon. A large majority of religious teachers, we admit, even to the present day, have attempted no explanation whatever, but have settled the subject by calling the star a miraculous appearance, concerning whose true nature we can know nothing. But two solutions of the phenomenon have been given by well-known astronomers, either of which, if accepted, will place the miracle in the list of purely natural occurrences. Kepler held that the Star of Bethlehem was simply a conjunction of the planets. Astronomy, which, more fortunate than history, can bring unimpeachable witnesses to its record of past events, assures us that there was a remarkable conjunction, or rather three conjunctions of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, in the year of Rome 747, or seven years before the Christian era. It is now generally admitted that Christ was probably born at least four years before the date fixed upon as the first "year of our Lord," and remembering how much uncertainty hangs about this date we might consider ourselves fully justified in placing it, as Kepler did, in the year 7 B.C. This being granted, let us see how the occurrence of the conjunctions in this year explains the miracle of the "Star." In the first place, note that the Magi, or Wise Men, of the East (presumably the country of Chaldea) were the first to call attention to the star as indicating the birth of the "King of the Jews." The Chaldeans were devoted to astrology, and it is only reasonable to infer that whatever remarkable appearance they saw in the sky, they would endeavor to explain it by their astrological laws. On the 29th of May, 7 B.C., a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurred, in the 20th degree of the constellation Pisces, close to the first point of Aries; on the 29th of September of the same year, another conjunction of these planets took place, in the 16th degree of Pisces; and on the 5th of December, a third, in the 15th degree of the same sign. (These are not conjectures or inferences, but known astronomical facts.) If we suppose that the Magi, intent on their study of the heavens, saw the first of these conjunctions, they actually saw it _in the East_, for on May 29, it would rise three and one half hours before sunrise. It is not necessary to suppose that the planets approached near enough to each other to appear as one star, for they probably did not--it was their conjunctions that gave their astrological significance. It plainly indicated to these observers that some important event was impending, and what could be more important than the birth of a great man? But where was this one to appear? The sign Pisces was the most significant one for the Jews, for according to astrological legend, in the year 2865 A.M. a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in this sign had heralded the birth of Moses; the proximity to Aries indicated that the hero foretold was of kingly lineage; the Jewish expectation of a great king had become a well-known story in Chaldea during the captivity, ergo, the inference was prompt and sure, this conjunction indicated the birth of the expected King of the Jews. That they might be among the first to do honor to so great a personage as they believed this king to be, the wise men soon set out for Judea. The journey probably took them five months or more. On their way they witnessed the second conjunction, which no doubt only strengthened their faith. If they performed the journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem at the time of the third conjunction, December 5, in the evening, as the narration implies, the stars would be some distance east of the meridian, and would seem to move from southeast to southwest, or towards Bethlehem. Their standing over the house we may regard as an additional statement that crept into the narration probably through its repetitions. Such is Kepler's explanation of the Star of Bethlehem. But before he had given this to the world, indeed while he was an infant in his cradle, Tycho Brahe had connected the phenomenon with that of one of the great variable stars of the solar system. The latter astronomer discovered, in 1572, what appeared to be a new star in the constellation, Cassiopeia. It was a star of the first magnitude when first perceived, and daily it increased in brilliancy, till it out-shone Sirius, equaled Venus in lustre, and could be perceived, even by the naked eye, at noonday. For nearly a month the star shone; at first it had a white light, then a yellow, and finally it was a bright red. Then it slowly faded, and in about sixteen months had disappeared. Amidst all the conjecture concerning this remarkable appearance, some regarding it as a new world in process of creation, others as a sun on fire, Tycho Brahe held to the belief, though unable to prove it, that it was a star with a regular period of light and of darkness, caused possibly by its nearness to, or distance from, the earth. When the telescope was invented, forty years later, the accuracy of this theory was known. At the spot carefully mapped out by Tycho Brahe, a telescopic star was found, undoubtedly the same one whose brilliant appearance had so startled the world in 1572. Upon this, astronomers began to study the annals of their science for similar appearances, and found that a very brilliant star had appeared and disappeared near the same spot in the heavens in 1264, and also in 945. The inference was that this star had a period of about three hundred years, and counting back, imagination might place one of its periods of brilliancy very near the time of Christ's birth. For this reason it received the name of the Star of Bethlehem, and many have fully accepted the theory which makes this variable luminary identical with the "Star of the East." This second theory has especial interest just now, for if astronomical calculations are correct, we may look for the reappearance of this remarkable star during the coming year. If it does fulfill the prediction of its return it must be reckoned as one of the most noteworthy phenomena of the century. For the benefit of amateur observers, who are as likely as any to be the first to perceive this remarkable sight, we may say that Cassiopeia, the constellation in which it will appear, lies very near the North Star. You all know how to find the Polar Star by the pointers of the Great Dipper; continue this line beyond about an equal distance, and you will strike Caph, the largest star in Cassiopeia, or the Chair, so-called because the stars form the outline of an inverted chair. Near one of these the wandering luminary will probably flash out, "to amaze a wondering world." We may remark, in conclusion, that though there are quite a number of variable stars, their nature and the cause of their changes are but imperfectly understood. The Star of Bethlehem has no doubt an orbit, which brings it much nearer the earth at some times than others. But astronomers do not believe that the mere fact of distance explains all changes. There is a star known as Mira, which for eleven months is wholly invisible to the naked eye, then flames forth as a star of the first magnitude, and is visible for a period of nearly three months, fading at its close into darkness again. The star Algol, in the constellation Perseus, is usually of the second magnitude, but every two and a-half days it begins to decline in brilliancy, becomes very faint, and remains thus for about three hours, and then waxes bright again. Possibly this may be caused by the shadow of another star. In 1866 a star of the eighth magnitude, in the Northern Crown, suddenly flamed up into extraordinary brilliancy, remained thus for several months and gradually subsided. This star was examined with the spectrum, and showed lines of burning hydrogen. This led to the theory, now held, that the increase in brilliancy of these stars is caused by the incandescence of this gas. These fixed stars are all supposed to be suns of other systems, and to be surrounded--like our sun--with envelopes of fiery gases; from some cause not at all understood these gases may, at regular periods, flame up with fiercer heat than usual, and produce this appearance of greatly increased light. This is a very inadequate explanation, no doubt, but it is the best that astronomers have yet been able to devise in the matter. A.C.C. * * * * * OUR BOOKS. Books Free! Good books are valued by intelligent men and women more than silver and gold. They are treasures in every home. They are to the mind what light and heat are to plants. They _Store the Mind with Useful Knowledge;_ the mind directs the hands. An intelligent man has an advantage over one who is ignorant, whether he is a farmer, or mechanic, or merchant, and is surer of success in his occupation. Think how _Losses of Time and Money may be Saved_ by having some book at hand containing just the information desired in some line of the rural industries. We offer an excellent opportunity for any one to obtain BOOKS FREE for himself or family, and also for societies, farmers' clubs, and associations to make additions to a library, or to start one. These books comprise standard works, and the latest and best books for Farmers, Stockmen, Dairymen, Fruit-Growers, Gardeners, Florists, Poultrymen, Apiarists, Silk-Culturists, Housekeepers, Architects, Etc., Etc. THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY will give to any person, association, or club, who will obtain and send subscribers to THE PRAIRIE FARMER (including both new subscribers and renewals), at the regular price of the paper ($2) each, any of the books contained in our Book List on the following terms: For THREE subscribers, books to the amount of $1.50. For FOUR subscribers, books to the amount of $2.00. For FIVE subscribers, books to the amount of $2.50. For SIX subscribers, books to the amount of $3.00. For SEVEN subscribers, books to the amount of $3.50. For EIGHT subscribers, books to the amount of $4.00 For TEN subscribers, books to the amount of $5.00. _For Twelve Subscriptions and Upward,_ A Dollar's Worth of Books for Every Two Subscriptions sent at $2.00 each. All books given under these offers will be delivered at our office, No. 150 Monroe street. If it is desired that they shall be forwarded by express, they will be packed and delivered at the express office by us, the receiver to pay cost of carriage. Sent by mail to any part of the United States or Canada, the postage will be seven cents on each dollar's worth of books. It is necessary that parties to whom the books are given shall remit us the postage before the books are sent. * * * * * A Dictionary Free! This is no catchpenny affair, but a valuable lexicon. It is the popular AMERICAN DICTIONARY, on the basis of Webster, Worcester, Johnson, and other eminent American and English authorities. It contains over 32,000 words, with accurate definitions, proper spelling, and exact pronunciation; to which is added a mass of valuable information. It is enriched with 400 illustrations. REMEMBER, every subscriber at the regular price of THE PRAIRIE FARMER gets this Dictionary FREE, if preferred to our commercial map. * * * * * HERE IS ANOTHER. ROPP'S CALCULATOR And Account Book for 1884. This is the most useful thing in the way of a memorandum book and calculator ever issued. It is a work of nearly 80 pages of printed matter and an equal number of blank leaves, ruled, for keeping accounts. The contents include a vast array of practical calculations, 100,000 or more in number, arranged for reference like a dictionary, so that a farmer or business man may turn to the figures, and find the answer to any problem in business. There are three kinds. We use No. 3. Full leather; assorted colors, with flap, slate pocket, and a renewable account book, ruled with divisions or headings especially adapted to farmers' use. The retail price of this book in leather is $1. We will send it FREE to every subscriber to THE PRAIRIE FARMER who sends us $2. Or we will send THREE copies of No. 1, the cheaper issue. * * * * * AND YET ANOTHER. American Etiquette and Rules of Politeness. It is the latest and best standard work recommended and endorsed by all who have read it. The acknowledged authority. Beautifully and appropriately illustrated; handsomely and substantially bound. It contains 38 chapters, treating on all subjects relating to etiquette. We send this book--plain edition, to any subscriber desiring it who sends $2.00 for THE PRAIRIE FARMER year, or for two subscribers to THE PRAIRIE FARMER at $2 each, we will send American Etiquette bound in English cloth, burnished edges. Our large and varied premium list will be issued in a few days. Send for it. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. TO PRESERVE THE HEALTH Use the Magneton Appliance Co.'s MAGNETIC LUNG PROTECTOR! PRICE ONLY $5. They are priceless to LADIES, GENTLEMEN, and CHILDREN with WEAK LUNGS; no case of PNEUMONIA OR CROUP is ever known where these garments are worn. They also prevent and cure HEART DIFFICULTIES, COLDS, RHEUMATISM, NEURALGIA, THROAT TROUBLES, DIPHTHERIA, CATARRH, AND ALL KINDRED DISEASES. Will WEAR any service for THREE YEARS. Are worn over the under-clothing. CATARRH, It is needless to describe the symptoms of this nauseous disease that is sapping the life and strength of only too many of the fairest and best of both sexes. Labor, study, and research in America, Europe, and Eastern lands, have resulted in the Magnetic Lung Protector, affording cure for Catarrh, a remedy which contains No DRUGGING OF THE SYSTEM, and with the continuous stream of Magnetism permeating through the afflicted organs, MUST RESTORE THEM TO A HEALTHY ACTION. WE PLACE OUR PRICE for this Appliance at less than one-twentieth of the price asked by others for remedies upon which you take all the chances, and WE ESPECIALLY INVITE the patronage of the MANY PERSONS who have tried DRUGGING THEIR STOMACHS WITHOUT EFFECT. HOW TO OBTAIN This Appliance. Go to your druggist and ask for them. If they have not got them, write to the proprietors, enclosing the price, in letter at our risk, and they will be sent to you at once by mail, post paid. Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical Treatment WITHOUT MEDICINE," with thousands of testimonials, THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 State Street, Chicago, Ill. NOTE.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our Magnetic Appliances. Positively _no cold feet where they are worn, or money refunded_. * * * * * PUBLICATIONS. MARSHALL M. KIRKMAN'S BOOKS ON RAILROAD TOPICS. DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A RAILROAD MAN IF YOU DO, THE BOOKS DESCRIBED BELOW POINT THE WAY. The most promising field for men of talent and ambition at the present day is the railroad service. The pay is large in many instances, while the service is continuous and honorable. Most of our railroad men began life on the farm. Of this class is the author of the accompanying books descriptive of railway operations, who has been connected continuously with railroads as a subordinate and officer for 27 years. He was brought up on a farm, and began railroading as a lad at $7 per month. He has written a number of standard books on various topics connected with the organization, construction, management and policy of railroads. These books are of interest not only to railroad men but to the general reader as well. They are indispensable to the student. They present every phase of railroad life, and are written in an easy and simple style that both interests and instructs. The books are as follows: "RAILWAY EXPENDITURES--THEIR EXTENT, OBJECT AND ECONOMY."--A Practical Treatise on Construction and Operation. In Two Volumes, 850 pages. $4.00 "HAND BOOK OF RAILWAY EXPENDITURES."--Practical Directions for Keeping the Expenditure Accounts. 2.00 "RAILWAY REVENUE AND ITS COLLECTION."--And Explaining the Organization of Railroads. 2.50 "THE BAGGAGE PARCEL AND MAIL TRAFFIC OF RAILROADS."--An interesting work on this important service; 425 pages. 2.00 "TRAIN AND STATION SERVICE"--Giving The Principal Rules and Regulations governing Trains; 280 pages. 2.00 "THE TRACK ACCOUNTS OF RAILROADS."--And how they should be kept. Pamphlet. 1.00 "THE FREIGHT TRAFFIC WAY-BILL."--Its Uses Illustrated and Described. Pamphlet. .50 "MUTUAL GUARANTEE."--A Treatise on Mutual Suretyship. Pamphlet. .50 Any of the above books will be sent post paid on receipt of price, by PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., 150 Monroe St. CHICAGO, ILL. Money should be remitted by express, or by draft check or post office order. * * * * * CUT THIS OUT & Return to us with TEN CTS. & you'll get by mail A GOLDEN BOX OF GOODS that will bring you in MORE MONEY, in One Month, than anything else in America. Absolute Certainty. Need no capital. M. Young, 173 Greenwich St. N. York. * * * * * 40 (1884) Chromo Cards, no 2 alike, with name, 10c., 13 pks, $1. GEORGE I. REED & CO., Nassau, N.Y. HOUSEHOLD. For nothing lovelier can be found In woman than to study _household_ good.--Milton. HOW THE ROBIN CAME. Happy young friends, sit by me, Under May's blown apple-tree; Hear a story, strange and old, By the wild red Indians told, How the Robin came to me: Once a great chief left his son,-- Well-beloved, his only one, When the boy was well-nigh grown, In the trial-lodge alone Left for tortures long and slow Youths like him must undergo, Who their pride of manhood test, Lacking water, food and rest, Seven days the fast he kept, Seven nights he never slept. Then the poor boy, wrung with pain, Weak from nature's overstrain, Faltering, moaned a low complaint; "Spare me, Father, for I faint!" But the chieftain, haughty-eyed, Hid his pity in his pride. "You shall be a hunter good, Knowing never lack of food; You shall be a warrior great, Wise as fox, and strong as bear; Many scalps your belt shall wear, If with patient heart you wait One day more!" the father said. When, next morn, the lodge he sought, And boiled samp and moose-meat brought For the boy, he found him dead. As with grief his grave they made, And his bow beside him laid, Pipe and knife, and wampum-braid-- On the lodge-top overhead, Preening smooth its breast of red And the brown coat that it wore, Sat a bird, unknown before. And as if with human tongue, "Mourn me not," it said, or sung; "I, a bird, am still your son, Happier than if hunter fleet, Or a brave, before your feet Laying scalps in battle won. Friend of man, my song shall cheer Lodge and corn-land hovering near. To each wigwam I shall bring Tidings of the coming spring; Every child my voice shall know In the moon of melting snow, When the maple's red bud swells, And the wild flower lifts its bells. As their fond companion Men shall henceforth own your son, And my song shall testify That of human kin am I." Thus the Indian legion saith How, at first, the robin came With a sweeter life from death, Bird for boy, and still the same. If my young friends doubt that this Is the robin's genesis, Not in vain is still the myth If a truth be found therewith: Unto gentleness belong Gifts unknown to pride and wrong: Happier far than hate is praise-- He who sings than he who slays. _--J.G. Whittier in St. Nicholas._ AFTER TWENTY YEARS. The following tale of love and faithful waiting is told the New York World by its Canton, Ohio, correspondent: At the residence of Thomas Barker, three miles from this village, two people were to-day made man and wife. William Craig left his pretty girl sweetheart in a fit of jealous anger on the eve of Dec. 9, 1863, returned a week or two since, found his betrothed still single and true, and this afternoon the long deferred marriage was consummated. All the surviving friends of their youth were present, and many half forgotten associates came from neighboring towns and farms to join in the merrymaking. Twenty years ago Will Craig worked on his father's farm near here during the day and spent his evenings at the residence of a farmer neighbor. The attraction was Mary Barker, a pretty seventeen-year old girl. Craig was deeply in love and so was Mary, but like many other girls she liked to play the coquette occasionally. Their wedding-day was set for Christmas, 1863, and the prospective bride felt secure. One evening, however, the pretty Mary pushed her coquetry too far. On December 7, 1863, Farmer Barker gave an old-fashioned "sociable" in honor of his daughter's approaching wedding. Craig was there, of course, but his happiness was marred by the presence of a Pittsburg youth--a new comer. Mary allowed this young man to pay her many attentions. Craig was madly jealous. After all his attention he thought his betrothed showed too much regard for his rival, and as she only laughed at his pleadings he grew angry and threatened to leave. Her seeming indifference made him desperate, and he declared: "If you dance once more with that fellow you will not see me again for twenty years." "You couldn't leave me for even twenty hours if you tried ever so hard," she replied, and with a coquettish smile she went off to dance with his rival. Craig went home alone that night and the next day was missing. The most careful search failed to reveal any trace of him. The old couple continued to till the farm without the aid of the strong-armed son, and at the neighbor's down the road pretty Mary Barker went about her household labors with a demure air that told plainly how she regarded her lover's disappearance. She refused to "keep company" in the old-fashioned way with any of the young farmers who would willingly have taken young Craig's place. She went out very little, kept a cat and grew domestic in her habits. She had an abiding faith that Craig would return, and to all entreaties would only shake her head and say: "I am waiting for Will." The firm contour of the cheek grew somewhat less rounded, the springing step less elastic, but she would not think of marriage. Friday, December 7, of this month (December) was just twenty years since the disappearance of William Craig. In the twilight a bearded man of forty came up the walk and as Miss Barker opened the door he put out both hands and said: "Mary, I have come again." "I am sorry you waited so long Will," was the quiet reply, as she led him into the house, where each told the story of the weary waiting, and Christmas was fixed upon once more as the day for the wedding. To the eager questions of old friends as to where he spent the time, he told them, as he had already told his wife, how he had at once gone to Philadelphia, enlisted in the army under an assumed name, then, after the war, gone to Nebraska and taken up a tract of valuable land. This he had diligently cultivated until at present he is in more than comfortable circumstances. The Craigs will leave early in January for their Nebraska home. WILL READERS TRY IT. The other day, says an exchange, we came across the following recipe for making ink in an English archæological journal. Archæology is the "science of antiquities," and surely this recipe is old enough to be good. It occurred to us that during the summer vacation many of our boys who are longing for something to do, might earn some money by manufacturing some of this ink and selling it in their neighborhood. At any rate the recipe is a good one and worthy of a trial by old folks as well as young people. Here is the recipe, and the way it was discovered, as told by a writer in Notes and Queries: While examining a large number of MSS. of an old scribe some twenty years ago, I was struck with the clearness and legibility of the writing, owing in a great measure to the permanent quality of the ink, which had not faded in the least, although many of the MSS. were at least two hundred years old. It was remarkable, that the writer must have been celebrated in his day for the excellence of his calligraphy, for I met with a letter or two from his correspondents in which there was a request for the recipe of the ink he used. I found his recipes, which I copied, and from one of them, dated in 1654, I have, during the last fifteen years, made all the ink I have used. The recipe is as follows: Rain water, one pint; galls, bruised, one and one-half ounces; green copperas, six drachms; gum Arabic, ten drachms. The galls must be coarsely powdered and put in a bottle, and the other ingredients and water added. The bottle securely stoppered, is placed in the light (sun if possible), and its contents are stirred occasionally until the gum and copperas is dissolved; after which it is enough to shake the bottle daily, and in the course of a month or six weeks it will be fit for use. I have ventured to add ten drops of carbolic acid to the contents of the bottle, as it effectually prevents the formation and growth of mold, without any detriment to the quality of the ink, so far as I know. THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. A French medical man who has just died at the age of one hundred and seven, pledged his word to reveal the secret of his longevity, when no more, for the benefit of others. It was stipulated, however, that the precious envelope containing the recipe for long life was not to be opened until he had been buried. The doctor's prescription, now made known, is simple enough; and easy to follow; but whether it is as available as he pretends, the Journal of Chemistry says, is extremely doubtful. He tells his fellow-men, that, if they wish to live for a century or more, they have but to pay attention to the position of their beds. "Let the head of the bed be placed to the north, the foot to the south; and the electric current, which is stronger during the night in the direction of the north, will work wonders on their constitutions, insure them healthier rest, strengthen their nervous system, and prolong their days." It is, he adds, to scrupulous attention to the position of his bed that he ascribes his longevity, the enjoyment of perfect health, and the absence of infirmity. HOW THE INVENTOR PLAGUES HIS WIFE. A facetious chap connected with one of our daily newspapers gave the following amusing burlesque on the trials of an inventor's wife: "It is all very well to talk about working for the heathen," said one, as the ladies put up their sewing, "but I'd like to have some one tell me what I am to do with my husband." "What is the matter with him?" asked a sympathetic old lady. "William is a good man," continued the first, waving her glasses in an argumentative way, "but William will invent. He goes inventing round from morning till night, and I have no peace or comfort. I didn't object when he invented a fire escape, but I did remonstrate when he wanted me to crawl out of the window one night last winter to see how it worked. Then he originated a lock for the door that would not open from midnight until morning, so as to keep burglars out. The first time he tried it he caught his coat tail in it, and I had to walk around him with a pan of hot coals all night to keep him from freezing." "Why didn't he take his coat off?" "I wanted him to, but he stood around till the thing opened itself, trying to invent some way of unfastening it. That's William's trouble. He will invent. A little while ago he got up a cabinet bedstead that would shut and open without handling. It went by clockwork. William got into it, and up it went. Bless your heart, he staid in there from Saturday afternoon till Sunday night, when it flew open and disclosed William with the plans and specifications of a patent washbowl that would tip over just when it got so full. The result was that I lost all my rings and breastpin down the waste pipe. Then he got up a crutch for a man that could also be used as an opera-glass. Whenever the man leaned on it up it went, and when he put it to his eye to find William, it flew out into a crutch and almost broke the top of his head off. Once he invented a rope ladder to be worn as guard chain and lengthened out with a spring. He put it round his neck, but the spring got loose and turned it into a ladder and almost choked him to death. Then he invented a patent boot heel to crack nuts with, but he mashed his thumb with it and gave it up. Why, he has a washtub full of inventions. One of them is a prayerbook that always opens at the right place. We tried it one morning at church, but the wheels and springs made such a noise that the sexton took William by the collar and told him to leave his fire engines at home when he came to worship. The other day I saw him going up the street with a model of a grain elevator sticking out of his hip pocket, and he is fixing up an improved shot tower in our bed-room." RECIPES. A hot shovel held over furniture removes white spots. A paste of equal parts of sifted ashes, clay, salt, and a little water cements cracks in stoves and ovens. Fried potatoes: Chop fine cold boiled potatoes; heat some butter in a frying pan and put the potatoes in. A few minutes before taking them from the fire stir in some well beaten eggs. Serve hot. Sardines picked up fine, and mixed with cold boiled ham also minced fine, and all well seasoned with a regular Mayonnaise dressing, make a delicious filling for sandwiches. Rye Bread: Make sponge as for wheat bread; let it rise over night; then mix up with rye flour, not as stiff as wheat bread. Place in baking pans; let rise, and bake half an hour longer than wheat bread. One of the best ways to cure sore throat is as follows: Wring a cloth out of salt and cold water, and keeping it quite wet bind tightly about the neck. Cover this with a dry cloth. It is best to use this remedy in the night. A delicious hot sauce for puddings is made of six tablespoonfuls of sugar, two of butter, and one egg; beat the butter, sugar, and the yolk of the egg together, then add the white beaten to a froth; lastly stir in a tea-cupful of boiling water and a teaspoonful of vanilla. A Dish for Breakfast: Take six good cooking apples, cut them in slices one-fourth of an inch thick; have a pan of fresh, hot lard ready, drop the slices in and fry till brown; sprinkle a little sugar over them and serve hot. A little curry-powder in chopped pickle gives a delicious flavor to it. A tablespoonful of the powder to four quarts of pickle is about the right quantity to use, unless you like to use the curry in place of pepper; then at least twice this quantity should be put in. A good way to extract the juice of beef for an invalid is to broil the beef on a gridiron for a few minutes, and then squeeze the juice from it with a lemon-squeezer. Put a little salt with it. This may be given, as the sick one prefers, cold or hot, or it may be frozen, and given in small lumps. Rolls: Flour, two quarts; sugar, one tablespoonful; one half cup of yeast; one pint of scalded milk, or water if milk is scarce, and a little salt. Set to rise until light; then knead until hard, and set to rise, and when wanted make in rolls. Place a piece of butter between the folds and bake in a slow oven. For Earache.--A writer in the Druggists' Circular says: "The remedy which I here offer has, after repeated trials, never failed to afford almost instant relief. It is perfectly simple, easy of application, costs but little, and can be procured at any drug store: Olive oil, 1 ounce; chloroform, 1 drachm. Mix, and shake well together. Then pour twenty-five or thirty drops into the ear, and close it up with a piece of raw cotton to exclude the air and retain the mixture." * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION ONE YEAR, $3 FOR THE TWO It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address Prairie Farmer Pub. Co., 150 Monroe Street Chicago. PAMPHLETS, ETC., RECEIVED. Gunnison, Colorado's Bonanza County, by John K. Hallowell, Geologist, Denver, Col. Price 50 cents, postpaid. Midland Florida: The Eden of the South. By "Carl" Webber, New York. United States Consular Reports, No. 35, for November, 1883. The Saskatchewan Fife Wheat: Its history, from its first importation from the Saskatchewan Valley, in Manitoba, six years ago, till the present time. By W.J. Abernethy. Price list of Huntsville nurseries, Huntsville, Ala. Oscar Close, Greendale. Catalogue of nurseries, Worcester, Mass. Price list of L.R. Bryant's cider vinegar works, Princeton, Ill. Vich's Floral Guide. Here it is again, brighter and better than ever; its cover alone, with its delicate tinted background and its dish of gracefully arranged flowers, would entitle it to a permanent place in every household. The 1884 edition is an elegant book of 150 pages, three colored plates of flowers and vegetables, and more than 1,000 illustrations of the choicest plants, flowers, and vegetables, with directions for growing. The price, only 10 cents, can be deducted from the first order sent for goods. Rochester, N.Y. The Great Rock Island Cook Book, dedicated to the women of America, Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway. This book contains a selection of the most useful recipes and other valuable information in the culinary art. It will be found especially valuable for the young housekeepers, as they can hardly fail to become good cooks with such a guide. Buist's Almanac and Garden Manual for 1884, Philadelphia. This little book is in its fifty-sixth year, and is one of the best of its kind published. It contains a full descriptive list (with cuts) of all kinds of vegetables, and many kinds of flowers. Report of the crops of the year, December, 1883. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. The Household Magazine for January comes to us in its usual bright, readable form. It is an unusually good number and will be enjoyed by the ladies. Catalogue of Clydesdale and Cleveland Bay horses. Imported and bred by the Door Prairie Live Stock Association, Door Village, La Porte, Ind. * * * * * REMEMBER _that_ $2.00 pays _for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year and, the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ OUR YOUNG FOLKS. THE CITY CAT. He is gaunt and thin, with a ragged coat, A scraggy tail, and a hunted look; No songs of melody burst from his throat As he seeks repose in some quiet nook-- A safe retreat from this world of sin, And all of its boots and stones and that-- For the life of a cat is a life of din, If he is a city cat. He is grumpy and stumpy, and old and gray, With a sleepy look in his lonely eye, (The other he lost at a matinee-- Knocked out by a boot from a window high.) Wherever he goes, he never knows-- Quarter or pause in the midnight spree, For the life of a cat is a life of blows, If he is a city cat. He is pelted by boys if he stirs abroad, He is chased by dogs if he dares to roam. His grizzled bosom has never thawed 'Neath the kindly blare of the light of home. His life's a perpetual warfare waged On balcony, back yard fence, and flat; For the life of a cat is a life outraged, If he is a city cat. The country cat is a different beast. Petted, well-housed, demure, and sleek; Three times a day he is called to feast, And why should he not be quiet and meek? No dreams of urchins, tin cans, and war, Disturb his sensuous sleep on the mat; Ah! cat life is a thing worth living for, If he isn't a city cat. And even when dead, the cat With strident members uneasy lies In some alley-way, and seems staring at A coming foe with his wild wide eye, Nobody owns him and nobody cares-- Another dead "Tom," and who mourns for that, If he's only a city cat. --_Providence Press._ AMUSING TRICKS. THE FRUIT CANDLE. Procure a good, large apple or turnip, and cut from it a piece of the shape to resemble the butt-end of a tallow candle; then from a nut of some kind--an almond is the best--whittle out a small peg of about the size and shape of a wick end. Stick the peg in the apple and you have a very fair representation of a candle. The wick you can light, and it will burn for at least a minute. In performing you should have your candle in a clean candlestick, show it plainly to the audience, and then put it into your mouth, taking care to blow it out, and munch it up. If you think best, you can blow the candle out and allow the wick to cool, and it will look, with its burned wick, so natural that even the sharpest eyes can not distinguish it from the genuine article. Once, at a summer resort in Massachusetts, I made use of this candle with considerable effect. While performing a few parlor tricks to amuse some friends, I pretended to need a light. A confederate left the room, and soon returned with a lantern containing one of these apple counterfeits. "Do you call that a candle?" I said. "Certainly," he replied. "Why, there is scarcely a mouthful." "A mouthful? Rather a disagreeable mouthful, I guess." "You have never been in Russia, I presume." "Never." "Then you don't know what is good." "Good?" "Yes, good. Why, candle ends, with the wick a little burned to give them a flavor, are delicious. They always serve them up before dinner in Russia as a kind of relish. It is considered bad taste in good society there to ask a friend to sit down to dinner without offering him this appetizer." "The bad taste would be in the relish, I think." "Not at all. Try a bit." I took the candle out of the lantern, and extended it toward my confederate, who shrank back with disgust. "Well," I said, "if you won't have it, I'll eat it myself." And so saying, I put it into my mouth and munched it up, amid the cries of surprise and horror of the assembled party. Two old maids insisted on looking into my mouth to see whether it was not concealed there. Having soaked a piece of thread in common salt water, tie it to a small finger-ring. When you apply the flame of a candle to the thread it will burn to ashes and yet sustain the ring. A DIFFICULT CIRCLE TO JUMP FROM. Take a piece of chalk, and ask, if you make a circle, whether any boy standing in it thinks he can jump out of it. As soon as one proposes to do so, bring him into the center of the room, draw a circle with the chalk around his jacket, and say, "Now jump out of it!" AN IMPOSSIBLE WALK. Ask one young lady in the company whether she thinks, if she clasped her hands, she could walk out of the room. On her saying she could, request her to pass her arm round the leg of the table or piano, join her hands, and walk away. THE HAT TRICK. Fill a small glass with water, cover it with a hat, and profess your readiness to drink it without touching the hat. Put your head under the table, make a noise, as if drinking, rise, and wipe your lips. The company, thinking you have drunk the water, one of them will certainly take up the hat to see. As soon as the hat is removed, take up the glass and drink its contents. "There!" say you, "you see I have not touched the hat." THE INCOMBUSTIBLE THREAD. Wind some linen thread tightly round a smooth pebble, and secure the end; then, if you expose it to the flame of a lamp or candle, the thread will not burn; for the caloric (or heat) traverses the thread, without remaining in it, and attacks the stone. The same sort of trick may be performed with a poker, round which is evenly pasted a sheet of paper. You can poke the fire with it without burning the paper. AN IMPOSSIBLE JUMP. Take a ruler, or any other piece of wood, and ask whether, if you laid it down on the ground, any of the company could jump over it. Of course one or two will express their readiness to jump over so small an obstruction. Then lay the ruler on the ground, close against the wall, and tell them to try. A DIFFICULT LOAD TO CARRY. Take a piece of wood, such as a lucifer match, and say to one of the company, "How long do you think it would take you to carry this piece of wood into the next room?" "Half a minute." perhaps one will reply. "Well, try, then," say you; "carry it." You then cut off little pieces, and give them to him one by one. He will soon be tired of the experiment. TO TURN A GLASS OF WATER UPSIDE DOWN WITHOUT SPILLING ITS CONTENTS. Fill a glass carefully, place a piece of paper on the top, place your hand on the paper, and tilt the glass round sharply, when it will be found that the pressure of the air upward on the paper will retain the water. The glass may then be held by the bottom. Health and Home says: I want to tell you of something very funny to do, if you have a little brother or sister who does not mind dressing up and standing still for a few moments. My aunt showed me how to do it the other day, when sister Nelly had a birthday party. We took little brother Tommy out into the library and stood him upon a high wooden stool, and dressed him up very finely in mamma's clothes. The stool made him so full that the dress was of just the right length. Then Uncle Ned, telling him to stand straight and firm, carried him, stool and all, into the parlor. I wish you could have heard the girls and boys laugh! He had such a comical look--with his tall body and little round face--just like some of those French Parian figures. One little girl handed him a fan, and then it was too funny to see the tall lady fan herself affectedly with her very small, dimpled hands. All the boys and girls just shouted.--_Young People._ BRIGHT SAYINGS. A writer in the School-Boy Magazine has gathered together the following dictionary words as defined by certain small people: Bed time--Shut-eye time. Dust--Mud with the juice squeezed out. Fan--A thing to brush warm off with. Fins--A fish's wings. Ice--Water that staid out in the cold and went to sleep. Nest-Egg--The egg that the old hen measures to make new ones. Pig--A hog's little boy. Salt--What makes your potato taste bad when you don't put any on. Snoring--Letting off sleep. Stars--The moon's eggs. Wakefulness--Eyes all the time coming unbuttoned. * * * * * If you would have good health, go out in the sunshine. Sickness is worse than freckles. * * * * * HYPOCHONDRIA. THE MYSTERIOUS ELEMENT IN THE MIND THAT AROUSES VAGUE APPREHENSIONS--WHAT ACTUALLY CAUSES IT. The narrative below, by a prominent scientist, touches a subject of universal importance. Few people are free from the distressing evils which hypochondria brings. They come at all times and are fed by the very flame which they themselves start. They are a dread of coming derangement caused by present disorder and bring about more suicides than any other one thing. Their first approach should be carefully guarded. _Editors Herald_: It is seldom I appear in print and I should not do so now did I not believe myself in possession of truths, the revelation of which will prove of inestimable value to many who may see these lines. Mine has been a trying experience. For many years I was conscious of a want of nerve tone. My mind seemed sluggish and I felt a certain falling off in my natural condition of intellectual acuteness, activity, and vigor. I presume this is the same way in which an innumerable number of other people feel, who, like myself, are physically below par, but like thousands of others I paid no attention to these annoying troubles, attributing them to overwork, and resorting to a glass of beer or a milk punch, which would for the time invigorate and relieve my weariness. After awhile the stimulants commenced to disagree with my stomach, my weariness increased, and I was compelled to resort to other means to find relief. If a physician is suffering he invariably calls another physician to prescribe for him, as he cannot see himself as he sees others; so I called a physician, and he advised me to try a little chemical food, or a bottle of hypophosphates. I took two or three bottles of the chemical food with no apparent benefit. My lassitude and indisposition seemed to increase, my food distressed me. I suffered from neuralgic pains in different parts of my body, my muscles became sore, my bowels were constipated, and my prospects for recovery were not very flattering. I stated my case to another physician, and he advised me to take five to ten drops of Magende's solution of morphine, two or three times a day, for the weakness and distress in my stomach, and a blue pill every other night to relieve the constipation. The morphine produced such a deathly nausea that I could not take it, and the blue pill failed to relieve my constipation. In this condition I passed nearly a year, wholly unfit for business, while the effort to think was irksome and painful. My blood became impoverished, and I suffered from incapacity with an appalling sense of misery and general apprehension of coming evil. I passed sleepless nights and was troubled with irregular action of the heart, a constantly feverish condition, and the most excruciating tortures in my stomach, living for days on rice water and gruel, and, indeed, the digestive functions seemed to be entirely destroyed. It was natural that while in this condition I should become hypochondrical, and fearful suggestions of self-destruction occasionally presented themselves. I experienced an insatiable desire for sleep, but on retiring would lie awake for a long time, tormented with troubled reflections, and when at last I did fall into an uneasy slumber of short duration, it was disturbed by horrid dreams. In this condition I determined to take a trip to Europe, but in spite of all the attentions of physicians and change of scene and climate, I did not improve, and so returned home with no earthly hope of ever again being able to leave the house. Among the numerous friends that called on me was one who had been afflicted somewhat similarly to myself, but who had been restored to perfect health. Upon his earned recommendation I began the same treatment he had employed but with little hope of being benefited. At first, I experienced little, if any, relief, except that it did not distress my stomach as other remedies or even food had done. I continued its use, however, and after the third bottle could see a marked change for the better, and now after the fifteenth bottle I am happy to state that I am again able to attend to my professional duties. I sleep well, nothing distresses me that I eat, I go from day to day without a feeling of weariness or pain, indeed I am a well man, and wholly through the influence of H.H. Warner & Co's Tippecanoe. I consider this remedy as taking the highest possible rank in the treatment of all diseases marked by debility, loss of appetite, and all other symptoms of stomach and digestive disorders. It is overwhelmingly superior to the tonics, bitters, and dyspepsia cures of the day, and is certain to be so acknowledged by the public universally. Thousands of people to-day are going to premature graves with these serious diseases, that I have above described, and to all such I would say: "Do not let your good judgment be governed by your prejudices, but give the above named remedy a fair and patient trial, and I believe you will not only be rewarded by a perfect restoration to health, but you will also be convinced that the medical profession does not possess all the knowledge there is embraced in medical science." A.G. RICHARDS, M.D., 468 Tremont street, Boston, Mass. COMPILED CORRESPONDENCE. E.B.F., Scotia, Neb., writes: The weather, so far this winter, has been extremely warm. No snow to exceed one inch since October. Cattle and hogs doing finely. Corn planted early is a good crop both as to quality and quantity, but late planted is soft. Wheat and oats were an extra good crop, wheat yielding from 25 to 35 bushels per acre, and oats from 50 to 75 bushels. E.B.F. * * * * * Cobden, Ill., Jan. 6.--We have been through the coldest weather ever experienced here since weather records have been kept, which is twenty-five years or more. Yesterday morning the mercury reached 24 degrees below at my house, which is 200 feet higher than the village. Reports from lower situations run down to 26, 28, with one of 30. This is six degrees lower than the lowest record ever made here, which was twenty years ago, when on the 1st of January it marked 18 below at my house, with some other records two or three degrees lower. At that time peach orchards were badly killed. There can be no doubt that such is the case now. And if it has been proportionately cold north, I fear that the injury to all kinds of fruit trees must have been very serious. PARRER EARLE. * * * * * Kane Co., Jan 7.--The weather has been intensely cold here since the 3d instant. The thermometer has been from 4 to 28 degs. below zero at 7 a.m., and from 2 to 16 degs. below at 2 p.m. The 5th was the coldest. The mercury dropped to 28 degs. below at sunrise; in some places 32 degs. below. On the 6th, 22 degs. below at 7 a.m.; at 12 m. 4 degs. below; at 5 p.m. 10 degs. below. Domestic animals were kept closely housed, except while being watered. Where they were exposed to the weather, they froze. We have not had such continued cold weather since January 1864, when for ten successive days it was intensely cold. Some farmers are short of coarse feed, and are shipping bran and middlings from Minneapolis, and corn from Kansas and Nebraska. Many farmers who were shipping milk to Chicago, are now taking it to the cheese factories. There has been an over supply of milk in the city. The dividends for October were from $1.16 to $1.25 per cwt. J.P.B. * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION ONE YEAR, $3 FOR THE TWO. It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB. Co., 150 Monroe Street, Chicago. * * * * * BREEDERS DIRECTORY. The following list embraces the names of responsible and reliable Breeders in their line, and parties wishing to purchase or obtain information can feel assured that they will be honorably dealt with: CATTLE. Jersey. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois HORSES. Clydesdales. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois SWINE. Berkshire. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois Chester Whites. W.A. Gilbert......................Wauwatosa Wis. SHEEP. Cotswold. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois * * * * * LIVE STOCK, ETC. Jerseys for Sale. One heifer, 2 years old in May, due to calve in April. Heifer, 2 years in June, and due to calve in April. Cow, 4 years old, due to calve in May. Bull calf 5 months old, and one good yearling bull. Address L.P. WHEELER. Quincy, Ill. * * * * * SCOTCH COLLIE SHEPHERD PUPS, --FROM-- IMPORTED AND TRAINED STOCK --ALSO-- NEWFOUNDLAND PUPS AND RAT TERRIER PUPS. Concise and practical printed instruction in Training young Shepherd Dogs, is given to buyers of Shepherd Puppies; or will be sent on receipt of 25 cents in postage stamps. For Printed Circular, giving full particulars about Shepherd Dogs, enclose a 3-cent stamp, and address N.H. PAAREN, P.O. Box 326, CHICAGO. ILL. * * * * * HOUSE PLANS FOR EVERYBODY. By S.B. REED, Architect. One of the most popular Architectural books ever issued, giving a wide range of design from a dwelling costing $250 up to $8,000, and adapted to farm, village, and town residences. It gives an ESTIMATE OF THE QUANTITY OF EVERY ARTICLE USED In the construction, and probable cost of constructing any one of the buildings presented. Profusely illustrated. Price, postpaid, $1.50. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago * * * * * MAP Of the United States and Canada, Printed in Colors, size 4×2-1/2 feet, also a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER for one year. Sent to any address for $2.00. * * * * * AGENTS WANTED EVERYWHERE to solicit subscriptions for this paper. Write PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, for particulars. LITERATURE THE WRONG PEW. There's one who wrote in years gone by in clear and ringing rhyme-- A poet of an elder day and of a distant clime-- Who sang of mortal misery, of sufferers long and lorn, "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn!" The hand that held that golden pen--that golden tongue--is dust; A dust that's dear to hearts that hold his homely truths in trust; And you who read this simple tale of wrath, and ruth, and wrong, May hear the echo of the sob that breaks upon my song! I sat upon the Sabbath-day within the sacred fane, The sunlight through the windows poured like rainbow-tinted rain; While maids and matrons passing fair, and men of high degree, All fashion's proudest votaries, knelt low on bended knee. And there was one of stature tall, whose robe of silken sheen Draped quiet grace and courtesy that might have shamed a queen, Save only that her pallid face, and drooping, tear-dimmed eyes, Looked like the Peri's, waiting by the gates of Paradise. What is it moves that jeweled throng of dainty worshippers? Their hearts have probed the cruel wrong that rankles sore in hers; For she who sat beside her there--ah, heart of hardest stone! Swept forth with stern and haughty stare, and left her there alone. Then one, God bless her woman's heart! the loveliest woman there, Stepped down the aisle with stately tread, and calm and steadfast air; With gentle voice, and tender eyes distilling heaven's own dew, She whispered to the shrinking girl, "I've room, my friend, for you." I think earth's sorest sinners need a judge less stern than they Who wear their ermine clasped across a breast of common clay! I think heaven's loveliest angels come among us circling down, To bear the cruel earthly cross, and then regain the crown. Alas! alas! for paltry pride arrayed in rich attire, And woe is me for priestly praise which is our heart's desire! Would we could seek, like pilgrims gray, beside that sunlit sea, The simple faith that lit the shores of sacred Galilee! Sometimes it seems that ages past our souls have sojourned here; But God's great angel guards the gate and stands beside the bier; For when some mystic touch awakes the chords of memory, His awful hand holds down the note, and clasps the quivering key. Bend low, bend low the lofty brow and bring the sack-cloth gown; Throw dust and ashes on our heads, and through the sinful town; I think the green earth grows more gray, beneath its golden sun, Because the good God sits in heaven, and sees such evil done. --_Edward Renaud._ YIK KEE. After father died some ten years ago, I found, that for three years we had been living on credit. I was eighteen, strong and well, but did not know how to work. In the little back room of the New York tenement house (by the way, the landlady seized my clothes for our rent) I considered my future. I had inherited a great faith in relatives, from my father, so I wrote to seven. I received six polite notes, telling me to go to work, and the following letter: JONESBORO, COLORADO--JACKSON'S RANCH. Dear Nell.--I'm your cousin Jack. Your father once give me money to come out West. I've took up land, got a comfortable home, no style or frills, but good folks to live with and healthy grub. I've got the best wife you ever see and seven fine youngsters. The city ain't no place for a friendless girl. Wife wants you to come. She'll be a mother to you. Come right off. I'll meet you at Denver. Jack. Inclosed was a check sufficient to defray expenses; so I started. Denver was then only a large town and the depot a barn-like structure. I got out of the cars and stood bewildered among all the emigrants and their bundles. Some one touched me on the shoulder--a roughly-dressed, broad-shouldered man with long, blonde beard and big blue eyes. "Are you Nell?" he said. "Yes; and you're Cousin Jack." "I knew you," he said, as he led the way, "by your black clothes an' sorrerful look, an' them big blue eyes, like yer father's as two peas. We'll git the shader outer 'em when we get home. Yer father was a mighty good man. Bless yer dear heart, don't let them tears come. This 'ere's a dry country, we don't waste no water." Comforting me in his kind, rough way, he reached his team, a big green wagon, drawn by two wild-looking steeds which I afterward knew to be bronchos. A fat, blonde boy, about twelve, held the reins. "That's Ted," said Cousin Jack. "Ted, this is Miss Nell, yer cousin; give her a hug." The fat boy solemnly obeyed. After this he seemed to have a special claim on my affections because he met me first. Jack's wife was a jolly, plump woman, with brown eyes and curly hair. She always had a baby in her arms and another at her heels. She adored Jack. I never knew them to have a quarrel. I soon grew to love the life at the ranch. I liked the big, half-finished house, its untidyness and comfort--its pleasant, healthy atmosphere. I loved the children, the household pets--Shep, the sagacious dog; Thad, the clever cat; the hens and sheep; the horses Dolly, Dot, and Daisy, that did the plowing, and the marketing at Denver, twelve miles away, and were so gentle and kind we used to ride them without saddle or bridle. I learned that cattle grew fat on the dry-looking grass and gave the best of milk. I learned to love the broad plains and the glorious sunsets, and to watch the distant bands of Indians with half fear, half interest. I helped Cousin Mary, sewed and cooked, kept the house and children neat, and lifted many burdens from her weary shoulders. We were so happy. The children and I took long walks over the plains, and Ted and I took many rides on Dolly and Dot, and in the long winter evenings I told the children stories. Occasionally Harry White came over to visit us from his ranch five miles away. He lived with his old mother; he and Jack were dear friends. Harry needed a wife, Jack used to say, winking at me. One day Jack went to Denver for supplies. He went alone, and coming home later than usual, Ted and I and baby Mame went out to meet him. Jack looked sober and guilty, and seemed ill at ease. If he ever drank, I should have thought him intoxicated. In the wagon was a queer-shaped heap under a horse-blanket. I was sure it moved. When we got behind the barn Jack said, sheepishly, avoiding my eye. "Well, Ted, I calkerlate I've got su'thing in that there waggin that 'ul astonish yer marm." Little Mame pulled the blanket off the heap; she had been peeping under it all the while she was in the back of the wagon. There lay a human being. Such an object; short and squat, dressed in a queer blue blouse with flowing sleeves, wide trousers and queer wooden shoes. He had small, black eyes, a shaven poll, from which depended a long thin queue. His countenance was battered and bruised, his clothes torn and bloody. "There was a row down to Denver," said Jack; "the Christian folks stove in these 'ere heathen's winders, tore their houses down, an' killed half on 'em. I cleared out soon as I could. When I got half way home I heard a noise back o' me, and out crawled this thing. I was so dumfounded I couldn't speak. He thought I was going ter send him back, an' he fell ter cryin' an' jabberin' in that yap of his, an' clingin' onter my han' an' kissin' of it. It sorter turned my stomach. I told him ter set down, give him some crackers ter eat, covered him up an' told him he could live with me. What do you s'pose marm'll say?" "Oh! Cousin Jack," I said, "of course, she will not care. Your home is a refuge for all the wretched and unfortunate." "Now don't, Nell," he said, turning as red as a rose, and busying himself about the harness. The Celestial looked at us solemnly: Mame toddled up to him. He looked at her curiously, but did not move. "Get out, John," said Jack, "you needn't be scared no more; we're to home." He got out stiffly, and, to my surprise, turned and lifted the baby down. She caught his pig-tail, and pulled it in wild delight. He seemed grieved when I took her away. When Jack told Mary, the good soul found a thousand reasons why he should stay, and hurried to make him a bed in the attic. The Celestial did not say much, but when Jack called him "John," he smiled a sad smile. "Melican man callee John. Hump. Yik Kee." So with due consideration for his feelings we addressed him as Yik Kee. He was of great use. He helped take care of the children, did the washing (Mary did not fancy his method of sprinkling clothes) and helped Jack on the farm. We made him one of the family. He was always pleasant and smiling, but was a man of few words. Cousin Jack added much to his income by trading in hides. Ranchmen living at a distance sold their hides to him and Jack sold them to traders who came around at certain times in the year. Harry White was a partner in the business. He used to go on a sort of round-up and visit the ranches all over the country. The cattle of the ranchmen roamed in vast herds over the plains, protected only by the brand of the owner. Cattle stealing was frequently practiced. Offenders in this respect were shown no mercy. They were convicted, tried, and executed only in the court of Judge Lynch. I never blamed the ranchmen for this; it was impossible to guard the herds in the vast area over which they traversed, and the cattle must be protected in some way. Gil Mead was a wealthy ranchman, who lived about ten miles from us. He owned the largest herd of cattle on the plains. They were branded with the vowels of his name. E.A., which could be recognized anywhere. He always shipped his cattle East to his brother in Chicago. I feared the man. He was tall and gaunt, with deep-set black eyes and low forehead. His home was unhappy; his wife cross and ugly, and his children wild and unruly. This made him more than commonly disagreeable. I think it was in the fall of '74 that Harry White brought the big load of hides to Jack. Both were much pleased at the bargain they made. Harry gave glowing accounts of a new customer--a ranchman from Chicago, who had taken up an abandoned homestead. He had purchased many cattle from his cousin, Gil Mead, and hoped to rival him in the number and quality of his herd. Jack packed the hides away to keep till December, when we expected the dealer. One afternoon, not long after this, Gil Mead rode up to the house, looking very agreeable and pleasant. A couple of strangers, also ranchmen, were with him. They wanted to look at the hides, one of the men being a trader, Gil said. Jack was in Denver, so Yik Kee and I went to the barn with them. They looked the hides over carefully, and conversed in low tones, Gil with a suppressed oath. Finally they thanked us courteously and took their leave. "Hump; no goodee," said Yik Kee, but he wouldn't say any more. At five that evening, when we were at supper, a crowd of twenty-five or thirty men rode up on horseback. Jack came out and met them, inviting them in to take supper, in his generous, hospitable way. They wanted him to go to Denver with them, there was to be a meeting there of importance to ranchmen. The meeting would be at eight. They had brought with them an extra horse for Jack. Mary looked around for Yik Kee to help her, but he had mysteriously disappeared. I faintly remembered seeing his white, horrified face peering around the barn at the horses. I noted the visitors ate little--the food seemed to choke them. Some of them watched Mary and the baby in a queer sort of way. When Jack, as was his custom, kissed his wife and babies good-by, one of the visitors, an oldish man, coughed huskily, and said: "Blest if I kin stan' this." They all rode off, Jack the merriest of all, waving his hat till he was out of sight. When we were clearing up the unusual quantity of dishes, Yik Kee appeared at the end window and beckoned me. I followed him out. Ted was with him. Behind the barn were the three horses saddled. Shep was with them, released from confinement, where he had been secured from following his master. "Foller 'em," said Ted in an excited whisper. "Yik's afraid they're up to something." "What is it, Yik?" I said, sternly. "No fooling now." For answer he twisted his long pig-tail around his neck, tying it under his left ear in a significant manner. "Hump, he hangee; stealee cow." "Oh, Mary," I sobbed, remembering Gil Mead's visit, and his strange actions, and dimly seeing what Yik Kee meant, "I must tell Mary," I said, wildly. "Hump, no," said Yik Kee. "Yellee sick," and he closed his eyes in a die-away sort of manner. "Go now--too latee." We mounted. "Mother'll think we're gone to ride," said Ted, as we galloped over the plains. He was deathly pale, poor little fellow, but he sat erect and firm. I saw his father's big Colt's revolver sticking out of his pocket. He was a determined boy. Even in my despair, in my wild hope that I could save Jack by begging on my knees, that I could cling to him, that they would have to kill me first, I could not help a smile at the comical figure Yik Kee presented on horseback. His loose garments flapped in the wind, his long pig-tail flew out behind, and he bobbed up and down like a kernel of corn in a corn-hopper. It was a soft, warm night, lighted only by the pale young moon and the twinkling stars. We rode as fast as our horses could gallop. Shep was close at our heels. Way ahead, when we reached the top of a little hill, we saw the crowd of horsemen. They were riding toward Denver. We galloped on with renewed zeal. They turned into a cross road leading to Mead's ranch. On this road was a bridge over Dry Gulch, which was in the spring a roaring torrent. Beyond the bridge, across the fields, was the hay-stack of Mead, where was stored sufficient to feed his domestic cattle through the winter. We at last reached the turn in the road. They were three miles in advance, riding rapidly. Yik Kee stopped at the turn. "Hump! Can't catchee. Hangee at bridge. You goee!" He turned his horse and sped across the field, deserting us basely. We rode on, Ted and I. He was pale and still; my cheeks were burning. We neared the bridge. The high mound of earth before us hid us from sight. We stopped our horses and listened. The men had lighted torches, some were preparing a rough gallows under the bridge; two were uncoiling rope; some held the horses of the others beyond the bridge. The men were masked now, and I could see by the lighted torches that this number was increased. Jack was very white and sad, but he showed no fear. "I am innocent, gentlemen," he said, slowly, "but I refuse to tell you of whom I bought the hides." I understood him. Could Harry White be a cattle thief? I felt as if I were going mad. "What shall we do?" whispered Ted, cocking his revolver? Suddenly a bright red light illuminated the heavens, followed by clouds of black smoke and a queer crackling noise. A yell from the men--Gil Mead's voice above the rest. The hay-stack was on fire. It seemed to me in the gale around it that I could see a foreign-looking human vanishing across the plain. The men mounted their horses, Gil Mead at the head, and set off across the fields at a mad gallop. They must save the stack. They left Jack, bound hand and foot, and guarded by one man. Shep, the wonderful dog, had kept by us until now, slinking in the dark shadows. Now, gliding sidewise and still, he reached the man on guard whose back was to us, and with no warning growl caught him by the throat with strong white teeth that could choak a coyote in a second. The man, who was in a sitting posture, fell back with a groan. Ted struck him over the head with the butt of the revolver, and pulled off the dog. I cut Jack's bonds with a knife. He looked at us wonderingly and staggered to his feet. "Never mind how we came, Jack," I said; "quick, mount the horse beyond the bridge, and ride to Denver for your life. They will not harm a woman and child." "Harry White," he muttered, the loyal soul that even now could think of another's danger. "I will tell him." "No, no; not of this--only say, if he stole the cattle, to fly the country. They will find out, sooner or later." He galloped down the road. Ted and I mounted, calling off Shep, who sat on his haunches watching the unconscious man, and then we, too, sped down the road. The hay-stack was giving out great columns of black smoke, but the fire was dead. Ahead of us was a riderless horse, Dolly, who greeted her master with a joyful whinny. Where was Yik Kee? Then Dot, my horse, shied from the road at a recumbent black figure. It was the indomitable Yik Kee, who had crawled all the way from the stack on his stomach, so that he could not be seen, after lying in the ditch till the blaze had faded out. "Hump! no catchee Chinee; heap sore," he said, laconically rubbing his stomach. He mounted Dolly, and we rode on to White's ranch. Harry rushed out at the sound of horses' feet, at midnight. There, under the twinkling stars I looked into his eyes, and I told him the whole story. He showed no guilt, but only said we must stay the night at his ranch, for the men would come back to Jack's for him, and then mounting his fleet colt rode off down the road. I comforted his mother as best I could. At day-break we rode home. Mary was in a wild state of alarm. Where had we been? Where was Jack? and how cruel we were to leave her alone. She said that at one o'clock three masked men had come to the house and searched it and the premises, and had not molested her or the children, only asking where Jack was, very sternly and sharply. At noon Jack, Harry, the sheriff, and a party of armed men from Denver rode up, stopping only a moment to tell me they would be back at night. I dared not tell Mary, and she worried all the afternoon at their strange conduct. At night Jack and Harry came home, looking tired but happy. Then Jack told Mary, and she clung to him as though she could never let him go. It seemed the pleasing ranchman from Chicago was one of a band of cattle thieves. He sold the hides to Harry, who, honest and open himself, was slow to suspect wrong dealings in others. The sheriff had caught the men skinning a cow that belonged to Mead, and had captured the gang and taken them to Denver. The men concerned in the attempt to lynch Jack were sincerely sorry. Their regrets would not have availed much, however, if they had succeeded in their purpose. They gave each of the children ten acres of land; they gave Ted sixty-five, and me, whom they pleased to consider very plucky, one hundred and fifty acres. I felt rich enough, and time has made it very valuable land. The man on guard was our warmest admirer. He thought Ted, Shep, and I wonders of courage. He said when I came down on the bridge with the open knife, he thought his last hour had come. Gil Mead committed suicide not long after this. He was always queer. No one ever knew that Yik Kee set the stack afire. I tell you Jack rewarded the faithful fellow--gave him a good farm, taught him to work it, and built him a house. The funniest thing was Yik Kee had a wife and three queer little children back in China, and Jack sent for them, and Yik Kee and his family are as happy as they can be. The children play with Jack's (he has twelve now) and get along finely together. In '75 I married Harry White, which, I suppose, was foreseen from the beginning--at least, Jack says anybody could have seen it. The most serene and satisfied face at the wedding was that of the Celestial. In my inner consciousness, notwithstanding he is a "heathen Chinee," I have the conviction that as great a hero as is seen in modern times is the man of few words, Yik Kee.--_The Continent._ HUMOROUS "A LEEDLE MISTAKES." "I see all how it vhas now," observed Jacob Handonder, as he came out. "Oh, you do! You are the man who got drunk and raised a fuss on a street car?" "I vhas der man, and I tell you how it vhas. You see, I vhas tight. I took too much beer." "Can a saloon-keeper take too much beer?" "Vhell, maype I vhas seek. I shtart to go home. Vhen der sthreet car comes along I pelief it vhas my house. I got in und look all aroundt, but I doan' see Katarina. I call out for der shildrens, und eferybody laughs at me. Maype dot makes me madt, und der drifer calls a boliceman, und I vhas galloped down here." "So it wasn't your home?" "Not oxactly. It vhas a leedle mistake." "It'll cost you $5." "Vheel, dot ain't so bad. I pay him oop und go home to preakfast." "Be careful next time." "Oh, I vill dot. Next time I vhas tight I go home on some shtreets midout cars. If I take some ice-wagon for my house I pelief I got cooled off pooty queek." SHARPER THAN A RAZOR. A long-waisted man, with the nose of a fox and an eye full of speculation, walked up to a second-hand clothier, in Buffalo, the other day, and said: "See that overcoat hanging out down there?" "Of course." "Well, I've taken a fancy to it. It's rather cheeky to ask you to go down there, but I'll make it an object; I won't give but $8 for the coat, but I'll give you $1 to buy it for me. You are also a Jew and know how to beat him down. Here are $9." The dealer took the money and started off, and in five minutes was back with the coat. "Good!" chuckled the other. "I reckoned you'd lay him out. How much did you make for your share?" "Vhell, ash dot is my branch shore, and I only ask six dollar fur de goat, I was about tree dollar ahead." A COMING DIVIDEND. Last fall, when a would-be purchaser of railroad stock called upon Russell Sage and asked him regarding the outlook of certain stock, Mr. Sage replied: "Splendid idea! That stock is certain to raise fifteen per cent." "Upon what do you base your calculations?" "Upon the immense crops to be moved along that line." The other day the same gentleman again interviewed Mr. Sage regarding the same stock, and the great financier replied: "Best outlook in the world for that stock! Certain to advance fifteen per cent." "Do you base your calculations upon last fall's crops?" "No, sir; it's going to be an open winter, and the line will save enough in snow-plows to declare a dividend of five per cent." * * * * * At a party: Merchant--"Ah! How d'do, Mr. Blank? How is your paper coming out? I read it daily. By the way, you are getting up a report of this grand assembly, I suppose?" Editor--"No. By the way, how is your store coming on? My cook buys a good deal of you. You are here drumming up custom, I suppose?" * * * * * "Yes," said Mrs. Towers, as she expatiated upon the beauties of her flower-garden, "I have given it great care, and if you come over in a week or two, I expect to be able to show you some beautiful scarlet pneumonias." * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION ONE YEAR, $3 FOR THE TWO. It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address Prairie Farmer Pub Co., 150 Monroe Street. Chicago. * * * * * ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD. 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Remittance can be made in currency, sent in letter at our risk. The Magneton Garments are adapted to all ages, are worn over the under-clothing (NOT NEXT TO THE BODY LIKE THE MANY GALVANIC AND ELECTRIC HUMBUGS ADVERTISED SO EXTENSIVELY), and should be taken off at night. They hold their POWER FOREVER, and are worn at all seasons of the year. Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical treatment WITHOUT MEDICINE," with thousands of testimonials. THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 STATE STREET. CHICAGO, ILL. Note.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our other Magnetic Appliances. Positively no cold feet when they are worn, or money refunded. * * * * * Self Cure Free Nervous Debility Lost Manhood Weakness and Decay A favorite prescription of a noted specialist (now retired.) Druggists can fill it. Address DR. WARD & CO., LOUISIANA, MO. * * * * * SCALES. U.S. STANDARD SCALES, MANUFACTURED EXPRESSLY FOR THE PRAIRIE FARMER _Every Scale Guaranteed by the Manufacturers, and by Us, to be Perfect, and to give the Purchaser Satisfaction._ The PRAIRIE FARMER Sent Two Years Free To any person ordering either size Wagon Scale at prices given below. [Illustration] 2-Ton Wagon or Farm Scale (Platform 6 × 12 feet), $35; 3-Ton (7 × 13), $45; 5-Ton (8 × 14), $55. Beam Box, Brass Beam, Iron Levers, Steel Bearings, and full directions for setting up. THE PRAIRIE FARMER SENT 1 YEAR FREE! To any person ordering either of the following Scales, at prices named below. [Illustration] The Housekeeper's Scale--$4.00 Weighing accurately from 1/4 oz. to 25 lbs. This is also a valuable Scale for Offices for Weighing Mail Matter. Tin Scoop, 50c. extra; Brass 75c. extra. [Illustration] The Family Scale--$7.00. Weighs from 1/4 oz. to 240 lbs. Small articles weighed in Scoop, large ones on Platform. Size of Platform, 10-1/2 × 13-1/2 in. [Illustration] The Prairie Farmer Scale--$10.00 Weighs from 2 oz. to 320 lbs. Size of Platform 14 × 19 inches. A convenient Scale for Small Farmers, Dairymen, etc. [Illustration] Platform Scales--4 Sizes. 400 lbs., $15; 600 lbs., $20; 900 lbs., $24; 1,200 lbs., $28; Wheels and Axles, $2 extra. In ordering, give the Price and Description given above. All Scales Boxed and Delivered at Depot in Chicago. Give full shipping directions. Send money by Draft on Chicago or New York Post Office Order or Registered Letter. Address THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY, CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS [Illustration] THE STANDARD REMINGTON TYPE-WRITER is acknowledged to be the only rapid and reliable writing machine. It has no rival. These machines are used for transcribing and general correspondence in every part of the globe, doing their work in almost every language. Any young man or woman of ordinary ability, having a practical knowledge of the use of this machine may find constant and remunerative employment. All machines and supplies, furnished by us, warranted. Satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded. Send for circulars. WYCKOFF, SEAMANS & BENEDICT, 38 East Madison St, Chicago, Ill. * * * * * Send for Catalogue and Prices. ATLAS ENGINE WORKS [Illustration] INDIANAPOLIS, IND., U.S.A. MANUFACTURERS OF STEAM ENGINES AND BOILERS. CARRY ENGINES and BOILERS IN STOCK for IMMEDIATE DELIVERY * * * * * SEEDS ALBERT DICKINSON, Dealer in Timothy, Clover, Flax, Hungarian, Millet, Red Top, Blue Grass, Lawn Grass, Orchard Grass, Bird Seeds, &c. POPCORN. Warehouses { 115, 117 & 119 Kinzie St. OFFICE. 115 KINZIE ST., { 104, 106, 108, & 110 Michigan St. CHICAGO, ILL. GENERAL NEWS. Gen. Butler is now out of office. A verdict of not guilty was rendered in the Emma Bond case. St. Petersburg, Russia, is in a panic over recent acts of the Nihilists. Two wolves have lately been killed in the vicinity of Douglas Park, Chicago. Another effort is soon to be made in Congress to reinstate Fitz John Porter. Brokers in Dubuque have offered $330,000 cash for the B.F. Allen Homestead. At Winnipeg on Thursday of last week the mercury was 45 degrees below zero. Albert E. Kent, of San Francisco, gives $25,000 for a chemical laboratory at Yale College. Judge McCrary, of the Supreme Court, has resigned, and accepted a position as a railway attorney. The Government of China has ordered the construction of two more torpedo boats at the German port of Stettin. St. Louis had many fires last week. There were nine outbreaks within forty-eight hours. The firemen were completely worn out. There were 319 failures in the United States last week--the largest number yet recorded within the same number of days. There was strong talk at Hillsboro of lynching the discharged prisoners in the Emma Bond case, but better counsel prevailed. Governor Stoneman presided at a meeting in San Francisco, where arrangements were made to hold a world's exposition in 1887. The mercury at Charleston, S.C., was 13 degrees below zero January 4th. Through New England the weather was extremely cold. Mary, the seventeenth wife of the late Brigham Young, died at Salt Lake City Saturday from blood poisoning. She has fourteen survivors. A pie made of tainted meat caused the poisoning of sixteen boarders and three Sisters at a convent in Montreal. Two of the former are dangerously ill. It is announced from Paris that the French government is intending to sell the railways owned by the Republic. The Rothschilds stand ready to purchase them. By a railroad accident near Fort Dodge, on Wednesday last, three persons were killed and several wounded. Among the killed was Mrs. J.H. South, of Bureau Co., Ills. Mrs. Holcomb, daughter of the murdered millionaire Crouch, of Michigan, has committed suicide. There is some suspicion that she knew something about the murder. A nihilist proclamation has been issued threatening the Czar. There is much anxiety at Gatschina palace. It is now said the Czar's injury in the shoulder the other day was caused by a bullet. The United States Consul General at Cairo reports the deaths by the cholera epidemic at from 65,000 to 70,000. A member of the international tribunal says there are still from one to three fatal cases each day. The Gould system of railroads is about to establish a telegraph school at St. Louis, with a view not only to educating operators, but of selecting pupils from the acclimated people along the Southwestern lines. The Catholic convent at Belleville, Ill., took fire from the furnace Saturday evening, and in an hour was reduced to ashes. Sixty pupils made desperate efforts to escape, some of them leaping from the windows. Twenty-seven lives were lost. The Secretary of State at Springfield has issued papers of incorporation to Col. Wood's museum, at Chicago, with a capital stock of $100,000. The Colonel is said to have secured a lease of his old stand on Randolph street, and the Olympic Theatre. Henry Villard closed his business career by handing over to assignees his mansion on Madison square and other property, with instructions to dispose of the same, pay a mortgage of $200,000, and discharge any indebtedness to the Oregon Railway Company, the residue to be given to his wife. The directors of the Northern Pacific road held a meeting in New York, on Friday, of last week. A letter was read from Henry Villard, resigning the presidency of the company because of nervous prostration and in deference to the interests of the stockholders. The resignation was accepted, and a special election was ordered to choose a successor. The directors voted Mr. Villard $10,000 per annum for his services. Vice President Oakes reported the line in first-class order except one hundred miles near the junction west of Helena. It is understood that the Oregon Navigation company will reduce its dividends to 8 per cent. The Oregon Transcontinental has raised $3,000,000 in Boston with which to lift its floating debt. MARKETS MARKET REPORTS. OFFICE OF THE PRAIRIE FARMER, CHICAGO. Jan 8, 1884. FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL. The extremely cold weather of the past week interfered with business very generally. In financial circles, as in others, the arctic wave made matters rather quiet. Early in the present week, however, business at the banks was active. The arrival of delayed mail trains added to the volume of business; but while there was much activity, the monetary situation remained about the same as usual. In the loan market quotations were 6@7 per cent. Eastern exchange sold at 70@75c per $1,000 premium. Government securities are as follows: 4's coupons, 1907 Q. Apr. 123-1/4 4's reg., 1907 Q. Apr. 123-1/4 4-1/2's coupon, 1891 Q. Mar. 114-1/8 4-1/2's registered, 1891 Q. Mar. 114-1/8 3's registered Q. Mar. 100 GRAIN AND PROVISIONS. The leading produce markets have been irregular for several days past, and the tendency, in the main, was downward. Yesterday wheat was moderately active, but the market was depressed at the close. There was a drop, also, in corn, oats, mess pork, and lard. FLOUR was quiet at about the following rates. Choice to favorite white winters $5 25 @ 5 50 Fair to good brands of white winters 4 75 @ 5 00 Good to choice red winters 5 00 @ 5 50 Prime to choice springs 4 75 @ 5 00 Good to choice export stock, in sacks, extras 4 25 @ 4 50 Good to choice export stock, double extras 4 50 @ 4 65 Fair to good Minnesota springs 4 50 @ 4 75 Choice to fancy Minnesota springs 5 25 @ 5 75 Patent springs 6 00 @ 6 50 Low grades 2 25 @ 3 50 WHEAT.--Red winter, No. 2 96 @ 98c; car lots of spring, No. 2, sold at 93-3/4 @ 95c; No. 3, do. 77-1/2 @ 81c. CORN.--Moderately active. Car lots No. 2, 57-3/8 @ 57-5/8c; rejected, 46-1/2; new mixed, 48 @ 48-1/4c. OATS.--No. 2 in store, closed 33-1/2 @ 33-5/8. RYE.--May, in store 58 @ 58-1/2. BARLEY.--No. 2, 62 @ 63c; No. 3, 44c. FLAX.--Closed at $1 41. TIMOTHY.--$1 25 per bushel. Little doing. CLOVER.--Quiet at $5 90 @ 6 15 for prime. PROVISIONS.--Mess pork, February, $14 45 @ 14 47-1/2 per bbl; May, $15 @ 15 05. Green hams, 8-3/8c, per lb. Short ribs, $7 42-1/2 per cwt. LARD.--January, $8 75; February, $8 85. LUMBER. Lumber unchanged. Quotations for green are as follows: Short dimension, per M $9 50 @ 10 00 Long dimension, per M 10 00 @ 11 50 Boards and strips, No. 2 11 00 @ 13 00 Boards and strips, medium 13 00 @ 16 00 Boards and strips, No. 1 choice 16 00 @ 20 00 Shingles, standard 2 10 @ 2 20 Shingles, choice 2 25 @ 2 30 Shingles, extra 2 40 @ 2 60 Lath 1 65 @ 1 70 COUNTRY PRODUCE. NOTE.--The quotations for the articles named in the following list are generally for commission lots of goods and from first hands. While our prices are based as near as may be on the landing or wholesale rates, allowance must be made for selections and the sorting up for store distribution. BEANS.--Hand picked mediums $2 00 @ 2 10. Hand picked navies, $2 15 @ 2 20. BUTTER.--Dull and without change. Choice to extra creamery, 32 @ 35c per lb.; fair to good do. 26 @ 30c; fair to choice dairy, 25 @ 30c; common to choice packing stock fresh and sweet, 20 @ 25c; ladle packed 10 @ 13c; fresh made, streaked butter, 9 @ 11c. BRAN.--Quoted at $11 87-1/2 @ 13 50 per ton; extra choice $13. BROOM-CORN.--Good to choice hurl 6-1/2 @ 7-1/2c per lb; green self-working 5 @ 6c; red-tipped and pale do. 4 @ 5c; inside and covers 3 @ 4c; common short corn 2-1/2 @ 3-1/2c; crooked, and damaged, 2 @ 4c, according to quality. CHEESE.--Choice full-cream cheddars 12-1/2 @ 13c per lb; medium quality do. 9 @ 10c; good to prime full cream flats 13 @ 13-3/4c; skimmed cheddars 9 @ 10c; good skimmed flats 6 @ 7c; hard-skimmed and common stock 3 @ 4c. EGGS.--In a small way the best brands are quotable at 25 @ 26c per dozen; 20 @ 23c for good ice house stock; 18 @ 19c per pickled. HAY.--No. 1 timothy $10 @ 10 50 per ton; No. 2 do. $8 @ 9; mixed do. $7 @ 8; upland prairie $8 00 @ 10 75; No. 1 prairie $6 @ 7; No. 2 do. $4 50 @ 5 50. Small bales sell at 25 @ 50c per ton more than large bales. HIDES AND PELTS.--Green-cured light hides 8c per lb; do. heavy cows 8c; No. 2 damaged green-salted hides 6c; green-salted calf 12 @ 12-1/2 cents; green-salted bull 6 c; dry-salted hides 11 cents; No. 2 two-thirds price; No. 1 dry flint 14 @ 14-1/2c. Sheep pelts salable at 28 @ 32c for the estimated amount of wash wool on each pelt. All branded and scratched hides are discounted 15 per cent from the price of No. 1. HOPS.--Prime to choice New York State hops 25 @ 26c per lb; Pacific coast of 23 @ 26c; fair to good Wisconsin 15 @ 20c. POULTRY.--Prices for good to choice dry picked and unfrozen lots are: Turkeys 14 @ 15c per lb; chickens 10 @ 11c; ducks 10 @ 12c; geese 9 @ 11c. Thin, undesirable, and frozen stock 2 @ 3c per lb less than these figures; live offerings nominal. POTATOES.--Good to choice 35 @ 40c per bu. on track; common to fair 25 @ 30c. Illinois sweet potatoes range at $3 @ 3 50 per bbl for yellow. Baltimore stock at $2 25 @ 2 75, and Jerseys at $5. Red are dull and nominal. TALLOW AND GREASE.--No. 1 country tallow 7@7-1/4c per lb; No. 2 do. 6-1/4 @ 6-1/2 c. Prime white grease 6 @ 6-1/2 c; yellow 5-1/4 @ 5-3/4c: brown 4-1/2@5. VEGETABLES.--Cabbage, $8 @ 12 per 100; celery, 35 @ 40c per doz bunches; onions, $1 00 @ 1 25 $ bbl for yellow, and $1 for red; turnips, $1 35@ 1 50 per bbl for rutabagas, and $1 00 for white flat. WOOL.--from store range as follows for bright wools from Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Eastern Iowa--dark Western lots generally ranging at 1 @ 2c per lb. less. Coarse and dingy tub 25 @ 30 Good medium tub 31 @ 34 Unwashed bucks' fleeces 14 @ 15 Fine unwashed heavy fleeces 18 @ 22 Fine light unwashed heavy fleeces 22 @ 23 Coarse unwashed fleeces 21 @ 22 Low medium unwashed fleeces 24 @ 25 Fine medium unwashed fleeces 26 @ 27 Fine washed fleeces 32 @ 33 Coarse washed fleeces 26 @ 28 Low medium washed fleeces 30 @ 32 Fine medium washed fleeces 34 @ 35 Colorado and Territory wools range as follows: Lowest grades 14 @ 16 Low medium 18 @ 22 Medium 22 @ 26 Fine 16 @ 24 Wools from New Mexico: Lowest grades 14 @ 16 Part improved 16 @ 17 Best improved 19 @ 23 Burry from 2c to 10c off: black 2c to 5c off. LIVE STOCK MARKETS. The total receipts and shipments for last week were as follows: Received. Shipped. Cattle 25,594 13,722 Calves 353 166 Hogs 45,376 31,864 Sheep 14,206 8,903 The live stock receipts are increasing, and show a large gain over last week. CATTLE.--The receipts for Sunday and Monday were rather large, being estimated at 6,800 head of cattle, as against 3,700 received in the corresponding time last week. Shipping grades of cattle were active and firm yesterday at $5 @ 6 67-1/2, exporters taking a fair number. Common lots were lower, with sales to dressed-beef buyers as low as $4 25. A good share of the day's trading was done at $5 70 @ 6 60. Quotations are as follows: Fancy fat cattle $ 6 75 @ 7 00 Choice to prime steers 6 05 @ 6 70 Fair to good shipping steers 5 55 @ 6 00 Common to medium steers 4 25 @ 5 50 Butcher's steers 4 50 @ 5 00 Cows and bulls, common to good 3 00 @ 4 25 Inferior cows and bulls 2 00 @ 2 95 Stockers 3 40 @ 4 40 Feeders 4 25 @ 4 75 Milch cows, per head 25 00 @55 00 Veal calves, per 100lbs 4 00 @ 7 25 HOGS.--The receipts Sunday and Monday were estimated at 18,000 hogs, against only 6,700 received in the corresponding time last week. Although the receipts have been increasing during the last few days, supplies are still remarkably small for the first half of January. The great bulk of the crop has undoubtedly been marketed, but there are known to be a very good number still unmarketed, and it is believed that farmers are unwilling to ship freely to this market while packers are so largely inactive, fearing a decline in prices. Shippers have been taking most of the hogs lately. Butchers took in the neighborhood of 1,900 hogs, leaving a few thousand still unsold. Sales were made of heavy at $5 10 @ 6 25; light at $5 10 @ 5 75, and skips and culls at $3 50 @ 5. Note.--All sales of hogs are made subject to a shrinkage of 40 lbs for piggy sows and 80 lbs for stags. Dead hogs sell for 1-1/2c per lb for weights of 200 and over and for weights of less than 100lbs. SHEEP.--The market opened with a good supply, the receipts for Sunday and Monday being estimated at 2,500 head, as against 1,968 received in the same time last week. There was an active local and shipping demand for all desirable offerings, and prices ruled firm at the recent advance, sales being made of fair to choice at $3 65 @ 5 60. * * * * * COMMISSION MERCHANTS. J.H. WHITE & CO., PRODUCE COMMISSION 106 WATER ST., CHICAGO. Refers to this paper. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. 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11696	----	[Illustration: He sat down in a garden, with his back to a house that overlooked all London.] THE FOOD OF THE GODS AND HOW IT CAME TO EARTH H.G. WELLS [Illustration] CONTENTS. BOOK I. THE DAWN OF THE FOOD. I. THE DISCOVERY OF THE FOOD II. THE EXPERIMENTAL FARM III. THE GIANT RATS IV. THE GIANT CHILDREN V. THE MINIMIFICENCE OF MR. BENSINGTON BOOK II. THE FOOD IN THE VILLAGE. I. THE COMING OF THE FOOD II. THE BRAT GIGANTIC BOOK III. THE HARVEST OF THE FOOD. I. THE ALTERED WORLD II. THE GIANT LOVERS III. YOUNG CADDLES IN LONDON IV. REDWOOD'S TWO DAYS V. THE GIANT LEAGUER BOOK I. THE DAWN OF THE FOOD. THE FOOD OF THE GODS. CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE DISCOVERY OF THE FOOD. I. In the middle years of the nineteenth century there first became abundant in this strange world of ours a class of men, men tending for the most part to become elderly, who are called, and who are very properly called, but who dislike extremely to be called--"Scientists." They dislike that word so much that from the columns of _Nature_, which was from the first their distinctive and characteristic paper, it is as carefully excluded as if it were--that other word which is the basis of all really bad language in this country. But the Great Public and its Press know better, and "Scientists" they are, and when they emerge to any sort of publicity, "distinguished scientists" and "eminent scientists" and "well-known scientists" is the very least we call them. Certainly both Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood quite merited any of these terms long before they came upon the marvellous discovery of which this story tells. Mr. Bensington was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a former president of the Chemical Society, and Professor Redwood was Professor of Physiology in the Bond Street College of the London University, and he had been grossly libelled by the anti-vivisectionists time after time. And they had led lives of academic distinction from their very earliest youth. They were of course quite undistinguished looking men, as indeed all true Scientists are. There is more personal distinction about the mildest-mannered actor alive than there is about the entire Royal Society. Mr. Bensington was short and very, very bald, and he stooped slightly; he wore gold-rimmed spectacles and cloth boots that were abundantly cut open because of his numerous corns, and Professor Redwood was entirely ordinary in his appearance. Until they happened upon the Food of the Gods (as I must insist upon calling it) they led lives of such eminent and studious obscurity that it is hard to find anything whatever to tell the reader about them. Mr. Bensington won his spurs (if one may use such an expression of a gentleman in boots of slashed cloth) by his splendid researches upon the More Toxic Alkaloids, and Professor Redwood rose to eminence--I do not clearly remember how he rose to eminence! I know he was very eminent, and that's all. Things of this sort grow. I fancy it was a voluminous work on Reaction Times with numerous plates of sphygmograph tracings (I write subject to correction) and an admirable new terminology, that did the thing for him. The general public saw little or nothing of either of these gentlemen. Sometimes at places like the Royal Institution and the Society of Arts it did in a sort of way see Mr. Bensington, or at least his blushing baldness and something of his collar and coat, and hear fragments of a lecture or paper that he imagined himself to be reading audibly; and once I remember--one midday in the vanished past--when the British Association was at Dover, coming on Section C or D, or some such letter, which had taken up its quarters in a public-house, and following two, serious-looking ladies with paper parcels, out of mere curiosity, through a door labelled "Billiards" and "Pool" into a scandalous darkness, broken only by a magic-lantern circle of Redwood's tracings. I watched the lantern slides come and go, and listened to a voice (I forget what it was saying) which I believe was the voice of Professor Redwood, and there was a sizzling from the lantern and another sound that kept me there, still out of curiosity, until the lights were unexpectedly turned up. And then I perceived that this sound was the sound of the munching of buns and sandwiches and things that the assembled British Associates had come there to eat under cover of the magic-lantern darkness. And Redwood I remember went on talking all the time the lights were up and dabbing at the place where his diagram ought to have been visible on the screen--and so it was again so soon as the darkness was restored. I remember him then as a most ordinary, slightly nervous-looking dark man, with an air of being preoccupied with something else, and doing what he was doing just then under an unaccountable sense of duty. I heard Bensington also once--in the old days--at an educational conference in Bloomsbury. Like most eminent chemists and botanists, Mr. Bensington was very authoritative upon teaching--though I am certain he would have been scared out of his wits by an average Board School class in half-an-hour--and so far as I can remember now, he was propounding an improvement of Professor Armstrong's Heuristic method, whereby at the cost of three or four hundred pounds' worth of apparatus, a total neglect of all other studies and the undivided attention of a teacher of exceptional gifts, an average child might with a peculiar sort of thumby thoroughness learn in the course of ten or twelve years almost as much chemistry as one could get in one of those objectionable shilling text-books that were then so common.... Quite ordinary persons you perceive, both of them, outside their science. Or if anything on the unpractical side of ordinary. And that you will find is the case with "scientists" as a class all the world over. What there is great of them is an annoyance to their fellow scientists and a mystery to the general public, and what is not is evident. There is no doubt about what is not great, no race of men have such obvious littlenesses. They live in a narrow world so far as their human intercourse goes; their researches involve infinite attention and an almost monastic seclusion; and what is left over is not very much. To witness some queer, shy, misshapen, grey-headed, self-important, little discoverer of great discoveries, ridiculously adorned with the wide ribbon of some order of chivalry and holding a reception of his fellow-men, or to read the anguish of _Nature_ at the "neglect of science" when the angel of the birthday honours passes the Royal Society by, or to listen to one indefatigable lichenologist commenting on the work of another indefatigable lichenologist, such things force one to realise the unfaltering littleness of men. And withal the reef of Science that these little "scientists" built and are yet building is so wonderful, so portentous, so full of mysterious half-shapen promises for the mighty future of man! They do not seem to realise the things they are doing! No doubt long ago even Mr. Bensington, when he chose this calling, when he consecrated his life to the alkaloids and their kindred compounds, had some inkling of the vision,--more than an inkling. Without some such inspiration, for such glories and positions only as a "scientist" may expect, what young man would have given his life to such work, as young men do? No, they _must_ have seen the glory, they must have had the vision, but so near that it has blinded them. The splendour has blinded them, mercifully, so that for the rest of their lives they can hold the lights of knowledge in comfort--that we may see! And perhaps it accounts for Redwood's touch of preoccupation, that--there can be no doubt of it now--he among his fellows was different, he was different inasmuch as something of the vision still lingered in his eyes. II. The Food of the Gods I call it, this substance that Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood made between them; and having regard now to what it has already done and all that it is certainly going to do, there is surely no exaggeration in the name. So I shall continue to call it therefore throughout my story. But Mr. Bensington would no more have called it that in cold blood than he would have gone out from his flat in Sloane Street clad in regal scarlet and a wreath of laurel. The phrase was a mere first cry of astonishment from him. He called it the Food of the Gods, in his enthusiasm and for an hour or so at the most altogether. After that he decided he was being absurd. When he first thought of the thing he saw, as it were, a vista of enormous possibilities--literally enormous possibilities; but upon this dazzling vista, after one stare of amazement, he resolutely shut his eyes, even as a conscientious "scientist" should. After that, the Food of the Gods sounded blatant to the pitch of indecency. He was surprised he had used the expression. Yet for all that something of that clear-eyed moment hung about him and broke out ever and again.... "Really, you know," he said, rubbing his hands together and laughing nervously, "it has more than a theoretical interest. "For example," he confided, bringing his face close to the Professor's and dropping to an undertone, "it would perhaps, if suitably handled, _sell_.... "Precisely," he said, walking away,--"as a Food. Or at least a food ingredient. "Assuming of course that it is palatable. A thing we cannot know till we have prepared it." He turned upon the hearthrug, and studied the carefully designed slits upon his cloth shoes. "Name?" he said, looking up in response to an inquiry. "For my part I incline to the good old classical allusion. It--it makes Science res--. Gives it a touch of old-fashioned dignity. I have been thinking ... I don't know if you will think it absurd of me.... A little fancy is surely occasionally permissible.... Herakleophorbia. Eh? The nutrition of a possible Hercules? You know it _might_ ... "Of course if you think _not_--" Redwood reflected with his eyes on the fire and made no objection. "You think it would do?" Redwood moved his head gravely. "It might be Titanophorbia, you know. Food of Titans.... You prefer the former? "You're quite sure you don't think it a little _too_--" "No." "Ah! I'm glad." And so they called it Herakleophorbia throughout their investigations, and in their report,--the report that was never published, because of the unexpected developments that upset all their arrangements,--it is invariably written in that way. There were three kindred substances prepared before they hit on the one their speculations had foretolds and these they spoke of as Herakleophorbia I, Herakleophorbia II, and Herakleophorbia III. It is Herakleophorbia IV. which I--insisting upon Bensington's original name--call here the Food of the Gods. III. The idea was Mr. Bensington's. But as it was suggested to him by one of Professor Redwood's contributions to the Philosophical Transactions, he very properly consulted that gentleman before he carried it further. Besides which it was, as a research, a physiological, quite as much as a chemical inquiry. Professor Redwood was one of those scientific men who are addicted to tracings and curves. You are familiar--if you are at all the sort of reader I like--with the sort of scientific paper I mean. It is a paper you cannot make head nor tail of, and at the end come five or six long folded diagrams that open out and show peculiar zigzag tracings, flashes of lightning overdone, or sinuous inexplicable things called "smoothed curves" set up on ordinates and rooting in abscissae--and things like that. You puzzle over the thing for a long time and end with the suspicion that not only do you not understand it but that the author does not understand it either. But really you know many of these scientific people understand the meaning of their own papers quite well: it is simply a defect of expression that raises the obstacle between us. I am inclined to think that Redwood thought in tracings and curves. And after his monumental work upon Reaction Times (the unscientific reader is exhorted to stick to it for a little bit longer and everything will be as clear as daylight) Redwood began to turn out smoothed curves and sphygmographeries upon Growth, and it was one of his papers upon Growth that really gave Mr. Bensington his idea. Redwood, you know, had been measuring growing things of all sorts, kittens, puppies, sunflowers, mushrooms, bean plants, and (until his wife put a stop to it) his baby, and he showed that growth went out not at a regular pace, or, as he put it, so, / / / / / / / / / / / but with bursts and intermissions of this sort, _____ / / _____/ / / _____/ / / / and that apparently nothing grew regularly and steadily, and so far as he could make out nothing could grow regularly and steadily: it was as if every living thing had just to accumulate force to grow, grew with vigour only for a time, and then had to wait for a space before it could go on growing again. And in the muffled and highly technical language of the really careful "scientist," Redwood suggested that the process of growth probably demanded the presence of a considerable quantity of some necessary substance in the blood that was only formed very slowly, and that when this substance was used up by growth, it was only very slowly replaced, and that meanwhile the organism had to mark time. He compared his unknown substance to oil in machinery. A growing animal was rather like an engine, he suggested, that can move a certain distance and must then be oiled before it can run again. ("But why shouldn't one oil the engine from without?" said Mr. Bensington, when he read the paper.) And all this, said Redwood, with the delightful nervous inconsecutiveness of his class, might very probably be found to throw a light upon the mystery of certain of the ductless glands. As though they had anything to do with it at all! In a subsequent communication Redwood went further. He gave a perfect Brock's benefit of diagrams--exactly like rocket trajectories they were; and the gist of it--so far as it had any gist--was that the blood of puppies and kittens and the sap of sunflowers and the juice of mushrooms in what he called the "growing phase" differed in the proportion of certain elements from their blood and sap on the days when they were not particularly growing. And when Mr. Bensington, after holding the diagrams sideways and upside down, began to see what this difference was, a great amazement came upon him. Because, you see, the difference might probably be due to the presence of just the very substance he had recently been trying to isolate in his researches upon such alkaloids as are most stimulating to the nervous system. He put down Redwood's paper on the patent reading-desk that swung inconveniently from his arm-chair, took off his gold-rimmed spectacles, breathed on them and wiped them very carefully. "By Jove!" said Mr. Bensington. Then replacing his spectacles again he turned to the patent reading-desk, which immediately, as his elbow came against its arm, gave a coquettish squeak and deposited the paper, with all its diagrams in a dispersed and crumpled state, on the floor. "By Jove!" said Mr. Bensington, straining his stomach over the arm-chair with a patient disregard of the habits of this convenience, and then, finding the pamphlet still out of reach, he went down on all fours in pursuit. It was on the floor that the idea of calling it the Food of the Gods came to him.... For you see, if he was right and Redwood was right, then by injecting or administering this new substance of his in food, he would do away with the "resting phase," and instead of growth going on in this fashion, _____ / / _____/ / / _____/ / / / it would (if you follow me) go thus-- / / / / / / / / / / / IV. The night after his conversation with Redwood Mr. Bensington could scarcely sleep a wink. He did seem once to get into a sort of doze, but it was only for a moment, and then he dreamt he had dug a deep hole into the earth and poured in tons and tons of the Food of the Gods, and the earth was swelling and swelling, and all the boundaries of the countries were bursting, and the Royal Geographical Society was all at work like one great guild of tailors letting out the equator.... That of course was a ridiculous dream, but it shows the state of mental excitement into which Mr. Bensington got and the real value he attached to his idea, much better than any of the things he said or did when he was awake and on his guard. Or I should not have mentioned it, because as a general rule I do not think it is at all interesting for people to tell each other about their dreams. By a singular coincidence Redwood also had a dream that night, and his dream was this:-- | | | | | | | | | | It was a diagram done in fire upon a long scroll of the abyss. And he (Redwood) was standing on a planet before a sort of black platform lecturing about the new sort of growth that was now possible, to the More than Royal Institution of Primordial Forces--forces which had always previously, even in the growth of races, empires, planetary systems, and worlds, gone so:-- _____ / _____/ / _____/ / / And even in some cases so:-- ____ / \ _____/ / / And he was explaining to them quite lucidly and convincingly that these slow, these even retrogressive methods would be very speedily quite put out of fashion by his discovery. Ridiculous of course! But that too shows-- That either dream is to be regarded as in any way significant or prophetic beyond what I have categorically said, I do not for one moment suggest. CHAPTER THE SECOND. THE EXPERIMENTAL FARM. I. Mr. Bensington proposed originally to try this stuff, so soon as he was really able to prepare it, upon tadpoles. One always does try this sort of thing upon tadpoles to begin with; this being what tadpoles are for. And it was agreed that he should conduct the experiments and not Redwood, because Redwood's laboratory was occupied with the ballistic apparatus and animals necessary for an investigation into the Diurnal Variation in the Butting Frequency of the Young Bull Calf, an investigation that was yielding curves of an abnormal and very perplexing sort, and the presence of glass globes of tadpoles was extremely undesirable while this particular research was in progress. But when Mr. Bensington conveyed to his cousin Jane something of what he had in mind, she put a prompt veto upon the importation of any considerable number of tadpoles, or any such experimental creatures, into their flat. She had no objection whatever to his use of one of the rooms of the flat for the purposes of a non-explosive chemistry that, so far as she was concerned, came to nothing; she let him have a gas furnace and a sink and a dust-tight cupboard of refuge from the weekly storm of cleaning she would not forego. And having known people addicted to drink, she regarded his solicitude for distinction in learned societies as an excellent substitute for the coarser form of depravity. But any sort of living things in quantity, "wriggly" as they were bound to be alive and "smelly" dead, she could not and would not abide. She said these things were certain to be unhealthy, and Bensington was notoriously a delicate man--it was nonsense to say he wasn't. And when Bensington tried to make the enormous importance of this possible discovery clear, she said that it was all very well, but if she consented to his making everything nasty and unwholesome in the place (and that was what it all came to) then she was certain he would be the first to complain. And Mr. Bensington went up and down the room, regardless of his corns, and spoke to her quite firmly and angrily without the slightest effect. He said that nothing ought to stand in the way of the Advancement of Science, and she said that the Advancement of Science was one thing and having a lot of tadpoles in a flat was another; he said that in Germany it was an ascertained fact that a man with an idea like his would at once have twenty thousand properly-fitted cubic feet of laboratory placed at his disposal, and she said she was glad and always had been glad that she was not a German; he said that it would make him famous for ever, and she said it was much more likely to make him ill to have a lot of tadpoles in a flat like theirs; he said he was master in his own house, and she said that rather than wait on a lot of tadpoles she'd go as matron to a school; and then he asked her to be reasonable, and she asked _him_ to be reasonable then and give up all this about tadpoles; and he said she might respect his ideas, and she said not if they were smelly she wouldn't, and then he gave way completely and said--in spite of the classical remarks of Huxley upon the subject--a bad word. Not a very bad word it was, but bad enough. And after that she was greatly offended and had to be apologised to, and the prospect of ever trying the Food of the Gods upon tadpoles in their flat at any rate vanished completely in the apology. So Bensington had to consider some other way of carrying out these experiments in feeding that would be necessary to demonstrate his discovery, so soon as he had his substance isolated and prepared. For some days he meditated upon the possibility of boarding out his tadpoles with some trustworthy person, and then the chance sight of the phrase in a newspaper turned his thoughts to an Experimental Farm. And chicks. Directly he thought of it, he thought of it as a poultry farm. He was suddenly taken with a vision of wildly growing chicks. He conceived a picture of coops and runs, outsize and still more outsize coops, and runs progressively larger. Chicks are so accessible, so easily fed and observed, so much drier to handle and measure, that for his purpose tadpoles seemed to him now, in comparison with them, quite wild and uncontrollable beasts. He was quite puzzled to understand why he had not thought of chicks instead of tadpoles from the beginning. Among other things it would have saved all this trouble with his cousin Jane. And when he suggested this to Redwood, Redwood quite agreed with him. Redwood said that in working so much upon needlessly small animals he was convinced experimental physiologists made a great mistake. It is exactly like making experiments in chemistry with an insufficient quantity of material; errors of observation and manipulation become disproportionately large. It was of extreme importance just at present that scientific men should assert their right to have their material _big_. That was why he was doing his present series of experiments at the Bond Street College upon Bull Calves, in spite of a certain amount of inconvenience to the students and professors of other subjects caused by their incidental levity in the corridors. But the curves he was getting were quite exceptionally interesting, and would, when published, amply justify his choice. For his own part, were it not for the inadequate endowment of science in this country, he would never, if he could avoid it, work on anything smaller than a whale. But a Public Vivarium on a sufficient scale to render this possible was, he feared, at present, in this country at any rate, a Utopian demand. In Germany--Etc. As Redwood's Bull calves needed his daily attention, the selection and equipment of the Experimental Farm fell largely on Bensington. The entire cost also, was, it was understood, to be defrayed by Bensington, at least until a grant could be obtained. Accordingly he alternated his work in the laboratory of his flat with farm hunting up and down the lines that run southward out of London, and his peering spectacles, his simple baldness, and his lacerated cloth shoes filled the owners of numerous undesirable properties with vain hopes. And he advertised in several daily papers and _Nature_ for a responsible couple (married), punctual, active, and used to poultry, to take entire charge of an Experimental Farm of three acres. He found the place he seemed in need of at Hickleybrow, near Urshot, in Kent. It was a little queer isolated place, in a dell surrounded by old pine woods that were black and forbidding at night. A humped shoulder of down cut it off from the sunset, and a gaunt well with a shattered penthouse dwarfed the dwelling. The little house was creeperless, several windows were broken, and the cart shed had a black shadow at midday. It was a mile and a half from the end house of the village, and its loneliness was very doubtfully relieved by an ambiguous family of echoes. The place impressed Bensington as being eminently adapted to the requirements of scientific research. He walked over the premises sketching out coops and runs with a sweeping arm, and he found the kitchen capable of accommodating a series of incubators and foster mothers with the very minimum of alteration. He took the place there and then; on his way back to London he stopped at Dunton Green and closed with an eligible couple that had answered his advertisements, and that same evening he succeeded in isolating a sufficient quantity of Herakleophorbia I. to more than justify these engagements. The eligible couple who were destined under Mr. Bensington to be the first almoners on earth of the Food of the Gods, were not only very perceptibly aged, but also extremely dirty. This latter point Mr. Bensington did not observe, because nothing destroys the powers of general observation quite so much as a life of experimental science. They were named Skinner, Mr. and Mrs. Skinner, and Mr. Bensington interviewed them in a small room with hermetically sealed windows, a spotted overmantel looking-glass, and some ailing calceolarias. Mrs. Skinner was a very little old woman, capless, with dirty white hair drawn back very very tightly from a face that had begun by being chiefly, and was now, through the loss of teeth and chin, and the wrinkling up of everything else, ending by being almost exclusively--nose. She was dressed in slate colour (so far as her dress had any colour) slashed in one place with red flannel. She let him in and talked to him guardedly and peered at him round and over her nose, while Mr. Skinner she alleged made some alteration in his toilette. She had one tooth that got into her articulations and she held her two long wrinkled hands nervously together. She told Mr. Bensington that she had managed fowls for years; and knew all about incubators; in fact, they themselves had run a Poultry Farm at one time, and it had only failed at last through the want of pupils. "It's the pupils as pay," said Mrs. Skinner. Mr. Skinner, when he appeared, was a large-faced man, with a lisp and a squint that made him look over the top of your head, slashed slippers that appealed to Mr. Bensington's sympathies, and a manifest shortness of buttons. He held his coat and shirt together with one hand and traced patterns on the black-and-gold tablecloth with the index finger of the other, while his disengaged eye watched Mr. Bensington's sword of Damocles, so to speak, with an expression of sad detachment. "You don't want to run thith Farm for profit. No, Thir. Ith all the thame, Thir. Ekthperimenth! Prethithely." He said they could go to the farm at once. He was doing nothing at Dunton Green except a little tailoring. "It ithn't the thmart plathe I thought it wath, and what I get ithent thkarthely worth having," he said, "tho that if it ith any convenienth to you for uth to come...." And in a week Mr. and Mrs. Skinner were installed in the farm, and the jobbing carpenter from Hickleybrow was diversifying the task of erecting runs and henhouses with a systematic discussion of Mr. Bensington. "I haven't theen much of 'im yet," said Mr. Skinner. "But as far as I can make 'im out 'e theems to be a thtewpid o' fool." "_I_ thought 'e seemed a bit Dotty," said the carpenter from Hickleybrow. "'E fanthieth 'imself about poultry," said Mr. Skinner. "O my goodneth! You'd think nobody knew nothin' about poultry thept 'im." "'E _looks_ like a 'en," said the carpenter from Hickleybrow; "what with them spectacles of 'is." Mr. Skinner came closer to the carpenter from Hickleybrow, and spoke in a confidential manner, and one sad eye regarded the distant village, and one was bright and wicked. "Got to be meathured every blethed day--every blethed 'en, 'e thays. Tho as to thee they grow properly. What oh ... eh? Every blethed 'en--every blethed day." And Mr. Skinner put up his hand to laugh behind it in a refined and contagious manner, and humped his shoulders very much--and only the other eye of him failed to participate in his laughter. Then doubting if the carpenter had quite got the point of it, he repeated in a penetrating whisper; "_Meathured_!" "'E's worse than our old guvnor; I'm dratted if 'e ain't," said the carpenter from Hickleybrow. II. Experimental work is the most tedious thing in the world (unless it be the reports of it in the _Philosophical Transactions_), and it seemed a long time to Mr. Bensington before his first dream of enormous possibilities was replaced by a crumb of realisation. He had taken the Experimental Farm in October, and it was May before the first inklings of success began. Herakleophorbia I. and II. and III. had to be tried, and failed; there was trouble with the rats of the Experimental Farm, and there was trouble with the Skinners. The only way to get Skinner to do anything he was told to do was to dismiss him. Then he would nib his unshaven chin--he was always unshaven most miraculously and yet never bearded--with a flattened hand, and look at Mr. Bensington with one eye, and over him with the other, and say, "Oo, of courthe, Thir--if you're _theriouth_!" But at last success dawned. And its herald was a letter in the long slender handwriting of Mr. Skinner. "The new Brood are out," wrote Mr. Skinner, "and don't quite like the look of them. Growing very rank--quite unlike what the similar lot was before your last directions was given. The last, before the cat got them, was a very nice, stocky chick, but these are Growing like thistles. I never saw. They peck so hard, striking above boot top, that am unable to give exact Measures as requested. They are regular Giants, and eating as such. We shall want more corn very soon, for you never saw such chicks to eat. Bigger than Bantams. Going on at this rate, they ought to be a bird for show, rank as they are. Plymouth Rocks won't be in it. Had a scare last night thinking that cat was at them, and when I looked out at the window could have sworn I see her getting in under the wire. The chicks was all awake and pecking about hungry when I went out, but could not see anything of the cat. So gave them a peck of corn, and fastened up safe. Shall be glad to know if the Feeding to be continued as directed. Food you mixed is pretty near all gone, and do not like to mix any more myself on account of the accident with the pudding. With best wishes from us both, and soliciting continuance of esteemed favours, "Respectfully yours, "ALFRED NEWTON SKINNER." The allusion towards the end referred to a milk pudding with which some Herakleophorbia II. had got itself mixed with painful and very nearly fatal results to the Skinners. But Mr. Bensington, reading between the lines saw in this rankness of growth the attainment of his long sought goal. The next morning he alighted at Urshot station, and in the bag in his hand he carried, sealed in three tins, a supply of the Food of the Gods sufficient for all the chicks in Kent. It was a bright and beautiful morning late in May, and his corns were so much better that he resolved to walk through Hickleybrow to his farm. It was three miles and a half altogether, through the park and villages and then along the green glades of the Hickleybrow preserves. The trees were all dusted with the green spangles of high spring, the hedges were full of stitchwort and campion and the woods of blue hyacinths and purple orchid; and everywhere there was a great noise of birds--thrushes, blackbirds, robins, finches, and many more--and in one warm corner of the park some bracken was unrolling, and there was a leaping and rushing of fallow deer. These things brought back to Mr. Bensington his early and forgotten delight in life; before him the promise of his discovery grew bright and joyful, and it seemed to him that indeed he must have come upon the happiest day in his life. And when in the sunlit run by the sandy bank under the shadow of the pine trees he saw the chicks that had eaten the food he had mixed for them, gigantic and gawky, bigger already than many a hen that is married and settled and still growing, still in their first soft yellow plumage (just faintly marked with brown along the back), he knew indeed that his happiest day had come. At Mr. Skinner's urgency he went into the runs but after he had been pecked through the cracks in his shoes once or twice he got out again, and watched these monsters through the wire netting. He peered close to the netting, and followed their movements as though he had never seen a chick before in his life. "Whath they'll be when they're grown up ith impothible to think," said Mr. Skinner. "Big as a horse," said Mr. Bensington. "Pretty near," said Mr. Skinner. "Several people could dine off a wing!" said Mr. Bensington. "They'd cut up into joints like butcher's meat." "They won't go on growing at thith pathe though," said Mr. Skinner. "No?" said Mr. Bensington. "No," said Mr. Skinner. "I know thith thort. They begin rank, but they don't go on, bleth you! No." There was a pause. "Itth management," said Mr. Skinner modestly. Mr. Bensington turned his glasses on him suddenly. "We got 'em almoth ath big at the other plathe," said Mr. Skinner, with his better eye piously uplifted and letting himself go a little; "me and the mithith." Mr. Bensington made his usual general inspection of the premises, but he speedily returned to the new run. It was, you know, in truth ever so much more than he had dared to expect. The course of science is so tortuous and so slow; after the clear promises and before the practical realisation arrives there comes almost always year after year of intricate contrivance, and here--here was the Foods of the Gods arriving after less than a year of testing! It seemed too good--too good. That Hope Deferred which is the daily food of the scientific imagination was to be his no more! So at least it seemed to him then. He came back and stared at these stupendous chicks of his, time after time. "Let me see," he said. "They're ten days old. And by the side of an ordinary chick I should fancy--about six or seven times as big...." "Itth about time we artht for a rithe in thkrew," said Mr. Skinner to his wife. "He'th ath pleathed ath Punth about the way we got thothe chickth on in the further run--pleathed ath Punth he ith." He bent confidentially towards her. "Thinkth it'th that old food of hith," he said behind his hands and made a noise of suppressed laughter in his pharyngeal cavity.... Mr. Bensington was indeed a happy man that day. He was in no mood to find fault with details of management. The bright day certainly brought out the accumulating slovenliness of the Skinner couple more vividly than he had ever seen it before. But his comments were of the gentlest. The fencing of many of the runs was out of order, but he seemed to consider it quite satisfactory when Mr. Skinner explained that it was a "fokth or a dog or thomething" did it. He pointed out that the incubator had not been cleaned. "That it _asn't_, Sir," said Mrs. Skinner with her arms folded, smiling coyly behind her nose. "We don't seem to have had time to clean it not since we been 'ere...." He went upstairs to see some rat-holes that Skinner said would justify a trap--they certainly were enormous--and discovered that the room in which the Food of the Gods was mixed with meal and bran was in a quite disgraceful order. The Skinners were the sort of people who find a use for cracked saucers and old cans and pickle jars and mustard boxes, and the place was littered with these. In one corner a great pile of apples that Skinner had saved was decaying, and from a nail in the sloping part of the ceiling hung several rabbit skins, upon which he proposed to test his gift as a furrier. ("There ithn't mutth about furth and thingth that _I_ don't know," said Skinner.) Mr. Bensington certainly sniffed critically at this disorder, but he made no unnecessary fuss, and even when he found a wasp regaling itself in a gallipot half full of Herakleophorbia IV, he simply remarked mildly that his substance was better sealed from the damp than exposed to the air in that manner. And he turned from these things at once to remark--what had been for some time in his mind--"I _think_, Skinner--you know, I shall kill one of these chicks--as a specimen. I think we will kill it this afternoon, and I will take it back with me to London." He pretended to peer into another gallipot and then took off his spectacles to wipe them. "I should like," he said, "I should like very much, to have some relic--some memento--of this particular brood at this particular day." "By-the-bye," he said, "you don't give those little chicks meat?" "Oh! _no_, Thir," said Skinner, "I can athure you, Thir, we know far too much about the management of fowlth of all dethcriptionth to do anything of that thort." "Quite sure you don't throw your dinner refuse--I thought I noticed the bones of a rabbit scattered about the far corner of the run--" But when they came to look at them they found they were the larger bones of a cat picked very clean and dry. III. "_That's_ no chick," said Mr. Bensington's cousin Jane. "Well, I should _think_ I knew a chick when I saw it," said Mr. Bensington's cousin Jane hotly. "It's too big for a chick, for one thing, and besides you can _see_ perfectly well it isn't a chick. "It's more like a bustard than a chick." "For my part," said Redwood, reluctantly allowing Bensington to drag him into the argument, "I must confess that, considering all the evidence--" "Oh! if you do _that_," said Mr. Bensington's cousin Jane, "instead of using your eyes like a sensible person--" "Well, but really, Miss Bensington--!" "Oh! Go _on!_" said Cousin Jane. "You men are all alike." "Considering all the evidence, this certainly falls within the definition--no doubt it's abnormal and hypertrophied, but still--especially since it was hatched from the egg of a normal hen--Yes, I think, Miss Bensington, I must admit--this, so far as one can call it anything, is a sort of chick." "You mean it's a chick?" said cousin Jane. "I _think_ it's a chick," said Redwood. "What NONSENSE!" said Mr. Bensington's cousin Jane, and "Oh!" directed at Redwood's head, "I haven't patience with you," and then suddenly she turned about and went out of the room with a slam. "And it's a very great relief for me to see it too, Bensington," said Redwood, when the reverberation of the slam had died away. "In spite of its being so big." Without any urgency from Mr. Bensington he sat down in the low arm-chair by the fire and confessed to proceedings that even in an unscientific man would have been indiscreet. "You will think it very rash of me, Bensington, I know," he said, "but the fact is I put a little--not very much of it--but some--into Baby's bottle, very nearly a week ago!" "But suppose--!" cried Mr. Bensington. "I know," said Redwood, and glanced at the giant chick upon the plate on the table. "It's turned out all right, thank goodness," and he felt in his pocket for his cigarettes. He gave fragmentary details. "Poor little chap wasn't putting on weight... desperately anxious.--Winkles, a frightful duffer ... former pupil of mine ... no good.... Mrs. Redwood--unmitigated confidence in Winkles.... _You_ know, man with a manner like a cliff--towering.... No confidence in _me_, of course.... Taught Winkles.... Scarcely allowed in the nursery.... Something had to be done.... Slipped in while the nurse was at breakfast ... got at the bottle." "But he'll grow," said Mr. Bensington. "He's growing. Twenty-seven ounces last week.... You should hear Winkles. It's management, he said." "Dear me! That's what Skinner says!" Redwood looked at the chick again. "The bother is to keep it up," he said. "They won't trust me in the nursery alone, because I tried to get a growth curve out of Georgina Phyllis--you know--and how I'm to give him a second dose--" "Need you?" "He's been crying two days--can't get on with his ordinary food again, anyhow. He wants some more now." "Tell Winkles." "Hang Winkles!" said Redwood. "You might get at Winkles and give him powders to give the child--" "That's about what I shall have to do," said Redwood, resting his chin on his fist and staring into the fire. Bensington stood for a space smoothing the down on the breast of the giant chick. "They will be monstrous fowls," he said. "They will," said Redwood, still with his eyes on the glow. "Big as horses," said Bensington. "Bigger," said Redwood. "That's just it!" Bensington turned away from the specimen. "Redwood," he said, "these fowls are going to create a sensation." Redwood nodded his head at the fire. "And by Jove!" said Bensington, coming round suddenly with a flash in his spectacles, "so will your little boy!" "That's just what I'm thinking of," said Redwood. He sat back, sighed, threw his unconsumed cigarette into the fire and thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets. "That's precisely what I'm thinking of. This Herakleophorbia is going to be queer stuff to handle. The pace that chick must have grown at--!" "A little boy growing at that pace," said Mr. Bensington slowly, and stared at the chick as he spoke. "I _Say_!" said Bensington, "he'll be Big." "I shall give him diminishing doses," said Redwood. "Or at any rate Winkles will." "It's rather too much of an experiment." "Much." "Yet still, you know, I must confess--... Some baby will sooner or later have to try it." "Oh, we'll try it on _some_ baby--certainly." "Exactly so," said Bensington, and came and stood on the hearthrug and took off his spectacles to wipe them. "Until I saw these chicks, Redwood, I don't think I _began_ to realise--anything--of the possibilities of what we were making. It's only beginning to dawn upon me ... the possible consequences...." And even then, you know, Mr. Bensington was far from any conception of the mine that little train would fire. IV. That happened early in June. For some weeks Bensington was kept from revisiting the Experimental Farm by a severe imaginary catarrh, and one necessary flying visit was made by Redwood. He returned an even more anxious-looking parent than he had gone. Altogether there were seven weeks of steady, uninterrupted growth.... And then the Wasps began their career. It was late in July and nearly a week before the hens escaped from Hickleybrow that the first of the big wasps was killed. The report of it appeared in several papers, but I do not know whether the news reached Mr. Bensington, much less whether he connected it with the general laxity of method that prevailed in the Experimental Farm. There can be but little doubt now, that while Mr. Skinner was plying Mr. Bensington's chicks with Herakleophorbia IV, a number of wasps were just as industriously--perhaps more industriously--carrying quantities of the same paste to their early summer broods in the sand-banks beyond the adjacent pine-woods. And there can be no dispute whatever that these early broods found just as much growth and benefit in the substance as Mr. Bensington's hens. It is in the nature of the wasp to attain to effective maturity before the domestic fowl--and in fact of all the creatures that were--through the generous carelessness of the Skinners--partaking of the benefits Mr. Bensington heaped upon his hens, the wasps were the first to make any sort of figure in the world. It was a keeper named Godfrey, on the estate of Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Hick, near Maidstone, who encountered and had the luck to kill the first of these monsters of whom history has any record. He was walking knee high in bracken across an open space in the beechwoods that diversify Lieutenant-Colonel Hick's park, and he was carrying his gun--very fortunately for him a double-barrelled gun--over his shoulder, when he first caught sight of the thing. It was, he says, coming down against the light, so that he could not see it very distinctly, and as it came it made a drone "like a motor car." He admits he was frightened. It was evidently as big or bigger than a barn owl, and, to his practised eye, its flight and particularly the misty whirl of its wings must have seemed weirdly unbirdlike. The instinct of self-defence, I fancy, mingled with long habit, when, as he says, he "let fly, right away." The queerness of the experience probably affected his aim; at any rate most of his shot missed, and the thing merely dropped for a moment with an angry "Wuzzzz" that revealed the wasp at once, and then rose again, with all its stripes shining against the light. He says it turned on him. At any rate, he fired his second barrel at less than twenty yards and threw down his gun, ran a pace or so, and ducked to avoid it. It flew, he is convinced, within a yard of him, struck the ground, rose again, came down again perhaps thirty yards away, and rolled over with its body wriggling and its sting stabbing out and back in its last agony. He emptied both barrels into it again before he ventured to go near. When he came to measure the thing, he found it was twenty-seven and a half inches across its open wings, and its sting was three inches long. The abdomen was blown clean off from its body, but he estimated the length of the creature from head to sting as eighteen inches--which is very nearly correct. Its compound eyes were the size of penny pieces. That is the first authenticated appearance of these giant wasps. The day after, a cyclist riding, feet up, down the hill between Sevenoaks and Tonbridge, very narrowly missed running over a second of these giants that was crawling across the roadway. His passage seemed to alarm it, and it rose with a noise like a sawmill. His bicycle jumped the footpath in the emotion of the moment, and when he could look back, the wasp was soaring away above the woods towards Westerham. After riding unsteadily for a little time, he put on his brake, dismounted--he was trembling so violently that he fell over his machine in doing so--and sat down by the roadside to recover. He had intended to ride to Ashford, but he did not get beyond Tonbridge that day.... After that, curiously enough, there is no record of any big wasps being seen for three days. I find on consulting the meteorological record of those days that they were overcast and chilly with local showers, which may perhaps account for this intermission. Then on the fourth day came blue sky and brilliant sunshine and such an outburst of wasps as the world had surely never seen before. How many big wasps came out that day it is impossible to guess. There are at least fifty accounts of their apparition. There was one victim, a grocer, who discovered one of these monsters in a sugar-cask and very rashly attacked it with a spade as it rose. He struck it to the ground for a moment, and it stung him through the boot as he struck at it again and cut its body in half. He was first dead of the two.... The most dramatic of the fifty appearances was certainly that of the wasp that visited the British Museum about midday, dropping out of the blue serene upon one of the innumerable pigeons that feed in the courtyard of that building, and flying up to the cornice to devour its victim at leisure. After that it crawled for a time over the museum roof, entered the dome of the reading-room by a skylight, buzzed about inside it for some little time--there was a stampede among the readers--and at last found another window and vanished again with a sudden silence from human observation. Most of the other reports were of mere passings or descents. A picnic party was dispersed at Aldington Knoll and all its sweets and jam consumed, and a puppy was killed and torn to pieces near Whitstable under the very eyes of its mistress.... The streets that evening resounded with the cry, the newspaper placards gave themselves up exclusively in the biggest of letters to the "Gigantic Wasps in Kent." Agitated editors and assistant editors ran up and down tortuous staircases bawling things about "wasps." And Professor Redwood, emerging from his college in Bond Street at five, flushed from a heated discussion with his committee about the price of bull calves, bought an evening paper, opened it, changed colour, forgot about bull calves and committee forthwith, and took a hansom headlong for Bensington's flat. V. The flat was occupied, it seemed to him--to the exclusion of all other sensible objects--by Mr. Skinner and his voice, if indeed you can call either him or it a sensible object! The voice was up very high slopping about among the notes of anguish. "Itth impothible for uth to thtop, Thir. We've thtopped on hoping thingth would get better and they've only got worth, Thir. It ithn't on'y the waptheth, Thir--thereth big earwigth, Thir--big ath that, Thir." (He indicated all his hand and about three inches of fat dirty wrist.) "They pretty near give Mithith Thkinner fitth, Thir. And the thtinging nettleth by the runth, Thir, _they're_ growing, Thir, and the canary creeper, Thir, what we thowed near the think, Thir--it put itth tendril through the window in the night, Thir, and very nearly caught Mithith Thkinner by the legth, Thir. Itth that food of yourth, Thir. Wherever we thplathed it about, Thir, a bit, it'th thet everything growing ranker, Thir, than I ever thought anything could grow. Itth impothible to thtop a month, Thir. Itth more than our liveth are worth, Thir. Even if the waptheth don't thting uth, we thall be thuffocated by the creeper, Thir. You can't imagine, Thir--unleth you come down to thee, Thir--" He turned his superior eye to the cornice above Redwood's head. "'Ow do we know the ratth 'aven't got it, Thir! That 'th what I think of motht, Thir. I 'aven't theen any big ratth, Thir, but 'ow do I know, Thir. We been frightened for dayth becauth of the earwigth we've theen--like lobthters they wath--two of 'em, Thir--and the frightful way the canary creeper wath growing, and directly I heard the waptheth--directly I 'eard 'em, Thir, I underthood. I didn't wait for nothing exthept to thow on a button I'd lortht, and then I came on up. Even now, Thir, I'm arf wild with angthiety, Thir. 'Ow do _I_ know watth happenin' to Mithith Thkinner, Thir! Thereth the creeper growing all over the plathe like a thnake, Thir--thwelp me but you 'ave to watch it, Thir, and jump out of itth way!--and the earwigth gettin' bigger and bigger, and the waptheth--. She 'athen't even got a Blue Bag, Thir--if anything thould happen, Thir!" "But the hens," said Mr. Bensington; "how are the hens?" "We fed 'em up to yethterday, thwelp me," said Mr. Skinner, "But thith morning we didn't _dare_, Thir. The noithe of the waptheth wath--thomething awful, Thir. They wath coming ont--dothenth. Ath big ath 'enth. I thayth, to 'er, I thayth you juth thow me on a button or two, I thayth, for I can't go to London like thith, I thayth, and I'll go up to Mithter Benthington, I thayth, and ekthplain thingth to 'im. And you thtop in thith room till I come back to you, I thayth, and keep the windowth thhut jutht ath tight ath ever you can, I thayth." "If you hadn't been so confoundedly untidy--" began Redwood. "Oh! don't thay _that_, Thir," said Skinner. "Not now, Thir. Not with me tho diththrethed, Thir, about Mithith Thkinner, Thir! Oh, _don't,_ Thir! I 'aven't the 'eart to argue with you. Thwelp me, Thir, I 'aven't! Itth the ratth I keep a thinking of--'Ow do I know they 'aven't got at Mithith Thkinner while I been up 'ere?" "And you haven't got a solitary measurement of all these beautiful growth curves!" said Redwood. "I been too upthet, Thir," said Mr. Skinner. "If you knew what we been through--me and the mithith! All thith latht month. We 'aven't known what to make of it, Thir. What with the henth gettin' tho rank, and the earwigth, and the canary creeper. I dunno if I told you, Thir--the canary creeper ..." "You've told us all that," said Redwood. "The thing is, Bensington, what are we to do?" "What are _we_ to do?" said Mr. Skinner. "You'll have to go back to Mrs. Skinner," said Redwood. "You can't leave her there alone all night." "Not alone, Thir, I don't. Not if there wath a dothen Mithith Thkinnerth. Itth Mithter Benthington--" "Nonsense," said Redwood. "The wasps will be all right at night. And the earwigs will get out of your way--" "But about the ratth?" "There aren't any rats," said Redwood. VI. Mr. Skinner might have foregone his chief anxiety. Mrs. Skinner did not stop out her day. About eleven the canary creeper, which had been quietly active all the morning, began to clamber over the window and darken it very greatly, and the darker it got the more and more clearly Mrs. Skinner perceived that her position would speedily become untenable. And also that she had lived many ages since Skinner went. She peered out of the darkling window, through the stirring tendrils, for some time, and then went very cautiously and opened the bedroom door and listened.... Everything seemed quiet, and so, tucking her skirts high about her, Mrs. Skinner made a bolt for the bedroom, and having first looked under the bed and locked herself in, proceeded with the methodical rapidity of an experienced woman to pack for departure. The bed had not been made, and the room was littered with pieces of the creeper that Skinner had hacked off in order to close the window overnight, but these disorders she did not heed. She packed in a decent sheet. She packed all her own wardrobe and a velveteen jacket that Skinner wore in his finer moments, and she packed a jar of pickles that had not been opened, and so far she was justified in her packing. But she also packed two of the hermetically closed tins containing Herakleophorbia IV. that Mr. Bensington had brought on his last visit. (She was honest, good woman--but she was a grandmother, and her heart had burned within her to see such good growth lavished on a lot of dratted chicks.) And having packed all these things, she put on her bonnet, took off her apron, tied a new boot-lace round her umbrella, and after listening for a long time at door and window, opened the door and sallied out into a perilous world. The umbrella was under her arm and she clutched the bundle with two gnarled and resolute hands. It was her best Sunday bonnet, and the two poppies that reared their heads amidst its splendours of band and bead seemed instinct with the same tremulous courage that possessed her. The features about the roots of her nose wrinkled with determination. She had had enough of it! All alone there! Skinner might come back there if he liked. She went out by the front door, going that way not because she wanted to go to Hickleybrow (her goal was Cheasing Eyebright, where her married daughter resided), but because the back door was impassable on account of the canary creeper that had been growing so furiously ever since she upset the can of food near its roots. She listened for a space and closed the front door very carefully behind her. At the corner of the house she paused and reconnoitred.... An extensive sandy scar upon the hillside beyond the pine-woods marked the nest of the giant Wasps, and this she studied very earnestly. The coming and going of the morning was over, not a wasp chanced to be in sight then, and except for a sound scarcely more perceptible than a steam wood-saw at work amidst the pines would have been, everything was still. As for earwigs, she could see not one. Down among the cabbage indeed something was stirring, but it might just as probably be a cat stalking birds. She watched this for a time. She went a few paces past the corner, came in sight of the run containing the giant chicks and stopped again. "Ah!" she said, and shook her head slowly at the sight of them. They were at that time about the height of emus, but of course much thicker in the body--a larger thing altogether. They were all hens and five all told, now that the two cockerels had killed each other. She hesitated at their drooping attitudes. "Poor dears!" she said, and put down her bundle; "they've got no water. And they've 'ad no food these twenty-four hours! And such appetites, too, as they 'ave!" She put a lean finger to her lips and communed with herself. Then this dirty old woman did what seems to me a quite heroic deed of mercy. She left her bundle and umbrella in the middle of the brick path and went to the well and drew no fewer than three pailfuls of water for the chickens' empty trough, and then while they were all crowding about that, she undid the door of the run very softly. After which she became extremely active, resumed her package, got over the hedge at the bottom of the garden, crossed the rank meadows (in order to avoid the wasps' nest) and toiled up the winding path towards Cheasing Eyebright. She panted up the hill, and as she went she paused ever and again, to rest her bundle and get her breath and stare back at the little cottage beside the pine-wood below. And when at last, when she was near the crest of the hill, she saw afar off three several wasps dropping heavily westward, it helped her greatly on her way. She soon got out of the open and in the high banked lane beyond (which seemed a safer place to her), and so up by Hickleybrow Coombe to the downs. There at the foot of the downs where a big tree gave an air of shelter she rested for a space on a stile. Then on again very resolutely.... You figure her, I hope, with her white bundle, a sort of erect black ant, hurrying along the little white path-thread athwart the downland slopes under the hot sun of the summer afternoon. On she struggled after her resolute indefatigable nose, and the poppies in her bonnet quivered perpetually and her spring-side boots grew whiter and whiter with the downland dust. Flip-flap, flip-flap went her footfalls through the still heat of the day, and persistently, incurably, her umbrella sought to slip from under the elbow that retained it. The mouth wrinkle under her nose was pursed to an extreme resolution, and ever and again she told her umbrella to come up or gave her tightly clutched bundle a vindictive jerk. And at times her lips mumbled with fragments of some foreseen argument between herself and Skinner. And far away, miles and miles away, a steeple and a hanger grew insensibly out of the vague blue to mark more and more distinctly the quiet corner where Cheasing Eyebright sheltered from the tumult of the world, recking little or nothing of the Herakleophorbia concealed in that white bundle that struggled so persistently towards its orderly retirement. VII. So far as I can gather, the pullets came into Hickleybrow about three o'clock in the afternoon. Their coming must have been a brisk affair, though nobody was out in the street to see it. The violent bellowing of little Skelmersdale seems to have been the first announcement of anything out of the way. Miss Durgan of the Post Office was at the window as usual, and saw the hen that had caught the unhappy child, in violent flight up the street with its victim, closely pursued by two others. You know that swinging stride of the emancipated athletic latter-day pullet! You know the keen insistence of the hungry hen! There was Plymouth Rock in these birds, I am told, and even without Herakleophorbia that is a gaunt and striding strain. Probably Miss Durgan was not altogether taken by surprise. In spite of Mr. Bensington's insistence upon secrecy, rumours of the great chicken Mr. Skinner was producing had been about the village for some weeks. "Lor!" she cried, "it's what I expected." She seems to have behaved with great presence of mind. She snatched up the sealed bag of letters that was waiting to go on to Urshot, and rushed out of the door at once. Almost simultaneously Mr. Skelmersdale himself appeared down the village, gripping a watering-pot by the spout, and very white in the face. And, of course, in a moment or so every one in the village was rushing to the door or window. The spectacle of Miss Durgan all across the road, with the entire day's correspondence of Hickleybrow in her hand, gave pause to the pullet in possession of Master Skelmersdale. She halted through one instant's indecision and then turned for the open gates of Fulcher's yard. That instant was fatal. The second pullet ran in neatly, got possession of the child by a well-directed peck, and went over the wall into the vicarage garden. "Charawk, chawk, chawk, chawk, chawk, chawk!" shrieked the hindmost hen, hit smartly by the watering-can Mr. Skelmersdale had thrown, and fluttered wildly over Mrs. Glue's cottage and so into the doctor's field, while the rest of those Gargantuan birds pursued the pullet, in possession of the child across the vicarage lawn. "Good heavens!" cried the Curate, or (as some say) something much more manly, and ran, whirling his croquet mallet and shouting, to head off the chase. "Stop, you wretch!" cried the curate, as though giant hens were the commonest facts in life. And then, finding he could not possibly intercept her, he hurled his mallet with all his might and main, and out it shot in a gracious curve within a foot or so of Master Skelmersdale's head and through the glass lantern of the conservatory. Smash! The new conservatory! The Vicar's wife's beautiful new conservatory! It frightened the hen. It might have frightened any one. She dropped her victim into a Portugal laurel (from which he was presently extracted, disordered but, save for his less delicate garments, uninjured), made a flapping leap for the roof of Fulcher's stables, put her foot through a weak place in the tiles, and descended, so to speak, out of the infinite into the contemplative quiet of Mr. Bumps the paralytic--who, it is now proved beyond all cavil, did, on this one occasion in his life, get down the entire length of his garden and indoors without any assistance whatever, bolt the door after him, and immediately relapse again into Christian resignation and helpless dependence upon his wife.... The rest of the pullets were headed off by the other croquet players, and went through the vicar's kitchen garden into the doctor's field, to which rendezvous the fifth also came at last, clucking disconsolately after an unsuccessful attempt to walk on the cucumber frames in Mr. Witherspoon's place. They seem to have stood about in a hen-like manner for a time, and scratched a little and chirrawked meditatively, and then one pecked at and pecked over a hive of the doctor's bees, and after that they set off in a gawky, jerky, feathery, fitful sort of way across the fields towards Urshot, and Hickleybrow Street saw them no more. Near Urshot they really came upon commensurate food in a field of swedes; and pecked for a space with gusto, until their fame overtook them. The chief immediate reaction of this astonishing irruption of gigantic poultry upon the human mind was to arouse an extraordinary passion to whoop and run and throw things, and in quite a little time almost all the available manhood of Hickleybrows and several ladies, were out with a remarkable assortment of flappish and whangable articles in hand--to commence the scooting of the giant hens. They drove them into Urshot, where there was a Rural Fete, and Urshot took them as the crowning glory of a happy day. They began to be shot at near Findon Beeches, but at first only with a rook rifle. Of course birds of that size could absorb an unlimited quantity of small shot without inconvenience. They scattered somewhere near Sevenoaks, and near Tonbridge one of them fled clucking for a time in excessive agitation, somewhat ahead of and parallel with the afternoon boat express--to the great astonishment of every one therein. And about half-past five two of them were caught very cleverly by a circus proprietor at Tunbridge Wells, who lured them into a cage, rendered vacant through the death of a widowed dromedary, by scattering cakes and bread.... VIII. When the unfortunate Skinner got out of the South-Eastern train at Urshot that evening it was already nearly dusk. The train was late, but not inordinately late--and Mr. Skinner remarked as much to the station-master. Perhaps he saw a certain pregnancy in the station-master's eye. After the briefest hesitation and with a confidential movement of his hand to the side of his mouth he asked if "anything" had happened that day. "How d'yer _mean_?" said the station-master, a man with a hard, emphatic voice. "Thethe 'ere waptheth and thingth." "We 'aven't 'ad much time to think of _waptheth_," said the station-master agreeably. "We've been too busy with your brasted 'ens," and he broke the news of the pullets to Mr. Skinner as one might break the window of an adverse politician. "You ain't 'eard anything of Mithith Thkinner?" asked Skinner, amidst that missile shower of pithy information and comment. "No fear!" said the station-master--as though even he drew the line somewhere in the matter of knowledge. "I mutht make inquireth bout thith," said Mr. Skinner, edging out of reach of the station-master's concluding generalisations about the responsibility attaching to the excessive nurture of hens.... Going through Urshot Mr. Skinner was hailed by a lime-burner from the pits over by Hankey and asked if he was looking for his hens. "You ain't 'eard anything of Mithith Thkinner?" he asked. The lime-burner--his exact phrases need not concern us--expressed his superior interest in hens.... It was already dark--as dark at least as a clear night in the English June can be--when Skinner--or his head at any rate--came into the bar of the Jolly Drovers and said: "Ello! You 'aven't 'eard anything of thith 'ere thtory bout my 'enth, 'ave you?" "Oh, _'aven't_ we!" said Mr. Fulcher. "Why, part of the story's been and bust into my stable roof and one chapter smashed a 'ole in Missis Vicar's green 'ouse--I beg 'er pardon--Conservarratory." Skinner came in. "I'd like thomething a little comforting," he said, "'ot gin and water'th about my figure," and everybody began to tell him things about the pullets. "_Grathuth_ me!" said Skinner. "You 'aven't 'eard anything about Mithith Thkinner, 'ave you?" he asked in a pause. "That we 'aven't!" said Mr. Witherspoon. "We 'aven't thought of 'er. We ain't thought nothing of either of you." "Ain't you been 'ome to-day?" asked Fulcher over a tankard. "If one of those brasted birds 'ave pecked 'er," began Mr. Witherspoon and left the full horror to their unaided imaginations.... It appeared to the meeting at the time that it would be an interesting end to an eventful day to go on with Skinner and see if anything _had_ happened to Mrs. Skinner. One never knows what luck one may have when accidents are at large. But Skinner, standing at the bar and drinking his hot gin and water, with one eye roving over the things at the back of the bar and the other fixed on the Absolute, missed the psychological moment. "I thuppothe there 'athen't been any trouble with any of thethe big waptheth to-day anywhere?" he asked, with an elaborate detachment of manner. "Been too busy with your 'ens," said Fulcher. "I thuppothe they've all gone in now anyhow," said Skinner. "What--the 'ens?" "I wath thinking of the waptheth more particularly," said Skinner. And then, with, an air of circumspection that would have awakened suspicion in a week-old baby, and laying the accent heavily on most of the words he chose, he asked, "I _thuppothe nobody_ 'athn't '_eard_ of any other _big_ thingth, about, 'ave they? Big _dogth_ or _catth_ or anything of _that_ thort? Theemth to me if thereth big henth and big waptheth comin' on--" He laughed with a fine pretence of talking idly. But a brooding expression came upon the faces of the Hickleybrow men. Fulcher was the first to give their condensing thought the concrete shape of words. "A cat to match them 'ens--" said Fulcher. "Ay!" said Witherspoon, "a cat to match they 'ens." "'Twould be a tiger," said Fulcher. "More'n a tiger," said Witherspoon.... When at last Skinner followed the lonely footpath over the swelling field that separated Hickleybrow from the sombre pine-shaded hollow in whose black shadows the gigantic canary-creeper grappled silently with the Experimental Farm, he followed it alone. He was distinctly seen to rise against the sky-line, against the warm clear immensity of the northern sky--for so far public interest followed him--and to descend again into the night, into an obscurity from which it would seem he will nevermore emerge. He passed--into a mystery. No one knows to this day what happened to him after he crossed the brow. When later on the two Fulchers and Witherspoon, moved by their own imaginations, came up the hill and stared after him, the flight had swallowed him up altogether. The three men stood close. There was not a sound out of the wooded blackness that hid the Farm from their eyes. "It's all right," said young Fulcher, ending a silence. "Don't see any lights," said Witherspoon. "You wouldn't from here." "It's misty," said the elder Fulcher. They meditated for a space. "'E'd 'ave come back if anything was wrong," said young Fulcher, and this seemed so obvious and conclusive that presently old Fulcher said, "Well," and the three went home to bed--thoughtfully I will admit.... A shepherd out by Huckster's Farm heard a squealing in the night that he thought was foxes, and in the morning one of his lambs had been killed, dragged halfway towards Hickleybrow and partially devoured.... The inexplicable part of it all is the absence of any indisputable remains of Skinner! Many weeks after, amidst the charred ruins of the Experimental Farm, there was found something which may or may not have been a human shoulder-blade and in another part of the ruins a long bone greatly gnawed and equally doubtful. Near the stile going up towards Eyebright there was found a glass eye, and many people discovered thereupon that Skinner owed much of his personal charm to such a possession. It stared out upon the world with that same inevitable effect of detachment, that same severe melancholy that had been the redemption of his else worldly countenance. And about the ruins industrious research discovered the metal rings and charred coverings of two linen buttons, three shanked buttons entire, and one of that metallic sort which is used in the less conspicuous sutures of the human Oeconomy. These remains have been accepted by persons in authority as conclusive of a destroyed and scattered Skinner, but for my own entire conviction, and in view of his distinctive idiosyncrasy, I must confess I should prefer fewer buttons and more bones. The glass eye of course has an air of extreme conviction, but if it really _is_ Skinner's--and even Mrs. Skinner did not certainly know if that immobile eye of his was glass--something has changed it from a liquid brown to a serene and confident blue. That shoulder-blade is an extremely doubtful document, and I would like to put it side by side with the gnawed scapulae of a few of the commoner domestic animals before I admitted its humanity. And where were Skinner's boots, for example? Perverted and strange as a rat's appetite must be, is it conceivable that the same creatures that could leave a lamb only half eaten, would finish up Skinner--hair, bones, teeth, and boots? I have closely questioned as many as I could of those who knew Skinner at all intimately, and they one and all agree that they cannot imagine _anything_ eating him. He was the sort of man, as a retired seafaring person living in one of Mr. W.W. Jacobs' cottages at Dunton Green told me, with a guarded significance of manner not uncommon in those parts, who would "get washed up anyhow," and as regards _the_ devouring element was "fit to put a fire out." He considered that Skinner would be as safe on a raft as anywhere. The retired seafaring man added that he wished to say nothing whatever against Skinner; facts were facts. And rather than have his clothes made by Skinner, the retired seafaring man remarked he would take his chance of being locked up. These observations certainly do not present Skinner in the light of an appetising object. To be perfectly frank with the reader, I do not believe he ever went back to the Experimental Farm. I believe he hovered through long hesitations about the fields of the Hickleybrow glebe, and finally, when that squealing began, took the line of least resistance out of his perplexities into the Incognito. And in the Incognito, whether of this or of some other world unknown to us, he obstinately and quite indisputably has remained to this day.... CHAPTER THE THIRD. THE GIANT RATS. I. It was two nights after the disappearance of Mr. Skinner that the Podbourne doctor was out late near Hankey, driving in his buggy. He had been up all night assisting another undistinguished citizen into this curious world of ours, and his task accomplished, he was driving homeward in a drowsy mood enough. It was about two o'clock in the morning, and the waning moon was rising. The summer night had gone cold, and there was a low-lying whitish mist that made things indistinct. He was quite alone--for his coachman was ill in bed--and there was nothing to be seen on either hand but a drifting mystery of hedge running athwart the yellow glare of his lamps, and nothing to hear but the clitter-clatter of his horses and the gride and hedge echo of his wheels. His horse was as trustworthy as himself, and one does not wonder that he dozed.... You know that intermittent drowsing as one sits, the drooping of the head, the nodding to the rhythm of the wheels then chin upon the breast, and at once the sudden start up again. _Pitter, litter, patter_. "What was that?" It seemed to the doctor he had heard a thin shrill squeal close at hand. For a moment he was quite awake. He said a word or two of undeserved rebuke to his horse, and looked about him. He tried to persuade himself that he had heard the distant squeal of a fox--or perhaps a young rabbit gripped by a ferret. _Swish, swish, swish, pitter, patter, swish_--... What was that? He felt he was getting fanciful. He shook his shoulders and told his horse to get on. He listened, and heard nothing. Or was it nothing? He had the queerest impression that something had just peeped over the hedge at him, a queer big head. With round ears! He peered hard, but he could see nothing. "Nonsense," said he. He sat up with an idea that he had dropped into a nightmare, gave his horse the slightest touch of the whip, spoke to it and peered again over the hedge. The glare of his lamp, however, together with the mist, rendered things indistinct, and he could distinguish nothing. It came into his head, he says, that there could be nothing there, because if there was his horse would have shied at it. Yet for all that his senses remained nervously awake. Then he heard quite distinctly a soft pattering of feet in pursuit along the road. He would not believe his ears about that. He could not look round, for the road had a sinuous curve just there. He whipped up his horse and glanced sideways again. And then he saw quite distinctly where a ray from his lamp leapt a low stretch of hedge, the curved back of--some big animal, he couldn't tell what, going along in quick convulsive leaps. He says he thought of the old tales of witchcraft--the thing was so utterly unlike any animal he knew, and he tightened his hold on the reins for fear of the fear of his horse. Educated man as he was, he admits he asked himself if this could be something that his horse could not see. Ahead, and drawing near in silhouette against the rising moon, was the outline of the little hamlet of Hankey, comforting, though it showed never a light, and he cracked his whip and spoke again, and then in a flash the rats were at him! He had passed a gate, and as he did so, the foremost rat came leaping over into the road. The thing sprang upon him out of vagueness into the utmost clearness, the sharp, eager, round-eared face, the long body exaggerated by its movement; and what particularly struck him, the pink, webbed forefeet of the beast. What must have made it more horrible to him at the time was, that he had no idea the thing was any created beast he knew. He did not recognise it as a rat, because of the size. His horse gave a bound as the thing dropped into the road beside it. The little lane woke into tumult at the report of the whip and the doctor's shout. The whole thing suddenly went fast. _Rattle-clatter, clash, clatter_. The doctor, one gathers, stood up, shouted to his horse, and slashed with all his strength. The rat winced and swerved most reassuringly at his blow--in the glare of his lamp he could see the fur furrow under the lash--and he slashed again and again, heedless and unaware of the second pursuer that gained upon his off side. He let the reins go, and glanced back to discover the third rat in pursuit behind.... His horse bounded forward. The buggy leapt high at a rut. For a frantic minute perhaps everything seemed to be going in leaps and bounds.... It was sheer good luck the horse came down in Hankey, and not either before or after the houses had been passed. No one knows how the horse came down, whether it stumbled or whether the rat on the off side really got home with one of those slashing down strokes of the teeth (given with the full weight of the body); and the doctor never discovered that he himself was bitten until he was inside the brickmaker's house, much less did he discover when the bite occurred, though bitten he was and badly--a long slash like the slash of a double tomahawk that had cut two parallel ribbons of flesh from his left shoulder. He was standing up in his buggy at one moment, and in the next he had leapt to the ground, with his ankle, though he did not know it, badly sprained, and he was cutting furiously at a third rat that was flying directly at him. He scarcely remembers the leap he must have made over the top of the wheel as the buggy came over, so obliteratingly hot and swift did his impressions rush upon him. I think myself the horse reared up with the rat biting again at its throat, and fell sideways, and carried the whole affair over; and that the doctor sprang, as it were, instinctively. As the buggy came down, the receiver of the lamp smashed, and suddenly poured a flare of blazing oil, a thud of white flame, into the struggle. That was the first thing the brickmaker saw. He had heard the clatter of the doctor's approach and--though the doctor's memory has nothing of this--wild shouting. He had got out of bed hastily, and as he did so came the terrific smash, and up shot the glare outside the rising blind. "It was brighter than day," he says. He stood, blind cord in hand, and stared out of the window at a nightmare transformation of the familiar road before him. The black figure of the doctor with its whirling whip danced out against the flame. The horse kicked indistinctly, half hidden by the blaze, with a rat at its throat. In the obscurity against the churchyard wall, the eyes of a second monster shone wickedly. Another--a mere dreadful blackness with red-lit eyes and flesh-coloured hands--clutched unsteadily on the wall coping to which it had leapt at the flash of the exploding lamp. You know the keen face of a rat, those two sharp teeth, those pitiless eyes. Seen magnified to near six times its linear dimensions, and still more magnified by darkness and amazement and the leaping fancies of a fitful blaze, it must have been an ill sight for the brickmaker--still more than half asleep. Then the doctor had grasped the opportunity, that momentary respite the flare afforded, and was out of the brickmaker's sight below battering the door with the butt of his whip.... The brickmaker would not let him in until he had got a light. There are those who have blamed the man for that, but until I know my own courage better, I hesitate to join their number. The doctor yelled and hammered.... The brickmaker says he was weeping with terror when at last the door was opened. "Bolt," said the doctor, "bolt"--he could not say "bolt the door." He tried to help, and was of no service. The brickmaker fastened the door, and the doctor had to sit on the chair beside the clock for a space before he could go upstairs.... "I don't know what they _are_!" he repeated several times. "I don't know what they _are_"--with a high note on the "are." The brickmaker would have got him whisky, but the doctor would not be left alone with nothing but a flickering light just then. It was long before the brickmaker could get him to go upstairs.... And when the fire was out the giant rats came back, took the dead horse, dragged it across the churchyard into the brickfield and ate at it until it was dawn, none even then daring to disturb them.... II. Redwood went round, to Bensington about eleven the next morning with the "second editions" of three evening papers in his hand. Bensington looked up from a despondent meditation over the forgotten pages of the most distracting novel the Brompton Road librarian had been able to find him. "Anything fresh?" he asked. "Two men stung near Chartham." "They ought to let us smoke out that nest. They really did. It's their own fault." "It's their own fault, certainly," said Redwood. "Have you heard anything--about buying the farm?" "The House Agent," said Redwood, "is a thing with a big mouth and made of dense wood. It pretends someone else is after the house--it always does, you know--and won't understand there's a hurry. 'This is a matter of life and death,' I said, 'don't you understand?' It drooped its eyes half shut and said, 'Then why don't you go the other two hundred pounds?' I'd rather live in a world of solid wasps than give in to the stonewalling stupidity of that offensive creature. I--" He paused, feeling that a sentence like that might very easily be spoiled by its context. "It's too much to hope," said Bensington, "that one of the wasps--" "The wasp has no more idea of public utility than a--than a House Agent," said Redwood. He talked for a little while about house agents and solicitors and people of that sort, in the unjust, unreasonable way that so many people do somehow get to talk of these business calculi ("Of all the cranky things in this cranky world, it is the most cranky to my mind of all, that while we expect honour, courage, efficiency, from a doctor or a soldier as a matter of course, a solicitor or a house agent is not only permitted but expected to display nothing but a sort of greedy, greasy, obstructive, over-reaching imbecility--" etc.)--and then, greatly relieved, he went to the window and stared out at the Sloane Street traffic. Bensington had put the most exciting novel conceivable on the little table that carried his electric standard. He joined the fingers of his opposed hands very carefully and regarded them. "Redwood," he said. "Do they say much about _Us_?" "Not so much as I should expect." "They don't denounce us at all?" "Not a bit. But, on the other hand, they don't back up what I point out must be done. I've written to the _Times_, you know, explaining the whole thing--" "We take the _Daily Chronicle_," said Bensington. "And the _Times_ has a long leader on the subject--a very high-class, well-written leader, with three pieces of _Times_ Latin--_status quo_ is one--and it reads like the voice of Somebody Impersonal of the Greatest Importance suffering from Influenza Headache and talking through sheets and sheets of felt without getting any relief from it whatever. Reading between the lines, you know, it's pretty clear that the _Times_ considers that it is useless to mince matters, and that something (indefinite of course) has to be done at once. Otherwise still more undesirable consequences--_Times_ English, you know, for more wasps and stings. Thoroughly statesmanlike article!" "And meanwhile this Bigness is spreading in all sorts of ugly ways." "Precisely." "I wonder if Skinner was right about those big rats--" "Oh no! That would be too much," said Redwood. He came and stood by Bensington's chair. "By-the-bye," he said, with a slightly lowered voice, "how does _she_--?" He indicated the closed door. "Cousin Jane? She simply knows nothing about it. Doesn't connect us with it and won't read the articles. 'Gigantic wasps!' she says, 'I haven't patience to read the papers.'" "That's very fortunate," said Redwood. "I suppose--Mrs. Redwood--?" "No," said Redwood, "just at present it happens--she's terribly worried about the child. You know, he keeps on." "Growing?" "Yes. Put on forty-one ounces in ten days. Weighs nearly four stone. And only six months old! Naturally rather alarming." "Healthy?" "Vigorous. His nurse is leaving because he kicks so forcibly. And everything, of course, shockingly outgrown. Everything, you know, has had to be made fresh, clothes and everything. Perambulator--light affair--broke one wheel, and the youngster had to be brought home on the milkman's hand-truck. Yes. Quite a crowd.... And we've put Georgina Phyllis back into his cot and put him into the bed of Georgina Phyllis. His mother--naturally alarmed. Proud at first and inclined to praise Winkles. Not now. Feels the thing _can't_ be wholesome. _You_ know." "I imagined you were going to put him on diminishing doses." "I tried it." "Didn't it work?" "Howls. In the ordinary way the cry of a child is loud and distressing; it is for the good of the species that this should be so--but since he has been on the Herakleophorbia treatment---" "Mm," said Bensington, regarding his fingers with more resignation than he had hitherto displayed. "Practically the thing _must_ come out. People will hear of this child, connect it up with our hens and things, and the whole thing will come round to my wife.... How she will take it I haven't the remotest idea." "It _is_ difficult," said Mr. Bensington, "to form any plan--certainly." He removed his glasses and wiped them carefully. "It is another instance," he generalised, "of the thing that is continually happening. We--if indeed I may presume to the adjective--_scientific_ men--we work of course always for a theoretical result--a purely theoretical result. But, incidentally, we do set forces in operation--_new_ forces. We mustn't control them--and nobody else _can_. Practically, Redwood, the thing is out of our hands. _We_ supply the material--" "And they," said Redwood, turning to the window, "get the experience." "So far as this trouble down in Kent goes I am not disposed to worry further." "Unless they worry us." "Exactly. And if they like to muddle about with solicitors and pettifoggers and legal obstructions and weighty considerations of the tomfool order, until they have got a number of new gigantic species of vermin well established--Things always _have_ been in a muddle, Redwood." Redwood traced a twisted, tangled line in the air. "And our real interest lies at present with your boy." Redwood turned about and came and stared at his collaborator. "What do you think of him, Bensington? You can look at this business with a greater detachment than I can. What am I to do about him?" "Go on feeding him." "On Herakleophorbia?" "On Herakleophorbia." "And then he'll grow." "He'll grow, as far as I can calculate from the hens and the wasps, to the height of about five-and-thirty feet--with everything in proportion---" "And then what'll he do?" "That," said Mr. Bensington, "is just what makes the whole thing so interesting." "Confound it, man! Think of his clothes." "And when he's grown up," said Redwood, "he'll only be one solitary Gulliver in a pigmy world." Mr. Bensington's eye over his gold rim was pregnant. "Why solitary?" he said, and repeated still more darkly, "_Why_ solitary?" "But you don't propose---?" "I said," said Mr. Bensington, with the self-complacency of a man who has produced a good significant saying, "Why solitary?" "Meaning that one might bring up other children---?" "Meaning nothing beyond my inquiry." Redwood began to walk about the room. "Of course," he said, "one might--But still! What are we coming to?" Bensington evidently enjoyed his line of high intellectual detachment. "The thing that interests me most, Redwood, of all this, is to think that his brain at the top of him will also, so far as my reasoning goes, be five-and-thirty feet or so above our level.... What's the matter?" Redwood stood at the window and stared at a news placard on a paper-cart that rattled up the street. "What's the matter?" repeated Bensington, rising. Redwood exclaimed violently. "What is it?" said Bensington. "Get a paper," said Redwood, moving doorward. "Why?" "Get a paper. Something--I didn't quite catch--Gigantic rats--!" "Rats?" "Yes, rats. Skinner was right after all!" "What do you mean?" "How the Deuce am _I_ to know till I see a paper? Great Rats! Good Lord! I wonder if he's eaten!" He glanced for his hat, and decided to go hatless. As he rushed downstairs two steps at a time, he could hear along the street the mighty howlings, to and fro, of the Hooligan paper-sellers making a Boom. "'Orrible affair in Kent--'orrible affair in Kent. Doctor ... eaten by rats. 'Orrible affair--'orrible affair--rats--eaten by Stchewpendous rats. Full perticulars--'orrible affair." III. Cossar, the well-known civil engineer, found them in the great doorway of the flat mansions, Redwood holding out the damp pink paper, and Bensington on tiptoe reading over his arm. Cossar was a large-bodied man with gaunt inelegant limbs casually placed at convenient corners of his body, and a face like a carving abandoned at an early stage as altogether too unpromising for completion. His nose had been left square, and his lower jaw projected beyond his upper. He breathed audibly. Few people considered him handsome. His hair was entirely tangential, and his voice, which he used sparingly, was pitched high, and had commonly a quality of bitter protest. He wore a grey cloth jacket suit and a silk hat on all occasions. He plumbed an abysmal trouser pocket with a vast red hand, paid his cabman, and came panting resolutely up the steps, a copy of the pink paper clutched about the middle, like Jove's thunderbolt, in his hand. "Skinner?" Bensington was saying, regardless of his approach. "Nothing about him," said Redwood. "Bound to be eaten. Both of them. It's too terrible.... Hullo! Cossar!" "This your stuff?" asked Cossar, waving the paper. "Well, why don't you stop it?" he demanded. "_Can't_ be jiggered!" said Cossar. "_Buy the place_?" he cried. "What nonsense! Burn it! I knew you chaps would fumble this. _What are you to do_? Why--what I tell you. "_You_? Do? Why! Go up the street to the gunsmith's, of course. _Why_? For guns. Yes--there's only one shop. Get eight guns! Rifles. Not elephant guns--no! Too big. Not army rifles--too small. Say it's to kill--kill a bull. Say it's to shoot buffalo! See? Eh? Rats? No! How the deuce are they to understand that? Because we _want_ eight. Get a lot of ammunition. Don't get guns without ammunition--No! Take the lot in a cab to--where's the place? _Urshot_? Charing Cross, then. There's a train---Well, the first train that starts after two. Think you can do it? All right. License? Get eight at a post-office, of course. Gun licenses, you know. Not game. Why? It's rats, man. "You--Bensington. Got a telephone? Yes. I'll ring up five of my chaps from Ealing. _Why_ five? Because it's the right number! "Where you going, Redwood? Get a hat! _Nonsense_. Have mine. You want guns, man--not hats. Got money? Enough? All right. So long. "Where's the telephone, Bensington?" Bensington wheeled about obediently and led the way. Cossar used and replaced the instrument. "Then there's the wasps," he said. "Sulphur and nitre'll do that. Obviously. Plaster of Paris. You're a chemist. Where can I get sulphur by the ton in portable sacks? _What_ for? Why, Lord _bless_ my heart and soul!--to smoke out the nest, of course! I suppose it must be sulphur, eh? You're a chemist. Sulphur best, eh?" "Yes, I should _think_ sulphur." "Nothing better?" "Right. That's your job. That's all right. Get as much sulphur as you can--saltpetre to make it burn. Sent? Charing Cross. Right away. See they do it. Follow it up. Anything?" He thought a moment. "Plaster of Paris--any sort of plaster--bung up nest--holes--you know. That _I'd_ better get." "How much?" "How much what?" "Sulphur." "Ton. See?" Bensington tightened his glasses with a hand tremulous with determination. "Right," he said, very curtly. "Money in your pocket?" asked Cossar. "Hang cheques. They may not know you. Pay cash. Obviously. Where's your bank? All right. Stop on the way and get forty pounds--notes and gold." Another meditation. "If we leave this job for public officials we shall have all Kent in tatters," said Cossar. "Now is there--anything? _No! HI_!" He stretched a vast hand towards a cab that became convulsively eager to serve him ("Cab, Sir?" said the cabman. "Obviously," said Cossar); and Bensington, still hatless, paddled down the steps and prepared to mount. "I _think_," he said, with his hand on the cab apron, and a sudden glance up at the windows of his flat, "I _ought_ to tell my cousin Jane--" "More time to tell her when you come back," said Cossar, thrusting him in with a vast hand expanded over his back.... "Clever chaps," remarked Cossar, "but no initiative whatever. Cousin Jane indeed! I know her. Rot, these Cousin Janes! Country infested with 'em. I suppose I shall have to spend the whole blessed night, seeing they do what they know perfectly well they ought to do all along. I wonder if it's Research makes 'em like that or Cousin Jane or what?" He dismissed this obscure problem, meditated for a space upon his watch, and decided there would be just time to drop into a restaurant and get some lunch before he hunted up the plaster of Paris and took it to Charing Cross. The train started at five minutes past three, and he arrived at Charing Cross at a quarter to three, to find Bensington in heated argument between two policemen and his van-driver outside, and Redwood in the luggage office involved in some technical obscurity about his ammunition. Everybody was pretending not to know anything or to have any authority, in the way dear to South-Eastern officials when they catch you in a hurry. "Pity they can't shoot all these officials and get a new lot," remarked Cossar with a sigh. But the time was too limited for anything fundamental, and so he swept through these minor controversies, disinterred what may or may not have been the station-master from some obscure hiding-place, walked about the premises holding him and giving orders in his name, and was out of the station with everybody and everything aboard before that official was fully awake to the breaches in the most sacred routines and regulations that were being committed. "Who _was_ he?" said the high official, caressing the arm Cossar had gripped, and smiling with knit brows. "'E was a gentleman, Sir," said a porter, "anyhow. 'Im and all 'is party travelled first class." "Well, we got him and his stuff off pretty sharp--whoever he was," said the high official, rubbing his arm with something approaching satisfaction. And as he walked slowly back, blinking in the unaccustomed daylight, towards that dignified retirement in which the higher officials at Charing Cross shelter from the importunity of the vulgar, he smiled still at his unaccustomed energy. It was a very gratifying revelation of his own possibilities, in spite of the stiffness of his arm. He wished some of those confounded arm-chair critics of railway management could have seen it. IV. By five o'clock that evening this amazing Cossar, with no appearance of hurry at all, had got all the stuff for his fight with insurgent Bigness out of Urshot and on the road to Hickleybrow. Two barrels of paraffin and a load of dry brushwood he had bought in Urshot; plentiful sacks of sulphur, eight big game guns and ammunition, three light breechloaders, with small-shot ammunition for the wasps, a hatchet, two billhooks, a pick and three spades, two coils of rope, some bottled beer, soda and whisky, one gross of packets of rat poison, and cold provisions for three days, had come down from London. All these things he had sent on in a coal trolley and a hay waggon in the most business-like way, except the guns and ammunition, which were stuck under the seat of the Red Lion waggonette appointed to bring on Redwood and the five picked men who had come up from Ealing at Cossar's summons. Cossar conducted all these transactions with an invincible air of commonplace, in spite of the fact that Urshot was in a panic about the rats, and all the drivers had to be specially paid. All the shops were shut in the place, and scarcely a soul abroad in the street, and when he banged at a door a window was apt to open. He seemed to consider that the conduct of business from open windows was an entirely legitimate and obvious method. Finally he and Bensington got the Red Lion dog-cart and set off with the waggonette, to overtake the baggage. They did this a little beyond the cross-roads, and so reached Hickleybrow first. Bensington, with a gun between his knees, sitting beside Cossar in the dog-cart, developed a long germinated amazement. All they were doing was, no doubt, as Cossar insisted, quite the obvious thing to do, only--! In England one so rarely does the obvious thing. He glanced from his neighbour's feet to the boldly sketched hands upon the reins. Cossar had apparently never driven before, and he was keeping the line of least resistance down the middle of the road by some no doubt quite obvious but certainly unusual light of his own. "Why don't we all do the obvious?" thought Bensington. "How the world would travel if one did! I wonder for instance why I don't do such a lot of things I know would be all right to do--things I _want_ to do. Is everybody like that, or is it peculiar to me!" He plunged into obscure speculation about the Will. He thought of the complex organised futilities of the daily life, and in contrast with them the plain and manifest things to do, the sweet and splendid things to do, that some incredible influences will never permit us to do. Cousin Jane? Cousin Jane he perceived was important in the question, in some subtle and difficult way. Why should we after all eat, drink, and sleep, remain unmarried, go here, abstain from going there, all out of deference to Cousin Jane? She became symbolical without ceasing to be incomprehensible! A stile and a path across the fields caught his eye and reminded him of that other bright day, so recent in time, so remote in its emotions, when he had walked from Urshot to the Experimental Farm to see the giant chicks. Fate plays with us. "Tcheck, tcheck," said Cossar. "Get up." It was a hot midday afternoon, not a breath of wind, and the dust was thick in the roads. Few people were about, but the deer beyond the park palings browsed in profound tranquillity. They saw a couple of big wasps stripping a gooseberry bush just outside Hickleybrow, and another was crawling up and down the front of the little grocer's shop in the village street trying to find an entry. The grocer was dimly visible within, with an ancient fowling-piece in hand, watching its endeavours. The driver of the waggonette pulled up outside the Jolly Drovers and informed Redwood that his part of the bargain was done. In this contention he was presently joined by the drivers of the waggon and the trolley. Not only did they maintain this, but they refused to let the horses be taken further. "Them big rats is nuts on 'orses," the trolley driver kept on repeating. Cossar surveyed the controversy for a moment. "Get the things out of that waggonette," he said, and one of his men, a tall, fair, dirty engineer, obeyed. "Gimme that shot gun," said Cossar. He placed himself between the drivers. "We don't want _you_ to drive," he said. "You can say what you like," he conceded, "but we want these horses." They began to argue, but he continued speaking. "If you try and assault us I shall, in self-defence, let fly at your legs. The horses are going on." He treated the incident as closed. "Get up on that waggon, Flack," he said to a thickset, wiry little man. "Boon, take the trolley." The two drivers blustered to Redwood. "You've done your duty to your employers," said Redwood. "You stop in this village until we come back. No one will blame you, seeing we've got guns. We've no wish to do anything unjust or violent, but this occasion is pressing. I'll pay if anything happens to the horses, never fear." "_That's_ all right," said Cossar, who rarely promised. They left the waggonette behind, and the men who were not driving went afoot. Over each shoulder sloped a gun. It was the oddest little expedition for an English country road, more like a Yankee party, trekking west in the good old Indian days. They went up the road, until at the crest by the stile they came into sight of the Experimental Farm. They found a little group of men there with a gun or so--the two Fulchers were among them--and one man, a stranger from Maidstone, stood out before the others and watched the place through an opera-glass. These men turned about and stared at Redwood's party. "Anything fresh?" said Cossar. "The waspses keeps a comin' and a goin'," said old Fulcher. "Can't see as they bring anything." "The canary creeper's got in among the pine trees now," said the man with the lorgnette. "It wasn't there this morning. You can see it grow while you watch it." He took out a handkerchief and wiped his object-glasses with careful deliberation. "I reckon you're going down there," ventured Skelmersdale. "Will you come?" said Cossar. Skelmersdale seemed to hesitate. "It's an all-night job." Skelmersdale decided that he wouldn't. "Rats about?" asked Cossar. "One was up in the pines this morning--rabbiting, we reckon." Cossar slouched on to overtake his party. Bensington, regarding the Experimental Farm under his hand, was able to gauge now the vigour of the Food. His first impression was that the house was smaller than he had thought--very much smaller; his second was to perceive that all the vegetation between the house and the pine-wood had become extremely large. The roof over the well peeped amidst tussocks of grass a good eight feet high, and the canary creeper wrapped about the chimney stack and gesticulated with stiff tendrils towards the heavens. Its flowers were vivid yellow splashes, distinctly visible as separate specks this mile away. A great green cable had writhed across the big wire enclosures of the giant hens' run, and flung twining leaf stems about two outstanding pines. Fully half as tall as these was the grove of nettles running round behind the cart-shed. The whole prospect, as they drew nearer, became more and more suggestive of a raid of pigmies upon a dolls' house that has been left in a neglected corner of some great garden. There was a busy coming and going from the wasps' nest, they saw. A swarm of black shapes interlaced in the air, above the rusty hill-front beyond the pine cluster, and ever and again one of these would dart up into the sky with incredible swiftness and soar off upon some distant quest. Their humming became audible at more than half a mile's distance from the Experimental Farm. Once a yellow-striped monster dropped towards them and hung for a space watching them with its great compound eyes, but at an ineffectual shot from Cossar it darted off again. Down in a corner of the field, away to the right, several were crawling about over some ragged bones that were probably the remains of the lamb the rats had brought from Huxter's Farm. The horses became very restless as they drew near these creatures. None of the party was an expert driver, and they had to put a man to lead each horse and encourage it with the voice. They could see nothing of the rats as they came up to the house, and everything seemed perfectly still except for the rising and falling "whoozzzzzzZZZ, whoooo-zoo-oo" of the wasps' nest. They led the horses into the yard, and one of Cossar's men, seeing the door open--the whole of the middle portion of the door had been gnawed out--walked into the house. Nobody missed him for the time, the rest being occupied with the barrels of paraffin, and the first intimation they had of his separation from them was the report of his gun and the whizz of his bullet. "Bang, bang," both barrels, and his first bullet it seems went through the cask of sulphur, smashed out a stave from the further side, and filled the air with yellow dust. Redwood had kept his gun in hand and let fly at something grey that leapt past him. He had a vision of the broad hind-quarters, the long scaly tail and long soles of the hind-feet of a rat, and fired his second barrel. He saw Bensington drop as the beast vanished round the corner. Then for a time everybody was busy with a gun. For three minutes lives were cheap at the Experimental Farm, and the banging of guns filled the air. Redwood, careless of Bensington in his excitement, rushed in pursuit, and was knocked headlong by a mass of brick fragments, mortar, plaster, and rotten lath splinters that came flying out at him as a bullet whacked through the wall. He found himself sitting on the ground with blood on his hands and lips, and a great stillness brooded over all about him. Then a flattish voice from within the house remarked: "Gee-whizz!" "Hullo!" said Redwood. "Hullo there!" answered the voice. And then: "Did you chaps get 'im?" A sense of the duties of friendship returned to Redwood. "Is Mr. Bensington hurt?" he said. The man inside heard imperfectly. "No one ain't to blame if I ain't," said the voice inside. It became clearer to Redwood that he must have shot Bensington. He forgot the cuts upon his face, arose and came back to find Bensington seated on the ground and rubbing his shoulder. Bensington looked over his glasses. "We peppered him, Redwood," he said, and then: "He tried to jump over me, and knocked me down. But I let him have it with both barrels, and my! how it has hurt my shoulder, to be sure." A man appeared in the doorway. "I got him once in the chest and once in the side," he said. "Where's the waggons?" said Cossar, appearing amidst a thicket of gigantic canary-creeper leaves. It became evident, to Redwood's amazement, first, that no one had been shot, and, secondly, that the trolley and waggon had shifted fifty yards, and were now standing with interlocked wheels amidst the tangled distortions of Skinner's kitchen garden. The horses had stopped their plunging. Half-way towards them, the burst barrel of sulphur lay in the path with a cloud of sulphur dust above it. He indicated this to Cossar and walked towards it. "Has any one seen that rat?" shouted Cossar, following. "I got him in between the ribs once, and once in the face as he turned on me." They were joined by two men, as they worried at the locked wheels. "I killed that rat," said one of the men. "Have they got him?" asked Cossar. "Jim Bates has found him, beyond the hedge. I got him jest as he came round the corner.... Whack behind the shoulder...." When things were a little ship-shape again Redwood went and stared at the huge misshapen corpse. The brute lay on its side, with its body slightly bent. Its rodent teeth overhanging its receding lower jaw gave its face a look of colossal feebleness, of weak avidity. It seemed not in the least ferocious or terrible. Its fore-paws reminded him of lank emaciated hands. Except for one neat round hole with a scorched rim on either side of its neck, the creature was absolutely intact. He meditated over this fact for some time. "There must have been two rats," he said at last, turning away. "Yes. And the one that everybody hit--got away." "I am certain that my own shot--" A canary-creeper leaf tendril, engaged in that mysterious search for a holdfast which constitutes a tendril's career, bent itself engagingly towards his neck and made him step aside hastily. "Whoo-z-z z-z-z-z-Z-Z-Z," from the distant wasps' nest, "whoo oo zoo-oo." V. This incident left the party alert but not unstrung. They got their stores into the house, which had evidently been ransacked by the rats after the flight of Mrs. Skinner, and four of the men took the two horses back to Hickleybrow. They dragged the dead rat through the hedge and into a position commanded by the windows of the house, and incidentally came upon a cluster of giant earwigs in the ditch. These creatures dispersed hastily, but Cossar reached out incalculable limbs and managed to kill several with his boots and gun-butt. Then two of the men hacked through several of the main stems of the canary creeper--huge cylinders they were, a couple of feet in diameter, that came out by the sink at the back; and while Cossar set the house in order for the night, Bensington, Redwood, and one of the assistant electricians went cautiously round by the fowl runs in search of the rat-holes. They skirted the giant nettles widely, for these huge weeds threatened them with poison-thorns a good inch long. Then round beyond the gnawed, dismantled stile they came abruptly on the huge cavernous throat of the most westerly of the giant rat-holes, an evil-smelling profundity, that drew them up into a line together. "I _hope_ they'll come out," said Redwood, with a glance at the pent-house of the well. "If they don't--" reflected Bensington. "They will," said Redwood. They meditated. "We shall have to rig up some sort of flare if we _do_ go in," said Redwood. They went up a little path of white sand through the pine-wood and halted presently within sight of the wasp-holes. The sun was setting now, and the wasps were coming home for good; their wings in the golden light made twirling haloes about them. The three men peered out from under the trees--they did not care to go right to the edge of the wood--and watched these tremendous insects drop and crawl for a little and enter and disappear. "They will be still in a couple of hours from now," said Redwood.... "This is like being a boy again." "We can't miss those holes," said Bensington, "even if the night is dark. By-the-bye--about the light--" "Full moon," said the electrician. "I looked it up." They went back and consulted with Cossar. He said that "obviously" they must get the sulphur, nitre, and plaster of Paris through the wood before twilight, and for that they broke bulk and carried the sacks. After the necessary shouting of the preliminary directions, never a word was spoken, and as the buzzing of the wasps' nest died away there was scarcely a sound in the world but the noise of footsteps, the heavy breathing of burthened men, and the thud of the sacks. They all took turns at that labour except Mr. Bensington, who was manifestly unfit. He took post in the Skinners' bedroom with a rifle, to watch the carcase of the dead rat, and of the others, they took turns to rest from sack-carrying and to keep watch two at a time upon the rat-holes behind the nettle grove. The pollen sacs of the nettles were ripe, and every now and then the vigil would be enlivened by the dehiscence of these, the bursting of the sacs sounding exactly like the crack of a pistol, and the pollen grains as big as buckshot pattered all about them. Mr. Bensington sat at his window on a hard horse-hair-stuffed arm-chair, covered by a grubby antimacassar that had given a touch of social distinction to the Skinners' sitting-room for many years. His unaccustomed rifle rested on the sill, and his spectacles anon watched the dark bulk of the dead rat in the thickening twilight, anon wandered about him in curious meditation. There was a faint smell of paraffin without, for one of the casks leaked, and it mingled with a less unpleasant odour arising from the hacked and crushed creeper. Within, when he turned his head, a blend of faint domestic scents, beer, cheese, rotten apples, and old boots as the leading _motifs_, was full of reminiscences of the vanished Skinners. He regarded the dim room for a space. The furniture had been greatly disordered--perhaps by some inquisitive rat--but a coat upon a clothes-peg on the door, a razor and some dirty scraps of paper, and a piece of soap that had hardened through years of disuse into a horny cube, were redolent of Skinner's distinctive personality. It came to Bensington's mind with a complete novelty of realisation that in all probability the man had been killed and eaten, at least in part, by the monster that now lay dead there in the darkling. To think of all that a harmless-looking discovery in chemistry may lead to! Here he was in homely England and yet in infinite danger, sitting out alone with a gun in a twilit, ruined house, remote from every comfort, his shoulder dreadfully bruised from a gun-kick, and--by Jove! He grasped now how profoundly the order of the universe had changed for him. He had come right away to this amazing experience, _without even saying a word to his cousin Jane_! What must she be thinking of him? He tried to imagine it and he could not. He had an extraordinary feeling that she and he were parted for ever and would never meet again. He felt he had taken a step and come into a world of new immensities. What other monsters might not those deepening shadows hide? The tips of the giant nettles came out sharp and black against the pale green and amber of the western sky. Everything was very still--very still indeed. He wondered why he could not hear the others away there round the corner of the house. The shadow in the cart-shed was now an abysmal black. * * * * * _Bang ... Bang ... Bang_. A sequence of echoes and a shout. A long silence. _Bang_ and a _diminuendo_ of echoes. Stillness. Then, thank goodness! Redwood and Cossar were coming out of the inaudible darknesses, and Redwood was calling "Bensington!" "Bensington! We've bagged another of the rats!" "Cossar's bagged another of the rats!" VI. When the Expedition had finished refreshment, the night had fully come. The stars were at their brightest, and a growing pallor towards Hankey heralded the moon. The watch on the rat-holes had been maintained, but the watchers had shifted to the hill slope above the holes, feeling this a safer firing-point. They squatted there in a rather abundant dew, fighting the damp with whisky. The others rested in the house, and the three leaders discussed the night's work with the men. The moon rose towards midnight, and as soon as it was clear of the downs, every one except the rat-hole sentinels started off in single file, led by Cossar, towards the wasps' nest. So far as the wasps' nest went, they found their task exceptionally easy--astonishingly easy. Except that it was a longer labour, it was no graver affair than any common wasps' nest might have been. Danger there was, no doubt, danger to life, but it never so much as thrust its head out of that portentous hillside. They stuffed in the sulphur and nitre, they bunged the holes soundly, and fired their trains. Then with a common impulse all the party but Cossar turned and ran athwart the long shadows of the pines, and, finding Cossar had stayed behind, came to a halt together in a knot, a hundred yards away, convenient to a ditch that offered cover. Just for a minute or two the moonlit night, all black and white, was heavy with a suffocated buzz, that rose and mingled to a roar, a deep abundant note, and culminated and died, and then almost incredibly the night was still. "By Jove!" said Bensington, almost in a whisper, "_it's done!_" All stood intent. The hillside above the black point-lace of the pine shadows seemed as bright as day and as colourless as snow. The setting plaster in the holes positively shone. Cossar's loose framework moved towards them. "So far--" said Cossar. Crack--_bang_! A shot from near the house and then--stillness. "What's _that_?" said Bensington. "One of the rats put its head out," suggested one of the men. "By-the-bye, we left our guns up there," said Redwood. "By the sacks." Every one began to walk towards the hill again. "That must be the rats," said Bensington. "Obviously," said Cossar, gnawing his finger nails. _Bang_! "Hullo?" said one of the men. Then abruptly came a shout, two shots, a loud shout that was almost a scream, three shots in rapid succession and a splintering of wood. All these sounds were very clear and very small in the immense stillness of the night. Then for some moments nothing but a minute muffled confusion from the direction of the rat-holes, and then again a wild yell ... Each man found himself running hard for the guns. Two shots. Bensington found himself, gun in hand, going hard through the pine trees after a number of receding backs. It is curious that the thought uppermost in his mind at that moment was the wish that his cousin Jane could see him. His bulbous slashed boots flew out in wild strides, and his face was distorted into a permanent grin, because that wrinkled his nose and kept his glasses in place. Also he held the muzzle of his gun projecting straight before him as he flew through the chequered moonlight. The man who had run away met them full tilt--he had dropped his gun. "Hullo," said Cossar, and caught him in his arms. "What's this?" "They came out together," said the man. "The rats?" "Yes, six of them." "Where's Flack?" "Down." "What's he say?" panted Bensington, coming up, unheeded. "Flack's down?" "He fell down." "They came out one after the other." "What?" "Made a rush. I fired both barrels first." "You left Flack?" "They were on to us." "Come on," said Cossar. "You come with us. Where's Flack? Show us." The whole party moved forward. Further details of the engagement dropped from the man who had run away. The others clustered about him, except Cossar, who led. "Where are they?" "Back in their holes, perhaps. I cleared. They made a rush for their holes." "What do you mean? Did you get behind them?" "We got down by their holes. Saw 'em come out, you know, and tried to cut 'em off. They lolloped out--like rabbits. We ran down and let fly. They ran about wild after our first shot and suddenly came at us. _Went_ for us." "How many?" "Six or seven." Cossar led the way to the edge of the pine-wood and halted. "D'yer mean they _got_ Flack?" asked some one. "One of 'em was on to him." "Didn't you shoot?" "How _could_ I?" "Every one loaded?" said Cossar over his shoulder. There was a confirmatory movement. "But Flack--" said one. "D'yer mean--Flack--" said another. "There's no time to lose," said Cossar, and shouted "Flack!" as he led the way. The whole force advanced towards the rat-holes, the man who had run away a little to the rear. They went forward through the rank exaggerated weeds and skirted the body of the second dead rat. They were extended in a bunchy line, each man with his gun pointing forward, and they peered about them in the clear moonlight for some crumpled, ominous shape, some crouching form. They found the gun of the man who had run away very speedily. "Flack!" cried Cossar. "Flack!" "He ran past the nettles and fell down," volunteered the man who ran away. "Where?" "Round about there." "Where did he fall?" He hesitated and led them athwart the long black shadows for a space and turned judicially. "About here, I think." "Well, he's not here now." "But his gun---?" "Confound it!" swore Cossar, "where's everything got to?" He strode a step towards the black shadows on the hillside that masked the holes and stood staring. Then he swore again. "If they _have_ dragged him in---!" So they hung for a space tossing each other the fragments of thoughts. Bensington's glasses flashed like diamonds as he looked from one to the other. The men's faces changed from cold clearness to mysterious obscurity as they turned them to or from the moon. Every one spoke, no one completed a sentence. Then abruptly Cossar chose his line. He flapped limbs this way and that and expelled orders in pellets. It was obvious he wanted lamps. Every one except Cossar was moving towards the house. "You're going into the holes?" asked Redwood. "Obviously," said Cossar. He made it clear once more that the lamps of the cart and trolley were to be got and brought to him. Bensington, grasping this, started off along the path by the well. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw Cossar's gigantic figure standing out as if he were regarding the holes pensively. At the sight Bensington halted for a moment and half turned. They were all leaving Cossar---! Cossar was able to take care of himself, of course! Suddenly Bensington saw something that made him shout a windless "Hi!" In a second three rats had projected themselves from the dark tangle of the creeper towards Cossar. For three seconds Cossar stood unaware of them, and then he had become the most active thing in the world. He didn't fire his gun. Apparently he had no time to aim, or to think of aiming; he ducked a leaping rat, Bensington saw, and then smashed at the back of its head with the butt of his gun. The monster gave one leap and fell over itself. Cossar's form went right down out of sight among the reedy grass, and then he rose again, running towards another of the rats and whirling his gun overhead. A faint shout came to Bensington's ears, and then he perceived the remaining two rats bolting divergently, and Cossar in pursuit towards the holes. The whole thing was an affair of misty shadows; all three fighting monsters were exaggerated and made unreal by the delusive clearness of the light. At moments Cossar was colossal, at moments invisible. The rats flashed athwart the eye in sudden unexpected leaps, or ran with a movement of the feet so swift, they seemed to run on wheels. It was all over in half a minute. No one saw it but Bensington. He could hear the others behind him still receding towards the house. He shouted something inarticulate and then ran back towards Cossar, while the rats vanished. He came up to him outside the holes. In the moonlight the distribution of shadows that constituted Cossar's visage intimated calm. "Hullo," said Cossar, "back already? Where's the lamps? They're all back now in their holes. One I broke the neck of as it ran past me ... See? There!" And he pointed a gaunt finger. Bensington was too astonished for conversation ... The lamps seemed an interminable time in coming. At last they appeared, first one unwinking luminous eye, preceded by a swaying yellow glare, and then, winking now and then, and then shining out again, two others. About them came little figures with little voices, and then enormous shadows. This group made as it were a spot of inflammation upon the gigantic dreamland of moonshine. "Flack," said the voices. "Flack." An illuminating sentence floated up. "Locked himself in the attic." Cossar was continually more wonderful. He produced great handfuls of cotton wool and stuffed them in his ears--Bensington wondered why. Then he loaded his gun with a quarter charge of powder. Who else could have thought of that? Wonderland culminated with the disappearance of Cossar's twin realms of boot sole up the central hole. Cossar was on all fours with two guns, one trailing on each side from a string under his chin, and his most trusted assistant, a little dark man with a grave face, was to go in stooping behind him, holding a lantern over his head. Everything had been made as sane and obvious and proper as a lunatic's dream. The wool, it seems, was on account of the concussion of the rifle; the man had some too. Obviously! So long as the rats turned tail on Cossar no harm could come to him, and directly they headed for him he would see their eyes and fire between them. Since they would have to come down the cylinder of the hole, Cossar could hardly fail to hit them. It was, Cossar insisted, the obvious method, a little tedious perhaps, but absolutely certain. As the assistant stooped to enter, Bensington saw that the end of a ball of twine had been tied to the tail of his coat. By this he was to draw in the rope if it should be needed to drag out the bodies of the rats. Bensington perceived that the object he held in his hand was Cossar's silk hat. How had it got there? It would be something to remember him by, anyhow. At each of the adjacent holes stood a little group with a lantern on the ground shining up the hole, and with one man kneeling and aiming at the round void before him, waiting for anything that might emerge. There was an interminable suspense. Then they heard Cossar's first shot, like an explosion in a mine.... Every one's nerves and muscles tightened at that, and bang! bang! bang! the rats had tried a bolt, and two more were dead. Then the man who held the ball of twine reported a twitching. "He's killed one in there," said Bensington, "and he wants the rope." He watched the rope creep into the hole, and it seemed as though it had become animated by a serpentine intelligence--for the darkness made the twine invisible. At last it stopped crawling, and there was a long pause. Then what seemed to Bensington the queerest monster of all crept slowly from the hole, and resolved itself into the little engineer emerging backwards. After him, and ploughing deep furrows, Cossar's boots thrust out, and then came his lantern-illuminated back.... Only one rat was left alive now, and this poor, doomed wretch cowered in the inmost recesses until Cossar and the lantern went in again and slew it, and finally Cossar, that human ferret, went through all the runs to make sure. "We got 'em," he said to his nearly awe-stricken company at last. "And if I hadn't been a mud-headed mucker I should have stripped to the waist. Obviously. Feel my sleeves, Bensington! I'm wet through with perspiration. Jolly hard to think of everything. Only a halfway-up of whisky can save me from a cold." VII. There were moments during that wonderful night when it seemed to Bensington that he was planned by nature for a life of fantastic adventure. This was particularly the case for an hour or so after he had taken a stiff whisky. "Shan't go back to Sloane Street," he confided to the tall, fair, dirty engineer. "You won't, eh?" "No fear," said Bensington, nodding darkly. The exertion of dragging the seven dead rats to the funeral pyre by the nettle grove left him bathed in perspiration, and Cossar pointed out the obvious physical reaction of whisky to save him from the otherwise inevitable chill. There was a sort of brigand's supper in the old bricked kitchen, with the row of dead rats lying in the moonlight against the hen-runs outside, and after thirty minutes or so of rest, Cossar roused them all to the labours that were still to do. "Obviously," as he said, they had to "wipe the place out. No litter--no scandal. See?" He stirred them up to the idea of making destruction complete. They smashed and splintered every fragment of wood in the house; they built trails of chopped wood wherever big vegetation was springing; they made a pyre for the rat bodies and soaked them in paraffin. Bensington worked like a conscientious navvy. He had a sort of climax of exhilaration and energy towards two o'clock. When in the work of destruction he wielded an axe the bravest fled his neighbourhood. Afterwards he was a little sobered by the temporary loss of his spectacles, which were found for him at last in his side coat-pocket. Men went to and fro about him--grimy, energetic men. Cossar moved amongst them like a god. Bensington drank that delight of human fellowship that comes to happy armies, to sturdy expeditions--never to those who live the life of the sober citizen in cities. After Cossar had taken his axe away and set him to carry wood he went to and fro, saying they were all "good fellows." He kept on--long after he was aware of fatigue. At last all was ready, and the broaching of the paraffin began. The moon, robbed now of all its meagre night retinue of stars, shone high above the dawn. "Burn everything," said Cossar, going to and fro--"burn the ground and make a clean sweep of it. See?" Bensington became aware of him, looking now very gaunt and horrible in the pale beginnings of the daylight, hurrying past with his lower jaw projected and a flaring torch of touchwood in his hand. "Come away!" said some one, pulling Bensington's arm. The still dawn--no birds were singing there--was suddenly full of a tumultuous crackling; a little dull red flame ran about the base of the pyre, changed to blue upon the ground, and set out to clamber, leaf by leaf, up the stem of a giant nettle. A singing sound mingled with the crackling.... They snatched their guns from the corner of the Skinners' living-room, and then every one was running. Cossar came after them with heavy strides.... Then they were standing looking back at the Experimental Farm. It was boiling up; the smoke and flames poured out like a crowd in a panic, from doors and windows and from a thousand cracks and crevices in the roof. Trust Cossar to build a fire! A great column of smoke, shot with blood-red tongues and darting flashes, rushed up into the sky. It was like some huge giant suddenly standing up, straining upward and abruptly spreading his great arms out across the sky. It cast the night back upon them, utterly hiding and obliterating the incandescence of the sun that rose behind it. All Hickleybrow was soon aware of that stupendous pillar of smoke, and came out upon the crest, in various _deshabille_, to watch them coming. Behind, like some fantastic fungus, this smoke pillar swayed and fluctuated, up, up, into the sky--making the Downs seem low and all other objects petty, and in the foreground, led by Cossar, the makers of this mischief followed the path, eight little black figures coming wearily, guns shouldered, across the meadow. As Bensington looked back there came into his jaded brain, and echoed there, a familiar formula. What was it? "You have lit to-day--? You have lit to-day--?" Then he remembered Latimer's words: "We have lit this day such a candle in England as no man may ever put out again--" What a man Cossar was, to be sure! He admired his back view for a space, and was proud to have held that hat. Proud! Although he was an eminent investigator and Cossar only engaged in applied science. Suddenly he fell shivering and yawning enormously and wishing he was warmly tucked away in bed in his little flat that looked out upon Sloane Street. (It didn't do even to think of Cousin Jane.) His legs became cotton strands, his feet lead. He wondered if any one would get them coffee in Hickleybrow. He had never been up all night for three-and-thirty years. VIII. And while these eight adventurers fought with rats about the Experimental Farm, nine miles away, in the village of Cheasing Eyebright, an old lady with an excessive nose struggled with great difficulties by the light of a flickering candle. She gripped a sardine tin opener in one gnarled hand, and in the other she held a tin of Herakleophorbia, which she had resolved to open or die. She struggled indefatigably, grunting at each fresh effort, while through the flimsy partition the voice of the Caddles infant wailed. "Bless 'is poor 'art," said Mrs. Skinner; and then, with her solitary tooth biting her lip in an ecstasy of determination, "Come _up_!" And presently, "_Jab_!" a fresh supply of the Food of the Gods was let loose to wreak its powers of giantry upon the world. CHAPTER THE FOURTH. THE GIANT CHILDREN. I. For a time at least the spreading circle of residual consequences about the Experimental Farm must pass out of the focus of our narrative--how for a long time a power of bigness, in fungus and toadstool, in grass and weed, radiated from that charred but not absolutely obliterated centre. Nor can we tell here at any length how these mournful spinsters, the two surviving hens, made a wonder of and a show, spent their remaining years in eggless celebrity. The reader who is hungry for fuller details in these matters is referred to the newspapers of the period--to the voluminous, indiscriminate files of the modern Recording Angel. Our business lies with Mr. Bensington at the focus of the disturbance. He had come back to London to find himself a quite terribly famous man. In a night the whole world had changed with respect to him. Everybody understood. Cousin Jane, it seemed, knew all about it; the people in the streets knew all about it; the newspapers all and more. To meet Cousin Jane was terrible, of course, but when it was over not so terrible after all. The good woman had limits even to her power over facts; it was clear that she had communed with herself and accepted the Food as something in the nature of things. She took the line of huffy dutifulness. She disapproved highly, it was evident, but she did not prohibit. The flight of Bensington, as she must have considered it, may have shaken her, and her worst was to treat him with bitter persistence for a cold he had not caught and fatigue he had long since forgotten, and to buy him a new sort of hygienic all-wool combination underwear that was apt to get involved and turned partially inside out and partially not, and as difficult to get into for an absent-minded man, as--Society. And so for a space, and as far as this convenience left him leisure, he still continued to participate in the development of this new element in human history, the Food of the Gods. The public mind, following its own mysterious laws of selection, had chosen him as the one and only responsible Inventor and Promoter of this new wonder; it would hear nothing of Redwood, and without a protest it allowed Cossar to follow his natural impulse into a terribly prolific obscurity. Before he was aware of the drift of these things, Mr. Bensington was, so to speak, stark and dissected upon the hoardings. His baldness, his curious general pinkness, and his golden spectacles had become a national possession. Resolute young men with large expensive-looking cameras and a general air of complete authorisation took possession of the flat for brief but fruitful periods, let off flash lights in it that filled it for days with dense, intolerable vapour, and retired to fill the pages of the syndicated magazines with their admirable photographs of Mr. Bensington complete and at home in his second-best jacket and his slashed shoes. Other resolute-mannered persons of various ages and sexes dropped in and told him things about Boomfood--it was _Punch_ first called the stuff "Boomfood"--and afterwards reproduced what they had said as his own original contribution to the Interview. The thing became quite an obsession with Broadbeam, the Popular Humourist. He scented another confounded thing he could not understand, and he fretted dreadfully in his efforts to "laugh the thing down." One saw him in clubs, a great clumsy presence with the evidences of his midnight oil burning manifest upon his large unwholesome face, explaining to every one he could buttonhole: "These Scientific chaps, you know, haven't a Sense of Humour, you know. That's what it is. This Science--kills it." His jests at Bensington became malignant libels.... An enterprising press-cutting agency sent Bensington a long article about himself from a sixpenny weekly, entitled "A New Terror," and offered to supply one hundred such disturbances for a guinea, and two extremely charming young ladies, totally unknown to him, called, and, to the speechless indignation of Cousin Jane, had tea with him and afterwards sent him their birthday books for his signature. He was speedily quite hardened to seeing his name associated with the most incongruous ideas in the public press, and to discover in the reviews articles written about Boomfood and himself in a tone of the utmost intimacy by people he had never heard of. And whatever delusions he may have cherished in the days of his obscurity about the pleasantness of Fame were dispelled utterly and for ever. At first--except for Broadbeam--the tone of the public mind was quite free from any touch of hostility. It did not seem to occur to the public mind as anything but a mere playful supposition that any more Herakleophorbia was going to escape again. And it did not seem to occur to the public mind that the growing little band of babies now being fed on the food would presently be growing more "up" than most of us ever grow. The sort of thing that pleased the public mind was caricatures of eminent politicians after a course of Boom-feeding, uses of the idea on hoardings, and such edifying exhibitions as the dead wasps that had escaped the fire and the remaining hens. Beyond that the public did not care to look, until very strenuous efforts were made to turn its eyes to the remoter consequences, and even then for a while its enthusiasm for action was partial. "There's always somethin' New," said the public--a public so glutted with novelty that it would hear of the earth being split as one splits an apple without surprise, and, "I wonder what they'll do next." But there were one or two people outside the public, as it were, who did already take that further glance, and some it seems were frightened by what they saw there. There was young Caterham, for example, cousin of the Earl of Pewterstone, and one of the most promising of English politicians, who, taking the risk of being thought a faddist, wrote a long article in the _Nineteenth Century and After_ to suggest its total suppression. And--in certain of his moods, there was Bensington. "They don't seem to realise--" he said to Cossar. "No, they don't." "And do we? Sometimes, when I think of what it means--This poor child of Redwood's--And, of course, your three... Forty feet high, perhaps! After all, _ought_ we to go on with it?" "Go on with it!" cried Cossar, convulsed with inelegant astonishment and pitching his note higher than ever. "Of _course_ you'll go on with it! What d'you think you were made for? Just to loaf about between meal-times? "Serious consequences," he screamed, "of course! Enormous. Obviously. Ob-viously. Why, man, it's the only chance you'll ever get of a serious consequence! And you want to shirk it!" For a moment his indignation was speechless, "It's downright Wicked!" he said at last, and repeated explosively, "Wicked!" But Bensington worked in his laboratory now with more emotion than zest. He couldn't tell whether he wanted serious consequences to his life or not; he was a man of quiet tastes. It was a marvellous discovery, of course, quite marvellous--but--He had already become the proprietor of several acres of scorched, discredited property near Hickleybrow, at a price of nearly £90 an acre, and at times he was disposed to think this as serious a consequence of speculative chemistry as any unambitious man could wish. Of course he was Famous--terribly Famous. More than satisfying, altogether more than satisfying, was the Fame he had attained. But the habit of Research was strong in him.... And at moments, rare moments in the laboratory chiefly, he would find something else than habit and Cossar's arguments to urge him to his work. This little spectacled man, poised perhaps with his slashed shoes wrapped about the legs of his high stool and his hand upon the tweezer of his balance weights, would have again a flash of that adolescent vision, would have a momentary perception of the eternal unfolding of the seed that had been sown in his brain, would see as it were in the sky, behind the grotesque shapes and accidents of the present, the coming world of giants and all the mighty things the future has in store--vague and splendid, like some glittering palace seen suddenly in the passing of a sunbeam far away.... And presently it would be with him as though that distant splendour had never shone upon his brain, and he would perceive nothing ahead but sinister shadows, vast declivities and darknesses, inhospitable immensities, cold, wild, and terrible things. II. Amidst the complex and confused happenings, the impacts from the great outer world that constituted Mr. Bensington's fame, a shining and active figure presently became conspicuous--became almost, as it were, a leader and marshal of these externalities in Mr. Bensington's eyes. This was Dr. Winkles, that convincing young practitioner, who has already appeared in this story as the means whereby Redwood was able to convey the Food to his son. Even before the great outbreak, it was evident that the mysterious powders Redwood had given him had awakened this gentleman's interest immensely, and so soon as the first wasps came he was putting two and two together. He was the sort of doctor that is in manners, in morals, in methods and appearance, most succinctly and finally expressed by the word "rising." He was large and fair, with a hard, alert, superficial, aluminium-coloured eye, and hair like chalk mud, even-featured and muscular about the clean-shaven mouth, erect in figure and energetic in movement, quick and spinning on the heel, and he wore long frock coats, black silk ties and plain gold studs and chains and his silk hats had a special shape and brim that made him look wiser and better than anybody. He looked as young or old as anybody grown up. And after that first wonderful outbreak he took to Bensington and Redwood and the Food of the Gods with such a convincing air of proprietorship, that at times, in spite of the testimony of the Press to the contrary, Bensington was disposed to regard him as the original inventor of the whole affair. "These accidents," said Winkles, when Bensington hinted at the dangers of further escapes, "are nothing. Nothing. The discovery is everything. Properly developed, suitably handled, sanely controlled, we have--we have something very portentous indeed in this food of ours.... We must keep our eye on it ... We mustn't let it out of control again, and--we mustn't let it rest." He certainly did not mean to do that. He was at Bensington's now almost every day. Bensington, glancing from the window, would see the faultless equipage come spanking up Sloane Street and after an incredibly brief interval Winkles would enter the room with a light, strong motion, and pervade it, and protrude some newspaper and supply information and make remarks. "Well," he would say, rubbing his hands, "how are we getting on?" and so pass to the current discussion about it. "Do you see," he would say, for example, "that Caterham has been talking about our stuff at the Church Association?" "Dear me!" said Bensington, "that's a cousin of the Prime Minister, isn't it?" "Yes," said Winkles, "a very able young man--very able. Quite wrong-headed; you know, violently reactionary--but thoroughly able. And he's evidently disposed to make capital out of this stuff of ours. Takes a very emphatic line. Talks of our proposal to use it in the elementary schools---" "Our proposal to use it in the elementary schools!" "_I_ said something about that the other day--quite in passing--little affair at a Polytechnic. Trying to make it clear the stuff was really highly beneficial. Not in the slightest degree dangerous, in spite of those first little accidents. Which cannot possibly occur again.... You know it _would_ be rather good stuff--But he's taken it up." "What did you say?" "Mere obvious nothings. But as you see---! Takes it up with perfect gravity. Treats the thing as an attack. Says there is already a sufficient waste of public money in elementary schools without this. Tells the old stories about piano lessons again--_you_ know. No one; he says, wishes to prevent the children of the lower classes obtaining an education suited to their condition, but to give them a food of this sort will be to destroy their sense of proportion utterly. Expands the topic. What Good will it do, he asks, to make poor people six-and-thirty feet high? He really believes, you know, that they _will_ be thirty-six feet high." "So they would _be_," said Bensington, "if you gave them our food at all regularly. But nobody said anything---" "_I_ said something." "But, my dear Winkles--!" "They'll be Bigger, of course," interrupted Winkles, with an air of knowing all about it, and discouraging the crude ideas of Bensington. "Bigger indisputably. But listen to what he says! Will it make them happier? That's his point. Curious, isn't it? Will it make them better? Will they be more respectful to properly constituted authority? Is it fair to the children themselves?? Curious how anxious his sort are for justice--so far as any future arrangements go. Even nowadays, he says, the cost of feeding and clothing children is more than many of their parents can contrive, and if this sort of thing is to be permitted--! Eh? "You see he makes my mere passing suggestion into a positive proposal. And then he calculates how much a pair of breeches for a growing lad of twenty feet high or so will cost. Just as though he really believed--Ten pounds, he reckons, for the merest decency. Curious this Caterham! So concrete! The honest, and struggling ratepayer will have to contribute to that, he says. He says we have to consider the Rights of the Parent. It's all here. Two columns. Every Parent has a right to have his children brought up in his own Size.... "Then comes the question of school accommodation, cost of enlarged desks and forms for our already too greatly burthened National Schools. And to get what?--a proletariat of hungry giants. Winds up with a very serious passage, says even if this wild suggestion--mere passing fancy of mine, you know, and misinterpreted at that--this wild suggestion about the schools comes to nothing, that doesn't end the matter. This is a strange food, so strange as to seem to him almost wicked. It has been scattered recklessly--so he says--and it may be scattered again. Once you've taken it, it's poison unless you go on with it. 'So it is,' said Bensington. And in short he proposes the formation of a National Society for the Preservation of the Proper Proportions of Things. Odd? Eh? People are hanging on to the idea like anything." "But what do they propose to do?" Winkles shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands. "Form a Society," he said, "and fuss. They want to make it illegal to manufacture this Herakleophorbia--or at any rate to circulate the knowledge of it. I've written about a bit to show that Caterham's idea of the stuff is very much exaggerated--very much exaggerated indeed, but that doesn't seem to check it. Curious how people are turning against it. And the National Temperance Association, by-the-bye, has founded a branch for Temperance in Growth." "Mm," said Bensington and stroked his nose. "After all that has happened there's bound to be this uproar. On the face of it the thing's--_startling_." Winkles walked about the room for a time, hesitated, and departed. It became evident there was something at the back of his mind, some aspect of crucial importance to him, that he waited to display. One day, when Redwood and Bensington were at the flat together he gave them a glimpse of this something in reserve. "How's it all going?" he said; rubbing his hands together. "We're getting together a sort of report." "For the Royal Society?" "Yes." "Hm," said. Winkles, very profoundly, and walked to the hearth-rug. "Hm. But--Here's the point. _Ought_ you?" "Ought we--what?" "Ought you to publish?" "We're not in the Middle Ages," said Redwood. "I know." "As Cossar says, swapping wisdom--that's the true scientific method." "In most cases, certainly. But--This is exceptional." "We shall put the whole thing before the Royal Society in the proper way," said Redwood. Winkles returned to that on a later occasion. "It's in many ways an Exceptional discovery." "That doesn't matter," said Redwood. "It's the sort of knowledge that could easily be subject to grave abuse--grave dangers, as Caterham puts it." Redwood said nothing. "Even carelessness, you know--" "If we were to form a committee of trustworthy people to control the manufacture of Boomfood--Herakleophorbia, I _should_ say--we might--" He paused, and Redwood, with a certain private discomfort, pretended that he did not see any sort of interrogation.... Outside the apartments of Redwood and Bensington, Winkle, in spite of the incompleteness of his instructions, became a leading authority upon Boomfood. He wrote letters defending its use; he made notes and articles explaining its possibilities; he jumped up irrelevantly at the meetings of the scientific and medical associations to talk about it; he identified himself with it. He published a pamphlet called "The Truth about Boomfood," in which he minimised the whole of the Hickleybrow affair almost to nothing. He said that it was absurd to say Boomfood would make people thirty-seven feet high. That was "obviously exaggerated." It would make them Bigger, of course, but that was all.... Within that intimate circle of two it was chiefly evident that Winkles was extremely anxious to help in the making of Herakleophorbia, help in correcting any proofs there might be of any paper there might be in preparation upon the subject--do anything indeed that might lead up to his participation in the details of the making of Herakleophorbia. He was continually telling them both that he felt it was a Big Thing, that it had big possibilities. If only they were--"safeguarded in some way." And at last one day he asked outright to be told just how it was made. "I've been thinking over what you said," said Redwood. "Well?" said Winkles brightly. "It's the sort of knowledge that could easily be subject to grave abuse," said Redwood. "But I don't see how that applies," said Winkles. "It does," said Redwood. Winkles thought it over for a day or so. Then he came to Redwood and said that he doubted if he ought to give powders about which he knew nothing to Redwood's little boy; it seemed to him it was uncommonly like taking responsibility in the dark. That made Redwood thoughtful. "You've seen that the Society for the Total Suppression of Boomfood claims to have several thousand members," said Winkles, changing the subject. "They've drafted a Bill," said Winkles. "They've got young Caterham to take it up--readily enough. They're in earnest. They're forming local committees to influence candidates. They want to make it penal to prepare and store Herakleophorbia without special license, and felony--matter of imprisonment without option--to administer Boomfood--that's what they call it, you know--to any person under one-and-twenty. But there's collateral societies, you know. All sorts of people. The Society for the Preservation of Ancient Statures is going to have Mr. Frederic Harrison on the council, they say. You know he's written an essay about it; says it is vulgar, and entirely inharmonious with that Revelation of Humanity that is found in the teachings of Comte. It is the sort of thing the Eighteenth Century _couldn't_ have produced even in its worst moments. The idea of the Food never entered the head of Comte--which shows how wicked it really is. No one, he says, who really understood Comte...." "But you don't mean to say--" said Redwood, alarmed out of his disdain for Winkles. "They'll not do all that," said Winkles. "But public opinion is public opinion, and votes are votes. Everybody can see you are up to a disturbing thing. And the human instinct is all against disturbance, you know. Nobody seems to believe Caterham's idea of people thirty-seven feet high, who won't be able to get inside a church, or a meeting-house, or any social or human institution. But for all that they're not so easy in their minds about it. They see there's something--something more than a common discovery--" "There is," said Redwood, "in every discovery." "Anyhow, they're getting--restive. Caterham keeps harping on what may happen if it gets loose again. I say over and over again, it won't, and it can't. But--there it is!" And he bounced about the room for a little while as if he meant to reopen the topic of the secret, and then thought better of it and went. The two scientific men looked at one another. For a space only their eyes spoke. "If the worst comes to the worst," said Redwood at last, in a strenuously calm voice, "I shall give the Food to my little Teddy with my own hands." III. It was only a few days after this that Redwood opened his paper to find that the Prime Minister had promised a Royal Commission on Boomfood. This sent him, newspaper in hand, round to Bensington's flat. "Winkles, I believe, is making mischief for the stuff. He plays into the hands of Caterham. He keeps on talking about it, and what it is going to do, and alarming people. If he goes on, I really believe he'll hamper our inquiries. Even as it is--with this trouble about my little boy--" Bensington wished Winkles wouldn't. "Do you notice how he has dropped into the way of calling it Boomfood?" "I don't like that name," said Bensington, with a glance over his glasses. "It is just so exactly what it is--to Winkles." "Why does he keep on about it? It isn't his!" "It's something called Booming," said Redwood. "_I_ don't understand. If it isn't his, everybody is getting to think it is. Not that _that_ matters." "In the event of this ignorant, this ridiculous agitation becoming--Serious," began Bensington. "My little boy can't get on without the stuff," said Redwood. "I don't see how I can help myself now. If the worst comes to the worst--" A slight bouncing noise proclaimed the presence of Winkles. He became visible in the middle of the room rubbing his hands together. "I wish you'd knock," said Bensington, looking vicious over the gold rims. Winkles was apologetic. Then he turned to Redwood. "I'm glad to find you here," he began; "the fact is--" "Have you seen about this Royal Commission?" interrupted Redwood. "Yes," said Winkles, thrown out. "Yes." "What do you think of it?" "Excellent thing," said Winkles. "Bound to stop most of this clamour. Ventilate the whole affair. Shut up Caterham. But that's not what I came round for, Redwood. The fact is--" "I don't like this Royal Commission," said Bensington. "I can assure you it will be all right. I may say--I don't think it's a breach of confidence--that very possibly _I_ may have a place on the Commission--" "Oom," said Redwood, looking into the fire. "I can put the whole thing right. I can make it perfectly clear, first, that the stuff is controllable, and, secondly, that nothing short of a miracle is needed before anything like that catastrophe at Hickleybrow can possibly happen again. That is just what is wanted, an authoritative assurance. Of course, I could speak with more confidence if I knew--But that's quite by the way. And just at present there's something else, another little matter, upon which I'm wanting to consult you. Ahem. The fact is--Well--I happen to be in a slight difficulty, and you can help me out." Redwood raised his eyebrows, and was secretly glad. "The matter is--highly confidential." "Go on," said Redwood. "Don't worry about that." "I have recently been entrusted with a child--the child of--of an Exalted Personage." Winkles coughed. "You're getting on," said Redwood. "I must confess it's largely your powders--and the reputation of my success with your little boy--There is, I cannot disguise, a strong feeling against its use. And yet I find that among the more intelligent--One must go quietly in these things, you know--little by little. Still, in the case of Her Serene High--I mean this new little patient of mine. As a matter of fact--the suggestion came from the parent. Or I should never--" He struck Redwood as being embarrassed. "I thought you had a doubt of the advisability of using these powders," said Redwood. "Merely a passing doubt." "You don't propose to discontinue--" "In the case of your little boy? Certainly not!" "So far as I can see, it would be murder." "I wouldn't do it for the world." "You shall have the powders," said Redwood. "I suppose you couldn't--" "No fear," said Redwood. "There isn't a recipe. It's no good, Winkles, if you'll pardon my frankness. I'll make you the powders myself." "Just as well, perhaps," said Winkles, after a momentary hard stare at Redwood--"just as well." And then: "I can assure you I really don't mind in the least." IV. When Winkles had gone Bensington came and stood on the hearth-rug and looked down at Redwood. "Her Serene Highness!" he remarked. "Her Serene Highness!" said Redwood. "It's the Princess of Weser Dreiburg!" "No further than a third cousin." "Redwood," said Bensington; "it's a curious thing to say, I know, but--do you think Winkles understands?" "What?" "Just what it is we have made. "Does he really understand," said Bensington, dropping his voice and keeping his eye doorward, "that in the Family--the Family of his new patient--" "Go on," said Redwood. "Who have always been if anything a little _under_--_under_--" "The Average?" "Yes. And so _very_ tactfully undistinguished in _any_ way, he is going to produce a royal personage--an outsize royal personage--of _that_ size. You know, Redwood, I'm not sure whether there is not something almost--_treasonable_ ..." He transferred his eyes from the door to Redwood. Redwood flung a momentary gesture--index finger erect--at the fire. "By Jove!" he said, "he _doesn't_ know!" "That man," said Redwood, "doesn't know anything. That was his most exasperating quality as a student. Nothing. He passed all his examinations, he had all his facts--and he had just as much knowledge--as a rotating bookshelf containing the _Times Encyclopedia_. And he doesn't know anything _now_. He's Winkles, and incapable of really assimilating anything not immediately and directly related to his superficial self. He is utterly void of imagination and, as a consequence, incapable of knowledge. No one could possibly pass so many examinations and be so well dressed, so well done, and so successful as a doctor without that precise incapacity. That's it. And in spite of all he's seen and heard and been told, there he is--he has no idea whatever of what he has set going. He has got a Boom on, he's working it well on Boomfood, and some one has let him in to this new Royal Baby--and that's Boomier than ever! And the fact that Weser Dreiburg will presently have to face the gigantic problem of a thirty-odd-foot Princess not only hasn't entered his head, but couldn't--it couldn't!" "There'll be a fearful row," said Bensington. "In a year or so." "So soon as they really see she is going on growing." "Unless after their fashion--they hush it up." "It's a lot to hush up." "Rather!" "I wonder what they'll do?" "They never do anything--Royal tact." "They're bound to do something." "Perhaps _she_ will." "O Lord! Yes." "They'll suppress her. Such things have been known." Redwood burst into desperate laughter. "The redundant royalty--the bouncing babe in the Iron Mask!" he said. "They'll have to put her in the tallest tower of the old Weser Dreiburg castle and make holes in the ceilings as she grows from floor to floor! Well, I'm in the very same pickle. And Cossar and his three boys. And--Well, well." "There'll be a fearful row," Bensington repeated, not joining in the laughter. "A _fearful_ row." "I suppose," he argued, "you've really thought it out thoroughly, Redwood. You're quite sure it wouldn't be wiser to warn Winkles, wean your little boy gradually, and--and rely upon the Theoretical Triumph?" "I wish to goodness you'd spend half an hour in my nursery when the Food's a little late," said Redwood, with a note of exasperation in his voice; "then you wouldn't talk like that, Bensington. Besides--Fancy warning Winkles... No! The tide of this thing has caught us unawares, and whether we're frightened or whether we're not--_we've got to swim!_" "I suppose we have," said Bensington, staring at his toes. "Yes. We've got to swim. And your boy will have to swim, and Cossar's boys--he's given it to all three of them. Nothing partial about Cossar--all or nothing! And Her Serene Highness. And everything. We are going on making the Food. Cossar also. We're only just in the dawn of the beginning, Redwood. It's evident all sorts of things are to follow. Monstrous great things. But I can't imagine them, Redwood. Except--" He scanned his finger nails. He looked up at Redwood with eyes bland through his glasses. "I've half a mind," he adventured, "that Caterham is right. At times. It's going to destroy the Proportions of Things. It's going to dislocate--What isn't it going to dislocate?" "Whatever it dislocates," said Redwood, "my little boy must have the Food." They heard some one falling rapidly upstairs. Then Cossar put his head into the flat. "Hullo!" he said at their expressions, and entering, "Well?" They told him about the Princess. "_Difficult question!_" he remarked. "Not a bit of it. _She'll_ grow. Your boy'll grow. All the others you give it to 'll grow. Everything. Like anything. What's difficult about that? That's all right. A child could tell you that. Where's the bother?" They tried to make it clear to him. "_Not go on with it!_" he shrieked. "But--! You can't help yourselves now. It's what you're for. It's what Winkles is for. It's all right. Often wondered what Winkles was for. _Now_ it's obvious. What's the trouble? "_Disturbance_? Obviously. _Upset things_? Upset everything. Finally--upset every human concern. Plain as a pikestaff. They're going to try and stop it, but they're too late. It's their way to be too late. You go on and start as much of it as you can. Thank God He has a use for you!" "But the conflict!" said Bensington, "the stress! I don't know if you have imagined--" "You ought to have been some sort of little vegetable, Bensington," said Cossar--"that's what you ought to have been. Something growing over a rockery. Here you are, fearfully and wonderfully made, and all you think you're made for is just to sit about and take your vittles. D'you think this world was made for old women to mop about in? Well, anyhow, you can't help yourselves now--you've _got_ to go on." "I suppose we must," said Redwood. "Slowly--" "No!" said Cossar, in a huge shout. "No! Make as much as you can and as soon as you can. Spread it about!" He was inspired to a stroke of wit. He parodied one of Redwood's curves with a vast upward sweep of his arm. "Redwood!" he said, to point the allusion, "make it SO!" V. There is, it seems, an upward limit to the pride of maternity, and this in the case of Mrs. Redwood was reached when her offspring completed his sixth month of terrestrial existence, broke down his high-class bassinet-perambulator, and was brought home, bawling, in the milk-truck. Young Redwood at that time weighed fifty-nine and a half pounds, measured forty-eight inches in height, and gripped about sixty pounds. He was carried upstairs to the nursery by the cook and housemaid. After that, discovery was only a question of days. One afternoon Redwood came home from his laboratory to find his unfortunate wife deep in the fascinating pages of _The Mighty Atom_, and at the sight of him she put the book aside and ran violently forward and burst into tears on his shoulder. "Tell me what you have _done_ to him," she wailed. "Tell me what you have done." Redwood took her hand and led her to the sofa, while he tried to think of a satisfactory line of defence. "It's all right, my dear," he said; "it's all right. You're only a little overwrought. It's that cheap perambulator. I've arranged for a bath-chair man to come round with something stouter to-morrow--" Mrs. Redwood looked at him tearfully over the top of her handkerchief. "A baby in a bath-chair?" she sobbed. "Well, why not?" "It's like a cripple." "It's like a young giant, my dear, and you've no cause to be ashamed of him." "You've done something to him, Dandy," she said. "I can see it in your face." "Well, it hasn't stopped his growth, anyhow," said Redwood heartlessly. "I _knew_," said Mrs. Redwood, and clenched her pocket-handkerchief ball fashion in one hand. She looked at him with a sudden change to severity. "What have you done to our child, Dandy?" "What's wrong with him?" "He's so big. He's a monster." "Nonsense. He's as straight and clean a baby as ever a woman had. What's wrong with him?" "Look at his size." "That's all right. Look at the puny little brutes about us! He's the finest baby--" "He's _too_ fine," said Mrs. Redwood. "It won't go on," said Redwood reassuringly; "it's just a start he's taken." But he knew perfectly well it would go on. And it did. By the time this baby was twelve months old he tottered just one inch under five feet high and scaled eight stone three; he was as big in fact as a St. Peter's _in Vaticano_ cherub, and his affectionate clutch at the hair and features of visitors became the talk of West Kensington. They had an invalid's chair to carry him up and down to his nursery, and his special nurse, a muscular young person just out of training, used to take him for his airings in a Panhard 8 h.p. hill-climbing perambulator specially made to meet his requirement. It was lucky in every way that Redwood had his expert witness connection in addition to his professorship. When one got over the shock of little Redwood's enormous size, he was, I am told by people who used to see him almost daily teufteufing slowly about Hyde Park, a singularly bright and pretty baby. He rarely cried or needed a comforter. Commonly he clutched a big rattle, and sometimes he went along hailing the bus-drivers and policemen along the road outside the railings as "Dadda!" and "Babba!" in a sociable, democratic way. "There goes that there great Boomfood baby," the bus-driver used to say. "Looks 'ealthy," the forward passenger would remark. "Bottle fed," the bus-driver would explain. "They say it 'olds a gallon and 'ad to be specially made for 'im." "Very 'ealthy child any'ow," the forward passenger would conclude. When Mrs. Redwood realized that his growth was indeed going on indefinitely and logically--and this she really did for the first time when the motor-perambulator arrived--she gave way to a passion of grief. She declared she never wished to enter her nursery again, wished she was dead, wished the child was dead, wished everybody was dead, wished she had never married Redwood, wished no one ever married anybody, Ajaxed a little, and retired to her own room, where she lived almost exclusively on chicken broth for three days. When Redwood came to remonstrate with her, she banged pillows about and wept and tangled her hair. "_He's_ all right," said Redwood. "He's all the better for being big. You wouldn't like him smaller than other people's children." "I want him to be _like_ other children, neither smaller nor bigger. I wanted him to be a nice little boy, just as Georgina Phyllis is a nice little girl, and I wanted to bring him up nicely in a nice way, and here he is"--and the unfortunate woman's voice broke--"wearing number four grown-up shoes and being wheeled about by--booboo!--Petroleum! "I can never love him," she wailed, "never! He's too much for me! I can never be a mother to him, such as I meant to be!" But at last, they contrived to get her into the nursery, and there was Edward Monson Redwood ("Pantagruel" was only a later nickname) swinging in a specially strengthened rocking-chair and smiling and talking "goo" and "wow." And the heart of Mrs. Redwood warmed again to her child, and she went and held him in her arms and wept. "They've done something to you," she sobbed, "and you'll grow and grow, dear; but whatever I can do to bring you up nice I'll do for you, whatever your father may say." And Redwood, who had helped to bring her to the door, went down the passage much relieved. (Eh! but it's a base job this being a man--with women as they are!) VI. Before the year was out there were, in addition to Redwood's pioneer vehicle, quite a number of motor-perambulators to be seen in the west of London. I am told there were as many as eleven; but the most careful inquiries yield trustworthy evidence of only six within the Metropolitan area at that time. It would seem the stuff acted differently upon different types of constitution. At first Herakleophorbia was not adapted to injection, and there can be no doubt that quite a considerable proportion of human beings are incapable of absorbing this substance in the normal course of digestion. It was given, for example, to Winkles' youngest boy; but he seems to have been as incapable of growth as, if Redwood was right, his father was incapable of knowledge. Others again, according to the Society for the Total Suppression of Boomfood, became in some inexplicable way corrupted by it, and perished at the onset of infantile disorders. The Cossar boys took to it with amazing avidity. Of course a thing of this kind never comes with absolute simplicity of application into the life of man; growth in particular is a complex thing, and all generalisations must needs be a little inaccurate. But the general law of the Food would seem to be this, that when it could be taken into the system in any way it stimulated it in very nearly the same degree in all cases. It increased the amount of growth from six to seven times, and it did not go beyond that, whatever amount of the Food in excess was taken. Excess of Herakleophorbia indeed beyond the necessary minimum led, it was found, to morbid disturbances of nutrition, to cancer and tumours, ossifications, and the like. And once growth upon the large scale had begun, it was soon evident that it could only continue upon that scale, and that the continuous administration of Herakleophorbia in small but sufficient doses was imperative. If it was discontinued while growth was still going on, there was first a vague restlessness and distress, then a period of voracity--as in the case of the young rats at Hankey--and then the growing creature had a sort of exaggerated anaemia and sickened and died. Plants suffered in a similar way. This, however, applied only to the growth period. So soon as adolescence was attained--in plants this was represented by the formation of the first flower-buds--the need and appetite for Herakleophorbia diminished, and so soon as the plant or animal was fully adult, it became altogether independent of any further supply of the food. It was, as it were, completely established on the new scale. It was so completely established on the new scale that, as the thistles about Hickleybrow and the grass of the down side already demonstrated, its seed produced giant offspring after its kind. And presently little Redwood, pioneer of the new race, first child of all who ate the food, was crawling about his nursery, smashing furniture, biting like a horse, pinching like a vice, and bawling gigantic baby talk at his "Nanny" and "Mammy" and the rather scared and awe-stricken "Daddy," who had set this mischief going. The child was born with good intentions. "Padda be good, be good," he used to say as the breakables flew before him. "Padda" was his rendering of Pantagruel, the nickname Redwood imposed on him. And Cossar, disregarding certain Ancient Lights that presently led to trouble, did, after a conflict with the local building regulations, get building on a vacant piece of ground adjacent to Redwood's home, a comfortable well-lit playroom, schoolroom, and nursery for their four boys--sixty feet square about this room was, and forty feet high. Redwood fell in love with that great nursery as he and Cossar built it, and his interest in curves faded, as he had never dreamt it could fade, before the pressing needs of his son. "There is much," he said, "in fitting a nursery. Much. "The walls, the things in it, they will all speak to this new mind of ours, a little more, a little less eloquently, and teach it, or fail to teach it a thousand things." "Obviously," said Cossar, reaching hastily for his hat. They worked together harmoniously, but Redwood supplied most of the educational theory required ... They had the walls and woodwork painted with a cheerful vigour; for the most part a slightly warmed white prevailed, but there were bands of bright clean colour to enforce the simple lines of construction. "Clean colours we _must_ have," said Redwood, and in one place had a neat horizontal band of squares, in which crimson and purple, orange and lemon, blues and greens, in many hues and many shades, did themselves honour. These squares the giant children should arrange and rearrange to their pleasure. "Decorations must follow," said Redwood; "let them first get the range of all the tints, and then this may go away. There is no reason why one should bias them in favour of any particular colour or design." Then, "The place must be full of interest," said Redwood. "Interest is food for a child, and blankness torture and starvation. He must have pictures galore." There were no pictures hung about the room for any permanent service, however, but blank frames were provided into which new pictures would come and pass thence into a portfolio so soon as their fresh interest had passed. There was one window that looked down the length of a street, and in addition, for an added interest, Redwood had contrived above the roof of the nursery a camera obscura that watched the Kensington High Street and not a little of the Gardens. In one corner that most worthy implement, an Abacus, four feet square, a specially strengthened piece of ironmongery with rounded corners, awaited the young giants' incipient computations. There were few woolly lambs and such-like idols, but instead Cossar, without explanation, had brought one day in three four-wheelers a great number of toys (all just too big for the coming children to swallow) that could be piled up, arranged in rows, rolled about, bitten, made to flap and rattle, smacked together, felt over, pulled out, opened, closed, and mauled and experimented with to an interminable extent. There were many bricks of wood in diverse colours, oblong and cuboid, bricks of polished china, bricks of transparent glass and bricks of india-rubber; there were slabs and slates; there were cones, truncated cones, and cylinders; there were oblate and prolate spheroids, balls of varied substances, solid and hollow, many boxes of diverse size and shape, with hinged lids and screw lids and fitting lids, and one or two to catch and lock; there were bands of elastic and leather, and a number of rough and sturdy little objects of a size together that could stand up steadily and suggest the shape of a man. "Give 'em these," said Cossar. "One at a time." These things Redwood arranged in a locker in one corner. Along one side of the room, at a convenient height for a six-or eight-foot child, there was a blackboard, on which the youngsters might flourish in white and coloured chalk, and near by a sort of drawing block, from which sheet after sheet might be torn, and on which they could draw in charcoal, and a little desk there was, furnished with great carpenter's pencils of varying hardness and a copious supply of paper, on which the boys might first scribble and then draw more neatly. And moreover Redwood gave orders, so far ahead did his imagination go, for specially large tubes of liquid paint and boxes of pastels against the time when they should be needed. He laid in a cask or so of plasticine and modelling clay. "At first he and his tutor shall model together," he said, "and when he is more skilful he shall copy casts and perhaps animals. And that reminds me, I must also have made for him a box of tools! "Then books. I shall have to look out a lot of books to put in his way, and they'll have to be big type. Now what sort of books will he need? There is his imagination to be fed. That, after all, is the crown of every education. The crown--as sound habits of mind and conduct are the throne. No imagination at all is brutality; a base imagination is lust and cowardice; but a noble imagination is God walking the earth again. He must dream too of a dainty fairy-land and of all the quaint little things of life, in due time. But he must feed chiefly on the splendid real; he shall have stories of travel through all the world, travels and adventures and how the world was won; he shall have stories of beasts, great books splendidly and clearly done of animals and birds and plants and creeping things, great books about the deeps of the sky and the mystery of the sea; he shall have histories and maps of all the empires the world has seen, pictures and stories of all the tribes and habits and customs of men. And he must have books and pictures to quicken his sense of beauty, subtle Japanese pictures to make him love the subtler beauties of bird and tendril and falling flower, and western pictures too, pictures of gracious men and women, sweet groupings, and broad views of land and sea. He shall have books on the building of houses and palaces; he shall plan rooms and invent cities-- "I think I must give him a little theatre. "Then there is music!" Redwood thought that over, and decided that his son might best begin with a very pure-sounding harmonicon of one octave, to which afterwards there could be an extension. "He shall play with this first, sing to it and give names to the notes," said Redwood, "and afterwards--?" He stared up at the window-sill overhead and measured the size of the room with his eye. "They'll have to build his piano in here," he said. "Bring it in in pieces." He hovered about amidst his preparations, a pensive, dark, little figure. If you could have seen him there he would have looked to you like a ten-inch man amidst common nursery things. A great rug--indeed it was a Turkey carpet--four hundred square feet of it, upon which young Redwood was soon to crawl--stretched to the grill-guarded electric radiator that was to warm the whole place. A man from Cossar's hung amidst scaffolding overhead, fixing the great frame that was to hold the transitory pictures. A blotting-paper book for plant specimens as big as a house door leant against the wall, and from it projected a gigantic stalk, a leaf edge or so and one flower of chickweed, all of that gigantic size that was soon to make Urshot famous throughout the botanical world ... A sort of incredulity came to Redwood as he stood among these things. "If it really _is_ going on--" said Redwood, staring up at the remote ceiling. From far away came a sound like the bellowing of a Mafficking bull, almost as if in answer. "It's going on all right," said Redwood. "Evidently." There followed resounding blows upon a table, followed by a vast crowing shout, "Gooloo! Boozoo! Bzz ..." "The best thing I can do," said Redwood, following out some divergent line of thought, "is to teach him myself." That beating became more insistent. For a moment it seemed to Redwood that it caught the rhythm of an engine's throbbing--the engine he could have imagined of some great train of events that bore down upon him. Then a descendant flight of sharper beats broke up that effect, and were repeated. "Come in," he cried, perceiving that some one rapped, and the door that was big enough for a cathedral opened slowly a little way. The new winch ceased to creak, and Bensington appeared in the crack, gleaming benevolently under his protruded baldness and over his glasses. "I've ventured round to _see_," he whispered in a confidentially furtive manner. "Come in," said Redwood, and he did, shutting the door behind him. He walked forward, hands behind his back, advanced a few steps, and peered up with a bird-like movement at the dimensions about him. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Every time I come in," he said, with a subdued note in his voice, "it strikes me as--'_Big_.'" "Yes," said Redwood, surveying it all again also, as if in an endeavour to keep hold of the visible impression. "Yes. They're going to be big too, you know." "I know," said Bensington, with a note that was nearly awe. "_Very_ big." They looked at one another, almost, as it were, apprehensively. "Very big indeed," said Bensington, stroking the bridge of his nose, and with one eye that watched Redwood doubtfully for a confirmatory expression. "All of them, you know--fearfully big. I don't seem able to imagine--even with this--just how big they're all going to be." CHAPTER THE FIFTH. THE MINIMIFICENCE OF MR. BENSINGTON. I. It was while the Royal Commission on Boomfood was preparing its report that Herakleophorbia really began to demonstrate its capacity for leakage. And the earliness of this second outbreak was the more unfortunate, from the point of view of Cossar at any rate, since the draft report still in existence shows that the Commission had, under the tutelage of that most able member, Doctor Stephen Winkles (F.R.S. M.D. F.R.C.P. D. Sc. J.P. D.L. etc.), already quite made up its mind that accidental leakages were impossible, and was prepared to recommend that to entrust the preparation of Boomfood to a qualified committee (Winkles chiefly), with an entire control over its sale, was quite enough to satisfy all reasonable objections to its free diffusion. This committee was to have an absolute monopoly. And it is, no doubt, to be considered as a part of the irony of life that the first and most alarming of this second series of leakages occurred within fifty yards of a little cottage at Keston occupied during the summer months by Doctor Winkles. There can be little doubt now that Redwood's refusal to acquaint Winkles with the composition of Herakleophorbia IV. had aroused in that gentleman a novel and intense desire towards analytical chemistry. He was not a very expert manipulator, and for that reason probably he saw fit to do his work not in the excellently equipped laboratories that were at his disposal in London, but without consulting any one, and almost with an air of secrecy, in a rough little garden laboratory at the Keston establishment. He does not seem to have shown either very great energy or very great ability in this quest; indeed one gathers he dropped the inquiry after working at it intermittently for about a month. This garden laboratory, in which the work was done, was very roughly equipped, supplied by a standpipe tap with water, and draining into a pipe that ran down into a swampy rush-bordered pool under an alder tree in a secluded corner of the common just outside the garden hedge. The pipe was cracked, and the residuum of the Food of the Gods escaped through the crack into a little puddle amidst clumps of rushes, just in time for the spring awakening. Everything was astir with life in that scummy little corner. There was frog spawn adrift, tremulous with tadpoles just bursting their gelatinous envelopes; there were little pond snails creeping out into life, and under the green skin of the rush stems the larvae of a big Water Beetle were struggling out of their egg cases. I doubt if the reader knows the larva of the beetle called (I know not why) Dytiscus. It is a jointed, queer-looking thing, very muscular and sudden in its movements, and given to swimming head downward with its tail out of water; the length of a man's top thumb joint it is, and more--two inches, that is for those who have not eaten the Food--and it has two sharp jaws that meet in front of its head--tubular jaws with sharp points--through which its habit is to suck its victim's blood ... The first things to get at the drifting grains of the Food were the little tadpoles and the little water snails; the little wriggling tadpoles in particular, once they had the taste of it, took to it with zest. But scarcely did one of them begin to grow into a conspicuous position in that little tadpole world and try a smaller brother or so as an aid to a vegetarian dietary, when nip! one of the Beetle larvae had its curved bloodsucking prongs gripping into his heart, and with that red stream went Herakleophorbia IV, in a state of solution, into the being of a new client. The only thing that had a chance with these monsters to get any share of the Food were the rushes and slimy green scum in the water and the seedling weeds in the mud at the bottom. A clean up of the study presently washed a fresh spate of the Food into the puddle, and overflowed it, and carried all this sinister expansion of the struggle for life into the adjacent pool under the roots of the alder... The first person to discover what was going on was a Mr. Lukey Carrington, a special science teacher under the London Education Board, and, in his leisure, a specialist in fresh-water algae, and he is certainly not to be envied his discovery. He had come down to Keston Common for the day to fill a number of specimen tubes for subsequent examination, and he came, with a dozen or so of corked tubes clanking faintly in his pocket, over the sandy crest and down towards the pool, spiked walking stick in hand. A garden lad standing on the top of the kitchen steps clipping Doctor Winkles' hedge saw him in this unfrequented corner, and found him and his occupation sufficiently inexplicable and interesting to watch him pretty closely. He saw Mr. Carrington stoop down by the side of the pool, with his hand against the old alder stem, and peer into the water, but of course he could not appreciate the surprise and pleasure with which Mr. Carrington beheld the big unfamiliar-looking blobs and threads of the algal scum at the bottom. There were no tadpoles visible--they had all been killed by that time--and it would seem Mr. Carrington saw nothing at all unusual except the excessive vegetation. He bared his arm to the elbow, leant forward, and dipped deep in pursuit of a specimen. His seeking hand went down. Instantly there flashed out of the cool shadow under the tree roots something-- Flash! It had buried its fangs deep into his arm--a bizarre shape it was, a foot long and more, brown and jointed like a scorpion. Its ugly apparition and the sharp amazing painfulness of its bite were too much for Mr. Carrington's equilibrium. He felt himself going, and yelled aloud. Over he toppled, face foremost, splash! into the pool. The boy saw him vanish, and heard the splashing of his struggle in the water. The unfortunate man emerged again into the boy's field of vision, hatless and streaming with water, and screaming! Never before had the boy heard screams from a man. This astonishing stranger appeared to be tearing at something on the side of his face. There appeared streaks of blood there. He flung out his arms as if in despair, leapt in the air like a frantic creature, ran violently ten or twelve yards, and then fell and rolled on the ground and over and out of sight of the boy. The lad was down the steps and through the hedge in a trice--happily with the garden shears still in hand. As he came crashing through the gorse bushes, he says he was half minded to turn back, fearing he had to deal with a lunatic, but the possession of the shears reassured him. "I could 'ave jabbed his eyes," he explained, "anyhow." Directly Mr. Carrington caught sight of him, his demeanour became at once that of a sane but desperate man. He struggled to his feet, stumbled, stood up, and came to meet the boy. "Look!" he cried, "I can't get 'em off!" And with a qualm of horror the boy saw that, attached to Mr. Carrington's cheek, to his bare arm, and to his thigh, and lashing furiously with their lithe brown muscular bodies, were three of these horrible larvae, their great jaws buried deep in his flesh and sucking for dear life. They had the grip of bulldogs, and Mr. Carrington's efforts to detach the monsters from his face had only served to lacerate the flesh to which it had attached itself, and streak face and neck and coat with living scarlet. "I'll cut 'im," cried the boy; "'old on, Sir." And with the zest of his age in such proceedings, he severed one by one the heads from the bodies of Mr. Carrington's assailants. "Yup," said the boy with a wincing face as each one fell before him. Even then, so tough and determined was their grip that the severed heads remained for a space, still fiercely biting home and still sucking, with the blood streaming out of their necks behind. But the boy stopped that with a few more slashes of his scissors--in one of which Mr. Carrington was implicated. "I couldn't get 'em off!" repeated Carrington, and stood for a space, swaying and bleeding profusely. He dabbed feeble hands at his injuries and examined the result upon his palms. Then he gave way at the knees and fell headlong in a dead faint at the boy's feet, between the still leaping bodies of his defeated foes. Very luckily it didn't occur to the boy to splash water on his face--for there were still more of these horrors under the alder roots--and instead he passed back by the pond and went into the garden with the intention of calling assistance. And there he met the gardener coachman and told him of the whole affair. When they got back to Mr. Carrington he was sitting up, dazed and weak, but able to warn them against the danger in the pool. II. Such were the circumstances by which the world had its first notification that the Food was loose again. In another week Keston Common was in full operation as what naturalists call a centre of distribution. This time there were no wasps or rats, no earwigs and no nettles, but there were at least three water-spiders, several dragon-fly larvae which presently became dragon-flies, dazzling all Kent with their hovering sapphire bodies, and a nasty gelatinous, scummy growth that swelled over the pond margin, and sent its slimy green masses surging halfway up the garden path to Doctor Winkles's house. And there began a growth of rushes and equisetum and potamogeton that ended only with the drying of the pond. It speedily became evident to the public mind that this time there was not simply one centre of distribution, but quite a number of centres. There was one at Ealing--there can be no doubt now--and from that came the plague of flies and red spider; there was one at Sunbury, productive of ferocious great eels, that could come ashore and kill sheep; and there was one in Bloomsbury that gave the world a new strain of cockroaches of a quite terrible sort--an old house it was in Bloomsbury, and much inhabited by undesirable things. Abruptly the world found itself confronted with the Hickleybrow experiences all over again, with all sorts of queer exaggerations of familiar monsters in the place of the giant hens and rats and wasps. Each centre burst out with its own characteristic local fauna and flora.... We know now that every one of these centres corresponded to one of the patients of Doctor Winkles, but that was by no means apparent at the time. Doctor Winkles was the last person to incur any odium in the matter. There was a panic quite naturally, a passionate indignation, but it was indignation not against Doctor Winkles but against the Food, and not so much against the Food as against the unfortunate Bensington, whom from the very first the popular imagination had insisted upon regarding as the sole and only person responsible for this new thing. The attempt to lynch him that followed is just one of those explosive events that bulk largely in history and are in reality the least significant of occurrences. The history of the outbreak is a mystery. The nucleus of the crowd certainly came from an Anti-Boomfood meeting in Hyde Park organised by extremists of the Caterham party, but there seems no one in the world who actually first proposed, no one who ever first hinted a suggestion of the outrage at which so many people assisted. It is a problem for M. Gustave le Bon--a mystery in the psychology of crowds. The fact emerges that about three o'clock on Sunday afternoon a remarkably big and ugly London crowd, entirely out of hand, came rolling down Thursday Street intent on Bensington's exemplary death as a warning to all scientific investigators, and that it came nearer accomplishing its object than any London crowd has ever come since the Hyde Park railings came down in remote middle Victorian times. This crowd came so close to its object indeed, that for the space of an hour or more a word would have settled the unfortunate gentleman's fate. The first intimation he had of the thing was the noise of the people outside. He went to the window and peered, realising nothing of what impended. For a minute perhaps he watched them seething about the entrance, disposing of an ineffectual dozen of policemen who barred their way, before he fully realised his own importance in the affair. It came upon him in a flash--that that roaring, swaying multitude was after him. He was all alone in the flat--fortunately perhaps--his cousin Jane having gone down to Ealing to have tea with a relation on her mother's side, and he had no more idea of how to behave under such circumstances than he had of the etiquette of the Day of Judgment. He was still dashing about the flat asking his furniture what he should do, turning keys in locks and then unlocking them again, making darts at door and window and bedroom--when the floor clerk came to him. "There isn't a moment, Sir," he said. "They've got your number from the board in the hall! They're coming straight up!" He ran Mr. Bensington out into the passage, already echoing with the approaching tumult from the great staircase, locked the door behind them, and led the way into the opposite flat by means of his duplicate key. "It's our only chance now," he said. He flung up a window which opened on a ventilating shaft, and showed that the wall was set with iron staples that made the rudest and most perilous of wall ladders to serve as a fire escape from the upper flats. He shoved Mr. Bensington out of the window, showed him how to cling on, and pursued him up the ladder, goading and jabbing his legs with a bunch of keys whenever he desisted from climbing. It seemed to Bensington at times that he must climb that vertical ladder for evermore. Above, the parapet was inaccessibly remote, a mile perhaps, below--He did not care to think of things below. "Steady on!" cried the clerk, and gripped his ankle. It was quite horrible having his ankle gripped like that, and Mr. Bensington tightened his hold on the iron staple above to a drowning clutch, and gave a faint squeal of terror. It became evident the clerk had broken a window, and then it seemed he had leapt a vast distance sideways, and there came the noise of a window-frame sliding in its sash. He was bawling things. Mr. Bensington moved his head round cautiously until he could see the clerk. "Come down six steps," the clerk commanded. All this moving about seemed very foolish, but very, very cautiously Mr. Bensington lowered a foot. "Don't pull me!" he cried, as the clerk made to help him from the open window. It seemed to him that to reach the window from the ladder would be a very respectable feat for a flying fox, and it was rather with the idea of a decent suicide than in any hope of accomplishing it that he made the step at last, and quite ruthlessly the clerk pulled him in. "You'll have to stop here," said the clerk; "my keys are no good here. It's an American lock. I'll get out and slam the door behind me and see if I can find the man of this floor. You'll be locked in. Don't go to the window, that's all. It's the ugliest crowd I've ever seen. If only they think you're out they'll probably content themselves by breaking up your stuff--" "The indicator said In," said Bensington. "The devil it did! Well, anyhow, I'd better not be found--" He vanished with a slam of the door. Bensington was left to his own initiative again. It took him under the bed. There presently he was found by Cossar. Bensington was almost comatose with terror when he was found, for Cossar had burst the door in with his shoulder by jumping at it across the breadth of the passage. "Come out of it, Bensington," he said. "It's all right. It's me. We've got to get out of this. They're setting the place on fire. The porters are all clearing out. The servants are gone. It's lucky I caught the man who knew. "Look here!" Bensington, peering from under the bed, became aware of some unaccountable garments on Cossar's arm, and, of all things, a black bonnet in his hand! "They're having a clear out," said Cossar, "If they don't set the place on fire they'll come here. Troops may not be here for an hour yet. Fifty per cent. Hooligans in the crowd, and the more furnished flats they go into the better they'll like it. Obviously.... They mean a clear out. You put this skirt and bonnet on, Bensington, and clear out with me." "D'you _mean_--?" began Bensington, protruding a head, tortoise fashion. "I mean, put 'em on and come! Obviously," And with a sudden vehemence he dragged Bensington from under the bed, and began to dress him for his new impersonation of an elderly woman of the people. He rolled up his trousers and made him kick off his slippers, took off his collar and tie and coat and vest, slipped a black skirt over his head, and put on a red flannel bodice and a body over the same. He made him take off his all too characteristic spectacles, and clapped the bonnet on his head. "You might have been born an old woman," he said as he tied the strings. Then came the spring-side boots--a terrible wrench for corns--and the shawl, and the disguise was complete. "Up and down," said Cossar, and Bensington obeyed. "You'll do," said Cossar. And in this guise it was, stumbling awkwardly over his unaccustomed skirts, shouting womanly imprecations upon his own head in a weird falsetto to sustain his part, and to the roaring note of a crowd bent upon lynching him, that the original discoverer of Herakleophorbia IV. proceeded down the corridor of Chesterfield Mansions, mingled with that inflamed disorderly multitude, and passed out altogether from the thread of events that constitutes our story. Never once after that escape did he meddle again with the stupendous development of the Food of the Gods he of all men had done most to begin. III. This little man who started the whole thing passes out of the story, and after a time he passed altogether out of the world of things, visible and tellable. But because he started the whole thing it is seemly to give his exit an intercalary page of attention. One may picture him in his later days as Tunbridge Wells came to know him. For it was at Tunbridge Wells he reappeared after a temporary obscurity, so soon as he fully realised how transitory, how quite exceptional and unmeaning that fury of rioting was. He reappeared under the wing of Cousin Jane, treating himself for nervous shock to the exclusion of all other interests, and totally indifferent, as it seemed, to the battles that were raging then about those new centres of distribution, and about the baby Children of the Food. He took up his quarters at the Mount Glory Hydrotherapeutic Hotel, where there are quite extraordinary facilities for baths, Carbonated Baths, Creosote Baths, Galvanic and Faradic Treatment, Massage, Pine Baths, Starch and Hemlock Baths, Radium Baths, Light Baths, Heat Baths, Bran and Needle Baths, Tar and Birdsdown Baths,--all sorts of baths; and he devoted his mind to the development of that system of curative treatment that was still imperfect when he died. And sometimes he would go down in a hired vehicle and a sealskin trimmed coat, and sometimes, when his feet permitted, he would walk to the Pantiles, and there he would sip chalybeate water under the eye of his cousin Jane. His stooping shoulders, his pink appearance, his beaming glasses, became a "feature" of Tunbridge Wells. No one was the least bit unkind to him, and indeed the place and the Hotel seemed very glad to have the distinction of his presence. Nothing could rob him of that distinction now. And though he preferred not to follow the development of his great invention in the daily papers, yet when he crossed the Lounge of the Hotel or walked down the Pantiles and heard the whisper, "There he is! That's him!" it was not dissatisfaction that softened his mouth and gleamed for a moment in his eye. This little figure, this minute little figure, launched the Food of the Gods upon the world! One does not know which is the most amazing, the greatness or the littleness of these scientific and philosophical men. You figure him there on the Pantiles, in the overcoat trimmed with fur. He stands under that chinaware window where the spring spouts, and holds and sips the glass of chalybeate water in his hand. One bright eye over the gilt rim is fixed, with an expression of inscrutable severity, on Cousin Jane. "Mm," he says, and sips. So we make our souvenir, so we focus and photograph this discoverer of ours for the last time, and leave him, a mere dot in our foreground, and pass to the greater picture that has developed about him, to the story of his Food, how the scattered Giant Children grew up day by day into a world that was all too small for them, and how the net of Boomfood Laws and Boomfood Conventions, which the Boomfood Commission was weaving even then, drew closer and closer upon them with every year of their growth, Until-- BOOK II THE FOOD IN THE VILLAGE. CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE COMING OF THE FOOD. I. Our theme, which began so compactly in Mr. Bensington's study, has already spread and branched, until it points this way and that, and henceforth our whole story is one of dissemination. To follow the Food of the Gods further is to trace the ramifications of a perpetually branching tree; in a little while, in the quarter of a lifetime, the Food had trickled and increased from its first spring in the little farm near Hickleybrow until it had spread,--it and the report and shadow of its power,--throughout the world. It spread beyond England very speedily. Soon in America, all over the continent of Europe, in Japan, in Australia, at last all over the world, the thing was working towards its appointed end. Always it worked slowly, by indirect courses and against resistance. It was bigness insurgent. In spite of prejudice, in spite of law and regulation, in spite of all that obstinate conservatism that lies at the base of the formal order of mankind, the Food of the Gods, once it had been set going, pursued its subtle and invincible progress. The children of the Food grew steadily through all these years; that was the cardinal fact of the time. But it is the leakages make history. The children who had eaten grew, and soon there were other children growing; and all the best intentions in the world could not stop further leakages and still further leakages. The Food insisted on escaping with the pertinacity of a thing alive. Flour treated with the stuff crumbled in dry weather almost as if by intention into an impalpable powder, and would lift and travel before the lightest breeze. Now it would be some fresh insect won its way to a temporary fatal new development, now some fresh outbreak from the sewers of rats and such-like vermin. For some days the village of Pangbourne in Berkshire fought with giant ants. Three men were bitten and died. There would be a panic, there would be a struggle, and the salient evil would be fought down again, leaving always something behind, in the obscurer things of life--changed for ever. Then again another acute and startling outbreak, a swift upgrowth of monstrous weedy thickets, a drifting dissemination about the world of inhumanly growing thistles, of cockroaches men fought with shot guns, or a plague of mighty flies. There were some strange and desperate struggles in obscure places. The Food begot heroes in the cause of littleness ... And men took such happenings into their lives, and met them by the expedients of the moment, and told one another there was "no change in the essential order of things." After the first great panic, Caterham, in spite of his power of eloquence, became a secondary figure in the political world, remained in men's minds as the exponent of an extreme view. Only slowly did he win a way towards a central position in affairs. "There was no change in the essential order of things,"--that eminent leader of modern thought, Doctor Winkles, was very clear upon this,--and the exponents of what was called in those days Progressive Liberalism grew quite sentimental upon the essential insincerity of their progress. Their dreams, it would appear, ran wholly on little nations, little languages, little households, each self-supported on its little farm. A fashion for the small and neat set in. To be big was to be "vulgar," and dainty, neat, mignon, miniature, "minutely perfect," became the key-words of critical approval.... Meanwhile, quietly, taking their time as children must, the children of the Food, growing into a world that changed to receive them, gathered strength and stature and knowledge, became individual and purposeful, rose slowly towards the dimensions of their destiny. Presently they seemed a natural part of the world; all these stirrings of bigness seemed a natural part of the world, and men wondered how things had been before their time. There came to men's ears stories of things the giant boys could do, and they said "Wonderful!"--without a spark of wonder. The popular papers would tell of the three sons of Cossar, and how these amazing children would lift great cannons, hurl masses of iron for hundreds of yards, and leap two hundred feet. They were said to be digging a well, deeper than any well or mine that man had ever made, seeking, it was said, for treasures hidden in the earth since ever the earth began. These Children, said the popular magazines, will level mountains, bridge seas, tunnel your earth to a honeycomb. "Wonderful!" said the little folks, "isn't it? What a lot of conveniences we shall have!" and went about their business as though there was no such thing as the Food of the Gods on earth. And indeed these things were no more than the first hints and promises of the powers of the Children of the Food. It was still no more than child's play with them, no more than the first use of a strength in which no purpose had arisen. They did not know themselves for what they were. They were children--slow-growing children of a new race. The giant strength grew day by day--the giant will had still to grow into purpose and an aim. Looking at it in a shortened perspective of time, those years of transition have the quality of a single consecutive occurrence; but indeed no one saw the coming of Bigness in the world, as no one in all the world till centuries had passed saw, as one happening, the Decline and Fall of Rome. They who lived in those days were too much among these developments to see them together as a single thing. It seemed even to wise men that the Food was giving the world nothing but a crop of unmanageable, disconnected irrelevancies, that might shake and trouble indeed, but could do no more to the established order and fabric of mankind. To one observer at least the most wonderful thing throughout that period of accumulating stress is the invincible inertia of the great mass of people, their quiet persistence in all that ignored the enormous presences, the promise of still more enormous things, that grew among them. Just as many a stream will be at its smoothest, will look most tranquil, running deep and strong, at the very verge of a cataract, so all that is most conservative in man seemed settling quietly into a serene ascendency during these latter days. Reaction became popular: there was talk of the bankruptcy of science, of the dying of Progress, of the advent of the Mandarins,--talk of such things amidst the echoing footsteps of the Children of the Food. The fussy pointless Revolutions of the old time, a vast crowd of silly little people chasing some silly little monarch and the like, had indeed died out and passed away; but Change had not died out. It was only Change that had changed. The New was coming in its own fashion and beyond the common understanding of the world. To tell fully of its coming would be to write a great history, but everywhere there was a parallel chain of happenings. To tell therefore of the manner of its coming in one place is to tell something of the whole. It chanced one stray seed of Immensity fell into the pretty, petty village of Cheasing Eyebright in Kent, and from the story of its queer germination there and of the tragic futility that ensued, one may attempt--following one thread, as it were--to show the direction in which the whole great interwoven fabric of the thing rolled off the loom of Time. II. Cheasing Eyebright had of course a Vicar. There are vicars and vicars, and of all sorts I love an innovating vicar--a piebald progressive professional reactionary--the least. But the Vicar of Cheasing Eyebright was one of the least innovating of vicars, a most worthy, plump, ripe, and conservative-minded little man. It is becoming to go back a little in our story to tell of him. He matched his village, and one may figure them best together as they used to be, on the sunset evening when Mrs. Skinner--you will remember her flight!--brought the Food with her all unsuspected into these rustic serenities. The village was looking its very best just then, under that western light. It lay down along the valley beneath the beechwoods of the Hanger, a beading of thatched and red-tiled cottages--cottages with trellised porches and pyracanthus-lined faces, that clustered closer and closer as the road dropped from the yew trees by the church towards the bridge. The vicarage peeped not too ostentatiously between the trees beyond the inn, an early Georgian front ripened by time, and the spire of the church rose happily in the depression made by the valley in the outline of the hills. A winding stream, a thin intermittency of sky blue and foam, glittered amidst a thick margin of reeds and loosestrife and overhanging willows, along the centre of a sinuous pennant of meadow. The whole prospect had that curiously English quality of ripened cultivation--that look of still completeness--that apes perfection, under the sunset warmth. And the Vicar too looked mellow. He looked habitually and essentially mellow, as though he had been a mellow baby born into a mellow class, a ripe and juicy little boy. One could see, even before he mentioned it, that he had gone to an ivy-clad public school in its anecdotage, with magnificent traditions, aristocratic associations, and no chemical laboratories, and proceeded thence to a venerable college in the very ripest Gothic. Few books he had younger than a thousand years; of these, Yarrow and Ellis and good pre-Methodist sermons made the bulk. He was a man of moderate height, a little shortened in appearance by his equatorial dimensions, and a face that had been mellow from the first was now climacterically ripe. The beard of a David hid his redundancy of chin; he wore no watch chain out of refinements and his modest clerical garments were made by a West End tailor.... And he sat with a hand on either shin, blinking at his village in beatific approval. He waved a plump palm towards it. His burthen sang out again. What more could any one desire? "We are fortunately situated," he said, putting the thing tamely. "We are in a fastness of the hills," he expanded. He explained himself at length. "We are out of it all." For they had been talking, he and his friend, of the Horrors of the Age, of Democracy, and Secular Education, and Sky Scrapers, and Motor Cars, and the American Invasion, the Scrappy Reading of the Public, and the disappearance of any Taste at all. "We are out of it all," he repeated, and even as he spoke the footsteps of some one coming smote upon his ear, and he rolled over and regarded her. You figure the old woman's steadfastly tremulous advance, the bundle clutched in her gnarled lank hand, her nose (which was her countenance) wrinkled with breathless resolution. You see the poppies nodding fatefully on her bonnet, and the dust-white spring-sided boots beneath her skimpy skirts, pointing with an irrevocable slow alternation east and west. Beneath her arm, a restive captive, waggled and slipped a scarcely valuable umbrella. What was there to tell the Vicar that this grotesque old figure was--so far as his village was concerned at any rate--no less than Fruitful Chance and the Unforeseen, the Hag weak men call Fate. But for us, you understand, no more than Mrs. Skinner. As she was too much encumbered for a curtsey, she pretended not to see him and his friend at all, and so passed, flip-flop, within three yards of them, onward down towards the village. The Vicar watched her slow transit in silence, and ripened a remark the while.... The incident seemed to him of no importance whatever. Old womankind, _aere perennius_, has carried bundles since the world began. What difference has it made? "We are out of it all," said the Vicar. "We live in an atmosphere of simple and permanent things, Birth and Toil, simple seed-time and simple harvest. The Uproar passes us by." He was always very great upon what he called the permanent things. "Things change," he would say, "but Humanity--_aere perennius_." Thus the Vicar. He loved a classical quotation subtly misapplied. Below, Mrs. Skinner, inelegant but resolute, had involved herself curiously with Wilmerding's stile. III. No one knows what the Vicar made of the Giant Puff-Balls. No doubt he was among the first to discover them. They were scattered at intervals up and down the path between the near down and the village end--a path he frequented daily in his constitutional round. Altogether, of these abnormal fungi there were, from first to last, quite thirty. The Vicar seems to have stared at each severally, and to have prodded most of them with his stick once or twice. One he attempted to measure with his arms, but it burst at his Ixion embrace. He spoke to several people about them, and said they were "marvellous!" and he related to at least seven different persons the well-known story of the flagstone that was lifted from the cellar floor by a growth of fungi beneath. He looked up his Sowerby to see if it was _Lycoperdon coelatum_ or _giganteum_--like all his kind since Gilbert White became famous, he Gilbert-Whited. He cherished a theory that _giganteum_ is unfairly named. One does not know if he observed that those white spheres lay in the very track that old woman of yesterday had followed, or if he noted that the last of the series swelled not a score of yards from the gate of the Caddles' cottage. If he observed these things, he made no attempt to place his observation on record. His observation in matters botanical was what the inferior sort of scientific people call a "trained observation"--you look for certain definite things and neglect everything else. And he did nothing to link this phenomenon with the remarkable expansion of the Caddles' baby that had been going on now for some weeks, indeed ever since Caddles walked over one Sunday afternoon a month or more ago to see his mother-in-law and hear Mr. Skinner (since defunct) brag about his management of hens. IV. The growth of the puff-balls following on the expansion of the Caddles' baby really ought to have opened the Vicar's eyes. The latter fact had already come right into his arms at the christening--almost over-poweringly.... The youngster bawled with deafening violence when the cold water that sealed its divine inheritance and its right to the name of "Albert Edward Caddles" fell upon its brow. It was already beyond maternal porterage, and Caddles, staggering indeed, but grinning triumphantly at quantitatively inferior parents, bore it back to the free-sitting occupied by his party. "I never saw such a child!" said the Vicar. This was the first public intimation that the Caddles' baby, which had begun its earthly career a little under seven pounds, did after all intend to be a credit to its parents. Very soon it was clear it meant to be not only a credit but a glory. And within a month their glory shone so brightly as to be, in connection with people in the Caddles' position, improper. The butcher weighed the infant eleven times. He was a man of few words, and he soon got through with them. The first time he said, "E's a good un;" the next time he said, "My word!" the third time he said, "_Well_, mum," and after that he simply blew enormously each time, scratched his head, and looked at his scales with an unprecedented mistrust. Every one came to see the Big Baby--so it was called by universal consent--and most of them said, "E's a Bouncer," and almost all remarked to him, "_Did_ they?" Miss Fletcher came and said she "never _did_," which was perfectly true. Lady Wondershoot, the village tyrant, arrived the day after the third weighing, and inspected the phenomenon narrowly through glasses that filled it with howling terror. "It's an unusually Big child," she told its mother, in a loud instructive voice. "You ought to take unusual care of it, Caddles. Of course it won't go on like this, being bottle fed, but we must do what we can for it. I'll send you down some more flannel." The doctor came and measured the child with a tape, and put the figures in a notebook, and old Mr. Drifthassock, who farmed by Up Marden, brought a manure traveller two miles out of their way to look at it. The traveller asked the child's age three times over, and said finally that he was blowed. He left it to be inferred how and why he was blowed; apparently it was the child's size blowed him. He also said it ought to be put into a baby show. And all day long, out of school hours, little children kept coming and saying, "Please, Mrs. Caddles, mum, may we have a look at your baby, please, mum?" until Mrs. Caddles had to put a stop to it. And amidst all these scenes of amazement came Mrs. Skinner, and stood and smiled, standing somewhat in the background, with each sharp elbow in a lank gnarled hand, and smiling, smiling under and about her nose, with a smile of infinite profundity. "It makes even that old wretch of a grandmother look quite pleasant," said Lady Wondershoot. "Though I'm sorry she's come back to the village." Of course, as with almost all cottagers' babies, the eleemosynary element had already come in, but the child soon made it clear by colossal bawling, that so far as the filling of its bottle went, it hadn't come in yet nearly enough. The baby was entitled to a nine days' wonder, and every one wondered happily over its amazing growth for twice that time and more. And then you know, instead of its dropping into the background and giving place to other marvels, it went on growing more than ever! Lady Wondershoot heard Mrs. Greenfield, her housekeeper, with infinite amazement. "Caddles downstairs again. No food for the child! My dear Greenfield, it's impossible. The creature eats like a hippopotamus! I'm sure it can't be true." "I'm sure I hope you're not being imposed upon, my lady," said Mrs. Greenfield. "It's so difficult to tell with these people," said Lady Wondershoot. "Now I do wish, my good Greenfield, that you'd just go down there yourself this afternoon and _see_--see it have its bottle. Big as it is, I cannot imagine that it needs more than six pints a day." "It hasn't no business to, my lady," said Mrs. Greenfield. The hand of Lady Wondershoot quivered, with that C.O.S. sort of emotion, that suspicious rage that stirs in all true aristocrats, at the thought that possibly the meaner classes are after all--as mean as their betters, and--where the sting lies--scoring points in the game. But Mrs. Greenfield could observe no evidence of peculation, and the order for an increasing daily supply to the Caddles' nursery was issued. Scarcely had the first instalment gone, when Caddles was back again at the great house in a state abjectly apologetic. "We took the greates' care of 'em, Mrs. Greenfield, I do assure you, mum, but he's regular bust 'em! They flew with such vilence, mum, that one button broke a pane of the window, mum, and one hit me a regular stinger jest 'ere, mum." Lady Wondershoot, when she heard that this amazing child had positively burst out of its beautiful charity clothes, decided that she must speak to Caddles herself. He appeared in her presence with his hair hastily wetted and smoothed by hand, breathless, and clinging to his hat brim as though it was a life-belt, and he stumbled at the carpet edge out of sheer distress of mind. Lady Wondershoot liked bullying Caddles. Caddles was her ideal lower-class person, dishonest, faithful, abject, industrious, and inconceivably incapable of responsibility. She told him it was a serious matter, the way his child was going on. "It's 'is appetite, my ladyship," said Caddles, with a rising note. "Check 'im, my ladyship, you can't," said Caddles. "There 'e lies, my ladyship, and kicks out 'e does, and 'owls, that distressin'. We 'aven't the 'eart, my ladyship. If we 'ad--the neighbours would interfere...." Lady Wondershoot consulted the parish doctor. "What I want to know," said Lady Wondershoot, "is it _right_ this child should have such an extraordinary quantity of milk?" "The proper allowance for a child of that age," said the parish doctor, "is a pint and a half to two pints in the twenty-four hours. I don't see that you are called upon to provide more. If you do, it is your own generosity. Of course we might try the legitimate quantity for a few days. But the child, I must admit, seems for some reason to be physiologically different. Possibly what is called a Sport. A case of General Hypertrophy." "It isn't fair to the other parish children," said Lady Wondershoot. "I am certain we shall have complaints if this goes on." "I don't see that any one can be expected to give more than the recognised allowance. We might insist on its doing with that, or if it wouldn't, send it as a case into the Infirmary." "I suppose," said Lady Wondershoot, reflecting, "that apart from the size and the appetite, you don't find anything else abnormal--nothing monstrous?" "No. No, I don't. But no doubt if this growth goes on, we shall find grave moral and intellectual deficiencies. One might almost prophesy that from Max Nordau's law. A most gifted and celebrated philosopher, Lady Wondershoot. He discovered that the abnormal is--abnormal, a most valuable discovery, and well worth bearing in mind. I find it of the utmost help in practice. When I come upon anything abnormal, I say at once, This is abnormal." His eyes became profound, his voice dropped, his manner verged upon the intimately confidential. He raised one hand stiffly. "And I treat it in that spirit," he said. V. "Tut, tut!" said the Vicar to his breakfast things--the day after the coming of Mrs. Skinner. "Tut, tut! what's this?" and poised his glasses at his paper with a general air of remonstrance. "Giant wasps! What's the world coming to? American journalists, I suppose! Hang these Novelties! Giant gooseberries are good enough for me. "Nonsense!" said the Vicar, and drank off his coffee at a gulp, eyes steadfast on the paper, and smacked his lips incredulously. "Bosh!" said the Vicar, rejecting the hint altogether. But the next day there was more of it, and the light came. Not all at once, however. When he went for his constitutional that day he was still chuckling at the absurd story his paper would have had him believe. Wasps indeed--killing a dog! Incidentally as he passed by the site of that first crop of puff-balls he remarked that the grass was growing very rank there, but he did not connect that in any way with the matter of his amusement. "We should certainly have heard something of it," he said; "Whitstable can't be twenty miles from here." Beyond he found another puff-ball, one of the second crop, rising like a roc's egg out of the abnormally coarsened turf. The thing came upon him in a flash. He did not take his usual round that morning. Instead he turned aside by the second stile and came round to the Caddles' cottage. "Where's that baby?" he demanded, and at the sight of it, "Goodness me!" He went up the village blessing his heart, and met the doctor full tilt coming down. He grasped his arm. "What does this _mean_?" he said. "Have you seen the paper these last few days?" The doctor said he had. "Well, what's the matter with that child? What's the matter with everything--wasps, puff-balls, babies, eh? What's making them grow so big? This is most unexpected. In Kent too! If it was America now--" "It's a little difficult to say just what it is," said the doctor. "So far as I can grasp the symptoms--" "Yes?" "It's Hypertrophy--General Hypertrophy." "Hypertrophy?" "Yes. General--affecting all the bodily structures--all the organism. I may say that in my own mind, between ourselves, I'm very nearly convinced it's that.... But one has to be careful." "Ah," said the Vicar, a good deal relieved to find the doctor equal to the situation. "But how is it it's breaking out in this fashion, all over the place?" "That again," said the doctor, "is difficult to say." "Urshot. Here. It's a pretty clear case of spreading." "Yes," said the doctor. "Yes. I think so. It has a strong resemblance at any rate to some sort of epidemic. Probably Epidemic Hypertrophy will meet the case." "Epidemic!" said the Vicar. "You don't mean it's contagious?" The doctor smiled gently and rubbed one hand against the other. "That I couldn't say," he said. "But---!" cried the Vicar, round-eyed. "If it's _catching_--it--it affects _us!_" He made a stride up the road and turned about. "I've just been there," he cried. "Hadn't I better---? I'll go home at once and have a bath and fumigate my clothes." The doctor regarded his retreating back for a moment, and then turned about and went towards his own house.... But on the way he reflected that one case had been in the village a month without any one catching the disease, and after a pause of hesitation decided to be as brave as a doctor should be and take the risks like a man. And indeed he was well advised by his second thoughts. Growth was the last thing that could ever happen to him again. He could have eaten--and the Vicar could have eaten--Herakleophorbia by the truckful. For growth had done with them. Growth had done with these two gentlemen for evermore. VI. It was a day or so after this conversation--a day or so, that is, after the burning of the Experimental Farm--that Winkles came to Redwood and showed him an insulting letter. It was an anonymous letter, and an author should respect his character's secrets. "You are only taking credit for a natural phenomenon," said the letter, "and trying to advertise yourself by your letter to the _Times_. You and your Boomfood! Let me tell you, this absurdly named food of yours has only the most accidental connection with those big wasps and rats. The plain fact is there is an epidemic of Hypertrophy--Contagious Hypertrophy--which you have about as much claim to control as you have to control the solar system. The thing is as old as the hills. There was Hypertrophy in the family of Anak. Quite outside your range, at Cheasing Eyebright, at the present time there is a baby--" "Shaky up and down writing. Old gentleman apparently," said Redwood. "But it's odd a baby--" He read a few lines further, and had an inspiration. "By Jove!" said he. "That's my missing Mrs. Skinner!" He descended upon her suddenly in the afternoon of the following day. She was engaged in pulling onions in the little garden before her daughter's cottage when she saw him coming through the garden gate. She stood for a moment "consternated," as the country folks say, and then folded her arms, and with the little bunch of onions held defensively under her left elbow, awaited his approach. Her mouth opened and shut several times; she mumbled her remaining tooth, and once quite suddenly she curtsied, like the blink of an arc-light. "I thought I should find you," said Redwood. "I thought you might, sir," she said, without joy. "Where's Skinner?" "'E ain't never written to me, Sir, not once, nor come nigh of me since I came here. Sir." "Don't you know what's become of him?" "Him not having written, no, Sir," and she edged a step towards the left with an imperfect idea of cutting off Redwood from the barn door. "No one knows what has become of him," said Redwood. "I dessay '_e_ knows," said Mrs. Skinner. "He doesn't tell." "He was always a great one for looking after 'imself and leaving them that was near and dear to 'im in trouble, was Skinner. Though clever as could be," said Mrs. Skinner.... "Where's this child?" asked Redwood abruptly. She begged his pardon. "This child I hear about, the child you've been giving our stuff to--the child that weighs two stone." Mrs. Skinner's hands worked, and she dropped the onions. "Reely, Sir," she protested, "I don't hardly know, Sir, what you mean. My daughter, Sir, Mrs. Caddles, '_as_ a baby, Sir." And she made an agitated curtsey and tried to look innocently inquiring by tilting her nose to one side. "You'd better let me see that baby, Mrs. Skinner," said Redwood. Mrs. Skinner unmasked an eye at him as she led the way towards the barn. "Of course, Sir, there may 'ave been a _little_, in a little can of Nicey I give his father to bring over from the farm, or a little perhaps what I happened to bring about with me, so to speak. Me packing in a hurry and all ..." "Um!" said Redwood, after he had cluckered to the infant for a space. "Oom!" He told Mrs. Caddles the baby was a very fine child indeed, a thing that was getting well home to her intelligence--and he ignored her altogether after that. Presently she left the barn--through sheer insignificance. "Now you've started him, you'll have to keep on with him, you know," he said to Mrs. Skinner. He turned on her abruptly. "Don't splash it about _this_ time," he said. "Splash it about, Sir?" "Oh! _you_ know." She indicated knowledge by convulsive gestures. "You haven't told these people here? The parents, the squire and so on at the big house, the doctor, no one?" Mrs. Skinner shook her head. "I wouldn't," said Redwood.... He went to the door of the barn and surveyed the world about him. The door of the barn looked between the end of the cottage and some disused piggeries through a five-barred gate upon the highroad. Beyond was a high, red brick-wall rich with ivy and wallflower and pennywort, and set along the top with broken glass. Beyond the corner of the wall, a sunlit notice-board amidst green and yellow branches reared itself above the rich tones of the first fallen leaves and announced that "Trespassers in these Woods will be Prosecuted." The dark shadow of a gap in the hedge threw a stretch of barbed wire into relief. "Um," said Redwood, then in a deeper note, "Oom!" There came a clatter of horses and the sound of wheels, and Lady Wondershoot's greys came into view. He marked the faces of coachman and footman as the equipage approached. The coachman was a very fine specimen, full and fruity, and he drove with a sort of sacramental dignity. Others might doubt their calling and position in the world, he at any rate was sure--he drove her ladyship. The footman sat beside him with folded arms and a face of inflexible certainties. Then the great lady herself became visible, in a hat and mantle disdainfully inelegant, peering through her glasses. Two young ladies protruded necks and peered also. The Vicar passing on the other side swept off the hat from his David's brow unheeded.... Redwood remained standing in the doorway for a long time after the carriage had passed, his hands folded behind him. His eyes went to the green, grey upland of down, and into the cloud-curdled sky, and came back to the glass-set wall. He turned upon the cool shadows within, and amidst spots and blurs of colour regarded the giant child amidst that Rembrandtesque gloom, naked except for a swathing of flannel, seated upon a huge truss of straw and playing with its toes. "I begin to see what we have done," he said. He mused, and young Caddles and his own child and Cossar's brood mingled in his musing. He laughed abruptly. "Good Lord!" he said at some passing thought. He roused himself presently and addressed Mrs. Skinner. "Anyhow he mustn't be tortured by a break in his food. That at least we can prevent. I shall send you a can every six months. That ought to do for him all right." Mrs. Skinner mumbled something about "if you think so, Sir," and "probably got packed by mistake.... Thought no harm in giving him a little," and so by the aid of various aspen gestures indicated that she understood. So the child went on growing. And growing. "Practically," said Lady Wondershoot, "he's eaten up every calf in the place. If I have any more of this sort of thing from that man Caddles--" VII. But even so secluded a place as Cheasing Eyebright could not rest for long in the theory of Hypertrophy--Contagious or not--in view of the growing hubbub about the Food. In a little while there were painful explanations for Mrs. Skinner--explanations that reduced her to speechless mumblings of her remaining tooth--explanations that probed her and ransacked her and exposed her--until at last she was driven to take refuge from a universal convergence of blame in the dignity of inconsolable widowhood. She turned her eye--which she constrained to be watery--upon the angry Lady of the Manor, and wiped suds from her hands. "You forget, my lady, what I'm bearing up under." And she followed up this warning note with a slightly defiant: "It's 'IM I think of, my lady, night _and_ day." She compressed her lips, and her voice flattened and faltered: "Bein' et, my lady." And having established herself on these grounds, she repeated the affirmation her ladyship had refused before. "I 'ad no more idea what I was giving the child, my lady, than any one _could_ 'ave...." Her ladyship turned her mind in more hopeful directions, wigging Caddles of course tremendously by the way. Emissaries, full of diplomatic threatenings, entered the whirling lives of Bensington and Redwood. They presented themselves as Parish Councillors, stolid and clinging phonographically to prearranged statements. "We hold you responsible, Mister Bensington, for the injury inflicted upon our parish, Sir. We hold you responsible." A firm of solicitors, with a snake of a style--Banghurst, Brown, Flapp, Codlin, Brown, Tedder, and Snoxton, they called themselves, and appeared invariably in the form of a small rufous cunning-looking gentleman with a pointed nose--said vague things about damages, and there was a polished personage, her ladyship's agent, who came in suddenly upon Redwood one day and asked, "Well, Sir, and what do you propose to do?" To which Redwood answered that he proposed to discontinue supplying the food for the child, if he or Bensington were bothered any further about the matter. "I give it for nothing as it is," he said, "and the child will yell your village to ruins before it dies if you don't let it have the stuff. The child's on your hands, and you have to keep it. Lady Wondershoot can't always be Lady Bountiful and Earthly Providence of her parish without sometimes meeting a responsibility, you know." "The mischief's done," Lady Wondershoot decided when they told her--with expurgations--what Redwood had said. "The mischief's done," echoed the Vicar. Though indeed as a matter of fact the mischief was only beginning. CHAPTER THE SECOND. THE BRAT GIGANTIC. I. The giant child was ugly--the Vicar would insist. "He always had been ugly--as all excessive things must be." The Vicar's views had carried him out of sight of just judgment in this matter. The child was much subjected to snapshots even in that rustic retirement, and their net testimony is against the Vicar, testifying that the young monster was at first almost pretty, with a copious curl of hair reaching to his brow and a great readiness to smile. Usually Caddles, who was slightly built, stands smiling behind the baby, perspective emphasising his relative smallness. After the second year the good looks of the child became more subtle and more contestable. He began to grow, as his unfortunate grandfather would no doubt have put it, "rank." He lost colour and developed an increasing effect of being somehow, albeit colossal, yet slight. He was vastly delicate. His eyes and something about his face grew finer--grew, as people say, "interesting." His hair, after one cutting, began to tangle into a mat. "It's the degenerate strain coming out in him," said the parish doctor, marking these things, but just how far he was right in that, and just how far the youngster's lapse from ideal healthfulness was the result of living entirely in a whitewashed barn upon Lady Wondershoot's sense of charity tempered by justice, is open to question. The photographs of him that present him from three to six show him developing into a round-eyed, flaxen-haired youngster with a truncated nose and a friendly stare. There lurks about his lips that never very remote promise of a smile that all the photographs of the early giant children display. In summer he wears loose garments of ticking tacked together with string; there is usually one of those straw baskets upon his head that workmen use for their tools, and he is barefooted. In one picture he grins broadly and holds a bitten melon in his hand. The winter pictures are less numerous and satisfactory. He wears huge sabots--no doubt of beechwoods and (as fragments of the inscription "John Stickells, Iping," show) sacks for socks, and his trousers and jacket are unmistakably cut from the remains of a gaily patterned carpet. Underneath that there were rude swathings of flannel; five or six yards of flannel are tied comforter-fashion about his neck. The thing on his head is probably another sack. He stares, sometimes smiling, sometimes a little ruefully, at the camera. Even when he was only five years old, one sees that half whimsical wrinkling over his soft brown eyes that characterised his face. He was from the first, the Vicar always declared, a terrible nuisance about the village. He seems to have had a proportionate impulse to play, much curiosity and sociability, and in addition there was a certain craving within him--I grieve to say--for more to eat. In spite of what Mrs. Greenfield called an "_excessively_ generous" allowance of food from Lady Wondershoot, he displayed what the doctor perceived at once was the "Criminal Appetite." It carries out only too completely Lady Wondershoot's worst experiences of the lower classes--that in spite of an allowance of nourishment inordinately beyond what is known to be the maximum necessity even of an adult human being, the creature was found to steal. And what he stole he ate with an inelegant voracity. His great hand would come over garden walls; he would covet the very bread in the bakers' carts. Cheeses went from Marlow's store loft, and never a pig trough was safe from him. Some farmer walking over his field of swedes would find the great spoor of his feet and the evidence of his nibbling hunger--a root picked here, a root picked there, and the holes, with childish cunning, heavily erased. He ate a swede as one devours a radish. He would stand and eat apples from a tree, if no one was about, as normal children eat blackberries from a bush. In one way at any rate this shortness of provisions was good for the peace of Cheasing Eyebright--for many years he ate up every grain very nearly of the Food of the Gods that was given him.... Indisputably the child was troublesome and out of place, "He was always about," the Vicar used to say. He could not go to school; he could not go to church by virtue of the obvious limitations of its cubical content. There was some attempt to satisfy the spirit of that "most foolish and destructive law"--I quote the Vicar--the Elementary Education Act of 1870, by getting him to sit outside the open window while instruction was going on within. But his presence there destroyed the discipline of the other children. They were always popping up and peering at him, and every time he spoke they laughed together. His voice was so odd! So they let him stay away. Nor did they persist in pressing him to come to church, for his vast proportions were of little help to devotion. Yet there they might have had an easier task; there are good reasons for guessing there were the germs of religious feeling somewhere in that big carcase. The music perhaps drew him. He was often in the churchyard on a Sunday morning, picking his way softly among the graves after the congregation had gone in, and he would sit the whole service out beside the porch, listening as one listens outside a hive of bees. At first he showed a certain want of tact; the people inside would hear his great feet crunch restlessly round their place of worship, or become aware of his dim face peering in through the stained glass, half curious, half envious, and at times some simple hymn would catch him unawares, and he would howl lugubriously in a gigantic attempt at unison. Whereupon little Sloppet, who was organ-blower and verger and beadle and sexton and bell-ringer on Sundays, besides being postman and chimney-sweep all the week, would go out very briskly and valiantly and send him mournfully away. Sloppet, I am glad to say, felt it--in his more thoughtful moments at any rate. It was like sending a dog home when you start out for a walk, he told me. But the intellectual and moral training of young Caddles, though fragmentary, was explicit. From the first, Vicar, mother, and all the world, combined to make it clear to him that his giant strength was not for use. It was a misfortune that he had to make the best of. He had to mind what was told him, do what was set him, be careful never to break anything nor hurt anything. Particularly he must not go treading on things or jostling against things or jumping about. He had to salute the gentlefolks respectful and be grateful for the food and clothing they spared him out of their riches. And he learnt all these things submissively, being by nature and habit a teachable creature and only by food and accident gigantic. For Lady Wondershoot, in these early days, he displayed the profoundest awe. She found she could talk to him best when she was in short skirts and had her dog-whip, and she gesticulated with that and was always a little contemptuous and shrill. But sometimes the Vicar played master--a minute, middle-aged, rather breathless David pelting a childish Goliath with reproof and reproach and dictatorial command. The monster was now so big that it seems it was impossible for any one to remember he was after all only a child of seven, with all a child's desire for notice and amusement and fresh experience, with all a child's craving for response, attention and affection, and all a child's capacity for dependence and unrestricted dulness and misery. The Vicar, walking down the village road some sunlit morning, would encounter an ungainly eighteen feet of the Inexplicable, as fantastic and unpleasant to him as some new form of Dissent, as it padded fitfully along with craning neck, seeking, always seeking the two primary needs of childhood--something to eat and something with which to play. There would come a look of furtive respect into the creature's eyes and an attempt to touch the matted forelock. In a limited way the Vicar had an imagination--at any rate, the remains of one--and with young Caddles it took the line of developing the huge possibilities of personal injury such vast muscles must possess. Suppose a sudden madness--! Suppose a mere lapse into disrespect--! However, the truly brave man is not the man who does not feel fear but the man who overcomes it. Every time and always the Vicar got his imagination under. And he used always to address young Caddles stoutly in a good clear service tenor. "Being a good boy, Albert Edward?" And the young giant, edging closer to the wall and blushing deeply, would answer, "Yessir--trying." "Mind you do," said the Vicar, and would go past him with at most a slight acceleration of his breathing. And out of respect for his manhood he made it a rule, whatever he might fancy, never to look back at the danger, when once it was passed. In a fitful manner the Vicar would give young Caddles private tuition. He never taught the monster to read--it was not needed; but he taught him the more important points of the Catechism--his duty to his neighbour for example, and of that Deity who would punish Caddles with extreme vindictiveness if ever he ventured to disobey the Vicar and Lady Wondershoot. The lessons would go on in the Vicar's yard, and passers-by would hear that great cranky childish voice droning out the essential teachings of the Established Church. "To onner 'n 'bey the King and allooer put 'nthority under 'im. To s'bmit meself t'all my gov'ners, teachers, spir'shall pastors an' masters. To order myself lowly 'n rev'rently t'all my betters--" Presently it became evident that the effect of the growing giant on unaccustomed horses was like that of a camel, and he was told to keep off the highroad, not only near the shrubbery (where the oafish smile over the wall had exasperated her ladyship extremely), but altogether. That law he never completely obeyed, because of the vast interest the highroad had for him. But it turned what had been his constant resort into a stolen pleasure. He was limited at last almost entirely to old pasture and the Downs. I do not know what he would have done if it had not been for the Downs. There there were spaces where he might wander for miles, and over these spaces he wandered. He would pick branches from trees and make insane vast nosegays there until he was forbidden, take up sheep and put them in neat rows, from which they immediately wandered (at this he invariably laughed very heartily), until he was forbidden, dig away the turf, great wanton holes, until he was forbidden.... He would wander over the Downs as far as the hill above Wreckstone, but not farther, because there he came upon cultivated land, and the people, by reason of his depredations upon their root-crops, and inspired moreover by a sort of hostile timidity his big unkempt appearance frequently evoked, always came out against him with yapping dogs to drive him away. They would threaten him and lash at him with cart whips. I have heard that they would sometimes fire at him with shot guns. And in the other direction he ranged within sight of Hickleybrow. From above Thursley Hanger he could get a glimpse of the London, Chatham, and Dover railway, but ploughed fields and a suspicious hamlet prevented his nearer access. And after a time there came boards--great boards with red letters that barred him in every direction. He could not read what the letters said: "Out of Bounds," but in a little while he understood. He was often to be seen in those days, by the railway passengers, sitting, chin on knees, perched up on the Down hard by the Thursley chalk pits, where afterwards he was set working. The train seemed to inspire a dim emotion of friendliness in him, and sometimes he would wave an enormous hand at it, and sometimes give it a rustic incoherent hail. "Big," the peering passenger would say. "One of these Boom children. They say, Sir, quite unable to do anything for itself--little better than an idiot in fact, and a great burden on the locality." "Parents quite poor, I'm told." "Lives on the charity of the local gentry." Every one would stare intelligently at that distant squatting monstrous figure for a space. "Good thing that was put a stop to," some spacious thinking mind would suggest. "Nice to 'ave a few thousand of _them_ on the rates, eh?" And usually there was some one wise enough to tell this philosopher: "You're about Right there, Sir," in hearty tones. II. He had his bad days. There was, for example, that trouble with the river. He made little boats out of whole newspapers, an art he learnt by watching the Spender boy, and he set them sailing down the stream--great paper cocked-hats. When they vanished under the bridge which marks the boundary of the strictly private grounds about Eyebright House, he would give a great shout and run round and across Tormat's new field--Lord! how Tormat's pigs did scamper, to be sure, and turn their good fat into lean muscle!--and so to meet his boats by the ford. Right across the nearer lawns these paper boats of his used to go, right in front of Eyebright House, right under Lady Wondershoot's eyes! Disorganising folded newspapers! A pretty thing! Gathering enterprise from impunity, he began babyish hydraulic engineering. He delved a huge port for his paper fleets with an old shed door that served him as a spade, and, no one chancing to observe his operations just then, he devised an ingenious canal that incidentally flooded Lady Wondershoot's ice-house, and finally he dammed the river. He dammed it right across with a few vigorous doorfuls of earth--he must have worked like an avalanche--and down came a most amazing spate through the shrubbery and washed away Miss Spinks and her easel and the most promising water-colour sketch she had ever begun, or, at any rate, it washed away her easel and left her wet to the knees and dismally tucked up in flight to the house, and thence the waters rushed through the kitchen garden, and so by the green door into the lane and down into the riverbed again by Short's ditch. Meanwhile, the Vicar, interrupted in conversation with the blacksmith, was amazed to see distressful stranded fish leaping out of a few residual pools, and heaped green weed in the bed of the stream, where ten minutes before there had been eight feet and more of clear cool water. After that, horrified at his own consequences, young Caddles fled his home for two days and nights. He returned only at the insistent call of hunger, to bear with stoical calm an amount of violent scolding that was more in proportion to his size than anything else that had ever before fallen to his lot in the Happy Village. III. Immediately after that affair Lady Wondershoot, casting about for exemplary additions to the abuse and fastings she had inflicted, issued a Ukase. She issued it first to her butler, and very suddenly, so that she made him jump. He was clearing away the breakfast things, and she was staring out of the tall window on the terrace where the fawns would come to be fed. "Jobbet," she said, in her most imperial voice--"Jobbet, this Thing must work for its living." And she made it quite clear not only to Jobbet (which was easy), but to every one else in the village, including young Caddles, that in this matter, as in all things, she meant what she said. "Keep him employed," said Lady Wondershoot. "That's the tip for Master Caddles." "It's the Tip, I fancy, for all Humanity," said the Vicar. "The simple duties, the modest round, seed-time and harvest--" "Exactly," said Lady Wondershoot. "What _I_ always say. Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. At any rate among the labouring classes. We bring up our under-housemaids on that principle, always. What shall we set him to do?" That was a little difficult. They thought of many things, and meanwhile they broke him in to labour a bit by using him instead of a horse messenger to carry telegrams and notes when extra speed was needed, and he also carried luggage and packing-cases and things of that sort very conveniently in a big net they found for him. He seemed to like employment, regarding it as a sort of game, and Kinkle, Lady Wondershoot's agent, seeing him shift a rockery for her one day, was struck by the brilliant idea of putting him into her chalk quarry at Thursley Hanger, hard by Hickleybrow. This idea was carried out, and it seemed they had settled his problem. He worked in the chalk pit, at first with the zest of a playing child, and afterwards with an effect of habit--delving, loading, doing all the haulage of the trucks, running the full ones down the lines towards the siding, and hauling the empty ones up by the wire of a great windlass--working the entire quarry at last single-handed. I am told that Kinkle made a very good thing indeed out of him for Lady Wondershoot, consuming as he did scarcely anything but his food, though that never restrained her denunciation of "the Creature" as a gigantic parasite upon her charity.... At that time he used to wear a sort of smock of sacking, trousers of patched leather, and iron-shod sabots. Over his head was sometimes a queer thing--a worn-out beehive straw chair it was, but usually he went bareheaded. He would be moving about the pit with a powerful deliberation, and the Vicar on his constitutional round would get there about midday to find him shamefully eating his vast need of food with his back to all the world. His food was brought to him every day, a mess of grain in the husk, in a truck--a small railway truck, like one of the trucks he was perpetually filling with chalk, and this load he used to char in an old limekiln and then devour. Sometimes he would mix with it a bag of sugar. Sometimes he would sit licking a lump of such salt as is given to cows, or eating a huge lump of dates, stones and all, such as one sees in London on barrows. For drink he walked to the rivulet beyond the burnt-out site of the Experimental Farm at Hickleybrow and put down his face to the stream. It was from his drinking in that way after eating that the Food of the Gods did at last get loose, spreading first of all in huge weeds from the river-side, then in big frogs, bigger trout and stranding carp, and at last in a fantastic exuberance of vegetation all over the little valley. And after a year or so the queer monstrous grub things in the field before the blacksmith's grew so big and developed into such frightful skipjacks and cockchafers--motor cockchafers the boys called them--that they drove Lady Wondershoot abroad. IV. But soon the Food was to enter upon a new phase of its work in him. In spite of the simple instructions of the Vicar--instructions intended to round off the modest natural life befitting a giant peasant, in the most complete and final manner--he began to ask questions, to inquire into things, to _think_. As he grew from boyhood to adolescence it became increasingly evident that his mind had processes of its own--out of the Vicar's control. The Vicar did his best to ignore this distressing phenomenon, but still--he could feel it there. The young giant's material for thought lay about him. Quite involuntarily, with his spacious views, his constant overlooking of things, he must have seen a good deal of human life, and as it grew clearer to him that he too, save for this clumsy greatness of his, was also human, he must have come to realise more and more just how much was shut against him by his melancholy distinction. The sociable hum of the school, the mystery of religion that was partaken in such finery, and which exhaled so sweet a strain of melody, the jovial chorusing from the Inn, the warmly glowing rooms, candle-lit and fire-lit, into which he peered out of the darkness, or again the shouting excitement, the vigour of flannelled exercise upon some imperfectly understood issue that centred about the cricket-field--all these things must have cried aloud to his companionable heart. It would seem that as his adolescence crept upon him, he began to take a very considerable interest in the proceedings of lovers, in those preferences and pairings, those close intimacies that are so cardinal in life. One Sunday, just about that hour when the stars and the bats and the passions of rural life come out, there chanced to be a young couple "kissing each other a bit" in Love Lane, the deep hedged lane that runs out back towards the Upper Lodge. They were giving their little emotions play, as secure in the warm still twilight as any lovers could be. The only conceivable interruption they thought possible must come pacing visibly up the lane; the twelve-foot hedge towards the silent Downs seemed to them an absolute guarantee. Then suddenly--incredibly--they were lifted and drawn apart. They discovered themselves held up, each with a finger and thumb under the armpits, and with the perplexed brown eyes of young Caddles scanning their warm flushed faces. They were naturally dumb with the emotions of their situation. "_Why_ do you like doing that?" asked young Caddles. I gather the embarrassment continued until the swain remembering his manhood, vehemently, with loud shouts, threats, and virile blasphemies, such as became the occasion, bade young Caddles under penalties put them down. Whereupon young Caddles, remembering his manners, did put them down politely and very carefully, and conveniently near for a resumption of their embraces, and having hesitated above them for a while, vanished again into the twilight ... "But I felt precious silly," the swain confided to me. "We couldn't 'ardly look at one another--bein' caught like that. "Kissing we was--_you_ know. "And the cur'ous thing is, she blamed it all on to me," said the swain. "Flew out something outrageous, and wouldn't 'ardly speak to me all the way 'ome...." The giant was embarking upon investigations, there could be no doubt. His mind, it became manifest, was throwing up questions. He put them to few people as yet, but they troubled him. His mother, one gathers, sometimes came in for cross-examination. He used to come into the yard behind his mother's cottage, and, after a careful inspection of the ground for hens and chicks, he would sit down slowly with his back against the barn. In a minute the chicks, who liked him, would be pecking all over him at the mossy chalk-mud in the seams of his clothing, and if it was blowing up for wet, Mrs. Caddles' kitten, who never lost her confidence in him, would assume a sinuous form and start scampering into the cottage, up to the kitchen fender, round, out, up his leg, up his body, right up to his shoulder, meditative moment, and then scat! back again, and so on. Sometimes she would stick her claws in his face out of sheer gaiety of heart, but he never dared to touch her because of the uncertain weight of his hand upon a creature so frail. Besides, he rather liked to be tickled. And after a time he would put some clumsy questions to his mother. "Mother," he would say, "if it's good to work, why doesn't every one work?" His mother would look up at him and answer, "It's good for the likes of us." He would meditate, "_Why_?" And going unanswered, "What's work _for_, mother? Why do I cut chalk and you wash clothes, day after day, while Lady Wondershoot goes about in her carriage, mother, and travels off to those beautiful foreign countries you and I mustn't see, mother?" "She's a lady," said Mrs. Caddles. "Oh," said young Caddles, and meditated profoundly. "If there wasn't gentlefolks to make work for us to do," said Mrs. Caddles, "how should we poor people get a living?" This had to be digested. "Mother," he tried again; "if there wasn't any gentlefolks, wouldn't things belong to people like me and you, and if they did--" "Lord sakes and _drat_ the Boy!" Mrs. Caddles would say--she had with the help of a good memory become quite a florid and vigorous individuality since Mrs. Skinner died. "Since your poor dear grandma was took, there's no abiding you. Don't you arst no questions and you won't be told no lies. If once I was to start out answerin' you _serious_, y'r father 'd 'ave to go' and arst some one else for 'is supper--let alone finishing the washin'." "All right, mother," he would say, after a wondering stare at her. "I didn't mean to worry." And he would go on thinking. V. He was thinking too four years after, when the Vicar, now no longer ripe but over-ripe, saw him for the last time of all. You figure the old gentleman visibly a little older now, slacker in his girth, a little coarsened and a little weakened in his thought and speech, with a quivering shakiness in his hand and a quivering shakiness in his convictions, but his eye still bright and merry for all the trouble the Food had caused his village and himself. He had been frightened at times and disturbed, but was he not alive still and the same still? and fifteen long years--a fair sample of eternity--had turned the trouble into use and wont. "It was a disturbance, I admit," he would say, "and things are different--different in many ways. There was a time when a boy could weed, but now a man must go out with axe and crowbar--in some places down by the thickets at least. And it's a little strange still to us old-fashioned people for all this valley, even what used to be the river bed before they irrigated, to be under wheat--as it is this year--twenty-five feet high. They used the old-fashioned scythe here twenty years ago, and they would bring home the harvest on a wain--rejoicing--in a simple honest fashion. A little simple drunkenness, a little frank love-making, to conclude ... poor dear Lady Wondershoot--she didn't like these Innovations. Very conservative, poor dear lady! A touch of the eighteenth century about her, I always said. Her language for example ... Bluff vigour ... "She died comparatively poor. These big weeds got into her garden. She was not one of these gardening women, but she liked her garden in order--things growing where they were planted and as they were planted--under control ... The way things grew was unexpected--upset her ideas ... She didn't like the perpetual invasion of this young monster--at last she began to fancy he was always gaping at her over her wall ... She didn't like his being nearly as high as her house ... Jarred with her sense of proportion. Poor dear lady! I had hoped she would last my time. It was the big cockchafers we had for a year or so that decided her. They came from the giant larvae--nasty things as big as rats--in the valley turf ... "And the ants no doubt weighed with her also. "Since everything was upset and there was no peace and quietness anywhere now, she said she thought she might just as well be at Monte Carlo as anywhere else. And she went. "She played pretty boldly, I'm told. Died in a hotel there. Very sad end... Exile... Not--not what one considers meet... A natural leader of our English people... Uprooted. So I... "Yet after all," harped the Vicar, "it comes to very little. A nuisance of course. Children cannot run about so freely as they used to do, what with ant bites and so forth. Perhaps it's as well ... There used to be talk--as though this stuff would revolutionise everything ... But there is something that defies all these forces of the New ... I don't know of course. I'm not one of your modern philosophers--explain everything with ether and atoms. Evolution. Rubbish like that. What I mean is something the 'Ologies don't include. Matter of reason--not understanding. Ripe wisdom. Human nature. _Aere perennius._ ... Call it what you will." And so at last it came to the last time. The Vicar had no intimation of what lay so close upon him. He did his customary walk, over by Farthing Down, as he had done it for more than a score of years, and so to the place whence he would watch young Caddles. He did the rise over by the chalk-pit crest a little puffily--he had long since lost the Muscular Christian stride of early days; but Caddles was not at his work, and then, as he skirted the thicket of giant bracken that was beginning to obscure and overshadow the Hanger, he came upon the monster's huge form seated on the hill--brooding as it were upon the world. Caddles' knees were drawn up, his cheek was on his hand, his head a little aslant. He sat with his shoulder towards the Vicar, so that those perplexed eyes could not be seen. He must have been thinking very intently--at any rate he was sitting very still ... He never turned round. He never knew that the Vicar, who had played so large a part in shaping his life, looked then at him for the very last of innumerable times--did not know even that he was there. (So it is so many partings happen.) The Vicar was struck at the time by the fact that, after all, no one on earth had the slightest idea of what this great monster thought about when he saw fit to rest from his labours. But he was too indolent to follow up that new theme that day; he fell back from its suggestion into his older grooves of thought. "_Aere-perennius,"_ he whispered, walking slowly homeward by a path that no longer ran straight athwart the turf after its former fashion, but wound circuitously to avoid new sprung tussocks of giant grass. "No! nothing is changed. Dimensions are nothing. The simple round, the common way--" And that night, quite painlessly, and all unknowing, he himself went the common way--out of this Mystery of Change he had spent his life in denying. They buried him in the churchyard of Cheasing Eyebright, near to the largest yew, and the modest tombstone bearing his epitaph--it ended with: _Ut in Principio, nunc est et semper_--was almost immediately hidden from the eye of man by a spread of giant, grey tasselled grass too stout for scythe or sheep, that came sweeping like a fog over the village out of the germinating moisture of the valley meadows in which the Food of the Gods had been working. BOOK III. THE HARVEST OF THE FOOD. CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE ALTERED WORLD. I. Change played in its new fashion with the world for twenty years. To most men the new things came little by little and day by day, remarkably enough, but not so abruptly as to overwhelm. But to one man at least the full accumulation of those two decades of the Food's work was to be revealed suddenly and amazingly in one day. For our purpose it is convenient to take him for that one day and to tell something of the things he saw. This man was a convict, a prisoner for life--his crime is no concern of ours--whom the law saw fit to pardon after twenty years. One summer morning this poor wretch, who had left the world a young man of three-and-twenty, found himself thrust out again from the grey simplicity of toil and discipline, that had become his life, into a dazzling freedom. They had put unaccustomed clothes upon him; his hair had been growing for some weeks, and he had parted it now for some days, and there he stood, in a sort of shabby and clumsy newness of body and mind, blinking with his eyes and blinking indeed with his soul, _outside_ again, trying to realise one incredible thing, that after all he was again for a little while in the world of life, and for all other incredible things, totally unprepared. He was so fortunate as to have a brother who cared enough for their distant common memories to come and meet him and clasp his hand--a brother he had left a little lad, and who was now a bearded prosperous man--whose very eyes were unfamiliar. And together he and this stranger from his kindred came down into the town of Dover, saying little to one another and feeling many things. They sat for a space in a public-house, the one answering the questions of the other about this person and that, reviving queer old points of view, brushing aside endless new aspects and new perspectives, and then it was time to go to the station and take the London train. Their names and the personal things they had to talk of do not matter to our story, but only the changes and all the strangeness that this poor returning soul found in the once familiar world. In Dover itself he remarked little except the goodness of beer from pewter--never before had there been such a draught of beer, and it brought tears of gratitude to his eyes. "Beer's as good as ever," said he, believing it infinitely better.... It was only as the train rattled them past Folkestone that he could look out beyond his more immediate emotions, to see what had happened to the world. He peered out of the window. "It's sunny," he said for the twelfth time. "I couldn't ha' had better weather." And then for the first time it dawned upon him that there were novel disproportions in the world. "Lord sakes," he cried, sitting up and looking animated for the first time, "but them's mortal great thissels growing out there on the bank by that broom. If so be they _be_ thissels? Or 'ave I been forgetting?" But they were thistles, and what he took for tall bushes of broom was the new grass, and amidst these things a company of British soldiers--red-coated as ever--was skirmishing in accordance with the directions of the drill book that had been partially revised after the Boer War. Then whack! into a tunnel, and then into Sandling Junction, which was now embedded and dark--its lamps were all alight--in a great thicket of rhododendron that had crept out of some adjacent gardens and grown enormously up the valley. There was a train of trucks on the Sandgate siding piled high with rhododendron logs, and here it was the returning citizen heard first of Boomfood. As they sped out into a country again that seemed absolutely unchanged, the two brothers were hard at their explanations. The one was full of eager, dull questions; the other had never thought, had never troubled to see the thing as a single fact, and he was allusive and difficult to follow. "It's this here Boomfood stuff," he said, touching his bottom rock of knowledge. "Don't you know? 'Aven't they told you--any of 'em? Boomfood! You know--Boomfood. What all the election's about. Scientific sort of stuff. 'Asn't no one ever told you?" He thought prison had made his brother a fearful duffer not to know that. They made wide shots at each other by way of question and answer. Between these scraps of talk were intervals of window-gazing. At first the man's interest in things was vague and general. His imagination had been busy with what old so-and-so would say, how so-and-so would look, how he would say to all and sundry certain things that would present his "putting away" in a mitigated light. This Boomfood came in at first as it were a thing in an odd paragraph of the newspapers, then as a source of intellectual difficulty with his brother. But it came to him presently that Boomfood was persistently coming in upon any topic he began. In those days the world was a patchwork of transition, so that this great new fact came to him in a series of shocks of contrast. The process of change had not been uniform; it had spread from one centre of distribution here and another centre there. The country was in patches: great areas where the Food was still to come, and areas where it was already in the soil and in the air, sporadic and contagious. It was a bold new motif creeping in among ancient and venerable airs. The contrast was very vivid indeed along the line from Dover to London at that time. For a space they traversed just such a country-side as he had known since his childhood, the small oblongs of field, hedge-lined, of a size for pigmy horses to plough, the little roads three cart-widths wide, the elms and oaks and poplars dotting these fields about, little thickets of willow beside the streams; ricks of hay no higher than a giant's knees, dolls' cottages with diamond panes, brickfields, and straggling village streets, the larger houses of the petty great, flower-grown railway banks, garden-set stations, and all the little things of the vanished nineteenth century still holding out against Immensity. Here and there would be a patch of wind-sown, wind-tattered giant thistle defying the axe; here and there a ten-foot puff-ball or the ashen stems of some burnt-out patch of monster grass; but that was all there was to hint at the coming of the Food. For a couple of score of miles there was nothing else to foreshadow in any way the strange bigness of the wheat and of the weeds that were hidden from him not a dozen miles from his route just over the hills in the Cheasing Eyebright valley. And then presently the traces of the Food would begin. The first striking thing was the great new viaduct at Tonbridge, where the swamp of the choked Medway (due to a giant variety of _Chara_) began in those days. Then again the little country, and then, as the petty multitudinous immensity of London spread out under its haze, the traces of man's fight to keep out greatness became abundant and incessant. In that south-eastern region of London at that time, and all about where Cossar and his children lived, the Food had become mysteriously insurgent at a hundred points; the little life went on amidst daily portents that only the deliberation of their increase, the slow parallel growth of usage to their presence, had robbed of their warning. But this returning citizen peered out to see for the first time the facts of the Food strange and predominant, scarred and blackened areas, big unsightly defences and preparations, barracks and arsenals that this subtle, persistent influence had forced into the life of men. Here, on an ampler scale, the experience of the first Experimental Farm had been repeated time and again. It had been in the inferior and accidental things of life--under foot and in waste places, irregularly and irrelevantly--that the coming of a new force and new issues had first declared itself. There were great evil-smelling yards and enclosures where some invincible jungle of weed furnished fuel for gigantic machinery (little cockneys came to stare at its clangorous oiliness and tip the men a sixpence); there were roads and tracks for big motors and vehicles--roads made of the interwoven fibres of hypertrophied hemp; there were towers containing steam sirens that could yell at once and warn the world against any new insurgence of vermin, or, what was queerer, venerable church towers conspicuously fitted with a mechanical scream. There were little red-painted refuge huts and garrison shelters, each with its 300-yard rifle range, where the riflemen practised daily with soft-nosed ammunition at targets in the shape of monstrous rats. Six times since the day of the Skinners there had been outbreaks of giant rats--each time from the south-west London sewers, and now they were as much an accepted fact there as tigers in the delta by Calcutta.... The man's brother had bought a paper in a heedless sort of way at Sandling, and at last this chanced to catch the eye of the released man. He opened the unfamiliar sheets--they seemed to him to be smaller, more numerous, and different in type from the papers of the times before--and he found himself confronted with innumerable pictures about things so strange as to be uninteresting, and with tall columns of printed matter whose headings, for the most part, were as unmeaning as though they had been written in a foreign tongue--"Great Speech by Mr. Caterham"; "The Boomfood Laws." "Who's this here Caterham?" he asked, in an attempt to make conversation. "_He's_ all right," said his brother. "Ah! Sort of politician, eh?" "Goin' to turn out the Government. Jolly well time he did." "Ah!" He reflected. "I suppose all the lot _I_ used to know--Chamberlain, Rosebery--all that lot--_What_?" His brother had grasped his wrist and pointed out of the window. "That's the Cossars!" The eyes of the released prisoner followed the finger's direction and saw-- "My Gawd!" he cried, for the first time really overcome with amazement. The paper dropped into final forgottenness between his feet. Through the trees he could see very distinctly, standing in an easy attitude, the legs wide apart and the hand grasping a ball as if about to throw it, a gigantic human figure a good forty feet high. The figure glittered in the sunlight, clad in a suit of woven white metal and belted with a broad belt of steel. For a moment it focussed all attention, and then the eye was wrested to another more distant Giant who stood prepared to catch, and it became apparent that the whole area of that great bay in the hills just north of Sevenoaks had been scarred to gigantic ends. A hugely banked entrenchment overhung the chalk pit, in which stood the house, a monstrous squat Egyptian shape that Cossar had built for his sons when the Giant Nursery had served its turn, and behind was a great dark shed that might have covered a cathedral, in which a spluttering incandescence came and went, and from out of which came a Titanic hammering to beat upon the ear. Then the attention leapt back to the giant as the great ball of iron-bound timber soared up out of his hand. The two men stood up and stared. The ball seemed as big as a cask. "Caught!" cried the man from prison, as a tree blotted out the thrower. The train looked on these things only for the fraction of a minute and then passed behind trees into the Chislehurst tunnel. "My Gawd!" said the man from prison again, as the darkness closed about them. "Why! that chap was as 'igh as a 'ouse." "That's them young Cossars," said his brother, jerking his head allusively--"what all this trouble's about...." They emerged again to discover more siren-surmounted towers, more red huts, and then the clustering villas of the outer suburbs. The art of bill-sticking had lost nothing in the interval, and from countless tall hoardings, from house ends, from palings, and a hundred such points of vantage came the polychromatic appeals of the great Boomfood election. "Caterham," "Boomfood," and "Jack the Giant-killer" again and again and again, and monstrous caricatures and distortions--a hundred varieties of misrepresentations of those great and shining figures they had passed so nearly only a few minutes before.... II. It had been the purpose of the younger brother to do a very magnificent thing, to celebrate this return to life by a dinner at some restaurant of indisputable quality, a dinner that should be followed by all that glittering succession of impressions the Music Halls of those days were so capable of giving. It was a worthy plan to wipe off the more superficial stains of the prison house by this display of free indulgence; but so far as the second item went the plan was changed. The dinner stood, but there was a desire already more powerful than the appetite for shows, already more efficient in turning the man's mind away from his grim prepossession with his past than any theatre could be, and that was an enormous curiosity and perplexity about this Boomfood and these Boom children--this new portentous giantry that seemed to dominate the world. "I 'aven't the 'ang of 'em," he said. "They disturve me." His brother had that fineness of mind that can even set aside a contemplated hospitality. "It's _your_ evening, dear old boy," he said. "We'll try to get into the mass meeting at the People's Palace." And at last the man from prison had the luck to find himself wedged into a packed multitude and staring from afar at a little brightly lit platform under an organ and a gallery. The organist had been playing something that had set boots tramping as the people swarmed in; but that was over now. Hardly had the man from prison settled into place and done his quarrel with an importunate stranger who elbowed, before Caterham came. He walked out of a shadow towards the middle of the platform, the most insignificant little pigmy, away there in the distance, a little black figure with a pink dab for a face,--in profile one saw his quite distinctive aquiline nose--a little figure that trailed after it most inexplicably--a cheer. A cheer it was that began away there and grew and spread. A little spluttering of voices about the platform at first that suddenly leapt up into a flame of sound and swept athwart the whole mass of humanity within the building and without. How they cheered! Hooray! Hooray! No one in all those myriads cheered like the man from prison. The tears poured down his face, and he only stopped cheering at last because the thing had choked him. You must have been in prison as long as he before you can understand, or even begin to understand, what it means to a man to let his lungs go in a crowd. (But for all that he did not even pretend to himself that he knew what all this emotion was about.) Hooray! O God!--Hoo-ray! And then a sort of silence. Caterham had subsided to a conspicuous patience, and subordinate and inaudible persons were saying and doing formal and insignificant things. It was like hearing voices through the noise of leaves in spring. "Wawawawa---" What did it matter? People in the audience talked to one another. "Wawawawawa---" the thing went on. Would that grey-headed duffer never have done? Interrupting? Of course they were interrupting. "Wa, wa, wa, wa---" But shall we hear Caterham any better? Meanwhile at any rate there was Caterham to stare at, and one could stand and study the distant prospect of the great man's features. He was easy to draw was this man, and already the world had him to study at leisure on lamp chimneys and children's plates, on Anti-Boomfood medals and Anti-Boomfood flags, on the selvedges of Caterham silks and cottons and in the linings of Good Old English Caterham hats. He pervades all the caricature of that time. One sees him as a sailor standing to an old-fashioned gun, a port-fire labelled "New Boomfood Laws" in his hand; while in the sea wallows that huge, ugly, threatening monster, "Boomfood;" or he is _cap-a-pie_ in armour, St. George's cross on shield and helm, and a cowardly titanic Caliban sitting amidst desecrations at the mouth of a horrid cave declines his gauntlet of the "New Boomfood Regulations;" or he comes flying down as Perseus and rescues a chained and beautiful Andromeda (labelled distinctly about her belt as "Civilisation") from a wallowing waste of sea monster bearing upon its various necks and claws "Irreligion," "Trampling Egotism," "Mechanism," "Monstrosity," and the like. But it was as "Jack the Giant-killer" that the popular imagination considered Caterham most correctly cast, and it was in the vein of a Jack the Giant-killer poster that the man from prison, enlarged that distant miniature. The "Wawawawa" came abruptly to an end. He's done. He's sitting down. Yes! No! Yes! It's Caterham! "Caterham!" "Caterham!" And then came the cheers. It takes a multitude to make such a stillness as followed that disorder of cheering. A man alone in a wilderness;--it's stillness of a sort no doubt, but he hears himself breathe, he hears himself move, he hears all sorts of things. Here the voice of Caterham was the one single thing heard, a thing very bright and clear, like a little light burning in a black velvet recess. Hear indeed! One heard him as though he spoke at one's elbow. It was stupendously effective to the man from prison, that gesticulating little figure in a halo of light, in a halo of rich and swaying sounds; behind it, partially effaced as it were, sat its supporters on the platform, and in the foreground was a wide perspective of innumerable backs and profiles, a vast multitudinous attention. That little figure seemed to have absorbed the substance from them all. Caterham spoke of our ancient institutions. "Earearear," roared the crowd. "Ear! ear!" said the man from prison. He spoke of our ancient spirit of order and justice. "Earearear!" roared the crowd. "Ear! Ear!" cried the man from prison, deeply moved. He spoke of the wisdom of our forefathers, of the slow growth of venerable institutions, of moral and social traditions, that fitted our English national characteristics as the skin fits the hand. "Ear! Ear!" groaned the man from prison, with tears of excitement on his cheeks. And now all these things were to go into the melting pot. Yes, into the melting pot! Because three men in London twenty years ago had seen fit to mix something indescribable in a bottle, all the order and sanctity of things--Cries of "No! No!"--Well, if it was not to be so, they must exert themselves, they must say good-bye to hesitation--Here there came a gust of cheering. They must say good-bye to hesitation and half measures. "We have heard, gentlemen," cried Caterham, "of nettles that become giant nettles. At first they are no more than other nettles--little plants that a firm hand may grasp and wrench away; but if you leave them--if you leave them, they grow with such a power of poisonous expansion that at last you must needs have axe and rope, you must needs have danger to life and limb, you must needs have toil and distress--men may be killed in their felling, men may be killed in their felling---" There came a stir and interruption, and then the man from prison heard Caterham's voice again, ringing clear and strong: "Learn about Boomfood from Boomfood itself and--" He paused--"_Grasp your nettle before it is too late!_" He stopped and stood wiping his lips. "A crystal," cried some one, "a crystal," and then came that same strange swift growth to thunderous tumult, until the whole world seemed cheering.... The man from prison came out of the hall at last, marvellously stirred, and with that in his face that marks those who have seen a vision. He knew, every one knew; his ideas were no longer vague. He had come back to a world in crisis, to the immediate decision of a stupendous issue. He must play his part in the great conflict like a man--like a free, responsible man. The antagonism presented itself as a picture. On the one hand those easy gigantic mail-clad figures of the morning--one saw them now in a different light--on the other this little black-clad gesticulating creature under the limelight, that pigmy thing with its ordered flow of melodious persuasion, its little, marvellously penetrating voice, John Caterham--"Jack the Giant-killer." They must all unite to "grasp the nettle" before it was "too late." III. The tallest and strongest and most regarded of all the children of the Food were the three sons of Cossar. The mile or so of land near Sevenoaks in which their boyhood passed became so trenched, so dug out and twisted about, so covered with sheds and huge working models and all the play of their developing powers, it was like no other place on earth. And long since it had become too little for the things they sought to do. The eldest son was a mighty schemer of wheeled engines; he had made himself a sort of giant bicycle that no road in the world had room for, no bridge could bear. There it stood, a great thing of wheels and engines, capable of two hundred and fifty miles an hour, useless save that now and then he would mount it and fling himself backwards and forwards across that cumbered work-yard. He had meant to go around the little world with it; he had made it with that intention, while he was still no more than a dreaming boy. Now its spokes were rusted deep red like wounds, wherever the enamel had been chipped away. "You must make a road for it first, Sonnie," Cossar had said, "before you can do that." So one morning about dawn the young giant and his brothers had set to work to make a road about the world. They seem to have had an inkling of opposition impending, and they had worked with remarkable vigour. The world had discovered them soon enough, driving that road as straight as a flight of a bullet towards the English Channel, already some miles of it levelled and made and stamped hard. They had been stopped before midday by a vast crowd of excited people, owners of land, land agents, local authorities, lawyers, policemen, soldiers even. "We're making a road," the biggest boy had explained. "Make a road by all means," said the leading lawyer on the ground, "but please respect the rights of other people. You have already infringed the private rights of twenty-seven private proprietors; let alone the special privileges and property of an urban district board, nine parish councils, a county council, two gasworks, and a railway company...." "Goodney!" said the elder boy Cossar. "You will have to stop it." "But don't you want a nice straight road in the place of all these rotten rutty little lanes?" "I won't say it wouldn't be advantageous, but--" "It isn't to be done," said the eldest Cossar boy, picking up his tools. "Not in this way," said the lawyer, "certainly." "How is it to be done?" The leading lawyer's answer had been complicated and vague. Cossar had come down to see the mischief his children had done, and reproved them severely and laughed enormously and seemed to be extremely happy over the affair. "You boys must wait a bit," he shouted up to them, "before you can do things like that." "The lawyer told us we must begin by preparing a scheme, and getting special powers and all sorts of rot. Said it would take us years." "_We'll_ have a scheme before long, little boy," cried Cossar, hands to his mouth as he shouted, "never fear. For a bit you'd better play about and make models of the things you want to do." They did as he told them like obedient sons. But for all that the Cossar lads brooded a little. "It's all very well," said the second to the first, "but I don't always want just to play about and plan, I want to do something _real_, you know. We didn't come into this world so strong as we are, just to play about in this messy little bit of ground, you know, and take little walks and keep out of the towns"--for by that time they were forbidden all boroughs and urban districts. "Doing nothing's just wicked. Can't we find out something the little people _want_ done and do it for them--just for the fun of doing it? "Lots of them haven't houses fit to live in," said the second boy, "Let's go and build 'em a house close up to London, that will hold heaps and heaps of them and be ever so comfortable and nice, and let's make 'em a nice little road to where they all go and do business--nice straight little road, and make it all as nice as nice. We'll make it all so clean and pretty that they won't any of them be able to live grubby and beastly like most of them do now. Water enough for them to wash with, we'll have--you know they're so dirty now that nine out of ten of their houses haven't even baths in them, the filthy little skunks! You know, the ones that have baths spit insults at the ones that haven't, instead of helping them to get them--and call 'em the Great Unwashed--_-You_ know. We'll alter all that. And we'll make electricity light and cook and clean up for them, and all. Fancy! They make their women--women who are going to be mothers--crawl about and scrub floors! "We could make it all beautifully. We could bank up a valley in that range of hills over there and make a nice reservoir, and we could make a big place here to generate our electricity and have it all simply lovely. Couldn't we, brother? And then perhaps they'd let us do some other things." "Yes," said the elder brother, "we could do it _very_ nice for them." "Then _let's,"_ said the second brother. "_I_ don't mind," said the elder brother, and looked about for a handy tool. And that led to another dreadful bother. Agitated multitudes were at them in no time, telling them for a thousand reasons to stop, telling them to stop for no reason at all--babbling, confused, and varied multitudes. The place they were building was too high--it couldn't possibly be safe. It was ugly; it interfered with the letting of proper-sized houses in the neighbourhood; it ruined the tone of the neighbourhood; it was unneighbourly; it was contrary to the Local Building Regulations; it infringed the right of the local authority to muddle about with a minute expensive electric supply of its own; it interfered with the concerns of the local water company. Local Government Board clerks roused themselves to judicial obstruction. The little lawyer turned up again to represent about a dozen threatened interests; local landowners appeared in opposition; people with mysterious claims claimed to be bought off at exorbitant rates; the Trades Unions of all the building trades lifted up collective voices; and a ring of dealers in all sorts of building material became a bar. Extraordinary associations of people with prophetic visions of aesthetic horrors rallied to protect the scenery of the place where they would build the great house, of the valley where they would bank up the water. These last people were absolutely the worst asses of the lot, the Cossar boys considered. That beautiful house of the Cossar boys was just like a walking-stick thrust into a wasps' nest, in no time. "I never did!" said the elder boy. "We can't go on," said the second brother. "Rotten little beasts they are," said the third of the brothers; "we can't do _anything!_" "Even when it's for their own comfort. Such a _nice_ place we'd have made for them too." "They seem to spend their silly little lives getting in each other's way," said the eldest boy, "Rights and laws and regulations and rascalities; it's like a game of spellicans.... Well, anyhow, they'll have to live in their grubby, dirty, silly little houses for a bit longer. It's very evident _we_ can't go on with this." And the Cossar children left that great house unfinished, a mere hole of foundations and the beginning of a wall, and sulked back to their big enclosure. After a time the hole was filled with water and with stagnation and weeds, and vermin, and the Food, either dropped there by the sons of Cossar or blowing thither as dust, set growth going in its usual fashion. Water voles came out over the country and did infinite havoc, and one day a farmer caught his pigs drinking there, and instantly and with great presence of mind--for he knew: of the great hog of Oakham--slew them all. And from that deep pool it was the mosquitoes came, quite terrible mosquitoes, whose only virtue was that the sons of Cossar, after being bitten for a little, could stand the thing no longer, but chose a moonlight night when law and order were abed and drained the water clean away into the river by Brook. But they left the big weeds and the big water voles and all sorts of big undesirable things still living and breeding on the site they had chosen--the site on which the fair great house of the little people might have towered to heaven ... IV. That had been in the boyhood of the Sons, but now they were nearly men, And the chains had been tightening upon them, and tightening with every year of growth. Each year they grew, and the Food spread and great things multiplied, each year the stress and tension rose. The Food had been at first for the great mass of mankind a distant marvel, and now It was coming home to every threshold, and threatening, pressing against and distorting the whole order of life. It blocked this, it overturned that; it changed natural products, and by changing natural products it stopped employments and threw men out of work by the hundred thousands; it swept over boundaries and turned the world of trade into a world of cataclysms: no wonder mankind hated it. And since it is easier to hate animate than inanimate things, animals more than plants, and one's fellow-men more completely than any animals, the fear and trouble engendered by giant nettles and six-foot grass blades, awful insects and tiger-like vermin, grew all into one great power of detestation that aimed itself with a simple directness at that scattered band of great human beings, the Children of the Food. That hatred had become the central force in political affairs. The old party lines had been traversed and effaced altogether under the insistence of these newer issues, and the conflict lay now with the party of the temporisers, who were for putting little political men to control and regulate the Food, and the party of reaction for whom Caterham spoke, speaking always with a more sinister ambiguity, crystallising his intention first in one threatening phrase and then another, now that men must "prune the bramble growths," now that they must find a "cure for elephantiasis," and at last upon the eve of the election that they must "Grasp the nettle." One day the three sons of Cossar, who were now no longer boys but men, sat among the masses of their futile work and talked together after their fashion of all these things. They had been working all day at one of a series of great and complicated trenches their father had bid them make, and now it was sunset, and they sat in the little garden space before the great house and looked at the world and rested, until the little servants within should say their food was ready. You must figure these mighty forms, forty feet high the least of them was, reclining on a patch of turf that would have seemed a stubble of reeds to a common man. One sat up and chipped earth from his huge boots with an iron girder he grasped in his hand; the second rested on his elbow; the third whittled a pine tree into shape and made a smell of resin in the air. They were clothed not in cloth but in under-garments of woven rope and outer clothes of felted aluminium wire; they were shod with timber and iron, and the links and buttons and belts of their clothing were all of plated steel. The great single-storeyed house they lived in, Egyptian in its massiveness, half built of monstrous blocks of chalk and half excavated from the living rock of the hill, had a front a full hundred feet in height, and beyond, the chimneys and wheels, the cranes and covers of their work sheds rose marvellously against the sky. Through a circular window in the house there was visible a spout from which some white-hot metal dripped and dripped in measured drops into a receptacle out of sight. The place was enclosed and rudely fortified by monstrous banks of earth, backed with steel both over the crests of the Downs above and across the dip of the valley. It needed something of common size to mark the nature of the scale. The train that came rattling from Sevenoaks athwart their vision, and presently plunged into the tunnel out of their sight, looked by contrast with them like some small-sized automatic toy. "They have made all the woods this side of Ightham out of bounds," said one, "and moved the board that was out by Knockholt two miles and more this way." "It is the least they could do," said the youngest, after a pause. "They are trying to take the wind out of Caterham's sails." "It's not enough for that, and--it is almost too much for us," said the third. "They are cutting us off from Brother Redwood. Last time I went to him the red notices had crept a mile in, either way. The road to him along the Downs is no more than a narrow lane." The speaker thought. "What has come to our brother Redwood?" "Why?" said the eldest brother. The speaker hacked a bough from his pine. "He was like--as though he wasn't awake. He didn't seem to listen to what I had to say. And he said something of--love." The youngest tapped his girder on the edge of his iron sole and laughed. "Brother Redwood," he said, "has dreams." Neither spoke for a space. Then the eldest brother said, "This cooping up and cooping up grows more than I can bear. At last, I believe, they will draw a line round our boots and tell us to live on that." The middle brother swept aside a heap of pine boughs with one hand and shifted his attitude. "What they do now is nothing to what they will do when Caterham has power." "If he gets power," said the youngest brother, smiting the ground with his girder. "As he will," said the eldest, staring at his feet. The middle brother ceased his lopping, and his eye went to the great banks that sheltered them about. "Then, brothers," he said, "our youth will be over, and, as Father Redwood said to us long ago, we must quit ourselves like men." "Yes," said the eldest brother; "but what exactly does that mean? Just what does it mean--when that day of trouble comes?" He too glanced at those rude vast suggestions of entrenchment about them, looking not so much at them as through them and over the hills to the innumerable multitudes beyond. Something of the same sort came into all their minds--a vision of little people coming out to war, in a flood, the little people, inexhaustible, incessant, malignant.... "They are little," said the youngest brother; "but they have numbers beyond counting, like the sands of the sea." "They have arms--they have weapons even, that our brothers in Sunderland have made." "Besides, Brothers, except for vermin, except for little accidents with evil things, what have we seen of killing?" "I know," said the eldest brother. "For all that--we are what we are. When the day of trouble comes we must do the thing we have to do." He closed his knife with a snap--the blade was the length of a man--and used his new pine staff to help himself rise. He stood up and turned towards the squat grey immensity of the house. The crimson of the sunset caught him as he rose, caught the mail and clasps about his neck and the woven metal of his arms, and to the eyes of his brother it seemed as though he was suddenly suffused with blood ... As the young giant rose a little black figure became visible to him against that western incandescence on the top of the embankment that towered above the summit of the down. The black limbs waved in ungainly gestures. Something in the fling of the limbs suggested haste to the young giant's mind. He waved his pine mast in reply, filled the whole valley with his vast Hullo! threw a "Something's up" to his brothers, and set off in twenty-foot strides to meet and help his father. V. It chanced too that a young man who was not a giant was delivering his soul about these sons of Cossar just at that same time. He had come over the hills beyond Sevenoaks, he and his friend, and he it was did the talking. In the hedge as they came along they had heard a pitiful squealing, and had intervened to rescue three nestling tits from the attack of a couple of giant ants. That adventure it was had set him talking. "Reactionary!" he was saying, as they came within sight of the Cossar encampment. "Who wouldn't be reactionary? Look at that square of ground, that space of God's earth that was once sweet and fair, torn, desecrated, disembowelled! Those sheds! That great wind-wheel! That monstrous wheeled machine! Those dykes! Look at those three monsters squatting there, plotting some ugly devilment or other! Look--look at all the land!" His friend glanced at his face. "You have been listening to Caterham," he said. "Using my eyes. Looking a little into the peace and order of the past we leave behind. This foul Food is the last shape of the Devil, still set as ever upon the ruin of our world. Think what the world must have been before our days, what it was still when our mothers bore us, and see it now! Think how these slopes once smiled under the golden harvest, how the hedges, full of sweet little flowers, parted the modest portion of this man from that, how the ruddy farmhouses dotted the land, and the voice of the church bells from yonder tower stilled the whole world each Sabbath into Sabbath prayer. And now, every year, still more and more of monstrous weeds, of monstrous vermin, and these giants growing all about us, straddling over us, blundering against all that is subtle and sacred in our world. Why here--Look!" He pointed, and his friend's eyes followed the line of his white finger. "One of their footmarks. See! It has smashed itself three feet deep and more, a pitfall for horse and rider, a trap to the unwary. There is a briar rose smashed to death; there is grass uprooted and a teazle crushed aside, a farmer's drain pipe snapped and the edge of the pathway broken down. Destruction! So they are doing all over the world, all over the order and decency the world of men has made. Trampling on all things. Reaction! What else?" "But--reaction. What do you hope to do?" "Stop it!" cried the young man from Oxford. "Before it is too late." "But---" "It's _not_ impossible," cried the young man from Oxford, with a jump in his voice. "We want the firm hand; we want the subtle plan, the resolute mind. We have been mealy-mouthed and weak-handed; we have trifled and temporised and the Food has grown and grown. Yet even now--" He stopped for a moment. "This is the echo of Caterham," said his friend. "Even now. Even now there is hope--abundant hope, if only we make sure of what we want and what we mean to destroy. The mass of people are with us, much more with us than they were a few years ago; the law is with us, the constitution and order of society, the spirit of the established religions, the customs and habits of mankind are with us--and against the Food. Why should we temporise? Why should we lie? We hate it, we don't want it; why then should we have it? Do you mean to just grizzle and obstruct passively and do nothing--till the sands are out?" He stopped short and turned about. "Look at that grove of nettles there. In the midst of them are homes--deserted--where once clean families of simple men played out their honest lives! "And there!" he swung round to where the young Cossars muttered to one another of their wrongs. "Look at them! And I know their father, a brute, a sort of brute beast with an intolerant loud voice, a creature who has ran amuck in our all too merciful world for the last thirty years and more. An engineer! To him all that we hold dear and sacred is nothing. Nothing! The splendid traditions of our race and land, the noble institutions, the venerable order, the broad slow march from precedent to precedent that has made our English people great and this sunny island free--it is all an idle tale, told and done with. Some claptrap about the Future is worth all these sacred things.... The sort of man who would run a tramway over his mother's grave if he thought that was the cheapest line the tramway could take.... And you think to temporise, to make some scheme of compromise, that will enable you to live in your way while that--that machinery--lives in its. I tell you it is hopeless--hopeless. As well make treaties with a tiger! They want things monstrous--we want them sane and sweet. It is one thing or the other." "But what can you do?" "Much! All! Stop the Food! They are still scattered, these giants; still immature and disunited. Chain them, gag them, muzzle them. At any cost stop them. It is their world or ours! Stop the Food. Shut up these men who make it. Do anything to stop Cossar! You don't seem to remember--one generation--only one generation needs holding down, and then--Then we could level those mounds there, fill up their footsteps, take the ugly sirens from our church towers, smash all our elephant guns, and turn our faces again to the old order, the ripe old civilisation for which the soul of man is fitted." "It's a mighty effort." "For a mighty end. And if we don't? Don't you see the prospect before us clear as day? Everywhere the giants will increase and multiply; everywhere they will make and scatter the Food. The grass will grow gigantic in our fields, the weeds in our hedges, the vermin in the thickets, the rats in the drains. More and more and more. This is only a beginning. The insect world will rise on us, the plant world, the very fishes in the sea, will swamp and drown our ships. Tremendous growths will obscure and hide our houses, smother our churches, smash and destroy all the order of our cities, and we shall become no more than a feeble vermin under the heels of the new race. Mankind will be swamped and drowned in things of its own begetting! And all for nothing! Size! Mere size! Enlargement and _da capo_. Already we go picking our way among the first beginnings of the coming time. And all we do is to say 'How inconvenient!' To grumble and do nothing. _No_!" He raised his hand. "Let them do the thing they have to do! So also will I. I am for Reaction--unstinted and fearless Reaction. Unless you mean to take this Food also, what else is there to do in all the world? We have trifled in the middle ways too long. You! Trifling in the middle ways is your habit, your circle of existence, your space and time. So, not I! I am against the Food, with all my strength and purpose against the Food." He turned on his companion's grunt of dissent. "Where are you?" "It's a complicated business---" "Oh!--Driftwood!" said the young man from Oxford, very bitterly, with a fling of all his limbs. "The middle way is nothingness. It is one thing or the other. Eat or destroy. Eat or destroy! What else is there to do?" CHAPTER THE SECOND. THE GIANT LOVERS. I. Now it chanced in the days when Caterham was campaigning against the Boom-children before the General Election that was--amidst the most tragic and terrible circumstances--to bring him into power, that the giant Princess, that Serene Highness whose early nutrition had played so great a part in the brilliant career of Doctor Winkles, had come from the kingdom of her father to England, on an occasion that was deemed important. She was affianced for reasons of state to a certain Prince--and the wedding was to be made an event of international significance. There had arisen mysterious delays. Rumour and Imagination collaborated in the story and many things were said. There were suggestions of a recalcitrant Prince who declared he would not be made to look like a fool--at least to this extent. People sympathised with him. That is the most significant aspect of the affair. Now it may seem a strange thing, but it is a fact that the giant Princess, when she came to England, knew of no other giants whatever. She had lived in a world where tact is almost a passion and reservations the air of one's life. They had kept the thing from her; they had hedged her about from sight or suspicion of any gigantic form, until her appointed coming to England was due. Until she met young Redwood she had no inkling that there was such a thing as another giant in the world. In the kingdom of the father of the Princess there were wild wastes of upland and mountains where she had been accustomed to roam freely. She loved the sunrise and the sunset and all the great drama of the open heavens more than anything else in the world, but among a people at once so democratic and so vehemently loyal as the English her freedom was much restricted. People came in brakes, in excursion trains, in organised multitudes to see her; they would cycle long distances to stare at her, and it was necessary to rise betimes if she would walk in peace. It was still near the dawn that morning when young Redwood came upon her. The Great Park near the Palace where she lodged stretched, for a score of miles and more, west and south of the western palace gates. The chestnut trees of its avenues reached high above her head. Each one as she passed it seemed to proffer a more abundant wealth of blossom. For a time she was content with sight and scent, but at last she was won over by these offers, and set herself so busily to choose and pick that she did not perceive young Redwood until he was close upon her. She moved among the chestnut trees, with the destined lover drawing near to her, unanticipated, unsuspected. She thrust her hands in among the branches, breaking them and gathering them. She was alone in the world. Then--- She looked up, and in that moment she was mated. We must needs put our imaginations to his stature to see the beauty he saw. That unapproachable greatness that prevents our immediate sympathy with her did not exist for him. There she stood, a gracious girl, the first created being that had ever seemed a mate for him, light and slender, lightly clad, the fresh breeze of the dawn moulding the subtly folding robe upon her against the soft strong lines of her form, and with a great mass of blossoming chestnut branches in her hands. The collar of her robe opened to show the whiteness of her neck and a soft shadowed roundness that passed out of sight towards her shoulders. The breeze had stolen a strand or so of her hair too, and strained its red-tipped brown across her cheek. Her eyes were open blue, and her lips rested always in the promise of a smile as she reached among the branches. She turned upon him with a start, saw him, and for a space they regarded one another. For her, the sight of him was so amazing, so incredible, as to be, for some moments at least, terrible. He came to her with the shock of a supernatural apparition; he broke all the established law of her world. He was a youth of one-and-twenty then, slenderly built, with his father's darkness and his father's gravity. He was clad in a sober soft brown leather, close-fitting easy garments, and in brown hose, that shaped him bravely. His head went uncovered in all weathers. They stood regarding one another--she incredulously amazed, and he with his heart beating fast. It was a moment without a prelude, the cardinal meeting of their lives. For him there was less surprise. He had been seeking her, and yet his heart beat fast. He came towards her, slowly, with his eyes upon her face. "You are the Princess," he said. "My father has told me. You are the Princess who was given the Food of the Gods." "I am the Princess--yes," she said, with eyes of wonder. "But--what are you?" "I am the son of the man who made the Food of the Gods." "The Food of the Gods!" "Yes, the Food of the Gods." "But--" Her face expressed infinite perplexity. "What? I don't understand. The Food of the Gods?" "You have not heard?" "The Food of the Gods! _No_!" She found herself trembling violently. The colour left her face. "I did not know," she said. "Do you mean--?" He waited for her. "Do you mean there are other--giants?" He repeated, "Did you not know?" And she answered, with the growing amazement of realisation, "_No!_" The whole world and all the meaning of the world was changing for her. A branch of chestnut slipped from her hand. "Do you mean to say," she repeated stupidly, "that there are other giants in the world? That some food--?" He caught her amazement. "You know nothing?" he cried. "You have never heard of us? You, whom the Food has made akin to us!" There was terror still in the eyes that stared at him. Her hand rose towards her throat and fell again. She whispered, "_No_." It seemed to her that she must weep or faint. Then in a moment she had rule over herself and she was speaking and thinking clearly. "All this has been kept from me," she said. "It is like a dream. I have dreamt--have dreamt such things. But waking--No. Tell me! Tell me! What are you? What is this Food of the Gods? Tell me slowly--and clearly. Why have they kept it from me, that I am not alone?" II. "Tell me," she said, and young Redwood, tremulous and excited, set himself to tell her--it was poor and broken telling for a time--of the Food of the Gods and the giant children who were scattered over the world. You must figure them both, flushed and startled in their bearing; getting at one another's meaning through endless half-heard, half-spoken phrases, repeating, making perplexing breaks and new departures--a wonderful talk, in which she awakened from the ignorance of all her life. And very slowly it became clear to her that she was no exception to the order of mankind, but one of a scattered brotherhood, who had all eaten the Food and grown for ever out of the little limits of the folk beneath their feet. Young Redwood spoke of his father, of Cossar, of the Brothers scattered throughout the country, of the great dawn of wider meaning that had come at last into the history of the world. "We are in the beginning of a beginning," he said; "this world of theirs is only the prelude to the world the Food will make. "My father believes--and I also believe--that a time will come when littleness will have passed altogether out of the world of man,--when giants shall go freely about this earth--their earth--doing continually greater and more splendid things. But that--that is to come. We are not even the first generation of that--we are the first experiments." "And of these things," she said, "I knew nothing!" "There are times when it seems to me almost as if we had come too soon. Some one, I suppose, had to come first. But the world was all unprepared for our coming and for the coming of all the lesser great things that drew their greatness from the Food. There have been blunders; there have been conflicts. The little people hate our kind.... "They are hard towards us because they are so little.... And because our feet are heavy on the things that make their lives. But at any rate they hate us now; they will have none of us--only if we could shrink back to the common size of them would they begin to forgive.... "They are happy in houses that are prison cells to us; their cities are too small for us; we go in misery along their narrow ways; we cannot worship in their churches.... "We see over their walls and over their protections; we look inadvertently into their upper windows; we look over their customs; their laws are no more than a net about our feet.... "Every time we stumble we hear them shouting; every time we blunder against their limits or stretch out to any spacious act.... "Our easy paces are wild flights to them, and all they deem great and wonderful no more than dolls' pyramids to us. Their pettiness of method and appliance and imagination hampers and defeats our powers. There are no machines to the power of our hands, no helps to fit our needs. They hold our greatness in servitude by a thousand invisible bands. We are stronger, man for man, a hundred times, but we are disarmed; our very greatness makes us debtors; they claim the land we stand upon; they tax our ampler need of food and shelter, and for all these things we must toil with the tools these dwarfs can make us--and to satisfy their dwarfish fancies ... "They pen us in, in every way. Even to live one must cross their boundaries. Even to meet you here to-day I have passed a limit. All that is reasonable and desirable in life they make out of bounds for us. We may not go into the towns; we may not cross the bridges; we may not step on their ploughed fields or into the harbours of the game they kill. I am cut off now from all our Brethren except the three sons of Cossar, and even that way the passage narrows day by day. One could think they sought occasion against us to do some more evil thing ..." "But we are strong," she said. "We should be strong--yes. We feel, all of us--you too I know must feel--that we have power, power to do great things, power insurgent in us. But before we can do anything--" He flung out a hand that seemed to sweep away a world. "Though I thought I was alone in the world," she said, after a pause, "I have thought of these things. They have taught me always that strength was almost a sin, that it was better to be little than great, that all true religion was to shelter the weak and little, encourage the weak and little, help them to multiply and multiply until at last they crawled over one another, to sacrifice all our strength in their cause. But ... always I have doubted the thing they taught." "This life," he said, "these bodies of ours, are not for dying." "No." "Nor to live in futility. But if we would not do that, it is already plain to all our Brethren a conflict must come. I know not what bitterness of conflict must presently come, before the little folks will suffer us to live as we need to live. All the Brethren have thought of that. Cossar, of whom I told you: he too has thought of that." "They are very little and weak." "In their way. But you know all the means of death are in their hands, and made for their hands. For hundreds of thousands of years these little people, whose world we invade, have been learning how to kill one another. They are very able at that. They are able in many ways. And besides, they can deceive and change suddenly.... I do not know.... There comes a conflict. You--you perhaps are different from us. For us, assuredly, the conflict comes.... The thing they call War. We know it. In a way we prepare for it. But you know--those little people!--we do not know how to kill, at least we do not want to kill--" "Look," she interrupted, and he heard a yelping horn. He turned at the direction of her eyes, and found a bright yellow motor car, with dark goggled driver and fur-clad passengers, whooping, throbbing, and buzzing resentfully at his heel. He moved his foot, and the mechanism, with three angry snorts, resumed its fussy way towards the town. "Filling up the roadway!" floated up to him. Then some one said, "Look! Did you see? There is the monster Princess over beyond the trees!" and all their goggled faces came round to stare. "I say," said another. "_That_ won't do ..." "All this," she said, "is more amazing than I can tell." "That they should not have told you," he said, and left his sentence incomplete. "Until you came upon me, I had lived in a world where I was great--alone. I had made myself a life--for that. I had thought I was the victim of some strange freak of nature. And now my world has crumbled down, in half an hour, and I see another world, other conditions, wider possibilities--fellowship--" "Fellowship," he answered. "I want you to tell me more yet, and much more," she said. "You know this passes through my mind like a tale that is told. You even ... In a day perhaps, or after several days, I shall believe in you. Now--Now I am dreaming.... Listen!" The first stroke of a clock above the palace offices far away had penetrated to them. Each counted mechanically "Seven." "This," she said, "should be the hour of my return. They will be taking the bowl of my coffee into the hall where I sleep. The little officials and servants--you cannot dream how grave they are--will be stirring about their little duties." "They will wonder ... But I want to talk to you." She thought. "But I want to think too. I want now to think alone, and think out this change in things, think away the old solitude, and think you and those others into my world.... I shall go. I shall go back to-day to my place in the castle, and to-morrow, as the dawn comes, I shall come again--here." "I shall be here waiting for you." "All day I shall dream and dream of this new world you have given me. Even now, I can scarcely believe--" She took a step back and surveyed him from the feet to the face. Their eyes met and locked for a moment. "Yes," she said, with a little laugh that was half a sob. "You are real. But it is very wonderful! Do you think--indeed--? Suppose to-morrow I come and find you--a pigmy like the others... Yes, I must think. And so for to-day--as the little people do--" She held out her hand, and for the first time they touched one another. Their hands clasped firmly and their eyes met again. "Good-bye," she said, "for to-day. Good-bye! Good-bye, Brother Giant!" He hesitated with some unspoken thing, and at last he answered her simply, "Good-bye." For a space they held each other's hands, studying each the other's face. And many times after they had parted, she looked back half doubtfully at him, standing still in the place where they had met.... She walked into her apartments across the great yard of the Palace like one who walks in a dream, with a vast branch of chestnut trailing from her hand. III. These two met altogether fourteen times before the beginning of the end. They met in the Great Park or on the heights and among the gorges of the rusty-roaded, heathery moorland, set with dusky pine-woods, that stretched to the south-west. Twice they met in the great avenue of chestnuts, and five times near the broad ornamental water the king, her great-grandfather, had made. There was a place where a great trim lawn, set with tall conifers, sloped graciously to the water's edge, and there she would sit, and he would lie at her knees and look up in her face and talk, telling of all the things that had been, and of the work his father had set before him, and of the great and spacious dream of what the giant people should one day be. Commonly they met in the early dawn, but once they met there in the afternoon, and found presently a multitude of peering eavesdroppers about them, cyclists, pedestrians, peeping from the bushes, rustling (as sparrows will rustle about one in the London parks) amidst the dead leaves in the woods behind, gliding down the lake in boats towards a point of view, trying to get nearer to them and hear. It was the first hint that offered of the enormous interest the countryside was taking in their meetings. And once--it was the seventh time, and it precipitated the scandal--they met out upon the breezy moorland under a clear moonlight, and talked in whispers there, for the night was warm and still. Very soon they had passed from the realisation that in them and through them a new world of giantry shaped itself in the earth, from the contemplation of the great struggle between big and little, in which they were clearly destined to participate, to interests at once more personal and more spacious. Each time they met and talked and looked on one another, it crept a little more out of their subconscious being towards recognition, that something more dear and wonderful than friendship was between them, and walked between them and drew their hands together. And in a little while they came to the word itself and found themselves lovers, the Adam and Eve of a new race in the world. They set foot side by side into the wonderful valley of love, with its deep and quiet places. The world changed about them with their changing mood, until presently it had become, as it were, a tabernacular beauty about their meetings, and the stars were no more than flowers of light beneath the feet of their love, and the dawn and sunset the coloured hangings by the way. They ceased to be beings of flesh and blood to one another and themselves; they passed into a bodily texture of tenderness and desire. They gave it first whispers and then silence, and drew close and looked into one another's moonlit and shadowy faces under the infinite arch of the sky. And the still black pine-trees stood about them like sentinels. The beating steps of time were hushed into silence, and it seemed to them the universe hung still. Only their hearts were audible, beating. They seemed to be living together in a world where there is no death, and indeed so it was with them then. It seemed to them that they sounded, and indeed they sounded, such hidden splendours in the very heart of things as none have ever reached before. Even for mean and little souls, love is the revelation of splendours. And these were giant lovers who had eaten the Food of the Gods ... * * * * * You may imagine the spreading consternation in this ordered world when it became known that the Princess who was affianced to the Prince, the Princess, Her Serene Highness! with royal blood in her veins! met,--frequently met,--the hypertrophied offspring of a common professor of chemistry, a creature of no rank, no position, no wealth, and talked to him as though there were no Kings and Princes, no order, no reverence--nothing but Giants and Pigmies in the world, talked to him and, it was only too certain, held him as her lover. "If those newspaper fellows get hold of it!" gasped Sir Arthur Poodle Bootlick ... "I am told--" whispered the old Bishop of Frumps. "New story upstairs," said the first footman, as he nibbled among the dessert things. "So far as I can make out this here giant Princess--" "They say--" said the lady who kept the stationer's shop by the main entrance to the Palace, where the little Americans get their tickets for the State Apartments ... And then: "We are authorised to deny--" said "Picaroon" in _Gossip_. And so the whole trouble came out. IV. "They say that we must part," the Princess said to her lover. "But why?" he cried. "What new folly have these people got into their heads?" "Do you know," she asked, "that to love me--is high treason?" "My dear," he cried; "but does it matter? What is their right--right without a shadow of reason--and their treason and their loyalty to us?" "You shall hear," she said, and told him of the things that had been told to her. "It was the queerest little man who came to me with a soft, beautifully modulated voice, a softly moving little gentleman who sidled into the room like a cat and put his pretty white hand up so, whenever he had anything significant to say. He is bald, but not of course nakedly bald, and his nose and face are chubby rosy little things, and his beard is trimmed to a point in quite the loveliest way. He pretended to have emotions several times and made his eyes shine. You know he is quite a friend of the real royal family here, and he called me his dear young lady and was perfectly sympathetic even from the beginning. 'My dear young lady,' he said, 'you know--_you mustn't,'_ several times, and then, 'You owe a duty.'" "Where do they make such men?" "He likes it," she said. "But I don't see--" "He told me serious things." "You don't think," he said, turning on her abruptly, "that there's anything in the sort of thing he said?" "There's something in it quite certainly," said she. "You mean--?" "I mean that without knowing it we have been trampling on the most sacred conceptions of the little folks. We who are royal are a class apart. We are worshipped prisoners, processional toys. We pay for worship by losing--our elementary freedom. And I was to have married that Prince--You know nothing of him though. Well, a pigmy Prince. He doesn't matter.... It seems it would have strengthened the bonds between my country and another. And this country also was to profit. Imagine it!--strengthening the bonds!" "And now?" "They want me to go on with it--as though there was nothing between us two." "Nothing!" "Yes. But that isn't all. He said--" "Your specialist in Tact?" "Yes. He said it would be better for you, better for all the giants, if we two--abstained from conversation. That was how he put it." "But what can they do if we don't?" "He said you might have your freedom." "_I!_" "He said, with a stress, 'My dear young lady, it would be better, it would be more dignified, if you parted, willingly.' That was all he said. With a stress on willingly." "But--! What business is it of these little wretches, where we love, how we love? What have they and their world to do with us?" "They do not think that." "Of course," he said, "you disregard all this." "It seems utterly foolish to me." "That their laws should fetter us! That we, at the first spring of life, should be tripped by their old engagements, their aimless institutions! Oh--! We disregard it." "I am yours. So far--yes." "So far? Isn't that all?" "But they--If they want to part us--" "What can they do?" "I don't know. What _can_ they do?" "Who cares what they can do, or what they will do? I am yours and you are mine. What is there more than that? I am yours and you are mine--for ever. Do you think I will stop for their little rules, for their little prohibitions, their scarlet boards indeed!--and keep from _you_?" "Yes. But still, what can they do?" "You mean," he said, "what are we to do?" "Yes." "We? We can go on." "But if they seek to prevent us?" He clenched his hands. He looked round as if the little people were already coming to prevent them. Then turned away from her and looked about the world. "Yes," he said. "Your question was the right one. What can they do?" "Here in this little land," she said, and stopped. He seemed to survey it all. "They are everywhere." "But we might--" "Whither?" "We could go. We could swim the seas together. Beyond the seas--" "I have never been beyond the seas." "There are great and desolate mountains amidst which we should seem no more than little people, there are remote and deserted valleys, there are hidden lakes and snow-girdled uplands untrodden by the feet of men. _There_--" "But to get there we must fight our way day after day through millions and millions of mankind." "It is our only hope. In this crowded land there is no fastness, no shelter. What place is there for us among these multitudes? They who are little can hide from one another, but where are we to hide? There is no place where we could eat, no place where we could sleep. If we fled--night and day they would pursue our footsteps." A thought came to him. "There is one place," he said, "even in this island." "Where?" "The place our Brothers have made over beyond there. They have made great banks about their house, north and south and east and west; they have made deep pits and hidden places, and even now--one came over to me quite recently. He said--I did not altogether heed what he said then. But he spoke of arms. It may be--there--we should find shelter.... "For many days," he said, after a pause, "I have not seen our Brothers... Dear! I have been dreaming, I have been forgetting! The days have passed, and I have done nothing but look to see you again ... I must go to them and talk to them, and tell them of you and of all the things that hang over us. If they will help us, they can help us. Then indeed we might hope. I do not know how strong their place is, but certainly Cossar will have made it strong. Before all this--before you came to me, I remember now--there was trouble brewing. There was an election--when all the little people settle things, by counting heads. It must be over now. There were threats against all our race--against all our race, that is, but you. I must see our Brothers. I must tell them all that has happened between us, and all that threatens now." V. He did not come to their next meeting until she had waited some time. They were to meet that day about midday in a great space of park that fitted into a bend of the river, and as she waited, looking ever southward under her hand, it came to her that the world was very still, that indeed it was broodingly still. And then she perceived that, spite of the lateness of the hour, her customary retinue of voluntary spies had failed her. Left and right, when she came to look, there was no one in sight, and there was never a boat upon the silver curve of the Thames. She tried to find a reason for this strange stillness in the world.... Then, a grateful sight for her, she saw young Redwood far away over a gap in the tree masses that bounded her view. Immediately the trees hid him, and presently he was thrusting through them and in sight again. She could see there was something different, and then she saw that he was hurrying unusually and then that he limped. He gestured to her, and she walked towards him. His face became clearer, and she saw with infinite concern that he winced at every stride. She ran towards him, her mind full of questions and vague fear. He drew near to her and spoke without a greeting. "Are we to part?" he panted. "No," she answered. "Why? What is the matter?" "But if we do not part--! It is _now_." "What is the matter?" "I do not want to part," he said. "Only--" He broke off abruptly to ask, "You will not part from me?" She met his eyes with a steadfast look. "What has happened?" she pressed. "Not for a time?" "What time?" "Years perhaps." "Part! No!" "You have thought?" he insisted. "I will not part." She took his hand. "If this meant death, _now_, I would not let you go." "If it meant death," he said, and she felt his grip upon her fingers. He looked about him as if he feared to see the little people coming as he spoke. And then: "It may mean death." "Now tell me," she said. "They tried to stop my coming." "How?" "And as I came out of my workshop where I make the Food of the Gods for the Cossars to store in their camp, I found a little officer of police--a man in blue with white clean gloves--who beckoned me to stop. 'This way is closed!' said he. I thought little of that; I went round my workshop to where another road runs west, and there was another officer. 'This road is closed!' he said, and added: 'All the roads are closed!'" "And then?" "I argued with him a little. 'They are public roads!' I said. "'That's it,' said he. 'You spoil them for the public.' "'Very well,' said I, 'I'll take the fields,' and then, up leapt others from behind a hedge and said, 'These fields are private.' "'Curse your public and private,' I said, 'I'm going to my Princess,' and I stooped down and picked him up very gently--kicking and shouting--and put him out of my way. In a minute all the fields about me seemed alive with running men. I saw one on horseback galloping beside me and reading something as he rode--shouting it. He finished and turned and galloped away from me--head down. I couldn't make it out. And then behind me I heard the crack of guns." "Guns!" "Guns--just as they shoot at the rats. The bullets came through the air with a sound like things tearing: one stung me in the leg." "And you?" "Came on to you here and left them shouting and running and shooting behind me. And now--" "Now?" "It is only the beginning. They mean that we shall part. Even now they are coming after me." "We will not." "No. But if we will not part--then you must come with me to our Brothers." "Which way?" she said. "To the east. Yonder is the way my pursuers will be coming. This then is the way we must go. Along this avenue of trees. Let me go first, so that if they are waiting--" He made a stride, but she had seized his arm. "No," cried she. "I come close to you, holding you. Perhaps I am royal, perhaps I am sacred. If I hold you--Would God we could fly with my arms about you!--it may be, they will not shoot at you--" She clasped his shoulder and seized his hand as she spoke; she pressed herself nearer to him. "It may be they will not shoot you," she repeated, and with a sudden passion of tenderness he took her into his arms and kissed her cheek. For a space he held her. "Even if it is death," she whispered. She put her hands about his neck and lifted her face to his. "Dearest, kiss me once more." He drew her to him. Silently they kissed one another on the lips, and for another moment clung to one another. Then hand in hand, and she striving always to keep her body near to his, they set forward if haply they might reach the camp of refuge the sons of Cossar had made, before the pursuit of the little people overtook them. And as they crossed the great spaces of the park behind the castle there came horsemen galloping out from among the trees and vainly seeking to keep pace with their giant strides. And presently ahead of them were houses, and men with guns running out of the houses. At the sight of that, though he sought to go on and was even disposed to fight and push through, she made him turn aside towards the south. As they fled a bullet whipped by them overhead. CHAPTER THE THIRD. YOUNG CADDLES IN LONDON. I. All unaware of the trend of events, unaware of the laws that were closing in upon all the Brethren, unaware indeed that there lived a Brother for him on the earth, young Caddles chose this time to come out of his chalk pit and see the world. His brooding came at last to that. There was no answer to all his questions in Cheasing Eyebright; the new Vicar was less luminous even than the old, and the riddle of his pointless labour grew at last to the dimensions of exasperation. "Why should I work in this pit day after day?" he asked. "Why should I walk within bounds and be refused all the wonders of the world beyond there? What have I done, to be condemned to this?" And one day he stood up, straightened his back, and said in a loud voice, "No! "I won't," he said, and then with great vigour cursed the pit. Then, having few words, he sought to express his thought in acts. He took a truck half filled with chalk, lifted it, and flung it, smash, against another. Then he grasped a whole row of empty trucks and spun them down a bank. He sent a huge boulder of chalk bursting among them, and then ripped up a dozen yards of rail with a mighty plunge of his foot. So he commenced the conscientious wrecking of the pit. "Work all my days," he said, "at this!" It was an astonishing five minutes for the little geologist he had, in his preoccupation, overlooked. This poor little creature having dodged two boulders by a hairbreadth, got out by the westward corner and fled athwart the hill, with flapping rucksack and twinkling knicker-bockered legs, leaving a trail of Cretaceous echinoderms behind him; while young Caddles, satisfied with the destruction he had achieved, came striding out to fulfil his purpose in the world. "Work in that old pit, until I die and rot and stink!... What worm did they think was living in my giant body? Dig chalk for God knows what foolish purpose! Not _I!_" The trend of road and railway perhaps, or mere chance it was, turned his face to London, and thither he came striding; over the Downs and athwart the meadows through the hot afternoon, to the infinite amazement of the world. It signified nothing to him that torn posters in red and white bearing various names flapped from every wall and barn; he knew nothing of the electoral revolution that had flung Caterham, "Jack the Giant-killer," into power. It signified nothing to him that every police station along his route had what was known as Caterham's ukase upon its notice board that afternoon, proclaiming that no giant, no person whatever over eight feet in height, should go more than five miles from his "place of location" without a special permission. It signified nothing to him that on his wake belated police officers, not a little relieved to find themselves belated, shook warning handbills at his retreating back. He was going to see what the world had to show him, poor incredulous blockhead, and he did not mean that occasional spirited persons shouting "Hi!" at him should stay his course. He came on down by Rochester and Greenwich towards an ever-thickening aggregation of houses, walking rather slowly now, staring about him and swinging his huge chopper. People in London had heard something of him before, how that he was idiotic but gentle, and wonderfully managed by Lady Wondershoot's agent and the Vicar; how in his dull way he revered these authorities and was grateful to them for their care of him, and so forth. So that when they learnt from the newspaper placards that afternoon that he also was "on strike," the thing appeared to many of them as a deliberate, concerted act. "They mean to try our strength," said the men in the trains going home from business. "Lucky we have Caterham." "It's in answer to his proclamation." The men in the clubs were better informed. They clustered round the tape or talked in groups in their smoking-rooms. "He has no weapons. He would have gone to Sevenoaks if he had been put up to it." "Caterham will handle him...." The shopmen told their customers. The waiters in restaurants snatched a moment for an evening paper between the courses. The cabmen read it immediately after the betting news.... The placards of the chief government evening paper were conspicuous with "Grasping the Nettle." Others relied for effect on: "Giant Redwood continues to meet the Princess." The _Echo_ struck a line of its own with: "Rumoured Revolt of Giants in the North of England. The Sunderland Giants start for Scotland." The _Westminster Gazette_ sounded its usual warning note. "Giants Beware," said the _Westminster Gazette_, and tried to make a point out of it that might perhaps serve towards uniting the Liberal party--at that time greatly torn between seven intensely egotistical leaders. The later newspapers dropped into uniformity. "The Giant in the New Kent Road," they proclaimed. "What I want to know," said the pale young man in the tea shop, "is why we aren't getting any news of the young Cossars. You'd think they'd be in it most of all ..." "They tell me there's another of them young giants got loose," said the barmaid, wiping out a glass. "I've always said they was dangerous things to 'ave about. Right away from the beginning ... It ought to be put a stop to. Any'ow, I 'ope 'e won't come along 'ere." "I'd like to 'ave a look at 'im," said the young man at the bar recklessly, and added, "I _seen_ the Princess." "D'you think they'll 'urt 'im?" said the barmaid. "May 'ave to," said the young man at the bar, finishing his glass. Amidst a hum of ten million such sayings young Caddles came to London... II. I think of young Caddles always as he was seen in the New Kent Road, the sunset warm upon his perplexed and staring face. The Road was thick with its varied traffic, omnibuses, trams, vans, carts, trolleys, cyclists, motors, and a marvelling crowd--loafers, women, nurse-maids, shopping women, children, venturesome hobble-dehoys--gathered behind his gingerly moving feet. The hoardings were untidy everywhere with the tattered election paper. A babblement of voices surged about him. One sees the customers and shopmen crowding in the doorways of the shops, the faces that came and went at the windows, the little street boys running and shouting, the policemen taking it all quite stiffly and calmly, the workmen knocking off upon scaffoldings, the seething miscellany of the little folks. They shouted to him, vague encouragement, vague insults, the imbecile catchwords of the day, and he stared down at them, at such a multitude of living creatures as he had never before imagined in the world. Now that he had fairly entered London he had had to slacken his pace more and more, the little folks crowded so mightily upon him. The crowd grew denser at every step, and at last, at a corner where two great ways converged, he came to a stop, and the multitude flowed about him and closed him in. There he stood, with his feet a little apart, his back to a big corner gin palace that towered twice his height and ended In a sky sign, staring down at the pigmies and wondering--trying, I doubt not, to collate it all with the other things of his life, with the valley among the downlands, the nocturnal lovers, the singing in the church, the chalk he hammered daily, and with instinct and death and the sky, trying to see it all together coherent and significant. His brows were knit. He put up his huge paw to scratch his coarse hair, and groaned aloud. "I don't see It," he said. His accent was unfamiliar. A great babblement went across the open space--a babblement amidst which the gongs of the trams, ploughing their obstinate way through the mass, rose like red poppies amidst corn. "What did he say?" "Said he didn't see." "Said, where is the sea?" "Said, where is a seat?" "He wants a seat." "Can't the brasted fool sit on a 'ouse or somethin'?" "What are ye for, ye swarming little people? What are ye all doing, what are ye all for? "What are ye doing up here, ye swarming little people, while I'm a-cuttin' chalk for ye, down in the chalk pits there?" His queer voice, the voice that had been so bad for school discipline at Cheasing Eyebright, smote the multitude to silence while it sounded and splashed them all to tumult at the end. Some wit was audible screaming "Speech, speech!" "What's he saying?" was the burthen of the public mind, and an opinion was abroad that he was drunk. "Hi, hi, hi," bawled the omnibus-drivers, threading a dangerous way. A drunken American sailor wandered about tearfully inquiring, "What's he want anyhow?" A leathery-faced rag-dealer upon a little pony-drawn cart soared up over the tumult by virtue of his voice. "Garn 'ome, you Brasted Giant!" he brawled, "Garn 'Ome! You Brasted Great Dangerous Thing! Can't you see you're a-frightening the 'orses? Go _'ome_ with you! 'Asn't any one 'ad the sense to tell you the law?" And over all this uproar young Caddles stared, perplexed, expectant, saying no more. Down a side road came a little string of solemn policemen, and threaded itself ingeniously into the traffic. "Stand back," said the little voices; "keep moving, please." Young Caddles became aware of a little dark blue figure thumping at his shin. He looked down, and perceived two white hands gesticulating. "_What_?" he said, bending forward. "Can't stand about here," shouted the inspector. "No! You can't stand about here," he repeated. "But where am I to go?" "Back to your village. Place of location. Anyhow, now--you've got to move on. You're obstructing the traffic." "What traffic?" "Along the road." "But where is it going? Where does it come from? What does it mean? They're all round me. What do they want? What are they doin'? I want to understand. I'm tired of cuttin' chalk and bein' all alone. What are they doin' for me while I'm a-cuttin' chalk? I may just as well understand here and now as anywhere." "Sorry. But we aren't here to explain things of that sort. I must arst you to move on." "Don't you know?" "I must arst you to move on--_if_ you please ... I'd strongly advise you to get off 'ome. We've 'ad no special instructions yet--but it's against the law ... Clear away there. Clear away." The pavement to his left became invitingly bare, and young Caddles went slowly on his way. But now his tongue was loosened. "I don't understand," he muttered. "I don't understand." He would appeal brokenly to the changing crowd that ever trailed beside him and behind. "I didn't know there were such places as this. What are all you people doing with yourselves? What's it all for? What is it all for, and where do I come in?" He had already begotten a new catchword. Young men of wit and spirit addressed each other in this manner, "Ullo 'Arry O'Cock. Wot's it all _for_? Eh? Wot's it all bloomin' well _for_?" To which there sprang up a competing variety of repartees, for the most part impolite. The most popular and best adapted for general use appears to have been "_Shut_ it," or, in a voice of scornful detachment--"_Garn!_" There were others almost equally popular. III. What was he seeking? He wanted something the pigmy world did not give, some end which the pigmy world prevented his attaining, prevented even his seeing clearly, which he was never to see clearly. It was the whole gigantic social side of this lonely dumb monster crying out for his race, for the things akin to him, for something he might love and something he might serve, for a purpose he might comprehend and a command he could obey. And, you know, all this was _dumb_, raged dumbly within him, could not even, had he met a fellow giant, have found outlet and expression in speech. All the life he knew was the dull round of the village, all the speech he knew was the talk of the cottage, that failed and collapsed at the bare outline of his least gigantic need. He knew nothing of money, this monstrous simpleton, nothing of trade, nothing of the complex pretences upon which the social fabric of the little folks was built. He needed, he needed--Whatever he needed, he never found his need. All through the day and the summer night he wandered, growing hungry but as yet untired, marking the varied traffic of the different streets, the inexplicable businesses of all these infinitesimal beings. In the aggregate it had no other colour than confusion for him.... He is said to have plucked a lady from her carriage in Kensington, a lady in evening dress of the smartest sort, to have scrutinised her closely, train and shoulder blades, and to have replaced her--a little carelessly--with the profoundest sigh. For that I cannot vouch. For an hour or so he watched people fighting for places in the omnibuses at the end of Piccadilly. He was seen looming over Kennington Oval for some moments in the afternoon, but when he saw these dense thousands were engaged with the mystery of cricket and quite regardless of him he went his way with a groan. He came back to Piccadilly Circus between eleven and twelve at night and found a new sort of multitude. Clearly they were very intent: full of things they, for inconceivable reasons, might do, and of others they might not do. They stared at him and jeered at him and went their way. The cabmen, vulture-eyed, followed one another continually along the edge of the swarming pavement. People emerged from the restaurants or entered them, grave, intent, dignified, or gently and agreeably excited or keen and vigilant--beyond the cheating of the sharpest waiter born. The great giant, standing at his corner, peered at them all. "What is it all for?" he murmured in a mournful vast undertone, "What is it all for? They are all so earnest. What is it I do not understand?" And none of them seemed to see, as he could do, the drink-sodden wretchedness of the painted women at the corner, the ragged misery that sneaked along the gutters, the infinite futility of all this employment. The infinite futility! None of them seemed to feel the shadow of that giant's need, that shadow of the future, that lay athwart their paths... Across the road high up mysterious letters flamed and went, that might, could he have read them, have measured for him the dimensions of human interest, have told him of the fundamental needs and features of life as the little folks conceived it. First would come a flaming T; Then U would follow, TU; Then P, TUP; Until at last there stood complete, across the sky, this cheerful message to all who felt the burthen of life's earnestness: TUPPER'S TONIC WINE FOR VIGOUR. Snap! and it had vanished into night, to be followed in the same slow development by a second universal solicitude: BEAUTY SOAP. Not, you remark, mere cleansing chemicals, but something, as they say, "ideal;" and then, completing the tripod of the little life: TANKER'S YELLOW PILLS. After that there was nothing for it but Tupper again, in naming crimson letters, snap, snap, across the void. T U P P.... Early in the small hours it would seem that young Caddles came to the shadowy quiet of Regent's Park, stepped over the railings and lay down on a grassy slope near where the people skate in winter time, and there he slept an hour or so. And about six o'clock in the morning, he was talking to a draggled woman he had found sleeping in a ditch near Hampstead Heath, asking her very earnestly what she thought she was for.... IV. The wandering of Caddles about London came to a head on the second day in the morning. For then his hunger overcame him. He hesitated where the hot-smelling loaves were being tossed into a cart, and then very quietly knelt down and commenced robbery. He emptied the cart while the baker's man fled for the police, and then his great hand came into the shop and cleared counter and cases. Then with an armful, still eating, he went his way looking for another shop to go on with his meal. It happened to be one of those seasons when work is scarce and food dear, and the crowd in that quarter was sympathetic even with a giant who took the food they all desired. They applauded the second phase of his meal, and laughed at his stupid grimace at the policeman. "I woff hungry," he said, with his mouth full. "Brayvo!" cried the crowd. "Brayvo!" Then when he was beginning his third baker's shop, he was stopped by half a dozen policemen hammering with truncheons at his shins. "Look here, my fine giant, you come along o' me," said the officer in charge. "You ain't allowed away from home like this. You come off home with me." They did their best to arrest him. There was a trolley, I am told, chasing up and down streets at that time, bearing rolls of chain and ship's cable to play the part of handcuffs in that great arrest. There was no intention then of killing him. "He is no party to the plot," Caterham had said. "I will not have innocent blood upon my hands." And added: "--until everything else has been tried." At first Caddles did not understand the import of these attentions. When he did, he told the policemen not to be fools, and set off in great strides that left them all behind. The bakers' shops had been in the Harrow Road, and he went through canal London to St. John's Wood, and sat down in a private garden there to pick his teeth and be speedily assailed by another posse of constables. "You lea' me alone," he growled, and slouched through the gardens--spoiling several lawns and kicking down a fence or so, while the energetic little policemen followed him up, some through the gardens, some along the road in front of the houses. Here there were one or two with guns, but they made no use of them. When he came out into the Edgware Road there was a new note and a new movement in the crowd, and a mounted policeman rode over his foot and got upset for his pains. "You lea' me alone," said Caddles, facing the breathless crowd. "I ain't done anything to you." At that time he was unarmed, for he had left his chalk chopper in Regent's Park. But now, poor wretch, he seems to have felt the need of some weapon. He turned back towards the goods yard of the Great Western Railway, wrenched up the standard of a tall arc light, a formidable mace for him, and flung it over his shoulder. And finding the police still turning up to pester him, he went back along the Edgware Road, towards Cricklewood, and struck off sullenly to the north. He wandered as far as Waltham, and then turned back westward and then again towards London, and came by the cemeteries and over the crest of Highgate about midday into view of the greatness of the city again. He turned aside and sat down in a garden, with his back to a house that overlooked all London. He was breathless, and his face was lowering, and now the people no longer crowded upon him as they had done when first he came to London, but lurked in the adjacent garden, and peeped from cautious securities. They knew by now the thing was grimmer than they had thought. "Why can't they lea' me alone?" growled young Caddles. "I _mus'_ eat. Why can't they lea' me alone?" He sat with a darkling face, gnawing at his knuckles and looking down over London. All the fatigue, worry, perplexity, and impotent wrath of his wanderings was coming to a head in him. "They mean nothing," he whispered. "They mean nothing. And they _won't_ let me alone, and they _will_ get in my way." And again, over and over to himself, "Meanin' nothing. "Ugh! the little people!" He bit harder at his knuckles and his scowl deepened. "Cuttin' chalk for 'em," he whispered. "And all the world is theirs! _I_ don't come in--nowhere." Presently with a spasm of sick anger he saw the now familiar form of a policeman astride the garden wall. "Lea' me alone," grunted the giant. "Lea' me alone." "I got to do my duty," said the little policeman, with a face that was white and resolute. "You lea' me alone. I got to live as well as you. I got to think. I got to eat. You lea' me alone." "It's the Law," said the little policeman, coming no further. "We never made the Law." "Nor me," said young Caddles. "You little people made all that before I was born. You and your Law! What I must and what I mustn't! No food for me to eat unless I work a slave, no rest, no shelter, nothin', and you tell me--" "I ain't got no business with that," said the policeman. "I'm not one to argue. All I got to do is to carry out the Law." And he brought his second leg over the wall and seemed disposed to get down. Other policemen appeared behind him. "I got no quarrel with _you_--mind," said young Caddles, with his grip tight upon his huge mace of iron, his face pale, and a lank explanatory great finger to the policeman. "I got no quarrel with you. But--_You lea' me alone."_ The policeman tried to be calm and commonplace, with a monstrous tragedy clear before his eyes. "Give me the proclamation," he said to some unseen follower, and a little white paper was handed to him. "Lea' me alone," said Caddles, scowling, tense, and drawn together. "This means," said the policeman before he read, "go 'ome. Go 'ome to your chalk pit. If not, you'll be hurt." Caddles gave an inarticulate growl. Then when the proclamation had been read, the officer made a sign. Four men with rifles came into view and took up positions of affected ease along the wall. They wore the uniform of the rat police. At the sight of the guns, young Caddles blazed into anger. He remembered the sting of the Wreckstone farmers' shot guns. "You going to shoot off those at me?" he said, pointing, and it seemed to the officer he must be afraid. "If you don't march back to your pit--" Then in an instant the officer had slung himself back over the wall, and sixty feet above him the great electric standard whirled down to his death. Bang, bang, bang, went the heavy guns, and smash! the shattered wall, the soil and subsoil of the garden flew. Something flew with it, that left red drops on one of the shooter's hands. The riflemen dodged this way and that and turned valiantly to fire again. But young Caddles, already shot twice through the body, had spun about to find who it was had hit him so heavily in the back. Bang! Bang! He had a vision of houses and greenhouses and gardens, of people dodging at windows, the whole swaying fearfully and mysteriously. He seems to have made three stumbling strides, to have raised and dropped his huge mace, and to have clutched his chest. He was stung and wrenched by pain. What was this, warm and wet, on his hand? One man peering from a bedroom window saw his face, saw him staring, with a grimace of weeping dismay, at the blood upon his hand, and then his knees bent under him, and he came crashing to the earth, the first of the giant nettles to fall to Caterham's resolute clutch, the very last that he had reckoned would come into his hand. CHAPTER THE FOURTH. REDWOOD'S TWO DAYS. I. So soon as Caterham knew the moment for grasping his nettle had come, he took the law into his own hands and sent to arrest Cossar and Redwood. Redwood was there for the taking. He had been undergoing an operation in the side, and the doctors had kept all disturbing things from him until his convalescence was assured. Now they had released him. He was just out of bed, sitting in a fire-warmed room, with a heap of newspapers about him, reading for the first time of the agitation that had swept the country into the hands of Caterham, and of the trouble that was darkening over the Princess and his son. It was in the morning of the day when young Caddles died, and when the policeman tried to stop young Redwood on his way to the Princess. The latest newspapers Redwood had did but vaguely prefigure these imminent things. He was re-reading these first adumbrations of disaster with a sinking heart, reading the shadow of death more and more perceptibly into them, reading to occupy his mind until further news should come. When the officers followed the servant into his room, he looked up eagerly. "I thought it was an early evening paper," he said. Then standing up, and with a swift change of manner: "What's this?" After that Redwood had no news of anything for two days. They had come with a vehicle to take him away, but when it became evident that he was ill, it was decided to leave him for a day or so until he could be safely removed, and his house was taken over by the police and converted into a temporary prison. It was the same house in which Giant Redwood had been born and in which Herakleophorbia had for the first time been given to a human being, and Redwood had now been a widower and had lived alone in it eight years. He had become an iron-grey man, with a little pointed grey beard and still active brown eyes. He was slender and soft-voiced, as he had ever been, but his features had now that indefinable quality that comes of brooding over mighty things. To the arresting officer his appearance was in impressive contrast to the enormity of his offences. "Here's this feller," said the officer in command, to his next subordinate, "has done his level best to bust up everything, and 'e's got a face like a quiet country gentleman; and here's Judge Hangbrow keepin' everything nice and in order for every one, and 'e's got a 'ead like a 'og. Then their manners! One all consideration and the other snort and grunt. Which just shows you, doesn't it, that appearances aren't to be gone upon, whatever else you do." But his praise of Redwood's consideration was presently dashed. The officers found him troublesome at first until they had made it clear that it was useless for him to ask questions or beg for papers. They made a sort of inspection of his study indeed, and cleared away even the papers he had. Redwood's voice was high and expostulatory. "But don't you see," he said over and over again, "it's my Son, my only Son, that is in this trouble. It isn't the Food I care for, but my Son." "I wish indeed I could tell you, Sir," said the officer. "But our orders are strict." "Who gave the orders?" cried Redwood. "Ah! _that_, Sir---" said the officer, and moved towards the door.... "'E's going up and down 'is room," said the second officer, when his superior came down. "That's all right. He'll walk it off a bit." "I hope 'e will," said the chief officer. "The fact is I didn't see it in that light before, but this here Giant what's been going on with the Princess, you know, is this man's son." The two regarded one another and the third policeman for a space. "Then it is a bit rough on him," the third policeman said. It became evident that Redwood had still imperfectly apprehended the fact that an iron curtain had dropped between him and the outer world. They heard him go to the door, try the handle and rattle the lock, and then the voice of the officer who was stationed on the landing telling him it was no good to do that. Then afterwards they heard him at the windows and saw the men outside looking up. "It's no good that way," said the second officer. Then Redwood began upon the bell. The senior officer went up and explained very patiently that it could do no good to ring the bell like that, and if it was rung for nothing now it might have to be disregarded presently when he had need of something. "Any reasonable attendance, Sir," the officer said. "But if you ring it just by way of protest we shall be obliged, Sir, to disconnect." The last word the officer heard was Redwood's high-pitched, "But at least you might tell me if my Son--" II. After that Redwood spent most of his time at the windows. But the windows offered him little of the march of events outside. It was a quiet street at all times, and that day it was unusually quiet: scarcely a cab, scarcely a tradesman's cart passed all that morning. Now and then men went by--without any distinctive air of events--now and then a little group of children, a nursemaid and a woman going shopping, and so forth. They came on to the stage right or left, up or down the street, with an exasperating suggestion of indifference to any concerns more spacious than their own; they would discover the police-guarded house with amazement and exit in the opposite direction, where the great trusses of a giant hydrangea hung across the pavement, staring back or pointing. Now and then a man would come and ask one of the policemen a question and get a curt reply ... Opposite the houses seemed dead. A housemaid appeared once at a bedroom window and stared for a space, and it occurred to Redwood to signal to her. For a time she watched his gestures as if with interest and made a vague response to them, then looked over her shoulder suddenly and turned and went away. An old man hobbled out of Number 37 and came down the steps and went off to the right, altogether without looking up. For ten minutes the only occupant of the road was a cat.... With such events that interminable momentous morning lengthened out. About twelve there came a bawling of newsvendors from the adjacent road; but it passed. Contrary to their wont they left Redwood's street alone, and a suspicion dawned upon him that the police were guarding the end of the street. He tried to open the window, but this brought a policeman into the room forthwith.... The clock of the parish church struck twelve, and after an abyss of time--one. They mocked him with lunch. He ate a mouthful and tumbled the food about a little in order to get it taken away, drank freely of whisky, and then took a chair and went back to the window. The minutes expanded into grey immensities, and for a time perhaps he slept.... He woke with a vague impression of remote concussions. He perceived a rattling of the windows like the quiver of an earthquake, that lasted for a minute or so and died away. Then after a silence it returned.... Then it died away again. He fancied it might be merely the passage of some heavy vehicle along the main road. What else could it be? After a time he began to doubt whether he had heard this sound. He began to reason interminably with himself. Why, after all, was he seized? Caterham had been in office two days--just long enough--to grasp his Nettle! Grasp his Nettle! Grasp his Giant Nettle! The refrain once started, sang through his mind, and would not be dismissed. What, after all, could Caterham do? He was a religious man. He was bound in a sort of way by that not to do violence without a cause. Grasp his Nettle! Perhaps, for example, the Princess was to be seized and sent abroad. There might be trouble with his son. In which case--! But why had he been arrested? Why was it necessary to keep him in ignorance of a thing like that? The thing suggested--something more extensive. Perhaps, for example--they meant to lay all the giants by the heels! They were all to be arrested together. There had been hints of that in the election speeches. And then? No doubt they had got Cossar also? Caterham was a religious man. Redwood clung to that. The back of his mind was a black curtain, and on that curtain there came and went a word--a word written in letters of fire. He struggled perpetually against that word. It was always as it were beginning to get written on the curtain and never getting completed. He faced it at last. "Massacre!" There was the word in its full brutality. No! No! No! It was impossible! Caterham was a religious man, a civilised man. And besides after all these years, after all these hopes! Redwood sprang up; he paced the room. He spoke to himself; he shouted. "_No!_" Mankind was surely not so mad as that--surely not! It was impossible, it was incredible, it could not be. What good would it do to kill the giant human when the gigantic in all the lower things had now inevitably come? They could not be so mad as that! "I must dismiss such an idea," he said aloud; "dismiss such an idea! Absolutely!" He pulled up short. What was that? Certainly the windows had rattled. He went to look out into the street. Opposite he saw the instant confirmation of his ears. At a bedroom at Number 35 was a woman, towel in hand, and at the dining-room of Number 37 a man was visible behind a great vase of hypertrophied maidenhair fern, both staring out and up, both disquieted and curious. He could see now too, quite clearly, that the policeman on the pavement had heard it also. The thing was not his imagination. He turned to the darkling room. "Guns," he said. He brooded. "Guns?" They brought him in strong tea, such as he was accustomed to have. It was evident his housekeeper had been taken into consultation. After drinking it, he was too restless to sit any longer at the window, and he paced the room. His mind became more capable of consecutive thought. The room had been his study for four-and-twenty years. It had been furnished at his marriage, and all the essential equipment dated from then, the large complex writing-desk, the rotating chair, the easy chair at the fire, the rotating bookcase, the fixture of indexed pigeon-holes that filled the further recess. The vivid Turkey carpet, the later Victorian rugs and curtains had mellowed now to a rich dignity of effect, and copper and brass shone warm about the open fire. Electric lights had replaced the lamp of former days; that was the chief alteration in the original equipment. But among these things his connection with the Food had left abundant traces. Along one wall, above the dado, ran a crowded array of black-framed photographs and photogravures, showing his son and Cossar's sons and others of the Boom-children at various ages and amidst various surroundings. Even young Caddles' vacant visage had its place in that collection. In the corner stood a sheaf of the tassels of gigantic meadow grass from Cheasing Eyebright, and on the desk there lay three empty poppy heads as big as hats. The curtain rods were grass stems. And the tremendous skull of the great hog of Oakham hung, a portentous ivory overmantel, with a Chinese jar in either eye socket, snout down above the fire.... It was to the photographs that Redwood went, and in particular to the photographs of his son. They brought back countless memories of things that had passed out of his mind, of the early days of the Food, of Bensington's timid presence, of his cousin Jane, of Cossar and the night work at the Experimental Farm. These things came to him now very little and bright and distinct, like things seen through a telescope on a sunny day. And then there was the giant nursery, the giant childhood, the young giant's first efforts to speak, his first clear signs of affection. Guns? It flowed in on him, irresistibly, overwhelmingly, that outside there, outside this accursed silence and mystery, his son and Cossar's sons, and all these glorious first-fruits of a greater age were even now--fighting. Fighting for life! Even now his son might be in some dismal quandary, cornered, wounded, overcome.... He swung away from the pictures and went up and down the room gesticulating. "It cannot be," he cried, "it cannot be. It cannot end like that!" "What was that?" He stopped, stricken rigid. The trembling of the windows had begun again, and then had come a thud--a vast concussion that shook the house. The concussion seemed to last for an age. It must have been very near. For a moment it seemed that something had struck the house above him--an enormous impact that broke into a tinkle of falling glass, and then a stillness that ended at last with a minute clear sound of running feet in the street below. Those feet released him from his rigor. He turned towards the window, and saw it starred and broken. His heart beat high with a sense of crisis, of conclusive occurrence, of release. And then again, his realisation of impotent confinement fell about him like a curtain! He could see nothing outside except that the small electric lamp opposite was not lighted; he could hear nothing after the first suggestion of a wide alarm. He could add nothing to interpret or enlarge that mystery except that presently there came a reddish fluctuating brightness in the sky towards the south-east. This light waxed and waned. When it waned he doubted if it had ever waxed. It had crept upon him very gradually with the darkling. It became the predominant fact in his long night of suspense. Sometimes it seemed to him it had the quiver one associates with dancing flames, at others he fancied it was no more than the normal reflection of the evening lights. It waxed and waned through the long hours, and only vanished at last when it was submerged altogether under the rising tide of dawn. Did it mean--? What could it mean? Almost certainly it was some sort of fire, near or remote, but he could not even tell whether it was smoke or cloud drift that streamed across the sky. But about one o'clock there began a flickering of searchlights athwart that ruddy tumult, a flickering that continued for the rest of the night. That too might mean many things? What could it mean? What did it mean? Just this stained unrestful sky he had and the suggestion of a huge explosion to occupy his mind. There came no further sounds, no further running, nothing but a shouting that might have been only the distant efforts of drunken men... He did not turn up his lights; he stood at his draughty broken window, a distressful, slight black outline to the officer who looked ever and again into the room and exhorted him to rest. All night Redwood remained at his window peering up at the ambiguous drift of the sky, and only with the coming of the dawn did he obey his fatigue and lie down upon the little bed they had prepared for him between his writing-desk and the sinking fire in the fireplace under the great hog's skull. III. For thirty-six long hours did Redwood remain imprisoned, closed in and shut off from the great drama of the Two Days, while the little people in the dawn of greatness fought against the Children of the Food. Then abruptly the iron curtain rose again, and he found himself near the very centre of the struggle. That curtain rose as unexpectedly as it fell. In the late afternoon he was called to the window by the clatter of a cab, that stopped without. A young man descended, and in another minute stood before him in the room, a slightly built young man of thirty perhaps, clean shaven, well dressed, well mannered. "Mr. Redwood, Sir," he began, "would you be willing to come to Mr. Caterham? He needs your presence very urgently." "Needs my presence!" There leapt a question into Redwood's mind, that for a moment he could not put. He hesitated. Then in a voice that broke he asked: "What has he done to my Son?" and stood breathless for the reply. "Your Son, Sir? Your Son is doing well. So at least we gather." "Doing well?" "He was wounded, Sir, yesterday. Have you not heard?" Redwood smote these pretences aside. His voice was no longer coloured by fear, but by anger. "You know I have not heard. You know I have heard nothing." "Mr. Caterham feared, Sir--It was a time of upheaval. Every one--taken by surprise. He arrested you to save you, Sir, from any misadventure--" "He arrested me to prevent my giving any warning or advice to my son. Go on. Tell me what has happened. Have you succeeded? Have you killed them all?" The young man made a pace or so towards the window, and turned. "No, Sir," he said concisely. "What have you to tell me?" "It's our proof, Sir, that this fighting was not planned by us. They found us ... totally unprepared." "You mean?" "I mean, Sir, the Giants have--to a certain extent--held their own." The world changed, for Redwood. For a moment something like hysteria had the muscles of his face and throat. Then he gave vent to a profound "Ah!" His heart bounded towards exultation. "The Giants have held their own!" "There has been terrible fighting--terrible destruction. It is all a most hideous misunderstanding ... In the north and midlands Giants have been killed ... Everywhere." "They are fighting now?" "No, Sir. There was a flag of truce." "From them?" "No, Sir. Mr. Caterham sent a flag of truce. The whole thing is a hideous misunderstanding. That is why he wants to talk to you, and put his case before you. They insist, Sir, that you should intervene--" Redwood interrupted. "Do you know what happened to my Son?" he asked. "He was wounded." "Tell me! Tell me!" "He and the Princess came--before the--the movement to surround the Cossar camp was complete--the Cossar pit at Chislehurst. They came suddenly, Sir, crashing through a dense thicket of giant oats, near River, upon a column of infantry ... Soldiers had been very nervous all day, and this produced a panic." "They shot him?" "No, Sir. They ran away. Some shot at him--wildly--against orders." Redwood gave a note of denial. "It's true, Sir. Not on account of your son, I won't pretend, but on account of the Princess." "Yes. That's true." "The two Giants ran shouting towards the encampment. The soldiers ran this way and that, and then some began firing. They say they saw him stagger--" "Ugh!" "Yes, Sir. But we know he is not badly hurt." "How?" "He sent the message, Sir, that he was doing well!" "To me?" "Who else, Sir?" Redwood stood for nearly a minute with his arms tightly folded, taking this in. Then his indignation found a voice. "Because you were fools in doing the thing, because you miscalculated and blundered, you would like me to think you are not murderers in intention. And besides--The rest?" The young man looked interrogation. "The other Giants?" The young man made no further pretence of misunderstanding. His tone fell. "Thirteen, Sir, are dead." "And others wounded?" "Yes, Sir." "And Caterham," he gasped, "wants to meet me! Where are the others?" "Some got to the encampment during the fighting, Sir ... They seem to have known--" "Well, of course they did. If it hadn't been for Cossar--Cossar is there?" "Yes, Sir. And all the surviving Giants are there--the ones who didn't get to the camp in the fighting have gone, or are going now under the flag of trace." "That means," said Redwood, "that you are beaten." "We are not beaten. No, Sir. You cannot say we are beaten. But your sons have broken the rules of war. Once last night, and now again. After our attack had been withdrawn. This afternoon they began to bombard London--" "That's legitimate!" "They have been firing shells filled with--poison." "Poison?" "Yes. Poison. The Food--" "Herakleophorbia?" "Yes, Sir. Mr. Caterham, Sir--" "You are beaten! Of course that beats you. It's Cossar! What can you hope to do now? What good is it to do anything now? You will breathe it in the dust of every street. What is there to fight for more? Rules of war, indeed! And now Caterham wants to humbug me to help him bargain. Good heavens, man! Why should I come to your exploded windbag? He has played his game ... murdered and muddled. Why should I?" The young man stood with an air of vigilant respect. "It is a fact, Sir," he interrupted, "that the Giants insist that they shall see you. They will have no ambassador but you. Unless you come to them, I am afraid, Sir, there will be more bloodshed." "On _your_ side, perhaps." "No, Sir--on both sides. The world is resolved the thing must end." Redwood looked about the study. His eyes rested for a moment on the photograph of his boy. He turned and met the expectation of the young man. "Yes," he said at last, "I will come." IV. His encounter with Caterham was entirely different from his anticipation. He had seen the man only twice in his life, once at dinner and once in the lobby of the House, and his imagination had been active not with the man but with the creation of the newspapers and caricaturists, the legendary Caterham, Jack the Giant-killer, Perseus, and all the rest of it. The element of a human personality came in to disorder all that. Here was not the face of the caricatures and portraits, but the face of a worn and sleepless man, lined and drawn, yellow in the whites of the eyes, a little weakened about the mouth. Here, indeed, were the red-brown eyes, the black hair, the distinctive aquiline profile of the great demagogue, but here was also something else that smote any premeditated scorn and rhetoric aside. This man was suffering; he was suffering acutely; he was under enormous stress. From the beginning he had an air of impersonating himself. Presently, with a single gesture, the slightest movement, he revealed to Redwood that he was keeping himself up with drugs. He moved a thumb to his waistcoat pocket, and then, after a few sentences more, threw concealment aside, and slipped the little tabloid to his lips. Moreover, in spite of the stresses upon him, in spite of the fact that he was in the wrong, and Redwood's junior by a dozen years, that strange quality in him, the something--personal magnetism one may call it for want of a better name--that had won his way for him to this eminence of disaster was with him still. On that also Redwood had failed to reckon. From the first, so far as the course and conduct of their speech went, Caterham prevailed over Redwood. All the quality of the first phase of their meeting was determined by him, all the tone and procedure were his. That happened as if it was a matter of course. All Redwood's expectations vanished at his presence. He shook hands before Redwood remembered that he meant to parry that familiarity; he pitched the note of their conference from the outset, sure and clear, as a search for expedients under a common catastrophe. If he made any mistake it was when ever and again his fatigue got the better of his immediate attention, and the habit of the public meeting carried him away. Then he drew himself up--through all their interview both men stood--and looked away from Redwood, and began to fence and justify. Once even he said "Gentlemen!" Quietly, expandingly, he began to talk.... There were moments when Redwood ceased even to feel himself an interlocutor, when he became the mere auditor of a monologue. He became the privileged spectator of an extraordinary phenomenon. He perceived something almost like a specific difference between himself and this being whose beautiful voice enveloped him, who was talking, talking. This mind before him was so powerful and so limited. From its driving energy, its personal weight, its invincible oblivion to certain things, there sprang up in Redwood's mind the most grotesque and strange of images. Instead of an antagonist who was a fellow-creature, a man one could hold morally responsible, and to whom one could address reasonable appeals, he saw Caterham as something, something like a monstrous rhinoceros, as it were, a civilised rhinoceros begotten of the jungle of democratic affairs, a monster of irresistible onset and invincible resistance. In all the crashing conflicts of that tangle he was supreme. And beyond? This man was a being supremely adapted to make his way through multitudes of men. For him there was no fault so important as self-contradiction, no science so significant as the reconciliation of "interests." Economic realities, topographical necessities, the barely touched mines of scientific expedients, existed for him no more than railways or rifled guns or geographical literature exist for his animal prototype. What did exist were gatherings, and caucuses, and votes--above all, votes. He was votes incarnate--millions of votes. And now in the great crisis, with the Giants broken but not beaten, this vote-monster talked. It was so evident that even now he had everything to learn. He did not know there were physical laws and economic laws, quantities and reactions that all humanity voting _nemine contradicente_ cannot vote away, and that are disobeyed only at the price of destruction. He did not know there are moral laws that cannot be bent by any force of glamour, or are bent only to fly back with vindictive violence. In the face of shrapnel or the Judgment Day, it was evident to Redwood that this man would have sheltered behind some curiously dodged vote of the House of Commons. What most concerned his mind now was not the powers that held the fastness away there to the south, not defeat and death, but the effect of these things upon his Majority, the cardinal reality in his life. He had to defeat the Giants or go under. He was by no means absolutely despairful. In this hour of his utmost failure, with blood and disaster upon his hands, and the rich promise of still more horrible disaster, with the gigantic destinies of the world towering and toppling over him, he was capable of a belief that by sheer exertion of his voice, by explaining and qualifying and restating, he might yet reconstitute his power. He was puzzled and distressed no doubt, fatigued and suffering, but if only he could keep up, if only he could keep talking-- As he talked he seemed to Redwood to advance and recede, to dilate and contract. Redwood's share of the talk was of the most subsidiary sort, wedges as it were suddenly thrust in. "That's all nonsense." "No." "It's no use suggesting that." "Then why did you begin?" It is doubtful if Caterham really heard him at all. Round such interpolations Caterham's speech flowed indeed like some swift stream about a rock. There this incredible man stood, on his official hearthrug, talking, talking with enormous power and skill, talking as though a pause in his talk, his explanations, his presentation of standpoints and lights, of considerations and expedients, would permit some antagonistic influence to leap into being--into vocal being, the only being he could comprehend. There he stood amidst the slightly faded splendours of that official room in which one man after another had succumbed to the belief that a certain power of intervention was the creative control of an empire.... The more he talked the more certain Redwood's sense of stupendous futility grew. Did this man realise that while he stood and talked there, the whole great world was moving, that the invincible tide of growth flowed and flowed, that there were any hours but parliamentary hours, or any weapons in the hands of the Avengers of Blood? Outside, darkling the whole room, a single leaf of giant Virginia creeper tapped unheeded on the pane. Redwood became anxious to end this amazing monologue, to escape to sanity and judgment, to that beleaguered camp, the fastness of the future, where, at the very nucleus of greatness, the Sons were gathered together. For that this talking was endured. He had a curious impression that unless this monologue ended he would presently find himself carried away by it, that he must fight against Caterham's voice as one fights against a drug. Facts had altered and were altering beneath that spell. What was the man saying? Since Redwood had to report it to the Children of the Food, in a sort of way he perceived it did matter. He would have to listen and guard his sense of realities as well as he could. Much about bloodguiltiness. That was eloquence. That didn't matter. Next? He was suggesting a convention! He was suggesting that the surviving Children of the Food should capitulate and go apart and form a community of their own. There were precedents, he said, for this. "We would assign them territory--" "Where?" interjected Redwood, stooping to argue. Caterham snatched at that concession. He turned his face to Redwood's, and his voice fell to a persuasive reasonableness. That could be determined. That, he contended, was a quite subsidiary question. Then he went on to stipulate: "And except for them and where they are we must have absolute control, the Food and all the Fruits of the Food must be stamped out--" Redwood found himself bargaining: "The Princess?" "She stands apart." "No," said Redwood, struggling to get back to the old footing. "That's absurd." "That afterwards. At any rate we are agreed that the making of the Food must stop--" "I have agreed to nothing. I have said nothing--" "But on one planet, to have two races of men, one great, one small! Consider what has happened! Consider that is but a little foretaste of what might presently happen if this Food has its way! Consider all you have already brought upon this world! If there is to be a race of Giants, increasing and multiplying--" "It is not for me to argue," said Redwood. "I must go to our sons. I want to go to my son. That is why I have come to you. Tell me exactly what you offer." Caterham made a speech upon his terms. The Children of the Food were to be given a great reservation--in North America perhaps or Africa--in which they might live out their lives in their own fashion. "But it's nonsense," said Redwood. "There are other Giants now abroad. All over Europe--here and there!" "There could be an international convention. It's _not_ impossible. Something of the sort indeed has already been spoken of ... But in this reservation they can live out their own lives in their own way. They may do what they like; they may make what they like. We shall be glad if they will make us things. They may be happy. Think!" "Provided there are no more Children." "Precisely. The Children are for us. And so, Sir, we shall save the world, we shall save it absolutely from the fruits of your terrible discovery. It is not too late for us. Only we are eager to temper expediency with mercy. Even now we are burning and searing the places their shells hit yesterday. We can get it under. Trust me we shall get it under. But in that way, without cruelty, without injustice--" "And suppose the Children do not agree?" For the first time Caterham looked Redwood fully in the face. "They must!" "I don't think they will." "Why should they not agree?" he asked, in richly toned amazement. "Suppose they don't?" "What can it be but war? We cannot have the thing go on. We cannot. Sir. Have you scientific men _no_ imagination? Have you no mercy? We cannot have our world trampled under a growing herd of such monsters and monstrous growths as your Food has made. We cannot and we cannot! I ask you, Sir, what can it be but war? And remember--this that has happened is only a beginning! _This_ was a skirmish. A mere affair of police. Believe me, a mere affair of police. Do not be cheated by perspective, by the immediate bigness of these newer things. Behind us is the nation--is humanity. Behind the thousands who have died there are millions. Were it not for the fear of bloodshed, Sir, behind our first attacks there would be forming other attacks, even now. Whether we can kill this Food or not, most assuredly we can kill your sons! You reckon too much on the things of yesterday, on the happenings of a mere score of years, on one battle. You have no sense of the slow course of history. I offer this convention for the sake of lives, not because it can change the inevitable end. If you think that your poor two dozen of Giants can resist all the forces of our people and of all the alien peoples who will come to our aid; if you think you can change Humanity at a blow, in a single generation, and alter the nature and stature of Man--" He flung out an arm. "Go to them now, Sir. I see them, for all the evil they have done, crouching among their wounded--" He stopped, as though he had glanced at Redwood's son by chance. There came a pause. "Go to them," he said. "That is what I want to do." "Then go now...." He turned and pressed the button of a bell; without, in immediate response, came a sound of opening doors and hastening feet. The talk was at an end. The display was over. Abruptly Caterham seemed to contract, to shrivel up into a yellow-faced, fagged-out, middle-sized, middle-aged man. He stepped forward, as if he were stepping out of a picture, and with a complete assumption of that friendliness that lies behind all the public conflicts of our race, he held out his hand to Redwood. As if it were a matter of course, Redwood shook hands with him for the second time. CHAPTER THE FIFTH. THE GIANT LEAGUER. I. Presently Redwood found himself in a train going south over the Thames. He had a brief vision of the river shining under its lights, and of the smoke still going up from the place where the shell had fallen on the north bank, and where a vast multitude of men had been organised to burn the Herakleophorbia out of the ground. The southern bank was dark, for some reason even the streets were not lit, all that was clearly visible was the outlines of the tall alarm-towers and the dark bulks of flats and schools, and after a minute of peering scrutiny he turned his back on the window and sank into thought. There was nothing more to see or do until he saw the Sons.... He was fatigued by the stresses of the last two days; it seemed to him that his emotions must needs be exhausted, but he had fortified himself with strong coffee before starting, and his thoughts ran thin and clear. His mind touched many things. He reviewed again, but now in the enlightenment of accomplished events, the manner in which the Food had entered and unfolded itself in the world. "Bensington thought it might be an excellent food for infants," he whispered to himself, with a faint smile. Then there came into his mind as vivid as if they were still unsettled his own horrible doubts after he had committed himself by giving it to his own son. From that, with a steady unfaltering expansion, in spite of every effort of men to help and hinder, the Food had spread through the whole world of man. And now? "Even if they kill them all," Redwood whispered, "the thing is done." The secret of its making was known far and wide. That had been his own work. Plants, animals, a multitude of distressful growing children would conspire irresistibly to force the world to revert again to the Food, whatever happened in the present struggle. "The thing is done," he said, with his mind swinging round beyond all his controlling to rest upon the present fate of the Children and his son. Would he find them exhausted by the efforts of the battle, wounded, starving, on the verge of defeat, or would he find them still stout and hopeful, ready for the still grimmer conflict of the morrow? His son was wounded! But he had sent a message! His mind came back to his interview with Caterham. He was roused from his thoughts by the stopping of his train in Chislehurst station. He recognised the place by the huge rat alarm-tower that crested Camden Hill, and the row of blossoming giant hemlocks that lined the road.... Caterham's private secretary came to him from the other carriage and told him that half a mile farther the line had been wrecked, and that the rest of the journey was to be made in a motor car. Redwood descended upon a platform lit only by a hand lantern and swept by the cool night breeze. The quiet of that derelict, wood-set, weed-embedded suburb--for all the inhabitants had taken refuge in London at the outbreak of yesterday's conflict--became instantly impressive. His conductor took him down the steps to where a motor car was waiting with blazing lights--the only lights to be seen--handed him over to the care of the driver and bade him farewell. "You will do your best for us," he said, with an imitation of his master's manner, as he held Redwood's hand. So soon as Redwood could be wrapped about they started out into the night. At one moment they stood still, and then the motor car was rushing softly and swiftly down the station incline. They turned one corner and another, followed the windings of a lane of villas, and then before them stretched the road. The motor droned up to its topmost speed, and the black night swept past them. Everything was very dark under the starlight, and the whole world crouched mysteriously and was gone without a sound. Not a breath stirred the flying things by the wayside; the deserted, pallid white villas on either hand, with their black unlit windows, reminded him of a noiseless procession of skulls. The driver beside him was a silent man, or stricken into silence by the conditions of his journey. He answered Redwood's brief questions in monosyllables, and gruffly. Athwart the southern sky the beams of searchlights waved noiseless passes; the sole strange evidences of life they seemed in all that derelict world about the hurrying machine. The road was presently bordered on either side by gigantic blackthorn shoots that made it very dark, and by tail grass and big campions, huge giant dead-nettles as high as trees, flickering past darkly in silhouette overhead. Beyond Keston they came to a rising hill, and the driver went slow. At the crest he stopped. The engine throbbed and became still. "There," he said, and his big gloved finger pointed, a black misshapen thing before Redwood's eyes. Far away as it seemed, the great embankment, crested by the blaze from which the searchlights sprang, rose up against the sky. Those beams went and came among the clouds and the hilly land about them as if they traced mysterious incantations. "I don't know," said the driver at last, and it was clear he was afraid to go on. Presently a searchlight swept down the sky to them, stopped as it were with a start, scrutinised them, a blinding stare confused rather than mitigated by an intervening monstrous weed stem or so. They sat with their gloves held over their eyes, trying to look under them and meet that light. "Go on," said Redwood after a while. The driver still had his doubts; he tried to express them, and died down to "I don't know" again. At last he ventured on. "Here goes," he said, and roused his machinery to motion again, followed intently by that great white eye. To Redwood it seemed for a long time they were no longer on earth, but in a state of palpitating hurry through a luminous cloud. Teuf, teuf, teuf, teuf, went the machine, and ever and again--obeying I know not what nervous impulse--the driver sounded his horn. They passed into the welcome darkness of a high-fenced lane, and down into a hollow and past some houses into that blinding stare again. Then for a space the road ran naked across a down, and they seemed to hang throbbing in immensity. Once more giant weeds rose about them and whirled past. Then quite abruptly close upon them loomed the figure of a giant, shining brightly where the searchlight caught him below, and black against the sky above. "Hullo there!" he cried, and "stop! There's no more road beyond ... Is that Father Redwood?" Redwood stood up and gave a vague shout by way of answer, and then Cossar was in the road beside him, gripping both hands with both of his and pulling him out of the car. "What of my son?" asked Redwood. "He's all right," said Cossar. "They've hurt nothing serious in _him_." "And your lads?" "Well. All of them, well. But we've had to make a fight for it." The Giant was saying something to the motor driver. Redwood stood aside as the machine wheeled round, and then suddenly Cossar vanished, everything vanished, and he was in absolute darkness for a space. The glare was following the motor back to the crest of the Keston hill. He watched the little conveyance receding in that white halo. It had a curious effect, as though it was not moving at all and the halo was. A group of war-blasted Giant elders flashed into gaunt scarred gesticulations and were swallowed again by the night ... Redwood turned to Cossar's dim outline again and clasped his hand. "I have been shut up and kept in ignorance," he said, "for two whole days." "We fired the Food at them," said Cossar. "Obviously! Thirty shots. Eh!" "I come from Caterham." "I know you do." He laughed with a note of bitterness. "I suppose he's wiping it up." II. "Where is my son?" said Redwood. "He is all right. The Giants are waiting for your message." "Yes, but my son--..." He passed with Cossar down a long slanting tunnel that was lit red for a moment and then became dark again, and came out presently into the great pit of shelter the Giants had made. Redwood's first impression was of an enormous arena bounded by very high cliffs and with its floor greatly encumbered. It was in darkness save for the passing reflections of the watchman's searchlights that whirled perpetually high overhead, and for a red glow that came and went from a distant corner where two Giants worked together amidst a metallic clangour. Against the sky, as the glare came about, his eye caught the familiar outlines of the old worksheds and playsheds that were made for the Cossar boys. They were hanging now, as it were, at a cliff brow, and strangely twisted and distorted with the guns of Caterham's bombardment. There were suggestions of huge gun emplacements above there, and nearer were piles of mighty cylinders that were perhaps ammunition. All about the wide space below, the forms of great engines and incomprehensible bulks were scattered in vague disorder. The Giants appeared and vanished among these masses and in the uncertain light; great shapes they were, not disproportionate to the things amidst which they moved. Some were actively employed, some sitting and lying as if they courted sleep, and one near at hand, whose body was bandaged, lay on a rough litter of pine boughs and was certainly asleep. Redwood peered at these dim forms; his eyes went from one stirring outline to another. "Where is my son, Cossar?" Then he saw him. His son was sitting under the shadow of a great wall of steel. He presented himself as a black shape recognisable only by his pose,--his features were invisible. He sat chin upon hand, as though weary or lost in thought. Beside him Redwood discovered the figure of the Princess, the dark suggestion of her merely, and then, as the glow from the distant iron returned, he saw for an instant, red lit and tender, the infinite kindliness of her shadowed face. She stood looking down upon her lover with her hand resting against the steel. It seemed that she whispered to him. Redwood would have gone towards them. "Presently," said Cossar. "First there is your message." "Yes," said Redwood, "but--" He stopped. His son was now looking up and speaking to the Princess, but in too low a tone for them to hear. Young Redwood raised his face, and she bent down towards him, and glanced aside before she spoke. "But if we are beaten," they heard the whispered voice of young Redwood. She paused, and the red blaze showed her eyes bright with unshed tears. She bent nearer him and spoke still lower. There was something so intimate and private in their bearing, in their soft tones, that Redwood--Redwood who had thought for two whole days of nothing but his son--felt himself intrusive there. Abruptly he was checked. For the first time in his life perhaps he realised how much more a son may be to his father than a father can ever be to a son; he realised the full predominance of the future over the past. Here between these two he had no part. His part was played. He turned to Cossar, in the instant realisation. Their eyes met. His voice was changed to the tone of a grey resolve. "I will deliver my message now," he said. "Afterwards--... It will be soon enough then." The pit was so enormous and so encumbered that it was a long and tortuous route to the place from which Redwood could speak to them all. He and Cossar followed a steeply descending way that passed beneath an arch of interlocking machinery, and so came into a vast deep gangway that ran athwart the bottom of the pit. This gangway, wide and vacant, and yet relatively narrow, conspired with everything about it to enhance Redwood's sense of his own littleness. It became, as it were, an excavated gorge. High overhead, separated from him by cliffs of darkness, the searchlights wheeled and blazed, and the shining shapes went to and fro. Giant voices called to one another above there, calling the Giants together to the Council of War, to hear the terms that Caterham had sent. The gangway still inclined downward towards black vastnesses, towards shadows and mysteries and inconceivable things, into which Redwood went slowly with reluctant footsteps and Cossar with a confident stride.... Redwood's thoughts were busy. The two men passed into the completest darkness, and Cossar took his companion's wrist. They went now slowly perforce. Redwood was moved to speak. "All this," he said, "is strange." "Big," said Cossar. "Strange. And strange that it should be strange to me--I, who am, in a sense, the beginning of it all. It's--" He stopped, wrestling with his elusive meaning, and threw an unseen gesture at the cliff. "I have not thought of it before. I have been busy, and the years have passed. But here I see--It is a new generation, Cossar, and new emotions and new needs. All this, Cossar--" Cossar saw now his dim gesture to the things about them. "All this is Youth." Cossar made no answers and his irregular footfalls went striding on. "It isn't _our_ youth, Cossar. They are taking things over. They are beginning upon their own emotions, their own experiences, their own way. We have made a new world, and it isn't ours. It isn't even--sympathetic. This great place--" "I planned it," said Cossar, his face close. "But now?" "Ah! I have given it to my sons." Redwood could feel the loose wave of the arm that he could not see. "That is it. We are over--or almost over." "Your message!" "Yes. And then--" "We're over." "Well--?" "Of course we are out of it, we two old men," said Cossar, with his familiar note of sudden anger. "Of course we are. Obviously. Each man for his own time. And now--it's _their_ time beginning. That's all right. Excavator's gang. We do our job and go. See? That is what death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple. What's the trouble?" He paused to guide Redwood to some steps. "Yes," said Redwood, "but one feels--" He left his sentence incomplete. "That is what Death is for." He heard Cossar below him insisting, "How else could the thing be done? That is what Death is for." III. After devious windings and ascents they came out upon a projecting ledge from which it was possible to see over the greater extent of the Giants' pit, and from which Redwood might make himself heard by the whole of their assembly. The Giants were already gathered below and about him at different levels, to hear the message he had to deliver. The eldest son of Cossar stood on the bank overhead watching the revelations of the searchlights, for they feared a breach of the truce. The workers at the great apparatus in the corner stood out clear in their own light; they were near stripped; they turned their faces towards Redwood, but with a watchful reference ever and again to the castings that they could not leave. He saw these nearer figures with a fluctuating indistinctness, by lights that came and went, and the remoter ones still less distinctly. They came from and vanished again into the depths of great obscurities. For these Giants had no more light than they could help in the pit, that their eyes might be ready to see effectually any attacking force that might spring upon them out of the darknesses around. Ever and again some chance glare would pick out and display this group or that of tall and powerful forms, the Giants from Sunderland clothed in overlapping metal plates, and the others clad in leather, in woven rope or in woven metal, as their conditions had determined. They sat amidst or rested their hands upon, or stood erect among machines and weapons as mighty as themselves, and all their faces, as they came and went from visible to invisible, had steadfast eyes. He made an effort to begin and did not do so. Then for a moment his son's face glowed out in a hot insurgence of the fire, his son's face looking up to him, tender as well as strong; and at that he found a voice to reach them all, speaking across a gulf, as it were, to his son. "I come from Caterham," he said. "He sent me to you, to tell you the terms he offers." He paused. "They are impossible terms, I know, now that I see you here all together; they are impossible terms, but I brought them to you, because I wanted to see you all--and my son. Once more ... I wanted to see my son...." "Tell them the terms," said Cossar. "This is what Caterham offers. He wants you to go apart and leave his world!" "Where?" "He does not know. Vaguely somewhere in the world a great region is to be set apart.... And you are to make no more of the Food, to have no children of your own, to live in your own way for your own time, and then to end for ever." He stopped. "And that is all?" "That is all." There followed a great stillness. The darkness that veiled the Giants seemed to look thoughtfully at him. He felt a touch at his elbow, and Cossar was holding a chair for him--a queer fragment of doll's furniture amidst these piled immensities. He sat down and crossed his legs, and then put one across the knee of the other, and clutched his boot nervously, and felt small and self-conscious and acutely visible and absurdly placed. Then at the sound of a voice he forgot himself again. "You have heard, Brothers," said this voice out of the shadows. And another answered, "We have heard." "And the answer, Brothers?" "To Caterham?" "Is No!" "And then?" There was a silence for the space of some seconds. Then a voice said: "These people are right. After their lights, that is. They have been right in killing all that grew larger than its kind--beast and plant and all manner of great things that arose. They were right in trying to massacre us. They are right now in saying we must not marry our kind. According to their lights they are right. They know--it is time that we also knew--that you cannot have pigmies and giants in one world together. Caterham has said that again and again--clearly--their world or ours." "We are not half a hundred now," said another, "and they are endless millions." "So it may be. But the thing is as I have said." Then another long silence. "And are we to die then?" "God forbid!" "Are they?" "No." "But that is what Caterham says! He would have us live out our lives, die one by one, till only one remains, and that one at last would die also, and they would cut down all the giant plants and weeds, kill all the giant under-life, burn out the traces of the Food--make an end to us and to the Food for ever. Then the little pigmy world would be safe. They would go on--safe for ever, living their little pigmy lives, doing pigmy kindnesses and pigmy cruelties each to the other; they might even perhaps attain a sort of pigmy millennium, make an end to war, make an end to over-population, sit down in a world-wide city to practise pigmy arts, worshipping one another till the world begins to freeze...." In the corner a sheet of iron fell in thunder to the ground. "Brothers, we know what we mean to do." In a spluttering of light from the searchlights Redwood saw earnest youthful faces turning to his son. "It is easy now to make the Food. It would be easy for us to make Food for all the world." "You mean, Brother Redwood," said a voice out of the darkness, "that it is for the little people to eat the Food." "What else is there to do?" "We are not half a hundred and they are many millions." "But we held our own." "So far." "If it is God's will, we may still hold our own." "Yes. But think of the dead!" Another voice took up the strain. "The dead," it said. "Think of the unborn...." "Brothers," came the voice of young Redwood, "what can we do but fight them, and if we beat them, make them take the Food? They cannot help but take the Food now. Suppose we were to resign our heritage and do this folly that Caterham suggests! Suppose we could! Suppose we give up this great thing that stirs within us, repudiate this thing our fathers did for us--that _you_, Father, did for us--and pass, when our time has come, into decay and nothingness! What then? Will this little world of theirs be as it was before? They may fight against greatness in us who are the children of men, but can they conquer? Even if they should destroy us every one, what then? Would it save them? No! For greatness is abroad, not only in us, not only in the Food, but in the purpose of all things! It is in the nature of all things; it is part of space and time. To grow and still to grow: from first to last that is Being--that is the law of life. What other law can there be?" "To help others?" "To grow. It is still, to grow. Unless we help them to fail...." "They will fight hard to overcome us," said a voice. And another, "What of that?" "They will fight," said young Redwood. "If we refuse these terms, I doubt not they will fight. Indeed I hope they will be open and fight. If after all they offer peace, it will be only the better to catch us unawares. Make no mistake, Brothers; in some way or other they will fight. The war has begun, and we must fight, to the end. Unless we are wise, we may find presently we have lived only to make them better weapons against our children and our kind. This, so far, has been only the dawn of battle. All our lives will be a battle. Some of us will be killed in battle, some of us will be waylaid. There is no easy victory--no victory whatever that is not more than half defeat for us. Be sure of that. What of that? If only we keep a foothold, if only we leave behind us a growing host to fight when we are gone!" "And to-morrow?" "We will scatter the Food; we will saturate the world with the Food." "Suppose they come to terms?" "Our terms are the Food. It is not as though little and great could live together in any perfection of compromise. It is one thing or the other. What right have parents to say, My child shall have no light but the light I have had, shall grow no greater than the greatness to which I have grown? Do I speak for you, Brothers?" Assenting murmurs answered him. "And to the children who will be women as well as to the children who will be men," said a voice from the darkness. "Even more so--to be mothers of a new race ..." "But for the next generation there must be great and little," said Redwood, with his eyes on his son's face. "For many generations. And the little will hamper the great and the great press upon the little. So it must needs be, father." "There will be conflict." "Endless conflict. Endless misunderstanding. All life is that. Great and little cannot understand one another. But in every child born of man, Father Redwood, lurks some seed of greatness--waiting for the Food." "Then I am to go to Caterham again and tell him--" "You will stay with us, Father Redwood. Our answer goes to Caterham at dawn." "He says that he will fight...." "So be it," said young Redwood, and his brethren murmured assent. "_The iron waits_," cried a voice, and the two giants who were working in the corner began a rhythmic hammering that made a mighty music to the scene. The metal glowed out far more brightly than it had done before, and gave Redwood a clearer view of the encampment than had yet come to him. He saw the oblong space to its full extent, with the great engines of warfare ranged ready to hand. Beyond, and at a higher level, the house of the Cossars stood. About him were the young giants, huge and beautiful, glittering in their mail, amidst the preparations for the morrow. The sight of them lifted his heart. They were so easily powerful! They were so tall and gracious! They were so steadfast in their movements! There was his son amongst them, and the first of all giant women, the Princess.... There leapt into his mind the oddest contrast, a memory of Bensington, very bright and little--Bensington with his hand amidst the soft breast feathers of that first great chick, standing in that conventionally furnished room of his, peering over his spectacles dubiously as cousin Jane banged the door.... It had all happened in a yesterday of one-and-twenty years. Then suddenly a strange doubt took hold of him: that this place and present greatness were but the texture of a dream; that he was dreaming, and would in an instant wake to find himself in his study again, the Giants slaughtered, the Food suppressed, and himself a prisoner locked in. What else indeed was life but that--always to be a prisoner locked in! This was the culmination and end of his dream. He would wake through bloodshed and battle, to find his Food the most foolish of fancies, and his hopes and faith of a greater world to come no more than the coloured film upon a pool of bottomless decay. Littleness invincible! So strong and deep was this wave of despondency, this suggestion of impending disillusionment, that he started to his feet. He stood and pressed his clenched fists into his eyes, and so for a moment remained, fearing to open them again and see, lest the dream should already have passed away.... The voice of the giant children spoke to one another, an undertone to that clangorous melody of the smiths. His tide of doubt ebbed. He heard the giant voices; he heard their movements about him still. It was real, surely it was real--as real as spiteful acts! More real, for these great things, it may be, are the coming things, and the littleness, bestiality, and infirmity of men are the things that go. He opened his eyes. "Done," cried one of the two ironworkers, and they flung their hammers down. A voice sounded above. The son of Cossar, standing on the great embankment, had turned and was now speaking to them all. "It is not that we would oust the little people from the world," he said, "in order that we, who are no more than one step upwards from their littleness, may hold their world for ever. It is the step we fight for and not ourselves.... We are here, Brothers, to what end? To serve the spirit and the purpose that has been breathed into our lives. We fight not for ourselves--for we are but the momentary hands and eyes of the Life of the World. So you, Father Redwood, taught us. Through us and through the little folk the Spirit looks and learns. From us by word and birth and act it must pass--to still greater lives. This earth is no resting place; this earth is no playing place, else indeed we might put our throats to the little people's knife, having no greater right to live than they. And they in their turn might yield to the ants and vermin. We fight not for ourselves but for growth--growth that goes on for ever. To-morrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit for ever more. To grow according to the will of God! To grow out of these cracks and crannies, out of these shadows and darknesses, into greatness and the light! Greater," he said, speaking with slow deliberation, "greater, my Brothers! And then--still greater. To grow, and again--to grow. To grow at last into the fellowship and understanding of God. Growing.... Till the earth is no more than a footstool.... Till the spirit shall have driven fear into nothingness, and spread...." He swung his arm heavenward:--"_There!"_ His voice ceased. The white glare of one of the searchlights wheeled about, and for a moment fell upon him, standing out gigantic with hand upraised against the sky. For one instant he shone, looking up fearlessly into the starry deeps, mail-clad, young and strong, resolute and still. Then the light had passed, and he was no more than a great black outline against the starry sky--a great black outline that threatened with one mighty gesture the firmament of heaven and all its multitude of stars. THE END. 
16900	----	The First Book of Farming [Illustration: THE FARM EQUIPMENT--PLANTS, SOILS, ANIMALS, TOOLS, BUILDINGS.] The First Book of Farming By CHARLES L. GOODRICH _Farmer_ Expert in the Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. _Illustrated_ GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1923 1905, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHED MARCH, 1905 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y. PREFACE The most successful farmers of the present day are those who work in harmony with the forces and laws of nature which control the growth and development of plants and animals. These men have gained their knowledge of those laws and forces by careful observation, experiment and study. This book is a result of the author's search for these facts and truths as a student and farmer and his endeavor as a teacher to present them in a simple manner to others. The object in presenting the book to the general public is the hope that it may be of assistance to farmers, students and teachers, in their search for the fundamental truths and principles of farming. In the first part of the book an attempt has been made to select the most important and fundamental truths and principles underlying all agriculture and to present them in the order of their importance, beginning with the most important. An endeavor has been made to present these truths to the reader and student in a simple and interesting manner. As far as possible each advance step is based on a previously stated fact or truth. A number of side truths are introduced at various places. A number of simple experiments have been introduced into the text in the belief that they will make the work more interesting to the general reader, and will aid the student in learning to make simple investigations for himself. The author recommends all who use the book to perform the experiments and to make the observations, and so come actively in touch with the work. The observations begin on the farm. The author considers the plant the central and all-important factor or agent on the farm. The root is regarded as the most important part of the plant to itself, and consequently to the plant grower. The general truths or principles which state the conditions necessary for the growth and development of plant roots are regarded as the foundation truths or fundamental principles of all agriculture. These truths are as follows: The roots of farm plants need for their best growth and development: A firm, mellow soil. A moist soil. A ventilated soil. A warm soil. A soil supplied with plant food. The first two chapters lead the reader quickly through logical reasoning to these fundamental truths, on which the remainder of the work is based. A study of soils is made in connection with the root studies, as the two are so closely related. After the study of roots and soils the other parts of the plant are considered in the order of their importance to the farmer or plant grower. The aim is always to get at fundamental facts and principles underlying all agricultural and horticultural practice. The author regards the conditions necessary to root growth and development as the important factor constituting soil fertility, and in the last ten chapters takes up the discussion of certain farm operations and practices and their effects on these necessary conditions, and consequently their effect on the fertility of the soil. The author extends gratitude to all who have in any way assisted in the preparation of this book, whether through advice, preparation of the text, preparation of the illustrations, or any other way in which he has received assistance. C.L. GOODRICH. GLENNDALE, Prince George Co., Maryland, _January_ 21, 1905. CONTENTS PART I GENERAL PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING PLANT CULTURE Chapter Page I.--INTRODUCTION TO PLANTS 3 II.--ROOTS 9 Uses of roots to plants 9 Habit of growth of roots 11 Conditions necessary for root growth 20 III.--SOILS 23 Relation of soil to plants 23 Classification of soils 26 How were soils made? 30 Soil texture 37 IV.--RELATION OF SOILS TO WATER 39 Importance of water to plants 39 Sources of soil water 40 Attitude of soils toward water: Percolation Absorption from below Power to hold water 40 The effect of working soils when wet 45 V.--FORMS OF SOIL WATER 48 Free water 48 Capillary water 49 Film water 50 VI.--LOSS OF SOIL WATER By surface wash By percolation and leaching By evaporation By transpiration How to check these losses 53 VII.--SOIL TEMPERATURE 57 How soils are warmed 58 How soils lose heat How to check loss of heat 59 Conditions which influence soil temperature 60 Value of organic matter 61 VIII.--PLANT FOOD IN THE SOIL 63 IX.--SEEDS 70 Conditions necessary for sprouting 70 Seed testing 75 How the seeds come up 77 Use of cotyledons and endosperm 79 X.--SEED PLANTING 81 Depth of planting: Operation of planting Planting machines 81 Seed classification 85 Transplanting 87 XI.--SPADING AND PLOWING 90 Spading the soil 90 Plowing 91 Why we spade and plow 91 Parts of a plow 92 Characteristics of a good plow 95 The furrow slice 96 How deep to plow 96 "Breaking out the middles" 97 Ridging the land 98 Time to plow 98 Bare fallow 100 XII.--HARROWING AND ROLLING 101 Harrowing: Why we harrow Time to harrow 101 Types of harrows 102 Rolling 106 XIII.--LEAVES 108 Facts about leaves 108 The uses of leaves to plants: Transpiration Starch making Digestion of food Conditions necessary for leaf work 109 How the work of leaves is interfered with 115 XIV.--STEMS 120 What are stems for? 120 How the work of the stem may be interfered with 126 XV.--FLOWERS 128 Function of flowers 128 Parts of flowers 129 Functions of the parts: Cross pollination 130 Value of a knowledge of the flowers 134 Fruit 136 PART II SOIL FERTILITY AS AFFECTED BY FARM OPERATIONS AND FARM PRACTICES Chapter Page XVI.--A FERTILE SOIL 141 Physical properties: Power to absorb and hold water Power of ventilation Power to absorb and hold heat 142 Biological properties 143 Nitrogen-fixing germs 144 Nitrifying germs 145 Denitrifying germs 147 Chemical properties: Nitrogen in the soil Phosphoric acid in the soil Potash in the soil Lime in the soil Great importance of physical properties 147 Maintenance of fertility 150 XVII.--SOIL WATER 151 Importance of soil water 151 Necessity of soil water 151 Sources and forms of soil water 153 Too much water 154 Not enough water 154 Loss of soil water 155 How some farm operations influence soil water 156 Hoeing, raking, harrowing and cultivating 158 Manures and soil water 159 Methods of cropping and soil water 159 Selection of crops with reference to soil water 160 XVIII.--THE AFTER-CULTIVATION OF CROPS 164 Loss of water by evaporation 164 Loss of water through weeds 165 Saving the water 165 Time to cultivate 166 Tools for after-cultivation 167 Hilling and ridging 169 XIX.--FARM MANURES 171 The functions of manures and fertilizers 171 Classification 171 Importance of farm manures 172 Barn or stable manure 173 Loss of value 173 Checking the losses 176 Applying the manure to the soil 177 Proper condition of manure when applied 179 Composts 181 XX.--FARM MANURES, CONCLUDED 183 Green-crop manures: Functions 183 Benefits 185 Character of best plants for green-crop manuring 185 The time for green-manure crops 186 Leguminous green-manure crops 186 Non-leguminous green-manure plants 191 XXI.--COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS 192 The raw materials 192 Sources of nitrogen 193 Sources of phosphoric acid 195 Sources of potash 199 Sources of lime 200 XXII.--COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS, CONTINUED 202 Mixed fertilizers: What they are Many brands Safeguard for the farmer Low grade materials Inflating the guarantee 202 Valuation 205 Low grade mixtures 207 Buy on the plant food basis 209 XXIII.--COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS, CONCLUDED 211 Home mixing of fertilizers 211 Kind and amount to buy 212 The crop 213 The soil 215 The system of farming 215 Testing the soil 215 XXIV.--ROTATION OF CROPS 219 Systems of cropping 219 The one crop system 221 Rotation of crops 224 Benefits derived from rotation of crops 230 The typical rotation 231 Conditions which modify the rotation 232 General rules 233 Length of rotation 233 XXV.--FARM DRAINAGE 235 How surplus water affects fertility 235 Indications of a need of drainage 235 Drains: Surface drains Open ditch drains Covered drains or under drains 236 Influence of covered drains on fertility 237 Location of drains: Grade Tile drains 238 GLOSSARY 241 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The farm equipment--plants, soils, animals, tools, buildings _Frontispiece_ Figure Facing Page 1. Specimen plants for study 6 2. The first effort of a sprouting seed 7 3. Germinating seeds with roots 7 4. To show that plant roots take water from the soil 10 5. To show that plant roots take food from the soil 10 6. A radish root, from which the stored food has been used to help produce a crop of seeds 11 7. A sweet-potato root producing new plants 11 8. Sweet-potato roots 14 9. Soy-bean roots 15 10. A plow stopped in the furrow, to show what it does to the roots of plants when used for after-cultivation 18 11. A corn-plant ten days after planting the seed 19 12. To show where growth in length of the root takes place 22 13. Radish seeds sprouted on dark cloth 22 14. To show how water gets into the roots of plants 23 15. To show osmose 23 16. To show that roots need air 26 17. Comparison of fresh and boiled water 26 18. Comparison of moist sand and puddled clay 27 19. Comparing soils 32 20. Water-test of soils 33 21. To show what becomes of the water taken from the soil by roots 40 22. Percolation experiment. To show the relative powers of soils to take in water falling on the surface 41 23. Bottles used in place of the lamp chimneys in Figs. 22 and 24 44 24. Capillarity of soils. To show the relative powers of soils to take water from below 44 25. Water-absorbing and water-holding powers of soils 45 26. Capillary tubes. To show how water rises in small tubes or is drawn into small spaces 48 27. Capillary plates 48 28. A cone of soil to show capillarity 49 29. To show the relative amounts of film-moisture held by coarse and fine soils 49 30. To show the effect of a soil mulch 56 31. Soil temperature experiment 57 32. Charts showing average temperature of a set of dry and wet soils during a period of five days 60 33. To show the value of organic matter 61 34. Soy-bean roots, showing nodules or tubercles 64 35. Garden-pea roots, showing tubercles or nodules 65 36. To show that seeds need water for germination 72 37. To show that seeds need air for germination 72 38. To show that seeds need air for germination 73 39. A seed-tester: two plates and a moist cloth 80 40. A seed-tester: a plaster cast with cavities in the surface for small seeds 80 41. Germinating corn-kernel and bean 81 42. To show how the bean-plant gets up 82 43. To show how the corn-plant gets out of the soil 82 44. To show the use of cotyledons 83 45. To show the use of the kernel to the young corn-plant 86 46. To show how deeply seeds should be planted 87 47. Operations of seed-planting 88 48. A collection of planting machines 89 49. Spading-fork and spade 92 50. A wood beam-plow 93 51. A slip-nose share and a slip-nose 96 52. A straight knife coulter 96 53. An iron beam-plow with rolling coulter and double clevis 96 54. A rolling cutter-harrow 97 55. Spring-toothed harrows 97 56. Spike-toothed harrows 104 57. A coulter-toothed harrow 104 58. A plank harrow 105 59. To show transpiration 108 60. Amount of transpiration 109 61. To show that growing leaves contain starch 114 62. To show that starch disappears from the leaf when the plant is placed in the dark 114 63. To show that sunlight is necessary for starch-making by leaves 115 64. To show that chlorophyl is necessary for starch formation in the leaf 115 65. To show the giving off of gas by leaves, and that sunlight is necessary for it 118 66. Seedling radishes reaching for light 119 67. Elm leaves injured by the "imported elm-tree leaf-beetle," a chewing insect 119 68. A horse-chestnut stem, showing leaves, buds, and scars, where last year's leaves dropped off 128 69. An underground stem. Buds show distinctly 129 70. Flower of cherry 130 71. Flower of apple 130 72. Pistil and stamen of flowering raspberry 131 73. Flower of buttercup 131 74. A magnolia flower showing central column of pistils and stamens 134 75. Flowers of squash 135 76. Flower of a lily 136 77. Bud and flower of jewel-weed or "touch-me-not" 137 78. Pistillate flower and perfect flower of strawberry 137 79. A crop of cowpeas 178 80. Red clover 179 81. Soy-beans in young orchard 182 82. A young alfalfa plant just coming into flower 183 83. Cross-sections of stone-drains 238 84. Cross-section of a pole-drain and of a tile-drain 238 85. A collection of drainage tools 239 86. A poorly laid tile-drain and a properly graded tile-drain 239 PART I General Principles Underlying Plant Culture THE FIRST BOOK OF FARMING PART I _General Principles Underlying Plant Culture_ CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO PLANTS Our object in reading and studying this book is to find out some facts that will help those of us who are thinking of going into farming and gardening as a business or recreation to start right, and will also help those of us that are already in the business to make our farms and gardens more productive. In order to make the book of greatest value to you, I would urge you not only to read and study it, but also to make the excursions suggested and to perform the experiments. In other words, it will be of much greater value to you if you will make the observations and investigations and find out for yourselves the important facts and principles rather than simply take statements of the book unquestioned. A very good time to begin this work is during the latter part of the summer, when the summer crops are ripening and the fall and winter crops are starting into growth. So suppose we begin our study with a visit to some farm in early September, to bring to mind the many things a farmer works with, the many things he has to think about and know about. As we approach the farm we will probably see first the farm-house surrounded by shade trees, perhaps elms or maples, with the barns and other buildings grouped nearby. As we pass up the front walk we notice more or less lawn of neatly clipped grass, with flower beds bordering the walk, or we may find a number of chickens occupying the front yard, and the flower beds, placed in red half-barrels, set upon short posts. In the flower beds we may find petunias, nasturtiums, geraniums, rose bushes and other flowering plants. Going around the house, we come upon the dairy, with its rack of cans and pans set out for the daily sunning and airing. Nearby is a well with its oaken bucket; at the barn we find the farmer, and he very kindly consents to go with us to answer questions. In the barn and sheds we find wagons, plows, harrows, seed drills, hoes, rakes, scythes and many other tools and machines. Passing on to the fields, we go through the vegetable garden, where are carrots, parsnips, cabbages, beets, celery, sage and many other vegetables and herbs. On the right, we see a field of corn just ready to harvest, and beyond a field of potatoes. On the left is the orchard, and we are invited to refresh ourselves with juicy apples. In the field beyond the hired man is plowing with a fine team of horses. In the South we would find a field of cotton and one of sweet potatoes, and perhaps sugar cane or peanuts. We have not failed to notice the pig weeds in the corn field nor the rag weed in the wheat stubble, and many other weeds and grasses in the fence corners. Perhaps we may meet the cows coming from pasture to the stable. All the way we have been trampling on something very important which we will notice on our way back. In this field we find a coarse sandy soil, in the next one a soil that is finer and stiffer. The plow is turning up a reddish soil. In the garden we find the soil quite dark in color. But these are only a few of the things we have found. If you have used your notebook you will discover that you have long lists of objects which you have noticed, and these may be grouped under the following headings: Animals, Plants, Soils, Buildings, Tools, etc. The farmer, then, in his work on the farm deals with certain agents, chief among which are Soils, Plants, Animals, Tools and Buildings. Other agents which assist or retard his work according to circumstances are the air, sunlight, heat, moisture, plant food, microscopic organisms called bacteria, etc. These agents are controlled in their relations to one another by certain forces which work according to certain laws and principles of nature. To work intelligently and to obtain the best results the farmer must become familiar with these agents and must work in harmony with the laws and principles which control them. Let us take up the study of some of these groups of agents, beginning with the most important or central one on the farm. Which do you think is the most important group? Some will say "tools." The majority will probably say, study the soil first, "because we must work the soil before we can grow good crops." Some few will mention "plants." This last is right. The farm animals are dependent on plants for food. We till or work the soil to produce plants. Plants are living, growing things, and certain requirements or conditions are necessary for their growth and development; we cannot intelligently prepare the soil for plant growth until we know something about the work of plants and the conditions they need to do their work well. For our first study of plants let us get together a number of farm and garden plants. Say, we have a corn plant, cotton, beet, turnip, carrot, onion, potato, grass, geranium, marigold, pigweed, thistle, or other farm or garden plants. In each case get the entire plant, with as much root as possible. Do these plants in any way resemble one another? All are green, all have roots, all have stems and leaves, some of them have flowers, fruit, and seeds, and the others in time will produce them. Why does the farmer raise these plants? For food for man and animals; for clothing; for ornamental purposes; for pleasure, etc. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--SPECIMEN PLANTS FOR STUDY.] [Illustration: FIG. 2. The first effort of a sprouting seed is to send a root down into the soil.] [Illustration: FIG. 3. Germinating seeds produce roots before they send a shoot up into the air.] Which part of any or all of these farm plants is of greatest importance to the plant itself? I am sure that you will agree that the root is the part most important to the plant itself, for if any part of a plant be separated from the root, that part ceases growth and will soon die, unless it is able to put out new roots. But the root from which the plant was cut will generally send up new shoots, unless it has nearly completed its life work. When a slip or cutting is placed in water or in moist sand it makes a root before it continues much in growth. When a seed is planted its first effort is to send a rootlet down into the soil. Experiment to see if this is true by planting slips of willow, or geranium, or by planting corn or beans in a glass tumbler of soil, or in a box having a glass side, placing the seeds close to the glass; then watch and see what the seed does. Figs. 2 and 3. Which of the parts of the plant is of greatest importance to the farmer or any plant grower, or to which part of a plant should the plant grower give his best attention? You will probably mention different parts of the different plants in answering this question. For instance, some will say, "The seed is the most important part of the wheat plant to the farmer, for that is what the wheat is grown for." "The fruit is the most important part of the apple plant for the same reason." "The leaves and grain of the corn, the leaves of the cabbage, are the important parts of these plants and should have the best attention of the grower, because they are the parts for which he grows the plants." But you must remember that all of these parts are dependent on the root for life and growth, as was brought out in the answer to the last question, and that if the farmer or plant grower desires a fine crop of leaves, stems, flowers, fruit or seeds, he must give his very best attention to the root. Judging from the poor way in which many farmers and plant growers prepare the soil for the plants they raise, and the poor way they care for the soil during the growth of the plants, they evidently think least of, and give least attention to, the roots of the plants. Then, in studying our plants, which part shall we study first? Why, the roots, of course: To find out what they do for the plant, how they do this work, and what conditions are necessary for them to grow and to do their work well. CHAPTER II ROOTS USES OF ROOTS TO PLANTS Of what use are roots to plants, or, what work do they perform for the plants? If the reader has ever tried to pull up weeds or other plants he will agree that one function of the roots of plants is to hold them firmly in place while they are growing. =Experiment.=--Pull two plants from the soil, shake them free of earth, and place the roots of one in water and expose the roots of the other to the air. Notice that the plant whose roots are exposed to the air soon wilts, while the one whose roots were placed in water keeps fresh. You have noticed how a potted plant will wilt if the soil in the pot is allowed to become dry (see Fig. 4), or how the leaves of corn and other plants curl up and wither during long periods of dry weather. It is quite evident roots absorb moisture from the soil for the plant. =Experiment.=--Plant some seeds in tumblers or in boxes filled with sand and in others filled with good garden soil. Keep them well watered and watch their progress for a few weeks (see Fig. 5). The plants in the garden soil will grow larger than those in the sand. The roots evidently must get food from the soil and those in the good garden soil get more than those in the poorer sand. Another important function of plant roots then is to take food from the soil for the plant. You know how thick and fleshy the roots of radishes, beets and turnips are. Well, go into the garden and see if you can find a spring radish or an early turnip that has sent up a flower stalk, blossomed and produced seeds. If you are successful, cut the root in two and notice that instead of being hard and fleshy like the young radish or turnip, it has become hollow, or soft and spongy (see Fig. 6). Evidently the hard, fleshy young root was packed with food, which it afterwards gave up to produce flower stalk and seeds. A fourth use of the root, then, is to store food for the future use of the plant. =Experiment.=--Plant a sweet potato or place it with the lower end in a tumbler of water and set it in a warm room. Observe it from day to day as it puts out new shoots bearing leaves and roots (see Fig. 7). Break these off and plant them in soil and you have a number of new plants. If you can get the material, repeat this experiment with roots of horse-radish, raspberry, blackberry or dahlia. From this we see that it is the work of some roots to produce new plants. This function of roots is made use of in propagating or obtaining new plants of the sweet potato, horse-radish, blackberry, raspberry, dahlia and other plants. [Illustration: FIG. 4. To show that plant-roots take water from the soil, the plants in _A_ are suffering from thirst. _B_ has sufficient water.] [Illustration: FIG. 5. To show that plant roots take food from the soil. Both boxes were planted at the same time.] [Illustration: FIG. 6. A radish root, from which the stored food has been used to help produce a crop of seeds. Notice the spindle shaded seed-vessels.] [Illustration: FIG. 7. A sweet-potato root producing new plants.] We have now learned five important things that roots do for plants, namely: Roots hold plants firmly in place. They absorb water from the soil for the plants. They absorb food from the soil for the plants. Some roots store food for the future use of the plant. Some roots produce new plants. How do the roots do this work? To answer this question it will be necessary to study the habit of growth of the roots of our plants. HABIT OF GROWTH OF ROOTS The proper place to begin this study is in the field or garden. So we will make another excursion, and this time we will take with us a pick-axe or mattock, a shovel or two, a sharp stick, a quart or half-gallon pitcher, and several buckets of water. Arrived in the field, we will select a well-developed plant, say, of corn, potato or cotton. Then we will dig a hole about six feet long, three feet wide, and five or six feet deep, close to the plant, letting one side come about four or five inches from the base of the plant. It will be well to have this hole run across the row rather than lengthwise with it. Then with the pitcher pour water about the base of the plant and wash the soil away from the roots. Gently loosening the soil with the sharpened stick will hasten this work. In this way carefully expose the roots along the side of the hole, tracing them as far as possible laterally and as deep as possible, taking care to loosen them as little as possible from their natural position. (See Figs. 8 and 9.) Having exposed the roots of one kind of plant to a width and depth of five or six feet, expose the roots of six or eight plants of different kinds to a depth of about eighteen inches. As this may require more time than we can take for it in one day, it will be well to cover the exposed roots with some old burlaps or other material until we have them all ready, in order to keep them from drying and from injury. When all is ready we will study the root system of each plant and answer these four questions: In what part of the soil are most of the roots? How deep do they penetrate the soil? How near do they come to the surface of the soil? How far do they reach out sidewise or laterally from the plant? To the first question, "In what part of the soil are most of the roots?" you will give the following answers: "In the upper layer." "In the surface soil." "In the softer soil." "In the darker soil." "In the plowed soil." These are all correct, but the last is the important one. Most of the roots will be formed in that part of the soil that has been plowed or spaded. The second question, "How deep do the roots penetrate the soil?" is easily answered. Roots will be found penetrating the soil to depths of from two to six feet or more. (See Fig. 8.) The author has traced the roots of cowpea and soy bean plants to depths of five and six feet, corn roots four and five feet, parsnips over six feet. The sweet-potato roots illustrated in Fig. 8 penetrated the soil to a depth of over five feet. The roots of alfalfa or lucern have been traced to depths of from thirteen to sixteen feet or more. How near to the surface of the soil do you find roots? Main side or lateral roots will be found within two or three inches of the surface, and little rootlets from these will be found reaching up as near the surface as there is a supply of moisture. After a continued period of wet weather, if the soil has not been disturbed, roots will be found coming to the very surface and even running along the top of the soil. As to the fourth question, How far do roots reach out sidewise or laterally from the plant? you will find roots extending three, four, five and even six or more feet from the plant. They have numerous branches and rootlets, which fill all parts of the upper soil. Tree roots have been found thirty or forty feet in length. We started on this observation lesson to find out something about the habit of growth of roots, so that we could tell how the roots do their work for the plant. But before going on with that question, let us stop right here and see whether we cannot find some very important lessons for the farmer and plant grower from what we have already seen. Is a knowledge of these facts we have learned about roots of any value to the farmer? Let us examine each case and see. Of what value is it to the farmer to know that the larger part of the roots of farm plants develop in that part of the soil that has been plowed or spaded? It tells him that plowing tends to bring about the soil conditions which are favorable to the growth and development of roots. Therefore, the deeper he plows, the deeper is the body of the soil having conditions best suited for root growth, and the larger will be the crop which grows above the soil. Of what value is it to the farmer to know that the roots of farm plants penetrate to depths of five or six feet in the soil? To answer this question it will be necessary for us to know something of the conditions necessary for root growth. So we will leave this till later. Of what value is it to the farmer to know that many of the roots of his farm plants come very near the surface of the soil? It tells him that he should be careful in cultivating his crop to injure as few of these roots as possible. In some parts of the country, particularly in the South, the tool commonly used for field cultivation is a small plow. This is run alongside of the row, throwing the soil from the crop, and then again throwing the soil to the crop. Suppose we investigate, and see how this affects the roots of the crop. [Illustration: FIG. 8. Sweet potato roots. The great mass of the roots is in the plowed soil. Many of them reach out 5 to 7 feet from the plant. Some reach a depth of more than 5 feet, and others come to the very surface of the soil.] [Illustration: FIG. 9. Soy-bean roots showing location, extent and depth of root-growth.] Let us visit a field where some farmer is working a crop with a plow, or get him to do it, for the sake of the lesson. We will ask him to stop the plow somewhere opposite a plant, then we will dig a hole a little to one side of the plow and wash away the soil from over the plow (see Fig. 10), and see where the roots are. We will find that the plow-point runs under many strong-feeding lateral roots and tears them off, thus checking the feeding power of the plant, and consequently checking its growth. Now, if we can get a cultivator, we will have that run along the row and then wash away the loosened soil. It will be found that few, if any, of the main lateral roots have been injured. Is it of any value to the farmer to know that roots extend laterally three to six feet and more on all sides of the plant, and that every part of the upper soil is filled with their branches and rootlets? This fact has a bearing on the application of manures and fertilizers. It tells the farmer that when he applies the manure and fertilizers to the soil he should mix the most of them thoroughly all through the soil, placing only a little directly in the row to start the young plant. To find out how quickly the roots reach out into the soil, wash the soil away from some seedlings that have been growing only a few days, say, seven, ten and fifteen. (See Fig. 11.) From our observations, then, we have learned the important lessons of deep, thorough plowing, careful shallow after-cultivation, and that fertilizers should be well mixed with the soil. We are now ready to go back to our study of the habit of growth of roots, and can perhaps tell something of how the root does its work for the plant. It is very easy to see how the roots hold the plant firmly in place, for they penetrate so thoroughly every part of the soil, and to such distances, that they hold with a grip that makes it impossible to remove the plant from the soil without tearing it free from the roots. It is also on account of this very thorough reaching out through the soil that the roots are able to supply the plant with sufficient moisture and food. We have doubtless observed that most of these roots are very slender and many very delicate. How did they manage to reach out into the soil so far from the plant? Or where does the root grow in length? To answer this question I will ask you to perform the following experiment: =Experiment.=--Place some kernels of corn or other large seeds on a plate between the folds of a piece of wet cloth. Cover with a pane of glass or another plate. Keep the cloth moist till the seeds sprout and the young plants have roots two or three inches long. Now have at hand a plate, two pieces of glass, 4 by 6 inches, a piece of white cloth about 4 by 8 inches, a spool of dark thread, and two burnt matches, or small slivers of wood. A shallow tin pan may be used in place of the plate. Lay one pane of glass on the plate, letting one end rest in the bottom of the plate and the other on the opposite edge of the plate. At one end of the piece of cloth cut two slits on opposite sides about an inch down from the end and reaching nearly to the middle. Wet the cloth and spread it on the glass. Take one of the sprouted seeds, lay it on the cloth, tie pieces of thread around the main root at intervals of one-quarter inch from tip to seed. Tie carefully, so that the root will not be injured. Place the second pane of glass over the roots, letting the edge come just below the seed, slipping in the slivers of wood to prevent the glass crushing the roots. Wrap the two flaps of the cloth about the seed. Pour some water in the plate and leave for development. (Fig. 12.) A day or two of waiting will show conclusively that the lengthening takes place at the tip only, or just back of the tip. Is this fact of any value to the farmer? Yes. The soft tender root tips will force their way through a mellow soil with greater ease and rapidity than through a hard soil, and the more rapid the root growth the more rapid the development of the plant. This teaches us again the lesson of deep, thorough breaking and pulverizing of the soil before the crop is planted. We have learned that the roots grow out into the soil in search of moisture and food, which they absorb for the use of the plant. How does the root take in moisture and food? Many people think that there are little mouths at the tips of the roots, and that the food and moisture are taken in through them. This is not so, for examination with the most powerful microscopes fails to discover any such mouths. Sprout seeds of radish, turnip or cabbage, or other seeds, on dark cloth, placed in plates and kept moist. Notice the fuzz or mass of root hairs near the ends of the tender roots of the seedlings (Fig. 13). Plant similar seed in sand or soil, and when they have started to grow pull them up and notice how difficult it is to remove all of the sand or dirt from the roots. This is because the delicate root hairs cling so closely to the soil grains. The root hairs are absorbing moisture laden with plant food from the surface of the soil particles. The root hairs are found only near the root tips. As the root grows older, its surface becomes tougher and harder, and the hairs die, while new ones appear on the new growth just back of the root tips, which are constantly reaching out after moisture and food. The moisture gets into the root hairs by a process called osmose. The following interesting experiment will give you an idea of this process or force of osmose. [Illustration: FIG. 10. A plow stopped in the furrow, to show what it does to the roots of plants when used for after-cultivation. Notice the point of the plow under the roots.] [Illustration: FIG. 11. A corn-plant ten days after planting the seed. To show how quickly the roots reach out into the soil. Some of the roots were over 18 inches long.] =Experiment.=--Procure a wide-mouthed bottle, an egg, a glass tube about three inches long and a quarter-inch in diameter, a candle, and a piece of wire a little longer than the tube. Remove a part of the shell from the large end of the egg without breaking the skin beneath. This is easily done by gently tapping the shell with the handle of a pocket-knife until it is full of small cracks, and then, with the blade of the knife, picking off the small pieces. In this way remove the shell from the space about the size of a nickel. Remove the shell from the small end of the egg over a space about as large as the end of the glass tube. Next, from the lower end of the candle cut a piece about one-half inch long. Bore a hole in this just the size of the glass tube. Now soften one end of the piece of candle with the hole in it and stick it on to the small end of the egg so that the hole in the candle comes over the hole in the egg. Heat the wire, and with it solder the piece of candle more firmly to the egg, making a water-tight joint. Place the glass tube in the hole in the piece of candle, pushing it down till it touches the egg. Then, with the heated wire, solder the tube firmly in place. Now run the wire down the tube and break the skin of the egg just under the end of the tube. Fill the bottle with water till it overflows, and set the egg on the bottle, the large end in contact with the water (Fig. 14). In an hour or so the contents of the egg will be seen rising in the glass tube. This happens because the water is making its way by osmose into the egg through the skin, which has no openings, so far as can be discovered. If the bottle is kept supplied with water as fast as it is taken up by the egg, almost the entire contents of the egg will be forced out of the tube. In this way water in which plant food is dissolved enters the slender root hairs and rises through the plant. =Experiment.=--This process of osmose may also be shown as follows (Fig. 15): Remove the shell from the large end of an egg without breaking the skin, break a hole in the small end of the egg and empty out the contents of the egg; rinse the shell with water. Fill a wide-mouthed bottle with water colored with a few drops of red ink. Fill the egg-shell partly full of clear water and set it on the bottle of colored water. Colored water will gradually pass through the membrane of the egg and color the water in the shell. Prepare another egg in the same way, but put colored water in the shell and clear water in the bottle. The colored water in the shell will pass through the skin and color the water in the bottle. Sugar or salt may be used in place of the red ink, and their presence after passing through the membrane may be detected by taste. CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR ROOT GROWTH We have learned some of the things that the roots do for plants and a little about how the work is done. The next thing to find out is: What conditions are necessary for the root to do its work? We know that a part of the work of the root is to penetrate the soil and hold the plant firmly in place. Therefore, it needs a firm soil. We know that the part of the root which penetrates the soil is tender and easily injured. Therefore, for rapid growth the root needs a mellow soil. We know that part of the work of the root is to take moisture from the soil. Therefore, it needs a moist soil. We know that part of the work of the root is to take food from the soil. Therefore, it needs a soil well supplied with plant food. We know that roots stop their work in cold weather. Therefore, they need a warm soil. Another condition needed by roots we will find out by experiment. =Experiment.=--Take two wide-mouthed clear glass bottles (Fig. 16); fill one nearly full of water from the well or hydrant; fill the other bottle nearly full of water that has been boiled and cooled; place in each bottle a slip or cutting of Wandering Jew (called also inch plant, or tradescantia, and spiderwort), or some other plant that roots readily in water. Then pour on top of the boiled water about a quarter of an inch of oil--lard oil or cotton-seed oil or salad oil. This is to prevent the absorption of air. In a few days roots will appear on the slip in the hydrant water, while only a very few short ones, if any, will appear in the boiled water, and they will soon cease growing. Why is this? To answer this question, try another experiment. Take two bottles, filled as before, one with hydrant water and the other with boiled water; drop into each a slip of glass or a spoon or piece of metal long enough so that one end will rest on the bottom and the other against the side of the bottle, and let stand for an hour or so (Fig. 17). At the end of that time bubbles of air will be seen collecting on the glass or spoon in the hydrant water, but none in the boiled water. This shows us that water contains more or less air, and that boiling the water drives this air out. The cutting in the boiled water did not produce roots because there was no air in it and the oil kept it from absorbing any. =Experiment.=--Into some tumblers of moist sand put cuttings of several kinds of plants that root readily (Fig. 18), geranium, tradescantia, begonia, etc. Put cuttings of same plants into tumblers filled with clay that has been wet and stirred very thoroughly, until it is about the consistency of cake batter. Keep the sand and puddled clay moist; do not allow the clay to crack, which it will do if it dries. The cuttings in the sand will strike root and grow, while most, if not all, those in the clay will soon die. The reason for this is that the sand is well ventilated and there is sufficient air for root development, while the clay is very poorly ventilated, and there is not sufficient air for root growth. These experiments show us that to develop and do their work roots need air or a well-ventilated soil. We have found the conditions which are necessary for the growth and development of plant roots, namely: A firm, mellow soil. A moist soil. A soil supplied with available plant food. A warm soil. A ventilated soil. These are the most important facts about plant growth so far as the plant grower is concerned. In other words, these conditions which are necessary for root growth and development are the most important truths of agriculture, or they are the foundation truths or principles upon which all agriculture is based. Having found these conditions, the next most important step is to find out how to bring them about in the soil, or, if they already exist, how to keep them or to improve them. This brings us, then, to a study of soils. [Illustration: FIG. 12. To show where growth in length of the root takes place. Forty hours before the photograph was taken the tip of the root was ¼ inch from the lowest thread. The glass cover was taken from this in order to get a good picture of the root.] [Illustration: FIG. 13. Radish seeds sprouted on dark cloth. To show root hairs.] [Illustration: FIG. 14. To show how water gets into the roots of plants. Water passed up into the egg through the skin, or membrane, and forced the contents up the glass tube until it began to overflow.] [Illustration: FIG. 15. To show osmose (see page 19).] CHAPTER III SOILS The soil considered agriculturally, is that part of the earth's crust which is occupied by the roots of plants and from which they absorb food and moisture. RELATION OF SOIL TO PLANTS We have learned that plant roots penetrate the soil to hold the plant in a firm and stable position, to absorb moisture and with it plant food. We learned also that for roots to do these things well, the soil in which they grow must be mellow and firm, and must contain moisture and plant food, air must circulate in its pores and it must be warm. How can we bring about these conditions? To answer this question intelligently it will be necessary for us to study the soil to find out something about its structure, its composition, its characteristics; also, how it was made and what forces or agencies were active in making it. Are these forces acting on the soil at the present time? Do they have any influence over the conditions which are favorable or unfavorable to plant growth? If so, can we control them in their action for the benefit or injury of plants? We will begin this soil study with an excursion and a few experiments. Go to the field. Examine the soil in the holes dug for the root lessons, noticing the difference between the upper or surface soil and the under or subsoil. Examine as many kinds of surface soils and subsoils as possible, also decayed leaf mould, the black soil of the woods, etc. If there are in the neighborhood any exposed embankments where a road has been cut through a hill, or where a river or the sea water has cut into a bank of soil, visit them and examine the exposed soils. =Experiment.=--Place in separate pans, dishes, plates, boxes, or on boards, one or two pints each of sand, clay, decayed vegetable matter or leaf mould or woods soil, and garden soil. The soil should be fresh from the field. Examine the sand, clay and leaf mould, comparing them as to color; are they light or dark, are they moist or not? Test the soils for comparative size of particles by rubbing between the fingers (Fig. 19), noticing if they are coarse or fine, and for stickiness by squeezing in the hand and noting whether or not they easily crumble afterwards. =Experiment.=--Take samples, about a teaspoonful, of sand, clay and leaf mould. Dry them and then place each in an iron spoon or on a small coal shovel and heat in stove to redness. It will be found that the leaf mould will smoke and burn, and will diminish in amount, while the sand and clay will not. =Experiment.=--Take two wide-mouthed bottles; fill both nearly full of water. Into one put about a teaspoonful of clay and into the other the same amount of sand; shake both bottles thoroughly and set on table to settle (Fig. 20). It will be found that the sand settles very quickly and the clay very slowly. As the result of our three experiments we will find something as follows: Sand is light in color, moist, coarse, not sticky, settles quickly in water, and will not burn. Clay is darker in color, moist, very fine, quite sticky, settles slowly in water, and will not burn. Leaf mould or humus is very dark in color, moist, very fine, slightly sticky, and burns when placed in the fire. =Experiment.=--We now have knowledge and means for making simple tests of soils. Repeat the last three experiments with the garden soil. We will find, perhaps, that it is dark in color and some of it burns away when placed in the fire, therefore it contains organic matter or decaying vegetable matter or humus, as it is called. This sample has perhaps fine particles and coarse particles; part of it will settle quickly in water while part settles very slowly, and it is sticky. Therefore we conclude that there are both clay and sand in it. If we shake a sample of it in a bottle of water and let it settle for several days, we can tell roughly from the layers of soil in the bottom of the bottle the relative amounts of sand and clay in the soil. Also if we weigh a sample before and after burning we can tell roughly the amount of organic matter in the soil. Test a number of soils and determine roughly the proportions of sand, clay and organic matter in them. =Experiment.=--Take the pans of soil used in our first soil experiment and separate the soils in the pans into two parts by a trench across the centre on the pan. Now wet the soil in one side of the pan and stir it with a stick or a spoon, carefully smooth the surface of the soil in the other side of the pan and pour or sprinkle some water on it, but do not stir it. Set the pans aside till the soils are dry. This drying may take several days and in the meantime we will study the classification of soils. [Illustration: FIG. 16. To show that roots need air. Bottle _A_ was supplied with fresh water, and bottle _B_ with water that had been boiled to drive the air out and then cooled.] [Illustration: FIG. 17. Bottle _A_ contains fresh water, bottle _B_ contains boiled water. Notice the air bubbles in bottle _A._] [Illustration: FIG. 18. Tumblers _A_ and _C_ contained moist sand, _B_ and _D_ contained puddled clay. Cuttings in _B_ and _D_ died, because there was not sufficient ventilation in the clay for root-development.] CLASSIFICATION OF SOILS Soil materials and soils are classified as follows: _Stones._--Coarse, irregular or rounded rock fragments or pieces of rock. _Gravel._--Coarse fragments and pebbles ranging in size from several inches in diameter down to 1/25 inch. _Sand._--Soil particles ranging from 1/25 of an inch down to 1/500 of an inch in diameter. Sand is divided into several grades or sizes. Coarse sand 1/25 to 1/50 of an inch. Medium sand 1/50 to 1/100 of an inch. Fine sand 1/100 to 1/250 of an inch. Very fine sand 1/250 to 1/500 of an inch. These grades of sand correspond very nearly with the grains of granulated and soft sugar and fine table salt. _Silt._--Fine soil particles ranging from 1/500 to 1/5000 of an inch in diameter. It feels very fine and smooth when rubbed between the fingers, especially when moist. A good illustration of silt is the silicon used for cleaning knives, a small amount of which can be obtained at most any grocery store. By rubbing some of this between the fingers, both dry and wet, one can get a fair idea of how a silty soil should feel. Silt when wet is sticky like clay. _Clay._--The finest of rock particles, 1/5000 to 1/250000 of an inch in diameter, too small to imagine. Clay when wet is very soft, slippery and very sticky. Yellow ochre and whiting from the paint shop are good illustrations of clay. _Humus_, or decaying vegetable and animal matter. This is dark brown or almost black in color--decaying leaves and woods soil are examples. Soils composed of the above materials: _Sands or Sandy Soils._--These soils are mixtures of the different grades of sand and small amounts of silt, clay and organic matter. They are light, loose and easy to work. They produce early crops, and are particularly adapted to early truck, fruit and bright tobacco, but are too light for general farm crops. To this class belongs the so-called Norfolk Sand. This is a coarse to medium, yellow or brown sand averaging about five-sixths sand and one-sixth silt and clay and is a typical early truck soil found all along the eastern coast of the United States. "It is a mealy, porous, warm sand, well drained and easily cultivated. In regions where trucking forms an important part of agriculture, this soil is sought out as best adapted to the production of watermelons, canteloupes, sweet potatoes, early Irish potatoes, strawberries, early tomatoes, early peas, peppers, egg plant, rhubarb and even cabbage and cauliflower, though the latter crops produce better yields on a heavier soil." A very similar sand in the central part of the country is called Miami Sand and, on the Pacific Coast, Fresno Sand. These names are given to these type soils by the Bureau of Soils of the United States Department of Agriculture. _Loams or Loamy Soils_, consist of mixtures of the sands, silt and clay with some organic matter. The term loam is applied to a soil which, from its appearance in the field and the feeling when handled, appears to be about one-half sand and the other half silt and clay with more or less organic matter. These are naturally fine in texture and quite sticky when wet. They would be called clay by many on account of their stickiness. They are good soils for general farming and produce good grain, grass, corn, potatoes, cotton, vegetables, etc. _Sandy Loams_, averaging about three-fifths sand and two-fifths silt and clay. These soils are tilled easily and are the lightest desirable soil for general farming. They are particularly adapted to corn and cotton and in some instances are used for small fruits and truck crops. _Silt Loam_ consists largely of silt with a small amount of sand, clay, and organic matter. These soils are some of the most difficult to till, but when well drained they are with careful management good general farming soils, producing good corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, alfalfa and fair cotton. _Clay Loams._--These soils contain more clay than the silt loams. They are stiff, sticky soils, and some of them are difficult to till. They are generally considered the strongest soils for general farming. They are particularly adapted to wheat, hay, corn and grass. _Gravelly loams_ are from one-fourth to two-thirds coarse grained; the remaining fine soil may be sandy loam, silt or clay loam. They are adapted to various crops according to the character of the fine soil. Some of them are best planted to fruit and forest. _Stony Loam._--Like the gravelly loam the stony loams are one-fourth to three-fourths sandy, silty or clay loam, the remainder being rock fragments of larger size than the gravel. These fragments are sometimes rough and irregular and sometimes rounded. The stones interfere seriously with tillage, and naturally the soils are best planted with forest or fruit. _Clay Soils._--Clay soils are mixtures of sand, silt, clay and humus, the clay existing in quite large quantities, there being a greater preponderance of the clay characteristics than in the clay loams; they are very heavy, sticky, and difficult to manage. Some clay soils are not worth farming. Those that can be profitably tilled are adapted to wheat, corn, hay and pasture. _Adobe Soils._--These are peculiar soils of the dry West. They are mixtures of clay, silt, some sand and large amounts of humus. Their peculiar characteristic is that they are very sticky when wet and bake very hard when dry and are, therefore, very difficult to manage, though they are generally very productive when they are moist enough to support crops. _Swamp Muck_ is a dark brown or black swamp soil consisting of large amounts of humus or decaying organic matter mixed with some fine sand and clay. It is found in low wet places. _Peat_ is also largely vegetable matter, consisting of tough roots, partially decayed leaves, moss, etc. It is quite dense and compact and in some regions is used for fuel. HOW WERE SOILS MADE? As a help in finding the answer to this question collect and examine a number of the following or similar specimens: _Brick._--Take pieces of brick and rub them together. A fine powder or dust will be the result. _Stones._--Rub together pieces of stone; the same result will follow, except that the dust will be finer and will be produced with greater difficulty because the stones are harder. Some stones will be found which will grind others without being much affected themselves. _Rock Salt or Cattle Salt._--This is a soft rock, easily broken. Place on a slate or platter one or two pieces about the size of an egg or the size of your fist. Slowly drop water on them till it runs down and partly covers the slate, then set away till the water dries up. Fine particles of salt will be found on the slate wherever the water ran and dried. This is because the water dissolved some of the rock. _Lime Stone._--This is harder. Crush two samples to a fine powder and place one in water and the other in vinegar. Water has apparently no effect on it, but small bubbles are seen to rise from the sample in vinegar. The vinegar which is a weak acid is slowly dissolving the rock. The chemists tell us water will also dissolve the limestone, but very slowly. There are large areas of soil which are the refuse from the dissolving of great masses of limestone. We find that the rocks about us differ in hardness: they are ground to powder when rubbed together, some are easily dissolved in water, others are dissolved by weak acids. Geologists tell us that the whole crust of the earth was at one time made up of rocks, part of which have been broken down into coarse and fine particles which form the gravel, sand and clay of our soils. The organic matter of our soils has been added by the decay of plants and animals. Several agencies have been active in this work of breaking down the rocks and making soils of them. If we look about we can perhaps see some of this work going on now. _Work of the Sun._--Examine a crockery plate or dish that has been many times in and out of a hot oven, noticing the little cracks all over its surface. Most substances expand when they are heated and contract when they are cooled. When the plate is placed in the oven the surface heats faster than the inner parts, and cools faster when taken out of the oven. The result is that there is unequal expansion and contraction in the plate and consequently tension or pulling of its parts against each other. The weaker part gives way and a crack appears. If hot water is put into a thick glass tumbler or bottle, the inner surface heats and expands faster than the outer parts and the result is tension and cracking. If cold water be poured on a warm bottle or piece of warm glass, it cracks, because there is unequal contraction. In the early part of a bright sunny afternoon feel of the surface of exposed rocks, bricks, boards, or buildings on which the sun has been shining. Examine them in the same way early the next morning. You will find that the rocks are heated by the sun just as the plate was heated when put into the oven, and when the sun goes down the rocks cool again. This causes tension in the rocks and little cracks and checks appear in them just as in the heated plate, only more slowly. This checking may also be brought about by a cool shower falling on the sun heated rocks just as the cool water cracked the warm glass. Many rocks if examined closely will be found to be composed of several materials. These materials do not expand and contract alike when heated and cooled and the tendency for them to check is greater even than that of the plate. This is the case with most rocks. [Illustration: FIG. 19.--COMPARING SOILS.] [Illustration: FIG. 20.--WATER TEST OF SOILS. Bottle _A_ contains sand and water, bottle _B_ clay and water. The sand settles quickly, the clay very slowly.] _Work of Rain._--Rain falling on the rocks may dissolve a part of them just as it dissolved the rock salt; or, working into the small cracks made by the sun, may wash out loosened particles; or, during cold weather it may freeze in the cracks and by its expansion chip off small pieces; or, getting into large cracks and freezing, may split the rock just as freezing water splits a water pitcher or the water pipes. _Work of Moving Water._--Visit some neighboring beach or the banks of some rapid stream. See how the waves are rolling the sand and pebbles up and down the beach, grinding them together, rounding their corners and edges, throwing them up into sand beds, and carrying off the finer particles to deposit elsewhere. Now visit a quiet cove or inlet and see how the quiet water is laying down the fine particles, making a clay bed. Notice also how the water plants along the border are helping. They act as an immense strainer, collecting the suspended particles from the water, and with them and their bodies building beds of soil rich in organic matter or humus. The sun, besides expanding and cracking the rocks by its heat, helps in another way to make soils. It warms the water that has been grinding soil on the beach or along the river banks and causes some of it to evaporate. This vapor rises, forms a cloud and floats away in the air. By and by the vapor forms into rain drops which may fall on the top of some mountain. These rain drops may wash loosened particles from the surface or crevices of exposed rocks. These drops are joined by others until, by and by, they form a little stream which carries its small burden of rock dust down the slope, now dropping some particles, now taking up others. Other little streams join this one until they form a brook which increases in size and power as it descends the mountain side. As it grows by the addition of other streams it picks up larger pieces, grinds them together, grinds at its banks and loads itself with rocks, pebbles, sand and clay. As the stream reaches the lower part of the mountain where the slope is less steep, it is checked in its course and the larger stones and pebbles are dropped while the sand and finer particles are carried on and deposited on the bottom of some broad quiet river farther down, and when the river overflows its banks, are distributed over the neighboring meadows, giving them a new coating of soil and often adding to their fertility. What a river does not leave along its course it carries out to sea to help build the sand bars and mud flats there. The rain drops have now gotten back to the beach where they take up again the work of grinding the soil. The work of moving water can be seen in almost any road or cultivated field during or just after a rain, and particularly on the hillsides, where often the soil is loosened and carried from higher to lower parts, making barren sand and clay banks of fertile hillsides and destroying the fertility of the bottom lands below. We have already noticed the work of freezing water in splitting small and large fragments from the rocks. Water moving over the surface of the earth in a solid form, or ice, was at an earlier period in the history of the earth one of the most powerful agencies in soil formation. Away up in Greenland and on the northern border of this continent the temperature is so low that most if not all of the moisture that falls on the earth falls as snow. This snow has piled up until it has become very deep and very heavy. The great weight has packed the bottom of this great snow bank to ice. On the mountains where the land was not level the masses of snow and ice, centuries ago, began to slide down the slopes and finally formed great rivers of solid water or moving ice. The geologists tell us that at one time a great river of ice extended from the Arctic region as far south as central Pennsylvania and from New England to the Rocky Mountains. This vast river was very deep and very heavy and into its under surface were frozen sand, pebbles, larger stones and even great rocks. Thus it acted as a great rasp or file and did an immense amount of work grinding rocks and making soils. It ground down mountains and carried great beds of soil from one place to another. When this great ice river melted, it dropped its load of rocks and soils, and as a result we find in that region of the country great boulders and beds of sand and clay scattered over the land. _Work of the Air._--The air has helped in the work of wearing down the rocks and making soils. If a piece of iron be exposed to moist air a part of the air unites with part of the iron and forms iron rust. In the same way when moist air comes in contact with some rocks part of the air unites with part of the rock and forms rock rust which crumbles off or is washed away by water. Thus the air helps to break down the rocks. Moving air or wind picks up dust particles and carries them from one field to another. On sandy beaches the wind often blows the sand along like snow and piles it into drifts. The entire surface of sandy regions is sometimes changed in this way. Sands blown from deserts sometimes bury forests which with their foliage sift the fatal winding sheet from the dust-laden winds. _The Work of Plants._--Living plants sometimes send their roots into rock crevices; there they grow, expand, and split off rock fragments. Certain kinds of plants live on the surface of rocks. They feed on the rocks and when they die and decay they keep the surface of the rocks moist and also produce carbonic acid which dissolves the rocks slowly just as the vinegar dissolved the limestone in our experiment. Dead decaying roots, stems, and leaves of plants form largely the organic matter of the soil. When organic matter has undergone a certain amount of decay it is called humus, and these soils are called organic soils or humus soils. The black soils of the woods, swamps and prairies, contain large amounts of humus. _Work of Animals._--Earth worms and the larvæ of insects which burrow in the soil eat soil particles which pass through their bodies and are partially dissolved. These particles are generally cast out on the surface of the soil. Thus these little animals help to move soil, to dissolve soil, and to open up passages for the entrance of air and rain. SOIL TEXTURE We have seen that the soil particles vary in size and that for the best development of the plant the particles of the soil must be so arranged that the delicate rootlets can readily push their way about in search of food, or, in other words, that the soil must have a certain texture. By the texture of the soil we mean the size of its particles and their relation to each other. The following terms are used in describing soil textures: Coarse, fine, open, close, loose, hard, stiff, compact, soft, mellow, porous, leachy, retentive, cloddy, lumpy, light, heavy. Which of these terms will apply to the texture of sand, which to clay, which to humus, which to the garden soil, which to a soil that plant roots can easily penetrate? We find then that texture of the soil depends largely on the relative amounts of sand, silt, clay and humus that it contains. CHAPTER IV RELATION OF SOILS TO WATER IMPORTANCE OF WATER TO PLANTS We learned in a previous paragraph that plant roots take moisture from the soil. What becomes of this moisture? We will answer this question with an experiment. =Experiment.=--Take a pot or tumbler in which a young plant is growing, also a piece of pasteboard large enough to cover the top of the pot or tumbler; cut a slit from the edge to the centre of the board, then place it on top of the pot, letting the stem of the plant enter the slit. Now close the slit with wax or tallow, making it perfectly tight about the stem. If the plant is not too large invert a tumbler over it (Fig. 21), letting the edge of the tumbler rest on the pasteboard; if a tumbler is not large enough use a glass jar. Place in a sunny window. Moisture will be seen collecting on the inner surface of the glass. Where does this come from? It is absorbed from the soil by the roots of the plant and is sent with its load of dissolved plant food up through the stem to the leaves. There most of the moisture is passed from the leaves to the air and some of it is condensed on the side of the glass. By experiments at the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N.Y., it has been found that during the growth of a sixty bushel crop of corn the plants pump from the soil by means of their roots, and send into the air through their leaves over nine hundred tons of water. A twenty-five bushel crop of wheat uses over five hundred tons of water in the same way. This gives us some idea of the importance of water to the plant and the necessity of knowing something of the power of the soil to absorb and hold moisture for the use of the plant. Also the importance of knowing if we can in any way control or influence the water-holding power of the soil for the good of the plant. SOURCES OF SOIL WATER From what sources does the soil receive water? From the air above, in the form of rain, dew, hail and snow, falling on the surface, and from the lower soil. This water enters the soil more or less rapidly. ATTITUDE OF THE SOILS TOWARDS WATER Which soils have the greater power to take in the rain which falls on their surface? [Illustration: FIG. 21. To show what becomes of the water taken from the soil by roots. Moisture, sent up from the roots, has been given off by the leaves and has condensed on the glass.] [Illustration: FIG. 22.--PERCOLATION EXPERIMENT. To show the relative powers of soils to take in water falling on the surface. _A_, sand; _B_, clay; _C_, humus; _D_, garden soil.] =Experiment.=--Take four student-lamp chimneys. (In case the chimneys cannot be found get some slender bottles like salad oil bottles or wine bottles and cut the bottoms off with a hot rod. While the rod is heating make a shallow notch in the glass with the wet corner of a file in the direction you wish to make the cut. When the rod is hot lay the end of it lengthwise on the notch. Very soon a little crack will be seen to start from the notch. Lead this crack around the bottle with the hot rod and the bottom of the bottle will drop off.) (Fig. 23.) Make a rack to hold them. Tie a piece of cheese cloth or other thin cloth over the small ends of the chimneys. Then fill them nearly full respectively, of dry, sifted, coarse sand, clay, humus soil, and garden soil. Place them in the rack; place under them a pan or dish. Pour water in the upper ends of the tubes until it soaks through and drips from the lower end (Fig. 22). Ordinary sunburner lamp chimneys may be used for the experiment by tying the cloth over the tops; then invert them, fill them with soil and set in plates or pans. The sand will take the water in and let it run through quickly; the clay is very slow to take it in and let it run through; the humus soil takes the water in quite readily. Repeat the experiment with one of the soils, packing the soil tightly in one tube and leaving it loose in another. The water will be found to penetrate the loose soil more rapidly than the packed soil. We see then that the power of the soil to take in rainfall depends on its texture or the size and compactness of the particles. If the soil of our farm is largely clay, what happens to the rain that falls on it? The clay takes the water in so slowly that most of it runs off and is lost. Very likely it carries with it some of the surface soil which it has soaked and loosened, and thus leaves the farm washed and gullied. What can we do for our clay soils to help them to absorb the rain more rapidly? For immediate results we can plow them and keep them loose and open with the tillage tools. For more permanent results we may mix sand with them, but sand is not always to be obtained and is expensive to haul. The best method is to mix organic matter with them by plowing in stable manures, or woods soil, or decayed leaves, or by growing crops and turning them under. The organic matter not only loosens the soil but also adds plant food to it, and during its decay produces carbonic acid which helps to dissolve the mineral matter and make available the plant food that is in it. Clay soils can also be made loose and open by applying lime to them. =Experiment.=--Take two bottles or jars, put therein a few spoonsful of clay soil, fill with water, put a little lime in one of them, shake both and set them on the table. It will be noticed that the clay in the bottle containing lime settles in flakes or crumbs, and much faster than in the other bottle. In the same manner, lime applied to a field of clay has a tendency to collect the very fine particles of soil into flakes or crumbs and give it somewhat the open texture of a sandy soil. Lime is applied to soil for this purpose at the rate of twenty bushels per acre once in four or five years. Which soils have the greater power to absorb or pump moisture from below? =Experiment.=--Use the same or a similar set of tubes as in the experiment illustrated in Fig. 23. Fill the tubes with the same kinds of dry sifted soils. Then pour water into the pan or dish beneath the tubes until it rises a quarter of an inch above the lower end of the tubes (Fig. 24). Watch the water rise in the soils. The water will be found to rise rapidly in the sand about two or three inches and then stop or continue very slowly a short distance further. In the clay it starts very slowly, but after several hours is finally carried to the top of the soil. The organic matter takes it up less rapidly than the sand, faster than the clay, and finally carries it to the top. By this and further experiments it will be found that the power of soils to take moisture from below depends on their texture or the size and closeness of their particles. We found the sand pumped the water only a short distance and then stopped. What can we do for our sandy soils to give them greater power to take moisture from below? For immediate results we can compact them by rolling or packing. This brings the particles closer together, makes the spaces between them smaller, and therefore allows the water to climb higher. For more lasting results we can fill them with organic matter in the shape of stable manures or crops turned under. Clay may be used, but is expensive to haul. Which soils have greatest power to hold the water which enters them? =Experiment.=--Use the same or similar apparatus as for the last experiment. After placing the cloth caps over the ends of the tubes label and carefully weigh each one, keeping a record of each; then fill them with the dry soils and weigh again. Now place the tubes in the rack and pour water in the upper ends until the entire soil is wet; cover the tops and allow the surplus water to drain out; when the dripping stops, weigh the tubes again, and by subtraction find the amount of water held by the soil in each tube; compute the percentage. It will be found that the organic matter will hold a much larger percentage of water than the other soils; and the clay more than the sand. The tube of organic soil will actually hold a larger amount of water than the other tubes. (See also Fig. 25.) In the experiment on page 40 we noticed that the sand took in the water poured on its surface and let it run through very quickly. This is a fault of sandy soils. What can we do for our sandy soils to help them to hold better the moisture which falls on them and tends to leach through them? For immediate effect we can close the pores somewhat by compacting the soil with the roller. For more lasting effects, we can fill them with organic matter. Which soils will hold longest the water which they have absorbed? Or which soils will keep moist longest in dry weather? [Illustration: FIG. 23. To show how bottles may be used in place of lamp chimneys shown in Figs 22 and 24.] [Illustration: FIG. 24.--CAPILLARITY OF SOILS To show the relative powers of soils to take water from below.] [Illustration: FIG. 25.--WATER-ABSORBING AND WATER-HOLDING POWERS OF SOILS.] =Experiment.=--Fill a pan or bucket with moist sand, another with moist clay, and a third with moist organic matter; set them in the sun to dry and notice which dries last. The organic matter will be found to hold moisture much longer than the other soils. The power of the other soils to hold moisture through dry weather can be improved by mixing organic matter with them. We find then that the power of soils to absorb and hold moisture depends on the amount of sand, clay, or humus which they contain, and the compactness of the particles. We see also how useful organic matter is in improving sandy and clayey soils. THE EFFECT OF WORKING SOILS WHEN WET By this time the soils we left in the pans (see page 26), sand, clay, humus and garden soil, must be dry. If so, examine them. We find that the clay which was stirred when wet has dried into an almost bricklike mass, while that which was not stirred is not so hard, though it has a thick, hard crust. The sand is not much affected by stirring when wet. The organic matter which was stirred when wet has perhaps stiffened a little, but very easily crumbles; the unstirred part was not much affected by the wetting and drying. The garden soil after drying is not as stiff as the clay nor as loose as the sand and humus. This is because it is very likely a mixture of all three, the sand and the humus checking the baking. This teaches us that it is not a good plan to work soils when they are wet if they are stiff and sticky; and that our stiff clay soils can be kept from drying hard or baking by the use of organic matter. "And that's a witness" for organic matter. The relation of the soil to moisture is very important, for moisture is one of the greatest factors if not the greatest in the growth of the crop. The power to absorb or soak up moisture from any source is greatest in those soils whose particles are smaller and fit closer together. It is for this reason that strong loams and clay soils absorb and hold three times as much water as sandy soils do, while peaty or humus soils absorb a still larger proportion. The reason why crops burn up so quickly on sandy soils during dry seasons is because of their weak power to hold water. The clay and humus soils carry crops through dry weather better because of their power to hold moisture and to absorb or soak up moisture from below. It is for this reason also that clay and peaty soils more often need draining than sandy soils. When rain falls on a sandy soil it enters readily, but it is apt to pass rapidly down and be, to a great extent, lost in the subsoil, for the sand has not sufficient power to hold much of it. When rain falls on a clay soil it enters less readily because of the closeness of the particles, and during long rains or heavy showers some of the water may run off the surface. If the surface has been recently broken and softened with the plow or cultivator the rain enters more readily. What does enter is held and is not allowed to run through as in the case of the sand. Humus soil absorbs the rain as readily as the sand and holds it with a firmer grip than clay. This fact gives us a hint as to how we may improve the sand and clay. Organic matter mixed with these soils by applying manures or plowing under green crops will cause the sand to hold the rain better and the clay to absorb it more readily. CHAPTER V FORMS OF SOIL WATER Water which comes to the soil and is absorbed exists in the soil principally in two forms: Free water and capillary water. FREE WATER Free water is that form of water which fills our wells, is found in the bottoms of holes dug in the ground during wet seasons and is often found standing on the surface of the soil after heavy or long continued rains. It is sometimes called ground water or standing water and flows under the influence of gravity. Is free water good for the roots of farm plants? If we remember how the root takes its food and moisture, namely through the delicate root hairs; and also remember the experiment which showed us that roots need air, we can readily see that free water would give the root hairs enough moisture, but it would at the same time drown them by cutting off the air. Therefore free water is not directly useful to the roots of house plants or farm plants, excepting such as are naturally swamp plants, like rice, which grows part of the time with its roots covered with free water. [Illustration: FIG. 26.--CAPILLARY TUBES. To show how water rises in small tubes or is drawn into small spaces.] [Illustration: FIG. 27.--CAPILLARY PLATES. Water is drawn to the highest point where the glass plates are closest together.] [Illustration: FIG. 28. A cone of soil to show capillarity. Water poured about the base of this cone of soil has been drawn by capillary force half-way to the top.] [Illustration: FIG. 29. To show the relative amounts of film-moisture held by coarse and fine soils. The colored water in bottle _A_ represents the amount of water required to cover the half pound of pebbles in the tumbler _B_ with a film of moisture. The colored water in bottle _C_ shows the amount required to cover the soil grains in the half pound of sand in tumbler _D._] CAPILLARY WATER If you will take a number of glass tubes of different sizes, the largest not more than one-fourth of an inch in diameter, and hold them with one end of each in water or some colored liquid, you will notice that the water rises in the tubes (Fig. 26), and that it rises highest in the smallest tube. The force which causes the water to rise in these tubes is called the capillary force, from the old Latin word _capillum_ (a hair), because it is most marked in hair-like tubes, the smaller the tube the higher the water will rise. The water which rises in the tubes is called capillary water. Another method of illustrating capillary water is to tie or hold together two flat pieces of glass, keeping two of the edges close together and separating the opposite two about one-eighth of an inch with a sliver of wood. Then set them in a plate of water or colored liquid and notice how the water rises between the pieces of glass, rising higher the smaller the space (Fig. 27). It is the capillary force which causes water to rise in a piece of cloth or paper dipped in water. Take a plate and pour onto it a cone-shaped pile of dry sand or fine soil; then pour water around the base of the pile and note how the water is drawn up into the soil by capillary force (Fig. 28). Capillary water is the other important form of water in the soil. This is moisture which is drawn by capillary force or soaks into the spaces between the soil particles and covers each particle with a thin film of moisture. FILM WATER Take a marble or a pebble, dip it into water and notice the thin layer or film of water that clings to it. This is a form of capillary water and is sometimes called film water or film moisture. Take a handful of soil that is moist but not wet, notice that it does not wet the hand, and yet there is moisture all through it; each particle is covered with a very thin film of water. Now this film water is just the form of water that can supply the very slender root hairs without drowning them, that is, without keeping the air from them. And the plant grower should see to it that the roots of his plants are well supplied with film water and are not drowned by the presence of free water. Capillary water may sometimes completely fill the spaces between the soil particles; when this occurs the roots are drowned just as in the case of free water as we saw when cuttings were placed in the puddled clay (see Fig. 18). Free water is indirectly of use to the plant because it serves as a supply for capillary and film moisture. Now I think we can answer the question which was asked when we were studying the habit of growth of roots but was left unanswered at the time (see page 14). The question was this: Of what value is it to the farmer to know that roots enter the soil to a depth of three to six feet? We know that roots will not grow without air. We also know that if the soil is full of free water there is no air in it, and, therefore, roots of most plants will not grow in it. It is, therefore, of interest to the farmer to see that free water does not come within at least three or four feet of the surface of the soil so that the roots of his crops may have plenty of well ventilated soil in which to develop. If there is a tendency for free water to fill the soil a large part of the time, the farmer can get rid of it by draining the land. We get here a lesson for the grower of house plants also. It is that we must be careful that the soil in the pots or boxes in which our plants are growing is always supplied with film water and not wet and soggy with free water. Water should not be left standing long in the saucer under the pot of a growing plant. It is best to water the pot from the top and let the surplus water drain into the saucer and then empty it out. Which soils have the greatest capacity for film water? =Experiment.=--Place in a tumbler or bottle one-half pound of pebbles about the size of a pea or bean; pour a few drops of water on them and shake them; continue adding water and shaking them till every pebble is covered with a film of water; let any surplus water drain off. Then weigh again; the difference in the two weights will be approximately the weight of the film water that the pebbles can carry. Repeat this with sand and compare the two amounts of water. A striking illustration can be made by taking two slender bottles and placing in them amounts of colored water equal to the amounts of film water held by the pebbles and sand respectively. In the accompanying illustration (Fig. 29), _A_ represents the amount of water that was found necessary to cover the pebbles in tumbler _B_ with a film of moisture. _C_ is the amount that was necessary to cover with a film the particles of sand in _D_. The finer soil has the greater area for film moisture. It has been estimated that the particles of a cubic foot of clay loam have a possible aggregate film surface of three-fourths of an acre. CHAPTER VI LOSS OF SOIL WATER LOSS OF SOIL WATER AND MEANS OF CHECKING THE LOSS We noticed in previous paragraphs that soil might at times have too much water in it for proper ventilation and so check the growth of the roots of the plant. Now is it possible that soil water may be lost or wasted and if so can we check the loss? In the experiment to find out how well the soils would take in the rainfall (page 40) we noticed that the clay soil took in the water very slowly and that on a field of clay soil part of the rain water would be likely to run off over the surface and be lost. Free water may be lost then, by surface wash. We noticed methods of checking this loss, namely, pulverizing the soil with the tillage tools and putting organic matter into it to make it absorb the rain more readily. We noticed that water poured on the sand ran through it very quickly and was apt to be lost by leaching or percolation. This we found could be checked by rolling the soil and by putting organic matter into it to close the pores. We learned that roots take water from the soil for the use of the plant and send it up to the leaves, which in turn send it out into the air, or transpire it, as this process is called. We learned also that the amount transpired is very great. Now water that is pumped up and transpired by the crops we are growing we consider properly used. But when weeds grow with the crop and pump and transpire water we consider this water as lost or wasted. Water may be lost then by being pumped up and transpired by weeds. And this is the way weeds do their greatest injury to crops during dry weather. The remedy is easily pointed out. Kill the weeds or do not let them get a start. There is another way, which we are not apt to notice, by which water may be lost from the soil. When the soil in the pans in a previous experiment (page 26) had been wet and set aside a few days it became very dry. How did the water get out of this soil? That at the surface of the soil evaporated or was changed into vapor and passed into the air. Then water from below the surface was pumped up by capillary force to take its place just as the water was pumped up in the tubes of soil. This in turn was evaporated and the process repeated till all of the water in the soil had passed into the air. Now this process is going on in the field whenever it is not raining or the ground is not frozen very hard. Water then may be lost by evaporation. How can we check this loss? Suppose we try the experiment of covering the soil with some material that cannot pump water readily. =Experiment.=--Take four glass fruit jars, two-quart size, with straight sides. If you cannot get them with straight sides cut off the tops with a hot iron just below the shoulder; tin pails will do if the glass jars cannot be had. Fill these with moist soil from the field or garden, packing it till it is as hard as the unplowed or unspaded soil. Leave one of them in this condition; from two of them remove an inch or two of soil and replace it in the case of one with clean, dry, coarse sand, and in the case of the other with chaff or straw cut into half-inch lengths. Stir the soil in the fourth one to a depth of one inch, leaving it light and crumbly. Now weigh the jars and set them aside. Weigh each day for several days. The four jars illustrated in Fig. 30 were prepared in this way and allowed to stand seven days. In that time they lost the following amounts of water: Amounts of water lost from jars of prepared soil in seven days. No. 1 packed soil--lost 5.5 oz. equal to about 75 tons per acre. No. 2 covered with straw--lost 2 oz. equal to about 27 tons per acre. No. 3 covered with dry sand--lost 0 oz. equal to about tons per acre. No. 4 covered with crumbled soil--lost 2.5 oz., equal to about 34 tons per acre. Why did not 2, 3 and 4 lose as much water as No. 1? The soil in jar No. 1 was packed and water was pumped to the surface by capillary force and was evaporated as fast as it came to the surface. In No. 2 the water could rise rapidly until it reached the straw, then it was stopped almost entirely. But the straw being coarse, the air circulated in it more or less freely and there was a slow loss by evaporation. In jar No. 3 the water could rise only to the sand, which was so coarse that the water could not climb on it to the surface, and the air circulated in the sand so slowly that there was not sufficient evaporation to affect scales weighing to one-quarter ounce. No. 4 lost less than No. 1 because, as in the case of the sand, the water could not climb rapidly to the surface on the coarse crumbs of soil. The loss that did take place from No. 4 was what the air took from the loosely stirred soil on the surface with a very little from the lower soil. Simply stirring the surface of the sod in No. 4 reduced the loss of water to less than half the loss from the hard soil in No. 1. This experiment gives us the clew to the method of checking loss of water from the soil by evaporation. It is to keep the water from climbing up to the surface, or check the power of the soil to pump the water to the surface by making it loose on top. This loose soil is called a soil mulch. Everything that we do to the soil that loosens and crumbles the surface tends to check the loss of water by evaporation from the soil below. [Illustration: FIG. 30.--TO SHOW THE EFFECT OF A SOIL MULCH 1. Packed soil, lost in 7 days 5.5 ozs. water, equal to 75 tons per acre. 2. Packed soil, covered with straw, lost in 7 days 2 ozs. water, equal to 27 tons per acre. 3. Packed soil, covered with sand, lost in 7 days 0 ozs. water, equal to tons per acre. 4. Packed soil, covered with soil mulch, lost in 7 days 2.5 ozs. water, equal to 34 tons per acre.] CHAPTER VII SOIL TEMPERATURE We learned that roots need heat for their growth and development. Now what is the relation of the different kinds of soil toward heat or what are their relative powers to absorb and hold heat? =Experiment.=--Some days before this experiment, spread on a dry floor about a half bushel each of sand, clay and decayed leaf mould or black woods soil. Stir them occasionally till they are thoroughly dry. When they are dry place them separately in three boxes or large flower pots and keep dry. In three similar boxes or pots place wet sand, wet clay, and wet humus. Place a thermometer in each of the soils, placing the bulb between one and two inches below the surface (Fig. 31). Then place the soils out of doors where the sun can shine on them and leave them several days. If a rain should come up protect the dry soils. Observe and make a record of the temperatures of each soil several times a day. Chart the average of several days observations. Fig. 32 shows the averages of several days observations on a certain set of soils. It will be noticed that the temperature of the soils increased until the early part of the afternoon and after that time they lost heat. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--SOIL TEMPERATURE EXPERIMENT. Thermometer in pot of soil.] HOW SOILS ARE WARMED =Experiment.=--Hold your hand in bright sunlight or near a warm stove or radiator. Your hand is warmed by heat radiated from the sun or warm stove through the air to your body. In the same manner the rays of the sun heat the surface of the soil. =Experiment.=--Take the stove poker or any small iron rod and hold one end of it in the fire or hold one end of a piece of wire in a candle or lamp flame. The end of the rod or wire will quickly become very hot and heat will gradually be carried its entire length until it becomes too hot to hold. This carrying of the heat from particle to particle through the length of the rod is called heating by conduction. Now when the warm rays of the sun reach the soil, or a warm wind blows over it, the surface particles are warmed and then pass the heat on to the next ones below, and these in turn pass it to others and so on till the soil becomes heated to a considerable depth by conduction. A clay soil will absorb heat by conduction faster than a sandy soil because the particles of the clay lie so close together that the heat passes more readily from one to another than in the case of the coarser sand. If the soil is open and porous, warm air and warm rains can enter readily and carry heat to the lower soil. You have noticed how a pile of stable manure steams in cold weather. You doubtless know that manure from the horse stable is often used to furnish heat for hotbeds and for sweet potato beds. Now the heat which warms the manure and sends the steam out of it, and warms the hotbed and sweet potato bed, is produced by the decaying or rotting of the manure. More or less heat is produced by the decay of all kinds of organic matter. So if the soil is well supplied with organic matter, the decay of this material will add somewhat to the warmth of the soil. HOW SOILS LOSE HEAT Wet one of your fingers and hold your hand up in the air. The wet finger will feel colder than the others and will gradually become dry. This is because some of the heat of your finger is being used to dry up the water or change it into a vapor, or in other words to evaporate it. In the same manner a wet soil loses heat by the evaporation of water from its surface. =Experiment.=--Heat an iron rod, take it from the fire and hold it near your face or hand. You will feel the heat without touching the rod. The heat is radiated from the rod through the air to your body and the rod gradually cools. In the same way the soil may lose its heat by radiating it into the air. A clay soil will lose more heat by radiation than a sandy soil because the clay is more compact. CONDITIONS WHICH INFLUENCE SOIL TEMPERATURE It will be noticed that the dry soils are warmer than the wet ones. Why is this? Scientists tell us that it takes a great deal more heat to warm water than it does to warm other substances. Therefore when soil is wet it takes much more heat to warm it than if it were dry. It will be seen that of the dry soils the humus is the warmest. Why? =Experiment.=--Take two thermometers, wrap the bulb of one with a piece of black or dark colored cloth and the bulb of the other with a piece of white cloth, then place them where the sun will shine on the cloth covered bulbs. The mercury in both thermometers will be seen to rise, but in the thermometer with the dark cloth about the bulb it will rise faster and higher than in the other. This shows that the dark cloth absorbs heat faster than the white cloth. In the same manner a dark soil will absorb heat faster than a light colored soil; therefore it will be warmer if dry. Why was the dry clay warmer than the dry sand? Because its darker color helped it to absorb heat more rapidly than the sand, and, as the particles were smaller and more compact, heat was carried into it more rapidly by conduction. Why were the wet humus and clay cooler than the wet sand? As they were darker in color and the clay was more compact than the sand, they must have absorbed more heat, but they also held more water, and, therefore, lost more heat by evaporation. [Illustration: FIG. 32. Charts showing average temperature of a set of dry and wet soils during a period of five days. _H_, humus; _C_, clay; _S_, sand.] [Illustration: FIG. 33. To show the value of organic matter. 1 contains clay subsoil; 2, clay subsoil and fertilizer; 3, clay subsoil and organic matter. All planted at the same time.] Of the dry soils, then, the humus averaged warmest, because, on account of its dark color, it absorbed heat more readily than the others. The dry clay was warmer than the sand on account of its color and compact texture. Of the wet soils the sand was the warmest, because, on account of its holding less moisture, less heat was required to raise its temperature and there was less cooling by evaporation, while the other soils, although they absorbed more heat than the sand, lost more on account of greater evaporation, due to their holding more moisture. Why are sandy soils called warm soils and clay soils said to be cold? How may we check losses of heat from the soil? If we make a mulch on the surface of the soil evaporation will be checked and therefore loss of heat by evaporation will be checked also. The mulch will also check the conduction of heat from the lower soil to the surface and therefore check loss of heat by radiation from the surface. VALUE OF ORGANIC MATTER Figure 33 illustrates a simple way to show the value of organic matter in the soil. The boxes are about twelve inches square and ten inches deep. They were filled with a clay subsoil taken from the second foot below the surface of the field. To the second box was added sufficient commercial fertilizer to supply the plants with all necessary plant food. To the third box was added some peat or decayed leaves, in amount about ten per cent. of the clay subsoil. The corn was then planted and the boxes were all given the same care. The better growth of the corn in the third box was due to the fact that the organic matter not only furnished food for the corn but during its decay prepared mineral plant food that was locked up in the clay, and also brought about better conditions of air and moisture by improving the texture of the soil. The plants in the second box had sufficient plant food, but did not make better growth because poor texture prevented proper conditions of air and moisture. "And that's another witness" for organic matter. Decaying organic matter or humus is really the life of the soil and it is greatly needed in most of the farm soils of the eastern part of the country. It closes the pores of sandy soils and opens the clay, thus helping the sand to soak up and hold more moisture and lessening excessive ventilation, and at the same time helping the roots to take a firmer hold. It helps the clay to absorb rain, helps it to pump water faster, helps it to hold water longer in dry weather, increases ventilation, favors root penetration and increases heat absorption. We can increase the amount of organic matter in the soil by plowing in stable manure, leaves and other organic refuse of the farm, or we can plow under crops of clover, grass, grain or other crops grown for that purpose. CHAPTER VIII PLANT FOOD IN THE SOIL We learned in previous paragraphs that the roots of plants take food from the soil, and that a condition necessary for the root to do its work for the plant was the presence of available plant food in sufficient quantities. What is plant food? For answer let us go to the plant and ask it what it is made of. =Experiment.=--Take some newly ripened cotton or cotton wadding, a tree branch, a cornstalk, and some straw or grass. Pull the cotton apart, then twist some of it and pull apart; in turn break the branch, the cornstalk and the straw. The cotton does not pull apart readily nor do the others break easily; this is because they all contain long, tough fibres. These fibres are called woody fibre or cellulose. The cotton fibre is nearly pure cellulose. =Experiment.=--Get together some slices of white potato, sweet potato, parsnip, broken kernels of corn, wheat and oats, a piece of laundry starch and some tincture of iodine diluted to about the color of weak tea. Rub a few drops of the iodine on the cut surfaces of the potatoes, parsnip, and the broken surfaces of the grains. Notice that it turns them purple. Now drop a drop of the iodine on the laundry starch. It turns that purple also. This experiment tells us that plants contain starch. =Experiment.=--Chew a piece of sorghum cane, sugar cane, cornstalk, beet root, turnip root, apple or cabbage. They all taste sweet and must therefore contain sugar. Examine a number of peach and cherry trees. You will find on the trunk and branches more or less of a sticky substance called gum. =Experiment.=--Crush on paper seeds of cotton, castor-oil bean, peanuts, Brazil nuts, hickory nuts, butternuts, etc. They make grease spots; they contain fat and oil. =Experiment.=--Chew whole grains of wheat and find a gummy mucilaginous substance called wheat gum, or wet a pint of wheat flour to a stiff dough, let it stand about an hour, and then wash the starch out of it by kneading it under a stream of running water or in a pan of water, changing the water frequently. The result will be a tough, yellowish gray, elastic mass called gluten. This is the same as the wheat gum and is called an albuminoid because it contains nitrogen and is like albumen, a substance like the white of an egg. If we crush or grate some potatoes or cabbage leaves to a pulp and separate the juice, then heat the clear juice, a substance will separate in a flaky form and settle to the bottom of the liquid. This is vegetable albumen. [Illustration: FIG. 34. Soy-bean roots. Showing nodules of tubercles, the homes of nitrogen-fixing bacteria.] [Illustration: FIG. 35. Garden-pea roots, showing tubercles or nodules, the homes of nitrogen-fixing bacteria.] =Experiment.=--Crush the leaves or stems of several growing plants and notice that the crushed and exposed parts are moist. In a potato or an apple we find a great deal of moisture. Plants then are partly made of water. In fact growing plants are from 65 to 95 per cent. water. =Experiment.=--Expose a plant or part of a plant to heat; the water is driven off and there remains a dry portion. Heat the dry part to a high degree and it burns; part passes into the air as smoke and part remains behind as ashes. We have found then the following substances in plants: Woody fibre or cellulose, starch, sugar, gum, fats and oils, albuminoids, water, ashes. Aside from these are found certain coloring matters, certain acids and other matters which give taste, flavor, and poisonous qualities to fruits and vegetables. More or less of all these substances are found in all plants. Now these are all compound substances. That is, they can all be broken down into simpler substances, and with the exception of the water and the ashes, the plants do not take them directly from the soil. The chemists tell us that these substances are composed of certain chemical elements, some of which the plant obtains from the air, some from the soil and some from water. The following table gives the substances found in plants, the elements of which they are composed, and the sources from which the plants obtain them: ----------------------------------------------------------+ Substances found | Elements of which | Sources from | in plants. | they are made. | which plants | | | obtain them. | -------------------+---------------------+----------------+ Cellulose or | | | woody fibre | Carbon | Air | Starch |---------------------+----------------+ Sugar | | | Gum | Oxygen | Water | Fat and Oil | Hydrogen | | -------------------+---------------------+----------------+ | Carbon | Air | +---------------------+----------------+ Albuminoids | Oxygen | Water | | Hydrogen | | +---------------------+----------------+ | _Nitrogen_ | | | Sulphur | | | Phosphorus | | -------------------+---------------------| Soil + | _Phosphorus_ | | | _Potassium_ | | Ashes | _Calcium_ | | | Magnesium | | | Iron | | -------------------+---------------------+----------------+ Water | Oxygen | Soil | | Hydrogen | | -----------------------------------------+----------------+ Here is a brief description of these chemical elements. Oxygen, a colorless gas, forms one-fifth of the air. Hydrogen, a colorless gas, forms a part of water. Carbon, a dark solid, forms nearly one-half of all organic matter; charcoal is one of its forms. The lead in your pencil is another example. Nitrogen, a colorless gas, forms four-fifths of the air. Found in all albuminoids. Sulphur, a yellow solid. Phosphorus, a yellowish white solid. Potassium, a silver white solid. Calcium, a yellowish solid. Found in limestone. Magnesium, a silver white solid. Iron, a silver gray solid. Of these elements the nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and iron must not only exist in the soil but must also be there in such form that the plant can use them. The plant does not use them in their simple elementary form but in various compounds. These compounds must be soluble in water or in weak acids. Of these seven elements of plant food the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and calcium are of particular importance to the farmer, because they do not always exist in the soil in sufficient available quantities to produce profitable crops. Professor Roberts, of Cornell University, tells us that an average acre of soil eight inches deep contains three thousand pounds of nitrogen. The nitrogen exists largely in the humus of the soil and it is only as the humus decays that the nitrogen is made available. Here is another reason for keeping the soil well supplied with organic matter. The decay of this organic matter is hastened by working the soil; therefore good tillage helps to supply the plant with nitrogen. If the nitrogen becomes available when there is no crop on the soil it will be washed out by rains and so lost. Therefore the soil, especially if it is sandy, should be covered with a crop the year through. Many lands lose large amounts of plant food by being left bare through the fall and winter, especially in those parts of the country where the land does not freeze. The phosphorus, potassium and calcium also exist in most soils in considerable quantities, but often are not available; thorough tillage and the addition of organic matter will help to make them available, and new supplies may be added in the form of fertilizers. Calcium is found in nearly all soils in sufficient quantities for most crops, but sometimes there is not enough of it for such crops as clover, cowpea, alfalfa, etc. It is also used to improve soil texture. The entire subject of commercial fertilizers is based almost entirely on the fact of the lack of these four elements in the soil in sufficient available quantities to grow profitable crops. The plant gets its phosphorus from phosphoric acid, its potassium from potash, and its calcium from lime. There is a class of plants which have the power of taking free nitrogen from the air. These are the leguminous plants; such as clover, beans, cowpeas, alfalfa, soy bean, etc. They do it through the acid of microscopic organisms called bacteria which live in nodules or tubercles on the roots of these plants (Figs. 34-35). Collect roots of these plants and find the nodules on them. The bacteria take nitrogen from the air which penetrates the soil and give it over to the plants. Here is another reason for good soil ventilation. This last fact brings us to another very important property of soils. Soils have existing in them many very small plants called bacteria. They are so very small that it would take several hundred of them to reach across the edge of this sheet of paper. We cannot see them with the naked eye but only with the most powerful microscopes. Some of these minute plants are great friends to the farmer, for it is largely through their work that food is made available for the higher plants. Some of them break down the organic matter and help prepare the nitrogen for the larger plants. Others help the leguminous plants to feed on the nitrogen of the air. To do their work they need warmth, moisture, air, and some mineral food; these conditions we bring about by improving the texture of the soil by means of thorough tillage and the use of organic matter. CHAPTER IX SEEDS CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR SEEDS TO SPROUT In the spring comes the great seed-planting time on the farm, in the home garden and in the school garden. Many times the questions will be asked: Why didn't those seeds come up? How shall I plant seeds so as to help them sprout easily and grow into strong plants? To answer these questions, perform a few experiments with seeds, and thus find out what conditions are necessary for seeds to sprout, or germinate. For these experiments you will need a few teacups, glass tumblers or tin cans, such as tomato cans or baking-powder cans; a few plates, either of tin or crockery; some wide-mouth bottles that will hold about half a pint, such as pickle, olive, or yeast bottles or druggists' wide-mouth prescription bottles; and a few pieces of cloth. Also seeds of corn, garden peas and beans. =Experiment.=--Put seeds of corn, garden peas, and beans (about a handful of each) to soak in bottles or tumblers of water. Next day, two hours earlier in the day, put a duplicate lot of seeds to soak. When this second lot of seeds has soaked two hours, you will have two lots of soaked seeds of each kind, one of which has soaked twenty-four hours and the other two hours. Now take these seeds from the water and dry the surplus water from them by gently patting or rubbing a few at a time in the folds of a piece of cloth, taking care not to break the skin or outer coating of the seed. Place them in dry bottles, putting in enough to cover the bottoms of the bottles about three seeds deep; cork the bottles. If you cannot find corks, tie paper over the mouths of the bottles. Label the bottles "Seeds soaked 24 hours," "Seeds soaked 2 hours," and let them stand in a warm place several days. If there is danger of freezing at night, the bottles of seeds may be kept in the kitchen or living room where it is warm, until they sprout. Observe the seeds from day to day. The seeds that soaked twenty-four hours will sprout readily (Fig. 36), while most, if not all, of those that soaked only two hours will not sprout. Why is this? It is because the two-hour soaked seeds do not receive sufficient moisture to carry on the process of sprouting. Our experiment teaches us that seeds will not sprout until they receive enough moisture to soak them through and through. This also teaches that when we plant seeds we must so prepare the soil for them and so plant them that they will be able to get sufficient moisture to sprout. =Experiment.=--Soak some beans, peas or corn, twenty-four hours; carefully dry them with a cloth. In one half-pint bottle place enough of them to cover the bottom of the bottle two or three seeds deep; mark this bottle A. Fill another bottle two-thirds full of them and mark the bottle B (Fig. 37). Cork the bottles and let them stand for several days. Also let some seeds remain soaking in the water. The few seeds in bottle A will sprout, while, the larger number in bottle B will not sprout, or will produce only very short sprouts. Why do not the seeds sprout easily in the bottle which is more than half full? To answer this question try the following experiment: =Experiment.=--Carefully loosen the cork in bottle B (the bottle containing poorly sprouted seeds), light a match, remove the cork from the bottle and introduce the lighted match. The match will stop burning as soon as it is held in the bottle, because there is no fresh air in the bottle to keep the match burning. Test bottle A in the same way. What has become of the fresh air that was in the bottles when the seeds were put in them? The seeds have taken something from it and have left bad air in its place; they need fresh air to help them sprout, but they have not sprouted so well in bottle B because there was not fresh air enough for so many seeds. The seeds in the water do not sprout because there is not enough air in the water. Now try another experiment. [Illustration: FIG. 36. To show that seeds need water for germination. The beans in bottle _A_ were soaked 2 hours, those in bottle _B_ were soaked 24 hours. They were then removed from the water and put into dry bottles.] [Illustration: FIG. 37. To show that seeds need air for germination. The beans in both bottles were soaked 24 hours, and then were put into dry bottles Bottle _A_ contained sufficient air to start the few seeds. Bottle _B_ had not enough. The water in the tumbler _C_ did not contain sufficient air for germination. See experiment, page 72.] [Illustration: FIG. 38. To show that seeds need air for germination. Corn planted in puddled clay in tumbler _A_ could not get sufficent air for sprouting. The moist sand in tumbler _B_ admitted sufficient air for germination.] =Experiment.=--Fill some tumblers or teacups or tin cans with wet sand and others with clay that has been wet and then thoroughly stirred till it is about the consistency of cake batter or fresh mixed mortar. Take a tumbler of the wet sand and one of the wet clay and plant two or three kernels of corn in each, pressing the kernels down one-half or three-quarters of an inch below the surface; cover the seeds and carefully smooth the surface. In other tumblers plant peas, beans, and other seeds. Cover the tumblers with saucers, or pieces of glass or board to keep the soil from drying. Watch them for several days. If the clay tends to dry and crack, moisten it, fill the cracks and smooth the surface. The seeds in the sand will sprout but those in the clay will not (see Fig. 38). Why is this? Water fills the small spaces between the particles of clay and shuts out the fresh air which is necessary for the sprouting of the seeds. This teaches us that when we plant seeds we must so prepare the soil, and so plant the seeds that they will get enough fresh air to enable them to sprout, or, in other words, the soil must be well ventilated. =Experiment.=--Plant seeds of corn and beans in each of two tumblers; set one out of doors in a cold place and keep the other in a warm place in the house. The seeds kept in the house will sprout quickly but those outside in the cold will not sprout at all. This shows us that seeds will not sprout without heat. If the weather is warm place one of the tumblers in a refrigerator. Why don't we plant corn in December? Why not plant melons in January? Why not plant cotton in November? The seeds of farm crops may be divided into two classes according to the temperatures at which they will germinate or sprout readily and can be safely planted. Class A. Those seeds that will germinate or sprout at an average temperature of forty-five degrees in the shade, or at about the time the peach and plum trees blossom: Barley Beet Parsley Oats Carrot Parsnip Rye Cabbage Onion Wheat Cauliflower Pea Red Clover Endive Radish Crimson Clover Kale Turnip Grasses Lettuce Spinach These can be planted with safety in the spring as soon as the ground can be prepared, and some of them, if planted in the fall, live through the winter. Class B. Those seeds that will germinate or sprout at an average temperature of sixty degrees in the shade, or when the apple trees blossom: Alfalfa Soy Bean Squash Cow Pea Pole Bean Cucumber Corn String Bean Pumpkin Cotton Melon Tomato Egg Plant Okra Pepper We are now ready to answer the question: What conditions are necessary for seeds to sprout or germinate? These conditions are: The presence of enough moisture to keep the seed thoroughly soaked. The presence of fresh air. The presence of more or less heat. This teaches us that when we plant seeds in the window box or in the garden or on the farm we must so prepare the soil and so plant the seeds that they will be able to obtain sufficient moisture, heat, and air for sprouting. The moisture must be film water, for if it is free water or capillary water filling the soil pores, there can be no ventilation and, therefore, no sprouting. SEED TESTING In a previous experiment (page 73) the seeds planted in the wet clay did not sprout (see Fig. 38). In answer to the question, "Why is this?" some will say the seeds were bad. It often happens on the farm that the seeds do not sprout well and the farmer accuses the seedsman of selling him poor seed, but does not think that he himself may be the cause of the failure by not putting the seeds under the proper conditions for sprouting. How can we tell whether or not our seeds will sprout if properly planted? We can test them by putting a number of seeds from each package under proper conditions of moisture, heat and air, as follows: For large seeds take two plates (see Fig. 39) and a piece of cloth as wide as the bottom of the plate and twice as long. Count out fifty or one hundred seeds from a package, wet the cloth and wring it out. Place one end of the cloth on the plate, place the seeds on the cloth and fold the other end of the cloth over them. On a slip of paper mark the number of seeds and date, and place on the edge of the plate. Now cover the whole with another plate, or with a pane of glass to keep from drying. Set the plate of seeds in a warm room and examine occasionally for several days. If the cloth tends to dry, moisten it from time to time. As the seeds sprout take them out and keep a record of them. Or leave them in the plate and after four or five days count those that have sprouted. This will give the proportion of good seeds in the packages. For small seeds fold the cloth first and place the seeds on top of it. Another good tester for small seeds is made by running about an inch of freshly mixed plaster of Paris into a small dish or pan and moulding flat cavities in the surface by setting bottles into it. The dish or pan and bottles should be slightly greased to prevent the plaster sticking to them. When the cast has hardened it should be turned out of the mould and set in a large dish or pan. One hundred small seeds are then counted out and put into one of the cavities, others are put into the other cavities. Water is then poured into the pan till it rises half way up the side of the plaster cast or porous saucer. The whole thing is then covered to keep in the moisture (Fig. 40). Another method is to get boxes of finely pulverized sand or soil and carefully plant in it fifty or one hundred seeds of each kind to be tested. Then by counting those that come up, the proportion of good seeds can easily be found. In every case the testers should be kept at a temperature of about seventy degrees or about that of the living room. HOW THE SEEDS COME UP Plant a few seeds of corn, beans and garden peas in boxes or tumblers each day for several days in succession. Then put seeds of corn, beans and garden peas to soak. After these have soaked a few hours, examine them to find out how the seed is constructed. Note first the general shape of the seeds and the scar (Fig. 41-4) on one side as in the bean or pea and at one end or on one edge in the corn. This scar, also called hilum, is where the seed was attached to the seed vessel. Cut into the bean and pea, they will be found to be protected by a tough skin or coat. Within this the contents of the seed are divided into two bodies of equal size lying close to each other and called seed leaves or cotyledons (Fig. 41-5). Between them near one end or one side will be found a pair of very small white leaves and a little round pointed projection. The part bearing the tiny leaves was formerly, and is sometimes now, called the plumule, but is generally called the epicotyl, because it grows above or upon the cotyledons. The round pointed projection was formerly called the radicle, but is now spoken of as the hypocotyl, because it grows below or under the cotyledons. Examine a dry kernel of corn and notice that on one side there is a slight oval-shaped depression (Fig. 41-1). Now take a soaked kernel and cut it in two pieces making the cut lengthwise from the top of the kernel through the centre of the oval depression and examine the cut surface. A more or less triangular-shaped body will be found on the concave side of the kernel (see Figs. 41-2 and 41-3). This is the one cotyledon of the corn. Besides this will be found quite a mass of starchy material packed in the coverings of the kernel and in close contact with one side of the cotyledon. This is sometimes called the endosperm. Within the cotyledon will be found a little growing shoot pointed toward the top of the kernel. This is the epicotyl, and another growing tip pointed toward the lower end of the kernel; this is the hypocotyl or the part which penetrates the soil and forms roots. Now examine the seeds that were planted in succession. Some will be just starting a growing point down into the soil. Some of them have probably come up and others are at intermediate stages. How did the bean get up? After sending down a root the hypocotyl began to develop into a strong stem which crooked itself until it reached the surface of the soil and then pulled the cotyledons or seed-leaves after it (Fig. 42). These turn green and after a time shrink and fall off. The pea cotyledons were left down in the soil, the epicotyl alone pushing up to the surface. The corn pushed a slender growing point to the surface leaving the cotyledon and endosperm behind in the soil but still attached to the little plant (Fig. 43). USE OF COTYLEDONS AND ENDOSPERM =Experiment.=--Plant some beans in a pot or box of soil and as soon as they come up cut the seed-leaves from some of them and watch their growth for several days. It will soon be seen that the plants on which the seed-leaves were left increase in size much more rapidly than those from which the seed-leaves were removed (see Figs. 43 and 44). Sprout some corn in the seed tester. When the seedlings are two or three inches long, get a wide-mouthed bottle or a tumbler of water and a piece of pasteboard large enough to cover the top. Cut a slit about an eighth of an inch wide from the margin to the centre of the pasteboard disk. Take one of the seedlings, insert it in the slit, with the kernel under the pasteboard so that it just touches the water. Take another seedling of the same size, carefully remove the kernel from it without injuring the root, and place this seedling in the slit beside the first one (Fig. 45). Watch the growth of these two seedlings for a few days. Repeat this with sprouted peas. In each case it will be found that the removal of the seed-leaves or the kernel checks the growth of the seedling. Therefore, it must be that the seed-leaves which appear above ground, as in the case of the bean, or the kernel of the corn which remains below the surface of the soil, furnish the little plant with food until its roots have grown strong enough to take sufficient food from the soil. [Illustration: FIG. 39. A seed-tester, consisting of two plates and a moist cloth.] [Illustration: FIG. 40.--A SEED-TESTER. A plaster cast with cavities in the surface for small seeds.] [Illustration: FIG. 41. 1. Corn-kernel showing depression at _z_. 2. Section of same after soaking. 3. Corn-kernel after germination has begun. The seed-coat _a_ has been partly removed. 4. Bean showing scar or hilum at _h_. 5. The same, split open. 6. Bean with one cotyledon removed, after sprouting had begun. _a_, Seed-coat; _b_, cotyledon; _c_, epicotyl; _d_, hypocotyl; _e_, endosperm. (Drawings by M.E. Feltham.)] CHAPTER X SEED PLANTING HOW DEEP SHOULD SEEDS BE PLANTED? =Experiment.=--Plant several kernels of corn in moist soil in a glass tumbler or jar. Put one kernel at the bottom and against the side of the glass, place the next one a half inch or an inch higher and an inch and a half to one side of the first seed and against the glass. Continue this till the top of the glass is reached (Fig. 2). Leave the last seed not more than one-fourth inch below the top of the soil. The soil should be moist at the start and the seeds should all be against the glass so they can be seen. This can best be done by planting as you fill the glass with soil. Plant peas and beans in the same way. Do not water the soil after planting. Set aside in a warm place and wait for the seeds to come up. Another method of performing this experiment is to make a box having one side glass (Fig. 46). The length and the depth of the box will depend upon the size of the glass you use. Fill the box nearly full of moist soil and plant seeds of corn and beans and peas at depths of one-quarter inch, one inch, two inches, three inches, and four inches. These seeds can best be put in as the box is being filled. Hold each individual seed against the glass with a stick so that when planted they may be seen through the glass. Protect the seeds and roots from light by using a sheet of cardboard, tin or wrapping paper or a piece of board, and set in a warm place. Many of the seeds planted only one-quarter inch deep will not sprout because the soil about them will probably dry out before they take from it enough moisture to sprout. The one and two-inch deep seeds will probably come up all right. Of the three and four-inch deep seeds, the corn and peas will probably make their way to the surface because they send up only a slender shoot, which can easily force its way through the soil. The deep-planted beans will make a strong effort but will not succeed in forcing their way to the surface because they are not able to lift the large seed-leaves through so much soil, and will finally give up the struggle. If any of the deeper beans do get up, the seed-leaves will probably be broken off and the little plant will starve and be dwarfed. This experiment teaches us that we should plant seeds deep enough to get sufficient moisture for sprouting and yet not so deep that the young seedlings will not be able to force their way to the surface. Seeds which raise their cotyledons above the soil should not be planted as deep as those which do not. Large, strong seeds like corn, peas, etc., which do not lift their cotyledons above the surface, can be planted with safety at a depth of from one to four or five inches. [Illustration: FIG. 42. To show how the bean plant gets up. Notice the curved hypocotyls pulling the seed-leaves or cotyledon out of the soil.] [Illustration: FIG. 43. To show how the corn-plant gets out of the soil. A slender growing point pushes straight up through the soil, leaving the kernel behind.] [Illustration: FIG. 44. To show the use of the cotyledons. These are the plants shown in tumbler 2, Fig 42, forty-eight hours after removing the cotyledons from plant _B._ Plant _B_, although first up, has been handicapped by the loss of its cotyledons.] Seeds of carrot, celery, parsley, parsnip and egg plant are weak and rather slow in germinating. It is customary to plant them rather thickly in order that by the united strength of many seeds they may more readily come to the surface. This point should be observed also in planting seeds in heavy ground that is liable to pack and crust over before the seeds germinate. Seed should always be sown in freshly stirred soil and may be planted by hand or with a machine. For the home garden and the school garden, and when only small quantities of any one variety are planted, a machine is hardly desirable and hand planting is preferable. The rows are marked out with the garden marker, or the end of a hoe or rake handle (Fig. 47), using a line or the edge of a board as a guide. The seeds are then carefully and evenly dropped in the mark or furrow. The covering is done with the hand or a rake or hoe, and the soil is pressed over the seeds by patting it with the covering tool or walking on the row and pressing it with the feet. This pressing of the soil over the seeds is to bring the particles of soil close to each other and to the seed so that film water can climb upon them and moisten the seed sufficiently for sprouting. A convenient way of distributing small seeds like those of turnip and cabbage, is to take a small pasteboard box or tin spice or baking-powder box, and punch a small hole in the bottom near one end or side. Through this the seeds can be sifted quite evenly. For the larger operations of the farm and market garden, hand and horse-power drills and broadcasters are generally used, though some farmers still plant large fields by hand. The grasses and clovers are generally broadcasted by hand or machine, and are then lightly harrowed and are generally rolled. The small grains (wheat, oats, etc.) are broadcasted by many farmers, but drilling is considered better. With the grain drill the seed is deposited at a uniform depth and at regular intervals. In broadcasting, some of the seeds are planted too deep, and some too shallow, and others are left on the surface of the soil. From experiment it has been found that there is a loss of about one-fifth of the seed when broadcasted as compared with drilling. As in the case of grass seed, the grains are generally rolled after sowing. Corn is planted by hand, or by hand- and horse-corn-planters, which drop a certain number of seeds at any required distance in the row. There are a number of seed drills made for planting vegetable seeds which are good machines. The main points to be considered in seed drills or seed planting machines are: Simplicity and durability of structure. Ease of draft. Uniformity in quantity of seed planted, and in the distances apart and depth to which they are planted. The distances apart at which seeds are planted vary according to the character of the plant. Bushy, spreading plants and tall plants require more room than low and slender-growing plants. Visit the neighboring hardware stores and farms and examine as many seed-growing tools as possible to see how they are constructed and how properly used. Practice planting with these tools, if possible. Illustrations of grain drills and other seed-planting machines will be found in seed catalogues, hardware catalogues, and in the advertising columns of agricultural papers. SEED CLASSIFICATION In order to become familiar with the farm and garden seeds, obtain samples of as many of them as possible. Put them in small bottles--homoeopathic vials for instance--or stick a few of each kind on squares of cardboard. Arrange them in groups according to resemblances or relationships, comparing not only the seeds but the plants on which they grew. If you cannot recall the plants, and there is no collection available, study the illustrations in seed catalogues which can be obtained from seedsmen. The following groups contain most of the farm and garden seeds, excepting flower seeds: GRASS FAMILY: MUSTARD FAMILY: NIGHTSHADE FAMILY: Corn, Mustard, Potato, Wheat, Cabbage, Tomato, Oats, Cauliflower, Egg Plant, Rye, Collards, Pepper. Barley, Brussels Sprouts, Sorghum, Kale, GOOSEFOOT FAMILY: Orchard Grass, Kohl Rabi, Beet, Red Top Grass, Radish, Chard, Timothy, Ruta Baga, Spinach, Kentucky Blue Grass. Turnips, Mangle Wurzel. Watercress. GOURD FAMILY: PEA OR LEGUME FAMILY: Canteloupe, THISTLE FAMILY: Garden Pea, Citron, Artichoke, Canada Field Pea, Cucumber, Cardoon, Cow Pea, Gourd, Chicory, Soy Bean, Muskmelon, Dandelion, Bush Bean, Pumpkin, Endive, Lima Bean, Squash, Lettuce, Velvet Bean, Watermelon, Salsify, Vetch, Cymling. Sunflower, Clover, Tansy. Alfalfa. PARSLEY FAMILY: Caraway, LILY FAMILY: MALLOW FAMILY: Carrot, Asparagus, Okra, Celery, Garlic, Cotton. Coriander, Leek, Cumin, Onion. Fennel, Parsley, Parsnip. [Illustration: FIG. 45. To show the use of the kernel to the young corn-plant. The kernel was carefully removed from the plant on the right when both plants were of the same size. The result is a dwarfing of the plant.] [Illustration: FIG. 46. To show how deeply seeds should be planted. Seeds 1 and 5 did not sprout because they were not deep enough to get sufficient moisture. The corn-plants from sprouting seeds 2, 3 and 4 all pushed their slender growing points to the surface. Of the beans, No. 6 succeeded in pulling the cotyledons to the surface, and has made a good plant. Nos. 7 and 8, although they made a hard struggle, were not able to raise the cotyledons through so great a depth of soil, and finally gave up the struggle.] TRANSPLANTING The seeds of some crops--cabbage, tomato, lettuce, for example--are planted in window boxes, hot-beds, cold frames or a corner of the field or garden. When the seedlings have developed three or four leaves or have become large enough to crowd one another, they are thinned out or are transplanted into other boxes, frames or plots of ground, or are transplanted into the field or garden. The time and method of transplanting depend largely on The condition of the plant. The condition of the soil. The condition of the atmosphere. For best results in field planting the plant should be well grown, strong and stocky, with well developed roots and three or four strong leaves. The soil should be thoroughly prepared, moist and freshly stirred. A moist day just before a light shower is the best time. These conditions being present, the plants are carefully lifted from the seed bed with as little disturbance of the roots as possible and carried to the field or garden. Some plants, like cabbage, will stand considerable rough treatment, while others, like the eggplant, require greater care. In the field or garden a hole is made for each plant with the hand, a stick or dibber or any convenient tool, the roots of the plant are carefully placed in it and the soil is pressed about them. If the soil is moist and freshly stirred, new roots will generally start in a very short time. Plants that have been grown in pots, small boxes or tin cans, as tomatoes and eggplants are sometimes grown, may be quickly transplanted in the field in the following manner: Open the furrow with a small plow, knock the plants out of the pots or cans and place them along the land side of the furrow at the proper distances, then turn the soil back against them with the plow. When there is a large number of plants to be set, as in planting cabbage, sweet potatoes, etc., by the acre, it is not always convenient to wait for a cloudy day or to defer operations till the sun is low in the afternoon. In such cases the roots of the plants should be dipped in water or in thin mud just before setting them, or a little water may be poured into each hole as the plant is put in. The soil should always be well firmed about the roots. The firming of the soil about the roots of a newly set plant is as important as firming it over planted seeds. The soil should be packed so tightly that the individual leaves will be torn off when an attempt is made to pull the plant up by them. In dry or warm weather it is a good plan to trim the tops of plants when setting them. This can be done readily with some plants, such as cabbage and lettuce, by taking a bundle of them in one hand and with the other twisting off about half of their tops. [Illustration: FIG. 47. Operations of seed-planting: 1, making the drill; 2, dropping the seeds; 3, covering the seeds; 4, packing the soil over the seeds.] [Illustration: FIG. 48. A collection of planting machines. The large central machine is a grass and grain planter. The one on the left, a potato planter. The one on the right, a corn, bean, and pea planter. The three smaller machines in front are hand seed planters.] The proper time to transplant fruit and ornamental trees and shrubs is during the fall, winter and early spring, which is their dormant or resting season, as this gives the injured roots a chance to recover and start new rootlets before the foliage of the plant makes demands on them for food and moisture. In taking up large plants many roots are broken or crushed. These broken and injured roots should be trimmed off with a smooth cut. The tree or shrub is then placed in the hole prepared for it and the soil carefully filled in and packed about the roots. After the plant is set, the top should be trimmed back to correspond with the loss of root. If the plant is not trimmed, more shoots and leaves will start into growth than the damaged roots can properly furnish with food and water, and the plant will make a weak growth or die. There are on the market a number of hand transplanting machines which, from their lack of perfection, have not come into general use. Many of them require more time to operate than is consumed in hand planting. A number of large machines for transplanting are in successful and satisfactory use on large truck and tobacco farms. These machines are drawn by horses and carry water for watering each plant as it is set. Practice transplanting in window boxes or in the open soil and see how many of your plants will survive the operation. CHAPTER XI SPADING AND PLOWING We have learned the important conditions necessary for the sprouting of seeds and for the growth and development of roots. We have also learned something about the soil, its properties, and its relation to, or its behavior toward these important conditions. We are therefore prepared to discuss intelligently methods of treating the soil to bring about, or maintain, these conditions. SPADING THE SOIL The typical tool for preparing the soil for root growth is a spade or spading fork (Fig. 49). With this tool properly used we can prepare the soil for a crop better than with any other. In spading, the spade or fork should be pushed into the soil with the foot the full length of the blade and nearly straight down. The handle is then pulled back and the spadeful of earth is pried loose, lifted slightly, thrown a little forward, and at the same time turned. The lumps are then broken by striking them with the blade or teeth of the tool. All weeds and trash should be covered during the operation. A common fault of beginners is to put the spade in the soil on a slant and only about half the length of the blade, and then flop the soil over in the hole from which it came, often covering the edge of the unspaded soil. The good spader works from side to side across his piece of ground, keeping a narrow trench or furrow between the spaded and unspaded soil, into which weeds and trash and manure may be drawn and thoroughly covered, and also to prevent covering the unspaded soil. If this work has been well done with the ordinary spade or fork and finished with a rake, the result will be a bed of soil twelve to fifteen inches deep, fine and mellow and well prepared for root penetration, for good ventilation, for the absorbing and holding of moisture and warmth. This method should always be employed for small gardens and flower beds. PLOWING For preparing large areas of soil the plow is the tool most generally used. WHY DO WE SPADE AND PLOW? To break and pulverize the soil and make it soft and mellow, so the roots of plants may enter it in search of food, and get a firm hold for the support of the plant which is above ground. To make the soil open and porous, so that it can more readily absorb rain as it falls on the surface. To check loss of water by evaporation. To admit air to the roots of plants. Also to allow air to act chemically on the mineral and organic matter of the soil and make them available to the crop. To raise the temperature of soils in the spring, or of damp soils at any time. To mix manures and organic matter with the soil. The more thoroughly manure is distributed through the soil the more easily plants will get it and the greater will be its effect on the soil. To destroy the insect enemies of the plant by turning them up to the frost and the birds. To kill weeds. Weeds injure crops: They waste valuable moisture by pumping it up from the soil and sending it out into the air through their leaves. In this way they do their greatest injury to crops. They crowd and shade the crop. They take plant food which the plant should have. Spading and plowing bring about conditions necessary for the sprouting or germination of seeds. Spading and plowing also tend to bring about conditions necessary for the very important work of certain of the soil bacteria. PARTS OF A PLOW It will be found that a good farm plow has the following parts (Fig. 50): _A standard_ or stock, the central part of the plow to which many of the other parts are attached. [Illustration: FIG. 49.--SPADING-FORK AND SPADE.] [Illustration: FIG. 50.--A WOOD BEAM-PLOW _a_, stock; _b_, beam; _c_, handles; _d_, clevis, _e_, shackle, _f_, share; _g_, mould board; _h_, landside; _k_, jointer or skimmer, _l_, truck or wheel, _p_, point or nose, _s_, shin.] _A beam_, to which the power is attached by which the plow is drawn. Some plows have wooden beams and others have iron beams. _Handles_ by which the plowman guides and steadies the plow and also turns it at the corners of the plowed ground in going about the field. _A clevis_, which is attached to the end of the beam and is used to regulate the depth of plowing. To the clevis is attached a _draft ring_ or _shackle_, to which the horse or team is fastened. To make the plow run deep the draft ring or shackle is placed in the upper holes or notches of the clevis; to make it run shallow the ring is placed in the lower holes. On some plows there are only notches in the clevis for holding the ring, they answer the same purpose as holes. The clevis is also used on some plows to regulate the width of the furrow. By moving the draft ring or shackle towards the plowed land the plow is made to cut a wider furrow, moving it away from the plowed land causes the plow to cut narrower. Some plows have a double clevis so that the draft ring may be raised or lowered, or moved to right or left. With some plows the width of the furrow is adjusted by moving the beam at its attachment to the handles. _A share_, called by some the point, which shears the bottom of the furrow slice from the land. The share should be sharp, especially for plowing in grass land and land full of tough roots. If the share, particularly the point, becomes worn so that it bevels from beneath upwards it will be hard to keep the plow in the soil, for it will tend to slide up to the surface. If this happens the share must be renewed or sharpened. Plows are being made now with share and point separate, and both of these reversible (Fig. 51), so that if either becomes worn on the under side it can be taken out and turned over and put back and it is all right, they thus become self-sharpening. _A mouldboard._ This turns and breaks the furrow slice. The degree to which the mouldboard pulverizes depends on the steepness of its slant upward and the abruptness of its curve sidewise. The steeper it is and the more abrupt the curve, the greater is its pulverizing power. A steep, abrupt mouldboard is adapted to light soils and to the heavier soils when they are comparatively dry. This kind of a plow is apt to puddle a clay soil if it is quite moist. For breaking new land a plow with a long, gradually sloping share and mouldboard is used. _A landslide_, which keeps the plow in place. _A coulter._ Some plows have a straight knife-like coulter (Fig. 52) which is fastened to the beam just in front of the mouldboard and serves to cut the furrow slice from the land. In some plows this is replaced by an upward projection of the share; this is wide at the back and sharp in front and is called the shin of the plow from its resemblance to the shin bone. The coulter is sometimes made in the form of a sharp, revolving disk (Fig. 53), called a rolling coulter. This form is very useful in sod ground and in turning under vines and tall weeds. It also lessens the draft of the plow. _A jointer_ or skimmer which skims stubble and grass from the surface of the soil and throws them into the bottom of the furrow where they are completely covered. The jointer helps also to pulverize the soil. _A truck_ or wheel, attached under the end of the beam. This truck makes the plow run steadier. This is sometimes used to make the plow run shallower by setting it low down. This is not right, for it then acts as a brake and makes the plow draw harder. The depth of the furrow should be adjusted at the clevis. A plow not only has parts but it has character also. CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD PLOW A good plow should be strong in build and light in weight. The draft should be as light as possible. The plow should run steadily. A good plow should not only turn the soil but should pulverize it as well. When plowing, the team should be hitched to the plow with as short traces as possible, and the plow should be so adjusted that it will cut furrows of the required width and thickness with the least possible draft on the team and the least exertion on the part of the plowman. THE FURROW SLICE In plowing, the furrow slice may be cut thin and wide and be turned over flat. This method is adapted to breaking new land and heavy sod land. It may be cut thick and narrow and be turned up on edge. Or it may be cut of such a width and depth that the plow will turn it at an angle of about forty-five degrees. By this last method the greatest amount of soil can be turned at least expense of labor; the furrow slice can be more thoroughly broken; the greatest surface is exposed to the action of the air, and plant food is more evenly distributed through the soil. HOW DEEP SHALL WE PLOW? We learned in a previous chapter that the roots of farm plants develop largely in that part of the soil which is worked by the plow; therefore, to have as much tilled soil as possible for root growth, we should generally plow as deep as possible without turning too much of the subsoil to the surface. Lands that have been plowed deep should be deepened gradually by plowing up a half-inch to an inch of subsoil each year until the plow reaches a depth of at least nine or ten inches. There is an opinion among many farmers that sandy soils should not be plowed deep. But as these soils are apt to be leachy it seems best to fill them with organic matter to as great a depth as possible to increase their water-holding power, and this can best be done by plowing farm manures in deep. [Illustration: FIG. 51.--A SLIP-NOSE SHARE. _N_, A SLIP-NOSE.] [Illustration: FIG. 52.--_C_, STRAIGHT KNIFE COULTER.] [Illustration: FIG. 53. An iron beam-plow, with rolling coulter and double clevis.] [Illustration: FIG. 54.--A ROLLING COULTER HARROW.] [Illustration: FIG. 55.--SPRING-TOOTHED HARROWS.] In many parts of the South the farmers use very small plows and small animals to draw them. The result is that the soil is not prepared to a sufficient depth to allow of the large root development necessary for large crops. These farmers need larger tools and heavier animals if they expect to make much improvement in the yield of their crops. These small plows and this shallow plowing have done much to aid the washing and gulleying of the hill farms by rain. The shallow layer of loose soil takes in the rain readily, but as the harder soil beneath does not take the water as readily, the shallow plowed soil soon fills, then becomes mud, and the whole mass goes down the slope. The land would wash less if it had not been plowed at all, and least of all if it were plowed deep, for then there would be a deep reservoir of loose soil which would be able to hold a large amount of water until the harder lower soil could take care of it. BREAKING OUT THE MIDDLES Some farmers have a way when getting the land ready for a crop, of plowing the rows first and then "breaking out the middles" or spaces between after the crop is planted. This is a poor practice, as it interferes with thorough preparation of the soil. The ground can be more thoroughly plowed and broken up before the crop is planted than afterwards. This practice of leaving the middles interferes with proper harrowing and after-cultivation. THROWING THE LAND UP IN RIDGES Many farmers throw the land up into ridges with the plow and then plant on the ridge. When land is thrown into ridges a greater amount of surface is exposed to the air and a greater loss of moisture by evaporation takes place, therefore ridge culture is more wasteful of soil water than level culture. For this reason dry soils everywhere and most soils in dry climates should, wherever practicable, be left flat. On stiff, heavy soils which are slow to dry out, and on low bottom lands it may be desirable to ridge the land to get the soil dried out and warmed quicker in the spring. Late fall and early planter truck crops are often planted on the southern slopes of low ridges thrown up with the plow for warmth and protection from cold winds. TIME TO PLOW The time of plowing will depend somewhat on the nature of the soil, climate and the crop. More plowing is done in the spring just before planting spring and summer crops than at any other time, excepting in localities that plant large areas of winter grain and truck. This spring plowing should be done early, for the spring plowing tends to dry the loosened soil somewhat and allows it to become warm at an earlier date, and at the same time the loosened soil tends to hold water in the lower soil for future use by the crop and allows the soil to take in spring rains more readily. If a cover crop or green manure crop is to be turned under in the spring it should be done early so as to prevent the crop to be turned under from pumping too much water out of the soil and thus interfering with the growth of the crop for which the land is being prepared. There are some particular advantages to be gained by fall plowing in heavy soils: Immediately after harvest the land is usually dry and easy to work. The soil plowed at this time and left rough is acted upon physically by frost which pulverizes it, and chemically by rain and air which renders plant food available. Insects are turned up and exposed to frost and birds. A great number of weeds are destroyed and the land is more easily fitted for crops in the spring. Fall plowing should be done as early as possible, especially in the dryer regions, to catch all water possible. It is not advisable to plow sandy soils in the fall lest plant food be washed out of them. When possible a cover crop should be put on fall plowed land where there is likely to be loss of plant food by leaching. BARE FALLOW The term "fallowing" is sometimes applied to the operation of plowing, and sometimes the land is left bare without a crop sometime after plowing; this is called "bare fallowing" the land. Bare fallowing should not be practiced on all soils. It is adapted: To dry climates and dry seasons where it is desirable to catch and save every possible drop of rainfall, and where plant food will not be washed out of the exposed soils by rains. To heavy clay lands. To lands that are foul with weeds and insects. To sour soils which are sweetened by exposure to air and rain. Light sandy soils should not be subjected to bare fallow unless they are very foul with weeds. They should always be covered with a crop to prevent loss of plant food by leaching. CHAPTER XII HARROWING AND ROLLING HARROWING After spading or plowing the next operation in the preparation of the soil is generally raking, harrowing or dragging. The objects of these operations are: To break lumps and clods left by the plow and spade and to further pulverize the soil. Harrowing and raking aid in controlling soil ventilation, and put the soil in better condition to absorb moisture. They check the loss of moisture by making a mulch of fine loose earth on the surface. The harrow and rake destroy the weeds. The harrow brings about conditions favorable to the even distribution of seeds. It is also the tool generally used to cover seeds sown broadcast. Harrowing is generally done just before planting, and with some crops just after, to cover seeds or to smooth the ground. Harrowing is also done in the first stages of growth of some crops to kill weeds and make a soil mulch. The harrow should always follow the plow within a few hours unless it is desired to leave the land in a bare fall or winter fallow. At other times of the year the lumps of earth are apt to dry out and become hard and difficult to break. If there is but one work team on the farm it is a good plan during the plowing season to stop the plow in time to harrow the day's plowing before the day's work ends. HARROWS There are several types of harrows in use. They may be classified according to the style of their teeth or cutting parts; they are as follows: Rolling cutter harrows. Spring-toothed harrows. Spike-toothed harrows. Coulter-toothed harrows. Chain harrows. Brush harrows. Plank or drag harrows. These types vary in the depth to which they cut, and the degree to which they pulverize the soil. _Rolling cutter harrows._ Harrows of this type (see Fig. 54) consist of one or more revolving shafts on which are arranged a number of concave disks. These disks are either entire, notched, or made of several pieces fastened together. Examples of these are the disk, cutaway and spading harrows. These harrows cut and move the soil deeper than the other types. They are especially adapted to work on heavy clay soils. The value of this type of harrow as moisture preservers depends on the manner in which they are used. If the disks are so set that they cover but a portion of the surface with a mulch of fine earth they leave a ridge exposed to the action of the wind and sun and the rate of evaporation is greatly increased. The disks should be set at such an angle that the whole surface shall be stirred or covered. Soils which need the disk harrow should generally be gone over again with some shallower working tool to smooth the surface. An objection to the rolling cutters is that unless great care is taken they will leave the land in ridges and valleys. The two gangs of disks throw the earth in opposite directions. They are generally set to throw it from the centre and the result is a shallow double furrow the width of the machine. By lapping each time the furrow is partially filled, but to get the land smooth a smoothing harrow should be used after the rolling cutter. _Spring-toothed harrows_ (Fig. 55). Spring-toothed harrows with their curved spring teeth enter the soil readily, draw moderately easy and pass over obstructions without much difficulty. They are very useful in new land that is full of roots and stumps and also stony land. They pulverize the soil to an average depth. They leave the soil in ridges. The ridges can be leveled by a smoother in the shape of a piece of plank attached to the rear of the harrow. On newly plowed grass land they tend to tear up the sod and leave it on the surface. They also tend to drag out coarse manures when plowed in. The original and more common form of the spring-toothed harrow is a floating harrow when at work. That is, it rests on the points of the teeth and is dragged or floated over the ground. A newer form of spring-toothed harrow, sometimes called the fallow cultivator, is mounted on high wheels and its action is largely controlled by them. This form of harrow is claimed to do much better work than the floating harrow and may in a large measure displace the rolling cutter. The weight of this harrow is entirely taken from the soil except in the wheel tracks, and the entire action is that of pulverizing and lightening the soil. _Spike-toothed harrows_ (Fig. 56). The teeth of these harrows are round, square or diamond-shaped spikes fastened into a wood or iron frame. The teeth are set in a vertical position or are inclined to the rear. These harrows are shallow in their action; they run easily but tend to compact the soil more than the other types and are therefore better adapted to loose soils and to finishing off after the work of the deep cutting harrows. They are also used for covering seeds. [Illustration: FIG. 56.--SPIKE-TOOTHED HARROWS.] [Illustration: FIG. 57.--A COULTER-TOOTHED HARROW.] [Illustration: FIG. 58.--A PLANK HARROW.] _Coulter-toothed harrows._ The coulter-toothed harrows (Fig. 57) have teeth resembling the coulter of a plow twisted or bent into various shapes. The Acme is a good example of this class of harrow. It cuts, turns and pulverizes the surface soil somewhat after the manner of the plow. It prepares a fine mulch and leaves an excellent seed bed. It is an excellent harrow to finish off with after using a rolling cutter. _Chain harrows._ The chain harrow consists of a web of chains linked together. They have a wonderful power for breaking clods and are useful for collecting weeds. They shake the dirt from the weeds and roll them into heaps. Chain harrows tend to compact the soil. _Brush harrows._ The brush harrow is a primitive form made by fastening brush to a long pole. Brush harrows are quite useful for brushing in seed and for pulverizing manure broadcasted on grass lands. _Plank harrows._ The plank harrow (see Fig. 58) is made of several planks fastened together so that each plank overlaps the next one to it, like the clapboards of a house. This harrow is as good as a roller in fining and smoothing the surface soil. It is an excellent tool to use alternately with a spike or coulter-toothed harrow on lumpy soil. This tool rasps or grinds many of the lumps or clods which slip by the harrow teeth and presses others into the ground so that the harrow following can get a grip on them. It is a harrow that can be made on any farm. This planker is an excellent tool to smooth the surface, for broadcasting small seeds and for planting truck crops. ROLLING The objects of rolling are: To compress the surface soil so that the harrow will do its work more efficiently, also to break clods or lumps that may have resisted the action of the harrow. To smooth the surface of the soil for an even distribution of small seeds, and to firm the soil around such seeds after they are planted so that they will keep moist and sprout readily. To give compactness to soils that are light and loose and thus enable them to hold moisture and plant food better. To press into the ground the roots of plants partly dislodged by the frost. To remove the conditions favorable to the development of many kinds of insects. To sink surface stones so that they will not interfere with harvesting the crop. Light porous soils may be rolled at any time, but clay soils can be rolled to advantage only when they are stiff and cloddy. Spring-sown grain is often rolled as soon as sown. This is all right in ordinary spring weather, but if showers are frequent and the soil is quite moist the rolling should be omitted till after the grain is up. The same practice will apply to autumn-sown grain also. If the soil is dry the rolling helps it to pump water up to the seeds. But if it is moist and showers are frequent the combined action of the roller and the rain is to make so thick a crust that many of the seeds will not be able to force their way through it or will be smothered by poor ventilation. After the grain is up the rolling may be done to advantage, as it then makes a firm soil about the roots of the plants, a condition of benefit to grain crops. The most simple form of roller is a solid or hollow cylinder of wood fastened into a frame by which it is drawn. Some rollers have spikes or blunt attachments fastened to their surfaces for breaking clods. A roller that is quite popular consists of a cylinder of pressed steel. CHAPTER XIII LEAVES FACTS ABOUT LEAVES We found in an earlier lesson that all of our farm plants have roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruit and seeds. We studied the root first as being the most important part of the plant to the farmer. The seed was the next part studied, for that was considered the next most important, because the seed is the main reliance for new plants. The part next in importance is the leaf and that we will now study. If you will go into the field and observe the leaves on a number of plants, you will find that the following facts are true: They are all green. They are flat and thin. Many of them are very broad. Some of the leaves on a single branch are larger than others on the same branch, and some have longer stems than others. Most of them have a rather dark glossy upper surface and a lighter rougher under surface. [Illustration: FIG. 59. To show transpiration. Plant _A_ was set in the sunlight, plant _B_ was left in the darker part of the room. _A_ has transpired much more than _B_, showing that sunlight is necessary for this work.] [Illustration: FIG. 60.--AMOUNT OF TRANSPIRATION This plant transpired within 48 hours an amount of water equal to the colored liquid in the bottle standing on the jar, more than 6 ounces.] The leaves on the lower branches of the trees are spread out in a more or less flat layer and have their glossy surfaces all turned up, while those on branches in the tops of trees or shrubs are arranged all around the branch, the glossy surface being turned up. What are the reasons for these facts? A study of the work of the leaves and the conditions necessary for them to perform their work will help us to answer this question. THE USES OF LEAVES TO PLANTS =Experiment.=--(See Fig. 59). Take a pot or tumbler in which a young plant is growing, also a piece of pasteboard large enough to cover the top of the pot; cut a slit from the edge to the centre of the pasteboard, then place it on the top of the pot, letting the plant enter the slit. Now close the slit with wax or tallow, making it perfectly tight about the stem. If the plant is not too large, invert a tumbler over it, letting the edge of the tumbler rest on the pasteboard; if a tumbler is not large enough use a glass jar. If a potted plant is not convenient a slip or a seedling bean or pea placed in a tumbler of water will serve the purpose. Prepare several and place some in a sunny window and leave others in the room where it is darker, and observe them from time to time. In the case of those plants that were set in the sunny window moisture will be seen collecting on the inner surface of the tumbler. Where does this come from? It is absorbed from the soil by the roots and is sent with its load of dissolved plant food up through the stems to the leaves. There most of the water is passed from the leaves to the air and is condensed on the sides of the glass. A work of leaves then is to throw off or to transpire moisture and thus make room for a new supply of food-laden moisture. This water is thrown off through little pores or mouths or stomata which are very small and very numerous on the under side of the leaf. It will be noticed that the plant not placed in the sunlight transpires very little moisture, showing that sunlight helps the leaves in this work of transpiration. How much water does a plant transpire or throw off from its leaves? =Experiment.=--(See Fig. 60). Fill a common quart fruit jar or can with soil and plant in it a kernel of corn, a bean, a cotton seed or seed of some other plant. After the plant has grown to be twelve or fifteen inches high, cut a piece of pasteboard a little larger than the top of the jar, cut a hole in the centre as large as the stem of the plant and make a slit from edge to centre. Soak the pasteboard in melted wax or paraffine candle. Cool it and then place it over the jar, slipping it around the plant stem. Now solder the pasteboard to the jar with melted candle making the joints tight all the way around. Then close up the slit and the hole about the stem. The jar is now completely sealed and there is no way for water to escape except through the plant. The plant should be well watered before the jar is closed. Now weigh the jar and set in the sunlight. Weigh again the next day. The difference in the two weights will represent the amount of water transpired by the plant. The weighings may be repeated until moisture gives out. If it is desired to continue this experiment some time, a small hole should be cut in the pasteboard before it is fastened to the jar. This hole is for adding water to the jar from time to time. The hole should be kept closed with a cork. The amount of water added should always be weighed and account taken of it in the following weighings. While this plant is growing it will be well to wrap the jar with paper to protect the roots from the light. It has been found that the amount of water necessary to grow a plant to maturity is equal to from 300 to 500 times the weight of the plant when dry. This gives us an idea of the very great importance of water to plants. =Experiment.=--Take a few leaves from a plant of cotton, bean, clover or other plant that has been growing in the sunlight; boil them for a few minutes to soften the tissues, then place them in alcohol for a day or until the green coloring matter is extracted by the alcohol. Wash the leaves by taking them from the alcohol and putting them in a tumbler of water. Then put them in saucers in a weak solution of iodine. The leaf will be seen to gradually darken; this will continue until it becomes dark purple or almost black (Fig. 61). We have already learned that iodine turns starch this color, so we conclude that leaves must contain starch. (Five or ten cents worth of tincture of iodine from a drug store diluted to about the color of weak tea will be sufficient for these leaf experiments.) =Experiment.=--If a potted plant was used for the last experiment, set it away in a dark closet after taking the leaves for the experiment. A day or two after, take leaves from it before removing it from the closet. Boil these leaves and treat them with alcohol as in the previous experiment. Then wash them and test them with iodine as before. No starch will be found in the leaves (Fig. 62). The starch that was in them when placed in the closet has disappeared. Now paste some thick paper labels on some of the leaves of a plant exposed to the sunlight. After a few hours remove the leaves that have the labels on them, boil, treat with alcohol and test with the iodine. In this case starch will be found in all parts of the leaf except the part over which the label was pasted (Fig. 63). If the sunlight is intense and the label thin, some starch will appear under it. According to these last experiments, leaves contain starch at certain times, and this starch seems to appear when the leaf is in the sunlight and to disappear when the light is cut off. The fact is that the leaves manufacture starch for the plant and sunlight is necessary for this work. The starch is then changed to sugar which is carried by the sap to other parts of the plant where it is again changed to starch to be built into the plant structure or stored for future use. =Experiment.=--Take leaves from a plant of silver-leaf geranium growing in the sunlight. If this plant cannot be had, the leaves from some other variegated white and green leaved plant will do. Boil these leaves, treat with alcohol, wash and test with iodine (Fig. 64). Starch will be found in the leaf wherever there was green coloring matter in it, while the parts that were white will show no starch. The green coloring matter seems to have something to do with the starch making, in fact starch is manufactured only where it is present. This coloring matter is called chlorophyl or leaf green. We are told by the chemists that this starch is made from carbon and water. There exists in the air a gas called carbonic acid gas; this gas is composed of carbon and oxygen. It is breathed out of the lungs of animals and is produced by the burning and decay of organic matter. The under side of the leaf contains hundreds of little pores or mouths called stomata. This gas mixed with air enters these mouths. The green part of the leaf aided by the sun takes hold of the gas and separates the carbon from the oxygen. The oxygen is allowed to go free, but the carbon is made to unite with water and form starch. =Experiment.=--The escape of this oxygen gas may be seen by taking some water weed from either fresh or salt water and placing it in a glass jar of the kind of water from which it came, then set the jar in the sunlight. After a time bubbles of gas will be seen collecting and rising to the surface. If a mass of weed like the green scum of fresh water ponds or green sea lettuce be used, the bubbles of gas will become entangled in the mass and will cause it to rise to the surface of the water. At the same time prepare another jar of the weed and place it somewhere out of the sun; very few bubbles will be seen to rise and the weed will settle to the bottom of the jar (Fig. 65). All of the food of the plant, whether taken from the air or from the soil is digested in the leaves, and sunlight and air are necessary for this work. Another function of leaves then is to digest food for the plant. Important functions of leaves then are: To transpire moisture sent up by the roots. To manufacture starch by combining some of the water sent up by the roots with carbon taken from the air. To digest the starch and food sent up by the roots. To do these things well leaves must be connected with a strong, healthy root system and must have plenty of light and air. We are now ready to give reasons for the facts about leaves mentioned in the first part of the chapter (see page 109). Leaves are green because the green coloring matter is necessary for the leaf to do its work. Leaves are flat and thin and broad in order that they may present a large surface to the air and sunlight. [Illustration: FIG. 61. To show that growing leaves contain starch. 1. Represents a green cotton leaf as picked from the plant. 2. Is the same leaf after taking out the green coloring matter; the leaf is white. 3. The same leaf after treatment with weak iodine turned to a dark purple, showing the presence of starch. (Drawings by M.E. Feltham.)] [Illustration: FIG. 62. To show that starch disappears from the leaf when the plant is placed in the dark. The plant from which was taken the leaf represented in Fig 61, was immediately placed in a dark closet for 24 hours. Then leaf 4 was taken from it; 5 represents this leaf after the chlorophyl was taken from it: it is white; 6 is the same after treatment with iodine. The leaf remains white, showing no starch. (Drawings by M.E. Feltham.)] [Illustration: FIG. 63. To show that sunlight is necessary for starch-making by leaves. Leaf 7 had a paper label stuck to its upper surface a couple of hours while the plant was exposed to sunlight; 8 is the same leaf after the chlorophyl was taken out, and 9 represents it after treatment with iodine. The leaf turned purple in all parts except the part that was shaded by the label. Starch was removed from the portion under the label, but was not renewed because the label kept out the necessary sunlight. (Drawings by M.E. Feltham.)] [Illustration: FIG. 64. To show that chlorophyl is necessary for starch formation in the leaf. 10 is a variegated leaf from a silver-leaved geranium; the center is an irregular patch of green, with an irregular border of white. 11, after taking out the green. 12, after iodine treatment, the leaf turns purple only where it was originally green, showing that no starch forms in the white border. (Drawings by M.E. Feltham.)] Some leaves on the branch are larger than others because in the struggle for light and air they have had a better chance than the others or they have had more of the food which has come up from the root. Some of the leaves have developed longer stems than others in their effort to reach out after light and air. Most leaves have the little mouths through which air is taken in and water and oxygen given out on the rough side, and that side is turned down toward the earth probably so that rain and dust will not choke the little pores. The leaves of the lower branches tend to spread out in a broad, flat plane because in the effort to get light no leaf will grow directly under and in the shadow of another, while on those branches which grow straight up from the top of the tree the leaves can get light from all sides and so arrange themselves around the stem. Is it of any value to the plant grower to know these facts about leaves? It is, for knowing these things he can better understand the necessity of caring for the leaves of his growing plants to see that their work is not interfered with. HOW THE WORK OF SOME LEAVES IS INTERFERED WITH Many people who grow house plants have trouble in keeping them well clothed with leaves, for instance, the geranium and the rubber plant. The leaves are constantly turning yellow and dropping off or drying up. This sometimes occurs from over-watering or not sufficiently watering the soil in the pot or box. If the watering is all right the trouble may occur in this way: The air of the house is quite dry, especially in winter. As a result transpiration from the leaf may be excessive. More water is transpired than is necessary, consequently more is pumped by the roots and with it more food is sent to the leaf than it can take care of. As the excess of water is transpired the excess of food is left in the leaf. The tendency is to clog its pores and therefore interfere with its work, and gradually weaken and finally kill it. The remedy for this is to spray the leaves frequently so as to keep the air about them moist and so check transpiration. Keeping a vessel of water near them helps also as this tends to keep the air moist. Dust sometimes chokes the leaves. Washing or spraying remedies this. Sometimes house plants, and out-door plants as well, become covered with a small, green insect called the plant louse or aphis. This insect has a sharp beak like a mosquito and it sucks the juices from the leaf and causes it to curl up, interfering with its work and finally killing it. Frequent spraying with water will tend to keep these away. A surer remedy against them is to spray the plants with weak tobacco water made by soaking tobacco or snuff in water, or to fumigate them with tobacco smoke. Sometimes the under side of the leaf becomes infested with a very small mite called red spider because it spins a web. These mites injure the leaf by sucking sap from it. They can be kept in check by frequent spraying for they do not like water. If, then, we are careful to frequently spray the leaves of our house plants we will have very little trouble from aphis, red spider or over transpiration. The aphis, or plant louse, is often very numerous on out-door plants, for instance, the rose, chrysanthemum, cabbage, and fruit trees. They vary in color from green to dark brown or black. They are treated in the same way as those on the house plants. Some familiar out-door insects which interfere with leaf work are the common potato bug, the green cabbage worm, the rose slug, the elm tree leaf beetle, the canker worm, the tomato worm. These insects and many others eat the leaves (Fig. 67). They chew and swallow their food and are called chewing insects. All insects which chew the leaves of plants can be destroyed by putting poison on their food. The common poisons used for this purpose are Paris green and London purple, which contain arsenic, and are used at the rate of one teaspoonful to a pail of water or one-fourth pound to a barrel of water. This is sprinkled or sprayed on the leaves of the plants. Another poison used is white hellebore. This loses its poisoning qualities when exposed to the air for a time. Therefore it is safer to use about the flower garden and on plants which are soon to be used as food or whose fruit is to be used soon, like cabbages and current bushes. This hellebore is sifted on the plant full strength, or it may be diluted by mixing one part of hellebore with one or two parts of flour, plaster, or lime. It is also used in water, putting one ounce of hellebore in three gallons of water and then spraying it on the plants. Plants may be sprayed by using a watering pot with a fine rose or sprinkler, or an old hair-brush or clothes-brush. For large plants or large numbers of smaller plants spray pumps of various sizes are used. Sometimes chewing insects on food plants and sucking insects on all plants are treated by spraying them with soapy solutions or oily solutions which injure their bodies. The work of the leaf is also interfered with by diseases which attack the leaves and cause parts or the whole leaf to turn yellow or brown or become blistered or filled with holes. The common remedy for most of these diseases is called the "Bordeaux Mixture." It is prepared as follows: Dissolve four pounds of blue vitriol (blue stone, or copper sulphate) in several gallons of water. Then slake four pounds of lime. Mix the two and add enough water to make a barrelful. The mixture is then sprayed on the plants. For more detailed directions for spraying plants and combating insects and diseases write to your State Experiment Station and to the United States Department of Agriculture at Washington, D.C. [Illustration: FIG. 65. To show the giving off of gas by leaves, and that sunlight is necessary for it. The jars contain seaweed. _A_ was set in the sun and developed enough gas to float part of the plant. _B_ was left in the darker part of the room and developed very little gas.] [Illustration: FIG. 66. Seedling radishes reaching for light.] [Illustration: FIG. 67. Elm leaves injured by the "imported elm-tree leaf beetle," a chewing insect.] The work of the leaves of house plants is often interfered with by not giving them sufficient sunlight. Garden and field plants are sometimes planted so thick that they crowd each other and shut the light and air from each other, or weeds are allowed to grow and do the same thing, the result being that the leaves cannot do good work and the plant becomes weak and sickly. Weeds are destroyed by pulling them up and exposing their roots to the sun. This should be done before the weeds blossom, to prevent them from producing fresh seeds for a new crop of weeds. Some weeds have fleshy roots--for example, dock, thistle--in which food is stored; these roots go deep in the ground, and when the upper part of the plant is cut or broken off the root sends up new shoots to take the place of the old. Some have underground stems in which food is stored for the same purpose. The surest way to get rid of such weeds, in fact, of all weeds, is to prevent their leaves from growing and making starch and digesting food for them. This is accomplished by constantly cutting off the young shoots as soon as they appear above the soil, or by growing some crop that will smother them. The constant effort to make new growth will soon exhaust the supply of stored food and the weed will die. CHAPTER XIV STEMS WHAT ARE STEMS FOR? Visit the farm or garden and the fields to examine stems and study their general appearances and habits of growth. Notice that many plants, like the trees, bushes and many vegetable and flowering plants, have stems which are very much branched, while others have apparently single stems with but few or no branches. Examine these stems carefully and note that there are leaves on some part of all of them and that just above the point where each leaf is fastened to the stem there is a bud which may sometime produce a new branch (Fig. 68). If the stems of trees and other woody plants be examined in the winter after the leaves have fallen, it will be seen that the buds are still there, and that just below each bud is a mark or leaf scar left by the fallen leaf. These buds are the beginnings of new branches for another year's growth. On some branches will be found also flowers and fruit or seed vessels. Buds and leaves or buds and leaf scars distinguish stems from roots. Some plants have stems under the soil as well as above it. These underground stems resemble roots but can be distinguished from them by the rings or joints where will be found buds and small scale-like leaves (Fig. 69). Quitch-grass or wiregrass, Burmuda grass, white potato and artichoke are examples of underground stems. Now study the habit of growth of these stems. Notice that: Some plants grow erect with strong, stiff stems, for example, corn, sunflower, maple, pine, elm and other trees. Many of these erect stems have branches reaching out into the air in all directions. Stand under a tree close to the stem or trunk and look up into the tree and notice that the leaves are near the outer ends of the branches while in the centre of the tree the branches are nearly bare. Why is this? If you remember the work of leaves and the conditions necessary for their work you will be able to answer this question. Leaves need light and air for their work, and these erect, branching stems hold the leaves up and spread them out in the light and air. Notice that where several trees grow close together, they are one-sided, and that the longest and largest branches are on the outside of the group and that they have more leaves than the inner branches. Why? Why do the trees in thick woods have most of the living branches and bear most of their leaves away up in the top of the tree? Some stems instead of standing up erect climb up on other plants or objects by means of springlike tendrils which twist about the object and so hold up the slender stem. On the grape vine these tendrils are slender branches. On the sweet pea and garden pea they are parts of the leaves. The trumpet creeper and English ivy climb by means of air roots. The nasturtium climbs by means of its leaf stems. Other stems get up into the light and air with their leaves by twining about upright objects. For example, the morning glory and pole bean. Some stems will be found that spread their leaves out to the sun by creeping over the ground. Sweet potato, melon, squash, and cucumber vines are examples of such plants. One use of the stems of plants then is to support the leaves, flowers and fruit, and expose them to the much needed light and air. =Experiment.=--Get a piece of grape vine and cut it into pieces four or five inches long; notice that the cut surface appears to be full of little holes. Cut a piece from between joints, place one end in your mouth and blow hard. It will be found that air can be blown through the piece of vine. Now pour about an inch of water in a tumbler or cup and color it with a few drops of red ink. Then stand some of the pieces of grape vine in the colored water. In a few hours the colored water will appear at the upper ends of the sticks. Capillary force has caused the colored water to rise through the small tubes in the vine. Repeat this experiment with twigs of several kinds of trees and soft green plants, as elm, maple, sunflower, corn, etc. It will not be possible to blow through these twigs, but the red water will rise through them by osmose, and in a few hours will appear at the upper ends. If some leaves are left on the stems the colored water will appear in them. Some white flowers can be colored in this way. In this manner the stem carries plant food dissolved in water from the roots to the leaves, and after the leaves have digested it carries it back to various parts of the plant. The stem then serves as a conductor or a passage for food and moisture between roots and leaves. Visit a strawberry bed or search for wild strawberry plants. Notice that from the older and larger plants are sent out long, slender, leafless stems with a bud at the tip. These stems are called runners. Find some runners that have formed roots at the tip and have developed a tuft of leaves there, forming new plants. Find some black raspberry plants and notice that some of the canes have bent over and taken root at the tips sending up a new shoot and thus forming a new plant. You know how rapidly wire grass and Bermuda grass will overrun the garden or farm. One way in which they do this is by sending out underground stems which take root at the joints and so form new plants. Another use of the stem then is to produce new plants. On the farm we make use of this habit of stems when we wish to produce new white potato plants. We cut an old potato in pieces and plant them. The buds in the eyes grow and form new plants. One way of getting new grape plants is to take a ripened vine in the fall and cut it in pieces with two or three buds and plant them so that one or both of the buds are covered with soil. The pieces will take root and in the spring will send up new shoots and thus form new plants. You can obtain new plants from geranium, verbena, nasturtium and many other flowering plants, by cutting and planting slips or parts of the stems from them. In parts of the South new sweet potato plants are obtained by cutting parts of the stems from growing plants and planting them. Florists produce large numbers of new plants by taking advantage of this function of stems. =Experiment.=--Take a white potato which is a thickened stem and place it in a warm, dark place. It will soon begin to sprout or send out new stems, and as these new stems grow the potato shrinks and shrivels up. Why is this? It is because the starch and other material stored in the potato are being used to feed the new branches. When we plant potatoes in the garden and field the new plants produced from the eyes of the potato are fed by the stored material until they strike root and are able to take care of themselves. All stems store food for the future use of the plant. Annual plants, or those which live but one year, store food in their stems and leaves during the early part of their growth. During the fruiting or seed forming season this food material is transferred to the seeds and there stored, and the stems become woody. This is a fact to bear in mind in connection with the harvesting of hay or other fodder crops. If we let the grass stand until the seeds form in the head, the stem and leaves send their nourishment to the seeds and become woody and of less value than if cut before the seeds are fully formed. In plants of more than one year's growth the stored food is used to give the plant a start the following season, or for seed production. The rapid growth of leaf and twig on trees and shrubs in spring is made from the food stored in the stem the season before. Sago is a form of starch stored in the stem of the sago palm for the future use of the plant. Maple sugar is made from the food material stored in the trunk of the maple tree for the rapid growth of twig and leaf in the spring. Cane sugar is the food stored in the sugar cane to produce new plants the next season. If we examine the stem of a tree that has been cut down we find that it is woody, that the wood is arranged in rings or layers and that the outer part of the stem is covered with bark. We will notice also that the wood near the centre of the tree is darker than the outer part. This inner part is called the heart wood of the tree. The lighter wood is called the sap wood. It is through the outer or sap wood that the water taken in by the root is passed up to the leaves where the food which it carries is digested and then sent back to the plant. The returning digested food is sent back largely through the bark. Between the bark and the wood is a very thin layer which is called cambium. This is the active growing tissue of the stem. In the spring it is very soft and slippery and causes the bark to peel off easily. This cambium builds a new ring of wood outside of the old wood and a new ring of bark on the inside of the bark. In this way the tree grows in diameter. Now if the bark is injured, or any part of the stem, all parts below the wound are cut off from the return supply of digested food and their growth is checked. When such a wound does occur, or if a wound is made by cutting off a branch, the cambium sets to work to repair the damage by pushing out a new growth which tends to cover the wound. We can help this by covering the wound and keeping the air from it to prevent its drying and to keep disease from attacking it before it is healed. HOW THE WORK OF THE STEM MAY BE INTERFERED WITH If there are any peach trees near by, examine the trunks close to the ground, even pulling away the soil for a few inches. You will very likely find a mass of gummy substance oozing from the tree. Pull this away and in it and in the wood under it will be found one or more yellowish white worms. These are tree borers. They will be found in almost all peach trees. They interfere with the work of the stem and in many cases kill the trees. These worms may be kept somewhat in check by keeping papers wrapped about the lower part of the tree. But the surest way to keep them in check is to dig them out, spring and fall, with a knife and wire. Borers attack the other fruit trees and also ornamental trees and shrubs. Rabbits sometimes gnaw the bark from trees during severe winters. Careless workmen sometimes injure the bark of trees by allowing plows and mowing machines or other tools which they are using among them to come in contact with the trees and injure the bark. Young trees purchased from the nursery generally have a label fastened to them with a piece of wire. Unless this wire is removed or is carefully watched and enlarged from time to time it will cut into the bark as the stem grows and interfere with its work and often kill the top of the tree or injure a main branch. These are a few ways in which the work of the stem is sometimes checked and the plant injured thereby. CHAPTER XV FLOWERS In our study of the parts of plants the flower and fruit have been given the last place because in the growing of most farm plants a knowledge of the functions of the flower is of less importance than that of the roots, leaves and stems. However, a knowledge of these parts is necessary for successful fruit culture and some other horticultural industries. As with the other parts of the plant our study will not be exhaustive but will be simply an attempt to bring out one or two important truths of value to most farmers. In the study of flowers the specimens used for study will depend upon the time of the year in which the studies are made and need not necessarily be the ones used here for illustration. FUNCTION OR USE OF FLOWERS TO PLANTS Of what use is the flower to the plant? You have doubtless noticed that most flowers are followed by fruit or seed vessels. In fact, the fruit and seeds are really produced from the flower, and the work of most flowers is to produce seeds in order to provide for new plants. [Illustration: FIG. 68. A horse-chestnut stem showing leaves, buds, and scars where last year's leaves dropped off.] [Illustration: FIG. 69.--AN UNDERGROUND STEM Buds show distinctly at points indicated by _b_.] To understand how this comes about it will be necessary to study the parts of the flower and find out their individual uses or functions. PARTS OF A FLOWER If we take for our study any of the following flowers: cherry, apple, buttercup, wild mustard, and start from the outside, we will find an outer and under part which in most flowers is green. This is called the calyx (Figs. 70-74). In the buttercup and mustard the calyx is divided into separate parts called sepals. In the cherry, peach and apple, the calyx is a cup or tube with the upper edge divided into lobes. Above the calyx is a broad spreading corolla which is white or brightly colored and is divided into several distinct parts called petals. The petals of one kind of flower are generally different in shape, size and color from those of other flowers. In some flowers the petals are united into a corolla of one piece which may be funnel-shaped, as in the morning glory or petunia of the garden, or tubular as in the honeysuckle, wheel-shaped as in the tomato and potato, or of various other forms. Within the corolla are found several bodies having long, slender stems with yellow knobs on their tips. These are called stamens. The slender stems are called stalks or filaments and the knobs anthers. The anthers of some of the stamens will very likely be found covered with a fine, yellow powder called pollen. This pollen is produced within the anther which, when ripe, bursts and discharges the pollen. The stamens vary greatly in number in different kinds of flowers. In the centre of the cherry, peach, or mustard flower will be found an upright slender body called the pistil. In the peach and cherry the pistil has three parts, a lower rounded, somewhat swollen part called the ovary, a slender stem arising from it called the style, and a slight enlargement at the top of the style called the stigma. The stigma is generally roughened or sticky. If the ovary is split open, within it will be found a little body called an ovule, which is to develop into a seed. In the apple flower the pistils will be found to have one ovary with five styles and stigmas and in the ovary will be several ovules. In the buttercup will be found a large number of small pistils, each consisting of an ovary and stigma. The parts of different flowers will be found to vary in color, in shape, in relative size and in number. In some flowers one or more of the parts will be found wanting. Examine a number of flowers and find the parts. FUNCTIONS OF THE PARTS OF THE FLOWERS Now what are the uses of these parts of the flower? [Illustration: FIG. 70.--FLOWER OF CHERRY. _a_, pistil; _b_, stamen; _c_, corolla; _d_, calyx; _e_, section of flower showing ovary with ovule. (Drawing by M.E. Feltham.)] [Illustration: FIG. 71. 1. Flower of apple; _b_, stamens; _c_, corolla; _d_, calyx. 2. Section of same; _a_, style; _e_, compound ovary; _f_, filament; _g_, anther. (Drawing by M.E. Feltham.)] [Illustration: FIG. 72. _A._ Pistil of flowering raspberry; _e_, ovary; _t_, style; _s_, stigma. _B._ Stamen of flowering raspberry; _f_, filament; _g_, anther; _p_, pollen.] [Illustration: FIG. 73.--FLOWER OF BUTTERCUP. _c_, petals; _d_, sepals; _h_, ripened pistils, or fruit. (Drawing by M.E. Feltham.)] If we watch a flower of the peach or cherry from week to week, we will see that the pistil develops into a peach or cherry which bears within a seed from which a new plant will be produced if the seed is placed under conditions necessary for germination or sprouting. The pistils of the flowers of other plants will be found to develop into fleshy fruits, hard nuts, dry pods or husks containing one or more seeds. The work of the pistil or pistils of flowers then is to furnish seeds for the production of new plants. The botanists tell us that a pistil will not produce seeds unless it is fertilized by pollen from the same kind of flower falling on its stigma. The work of the stamen then is to produce pollen to fertilize the pistils. Pistils and stamens are both necessary for the production of fruit and seed. They are therefore called the essential or necessary parts of the flower. The botanists also tell us that nature has provided that in most cases the pistils shall be fertilized by the pollen of some other flower than their own, as this produces stronger seeds. How is the pollen carried from flower to flower? Go into the garden or field and watch the bees and butterflies flying about the flowers, resting on them and crawling into them. They are seeking for nectar which the flower secretes. As they visit plant after plant, feeding from many flowers, their bodies become more or less covered with pollen as they brush over the stamens. Some of this pollen in turn gets rubbed off on the stigmas of the pistils and they become fertilized. Thus the bees and some other insects have become necessary as pollen carriers for some of the flowers and the flowers in turn feed them with sweet nectar. This gives us a hint as to one use of the corollas which spreads out such broad, brightly-colored, conspicuous petals. It must be that they are advertisements or sign boards to attract the bees and to tell them where they can find nectar and so lead them unconsciously to carry pollen from flower to flower to fertilize the pistils. The act of carrying pollen to the pistil is called pollination, and carrying pollen from the stamens of one flower to the pistil of another flower is called cross pollination. If we examine a blossom bud just before it opens we will see only the calyx. Everything else will be wrapped up inside of it. Evidently, then, the calyx is a protecting covering for the other parts of the flower until blossoming time. The corolla will be found carefully folded within the calyx and also helps protect the stamens and pistil. Some flowers do not produce bright-colored corollas to attract the bees, for examples, the flowers of the grasses, wheat, corn, and other grains, the willows, butternuts, elms, pines and others. But they produce large amounts of pollen which is carried by the wind to the pistils. You have sometimes noticed in the spring that after a rain the pools of water are surrounded by a ring of yellow powder and you have perhaps thought it was sulphur. It was not sulphur but was composed of millions of pollen grains from flowers. One spring Sunday I laid my hat on the seat in church. When I picked it up at the end of the service I found considerable dust on it. I brushed the dust off, but on reaching home I found some remaining and noticed that is was yellow, so I examined it with a magnifying glass and found that it was nearly all pollen grains. Then I rubbed my finger across a shelf in my room and found it slightly dusty; the magnifying glass showed me that this dust was half pollen. This shows what a great amount of pollen is produced and discharged into the air, and it shows that very few pistils could escape even if they were under cover of a building. To make sure of cross pollination nature has in some cases placed the stamens and pistils in different flowers on the same plant. This will be found true of the flowers of the squashes, melons and cucumber. Below some of the flower buds will be seen a little squash, melon or cucumber (Fig. 75). These are the ovaries of pistils and the stigmas will be found within the bud or will be seen when the bud opens. But no stamen will be found here. Other flowers on these plants will be found to possess only stamens. These staminate flowers produce pollen and then die. They do not produce any fruit, but their pollen is necessary for the little cucumbers, squashes and melons to develop. Another example is the corn plant. Here the pistils are on the ear, the corn silk being the styles and stigmas, while the pollen is produced in the tassel at the top of the plant. With some plants we find that not only are the pistils and stamens in separate flowers but the staminate and pistilate flowers are placed on different plants. This will be found true of the osage orange and the willow. In many flowers that have both stamens and pistils or are perfect flowers the stigmas and pollen ripen at different times. With some varieties of fruit it is found that the pistils cannot be fertilized by pollen of the same variety. This is true of most of our native plums. For example, the pistils of the wild goose plum cannot be fertilized by pollen of wild goose plums even if it comes from other trees than the one bearing the pistils. They must have pollen from another variety of plum. VALUE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF THE FLOWER Many times it happens that a farmer or a gardener wants to start a strawberry bed and buys plants of a variety of berries that have the reputation of being very productive. He plants them and cultivates them carefully, and at the proper time they blossom very freely, and there is promise of a large crop, yet very few berries appear and this continues to be the case. Not satisfied with them he buys another variety and plants near them, and after that the old bed becomes very productive. Now why is this? It happens that the flowers of some varieties of strawberries have a great many pistils but no stamens, or very few stamens, and there is not pollen enough to fertilize all of the blossoms, and when such a variety is planted it is necessary to plant near it some variety that produces many stamens and therefore pollen enough to fertilize both varieties in order to be sure of a crop. Those strawberries which produce flowers with only pistils are called pistilate varieties, while those with both stamens and pistils are called perfect varieties (Fig. 78). In planting them there should be at least one row of a perfect variety to every four or five pistilate rows. [Illustration: FIG. 74. A magnolia flower showing central column of pistils and stamens, the pistils being above and the stamens below them.] [Illustration: FIG. 75.--FLOWERS OF SQUASH. _A_, pistillate flower; _B_, staminate flower. A means of insuring cross-pollination.] We have learned that certain varieties of plums cannot be fertilized by pollen from the same variety, and to make them fruitful some other variety must be planted among them to produce pollen that will make them fruitful. This is more or less true of all our fruits. Therefore it is not best generally to plant one variety of fruit by itself. Not knowing this some orchardists have planted large blocks of a single variety of fruit which has been unfruitful till some other varieties have been planted near them or among them. A knowledge of the necessity of pollination is very important to those gardeners who grow cucumbers, tomatoes, melons and other fruiting plants in greenhouses. Here in most cases the pollination is done by hand. We noticed that nature provides that most of the flowers shall be cross pollinated. This is particularly true of the flowers of the fruit trees, and for this reason it is impossible to get true varieties of fruit from seed. For example, if we plant seeds of the wine sap apple, the new trees produced from them will not produce the same kind of apple but each tree will produce something different and they will very likely all be poorer than the parent fruit. This is because of the mixture of pollens which fertilize the pistils. Knowing this fact the nurseryman plants apple seeds and grows apple seedlings. When these get to be the size of a lead pencil he grafts them, that is, he digs them up, cuts off the tops away down to the root and then takes twigs from the variety he wishes to grow and sets or splices these twigs in the roots of the seedlings and then plants them. The root and the new top unite and produce a tree that bears the same kind of fruit as that produced by the tree from which the twig was taken. These are a few of the reasons why it is well to know something about flowers and their work. [Illustration: FIG. 76.--FLOWER OF A LILY. Notice how the stigma and the anthers are kept as far as possible from each other to guard against self-pollination and to insure cross-pollination.] [Illustration: FIG. 77. Bud and flower of jewel-weed, or "touch-me-not." _A._ Interior of bud. Stamens are seen, but there appears to be no pistil. _B._ Section of bud showing the pistil concealed behind the stamens. _C._ Bee entering flower comes in contact with stamens and is loaded with pollen. _D._ Same bee entering older flower. The stamens have ripened and been pushed off by the lengthened pistil, which is brushed by the back of the bee, and thus is pollinated. This is a contrivance to insure cross-pollination.] [Illustration: FIG. 78. _A._ Pistillate flower of strawberry. _B._ Perfect flower of strawberry. (Drawing by M.E. Feltham.)] FRUIT The pistil develops and forms the fruit of the plant. This fruit bears seed for the production of new plants. This fruit may be a dry pod like the bean or pea, or it may be a fleshy fruit like the apple or plum. Now the developing pistil or fruit may be checked in its work of seed production by insects and diseases, and to secure good fruit it is in many cases necessary to spray the fruits just as the leaves are sprayed, to keep these insects and diseases in check. The fruits of most plants, like the leaves, need light and air for their best development, and it sometimes happens that the branches of the fruit trees grow so thick that the fruits do not get sufficient light and air. This makes it necessary to thin the branches or in other words to prune the tree. Some trees also start more fruit than they can properly feed and as a result the ripened fruits are small and the tree is weakened. This makes it necessary to thin the fruits while they are young and undeveloped. PART II Soil Fertility as Affected by Farm Operations and Farm Practices THE FIRST BOOK OF FARMING PART II _Soil Fertility as Affected by Farm Operations and Farm Practices_ CHAPTER XVI A FERTILE SOIL What is a fertile soil? The expression a fertile soil is often used as meaning a soil that is rich in plant food. In its broader and truer meaning a fertile soil is one in which are found all the conditions necessary to the growth and development of plant roots. These conditions, as learned in Chapter II, are as follows: The root must have a firm yet mellow soil. It must be well supplied with moisture. It must be well supplied with air. It must have a certain amount of heat. It must be supplied with available plant food. In order to furnish these needs or conditions the soil must possess certain characteristics or properties. These properties may be grouped under three heads: Physical properties; the moisture, heat and air conditions needed by the roots. Biological properties; the work of very minute living organisms in the soil. Chemical properties; plant food in the soil. PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF A FERTILE SOIL Three very important physical properties of a fertile soil are its Power to take water falling on the surface. Power to absorb water from below. Power to hold water. The fertile soil must possess all three of these powers. The relative degrees to which these three powers or properties are possessed determine more than anything else the kind of crops or the class of crops that will grow best on a given soil. These powers depend, as we learned in Chapter IV, on the texture of the soil or the relative amounts of sand, silt, clay and humus contained in the soil. The power of admitting a free circulation of air through its pores is also an important property of a fertile soil, for air is necessary to the life and growth of the roots. This property is dependent also on texture. Two other important properties of a fertile soil are power to absorb and power to hold heat. These depend upon the power of the soil to take in warm rain and warm air, and also upon density and color. The denser or more compact soil and the darker soil having greater power to absorb heat. The compactness of the soil which gives it greater powers to absorb heat weakens its powers to hold it, because the compactness allows more rapid conduction of heat to the surface, where it is lost by radiation. The more moisture a soil holds, the weaker is its heat-holding power, because the heat is used in warming and evaporating water from the surface of the soil. These important properties or conditions of moisture, heat and air, are, as we have seen, dependent on soil texture and color, which in turn are dependent upon the relative amounts of sand, clay and humus in the soil. We are able to control soil texture and therefore these physical properties to a certain degree by means of tillage and the addition of organic matter or humus (see Chapter IV). BIOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF A FERTILE SOIL Biology is the story or science of life; and the biological properties of the soil have to do with living organisms in the soil. The soil of every fertile field is full of very small or microscopic plants called bacteria or germs. They are said to be microscopic because they are so small that they cannot be seen without the aid of a powerful magnifying glass or microscope. They are so small that it would take about 10,000 average-sized soil bacteria or soil germs placed side by side to measure one inch. A knowledge of three classes of these soil germs is of great importance to the farmer. These three classes of germs are: Nitrogen-fixing germs. Nitrifying germs. Denitrifying germs. NITROGEN-FIXING GERMS We learned in Chapter VIII that nitrogen is one of the necessary elements of plant food, and that although the air is four-fifths nitrogen, most plants must take their nitrogen from the soil. There is, however, a class of plants called legumes which can use the nitrogen of the air. Clover, alfalfa, lucern, cowpea, soy bean, snap bean, vetch and similar plants are legumes. These legumes get the nitrogen from the air in a very curious and interesting manner. It is done through the aid of bacteria or germs. Carefully dig up the roots of several legumes and wash the soil from them. On the roots will be found many small enlargements like root galls; these are called nodules or tubercles. On clover roots these nodules are about the size of the head of a pin while on the soy bean and cowpea they are nearly as large as a pea (see Fig. 34). These nodules are filled with bacteria or germs and these germs have the power of taking nitrogen from the air which finds its way into the soil. After using the nitrogen the germ gives it to the plant which then uses it to build stem, leaves and roots. In this way the legumes are able to make use of the nitrogen of the soil air, and these germs which help them to do it by catching the nitrogen are called nitrogen-fixing germs. The work of these germs makes it possible for the farmer to grow nitrogen, so to speak, on the farm. By growing crops of legumes and turning them under to decay in the soil, or leaving the roots and stubble to decay after the crop is harvested, he can furnish the following crop with a supply of nitrogen in a very cheap manner and lessen the necessity of buying fertilizer. NITRIFYING GERMS Almost all the nitrogen of the soil is locked up in the humus and cannot in that condition be used by the roots of plants. The nitrogen caught by the nitrogen-fixing germs and built into the structure of leguminous plants which are grown and turned under to feed other plants cannot be used until the humus, which is produced by their partial decay, is broken down and the nitrogen built into other substances upon which the root can feed. The breaking down of the humus and building of the nitrogen into other substances is the work of another set of bacteria or germs called nitrifying germs. These nitrifying germs attack the humus, break it down, separate the nitrogen, cause it to unite with the oxygen of the air and thus build it into nitric acid which can be used by plant roots. This nitric acid if not immediately used will unite with lime or potash or soda or other similar substances and form nitrates, as nitrate of lime, nitrate of potash or common saltpetre. These nitrates are soluble in water and can be easily used by plant roots. If there are no plant roots to use them they are easily lost by being washed out of the soil. The work of the nitrifying germs is called nitrification. To do their work well the nitrogen-fixing germs and the nitrifying germs require certain conditions. The soil must be moist. The soil must be well ventilated to supply nitrogen for the nitrogen-fixing germs and oxygen for the nitrifying germs. The soil must be warm. Summer temperature is the most favorable. Their work begins and continues slowly at a temperature of about forty-five degrees and increases in rapidity as the temperature rises until it reaches ninety or ninety-five. The nitrifying germs require phosphoric acid, potash and lime in the soil. Direct sunlight destroys these bacteria, therefore they cannot work at the surface of the soil unless it is shaded by a crop. From this we see that these bacteria or germs work best in the soil that has conditions necessary for the growth and development of plant roots. DENITRIFYING GERMS These germs live on the coarse organic matter of the soil. Like the nitrifying germs they need oxygen, and when they cannot get it more readily elsewhere they take it from the nitric acid and nitrates. This allows the nitrogen of the nitrates to escape as a free gas into the air again, and the work of the nitrogen-fixing and nitrifying germs is undone and the nitrogen is lost. This loss of nitrogen is most apt to occur when the soil is poorly ventilated, because of its being very compact, or when the soil spaces are filled with water. This loss of nitrogen by denitrification can be checked by keeping the soil well ventilated. CHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF A FERTILE SOIL By the term chemical properties we have reference to the chemical composition of the soil, the chemical changes which take place in the soil, and the conditions which influence these changes. The sand, clay and humus of the soil are made up of a great variety of substances. The larger part of these act simply as a mechanical support for the plants and also serve to bring about certain physical conditions. Only a very small portion of these substances serve as the direct food of plants and the chemical conditions of these substances are of great importance. In Chapter VIII we learned that plants are composed of several elements and that seven necessary elements are taken from the soil. These seven are nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and sulphur. Now a fertile soil must contain these seven elements of plant food and they must be in such form that the plant roots can use them. Plant roots can generally get from most soils enough of the magnesium, calcium, iron, and sulphur to produce well developed plants. But the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, although they exist in sufficient quantities in the soil, are often in such a form or condition that the roots cannot get enough of one or more of them to produce profitable crops. For this reason these three elements are of particular importance to the farmer for, in order to keep his soil fertile, he must so treat it that these elements will be made available or he must add more of them to the soil in the proper form or condition. _Nitrogen in the soil._--Plant roots use nitrogen in the form of nitric acid and salts of nitrogen called nitrates. But the nitrogen of the soil is very largely found in the humus with the roots cannot use. A chemical change must take place in it and the nitrogen be built into nitric acid and nitrates. This, we have learned, is done through the aid of the nitrifying germs. _Phosphoric acid in the soil._--Phosphorus does not exist pure in the soil. The plant finds it as a phosphoric acid united with the other substances forming phosphates. These are often not available to plants, but can to a certain extent be made available through tillage and by adding humus to the soil. _Potash in the soil._--The plant finds potassium in potash which exists in the soil. Potash like phosphoric acid often exists in forms which the plant cannot use but may be made available to a certain extent by tillage, the addition of humus, and the addition of lime to the soil. _Lime in the soil._--Most soils contain the element calcium or lime, the compound in which it is found, in sufficient quantities for plant food. But lime is also of importance to the farmer and plant grower because it is helpful in causing chemical changes in the soil which tend to prepare the nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash for plant use. It is also helpful in changing soil texture. The chemical changes which make the plant foods available are dependent on moisture, heat, and air with its oxygen, and are therefore dependent largely on texture, and therefore on tillage. When good tillage and the addition of organic matter and lime do not render available sufficient plant food, then the supply of available food may be increased by the application of manure and fertilizers. It will be seen that all these classes of properties are necessary to furnish all the conditions for root growth. The proper chemical conditions require the presence of both physical and biological properties and the biological work in the soil requires both chemical and physical conditions. From the farmer's standpoint the physical properties seem to be most important, for the others are dependent on the proper texture, moisture, heat and ventilation which are controlled largely by tillage. Therefore the first effort of the farmer to improve the fertility of his soil should be to improve his methods of working the soil. Every one of these properties of the fertile soil, and consequently every one of the conditions necessary for the growth and development of plant roots, is influenced in some way by every operation performed on the soil, whether it be plowing, harrowing, cultivating, applying manure, growing crops, harvesting, or anything else, and the thoughtful farmer will frequently ask himself the question: "How is this going to effect the fertility of my soil or the conditions necessary for profitable crop production?" MAINTENANCE OF FERTILITY The important factors in maintaining or increasing the fertility of the soil are: The mechanical operations of tillage, especially with reference to the control of soil water. The application of manures and fertilizers, especially with reference to maintaining a supply of humus and plant food. Methods or systems of cropping the soil, with reference to economizing fertility. CHAPTER XVII SOIL WATER The more important tillage tools and tillage operations we studied in Chapters XI and XII. They will be noticed here only in connection with their influence over soil water, for in the regulation of this important factor in soil fertility the other conditions of fertility are also very largely controlled. IMPORTANCE OF SOIL WATER "Of all the factors influencing the growth of plants, water is beyond doubt the most important," and the maintaining of the proper amount of soil water is one of the most important problems of the thinking farmer in controlling the fertility of his soil. NECESSITY OF SOIL WATER The decay of mineral and organic matter in the soil, and the consequent setting free of plant food, can take place only in the presence of moisture. The plant food in barn manures and crops plowed under for green moisture, can be made available only when there is sufficient moisture in the soil to permit breaking down and decomposition. The presence of moisture in the soil is necessary for the process of nitrification to take place. Soil moisture is necessary to dissolve plant food. Plant roots can absorb food from the soil only when it is in solution, and it seems to be necessary that a large quantity of water pass through the plant tissues to furnish the supply of mineral elements required by growth. Moisture is necessary to build plant tissues. The quantity of water entering into the structure of growing plants varies from sixty to as high as ninety-five per cent, of their total weight. During the periods of active growth there is a constant giving off of moisture by the foliage of plants and this must be made good by water taken from the soil by their roots. In a series of experiments at the University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, it was found that in raising oats, every ton of dry matter grown required 522.4 tons of water to produce it; for every ton of dry matter of corn there were required 309.8 tons of water; a ton of dry red clover requires 452.8 tons of water to grow it. At the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, a yield of potatoes at the rate of 450 bushels per acre represented a water requirement of 1310.75 tons of water. SOURCES AND FORMS OF SOIL WATER The soil which is occupied by the roots of plants receives moisture in the form of rain, snow and dew from above and free and capillary water rising from below. "Free water is that form of water which fills our wells, is found in the bottom of holes dug in the ground during wet seasons, and is often found standing on the surface of the soil after heavy or long continued rains. It is sometimes called 'ground water' or 'standing water,' and flows under the influence of gravity." Free water is not used directly by plants unless they are swamp plants, and its presence within eighteen inches of the surface is injurious to most farm plants. Free water serves as the main source of supply for capillary water. "Capillary water is water which is drawn by capillary force or soaks into the spaces between the soil particles and covers these particles with a thin film of moisture." It is a direct source of water to plants. Capillary water will flow in any direction in the soil, the direction of flow being determined by texture and dryness, the flow being stronger toward the more compact and drier parts. If the soil is left lumpy and cloddy then capillary water cannot rise readily from below to take the place of that which is lost by evaporation. If, however, the soil is fine and well pulverized, the water rises freely and continuously to supply the place of that taken by plant roots or evaporation from the surface. TOO MUCH WATER Some farm lands contain too much water for the growth of farm crops; for example, bottom lands which are so low that water falling on the surface cannot run off or soak down into the lower soil. The result is that the spaces between the soil particles are most of the time filled with water, and this checks ventilation, which is a necessary factor in soil fertility. This state of affairs occurs also on sloping uplands which are kept wet by spring water or by seepage water from higher lands. Some soils are so close and compact that water falling on the surface finds great difficulty in percolating through them, and therefore renders them too wet for profitable cropping during longer or shorter periods of the year. Nearly all such lands can be improved by removing the surplus water through drains. (See Chapter XXV.) Percolation and ventilation of close compact soils can be improved by mixing lime and organic matter with them. NOT ENOUGH WATER In some sections of the country, particularly the arid and semi-arid sections of the West, the soil does not receive a sufficient supply of rain water for the production of profitable yearly crops. These soils are rendered unfertile by the lack of this one all important factor of fertility. They can be made fertile and productive by supplying them with sufficient water through irrigation. The crop-producing power of some lands is lowered even in regions where the rainfall is sufficient, because these lands are not properly prepared by tillage and the addition of organic matter to absorb and hold the water that comes to them, or part of the water may be lost or wasted by lack of proper after-tillage or after-cultivation. This state of affairs is of course improved by better preparation to receive water before planting the crop and better methods of after-cultivation to save the water for the use of the crop. LOSS OF SOIL WATER Aside from what is used by the crops the soil may lose its water in the following ways: Rain water which comes to the soil may be lost by running off over the surface of the land. This occurs especially on hilly farms and in the case of close, compact soils. Water may be lost from the soil by leaching through the lower soil. Water may be lost from the soil by evaporation from the surface. The soil may lose water by the growth of weeds which are continually pumping water up by their roots and transpiring it from their leaves into the air. HOW SOME FARM OPERATIONS INFLUENCE SOIL WATER Plowing and soil water. One of the first effects of deeply and thoroughly plowing a close, compact soil, is that rain will sink into it readily and not be lost by surface wash. In many parts of the country, especially the South, great damage is done by the surface washing and gulleying of sloping fields. The shallow layer of soil stirred up by small plows and practice of shallow plowing so prevalent in the South takes in the rain readily, but as the harder soil beneath does not easily absorb the water the shallow layer of plowed soil soon fills, then becomes mud, and the whole mass goes down the slope. Where the land is plowed deep there is prepared a deep reservoir of loose soil that is able to hold a large amount of water till the harder lower soil can gradually absorb it. The soil stirred and thoroughly broken by the plow serves not only as a reservoir for the rainfall, but also acts as a mulch over the more compact soil below it, thus checking the rapid use of capillary water to the surface and its consequent loss by evaporation. The plow which breaks and pulverizes the soil most thoroughly is the one best adapted to fit the soil for receiving and holding moisture. If the plowing is not well done or if the land is too dry when plowed and the soil is left in great coarse lumps and clods, the air circulates readily among the clods and takes from them what little moisture they may have had and generally the soil is left in a worse condition than if it had not been plowed at all. Fall plowing on rolling land and heavy soil leaving the surface rough helps to hold winter snows and rains when they fall, giving to such fields a more even distribution of soil water in the spring. Spring plowing should be done early, before there is much loss of water from the surface by evaporation. Professor King, of the University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, carried on an experiment to see how much soil water could be saved by early plowing. He selected two similar pieces of ground near each other and tested them for water April 29th. Immediately after testing one piece was plowed. Seven days later, May 6th, he tested them for water again and found that both had lost some water, but that the piece which was not plowed had lost 9.13 pounds more water per square foot of surface than the plowed piece. This means that by plowing one part a week earlier than the other he saved in it water equal to a rainfall of nearly two inches or at the rate of nearly 200 tons of water per acre. HOEING, RAKING, HARROWING, AND CULTIVATING These operations when properly and thoroughly done tend to supplement the work of the plow in fitting the soil to absorb rain and in making a mulch to check loss by surface evaporation. The entire surface should be worked and the soil should be left smooth and not in ridges. Rolling cutters and spring-toothed harrows are apt to leave ridges and should have an attachment for smoothing the surface or be followed by a smoothing harrow. Cultivators used to make mulches to save water should have many narrow teeth rather than few broad ones. If a large broad-toothed tool is used to destroy grass and large weeds it should be followed by a smoother to level the ridges and thus lessen the evaporating surface. The soil should be cultivated as soon after a rain as it can be safely worked. Rolling compacts the soil and starts a quicker capillary movement of water toward the surface and a consequent loss by evaporation. When circumstances will permit, the roller should be followed by a light harrow to restore the mulch. Ridging the land tends to lessen the amount of moisture in the soil because it increases the evaporating surface. It should be practiced only on wet land or in early spring to secure greater heat. Drains placed in wet land remove free water to a lower depth and increase the depth of soil occupied by capillary water and therefore increase the body of soil available to plant roots. MANURES AND SOIL WATER Humus, as we learned in Chapter IV, has a very great and therefore important influence over the water-absorbing and water-holding powers of soils. Therefore, any of the farm practices that tend to increase or diminish the amount of humus in the soil are to be seriously considered because of the effect on the water content of the soil. For this reason the application of barn manures and green crops turned under tend to improve the water conditions of most soils. The mixing of heavy applications of coarse manures or organic matter with light sandy soils may make them so loose and open that they will lose moisture rapidly. When this practice is necessary the land should be rolled after the application of the manure. METHODS OF CROPPING AND SOIL WATER Constant tillage hastens the decay of organic matter in the soil. Hence any method or system of cropping which does not occasionally return to the soil a new supply of humus tends to weaken the powers of the soil toward water. All of the operations and practices which influence soil water also affect the other conditions necessary to root growth; namely, texture, ventilation, heat, and plant food, and those operations and practices which properly control and regulate soil water to a large degree control and regulate soil fertility. SELECTION OF CROPS WITH REFERENCE TO SOIL WATER While climatic conditions determine the general distribution of plants, the amount of water which a soil holds and can give up to plants during the growing season determines very largely the crops to which it is locally best adapted. With crops that can be grown on a wide range of soils the water which the soil can furnish largely determines the time of maturing, the yield, and often the quality of the crop. With such a crop a small supply of water tends to hasten maturity at the expense of yield. The sweet potato, when wanted for early market and high prices, is grown on the light sandy soils called early truck soils. These soils hold from five to seven per cent, of water. That is, the texture is such that during the early part of the growing season one hundred pounds of this soil is found to hold an average of from five to seven pounds of water under field conditions. This soil, holding little water, warms up early and thus hastens growth. Then as the warmer summer weather advances, the water supply diminishes, growth is checked, and the crop matures rapidly. On account of the small amount of water and the early checking of growth, the yield of the crop is less than if grown on a soil holding more water, but the earlier maturity makes it possible to realize a much higher price per bushel for the crop. A sweet potato grown on such a light soil is dry and starchy, a quality which brings a higher price in the northern markets than does the moist, soggy potato grown on heavier soils which contain more water and produce larger yields. Early white potatoes, early cabbage, water melons, musk-melons, tomatoes and other early truck and market garden crops are also grown on light soil holding from five to seven per cent. of water. The main crop of potatoes and cabbage and the canning crop of tomatoes are grown on the loam soils holding from ten to eighteen per cent. of water. Such soils produce a later though much larger yield. Upland cotton produces best on a deep loam that is capable of furnishing a uniform supply of about ten or twelve per cent. of water during the growing season. Sea Island Cotton grows best on a light, sandy soil holding only five per cent. of water. On light, sandy soils the Upland Cotton produces small plants with small yield of lint, while on clay and bottom land, which are apt to have large amounts of water, the plants grow very large and produce fewer bolls, which are very late in maturing. Corn, while it will grow on a wide range of soils, produces best on loam or moist bottom lands holding about fifteen per cent. of water during the growing season. The grasses and small grains do best on cool, firm soils holding eighteen to twenty-two per cent. of water. Sorghum or "Molasses Cane" grows best on good corn soil, while the sugar cane of the Gulf States requires a soil with twenty-five per cent. of water for best growth. While the amount of water which a soil will hold is determined largely by texture, it is also considerably influenced by the amount and frequency of rainfall and the location of the soil as to whether it be upland or bottom land. The average percentage of water held by a soil during the growing season may be approximately determined in the following manner: Sample the soil in one of the following methods: Take to the field a spade, a box that will hold about half a bushel, and a pint or quart glass jar with a tight cover. If a cultivated field, select a place free from grass and weeds. Dig a hole one foot deep and about eighteen inches square. Trim one side of the hole square. Now from this side cut a slice about three inches thick and one foot deep, quickly place this in the box and thoroughly break lumps and mix together, then fill jar and cork tightly. Another method is to take a common half-inch or two-inch carpenter's auger and bore into the soil with it. Pull it out frequently and put the soil which comes up with it into the jar until you have a sample a foot deep. If one boring twelve inches deep does not give sufficient soil make another boring or two close by and put all into the jar. Take the sample, by whatever method obtained, weigh out ten or twenty ounces of the moist soil and dry it at a temperature just below 212 degrees. When it is thoroughly dry weigh again. The difference between the two weights will be the amount of water held by the sample. Now divide this by the weight of the dry sample and the result will be the per cent. of water held by the soil. Several samples taken from different parts of the field will give an average for the field. Repeat this every week or oftener through the season and an approximate estimate of the water-holding capacity of the soil will be obtained and consequently an indication of the crops to which the soil is best adapted. EXAMPLE. Weight of a soil sample, 20 ounces. When dried this sample weighs 17¾ ounces. 20 - 17¾ = 2¼, the water held by the soil. 2.25 ÷ 17.75 = .12 plus. This soil held a little over twelve per cent. of water. If this soil continues to give about the same result for successive tests during the growing season, the results would indicate a soil adapted to cotton, late truck or corn. CHAPTER XVIII THE AFTER-CULTIVATION OF CROPS The term "after-cultivation" is here used in referring to those tillage operations which are performed after the crop is planted. Synonymous terms are "cultivation," "inter-tillage," "working the crop." After-cultivation influences the texture, ventilation, heat, plant food and moisture factors of fertility, but most particularly the moisture factor. Under ordinary circumstances the greatest benefit derived from after-cultivation when properly performed is the saving of soil water for the use of the crop. LOSS OF WATER BY EVAPORATION Soil water is seldom at rest unless the soil be frozen solid. When rain falls on a fertile soil there is a downward movement of water. When the rain ceases, water begins to evaporate from the surface of the soil. Its place is taken by water brought from below by capillarity. This is in turn evaporated and replaced by more from below. This process continues with greater or less rapidity according to the dryness of the air and the compactness of the soil. LOSS OF WATER THROUGH WEEDS We learned in a former chapter that during their growth farm plants require an amount of water equal to from 300 to 500 times their dry weight. Weeds require just as much water and some of them probably more than the cultivated plants. This water is largely absorbed by the roots and sent up to the leaves where it is transpired into the air and is lost from the soil, and therefore is unavailable to the growing crop until it again falls onto the soil. In some parts of the country, particularly the semi-arid West, the rainfall is not sufficient to supply the soil with enough water to grow such crops as it could otherwise produce. In the moister regions the rainfall is not evenly distributed throughout the growing season, and there are longer or shorter intervals between rains when the loss of water through evaporation and weeds is apt to be greater than the rainfall. For these reasons it is best to check these losses and save the water in the soil for the use of the crops. SAVING THE WATER This can be done by: Preventing the growth of weeds and by checking losses by evaporation with a soil mulch. TIME TO CULTIVATE A seedling plant is easiest killed just as it has started into growth. The best time to kill a plant starting from an underground stem or a root is just as soon as it appears above the surface in active growth. The best time to cultivate, then, to kill weeds is as soon as the weeds appear. At this time large numbers can be killed with the least of effort. Do not let them get to be a week or two old before getting after them. In planting some crops the ground between the rows becomes trampled and compact. This results in active capillarity which brings water to the surface and it is lost by evaporation. Every rainfall tends to beat the soil particles together and form a crust which enables the capillary water to climb to the surface and escape into the air. This loss by evaporation should be constantly watched for and the soil should be stirred and a mulch formed whenever it becomes compact or a crust is formed. The proper time to cultivate, then, to save water is as soon as weeds appear or as soon as the surface of the soil becomes compact or crusted by trampling, by the beating of rain or from any other cause, whether the crop is up or not. The cultivation should start as soon after a rain as the soil is dry enough to work safely. The surface soil should always be kept loose and open. The efficacy of the soil mulch depends on the thoroughness and frequency of the operation. It is particularly beneficial during long, dry periods. During such times it is not necessary to wait for a rain to compact the soil; keep the cultivators going, rain or no rain. TOOLS FOR AFTER-CULTIVATION The main objects of after-cultivation are to destroy weeds and to form a soil mulch for the purpose of controlling soil moisture. These ends are secured by shallow surface work. It is not necessary to go more than two or three inches deep. Deeper work will injure the roots of the crop. Therefore the proper tools for after-cultivation in the garden are the hoe and rake and for field work narrow-toothed harrows and cultivators or horse-hoes which stir the whole surface thoroughly to a moderate depth. These field tools are supplemented in some cases by the hand hoe, but over wide areas of country the hoe never enters the field. A light spike-toothed harrow can be used on corn, potatoes, and similar crops, and accomplish the work of cultivation rapidly until they get to be from four to six inches high; after that cultivators which work between the rows should be used. A very useful class of tools for destroying weeds in the earlier stages are the so-called "weeders." They somewhat resemble a horse hay rake and have a number of flexible wire teeth which destroy shallow rooted weeds but slip around the more firmly rooted plants of the crop. These weeders must be used frequently to be of much value, for after a weed is well rooted the weeder cannot destroy it. There is a larger class of hand wheel hoes which are very useful in working close planted garden and truck crops. They either straddle the row, working the soil on both sides at the same time, or, running between the rows, work the soil to a width of from six to eighteen inches. For best results with the weeder and hand wheel hoes the soil should be thoroughly prepared before planting by burying all trash with the plow and breaking all clods with harrow and roller. The objection made to the deep-working implements, like the plow, is that they injure the crop by cutting its feeding roots, and this has been found by careful experiment and observation to diminish the crop. Some farmers object to using a light harrow for cultivation in the early stages of the crop because they say the harrow will destroy the crop as well as the weeds. This danger is not so great as it seems. The seeds of the crop are deeper in the soil than the seeds of the weeds which germinate and appear so quickly. The soil has also been firmed about them. Hence they have a firmer hold on the soil and but few of them are destroyed if the work is carefully done. In working crops not only should weeds be destroyed but also surplus plants of the crop, as these have the same effect as weeds; namely, they occupy the soil and take plant food and moisture which if left to fewer plants would produce a larger harvest. HILLING AND RIDGING Except in low, wet ground, the practice of hilling or ridging up crops is now considered by those who have given the matter thorough study, to be unnecessary, flat and shallow culture being cheaper. It saves more moisture, and for this reason, in the majority of cases, produces larger crops. Sometimes during very long-continued periods of wet weather weeds and grass become firmly established among the plants of the crop. Under such circumstances it is necessary to use on the cultivator teeth having long, narrow sweeps that will cut the weeds just beneath the surface of the soil. Sometimes a broad-toothed tool is used that will throw sufficient soil over the large weeds near the rows to smother them. The condition to be met and the effect of the operation should always be given serious thought. We have considered after-cultivation as influencing soil fertility by checking a loss of water by evaporation and weed transpiration, and this is its main influence but other benefits follow. Keeping the surface soil loose and open benefits fertility because it directly aids the absorption of rain, favors ventilation, and has a beneficial influence over soil temperature. Indirectly through these factors it aids the work of the beneficial soil bacteria and the chemical changes in the process of preparing plant food for crop use. CHAPTER XIX FARM MANURES FUNCTIONS OF MANURES AND FERTILIZERS In Chapter II we learned that the roots of plants for their growth and development need a soil that is firm yet mellow, moist, warm, ventilated and supplied with plant food. We also learned that of the plant foods there is often not enough available nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash and lime for the needs of the growing plants. Manures and fertilizers are applied to the soil for their beneficial effects on these necessary conditions for root growth and therefore to assist in maintaining soil fertility. CLASSIFICATION OF MANURES AND FERTILIZERS Manures may be classified as follows: { Barn or stable manures, Farm manures. { Green-crop manures, { Composts. Commercial { Materials furnishing nitrogen, fertilizers { " " phosphoric acid, or artificial { " " potash, manures. { " " lime. IMPORTANCE OF FARM MANURES Of these two classes of manures the farmer should rely chiefly on the farm manures letting the commercial fertilizers take a secondary place because: Farm manures are complete manures; that is they contain all the necessary elements of plant food. Farm manures add to the soil large amounts of organic matter or humus. The decay of organic matter produces carbonic acid which hastens the decay of mineral matter in the soil and so increases the amount of available plant food. The organic matter changes the texture of the soil. It makes sandy soils more compact and therefore more powerful to hold water and plant food. It makes heavy clay soils more open and porous, giving them greater power to absorb moisture and plant food. This admits also of better circulation of the air in the soil, and prevents baking in dry weather. Farm manures influence all of the conditions necessary for root growth while the commercial fertilizers influence mainly the plant food conditions. The farm manures are good for all soils and crops. They are lasting in their effects on the soil. BARN OR STABLE MANURE Barn or stable manure consists of the solid and liquid excrement of any of the farm animals mixed with the straw or other materials used as bedding for the comfort of the animals and to absorb the liquid parts. The liquid parts should be saved, as they contain more than half of the nitrogen and potash in the manure. The value of barn manure for improving the soil conditions necessary for root growth depends in a measure upon the plant food in it, but chiefly upon the very large proportion of organic matter which it contains when it is applied to the soil. These factors are influenced somewhat: by the kind of animal that produces the manure; by the kind of food the animal receives; by the kind and amount of litter or bedding used; but they depend particularly on the way the manure is cared for after it is produced. LOSS OF VALUE Improper care of the manure may cause it to diminish in value very much. _Loss by leaching._ If the manure is piled against the side of the stable where water from the roof can drip on it, as is often the case, or if it is piled in an exposed place where heavy rain can beat on it, the rain water in leaching through the manure washes out of it nitrogen and potash, which pass off in the dark brown liquid that oozes from the base of the pile. _Loss by heating or fermenting._ When barn manure is thrown into piles it soon heats and throws off more or less steam and gas. This heating of the manure is caused by fermentation or the breaking down of the materials composing the manure and the forming of new compounds. This fermentation is produced by very small or microscopic plants called bacteria. The fermentation of the manure is influenced by the following conditions: A certain amount of heat is necessary to start the work of the bacteria. After they have once started they keep up and increase the temperature of the pile until it gets so hot that sometimes a part of the manure is reduced to ashes. The higher the temperature the more rapid the fermentation. This can be seen particularly in piles of horse manure. The bacteria which produce the most rapid fermentation in manure need plenty of air with its oxygen. Therefore fermentation will be more or less rapid according as the manure is piled loosely or in a close compact mass. A certain amount of moisture is necessary for the fermentation to take place, but if the manure is made quite wet the temperature is lowered and the fermentation is checked. The water also checks the fermentation by limiting the supply of air that can enter the pile. The composition of the manure influences the fermentation. The presence of considerable amounts of soluble nitrogen hastens the rapidity of the fermentation. Now when the manure ferments a large part of the organic matter in it is broken down and changed into gases. The gas formed most abundantly by the fermentation is carbonic acid gas, which is produced by the union of oxygen with carbon of the organic matter. The formation of this gas means a loss of humus. This loss can be noticed by the fact that the pile gradually becomes smaller. The next most abundant product of the fermentation is water vapor which can often be seen passing off in clouds of steam. When manure ferments rapidly the nitrogen in it is changed largely into ammonia. This ammonia combines with part of the carbonic acid gas and forms carbonate of ammonia, a very volatile salt which rapidly changes to a vapor and is lost in the atmosphere. This causes a great loss of nitrogen during the rapid decomposition of the manure. This loss can be detected by the well known odor of the ammonia which is particularly noticeable about horse stables and piles of horse manure. Besides these gases a number of compounds of nitrogen, potash, etc., are formed which are soluble in water. It is these that form the dark brown liquid that sometimes oozes out from the base of the manure heap. At the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, the following experiment was carried out to find out how much loss would take place from a pile of manure: "Four thousand pounds of manure from the horse stable were placed out of doors in a compact pile and left exposed from April 25th to September 22d. The results were as follows:" ----------------------------+-------------+--------------+---------- | April 25. | Sept. 22. | Loss | | | per cent. ----------------------------+-------------+--------------+---------- Gross weight | 4,000 lbs. | 1,730 lbs. | 57 Nitrogen | 19.6 " | 7.79 " | 60 Phos. acid | 14.8 " | 7.79 " | 47 Potash | 36 " | 8.65 " | 76 Value of plant food per ton | $2.30 | $1.06 | ----------------------------+-------------+--------------+---------- This shows a loss of more than half the bulk of the manure and more than half the plant food contained in it. CHECKING THE LOSSES The first step to be taken in preserving the manure or in checking losses is to provide sufficient bedding or litter in the stable to absorb and save all the liquid parts. The losses from fermentation of hot manures like horse manure may be largely checked by mixing with the colder manure from the cow stable. Losses from fermentation may also be checked. By piling compactly, which keeps the air out. By moistening the pile, which lowers the temperature and checks the access of oxygen. The manure may be hauled directly to the field each day and spread on the surface or plowed in. This method is the best when practicable because fermentation of the manure will take place slowly in the soil and the gases produced will be absorbed and retained by the soil. Gypsum or land plaster is often sprinkled on stable floors and about manure heaps to prevent the loss of ammonia. Copperas or blue stone, kainite and superphosphate are sometimes used for the same purpose. There is, however, nothing better nor so good for this purpose as dry earth containing a large percentage of humus. Losses from washing or leaching by rain may be prevented by piling the manure under cover or by hauling it to the field as soon as produced and spreading it on the surface or plowing it under. APPLYING THE MANURE TO THE SOIL From ten to twenty tons per acre is considered a sufficient application of barn manure for most farm crops. Larger amounts are sometimes applied to the soil for truck and market garden crops. Barn manures are applied to the soil by these methods: The manure is sometimes hauled out from the barn and placed in a large pile in the field or in many small piles where it remains for some time before being spread and plowed or harrowed in. Some farmers spread it on the field and allow it to lie some time before plowing it in. It is sometimes spread as soon as hauled to the field and is immediately plowed in or mixed with the soil. This last is the safest and most economical method so far as the manure alone is concerned. When the manure is left in a large pile it suffers losses due to fermentation and leaching. At the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, five tons of manure from the cow stable, including three hundred pounds of gypsum which was mixed with it, were exposed in a compact pile out of doors from April 25th to September 22d. The result was as follows: ----------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------- | April 25 | Sept 22 | Loss | | | per cent. ----------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------- Gross weight | 10,000 lbs. | 5,125 lbs. | 49 Nitrogen | 47 " | 28 " | 41 Phos. acid | 32 " | 26 " | 19 Potash | 48 " | 44 " | 8 Value of plant food per ton | $2.29 | $1.60 | ----------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------- When distributed over the field in small piles and allowed to remain so for some time, losses from fermentation take place, and the rain washes plant food from the pile into the soil under and immediately about it. This results in an uneven distribution of plant food over the field, for when the manure is finally scattered and plowed in, part of the field is fertilized with washed out manure while the soil under and immediately about the location of the various piles is often so strongly fertilized that nothing can grow there unless it be rank, coarse weeds. [Illustration: FIG. 79.--A CROP OF COWPEAS.] [Illustration: FIG. 80.--RED CLOVER.] When the manure is spread on the surface and allowed to lie for some time it is apt to become dry and hard, and when finally plowed in, decays very slowly. When the manure is plowed in or mixed with the soil as soon as applied to the field there results an even distribution of plant food in the soil, fermentation takes place gradually and all gases formed are absorbed by the soil, there is very little loss of valuable nitrogen and organic matter, and the fermentation taking place in the soil also aids in breaking down the mineral constituents of the soil and making available the plant food held by them. Therefore it seems best to spread the manure and plow it in or mix it with the soil as soon as it is hauled to the field, when not prevented by bad weather and other more pressing work. PROPER CONDITION OF MANURE WHEN APPLIED A large part of the value of barn manure lies in the fact that it consists largely of organic matter, and therefore has an important influence on soil texture, and during its decay in the soil produces favorable chemical changes in the soil constituents. Therefore it will produce its greatest effect on the soil when applied fresh. For this reason it is generally best to haul the manure to the field and mix it with the soil as soon after it is produced as possible. If coarse manures are mixed with light, sandy soils it is best to follow with the roller, otherwise the coarse manure may cause the soil to lie so loose and open that both soil and manure will lose moisture so rapidly that fermentation of the manure will be stopped and the soil will be unfit for planting. If it is desired to apply manure directly to delicate rooted truck and vegetable crops it is best to let it stand for some time until the first rank fermentation has taken place and the manure has become rotten. A good practice is to apply the manure in its fresh condition to coarse feeding crops like corn, and then follow the corn by a more delicate rooted crop which requires the manure to be in a more decomposed condition than is necessary for the corn. In this case the corn is satisfied and the remaining manure is in proper condition for the following crop when it is planted. Another practice is to broadcast the coarse manure on grass land and then when the hay is harvested the sod and remaining manure are plowed under for the following crop. A study of root development in Chapter II. tells us that most of the manure used for cultivated crops should be broadcasted and thoroughly mixed with the soil. A small amount may be placed in the drill or hill and thoroughly mixed with the soil for crops that are planted in rows or furrows in order to give the young plant a rapid start. For the vegetable garden and flower garden and lawns, it is best to apply only manure that has been piled for some time and has been turned over several times so that it is well rotted and broken up. There may not be a single farm where it will be possible to carry out to the letter these principles applying to the treatment and application of barn manures. This is because climate, crops and conditions vary in different parts of the country and on different farms. Therefore we should study carefully our conditions and the principles and make our practice so combine the two as to produce the best and most economical results under the circumstances. If we can get manure out in the winter it will very much lessen the rush of spring work. In some parts of the country on account of deep snows, heavy rainfall and hilly fields, it is not advisable to apply manure in the winter. This will necessitate storing the manure. If conditions are such that we can get the manure on to the land as soon as it is made, it should be applied to land on which a crop is growing or land which is soon to be planted. If land is not intended for an immediate crop, put a cover crop on it. COMPOSTS Composts are collections of farm trash or rubbish, as leaves, potato tops, weeds, road and ditch scrapings, fish, slaughter-house refuse, etc., mixed in piles with lime, barn manure, woods-earth, swamp muck, peat and soil. The object of composting these materials is to hasten their decay and render available the plant food in them. There are certain disadvantages in composting, namely: Expense of handling and carting on account of bulk. Low composition. Loss of organic matter by fermentation. Compost heaps serve as homes for weed seeds, insects and plant diseases. Nevertheless, all waste organic matter on the farm should be saved and made use of as manure. These materials when not too coarse may be spread on the surface of the soil and plowed under; they should never be burned unless too coarse and woody or foul with weed seeds, insects and disease. [Illustration: FIG. 81.--SOY BEANS IN YOUNG ORCHARD.] [Illustration: FIG. 82.--A YOUNG ALFALFA PLANT JUST COMING INTO FLOWER.] CHAPTER XX FARM MANURES--CONCLUDED GREEN-CROP MANURES Green-crop manures are crops grown and plowed under for the purpose of improving the fertility of the soil. The main object of turning these crops under is to furnish the soil with humus. Any crop may be used for this purpose. By growing any of the class of crops called Legumes we may add to the soil not only humus but also nitrogen. Cowpeas, beans, clover, vetch and plants having foliage, flowers, seed pods and seeds like them are called Legumes. Most of the farm plants take their nitrogen from the soil. This nitrogen is taken in the form of nitric acid and nitrogen salts dissolved in soil water. The legumes, however, are able to use the free nitrogen which forms four-fifths of the atmosphere. This they do not of their own power but through the aid of very minute plants called bacteria or nitrogen-fixing germs. These germs are so small that they cannot be seen without the use of a powerful microscope. It would take ten thousand average sized bacteria placed side by side to measure one inch. These little germs make their homes in the roots of the legumes, causing the root to enlarge at certain points and form tubercles or nodules (Figs. 34 and 35). Carefully dig up a root of clover, cowpea, soy bean or other legume and wash the soil from it. You will find numbers of the little tubercles or nodules. On the clover they will be about the size of a pin head or a little larger. On the soy bean they will be nearly as large as the beans. These nodules are filled with colonies or families of bacteria which take the free nitrogen from the air which penetrates the soil and give it over to the plant in return for house rent and starch or other food they may have taken from the plant. In an experiment at Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, in 1896, clover seeds were sown August 1st, and the plants were dug November 4th, three months and four days after the seeds were sown. The clovers were then weighed and tested and the following results were obtained: ----------------+---------------------------------------------- | NITROGEN IN AN ACRE OF CLOVERS. +---------------+----------------+------------- | Lbs. in tops. | Lbs. in roots. | Lbs., total. ----------------+---------------+----------------+------------- Crimson Clover | 125.28 | 30.66 | 155.94 Mammoth Clover | 67.57 | 78.39 | 145.96 Red Clover | 63.11 | 40.25 | 103.36 ----------------+---------------+----------------+------------- A large part of the nitrogen found in these plants was undoubtedly taken by the roots from the soil air. Besides adding humus and nitrogen to the soil the legumes, being mostly deep-rooted plants, are able to take from the subsoil food which is out of reach of other plants. This food is distributed throughout the plant and when the plant is plowed under the food is deposited in the upper soil for the use of shallow-rooted plants. BENEFITS The benefits derived from green crop manuring then are as follows: We add to the soil organic matter or humus which is so helpful in bringing about the conditions necessary for root growth. By using the legumes for our green manure crops we may supply the soil with nitrogen taken from the air. We return to the surface soil not only the plant food taken from it but also plant food brought from the subsoil by the roots of the green manure plants. CHARACTER OF BEST PLANTS FOR GREEN CROP MANURING The plants best adapted to green crop manuring are deep-rooted, heavy-foliaged plants. Of these the legumes are by far the best, as they collect the free nitrogen from the air which other plants cannot do. This enables the farmer to grow nitrogen which is very expensive to buy. THE TIME FOR GROWING GREEN MANURE CROPS Green manure crops may be grown at any time that the soil is not occupied by other crops, provided other conditions are suitable. Land which is used for spring and summer crops often lies bare and idle during fall and winter. A hardy green manure crop planted after the summer crop is harvested will make considerable growth during the fall and early spring, and this can be plowed under for the use of the following summer crops. If there is a long interval of time during spring or summer when the land is bare, that is a good time for a green manure crop. Green manure crops are often planted between the rows of other crops such as corn or cotton at the last working of the crop for the benefit of the crop which is to follow. It is advisable to arrange for a green manure crop at least once in three or four years. LEGUMINOUS GREEN MANURE CROPS _Cowpea_. (Field pea, stock pea, black pea, black-eyed pea, clay pea, etc.) (Fig. 79.) The cowpea is perhaps the most important leguminous plant grown for soil improvement in the South. It will grow anywhere south of the Ohio River and can be grown with fair success in many localities farther north. It is a tender annual, that is, it is killed by frost and makes its entire growth from seed to seed in a single season. It should therefore be planted only during the spring and summer. This crop not only has power like the other legumes to take nitrogen from the air, but it is also a strong feeder, that is, it can feed upon mineral plant food in the soil that other plants are unable to make use of. For this reason it will grow on some of the poorest soils, and is a good plant with which to begin the improvement of very poor land. It is a deep-rooted plant. On the farm of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute cowpea roots have been traced to the depth of sixty-one inches. Cowpeas will grow on almost any land that is not too wet. From one and one-half to three bushels of seed are used per acre. These are sown broadcast and harrowed in or are planted in drills or furrows and cultivated a few times. Aside from its value as a green manure crop the cowpea is useful as food for man and the farm animals. The green pods are used as string beans or snaps. The ripened seeds are used as a food and the vines make good fodder for the farm animals. "Experiments at the Louisiana Experiment Station show that one acre of cowpeas yielding 3,970.38 pounds of organic matter, turned under, gave to the soil 64.95 pounds of nitrogen, 20.39 pounds of phosphoric acid and 110.56 pounds of potash."--Farmer's Bulletin, 16 U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. "It is now grown in all the States south of the Ohio River, and in 1899 there were planted nearly 800,000 acres to the crop. Basing our estimate on the amount of nitrogen stored in the soil by this crop, it is fair to say that fully fifteen million pounds of this valuable substance were collected and retained as a result of the planting of the cowpea alone. This at fifteen cents per pound (the market price of nitrogen) would be worth something more than $2,000,000 for nitrogen alone."--Year Book of the Department of Agriculture, 1902. _The Clovers._--These are the most extensively grown plants for green manure purposes in the United States. They are deep-rooted, and are able to use mineral food that is too tough for other plants. They furnish large crops of hay or green forage and a good aftermath and sod to turn under as green manure, or the entire crop may be plowed under. _Red Clover_ is the most widely planted (Fig. 80). It is a perennial plant and grows from the most northern States to the northern border of the Gulf States. It grows best on the loams and heavier soils well supplied with water, but not wet. It is sown broadcast at the rate of from ten to twenty pounds of seed per acre. In the North it is generally sown in the spring on fields of winter grain. In the South, September and October are recommended as the proper sowing times. It is the custom to let it grow two years, cutting it for hay and seed, and then to turn the aftermath and sod under. _Mammoth Red Clover_, also called sapling clover and pea-vine clover, closely resembles the red clover, but is ranker in growth and matures two or three weeks later. It is better adapted to wet land than the red clover. _Crimson Clover_, also called German clover and Italian clover, is a valuable green manure crop in the central and southern States east of the Mississippi. It is a hardy annual in that section and is generally sown from the last of July to the middle of October, either by itself or with cultivated crops at their last working. Fifteen and twenty pounds of seed are used to the acre. It makes a good growth during the fall and early winter and is in blossom and ready to cut or plow under in April or May. It grows at a season when the cowpea will not live. Crimson clover will grow on soils too light for other clovers. The _Soy Bean_, also called soja bean and Japanese pea, is another leguminous crop used for green manuring (Fig. 81). It was introduced into this country from Japan and in some localities is quite extensively planted. It grows more upright than the cowpea and produces a large amount of stem and foliage which may be used for fodder or turned under for green manure The seeds are used for food for man and beast. The soy bean is planted and cared for in the same manner as the cowpea. The _Canadian Field Pea_ is sometimes grown in the north as a green manure crop. _White Sweet Clover_, white melitot or Bokhara clover, grows as a weed from New England to the Gulf of Mexico. In the Gulf States it is regarded as a valuable forage and green manure plant. One or two pecks of seed per acre are sown in January or February. _Alfalfa_, or lucern, though grown more for a forage crop than for green manuring, should be mentioned here, for wherever grown and for whatever purpose, its effects on the soil are beneficial (Fig. 82). This plant requires a well prepared soil that is free from weeds. Twenty to twenty-five pounds of seed are planted per acre. In the north the seeding is generally done in the spring after danger of frost is past, as frost kills the young plants. In the South fall seeding is the custom in order to give the young plants a long start ahead of the spring weeds. One seeding if well cared for lasts for many years. Alfalfa is pastured or cut for hay, four to eight tons being the yield. Many fields run out in five or six years and the sod is plowed under. This plant sends its roots thirteen, sixteen, and even thirty feet into the soil after water and food, and when these roots decay they furnish the lower soil with organic matter and their passages serve as drains and ventilators in the soil. Alfalfa is grown extensively in the semi-arid regions of the country. NON-LEGUMINOUS GREEN MANURE PLANTS Among the non-leguminous green manure plants are rye, wheat, oats, mustard, rape, buckwheat. Of these the rye and buckwheat are most generally used, the rye being a winter crop and the other a warm weather plant. They are both strong feeders and can use tough plant food. They do not add new nitrogen to the soil though they furnish humus and prepare food for the weaker feeders which may follow them. CHAPTER XXI COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS THE RAW MATERIALS Next to the soil itself, the farmer's most important sources of plant food are the farm manures. But most farms do not produce these in sufficient quantities to keep up the plant food side of fertility. Therefore the farmer must resort to other sources of plant food to supplement the farm manures. There is a large class of materials called Commercial Fertilizers, which, if judiciously used, will aid in maintaining the fertility of the farm with economy. We learned in a previous chapter that the plant foods, nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash and lime, are apt to be found wanting in sufficient available quantities to supply the needs of profitable crops. We learned also that lime is useful in improving the texture of the soil and in making other plant foods available. Now the commercial fertilizers are used to supply the soil with these four substances and they may be classified according to the substance furnished as follows: Sources of nitrogen, " " phosphoric acid, " " potash, " " lime. SOURCES OF NITROGEN Nitrogen is the most expensive of plant foods to buy, therefore special attention should be given to producing it on the farm by means of barn manures and legumes plowed under. The principal commercial sources of nitrogen are: Nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, dried blood, tankage, dry ground fish, cotton-seed meal. _Nitrate of Soda_ or Chile saltpetre containing 15.5 per cent. of nitrogen, is found in large deposits in the rainless regions of western South America. In the crude state as it comes from the mine it contains common salt and earthy matter as impurities. To remove these impurities the crude nitrate is put into tanks of warm water. The nitrate dissolves and the salt and earthy matter settle to the bottom of the tank. The water with the nitrate in solution is then drawn off into other tanks from which the water is evaporated, leaving the nitrate, a coarse, dirty looking salt which is packed in three-hundred-pound bags and shipped. Plants that take their nitrogen from the soil take it in the form of nitrate. Hence nitrate of soda, which is very soluble in water, is immediately available to plants and is one of the most directly useful nitrogen fertilizers. It is used for quick results and should be applied only to land that has a crop or is to be immediately planted, otherwise it is liable to be lost by leaching. _Sulphate of Ammonia_ contains 20 per cent. of nitrogen. It is a white salt, finer and cleaner looking than the nitrate. It is a by-product of the gas works and coke ovens. The nitrogen in it is quite readily available. _Dried Blood_ contains 8 to 12 per cent. of nitrogen. This is blood collected in slaughter-houses and dried by steam or hot air. It decays rapidly in the soil and is a quick acting nitrogen fertilizer. _Tankage_ contains 4 to 8 per cent. of nitrogen and 7 to 20 per cent. of phosphoric acid. Slaughter-house waste, such as meat and bone scrap, are boiled or steamed to extract the fat. The settlings are dried and ground and sold as tankage. It is much slower in its action than dried blood and supplies the crop with both nitrogen and phosphoric acid. _Dried Fish Scrap_ is a by-product of the fish oil factories and the fish canning factories. It contains 7 to 9 per cent. of nitrogen and 6 to 8 per cent. of phosphoric acid. It undergoes nitrification readily and is a quick acting organic source of nitrogen and phosphoric acid. _Cotton-seed Meal_ contains 7 per cent. of nitrogen, about 2.5 phosphoric acid, and 1.5 per cent. of potash. It is a product of the cotton oil factories and is obtained by grinding the cotton seed cake from which the oil has been pressed. It is a most valuable source of nitrogen for the South. The nitrogen in the dried blood, tankage, fish scrap and cotton-seed meal, being organic nitrogen, must be changed by the process of nitrification to nitric acid or nitrate before it is available. They are therefore better materials to use for a more gradual and continuous feeding of crops than the nitrate of soda or sulphate of ammonia. Scrap leather, wool waste, horn and hoof shavings are rich in nitrogen but they decay so slowly that they make poor fertilizers. They are used by fertilizer manufacturers in making cheap mixed fertilizers. SOURCES OF PHOSPHORIC ACID The principal commercial sources of phosphoric acid are: Phosphate Rocks. Bones. Fish scrap. Phosphate slag. The _Phosphate Rocks_ are found in shallow mines in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, and also as pebbles in the river beds. They are the fossil remains of animals. After being dug from the mines the rock is kiln dried and then ground to a very fine powder called "floats" which is used on the soil. The phosphoric acid in the floats is insoluble and becomes available only as the phosphate decays. This is too slow for most plants so it is treated with oil of vitriol or sulphuric acid to make it available. The phosphoric acid in the ground rock is combined with lime, forming a phosphate of lime which is insoluble. When treated with the oil of vitriol or sulphuric acid, the sulphuric acid takes lime from the phosphate and forms sulphate of lime or gypsum. The phosphoric acid is left combined with the smallest possible amount of lime and is soluble in water. It is then called soluble or water soluble phosphoric acid. Now if this soluble form remains unused it begins to take on lime again and turns back toward its original insoluble form. After a time it gets to such a state that it is no longer soluble in water but is soluble in weak acids. It is then said to be reverted phosphoric acid. Reverted phosphoric acid is also called citrate soluble phosphoric acid, because in testing fertilizers the chemists use ammonium citrate to determine the amount of reverted phosphoric acid. This form still continues to take on lime and by and by gets back to the original insoluble form called insoluble phosphoric acid. The soluble phosphoric acid and reverted phosphoric acid are available to plant roots. The insoluble form is not. The rock phosphates contain from 26 to 35 per cent. of insoluble phosphoric acid. The acid phosphates or dissolved rock phosphates contain from 12 to 16 per cent. of available phosphoric acid and from 1 to 4 per cent. of insoluble. _Bone Fertilizers._ Bones have long been a valuable and favored source of phosphoric acid. In addition to phosphoric acid they contain some nitrogen which adds to their value. They are organic phosphates and are quite lasting in their effect on the soil as they decay slowly. The terms "Raw Bone," "Steamed Bone," "Ground Bone," "Bone Meal," "Bone Dust," "Bone Black," "Dissolved Bone," indicate the processes through which the bone has passed in preparation, or the condition of the material as put on the market and used on the soil. Ground bone, bone meal, bone dust, indicate the mechanical conditions of the bones. The bones are sometimes ground "raw" just as they come from the slaughter-house or kitchen, or they are sometimes first "steamed" to extract the fat for soap, and the nitrogenous matter for glue. _Raw Bone._ Analysis: Nitrogen, 2.5 to 4.5 per cent. Available phosphoric acid, 5 to 8 per cent. Insoluble phosphoric acid 15 to 17 per cent. _Steamed Bone_ contains 1.5 to 2.5 per cent. of nitrogen, 6 to 9 per cent. of available phosphoric acid and 16 to 20 per cent. of insoluble phosphoric acid. Steamed bone pulverizes much finer than raw bone and decays more rapidly in the soil because the fat has been extracted from it. _Dissolved Bone._ Ground bone is sometimes treated with sulphuric acid to render the phosphoric acid in it more available. It is then called dissolved bone and contains thirteen to fifteen per cent. of available phosphoric acid and two to three per cent. of nitrogen. _Dissolved Bone Black._ Bone charcoal is used for refining sugar. It is then turned over to the fertilizer manufacturers who sell it as "Bone Black" or treat it with sulphuric acid and then put it on the market as dissolved bone black. The bone black contains thirty to thirty-six per cent. of insoluble phosphoric acid. The dissolved bone black contains 15 to 17 per cent. of available phosphoric acid and 1 to 2 per cent. insoluble. "_Thomas Slag_," "_Phosphate Slag_," "_Odorless Phosphate_." Phosphorous is an impurity in certain iron ores. In the manufacture of Bessemer steel this is extracted by the use of lime which melts in the furnace, unites with the phosphorous and brings it away in the slag. This slag is ground to a fine powder and used as a fertilizer. It contains 11 to 23 per cent. of phosphoric acid, most of which is available. _Superphosphate._ The term superphosphate is applied to the phosphates that have been treated with sulphuric acid to make the phosphoric acid available. Dissolved bone, dissolved bone black, and the dissolved phosphate rocks are superphosphates. _Fish Scrap_, mentioned as a source of nitrogen, is also a valuable source of phosphoric acid, containing 6 to 8 per cent., which is quite readily available owing to the rapid decay of the scrap. SOURCES OF POTASH The chief sources of potash used for fertilizers are the potash salts from the potash mines at Stassfurt, Germany, where there is an immense deposit of rock salt and potash salts. The principal products of these mines used in this country are the crude salts: _Kainite_, containing 12 per cent. of potash. _Sylvinite_, containing 16 to 20 per cent. of potash, and the higher grade salts manufactured from the crude salts: _Muriate of Potash_, containing 50 per cent. potash. _High grade Sulphate of Potash_, containing 50 per cent. potash. _Low grade Sulphate of Potash_, containing 25 per cent. potash. _Wood Ashes_, if well kept and not allowed to get wet and leach, contain 4 to 9 per cent. of potash. _Cotton Hull Ashes_ contain 20 to 30 per cent, of potash and 7 to 9 per cent. of phosphoric acid. The potash in all these forms is soluble in water and equally available to plants. The crude salts, kainite and sylvinite, and the muriate contain chlorine and are not considered good for potatoes and tobacco as the chlorine lowers the quality of these products. In tobacco regions tobacco refuse is a valuable source of potash, the stems are about five per cent. potash. LIME _Lime_ is generally supplied to the soil in the form of quicklime made by burning lime stone or shells. Other forms are gypsum or land plaster, gas lime (a refuse from gas works) and marl. Most soils contain sufficient lime for the food requirements of most plants. Some soils, however, are deficient in lime and some crops, particularly the legumes, are benefitted by direct feeding with lime. Lime is valuable for its effect on the soil properties which constitute fertility. Physically lime acts on the texture of the soil making clay soils mealy and crumbly, and causing the lighter soils to adhere or stick together more closely. Chemically, lime decomposes minerals containing potash and other plant foods, thus rendering them available for the use of plants. It also aids the decay of organic matter and sweetens sour soils. Biologically lime aids the process of nitrification. The action of lime is greatest in its caustic or unslacked form. Too much or too frequent liming may injure the soil. It should be carefully tried in a small way, and its action noted, before using it extensively. A common way of using lime is to place twenty to forty bushels on an acre in heaps of three to five bushels, covering them with soil until the lime slacks to a fine powder. The lime is then spread and harrowed in. Lime tends to hasten the decay of humus. It should not be applied oftener than once in four or five years. _Gypsum_, a sulphate of lime, is similar to lime in its action on the soil. Its most important effect is the setting free of potash from its compounds. _Gas lime_ should be used with great care as it contains substances that are poisonous to plant roots. It is best to let it lie exposed to the weather several months before using. _Marl_ is simply soil containing an amount of lime varying from five to fifty per cent. It has value in the vicinity of marl beds but does not pay to haul very far. CHAPTER XXII COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS--CONTINUED MIXED FERTILIZERS _What they are._ There are a large number of business concerns in the country which buy the raw materials described in Chapter XXI, mix them in various proportions, and sell the product as mixed or manufactured fertilizers. If these mixtures contain the three important plant foods, nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, they are sometimes called "complete" manures or fertilizers. In some parts of the country all commercial fertilizers are called "guano." _Many brands._ These raw materials are mixed in many different proportions and many dealers have special brands for special crops. There are consequently large numbers of brands of fertilizers which vary in the amounts, proportions and availability of the plant foods they contain. For instance, in 1903, twenty-three fertilizer manufacturers offered for sale ninety-six different brands in the State of Rhode Island. In Missouri one hundred and ten brands, made by sixteen different manufacturers, were offered for sale. Eighty-three manufacturers placed six hundred and forty-four brands on the market in New York State during the same year. Of one hundred and twenty brands registered for sale in Vermont in the spring of 1904, there were seventeen mixtures for corn and thirty-four for potatoes. The result of this is more or less confusion on the part of the farmer in purchasing fertilizers, and with many a farmer it is a lottery as to whether or not he is buying what his crop or his soil needs. Some of the manufacturers are not above using poor, low grade, raw materials in making these mixtures. This means that the farmer should make himself familiar with the subject of fertilizers if he desires to use them intelligently and economically. _Safeguard for the farmer._ As a safeguard to the buyer of fertilizers the State laws require that every brand put on the market shall be registered and that every bag or package sold shall have stated on it an analysis showing the amounts of nitrogen, or its equivalent in ammonia, the soluble phosphoric acid, the reverted phosphoric acid, the insoluble phosphoric acid, and the potash. This registration is generally made at the State experiment station, and the director of the station is instructed to take samples of these brands and have them analyzed, and publish the results together with the analysis guaranteed by the maker. These analyses are published in bulletin form and should be in the hands of every farmer who makes a practice of using commercial fertilizers. The manufacturers of fertilizers comply with the law by printing on the bag or package the per cents of plant food in the fertilizers, and these statements in the great majority of cases agree favorably with the analyses of the experiment stations, but they do not in all cases state what materials were used to furnish the different kinds of plant food, and it is not always possible to find this out by analysis. _Low grade materials._ For instance in mixing a fertilizer one manufacturer may use dried blood to furnish nitrogen and another may use leather waste or horn shavings. The latter contains more nitrogen than the dried blood, but they are so tough and decay so slowly that they are of little benefit to a quick growing plant. _Inflating the guarantee._ Although the dealer states correctly the per cents of plant food in the fertilizer, he is quite frequently inclined to repeat this in a different form, and thus give the impression that the mixture contains more than it really does. The dealers also give the nitrogen as ammonia because it makes a larger showing. Phosphoric acid is often stated as "bone phosphate" because in this the amount appears to be greater. For example, an analysis taken from a fertilizer catalogue reads as follows: Ammonia 2 to 3 per cent. Available Phosphoric Acid 8 to 10 " Total Phosphoric Acid 11 to 14 " Total Bone Phosphate 23 to 25 " Actual Potash 10 to 12 " Sulphate of Potash 18 to 20 " A better statement would be as follows: Nitrogen 1.65 per cent. Available Phosphoric Acid 8 " Total Phosphoric Acid (furnished in Bone Phosphate) 11 " Potash (furnished in Sulphate of Potash) 10 " Ammonia is reduced to terms of nitrogen by multiplying by .824. All bone phosphate is forty-six per cent. phosphoric acid. When bone phosphate is given instead of phosphoric acid it simply makes the mixture appear to have more in it, and when both phosphoric acid and bone phosphate are stated one is merely a repetition of the other. The same is true of the statements, potash and sulphate of potash, one is a repetition of the other only a different form. VALUATION The experiment stations not only publish comparative analyses of the registered fertilizers but they also compute the market values of the plant food contained in them and compare these valuations with the selling price of the fertilizers. They also furnish a list of trade values of the plant foods in raw materials for the convenience of fertilizer buyers in testing the values of the brands offered them on the markets. In the following list are given the "trade values agreed upon by the Experiment Stations of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Vermont, after a careful study of prices ruling in the larger markets of the southern New England and Middle States." Trade values of fertilizing ingredients in raw materials and chemicals for 1904: Cents per lb. Nitrogen in Nitrates 16 Nitrogen in Ammonia Salts 17½ Organic Nitrogen in dry and fine ground fish, blood, and meat, and in mixed fertilizers 17½ Organic Nitrogen in fine ground bone and tankage 17 Organic Nitrogen in coarse bone and tankage 12½ Phosphoric Acid soluble in water 4½ Phosphoric Acid soluble in ammonium citrate 4 Phosphoric Acid in fine ground bone and tankage 4 Phosphoric Acid in coarse bone and tankage 3 Phosphoric Acid (insoluble in water and in ammonium citrate) in mixed fertilizer 2 Potash as high-grade sulphate and in mixtures free from muriate (chloride) 5 Potash as muriate 4¼ For example, in calculating the commercial value of the plant food in a fertilizer we will take the formula mentioned on page 205, namely: Ammonia 2 to 3 per cent. Available Phosphoric Acid 8 to 10 " Total Phosphoric Acid 11 to 14 " Total Bone Phosphate 23 to 25 " Actual Potash 10 to 12 " Sulphate of Potash 18 to 20 " This fertilizer is evidently a mixture of bone meal and sulphate of potash and the plant food contained in it is as follows: Nitrogen 1.65 per cent. Available Phosphoric Acid 8 " Insoluble Phosphoric Acid 3 " Potash 10 " One hundred pounds of the mixture would contain: Pounds. Value per 100 lbs. Nitrogen 1.64 value at 17½¢ .29 Available Phosphoric Acid 8 " " 4¢ .32 Insoluble Phosphoric Acid 3 " " 2¢ .06 Potash 10 " " 5¢ .50 ----- Total $1.17 In one ton the whole value would be twenty times this or $23.40. Add to this $8, which is about the average charge for mixing, bagging, shipping, selling and profit, and we find that $32 is probably the lowest figure at which this fertilizer could be purchased on the markets, and very likely the price would be higher as we have taken the lowest guaranteed per cent. of plant food for our basis of calculation. Fertilizers are generally mixed and sold to the farmer on the ton basis. LOW GRADE MIXTURES Most dealers, to meet a certain demand, furnish mixtures ranging from $15 to $25 per ton. These mixtures are necessarily low grade and are more expensive than the higher priced high grade mixtures. For example: A certain potato fertilizer on the market, which we will call mixture A, has the following guaranteed analysis: Ammonia 7 to 8 per cent. Available Phosphoric Acid 6 to 7 " Actual Potash 5 to 6 " A ton of this would contain: Pounds. Nitrogen 115.4 value at 17½¢ $20.19 Available Phosphoric Acid 120 " " 4¢ 4.80 Potash 100 " " 5¢ 5.00 ----- ------ Totals 335.4 $29.99 Add to this the average charge for mixing, bagging, selling, profit, etc., $8, and the cost will be $37.99. The selling price of this fertilizer would probably be not less than $40. Now suppose the farmer thinks this a high priced and expensive fertilizer and looks about for something cheaper. He finds a low grade potato fertilizer, which we will call mixture B, that has the following guarantee: Ammonia 3½ to 4 per cent. Available Phosphoric Acid 3 to 3½ " Actual Potash 2½ to 3 " Just one-half the guarantee of the high grade mixture A. A ton of this contains: Pounds. Nitrogen 57.7 value at 17½¢ $10.10 Available Phosphoric Acid 60 " " 4¢ 2.40 Potash 50 " " 5¢ 2.50 ----- ------ Totals 167.7 $15.00 Add average charge for mixing, etc. 8.00 ------ $23.00 The selling price of this would very likely be not less than $25. This seems at first sight to be cheaper and more reasonable. But let us see. In a ton of mixture A he gets 335.4 pounds of plant food for $40, or at an average cost of twelve cents per pound, while in a ton of mixture B he gets 167.7 pounds of plant food for $25, or at an average cost of fifteen cents per pound. To put it another way, in a ton of the high grade mixture A, he gets 335.4 pounds of plant food for $40. To get the same amount of plant food, 335.4 pounds, in the low grade mixture, B, it will be necessary to buy two tons at a cost of $50. A low grade fertilizer is always expensive even if the plant food is furnished by high grade materials. BUY ON THE PLANT FOOD BASIS The farmer generally buys his fertilizer on the ton basis. A better method is to buy just as the fertilizer manufacturers buy the raw materials they use for mixing, namely, on the basis of actual plant food in the fertilizer. The dealers have what they call the "unit basis," a "unit" meaning one per cent. of a ton or twenty pounds of plant food. A ton of nitrate of soda, for instance, contains 310 pounds or 15½ units of nitrogen, which at $3.20 cents per unit would cost $49. Buy your mixture of a reliable firm, find out the actual amounts of the plant foods in the mixture and pay a fair market price for them. CHAPTER XXIII COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS--CONCLUDED THE HOME MIXING OF FERTILIZERS When a considerable amount of fertilizer is used a better plan than buying mixed fertilizer is to buy the raw materials and mix them yourself. For example, a farmer is about to plant five acres of cabbages for the market. He finds that a certain successful cabbage grower recommends the use of fifty pounds nitrogen, fifty pounds phosphoric acid and seventy pounds potash per acre. For the five acres this will mean 250 pounds nitrogen, 250 pounds phosphoric acid and 350 pounds potash. To furnish the nitrogen he can buy 1,613 pounds of nitrate of soda or 2,500 pounds dried blood or 1,250 pounds sulphate of ammonia, or a part of each. To furnish the phosphoric acid he can buy 1,786 pounds acid phosphate. Seven hundred pounds of either sulphate or muriate of potash will furnish the potash. These materials can be easily mixed by spreading in alternate layers on a smooth floor and then shovelling over the entire mass several times. The mixture can be further improved by passing it through a sand or coal screen or sieve. By following this method of buying the raw materials and mixing them on the farm, the farmer can reduce his fertilizer bill by quite a considerable amount and at the same time can obtain just the kinds and proper amounts of plant foods needed by his crops. KIND AND AMOUNT TO BUY The farmer should make the best use of farm manures and through tillage to render plant food available for his crops before turning to commercial fertilizer for additional plant food. If he grows leguminous crops for green manuring, for feeding stock or for cover crops, he can in many cases secure, chiefly through them, sufficient high priced nitrogen for the needs of his crops, and it is necessary only occasionally to purchase moderate amounts of phosphoric acid, potash and lime. For special farming and special crops it may be necessary to use the commercial fertilizer more freely. It is impossible to say here just what amounts or what kinds of fertilizer should be purchased, because no two farms are exactly alike as to soil, methods of cropping or methods of tillage. There are certain factors, however, which will serve as a general guide and which should be considered in determining the kind and amount of fertilizer to buy. These factors are: The crop. The soil. The system of farming. THE CROP Crop roots differ in their powers of feeding, or their powers of securing plant foods. Some roots can use very tough plant foods, while others require it in the most available form. Some roots secure nitrogen from the air. The cowpea roots, for example, can take nitrogen from the air and they can use such tough phosphoric acid and potash that it seldom pays to feed them directly with fertilizers. A bale per acre crop of cotton requires for the building of roots, stems, leaves, bolls, lint and seed: 103 pounds of Nitrogen. 41 " " Phosphoric Acid. 65 " " Potash. and yet experiment and experience have proved that the best fertilizer for such a crop contains the following amounts of plant food: Nitrogen 20 pounds Phosphoric Acid 70 " Potash 20 " This means that cotton roots are fairly strong feeders of nitrogen and potash, but are weak on the phosphoric acid side. The small grains, wheat, oats, barley and rye, can use tough phosphoric acid and potash, but are weak on nitrogen, and as they make the greater part of their growth in the cool spring before nitrification is rapid, they are benefitted by the application of nitrogen, particularly in the form of nitrate, which is quickly available. Clover, peas, beans, etc., have the power of drawing nitrogen from the air, but draw from the soil lime, phosphoric acid and potash. Hence the phosphates, potash manures and lime are desirable for these crops. Root and tuber crops are unable to use the insoluble mineral elements in the soil, hence they require application of all the important plant foods in readily available form. Nitrogen is especially beneficial to beets. Turnips are benefitted by liberal applications of soluble phosphoric acid. White and sweet potatoes require an abundance of potash. If we are growing tender, succulent market garden crops, we need nitrogenous manures, which increase the growth of stem and foliage. Fruit trees are slow growing plants and do not need quick acting fertilizers. The small fruits, being more rapid in growth, require more of the soluble materials. A dark, healthy green foliage indicates a good supply of nitrogen, while a pale yellowish green may indicate a need of nitrogen. A well developed head of grain, seed pod or fruit indicates liberal supplies of phosphoric acid and potash. THE SOIL Soils that are poor in humus are generally in need of nitrogen. Heavy soils are generally supplied with potash but lack phosphoric acid. Sandy soils are apt to be poor in potash and nitrogen. SYSTEM OF FARMING A system of general or diversified farming embracing crop products and stock raising, requires much less artificial manuring than does a system which raises special crops or quick growing crops in rapid succession, as in the case of truck farming or market gardening. TESTING THE SOIL Every farmer should be more or less of an investigator and experimenter. The factors mentioned previously as indicating the presence or absence of sufficient quantities of certain plant foods serve as a general guide, but are not absolute. The best method of determining what plant foods are lacking in the soil is to carry on some simple experiments. The following plan for soil testing with plant foods is suggestive: To test the soil for a possible need of the single plant foods, a series of five plots may be laid off. These plots should be long and narrow and may be one-twentieth, one-sixteenth, one-tenth, one eighth acre or larger. A plot one rod wide and eight rods long will contain one-twentieth acre. The width of the plot may be adjusted to accommodate a certain number of rows of crop and the length made proper to include an even fraction of an acre. A strip three or four feet in width should be left between each two plots. These strips are to be left unfertilized and are for the purpose of preventing one plot being affected by the plant food of another. The plots are all plowed, planted and cared for alike, the only difference in treatment being in the application of plant food. If the plots are one-twentieth acre in size, plant foods may be applied as follows. +----------------------------+ PLOT 1. | Nitrate of Soda 8 lbs. | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ PLOT 2. | Acid Phosphate 16 lbs. | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ PLOT 3. | Nothing. | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ PLOT 4. | Muriate of Potash 8 lbs. | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ PLOT 5. | Lime 1 bushel. | +----------------------------+ Plot 3 is a check plot for comparison. The measuring of the plots, weighing and application of the fertilizers, planting and care of the crops, weighing and measuring at harvest, should be carefully and accurately done. A number of additional plots may be added if desired to test the effect of plant foods in combination. For instance: +----------------------------+ PLOT 6. | Nitrate of Soda 8 lbs. | | Acid Phosphate 16 " | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ PLOT 7. | Nitrate of Soda 8 lbs. | | Muriate of Potash 8 " | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ PLOT 8. | Nothing. | | | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ PLOT 9. | Muriate of Potash 8 lbs. | | Acid Phosphate 16 " | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ PLOT 10. | Nitrate of Soda 8 lbs. | | Acid Phosphate 16 " | | Muriate of Potash 8 " | +----------------------------+ If the amount of fertilizer is too small to distribute evenly over the plot, mix it thoroughly with a few quarts of dry earth or sand to give it more bulk and then apply it. In the use of fertilizers it should always be remembered that small crops are not always due to lack of plant food, but may be caused by an absence of the other conditions necessary for root growth and development. The soil may not be sufficiently moist to properly supply the plants with water. Too much water may check ventilation. Poor tillage may check root development. Unless the physical conditions are right the possible effects of additional plant food in the form of fertilizers are greatly diminished. The farmer who gets the largest return from fertilizers is the one who gives greatest attention to the physical properties of the soil. He makes use of organic matter and is very thorough in his methods of tillage. Every farmer should apply to his State Experiment Station for bulletins on the subject of fertilizers. CHAPTER XXIV THE ROTATION OF CROPS SYSTEMS OF CROPPING There are two methods or systems of cropping the soil: The One Crop System, or the continuous cropping of the soil year after year with one kind of crop. The Rotation of Crops or the selection of a given number of different crops and growing them in regular order. The purpose of this chapter is to inquire into the effect of these two systems of cropping: On the soil conditions necessary for the best growth and development of the crops. On the market value of the crops. On the increase of or the protection from injurious diseases and insects. On the distribution of labor throughout the year. On the caring for farm stock. On the providing for home supplies. This inquiry and the conclusion will be based on the following facts learned in the foregoing chapters. Plant roots need for their growth and development (see Chapter II): A mellow yet firm soil. A moist soil. A ventilated soil. A warm soil. A soil supplied with plant food. Decaying organic matter or humus is one of the most important ingredients of our soils. Because: It greatly influences soil texture and therefore the conditions necessary for root growth. Its presence or absence greatly influences the attitude of soils toward water, the most important factor in plant growth. Its presence helps light, sandy soils to hold more water and to better pump water from below, while it helps close, heavy soils to better take in the water which falls on their surface. Its absence causes an opposite state of affairs. The presence of organic matter checks excessive ventilation in too open, sandy soil by filling the pores, and improves poor ventilation in heavy clay soils by making them more open. Humus, on account of its color, influences the heat absorbing powers of soils. The organic matter is constantly undergoing more or less rapid decay unless the soil be perfectly dry or frozen solid. Stirring and cultivating the soil hasten this decay. As the organic matter decays it adds available plant food to the soil, particularly nitrogen. As it decays, it produces carbonic acid and other acids which are able to dissolve mineral plant food not soluble in pure water and thus render it available to plants. Plants, although they require the same elements of plant food, take them in different amounts and different proportions. Plants differ in the extent and depth of root growth and therefore take food from different parts of the soil. Some are surface feeders while others feed on the deeper soil. Plants differ in their power to take plant food from the soil; some are weak feeders, and can use only the most available food; others are strong feeders, and can use tougher plant food. Plants vary in the amount of heat they require to carry on their growth and development. THE ONE CROP SYSTEM We are now ready for the question. What effect has the continuous cultivation, year after year, of the same kind of crop on the soil conditions necessary to the best growth and development of that crop or any other crop? Suppose we take cotton for example. How does cotton growing affect soil humus? During the cultivation of cotton, the organic matter or humus of the soil decays in greater quantities than are added by the stalks and leaves of the crop. Therefore, cotton is a humus wasting crop, and the continuous cultivation of this crop tends to exhaust the supply of organic matter in the soil. How does cotton growing affect soil texture? Cotton growing wastes soil humus and therefore injures soil texture by making the lighter soils more loose and open, and the heavier soils more dense and compact. How does cotton growing affect soil water? By wasting humus cotton growing injures soil texture and so weakens the water holding and water pumping power of light soils and weakens the water absorbing power of heavy soils. Therefore the continuous cultivation of cotton weakens the power of the soil over water, that most important factor in crop growth. How does cotton growing affect soil ventilation? Continuous cotton culture, by wasting humus, injures texture and therefore injures soil ventilation, causing too much ventilation in the lighter soils and too little in heavier soils. How does cotton culture affect plant food in the soil? Continuous cotton growing wastes plant food: Because it wastes organic matter which contains valuable plant food, particularly nitrogen. Because by wasting organic matter it increases the leaching of the lighter soils and the surface washing of the heavier soils. Because its roots occupy largely the upper soil and do not make use of much food from the lower soil. Because it grows only during the warm part of the year and there is no crop on the land to check loss of plant food from leaching and surface wash during the winter. Because it is a weak feeder of phosphoric acid, and can use only that which is in the most available form. In applying fertilizer to cotton it is necessary for best results to apply at least twice as much phosphoric acid as the crop can use, because it can use only that which is in the most available form and the remainder is left in the soil unused. Continuous cotton culture then has an injurious effect on all the important soil conditions necessary to its best growth and development, and the result is a diminishing yield or an increasing cost in maintaining fertility by the use of fertilizer. How does continuous cotton culture affect the economics of the farm? The injury to the soil conditions necessary to root growth diminishes the yield and therefore increases the cost of production. The poor soil conditions tend not only to diminish yield but also to diminish the quality of the crop, which tends to lower the price received for the cotton. Keeping the land constantly in cotton tends to increase the insect enemies and the diseases of the crop. The continuous growing of cotton does not permit the constant employment of one set of laborers throughout the year. The continuous growing of cotton generally means that most of the farm goes into cotton. A small patch of corn is planted for the stock, which are apt to suffer from a lack of variety in food. The same is true with reference to home supplies. Very few vegetables are grown for the table and there is little milk, butter or eggs for home use or exchange for groceries or drygoods at the store. Thus we see that the continuous growing of cotton on the soil, year after year, has a bad effect on conditions necessary to its best growth and development and also on the economics of the farm. These facts are true to a greater or less degree in the case of nearly all of the farm crops. The grain crops are often considered as humus makers because of the stubble turned under, but Professor Snyder, of Minnesota, found that five years' continuous culture of wheat resulted in an annual loss of 171 pounds of nitrogen per acre, of which only 24.5 was taken by the crop, the remaining 146.5 pounds were lost through a waste of organic matter. THE ROTATION OF CROPS Now, suppose that instead of growing cotton on the same soil year after year, we select four crops--cotton, corn, oats and cowpea--and grow them in regular order, a rotation practiced in some parts of the South. We will divide the farm into three fields and number them 1, 2 and 3, and will plant these crops as indicated by the following diagrams: [Illustration: Plan of farm.] Plan for planting. FIELD 1. FIELD 2. FIELD 3. +----------------+----------------+----------------+ | | OATS, | CORN, | 1st year | | harvested in | followed by | or 1905. | COTTON | spring, | oats, | | | followed by | planted in | | | COWPEAS. | fall. | +----------------+----------------+----------------+ | CORN, | | OATS, | 2d year | followed by | | harvested in | or 1906. | oats, | COTTON. | spring, | | planted in | | followed by | | fall. | | COWPEAS. | +----------------+----------------+----------------+ | OATS, | CORN, | | 3d year | harvested in | followed by | | or 1907. | spring, | oats, | COTTON. | | followed by | planted in | | | COWPEAS. | fall. | | +----------------+----------------+----------------+ Each of these crops occupies one-third of the farm each year, and yet the crop on each field changes each year so that no one kind of crop is grown on any field oftener than once in three years. The cotton is grown for market, the corn partly to sell, partly to feed, the oats to feed and the cowpeas to plow under. All cotton and corn refuse is plowed under. What effect will such a system have on the conditions necessary for plant growth? Suppose we follow the crops on Field 1. Cotton, corn, and oats are humus wasting crops but the pea crop which is grown the third year is plowed under, and largely, if not entirely, remedies the loss by furnishing a new supply of organic matter, and the ill effects which we noticed would follow the loss of organic matter due to the continuous growing of cotton are avoided, soil texture is preserved, soil ventilation is not injured, and the power of the soil over water is preserved. What is the effect on plant food in the soil? Before answering this question let us see what amounts of plant foods these crops take out of the soil. We will assume that the soil is a good loam at the start and will produce: One bale of five hundred pounds of lint cotton per acre, sixty bushels shelled corn per acre, thirty bushels oats per acre, or two tons cowpea hay per acre. Such a yield of crop would take from the soil the following amounts of plant food per acre: ----------------------+-----------+------------+------------ | | Phosphoric | | Nitrogen, | Acid, | Potash, | pounds. | pounds. | pounds. ----------------------+-----------+------------+--------- Cotton (whole plant) | 103 | 41 | 65 Corn (whole plant) | 84 | 26 | 61 Oats (whole plant) | 32 | 13 | 27 Cowpea | 78 | 23 | 66 ----------------------+-----------+------------+--------- Now suppose we sell the lint of the cotton, keeping all the rest of the plant, including the seed, on the farm and turning it back into the soil. Of the corn suppose we sell one-half the grain and keep the other half and the fodder for use on the farm. Suppose the oats be made into oat hay and be fed on the farm and the cowpeas be turned under. Assuming that the cowpeas take half their nitrogen from the air. This will mean that in the course of three years we take out of the soil of each acre in the crops: Nitrogen. Phosphoric Acid. Potash. 258 pounds. 103 pounds. 219 pounds. but we return to the soil in crop refuse and manure from the stock: Nitrogen. Phosphoric Acid. Potash. 256 pounds. 87 pounds. 197 pounds. This assumes that we have taken from the farm in products sold: ------------------+-----------+------------+------------+ | Nitrogen. | Phosphoric | Potash. | | | Acid. | | ------------------|-----------|------------|------------| Cotton Lint | 2 | 1 | 2 | Corn | 28 | 12 | 10 | Animal products | 11 | 3 | 10 | +-----------+------------+------------+ Totals | 41 | 16 | 22 | ------------------+-----------+------------+------------+ The plant food charged to animal products is twenty per cent. of that in the grain and forage fed to the stock. At the end of the three years the plant food account will balance up with: Nitrogen a gain of 2 pounds. Phosphoric Acid a loss of 16 " Potash a loss of 22 " This result is of course approximate. There will be some loss of nitrogen through leaching and denitrification. Some of the potash and phosphoric acid will be converted into unavailable forms. This can be made good by applying to the cotton a fertilizer containing twenty pounds of nitrogen, sixty pounds of phosphoric acid and twenty pounds of potash. Additional nitrogen and organic matter can be grown to turn under by planting crimson clover in the cotton at the last working for a winter cover crop to be turned under for the corn, and by planting cowpeas or soy beans between the rows of corn. If this is done it may not be necessary to add any nitrogen in the fertilizer, letting that supply only phosphoric acid and potash. If commercial fertilizer is used on the cotton, it would be a good plan to apply the manure from the stock to the corn. To follow our crop on Field 1 through the three years we will have, first, cotton drawing large amounts of plant food from the soil and diminishing the humus of the soil. Growing a winter crop of crimson clover, turning back all the cotton refuse except the lint and oil, and applying the barn manure will furnish ample plant food for the corn and replenish the organic matter. The corn is a rather stronger feeder of phosphoric acid than cotton and will be able to get sufficient from that left by the cotton. The oats will be able to get a full ration after the corn, and the cowpeas will readily take care of themselves on the score of plant food and will put the soil in fine condition for cotton again. The peas may be left on the ground to turn under in the spring at cotton planting time, or they may be plowed under in the early fall and a crimson clover or vetch cover crop planted, which will be plowed under for the cotton. These same facts will be true of each of the three fields. The humus and, therefore, texture will be taken care of; ventilation, soil temperature and plant food will be controlled to advantage. Each of the crops will be represented on the farm each year and the yields of each crop will be better than if grown continuously alone. The quality and therefore the market value will be greater. Insects and disease will be easier kept in control, and stock will be more economically furnished with a variety of foods. BENEFITS DERIVED FROM ROTATION OF CROPS Rotation of crops economizes the natural plant food of the soil and also that which is applied in the form of manure and fertilizer. This is because: Crops take food from the soil in different amounts and different proportions. Crops differ in their feeding powers. Crops differ in the extent and depth to which they send their roots into the soil in search of food and water. Crops differ in the time of year at which they make their best growths. Rotation helps to maintain or improve the texture of the soil because the amount of humus in the soil is maintained or increased by turning under green manure and cover crops which should occur in every well-planned rotation. Rotation helps to maintain or increase the plant food in the surface soil. When crops like cowpeas or clover which take mineral food from the subsoil and nitrogen from the air, are plowed under, they give up the plant food in their leaves, stems and upper roots to the surface soil, and thus help to maintain or increase fertility. Rotation tends to protect crops from injurious insects and diseases. If one kind of crop is grown continuously on one piece of land the soil becomes infested with the insects and diseases which injure that particular crop. If the crop is changed, the insects and diseases find difficulty in adapting themselves to the change and consequently diminish in numbers. Rotation helps to keep the soil free from weeds. "If the same kind of crop were grown year after year on the same field, the weeds which grow most readily along with that crop would soon take possession of the soil." For example, chick weed, dock, thistle, weeds peculiar to grain and grain crops tend to increase if the land is long occupied by these crops. Rotation helps the farmer to make a more even distribution of labor throughout the year. This is because crops differ as to the time of year at which they are planted and harvested. Rotation of crops enables the farmer to provide for his stock more economically. Live stock fares better on a variety of food, which is more cheaply secured by a system of rotation than otherwise. THE TYPICAL ROTATION A typical rotation for general farming should contain at least: One money crop which is necessarily an exhaustive crop. One manurial crop which is a soil enricher. One feeding crop which diminishes fertility only a little. One cleansing crop, a hoed or cultivated crop. CONDITIONS WHICH MODIFY THE ROTATION There are certain conditions which tend to modify the rotation or to influence the farmer in his choice of crops. They are as follows: First of all the climate will set a limit on the number and varieties of crops from which a choice can be made for a given locality. The kind of farming which he chooses to carry on, whether stock raising, grain farming, truck farming, or a combination of two or more of these, or others. Kind of soil. Certain soils are best adapted to particular crops. For example, heavy soils are best suited to wheat, grass, clover, cabbages, etc. Light, sandy soils to early truck, certain grades of tobacco, etc. The demand for crops and their market value. Facilities for getting crops to market, good or bad country roads, railroads and water transportation. The state of the land with respect to weeds, insect pests and plant diseases. GENERAL RULES A few general rules may be made use of in arranging the order of the crops in the rotation though they cannot always be strictly followed. Crops that require the elements of plant food in the same proportion should not follow each other. Deep-rooted crops should alternate with shallow-rooted crops. Humus makers should alternate with humus wasters. Every well arranged rotation should have at least one crop grown for its manurial effect on the soil, as a crop of cowpeas, or one of clover, to be turned under. The objection often made to this last rule is that, aside from the increase in fertility, there is no direct return for the time, labor and seed, and the land brings no crop for a year. It is not necessary to use the entire crop for green manuring--a part of it may be used for hay or for pasture with little loss of the manurial value of the crop, provided the manure from that part of the crop taken off is returned and the part of the crop not removed is turned under. LENGTH OF THE ROTATION The length of the rotation may vary from a two-course or two crop rotation to one of several courses. Crimson clover may be alternated with corn, both crops being grown within a year. A three-course rotation, popular in some parts of the country, is wheat, clover, and potatoes; potatoes being the money crop and cleansing crop, wheat a secondary money crop or feeding crop, and clover the manurial and feeding crop. A popular four-course rotation is corn, potatoes or truck, small grain, clover; the potatoes being the chief money crop, corn the feeding crop, the small grain the secondary money or feeding crop, and clover the manurial and feeding crop. On many New England farms near towns, hay and straw are the chief money crops. Here the rotation is grass two or more years, then a cleansing crop and a grain crop. A Canadian rotation is wheat, hay, pasture, oats, peas. A rotation for the South might be corn, crimson clover, cotton, crimson clover; this rotation covering a period of two years. A South Carolina rotation is oats, peas, cotton, corn--a three-year rotation. It might be improved as follows: Oats, peas, crimson clover, cotton, crimson clover, corn. CHAPTER XXV FARM DRAINAGE Some farm lands contain so much water that the conditions of fertility are interfered with and therefore the crop producing power of these lands is lowered. HOW SURPLUS WATER AFFECTS FERTILITY This surplus water diminishes fertility by reducing the area of film water in the soil. It checks soil ventilation. It tends to keep the soil cold. It dilutes plant food in the soil. It interferes with proper tillage. INDICATIONS OF A NEED OF DRAINAGE The above-mentioned state of affairs occurs sometimes in fields at the foot of hills, or on sloping uplands which receive spring water or seepage water from higher lands. Some fields are underlaid by a close, compact subsoil which so checks percolation that the surface soil is too wet for tillage operations the greater part of the year. In such cases: A need of drainage is generally indicated by the presence of more or less free water standing on the surface. In some lands the surface water does not appear as free water standing on the surface. In such cases: A need of drainage is indicated by the curling and wilting of the leaves of corn and other crops during dry, hot weather. This curling and wilting is due to the fact that during the early growth of the crop free water stands so high in the soil that the crop roots are confined to a shallow layer of soil. When dry, hot weather comes, the free water recedes, the upper soil dries out, and the roots cannot get sufficient water to supply the demands of transpiration, hence the curling and wilting of the leaves. If drains are placed in this soil, the free water will be kept at a lower level in the spring and the plant roots will develop deeper in the soil, where there will be constant supply of film water during the dryer and warmer summer weather. The wiry and spindling growth of grass and grain crops may indicate too much water. The growth of moss on the surface of the ground and the cracking of the soil in dry weather are also indications of too much water. DRAINS How can we get rid of this surplus free water? We can make passageways through the soil to a lower level and then let gravity pull the water through them to lower ground below. These passageways are called drains. Drains may be classed as: Surface drains which are shallow, open channels made in the soil with a plow, hoe or other tool, to carry off surface water. They are temporary and need frequent renewing. Open-ditch drains are deeper, more permanent water passageways around or across the fields. Surface and open-ditch drains take only surface water. They also carry off surface soil and manures washed into them. They frequently become choked or stopped by trash and soil, and are in the way of cultivation and harvesting operations. Covered drains, under drains or blind ditches are water passageways made of brush, poles, stones, tiles, etc. (Figs. 80-81), placed in the bottoms of ditches and then covered with soil. INFLUENCE OF COVERED OR UNDER DRAINS ON FERTILITY _Influence on soil water._ Covered or under drains take not only surface water, but also remove free water from the soil beneath down to nearly the level of the bottom of the drains, and thus increase the area of film water. Removing the free water enables the soil to absorb more readily rain water falling on the surface and therefore checks surface wash and the gullying of fields. _Influence on soil ventilation._ Lowering the free water allows a deeper penetration of air and, therefore, a deeper root development and enables crops to better resist dry periods. _Influence on soil temperature._ Lowering the free water in the soil influences soil temperature: By diminishing the amount of water to be heated. By checking evaporation. By letting warm showers sink down into the soil. By increasing ventilation and therefore permitting the circulation of warm air in the soil. The cropping season is lengthened by causing the soil to be warmer and drier earlier in the spring and later in the fall. _Influence on plant food in the soil._ Covered or under drains check losses of plant food that occur with surface and open ditch drains. They render available more plant food, for lowering free water and increasing ventilation: Deepen the feeding area of the roots. Aid the process of nitrification. Aid chemical changes which make plant food available. Check denitrification. LOCATION OF DRAINS As gravity is the force that is to take the surplus water from the soil, the outlet of the drainage system should be at the lowest part of the area to be drained. [Illustration: FIG. 83.--CROSS-SECTIONS OF STONE-DRAINS.] [Illustration: FIG. 84. _A._ Cross-section of a pole-drain. _B._ Cross-section of a tile-drain.] [Illustration: FIG. 85.--A COLLECTION OF DRAINAGE TOOLS.] [Illustration: FIG. 86. _A_ represents a poorly laid tile-drain. It is poorly graded, and has partly filled with soil. It has lost more than half its water carrying capacity. _B_ was properly graded, and has kept free from sediment.] The main drains should be located in the lowest parts of the fields, indicated by courses taken by water after a rain or by small streams running through the farm. The lateral drains, if surface or open ditch drains, should run across the slopes; if under drains, they should run up and down the slopes. _Grade or slope of the drain._ The grade of the drain should be sufficient to cause a flow of the water. In the case of open ditches it should not be steep enough to cause too rapid a current and a consequent serious washing of the banks of the ditch. Large, deep ditches will carry water with a grade of one inch to a hundred feet. _Tile drains._ Covered or under drains are made of brush, poles, planks, stones, tiles, etc. (Figs. 83-84). Where tiles can be obtained at reasonable prices they are considered best. Tiles are made of clay and are burnt like brick. They are more lasting than wood and are easier and cheaper to lay than stone, unless the stone must be gotten rid of. The most approved form of drain tile is the round or circular form. These are made in sizes ranging from two and one-half to six and eight inches in diameter, and in pieces one foot in length. The size used depends on the length of the drain, the amount of water to carry, the frequency of heavy rainfalls and the character of the soil. The distance apart varies from twenty-five feet in heavy soils to over two hundred feet in light soils. The usual depth is about three feet, though the farther apart the deeper they are put. A lateral tile drain should enter a main at an acute angle to prevent too great a check in the current. In putting in a drainage system the first thing to be done is to make a plan of the ground and determine the slope of the land and the grade of the drain. The ditches are then staked out and the digging proceeds. In digging the ditches plows are sometimes used to throw out the top soil, then the work is finished with spades and shovels. Professional ditchers use special tools and they take out only sufficient earth to make room for the tiles (Fig. 85). The tiles are then laid end to end, the joints covered with a piece of sod, some grass, straw, paper or clay, to prevent loose soil sifting in. As the tiles are laid, enough soil is placed on them to hold them in place until the ditch is filled. In laying the tiles an even grade should be maintained (Fig. 86). A lessening of the grade checks the current of water and tends to cause a stoppage of the drain. The water gets into the drain through the joints where the tiles come together. The outlet of a tile drain should be protected by brick work or should be of glazed tile such as the so-called terra-cotta tile, to prevent injury by frost. The mouth of the drain should be protected by a screen of wire to prevent the entrance of rats and other small animals. GLOSSARY =Acid=, a chemical name given to many sour substances. =Albumen=, a nitrogenous organic compound. =Albuminoid=, a nitrogenous substance resembling albumen. =Ammonia=, a gas containing nitrogen produced by the decay of organic matter. =Annual=, a plant that lives only one year; corn and sunflower are examples. =Anther=, the part of a stamen that bears the pollen. =Available=, that which can be used. =Bacteria=, very small plants, so small that they cannot be seen without the aid of a powerful microscope. They are sometimes called "germs." Some of them are beneficial, some do great harm and some produce disease. =Biennial=, a plant that lives two years, usually producing seeds the second year. =Bordeaux mixture,= a mixture of copper sulphate, lime and water used to prevent plant diseases. It was invented in Bordeaux, France. =Bud=, an undeveloped branch. =Calyx=, the outermost part of a flower. =Cambium=, the active growing layer between the bark and the wood of a tree. =Capillary=, Hair-like. A name given to very small spaces through which water flows by the force of capillary attraction. =Carbohydrate=, an organic substance made of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, but containing no nitrogen; cellulose or woody fibre, sugar, starch are examples. =Carbon=, a chemical element. Charcoal is nearly pure carbon. =Carbonic acid gas=, a gas consisting of carbon and oxygen. It is produced from the lungs of animals, and by the decay or burning of organic matter. =Catch crop=, a crop growing during the interval between regular crops. =Cereal=, a name given to the grain crops that are used for food. =Chlorophyl=, the green matter in plants. =Commercial fertilizers=, materials containing plant food which are bought and sold in the markets to improve the soil. =Compost=, a mixture of decaying organic matter used to enrich the soil. =Cross pollination=, the pollination of a flower by pollen brought from some other flower. =Cover crop=, a crop to cover the soil during the interval between regular corps. =Cultivator=, a farm implement used to loosen the surface of the soil and to kill weeds after a crop has been planted. =Cutting=, a part of a plant placed in moist soil, water or other medium with the object of its producing roots and making a new plant. =Dormant=, said of plants when they are resting or inactive. Most plants are dormant during the winter season. =Drainage=, the method by which surplus water is removed from the land. =Element=, a substance that cannot be divided into simpler substances. =Fermentation=, the process by which organic substances are broken down or changed and new substances formed. =Fertility=, that state or condition of the soil which enables it to produce crops. =Fibre=, long thread-like structure. =Flocculate=, to make crumbly. =Free water=, standing water or water which flows under the influence of gravity. =Function=, the particular action of any part of an organism. =Furrow=, the trench left by the plow. =Furrow slice=, the strip of earth which is turned by the plow. =Germinate=, to sprout. =Grafting=, the process of inserting a cion or bud in a stock plant. =Green manure crops=, crops intended to be plowed under to improve the soil. =Harrow=, an implement used to pulverize the surface of the soil. =Heavy soils=, soils that are hard to work; stiff, cloddy soils. =Horticulture=, that branch of agriculture which deals with the growing of fruits, vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants. =Humus=, partially decayed animal and vegetable matter in the soil. =Hydrogen=, a gaseous, chemical element, one of the constituents of water. =Inter-tillage=, tillage between plants. =Irrigation=, the practice of supplying plants with water by artificial means. =Kainite=, a potash salt used in making fertilizer. =Kernel=, a single seed or grain. =Leaching=, passing through and going off in drainage water. =Legume=, a plant belonging to the bean, pea and clover family. =Light soils=, soils which are loose and open and easy to work. =Loam=, a mixture of sand, clay and organic matter. =Mould board=, the curved part of the plow which turns the furrow slice. =Mulch=, a covering on the soil. It may be of straw, leaves, pulverized soil or other material. =Nectar=, a sweet substance in flowers from which bees make honey. =Nitrate=, a soluble form of nitrogen. =Nitrification=, the changing of nitrogen into a nitrate. =Nitrogen=, a gas forming four-fifths of the air. Nitrogen is a very necessary food of plants. =Organic matter=, substances produced by the growth of plants and animals. =Osmose=, the movement of fluids through membranes or thin partitions. =Oxygen=, a gas which forms one-fifth of the air. Its presence is necessary to the life of all green plants and all animals. =Ovary=, the part of the pistil that bears the developing seeds. =Ovule=, an immature seed in the ovary. =Perennial=, living through several years. =Phosphoric acid=, an important plant food found in phosphates. =Pistil=, the part of the flower which produces seeds. =Propagate=, to increase in number. =Pollen=, the powdery substance produced by stamens. =Pollination=, the transfer of pollen from stamens to pistils. =Potash=, an important plant food. =Pruning=, removing parts of a plant for the good of what remains. =Retentive=, holding, retaining, said of soil which holds water. =Reverted=, said of phosphoric acid in the process of becoming insoluble. =Rotation of crops=, a change of crops in regular order. =Sap=, the juice or liquid contents of plants. =Seed bed=, the earth in which seeds are sown. =Seedling=, a young plant just from the seed. Also a plant raised from a seed in distinction from one produced from a graft or a cutting. =Sepal=, one of the parts of the calyx. =Slip=, a cutting placed in water or moist soil or other substance to produce roots and form a new plant. =Soil=, that part of the earth's crust into which plants send their roots for food and water. =Stamen=, that part of a flower which bears the pollen. =Stigma=, the part of the pistil which receives the pollen. =Stomata=, breathing pores in plants. =Subsoil=, that part of the soil which lies beneath the soil that is worked with the tillage tools. =Sap root=, a main root that runs straight down into the soil. =Tillage=, stirring the soil. =Transpiration=, the giving off of water from plants. =Tubercle=, a small nodular growth on the roots of plants. =Under drainage=, drainage from below. =Vitality of seeds=, the ability of seeds to grow. INDEX Acid phosphates, 196. Adobe soils, 30. After-cultivation, 158, 164. benefits from, 164. flat, 169. frequency of, 167. saves water, 164. shallow, 15, 167, 169. time for, 166. tools for, 167. Agencies active in making soils, 32. Agents, with which farmer works, 5. most important, 6. Agriculture, foundation facts and principles of, 22. Air, and the farmer, 5. in relation to germination, 72. necessary for root growth, 20. work of, in making soils, 36. Albuminoids in plants, 64, 66. Alfalfa or lucern, 68. roots, 13. soils, 29. Ammonia in fertilizers, 204, 205. in barn manures, 175. lost by fermentation, 175. sulphate of, 194. Analysis of plants, 163-166. of fertilizers, 203. Animals, 5. and the farmer, 5. dependent on plants, 6. work of, in making soils, 37. Annual plants, 125. Anthers, 129. Aphis, 116. Apple, flower of, 129, 130. Ash in plants, 65, 66. Ashes, a source of potash, 199. cotton hull, 199. Bacteria, 68, 143. and the farmer, 5, 144. denitrifying, 144. in manures, 174. in the roots of legumes, 68. in the soil, 68, 143. nitrifying, 144. nitrogen-fixing, 144. Bare fallow, 100. when advisable, 100. Barn manures, 171. application of, 177. condition of, 179. effect of on soil texture, 172. loss of value of, 173. meaning of term, 173. Beet, 6. Beets, 4. nitrogen for, 214. Biological properties of a fertile soil, 143. Biology, 143. Blood, dried, 194. as a fertilizer, 194. nitrogen in, 194. Bokhara clover, 190. Bone, dissolved, 197. dust, 197. ground, 197. Bone fertilizers, 197. meal, 197. raw, 197. steamed, 197. Bone black, 197. dissolved, 198. Bones, 195, 197. Bordeaux mixture, 118. Breaking out the middles, 97. Brick, 30. Brush harrow, 102, 105. Buds, 120. Buildings, 5. and the farmer, 5. Bureau of soils, United States, 28. Department of Agriculture, 28. Buttercup, flower of, 129, 130. Cabbage, fertilizer for, 211. soil, 28, 161. transplanting, 87, 88. worm, 117. Cabbages, 4. Calcium in plants, 66, 67. in soils, 68. Calyx, 129. function of, 132. Cambium, 126. Canadian field pea, 189. Canteloupe soil, 28. Capillary force, 49. meaning of term, 49. tubes, 49. water, 153. Carbon in plants, 66. Carbonic acid in soil, 37. Carrots, 4, 6. Cauliflower soil, 28. Celery, 4. Cellulose in plants, 63, 66. Chain harrow, 102, 105. Chemical properties of a fertile soil, 147. Cherry flower, 129, 130. Chlorophyl in leaves, 113. Classification of soils, 26. Clay, 27, 38. and lime, 42. loams, 29. power to absorb water, 41, 42. relation to water, 25, 41, 43. soils, 29. soils injured by working when wet, 45. to improve texture of, 42. water-holding power, 44. Clevis, 93. Climbing plants, 121. Clover, 68. Bokhara, 190. crimson, 189. mammoth, 189. red, 188. Clovers, as green manure-crops, 188. as nitrogen gatherers, 184. nodules on roots of, 184. Commercial fertilizers, 171, 192. amount to buy, 212. home mixing, 211. kind to buy, 212. raw materials, 192. (See also Fertilizers.) Composts, 171, 181. Conditions necessary for root growth, 20. Corn, a humus waster, 226. depth of root growth of, 13. flower of, 132. germination of, 78, 79. in rotation, 226, 229, 234. plant, 6. pollination of, 133. rapid growth of roots of, 13. roots cut by plow, 14. soils, 28, 29, 30, 161. structure of seed, 78. water used by, 40. Corolla, 129. function of, 132. Cotton, 5, 161. a humus waster, 221. in rotation, 225-229. plant, 6. plant food removed by, 227. Sea Island, 161. soils, 28, 29, 161. upland, 161. Cotton hull ashes, 199. Cotton-seed meal, 194. Cotyledons, 77. use of, 79. Coulter of plow, 94. Coulter-toothed harrow, 102, 104. Cow manure, 178. losses by exposure, 178. Cowpeas, 68, 186. for green manuring, 186. plant food in, 187. root growth of, 12. soils for, 187. Cropping and soil water, 159, 160. Crops, cleansing, 232. feeding, 232. in rotation, 219. manurial, 232. money, 232. Cucumber flower, 133. Cultivation. (See After-cultivation.) Denitrification, 147. conditions favoring, 147. Denitrifying germs, 144, 147. Draft ring of plow, 93. Draining, need of, 235. Drains, 158-239. and capillary water, 237. covered, 237. Drains, effect on film water, 237. effect on plant food, 238. effect on soil temperature, 238. effect on soil water, 237. grade of, 239. lateral, 239. location of, 238. main, 239. open ditch, 237. surface, 237. tile, 239. Dried blood, 194. as a fertilizer, 194. nitrogen in, 194. Early crops, soils for, 27, 28. Egg experiments to show osmose, 18, 19. Egg plant, soil for, 28. Elements in plants, 66. Elm tree leaf beetle, 117. Endosperm, 78. use of, 79. Epicotyl, 78. Essential organs of flowers, 131. Evaporation, loss of water by, 54. loss of heat by, 59. Excursion, to examine soils, 24. to see plow cutting roots, 14. to study roots, 11. to study leaves, 108. to study stems, 120. to visit farm, 4. Experiment to show, air necessary for germination, 73. amount of transpiration, 110. capillarity, 49. capacity of soils for film water, 51. checking loss of water by evaporation, 55. chlorophyl necessary for starch making, 113. effect of soil mulch, 55. depth of planting seeds, 81. effect of lime on clay soil, 42. effect of working soil when wet, 26, 45. exclusion of oxygen by leaf, 113. film water, 50. growth in length of roots, 16. heat necessary for germination, 73. how food and water get into the root, 18, 19. how soils are warmed, 58. how soils lose heat, 59. importance of roots, 7. moisture necessary for germination, 71. no starch formed in dark, 112. osmose, 18, 19. plants contain albuminoids, 64. plants contain ashes, 65. plants contain cellulose, 63. plants contain gum, 64. plants contain oil, 64. plants contain starch, 64. plants contain sugar, 64. plants contain water, 65. power of soils to absorb rain, 40. power of soils to hold water, 44, 45. power of soils to pump water, 43. roots absorb moisture, 9. roots take food from soil, 9. roots produce new plants, 10. roots need air, 21. soil characteristics, 24, 25. soil temperature, 57, 60. starch in leaf, 111. stems carry sap, 122. stems store food, 124. transpiration, the fact, 109. transpiration, amount, 111. use of cotyledons, 79. what becomes of water taken by roots, 39. Fallow, bare, 100. Fall plowing, 99. Families of plants, 86. Farm drainage, 235. Farm manures, 171, 183. classification of, 171. importance of, 172. Farmer deals with agents, laws and forces, 5. Fat in plants, 64. Fermentation of manures, 174. Fertile soil, a, 141. biological properties of, 142, 143. chemical properties of, 142, 147. most important properties of, 150. physical properties of, 142. Fertility of the soil, 150. economizing the, 150. maintaining the, 150. Fertilizers, commercial, 68, 192. analysis of, 203. classification of, 171. home mixing, 211. how to know what kind is needed, 212. importance of thorough mixing with the soil, 15. manufactured, 202. many brands, 202. mixed, 202. raw materials, 192. sources of lime, 193, 200. sources of nitrogen, 193. sources of phosphoric acid, 193, 195. sources of potash, 193, 199. use of by farmer, 172, 192. value of plant food in, 205. Filament of stamen, 129. Film water, 50. Fish scrap as a fertilizer, 194. Flower, of apple, 129, 130. of buttercup, 129, 130. calyx, 129. of cherry, 129, 130. corolla, 129. of cucumber, 133. functions of parts of, 130. of honeysuckle, 129. of melon, 133. parts of, 129. of peach, 129, 130. petals, 129. of petunia, 129. pistil, 130. pollen, 130. of potato, 129. sepals, 129. stamen, 129. of squash, 133. of tomato, 129. of wild mustard, 129, 130. Flowers, 8, 128. essential parts of, 131. functions of, 130. Food of plants, 63. Forces of nature and the farmer, 5. Forest soils, 29. Foundation facts and principles of agriculture, 22. Free water in the soil, 48, 153. injurious to roots, 153. source of capillary and film water, 153. Fresno sand, 28. Fruit, 8, 136. Fruit soils, 29. Fruits, 27. Furrow slice, 96. Gas lime, 201. Geranium, 6. Germinating seeds, need air, 73. need heat, 73. need water, 71. Germs, 143. denitrifying, 144, 147. nitrifying, 144, 145. nitrogen fixing, 144. Goosefoot family, 86. Gourd family, 86. Grafting, 136. Grain crops humus wasters, 224. Grain soils, 28. Grass, 5. family, 86. soils, 28, 29, 30, 162. Gravel, 26. Gravelly loams, 29. Green-crop manures, 171, 183. benefits from, 185. best plants for, 185. Green manure-crops, 186. clovers as, 188. cowpeas as, 186. legumes as, 186. non-leguminous, 191. soy-bean as, 189. time for growing, 186. Gum in plants, 64, 66. Gypsum, 201. Habit of growth of roots, 11. Handles of plow, 93. Harrowing, 101, 158. objects of, 101. time for, 101. Harrows, 4, 102. brush, 102, 105. chain, 102, 105. coulter-toothed, 102, 104. plank, 102, 105. rolling cutter, 102, 103. spike-toothed, 102, 104. spring-toothed, 102, 103. Hay soils, 29, 30. Heat and the farmer, 5. Heat necessary for germination, 73. Hilling the crop, 169. Hilum, 77. Hoeing and soil water, 158. Hoes, 4. Horn shavings as fertilizer, 195. Horse manure, 176. losses when piled, 176. House plants, watering of, 51. How the bean gets up, 78. How the corn gets up, 79. Humus, 27, 38. influence on soil texture, 62. nitrogen in, 67. a source of nitrogen, 67. water-absorbing power of, 41. water-holding power of, 44. water-pumping power of, 43. Hydrogen in plants, 66. Hypocotyl, 78. Ice, work of, in making soils, 35. Insects, chewing, 117. how to combat, 116, 117. injure leaves, 116. sucking, 116. Insect pollination, 131. Inter-tillage, 164. Iodine, test for starch, 64. Iron in plants, 66. Jointer of plow, 95. value as a pulverizer, 95. Kainite, 199. Knowledge of flowers, value of, 134. Land plaster, 200. Laws of nature, 5. Leaf work, conditions necessary for, 114. interfered with, 115, 118. Leather as a fertilizer, 195. Leaves, 8, 108. digest food, 114. facts about, 108. functions of, 109. manufacture starch, 112. transpire water, 110. Legume family, 86. Legumes, definition of, 68. nitrogen fixers, 68, 186, 144. value as green manure plants, 144, 185. Leguminous plants, 68. Light necessary for leaf work, 114. Lily family, 86. Lime, 200. amount to use, 200. effect on sand, 200. effect on clay, 200. in soils, 149. its action on soils, 149, 200. sets free potash, 149. sources of, 171, 200. Lime stone soluble in water, 31. Loam, 28. Loamy soils, 28. London purple, 117. Loss of soil water, 53, 155. Lucern, 13. roots, 13. Magnesium in plants, 66. Maintenance of fertility, 150. Materials composing soils, 26. Mallow family, 86. Manures, barn, 171, 173. application of, 177. care of, 173. checking losses from, 176. effect on soil texture, 172. effect on soil water, 159. functions of, 171. losses from leaching, 173. losses from heating, 174. Many things the farmer deals with, 5. Marigold, 6. Marl, 201. Melon flower, 133. Miami sand, 28. Microscopic organisms, 5. Mixed fertilizers, 202. inflating the guarantee, 204. low grade, 204, 207. many brands, 202. valuation of, 205. Morning-glory, 129. Most important factor in the raising of crops, 151. Mould board of plow, 94. Muck, swamp, 30. Mulch, soil, 56. how made, 56. to save water, 56. Muriate of potash, 199. Mustard, family, 86. flower, 129, 130. Muskmelon soils, 161. Night shade family, 86. Nitrates, what they are, 146. availability of, 146, 193. solubility of, 146. Nitrate of soda, 193. nitrogen, 193. Nitric acid in soil, 146. Nitrification, 146. aided by plowing, 146. aided by lime, 146. conditions favorable to, 146. Nitrifying germs, 144, 145. Nitrogen, 66. added to the soil by legumes, 68. grown on the farm, 68. in humus, 167. in soils, 67, 148. in plants, 66, 67. in fertilizers, 192. loss of, 67. sources of, 171. Nitrogen-fixing germs, 144. Non-leguminous green manure-crops, 191. Norfolk sand, 28. Oats, soil for, 29. Object of this book, 3. Odorless phosphate, 198. Oil in plants, 64, 66. One-crop system, 221. effect on fertility, 221. Onion, 6. Organic matter, in soils, 32, 62, 220. value of, 61. Osmose, 18. Ovary of flower, 130. Ovules, 130. Oxygen in plants, 66. Paris green to destroy chewing insects, 117. Parsley family, 86. Parsnip root, depth of growth, 13. Parsnips, 4. Pasture, soils for, 30. Pea family, 86. soils, 28. Peach borer, 127. flower, 130. Peanuts, 5. Peat, 30. Peppers, soil for, 28. Percolation of water, 41. Petals, 129. Petunia, 129. Pigweeds, 5, 6. Pistil, 130. function of, 131. Phosphate, odorless, 198. rock, 195. slag, 195, 198. Phosphoric acid, 195. available, 195, 196. in fertilizers, 195. in soil, 148. insoluble, 195, 196. reverted, 196. soluble, 196. sources of, 171. Phosphorus in plants, 66, 67. in soils, 68. Plank harrow, 102, 105. Plant, analysis of, 63. most important part of to plant itself, 7. most important part of to plant grower, 7. Plant diseases, 118. Plant food, 63. and the farmer, 5. Plant food, in soil, 63. in fertilizers, 68, 192, 205. what it is, 63, 69. Planting, corn, 84. grass seed, 84. grain seed, 84. method of, 83. seeds, 81. vegetable seeds, 84. Plants, 5. and the farmer, 5. conditions for growth, 6. composition of food of, 63. for study, 6. living, growing things, 6. parts of, 6. resemble one another, 6. why raised, 6. work of in making soils, 36. Plow beam, 93. coulter, 94. characteristics of, 95. clevis, 93. cutting roots, 15. draft ring, 93. handles, 93. jointer, 95. landside, 94. mouldboard, 94. parts of, 92. shackle, 93. share, 93. standard, 92. truck, 95. Plowing, 90. depth of, 96. effect on soil water, 156. favors root growth, 14. in fall, 99, 157. in spring, 98, 157. importance of deep, 15, 17. objects of, 91, 92. to save water, 92. time for, 98. Plows, 4. Plumule, 78. Pollen, 130. Pollination, 131, 132, 135. cross, 132, 133, 135. of wild goose plum, 134. Potash, 199. in fertilizers, 199. in soils, 149. sources of, 171. Potassium, in plants, 66, 67. in soils, 68. Potato, 6. soils, 28, 29, 161. Potato, sweet, roots of, 13. soils, 28, 160. Properties of a fertile soil, 141. Pruning, 137. Quitch-grass, 121. underground stem of, 121. Radicle, 78. Radish, shrunken root of, 10. Ragweed, 5. Rain, work of in making soils, 33. on clay soils, 41. on sandy soils, 41. Rake, 101. Rakes, 4. Raking and soil water, 158. Red spider, 117. Rhubarb soil, 28. Ridging the soil, 98, 158, 169. Rock salt, 31. Rollers, 107. Rolling, 101, 106, 158. autumn-sown grain, 106. light soils, 106. reason for, 106. spring-sown grain, 106. Rolling cutter harrows, 102. Root, 8. how it takes moisture, 18. most important part of plant, 7. Root hairs, 17, 18. Roots, absorb water, 9, 11, 17. absorb plant food, 10, 11. alfalfa, 13. and fertilizers, 15. growth of in length, 16. conditions necessary for growth of, 8, 20, 141, 220. corn, 13. cowpea, 12. depth of growth of, 12. extent of growth of, 12. habit of growth of, 11, 15. hold plant in place, 9, 11, 15, 16. important lessons from, 13, 15. location of, 12, 13. need firm soil, 20, 22, 23. need mellow soil, 20, 22, 23. need moist soil, 20, 22, 23. need plant food in soil, 20, 22, 23. need warm soil, 20, 22, 23. need air in soil, 21, 22, 23. produce new plants, 10, 11. rapidity of growth of, 15. soy-bean, 12. store food, 10, 11. sweet potato, 13. tree, 13. uses of, 9, 10, 11, 15. work of, 9, 10, 15. Rotation of crops, 219. benefits from, 230. conditions which modify, 232. effect upon fertility, 224. examples of, 234. general rules for, 233. length of, 233. typical, 231. Sampling soils, 163. Sand, 26, 38. Fresno, 28. grades of, 26. Miami, 28. Norfolk, 28. power to absorb water, 41, 43. Sandy soils, 27. adapted to early truck, 27. effect of humus on, 43, 44, 220. improving, 43. water-holding power of, 44. Sandy loam, 28. Sapwood, 126. Scythes, 4. Seed leaves, 77. Seed, 130. classification of, 85. crab, drills, 4, 84. planting, 81, 83. Seeds, 8. depth to plant, 81. how they come up, 77. how to test, 75. which germinate at a temperature of 45 degrees, 74. which germinate at a temperature of 60 degrees, 74. Seeds to germinate, need air, 72, 73, 75. need heat, 73, 75. need moisture, 71, 75. Sepals, 129. Shallow cultivation, 14, 15, 167, 169. Share of plow, 93. Shackle of plow, 93. Silt, 27, 38. Silt loam, 29. Small fruit soils, 20. Soil, a fertile, 141. definition of, 23. formation of, 30, 237. material composing, 147, 26. mulch, 56. temperature, 57, 60. testing, 162, 215. texture, 37, 142. texture important, 142, 143. ventilation, 68, 142. warmed by sun, 58. warmed by conduction, 58. water, 40, 151. Soils, 5, 23. adobe, 30. alfalfa, 29. and the farmer, 5. attitude of toward water, 40. cabbage, 28, 161. canteloupe, 28, 161. capacity for film water, 51. cauliflower, 28. classified, 26. clay, 29. cloddy, 38. close, 38. coarse, 38. compact, 38. corn, 28, 29, 30, 161. cotton, 28, 29, 161. effect of working when wet, 26, 41. egg plant, 28. fine, 38. forest, 29. fruit, 27, 29. general farming, 28, 29. grain, 28, 162. grass, 28, 29, 162. gravelly, 29. hard, 38. hay, 29, 30. heavy, 38. how made, 30. humus, 27, 38. leachy, 38. loamy, 28. loose, 38. lose heat, 59. light, 38. lime in, 67, 149. loss of water from, 53, 153. lumpy, 38. mellow, 38. oat, 29. open, 38. organic matter in, 220. pasture, 30. pea, 28. peat, 30. peppers, 28. plant food in, 63. potato, 28, 29, 161. porous, 38. relation of to water, 39, 46. relation of to plants, 23. retentive, 38. rhubarb, 28. sandy, 27. small fruit, 28, 29. soft, 38. sorghum, 162. stiff, 38. stony, 29. strawberry, 28. swamp, 30. testing, 162, 215. tobacco, 27. tomato, 28, 161. truck, 27, 28, 29, 161. vegetable, 28. water-absorbing power of, 40, 43, 46, 142. water-holding power of, 44, 142. watermelon, 28, 161. wheat, 29, 30. Soil water, 150, 151. amount of used by plants, 40. and farm operations, 156. control of, 53. form of, 48, 153. greatest factor in growth of crop, 46. importance of, 39, 151. loss of, 53, 155, 157, 164. loss of by evaporation, 54. loss of by weeds, 54, 165. loss of by surface wash, 53. necessity for, 151. not enough, 154. saving, 165. sources of, 40, 153. too much, 154. Soil water influenced, by cropping, 159. by harrowing, 101, 103, 158. by humus, 42, 43, 44, 45, 220. by plowing, 91, 156. by ridging, 98, 158. by rolling, 106, 158. Sorghum soils, 162. Soy-bean, as a green manure crop, 189. growth of roots, 12. Spade, 90. Spading, 90. Spading-fork, 90. Spike-toothed harrows, 102, 104. Spraying, 118. Spring plowing, 98. Spring-toothed harrows, 102, 103. Squash flowers, 133. Stable manure, 171, 173. Stamen, 129. function of, 131. Staminate flowers, 133. Starch in plants, 64, 66. iodine test for, 64. Stems, 8, 120. distinguished from roots, 120. habit of growth of, 121. structure of, 125. underground, 121. uses of, 120. work of checked, 126. Stigma, 130. Stomata, 110. Stones, 26, 31. Stony loam, 29. Strawberry flowers, 134. perfect, 135. pistillate, 135. Study of plants begun, 6. Style, 130. Sugar cane, 5. soil, 162. Sugar in plants, 64, 66. Sulphate of ammonia, 194. Sulphate of potash, 199. Sulphur in plants, 66. Sun, work of in making soils, 32, 34. Sunlight, and the farmer, 5. necessary for leaf work, 110, 111, 112. Superphosphates, 198. Swamp muck, 30. Sweet clover, 190. Sweet potato roots, 13. soils, 28, 160. Sweet potatoes, 5. Sylvinite, 199. Systems of cropping, 119. Tankage, 194. as fertilizer, 194. nitrogen in, 194. phosphoric acid in, 194. Temperature of soil, 57. Tendrils, plants climb by, 122. Testing seeds, 75. Testing soils for water, 162. for plant food, 215. Texture of soils, 37, 143, 150. Thinning fruit, 137. Thistle, 6. Thistle family, 86. Thomas slag, 198. as fertilizer, 198. phosphoric acid in, 198. Tillage and plant food, 67. and fertility, 150. Time to begin this study, 3. Time to plow, 98. Tobacco soils, 27. Tomato soils, 161. Tools, 5. and the farmer, 5. Transpiration, the fact, 110. amount of, 111. Transplanting, 87. machines, 89. Truck of plow, 95. Truck soils, 27, 28, 29, 161. Tubercles on roots of legumes, 68, 144. Turnip, 6. Type soils, 26. Under drains, 237. advantage of, 237. Underground stems, 121. Value of knowledge of flowers, 134. Vegetables, roots, 13, 14, 15. soil for, 28. Ventilation of soils, 68, 142. necessary for germination, 73. necessary for root growth, 21, 22, 23. necessary for fixation of nitrogen, 144. Water, absorption of by soil, 40, 43, 46, 142. amount used by plants, 40. capillary, 49, 153. evaporation of, 54, 155. free, 48, 153. film, 50. ground, 48. importance of to plants, 39. percolation of, 41. relation of soils to, 39. standing, 48. work of in making soils, 33, 35. Water and the farmer, 5. Water in plants, 65. Watering house plants, 51. Watermelon soils, 28, 161. Weeders, 167. Weeds, 54. how they injure crops, 54, 92. how to kill, 119. waste soil water, 54. Wheat soils, 29, 30. water used by, 40. Wheel hoes, 168. White hellebore, 117. Wind pollination, 132. Work of roots, 9, 10, 15. Work of sun in making soils, 32, 34. air in making soils, 36. animals in making soils, 37. moving ice in making soils, 35. moving water in making soils, 33, 35. plants in making soils, 36. rain in making soils, 33. Wood ashes, 199. Wool waste as fertilizer, 195. * * * * * 
22040	----	THE PRAIRIE FARMER A Weekly Journal for THE FARM, ORCHARD, AND FIRESIDE. ESTABLISHED IN 1841. ENTIRE SERIES: VOL. 56--NO. 3. CHICAGO, SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1884. PRICE, $2.00 PER YEAR, IN ADVANCE. [Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was originally located on page 40 of the periodical. It has been moved here for ease of use.] THE CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. AGRICULTURE--The Corn Root Worm, Page 33; Biographical Sketch of Patrick Barry, 33; Compiled Correspondence, 33; Illinois Tile-Makers Convention Report, 34; Farmers Advice, 35; Cisterns on the farm, 35; Field and Furrow Items, 35. LIVE STOCK--Iowa Wool-Men, Page 36; Polled Cattle-Breeders, 36; Merino Sheep-Breeders, 36; Cattle Diseases, 36; The Horse and His Treatment 36-37; Cost of Pork on 1883 Corn, 37. VETERINARY--Grease, So-Called, Page 37; Foul in the Foot, 37; Founder, 37; Question Answered, 37. THE DAIRY--Curing Cheese, Page 37; Items, 37. HORTICULTURE--Southern Ills. Hort. Society, Page 38; Notes on Current Topics, 38; Pear Blight, 38; Treatment of Tree Wound, 38; The Tomato Pack of 1883, 38; Sweating Apples, 39; Prunings Items, 39. FLORICULTURE--Smilax and its Uses, Page 39. EDITORIAL--Will You? Page 40; Items, 40; The Wealth of the Nation, 40; Contagious Animal Disease, 40, 41; Iowa State Fair, 41; Still Another Fat Stock Show, 41; Questions Answered, 41; Letter from Champaign, 41; Wayside Notes, 41. POULTRY NOTES--Chicken Chat, Page 42; Business Still Running, 42. THE APIARY--The Best Hive, Page 42. SCIENTIFIC--Some Gossip About Darwin, Page 43. HOUSEHOLD--"Going up Head" (poetry), Page 44; Too Fat to Marry, 44; Ornaments for Homes, 44. YOUNG FOLKS--Chat About a Bear, Page 45; A Fairy Story, by Little Johnnie, 45. LITERATURE--For Those Who Fail (poetry), Page 46; A Singular Philosopher, 46. HUMOROUS--The Donkey's Dream, Page 47; Tom Typo 47; Courtship of a Vassar Girl, 47; Items, 47. NEWS OF THE WEEK--Page 48. MARKETS--Page 48. THE CORN-ROOT WORM. EDITOR PRAIRIE FARMER--I write you in regard to the corn question. I would like to know if angle-worms damage corn. Eight years ago I came to the conclusion that I could raise double the number of bushels of corn that I was then raising. I then commenced experimenting on a small scale. I succeeded very well for the first three or four years. I got so that I could raise over ninety bushels per acre. In one year I got a few pounds over 100 bushels per acre. Three years ago my crop began to fail, and has continued to fail up to the present year, with the same treatment. Last year it was so bad that I concluded to examine the roots of the corn plants. I found both angle-worms and grubs in the roots. This year I went into a thorough examination and found nothing there but angle-worms, with a wonderful increase. They were right at the end of the stalk where the roots were thick, but the worms thicker. The corn at first seems to do very well, but long before the grain gets ripe the leaves begin to get dry and the stalks commence falling. The consequence is that over one-half the corn is loose on the cob and the ears very short. I am entirely headed in the corn line. Is it the angle-worms? If so, what is the remedy? I plant my corn every year on the same ground. I allow no weeds to grow in my cornfield. Farmers can not afford to raise weeds. I remove all weeds and put corn in their places. I have plowed my land for the next year's crop of corn and put on twenty loads of manure to the acre and plowed it under. I have no faith in planting the ground next year unless I can destroy the worms that I call angle-worms. I have consulted several of my brother farmers, and they say that the angle-worms never destroy a crop of corn. I thought last year that my seed corn was poor and run out, so I went to Chicago and got Sibley's "Pride of the North," but that was no better. If you will kindly inform me how to remedy this looseness of the kernel I will agree to show you how 100 bushels of corn can be raised on one acre every good corn year. HORACE HOPKINS. DESPLAINES, ILL., Jan. 2. * * * * * We sent this communication to Professor Forbes, State Entomologist and received the following reply: EDITOR PRAIRIE FARMER--There can be hardly a shadow of a doubt that the injury which your correspondent so graphically describes is due to the corn root-worm (Diabrotica longicornis), a full account of which will be found in my report for 1882, published last November. The clue to his whole difficulty lies in the sentence, "I plant my corn every year on the same ground." As the beetles from which the root-worms descend lay their eggs in corn fields in autumn, and as these eggs do not hatch until after corn planting in the following spring, a simple change of crops for a single year, inevitably starves the entire generation to death in the ground. I inclose a slip, giving a brief account of this most grievous pest; but the article in my last report already referred to will be found more satisfactory. S. A. FORBES. NORMAL, ILL., January 3. P.S.--You will probably remember that I published a paper on this insect in THE PRAIRIE FARMER for December 30, 1882. * * * * * The following is the description referred to: _From the "Crop Report" for 1882._ "The corn-root worm, in the form in which it affects the roots of corn, is a slender white grub, not thicker than a pin, from one fourth to three-eighths of an inch in length, with a small brown head, and six very short legs. It commences its attack in May or June, usually at some distance from the stalk, towards which it eats its way beneath the epidermis, killing the root as fast as it proceeds. Late in July or early in August it transforms in the ground near the base of the hill, changing into a white pupa, about fifteen-hundredths of an inch long and two-thirds that width, looking somewhat like an adult beetle, but with the wings and wing-covers rudimentary, and with the legs closely drawn up against the body. A few days later it emerges as a perfect insect, about one-fifth of an inch in length, varying in color from pale greenish-brown to bright grass-green, and usually without spots or markings of any kind. The beetle climbs up the stalk, living on fallen pollen and upon the silk at the tip of the ear until the latter dies, when a few of the beetles creep down between the husks, and feed upon the corn itself, while others resort for food to the pollen of such weeds in the field as are at that time in blossom. In September and October the eggs are laid in the ground upon or about the roots of the corn, and most of the beetles soon after disappear from the field. They may ordinarily be found upon the late blooming plants, feeding as usual upon the pollen of the flowers, and also to some extent upon molds and other fungi, and upon decaying vegetation. There can be no further doubt that the insect is single-brooded, that it hibernates in the egg as a rule, and that this does not hatch until after the ground has been plowed and planted to corn in the spring probably in May or June. "Although the adult beetles, when numerous, do some harm by eating the silk before the kernels are fertilized by the pollen, and also destroy occasionally a few kernels in the tip of the ear, yet the principal injury is done by the larva in its attack upon the roots. The extent of this injury depends not only upon the number of the worms, but also upon the soil and weather and the general condition of the crop, being worst on high land and in dry weather. Under specially unfavorable circumstances the loss due to the insect may amount to from one-fourth to one-half or even three-fourths of the crop; but when the conditions are generally favorable, it rarely amounts to more than ten or twenty per cent, and frequently even to less. Although the roots penetrated by the larvæ die and decay, thrifty corn will throw out new ones to replace those lost. The hold of the stalk upon the ground is often so weakened that a slight wind is sufficient to prostrate the corn. Under these circumstances it will often throw out new roots from the joints above the ground, thus rallying to a certain extent against serious injury. "As the result of numerous observations and comparisons, it is clearly to be seen that little or no mischief is done except in fields that have been in corn during the year or two preceding, and a frequent change of crops is therefore a complete preventive. Beyond this, the life history of the insect gives us little hope of fighting it effectually except at too great expense, as the eggs and worms are scattered and hidden in the ground, and the perfect beetle is widely dispersed throughout the field." * * * * * California has about eighty thousand tons of wheat to ship to Europe. Besides this a large amount is already stowed in ships. * * * * * PATRICK BARRY. [Illustration: Patrick Barry] Our portrait this week is of Patrick Barry, Esq., the noted nurseryman and horticulturist of Rochester, N. Y. Mr. Barry was born near Belfast, Ireland, in 1816. His father was a small farmer, but he gave the boy a good education, and at eighteen he was appointed to teach in one of the national schools. At the age of twenty he resigned this position, and came to America, where he began clerking in the Linnæan nurseries, at Flushing, L. I. During his stay of four years here he mastered the principles of the nursery business. In 1840 he moved to Rochester, and forming a partnership with Mr. Ellwanger, started the famous Mount Hope Nurseries. They began on a tract of but seven acres. In 1852 he issued the "Fruit Garden," which is to this day a standard work among horticulturists. Previous to this he had written largely for the agricultural and horticultural press. In 1852 he also began editing the Horticulturist, then owned by Mr. James Vick. Mr. Barry's second great work, and the one involving most time and labor was the Catalogue of the American Pomological Society. Mr. Barry has long been President of the Western New York Horticultural Society. He is also a member of the Board of Control of the New York Experiment Station. He has served several terms in the city council of Rochester and in the Board of Supervisors of the country. Mr. Barry is an active business man and besides his great labor in conducting the nursery affairs, he discharges the duties of President of many corporate enterprises in which he has large financial interests. Mr. Barry was happily married in 1847, and the amiable sharer of his hardships and his successes is still living. COMPILED CORRESPONDENCE. HANCOCK CO., Dec. 31.--Weather very disagreeable; snow six inches deep, and from rain and sleet and thaw and freeze, has formed a hard crust, so as to make bad traveling--in the roads icy and slippery. To-day cloudy, damp and cool. A few days ago the mercury reached 8 degrees below zero, the lowest of the season. It is very hard on stock, and many of the cattle are without shelter, as usual. Accept New Year greetings for all THE PRAIRIE FARMER family. L. T. * * * * * MILLS CO., MO., Jan. 8.--Since the first of January we have had hard winter weather. An old weather prophet says we are to have just such weather for forty days. I sincerely hope not. On Friday night, January 4th and 5th, all the thermometers commonly used by farmers went clear down out of sight. As they only mark about 30 degrees below zero it was uncertain how cold it really was. Unsheltered stock suffered terribly. A few farmers were caught without wood, and suffered from the storm in securing a supply. We have had five days of snow so that there is a heavy coat all over. A. J. L. * * * * * ST. LOUIS, MO., January 13.--Advices from Mobile say the late cold snap caused immense damage in that section. The loss to the orange groves is estimated at nearly a $1,000,000, and the value of vegetables killed in Mobile county alone will reach the same sum. Great damage was also done to orange groves in Florida, but many orange growers profited by the Signal Service warning and built fires in their groves, and thus saved their trees. News from the Michigan peach belt is that the fruits are uninjured. * * * * * Strawberries are sold in New York city at fifteen cents each. * * * * * [Illustration] AGRICULTURAL Farmers, Write for Your Paper. Illinois Tile-Makers. The Illinois State Tile-Makers' Convention at Springfield, last week, was more largely attended than in any previous year since the association was formed. Nearly one hundred joined the association. The convention was welcomed to the city by Governor Hamilton in an appropriate address in which he expressed his deep sympathy with and interest in all the manufacturing enterprises that are giving employment to the people and adding wealth to the State. He announced himself as in favor of protection and encouragement to the manufacturing interests. He thought the tile men were greatly adding to the wealth and productiveness of Illinois, and that they were also indirectly improving the health of the people. The President's address was brief but full of information and good sense. He pointed out at length the improvements in tile kilns, and in various appliances, which have been made in recent years, and declared that valuable as these all are, they can not make up for the lack of skill and experience. He believed the increased interest in terra cotta, and in useful ornamental and out tiling points to the great source of supply as the timber of the country decreases in quantity. The drain-tile manufacture was simply the beginning of an era of skillful clay working, which would not only add greatly to the fertility of the soil, but to the means of the beauty and endurance in numerous forms of building. Of the statistics of the business, he said the latest information is that there are in the State 600 factories, built at an average cost of $3,000 each, employing about 5,400 men seven months each year, who receive about $250,000 and their board. The total annual capacity of these factories he estimates at 56,100 miles annually. He estimates the amount invested in the industry, including the value of tile already laid, at $5,000,000, and the increased value of land drained at $10,000,000. The Secretary's report gave the general condition of the society. In 1879 it was composed of forty-five members; in 1880, of thirty-five; in 1881, of twenty-eight; in 1882, fifty-three; in 1883, of eighty-three, and in 1884, of eighty-six. The first meetings of the association were necessarily crude, the programme having been prepared after the association met. Now, however, they were in working harness, and met with a regularly prepared programme. The proceedings of the meetings and a summary of the papers read and discussed, are now published in the report of the State Board of Agriculture. The treasurer, John McCabe, Esq., of Rushville, made his report of which the following is the summary: Amount on hand at last report $29 35 Received from members last year 82 00 ------- $111 35 Paid out last year 87 50 ------- Balance in the treasury $ 23 85 These reports were followed by an essay by Mr. C. G. Elliott, which is of so much merit that we give it in full deferring a further report of proceedings until next week. MISTAKES IN DRAINAGE. To speak of our successes rather than our mistakes, is far more agreeable to ourselves and also to others. We all take pride in giving our experience in any work when we have been successful, but our errors and mistakes we often carefully hide from public gaze. The transactions of our industrial conventions are largely made up of the successful parts of the experiences of members. Our tile manufacturers fail to speak of their losses in correcting mistakes the number of kilns they have rebuilt, the number of tile they weekly commit to the waste pile, the percentage of good and poor tile in each kiln, and many other things that your humble servant will probably never suspect until he attempts to manufacture tile. A similar statement may be made with reference to drainage mistakes. How many dry weather drains do we hear mentioned in our conventions, or see described in our newspapers. By such drains, I mean those which in favorable seasons so operate as to permit the land to produce a heavy crop--one worth publishing--while in wet years, merely a total loss results. Cases of such drainage can be numbered by the score. How many miles of drain tile have been taken up and relaid during the past year because of some mistake in plan, size of tile, or execution of the work? Much might be said of drainage mistakes in a general way, but it is proposed in this paper to treat the subject in a specific and practical manner. It may be encouraging to remember that it is only by comparing success with mistakes that we make progress in any valuable science or art. Great skill and success rest upon a foundation of corrected mistakes. MISTAKE NO. 1--LACK OF INFORMATION ON DRAINAGE. We might more properly call this the cause of many mistakes. "Knowledge is power," says the old adage, and we might add that knowledge in drainage is success. This knowledge may be obtained in three ways: First, from reliable books; second, by inquiring of others who have had experience; third, by our own experience. The first is of prime importance to the beginner, for in books are found statements of the general principles and philosophy of drainage, together with the best methods and practice known. The second is often unreliable, for the reason that the error of one is often copied by another and becomes wide spread before it is detected. The third, though valuable is costly, and discouraging to the learner. Gleanings from all of these sources will, perhaps, give the most complete satisfaction. Tile drainage began to be practiced in my own neighborhood about seven years ago. Those who were about to begin knew nothing about drainage, except from hearsay knowledge that had crept into the community. Not a single book upon the subject was consulted or even inquired for. Even now they are as rare in farmers libraries as the classic poets. Farmer A. wished to drain and consulted farmer B., who had put in some tile the year before. Did he think it paid? Yes. What kind of tile did he use and how was the work done? So A. planned and did his work in accordance with information obtained from B. Neighbor C. followed A., and so the work spread. It is now found that mistakes were made in the beginning which were handed from one to the other, until now, no alternative remains but to remove the whole work, and no little trouble and expense. This case is but one out of many which might be stated illustrating the lack of information at the beginning of drainage work. My observation upon this point has been that those have availed themselves of information given in books and papers upon drainage matters made fewer mistakes and did better work than those who relied upon the general wave of progress to push them along in the footsteps of their nearest neighbor. The theory, as well as the art, of drainage should be studied, and all knowledge adapted to the peculiarities of each case. MISTAKE NO. 2--NOT PLANNING FOR FUTURE DRAINAGE. A mistake often made by the novice is, that at first, drains are located without reference to the future drainage of other parts of the farm. Drains are put in as experiments, very much as we would plant a new variety of fruit or grain, expecting that probably the chances are against their success. Subsequently, when plans for more extended drainage are made, the drains already in operation were found to poorly serve the desired purpose. In order to guard against this mistake, have faith in drainage. Put it down on the whitest page of your memorandum, and with your best pen and ink, that drainage will pay, and the fewer mistakes made about it the better it will pay. Put it down that the time will come when you will drain all of your wet land, and make your plans accordingly. Many times have I heard this objection to locating a drain so as to benefit a certain field, "O no; I'll never drain that field. It's all right as it is. If I can only get this wet over here dry I shall be satisfied." In two years this same farmer was planning how he could drain the rejected field, and regretting that he had not made provision for it from the beginning. I have in mind several miles of tile that will be taken up during the coming season and relaid with reference to the drainage of all land having a natural slope in that direction. MISTAKE NO. 3--NOT BEGINNING AT THE RIGHT PLACE. Many of the drains first put in are at the head of the water shed instead of at the lower part or outlet. They discharge improperly and fail to fit into a more thorough system, where plans for better drainage are laid out. To avoid this error, begin at the outlet and work with reference to ultimately draining the whole section naturally sloping toward this outlet. If a surface ditch is necessary, make it. If tile can be used, lay them, even if only a fraction of the entire work is done each year. Drain laterally toward the main as it is carried upward. The outlay at first, rod for rod, will be greater, but the final cost will be less, and yearly profits greater. I have in mind several cases of unsatisfactory drainage growing out of a desire to avoid difficulty and expense in making a sufficient outlet. Among them may be named the following: Putting a drain across one side of a pond because sufficient depth can not be had to admit of its being run through the center. Placing drains each side of a slough, parallel to its center line, leaving the center undrained. Draining cultivated fields and allowing the water to discharge upon land occupying a lower level. All of these are make-shifts for the purpose of avoiding the expense of a good outlet. There is in this connection a difficulty which can not be overlooked, one which is beyond the control of the individual farmer, and that is, when the drainage section is owned by two or more parties. The adjustment of such cases has occupied the attention of our legislators, and some progress has been made in framing laws to meet the case, yet many difficulties remain unprovided for. If all parties agree to accept such awards and assessments as a commission may make, then the matter of drainage outlets can be satisfactorily adjusted, but if any party is disposed to resist, the desired drainage can be practically defeated. I may, at present, be justified in saying that where only a few neighbors are concerned, it is a mistake to attempt to use the law at all. Arrange the matter by mutual agreement or by leaving it to disinterested men to decide. MISTAKE NO. 4--TOO SMALL TILE. No mistake has become apparent sooner than this. The following observations will account for this, and also aid in correcting it. The whole area of land which naturally discharges toward the drain is not always taken into account. It is generally thought that land lying at some distance from the drain, though sloping toward it, does not affect the capacity required for the drain, whereas in times of heavy rains, when drains are taxed to their utmost, water flows from those more distant parts over the surface to the ground acted upon by the tile drain. We must then provide for the drainage not only of land contiguous to the drains but for an additional amount of water coming from adjoining slopes. Another popular error is that the diameter of the tile is the measure of its capacity, whereas the grade upon which it is laid is as important as the size of the tile. The extreme porosity of many of our soils, and the lack of thorough lateral drainage is another thing by reason of which main drains become over-taxed, simply because drainage water is not held in check by close soils, or distributed by lateral drains, but is brought in large quantities over the surface to the drain line, and must be taken away in a short time or injury is done to the land. In making mains or sub-mains it is better to err in making them too large than too small. MISTAKE NO. 5--NOT LATERAL ENOUGH. We expect too much from a single line of tile. We often see a line of tile put through a fifteen or twenty acre field with the expectation that the field will be drained, and thanks to our tractable soil, and the magic influence of tile, a great work is done for the field. It is, however, the dry weather drains previously alluded to. Put in the lateral drains so that the whole flat will come under the direct influence of tile, and you will have a garden spot instead of a field periodically flooded. Your sleep will not then be disturbed by fears that the morning will reveal your tiled field covered with water, and your corn crop on the verge of ruin. We often see a single line laid through a pond containing from one half to three acres. Ponds with such drainage always get flooded. Put in an abundance of laterals and the difficulty is overcome. I am glad to say that the tendency now among farmers who have practiced random drainage is toward more thorough work in this direction. The loss of an occasional crop soon demonstrates in favor of more thorough work. MISTAKE NO. 6--INATTENTION TO DETAILS. Farmers have been too much under the rule of professional ditchers. Having no well defined ideas of good drainage work, they have left the matter largely to the judgment, or rather the cupidity of the ditcher and the layer. There are many first-class, conscientious workmen, but it is to be regretted that the average ditcher does work far below the standard of excellence. If by some magic means the conditions of many of the drains in our State could be spread out before us in open view, it would be a wonder to this convention that tile drainage has wrought out such favorable results as it has. We would see tile laid on the siphon plan, good and poor joints, faulty connections, ditches crooked enough to baffle the sagacious mole should he attempt to follow the line. Patience would scarcely hold out to enumerate the exasperating defects of much of our drainage work. Nothing can overcome the egotism and self-confidence of the average ditcher except the constant supervision of the employer. Such work is so soon covered, and errors placed beyond immediate detection that nothing else will suffice. To guard against such mistakes, know what work you want and how you want it done, and then look after it yourself or employ some one in whom you have confidence to superintend it. When any mistake is guarded against, from beginning to end, the work will not be too well done. The cut-and-cover, hurry-scurry methods of doing things, common on some Western farms, will not do in drainage work. Carefulness in regard to every detail is the only safe rule to adopt. MISTAKE NO. 7--FAILURE TO MAKE OPEN DITCHES FOR WATER COURSES. The farmers of Illinois have, in many sections, been avoiding the main question in the drainage of our rich prairies, and that is the improvement of the natural water courses so that they will carry off the drainage water of sections for which they afford outlets. Every feasible plan and device has been used to circumvent the forces of nature and relieve valuable farm lands from surplus water. In the flat sections of our State nothing will serve this purpose but the deepening of our large sloughs by constructing capacious open ditches. Our land can not be properly drained without them. They must be of ample depth and width, and well made in every respect. No problem connected with the drainage interests of our State should, at present, receive more careful attention than this. Nature, has, in most cases, marked out the line for work, and says, "let man enlarge and complete for his undivided use according to his strength and skill." When such work is done, the demand for tile to supplement the drainage thus made possible will be unprecedented. The drainage of our roads will be facilitated, and the greatest difficulty thus far encountered in the drainage of our flat prairies will be overcome. Much has been attempted in this direction in some portions of the State, but many open ditches are too shallow, too small, and too carelessly made to serve the desired purpose. In pointing out some of the mistakes made in drainage, I am well aware that there are differences of opinion as to what may be properly considered a mistake. The aim of drainage is to fit the wet land of the entire farm for the successful cultivation of all the field crops at the least expense consistent with thoroughness. Now, if experiments must be tried by tiling here and there, and afterward take the tile up and remold the whole work, there is a loss which, were it not for the large profit resulting from the use of tile, would be disastrous. Should a Board of Public Works build several bridges of insufficient capacity in order to find out the necessary dimensions and strength of one which will serve their purpose, we should at once regard them incompetent and wasteful. I know of tile which have been taken up at three different times, larger tile being used each time. This farmer discards the use of lateral drains and rests his success upon single lines of large tile. He will probably be disappointed in this and, perhaps, finally hit upon the correct method. Would it not have been the part of wisdom to have obtained some reliable information upon that matter at first from books, from inquiring of others of longer experience, from a competent engineer, or from all of these sources? Anything which needlessly adds to the expense, or detracts from the efficiency of the work, should be regarded as a mistake. As a summary of what has been said regarding mistakes and how to avoid them, I append here a few DRAINAGE MAXIMS. 1. Become informed upon the theory and best methods known and used. 2. Do not literally copy the methods of others, but carefully adapt them to your own case. 3. Provide good outlets and large mains. 4. Have faith in good tile and thorough work. 5. Study economy and efficiency in locating drains. 6. In difficult cases, or where you have doubt about the success of your plans, submit the case to a good engineer before expending money or labor. 7. Employ good help by the day, and work it under a competent superintendent, rather than job out the work by the rod. 8. Drain as you would plant fruit trees--for the future as well as the present. I have been prosy and practical enough and now have used my allotted time and space. It may not be wholly out of place to further tax your time and patience, and ask you to lift your eyes from taking a critical view of defective drains, muddy ditches, and unattractive detail work, and look at the result of careful and thorough labor. As the years come and go with their changing seasons, your drained fields are ever your friends, always cheering you with a bountiful harvest, always answering to every industrious touch you may bestow upon them. "No excellence without labor," says the scholar to the discouraged student. "No excellence without labor," says the soil to the farmer, as he drains and plows and digs, and so we all learn that success in dealing with nature is brought about by thorough and honest work. Our enthusiasm scarcely knows bounds when we see that by our drainage work the apparently obstinate soil is made to reflect the sunlight from a covering of golden grain; when gardens and orchards bloom and yield fruit where once the willows dipped their drooping branches in the slimy fluid below, and frogs regaled the passer-by with their festive songs. Roses now twine over the rural cottage and send their fragrance into the wholesome air, where once the beaver reared his rude dwelling, and disease lurked in every breath, ready to seize his unsuspecting victim. Think you that these changes can be wrought without earnest and careful effort? I have but little sympathy with the glittering generalities and highly colored pictures of success in industrial pursuits, held before the public gaze by unpractical but well meaning public teachers. We need the dissemination of ideas of thoroughness and the knowledge necessary to put those ideas into practical use in order that the farmers of Illinois may make the fewest possible mistakes in drainage. FARMERS ADVICE. Farmers get plenty of advice. Were we able to work as easy and as well as the advice generally given to us would seem to indicate we could how easy and independent our occupation would become. In no other line of business is advice so freely given, and so much blame attached because the advice is not followed. The great trouble is that nearly everybody imagines they know how to farm. Although these same people may never have been practical farmers, they yet seem to think that anybody can farm, and, of course, they know as much about it as any one, and can tell at least how it ought to be done. Theoretical farming is always very fine--more so than any other calling. Very few believe in theory in other branches in business. As a rule, to be successful in other occupations, a long training is necessary; step by step must one go until each detail is learned. And it is only by industry, experience, and hard work that these are fully mastered. Advice is offered sparingly, because it is known that experience is the only true guide. But in farming theories are supposed to take the place of experience, and men who have very little, if any, practical knowledge can tell us how to farm. The fact is there is hardly a business or occupation that practically requires more study and experience than farming. A practical farmer, who makes his farm and farm work a study, learns something every day, and unless he is willing to learn not only by his own experience, but by that of others, he will soon discover that he is falling behind. Such a man is able to discriminate between the practical experience of one and the theory of the other. If new plans or new methods are presented, he can, in some degree, judge whether they are in any way practical, and if they are, he is willing to give them a trial. He knows that what might prove just the right thing to plant in one section of country, under certain conditions, and in some soils would, under a different climate and soil, result far from satisfactory. The large per cent of this kind of real practical knowledge can only be gained by experience. Whenever we meet a man who will not learn, we can not help but conclude that he will never make a successful farmer. We want to learn, too, not only by our successes, but by our failures. If we try a new plan and fail, we want to be able to know why we failed--just as much as to know why we succeeded. One great trouble with us in learning is that we are too apt to keep in mind our successes and forget the failures. This is the great fault of theoretical farming. If by a combination of favorable conditions success is obtained, it is given out as a fact--no exception being given or allowed for the very favorable conditions under which the method was tried. Such things may rightly be compared to the many specifics given to cure the various ills of life. A remedy is tried which, under favorable conditions, effects a cure, and forthwith the cure is given out as a specific. Others, with the same complaint but under different conditions, try the same remedy and fail to receive the least benefit. No mention is made of these failures, and, of course, others are induced to give the remedy a trial. For this reason it is always interesting to hear of failures as well as successes, provided the real cause can be stated. MILLER CO., MO. N. J. SHEPHERD. CISTERNS ON THE FARM. There is hardly any one thing on a well-regulated farm so much needed as a cistern near the kitchen door, so the farmer's wife will have to go but a little distance for water, and no man knows how much is used in a farmer's kitchen, unless he carries it for his wife for six months or a year, and if he has to carry it a hundred yards or so from the spring, he will wonder what in the world his wife does with so much water. The cistern should be a large one and hold not less than 200 barrels, and well built, that is, walled up with brick and scientifically plastered. All of the pipes from the roof should lead into one hopper, and one pipe leading from the bottom of the hopper (under ground is the best) into the cistern. In the bottom of the hopper should be fitted a piece of woven wire, which can be readily taken out and put in again; the meshes of the wire should not be larger than one-eighth of an inch. This piece of woven wire should never be in its place except when water is running into the cistern, when it will serve as a strainer to keep leaves or trash of any kind from running into the cistern. A waste-water pipe should be attached to the down pipe (all of the down pipes should lead into one) which leads into the hopper, to waste all the water that comes from the roof until the water is perfectly clear and free from leaves or trash of any kind; then the waste-water pipe should be taken off and a pipe of proper length slipped onto the down pipe conducting the water, pure and clean, into the hopper. But before letting the water into the hopper, the piece of woven wire should be put in its place in the bottom of the hopper, and after the rain is over it should be taken out and hung up in a dry place until wanted again, and the waste-water pipe put on. If the piece of woven wire is left in the hopper the meshes will get filled up, and the hopper will fill with leaves and trash of all kinds and run over, and no water get into the cistern--and if it does it will not be pure. By this arrangement only pure water will run into the cistern; but even then it ought to be cleaned out very fall or early in the spring. Farmers will find a cistern in their house lots or inside the barn a great convenience--but the one near the kitchen is of the greatest importance because the men will not carry water if they can help it, and the farmer's wife, if she has any spunk, will insist upon the water being carried for her or raise the roof off the house, and I don't blame her--the hair on the top of my head is very thin--and scarce. HIKE'S POINT, KY. E. F. C. FIELD AND FURROW. Mass. Ploughman: Farm accounts, even when kept in the most simple form, not only afford great satisfaction, but they do much to aid the farmer in his efforts to success. If at the end of the season he is able to strike the balance, and thus learn the cost of his principal crops, he is in a position to correctly judge what crops will promise the most profit another year. The Farm Economist has this to say in regard to marketing corn. While it is contrary to general opinion, it is nevertheless true, as facts and figures are capable of proving: "Farmers in discussing their declining markets should remember that every bushel of corn sold in the form of whisky cuts off the sale of ten bushels in the form of meat. It might be well to consider this in discussing how the market for farm products can be improved." This same paper further remarks, "Where's the sense in a farmer growling because he is not represented in the government when he won't go to a convention and see that he is represented. Quit your growling and do your duty. One good vote in the primaries or in the convention is worth 1,757,362 growls afterward." The Wisconsin Tobacco Reporter states that the new phase to the Sumatra question has brought out considerable discussion among dealers in the Edgerton market and that the prevailing impression appears to be that even if the recent decision be upheld, under the jugglery by which Sumatra is run into the country, prices for 1883 Wisconsin leaf will not be materially affected, as it can not entirely supplant its use and there will be a good demand for all our product. The editor adds: The scarecrow argument will doubtless be used by some buyers in bearing the market, but we are inclined to look upon it more as a bugaboo than many others, whatever the effect may be on future crops. We know of no good reason why 1883 Wisconsin should sell for lower prices than have ruled thus far this season and the report from Eastern markets seem to warrant this view. A. B. Allen, in N. Y. Tribune: My cistern is about five feet in diameter and five feet deep. After cleaning it out in spring, I put about one bushel of sand in the bottom, and then let the rain-water come in. This keeps the water sweet and clear for a whole year. I have tried charcoal and various things for this purpose, but find pure clear sand best of all. It must not have other soil mixed with it, or any vegetable matter. The kind I use is white, and very like such as is found at the sea shore. Of course the roof end of the pipe should have wire gauze fastened over it so that no foul stuff can be carried down, and the eaves-troughs must be kept clean, the roof and chimneys also, and never be painted, or the latter even whitewashed. The sand is an excellent absorber of even the finest of foul stuff, and this is the reason, in addition to its own purity, of its keeping the water so free from generating the smell of ammonia. Peoria Transcript: During some of the comparatively idle days of winter, the farmer may combine pleasure with profit by hitching up, taking his family, and driving to some one of his successful farm neighbors for a friendly visit. Such an act may be looked upon by the man-of-toil as a poor excuse to get out of doing a day's work, but we venture that he who tries the experiment once will be very apt to repeat it as often as time or opportunity will justify. In our neighborhood, and we presume the same condition of affairs exists in nearly every locality, there are farmers who have lived within a mile or two of each other for years, who hardly know their neighbors from a stranger when they meet upon the public highway or at town meeting, and as for going to the house, nothing short of death in the family or some event of great importance will ever bring them into the friendly relations which should exist between neighboring farmers. A New Jersey correspondent of the Rural New Yorker writes: My clear water carp pond covers an area of about three-fourths of an acre, and is located about eighty feet below springs in the hillside, which furnish a never-failing supply of pure, clear water. The normal temperature of these springs, where they empty into the pond, varies but little according to season, but maintains an average of fifty degrees, Fah. Several times through the summer I found the water in the pond indicated an average of 80 degrees, Fah. The pond is so constructed that the water is constantly drawn from the bottom, thus keeping the surface at this high temperature. About one-half the pond is covered with mud to the depth of two feet or more--an essential in all carp ponds for hibernating. A limited supply of pure German carp fingerlings to place in the pond was sent me by Prof. S. F. Baird, United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, Washington, D. C., and placed therein on April 6th last. No food was given besides that which grew in the pond. I saw them at rare intervals during the summer, and was agreeably surprised, when I drew the pond November 16th last past, to find that they had grown to be sixteen inches in length, and a pair weighed eight pounds. * * * * * THE MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE. On our 268th page appears the advertisement of the New Improved Monarch Lightning Sawing Machine, manufactured by the Monarch Mfg. Co., 163 Randolph. St., Chicago. The result of long experience in the manufacture of implements for cutting up wood is the superior and valuable machine which is advertised in our paper. Such of our readers who live in a timbered district, and who need such a machine, should send for their large illustrated free catalogue. This company is the largest and most successful corporation in this city engaged in manufacturing one man power drag saws. The Monarch Lightning Sawing Machine has been sold all over the Western States, and always gives satisfaction. It is a first-class firm, thoroughly reliable, and their machine is of superior excellence.--Farm, Field and Fireside, January, 1884. See their advertisement on another page of this issue. * * * * * FARM MACHINERY, Etc. [Illustration: DEDERICK'S HAY PRESSES.] DEDERICK'S HAY PRESSES. are sent any where on trial to operate against all other presses, the customer keeping the one that suits best. Order on trial, address for circular and location of Western and Southern Storehouses and Agents. TAKE NOTICE.--As parties infringing our patents falsely claim premiums and superiority over Dederick's Reversible Perpetual Press. Now, therefore, I offer and guarantee as follows: FIRST. That baling Hay with One Horse, Dederick's Press will bale to the solidity required to load a grain car, twice as fast as the presses in question, and with greater ease to both horse and man at that. SECOND. That Dederick's Press operated by One Horse will bale faster and more compact than the presses in question operated by Two Horses, and with greater ease to both man and beast. THIRD. That there is not a single point or feature of the two presses wherein Dederick's is not the superior and most desirable. Dederick Press will be sent any where on this guarantee, on trial at Dederick's risk and cost. P. K. DEDERICK & CO., ALBANY, N. Y. * * * * * GREAT SAVING FOR FARMERS. THE Lightning Hay Knife! (WEYMOUTH'S PATENT.) [Illustration] Awarded "FIRST ORDER OF Merit" at Melbourne Exhibition, 1880. Was awarded the FIRST PREMIUM at the International Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876, and accepted by the Judges as SUPERIOR TO ANY OTHER KNIFE IN USE. It is the BEST KNIFE in the _world_ to cut _fine feed_ from bale, to cut down _mow_ or _stack_, to cut _corn-stalks_ for feed, to cut _peat_, or for ditching in marshes, and has no equal for cutting ensilage from the silo. TRY IT. IT WILL PAY YOU. Manufactured only by HIRAM HOLT & CO., East Wilton, Me., U.S.A. _For sale by Hardware Merchants and the trade generally_ * * * * * THE CHICAGO DOUBLE HAY AND STRAW PRESS [Illustration] Guaranteed to load more Hay or Straw in a box car than any other, and bale at a less cost per ton. Send for circular and price list. Manufactured by the Chicago Hay Press Co., Nos. 3354 to 3358 State St., Chicago. Take cable car to factory. Mention this paper. * * * * * Sawing Made Easy Monarch Lightning Sawing Machine! Sent on 30 Days test Trial. A Great Saving of Labor & Money. [Illustration] A boy 16 years old can saw logs FAST and EASY. MILES MURRAY, Portage, Mich. writes, "Am much pleased with the MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE. I sawed off a 30-inch log in 2 minutes." For sawing logs into suitable lengths for family stove-wood, and all sorts of log-cutting, it is peerless and unrivaled. Illustrated Catalogue, FREE. AGENTS WANTED. Mention this paper. Address MONARCH MANUFACTURING CO., 163 N. Randolph St., Chicago, Ill. * * * * * CHICAGO SCALE CO. 2 TON WAGON SCALE, $40. 3 TON, $50. 4 Ton $60, Beam Box Included. 240 lb. FARMER'S SCALE, $5. The "Little Detective," 1/4 oz. to 25 lb. $3. 300 OTHER SIZES. Reduced PRICE LIST FREE. FORGES, TOOLS, &c. BEST FORGE MADE FOR LIGHT WORK, $10, 40 lb. Anvil and Kit of Tools. $10. Farmers save time and money doing odd jobs. Blowers, Anvils, Vices & Other Articles AT LOWEST PRICES, WHOLESALE & RETAIL. * * * * * [Illustration] THE PROFIT FARM BOILER is simple, perfect, and cheap; the BEST FEED COOKER; the only dumping boiler; empties its kettle in a minute. OVER 5,000 IN USE; Cook your corn and potatoes, and save one-half the cost of pork. Send for circular. D. R. SPERRY & CO., Batavia, Illinois. * * * * * CHAMPION BALING PRESSES. [Illustration] A Ton per Hour. Run by two men and one team. Loads 10 to 15 tons in car. Send for descriptive circular with prices, to GEHRT & CO., 216, 218 and 220 Maine St., Quincy, Ill. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1884; $2.00 pays for it from this date to January 1, 1885. For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * [Illustration] LIVE STOCK DEPARTMENT. Stockmen, Write for Your Paper. Iowa Wool Men. The Iowa Wool-Growers' Association met at Des Moines last week. The attendance was light. The general sentiment expressed was that sheep growing was profitable in Iowa, if the dogs could be got rid of. The Legislature will be importuned to abolish the curs. The session the last evening was devoted to the tariff on wool. The petition of the Ohio sheep-growers, presented to Congress, asking a restoration of the tariff law of 1867 on wool, was read and unanimously accepted. Officers for the ensuing year were elected as follows: S. P. McNeil, Gordon Grove, President; J. C. Robinson, Albia, Samuel Russell, West Grove, and A. N. Stewart, Grove Station, Vice-Presidents; A. J. Blakely, Grinnell, Secretary. Polled Cattle-Breeders. Twenty-seven head of Galloway and Angus cattle, belonging to A. B. Matthews, Kansas City, were sold at auction at Des Moines, Iowa, January 9th, at prices ranging from $235 to $610. The sale aggregated $10,425, or $386 per head. In the evening of the same day some twenty-five polled cattle-breeders met and organized a State association. An address was read by Abner Graves, of Dow City, in which the breed was duly extolled. An interesting discussion followed, in the course of which it was stated that the polled breeds have two anatomical peculiarities in common with the American bison, indicating a close relation to, or possible descent from the buffalo family. The officers elected were: President, Abner Graves, of Dow City; Vice-Presidents, Messrs. Bryan, of Montezuma, D. J. Moore, of Dunlop, and Charles Farwell, of Montezuma; Secretary and Treasurer, H. G. Gue, of Des Moines. Liberal subscriptions were made to the articles of incorporation which were formed inside the organization, after the meeting adjourned. Merino Sheep Breeders. The sixth annual meeting of the Northern Illinois Merino Sheep Breeders' Association was held at Elgin, January 9th. The meeting was well attended and enthusiastic. George E. Peck presided. The annual report of Secretary Vandercook showed the association to be in a growing condition. The discussion of the day was mainly on the tariff question. A communication from Columbus Delano, President of the National Wool-Growers Association was read, asking for the co-operation of the society in a move upon Congress for the restoration of duties on imported wools as they were established by the act of 1867 met with a hearty reception. Thomas McD. Richards delivered an interesting address on wool-growing and the merino as a mutton sheep. He argued that a prevailing idea to the effect that good mutton could not come from fine-wool sheep was entirely erroneous. Touching on the tariff question he said the past year had been an unprofitable one to mere wool-growers, and that sheep had been unsalable at paying prices. The removal of the duty on wool had paralyzed the industry, and the tariff must be restored. There was an abundance of competition among the wool-growers of our own land without compelling them to compete with the stockmen of South America and Australia. The farmers had not clamored for a removal of the duty on wool. If the tariff was not restored the wool interests of the country would be ruined. Already legislation had lowered the price of wool several cents, and had depreciated the value of sheep at least $1 per head. The tariff was also dilated upon by Col. John S. Wilcox, of Elgin, Daniel Kelley, of Wheaton, and Asa H. Crary. The conclusion arrived at was that energetic and united action for the restoration of the duty was the thing desired. V. P. Richmond read an interesting essay on "Merinos; Their Characteristics and Attributes." The annual election of officers resulted as follows: President, George E. Peck, Geneva; Vice-Presidents, Thomas McD. Richards, Woodstock, and Daniel Kelley, Wheaton; Secretary and Treasurer, W. C. Vandercook, Cherry Valley. It was decided to hold the association's annual public sheep-shearing at Richmond, McHenry county, April 29 and 30, and C. R. Lawson, L. H. Smith, and A. S. Peck were designated a committee to represent the association at the annual sheep-shearing of the Wisconsin association. Cattle Disease. The House committee on agriculture last week discussed in a general way the subject of pleuro pneumonia in cattle. Mr. Loring, Commissioner of Agriculture, expressed his views upon the subject in a short speech. Mr. Grinnell, of Iowa, chairman of the committee appointed by the convention of cattle men, in Chicago, to visit Washington to influence Legislation in reference to diseased cattle, was present. It was arranged that a sub-committee, consisting of Congressmen Hatch, Dibrell, Williams, Winans, Wilson, and Ochiltree, should meet the representatives of the cattle interests at the Agricultural Department. Pleuro-pneumonia among cattle will be the first subject considered. The House committee on agriculture will report a bill at an early day. The assistant Secretary of the Treasury has transmitted to the House the report of the cattle commission, consisting of James Law, E. F. Thayer, and J. H. Sanders, for the past year. The commission recommended that the National Government prevent the shipment northward, out of the area infected with Texas fever, of all cattle whatsoever, excepting from the beginning of November to the beginning of March. Special attention is invited by the Assistant Secretary to the recommendation of the commission that the Secretary of the Treasury be empowered to order the slaughter and safe disposal of all imported herds that may be found infected on their arrival in the United States, or may develop a dangerous or contagious disease during quarantine; and that he be also empowered to have all ruminants (other than cattle) and all swine imported into the United States, subjected to inspection by veterinary surgeons, and if necessary to prevent the spread of contagious diseases, slaughtered or submitted to quarantine until they shall be considered uninfected; and that an appropriation of $1,500,000 be made to defray the expenses of preventing a further spread of the lung plague among cattle in this country, and for stamping out the plague now existing. A supplemental report of the majority of commission, submitted by Law and Thayer, and of a later date than the first report is also submitted. This report deals especially with the inadequacy to the end sought to be accomplished of the inspection of cattle at ports of export, and recommends that such inspection and guarantee be delayed. Their reason for doubting the adequacy of the inspection at ports of exports is that neither lung plague nor Texas fever can be certainly detected by such examination, because those diseases pass through an average stage of incubation for thirty days, during which it is impossible for the most accomplished expert to detect the presence of the germ in the system. The result would be, if such an inspection were the only thing relied upon, that cattle which had been exposed to infection in the stock yards several days before inspection would pass that inspection, but three weeks later, when they arrived at a foreign port, would show marked symptoms of the disease. This result destroys absolutely the efficacy of the certificates of inspection as to guarantees to foreign imported cattle. The report closes with the statement that so long as the infected districts in this country can not be secluded, the landing of infected cattle in England from this country can not be prevented, and so long as American cattle show these diseases on their arrival in England we can hope for no modification of the present restrictions that country places against American cattle. * * * * * At the conference between House sub-committee on agriculture and the Chicago convention committee a general discussion on contagious diseases among cattle was indulged in. The committee of cattle men, in answer to the inquiries of representatives, said diseases existed in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Connecticut, New York, and possibly in other places. In New York a few counties are reported infected. Mr. Hunt, of New Jersey, said if Congress would appropriate an adequate amount payable to the order of the authorities of the different States and protect New Jersey for six months from the importation of diseased cattle, the State in that time would stamp out pleuro-pneumonia in its territory. Dr. Law, of the Cattle Commission of the Treasury Department, said the disease was undoubtedly the result of importation. He said that with plenty of money and a Federal law it could be eradicated in twelve months. New York City had at one time stamped it out in three months. He advocated the burning of buildings where the disease occurred. Judge Carey, of Wyoming, gave the history of the disease, saying it was like Asiatic cholera spreading through Europe and reaching New York forty years ago. It existed on the continent of Europe, in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and this country. He said $100,000,000 was invested in the cattle business of the United States. Representative Hatch said that Mr. Singleton, of Illinois, had offered $1,000 reward for an animal afflicted with pleuro-pneumonia, but no one had accepted. Several members of the cattle committee at once offered to show the disease to any one doubting its existence. Representative Weller gave notice that he would offer a bill appropriating $10,000,000 by the Government for suppressing contagious diseases among cattle, to be distributed among the States and Territories in the ratio of representation in Congress, provided that each State appropriated a sum equal to the amount given by the Government. The legislation proposed is to make the shipment of cattle known to be diseased a penal offense; to establish a cattle bureau in the Department of Agriculture; increase the power of the Commissioner of Agriculture; provide funds for an elaborate investigation of the diseases of cattle; and provide an appropriation to purchase diseased cattle so they can be destroyed. An appropriation will be asked the first year of $500,000. THE HORSE AND HIS TREATMENT. NUMBER TWO. First, as regards food. The horse is naturally a wild animal and therefore, though domesticated, he demands such food as nature would provide for him. But man seems to forget this. Nature's food would be largely of grass. It is true that when domesticated and put to hard work he needs some food of a more concentrated and highly nutritious nature than grass; but while labor may necessitate grain, the health of his system yet demands a liberal allowance of grass. In direct opposition to this many farmers keep their horses off pasture while they are at work, which comprises almost the entire season of green pasture. I have frequently heard farmers say that their horses did best during the spring and summer, if kept in the stable at night. I can only say that I have found the very opposite to be true and I believe I have carefully and faithfully tested the matter. I have found that when the horses were allowed the range of a blue grass pasture at night, they endured work the best because they digested their grain and hay better, and good digestion made good appetites. In fact, I consider pasture the best food and the best medicine a horse can be given. If his coat is rough, if he is stiff and lifeless, if he is losing flesh and strength, turn him on pasture and he will soon grow better. Some grasses make far better pasture than others. All in all, I consider blue grass the best. It comes earliest in the spring, and while very palatable and easily digested, seems to possess more substance than other grasses. Next I would place timothy. Clover is good medicine for a sick horse, but because of its action on the salivary glands is apt to make work horses "slobber" at certain seasons. For winter, hay is provided. But how is it provided in a majority of cases? The grass is cut out of season; is cured negligently, very likely is exposed to rain; and then piled up to mold and rot. A few tarpaulins to put over the cocks in case of rain, and barracks or mow to protect and preserve the hay would give the horse good hay, and be one of the very best of investments. It should be remembered that the digestive organs of none other of our farm animals are so easily deranged as those of the horse. Musty, moldy hay is the moving cause of much disease. The man who can not provide a good mow should sell his horses to some farmer who can manage better. Though blue grass is the best for pasture, timothy is the best for hay. Clover makes better hay than blue grass. Corn fodder has substance, and pound for pound contains about two-thirds as much nutriment as hay. But it is not good forage for the horse. Where hay is procurable corn fodder should never be fed. I am convinced that the great majority of farmers do nor feed their horses enough forage. I know of farmers who do not feed hay at all when their horses are at work, which is more than half the year. Grain is fed exclusively. Yet they wonder why their horses lose flesh and have rough coats. Feeding a horse all grain is like feeding a man all meat. The food is so oily and difficult of digestion that it soon deranges the digestive organs. The horse should have all the hay he wishes to eat, at all seasons of the year. This brings me to another error in his treatment. When at work the horse should have at least ninety minutes for each meal. My observation convinces me that a large number of farmers do not give him this much time. Their reason for neglecting to do so is, that it would be a loss of time. But the very opposite of this is the case. Time is gained. The horse has opportunity to eat slowly, which is essential to complete digestion; can eat all he wishes; and has time to rest after eating, giving the organs of digestion a chance to work. Give your horse an hour and a half to eat his noon-day meal, at least, and at the end of the season you will find that by so doing you have gained time. He may not have walked before the plow and harrow so many hours, but he has stepped faster and pulled more energetically. Another error is the feeding of too much grain. Some farmers have grain in the feeding troughs all the time during the spring and summer. The horse is sated. This manner may do for a hog, whose only business is to lie around, grunt, and put on fat; but for a horse it will not do. A horse should never be given all the grain he will eat. At every meal he should clean out his box, and then be ready to eat hay for at least fifteen minutes. Another error is in confining the grain feed almost altogether to corn. Corn is a heavy, gross diet. It contains a large proportion of oil, and tends to produce lymph and fat, which are inimical to health, and destructive of vigor and endurance. Oats is a much better food; yet it is very rarely fed in the South, and not half of the farmers of the North feed it. Corn heats the blood, and on this account should not be fed in hot weather. Oats is a lighter, easier diet, does not heat the blood, and makes muscle, rather than fat. All in all, oats is the most economical food, at least for horses at work in hot weather. One more error which I shall notice in feeding is the giving of too much dry food. The horse does best upon moist food, or that which has a large percentage of water in its composition. Carrots, turnips, beets, pumpkins, etc., may be given in small quantities with decided advantage, especially in the winter. In summer the hay should be sprinkled with water, and the oats soaked. This will not only make the food more palatable and easily digested, but will obviate the necessity of watering after meals. Many object to watering after the horse has eaten, because the fluid carries the grain into the intestines where it can not be digested. But if grain and forage are dampened, the horse will not require watering after a meal. He will rarely drink if water is offered him, and the moisture will aid digestion. This is surely better and more humane than to give a horse dry food and then work him for six or seven hours in the hot sun, afterward, without any drink. Of the quality of water given to the horse there is not much to condemn. He generally gets better water than the hog, or sheep, because he is very fastidious in this matter and will not drink foul water unless driven to do so by dire necessity. But I believe that three times is not often enough to water a horse at work in hot weather, though this is the common and time honored practice. The stomach of the horse is small--very small in proportion to the size of his body. When he has labored in summer for half a day his thirst is intense, and when he is permitted to slake it he drinks too much, producing really serious disorders. No valid objection can be urged against watering five times per day. The arguments are all in its favor. The errors in stabling are fully as grievous as any we have noticed. I have lately written of the evils of lack of light and proper ventilation in these columns, and also discussed the problem of currying in various phases, so shall not repeat here what I have heretofore written. One of the other evils of stable management often allowed, is the accumulation of manure. It is not within the scope of this article to notice the evil the neglect to save manure works to the farm and the farmer. But that the accumulation of the manure in the stable is a hurt to the horse, no sensibly reasoning person can doubt. Its fermentation gives off obnoxious gases which pollute and poison the air the horse is compelled to breathe, and thus in turn poison the animal's blood. This is a more fruitful cause of disease than is generally supposed. The gases prove injurious to the eye, and when we consider the accumulation of manure and the exclusion of light, we are not apt to wonder much at the prevalence of blindness among horses. The manure should be cleaned out in the morning, at noon, and again at night. Use sawdust or straw liberally for bedding. It will absorb the urine, and as soon as foul, should be removed to the compost heap with the dung, where it will soon be converted into fine, excellent manure. Another thing that deserves attention is the stable floor. I unhesitatingly say that a composition of clay and fine gravel is best. Pavement is the worst, and planks are next. The clay and gravel should be put in just moist enough to pack solidly. Stamp till very firm and then allow to dry and harden for a week. The stable floor should be kept perfectly level. Do not make the horse stand in a strained, unnatural position. The stall should be large enough for him to move around--at least six feet wide. Narrow stalls are a nuisance but very common. JOHN M. STAHL. COST OF PORK ON 1883 CORN. About three weeks ago the "Man of the Prairie" wanted to know how many pounds of pork a bushel of corn would make this year. As I wanted to know the same thing I have weighed my hogs every week and also the corn I fed them, and for the benefit of your readers I will give the results: December 10--15 hogs, weight 4,130 " 17--" " " 4,280 ate 960 lbs Corn. " 24--" " " 4,410 " 864 " " 31--" " " 4,572 " 816 " This gives a gain, in twenty-one days, of 442 lbs, and they ate in that time 2,640 lbs., or 47-1/7 bu. corn. The corn was planted about the eighth of May; was the large white variety; is quite loose on the cob, and a good many of the ears are mouldy. A common bushel basket holds of it in ear 35 lbs. The hogs were fed the corn in ear twice a day, and had all the water they wanted to drink. This gives 9-62/165 lbs. pork to the bushel. At the present price of pork ($5.25) it would make the corn worth about 49-1/2 cts. per bushel. G. W. POWESS. WINNEBAGO CO., ILL. P.S. The weight of corn given is its weight shelled, as it shells out 55 lbs from 80 lbs. in ear. G. F. P. VETERINARY Grease, So-Called. This ailment occurs sometimes in the fore feet, but oftener in the hind feet; and though neither contagious nor epizootic, it not unfrequently appears about one time or within a brief period, on most or all of the horses in a stable. It essentially consists in a stoppage of the normal secretions of the skin, which is beneficially provided for maintaining a soft condition of the skin of the heel, and preventing chapping and excoriation; and it usually develops itself in redness, dryness, and scurfiness of the skin; but in bad or prolonged cases, it is accompanied with deep cracks, an ichorous discharge, more or less lameness, and even great ulceration, and considerable fungus growth; and in the worst cases it spreads athwart all the heel, extends on the fetlock, or ascends the leg, and is accompanied with extensive swelling and a general oozing discharge, of a peculiar strong, disagreeable odor. Most of the causes of grease are referable to bad management, especially in regard to great and sudden changes in the exterior temperature of the heels. The feet of the horse may be alternately heated by the bedding and cooled by draft from the open stable door; or they may first be made hot and sensitive by the irritating action of the urine and filth on the stable floor, and then violently reacted on by the cold breezes of the open air, or they may be moist and reeking when the horse is led out to work, and then chilled for a long period by the slow evaporation of the moisture from them amid the clods and soil of the field; or they may be warm and even perspiring with the labor of the day, and next plunged into a stream or washed with cold water, and then allowed to dry partly in the open air and partly in the stable; and in many of these ways, or of any others which occasion sudden changes of temperature in the heels, especially when those changes are accompanied or aggravated by the irritating action of filth, grease is exceedingly liable to be induced. Want of exercise, high feeding, and whatever tends to accumulate or to stagnate the normal greasy secretion in the skin of the heels, also operate, in some degree, as causes. By mere good management and by avoiding these known causes, horse owners might prevent the appearance of this disease altogether. In the early, dry, scurfy stage of grease, the heels may be well cleaned with soft soap and water, and afterwards thoroughly dried, and then treated with a dilution of Goulard's extract--one part to eight parts of water, or one part with six parts of lard oil. In the mildest form of the stage of cracks and ichorous discharge, after cleansing, some drying powder, such as equal quantities of white lead and putty (impure protoxide of zinc), may be applied, or simply the mixture of Goulard's extract with lard oil may be continued. In the virulent form of cracks, accompanied with ulceration, the heels ought to be daily washed clean with warm water, and afterwards bathed with a mild astringent lotion, and every morning and evening thinly poulticed or coated with carbolized ointment; and the whole system ought to be acted on by alteratives, by nightly bran mash, and, if the animal be in full condition, with a dose of purgative medicine. In the worst and most extensively spread cases, poultices of a very cooling kind, particularly poultices of scraped carrots or scraped turnips, ought to be used day and night, both for the sake of their own action, and as preparatives to the action of the astringent application; and the whole course of treatment ought to aim at the abatement of the inflammatory action, previous to the stopping of the discharge. Nothing tends so much to prevent grease and swelling of the legs as frequent hand rubbing and cleansing the heels carefully as soon as a horse comes in from exercise or work. In inveterate cases of grease, where the disease appears to have become habitual, in some degree, a run at grass, when in season, is the only remedy. If a dry paddock is available, where a horse can be sheltered in bad weather, it will be found extremely convenient; as in such circumstances, he may perform his usual labor, and at the same time be kept free from the complaint. Foul in the Foot. This name is given to a disease in cattle, which presents a resemblance to foot rot in sheep, but is different from this. It appears to be always occasioned by the neglect and aggravation of wounds and ulcers originating in mechanical injury--particularly in the insinuating of pieces of stone, splinters of wood, etc., between the claws of the hoof, or in the wearing, splitting, or bruising of the horn, and consequent abrasion of the sensible foot; by walking for an undue length of time, or a long distance upon gravelly or flinty roads, or other hard and eroding surfaces. It is sometimes ascribed, indeed, to a wet state of the pasture; but moisture merely predisposes to it, by softening the hoof and diminishing its power of resisting mechanical injury. The ulcers of foul in the foot usually occur about the coronet and extend under the hoof, causing much inflammatory action, very great pain, and more or less separation of the hoof; but they often originate in uneven pressure upon the sole, and rise upward from a crack between the claws, and are principally or wholly confined to one side or claw of the foot. A fetid purulent discharge proceeds from the ulcers, and a sinus may sometimes be discovered by means of a probe to descend from the coronet beneath the hoof. The affected animal is excessively lame, and may possibly suffer such a degree of pain as to lose all appetite and become sickly and emaciated. If the disease is of a mild form, or be merely in the initiatory stage, it may be readily cured by cleaning, fomentation, and rest; if it be of a medium character, between mild and violent, it may be cured by cleaning, by carefully paring away loose and detached horn, by destroying any fungus growth, and by applying, with a feather, a little butyr of antimony; and if it be of a very bad form, or has been long neglected, it will require to be probed, lanced, or otherwise dealt with according to the rules of good surgery, and afterwards poulticed twice a day with linseed meal, and frequently, but lightly, touched with butyr of antimony. Founder. This disease consists in inflammation of the laminæ and of the vascular parts of the sensible foot. It sometimes attacks only one foot, sometimes two, and sometimes all four; but, in a great majority of cases, it attacks either one or both of the front feet. A chronic form sometimes occurs, and exhibits symptoms somewhat similar to those of contraction of the hoof; but acute inflammation of the laminæ is what is generally called founder. This disease is occasioned by overstraining of the laminæ from long standing, by prolonged or excessive driving over hard roads, by congestion from long confinement, by sudden reaction from standing in snow after being heated, or from covering with warm bedding after prolonged exposure to cold, by sudden change of diet from a comparatively cool to a comparatively heating kind of food, and by translation of inflammatory action from some other part of the body, particularly after influenza. In the early stages of founder, a horse evinces great pain, shows excessive restlessness of foot, and tries to lighten the pressure of his body on the diseased feet. In the more advanced stages he is feverish, breathes hard, has violent throbbing in the arteries of the fetlock, lies down, stretches out his legs, and sometimes gazes wistfully upon the seat of the disease; and in the ulterior stages, if no efficacious remedies have been applied, the diseased feet either naturally recover their healthy condition, or they suppurate, slough, cast part or all of the hoof, and gradually acquire a small, weak, new hoof, or they undergo such mortification and change of tissues as to render the animal permanently useless. The shoe of a foundered foot must be removed; the hoof should be pared in such a manner that the sole and central portion of the same alone come to sustain the weight of the body. Therefore, the wall of the hoof, or that portion of the hoof which, under normal conditions, is made to bear upon the shoe, should be pared or rasped away, all around, to such an extent that it does not touch the ground when the animal stands upon the foot. A well-bedded shed, or a roomy, well-bedded box-stall, should be provided, with a view of allowing ample room for stretching out, as well as for changing position on a floor which should not be slanting, and which conveniences can not be had in a single stall, or when the animal is kept tied up in a confined space. Fomentations, evaporating lotions, wet cloths, and moist poultices should be applied to the feet. The animal ought to have light and spare diet, and bran mashes. When much fever exists febrifuges and diuretics should be given. QUESTIONS ANSWERED. COW DRYING UP UNEVENLY. D. W., AUBURN, ILL.--1. What is the cause of a cow going dry in one teat? She dropped her calf the 25th of May, and it sucked till it was three months old two teats on one side; that was her third calf; her next one will be due the last of April next. For some six weeks past the quantity of milk has been diminishing, till now she does not give more than a gill from one teat, while the opposite one gives more than double that of either of the others. Can any thing be done to remedy the difficulty? 2. If a cow gives more milk on one side than the other, does it indicate the sex of the coming calf? REPLY.--Most likely the cow will give milk from all four quarters after calving. She should be allowed to gradually dry up now, and toward the time of calving, she should not be fed exclusively on dry food. 2. No. [Illustration] THE DAIRY. Dairymen, Write for Your Paper. Curing Cheese. The curing of cheese develops not only flavor, but texture and digestibility. As a rule, says an English exchange, no American cheese is well cured, and this is for want of suitable curing houses. Dr. H. Reynolds, of Livermore Falls, Me., remarks upon this subject as follows: "Increased attention needs to be given by cheese-makers to this matter of curing cheese. Cheese factories should be provided with suitable curing rooms, where a uniform temperature of the required degree can be maintained, together with a suitable degree of moisture and sufficient supply of fresh air. The expense required to provide a suitable curing room would be small compared to the increased value of the cheese product thereby secured. Small dairymen and farmers, having only a few cows, labor under some difficulties in the way of providing suitable curing room for their cheese. Yet if they have a clear idea of what a curing room should be, they will generally be able to provide something which will approximate to what is needed. Good curing rooms are absolutely needed in order to enable our cheese-makers to produce a really fine article of cheese. The nicer the quality of cheese produced, the higher the price it will bring, and the more desirable will it become as an article of food. In the curing of cheese certain requisites are indispensable in order to attain the best results. Free exposure to air is one requisite for the development of flavor. Curd sealed up in an air-tight vessel and kept at the proper temperature readily breaks down into a soft, rich, ripe cheese, but it has none of the flavor so much esteemed in good cheese. Exposure to the oxygen of the air develops flavor. The cheese during the process of curding takes in oxygen and gives off carbonic acid gas. This fact was proved by Dr. S. M. Babcock, of Cornell University, who, by analyzing the air passing over cheese while curding, found that the cheese was constantly taking in oxygen and giving off carbonic acid gas. The development of flavor can be hastened by subjecting the cheese to a strong current of air. The flavor is developed by the process of oxidation. If the cheese is kept in too close air during the process of curding, it will be likely to be deficient in flavor." * * * * * An anonymous writer very truly remarks that the dairyman, by the force of circumstances, has to become versed in the breeding and management of stock, especially that of dairy breeds; hence, in the very nature of things, he becomes a thoughtful, studious, observing man, and, what is better, he attains a higher intelligence. The advantages of dairying call out, among other things, enhanced revenues, because butter and cheese have become necessities; it enriches the farm, and is perfectly adapted to foster the breeding and raising of better and more stock. It embodies thrift, progress, and prosperity. Under "new methods" it makes fine butter and choice beef, not by any means less, but even more, and affords better grain. It does not imply farm houses with added burdens, but, on the contrary, relieved of drudgery, and the time thus gained can be spent in cultivating the refining graces, and thus making farmers' homes abodes of culture, refinement, and education, placing the dairy farmer upon a level financially, socially, and intellectually with any other class or profession. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. THE RURAL NEW-YORKER The great national farm and garden journal of America, with its Celebrated Free Seed Distribution, and THE PRAIRIE FARMER one year, post-paid, all for only $3.00. It is a rare chance. Specimen copies cheerfully sent gratis. Compare them with other rural weeklies, and then subscribe for the best. Apply to 34 PARK ROW, NEW YORK. * * * * * For Sale or Rent. Farm of four hundred and eighty acres situated in Marlon County, Illinois, two and a half miles from Tonti Station, and six miles from Odin, on branch of Illinois Central R. R., and O. & M. Road--300 acres under plow, 180 acres timber. The latter has never been culled and is very valuable. Farm is well fenced into seven fields. Has an orchard on it which has yielded over two thousand dollars worth of fruit a year. No poor land on the farm, and is called the best body of land in Marion County. It was appraised by the Northwestern Insurance Co. for a loan at $18,000 and a loan made of six thousand. Buildings are not very good. Will sell for $14,800--$2,800 cash, $6,000 May 31, 1887, and $6,000 Feb. 24, 1892, deferred payments to bear 6 per cent interest, or, to a first-class party, having a few thousand dollars to put into stock, a liberal arrangement will be made to rent it for a term of years. Property belongs to an estate. Address J. E. YOUNG, 71 Park Avenue, Chicago. * * * * * HENRY DAVIS, DYER, IND. [Illustration] Breeder of Light Brahmas, Plymouth Rocks, Bronze Turkeys, Toulouse Geese, and Pekin Ducks. Stock for sale. Eggs in Season. 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Write PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, for particulars. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ [Illustration] HORTICULTURAL Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper. SOUTHERN ILL. HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. The members of the Southern Illinois Horticultural Society recently held a meeting at Alton, and resolved to put a little more life into the organization. A new constitution was adopted, and the following officers were elected for the ensuing year: President--E. A. Riehl, Alton. First Vice-President--G. W. Endicott, Villa Ridge. Second Vice-President--Wm. Jackson, Godfrey. Secretary and Treasurer--E. Hollister, Alton. The following select list of fruits was recommended for the district, or Southern grand division of the State: Apples--Summer--Red Astrachan, Keswick Codlin, Benoni, Saps of Wine, and Maiden's Blush. Fall--It was unanimously agreed that fall apples were not profitable for market purposes. Winter--Ben Davis, Rome Beauty, Jonathan, Wine-Sap, Winter May, Gilpin, and Janet. Apples for family use--Summer--Early Harvest, Red Astrachan, Carolina Red June, Benoni, Maiden's Blush, Bailey Sweet and Fameuse. Fall--Fall Wine, Rambo, Grimes' Golden, Yellow Belleflower. Winter--Jonathan, Rome Beauty, Winesap, Ben Davis, Janet, Gilpin, Moore's Sweet, Sweet Vandevere. Peaches for Market--Bartlett, Howell, and Duchess. Pears for Family Use--Bartlett, Seckel, Howell, White Doyenne, D'Anjou, and Sheldon. Peaches--For Family Use and Market--Alexander, Mountain Rose, L. E. York, Oldmixon Free, Crawford's Late Stump, Picquet's Late, Smock, Salway, and Heath Cling. Grapes--Home Use and Market--Worden or Concord, Cynthiana or Norton's Va., Mo. Reisling, Noah, Ives. Strawberries--Home and Market--Capt. Jack, Downing, and Wilson. Raspberries--Black Caps--Doolittle and Gregg. Reds--Cuthbert, Brandywine, and Turner for home use only. Notes on Current Topics. FARM ECONOMY. Now, if one wants to ascertain how many agricultural implements are used by the farmers of the West, let him take a trip across the country for a day or two, and he will see reapers and mowers, and hay rakes and cultivators, and plows and seeders, standing in the fields and meadows, at the end of the rows where they had last been used. A stranger might think that this is not the place for them at this particular time of year. But in this he shows his ignorance of Western farm economy--for it is the very place for them; the identical locality where a great many of our farmers choose to keep their costly implements. Besides--don't you see, our farmers believe in fostering the manufactures of our country; and this place of caring for their tools after using them adds 15 or 20 per cent to the business of the manufacturers. ABOUT THE BORER. I referred to the fact that I had lately been cutting away, digging up, and making stove-wood of a number of dead and decaying apple trees. Some of them had been dead and dying for two or three years. In splitting up the body and roots of one of these, I dislodged scores of the borers, of all ages and sizes--making quite a dinner for a hen and chickens that happened to be nigh. This fact brought forcibly to my mind what I should have thought of before, namely--that these dead and dying trees ought not to be allowed to remain a day after their usefulness has departed; but should be removed bodily and consigned to the flames. Otherwise they remain as breeding places for the pests, to the great detriment of the rest of the orchard. Cut away your decaying trees at once. COAL ASHES. Now that coal has become so common as a substitute for wood for fuel, not only on the railroads and manufactories, but in the villages and on the farms, wood ashes will still be harder to procure. Though not near so valuable for the purposes for which wood ashes is chiefly used in horticulture, it is believed that ashes from the coal has too great a value to be wasted. It should all be saved and applied to some good purpose on the garden or orchard. Has any one tried it as a preventive to pear blight? or mildew on the gooseberry? or the grape rot? or for the yellows or leaf-curl in peach trees? or for the rust in the blackberry and raspberry? In any or all of these it may have a decided value, and should be faithfully experimented with. As an absorbent alone it ought to be worth saving, to use in retaining the house slops and other liquid manures that are too often wasted. ONE CAUSE OF FAILURE in our orchard trees, of which we read and hear so much in late years, is doubtless to be found in the fact that we fail to feed them properly. A hog will fail to put on fat if he is not fed; a hen will not lay eggs if she is starved for food; and is it more reasonable to expect an apple or a peach or a pear tree to thrive and grow and yield of its luscious fruit in perfection while it is being starved? Our fresh soils--some of them at least--contain a fair proportion of the food needed to support the life of a tree; we plant our orchards, and for some years, more or less, they give us paying returns for our investments. But that food will not always last; it is gradually exhausted, and we fail to feed them again, or in that proportion their necessities require. They languish and die; a disease seizes them, and we complain and grumble at the dispensations of Providence. Think of it, fellow fruit-growers; let us begin to treat our fruit trees as we do our hogs and our hens, and see if we can not be favored with corresponding results. It is doubtless true that many of the diseases to which our trees are subject are caused by starvation, or by improper feeding; and a sickly tree is much more certain to be attacked by insects than a healthy one. Rare, indeed, is the case where a tree is carefully fed and cared for, and its wants regularly and bountifully supplied, that it does not repay as bountifully in its life-giving fruits. T. G. PEAR BLIGHT. THE TWO THEORIES WITH REGARD TO ITS CAUSE, AND THEIR PRACTICAL VALUE. It is assumed that this pest has cost agriculturists many millions of dollars during the past decade; not only in the loss of trees, but the time--as it seldom appears until after the first crop--consequently the land, manure, labor, enclosure, and taxes are not insignificant items. Climate, soil, and cultivation have utterly failed, so also the nostrums, such as "carbonate of lime" suggested by the best authority, and the experts now admit that parasites (such as cause the rust or smut in our cereals) are the cause of this mischief. The only question is whether they act directly or indirectly: this question determines whether it is remediable. If these parasites accomplish all this mischief by direct contact, as in the case of rust, their ubiquitous character is so demonstrated that we are utterly discouraged; whereas, if we prove that their indirect action is the only one that is to be dreaded, and that indirect action is remediable we are encouraged to cultivate the pear, though we have lost more than five hundred of one variety and almost all of the other varieties before we discovered the real cause of the failure. "Where you lose you may find;" success does not indicate merit, and "fools never learn by experience." As a celebrated surgeon said in his lecture. "A good oculist is made at the expense of a hatful of eyes." The celebrated Johnson who wrote the Encyclopedia of Agriculture a few years since, is now regarded as an old fogy, because he assumed that the spores of smut travel from the manure and seed of the previous crop in the circulation of the plant to the capsule, and thus convert the grain into a puff-ball, so also the ears of corn, the oats, and rye. This monstrosity on the rye grains is called ergot, or spurred rye, and when it is eaten by chickens or other fowls their feet and legs shrivel or perish with dry gangrene, not because the spores of the fungus which produced the spurred rye circulate in the blood of the chicken, nor that the spawn or mycelium thus traverses the fowl, but the peculiar and specific influence acts upon the whole animal precisely like the poison of the poison oak, producing its specific effect on the most remote parts of the system, and not as mustard confined to the part it touches. The mustard acts directly, but the "poison Ivy" acts indirectly; so also the virus of cow-pox poisons the whole system, but usually appears in but one spot unless the lymphatics of the whole arm are weak, and in that case crops of umbilicated pustules precisely like the original, may recur on all parts of the arm for several months. The specific effect of ergot or the fungus when indirect is manifested by contracting and even strangulating the tubes or capillaries causing them to pucker up (as a persimmon acts directly on the mouth), but in this case permanently though indirectly, so that rye bread sometimes causes dry gangrene in the human subject; the shins and feet shrivel precisely as those parts of the limbs of the pear do, moreover a dark fluid exudes (as the circulation is arrested where a patch occurs) in both cases alike, consequently if the remedy in both cases is based on the same principles, and is demonstrated to be equally effectual, the cause and the disease are similar. I have seen dry gangrene in the human subject originate apparently from an old "frost bite;" which means merely chronic debility of the capillaries of the foot or shin. Thus the extremities of the pear, or the weakest part, always succumb first, and the most vigorous trees never manifest it until they are weakened by their first crop of fruit. All are familiar with the fact that an old frost bite will swell or succumb to a temperature which will be innocuous to any other part of the body. The microscope may invariably reveal fungi in the patch of pear blight precisely as the housewife discovers the mold plant in her preserves and canned fruit, and even in the eggs of fowls, the mycelium (or spawn) penetrating the fruit or preserve though it be covered while boiling hot. If so, the reason why all parts of the tree are not attacked at the same time, is not because the fungus is not ubiquitous. We first notice the action of strychnia in the legs, or in paralyzed limbs exclusively, because they are weaker and become subject to its influence more easily; so also the same tree may escape for a long time after the limb which has succumbed is removed. Moreover the grafts, however numerous, may all be blighted, but the standard seedling on which so many varieties were grafted has survived more than fifty winters, and it fruited last year. DAVID STEWART, M. D. PORT PENN, DEL. TREATMENT OF TREE WOUNDS. Valuable trees that have been wounded or mutilated are often sacrificed for lack of the discreet surgery which would repair the injury they have suffered; and Professor C. A. Sargent, of the Bussey Institution, has done good service to farmers, fruit-raisers, and landscape-gardeners, by translating from the French the following practical hints, which we give with slight abridgment: Bark once injured or loosened can never attach itself again to the trunk; and whenever wounds, abrasures, or sections of loose bark exist on the trunk of a tree, the damaged part should be cut away cleanly, as far as the injury extends. Careful persons have been known to nail to a tree a piece of loosened bark, in hope of inducing it to grow again, or at least of retaining on the young wood its natural covering. Unfortunately the result produced by this operation is exactly opposite to that intended. The decaying wood and bark attract thousands of insects, which find here safe shelter and abundant food, and, increasing rapidly, hasten the death of the tree. In such cases, instead of refastening the loosened bark to the tree, it should be entirely cut away, care being taken to give the cut a regular outline, especially on the lower side; for if a portion of the bark, even if adhering to the wood, is left without direct communication with the leaves, it must die and decay. A coating of coal-tar should be applied to such wounds. LOOSENED BARK.--It is necessary to frequently examine the lower portions of the trunk, especially of trees beginning to grow old; for here is often found the cause of death in many trees, in large sheets of bark entirely separated from the trunk. This condition of things, which often can not be detected, except by the hollow sound produced by striking the trunk with the back of the iron pruning-knife, arrests the circulation of sap, while the cavity between the bark and the wood furnishes a safe retreat for a multitude of insects, which hasten the destruction of the tree. The dead bark should be entirely removed, even should it be necessary, in so doing, to make large wounds. Cases of this nature require the treatment recommended for the last class. CAVITIES IN THE TRUNK.--Very often, when a tree has been long neglected, the trunk is seriously injured by cavities caused by the decay of dead or broken branches. It is not claimed that pruning can remove defects of this nature; it can with proper application, however, arrest the progress of the evil. The edge of the cavity should be cut smooth and even; and all decomposed matter, or growth of new bark formed in the interior, should be carefully removed. A coating of coal-tar should be applied to the surface of the cavity, and the mouth plugged with a piece of well-seasoned oak securely driven into the place. The end of the plug should then be carefully pared smooth and covered with coal-tar, precisely as if the stump of a branch were under treatment. If the cavity is too large to be closed in this manner, a piece of thoroughly seasoned oak board, carefully fitted to it, may be securely nailed into the opening, and then covered with coal-tar. It is often advisable to guard against the attacks of insects by nailing a piece of zinc or other metal over the board in such a way that the growth of the new wood will in time completely cover it. Coal-tar, a waste product of gas-works, can be applied with an ordinary painter's brush, and may be used cold, except in very cold weather, when it should be slightly warmed before application. Coal-tar has remarkable preservative properties, and may be used with equal advantage on living and dead wood. A single application, without penetrating deeper than ordinary paint, forms an impervious coating to the wood-cells, which would, without such covering, under external influences, soon become channels of decay. This simple application then produces a sort of instantaneous cauterization, and preserves from decay wounds caused either in pruning or by accident. The odor of coal-tar drives away insects, or prevents them, by complete adherence to the wood, from injuring it. After long and expensive experiments, the director of the parks of the city of Paris finally, in 1863, adopted coal-tar, in preference to other preparations used, for covering tree wounds. In the case of stone fruit trees it should, however, be used with considerable caution, especially on plum trees. It should not be allowed to needlessly run down the trunk; and it is well to remember, that the more active a remedy is the greater should be the care in its application. The practice of leaving a short stump to an amputated branch, adopted by some to prevent the loss of sap, although less objectionable in the case of coniferous trees than in that of others, should never be adopted. Such stumps must be cut again the following year close to the trunk, or cushions of wood will form about their base, covering the trunk with protuberances. These greatly injure the appearance and value of the tree, and necessitate, should it be found desirable, the removal, later on, of such excrescences, causing wounds two or three times as large as an original cut close to the trunk would have made. THE TOMATO PACK OF 1883. Through the co-operation of packers in all parts of the United States, the American Grocer was enabled to present its annual statement of the 1883 pack of tomatoes some weeks earlier than usual. Despite a cold, backward spring, unusually low temperature throughout the summer, with cool nights in August and September, drouth in some sections, early and severe frosts in others, the trade is called upon to solve the question: Can the demand absorb a supply of three million cases? The pack of 1883 is heavily in excess of that of 1882, due to an increase in the number packers, and to an unusually heavy yield in New Jersey and Delaware. In detail, the result in the different States is as follows: Cases, two doz. each. Maryland 1,450,000 New Jersey 612,703 Delaware 156,391 California 117,000 Ohio 112,000 Indiana 90,000 Virginia 75,000 Kansas 65,000 New York 59,344 Iowa 47,925 Missouri 34,500 Michigan 30,700 Massachusetts 25,000 Canada 20,000 Connecticut 18,000 Illinois 14,516 Pennsylvania 15,000 --------- Total 2,943,579 The above total of 2,943,579 cases, of two dozen tins each represents seventy million, six hundred and forty-five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six cans, as the minimum quantity of canned tomatoes packed in the United States this year. Never in recent years have the holdings of the jobbers been as light as at present. Undoubtedly there is an unusually large stock of tomatoes in packers' hands, but there are innumerable parties in all the great centers of trade ready to take hold freely at 80 cents. At no time has the stock of extra brands been equal to the inquiry, and hence we have seen the anomaly of a range in prices of from 80 cents to $1.40 per dozen. There is room for improvement in quality, as well as for methods of marketing the large production of Harford county. A move in the right direction has been started by the forming of associations, which seek to build extensive warehouses and aid weak packers to carry stock, instead of forcing it upon a dull market. Three million cases or seventy-two million cans means a supply of only one and two-fifths cans per capita per annum, or seven cans per annum for every family of five persons. With tomatoes retailing from 8 to 15 cents per can, the consumption could reach three times that quantity, and then each family would only find tomatoes upon its bill of fare once every fortnight. While many packers have failed to secure a fair return for their work, others have been well paid. Some few have made heavy losses, and will, in the future, be less inclined to bet against wet weather, drought and frost. If general business is good during the first half of 1884, The Grocer can see no good reason why the stock of tomatoes should not go into consumption between 85 cents and $1 per dozen for standards. Any marked advance would be sure to check demand, and, therefore, low prices must rule if the stock is absorbed prior to the receipt of 1884 packing. The year closes with Maryland packed obtainable from 75 to 85 cents; New Jersey and Delaware, 90 to 95 cents; fancy brands, $1.10 to $1.35, delivered on dock in New York. SWEATING APPLES. According to the Popular Science News, apples do not sweat after they are gathered in the autumn. Here is an account of what takes place with them. The skin of a sound apple is practically a protective covering, and designed for a two-fold purpose: first, to prevent the ingress of air and moisture to the tender cellular structure of the fruit; and, second, to prevent the loss of juices by exudation. There is no such process as sweating in fruits. When men or animals sweat, they become covered with moisture passing through the skin; when an apple becomes covered with moisture, it is due to condensation of moisture from without. Apples taken from trees in a cool day remain at the temperature of the air until a change to a higher temperature occurs, and then condensation of moisture from the warmer air circulating around the fruit occurs, just as moisture gathers upon the outside of an ice-pitcher in summer. This explains the whole matter; and the vulgar notion of fruits "sweating" should be dispelled from the mind. It is almost impossible to gather apples under such conditions of temperature that they will not condense moisture after being placed in barrels. It would be better if this result could be avoided, as dryness of fruit is essential to its protracted keeping. Our northern autumns are characterized by changes from hot to cold, and these occur suddenly. The days are hot, and the nights cool, and this favors condensation. Apples picked on a moderately cool day, and placed in a moderately cool shed, protected from the sun, will not gather moisture, and this is the best method to pursue when practicable. PRUNINGS. Mr. N. Atwell, one of the Michigan commissioners, whose duty it is to look after the peach districts of that State and check if possible the ravages of the destructive disease known as "yellows," claims that there is no known remedy, and that the only safe plan is to uproot and burn the trees upon the first appearance of the disease. * * * * * If you are going to set a new orchard this spring, remember that it is an excellent thing to prepare a plan of the orchard, showing the position of each tree, its variety, etc. If a tree dies it can be replaced by one of the same sort. Some fruit-raisers keep a book in which they register the age and variety of every tree in the orchard, together with any items in regard to their grafting, productiveness, treatment, etc., which are thought to be desirable. * * * * * Cor. California Rural Press: The first generation of codling moth begins to fly about the first of May. To make sure gather some in the chrysalis state in March or April, put in a jar, and set the jar in a place where you will see it every day. When they begin to have wings, prepare your traps thus: The half of a kerosene can with the tin bent in at the top an inch; a half inch of kerosene in the can, a little flat lamp near the oil. The light reflected from the bright tin will draw the moth five rods at least. If your orchard is forty rods square, sixteen traps will do the work. The moth will fly about the light until it touches the oil. This will end it. * * * * * The Industrial South has the following in relation to Albemarle and Nelson (Virginia) apple orchards in the space of fifteen square miles: "What would you think of an orchard planted, if not since the war, as I think it was, a very short time before, and away up on the side of the Blue Ridge, that to look from below you would think of insuring your neck before setting out to it, producing eighteen hundred barrels? This was the produce of picked fruit, to say nothing of the fallen--enough to keep a big drying establishment running for months. These are true figures--and it is the property of a worthy citizen of Richmond, who, in its management, has cause to exclaim "ab imo pectore," save me from my friends. Then there is another from which the owner, with a dryer of his own, has sold five thousand dollars of the proceeds besides cider, vinegar, and brandy. There is yet another, that the lady-owner sold as the fruit hung in the orchard, for forty-five hundred dollars. The fruit in the area referred to brought over fifty thousand dollars, bought by the agent of a New York house, and doubtless much of it will reach Europe." * * * * * Prof. Cook in the New York Tribune: The Rev. W. W. Meech writes that he has seen in several papers of high standing "the beetle Saperdabivitati, parent of the borer," described as a "a miller"--"a mistake very misleading to those who are seeking knowledge of insect pests." He adds that among hundreds of quince trees growing he has had but three touched by this enemy in eight years. He simply takes the precaution to keep grass and weeds away from the collar of the tree, "so that there is no convenient harbor for the beetle to hide in while at the secret work of egg-laying." He thinks a wrap of "petroleum paper around the collar" would be found a preventive, as it is not only disagreeable but hinders access to the place where the eggs are deposited. It is an unfortunate error to refer to a beetle as a moth. It would be better if all would recognize the distinction between "bug" and "beetle," and between "worms" and "larva," in writing popular articles. I notice that some of the editors of medical journals are referring to bacteria as "bugs." Surely reform is needed. I am not so sure of Mr. Meech's remedy. I imagine that fortune, not his pains, is to be thanked for his grubless trees. I have known this borer to do very serious mischief where the most perfect culture was practised. The caustic wash is much safer than a petroleum wrap. The eggs are often laid high up on the trunk or even on the branches. Nothing is better for the borers than the soap and carbolic acid mixture. [Illustration] FLORICULTURE. Gleanings by an Old Florist. SMILAX AND ITS USES. Smilax, as now used by florists, is but a very recent affair. Although introduced first into Europe from the Cape of Good Hope as early as 1702, it remained for the florist of our time to find out its great adaptability for decoration and other uses in his art or calling. To Boston florists belong the credit of its first extensive culture and use, and for several years they may be said to have had the monopoly of its trade, and Boston smilax, along with Boston tea roses, which was pre-eminently the variety called the Bon Silene, was, for years, shipped to this and other cities. It is scarcely a decade of years ago, in this city, when a batch of one hundred strings could not be bought here, home-grown; now there would be no difficulty in getting thousands. Like everything else of like character, the first introducers reaped a golden harvest, so far as price is concerned, having often obtained a dollar a string; while now, the standard price, even in mid winter, is $2 per dozen, and often in quantity, it can be obtained at less. But where there was one string used then, there are now thousands. In olden times the florist was often put to his wits to find material to go around his made-up pieces and for relief as a green; now, everything green is smilax, and it must be confessed, that with the choice ferns, begonia leaves, and the like, that he used to have to prepare with, his work then was really often in better taste, so far as relief to flowers is concerned, with the old material than the new. But for the purpose of festooning buildings, churches, and the like, smilax is by all odds the very thing wanted, and as much ahead of the old-time evergreen wreathing, that we had to use, as the methods now in use for obtaining cut flowers are ahead of the old. It is hard to say what the florist could do without smilax, so indispensable has it become. There are now probably twenty of the principal growers of this city that have at least one house in smilax, who will cut not less than three thousand strings in a winter, while of the balance of smaller fry enough to make up the total to 100,000 strings per year. In times of scarcity of material, it is cut not over three feet long; again, when the supply exceeds the demand, the buyer will often get it six to nine feet long, and at a lower price than he can buy the short--supply and demand ruling price, as a rule, between $1 and $3 per dozen. The plant now under consideration is called, botanically, Myrsiphyllum asparagoides; by common usage it is called smilax, although not even a member of the true smilax family, some of which are natives of this country. The plant seeds readily, hence every one who grows smilax may, by leaving two or three strings uncut, grow his own seed; it is then sure to be fresh--which is sometimes not the case when purchased. The seed is more likely to germinate if soaked twelve hours in warm water or milk before sowing. A bed may be formed any time of the year, but the usual custom is to prepare it so as to be ready to cut, say, in the fall, for the first time. Take a pan or shallow box and sow the seed any time during the winter before March. When well up, so they can be handled, transplant into small pots, and from these shift into larger, say to three or four inch pots. Keep the shoots pinched back so as to form a stout, bushy plant. During winter they will require an artificial temperature of not less than 50 degrees. When summer comes they may be kept in the house or stand out of doors until the bed in which they are to grow is ready. This may be prepared any time most desirable, but if to cut first in the fall, so manage it that they may have two or three months to perfect their growth. The common practice is to give the whole house to the use of the plant, but this may be varied at pleasure, growing either the center bunch, the front bunch, or both, as may be desirable. The best soil is decayed sod from a pasture enriched with cow manure. It requires no benches to grow this plant; all that is necessary is to inclose the space designed by putting up boards one foot high to form a coping to hold the soil. Into this the plants are set evenly over the entire space, in rows nine inches to one foot apart. At the time of planting, a stake is driven into and even with the soil at each plant, being careful to have them in true lines both ways, and driven deep enough to be quite firm; on the top of this stake is driven a small nail or hook. Directly over each nail, in the rafter of the house, or a strip nailed to them for the purpose, is placed another nail, and between the two a cord similar to that used by druggists or the like--but green, if possible, in color, for obvious reasons--is stretched as taught as may be, so that when finished the whole house or space used is occupied by these naked strings, on which, as the growth proceeds, the plants entwine themselves. Some care will be required at first to get them started, after which they will usually push on themselves. The most convenient height of the rafters above the soil is from four to ten feet, which will give long enough strings, and, what is important for quick growth, keep the plants when young not too far from the glass. In planting, some make a difference of a month or two in the time, so that the crop may not come in all at once; but usually the plants will vary some in their growth, and hence, by cutting the largest first, the same result is obtained. If a heat of 55 degrees can be obtained as a minimum, and care is taken in keeping a moist, growing temperature, a crop can be taken off every three months at least. So as soon as ready to cut and a market can be obtained for the crop, strings should be strung again at once, leaving some of the smaller shoots when cutting for a starter of the next crop. Like everything else, heavy cropping requires heavy manuring, and hence a rich compost should be added to the soil at each cutting. Some plant their beds fresh every year, others leave them longer. The root is perennial in character, and consists of fleshy tubers, not unlike asparagus, and may be divided for the new beds; but the general practice is to grow new plants. Always beware of buying old, dry roots, as they will sometimes refuse to grow, even if they look green and fresh. With many, in cutting, the practice is to cut clear through at the bottom, string and all, then by a deft movement of the hands the smilax is slipped from the string which, with the addition of a foot or two to tie again, is at once ready for the next, while others bring to market string and all, these being simply matters of practice or convenience. EDGAR SANDERS. * * * * * Was Noah's voyage an arktic expedition? * * * * * OUR NEW CLUBBING LIST FOR 1884. THE PRAIRIE FARMER IN CONNECTION WITH OTHER JOURNALS. We offer more liberal terms than ever before to those who desire to take, in connection with THE PRAIRIE FARMER, either of the following weekly or monthly periodicals. 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ANY SUBSCRIBER CAN AT ONCE TELL WHEN HIS SUBSCRIPTION EXPIRES BY REFERRING TO VOLUME AND NUMBER AS GIVEN ON FIRST PAGE OF THE PAPER. * * * * * [Transcriber's Note: Original location of Table of Contents.] * * * * * 1841. 1884. THE PRAIRIE FARMER PROSPECTUS FOR 1884. SEE INDUCEMENTS OFFERED SUBSCRIBE NOW. For forty-three years THE PRAIRIE FARMER has stood at the front in agricultural journalism. It has kept pace with the progress and development of the country, holding its steady course through all these forty-three years, encouraging, counseling, and educating its thousands of readers. It has labored earnestly in the interest of all who are engaged in the rural industries of the country, and that it has labored successfully is abundantly shown by the prominence and prestige it has achieved, and the hold it has upon the agricultural classes. Its managers are conscious from comparison with other journals of its class, and from the uniform testimony of its readers, that it is foremost among the farm and home papers of the country. It will not be permitted to lose this proud position; we shall spare no efforts to maintain its usefulness and make it indispensable to farmers, stock-raisers, feeders, dairymen, horticulturalists, gardeners, and all others engaged in rural pursuits. It will enter upon its forty-fourth year under auspices, in every point of view, more encouraging than ever before in its history. Its mission has always been, and will continue to be-- To discuss the most approved practices in all agricultural and horticultural pursuits. To set forth the merits of the best breeds of domestic animals, and to elucidate the principles of correct breeding and management. To further the work of agricultural and horticultural organization. To advocate industrial education in the correct sense of the term. To lead the van in the great contest of the people against monopolies and the unjust encroachments of capital. To discuss the events and questions of the day without fear or favor. To provide information concerning the public domain, Western soil, climate, water, railroads, schools, churches, and society. To answer inquiries on all manner of subjects coming within its sphere. To furnish the latest and most important industrial news at home and abroad. To give full and reliable crop, weather, and market reports. To present the family with pure, choice, and interesting literature. To amuse and instruct the young folks. To gather and condense the general news of the day. To be, in brief, an indispensable and unexceptionable farm and home companion for the people of the whole country. The style and form of the paper are now exactly what they should be. The paper used is of superior quality. The type is bold and clear. The illustrations are superb. The departments are varied and carefully arranged. The editorial force is large and capable. The list of contributors is greatly increased, and embraces a stronger array of talent than is employed on any similar paper in this country. We challenge comparison with any agricultural journal in the land. THE PRAIRIE FARMER is designed for all sections of the country. In entering upon the campaign of 1884, we urge all patrons and friends to continue their good works in extending the circulation of our paper. On our part we promise to leave nothing undone that it is possible for faithful, earnest work--aided by money and every needed mechanical facility--to do to make the paper in every respect still better than it has ever been before. * * * * * SPECIAL NOTICE To each Subscriber who will remit us $2.00 between now and February 1st, 1884, we will mail a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER FOR ONE YEAR, AND ONE OF OUR NEW STANDARD TIME COMMERCIAL MAPS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA--showing all the Counties, Railroads, and Principal Towns up to date. This comprehensive map embraces all the country from the Pacific Coast to Eastern New Brunswick, and as far north as the parallel of 52 deg., crossing Hudson's Bay. British Columbia; Manitoba, with its many new settlements; and the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, completed and under construction, are accurately and distinctly delineated. It extends so far south as to Include Key West and more than half of the Republic of Mexico. It is eminently adapted for home, school, and office purposes. The retail price of the Map alone is $2.00. Size, 58 × 41 inches. Scale, about sixty miles to one inch. * * * * * READ THIS. ANOTHER SPECIAL OFFER. [Illustration] "THE LITTLE DETECTIVE." WEIGHS 1/4 OZ. TO 25 LBS. Every housekeeper ought to have this very useful scale. The weight of article bought or sold may readily be known. Required proportions in culinary operations are accurately ascertained. We have furnished hundreds of them to subscribers, and they give entire satisfaction. During January, 1884, to any person sending us THREE SUBSCRIBERS, at $2.00 each, we will give one of these scales, and to each of the three subscribers Ropp's Calculator, No. 1. * * * * * RENEW! RENEW!! Remember that every yearly subscriber, either new or renewing, sending us $2, receives a splendid new map of the United States and Canada--58 × 41 inches--FREE. Or, if preferred, one of the books offered in another column. It is not necessary to wait until a subscription expires before renewing. * * * * * WE WANT AGENTS in every locality. We offer very liberal terms and good pay. Send for sample copies and terms to agents. * * * * * WILL YOU Read about Patrick Barry, about the corn-root worm, about mistakes in drainage, about the change in prize rings at the Fat Stock Show, about improvement in horses, about the value of 1883 corn for pork making, about Fanny Field's Plymouth Rocks, about the way to make the best bee hive, about that eccentric old fellow Cavendish, about the every day life of the great Darwin, about making home ornaments and nice things for the little folks? Will you Read the poems, the jokes, the news, the markets, the editorials, the answers to correspondents? In short, will you Read the entire paper and then sit down and think it all over and see if you do not conclude that this single number is worth what the paper has cost you for the whole year? Then tell your neighbors about it, show it to them and ask them to subscribe for it. Tell them that they will also get for the $2 a copy of our superb map. By doing this you can double our subscription list in a single week. WILL YOU? * * * * * The Illinois State Board of Agriculture will hold a meeting at the Sherman House in Chicago, on the 4th of March next. The principal business of the meeting will be to complete arrangements for the next State Fair and the Fat Stock Show. * * * * * The annual meeting of the Northern Illinois Horticultural Society will be held at Elgin Tuesday, January 22d and continuing three days. Kindred societies are invited to send delegates, and a large general attendance is solicited. Further particulars will be gladly received by S. M. Slade, President, Elgin, or D. Wilmot Scott, Secretary, Galena. * * * * * The Brooklyn Board of Health petitions Congress to appropriate a sufficient amount of money to stamp out contagious pleuro-pneumonia and provide for the appointment of a number of veterinarians to inspect all herds in infected districts, to indemnify owners for cattle slaughtered by the Government, and to forbid the movement of all cattle out of any infected State which will not take measures to stamp out the disease. * * * * * Secretary L. A. Goodman, of the Missouri State Horticultural Society writes THE PRAIRIE FARMER that on the 5th of January the mercury at Westport, Wis., indicated 26 degrees below zero, the lowest point ever recorded there. He adds: "The peaches are killed, as are the blackberries. Cherries are injured very much and the raspberries also. The dry September checked the growth of the berries and sun-burned them some, and now the cold hurts them badly. Apples are all right yet and prospects for good crop are excellent." * * * * * It may be of interest to many readers to know that the I. & St. L. R. R. will sell tickets from Indianapolis and intermediate points to St. Louis, to persons attending the meeting of the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society, at one and one-third rates. Mr. Ragan informs us that this is the only railroad line from central Indiana that offers a reduction of fare. The Missouri Pacific system of roads, including the Wabash, and embracing about ten thousand miles of road, extending as far north and east as Chicago, Detroit and Toledo, and as far south and west as New Orleans, Galveston and El Paso, will return members in attendance, who have paid full fare over these lines, at one cent a mile, upon the certificate of the Secretary of the Society. The Chicago & Alton, C., B. & Q., Keokuk, St. L. & N. W., Chicago, B. & K. C., Illinois Central, Cairo Short Line, and Hannibal & St. Joe roads will return members on the same terms. The Ohio & Mississippi will sell tickets to St. Louis and return at one and one-third fare, to members indorsed by the Secretary. The Louisville and Nashville will give reduced rates to members applying to its General Passenger Agent, C. P. Atmore, of Louisville, Ky. THE WEALTH OF THE NATION. The Census Bureau and Bradstreet's agency have made from the most accurate examination possible an estimate of the wealth and business of the nation: Aggregate wealth of the United States in 1880 was $43,642,000,000 (forty thousand and a half billions); the total amount of capital invested in business was $8,177,000,000 (over eight billions); and the number of persons engaged in commercial business was 703,828. Twenty-two per cent of all the business capital of the country is credited to the State of New York. Massachusetts ranks second, Pennsylvania third, Ohio fourth, Illinois fifth, and Michigan sixth. The aggregate business capital of these six States was $5,113,087,000, leaving to all the other States $3,063,923,000. The total recorded number of traders in the United States in June, 1880--those having distinctive position in the commercial or industrial community--was 703,328; a trifle over 40 per cent were in the Western States. For the United States as a whole the average amount of capital employed to each venture--as indicated by the aggregate of capital in the country invested in trade (as explained in the table compiled from the forthcoming census work) and the total number of individuals, firms, and corporations engaged in business--is, in round numbers, $11,600. The wealth of the country is, or was June 1, 1880, distributed as follows: Millions. Farms $10,197 Residence and business real estate, capital employed in business, including water-power 9,881 Railroads and equipment 5,536 Telegraphs, shipping, and canals 410 Live stock, whether on or off farms, farming tools and machinery 2,406 Household furniture, paintings, books, clothing, jewelry, household supplies of food, fuel, etc. 5,000 Mines (including petroleum wells) and quarries, together with one-half of the annual product reckoned as the average supply on hand 780 Three-quarters of the annual product of agriculture and manufactures, and of the annual importation of foreign goods, assumed to be the average supply on hand 6,160 Churches, schools, asylums, public buildings of all kinds, and other real estate exempt from taxation 2,000 Specie 612 Miscellaneous items, including tools of mechanics 650 ------- Total $43,642 It will thus be seen that the farms of the United States comprise nearly one-fourth of its entire wealth. They are worth nearly double the combined capital and equipments of all the railroads, telegraphs, shipping, and canals; more than double all the household furniture, paintings, books, clothing, jewelry, and supplies of food, fuel, etc. The live stock is more valuable than all the church property, school houses, asylums, and public buildings of all kinds; more than all the mines, telegraph companies, shipping, and canals combined. It would take more than three times as much "hard" money as the nation possesses to purchase all these domestic animals. The farms and live stock together exceed the value of any two other interests in the country. CONTAGIOUS ANIMAL DISEASES. Congress seems bound to act at once upon the question of protection to domestic animals from contagious diseases. The pressure brought to bear upon members is enormous, and cannot be ignored. The action of European States on swine importation from America, the restrictions on the landing of American cattle in England, and the strong effort being made there to prohibit their introduction altogether, the known existence of pleuro-pneumonia in several of the Atlantic States, the unceasing clamor of our shippers and growers of live stock, all conspire to open the eyes of the average Congressman to the fact that something must be done. Mr. Singleton, of Illinois, must be something above or below the average Congressman, if the report is correct that he does not believe pleuro-pneumonia exists anywhere within the borders of the United States, and that he is willing to back his non-belief by a thousand dollars forfeit, if an animal suffering from the disease can be shown him. The former owner of Silver Heels, and breeder of fine horses and cattle at his Quincy farm, must have his eyes shaded and his ears obstructed by that broad brimmed hat, that has so long covered his silvered head and marble brow. "The world do move," nevertheless, and pleuro-pneumonia does prevail in this country to such an extent as to furnish a reasonable excuse for unfriendly legislation abroad, and we gain nothing by denying the fact, the Allerton and Singleton assertions to the contrary, notwithstanding. IOWA STATE FAIR. At the late meeting of the Iowa State Agricultural Society, President Smith strongly advocated the permanent location of the State Fair. He thought it had been hawked about long enough for the purpose of giving different cities a chance to skin the people. The Legislature should aid the society in purchasing grounds. Ample ground should be purchased, as the fair is growing, and they should not be governed solely by our present demands. Secretary Shaffer touched briefly on the weather of last summer, the acreage and yield of crops, the demonstration of the futility of trying to acclimatize Southern seed-corn in the North, and the appointment of a State entomologist. He thought the State should assist the society in distributing its publications. The improvement of the Mississippi river was briefly handled. The state of the corn during the past year, the seeding, the yield, etc., were summarized by months. The corn crop was a failure. The sorghum industry in its various bearings was discussed. Iowa will yet, he said, produce its own sugar. The question was raised whether the State should not encourage the growth of Northern cane. The sheep industry and its peril from worthless dogs was duly treated. This society was the first to insist on the necessity of Legislation on this subject looking to the extermination of worthless dogs. The society proceeded to locate the fair for the next year. Des Moines offered the present grounds for 10 per cent of the gate money. Dubuque offered free grounds and $2,500 in money. The first ballot resulted in seventy-one votes for Des Moines and twenty-three for Dubuque. Officers were elected as follows: President, William L. Smith, of Oskalossa; Vice-President, H. C. Wheeler, of Sac; Secretary, John Shaffer, of Fairfield; Treasurer, George H. Marsh, of Des Moines. STILL ANOTHER FAT STOCK SHOW. At the meeting of the Indiana State Board of Agriculture last week, it was decided to hold a Fat Stock Show at Indianapolis some time in December of the present year. Liberal premiums will be offered. The matter elicited a discussion of considerable length, and it was generally believed that the show, if properly managed, could be made a success. Even if it failed to realize expenses the first year, the exhibition would be incalculably beneficial to the State. The election of new members to the Board resulted as follows: First district, Robert Mitchell, of Gibson county; Second, Samuel Hargrave, of Pike; Third, J. Q. A. Seig, of Harrison; Fourth, W. B. Seward, of Monroe; Eighth, W. S. Dungan, of Johnson; Fourteenth, L. B. Custer, of Cass; Fifteenth, W. A. Banks, of La Porte; Sixteenth, R. M. Lockhart, of DeKalb. Three Fat Stock Shows in the West! True, the success of the Chicago exhibit is having a wide influence. The live stock interests of the country are fully awakened to the important results from these shows. They are, indeed, educators of the highest character, and they stimulate to excellence unthought of by most farmers, ten years ago. Chicago, Kansas City, Toronto, and now Indianapolis! Is there not room for a similar exhibition in the great stock State of Iowa? Why do we not hear from West Liberty or Cedar Rapids? QUESTIONS ANSWERED. F. J. ST. CLAIR, URSA, ILL.--Who was the first President to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation? ANSWER.--Washington, in 1798, on the adoption by the States of the Constitution of the United States. SUBSCRIBER, PEOTONE, ILL.--How many kinds of soils are there, and what crops are best suited to bottom and what to upland soils? ANSWER.--There are really but two soils, agriculturally considered, fertile soils and barren soils. Generally speaking, fertile soils are the result of the disintegration of mechanical forces and chemical agencies of limestone rocks; and barren soils--sandy soils--are produced by similar means, from rocks largely or wholly composed of silex or quartz. The mixture of these two give rise to soils of an infinite variety, almost, having many differing degrees of fertility, down to barrenness. But you have practically but one soil to deal with, a true limestone soil of high fertility, which has received considerable accessions from silicious rocks. Your bottom lands do not differ materially from the upland, except that the former have received considerable vegetable matter, which the latter have lost. For the lowlands, corn, grass, and potatoes are the best crops; for the highlands, the small grains, sorghum, beans, etc. But provide as much vegetable matter for the highlands as your lowlands possess, and make the sum of mixture in both alike, and your highlands will grow corn, grass, and potatoes as well as the low. CHARLES VAN METER, SPRINGFIELD, MO.--What is the best work on Grape Culture? My means are small, and I can not, of course, buy a work costing ten or twelve dollars, however good it may be. Recommend, for this latitude, something good and cheap. ANSWER.--For your needs you will find nothing better than Hussman's Grapes and Wine, a single volume, which will be sent you from THE PRAIRIE FARMER office, on remittance of $1.50. But there is something cheaper still, and very good, indeed, but covering different grounds from Hussman. The Grape Catalogue of Bush & Son & Meissner. You may obtain it by sending twenty-five cents to Bush & Son & Meissner, Bushberg, Missouri. CONSTANT READER, CHICAGO, ILL.--I am thinking of going down, one of these days, to Florida, with a view to go into oranges and make more money than I have, or lose it all. I have read a good deal about the seductive business, in Florida, though but little of the details of cultivation in other countries. Tell me where I can find something about how they manage in Spain and the south of Europe. ANSWER.--Most of the really valuable works on this subject are in foreign languages--French, Spanish, or Italian. However, for a wonder, a late publication of the Department of State, at Washington--Reports from the consuls of the United States, No. 33--contains a valuable and lengthy paper on Orange Growing at Valencia, Spain, contributed by the consul there, which you may perhaps obtain through your member of Congress. J. D. SLADE, COLUMBUS, GA.--I am interested in a large plantation near this city with a friend who is a practical farmer. We have decided to abandon the planting of cotton to a great extent and adopt some other crops. Having concluded to try the castor bean, I wish to ask some information. 1. Will you give me the names of parties engaged in the cultivation of the crop in Illinois and Wisconsin? 2. Where can I get the beans for planting? 3. Describe the soil, mode of preparation, planting, and cultivation, and give me such other information as we may need. ANSWER.--1. Winter wheat and corn have, to a very large extent, taken the place of castor beans and tobacco in the agriculture of Southern Illinois. As for Wisconsin, we question whether a bushel of castor beans was grown there last year. The two sections where they are now mostly cultivated are in Southwestern Missouri, by the old settlers, and in Middle and Southern Kansas, by the first comers. For information on the whole subject, write the Secretary of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture for the quarterly report issued two or three years ago, which was mostly devoted to castor-bean culture. The Secretary's address is Topeka, Kansas. 2. Of the Plant Seed Company, St. Louis, and also valuable information--that city being the chief market for the castor beans. 3. The soil best suited to the crop is a light, rich, sandy loam, though any dry and fertile soil will yield good crops. For some reason not clearly understood, the castor bean has been found a powerful and energetic agent in improving some, if not all soils, the experience in Kansas being, that land which previously refused to yield good crops of wheat or corn either, after being cultivated two or three years in castor beans has borne great crops. This has been attributed to the completeness and the long time the crop shades the ground, and also to the long tap root of the plant, which makes it a crop of all others, suited to dry soils, and hot climate. After preparing the land as for corn, it should be laid off so the plants will stand, for your latitude, five feet each way. Three or four seeds are usually planted, but when the beans are five to six inches high, and out of the way of cut-worms, they are thinned to one. The cultivation is after the manner of Indian corn, and the planting should be at the same time. The beans for your latitude will begin to ripen late in July, and continue to the end of the season, when the plants are killed by severe frosts, light frosts doing scarcely any damage. In harvesting, a spot of hard ground is prepared and the pods as gathered are thrown on the ground and dried out in the sun. And here is where the trouble with making a successful and profitable crop comes in. The beans must be kept in the dry from the time of gathering the pods--one soaking rain always seriously damaging, and frequently destroying the merchantable value of so much of the harvest as happens to be on the ground. As in the case of broom corn, the hot, dry, and protracted late summer and fall months of that State, afford the Kansas farmer something like a monopoly of the castor bean crop. It is nevertheless giving place to corn and wheat. LETTER FROM CHAMPAIGN. The snow continues to accumulate, the last having fallen before midnight the 11th. There were only about two inches, but it is drifting this morning, for all it is worth, before a gale from the West. The first and second snows stay where they were put at first, but the subsequent ones are in drifts or scattered all abroad, in the many snows and the excellence of the sleighing, this winter resembles '78-'79, but there is more snow and the temperature is very much more severe. I suppose there is well-nigh eighteen inches now on the ground, something quite unusual in this latitude. Let us hope it will stay sometime longer yet, and save the fall wheat. The intensely cold weather of last week was rough on stock of all kinds and in all conditions, and particularly hard on that portion having short rations. But I have seen many worse storms and much harder weather for stock; none however in which the fruits, small or large, suffered worse. At least that is the general judgment at the present. Peach buds are killed of course, and it will be lucky if the trees have escaped. All blackberries, but the Snyder, are dead down to the snow line--and some think the Snyder has not escaped, for reasons given further on. Examinations made of the buds of Bartlett, Duchess, Howell, Tyson, Bigarreau, Seckel, Buffum, Easter Buerre, and others yesterday, showed them all to be about equally frosted and blackened, and probably destroyed. Last year our pears suffered a good deal from the sleet of the second of February, which clung to the trees ten days, and the crop was a light one. This year, if appearances can be trusted, there will be less. In the many intense freezes of the last twenty-five years, I have never known pear buds to be seriously injured; last year being a marked exception and this still more so. Hardy grapes have probably suffered as much, and the tender varieties are completely done for. How well the May cherry has resisted the low temperature remains to be seen. As for the sweet cherries, it is probably the end of them. There were buds set for an unusually abundant crop of apples in 1884--the Presidential year. The hardy varieties have escaped material damage, no doubt, but some of the tender Eastern varieties, like the Baldwin, Roxbury Russet, in all reasonable probability, have not only lost their buds but their lives also. * * * * * The disasters following the very low temperature of last week have no doubt been increased by the immaturity of the wood, due to the cool, moist summer. If summers like those of 1882-83 are not warm enough to ripen the corn crop, buds and wood of fruit trees will not acquire a maturity that resists intense cold as we see by our experience with pears, grapes, and peaches in the fruit season of 1883, and which is almost sure to be repeated with aggravations in 1884. Possibly the ground being but lightly frozen and protected by a good coat of snow, may save the apple trees and others from great disaster following thirty to thirty-five degrees below zero, when falling on half ripened wood, but the reasonable fear is that orchards on high land in Northern and Central Illinois, have been damaged more than last year. If so perhaps it were better after all, since it will open the eyes of a great many to the mistakes in location heretofore made, and lead them to put out future orchards where they ought to be. * * * * * If my word of warning could reach those engaged in taking measures at Washington to prevent the spread of epidemic and infectious diseases in our stock, it would be "go slow." If the wishes of a few veterinarians are met and the demands of a raft of pauper lawyers and politicians are complied with, it will result in the creation of a half dozen commissions. Each one of them, as previous ones have done, will find sufficient reason for their continuance and reports will be made that half the live stock in the country, South and West, is either in danger from or suffering under some of the many forms of epidemic or infectious diseases--and by the way, what justice is there in putting Detmers out of the way, and clinging to Salmon and Laws, both of whom indorsed nearly every thing the former did? Beware of commissions, and above all of putting men upon them whose bread and butter is of more consequence to them than the stock interest, vast as it is. B. F. J. WAYSIDE NOTES. BY A MAN OF THE PRAIRIE. Of the 2,500,000 packages of seeds distributed by the United States Agricultural Department during last year more than 2,000,000 packages were furnished to Congressmen, and I notice that some of the papers are making unfavorable comments on the fact. Now I do not discover anything that seems to me radically wrong in this practice of the Department of Agriculture, or rather in the instructions under which the practice prevails. There are some men, mostly seedsmen, and some publishers, mostly those interested in securing patronage through seed premiums, or which are run in the interest of seed dealers, who grumble a great deal about this matter, and who sneer at the department and derisively call it the "Government seed store." But I imagine if the public was thoroughly informed of the good the department has done by its seed distributions, it would have a great deal better opinion of this branch than it now has, and I wish Mr. Dodge, or some other efficient man, who knows all about it from the beginning would give to the country a complete history of what has been done in the way of introducing and disseminating new seeds, plants, and cuttings. I believe if the whole truth were told it would put an end to ridicule and denunciation. I am aware that there have been some things connected with this work that were not exactly correct. There may have been some helping of friends in the purchase of seeds; there may have been some noxious weed seeds sent out to the detriment of the country; Congressmen may have used their quota of seeds for the purpose of keeping themselves solid with their constituents. But, after all, it is my candid opinion the seed distributing branch of the department has been an untold blessing to the farmers of this country. As to this matter of giving a large proportion of the seeds to Congressmen, I have not much fault to find about that either, though perhaps a better system of distribution might be devised. I have yet to learn that an application to a Congressman for seed has been disregarded, if the seeds were to be had, whether that application came from a political friend or a political foe. And I do wish that farmers generally would make more frequent application to the members from their respective districts than they do. It will be money in their pockets if they will keep posted in what the department has to distribute which is valuable, or new and promising, and solicit samples either from Congressmen or direct from the Commissioner of Agriculture. * * * * * "Put your thumb down there," said an experienced orchardist to me the other day. We were talking about the recently started theory that the best bearing orchards are to be found on the low lands of the prairies. "You just wait and see if these brag orchards ever bear another crop! It will be as it was after the severe winter of 1874 and '75, when the following autumn many of our orchards bore so profusely. The succeeding year the majority of the trees were as dead as smelts, and the balance never had vigor enough afterward to produce a decent crop. Once before," said he, "we had a similar experience in Illinois. Put your thumb down at this place and watch for results. Do not say anything about this in your Wayside Blusterings, at least as coming from me," and of course I don't. But I wanted the readers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER to help me watch with fear and trembling for the fulfillment of this horticultural prophesy, so I straightway make a note of it and ask you all to "put your thumbs down here" and wait. My friend's theory is that the severe cold of last winter destroyed a large portion of the roots of these trees; that the root pruning caused the extra fruitfulness, but proved too severe for the vitality of the trees to withstand, and that next year the bulk of the trees will not leaf out at all; and further that the old theory as taught by Kennecott, Whitney, Edwards, and the rest of the "fathers," that apple trees cannot thrive with wet feet, was the correct theory then and is the correct theory now. He would still plant on high, well drained land. * * * * * My neighbor up at the "Corners" has a large flock of grade Cotswold sheep--Cotswolds crossed on large native Merinos. He keeps them to produce early lambs for the Chicago market. For the last three or four years he has received, on an average, four dollars per head for his lambs, taken at his farm. It is a profitable and pleasant sort of farming. Some day I may tell how he manages, in detail. * * * * * REMEMBER _that_ $2.00 _pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ [Illustration] POULTRY NOTES. Poultry-Raisers. Write for Your Paper. CHICKEN CHAT. Let me see--it was sometime during the month of December that the "Man of the Prairie" went wandering all over the village, and even scoured the country round about the village in search of an extra dozen eggs, and went home mad, and, man fashion, threatened to kill off every hen on the place if they didn't proceed to do their duty like hens and fellow citizens. It was also during that same December that the fifty Plymouth Rock hens that we are wintering in the barn cellar, laid, regardless of the weather, 736 eggs--an average of nearly fifteen eggs apiece. "Is it a fact that the corn is too poor for manufacture into eggs?" I don't know anything about the corn in your locality, but I do know that our Plymouth Rocks had whole corn for supper exactly thirty-one nights during the month of December--not Western corn, but sound, well-ripened, Northern corn, that sells in our market for twenty cents more per bushel than Western corn. I also know that hens fed through the winter on corn alone will not lay enough to pay for the corn, but in our climate the poultry-raiser may feed corn profitably fully one-half the time. When the morning feed consists of cooked vegetable and bran or shorts, and the noon meal of oats or buckwheat, the supper may be of corn. I believe the analytical fellows tell us that corn won't make eggs, and I am sure I don't know whether it will or not, and I don't much care; but I know that hens will eat corn, when they can get it, in preference to any other grain, and I know that it "stands by" better than anything else, and that it is a heat-producing grain, and consequently just the thing to feed when the days are short and the nights long, and the mercury fooling around 30 degrees below zero. Hens need something besides egg material; they must have food to keep up the body heat, and the poultry-raiser who feeds no corn in winter blunders just as badly as the one who feeds all corn. * * * * * Talking about corn for fowls reminds me that the agricultural papers are full of wails from farmers who were taken in last season on seed corn. If they had followed the plan of an old farmer of my acquaintance they would not now be obliged to mourn a corn crop cut off by frost. When this old chap went to farming forty years ago he bought a peck of seed corn of the Northern yellow flint variety, and as he "don't believe in running after all the new seeds that are advertised in the papers," he is still raising the same variety--only it ripens some three weeks earlier than it did then. Every fall he does through his field and selects his seed corn from the best of the earliest ripened ears; when these ears are husked one or two husks are left on each ear, and then the husks, with the ears attached, are braided together until there are fifteen or twenty ears in a string. These strings of seed corn are hung up in the sun for a fortnight or so, and then hung from the rafters in a cool, dry loft over the wood-shed; there it remains till seed time comes again, and it never fails to grow. FANNY FIELD. BUSINESS STILL RUNNING. "My own hens closed out business six weeks ago," not long since said "Man of the Prairie." He mentioned also, that he had not much faith in pure bred poultry. Now he severely complains that no eggs can be found among the farmers nor in village stores. I will not say that pure strains of poultry are better layers than common, but, when one pays a good price for poultry, it is an incentive to provide good shelter and bestow upon them some manifestations of interest which would not be done with the common fowls. Herein may lay in part the secret of better returns from pure strains. Years ago our chickens 'closed out business' for several months. Of late this procedure is unknown. We crossed our best common hens with Plymouth Rock stock, paying a good price. We furnished comfortable quarters, gave variety of feed, and at present writing the lady-like biddies furnish enough eggs for our own use and some to sell to stores and neighbors. We still have a few common hens (not caring to have all pure) yet we find that with same care and attention, the purer strains give best returns. Skeptical, like a good many others, we were loth to experiment. Thanks to Fanny Field for her wise and instructive poultry writings. In a recent number she seemed to be in doubt whether her writings were heeded or doing any one good. Let me say in behalf of myself and a few others, that a few married ladies now have pin money by following her instructions, who, before, had to go to their lords (husbands) when they wanted a little money, which was sometimes begrudgingly given, and often times not at all. BACHELOR & MAID. COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA. [Illustration] THE APIARY. THE BEST HIVE. In answer to many inquiries as to the best hive, we will here state that is a mere matter of choice. Many good movable frame hives are now in use, free from patents, and while we prefer the Langstroth, there may be others just as good. Apiarists differ as to what constitutes the best hive. Novices in bee culture generally think that they can invent a better hive than any in use, but after trying their invention for awhile, conclude that they are not as wise as they thought they were. Many hives are patented yearly by persons ignorant of the nature of the honey-bee, and few, if any, are received with favor by intelligent apiarists. The requisites for a good hive are durability, simplicity, ease of construction and of working, and pleasing to the eye. We think the Langstroth embodies these. It was invented by the father of modern bee-culture. He gave to the world the movable frame; without its use, we might as well keep our bees in hollow logs, as our fathers did. Different sizes of movable frames are now in use, but two-thirds of the apiarists prefer the Langstroth. Upon many farms, bees may be found in salt barrels, nail-kegs, etc., doing little good for their owner, while if they were put into hives, where the surplus could be obtained in good shape, they would become a source of income. Specialists either manufacture their own hives, or buy them in the flat, in the lumber region. As the farmer may need but a few hives, he may find leisure in winter to make them. Every farmer needs a workshop, and if he has none, should provide himself with one. It need not be large, and can be made quite inexpensively. In his barn, if it is large, partition off a room for a workshop 12 × 14 feet, and if he not be blessed with a good large barn, why a thousand feet of common boards, and a load of good stout saplings, with a little mechanical skill and some muscle, will provide a very good farm workshop. Get a few tools, such as a saw, square, plane, hatchet, a brace, and a few bits, and before twelve months pass away you will wonder how you ever managed to do without one before; many a singletree or doubletree can be made, or broken implements repaired during leisure, or the rainy days of late winter or spring, and the boys will go there to try their hands, and develop their mechanical skill; exercising both brain and muscle. Remember that the school of industry is second to no university in the land. Now for the hives; in the first place you need a pattern. Purchase of some dealer or manufacturer of apiarian supplies, a good Langstroth hive complete with section boxes. Then get a couple of hundred feet (more or less) of ten inch stock boards, mill dressed on both sides, then with your pattern hive, workshop, and tools, you are master of the situation. After your hives are made, don't forget to paint them; it is economy to paint hives as well as dwelling houses. LANGSTROTH HIVE. For the benefit of those who may not be able to obtain a pattern hive, or frame, we will give the dimensions. The sides of the Langstroth hive are 10 inches wide, by 23 inches long, the ends are 12 inches long, the back end the same width as the sides; front end, 3/8 inches narrower, and recesses or sets back 3-3/8 inches from portico, all 7/8 inches thick. The Langstroth frame is 17-1/4 × 9-1/4 inches outside measure. The length of top bar of frame is 19-1/4 inches, the frame stuff is all 7/8 wide, the top bar is 5/8 × 7/8, and is V shaped on the under side for a comb guide--the upright pieces 1/2 × 7/8, the bottom pieces 1/4 × 7/8. The above are the dimensions of an eight frame hive. Strips 1/4 × 7/8 inches are nailed on the outside of the hive 1/4 inch from the upper edge, and the cap or upper hive rests upon them. We make the cap 22-1/8 inches long by 13-7/8 inches wide in the clear, and ten inches high. Some apiarists omit the porticos, but we like them, and the bees appear to enjoy them. Right angled triangle blocks, made right and left, are used to regulate the entrance. By changing the position of these blocks on the alighting board the size of the entrance may be varied, and the bees always directed to it by the shape of the block, without any loss of time in searching for it--in case of robbing the hive, the hive can be entirely closed with them. A board was formerly used to cover the frames, but is now generally abandoned, apiarists preferring duck, enameled cloth, or heavy muslin. MRS. L. HARRISON. * * * * * NO SAFER REMEDY can be had for Coughs and Colds, or any trouble of the Throat, than "_Brown's Bronchial Troches_." Price 25 cents. _Sold only in boxes._ * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. ARM & HAMMER BRAND TO FARMERS.--It is important that the SODA OR SALERATUS they use should be _white_ and _pure_, in common with all similar substances used for food. [Illustration: CHURCH & CO'S SODA & SALERATUS] In making bread with yeast, it is well to use about half a teaspoonful of the "ARM AND HAMMER" BRAND SODA or SALERATUS at the same time, and thus make the bread rise better and prevent it becoming sour by correcting the natural acidity of the yeast. DAIRYMEN AND FARMERS should use only the "ARM AND HAMMER" brand for cleaning and keeping milk-pans sweet and clean. _To insure obtaining only the_ "ARM AND HAMMER" _brand Soda or Saleratus, buy it in_ "POUND _or_ HALF-POUND PACKAGES," _which bear our name and trade-mark, as inferior goods are sometimes substituted for the_ "ARM AND HAMMER" _brand when bought in bulk._ * * * * * "THE BEST IS THE CHEAPEST." ENGINES SAW MILLS, THRESHERS, HORSE POWERS, (For all sections and purposes.) Write for FREE Pamphlet and Prices to The Aultman & Taylor Co., Mansfield, Ohio. * * * * * THE FAMOUS EASY-RUNNING Monarch Lightning Sawing Machine IT BEATS THE WORLD FOR SAWING LOGS OR FAMILY STOVE WOOD. SENT ON 30 DAYS' TEST TRIAL. [Illustration] The boy in the picture on the left is sawing up logs into 20-inch lengths, to be split into stovewood for family use. This is much the BEST and CHEAPEST way to get out your firewood, because the 20-inch blocks are VERY EASILY split up, a good deal easier and quicker than the old-fashioned way of cutting the logs into 4-feet lengths, splitting it into cordwood, and from that sawing it up with a buck saw into stovewood. We sell a large number of machines to farmers and others for just this purpose. A great many persons who had formerly burned coal have stopped that useless expense since getting our Machine. Most families have one or two boys, 16 years of age and up, who can employ their spare time in sawing up wood just as well as not. The MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE will save your paying money and board to ONE hired man and perhaps TWO men. The boy at the right in the picture is sawing up cordwood in a buck frame. You can very easily use our machine in this way if you have cordwood on hand that you wish to saw up into suitable lengths for firewood. A boy sixteen years old can work the machine all day and not get any more tired than he would raking hay. The machine runs VERY EASILY, so easily, in fact, that after giving the crank half a dozen turns, the operator may let go and the machine will run itself for THREE OR FOUR REVOLUTIONS. Farmers owning standing timber cannot fail to see the many advantages of this great LABOR-SAVING AND MONEY-SAVING MACHINE. If you prefer, you can easily go directly into the woods and easily saw the logs into 20-inch lengths for your family use, or you can saw them into 4-foot lengths, to be split into cordwood, when it can be readily hauled off to the village market. Many farmers are making a good deal of money with this Machine in employing the dull months of the year in selling cordwood. It makes a great difference in LABOR AND MONEY both in using our machine, because you get away with a second man. It takes two men to run the old-fashioned cross-cut saw, and it makes two backs ache every day they use it. Not so with our saw. We offer $1,000 for a sawing machine that is EASIER OPERATED and FASTER RUNNING than ours. Every farmer should own our machine. It will pay for itself in one season. Easily operated by a sixteen-year-old boy. Lumbermen and farmers should GET THE BEST--GET THE CHEAPEST--GET THE MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE. E. DUTTER, Hicksville, O., writes:--It runs so easy that it is JUST FUN to saw wood. C. A. COLE, Mexico, N. Y., writes:--With this machine I sawed off an elm log, twenty-one inches in diameter, in one minute, forty-three seconds. Z. G. HEGE, Winston, N. C., writes:--I have shown your machine to several farmers, and all pronounce it a PERFECT SUCCESS. WM. DILLENBACK, Dayton, Tex., writes:--I am WELL PLEASED with the MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE. My boys can saw WITH ALL EASE. L. W. YOST, Seneca, Kan., writes:--I will bet $50 that I can saw as much with this machine as any two men can with the old-fashioned cross-cut saw. T. K. BUCK, Mt. Vernon, Ill., writes:--I have given the Monarch a fair trial, and can truly say it is ALL YOU CLAIM FOR IT, a complete success, enabling a boy to do the work of two strong men, and indeed, more. I would not take $75 for the MONARCH and be deprived of the privilege of having another like it. I sawed off a twenty-inch solid water oak log twelve times yesterday in FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. J. M. CRAWFORD. Columbia, S. C., writes:--I tried the Monarch on an oak log to-day before twenty farmers. All said it WORKED PERFECTLY. N. B.--We are selling SIX TIMES as many Machines as any other firm, simply because our Machine gives perfect satisfaction. Our factory is running day and night to fill orders. Send in your order at once. The BEST is the CHEAPEST. Our agent sold four machines in one day. Another sold twenty-eight in his township. Another agent cleared $100 in one week. BE SURE AND MENTION THIS PAPER. WE WISH A LIVE, WIDE-AWAKE AGENT IN EVERY COUNTY IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. Write for Latest Illustrated Catalogue giving Special Terms and scores of Testimonials. MONARCH MANUFACTURING CO. 163 E. RANDOLPH STREET, CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ SCIENTIFIC. SOME GOSSIP ABOUT DARWIN. The last number of the American Naturalist presents the following from David S. Jorden, of Bloomington, Indiana. It is one of those gossipy bits about the great scientist that every body enjoys reading. In a recent visit to England, the writer strolled into the village of Down in Kent, and talked with some of the villagers in regard to Mr. Darwin, whose beautiful home is just outside the little town. Some of this talk, although in itself idle and valueless, may have an interest to readers, as showing how a great man looks to his smaller neighbors. The landlord of the "George Inn" said that "all the people wished to have Mr. Darwin buried in Down, but the government would not let them. It would have helped the place so much. It would have brought hosts of people down to see his grave. Especially it would have helped the hotel business which is pretty dull in winter time. "Mr. Darwin was a very fine-looking man. He had a high forehead and wore a long beard. Still, if you had met him on the street, perhaps, you would not have taken much notice of him unless you knew that he was a clever man." "Sir John Lubbock (Darwin's friend and near neighbor) is a very clever man, too, but not so clever nor so remarkable-looking as Mr. Darwin. He is very fond of hants (ants), and plants, and things." At Keston, three miles from Down, the landlady of the Grayhound had never heard of Mr. Darwin until after his death. There was then considerable talk about his being buried in Westminster, but nothing was said of him before. Several persons had considerable to say of Mr. Darwin's extensive and judicious charity to the poor. To Mr. Parslow, for many years his personal servant, Mr. Darwin gave a life pension of £50, and the rent of the handsome "Home Cottage" in Down. During the time of a water famine in that region, he used to ride about on horseback to see who needed water, and had it brought to them at his own expense from the stream at St. Mary's Cray. "He was," said Mr. Parslow, "a very social, nice sort of a gentleman, very joking and jolly indeed; a good husband and a good father and a most excellent master. Even his footmen used to stay with him as long as five years. They would rather stay with him than take a higher salary somewhere else. The cook came there while young and stayed there till his death, nearly thirty years later. "Mrs Darwin is a pleasant lady, a year older than her husband. Their boys are all jolly, nice young fellows. All have turned out so well, not one of them rackety, you know. Seven children out of the ten are now living. "George Darwin is now a professor in Oxford. He was a barrister at first; had his wig and gown and all, but had to give it up on account of bad health. He would have made a hornament to the profession. "Francis Darwin is a doctor, and used to work with his father in the greenhouse. He is soon to marry a lady who lectures on Botany in Oxford. "For the first twenty years after Mr. Darwin's return from South America, his health was very bad--much more than later. He had a stomach disease which resulted from sea-sickness while on the voyage around the world. Mr. Parslow learned the watercure treatment and treated Mr. Darwin in that system, for a long time, giving much relief. "Mr. Darwin used to do his own writing but had copyists to get his work ready for the printer. He was always an early man. He used to get up at half past six. He used to bathe and then go out for a walk all around the place. Then Parslow used to get breakfast for him before the rest of the family came down. He used to eat rapidly, then went to his study and wrote till after the rest had breakfast. Then Mrs. Darwin came in and he used to lie half an hour on the sofa, while she or someone else read to him. Then he wrote till noon, then went out for an hour to walk. He used to walk all around the place. Later in life, he had a cab, and used to ride on horseback. Then after lunch at one, he used to write awhile. Afterwards he and Mrs. Darwin used to go to the bedroom, where he lay on a sofa and often smoked a cigarette while she read to him. After this he used to walk till dinner-time at five. Before the family grew up, they used to dine early, at half-past one, and had a meat-tea at half-past six. "Sometimes there were eighteen or twenty young Darwins of different families in the house. Four-in-hand coaches of young Darwins used sometimes to come down from London. Mr. Darwin liked children. They didn't disturb him in the least. There were sometimes twenty or thirty pairs of little shoes to be cleaned of a morning, but there were always plenty of servants to do this. "The gardener used to bring plants into his room often of a morning, and he used to tie bits of cotton on them, and try to make them do things. He used to try all sorts of seeds. He would sow them in pots in his study. "There were a quantity of people in Westminster Abbey when he was buried. Mr. Parslow and the cook were among the chief mourners and sat in the Jerusalem chamber. The whole church was as full of people as they could stand. There was great disappointment in Down that he was not buried there. He loved the place, and we think that he would rather have rested there had he been consulted." * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. To Our Readers. THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the OLDEST, MOST RELIABLE, and the LEADING AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST, devoted exclusively to the interests of the Farmer, Gardener, Florist, Stock Breeder, Dairyman, Etc., and every species of industry connected with that great portion of the People of the World, the PRODUCERS. Now in the Forty-Second Year of its existence, and never, during more than two score years, having missed the regular visit to its patrons, it will continue to maintain supremacy as A STANDARD AUTHORITY ON MATTERS PERTAINING TO AGRICULTURE AND KINDRED PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRIES, and as a FRESH AND READABLE FAMILY AND FIRESIDE JOURNAL. It will from time to time add new features of interest, securing for each department the ablest writers of practical experience. THE PRAIRIE FARMER will discuss, without fear or favor, all topics of interest properly belonging to a Farm and Fireside Paper, treat of the most approved practices in AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, BREEDING, ETC.; the varied Machinery, Implements, and improvements in same, for use both in Field and House; and, in fact, everything of interest to the Agricultural community, whether in FIELD, MARKET, OR HOME CIRCLE. IT WILL GIVE INFORMATION UPON THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, WESTERN SOILS, CLIMATE, ETC.; ANSWER INQUIRIES on all manner of subjects which come within its sphere; GIVE each week, full and RELIABLE MARKET, CROP, AND WEATHER REPORTS; PRESENT the family with choice and INTERESTING LITERATURE; amuse and INSTRUCT THE YOUNG FOLKS: AND, in a word, aim to BE, in every respect, AN INDISPENSABLE AND UNEXCEPTIONABLE farm and fireside COMPANION. Terms of Subscription and 'Club Rates': ONE COPY, 1 YEAR, postage paid $ 2.00 TWO COPIES, " " " 3.75 FIVE " " sent at one time 8.75 TEN " " sent at one time, and one to Club getter 16.00 TWENTY " " sent at one time, and one to Club getter 30.00 Address The Prairie Farmer Publishing Co., Chicago. Ill. * * * * * This Elegant RING GIVEN AWAY [Illustration] This elegant 18K ROLLED GOLD WEDDING RING, equal in appearance to a $10 ring, FREE TO ALL. Wishing to at once secure a large number of new subscribers to our well known literary and family paper, BACKLOG SKETCHES, and knowing that all who once read it will become regular subscribers, we make this most liberal offer to induce all to subscribe, firmly believing that in the future we shall be benefited in the increased business it will bring us. For only 25 Cents we will send BACKLOG SKETCHES three months ON TRIAL, and we will send every subscriber, absolutely FREE, this elegant 18K ROLLED GOLD RING. For $1, we send Backlog Sketches a year and send every subscriber free, a beautiful RING, WARRANTED SOLID GOLD. Backlog Sketches is a large, 16 page, illustrated literary paper, size Harper's Weekly, every issue being filled with the most charming stories and sketches and choicest miscellany. It is alone worth double the subscription price. Subscribe now. Sample paper for stamp. Address BACKLOG PUBLISHING CO., AUGUSTA, MAINE CUT THIS OUT. IT WILL NOT APPEAR AGAIN. The above liberal offer, by a reliable firm, gives all a chance to get a valuable ring free. Subscribe now, before you forget it. * * * * * GOLD MEDAL, PARIS, 1878. [Illustration] BAKER'S BREAKFAST COCOA. Warranted _absolutely pure Cocoa_, from which the excess of Oil has been removed. It has _three times the strength_ of Cocoa mixed with Starch, Arrowroot or Sugar, and is therefore far more economical. It is delicious, nourishing, strengthening, easily digested, and admirably adapted for invalids as well as for persons in health. SOLD BY GROCERS EVERYWHERE. W. BAKER & CO., Dorchester, Mass. * * * * * A DANGEROUS AMBUSCADE. Discovered Barely in Time--The Most Deceptive and Luring of Modern Evils Graphically Described. (_Syracuse Journal._) Something of a sensation was caused in this city yesterday by a rumor that one of our best-known citizens was about to publish a statement concerning some unusual experiences during his residence in Syracuse. How the rumor originated it is impossible to say, but a reporter immediately sought Dr. S. G. Martin, the gentleman in question, and secured the following interview: "What about this rumor, Doctor, that you are going to make a public statement of some important matters?" "Just about the same as you will find in all rumors--some truth; some fiction. I had contemplated making a publication of some remarkable episodes that have occurred in my life, but have not completed it as yet." "What is the nature of it, may I inquire?" "Why, the fact that I am a human being instead of a spirit. I have passed through one of the most wonderful ordeals that perhaps ever occurred to any man. The first intimation I had of it was several years ago, when I began to feel chilly at night and restless after retiring. Occasionally this would be varied by a soreness of the muscles and cramps in my arms and legs. I thought, as most people would think, that it was only a cold and so paid as little attention to it as possible. Shortly after this I noticed a peculiar catarrhal trouble and my throat also became inflamed. As if this were not variety enough I felt sharp pains in my chest, and a constant tendency to headache." "Why didn't you take the matter in hand and check it right where it was?" "Why doesn't everybody do so? Simply because they think it is only some trifling and passing disorder. These troubles did not come all at once and I thought it unmanly to heed them. I have found, though, that every physical neglect must be paid for and with large interest. Men can not draw drafts on their constitution without honoring them sometime. These minor symptoms I have described, grew until they were giants of agony. I became more nervous; had a strange fluttering of the heart, an inability to draw a long breath and an occasional numbness that was terribly suggestive of paralysis. How I could have been so blind as not to understand what this meant I can not imagine." "And did you do nothing?" "Yes, I traveled. In the spring of 1879 I went to Kansas and Colorado, and while in Denver, I was attacked with a mysterious hemorrage of the urinary organs and lost twenty pounds of flesh in three weeks. One day after my return I was taken with a terrible chill and at once advanced to a very severe attack of pneumonia. My left lung soon entirely filled with water and my legs and body became twice their natural size. I was obliged to sit upright in bed for several weeks in the midst of the severest agony, with my arms over my head, and constant fear of suffocation." "And did you still make no attempt to save yourself?" "Yes, I made frantic efforts. I tried everything that seemed to offer the least prospect of relief. I called a council of doctors and had them make an exhaustive chemical and microscopical examination of my condition. Five of the best physicians of Syracuse and several from another city said I must die! "It seemed as though their assertion was true for my feet became cold, my mouth parched, my eyes wore a fixed glassy stare, my body was covered with a cold, clammy death sweat, and I read my fate in the anxious expressions of my family and friends." "But the _finale_?" "Came at last. My wife, aroused to desperation, began to administer a remedy upon her own responsibility and while I grew better very slowly, I gained ground surely until, in brief, I have no trace of the terrible Bright's disease from which I was dying, and am a perfectly well man. This may sound like a romance, but it is true, and my life, health and what I am are due to Warner's Safe Cure, which I wish was known to and used by the thousands who I believe, are suffering this minute as I was originally. Does not such an experience as this justify me in making a public statement?" "It certainly does. But then Bright's disease is not a common complaint, doctor." "Not common! On the contrary it is one of the most common. The trouble is, few people know they have it. It has so few marked symptoms until its final stages that a person may have it for years, each year getting more and more in its power and not suspect it. It is quite natural I should feel enthusiastic over this remedy while my wife is even more so than I am. She knows of its being used with surprising results by many ladies for their own peculiar ailments, over which it has singular power." The statement drawn out by the above interview is amply confirmed by very many of our most prominent citizens, among them being Judge Reigel, and Col. James S. Goodrich, of the Times, while Gen. Dwight H. Bruce and Rev. Prof. W. P. Coddington, D. D., give the remedy their heartiest indorsement. In this age of wonders, surprising things are quite common, but an experience so unusual as that of Dr. Martin's and occurring here in our midst, may well cause comment and teach a lesson. It shows the necessity of guarding the slightest approach of physical disorder and by the means which has been proven the most reliable and efficient. It shows the depth to which one can sink and yet be rescued and it proves that few people need suffer if these truths are observed. * * * * * TO PRESERVE THE HEALTH Use the Magneton Appliance Co.'s MAGNETIC LUNG PROTECTOR! PRICE ONLY $5. They are priceless to LADIES, GENTLEMEN, and CHILDREN with WEAK LUNGS; no case of PNEUMONIA OR CROUP is ever known where these garments are worn. They also prevent and cure HEART DIFFICULTIES, COLDS, RHEUMATISM, NEURALGIA, THROAT TROUBLES, DIPHTHERIA, CATARRH, AND ALL KINDRED DISEASES. Will WEAR any service for THREE YEARS. Are worn over the under-clothing. CATARRH, It is needless to describe the symptoms of this nauseous disease that is sapping the life and strength of only too many of the fairest and best of both sexes. Labor, study, and research in America, Europe, and Eastern lands, have resulted in the Magnetic Lung Protector, affording cure for Catarrh, a remedy which contains NO DRUGGING OF THE SYSTEM, and with the continuous stream of Magnetism permeating through the afflicted organs, MUST RESTORE THEM TO A HEALTHY ACTION. WE PLACE OUR PRICE for this Appliance at less than one-twentieth of the price asked by others for remedies upon which you take all the chances, and WE ESPECIALLY INVITE the patronage of the MANY PERSONS who have tried DRUGGING THE STOMACHS WITHOUT EFFECT. HOW TO OBTAIN This Appliance. Go to your druggist and ask for them. If they have not got them, write to the proprietors, enclosing the price, in letter at our risk, and they will be sent to you at once by mail, post paid. Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical Treatment WITHOUT MEDICINE," with thousands of testimonials, THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 State Street, Chicago, Ill. NOTE.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our Magnetic Appliances. Positively _no cold feet where they are worn, or money refunded_. * * * * * [Illustration] AGENTS make over ONE hundred per cent. profit selling the REFLECTING SAFETY LAMP which can be sold in every family. Gives more light than three ordinary lamps. SAMPLE LAMP SENT FOR FIFTY CENTS IN STAMPS. We have other household articles. Send for circulars. FORSEE & MCMAKIN, CINCINNATI, O. * * * * * PUBLICATIONS. MARSHALL M. KIRKMAN'S BOOKS ON RAILROAD TOPICS. DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A RAILROAD MAN IF YOU DO, THE BOOKS DESCRIBED BELOW POINT THE WAY. The most promising field for men of talent and ambition at the present day is the railroad service. The pay is large in many instances, while the service is continuous and honorable. Most of our railroad men began life on the farm. Of this class is the author of the accompanying books descriptive of railway operations, who has been connected continuously with railroads as a subordinate and officer for 27 years. He was brought up on a farm, and began railroading as a lad at $7 per month. He has written a number of standard books on various topics connected with the organization, construction, management and policy of railroads. These books are of interest not only to railroad men but to the general reader as well. They are indispensable to the student. They present every phase of railroad life, and are written in an easy and simple style that both interests and instructs. The books are as follows: "RAILWAY EXPENDITURES--THEIR EXTENT, OBJECT AND ECONOMY."--A Practical Treatise on Construction and Operation. In Two Volumes, 850 pages. $4.00 "HAND BOOK OF RAILWAY EXPENDITURES."--Practical Directions for Keeping the Expenditure Accounts. 2.00 "RAILWAY REVENUE AND ITS COLLECTION."--And Explaining the Organization of Railroads. 2.50 "THE BAGGAGE PARCEL AND MAIL TRAFFIC OF RAILROADS."--An interesting work on this important service; 425 pages. 2.00 "TRAIN AND STATION SERVICE"--Giving The Principal Rules and Regulations governing Trains; 280 pages. 2.00 "THE TRACK ACCOUNTS OF RAILROADS."--And how they should be kept. Pamphlet. 1.00 "THE FREIGHT TRAFFIC WAY-BILL."--Its Uses Illustrated and Described. Pamphlet. .50 "MUTUAL GUARANTEE."--A Treatise on Mutual Suretyship. Pamphlet. .50 Any of the above books will be sent post paid on receipt of price, by PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., 150 Monroe St. CHICAGO, ILL. Money should be remitted by express, or by draft check or post office order. * * * * * [Illustration] ONLY ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. LOOK at this MAGNIFICENT OFFER for 1884. One of these beautiful Cluster Regard Rings or 7 BEAUTIFUL OIL CHROMOS, and these HANDSOME SOLITAIRE PARISIAN DIAMOND EAR DROPS. This is no humbug, but a chance that will never be offered again, as it appears but once. So do not let THIS CHANCE SLIP by when you can get any of these BEAUTIFUL ARTICLES by subscribing for the LEADING FAMILY STORY PAPER, HOUSEHOLD AND FARM, providing your order is received on or before MARCH 15TH, 1884. As we wish to introduce our Illustrated Family Paper, THE HOUSEHOLD AND FARM, in fifty thousand new homes, and in order to do so we make this wonderful offer. THE HOUSEHOLD AND FARM (Subscription price only $1.00 per year), is a sixteen page family paper, illustrated, cut and bound, and same size as Harper's Weekly, and brimful of interesting reading for the household. This offer is only extended to ONE MEMBER OF EACH FAMILY, and will not be made again. Postage Stamps taken. Address, [Illustration] HOUSEHOLD & FARM, 9 Spruce Street, P. O. Box 2834. NEW YORK. HOUSEHOLD. For nothing lovelier can be found In woman than to study _household_ good.--_Milton._ "GOING UP HEAD." AN OLD SOLDIER'S STORY. The low school-house stood in a green Wabash wood Lookin' out on long levels of corn like a sea-- A little log-house, hard benches, and we, Big barefooted boys and rough 'uns, we stood In line with the gals and tried to get 'head At spellin' each day when the lessons was said. But one, Bally Dean, tall, bony, and green As green corn in the milk, stood fast at the foot-- Stood day after day, as if he'd been put A soldier on guard there did poor Bally Dean. And stupid! God made him so stupid I doubt-- But I guess God who made us knows what He's about. He'd a long way to walk. But he wouldn't once talk Of that, nor the chores for his mother who lay A shakin' at home. Still, day after day He stood at the foot till the class 'gan to mock! Then to master he plead, "Oh I'd like to go head!" Now it wasn't so much, but the way it was said. Then the war struck the land! Why the barefooted band It just nailed up that door: and the very next day, With master for Cap'en, went marchin' away; And Bally the butt of the whole Wabash band. But he bore with it all, yet once firmly said, "When I get back home, I'm agoin' up head!" Oh, that school-house that stood in the wild Wabash wood! The rank weeds were growin' like ghosts through the floor. The squirrels hulled nuts on the sill of the door. And the gals stood in groups scrapin' lint where they stood. And we boys! How we sighed; how we sickened and died For the days that had been, for a place at their side. Then one fever-crazed and his better sense dazed And dulled with heart-sickness all duty forgot; Deserted, was taken, condemned to be shot! And Bally Dean guardin' his comrade half crazed, Slow paced up and down while he slept where he lay In the tent waitin' death at the first flush of day. And Bally Dean thought of the boy to be shot, Of the fair girl he loved in the woods far away; Of the true love that grew like a red rose of May; And he stopped where he stood, and he thought and he thought Then a sudden star fell, shootin' on overhead. And he knew that his mother beckon'd onto the dead. And he said what have I? Though I live though I die. Who shall care for me now? Then the dull, muffled drum Struck his ear, and he knew that the master had come With the squad. And he passed in the tent with a sigh, And the doomed lad crept forth, and the drowsy squad led With low trailin' guns to the march of the dead. Then with face turned away tow'rd a dim streak of day, And his voice full of tears the poor bowed master said, As he fell on his knees and uncovered his head: "Come boys it is school time, let us all pray." And we prayed. And the lad by the coffin alone Was tearless, was silent, was still as a stone. "In line," master said, and he stood at the head; But he couldn't speak now. So he drew out his sword And dropped the point low for the last fatal word. Then the rifles rang out, and a soldier fell dead! The master sprang forward. "Great Heaven," he said, "It is Bally, poor Bally, and he's gone up head!" --_Joaquin Miller._ TOO FAT TO MARRY. A very fat young woman came to my office and asked to see me privately. When we were alone she said: "Are you sure no one can overhear us?" "Quite sure." "You won't laugh at me, will you?" "Madam, I should be unworthy of your confidence if I could be guilty of such a rudeness." "Thank you, sir; but no one ever called upon you on such a ridiculous errand. You won't think me an idiot, will you?" "I beg of you to go on." "You don't care to know my name or residence?" "Certainly not, if you care to conceal them." "I have called to consult you about the strangest thing in the world. I will tell you all. I am twenty-three years old. When I was nineteen I weighed 122 pounds; now I weigh 209; I am all filling up with fat. I can hardly breathe. The best young man that ever lived loves me, and has been on the point of asking me to marry him, but of course he sees I am growing worse all the time and he don't dare venture. I can't blame him. He is the noblest man in the world, and could marry any one he chooses. I don't blame him for not wishing to unite himself to such a tub as I am. Why, Doctor, you don't know how fat I am. I am a sight to behold. And now I have come to see if any thing can be done. I know you have studied up all sorts of curious subjects, and I thought you might be able to tell me how to get rid of this dreadful curse." She had been talking faster and faster, and with more and more feeling (after the manner of fat women, who are always emotional), until she broke down in hysterical sobs. I inquired about her habits--table and otherwise. She replied: "Oh, I starve myself; I don't eat enough to keep a canary bird alive, and yet I grow fatter and fatter all the time. I don't believe anything can be done for me. We all have our afflictions, and I suppose we ought to bear them with fortitude. I wouldn't mind for myself, but it's just breaking his heart; if it wasn't for him I could be reconciled." I then explained to her our nervous system, and the bearing certain conditions of one class of nerves has upon the deposition of adipose tissue. I soon saw she was not listening, but was mourning her sorrow. Then I asked her if she would be willing to follow a prescription I might give her. "Willing? willing?" she cried. "I would be willing to go through fire, or to have my flesh cut off with red-hot knives. There is nothing I would not be willing to endure if I could only get rid of this horrible condition." I prepared a prescription for her, and arranged that she should call upon me once a week, that I might supervise her progress and have frequent opportunities to encourage her. The prescription which I read to her was this: 1. For breakfast eat a piece of beef or mutton as large as your hand, with a slice of white bread twice as large. For dinner the same amount of meat, or, if preferred, fish or poultry, with the same amount of farinaceous or vegetable food in the form of bread or potato. For supper, nothing. 2. Drink only when greatly annoyed with thirst; then a mouthful of lemonade without sugar. 3. Take three times a week some form of bath, in which there shall be immense perspiration. The Turkish bath is best. You must work, either in walking or some other way, several hours a day. "But, doctor, I can't walk; my feet are sore." "I thought that might be the case, but if the soles of your shoes are four inches broad, and are thick and strong, walking will not hurt your feet. You must walk or work until you perspire freely, every day of the week. Of course, you are in delicate health, with little endurance, but, as you have told me that you are willing to do anything, you are to work hard at something six or seven hours every day." 4. You must rise early in the morning, and retire late at night. Much sleep fattens people. 5. The terrible corset you have on, which compresses the center of the body, making you look a great deal fatter than you really are, must be taken off, and you must have a corset which any dress maker can fit to you--a corset for the lower part of the abdomen, which will raise this great mass and support it. "This is all the advice I have to give you at present. At first you will lose half a pound a day. In the first three months you will lose from twenty to thirty pounds. In six months, forty pounds. You will constantly improve in health, get over this excessive emotion, and be much stronger. Every one knows that a very fat horse weighing 1,200 pounds, can be quickly reduced to 1,000 pounds with great improvement to activity and health. It is still easier with a human being. That you may know exactly what is being done, I wish you to be weighed; write the figures in your memorandum, and one week from now, when you come again, weigh yourself and tell me how much you have lost." I happened to be out of the city and did not see her until her second visit, two weeks from our last meeting. It was plain when she entered that already her system was being toned up, and when we were again in my private office, she said: "I have lost six and a half pounds; not quite as much as you told me, but I am delighted, though nearly starved. I have done exactly as you prescribed, and shall continue to if it kills me. You must be very careful not to make any mistakes, for I shall do just as you say. At first the thirst was dreadful. I thought I could not bear it. But now I have very little trouble with that." About four months after our first meeting this young woman brought a handsome young man with her, and after a pleasant chat, she said to me: "We are engaged; but I have told my friend that I shall not consent to become his wife until I have a decent shape. When I came to you I weighed 209 pounds; I now weigh 163 pounds. I am ten times as strong, active, and healthy as I was then, and I have made up my mind, for my friend has left it altogether to me, that when I have lost ten or fifteen pounds more, we shall send you the invitations." As the wedding day approached she brought the figures 152 on a card, and exclaimed, with her blue eyes running over: "I am the happiest girl in the world, and don't you think I have honestly earned it? I think I am a great deal happier than I should have been had I not worked for it." The papers said the bride was beautiful. I thought she was, and I suppose no one but herself and husband felt as much interested in that beauty as I did. I took a sort of scientific interest in it. We made the usual call upon them during the first month, and when, two months after the wedding, they were spending the evening with us, I asked him if his wife had told him about my relations with her avoirdupois? He laughed heartily, and replied: "Oh, yes, she has told me everything, I suppose: but wasn't it funny?" "Not very. I am sure you wouldn't have thought it funny if you could have heard our first interview. It was just the reverse of funny; don't you think so madam?" "I am sure it was the most anxious visit I ever paid any one. Doctor, my good husband says he should have married me just the same, but I think he would have been a goose if he had." "Yes," said the husband, "it was foreordained that we two should be one." "To be sure it was," replied the happy wife, "because it was foreordained that I should get rid of those horrid fifty-seven pounds. I am going down till I reach one hundred and forty pounds, and there I will stop, unless my husband says one hundred and thirty. I am willing do anything to please him."--_Dio Lewis' Monthly._ ORNAMENTS FOR HOMES. It is not the most expensively furnished houses that are the most homelike, besides comparatively few persons have the means to gratify their love of pretty little ornaments with which to beautify their homes. It is really painful to visit some houses; there naked walls and cheerless rooms meet you yet there are many such, and children in them too. How much might these homes be brightened by careful forethought in making some little ornaments that are really of no expense, save the time. Comb cases, card receivers, letter holders, match safes, paper racks, cornucopias, and many other pretty and useful things can easily be made of nice clean paste board boxes (and the boxes are to be found in a variety of colors). For any of these cut out the parts and nicely sew them together, and the seams and raw edges can be covered with narrow strips of bright hued paper or tape. Ornament them with transfer or scrap pictures. I have seen very pretty vases for holding dried flowers and grasses, made of plain dark brown pasteboard, and the seams neatly covered with narrow strips of paper. Pretty ottomans can be made by covering any suitable sized box with a bit of carpeting, and stuffing the top with straw or cotton. Or, if the carpeting is not convenient, piece a covering of worsteds. A log cabin would be a pretty pattern. To amuse the children during the long winter months, make a scrap-book of pictures. Collect all the old illustrated books, papers, and magazines, and cut out the pictures and with mucilage nicely paste them in a book, first removing alternate leaves so it will not be too bulky. Perhaps this last remark is slightly wandering from my subject, but I can't help it, I love the little folks and want them happy. Cares and trouble will come to them soon enough. Autograph albums are quite the rage nowadays, and children get the idea and quite naturally think it pretty nice, and want an album too. For them make a pretty album in the form of a boot. For the outside use plain red cardboard; for the inside leaves use unruled paper; fasten at the top with two tiny bows of narrow blue ribbon. A lady sent my little girl an autograph album after this pattern for a birthday present and it is very neat indeed. Any of the little folks who want a pattern of it can have it and welcome by sending stamp to pay postage. For the wee little girl make a nice rag doll; it will please her quite as well as a boughten one, and certainly last much longer. I have a good pattern for a doll which you may also have if you wish it. A nice receptacle for pins, needles, thread, etc., can be made in form of an easy chair or sofa. Cut the part of pasteboard and cover the seat, arms, and back with cloth, and stuff with cotton. Brackets made of pasteboard will do service a long time. MRS. F. A. WARNER SOUTH SAGINAW, MICH. * * * * * RAILROADS. [Illustration] A MAN WHO IS UNACQUAINTED WITH THE GEOGRAPHY OF THIS COUNTRY WILL SEE BY EXAMINING THIS MAP THAT THE CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND & PACIFIC R'Y By the central position of its line, connects the East and the West by the shortest route, and carries passengers, without change of cars, between Chicago and Kansas City, Council Bluffs, Leavenworth, Atchison, Minneapolis and St. Paul. It connects in Union Depots with all the principal lines of road between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Its equipment is unrivaled and magnificent, being composed of Most Comfortable and Beautiful Day Coaches, Magnificent Horton Reclining Chair Cars, Pullman's Prettiest Palace Sleeping Cars, and the Best Line of Dining Cars in the World. Three Trains between Chicago and Missouri River Points. Two Trains between Chicago and Minneapolis and St. Paul, via the Famous "ALBERT LEA ROUTE." A New and Direct Line, via Seneca and Kankakee, has recently been opened between Richmond Norfolk, Newport News, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Augusta, Nashville, Louisville, Lexington, Cincinnati Indianapolis and Lafayette, and Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Paul and intermediate points. All Through Passengers Travel on Fast Express Trains. Tickets for sale at all principal Ticket Offices in the United States and Canada. Baggage checked through and rates of fare always as low as competitors that offer less advantages. For detailed information, get the Maps and Folders of the GREAT ROCK ISLAND ROUTE, At your nearest Ticket Office, or address R.R. CABLE, Vice-Pres. & Gen'l M'g'r, E. ST. JOHN, Gen'l Tkt. & Pass. Agt. CHICAGO. * * * * * MAPS. RAND, McNALLY & CO.'S NEW RAILROAD --AND-- COUNTY MAP --OF THE-- UNITED STATES --AND-- DOMINION OF CANADA. Size, 4 × 2-1/2 feet, mounted on rollers to hang on the wall. This is an ENTIRELY NEW MAP, Constructed from the most recent and authentic sources. --IT SHOWS-- _ALL THE RAILROADS,_ --AND-- EVERY COUNTY AND PRINCIPAL TOWN --IN THE-- UNITED STATES AND CANADA. A useful Map in every one's home, and place of business. PRICE, $2.00. Agents wanted, to whom liberal inducements will be given. Address RAND, McNALLY & CO., Chicago, Ill. By arrangements with the publishers of this Map we are enabled to make the following liberal offer: To each person who will remit us $2.25 we will send copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER One Year and THIS MAP POSTPAID. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. "FACTS ABOUT Arkansas and Texas." A handsome book, beautifully illustrated, with colored diagrams, giving reliable information as to crops, population, religious denominations, commerce, timber, Railroads, lands, etc., etc. Sent free to any address on receipt of a 2-cent stamp. Address H.C. TOWNSEND, GEN. PASSENGER AGT., ST. LOUIS, MO. * * * * * 500 VIRGINIA FARMS & MILLS FOR SALE AND EXCHANGE. Write for free REAL ESTATE JOURNAL. R.B. CHAFFIN & CO., Richmond, Virginia. * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the Cheapest and Best Agricultural Paper published. Only $2.00 per year. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ OUR YOUNG FOLKS CHAT ABOUT A BEAR. As I promised you last week, I will try and tell you about the bear I saw a few months ago away down in Nova Scotia, not many miles from that quaint old city of Halifax. Do I hear some of THE PRAIRIE FARMER boys and girls exclaim, as a real grown-up lady did just before I left Chicago: "Halifax! why, yes, I have heard tell of the place, but did not think that anybody ever really went there." People do go there, however, by the hundreds in the summer time, and a most delightful, hospitable, charming class of inhabitants do they find the Blue Noses, as they are called--that is, when one goes to them very well introduced. But we will have a little talk about Halifax and surroundings when you have heard about the bear. Well, in the first place I did not, of course, see the bear in the city, but in a place called Sackville--a section of country about five miles long, and extending over hill and dale and valley; through woods and across streams. My host owned a beautiful farm--picturesquely beautiful only, not with a money-making beauty--situated upon the slope of a hill, where one could stand and look upon the most tender of melting sunsets, away off toward the broad old ocean. One morning as we were all gathered upon the front stoop, grandpa, mamma, baby, kitten and all, we looked down the valley and saw coming up the hill, led by two men, an immense yellow bear. One of the farm hands was sent to call the men and the bear up to the house. The men, who were Swiss, were glad enough to come, as they were taking bruin through the country to show off his tricks and make thereby a little money. The children were somewhat afraid at first, but soon felt quite safe when they saw he was firmly secured by a rope. Old bruin's keeper first gave him a drink of water, then poured a pailful over him, which he seemed to enjoy very much, as the day was a warm one. One of the men said something in Swiss, at which the bear gave a roar-like grunt and commenced to dance. Around and around the great lumbering fellow went on his two hind legs, holding his fore paws in the air. It was not what one would call a very "airy waltz," however. Again the keeper spoke, and immediately bruin threw himself upon the ground and turned somersaults, making us all laugh heartily. He then told him to shake hands (but all in Swiss), and it was too funny to see the great awkward animal waddle up on his hind legs and extend first one paw and then the other. But what interested us all most, both big and little, was to hear the man say, "Kisse me," and then to watch the bear throw out his long tongue and lick his keeper's face. We then gave the bear some milk to drink, when suddenly he gave a bound forward toward the baby. But he was securely tied, as we well knew. The milk roused all the beast's savage instincts, one of the men said. But what will interest you most of all will be the fact that on the farm (which consisted of five hundred acres, nearly all woodland) there were seen almost every morning the footprints of a real savage bear. The sheep were fast disappearing, and the farmers about were not a little worried. One day I went for a walk into these same woods, and such woods! you Western boys and girls could not possibly imagine them--the old moss-covered logs, and immense trees cut down years ago and left to lie there until all overgrown with mosses and lichens. I never before experienced such a feeling of solitude as in that walk of over a mile in length through those deep dark woods, where sometimes we had literally to cut our way through with our little hatchets (we always carried them with us when in the forest). As I sauntered on, those lines of Longfellow's in Evangeline, came unconsciously to my mind, so exactly did they describe the place: This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic. Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. Nova Scotia is, as you all know the Acadian country of which our own fireside poet writes so beautifully. It was but a few miles from where I was visiting that the scene of Evangeline, that exquisitely tender romance which so thrills the hearts of both old and young, was laid. As I drove through the country, coming ever and anon unexpectedly upon one of the many beautiful lakes from half a mile to two miles in length, in fancy I pictured the fair Evangeline and her guide, the good Father Felician, skirting these lakes in a light canoe as they traversed the whole and through in the sad and fruitless search for the lost lover Gabriel. No wonder the soul of the poet was filled with such strange, mystic beauty which thus found expression in rhythm and song, for Acadia has an enchantment all its own and can best be interpreted by the diviner thought of the poet. But I am afraid, boys and girls, that I have chatted with you so long now that there will be scarcely room this week to touch upon Halifax. But, however, if you wish, I will try and talk to you about it next week, and tell you of some of the winter sports the little Blue Noses indulge in in the winter time. MARY HOWE. A FAIRY STORY BY LITTLE JOHNNY. Me an Billy we ben readn fairy tales, an I never see such woppers. I bet the feller wich rote em will be burnt every tiny little bit up wen he dies, but Billy says they are all true but the facks. Uncle Ned sed cude I tell one, and I ast him wot about, and he sed: "Wel Johnny, as you got to do the tellin I'le leav the choice of subjeck entirely to you; jest giv us some thing about a little boy that went and sook his forten." So I sed: "One time there was a little boy went out for to seek his forten, and first thing he see was great big yello posy on a punkin vine." Then Uncle Ned he sed: "Johnny, was that the punkin vine wich your bed once had a bizness connection with?" But I didn't anser, only went on with the story. "So the little boy he wocked into the posy, and crold down the vine on his hands and kanees bout ten thousan hundred miles, till he come bime bi to a door, wich he opened an went in an found hisself in a grate big house, ofle nice like a kings pallows or a hotell. But the little boy dident find any body to home and went out a other door, where he see a ocion with a bote, and he got in the bote." Then Uncle Ned he sed a uther time: "Johnny, excuse the ignance of a man wich has been in Injy an evry were, but is it the regular thing for punkin vines to have sea side resorts in em?" But I only sed: "Wen the little boy had saild out of site of land the bote it sunk, and he went down, down, down in the water, like he was tied around the neck of a mill stone, till he was swollowed by a wale, cos wales is the largest of created beings wich plows the deep, but lions is the king of beests, an the American eagle can lick ol other birds, hooray! Wen the boy was a seekn his forten in the stummeck of the wales belly he cut to a fence, an wen he had got over the fence he found hisself in a rode runin thru a medder, and it was a ofle nice country fur as he cude see." Uncle Ned sed: "Did he put up at the same way side inn wich was patternized by Jonah wen he pennitrated to that part of the morl vinyerd?" But I said: "Bimebi he seen a rope hangin down from the ski, and he begin for to clime it up, a sayin, 'Snitchety, snatchety, up I go,' 'wot time is it old witch?' 'niggers as good as a white man,' 'fee-faw-fum,' 'Chinese mus go,' 'all men is equil fore de law,' 'blitherum, blatherum, boo,' and all the words of madgick wich he cude think of. After a wile it got reel dark, but he kep on a climeing, and pretty sune he see a round spot of dalite over his hed, and then he cum up out of a well in a grate city." Jest then my father he came in, and he said: "Johnny, you get the bucket and go to the wel and fetch sum water for your mother to wash the potatoes." But I said it was Billy's tern, and Billy he sed twasent no sech thing, and I said he lide, and he hit me on the snoot of my nose, and we fot a fite, but victery percht upon the banners of my father, cos he had a stick. Then wile me and Billy was crying Uncle Ned he spoke up and begun: "One time there was a grate North American fairy taler--" But I jest fetched Mose a kick, wich is the cat, and went out and pitcht into Sammy Doppy, which licked me reel mean. * * * * * BREEDERS DIRECTORY. The following list embraces the names of responsible and reliable Breeders in their line, and parties wishing to purchase or obtain information can feel assured that they will be honorably dealt with: CATTLE. Jersey. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois HORSES. Clydesdales. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois SWINE. Berkshire. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois Chester Whites. W.A. Gilbert......................Wauwatosa Wis. SHEEP. Cotswold. Mills, Charles F.....................Springfield, Illinois * * * * * LIVE STOCK, Etc. Jersey Bulls. JERSEY BREEDERS desiring young bulls of the most approved form and breeding, and representing the families most noted for large yields of butter, will serve their interests by addressing the undersigned. Stock recorded in A. J. C. C. H. R. * * * * * Cotswold Sheep. CHOICE representatives of this large and popular breed of sheep for sale at prices satisfactory to buyers. Ewes and rams of different ages. Breeding stock recorded in the American Cotswold Record. CHAS. F. MILLS, Springfield, Ill. * * * * * VICTORIA SWINE. [Illustration] FALSTAFF. Winner of First Prize Chicago Fat Stock Show 1878. Originators of this famous breed. Also breeders of Pekin Ducks and Light Brahma Fowls. Stock for sale. Send for circular A. SCHIEDT & DAVIS, Dyer, Lake Co. Ind. * * * * * [Illustration] We will send you a watch or a chain BY MAIL OR EXPRESS, C. O. D., to be examined before paying any money and if not satisfactory, returned at our expense. We manufacture all our watches and save you 30 per cent. Catalogue of 250 styles free. EVERY WATCH WARRANTED. ADDRESS STANDARD AMERICAN WATCH CO., PITTSBURGH, PA. * * * * * MEDICAL. Weak Nervous Men [Illustration:] Whose DEBILITY, EXHAUSTED POWERS, premature decay and failure to perform LIFE'S DUTIES properly are caused by excesses, errors of youth, etc., will find a perfect and lasting restoration to ROBUST HEALTH and VIGOROUS MANHOOD in THE MARSTON BOLUS. Neither stomach drugging nor instruments. This treatment of NERVOUS DEBILITY and PHYSICAL DECAY is uniformly successful because based on perfect diagnosis, NEW AND DIRECT METHODS and absolute THOROUGHNESS. Full information and Treatise free. Address Consulting Physician of MARSTON REMEDY CO., 46W. 14th St., New York. * * * * * TWO LADIES MET ONE DAY. One said to the other "By the way how is that Catarrh of yours?" "Why it's simply horrid, getting worse every day." "Well, why don't you try 'DR. SYKES' SURE CURE,' I know it will cure you!" "Well, then I will, for I've tried everything else." Just six weeks afterward they met again and No. 1 said. "Why, how much better you look, what's up! Going to get married, or what?" "Well, yes, and it's all owing to 'DR. SYKES' SURE CURE FOR CATARRH;' oh, why didn't I know of it before? it's simply wonderful." Send 10 cents to Dr. C.R. Sykes, 181 Monroe street, Chicago, for valuable book of full information, and mention the "Two Ladies." * * * * * 30 DAYS' TRIAL DR. DYE'S [Illustration] ELECTRO VOLTAIC BELT, and other ELECTRIC APPLIANCES. We will send on Thirty Days' Trial, TO MEN, YOUNG OR OLD, who are suffering from NERVOUS DEBILITY, LOST VITALITY, and those diseases of a PERSONAL NATURE resulting from ABUSES and OTHER CAUSES. Speedy relief and complete restoration to HEALTH, VIGOR and MANHOOD GUARANTEED. Send at once for Illustrated Pamphlet free. Address VOLTAIC BELT CO., MARSHALL, MICH. * * * * * I CURE FITS! When I say cure I do not mean merely to stop them for a time and then have them return again, I mean a radical cure. I have made the disease of FITS, EPILEPSY or FALLING SICKNESS a life-long study. I warrant my remedy to cure the worst cases. Because others have failed is no reason for not now receiving a cure. Send at once for a treatise and a Free Bottle of my infallible remedy. Give Express and Post Office. It costs you nothing for a trial, and I will cure you. Address Dr. H. G. ROOT, 183 Pearl St., New York. * * * * * BEST QUALITY. [Illustration] 80 Cards New designs in Satin and Gold finish, with name, 10 cts. We offer $100 for a pack of cards any nicer work, or prettier styles. _Samples free_. EAGLE CARD WORKS, NEW HAVEN, CT. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. DIAMONDS FREE! We desire to make the circulation of our paper 250,000 during the next six months. To accomplish which we will give absolutely free a genuine FIRST WATER Diamond Ring, and the Home Companion for one year, for only $2.00. Our reasons for making this unprecedented offer are as follows; A newspaper with 200,000 subscribers can get 1c. per line per 1,000 of circulation for its advertising space, or $5,000 per issue MORE than it costs to produce and mail the paper. With but 10,000 or 20,000 subscribers, its advertising revenues do not pay expenses. Only the papers with mammoth circulations make fortunes for their owners, DERIVED FROM ADVERTISING SPACE. For these and other reasons, we regard 100,000 subscribers as being of more financial benefit to a paper than the paper is to the subscribers. With 100,000 or 200,000 bona-fide subscribers, we make $100,000 to $200,000 a year clear profit from advertising, above cost of publishing. Without a large circulation, we would lose money. 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It contains contributions from the first writers of the times: fiction, choice facts, intellectual food of the most interesting, instructive and refined character. It is one of the LEADING PAPERS OF THE PROGRESSIVE WEST. We are determined to make it the most desirable and reliable paper in the United States; will spare no effort or money to achieve that object. Sample Copies sent free on application. Remit by draft, express, or new postal note, to THE HOME COMPANION. N.W. Cor. Fourth and Race Streets, Cincinnati, O. Don't fail to name the paper in which you see this advertisement. * * * * * Don't be Humbugged With Poor, Cheap Coulters. [Illustration] All farmers have had trouble with their Coulters. In a few days they get to wabbling, are condemned and thrown aside. In our "BOSS" Coulter we furnish a tool which can scarcely be worn out; and when worn, the wearable parts, a prepared wood journal, and movable thimble in the hub (held in place by a key) can be easily and cheaply renewed. WE GUARANTEE OUR "BOSS" to plow more acres than any other three Coulters now used. OUR "O. K." CLAMP Attaches the Coulter to any size or kind of beam, either right or left hand plow. We know that after using it you will say it is THE BEST TOOL ON THE MARKET. Ask your dealer for it. Manufactured by the BOSS COULTER CO., Bunker Hill, Ills. LITERATURE. FOR THOSE WHO FAIL. "All honor to him who shall win the prize," The world has cried for a thousand years, But to him who tries and who fails and dies I give great honor and glory and tears. Give glory and honor and pitiful tears To all who fail in their deeds sublime, Their ghosts are many in the van of years, They were born with Time in advance of Time. Oh, great is the hero who wins a name, But greater many and many a time Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame And lets God finish the thought sublime. And great is the man with a sword undrawn, And good is the man who refrains from wine; But the man who fails and yet still fights on, Lo, he is the twin-born brother of mine. --_Joaquin Miller._ A SINGULAR PHILOSOPHER. Hon. Henry Cavendish was born in England, Oct. 10, 1731, and died Feb. 21, 1810. Cavendish was the son of Lord Charles Cavendish, a son of the Duke of Devonshire; and his mother was Lady Anne Grey, daughter of Henry, Duke of Kent. It is thus seen that the subject of this sketch belonged to two of the two most aristocratic, noble families in England, having for grandfathers the Dukes of Kent and Devonshire. This man, who became one of the most distinguished chemists and physicists of the age, born in high life, of exalted position and wealth, passed through the period of his boyhood and early manhood in utter obscurity, and a dense cloud rests upon his early life. Indeed, the place of his birth has been in dispute; some of his biographers asserting that he was born in England, others that he was born in France or Italy. It is now known that he was born at Nice, whither his mother had gone for the sake of health. It seems incredible that one highly distinguished, who lived and died so recently, should have almost entirely escaped observation until he had reached middle life. From fragments of his early history which have been collected, we learn that he was a peculiar boy,--shy, reticent, fond of solitary walks, without playfellows, and utterly insensible to the attractions of home and social life. He was born with inflexible reserve; and the love of retirement so manifest in in later life mastered all his instincts even when a boy. If he had been of poor and obscure parentage, it would not seem so strange that one who for nearly fifty years was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and for a lengthened period a member of the Institute of France, and an object of European interest to men of science, had no one to record the incidents of his early life. But he lost his mother when almost an infant, and this sad event probably influenced greatly his early career, and isolated him from the world in which he lived. We find him at Dr. Newcome's school at Hackney in 1742, and from this school he went directly to Cambridge, where he remained until 1753. He did not graduate, true to his odd instincts, although he spent the full period for a degree at Cambridge. No records of his college life have been preserved, and, as he went to London, it is wonderful that the next ten years of his life remain a blank. He joined the Royal Society in 1760, but contributed nothing until 1766, when he published his first paper on "Factitious Airs." Cavendish was a great mathematician, electrician, astronomer, meteorologist, and as a chemist he was equally learned and original. He lived at a time when science was to a large extent but blank empiricism; even the philosophy of combustion was based on erroneous and absurd hypotheses, and the speculation of experimenters were wild and fantastic. He was the first to submit these speculations to crucial tests, to careful and accurate experiment; and the results which were given to the world introduced a new era in scientific knowledge. We have so much to say regarding the man, that we can only present a brief outline of his great discoveries. Alone, in a spacious house on Clapham Common, outside of London, did this singular man work through many long years, until he filled it with every possible device capable of unfolding or illustrating principles in science. At the time of a visit to London in 1856 this famous house was standing, and remained as it was when the owner left it, about a half century before. The exterior of the house would not attract special attention; but within, the whole world could not, perhaps, furnish a parallel. Anvils and forges, files and hammers, grindstones and tempering-troughs, furnaces and huge bellows, had converted the panelled and wall-frescoed drawing-room into the shop of a blacksmith. In the spacious dining-room chemical apparatus occupied the place of furniture. Electrical machines, Leyden-jars, eudiometers, thermometric scales, philosophical instruments, were distributed through the chambers. The third story, save two bed-chambers,--one for the housekeeper, the other for the footman,--had been fitted up for an observatory. The lenses and achromatic glasses, tubes and specula, concave mirrors, and object-prisms, and the huge, rough old telescope, peering through the roof, were still there as their owner had left them. All appliances of housekeeping were absent, and Cavendish House was destitute of all comforts, for which the owner had no taste. In this house Cavendish lived for nearly half a century, totally isolated from the world and all human sympathies. He seldom or never visited relatives, and they were never guests at his house. He had several servants, all of whom were males, with one exception. He was shy of women, and did not like to have them come in his way. If he saw his female servant in any of the rooms, he would order her away instantly, or fly himself to other quarters. Rarely, during all the years of his solitary life, did a woman cross his threshold; and, when one did, he would run from her as if she brought the plague. His servants were all trained to silence, and in giving his orders the fewest words possible were used. His meals were served irregularly, whenever in the intervals of absorbing labors, he could snatch a fragment of time. He uniformly dined upon one kind of meat,--a joint of mutton; and he seemed to have no knowledge that there were other kinds in the market. Upon one occasion he had invited a few scientific friends to dinner at Cavendish House, and when his servant asked him what he should provide, "A leg of mutton!" said Cavendish. "It will hardly be enough," said the servant. "Well, then get two." "Anything else, sir?" "Yes, get four legs of mutton." His dress was peculiar,--a snuff-colored coat reaching to his knees, a long vest of the same color, buff breeches, and a three-cornered hat. With him the fashion never changed; he had but one suit; not an extra coat, hat, or even two handkerchiefs. When his wardrobe gave out, and he was forced to see his tailor, he became very nervous. He would walk the room in agony, give orders to have the tailor sent for, and then immediately countermand the same. His shoes for fifty years were of one pattern; and when he took them off they were put in one place behind a door, and woe to the servant who accidentally displaced them. He hung his old three-cornered hat on one peg at his house, and when he attended the meetings of the Royal Society he had a peg in the hall known as "Cavendish's peg." If, through accident, it was taken by some member before his arrival, he would stop, look at the occupied peg, and then turn on his heel, and go back to his house. When he went to the meetings, he walked in the middle of the street, never on the sidewalk; and he invariably took the same route. Upon reaching the steps leading to the rooms, he would stop, hesitate, put his hand on the door-handle, and look about timidly, and sometimes return at a rapid pace. His cane, which he carried for fifty years, he placed upright in his left boot, which he took off at the door, covering his foot with a slipper. Once inside the rooms of the Royal Society, and surrounded by the most distinguished men of England and the world, he became excessively shy, and read his wonderful papers in an awkward manner. Applause of any kind he could not bear; and if in conversation any one praised his researches or papers, he would turn away abruptly, as if highly indignant. If he was appealed to as authority upon any point, he would dart away, and perhaps quit the hall for the evening. This man of great genius and vast acquirements was incapable of understanding or enduring praise or flattery. He sought in every possible way to escape recognition or notice, listened attentively to conversation, but seldom asked questions; never spoke of himself, or of what he had accomplished in the world of science. Cavendish was a man possessed of vast wealth, and, when he died, he was the richest bank-owner in all England. "At the age of forty, a large accession came to his fortune. His income already exceeded his expenditure. Pecuniary transactions were his aversion. Other matters occupied his attention. The legacy was therefore paid in to his bankers. It was safe there, and he gave it no more heed. One of the firm sought to see him at Clapham. In answer to the inquiries of the footman as to his Business, the banker replied to see Mr. Cavendish personally. 'You must wait, then,' responded the servant, 'till he rings his bell.' The banker tarried for hours, when the long-expected bell rang. His name was announced. 'What does he want?' the master was heard to ask. 'A personal interview.' 'Send him up.' The banker appeared. "'I am come, sir, to ascertain your views concerning a sum of two hundred thousand pounds placed to your account.' "'Does it inconvenience you?' asked the philosopher. 'If so, transfer it elsewhere.' "'Inconvenience, sir? By no means,' replied the banker. 'But pardon me for suggesting that it is too large a sum to remain unproductive. Would you not like to invest it?' "'Invest it? Eh? Yes, if you will. Do as you like, but don't interrupt me about such things again. I have other matters to think about.'" With all his wealth it never occurred to him that others were in need, and that he might do good by benefactions. Solicited on one occasion to contribute to a charitable object, he exclaimed, "Give, eh! What do you want? How much?" "Give whatever you please, sir," said the solicitor. "Well, then, will ten thousand pounds do?" On another occasion he was forced, from circumstances, to attend a christening in a church; and, when it was intimated to him that it was customary to bestow some little present upon the attending nurse, he ran up to her, and poured into her lap a double handful of gold coins, and hastily departed. This was the only occasion on which he was known to cross the threshold of a church. Cavendish died possessed of five million dollars of property, and yet at no time had he the slightest knowledge of how much he had, and how it was invested. He despised money, and made as little use of it as possible. As regards matters of religion, he never troubled himself about them. He would never talk upon the subject, and probably never gave it a thought. All days of the week were alike to him: he was as busy on Sunday as on any other day. When asked by a friend what his views were of God, he replied, "Don't ask me such questions: I never think of them." The circumstances of Cavendish's death are as remarkable as his career in life. "Without premitory disease or sickness, or withdrawal from daily duties, or decadence of mental powers, or physical disability, he made up his mind that he was about to die. Closing his telescopes, putting his achromatic glasses in their several grooves, locking the doors of his laboratories, destroying the papers he deemed useless, and arranging those corrected for publication, he ascended to his sleeping-apartment and rang his bell. A servant appeared. "'Edgar,' said Cavendish, addressing him by name, 'listen! Have I ever commanded you to do an unreasonable thing?' "The man heard the question without astonishment, for he knew his master's eccentricities, and replied in the negative. "'And that being the case,' continued the old man, 'I believe I have a right to be obeyed.' "The domestic bowed his assent. "'I shall now give you my last command,' Cavendish went on to say, 'I am going to die. I shall, upon your departure, lock my room. Here let me be alone for eight hours. Tell no one. Let no person come near. When the time has passed, come and see if I am dead. If so, let Lord George Cavendish know. This is my last command. Now, go.' "The servant knew from long experience that to dispute his master's will would be useless. He bowed, therefore, and turned to go away. "'Stay--one word!' added Cavendish. 'Repeat exactly the order I have given.' "Edgar repeated the order, promised obedience once more, and retired from the chamber." The servant did not keep his promise, but called to his master's bedside Sir Everard Home, a distinguished physician. "Sir Everard inquired if he felt ill. "'I am not ill,' replied Cavendish; 'but I am about to die. Don't you think a man of eighty has lived long enough? Why am I disturbed? I had matters to arrange. Give me a glass of water.' "The glass of water was handed to him; he drank it, turned on his back, closed his eyes, and died. "This end of a great man, improbable as are some of the incidents narrated, is no fiction of imagination. Sir Everard Home's statement, read before the Royal Institution, corroborates every particular. The mental constitution of the philosopher, puzzling enough during his life, was shrouded certainly in even greater mystery in his death." It is as a chemist that Cavendish stands preeminent. Without instructors, without companionship, in the solitary rooms of his dwelling, he meditated and experimented. The result of his researches he communicated in papers read to the Royal Society, and these are quite numerous. He was the first to demonstrate the nature of atmospheric air and also of water. He was the discoverer of nitrogen and several gaseous bodies. He did much to overthrow the phlogiston theory, which was universally accepted in his time; and his researches upon arsenic were of the highest importance. There is scarcely any department of chemistry which he did not enrich by his discoveries. He was a close student of electrical phenomena, and made many discoveries in this department of research. He was also an astronomer and observed the heavens with his telescopes with the deepest interest. Some of his most important discoveries were unknown until after his death, as they were hidden in papers, which, for some reason, he would not publish. The life of this singular man was morally a blank, and can only be described by negations. He did not love; he did not hate; he did not hope; he did not worship. He separated himself from his fellow-men and from his God. There was nothing earnest, enthusiastic, heroic, in his nature, and as little that was mean, groveling, or ignoble. He was passionless, wholly destitute of emotion. Everything that required the exercise of fancy, imagination, faith, or affection, was distasteful to Cavendish. He had a clear head for thinking, a pair of eyes for observing, hands for experimenting and recording, and these were all. His brain was a calculating engine; his eyes, inlets of vision, not fountains of tears; his heart, an anatomical organ necessary for the circulation of the blood. If such a man can not be loved, he can not be abhorred or despised. He was as the Almighty made him, and he served an important end in the world. Such a man manifestly would never sit for his portrait. And he never did. It was taken by Borrow the painter, unobserved by Cavendish, while at a dinner-party given for the express purpose of securing the likeness. It is now in the British Museum. Cuts of this painting are rare.--_Popular Science News._ * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION ONE YEAR, $3 FOR THE TWO. It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB. CO., 150 Monroe Street, Chicago. * * * * * SEEDS, Etc. BUIST'S SEEDS ARE THE BEST. WARRANTED TO GIVE SATISFACTION OR MONEY RETURNED, SPECIAL-INDUCEMENTS FOR MARKET GARDENERS. OUR VALUABLE CATALOGUE OF 192 PAGES FREE TO ALL. SEED GROWER ROBERT BUIST, JR. PHILADELPHIA, PA. * * * * * [Illustration: FERRY'S SEED ANNUAL FOR 1884] Will be mailed FREE TO ALL applicants and to customers of last year without ordering it. It contains illustrations, prices, descriptions and directions for planting all Vegetable and Flower Seeds, Plants, etc. INVALUABLE TO ALL. D.M. FERRY & CO. DETROIT, Mich. * * * * * J. B. ROOT & CO.'S [Illustration] Illustr'd Garden Manual of VEGETABLE and FLOWER SEEDS, ready for all applicants. Market Gardeners SEEDS a Specialty. Write for Wholesale Price-List, SENT FREE ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS. * * * * * SEED-POTATOES and SEEDS. [Illustration] 60 newest varieties of potatoes. Garden seeds. Seed Grain, etc., at lowest prices. Illustrated catalogue and treatise on POTATO CULTURE, free. _J. W. WILSON, Austin, Ill._ * * * * * SEEDS! PLANTS--Catalogue Free. A. E. SPALDING, AINSWORTH, IOWA. HUMOROUS THE DONKEY'S DREAM. A donkey laid him down to sleep, And as he slept and snored full deep, He was observed (strange sight) to weep, As if in anguished mood. A gentle mule that lay near by, The donkey roused, and, with a sigh, In kindly voice inquired why Those tears he did exude. The donkey, while he trembled o'er And dropped cold sweat from every pore, Made answer in a fearful roar: "_I dreamed I was a dude!_" TOM TYPO. Tom Typo was a printer good, A merry, cheerful elf; And whatsoever care he had, He still "composed" himself. Where duty called him he was found Still working in his place; But nothing tempted from his post-- Which really was the "case." He courted pretty Emma Grey, One of earth's living gems-- The sweetest Em, he used to say, Among a thousand "ems." So "chased" was Emma's love for Tom, It met admiring eyes; She "proved" a "copy" to her sex. And wanted no "revise." And Tom, he kept his "pages" clear And grew to be a "type" Of all that manhood holds most dear, When he with age was ripe. He made his last "impression" here While yet his heart was warm, Just in the "nick" closed his career, And death "locked up his form." He sank into his final rest Without one sigh or moan; His latest words--"Above my breast Place no 'imposing stone.'" COURTSHIP OF A VASSAR GIRL. The parents and the old relatives are chatting over their darling's future. Meanwhile the fiances have escaped into the back parlor. Virginia--Where are you leading me to, John? John--I wish to tell you, while others forget us, how happy I am to marry you--you, so winning, so witty, the gem of Vassar College. Virginia--Oh! how many compliments to a poor graduate who only won the premium of rhetoric, and was second best in geometry. John--I love you, and worship you just as you are. V.--Oh, my friend, how anaphorical, and especially how epanaletical. J.--I don't understand. V.--I mean that you repeat yourself. It is the custom of lovers to abuse of the gorgiaques figures from the very protasis and exordium. J.--I love you because you are accomplished and perfect. V.--Did I not know you, I should think that you favored asteisin and ethossoia. J. (Somewhat abashed.)--Ah! do you see * * * V.--Why this aposiopesis? J.--Aposiopesis! V.--This reticence? J.--That is clearer. I acknowledge that the expressions you use annoy and trouble me. V.--You, on your side, speak a language stamped with schematism, while to be correct, even in making love, your language should be discursive. Allow me to tell you so frankly. J.--Anyhow, you do not doubt my love? V.--I pardon this epitrope, but pray use less metaphor and more litotes in the prosopography you dedicate to my modest entity-- J.--What will you? Men love women; I am a man; therefore, I love you. V.--Your syllogism is perfect in its premises, but the conclusion is false. J.--Oh! you are a cruel angel! V.--I like that catachresis, but once again I repeat, I am practical, and prefer synedoche. J. [Very much perplexed.]--Will you continue the conversation in the garden? V.--Yes. (They go into the garden.) Look, here is a very lovely parallelogram of green surrounded by petasites. Let us sit under those maritamboues will you? J.--Willingly! Ah! here I am happy! My heart fills with joy; it seems to me it contains the universe. V.--You are speaking pure Spinozism. J.--When I think that you will be my wife, and I your husband! What will be our destiny! V.--The equation being given you are looking for the unknown quantity. Like you, I shall await the co-efficient. J. (Who is determined to follow out his own thoughts)--With the world of constellations above us, and nature surrounding us, admire with me those orbs sending us their pure light. Look up there at that star. V.--It is Allioth, neighbor to the polar star. They are nearing the cosmical moment, and if we remain here a few moments longer the occultation will take place. J. (Resignedly.)--And there those thousands of stars. V.--It is the galaxy. Admire also the syzygy of those orbs. J. (Exhausted.)--And the moon; do you see the moon? V.--It is at its zenith; it will be at its nadir in fifteen days, unless there are any occultations in the movements of that satellite. J.--How happy I am! (They go indoors.) * * * * * The owner of a soap factory, who had been complained of for maintaining a nuisance, was terribly put out at the charge and explained to the court: "Your honor, the odors complained of can not exist!" "But here are twenty complaints." "Yes, but I have worked in my factory for the last fifteen years, and I'll take my oath I can not detect any smells." "As a rule, prisoner," replied the judge, as he sharpened his spectacles on his bootleg, "the best noses are on the outside of soap factories. You are fined $25 and costs." Moral: Where a soap factory and a school-house are at loggerheads the school should be removed. * * * * * THE PRAIRIE FARMER AND YOUTH'S COMPANION ONE YEAR, $3 FOR THE TWO. It is not required that both papers be sent to one address, nor to the same post-office. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB. CO., 150 Monroe Street, Chicago. * * * * * Illinois Central Railroad. The elegant equipment of coaches and sleepers being added to its various through routes is gaining it many friends. Its patrons fear no accidents. Its perfect track of steel, and solid road-bed, are a guarantee against them. * * * * * MEDICAL. DISEASE CURED Without Medicine. _A Valuable Discovery for supplying Magnetism to the Human System. Electricity and Magnetism utilized as never before for Healing the Sick._ THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO.'s Magnetic Kidney Belt! 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TO THE LADIES:--If you are afflicted with LAME BACK, WEAKNESS OF THE SPINE, FALLING OF THE WOMB, LEUCORRHOEA, CHRONIC INFLAMMATION AND ULCERATION OF THE WOMB, INCIDENTAL HEMORRHAGE OR FLOODING, PAINFUL, SUPPRESSED, AND IRREGULAR MENSTRUATION, BARRENNESS, AND CHANGE OF LIFE, THIS IS THE BEST APPLIANCE AND CURATIVE AGENT KNOWN. For all forms of FEMALE DIFFICULTIES it is unsurpassed by anything before invented, both as a curative agent and as a source of power and vitalization. Price of either Belt with Magnetic Insoles, $10, sent by express C. O. D., and examination allowed, or by mail on receipt of price. In ordering send measure of waist, and size of shoe. Remittance can be made in currency, sent in letter at our risk. The Magneton Garments are adapted to all ages, are worn over the under-clothing (NOT NEXT TO THE BODY LIKE THE MANY GALVANIC AND ELECTRIC HUMBUGS ADVERTISED SO EXTENSIVELY), and should be taken off at night. 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U.S. STANDARD SCALES, MANUFACTURED EXPRESSLY FOR THE PRAIRIE FARMER _Every Scale Guaranteed by the Manufacturers, and by Us, to be Perfect, and to give the Purchaser Satisfaction._ The PRAIRIE FARMER Sent Two Years Free To any person ordering either size Wagon Scale at prices given below. [Illustration] 2-Ton Wagon or Farm Scale (Platform 6 × 12 feet), $35; 3-Ton (7 × 13), $45; 5-Ton (8 × 14), $55. Beam Box, Brass Beam, Iron Levers, Steel Bearings, and full directions for setting up. THE PRAIRIE FARMER SENT 1 YEAR FREE! To any person ordering either of the following Scales, at prices named below. [Illustration] The Housekeeper's Scale--$4.00 Weighing accurately from 1/4 oz. to 25 lbs. This is also a valuable Scale for Offices for Weighing Mail Matter. Tin Scoop, 50c. extra; Brass 75c. extra. [Illustration] The Family Scale--$7.00. Weighs from 1/4 oz. to 240 lbs. Small articles weighed in Scoop, large ones on Platform. Size of Platform, 10-1/2 × 13-1/2 in. [Illustration] The Prairie Farmer Scale--$10.00 Weighs from 2 oz. to 320 lbs. Size of Platform 14 × 19 inches. A convenient Scale for Small Farmers, Dairymen, etc. [Illustration] Platform Scales--4 Sizes. 400 lbs., $15; 600 lbs., $20; 900 lbs., $24; 1,200 lbs., $28; Wheels and Axles, $2 extra. In ordering, give the Price and Description given above. All Scales Boxed and Delivered at Depot in Chicago. Give full shipping directions. Send money by Draft on Chicago or New York Post Office Order or Registered Letter. Address THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY, CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS SEEDS FOR THE GARDEN, FARM & FIELD. ESTABLISHED 1845. Our Annual Catalogue, mailed free on application, published first of every January, contains full description and prices of RELIABLE VEGETABLE, TREE, FIELD AND FLOWER SEED, SEED GRAIN, SEED CORN, SEED POTATOES, ONION SETS, ETC; ALSO GARDEN DRILLS, CULTIVATORS, FERTILIZERS, ETC., with full information for growing and how to get our Seeds. Address PLANT SEED COMPANY, Nos. 812 & 814 N. 4th St., ST. LOUIS, MO. * * * * * [Illustration] THE STANDARD REMINGTON TYPE-WRITER is acknowledged to be the only rapid and reliable writing machine. It has no rival. These machines are used for transcribing and general correspondence in every part of the globe, doing their work in almost every language. Any young man or woman of ordinary ability, having a practical knowledge of the use of this machine may find constant and remunerative employment. All machines and supplies, furnished by us, warranted. Satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded. Send for circulars. WYCKOFF, SEAMANS & BENEDICT, 38 East Madison St., Chicago, Ill. * * * * * SEEDS ALBERT DICKINSON, Dealer in Timothy, Clover, Flax, Hungarian, Millet, Red Top, Blue Grass, Lawn Grass, Orchard Grass, Bird Seeds, &c. POP CORN. Warehouses {115, 117 & 119 Kinzie St. {104, 106, 108 & 110 Michigan St. OFFICE. 115 Kinzie St. CHICAGO, ILL. GENERAL NEWS. The State tax of Florida this year is but three mills. Hog cholera is again raging in Champaign county, Ill. A cat show is to be held in New York, beginning on the 23d inst. Ice harvesters along the Hudson river are on a strike for higher wages. The Ohio river is rapidly rising from the melting of heavy bodies of snow. Several heavy failures among grain dealers of New York occurred last week. Senator Anthony is unable to attend to the duties as President pro tem of the Senate. The glucose works at Buffalo N. Y., have been removed to Peoria, Ill., and Levenworth, Kansas. On Friday last one murderer was hung in Virginia, another in South Carolina, and still another in California. A very heavy snow storm prevailed in Western and Northern N. Y., last week. It also extended to New England. The State Senate of Texas has passed a bill giving the public domain, except homesteads to actual settlers, to the public schools. There were over four thousand suicides in Paris last year, which is attributed to the tremendous pace at which the people live in France. The starch-sugar industry of the country consumes forty thousand bushels of corn per day, and the product is valued at about $10,000,000 per year. In attempting to slaughter a flock of prairie chickens near Fort Sill, a party of eight hunters grew so careless that three of their number were badly wounded. The employes in three of the nail-mills at Wareham, Mass., struck, Saturday, against reducing their wages ten per cent. The nailers and puddlers of Plymouth also struck. Canada is raising a standing army of 1,200 men to serve for three years. The full number applied at the recruiting office in Montreal, where the quota was only one hundred. The Grand Orient of France has issued an appeal to all the lodges of freemasons in the world asking a renewal of unity between the Grand Orient and all other branches of the masonic rite. The situation in Tonquin effectually ties the hands of France. The announcement of the blocking of Canton harbor is the only important event of the week in the Franco-Chinese struggle. Dr. Tanner, the famous faster, is practicing medicine in Jamestown, N. Y. The physicians of that city have made a fruitless attempt to secure his indictment by the grand jury as an illegal practitioner. The French press are advocating an organized effort against the prohibition of the importation of American pork. The prohibition, it is estimated, will cost the French ports 100,000,000 francs, and deprive the working people, besides, of cheap and wholesome food. Articles of incorporation were filed at Springfield, Saturday, for the building of a railroad from a point within five miles of the northeast corner of Cook county to a point in Rock Island county, on the Mississippi, opposite Muscatine, Iowa. The capital is $3,000,000, and among the incorporators are Joseph R. Reynolds, Edgar Terhune Holden, and Josiah Browne, of Chicago. CONGRESSIONAL. Senator Edmunds has again been chosen president pro tem of the Senate. Mr. Anthony, of Rhode Island, declares himself too ill to perform the duties of the position. On Monday nearly 500 bills were introduced into the House. The total number of bills introduced and referred since the session began, reaches nearly 4,000. There are many important measures among them, while there are more that are of somewhat doubtful import, especially those which look to a still further increase of the pension appropriations. There are bills for the regulation of banks and banking; several new bankruptcy acts; one reducing the fees on patents as follows: The fee upon filing original application for a patent is reduced from $15 to $5. The minimum fees for a design patent shall be $5 instead of $10 and the minimum term for which granted shall be five instead of three and a half years; a bill to reorganize the infantry branch of the army; for reorganizing and increasing the navy; several to revise the tariff; to look after the forfeiture of land grants; to restrict importation of foreign adulterated goods; to stamp out contagious diseases of animals; to establish a department of commerce; to repeal the act prohibiting ex-confederate officers from serving in the United States army; to relieve Fitz John Porter, and hundreds of bills for the relief or benefit of individuals in different parts of the country. There are also bills for the regulation of transportation companies and for the establishment of a system of government telegraph. As yet no appropriation bills have been reported and the Ways and Means committee has but recently organized into subcommittees and has not begun the consideration of any subject. There is already business enough before this Congress to keep it in continuous session for years. MARKETS. FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL. OFFICE OF THE PRAIRIE FARMER, CHICAGO. Jan 15, 1884. There is an increased financial activity over last week. Bankers, on Monday, felt quite certain of a brisk week and were correspondingly cheerful. Interest rates are unchanged, being 6 and 7 per cent. Eastern exchange sold between banks at 60@70c per $1,000 premium, and closed firm. There is no change in Government securities. The New York stock market was weak, and it is reported that the New York millionaires such as Gould, Vanderbilt, Sage, etc., have suffered to the extent of several millions each by the late general shrinkage in the value of stocks. Nevertheless, it is in such times as these that the Vanderbilts of the country reap their richest harvests. They have money to buy depressed stock with, and when the wheel turns their investments again add to their wealth. The little fellows have to sacrifice all their cash and then go to the wall. Government securities are as follows: 4's coupons, 1907 Q. Apr. 123-1/4 4's reg., 1907 Q. Apr. 123-1/4 4-1/2's coupon, 1891 Q. Mar. 114-1/8 4-1/2's registered, 1891 Q. Mar. 114-1/8 3's registered Q. Mar. 100 GRAIN AND PROVISIONS. There was more of a speculative feeling in the Chicago grain and provision markets yesterday than for some time. There was something of a recovery from the panicky feeling of Saturday, when the bulls had complete charge of the prices, but there was no advance. FLOUR was unchanged, the article not yet feeling the uncertain condition of the wheat market. Choice to favorite white winters $5 25@5 50 Fair to good brands of white winters 4 75@5 00 Good to choice red winters 5 00@5 50 Prime to choice springs 4 75@5 00 Good to choice export stock, in sacks, extras 4 25@4 50 Good to choice export stock, double extras 4 50@4 65 Fair to good Minnesota springs 4 50@4 75 Choice to fancy Minnesota springs 5 25@5 75 Patent springs 6 00@6 50 Low grades 2 25@3 50 WHEAT.--Red winter, No. 2, 97@99c; car lots of spring. No. 2, sold at 89@90-1/2c; No. 3, do. 84-1/2@85c. CORN.--Moderately active. Car lots No 2, 53@53-7/8c; rejected, 46-1/2; new mixed, 49c. OATS.--No. 2 in store, closed 32-1/2@32-3/4. RYE.--May, in store 58@58-1/2. BARLEY.--No. 2, 59 in store; No. 3, 52-1/2c. FLAX.--Closed at $1 45 on track. TIMOTHY.--$1 28@1 35 per bushel. Little doing. CLOVER.--Quiet at $6 15@6 35 for prime. PROVISIONS.--Mess pork, February, $14 75@ 14 78 per bbl; Green hams, 9-1/2c per lb. Short ribs, $7 47-1/2 per cwt. LARD.--January, $9 20; February, $9 75. LUMBER. Lumber unchanged. Quotations for green are as follows: Short dimension, per M $ 9 50@10 00 Long dimension, per M 10 00@11 50 Boards and strips, No. 2 11 00@13 00 Boards and strips, medium 13 00@16 00 Boards and strips, No. 1 choice 16 00@20 00 Shingles, standard 2 10@ 2 20 Shingles, choice 2 25@ 2 30 Shingles, extra 2 40@ 2 60 Lath 1 65@ 1 70 COUNTRY PRODUCE. NOTE.--The quotations for the articles named in the following list are generally for commission lots of goods and from first hands. While our prices are based as near as may be on the landing or wholesale rates, allowance must be made for selections and the sorting up for store distribution. BEANS.--Hand picked mediums $2 00@2 10. Hand picked navies, $2 15@2 20. BUTTER.--Dull and without change. Choice to extra creamery, 32@35c per lb.; fair to good do 25@32c; fair to choice dairy, 23@28c; common to choice packing stock fresh and sweet, 18@22c; ladle packed 10@13c; fresh made, streaked butter, 9@11c. BRAN.--Quoted at $11 87-1/2@13 50 per ton; extra choice $13. BROOM-CORN--Good to choice hurl 6-1/2@7-1/2c per lb; green self-working 5@6c; red-tipped and pale do 4@5c; inside and covers 3@4c; common short corn 2-1/2@3-1/2c; crooked, and damaged, 2@4c, according to quality. CHEESE.--Choice full-cream cheddars 13@13-1/2c per lb; medium quality do 9@10c; good to prime full cream flats 13@13-3/4c; skimmed cheddars 9@10c; good skimmed flats 6@7c; hard-skimmed and common stock 3@4c. EGGS.--In a small way the best brands are quotable at 25@26c per dozen; 20@23c for good ice house stock; 18@19c per pickled. HAY.--No 1 timothy $10@10 50 per ton; No 2 do $8 50@9 50; mixed do $7@8; upland prairie $8 00@10 75; No 1 prairie $6@7; No 2 do $4 50@5 50. Small bales sell at 25@50c per ton more than large bales. HIDES AND PELTS.--Green-cured light hides 8-1/4c per lb; do heavy cows 8c; No 2 damaged green-salted hides 6c; green-salted calf 12@12-1/2 cents; green-salted bull 6 c; dry-salted hides 11 cents; No. 2 two-thirds price; No. 1 dry flint 14@14-1/2c. Sheep pelts salable at 28@32c for the estimated amount of wash wool on each pelt. All branded and scratched hides are discounted 15 per cent from the price of No. 1. HOPS.--Prime to choice New York State hops 25@26c per lb; Pacific coast of 23@26c; fair to good Wisconsin 15@20c. POULTRY.--Prices for good to choice dry picked and unfrozen lots are: Turkeys 13@14c per lb; chickens 9@10c; ducks 12@13c; geese 9@11c. Thin, undesirable, and frozen stock 2@3c per lb less than these figures; live offerings nominal. POTATOES.--Good to choice 37@40c per bu. on track; common to fair 30@35c. Illinois sweet potatoes range at $3 50@4 per bbl for yellow. Baltimore stock at $2 25@2 75, and Jerseys at $5. Red are dull and nominal. TALLOW AND GREASE.--No 1 country tallow 7@7-1/4c per lb; No 2 do 6-1/4@6-1/2c. Prime white grease 6@6-1/2c; yellow 5-1/4@5-3/4c; brown 4-1/2@5. VEGETABLES.--Cabbage, $8@12 per 100; celery, 25@35c per doz bunches; onions, $1 00@1 25 per bbl for yellow, and $1 for red; turnips, $1 35@1 50 per bbl for rutabagas, and $1 00 for white flat. WOOL.--from store range as follows for bright wools from Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Eastern Iowa--dark Western lots generally ranging at 1@2c per lb. less. Coarse and dingy tub 25@30 Good medium tub 31@34 Unwashed bucks' fleeces 14@15 Fine unwashed heavy fleeces 18@22 Fine light unwashed heavy fleeces 22@23 Coarse unwashed fleeces 21@22 Low medium unwashed fleeces 24@25 Fine medium unwashed fleeces 26@27 Fine washed fleeces 32@33 Coarse washed fleeces 26@28 Low medium washed fleeces 30@32 Fine medium washed fleeces 34@35 Colorado and Territory wools range as follows: Lowest grades 14@16 Low medium 18@22 Medium 22@26 Fine 16@24 Wools from New Mexico: Lowest grades 14@16 Part improved 16@17 Best improved 19@23 Burry from 2c to 10c off: black 2c to 5c off. LIVE STOCK MARKETS. The total receipts and shipments for last week were as follows: Received. Shipped. Cattle 38,913 18,801 Calves 216 37 Hogs 169,076 42,205 Sheep 24,595 14,225 CATTLE.--Notwithstanding a reported advance in England, cattle did not improve in prices over Saturday. Indeed, there was a decline of a few cents per hundred. The supplies were large and the quality inferior. Indeed few really fat cattle came in during the week. Eastern markets were reported as over stocked. Shippers and dressed meat operators bought rather freely of common lots. We may quote as follows: Fancy fat cattle $7 00@ 7 25 Choice to prime steers 6 25@ 6 85 Fair to good shipping steers 5 60@ 6 20 Common to medium steers 4 65@ 5 55 Butcher's steers 4 50@ 5 00 Cows and bulls, common to good 3 25@ 4 50 Inferior cows and bulls 2 30@ 3 20 Stockers 3 50@ 4 50 Feeders 4 25@ 4 75 Milch cows, per head 25 00@55 00 Veal calves, per 100 lbs. 4 00@ 7 25 HOGS.-There were fair receipts on Saturday and Monday--an aggregate of 21,000 head or some 7,000 more than for the same days last week. As city packers are at work again, the market was quite active. They bought about 15,000 head, and shippers took nearly all that were left. Prices advanced from 5 to 10 cents. It may be said in general that the quality of the hogs now coming in is poor. Heavy lots were sold at $5 15@6 25; light hogs brought $5@5 60. Skips and culls $3 25@5. Note.--All sales of hogs are made subject to a shrinkage of 40 lbs for piggy sows and 80 lbs for stags. Dead hogs sell for 1-1/2c per lb for weights of 200 and over and [Transcriber's Note: blank in original] for weights of less than 100 lbs. SHEEP.--The supply was sufficient to meet the demand, though considerably less than on Monday of last week. Really choice animals were scarce. Shippers and butchers bought freely. Common lots were dull, bringing $5 25@5 50, while fancy lots sold at $5.75@6. Very inferior sheep sold at $2 50. * * * * * COMMISSION MERCHANTS. J.H. WHITE & CO., PRODUCE COMMISSION 106 WATER ST., CHICAGO. Refers to this paper. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. First-Class Plants OF BEST VARIETIES OF SMALL FRUITS. Catalogues free. Address O. B. GALUSHA, Peoria, Ill. * * * * * [Illustration] Print Your Own Cards Labels, Envelopes, etc. with our $3 PRINTING PRESS. Larger sizes for circulars, etc., $8 to $75. For pleasure, money making, young or old. Everything easy, printed instructions. Send 2 stamps for Catalogue of Presses, Type, Cards, etc., to the factory. KELSEY & CO., MERIDEN, CONN. * * * * * FOR SALE. Pure bred Bronze Turkeys and Pekin Ducks. Also eggs in Season. MRS. J. F. FULTON, Petersburg. Ills. * * * * * MARLBORO RED RASPBERRY Send to the originators for history and terms. A. S. Caywood & Son, Marlboro, N. Y. * * * * * PIG EXTRICATOR To aid animals in giving birth. Send for free circular to WM. DULIN, Avoca, Pottawattamie Co., Ia. * * * * * EDUCATIONAL. UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK AMERICAN VETERINARY COLLEGE, 141 WEST 54TH ST., NEW YORK CITY. The regular course of lectures commences in October each year. Circular and information can be had on application to A. LIAUTARD, M.D.V.S., Dean of the Faculty. * * * * * SPECIAL OFFER. $67 FOR $18! [Illustration] A Superb New Family Sewing Machine! Combining all the most recent improvements, and now selling for $65, is offered by THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY to subscribers to THE PRAIRIE FARMER FOR $18, including one year's subscription to the paper. This exceptional offer will remain open for a few days only. * * * * * SEWING SILK. Corticelli Sewing Silk, [Illustration] LADIES, TRY IT! The Best Sewing Silk Made. Every Spool Warranted. Full Length, Smooth and Strong. Ask your Storekeeper for Corticelli Silk. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. 1884. _Now is the Time to Subscribe._ Harper's Periodicals. Per Year: HARPER'S MAGAZINE $4 00 HARPER'S WEEKLY 4 00 HARPER'S BAZAR 4 00 HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE 1 50 HARPER'S FRANKLIN SQUARE LIBRARY, One year (52 Numbers) 10 00 _Postage Free to all subscribers in the United States or Canada._ * * * * * The Volumes of the WEEKLY and BAZAR begin with the first numbers for January, the Volumes of the YOUNG PEOPLE with the first Number for November, and the Volumes of the MAGAZINE with the Numbers for June and December of each year. Subscriptions will be entered with the Number of each Periodical current at the time of receipt of order, except in cases where the subscriber otherwise directs. Specimen copy of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE sent on receipt of four cents in stamps. * * * * * HARPER'S FRANKLIN SQUARE LIBRARY: A weekly publication, containing works of Travel, Biography, History, Fiction, and Poetry, at prices ranging from 10 to 25 cents per number. Full list of _Harper's Franklin Square Library_ will be furnished gratuitously on application to HARPER & BROTHERS. * * * * * Remittances should be made by Post-Office Money Order or Draft, to avoid risk of loss. Address HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, N. Y. * * * * * --> HARPER'S CATALOGUE, of between three and and four thousand volumes, mailed on receipt of Ten Cent in Postage Stamps. * * * * * A NEW THING Every Farmer will have it. Saves them large sums of money; saves labor; pays a profit; honest business; Agents clear $20 to $30 a week introducing it; no risk to you; terms easy; full satisfaction; a harvest for live men with small capital. Address F. C. RENNER, New Midway, Frederick Co., Md. 
16525	----	THE FAT OF THE LAND [Illustration] THE FAT OF THE LAND The Story of an American Farm BY JOHN WILLIAMS STREETER New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1904 _All rights reserved_ copyright, 1904. by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up, electrotyped, and published February, 1904. Reprinted March, April, May, 1904. Norwood Press J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. To POLLY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. MY EXCUSE 3 II. THE HUNTING OF THE LAND 11 III. THE FIRST VISIT TO THE FARM 14 IV. THE HIRED MAN 25 V. BORING FOR WATER 31 VI. WE TAKE POSSESSION 36 VII. THE HORSE-AND-BUGGY MAN 45 VIII. WE PLAT THE FARM 49 IX. HOUSE-CLEANING 54 X. FENCED IN 61 XI. THE BUILDING LINE 67 XII. CARPENTERS QUIT WORK 70 XIII. PLANNING FOR THE TREES 78 XIV. PLANTING OF THE TREES 88 XV. POLLY'S JUDGMENT HALL 94 XVI. WINTER WORK 101 XVII. WHAT SHALL WE ASK OF THE HEN? 103 XVIII. WHITE WYANDOTTES 110 XIX. FRIED PORK 116 XX. A RATION FOR PRODUCT 121 XXI. THE RAZORBACK 126 XXII. THE OLD ORCHARD 135 XXIII. THE FIRST HATCH 138 XXIV. THE HOLSTEIN MILK MACHINE 144 XXV. THE DAIRYMAID 150 XXVI. LITTLE PIGS 155 XXVII. WORK ON THE HOME FORTY 158 XXVIII. DISCOUNTING THE MARKET 164 XXIX. FROM CITY TO COUNTRY 169 XXX. AUTUMN RECKONING 174 XXXI. THE CHILDREN 178 XXXII. THE HOME-COMING 183 XXXIII. CHRISTMAS EVE 189 XXXIV. CHRISTMAS 194 XXXV. WE CLOSE THE BOOKS FOR '96 199 XXXVI. OUR FRIENDS 202 XXXVII. THE HEADMAN'S JOB 210 XXXVIII. SPRING OF '97 217 XXXIX. THE YOUNG ORCHARD 225 XL. THE TIMOTHY HARVEST 230 XLI. STRIKE AT GORDON'S MINE 236 XLII. THE RIOT 250 XLIII. THE RESULT 260 XLIV. DEEP WATERS 268 XLV. DOGS AND HORSES 274 XLVI. THE SKIM-MILK TRUST 282 XLVII. NABOTH'S VINEYARD 285 XLVIII. MAIDS AND MALLARDS 294 XLIX. THE SUNKEN GARDEN 298 L. THE HEADMAN GENERALIZES 303 LI. THE GRAND-GIRLS 308 LII. THE THIRD RECKONING 313 LIII. THE MILK MACHINE 317 LIV. BACON AND EGGS 328 LV. THE OLD TIME FARM-HAND 337 LVI. THE SYNDICATE 342 LVII. THE DEATH OF SIR TOM 346 LVIII. BACTERIA 352 LIX. MATCH-MAKING 355 LX. "I TOLD YOU SO" 362 LXI. THE BELGIAN FARMER 367 LXII. HOME-COMING 375 LXIII. AN HUNDRED FOLD 378 LXIV. COMFORT ME WITH APPLES 383 LXV. THE END OF THE THIRD YEAR 388 LXVI. LOOKING BACKWARD 394 LXVII. LOOKING FORWARD 402 THE FAT OF THE LAND CHAPTER I MY EXCUSE My sixtieth birthday is a thing of yesterday, and I have, therefore, more than half descended the western slope. I have no quarrel with life or with time, for both have been polite to me; and I wish to give an account of the past seven years to prove the politeness of life, and to show how time has made amends to me for the forced resignation of my professional ambitions. For twenty-five years, up to 1895, I practised medicine and surgery in a large city. I loved my profession beyond the love of most men, and it loved me; at least, it gave me all that a reasonable man could desire in the way of honors and emoluments. The thought that I should ever drop out of this attractive, satisfying life, never seriously occurred to me, though I was conscious of a strong and persistent force that urged me toward the soil. By choice and by training I was a physician, and I gloried in my work; but by instinct I was, am, and always shall be, a farmer. All my life I have had visions of farms with flocks and herds, but I did not expect to realize my visions until I came on earth a second time. I would never have given up my profession voluntarily; but when it gave me up, I had to accept the dismissal, surrender my ambitions, and fall back upon my primary instinct for diversion and happiness. The dismissal came without warning, like the fall of a tree when no wind shakes the forest, but it was imperative and peremptory. The doctors (and they were among the best in the land) said, "No more of this kind of work for years," and I had to accept their verdict, though I knew that "for years" meant forever. My disappointment lasted longer than the acute attack; but, thanks to the cheerful spirit of my wife, by early summer of that year I was able to face the situation with courage that grew as strength increased. Fortunately we were well to do, and the loss of professional income was not a serious matter. We were not rich as wealth is counted nowadays; but we were more than comfortable for ourselves and our children, though I should never earn another dollar. This is not the common state of the physician, who gives more and gets less than most other men; it was simply a happy combination of circumstances. Polly was a small heiress when we married; I had some money from my maternal grandfather; our income was larger than our necessities, and our investments had been fortunate. Fate had set no wolf to howl at our door. In June we decided to take to the woods, or rather to the country, to see what it had in store for us. The more we thought of it, the better I liked the plan, and Polly was no less happy over it. We talked of it morning, noon, and night, and my half-smothered instinct grew by what it fed on. Countless schemes at length resolved themselves into a factory farm, which should be a source of pleasure as well as of income. It was of all sizes, shapes, industries, and limits of expenditure, as the hours passed and enthusiasm waxed or waned. I finally compromised on from two hundred to three hundred acres of land, with a total expenditure of not more than $60,000 for the building of my factory. It was to produce butter, eggs, pork, and apples, all of best quality, and they were to be sold at best prices. I discoursed at some length on farms and farmers to Polly, who slept through most of the harangue. She afterward said that she enjoyed it, but I never knew whether she referred to my lecture or to her nap. If farming be the art of elimination, I want it not. If the farmer and the farmer's family must, by the nature of the occupation, be deprived of reasonable leisure and luxury, if the conveniences and amenities must be shorn close, if comfort must be denied and life be reduced to the elemental necessities of food and shelter, I want it not. But I do not believe that this is the case. The wealth of the world comes from the land, which produces all the direct and immediate essentials for the preservation of life and the protection of the race. When people cease to look to the land for support, they lose their independence and fall under the tyranny of circumstances beyond their control. They are no longer producers, but consumers; and their prosperity is contingent upon the prosperity and good will of other people who are more or less alien. Only when a considerable percentage of a nation is living close to the land can the highest type of independence and prosperity be enjoyed. This law applies to the mass and also to the individual. The farmer, who produces all the necessities and many of the luxuries, and whose products are in constant demand and never out of vogue, should be independent in mode of life and prosperous in his fortunes. If this is not the condition of the average farmer (and I am sorry to say it is not), the fault is to be found, not in the land, but in the man who tills it. Ninety-five per cent of those who engage in commercial and professional occupations fail of large success; more than fifty per cent fail utterly, and are doomed to miserable, dependent lives in the service of the more fortunate. That farmers do not fail nearly so often is due to the bounty of the land, the beneficence of Nature, and the ever-recurring seed-time and harvest, which even the most thoughtless cannot interrupt. The waking dream of my life had been to own and to work land; to own it free of debt, and to work it with the same intelligence that has made me successful in my profession. Brains always seemed to me as necessary to success in farming as in law, or in medicine, or in business. I always felt that mind should control events in agriculture as in commercial life; that listlessness, carelessness, lack of thrift and energy, and waste, were the factors most potent in keeping the farmer poor and unreasonably harassed by the obligations of life. The men who cultivate the soil create incalculable wealth; by rights they should be the nation's healthiest, happiest, most comfortable, and most independent citizens. Their lives should be long, free from care and distress, and no more strenuous than is wholesome. That this condition is not general is due to the fact that the average farmer puts muscle before mind and brawn before brains, and follows, with unthinking persistence, the crude and careless traditions of his forefathers. Conditions on the farm are gradually changing for the better. The agricultural colleges, the experiment stations, the lecture courses which are given all over the country, and the general diffusion of agricultural and horticultural knowledge, are introducing among farming communities a more intelligent and more liberal treatment of land. But these changes are so slow, and there is so much to be done before even a small percentage of our six millions of farmers begin to realize their opportunities, that even the weakest effort in this direction may be of use. This is my only excuse for going minutely into the details of my experiment in the cultivation of land. The plain and circumstantial narrative of how Four Oaks grew, in seven years, from a poor, ill-paying, sadly neglected farm, into a beautiful home and a profitable investment, must simply stand for what it is worth. It may give useful hints, to be followed on a smaller or a larger scale, or it may arouse criticisms which will work for good, both to the critic and to the author. I do not claim experience, excepting the most limited; I do not claim originality, except that most of this work was new to me; I do not claim hardships or difficulties, for I had none; but I do claim that I made good, that I arrived, that my experiment was physically and financially a success, and, as such, I am proud of it, and wish to give it to the world. I was fifty-three years old when I began this experiment, and I was obliged to do quickly whatever I intended to do. I could devote any part of $60,000 to the experiment without inconvenience. My desire was to test the capacity of ordinary farm land, when properly treated, to support an average family in luxury, paying good wages to more than the usual number of people, keeping open house for many friends, and at the same time not depleting my bank account. I wished to experiment in _intensive farming_, using ordinary farm land as other men might do under similar or modified circumstances. I believed that if I fed the land, it would feed me. My plan was to sell nothing from the farm except finished products, such as butter, fruit, eggs, chickens, and hogs. I believed that best results would be attained by keeping only the best stock, and, after feeding it liberally, selling it in the most favorable market. To live on the fat of the land was what I proposed to do; and I ask your indulgence while I dip into the details of this seven years' experiment. You may say that few persons have the time, inclination, taste, or money to carry out such an experiment; that the average farmer must make each year pay, and that the exploiting of this matter is therefore of interest to a very limited number. Admitting much of this, I still claim that there is a lesson to every struggling farmer in this narrative. It should teach the value of brain work on the farm, and the importance of intelligent cultivation; also the advantages of good seed, good tilth, good specimens of well-bred stock, good food, and good care. Feed the land liberally, and it will return you much. Permit no waste in space, product, time, tools, or strength. Do in a small way, if need be, what I have done on a large scale, and you will quickly commence to get good dividends. I have spent much more money than was really necessary on the place, and in the ornamentation of Four Oaks. This, however, was part of the experiment. I asked the land not only to supply immediate necessities, but to minister to my every want, to gratify the eye, and please the senses by a harmonious fusion of utility and beauty. I wanted a fine country home and a profitable investment within the same ring fence. Will you follow me through the search for the land, the purchase, and the tremendous house-cleaning of the first year? After that we will take up the years as they come, finding something of special interest attaching naturally to each. I shall have to deal much with figures and statistics, in a small way, and my pages may look like a school book, but I cannot avoid this, for in these figures and statistics lies the practical lesson. Theory alone is of no value. Practical application of the theory is the test. I am not imaginative. I could not write a romance if I tried. My strength lies in special detail, and I am willing to spend a lot of time in working out a problem. I do not claim to have spent this time and money without making serious mistakes; I have made many, and I am willing to admit them, as you will see in the following pages. I do claim, however, that, in spite of mistakes, I have solved the problem, and have proved that an intelligent farmer can live in luxury on the fat of the land. CHAPTER II THE HUNTING OF THE LAND The location of the farm for this experiment was of the utmost importance. The land must be within reasonable distance of the city and near a railroad, consequently within easy touch of the market; and if possible it must be near a thriving village, to insure good train service. As to size, I was somewhat uncertain; my minimum limit was 150 acres and 400 the maximum. The land must be fertile, or capable of being made so. I advertised for a farm of from two hundred to four hundred acres, within thirty-five miles of town, and convenient to a good line of transportation. Fifty-seven replies came, of which forty-six were impossible, eleven worth a second reading, and five worth investigating. My third trip carried me thirty miles southwest of the city, to a village almost wholly made up of wealthy people who did business in town, and who had their permanent or their summer homes in this village. There were probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight hundred people in the village, most of whom owned estates of from one to thirty acres, varying in value from $10,000 to $100,000. These seemed ideal surroundings. The farm was a trifle more than two miles from the station, and 320 acres in extent. It lay to the west of a north-and-south road, abutting on this road for half a mile, while on the south it was bordered for a mile by a gravelled road, and the west line was an ordinary country road. The lay of the land in general was a gentle slope to the west and south from a rather high knoll, the highest point of which was in the north half of the southeast forty. The land stretched away to the west, gradually sloping to its lowest point, which was about two-thirds of the distance to the western boundary. A straggling brook at its lowest point was more or less rampant in springtime, though during July and August it contained but little water. Westward from the brook the land sloped gradually upward, terminating in a forest of forty to fifty acres. This forest was in good condition. The trees were mostly varieties of oak and hickory, with a scattering of wild cherry, a few maples, both hard and soft, and some lindens. It was much overgrown with underbrush, weeds, and wild flowers. The land was generally good, especially the lower parts of it. The soil of the higher ground was thin, but it lay on top of a friable clay which is fertile when properly worked and enriched. The farm belonged to an unsettled estate, and was much run down, as little had been done to improve its fertility, and much to deplete it. There were two sets of buildings, including a house of goodly proportions, a cottage of no particular value, and some dilapidated barns. The property could be bought at a bargain. It had been held at $100 an acre; but as the estate was in process of settlement, and there was an urgent desire to force a sale, I finally secured it for $71 per acre. The two renters on the farm still had six months of occupancy before their leases expired. They were willing to resign their leases if I would pay a reasonable sum for the standing crops and their stock and equipments. The crops comprised about forty acres of corn, fifty acres of oats, and five acres of potatoes. The stock was composed of two herds of cows (seven in one and nine in the other), eleven spring calves, about forty hogs, and the usual assortment of domestic fowls. The equipment of the farm in machinery and tools was meagre to the last degree. I offered the renters $700 and $600, respectively, for their leasehold and other property. This was more than their value, but I wanted to take possession at once. CHAPTER III THE FIRST VISIT TO THE FARM It was the 8th of July, 1895, when I contracted for the farm; possession was to be given August 1st. On July 9th, Polly and I boarded an early train for Exeter, intending to make a day of it in every sense. We wished to go over the property thoroughly, and to decide on a general outline of treatment. Polly was as enthusiastic over the experiment as I, and she is energetic, quick to see, and prompt to perform. She was to have the planning of the home grounds--the house and the gardens; and not only the planning, but also the full control. A ride of forty-five minutes brought us to Exeter. The service of this railroad, by the way, is of the best; there is hardly a half-hour in the day when one cannot make the trip either way, and the fare is moderate: $8.75 for twenty-five rides,--thirty-five cents a ride. We hired an open carriage and started for the farm. The first half-mile was over a well-kept macadam road through that part of the village which lies west of the railway. The homes bordering this street are of fine proportions, and beautifully kept. They are the country places of well-to-do people who love to get away from the noise and dirt of the city. Some of them have ten or fifteen acres of ground, but this land is for breathing space and beauty--not for serious cultivation. Beyond these homes we followed a well-gravelled road leading directly west. This road is bordered by small farms, most of them given over to dairying interests. Presently I called Polly's attention to the fact that the few apple trees we saw were healthy and well grown, though quite independent of the farmer's or the pruner's care. This thrifty condition of unkept apple orchards delighted me. I intended to make apple-growing a prominent feature in my experiment, and I reasoned that if these trees did fairly well without cultivation or care, others would do excellently well with both. As we approached the second section line and climbed a rather steep hill, we got the first glimpse of our possession. At the bottom of the western slope of this hill we could see the crossing of the north-and-south road, which we knew to be the east boundary of our land; while, stretching straight away before us until lost in the distant wood, lay the well-kept road which for a good mile was our southern boundary. Descending the hill, we stopped at the crossing of the roads to take in the outline of the farm from this southeast corner. The north-and-south road ran level for 150 yards, gradually rose for the next 250, and then continued nearly level for a mile or more. We saw what Jane Austen calls "a happy fall of land," with a southern exposure, which included about two-thirds of the southeast forty, and high land beyond for the balance of this forty and the forty lying north of it. There was an irregular fringe of forest trees on this southern slope, especially well defined along the eastern border. I saw that Polly was pleased with the view. "We must enter the home lot from this level at the foot of the hill," said she, "wind gracefully through the timber, and come out near those four large trees on the very highest ground. That will be effective and easily managed, and will give me a chance at landscape gardening, which I am just aching to try." "All right," said I, "you shall have a free hand. Let's drive around the boundaries of our land and behold its magnitude before we make other plans." We drove westward, my eyes intent upon the fields, the fences, the crops, and everything that pertained to the place. I had waited so many years for the sense of ownership of land that I could hardly realize that this was not another dream from which I would soon be awakened by something real. I noticed that the land was fairly smooth except where it was broken by half-rotted stumps or out-cropping boulders, that the corn looked well and the oats fair, but the pasture lands were too well seeded to dock, milkweed, and wild mustard to be attractive, and the fences were cheap and much broken. The woodland near the western limit proved to be practically a virgin forest, in which oak trees predominated. The undergrowth was dense, except near the road; it was chiefly hazel, white thorn, dogwood, young cherry, and second growth hickory and oak. We turned the corner and followed the woods for half a mile to where a barbed wire fence separated our forest from the woodland adjoining it. Coming back to the starting-point we turned north and slowly climbed the hill to the east of our home lot, silently developing plans. We drove the full half-mile of our eastern boundary before turning back. I looked with special interest at the orchard, which was on the northeast forty. I had seen it on my first visit, but had given it little attention, noting merely that the trees were well grown. I now counted the rows, and found that there were twelve; the trees in each row had originally been twenty, and as these trees were about thirty-five feet apart, it was easy to estimate that six acres had been given to this orchard. The vicissitudes of seventeen years had not been without effect, and there were irregular gaps in the rows,--here a sick tree, there a dead one. A careless estimate placed these casualties at fifty-five or sixty, which I later found was nearly correct. This left 180 trees in fair health; and in spite of the tight sod which covered their roots and a lamentable lack of pruning, they were well covered with young fruit. They had been headed high in the old-fashioned way, which made them look more like forest trees than a modern orchard. They had done well without a husbandman; what could not others do with one? The group of farm buildings on the north forty consisted of a one-story cottage containing six rooms--sitting room, dining room, kitchen, and a bedroom opening off each--with a lean-to shed in the rear, and some woe-begone barns, sheds, and out-buildings that gave the impression of not caring how they looked. The second group was better. It was south of the orchard on the home forty, and quite near the road. Why does the universal farm-house hang its gable over the public road, without tree or shrub to cover its boldness? It would look much better, and give greater comfort to its inmates, if it were more remote. A lawn leading up to a house, even though not beautiful or well kept, adds dignity and character to a place out of all proportion to its waste or expense. I know of nothing that would add so much to the beautification of the country-side as a building line prohibiting houses and barns within a hundred yards of a public road. A staring, glaring farm-house, flanked by a red barn and a pigsty, all crowding the public road as hard as the path-master will permit, is incongruous and unsightly. With all outdoors to choose from, why ape the crowded city streets? With much to apologize for in barn and pigsty, why place them in the seat of honor? Moreover, many things which take place on the farm gain enchantment from distance. It is best to leave some scope for the imagination of the passer-by. These and other things will change as farmers' lives grow more gracious, and more attention is given to beautifying country houses. The house, whose gables looked up and down the street, was two stories in height, twenty-five feet by forty in the main, with a one-story ell running back. Without doubt there was a parlor, sitting room, and four chambers in the main, with dining room and kitchen in the ell. "That will do for the head man's house, if we put it in the right place and fix it up," said Polly. "My young lady, I propose to be the 'head man' on this farm, and I wish it spelled with a capital H, but I do not expect to live in that house. It will do first-rate for the farmer and his men, when you have placed it where you want it, but I intend to live in the big house with you." "We'll not disagree about that, Mr. Headman." The barns were fairly good, but badly placed. They were not worth the expense of moving, so I decided to let them stand as they were until we could build better ones, and then tear them down. We drove in through a clump of trees behind the farm-house, and pushed on about three hundred yards to the crest of the knoll. Here we got out of the carriage and looked about, with keen interest, in every direction. The views were wide toward three points of the compass. North and northwest we could see pleasant lands for at least two miles; directly west, our eyes could not reach beyond our own forest; to the south and southwest, fruitful valleys stretched away to a range of wooded hills four miles distant; but on the east our view was limited by the fringe of woods which lay between us and the north-and-south road. "This is the exact spot for the house," said Polly. "It must face to the south, with a broad piazza, and the chief entrance must be on the east. The kitchens and fussy things will be out of sight on the northwest corner; two stories, a high attic with rooms, and covered all over with yellow-brown shingles." She had it all settled in a minute. "What will the paper on your bedroom wall be like?" I asked. "I know perfectly well, but I shan't tell you." Seating myself on an out-cropping boulder, I began to study the geography of the farm. In imagination I stripped it of stock, crops, buildings, and fences, and saw it as bald as the palm of my hand. I recited the table of long measure: Sixteen and a half feet, one rod, perch, or pole; forty rods, one furlong; eight furlongs, one mile. Eight times 40 is 320; there are 320 rods in a mile, but how much is 16-1/2. times 320? "Polly, how much is 16-1/2 times 320?" "Don't bother me now; I'm busy." (Just as if she could have told in her moment of greatest leisure!) I resorted to paper and pencil, and learned that there are 5280 feet in each and every mile. My land was, therefore, 5280 feet long and 2640 feet wide. I must split it in some way, by a road or a lane, to make all parts accessible. If I divided it by two lanes of twenty feet each, I could have on either side of these lanes lots 650 feet deep, and these would be quite manageable. I found that if these lots were 660 feet long, they would contain ten acres minus the ten feet used for the lane. This seemed a real discovery, as it simplified my calculations and relieved me of much mental effort. "Polly, I am going to make a map of the place,--lay it out just as I want it." "You may leave the home forty out of your map; I will look after that," said the lady. In my pocket I found three envelopes somewhat the worse for wear. This is how one of them looked when my map was finished. [Illustration:] I am not especially haughty about this map, but it settled a matter which had been chaotic in my mind. My plan was to make the farm a soiling one; to confine the stock within as limited a space as was consistent with good health, and to feed cultivated forage and crops. In drawing my map, the forty which Polly had segregated left the northeast forty standing alone, and I had to cast about for some good way of treating it. "Make it your feeding ground," said my good genius, and thus the wrath of Polly was made to glorify my plans. This feeding lot of forty acres is all high land, naturally drained. It was near the obvious building line, and it seemed suitable in every way. I drew a line from north to south, cutting it in the middle. The east twenty I devoted to cows and their belongings; the west twenty was divided by right lines into lots of five acres each, the southwest one for the hens and the other three for hogs. Looking around for Polly to show her my work, I found she had disappeared; but soon I saw her white gown among the trees. Joining her, I said,-- "I have mapped seven forties; have you finished one?" "I have not," she said. "Mine is of more importance than all of yours; I will give you a sketch this evening. This bit of woods is better than I thought. How much of it do you suppose there is?" "About seven acres, I reckon, by hook and by crook; enough to amuse you and furnish a lot of wild-flower seed to be floated over the rest of the farm." "You may plant what seeds you like on the rest of the farm, but I must have wild flowers. Do you know how long it is since I have had them? Not since I was a girl!" "That is not very long, Polly. You don't look much more than a girl to-day. You shall have asters and goldenrod and black-eyed Susans to your heart's content if you will always be as young." "I believe Time will turn backward for both of us out here, Mr. Headman. But I'm as hungry as a wolf. Do you think we can get a glass of milk of the 'farm lady'?" We tried, succeeded, and then started for home. Neither of us had much to say on the return trip, for our minds were full of unsolved problems. That evening Polly showed me this plat of the home forty. [Illustration:] CHAPTER IV THE HIRED MAN Modern farming is greatly handicapped by the difficulty of getting good help. I need not go into the causes which have operated to bring about this condition; it exists, and it has to be met. I cannot hope to solve the problem for others, but I can tell how I solved it for myself. I determined that the men who worked for me should find in me a considerate friend who would look after their interests in a reasonable and neighborly fashion. They should be well housed and well fed, and should have clean beds, clean table linen and an attractively set table, papers, magazines, and books, and a comfortable room in which to read them. There should be reasonable work hours and hours for recreation, and abundant bathing facilities; and everything at Four Oaks should proclaim the dignity of labor. From the men I expected cleanliness, sobriety, uniform kindness to all animals, cheerful obedience, industry, and a disposition to save their wages. These demands seemed to me reasonable, and I made up my mind to adhere to them if I had to try a hundred men. The best way to get good farm hands who would be happy and contented, I thought, was to go to the city and find men who had shot their bolts and failed of the mark; men who had come up from the farm hoping for easier or more ambitious lives, but who had failed to find what they sought and had experienced the unrest of a hand-to-mouth struggle for a living in a large city; men who were pining for the country, perhaps without knowing it, and who saw no way to get back to it. I advertised my wants in a morning paper, and asked my son, who was on vacation, to interview the applicants. From noon until six o'clock my ante-room was invaded by a motley procession--delicate boys of fifteen who wanted to go to the country, old men who thought they could do farm work, clerks and janitors out of employment, typical tramps and hoboes who diffused very naughty smells, and a few--a very few--who seemed to know what they could do and what they really wanted. Jack took the names of five promising men, and asked them to come again the next day. In the morning I interviewed them, dismissed three, and accepted two on the condition that their references proved satisfactory. As these men are still at Four Oaks, after seven years of steady employment, and as I hope they will stay twenty years longer, I feel that the reader should know them. Much of the smooth sailing at the farm is due to their personal interest, steadiness of purpose, and cheerful optimism. William Thompson, forty-six years of age, tall, lean, wiry, had been a farmer all his life. His wife had died three years before, and a year later, he had lost his farm through an imperfect title. Understanding machinery and being a fair carpenter, he then came to the city, with $200 in his pocket, joined the Carpenter's Union, and tried to make a living at that trade. Between dull business, lock-outs, tie-ups, and strikes, he was reduced to fifty cents, and owed three dollars for room rent. He was in dead earnest when he threw his union card on my table and said:-- "I would rather work for fifty cents a day on a farm than take my chances for six times as much in the union." This was the sort of man I wanted: one who had tried other things and was glad of a chance to return to the land. Thompson said that after he had spent one lonesome year in the city, he had married a sensible woman of forty, who was now out at service on account of his hard luck. He also told of a husky son of two-and-twenty who was at work on a farm within fifty miles of the city. I liked the man from the first, for he seemed direct and earnest. I told him to eat up the fifty cents he had in his pocket and to see me at noon of the following day. Meantime I looked up one of his references; and when he came, I engaged him, with the understanding that his time should begin at once. The wage agreed upon was $20 a month for the first half-year. If he proved satisfactory, he was to receive $21 a month for the next six months, and there was to be a raise of $1 a month for each half-year that he remained with me until his monthly wage should amount to $40,--each to give or take a month's notice to quit. This seemed fair to both. I would not pay more than $20 a month to an untried man, but a good man is worth more. As I wanted permanent, steady help, I proposed to offer a fair bonus to secure it. Other things being equal, the man who has "gotten the hang" of a farm can do better work and get better results than a stranger. The transient farm-hand is a delusion and a snare. He has no interest except his wages, and he is a breeder of discontent. If the hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men who are working for scant wages in cities, or inanely tramping the country, could see the dignity of the labor which is directly productive, what a change would come over the face of the country! There are nearly six million farms in this nation, and four millions of them would be greatly benefited by the addition of another man to the working force. There is a comfortable living and a minimum of $180 a year for each of four million men, if they will only seek it and honestly earn it. Seven hundred millions in wages, and double or treble that in product and added values, is a consideration not unworthy the attention of social scientists. To favor an exodus to the land is, I believe, the highest type of benevolence, and the surest and safest solution of the labor problem. Besides engaging Thompson, I tentatively bespoke the services of his wife and son. Mrs. Thompson was to come for $15 a month and a half-dollar raise for each six months, the son on the same terms as the father. The other man whom I engaged that day was William Johnson, a tall, blond Swede about twenty-six years old. Johnson had learned gardening in the old country, and had followed it two years in the new. He was then employed in a market gardener's greenhouse; but he wanted to change from under glass to out of doors, and to have charge of a lawn, shrubs, flowers, and a kitchen garden. He spoke brokenly, but intelligently, had an honest eye, and looked to me like a real "find." Polly, who was to be his immediate boss, was pleased with him, and we took him with the understanding that he was to make himself generally useful until the time came for his special line of work. We now had two men engaged (with a possible third) and one woman, and my _venire_ was exhausted. Two days later I again advertised, and out of a number of applicants secured one man. Sam Jones was a sturdy-looking fellow of middle age, with a suspiciously red nose. He had been bred on a farm, had learned the carpenter's trade, and was especially good at taking care of chickens. His ambition was to own and run a chicken plant. I hired him on the same terms as the others, but with misgivings on account of the florid nose. This was on the 19th or 20th of July, and there were still ten days before I could enter into possession. The men were told to report for duty the last day of the month. CHAPTER V BORING FOR WATER The water supply was the next problem. I determined to have an abundant and convenient supply of running water in the house, the barns, and the feeding grounds, and also on the lawn and gardens. I would have no carrying or hauling of water, and no lack of it. There were four wells on the place, two of them near the houses and two stock wells in the lower grounds. Near the well at the large house was a windmill that pumped water into a small tank, from which it was piped to the barn-yard and the lower story of the house. The supply was inadequate and not at all to my liking. My plan involved not only finding, raising, and distributing water, but also the care of waste water and sewage. Inquiring among those who had deep wells in the village, I found that good water was usually reached at from 180 to 210 feet. As my well-site was high, I expected to have to bore deep. I contracted with a well man of good repute for a six-inch well of 250 feet (or less), piped and finished to the surface, for $2 a foot; any greater depth to be subject to further agreement. It took nearly three months to finish the water system, but it has proved wonderfully convenient and satisfactory. During seven years I have not spent more than $50 for changes and repairs. We struck bed-rock at 197 feet, drilled 27 feet into this rock, and found water which rose to within 50 feet of the surface and which could not be materially lowered by the constant use of a three-inch power-pump. The water was milky white for three days, in spite of much pumping; and then, and ever after, it ran clear and sweet, with a temperature of 54° F. Well and water being satisfactory, I cheerfully paid the well man $448 for the job. Meantime I contracted for a tank twelve by twelve feet, to be raised thirty feet above the well on eight timbers, each ten inches square, well bolted and braced, for $430,--I to put in the foundation. This consisted of eight concrete piers, each five feet deep in the clay, three feet square, and capped at the level of the ground with a limestone two feet square and eight inches thick. These piers were set in octagon form around the well, with their centres seven feet from the middle of the bore, making the spread of the framework fourteen feet at the ground and ten at the platform. The foundation cost $32. A Rider eight-inch, hot-air, wood-burning, pumping engine (with a two-inch pipe leading to the tank, and a four-inch pipe from it), filled the tank quickly; and it was surprising to see how little fuel it consumed. It cost $215. I have now to confess to a small extravagance. I contracted with a carpenter to build an ornamental tower, fifty-five feet high, twenty feet across at the base, and fifteen feet at the top, sheeted and shingled, with a series of small windows in spiral and a narrow stairway leading to a balcony that surrounded the tower on a level with the top of the tank. This tower cost $425; but it was not all extravagance, because a third of the expense would have been incurred in protecting the engine and making the tank frost-proof. To distribute the water, I had three lines of four-inch pipe leading from the tank's out-flow pipe. One of these went 250 feet to the house, with one-inch branches for the gardens and lawn; another led east 375 feet, past the proposed sites of the cottage, the farm-house, the dairy, and other buildings in that direction; while the third, about 400 feet long, led to the horse barn and the other projected buildings. From near the end of this west pipe a 1-1/2-inch pipe was carried due north through the centre of the five-acre lot set apart for the hennery, and into the fields beyond. This pipe was about 700 feet long. Altogether I used 1100 feet of four-inch, and about 2200 feet of smaller pipe, at a total cost of $803. All water pipes were placed 4-1/2 feet in the ground to be out of the reach of frost, and to this day they have received no further attention. The trenches for the pipes were opened by a party of five Italians whom a railroad friend found for me. These men boarded themselves, slept in the barn, and did the work for seventy-five cents a rod, the job costing me $169. Opening the sewer trenches cost a little more, for they were as deep as those for the water, and a little wider. Eight hundred feet of main sewer, a three-hundred-foot branch to the house, and short branches from barns, pens, and farm-houses, made in all about fourteen hundred feet, which cost $83 to open. The sewer ended in the stable yard back of the horse barn, in a ten-foot catch-basin near the manure pit. A few feet from this catch-basin was a second, and beyond this a third, all of the same size, with drain-pipes connecting them about two feet below the ground. These basins were closely covered at all times, and in winter they were protected from frost by a thick layer of coarse manure. They were placed near the site of the manure pit for convenience in cleaning, which had to be done every three months for the first one, once in six months for the second and rarely for the third; indeed, the water flowing from the third was always clear. This waste water was run through a drain-pipe diagonally across the northwest corner of the big orchard to an open ditch in the north lane. Opening this drain of forty rods cost $30. Later I carried this closed drain to the creek, at an additional expense of $67. The connecting of the water pipes and the laying of the sewer was done by a local plumber for $50; the drain-pipe and sewer-pipe cost $112; and the three catch-basins, bricked up and covered with two-inch plank, cost $63. The filling in of all these trenches was done by my own men with teams and scrapers, and should not be figured into this expense account. It must be borne in mind that while this elaborate water system was being installed, no buildings were completed and but few were even begun; the big house was not finished for more than a year. The sites of all the buildings had been decided on, and the farm-house and the cottage had been moved and remodelled, by the middle of October, at which date the water plant was completed. An abundant supply of good water is essential to the comfort of man and beast, and the money invested in securing it will pay a good interest in the long run. My water plant cost me a lot of money, $2758; but it hasn't cost me $10 a year since it was finished. CHAPTER VI WE TAKE POSSESSION My barn was full of horses, but none of them was fit for farm work; so I engaged a veterinary surgeon to find three suitable teams. By the 25th of the month he had succeeded, and I inspected the animals and found them satisfactory, though not so smooth and smart-looking as I had pictured them. When I compared them, somewhat unfavorably, with the teams used for city trucks and delivery wagons, he retorted by saying: "I did not know that you wanted to pay $1200 a pair for your horses. These six horses will cost you $750, and they are worth it." They were a sturdy lot, young, well matched, not so large as to be unwieldy, but heavy enough for almost any work. The lightest was said to weigh 1375 pounds, and the heaviest not more than a hundred pounds more. Two of the teams were bay with a sprinkling of white feet, while the other pair was red roan, and, to my mind, the best looking. Four of these horses are still doing service on the farm, after more than seven years. One of the bays died in the summer of '98, and one of the roans broke his stifle during the following winter and had to be shot. The bereaved relicts of these two pairs have taken kindly to each other, and now walk soberly side by side in double harness. I sometimes think, however, that I see a difference. The personal relation is not just as it was in the old union,--no bickerings or disagreements, but also no jokes and no caresses. The soft nose doesn't seek its neighbor's neck, there is no resting of chin on friendly withers while half-closed eyes see visions of cool shades, running brooks, and knee-deep clover; and the urgent whinney which called one to the other and told of loneliness when separated is no longer heard. It is pathetic to think that these good creatures have been robbed of the one thing which gave color to their lives and lifted them above the dreary treadmill of duty for duty's sake. The kindly friendship of each for his yoke-fellow is not the old sympathetic companionship, which will come again only when the cooling breezes, running brooks, and knee-deep pastures of the good horse's heaven are reached. A horse is wonderfully sensitive for an animal of his size and strength. He is timid by nature and his courage comes only from his confidence in man. His speed, strength, and endurance he will willingly give, and give it to the utmost, if the hand that guides is strong and gentle, and the voice that controls is firm, confident, and friendly. Lack of courage in the master takes from the horse his only chance of being brave; lack of steadiness makes him indirect and futile; lack of kindness frightens him into actions which are the result of terror at first, and which become vices only by mismanagement. By nature the horse is good. If he learns bad manners by associating with bad men, we ought to lay the blame where it belongs. A kind master will make a kind horse; and I have no respect for a man who has had the privilege of training a horse from colt-hood and has failed to turn out a good one. Lack of good sense, or cruelty, is at the root of these failures. One can forgive lack of sense, for men are as God made them; but there is no forgiveness for the cruel: cooling shades and running brooks will not be prominent features in their ultimate landscapes. For harness and farm equipments, tools and machinery, I went to a reliable firm which made most and handled the rest of the things that make a well-equipped farm. It is best to do much of one's business through one house, provided, of course, that the house is dependable. You become a valued customer whom it is important to please, you receive discounts, rebates, and concessions that are worth something, and a community of interest grows up that is worth much. My first order to this house was for three heavy wagons with four-inch tires, three sets of heavy harness, two ploughs and a subsoiler, three harrows (disk, spring tooth, and flat), a steel land-roller, two wheelbarrows, an iron scraper, fly nets and other stable equipment, shovels, spades, hay forks, posthole tools, a hand seeder, a chest of tools, stock-pails, milk-pails and pans, axes, hatchets, saws of various kinds, a maul and wedges, six kegs of nails, and three lanterns. The total amount was $488; but as I received five per cent discount, I paid only $464. The goods, except the wagons and harnesses, were to go by freight to Exeter. Polly was to buy the necessary furnishings for the men's house, the only stipulation I made being that the beds should be good enough for me to sleep in. On the 25th of July she showed me a list of the things which she had purchased. It seemed interminable; but she assured me that she had bought nothing unnecessary, and that she had been very careful in all her purchases. As I knew that Polly was in the habit of getting the worth of her money, I paid the bills without more ado. The list footed up to $495. Most of the housekeeping things were to be delivered at the station in Exeter; the rest were to go on the wagons. On the afternoon of the 30th the wagons and harnesses were sent to the stable where the horses had been kept, and the articles to go in these wagons were loaded for an early start the following morning. The distance from the station in the city to the station at Exeter is thirty miles, but the stable is three miles from the city station, the farm two and a half miles from Exeter station, and the wagon road not so direct as the railroad. The trip to the farm, therefore, could not be much less than forty miles, and would require the best part of two days. The three men whom I had engaged reported for duty, as also did Thompson's son, whom we are to know hereafter as Zeb. Early on the last day of the month the men and teams were off, with cooked provisions for three days. They were to break the journey twenty-five miles out, and expected to reach the farm the next afternoon. Polly and I wished to see them arrive, so we took the train at 1 P.M. August 1st, and reached Four Oaks at 2.30, taking with us Mrs. Thompson, who was to cook for the men. Before starting I had telephoned a local carpenter to meet me, and to bring a mason if possible. I found both men on the ground, and explained to them that there would be abundant work in their lines on the place for the next year or two, that I was perfectly willing to pay a reasonable profit on each job, but that I did not propose to make them rich out of any single contract. The first thing to do, I told them, was to move the large farm-house to the site already chosen, about two hundred yards distant, enlarge it, and put a first-class cellar under the whole. The principal change needed in the house was an additional story on the ell, which would give a chamber eighteen by twenty-six, with closets five feet deep, to be used as a sleeping room for the men. I intended to change the sitting room, which ran across the main house, into a dining and reading room twenty feet by twenty-five, and to improve the shape and convenience of the kitchen by pantry and lavatory. There must also be a well-appointed bathroom on the upper floor, and set tubs in the kitchen. My men would dig the cellar, and the mason was to put in the foundation walls (twelve inches thick and two feet above ground), the cross or division walls, and the chimneys. He was also to put down a first-class cement floor over the whole cellar and approach. The house was to be heated by a hot-water system; and I afterward let this job to a city man, who put in a satisfactory plant for $500. We had hardly finished with the carpenter and the mason when we saw our wagons turning into the grounds. We left the contractors to their measurements, plans, and figures, while we hastened to turn the teams back, as they must go to the cottage on the north forty. The horses looked a little done up by the heat and the unaccustomed journey, but Thompson said: "They're all right,--stood it first-rate." The cottage and out-buildings furnished scanty accommodations for men and beasts, but they were all that we could provide. I told the men to make themselves and the horses as comfortable as they could, then to milk the cows and feed the hogs, and call it a day. While the others were unloading and getting things into shape, I called Thompson off for a talk. "Thompson," I said, "you are to have the oversight of the work here for the present, and I want you to have some idea of my general plan. This experiment at farming is to last years. We won't look for results until we are ready to force them, but we are to get ready as soon as possible. In the meantime, we will have to do things in an awkward fashion, and not always for immediate effect. We must build the factory before we can turn out the finished product. The cows, for instance, must be cared for until we can dispose of them to advantage. Half of them, I fancy, are 'robber cows,' not worth their keep (if it costs anything to feed them), and we will certainly not winter them. Keep your eye on the herd, and be able to tell me if any of them will pay. Milk them carefully, and use what milk, cream, and butter you can, but don't waste useful time carting milk to market--feed it to the hogs rather. If a farmer or a milkman will call for it, sell what you have to spare for what he will give, and have done with it quickly. You are to manage the hogs on the same principle. Fatten those which are ready for it, with anything you find on the place. We will get rid of the whole bunch as soon as possible. You see, I must first clear the ground before I can build my factory. Let the hens alone for the present; you can eat them during the winter. "Now, about the crops. The hay in barns and stacks is all right; the wheat is ready for threshing, but it can wait until the oats are also ready; the corn is weedy, but it is too late to help it, and the potatoes are probably covered with bugs. I will send out to-morrow some Paris green and a couple of blow-guns. There is not much real farm work to do just now, and you will have time for other things. The first and most important thing is to dig a cellar to put your house over; your comfort depends on that. Get the men and horses with plough and scraper out as early as you can to-morrow morning, and hustle. You have nothing to do but dig a big hole seven feet deep inside these lines. I count on you to keep things moving, and I will be out the day after to-morrow." The mason had finished his estimate, which was $560. After some explanations, I concluded that it was a fair price, and agreed to it, provided the work could be done promptly. The carpenter was not ready to give me figures; he said, however, that he could get a man to move the house for $120, and that he would send me by mail that night an itemized estimate of costs, and also one from a plumber. This seemed like doing a lot of things in one afternoon, so Polly and I started for town content. "Those people can't be very luxurious out there," said Polly, "but they can have good food and clean beds. They have all out-doors to breathe in, and I do not see what more one can ask on a fine August evening, do you, Mr. Headman?" I could think of a few things, but I did not mention them, for her first words recalled some scenes of my early life on a backwoods farm: the log cabin, with hardly ten nails in it, the latch-string, the wide-mouthed stone-and-stick chimney, the spring-house with its deep crocks, the smoke-house made of a hollow gum-tree log, the ladder to the loft where I slept, and where the snows would drift on the floor through the rifts in the split clapboards that roofed me over. I wondered if to-day was so much better than yesterday as conditions would warrant us in expecting. CHAPTER VII THE HORSE-AND-BUGGY MAN August 3 found me at Four Oaks in the early afternoon. A great hollow had been dug for the cellar, and Thompson said that it would take but one more full day to finish it. Piles of material gave evidence that the mason was alert, and the house-mover had already dropped his long timbers, winch, and chains by the side of the farm-house. While I was discussing matters with Thompson, a smart trap turned into the lot, and a well-set-up young man sprang out of the stylish runabout and said,-- "Dr. Williams, I hear you want more help on your farm." "I can use another man or two to advantage, if they are good ones." "Well, I don't want to brag, but I guess I am a good one, all right. I ain't afraid of work, and there isn't much that I can't do on a farm. What wages do you pay?" I told him my plan of an increasing wage scale, and he did not object. "That includes horse keep, I suppose?" said he. "I do not know what you mean by 'horse keep.'" "Why, most of the men on farms around here own a horse and buggy, to use nights, Sundays, and holidays, and we expect the boss to keep the horse. This is my rig. It is about the best in the township; cost me $280 for the outfit." "See here, young man, this is another specimen of farm economics, and it is one of the worst in the lot. Let me do a small example in mental arithmetic for you. The interest on $280 is $14; the yearly depreciation of your property, without accidents, is at least $40; horse-shoeing and repairs, $20; loss of wages (for no man will keep your horse for less than $4 a month), $48. In addition to this, you will be tempted to spend at least $5 a month more with a horse than without one; that is $60 more. You are throwing away $182 every year without adding $1 to your value as an employee, one ounce of dignity to your employment, or one foot of gain in your social position, no matter from what point you view it. "Taking it for granted that you receive $25 a month for every month of the year (and this is admitting too much), you waste more than half on that blessed rig, and you can make no provision for the future, for sickness, or for old age. No, I will not keep your horse, nor will I employ any man whose scheme of life doesn't run further than the ownership of a horse and buggy." "But a fellow must keep up with the procession; he must have some recreation, and all the men around here have rigs." "Not around Four Oaks. Recreation is all right, but find it in ways less expensive. Read, study, cultivate the best of your kind, plan for the future and save for it, and you will not lack for recreation. Sell your horse and buggy for $200, if you cannot get more, put the money at interest, save $200 out of your wages, and by the end of the year you will be worth over $400 in hard cash and much more in self-respect. You can easily add 1200 a year to your savings, without missing anything worth while; and it will not be long before you can buy a farm, marry a wife, and make an independent position. I will have no horse-and-buggy men on my farm. It's up to you." "By Jove! I believe you may be right. It looks like a square deal, and I'll play it, if you'll give me time to sell the outfit." "All right, come when you can. I'll find the work." That day being Saturday, I told Thompson that I would come out early Monday morning, bringing with me a rough map of the place as I had planned it, and we would go over it with a chain and drive some outlining stakes. I then returned to Exeter, found the carpenter and the plumber, and accepted their estimates,--$630 and $325, respectively. The farm-house moved, finished, furnished, and heated, but not painted or papered, would cost $2630. Painting, papering, window-shades, and odds and ends cost $275, making a total of $2905. It proved a good investment, for it was a comfortable and convenient home for the men and women who afterward occupied it. It has certainly been appreciated by its occupants, and few have left it without regret. We have always tried to make it an object lesson of cleanliness and cheerfulness, and I don't think a man has lived in it for six months without being bettered. It seemed a good deal of money to put on an old farm-house for farm-hands, but it proved one of the best investments at Four Oaks, for it kept the men contented and cheerful workers. CHAPTER VIII WE PLAT THE FARM On Monday I was out by ten o'clock, armed with a surveyor's chain. Thompson had provided a lot of stakes, and we ran the lines, more or less straight, in general accord with my sketch plan. We walked, measured, estimated, and drove stakes until noon. At one o'clock we were at it again, and by four I was fit to drop from fatigue. Farm work was new to me, and I was soft as soft. I had, however, got the general lay of the land, and could, by the help of the plan, talk of its future subdivisions by numerals,--an arrangement that afterward proved definite and convenient. We adjourned to the shade of the big black oak on the knoll, and discussed the work in hand. "You cannot finish the cellar before to-morrow night," I said, "because it grows slower as it grows deeper; but that will be doing well enough. I want you to start two teams ploughing Wednesday morning, and keep them going every day until the frost stops them. Let Sam take the plough, and have young Thompson follow with the subsoiler. Have them stick to this as a regular diet until I call them off. They are to commence in the wheat stubble where lots six and seven will be. I am going to try alfalfa in that ground, though I am not at all sure that it will do well, and the soil must be fitted as well as possible. After it has had deep ploughing it is to be crossed with the disk harrow; then have it rolled, disk it again, and then use the flat harrow until it feels as near like an ash heap as time will permit. We must get the seed in before September." "We will need another team if you keep two ploughing and one on the harrow," said Thompson. "You are right, and that means another $400, but you shall have it. We must not stop the ploughs for anything. Numbers 10, 11, 14, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and much of the home lot, ought to be ploughed before snow flies. That means about 160 acres,--80 odd days of steady work for the ploughmen and horses. You will probably find it best to change teams from time to time. A little variety will make it easier for them. As soon as 6 and 7 are finished, turn the ploughs into the 40 acres which make lots 1 to 5. All that must be seeded to pasture grass, for it will be our feeding-ground, and we'll be late with it if we don't look sharp. "We must have more help, by the way. That horse-and-buggy man, Judson, is almost sure to come, and I will find another. Some of you will have to bunk in the hay for the present, for I am going to send out a woman to help your wife. Six men can do a lot of work, but there is a tremendous lot of work to do. We must fit the ground and plant at least three thousand apple trees before the end of November, and we ought to fence this whole plantation. Speaking of fences reminds me that I must order the cedar posts. Have you any idea how many posts it will take to fence this farm as we have platted it? I suppose not. Well, I can tell you. Twenty-two hundred and fifty at one rod apart, or 1850 at twenty feet apart. These posts must be six feet above and three feet below ground. They will cost eighteen cents each. That item will be $333, for there are seven miles of fence, including the line fence between me and my north neighbor. I am going to build that fence myself, and then I shall know whose fault it is if his stock breaks through. Of course some of the old posts are good, but I don't believe one in twenty is long enough for my purpose." "What do you buy cedar posts for, when you have enough better ones on the place?" asked Thompson. "I don't know what you mean." "Well, down in the wood yonder there's enough dead white oak, standing or on the ground, to make three thousand, nine-foot posts, and one seasoned white oak will outlast two cedars, and it is twice as strong." "Well, that's good! How much will it cost to get them out?" "About five cents apiece. A couple of smart fellows can make good wages at that price." "Good. We will save thirteen cents each. They will cost $93 instead of $333. I don't know everything yet, do I, Thompson?" "You learn easy, I reckon." "Keep your eyes and ears open, and if you find any one who can do this job, let him have it, for we are going to be too busy with other things at present. It's time for me to be off. I cannot be out again till Thursday, for I must find a man, a woman, and a team of horses and all that goes with them. I'll see you on the 8th at any rate." I was dead tired when I reached home; but there wasn't a grain of depression in my fatigue,--rather a sense of elation. I felt that for the first time in thirty years real things were doing and I was having a hand in them. The fatigue was the same old tire that used to come after a hard day on my father's farm, and the sense was so suggestive of youth that I could not help feeling younger. I have never gotten away from the faith that the real seed of life lies hidden in the soil; that the man who gives it a chance to germinate is a benefactor, and that things done in connection with land are about the only real things. I have grown younger, stronger, happier, with each year of personal contact with the soil. I am thankful for seven years of it, and look forward to twice seven more. I have lost the softness which nearly wilted me that 5th day of August, and with the softness has gone twenty or thirty pounds of useless flesh. I am hard, active, and strong for a man of sixty, and I can do a fair day's work. To tell the truth, I prefer the moderate work that falls to the lot of the Headman, rather than the more strenuous life of the husbandman; but I find an infinite deal to thank the farm for in health and physical comfort. CHAPTER IX HOUSE-CLEANING After dinner I telephoned the veterinary surgeon that I wanted another team. He replied that he thought he knew of one that would suit, and that he would let me know the next day. I also telephoned two "want ads." to a morning paper, one for an experienced farm-hand, the other for a woman to do general housework in the country. Polly was to interview the women who applied, and I was to look after the men. That night I slept like a hired man. Out of the dozen who applied the next day I accepted a Swede by the name of Anderson. He was about thirty, tall, thin, and nervous. He did not fit my idea of a stockman, but he looked like a worker, and as I could furnish the work we soon came to terms. A few words more about Anderson. He proved a worker indeed. He had an insatiable appetite for work, and never knew when to quit. He was not popular at the farm, for he was too eager in the morning to start and too loath in the evening to stop. His unbridled passion for work was a thing to be deplored, as it kept him thin and nervous. I tried to moderate this propensity, but with no result. Anderson could not be trusted with horses, or, indeed, with animals of any kind, for he made them as nervous as himself; but in all other kinds of work he was the best man ever at Four Oaks. He worked for me nearly three years, and then suddenly gave out from a pain in his left chest and shortness of breath. I called a physician for poor Anderson, and the diagnosis was dilatation of the heart from over-exercise. "A rare disease among farm-hands, Dr. Williams," said Dr. High, but my conscience did not fully forgive me. I asked Anderson to stay at the farm and see what could be done by rest and care. He declined this, as well as my offer to send him to a hospital. He expressed the liveliest gratitude for kindnesses received and others offered, but he said he must be independent and free. He had nearly $1200 in a savings bank in the city, and he proposed to use it, or such portion of it as was necessary. I saw him two months later. He was better, but not able to work. Hearing nothing from him for three years, a year ago I called at the bank where I knew he had kept his savings. They had sent sums of money to him, once to Rio Janeiro and once to Cape Town. For two years he had not been heard from. Whether he is living or dead I do not know. I only know that a valuable man and a unique farm-hand has disappeared. I never think of Anderson without wishing I had been more severe with him,--more persistent in my efforts to wean him from his real passion. Peace to his ashes, if he be ashes. That same day I telephoned the Agricultural Implement Company to send me another wagon, with harness and equipment for the team. The veterinary surgeon reported that he had a span of mares for me to look at, but I was too much engaged that day to inspect the team, and promised to do so on the next. When I reached home, Polly said she had found nothing in the way of a general housework girl for the country. She had seen nine women who wished to do all other kinds of work, but none to fit her wants. "What do they come for if they don't want the place we described? Do they expect we are to change our plans of life to suit their personal notions?" she asked. "It's hard to say what they came for or what they want. Their ways are past finding out. We will put in another 'ad.' and perhaps have better luck." Wednesday, the 7th, I went to see the new team. I found a pair of flea-bitten gray Flemish mares, weighing about twenty-eight hundred pounds. They were four years old, short of leg and long of body, and looked fit. The surgeon passed them sound, and said he considered them well worth the price asked,--$300. I was pleased with the team, and remembered a remark I had heard as a boy from an itinerant Methodist minister at a time when the itinerant minister was supposed to know all there was to know about horse-flesh. This was his remark: "There was never a flea-bitten mare that was a poor horse." In spite of its ambiguity, the saying made an impression from which I never recovered. I always expected great things from flea-bitten grays. The team, wagon, harness, etc., added $395 to the debit account against the farm. Polly secured her girl,--a green German who had not been long enough in America to despise the country. "She doesn't know a thing about our ways," said Polly, "but Mrs. Thompson can train her as she likes. If you can spend time enough with green girls, they are apt to grow to your liking." On Thursday I saw Anderson and the new team safely started for the farm. Then Polly, the new girl, and I took train for the most interesting spot on earth. Soon after we arrived I lost sight of Polly, who seemed to have business of her own. I found the mason and his men at work on the cellar wall, which was almost to the top of the ground. The house was on wheels, and had made most of its journey. The house mover was in a rage because he had to put the house on a hole instead of on solid ground, as he had expected. "I have sent for every stick of timber and every cobbling block I own, to get this house over that hole; there's no money in this job for me; you ought to have dug the cellar after the house was placed," said he. I made friends with him by agreeing to pay $30 more for the job. The house was safely placed, and by Saturday night the foundation walls were finished. Sam and Zeb had made a good beginning on the ploughing, the teams were doing well for green ones, and the men seemed to understand what good ploughing meant. Thompson and Johnson had spent parts of two days in the potato patches in deadly conflict with the bugs. "We've done for most of them this time," said Thompson, "but we'll have to go over the ground again by Monday." The next piece of work was to clear the north forty (lots 1 to 5) of all fences, stumps, stones, and rubbish, and all buildings except the cottage. The barn was to be torn down, and the horses were to be temporarily stabled in the old barn on the home lot. Useful timbers and lumber were to be snugly piled, the manure around the barns was to be spread under the old apple trees, which were in lot No. 1, and everything not useful was to be burned. "Make a clean sweep, and leave it as bare as your hand," I told Thompson. "It must be ready for the plough as soon as possible." Judson, the man with the buggy, reported at noon. He came with bag and baggage, but not with buggy, and said that he came to stay. "Thompson," said I, "you are to put Judson in charge of the roan team to follow the boys when they are far enough ahead of him. In the meantime he and the team will be with you and Johnson in this house-cleaning. By to-morrow night Anderson and the new team will get in, and they, too, will help on this job. I want you to take personal charge of the gray team,--neither Johnson nor Anderson is the right sort to handle horses. The new team will do the trucking about and the regular farm work, while the other three are kept steadily at the ploughs and harrows." The cleaning of the north forty proved a long job. Four men and two teams worked hard for ten days, and then it was not finished. By that time the ploughmen had finished 6 and 7, and were ready to begin on No. 1. Judson, with the roans and harrows, was sent to the twenty acres of ploughed ground, and Zeb and his team were put at the cleaning for three days, while Sam ploughed the six acres of old orchard with a _shallow-set_ plough. The feeding roots of these trees would have been seriously injured if we had followed the deep ploughing practised in the open. By August 24 about two hundred loads of manure from the barn-yards, the accumulation of years, had been spread under the apple trees, and I felt sure it was well bestowed. Manuring, turning the sod, pruning, and spraying, ought to give a good crop of fruit next year. We had several days of rain during this time, which interfered somewhat with the work, but the rains were gratefully received. I spent much of my time at Four Oaks, often going every day, and never let more than two days pass without spending some hours on the farm. To many of my friends this seemed a waste of time. They said, "Williams is carrying this fad too far,--spending too much time on it." Polly did not agree with them, neither did I. Time is precious only as we make it so. To do the wholesome, satisfying thing, without direct or indirect injury to others, is the privilege of every man. To the charge of neglecting my profession I pleaded not guilty, for my profession had dismissed me without so much as saying "By your leave." I was obliged to change my mode of life, and I chose to be a producer rather than a consumer of things produced by others. I was conserving my health, pleasing my wife, and at the same time gratifying a desire which had long possessed me. I have neither apology to make nor regret to record; for as individuals and as a family we have lived healthier, happier, more wholesome, and more natural lives on the farm than we ever did in the city, and that is saying much. CHAPTER X FENCED IN On the 26th, when I reached the station at Exeter, I found Thompson and the gray team just starting for the farm with the second load of wire fencing. I had ordered fifty-six rolls of Page's woven wire fence, forty rods in each roll. This fence cost me seventy cents a rod, $224 a mile, or $1568 for the seven miles. Add to this $37 for freight, and the total amounted to $1605 for the wire to fence my land. I got this facer as I climbed to the seat beside Thompson. I did not blink, however, for I had resolved in the beginning to take no account of details until the 31st day of December, and to spend as much on the farm in that time as I could without being wasteful. I did not care much what others thought. I felt that at my age time was precious, and that things must be rushed as rapidly as possible. I was glad of this slow ride with Thompson, for it gave me an opportunity to study him. I wondered then and afterward why a man of his general intelligence, industry, and special knowledge of the details of farming, should fail of success when working for himself. He knew ten times as much about the business as I did, and yet he had not succeeded in an independent position. Some quality, like broadness of mind or directness of purpose, was lacking, which made him incapable of carrying out a plan, no matter how well conceived. He was like Hooker at Chancellorsville, whose plan of campaign was perfect, whose orders were carried out with exactness, whose army fell into line as he wished, and whose enemy did the obvious thing, yet who failed terribly because the responsibility of the ultimate was greater than he could bear. As second in command, or as corps leader, he was superb; in independent command he was a disastrous failure. Thompson, then, was a Joe Hooker on a reduced plane,--good only to execute another man's plans. Thompson might have rebutted this by saying that I too might prove a disastrous failure; that as yet I had shown only ability to spend,--perhaps not always wisely. Such rebuttal would have had weight seven years ago, but it would not be accepted to-day, for I have made my campaign and won my battle. The record of the past seven years shows that I can plan and also execute. Thompson told me that he had found two woodsmen (by scouting around on Sunday) who were glad to take the job of cutting the white-oak posts at five cents each, and that they were even then at work; and that Nos. 6 and 7 would be fitted for alfalfa by the end of the week. He added that the seed ought to be sown as soon thereafter as possible and that a liberal dressing of commercial fertilizer should be sown before the seed was harrowed in. "I have ordered five tons of fertilizer," I said, "and it ought to be here this week. Sow four bags to the acre." "Four bags,--eight hundred pounds; that's pretty expensive. Costs, I suppose, $35 to $40 a ton." "No; $24." "How's that?" "Friend at court; factory price; $120 for five tons; $5 freight, making in all $125. We must use at least eight hundred pounds this fall and five hundred in the spring. Alfalfa is an experiment, and we must give it a show." "Never saw anything done with alfalfa in this region, but they never took no pains with it," said Thompson. "I hope it will grow for us, for it is great forage if properly managed. The seed will be out this week, and you had best sow it on Monday, the 2d." "How are you going to seed the north forty?" "Timothy, red top, and blue grass; heavy seeding, to get rid of the weeds. These lots will all be used as stock lots. Small ones, you think, but we will depend almost entirely upon soiling. I hope to keep a fair sod on these lots, and they will be large enough to give the animals exercise and keep them healthy. I hope the carpenter is pushing things on the house. I want to get you into better quarters as soon as possible, and I want the cottage moved out of the way before we seed the lot." "They're pushing things all right, I guess; that man Nelson is a hustler." When I reached the farm I found Johnson and Anderson tearing down the old fence that was our eastern boundary. None of the posts were long enough for my purpose, so all were consigned to the woodpile. My neighbor on the north owned just as much land as I did. He inherited it and a moderate bank account from his father, who in turn had it from his. The farm was well kept and productive. The house and barns were substantial and in good repair. The owner did general farming, raised wheat, corn, and oats to sell, milked twenty cows and sent the milk to the creamery, sold one or two cows and a dozen calves each year, and fattened twenty or thirty pigs. He was pretty certain to add a few hundred dollars to his bank account at the end of each season. He kept one man all the time and two in summer. He was a bachelor of twenty-eight, well liked and good to look upon: five feet ten inches in height, broad of shoulder, deep of chest, and a very Hercules in strength. His face was handsome, square-jawed and strong. He was good-natured, but easily roused, and when angry was as fierce as fire. He had the reputation of being the hardest fighter in the country. His name was William Jackson, so he was called Bill. I had met Jackson often, and we had taken kindly to each other. I admired his frank manner and sturdy physique, and he looked upon me as a good-natured tenderfoot, who might be companionable, and who would certainly stir up things in the neighborhood. I went in search of him that afternoon to discuss the line fence, a full mile of which divided our lands. "I want to put a fence along our line which nothing can get over or under," I said. "I am willing to bear the expense of the new fence if you will take away the old one and plough eight furrows,--four on your land and four on mine,--to be seeded to grass before the wires are stretched. We ought to get rid of the weeds and brush." "That is a liberal proposition, Dr. Williams, and of course I accept," said Jackson; "but I ought to do more. I'll tell you what I'll do. You are planning to put a ring fence around your land,--three miles in all. I'll plough the whole business and fit it for the seed. I'll take one of my men, four horses, and a grub plough, and do it whenever you are ready." This settled the fence matter between Jackson and me. The men who cut the posts took the job of setting them, stretching the wire, and hanging the gates, for $400. This included the staples and also the stretching of three strands of barbed wire above the woven wire; two at six-inch intervals on the outside, and one inside, level with the top of the post. Thus my ring fence was six feet high and hard to climb. I have a serious dislike for trespass, from either man or beast, and my boundary fence was made to discourage trespassers. I like to have those who enter my property do so by the ways provided, for "whoso climbeth up any other way, the same is a thief and a robber." The ring fence was finished by the middle of October. The interior fences were built by my own men during soft weather in winter and spring; and, as I had already paid for the wire and posts, nothing more should be charged to the fence account. In round numbers these seven miles of excellent fence cost me $2100. A lot of money! But the fence is there to-day as serviceable as when it was set, and it will stand for twice seven years more. One hundred dollars a year is not a great price to pay for the security and seclusion which a good fence furnishes. There was no need of putting up so much interior fence. I would save a mile or two if I had it to do again; however, I do not dislike my straight lanes and tightly fenced fields. CHAPTER XI THE BUILDING LINE Before leaving Four Oaks that day I had a long conversation with Nelson, the carpenter. I had taken his measure, by inquiry and observation, and was willing to put work into his hands as fast as he could attend to it. The first thing was to put him in possession of my plan of a building line. Two hundred feet south of the north line of the home lot a street or lane was to run due west from the gate on the main road. This was to be the teaming or business entrance to the farm. Commencing three hundred feet from the east end of this drive, the structures were to be as follows: On the south side, first a cold-storage house, then the farm-house, the cottage, the well, and finally the carriage barn for the big house. On the north side of the line, opposite the ice-house, the dairy-house; then a square with a small power-house for its centre, a woodhouse, a horse barn for the farm horses, a granary and a forage barn for its four corners. Beyond this square to the west was the fruit-house and the tool-house--the latter large enough to house all the farm machinery we should ever need. I have a horror of the economy that leaves good tools to sky and clouds without protection. This sketch would not be worked out for a long time, as few of the buildings were needed at once. It was made for the sake of having a general design to be carried out when required; and the water and sewer system had been built with reference to it. I told Nelson that a barn to shelter the horses was the first thing to build, after the house for the men, and that I saw no reason why two or even three buildings should not be in process of construction at the same time. He said there would be no difficulty in managing that if he could get the men and I could get the money. I promised to do my part, and we went into details. I wanted a horse barn for ten horses, with shed room for eight wagons in front and a small stable yard in the rear; also a sunken manure vat, ten feet by twenty, with cement walls and floor, the vat to be four feet deep, two feet in the ground and two feet above it. A vat like this has been built near each stable where stock is kept, and I find them perfectly satisfactory. They save the liquid manure, and thus add fifty per cent to the value of the whole. Open sheds protect from sun and rain, and they are emptied as often as is necessary, regardless of season, for I believe that the fields can care for manure better than a compost heap. I also told Nelson to make plans and estimates for a large forage barn, 75 by 150 feet, 25 feet from floor to rafter plate, with a driving floor through the length of it and mows on either side. A granary, with a capacity of twenty thousand bushels, a large woodhouse, and a small house in the centre of this group where the fifteen horse-power engine could be installed, completed my commissions for that day. Plans for these structures were submitted in due time, and the work was pushed forward as rapidly as possible. The horse barn made a comfortable home for ten horses, if we should need so many, with food and water close at hand and every convenience for the care of the animals and their harness. The forage barn was not expensive,--it was simply to shelter a large quantity of forage to be drawn upon when needed. The woodhouse was also inexpensive, though large. Wood was to be the principal fuel at Four Oaks, since it would cost nothing, and there must be ample shelter for a large amount. The granary would have to be built well and substantially, but it was not large. The power-house also was a small affair. The whole cost of these five buildings was $8550. The itemized amount is, horse barn, $2000, forage barn, $3400, granary, $2200, woodhouse, $400, power-house, $550. CHAPTER XII CARPENTERS QUIT WORK On Friday, August 30, I was obliged to go to a western city on business that would keep me from four to ten days. I turned my face away from the farm with regret. I could hardly realize that I had spent but one month in my new life, the old interests had slipped so far behind. I was reluctant to lose sight, even for a week, of the intensely interesting things that were doing at Four Oaks. Polly said she would go to Four Oaks every day, and keep so watchful an eye on the farm that it could not possibly get away. "You're getting a little bit maudlin about that farm, Mr. Headman, and it will do you good to get away for a few days. There are _some other_ things in life, though I admit they are few, and we are not to forget them. I am up to my ears in plans for the house and the home lot; but I can't quite see what you find so interesting in tearing down old barns and fences and turning over old sods." "Every heart knoweth its own sorrow, Polly, and I have my troubles." Friday evening, September 6, I returned from the west. My first greeting was,-- "How's the farm, Polly?" "It's there, or was yesterday; I think you'll find things running smoothly." "Have they sowed the alfalfa and cut the oats?" "Yes." "Finished the farm-house?" "No, not quite, but the painters are there, and Nelson has commenced work on two other buildings." "What time can I breakfast? I must catch the 8.10 train, and spend a long day where things are doing." Things were humming at Four Oaks when I arrived. Ten carpenters besides Nelson and his son were pounding, sawing, and making confusion in all sorts of ways peculiar to their kind. The ploughmen were busy. Thompson and the other two men were shocking oats. I spent the day roaming around the place, watching the work and building castles. I went to the alfalfa field to see if the seed had sprouted. Disappointed in this, I wandered down to the brook and planned some abridgment of its meanderings. It could be straightened and kept within bounds without great expense if the work were done in a dry season. Polly had asked for a winding brook with a fringe of willows and dogwood, but I would not make this concession to her esthetic taste. This farm land must be useful to the sacrifice of everything else. A winding brook would be all right on the home lot, if it could be found, but not on the farm. A straight ditch for drainage was all that I would permit, and I begrudged even that. No waste land in the cultivated fields, was my motto. I had threshed this out with Polly and she had yielded, after stipulating that I must keep my hands off the home forty. Over in the woods I found two men at work splitting fence posts. They seemed expert, and I asked them how many they could make in a day. "From 90 to 125, according to the timber. But we must work hard to make good wages." "That applies to other things besides post-splitting, doesn't it?" Closer inspection of the wood lot gratified me exceedingly. Little had been done for it except by Nature, but she had worked with so prodigal a hand that it showed all kinds of possibilities, both for beauty and for utility. Before leaving the place, I had a little talk with Nelson. "Everything is going on nicely," he said. "I have ten carpenters, and they are a busy lot. If I can only hold them on to the job, things will go well." "What's the matter? Can't you hold them?" "I hope so, but there is a hoisters' strike on in the city, and the carpenters threaten to go out in sympathy. I hope it won't reach us, but I'm afraid it will." "What will you do if the men go out?" "Do the best I can. I can get two non-union men that I know of. They would like to be on this job now, but these men won't permit it. My son is a full hand, so there will be four of us; but it will be slow work." "See here, Nelson, I can't have this work slack up. We haven't time. Cold weather will be on before we know it. I'm going to take this bull by the horns. I'll advertise for carpenters in the Sunday papers. Some of those who apply will be non-union men, and I'll hold them over for a few days until we see how the cat jumps. If it comes to the worst, we can get some men to take the place of Thompson and Sam, who are carpenters, and set them at the tools. I will not let this work stop, strike or no strike." "If you put non-union men on you will have to feed and sleep them on the place. The union will make it hot for them." "I will take all kinds of care of every man who gives me honest work, you may be sure." When I returned to town I sent this "ad." to two papers: "Wanted: Ten good carpenters to go to the country." The Sunday papers gave a lurid account of the sentiment of the Carpenters' Union and its sympathetic attitude toward the striking hoisters. The forecast was that there would not be a nail driven if the strike were not settled by Tuesday night. It seemed that I had not moved a day too soon. On Monday thirty-seven carpenters applied at my office. Most of them had union tickets and were not considered. Thirteen, however, were not of the union, and they were investigated. I hired seven on these conditions: wages to begin the next day, Tuesday, and to continue through the week, work or no work. If the strike was ordered, I would take the men to the country and give them steady work until my jobs were finished. They agreed to these conditions, and were requested to report at my office on Wednesday morning to receive two days' pay, and perhaps to be set to work. I did not go to the farm until Tuesday afternoon. There was no change in the strike, and no reason to expect one. The noon papers said that the Carpenters' Union would declare a sympathetic strike to be on from Wednesday noon. On reaching Four Oaks I called Nelson aside and told him how the land lay and what I had done. "I want you to call the men together," said I, "and let me talk to them. I must know just how we stand and how they feel." Nelson called the men, and I read the reports from two papers on the impending strike order. "Now, men," said I, "we must look this matter in the face in a businesslike fashion. You have done good work here; your boss is satisfied, and so am I. It would suit us down to the ground if you would continue on until all these jobs are finished. We can give you a lot of work for the best part of the year. You are sure of work and sure of pay if you stay with us. That is all I have to say until you have decided for yourselves what you will do if the strike is ordered." I left the men for a short time, while they talked things over. It did not take them long to decide. "We must stand by the union," said the spokesman, "but we'll be damned sorry to quit this job. You see, sir, we can't do any other way. We have to be in the union to get work, and we have to do as the union says or we will be kicked out. It is hard, sir, not to do a hit of a hammer for weeks or months with a family on one's hands and winter coming; but what can a man do? We don't see our way clear in this matter, but we must do as the union says." "I see how you are fixed," said I, "and I am mighty sorry for you. I am not going to rail against unions, for they may have done some good; but they work a serious wrong to the man with a family, for he cannot follow them without bringing hardships upon his dependent ones. It is not fair to yoke him up with a single man who has no natural claims to satisfy, no mouth to feed except his own; but I will talk business. "You will be ordered out to-morrow or next day, and you say you will obey the order. You have an undoubted right to do so. A man is not a slave, to be made to work against his will; but, on the other hand, is he not a slave if he is forced to quit against his will? Freedom of action in personal matters is a right which wise men have fought for and for which wise men will always fight. Do you find it in the union? What shall I do when you quit work? How long are you going to stay out? What will become of my interests while you are following the lead of your bell-wethers? Shall my work stop because you have been called out for a holiday? Shall the weeds grow over these walls and my lumber rot while you sit idly by? Not by a long sight! You have a perfect right to quit work, and I have a perfect right to continue. "The rights which we claim for ourselves we must grant to others. One man certainly has as defensible a right to work as another man has to be idle. In the legitimate exercise of personal freedom there is no effort at coercion, and in this case there shall be none. If you choose to quit, you will do so without let or hindrance from me; but if you quit, others will take your places without let or hindrance from you. You will be paid in full to-night. When you leave, you must take your tools with you, that there may be no excuse for coming back. When you leave the place, the incident will be closed so far as you and I are concerned, and it will not be opened unless I find some of you trying to interfere with the men I shall engage to take your places. I think you make a serious mistake in following blind leaders who are doing you material injury, for sentimental reasons; but you must decide this for yourselves. If, after sober thought, any of you feel disposed to return, you can get a job if there is a vacancy; but no man who works for me during this strike will be displaced by a striker. You may put that in your pipes and smoke it. Nelson will pay you off to-night." The strike was ordered for Wednesday. On the morning of that day the seven carpenters whom I had engaged arrived at my office ready for work. I took them to the station and started for Four Oaks. At a station five miles from Exeter we quitted the train, hired two carriages, and were driven to the farm without passing through the village. We arrived without incident, the men had their dinners, and at one o'clock the hammers and saws were busy again. We had lost but one half day. The two non-union men whom Nelson had spoken of were also at work, and three days later the spokesman of the strikers threw up his card and joined our force. We had no serious trouble. It was thought wise to keep the new men on the place until the excitement had passed, and we had to warn some of the old ones off two or three times, but nothing disagreeable happened, and from that day to this Four Oaks has remained non-unionized. CHAPTER XIII PLANNING FOR THE TREES The morning of September 17th a small frost fell,--just enough to curl the leaves of the corn and show that it was time for it to be laid by. Thompson, Johnson, Anderson, and the two men from the woods, who were diverted from their post-splitting for the time being, went gayly to the corn fields and attacked the standing grain in the old-fashioned way. This was not economical; but I had no corn reaper, and there was none to hire, for the frost had struck us all at the same time. The five men were kept busy until the two patches--about forty-three acres--were in shock. This brought us to the 24th. In the meantime the men and women moved from the cottage to the more commodious farm-house. Polly had found excuses for spending $100 more on the furnishings of this house,--two beds and a lot of other things. Sunday gave the people a chance to arrange their affairs; and they certainly appreciated their improved surroundings. The cottage was moved to its place on the line, and the last of the seeding on the north forty was done. Ten tons of fertilizer were sown on this forty-acre tract (at a cost of $250), and it was then left to itself, not to be trampled over by man or beast, except for the stretching of fences or for work around some necessary buildings, until the middle of the following May. We did not sow any wheat that year,--there was too much else to be done of more importance. There is not much money in wheat-farming unless it be done on a large scale, and I had no wish to raise more than I could feed to advantage. Wheat was to be a change food for my fowls; but just then I had no fowls to feed, and there were more than two hundred bushels in stacks ready for the threshers, which I could hold for future hens. The ploughmen were now directed to commence deep ploughing on No. 14,--the forty acres set apart for the commercial orchard. This tract of land lay well for the purpose. Its surface was nearly smooth, with a descent to the west and southwest that gave natural drainage. I have been informed that an orchard would do better if the slope were to the northeast. That may be true, but mine has done well enough thus far, and, what is more to the point, I had no land with a northeast slope. The surface soil was thin and somewhat impoverished, but the subsoil was a friable clay in which almost anything would grow if it was properly worked and fed. It was my desire to make this square block of forty acres into a first-class apple orchard for profit. Seven years from planting is almost too soon to decide how well I have succeeded, but the results attained and the promises for the future lead me to believe that there will be no failure in my plan. The three essentials for beginning such an orchard are: prepare the land properly, get good stock (healthy and true to name), and plant it well. I could do no more this year than to plough deep, smooth the surface, and plant as well as I knew how. Increased fertility must come from future cultivation and top dressing. The thing most prominent in my plan was to get good trees well placed in the ground before cold weather set in. At my time of life I could not afford to wait for another autumn, or even until spring. I had, and still have, the opinion that a fall-planted tree is nearly six months in advance of one planted the following spring. Of course there can be no above-ground growth during that time, but important things are being done below the surface. The roots find time to heal their wounds and to send out small searchers after food, which will be ready for energetic work as soon as the sun begins to warm the soil. The earth settles comfortably about these roots and is moulded to fit them by the autumn rains. If the stem is well braced by a mound of earth, and if a thick mulch is placed around it, much will be done below ground before deep frosts interrupt the work; and if, in the early spring, the mulch and mound are drawn back, the sun's influence will set the roots at work earlier by far than a spring tree could be planted. Other reasons for fall planting are that the weather is more settled, the ground is more manageable, help is more easily secured, and the nurserymen have more time for filling your order. Any time from October 15 until December 10 will answer in our climate, but early November is the best. I had decided to plant the trees in this orchard twenty-five feet apart each way. In the forty acres there would be fifty-two rows, with fifty-two trees in each row,--or twenty-seven hundred in all. I also decided to have but four varieties of apples in this orchard, and it was important that they should possess a number of virtues. They must come into early bearing, for I was too old to wait patiently for slow-growing trees; they must be of kinds most dependable for yearly crops, for I had no respect for off years; and they must be good enough in color, shape, and quality to tempt the most fastidious market. I studied catalogues and talked with pomologists until my mind was nearly unsettled, and finally decided upon Jonathan, Wealthy, Rome Beauty, and Northwestern Greening,--all winter apples, and all red but the last. I was helped in my decision, so far as the Jonathans and Rome Beauties were concerned, by the discovery that more than half of the old orchard was composed of these varieties. There is little question as to the wisdom of planting trees of kinds known to have done well in your neighborhood. They are just as likely to do well by you as by your neighbor. If the fruit be to your liking, you can safely plant, for it is no longer an experiment; some one else has broken that ground for you. In casting about for a reliable nurseryman to whom to trust the very important business of supplying me with young trees, I could not long keep my attention diverted from Rochester, New York. Perhaps the reason was that as a child I had frequently ridden over the plank road from Henrietta to Rochester, and my memory recalled distinctly but three objects on that road,--the house of Frederick Douglass, Mount Hope Cemetery, and a nursery of young trees. Everything else was obscure. I fancy that in fifty years the Douglass house has disappeared, but Mount Hope Cemetery and the tree nursery seem to mock at time. The soil and climate near Rochester are especially favorable to the growing of young trees, and my order went to one of the many reliable firms engaged in this business. The order was for thirty-four hundred trees,--twenty-seven hundred for the forty-acre orchard and seven hundred for the ten acres farthest to the south on the home lot. Polly had consented to this invasion of her domain, for reasons. She said:-- "It is a long way off, rather flat and uninteresting, and I do not see exactly how to treat it. Apple trees are pretty at most times, and picturesque when old. You can put them there, if you will seed the ground and treat it as part of the lawn. I hate your old straight rows, but I suppose you must have them." "Yes, I guess I shall have to have straight rows, but I will agree to the lawn plan after the third year. You must give me a chance to cultivate the land for three years." Your tree-man must be absolutely reliable. You have to trust him much and long. Not only do you depend upon him to send you good and healthy stock, but you must trust, for five years at least, that this stock will prove true to name. The most discouraging thing which can befall a horticulturist is to find his new fruit false to purchase labels. After wait, worry, and work he finds that he has not what he expected, and that he must begin over again. It is cold comfort for the tree-man to make good his guarantee to replace all stock found untrue, for five years of irreplaceable time has passed. When you have spent time, hope, and expectation as well as money, looking for results which do not come, your disappointment is out of all proportion to your financial loss, be that never so great. In the best-managed nurseries there will be mistakes, but the better the management the fewer the mistakes. Pay good prices for young trees, and demand the best. There is no economy in cheap stock, and the sooner the farmer or fruit-grower comprehends this fact, the better it will be for him. I ordered trees of three years' growth from the bud,--this would mean four-year-old roots. Perhaps it would have been as well to buy smaller ones (many wise people have told me so), but I was in such a hurry! I wanted to pick apples from these trees at the first possible moment. I argued that a sturdy three-year-old would have an advantage over its neighbor that was only two. However small this advantage, I wanted it in my business--my business being to make a profitable farm in quick time. The ten acres of the home lot were to be planted with three hundred Yellow Transparent, three hundred Duchess of Oldenburg, and one hundred mixed varieties for home use. I selected the Transparent and the Duchess on account of their disposition to bear early, and because they are good sellers in a near market, and because a fruit-wise friend was making money from an eight-year-old orchard of three thousand of these trees, and advised me not to neglect them. My order called for thirty-four hundred three-year-old apple trees of the highest grade, to be delivered in good condition on the platform at Exeter for the lump sum of $550. The agreement had been made in August, and the trees were to be delivered as near the 20th of October as practicable. Apple trees comprised my entire planting for the autumn of 1895. I wanted to do much other work in that line, but it had to be left for a more convenient season. Hundreds of fruit trees, shade trees, and shrubs have since been planted at Four Oaks, but this first setting of thirty-four hundred apple trees was the most important as well as the most urgent. The orchard was to be a prominent feature in the factory I was building, and as it would be slower in coming to perfection than any other part, it was wise to start it betimes. I have kicked myself black and blue for neglecting to plant an orchard ten years earlier. If I had done this, and had spent two hours a month in the management of it, it would now be a thing of beauty and an income-producing joy forever,--or, at least, as long as my great-grandchildren will need it. There is no danger of overdoing orcharding. The demand for fruit increases faster than the supply, and it is only poor quality or bad handling that causes a slack market. If the general farmer will become an expert orchardist, he will find that year by year his ten acres of fruit will give him a larger profit than any forty acres of grain land; but to get this result he must be faithful to his trees. Much of the time they are caring for themselves, and for the owner, too; but there are times when they require sharp attention, and if they do not get it promptly and in the right way, they and the owner will suffer. Fruit growing as a sole occupation requires favorable soil, climate, and market, and also a considerable degree of aptitude on the part of the manager, to make it highly profitable. A fruit-grower in our climate must have other interests if he would make the most of his time. While waiting for his fruit he can raise food for hens and hogs; and if he feeds hens and hogs, he should keep as many cows as he can. He will then use in his own factory all the raw material he can raise. This will again be returned to the land as a by-product, which will not only maintain the fertility of the farm, but even increase it. If his cows are of the best, they will yield butter enough to pay for their food and to give a profit; the skim milk, fed to the hogs and hens, will give eggs and pork out of all proportion to its cost; and everything that grows upon his land can thus be turned off as a finished product for a liberal price, and yet the land will not be depleted. The orchard is better for the hens and hogs and cows, and they are better for the orchard. These industries fit into each other like the folding of hands; they seem mutually dependent, and yet they are often divorced, or, at best, only loosely related. This view may seem to be the result of _post hoc_ reasoning, but I think it is not. I believe I imbibed these notions with my mother's milk, for I can remember no time when they were not mine. The psalmist said, "Comfort me with apples"; and the psalmist was reputed a wise man. With only sufficient wisdom to plant an orchard, I live in high expectation of finding the same comfort in my old age. CHAPTER XIV PLANTING OF THE TREES September proved as dry as August was wet,--only half an inch of water fell; and the seedings would have been slow to start had they depended for their moisture upon the clouds. By October 1, however, green had taken the place of brown on nearly all the sixty acres we had tilled. The threshers came and threshed the wheat and oats. Of wheat there were 311 bushels, of oats, 1272. We stored this grain in the cottage until the granary should be ready, and stacked the straw until the forage barn could receive it. My plan from the first has been to shelter all forage, even the meanest, and bright oat straw is not low in the scale. On the 10th the horse stable was far enough advanced to permit the horses to be moved, and the old barn was deserted. A neighbor who had bought this barn at once pulled it down and carted it away. In this transaction I held out several days for $50, but as my neighbor was obdurate I finally accepted his offer. The first entry on the credit side of my farm ledger is, By one old barn, $45. The receipts for October, November, and December, were:-- By one old barn $45.00 By apples on trees (153 trees at $1.85 each) 283.00 By 480 bushels of potatoes at 30 cents per bushel 144.00 By five old sows, not fat 35.00 One cow 15.00 Three cows 70.00 Two cows 35.00 Three cows, two heifers, nine calves 187.00 Forty-three shoats and gilts, average 162 lb., at 2 cents per lb 139.00 Total $953.00 The young hogs had eaten most of my small potatoes and some of my corn before we parted with them in late November. These sales were made at the farm, and at low prices, for I was afraid to send such stuff to market lest some one should find out whence it came. The Four Oaks brand was to stand for perfection in the future, and I was not willing to handicap it in the least. Top prices for gilt-edged produce is what intensive farming means; and if there is money in land, it will be found close to this line. The potatoes had been dug and sold, or stored in the cellar of the farm-house; the apples from the trees reserved for home use had been gathered, and we were ready for the fall planting. While waiting for the stock to arrive, we had time to get in all the hay and most of the straw into the forage barn, which was now under roof. On Saturday, the 26th, word came that sixteen immense boxes had arrived at Exeter for us. Three teams were sent at once, and each team brought home two boxes. Three trips were made, and the entire prospective orchard was safely landed. Monday saw our whole force at work planting trees. Small stakes had been driven to give the exact centre for each hole, so that the trees, viewed from any direction, would be in straight lines. Sam, Zeb, and Judson were to dig the holes, putting the surface dirt to the right, and the poor earth to the left; I was to prune the roots and keep tab on the labels; Johnson and Anderson were to set the trees,--Anderson using a shovel and Johnson his hands, feet, and eyes; while Thompson was to puddle and distribute the trees. The puddling was easily done. We sawed an oil barrel in halves, placed these halves on a stone boat, filled them two-thirds full of water, and added a lot of fine clay. Into this thin mud the roots of each tree were dipped before planting. My duty was to shorten the roots that were too long, and to cut away the bruised and broken ones. The top pruning was to be done after the trees were all set and banked. The stock was fine in every respect,--fully up to promise. Watching Johnson set his first tree convinced me that he knew more about planting than I did. He lined and levelled it; he pawed surface dirt into the hole, and churned the roots up and down; more dirt, and he tamped it; still more dirt, and he tramped it; yet more dirt, and he stamped it until the tree stood like a post; then loose dirt, and he left it. I was sure Johnson knew his business too well to need advice from a tenderfoot, so I went back to my root pruning. We were ten days planting these thirty-four hundred trees, but we did it well, and the days were short. We finished on the 7th of November. The trees were now to be top pruned. I told Johnson to cut every tree in the big orchard back to a three-foot stub, unless there was very good reason for leaving a few inches (never more than six), and I turned my back on him and walked away as I said these cruel words. It seemed a shame to cut these bushy, long-legged, handsome fellows back to dwarfish insignificance and brutish ugliness, but it had to be done. I wanted stocky, thrifty, low-headed business trees, and there was no other way to get them. The trees in the lower, or ten-acre, orchard, were not treated so severely. Their long legs were left, and their bushy tops were only moderately curtailed. We would try both high and low heading. On the night of November 11 the shredders came and set up their great machine on the floor of the forage barn, ready to commence work the next morning. There were ten men in the shredding gang. I furnished six more, and Bill Jackson came with two others to change work with me; that is, my men were to help him when the machine reached his farm. We worked nineteen men and four teams three and a half days on the forty-three acres of corn, and as a result, had a tremendous mow of shredded corn fodder and an immense pile of half-husked ears. For the use of the machine and the wages of the ten men I paid $105. Poor economy! Before next corn-shredding time I owned a machine,--smaller indeed, but it did the work as well (though not as quickly), and it cost me only $215, and was good for ten years. The weather had favored me thus far. The wet August had put the ground into good condition for seeding, and the dry September and October had permitted our buildings to be pushed forward, but now everything was to change. A light rain began on the morning of the 15th (I did not permit it to interrupt the shredding, which was finished by noon), and by night it had developed into a steady downpour that continued, with interruptions, for six weeks. November and December of 1895 gave us rain and snow fall equal to twelve and a half inches of water. Plans at Four Oaks had to be modified. There was no more use for the ploughs. Nos. 10 and 11, and much of the home lot were left until spring. I had planned to mulch heavily all the newly set trees, and for this purpose had bought six carloads of manure (at a cost of $72); but this manure could not be hauled across the sodden fields, and must needs be piled in a great heap for use in the spring. The carpenters worked at disadvantage, and the farm men could do little more than keep themselves and the animals comfortable. They did, however, finish one good job between showers. They tile-drained the routes for the two roads on the home lot,--the straight one east and west through the building line, about 1000 feet, and the winding carriage drive to the site of the main house, about 1850 feet. The tile pipe cost $123. They also set a lot of fence posts in the soft ground. Building progressed slowly during the bad weather, but before the end of December the horse barn, the woodshed, the granary, the forage barn, and the power-house were completed, and most of the machinery was in place. The machinery consisted of a fifteen horse-power engine, with shafting running to the forage barn, the granary, and the woodshed. A power-saw was set in the end of the shed, a grinding mill in the granary, and a fodder-cutter in the forage barn. The cost of these items was:-- Engine and shafting $187.00 Saw 24.00 Mill 32.00 Feed-cutter and carrier 76.00 Total $319.00 I gave the services of my two carpenters, Thompson and Sam, during most of this time to Nelson, for I had but little work for them, and he was not making much out of his job. The last few days of 1895 turned clear and cold, and the barometer set "fair." The change chirked us up, and we ended the year in good spirits. CHAPTER XV POLLY'S JUDGMENT HALL Before closing the books, we should take account of stock, to see what we had purchased with our money. Imprimis: 320 acres of good land, satisfactory to the eye, well fenced and well groomed; 3400 apple trees, so well planted as to warrant a profitable future; a water and sewer system as good as a city could supply; farm buildings well planned and sufficient for the day; an abundance of food for all stock, and to spare; an intelligent and willing working force; machinery for more than present necessity; eight excellent horses and their belongings; six cows, moderately good; two pigs and two score fowls, to be eaten before spring, and _a lot of fun_. What price I shall have to put against this last item to make the account balance, I can tell better when I foot the other side of the ledger. But first I must add a few items to the debit account. Moving the cottage cost $30. I paid $134 for grass seed and seed rye. The wage account for six men and two women for five months was $735. Their food account was $277. Of course the farm furnished milk, cream, butter, vegetables, some fruit, fresh pork, poultry, and eggs. There were also some small freight bills, which had not been accounted for, amounting to $31, and $8 had been spent in transportation for the men. Then the farm must be charged with interest on all money advanced, when I had completed my additions. The rate was to be five per cent, and the time three months. On the last day of the year I went to the farm to pay up to date all accounts. I wished to end the year with a clean score. I did not know what the five months had cost me (I would know that evening), but I did know that I had had "the time of my life" in the spending, and I would not whine. I felt a little nervous when I thought of going over the figures with Polly,--she was such a judicious spender of money. But I knew her criticism would not be severe, for she was hand-in-glove with me in the project. I tried to find fault with myself for wastefulness, but some excellent excuse would always crop up. "Your water tower is unnecessary." "Yes, but it adds to the landscape, and it has its use." "You have put up too much fencing." "True, but I wanted to feel secure, and the old fences were such nests of weeds and rubbish." "You have spent too much money on the farm-house." "I think not, for the laborer is worthy of his hire, and also of all reasonable creature comforts." And thus it went on. I would not acknowledge myself in the wrong; nor, arguing how I might, could I find aught but good in my labors. I devoutly hoped to be able to put the matter in the same light when I stood at the bar in Polly's judgment hall. The day was clear, cool, and stimulating. A fair fall of snow lay on the ground, clean and wholesome, as country snow always is. I wished that the house was finished (it was not begun), and that the family was with me in it. "Another Christmas time will find us here, God willing, and many a one thereafter." I spent three hours at the farm, doing a little business and a lot of mooning, and then returned to town. The children were off directly after dinner, intent on holiday festivities, so that Polly and I had the house to ourselves. I felt that we needed it. I invited my partner into the den, lighted a pipe for consolation, unlocked the drawer in which the farm ledger is kept, gave a small deprecatory cough, and said:-- "My dear, I am afraid I have spent an awful lot of money in the last five months. You see there is such a quantity of things to do at once, and they run into no end of money. You know, I--" "Of course I know it, and I know that you have got the worth of it, too." Wouldn't that console you! How was I to know that Polly would hail from that quarter? I would have kissed her hand, if she would have permitted such liberty; I kissed her lips, and was ready to defend any sum total which the ledger dare show. "Do you know how much it is?" said Polly. "Not within a million!" I was reckless then, and hoped the total would be great, for had not Polly said that she knew I had got the worth of my money? And who was to gainsay her? "It is more than I planned for, I know, but I do not see how I could use less without losing precious time. We started into this thing with the theory that the more we put into it, without waste, the more we would ultimately get out of it. Our theory is just as sound to-day as it was five months ago." "We will win out all right in the end, Mr. Headman, for we will not put the price-mark on health, freedom, happiness, or fun, until we have seen the debit side of the ledger." "How much do you want to spend for the house?" said I. "Do you mean the house alone?" "No; the house and carriage barn. I'll pay for the trees, shrubs, and kickshaws in the gardens and lawns." "You started out with a plan for a $10,000 house, didn't you? Well, I don't think that's enough. You ought to give me $15,000 for the house and barn and let me see what I can do with it; and you ought to give it to me right away, so that you cannot spend it for pigs and foolish farm things." "I'll do it within ten days, Polly; and I won't meddle in your affairs if you will agree to keep within the limit." "It's a bargain," said Polly, "and the house will be much more livable than this one. What do you think we could sell this one for?" "About $33,000 or $34,000, I think." "And will you sell it?" "Of course, if you don't object." "Sell, to be sure; it would be foolish to keep it, for we'll be country folk in a year." "I have a theory," said I, "that when we live on the farm we ought to credit the farm with what it costs us for food and shelter here,--providing, of course, that the farm feeds and shelters us as well." "It will do it a great deal better. We will have a better house, better food, more company, more leisure, more life, and more everything that counts, than we ever had before." "We'll fix the value of those things when we've had experience," said I. "Now let's get at the figures. I tell you plainly that I don't know what they foot up,--less than $40,000, I hope." "Don't let's worry about them, no matter what they say." This from prudent, provident Polly! "Certainly not," said I, as bold as a lion. "There are thirty-five items on the debit side of the ledger and a few little ones on the credit side. Hold your breath while I add them. "I have spent $44,331 and have received $953, which leaves a debit balance of $43,378." "That isn't so awfully bad, when you think of all the fun you've had." "Fun comes high at this time of the year, doesn't it, Polly?" "Much depends on what you call high. You have waited and worked a long time for this. I won't say a word if you spend all you have in the world. It's yours." "Mine and yours and the children's; but I won't spend it all. Seventy or seventy-five thousand dollars, besides your house and barn money, shall be my limit. There is still an item of interest to be added to this account. "Interest! Why, John Williams, do you mean to tell me that you borrowed this money? I thought it was your own to do as you liked with. Have you got to pay interest on it?" "It was mine, but I loaned it to the farm. Before I made this loan I was getting five per cent on the money. I must now look to the farm for my five per cent. If it cannot pay this interest promptly, I shall add the deferred payment to the principal, and it shall bear interest. This must be done each year until the net income from the farm is greater than the interest account. Whatever is over will then be used to reduce the principal." "That's a long speech, but I don't think it's very clear. I don't see why a man should pay interest on his own money. The farm is yours, isn't it? You bought it with your own money, didn't you? What difference does it make whether you charge interest or not?" "Not the least difference in the world to us, Polly, but a great deal to the experiment." "Oh, yes, I forgot the experiment. And how much interest do you add?" "Five hundred and forty-two dollars. Also, $75 to the lawyer and $5 for recording the deed, making the whole debt of the farm to me $44,000 even." "Does it come out just even $44,000? I believe you've manipulated the figures." "Not on your life! Add them yourself. They were put down at all sorts of times during the past five months. My dear, I wish you a good-night and a happy New Year. You have given me a very happy ending for the old one." CHAPTER XVI WINTER WORK The new year opened full of all sorts of interests and new projects. There were so many things to plan for and to commence at the farm that we often got a good deal mixed up. I can hardly expect to make a connected narrative of the various plans and events, so will follow each one far enough to launch it and then leave it for future development. Little snow fell in January and February '96. The weather was average winter weather, and a good deal of outdoor work was done. On the 2d I went to the farm to plan with Thompson an outline for the two months. I had decided to make Thompson the foreman, for I had watched him carefully for five months and was satisfied that I might go farther and fare a great deal worse. Indeed, I thought myself very fortunate to have found such a dependable man. He was temperate and good-natured, and he had a bluff, hearty way with the other men that made it easy for them to accept his directions. He was thorough, too, in his work. He knew how a job should be done, and he was not satisfied until it was finished correctly. He was not a worker for work's sake, as was Anderson, but he was willing to put his shoulder to the wheel for results. "Wait till I get my shoulder under it," was a favorite expression with him, and I am frank to say that when this conjunction took place there was apt to be something doing. Thompson is still at Four Oaks, and it will be a bad day for the farm when he leaves. "Thompson," said I, "you are to be working foreman out here, and I want you to put your mind on the business and keep it there. I cannot raise your wages, for I have a system; but you shall have $50 as a Christmas present if things go well. Will you stay on these terms?" "I will stay, all right, Dr. Williams, and I will give the best I've got. I like the looks of this place, and I want to see how you are going to work it out." That being settled, I told Thompson of some things that must be done during January and February. "You must get out a great lot of wood, have it sawed, and store it in the shed, more than enough for a year's use. The wood should be taken from that which is already down. Don't cut any standing trees, even though they are dead. Use all limbs that are large enough, but pile the brushwood where it can be burned. We must do wise forestry in these woods, and we will have an unlimited supply of fuel. I mean that the wood lot shall grow better rather than worse as the years go by. We cannot do much for it now, but more in time. You must see to it that the men are not careless about young trees,--no breaking or knocking down will be in order. Another thing to look after is the ice supply. I will get Nelson to build an ice-house directly, and you must look around for the ice. Have you any idea as to where it can be had?" "A big company is getting ice on Round Lake three miles west, and I suppose they will sell you what you want," said Thompson, "and our teams can haul it all right." "What do you suppose they will charge per ton on their platform?" "From twenty-five to forty cents, I reckon." "All right, make as good a bargain as you can, and attend to it at the best time. When the teams are not hauling ice or wood, let them draw gravel from French's pit. It will be hard to get it out in the winter, but I guess it can be done, and we will need a lot of it on these roads. Have it dumped at convenient places, and we will put it on the drives in the spring. "Another thing,--we must have a bridge across the brook on each lane. You will find timbers and planks enough in the piles from the old barns to make good bridges, and the men can do the work. Then there is all that wire for the inside fences to stretch and staple; but mind, no barbed wire is to be put on top of inside fences. "These five jobs will keep you busy for the next two months, for there'll be only four men besides yourself to do them. I am going to set Sam at the chicken plant. I'll see you before long, and we'll go over the cow and hog plans; but you have your work cut out for the next two months. By the way, how much of an ice-house shall I need?" "How many cows are you going to milk?" "About forty when we run at full speed; perhaps half that number this year." "Well, then you'd better build a house for four hundred tons. That won't be too big when you are on full time, and it's a mighty bad thing to run short of ice." I saw Nelson the same day and contracted with him for an ice-house capable of holding four hundred tons, for $900. The walls of the house to be of three thicknesses of lumber with two air spaces (one four inches, the other two) without filling. As a result of the conference with Thompson, I had, before the first of March, a wood-house full of wood, which seemed a supply for two years at full steam; an ice-house nearly full of ice; two serviceable bridges across the brook; the wire fencing almost completed; and eighty loads of gravel,--about one-third of what I needed. The whole cash outlay was,-- 300 tons of ice at 30 cents per ton $90.00 80 tons of gravel at 25 cents per load 20.00 Fence staples 19.00 ------ Total $129.00 The conference with Sam Jones, the hen man, was deferred until my next visit, and my plans for the cow barn, dairy-house, and hog-house were left to Nelson for consideration, he promising to give me estimates within a few days. CHAPTER XVII WHAT SHALL WE ASK OF THE HEN? Sam Jones, the chicken-loving man, was as pleased as a boy with a new top when I began to talk of a hen plant. He had a lot of practical knowledge of the business, for he had _failed_ in it twice; and I could furnish any amount of theory, and enough money to prevent disaster. In his previous attempts he had invested nearly all his small capital in a plant that might yield two hundred eggs a day; he had to buy all foods in small quantities, and therefore at high prices; and he had to give his whole time to a business which was too small and too much on the hand-to-mouth order to give him a living profit. My theory of the business was entirely different. I could plan for results, and, what was more to the point, I could wait for them. Mistakes, accidents, even disasters, were disarmed by a bank account; my bread and butter did not depend upon the temper of a whimsical hen. The food would cost the minimum. All grains and green food, and most of the animal food, in the form of skim milk, would be furnished by the farm. I meant also to develop a plant large enough to warrant the full attention of an able-bodied man. I felt no hesitation about this venture, for I did not intend to ask more of my hens than a well-disposed hen ought to be willing to grant. I do not ask a hen to lay a double-yolk every day in the year. That is too much to expect of a creature in whom the mother instinct is prominent, and who wishes also to have a new dress for herself at least once in that time. I do not wish a hen to work overtime for me. If she will furnish me with eight dozen of her finished product per annum, I will do the rest. Whatever she does more than that shall redound to her credit. Two-hundred-eggs-a-year hens are scarcer than hens with teeth, and I was not looking for the unusual. A hen can easily lay one hundred eggs in three hundred and sixty-five days, and yet find time for domestic and social affairs. She can feel that she is not a subject for charity, while at the same time she retains her self-respect as a hen of leisure. I have the highest regard for this domestic fowl, and I would not for a great deal impose a too arduous task upon her. I feel like encouraging her in her peculiar industry, for which she is so eminently fitted, but not like forcing her into strenuous efforts that would rob her of vivacity and dull her social and domestic impulses. No; if the hen will politely present me with one hundred eggs a year, I will thank her and ask no more. Some one will say: "How can you make hens pay if they don't lay more than eight dozen eggs a year? Eggs sometimes sell as low as twelve cents per dozen." Four Oaks hens never have laid one-cent eggs, and never will. They would quit work if such a price were suggested. Ninety per cent of the eggs from Four Oaks have sold for thirty cents or more per dozen, and the demand is greater than the supply. The Four Oaks certificate that the egg is not thirty-six hours old when it reaches the egg cup, makes two and a half cents look small to those who can afford to pay for the best. To lack confidence in the egg is a serious matter at the breakfast table, and a person who can insure perfect trust will not lack patronage. If, therefore, a hen will lay eight dozen eggs, she is welcome to say to an acquaintance: "I have just handed the Headman a two-dollar bill," for she knows that I have not paid fifty cents for her food. Of course the wages of the hen man and his food and the interest on the plant must be counted, but I do not propose to count them twice. Four Oaks is a factory where several things are made, each in a measure dependent on, and useful to, the others, and we cannot itemize costs of single products because of this mutual dependence. I feel certain that I could not drop one of the factory's industries without loss to each of the others. For this reason I kept a very simple set of books. I charged the farm with all money spent for it, and credited it with all moneys received. Even now I have no very definite knowledge of what it costs to keep a hen, a hog, or a cow; nor do I care. Such data are greatly influenced by location, method of getting supplies, and market fluctuations. I furnish most of my food, and my own market. My crops have never entirely failed, and I take little heed whether they be large or small. They are not for sale as crops, but as finished products. I am not willing to sell them at any price, for I want them consumed on the place for the sake of the land. Corn has sold for eighty cents a bushel since I began this experiment, yet at that time I fed as much as ever and was not tempted to sell a bushel, though I could easily have spared five thousand. When it went down to twenty-eight cents, I did not care, for corn and oats to me are simply in transition state,--not commodities to be bought or sold. They cost me, one year with another, about the same. An abundant harvest fills my granaries to overflowing; a bad harvest doesn't deplete them, for I do not sell my surplus for fear that I, too, may have to buy out of a high market. I have bought corn and oats a few times, but only when the price was decidedly below my idea of the feeding value of these grains. I can find more than twenty-eight cents in a bushel of corn, and more than eighteen cents in thirty-two pounds of oats. But I am away off my subject. I began to talk about the hen plant, and have wandered to my favorite fad,--the factory farm. CHAPTER XVIII WHITE WYANDOTTES "Sam," said I, "I am going to start this poultry plant from just as near the beginning of things as possible. I want you to dispose of every hen on the place within the next twenty days, and to burn everything that has been used in connection with them. We've cleared this land of disease germs, if there were germs in it, by turning it bottom-side up; now let's start free from the pestiferous vermin that make a hen's life unhappy. No stock, either old or young, shall be brought here. When we want to change our breeding, we'll buy eggs from the best fanciers and hatch them in our own incubators. It will then be our own fault if we don't keep our chickens comfortable and free from their enemies. This is sound theory, and we'll try how it works out in practice. Certainly it will be easier to keep clean if we start clean. Not one board or piece of lumber that has been used for any other purpose shall find place in my hen-houses. Eternal vigilance makes a full egg basket; and a full egg basket means a lot of money at the year's end. I will never find fault with you for being too careful Attend to the details in such way as suits you best, provided the result is thorough and everlasting cleanliness. Nothing less will win out, and nothing less will meet the requirements of our factory rules. "The first thing to do is to get the incubating cellar made. It ought to be four feet in the ground and four feet out of it. Make it ten feet by fifteen, inside measure, and you can easily run five two-hundred-egg incubators. Build it near the south fence in No. 4,--that's the lot for the hens. The walls are to be of brick, and we'll have a brick floor put in, for it's too cold to concrete it now. Gables are to point east and west, and each is to have a window; put the door in the middle of the south wall, and shingle the roof. Digging through three feet of frost will be hard, but it must be done, and done quickly. I want you to start your incubator lamps before the 3d of February." "I can dig the hole without much trouble,--big fire on the ground for two or three hours will help,--and I can put on the roof and do all the carpenter work, but I can't lay the brick." "I'll look out for that part of the job, but I want you to see that things are pushed, for I shall have a thousand eggs here by February 1st and another thousand by the 25th, and these eggs mean money." "What do you have to pay for them?" "Ten cents apiece,--$200 for two thousand eggs." "Well, I should say! Are they hand-painted? I wouldn't have had to quit business if I could have sold my eggs at a quarter of that price." "That's all right, Sam, but you didn't sell White Wyandotte eggs for hatching. I've contracted with two of the best-known fanciers of Wyandottes in the country to send me five hundred eggs apiece February 1st and 25th. I don't think the price is high for the stock." "Have you decided to keep 'dottes? I hoped you would try Leghorns; they're great layers." "Yes, they're great summer layers, but the American birds will beat them hollow in winter; and I must have as steady a supply of eggs as possible. My customers don't stop eating eggs in winter, and they'll be willing to pay more for them at that season. The Leghorn is too small to make a good broiler, and as half the chicks come cockerels, we must look out for that." "Why do you throw down the Plymouth Rocks? They're bigger than 'dottes, and just as good layers." "I threw down the barred Plymouth Rocks on account of color; I like white hens best. It was hard to decide between White Rocks and Wyandottes, for there's mighty little difference between them as all-around hens. I really think I chose the 'dottes because the first reply to my letters was from a man who was breeding them." "They are 'beauts,' all of them, and I'll give them a good chance to spread themselves," said Sam. "What percentage of hatch may we expect from purchased eggs?" "About sixty chicks out of every hundred eggs, I reckon." "That would be doing pretty well, wouldn't it? If we had good luck with the sixty chicks, how many would grow up?" "Fifty ought to." "Of these fifty, can we count on twenty-five pullets?" "Yes." "That's what I was getting at. You think we might, by good luck, raise twenty-five pullets from each hundred eggs. I'll cut that in the middle and be satisfied with twelve, or even with ten. At that rate the two thousand eggs that cost $200 will give me two hundred pullets to begin the egg-making next November. That's not enough; we ought to raise just twice that number. I'll spend as much more on eggs to be hatched by the middle of April or the first of May, and then we can reasonably expect to go into next winter with four hundred pullets. They will cost the farm a dollar apiece, but the farm will have four hundred cockerels to sell at fifty cents each, which will materially reduce the cost." "I think you put that pretty low, sir; we ought to raise more than four hundred pullets out of four thousand eggs." "Everything more will be clear gain. I shall be satisfied with four hundred. We must also get at the brooder house. This is the order in which I want the buildings to stand in the chicken lot: first, the incubating house, 10 feet from the south line; 40 feet north of this, the brooder house; and 120 feet north of that, the first hen-house, with runs 100 feet deep. We'll build other houses for the birds as we need them. They are all to face to the south. If the brooder house is 50 feet long and 15 feet wide, it can easily care for the eight hundred chicks, and for half as many more, if we are lucky enough to get them. "We'll have a five-foot walk against the north wall of this house, and a ten-foot space north and south through the centre for heating plant and food. This will leave a space at each side ten by twenty feet, to be cut into five pens four feet by ten, each of which will mother a hundred chicks or more. There must be plenty of glass in the south wall, and we'll use overhead water pipes in each hover. "There's no hurry about the poultry-houses. You can build one in the early summer, and perhaps another in the fall. I expect you to do the carpenter work on these houses. I'll see the mason at once and have him ready by the time you've dug the hole. The incubators will be here in good time, and we want everything ready for work as soon as the eggs arrive." Sam was pleased with his job; it was exactly to his liking. He took real delight in caring for fowls, and he was especially anxious to prove to me that it was not so much lack of knowledge as lack of capital that had caused the downfall of his previous efforts. Sam could not then understand why one man could sell his eggs at thirty-six cents a dozen when his neighbor could get only sixteen; he found out later. The mason's work for the incubator house and the foundation wall for the brooder house cost $290. The lumber bill for these two, including doors and windows, was $464. The five incubators, $65, and the hot-water heater for the brooder house, $68, made the total $897. Add to this $400 paid during two months for eggs, and we have $1297 as the cost of starting the poultry plant. CHAPTER XIX FRIED PORK I had given Nelson this sketch as a guide in working out the plan for the cow barn: Length over all, 130 feet; width, 40 feet. This parallelogram was to be divided lengthwise into three equal spaces, one in the centre for a driveway, and one on each side for the cow platforms and feeding mangers. Twenty feet at the west end of the barn was partitioned off, one corner for a small granary, the other for a kitchen in which the food was to be prepared. These rooms were each thirteen feet by twenty. At the other end of the building, ten feet on each side was given over to hospital purposes,--a lying-in ward ten feet by thirteen being on each side of the driveway. The foundation for this building was to be of stone, and the entire floor of cement; and the walls were to be sealed within and sheeted without, and then covered with ship lap boards, making three thicknesses of boards. It was to be one story high. An east-and-west passage, cutting the main drive at right angles, divided the barn at its middle. At the south end of this passage was a door leading to the dairy-house, which was on the building line 150 feet away. The four spaces made by these passages were each subdivided into ten stalls five feet wide. Two doors on the north and two on the south gave exit for the cows. I had placed my limit at forty milch cows, and I thought this stable would furnish suitable quarters for that number. If I had to rebuild, I would make some modifications. Experience is a good teacher; but the stable has served its purpose, and I cannot quarrel with the results. The chief defect is in the distribution of water. The supply is abundant, but it is let on only in the kitchen, whence it is supplied to the cows by means of a hose or a barrel swung between wheels. [Illustration] In the kitchen are appliances for mixing and cooking food, and for warming the drinking water in winter. Nelson and I discussed the sketch plan given below, and he found some fault with it. I would not be dissuaded from my views, however, and Nelson had to yield. I was as opinionated in those days as a theoretical amateur is apt to be; and it was hard to give up my theories at the suggestion of a person who had only experience to guide him. The best plan, as I have long since learned, is to mix the two and use the solid substance that results from their combination. We located the site of the building, and talked plans until the low sun of January 8th disappeared in the west. Then we adjourned to the sitting room of the farm-house to finish the matter so far as was possible. An hour and a half passed, and we were in fair accord, when Mrs. Thompson came into the room to say that supper was ready, and to ask us to join the men at table before starting homeward. I was glad of the opportunity, for I was curious to know if Mrs. Thompson set a good table. We went into the dining room just as the farm family was ready to sit down. There were ten of us,--two women, six men, Nelson, and myself; and as we sat down, I noticed with pleasure that each had evidently taken some thought of the obligations which a table ought to impose. The table was clothed in clean white, and there was a napkin at each plate. Nelson and I had the only perfectly fresh ones, and this I took as evidence that napkins were usual. The food was all on the table, and was very satisfactory to look at. Thompson sat at one end, and before him, on a great platter, lay two dozen or more pieces of fried salt pork, crisp in their shells of browned flour, and fit for a king. On one side of the platter was a heaping dish of steaming potatoes. A knife had been drawn once around each, just to give it a chance to expand and show mealy white between the gaping circles that covered its bulk. At the other side was a boat of milk gravy, which had followed the pork into the frying-pan and had come forth fit company for the boiled potatoes. I went back forty years at one jump, and said,-- "I now renew my youth. Is there anything better under the sun than fried salt pork and milk gravy? If there is, don't tell me of it, for I have worshipped at this shrine for forty years, and my faith must not be shaken." Such a supper twice or thrice a week would warm the cockles of my old heart; but Polly says, "No modern cook can make these things just right; and if not just right, they are horrid." That is true; it takes an artist or a mother to fry salt pork and make milk gravy. There were other things on the table,--quantities of bread and butter, apple sauce (in a dish that would hold half a peck), stacks of fresh ginger-bread, tea, and great pitchers of milk; but naught could distract my attention from the _pièce de résistance_. Thrice I sent my plate back, and then could do no more. That meal convinced me that I could trust Mrs. Thompson. A woman who could fry salt pork as my mother did, was a woman to be treasured. I left the farm-house at 7, and reached home by 8.45. Polly was not quite pleased with my late hours; she said it did not worry her not to know where I was, but it was annoying. "Can't you have a telephone put into the farm-house? It would be convenient in a lot of ways." "Why, of course; I don't see why it can't be done at once. I'll make application this very night." It was six weeks before we really got a wire to the farm, but after that we wondered how we ever got along without it. CHAPTER XX A RATION FOR PRODUCT Nelson was to commence work on the cow-house at once; at least, the mason was. I left the job as a whole to Nelson, and he made some sort of contract with the mason. The agreement was that I should pay $4260 for the barn complete. The machinery we put into it was very simple,--a water heater and two cauldrons for cooking food. All three cost about $60. Thompson had selected six cows, from those bought with the place, as worth wintering. They were now giving from six to eight quarts each, and were due to come in in April and May. An eight-quart-a-day cow was not much to my liking, but Thompson said that with good care they would do better in the spring. "Four of those cows ought to make fine milkers," he said; "they are built for it,--long bodies, big bags, milk veins that stand out like crooked welts, light shoulders, slender necks, and lean heads. They are young, too; and if you'll dehorn them, I believe they'll make your thoroughbreds hump themselves to keep up with them at the milk pail. You see, these cows never had more than half a chance to show what they could do. They have never been 'fed for milk.' Farmers don't do that much. They think that if a cow doesn't bawl for food or drink she has enough. I suppose she has enough to keep her from starving, and perhaps enough to hold her in fair condition, but not enough to do this and fill the milk pail, too. I read somewhere about a ration for 'maintenance' and one for 'product,' and there was a deal of difference. Most farmers don't pay much attention to these things, and I guess that's one reason why they don't get on faster." "You've got the whole matter down fine in that 'ration for product,' Thompson, and that's what we want on this farm. A ration that will simply keep a cow or a hen in good health leaves no margin for profit. Cows and hens are machines, and we must treat them as such. Crowd in the raw material, and you may look for large results in finished product. The question ought always to be, How much can a cow eat and drink? not, How little can she get on with? Grain and forage are to be turned into milk, and the more of these foods our cows eat, the better we like it. If these machines work imperfectly, we must get rid of them at once and at any price. It will not pay to keep a cow that persistently falls below a high standard. We waste time on her, and the smooth running of the factory is interrupted. I'm going to place a standard on this farm of nine thousand pounds a year for each matured cow; I don't think that too high. If a cow falls much below that amount, she must give place to a better one, for I'm not making this experiment entirely for my health. The standard isn't too high, yet it's enough to give a fine profit. It means at least three hundred and fifty pounds of butter a year, and in this case the butter means at least thirty cents a pound, or more than $100 a year for each cow. This is all profit, if one wishes to figure it by itself, for the skimmed milk will more than pay for the food and care. But why did you say dehorn the cows?" "Well, I notice that a man with a club is almost sure to find some use for it. If he isn't pounding the fence or throwing it at a dog, he's snipping daisies or knocking the heads off bull-thistles. He's always doing something with it just because he has it in his hand. It's the same way with a cow. If she has horns, she'll use them in some way, and they take her mind off her business. No, sir; a cow will do a lot better without horns. There's mighty little to distract her attention when her clubs are gone." "What breeds of cows have you handled, Thompson?" "Not any thoroughbreds that I know of; mostly common kinds and grade Jerseys or Holsteins." "I'm going to put a small herd of thorough bred Holsteins on the place." "Why don't you try thoroughbred Jerseys' They'll give as much butter, and they won't eat more than half as much." "You don't quite catch my idea, Thompson. I want the cow that will eat the most, if she is, at the same time, willing to pay for her food. I mean to raise a lot of food, and I want a home market for it. What comes from the land must go back to it, or it will grow thin. The Holstein will eat more than the Jersey, and, while she may not make more butter, she will give twice as much skimmed milk and furnish more fertilizer to return to the land. Fresh skimmed milk is a food greatly to be prized by the factory-farm man; and when we run at full speed, we shall have three hundred thousand pounds of it to feed. "I have purchased twenty three-year-old Holstein cows, in calf to advanced registry bulls, and they are to be delivered to me March 10. I shall want you to go and fetch them. I also bought a young bull from the same herd, but not from the same breeding. These twenty-one animals will cost, by the time they get here, $2200. I shall give the bull to my neighbor Jackson. He will be proud to have it, and I shall be relieved of the care of it. Be good to your neighbor, Thompson, if by so doing you can increase the effectiveness of the factory farm. We will start the dairy with twenty thoroughbreds and six scrubs. I shall probably buy and sell from time to time; but of one thing I am certain: if a cow cannot make our standard, she goes to the butcher, be she mongrel or thoroughbred. What do you think of Judson as a probable dairyman?" "I shouldn't wonder if he would do first-rate. He's a quiet fellow, and cows like that. He has those roans tagging him all over the place; and if a horse likes a man, it's because he's nice and quiet in his ways. I notice that he can milk a cow quicker than the other men, and it ain't because he don't milk dry--I sneaked after him twice. The cow just gives down for him better than for the others." CHAPTER XXI THE RAZORBACK We have now launched three of the four principal industries of our factory farm. The fourth is perhaps the most important of all, if a single member of a group of mutually dependent industries can have this distinction. There is no question that the farmer's best friend is the hog. He will do more for him and ask less of him than any other animal. All he asks is to be born. That is enough for this non-ruminant quadruped, who can find his living in the earth, the roadside ditch, or the forest, and who, out of a supply of grass, roots, or mast, can furnish ham and bacon to the king's taste and the poor man's maintenance. The half-wild razorback, with never a clutch of corn to his back, gives abundant food to the mountaineer over whose forest he ranges. The cropped or slit ear is the only evidence of human care or human ownership. He lives the life of a wild beast, and in the autumn he dies the death of a wild beast; while his flesh, made rich with juices of acorns, beechnuts, and other sweet masts, nourishes a man whose only exercise of ownership is slaughter. The hog that can make his own living, run like a deer, and drink out of a jug, has done more for the pioneer and the backwoodsman than any other animal. Take this semi-wild beast away from his wild haunts, give him food and care, and he will double his gifts. Add a hundred generations of careful selection, until his form is so changed that it is beyond recognition, and again the product will be doubled. The spirit of swine is not changed by civilization or good breeding; such as it was on that day when the herd "ran down a steep place and was drowned in the sea," such it is to-day. A fixed determination to have its own way dominated the creature then, and a pig-headed desire to be the greatest food-producing machine in the world is its ruling passion now. That the hog has succeeded in this is beyond question; for no other food animal can increase its own weight one hundred and fifty fold in the first eight months of its life. All over the world there is a growing fondness for swine flesh, and the ever increasing supply doesn't outrun the demand. Since the dispersion of the tribes of Israel there has been no persistent effort to depopularize this wonderful food maker. Pig has more often been the food of the poor than of the rich, but now rich and poor alike do it honor. Old Ben Jonson said:-- "Now pig is meat, and a meat that is nourishing and may be desired, and consequently eaten: it may be eaten; yea, very exceedingly well eaten." Hundreds have praised the rasher of ham, and thousands the flitch of bacon; it took the stroke of but one pen to make roast pig classical. The pig of to-day is so unlike his distant progenitor that he would not be recognized; if by any chance he were recognized, it would be only with a grunt of scorn for his unwieldy shape and his unenterprising spirit. Gone are the fleet legs, great head, bulky snout, terrible jaws, warlike tusks, open nostrils, flapping ears, gaunt flanks, and racing sides; and with these has gone everything that told of strength, freedom, and wild life. In their place has come a cuboidal mass, twice as long as it is broad or high, with a place in front for mouth and eyes, and a foolish-looking leg under each corner. A mighty fall from "freedom's lofty heights," but a wonderfully improved machine. The modern hog is to his progenitor as the man with the steam-hammer to the man with the stone-hammer,--infinitely more useful, though not so free. It is not easy to overestimate the value of swine to the general farmer; but to the factory farmer they are indispensable. They furnish a profitable market for much that could not be sold, and they turn this waste material into a surprising lot of money in a marvellously short time. A pig should reach his market before he is nine months old. From the time he is new-born until he is 250 days old, he should gain at least one pound a day, which means five cents, in ordinary times. During this time he has eaten, of things which might possibly have been sold, perhaps five dollars' worth. At 250 days, with a gain of one pound a day, he is worth, one year with another, $12.50. This is putting it too low for my market, but it gives a profit of not less than $6 a head after paying freight and commissions. It is, then, only a question of how many to keep and how to keep them. To answer the first half of this question I would say, Keep just as many as you can keep well. It never pays to keep stock on half rations of food or care, and pigs are not exceptions. In answering the other half of the question, how to keep them, I shall have to go into details of the first building of a piggery at Four Oaks. As in the case of the hens, I determined to start clean. Hogs had been kept on the farm for years, and, so far as I could learn, there had been no epizoötic disease. The swine had had free range most of the time, and the specimens which I bought were healthy and as well grown as could be expected. They were not what I wanted, either in breed or in development, so they had been disposed of, all but two. These I now consigned to the tender care of the butcher, and ordered the sty in which they had been kept to be burned. I had planned to devote lot No. 2 to a piggery. There are five acres in this lot, and I thought it large enough to keep four or five hundred pigs of all sizes in good health and good condition for forcing. Some of the swine, not intended for market, would have more liberty; but close confinement in clean pens and small runs was to be the rule. To crowd hogs in this way, and at the same time to keep them free from disease, would require special vigilance. The ordinary diseases that come from damp and draughts could be fended off by carefully constructed buildings. Cleanliness and wholesome food ought to do much, and isolation should accomplish the rest. I have established a perfect quarantine about my hog lot, and it has never been broken. After the first invoices of swine in the winter and spring of 1896, no hog, young or old, has entered my piggery, save by the way of a sixty-day quarantine in the wood lot, and very few by that way. My pigs are several hundred yards from the public roads, and my neighbor, Jackson, has planted a young orchard on his land to the north of my hog lots, and permits no hogs in this planting. I have thus secured practical isolation. I have rarely sent swine to fairs or stock shows. In the few instances in which I have broken this rule I have sold the stock shown, never returning it to Four Oaks. Isolation, cleanliness, good food, good water, and a constant supply of ashes, charcoal, and salt, have kept my herd (thus far) from those dreadfully fatal diseases that destroy so many swine. If I can keep the specific micro-organism that causes hog-cholera off my place, I need not fear the disease. The same is true of swine plague. These diseases are of bacterial origin, and are communicated by the transference of bacteria from the infected to the non-infected. I propose to keep my healthy herd as far removed as possible from all sources of infection. I have carried these precautions so far that I am often scoffed at. I require my swineherd, when returning from a fair or a stock show, to take a full bath and to disinfect his clothing before stepping into the pig-house. This may seem an unnecessary refinement in precautionary measures, but I do not think so. It has served me well: no case of cholera or plague has shown itself at Four Oaks. What would I do if disease should appear? I do not know. I think, however, that I should fight it as hard as possible at close quarters, killing the seriously ill, and burning all bodies. After the scourge had passed I would dispose of all stock as best I could, and then burn the entire plant (fences and all), plough deep, cover the land white as snow with lime, leave it until spring, plough again, and sow to oats. During the following summer I would rebuild my plant and start afresh. A whole year would be lost, and some good buildings, but I think it would pay in the end. There would be no safety for the herd while a single colony of cholera or plague bacteria was harbored on the place; and while neither might, for years, appear in virulent form, yet there would be constant small losses and constant anxiety. One cannot afford either of these annoyances, and it is usually wise to take radical measures. If we apply sound business rules to farm management, we shall at least deserve success. I chose to keep thoroughbred swine for the reason that all the standard varieties are reasonably certain to breed true to a type which, in each breed, is as near pork-making perfection as the widest experience can make it. Most of our good hogs are bred from English or Chinese stock. Modifications by climate, care, crossing, and wise selection have procured a number of excellent varieties, which are distinct enough to warrant separate names, but which are nearly equal as pork-makers. In color one could choose between black, black and white, and white and red. I wanted white swine; not because they are better than swine of other colors, for I do not think they are, but for æsthetic reasons. My poultry was to be white, and white predominated in my cows; why should not my swine be white also,--or as white as their habits would permit? I am told on all sides that the black hog is the hardiest, that it fattens easier, and that for these reasons it is a better all-round hog. This may be true, but I am content with my white ones. When some neighbor takes a better bunch of hogs to market, or gets a better price for them, than I do, I may be persuaded to think as he talks. Thus far I have sold close to the top of the market, and my hogs are never left over. Perhaps my hogs eat more than those of my neighbors. I hope they do, for they weigh more, on a "weight for age" scale, and I do not think they are "air crammed," for "you cannot fatten capons so." I am more than satisfied with my Chester Whites. They have given me a fine profit each year, and I should be ungrateful if I did not speak them fair. I wished to get the hog industry started on a liberal scale, and scoured the country, by letter, for the necessary animals. I found it difficult to get just what I wanted. Perhaps I wanted too much. This is what I asked for: A registered young sow due to farrow her second litter in March or April. By dint of much correspondence and a considerable outlay of money, I finally secured nineteen animals that answered the requirements. I got them in twos and threes from scattered sources, and they cost an average price of $31 per head delivered at Four Oaks. A young boar, bred in the purple, cost $27. My foundation herd of Chester Whites thus cost me $614,--too much for an economical start; but, again, I was in a hurry. The hogs began to arrive in February, and were put into temporary quarters pending the building of the house for the brood sows, which house must now be described. It was a low building, 150 by 30 feet, divided by a six-foot alley-way into halves, each 150 by 12 feet. Each of these halves was again divided into fifteen pens 10 by 12 feet, with a 10 by 30 run for each pen. This was the general plan for the brood-house for thirty sows. At the east end of this house was a room 15 by 30 feet for cooking food and storing supplies for a few days. The building was of wood with plank floors. It stands there yet, and has answered its purpose; but it was never quite satisfactory. I wanted cement floors and a more sightly building. I shall probably replace it next year. When it was built the weather was unfavorable for laying cement, and I did not wish to wait for a more clement season. The house and the fences for the runs cost $2100. On the 6th of March Thompson called me to one of the temporary pens and showed me a family of the prettiest new-born animals in the world,--a fine litter of no less than nine new-farrowed pigs. I felt that the fourth industry was fairly launched, and that we could now work and wait. CHAPTER XXII THE OLD ORCHARD March was unusually raw even for that uncooked month. The sun had to cross the line before it could make much impression on the deep frost. After the 15th, however, we began to find evidences that things were stirring below ground. The red and yellow willows took on brighter colors, the bark of the dogwood assumed a higher tone, and the catkins and lilac buds began to swell with the pride of new sap. If our old orchard was to be pruned while dormant, it must be done at once. Thompson and I spent five days of hard work among the trees, cutting out all dead limbs, crossing branches, and suckers. We called the orchard old, but it was so only by comparison, for it was not out of its teens; and I did not wish to deal harshly with it. A good many unusual things were being done for it in a short time, and it was not wise to carry any one of them too far. It had been fertilized and ploughed in the fall, and now it was to be pruned and sprayed,--all innovations. The trees were well grown and thrifty. They had given a fair crop of fruit last year, and they were well worth considerable attention. They could not hereafter be cultivated, for they were all in the soiling lot for the cows, but they could be pruned and sprayed. The lack of cultivation would be compensated by the fertilization incident to a feeding lot. The trees would give shade and comfort to the cows, while the cows fed and nourished the trees,--a fair exchange. The crop of the year before, though half the apples were stung, had brought nearly $300. With better care, and consequently better fruit, we could count on still better results, for the varieties were excellent (Baldwins, Jonathans, and Rome Beauties); so we trimmed carefully and burned the rubbish. This precaution, especially in the case of dead limbs, is important, for most dead wood in young trees is due to disease, often infectious, and should be burned at once. I bought a spraying-pump (for $13), which was fitted to a sound oil barrel, and we were ready to make the first attack on fungus disease with the Bordeaux mixture. This was done by Johnson and Anderson late in the month. Another vigorous spraying with the same mixture when the buds were swelling, another when the flower petals were falling, and still another when the fruit was as large as peas (the last two sprayings had Paris green added to the Bordeaux mixture), and the fight against apple enemies was ended for that year. Thompson had gone for the cows. He left March 9, and returned with the beauties on Friday the 17th. They were all my fancy had painted them,--large, gentle-eyed, with black and white hair over soft butter-yellow skin, and all the points that distinguish these marvellous milk-machines. They were bestowed as needs must until the cow barn was completed. One of them had dropped a bull calf two days before leaving the home farm. The calf had been left, and the mother was in an uncomfortable condition, with a greatly distended udder and milk streaming from her four teats, though Thompson had relieved her thrice while _en route_. I was greatly pleased with the cows, but must not spend time on them now, for things are happening in my factory faster than I can tell of them. Johnson had built some primitive hotbeds for early vegetables out of old lumber and oiled muslin. He had filled them with refuse from the horse stable and had sown his seeds. CHAPTER XXIII THE FIRST HATCH On February 3 the incubator lamps were lighted under the first invoice of one thousand eggs. The incubating cellar was to Sam's liking, and he felt confident that three weeks of strict attention to temperature, moisture, and the turning of eggs, would bring results beyond my expectations. After the seventh day, on which he had tested or candled the eggs, he was willing to promise almost anything in the way of a hatch, up to seventy-five or eighty per cent. In the intervals of attendance on the incubators he was hard at work on the brooder-house, which must be ready for its first occupants by the 25th. Everything went smoothly until the 18th. That morning Sam met me with a long face. "Something went wrong with one of my lamps last night," said he. "I looked at them at ten o'clock and they were all right, but at six this morning one of the thermometers was registering 122°, and the whole batch was cooked." "Not the whole thousand, Sam!" "No, but 170 fertile eggs, and that spoils a twenty-dollar bill and a lot of good time. What in the name of the black man ever got into that lamp of mine is more than I know. It's just my luck!" "It's everybody's luck who tries to raise chickens by wholesale, and we must copper it. Don't be downed by the first accident, Sam; keep fighting and you'll win out." The brooder-house was ready when the first chicks picked the shells on the 24th, and within thirty-six hours we had 503 little white balls of fluff to transfer from the four incubators to the brooder-house. We put about a hundred together in each of five brooders, fed them cut oats and wheat with a little coarse corn meal and all the fresh milk they could drink, and they throve mightily. The incubators were filled again on the 26th, and from that hatch we got 552 chicks. On the 21st of March they were again filled, and on the 13th of April we had 477 more to add to the colony in the brooder-house. For the last time we started the lamps April 15th, and on the 6th of May we closed the incubating cellar and found that 2109 chicks had been hatched from the 4000 eggs. The last hatch was the best of all, giving 607. I don't think we have ever had as good results since, though to tell the truth I have not attempted to keep an exact count of eggs incubated. My opinion is that fifty per cent is a very good average hatch, and that one should not expect more. In September, when the young birds were separated, the census report was 723 pullets and 764 cockerels, showing an infant mortality of 622, or twenty-nine per cent. The accidents and vicissitudes of early chickenhood are serious matters to the unmothered chick, and they must not be overlooked by the breeder who figures his profits on paper. After the first year I kept no tabs on the chickens hatched; my desire was to add each year 600 pullets to my flock, and after the third season to dispose of as many hens. It doesn't pay to keep hens that are more than two and a half years old. I have kept from 1200 to 1600 laying hens for the past six years. I do not know what it costs to feed one or all of them, but I do know what moneys I have received for eggs, young cockerels, and old hens, and I am satisfied. There is a big profit in keeping hens for eggs if the conditions are right and the industry is followed, in a businesslike way, in connection with other lines of business; that is, in a factory farm. If one had to devote his whole time to the care of his plant, and were obliged to buy almost every morsel of food which the fowls ate, and if his market were distant and not of the best, I doubt of great success; but with food at the lowest and product at the highest, you cannot help making good money. I do not think I have paid for food used for my fowls in any one year more than $500; grits, shells, meat meal, and oil meal will cover the list. I do not wish to induce any man or woman to enter this business on account of the glowing statements which these pages contain. I am ideally situated. I am near one of the best markets for fine food; I can sell all the eggs my hens will lay at high prices; food costs the minimum, for it comes from my own farm; I utilize skim-milk, the by-product from another profitable industry, to great advantage; and I had enough money to carry me safely to the time of product. In other words, I could build my factory before I needed to look to it for revenue. I do not claim that this is the only way, but I do claim that it is the way for the fore-handed middle-aged man who wishes to change from city to country life without financial loss. Younger people with less means can accomplish the same results, but they must offset money by time. The principle of the factory farm will hold as well with the one as with the other. To intensify farming is the only way to get the fat of the land. The nations of the old world have nearly reached their limit in food production. They are purchasers in the open market. This country must be that market; and it behooves us to look to it that the market be well stocked. There is land enough now and to spare, but will it be so fifty or a hundred years hence? Our arid lands will be made fertile by irrigation, but they will add only a small percentage to the amount already in quasi-cultivation. Our future food supplies must be drawn largely from the six million farms now under fences. These farms must be made to yield fourfold their present product, or they will fall short, not only of the demands made upon them, but also of their possibilities. That is why I preach the gospel of intensive farming, for grain, hay, market, and factory farm alike. I will put the chickens out of the way for the present, referring to them from time to time and indicating their general management, the cost of their houses and food, and the amount of money received for eggs and fowls. I do not think my plant would win the approval of fanciers, and it is not in all ways up to date; but it is clean, healthy, and commodious, and the birds attend as strictly to business as a reasonable owner could wish. I shall be glad to show it to any one interested enough to search it out, and to go into the details of the business and show how I have been able to make it so remunerative. Sam is with me no longer. For three years he did good service and saved money, and the lurid nose grew dim. There is, however, a limit to human endurance. Like victims of other forms of circular insanity, the dipsomaniac completes his cycle in an uncertain period and falls upon bad times. For a month before we parted company I saw signs of relapse in Sam. He was loquacious at times, at other times morose. He talked about going into business for himself, and his nose took on new color. I labored with him, but to no purpose; the spirit of unrest was upon him, and it had to work its own. I held him firm long enough to secure another man, and then we parted, he to do business for himself, I to get on as best I could. Sam painted his nose and raised chickens and other things until his savings had flown; then he got a position with a woman who runs a broiler plant, and for two years he has given good service. He will probably continue in ways of well-doing until the next cycle is complete, when the beacon light will blaze afresh and he will follow it on to the rocks. Such a man is more to be pitied than condemned, for his anchor is sure to drag at times. CHAPTER XXIV THE HOLSTEIN MILK MACHINE During the month of March the teams hauled more gravel. They also distributed the manure that had been purchased in the fall for mulching the trees. While the ground was still frozen this mulch was placed near the trees, to be used as soon as the sun had warmed the earth. The mound of dirt at the base of each tree was of course levelled down before this dressing was applied. I never afterward purchased stable or stock-yard manure, though I could often have used it to advantage; for I did not think it safe to purchase this kind of fertilizer for a farm where large numbers of animals are kept. The danger from infection is too great. Large quantities of barnyard manure were furnished yearly out of my own pits, and I supplemented it with a good deal of the commercial variety. I try to turn back to the land each year more than I take from it, but I do not dare to go to a stock-yard for any part of my supply. It was not until I had mentally established a quarantine for my hogs that I realized the danger from those six carloads of manure; and I promised myself then that no such breach of quarantine should again occur. The cows arrived on St. Patrick's Day. Our herd was then composed of the twenty Holstein heifers (coming three years old), and six of the best of the common cows purchased with the farm. Within forty days the herd was increased by the addition of twenty-three calves. Twenty-five were born, but two were dead. Of this number, eighteen were Holsteins eligible for registration, ten heifers, and eight bulls. Each calf was taken from its mother on the third day and fed warm skim-milk from a patent feeder three times a day, all it would drink. When three weeks old, seven of the Holstein calves and the five from the common cows were sent to market. They brought $5.25 each above the expense of selling, or $63 for the bunch. The ten Holstein heifer calves were of course held; and one bull calf, which had a double cross of Pieterje 2d and Pauline Paul, and which seemed an unusually fair specimen, was kept for further development. The cow barn was finished about April 1st, and shortly after that the herd was established in permanent quarters. As the dairy-house was unfinished, and there was no convenient way of disposing of the milk which now flowed in abundance, I bought a separator (for $200) and sent the cream to a factory, using the fresh skim-milk for the calves and young pigs and chickens. From March 22, when I began to sell, until May 10, when my dairy-house was in working order, I received $203 for cream. Thompson had sold milk from the old cows, from August to December, 1895, to the amount of $132. This item should have been entered on the credit side for the last year, but as it was not, we will make a note of it here. These are the only sales of milk and cream made from Four Oaks since I bought the land. The milk supply from my herd started out at a tremendous rate, considering the age of the cows. It must be borne in mind that none of the thoroughbreds was within three years of her (probable) best; yet they were doing nobly, one going as high as fifty-two pounds of milk in one day, and none falling below thirty-six as a maximum. The common cows did nearly as well at first, four of them giving a maximum of thirty-two pounds each in twenty-four hours. It was easy to see the difference between the two sorts, however. The old ones had reached maturity and were doing the best they could; the others were just beginning to manufacture milk, and were building and regulating their machinery for that purpose. The Holsteins, though young, were much larger than the old cows, and were enormous feeders. A third or a half more food passed their great, coarse mouths than their less aristocratic neighbors could be coaxed to eat. Food, of course, is the one thing that will make milk; other things being equal, then the cow that consumes the most food will produce the most milk. This is the secret of the Holsteins' wonderful capacity for assimilating enormous quantities of food without retaining it under their hides in the shape of fat. They have been bred for centuries with the milk product in view, and they have become notable machines for that purpose. They are not the cows for people to keep who have to buy feed in a high market, for they are not easy keepers in any sense; but for the farmer who raises a lot of grain and roughage which should be fed at his own door, they are ideal. They will eat much and return much. As to feeding for milk, I have followed nearly the same plan through my whole experiment. I keep an abundance of roughage, usually shredded corn, before the cows all the time. When it has been picked over moderately well, it is thrown out for bedding, and fresh fodder is put in its place. The finer forages, timothy, red-top, clover, alfalfa, and oat straw, are always cut fine, wetted, and mixed with grain before feeding. This food is given three times a day in such quantities as will be eaten in forty-five minutes. Green forage takes the place of dry in season, and fresh vegetables are served three times a week in winter. The grain ration is about as follows: By weight, corn and cob meal, three parts; oatmeal, three parts; bran, three parts; gluten meal, two parts; linseed meal, one part. The cash outlay for a ton of this mixture is about $12; this price, of course, does not include corn and oats, furnished by the farm. A Holstein cow can digest fifteen pounds of this grain a day. This means about two and a half tons a year, with a cash outlay of $30 per annum for each head. Fresh water is always given four times a day, and much of the time the cows have ready access to it. In cold weather the water is warmed to about 65° F. The cows are let out in a twenty-acre field for exercise every day, except in case of severe storms. They are fed forage in the open when the weather is fine and insects are not troublesome, and they sometimes sleep in the open on hot nights; but by far the largest part of their time is spent in their own stalls away from chilling winds and biting flies. In their stables they are treated much as fine horses are,--well bedded, well groomed, and well cared for in all ways. A quiet, darkened stable conduces rumination. Loud talking, shouting, or laughing are not looked upon with favor in our cow barn. On the other hand, continuous sounds, if at all melodious, seem to soothe the animals and increase the milk flow. Judson, who has proved to be our best herdsman, has a low croon in his mouth all the time. It can hardly be called a tune, though I believe he has faith in it, but it has a fetching way with the herd. I have never known him to be quick, sharp, or loud with the cows. When things go wrong, the crooning ceases. When it is resumed, all is well in the cow world. The other man, French, who is an excellent milker, and who stands well with the cows, has a half hiss, half whistle, such as English stable-boys use, except that it runs up and down five notes and is lost at each end. The cows like it and seem to admire French for his accomplishment even more than Judson, for they follow his movements with evident pleasure expressed in their great ox eyes. Rigid rules of cleanliness are carried out in every detail with the greatest exactness. The house and the animals are cared for all the time as if on inspection. Before milking, the udders are carefully brushed and washed, and the milker covers himself entirely with a clean apron. As each cow is milked, the milker hangs the pail on a spring balance and registers the exact weight on a blackboard. He then carries the milk through the door that leads to the dairy-house, and pours it into a tank on wheels. This ends his responsibility. The dairymaid is then in charge. CHAPTER XXV THE DAIRYMAID Of course I had trouble in getting a dairymaid. I was not looking for the bouncing, buxom, red-cheeked, arms-akimbo, butter-colored-hair sort. I didn't care whether she were red-cheeked and bouncing or not, but for obvious reasons I didn't want her hair to be butter-colored. What I did want was a woman who understood creamery processes, and who could and would make the very giltest of gilt-edged butter. I commenced looking for my paragon in January. I interviewed applicants of both sexes and all nationalities, but there was none perfect; no, not one. I was not exactly discouraged, but I certainly began to grow anxious as the time approached when I should need my dairymaid, and need her badly. One day, while looking over the _Rural New Yorker_ (I was weaned on that paper), I saw the following advertisement. "Wanted: Employment on a dairy-farm by a married couple who understand the business." If this were true, these two persons were just what I needed; but, was it true? I had tried a score of greater promise and had not found one that would do. Was I to flush two at once, and would they fall to my gun? A small town in one of the Middle Western states was given as the address, and I wrote at once. My letter was strong in requirements, and asked for particulars as to experience, age, references, and nationality. The reply came promptly, and was more to my liking than any I had received before. Name, French; Americans, newly married, twenty-eight and twenty-six respectively; experience four and three years in creamery and dairy work; references, good; the couple wished to work together to save money to start a dairy of their own. I was pleased with the letter, which was an unusual one to come from native-born Americans. Our people do not often hunt in couples after this manner. I telegraphed them to come to the city at once. It was late in April when I first saw the Frenches. The man was tall and raw-boned, but good-looking, with a frank manner that inspired confidence. He was a farmer's son with a fair education, who had saved a little money, and had married his wife out of hand lest some one else should carry her off while he was building the nest for her. "I took her when I could get her," he said, "and would have done it with a two-dollar bill in my pocket rather than have taken chances." The woman was worthy of such an extreme measure, for she looked capable of caring for both. She was a fine pattern of a country girl, with a head full of good sense, and very useful-looking hands and arms. Her face was good to look upon; it showed strength of character and a definite object in life. She said she understood the creamery processes in all their niceties, and that she could make butter good enough for Queen Victoria. The proposition offered by this young couple was by far the best I had received, and I closed with them at once. I agreed to pay each $25 a month to start with, and explained my plan of an increasing wage of $1 a month for each period of six months' service. They thought they ought to have $30 level. I thought so, too, if they were as good as they promised. But I had a fondness for my increasing scale, and I held to it. These people were skilled laborers, and were worth more to begin with than ordinary farm hands. That is why I gave them $25 a month from the start. Six hundred dollars a year for a man and wife, with no expense except for clothing, is good pay. They can easily put away $400 out of it, and it doesn't take long to get fore-handed. I think the Frenches have invested $500 a year, on an average, since they came to Four Oaks. It is now time to get at the dairy-house, since the dairy and the dairymaid are both in evidence. The house was to be on the building line, and both Polly and I thought it should have attractive features. We decided to make it of dark red paving brick. It was to be eighteen feet by thirty, with two rooms on the ground. The first, or south room, ten feet by eighteen, was fitted for storing fruit, and afforded a stairway to the rooms above, which were four in number besides the bath. The larger room was of course the butter factory, and was equipped with up-to-date appliances,--aërator, Pasteurizer, cooler, separator, Babcock tester, swing churn, butter-worker, and so on. The house was to have steep gables and projecting eaves, with a window in each gable, and two dormer windows in each roof. The walls were to be plastered, and the ground floor was to be cement. It cost $1375. As motive power for the churn and separator, a two-sheep-power treadmill has proved entirely satisfactory. It is worked by two sturdy wethers who are harbored in a pleasant house and run, close to the power-house, and who pay for their food by the sweat of their brows and the wool from their backs. They do not appear to dislike the "demnition grind," which lasts but an hour twice a day; they go without reluctance to the tramp that leads nowhere, and the futile journey which would seem foolish to anything wiser than a sheep. This sheep-power is one of the curios of the place. My grand-girls never lose their interest in it, and it has been photographed and sketched more times than there are fingers and toes on the sheep. The expenditure for equipment, from separator to sheep, was $354. I made an arrangement with a fancy grocer in the city to furnish him thirty pounds, more or less, of fresh (unsalted) butter, six days in the week, at thirty-three cents a pound, I to pay express charges. I bought six butter-carriers with ice compartments for $3.75 each, $23 in all, and arranged with the express company to deliver my packages to the grocer for thirty cents each. The butter netted me thirty-two cents a pound that year, or about $60 a week. In July I bought four thoroughbred Holsteins, four years old, in fresh milk, and in October, six more, at an average price of $120 a head,--$1200 in all. These reënforcements made it possible for me to keep my contract with the middleman, and often to exceed it. The dairy industry was now fairly launched and in working order. It had cost, not to be exact, $7000, and it was reasonably sure to bring back to the farm about $60 a week in cash, besides furnishing butter for the family and an immense amount of skim-milk and butter-milk to feed to the young animals on the place. CHAPTER XXVI LITTLE PIGS By April 1st all my sows had farrowed. There was much variation in the number of pigs in these nineteen litters. One noble mother gave me thirteen, two of which promptly died. Three others farrowed eleven each, and so down to one ungrateful mother who contributed but five to the industry at Four Oaks. The average, however, was good; 154 pigs on April 10th were all that a halfway reasonable factory man could expect. These youngsters were left with their mothers until eight weeks old; then they were put, in bunches of thirty, into the real hog-house, which was by that time completed. It was 200 feet long and 50 feet wide, with a 10-foot passageway through the length of it. On either side were 10 pens 20 feet by 20, each connected with a run 20 feet by 120. The house stood on a platform or bed of cement 90 by 200 feet, which formed the floor of the house and extended 20 feet outside of each wall, to secure cleanliness and a dry feeding-place in the open. The cement floor was expensive ($1120 as first cost), but I think it has paid for itself several times over in health and comfort to the herd. The structure on this floor was of the simplest; a double wall only five feet high at the sides, shingled roof, broken at the ridge to admit windows, and strong partitions. It cost $3100. As in the brood-sow house, there is a kitchen at the west end. The 150 little pigs made but a small showing in this great house, which was intended to shelter six hundred of all sizes, from the eight-weeks-old baby pig to the nine-months-old three-hundred-pounder ready for market. Pigs destined for market never leave this house until ripe for killing. At six or seven months a few are chosen to remain on the farm and keep up its traditions; but the great number live their ephemeral lives of eight months luxuriously, even opulently, until they have made the ham and bacon which, poor things, they cannot save, and then pass into the pork barrel or the smoke-house without a sigh of regret. They toil not, neither do they spin; but they have a place in the world's economy, and they fit it perfectly. So long as one animal must eat another, the man animal should thank the hog animal for his generosity. Now that my big hog-house seemed so empty, I would gladly have sent into the highways and byways to buy young stock to fill it; but I dared not break my quarantine. I could easily have picked up one hundred or even two hundred new-weaned pigs, within six or eight miles of my place, at about $1.50 each, and they would have grown into fat profit by fall; but I would not take a risk that might bear ill fruit. I had slight depressions of spirits when I visited my piggery during that summer; but I chirked up a little in the fall, when the brood sows again made good. But more of that anon. CHAPTER XXVII WORK ON THE HOME FORTY April and May made amends for the rudeness of March, and the ploughs were early afield. Thompson, Zeb, Johnson, and sometimes Anderson, followed the furrows, first in 10 and 11, and lastly in 13. Number 9 had a fair clover sod, and was not disturbed. We ploughed in all about 114 acres, but we did not subsoil. We spent twenty days ploughing and as many more in fitting the ground for seed. The weather was unusually warm for the season, and there was plenty of rain. By the middle of May, oats were showing green in Nos. 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13,--sixty-two acres. The corn was well planted in 15 and the west three-quarters of 14,--eighty-two acres. The other ten acres in the young orchard was planted to fodder corn, sown in drills so that it could be cultivated in one direction. The ten-acre orchard on the south side of the home lot was used for potatoes, sugar beets, cabbages, turnips, etc., to furnish a winter supply of vegetables for the stock. The outlook for alfalfa was not bright. In the early spring we fertilized it again, using five hundred pounds to the acre, though it seemed like a conspicuous waste. The warm rains and days of April and May brought a fine crop of weeds; and about the middle of May I turned Anderson loose in the fields with a scythe, and he mowed down everything in sight. After that things soon began to look better in the alfalfa fields. As the season was favorable, we were able to cut a crop of over a ton to the acre early in July, and nearly as much in the latter part of August. We cut forty tons from these twenty acres within a year from seeding, but I suspect that was unusual luck. I had used thirteen hundred pounds of commercial fertilizer to the acre, and the season was very favorable for the growth of the plant. I have since cut these fields three times each year, with an average yield of five tons to the acre for the whole crop. I like alfalfa, both as green and as dry forage. When we use it green, we let it lie in swath for twenty-four hours, that it may wilt thoroughly before feeding. It is then fit food for hens, hogs, and, in limited quantities, for cows, and is much relished. When used dry, it is always cut fine and mixed with ground grains. In this shape it is fed liberally to hens and hogs, and also to milch cows; for the latter it forms half of the cut-food ration. While the crops are growing, we will find time to note the changes on the home lot. Nearly in front of the farm-house, and fifty yards distant, was a space well fitted for the kitchen garden. We marked off a plat two hundred feet by three hundred, about one and a half acres, carted a lot of manure on it, and ploughed it as deep as the subsoiler would reach. This was done as soon as the frost permitted. We expected this garden to supply vegetables and small fruits for the whole colony at Four Oaks. An acre and a half can be made exceedingly productive if properly managed. Along the sides of this garden we planted two rows of currant and gooseberry bushes, six feet between rows, and the plants four feet apart in the rows. The ends of the plat were left open for convenience in horse cultivation. Ten feet outside these rows of bush fruit was planted a line of quince trees, thirty on each side, and twenty feet beyond these a row of cherry trees, twenty in each row. Near the west boundary of the home lot, and north of the lane that enters it, I planted two acres of dwarf pear trees--Bartlett and Duchess,--three hundred trees to the acre. I also planted six hundred plum trees--Abundance, Wickson, and Gold--in the chicken runs on lot 4. After May 1, when he was relieved from his farm duties, Johnson had charge of the planting and also of the gardening, and he took up his special work with energy and pleasure. The drives on the home lot were slightly rounded with ploughs and scraper, and then covered with gravel. The open slope intended for the lawn was now to be treated. It comprised about ten acres, irregular in form and surface, and would require a good deal of work to whip it into shape. A lawn need not be perfectly graded,--in fact, natural inequalities with dips and rises are much more attractive; but we had to take out the asperities. We ploughed it thoroughly, removed all stumps and stones, levelled and sloped it as much as pleased Polly, harrowed it twice a week until late August, sowed it heavily to grass seed, rolled it, and left it. Polly had the house in her mind's eye. She held repeated conversations with Nelson, and was as full of plans and secrets as she could hold. By agreement, she was to have a free hand to the extent of $15,000 for the house and the carriage barn. I never really examined the plans, though I saw the blue prints of what appeared to be a large house with a driving entrance on the east and a great wide porch along the whole south side. I did not know until it was nearly finished how large, convenient, and comfortable it was to be. A hall, a great living-room, the dining room, a small reception room, and an office, bedroom, and bath for me, were all on the ground floor, besides a huge wing for the kitchen and other useful offices. Above stairs there was room for the family and a goodly number of friends. We had agreed that the house should be simple in all ways, with no hard wood except floors, and no ornamentation except paint and paper. It must be larger than our needs, for we looked forward to delightful visits from many friends. We were to have more leisure than ever before for social life, and we desired to make the most of our opportunities. A country house is by all odds the finest place to entertain friends and to be entertained by them. They come on invitation, not as a matter of form, and they stay long enough to put by questions of weather, clothes, and servant-girls, and to get right down to good old-fashioned visiting. Real heart-to-heart talks are everyday occurrences in country visits, while they are exceptional in city calls. We meant to make much of our friends at Four Oaks, and to have them make much of us. We have discovered new values even in old friends, since we began to live with them, weeks at a time, under the same roof. Their interests are ours, and our plans are warmly taken up by them. There is nothing like it among the turmoils and interruptions of town life, and the older we grow the more we need this sort of rest among our friends. The guest book at the farm will show very few weeks, in the past six years, when friends haven't been with us, and Polly and I feel that the pleasure we have received from this source ought to be placed on the credit side of the farm ledger. Another reason for a company house was that Jack and Jane would shortly be out of school. It was not at all in accord with our plan that they should miss any pleasure by our change. Indeed, we hoped that the change would be to their liking and to their advantage. CHAPTER XXVIII DISCOUNTING THE MARKET We broke ground for the house late in May, and Nelson said that we should be in it by Thanksgiving Day. Soon after the plans were settled Polly informed me that she should not spend much money on the stable. "Can't do it," she said, "and do what I ought to on the house. I will give you room for six horses; the rest, if you have more, must go to the farm barn. I cannot spend more than $1100 or $1200 on the barn." Polly was boss of this department, and I was content to let her have her way. She had already mulcted me to the extent of $436 for trees, plants, and shrubs which were even then grouped on the lawn after a fashion that pleased her. I need not go into the details of the lawn planting, the flower garden, the pergola, and so forth. I have a suspicion that Polly has in mind a full account of the "fight for the home forty," in a form greatly better than I could give it, and it is only fair that she should tell her own story. I am not the only one who admires her landscape, her flower gardens, and her woodcraft. Many others do honor to her tastes and to the evidence of thought which the home lot shows. She disclaims great credit, for she says, "One has only to live with a place to find out what it needs." As I look back to the beginning of my experiment, I see only one bit of good luck that attended it. Building material was cheap during the months in which I had to build so much. Nothing else specially favored me, while in one respect my experiment was poorly timed. The price of pork was unusually low. For three years, from 1896, the price of hogs never reached $5 per hundred pounds in our market,--a thing unprecedented for thirty years. I never sold below three and a half cents, but the showing would have been wonderfully bettered could I have added another cent or two per pound for all the pork I fattened. The average price for the past twenty-five years is well above five cents a pound for choice lots. Corn and all other foods were also cheap; but this made little difference with me, because I was not a seller of grain. In 1896 I was, however, a buyer of both corn and oats. In September of that year corn sold on 'Change at 19-1/2 cents a bushel, and oats at 14-3/4. These prices were so much below the food value of these grains that I was tempted to buy. I sent a cash order to a commission house for five thousand bushels of each. I stored this grain in my granary, against the time of need, at a total expense of $1850,--21 cents a bushel for corn and 16 for oats. I had storage room and to spare, and I knew that I could get more than a third of a cent out of each pound of corn, and more than half a cent out of each pound of oats. I recalled the story of a man named Joseph who did some corn business in Egypt a good many years ago, much in this line, and who did well in the transaction. There was no dream of fat kine in my case; but I knew something of the values of grains, and it did not take a reader of riddles to show me that when I could buy cheaper than I could raise, it was a good time to purchase. As I said once before, there have been no serious crop failures at Four Oaks,--indeed, we can show better than an average yield each year; but this extra corn in my cribs has given me confidence in following my plan of very liberal feeding. With this grain on hand I was able to cut twenty acres of oats in Nos. 10 and 11 for forage. This was done when the grain was in the milk, and I secured about sixty tons of excellent hay, much loved by horses. We got from No. 9 a little less than twelve tons of clover,--alfalfa furnished forty tons; and there was nearly twenty tons of old hay left over from that originally purchased. With all this forage, good of its kind, there was, however, no timothy or red top, which is by all odds the best hay for horses. I determined to remedy this lack before another year. As soon as the oats were off lots 10 and 11, they were ploughed and crossed with the disk harrow. From then until September 1, these fields were harrowed each week in half lap, so that by the time we were ready to seed them they were in excellent condition and free from weeds. About September 1 they were sown to timothy and red top, fifteen pounds each to the acre, top-dressed with five hundred pounds of fertilizer, harrowed once more, rolled, and left until spring, when another dose of fertilizer was used. I wished to establish twenty acres of timothy and as much alfalfa, to furnish the hay supply for the farm. With one hundred tons of alfalfa and sixty of timothy, which I could reasonably expect, I could get on splendidly. From the first I have practised feeding my hay crop for immediate returns. The land receives five hundred pounds of fertilizer per acre when it is sown, a like amount again in the spring, and, as soon as a crop is cut, three hundred pounds an acre more. This usually gives a second crop of timothy about September 1, if the season is at all favorable. The alfalfa is cut at least three times, and for each cutting it receives three hundred pounds of plant food per acre. In the course of a year I spend from $10 to $12 an acre for my grass land. In return I get from each acre of timothy, in two cuttings, about three and a half tons; worth, at an average selling price, $12 a ton. The alfalfa yields nearly five tons per acre, and has a feeding value of $10 a ton. I have sold timothy hay a few times, but I feel half ashamed to say so, for it is against my view of justice to the land. I find oat hay cheaper to raise than timothy, and, as it is quite as well liked by the horses, I have been tempted to turn a part of my timothy crop into money directly from the field. CHAPTER XXIX FROM CITY TO COUNTRY In early July I went through my young orchard, which had been cut back so ruthlessly the previous autumn, and carefully planned a head for each tree. Quite a bunch of sprouts had started from near the top of each stub, and were growing luxuriantly. Out of each bunch I selected three or four to form the head; the rest were rubbed off or cut out with a sharp knife or pruning shears. It surprised me to see what a growth some of these sprouts had made; sixteen or eighteen inches was not uncommon. Big roots and big bodies were pushing great quantities of sap toward the tops. Of course I bought farm machinery during this first season,--mower, reaper, corn reaper, shredder, and so on. In October I took account of expenditures for machinery, grass seed, and fertilizer, and found that I had invested $833. I had also, at an expense of $850, built a large shed or tool-house for farm implements. It is one of the rules at Four Oaks to grease and house all tools when not in actual use. I believe the observation of this rule has paid for the shed. In October 1896 I had a good offer for my town house, and accepted it. I had purchased the property eleven years before for $22,000, but, as it was in bad condition, I had at once spent $9000 on it and the stable. I sold it for $34,000, with the understanding that I could occupy it for the balance of the year if I wished. After selling the house, I calculated the cost of the elementary necessities, food and shelter, which I had been willing to pay during many years of residence in the city. The record ran about like this:-- Interest at 5% on house valued at $34,000 $1700.00 Yearly taxes on same 340.00 Insurance 80.00 Fuel and light 250.00 Wages for one man and three women 1200.00 Street sprinkling, watchman, etc. 90.00 Food, including water, ice, etc. 1550.00 ________ Making a total of $5210.00 It cost me $100 a week to shelter and feed my family in the city. This, of course, took no account of personal expenses,--travel, sight-seeing, clothing, books, gifts, or the thousand and one things which enter more or less prominently into the everyday life of the family. If the farm was to furnish food and shelter for us in the future, it would be no more than fair to credit it with some portion of this expenditure, which was to cease when we left the city home. What portion of it could be justly credited to the farm was to be decided by comparative comforts after a year of experience. I did not plan our exodus for the sake of economy, or because I found it necessary to retrench; our rate of living was no higher than we were willing and able to afford. Our object was to change occupation and mode of life without financial loss, and without moulting a single comfort. We wished to end our days close to the land, and we hoped to prove that this could be done with both grace and profit. I had no desire to lose touch with the city, and there was no necessity for doing so. Four Oaks is less than an hour from the heart of town. I could leave it, spend two or three hours in town, and be back in time for luncheon without special effort; and Polly would think nothing of a shopping trip and friends home with her to dinner. The people of Exeter were nearly all city people who were so fortunate as not to be slaves to long hours. They were rich by work or by inheritance, and they gracefully accepted the _otium cum dignitate_ which this condition permitted. Social life was at its best in Exeter, and many of its people were old acquaintances of ours. A noted country club spread its broad acres within two miles of our door, and I had been favorably posted for membership. It did not look as though we should be thrust entirely upon our own resources in the country; but at the worst we had resources within our own walls and fences that would fend off all but the most violent attacks of ennui. We were both keenly interested in the experiment. Nothing that happened on the farm went unchallenged. The milk product for the day was a thing of interest; the egg count could not go unnoted; a hatch of chickens must be seen before they left the incubator; a litter of new-born pigs must be admired; horses and cows were forever doing things which they should or should not do; men and maids had griefs and joys to share with mistress or Headman; flowers were blooming, trees were leafing, a robin had built in the black oak, a gopher was tunnelling the rose bed,--a thousand things, full of interest, were happening every day. As a place where things the most unexpected do happen, recommend me to a quiet farm. But we were not to depend entirely upon outside things for diversion. Books we had galore, and we both loved them. Many a charming evening have I spent, sometimes alone, more often with two or three congenial friends, listening to Polly's reading. This is one of her most delightful accomplishments. Her friends never tire of her voice, and her voice never tires of her friends. We all grow lazy when she is about; but there are worse things than indolence. No, we did not mean to drop out of anything worth while; but we were pretty well provisioned against a siege, if inclement weather or some other accident should lock us up at the farm. To keep still better hold of the city, I suggested to Tom and Kate that they should keep open house for us, or any part of us, whenever we were inclined to take advantage of their hospitality. This would give us city refuge after late functions of all sorts. The plan has worked admirably. I devote $1200 a year out of the $5200 of food-and-shelter money to the support of our city shelter at Kate's house, and the balance, $4000, is entered at the end of each year on the credit side of the farm ledger. Nor do I think this in any way unjust. We do not expect to get things for nothing, and we do not wish to. If the things we pay for now are as valuable as those we paid for six or eight years ago, we ought not to find fault with an equal price. I have repeatedly polled the family on this question, and we all agree that we have lost nothing by the change, and that we have gained a great deal in several ways. Our friends are of like opinion; and I am therefore justified in crediting Four Oaks with a considerable sum for food and shelter. We have bettered our condition without foregoing anything, and without increasing our expenses. That is enough. CHAPTER XXX AUTUMN RECKONING We harvested the crops in the autumn of 1896, and were thankful for the bountiful yield. Nearly sixteen hundred bushels of oats and twenty-seven hundred bushels of corn made a proud showing in the granary, when added to its previous stock. The corn fodder, shredded by our own men and machine, made the great forage barn look like an overflowing cornucopia, and the only extra expense attending the harvest was $31 paid for threshing the oats. Three important items of food are consumed on the farm that have to be purchased each year, and as there is not much fluctuation in the price paid, we may as well settle the per capita rate for the milch cows and hogs for once and all. At each year's end we can then easily find the cash outlay for the herds by multiplying the number of stock by the cost of keeping one. My Holstein cows consume a trifle less than three tons of grain each per year,--about fifteen pounds a day. Taking the ration for four cows as a matter of convenience, we have: corn and cob meal, three tons, and oatmeal, three tons, both kinds raised and ground on the farm, and not charged in this account; wheat bran, three tons at $18, $54; gluten meal, two tons at $24, $48; oil meal, one ton, $26; total cash outlay for four cows, $128, or $32 per head. This estimate is, however, about $2 too liberal. We will, hereafter, charge each milch cow $30, and will also charge each hog fattened on the place $1 for shorts and middlings consumed. This is not exact, but it is near enough, and it greatly simplifies accounts. As I kept twenty-six cows ten months, and ten more for an average of four and a half months, the feeding for 1896 would be equivalent to one year for thirty cows, or $900. To this add $120 for swine food and $25 for grits and oyster shells for the chickens, and we have $1045 paid for food for stock. Shoeing the horses for the year and repairs to machinery cost $157. The purchased food for eight employees for twelve months and for two additional ones for eight months, amounted to $734. The wage account, including $50 extra to Thompson, was $2358. A second hen-house, a duplicate of the first, was built before October. It was intended that each house should accommodate four hundred laying hens. We have now on the place five of these houses; but only two of them, besides the incubator and the brooder-house, were built in 1896. As offset to the heavy expenditure of this year, I had not much to show. Seven hundred cockerels were sold in November for $342. In October the pullets began laying in desultory fashion, and by November they had settled down to business; and that quarter they gave me 703 dozen eggs to sell. As these eggs were marketed within twenty-four hours, and under a guarantee, I had no difficulty in getting thirty cents a dozen, net. November eggs brought $211, and the December out-put, $252. I sold 600 bushels of potatoes for $150, and the apples from 150 of the old trees (which, by the way, were greatly improved this year) brought $450 on the trees. The cows did well. In the thirty-three weeks from May 12 to December 31, I sold a little more than 6600 pounds of butter, which netted me $2127. We had 122 young hogs to sell in December. They had been crowded as fast as possible to make good weight, and they went to market at an average of 290 pounds a head. The price was low, but I got the top of the market,--$3.55 a hundred, which amounted to $1170 after paying charges. I had reserved twenty-five of the most likely young sows to stay on the farm, and had transferred eight to the village butcher, who was to return them in the shape of two barrels of salt pork, thirty-two smoked hams and shoulders, and a lot of bacon. The old sows farrowed again in September and early October, and we went into the winter with 162 young pigs. I get these details out of the way now in order to turn to the family and the social side of life at Four Oaks. CHAPTER XXXI THE CHILDREN The house did not progress as fast as Nelson had promised, and it was likely to be well toward Christmas before we could occupy it. As the days shortened, Polly and I found them crowded with interests. Life at Four Oaks was to mean such a radical change that we could not help speculating about its influence upon us and upon the children. Would it be satisfactory to us and to them? Or should we find after a year or two of experiment that we had been mistaken in believing that we could live happier lives in the country than in town? A year and a half of outdoor life and freedom from professional responsibilities had wrought a great change in me. I could now eat and sleep like a hired man, and it seemed preposterous to claim that I was going to the country for my health. My medical adviser, however, insisted that I had not gotten far enough away from the cause of my breakdown, and that it would be unwise for me to take up work again for at least another year. In my own mind there was a fixed opinion that I should never take it up again. I loved it dearly; but I had given long, hard service to it, and felt that I had earned the right to freedom from its exacting demands. I have never lost interest in this, the noblest of professions, but I had done my share, and was now willing to watch the work of others. In my mind there was no doubt about the desirability of the change. I have always loved the thought of country life, and now that my thoughts were taking material shape, I was keen to push on. Polly looked toward the untrammelled life we hoped to lead with as great pleasure as I. But how about the children? Would it appeal to them with the same force as to us? The children have thus far been kept in the background. I wanted to start my factory farm and to get through with most of its dull details before introducing them to the reader, lest I should be diverted from the business to the domestic, or social, proposition. The farm is laid by for the winter, and most of the details needed for a just comprehension of our experiment have been given. From this time on we will deal chiefly with results. We will watch the out-put from the factory, and commend or find fault as the case may deserve. The social side of life is quite as important as the commercial, for though we gain money, if we lose happiness, what profit have we? Let us study the children to see what chances for happiness and good fellowship lie in them. Kate is our first-born. She is a bright, beautiful woman of five-and-twenty, who has had a husband these six years, one daughter for four years, and, wonderful to relate, another daughter for two years. She is quick and practical, with strong opinions of her own, prompt with advice and just as prompt with aid; a woman with a temper, but a friend to tie to in time of stress. She has the education of a good school, and what is infinitely better, the cultivation of an observing mind. She is quick with tongue and pen, but her quickness is so tempered by unquestioned friendliness that it fastens people to her as with a cord. She overflows with interests of every description, but she is never too busy to listen sympathetically to a child or a friend. She is the practical member of the family, and we rarely do much out of the ordinary without first talking it over with Kate. Tom Hamilton, her husband, is a young man who is getting on in the world. He is clever in his profession, and sure to succeed beyond the success of most men. He is quiet in manner, but he seems to have a way of managing his quick, handsome wife, which is something of a surprise to me, and to her also, I fancy. They are congenial and happy, and their children are beings to adore. Tom and Kate are to live in town. They are too young for the joys of country life, and must needs drag on as they are, loved and admired by a host of friends. They can, and will, however, spend much time at Four Oaks; and I need not say they approved our plans. Jack is our second. He was a junior at Yale, and I am shy of saying much about him lest I be accused of partiality. Enough to say that he is tall, blond, handsome, and that he has gentle, winning ways that draw the love of men and women. He is a dreamer of dreams, but he has a sturdy drop of Puritan blood in his veins that makes him strong in conviction and brave in action. Jack has never caused me an hour of anxiety, and I was ever proud to see him in any company. Concerning Jane, I must be pardoned in advance for a father's favoritism. She is my youngest, and to me she seems all that a father could wish. Of fair height and well moulded, her physique is perfect. Good health and a happy life had set the stamp of superb womanhood upon her eighteen years. Any effort to describe her would be vain and unsatisfactory. Suffice it to say that she is a pure blonde, with eyes, hair, and skin just to my liking. She is quiet and shy in manner, deliberate in speech, sensitive beyond measure, wise in intuitive judgment, clever in history and literature, but always a little in doubt as to the result of putting seven and eight together, and not unreasonably dominated by the rules of orthography. She is fond of outdoor life, in love with horses and dogs, and withal very much of a home girl. Every one makes much of Jane, and she is not spoiled, but rather improved by it. She was in her second year at Farmington, and, like all Farmington students, she cared more for girls than for boys. These were the children whom I was to transport from the city, where they were born, to the quiet life at Four Oaks. After carefully taking their measures, I felt little hesitation about making the change. They, of course, had known of the plan, and had often been to the farm; but they were still to find out what it really meant to live there. A saddle horse and dogs galore would square me with Jane, beyond question; but what about Jack? Time must decide that. His plan of life was not yet formed, and we could afford to wait. We did not have much time in which to weigh these matters, for the Christmas holidays were near, and the youngsters would soon be home. We planned to be settled in the new house when they arrived. CHAPTER XXXII THE HOME-COMING In arranging to move my establishment I was in a quandary as to what it was best to do for a coachman. Lars had been with me fifteen years. He came a green Swedish lad, developed into a first-class coachman, married a nice girl--and for twelve years he and his wife lived happily in the rooms above my stable. Two boys were born to them, and these lads were now ten and twelve years of age. Shortly after I bought the farm Lars was so unfortunate as to lose his good wife, and he and the boys were left forlorn. A relative came and gave them such care as she could, but the mother and wife was missed beyond remedy. In his depression Lars took to drink, and things began to go wrong in the stable. He was not often drunk, but he was much of the time under the influence of alcohol, and consequently not reliable. I had done my best for the poor fellow, and he took my lectures and chidings in the way they were intended, and, indeed, he tried hard to break loose from the one bad habit, but with no good results. His evil friends had such strong hold on him that they could and would lead him astray whenever there was opportunity. Polly and I had many talks about this matter. She was growing timid under his driving, and yet she was attached to him for long and faithful service. "Let's chance it," she said. "If we get him away from these people who lead him astray, he may brace up and become a man again." "But what about the boys, Polly?" said I. "We ought to be able to find something for the boys to do on the farm, and they can go to school at Exeter. Can't they drive the butter-cart out each morning and home after school? They're smart chaps, you know, and used to doing things." Polly had found a way, and I was heartily glad of it, for I did not feel like giving up my hold on the man and the boys. Lars was glad of the chance to make good again, and he willingly agreed to go. He was to receive $23 a month. This was less than he was getting in the city, but it was the wage which we were paying that year at the farm, and he was content; for the boys were each to receive $5 a month, and to be sent to school eight months a year for three years. This matter arranged, we began to plan for the moving. I had five horses in my stable,--a span of blacks for the carriage and three single drivers. Besides the horses, harness, and equipment, there was a large carriage, a brougham, a Goddard phæton, a runabout, and a cart. I exchanged the brougham and the Goddard for a station wagon and a park phæton, as more suitable for country use. The barn equipment was all sent in one caravan, Thompson and Zeb coming into town to help Lars drive out. Our lares and penates were sent by freight on December 17. Polly had managed to coax another thousand dollars out of me for things for the house; and these, with the furniture from our old home, made a brave showing when we gathered around the big fire in the living room, December 22, for our first night in the country. Tom, Kate, and the grand-girls were with us to spend the holidays, and so, too, was the lady whom we call Laura. I shall not try to say much about Laura. She was a somewhat recent friend. How we ever came to know her well, was half a mystery; and how we ever got on before we knew her well, was a whole one. Roaring fires and shaded lamps gave an air of homelike grace to our new house, and we decided that we would never economize in either wood or oil; they seemed to stir the home spirit more than ever did coal or electricity. The day had been a busy one for the ladies, but they were pleased with results as they looked around the well-ordered house and saw the work of their hands. Before separating for the night, Kate said:-- "I'm going to town to-morrow, and I'll pick up Jane and Jack in time to take the four o'clock train out. Papa will meet us at the station, and Momee will greet us at the doorstep. Make an illumination, Momee, and we will carry them by storm. Tom will have to take a later train, but he will be here in time for dinner." The afternoon of the 23d, the children came, and there was no failure in Kate's plan. The youngsters were delighted with everything. Jane said:-- "I always wanted to live on a farm. I can have a saddle horse now, and keep as many dogs as I like, can't I, Dad?" "You shall have the horse, and the dogs, too, when you come to stay." "Daddy," said Jack, "this will be great for you. Let me finish at an agricultural college, so that I can be of some practical help." "Not on your life, my son! What your daddy doesn't know about farming wouldn't spoil a cup of tea! While you are at home I will give you daily instruction in this most wholesome and independent business, which will be of incalculable benefit to you, and which, I am frank to say, you cannot get in any agricultural college. College, indeed! I have spent thousands of hours in dreaming and planning what a farm should be like! Do you suppose I am going to let these visions become contaminated by practical knowledge? Not by a long way! I have, in the silent watches of the night, reduced the art to mathematical exactness, and I can show you the figures. Don't talk to me about colleges!" After supper we took the children through the house. Every part was inspected, and many were the expressions of pleasure and admiration. They were delighted with their rooms, and apparently with everything else. We finally quieted down in front of the open fire and discussed plans for the holidays. The children decided that it must be a house party. "Florence Marcy is with an aunt for whom she doesn't particularly care, and Minnie will just jump at the chance of spending a week in the country," said Jane. "You can invite three girls, and Jack can have three men. Of course Jessie Gordon will be here. We will drive over in the morning and make sure of her." "Jack, whom will you ask? Get some good men out here, won't you?" "The best in the world, little sister, and you will have to keep a sharp lookout or you will lose your heart to one of them. Frank Howard will count it a lark. He has stuck to the "business" as faithfully as if he were not heir to it, and he will come sure to-morrow night. Dear old Phil--my many years' chum--will come because I ask him. These two are all right, and we can count on them. The other one is Jim Jarvis,--the finest man in college." "Tell us about him, Jack." "Jarvis's father lives in Montana, and has a lot of gold mines and other things to keep him busy. He doesn't have time to pay much attention to his son, who is growing up after his own fashion. Jim's mother is dead, and he has neither brother nor sister,--nothing but money and beauty and health and strength and courage and sense and the stanchest heart that ever lifted waistcoat! He has been on the eleven three years. They want him in the boat, but he'll not have it; says it's not good work for a man. He's in the first division, well toward the front, too, and in the best society. He's taken a fancy to me, and I'm dead gone on him. He's the man for you to shun, little woman, unless you wish to be led captive." "There are others, Jack, so don't worry about me. But do you think you can secure this paragon?" "Not a doubt of it! I'll wire him in the morning, and he'll be here as soon as steam can bring him; he's my best chum, you know." This would make our party complete. We were all happy and pleased, and the evening passed before we knew it. CHAPTER XXXIII CHRISTMAS EVE The next day was a busy one for all of us. Polly and Jane drove to the Gordons and secured Miss Jessie, and then Jane went to town to fetch her other friends. Jack went with her, after having telegraphed to Jim Jarvis. They all came home by mid-afternoon, just as a message came from Jarvis: "Will be on deck at six." Florence Marcy and Minnie Henderson were former neighbors and schoolmates of Jane's. They were fine girls to look at and bright girls to talk with; blondes, eighteen, high-headed, full of life, and great girls for a house party. Phil and Frank were good specimens of their kinds. Frank was a little below medium height, slight, blond, vivacious to a degree, full of fun, and the most industrious talker within miles; he would "stir things up" at a funeral. Phil Stone was tall, slender, dark, quiet, well-dressed, a good dancer, and a very agreeable fellow in the corner of the room, where his low musical voice was most effective. Jessie Gordon came at five o'clock. We were all very fond of Jessie, and who could help it? She was tall (considerably above the average height), slender, straight as an arrow, graceful in repose and in motion. She carried herself like a queen, with a proud kind of shyness that became her well. Her head was small and well set on a slender neck, her hair dark, luxurious, wavy, and growing low over a broad forehead, her eyes soft brown, shaded by heavy brows and lashes. She had a Grecian nose, and her mouth was a shade too wide, but it was guarded by singularly perfect and sensitive lips. Her chin was pronounced enough to give the impression of firmness; indeed, save for the soft eyes and sensitive mouth, firmness predominated. She was not a great talker, yet every one loved to listen to her. She laughed with her eyes and lips, but rarely with her voice. She enjoyed intensely, and could, therefore, suffer intensely. She was a dear girl in every way. All was now ready for the début of Jack's paragon. Jack had driven to the station to fetch him, and presently the sound of wheels on the gravel drive announced the arrival of the last guest. I went into the hall to meet the men. "Daddy, I want you to know my chum, Jim Jarvis,--the finest all-round son of old Eli. Jarvis, this is my daddy,--the finest father that ever had son!" "I'm right glad to meet you, Mr. Jarvis; your renown has preceded you." "I fear, Doctor, it has _exceeded_ me as well. Jack is not to be trusted on all subjects. But, indeed, I thank you for your hospitality; it was a godsend to me." As we entered the living room, Polly came forward and I presented Jarvis to her. "You are more than welcome, Mr. Jarvis! Jack's 'best friend' is certain of a warm corner at our fireside." "Madam, I find no word of thanks, but I _do_ thank you. I have envied Jack his home letters and the evidences of mother care more than anything else,--and God knows there are enough other things to envy him for. I have no mother, and my father is too busy to pay much attention to me. I wish you would adopt me; I'll try to rival Jack in all that is dutiful." She did adopt him then and there, for who could refuse such a son! Brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, a frank, rugged, clean-shaven face, features strong enough to excite criticism and good enough to bear it; broad-shouldered, deep-chested, strong in arm and limb, he carried his six feet of manhood like an Apollo in tweeds. He was introduced to the girls,--the men he knew,--but he was not so quick in his speeches to them. Our Hercules was only mildly conscious of his merits, and was evidently relieved when Jack hurried him off to his room to dress for dinner. When he was fairly out of hearing there was a chorus of comments. The girls all declaimed him handsome, and the boys said:-- "That isn't the best of it,--he's a _trump_! Wait till you know him." Jane was too loyal to Jack to admit that his friend was any handsomer or in any way a finer fellow than her brother. "Who said he was?" said Frank, "Jack Williams is out and out the finest man I know. We were sizing him up by such fellows as Phil and me." "Jack's the most popular man at Yale," said Phil, "but he's too modest to know it; Jarvis will tell you so. He thinks it's a great snap to have Jack for his chum." These things were music in my ears, for I was quite willing to agree with the boys, and the mother's eyes were full of joy as she led the way to the dining room. That was a jolly meal. Nothing was said that could be remembered, and yet we all talked a great deal and laughed a great deal more. City, country, farm, college, and seminary were touched with merry jests. Light wit provoked heavy laughter, and every one was the better for it. It was nine o'clock before we left the table. I heard Jarvis say:-- "Miss Jane, I count it very unkind of Jack not to have let me go to Farmington with him last term. He used to talk of his 'little sister' as though she were a miss in short dresses. Jack is a deep and treacherous fellow!" "Rather say, a very prudent brother," said Jane. "However, you may come to the Elm Tree Inn in the spring term, if Jack will let you." "I'll work him all winter," was Jarvis's reply. CHAPTER XXXIV CHRISTMAS Christmas light was slow in coming. There was a hush in the air as if the earth were padded so that even the footsteps of Nature might not be heard. Out of my window I saw that a great fall of snow had come in the night. The whole landscape was covered by fleecy down--soft and white as it used to be when I first saw it on the hills of New England. No wind had moved it; it lay as it fell, like a white mantle thrown lightly over the world. Great feathery flakes filled the air and gently descended upon the earth, like that beautiful Spirit that made the plains of Judea bright two thousand years ago. It seemed a fitting emblem of that nature which covered the unloveliness of the world by His own beauty, and changed the dark spots of earth to pure white. It was an ideal Christmas morning,--clean and beautiful. Such a wealth of purity was in the air that all the world was clothed with it. The earth accepted the beneficence of the skies, and the trees bent in thankfulness for their beautiful covering. It was a morning to make one thoughtful,--to make one thankful, too, for home and friends and country, and a future that could be earned, where the white folds of usefulness and purity would cover man's inheritance of selfishness and passion. For an hour I watched the big flakes fall; and, as I watched, I dreamed the dream of peace for all the world. The brazen trumpet of war was a thing of the past. The white dove of peace had built her nest in the cannon's mouth and stopped its awful roar. The federation of the world was secured by universal intelligence and community of interest. Envy and selfishness and hypocrisy, and evil doing and evil speaking, were deeply covered by the snowy mantle that brought "peace on earth and good will to men." My dream was not dispelled by any rude awakening. As the house threw off the fetters of the night and gradually struggled into activity, it was in such a fresh and loving manner and with such thoughtful solicitude for each member of our world, that I walked in my dream all day. The snow fell rapidly till noon, and then the sun came forth from the veil of clouds and cast its southern rays across the white expanse with an effect that drew exclamations of delight from all who had eyes to see. No wind stirred the air, but ever and anon a bright avalanche would slide from bough or bush, sparkle and gleam as the sun caught it, and then sink gently into the deep lap spread below. The bough would spring as if to catch its beautiful load, and, failing in this, would throw up its head and try to look unconcerned,--though quite evidently conscious of its bereavement. The appearance of the sun brought signs of life and activity. The men improvised a snow-plough, the strong horses floundering in front of it made roads and paths through the two feet of feathers that hid the world. After lunch, the young people went for a frolic in the snow. Two hours later the shaking of garments and stamping of feet gave evidence of the return of the party. Stepping into the hall I was at once surrounded by the handsomest troupe of Esquimaux that ever invaded the temperate zone. The snow clung lovingly to their wet clothing and would not be shaken off; their cheeks were flushed, their eyes bright, and their voices pitched at an out-of-doors key. "Away to your rooms, every one of you, and get into dry clothes," said I. "Don't dare show yourselves until the dinner bell rings. I'll send each of you a hot negus,--it's a prescription and must be taken; I'm a tyrant when professional." We saw nothing more of them until dinner. The young ladies came in white, with their maiden shoulders losing nothing by contact with their snow-white gowns. All but Miss Jessie, whose dress was a pearl velvet, buttoned close to her slender throat. I loved this style best, but I could never believe that anything could be prettier than Jane's white shoulders. The table was loaded, as Christmas tables should be, and, as I asked God's blessing on it and us, the thought came that the answer had preceded the request and that we were blessed in unusual degree. After dinner the rugs in the great room were rolled up, and the young folks danced to Laura's music, which could inspire unwilling feet. But there were none such that night. Tom and Kate led off in the newest and most fantastic waltz, others followed, and Polly and I were the only spectators. An hour of this, and then we gathered around the hearth to hear Polly read "The Christmas Carol." No one reads like Polly. Her low, soft voice seems never to know fatigue, but runs on like a musical brook. When the reading was over, a hush of satisfied enjoyment had taken possession of us all. It was not broken when Miss Jessie turned to the piano and sang that glorious hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." Jack was close beside her, his blue eyes shining with an appreciation of which any woman might be proud, and his baritone in perfect harmony with her rich contralto. The young ladies took the higher part, Frank added his tenor, and even Phil and I leaned heavily on Jarvis's deep bass. My effort was of short duration; a lump gathered in my throat that caused me to turn away. Polly was searching fruitlessly for something to dry the tears that overran her eyes, and I was able to lend her aid, but the accommodation was of the nature of a "call loan." As we separated for the night, Jarvis said: "Lady mother, this day has been a revelation to me. If I live a hundred years, I shall never forget it." I was slow in bringing it to a close. As I loitered in my room, I heard the shuffling of slippered feet in the hall, and a timid knock at Polly's door. It was quickly opened for Jane and Jessie, and I heard sobbing voices say:-- "Momee, we want to cry on your bed," and, "Oh, Mrs. Williams, why can't all days be like this!" Polly's voice was low and indistinct, but I know that it carried strong and loving counsel; and, as I turned to my pillow, I was still dreaming the dream of the morning. CHAPTER XXXV WE CLOSE THE BOOKS FOR '96 The morning after Christmas broke clear, with a wind from the south that promised to make quick work of the snow. The young people were engaged for the evening, as indeed for most evenings, in the hospitable village, and they spent the day on the farm as pleased them best. There were many things to interest city-bred folk on a place like Four Oaks. Everything was new to them, and they wanted to see the workings of the factory farm in all its detail. They made friends with the men who had charge of the stock, and spent much time in the stables. Polly and I saw them occasionally, but they did not need much attention from us. We have never found it necessary to entertain our friends on the farm. They seem to do that for themselves. We simply live our lives with them, and they live theirs with us. This works well both for the guests and for the hosts. The great event of the holiday week was a New Year Eve dance at the Country Club. Every member was expected to appear in person or by proxy, as this was the greatest of many functions of the year. Sunday was warm and sloppy, and little could be done out of doors. Part of the household were for church, and the rest lounged until luncheon; then Polly read "Sonny" until twilight, and Laura played strange music in the half-dark. The next day the men went into town to look about, and to lunch with some college chums. As they would not return until five, the ladies had the day to themselves. They read a little, slept a little, and talked much, and were glad when five o'clock and the men came. Tea was so hot and fragrant, the house so cosey, and the girls so pretty, that Jack said:-- "What chumps we men were to waste the whole day in town!" "And what do you expect of men, Mr. Jack?" said Jessie. "Yes, I know, the old story of pearls and swine, but there are pearls and pearls." "Do you mean that there are more pearls than swine, Mr. Jack? For, if you do, I will take issue with you." "If I am a swine, I will be an æsthetic one and wear the pearl that comes my way," said Jack, looking steadily into the eyes of the high-headed girl. "Will you have one lump or two?" "One," said Jack, as he took his cup. The last day of the year came all too quickly for both young and old at Four Oaks. Polly and I went into hiding in the office in the afternoon to make up the accounts for the year. As Polly had spent the larger lump sum, I could face her with greater boldness than on the previous occasion. Here is an excerpt from the farm ledger:-- Expended in 1896 $43,309 Interest on previous account 2,200 _______ Total $45,509 Receipts 5,105 _______ Net expense $40,404 Previous account 44,000 _______ $84,404 The farm owes me a little more than $84,000. "Not so good as I hoped, and not so bad as I feared," said Polly. "We will win out all right, Mr. Headman, though it does seem a lot of money." "Like the Irishman's pig," quoth I. "Pat said, 'It didn't weigh nearly as much as I expected, but I never thought it would.'" There was little to depress us in the past, and nothing in the present, so we joined the young people for the dance at the Club. CHAPTER XXXVI OUR FRIENDS After our guests had departed, to college or school or home, the house was left almost deserted. We did not shut it up, however. Fires were bright on all hearths, and lamps were kept burning. We did not mean to lose the cheeriness of the house, though much of the family had departed. For a wonder, the days did not seem lonesome. After the fist break was over, we did not find time to think of our solitude, and as the weeks passed we wondered what new wings had caused them to fly so swiftly. Each day had its interests of work or study or social function. Stormy days and unbroken evenings were given to reading. We consumed many books, both old and new, and we were not forgotten by our friends. The dull days of winter did not drag; indeed, they were accepted with real pleasure. Our lives had hitherto been too much filled with the hurry and bustle inseparable from the fashionable existence-struggle of a large city to permit us to settle down with quiet nerves to the real happiness of home. So much of enjoyment accompanies and depends upon tranquillity of mind, that we are apt to miss half of it in the turmoil of work-strife and social-strife that fill the best years of most men and women. It is a pity that all overwrought people cannot have a chance to relax their nerves, and to learn the possibilities of happiness that are within them. Most of the jars and bickerings of domestic life, most of the mental and moral obliquities, depend upon threadbare nerves, either inherited or uncovered by friction incident to getting on in the world. I never understood the comforts that follow in the wake of a quiet, unambitious life, until such a life was forced upon me. When you discover these comforts for the first time, you marvel that you have foregone them so long, and are fain to recommend them to all the world. Polly and I had gotten on reasonably well up to this time; but before we became conscious of any change, we found ourselves drawn closer together by a multitude of small interests common to both. After twenty-five years of married life it will compensate any man to take a little time from business and worry that he may become acquainted with his wife. A few fortunate men do this early in life, and they draw compound interest on the investment; but most of us feel the cares of life so keenly that we take them home with us to show in our faces and to sit at our tables and to blight the growth of that cheerful intercourse which perpetuates love and cements friendship in the home as well as in the world. There were no serious cares nowadays, and time passed so smoothly at Four Oaks that we wondered at the picnic life that had fallen to us. The village of Exeter was alive in all things social. The city families who had farms or country places near the village were so fond of them that they rarely closed them for more than two or three months, and these months were as likely to come in summer as in winter. Our friends the Gordons made Homestead Farm their permanent residence, though they kept open house in town. Beyond the Gordons' was the modest home of an Irish baronet, Sir Thomas O'Hara. Sir Tom was a bachelor of sixty. He had run through two fortunes (as became an Irish baronet) in the racing field and at Homburg, and as a young man he had lived ten years at Limmer's tavern in London. When not in training to ride his own steeple-chasers, he was putting up his hands against any man in England who would face him for a few friendly rounds. He was not always victorious, either in the field, before the green cloth, or in the ring; but he was always a kind-hearted gentleman who would divide his last crown with friend or foe, and who could accept a beating with grace and unruffled spirit. He could never ride below the welter weight, and after a few years he outgrew this weight and was forced to give up the least expensive of his diversions. The green cloth now received more of his attention, and, as a matter of course, of his money. Things went badly with him, and he began to see the end of his second fortune before he called a halt. Bad times in Ireland seriously reduced his rents, and he was forced to dispose of his salable estates. Then he came to this country in the hope of recouping himself, and to get away from the fast set that surrounded him. "I can resist anything but temptation," this warm-hearted Irishman would say; and that was the keynote of his character. Though Sir Tom was only sixty years old, he looked seventy. He was much broken in health by gout and the fast pace of his early manhood. But his spirit was untouched by misfortune, disease, or hardship. His courage was as good as when he served as a subaltern of the Guards in the trenches before Sebastopol, or presented his body as a mark for the sledge-hammer blows of Tom Sayers, just for diversion. His constitution must have been superb, for even in his decrepitude he was good to look upon: five feet ten, fine body, slightly given to rotundity, legs a little shrunken in the shanks, but giving unmistakable signs of what they had been ("not lost, but gone before," as he would say of them), hands and feet aristocratic in form and well cared for, and a fine head set on broad shoulders. His hair was thin, and he parted it with great exactness in the middle. His eyes were brown, large, and of exceeding softness. His nose was straight in spite of many a contusion, and his whole expression was that of a high-bred gentleman somewhat the worse for wear. Sir Tom was perfectly groomed when he came forth from his chamber, which was usually about ten in the morning. Those of us who had access to his rooms often wondered how he ever got out of them looking so immaculate, for they were a perfectly impassable jungle to the stranger. Such a tangle of trunks, hand-bags, rug bundles, clothes, boots, pajamas, newspapers, scrap-books, B. & S. bottles, could hardly be found anywhere else in the world. He had a fondness for newspaper clippings, and had trunks of them, sorted into bundles or pasted in scrap-books. Old volumes of Bell's _Life_ filled more than one trunk, and on one occasion when he and I were spending a long evening together, in celebration of his recent recovery from an attack of gout, and when he had done more than usual justice to the B. & S. bottles and less than usual justice to his gout, he showed me the record of a long-gone year in which this same Bell's _Life_ called him the "first among the gentlemen riders in the United Kingdom," and proved this assertion by showing how he had won most of the great steeple-chases in England and Ireland, riding his own horses. This was the nearest approach to boasting that ever came to my knowledge in the years of our close friendship, and I would never have thought of it as such had I not seen that he regarded it as unwarrantable self-praise. I have never known a more simple, kind-hearted, agreeable, and lovable gentleman than this broken-down sporting man and gambler. I loved him as a brother; and though he has passed out of my life, I still love the memory of his genial face, his courtesy, his unselfish friendship, more than words can express. A tender heart and a gentle spirit found strange housing in a body given over to reckless prodigality. The combination, tempered by time and exhaustion, showed nothing that was not lovable; and it is scant praise to say that Sir Thomas was much to me. He was just as acceptable to Polly. No woman could fail to appreciate the homage which he never failed to show to the wife and mother. Many winter evenings at Four Oaks were made brighter by his presence, and we grew to expect him at least three nights each week. His plate was placed on our round table these nights, and he rarely failed to use it; and the B. & S. bottles were near at hand, and his favorite brand of cigars within easy reach. "I light a 'baccy' by your permission, Mrs. Williams," and a courtly bow accompanied the words. At 9.30 William came to bring Sir Tom home. The leave-taking was always formal with Polly, but with me it was, "Ta-ta, Williams--see you later," and our guest would hobble out on his poor crippled feet, waving his hand gallantly, with a voice as cheery as a boy's. Another family whom I wish the reader to know well is the Kyrles. For more than twenty-five years we have known no joys or sorrows which they did not feel, and no interests that touched them have failed to leave a mark on us. We could not have been more intimate or better friends had the closest blood tie united us. The acquaintance of young married couples had grown into a friendship that was bearing its best fruit at a time when best fruit was most appreciated. We do not consider a pleasure more than half complete until we have told it to Will and Frances Kyrle, for their delight doubles our happiness. They were among the earliest of my patients, and they are easily first among our friends. I have watched more than a half-dozen of their children from infancy to adult life, and this alone would be a strong bond; but in addition to this is the fact that the whole family, from father to youngest child, possess in a wonderful degree that subtle sense of true camaraderie which is as rare as it is charming. The Kyrles lived in the city, but they were foot-free, and we could count on having them often. Four Oaks was to be, if we had our way, a country home for them almost as much as for us. Indeed, one of the rooms was called the Kyrles' room, and they came to it at will. Enough about our friends. We must go back to the farm interests, which are, indeed, the only excuse for this history. CHAPTER XXXVII THE HEADMAN'S JOB Our life at Four Oaks began in earnest in January, 1897. Even during the winter months there was no lack of employment and interest for the Headman. I breakfasted at seven, and from that time until noon I was as busy as if I were working for $20 a month. The master's eye is worth more than his hand in a factory like mine. My men were, and are, an unusual lot,--intelligent, sober, and willing,--but they, like others, are apt to fall into routine ways, and thereby to miss points which an observing proprietor would not overlook. The cows, for instance, were all fed the same ration. Fifteen pounds of mixed grains was none too much for the big Holstein milk-makers, who were yielding well and looking in perfect health; but the common cows were taking on too much flesh and falling off in milk. I at once changed the ration for these six cows by leaving out the corn entirely and substituting oat straw for alfalfa in the cut feed. The change brought good results in five of the cows; the other one did not pick up in her milk, and after a reasonable trial I sold her. The herd was doing excellently for mid-winter,--the yield amounted to a daily average of 840 pounds throughout the month, and I was able to make good my contract with the middleman. I could see breakers ahead, however, and it behooved me to make ready for them. I decided to buy ten more thoroughbreds in new milk, if I could find them. I wrote to the people from whom I had purchased the first herd, and after a little delay secured nine cows in fresh milk and about four years old. This addition came in February, and kept my milk supply above the danger point. Since then I have bought no cows. Thirty-four of these thoroughbreds are still at Four Oaks--two of them have died, and three have been sold for not keeping up to the standard--and are doing grand service. Their numbers have been reënforced by twenty of their best daughters, so there are at this writing fifty-four milch cows and five yearling heifers in the herd. Most of the calves have been disposed of as soon as weaned. I have no room for more stock on my place, and it doesn't pay to keep them to sell as cows. Four Oaks is not a breeding farm, but a factory farm, and everything has to be subordinated to the factory idea. My thoroughbred calves have brought me an average price of $12 each at four to six weeks, sold to dairymen, and I am satisfied to do business in that way. The nine milch cows which I bought to complete the herd cost, delivered at Four Oaks, $1012. All the grain fed to cows, horses, and hogs, and a portion of that fed to chickens, is ground fine before feeding. The grinding is done in the granary by a mill with a capacity of forty bushels an hour. We make corn meal, corn and cob meal, and oatmeal enough for a week's supply in a few hours. All hay and straw is cut fine, before being fed, by a power cutter in the forage barn, and from thence is taken by teams in box racks to the feeding rooms, where it is wetted with hot water and mixed with the ground feed for the cows and horses, and steamed or cooked with the ground feed for the hogs and hens. Alfalfa is the only hay used for the hens, and wonderfully good it is for them. Besides feed for the hogs, we have to provide ashes, salt, and charcoal for them. These three things are kept constantly before them in narrow troughs set so near the wall that they cannot get their feet into them. We carefully save all wood ashes for the hogs and hens, and we burn our own charcoal in a pit in the wood lot. Five cords of sound wood make an abundant supply for a year. I think this side dish constantly before swine goes a long way toward keeping them healthy. Clean pens, well-balanced and well-cooked food, pure water, and this medicine can be counted on to keep a growing and fattening herd healthy during its nine months of life. It is claimed that it is unnatural and artificial to confine these young things within such narrow limits, and so it is; but the whole scheme is unnatural, if you please. The pig is born to die, and to die quickly, for the profit and maintenance of man. What could be more unnatural? Would he be better reconciled to his fate after spending his nine months between field and sty? I wot not. The Chester White is an indolent fellow, and I suspect he loves his comfortable house, his cool stone porch, his back yard to dig in, his neighbors across the wire fence to gossip with, and his well-balanced, well-cooked food served under his own nose three times a day. At least he looks content in his piggery, and grows faster and puts on more flesh in his 250 days than does his neighbor of the field. If the hog's profitable life were twice or thrice as long, I would advocate a wider liberty for the early part of it; but as it doesn't pay to keep the animal after he is nine months old, the quickest way to bring him to perfection is the best. One cannot afford to graze animals of any kind when one is trying to do intensive farming. It is indirect, it is wasteful of space and energy, and it doesn't force the highest product. Grazing, as compared with soiling, may be economical of labor, but as I understand economics that is the one thing in which we do not wish to economize. The multiplication of well-paid and well-paying labor is a thing to be specially desired. If the soiling farm will keep two or three more men employed at good wages, and at the same time pay better interest than the grazing farm, it should be looked upon as much the better method. The question of furnishing landscape for hogs is one that borders too closely on the æsthetic or the sentimental to gain the approval of the factory-farm man. What is true of hogs is also true of cows. They are better off under the constant care of intelligent and interested human beings than when they follow the rippling brook or wind slowly o'er the lea at their own sweet pleasure. The truth is, the rippling brook doesn't always furnish the best water, and the lea furnishes very imperfect forage during nine months of the year. A twenty-acre lot in good grass, in which to take the air, is all that a well-regulated herd of fifty cows needs. The clean, cool, calm stable is much to their liking, and the regular diet of a first-class cow-kitchen insures a uniform flow of milk. What is true of hogs and cows is true also of hens. The common opinion that the farm-raised hen that has free range is healthier or happier than her sister in a well-ordered hennery is not based on facts. Freedom to forage for one's self and pick up a precarious living does not always mean health, happiness, or comfort. The strenuous life on the farm cannot compare in comfort with the quiet house and the freedom from anxiety of the well-tended hen. The vicissitudes of life are terrible for the uncooped chicken. The occupants of air, earth, and water lie in wait for it. It is fair game for the hawk and the owl; the fox, the weasel, the rat, the wood pussy, the cat, and the dog are its sworn enemies. The horse steps on it, the wheel crushes it; it falls into the cistern or the swill barrel; it is drenched by showers or stiffened by frosts, and, as the English say, it has a "rather indifferent time of it." If it survive the summer, and some chickens do, it will roost and shiver on the limb of an apple tree. Its nest will be accessible only to the mink and the rat; and, like Rachel, it will mourn for its children, which are not. No, the well-yarded hen has by all odds the best of it. The wonder is that, with three-fourths of the poultry at large and making its own living, hens still furnish a product, in this country alone, $100,000,000 greater in value than the whole world's output of gold. Our annual production of eggs and poultry foots up to $280,000,000,--$4 apiece for every man, woman, and child,--and yet people say that hens do not pay! Each flock of forty hens at Four Oaks has a house sixteen feet by twenty, and a run twenty feet by one hundred. I hear no complaints of close quarters or lack of freedom, but I do hear continually the song of contentment, and I see results daily that are more satisfactory than those of any oil well or mine in which I have ever been interested. CHAPTER XXXVIII SPRING OF '97 Sam began to make up his breeding pens in January. He selected 150 of his favorites, divided them into 10 flocks of 15, added a fine cockerel to each pen (we do not allow cocks or cockerels to run with the laying hens), and then began to set the incubator house in order. He filled the first incubator on Saturday, January 30, and from that day until late in April he was able to start a fresh machine about every six days. Sam reports the total hatch for the year as 1917 chicks, out of which number he had, when he separated them in the early autumn, 678 pullets to put in the runs for laying hens, and 653 cockerels to go to the fattening pens. These figures show that Sam was a first-class chicken man. We secured 300 tons of ice at the side of the lake for $98, having to pay a little more that year than the last, on account of the heavy fall of snow. The wood-house was replenished, although there was still a good deal of last year's cut on hand. We did not fell any trees, for there was still a considerable quantity of dead wood on the ground which should be used first. I wanted to clear out much of the useless underbrush, but we had only time to make a beginning in this effort at forestry. We went over perhaps ten acres across the north line, removing briers and brush. Everything that looked like a possible future tree was left. Around oak and hickory stumps we found clumps of bushes springing from living roots. These we cut away, except one or possibly two of the most thrifty. We trimmed off the lower branches of those we saved, and left them to make such trees as they could. I have been amazed to see what a growth an oak-root sprout will make after its neighbors have been cut away. There are some hundreds of these trees in the forest at Four Oaks, from five to six inches in diameter, which did not measure more than one or two inches five years ago. As the underbrush was cleared from the wood lot, I planned to set young trees to fill vacant spaces. The European larch was used in the first experiment. In the spring of 1897 I bought four thousand seedling larches for $80, planted them in nursery rows in the orchard, cultivated them for two years, and then transplanted them to the forest. The larch is hardy and grows rapidly; and as it is a valuable tree for many purposes, it is one of the best for forest planting. I have planted no others thus far at Four Oaks, as the four thousand from my little nursery seem to fill all unoccupied spaces. Fresh mulching was piled near all the young fruit trees, to be applied as soon as the frost was out of the ground. Several hundreds of loads of manure were hauled to the fields, to be spread as soon as the snow disappeared. I always return manure to the land as soon as it can be done conveniently. The manure from the hen-house was saved this year to use on the alfalfa fields, to see how well it would take the place of commercial fertilizer. I may as well give the result of the experiment now. It was mixed with sand and applied at the rate of eight hundred pounds an acre for the spring dressing over a portion of the alfalfa, against four hundred pounds an acre of the fertilizer 3:8:8. After two years I was convinced that, when used alone, it is not of more than half the value of the fertilizer. My present practice is to use five hundred pounds of hen manure and two hundred pounds of fertilizer on each acre for the spring dressing, and two hundred pounds an acre of the fertilizer alone after each cutting except the last. We have ten or twelve tons of hen manure each year, and it is nearly all used on the alfalfa or the timothy as spring dressing. It costs nothing, and it takes off a considerable sum from the fertilizer account. I am not at all sure that the scientists would approve this method of using it; I can only give my experience, and say that it brings me satisfactory crops. There was much snow in January and February, and in March much rain. When the spring opened, therefore, the ground was full of water. This was fortunate, for April and May were unusually dry months,--only 1.16 inches of water. The dry April brought the ploughs out early; but before we put our hands to the plough we should make a note of what the first quarter of 1897 brought into our strong box. Sold: Butter . . . . $842.00 Eggs . . . . 401.00 Cow . . . . 35.00 Two sows . . . 19.00 Total . . . $1297.00 Fifteen of the young sows farrowed in March, and the other 9 in April, as also did 18 old ones. The young sows gave us 147 pigs, and the old ones 161, so that the spring opened with an addition to our stock of 300 head of young swine. Between March 1 and May 10 were born 25 calves, which were all sold before July 1. The population of our factory farm was increasing so rapidly that it became necessary to have more help. We already had eight men and three women, besides the help in the big house. One would think that eight men could do the work on a farm of 320 acres, and so they can, most of the time; but in seed-time and harvest they are not sufficient at Four Oaks. We could not work the teams. Up to March, 1897, Sam had full charge of the chickens, and also looked after the hogs, with the help of Anderson. Judson and French had their hands full in the cow stables, and Lars was more than busy with the carriage horses and the driving. Thompson was working foreman, and his son Zeb and Johnson looked after the farm horses during the winter and did the general work. From that time on Sam gave his entire time to the chickens, Anderson his entire time to the hogs, and Johnson began gardening in real earnest. This left only Thompson and Zeb for general farm work. Again I advertised for two farm hands. I selected two of the most promising applicants and brought them out to the farm. Thompson discharged one of them at the end of the first day for persistently jerking his team, and the other discharged himself at the week's end, to continue his tramp. Once more I resorted to the city papers. This time I was more fortunate, for I found a young Swede, square-built and blond-headed, who said he had worked on his father's farm in the old country, and had left it because it was too small for the five boys. Otto was slow of speech and of motion, but he said he could work, and I hired him. The other man whom I sent to the farm at the same time proved of no use whatever. He stayed four days, and was dismissed for innocuous desuetude. Still another man whom I tried did well for five weeks, and then broke out in a most profound spree, from which he could not be weaned. He ended up by an assault on Otto in the stable yard. The Swede was taken by surprise, and was handsomely bowled over by the first onslaught of his half-drunk, half-crazed antagonist. As soon, however, as his slow mind took in the fact that he was being pounded, he gathered his forces, and, with a grunt for a war-cry, rolled his enemy under him, sat upon his stomach, and, flat-handed, slapped his face until he shouted for aid. The man left the farm at once, and I commended the Swede for having used the flat of his hand. In spite of bad luck with the new men we were able to plough and seed 144 acres by May 10. Lots Nos. 8, 12, 13, and 14 were planted to corn, and No. 15 sowed to oats, and the 10 acres on the home lot were divided between sweet fodder corn, potatoes, and cabbage. The abundant water in the soil gave the crops a fair start, and June proved an excellent growing month, a rainfall of nearly four inches putting them beyond danger from the short water supply of July and August. Indeed, had it not been for the generosity of June we should have been in a bad way, for the next three months gave a scant four inches of rain. The oats made a good growth, though the straw was rather short, and the corn did very well indeed,--due largely to thorough cultivation. Twelve acres of oats were cut for forage, and the rest yielded 33 bushels to the acre,--a little over 1300 bushels. The alfalfa and timothy made a good start. From the former we cut, late in June, 2¼ tons to the acre, and from the timothy, in July, 2½ tons,--50 tons of timothy and 45 of alfalfa. Each of these fields received the usual top-dressing after the crop was cut; but the timothy did not respond,--the late season was too dry. We cut two more crops from the alfalfa field, which together made a yield of a little more than 2 tons. The alfalfa in that dry summer gave me 95 tons of good hay, proving its superiority as a dry-weather crop. Johnson started the one-and-one-half-acre vegetable and fruit garden in April, and devoted much of his time to it. His primitive hotbeds gradually emptied themselves into the garden, and we now began to taste the fruit of our own soil, much to the pleasure of the whole colony. It is surprising what a real gardener can do with a garden of this size. By feeding soil and plants liberally, he is able to keep the ground producing successive crops of vegetables, from the day the frost leaves it in the spring until it again takes possession in the fall, without doing any wrong to the land. Indeed, our garden grows better and more prolific each year in spite of the immense crops that are taken from it. This can be done only by a person who knows his business, and Johnson is such a person. He gave much of his time to this practical patch, but he also worked with Polly among the shrubs on the lawn, and in her sunken flower garden, which is the pride of her life. We shall hear more about this flower garden later on. The accounts for the second quarter of the year show these items on the income side:-- Butter $1052.00 Eggs 379.00 Twenty-five calves 275.00 -------- Total $1706.00 CHAPTER XXXIX THE YOUNG ORCHARD One of the most enjoyable occupations of a farmer's life is the care of young trees. Until your experience in this work is of a personal and proprietary nature, you will not realize the pleasure it can afford. The intimate study of plant life, especially if that plant life is yours, is a never failing source of pleasurable speculation, and a thing upon which to hang dreams. You grow to know each tree, not only by its shape and its habit of growth, but also by peculiarities that belong to it as an individual. The erect, sturdy bearing of one bespeaks a frank, bold nature, which makes it willing to accept its surroundings and make the most of them; while the crooked, dwarfish nature of another requires the utmost care of the husbandman to keep it within the bounds of good behavior. And yet we often find that the slow-growing, ill-conditioned young tree, if properly cared for, will bring forth the finest fruit at maturity. To study the character and to watch the development of young trees is a pleasing and useful occupation for the man who thinks of them as living things with an inheritance that cannot be ignored. That seeds in all appearance exactly alike should send forth shoots so unlike, is a wonder of Nature; and that young shoots in the same soil and with the same care should show such dissimilarity in development, is a riddle whose answer is to be found only in the binding laws of heredity. That a tiny bud inserted under the bark of a well-grown tree can change a sour root to a sweet bough, ought to make one careful of the buds which one grafts on the living trunk of one's tree of life. The young orchard can teach many lessons to him who is willing to be taught; in the hands of him who is not, the schoolmaster has a very sorry time of it, no matter how he sets his lessons. The side pockets of my jacket are usually weighted down with pruning-shears, a sharp knife, and a handled copper wire,--always, indeed, in June, when I walk in my orchard. June is the month of all months for the prudent orchardist to go thus armed, for the apple-tree borer is abroad in the land. When the quick eye of the master sees a little pile of sawdust at the base of a tree, he knows that it is time for him to sit right down by that tree and kill its enemy. The sharp knife enlarges the hole, which is the trail of the serpent, and the sharp-pointed, flexible wire follows the route until it has reached and transfixed the borer. This is the only way. It is the nature of the borer to maim or kill the tree; it is for the interest of the owner that the tree should live. The conflict is irrepressible, and the weakest must go to the wall. The borer evil can be reduced to a minimum by keeping the young trees banked three or four inches high with firm dirt or ashes; but borers must be followed with the wire, once they enter the bark. The sharp knife and the pruning-shears have other uses in the June orchard. Limbs and sprouts will come in irregular and improper places, and they should be nipped out early and thus save labor and mutilation later on. Sprouts that start from the eyes on the trunk can be removed by a downward stroke of the gloved hand. All intersecting or crossing boughs are removed by knife or scissors, and branches which are too luxuriant in growth are cut or pinched back. Careful guidance of the tree in June will avoid the necessity of severe correction later on. A man ought to plant an orchard, if for no other reason, that he may have the pleasure of caring for it, and for the companionship of the trees. This was the second year of growth for my orchard, and I was gratified by the evidences of thrift and vigor. Fine, spreading heads adorned the tops of the stubs of trees that had received such (apparently) cruel treatment eighteen months before. The growth of these two seasons convinced me that the four-year-old root and the three-year-old stem, if properly managed, have greater possibilities of rapid development than roots or stems of more tender age. I think I made no mistake in planting three-year-old trees. As I worked in my orchard I could not help looking forward to the time when the trees would return a hundred-fold for the care bestowed upon them. They would begin to bring returns, in a small way, from the fourth year, and after that the returns would increase rapidly. It is safe to predict that from the tenth to the fortieth year a well-managed orchard will give an average yearly income of $100 an acre above all expenses, including interest on the original cost. A fifty-acre orchard of well-selected apple trees, near a first-class market and in intelligent hands, means a net income of $5000, taking one year with another, for thirty or forty years. What kind of investment will pay better? What sort of business will give larger returns in health and pleasure? I do not mean to convey the idea that forty years is the life of an orchard; hundreds of years would be more correct. As trees die from accident or decrepitude, others should take their places. Thus the lease of life becomes perpetual in hands that are willing to keep adding to the soil more than the trees and the fruit take from it. Comparatively few owners of orchards do this, and those who belong to the majority will find fault with my figures; but the thinking few, who do not expect to enjoy the fat of the land without making a reasonable return, will say that I am too conservative,--that a well-placed, well-cared-for, well-selected, and well-marketed orchard will do much better than my prophecy. Nature is a good husbandman so far as she goes, but her scheme contemplates only the perpetuation of the tree, by seeds or by other means. Nature's plan is to give to each specimen a nutritive ration. Anything beyond this is thrown away on the individual, and had better be used for the multiplying of specimens. When man comes to ask something more than germinating seeds from a plant, he must remove it from the crowded clump, give it more light and air, _and feed it for product_. In other words, he must give it more nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash than it can use for simple growth and maintenance, and thus make it burst forth into flower-or fruit-product. Nature produces the apple tree, but man must cultivate it and feed it if he would be fed and comforted by it. People who neglect their orchards can get neither pleasure nor profit from them, and such persons are not competent to sit in judgment upon the value of an apple tree. Only those who love, nourish, and profit by their orchards may come into the apple court and speak with authority. CHAPTER XL THE TIMOTHY HARVEST On Friday, the 25th, the children came home from their schools, and with them came Jim Jarvis to spend the summer holidays. Our invitation to Jarvis had been unanimous when he bade us good-by in the winter. Jack was his chum, Polly had adopted him, I took to him from the first, and Jane, in her shy way, admired him greatly. The boys took to farm life like ducks to water. They were hot for any kind of work, and hot, too, from all kinds. I could not offer anything congenial until the timothy harvest in July. When this was on, they were happy and useful at the same time,--a rare combination for boys. The timothy harvest is attractive to all, and it would be hard to find a form of labor which contributes more to the æsthetic sense than does the gathering of this fragrant grass. At four o'clock on a fine morning, with the barometer "set fair," Thompson started the mower, and kept it humming until 6.30, when Zeb, with a fresh team, relieved him. Zeb tried to cut a little faster than his father, but he was allowed no more time. Promptly at nine he was called in, and there was to be no more cutting that day. At eleven o'clock the tedder was started, and in two hours the cut grass had been turned. At three o'clock the rake gathered it into windrows, from which it was rolled and piled into heaps, or cocks, of six hundred or eight hundred pounds each. The cutting of the morning was in safe bunches before the dew fell, there to go through the process of sweating until ten o'clock the next day. It was then opened and fluffed out for four hours, after which all hands and all teams turned to and hauled it into the forage barn. The grass that was cut one morning was safely housed as hay by the second night, if the weather was favorable; if not, it took little harm in the haycocks, even from foul weather. It is the sun-bleach that takes the life out of hay. This year we had no trouble in getting fifty tons of as fine timothy hay as horses could wish to eat or man could wish to see. We began to cut on Tuesday, the 6th of July, and by Saturday evening the twenty-acre crop was under cover. The boys blistered their hands with the fork handles, and their faces, necks, and arms with the sun's rays, and claimed to like the work and the blisters. Indeed, tossing clean, fragrant hay is work fit for a prince; and a man never looks to better advantage or more picturesque than when, redolent with its perfume, he slings a jug over the crook in his elbow and listens to the gurgle of the home-made ginger ale as it changes from jug to throat. There may be joys in other drinks, but for solid comfort and refreshment give me a July hay-field at 3 P.M., a jug of water at forty-eight degrees, with just the amount of molasses, vinegar, and ginger that is Polly's secret, and I will give cards and spades to the broadest goblet of bubbles that was ever poured, and beat it to a standstill. Add to this a blond head under a broad hat, a thin white gown, such as grasshoppers love, and you can see why the emptying of the jug was a satisfying function in our field; for Jane was the one who presided at these afternoon teas. Often Jane was not alone; Florence or Jessie, or both, or others, made hay while the sun shone in those July days, and many a load went to the barn capped with white and laughter. The young people decided that a hay farm would be ideal--no end better than a factory farm--and advised me to put all the land into timothy and clover. I was not too old to see the beauties of haying-time, with such voluntary labor; but I was too old and too much interested with my experiment to be cajoled by a lot of youngsters. I promised them a week of haying in each fifty-two, but that was all the concession I would make. Laura said:-- "We are commanded to make hay while the sun shines; and the sun always shines at Four Oaks, for me." It was pretty of her to say that; but what else would one expect from Laura? The twelve acres from which the fodder oats had been cut were ploughed and fitted for sugar beets and turnips. I was not at all certain that the beets would do anything if sown so late, but I was going to try. Of the turnips I could feel more certain, for doth not the poet say:-- "The 25th day of July, Sow your turnips, wet or dry"? As the 25th fell on Sunday, I tried to placate the agricultural poet by sowing half on the 24th and the other half on the 26th, but it was no use. Whether the turnip god was offended by the fractured rule and refused his blessing, or whether the dry August and September prevented full returns, is more than I can say. Certain it is that I had but a half crop of turnips and a beggarly batch of beets to comfort me and the hogs. Some little consolation, however, was found in Polly's joy over a small crop of currants which her yearling bushes produced. I also heard rumors of a few cherries which turned their red cheeks to the sun for one happy day, and then disappeared. Cock Robin's breast was red the next morning, and on this circumstantial evidence Polly accused him. He pleaded "not guilty," and strutted on the lawn with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and his suspected breast as much in evidence as a pouter pigeon's. A jury, mostly of blackbirds, found the charge "not proven," and the case was dismissed. I was convinced by the result of this trial that the only safe way would be to provide enough cherries for the birds and for the people too, and ordered fifty more trees for fall planting. I found by experience, that if one would have bird neighbors (and who would not?), he must provide liberally for their wants and also for their luxuries. I have stolen a march as to the cherries by planting scores of mulberry trees, both native and Russian. Birds love mulberries even better than they do cherries, and we now eat our pies in peace. To make amends for this ruse, I have established a number of drinking fountains and free baths; all of which have helped to make us friends. In August I sold, near the top of a low market, 156 young hogs. At $4.50 per hundred, the bunch netted me $1807. They did not weigh quite as much as those sold the previous autumn, and I found two ways of accounting for this. The first and most probable was that fall pigs do not grow so fast as those farrowed in the spring. This is sufficient to account for the fact that the herd average was twenty pounds lighter than that of its predecessor. I could not, however, get over the notion that Anderson's nervousness had in some way taken possession of the swine (we have Holy Writ for a similar case), and that they were wasted in growth by his spirit of unrest. He was uniformly kind to them and faithful with their food, but there was lacking that sense of cordial sympathy which should exist between hog and man if both would appear at their best. Even when Anderson came to their pens reeking with the rich savor of the food they loved, their ears would prick up (as much as a Chester White's ears can), and with a "woof!" they would shoot out the door, only to return in a moment with the greatest confidence. I never heard that "woof" and saw the stampede without looking around for the "steep place" and the "sea," feeling sure that the incident lacked only these accessories to make it a catastrophe. Anderson was good and faithful, and he would work his arms and legs off for the pigs; but the spirit of unrest entered every herd which he kept, though neither he nor I saw it clearly enough to go and "tell it in the city." With other swineherds my hogs averaged from fifteen to eighteen pounds better than with faithful Anderson, and I am, therefore, competent to speak of the gross weight of the spirit of contentment. CHAPTER XLI STRIKE AT GORDON'S MINE Frank Gordon owned a coal mine about six miles west of the village of Exeter, and four miles from Four Oaks. A village called Gordonville had sprung up at the mouth of the mine. It was the home of the three hundred miners and their families,--mostly Huns, but with a sprinkling of Cornishmen. The houses were built by the owner of the mine, and were leased to the miners at a small yearly rental. They were modest in structure, but they could be made inviting and neat if the occupants were thrifty. No one was allowed to sell liquor on the property owned by the Gordons, but outside of this limit was a fringe of low saloons which did a thriving business off the improvident miners. There had never been a strike at Gordonville, and such a thing seemed improbable, for Gordon was a kind master, who paid his men promptly and looked after their interests more than is usual for a capitalist. It was, therefore, a distinct surprise when the foreman of the mine telephoned to Gordon one July morning that the men had struck work. Gordon did not understand the reason of it, but he expressed himself as being heartily glad, for financial reasons, that the men had gone out. He had more than enough coal on the surface and in cars to supply the demand for the next three months, and it would be money in his pocket to dispose of his coal without having to pay for the labor of replacing it. During the day the reason for the strike was announced. From the establishment of the mine it had been the custom for the miners to have their tools sharpened at a shop built and run by the property. This was done for the accommodation of the men, and the charge for keeping the tools sharp was ten cents a week for each man, or $5 a year. For twenty years no fault had been found with the arrangement; it had been looked upon as satisfactory, especially by the men. A walking delegate, mousing around the mine, and finding no other cause for complaint, had lighted upon this practice, and he told the men it was a shame that they should have to pay ten cents a week out of their hard-earned wages for keeping their tools sharp. He said that it was the business of the property to keep the tools sharp, and that the men should not be called upon to pay for that service; that they ought, in justice to themselves and for the dignity of associated labor, to demand that this onerous tax be removed; and, to insure its removal, he declared a strike on. This was the reason, and the only reason, for the strike at Gordon's mine. Three hundred men quit work, and three hundred families suffered, many of them for the necessities of life, simply because a loud-mouthed delegate assured them that they were being imposed upon. Things went on quietly at the mine. There was no riot, no disturbance. Gordon did not go over, but simply telephoned to the superintendent to close the shaft houses, shut down the engines, put out the fires, and let things rest, at the same time saying that he would hold the superintendent and the bosses responsible for the safety of the plant. The men were disappointed, as the days went by, that the owner made no effort to induce them to resume work. They had believed that he would at once accede to their demand, and that they would go back to work with the tax removed. This, however, was not his plan. Weeks passed and the men became restless. They frequented the saloons more generally, spent their remaining money for liquor, and went into debt as much as they were permitted for more liquor. They became noisy and quarrelsome. The few men who were opposed to the strike could make no headway against public opinion. These men held aloof from the saloons, husbanded their money, and confined themselves as much as possible to their own houses. Things had gone on in this way for six weeks. The men grew more and more restless and more dissipated. Again the walking delegate came to encourage them to hold out. Mounted on an empty coal car, he made an inflammatory speech to the men, advising them not only to hold out against the owner, but also to prevent the employment of any other help. If this should not prove sufficient, he advised them to wreck the mining property and to fire the mine,--anything to bring the owner to terms. Jack and Jarvis went for a long walk one day, and their route took them near Gordonville. Seeing the men collected in such numbers around a coal car, they approached, and heard the last half of this inflammatory speech. As the walking delegate finished, Jack jumped up on the car, and said:-- "McGinnis has had his say; now, men, let me have mine. There are always two sides to a question. You have heard one, let me give you the other. I am a delegate, self-appointed, from the amalgamated Order of Thinkers, and I want you to listen to our view of this strike,--and of all strikes. I want you also to think a little as well as to listen. "You have been led into this position by a man whose sole business is to foment discords between working-men and their employers. The moment these discords cease, that moment this man loses his job and must work or starve like the rest of you. He is, therefore, an interested party, and he is more than likely to be biassed by what seems to be his interest. He has made no argument; he has simply asserted things which are not true, and played upon your sympathies, emotions, and passions, by the use of the stale war-cries--'oppression,' 'down-trodden working-man,' 'bloated bond-holders,' and, most foolish of all, 'the conflict between Capital and Labor.' You have not thought this matter out for yourselves at all. That is why I ask you to join hands for a little while with the Order of Thinkers and see if there is not some good way out of this dilemma. McGinnis said that the Company has no right to charge you for keeping your tools sharp. In one sense this is true. You have a perfect right to work with dull tools, if you wish to; you have the right to sharpen your own tools; and you also have the right to hire any one else to do it for you. You work 'by the ton,' you own your pickaxes and shovels from handle to blade, and you have the right to do with them as you please. "There are three hundred of you who use tools; you each pay ten cents a week to the Company for keeping them sharp,--that is, in round numbers, $1500 a year. There are two smiths at work at $50 a month (that is $1200), and a helper at $25 a month ($300 more), making just $1500 paid by the Company in wages. If you will think this matter out, you will see that there is a dead loss to the Company of the coal used, the wear and tear of the instruments, and the interest, taxes, insurance, and degeneration of the plant. Is the Company under obligation to lose this money for you? Not at all! The Company does this as an accommodation and a gratuity to you, but not as a duty. Just as much coal would be taken from the Gordon mine if your tools were never sharpened, only it would require more men, and you would earn less money apiece. You could not get this sharpening done at private shops so cheaply, and you cannot do it yourselves. You have no more right to ask the Company to do this work for nothing than you have to ask it to buy your tools for you. It would be just as sensible for you to strike because the Company did not send each of you ten cents' worth of ice-cream every Sunday morning, as it is for you to go out on this matter of sharpening tools. "But, suppose the Company were in duty bound to do this thing for you, and suppose it should refuse; would that be a good reason for quitting work? Not by any means! You are earning an average of $2 a day,--nearly $16,000 a month. You've 'been out' six weeks. If you gain your point, it will take you fifteen years to make up what you've already lost. If you have the sense which God gives geese, you will see that you can't afford this sort of thing. "But the end is not yet. You are likely to stay out six weeks longer, and each six weeks adds another fifteen years to your struggle to catch up with your losses. Is this a load which thinking people would impose upon themselves? Not much! You will lose your battle, for your strike is badly timed. It seems to be the fate of strikes to be badly timed; they usually occur when, on account of hard times or over-supply, the employers would rather stop paying wages than not. That's the case now. Four months of coal is in yards or on cars, and it's an absolute benefit to the Company to turn seventy or eighty thousand dollars of dead product into live money. Don't deceive yourselves with the hope that you are distressing the owner by your foolish strike; you are putting money into his pockets while your families suffer for food. There is no great principle at stake to make your conduct seem noble and to call forth sympathy for your suffering,--only foolishness and the blind following of a demagogue whose living depends upon your folly. "McGinnis talked to you about the conflict between capital and labor. That is all rot. There is not and there cannot be such a conflict. Labor makes capital, and without capital there would be no object in labor. They are mutually dependent upon each other, and there can be no quarrel between them, for neither could exist after the death of the other. The capitalist is only a laborer who has saved a part of his wages, --either in his generation or in some preceding one. Any man with a sound mind and a sound body can become a capitalist. When the laborer has saved one dollar he is a capitalist,--he has money to lend at interest or to invest in something that will bring a return. The second dollar is easier saved than the first, and every dollar saved is earning something on its own account. All persons who have money to invest or to lend are capitalists. Of course, some are great and some are small, but all are independent, for they have more than they need for immediate personal use. "I am going to tell you how you may all become capitalists; but first I want to point out your real enemies. The employer is not your enemy, capital is not your enemy, but the saloonkeeper is,--and the most deadly enemy you can possibly have. In that fringe of shanties over yonder live the powers that keep you down; there are the foes that degrade you and your families, forcing you to live little better than wild beasts. Your food is poor, your clothing is in rags, your children are without shoes, your homes are desolate, there are no schools and no social life. Year follows year in dreary monotone, and you finally die, and your neighbors thrust you underground and have an end of you. Misery and wretchedness fill the measure of your days, and you are forgotten. "This dull, brutish condition is self-imposed, and to what end? That some dozen harpies may fatten on your flesh; that your labor may give them leisure; that your suffering may give them pleasure; that your sweat may cool their brows, and your money fill their tills! "What do you get in return? Whiskey, to poison your bodies and pervert your minds; whiskey, to make you fierce beasts or dull brutes; whiskey, to make your eyes red and your hands unsteady; whiskey, to make your homes sties and yourselves fit occupants for them; whiskey, to make you beat your wives and children; whiskey, to cast you into the gutter, the most loathsome animal in all the world. This is cheap whiskey, but it costs you dear. All that makes life worth living, all that raises man above the brute, and all the hope of a future life, are freely given for this poor whiskey. The man who sells it to you robs you of your money and also of your manhood. You pay him ten times (often twenty times) as much as it cost him, and yet he poses as your friend. "I'm not going to say anything against beer, for I don't think good beer is very likely to hurt a man. I will say this, however,--you pay more than twice what it is worth. This is the point I would make: beer is a food of some value, and it should be put on a food basis in price. It isn't more than half as valuable as milk, and it shouldn't cost more than half as much. You can have good beer at three or four cents a quart, if you will let whiskey alone. "I promised to tell you how to become capitalists, each and every one of you, and I'll keep my word if you'll listen to me a little longer." While Jack had been speaking, some of the men had shown considerable interest and had gradually crowded their way nearer to the boy. Thirty or forty Cornishmen and perhaps as many others of the better sort were close to the car, and seemed anxious to hear what he had to say. Back of these, however, were the large majority of the miners and the hangers-on at the saloons, who did not wish to hear, and did not mean that others should hear, what the boy had to say. Led by McGinnis and the saloon-keepers, they had kept up such a row that it had been impossible for any one, except those quite near the car, to hear at all. Now they determined to stop the talk and to bounce the boy. They made a vigorous rush for the car with shouts and uplifted hands. A gigantic Cornishman mounted the car, and said, in a voice that could easily be heard above the shouting of the crowd:-- "Wait--wait a bit, men! The lad is a brave one, and ye maun own to that! There be small 'urt in words, and mebbe 'e 'ave tole a bit truth. Me and me mates 'ere are minded to give un a chance. If ye men don't want to 'ear 'im, you don't 'ave to stay; but don't 'e dare touchen with a finger, or, by God! Tom Carkeek will kick the stuffin' out en 'e!" This was enough to prevent any overt act, for Tom Carkeek was the champion wrestler in all that county; he was fiercer than fire when roused, and he would be backed by every Cornishman on the job. Jack went on with his talk. "The 'Order of Thinkers' claim that you men and all of your class spend one-third of your entire wages for whiskey and beer. There are exceptions, but the figures will hold good. I am going to call the amount of your wages spent in this way, one-fourth. The yearly pay-roll of this mine is, in round numbers, $200,000. Fifty thousand of this goes into the hands of those harpies, who grow rich as you grow poor. You are surprised at these figures, and yet they are too small. I counted the saloons over there, and I find there are eleven of them. Divide $50,000 into eleven parts, and you would give each saloon less than $5000 a year as a gross business. Not one of those places can run on the legitimate percentage of a business which does not amount to more than that. Do you suppose these men are here from charitable motives or for their health? Not at all. They are here to make money, and they do it. Five or six hundred dollars is all they pay for the vile stuff for which they charge you $5000. They rob you of manhood and money alike. "Now, what would be the result if you struck on these robbers? I will tell you. In the first place, you would save $50,000 each year, and you would be better men in every way for so doing. You would earn more money, and your children would wear shoes and go to school. That would be much, and well worth while; but that is not the best of it. I will make a proposition to you, and I will promise that it shall be carried out on my side exactly as I state it. "This is a noble property. In ten years it has paid its owner $500,000,--$50,000 a year. It is sure to go on in this way under good management. I offer, in the name of the owner, to bond this property to you for $300,000 for five years at six per cent. Of course this is an unusual opportunity. The owner has grown rich out of it, and he is now willing to retire and give others a chance. His offer to you is to sell the mine for half its value, and, at the same time, to give you five years in which to pay for it. I will add something to this proposition, for I feel certain that he will agree to it. It is this: Mr. Gordon will build and equip a small brewery on this property, in which good, wholesome beer can be made for you at one cent a glass. You are to pay for the brewery in the same way that you pay for the other property; it will cost $25,000. This will make $325,000 which you are to pay during the next five years. How? Let me tell you. "The property will give you a net income of $40,000 or $50,000, and you will save $50,000 more when you give up whiskey and get your beer for less than one-fourth of what it now costs you. The general store at which you have always traded will be run in your interests, and all that you buy will be cheaper. The market will be a cooperative one, which will furnish you meat, fattened on your own land, at the lowest price. Your fruit and vegetables will come from these broad acres, which will be yours and will cost you but little. You will earn more money because you will be sober and industrious, and your money will purchase more because you will deal without a middleman. You will be better clothed, better fed, and better men. Your wives will take new interest in life, and there will be carpets on your floors, curtains at your windows, vegetables behind your cottages, and flowers in front of them. "All these things you will have with the money you are now earning, and at the same time you will be changing from the laborer to the capitalist. The mine gives you a profit of $40,000, and you save one-fourth of your wages, which makes $50,000 more,--$90,000 in all. What are you to do with this? Less than $20,000 will cover the interest. You will have $70,000 to pay on the principal. This will reduce the interest for the next year more than $3000. Each year you can do as well, and by the time the five years have passed you will own the mine, the land, the brewery, the store, the market, and this blessed blacksmith shop about which you have had so much fuss, and also a bank with a paid-up capital of $50,000. You are capitalists, every one of you, at the end of five years, if you wish to be, and if you are willing to give up the single item,--whiskey. "Do you like the plan? Do you like the prospect? Turn it over and see what objections you can find. If you are willing to go into it, come over to Four Oaks some day and we will go more into details. McGinnis gave you one side of the picture: I have given you the other. You are at liberty to follow whichever you please." Jack and Jarvis jumped off the car and struck out for home. Carkeek and his Cornishmen followed the lads until they were well clear of the village, to protect them, and then Carkeek said:--"Me and the others like for to hear 'e talk, mister, and we like for to 'ear 'e talk more." "All right, Goliath," said Jack. "Come over any time and we'll make plans." CHAPTER XLII THE RIOT Two days later the boys, returning from the city, were met by Jane and Jessie in the big carriage to be driven home. Halfway to Four Oaks the carriage suddenly halted, and a confused murmur of angry voices gave warning of trouble. Jack opened the door and stood upon the step. "Fifteen or twenty drunken miners block the way,--they are holding the horses," said he. "Let me out; I'll soon clear the road," said Jarvis, trying to force his way past Jack. "Sit still, Hercules; I am slower to wrath than you are. Let me talk to them," and Jack took three or four steps forward, followed closely by Jarvis. "Well, men, what do you want? There is no good in stopping a carriage on the highroad." "We want work and money and bread," said a great bearded Hun who was nearest to Jack. "This is no way to get either. We have no work to offer, there is no bread in the carriage, and not much money. You are dead wrong in this business, and you are likely to get into trouble. I can make some allowance when I remember the bad whiskey that is in you, but you must get out of our way; the road is public and we have the right to use it." "Not until you have paid toll," said the Hun. "That's the rooster who said we drank whiskey and didn't work. He's the fellow who would rob a poor man of his liberty," came a voice in the crowd. "Knock his block off!" "Break his back!" "Let me at him," and a score of other friendly offers came from the drunken crowd. Jack stood steadily looking at the ruffians, his blue eyes growing black with excitement and his hands clenched tightly in the pockets of his reefer. "Slowly, men, slowly," said he. "If you want me, you may have me. There are ladies in the carriage; let them go on; I'll stay with you as long as you like. You are brave men, and you have no quarrel with ladies." "Ladies, eh!" said the Hun, "ladies! I never saw anything but _women_. Let's have a look at them, boys." This speech was drunkenly approved, and the men pressed forward. Jack stood firm, his face was white, but his eyes flamed. "Stand off! There are good men who will die for those ladies, and it will go hard but bad men shall die first." The Hun disregarded the warning. "I'll have a look into--" "Hell!" said the slow-of-wrath Jack, and his fist went straight from the shoulder and smote the Hun on the point of the jaw. It was a terrible blow, dealt with all the force of a trained athlete, and inspired by every impulse which a man holds dear; and the half-drunken brute fell like a stricken ox. Catching the club from the falling man, Jack made a sudden lunge forward at the face of the nearest foe. "Now, Jim!" he shouted, as the full fever of battle seized him. His forward lunge had placed another miner _hors de combat_, and Jarvis sprang forward and secured the wounded man's bludgeon. "Back to back, Jack, and mind your guard!" The odds were eighteen to two against the young men, but they did not heed them. Back to back they stood, and the heavy clubs were like feathers in their strong hands. Their skill at "single stick" was of immense advantage, for it built a wall of defence around them. The crazy-drunk miners rushed upon them with the fierceness of wild beasts; they crowded in so close as to interfere with their own freedom of movement; they sought to overpower the two men by weight of numbers and by showers of blows. Jack and Jim were kept busy guarding their own heads, and it was only occasionally that they could give an aggressive blow. When these opportunities came, they were accepted with fierce delight, and a miner fell with a broken head at every blow. Two fell in front of Jack and three went down under Jarvis's club. The battle had now lasted several minutes, and the strain on the young men was telling on their wind; they struck as hard and parried as well as at first, but they were breathing rapidly. The young men cheered each other with joyous words; they felt no need of aid. "Beats football hollow!" panted Jarvis. "Go in, old man! you're a dandy full-back!" came between strokes from Jack. Let us leave the boys for a minute and see what the girls are doing. When Jarvis got out of the carriage, he said:-- "Lars, if there is trouble here, you drive on as soon as you can get your horses clear. Never mind us; we'll walk home. Get the ladies to Four Oaks as soon as possible." When the battle began, the miners left the horses to attack the men. This gave a clear road, and Lars was ready to drive on, but the girls were not in the carriage. They had sprung out in the excitement of the first sound of blows; and now stood watching with glowing eyes and white faces the prowess of their champions. For minutes they watched the conflict with fear and pride combined. When seven or eight minutes had passed and the champions had not slain all their enemies, some degree of terror arose in the minds of the young ladies,--terror lest their knights be overpowered by numbers or become exhausted by slaying,--and they looked about for aid. Lars, remembering what Jarvis had said, urged the ladies to get into the carriage and be driven out of danger. They repelled his advice with scorn. Jane said:--"I won't stir a step until the men can go with us!" Jessie said never a word, but she darted forward toward the fighting men, stooped, picked up a fallen club, and was back in an instant. Mounting quickly to the box, she said:--"I can hold the horses. Don't you think you can help the men, Lars?" "I'd like to try, miss," and the coachman's coat was off in a trice and the club in his hand. He was none too soon! Jane, who had mounted the box with Jessie, cried, "Look out, Jack!" just as a heavy stone crashed against the back of his head. Some brute in the crowd had sent it with all his force. The stone broke through the Derby hat and opened a wide gash in Jack's scalp, and sent him to the ground with a thousand stars glittering before his eyes. Jane gave a sob and covered her eyes. Jessie swayed as though she would fall, but she never took her eyes from the fallen man; her lips moved, but she said nothing; and her face was ghastly white. Jarvis heard the dull thud against Jack's head and knew that he was falling. Whirling swiftly, he stopped a savage blow that was aimed at the stricken man, and with a back-handed cut laid the striker low. "All right, Jack; keep down till the stars are gone." He stood with one sturdy leg on each side of Jack's body and his big club made a charmed circle about him. It was not more than twenty seconds before the wheels were out of Jack's head and he was on his feet again, though not quite steady. Jack's fall had given courage to the gang, and they made a furious attack upon Jarvis, who was now alone and not a little impeded by the friend at his feet. As Jack struggled to his legs, a furious blow directed at him was parried by Jarvis's left arm,--his right being busy guarding his own head. The blow was a fearful one; it broke the small bone in the forearm, beat down the guard, and came with terrible force upon poor Jack's left shoulder, disabling it for a minute. At the same time Jarvis received a nasty blow across the face from an unexpected quarter. He was staggered by it, but he did not fall. Jack's right arm was good and very angry; a savage jab with his club into the face of the man who had struck Jarvis laid him low, and Jack grinned with satisfaction. Things were going hard with the young men. They had, indeed, disqualified nine of the enemy; but there were still eight or ten more, and through hard work and harder knocks they had lost more than half their own fighting strength. At this rate they would be used up completely while there were still three or four of the enemy on foot. This was when they needed aid, and aid came. No sooner had Lars found himself at liberty and with a club in his hands than he began to use it with telling effect. He attacked the outer circle, striking every head he could reach, and such was his sprightliness that four men fell headlong before the others became aware of this attack from the rear. This diversion came at the right moment, and proved effective. There were now but six of the enemy in fighting condition, and these six were more demoralized by the sudden and unknown element of a rear attack than by the loss of their thirteen comrades. They hesitated, and half turned to look, and two of them fell under the blows of Jack and Jarvis. As the rest turned to escape, the Swede's club felled one, and the other three ran for dear life. They did not escape, however, for the long legs of the young men were after them. Young blood is hot, and the savage fight that had been forced upon these boys had aroused all that was savage in them. In an instant they overtook two of the fleeing men, but neither could strike an enemy in the back. Throwing aside their clubs, each seized his enemy by the shoulder, turned him face to face and smote him sore, each after his fashion. Then they laughed, took hold of hands, and walked wearily back to the carriage. Jarvis's face was covered with blood, and Jack's neck and shoulders were drenched,--his wound had bled freely. Lars had relieved the ladies on the box after administering kicks and blows in generous measure to the dazed and crippled miners, who were crawling off the road or staggering along it. The Swede had a strain of fierce North blood which was not easily laid when once aroused, and he glared around the battle-field, hoping to find signs of resistance. When none were to be seen, he donned his coachman's coat and sat the box like a sphinx. The girls went quickly forward to meet the men. They said little, but they put their hands on their battered champions in a way to make the heart of man glad. The men were flushed and proud, as men have been, and men will be, through all time, when they have striven savagely against other savages in the sight of their mistresses, and have gained the victory. Their bruises were numb with exultation and their wounds dumb with pride. There was no regret for blows given or received,--no sympathy for fallen foe. The male fights, in the presence of the female, with savage delight, from the lowest to the highest ranks of creation, and we must forgive our boys for some cruel exultation as they looked on the field of strife. Better feelings will come when the blood flows less rapidly in their veins! "We must hurry home," said Jane, "and let papa mend you." Then she burst into tears. "Oh, I am so sorry and so frightened! Do you feel _very_ bad, Jack? I know you are suffering dreadfully, Mr. Jarvis. Can't I do something for you?" "My arm is bruised a bit," said Jarvis; "if you don't mind, you can steady it a little." Jane's soft hands clasped themselves tenderly over Jarvis's great fist, and she felt relieved in the thought that she was doing something for her hero. She held the great right hand of Hercules tenderly, and Jarvis never let her know that it was the _left_ arm that had been broken. She felt certain that he must be suffering agony, for ever and anon his fingers would close over hers with a spasmodic grip that sent a thrill of mixed joy and pain to her heart. While I was bandaging the broken arm I saw the young lady going through some pantomimic exercises with her hands, as if seeking to revive the memory of some previous position; then her face blazed with a light, half pleasure and half shame, and she disappeared. When the carriage arrived at Four Oaks, the story was told in few words, and I immediately set to work to "mend" the boys. Jack insisted that Jarvis should receive the first attention, and, indeed, he looked the worse. But after washing the blood off his face, I found that beyond a severe bruise, which would disfigure him for a few days, his face and head were unhurt. His arm was broken and badly contused. After I had attended to it, he said:-- "Doctor, I'm as good as new; hope Jack is no worse." I carefully washed the blood off Jack's head and neck, and found an ugly scalp wound at least three inches long. It made me terribly anxious until I fairly proved that the bone was uninjured. After giving the boy the tonsure, I put six stitches into the scalp, and he never said a word. Perhaps the cause of this fortitude could be found in the blazing eyes of Jessie Gordon, which fixed his as a magnet, while her hands clasped his tightly. Miss Jessie was as white as snow, but there was no tremor in hand or eye. When it was all over, her voice was steady and low as she said:-- "Jack Williams, in the olden days men fought for women, and they were called knights. It was counted a noble thing to take peril in defence of the helpless. I find no record of more knightly deed than you have done to-day, and I know that no knight could have done it more nobly. I want you to wear this favor on your hand." She kissed his hand and left the room. Jack didn't seem to mind the wound in his head, but he gave great attention to his hand. CHAPTER XLIII THE RESULT As soon as the first report of the battle reached me, I telephoned to Bill Jackson, asking him to come at once to Four Oaks and to bring a man with him. When he arrived, attended by his big Irishman, my men had already put one of the farm teams to a great farm wagon, and had filled the box nearly full of hay. We gave Jackson a hurried account of the fight and asked him to go at once and offer relief to the wounded,--if such relief were needed. Jackson was willing enough to go, but he was greatly disappointed that he had missed the fight; it seemed unnatural that there should be a big fight in his neighborhood and he not in it. "I'd give a ten-acre lot to have been with you, lads," said the big farmer as he started off. Word had been sent to Dr. High to be ready to care for some broken heads. Two hours later I drove to the Inn at Exeter and found the doctor just commencing the work of repair. Thirteen men had been brought in by the wagon, twelve of them more or less cut and bruised about the head, and all needing some surgical attention. The thirteenth man was stone dead. A terrific blow on the back of the head had crushed his skull as if it had been an egg-shell, and he must have died instantly. After looking this poor fellow over to make sure that there was no hope for him, we turned our attention to the wounded. The barn had been turned into a hospital, and in two hours we had a dozen sore heads well cared for, and their owners comfortably placed for the night on soft hay covered by blankets from the Inn. Mrs. French brought tea and gruels for the thirsty, feverish fellows, and we placed Otto and the big Irishman on duty as nurses for the night. The coroner had been summoned, and arrived as we finished our work. He was an energetic official, and lost no time in getting a jury of six to listen to the statements which the wounded men would give. To their credit be it said that every one who gave testimony at all, gave it to the effect that the miners were crazy-drunk, that they stopped the carriage, provoked the fight, and did their utmost to disable or destroy the enemy. The coroner would listen to no further testimony, but gave the case to the jury. In five minutes their verdict was returned, "justifiable and commendable homicide by person unknown to the jury." The news of a fight and the death of a miner had reached Gordonville, where it created intense excitement. By the time the inquest was over a crowd of at least fifty miners had collected near the barn. Much grumbling and some loud threats were heard. Jackson took it upon himself to meet these angry men, and no one could have done better. Stepping upon a box which raised him a foot or two above the crowd, he said:-- "See here, fellows, I want to say a word to you. My name's Jackson--Bill Jackson; perhaps some of you know me. If you don't, I'll introduce myself. I wasn't in this fight,--worse luck for me! but I am wide open for engagements in that line. Some one inside said that this gang must be conciliated, and I thought I would come out and do it. I understand that you feel sore over this affair,--it's natural that you should,--but you must remember that those boys out at Four Oaks couldn't accommodate all of you. If you wouldn't mind taking me for a substitute, I'll do my level best to make it lively for you. You don't need cards of introduction to me; you needn't be American citizens; you needn't speak English; all you have to do is to put up your hands or cock your hats, and I'll know what you mean. If any of you thinks he hasn't had his share of what's been going on this afternoon, he may just call on Bill Jackson for the balance. I want to conciliate you if I can! I'm a good-tempered man, and not the kind to pick a quarrel; but if any of you low-lived dogs are looking for a fight, I'm not the man to disappoint you! I came out here to satisfy you in this matter and to send you home contented, and, by the jumping Jews! I'll do it if I have to break the head of every dog's son among you! They told me to speak gently to you, and by thunder, I've done it; but now I'm going to say a word for myself! "A lot of your dirty crowd attacked two of the decentest men in the county when they were riding with ladies; one of the gang got killed and the rest got their skulls cracked. Would these boys fight for the girls they had with them? Hell's blazes! I'll fight for just thinking of it! Just one of you duffers say 'boo' to me! I'm going right through you!" Jackson sprang into the crowd, which parted like water before a strong swimmer. He cocked his hat, smacked his fists, and invited any or all to stand up to him. He was crazy for a fight, to get even with Jack and Jarvis; but no one was willing to favor him. He marched through the gang lengthways, crossways, and diagonally, but to no purpose. In great disgust he returned to the barn and reported that the crowd would not be "conciliated." When we left, however, there were no miners to be seen. It was after one o'clock in the morning when I reached home. Going directly to the room occupied by the boys, I met Polly on the stairs. "I'm glad you've come," said she, "for I can't do a thing with those boys; they are too wild for any use." Entering the room, I found the lads in bed, but hilarious. They had sent for Lars and had filled him full of hot stuff and commendation. He was sitting on the edge of a chair between the two beds, his honest eyes bulging and his head rolling from the effects of unusual potations. The lads had tasted the cup, too, but lightly; their high spirits came from other sources. Victories in war and in love deserve celebration; and when the two are united, a bit of freedom must be permitted. They sat bolt upright against the heads of their beds with flushed faces and shining eyes. They shouted Greek and Latin verse at the bewildered Swede; they gave him the story of Lars Porsena in the original, and then in bad Swedish. They called him Lars Porsena,--for had he not fought gallantly? Then he was Gustavus Adolphus,--for had he not come to the aid of the Protestants when they were in sore need? And then things got mixed and the "Royal Swede" was Lars Adolphus or Gustavus Porsena Viking all in one. The honest fellow was more than half crazed by strong waters, incomprehensible words, and "jollying up" which the young chaps had given him. "See here, boys, don't you see that you're sending your noble Swede to his Lutzen before his time,--not dead, indeed, but dead drunk? This isn't the sort of medicine for either of you; you should have been asleep three hours ago. I'll take your last victim home." We heard no more from any of the fighters until nine in the morning. In looking them over I found that the Swede had as sore a head as either of the others, though he had never taken a blow. Many friends came to see the boys during the days of their seclusion, to congratulate them on their fortunate escape, and to compliment them on their skill and courage. The lads enjoyed being made much of, and their convalescence was short and cheerful. Of course Sir Tom was the most constant and most enthusiastic visitor. The warm-hearted Irishman loved the boys always, but now he seemed to venerate them. The successful club fight appealed to his national instincts as nothing else could have done. "With twenty years off and a shillalah in me hand I would have been proud to stand with you. By the Lord, I'm asking too much! I'll yield the twenty years and only ask for the stick!" And his cane went whirling around his head, now guarding, now striking, and now with elaborate flourishes, after the most approved Donny-brook fashion. "But, me friend Jarvis, what is this you have on your face? Pond's Extract! Oh, murder! What is the world coming to when fresh beef and usquebaugh are crowded to the wall by bad-smelling water! Look at me nose; it is as straight as God made it, and yet many a time it has been knocked to one side of me face or spread all over me features. Nothing but whiskey and raw beef could ever coax it back! It's God's mercy if you are not deformed for life, me friend. Such privileges are not to be neglected with impunity. Let me bathe your face with whiskey and put a beef-steak poultice after it, and I'll have you as handsome as a girl in three days." "Give me the steak and whiskey inside and I'll feel handsome at once," said Jarvis. "Oh, the rashness of youth!" said Sir Tom. "But I'll not say a word against it. Youth is the greatest luck in the world, and I'll not copper it." And then our sporting friend grew reminiscent and told of a time at Limmer's when the marquis and he occupied beds in the same room, not unlike our boys' room--only smoky and dingy--and poulticed their battered faces with beef, and used usquebaugh inside and outside, after ten friendly rounds. "Queensbary's nose never resumed entirely after that night, but mine came back like rubber. Maybe it was the beef--maybe it was usquebaugh; me own preference is in favor of the latter." Sir Tom came every day so long as the boys were confined to the place, and each day he was able to develop some new incident connected with the battle which called for applause. After hearing Lars tell his story for the fourth time, he gave him a ten-dollar note, saying:-- "You did nobly for a Swede, Mr. Gustavus Adolphus, but I would give ten tenners to have had your place and your shillalah,--a Swede for a match-lock, but an Irishman for a stick." Jack had hardly recovered when he was waited on by a committee from the mine with a request that he would make another speech. He was asked to make good his offer of bonding the property, and also to formulate a plan of cooperation for the guidance of the men. Jack had the plans for a cooperative mining village well digested, and was anxious to get them before the miners. As soon as he was fit he went to Gordonville to try to organize the work. Jarvis of course went with him, and Bill Jackson and Sir Tom would not be denied; they did not say so, but they looked as if they thought some diversion might be found. In spite of the influence of strong whiskey, however, the meeting passed off peacefully. The results that grew from this effort at reformation were so great and so far-reaching that they deserve a book for their narration. CHAPTER XLIV DEEP WATERS For sharp contrasts give me the dull country. The unexpected is the usual in small and in great things alike as they happen on a farm, and I make no apology to the reader for entering them in my narrative. I only ask him, if he be a city man, to take my word for the truth as to the general facts. To some elaboration and embellishment I plead guilty, but the groundwork is truth, and the facts stated are as real as the foundations of my buildings or the cows in my stalls. If the fortunate reader be a country man, he will need no assurance from me, for his eyes have seen and his ears have heard the strange and startling episodes with which the quiet country-side is filled. I do not dare record all the adventures which clustered around us at Four Oaks. People who know only the monotonous life of cities would not believe the half if told, and I do not wish to invite discredit upon my story of the making of the factory farm. The incidents I have given of the strike at Gordon's mine are substantially correct, and I would love to follow them to their sequel,--the coöperative mine; but as that is a story by itself, I cannot do it now. I promise myself, however, the pleasure of writing a history of this innovation in coal-mining at an early date. It is worth the world's knowing that a copartnership can exist between three hundred equal partners without serious friction, and that community in business interests on a large scale can be successfully managed without any effort to control personal liberty, either domestic, social, or religious. Indeed, I believe the success of this experiment is due largely to the absence of any attempt to superintend the private interests of its members,--the only bond being a common financial one, and the one requisite to membership, ability to save a portion of the wages earned. But to go back to farm matters. In August the ground was stirred for the second time around the young trees. To do this, the mulch was turned back and the surface for a space of three feet all around the tree was loosened by hoe or mattock, and the mulch was then returned. The trees were vigorous, and their leaves had the polish of health, in spite of the dry July and August. The mulching must receive the credit for much of this thrift, for it protected the soil from the rays of the sun and invited the deep moisture to rise toward the surface. Few people realize the amount of water that enters into the daily consumption of a tree. It is said that the four acres of leaf surface of a large elm will transpire or yield to evaporation eight tons of water in a day, and that it takes more than five hundred tons of water to produce one ton of hay, wheat, oats, or other crop. This seems enormous; but an inch of rain on an acre of ground means more than a hundred tons of water, and precipitation in our part of the country is about thirty-six inches per annum, so that we can count on over thirty-six hundred tons of water per acre to supply this tremendous evaporation of plant life. Water-pot and hose look foolish in the face of these figures; indeed, they are poor makeshifts to keep life in plants during pinching times. A much more effective method is to keep the soil loose under a heavy mulch, for then the deep waters will rise. In our climate the tree's growth for the year is practically completed by July 15, and fortunately dry times rarely occur so early. We are, therefore, pretty certain to get the wood growth, no matter how dry the year, since it would take several years of unusual drought to prevent it. Of course the wood is not all that we wish for in fruit trees; the fruit is the main thing, and to secure the best development of it an abundant rainfall is needed after the wood is grown. If the rain doesn't come in July and August, heavy mulching must be the fruit-grower's reliance, and a good one it will prove if the drought doesn't continue more than one year. After July the new wood hardens and gets ready for the trying winter. If July and August are very wet, growth may continue until too late for the wood to harden, and it consequently goes into winter poorly prepared to resist its rigors. The result is a killing back of the soft wood, but usually no serious loss to the trees. The effort to stimulate late summer growth by cultivation and fertilization is all wrong; use manures and fertilizers freely from March until early June, but not later. The fall mulch of manure, if used, is more for warmth than for fertility; it is a blanket for the roots, but much of its value is leached away by the suns and rains of winter. I felt that I had made a mistake in not sowing a cover crop in my orchard the previous year. There are many excellent reasons for the cover crop and not one against it. The first reason is that it protects the land from the rough usage and wash of winter storms; the second, that it adds humus to the soil; and the third, if one of the legumes is used, that it collects nitrogen from the air, stores it in each knuckle and joint, and holds it there until it is liberated by the decay of the plant. As nitrogen is the most precious of plant foods, and as the nitrate beds and deposits are rapidly becoming exhausted, we must look to the useful legumes to help us out until the scientists shall be able to fix the unlimited but volatile supply which the atmosphere contains, and thus to remove the certain, though remote, danger of a nitrogen famine. That this will be done in the near future by electric forces, and with such economy as to make the product available for agricultural purposes, is reasonably sure. In the meantime we must use the vetches, peas, beans, and clovers which are such willing workers. The legumes fulfil the three requisites of the cover crop: protection, humus, and the storing of nitrogen. That was why, when the corn in the orchard was last cultivated in July, I planted cow peas between the rows. The peas made a fair growth in spite of the dry season, and after the corn was cut they furnished fine pasture for the brood sows, that ate the peas and trampled down the vines. In the spring ploughing this black mat was turned under, and with it went a store of fertility to fatten the land. Cow peas were sowed in all the corn land in 1897, and the rule of the farm is to sow corn-fields with peas, crimson clover, or some other leguminous plant. As my land is divided almost equally each year between corn and oats, which follow each other, it gets a cover crop turned under every two years over the whole of it. Great quantities of manure are hauled upon the oat stubble in the early spring, and these fields are planted to corn, while the corn stubble is fertilized by the cover crop, and oats are sown. The land is taxed heavily every year, but it increases in fertility and crop-making capacity. For the past two years my oats have averaged forty-seven bushels and my corn nearly sixty-eight bushels per acre. There is no waste land in my fields, and we have made such a strenuous fight against weeds that they no longer seriously tax the land. The wisdom of the work done on the fence rows is now apparent. The ploughing and seeding made it easy to keep the brush and weeds down; hay gathered close to the fences more than pays us for the mowing; and we have no tall weed heads to load the wind with seeds. This is a matter which is not sufficiently considered by the majority of farmers, for weeds are allowed to tax the land almost as much as crops do, and yet they pay no rent. Fence lines and corners are usually breeding beds for these pests, and it will pay any landowner to suppress them. CHAPTER XLV DOGS AND HORSES It was definitely decided in August that Jane was not to go back to Farmington. We had all been of two minds over this question, and it was a comfort to have it settled, though I always suspect that my share of it was not beyond the suspicion of selfishness. Jane was just past nineteen. She had a fair education, so far as books go, and she did not wish to graduate simply for the honor of a diploma. Indeed, there were many studies between her and the diploma which she loathed. She could never understand how a girl of healthy mind could care for mathematics, exact science, or dead languages. English and French were enough for her tongue, and history, literature, and metaphysics enough for her mind. "I can learn much more from the books in your library and from the dogs and horses than I can at school, besides being a thousand times happier; and oh, Dad, if you will let me have a forge and workshop, I will make no end of things." This was a new idea to me, and I looked into it with some interest. I knew that Jane was deft with her fingers, but I did not know that she had a special wish to cultivate this deftness or to put it to practical use. "What can you do with a forge?" said I. "You can't shoe the horses or sharpen the ploughs. Can you make nails? They are machine-made now, and you couldn't earn ten cents a week, even at horse-shoe nails." "I don't want to make nails, Dad; I want to work in copper and brass, and iron, too, but in girl fashion. Mary Town has a forge in Hartford, and I spent lots of Saturdays with her. She says that I am cleverer than she is, but of course she was jollying me, for she makes beautiful things; but I can learn, and it's great fun." "What kind of things does this young lady make, dear?" "Lamp-shades, paper-knives, hinges, bag-tops, buckles, and lots of things. She could sell them, too, if she had to. It's like learning a trade, Dad." "All right, child, you shall have a forge, if you will agree not to burn yourself up. Do you roll up your sleeves and wear a leather apron?" "Why, of course, just like a blacksmith; only mine will be of soft brown leather and pinked at the edges." So Jane was to have her forge. We selected a site for it at once in the grove to the east of the house and about 150 yards away, and set the carpenter at work. The shop proved to be a feature of the place, and soon became a favorite resort for old and young for five o'clock teas and small gossiping parties. The house was a shingled cottage, sixteen by thirty-two, divided into two rooms. The first room, sixteen by twenty, was the company room, but it contained a work bench as well as the dainty trappings of a girl's lounging room. In the centre of the wall that separated the rooms was a huge brick chimney, with a fireplace in the front room and a forge bed in the rear room, which was the forge proper. I suppose I must charge the $460 which this outfit cost to the farm account and pay yearly interest on it, for it is a fixture; but I protest that it is not essential to the construction of a factory farm, and it may be omitted by those who have no daughter Jane. There were other things hinging on Jane's home-staying which made me think that, from the standpoint of economy, I had made a mistake in not sending her back to Farmington. It was not long before the dog proposition was sprung upon me; insidiously at first, until I had half committed myself, and then with such force and sweep as to take me off my prudent feet. My own faithful terrier, which had dogged my heels for three years, seemed a member of the family, and reasonably satisfied my dog needs. That Jane should wish a terrier of some sort to tug at her skirts and claw her lace was no more than natural, and I was quite willing to buy a blue blood and think nothing of the $20 or $30 which it might cost. We canvassed the list of terriers,--bull, Boston, fox, Irish, Skye, Scotch, Airedale, and all,--and had much to say in favor of each. One day Jane said:-- "Dad, what do you think of the Russian wolf-hound?" "Fine as silk," said I, not seeing the trap; "the handsomest dog that runs." "I think so, too. I saw some beauties in the Seabright kennels. Wouldn't one of them look fine on the lawn?--lemon and white, and so tall and silky. I saw one down there, and he wasn't a year old, but his tail looked like a great white ostrich feather, and it touched the ground. Wouldn't it be grand to have such a dog follow me when I rode. Say, Dad, why not have one?" "What do you suppose a good one would cost?" "I don't know, but a good bit more than a terrier, if they sell dogs by size. May I write and find out?" "There's no harm in doing that," said I, like the jellyfish that I am. Jane wasted no time, but wrote at once, and at least seventeen times each day, until the reply came, she gave me such vivid accounts of the beauties of the beasts and of the pleasure she would have in owning one, that I grew enthusiastic as well, and quite made up my mind that she should not be disappointed. When the letter came, there was suppressed excitement until she had read it, and then excitement unsuppressed. "Dad, we can have Alexis, son of Katinka by Peter the Great, for $125! See what the letter says: 'Eleven months old, tall and strong in quarters, white, with even lemon markings, better head than Marksman, and a sure winner in the best of company.' Isn't that great? And I don't think $125 is much, do you?" "Not for a horse or a house, dear, but for a dog--" "But you know, Dad, this isn't a common dog. We mustn't think of it as a dog; it's a barzoi; that isn't too much for a barzoi, is it?" "Not for a barzoi, or a yacht either; I guess you will have to have one or the other." "The Seabright man says he has a girl dog by Marksman out of Katrina that is the very picture of Alexis, only not so large, and he will sell both to the same person for $200; they are such good friends." "Break away, daughter, do you want a steam launch with your yacht?" "But just think, Dad, only $75 for this one. You save $50, don't you see?" "Dimly, I must confess, as through a glass darkly. But, dear, I may come to see it through your eyes and in the light of this altruistic dog fancier. I'm such a soft one that it's a wonder I'm ever trusted with money." The natural thing occurred once more; the fool and his money parted company, and two of the most beautiful dogs came to live on our lawn. To live on our lawn, did I say? Not much! Such wonderful creatures must have a house and grounds of their own to retire to when they were weary of using ours, or when our presence bored them. The kennel and runs were built near the carriage barn, the runs, twenty by one hundred feet, enclosed with high wire netting. The kennel, eight by sixteen, was a handsome structure of its kind, with two compartments eight by eight (for Jane spoke for the future), and beds, benches, and the usual fixtures which well-bred dogs are supposed to require. The house for these dogs cost $200, so I was obliged to add another $400 to the interest-bearing debt. "If Jane keeps on in this fashion," thought I, "I shall have to refund at a lower rate,"--and she did keep on. No sooner were the dogs safely kennelled than she began to think how fine it would look to be followed by this wonderful pair along the country roads and through the streets of Exeter. To be followed, she must have a horse and a saddle and a bridle and a habit; and later on I found that these things did not grow on the bushes in our neighborhood. I drew a line at these things, however, and decided that they should not swell the farm account. Thus I keep from the reader's eye some of the foolishness of a doting parent who has always been as warm wax in the hands of his, nearly always, reasonable children. In my stable were two Kentucky-bred saddlers of much more than average quality, for they had strains of warm blood in their veins. There is no question nowadays as to the value of warm blood in either riding or driving horses. It gives ability, endurance, courage, and docility beyond expectation. One-sixteenth thorough blood will, in many animals, dominate the fifteen-sixteenths of cold blood, and prove its virtue by unusual endurance, stamina, and wearing capacity. The blue-grass region of Kentucky has furnished some of the finest horses in the world, and I have owned several which gave grand service until they were eighteen or twenty years old. An honest horseman at Paris, Kentucky, has sold me a dozen or more, and I was willing to trust his judgment for a saddler for Jane. My request to him was for a light-built horse; weight, one thousand pounds; game and spirited, but safe for a woman, and one broken to jump. Everything else, including price, was left to him. In good time Jane's horse came, and we were well pleased with it, as indeed we ought to have been. My Paris man wrote: "I send a bay mare that ought to fill the bill. She is as quiet as a kitten, can run like a deer, and jump like a kangaroo. My sister has ridden her for four months, and she is not speaking to me now. If you don't like her, send her back." But I did like her, and I sent, instead, a considerable check. The mare was a bright bay with a white star on her forehead and white stockings on her hind feet, stood fifteen hands three inches, weighed 980 pounds, and looked almost too light built; but when we noted the deep chest, strong loins, thin legs, and marvellous thighs, we were free to admit that force and endurance were promised. Jane was delighted. "Dad, if I live to be a hundred years old, I will never forget this day. She's the sweetest horse that ever lived. I must find a nice name for her, and to-morrow we will take our first ride, you and Tom and Aloha and I--yes, that's her name." We did ride the next day, and many days thereafter; and Aloha proved all and more than the Kentuckian had promised. CHAPTER XLVI THE SKIM-MILK TRUST The third quarter of the year made a better showing than any previous one, due chiefly to the sale of hogs in August. The hens did well up to September, when they began to make new clothes for themselves and could not be bothered with egg-making. There were a few more than seven hundred in the laying pens, and nearly as many more rapidly approaching the useful age. The chief advantage in early chickens is that they will take their places at the nests in October or November while the older ones are dressmaking. This is important to one who looks for a steady income from his hens,--October and November being the hardest months to provide for. A few scattered eggs in the pullet runs showed that the late February and early March chickens were beginning to have a realizing sense of their obligations to the world and to the Headman, and that they were getting into line to accept them. More cotton-seed meal was added to the morning mash for the old hens, and the corn meal was reduced a little and the oatmeal increased, as was also the red pepper; but do what you will or feed what you like, the hen will insist upon a vacation at this season of the year. You may shorten it, perhaps, but you cannot prevent it. The only way to keep the egg-basket full is to have a lot of youngsters coming on who will take up the laying for October and November. We milked thirty-seven cows during July, August, and September, and got more than a thousand pounds of milk a day. The butter sold amounted to a trifle more than $375 a month. I think this an excellent showing, considering the fact that the colony at Four Oaks never numbered less than twenty-four during that time, and often many more. I ought to say that the calves had the first claim to the skim-milk; but as we never kept many for more than a few weeks, this claim was easily satisfied. It was like the bonds of a corporation,--the first claim, but a comparatively small one. The hens came next; they held preferred stock, and always received a five-pound, semi-daily dividend to each pen of forty. The growing pigs came last; they held the common stock, which was often watered by the swill and dish-water from both houses and the buttermilk and butter-washing from the dairy. I hold that the feeding value of skim-milk is not less than forty cents a hundred pounds, as we use it at Four Oaks. This seems a high price when it can often be bought for fifteen cents a hundred at the factories; but I claim that it is worth more than twice as much when fed in perfect freshness,--certainly $4 a day would not buy the skim-milk from my dairy, for it is worth more than that to me to feed. This by-product is essential to the smooth running of my factory. Without it the chickens and pigs would not grow as fast, and it is the best food for laying hens,--nothing else will give a better egg-yield. The longer my experiment continues, the stronger is my faith that the combination of cow, hog, and hen, with fruit as a filler, are ideal for the factory farm. With such a plant well-started and well-managed, and with favorable surroundings, I do not see how a man can prevent money from flowing to him in fair abundance. The record of the fourth quarter is as follows:-- Butter $1126.00 Eggs 351.00 Hogs 1807.00 -------- Total $3284.00 CHAPTER XLVII NABOTH'S VINEYARD >One hazy, lazy October afternoon, as my friend Kyrle and I sat on the broad porch hitting our pipes, sipping high balls, and watching the men and machines in the corn-fields, as all toiling sons of the soil should do, he said:-- "Doctor, I don't think you've made any mistake in this business." "Lots of them, Kyrle; but none too serious to mend." "Yes, I suppose so; but I didn't mean it that way. It was no mistake when you made the change." "You're right, old man. It's done me a heap of good, and Polly and the youngsters were never so happy. I only wish we had done it earlier." "Do you think I could manage a farm?" "Why, of course you can; you've managed your business, haven't you? You've grown rich in a business which is a great sight more taxing. How have you done it?" "By using my head, I suppose." "That's just it; if a man will use his head, any business will go,--farming or making hats. It's the gray matter that counts, and the fellow that puts a little more of it into his business than his neighbor does, is the one who'll get on." "But farming is different; so much seems to depend upon winds and rains and frosts and accidents of all sorts that are out of one's line." "Not so much as you think, Kyrle. Of course these things cut in, but one must discount them in farming as in other lines of business. A total crop failure is an unknown thing in this region; we can count on sufficient rain for a moderate crop every year, and we know pretty well when to look for frosts. If a man will do well by his land, the harvest will come as sure as taxes. All the farmer has to do is to make the best of what Nature and intelligent cultivation will always produce. But he must use his gray matter in other ways than in just planning the rotation of crops. When he finds his raw staples selling for a good deal less than actual value,--less than he can produce them for, he should go into the market and buy against higher prices, for he may be absolutely certain that higher prices will come." "But how is one to know? Corn changes so that one can't form much idea of its actual value." "No more than other staples. You know what fur is worth, because you've watched the fur market for twenty years. If it should fall to half its present price, you would feel safe in buying a lot. You know that it would make just as good hats as it ever did, and that the hats, in all probability, would give you the usual profit. It's the same with corn and oats. I know their feeding value; and when they fall much below it, I fill my granary, because for my purpose they are as valuable as if they cost three times as much. Last year I bought ten thousand bushels of corn and oats at a tremendously low price. I don't expect to have such a chance again; but I shall watch the market, and if corn goes below thirty cents or oats below twenty cents, I will fill my granary to the roof. I can make them pay big profits on such prices." "Will you sell this plant, Williams?" "Not for a song, you may be sure." "What has it cost you to date?" "Don't know exactly,--between $80,000 and $90,000, I reckon; the books will show." "Will you take twenty per cent advance on what the books show? I'm on the square." "Now see here, old man, what would be the good of selling this factory for $100,000? How could I place the money so that it would bring me half the things which this farm brings me now? Could I live in a better house, or have better food, better service, better friends, or a better way of entertaining them? You know that $5000 or $6000 a year would not supply half the luxury which we secure at Four Oaks, or give half the enjoyment to my family or my friends. Don't you see that it makes little difference what we call our expenses out here, so long as the farm pays them and gives us a surplus besides? The investment is not large for one to get a living from, and it makes possible a lot of things which would be counted rank extravagance in the city. Here's one of them." A cavalcade was just entering the home lot. First came Jessie Gordon on her thoroughbred mare Lightfoot, and with her, Laura on my Jerry. Laura's foot is as dainty in the stirrup as on the rugs, and she has Jerry's consent and mine to put it where she likes. Following them were Jane and Bill Jackson, with Jane's slender mare looking absolutely delicate beside the big brown gelding that carried Jackson's 190 pounds with ease. The horses all looked as if there had been "something doing," and they were hurried to the stables. The ladies laughed and screamed for a season, as seems necessary for young ladies, and then departed, leaving us in peace. Jackson filled his pipe before remarking:-- "I've been over the ridge into the Dunkard settlement, and they have the cholera there to beat the band. Joe Siegel lost sixty hogs in three days, and there are not ten well hogs in two miles. What do you think of that?" "That means a hard 'fight mit Siegel,'" said Kyrle. "It ought to mean a closer quarantine on this side of the ridge," said I, "and you must fumigate your clothes before you appear before your swine, Jackson. It's more likely to be swine plague than cholera at this time of the year, but it's just as bad; one can hardly tell the difference, and we must look sharp." "How does the contagion travel, Doctor?" "On horseback, when such chumps as you can be found. You probably have some millions of germs up your sleeve now, or, more likely, on your back, and I wouldn't let you go into my hog pen for a $2000 note. I'm so well quarantined that I don't much fear contagion; but there's always danger from infected dust. The wind blows it about, and any mote may be an automobile for a whole colony of bacteria, which may decide to picnic in my piggery. This dry weather is bad for us, and if we get heavy winds from off the ridge, I'm going to whistle for rain." "I say, Williams, when you came out here I thought you a tenderfoot, sure enough, who was likely to pay money for experience; but, by the jumping Jews! you've given us natives cards and spades." "I _was_ a tenderfoot so far as practical experience goes, but I tried to use the everyday sense which God gave me, and I find that's about all a man needs to run a business like this." "You run it all right, for returns, and that's what we are after; and I'm beginning to catch on. I want you to tell me, before Kyrle here, why you gave me that bull two years ago." "What's the matter with the bull, Jackson? Isn't he all right?" "Sure he's all right, and as fine as silk; but why did you give him to me? Why didn't you keep him for yourself?" "Well, Bill, I thought you would like him, and we were neighbors, and--" "You thought I would save you the trouble of keeping him, didn't you?" "Well, perhaps that did have some influence. You see, this is a factory farm from fence to fence, except this forty which Polly bosses, and the utilitarian idea is on top. Keeping the bull didn't exactly run with my notion of economy, especially when I could conveniently have him kept so near, and at the same time be generous to a neighbor." "That's it, and it's taken me two years to find it out. You're trying to follow that idea all along the line. You're dead right, and I'm going to tag on, if you don't mind. I was glad enough for your present at the time, and I'm glad yet; but I've learned my lesson, and you may bet your dear life that no man will ever again give me a bull." "That's right, Jackson. Now you have struck the key-note; stick to it, and you will make money twice as fast as you have done. Have a mark, and keep your eye on it, and your plough will turn a straight furrow." Jackson sent for his horse, and just before he mounted, I said, "Are you thinking of selling your farm?" "I used to think of it, but I've been to school lately and can 'do my sums' better. No, I guess I won't sell the paternal acres; but who wants to buy?" "Kyrle, here, is looking for a farm about the size of yours, and to tell you the truth I should like him for a neighbor. It's dollars to doughnuts that I could give him a whole herd of bulls." "Indeed, you can't do anything of the kind! I wouldn't take a gold dollar from you until I had it tested. I'm on to your curves." "But seriously, Jackson, I must have more land; my stock will eat me out of house and home by the time the factory is running full steam. What would you say to a proposition of $10,000 for one hundred acres along my north line?" "A year ago I would have jumped at it. Now I say 'nit.' I need it all, Doctor; I told you I was going to tag on. But what's the matter with the old lady's quarter across your south road?" "Nothing's the matter with the land, only she won't sell it at any price." "I know; but that drunken brute of a son will sell as soon as she's under the sod, and they say the poor old girl is on her last legs,--down with distemper or some other beastly disease. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll sound the renegade son and see how he measures. Some one will get it before long, and it might as well be you." Jackson galloped off, and Kyrle and I sat on the porch and divided the widow's 160-acre mite. It was a good strip of land, lying a fair mile on the south road and a quarter of a mile deep. The buildings were of no value, the fences were ragged to a degree, but I coveted the land. It was the vineyard of Naboth to me, and I planned its future with my friend and accessory sitting by. I destroyed the estimable old lady's house and barns, ran my ploughshares through her garden and flower beds, and turned the home site into one great field of lusty corn, without so much as saying by your leave. Thus does the greed of land grow upon one. But in truth, I saw that I must have more land. My factory would require more than ten thousand bushels of grain, with forage and green foods in proportion, to meet its full capacity, and I could not hope to get so much from the land then under cultivation. Again, in a few years--a very few--the fifty acres of orchard would be no longer available for crops, and this would still further reduce my tillable land. With the orchards out of use, I should have but 124 acres for all crops other than hay. If I could add this coveted 160, it would give me 250 acres of excellent land for intensive farming. "I should like it on this side of the road," said I, "but I suppose that will have to do." "What will have to do?" asked Kyrle. "The 160 acres over there." "You unconscionable wretch! Have you evicted the poor widow, and she on her deathbed? For stiffening the neck and hardening the heart, commend me to the close-to-nature life of the farmer. I wouldn't own a farm for worlds. It risks one's immortality. Give me the wicked city for pasturage--and a friend who will run a farm, at his own risk, and give me the benefit of it." CHAPTER XLVIII MAIDS AND MALLARDS We have so rarely entered our house with the reader that he knows little of its domestic machinery. So much depends upon this machinery that one must always take it into consideration when reckoning the pleasures and even the comforts of life anywhere, and this is especially true in the country. We have such a lot of people about that our servants cannot sing the song of lonesomeness that makes dolor for most suburbanites. They are "churched" as often as they wish, and we pay city wages; but still it is not all clear sailing in this quarter of Polly's realm. I fancy that we get on better than some of our neighbors; but we do not brag, and I usually feel that I am smoking my pipe in a powder magazine. There is something essentially wrong in the working-girl world, and I am glad that I was not born to set it right. We cannot down the spirit of unrest and improvidence that holds possession of cooks and waitresses, and we needs must suffer it with such patience as we can. Two of our house servants were more or less permanent; that is, they had been with us since we opened the house, and were as content as restless spirits can be. These were the housekeeper and the cook,--the hub of the house. The former is a Norwegian, tall, angular, and capable, with a knot of yellow hair at the back of her head,--ostensibly for sticking lead pencils into,--and a disposition to keep things snug and clean. Her duties include the general supervision of both houses and the special charge of store-rooms, food cellars, and table supplies of all sorts. She is efficient, she whistles while she works, and I see but little of her. I suspect that Polly knows her well. The cook, Mary, is small, Irish, gray, with the temper of a pepper-pod and the voice of a guinea-hen suffering from bronchitis, but she can cook like an angel. She is an artist, and I feel as if the seven-dollar-a-week stipend were but a "tip" to her, and that sometime she will present me with a bill for her services. My safeguard, and one that I cherish, is an angry word from her to the housekeeper. She jeeringly asserted that she, the cook, got $2 a week more than she, the housekeeper, did. As every one knows that the housekeeper has $5 a week, I am holding this evidence against the time when Mary asks for a lump sum adequate to her deserts. The number of things which Mary can make out of everything and out of nothing is wonderful; and I am fully persuaded that all the moneys paid to a really good cook are moneys put into the bank. I often make trips to the kitchen to tell Mary that "the dinner was great," or that "Mrs. Kyrle wants the receipt for that pudding," or that "my friend Kyrle asks if he may see you make a salad dressing;" but "don't do it, Mary; let the secret die with you." The cook cackles, like the guinea-hen that she is, but the dishes are none the worse for the commendation. The laundress is just a washerwoman, so far as I know. She undoubtedly changes with the seasons, but I do not see her, though the clothes are always bleaching on the grass at the back of the house. The maids are as changeable as old-fashioned silk. There are always two of them; but which two, is beyond me. I tell Polly that Four Oaks is a sprocket-wheel for maids, with two links of an endless chain always on top. It makes but little difference which links are up, so the work goes smoothly. Polly thinks the maids come to Four Oaks just as less independent folk go to the mountains or the shore, for a vacation, or to be able to say to the policeman, "I've been to the country." Their system is past finding out; but no matter what it is, we get our dishes washed and our beds made without serious inconvenience. The wage account in the house amounts to just $25 a week. My pet system of an increasing wage for protracted service doesn't appeal to these birds of passage, who alight long enough to fill their crops with our wild rice and celery, and then take wing for other feeding-grounds. This kind of life seems fitted for mallards and maids, and I have no quarrel with either. From my view, there are happier instincts than those which impel migration; but remembering that personal views are best applied to personal use, I wish both maids and mallards _bon voyage_. CHAPTER XLIX THE SUNKEN GARDEN Extending directly west from the porch for 150 feet is an open pergola, of simple construction, but fast gaining beauty from the rapid growth of climbers which Polly and Johnson have planted. It is floored with brick for the protection of dainty feet, and near the western end cluster rustic benches, chairs, tables, and such things as women and gardeners love. Facing the west 50 feet of this pergola is Polly's sunken flower garden, which is her special pride. It extends south 100 feet, and is built in the side of the hill so that its eastern wall just shows a coping above the close-cropped lawn. Of course the western wall is much higher, as the lawn slopes sharply; but it was filled in so as to make this wall-enclosed garden quite level. The walls which rise above the flower beds 4½ feet, are beginning to look decorated, thanks to creeping vines and other things which a cunning gardener and Polly know. Flowers of all sorts--annuals, biennials (triennials, perhaps), and perennials--cover the beds, which are laid out in strange, irregular fashion, far indeed from my rectangular style. These beds please the eye of the mistress, and of her friends, too, if they are candid in their remarks, which I doubt. While excavating the garden we found a granite boulder shaped somewhat like an egg and nearly five feet long. It was a big thing, and not very shapely; but it came from the soil, and Polly wanted it for the base of her sun-dial. We placed it, big end down, in the mathematical centre of the garden (I insisted on that), and sunk it into the ground to make it solid; then a stone mason fashioned a flat space on the top to accommodate an old brass dial that Polly had found in Boston. The dial is not half bad. From the heavy, octagonal brass base rises a slender quill to cast its shadow on the figured circle, while around this circle old English characters ask, "Am I not wise, who note only bright hours?" A plat of sod surrounds the dial, and Polly goes to it at least once a day to set her watch by the shadow of the quill, though I have told her a hundred times that it is seventeen minutes off standard time. I am convinced that this estimable lady wilfully ignores conventional time and marks her cycles by such divisions as "catalogue time," "seed-buying time," "planting time," "sprouting time," "spraying time," "flowering time," "seed-gathering time," "mulching time," and "dreary time," until the catalogues come again. I know it seemed no time at all until she had let me in to the tune of $687 for the pergola, walls, and garden. She bought the sun-dial with her own money, I am thankful to say, and it doesn't enter into this account. I think it must have cost a pretty penny, for she had a hat "made over" that spring. Polly has planted the lawn with a lot of shade trees and shrubs, and has added some clumps of fruit trees. Few trees have been planted near the house; the four fine oaks, from which we take our name, stand without rivals and give ample shade. The great black oak near the east end of the porch is a tower of strength and beauty, which is "seen and known of all men," while the three white oaks farther to the west form a clump which casts a grateful shade when the sun begins to decline. The seven acres of forest to the east is left severely alone, save where the carriage drive winds through it, and Polly watches so closely that the foot of the Philistine rarely crushes her wild flowers. Its sacredness recalls the schoolgirl's definition of a virgin forest: "One in which the hand of man has never dared to put his foot into it." Polly wanders in this grove for hours; but then she knows where and how things grow, and her footsteps are followed by flowers. If by chance she brushes one down, it rises at once, shakes off the dust, and says, "I ought to have known better than to wander so far from home." She keeps a wise eye on the vegetable garden, too, and has stores of knowledge as to seed-time and harvest and the correct succession of garden crops. She and Johnson planned a greenhouse, which Nelson built, for flowers and green stuff through the winter, she said; but I think it is chiefly a place where she can play in the dirt when the weather is bad. Anyhow, that glass house cost the farm $442, and the interest and taxes are going on yet. I as well as Polly had to do some building that autumn. Three more chicken-houses were built, making five in all. Each consists in ten compartments twenty feet wide, of which each is intended to house forty hens. When these houses were completed, I had room for forty pens of forty each, which was my limit for laying hens. In addition was one house of ten pens for half-grown chickens and fattening fowls. It would take the hatch of another year to fill my pens, but one must provide for the future. These three houses cost, in round numbers, $2100,--five times as much as Polly's glass house,--but I was not going to play in them. I also built a cow-house on the same plan as the first one, but about half the size. This was for the dry cows and the heifers. It cost $2230, and gave me stable room enough for the waiting stock, so that I could count on forty milch cows all the time, when my herd was once balanced. Forty cows giving milk, six hundred swine of all ages, putting on fat or doing whatever other duty came to hand, fifteen or sixteen hundred hens laying eggs when not otherwise engaged, three thousand apple trees striving with all their might to get large enough to bear fruit,--these made up my ideal of a factory farm; and it looked as if one year more would see it complete. No rain fell in October, and my brook became such a little brook that I dared to correct its ways. We spent a week with teams, ploughs, and scrapers, cutting the fringe and frills away from it, and reducing it to severe simplicity. It is strange, but true, that this reversion to simplicity robbed it of its shy ways and rustic beauty, and left it boldly staring with open eyes and gaping with wide-stretched mouth at the men who turned from it. We put in about two thousand feet of tile drainage on both sides of what Polly called "that ditch," and this completed the improvements on the low lands. The land, indeed, was not too low to bear good crops, but it was lightened by under drainage and yielded more each after year. The tiles cost me five cents per foot, or $100 for the whole. The work was done by my own men. CHAPTER L THE HEADMAN GENERALIZES Jackson's prophecy came true. The old lady died, and before the ground was fairly settled around her the improvident son accepted a cash offer of $75 per acre for his homestead, and the farm was added to mine. This was in November. I at once spent $640 for 2-1/2 miles of fencing to enclose it in one field, charging the farm account with $12,640 for the land and fence. This transaction was a bargain, from my point of view; and it was a good sale, from the standpoint of the other man, for he put $12,000 away at five per cent interest, and felt that he need never do a stroke of work again. A lazy man is easily satisfied. In December I sold 283 hogs. It was a choice lot, as much alike as peas in a pod, and gave an average weight of 276 pounds; but the market was exceedingly low. I received the highest quotation for the month, $3.60 per hundred, and the lot netted $2702. It seems hard luck to be obliged to sell fine swine at such a price, and a good many farmers would hold their stock in the hope of a rise; but I do not think this prudent. When a pig is 250 days old, if he has been pushed, he has reached his greatest profit-growth; and he should be sold, even though the market be low. If one could be certain that within a reasonable time, say thirty days, there would be a marked advance, it might do to hold; but no one can be sure of this, and it doesn't usually pay to wait. Market the product when at its best, is the rule at Four Oaks. The young hog is undoubtedly at his best from eight to nine months old. He has made a maximum growth on minimum feed, and from that time on he will eat more and give smaller proportionate returns. There is danger, too, that he will grow stale; for he has been subjected to a forcing system which contemplated a definite time limit and which cannot extend much beyond that limit without risks. Force your swine not longer than nine months and sell for what you can get, and you will make more money in the long run than by trying to catch a high market. I sold in December something more than four hundred cockerels, which brought $215. The apples from the old trees were good that year, but not so abundant as the year before, and they brought $337,--$2.25 per tree. The hens laid few eggs in October and November, though they resumed work in December; but the pullets did themselves proud. Sam said he gathered from fourteen to twenty eggs a day from each pen of forty, which is better than forty per cent. We sold nearly eighteen hundred dozen eggs during this quarter, for $553. The butter account showed nearly twenty-eight hundred pounds sold, which brought $894, and the sale of eleven calves brought $180. These sales closed the credit side of our ledger for the year. Apples $337.00 Calves 130.00 Cockerels 215.00 1785 doz. eggs 553.00 2790 lb. butter 894.00 283 hogs 2702.00 -------- Total $4831.00 In making up the expense account of that year and the previous one, I found that I should be able in future to say with a good deal of exactness what the gross amount would be, without much figuring. The interest account would steadily decrease, I hoped, while the wage account would increase as steadily until it approached $5500; that year it was $4662. Each man who had been on the farm more than six months received $18 more that year than he did the year before, and this increase would continue until the maximum wage of $40 a month was reached; but while some would stay long enough to earn the maximum, others would drop out, and new men would begin work at $20 a month. I felt safe, therefore, in fixing $5500 as the maximum wage limit of any year. Time has proven the correctness of this estimate, for $5372 is the most I have paid for wages during the seven years since this experiment was inaugurated. The food purchased for cows, hogs, and hens may also be definitely estimated. It costs about $30 a year for each cow, $1 for each hog, and thirty cents for each hen. Everything else comes from the land, and is covered by such fixed charges as interest, wages, taxes, insurance, repairs, and replenishments. The food for the colony at Four Oaks, usually bought at wholesale, doesn't cost more than $5 a month per capita. This seems small to a man who is in the habit of paying cash for everything that enters his doors; but it amply provides for comforts and even for luxuries, not only for the household, but also for the stranger within the gates. In the city, where water and ice cost money and the daily purchase of food is taxed by three or four middlemen, one cannot realize the factory farmer's independence of tradesmen. I do not mean that this sum will furnish terrapin and champagne, but I do not understand that terrapin and champagne are necessary to comfort, health, or happiness. Let us look for a moment at some of the things which the factory farmer does not buy, and perhaps we shall see that a comfortable existence need not demand much more. His cows give him milk, cream, butter, and veal; his swine give roast pig, fresh pork, salt pork, ham, bacon, sausages, and lard; his hens give eggs and poultry; his fields yield hulled corn, samp, and corn meal; his orchards give apples, pears, peaches, quinces, plums, and cherries; his bushes give currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries; his vines give grapes; his forests give hickory nuts, butternuts, and hazel nuts; and, best of all, his garden gives more than twenty varieties of toothsome and wholesome vegetables in profusion. The whole fruit and vegetable product of the temperate zone is at his door, and he has but to put forth his hand and take it. The skilled housewife makes wonderful provision against winter from the opulence of summer, and her storehouse is crowded with innumerable glass cells rich in the spoils of orchard and garden. There is scant use for the grocer and the butcher under such conditions. I am so well convinced that my estimate of $5 a month is liberal that I have taxed the account with all the salt used on the farm. CHAPTER LI THE GRAND-GIRLS The click of Jane's hammer began to be heard in November, and hardly a day passed without some music from this "Forge in the Forest." Sir Tom made a permanent station of the workshop, where he spent hours in a comfortable chair, drawing nourishment from the head of his cane and pleasure from watching the girl at the anvil. I suspect that he planted himself in the corner of the forge to safeguard Jane; for he had an abiding fear that she would take fire, and he wished to be near at hand to put her out. He procured a small Babcock extinguisher and a half-dozen hand-grenades, and with these instruments he constituted himself a very efficient volunteer fire department. He made her promise, also, that she would have definite hours for heavy work, that he might be on watch; and so fond was she of his company, or rather of his presence, for he talked but little, that she kept close to the schedule. Laura had a favorite corner in the forge, where she often turned a hem or a couplet. She was equally dexterous at either; and Sir Tom watched her, too, with an admiring eye. I once heard him say:-- "Milady Laura, it is the regret of me life that I came into the world a generation too soon." Laura sometimes went away--she called it "going home," but we scoffed the term--and the doldrums blew until she returned. Sir Tom dined with us nearly every evening through the fall and early winter; and when he, and Kate and Tom and the grand-girls, and the Kyrles, and Laura were at Four Oaks, there was little to be desired. The grand-girls were nearly five and seven now, and they were a great help to the Headman. My terrier was no closer to my heels from morning to night than were these youngsters. They took to country life like the young animals they were, and made friends with all, from Thompson down. They must needs watch the sheep as they walked their endless way on the treadmill night and morning; they thrust their hands into hundreds of nests and placed the spoils in Sam's big baskets; they watched the calves at their patent feeders, which deceived the calves, but not the girls; they climbed into the grain bins and tobogganed on the corn; they haunted the cow-barn at milking time and wondered much; but the chiefest of their delights was the beautiful white pig which Anderson gave them. A little movable pen was provided for this favorite, and the youngsters fed it several times a day with warm milk from a nursing-bottle, like any other motherless child. The pig loved its foster-mothers, and squealed for them most of the time when it was not eating or sleeping; fortunately, a pig can do much of both. It grew playful and intelligent, and took on strange little human ways which made one wonder if Darwin were right in his conclusion that we are all ascended from the ape. I have seen features and traits of character so distinctly piggish as to rouse my suspicions that the genealogical line is not free from a cross of _sus scrofa_. The pig grew in stature and in wisdom, but not in grace, from day to day, until it threatened to dominate the place. However, it was lost during the absence of its friends,--to be replaced by a younger one at the next visit. "Do _your_ pigs get lost when you are away?" asked No. 1. "Not often, dear." "It's only pet pigs that runds away," said No. 2, "and I don't care, for it rooted me." The pet pig is still a favorite with the grand-girls, but it always runs away in the fall. Kate loved to come to Four Oaks, and she spent so much time there that she often said:-- "We have no right to that $1200; we spend four times as much time here as you all do in town." "That's all right daughter, but I wish you would spend twice as much time here as you do, and I also wish that the $1200 were twice as much as it is." Time was running so smoothly with us that we "knocked on wood" each morning for fear our luck would break. The cottage which had once served as a temporary granary, and which had been moved to the building line two years before, was now turned into an overflow house against the time when Jack should come home for the winter vacation. Polly had decided to have "just as many as we can hold, and some more," and as the heaviest duties fell upon her, the rest of us could hardly find fault. The partitions were torn out of the cottage, and it was opened up into one room, except for the kitchen, which was turned into a bath-room. Six single iron beds were put up, and the place was made comfortable by an old-fashioned, air-tight, sheet-iron stove with a great hole in the top through which big chunks and knots of wood were fed. This stove would keep fire all night, and, while not up to latter-day demands, it was quite satisfactory to the warm-blooded boys who used it. The expense of overhauling the cottage was $214. Tom, Kate, and the grand-girls were to be with us, of course, and so were the Kyrles, Sir Tom, Jessie Gordon, Florence, Madeline, and Alice Chase. Jack was to bring Jarvis and two other men besides Frank and Phil of last year's party. The six boys were bestowed in the cottage, where they made merry without seriously interrupting sleep in the main house. The others found comfortable quarters under our roof, except Sir Tom, who would go home some time in the night, to return before lunch the next day. With such a houseful of people, the cook was worked to the bone; but she gloried in it, and cackled harder than ever. I believe she gave warning twice during those ten days; but Polly has a way with her which Mary cannot resist. I do not think we could have driven that cook out of the house with a club when there was such an opportunity for her to distinguish herself. Her warnings were simply matters of habit. The holidays were filled with such things as a congenial country house-party can furnish--the wholesomest, jolliest things in the world; and the end, when it came, was regretted by all. I grew to feel a little bit jealous of Jarvis's attentions to Jane, for they looked serious, and she was not made unhappy by them. Jarvis was all that was honest and manly, but I could not think of giving up Jane, even to the best of fellows. I wanted her for my old age. I suspect that a loving father can dig deeper into the mud of selfishness than any other man, and yet feel all the time that he is doing God service. It is in accord with nature that a daughter should take the bit in her teeth and bolt away from this restraining selfishness, but the man who is left by the roadside cannot always see it in that light. CHAPTER LII THE THIRD BECKONING On the afternoon of December 31 I called a meeting of the committee of ways and means, and Polly and I locked ourselves in my office. It was then two and a half years since we commenced the experiment of building a factory farm, which was to supply us with comforts, luxuries, and pleasures of life, and yet be self-supporting: a continuous experiment in economics. The building of the factory was practically completed, though not all of its machinery had yet been installed. We had spent our money freely,--too freely, perhaps; and we were now ready to watch the returns. Polly said:-- "There are some things we are sure of: we like the country, and it likes us. I have spent the happiest year of my life here. We've entertained more friends than ever before, and they've been better entertained, so that we are all right from the social standpoint. You are stronger and better than ever before, and so am I. Credit the farm with these things, Mr. Headman, and you'll find that it doesn't owe us such an awful amount after all." "Are these things worth $100,000?" "Now, John, you don't mean that you've spent $100,000! What in the world have you done with it? Just pigs and cows and chickens--" "And greenhouses and sunken gardens and pergolas and kickshaws," said I. "But seriously, Polly, I think that we can show value for all that we have spent; and the whole amount is not three times what our city house cost, and that only covered our heads." "How do you figure values here?" "We get a great deal more than simply shelter out of this place, and we have tangible values, too. Here are some of them: 480 acres of excellent land, so well groomed and planted that it is worth of any man's money, $120 per acre, or $57,600; buildings, water-plant, etc., all as good as new, $40,000; 44 cows, $4400; 10 heifers nearly two years old, $500; 8 horses, $1200; 50 brood sows, $1000; 350 young pigs, $1700; 1300 laying hens, $1300; tools and machinery, $1500; that makes well over $100,000 in sight, besides all the things you mentioned before." "You haven't counted the six horses in my barn." "They haven't been charged to the farm, Polly." "Or the trees you've planted?" "No, they go with the land to increase its value." "And my gardens, too?" "Yes, they are fixtures and count with the acres. You see, this, land didn't cost quite $75 an acre, but I hold it $50 better for what we've done to it; I don't believe Bill Jackson would sell his for less. I offered him $10,000 for a hundred acres, and he refused. We've put up the price of real estate in this neighborhood, Mrs. Williams." "Well, let's get at the figures. I'm dying to see how we stand." "I have summarized them here:-- "To additional land and development of plant $20,353.00 To interest on previous investment 4,220.00 Wages 4,662.00 Food for twenty-five people 1,523.00 Food for stock 2,120.00 Taxes and insurance 207.00 Shoeing and repairs 309.00 ---------- "Making in all $33,394.00 spent this year. "The receipts are:-- "First quarter $1,297.00 Second quarter 1,706.00 Third quarter 3,284.00 Fourth quarter 4,831.00 --------- "Making $11,118.00 "But we agreed to pay $4000 a year to the farm for our food and shelter, if it did as well by us as the town house did. Shall we do it, Polly?" "Why, of course; we've been no end more comfortable here." "Well, if we don't expect to get something for nothing, I think we ought to add it. Adding $4000 will make the returns from the farm $15,118, leaving $18,276 to add to the interest-bearing debt. Last year this debt was $84,404. Add this year's deficit, and we have $102,680. A good deal of money, Polly, but I showed you well over $100,000 in assets,--at our own price, to be sure, but not far wrong." "Will you ever have to increase the debt?" "I think not. I believe we shall reduce it a little next year, and each year thereafter. But, supposing it only pays expenses, how can you put on as much style on the interest of $100,000 anywhere else as you can here? It can't be done. When the fruit comes in and this factory is running full time, it will earn well on toward $25,000 a year, and it will not cost over $14,000 to run it, interest and all. It won't take long at that rate to wipe out the interest-bearing debt. You'll be rich, Polly, before you're ten years older." "You are rich now, in imagination and expectation, Mr. Headman, but I'll bank with you for a while longer. But what's the use of charging the farm with interest when you credit it with our keeping?" "There isn't much reason in that, Polly. It's about as broad as it is long. I simply like to keep books in that way. We charge the farm with a little more than $4000 interest, and we credit it with just $4000 for our food and shelter. We'll keep on in this way because I like it." CHAPTER LIII THE MILK MACHINE In opening the year 1898 I was faced by a larger business proposition than I had originally planned. When I undertook the experiment of a factory farm, I placed the limit of capital to be invested at about $60,000. Now I found that I had exceeded that amount by a good many thousand dollars, and I knew that the end was not yet. The factory was not complete, and it would be several years before it would be at its best in output. While it had cost me more than was originally contemplated, and while there was yet more money to be spent, there was still no reason for discouragement. Indeed, I felt so certain of ultimate profits that I was ready to put as much into it as could possibly be used to advantage. The original plan was for a soiling farm on which I could milk thirty cows, fatten two hundred hogs, feed a thousand hens, and wait for thirty-five hundred fruit trees to come to a profitable age. With this in view, I set apart forty acres of high, dry land, for the feeding-grounds, twenty acres of which was devoted to the cows; and I now found that this twenty-acre lot would provide an ample exercise field for twice that number. It was in grass (timothy, red-top, and blue grass), and the cows nibbled persistently during the short hours each day when they were permitted to be on it; but it was never reckoned as part of their ration. The sod was kept in good condition and the field free from weeds, by the use of the mowing-machine, set high, every ten or twenty days, according to the season. Following the mower, we use a spring-tooth rake which bunched the weeds and gathered or broke up the droppings; and everything the rake caught was carted to the manure vats. Our big Holsteins do not suffer from close quarters, so far as I am able to judge, neither do they take on fat. From thirty minutes to three hours (depending on the weather), is all the outing they get each day; but this seems sufficient for their needs. The well-ventilated stable with its moderate temperature suits the sedentary nature of these milk machines, and I am satisfied with the results. I cannot, of course, speak with authority of the comparative merits of soiling _versus_ grazing, for I have had no experience in the latter; but in theory soiling appeals to me, and in practice it satisfies me. When I found I could keep more cows on the land set apart for them, I built another cow stable for the dry cows and the heifers, and added four stalls to my milk stable by turning each of the hospital wards into two stalls. The ten heifers which I reserved in the spring of 1896 were now nearly two years old. They were expected to "come in" in the early autumn, when they would supplement the older herd. The cows purchased in 1895 were now five years old, and quite equal to the large demand which we made upon them. They had grown to be enormous creatures, from thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred pounds in weight, and they were proving their excellence as milk producers by yielding an average of forty pounds a day. We had, and still have, one remarkable milker, who thinks nothing of yielding seventy pounds when fresh, and who doesn't fall below twenty-five pounds when we are forced to dry her off. I have no doubt that she would be a successful candidate for advanced registration if we put her to the test. For ten months in each year these cows give such quantities of milk as would surprise a man not acquainted with this noble Dutch family. My five common cows were good of their kind, but they were not in the class with the Holsteins. They were not "robber" cows, for they fully earned their food; but there was no great profit in them. To be sure, they did not eat more than two-thirds as much as the Holsteins; but that fact did not stand to their credit, for the basic principle of factory farming is to consume as much raw material as possible and to turn out its equivalent in finished product. The common cows consumed only two-thirds as much raw material as the Holsteins, and turned out rather less than two-thirds of their product, while they occupied an equal amount of floor space; consequently they had to give place to more competent machines. They were to be sold during the season. Why dairymen can be found who will pay $50 apiece for cows like those I had for sale (better, indeed, than the average), is beyond my method of reckoning values. Twice $50 will buy a young cow bred for milk, and she would prove both bread and milk to the purchaser in most cases. The question of food should settle itself for the dairyman as it does for the factory farmer. The more food consumed, the better for each, if the ratio of milk be the same. My Holsteins are great feeders; more than 2 tons of grain, 2-1/2 tons of hay, and 4 or 5 tons of corn fodder, in addition to a ton of roots or succulent vegetables, pass through their great mouths each year. The hay is nearly equally divided between timothy, oat hay, and alfalfa; and when I began to figure the gross amount that would be required for my 50 Holstein gourmands, I saw that the widow's farm had been purchased none too quickly. To provide 100 tons of grain, 125 tons of hay, and 200 or 300 tons of corn fodder for the cows alone, was no slight matter; but I felt prepared to furnish this amount of raw material to be transmuted into golden butter. The Four Oaks butter had made a good reputation, and the four oak leaves stamped on each mould was a sufficient guarantee of excellence. My city grocer urged a larger product, and I felt safe in promising it; at the same time, I held him up for a slight advance in price. Heretofore it had netted me 32 cents a pound, but from January 1, 1898, I was to have 33-1/3 cents for each pound delivered at the station at Exeter, I agreeing to furnish at least 50 pounds a day, six days in a week. This was not always easily done during the first eight months of that year, and I will confess to buying 640 pounds to eke out the supply for the colony; but after the young heifers came in, there was no trouble, and the purchased butter was more than made up to our local grocer. It will be more satisfactory to deal with dairy matters in lump sums from now on. The contract with the city grocer still holds, and, though he often urges me to increase my herd, I still limit the supply to 300 pounds a week,--sometimes a little more, but rarely less. I believe that 38 to 44 cows in full flow of milk will make the best balance in my factory; and a well-balanced factory is what I am after. I am told that animals are not machines, and that they cannot be run as such. My animals are; and I run them as I would a shop. There is no sentiment in my management. If a cow or a hog or a hen doesn't work in a satisfactory way, it ceases to occupy space in my shop, just as would an imperfect wheel. The utmost kindness is shown to all animals at Four Oaks. This rule is the most imperative one on the place, and the one in which no "extenuating circumstances" are taken into account. There are two equal reasons for this: the first is a deep-rooted aversion to cruelty in all forms; and the second is, _it pays_. But kindness to animals doesn't imply the necessity of keeping useless ones or those whose usefulness is below one's standard. If a man will use the intelligence and attention to detail in the management of stock that is necessary to the successful running of a complicated machine, he will find that his stock doesn't differ greatly from his machine. The trouble with most farmers is that they think the living machine can be neglected with impunity, because it will not immediately destroy itself or others, and because it is capable of a certain amount of self-maintenance; while the dead machine has no power of self-support, and must receive careful and punctual attention to prevent injury to itself and to other property. If a dairyman will feed his cows as a thresher feeds the cylinder of his threshing-machine, he will find that the milk will flow from the one about as steadily as the grain falls from the other. Intensive factory farming means the use of the best machines pushed to the limit of their capacity through the period of their greatest usefulness, and then replaced by others. Pushing to the limit of capacity is in no sense cruelty. It is predicated on the perfect health of the animal, for without perfect condition, neither machine nor animal can do its best work. It is simply encouraging to a high degree the special function for which generations of careful breeding have fitted the animal. That there is gratification in giving milk, no well-bred cow or mother will deny. It is a joyous function to eat large quantities of pleasant food and turn it into milk. Heredity impels the cow to do this, and it would take generations of wild life to wean her from it. As well say that the cataleptic trance of the pointer, when the game bird lies close and the delicate scent fills his nostrils, is not a joy to him, or that the Dalmatian at the heels of his horse, or the foxhound when Reynard's trail is warm, receive no pleasure from their specialties. Do these animals feel no joy in the performance of service which is bred into their bones and which it is unnatural or freakish for them to lack? No one who has watched the "bred-for-milk" cow can doubt that the joys of her life are eating, drinking, sleeping, and giving milk. Pushing her to the limit of her capacity is only intensifying her life, though, possibly, it may shorten it by a year or two. While she lives she knows all the happiness of cow life, and knows it to the full. What more can she ask? She would starve on the buffalo grass which supports her half-wild sister, "northers" would freeze her, and the snow would bury her. She is a product of high cow-civilization, and as such she must have the intelligent care of man or she cannot do her best. With this care she is a marvellous machine for the making of the only article of food which in itself is competent to support life in man. If my Holsteins are not machines, they resemble them so closely that I will not quarrel with the name. What is true of the cow, is true also of the pork-making machine that we call the hog. His wild and savage progenitor is lost, and we have in his place a sluggish animal that is a very model as a food producer. His three pleasures are eating, sleeping, and growing fat. He follows these pleasures with such persistence that 250 days are enough to perfect him. It can certainly be no hardship to a pig to encourage him in a life of sloth and gluttony which appeals to his taste and to my profit. Custom and interest make his life ephemeral; I make it comfortable. From the day of his birth until we separate, I take watchful care of him. During infancy he is protected from cold and wet, and his mother is coddled by the most nourishing foods, that she may not fail in her duty to him. During childhood he is provided with a warm house, a clean bed, and a yard in which to disport himself, and is fed for growth and bone on skim-milk, oatmeal, and sweet alfalfa. During his youth, corn meal is liberally added to his diet, also other dainties which he enjoys and makes much of; and during his whole life he has access to clean water, and to the only medicine which a pig needs,--a mixture of ashes, charcoal, salt, and sulphur. When he has spent 250 happy days with me, we part company with feelings of mutual respect,--he to finish his mission, I to provide for his successor. My early plan was to turn off 200 of this finished product each year, but I soon found that I could do much better. One can raise a crop of hogs nearly as quickly as a crop of corn, and with much more profit, if the food be at hand. There was likely to be an abundance of food. I was more willing to sell it in pig skins than in any other packages. My plan was now to turn off, not 200 hogs each year, but 600 or more. I had 60 well-bred sows, young and old, and I could count on them to farrow at least three times in two years. The litters ought to average 7 each, say 22 pigs in two years; 60 times 22 are 1320, and half of 1320 is 660. Yes, at that rate, I could count on about 600 finished hogs to sell each year. But if my calculations were too high, I could easily keep 10 more brood sows, for I had sufficient room to keep them healthy. The two five-acre lots, Nos. 3 and 5, had been given over to the brood sows when they were not caring for young litters in the brood-house. Comfortable shelters and a cemented basin twelve feet by twelve, and one foot deep, had been built in each lot. The water-pipe that ran through the chicken lot (No. 4) connected with these basins, as did also a drain-pipe to the drain in the north lane, so that it was easy to turn on fresh water and to draw off that which was soiled. Through this device my brood sows had access to a water bath eight inches deep, whenever they were in the fields. My hogs, young or old, have never been permitted to wallow in mud. We have no mud-holes at Four Oaks to grow stale and breed disease. The breeding hogs have exercise lots and baths, but the young growing and fattening stock have neither. They are kept in runs twenty feet by one hundred, in bunches of from twenty to forty, according to age, from the time they are weaned until they leave the place for good. This plan, which I did not intend to change, opened a question in my mind that gave me pause. It was this: Can I hope, even with the utmost care, to keep the house for growing and fattening swine free from disease if I keep it constantly full of swine? The more I thought about it the less probable it appeared. The pig-house had cost me $4320. Another would cost as much, if not more, and I did not like to go to the expense unless it were necessary. I worked over this problem for several days, and finally came to the conclusion that I should never feel easy about my swine until I had two houses for them, besides the brood-house for the sows. I therefore gave the order to Nelson to build another swine-house as soon as spring opened. My plan was, and I carried it out, to move all the colonies every three months, and to have the vacant house thoroughly cleaned, sprayed with a powerful germicide, and whitewashed. The runs were to be turned over, when the weather would permit, and the ground sown to oats or rye. The new house was finished in June, and the pigs were moved into it on July 1st with a lease of three months. My mind has been easy on the question of the health of my hogs ever since; and with reason, for there has been no epizoötic or other serious form of disease in my piggery, in spite of the fact that there are often more than 1200 pigs of all degrees crowded into this five-acre lot. The two pig-houses and the brood-house, with their runs, cover the whole of the lot, except the broad street of sixty feet just inside my high quarantine fence, which encloses the whole of it. CHAPTER LIV BACON AND EGGS Each hog turned out from my piggery weighing 270 pounds or more, has eaten of my substance not less than 500 pounds of grain, 250 pounds of chopped alfalfa, 250 pounds of roots or vegetables, and such quantities of skimmed milk and swill as have fallen to his share. I could reckon the approximate cost of these foods, but I will not do so. All but the middlings and oil meal come from the farm and are paid for by certain fixed charges heretofore mentioned. The middlings and oil meal are charged in the "food for animals" account at the rate of $1 a year for each finished hog. The truth is that a large part of the food which enters into the making of each 300 pounds of live pork, is of slow sale, and that for some of it there is no sale at all,--for instance, house swill, dish-water, butter-washings, garden weeds, lawn clippings, and all sorts of coarse vegetables. A hog makes half his growth out of refuse which has no value, or not sufficient to warrant the effort and expense of selling it. He has unequalled facilities for turning non-negotiable scrip into convertible bonds, and he is the greatest moneymaker on the farm. If the grain ration were all corn, and if there were a roadside market for it at 35 cents a bushel, it would cost $3.12; the alfalfa would be worth $1.45, and the vegetables probably 65 cents, under like conditions, making a total of $5.22 as a possible gross value of the food which the hog has eaten. The gross value of these things, however, is far above their net value when one considers time and expense of sale. The hog saves all this trouble by tucking under his skin slow-selling remnants of farm products and making of them finished assets which can be turned into cash at a day's notice. To feed the hogs on the scale now planned, I had to provide for something like 7000 bushels of grain, chiefly corn and oats, 100 tons of alfalfa, and an equal amount of vegetables, chiefly sugar beets and mangel-wurzel. Certainly the widow's land would be needed. The poultry had also outgrown my original plans, and I had built with reference to my larger views. There were five houses on the poultry lot, each 200 feet long, and each divided into ten equal pens. Four of these houses were for the laying hens, which were divided into flocks of 40 each; while the other house was for the growing chickens and for cockerels being fattened for market. There were now on hand more than 1300 pullets and hens, and I instructed Sam to run his incubator overtime that season, so as to fill our houses by autumn. I should need 800 or 900 pullets to make our quota good, for most of the older hens would have to be disposed of in the autumn,--all but about 200, which would be kept until the following spring to breed from. I believe that a three-year-old hen that has shown the egg habit is the best fowl to breed from, and it is the custom at Four Oaks to reserve specially good pens for this purpose. The egg habit is unquestionably as much a matter of heredity as the milk or the fat producing habit, and should be as carefully cultivated. With this end in view, Sam added young cockerels to four of his best-producing flocks on January 1, and by the 15th he was able to start his incubators. Breeding and feeding for eggs is on the same principle as feeding and breeding for milk. It is no more natural for a hen to lay eggs for human consumption than it is for the robin to do so, or for the cow to give more milk than is sufficient for her calf. Man's necessity has made demands upon both cow and hen, and man's intelligence has converted individualists into socialists in both of these races. They no longer live for themselves alone. As the cow, under favorable conditions, finds pleasure in giving milk, so does the hen under like conditions take delight in giving eggs,--else why the joyous cackle when leaving her nest after doing her full duty? She gloats over it, and glories in it, and announces her satisfaction to the whole yard. It is something to be proud of, and the cackling hen knows it better than you or I. It can be no hardship to push this egg machine to the limit of its capacity. It adds new zest to the life of the hen, and multiplies her opportunities for well-earned self-congratulation. Our hens are fed for eggs, and we get what we feed for. I said of my hens that I would not ask them to lay more than eight dozen eggs each year, and I will stick to what I said. But I do not reject voluntary contributions beyond this number. Indeed, I accept them with thanks, and give Biddy a word of commendation for her gratuity. Eight dozen eggs a year will pay a good profit, but if each of my hens wishes to present me with two dozen more, I slip 62 cents into my pocket and say, "I am very much obliged to you, miss," or madam, as the case may be. Most of my hens do remember me in this substantial way, and the White Wyandottes are in great favor with the Headman. The houses in which my hens live are almost as clean as the one I inhabit (and Polly is tidy to a degree); their food is as carefully prepared as mine, and more punctually served; their enemies are fended off, and they are never frightened by dogs or other animals, for the five-acre lot on which their houses and runs are built is enclosed by a substantial fence that prevents any interloping; book agents never disturb their siestas, nor do tree men make their lives hideous with lithographs of impossible fruit on improbable trees. Whether I am indebted to one or to all of these conditions for my full egg baskets, I am unable to say; but I do not purpose to make any change, for my egg baskets are as full as a reasonable man could wish. As nearly as I can estimate, my hens give thirty per cent egg returns as a yearly average--about 120 eggs for each hen in 365 days. This is more than I ask of them, but I do not refuse their generosity. Every egg is worth, in my market, 2-1/2 cents, which means that the yearly product of each hen could be sold for $3. Something more than two thousand dozen are consumed by the home colony or the incubators; the rest find their way to the city in clean cartons of one dozen each, with a stencil of Four Oaks and a guarantee that they are not twenty-four hours old when they reach the middleman. In return for this $3 a year, what do I give my hens besides a clean house and yard? A constant supply of fresh water, sharp grits, oyster shells, and a bath of road dust and sifted ashes, to which is added a pinch of insect powder. Twice each day five pounds of fresh skim-milk is given to each flock of forty. In the morning they have a warm mash composed of (for 1600 hens) 50 pounds of alfalfa hay cut fine and soaked all night in hot water, 50 pounds of corn meal, 50 pounds of oat meal, 50 pounds of bran, and 20 pounds of either meat meal or cotton-seed meal. At noon they get 100 pounds of mixed grains--wheat and buckwheat usually--with some green vegetables to pick at; and at night 125 to 150 pounds of whole corn. There are variations of this diet from time to time, but no radical change. I have read much of a balanced ration, but I fancy a hen will balance her own ration if you give her the chance. Milk is one of the most important items on this bill of fare, and all hens love it. It should be fed entirely fresh, and the crocks or earthen dishes from which it is eaten should be thoroughly cleansed each day. Four ounces for each hen is a good daily ration, and we divide this into two feedings. Our 1600 hens eat about 75 tons of grain a year. Add to this the 100 tons which 50 cows will require, 200 tons for the swine, and 25 tons for the horses, and we have 400 tons of grain to provide for the stock on the factory farm. Nearly a fourth of this, in the shape of bran, gluten meal, oil meal, and meat meal, must be purchased, for we have no way of producing it. For the other 300 tons we must look to the land or to a low market. Three hundred tons of mixed grains means something like 13,000 bushels, and I cannot hope to raise this amount from my land at present. Fortunately the grain market was to my liking in January of 1898; and though there were still more than 7000 bushels in my granary, I purchased 5000 bushels of corn and as much oats against a higher market. The corn cost 27 cents a bushel and the oats 22, delivered at Exeter, the 10,000 bushels amounting to $2450, to be charged to the farm account. I was now prepared to face the food problem, for I had more than 17,000 bushels of grain to supplement the amount the farm would produce, and to tide me along until cheap grain should come again, or until my land should produce enough for my needs. The supply in hand plus that which I could reasonably expect to raise, would certainly provide for three years to come, and this is farther than the average farmer looks into the future. But I claim to be more enterprising than an average farmer, and determined to keep my eyes open and to take advantage of any favorable opportunity to strengthen my position. In the meantime it was necessary to force my trees, and to secure more help for the farm work. To push fruit trees to the limit of healthy growth is practical and wise. They can accomplish as much in growth and development in three years, when judiciously stimulated, as in five or six years of the "lick-and-a-promise" kind of care which they usually receive. A tree must be fed first for growth and afterward for fruit, just as a pig is managed, if one wishes quick returns. To plant a tree and leave it to the tenderness of nature, with only occasional attention, is to make the heart sick, for it is certain to prove a case of hope deferred. In the fulness of time the tree and "happy-go-lucky" nature will prove themselves equal to the development of fruit; but they will be slow in doing it. It is quite as well for the tree, and greatly to the advantage of the horticulturist, to cut two or three years out of this unprofitable time. All that is necessary to accomplish this is: to keep the ground loose for a space around the tree somewhat larger than the spread of its branches; to apply fertilizers rich in nitrogen; to keep the whole of the cultivated space mulched with good barn-yard manure, increasing the thickness of the mulch with coarse stuff in the fall, so as to lengthen the season of root activity; and to draw the mulch aside about St. Patrick's Day, that the sun's rays may warm the earth as early as possible. Moderate pruning, nipping back of exuberant branches, and two sprayings of the foliage with Bordeaux mixture, to keep fungus enemies in check, comprise all the care required by the growing tree. This treatment will condense the ordinary growth of five years into three, and the tree will be all the better for the forcing. As soon as fruit spurs and buds begin to show themselves, the treatment should be modified, but not remitted. Less nitrogen and more phosphoric acid and potash are to be used, and the mulch should _not_ be removed in the early spring. The objects now are, to stimulate the fruit buds and to retard activity in the roots until the danger from late frosts is past. As a result of this kind of treatment, many varieties of apple trees will give moderate crops when the roots are seven, and the trunks are six years old. Fruit buds showed in abundance on many of my trees in the fall of 1897, especially on the Duchess and the Yellow Transparent, and I looked for a small apple harvest that year. CHAPTER LV THE OLD TIME FARM-HAND With all my industries thus increasing, the necessity for more help became imperative. French and Judson had their hands more than full in the dairy barns, and had to be helped out by Thompson. Anderson could not give the swine all the attention they needed, and was assisted by Otto, who proved an excellent swineherd. Sam had the aid of Lars's boys with the poultry, and very efficient aid it was, considering the time they could give to it. They had to be off with the market wagon at 7.40, and did not return from school until 4 P.M. Lars was busy in the carriage barn; and though we spared him as much as possible from driving, he had to be helped out by Johnson at such times as the latter could spare from his greenhouse and hotbeds. Zeb took care of the farm teams; but the winter's work of distributing forage and grain, getting up wood and ice, hauling manure, and so forth, had to be done in a desultory and irregular manner. The spring work would find us wofully behindhand if I did not look sharp. I had been looking sharp since January set in, and had experienced, for the first time, real difficulties in finding anything like good help. Hitherto I had been especially fortunate in this regard. I had met some reverses, but in the main good luck had followed me. I had nine good men who seemed contented and who were all saving money,--an excellent sign of stability and contentment. Even Lars had not fallen from grace but once, and that could hardly be charged against him, for Jack and Jarvis had tempted him beyond resistance; while Sam's nose was quite blanched, and he was to all appearances firmly seated on the water wagon. Really, I did not know what labor troubles meant until 1898, but since then I have not had clear sailing. From my previous experience with working-men, I had formed the opinion that they were reasoning and reasonable human beings,--with peculiarities, of course; and that as a class they were ready to give good service for fair wages and decent treatment. In early life I had been a working-man myself, and I thought I could understand the feelings and sympathize with the trials of the laborer from the standpoint of personal experience. I was sorely mistaken. The laboring man of to-day is a different proposition from the man who did manual labor "before the war." That he is more intelligent, more provident, happier, or better in any way, I sincerely doubt; that he is restless, dissatisfied, and less efficient, I believe; that he is unreasonable in his demands and regardless of the interests of his employer, I know. There are many shining exceptions, and to these I look for the ultimate regeneration of labor; but the rule holds true. I do not believe that the principles of life have changed in forty years. I do not believe that an intelligent, able-bodied man need be a servant all his life, or that industry and economy miss their rewards, or that there is any truth in the theory that men cannot rise out of the rut in which they happen to find themselves. The trouble is with the man, not with the rut. He spends his time in wallowing rather than in diligently searching for an outlet or in honestly working his way up to it. Heredity and environment are heavy weights, but industry and sobriety can carry off heavier ones. I have sympathy for weakness of body or mind, and patience for those over whom inheritance has cast a baleful spell; but I have neither patience nor sympathy for a strong man who rails at his condition and makes no determined effort to better it. The time and money wasted in strikes, agitations, and arbitrations, if put to practical use, would better the working-man enough faster than these futile efforts do. I have no quarrel with unions or combinations of labor, so far as they have the true interests of labor for an object; but I do quarrel with the spirit of mob rule and the evidences of conspicuous waste, which have grown so rampant as to overshadow the helpful hand and to threaten, not the stability of society--for in the background I see six million conservative sons of the soil who will look to the stability of things when the time comes--but the unions themselves. I remember my first summer on a farm. It lasted from the first day of April to the thirty-first day of October, and on the evening of that day I carried to my father $28, the full wage for seven months. I could not have spent one cent during that time, for I carried the whole sum home; but I do not remember that I was conscious of any want. The hours on the farm were not short; an eight-hour day would have been considered but a half-day. We worked from sun to sun, and I grew and knew no sorrow or oppression. The next year I received the munificent wage of $6 a month, and the following year, $8. In after years, in brick-yards, sawmills, lumber woods, or harvest fields, there was no arbitrary limit put upon the amount of work to be done. If I chose to do the work of a man and a half, I got $1.50 for doing it, and it would have been a bold and sturdy delegate who tried to hold me from it. I felt no need of help from outside. I was fit to care for myself, and I minded not the long hours, the hard work, or the hard bed. This life was preliminary to a fuller one, and it served its use. I know what tired legs and back mean, and I know that one need not have them always if he will use the ordinary sense which God gives. Genius, or special cleverness, is not necessary to get a man out of the rut of hard manual labor. Just plain, everyday sense will do. But before I had secured the three men for whom I was in search, I began to feel that this common sense of which we speak so glibly is a rare commodity under the working-man's hat. I advertised, sent to agencies and intelligence offices, interviewed and inspected, consulted friends and enemies, and so generally harrowed my life that I was fit to give up the whole business and retire into a cave. By actual count, I saw more than one hundred men, of all ages, sizes, and colors. Eight of these were tried, of whom five were found wanting. Early in February I had settled upon three sober men to add to our colony. As none of these lasted the year out, I may be forgiven for not introducing them to the reader. They served their purpose, and mine too, and then drifted on. CHAPTER LVI THE SYNDICATE I do not wish to take credit for things which gave me pleasure in the doing, or to appear altruistic in my dealings with the people employed at Four Oaks. I tell of our business and other relations because they are details of farm history and rightfully belong to these pages. If I dealt fairly by my men and established relations of mutual confidence and dependence, it was not in the hope that my ways might be approved and commended, but because it paid, in more ways than one. I wanted my men to have a lively interest in the things which were of importance to me, that their efforts might be intelligent and direct; and I was glad to enter into their schemes, either for pleasure or for profit, with such aid as I could give. Cordial understanding between employee and employer puts life into the contract, and disposes of perfunctory service, which simply recognizes a definite deed for a definite compensation. Uninterested labor leaves a load of hay in the field to be injured, just because the hour for quitting has come, while interested labor hurries the hay into the barn to make it safe, knowing that the extra half-hour will be made up to it in some other way. It pays the farmer to take his help into a kind of partnership, not always in his farm, but always in his consideration. That is why my farm-house was filled with papers and magazines of interest to the men; that is why I spent many an evening with them talking over our industries; that is why I purchased an organ for them when I found that Mrs. French, the dairymaid, could play on it; that is why I talked economy to them and urged them to place some part of each month's wage in the Exeter Savings Bank; and that is why, early in 1898, I formulated a plan for investing their wages at a more profitable rate of interest. I asked each one to give me a statement of his or her savings up to date. They were quite willing to do this, and I found that the aggregate for the eight men and three women was $2530. Anderson, who saved most of his wages, had an account in a city savings bank, and did not join us in our syndicate, though he approved of it. The money was made up of sums varying from $90, Lena's savings, to $460 owned by Judson, the buggy man. My proposition was this: Pool the funds, buy Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific stock, and hold it for one or two years. The interest would be twice as much as they were getting from the bank, while the prospect of a decided advance was good. I said to them:-- "I have owned Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific stock for more than three years. I commenced to buy at fifty-seven, and I am still buying, when I can get hold of a little money that doesn't have to go into this blessed farm. It is now eighty-one, and it will go higher. I am so sure of this that I will agree to take the stock from each or all of you at the price you pay for it at any time during the next two years. There is no risk in this proposition to you, and there may be a very handsome return." They were pleased with the plan, and we formed a pool to buy thirty shares of stock. Thompson and I were trustees, and the certificate stood in our names; but each contributor received a pro-rata interest; Lena, one thirtieth; Judson, five-thirtieths; and the others between these extremes. The stock was bought at eighty-two. I may as well explain now how it came out, for I am not proud of my acumen at the finish. A little more than a year later the stock reached 122, and I advised the syndicate to sell. They were all pleased at the time with the handsome profit they had made, but I suspect they have often figured what they might have made "if the boss hadn't been such a chump," for we have seen the stock go above two hundred. This was not the only enterprise in which our colony took a small share. The people at Four Oaks are now content to hold shares in one of the great trusts, which they bought several points below par, and which pay 1¾. per cent every three months. Even Lena, who held only one share of the C., R.I., & P. five years ago, has so increased her income-bearing property that she is now looked upon as a "catch" by her acquaintances. If I am correctly informed, she has an annual income of $105, independent of her wages. CHAPTER LVII THE DEATH OF SIR TOM At 7.30 on the morning of March 16, Dr. High telephoned me that Sir Thomas O'Hara was seriously ill, and asked me to come at once. It took but a few minutes to have Jerry at the door, and, breasting a cold, thin rain at a sharp gallop, I was at my friend's door before the clock struck eight. Dr. High met me with a heavy face. "Sir Tom is bad," said he, "with double pneumonia, and I am awfully afraid it will go hard with him." I remembered that my friend's pale face had looked a shade paler than usual the evening before, and that there had been a pinched expression around the nose and mouth, as if from pain; but Sir Tom had many twinges from his old enemy, gout, which he did not care to discuss, and I took little note of his lack of fitness. He touched the brandy bottle a little oftener than usual, and left for home earlier; but his voice was as cheery as ever, and we thought only of gout. He was taken with a hard chill on his way home, which lasted for some time after he was put to bed; but he would not listen to the requests of William and the faithful cook that the doctor be summoned. At last he fell into a heavy sleep from which it was hard to rouse him, and the servants followed their own desire and called Dr. High. He came as promptly as possible, and did all that could be done for the sick man. A hurried examination convinced me that Dr. High's opinion of the gravity of the case was correct, and we telephoned at once for a specialist from the city, and for a trained nurse. After a short consultation with Dr. High I reëntered my friend's room, and I fear that my face gave me away, for Sir Tom said:-- "Be a man, Williams, and tell the whole of it." "My dear old man, this is a tough proposition, but you must buck up and make a game fight. We have sent for Dr. Jones and a nurse, and we will pull you through, sure." "You will try, for sure, but I reckon the call has come for me to cash in me checks. When that little devil Frost hit me right and left in me chest last night, I could see me finish; and I heard the banshee in me sleep, and that means much to a Sligo man." "Not to this Sligo man, I hope," said I, though I knew that we were in deep waters. The wise man and the nurse came out on the 10.30 train, the nurse bringing comfort and aid, but the physician neither. After thoroughly examining the patient, he simply confirmed our fears. "Serious disease to overcome, and only scant vital forces; no reasonable ground for hope." Sir Tom gave me a smile as I entered the room after parting from the specialist. "I've discounted the verdict," said he, "and the foreman needn't draw such a long face. I've had my fling, like a true Irishman, and I'm ready to pay the bill. I won't have to come back for anything, Williams; there's nothing due me; but I must look sharp for William and the old girl in the kitchen,--faithful souls,--for they will be strangers in a strange land. Will you send for a lawyer?" The lawyer came, and a codicil to Sir Thomas's will made the servants comfortable for life. All that day and the following night we hung around the sick bed, hoping for the favorable change that never came. On the morning of the 17th it was evident that he would not live to see the sun go down. We had kept all friends away from the sick chamber; but now, at his request, Polly, Jane, and Laura were summoned, and they came, with blanched faces and tearful eyes, to kiss the brow and hold the hands of this dear man. He smiled with contentment on the group, and said:-- "Me friends have made such a heaven of this earth that perhaps I have had me full share." "Sir Tom," said I, "shall I send for a priest?" "A priest! What could I do with a priest? Me forebears were on the Orange side of Boyne Water, and we have never changed color." "Would you like to see a clergyman?" "No, no; just the grip of a friend's hand and these angels around me. Asking pardon is not me long suit, Williams, but perhaps the time has come for me to play it. If the good God will be kind to me I will thank Him, as a gentleman should, and I will take no advantage of His kindness; but if He cannot see His way clear to do that, I will take what is coming." "Dear Sir Tom," said Jane, with streaming eyes, "God cannot be hard with you, who have been so good to every one." "If there's little harm in me life, there's but scant good, too; I can't find much credit. Me good angel has had an easy time of it, more's the pity; but Janie, if you love me, Le Bon Dieu will not be hard on me. He cannot be severe with a poor Irishman who never stacked the cards, pulled a race, or turned his back on a friend, and who is loved by an angel." I asked Sir Tom what we should do for him after he had passed away. "It would be foine to sleep in the woods just back of Janie's forge, where I could hear the click of her hammer if the days get lonely; but there's a little castle, God save the mark, out from Sligo. Me forebears are there,--the lucky ones,--and me wish is to sleep with them; but I doubt it can be." "Indeed it can be, and it shall be, too," said Polly. "We will all go with you, Sir Tom, when June comes, and you shall sleep in your own ground with your own kin." "I don't deserve it, Mrs. Williams, indeed I don't, but I would lie easier there. That sod has known us for a thousand years, and it's the greenest, softest, kindest sod in all the world; but little I'll mind when the breath is gone. I'll not be asking that much of you." "My dear old chap, we won't lose sight of you until that green sod covers the stanchest heart that ever beat. Polly is right. We'll go with you to Sligo,--all of us,--Polly and Jane and Jack and I, and Kate and the babies, too, if we can get them. You shall not be lonesome." "Lonesome, is it? I'll be in the best of company. Me heart is at rest from this moment, and I'll wait patiently until I can show you Sligo. This is a fine country, Mrs. Williams, and it has given me the truest friends in all the world, but the ground is sweet in Sligo." His breath came fainter and faster, and we could see that it would soon cease. After resting a few minutes, Sir Tom said:-- "Me lady Laura, do you mind that prayer song, the second verse?" Laura's voice was sobbing and uncertain as it quavered:-- "Other refuge have I none," but it gained courage and persuasiveness until it filled the room and the heart of the man with,-- "Cover my defenceless head, With the shadow of Thy wing." A gentle smile and the relaxing of closed hands completed the story of our loss, though the real weight of it came days and months later. It was long before we could take up our daily duties with anything like the familiar happiness. Something had gone out of our lives that could never be replaced, and only time could salve the wounds. The dear man who had gone was no friend to solemn faces, and living interests must bury dead memories; but it was a long time before the click of Jane's hammer was heard in her forge; not until Laura had said, "It will please _him_, Jane." CHAPTER LVIII BACTERIA January, February, and March passed with more than the usual snow and rain,--fully ten inches of precipitation; but the spring proved neither cold nor late. During these three months we sold butter to the amount of $1283, and $747 worth of eggs; in all, $2030. The ploughs were started in the highest land on the 11th of April, and were kept going steadily until they had turned over nearly 280 acres. I decided to put the whole of the widow's field into corn, lots 8, 12, and 15 (84 acres) into oats, and 50 acres of the orchards into roots and sweet fodder corn. Number 13 was to be sown with buckwheat as soon as the rye was cut for green forage. I decided to raise more alfalfa, for we could feed more to advantage, and it was fast gaining favor in my establishment. It is so productive and so nutritious that I wonder it is not more generally used by farmers who make a specialty of feeding stock. It contains as much protein as most grains, and is wholesome and highly palatable if properly cured. It should be cut just as it is coming into flower, and should be cured in the windrow. The leaves are the most nutritious part of the plant, and they are apt to fall off if the cutting be deferred, or if the curing be _done carelessly_. Lot No. 9 was to be fitted for alfalfa as soon as the season would permit. First, it must receive a heavy dressing of manure, to be ploughed under. The ordinary plough was to be followed in this case by a subsoiler, to stir the earth as deep as possible. When the seed was sown, the land was to receive five hundred pounds an acre of high-grade fertilizer, and one hundred pounds an acre of infected soil. The peculiar bacterium that thrives on congenial alfalfa soil is essential to the highest development of the plant. Without its presence the grass fails in its chief function--the storing of nitrogen--and makes but poor growth. When the alfalfa bacteria are abundant, the plant flourishes and gathers nitrogen in knobs and bunches in its roots and in the joints of its stems. I sent to a very successful alfalfa grower in Ohio for a thousand pounds of soil from one of his fields, to vaccinate my field with. This is not always necessary,--indeed, it rarely is, for alfalfa seed usually carry enough bacteria to inoculate favorable soils; but I wished to see if this infected soil would improve mine. I have not been able to discover any marked advantage from its use; the reason being that my soil was so rich in humus and added manures that the colonies of bacteria on the seeds were quite sufficient to infect the whole mass. Under less favorable conditions, artificial inoculation is of great advantage. Wonderful are the secrets of nature. The infinitely small things seem to work for us and the infinitely large ones appear suited to our use; and yet, perhaps, this is all "seeming" and "appearing." We may ourselves be simply more advanced bacteria, working blindly toward the solution of an infinite problem in which we are concerned only as means to an end. "Why should the spirit of mortal be proud," until it has settled its relative position with both Sirius and the micro-organisms, or has estimated its stature by view-points from the bacterial world and from the constellation of Lyra. Until we have been able to compare opinions from these extremes, if indeed they be extremes, we cannot expect to make a correct estimate of our value in the economy of the universe. I fancy that we are apt to take ourselves too seriously, and that we will sometime marvel at the shadow which we did not cast. CHAPTER LIX MATCH-MAKING The home lot took on a home look in the spring of 1898. The lawn lost its appearance of newness; the trees became acquainted with each other; the shrubs were on intimate terms with their neighbors, and broke into friendly rivalry of blossoms; the gardens had a settled-down look, as if they had come to stay; and even the wall flowers were enjoying themselves. These efforts of nature to make us feel at ease were thankfully received by Polly and me, and we voted that this was more like home than anything else we had ever had; and when the fruit trees put forth their promise of an autumn harvest in great masses of blossoms, we declared that we had made no mistake in transforming ourselves from city to country folk. "Aristocracy is of the land," said Polly. "It always has been and always will be the source of dignity and stability. I feel twice as great a lady as I did in the tall house on B---- Street." "So you don't want to go back to that tall house, madam?" "Indeed I don't. Why should I?" "I don't know why you should, only I remember Lot's wife looked back toward the city." "Don't mention that woman! She didn't know what she wanted. You won't catch me looking toward the city, except once a week for three or four hours, and then I hurry back to the farm to see what has happened in my garden while I've been away." "But how about your friends, Polly?" "You know as well as I that we haven't lost a friend by living out here, and that we've tied some of them closer. No, sir! No more city life for me. It may do for young people, who don't know better, but not for me. It's too restricted, and there's not enough excitement." "Country life fits us like paper on the wall," said I, "but how about the youngsters? If we insist on keeping children, we must take them into our scheme of life." "Of course we must, but children are an unknown quantity. They are _x_ in the domestic problem, and we cannot tell what they stand for until the problem is worked out. I don't see why we can't find the value of _x_ in the country as easily as in the city. They have had city and school life, now let them see country life; the _x_ will stand for wide experience at least." "Jane likes it thus far," said I, "and I think she will continue; but I don't feel so sure about Jack." "You're as blind as a bat--or a man. Jane loves country life because she's young and growing; but there's a subconscious sense which tells her that she's simply fitting herself to be carried off by that handsome giant, Jim Jarvis. She doesn't know it, but it's the truth all the same, and it will come as sure as tide; and when it does come, her life will be run into other moulds than we have made, no matter how carefully." "I wonder where this modern Hercules is most vulnerable. I'll slay him if I find him mousing around my Jane." "You will slay nothing, Mr. Headman, and you know it; you will just take what's coming to you, as others have done since the world was young." "Well, I give fair warning; it's 'hands off Jane,' for lo, these many years, or some one will be brewing 'harm tea' for himself." "You bark so loud no one will believe you can bite," said this saucy, match-making mother. "How about Jack?" said I. "Have you settled the moulds he is to be run in?" "Not entirely; but I am not as one without hope. Jack will be through college in June, and will go abroad with us for July and August; he will be as busy as possible with the miners from the moment he comes back; he is much in love with Jessie, the Gordon's have no other child, the property is large, Homestead Farm is only three miles, and--" "Slow up, Polly! Slow up! Your main line is all right, but your terminal facilities are bad. Jack is to be educated, travelled, employed, engaged, married, endowed with Homestead Farm, and all that; but you mustn't kill off the Gordons. I swing the red lantern in front of that train of thought. Let Jack and Jessie wait till we are through with Four Oaks and the Gordons have no further use for Homestead Farm, before thinking of coupling that property on to this." "Don't be a greater goose than you can help," said Polly. "You know what I mean. Men are so short-sighted! Laura says, 'the Headman ought to have a small dog and a long stick'; but no matter, I'll keep an eye on the children, and you needn't worry about country life for them. They'll take to it kindly." "Well, they ought to, if they have any appreciation of the fitness of things. Did you ever see weather made to order before? I feel as if I had been measured for it." "It suits my garden down to the ground," said Polly, who hates slang. "It was planned for the farmer, madam. If it happens to fit the rose-garden mistress, it is a detail for you to note and be thankful for, but the great things are outside the rose gardens. Look at that corn-field! A crow could hide in it anywhere." "What have crows hiding got to do with corn, I'd like to know?" "When I was a boy the farmers used to say, 'If it will cover a crow's back on the Fourth of July, it will make good corn,' and I am farmering with old saws when I can't find new ones." "It's all of three weeks yet to the Fourth of July, and your corn will cover a turkey by that time." "I hope so, but we shan't be here to see it, more's the pity, as Sir Tom would say." "Do you know, Kate says she won't go over. She doesn't think it would pay for so short a trip. Why do you insist upon eight weeks?" "Well, now, I like that! When did I ever insist on anything, Mrs. Williams? Not since I knew you well, did I? But be honest, Polly. Who has done the cutting down of this trip? You and the youngsters may stay as long as you please, but I will be back here September 1st unless the _Normania_ breaks a shaft." "I wish we could go _over_ on a German boat. I hate the Cunarders." "So do I, but we must land at Queenstown. We must put Sir Tom under the sod at that little castle out from Sligo. Then we can do Holland and Belgium, and have a week or ten days in London." "That will be enough. I do hope Johnson will take good care of my flowers; it's the very most important time, you know, and if he neglects them--" "He won't neglect them, Polly; even if he does, they can be easily replaced. But the hay harvest, now, that's different; if they spoil the timothy or cut the alfalfa too late!" "Bother your alfalfa! What do I care for that? Kate's coming out with the babies, and I'm going to put her in full charge of the gardens. She'll look after them, I'm sure. I'll tell you another bit of news: Jim Jarvis is bound to go with us, Jack says, and he has asked if we'll let him." "How long have you had that up your sleeve, young woman? I don't like it a little bit! That is why you talked so like an oracle a little while ago! What does Jane say?" "She doesn't say much, but I think she wouldn't object." "Of course she can't object. You sick a big brute of a man on to a little girl, and she don't dare object; but I'll feed him to the fishes if he worries her." "To be sure you will, Mr. Ogre. Anybody would be sure of that to hear you talk." "Don't chaff me, Polly. This is a serious business. If you sell my girl, I'm going to buy a new one. I'll ask Jessie Gordon to go with us and, if Jack is half the man I take him to be, he'll replenish our stock of girls before we get back." "Who is match-making now?" "I don't care what you call it. I shall take out letters of marque and reprisal. I won't raise girls to be carried off by the first privateer that makes sail for them, without making some one else suffer. If Jarvis goes, Jessie goes, that's flat." "I think it will be an excellent plan, Mr. Bad Temper, and I've no doubt that we can manage it." "Don't say 'we' when you talk of managing it. I tell you I'm entirely on the defensive until some one robs me, then I'll take what is my neighbor's if I can get it. If it were not for my promise to Sir Tom, I wouldn't leave the farm for a minute! And I would establish a quarantine against all giants for at least five years." "You know you like Jarvis. He is one of the best." "That's all right, Polly. He's as fine as silk, but he isn't fine enough for our Jane yet." CHAPTER LX "I TOLD YOU SO" It may be the limitless horizon, it may be the comradery of confinement, it may be the old superstition of a plank between one and eternity, or it may be some occult influence of ship and ocean; but certain it is that there is no such place in all the world as a deck of a transatlantic liner for softening young hearts, until they lose all semblance of shape, and for melting them into each other so that out of twain there comes but one. I think Polly was pleased to watch this melting process, as it began to show itself in our young people, from the safe retreat of her steamer chair and behind the covers of her book. I couldn't find that she read two chapters from any book during the whole voyage, or that she was miserable or discontented. She just watched with a comfortable "I told you so" expression of countenance; and she never mentioned home lot or garden or roses, from dock to dock. It is as natural for a woman to make matches as for a robin to build nests, and I suppose I had as much right to find fault with the one as with the other. I did not find fault with her, but neither could I understand her; so I fretted and fumed and smoked, and walked the deck and bet on everything in sight and out of sight, until the soothing influence of the sea took hold of me, and then I drifted like the rest of them. No, I will not say "like the rest of them," for I could not forgive this waste of space given over to water. In other crossings I had not noted the conspicuous waste with any feeling of loss or regret; but other crossings had been made before I knew the value of land. I could not get away from the thought that it would add much to the wealth of the world if the mountains were removed and cast into the sea. Not only that, but it would curb to some extent the ragings of this same turbulent sea, which was rolling and tossing us about for no really good reason that I could discover. The Atlantic had lost much of its romance and mystery for me, and I wondered if I had ever felt the enthusiasm which I heard expressed on all sides. "There she spouts!" came from a dozen voices, and the whole passenger list crowded the port rail, just to see a cow whale throwing up streams of water, not immensely larger than the streams of milk which my cow Holsteins throw down. The crowd seemed to take great pleasure in this sight, but to me it was profitless. I have known the day when I could watch the graceful leaps and dives of a school of porpoises, as it kept with easy fin, alongside of our ocean greyhound, with pleasure unalloyed by any feeling of non-utility. But now these "hogs of the sea" reminded me of my Chester Whites, and the comparison was so much in favor of the hogs of the land, that I turned from these spectacular, useless things, to meditate upon the price of pork. Even Mother Carey's chickens gave me no pleasure, for they reminded me of a far better brood at home, and I cheerfully thanked the noble Wyandottes who were working every third day so that I could have a trip to Europe. To be sure, I had European trips before I had Wyandottes; to have them both the same year was the marvel. Before we reached Queenstown, Jarvis had gained some ground by twice picking me out of the scuppers; but as I resented his steadiness of foot and strength of hand, it was not worth mentioning. I could see, however, that these feats were great in Jane's eyes. The double rescue of a beloved parent, from, not exactly a watery grave, but a damp scupper, would never be forgotten. The giant let her adore his manly strength and beauty, and I could only secretly hope that some wave--tidal if necessary--would take him off his feet and send him into the scuppers. But he had played football too long to be upset by a watery wave, and I was balked of my revenge. Jack and Jessie were rather a pleasure to me than otherwise. They settled right down to the heart-softening business in such matter-of-fact fashion that their hearts must have lost contour before the voyage was half over. Polly dismissed them from her mind with a sigh of satisfaction, and I then hoped that she would find some time to devote to me, but I was disappointed. She assured me that those two were safely locked in the fold, but that she could not "set her mind at rest" until the other two were safe. After that she promised to take me in hand; whether for reward or for punishment left me guessing. The six and a half days finally came to an end, and we debarked for Queenstown. The journey across Ireland was made as quickly as slow trains and a circuitous route would permit, and we reached Sligo on the second day. Sir Thomas's agent met us, and we drove at once to the "little castle out from Sligo." It proved to be a very old little castle, four miles out, overlooking the bay. It was low and flat, with thick walls of heavy stone pierced by a few small windows, and a broad door made of black Irish oak heavily studded with iron. From one corner rose a square tower, thirty feet or more in height, covered with wild vines that twined in and out through the narrow, unglazed windows. Within was a broad, low hall, from which opened four rooms of nearly equal size. There was little evidence that the castle had been inhabited during recent years, though there was an ancient woman care-taker who opened the great door for us, and then took up the Irish peasant's wail for the last of the O'Haras. She never ceased her crooning except when she spoke to us, which was seldom; but she placed us at table in the state dining room, and served us with stewed kid, potatoes, and goat's milk. The walls of the dining room were covered with ancient pictures of the O'Haras, but none so recent as a hundred years. We could well believe Sir Tom's words, "the sod has known us for a thousand years," when we looked upon the score of pictures, each of which stood for at least one generation. The agent told us that our friend had never lived at the castle, but that he had visited the place as a child, and again just before leaving for America. A wall-enclosed lot about two hundred feet square was "the kindest sod in all the world to an O'Hara," and here we placed our dear friend at rest with the "lucky ones" of his race. No one of the race ever deserved more "luck" than did our Sir Tom. The young clergyman who read the service assured us that he had found it; and our minds gave the same evidence, and our hearts said Amen, as we turned from his peaceful resting-place by the green waters of Sligo Bay. Two days later we were comfortably lodged at The Hague, from which we intended to "do" the little kingdom of Holland by rail, by canal, or on foot, as we should elect. CHAPTER LXI THE BELGIAN FARMER Leaving Holland with regret, we crossed the Schelde into Belgium, the cockpit of Europe. It is here that one sees what intensive farming is like. No fences to occupy space, no animals roaming at large, nothing but small strips of land tilled to the utmost, chiefly by hand. Little machinery is used, and much of the work is done after primitive fashions; but the land is productive, and it is worked to the top of its bent. The peasant-farmer soils his cows, his sheep, his swine, in a way that is economical of space and food, if not of labor, and manages to make a living and to pay rent for his twenty-acre strip of land. His methods do not appeal to the American farmer, who wastes more grain and forage each year than would keep the Netherlander, his family, and his stock; but there is a lesson to be learned from this subdivision and careful cultivation of land. Belgian methods prove that Mother Earth can care for a great many children if she be properly husbanded, and that the sooner we recognize her capacity the better for us. Abandoned farms are not known in Belgium and France, though the soil has been cultivated for a thousand years, and was originally no better than our New England farms, and not nearly so good as hundreds of those which are practically given over to "old fields" in Virginia. It is neglect that impoverishes land, not use. Intelligent use makes land better year by year. The only way to wear out land is to starve and to rob it at the same time. Food for man and beast may be taken from the soil for thousands of years without depleting it. All it asks in return is the refuse, carefully saved, properly applied, and thoroughly worked in to make it available. If, in addition to this, a cover crop of some leguminous plant be occasionally turned under, the soil may actually increase in fertility, though it be heavily cropped each year. It would pay the young American farmer to study Belgian methods, crude though they are, for the insight he could gain into the possibilities of continuous production. The greatest number of people to the square mile in the inhabited globe live in this little, ill-conditioned kingdom, and most of them get their living from the soil. It has been the battle-field of Europe: a thousand armies have harrowed it; human blood has drenched it from Liège to Ostend; it has been depopulated again and again. But it springs into new life after each catastrophe, simply because the soil is prolific of farmers, and they cannot be kept down. Like the poppies on the field of Waterloo, which renew the blood-red strife each year, the Belgian peasant-farmer springs new-born from the soil, which is the only mother he knows. After two weeks in Holland, two in Belgium, and two in London, we were ready to turn our faces toward home. We took the train to Southampton, and a small side-wheel steamer carried us outside Southampton waters, where we tossed about for thirty minutes before the _Normania_ came to anchor. The wind was blowing half a gale from the north, and we were glad to get under the lee of the great vessel to board her. The transfer was quickly made, and we were off for New York. The wind gained strength as the day grew old, but while we were in the Solent the bluff coast of Devon and Cornwall broke its force sufficiently to permit us to be comfortable on the port side of the ship. As night came on, great clouds rolled up from the northwest and the wind increased. Darkness, as of Egypt, fell upon us before we passed the Lizard, and the only things that showed above the raging waters were the beacon lights, and these looked dim and far away. Occasionally a flash of lightning threw the waters into relief, and then made the darkness more impenetrable. As we steamed beyond the Lizard and the protecting Cornish coast, the full force of the gale, from out the Irish Sea, struck us. We were going nearly with it, and the good ship pitched and reared like an angry horse, but did not roll much. Pitching is harder to bear than rolling, and the decks were quickly vacated. I turned into my stateroom soon after ten o'clock, and then happened a thing which will hold a place in my memory so long as I have one. I did not feel sleepy, but I was nervous, restless, and half sick. I lay on my lounge for perhaps half an hour, and then felt impelled to go on deck. I wrapped myself in a great waterproof ulster, pulled my storm cap over my ears, and climbed the companionway. Two or three electric bulbs in sheltered places on deck only served to make the darkness more intense. I crawled forward of the ladies' cabin, and, supporting myself against the donkey-engine, peered at the light above the crow's-nest and tried to think that I could see the man on watch in the nest. I did see him for an instant, when the next flash of lightning came, and also two officers on the bridge; and I knew that Captain Bahrens was in the chart house. When the next flash came, I saw the other lookout man making his short turns on the narrow space of bow deck, and was tempted to join him; why, I do not know. I crept past the donkey-engine, holding fast to it as I went, until I reached the iron gate that closes the narrow passage to the bow deck. With two silver dollars in my teeth I staggered across this rail-guarded plank, and when the next flash came I was sitting at the feet of the lookout man with the two silver dollars in my outstretched hand. He took the money, and let me crawl forward between the anchors and the high bulwark of the bows. The sensations which this position gave me were strange beyond description. Darkness was thick around me; at one moment I was carried upward until I felt that I should be lost in the black sky, and the next moment the downward motion was so terrible that the blacker water at the bottom of the sea seemed near. I cannot say that I enjoyed it, but I could not give it up. When the great bow rose, I stood up, and, looking over the bulwark, tried to see either sky or water, but tried in vain, save when the lightning revealed them both. When the bow fell, I crouched under the bulwark and let the sea comb over me. How long I remained at this weird post, I do not know; but I was driven from it in such terror as I hope never to feel again. An unusually large wave carried me nearer the sky than I liked to be, and just as the sharp bow of the great iron ship was balancing on its crest for the desperate plunge, a glare of lightning made sky and sea like a sheet of flame and curdled the blood in my veins. In the trough of the sea, under the very foot of the immense steamship, lay a delicate pleasure-boat, with its mast broken flush with its deck, and its helpless body the sport of the cruel waves. The light did not last longer than it would take me to count five, but in that time I saw four figures that will always haunt me. Two sailors in yachting costume were struggling hopelessly with the tiller, and the wild terror of their faces as they saw the huge destruction that hung over them is simply unforgettable. The other two were different. A strong, blond man, young, handsome, and brave I know, stood bareheaded in front of the cockpit. With a sudden, vehement motion he drew the head of a girl to his breast and held it there as if to shut out the horrible world. There was no fear in his face,--just pain and distress that he was unable to do more. I am thankful that I did not see the face of the girl. Her brown hair has floated in my dreams until I have cried out for help; what would her face have done? In the twinkling of an eye it was over. I heard a sound as when one breaks an egg on the edge of a cup,--no more. I screamed with horror, ran across the guarded plank, climbed the gate, and fell headlong and screaming over the donkey-engine. Picking up my battered self, I shouted: "Bahrens! Bahrens! for God's sake, help! Man overboard! Stop the ship!" I reached the ladder to the bridge just as the captain came out of the chart house. "For God's sake, stop the ship! You've run down a boat with four people! Stop her, can't you!" "It can't be done, man. If we've run down a boat, it's all over with it and all in it. I can't risk a thousand lives without hope of saving one. This is a gale, Doctor, and we have our hands full." I turned from him in horror and despair. I stumbled to my stateroom, dropped my wet clothing in the middle of the floor, and knew no more until the trumpet called for breakfast. The rush of green waters was pounding at my porthole; the experience of the night came back to me with horror; the reek of my wet clothes sickened my heart, and I rang for the steward. "Take these things away, Gustav, and don't bring them back until they are dry and pressed." "What things does the Herr Doctor speak for?" "The wet things there on the floor." "Excuse me, but I have seen no things wet." "You Dutch chump!" said I, half rising, "what do you mean by saying--Well, I'll be damned!" There were my clothes, dry and folded, on the couch, and my ulster and cap on their hook, without evidence of moisture or use. "Gustav, remind me to give you three rix-dollars at breakfast." "Danke, Herr Doctor." Of such stuff are dreams made. But I will know those terror-stricken sailors if I do not see them for a hundred years; and I am glad the dark-haired girl did not realize the horror, but simply knew that the man loved her; and I often think of the man who did the nice thing when no one was looking, and whose face was not terrorized by the crack of doom. CHAPTER LXII HOME-COMING Even Polly was satisfied with our young people before we entered New York Bay. If anything in their "left pulmonaries" had remained unsoftened during the voyage out and the comradery of the Netherlands, it was melted into non-resistance by the homeward trip. I could not long hold out against the evidence of happiness that surrounded me, and I gave a half-grudging consent that Jarvis and Jane might play together for the next three or four years, if they would not ask to play "for keeps" until those years had passed. They readily gave the promise, but every one knows how such promises are kept. The children wore me out in time, as all children do in all kinds of ways, and got their own ways in less than half the contract period. I cannot put my finger on any punishment that has befallen them for this lack of filial consideration, and I am fifteen-sixteenths reconciled. I was downright glad that Jack "made good" with Jessie Gordon. She was the sort of girl to get out the best that was in him, and I was glad to have her begin early. Try as I might, I could not feel unhappy that beautiful September morning as we steamed up the finest waterway to the finest city in the world. Deny it who will, I claim that our Empire City and its environments make the most impressive human show. There is more life, vigor, utility, gorgeousness about it than can be found anywhere else; and it has the snap and elasticity of youth, which are so attractive. No man who claims the privilege of American citizenship can sail up New York Bay without feeling pride in his country and satisfaction in his birthright. One doesn't disparage other cities and other countries when he claims that his own is the best. We were not specially badly treated at the custom-house,--no worse, indeed, than smugglers, thieves, or pirates would have been; and we escaped, after some hours of confinement, without loss of life or baggage, but with considerable loss of dignity. How can a self-respecting, middle-aged man (to be polite to myself) stand for hours in a crowded shed, or lean against a dirty post, or sit on the sharp edge of his open trunk, waiting for a Superior Being with a gilt band around his hat, without losing some modicum of dignity? And how, when this Superior Being calls his number and kicks his trunk, is he to know that he is a free-born American citizen and a lineal descendant of Roger Williams? The evidence is entirely from within. How is he to support a countenance and mien of dignity while the secrets of his chest are laid bare and the contents of his trunk dumped on the dirty floor? And how must his eyes droop and his face take on a hang-dog look when his second-best coat is searched for diamonds, and his favorite (though worn) pajamas punched for pearls. There are concessions to be made for one's great and glorious country, and the custom-house is one of them. Perhaps we will do better sometime, and perhaps, though this is unlikely, the customs inspectors of the future will disguise themselves as gentlemen. We finally passed the inquisition, and, with stuffed trunks and ruffled spirits, took cabs for the station, and were presently within the protecting walls at Four Oaks, there to forget lost dignities in the cultivation of land and new ones. CHAPTER LXIII AN HUNDRED FOLD Kate declared that she had had the time of her life during her nine weeks' stay at Four Oaks. "People here every day, and the house full over Sunday. We've kept the place humming," said she, "and you may be thankful if you find anything here but a mortgage. When Tom and I get rich, we are going to be farm people." "Don't wait for that, daughter. Start your country home early and let it grow up with the children. It doesn't take much money to buy the land and to get fruit trees started. If Tom will give it his care for three hours a week, he will make it at least pay interest and taxes, and it will grow in value every year until you are ready to live on it. Think how our orchards would look now if we had started them ten years ago! They would be fit to support an average family." "There, Dad, don't mount your hobby as soon as ever you get home. But we _have_ had a good time out here. Do you really think farming is all beer and skittles?" "It has been smooth sailing for me thus far, and I believe it is simply a business with the usual ups and downs; but I mean to make the ups the feature in this case." "Are you really glad to get back to it? Didn't you want to stay longer?" "I had a fine trip, and all that, but I give you this for true; I don't think it would make me feel badly if I were condemned to stay within forty miles of this place for the rest of my life." "I can't go so far as that with you, Dad, but perhaps I may when I'm older." "Yes, age makes a difference. At forty a man is a fool or a farmer, or both; at fifty the pull of the land is mighty; at sixty it has full possession of him; at seventy it draws him down with other forces than that which Newton discovered, and at eighty it opens for him and kindly tucks the sod around him. Mother Earth is no stepmother, but warm and generous to all, and I think a fellow is lucky who comes to her for long years of bounty before he is compelled to seek her final hospitality." "But, Dad, we can't all be farmers." "Of course not, and there's the pity of it; but almost every man can have a plot of ground on which each year he can grow some new thing, if only a radish or a leaf of lettuce, to add to the real wealth of the world. I tell you, young lady, that all wealth springs out of the ground. You think that riches are made in Wall Street, but they are not; they are only handled and manipulated. Stop the work of the farmer from April to October of any year, and Wall Street would be a howling wilderness. The Street makes it easier to exchange a dozen eggs for three spools of silk, or a pound of butter for a hat pin, but that's all; it never created half the intrinsic value of twelve eggs or sixteen ounces of butter. It's only the farmer who is a wealth producer, and it's high time that he should be recognized as such. He's the husbandman of all life; without him the world would be depopulated in three years. You don't half appreciate the profession which your Dad has taken up in his old age." "That sounds all right, but I don't think the farmer would recognize himself from that description. He doesn't live up to his possibilities, does he?" "Mighty few people do. A farmer may be what he chooses to be. He's under no greater limitations than a business or a professional man. If he be content to use his muscle blindly, he will probably fall under his own harrow. So, too, would the merchant or the lawyer who failed to use his intelligence in his business. The farmer who cultivates his mind as well as his land, uses his pencil as often as his plough, and mixes brains with brawn, will not fall under his own harrow or any other man's. He will never be the drudge of soil or of season, for to a large extent he can control the soil and discount the season. No other following gives such opportunity for independence and self-balance." "Almost thou persuadest me to become a farmer," said Kate, as we left the porch, where I had been admiring my land while I lectured on the advantages of husbandry. Polly came out of the rose garden, where she had been examining her flowers and setting her watch, and said:-- "Kate, you and the grand-girls must stay this month out, anyway. It seems an age since we saw you last." "All right, if Dad will agree not to fire farm fancies and figures at me every time he catches me in an easy-chair." "I'll promise, but you don't know what you're missing." Four Oaks looked great, and I was tempted to tramp over every acre of it, saying to each, "You are mine"; but first I had a little talk with Thompson. "Everything has been greased for us this summer," said Thompson. "We got a bumper crop of hay, and the oats and corn are fine! I allow you've got fifty-five bushels of oats to the acre in those shocks, and the corn looks like it stood for more than seventy. We sold nine more calves the end of June, for $104. Mr. Tom must have a lot of money for you, for in August we sold the finest bunch of shoates you ever saw,--312 of them. They were not extra heavy, but they were fine as silk. Mr. Tom said they netted $4.15 per hundred, and they averaged a little over 260 pounds. I went down with them, and the buyers tumbled over each other to get them. I was mighty proud of the bunch, and brought back a check for $3407." "Good for you, Thompson! That's the best sale yet." "Some of the heifers will be coming in the last of this month or the first of next. Don't you want to get rid of those five scrub cows?" "Better wait six weeks, and then you may sell them. Do you know where you can place them?" "Jackson was looking at them a few days ago, and said he would give $35 apiece for them; but they are worth more." "Not for us, Thompson, and not for him, either, if he saw things just right. They're good for scrubs; but they don't pay well enough for us, and if he wants them he can have them at that price about the middle of October." The credit account for the second quarter of 1898 stood:-- 23 calves . . . . . $270.00 Eggs . . . . . . 637.00 Butter . . . . . . 1314.00 Total. . . . . . $2221.00 CHAPTER LXIV COMFORT ME WITH APPLES September added a new item to our list of articles sold; small, indeed, but the beginning of the fourth and last product of our factory farm,--fruit from our newly planted orchards. The three hundred plum trees in the chicken runs gave a moderate supply for the colony, and the dwarf-pear trees yielded a small crop; but these were hardly included in our scheme. I expected to be able, by and by, to sell $200 or $300 worth of plums; but the chief income from fruit would come from the fifty acres of young apple orchards. I hope to live to see the time when these young orchards will bring me at least $5 a year for each tree; and if I round out my expectancy (as the life-insurance people figure it), I may see them do much better. In the interim the day of small things must not be despised. In our climate the Yellow Transparent and the Duchess do not ripen until early September, and I was therefore at home in time to gather and market the little crop from my six hundred trees. The apples were carefully picked, for they do not bear handling well, and the perfect ones were placed in half-bushel boxes and sent to my city grocer. Not one defective apple was packed, for I was determined that the Four Oaks stencil should be as favorably known for fruit as for other products. The grocer allowed me fifty cents a box. "The market is glutted with apples, but not your kind," said he. "Can you send more?" I could not send more, for my young trees had done their best in producing ninety-six boxes of perfect fruit. Boxes and transportation came to ten cents for each box, and I received $38 for my first shipment of fruit. I cannot remember any small sum of money that ever pleased me more,--except the $28 which I earned by seven months of labor in my fourteenth year; for it was "first fruits" of the last of our interlacing industries. Thirty-eight dollars divided among my trees would give one cent to each; but four years later these orchards gave net returns of ninety cents for each tree, and in four years from now they will bring more than twice that amount. At twelve years of age they will bring an annual income of $3 each, and this income will steadily increase for ten or fifteen years. At the time of writing, February, 1903, they are good for $1 a year, which is five per cent of $20. Would I take $20 apiece for these trees? Not much, though that would mean $70,000. I do not know where I could place $70,000 so that it would pay five per cent this year, six per cent next year, and twenty per cent eight or ten years from now. Of course, $70,000 would be an exorbitant price to pay for an orchard like mine; but it must be remembered that I am old and cannot wait for trees to grow. If a man will buy land at $50 or $60 an acre, plant it to apple trees (not less than sixty-five to the acre), and bring these trees to an age when they will produce fruit to the value of $1.50 each, they will not have cost more than $1.50 per tree for the land, the trees, and the labor. I am too old to begin over again, and I wish to see a handsome income from my experiment before my eyes are dim; but why on earth young men do not take to this kind of investment is more than I can see. It is as safe as government bonds, and infinitely safer than most mercantile ventures. It is a dignified employment, free from the ordinary risks of business; and it is not likely to be overdone. All one needs is energy, a little money, and a good bit of well-directed intelligence. This combination is common enough to double our rural population, relieve the congestion in trades and underpaid employments, and add immensely to the wealth of the country. If we can only get the people headed for the land, it will do much toward solving the vexing labor problems, and will draw the teeth of the communists and the anarchists; for no one is so willing to divide as he who cannot lose by division. To the man who has a plot of ground which he calls his own, division doesn't appeal with any but negative force. Neither should it, until all available lands are occupied. Then he must move up and make room for another man by his side. The sales for the quarter ending September 30 were as follows:-- 96 half-bushel boxes of apples $38.00 9 calves 104.00 Eggs 543.00 Butter 1293.00 Hogs 3407.00 -------- Total $5385.00 This was the best total for any three months up to date, and it made me feel that I was getting pretty nearly out of the woods, so far as increasing my investment went. Including my new hog-house and ten thousand bushels of purchased grain, the investment, thought I, must represent quite a little more than $100,000, and I hoped not to go much beyond that sum, for Polly looked serious when I talked of six figures, though she was reconciled to any amount which could be stated in five. My buildings were all finished, and were good for many years; and if they burned, the insurance would practically replace them. My granary was full enough of oats and corn to provide for deficits of years to come; and my flocks and herds were now at their maximum, since Sam had turned more than eight hundred pullets into the laying pens. I began to feel that the factory would soon begin to run full time and to make material returns for its equipment. It would, of course, be several years before the fruit would make much showing, but I am a patient man, and could wait. CHAPTER LXV THE END OF THE THIRD YEAR "Polly," said I, on the evening of December 31, "let's settle the accounts for the year, and see how much we must credit to 'experience' to make the figures balance." "Aren't you going to credit anything to health, and good times generally? If not, you don't play fair." "We'll keep those things in reserve, to spring on the enemy at a critical moment; perhaps they won't be needed." "I fancy you will have to bring all your reserves into action this time, Mr. Headman, for you promised to make a good showing at the end of the third year." "Well, so I will; at least, according to my own estimate; but others may not see it as I do." "Don't let others see it at all, then. The experiment is yours, isn't it?" "Yes, for us; but it's more than a personal matter. I want to prove that a factory farm is sound in theory and safe in practice, and that it will fit the needs of a whole lot of farmers." "I hardly think that 'a whole lot of farmers,' or of any other kind of people, will put $100,000 into a farm on any terms. Don't you think you've been a little extravagant?" "Only on the home forty, Polly. I will expound this matter to you some time until you fall asleep, but not to-day. We have other business on hand. I want to give you this warning to begin with: you are not to jump to a conclusion or on to my figures until you have fairly considered two items which enter into this year's expense account. I've built an extra hog-house and have bought ten thousand bushels of grain, at a total expense of about $6000. Neither of these items was really needed this year; but as they are our insurance against disease and famine, I secured them early and at low prices. They won't appear in the expense account again,--at least, not for many years,--and they give me a sense of security that is mighty comforting." "But what if Anderson sets fire to your piggery, or lightning strikes your granary,--how about the expense account then?" "What do you suppose fire insurance policies are for? To paper the wall? No, madam, they are to pay for new buildings if the old ones burn up. I charge the farm over $200 a year for this security, and it's a binding contract." "Well, I'll try and forget the $6000 if you'll get to the figures at once." "All right. First, let me go over the statement for the last quarter of the year. The sales were: apples, from 150 old trees at $3 per tree, $450; 10 calves, $115; 360 hens and 500 cockerels, $430; 5 cows (the common ones, to Jackson) at $35 each, $175; eggs, $827; butter, $1311; and 281 hogs, rushed to market in December when only about eight months old and sold for $3.70 per hundred to help swell this account, $2649; making a total for the fourth quarter of $5957. "The items of expense for the year were:-- "Interest on investment $5,132.00 New hog-house 4,220.00 10,000 bu. of grain 2,450.00 Food for colony 5,322.00 Food for stock 1,640.00 Seeds and fertilizers 2,155.00 Insurance and taxes 730.00 Shoeing and repairs 349.00 Replenishments 450.00 "Total $22,760.00 "The credit account reads: first quarter, $2030; second quarter, $2221; third quarter, $5387; fourth quarter, $5957; total, $15,595. "If we take out the $6670 for the extra piggery and the grain, the expense account and the income will almost balance, even leaving out the $4000 which we agreed to pay for food and shelter. I think that's a fair showing for the three years, don't you?" "Possibly it is; but what a lot of money you pay for wages. It's the largest item." "Yes, and it always will be. I don't claim that a factory farm can be run like a grazing or a grain farm. One of its objects is to furnish well-paid employment to a lot of people. We've had nine men and two lads all the year, and three extra men for seven months, three women on the farm and five in the house,--twenty-two people to whom we've paid wages this year. Doesn't that count for anything? How many did we keep in the city?" "Four,--three women and a man." "Then we give employment to eighteen more people at equally good wages and in quite as wholesome surroundings. Do you realize, Polly, that the maids in the house get $1300 out of the $5300,--one quarter of the whole? Possibly there is a suspicion of extravagance on the home forty." "Not a bit of it! You know that you proved to me that it cost us $5200 a year for board and shelter in the city, and you only credit the farm with $4000. That other $1200 would more than pay the extra wages. I really don't think it costs as much to live here as it did on B----Street, and any one can see the difference." "You are right. If we call our plant an even $100,000, which at five per cent would mean $5000 a year,--where can you get house, lawns, woods, gardens, horses, dogs, servants, liberty, birds, and sun-dials on a wide and liberal scale for $5000 a year, except on a farm like this? You can't buy furs, diamonds, and yachts with such money anyhow or anywhere, so personal expenditures must be left out of all our calculations. No, the wage account will always be the large one, and I am glad it is so, for it is one finger of the helping hand." "You haven't finished with the figures yet. You don't know what to add to our _permanent_ investment." "That's quickly done. _Nineteen thousand five hundred and ninety-five dollars_ from twenty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty dollars leaves three thousand one hundred and sixty-five dollars to charge to our investment. I resent the word 'permanent,' which you underscored just now, for each year we're going to have a surplus to subtract from this interest-bearing debt." "Precious little surplus you'll have for the next few years, with Jack and Jane getting married, and--" "But, Polly, you can't charge weddings to the farm, any more than we can yachts and diamonds." "I don't see why. A wedding is a very important part of one's life, and I think the farm ought to be _made_ to pay for it." "I quite agree with you; but we must add $3165 to the old farm debt, and take up our increased burden with such courage as we may. In round figures it is $106,000. Does that frighten you, Polly?" "A little, perhaps; but I guess we can manage it. _You_ would have been frightened three years ago if some one had told you that you would put $106,000 into a farm of less than five hundred acres." "You're right. Spending money on a farm is like other forms of vice,--hated, then tolerated, then embraced. But seriously, a man would get a bargain if he secured this property to-day for what it has cost us. I wouldn't take a bonus of $50,000 and give it up." "You'll hardly find a purchaser at that price, and I'm glad you can't, for I want to live here and nowhere else." CHAPTER LXVI LOOKING BACKWARD With the close of the third year ends the detailed history of the factory farm. All I wish to do further is to give a brief synopsis of the debit and credit accounts for each of the succeeding four years. First I will say a word about the people who helped me to start the factory. Thompson and his wife are still with me, and they are well on toward the wage limit. Johnson has the gardens and Lars the stables, and Otto is chief swineherd. French and his wife act as though they were fixtures on the place, as indeed I hope they are. They have saved a lot of money, and they are the sort who are inclined to let well enough alone. Judson is still at Four Oaks, doing as good service as ever; but I fancy that he is minded to strike out for himself before long. He has been fortunate in money matters since he gave up the horse and buggy; he informed me six months ago that he was worth more than $5000. "I shouldn't have had five thousand cents if I'd stuck to that darned old buggy," said he, "and I guess I'll have to thank you for throwing me down that day." Zeb has married Lena, and a little cottage is to be built for them this winter, just east of the farm-house; and Lena's place is to be filled by her cousin, who has come from the old country. Anderson and Sam both left in 1898,--poor, faithful Anderson because his heart gave out, and Sam because his beacon called him. Lars's boys, now sixteen and eighteen, have full charge of the poultry plant, and are quite up to Sam in his best days. Of course I have had all kinds of troubles with all sorts of men; but we have such a strong force of "reliables" that the atmosphere is not suited to the idler or the hobo, and we are, therefore, never seriously annoyed. Of one thing I am certain: no man stays long at our farm-house without apprehending the uses of napkin and bath-tub, and these are strong missionary forces. Through careful tilth and the systematic return of all waste to the land, the acres at Four Oaks have grown more fertile each year. The soil was good seven years ago, and we have added fifty per cent to its crop capacity. The amount of waste to return to the land on a farm like this is enormous, and if it be handled with care, there will be no occasion to spend much money for commercial fertilizers. I now buy fertilizers only for the mid-summer dressing on my timothy and alfalfa fields. The apple trees are very heavily mulched, even beyond the spread of their branches, with waste fresh from the vats, and once a year a light dressing of muriate of potash is applied. The trees have grown as fast as could be desired, and all of them are now in bearing. The apples from these young trees sold for enough last year to net ninety cents for each tree, which is more than the trees have ever cost me. In 1898 these orchards yielded $38; in 1899, $165; in 1900, $530; in 1901, $1117. Seven years from the date of planting these trees, which were then three years old, I had received in money $4720, or $1200 more than I paid for the fifty acres of land on which they grew. If one would ask for better returns, all he has to do is to wait; for there is a sort of geometrical progression inherent in the income from all well-cared-for orchards, which continues in force for about fifteen years. There is, however, no rule of progress unless the orchards are well cared for, and I would not lead any one to the mistake of planting an orchard and then doing nothing but wait. Cultivate, feed, prune, spray, dig bores, fight mice, rabbits, aphides, and the thousand other enemies to trees and fruit, and do these things all the time and then keep on doing them, and you will win out. Omit all or any of them, and the chances are that you will fail of big returns. But orcharding is not unique in this. Every form of business demands prompt, timely, and intelligent attention to make it yield its best. The orchards have been my chief care for seven years; the spraying, mulching, and cultivation have been done by the men, but I think I have spent one whole year, during the past seven, among my trees. Do I charge my orchards for this time? No; for I have gotten as much good from the trees as they have from me, and honors are easy. A meditative man in his sixth lustrum can be very happy with pruning-hook and shears among his young trees. If he cannot, I am sincerely sorry for him. I have not increased my plant during the past four years. My stock consume a little more than I can raise; but there are certain things which a farm will not produce, and there are other things which one had best buy, thus letting others work their own specialties. If I had more land, would I increase my stock? No, unless I had enough land to warrant another plant. My feeding-grounds are filled to their capacity from a sanitary point of view, and it would be foolish to take risks for moderate returns. If I had as much more land, I would establish another factory; but this would double my business cares without adding one item to my happiness. As it is, the farm gives me enough to keep me keenly interested, and not enough to tire or annoy me. So far as profits go, it is entirely satisfactory. It feeds and shelters my family and twenty others in the colony, and also the stranger within the gates, and it does this year after year without friction, like a well-oiled machine. Not only this. Each year for the past four, it has given a substantial surplus to be subtracted from the original investment. If I live to be sixty-eight years of age, the farm will be my creditor for a considerable sum. I have bought no corn or oats since January, 1898. The seventeen thousand bushels which I then had in my granary have slowly grown less, though there has never been a day when we could not have measured up seven thousand or eight thousand bushels. I shall probably buy again when the market price pleases me, for I have a horror of running short; but I shall not sell a bushel, though prices jump to the sky. I have seen the time when my corn and oats would have brought four times as much as I paid for them, but they were not for sale. They are the raw material, to be made up in my factory, and they are worth as much to me at twenty cents a bushel as at eighty cents. What would one think of the manager of a silk-thread factory who sold his raw silk, just because it had advanced in price? Silk thread would advance in proportion, and how does the manager know that he can replace his silk when needed, even at the advanced price? When corn went to eighty cents a bushel, hogs sold for $8.25 a hundred, and my twenty-cent corn made pork just as fast as eighty-cent corn would have done, and a great deal cheaper. Once I sold some timothy hay, but it was to "discount the season," just as I bought grain. On July 18, 1901, a tremendous rain and wind storm beat down about forty acres of oats beyond recovery. The next day my mowing machines, working against the grain, commenced cutting it for hay. Before it was half cut, I sold to a livery-stable keeper in Exeter fifty tons of bright timothy for $600. The storm brought me no loss, for the horses did quite as well on the oat hay as they ever had done on timothy, and $600 more than paid for the loss of the grain. During the first three years of my experiment hogs were very low,--lower, indeed, than at any other period for forty years. It was not until 1899 that prices began to improve. During that year my sales averaged $4.50 a hundred. In 1900 the average was $5.25, in 1901 it was $6.10, and in 1902 it was just $7. It will be readily appreciated that there is more profit in pork at seven cents a pound than at three and a half cents; but how much more is beyond me, for it cost no more to get my swine to market last year than it did in 1896. I charge each hog $1 for bran and shorts; this is all the ready money I pay out for him. If he weighs three hundred pounds (a few do), he is worth $10.50 at $3.50 a hundred, or $21 at $7 a hundred; and it is a great deal pleasanter to say $1 from $21, leaves $20, than to say $1 from $10.50 leaves $9.50. Of course, $1 a head is but a small part of what the hog has cost when ready for market, but it is all I charge him with directly, for his other expenses are carried on the farm accounts. The marked increase in income during the past four years is wholly due to the advance in the price of pork and the increased product of the orchards. The expense account has not varied much. The fruit crop is charged with extra labor, packages, and transportation, before it is entered, and the account shows only net returns. I have had to buy new machinery, but this has been rather evenly distributed, and doesn't show prominently in any year. In 1900 I lost my forage barn. It was struck by lightning on June 13, and burned to the ground. Fortunately, there was no wind, and the rain came in such torrents as to keep the other buildings safe. I had to scour the country over for hay to last a month, and the expense of this, together with some addition to the insurance money, cost the farm $1000 before the new structure was completed. I give below the income and the outgo for the last four years:-- INCOME EXPENSES TO THE GOOD 1899 $17,780.00 $15,420.00 $2,360.00 1900 19,460.00 16,480.00 2,980.00 1901 21,424.00 15,520.00 5,904.00 1902 23,365.00 15,673.00 7,692.00 ----------- Making a total to the good of $18,936.00 These figures cover only the money received and expended. They take no account of the $4000 per annum which we agreed to pay the farm for keeping us, so long as we made it pay interest to us. Four times $4000 are $16,000 which, added to $18,936, makes almost $35,000 to charge off from the $106,000 of original investment. Polly was wrong when she spoke of it as a _permanent_ investment. Four years more of seven-dollar pork and thrifty apple growth will make this balance of $71,000 look very small. The interest is growing rapidly less, and it will be but a short time before the whole amount will be taken off the expense account. When this is done, the yearly balance will be increased by the addition of $5000, and we may be able to make the farm pay for weddings, as Polly suggested. CHAPTER LXVII LOOKING FORWARD I am not so opinionated as to think that mine is the only method of farming. On the contrary, I know that it is only one of several good methods; but that it is a good one, I insist. For a well-to-do, middle-aged man who was obliged to give up his profession, it offered change, recreation, employment, and profit. My ability to earn money by my profession ceased in 1895, and I must needs live at ease on my income, or adopt some congenial and remunerative employment, if such could be found. The vision of a factory farm had flitted through my brain so often that I was glad of the opportunity to test my theories by putting them into practice. Fortunately I had money, and to spare; for I had but a vague idea of what money would be needed to carry my experiment to the point of self-support. I set aside $60,000 as ample, but I spent nearly twice that amount without blinking. It is quite likely that I could have secured as good and as prompt returns with two-thirds of this expenditure. I plead guilty to thirty-three per cent lack of economy; the extenuating circumstances were, a wish to let the members of my family do much as they pleased and have good things and good people around them, and a somewhat luxurious temperament of my own. Polly and I were too wise (not to say too old) to adopt farming as a means of grace through privations. We wanted the good there was in it, and nothing else; but as a secondary consideration I wished to prove that it can be made to pay well, even though one-third of the money expended goes for comforts and kickshaws. It is not necessary to spend so much on a five-hundred-acre farm, and a factory farm need not contain so many acres. Any number of acres from forty to five hundred, and any number of dollars from $5000 to $100,000, will do, so long as one holds fast to the rules: good clean fences for security against trespass by beasts, or weeds; high tilth, and heavy cropping; no waste or fallow land; conscientious return to the land of refuse, and a cover crop turned under every second year; the best stock that money can buy; feed for product, not simply to keep the animals alive; force product in every way not detrimental to the product itself; maintain a strict quarantine around your animals, and then depend upon pure food, water, air, sunlight, and good shelter to keep them healthy; sell as soon as the product is finished, even though the market doesn't please you; sell only perfect product under your own brand; buy when the market pleases you and thus "discount the seasons"; remember that interdependent industries are the essence of factory farming; employ the best men you can find, and keep them interested in your affairs; have a definite object and make everything bend toward that object; plant apple trees galore and make them your chief care, as in time they will prove your chief dependence. These are some of the principles of factory farming, and one doesn't have to be old, or rich, to put them into practice. I would exchange my age, money, and acres for youth and forty acres, and think that I had the best of the bargain; and I would start the factory by planting ten acres of orchard, buying two sows, two cows, and two setting hens. Youth, strength, and hustle are a great sight better than money, and the wise youth can have a finer farm than mine before he passes the half-century mark, even though he have but a bare forty to begin with. I do not take it for granted that every man has even a bare forty; but millions of men who have it not, can have it by a little persistent self-denial; and when an able-bodied man has forty acres of ground under his feet, it is up to him whether he will be a comfortable, independent, self-respecting man or not. A great deal of farm land is distant from markets and otherwise limited in its range of production, but nearly every forty which lies east of the hundredth meridian is competent to furnish a living for a family of workers, if the workers be intelligent as well as industrious. Farm lands are each year being brought closer to markets by steam and electric roads; telephone and telegraphic wires give immediate service; and the daily distribution of mails brings the producer into close touch with the consumer. The day of isolation and seclusion has passed, and the farmer is a personal factor in the market. He is learning the advantages of coöperation, both in producing and in disposing of his wares; he has paid off his mortgage and has money in the bank; he is a power in politics, and by far the most dependable element in the state. Like the wrestler of old, who gained new strength whenever his foot touched the ground, our country gains fresh vigor from every man who takes to the soil. In preaching a hejira to the country, I do not forget the interests of the children. Let no one dread country life for the young until they come to the full pith and stature of maturity; for their chances of doing things worth doing in the world are four to one against those of children who are city-bred. Four-fifths of the men and women who do great things are country-bred. This is out of all proportion to the birth-rate as between country and city, and one is at a loss to account for the disproportion, unless it is to be credited to environment. Is it due to pure air and sunshine, making redder blood and more vigorous development, to broader horizons and freedom from abnormal conventions? Or does a close relation to primary things give a newness to mind and body which is granted only to those who apply in person? Whatever the reason, it certainly pays to be country-bred. The cities draw to themselves the cream of these youngsters, which is only natural; but the cities do not breed them, except as exotics. If the unborn would heed my advice, I would say, By all means be born in the country,--in Ohio if possible. But, if fortune does not prove as kind to you as I could wish, accept this other advice: Choose the, country for your foster-mother; go to her for consolation and rejuvenation, take her bounty gratefully, rest on her fair bosom, and be content with the fat of the land. THE RURAL SCIENCE SERIES Includes books which state the underlying principles of agriculture in plain language. They are suitable for consultation alike by the amateur or professional tiller of the soil, the scientist or the student, and are freely illustrated and finely made. The following volumes are now ready: THE SOIL. By F.H. KING, of the University of Wisconsin. 303 pp. 45 illustrations. 75 cents. THE FERTILITY OF THE LAND. By I.P. ROBERTS, of Cornell University. Second edition. 421 pp. 45 illustrations. $1.25. THE SPRAYING OF PLANTS. By E.G. LODEMAN, late of Cornell University. 399 pp. 92 illustrations. $1.00. MILK AND ITS PRODUCTS. By H.H. WING, of Cornell University. Third edition. 311 pp. 43 illustrations. $1.00. THE PRINCIPLES OF FRUIT-GROWING. By L.H. BAILEY. Third edition. 516 pp. 120 illustrations. $1.25. BUSH-FRUITS. By F.W. CARD, of Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. Second edition. 537 pp. 113 illustrations. $1.50. FERTILIZERS. By E.B. VOORHEES, of New Jersey Experiment Station. Second edition. 332 pp. $1.00. THE PRINCIPLES OF AGRICULTURE. By L.H. BAILEY. Third edition. 300 pp. 92 illustrations. $1.25. IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE. By F.H. KING, University of Wisconsin. 502 pp. 163 illustrations. $1.50. THE FARMSTEAD. By I.P. ROBERTS. 350 pp. 138 illustrations. $1.25. RURAL WEALTH AND WELFARE. By GEORGE T. FAIRCHILD, ex-President of the Agricultural College of Kansas. 381 pp. 14 charts. $1.25. THE PRINCIPLES OF VEGETABLE-GARDENING. By L.H. BAILEY. 468 pp. 144 illustrations. $1.25. THE FEEDING OF ANIMALS. By W.H. JORDAN, of New York State Experiment Station. $1.25 _net_. FARM POULTRY. By GEORGE C. WATSON, of Pennsylvania State College. $1.25 _net_. CARE OF ANIMALS. By N.S. MAYO, of Connecticut Agricultural College. $1.25 _net_. New volumes will be added from time to time to the RURAL SCIENCE SERIES. The following are in preparation: PHYSIOLOGY OF PLANTS. By J.C. ARTHUR, Purdue University. BREEDING OF ANIMALS. By W.H. BREWER, of Yale University. PLANT PATHOLOGY. By B.T. GALLOWAY and associates of U.S. Department of Agriculture. Comprises practical hand-books for the horticulturist, explaining and illustrating in detail the various important methods which experience has demonstrated to be the most satisfactory. They may be called manuals of practice, and though all are prepared by Professor Bailey, of Cornell University, they include the opinions and methods of successful specialists in many lines, thus combining the results of the observations and experiences of numerous students in this and other lands. They are written in the clear, strong, concise English and in the entertaining style which characterize the author. The volumes are compact, uniform in style, clearly printed, and illustrated as the subject demands. They are of convenient shape for the pocket, and are substantially bound in flexible green cloth. THE HORTICULTURIST'S RULE-BOOK. By L.H. Bailey. Fourth edition. 312 pp. 75 cts. THE NURSERY-BOOK. By L.H. Bailey. Fourth edition. 365 pp. 152 illustrations. $1.00. PLANT-BREEDING. By L.H. Bailey. 293 pp. 20 illustrations. $1.00. THE FORCING-BOOK. By L.H. Bailey. 266 pp. 88 illustrations. $1.00. GARDEN MAKING. By L.H. Bailey. Third edition. 417 pp. 256 illustrations. $1.00. THE PRUNING-BOOK. By L.H. Bailey. Second edition. 545 pp. 331 illustrations. $1.50. THE PRACTICAL GARDEN-BOOK. By C.E. Hunn and L.H. Bailey. 250 pp. Many marginal cuts. $1.00. The Garden of a Commuter's Wife Recorded by the Gardener WITH EIGHT PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS Cloth 12mo $1.50 "In brief, the book is delightfully sketchy and chatty, thoroughly feminine and entrancing. The writer represents herself as a doctor's daughter in a country town, who has married an Englishman, and after two years abroad has come home to live. Both husband and wife prefer the country to the city, and they make of their modest estate a mundane paradise of which it is a privilege to have a glimpse. Surely it is no exaggeration to characterize this as one of the very best books of the holiday season, thus far."--_Providence Journal._ "It is written with charm, and is more than a mere treatise on what may be raised in the small lot of the suburban resident. "The author has not only learned to appreciate nature from intimate association, but has achieved unusual power of communicating these facts to others. There is something unusually attractive about the book."--_The Philadelphia Inquirer._ * * * * * A Woman's Hardy Garden By HELENA RUTHERFORD ELY With many Illustrations from Photographs taken in the Author's Garden by Professor C.F. CHANDLER Cloth 12MO $1.75 net "It Is never for a moment vague or general, and Mrs. Ely is certainly inspiring and helpful to the prospective gardener."--_Boston Herald._ "Mrs. Ely gives copious details of the cost of plants, the exact dates of planting, the number of plants required in a given space for beauty of effect and advantage to free growth, the protection needed from sun and frost, the precautions to take against injury from insects, the satisfaction to be expected from the different varieties of plants in the matter of luxuriant bloom and length of time for blossoming, and much information to be appreciated only by those who have raised a healthy garden by the slow teachings of personal experience."--_New York Times Saturday Review._ * * * * * THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 Fifth Avenue, New York 
12000	----	This eBook was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset. A WALK FROM LONDON TO JOHN O'GROATS with notes by the way. BY ELIHU BURRITT. CONTENTS. PREFACE CHAPTER I. Motives to the Walk--The Iron Horse and his Rider-- The Losses and Gains by Speed--The Railway Track and Turnpike Road: Their Sceneries Compared. CHAPTER II. First Day's Observations and Enjoyment--Rural Foot- paths; Visit to Tiptree Farm--Alderman Mechi's Operations-- Improvements Introduced, Decried and Adopted--Steam Power, Under- draining, Deep Tillage, Irrigation--Practical Results. CHAPTER III. English and American Birds--The Lark and its Song. CHAPTER IV. Talk with an Old Man on the Way--Old Houses in England--Their American Relationships--English Hedges and Hedge-row Trees--Their Probable Fate--Change of Rural Scenery without them. CHAPTER V. A Footpath Walk and its Incidents--Harvest Aspects-- English and American Skies--Humbler Objects of Contemplation--The Donkey: Its Uses and Abuses. CHAPTER VI. Hospitalities of "Friends"--Harvest Aspects: English Country Inns; their Appearance, Names and Distinctive Characteristics--The Landlady, Waiter, Chambermaid and Boots--Extra Fees and Extra Comforts. CHAPTER VII. Light of Human Lives--Photographs and Biographs--The late Jonas Webb, his Life, Labors and Memory. CHAPTER VIII. Threshing Machine--Flower Show--The Hollyhock and its Suggestions--The Law of Co-operative Activities in Vegetable, Animal, Mental and Moral Life. CHAPTER IX. Visit to a Three-Thousand-Acre Farm--Samuel Jonas; His Agricultural Operations, their Extent, Success and General Economy. CHAPTER X. Royston and its Specialities--Entertainment in a Small Village--St. Ives--Visits to Adjoining Villages--A Fen-Farm-- Capital Invested in English and American Agriculture Compared-- Allotments and Garden Tenantry--Barley Grown on Oats. CHAPTER XI. The Miller of Houghton--An Hour in Huntingdon--Old Houses--Whitewashed Tapestry and Works of Art--"The Old Mermaid" and "The Green Man"--Talk with Agricultural Laborers--Thoughts on their Condition, Prospects and Possibilities. CHAPTER XII. Farm Game--Hallett Wheat--Oundle--Country Bridges-- Fotheringay Castle--Queen Mary's Imprisonment and Execution-- Burghley House: The Park, Avenues, Elms and Oaks--Thoughts on Trees, English and American. CHAPTER XIII. Walk to Oakham--The English and American Spring--The English Gentry--A Specimen of the Class--Melton Mowbray and its Specialities--Belvoir Vale and its Beauty--Thoughts on the Blind Painter. CHAPTER XIV. Nottingham and its Characteristics--Newstead Abbey-- Mansfield--Talk in a Blacksmith's Shop--Chesterfield, Chatsworth and Haddon Hall--Aristocratic Civilisation, Present and Past. CHAPTER XV. Sheffield and its Individuality--The Country, Above Ground and Under Ground--Wakefield and Leeds--Wharf Vale--Farnley Hall--Harrogate; Ripley Castle; Ripon; Conservatism of Country Towns--Fountain Abbey; Studley Park--Rievaulx Abbey--Lord Faversham's Shorthorn Stock. CHAPTER XVI. Hexham--The North Tyne--Border-Land and its Suggestions--Hawick--Teviotdale--Birth-place of Leyden--Melrose and Dryburgh Abbeys--Abbotsford: Sir Walter Scott; Homage to his Genius--The Ferry and the Oar-Girl--New Farm Steddings--Scenery of the Tweed Valley--Edinburgh and its Characteristics. CHAPTER XVII. Loch Leven--Its Island Castle--Straths--Perth-- Salmon-breeding--Thoughts on Fish-farming--Dunkeld--Blair Atholl-- Ducal Tree-planter--Strathspey and its Scenery--The Roads--Scotch Cattle and Sheep--Night in a Wayside Cottage--Arrival at Inverness. CHAPTER XVIII. Inverness--Ross-shire--Tain--Dornoch--Golspie-- Progress of Railroads--The Sutherland Eviction--Sea-coast Scenery-- Caithness--Wick--Herring Fisheries--John O'Groat's: Walk's End. CHAPTER XIX. Anthony Cruickshank--The Greatest Herd of Shorthorns in the World--Return to London and Termination of my Tour. PREFACE. In presenting this volume to the public, I feel that a few words of explanation are due to the readers that it may obtain, in addition to those offered to them in the first chapter. When I first visited England, in 1846, it was my intention to make a pedestrian tour from one end of the island to the other, in order to become more acquainted with the country and people than I could by any other mode of travelling. A few weeks after my arrival, I set out on such a walk, and had made about one hundred miles on foot, when I was constrained to suspend the tour, in order to take part in movements which soon absorbed all my time and strength. For the ensuing ten years I was nearly the whole time in Great Britain, travelling from one end of the kingdom to the other, to promote the movements referred to; still desiring to accomplish the walk originally proposed. On returning to England at the beginning of 1863, after a continuous residence of seven years in America, I found myself, for the first time, in the condition to carry out my intention of 1846. Several new motives had been added in the interval to those that had at first operated upon my mind. I had dabbled a little in farming in my native village, New Britain, Connecticut, and had labored to excite additional interest in agriculture among my neighbors. We had formed an Agricultural Club, and met weekly for several winters to compare notes, exchange opinions' and discuss matters connected with the occupation. They had honored me with the post of Corresponding Secretary from the beginning. We held a meeting the evening before I left for England, when they not only refused to accept my resignation as Secretary, but made me promise to write them letters about farming in the Mother Country, and on other matters of interest that I might meet with on my travels there. My first idea was to do this literally;--to make a walk through the best agricultural sections of England, and write home a series of communications to be inserted in our little village paper. But, on second thought, on considering the size of the sheet, I found it would require four or five years to print in it all I was likely to write, at the rate of two columns a week. So I concluded that the easiest and quickest way would be to make a book of my Notes by the Way, and to send back to my old friends and neighbors in that form all the observations and incidents I might make and meet on my walk. The next thought that suggested itself was this,--that a good many persons in Great Britain might feel some interest in seeing what an American, who had resided so long in this country, might have to say of its sceneries, industries, social life, etc. Still, in writing out these Notes, although two distinct circles of readers--the English and American--have been present to my mind, I felt constrained to face and address the latter, just as if speaking to them alone. I have, moreover, adopted the free and easy style of epistolary composition, endeavoring to make each chapter as much like one of the letters I promised my friends and neighbors at home as practicable. In doing this, the "_I_" has, perhaps, talked far too much to beseem those proprieties which the author of a book should observe. Besides, expressions, figures and orthography more American than English may be noticed, which will indicate the circle of readers which the writer had primarily in view. Still, he would fain believe that these features of the volume will not seriously affect the interest it might otherwise possess in the minds of those disposed to give it a reading in this country. Whatever exceptions they may take to the style and diction, I hope they will find none to the spirit of the work. ELIHU BURRITT. London, April 5th, 1864. CHAPTER I. MOTIVES TO THE WALK--THE IRON HORSE AND HIS RIDER--THE LOSSES AND GAINS BY SPEED--THE RAILWAY TRACK AND TURNPIKE ROAD: THEIR SCENERIES COMPARED. One of my motives for making this tour was to look at the country towns and villages on the way in the face and eyes; to enter them by the front door, and to see them as they were made to be seen first, as far as man's mind and hand intended and wrought. Railway travelling, as yet, takes everything at a disadvantage; it does not front on nature, or art, or the common conditions and industries of men in town or country. If it does not actually of itself turn, it presents everything the wrong side outward. In cities, it reveals the ragged and smutty companionship of tumble-down out-houses, and mysteries of cellar and back-kitchen life which were never intended for other eyes than those that grope in them by day or night. How unnatural, and, more, almost profane and inhuman, is the fiery locomotion of the Iron Horse through these densely-peopled towns! now the screech, the roar, and the darkness of cavernous passages under paved streets, church vaults, and an acre or two of three- story brick houses, with the feeling of a world of breathing, bustling humanity incumbent upon you;--now the dash and flash out into the light, and the higgledy-piggledy glimpses of the next five minutes. In a moment you are above thickly-thronged streets, and the houses on either side, looking down into the black throats of smoky chimneys; into the garret lairs of poverty, sickness, and sin; down lower upon squads of children trying to play in back-yards eight feet square. It is all wrong, except in the single quality of speed. You enter the town as you would a farmer's house, if you first passed through the pig-stye into the kitchen. Every respectable house in the city turns its back upon you; and often a very brick and dirty back too, though it may show an elegant front of Bath or Portland stone to the street it faces. All the respectable streets run over or under you with an audible shudder of disgust or dread. None but a shabby lane of low shops for the sale of junk, beer, onions, shrimps, and cabbages, will run a third of a mile by your side for the sake of your company. The wickedest boys in the town hoot at you, with most ignominious and satiric antics, as you pass; and if they do not shie stones in upon you, or dead cats, it is more from fear of the beadle or the constable than out of respect for your business or pleasure. Indeed, every town and village, great or small, which you pass through or near on the railway, looks as if you came fifty years before you were expected. It says, in all the legible expressions of its countenance, "Lack-a-day!--if here isn't that creature come already, and looking in at my back door before I had time to turn around, or put anything in shape!" The Iron Horse himself gets no sympathy nor humane admiration. He stands grim and wrathy, when reined up for two minutes and forty-five seconds at a station. No venturesome boys pat him on the flanks, or look kindly into his eyes, or say a pleasant word to him, or even wonder if he is tired, or thirsty, or hungry. None of the ostlers of the greasy stables, in which the locomotives are housed, ever call him Dobbin, or Old Jack, or Jenny, or say, "Well done, old fellow!" when they unhitch him from the train at midnight, after a journey of a hundred leagues. His driver is a real man of flesh and blood; with wife and children whom he loves. He goes on Sunday to church, and, maybe, sings the psalms of David, and listens devoutly to the sermon, and says prayers at home, and the few who know him speak well of him, as a good and proper man in his way. But, spurred and mounted upon the saddle of the great iron hexiped, nearly all the passengers regard him as a part of the beast. No one speaks to him, or thinks of him on the journey. He may pull up at fifty stations, and not a soul among the Firsts, Seconds, or even Thirds, will offer him a glass of beer, or pipe-full of tobacco, or give him a sixpence at the end of the ride for extra speed or care. His face is grimy, and greasy, and black. All his motions are ambiguous and awkward to the casual observer. He has none of the sedate and conscious dignity of his predecessor on the old stage-coach box. He handles no whip, like him, with easy grace. Indeed, in putting up his great beast to its best speed, he "hides his whip in the manger," according to a proverb older than steam power. He wears no gloves in the coldest weather; not always a coat, and never a decent one, at his work. He blows no cheery music out of a brass bugle as he approaches a town, but pricks the loins of the fiery beast, and makes him scream with a sound between a human whistle and an alligator's croak. He never pulls up abreast of the station-house door, in the fashion of the old coach driver, to show off himself and his leaders, but runs on several rods ahead of his passengers and spectators, as if to be clear of them and their comments, good or bad. At the end of the journey, be it at midnight or day-break, not a man nor a woman he has driven safely at the rate of forty miles an hour thinks or cares what becomes of him, or separates him in thought from the great iron monster he mounts. Not the smock-frocked man, getting out of the forwardmost Third, with his stick and bundle, thinks of him, or stops a moment to see him back out and turn into the stable. With all the practical advantages of this machine propulsion at bird speed over space, it confounds and swallows up the poetical aspects and picturesque sceneries that were the charm of old-fashioned travelling in the country. The most beautiful landscapes rotate around a locomotive axis confusedly. Green pastures and yellow wheat fields are in a whirl. Tall and venerable trees get into the wake of the same motion, and the large, pied cows ruminating in their shade, seem to lie on the revolving arc of an indefinite circle. The views dissolve before their best aspect is caught by the eye. The flowers, like Eastern beauties, can only be seen "half hidden and half revealed," in the general unsteadiness. As for bees, you cannot hear or see them at all; and the songs of the happiest birds are drowned altogether by the clatter of a hundred wheels on the metal track. If there are any poor, flat, or fen lands, your way is sure to lie through them. In a picturesque and undulating country, studded with parks and mansions of wealth and taste, you are plunging through a long, dark tunnel, or walled into a deep cut, before your eye can catch the view that dashes by your carriage window. If you have a utilitarian proclivity and purpose, and would like to see the great agricultural industries of the country, they present themselves to you in as confused aspects as the sceneries of the passing landscape. The face of every farm is turned from you. The farmer's house fronts on the turnpike road, and the best views of his homestead, of his industry, prosperity, and happiness, look that way. You only get a furtive glance, a kind of clandestine and diagonal peep at him and his doings; and having thus travelled a hundred miles through a fertile country you can form no approximate or satisfactory idea of its character and productions. But no facts nor arguments are needed to convince an intelligent traveller that the railway affords no point of view for seeing town or country to any satisfactory perception of its character. Indeed, neither coach of the olden, nor cab of the modern vogue, nor saddle, will enable one to "do" either town or country with thorough insight and enjoyment. It takes him too long to pull up to catch the features of a sudden view. He can do nothing with those generous and delightful institutions of Old England,--the footpaths, that thread pasture, park, and field, seemingly permeating her whole green world with dusky veins for the circulation of human life. To lose all the picturesque lanes and landscapes which these field- paths cross and command, is to lose the great distinctive charm of the country. Then, neither from the coach-box nor the saddle can he make much conversation on the way. He loses the chance of a thousand little talks and pleasant incidents. He cannot say "Good morning" to the farmer at the stile, nor a word of greeting to the reapers over the hedge, nor see where they live, and the kind of children that play by their cottage doors; nor the little, antique churches, bearded to their eye-brows with ivy, covering the wrinkles of half a dozen centuries, nor the low and quiet villages clustering around, each like a family of bushy-headed children surrounding their venerable mother. In addition to these considerations, there was another that moved me to this walk. Although I had been up and down the country as often and as extensively as any American, perhaps, and admired its general scenery, I had never looked at it with an agricultural eye or interest. But, having dabbled a little in farming in the interval between my last two visits to England, and being touched with some of the enthusiasm that modern novices carry into the occupation, I was determined to look at the agriculture of Great Britain more leisurely and attentively, and from a better stand-point than I had ever done before. The thought had also occurred to me, that a walk through the best agricultural counties of England and Scotland would afford opportunity for observation which might be made of some interest to my friends and neighbor farmers in America as well as to myself. Therefore I beg the English reader to remember that I am addressing to them the notes that I may make by the way, hoping that its incidents and the thoughts it suggests will not be devoid of interest because they are principally intended for the American ear. CHAPTER II. FIRST DAY'S OBSERVATIONS AND ENJOYMENT--RURAL FOOT-PATHS; VISIT TO TIPTREE FARM--ALDERMAN MECHI'S OPERATIONS--IMPROVEMENTS INTRODUCED, DECRIED, AND ADOPTED--STEAM POWER, UNDER-DRAINING, DEEP TILLAGE, IRRIGATION--PRACTICAL RESULTS. On Wednesday, July 15th, 1863, I left London with the hope that I might be able to accomplish the northern half of my proposed "Walk from Land's End to John O'Groat's." I had been practically prostrated by a serious indisposition for nearly two months, and was just able to walk one or two miles at a time about the city. Believing that country air and exercise would soon enable me to be longer on my feet, I concluded to set out as I was, without waiting for additional strength, so slow and difficult to attain in the smoky atmosphere and hot streets of London. Few reading farmers in America there are who are not familiar with the name and fame of Alderman Mechi, as an agriculturist of that new and scientific school that is making such a revolution in the great primeval industry of mankind. His experiments on his Tiptree Farm have attained a world-wide publicity, and have given that homestead an interest that, perhaps, never attached to the same number of acres in any country or age. Thinking that this famous establishment would be a good starting point for my pedestrian tour, I concluded to proceed thither first by railway, and thence to walk northward, by easy stages, through the fertile and rural county of Essex. Taking an afternoon train, I reached Kelvedon about 5 p.m.,- -the station for Tiptree, and a good specimen of an English village, at two hours' ride from London. Calling at the residence of a Friend, or Quaker, to inquire the way to the Alderman's farm, he invited me to take tea with him, and be his guest for the night,--a hospitality which I very gladly accepted, as it was a longer walk than I had anticipated. After tea, my host, who was a farmer as well as miller, took me over his fields, and showed me his live stock, his crops of wheat, barley, oats, beans, and roots, which were all large and luxuriant, and looked a tableau vivant of plenty within the green hedges that enclosed and adorned them. The next morning, after breakfast, my kind host set me on the way to Tiptree by a footpath through alternating fields of wheat, barley, oats, beans, and turnips, into which an English farm is generally divided. These footpaths are among the vested interests of the walking public throughout the United Kingdom. Most of them are centuries old. The footsteps of a dozen generations have given them the force and sanctity of a popular right. A farmer might as well undertake to barricade the turnpike road as to close one of these old paths across his best fields. So far from obstructing them, he finds it good policy to straighten and round them up, and supply them with convenient gates or stiles, so that no one shall have an excuse for trampling on his crops, or for diverging into the open field for a shorter cut to the main road. Blessings on the man who invented them! It was done when land was cheap, and public roads were few; before four wheels were first geared together for business or pleasure. They were the doing of another age; this would not have produced them. They run through all the prose, poetry, and romance of the rural life of England, permeating the history of green hedges, thatched cottages, morning songs of the lark, moonlight walks, meetings at the stile, harvest homes of long ago, and many a romantic narrative of human experience widely read in both hemispheres. They will run on for ever, carrying with them the same associations. They are the inheritance of landless millions, who have trodden them in ages past at dawn, noon, and night, to and from their labor; and in ages to come the mowers and reapers shall tread them to the morning music of the lark, and through Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, they shall show the fresh checker-work of the ploughman's hob-nailed shoe. The surreptitious innovations of utilitarian science shall not poach upon these sacred preserves of the people, whatever revolutions they may produce in the machinery and speed of turnpike locomotion. These pleasant and peaceful paths through park, and pasture, meandering through the beautiful and sweet-breathing artistry of English agriculture, are guaranteed to future generations by an authority which no legislation can annul. A walk of a few miles brought me in sight of Tiptree Hall; and its first aspect relieved my mind of an impression which, in common with thousands better informed, I had entertained in reference to the establishment. An idea has generally prevailed among English farmers, and agriculturists of other countries who have heard of Alderman Mechi's experiments, that they were impracticable and almost valueless, because they would not _pay_; that the balance- sheet of his operations did and must ever show such ruinous discrepancy between income and expenditure as must deter any man, of less capital and reckless enthusiasm, from following his lead into such unconsidered ventures. In short, he has been widely regarded at home and abroad as a bold and dashing novice in agricultural experience, ready to lavish upon his own hasty inventions a fortune acquired in his London warehouse; and all this to make himself famous as a great light in the agricultural world, which light, after all, was a mere will-o'-the-wisp sort of affair, leading its dupes into the veriest bog of bankruptcy. In common with all those bold, self-reliant spirits that have ventured to break away from the antecedents of public opinion and custom, he has been the subject of many ungenerous innuendoes and criticisms. All kinds of ambitions and motives have been ascribed to him. Many a burly, red-faced farmer, who boasts of an unbroken agricultural lineage reaching back into the reign of Good Queen Bess, will tell you over his beer that the Alderman's doings are all _gammon_; that they are all to advertise his cutlery business in Leadenhall Street, Barnum fashion; to inveigle down to Tiptree Hall noblemen, foreign ambassadors, and great people of different countries, and bribe "an honourable mention" out of them with champagne treats and oyster suppers. Indeed, my Quaker host largely participated in this opinion, and took no pains to conceal it when speaking of his enterprising neighbor. From what I had read and heard of the Tiptree Hall estate, I expected to see a grand, old, baronial mansion, surrounded with elegant and costly buildings for housing horses, cattle, sheep, and other live stock, all erected on a scale which no bona fide farmer could adopt or approximately imitate. In a word, I fancied his barns and stables would even surpass in this respect the establishments of some of those most wealthy New York or Boston merchants, who think they are stimulating country farmers to healthy emulation by lavishing from thirty to forty thousand dollars on a barn and its appurtenant out-houses. With these preconceived ideas, it was an unexpected satisfaction to see quite a simple-looking, unassuming establishment, which any well-to-do farmer might make and own. The house is rather a large and solid-looking building, erected by Mr. Mechi himself, but not at all ostentatious of wealth or architectural taste. The barns and "steddings," or what we call cowhouses in America, are of a very ordinary cast, or such as any country-bred farmer would call economical and simple. The homestead occupies no picturesque site, and commands no interesting scenery. The farm consists of about 170 acres, which, in England, is regarded as a rather small holding. The land is naturally sterile and hard of cultivation, most of it apparently being heavily mixed with ferruginous matter. When ploughed deeply, the clods turned up look frequently like compact masses of iron ore. Every experienced farmer knows the natural poverty of such a soil, and the hard labor to man and beast it costs to till it. To my great regret, Mr. Mechi was not at home, though he passes most of his time in Summer at Tiptree. But his foreman, who enters into all the experiments and operations which have made the establishment so famous, with almost equal interest and enthusiasm, took me through the farm buildings, and all the fields, and showed me the whole process and machinery employed. Any English or American agriculturist who has read of Alderman Mechi's operations, would be inclined to ask, on looking, for the first time, at his buildings and the fields surrounding them, what is the great distinguishing speciality of his enterprise. His land is poor; his housings are simple; there is no outside show of uncommon taste or genius. Every acre is tile-drained, to be sure. But that is nothing new nor uncommon. Drainage is the order of the day. Any tenant farmer in England can have his land drained by the Government by paying six per cent. annually on the cost of the job. His expenditure for artificial manure does not exceed that of hundreds of good farmers. He carries out the deep tillage system most liberally. So do other scientific agriculturalists in Europe and America. Of course, a few hours' observation would not suffice for a full and correct conclusion on this point, but it gave me the impression that the great operation which has won for the Tiptree Farm its special distinction is its irrigation with liquid manure. In this respect it stands unrivalled, and, perhaps, unimitated. And this, probably, is the head and front of his offending to those who criticise his economy and decry his experiments. This irrigation is performed through the medium of a small steam engine and sixteen hydrants, so posted and supplied with hose as to reach every square foot of the 170 acres. The water used for this purpose is mostly, if not entirely, supplied from the draining pipes, even in the dryest season. The manure thus liquified is made by a comparatively small number of animals. Calves to the value of 50 pounds are bought, and fat stock to that of 500 pounds are sold annually. They are all stabled throughout the year, except in harvest time, when they are turned out for a few weeks to rowen feed. The calves are housed until a year old in a large stedding by themselves. They are then transferred to another building, and put upon "the boards;" that is in a long stable or cowhouse, with a flooring of slats, through which the manure drops into a cellar below, made water-tight. Here the busiest little engine in the world is brought to bear upon it, with all its faculties of suction and propulsion. Through one pipe it forces fresh water in upon this mass of manure, which, when liquified, runs down into a subterranean cistern or reservoir capable of holding over 100,000 gallons. From this it is propelled into any field to be irrigated. To prevent any sediment in the great reservoir, or to make an even mixture of the liquified manure, a hose is attached to the engine, and the other end dropped into the mass. Through this a constant volume of air is propelled with such force as to set the whole boiling and foaming like a little cataract. One man at the engine and two at the hose in the distant field perform the whole operation. The chapped and "baky" surface of the farm is thus softened and enriched at will, and rendered productive. Now, this operation seems to constitute the present distinctive speciality of Alderman Mechi's Tiptree Farm. Will it pay? ask a thousand voices. In how many years will he get his money back? Give us the balance sheet of the experiment. A New Englander, favorably impressed with the process, would be likely to answer these questions by another, and ask, will _drainage_ pay? Not in one year, assuredly, nor in five; not in ten, perhaps. The British Government assumes that all the expenditure upon under-drainage will be paid back in fifteen or twenty years at the farthest. It lends money to the land-owner on this basis; and the land-owner stipulates with his tenant that he shall reimburse him by annual instalments of six or seven per cent. until the whole cost of the operation is liquidated. Thus the tenant-farmer is willing to pay six, sometimes seven per cent. annually, for twenty years, for the increased capacity of production which drainage gives to the farm he cultivates. At the end of that period the Government is paid by the landlord, and the landlord by the tenant, and the tenant by his augmented crops for the whole original outlay upon the land. For aught either of the three parties to the operation knows to the contrary, it must all be done over again at the end of twenty years. The system is too young yet, even in England, for any one to say how long a course of tubing will last, or how often it must be relaid. One point, therefore, has been gained. No intelligent English farmer, who has tried the system, now asks if under-drainage will pay; nor does he expect that it will pay back the whole expenditure in less than twelve or fifteen years. Here is a generous faith in the operation on the side of all the parties concerned. Then why should not Alderman Mechi's irrigation system be put on the same footing, in the matter of public confidence? It is nothing very uncommon even for a two-hundred-acre farmer in England to have a small stationary or locomotive steam-engine, and to find plenty of work for it, too, in threshing his grain, grinding his fodder, pulping his roots, cutting his hay and straw, and for other purposes. Mr. Mechi would doubtless have one for these objects alone. So its cost must not be charged to the account of irrigation. A single course of iron tubing, a third of a mile long, reaching to the centre of his farthest field, cannot cost more, with all the hose employed, than the drainage of that field, while it would be fair to assume that the iron pipes will last twice as long as those of burnt clay. They might fairly be expected to hold good for forty years. If, then, for this period, or less, the process yields ten per cent. of increased production annually, over and above the effect of all other means employed, it is quite evident that it will pay as well as drainage. But does it augment the yearly production of the farm by this amount? To say that it is the only process by which the baky and chappy soil of Tiptree can be thoroughly fertilised, would not suffice to prove its necessity or value to other soils of different composition. One fact, however, may be sufficient to determine its virtue. The fields of clover, and Italian rye-grass, etc., are mown three and even four times in one season, and afterwards fed with sheep. Certainly, no other system could produce all this cropping. The distinctive difference it makes in other crops cannot, perhaps, be made so palpable. The wheat looked strong and heavy, with a fair promise of forty-five bushels to an acre. The oats, beans, and roots showed equally well. The irrigation and deep tillage systems were going on simultaneously in the same field, affording me a good opportunity of seeing the operation of both. Two men were plying the hose upon a portion of the field which had already been mowed three times. Two teams were at work turning up the other, which had already been cropped once or twice. One of two horses went first, and, with a common English plough, turned an ordinary furrow. Then the other followed, of twice the force of the first, in the same furrow, with a subsoil plough held to the work beam-deep. The iron-stones and ferruginous clods turned up by this "deep tillage" would make a prairie farmer of Illinois wonder, if not shudder, at the plucky and ingenious industry which competes with his easy toil and cheap land in providing bread for the landless millions of Great Britain. The only exceptional feature or arrangement, besides the irrigating machinery and process, that I noticed, was an iron hurdling for folding sheep. This, at first sight, might look to a practical farmer a little extravagant, indicating a city origin, or the notion of an amateur agriculturist, more ambitious of the new than of the necessary. Each length of this iron fencing is apparently about a rod, and cost 1 pound, or nearly five dollars. It is fitted to low wheels, or rollers, on an axle two or three feet in length, so that it can be moved easily and quickly in any direction. It would cost over fifty pounds, or two hundred and fifty dollars, to enclose an acre entirely with this kind of hurdling. Still, Mr. Mechi would doubtless be able to show that this large expenditure is a good investment, and pays well in the long run. The folding of sheep for twenty-four or forty-eight hours on small patches of clover, trefoil, or turnips, is a very important department of English farming, both for fattening them for the market and for putting the land in better heart than any other fertilising process could effect. Now, a man with this iron fencing on wheels must be able to make in two hours an enclosure that would cost him a day or more of busy labor with the old wooden hurdles. On the whole, a practical farmer, who has no other source of income than the single occupation of agriculture, would be likely to ask, what is the realised value of Alderman Mechi's operations to the common grain and stock-growers of the world? They have excited more attention or curiosity than any other experiments of the present day; but what is the real resume of their results? What new principles has he laid down; what new economy has he reduced to a science that may be profitably utilised by the million who get their living by farming? What has he actually done that anybody else has adopted or imitated to any tangible advantage? These are important questions; and this is the way he undertakes to answer them, beginning with the last. About twenty years ago, he inaugurated the system of under-draining the heavy tile-clay lands in Essex. Up to his experiment, the process was deemed impracticable and worthless by the most intelligent farmers of the county. It was more confidently decried than his present irrigation system. The water would never find its way down into the drain-pipes through such clay. It stood to reason that it would do no such thing. Did not the water stand in the track of the horse's hoof in such rich clay until evaporated by the sun? It might as well leak through an earthenware basin. It was all nonsense to bury a man's money in that style. He never would see a shilling of it back again. In the face of these opinions, Mr. Mechi went on, training his pipes through field after field, deep below the surface. And the water percolated through the clay into them, until all these long veins formed a continuous and rushing stream into the main artery that now furnishes an ample supply for his stabled cattle, for his steam engine, and for all the barn-yard wants. His tile-draining of clay-lands was a capital success; and those who derided and opposed it have now adopted it to their great advantage, and to the vast augmentation of the value and production of the county. Here, then, is one thing in which he has led, and others have followed to a great practical result. His next leading was in the way of agricultural machinery. He first introduced a steam engine for farming purposes in a district containing a million of acres. That, too, at the outset, was a fantastic vagary in the opinion of thousands of solid and respectable farmers. They insisted the Iron Horse would be as dangerous in the barn-yard or rick-yard as the very dragon in Scripture; that he would set everything on fire; kill the men who had care of him; burst and blow up himself and all the buildings into the air; that all the horses, cows, and sheep would be frightened to death at the very sight of the monster, and never could be brought to lie down in peace and safety by his side, even when his blood was cold, and when he was fast asleep. To think of it! to have a tall chimney towering up over a barn-gable or barn- yard, and puffing out black coal smoke, cotton-factory-wise! Pretty talk! pretty terms to train an honest and virtuous farmer to mouth! Wouldn't it be edifying to hear him string the yarn of these new words! to hear him tell of his _engineer_ and ploughman; of his _pokers_ and pitchforks; of _six-horse power, valves, revolutions, stopcocks, twenty pounds of steam_, etc.; mixing up all this ridiculous stuff with yearling-calves, turnips, horse-carts, oil- cake, wool, bullocks, beans, and sheep, and other vital things and interests, which forty centuries have looked upon with reverence! To plough, thresh, cut turnips, grind corn, and pump water for cattle by steam! What next? Why, next, the farmers of the region round about "First pitied, then embraced" this new and powerful auxiliary to agricultural industry, after having watched its working and its worth. And now, thanks to such bold and spirited novices as Mr. Mechi--men who had the pluck to work steadily on under the pattering rain of derisive epithets-- there are already nearly as many steam engines working at farm labor between Land's End and John O'Groat's as there are employed in the manufacture of cotton in Great Britain. His irrigation system will doubtless be followed in the same order and interval by those who have pooh-poohed it with the same derision and incredulity as the other innovations they have already adopted. The utilising of the sewage of large towns, especially of London, has now become a prominent idea and movement. Mr. Mechi's machinery and process are admirably adapted to the work of distributing a river of this fertilising material over any farm to which it may be conducted. Thus, there is good reason to believe that the very process he originated for softening and enriching the hard and sterile acres of his small farm in Essex will be adopted for saturating millions of acres in Great Britain with the millions of tons of manurial matter that have hitherto blackened and poisoned the rivers of the country on their wasteful way to the sea. This will be only an additional work for the farm engines now in operation, accomplished with but little increased expense. A single fact may illustrate the irrigating capacity of Mr. Mechi's machinery. It throws upon a field a quantity of the fertilising fluid equal to one inch of rainfall at a time, or 100 tons per imperial acre. And, as a proof of how deep it penetrates, the drains run freely with it, thus showing conclusively that the subsoil has been well saturated, a point of vital importance to the crop. Deep tillage is another speciality that distinguished the Tiptree Farm regime at the beginning, in which Mr. Mechi led, and in which he has been followed by the farmers of the country, although few have come up abreast of him as yet in the system. Here, then, are four specific departments of improvement in agricultural industry which the Alderman has introduced. Every one of them has been ridiculed as an impracticable and useless innovation in its turn. Three of them have already been adopted, and virtually incorporated with agricultural science and economy; and the fourth, or irrigation by steam power, bids fair to find as much favor, and as many adherents in the end as the others have done. He has not only originated these improvements, or been the first to give them practical experiment, but he has laid down certain principles which will doubtless exercise much influence in shaping the industrial economy of agriculture hereafter in different countries. One of the best of these principles he puts in the form of a mathematical proposition. Thus:--As the meat is to the manure, so is the crop to the land. Tell me, he says, how much meat you make, and I will tell you how much corn you make, to the acre. Meat, then, is the starting point with him; the basis of his annual production, to which he looks for a satisfactory decision of his balance-sheet. To show the value he attaches to this element, the fact will suffice that he usually keeps 65 bullocks, cows, and calves, 100 sheep, and a number of pigs, besides his horses, making one head to every acre of his farm. With this amount of live stock he makes from 4 to 5 pounds worth of meat per acre annually. Perhaps it would be safe to say that no other 170 acres of land in the world make more meat, manure, and grain in the year than the Tiptree Farm. In these results Mr. Mechi thinks his experiments and improvements have proved Quod es demonstrandum. Having gone over the farm pretty thoroughly, and noticed all the leading features of the establishment, I was requested by the foreman to enter my name in the visitor's book kept in his neat cottage parlor. It is a large volume, with the ruling running across both the wide pages; the left apportioned to name, town, country, and profession; the right to remarks of the visitor. It is truly a remarkable book of interesting autographs and observations, which the philologist as well as agriculturist might pore over with lively satisfaction. It not only contains the names and comments of many of the most distinguished personages in Great Britain, but those of all other countries of Europe, even of Asia and Africa, as well as America. Foreign ambassadors, Continental savans, men of fame in the literary, scientific, and political world have here recorded their names and impressions in the most unique succession and blending. Here, under one date, is a party of Italian gentlemen, leaving their autographs and their observations in the softest syllables of their language. Then several German connoisseurs follow in their peculiar script, with comments worded heavily with hard-mouthed consonants. Then comes, perhaps, a single Russian nobleman, who expresses his profound satisfaction in the politest French. Next succeed three or four Spanish Dons, with a long fence of names attached to each, who give their views of the establishment in the grave, sonorous words of their language. Here, now, an American puts in his autograph, with his sharp, curt notion of the matter, as "first-rate." Very likely a turbaned Mufti or Singh of the Oriental world follows the New England farmer. Danish and Swedish knights prolong the procession, mingling with Australian wool-growers, Members of the French Royal Academy, Canadian timber- merchants, Dutch Mynheers, Brazilian coffee-planters, Belgian lace- makers, and the representatives of all other countries and professions in Christendom. An autograph-monger, with the mania strong upon him, of unscrupulous curiosity, armed furtively with a keen pair of scissors would be a dangerous person to admit to the presence of that big book without a policeman at his elbow. Tiptree Hall has its own literature also, in two or three volumes, written by Mr. Mechi himself, and describing fully his agricultural experience and experiments, and giving facts and arguments which every English and American farmer might study with profit. CHAPTER III. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN BIRDS. "What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody." SHELLEY'S "SKYLARK." "Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these? Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught The dialect they speak, whose melodies Alone are the interpreters of thought? Whose household words are songs in many keys, Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught! Whose habitations in the tree-tops, even, Are half-way houses on the road to heaven." LONGFELLOW. Having spent a couple of hours very pleasantly at Tiptree Hall, I turned my face in a northerly direction for a walk through the best agricultural section of Essex. While passing through a grass field recently mown, a lark flew up from almost under my feet. And there, partially overarched by a tuft of clover, was her little all of earth--a snug, warm nest with two small eggs in it, about the size and color of those of the ground-chirping-bird of New England, which is nearer the English lark than any other American bird. I bent down to look at them with an interest an American could only feel. To him the lark is to the bird-world's companionship and music what the angels are to the spirit land. He has read and dreamed of both from his childhood up. He has believed in both poetically and pleasantly, sometimes almost positively, as real and beautiful individualities. He almost credits the poet of his own country, who speaks of hearing "the downward beat of angel wings." In his facile faith in the substance of picturesque and happy shadows, he sometimes tries to believe that the phoenix may have been, in some age and country, a real, living bird, of flesh and blood and genuine feathers, with long, strong wings, capable of performing the strange psychological feats ascribed to it in that most edifying picture emblazoned on the arms of Banking Companies, Insurance Offices, and Quack Doctors. He is not sure that dying swans have not sung a mournful hymn over their last moments, under an affecting and human sense of their mortality. He has believed in the English lark to the same point of pleasing credulity. Why should he not give its existence the same faith? The history of its life is as old as the English alphabet, and older still. It sang over the dark and hideous lairs of the bloody Druids centuries before Julius Caesar was born, and they doubtless had a pleasant name for it, unless true music was hateful to their ears. It sang, without loss or change of a single note of this morning's song, to the Roman legions as they marched, or made roads in Britain. It rang the same voluntaries to the Saxons, Danes, and Normans, through the long ages, and, perhaps, tended to soften their antagonisms, and hasten their blending into one great and mighty people. How the name and song of this happiest of earthly birds run through all the rhyme and romance of English poetry, of English rural life, ever since there was an England! Take away its history and its song from her daisy-eyed meadows, and shaded lanes, and hedges breathing and blooming with sweetbrier leaves and hawthorn flowers--from her thatched cottages, veiled with ivy--from the morning tread of the reapers, and the mower's lunch of bread and cheese under the meadow elm, and you take away a living and beautiful spirit more charming than music. You take away from English poetry one of its pleiades, and bereave it of a companionship more intimate than that of the nearest neighborhood of the stars above. How the lark's life and song blend, in the rhyme of the poet, with "the sheen of silver fountains leaping to the sea," with morning sunbeams and noontide thoughts, with the sweetest breathing flowers, and softest breezes, and busiest bees, and greenest leaves, and happiest human industries, loves, hopes, and aspirations! The American has read and heard of all this from his youth up to the day of setting his foot, for the first time, on English ground. He has tried to believe it, as in things seen, temporal and tangible. But in doing this he has to contend with a sense or suspicion of unreality--a feeling that there has been great poetical exaggeration in the matter. A patent fact lies at the bottom of this incredulity. The forefathers of New England carried no wild bird with them to sing about their cabin homes in the New World. But they found beautiful and happy birds on that wild continent, as well-dressed, as graceful in form and motion, and of as fine taste for music and other accomplishments, as if they and their ancestors had sung before the courts of Europe for twenty generations. These sang their sweet songs of welcome to the Pilgrims as they landed from the "Mayflower." These sang to them cheerily, through the first years and the later years of their stern trials and tribulations. These built their nests where the blue eyes of the first white children born in the land could peer in upon the speckled eggs with wonder and delight. What wonder that those strong-hearted puritan fathers and mothers, who "Made the aisles of the dim wood ring With the anthems of the free," should love the fellowship of these native singers of the field and forest, and give them names their hearts loved in the old home land beyond the sea! They did not consult Linnaeus, nor any musty Latin genealogy of Old World birds, at the christening of these songsters. There was a good family resemblance in many cases. The blustering partridge, brooding over her young in the thicket, was very nearly like the same bird in England. For the mellow-throated thrush of the old land they found a mate in the new, of the same size, color, and general habits, though less musical. The blackbird was nearly the same in many respects, though the smaller American wore a pair of red epaulettes. The swallows had their coat tails cut after the same old English pattern, and built their nests after the same model, and twittered under the eaves with the same ecstacy, and played the same antics in the air. But the two dearest home-birds of the fatherland had no family relations nor counterparts in America; and the pilgrim fathers and their children could not make their humble homes happy without the lark and the robin, at least in name and association; so they looked about them for substitutes. There was a plump, full-chested bird, in a chocolate-colored vest, with a bluish dress coat, that would mount the highest tree-top in early spring, and play his flute by the hour for very joy to see the snow melt and the buds swell again. There was such a rollicking happiness in his loud, clear notes, and he apparently sang them in such sympathy with human fellowships, and hopes, and homes, and he was such a cheery and confiding denizen of the orchard and garden withal, that he became at once the pet bird of old and young, and was called the _robin_; and well would it be if its English namesake possessed its sterling virtues; for, with all its pleasant traits and world-wide reputation, the English robin is a pretentious, arrogant busybody, characteristically pugilistic and troublesome in the winged society of England. In form, dress, deportment, disposition, and in voice and taste for vocal music, the American robin surpasses the English most decidedly. In this our grave forefathers did more than justice to the home-bird they missed on Plymouth Rock. In this generous treatment of their affection for it, they perhaps condoned for mating the English lark so incongruously; but it was true their choice was very limited. To match the prima donna carissima of English field and sky, it was necessary to select a meadow bird, with some other features of resemblance. It would never do to give the cherished name and association to one that lived in the forest, or built its nest in the tree-tops or house-tops, or to one that was black, yellow, or red. Having to conciliate all these conditions, and do the best with the material at hand, they pitched upon a rather large, brownish bird, in a drab waistcoat, slightly mottled, and with a loud, cracked voice, which nobody ever liked. So it never became a favorite, even to those who first gave it the name of lark. It was not its only defect that it lacked an ear and voice for music. There is always a scolding accent that marks its conversation with other birds in the brightest mornings of June. He is very noisy, but never merry nor musical. Indeed, compared with the notes of the English lark, his are like the vehement ejaculations of a maternal duck in distress. Take it in all, no bird in either hemisphere equals the English lark in heart or voice, for both unite to make it the sweetest, happiest, the welcomest singer that was ever winged, like the high angels of God's love. It is the living ecstacy of joy when it mounts up into its "glorious privacy of light." On the earth it is timid, silent, and bashful, as if not at home, and not sure of its right to be there at all. It is rather homely withal, having nothing in feather, feature, or form, to attract notice. It is seemingly made to be heard, not seen, reversing the old axiom addressed to children when getting voicy. Its mission is music, and it floods a thousand acres of the blue sky with it several times a day. Out of that palpitating speck of living joy there wells forth a sea of twittering ecstacy upon the morning and evening air. It does not ascend by gyrations, like the eagle or birds of prey. It mounts up like a human aspiration. It seems to spread out its wings and to be lifted straight upwards out of sight by the afflatus of its own happy heart. To pour out this in undulating rivulets of rhapsody is apparently the only motive of its ascension. This it is that has made it so loved of all generations. It is the singing angel of man's nearest heaven, whose vital breath is music. Its sweet warbling is only the metrical palpitation of its life of joy. It goes up over the roof-trees of the rural hamlet on the wings of its song, as if to train the rural soul to trial flights heavenward. Never did the Creator put a voice of such volume into so small a living thing. It is a marvel--almost a miracle. In a still hour you can hear it at nearly a mile's distance. When its form is lost in the hazy lace-work of the sun's rays above, it pours down upon you all the thrilling semitones of its song as distinctly as if it were warbling to you in your window. The only American bird that could star it with the English lark, and win any admiration at a popular concert by its side, is our favourite comic singer, the Bobolink. I have thought often, when listening to British birds at their morning rehearsals, what a sensation would ensue if Master Bob, in his odd-fashioned bib and tucker, should swagger into their midst, singing one of those Low- Dutch voluntaries which he loves to pour down into the ears of our mowers in haying time. Not only would such an apparition and overture throw the best-trained orchestra of Old World birds into amazement or confusion, but astonish all the human listeners at an English concert. With what a wonderment would one of these blooming, country milkmaids look at the droll harlequin, and listen to those familiar words of his, set to his own music:- Go to milk! go to milk! Oh, Miss Phillisey, Dear Miss Phillisey, What will Willie say If you don't go to milk! No cheese, no cheese, No butter nor cheese If you don't go to milk. It is a wonder that in these days of refined civilization, when Jenny Lind, Grisi, Patti, and other celebrated European singers, some of them from very warm climates, are transported to America to delight our Upper-Tendom, that there should be no persistent and successful effort to introduce the English lark into our out-door orchestra of singing-birds. No European voice would be more welcome to the American million. It would be a great gain to the nation, and be helpful to our religious devotions, as well as to our secular satisfactions. In several of our Sabbath hymns there is poetical reference to the lark and its song. For instance, that favorite psalm of gratitude for returning Spring opens with these lines:-- "The winter is over and gone, The thrush whistles sweet on the spray, The turtle breathes forth her soft moan, The _lark_ mounts on high and warbles away." Now, not one American man, woman, or child in a thousand ever heard or saw an English lark, and how is he, she, or it to sing the last line of the foregoing verse with the spirit and understanding due to an exercise of devotion? The American lark never mounts higher than the top of a meadow elm, on which it see-saws, and screams, or quacks, till it is tired; then draws a bee-line for another tree, or a fence-post, never even undulating on the voyage. It may be said, truly enough, that the hymn was written in England. Still, if sung in America from generation to generation, we ought to have the English lark with us, for our children to see and hear, lest they may be tempted to believe that other and more serious similes in our Sabbath hymns are founded on fancy instead of fact. Nor would it be straining the point, nor be dealing in poetical fancies, if we should predicate upon the introduction of the English lark into American society a supplementary influence much needed to unify and nationalise the heterogeneous elements of our population. Men, women, and children, speaking all the languages and representing all the countries and races of Europe, are streaming in upon us weekly in widening currents. The rapidity with which they become assimilated to the native population is remarkable. But there is one element from abroad that does not Americanise itself so easily--and that, curiously, is one the most American that comes from Europe--in other words, the _English_. They find with us everything as English as it can possibly be out of England--their language, their laws, their literature, their very bibles, psalm- books, psalm-tunes, the same faith and forms of worship, the same common histories, memories, affinities, affections, and general structure of social life and public institutions; yet they are generally the very last to be and feel at home in America. A Norwegian mountaineer, in his deerskin doublet, and with a dozen English words picked up on the voyage, will Americanise himself more in one year on an Illinois prairie than an intelligent, middle-class Englishman will do in ten, in the best society of Massachusetts. Now, I am not dallying with a facetious fantasy when I express the opinion, that the life and song of the English lark in America, superadded to the other institutions and influences indicated, would go a great way in fusing this hitherto insoluble element, and blending it harmoniously with the best vitalities of the nation. And this consummation would well repay a special and extraordinary effect. Perhaps this expedient would be the most successful of all that remain untried. A single incident will prove that it is more than a mere theory. Here it is, in substance:-- Some years ago, when the Australian gold fever was hot in the veins of thousands, and fleets of ships were conveying them to that far- off, uncultivated world, a poor old woman landed with the great multitude of rough and reckless men, who were fired to almost frenzy by dreams of ponderous nuggets and golden fortunes. For these they left behind them all the enjoyments, endearments, all the softening sanctities and surroundings of home and social life in England. For these they left mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. There they were, thinly tented in the rain, and the dew, and the mist, a busy, boisterous, womanless camp of diggers and grubbers, roughing-and- tumbling it in the scramble for gold mites, with no quiet Sabbath breaks, nor Sabbath songs, nor Sabbath bells to measure off and sweeten a season of rest. Well, the poor widow, who had her cabin within a few miles of "the diggings," brought with her but few comforts from the old homeland--a few simple articles of furniture, the bible and psalm-book of her youth, and an English lark to sing to her solitude the songs that had cheered her on the other side of the globe. And the little thing did it with all the fervor of its first notes in the English sky. In her cottage window it sang to her hour by hour at her labor, with a voice never heard before on that wild continent. The strange birds of the land came circling around in their gorgeous plumage to hear it. Even four-footed animals, of grim countenance, paused to hear it. Then, one by one, came other listeners. They came reverently, and their voices softened into silence as they listened. Hard-visaged men, bare- breasted and unshaven, came and stood gentle as girls; and tears came out upon many a tanned and sun-blistered cheek as the little bird warbled forth the silvery treble of its song about the green hedges, the meadow streams, the cottage homes, and all the sunny memories of the fatherland. And they came near unto the lone widow with pebbles of gold in their hard and horny hands, and asked her to sell them the bird, that it might sing to them while they were bending to the pick and the spade. She was poor, and the gold was heavy; yet she could not sell the warbling joy of her life. But she told them that they might come whenever they would to hear it sing. So, on Sabbath days, having no other preacher nor teacher, nor sanctuary privilege, they came down in large companies from their gold-pits, and listened to the devotional hymns of the lark, and became better and happier men for its music. Seriously, it may be urged that the refined tastes, arts, and genius of the present day do not develop themselves symmetrically or simultaneously in this matter. Here are connoisseurs and enthusiasts in vegetable nature hunting up and down all the earth's continents for rare trees, plants, shrubs, and flowers. They are bringing them to England and America in shiploads, to such extent and variety, that nearly all the dead languages and many of the living are ransacked to furnish names for them. Llamas, dromedaries, Cashmere goats, and other strange animals, are brought, thousands of miles by sea and land, to be acclimatised and domesticated to these northern countries. Artificial lakes are made for the cultivation of fish caught in Antipodean streams. That is all pleasant and hopeful and proper. The more of that sort of thing the better. But why not do the other thing, too? Vattemare made it the mission of his life to induce people of different countries to exchange books, or unneeded duplicates of literature. We need an Audubon or Wilson, not to make new collections of feathered skeletons, and new volumes on ornithology, but to effect an exchange of living birds between Europe and America; not for caging, not for Zoological gardens and museums, but for singing their free songs in our fields and forests. There is no doubt that the English lark would thrive and sing as well in America as in this country. And our bobolink would be as easily acclimatised in Europe. Who could estimate the pleasure which such an exchange in the bird-world would give to millions on both sides of the Atlantic? There are some English birds which we could not introduce into the feathered society of America, any more than we could import a score of British Dukes and Duchesses, with all their hereditary dignities and grand surroundings, into the very heart and centre of our democracy. For instance, the grave and aristocratic rooks, if transported to our country, would turn up their noses and caw with contempt at our institutions--even at our oldest buildings and most solemn and dignified oaks. It is very doubtful if they would be conciliated into any respect for the Capitol or The White House at Washington. They have an intuitive and most discriminating perception of antiquity, and their adhesion to it is invincible. Whether they came in with the Normans, or before, history does not say. One thing would seem evident. They are older than the Order of the Garter, and belonged to feudalism. They are the living spirits of feudalism, which have survived its human retainers by several hundred years, and now represent the defunct institution as pretentiously as in King Stephen's day. They are as fond of old Norman castles, cathedrals, and churches, as the very ivy itself, and cling to them with as much pertinacity. For several hundred generations of bird-life, they and their ancestors have colonised their sable communities in the baronial park-trees of England, and their descendants promise to abide for as many generations to come. In size, form, and color they differ but little from the American crow, but are swifter on the wing, with greater "gift of the gab," and less dignified in general deportment, though more given to aristocratic airs. Although they emigrated from France long before "La Democratic Sociale" was ever heard of in that country, they may be considered the founders of the _Socialistic_ theory and practice; and to this day they live and move in phalansteries, which succeed far better than those attempted by the American "Fourierites" some years ago. As in human communities, the collision of mind with mind contributes fortuitous scintillations of intelligence to their general enlightenment; so gregarious animals, birds and bees seem to acquire especial quick-wittedness from similar intercourse. The English rook, therefore, is more astute, subtle, and cunning than our American crow, and some of his feats of legerdemain are quite vulpine. The jackdaw is to the rook what the Esquimaux is to the Algonquin Indian; of the same form, color, and general habits, but smaller in size. They are as fond of ancient abbeys and churches as ever were the monks of old. Indeed, they have many monkish habits and predilections, and chatter over their Latin rituals in the storied towers of old Norman cathedrals, and in the belfries of ivy-webbed churches in as vivicacious confusion. There is no country in the world of the same size that has so many birds in it as England; and there are none so musical and merry. They all sing here congregationalwise, just as the people do in the churches and chapels of all religious denominations. As these buildings were fashioned in early times after the Gothic order of elm and oak-tree architecture, so the human worshippers therein imitated the birds, as well as the branches, of those trees, and learned to sing their Sabbath hymns together, young and old, rich and poor, in the same general uprising and blending of multitudinous voices. I believe everything sings that has wings in England. And well it might, for here it is safe from shot, stones, snares, and other destructives. "Young England" is not allowed to sport with firearms, after the fashion of our American boys. You hear no juvenile popping at the small birds of the meadow, thicket, or hedge-row, in Spring, Summer, or Autumn. After travelling and sojourning nearly ten years in the country, I have never seen a boy throw a stone at a sparrow, or climb a tree for a bird's-nest. The only birds that are not expected to die a natural death are the pheasant, partridge, grouse, and woodcock; and these are to be killed according to the strictest laws and customs, at a certain season of the year, and then only by titled or wealthy men who hold their vested interest in the sport among the most rigid and sacred rights of property. Thus law, custom, public sentiment, climate, soil, and production, all combine to give bird-life a development in England that it attains in no other country. In no other land is it so multitudinous and musical; in none is there such ample and varied provision for housing and homing it. Every field is a great bird's- nest. The thick, green hedge that surrounds it, and the hedge-trees arising at one or two rods' interval, afford nesting and refuge for myriads of these meadow singers. The groves and thickets are full of them and their music; so full, indeed, that sometimes every leaf seems to pulsate with a little piping voice in the general concert. Nor are they confined to the fields, groves, and hedges of the quiet country. If the census of the sparrows alone in London could be taken, they would count up to a larger figure than all the birds of a New England county would reach. Then there is another interesting feature of this companionship. A great deal of it lasts through the entire year. There are ten times as many birds in England as in America in the winter. Here the fields are green through the coldest months. No deep and drifting snows cover a frozen earth for ten or twelve weeks, as with us. There is plenty of shelter and seeds for birds that can stand an occasional frost or wintry storm, and a great number of them remain the whole year around the English homesteads. If such a difference were a full compensation, our North American birds make up in dress what they fall short of English birds in voice and musical talent. The robin redbreast and the goldfinch come out in brighter colors than any other beaux and belles of the season here; but the latter is only a slender-waisted brunette, and the former a plump, strutting, little coxcomb, in a mahogany-colored waistcoat. There is nothing here approaching in vivid colors the New England yellow-bird, hang-bird, red-bird, indigo-bird, or even the bluebird. In this, as well as other differences, Nature adjusts the system of compensation which is designed to equalise the conditions of different countries. CHAPTER IV. TALK WITH AN OLD MAN ON THE WAY--OLD HOUSES IN ENGLAND--THEIR AMERICAN RELATIONSHIPS--ENGLISH HEDGES AND HEDGE-ROW TREES--THEIR PROBABLE FATE--CHANGE OF RURAL SCENERY WITHOUT THEM. From Tiptree I had a pleasant walk to Coggeshall, a unique and antique town, marked by the quaint and picturesque architecture of the Elizabethan regime. On the way I met an old man, eighty-three years of age, busily at work with his wheel-barrow, shovel, and bush-broom, gathering up the droppings of manure on the road. I stopped and had a long talk with him, and learned much of those ingenious and minute industries by which thousands of poor men house, feed, and clothe themselves and their families in a country super-abounding with labor. He had nearly filled his barrow, after trundling it for four miles. He could sell his little load for 4d. to a neighboring farmer; but he intended to keep it for a small garden patch allotted to him by his son, with whom he lived. These few square yards of land constituted the microscopic point of his attachment to that great globe still holding in reserve unmeasured territories of productive soil, on which nor plough, nor spade, nor human foot, nor life has ever left a lasting mark. These made his little farm, as large to him and to his octogenarian sinews and ambitions as was the Tiptree Estate to Alderman Mechi. It filled his mind with as busy occupation and as healthy a stimulus. That rude barrow, with its clumsy wheel, thinly rimmed with an iron hoop, was to him what the steam engine, and two miles of iron tubing, and all its hose-power were to that eminent agriculturist, of whom he spoke in terms of high esteem as a neighbor, and even as a competitor. Proportionately they were on the same footing; the one with his 170 square acres, the other with his 170 square feet. It was pleasant and instructive to hear him speak with such sunny and cheery hope of his earthly lot and doings. His son was kind and good to him. He could read, and get many good books. He ate and slept well. He was poor but comfortable. He went to church on Sunday, and thought much of heaven on week days. His cabbages were a wonder; some with heads as large as a half-bushel measure. He did something very respectable in the potato and turnip line. He had grown beans and beets which would show well in any market. He always left a strip or corner for flowers. He loved to grow them; they did him good, and stirred up young-man feelings in him. He went on in this way with increased animation, following the lead of a few questions I put in occasionally to give direction to the narrative of his experience. How much I wished I could have photographed him as he stood leaning on his shovel, his wrinkled face and gray, thin hair, moistened with perspiration, while his coat lay inside out on one of the handles of his barrow! The July sun, that warmed him at his work, would have made an interesting picture of him, if some one could have held a camera to its eye at the moment. I added a few pennies to his stock-in-trade, and continued my walk, thinking much of that wonderful arrangement of Providence by which the infinite alternations and gradations of human life and condition are adjusted; fitting a separate being, experience, and attachment to every individual heart; training its tendrils to cling all its life long to one slightly individualised locality, which another could never call home; giving itself and all its earthly hopes to an occupation which another would esteem a prison discipline; sucking the honey of contentment out of a condition which would be wormwood to another person on the same social level. On reaching Coggeshall, I became again the guest of a Friend, who gave me the same old welcome and hospitality which I have so often received from the members of that society. After tea, he took me about the town, and showed me those buildings so interesting to an American--low, one-story houses, with thatched roofs, clay-colored, wavy walls, rudely-carved lintels, and iron-sash windows opening outward on hinges like doors, with squares of glass 3 inches by 4;-- houses which were built before the keel of the Mayflower was laid, which conveyed the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock. Here, now! see that one on the other side of the street, looking out upon a modern and strange generation through two ivy-browed eyes just lighted up to visible speculation by a single candle on the mantel-piece! A very animated and respectable baby was carried out of that door in its mother's arms, and baptised in the parish church, before William Shakespeare was weaned. There is a younger house near by, which was a century old when Washington was born. These unique, old dwellings of town, village, and hamlet in England, must ever possess an interest to the American traveller which the grand and majestic cathedrals, that fill him with so much admiration, cannot inspire. We link the life of our nation more directly to these humbler buildings. Our forefathers went out of these houses to the New World. The log huts they first erected served them and their families as homes for a few years; then were given to their horses and cattle for stabling; then were swept away, as too poor for either man or beast. The second generation of houses made greater pretensions to comfort, and had their day, then passed away. They were nearly all one-story, wooden buildings, with a small apartment on each side of a great chimney, and a little bed-roomage in the garret for children. Then followed the large, red, New England mansion, broadside to the road, two stories high in front, with nearly a rood of back roof declining to within five or six feet of the ground, and covering a great, dark kitchen, flanked on one side by a bed-room, and on the other by the buttery. A ponderous chimney arose out of the middle of the building, giving a fire-place of eight feet back to the kitchen, and one of half the dimensions to each of the other two large rooms--the _north_ and _south_. For, like the republic they founded, its forefathers and ours divided their dwellings by a kind of Mason and Dixon's Line, into two parts, giving them these sectional appellations which have represented such antagonisms and made us such trouble. Every one of these old- fashioned houses had its "North" and "South" rooms on the ground- floor, and duplicates, of the same size and name, above, divided by the massive, hollow tower, called a chimney. A double front door, with panels, scrolled with rude carving, opened right and left into the portly building, which, in the tout ensemble, looked like a New England gentleman of the olden time, in his cocked hat, and hair done up in a queue. These were the houses built "when George the Third was King." In these were born the men of the American Revolution. They are the oldest left in the land; and, like the Revolutionary pensioners, they are fast disappearing. In a few years, it will be said the last of them has been levelled to the ground, just as the paragraph will circulate through the newspapers that the last soldier of the War of Independence is dead. Thus, the young generation in America, now reciting in our schools the rudimental facts of the common history of the English-speaking race, will come to the meridian of manhood at a time when the three first generations of American houses shall have been swept away. But, travelling over a space of three centuries' breadth, they will see, in these old English dwellings, where the New World broke off from the Old--the houses in which the first settlers of New England were born; the churches and chapels in which they were baptised, and the school-houses in which they learned the alphabet of the great language that is to fill the earth with the speech of man's rights and God's glory. One hundred millions, speaking the tongue of Shakespeare and Milton on the American continent, and as many millions more on continents more recently settled by the same race, across the ocean, and across century-seas of time, shall moor their memories to these humble dwellings of England's hamlets, and feel how many taut and twisted liens attach them to the motherland of mighty nations. On reckoning up the log of my first day's walk, I found I had made full twelve miles by road and field; and was more than satisfied with such a trial of country air and exercise, and with the enjoyment of its scenery and occupations. The next day I made a longer distance still, from Coggeshall to Great Bardfield, or about eighteen miles; and felt at the end that I had established a reasonable claim to convalescence. The country on the way was marked by the quiet and happy features of diversified plenty. The green and gold of pastures, meadows, and wheat-fields; the picturesque interspersion of cottages, gardens, stately mansions, parks and lawns, all enlivened by a well-proportioned number of mottled cows feeding or lying along the brook-banks, and sheep grazing on the uplands,--all these elements of rural life and scenery were blended with that fortuitous felicity which makes the charm of Nature's country pictures. At Bardfield I was again homed for the night by a Friend; and after tea made an evening walk with him about the farm of a member of the same society, living in the outskirts of the town, who cultivates about 400 acres of excellent land, and is considered one of the most practical and successful agriculturists of Essex. His fields were larger and fewer than I had noticed on my walk in a farm of equal size. This feature indicates the modern improvements in English farming more prominently to the cursory observer than any other that attracts his eye. It is a rigidly utilitarian innovation on the old system, that does not at all promise to improve the picturesque aspect of the country. To "reconstruct the map" of a county, by wire-fencing it into squares of 100 acres each, after grubbing up all the hedges and hedge-trees, would doubtless add seven and a quarter per cent. to the agricultural production of the shire, and gratify many a Gradgrind of materialistic economy; but who would know England after such a transformation? One would be prone to reiterate Patrick's exclamation of surprise, when he first shouldered a gun and tested the freedom of the forest in America. Seeing a small bird in the top of a tree, he pointed the fowling- piece in that direction, turned away his face, and fired. A tree- toad fell to the ground from an agitated branch. The exulting Irishman ran and picked it up in triumph, and held it out at arm's length by one of its hind legs, exclaiming, "And how it alters a bird to shoot its feathers off, to be sure!" It would alter England nearly as much in aspect, if the unsparing despotism of pounds s. d. should root out the hedge-row trees, and substitute invisible lines of wire for the flowering hawthorn as a fencing for those fields which now look so much like framed portraits of Nature's best painting. The tendency of these utilitarian times may well occasion an unpleasant concern in the lovers of English rural scenery. What changes may come in the wake of the farmer's steam-engine, steam- plough, or under the smoke-shadows from his factory-like chimney, these recent "improvements" may suggest and induce. One can see in any direction he may travel these changes going on silently. Those little, unique fields, defined by lines and shapes unknown to geometry, are going out of the rural landscape. And when they are gone, they will be missed more than the amateurs of agricultural artistry imagine at the present moment. What some one has said of the peasantry, may be said, with almost equal deprecation, of these picturesque tit-bits of land, which,-- "Once destroyed, never can be supplied." And destroyed they will be, as sure as science. As large farms are swallowing up the little ones between them, so large fields are swallowing these interesting patches, the broad-bottomed hedging of which sometimes measures as many square yards as the space it encloses. There is much reason to fear that the hedge-trees will, in the end, meet with a worse fate still. Practical farmers are beginning to look upon them with an evil eye--an eye sharp and severe with pecuniary speculation; that looks at an oak or elm with no artist's reverence; that darts a hard, dry, timber-estimating glance at the trunk and branches; that looks at the circumference of its cold shadow on the earth beneath, not at the grand contour and glorious leafage of its boughs above. The farmer who was taking us over his large and highly-cultivated fields, was a man of wide intelligence, of excellent tastes, and the means wherewithal to give them free scope and play. His library would have satisfied the ambition of a student of history or belles-lettres. His gardens, lawn, shrubbery, and flowers would grace the mansion of an independent gentleman. He had an eye to the picturesque as well as practical. But I could not but notice, as significant of the tendency to which I have referred, that, on passing a large, outbranching oak standing in the boundary of two fields, he remarked that the detriment of its shadow could not have been less than ten shillings a year for half a century. As we proceeded from field to field, he recurred to the same subject by calling our attention to the circumference of the shadow cast on the best land of the farm by a thrifty, luxuriant ash, not more than a foot in diameter at the butt. Up to the broad rim of its shade, the wheat on each side of the hedge was thick, heavyheaded and tall, but within the cool and sunless circle the grain and grass were so pale and sickly that the bare earth would have been relief to a farmer's eye. The three great, distinctive graces of an English landscape are the hawthorn hedges, the hedge-row trees, and the everlasting and unapproachable greenness of the grass-fields they surround and embellish. In these beautiful features, England surpasses all other countries in the world. These make the peculiar charm of her rural scenery to a traveller from abroad. These are the salient lineaments of Motherland's face which the memories of myriads she has sent to people countries beyond the sea cling to with such fondness; memories that are transmitted from generation to generation; which no political revolutions nor severances affect; which are handed down in the unwritten legends of family life in the New World, as well as in the warp and woof of American literature and history. Will the utilitarian and unsparing science of these latter days, or of the days to come, shear away these beautiful tresses, and leave the brow and temples of the Old Country they have graced bare and brown under the bald and burning sun of material economy? It is not an idle question, nor too early to ask it. It is a question which will interest more millions of the English race on the American continent than these home-islands will ever contain. There are influences at work which tend to this unhappy issue. Some of these have been already indicated, and others more powerful still may be mentioned. Agriculture in England has to run the gauntlet of many pressing competitions, and carry a heavy burden of taxation as it runs. These will be noticed, hereafter, in their proper connection. Farming, therefore, is being reduced to a rigid science. Every acre of land must be put up to its last ounce of production. Every square foot of it must be utilised to the growth of something for man and beast. Manures for different soils are tested with as much chemical precision as ever was quinine for human constitutions. Dynameters are applied to prove the power of working machinery. Labor is scrutinised and economised, and measured closely up to the value of a farthing's-worth of capacity. A shilling's difference per acre in the cost of ploughing by horse-flesh or steam brings the latter into the field. The sound of the flail is dying out of the land, and soon will be heard no more. Even threshing machines worked by horses are being discarded, as too slow and old-fashioned. Locomotive steam-engines, on broad-rimmed wheels, may be met on the turnpike road, travelling on their own legs from farm to farm to thresh out wheat, barley, oats, and beans, for a few pence per bushel. They make nothing of ascending a hill without help, or of walking across a ploughed field to a rick-yard. Iron post and rail fencing, in lengths of twenty feet on wheels, drawn about by a donkey, bids fair to supersede the old wooden hurdles for sheep fed on turnips or clover. It is an iron age, and wire fencing is creeping into use, especially in the most scientifically cultivated districts of Scotland, where the elements and issues of the farmer's balance-sheet are looked to with the most eager concern. Iron wire grows faster than hawthorn or buckthorn. It doubtless costs less. It needs no yearly trimming, like shrubs with sap and leaves. It does not occupy a furrow's width as a boundary between two fields. It may be easily transposed to vary enclosures. It is not a nesting place for destructive birds or vermin. These and other arguments, of the same utilitarian genus, are making perceptible headway. Will they ever carry the day against the green hedges? I think they would, very soon, if the English farmer owned the land he cultivates. But such is rarely the case. Still, this fact may not prevent the final consummation of this policy of material interest. In a great many instances, the tenant might compromise with the landlord in such a way as to bring about this "modern improvement." And a comparatively few instances, showing a certain per centage of increased production per acre to the former, and a little additional rentage to the latter, would suffice to give the innovation an impulse that would sweep away half the hedges of the country, and deface that picture which so many generations have loved to such enthusiasm of admiration. Will the trees of the hedge-row be exposed to the same end? I think they will. Though trees are the most sacred things the earth begets in England, as has already been said, the farmer here looks at them with an evil eye, as horse-leeches that bleed to death long stretches of the land he pays 2 pounds per acre for annually to his landlord. The hedge, however wide-bottomed, is his fence; and fencing he must have. But these trees, arising at narrow intervals from the hedge, and spreading out their deadening shades upon his wheatfields on either side, are not useful nor ornamental to him. They may look prettily, and make a nice picture in the eyes of the sentimental tourist or traveller, but he grudges the ground they cover. He could well afford to pay the landlord an additional rentage per annum more than equal to the money value of the yearly growth of these trees. Besides, the landlord has, in all probability, a large park of trees around his mansion, and perhaps compact plantations on land unsuited to agriculture. Thus the high value of these hedge-row trees around the fields of his tenant, which he will realise on the spot, together with some additional pounds in rent annually to himself and heirs, would probably facilitate this levelling arrangement in face of all the restrictions that the law of entail might seem to throw in the way. If, therefore, the hedges of England disappear before the noiseless and furtive progress of utilitarian science, the trees that rise above them in such picturesque ranks will be almost certain to go with them. Then, indeed, a change will come over the face of the country, which will make it difficult for one to recognise it who daguerreotyped its most beautiful features upon his memory before they were obliterated by these latter-day "improvements." CHAPTER V. A FOOTPATH WALK AND ITS INCIDENTS--HARVEST ASPECTS--ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SKIES--HUMBLER OBJECTS OF CONTEMPLATION--THE DONKEY: ITS USES AND ABUSES. Immediately after breakfast the following morning, my kind host accompanied me for a mile on my walk, and put me on a footpath across the fields, by which I might save a considerable distance on the way to Saffron Walden, where I proposed to spend the Sabbath. After giving me minute directions as to the course I was to follow, he bade me good-bye, and I proceeded on at a brisk pace through fields of wheat and clover, greatly enjoying the scenery, the air, and exercise. Soon I came to a large field quite recently ploughed up _clean_, footpath and all. Seeing a gate at each of the opposite corners, I made my way across the furrows to the one at the left, as it seemed to be more in the direction indicated by my host. There the path was again broad and well-trodden, and I followed it through many fields of grain yellowing to the harvest, until it opened into the main road. This bore a little more to the left than I expected, but, as I had never travelled it before, I believed it was all right. Thaxted was half way to Saffron Walden, and there I had intended to stop an hour or two for dinner and rest, then push on to the end of the day's walk as speedily as possible. At about noon, I came suddenly down upon the town, which seemed remarkably similar to the one I had left, in size, situation, and general features. The parish church, also, bore a strong resemblance to the one I had noticed the previous evening. These old Essex towns are "as much alike as two peas," and you must make a note of it, as Captain Cuttle says, was the thought first suggested by the coincidence. I went into a cosy, clean-faced inn on the main street, and addressed myself with much satisfaction to a short season of rest and refreshment, exchanging hot and dusty boots for slippers, and going through other preliminaries to a comfortable time of it. Rang the bell for dinner, but before ordering it, asked the waiting-maid, with a complacent idea that I had improved my walking pace, and made more than half the way-- "How far is it to Saffron Walden?" "Twelve miles, sir." "Twelve miles, indeed! Why, it is only twelve miles from Great Bardfield!" "Well, this is Great Bardfield, sir." "Great Bardfield! What! How is this? What do you mean?" She meant what she said, and it was as true as two and two make four; and she was not to be beaten out of it by a stare of astonishment, however a discomfited man might expand his eyes with wonder, or cloud his face with chagrin. It was a patent fact. There, on the opposite side of the street, was the house in which I slept the night before; and here, just coming up to the door of the inn, was the good lady of my host. Her form and voice, and other identifications dispelled the mist of the mistake; and it came out as clear as day that I had followed the direction of my host, to bear to the left, far too liberally, and that I had been walking at my best speed in a "vicious circle" for full two hours and a half, and had landed just where I commenced, at least within the breadth of a narrow street of the same point. My good friends urged me to stop and dine with them, and then make a fair start for the end of my week's journey. But it was still twelve miles to Saffron Walden, and I was determined to put half of them behind me before dinner. So, taking a second leave of them in the course of three hours, I set out again on my walk, a wiser man in the practical understanding of the proverb, "The longest way around is the shortest way there." At 2 p.m. I reached Thaxted, and rectified my first notion of the town, formed when I mistook it for Bardfield. Having made six miles extra between the two points, I resumed my walk after a short delay at the latter. The weather was glorious. A cloudless sun shone upon a little sky- crystalled world of beauty, smaller in every dimension than you ever see in America. And this is a feature of English scenery that will strike the American traveller most impressively at the first glance, whether he looks at it by night or day. It is not that Nature, in adjusting the symmetries of her scenic structures, nicely apportions the skyscape to the landscape of a country merely for artistic effect. It is not because the island of Great Britain is so small in circumference that the sky is proportioned to it, as the crystal is to the dial of a watch; that it is so apparently low; that the stars it holds to its moist, blue bosom are so near at midnight, and the sun so large at noon. It comes, doubtless, from that constant humidity of the atmosphere which distinguishes the climate of England, and gives to both land and sky an aspect which is quite unknown to our great western continent. An American, after having habituated himself to this aspect, on returning to his own country, will be almost surprised at a feature of its scenery which he never noticed before. He will be struck at the loftiness of the sky; at the vividness of its blue and gold, the sharp, unsoftened light of the stars, and, as it were, the contracted pupil of the sun's eye at mid-day. The sunset glories of our western heavens play upon a ground of rigid blue. "The Northern Lights," which, at their winter evening illuminations, seem to have shredded into wavy filaments all the rainbows that have spanned the chambers of the East since the Flood, and to upspring, in mirthful fantasy, to hang their infinitely-tinted tresses to the zenith's golden diadem of stars-- even they sport upon the same lofty concave of dewless blue, which looks through and through the lacework and everchanging drapery of their mingled hues in the most witching mazes of their nightly waltz, giving to each a definiteness that our homely Saxon tongue might fit with a name. But here, on the lower grounds of instructive meditation, is a humbler individuality of the country to notice. Here is the most sadly abused and melancholy living creature in all England's animal realm that meets me in the midst of these reflections on things supernal and glorious. I will let the Northern Lights go, with their gorgeous pantomimes and midnight revelries, and have a moment's communing with this unfortunate quadruped. It is called in derision here a "_donkey_," but an ass, in a more generous time, when one of his race and size bore upon his back into the Holy City the world's Saviour and Re-Creator. Poor, libelled, hopeless beast! I pity you from my heart's heart. How I wish for Sterne's pen to do you some measure of justice or condolence under this heavy load of opprobrium that bends your back and makes your life so sunless and bitter! Come here, sir!--here is a biscuit for you, of the finest wheat; few of your race get such morsels; so, eat it and be thankful. What ears! No wonder our friend Patrick called you "the father of all rabbits" at first sight. No! don't turn away your head, as if I were going to strike you. Most animals are best described from a certain point of _view_,--in a fixed and quiescent attitude. But the donkey should be taken in the very act of this characteristic motion. You put out your hand in the gentlest manner to pat any one of them you meet, and he will instinctively turn away his head for fear of a beating. There is an interesting speculation now coming up among modern reveries in regard to the immortality of certain animals of great intelligence and domestic virtues. A large and tender kindness of disposition is the father of the thought, it may be; but the thought seems to gain ground and take shape, that so much of apparently human mind and heart as the dog possesses cannot be destined to annihilation at his death, but must live and enlarge in another sphere of existence. Having thus opened, if it may be said reverently, a back-door into immortality for sagacious and affectionate dogs and horses, they leave it ajar for the admission of animals of less intelligence--even for all the kinds that Noah took into the ark, perhaps, although the theory is still nebulous and undefined. Now, I would beg the kind-hearted adherents to this theory not to think I am seeking to play off a satirical pleasantry upon it, if I express a hope, which is earnest and true, that, if there be an immortality for any class of dumb animals, the donkey shall go into it first, and have a better place in it than their parlor dogs or nicely-groomed horses. Evidently they are building up a claim to this illustrious distinction of another existence for these pets on the sole ground of merit, not of works, even, but of mere intelligence, fidelity, and affection. Granted; but the donkey should go in first and take the highest place on that basis. When you come to the standard of moral measurement, it may be claimed as among the highest of human as well as animal virtues, "to learn to suffer and be strong." And this virtue the donkey has learned and practised incomparably beyond any other creature that ever walked on four legs since the Flood. Let these good people remember that their fanciful and romantic favoritisms are not to rule in the destinies awarded to the infinitesimally human spirits of domestic animals in another world, if another be in reserve for them. Let them remember that their softly-cushioned dogs, and horses so delicately clad, and fed, and fondled, have had a pretty good time of it in this life, and that in another, the poor, despised, abused donkey, going about begging, with such a long and melancholy face, for withered cabbage leaves and woody-grained turnips cast out and trodden under feet of happier animals,--that this meek little creature, kicked, cuffed, and club-beaten all the way from hopeless youth to an ignominious grave, will carry into another world merits and mementoes of his earthly lot that will obtain, if not entitle him to, some compensation in the award of a future condition. It is treading on delicate ground even to set one foot within the pale of their unscriptural theory; but as many of them hold the Christian faith in pureness of living and doctrine, let me remind them of that parable which shows so impressively how the disparities in human condition here are reversed in the destinies of the great hereafter. But, to return to the earthly lot and position of this poor, libelled animal. Among all the four-footed creatures domesticated to the service of man, this has always been the veriest scapegoat and victim of the cruellest and crabbedest of human dispositions. Truly, it has ever been born unto sorrow, bearing all its life long a weight of abuse and contumely which would break the heart of a less sensitive animal in a single week. From the beginning it has been the poor man's beast of burden; and "pity 'tis 'tis true," poor men, in all the generations of human poverty, have been far too prone to harshness of temper and treatment towards the beasts that serve them and share their lot of humble life. The donkey is made a kind of Ishmaelite in the great family of domestic animals. He is made, not born so. He is beaten about the head unmercifully with a heavy stick, and then jeered at for being stupid and obstinate! just as if any other creature, of four or two legs, would not be stupid after such fierce congestion of the brain. His long ears subject him to a more cruel prejudice than ever color engendered in the circle of humanity but just above him. True, he is rather unsymmetrical in form. His head is disproportionately long and large, quite sufficient in these dimensions to fit a camel. He is generally a hollow-backed, pot-bellied creature, about the size of a yearling calf, with ungainly, sloping haunches, and long, coarse hair. But nearly all these deformities come out of the shameful treatment he gets. You occasionally meet one that might hold up its head in any animal society; with straight back, symmetrical body and limbs, and hair as soft and sleek as the fur of a Maltese cat; with contented face, and hopeful and happy eyes, showing that he has a kind master. The donkey is really a useful and valuable animal, which might be introduced into America with great advantage to our farmers. I know of no animal of its size so tough and strong. It is astonishing, as well as shocking, to see what loads he is made to draw here. The vehicle to which he is usually harnessed is a heavy, solid affair, frequently as large as our common horse-carts. He is put to all kinds of work, and is almost exclusively the poor man's beast of burden and travel. In cities and large towns, his cart is loaded with the infinitely-varied wares of street trade; with cabbages, fish, fruit, or with some of the thousand-and-one nicknacks that find a market among the masses of the common people. At watering- places, or on the "commons" or suburban playgrounds of large towns, he is brought out in a handsome saddle, or a well got-up little carriage, and let by the hour or by the ride to invalid adults, or to children bubbling over with life. Here, although the everlasting club, to which he is born, is wielded by his driver, he often looks comfortable and sleek, and sometimes wears a red ribbon at each ear. It would not pay to bring on to the ground the scrawny, bony creature that generally tugs in the costermonger's cart. It is in the coal region or trade that you meet with him and his driver in their worst apostacy from all that is seemly in man or beast. To watch the poor creature, begrimed with coal-dust, wriggling up a long, steep hill, with a load four times his own weight, griping with his little sheep-footed hoofs into the black, slimy pavement of the road, while his tall, sooty-faced and harsh-voiced master, perhaps sitting on the top or on a shaft, is punching and beating him; to see this is enough to stir up the old adam in the meekest Christian to emotions of pugilistic indignation. It has often cost me a doubtful and protracted effort to keep it down. Indeed, I have often yielded to it so far as to wish that once more the poor creature might be honored of God with His gift to Balaam's ass, and be able to speak, bolt outright, an indignant remonstrance, in human speech, against such treatment. It would serve them right!--these lineal descendants of Balaam, who have inherited his club and wield it more cruelly. A word or two more about this animal, and I will pass on to others of more dignity of position. He is the cheapest as well as smallest beast of burden to be found in Christendom. You may buy one here for twenty or thirty English shillings. I am confident that they would be extremely serviceable in America, if once introduced. It costs but very little to keep them, and they will do all kinds of work up to the draught of 600 or 800 lbs. You frequently see here a span of them trotting off in a cart, with brisk and even step. Sometimes they are put on as leaders to a team of horses. I once saw on my walk a heavy Lincolnshire horse in the shafts, a pony next, and a donkey at the head, making a team graduated from 18 hands to 6 in height; and all pulling evenly, and apparently keeping step with each other, notwithstanding the disparity in the length of their legs. It would be unjust to that goodwill to man and beast which is being organised and stimulated in England through an infinite number of societies, if I should omit to state that, at last, a little rill of this benevolence has reached the donkey. That most valuable and widely-circulated penny magazine, "The British Workman," and its little companion for British workmen's children, "The Band of Hope Review," have advocated the rights and better treatment of this humble domestic for several years. His cause has also been pleaded in a packet of little papers called "Leaflets of the Law of Kindness for the Children." And now, at last, a wealthy and benevolent champion, on whom the mantle of Elizabeth Fry, his aunt, has fallen, has taken the lead in the work of raising the useful creature to the level of the other animals of the pasture, stable, and barn-yard. Up to the present time, every creature that walks on four or two legs, either haired, woolled, or feathered, with the single exception of the donkey has had the door of the Agricultural Exhibition thrown wide open to it, to enter the lists for prizes or "honorable mention," and for general admiration. A pig, whose legs and eyes have all been absorbed out of sight by an immense rotundity of fat, is often decked with a ribbon, of the Order of the Garter genus, as a reward of merit, or of grace of form and proportions! Turkeys, geese, ducks, and hens of different breeds, strut or waddle off with similar distinctions. As for blood-horses, bulls, cows, and sheep, one not versed in such matters might be tempted to think that men, especially the poorer sort, were made for beasts, and not beasts for men. And yet, mirabile dictu! at these great social gatherings of man-and-animal kind, there has not been even "a negro- pew" for the donkey. A genuine, raw, Guinea negro might have as well entered the Prince of Wales' Ball in New York bare-footed, and offered to play a voluntary on his banjo for the dancers, as this despised quadruped have hoped to obtain the entree to these grand and fashionable assemblies of the shorter-eared elite of society. But this prejudice against color and long ears is now going the way of other barbarisms. The gentleman to whom I have referred, a Member of Parliament, whose means are as large as his benevolence, has taken the first and decisive step towards raising the donkey to his true place in society. He has offered a liberal prize for the best conditioned one exhibited at the next Agricultural Fair. Since this offer was made, a very decided improvement has been noticed among the donkeys of the London costermongers, as if the competition for the first prize was to be a very large one. It will be a kind of St. Crispin's Day to the whole of the long- eared race--a day of emancipation from forty centuries of obloquy and oppression. Doubtless they will be admitted hereafter to the Royal Agricultural Society's exhibitions, to compete for honors with animals that have hitherto spurned such association with contempt. CHAPTER VI. HOSPITALITIES OF "FRIENDS"--HARVEST ASPECTS--ENGLISH COUNTRY INNS; THEIR APPEARANCE, NAMES, AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS--THE LANDLADY, WAITER, CHAMBERMAID, AND BOOTS--EXTRA FEES AND EXTRA COMFORTS. I reached Saffron Walden at 4 p.m., notwithstanding my involuntary walk of six extra miles in the morning. Here I remained over the Sabbath, again enjoying the hospitality of a Friend. And perhaps I may say it here and now with as much propriety as at any other time and place, that few persons, outside the pale of that society, have more frequently or fully enjoyed that hospitality than myself. This pleasant experience has covered the space of more than sixteen years. During this period, with the exception of short intervals, I have been occupied with movements which the Friends in England have always regarded with especial sympathy. This connection has brought me into acquaintance with members of the society in almost every town in Great Britain in which they reside; and in more than a hundred of their homes I have been received as a guest with a kindness which will make to my life's end one of its sunniest memories. On the following Monday, I resumed my walk northward, after a carriage ride which a Friend kindly gave me for a few miles on the way. Passed through a pre-eminently grain-producing district. Apparently full three-fourths of the land were covered with wheat, barley, oats, and beans. The fields of each were larger than I had noticed before; some containing 100 acres. The coming harvest is putting forth the full glory of its golden promise. The weather is all a farmer could wish, beautiful, warm, and bright. Nature, in every feature of its various scapes, seems to smile with the joy of that human happiness which her ministries inspire. Here, in these still expanses, waving with luxuriant crops, apparently so thinly peopled, one, forgetting the immense populations crowded into city spaces, is almost tempted to ask, where are all the mouths to eat this wide sea of food for man and beast, softening so gently into a yellow sheen under the very rim of the distant horizon? But, in the great heart of London, beating with the wants of millions, he will be likely to reverse the question, and ask, where can one buy bread wherewith to feed this great multitude? At Sawston, a rustic little village on the southern border of Cambridgeshire, I entered upon the enjoyment of English country-inn life with that relish which no one born in a foreign land can so fully feel as an American. As one looks upon the living face of some distinguished celebrity for the first time, after having had his portrait hung up in the parlor for twenty years, so an American looks, for the first time, at that great and picturesque speciality among human institutions, the village inn of old England. The like of it he never saw in his own country and never will. In fact, he would not like to see it there, plucked up out of its ancient histories and associations. In the ever-green foliage of these it stands inwoven, as with its own network of ivy. Other countries, even older than England, have had their taverns from time immemorial; but they are all kept in the background of human life. They do not come out in contemporaneous history with any definiteness; not even accidentally. If a king is murdered in one of them, or if it is the theatre of the most thrilling romance of love, you do not know whether it is a building of stone, brick, or wood; whether it is one, two, or three stories in height. No outlines nor aspects are given you to help to fill up a rational picture of it. Neither the landlord nor the landlady is drawn as a representative man or woman. Either might be mistaken for a guest in their own house, if seen in hat or bonnet by a stranger. But not so of the English country inn. It comes out into the foreground of a thousand interesting histories and pictures of common life. In them it has an individuality as marked as the parish church, couchante in its wide-rimmed nest of grave stones; as marked in unique architecture, location, and surroundings. In none of these features will you find two alike, if you travel from one end of the country to the other; especially among those a century old. You might as well mistake one of the living animals for the other, as to mistake "The Blue Boar" for "The Red Lion." They differ as much from each other in general make and aspect as do their nominal prototypes. To give every one of their thousands "a local habitation and a name" of striking distinctness, has required an ingenuity which has produced many interesting feats of house- building and nomenclature. Both these departments of genius figure largely in the poetry and classics of the institution, with which the reading million of America have been familiar from youth up. And when any of them come to travel in England, it will greatly enhance their enjoyment to find that the pictures they have admired and the descriptions they have read of the famous country inn have been true to the very life and letter. All its salient features they recognise at once, and are ready to exclaim, "How natural!" meaning by that, how true is the original to the picture which they have seen so frequently. If they go far enough, they will find the very original of every one of the hundred pictures they have seen, painted by pen or pencil. They will find that all of them have been true copies from nature. Here is the portly-looking, well-to-do, two-story tavern, standing out with its comfortable, cream-colored face broadside to the street. It is represented in the old engraving with a coach-and-four drawn up before the door, surrounded by a crowd of spectators and passengers, some descending and ascending on ladders over the forward wheels; some looking with admiration at the scarlet coats of the pursy and consequential driver and guard; some exchanging greetings, others farewell salutations; ostlers in long waistcoats, plush or fustian shorts, and yellow leggings, standing bareheaded with watering-pails at the "'osses' 'eads;" trunks great and small going up and down; village boys in high excitement; village grandfathers looking very animated; the landlord, burly, bland, and happy, with a face as rotund and genial as the full moon shining upon the scene; and those round, rosy, sunny, laughing faces peering out of the windows with delightful wonderment and exhilaration, winked at by the driver, and saluted with a graceful motion of his whip-handle in recognition of the barmaid, chambermaid, and all the other maids of the house. The coach, with all its picturesque appointments, its four-in-hand, the stirring heraldry of its horn coming down the road, its rattling wheels, the life and stir aroused and moved in its wake,--all this has gone from the presence of a higher civilisation. It will never re-appear in future pictures of actual life in England. It is all gone where the hedges and hedge-row trees will probably go in their turn. But the same village inn remains, and can be as easily recognised as a widow in weeds, who still wears a hopeful face, and makes the best of her bereavement. But that humbler type of hostelry so often represented in sketches of English rural life and scenery--the little, cozy, one-story, wayside, or hamlet inn, with its thatched roof, checker-work window, low door, and with a loaded hay-cart standing in front of it, while the driver, in his round, wool hat, and in his smock-frock, is drinking at a pewter mug of beer, with one hand on his horse's neck- -this the hand of modern improvements has not yet reached. This may be found still in a thousand villages and hamlets, surrounded with all its rural associations; the green, the geese, and gray donkeys feeding side by side; low-jointed cottages, with long, sloping roofs greened over with moss or grass, and other objects usually shadowed dimly in the background of the picture. It is these quiet hamlets and houses in the still depths of the country, away from the noise and bluster of railway life and motion, that best represent and perpetuate the primeval characteristics of a nation. These the American traveller will find invested with all the old charm with which his fancy clothed them. It will well repay him for a month's walk to see and enjoy them thoroughly. In these days of sun-literature, whose letters are human faces, and whose new volumes are numbered by the million yearly, without a duplicate to one of them, I am confident that a volume of these English village inns of the olden school, in photographs, would command a large sale and admiration in America, merely as specimens of unique and interesting architecture. A thousand might be taken, every one as unlike the other in distinctive form and feature, as every one of the same number of men would be to the other. The diversification of names, being more difficult, is still more remarkable. Although the spread eagle figures largely as the patron genius of American hotels, still nine-tenths of them bear the names of states, counties, towns, or national or local celebrities. But here natural history comes out strong and wide. The heraldry of sovereigns, aristocracy, gentry, commercial and industrial interests, puts up its various _arms_ upon hundreds of inns in town and country. All occupations and recreations are well represented. Thus no country in the world approaches England in the wide scope and play of hotel nomenclature. Some of the combinations are exceedingly unique and most interesting in their incongruity. Dickens has not exaggerated this characteristic; not even done it justice in his hotel scenes. Things are put together on a hundred tavern signs that were never joined before in the natural or moral world, and put together frequently in most grotesque association. For instance, there is a large, first-class inn right in the very heart of London, which has for a sign, not painted on a board, but let into the wall of the upper story, in solid statuary, a huge human mouth opened to its utmost capacity, and a bull, round and plump, standing stoutly on its four legs between the two distended jaws. Now, the leading idea of this device is involved in a tempting obscurity, which leads one, at first sight, into different lines of conjecture. What did the designer of this group of statuary really intend to represent? Was it to let the outside world know that, in that inn, the "Roast Beef of Old England" was always to be found par excellence? If so, would a man's mouth swallowing a bull whole, and apparently alive, with hide and horns, tend to stimulate the appetite of a passing traveller, and to draw him into the establishment? But leaving these ambiguous symbols to be interpreted by the passing public according to different perceptions of their meaning, how many in a thousand would guess aright the name given to the tavern by these tokens? Would not ninety-nine in a hundred say, "The Mouth and Bull," to be sure, not only on the principle that the major includes the minor, but also because the human element is entitled to precedence in the picture? But the ninety-nine would be completely mistaken, if they adopted this natural conclusion. They would find they had counted without their host, who knows better than they the relative position and value of things. What has the law of logic to do with fat beef? The name of his famous hotel is "THE BULL AND MOUTH;" and few in London have attained to its celebrity as a historical building. One is apt to wonder if this precedence given to the beast is really incidental, or adopted to give euphony to the name of an inn, or whether there is a latent and spontaneous leaning to such a method of association, from some cause or other connected with perceptions of personal comfort afforded at such establishments. Accidental or intentional, this form of association is very common. There is no tavern in London better known than The Elephant and Castle, a designation that would sound equally well if the two substantives were transposed. Even the loftiest symbols of sovereignty often occupy the secondary place in these compound titles. There are, doubtless, a hundred inns in Great Britain bearing the name of The Rose and Crown, but not one, to my knowledge, called "The Crown and Rose." The same order obtains in sporting sections and terminology. It is always "The _Hare_ and Hounds;" never "_Hounds_ and Hare." This characteristic in itself is very interesting, and no American, with an eye to the unique, would like to see it changed. But if the more syntax of hotel names in England is so pleasant for him to study, how much more admirable is their variety! He has read at home of many of them in lively romance and grave history but he finds here that not half has been told him. He is familiar with the Lions, Red, White, and Black; the Bulls and Boars of the same colors; the Black and White Swans and Harts; the Crown and Anchor, the Royal George, Queen's Head, and a few others of similar designation. These names have figured in volumes of English literature which he has perused. But let him travel on the turnpike road through country towns and villages, and he will meet with names he never thought of before, mounted over the doors of some of the most comfortable and delightful houses of entertainment for man and beast that can be found in the world. Here are a few that I have noticed: "The Three Jolly Butchers," "The Old Mash Tub," "The Old Mermaid," "The Old Malt Shovel," "The Chequers," "The Dog-in- Doublet," "Bishop Boniface," "The Spotted Cow," "The Green Dragon," "The Three Horseshoes," "The Bird-in-Hand," "The Spare Rib," "The Old Cock," "Pop goes the Weasel." There are wide spaces between these names which may be filled up from actual life with numbers of equal uniqueness. But it is not in architecture nor in name that the country inn presents its most attractive characteristic. These features merely specialise its outward corporeity. The living, brightening, all-pervading soul of the establishment is the LANDLADY. Let her name be written in capitals evermore. There is nothing so naturally, speakingly, and gloriously English in the wide world as she. It is doubtful if the nation is aware of this, but it is the fact. Her English individuality stands out embonpoint, rosy, genial, self-complacent, calm, serene, happyfying, and happy. She is the man and master of the house. She permeates it with her rayful presence, and fills it with a pleasant morning in foggy and blue-spirited days. She it is who greets the coming and speeds the parting guest with a grace which suns, with equal light and warmth, both remembrance and anticipation. It is not put on like a Sunday dress; it is not a thin gloss of French politeness that a feather, blown the wrong way, will brush off. It is not a color; it is a quality. You see it breathe and move in her like a nature, not as an art. Let no American traveller fancy he has seen England if he has not seen the Landlady of the village inn. If he has to miss one, he had better give up his visit to the Crystal Palace, Stratford-upon-Avon, Abbottsford, or even the House of Lords, or Windsor itself. Neither is so perfectly and exclusively English as the mistress of "The Brindled Cow," in one of the rural counties of the kingdom. It would be necessary to coin a new word if one were sought to contain and convey the distinctive characteristic of inn-life in England. Perhaps _homefulness_ would do this best, as it would more fully than any other term describe the coziness, quiet, and comfort to be enjoyed at these places of entertainment. Not one in a hundred of them ever heard the sound of the hotel-going bell, as we hear it in America. You are not thundered up or down by a vociferous gong. Then there is no marching nor counter-marching of a long line of waiters in white jackets around the dinner table, laying down plate, knife, fork, and spoon with uniform step and motion, as if going through a dress-parade or a military drill. There is no bustle, no noise, no eager nor anxious look of served or servants. Every one is calm, collected, and comfortable. "The cares that infest the day" do not ride into the presence of that roast beef and plum pudding on the wrinkles of any man's forehead, however business affairs may go with him outside. No one is in a hurry to sit down or to arise from the table. The whole economy of the establishment is to make you as much at home as possible; to individualise you, as far as it can be done, in every department of personal comfort. You follow your own time and inclination, and eat and drink when and how you please, with others or alone. The congregate system is the exception, not the rule. It seldom ever obtains at breakfast or tea. In many cases you have a little round table all to yourself at these meals. But if there is a common table for half a dozen persons, the tea and toast and other eatables are never aggregated into a common stock. Each person if he is a single guest, has his own allotment, even to a separate tea-pot. The table d'hote, if there be one at all, is made up like a select dinner party, rather early in the morning. If the guests of the house are not directly invited, they are asked, in a tone of hospitality, if they will join in the social meal, the only one got up by the establishment at which the table is not mapped out in separate holdings, or little independencies of dishes, each bounded by the wants and capacities of the individual occupant. The presiding and working faculty of a common English inn distinguishes it by another salient characteristic from the hotels of other countries. The landlady is, of course, the president of the establishment, whether or not she calls any man lord in the retired and family department of the house. But the actual gerantes, or working corps, with which you have to do immediately, are three independent and distinct personages, called the waiter, chambermaid, and _boots_. If it were respectful to gender, these might be called the great triumvirate of the English inn. No traveller after a night's lodging and breakfast, will mistake or confound the prerogatives or perquisites of these officials. If he is an American, and it be his first experience of the regime, he will be surprised and puzzled at the imperium in imperio which his bill, presented to him on a tea-tray, seems to represent. In no other business transaction of his life did he ever see the like. It goes far beyond anything in the line of limited partnership he ever saw. There is only one partial parallel that approaches it; and this comes to his mind as he reads the several items on his bill. When made out and interpreted, it comes to this: the proprietor, the waiter, chambermaid, and boots are independent parties, who get up a night's lodging and two or three meals for you on the same footing as four independent underwriters would take proportionate risks at Lloyd's in some ship at sea. Or, what would put it in simpler form to an uninitiated guest, he is apparently first charged for the raw provisions he consumes, and for the rent of his bed- room. This is the proprietor's share. Then, there is a separate charge for each of the remaining items of the entertainment,--for cooking and serving up each meal, for making up your bed, and for blacking your boots; just as distinctly as if you had gone out into the town the previous evening and hired three separate individuals to perform these services for you; and as if you had no right nor reason to expect from the landlord a dinner all cooked and served, but that you only bought it in the larder. Now, this is a peculiarity of the English hotel system that is apt to embarrass travellers from other countries, especially from America, where no such custom could be introduced. I do not know how old the custom is in Great Britain. Doubtless it originated in the almost universal disposition and habit of Englishmen of dropping gratuities or charity-gifts here and there with liberal hand, either to obtain or reward extra service in matters of personal comfort, or to alleviate some case of actual or stimulated suffering that meets them. It was natural and inevitable that gratuities thus given to hotel servants frequently to stimulate and reward special attention should soon become a rule, acting upon guests like a law of honor. When so many gave, and when the servants of every hotel expected a gift, a man must feel shabby to go away without dropping a few pennies into the hands of eager expectants who almost claimed the gratuity as a right. The worst stage of the system was when the expected gift was measured by your supposed position and ability, or when the waiter or the chambermaid, flattering you with what Falstaff would call an instinctive perception of your dignity, would say with an asking and hopeful smile, "What you please, sir." Now, that was not the question with you at all. You wanted to know how much each expected, or how much you must give to acquit yourself of the charge of being "a screw," when they put their heads and gains together in conference and comparison after you were gone. So, on the whole, it was a great relief when all these awkward uncertainties of expectation were cleared up and rectified in the system now usually adopted. Whether you be rich or poor, or whatever position or pretension be attributed to you, the fees of the universal triumvirate are put down specifically in black and white among the other charges on your bill. As I hope these notes may convey some useful information to Americans who may be about to visit England for the first time, it may be of some use to them to state what is the usual rule in this matter at the middle-class hotels in this country; for with those of the first rank I never have made nor ever expect to make any personal acquaintance. A moderate bill for a day's entertainment will read thus:-- s.d. Tea (bread and butter or toast) 1 0 Bed 1 6 Breakfast (rasher of bacon, eggs, or cold meats) 1 6 Dinner 2 6 Waiter 0 9 Chambermaid 0 6 Boots 0 3 ---- Total 8 0 These are about the average charges at the middle-class hotels in Great Britain. Generally the servants' fees amount to 25 per cent. of the whole bill. These, too, are graduated to parts of days. The waiter expects 3d. for every meal he serves; the chambermaid 6d. for every bed she makes, and the boots 3d. for doing every pair of boots, brogans, or shoes. You will pay these charges with all the better grace and good-will to these servants when you come to learn that these fees frequently, if not always, constitute all the salary they receive for hotel service. Even in a great number of eating- shops the same rule obtains. The penny you give the waiter, male or female, is all he or she gets for serving you. Besides this consideration, you get back much additional personal comfort from these extras. The waiter serves you with extra satisfaction and assiduity under their stimulus. He acts the host very blandly. He answers a hundred questions, extraneous to the meal, with good- natured readiness. He is a good judge of the weather and its signs. He is well "posted-up" in the local histories and sceneries of the place. He can give political information on both sides, incidents and anecdotes to match, whether you are Tory, Whig, or Radical. If you have a bias in that direction, he has or has heard some thoughts on Bishop Colenso and the Tractarians. In short, he caters to the humour and disposition of every guest with a happy facility of adaptation; and the shilling you give him at the end of a day's entertainment has been pretty well earned, if you have availed yourself of all these extra attentions which he is prepared and expecting to give for it. The same may be said of the chambermaid. She is not the taciturn invisible that steals in and out of your bed-room, and does it up when you are at breakfast or at your out-door business--whom you never see, except by sheer accident, as in the American hotel. She is an important and prominent personage in the English inn. She is a kind of mistress of the robes, and exercises her prerogative with much conscious dignity and self-satisfaction; and, what is better, with great satisfaction to yourself. No other subordinate official or servant trenches or poaches upon her preserves. She it is who precedes you up stairs with a candle, on a broad-bottomed brass candlestick, polished to its highest lustre. She conducts you to your room as if you were her personal guest, invited and expected a month ago. She opens the door with amiable complacency, as if welcoming you to a hospitality which she had prepared for you with especial care, before she knew you had arrived in town. She invites you, by a movement of her eyes, to glance at the room and see how comfortable it is; how round and soft is the bed, how white and well-aired are the sheets and pillows, how nice the curtains, how clean and tidy the carpet, in short, how everything is fitted to incline you to "rest and be thankful." And then the cheery "_good night_!" she bids you is said with a tone that is worth the sixpence she expects in the morning; and you pay it, too, with a much better grace than could be expected from an American recently arrived in the country. And the "boots" is a character, too, unmixedly and interestingly English, in name, person, appearance, and position. In the first of these qualities he is unique, being called after the subject of his occupation. He is an important personage, and generally has his own bell in the dining-room, surmounted by his name, to be called for any service coming within his department. And this is quite a wide one, including a great variety of errandry and porterage, as well as polishing boots and shoes. He is very helpful in a great many different ways, and often very intelligent, and knows all about the streets, the railway trains, the omnibuses, cabs, etc., and will assist you in such matters with good grace and activity. He may have got in the way of putting the H before the eggs instead of the ham; but he is just as good for all that, and more interesting besides. So you do not grudge the 3d. you give him daily for his strictly professional services, or the extra 6d. he expects for carrying your carpet-bag or portmanteau to the railway-station. Thus, although this feeing of servants may seem at first strange to an American traveller in England, and may occasion him some perplexity and even annoyance, he will soon become accustomed to it; and in making up the balance-sheet of the additional cost on one side and the additional comfort on the other which the system produces, he will come even to the mathematical conclusion, "if to equals you add equals, the sums will be equals." CHAPTER VII. LIGHT OF HUMAN LIVES--PHOTOGRAPHS AND BIOGRAPHS--THE LATE JONAS WEBB, HIS LIFE, LABORS, AND MEMORY. The next morning I resumed my walk and visited a locality bearing a name and association of world-wide celebrity and interest. It is the name of a small rural hamlet, hardly large enough to be called a village, and marked by no trait of nature or art to give it distinction. There are conditions and characteristics both in the natural and moral world which can hardly be described fully in Saxon, Latin, or Greek terminology, even with the largest license of construction. There are attributes or qualities attaching to certain locations, of the simplest natural features, which cannot even be hinted at or suggested by the terms, _geography, topography, or biography_. Put the three together and condense or collocate their several meanings in one compound qualification which you can write and another spell, and you do not compass the signification you want to convey. The soul of man has its immortality, and the feeblest-minded peasant believes he shall wear it through the ages of the great hereafter. The literature of human thoughts claims a life that shall endure as long as the future existence of humanity. The memory of many human actions and lives puts in a plea and promise of a duration that shall distance the sun's, and overlap upon the bright centuries of eternity. The human body, even, is promised its resurrection by the divinest authority and illustration, and waits hopefully, under all its pains and weaknesses, for the glory to be revealed in it when the earth on which it dwells shall have become "a forgotten circumstance." Human loves, remembrances, faiths, and fellowships lift up all their meek hands to the Father of Spirits, praying to be lifted up into His great immortality, and to be permitted to take with them unbroken the associations that sweetened this earthly life. Many humble souls that have passed through the furnace of affliction, poverty, and trial seven times heated, and heated daily here, have believed that He who went up through the same suffering to His great White Throne, would let them sing beside the crystal waters the same good old psalm tunes and songs of Sion which they sang under the willows of this lower world of tears and tribulation. How all the sparks of the undying life in man fly upward to the zenith of this immortality! You may call the steep flights of this faith pleasant and poetical diversions of a fervid imagination, but they are winged with the pinions that angels lift when they soar; pinions less ethereal than theirs, but formed and plumed to beat upward on the Milky Way to their Source, instead of swimming in the thinly-starred cerulean, in which spirits, never touched with the down or dust of human attributes, descend and ascend on their missions to the earth. Who can have the heart to handle harshly these beautiful faiths? To say, this hope may go up, but this must go down to the darkness of annihilation! Was it irreverent in the pious singing-master of a New England village, when he said, that often, while returning home late on bright winter nights, he had dropped the reins upon his horse's neck, and sung Old Hundred from the stars, set as notes to that holy tune, when they first sang together in the morning of the creation? What spiritual good or Christian end would be gained, to break up the charm and cheer of this his belief? Or to dispel that other confidence, which so helped him to bear earth's trials, that one day he should join all the spirits of the just made perfect, and all the high angels in heaven, and, on the plane of that golden gamut, they should sing together their hymns of joy and praise, in that same, good, old tune, from those same star-notes, which a thousand centuries should not deflect nor transpose from their first order within those everlasting staves and bars! If the spirit's faith be allowed such wide confidences as these; if it may carry up into the invisible and infinite so many precious relics from the wreck of time, so many human circumstances and associations, why may it not take with it, to hang up in its heaven, photographs of those earthly localities rendered immortal here by the lives of good and great men? Such a life is a sun, and it casts a disk of light upon the very earth on which it shines; not that flashy circle which the lens of the microscope casts upon the opposite wall, to show how scarcely visible mites may be magnified; but a soft and steady illumination that does not dim under the beating storms and bleaching dews of centuries, but grows brighter and brighter, as if the seed-rays that made it first multiplied themselves from year to year. The earth becomes more and more thickly dotted with these permanent disks of light, and each is visited by pilgrims, who go and stand with reverence and admiration within the cheering circle. Shakespeare's thought-life threw out a brilliant illumination, of wide circumference, at Stratford-upon- Avon, and no locality in England bears a biograph more venerated than the birth-place of the great poet. His thought-life was a sun that will never set as long as this above us shines. It is rising every year to new generations that never saw its rays before. When he laid down his pen, at the end of his last drama, the whole English-speaking race in both hemispheres did not number twice the present population of London. Now, seventy-five millions, peopling mighty continents, speak the tongue he raised to the grandest of all earth's speeches; and those who people the antipodes claim to offer the best homage to his genius. Thus it will go on to the end of time. As the language he clothed with such power and might shall spread itself over the earth, and be spoken, too, by races born to another tongue, his life-rays will permeate the minds of countless myriads, and the more widely they diverge and the farther they reach, the brighter and warmer will be the glow and the flow of that disk of light that embosoms and illumines his birth-place in England. What is true of Stratford-upon-Avon is equally true of Abbotsford, of the birth-place of Milton, Burns, Bunyan, Baxter, and other great minds, which have shone each like a sun or star in its sphere. Now, what one word, recognised as legitimate in scientific terminology, would describe fully one of these disks of light cast by a human life upon a certain space of earth, not as a fugitive flash, but as a permanent illumination? _Photograph_ would not do it, because its meaning is fixed and rigidly technical, as simple light-writing, or sun-writing. The term is completely pre-occupied by this signification, and you cannot inject the human life element into it. _Biography_ is universally limited to an operation in which the life is the subject, not the agent. It is simply the writing out of a life's history by some one with a common goose-quill or steel pen. Still, the word _biograph_ would be the best, of the same length, that we could form to describe one of these disks of light, if it were made the same verb active as _photograph_; or to mean that the life is the agent, as well as the subject,--that it writes itself in light upon a certain locality, just as the sun graves a human face upon glass. Let us then call the bright and quenchless planispheres, which such lives describe and fill around them, _biographs_, assuming that the script is in rays of light. As differ the stars above in glory, so these differ in the qualities of their illumination. The brightest of them, to mere human seeming, are those which shine with the sheer brilliancy of intellect and genius. These chiefly halo the homes of "the grand old masters" of poetry, painting, eloquence, and martial glory. These attract to their disks pilgrims the most numerous and enthusiastic. But, as the nearest stars are brightest, not largest, so these biographs are brightest on their earth-side. There are thousands of less sharp and spangling lustre to the eyes of the multitude, which shine with tenfold more brilliancy from their eternity-face. These are they that halo the homes of good men, whose great hearts drank in the life of God's love in perpetual streams, and distilled it like a luminous dew around them; men whose thoughts were not mere scintillations of genius, but living labors of beneficence, bearing the proof as well as promise of that immortality guaranteed to the deeds of earth's saints. If the soul, after such long isolation, is to take again to its embrace so much of the old human corporeity it wore here below, does it transcend the prerogative of hope in the great resurrection to believe that these biographs of God's loving children on earth shall be taken up whole into the same immortality as the bodies in which they worked His will among men? Is the faith too fanciful or irreverent that believes, that the corridors and inner temples of Heaven's Glory will be hung with these biographs of His servants surrounding, like stars, the light-flood of His love that radiated from His cross on earth? Is it too presumptuous to think and say, that such pictures will be as precious in His sight as any graven by the lives of angels on their outward or homeward flights of duty and delight? These are they, therefore, that shall give to the earth all the immortality to which it shall attain. These are they that shall take up into the brilliant existence of the hereafter, ten thousand sections of its corporeity; portions of its surface, perhaps, as substantial as the human form that the souls of men shall wear in another world. These are they that shall shine as the stars, when those beaming so brilliantly in our eyes around the shrines of mere intellect and genius, shall have "paled their ineffectual fires" before the efflux of diviner light. Let him, then, of thoughtful and attentive faculties think on these great and holy possibilities, when he treads within the pale of a good man's life, whose labors for human happiness "follow him" according to divine promise; not out of the world, not down into the grave with his resting body, but out among living generations, breathing upon them and through them a blessed and everlasting influence. Let him tread that disk of light reverentially, for it is the holiest place on the earth's surface outside the immediate circumference of Cavalry. This is Babraham; and here lived Jonas Webb; a good man and true, whose influence and usefulness had a broader circumference than the widest empire in the world. A Frenchman has written the fullest history of both, and an American here offers reverentially a tribute to his worth. The light of his life was a soft and gentle illumination on its earth-side; the lustre of the other was revealed only by partial glimpses to those who leaned closest to him in the testing-moments of his higher nature. He was one of the great benefactors, whose lives and labors become the common inheritance of mankind, and whose names go down through long generations with a pleasant memory. To a certain extent, he was to the great primeval industry of the world, what Arkwright, Watts, Stephenson, Fulton and Morse were each to the mechanical and scientific activities of the age. He did as much, perhaps, as any man that ever preceded him, to honor that industry, and lift it up to the level of the first occupations of modern times, which had claimed higher qualities of intelligence, genius and enterprize. He was a farmer, and his ancestors had been farmers from time immemorial. He did not bound into the occupation as an enthusiastic amateur, who had acquired a large fortune by manufacturing or commercial enterprize, which he was eager to lavish upon bold and uncertain experiments. He attained his highest eminence by the careful gradations of a continuous experience, reaching back far into the labors of his ancestors. The science, skill and judgment he brought to bear upon his operations, came from his reading, thinking, observations and experiments as a practical and hereditary farmer. The capital he employed in expanding these operations to their culminating magnitude, he acquired by farming. The mental culture, the generous dispositions, the refined manners, the graceful and manly bearing which made him one of the first gentlemen of the age, he acquired as a farmer. The mansion which welcomed to its easy and large-hearted hospitalities guests of such distinction from his own and other countries, was a farmer's home, and few ever opened their doors to more urbanity and cordial cheer. This is an aspect of his character which all those who follow the profession he honored should admire with a laudable esprit de corps. As a back-ground is an important element in the portraiture of human forms or natural scenery, so the ground on which the life and labors of Jonas Webb should be sketched, merits a few preliminary lines. Of all the occupations that employ and sustain the toiling myriads of our race, agriculture leans closest to the bosom of Divine Providence. It is an industry bound to the great and beautiful economics of the creation by more visible and sensible ties than any other worked by human hands. We will not here diverge to dwell upon these high and interesting affiliations. In their place we will give them a little extended thought. There is one feature of agricultural enterprize, however, that should not be overlooked in this connection. All its operations are above-board and open to the wide world, just like the fields to which they are applied. Nothing here is under lock and key. Nothing bears the grim warning over the bolted door, "No admittance here except on business!"--meaning by business, exclusively and sharply, the buying of certain wares of the establishment at a good round profit to the manufacturer, without carrying away a single scintillation or suggestion of his skill. If he has invented or adopted machinery or a process of labor which enables him to turn out cheap muslin at three farthings' less cost per yard than his neighbors can make it, he seals up the secret from them with the keenest vigilance. Not so in the great and heaven-honored industry of agriculture. Its experiments and improvements upon the earth's face are all put into the common stock of human knowledge and happiness. They can no more be placed under lock and key, as selfish secrets, than the stars themselves that look down upon them with all their golden eyes. No new implement of husbandry, no new mechanical force or chemical principle, no new process of labor or line of economy is withheld from the great commonwealth of mankind. As the broad skies above, as the sun and moon, and stars, as the winds, the rains, the dews, the birds and bees of heaven over-ride and ignore, in their missions, the boundaries of jealous nations, so all the great activities of agriculture prove their lineage by following the same generous rule. They are bounded by no nationalities. They are shut up in no narrow enclosure of self, but are put out as new vesicles of light to brighten the general illumination of the world. The department in which Jonas Webb attained to his position and capacity of usefulness was peculiarly marked by this characteristic. In a certain sense, it occupied a higher range of interest than that section of agriculture which is connected solely with the growing of grain, grass, and other crops. His great and distinguishing husbandry was the cultivation of animal life. To make two spires of grass grow where only one grew before has been pronounced as a great benefaction; and greater still are the merit and the gain of making one grow where nothing grew before. To go into the midst of Dartmoor, and turn an acre of its cold, stony, water-soaked waste into a fruitful field of golden grain, is going into co-partnership with Providence in the work of creation to a very large and honored degree. But to put the skilful hand of science upon creatures of flesh and blood, to re-form their physical structures and shapes, to add new inches to their stature, straighten their backs, expand their reins, amplify their chests, reduce all the lines and curves of their forms to an unborn symmetry, and then to give silky softness and texture to their aboriginal clothing--this seems to be mounting one step higher in the attainment and dignity of creative faculties. And this pre-eminently was the department in which Jonas Webb acquired a distinction perhaps unparalleled to the present time. This has made his name familiar all over Christendom, and honored among the world's benefactors. Never, before him, did a farm-stead become such a centre and have such a wide-sweeping radius as his. None ever possessed such centripetal attractions, or exerted such centrifugal influences for the material well-being of different and distant countries. Indeed, those most remote are most specially indebted to his large and generous operations. America and Australia will ever owe his memory an everlasting homage. His operations filled and crowned two great departments of improvement seldom, if ever, carried on simultaneously and evenly to a great success by one man. His first distinguishing speciality was sheep-culture. When he had brought this to the highest standard of perfection ever attained, he devoted the surplus capital of skill, experience and pecuniary means he had acquired from the process to the breeding of cattle; and he became nearly as eminent in this field of improvement as in the other. A few facts may serve as an outline of his progress in both to the American reader who is familiar with the general result of his efforts. Jonas Webb was born at Great Thurlow, Suffolk, on the 10th of November, 1796. His father, who died at the age of ninety-three, was a veteran in agriculture, and had attained to honorable distinction by his efforts to improve the old Norfolk breed of sheep, and by his experiments with other races. The results obtained from these operations convinced his son that more mutton and better wool could be made per acre from the Southdown than from any other breed, upon nine-tenths of the arable land of England, where the sheep are regularly folded, especially where the land is poor. In 1822, he commenced that agricultural career which won for him such a world-wide celebrity, by taking the Babraham Farm, occupying about 1,000 acres, some twelve miles south of Cambridge. In a very interesting letter, addressed to the Farmers' Magazine, about twenty years since, he gives a valuable resume of his experience up to that time. In this he states several facts that may be especially useful to American agriculturists. Having decided in his own mind that the Southdowns were preferable to every other breed, for the two properties mentioned, he went into Sussex, their native county, and purchased the best rams and ewes that could be obtained of the principal breeders, regardless of expense, and never made a cross from any other breed afterwards. Nor was this all; he never introduced new blood into his stock from flocks of the same breed, but, by a virtually in-and-in process, he was able to produce qualities till then unknown to the race, and to make them permanent and distinctive properties. Now this achievement in itself has an interest beyond its utilitarian value to the agricultural world. To "Rejoice in the joy of well-created things" is one of the best privileges and pleasures of a well-constituted mind. But what higher honor can attach to human science or industry than that of taking such a visible and effective part in that creation?--in sending out into the world successive generations of animal life, bearing each, through future ages and distant countries, the shaping impress of human fingers, long since gone back to their dust; features, forms, lines, curves, qualities and characteristics which those fingers, working, as it were, on the right wrist of Divine Providence, gave to the sheep and cattle upon a thousand hills in both hemispheres? There are flocks and herds now grazing upon the boundless prairies of America, the vast plains of Australia, the steppes of Russia, as well as on the smaller and greener pastures of England, France, and Germany, that bear these finger-marks of Jonas Webb, as mindless but everlasting memories to his worth. If the owners of these "well-created things" value the joy and profit which they thus derive from his long and laborious years of devotion to their interests, let them see that these finger-prints of his be not obliterated by their neglect, but be perpetuated for ever, both for their own good and for an ever-living memorial to his name. It is a fact of instructive suggestion, that although Mr. Webb commenced his operations in 1822, he won his first prize for stock ewes at the meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society at Cambridge in 1840. Here he realised one of the serious disadvantages to which stock-breeders in England are exposed, in "showing" sheep, cattle or swine at these annual exhibitions. The great outside world, with tastes that lean more to fat sirloins or shoulders than to the better symmetries of animated nature, almost demands that every one of these unfortunate beasts should be offered up as a bloated, blowing sacrifice to those great twin idols of fleshy lust, Tallow and Lard. If, therefore, a stock-raiser has not decided to drive his Shorthorn cow or Southdown ewe immediately from the Fair-grounds to the butcher's shambles, he runs an imminent risk of losing entirely the use and value of the animal. So great is this risk, that much of the stock that would be most useful for exhibition is withheld, and can only be seen by visiting private establishments scattered over the kingdom. They are too valuable to run the terrible gauntlet of oil-cake, bean and barley-meal, through which they must flounder on in cruel obesity to the prize. Especially is this the case with breeding animals. Mr. Webb's experience at his first trial of the process, will illustrate its tendencies and results. Of the nine shearling ewes he "fed" for the Cambridge Show, he lost _four_, and only raised two or three lambs from the rest. At the Exhibition of 1841, at Liverpool, he won three out of four of the prizes offered by the Royal Agricultural Society for Southdowns, or any other short-woolled sheep; two out of four offered at Bristol, in 1842, and three out of four offered at Derby, in 1843. But here again he over-fed two of his best sheep, under the inexorable rule of fat, which exercises such despotic sway over these annual competitions, and was obliged to kill them before the show. It will suffice to show the loss he incurred by this costly homage to Tallow, to give his own words on the subject:--"I had refused 180 guineas for the hire of the two sheep for the season. I also quite destroyed the usefulness of two other aged sheep by over- feeding them last year. Neither of them propogated [sic] through the season, and I have had each of them killed in consequence, which has so completely tired me of overfeeding that I never intend exhibiting another aged ram, unless I greatly alter my mind, or can find out some method of feeding them which will not destroy the animals, and which I have hitherto failed to accomplish." The conclusion which he adopted, in view of these liabilities, may be useful to agriculturists in America as well as in England. He says, "What I intend exhibiting in future will be shearlings only, as I believe they are not so easily injured by extra feeding as aged sheep, partly by being more active, and partly by having more time to put on their extra condition, by which their constitutions are not likely to be so much impaired." At nearly every subsequent national exhibition, Mr. Webb carried off the best prizes for Southdowns. At Dundee, in 1843, the Highland Society paid him the compliment of having the likenesses of his sheep taken for its museum in Edinburgh. He only received two checks in these competitions after 1840, and these he rectified and overcame in an interesting way. The first took place at the great meeting at Exeter, in 1850, and the second at Chelmsford, in 1856. On both of these occasions he was convinced that the judges had not done justice to the qualities of his animals, and he resolved to submit their judgment to a court of errors, or to the decision of a subsequent meeting of the society. So, in 1851, he presented the unsuccessful candidate at Exeter to the meeting at Windsor, and took the first prize for it. This fully reversed the Exeter verdict. He resorted to the same tribunal to set him right in regard to his apparent defeat at Chelmsford, in 1856. Next year he presented the ram beaten there to the Salisbury meeting, and another jury gave the animal the highest meed of merit. It was at the zenith of his fame as a sheep-breeder that Mr. Webb "assisted," as the French say, at the Universal Exposition at Paris, in 1855. Here his beautiful animals excited the liveliest admiration. The Emperor came himself to examine them, and expressed himself highly pleased at their splendid qualities. It was on this occasion that Mr. Webb presented to the Emperor his prize ram, for which, probably, he had refused the largest sum ever offered for a single animal of the same race, or 500 guineas ($2,500). The Emperor accepted the noble present, fully appreciating the spirit in which it was offered, and some time afterwards sent the generous breeder a magnificent candelabra, of solid silver, representing a grand, old English oak, with a group of horses shading themselves under its branches. This splendid token of the Emperor's regard is only one of the numerous trophies and souvenirs that embellish the farmer's home at Babraham, and which his children and remoter posterity will treasure as precious heirlooms. If Mr. Webb did not originate, he developed a system of usefulness into a permanent and most valuable institution, which, perhaps, will be the most novel to American stock-raisers. Having, by a long course of scientific observations and experiments, _fixed_ the qualities he desired to give his Southdowns; having brought them to the highest perfection, he now adopted a system which would most widely and cheaply diffuse the race thus cultivated all over the civilized world. He instituted an annual ram-letting, which took place in the month of July. This occasion constituted an important event to the great agricultural world. A few Americans have been present and witnessed the proceedings of these memorable days, and they know the interest attaching to them better than can be inferred from any description. M. De La Trehonnais, in the "Revue Agricole de l'Angleterre," thus sketches some of the incidents and aspects of the occasion:-- "It is a proceeding regarded in England as a public event, and all the journals give an account of it with exact care, assembling from every county and even from foreign countries. The sale begins about two o'clock. A circle in formed with ropes in a small field near the mansion, where the rams are introduced, and an auctioneer announces the biddings, which are frequently very spirited. The rams to be let are exposed around the field from the first of the morning, and a ticket at the head of each pen indicates the weight of the fleece of the animal it contains. Every one takes his notes, chooses the animal he approves of, and can demand the last bidding when he pleases. The evening after the letting, the numerous company assembles under a rustic shed, ornamented with leaves and agricultural devices. There tables are laid, around which are placed two or three hundred guests, and then commences one of those antique repasts described by Homer or Rabelais. The tables groan under the enormous pieces of beef, gigantic hams, etc., which have almost disappeared before the commencement of the sale. From eight in the morning until two in the afternoon, tables laid out in the dining-room and hall are furnished, only to be refurnished immediately, the end being equal to the beginning." This description refers to the thirty-second letting. Mr. Webb's flock then consisted of seven hundred breeding ewes, a proportionate number of lambs, and about four hundred rams of different ages. It was from these rams that the animals were selected which were sent into every country in the civilized world. The average price of their lettings was nearly 24 pounds each, although some of the rams brought the sum of 180 pounds, or nearly _nine hundred dollars_! What would some of the old-fashioned farmers of New England, of forty years ago, think of paying nearly a thousand dollars for the rent of a ram for a single year, or even one-tenth of that sum? But this rentage was not a fancy price. The farmer who paid it got back his money many times over in the course of a few years. From this infusion of the Babraham blood into his flock, he realised an augmented production of mutton and wool annually per acre which he could count definitely by pounds. The verdict of his balance-sheet proved the profit of the investment. It would be impossible to measure the benefit which the whole world reaped from Mr. Webb's labors in this department of usefulness. An eminent authority has stated that "it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a Southdown flock of any reputation, in any country in the world, not closely allied with the Babraham flock." It is a fact that illustrates the skill and care, as well as demonstrates the value of his system of improvement, that, after thirty-seven years as a breeder, the tribes he founded maintained to the last those distinguishing qualities which gave them such pre-eminence over all other sheep bearing the general name of the Sussex race. So valuable and distinctive were these qualities regarded by the best judges in the country, that the twelfth ram-letting, which took place at the time of the Cambridge Show, brought together 2,000 visitors, constituting, perhaps, the most distinguished assembly of agriculturists ever convened. On this occasion the Duke of Richmond, an hereditary and eminent breeder of Southdowns in their native county, bid a hundred guineas for a ram lamb, which Mr. Webb himself bought in. Having attained to such eminence as a sheep-breeder, Mr. Webb entered upon another sphere of improvement, in which he won almost equal distinction. In 1837, he laid the foundation of the Babraham Herd of Shorthorn cattle, made up of six different tribes, purchased from the most valuable and celebrated branches of the race bearing that name. An incident attaching to one of these purchases may illustrate the nice care and cultivated skill which Mr. Webb exercised in the treatment of choice animals. He bought out of Lord Spencer's herd the celebrated cow, "Dodona." That eminent breeder, it appears, had given her up as irretrievably sterile, and he parted with her solely on that account. Mr. Webb, however, took her to Babraham, and, as a result of the more intelligent treatment he bestowed upon her, she produced successively four calves, which thus formed one of the most valuable families of the Babraham herd. When I visited the scene of his life and labors, all his sheep and cattle had been sold. But two or three animals bought by an Australian gentleman were still in the keeping of Mr. Webb's son, awaiting arrangements for their transportation. One of these, a beautiful heifer of fourteen months, was purchased at the winding-up sale, for 225 guineas. It was called the "Drawing-room Rose," from this circumstance, as I afterwards learned. When it was first dropped by the dam, Mr. Webb was confined to the house by indisposition. But he had such a desire to see this new accession to his bovine family, that he directed it to be brought into the drawing-room for that purpose. Hence it received a more elegant and domestic appellation than the variegated nomenclature of high-blooded animals often allows. When the last volume of the "English Herd-Book" was about to be published, Mr. Webb sent for insertion a list of sixty-one cows, with their products. He generally kept from twenty to thirty bulls in his stalls. Nor were his labors confined even to the two great spheres of enterprise with which his name has been intimately and honorably associated. If it was the great aim of his intelligent activities to produce stock which should yield the most meat to the acre, he also gave great attention to the augmented production of the land itself. He was the principal originator and promoter of the great Agricultural Hall, in London, for the exhibition of the fat stock for the Smithfield Show. This may be called the Crystal Palace of the animal world. It is the grandest structure ever erected for the exhibition of cattle, sheep, swine, poultry, etc. I will essay no description of it here, but it will carry through long generations the name and memory of Jonas Webb of Babraham. He was chairman of the company that built the superb edifice; also president of the Nitro-phosphate or Blood-manure Company, a fertilizer in which he had the greatest confidence, and which he used in great quantities upon the large farm he cultivated, containing over 2,000 acres. At the age of nearly sixty-six, Mr. Webb found that his health would no longer stand the strain of the toil, care, and anxiety requisite to keep up the Babraham flock to the high standard of perfection which it had attained. So, after nearly forty years of devotion to this great occupation of his life, he concluded to retire from it altogether, dispersing his sheep and cattle as widely as purchasers might be found. This breaking-up took place at Babraham on the 10th of July, 1862. Then and there the long series of annual re-unions terminated for ever. The occasion had a mournful interest to many who had attended those meetings from year to year. It seemed like the voluntary and unexpected abdication of an Alexander, still able to add to his conquests and trophies. All present felt this; and several tried to express it at the old table now spread for the last time for such guests. But his inherent and invincible modesty waived aside or intercepted the compliments that came from so many lips. With a kind of ingenious delicacy, which one of the finest of human sentiments could only inspire, he contrived to divert attention or reference to himself and his life's labors. But he could not make the company forget them, even if he gently checked allusion to them. The company on this interesting occasion was very large, about 1,000 persons having sat down to the collation. Not only were the principal nobility and gentry of Great Britain interested in agricultural pursuits present in large number, but the representatives of nearly every other country in Christendom. Several gentlemen from the United States were among the purchasers. The total number of sheep sold was 969, which fetched under the hammer the great aggregate of 10,926 pounds, or more than $54,000. The most splendid ram in the flock went to the United States, being knocked down to Mr. J. C. Taylor, of Holmdale, New Jersey; who is doing so much to Americanise the Southdowns. Others went to the Canadas, Australia, South America, and to nearly every country in continental Europe. Thus was formed, and thus was dispersed the famous Babraham flock. And such were the labors of Jonas Webb for the material well-being of mankind. These alone, detached from those qualities and characteristics which make up and reflect a higher nature, entitle his name to a wide and lasting memory among men. And these labors and successes are they that those who have read of them in different countries know him by. These comprise and present the character they honor with respect. What he was in the temper and disposition of his inner life, in daily walk and conversation, in the even and gentle amenities of Christian humility, in sudden trials of his faith and patience; what he was as a husband, father, friend and neighbor, to the poor, to the afflicted in mind, body or estate,-- all this will remain unwritten, but not unremembered by those who breathed and moved within that disk of light which his life shed around him. Few men have lived in whom so many personal and moral qualities combined to command respect, esteem, and even admiration. In stature, countenance, expression, and deportment, he was a noble specimen of fully developed English manhood. To this first, external aspect, his kindly and generous dispositions, his genial manners, his delicate but dignified modesty, his large intelligence and large-heartedness, gave the additional and crowning characteristic of a Christian gentleman. Many Americans have visited Babraham, and enjoyed the hospitalities which such a host could only give and grace. They will remember the paintings hung around the walls of that drawing-room, in which his commanding form, in the strength and beauty of meridian life, towers up in the rural landscape, surrounded by cattle and sheep bearing the impress of his skill and care. A little incident occurred a few years ago, which may illustrate this personal aspect better than any simile of description. On the occasion of one of the great Agricultural Expositions in Paris, a deputation or a company of gentlemen went over to represent the Agricultural Society of England. Mr. Webb was one of the number; and some French nobleman who had known him personally, as well as by reputation, was very desirous of making him a guest while in Paris. To be sure of this pleasure, he sent a special courier all the way to Folkestone, charged with a letter which he was himself to put into the hands of Mr. Webb, before the steamer left the dock. "But how am I to know the gentleman?" asked the courier; "I never saw him in my life." "N'importe," was the reply. "Put the letter in the hand of the noblest-looking man on board, and you will be sure to be right." The courier followed the direction; and, stationing himself near the gangway, he took his master's measure of every passenger as he entered. He could not be mistaken. As soon as the plank was withdrawn, he approached Mr. Webb, hat in hand, and, with a deferential word of recognition, done in the best grace of French politeness, handed him the letter. One of the deputation, noticing the incident, and wondering how the man knew whom he was addressing without previous inquiry, questioned him afterwards on the subject, and learned from him the ground on which he proceeded. The photographic likeness presented in connection with this notice was taken shortly before his decease, at the age of nearly sixty-six, and when his health was greatly impaired. Few men ever carried out so fully the injunction, not to let the left hand know what the right hand did, in the quiet and steady outflow of good will and good works, as Mr. Webb. Even those nearest and dearest to him never knew what that right hand did as a help in time of need, what that large heart felt in time of others' affliction, what those lips said to the sorrowing, in tearful moments of grief, until they had been stilled for ever on earth. Then it came out, act by act, word by word, thought by thought, from those who held the remembrances in their souls as precious souvenirs of a good man's life. So earnest was his desire to do these things in secret, that his own family heard of them only by accident, and from those whom he so greatly helped with his kindness and generosity. And when known by his wife and children, in this way, they were put under the bann of secrecy. This it is that makes it so difficult to delineate the home and heaven side of his character. Those nearest to him, who breathed in the blessing of its daily odor, so revere his repeated and earnest wish not to have his good works talked of in public, that, even now he is dead and gone, they hold it as a sacred obligation to his memory not to give up these treasured secrets of his life. Thus, in giving a partial coup d'oeil of that aspect of his character which fronted homeward and heavenward, one can only glean, here and there, glimpses of different traits, in acts, incidents, and anecdotes remembered by neighbors and friends near and remote. Were it not that his children are withheld, by this delicate veneration, from giving to the public facts known to them alone, the moral beauty and brightness of his life would shine out upon the outside world with warmer rays and larger rayons. I hope that a single passage from a letter written by one of them to a friend, even under the injunction of confidence, may be given here, without rending the veil which they hold so sacred. In referring to this disposition and habit of her venerated father, she says-- "Often have I been so blessed as to be caused to shed tears of joy and pride at hearing proofs of his tenderness, kindness, and generosity related by the recipients of some token of his nobleness, but of which we never should have heard from himself." A little incident may illustrate this trait of his disposition. In 1862, a "Loan Court" was held in London, at which there was a most magnificent display of jewels and plate of all kinds, contributed by their owners to be exhibited for the gratification of the public. A friend, who held him in the highest veneration, returning from this brilliant show, expressed regret that Mr. Webb had not furnished one of the stands, by sending the splendid silver candelabra presented to him by the French Emperor, with the many silver cups and medals he had won. Mr. Webb replied, that the mercies God had blessed him with, and the successes He had awarded to him, might have been sent to teach him humility, and not given to parade before the world. It is one of the most striking proofs of his great and pure- heartedness, that, notwithstanding nearly forty consecutive years of vigorous and successful competition with the leading agriculturists of Great Britain and other countries, none of the victories he won over them, or the eminence he attained, ever made him an enemy. When we consider the eager ambitions and excited sensibilities that enter into these competitions, this fact in itself shows what manner of man he was in his disposition and deportment. Referring to this aspect of his character, the French writer already cited, M. De La Trehonnais, says of him, while still living-- "There exists no person who has gained the esteem and goodwill of his contemporaries to a higher degree than Mr. Webb. His probity, his scrupulous good faith, his generosity, and the affable equality of his character, have gained for him the respect and affection of every one. Since I have had the honor of knowing him, which is already many years, I have never known of his having a single enemy; and in my constant intercourse with the agricultural classes of England, I have never heard of a single malevolent insinuation respecting him. When we consider how much those who raise themselves in the world above others, are made the butt for the attacks of envy in proportion with their elevation, we may conclude that there are in the character of this wealthy man very solid virtues, well fixed principles, transcendant [sic] merit, to have passed through his long career of success and triumphs without having drawn upon himself the ill-will of a single enemy, or the calumnious shaft of envy." Nor were these negative virtues, ending where they begun, or enabling him to go through a long life of energetic activities without an enemy. He not only lived at peace with all men, but did his utmost to make them live at peace with each other. Says one who knew him intimately--"I never heard him express a sentiment savoring of enmity to any person, nor could he bear to see it entertained by any one towards another. Even if he heard of an ill-feeling existing between persons, he would, if possible, effect a reconciliation; and his own bright example, and hearty, kind, genial manners always warmed all hearts towards himself. Notwithstanding the numerous calls upon his time, made by public and private business, he did not lose his sweet cheerfulness of temper, and was ever ready in his most busy moments to aid others, if he saw a possibility of so doing." Energy, gentleness, conscientiousness and courtesy were seldom, if ever, blended in such suave accord as in him. These virtues came out, each in its distinctive lustre, under the trials and vexations which try human nature most severely. All who knew him marvelled that he was able to maintain such sweetness and evenness of temper under provocations and difficulties which would have greatly annoyed most men. What he was in these outer circles of his influence, he was, to all the centralization of his virtues, in the heart of his family. Here, indeed, the best graces of his character had their full play and beauty. He was the centre and soul of one of the happiest of earthly homes, attracting to him the affections of every member of the hearth circle that moved in the sleepless light of his life. Here he did not rule, but led by love. It alone dictated, and it alone obeyed. It inspired its like in domestic discipline. Spontaneous reverence for such a father's wish and will superseded the unpleasant necessity of more active parental constraint. To bring a shade of sadness to that venerated face, or a speechless reproach to that benignant eye, was a greater punishment to a temporarily wayward child than any corporal correction could have inflicted. No one of the hundreds that were present at the sale and dispersion of the Babraham flock could have thought that the remaining days of the great and good man were to be so few on earth. He was then about sixty-five years of age, of stately, unbending form and face radiant and genial with the florid flush of that Indian Summer which so many Englishmen wear late in those autumnal years that bend and pale American forms and faces to "the sere and yellow leaf" of life. But the sequel proved that he did not abdicate his position too early. In a little more than a year from this event, his spirit was raised to higher fellowships and folded with those of the pure and blest of bygone ages. The incidents and coincidents of the last, great moments of his being here, were remarkable and affecting. Neither he nor his wife died at the home they had made so happy with the beauty and savor of their virtues. Under another and distant roof they both laid themselves down to die. The husband's hand was linked in his wife's, up to within a few short steps of the river's brink, when, touched with the cold spray of the dark waters, it fell from its hold and was superseded by the strong arm of the angel of the covenant, sent to bear her fast across the flood. In life they were united to a oneness seldom witnessed on earth; in death they were not separated except by the thinnest partition. Though her spirit was taken up first to the great and holy communion above, the "ministering angel of God's love let her body remain with him as a pledge until his own spirit was called to join hers in the joint mansion of their eternal rest. On the very day that her body was carried to its long home, his own unloosed, to its upward flight, the soul that had made it shine for half a century like a temple erected to the Divine Glory. The years allotted to him on earth were even to a day. Just sixty-six were measured off to him, and then "the wheel ceased to turn at the cistern," and he died on his birthday. An affecting coincidence also marked the departure of his beloved wife. She left on the birthday of her eldest son, who had intended to make the anniversary the dating-day of domestic happiness, by choosing it for his marriage. A few facts will suffice for the history of the closing scene. About the middle of October, 1862, Mrs. Webb, whose health seemed failing, went to visit her brother, Henry Marshall, Esq., residing in Cambridge. Here she suddenly became much worse, and the prospect of her recovery more and more doubtful. Mr. Webb was with her immediately on the first unfavorable turn of her illness, together with other members of the family. When he realised her danger, and the hope of her surviving broke down within him, his physical constitution succumbed under the impending blow, and two days before her death, he was prostrated by a nervous fever, from which he never rallied, but died on the 10th of November. Although the great visitation was too heavy for his flesh and blood to bear, his spirit was strengthened to drink this last cup of earthly trial with beautiful serenity and submission. It was strong enough to make his quivering lips to say, in distinct and audible utterance, and his closing eyes to pledge the truth and depth of the sentiment, "Thy will be done!" One who stood over him in these last moments says, that, when assured of his own danger, his countenance only seemed to take on a light of greater happiness. He was conscious up to within a few minutes of his death, and, though unable to speak articulately, responded by expressions of his countenance to the words and looks of affection addressed to him by the dear ones surrounding his bed. One of them read to him a favorite hymn, beginning with "Cling to the Comforter!" When she ceased, he signed to her to repeat it; and, while the words were still on her lips, the Comforter came at his call, and bore his waiting spirit away to the heavenly companionship for which it longed. As it left the stilled temple of its earthly habitation, it shed upon the delicately-carved lines of its marble door and closed windows a sweet gleam of the morning twilight of its own happy immortality. A long funeral cortege attended the remains of the deceased from Cambridge to their last resting place in the little village churchyard of Babraham. Beside friends from neighboring villages, the First Cambridgeshire Mounted Rifle Corps joined the procession, together with a large number of the county police force. His body was laid down to its last, long rest beside that of his wife, who preceded him to the tomb only by a few days. Though Stratford-upon- Avon, and Dryburgh Abbey may attract more American travellers to their shrines, I am sure many of them, with due perception of moral worth, will visit Babraham, and hold it in reverent estimation as the home of one of the world's best worthies, who left on it a biograph which shall have a place among the human-life-scapes which the Saviour of mankind shall hang up in the inner temple of His Father's glory, as the most precious tokens and trophies of the earth, on which He shared the tearful experiences of humanity, and bore back to His throne all the touching memories of its weaknesses, griefs, and sorrows. A movement is now on foot to erect a suitable monument to his memory. It may indicate the public estimation in which his life and labors are held that, already, about 10,000 pounds have been subscribed towards this testimonial to his worth. The monument, doubtless, will be placed in the great Agricultural Hall, which he did so much to found. His name will wear down to coming generations the crystal roofage of that magnificent edifice as a fitting crown of honor. CHAPTER VIII. THRESHING MACHINE--FLOWER SHOW--THE HOLLYHOCK AND ITS SUGGESTIONS-- THE LAW OF CO-OPERATIVE ACTIVITIES IN VEGETABLE, ANIMAL, MENTAL, AND MORAL LIFE. "In all places, then, and in all seasons, Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings, Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, How akin they are to human things."--LONGFELLOW. My stay at Babraham was short. It was like a visit to the grave of one of those English worthies whose lives and labors are so well known and appreciated in America. All the external features of the establishment were there unchanged. The large and substantial mansion, with its hall and parlor walls hung with the mementoes of the genius and success that had made it so celebrated; the barns and housings for the great herds and flocks which had been dispersed over the world; the very pens still standing in which they had been folded in for the auctioneer's hammer; all these arrangements and aspects remained as they were when Jonas Webb left his home to return no more. But all those beautiful and happy families of animal life, which he reared to such perfection, were scattered on the wings of wind and steam to the uttermost and most opposite parts of the earth. The eldest son, Mr. Samuel Webb, who supervises part of the farm occupied by his father, and also carries on one of his own in a neighboring parish, was very cordial and courteous, and drove me to his establishment near Chesterford. Here a steam threshing machine was at work, doing prodigious execution on different kinds of grain. The engine had climbed, a proprii motu, a long ascent; had made its way partly through ploughed land to the rear of the barn, and was rattlingly busy in a fog of dust, doing the labor of a hundred flails. Ricks of wheat and beans, each as large as a comfortable cottage, disappeared in quick succession through the fingers of the chattering, iron-ribbed giant, and came out in thick and rapid streams of yellow grain. Swine seemed to be the speciality to which this son of Mr. Webb is giving some of that attention which his father gave to sheep. There were between 200 and 300 in the barn- yards and pens, of different ages and breeds, all looking in excellent condition. From Chesterford I went on to Cambridge, where I remained for the most part of two days, on account of a heavy fall of rain, which kept me within doors nearly all the time. I went out, however, for an hour or so to see a Flower Show in the Town Hall. The varieties and specimens made a beautiful, but not very extensive array. There was one flower that not only attracted especial admiration, but invited a pleasant train of thoughts to my own mind. It was one of those old favorites to which the common people of all countries, who speak our mother tongue, love to give an inalienable English name-- The Hollyhock. It is one of the flowers of the people, which the pedantic Latinists have left untouched in homely Saxon, because the people would have none of their long-winded and heartless appellations. Having dwelt briefly upon the honor that Divine Providence confers upon human genius and labor, in letting them impress their finger-marks so distinctly upon the features and functions of the earth, and upon the forms of animal life, it may be a profitable recurrence to the same line of thought to notice what that same genius and labor have wrought upon the structure and face of this familiar flower. What was it at first? What is it now in the rural gardens of New England? A shallow, bell-mouthed cup, in most cases purely white, and hung to a tall, coarse stalk, like the yellow jets of a mullein. That is its natural and distinctive characteristic in all countries; at least where it is best known and most common. What is it here, bearing the fingerprints of man's mind and taste upon it? Its white and thin-sided cup is brim full and running over with flowery exuberance of leaf and tint infinitely variegated. Here it is as solid, as globe-faced, and nearly as large as the dahlia. Place it side by side with the old, single- leafed hollyhock, in a New England farmer's garden, and his wife would not be able to trace any family relationship between them, even through the spectacles with which she reads the Bible. But the dahlia itself--what was that in its first estate, in the country in which it was first found in its aboriginal structure and complexion? As plain and unpretending as the hollyhock; as thinly dressed as the short-kirtled daisy in a Connecticut meadow. It is wonderful, and passing wonder, how teachable and quick of perception and prehension is Nature in the studio of Art. She, the oldest of painters, that hung the earth, sea, and sky of the antediluvian world with landscapes, waterscapes, and cloudscapes manifold and beautiful, when as yet the human hand had never lifted a pencil to imitate her skill; she, with the colors wherewith she dyed the fleecy clouds that spread their purple drapery over the first sunset, and in which she dipped the first rainbow hung in heaven, and the first rose that breathed and blushed on earth; she that has embellished every day, since the Sun first opened its eye upon the world, with a new gallery of paintings for every square mile of land and sea, and new dissolving views for every hour--she, with all these artistic antecedents, tastes, and faculties, comes modestly into the conservatory of the floriculturist, and takes lessons of him in shaping and tinting plants and flowers which the Great Master said were "all very good" on the sixth-day morning of the creation! This is marvellous, showing a prerogative in human genius almost divine, and worthy of reverent and grateful admiration. How wide-reaching and multigerent is this prerogative! In how many spheres of action it works simultaneously in these latter days! See how it manipulates the brute forces of Nature! See how it saddles the winds, and bridles and spurs the lightning! See how it harnesses steam to the plough, the flood to the spindle, the quick cross currents of electricity to the newsman's phaeton! Then ascend to higher reaches of its faculty. In the hands of a Bakewell or Webb, it gives a new and creative shaping to multitudinous generations of animal life. Nature yields to its suggestion and leading, and co- works, with all her best and busiest activities, to realise the human ideal; to put muscle there, to straighten that vertebra, to parallel more perfectly those dorsal and ventral lines, to lengthen or shorten those bones; to flesh the leg only to such a joint, and wool or unwool it below; to horn or unhorn the head, to blacken or blanch the face, to put on the whole body a new dress and make it and its remote posterity wear this new form and costume for evermore. All this shows how kindly and how proudly Nature takes Art into partnership with her, in these new structures of beauty and perfection; both teaching and taught, and wooing man to work with her, and walk with her, and talk with her within the domain of creative energies; to make the cattle and sheep of ten thousand hills and valleys thank the Lord, out of the grateful speech of their large, lustrous eyes, for better forms and features, and faculties of comfort than their early predecessors were born to. Equally wonderful, perhaps more beautiful, is the joint work of Nature and Art on the sweet life and glory of flowers. However many they were, and what they were, that breathed upon the first Spring or Summer day of time, each was a half-sealed gift of God to man, to be opened by his hand when his mind should open to a new sense of beauty and perfection. Flowers, each with a genealogy reaching unbroken through the Flood back to the overhanging blossoms of Eden, have come down to us, as it were, only in their travelling costume, with their best dresses packed away in stamen, or petal, or private seedcase, to be brought out at the end of fifty centuries at the touch of human genius. Those of which Solomon sang in his time, and which exceeded his glory in their every-day array, even "the hyssop by the wall," never showed, on the gala-days of his Egyptian bride, the hidden charms which he, in his wisdom, knew not how to unlock. Flowers innumerable are now, like illuminated capitals of Nature's alphabet, flecking, with their sheen-dots, prairie, steppe, mountain and meadow, the earth around, which, perhaps, will only give their best beauties to the world in a distant age. As the light of the latest-created and remotest stars has not yet completed its downward journey to the eye of man, so to his sight have not these sweet- breathing constellations of the field yet made the full revelation of their treasured hues and forms. Not one in a hundred of them all has done this up to the present moment. When one in ten of those that bless us with their life and being shall put on all its reserved beauty, then, indeed, the stars above and the stars below will stud the firmaments in which they shine with equal glory, and blend both in one great heaven-scape for the eye and heart of man. One by one, in its turn, the key of human genius shall unlock the hidden wardrobe of the commonest flowers, and deck them out in the court dress reserved, for five thousand years, to be worn in the brighter, afternoon centuries of the world. The Mistress of the Robes is a high dignitary in the Household of Royalty, and has her place near to the person of the Queen. But the Floriculturist, of educated perception and taste, is the master of a higher state robe, and holds the key of embroidered vestments, cosmetics, tintings, artistries, hair-jewels, head-dresses, brooches, and bracelets, which no empress ever wore since human crowns were made; which Nature herself could not show on all the bygone birthdays of her being. This is marvellous. It is an honor to man, put upon him from above, as one of the gratuitous dignities of his being. "An undevout astronomer is mad," said one who had opened his mind to a broad grasp of the wonders which this upper heaven holds in its bosom. The floriculturist is an astronomer, with Newton's telescope reversed; and if its revelations do not stir up holy thoughts in his soul, he is blind as well as mad. No glass, no geometry that Newton ever lifted at the still star-worlds above, could do more than _reveal_. At the farthest stretch of their faculty, they could only bring to light the life and immortality of those orbs which the human eye had never seen before. They could not tint nor add a ray to one of them all. They never could bring down to the reach of man's unaided vision a single star that Noah could not see through the deck-lights of the ark. It was a gift and a glory that well rewarded the science and genius of Newton and Herschel, of Adams and Le Verrier, that they could ladder these mighty perpendicular distances and climb the rounds to such heights and sweeps of observation, and count, measure, and name orbs and orbits before unknown, and chart the paths of their rotations and weigh them, as in scales, while in motion. But this ge-astronomer, whose observatory is his conservatory, whose telescope and fluxions are his trowel and watering-pot, not only brings to light the hidden life of a thousand earth-stars, but changes their forms, colors their rays, half creates and transforms, until each differs as much from its original structure and tinting as the planet Jupiter would differ from its familiar countenance if Adams or Le Verrier could make it wear the florid face of Mars. This man,--and it is to be hoped he carries some devout and grateful thoughts to his work--sets Nature new lessons daily in artistry, and she works out the new ideals of his taste to their joint and equal admiration. He has got up a new pattern for the fern. She lets him guide her hand in the delicate operation, and she crimps, fringes, shades or shapes its leaflets to his will, even to a thousand varieties. He moistens her fingers with the fluids she uses on her easel, and puts them to the rootlets of the rose, and they transpose its hues, or fringe it or tinge it with a new glory. He goes into the fen or forest, or climbs the jutting crags of lava-mailed mountains, and brings back to his fold one of Nature's foundlings,--a little, pale-faced orphan, crouching, pinched and starved, in a ragged hood of dirty muslin; and he puts it under the fostering of those maternal fingers, guided by his own. Soon it feels the inspiration of a new life warming and swelling its shrivelled veins. Its paralysed petals unfold, one by one. The rim of its cup fills, leaf by leaf, to the brim. It becomes a thing most lovely and fair, and he introduces it, with pride, to the court beauties of his crystal palace. The agriculturist is taken into this co-partnership of Nature in a higher domain of her activities, measured by the great utilities of human life. We have glanced at the joint-work in her animal kingdom. In the vegetable, it is equally wonderful. Nature contributes the raw material of these great and vital industries, then incites and works out human suggestions. Thus she trains and obeys the mind and hand of man, in this grand sphere of development. Their co-working and its result are just as perceptible in a common Irish potato as in the most gorgeous dahlia ever exhibited. Not one farmer in a thousand has ever read the history of that root of roots, in value to mankind; has ever conceived what a tasteless, contracted, water-soaked thing it was in its wild and original condition. Let them read a few chapters of the early history of New England, and they will see what it was two hundred and fifty years ago, when the strong-hearted men and women, whom Hooker led to the banks of the Connecticut, sought for it in the white woods of winter, scraping away the snow with their frosted fingers. The largest they found just equalled the Malaga grape in size and resembled it in complexion. They called it the _ground-nut_, for it seemed akin to the nuts dropped by the oaks of different names. No flower that breathes on earth has been made to produce so many varieties of form, complexion, and name as this homely root. It would be an interesting and instructive enterprise, to array all the varieties of this queen of esculent vegetables which Europe and America could exhibit, face to face with all the varieties which the dahlia, geranium, pansy, or even the fern has produced, and then see which has been numerically the most prolific in diversification of forms and features. It should gratify a better motive than curiosity to trace back the history of other roots to their aboriginal condition. Types of the original stock may now be found, in waste places, in the wild turnip, wild carrot, parsnip, etc. "Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little," it may be truly and gratefully said, these roots, internetted with the very life-fibres of human sustenance, have been brought to their present perfection and value. The great governments and peoples of the world should give admiring and grateful thought to this fact. Here nature co-works with the most common and inartistic of human industries, as they are generally held, with faculties as subtle and beautiful as those which she brings to bear upon the choicest flowers. The same is true of grains and grasses for man and beast. They come down to us from a kind of heathen parentage, receiving new forms and qualities from age to age. The wheats, which make the bread of all the continents, now exhibit varieties which no one has undertaken to enumerate. Fruits follow the same rule, and show the same joint-working of Nature and Art as in the realm of flowers. The wheel within wheel, the circle within circle expand and ascend until the last circumferential line sweeps around all the world of created being, even taking in, upon the common radius, the highest and oldest of the angels. From the primrose peering from the hedge to the premier seraph wearing the coronet of his sublime companionship; from the lowest forms of vegetable existence to the loftiest reaches of moral nature this side of the Infinite, this everlasting law of co-working rules the ratio of progress and development. In all the concentric spheres strung on the radius measured by these extremes, there is the same co-acting of internal and external forces. And mind, of man or angel, guides and governs both. Not a flower that ever breathed on earth, not one that ever blushed in Eden, could open all its hidden treasures of beauty without the co-working of man's mind and taste. No animal that ever bowed its neck to his yoke, or gave him labor, milk or wool, could come to the full development of its latent vitalities and symmetries without the help of his thought and skill. The same law obtains in his own physical nature. Mind has made it what it is to-day, as compared with the wild features and habits of its aboriginal condition. Mind has worked for five thousand years upon its fellow- traveller through time, to fit it more and more fully for the companionship. It was delivered over to her charge naked, with its attributes and faculties as latent and dormant as those of the wild rose or dahlia. Through all the ages long, she has worked upon its development; educating its tastes; taming its appetites; refining its sensibilities; multiplying and softening its enjoyments; giving to every sense a new capacity and relish of delight; cultivating the ear for music, and ravishing it with the concord of sweet sounds; cultivating the eye to drink in the glorious beauty of the external world, then adding to natural sceneries ten thousand pictures of mountain, valley, river, man, angel, and scenes in human and heaven's history, painted by the thought-instructed hand; cultivating the palate to the most exquisite sensibilities, and exploring all the zones for luxuries to gratify them; cultivating the fine finger-nerves to such perception that they can feel the pulse of sleeping notes of music; cultivating the still finer organism that catches the subtle odors on the wing, and sends their separate or mingled breathings through every vein and muscle from head to foot. The same law holds good in the development of mind. It has now reached such an altitude, and it shines with such lustre, that our imagination can hardly find the way down to the morning horizon of its life, and measure its scope and power in the dim twilight of its first hours in time. The simple fact of its first condition would now seem to most men as exaggerated fancies, if given in the simplest forms of truthful statement. With all the mighty faculties to which it has come; with its capacity to count, name, measure and weigh stars that Adam, nor Moses, nor Solomon ever saw; with all the forces of nature it has subdued to the service of man, it cannot tell what simplest facts of the creation had to be ascertained by its first, feeble and confused reasonings. No one of to-day can say how low down in the scale of intelligence the human mind began to exercise its untried faculties; what apposition and deduction of thoughts it required to individualise the commonest objects that met the eye; even to determine that the body it animated was not an immovable part of the earth itself; to obtain fixed notions of distance, of color, light, and heat; to learn the properties and uses of plants, herbs, and fruits; even to see the sun sink out of sight with the sure faith that it would rise again. It was gifted with no instinct, to decide these questions instantly and mechanically. They had all to pass through the varied processes of reason. The first bird that sang in Eden, built its first nest as perfectly as its last. But, thought by thought, the first human mind worked out conclusions which the dullest beast or bird reached instantly without reason. What wonderful co-working of internal and external influences was provided to keep thought in sleepless action; to open, one by one, the myriad petals of the mind! Nature, with all its shifting sceneries, filled every new scope of vision with objects that hourly set thought at play in a new line of reflection. Then, out of man's physical being came a thousand still small voices daily, whispering, Think! think! The first-born necessities, few and simple, cried, "_Think_! for we want bread, we want drink, we want shelter and raiment against the cold." The finer senses cried continually, "Give! give thought to this, to that." The Eye, the Ear, the Palate and every other organ that could receive and diffuse delight, worked the mental faculties by day and night, up to the last sunset of the antediluvian world; and all the intellectual result of this working Noah took with him into the ark, and gave to his sons to hand over to succeeding ages. Flowers that Eve stuck in the hair of the infant Abel are just now opening the last casket of their beauty to the favored children of our time. This, in itself, is a marvellous instance of the law we are noticing. But what is this to the processes of thought and observation through which the mind of man has reached its present expansion; through which it has developed all these sciences, arts, industries and tastes, the literature and the intellectual life of these bright days of humanity! The figure is weak, and every figure would be weak when applied to the ratio or the result of this progression; but, at what future age of time, or of the existence beyond time, will the mind, that has thus wrought on earth, open its last petal, put forth no new breathing, unfold no new beauty under the eye of the Infinite, who breathed it, as an immortal atom of His own essence, into the being of man? Follow the radius up into the next concentric circle, and we see this law working to finer and sublimer issues in man's moral nature. We have glanced at what the mind has done for and through his physical faculties and being; how that being has re-acted upon the mind, and kept all its capacities at work in procuring new delight to the eye, ear, palate, and all the senses that yearned for enjoyment. We have noticed how the inside and outside world acted upon his reasoning powers in the dawn of creation; how slowly they mastered the simplest facts and phenomena of life in and around them, how slowly they expanded, through the intervening centuries, to their present development. The mind is the central personage in the trinity of man's being; linking the mortal and immortal to its life and action; vitalising the body with intelligence, until every vein, muscle, and nerve, and function thrills and moves to the impulse of thought; vitalising the soul with the vigorous activities of reason, giving hands as well as wings to its hopes, faiths, loves, and aspirations; giving a faculty of speech, action, and influence to each, and play to all the tempers and tendencies of its moral nature. Thus all the influences that the mind could inhale from the material world through man's physical being, and all it could draw out of the depths of Divine revelation, were the dew and the light which it was its mission to bring to the fostering, growth, and glory of the human soul. These were man's means wherewith to shape it for its great destiny; these he was to bring to its training and expansion; with these he was to co-work with the Infinite Father of Spirits to fit it for His presence and fellowship, just as he co-works with Nature in developing the latent life and faculties of the rose. What distillations of spiritual influence have dropped down out of heaven, through the ages, to help onward this joint work! What histories of human experience have come in the other direction to the same end!--fraught with the emotions of the human heart, from the first sin and sorrow of Adam to our own griefs, hopes, and joys; and all so many lessons for the discipline of this high-born nature with us! And yet how slow and almost imperceptible has been the development of this nature! How gently and gradually the expanding influences, human and divine, have been let in upon its latent faculties! See with what delicate fostering the petals of love, faith, and hope were taught to open, little by little, their hidden life and beauty,--taking Moses' history of the process. First, one human being on the earth, surrounded with beasts and birds that could give him no intelligent companionship and no fellow-feeling. Then the beautiful being created to meet these awakening yearnings of his nature; then the first outflow and interchange of human love. The narrative brings us to the next stage of the sentiment. Sin and sorrow afflict, but unite, both hearts in the saddest experience of humanity. They are driven out of the Eden of their first condition, but their very sufferings and fears re-Eden their mutual attachments in the very thorns of their troubles and sorrows. Then another being, of their own flesh, heir to their changed lot, and to these attachments, is added to their companionship. The first child's face that heaven or earth ever saw, opened its baby eyes on them and smiled in the light of their parental love. The history goes on. In process of time, there is a family of families, called a community, embracing hundreds of individuals connected by ties of blood so attenuated that they possess no binding influence. Common interests, affinities, and sentiments supply the place of family relationship, and make laws of amity and equity for them as a population. Next we have a community of communities, or a commonwealth of these individual populations, generally called a nation. Here is a lesson for the moral nature. Here are thousands and tens of thousands of men who never saw each others' faces. Will this expanded orb of humanity revolve around the same centre as the first family circle, or the first independent community? How can you give it cohesion and harmony? Extend the radii of family relationship and influence to its circumference in every direction. Throne the sovereign in a parent's chair, to execute a father's laws. He shall treat them as children, and they each other as brethren. Here is a grand programme for human society. Here is a vigorous discipline for the wayward will and temper of the human heart. How is a man to feel and act in these new conditions? How is he to regulate his hates and loves, his passions and appetites, to comply properly with these extended and complicated relationships? About half way from Adam's day to ours, there came an utterance from Mount Sinai that anticipated and answered these questions once for all, and for one and all. In that august revelation of the Divine Mind, every command of the Decalogue swung open upon the pivot of a _not_, except one; and that one referred to man's duty to man, and the promise attached to its fulfilment was only an earthly enjoyment. All the rest were restrictive; to curb this appetite, to bar that passion, to hedge this impulse, to check that disposition; in a word, to hold back the hand from open and positive transgression. Even the first, relating to His own Godhead and requirements, was but the first of the series of negatives, a pure and simple prohibition of idolatry. No reward of keeping this first great law, reaching beyond the boundary of a temporal condition, was promised at its giving out. With the headstrong passions, lusts, appetites, and tempers of flesh and blood bridled and bitted by these restrictions, and with no motives to obedience beyond the awards of a short life on earth, the human soul groped its way through twenty centuries after the Revelation of Sinai, feeling for the immortality which was not yet revealed to it, even "as through a glass darkly." Here and there, but thinly scattered through the ages, divinely illumined men caught, through the parting seams of the veil, a transient glimpse and ray of the life to come. Here and there, obscurely and hesitatingly, they refer to this vision of their faith. Here and there we seem to see a hope climbing up out of a good man's heart into the pathless mystery of a future existence, and bringing back the fragment of a leaf which it believes must have grown on one of the trees of life immortal. Moses, Job, David, and Isaiah give us utterances that savor of this belief; but they leave us in the dark in reference to its influence upon their lives. We cannot glean from these incidental expressions, whether it brought them any steady comfort, or sensibly affected their happiness. Thus, for four thousand years, the soul of man dashed its wings against the prison-bars of time, peering into the night through the cold, relentless gratings for some fugitive ray of the existence of which it had such strong and sleepless presentiment. It is a mystery. It may seem irreverent to approach it even with a conjecture. Human reason should be humble and silent before it, and close its questioning lips. It may not, however, transcend its prerogative to say meekly, _perhaps_. Perhaps, then, for two-thirds of the duration that the sun has measured off to humanity, that life and immortality which the soul groped after were veiled from its vision, until all its mental and spiritual faculties had been trained and strengthened to the ability to grasp and appropriate the great fact when it should be revealed. Perhaps it required all the space of forty centuries to put forth feelers and fibres capable of clinging to the revelation with the steady hold of faith. Perhaps it was to prove, by long, decisive probation, what the unaided human mind could do in constructing its idealisms of immortality. Perhaps it was permitted to erect a scaffolding of conceptions on which to receive the great revelation at the highest possible level of thought and instinctive sentiment to which man could attain without supernatural light and help. If this last _perhaps_ is preferable to the others, where was this scaffolding the highest? Over Confucius, or Socrates, or the Scandinavian seer, or Druid or Aztec priest? Was it highest at Athens, because there the great apostle to the Gentiles planted his feet upon it, and said, in the ears of the Grecian sophists, "Him whom ye ignorantly worship declare I unto you?" At that brilliant centre of pagan civilization it might have reached its loftiest altitude, measured by a purely intellectual standard; but morally, this scaffolding was on the same low level of human life and character all the world around. The immortalities erected by Egyptian or Grecian philosophy were no purer, in moral conception and attributes, than the mythological fantasies of the North American Indians. In them all, human nature was to have the old play of its passions and appetites; in some of them, a wider sweep and sway. There was not one in the whole set of Grecian deities half so moral and pure, in sentiment and conduct, as Socrates; nor were Jupiter and his subordinate celestials better than the average kings and courts of Greece. Out of the hay, wood, and stubble of sheer fancy the human mind was left to raise these fantastic structures. They exercised and entertained the imagination, but brought no light nor strength to the soul; no superior nor additional motives to shape the conduct of life. But they did this, undoubtedly, with all their delusions; they developed the _thought_ of immortality among the most benighted races of men. Their most perplexing unrealities kept the mind restless and almost eager for some supplementary manifestation; so that, when the Star of Bethlehem shone out in the sky of Palestine, there were men looking heavenward with expectant eyes at midnight. From that hour to this, and among pagan tribes of the lowest moral perception, the heralds of the Great Revelation have found the _thought_ of another existence active though confused. They have found everywhere a platform already erected, like that on which Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill, and on which they could stand and say to heathen communities, "Him whom ye ignorantly worship declare I unto you! That future life and immortality which your darkened eyes and hungry souls have been groping and hungering for, bring we to you, bright as the sun, in this great gospel of Divine Love." Had the Star of Bethlehem appeared a century earlier, it might not have met an upturned eye. If the Saviour of Mankind had come into the world in Solomon's day, not even a manger might have been found to cradle His first moments of human life; no Simeon waiting in the temple to greet the great salvation He brought to our race in His baby hands. Here, then, commences, as it were, the central era of the soul's training in time. Here heaven opened upon it the full sunlight and sunwarmth of its glorious life and immortality. Here fell upon its opening faculties the dews and rays and spiritual influences which were to shape its being and destiny. Here commenced such co-working to this end as can find no measure nor simile in any other sphere of co-operative activities in the world below or above. Here the trinity of man and the Trinity of the Godhead came into a co-action and fellowship overpassing the highest outside wonder of the universe. And all this co-working, fellowship, and partnership has been repeated in the experience of every individual soul that has been fitted for this great immortality. Here, too, this co-working is a law, not an incident; most marvellously, mightily, and minutely a law, as legislatively and executively as that which we have seen acting upon the development of the flower. Had not the great apostle, who was caught up into the third heavens and heard things unutterable, spoken of this law in such bold words, it would seem rash and irreverent in us to approach so near to its sublime revelation. Not ours but his they are; and it is bold enough in us to repeat them. He said it: that He, to whose name every knee should bow, and every tongue confess; to whom belonged and who should possess and rule all the kingdoms of the earth, "was made under the law," not of Moses, not of human nature only, but under this very law of CO-WORKING. Through this the world was to be regenerated and filled with His life and light. Through this a new creation was to be enfolded in the bosom of His glory, of grander dimensions and of diviner attributes than that over which the morning stars sang at the birth of time. Said this law to the individual soul, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to will and to do of His own good pleasure." To will and to do. It is His own good will and pleasure that the soul shall be fitted and lifted up to its high destiny through this co-working. It was His power to raise it to that condition without man's participation or conscious acquiescence; but it was His will and pleasure to enact this law of salvation. Looking across the circumference of the individual soul, what says this law? "Go ye out into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and, lo, I am with you unto the end,"--not as an invisible companion, not merely with the still, small voice of the Comforter to cheer you in trial, weakness and privation; but with you as a _co-worker_, with the irresistible energies of the Spirit of Power. He might have done the whole work alone. He might have sent forth twelve, and twelve times twelve legions of angels, and given each a voice as loud as his who is to wake the dead, and bid them preach His gospel in the ears of every human being. He might have given a tongue to every breathing of the breeze, an articulate speech to every ray of light, and sent them out with their ceaseless voices on the great errand of His love. It was his power to do this. He did not do it, because it was His will and pleasure to put Himself under this law we have followed so far; to make men His co- workers in this new creation, and co-heirs with Him in all its joy and glory. So completely has He made this law His rule of action, that, for eighteen hundred years, we have not a single instance in which the life and immortality which He brought to light have been revealed to a human soul without the direct and active participation of a human instrumentality. So completely have His meekest servants on earth put themselves under this law, that not one of them dares to expect, hope, or pray that He will reveal Himself to a single benighted heathen mind without this human co-working. Thus, begin where you will, in the flower of the field or the hyssop by the wall, and ascend from sphere to sphere, until there is no more space in things and beings created to draw another circumferential line, and you will see the action and the result of this great law of _Co-operative Activities_. When I first looked within the lids of that hollyhock, and was incited to read the rudimental lessons of the new leaves that man's art had added to its scant, original volume, I had no thought of finding so much matter printed on its pages. I have transcribed it here in the order of its paragraphs, hoping that some who read them may see in this life of flowers an interest they may have partially overlooked. CHAPTER IX. VISIT TO A THREE-THOUSAND-ACRE FARM--SAMUEL JONAS--HIS AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS, THEIR EXTENT, SUCCESS, AND GENERAL ECONOMY. The rain having ceased, I resumed my walk, in a southerly direction, to Chrishall Grange, the residence of Samuel Jonas, who may be called the largest farmer in England; not, perhaps, in extent of territory occupied, but in the productive capacity of the land cultivated, and in the values realised from it. It is about four miles east of Royston, bordering on the three counties of Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, and Essex, though lying mainly in the latter. It contains upwards of 3,000 acres, and nearly every one of them is arable, and under active cultivation. It consists of five farms, belonging to four different landlords; still they are so contiguous and coherent that they form substantially one great block. No one could be more deeply impressed with the magnitude of such an establishment, and of the operations it involves, than a New England farmer. Taking the average of our agriculturists, their holdings or occupations, to use an English term, will not exceed 100 acres each; and, including woodland, swamp, and mountain, not over half of this space can be cultivated. To the owner and tiller of such a farm, a visit to Mr. Jonas' occupation must be interesting and instructive. Here is a man who cultivates a space which thirty Connecticut farmers would feel themselves rich to own and occupy, with families making a population of full two hundred souls, supporting and filling a church and school-house. In the great West of America, where cattle are bred and fed somewhat after the manner of Russian steppes or Mexican ranches, such an occupation would not be unusual nor unexpected; but in the very heart of England, containing a space less than the state of Virginia, a tract of such extent and value in the hands of a single farmer is a fact which a New Englander must regard at first with no little surprise. He will not wonder how one man can _rent_ such a space, but how he can _till_ it to advantage; how, even with the help of several intelligent and active sons, he can direct and supervise operations which fill the hands of thirty solid farmers of Massachusetts. Two specific circumstances enable him to perform this undertaking. In the first place, agriculture in England is reduced to an exact and rigid science. To use a nautical phrase, it is all plain sailing. The course is charted even in the written contract with the landlord. The very term, "_course_," is adopted to designate the direction which the English farmer is to observe. Skilled hands are plenty and pressing to man the enterprise. With such a chart, and such a force, and such an open sea, it is as easy for him to sail the "Great Eastern" as a Thames schooner. The helm of the great ship plays as freely and faithfully to the motion of his will as the rudder of the small craft. Then the English farmer has a great advantage over the American in this circumstance: he can hire cheaply a grade of labor which is never brought to our market. Men of great skill and experience, who in America would conduct farms of their own, and could not be hired at any price, may be had here in abundance for foremen, at from twelve to sixteen shillings, or from three to four dollars a week, they boarding and lodging themselves. And the number of such men is constantly increasing, from two distinct causes. In the first place there is a large generation of agricultural laborers in England, now in the prime of manhood, who have just graduated, as it were, through all the scientific processes of agriculture developed in the last fifteen years. The ploughmen, cowmen, cartmen, and shepherds, even, have become familiar with the established routine; and every set of these hands can produce one or two active and intelligent laborers who will gladly and ably fill the post of under-foreman for a shilling or two a week of advanced wages. Then, by the constant absorption of small holdings into large farms, which is going on more rapidly from this increased facility of managing great occupations, a very considerable number of small farmers every year are falling into the labor market, being reduced to the necessity of either emigrating to cheaper lands beyond the sea, or of hiring themselves out at home as managers, foremen or common laborers on the estates thus enlarged by their little holdings. From these two sources of supply, the English tenant-farmer, beyond all question, is able to cultivate a larger space, and conduct more extensive operations than any other agriculturist in the world, at least by free labor. The first peculiarity of this large occupation I noticed, was the extent of the fields into which it was divided. I had never seen any so large before in England. There were only three of the whole estate under 60, and some contained more than 400 acres each, giving the whole an aspect of amplitude like that of a rolling prairie farm in Illinois. Not one of the little, irregular morsels of land half swallowed by its broad-bottomed hedging, which one sees so frequently in an English landscape, could be found on this great holding. The white thorn fences were new, trim, and straight, occupying as little space as possible. The five amalgamated farms are light turnip soil, with the exception of about 200 acres, which are well drained. The whole surface resembles that of a heavy ground swell of the sea; nearly all the fields declining gently in different directions. The view from the rounded crest of the highest wave was exceedingly picturesque and beautiful, presenting a vista of plenty which Ceres of classic mythology never saw; for never, in ancient Greece, Italy, or Egypt, were the crops of vegetation so diversified and contrasting with each other as are interspersed over an English farm of the present day. It is doubtful if 3,000 acres of land, lying in one solid block, could be found in England better adapted for testing and rewarding the most scientific and expensive processes of agriculture, than this great occupation of Mr. Jonas. Certainly, no equal space could present a less quantity of waste land, or occupy less in hedges or fences. And it is equally certain that no estate of equal size is more highly cultivated, or yields a greater amount of production per acre. Its occupant, also, is what may be called an hereditary farmer. His father and his remote ancestors were farmers, and he, as in the case of the late Mr. Webb, has attained to his present position as an agriculturist by practical farming. Mr. Jonas cultivates his land on the "Four-course system." This very term indicates the degree to which English agriculture has been reduced to a precise and rigid science. It means here, that the whole arable extent of his estate is divided equally between four great crops; or, wheat, 750 acres; barley and oats, 750; seeds and pulse, 750; and roots, 750. Now, an American farmer, in order to form an approximate idea of the amount of labor given to the growth of these crops, must remember that all these great fields of wheat, oats, barley, turnips, beans, and peas, containing in all over 2,000 acres, are hoed by hand once or twice. His cereals are all drilled in at seven inches apart, turnips at seventeen. The latter are horse-hoed three or four times; and as they are drilled on the flat, or without ridging the surface of the ground, they are crossed with a horse-hoe with eight V shaped blades. This operation leaves the plants in bunches, which are singled out by a troop of children. One hand-hoeing and two or three more horse-hoeings finish the labor given to their cultivation. It is remarkable what mechanical skill is brought to bear upon these operations. In the first place, the plough cuts a furrow as straight and even as if it were turned by machinery. A kind of esprit de corps animates the ploughmen to a vigorous ambition in the work. They are trained to it with as much singleness of purpose as the smiths of Sheffield are to the forging of penknife blades. On a large estate like that occupied by Mr. Jonas, they constitute an order, not of Odd Fellows, but of Straight Furrow-men, and are jealous of the distinction. When the ground is well prepared, and made as soft, smooth, and even as a garden, the drilling process is performed with a judgement of the eye and skill of hand more marvellous still. The straightness of the lines of verdure which, in a few weeks, mark the tracks of the seed-tubes, is surprising. They are drawn and graded with such precision that, when the plants are at a certain height, a horse-hoe, with eight blades, each wide enough to cut the whole intervening space between two rows, is passed, hoeing four or five drills at once. Of course, if the lines of the drill and hoe did not exactly correspond with each other, whole rows of turnips would be cut up and destroyed. I saw this process going on in a turnip field, and thought it the most skilful operation connected with agriculture that I had ever witnessed. One of the principal advantages Mr. Jonas realises in cultivating such an extent of territory, is the ability to economise his working forces, of man, beast, and agricultural machinery. He saves what may be called the superfluous fractions, which small farmers frequently lose. For instance, a man with only fifty acres would need a pair of stout horses, a plough, cart, and all the other implements necessary for the growth and gathering of the usual crops. Now, Mr. Jonas has proved by experience, that, in cultivating his great occupation, the average force of two and a quarter horses is sufficient for a hundred acres. Here is a saving of almost one half the expense of horse-force per acre which the small farmer incurs, and full one half of the use of carts, ploughs, and other implements. The whole number of horses employed is about seventy-six; and the number of men and boys about a hundred. The whole of this great force is directed by Mr. Jonas and his sons with as much apparent ease and equanimity as the captain of a Cunarder would manifest in guiding a steamship across the Atlantic. The helm and ropes of the establishment obey the motion of one mind with the same readiness and harmony. A fact or two may serve an American farmer as a tangible measure whereby to estimate the extent of the operations thus conducted by one man. To come up to the standard of scientific and successful agriculture in England, it is deemed requisite that a tenant farmer, on renting an occupation, should have capital sufficient to invest 10 pounds, or $50, per acre in stocking it with cattle, sheep, horses, farming implements, fertilisers, etc. Mr. Jonas, beyond a doubt, invests capital after this ratio upon the estate he tills. If so, then the total amount appropriated to the land which he _rents_ cannot be less than 30,000 pounds, or nearly $150,000. The inventory of his live stock, taken at last Michaelmas, resulted in these figures:--Sheep, 6,581 pounds; horses, 2,487 pounds; bullocks, 2,218 pounds; pigs, 452 pounds; making a grand total of 11,638 pounds. Every animal bred on the estate is fatted, but by no means with the grain and roots grown upon it. The outlay for oil-cake and corn purchased for feeding, amounts to about 4,000 pounds per annum. Another heavy expenditure is about 1,700 pounds yearly for artificial fertilisers, consisting of guano and blood-manure. Mr. Jonas is one of the directors of the company formed for the manufacture of the latter. The whole income of this establishment is realised from two sources- -meat and grain. And this is the distinguishing characteristic of English farming generally. Not a pound of hay, straw, or roots is sold off the estate. Indeed, this is usually prohibited by the conditions of the contract with the landlord. So completely has Mr. Jonas adhered to this rule, that he could not give me the market price of hay, straw, or turnips per ton, as he had never sold any, and was not in the habit of noticing the market quotations of those products. I was surprised at one fact which I learned in connection with his economy. He keeps about 170 bullocks; buying in October and selling in May. Now, it would occasion an American farmer some wonderment to be told that this great herd of cattle is fed and fatted almost entirely for the manure they make. It is doubtful if the difference between the cost and selling prices averages 2 pounds, or $10, per head. For instance, the bullocks bought in will average 13 or 14 pounds. A ton of linseed-cake and some meal are given to each beast before it is sent to market, costing from 10 to 12 pounds. When sold, the bullocks average 24 or 25 pounds. Thus the cake and the meal equal the whole difference between the buying and selling price, so that all the roots, chaff, and attendance go entirely to the account of manure. These three items, together with the value of pasturage for the months the cattle may lie in the fields, from October to May inclusive, could hardly amount to less than 5 pounds per beast, which, for 170, would be 850 pounds. Then 1,700 pounds are paid annually for guano and artificial manures. Now add the value of the wheat, oat and barley straw grown on 1,500 acres, and mostly thrown into the barn-yards, or used as bedding for the stables, and you have one great division of the fertilising department of Chrishall Grange. The amount of these three items cannot be less than 3,000 pounds. Then there is another source of fertilisation nearly as productive and valuable. Upwards of 3,000 sheep are kept on the estate, of which 1,200 are breeding ewes. These are folded, acre by acre, on turnips, cole, or trefoil, and those fattened for the market are fed with oil-cake in the field. The locusts of Egypt could not have left the earth barer of verdure than these sheep do the successive patches of roots in which they are penned for twenty-four or forty-eight hours, nor could any other process fertilise the land more thoroughly and cheaply. Then 76 horses and 200 fattening hogs add their contingent to the manurial expenditure and production of the establishment. Thus the fertilising material applied to the estate cannot amount to less than 5,000 pounds, or $24,000, per annum. Sheep are the most facile and fertile source of nett income on the estate. Indeed, nearly all the profit on the production of meat is realised from them. Most of those I saw were Southdowns and Hampshires, pure or crossed, with here and there a Leicester. After being well fattened, they fetch in the market about double the price paid for them as stock sheep. About 2,000, thus fattened, including lambs, are sold yearly. They probably average about 2 pounds, or $10, per head; thus amounting to the nice little sum of 4,000 pounds a year, as one of the sources of income. Perhaps it would be easier to estimate the total expenditure than the gross income of such an establishment as that of Mr. Jonas. We have aggregated the former in a lump; assuming that the whole capital invested in rent, live stock, agricultural machinery, manures, labor of man and horse, fattening material, etc., amounts to 30,000 pounds. We may extract from this aggregate several estimated items which will indicate the extent of his operations, putting the largest expenditure at the head of the list. Corn and oil-cake purchased for feeding 4,000l. Guano and manufactured manures 1,700 Labor of 100 men and boys at the average of 20l. per annum 2,000 Labor of 76 horses, including their keep, 20l. per annum 1,500 Use and wear of steam-engine and agricultural machinery 500 Commutation money to men for beer 400 ----- 10,100l. These are some of the positive annual outlays, without including rent, interest on capital invested, and other items that belong to the debit side of the ledger. The smallest on the list given I would commend to the consideration of every New England farmer who may read these pages. It is stated under the real fact. The capacity of English laborers for drinking strong beer is a wonder to the civilised world. They seem to cling to this habit as to a vital condition of their very life and being. One would be tempted to think that malt liquor was a primary and bread a secondary necessity to them; it must cost them most of the two, at any rate. And generally they are as particular about the quality as the quantity, and complain if it is not of "good body," as well as full tale. In many cases the farmer furnishes it to them; sometimes brewing it himself, but more frequently buying it already made. Occasionally a farmer "commutes" with his men; allowing a certain sum of money weekly in lieu of beer, leaving them to buy and use it as they please. I understood that Mr. Jonas adopts the latter course, not only to save himself the trouble of furnishing and rationing such a large quantity of beer, but also to induce the habit among his men of appropriating the money he gives them instead of drink to better purposes. The sum paid to them last year was actually 452 pounds, or about $2,200! Now, it would be quite safe to say, that there is not a farm in the State of Connecticut that produces pasturage, hay, grain, and roots enough to pay this beer-bill of a single English occupation! This fact may not only serve to show the scale of magnitude which agricultural enterprise has assumed in the hands of such men as Mr. Jonas, but also to indicate to our American farmers some of the charges upon English agriculture from which they are exempt; thanks to the Maine Law, or, to a better one still, that of voluntary disuse of strong drink on our farms. I do not believe that 100 laboring men and boys could be found on one establishment in Great Britain more temperate, intelligent, industrious, and moral than the set employed by Mr. Jonas. Still, notice the tax levied upon his land by this beer-impost. It amounted last year to three English shillings, or seventy-two cents, on every acre of the five consolidated farms, including all the space occupied by hedges, copses, buildings, etc. Suppose a Maine farmer were obliged, by an inexorable law of custom, to pay a beer-tax of seventy-two cents per acre on his estate of 150 acres, or $108, annually, would he not be glad to "commute" with his hired men, by leaving them in possession of his holding and migrating to some distant section of the country where such a custom did not exist? The gross income of this great holding it would be more difficult to estimate. But no one can doubt the yearly issues of Mr. Jonas' balance-sheet, when he has been able to expand his operations gradually to their present magnitude from the capital and experience acquired by successful farming. Perhaps the principal sources of revenue would approximate to the following figures:-- 2,000 fat sheep and lambs at 2l. 4,000l. 150 fat bullocks at 25l. 3,750 200 fat pigs = 40,000 lbs., at 4d 666 22,500 bushels of wheat, at 6s 6,750 9,375 bushels of oats, at 2s 937 7,500 bushels of barley, at 3s 1,125 ----- Total of these estimated items 17,228l. This, of course, is a mere estimate of the principal sources of income upon which Mr. Jonas depends for a satisfactory result of his balance-sheet. Each item is probably within the mark. I have put down the crop of wheat of 750 acres at the average of thirty bushels per acre, and at 6s. per bushel, which are quite moderate figures. I have assumed 375 acres each for barley and oats, estimating the former at forty bushels per acre, and the latter at fifty; then reserving half of the two crops for feeding and fatting the live stock; also all the beans, peas, and roots for the same purpose. If the estimate is too high on some items, the products sold, and not enumerated in the foregoing list, such as cole and other seeds, will rectify, perhaps, the differences, and make the general result presented closely approximate to the real fact. As there is probably no other farm in Great Britain of the same size so well calculated to test the best agricultural science and economy of the day as the great occupation of Mr. Jonas, and as I am anxious to convey to American farmers a well-developed idea of what that science and economy are achieving in this country, I will dwell upon a few other facts connected with this establishment. The whole space of 3,000 acres is literally under cultivation, or in a sense which we in New England do not generally give to that term--that is, there is not, I believe, a single acre of permanent meadow in the whole territory. All the vast amount of hay consumed, and all the pasture grasses have virtually to be grown like grain. There is so much ploughing and sowing involved in the production of these grass crops, that they are called "seeds." Thus, by this four-course system, every field passes almost annually under a different cropping, and is mowed two or three times in ten years. This fact, in itself, will not only suggest the immense amount of labor applied, but also the quality and condition of 3,000 acres of land that can be surfaced to the scythe in this manner. The _seeds_ or grasses sown by Mr. Jonas for pasturage and hay are chiefly white and red clover and trefoil. His rule of seeding is the following:-- Wheat, from 8 to 10 pecks per acre Barley, from 12 to 14 " " " Oats, from 18 to 22 " " " Winter Beans, 8 " " " Red Clover, 20 lbs " " White Clover, 16 lbs " " Trefoil, 30 to 35 lbs. " " This, in New England, would be called very heavy seeding, especially in regard to oats and the grasses. I believe that twelve pecks of oats to the acre, rather exceed our average rule. Good clover seed should weigh two pounds to the quart, and eight quarts, or sixteen pounds, are the usual seeding with us. As labor of horse and man must be economised to the best advantage on such an estate, it may be interesting to know the expense of the principal operations. The cost of ploughing averages 7s. 6d., or $1 80c. per acre. For roots, the land is ploughed three or four times, besides harrowing, drilling, and rolling. The hoeing of wheat and roots varies from 2s. to 5s., or from 48c. to $1 20c. per acre. The sheep are all folded on turnips or grass fields, except the breeding ewes in the lambing season. The enclosures are made of _hurdles_, of which all reading Americans have read, but not one in a thousand ever has seen. They are a kind of diminutive, portable, post-and-rail fence, of the New England pattern, made up in permanent _lengths_, so light that a stout man might carry two or three of them on his shoulders at once. The two posts are sawed or split pieces of wood, about two inches thick, three wide, and from five to six feet in length. They are generally square-morticed for the rails, which are frequently what we should call split hoop- holes, but in the best kind are slats of hard wood, about two and a half inches wide and one in thickness. Midway between the two posts, the rails are nailed to an upright slat or brace, to keep them from swaying. Sometimes a farmer makes his own hurdles, thus furnishing indoor work for his men in winter, when they cannot labor in the fields; but most generally they are bought of those who manufacture them on a large scale. Some idea of the extent of sheep-folding on Chrishall Grange may be inferred from the fact, that the hurdling on it, if placed in one straight, continuous line, would reach full ten miles! A portable steam engine, of twelve-horse power, looking like a common railway locomotive strayed from its track and taken up and housed in a farmer's waggon-shed, performs prodigies of activity and labor. Indeed, search the three realms through and through, and you would hardly find one on its own legs doing such remarkable varieties of work. Briareus, with all his fabled faculties, never had such numerous and supple fingers as this creature of human invention. When set a-going, they are clattering and whisking and frisking everywhere, on the barn-floor, on the hay-loft, in the granary, under the eaves, down cellar, and all this at the same time. It is doubtful if any stationary engine in a machine shop ever performed more diversified operations at once; thus proving most conclusively how a farmer may work motive power which it was once thought preposterous in him to think of using. It threshes wheat and other kinds of grain at the rate of from 400 to 500 bushels a day; it conveys the straw up to a platform across what we call the "_great beams_," where it is cut into chaff and dropped into a great bay, at the trifling expense of sixpence, or twelve cents, per quantity grown on an acre! While it is doing this in one direction, it is turning machinery in another that cleans and weighs the grain off into sacks ready for the market. Open the doors right and left and you find it at work like reason, breaking oil-cake, grinding corn for the fat stock, turning the grindstone, pitching, pounding, paring, rubbing, grabbing, and twisting, threshing, wrestling, chopping, flopping, and hopping, after the manner of "The Waters of Lodore." The housings for live stock are most admirably constructed as well as extensive, and all the great yards are well fitted for making and delivering manure. I noticed here the best arrangement for feeding swine that I had ever seen before, and of a very simple character. Instead of revolving troughs, or those that are to be pulled out like drawers to be cleaned, a long, stationary one, generally of iron, extends across the whole breadth of the compartment next to the feeding passage. The board or picket-fence forming this end of the enclosure, from eight to twelve feet in length, is hung on a pivot at each side, playing in an iron ring or socket let into each of the upright posts that support it. Midway in the lower rail of this fence is a drop bolt which falls into the floor just behind the trough. At the feeding time, the man has only to raise this bolt and let it fall on the inner side, and he has the whole length and width of the trough free to clear with a broom and to fill with the feed. Then, raising the bolt, and bringing it back to its first place, the operation is performed in a minute with the greatest economy and convenience. There was one feature of this great farm home which I regarded with much satisfaction. It was the housing of the laborers employed on the estate. This is done in blocks of well-built, well-ventilated, and very comfortable cottages, all within a stone's throw of the noble old mansion occupied by Mr. Jonas. Thus, no long and weary miles after the fatigue of the day, or before its labor begins, have to be walked over by his men in the cold and dark, as in many cases in which the agricultural laborer is obliged to trudge on foot from a distant village to his work, making a hard and sunless journey at both ends of the day. Although my visit at this, perhaps the largest, farming establishment in England, occupied only a few hours, I felt on leaving that I had never spent an equal space of time more profitably and pleasantly in the pursuit or appreciation of agricultural knowledge. The open and large-hearted hospitality and genial manners of the proprietor and his family seemed to correspond with the dimensions and qualities of his holding, and to complete, vitalise, and beautify the symmetries of a true ENGLISH FARMER'S HOME. CHAPTER X. ROYSTON AND ITS SPECIALITIES--ENTERTAINMENT IN A SMALL VILLAGE--ST. IVES--VISITS TO ADJOINING VILLAGES--A FEN-FARM--CAPITAL INVESTED IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN AGRICULTURE COMPARED--ALLOTMENTS AND GARDEN TENANTRY--BARLEY GROWN ON OATS. From Chrishall Grange I went on to Royston, where I found very quiet and comfortable quarters in a small inn called "The Catherine Wheel," for what reason it is not yet clear to my mind, and the landlady could not enlighten me on the subject. I have noticed two inns in London of the same name, and have seen it mounted on several other public houses in England. Why that ancient saint and the machinery of her torture should be alone selected from the history and host of Christian martyrs, and thus associated with houses of entertainment for man and beast, is a mystery which I will not undertake to explore. To be sure, the head of a puncheon of rum is round like a wheel, and if the liquor were not too much diluted with water, it might make a revolving illumination quite interesting, if set on fire and rolled into the gutter. It may possibly suggest that lambent ignition of the brain which the fiery drinks of the establishment produce, and which so many infatuated victims think delightful. Both these inferences, and all others I could fancy, are so dubious that I will not venture further into the meaning of this singular appellation given to a tavern. Royston is a goodly and comfortable town, just inside the eastern boundary of Hertfordshire. It has its full share of half-legible and interesting antiquities, including the ruins of a royal palace, a cave, and several other broken monuments of the olden time, all festooned with the web-work of hereditary fancies, legends, and shreds of unravelled history dyed to the vivid colors of variegated imagination. It also boasts and enjoys a great, breezy common, large enough to hold such another town, and which few in the kingdom can show. Then, if it cannot cope with Glastonbury in showing, to the envious and credulous world, a thorn-tree planted by Joseph of Arimathaea, and blossoming always at Christmas, it can fly a bird of greater antiquity, which never flapped its wings elsewhere, so far as I can learn. It may be the lineal descendant of Noah's raven that has come down to this particular community without a cross with any other branch of the family. It is called "The Royston Crow," and is a variety of the genus which you will find in no other country. It is a great, heavy bird, larger than his colored American cousin, and is distinguished by a white back. Indeed, seen walking at a distance, he looks like our Bobolink expanded to the size of a large hen-hawk. To have such a wild bird all to themselves, and of its own free will, notwithstanding the length and power of its wings, and the force of centrifugal attractions, is a distinction which the good people of this favored town have good reason to appreciate at its proper value. Nor are they insensible to the honor. The town printer put into my hands a monthly publication called "THE ROYSTON CROW," containing much interesting and valuable information. It might properly have embraced a chapter on entomology; but, perhaps, it would have been impolitic for the personal interests of the bird to have given wide publicity to facts in this department of knowledge. For, after all, there may exist in the neighborhood certain special kinds of bugs and other insects which lie at the foundation of his preference for the locality. The next day I again faced northward, and walked as far as Caxton, a small, rambling village, which looked as if it had not shaved and washed its face, and put on a clean shirt for a shocking length of time. It was dark when I reached it; having walked twelve miles after three p.m. There was only one inn, properly speaking, in the town, and since the old coaching time, it had contracted itself into the fag-end of a large, dark, seedy-looking building, where it lived by selling beer and other sharp and cheap drinks to the villagers; nineteen-twentieths of whom appeared to be agricultural laborers. The entertainment proffered on the sign-board over the door was evidently limited to the tap-room. Indeed, this and the great, low- jointed and brick-floored kitchen opening into to it, seemed to constitute all the living or inhabited space in the building. I saw, at a glance, that the chance for a bed was faint and small; and I asked Landlord Rufus for one doubtingly, as one would ask for a ready-made pulpit or piano at a common cabinet-maker's shop. He answered me clearly enough before he spoke, and he spoke as if answering a strange and half-impertinent question, looking at me searchingly, as if he suspected I was quizzing him. His "No!" was short and decided; but, seeing I was honest and earnest in the inquiry, he softened his negative with the explanation that their beds were all full. It seemed strange to me that this should be so in a building large enough for twenty, and I hesitated hopefully, thinking he might remember some small room in which he might put me for the night. To awaken a generous thought in him in this direction, I intimated how contented I would be with the most moderate accommodation. But it was in vain. The house was full, and I must seek for lodging elsewhere. There were two or three other public houses in the village that might take me in. I went to them one by one. They all kept plenty of beer, but no bed. They, too, looked at me with surprise for asking for such a thing. Apparently, there had been no demand for such entertainment by any traveller since the stage-coach ceased to run through the village. I went up and down, trying to negotiate with the occupants of some of the best-looking cottages for a cot or bunk; but they had none to spare, as the number of wondering children that stared at me kindly, at once suggested before I put the question. It was now quite dark, and I was hungry and tired; and the prospect of an additional six miles walk was not very animating. What next? I will go back to Landlord Rufus and try a new influence on his sensibilities. Who knows but it will succeed? I will touch him on his true character as a Briton. So I went back, with my last chance hanging on the experiment. I told him I was an American traveller, weary, hungry, and infirm of health, and would pay an extra price for an extra effort to give me a bed for the night. I did not say all this in a Romanus-civus-sum sort of tone. No! dear, honest Old Abe, you would have done the same in my place. I made the great American Eagle coo like a dove in the request; and it touched the best instincts of the British Lion within the man. It was evident in a moment that I had put my case in a new aspect to him. He would talk with the "_missus_;" he withdrew into the back kitchen, a short conference ensued, and both came out together and informed me that they had found a bed, unexpectedly vacant, for my accommodation. And they would get up some tea and bread and butter for me, too. Capital! A sentiment of national pride stole in between every two feelings of common satisfaction at this result. The thought would come in and whisper, not for your importunity as a common fellow mortal were this bed and this loaf unlocked to you, but because you were an American citizen. So I followed "the missus" into that great kitchen, and sat down in one corner of the huge fire-place while she made the tea. It was a capacious museum of culinary curiosities of the olden time, all arranged in picturesque groups, yet without any aim at effect. Pots, kettles, pans, spits, covers, hooks and trammels of the Elizabethan period, apparently the heirlooms of several intersecting generations, showed in the fire-light like a work of artistry; the sharp, silvery brightness of the tin and the florid flush of burnished copper making distinct disks in the darkness. It was with a rare sentiment of comfort that I sat by that fire of crackling faggots, looked up at the stars that dropped in their light as they passed over the top of the great chimney, and glanced around at the sides of that old English kitchen, panelled with plates and platters and dishes of all sizes and uses. And this fire was kindled and this tea-kettle was singing for me really because I was an American! I could not forget that--so I deemed it my duty to keep up the character. Therefore, I told the _missus_ and her bright-eyed niece a great many stories about America; some of which excited their admiration and wonder. Thus I sat at the little, round, three- legged table, inside the out-spreading chimney, for an hour or more, and made as cozy and pleasant a meal of it as ever I ate. Besides all this, I had the best bed in the house, and several "Good nights!" on retiring to it, uttered with hearty good-will by voices softened to an accent of kindness. Next morning I was introduced into the best parlor, and had a capital breakfast, and then resumed my walk with a pleasant memory of my entertainment in that village inn. I passed through a fertile and interesting section to St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire. Here I remained with some friends for a week, visiting neighboring villages by day and returning at night. St. Ives is a pleasant, well-favored town, just large enough to constitute a coherent, neighborly, and well-regulated community. It is the centre-piece of a rich, rural picture, which, without any strikingly salient features, pleases the eye with lineaments of quiet beauty symmetrically developed by the artistry of Nature. The river Ouse meanders through a wide, fertile flat, or what the Scotch would call a strath, which gently rises on each side into pleasantly undulating uplands. Parks, groves, copses, and hedge-row trees are interspersed very happily, and meadow, pasture, and grain-fields seen through them, with villages, hamlets, farm-houses, and isolated cottages, make up a landscape that grows more and more interesting as you contemplate it. And this placid locality, with its peaceful river seemingly sleeping in the bosom of its long and level meadows, was the scene of Oliver Cromwell's young, fiery manhood. Here, where Nature invites to tranquil occupations and even exercises of the mind, he trained the latent energies of his will for action in the great drama that overturned a throne and transformed a nation. Here, till very lately, stood his "barn," and here he drilled the first squadron of his "Ironsides." My friend and host drove me one day to see a fen-farm a few miles beyond Ramsey, at which we remained over night and enjoyed the old- fashioned English hospitality of the establishment with lively relish. It was called "The Four-Hundred-Acre-Farm," to distinguish it from a hundred others, laid out on the same dead level, with lines and angles as straight and sharp as those of a brick. You will meet scores of persons in England who speak admiringly of the great prairies of our Western States--but I never saw one in Illinois as extensive as the vast level expanse you may see in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. In fact, the space of a large county has been fished up out of a shallow sea of salt water by human labor and capital. I will not dwell here upon the expense, process, and result of this gigantic operation. It would require a whole chapter to convey an approximate idea of the character and dimensions of the enterprise. The feat of Cyrus in turning the current of the Euphrates was the mere making of a short mill-race compared with the labor of lifting up these millions of acres bodily out of the flood that had covered and held them in quiescent solution since the world began. This Great Prairie of England, generally called here the Fens, or Fenland, would be an interesting and instructive section for the agriculturists of our Western States to visit. They would see how such a region can be made quite picturesque, as well as luxuriantly productive. Let them look off upon the green sea from one of the upland waves, and it will be instructive to them to see and know, that all the hedge-trees, groves, and copses that intersect and internect the vast expanse of green and gold were planted by man's hands. Such a landscape would convince them that the prairies of Illinois and Iowa may be recovered from their almost depressing monotony by the same means. The soil of this district is apparently the same as that around Chicago--black and deep, on a layer of clay. It pulverises as easily in dry weather, and makes the same inky and sticky composition in wet. To give it more body, or to cross it with a necessary and supplementary element, a whole field is often trenched by the spade as clean as one could be furrowed by the plough. By this process the substratum of clay is thrown up, to a considerable thickness, upon the light, black, almost volatile soil, and mixed with it when dry; thus giving it a new character and capacity of production. Everything seems to grow on a Californian scale in this fen district. Although the soil thus rescued from the waters that had flooded and half dissolved it, was at first as deep, black, and naturally fertile as that of our prairies, those who commenced its cultivation did not make the same mistake as did our Western farmers. They did not throw their manure into the broad draining canals to get rid of it, trusting to the inexhaustible fertility of the alluvial earth, as did the wheat growers of Indiana and Illinois to their cost; but they husbanded and well applied all the resources of their barn-yards. In consequence of this economy, there is no deterioration of annual averages of their crops to be recorded, as in some of our prairie States, which have been boasting of the natural and inexhaustible fertility of their soil even with the record of retrograde statistics before their eyes. The grain and root crops are very heavy; and a large business is done in growing turnip seed for the world in some sections of this fen country. A large proportion of the quantity we import comes from these low lands. Our host of the Four-Hundred-Acre Farm took us over his productive occupation, which was in a very high state of cultivation. The wheat was yellowing to harvest, and promised a yield of forty-two bushels to the acre. The oats were very heavy, and the root crops looked well, especially a field of mangel-wurzel. He apportions his land to different crops after this ratio:-- Wheat, 120 acres; oats, 80; rye-grass and clover, 50; roots, 60. His live stock consisted of 300 sheep, 50 to 60 head of cattle, and 70 to 80 hogs. His working force was from 10 to 12 men, 14 farm horses, and 4 nags. It may interest some of my American readers to know the number, character, and cost of the implements employed by this substantial English farmer in cultivating an estate of 400 acres. I noted down the following list, when he was showing us his tool-house:-- l. $ l. $ 6 Ploughs at 4 each = 20 24 = 120 6 Horse-carts, at 14 each = 70 84 = 420 1 Large Iron Roller and Gearing, 13 = 65 1 Cambridge Roller 14 = 70 1 Twelve-Coulter Drill 46 = 230 3 Harrows at 3 each = 15 9 = 45 2 Great Harrows at 3 each = 15 6 = 30 --- --- Total cost of these Implements 196l.$980 These figures will represent the working forces and implemental machinery of a well-tilled farm of 400 acres in England. They will also indicate the amount of capital required to cultivate an estate of this extent here. Let us compare it with the amount generally invested in New England for a farm of equal size. Thousands that have been under cultivation for a hundred years, may be bought for 5 pounds, or $25, per acre, including house, barn, and other buildings and appurtenances. It is a very rare thing for a man with us to buy 400 acres at once; but if he did, it would probably be on these conditions:-- He would pay 400 pounds, or $2,000, down at the time of purchase, giving his notes for the remaining 1,600 pounds, or $8,000, at 6 per cent. interest payable annually, together with the yearly instalment of principal specified in each note. He would perhaps have 200 pounds, or $1,000, left of his capital for working power and agricultural implements. He would probably divide it after the following manner:-- l. l. $ 2 Yokes of Oxen, at 25 = 50 = 250 1 Horse 20 = 100 2 Ox-carts, at 15 = 30 = 150 1 Waggon 20 = 100 2 Ox-sleds, at 1 = 2 = 10 2 Ox-ploughs, at 2 = 4 = 20 1 Single Horse-plough 1 = 5 2 Harrows 2 = 4 = 20 Cradles, scythes, hoes, rakes, flails, etc. 4 = 20 Fanning-mill, hay-cutter, and corn-sheller. 4 = 20 15 Cows, steers, and heifers 45 = 225 6 Shoats, or pigs, six months old 10 = 50 These figures would indicate a large operation for a practical New England farmer, who should undertake to purchase and cultivate an estate of 400 acres. Indeed, not one in a hundred buying such a large tract of land would think of purchasing all the implements on this list at once, or entirely new. One of his carts, sleds, and harrows would very probably be "second-handed," and bought at half the price of a new one. Thus, a substantial farmer with us would think he was beginning on a very satisfactory and liberal footing, if he had 200 pounds, or $1,000, in ready money for stocking a holding of 400 acres with working cattle and implemental machinery, cows, pigs, etc. Now, compare this outlay with that of our host of the Four-Hundred-Acre Farm in Lincolnshire. We will begin with his- - l. l. $ 14 Farm horses, at the low figure of 20 each = 280 = 1,400 4 Nags, or saddle and carriage horses 2O each = 8O = 400 300 Stock sheep 1 each = 300 = 1,500 7O Pigs, of different ages 2 each = 140 = 900 5O Head of cattle (cows, bullocks, etc.) 12 each = 600 = 3,000 Carts, drills, rollers, ploughs and other implements 1,000 = 5,000 ----- ----- 2,400 $12,200 The average rent of such land in England must be at least 1 pound 10s. per acre, and the tenant farmer must pay half of this out of the capital he begins with; which, on 400 acres, would amount to 300 pounds. Then, if he buys a quantity of artificial manures equal to the value of 10s. per acre, he will need to expend in this department 200 pounds. Next, if he purchases corn and oil-cake at the same ratio for his cattle and sheep as that adopted by Mr. Jonas, of Chrishall Grange, he will want 1,000 pounds for his 60 head of cattle and 300 sheep. In addition to these items of expenditure, he must pay his men weekly; and the wages of ten, at 10s. per week, for six months, amount to 130 pounds. Add an economical allowance for family expenses for the same length of time, and for incidental outgoes, and you make up the aggregate of 4,000 pounds, which is 10 pounds to the acre, which an English farmer needs to have and invest on entering upon the cultivation of a farm, great or small. This amount, as has been stated elsewhere, is the rule for successful agriculture in this country. These facts will measure the difference between the amounts of capital invested in equal spaces of land in England and America. It is as ten to one, assuming a moderate average. Here, a man would need 1,500 pounds, or more than $7,000, to begin with on renting a farm of 150 acres, in order to cultivate it successfully. In New England, a man would think he began under favorable auspices if he were able to enter upon the occupancy of equal extent with 100 pounds, or about $500. On returning from the Fens, I passed the night and most of the following day at Woodhurst, a village a few miles north of St. Ives, on the upland rising gently from the valley of the Ouse. My host here was a farmer, owning the land he tilled, cultivating it and the moral character and happiness of the little community, in which he moved as a father, with an equally generous heart and hand, and reaping a liberal reward from both departments of his labor. He took me over his fields, and showed me his crops and live stock, which were in excellent condition. Harvesting had already commenced, and the reapers were at work, men and women, cutting wheat and barley. Few of them used sickles, but a curved knife, wider than the sickle, of nearly the same shape, minus the teeth. A man generally uses two of them. With the one in his left hand he gathers in a good sweep of grain, bends it downward, and with the other strikes it close to the ground, as we cut Indian corn. With the left-hand hook and arm, he carries on the grain from the inside to the outside of the swath or "work," making three or four strokes with the cutting knife; then, at the end, gathers it all up and lays it down in a heap for binding. This operation is called "bagging." It does not do the work so neatly as the sickle, and is apt to pull up many stalks by the roots with the earth attaching to them, especially at the last, outside stroke. I was struck with the economy adopted by my host in loading, carting and stacking or ricking his grain. The operation was really performed like clock-work. Two or three men were stationed at the rick to unload the carts, two in the fields to load them, and several boys to lead them back and forth to the two parties. They were all one-horse carts, and so timed that a loaded one was always at the rick and an empty one always in the field; thus keeping the men at both ends fully employed from morning until night, pitching on and pitching off; while boys, at 6d. or 8d. a day, led the horses. On passing through the stables and housings for stock, I noticed a simple, yet ingenious contrivance for watering cattle, which I am not sure I can describe accurately enough, without a drawing, to convey a tangible idea of it to my agricultural neighbors in America. It may be called the buoy-cock. In the first place, the water is brought into a cistern placed at one end of the stable or shed at a sufficient elevation to give it the necessary fall in all the directions in which it is to be conducted. The pipe used for each cow-box or manger connects each with the cistern, and the distributing end of it rests upon, or is suspended over, the trough assigned to each animal. About one-third of this trough, which was here a cast-iron box, about twelve inches deep and wide, protrudes through the boarding of the stable. In this outside compartment is placed a hollow copper ball attached to a lever, which turns the axle or pivot of the cock. Now, this little buoy, of course, rises and falls with the water in the trough. When the trough is full, the buoy rises and raises the lever so as to shut off the water entirely. At every sip the animal takes, the buoy descends and lets on again, to a drop, a quantity equal to that abstracted from the inside compartment. Thus the trough is always kept full of pure water, without losing a drop of it through a waste-pipe or overflow. Where a great herd of cattle and a drove of horses have to be supplied from a deep well, as in the case of Mr. Jonas, at Chrishall Grange, this buoy-cock must save a great amount of labor. I saw also here in perfection that garden allotment system which is now coming widely into vogue in England, not only adjoining large towns like Birmingham, but around small villages in the rural districts. It is well worthy of being introduced in New England and other states, where it would work equally well in various lines of influence. A landowner divides up a field into allotments, each generally containing a rood, and lets them to the mechanics, tradespeople and agricultural laborers of the town or village, who have no gardens of their own for the growth of vegetables. Each of these is better than a savings-bank to the occupant. He not only deposits his odd pennies but his odd hours in it; keeping both away from the public-house or from places and habits of idleness and dissipation. The days of Spring and Summer here are very long, and a man can see to work in the field as early as three o'clock in the morning, and as late as nine at night. So every journeyman blacksmith, baker or shoemaker may easily find four or five hours in the twenty-four for work on his allotment, after having completed the task or time due to his employer. He generally keeps a pig, and is on the qui vive to make and collect all the manure he can for his little farm. A field of several acres, thus divided and cultivated in allotments, presents as striking a combination of colors as an Axminster carpet. As every rood is subdivided into a great variety of vegetables, and as forty or fifty of such patches, lying side by side, present, in one coup d'oeil, all the alternations of which these crops and colors are susceptible, the effect is very picturesque. My Woodhurst friend makes his allotment system a source of much social enjoyment to himself and the poor villagers. He lets forty- seven patches, each containing twenty poles. Every tenant pays 10s., or $2 40c., annual rent for his little holding, Mr. E. drawing the manure for each, which is always one good load a year. Here, too, these little spade-farmers are put under the same regime as the great tenant agriculturists of the country. Each must farm his allotment according to the terms of the yearly lease. He must dig up his land with spade or pick, not plough it; and he is not allowed to work on it upon the Sabbath. But encouragements greatly predominate over restrictions, and stimulate and reward a high cultivation. _Eight_ prizes are offered to this end, of the following amounts:--10s., 7s. 6d., 5s., 4s., 3s., 2s. 6d., 2s. and 1s. Every one who competes must not have more than half his allotment in potatoes. The greater the variety of vegetables the other half contains, the better is his chance for the first prize. The appraiser is some disinterested person of good judgment, perhaps from an adjoining town, who knows none of the competitors. To prevent any possible favoritism, the allotments are all numbered, and he awards prizes to numbers only, not knowing to whom they belong. Another feature, illustrating the generous disposition of the proprietor, characterises this good work. On the evening appointed for paying the rents, he gets up a regular, old-fashioned English supper of roast beef and plum-pudding for them, giving each fourpence instead of beer, so that they may all go home sober as well as cheerful. To see him preside at that table, with his large, round, rosy face beaming upon them with the quiet benevolence of a good heart, and to hear the fatherly and neighborly talks he makes to them, would be a picture and preaching which might be commended to the farmers of all countries. I saw also a curious phenomenon in the natural world on this farm, which perhaps will be regarded as a fiction of fancy by many a reader. It was a large field of barley grown from _oats_! We have recently dwelt upon some of the co-workings of Nature and Art in the development of flowers and of several useful plants. But here is something stranger still, that seems to diverge from the line of any law hitherto known in the vegetable world. Still, for aught one can know at this stage of its action, it may be the same general law of development which we have noticed, only carried forward to a more advanced point of progress. I would commend it to the deep and serious study of naturalists, botanists, or to those philosophers who should preside over the department of investigation to which the subject legitimately belongs. I will only say what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. Here, I repeat, was a large field of heavy grain, ready for harvest. The head and berry were _barley_, and the stalk and leaves were _oat_! Here, certainly, is a mystery. The barley sown on this field was the first-born offspring of oats. And the whole process by which this wonderful transformation is wrought, is simply this, and nothing more:--The oats are sown about the last week in June; and, before coming into ear, they are cut down within one inch and a half of the ground. This operation is repeated a second time. They are then allowed to stand through the winter, and the following season the produce is _barley_. This is the plain statement of the case in the very words of the originator of this process, and of this strange transmutation. The only practical result of it which he claims is this: that the straw of the barley thus produced is stouter, and stands more erect, and, therefore, less liable to be beaten down by heavy wind or rain. Then, perhaps, it may be added, this oat straw headed with barley is more valuable as fodder for live stock than the natural barley straw. But the value of this result is nothing compared with the issue of the experiment as proving the existence of a principle or law hitherto undiscovered, which may be applied to all kinds of plants for the use of man and beast. If any English reader of these notes is disposed to inquire more fully into this subject, I am sure he may apply without hesitation to Mr. John Ekins, of Bruntisham, near St. Ives, who will supply any additional information needed. He presented me with a little sample bag of this oat-born barley, which I hope to show my agricultural neighbors on returning to America. CHAPTER XI. THE MILLER OF HOUGHTON--AN HOUR IN HUNTINGDON--OLD HOUSES-- WHITEWASHED TAPESTRY AND WORKS OF ART--"THE OLD MERMAID" AND "THE GREEN MAN"--TALK WITH AGRICULTURAL LABORERS--THOUGHTS ON THEIR CONDITION, PROSPECTS, AND POSSIBILITIES. After a little more than a week's visit in St. Ives and neighboring villages, I again resumed my staff and set out in a westerly direction, in order to avoid the flat country which lay immediately northward for a hundred miles and more. Followed the north bank of the Ouse to Huntingdon. On the way, I stopped and dined with a gentleman in Houghton whose hospitality and good works are well known to many Americans. The locality mentioned is so identified with his name, that they will understand whom I mean. There was a good and tender-hearted man who lived in our Boston, called Deacon Grant; and I hope he is living still. He was so kind to everybody in trouble, and everybody in trouble went to him so spontaneously for sympathy and relief, that no one ever thought of him as belonging to a single religious congregation, but regarded him as Deacon of the whole of Boston--a kind of universal father, whose only children were the orphans and the poor men's sons and daughters of the city. The Miller of Houghton, as some of my readers will know, is just such another man, with one slight difference, which is to his advantage, as a gift of grace. He has all of Deacon Grant's self-diffusing life of love for his kind, generous and tender dispositions towards the poor and needy, and more than the Deacon's means of doing good; and, with all this, the indomitable energy and will and even the look of Cromwell. During my stay in the neighborhood, I was present at two large gatherings at his House of Canvas, with which he supplements his family mansion when the latter lacks the capacity of his heart in the way of accommodation. This tent, which he erects on his lawn, will hold a large congregation; and, on both the occasions to which I refer, was well filled with men, women, and children from afar and near. The first was a re- union of the Sunday-school teachers and pupils of the county, to whom he gave a sumptuous dinner; after which followed addresses and some business transactions of the association. The second was the examination of the British School of the village, founded and supported, I believe, by himself. At the conclusion of the exercises, which were exceedingly interesting, the whole company, young and old, adjourned to the lawn, where the visitors and elder people of the place were served with tea and coffee under the tent. Then came "The Children's Hour." They were called in from their games and romping on the lawn, and formed into a circle fifty feet in diameter. And here and now commenced an entertainment which would make a more interesting picture than the old Apsley House Dinner. The good deacon of the county, with several assistants, entered this charmed circle of boys and girls, all with eyes dilated and eager with expectation, and overlooked by a circular wall of elder people radiant with the spirit of the moment. The host, in his white hat and grey beard, led the way with a basket on his arm, filled with little cakes, called with us gingernuts. He was followed by a file of other men with baskets of nuts, apples, etc. It was a most hilarious scene, exhilarating to all the senses to look upon, either for young or old. He walked around the ring with a grand, Cromwellian step, sowing a pattering rain of the little cakes on the clean-shaven lawn, as a farmer would sow wheat in his field, broadcast, in liberal handfuls. Then followed in their order the nut-sowers, apple-sowers, and the sowers of other goodies. When the baskets were emptied, the circular space enclosed was covered with as tempting a spread of dainties as ever fascinated the eyes of a crowd of little people. For a whole minute, longer than a full hour of ordinary schoolboy enjoyments, they had to stand facing that sight, involuntarily attitudinising for the plunge. At the end of that long minute, the signal sounded, and, in an instant, there was a scene in the ring that would have made the soberest octogenarian shake his sides with the laughter of his youth. The encircling multitude of youngsters darted upon the thickly-scattered delicacies like a flock of birds upon a field of grain, with patter, twitter and flutter, and a tremor and treble of little short laughs; small, eager hands trying in vain to shut fast upon a large apple and several ginger-nuts at one grasp; slippings and trippings, tousling of tresses and crushing of dresses; boys and girls higgledy- piggledy; caps and bonnets piggledy-higgledy; little, red-faced Alexanders looking half sad, because they had filled their small pocket-worlds and both hands with apples and nuts, and had no room nor holding for more; little girls, with broken bonnet-strings, and long, sunny hair dancing over their eyes, stretching their short fingers to grasp another goodie,--all this, with the merry excitement of fathers and mothers, elder brothers and sisters, and other spectators, made it a scene of youthful life and delight which would test the genius of the best painters of the age to delineate. And Sir Roger Coverley Cromwell, the author of all this entertainment, would make a capital figure in the group, taken just as he looked at that moment, with his face illuminated with the upshooting joy of his heart, like the clear, frosty sky of winter with the glow and the flush of the Northern Lights. The good Miller of Houghton, having added stone to stone until his mills can grind all the wheat the largest county can grow, has recently handed over to his sons the great business he had built up to such magnitude, and retired, if possible, to a more active life of benevolence. One of his late benefactions was a gift of 3,000 pounds, or nearly $15,000, toward the erection of an Independent Chapel in St. Ives. At Huntingdon, I took tea and spent a pleasant hour with the principal of a select school, kept in a large, dignified and comfortable mansion, once occupied by the poet Cowper. In the yard behind the house there is a wide-spreading and prolific pear-tree planted by his hands. This, too, was one of the thousands of old, stately dwellings you meet with here and there, which have no beginning nor end that you can get at. Cowper lived and wrote in this, for instance; but who lived in it a century before he was born? Who built it? Which of the Two Roses did he mount on his arms? Or did he live and build later, and dine his townsman, the great Oliver, or was he loyal to the last to Charles the First? These are questions that come up, on going over such a building, but no one can answer them, and you are left to the wisdom of limping legends on the subject. The present occupant has an antiquarian penchant; so, a short time after he took possession of the house, he began to make explorations in the walls and wainscotings, as men of the same mind have done at Nineveh and Pompeii. Having penetrated a thick surface of white lava, or a layer of lime, put on with a brush "in an earlier age than ours," he came upon a gorgeous wall of tapestry, with inwoven figures and histories of great men and women, quite as large as life, and all of very florid complexion and luxurious costumes. He has already exhumed a great many square yards of this picturesque fabric, wrought in by-gone ages, and is continuing the work with all the zest and success of a fortunate archaeologist. Now it is altogether probable, that Cowper, as he sat in one of those rooms writing at his beautiful rhymes, had not the slightest idea that he was surrounded by such a crowd of kings, queens, and other great personages, barely concealed behind a thin cloud of white-wash. It may possibly be true, that a few beautiful, fair-haired heretics in love or religion have been stone-masoned up alive in the walls of abbeys or convents. Sir Walter Scott leaned to that belief, and perhaps had credible history for it. But if the trowel has slain its thousands, the whitewash swab has slain its ten thousands of innocents. Think of the furlongs of richly-wrought tapestry, full of sacred and profane history, and the furlongs of curiously-carved panels, wainscoting, and cornice that floppy, sloppy, vandal brush of pigs' bristles and pail of diluted lime have eclipsed and obliterated for ever, and not a retributive drop of the villainous mixture has fallen into the perpetrator's eye to "make his foul intent seem horrible!" Think of Christian kings of glorious memory, even Defenders of the Faith, with their fair queens, princes of the blood, and knights, noble and brave, all, in one still St. Bartholomew night of that soft, thin, white flood, buried from the sight of the living as completely as the Roman sentinel at his post by the red gulf-stream of Vesuvius! Still, we must not be too hard on these seemingly barbarous transactions. "Not in anger, not in wrath," nor in foolish fancy, was that dripping brush always lifted upon these works of art. Many a person of cultivated taste saw a time when he could say, almost with Sancho Panza, "blessings on the man who invented whitewash! It covers a tapestry, a carving, or a sculpture all over like a blanket;" like that one spoken of in Macbeth. England is just beginning to learn what treasures of art in old mansions, churches and cathedrals were saved to the present age by a timely application of that cheap and healthy fluid. For there was a time when stern men of iron will arose, who had no fear of Gothic architecture, French tapestry, or Italian sculpture before their eyes; who treated things that had awed or dazzled the world as "baubles" of vanity, to be put away, as King Josiah put away from his realm the graven images of his predecessors. And these men thought they were doing good service to religion by pushing their bayonets at the most delicate works of the needle, pencil and chisel; ripping and slitting the most elaborately wrought tapestry,- -stabbing off the fine leaf, and vine-work from carved cornices and wainscoting, and mutilating the marble lace-work of the sculptor in the old cathedrals. The only way to save these choice things was to make them suddenly take the white veil from the whitewasher's brush. Thousands of them were thus preserved, and they are now being brought forth to the light again, after having been shut away from the eye of man for several centuries. The school-house is still standing in Huntingdon, in good condition and busy occupation, in which Oliver Cromwell stormed the English alphabet and carried the first parallel of monosyllables at the point of the pen. The very form or bench of oak from which he mounted the breach is still occupied by boys of the same size and age, with the same number of inches between their feet and the floor which separated it from his. Had the photographic art been discovered in his day, we might have had his face and form as he looked when seated as a rosy-faced, light-haired boy in the rank and file of the youngsters gathered within those walls. What an overwhelming revelation it would have been to his young, honest and merry mind, if some seer, like him who told Hazael his future, could have given him a sudden glimpse of what he was to be and do in his middle manhood! After tea, I continued my walk westward to a small, quiet, comfortable village, about five miles from Huntingdon, where I became the guest of "The Old Mermaid," who extended her amphibious hospitalities to all strangers wishing bed and board for the night. Both I received readily and greatly enjoyed under her roof, especially the former. Never did I occupy a bed so fringed with the fanciful artistries of dreamland. It was close up under the thatched roof, and it was the most easy and natural thing in the world for the fancies of the midnight hour to turn that thatching into hair, and to cheat my willing mind with the delusion that I was sleeping with the long, soft tresses of Her Submarine Ladyship wound around my head. It was a delightful vagary of the imagination, which the morning light, looking in through the little checker-work window, gently dispelled. The next day I bent my course in a north-westerly direction, and passed through a very fertile and beautiful section. The scenery was truly delightful;--not grand nor splendid, but replete with quiet pictures that please the eye and touch the heart with a sense of gladness. The soft mosaic work of the gently rounded hills, or figures wrought in wheat, barley, oats, beans, turnips, and meadow and pasture land, and grouped into landscapes in endless alternation of lights and shades, and all this happy little world now veiled by the low, summer clouds, now flooded by a sunburst between them--all these lovely and changing sceneries made my walk like one through a continuous gallery of paintings. Harvesting had commenced in real earnest, and the wheat-fields were full of reapers, some wielding the sickle, others the scythe. When I saw men and women bending almost double to cut their sheaves close to the ground, I longed to walk through a barley-field with one of our American cradles, and show them how we do that sort of thing. As yet I have seen no reaping machines in operation, and I doubt if they will ever come into such extensive use here as with us, owing to the abundance of cheap labor in this country. I saw on this day's walk the heaviest crop of wheat that I have noticed since I left London. It must have averaged sixty bushels to the acre for the whole field. Late in the afternoon it began to rain; and I was glad to find shelter and entertainment at a comfortable village inn, under the patronage of "The Green Man," perhaps a brother or near relative of Mermadam my hostess that entertained me the preceding night. It was a unique old building, or rather a concrete of a great variety of buildings devoted to a remarkable diversity of purposes, including brewing, farming, and other occupations. The large, low, dark kitchen was flanked by one of the old-fashioned fire-places, with space for a large family between the jambs, and the hollow of the chimney ample enough to show one of the smaller constellations at the top of it in a clear night. A seat on the brick or stone floor before one of these kitchen fire-places is to me the focus of the home comforts of the house, and I always make for it mechanically. As the darkness drew on, several agricultural laborers drifted in, one after the other, until the broad, deep pavement of the hearth was lined by a row of them, quite fresh from their work. They were quiet, sober-looking men, and they spoke with subdued voices, without animation or excitement, as if the fatigue of the day and the general battle of life had softened them to a serious, pensive mood and movement. As they sat drying their jackets around the fire, passing successive mugs of the landlord's ale from one to the other, they grew more and more conversational; and, as I put in a question here and there, they gave me an insight into the general condition, aspects and prospects of their class which I had not obtained before. They were quite free to answer any questions relating to their domestic economy, their earnings, spendings, food, drink, clothing, housing and fuel, also in reference to their educational and religious privileges and habits. It was now the first week of harvest; and harvest in England, in any one locality, covers the space of a full month, in ordinary weather. Then, as the season varies remarkably, so that one county is frequently a week earlier in harvesting than that adjoining it on the north, the work for the sickle is often prolonged from the middle of July to the middle of September. This is the period of great expectation as well as toil for the agricultural laborers. Every man, woman, and boy of them is all put under the stimulus of extra earnings through these important weeks. Even the laborers hired by the year have a full month given them for harvesting forty or fifty extra shillings under this stimulus. Nearly all the grain in England is cut for a certain stipulated sum per acre; and thousands of all ages, with sickle or scythe in hand, see the sun rise and set while they are at work in the field. In the field they generally breakfast, lunch, and dine; and when it is considered there is daylight enough for labor between half-past three in the morning to half-past eight at night, one may easily see how many of the twenty-four hours they may bend to their toil. The price for cutting and binding wheat is from 10s. to 14s., or from $2 40c. to $3 36c. per acre, and 8s., or $1 92c. per acre for oats and barley. The men who cut, bind, and shock by the acre generally have to find their own beer, and will earn from 24s. to 28s., or from $5 76c. to $6 72c. per week. The regular laborers frequently let themselves to their employers during the harvest month at from 20s. to 24s. per week, which is just about double their usual wages. In addition to this pay, they are often allowed two quarts of ale and two quarts of small beer per day; not the small beer of New England, made only of hops, ginger, and molasses; but a far more stimulating drink, quite equal to our German lager. This gallon of beer will cost the farmer about 10d., or 20c. Where the piece-work laborer furnishes his own malt liquor, it must cost him on an average about an English shilling, or twenty-four cents, a day. Two or three of the men who formed the circle around the fire at The Green Man, had come to purchase, or pay for, a keg of beer for their harvest allowance. It was to me a matter of half-painful interest to see what vital importance they attached to a supply of this stimulant--to see how much more they leaned upon its strength and comfort than upon food. It was not in my heart to argue the question with them, or to seek to dispel the hereditary and pleasant illusion, that beer alone, of all human drinks, could carry them through the long, hot hours of toil in harvest. Besides, I wished to get at their own free thoughts on the subject without putting my own in opposition to them, which might have slightly restricted their full expression. Every one of them held to the belief, as put beyond all doubt or question by the experience of the present and all past generations, that wheat, barley and oats could not be reaped and ricked without beer, and beer at the rate of a gallon a day per head. Each had his string of proofs to this conviction terminating in a pewter mug, just as some poor people praying to the Virgin have a string of beads ending in a crucifix, which they tell off with honest hearts and sober faces. Each could make it stand to reason that a man could not bear the heat and burden of harvest labor without beer. Each had his illustration in the case of some poor fellow who had tried the experiment, out of principle or economy, and had failed under it. It was of no use to talk of temperance and all that. It was all very nice for well-to-do people, who never blistered their hands at a sickle or a scythe, to tell poor, laboring men, sweating at their hot and heavy work from sun to sun, that they must not drink anything but milk and water or cold tea and coffee, but put them in the wheat-field a few days, and let them try their wishy-washy drinks and see what would become of them. As I have said, I did not undertake to argue the men out of this belief, partly because I wished to learn from them all they thought and felt on the subject, and partly, I must confess, because I was reluctant to lay a hard hand upon a source of comfort which, to them, holds a large portion of their earthly enjoyments, especially when I could not replace it with a substitute which they would accept, and which would yield them an equal amount of satisfaction. A personal habit becomes a "second nature" to the individual, even if he stands alone in its indulgence. But when it is an almost universal habit, coming down from generation to generation, throwing its creepers and clingers around the social customs and industrial economies of a great nation, it is almost like re-creating a world to change that second nature thus strengthened. This change is slowly working its way in Great Britain--slowly, but perceptibly here and there--thanks to the faithful and persevering efforts put forth by good and true men, to enlighten the subjects of this impoverishing and demoralising custom, which has ruled with such despotism over the laborers of the land. Little by little the proper balance between the Four Great Powers of human necessity,-- Food, Drink, Raiment and Housing, so long disturbed by this habit, is being restored. Still, the preponderance of Drink, especially among the agricultural laborers in England, is very striking and sad. As a whole, Beer must still stand before Bread--even before Meat, and before both in many cases, in their expenditures. The man who sat next me, in muddy leggings, and smoking coat, was mildly spoken, quiet, and seemingly thoughtful. He had come for his harvest allowance of 20s. worth of beer. If he abstained from its use on Sundays, he would have a ration of about tenpence's worth daily. That would buy him a large loaf of bread, two good cuts of mutton or beef, and all the potatoes and other vegetables he could eat in a day. But he puts it all into the Jug instead of the Basket. Jug is the juggernaut that crushes his hard earnings in the dust, or, without the figure, distils them into drink. Jug swallows up the first fruits of his industry, and leaves Basket to glean among the sharpest thorns of his poverty. Jug is capricious as well as capacious. It clamors for quality as well as quantity; it is greedy of foaming and beaded liquors. Basket does well if it can bring to the reaper the food of well-kept dogs. In visiting different farms, I have noticed men and women at their luncheons and dinners in the field. A hot mutton chop, or a cut of roast-beef, and a hot potato, seem to be a luxury they never think of in the hardest toil of harvest. Both the meals I have mentioned consist, so far as I have seen, of only two articles of food,--bread and bacon, or bread and cheese. And this bacon is never warm, but laid upon a slice of bread in a thin, cold layer, instead of butter, both being cut down through with a jack-knife into morsels when eaten. Such is a habit that devours a lion's share of the English laborer's earnings, and leaves Food, Raiment, and Housing to shift for themselves. If he works by the piece and finds his own beer, it costs him more than he pays for house rent, or for bread, or meat, or for clothes for himself and family. If his employer furnishes it or pays him commutation money, it amounts for all his men to a tax of half-a-crown to the acre for his whole farm. There is no earthly reason why agricultural laborers in this country should spend more in drink than those of New England. I am confident that if a census were taken of all the "hired men" of our six states, and a fair average struck, the daily expenditure for drinks would not exceed twopence, or four cents per head, while their average wages would amount to 4s., or 96 cents, per day through the year. Yet our Summers are far hotter and dryer than in England, our labor equally hard, and there is really more natural occasion for drinks in our harvest fields than here. It would require a severe apprenticeship for our men to acquire a taste for sharp ale or strong beer as a beverage under our July sun. A pail or jug of sweetened water, perhaps with a few drops of cider to the pint, to sour it slightly, and a spoonful of ginger stirred in, is our substitute for malt liquor. Sometimes beer made of nothing but hops, water, and a little molasses, is brought into the field, and makes even an exhilarating drink, without any alcoholic effect. Cold coffee, diluted with water, and re-sweetened, is a healthful and grateful luxury to our farm laborers. It would be a blessed thing for all the outdoor and indoor laborers in this country, if the broad chasm between the strong beer of Old England and the small beer of New England could be bridged, and they be carried across to the shore of a better habit. The farm hands here need a good deal of gentle leading and suggestion in this matter. If some humane and ingenious man would get up a new, cheap, cold drink, which should be nutritious, palatable and exhilarating, without any inebriating property, it would be a boon of immeasurable value. Malt liquors are made in such rivers here, or rather in such lakes with river outlets; there is such a system for their distribution and circulation through every town, village, and hamlet; and they are so temptingly and conveniently kegged, bottled, and jugged, and so handy to be carried out into the field, that the habit of drinking them is almost forced upon the poor man's lips. If a cheaper drink, refreshing and strengthening, could be made equally convenient and attractive, it would greatly help to break this hereditary thraldom to the Beer-Barrel. Another powerful auxiliary to this good work might be contributed in the form of a simple contrivance, which any man of mechanical genius and a kind heart might elaborate. In this go-ahead age, scores of things are made portable that once were fast-anchored solidities. We have portable houses, portable beds, portable stoves and cooking ranges, as well as portable steam-engines. Now, if some benevolent and ingenious man would get up a little portable affair, at the cost of two or three shillings, especially for agricultural laborers in this country, which they could carry with one hand into the field, and by which they could make and keep hot a pot of coffee, cocoa, chocolate, broth or porridge, and also bake a piece of meat and a few potatoes, it would be a real benefaction to thousands, and help them up to the high road of a better condition. What is the best condition to which the agricultural laborers in Great Britain may ever expect to attain, or to which they may be raised by that benevolent effort now put forth for their elevation? They may all be taught to read and write and do a little in the first three rules of arithmetic. That will raise them to a new status and condition. Education of the masses has become such a vigorous idea with the Government and people of England; so much is doing to make the children of the manufacturing districts pass through the school-room into the factory, carrying with them the ability and taste for reading; ragged schools, working-men's clubs, and institutions for all kinds of cheap learning and gratuitous teaching are multiplying so rapidly; the press is turning out such a world of literature for the homes of the poor, and the English Post, like a beneficent Providence, is distilling such a morning dew of manuscript and printed thoughts over the whole length and breadth of the country, and all these streams of elevating influence are now so tending towards the agricultural laborers, that there is good reason to believe the next generation of them will stand head and shoulders above any preceding one in the stature of intelligence and self- respect. This in itself will give them a new status in society, as beneficial to their employers as to themselves. It will increase their mutual respect, and create a better footing for their relationships. But the first improvement demanded in their condition, and the most pressingly urgent, is a more comfortable, decent and healthy housing. Until this is effected, all other efforts to raise them mentally and morally must fail of their expected result. The London Times, and other metropolitan, and many local, journals publish almost daily distressing accounts of the miserable tenements occupied by the men and women whose labor makes England the garden of fertility and beauty that it is. Editors are making the subject the theme of able and stirring articles, and some of the most eloquent members of Parliament are speaking of it with great power. It is not only generous but just to take the language in which the writers and orators of a country denounce the evils existing in it cum grano salis, or with considerable allowance for exaggeration. Their statements and denunciations should not be used against their country as a reproach by the people of another, because they prove an earnest desire and effort to reform abuses which grew up in an unenlightened past. As a specimen of the language which is sometimes held on this subject, I subjoin the following paragraph from the Saturday Review, perhaps the most cynical or unsentimental journal in England:-- "There is a wailing for the dirt and vice and misery which must prevail in houses where seven or eight persons, of both sexes and all ages, are penned up together for the night in the one rickety, foul, vermin-hunted bed-room. The picture of agricultural life unrolls itself before us as it is painted by those who know it best. We see the dull, clouded mind, the bovine gaze, the brutality and recklessness, and the simple audacity, and the confessed hatred of his betters, which mark the English peasant, unless some happy fortune has saved him from the general lot, and persuaded him that life has something besides beer that the poor man may have and may relish." Now this is a sad picture truly. The pen is sharp and cuts like a knife,--but it is the surgeon's knife, not the poisoned barb of a foreigner's taunt. This is the hopeful and promising aspect of these delineations and denunciations of the laboring man's condition. That low, damp, ill-ventilated, contracted room in which he pens his family at night, was, quite likely, constructed in the days of Good Queen Bess, or when "George the Third was King," at the latest. And houses were built for good, substantial farmers in those days which they would hardly house their horses in now. There are hundreds of mechanics and day-laborers in Edinburgh who pen their families nightly in apartments once owned and occupied by Scotch dukes and earls, but which a journeyman shoemaker of New England would be loth to live in rent free. Even the favorite room of Queen Mary, in Holyrood Palace, in which she was wont to tea and talk with Rizzio, would be too small and dim for the shop-parlor of a small London tradesman of the present day. Thus, after all, the low-jointed, low-floored, small-windowed, ill-ventilated cottages now occupied by the agricultural laborers of England were proportionately as good as the houses built at the same period for the farmers of the country, many of which are occupied by farmers now, and the like of which never could be erected again on this island. Indeed, one wonders at finding so many of these old farm houses still inhabited by well-to-do people, who could well afford to live in better buildings. This, then, is a hopeful sign, and both pledge and proof of progress--that the very cottages of laboring men in England that once figured so poetically in the histories and pictures of rural life, are now being turned inside out to the scrutiny of a more enlightened and benevolent age, revealing conditions that stir up the whole community to painful sensibility and to vigorous efforts to improve them. These cottages were just as low, damp, small and dirty thirty years ago as they are now, and the families "penned" in them at night were doubtless as large, and perhaps more ignorant than those which inhabit them at the present time. It is not the real difference between the actual conditions of the two periods but the difference in the dispositions and perceptions of the public mind, that has produced these humane sensibilities and efforts for the elevation of the ploughers, sowers, reapers and mowers who enrich and beautify this favored land with their patient and poorly- paid labor. And there is no doubt that these newly-awakened sentiments and benevolent activities will carry the day; replacing the present tenements of the agricultural laborers with comfortable, well-built cottages, fitted for the homes of intelligent and virtuous families. This work has commenced in different sections under favorable auspices. Buildings have been erected on an estate here and there which will be likely to serve as models for whole hamlets of new tenements. From what I have heard, I should think that Lord Overstone, of the great banking house of the Lloyds, has produced the best models for cottage homes, on his estates in Northamptonshire. Although built after the most modern and improved plan, and capacious enough to accommodate a considerable family very comfortably, almost elegantly, the yearly rent is only 3 pounds, or less than _fifteen dollars_! Now with a three-pound cottage, having a parlor, kitchen, bed-room and buttery on the lower floor, and an equal number of apartments on the upper; with a forty-rod garden to grow his vegetables, and with a free school for his children at easy walking distance, the agricultural laborer in England will be placed as far forward on the road of improvement as the Government or people, or both, can set him. The rest of the way upward and onward he must make by his own industry, virtue and economy. From this point he must work out his own progress and elevation. No Government, nor any benevolent association, nor general nor private benevolence, can regulate the rate of his wages. The labor market will determine that, just as the Corn Exchange does the price of wheat. But there is one thing he can do to raise himself in civil stature, moral growth, and domestic comfort. He may empty the Jug into the Basket. He and his family may consume in solids what they now do in frothy fluids. They may exchange their scanty dinner of cold bacon and bread for one of roast beef and plum pudding, by substituting cold coffee, cocoa or pure water for strong beer. Or, if they are content to go on with their old fare of food, they may save the money they expended in ale for the rent of one or two acres of land, for a cow, or for two or three pigs, or deposit it weekly in the Post-Office Savings' Bank, until it shall amount to a sum sufficient to enable them to set up a little independent business of their own. Here, then, are three great steps indispensable for the elevation of the agricultural laborers of Great Britain to the highest level in society which they can reach and maintain. Two of these the Government, or the land-owners, or both, must take. They are Improved Dwellings and Free and Accessible Education. These the laborer cannot provide for himself and family. It is utterly beyond his ability to do it. The third, last, long step must depend entirely upon himself; though he may be helped on by sympathy, suggestion, and encouragement from those who know how hard a thing it is for the fixed appetites to break through the meshes of habit. He must make drink the cheapest of human necessities. He must exchange Beer for Bread, for clothes, for books, or for things that give permanent comfort and enjoyment. When these three steps are accomplished, the British laborer will stand before his country in the best position it can give him. And I believe it will be a position which will make him contented and happy, and be satisfactory to all classes of the people. After all that can be done for them, the wages of the agricultural laborers of Great Britain cannot be expected to exceed, on an average, twelve shillings a week, or about half the price of the same labor in America. Their rent and clothes cost them, perhaps, less than half the sum paid by our farm hands for the same items of expenditure. Their food must also cost only about half of what our men pay, who would think they were poor indeed if they could not have hot meat breakfasts, roast or boiled beef dinners and cold meat suppers, with the usual sprinkling of puddings, pies, and cakes, and tea sweetened with loaf sugar. Thus, after all, put the English laborer in the position suggested; give him such a three-pound cottage and garden as Lord Overstone provides; give his children free and convenient schooling; then let him exchange his ale for nutritious and almost costless drinks, and if he is still able to live for a few years on his old food-fare, he may work his way up to a very comfortable condition with his twelve shillings a week, besides his beer-money. On these conditions he would be able almost to run neck and neck with our hired men in the matter of saving money "for a rainy day," or for raising himself to a higher position. We will put them side by side, after the suggested improvements have been realised; assuming each has a wife, with two children too young to earn anything at field work. American Laborer at 24s per week English Laborer, at 12s per week Weekly Expense $ c. s. d Weekly Expense s. d. $ c for:-- for:-- ------------------------------- ---------------------------- Food 3 50 = 14 7 Food 7 3 = 1 75 Rent and Taxes 0 67 = 2 9 Rent 1 2 = O 28 Fuel, average of the year O 48 = 2 O For Fuel 1 O = O 24 For Clothes 1 0 = 4 2 For Clothes 2 1 = 0 50 Total Weekly Total Weekly Expenses -------------- Expenses ----------- -- 5 65 = 23 6 11 6 = 2 77 -------------- ----------- -- I think the American reader, who is personally acquainted with the habits and domestic economy of our farm laborers, will regard this estimate of their expenditures as quite moderate. I have assumed, in both cases, that no time is lost in the week on account of sickness, or of weather, or lack of employment; and all the incidental expenses I have included in the four general items given. It must also be conceded that our farm hands do not average more than twenty-four English shillings, or $5 75c., per week, through all the seasons of the year. The amount of expenditure allowed in the foregoing estimate enables them to support themselves and their families comfortably, if they are temperate and industrious; to clothe and educate their children; to make bright and pleasant homes, with well-spread tables, and to have respectable seats in church on the Sabbath. On the other hand, we have assigned to the English agricultural laborer what he would regard a proportionately comfortable allowance for the wants of a week. We may not have divided it correctly, but the total of the items is as great as he would expect to expend on the current necessities of seven days. I doubt if one in a thousand of the farm laborers of Great Britain lays out more than the sum we have allotted for one week's food, rent, and fuel and clothes. We then reach this result of the balance-sheet of the two men. Their weekly savings hardly differ by a penny; each amounting to about 5d., or 10 cents. At first sight, it might seem, from this result, that the English farm laborer earns half as much, lives half as well, and saves as much as the American. But he has a resource for increasing his weekly savings which his American competitor would work his fingers to the bone before he would employ. His wife is able and willing to go with him into the field and earn from three to five shillings a week. Then, if he commutes with his employer, he will receive from him 4d. daily, or 2s. a week, for beer-money. Thus, if he and his wife are willing to live, as such families do now, on bread, bacon and cheese, and such vegetables as they can grow in their garden, they may lay up, from their joint earnings, a dollar, or four shillings a week, provided a sufficiently stimulating object be set before them. To me it is surprising that they sustain so much human life on such small means. They are often reproached for their want of wise economy; but never was more keen ingenuity, more close balancing of pennies against provisions than a great many of them practice and teach. Let the most astute or utilitarian of social economists try the experiment of housing, feeding and clothing himself, wife and six children too young to earn anything, on ten or twelve shillings a week; and he will learn something that his philosophy never dreamed of. Even while bending under the weight of the beer-barrel, thousands of agricultural laborers in England have accomplished wonders by their indefatigable industry, integrity and economy. Put a future before them with a sun in it--some object they may reach that is worth a life's effort, and as large a proportion of them will work for it as you will find in any other country. A servant girl told me recently that her father was a Devonshire laborer, who worked the best years of his life for seven shillings a week, and her mother for three, when they had half a dozen children to feed and clothe. Yet, by that unflagging industry and ingenious economy with which thousands wrestle with the necessities of such a life and throw them, too, they put saving to saving, until they were able to rent an acre of orcharding, a large garden for vegetables, then buy a donkey and cart, then a pony and cart, and load and drive them both to market with their own and their neighbors' produce, starting from home at two in the morning. In a few years they were able to open a little grocery and provision shop, and are now taking their rank among the tradespeople of the village. But if the farm servants of England could only be induced to give up beer and lay by the money paid them as a substitute, it alone would raise them to a new condition of comfort, even independence. At 4d. a day commutation money, they would have each 5 pounds at the end of the year. That would pay the rent of two acres of land here; or it would buy five on the Illinois Central Railroad. Three years' beer-money would pay for those rich prairie acres, his fare by sea and land to them, and leave him 3 pounds in his pocket to begin their cultivation with. Three years of this saving would make almost a new man of him at home, in the way of self-respect, comfort and progress. It would be a "nest- egg," to which hope, habit and a strengthening ambition would add others of larger size and value from year to year. Give, then, the British agricultural laborer good, healthy Housing, Free Schooling, and let him empty the Jug into the Basket, and he may work his way up to a very comfortable condition at home. But if he should prefer to go to Australia or America, where land is cheap and labor dear, in a few years he may save enough to take him to either continent, with sufficient left in his pocket to begin life in a new world. CHAPTER XII. FARM GAME--HALLETT WHEAT--OUNDLE--COUNTRY BRIDGES--FOTHERINGAY CASTLE--QUEEN MARY'S IMPRISONMENT AND EXECUTION--BURGHLEY HOUSE: THE PARK, AVENUES, ELMS, AND OAKS--THOUGHTS ON TREES, ENGLISH AND AMERICAN. Having now pursued a westerly direction until I was in the range of a continuous upland section of country, I took a northward course and walked on to Oundle, a goodly town in Northamptonshire, as unique as its name. On the way, in crossing over to another turnpike road, I passed through a large tract of land in a very deshabille condition, rough, boggy and bushy. I soon found it was a game-growing estate, and very productive of all sorts of birds and small quadrupeds. The fields I crossed showed a promising crop of hares and rabbits; and doubtless there were more partridges on that square mile than in the whole State of Connecticut. This is a characteristic of the country which will strike an American, at his first visit, with wonder. He will see hares and rabbits bobbing about on common farms, and partridges in broods, like separate flocks of hens and chickens, in fields of grain, within a stone's throw of the farmer's house. I doubt if any county in New England produces so many in a year as the holding of Mr. Samuel Jonas already described. Rabbits have been put out of the pale of protection somewhat recently, I believe, and branded with the bad name of _vermin_; so that the tenant farmer may kill them on his occupation without leave or license from the landlord. It may indicate their number to state the fact, that one hundred and twenty-five head of them were killed in one day's shooting on Mr. Jonas's estate by his sons and some of their friends. It was market day in Oundle, and I had the pleasure of sitting down to dinner with a large company of farmers and cattle and corn- dealers. They were intelligent, substantial-looking men, with no occupational peculiarity of dress or language to distinguish them from ordinary middle-class gentlemen engaged in trade or manufacture. Indeed, the old-fashioned English farmer, of the great, round, purply-red face, aldermanic stature, and costume of fifty years ago, speaking the dialect of his county with such inimitable accent, is fast going out. I have not seen one during my present sojourn in England. I fear he has disappeared altogether with the old stage-coach, and that we have not pictures enough of him left to give the rising generation any correct notion of what he was, and how he looked. It may be a proper and utilitarian change, but one can hardly notice without regret what transformations the railway regime has wrought in customs and habits which once individualised a country and people. A kind of French centralisation in the world of fashion has been established, which has over-ridden and obliterated all the dress boundaries of civilised nations. All the upper and middle classes of Christendom centre themselves to one focus of taste and merge into one plastic commonwealth, to be shaped and moulded virtually by a common tailor. Their coats, vests, pantaloons, boots and shoes are made substantially after the same pattern. For a while, hats stood out with some show of pluck and patriotism, and made a stand for national individuality, but it was in vain. They, too, succumbed to the inexorable law of Uniformity. That law was liberal in one respect. It did not insist that the stove-pipe form should rule inflexibly. It admitted several variations, including wide-awakes, pliable felts, and that little, squat, lackadaisical, round-crown, narrow-brimmed thing worn by the Prince of Wales in the photographs taken of him and the Princess at Sandringham. But this has come to be the rule: that hats shall no longer represent distinct nationalities; that they shall be interchangeable in all civilised communities; in a word, that neither Englishman, American, French nor German shall be known by his hat, whatever be the form or material of its body or brim. If there were a southern county in England where the mercury stood at 100 degrees in the shade for two or three summer months, the upper classes in it would don, without any hesitation, the wide, flappy broadbrims of California, and still be in the fashion,--that is, variety in uniformity. The peasantry, or the lowest laboring classes of European countries, are now, and will remain perhaps for a century to come, the only conservators of the distinctive national costumes of bygone generations. During the conversation at the table, a farmer exhibited a head of the Hallett wheat, which he had grown on his land. I never saw anything to equal it, in any country in which I have travelled. It was nearly six inches in length, and seeded large and plump from top to bottom. This is a variety produced by Mr. Hallett, of Brighton, and is creating no little interest among English grain-growers. Lord Burghley, who had tested its properties, thus describes it, in a speech before the Northamptonshire Agricultural Society last summer:-- "At the Battersea Show last year, my attention was called to some enormous ears of wheat, which I thought could not have been grown in England. For, although the British farmer can grow corn with anyone, I had never seen such wheat here, and thought it must be foreign wheat. I went to the person who was threshing some out, and having been informed that it was sown only with one seed in a hole, I procured some of Mr. Hallett, of Brighton; and, being anxious to try the system, I planted it according to Mr. Hallett's directions-- one grain in a hole, the holes nine and a half inches apart, with six inches between the rows. To satisfy myself on the subject, I also planted some according to Stephen's instructions, who said three grains in a hole would produce the most profitable return. I also planted some two grains in a hole. I sowed the grain at the end of last September, on bad land, over an old quarry, and except some stiff clay at the bottom of it, there was nothing in it good for wheat. The other day I counted the stalks of all three. On Mr. Stephen's plan of three grains in a hole, there were eighteen stalks; with two grains in a hole, there was about the same number; but with one seed in a hole, the lowest number of stalks was sixteen, and the highest twenty-two. I planted only about half an acre as a trial, and when I left home a few days since, it looked as much like eight quarters (sixty-four bushels) to the acre as any I have seen. The ears are something enormous. I would certainly recommend every farmer to make his own experiments, for if it succeeds, it will prove a great economy of seed; and drills to distribute it fairly are to be had." Truly one of Hallett's wheat ears might displace the old cornucopia in that picture of happy abundance so familiar to old and young. Here are twenty ears from one seed, containing probably a thousand grains. The increase of a thousand-fold, or half that ratio, is prodigious, having nothing to equal it in the vegetable world that we know of. If one bushel of seed wheat could be so distributed by a drill as to produce 500 or 250 bushels at the harvest, certainly the staff of life would be greatly cheapened to the millions who lean upon it alone for subsistence. From Oundle I walked the next day to Stamford, a good, solid, old English town, sitting on the corners of three counties, and on three layers of history, Saxon, Dane and Norman. The first object of interest was a stone bridge over the Nen at Oundle. It is a grand structure to span such a little river. It must have cost three times as much as "The Great Bridge" over the Connecticut at Hartford; and yet the stream it crosses is a mere rivulet compared with our New England river. "The bridge with wooden piers" is a fabric of fancy to most English people. They have read of such a thing in Longfellow's poems, but hardly realise that it exists still in civilised countries. Here bridges are works of art as well as of utility, and rank next to the grand old cathedrals and parish churches for solidity and symmetry. Their stone arches are frequently turned with a grace as fine as any in St. Paul's, and their balustrades and butments often approach the domain of sculpture. Crossing the Nen, I followed it for several miles in a northerly direction. I soon came to a rather low, level section of the road, and noticed stones placed at the side of it, at narrow intervals, for a long distance to the very foot of a village situated on a rising ground. These stones were evidently taken from some ancient edifice, for many of them bore the marks of the old cathedral or castle chisel. They were the foot-tracks of a ruined monument of dark and painful history. More than this might be said of them. They were the blood-drops of a monstrosity chased from its den and hunted down by the people, who shuddered with horror at its sanguinary record of violence and wrong. As I approached the quiet village, whose pleasant-faced houses, great and small, looked like a congregation of old and young sitting reverently around the parish church and listening to the preaching of the belfry, I saw where these stones came from. There, on that green, ridgy slope, where the lambs lay in the sun by the river, these stones, and a million more scattered hither and thither, once stood in walls high, hideous and wrathful, for half a dozen centuries and more. If the breathings of human woe, if the midnight misery of wretched, broken hearts, could have penetrated these stones, one might almost fancy that they would have sweat with human histories in the ditch where they lay, and discolored the puddles they bridged with the bitter distilment of grief centuries old. On that gentle rising from the little Nen stood Fotheringay Castle. That central depression among the soft-carpeted ridges marks the site of the donjon huge and horrid, where many a knight and lady of noble blood was pinioned or penned in darkness and hopeless duress centuries before the unfortunate Mary was born. There nearly half the sad years of her young life and beauty were prisoned. There she pined in the sickness of hope deferred, in the corroding anguish of dread uncertainty, for a space as wide as that between the baptismal font and presentation at Elizabeth's court. There she laid her white neck upon the block. There fell the broad axe of Elizabeth's envy, fear and hate. There fell the fair-haired head that once gilded a crown and wore all the glory of regal courts--still beautiful in the setting light of farewell thoughts. It may be truly said of Fotheringay Castle, that not one stone is left upon another to mark its foundations. Not Fleet-street Prison, nor the Bastille itself, went out under a heavier weight of popular odium. Although public sentiment, as well as the personal taste and interest of their proprietors, has favored the preservation of the ruins of old castles and abbeys in Great Britain, Fotheringay bore, branded deep in its forehead, the mark of Cain, and every man's hand, of the last generation, seemed to have been turned against it. It has not only been demolished, but the debris have been scattered far and wide, and devoted to uses which they scarcely honor. You will see the well-faced stones for miles around, in garden walls, pavements, cottage hearths and chimneys, in stables and cow-houses. In Oundle, the principal hotel, a large castellated building, shows its whole front built of them. The great lion of Stamford is the Burghley House, the palace of the Marquis of Exeter. It may be called so without exaggeration of its magnificence as a building or of the extent and grandeur of its surroundings. The edifice itself would cut up into nearly half a dozen "White Houses," such as we install our American Presidents in at Washington. Certainly, in any point of view, it is large and splendid enough for the residence of an emperor and his suite. Its towers, turrets and spires present a picturesque grove of architecture of different ages, and its windows, it is said, equal in number all the days of the year. It was not open to the public the day I was in Stamford, so I could only walk around it and estimate its interior by its external grandeur. But there was an outside world of architecture in the park of sublimer features to me than even the great palace itself, with all its ornate and elaborate sculpture. It was the architecture of the majestic elms and oaks that stood in long ranks and folded their hands, high up in the blue sky, above the finely-gravelled walks that radiated outward in different directions. They all wore the angles and arches of the Gothic order and the imperial belt of several centuries. I walked down one long avenue and counted them on either side. There were not sixty on both; yet their green and graceful roofage reached a full third of a mile. Not sixty to pillar and turn such an arch as that! I sat down on a seat at the end to think of it. There was a morning service going on in this Cathedral of Nature. The dew-moistened, foliated arches so lofty, so interwebbed with wavy, waky spangles of sky, were all set to the music of the anthem. "The street musicians of the heavenly city" were singing one of its happiest hymns out of their mellow throats. The long and lofty orchestra was full of them. Their twittering treble shook the leaves with its breath, as it filtered down and flooded the temple below. Beautiful is this building of God! Beautiful and blessed are these morning singing-birds of His praise! Amen! But do not go yet. No; I will not. Here is the only book I carry with me on this walk--a Hebrew Psalter, stowed away in my knapsack. I will open it here and now, and the first words my eye lights upon shall be a text for a few thoughts on this scene and scenery. And here they are,--seemingly not apposite to this line of reflection, yet running parallel to it very closely: [HEBREW PHRASE] The best English that can be given of these words we have in our translation: "Blessed is he who, passing through the valley of Baca, maketh it a well." Why so? On what ground? If a man had settled down in that valley for life, there would have been no merit in his making it a well. It might, in that case, have been an act of lean-hearted selfishness on his part. Further than this, a man might have done it who could have had the heart to wall it in from the reach of thirsty travellers. No such man was meant in the blessing; nor any man resident in or near the valley. It was he who was "passing through" it, and who stopped, not to search for a dribbling vein of water to satisfy his own momentary thirst, but to make a well, broad and deep, after the oriental circumference, at which all future travellers that way might drink with gladness. That was the man on whom the blessing rested as a _condition_, not as a _wish_. Look at the word, and get the right meaning of it. It is [HEBREW WORD], not [HEBREW WORD]; it is a blessedness, not a benediction. It means a permanent reality of happiness, like that of Obededom, not a cheap "I thank you!" or "the Lord bless you!" from here and there a man or woman who appreciates the benefaction. And he deserves the same who, "passing through" the short years of man's life here on earth, plants trees like the living, lofty columns of this long cathedral aisle. How unselfish and generous is this gift to coming generations! How inestimable in its value and surpassing the worth of wealth!--surpassing the measurement of gold and silver! From my seat here, I look up to the magnificent frontage of that baronial palace. I see its towers, turrets and minarets; its grand and sculptured gateways and portals through this long, leaf-arched aisle. Not forty, but nearer four hundred years, doubtless, was that pile in building. Architecture of the pre- Norman period, and of all subsequent or cognate orders, diversifies the tastes and shapings of the structure. Suppose the whole should take fire to-night and burn to the ground. The wealth of the owner could command genius, skill and labor enough to rebuild it in three years, perhaps in one. The Czar of all the Russias did as large a thing once as this last, in the reconstruction of a palace. Perhaps the building is insured for its positive value, and the insurance money would erect a better one. But lift an axe upon that tall centurion of these templed elms. Cut through the closely-grained rings that register each succeeding year of two centuries. Hear the peculiar sounding of the heart-strokes, when the lofty, well-poised structure is balancing itself, and quivering through every fibre and leaf and twig on the few unsevered tendons that have not yet felt the keen edge of the woodman's steel. See the first leaning it cannot recover. Hear the first cracking of the central vertebra; then the mournful, moaning whir in the air; then the tremendous crash upon the green earth; the vibration of the mighty trunk on the ground, like the writhing and tremor of an ox struck by the butcher's axe; the rebound into the air of dismembered branches; the frightened flight of leaves and dust, and all the other distractions of that hour of death and destruction. Look upon that ruin! The wealth, genius and labor that could build a hundred Windsor Castles, and rebuild all the cathedrals of England in a decade, could not rebuild in two centuries that elm to the life and stature you levelled to the dust in two hours. Put, then, the man who plants trees for posterity with him who, "passing through the valley of Baca, maketh it a well." Put him under the same blessing of his kind, for he deserves it. He gives them the richest earthly gift that a man can give to a coming generation. In a practical sense, he gives them _time_. He gives them a whole century, as an extra. If they would pay a gold sovereign for every solid inch of oak, they could not hire one built to the stature of one of these trees in less than two centuries' time, though they dug about it and nursed it as the man did the vine in Scripture. Blessed be the builders of these living temples of Nature! Blessed be the man, rich or poor, old or young, especially the old, who sets his heart and hand to this cheap but sublime and priceless architecture. Let connoisseurs who have seen Memphis, Nineveh, Athens, Rome, or any or all of the great cities of the East, ancient or modern, come and sit here, and look at this lofty corridor, and mark the orders and graces of its architecture. What did the Ptolemies, their predecessors or successors in Egypt, or sovereigns of Chaldaic names, in Assyria, or ambitious builders in the ages of Pericles or Augustus, in Greece or Rome? Their structures were the wonders of the world. Mighty men they were, whose will was law, whose subjects worked it out to its wildest impulse without a murmur or a reward. But who built this sixty-columned temple, and bent these lofty arches? Two or three centuries ago, two men in coarse garb, and, it may be, in wooden shoes, came here with a donkey, bearing on its back a bundle of little elms, each of a finger's girth. They came with the rude pick and spade of that time; and, in the first six working hours of the day, they dug thirty holes on this side of the aisle, and planted in them half the tiny trees of their bundle. They then sat down at noon to their bread and cheese and, most likely, a mug of ale, and talked of small, home matters, just as if they were dibbling in a small patch of wheat or potatoes. They then went to work again and planted the other row; and, as the sun was going down, they straightened their backs, and, with hands stayed upon their hips, looked up and down the two lines and thought they would pass muster and please the master. Then they shouldered their brightened tools and went home to their low, dark cottages, discussing the prices of bread, beer and bacon, and whether the likes of them could manage to keep a pig and make a little meat in the year for themselves. That is the story of this most magnificent structure to which you look up with such admiration. Those two men in smock frocks, each with a pocket full of bread and cheese, were the Michael Angelos of this lofty St. Peter's. That donkey, with its worn panniers, was the only witness and helper of their work. And it was the work of a day! They may have been paid two English shillings for it. The little trees may have cost two shillings more, if taken from another estate. The donkey's day was worth sixpence. O, wooden-shoed Ptolemies! what a day's work was that for the world! They thought nothing of it--nothing more than they would of transplanting sixty cabbages. They most likely did the same thing the next day, and for most of the days of that year, and of the next year, until all these undulating acres were planted with trees of every kind that could grow in these latitudes. How cheap, but priceless, is the gift of such trees to mankind! What a wealth, what a glory of them can even a poor, laboring man give to a coming generation! They are the most generous crops ever sown by human hands. All others the sower reaps and garners into his own personal enjoyment; but this yields its best harvest to those who come after him. This is a seeding for posterity. From this well of Baca shall they draw the cooling luxury of the gift when the hands that made it shall have gone to dust. And this is a good place and time to think of home--of what we begin to hear called by her younger children, _Old_ New England. Trees with us have passed through the two periods specified by Solomon--"a time to plant and a time to pluck up." The last came first and lasted for a century. Trees were the natural enemies to the first settlers, and ranked in their estimation with the wild Indians, wolves and bears. It was their first, great business to cut them down, both great and small. Forests fell before the woodman's axe. It made clean work, and seldom spared an oak or an elm. But, at the end of a century, the people relented and felt their mistake. Then commenced "the time to plant;" first in and around cities like Boston, Hartford, and New Haven, then about villages and private homesteads. Tree-planting for use and ornament marks and measures the footsteps of our civilization. The present generation is reaping a full reward of this gift to the next. Every village now is coming to be embowered in this green legacy to the future; like a young mother decorating a Christmas-tree for her children. Towns two hundred years old are taking the names of this diversified architecture, and they glory in the title. New Haven, with a college second to none on the American Continent, loves to be called "The Elm City," before any other name. This generous and elevating taste is making its way from ocean to ocean, even marking the sites of towns and villages before they are built. I believe there is an act of the Connecticut Legislature now in force, which allows every farmer a certain sum of money for every tree he plants along the public roadside of his fields. The object of this is to line all the highways of the State with ornamental trees, so that each shall be a well-shaded avenue. What a gift to another generation that simple act is intended to make! What a world of wonder and delight will our little State be to European travellers and tourists of the next century, if this measure shall be carried out! If a few miles of such avenues as Burghley Park and Chatsworth present, command such admiration, what sentiments would a continuous avenue of trees of equal size from Hartford to New Haven inspire! While on this line of reflection, I will mention a case of monumental tree-planting in New England, not very widely known there. A small town, in the heart of Massachusetts, was stirred to the liveliest emotion, with all the rest in her borders, by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Different communities expressed their sense of the importance of this event in different ways, most of which were noisy and excited. But the good people of this rural parish came together, and, at a happy suggestion from some one of their number, agreed to spend the day in planting trees to commemorate the momentous transaction. They forthwith set to work, young and old, and planted first a double row on each side of the walk from the main road up "The Green" to their church door; then a row on each side of the public highway passing through the village, for nearly a mile in each direction. There was a blessed day's work for them, their children and children's children. Every hand that wielded a spade, or held up a treelet until its roots were covered with earth, has long since lost its cunning; but the tall, green monuments they erected to the memory of the most momentous day in American history, stand in unbroken ranks, the glory of the village. Although America will never equal England, probably, in compact and picturesque "plantations," or "woods," covering hundreds of acres, all planted by hand, our shade-trees will outnumber hers, and surpass them in picturesque distribution and arrangement, when our popular programme is fully carried out. In two or three important particulars, we have a considerable advantage over this country in respect to this tasteful embellishment. In the first place, all the farmers in America own the lands they cultivate, and, on an average, two sides of every farm front upon a public road. Two or three days' work suffices for planting a row of trees the whole length of this frontage, or the roadside of the farmer's fence or wall. This is being done more and more extensively from year to year, generally under the influence of public taste and custom, and sometimes under the stimulus of governmental compensation, as in Connecticut. Thus, in the life of the present generation, all our main roads and cross- roads may become arched and shaded avenues, giving the whole landscape of the country an aspect which no other land will present. Then we have another great advantage which England can never attain until she learns how to consume her coal smoke. Our wood and anthracite fires make no smoke to retard the growth or blacken the foliage of our trees. Thus we may have them in standing armies, tall and green, lining the streets, and overtopping the houses of our largest cities; filtering with their wholesome leafage the air breathed by the people. New Haven and Cleveland are good specimens of beautifully-shaded towns. There is a third circumstance in our favor as yet, and of no little value. The grand old English oak and elm are magnificent trees, in park or hedge-row here. The horse-chestnut, lime, beech and ash grow to a size that you will not see in America. The Spanish chestnut, a larger and coarser tree than our American, reaches an enormous girth and spread. The pines, larches and firs abound. Then there are tree-hunters exploring all the continents, and bringing new species from Japan and other antipodean countries. But as yet, our maples have never been introduced; and without these the tree-world of any country must ever lack a beautiful feature, both in spring, summer and autumn, especially in the latter. Our autumnal scenery without the maple, would be like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out; or like a royal court without a queen. Few Americans, even loudest in its praise, realise how much of the glory of our Indian summer landscape is shed upon it by this single tree. At all the Flower Shows I have seen in England and France, I have never beheld a bouquet so glorious and beautiful as a little islet in a small pellucid lake in Maine, filled to the brim, and rounded up like a full-blown rose, with firs, larches, white birches and soft maples, with a little sprinkling of the sumach. An early frost had touched the group with every tint of the rainbow, and there it stood in the ruddy glow of the Indian summer, looking at its face in the liquid mirror that smiled, still as glass, under its feet. I was much pleased to notice what honor was put upon one of our humble and despised trees in Burghley House park, as in the grounds of other noblemen. There was not one that spread such delicate and graceful tresses on the breeze as our White Birch; not one that fanned it with such a gentle, musical flutter of silver-lined leaves; not one that wore a bodice of such virgin white from head to foot, or that showed such long, tapering fingers against the sky. I was glad to see such justice done to a tree in the noblest parks in England, which with us has been treated with such disdain and contumely. When I saw it here in such glory and honor, and thought how, notwithstanding its Caucasian complexion, it is regarded as a nuisance in our woods, meadows and pastures, so that any man who owns, or can borrow an axe, may cut it down without leave or license wherever he finds it--when I saw this disparity in its status in the two Englands, I resolved to plead its cause in my own with new zeal and fidelity. CHAPTER XIII. WALK TO OAKHAM--THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPRING--THE ENGLISH GENTRY- -A SPECIMEN OF THE CLASS--MELTON MOWBRAY AND ITS SPECIALITIES-- BELVOIR VALE AND ITS BEAUTY--THOUGHTS ON THE BLIND PAINTER. From Stamford to Oakham was an afternoon walk which I greatly enjoyed. This was the first week of harvest, and the first of August. How wonderfully the seasons are localised and subdivided. How diversified is the economy of light and heat! That field of wheat, thick, tall and ripe for the sickle, was green and apparently growing through all the months of last winter. What a phenomenon it would have been, on the first of February last, to a New England farmer, suddenly transported from his snow-buried hills to the view of this landscape the same day! Not a spire of grass or grain was alive when he left his own homestead. All was cold and dead. The very earth was frozen to the solidity and sound of granite. It was a relief to his eye to see the snow fall upon the scene and hide it two feet deep for months. He looks upon this, then upon the one he left behind. This looks full of luxuriant life, as green as his in May. It has three months' start of his dead and buried crop. He walks across it; his shoes sink almost to the instep in the soft soil. He sees birds hopping about in it without overcoats. Surely, he says to himself, this is a favored land. Here it lies on the latitudes of Labrador, and yet its midwinter fields are as green as ours in the last month of Spring. At this rate the farmers here must harvest their wheat before the ears of mine are formed. But he counts without Nature. The American sun overtakes and distances the English by a full month. Here is the compensation for six consecutive months in which the New England farmer must house his plough and not turn a furrow. Doubtless, as much light and heat brighten and warm one country as the other in the aggregate of a year. But there is a great difference in the economy of distribution. In England, the sun spreads its warmth more evenly over the four seasons of the year. What it withholds from Summer it gives to Winter, and makes it wear the face of Spring through its shortest and coldest days. But then Spring loses a little from this equalising dispensation. It is not the resurrection from death and the grave as it is in America. Children are not waiting here at the sepulchre of the season, as with us, watching and listening for its little Bluebird angel to warble from the first budding tree top, "_It is risen_!" They do not come running home with happy eyes, dancing for joy, and shouting through the half open door, "O, mother, Spring has come! We've heard the Bluebird! Hurrah! Spring has come. We saw the Phebee on the top of the saw-mill!" Here Spring makes no sensation; takes no sudden leap into the seat of Winter, but comes in gently, like the law of primogeniture or the British Constitution. It is slow and decorous in its movements. It is conservative, treats its predecessor with much deference, and makes no sudden and radical changes in the face of things. It comes in with no Lord Mayor's Day, and blows no trumpets, and bends no triumphal arches to grace its entree. Few new voices in the tree-tops hail its advent. No choirs of tree-toads fiddle in the fens. No congregation of frogs at twilight gather to the green edges of the unfettered pond to sing their Old Hundred, led by venerable Signor Cronker, in his bright, buskin doublet, mounted on a floating stump, and beating time with a bulrush. No Shad-spirits with invisible wings, perform their undulating vespers in the heavens, to let the fishermen know that it is time to look to their nets. Even the hens of the farm-yard cackle with no new tone of hope and animation at the birth of the English Spring. The fact is, it is a baby three months old when it is baptised. It is really born at Christmas instead of Easter, and makes no more stir in the family circle of the seasons than any familiar face would at a farmer's table. In a utilitarian point of view, it is certainly an immense advantage to all classes in this country, that Nature has tempered her climates to it in this kindly way. I will not run off upon that line of reflection here, but will make it the subject of a few thoughts somewhere this side of John O'Groat's. But what England gains over us in the practical, she loses in the poetical, in this economy of the seasons. Her Spring does not thrill like a sudden revelation, as with us. It does not come out like the new moon, hanging its delicate silver crescent in the western pathway of the setting sun, which everybody tries to see first over the right shoulder, for the very luck of the coincidence. Still, both countries should be contented and happy under this dispensation of Nature. The balance is very satisfactory, and well suited to the character and habits of the two peoples. The Americans are more radical and sensational than the English; more given to sudden changes and stirring events. Sterne generally gets the credit of saying that pretty thought first, "Providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." A French writer puts it the other way, and more practically: "Providence tempers the wool of the lamb to the wind." This is far better and more natural. But it may be truly said that Providence tempers the seasons to the temperaments and customs of the two nations. Just before reaching Oakham, I passed a grand mansion, standing far back from the turnpike road, on a commanding eminence, flanked with extensive plantations. The wide avenue leading to it looked a full mile in length. Lawns and lakes, which mirrored the trees with equal distinctness, suffused the landscape of the park like evening smiles of Nature. It was indeed a goodly heritage for one man; and he only mounted a plain _Mr_. to his name, although I learned that he could count his farms by the dozen. I was told that the annual dinner given to his tenant farmers came off the previous day at the inn where I lodged. A sumptuous banquet was provided for them, presided over by the steward of the estate; as the great _Mr_. did not honor the plebeian company with his presence. This is a feature of the structure of English society which the best read American would not be likely to recognise without travelling somewhat extensively in the country. The British Nobility, the great, world- renowned Middle Class, and the poor laboring population, constitute the three great divisions of the people and include them all in his mind. He is apt to leave out of count the Gentry, the great untitled MISTERS, who come in between the nobility and middle-men, and constitute the connecting link between them. "The fine old English gentleman, all of the olden time," is supposed to belong to this class. They make up most of "the old county families," of which you hear more than you read. They are generally large landholders, owning from twenty to one hundred farms. They live in grand old mansions, surrounded with liveried servants, and inspire a mild awe and respectful admiration, not only in the common country people, but in the minds of persons in whom an American would not look for such homage to untitled rank. They hunt with horses and dogs over the grounds of their tenant farmers, and the latter often act as game-beaters for them at their "shootings." When one of them owns a whole village, church and all, he is generally called "the Squire," but most of them are squired without the definite article. They still boast of as good specimens of "the fine old English gentleman" as the country can show; and I am inclined to think it is not an unfounded pretension, although I have not yet come in contact with many of the class. One of this county squirocracy I know personally and well,--and other Americans know him as well as myself,--who, though living in a palace of his own, once occupied by an exiled French sovereign, is just as simple and honest as a child in every feature of his disposition and deportment. Every year he has a Festival in his park, lasting two or three days. It is a kind of out-door Parliament and a Greenwich Fair combined, as it would seem at first sight to an incidental spectator. I do not believe anything in the rest of the wide world could equal this gathering, for many peculiar features of enjoyment. It is made up of both sexes and all ages and conditions; especially of the laboring classes. They come out strong on these occasions. The round and red faced boys and girls of villages and hamlets for a great distance around look forward to this annual frolic with exhilarating expectation. Never was romping and racing and the amorous forfeit plays of the ring got up under more favorable auspices, or with more pleasant surroundings. It would do any man's heart good, who was ever a genuine boy, to see the venerable squire and his lady presiding over a race between competing couples of ploughmens' boys, from ten to fifteen years of age, running their rounds in the park, bare-footed, bare-headed, with faces as round and red as a ripe pumpkin, and hair of the same color whipping the air as they neck-and-neck it in the middle of the heat. When the winners of the prizes receive their rewards at his hands, his kind words and the radiant benevolence of his face they value more than the conquest and the coins they win. Then there are intellectual entertainments and deliberative proceedings of grave moment arranged for the elder portion of the great congregation. While groups of blushing lads and lasses are hunting the handkerchief in the hustle and tussle of the ring under the great, solemn elms, a scene may be witnessed on the lawn nearer the mansion that ought to have been painted long ago. Two or three double-horse wagons are ranged end to end in the shade, and planks are placed along from one end to the other, making a continuous seat for a score or two of orators. In front of this dozen-wheeled tribune rows of seats, capable of holding several hundred persons, are arranged within hearing distance. When these are filled and surrounded by a standing wall of men and women, three or four deep, and when the orators of the day ascend over the wheels to the long wagon-seat, you have a scene and an assembly the like of which you find nowhere else in Christendom. No Saxon parliament of the Heptarchy could "hold a candle to it." Never, in any age or country of free speech, did individual ideas, idiosyncrasies, and liberty of conscience have freer scope and play. Never did all the isms of philanthropy, politics, or of social and moral reform generally have such a harmonious trysting time of it. Never was there a platform erected for discussing things local and general so catholic as the one now resting upon the wheels of those farm wagons. Every year the bland and venerable host succeeds in widening the area of debate. I was invited to be present at the Festival this year, but was too far on the road to John O'Groat's to participate in a pleasure I have often enjoyed. But I read his resume of the year's doings, aspects and prospects from Japan to Hudson's Bay with lively interest and valuable instruction. He seldom presides himself as chairman, but leaves that post of honor to be filled, if possible, by the citizen of some foreign country, if he can speak English tolerably. This gives a more cosmopolitan aspect to the assembly. But he himself always makes what in Parliament would be called "a financial statement," without the reference to money matters. He sums up the significance of all the great events of the year, bearing upon human progress in general, and upon each specific enterprise in particular. With palatial mansions, parks, and farms great and small, scattered through several counties, he is the greatest radical in England. He distances the Chartists altogether in his programme, and adds several new points to their political creed. He not only advocates manhood suffrage, but womanhood suffrage, and woman-seats in Parliament. Then he is a great friend of a reform which the Chartists grievously overlook, and which would make thousands of them voters if they would adopt it. That is, Total Abstinence from Tobacco, as well as from Ardent Spirits. Thus, no report of modern times equals the good Squire's summing-up, which he gives on these occasions, from the great farm-wagon tribune, to the multitudinous and motley congregation assembled under his park trees. This year it was unusually rich and piquant, from the expanded area of events and aspects. In presenting these, as bearing upon the causes of Temperance, Peace, Anti-War, Anti- Slavery, Anti-Tobacco, Anti-Capital Punishment, Anti-Church-Rates, Free Trade, Woman's Rights, Parliamentary Reform, Social Reform, Scientific Progress, Discovery of the Sources of the Nile, and other important movements, he was necessarily obliged to be somewhat discursive. But he generalised with much ease and perspicuity, and conducted the thread of his discourse, like a rivulet of light, through the histories of the year; transporting the mind of his audience from doings in Japan to those in America, from Poland to Mexico, and through stirring regions of Geography, Politics, Philanthropy, Social Science and Economy, by gentle and interesting transitions. This annual statement is very valuable and instructive, and should have a wider publicity than it usually obtains. When "the fine old English gentleman all of the olden time" has concluded his resume of the year's progress, and the prospects it leaves to the one incoming, the orators of the different causes which he has thus reported, arise one after the other, and the bright air and the green foliage of the over-spreading trees, as well as the listening multitude below are stirred with fervid speeches, sometimes interspersed with "music from the band." The Festival is wound up by a banquet in the hall, given by the munificent host to a large number of guests, representing the various good movements advocated from the platform described. Many Americans have spoken from that rostrum, and sat at that banquet table in years gone by, and they will attest to the correctness of these slight delineations of the character of the host and of the annual festival that will perpetuate his name in long and pleasant remembrance. Oakham is a goodly and pleasant town, the chief and capital of Rutlandshire. It has the ruins of an old castle in its midst, and several interesting antiquities and customs. It, too, has its unique speciality or prerogative. I was told that every person of title driving through the town, or coming to reside within the jurisdiction of its bye-laws, must leave his card to the authorities in the shape of a veritable horse-shoe. It is said that the walls of the old town hall are hung with these iron souvenirs of distinguished visits; thus constituting a museum that would be instructive to a farrier or blacksmith, as well as to the antiquarian. From Oakham I walked to Melton Mowbray, a cleanly, good-looking town in Leicestershire, situated on the little river Eye. One cannot say exactly in regard to Rutlandshire what an Englishman once said to the authorities of a pigmy Italian duchy, who ordered him to leave it in twenty-four hours. "I only require fifteen minutes," said cousin John, with a look and tone which Jonathan could not imitate. This rural county is to the shire-family of England what Rhode Island is to the American family of States--the smallest, but not least, in several happy characteristics. I spent a quiet Sabbath in Melton Mowbray; attended divine service in the old parish church and listened to two extemporaneous sermons full of simple and earnest teaching, and delivered in a conversational tone of voice. Here, too, the parish church was seated in the midst of the great congregation which had long ceased to listen to the call of its Sabbath bells. It was a beautiful and touching arrangement of the olden time to erect the House of Prayer in the centre of "God's Acre," that the shadow of its belfry and the Sabbath voice of its silvery bells might float for centuries over the family circles lying side by side in their long homes around the sanctuary. There was a good and tender thought in making up this sabbath society of the living and the dead; in planting the narrow pathway between the two Sions with the white milestones of generations that had travelled it in ages gone, leaving here and there words of faith, hope and admonition to those following in their footsteps. It is one of the contingencies of "higher civilization" that this social economy of the churchyard, that linked present and past generations in such touching and instructive companionship, has been suspended and annulled. Melton Mowbray has also a very respectable individuality. It is a great centre for the scarlet-coated Nimrods who scale hedges and ditches, in well-mounted squadrons, after a fox _preserved_ at great expense and care to become the victim of their valor. But this is a small and frivolous distinction compared with its celebrated manufacture of _pork-pies_. It bids fair to become as famous for them as Banbury is for buns. I visited the principal establishment for providing the travelling and picnicking world with these very substantial and palatable portables. I went under the impulse of that uneasy, suspicious curiosity to peer into the forbidden mysteries of the kitchen which generally brings no satisfaction when gratified, and which often admonishes a man not only to eat what is set before him without any questions for conscience sake, but also for the sake of the more delicate and exacting sensibilities of the stomach. I must confess my first visit to this, the greatest pork- pie factory in the world, savored a little of the anxiety to know the worst, instead of the best, in regard to the solid materials and lighter ingredients which entered into the composition of these suspiciously cheap luxuries. There were points also connected with the process of their elaboration which had given me an undefinable uneasiness in the refreshment rooms of a hundred railway stations. I was determined to settle these moot points once for all. So I entered the establishment with an eye of as keen a speculation as an exciseman's searching a building for illicit distillery, and I came out of it a more charitable and contented man. All was above board, fair and clean. The meat was fresh and good. The flour was fine and sweet; the butter and lard would grace the neatest housewife's larder; the forms on which the pies were moulded were as pure as spotless marble. The men and boys looked healthy and bright; their hands were smooth and clean, and their aprons white as snow. Not one of them smoked or took snuff at his work. I saw every process and implement employed in the construction of these pies for the market; the great tubs of pepper and spice, the huge ovens, the cooling racks, the packing room; in a word, every department and feature of the establishment. And the best thing that I can say of it is this: that I shall eat with better satisfaction and relish hereafter the pies bearing the brand of Evans, of Melton Mowbray, than I ever did before. The famous Stilton cheese is another speciality of this quiet and interesting town, or of its immediate neighborhood. So, putting the two articles of luxury and consumption together, it is rather ahead of Banbury with its cakes. On Monday, August 11th, I resumed my walk northward, and passed through a very highly cultivated and interesting section. About the middle of the afternoon, I reached Broughton Hill, and looked off upon the most beautiful and magnificent landscape I have yet seen in England. It was the Belvoir Vale; and it would be worth a hundred miles' walk to see it, if that was the only way to reach it. It lay in a half-moon shape, the base line measuring apparently about twenty miles in length. As I sat upon the high wall of this valley, that overlooks it on the south, I felt that I was looking upon the most highly-finished piece of pre-Raphaelite artistry that could be found in the world,--the artistry of the plough, glorious and beautiful with the unconscious and involuntary pictures which patient human labor paints upon the canvas of Nature. Never did I see the like before. If Turner had the shaping of the ground entirely for an artistic purpose, it could not have been more happily formed for a display of agricultural pictures. What might be called the _physical_ vista made the most perfect hemiorama I ever looked upon. The long, high, wooded ridge, including Broughton Hill, _eclipsed_, as it were, just half the disk of a circle twenty miles in diameter, leaving the other half in all the glow and glory that Nature and that great blind painter, Agricultural Industry, could give to it. The valley with its foot against this mountainous ridge, put out its right arm and enfolded to its bosom a little, beautiful world of its own of about fifty miles girth. In this embrace were included hundreds of softly-rounded hills, with their intervening valleys, villages, hamlets, church spires and towers, plantations, groves, copses and hedge-row trees, grouped by sheer accident as picturesquely as Turner himself could have arranged them. The elevation of the ridge on which I sat softened down all these distant hills, so that they looked only like little undulating risings by which the valley gently ascended to the blue rim of the horizon on the north. It was an excellent standpoint on which to balance Nature and Human Industry; to estimate their separate and joint work upon that vast landscape. A few centuries ago, perhaps about the time that the Mayflower sighted Plymouth Rock, this valley, now so indescribably beautiful, was almost in the state of nature. Wolves and wild boars may have been prowling about in the woods and tangled thickets that covered this ridge back for several leagues. Bushes, bogs and briers, and coarse prairie grass roughened the bottom of this valley; matted heather, furze, broom and clumps of shrubby trees, all those hills and uplands arising in the background to the northward horizon. This declining sun, and the moon and stars that will soon follow in the pathway of its chariot, like a liveried cortege, shone upon that scene with all the light they will give this day and night. The rain and dew, and all the genial ministries of the seasons, did their unaided best to make it lovely and beautiful. The sweetest singing-birds of England came and tried to cheer its solitude with their happy voices. The summer breezes came with their softest breath, whispering through brake, bush and brier the little speeches of Nature's life. The summer bees came and filled all those heather-purpled acres with their industrial lays, and sang a merry song in the door of every wild-flower that gave them the petalled honey of its heart. All the trained and travelling industrials and all the sweet influences of Nature came and did all they could without man's help to make this great valley most delightful to the eye. But the wolves still prowled and howled; the briers grew rough and rank; the grass, coarse and thin; the heathered hills were oozy and cold in their watery beds; the clumpy, shrubby trees wore the same ragged coats of moss; and no feature of the scene mended for the better from year to year. Then came the great Blind Painter, with his rude, iron pencils, to the help of Nature. He came with the Axe, Plough and Spade, her mightiest allies. With these he had driven wild Druidic Paganism back mile by mile from England's centre; back into her dark fastnesses. With the Axe, Spade and Plough he chased the foul beasts and barbarisms from the island. Two centuries long was he in painting this Beautiful Valley. Nature ground and mixed the colors for him all the while, for he was blind. He was poor; often cold and hungry, and his children, with blue fingers and pale, silent eyes, sometimes asked for bread in winter he could not give. He lived in a low cottage, small, damp and dark, and laid him down at night upon a bed of straw. He could not read; and his thoughts of human life and its hereafter were few and small. He had no taste for music, and seldom whistled at his work. He wore a coarse garment, of ghostly pattern, called a smock-frock. His hat just rounded his head to a more globular and mindless form. His shoes were as heavy as a horse's with iron nails. He had no eye nor taste for colors. If all the trees, if all the crops of grain, grass and roots on which he wrought his life long, had come out in brickdust and oil, it would have been all the same to him, if they had sold as high in the market, and beer and bread had been as cheap for the uniformity. And yet he was the Turner of this great painting. He is the artist that has made England a gallery of the finest agricultural pictures in the world. And in no country in Christendom is High Art so appreciated to such pecuniary patronage and valuation as here. In none is the genius of the Pencil so treasured, so paid, and almost worshipped as here. The public and private galleries of Britain hold pictures that would buy every acre of the island at the price current of it when Elizabeth was queen. One of Turner's landscapes would pay for a whole Highland county at its valuation when Mary held her first court at Holyrood. I sit here and look off upon this largest, loveliest picture the Blind Painter has given to England. I note his grouping of the ivy- framed fields, of every size and form, panelling the gently-rounded hills, and all the soft slopes down to the foot of the valley; the silvery, ripe barley against the dark-green beans; the rich gold of the wheat against the smooth, blue-dashed leaves of the mangel wurzel or rutabaga; the ripening oats overlooking a foreground of vividly green turnips, with alternations of pasture and meadow land, hedges running in every direction, plantations, groves, copses sprinkled over the whole vista, as if the whole little world, clear up to the soft, blue fringe of the horizon, were the design and work of a single artist. And this, and ten thousand pictures of the same genius, were the work of the Briarean-handed BLIND PAINTER, who still wears a smock-frock and hob-nailed shoes, and lives in a low, damp cottage, and dines on bread and cheese among the golden sheaves of harvest! O, Mother England! thou that knightest the artists while living, and buildest their sepulchres when dead; thou that honorest to such stature of praise the plagiarists upon Nature, and clothest the copyists of patient Labor's pictures in such purple and fine linen; thou whose heart is softening to the sweet benevolences of Christian charity in so many directions,--wilt thou not think, with a new sentiment of kindness and sympathy, on this Blind Painter, who has tapestried the hills and valleys of thy island with an artistry that angels might look upon with admiration and wonder! Wilt thou not build him a better cottage to live in? Wilt thou not give him something better than dry bread and cold bacon for dinner in harvest? Wilt thou not teach all his children to read the alphabet and the blessed syllables of the Great Revelation of God's Love to man? Wilt thou not make a morning-ward door in his dwelling and show him a future with a sun in it, in _this_ world, as well as the world to come? Wilt thou not open up a pathway through the valley of his humiliation by which his children may ascend to the better conditions of society? CHAPTER XIV. NOTTINGHAM AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS--NEWSTEAD ABBEY--MANSFIELD--TALK IN A BLACKSMITH'S SHOP--CHESTERFIELD, CHATSWORTH AND HADDON HALL-- ARISTOCRATIC CIVILISATION, PRESENT AND PAST. From the Belvoir Vale I continued my walk to Nottingham the following day; crossing a grand old bridge over the Trent. Take it all in all, this may be called perhaps the most English town in England; stirring, plucky and radical; full of industrial intellect and vigor. Its chief businesses involve and exercise thought; and thought educed into one direction and activity, runs naturally into others. The whole population, under these influences, has become _peopled_ to a remarkable status and strength of opinion, sentiment and action. They prefix that large and generous quality to their best doings and institutions, and have their Peoples' College, Peoples' Park, etc. The Peoples' Charter had its stronghold here, and all radical reforms are sure to find sympathy and support among the People of Nottingham. I should think no equal population in the kingdom would sing "Britons never, never will be slaves," with more spirit, or, perhaps, with more understanding. Their plucky, English natures became terribly stirred up in the exciting time of the Reform Bill, and they burned down the magnificent palace-castle of the old Duke of Newcastle, crowning the mountainous rock which terminates on the west the elevated ridge on which the town is built. When the Bill was carried, and the People had cooled down to their normal condition of mind, they were obliged to pay for this evening's illumination of their wrath pretty dearly. The Duke mulcted the town and county to the tune of 21,000 pounds, or full $100,000. The castle was no Chepstow structure, rough and rude for war, but more like the ornate and castellated palace at Heidelberg, and it was almost as high above the Trent as the latter is above the Neckar. The view the site commands is truly magnificent, embracing the Trent Valley, and an extensive vista beyond it. It was really the great lion of the town, and the People, having paid the 21,000 pounds for dismounting it, because it roared in the wrong direction on the Reform Bill, expected, of course, that His Grace the Duke would set it up again on the old pedestal, with its mane and tail and general aspect much improved. But they counted without their host. "Is it not lawful to do what I will with my own," was the substance of his reply; and there stands the blackened, crumbling ruin to this day, as a silent but grim reproach to the People for letting their angry passions rise to such destructive excitement on political questions. Hosiery and lace are the two great manufacturing interests of Nottingham, and the tons of these articles it turns out yearly for the world are astonishing in number and value. A single London house employs 3,000 hands in the town and immediate vicinity upon hosiery alone for its establishment. Lace now seems to lead the way, and there are whole streets of factories and warehouses busy with its manufacture and sale. Perhaps no fabric in the world ever tested the ingenuity and value of machinery like this. The cost has been reduced, from the old hand-working to the present process, from three dollars to three cents a yard! I think no machinery yet invented has been endowed with more delicate functions of human reason and genius than that employed upon the flower-work of this subtle drapery. Until I saw it with my own eyes, I had concluded that the machinery invented or employed in America for setting card- teeth was the most astute, and as nearly approaching the faculties of the human mind in its apparent thought-power, as it was reverent and safe to carry anything made of iron and steel, or made by man at all. To construct a machine which should pass between its fingers a broad belt of leather and a fine thread of wire, prick rows of holes across the breadth of the leather, bend, cut off, and insert the shank ends of the teeth clear through these holes, and clinch them on the back side, and pour out a continuous, uninterrupted stream of perfectly-teethed belt, all ready for carding,--this, I fancied, was the ne plus ultra of mechanical inventions. But it is quite surpassed by the lace-weaving looms of Nottingham, that work out, to exquisite perfection, all the flowers, leaves, vines and vein-work of nature. It was wonderful to see the ductility of cotton, as here exemplified. The _bobbins_, which, I suppose, are a mere refinement upon the old hand-thrown shuttle, are of brass, about the size of half-a-crown. A groove that will just admit the thin edge of a case-knife, is cut into the rim of the little wheel, about one quarter of an inch deep. A cotton thread, 120 yards in length, and strong enough to be twitched about and twisted by a score of vigorous, chattering, iron fingers, is wound around in this groove. But it would be idle to attempt a description of either the machinery or the process. I went next into a large establishment for dyeing, dressing, winding and packing the lace for market. It was startling to see the acres of it dyed black for mourning. Really there seemed enough of it to drape the whole valley of the shadow of death! It was an impressive sight truly. If there were other establishments doing the same thing, Nottingham must turn out weeds of grief enough for several millions of mourning widows, mothers, sisters and daughters in a year. I ascended into the dressing-room, I think they called it, in the upper story, where there was a piece containing one twenty-fifth of an acre of lace undergoing a fearful operation for a human constitution to sustain. It was necessary that the heat of the apartment should be kept at _one hundred and twenty_ degrees! There was a large number of women and girls, and a few men and boys working under this melting ordeal. And one of the proprietors was at their head, in a rather summer dress, and with a seethed and crimson face beaded with hot perspiration. It was a very delicate and important operation which he had not only to watch with his own eyes, but to work at with his own hands. I was glad to learn that he was a staunch Protestant, and did not believe in _purgatory_; but those poor girls!--could they be expected to hold to the same belief under such a test? I was told that they could get up lace so cheap that the people of the town frequently cover their gooseberry bushes with it to keep off the insects. Spider-webbing is a scarcely more gossamer-like fabric. Sixteen square yards of this lace only weigh about an ounce! If the negroes on one of the South Carolina Sea-island plantations could have been shut into that dressing-room for two whole minutes, with the mercury at 120 degrees, they would have rolled up the whites of their eyes in perfect amazement and made a rush for "Dixie" again. From Nottingham I made an afternoon walk to Mansfield. The weather was splendid and the country in all the glory of harvest. On reaching Newstead Abbey, I found, to my regret, that the entree to the public had been closed by the new proprietor, one, I was told, of the manufacturing gentry of the Manchester school. Not that he was less liberal and accommodating to sight-seers than his predecessors, but because he was making very extensive and costly improvements in the buildings and grounds. I have seen nothing yet in England to compare, for ornate carving, with the new gate-way he is making to the park. It is of the finest kind of arabesque work done in stone that much resembles the Caen. This prevention barred me from even a distant view of the once famous residence of Lord Byron, as it could not be seen from the public road. Within about three miles of Mansfield, I came to a turnpike gate,--a neat, cozy, comfortable cottage, got up in the Gothic order. I stopped to rest a moment, and noticing the good woman setting her tea-table, I invited myself to a seat at it, on the inn basis, and had a pleasant meal and chat with her and an under-gamekeeper of the Duke of Portland, who had come in a little before me. The stories he told me about the extent of the Duke's possessions were marvellous, more especially in reference to his game preserves. I should think there must be a larger number of hares, rabbits and partridges on his estate than in the whole of New England. As I sat engaged in conversation with the woman of the house and this accidental guest, an unmistakable American face met my eyes, as I raised them to the opposite wall. It was the familiar face of a Bristol clock, made in the Connecticut village adjoining the one in which I was born. It wore the same honest expression, which a great many ill-natured people, especially in our Southern States, have regarded as covering a dishonest and untruthful mind, or a bad memory of the hours. Still it is the most ubiquitous Americanism in the world, and it is pleasant to see its face in so many cottages of laboring men from Land's End to John O'Groat's. Mansfield is a very substantial and venerable town, bearing a name which one distinguished man has rendered illustrious by wearing it through a brilliant life. It is situated near the celebrated Sherwood Forest, and is marked by many features of peculiar interest. One of its noticeable celebrities is the house in which Lord Chesterfield resided. It is now occupied by a Wesleyan minister, who elaborates his sermons in the very room, I believe, in which that fashionable nobleman penned his polite literature for youthful candidates for the uppermost circles of society. In the centre of the market place there is a magnificent monument erected to the memory of the late Lord George Bentinck, who was held in high esteem by the people of the town and vicinity. The manufactures are pretty much the same as in Nottingham. They turn out a great production of raw material in red sandstone, very much resembling our Portland, quite as fine, hard and durable. Immense blocks of it are quarried and conveyed to London and to all parts of the kingdom. The town also supplies a vast amount of moulding sand, of nearly the same color and consistency as that we procure from Albany. I stopped on my way into the town to take a turn through the cemetery, which was very beautifully laid out, and looked like a great garden lawn belted with shrubbery, and illuminated with the variegated lamps of flowers of every hue and breath. The meandering walks were all laid with asphalte, which presented a new and striking contrast to the gorgeous borders and the vivid green of the cleanly shaven grass. Many of the little graves were made in nests of geraniums and other modest and sweet-eyed stars of hope. Next day I had a very enjoyable walk in a north-westerly direction to Chesterfield. On the way, called in at a blacksmith's shop, and had a long talk with the smith-in-chief on matters connected with his trade. The "custom-work" of such shops in country villages in England is like that in ours fifty years ago--embracing the greatest variety of jobs. Articles now made with us in large manufacturing establishments at a price which would starve a master and his apprentice to compete with, are hammered out in these English shops on a single anvil. On comparing notes with this knight of the hammer, I learned a fact I had not known before. His price for horse-shoeing varied according to the size of the hoof, just as our leather-shoemakers charge according to the foot. On taking leave of him he intimated, in the most frank and natural way in the world, that, in our exchange of information, the balance was in his favor, and that I could not but think it fair to pay him the difference. I looked at him first inquiringly and doubtingly, embarrassed with the idea that I had not understood him, or that he was a journeyman and not the master of the establishment. But he was as free and easy and natural as possible. An American tobacco-chewer, of fifty years' standing, would not have asked a cut from a neighbor's "lady's twist," or "pig-tail" in more perfect good faith. That good, round, English face would have blushed crimson if the man suspected that I misunderstood him. Nay, more, he would quite likely have thrown the pennies at my head if I had offered them to him to buy bread or bacon with for himself and family. I had no reason for a moment's doubt. It all meant _beer_, "only that and nothing more;" a mere pour boire souvenir to celebrate our mutual acquaintance. So I gave him a couple of pennies, just as I would have given him a bite of tobacco if we had both been in that line. I feared to give him more, lest he might think I meant bread and bacon and thought him a beggar. But I ventured to tell him, however, that I did not use that beverage myself, and hoped he would wish me health in some better enjoyment. I saw, for the first time, a number of Spanish cattle feeding in a pasture. They were large, variously colored animals with the widely-branching horns that distinguish them. A man must have a long range of buildings to stable a score of creatures with such horns, and for that reason they will only be kept as curiosities in these northern latitudes. And they are curiosities of animal life, heightened to a wonderment when placed side by side with the black Galloways, or those British breeds of cattle which have no horns at all. I should not wonder, however, if this large, cream-colored stock from Spain should be introduced here to cross with the Durhams, Devons, and Herefords. When about half-way from Mansfield to Chesterfield, a remarkable change came over the face of the landscape. The mosaic work of the hill-sides and valleys showed more green squares than before. Three-fourths of the fields were meadow or pasture, or in mangel or turnips. There was but one here and there in wheat or other grain. The road beneath and the sky above began to blacken, and the chimneys of coal-pits to thicken. Sooty-faced men, horses and donkeys passed with loaded carts; and all the premonitory aspects of the "black country" multiplied as I proceeded. I do not recollect ever seeing a landscape change so suddenly in England. Chesterfield is an intelligent looking town, evidently growing in population and prosperity. It has its own unique speciality; almost as strikingly distinctive as that of Strasburg or Pisa. This is the most ambiguous and mysterious church spire in the world. It would be very difficult to convey any idea of it by any description from an unaided pen; and there is nothing extant that would avail as an illustration. The church is very old and large, and stands upon a commanding eminence. The massive tower supports a tall but suddenly tapering spire of the most puzzling construction to the eye. It must have been designed by a monk of the olden time, with a Chinese turn of ingenuity. There is no order known to architecture to furnish a term or likeness for it. A ridgy, spiral spire are the three most descriptive words, but these are not half enough for stating the shape, style and posture of this strange steeple. It is difficult even to assist the imagination to form an idea of it. I will essay a few words in that direction. Suppose, then, a plain spire, 100 feet high, in the form of an attenuated cone, planted upon a heavy church tower. Now, in imagination, plough this cone all around into deep ridges from top to bottom. Then mount to the top, and, with a great iron wrench, give it an even twist clear down to the base, so that each ridge shall wind entirely around the spire between the bottom and the top. Then, in giving it this screw- looking twist, bend over the top, with a gentle incline all the way down, so that it shall be "out of perpendicular" by about three feet. Then come down and look at your work, and you will be astonished at it, standing far or near. The tall, ridgy, curved, conical screw puzzles you with all sorts of optical illusions. As the eyes in a front-face portrait follow you around the room in which it is hung, so this strange spire seems to lean over upon you at every point, as you walk round the church. Indeed, I believe it was only found out several centuries after its erection, that it absolutely leaned more in one direction than another. It is a remarkable sight from the railway as you approach the town from a distance. If it may be said reverently, the church, standing on comparatively a hill, not only lifts its horn on high, but one like that of a rhinoceros, considerably curved. Just outside the town stands the house in which George Stephenson lived his last days, and ended his great life of benefaction to mankind; leaving upon that haloed spot a _biograph_ which the ages of time to come shall not wash out. From Chesterfield I diverged westward to see Chatsworth and Haddon Hall. Whoever makes this walk or ride, let him be sure to stop at Watch Hill on the way, and look at the view eastward. It is grander than that of Belvoir Vale, if not so beautiful. It was a pleasure quite equal to my anticipation to visit Chatsworth for the first time, after a sojourn in England, off and on, for sixteen years. It is the lion number three, according to the American ranking of the historical edifices and localities of England. Stratford-upon-Avon, Westminster Abbey and Chatsworth are the three representative celebrities which our travellers think they must visit, if they would see the life of England's ages from the best stand-points. And this is the order in which they rank them. Chatsworth and Haddon Hall should be seen the same day if possible; so that you may carry the impressions of the one fresh and active into the other. They are the two most representative buildings in the kingdom. Haddon is old English feudalism _edificed_. It represents the rough grandeur, hospitality, wassail and rude romance of the English nobility five hundred years ago. It was all in its glory about the time when Thomas-a-Becket the Magnificent used to entertain great companies of belted knights of the realm in a manner that exceeded regal munificence in those days,--even directing fresh straw to be laid for them on his ample mansion floor, that they might not soil the bravery of their dresses when they bunked down for the night. The building is brimful of the character and history of that period. Indeed, there are no two milestones of English history so near together, and yet measuring such a space of the nation's life and manners between them, as this hall and that of Chatsworth. It was built, of course, in the bow-and-arrow times, when the sun had to use the same missiles in shooting its barbed rays into the narrow apertures of old castles--or the stone coffins of fear-hunted knights and ladies, as they might be called. What a monument this to the dispositions and habits of the world, outside and inside, of that early time! Here is the porter's or warder's lodge just inside the huge gate. To think of a living being with a human soul in him burrowing in such a place!--a big, black sarcophagus without a lid to it, set deep in the solid wall. Then there is the chapel. Compare it with that of Chatsworth, and you may count almost on your fingers the centuries that have intervened between them. It was new-roofed soon after the discovery of America, and perhaps done up to some show of decency and comfort. But how small and rude the pulpit and pews--looking like rough- boarded potato-bins! Here is the great banquet-hall, full to overflowing with the tracks and cross-tracks of that wild, strange life of old. There is a fire-place for you, and a mark in the chimney-back of five hundred Christmas logs. Doubtless this great stone pavement of a floor was carpeted with straw at these banquets, after the illustrious Becket's pattern. Here is a memento of the feast hanging up at the top of the kitchenward door;--a pair of roughly-forged, rusty handcuffs amalgamated into one pair of jaws, like a musk-rat trap. What was the use of that thing, conductor? "That, sir, they put the 'ands in of them as shirked and didn't drink up all the wine as was poured into their cups, and there they made them stand on tiptoe up against that door, sir, before all the company, sir, until they was ashamed of theirselves." Descend into the kitchen, all scarred with the tremendous cookery of ages. Here they roasted bullocks whole, and just back in that dark vault with a slit or two in it for the light, they killed and dressed them. There are the relics of the shambles. And here is the great form on which they cut them up into manageable pieces. It would do you good, you Young America, to see that form, and the cross-gashes of the meat-axe in it. It is the half of a gigantic English oak, which was growing in Julius Caesar's time, sawed through lengthwise, making a top surface several feet wide, black and smooth as ebony. Some of the bark still clings to the under side. The dancing hall is the great room of the building. All that the taste, art and wealth of that day could do, was done to make it a splendid apartment, and it would pass muster still as a comfortable and respectable salon. As we pass out, you may decipher the short prayer cut in the wasting stone of a side portal, "GOD SAVE THE VERNONS!" I hope this prayer has been favorably answered; for history records much virtue in the family, mingled with some romantic escapades, which have contributed, I believe, to the entertainment of many novel readers. Just what Haddon Hall was to the baronial life and society of England five hundred years ago, is Chatsworth to the full stature of modern civilization and aristocratic wealth, taste and position. Of this it is probably the best measure and representative in the kingdom; and as such it possesses a special value and interest to the world at large. Were it not for here and there such an establishment, we should lack waymarks in the progress of the arts, sciences and tastes of advancing civilization. Governments and joint-stock companies may erect and fill, with a world of utilities and curiosities of ancient and modern times, British Museums, National Galleries, Crystal Palaces and Polytechnic Institutions; but not one of these, nor the Louvre, nor Versailles, nor the Tuileries can compete with one private mind, taste and will concentrated upon one great work for a lifetime, when endowed with the requisite perceptions and means competent to carry that work to the highest perfection of science, genius and art. Museums, galleries and public institutions of art are exclusively _visiting_ places. The elegancies of _home_ life are all shut out of their attractions. You see in them the work and presence of a committee, or corporation, often in discrepant layers of taste and plan. One mind does not stand out or above the whole, fashioning the tout- ensemble to the symmetrical lines of one governing, all-pervading and shaping thought. You see no exquisite artistry of drawing-room or boudoir elegance and luxury running through living apartments of home, out into the conservatories, lawns, gardens, park and all its surroundings and embellishments, making the whole like a great illuminated volume of family life, which you may peruse page by page, and trace the same pen and the same story from beginning to end. Even the grandest royal residences lack, in this quality, what you will find at Chatsworth. They all show the sharp-edged strata of unaffiliated tastes and styles of different ages and artists. They lack the oneness of a single individuality, of one great symmetrical conception. This one-mindedness, this one-man power of conception and execution gives to the Duke of Devonshire's palace at Chatsworth an interest and a value that probably do not attach to any other private establishment in England. In this felicitous characteristic it stands out in remarkable prominence and in striking contrast with nearly all the other baronial halls of the country. It is the parlor pier-glass of the present century. It reflects the two images in vivid apposition--the brilliant civilization of this last, unfinished age in which we live and the life of bygone centuries; that is, if Haddon Hall shows its face in it, or if you have the features of that antiquity before your eyes when you look into the Chatsworth mirror. The whole of this magnificent establishment bears the impress of the nineteenth century, inside and outside. The architecture, sculpture, carving, paintings, engravings, furniture, libraries, conservatories, flowers, shrubberies and rockeries all bear and honor the finger-prints of modern taste and art. In no casket in England, probably, have so many jewels of this century's civilization been treasured for posterity as in this mansion on the little meandering Derwent. If England has no grand National Gallery like the French Louvre, she has works of art that would fill fifty Louvres, collected and treasured in these quiet private halls, embosomed in green parks and plantations, from one end of the land to the other. And in no other country are the private treasure-houses of genius so accessible to the public as in this. They doubtless act as educational centres for refining the habits of the nation; exerting an influence that reaches and elevates the homes of the people, cultivating in them new perceptions of beauty and comfort; diffusing a taste for embowering even humble cottages in shrubbery; making little flower-fringed lawns, six feet by eight or less; rockeries and ferneries, and artificial ruins of castles or abbeys of smaller dimensions still. In passing through the galleries and gardens of Chatsworth you will recognise the originals of many works of art which command the admiration of the world. The most familiar to the American visitor will probably be the great painting of the Bolton Abbey Scene, the engravings of which are so numerous and admired on both sides of the Atlantic. But there is the original of a greater work, which has made the wonder of the age. It is the original of the Great Crystal Palace of 1851, and the mother of all the palaces of the same structure which have been or will be erected in time past or to come. Here it diadems at Chatsworth the choice plants and flowers of all the tropics; presenting a model which needed only expansion, and some modifications, to furnish the reproduction that delighted the world in Hyde Park in 1851. I was pleasantly impressed with one feature of the economy that ruled at Chatsworth. Although there were between one and two thousand deer flecking the park, it was utilised to the pasture of humbler and more useful animals. Over one hundred poor people's cows were feeding demurely over its vast extent, even to the gilded gates of the palace. They are charged only 2 pounds for the season; which is very moderate, even cheaper than the stony pasturage around the villages of New England. I noticed a flock of Spanish sheep, black-and-white, looking like a drove of Berkshire hogs, and seemingly clothed with bristles instead of wool. They are kept rather as curiosities than for use. Chatsworth, with all its treasures and embodiments of wealth, art and genius, with an estate continuous in one direction for about thirty miles, is but one of the establishments of the Duke of Devonshire. He owns a palace on the Thames that might crown the ambition of a German prince. He also counts in his possessions old abbeys, baronial halls, parks and towns that once were walled, and still have streets called after their gates. If any country is to have a personage occupying such a position, it is well to have a considerable number of the same class, to yeomanise such an aristocracy--to make each feel that he has his peers in fifty others. Otherwise an isolated duke would have to live and move outside the pale of human society; a proud, haughty entity dashing about, with not even a comet's orbit nor any fixed place in the constellation of a nation's communities. It is of great necessity to him, independent of political considerations, that there is a House of Peers instituted, in which he may find his social level; where he may meet his equals in considerable numbers, and feel himself but a man. CHAPTER XV. SHEFFIELD AND ITS INDIVIDUALITY--THE COUNTRY, ABOVE GROUND AND UNDER GROUND--WAKEFIELD AND LEEDS--WHARF VALE--FARNLEY HALL--HARROGATE; RIPLEY CASTLE; RIPON; CONSERVATISM OF COUNTRY TOWNS--FOUNTAIN ABBEY; STUDLEY PARK--RIEVAULX ABBEY--LORD FAVERSHAM'S SHORT-HORN STOCK. From Chatsworth I went on to Sheffield, crossing a hilly moorland belonging to the Duke of Rutland, and containing 10,000 acres in one solid block. It was all covered with heather, and kept in this wild, bleak condition for game. Here and there well-cultivated farms, as it were, bit into this cold waste, rescuing large, square morsels of land, and making them glow with the warm flush and glory of luxuriant harvests; thus showing how such great reaches of desert may be made to blossom like the rose under the hand of human labor. Here is Sheffield, down here, sweltering, smoking, and sweating, with face like the tan, under the walls of these surrounding hills. Here live and labor Briareus and Cyclops of modern mythology. Here they-- Swing their heavy sledge, With measured beats and slow; Like the sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low. Here live the lineal descendants of Thor, christianised to human industries. Here the great hammer of the Scandinavian Thunderer descended, took nest, and hatched a brood of ten thousand little iron beetles for beating iron and steel into shapes and uses that Tubal Cain never dreamed of. Here you may hear their clatter night and day upon a thousand anvils. O, Vale of Vulcan! O, Valley of Knives! Was ever a boy put into trousers, in either hemisphere, that did not carry in the first pocket made for him one of thy cheap blades? Did ever a reaper in the Old World or New cut and bind a sheaf of grain, who did not wield one of thy famous sickles? All Americans who were boys forty years ago, will remember three English centres of peculiar interest to them. These were Sheffield, Colebrook Dale, and Paternoster Row. There was hardly a house or log cabin between the Penobscot and the Mississippi which could not show the imprint of these three places, on the iron tea-kettle, the youngest boy's Barlow knife, and his younger sister's picture-book. To the juvenile imagination of those times, Sheffield was a huge jack-knife, Colebrook Dale a porridge-pot, and Paternoster Row a psalm-book, each in the generative case. How we young reapers used to discuss the comparative merits and meanings of those mysterious letters on our sickles, B.Y and I.R! What were they? Were they beginnings of words, or whole words themselves? Did they stand for things, qualities, or persons? "Mine is a _By_ sickle; mine is an _Ir_ one. Mine is the best," says the last, "for it has the finest teeth and the best curve." That was our boys' talk in walking through the rye, with bent backs and red faces, a little behind our fathers; who cut a wider work to enable us to keep near them. In what blacksmith shop or hardware house in America does not Sheffield show its face and faculties? Did any American, knowing the difference between cast-iron and cast-steel, ever miss the sight of Naylor and Sanderson's yellow labels in his travels? How many millions of acres of primeval forest have the ages edged with their fine steel cut through, and given to the plough! Fashion has its Iron Age as well as its Golden; and, what is more remarkable, the first of the two has come last, in the fitful histories of custom. And this last freak of feminine taste has brought a wonderful grist of additional business to the Sheffield mill. The fair Eugenie has done a good thing for this smoky town, well deserving of a monument of burnished steel erected to her memory on one of these hills. More than this; as Empress of Crinoline, she should wear the iron crown of Charlemagne in her own right. Her husband's empire is but a mere arondissement compared with the domain that does homage to her sceptre. Sheffield is the great arsenal of her armaments. Sheffield cases ships of war with iron plates a foot thick; but that is nothing, in pounds avoirdupois, compared with the weight of steel it spins into elastic springs for casing the skirts of two hundred millions of the fair Eugenie's sex and lieges in the two hemispheres. It is estimated that ten thousand tons of steel are annually absorbed into this use in Christendom; and Sheffield, doubtless, furnishes a large proportion of it. Here I had another involuntary walk, not put down in the programme of my expectations. On inquiring the way to Fir Vale, a picturesque suburb where a friend resided, I was directed to a locality which, it was suggested, must be the one I meant, though it was called Fir View. I followed the direction given for a considerable distance, when it was varied successively by persons of whom I occasionally inquired. After ascending and descending a number of steep hills, I suddenly came down upon the town again from the south, having made a complete circuit of it; a performance that cost me about two hours of time and much unsatisfactory perspiration. Fearing that a second attempt would be equally unsuccessful, I took the Leeds road, and left the Jericho at the first round. Walked about nine miles to a furnace-lighted village called very appropriately Hoyland, or Highland, when anglicised from the Danish. It commands truly a grand view of wooded hills and deep valleys dashed with the sheen of ripened grain. The next day I passed through a good sample section of England's wealth and industry. Mansions and parks of the gentry, hill, valley, wheat-fields, meadows of the most vivid green; crops luxuriant in most picturesque alternations; in a word, the whole a vista of the richest agricultural scenery. And yet out of the brightest and broadest fields of wheat, barley and oats, towered up the colliery chimneys in every direction, like good-natured and swarthy giants smoking their pipes complacently and "with comfortable breasts" in view of the goodly scene. The golden grain grew thick and tall up to the very pit's mouth. In the sun-light above and gas-light below human industry was plying its differently- bitted implements. There were men reaping and studding the pathway of their sickles through the field with thickly-planted sheaves. But right under them, a hundred fathoms deep, subterranean farmers were at work, with black and sweaty brows, garnering the coal- harvest sown there before the Flood. Sickle above and pick below were gathering simultaneously the layers of wealth that Nature had stored in her parlor and cellar for man. I passed through Barnsley and Wakefield on this day's walk,--towns full of profitable industries and busy populations, and growing in both after the American impulse and expansion. If the good "Vicar of Wakefield" of the olden time could revisit the scene of his earthly experience, and look upon the old church of his ministry as it now appears, renovated from bottom to the top of its grand and lofty spire, he would not be entrapped again so easily into assent to the Greek apothegm of the swindler. I lodged at a little village inn between Wakefield and Leeds, after a day of the most enjoyable walk that I had made. Never before, between sun and sun, had I passed over such a section of above- ground and under-ground industry and wealth. The next morning I continued northward, and noticed still more striking combinations of natural productions and human industries than on the preceding day. One small, rural area in which these were blended impressed me greatly, and I stopped to photograph the scene on my mind. In a circle hardly a third of a mile in diameter, there was the heaviest crop of oats growing that I had yet seen in England; in another part of the same field there was a large brick-kiln; in another, an extensive quarry and machinery for sawing the stone into all sizes and shapes; then a furnace for casting iron, and lastly, a coal mine; and all these departments of labor and production were in full operation. It is quite possible that not one of the hundred laborers on and under this ten-acre patch ever thought it an extraordinary focus of production. Perhaps even the proprietors and managers of the five different enterprises worked on the small space had taken its rich and diversified fertilities as a matter of course, as we take the rain, light and heat of summer; but to a traveller "taking stock" of a country's resources, it could not but be a point of view exciting admiration. I left it behind me deeply impressed with the conviction that I had seen the most productive ten-acre field that could be found on the surface of the globe, counting in the variety and value of its surface and sub-surface crops. I took tea with a friend in Leeds, remaining only an hour or two in that town, then pursuing my course northward. The wide world knows so much of Leeds that any notice that I could give of it might seem affected and presumptuous. It is to the Cloth-World what Rome is to the Catholic. Its Cloth Hall is the St. Peter's of Coat-and- trouserdom. Its rivers, streams and canals run black and blue with the stringent juices of all the woods and weeds of the world used in dyeing. The woods of all the continents come floating in here, like baled summer clouds of heaven. It is a city of magnipotent chimneys; and they stand thick and tall on the hills and in the valleys around, and puff their black breathings into the face and eyes of the sky above, baconising its countenance, and giving it no time to wash up and look sober, calm and clean, except a few hours on the sabbath. The Leeds Mercury is a power in the land, and everybody who reads the English language in either hemisphere knows Edward Baines by name. As I emerged from the great, busy town on the north, I passed by the estates and residences of its manufacturing aristocracy. The homes they have built and embellished should satisfy the tastes and ambitions of any hereditary nobility. They need only a little more age to make them rival many baronial establishments. It is interesting to see how the different classes of society are stepping into each other's shoes in going up into higher grades of social life. The merchant and manufacturing princes of England have not only reached but surpassed the conditions of wealth, taste and elegance which the hereditary peers of the realm occupied a century ago; while the latter have gone up to the rich and luxurious surroundings of kings and queens of that period. The upward movement has reached the very lowest strata of society. Not only have the small tradesmen and farmers ascended to the comfortable conditions of large merchants and landowners of one hundred years ago, but common day laborers are lifted upward by the general uprising. I should not wonder if all the damp, low cellarless cottages they now frequently inhabit should be swept away in less than fifty years and replaced by as comfortable buildings as the great middle class occupied in the childhood of the present generation. I found comfortable quarters for the night in the little village of Bramhope, about five miles from Leeds. The next day I walked to Harrogate, passing through Otley and across the celebrated Wharf Vale. The scenery of this valley, as it opens upon you suddenly on descending from the south into Otley, is exceedingly beautiful; not so extensive as that of Belvoir Vale, but with all the features of the latter landscape compressed in a smaller space; like a portrait taken on a smaller scale. As you look off from the southern ridge or wall of the valley, you seem to stand on the cord of a segment of a circle, the radius of which touches the horizon at about five miles to the north. This crescent is filled with the most delicate lineaments of Nature's beauty. The opposite walls of the gallery slope upward from the meandering Wharf so gently and yet reach the blue ceiling of the sky so near, that all the paintings that panel them are vividly distinct to your eye, and you can group all their lights and shades in the compass of a single glance. On the opposite side, half hidden and half revealed among the trees of an ample park, stands Farnley Hall, a historical residence of an old historical family. I had a letter of introduction to the present proprietor, Mr. Fawkes, who, I hope, will not deem it a disparagement to be called one of the Knights of the Shorthorns--a more extensive, useful, and cosmopolitan order than were the Knights of Rhodes or of Malta. Unfortunately for me, he was not at home; but his steward, a very intelligent, gentlemanly and genial man, took me over the establishment, and showed me all the stock that was stabled, mostly bulls of different ages. They were all of the best families of Shorthorn blood, and a better connoisseur of animal life than myself could not have enjoyed the sight of such well-made creatures more thoroughly than I did. The prince of the blood, in my estimation, was "Lord Cobham," a cream-colored bull, with which compared that famous animal in Greek mythology which played himself off as such an Adonis among the bovines, must have been a shabby, scraggy quadruped. Poor Europa! it would have been bad enough if she had been run away with by a "Lord Cobham." But the like of him did not live in her day. After going through the housings for cattle, the steward took me to the Hall, a grand old mansion full of English history, especially of the Commonwealth period. Indeed, one large apartment was a museum of relics of that stirring and stormy time. There, against the antique, carved wainscoting, hung the great broad-brim of Oliver Cromwell, with a circumference nearly as large as an opened umbrella, heavy, coarse and grim. There hung a sword he wielded in the fiery rifts of battle. There was Fairfax's sword hanging by its side; and his famous war-drum lay beneath. Its leather lungs, that once shouted the charge, were now still and frowsy, with no martial speech left in them. Mr. Fawkes owns about 15,000 acres of land, including most of the valley of Otley, and extending back almost to Harrogate. He farms about 450 acres, but grows no wheat. Indeed, I did not see a field of it in a circle of five miles' diameter. I reached Harrogate in the dusk of the evening, and found the town alive with people mostly in the streets. It is a snug and cozy little Saratoga among the hills of Yorkshire, away from the smoke, soot and savor of the great manufacturing centres. It is a favorite resort for a mild class of invalids, and of persons who need the medicine of pure air and gentle exercise, blended with the quiet tonics of cheery mirth and recreation. Superadded to all these stimulants, there is a mineral spring at which the visitors, young and old, drink most voluminously. I went down to it in the morning before breakfast, and found it thronged by a multitude of men, women and children, who drank off great goblets of it with astonishing faith and facility. The rotunda was so filled with the fumes of sulphur that I found it more easy to inhale than to imbibe, and preferred to satisfy that sense as to the merits of the water. The next day I reached the brave old city of Ripon. On the way I stopped an hour or two at Ripley and visited the castle. The building itself is a good specimen of the baronial hall of the olden time. But the gardens and grounds constitute its distinguishing feature. I never saw before such an exquisite arrangement of flowers, even at Chatsworth or the Kew Gardens. All forms imaginable were produced by them. The most extensive and elaborate combination was a row of flower sofas reaching around the garden. Each was from 20 to 30 feet in length. The seat was wrought in geraniums of every tint, all grown to an even, compact surface, presenting figures as diversified as the alternating hues could produce. The back was worked in taller flowers, presenting the same evenness of line and surface. On entering the garden gate and catching the first sight of these beautiful structures, you take them for veritable sofas, as perfectly wrought as anything was ever done in Berlin wool. Ripon is an interesting little city, with a fact-roll of history reaching back into the dimmest centuries of the land. It has run the gauntlet of all the Saxon, Danish, Scotch and Norman raids and regimes. It was burnt once or twice by each of these races in the struggle for supremacy. But with a plucky tenacity of life, it arose successively out of its own ashes and spread its phoenix wings to a new and vigorous vitality. A venerable cathedral looks down upon it with a motherly face. Unique old buildings, with half their centuries unrecorded and lost in oblivion, stand to this day in good repair, as the homes of happy children, who play at marbles and the last sports of the day just as if they were born in houses only a year older than themselves. Institutions and customs older than the cathedral are kept up with a filial faith in their virtue. One of the most interesting of these, I believe, was established by the Saxon Edgar or Alfred--it matters not which; they were only a century or two apart, and that space is but a trifling circumstance in the history of this old country. One of these kings appointed an officer called a "wakeman" for the town. He must originally have been a kind of secular beadle of the community, or a curfew constable, to see the whole population well a-bed in good season. One of his duties consisted in blowing a horn every night at nine o'clock as a signal to turn in. But a remarkable consideration was attached to faithful compliance with this summons. If any house or shop was robbed before sunrise, a tax was levied upon every inhabitant, of 4d. if his house had one outer door, and of 8d. if it had two. This tax was to compensate the sufferer for his loss, and also to put the whole community under bonds to keep the peace and to feel responsible for the safety of each other's property. Thus it not only acted as a great mutual insurance company of which every householder was a member, but it made him, as it were, a special constable against burglary. This old Saxon institution is in full life and vigor to-day. The wakeman is still the highest secular official of the town. For a thousand consecutive years the wakeman's toot-horn has been blown at night over the successive generations of the little cathedral city. This is an interesting fact, full of promise. No American could fail to admire this conservatism who appreciates national individuality. No one, at heart, could more highly esteem these salient traits of a people's character. And here I may as well put in a few thoughts on this subject as at any stage of my walk. Good-natured reader, are you a man of sensitive perceptions as to the proprieties and dignities of dress and deportment which should characterise some great historical personage whose name you have held in profound veneration all your life long? Now, in the wayward drift of your imagination among the freaks of modern fashion, did it ever dare to present before your eyes St. Paul in strapped pantaloons, figured velvet vest, swallow-tailed coat, stove-pipe hat, and a cockney glass at his eye? Did your fancy, in its wildest fictions, ever pass such an image across the speculum of your mental vision? Gentle reader, "in maiden meditation, fancy free," did a dreamy thought of yours ever stray through the histories of your sex and its modes of dress and adornment, and so blend or transpose them as to present to you, in a sudden flash of the imagination, the Virgin Mary dressed like the Empress Eugenie? Readers both, did not that fancy trouble you, as if an unholy thought had fallen into the soul? Well, a thought like that must trouble the American when his fancy passes before his mind's eye the image of Old England Americanised. And a faculty more serious and trusty than fancy will present this transformation to him, day by day, as he visits the great centres of the nation's life and industry. In London, Manchester, Liverpool, and all the most busy and prosperous commercial and manufacturing towns, he will see that England is becoming Americanised shockingly fast. In all these populous places it is losing the old individuality that once distinguished the grandfatherland of fifty millions who now speak its language beyond the sea. Look at London! look at the miles of three and four story houses under the mason's hands, now running out in every direction from the city. Will you see a single feature of the Old England of our common memories in them? No, not one! no more than in a modern English dress-coat, or in one of the iron rails of the British Great Western, or of the Illinois Central. It is doubtful if there will be anything of England left in London at the end of the next fifty years, unless it be the fog and the Lord Mayor's Show. Already the radicals are crying out against both of these institutions, which are merely local, by the way. The tailor's shears, the mason's trowel, and the carpenter's edge-tools are evening everything in Christendom to one dead level of uniformity. The railroads and telegraphs are all working to the same end. All these agencies of modern civilization at first lay their innovating hands upon large cities or commercial centres. Thence they work outward slowly and transform the appearance and habits of the country. The transformations I have noticed in England since 1846 are wonderful, utilitarian, and productive of absolute and rigid comfort to the people; still, I must confess, they inspire in me a sentiment akin to that which our village fathers experienced when the old church in which they worshipped from childhood was pulled down to make room for a better one. To every American, sympathising with these sentiments, it must be interesting to visit such a rural little city as Ripon, and find populations that cling with reverence and affection to the old Saxon institutions of Alfred. It will make him feel that he stands in the unbroken lineage of the centuries, to hear the wakeman's horn, and to know that it has been blown, spring, summer, autumn and winter, in all weathers, in weal and in woe, for a thousand years. As Old England is driven farther and farther back from London, Manchester, Liverpool, and other great improving towns, she will find refuge and residence in these retired country villages. Here she will wear longest and last the features in which she was engraven on the minds of all the millions who call her mother beyond the sea. The next day I visited the celebrated Fountain Abbey in Studley Park,--a grand relic of antiquity, framed with silver and emerald work of lakelets, lawns, shrubberies and trees as beautifully arranged as art, taste and wealth could set them. The old abbey is a majestic ruin which fills one with wonder as he looks up at its broken arches and towers and sees the dimensions marked by the pedestals or foot-prints of its templed columns. It stands rather in a narrow glen than in a valley, and was commenced, it is supposed, about 1130. The yew-trees under which the monks bivouacked while at work upon the magnificent edifice, are still standing, bearing leaves as large and green as those that covered the enthusiastic architects of that early time. In the height of its prosperity and power, the lands of the abbey embraced over 72,000 acres. The Park enclosing this great monument of an earlier age contains 250 acres, and is really an earthly elysium of beauty. It was comforting to learn that it was laid out so late as 1720, and that all the noble trees that filled it had grown to their present grandeur within the intervening period. Here I saw for the first time in England our hard-maple. It was a spindling thing, looking as if it had suffered much from fever and ague or rheumatism; but it was pleasant to see it admitted into a larger fellowship of trees than our New England soil ever bore. On a green, lawn-faced slope, at the turning of the principal walk, there was a little tree a few feet high enclosed in by a circular wire fence. It was planted by the Princess of Wales on a visit of the royal pair to Studley soon after their marriage. The fair Dane left her card in this way to the old Abbey, which began to rise upon its foundations soon after the stalwart Danish sovereign of England fell at the Battle of Hastings. Will any one of her posterity ever bear his name and sit upon the throne he vacated for that bloody grave? No! She will remember a better name at the font. The day and the name of the Harolds, Williams, Henrys, Charles's, and Georges are over and gone forever. ALBERT THE GOOD has estopped that succession; and England, doubtless, for centuries to come, will wear that name and its memories in her crown. After spending a few hours at Studley Park, I returned to Ripon and went on to Thirsk, where I spent the Sabbath with a Friend. The next day he drove me over to Rievaulx Abbey, which was the mother of Fountain Abbey. On the way to it we passed the ruins of another of these grand structures of that religious age, called Byland Abbey, where Robert Bruce came within an ace of capturing King Edward on his retreat from Scotland, after the Battle of Bannockburn. One of the objects of this excursion was to visit the establishment of Lord Faversham, near Helmsley, who is one of the most scientific and successful stock-raisers, of the Shorthorn blood, in England, and to whom I had a note of introduction. But he, too, was not at home, which I much regretted, as I was desirous of seeing one of the peers of the realm who enter into this culture of animal life with so much personal interest and assiduity. His manager, however, was very affable and attentive, ready and pleased to give any information desired upon different points. He showed us a splendid set of animals. Indeed, I had never seen a herd to equal it. There were several bulls of different ages with a perfection of form truly admirable. Some of them had already drawn first prizes at different shows. Several noble specimens of this celebrated herd have been sold to stock-raisers in America, Australia and in continental countries. The most perfect of all the well-made animals on the establishment, according to my untrained perceptions of symmetry, was a milk-white cow, called "The Lady in White," three years old. She and Mr. Fawkes' "Lord Cobham" should be shown together. I doubt if a better mated pair could be found in England. There was a large number of cows feeding in the park which would command admiration at any exhibition of stock. Lord Faversham's famous "Skyrocket" ended his days with much eclat. When getting into years, and into monstrous obesity, he was presented as a contribution to the Lancashire Relief Fund. Before passing into the butcher's hands, he was exhibited in Leeds, and realised about 200 pounds as a show. Thus as a curiosity first, and as a small mountain of fat beef afterward, he proved a generous gift to the suffering operatives in the manufacturing districts. Passing through the park gate, we entered upon a lawn esplanade looking down upon the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey. This broad terrace extended for apparently a half of a mile, and was as finely carpeted piece of ground as you will find in England. No hair of horse or dog groomed and brushed with the nicest care, and soft and shining with the healthiest vitality, could surpass in delicacy and life of surface the grass coverlet of this long terrace, from which you looked down upon that grand monument of twelfth-century architecture half veiled among the trees of the glen. This was one of the oldest abbeys in the north of England, and the mother of several of them. Some of its walls are still as entire and perfect as those of Tintern, on the Wye. It was founded by the monks of the St. Bernard order, in 1131, according to the historical record. Really those black-cowled masons and carvers must have given the enthusiasm and genius of the early painters of the Virgin to these magnificent structures. I will not go into the subject at large here, leaving it to form an entire chapter, when I have seen most of the old abbeys of the country. In looking up at their walls, arches and columns, one marvels to see the most delicate and elaborate vine and flower-work of the carver's chisel apparently as perfect as when it engraved the last line; and this, too, in face of the frosts and beating storms of six hundred years. The largest ivy I ever saw buttressed one of the windowed walls with ten thousand cross-folded fingers and foliage of vivid green piled thick and high upon the teeth-marks of time. The trunk was a full foot through at the butt. A few years ago a large mound was uncovered near the ruin, and found to be composed of cinders, showing incontestably that the monks had worked iron ore very extensively, thus teaching the common people that art as well as agriculture. These cinders have been used very largely in repairing the roads for a considerable distance around. On returning to Thirsk over the Hambleton range of hills, we crossed thousands of acres of moor-land covered with heather in full bloom, looking like a purple sea. It was a splendid sight. My friend, who was an artist, stopped for a while to sketch one or two views of the scene. As we proceeded, we saw several green and golden fields impinging upon this florid waste, serving to illustrate what might be done with the vast tracts of land in England and Scotland now bristling with this thick and prickly vegetation. The heatherland over which we were passing was utilised in a rather singular manner. It yielded pasturage to two sets of industrials--sheep and bees. As the heather blossom is thought to impart a peculiarly pleasant flavor to honey, I was told many bee-stock-raisers of Lincolnshire brought their hives to this section to pasture them for a season on this purple prairie. The westward view from the precipitous heights of the Hambleton ridge is one of the most beautiful and extensive you will find in England, well worth a special journey to see it. The declining sun was flooding the great basin with the day's last, best smile, filling it to the golden rim of the horizon with a soft light in which lay a landscape of thirty miles' depth, embracing full fifty villages and hamlets, parks, plantations and groves, all looking "like emeralds chased in gold." On the whole, I am inclined to think many tourists would regard this view as even superior to that of Belvoir Vale. It might be justly placed between that and Wharf Vale. A London gentleman produced a most unique picture on the forehead of one of these hills, which may be seen at a great distance. In the first place, he had a smooth, lawn-like surface prepared on the steep slope. Then he cut out the form of a horse in the green turf, sowing the whole contour of the animal with lime. This brought out in such bold relief the body and limbs, that, at several miles distance, you seem to see a colossal white horse standing on his four legs, perfect in form and feature, even to ear and nostril. The symmetry is perfect, although the body, head, legs and tail cover a space of _four_ acres! The next day I took staff for Northallerton, reaching that town about the middle of the afternoon. Passed through a highly cultivated district, and saw, for the first time, several reaping machines at work in the fields. I was struck at the manner in which they were used. I have noticed a peculiarity in reaping in this section which must appear singular to an American. The men cut inward instead of outward, as with us. And these machines were following the same rule! As they went around the field, they were followed or rather met by men and women, each with an allotted beat, who rushed in behind and gathered up the fallen from the standing grain so as to make a clear path for the next round. There seemed to be no reason for this singular and awkward practice, except the adhesion to an old custom of reaping. The grain was not very stout, nor was it lodged. From Northallerton I hastened on to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in order to attend, for the first time in my life, the meetings of the British Association. I reached that town on the 25th of August, and remained there a week, enjoying one of the greatest treats that ever fell to my lot. I will reserve a brief description of it for a separate chapter at the end of this volume, if my Notes on other matters do not crowd it out. CHAPTER XVI. HEXHAM--THE NORTH TYNE--BORDER-LAND AND ITS SUGGESTIONS--HAWICK-- TEVIOTDALE--BIRTH-PLACE OF LEYDEN--MELROSE AND DRYBURGH ABBEYS-- ABBOTSFORD: SIR WALTER SCOTT; HOMAGE TO HIS GENIUS--THE FERRY AND THE OAR-GIRL--NEW FARM STEDDINGS--SCENERY OF THE TWEED VALLEY-- EDINBURGH AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS. On Thursday, Sept. 3rd, I left Newcastle, and proceeded first westward to the old town of Hexham, with the view of taking a more central route into Scotland. Here, too, are the ruins of one of the most ancient of the abbeys. The parish church wears the wrinkles of as many centuries as the oldest in the land. Indeed, the town is full of antiquities of different dates and races,--Roman, Scotch, Saxon, Danish and Norman. They all left the marks of their glaived hands upon it. From Hexham I faced northward and followed the North Tyne up through a very picturesque and romantic valley, thickly wooded and studded with baronial mansions, parks, castles and residences of gentry, with comfortable farm-houses looking sunny and cheerful on the green hill slopes and on the quiet banks of the river. I saw fields of wheat quite green, looking as if they needed another month's sun to fit them for harvesting. Lodged in a little village about eight miles from Hexham. The next day walked on to the little hamlet of Fallstones, a distance of about twenty miles. As I ascended the valley, the scene changed rapidly. The river dwindled to a narrow stream. The hills that walled it in on either side grew higher and balder, and the clouds lay cold and dank upon their bleak and sullen brows. The hamlets edged in here and there grew thinner, smaller and shabbier. The road was barred and gated about once in a mile, to keep cattle and sheep from wandering; there being no fences nor hedges running parallel with it. In a word, the premonitory symptoms of a bare border-land thickened at every turn. Another day brought me into the midst of a wild region, which might be called No-man's-land; although most of it belongs to the Duke of Northumberland. It is all in the solitary grandeur of heather- haired hills, which tinge, with their purple flush, the huge, black- winged clouds that alight upon them. Only here and there a shepherd's cottage is to be seen half way up the heights, or sheltering itself in a clump of trees in glen or gorge, like a benighted traveller bivouacking for a night in a desert. Sheep, of the Cheviot breed mostly, are nearly the sole inhabitants and industrials of this mountainous waste. They climb to the highest peaks and bring down the white wealth of their wool to man. It was pleasant to see them like walking mites, flecking the dark brows of the mountains. They made a picture; they made a tableau vivant of the same illustration as Landseer's lamb looking into the grass- covered cannon's mouth. This is the Border-land! Here the fiercest antagonisms of hostile nationalities met in deadly conflict. Fire and blood, rapine and wrath blackened and reddened and ravaged for centuries across this bleak territory. Robber-chieftains and knighted free-booters carried on their guerilla raids backward and forward, under the counterfeited banner of patriotism. Scotch and English armies led by kings marched and counter-marched over this sombre boundary. Never before was there one apparently more insoluble as a barrier between two peoples. Never before in Christendom was there one that required a longer space of time to melt. Never before did the fusing of two nationalities encounter more fierce and prolonged opposition. Did ever patriotism pour out a swifter and deeper tide of chivalrous sentiment against merging one in another?--against uniting two thrones and two peoples in one? Did patriotism ever fight bloodier battles to prevent such a union, or cling to local sovereignty with a more desperate hold? This is the Border-land! Look up the purpled steeps of these heathered hills. The white lambs are looking, with their soft, meek eyes, into the grass-choked mouths of the rusty and dismantled cannon of the war of nationalities between England and Scotland. The deed has been consummated. The valor and patriotism of Wallace and Bruce could not prevent it. The sheep of English and Scotch shepherds feed side by side on these mountain heights, in spite of Stirling and Bannockburn, of Flodden and Falkirk. The Iron Horse, bearing the blended arms of the two realms on his shield, walks over those battle-fields by night and day, treading their memories deeper and deeper in the dust. The lambs are playing in the sun on the boundary line of the two dominions. Does a Scot of to-day love his native land less than the Campbell clansman or clan-chief in Bruce's time? Not a whit. He carries a heartful of its choicest memories with him into all countries of his sojourning. But there is a larger sentiment that includes all these filial feelings towards his motherland, while it draws additional warmth and strength from them. It is the sentiment of Imperial Nationality; the feeling of a Briton, that does not extinguish nor absorb, nor compete with, the Scot in his heart;--the feeling that he is a political constituent of a mighty nation, whose feet stand upon all the continents of the earth, while it holds the best islands of the sea in its hands;--the feeling with which he says _We_ with all the millions of a dominion on which the sun never sets, and _Our_, when he speaks of its grand and common histories, its hopes, prospects, progress, power and aspirations. There was a Border-land, dark and bloody, between Saxon England and Celtic Wales. For centuries the red foot-marks of savage conflict scarred and covered its wild waste. Never before did so small a people make so stout, and desperate and protracted struggle for local independence and isolation. Never did one produce a more strong-hearted and blind-eyed patriotism, or patriotism more poets to thrill the listeners to their lays with the intoxicating fanaticism of a national sentiment. On that Border-land the white lambs now lie in the sun. The Welsh sentiment is as strong as ever in the Snowdon shepherd, and he may not speak a dozen words of the English tongue. But the Briton lives in his breast. The feeling of its great meaning surrounds and illumines the inner circles of his local attachment. He may never have seen a map of the Globe, and never have been outside the wall of the Welsh mountains; but he knows, without geography, who and what Queen Victoria is among the earth's sovereigns, and the length and breadth of her sceptre's reach and rule around the world. There was a Border-land between Britain and Ireland, blackened and scarred by more burning antagonisms than those that once divided the larger island. The record of several consecutive centuries is graven deep in it by the brand and bayonet, and by the more incisive teeth-marks of hate. The slumbering antipathies of race and religion even now crop out here and there, over the unfused boundary, in hissing tongues of flame. The Briton and the Celt are still struggling for the precedence in the Irishman's breast; but it is not a war of extermination. His ardent nature is given to martial memories, and all the battles he boasts of are British battles, in which he or his father played the hero number one. The history of independent Ireland is poor and thin; still he holds it back in his heart, and hesitates to link it with the great annals of the "Saxon" realm, and thus make of both one grand and glorious record, present and future. He cannot yet make up his mind to say _We_ with all the other English-speaking millions of the empire, as the Scotsman and Welshman have learned and loved to say it. He cannot as yet say _Our_ with them with such a sentiment of joint- interest, when the histories, hopes, expansion and capacities of that empire unroll their vista before him. But the rains and the dews of a milder century are falling upon this Border-land. The lava of spent volcanoes that covered it is taking soil and seed of green vegetation. The white lambs shall yet lie on it in the sun. What a volume might be filled with the succinctest history of the Border-lands of Christendom! France was intersected with them for centuries. Seemingly they were as implacable and obdurate as any that ever divided the British isle. Local patriotism wrote poetry and shed blood voluminously to prevent the fusion of these old landmarks of pigmy nationalities. It took nearly a thousand years to complete the blending; to make the _we_ and the _our_ of one great consolidated empire the largest political sentiment of the men of Normandy, Burgundy or Navarre. Long and fierce, and seemingly endless was the struggle; but at last, on all those old obstinate boundaries of hostile principalities, the white lambs lay in the sun. There are Border-lands now in the south and east of Europe foaming and seething with the same antagonisms of race and language; and Christendom is tremulous with their emotion. It is the same old struggle over again; and yet ninety-nine in a hundred of intelligent and reading people, with the history of British and French Border- lands before them, seem to think that a new and strange thing has happened under the sun. Full that proportion of our English- speaking race, in both hemispheres, closing the volume of its own annals, have made up their minds to the belief that these Border- lands between German and Magyar, Teuton and Latin, Russ and Pole, bristle with antagonisms the like of which never were subdued, and never ought to be subdued by human means or motives. To them, naturally, the half century of this hissing and seething, insurrection and repression, is longer than the five hundred years and more it took to fuse into one the nationalities of England and Wales. What a point of space is a century midway between the ninth and nineteenth! Few are long-sighted enough in historic vision to touch that point with a cambric needle. It may seem unfeeling to say it or think it; still it is as true as the plainest history of the last millenium. There is a patriotism that looks at the future through a gimlet hole, and sees in it but a single star. That patriotism is a natural, and most popular sentiment. It was strong in the Welshman's breast a thousand years ago, and in the Scotsman's half that distance back in the past. But it is a patriotism that has its day and its rule; then both its eyes are opened, and it looks upon the firmament of the future broadside on, and sees a constellation where it once saw and half worshipped a solitary star. Better to be the part of a great WHOLE than the whole of a little _nothing_. These continental Border-lands may see the face of their future history in the mirror of England's annals. They are quaking now with the impetuous emotions of local nationality. They are blackened and scarred in the contest for the Welsh and Scotch independence of centuries agone. But over those boundary wastes the grass shall yet grow soft, fair and green, and there, too, the white lambs shall lie in the sun. My walk lay over the most inhospitable and unpeopled section I ever saw. Calling at a station on the railway that passes through it, I was told by the master that the nearest church or chapel was sixteen miles in one direction, and over twenty in another. It is doubtful if so large a churchless space could be found in Iowa or even Kansas. I was glad to reach Hawick, a good, solid town but a little way inside of the Scottish border, where I spent the sabbath and the following Monday. This was a rallying and sallying point in the old Border Wars, and was inundated two or three times by the flux and reflux of this conflict, having been burnt twice, and put under the ordeal of other calamities brought upon it when free-booting was both the business, occupation and pastime of knighted chieftains and their clansmen. It is now a thrifty, manufacturing town, lying in the trough of the sea, or of the lofty hills that resemble waves hardened to earth in their crests. Just opposite the Temperance Inn in which I had my quarters, was the Tower Hotel, once a palatial mansion of the Buccleuchs. There the Duchess of Monmouth used to hold her drawing-rooms in an apartment which many a New England journeyman mechanic would hardly think ample and comfortable enough for his parlor. There is a curious conical mound in the town, called the Moat-hill, which looks like a great, green carbuncle. It is thought by some to be a Druidical monument, but is quite involved in a mystery which no one has satisfactorily solved. It is strange that no persistent and successful effort has been made to let day- light through it. Some workmen a long time ago undertook to perforate it, but were frightened away by a thunder-storm, which they seemed to take as a reproof and threatened punishment for their profanity. The great business of Hawick is the manufacture of a woollen fabric called _Tweeds_. It came to this name in a singular way. The clerk of the factory made out an invoice of the first lot to a London house under the name of _Twilled_ goods. The London man read it _Tweeds_, instead of Twilled, and ever since they have gone by that title. As Sir Walter Scott was at that time making the name "Tweed" illustrious, the mistake was a very lucrative one to the manufacturers of the article. Here, too, in this border town commences the chain of birthplaces of eminent men, who have honored Scotland with their lives and history. Here was born James Wilson, once the editor of The Economist, who worked his way up, through intermediate positions of public honor and trust, to that of Finance Minister for India, and died at the meridian of his manhood in that country of dearly-bought distinctions. On Tuesday, Sept. 8th, I commenced my walk northward from this threshold town of Scotland. Followed down the Teviot to Denholm, the birth-place of the celebrated poet and linguist, Dr. John Leyden, another victim who offered himself a sacrifice to the costly honors and emoluments of East Indian official life. One great thought fired his soul in all the perils and privations of that deadly climate. It was to ascend one niche higher in knowledge of oriental tongues than Sir William Jones. He labored to this end with a desperate assiduity that perhaps was never surpassed or even equalled. He died hugging the conviction that he had attained it. This little village was his birthplace. Here he wrote his first rhymes, and wooed and won the first inspirations of the muse. His heart, as its last pulses grew weaker and slower, in that far-off heathen land, took on its child-thoughts again and its child- memories; and his last words were about this little, rural hamlet where he was born. A beautiful monument has been erected to his memory in the centre of the large common around which the village is built. On each of the four sides of the monument there is a tribute to his name and worth; one from Sir Walter Scott, and one taken from his own poems, entitled "Scenes of my Infancy," a touching appeal to his old friends and neighbors to hold him in kind remembrance. All this section is as fertile as it can be in the sceneries and historical associations favorable for inspiring a strong-hearted love of country, and for the development of the poetry of romantic patriotism. It was pleasant to emerge from the dark, cold, barren border-land, from the uncivilized mountains, standing sullen in the wild, shaggy chevelure of nature, and to walk again between towering hills dressed in the best toilet of human industry, crowned with golden wheatfields, and zoned with broad girdles of the greenest vegetation. It is when these contrasts are suddenly and closely brought within the same vista that one sees and feels how the Creator has honored the labor of human hands, and lifted it up into partnership with His omnipotences in chronicling the consecutive centuries of the earth in illuminated capitals of this joint handwriting. It is a grand and impressive sight--one of those dark- browed hills of the Border-land, bearded to its rock-ridged forehead with such bush-bristles and haired with matted heather. In nature it is what a painted Indian squaw in her blanket, eagle feathers and moccasins, is in the world of humanity. We look upon both with a species of admiration, as contrasts with objects whose worth is measured by the comparison. The Empress Eugenie and the Princess of Wales, and wives and sisters lovelier still to the circles of humble life, look more beautiful and graceful when the eye turns to them from a glance at the best-looking squaw of the North American wilds. And so looked the well-dressed hills on each side of the Teviot, compared with the uncultured and stunted mountains among which I had so recently walked. Ascending from Teviotdale, I passed the Earl of Minto's seat, a large and modern-looking mansion, surrounded with beautiful grounds and noble trees, and commanding a grand and picturesque view of valley and mountain from an excellent point of observation. As soon as I lost sight of Teviotdale another grand vista of golden and purpled hills and rich valleys burst upon my sight as suddenly as theatrical sceneries are shifted on the stage. Dined in a little, rural, unpoetical village bearing the name of Lilliesleaf. Resuming my walk, I soon came in sight of the grand valley of the Tweed, a great basin of natural beauty, holding, as it were, Scotland's "apples of gold in pictures of silver." Every step commanded some new feature of interest. Here on the left arose to the still, blue bosom of the sky the three great Eildon Hills, with their heads crowned with heather as with an emerald diadem. The sun is low, and the far-off village in the valley shows dimly between the daylight and darkness. There is the shadow of a broken edifice, broken but grand, that arises out of the midst of the low houses. A little farther on, arches, and the stone vein-work of glassless windows, and ivy-netted towers come out more distinctly. I recognise them at the next furlong. They stand thus in pictures hung up in the parlors of thousands of common homes in America, Australia and India. They are the ruins of Melrose Abbey. Here is the original of the picture. I see it at last, as thousands of Americans have seen it before. In history and association it is to them the Westminster Abbey of Scotland, but in ruin. It looks natural, though not at first glance what one expected. The familiar engraving does not give us the real flesh and blood of the antiquity, or the complexion of the stone; but it does not exaggerate the exquisite symmetries and artistic genius of the structure. These truly inspire one with wonder. They are all that pen and pencil have described them. The great window, which is the most salient feature in the common picture, is a magnificent piece of work in stone, twenty-four feet in height and sixteen in breadth. It is all in the elm-tree order of architecture. The old monks belonged to that school, and they wrought out branches, leaves and leaf-veins, and framed the lacework of their chisels with colored glass most exquisitely. Melrose Abbey was the eldest daughter, I believe, of Rievaulx Abbey, in Yorkshire, which has already been noticed; a year or two older in its foundation than Fountain Abbey, in Studley Park. The fecundity with which these ecclesiastical buildings multiplied and replenished England and Scotland is a marvel, considering the age in which they were erected and the small population and the poverty of the country. But something on this aspect of the subject hereafter. Here lie the ashes of Scottish kings, abbots and knights whose names figured conspicuously in the history of public and private wars which cover such a space of the country's life as an independent nation. The Douglas family especially with several of its branches found a resting-place for their dust within these walls. Built and rebuilt, burnt and reburnt, mutilated, dismembered, consecrated and desecrated, make up the history of this celebrated edifice, and that of its like, from Land's End to John O'Groat's. It is a slight but a very appreciable mitigation of these destructive acts that it was ruined _artistically_; just as some enthusiastic castle and abbey- painter would have suggested. Although I spent the night at Melrose, it was a dark and cloudy one, so that I could not see the abbey by moonlight--a view so much prized and celebrated. The next day I literally walked from morning till evening among the tombstones of antiquity and monuments of Scotch history invested with an interest which will never wane. In the first place, I went down the Tweed a few miles and crossed it in a ferry-boat to see Dryburgh Abbey. Here, embowered among the trees in a silver curve of the river, stands this grand monument of one of the most remarkable ages of the world. Within an hour's walk from Melrose, and four or five years only after the completion of that edifice, the foundations of this were laid. It is astonishing. We will not dwell upon it now, but make a separate chapter on it when I have seen most of the other ruins of the kind in the kingdom. The French are given to the habit of festooning the monuments and graves of their relatives and friends with immortelles. Nature has hung one of hers to Dryburgh Abbey. It is a yew-tree opposite the door by which you enter the ruins. The year-rings of its trunk register all the centuries that the stones of the oldest wall have stood imbedded one upon the other. The tree is still green, putting forth its leaf in its season. But there is an immortelle hung to these dark, crumbling walls that shall outlive the greenest trees now growing on earth. Here, in a little vaulted chapel, or rather a deep niche in the wall, lie the remains of Sir Walter Scott, his wife and the brilliant Lockhart. How many thousands of all lands where the English language is spoken will come and stand here in mute and pensive communion before the iron gate of this family tomb and look through the bars upon this group of simply-lettered stones! From Dryburgh I walked back to Melrose on the east side of the Tweed. Lost the footpath, and for two hours clambered up and down the precipitous cliffs that rise high and abrupt from the river. In many places the zig-zag path was cut into the rock, hardly a foot in breadth, overhanging a precipice which a person of weak nerves could hardly face with composure. At last got out of these dark fastnesses and ascended a range of lofty hills where I found a good carriage road. This elevation commanded the most magnificent view that I ever saw in Scotland, excepting, perhaps, the one from Stirling Castle only for the feature which the Forth supplies. It was truly beautiful beyond description, and it would be useless for me to attempt one. After dinner in Melrose, I resumed my walk northward and came suddenly upon Abbotsford. Indeed, I should have missed it, had I not noticed a wooden gate open on the roadside, with some directions upon it for those wishing to visit the house. As it stands low down towards the river, and as all the space above it to the road is covered with trees and shrubbery, it is entirely hidden from view in that direction. The descent to the house is rather steep and long. And here it is!--Abbotsford! It is the photograph of Sir Walter Scott. It is brim full of him and his histories. No author's pen ever gave such an individuality to a human home. It is all the coinage of thoughts that have flooded the hemispheres. Pages of living literature built up all these lofty walls, bent these arches, panelled these ceilings, and filled the whole edifice with these mementoes of the men and ages gone. Every one of these hewn stones cost a paragraph; that carved and gilded crest, a column's length of thinking done on paper. It must be true that pure, unaided literary labor never built before a mansion of this magnitude and filled it with such treasures of art and history. This will forever make it and the pictures of it a monument of peculiar interest. I have said that it is brim full of the author. It is equally full of all he wrote about; full of the interesting topographs of Scotland's history, back to the twilight ages; full inside and out, and in the very garden and stable walls. The studio of an artist was never fuller of models of human or animal heads, or of counterfeit duplicates of Nature's handiwork, than Sir Walter's mansion is of things his pen painted on in the long life of its inspirations. The very porchway that leads into the house is hung with petrified stag- horns, doubtless dug up in Scottish bogs, and illustrating a page of the natural history of the country in some pre-historic century. The halls are panelled with Scotland,--with carvings in oak from the old palace of Dunfermline. Coats of arms of the celebrated Border chieftains are arrayed in line around the walls. The armoury is a miniature arsenal of all arms ever wielded since the time of the Druids. And a history attaches to nearly every one of the weapons. History hangs its webwork everywhere. It is built, high and low, into the face of the outside walls. Quaint, old, carved stones from abbey and castle ruins, arms, devices and inscriptions are all here presented to the eye like the printed page of an open volume. Among the interesting relics are a chair made from the rafters of the house in which Wallace was betrayed, Rob Roy's pistol, and the key of the old Tolbooth of Edinburgh. I was conducted through the rooms opened to visitors by a very gentlemanly-looking man, who might be taken for an author himself, from his intellectual appearance and conversation. The library is the largest of all the apartments--fifty feet by sixty. Nor is it too large for the collection of books it contains, which numbers about 20,000 volumes, many of them very rare and valuable. But the soul-centre of the building to me was the _study_, opening into the library. There is the small writing-table, and there is the plain armchair in which he sat by it and worked out those creations of fancy which have excited such interest through the world. That square foot over against this chair, where his paper lay, is the focus, the point of incidence and reflection, of thoughts that pencilled outward, like sun-rays, until their illumination reached the antipodes,--thoughts that brought a pleasant shining to the sun- burnt face of the Australian shepherd as he watched his flock at noon from under the shadow of a stunted tree; thoughts which made a cheery fellowship at night for the Hudson Bay hunter, in his snow- buried cabin on the Saskatchiwine. The books of this little inner library were the body-guard of his genius, chosen to be nearest him in the outsallyings of his imagination. Here is a little conversational closet, with a window in it to let in the leaf-sifted light and air--a small recess large enough for a couple of chairs or so, which he called a "Speak-a-bit." Here is something so near his personality that it almost startles you like a sudden apparition of himself. It is a glass case containing the clothes he last wore on earth,--the large-buttoned, blue coat, the plaid trousers, the broad-brimmed hat, and heavy, thick-soled shoes which he had on when he came in from his last walk to lay himself down and die. On signing my name in the register, I was affected at a coincidence which conveyed a tribute of respect to the memory of the great author of striking significance, while it recorded the painful catastrophe which has broken over upon the American Republic. It was a sad sight to me to see the profane and suicidal antagonisms which have rent it in twain brought to the shrine of this great memory and graven upon its sacred tablet as it were with the murdering dagger's point. New and bad initials! The father and patriot Washington would have wept tears of blood to have read them here,--to have read them anywhere, bearing such deplorable meaning. They were U.S.A. and C.S.A., as it were chasing each other up and down the pages of the visitors' register. Sad, sad was the sight-- sadder, in a certain sense, than the smoke-wreaths of the Tuscarora and Alabama ploughing the broad ocean with their keels. U.S.A. and C.S.A.! What initials for Americans to write, with the precious memories of a common history and a common weal still held to their hearts--to write here or anywhere! What a riving and a ruin do those letters record! Still they brought in their severed hands a common homage-gift to the memory of the Writer of Abbotsford. If they represented the dissolution of a great political fabric, in which they once gloried with equal pride, they meant union here--a oneness indissoluble in admiration for a great genius whose memory can no more be localised to a nation than the interest of his works. American names, both of the North and South, may be found on almost every page of the register. I wrote mine next to that of a gentleman from Worcester, Mass., my old place of residence, who only left an hour before my arrival. Abbotsford and Stratford-upon-Avon are points to which our countrymen converge in their travels in this country; and you will find more of their signatures in the registry of these two haloed homesteads of genius than anywhere else in Europe. The valley of the Tweed in this section is all an artist would delight in as a surrounding of such histories. The hills are lofty, declining into gorges or dells at different angles with the river, which they wall in precipitously with their wooded sides in many places. They are mostly cultivated to the top, and now in harvest many of them were crowned with stooked sheaves of wheat, each looking in the distance like Nature with her golden curls done up in paper, dressing for the harvest-home of the season. Some of them wore belts and gores of turnip foliage of different nuances of green luxuriance, combining with every conceivable shade and alternation of vegetable coloring. Indeed, as already intimated, the view from the eminence almost overhanging the little sequestered peninsula on which Old Melrose stood twelve centuries ago, is indescribably beautiful, and well worth a long journey to see, disconnected from its historical associations. The Eildon Hills towering up heather- crowned to the height of over 1,300 feet above the level of the sea right out of the sheen of barley fields, as from a sea of silver, form one of the salient features of this glorious landscape. This is an interesting peculiarity of Scotch scenery;--civilization sapping the barbarism of the wilderness; wheat-fields mordant biting in upon peaty moorlands, or climbing to the tops of cold, bald mountains, shearing off their thorny locks of heather and covering them with the well-dressed chevelure of yellow grain. Where the farmer's horse cannot climb with the plough, or the little sheep cannot graze to advantage, human hands plant the Scotch larch or fir, just as a tenant-gardener would set out cabbage-plants in odd corners of his little holding which he could have no other use for. Abbotsferry is just above Abbotsford, and is crossed in a small row- boat. The river here is of considerable width and quite rapid. The boat was kept on the other side; so I hallooed to a man engaged in thatching a rick of oats to come and ferry me over. Without descending from the ladder, he called to some one in the cottage, when, to my surprise, a well-dressed young woman, in rather flowing dress, red jacket, and with her hair tastefully done up in a net a- la-mode, made her appearance. Descending to the river, she folded up her gown, and, settling herself to the oars, "pushed her light shallop from the shore" with the grace of The Lady of the Lake. In a few minutes she ran the prow upon the pebbled beach at my feet, and I took my seat at the other end of the boat. She did it all so naturally, and without any other flush upon her pleasant face than that of the exercise of rowing, that I felt quite easy myself and checked the expression of regret I was on the point of uttering for putting her to such service. A few questions convinced me it was her regular employment, especially when her father was busy. I could not help asking her if she had ever read "The Lady of the Lake," but found that neither that romance nor any other had ever invested her river experience with any sensibility except of a cheerful duty. She was going to do the whole for a penny, her usual charge, but I declined to take back any change for the piece of silver I gave to her, intimating that I regarded it cheap at that to be rowed over a river by such hands. Almost opposite to Abbotsford I passed one of the best farming establishments I had seen in Scotland. I was particularly struck with a feature which will hereafter distinguish the steddings or farm buildings in Great Britain. Steam has already accomplished many changes, and among others one that could hardly have been anticipated when it was first applied to common uses. It has virtually turned the threshing-floor out of doors. Grain growing has become completely out-of-door work, from seeding to sending to market. The day of building two-story barns for storing and threshing wheat, barley and oats is over, I am persuaded, in this country. A quadrangle of slate-roofed cow-sheds, for housing horses and cattle, will displace the old-fashioned barns, each with its rood of roof. This I saw on crossing the Tweed was quite new, and may serve as a model of the housing that will come into vogue rapidly. One familiar with New England in the "old meeting-house" time would call this establishment a hollow square of horse-sheds, without a break or crevice at the angles. I reached Galashiels about 5 p.m., and stopped an hour for tea. This is a vigorous and thrifty town, that makes a profitable and useful business of the manufacture of tweeds, tartans and shawls. It is situated on the banks of the Gala, a little, rapid, shallow river that joins the Tweed about a mile below. After tea I resumed my walk, but owing to the confused direction of the landlady, took the wrong side of the river, and diverged westward toward Peebles. I had made three miles or more in this direction before I found out my mistake, so was obliged to return to Galashiels, where I concluded to spend the night, after another involuntary excursion more unsatisfactory than my walk around Sheffield, inasmuch as I had to travel over the same road twice for the whole distance. Thus the three mistakes thus far made have cost me twenty miles of extra footing. The next morning I set out in good season, determined to reach Edinburgh, if possible, by night. Followed the Gala Water, as it is called here, just as if it were a placid lake or land-locked bay, though it is a tortuous and swift- running stream. The scenery was still picturesque, in some places very grand and romantic. There was one great amphitheatre just before reaching the village of Stow which was peculiarly interesting. It was a great bowl full of earth's glory up to the very rim. The circular wall was embossed with the best patterns and colors of vegetation. The hills of every tournure showed each in a fir setting, looking, with their sloping fields of grain, like inverted goblets of gold vined with emerald leafwork. In the valley a reaping machine was at work with its peculiar chatter and clatter, and men and women were following in its wake, gathering up and binding the grain as it fell and clearing the way for the next round. Up and down these hills frequently runs a stripe of Scotch firs or larches a few rods wide; here and there they resemble those geometrical figures often seen in gardens and pleasure grounds. The sun peeping out of the clouds, and flooding these features with a sudden, transient river of light, gives them a glow and glory that would delight the artist. After a long walk through such scenery, I reached, late in the evening, Auld Reekie, a favorite home-name which the modern Athenians love to give to Edinburgh. Being anxious to push on and complete my journey as soon as practicable, I only remained in the celebrated Scotch metropolis one night, taking staff early next morning, and holding northward towards the Highlands. Edinburgh has made its mark upon the world and its place among the great centres of the world's civilization. On the whole, no city in Great Britain, or in Christendom, has ever attained to such well- developed, I will not say angular, but salient individuality. This is deep-featured and ineffaceable. It is, not was. Edinburgh has reared great men prolifically and supplied the world with them, and kept always a good number back for itself to give a shaping to others the world needed. Its prestige is great in the production of such intellects. But it keeps up with the times. It is faithful to its antecedents, and appreciates them at their full value and obligation. It does not lie a-bed until noon because it has got its name up for educating brilliant minds. Its grand old University holds its own among the wranglers of learning. Its High School is proportionately as high as ever, notwithstanding the rapid growth of others of the same purpose. Its pulpit boasts of its old mind-power and moral stature. Its Theology stands iron-cabled, grand and solid as an iceberg in the sea of modern speculation, unsoftened under the patter of the heterodox sentimentalities of human philanthropy. It is growing more and more a City of Palaces. And the palaces are all built for housing the poorest of the poor, the weakest of the weak and the vilest of the vile. These hospitals are the Holyroods of Edinburgh II. They honor it with a renown better than the royal palace of the latter name ever won. I said Edinburgh the Second. That is correct. There are two towns, the Old and the New; the last about half a century's age. But the oldest will be the youngest fifty years hence. The hand of a "higher civilization," with its spirit-level, pick, plane and trowel, is upon it with the grip of a Samson. That hand will tone down its great distinctive individualities and give it the modern _uniformity_ of design, face and feature. All these tall houses, built skyward layer upon layer or flat upon flat, until they show half a dozen stories on one street, and twice that number on the other, are doomed, and they will be done for, one by one in its turn. They probably came in with Queen Mary, and they will go out under the blue-eyed Alexandra. They will be supplanted by the most improved architecture of modern taste and utilitarianism. Edinburgh will be Anglicised and put in the fashionable costume of a progressive age; in the same swallow-tailed coat, figured vest and stovepipe hat worn by London, Liverpool and Manchester. It will not be allowed to wear tweed pantaloons except for one circumstance;-- that it is now building its best houses of stone instead of brick. But there are physical features that will always distinguish Edinburgh from all other cities of the world and which no architectural changes can ever obliterate or deface. There are Arthur's Seat, Salisbury Crags, the Calton Hill, and the Castle Height, and there they will stand forever--the grandest surroundings and garniture of Nature ever given to any capital or centre of the earth's populations. CHAPTER XVII. LOCH LEVEN-ITS ISLANDCASTLE--STRATHS--PERTH--SALMON-BREEDING-- THOUGHTS ON FISH-FARMING--DUNKELD--BLAIR ATHOLL--DUCAL TREE-PLANTER- -STRATHSPEY AND ITS SCENERY--THE ROADS--SCOTCH CATTLE AND SHEEP-- NIGHT IN A WAYSIDE COTTAGE--ARRIVAL AT INVERNESS. On Friday, Sept. 11th, I left for the north the morning after my arrival in Edinburgh, hoping to finish my long walk before the rainy season commenced. My old friend and host accompanied me across the Forth, by the Granton Ferry, and walked with me for some distance on the other side; then bidding me God-speed, he returned to the city. The weather was fine, and the farmers were very busy at work. A vast quantity of grain, especially of oats, was cut and ready for carting; but little of it had been ricked in consequence of frequent showers. I noticed that they used a different snath for their scythes here from that common in England. It is in two parts, like the handles of a plough, joining a foot or two above the blade. One is shorter than the other, each having a thole. It is a singular contrivance, but seems to be preferred here to the old English pole. I have never seen yet an American scythe-snath in England or Scotland, although so much of our implemental machinery has been introduced. American manure-forks and hay-forks, axes and augurs you will now find exposed for sale in nearly every considerable town, but one of our beautifully mounted scythes would be a great novelty here. The scenery varies, but retains the peculiarly Scotch features. Hills which we should call mountains are frequently planted with trees as far up as the soil will lie upon the precipitous sides. On passing one of great height, bald at the top, but bearded to the eyebrows with fir and larch, I asked an elderly man, a blacksmith, standing in his shop-door, if they were a natural growth. He said that he and his two boys planted them all about forty-eight years ago. They were now worth, on an average, twelve English shillings, or about three dollars a-piece. I lodged in Kinross, a pleasant-faced, quiet and comfortable little town, done up with historical associations of special interest. Here is Loch Leven, serene and placid, like a mirror framed with wooded hills, looking at their faces in it. It is a beautiful sheet of water, taking the history out of it. But putting that in and around it, you see a picture before you that you will remember. Here is more of Mary the Unfortunate. You see reflected in the silver sheen of the lake that face which looks at you with its soft appeal for sympathy in all the galleries of Christendom. Out there, on that little islet, green and low, stands the black castle in which they prisoned her. There they made her trembling, indignant fingers write herself "a queen without a crown." Southward there, where amateurs now fish for trout, young Douglas rowed her ashore with muffled oars so softly that they stirred no ripple at the bow. The keys of the castle they threw into the lake to bar pursuit, lay in the mud for nearly three centuries, when they were found by a lad of the village, and presented to the Earl of Morton, a representative of the Douglas family. The next day I walked on to Perth, passing through a very interesting section, which nature and history have enriched with landscapes and manscapes manifold. It is truly a romantic region for both these qualities, with delightful views in sudden and frequent alternation. Glens deep, winding and dark, with steep mountain walls folding their tree-hands over the road; lofty hills in full Scotch uniform, in tartan heather and yellow grain plaided in various figures; chippering streams, now hidden, now coming to the light, in white flashing foam in a rocky glade of the dell; straths or savannas, like great prairie gardens, threaded by meandering rivers and studded with wheat in sheaves, shocks and ricks, seen over long reaches of unreapt harvests; villages, hamlets, white cottages nestling in the niches and green gorges of the mountains,--and all these sceneries set in romantic histories dating back to the Danes and their doings in Scotland, make up a prevista for the eye and a revista for the mind that keep both in exhilarating occupation every rod of the distance from Kinross to Perth. The road via Glenfarg would be a luxury of the first enjoyment to any tourist with an eye to the wild, romantic and picturesque. Debouching from this long, winding, tree-arched dell, you come out upon Strathearn, or the bottom-land of the river Earn, which joins the Tay a few miles below. The term strath is peculiarly a Scottish designation which many American readers may not have fully comprehended, although it is so blended with the history and romance of this country. It is not a valley proper, as we use that term; as the Valley of the Mississippi or the Valley of the Connecticut. If the word were admissible, it might be called most descriptively the land-bay of a river, at a certain distance between its source and mouth, such for instance as the German Flats on the Mohawk, or the Oxbow on the Connecticut, at Wethersfield, in Vermont, or the great onion-growing flat on the same river at Wethersfield in Connecticut. These straths are numerous in Scotland, and constitute the great productive centres of the mountain sections. They are generally cultivated to the highest perfection of agricultural science and economy and are devoted mostly to grain. As they are always walled in by bald-headed mountains and lofty hills, cropped as high as man and horse can climb with a plough and planted with firs and larches beyond, they show beautifully to the eye, and constitute, with these surroundings, the peculiar charm of Scotch scenery. The term is always prefixed to the name of the river, as Strathearn, Strathspey, etc. I noticed on this day's walk the same singular habit that struck me in the north part of Yorkshire; that is, of cutting inward upon the standing grain. Several persons, frequently women and boys, follow the mowers, and pick up the swath and bind it into sheaves, using no rake at all in the process. So pertinaciously they seem to adhere to this remarkable and awkward custom, that I saw two mowers walk down a hill, a distance of full a hundred rods, with their scythes under their arms, in order to begin a new swath in the same way; four or five men and women running after them full tilt to bind the grain as it fell! Here was a loss of at least five minutes each to half a dozen hands, amounting to half an hour to a single man at the end of each swath or work. Supposing the mowers made twenty in ten hours from bottom to top of the field, here is the loss of one whole day for one man, or one sixth of the whole aggregate time applied to the harvesting of the crop, given to the mere running down that hill of six pairs of legs for no earthly purpose but to cut inward instead of outward, as we do. The grain-ricks in Scotland are nearly all round and quite small. Every one of them is rounded up at the top and fitted with a Mandarin-looking hat of straw, which sheds the rain well. A good-sized farm-house is flanked with quite a village of these little round stacks, looking like a comfortable colony of large, yellow tea-caddies in the distance. Reached Perth a little after dark, having made a walk of nearly twenty miles after 11 a.m. Here I remained over the Sabbath, and greatly enjoyed both its rest and the devotional exercises in some of the churches of the city. The Fair City of Perth is truly most beautifully situated at the head of navigation on the Tay, as Stirling is on the Forth. It has no mountainous eminence in its midst, castle-crowned, like Stirling, from which to look off upon such a scene as the latter commands. But Nature has erected grand and lofty observatories near by in the Moncrieffe and Kinnoull Hills, from which a splendid prospect is unrolled to the eye. There is some historical or legendary authority for the idea that the Romans contemplated this view from Moncrieffe Hill; and, as the German army, returning homeward from France, shouted with wild enthusiasm, at its first sight, Der Rhein! Der Rhein! so these soldiers of the Caesars shouted at the view of the Tay and the Corse of Gowrie, Ecce Tiber! Ecce Compus Martius! There was more patriotism than parity in the comparison. The Italian river is a Rhine in history, but a mere Goose Creek within its actual banks compared with the Tay. In history, Perth has its full share of "love and murder," rhyme and romance, sieges, battering and burning, royals and rebels. In the practical life of to-day, it is a progressive, thriving town, busy, intelligent, respected and honorable. The two natural features which would attract, perhaps, the most special attention of the traveller are the two Inches, North and South, divided by the city. This is a peculiar Scotch term which an untravelled American will hardly understand. It has no relation to measurement of any kind; but signifies what we should call a low, level green or common in or adjoining a town. The Inches of Perth are, to my eye, the finest in Scotland, each having about a mile and a half in circumference, and making delightful and healthy playgrounds and promenades for the whole population. On Monday, Sept. 14th, I took staff and set out for another week- stage of my walk, or from Perth to Inverness. Crossed the Tay and proceeded northward up the east side of that fertile river. Fertile may sound at first a singular qualification for a broad, rapid stream running down out of the mountains and widening into a bay or firth at its mouth. But it may be applied in the best sense of production to the Tay; and not only that, but other terms known to practical agriculture. Up to the present moment, no river in the world has been cultivated with more science and success. None has been sown so thickly with seed-vitalities or produced more valuable crops of aquatic life. Here salmon are hatched by hand and folded and herded with a shepherd's care. Here pisciculture, or, to use a far better and more euphonious word, fish-farming, is carried to the highest perfection in Great Britain. It is a tillage that must hereafter take its place with agriculture as a great and honored industry. If the cold, bald-headed mountains, the wild, stony reaches of poverty-stricken regions, moor, morass, steppe and prairie are made the pasturage of sheep innumerable, the thousands of rivers in both hemispheres will not be suffered to run to waste through another century. The utilitarian genius of the present age will turn them into pasturage worth more per acre than the value of the richest land on their banks. Just think of the pasturage of the Tay. It rents for 14,000 pounds a year; and those who hire it must make it produce at least 50,000 pounds, or $240,000 annually. Let us assume that the whole length of this salmon-pasturage is fifty miles, and its average width one-eighth of a mile. Then the whole distance would contain the space of 4,000 square acres, and the annual rent for fishing would amount to over 3 pounds 13s. per acre. This would make every fish-bearing acre of the river worth 100 pounds, calculated on the land basis of interest or rent. Having heard of the Stormontfields' Ponds for breeding salmon, I had a great desire to see them. They are situated on the Tay, a few miles above Perth, and are well worthy of the inspection and admiration of the scientific as well as the utilitarian world. The process is as simple as it is successful and valuable. A race or canal, filled with a clear, mountain stream, and constructed many years ago to supply motive power to a corn-mill, runs parallel with the river, at the distance from it of about twenty rods. At right angles with this stream, there are twenty-five wooden boxes side by side, about fifty feet in length, placed on a slight decline. These boxes or troughs, each about two feet wide and one foot deep, are divided into partitions by cross-boards, which do not reach, within a few inches, the top of the siding, so that the water shall make a continuous surface the whole length of the trough. Each trough is filled with round river stones or pebbles washed clean, on which the spawn is laid. The water is let out of the mill-race upon these troughs through a wire-cloth filter, covering them about two inches deep above the stones. At the bottom, a lateral channel or race, running at right angles to the troughs, conducts the waste water in a rapid, bubbling stream down into the feeding-pond, which covers the space of about one-fifth of an acre, close to the river, with which it is connected by a narrow race gated also with a wire-cloth, to prevent the little living mites from being carried off before their time. This may serve to give the reader some approximate idea of the construction of the fish-fold. The next process is the stocking it with the breeding ewes of the sea and river. The female salmon is caught in the spawning season with a net, and the ova are expressed from her by passing the hand gently down the body, when she is again put into the river to go on her way. The manager told me that they generally reckoned upon a thousand eggs to a pound of the salmon caught. Thus fourteen good-sized fish would stock the twenty-five troughs. When hatched, the little things run down into the race- way, which carries them into the feeding-pond. Here they are fed twice daily, with five pounds of beef's liver pulverised. They remain in this water-yard from April to autumn, when the gate is raised and they are let out into the river. And it is a very singular and interesting fact that those only go which have got their sea-coats on them, or have reached the "smolt" character. The smaller fry remain in the pond until, as it has been said in higher circles of society, their beards are grown, or, in their case, until their scales are grown, to fit them for the rough and tumble of salt-water life. The growth of the little bull-headed mites, after being turned into the river-pasture, is wonderful--more rapid than that of lambs of the Southdown breed. The keeper had marked some of them, on letting them out, by clipping the dorsal fin. On being caught six or eight months afterward, they weighed from five to seven pounds against half a pound each when sent forth to take care of themselves. The proprietors of the fisheries defray the expense of this breeding establishment, being taxed only twopence in the pound of their rental. This, of course, they get back with large interest and profit from the tenant-farmers of the river. As a proof of the enhanced production of the Tay fisheries under this cultivation the fact will suffice, that they now rent for 14,000 pounds a year against 11,000 pounds under the old system. Salmon-breeding is doubtless destined to rank with sheep-culture and cattle-culture in the future. The remotest colonies of Great Britain are moving in the matter with vigor and almost enthusiasm. Vessels have been constructed on purpose to convey this fair and mottled stock of British rivers to those of Australia and New Zealand. In France, fish-farming has become a large and lucrative occupation. I hope our own countrymen, who plume themselves on going ahead in utilitarian enterprises, will show the world what they can do in this. Surely our New England men, who claim to lead in American industries and ingenuities, will not suffer half a million acres of river-pasturage to run to waste for another half century, when it would fold and feed millions of salmon. Once they herded in the Connecticut in such multitudes that a special stipulation was inserted in the indentures of apprentices in the vicinity of the river, that they should not be obliged to eat salmon more than a certain number of times in a week. Now, if a salmon is caught between the mouth and source of the river, it is blazoned forth in the newspapers as a very extraordinary and unnatural event. There is no earthly reason why the Connecticut should not breed and supply as great a number of these excellent and beautiful fish as the Tay. Its waters are equally pure and quiet as those of the Scotch river. Every acre of the Connecticut, from the northernmost bridge that spans it in Vermont to its debouchment at Saybrook, might be made productive of as great a value as any onion-garden acre at Wethersfield. The salmon-shepherd at Stormontfields, having fully explained the labors and duties of his charge, rowed me across the Tay, and I continued my walk highly gratified in having seen one of the new industries which this age is adding to the different cultures provided for the sustentation and comfort of human life. The whole way to Dunkeld was full of interest, nature and history making every mile a scene to delight the eye and exhilarate the mind. The first considerable village I passed through was Stanley, which gives the name to that old family of British peers known in history by the battle-cry of a badly-pressed sovereign, "On, Stanley, on!" Murthley Castle, the seat of Sir William Stewart, and the beautiful grounds which front and surround it, will excite the admiration of the traveller and pay him well for a moment's pause to peruse its illuminated pages opened to his view. The baronet is regarded as an eccentric man, perhaps chiefly because he has built a splendid Roman Catholic chapel quite near to his mansion and supports a priest of that order mostly for his own spiritual good. Near Dunkeld, Birnam Hill lifts its round, dark, bushy head to the height of over 1,500 feet, grand and grim, as if it wore the bonnet of Macbeth and hid his dagger beneath its tartan cloak of firs. "Birnam Wood," which Shakespeare's genius has made one of the immortals among earthly localities, was the setting of that hill in his day, and perhaps centuries before it. Crossing the Tay by a magnificent bridge, you are in the famous old city and capital of ancient Caledonia, Dunkeld. Here centre some of the richest rivulets of Scotch history, ecclesiastical and military, of church and state, cowl and crown. Walled in here, on the upper waters of the Tay, by dark and heavily-wooded mountains, it was just the place for the earliest monks to select as the site of one of their cloistered communities. The two best saints ever produced by these islands, St. Columba and St. Cuthbert, are said to have been connected with the religious foundations of this little sequestered city. The old cathedral, having been knocked about like other Roman Catholic edifices in the sledge-hammer crusades of the Reformation, was _ruined_ very picturesquely, as a tourist, with one of Murray's red-book guides in his hand, would be likely to say. But the choir was rebuilt and fitted up for worship by the late Duke of Atholl at the expense of about 5,000 pounds. Of this duke I must say a few words, for he has left the greenest monument to his memory that a man ever planted over his grave. He did something more and better than roofing the choir of a ruined cathedral. He roofed a hundred hills and valleys with a larch-and- fir work that will make them as glorious and beautiful as Lebanon forever. One of the most illustrious and eloquent of the Iroquois aristocracy was a chief called Corn-planter. This Duke of Atholl should be named and known for evermore as the great Tree-planter of Christendom. We have already dwelt upon the benefaction that such a man leaves to coming generations. This Scotch nobleman virtually founded a new order of knighthood far more useful and honorable than the Order of the Garter. To talk of _garters_!--why, he not only put the cold, ragged shivering hills of Scotland into garters, but into stockings waist high, and doublets and bonnets and shoes of beautifully green and thick fir-plaid. He planted 11,000 square acres with the larch alone; and thousands of these acres stood up edgewise against mountains and hills so steep that the planters must have spaded the holes with ropes around their waists to keep them from falling down the precipice. It is stated that he had twenty- seven millions of the larch alone planted on his mountainous estates, besides several millions of other trees. Now, it is doubtful if the whole region thus dibbled with this tree-crop yielded an average rental of one English shilling per acre as a pasturage for sheep. On passing through miles and miles of this magnificent wood-grain and taking an estimate of its value, I put it at 10s., or $2 40c. per tree. Of the twenty-seven millions of larches thus planted, ten must be worth that sum; making alone, without counting the rest, 5,000,000 pounds, or $24,000,000. It is quite probable that the larches, firs and other trees now covering the Atholl estates, would sell for 10,000,000 pounds if brought to the hammer. But he was not only the greatest arboriculturist in the world, but the founder of tree-farming as a productive industry as well as a decorative art. Already it has transformed the Highlands of Scotland and trebled their value, as well as clothed them with a new and beautiful scenery. What we call the Scotch larch was not originally a native of that country. Close to the cathedral in Dunkeld stand the two patriarchs of the family, first introduced into Scotland from Switzerland in 1737. Having remained the best part of two days in Dunkeld, I held on northward, through heavily-shaded and winding glen and valley to Blair Atholl. For the whole distance of twenty miles the country is quite Alpine, wild and grand, with mountains larched or firred to the utmost reach and tenure of soil for roots; deep, dark gorges pouring down into the narrowing river their foamy, dashing streams; mansions planted here and there on sloping lawns showing sunnily through groves and parks; now a hamlet of cottages set in the side of a lofty hill, now a larger village opening suddenly upon you at the turning of the turnpike road. I reached Blair Atholl at about dark, and lodged at the largest hotel I slept in between London and John O'Groat's. It is virtually the tourist's inn; for this is the centre of some of the most interesting and striking sceneries and localities in Scotland. Glens, waterfalls, stream, torrent, mountain and valley, with their romantic histories, make this a very attractive region to thousands of summer travellers from England and other countries. The railway from Perth to Inverness via Dunkeld and Blair Atholl, has just opened up this secluded Scotch Switzerland to multitudes who never would have seen it without the help of the Iron Horse. A month previous, this point had been the most distant in Scotland from steam-routes of transportation and travel. Now southern sportsmen were hiring up "the shooting" for many miles on both sides of the line, making the hills and glens echo with their fusillades. Blair Castle, the duke's mansion, is a very ordinary building in appearance, looking from the public road like a large four-story factory painted white, with small, old- fashioned windows. He himself was lying in a very painful and precarious condition, with a cancer in the throat, from which it was the general impression that he never would recover. The day preceding, the Queen had visited him, while en route for Balmoral, having gone sixty miles out of her way to comfort him with such an expression of her sympathy. The next day I reached the northern boundary of the Duke of Atholl's estates, having walked for full forty miles continuously through it. Passed over a very bleak, treeless, barren waste of mountain and moorland, most of it too rocky or soilless for even heather. The dashing, flashing, little Garry, which I had followed for a day or two, thinned and narrowed down to a noisy brook as I ascended towards its source. For a long distance the country was exceedingly wild and desolate. Terrible must be the condition of a man benighted therein, especially in winter. There were standing beacons all along the road for miles, to indicate the track when it was buried in drifting snow. These were painted posts, about six or eight feet high, planted on the rocky, river side of the road, at a few rods interval, to guide the traveller and keep him from dashing over the concealed precipices. About the middle of the afternoon I reached the summit of the two watersheds, where a horse's hoof might so dam a balancing stream as to send it southward into the Tay or northward into the Moray Firth. Soon a rivulet welled out in the latter direction with a decided current. It was the Spey. A few miles brought me suddenly into a little, glorious world of beauty. The change of theatrical sceneries could hardly have produced a more sudden and striking contrast than this presented to the wild, cold, dark waste through which I had been travelling for a day. It was Strathspey; and I doubt if there is another view in Scotland, of the same dimensions, to equal it. It was indescribably grand and beautiful, if you could blend the meaning of these two commonly- coupled adjectives into one qualification, as you can blend two colors on the easel. To get the full enjoyment of the scene at one draught, you should enter it first from the south, after having travelled for twenty miles without seeing a sheaf of wheat or patch of vegetation tilled by the hand of man. I know nothing in America to compare it with or to help the American reader to an approximate idea of it. Imagine a land-lake, apparently shut in completely by a circular wall of mountains of every stature, the tallest looking over the shoulders of the lower hills, like grand giants standing in steel helmets and green doublets and gilded corselets, to see the soft and quiet beauty of the valley sleeping under their watch and ward. As the sun-bursts from the strath-skies above darted out of their shifting cloud-walls and flashed a flush of light upon the solemn brows of these majestic apostles of nature one by one, they stood haloed, like the favored saints in Scripture in the overflow of the Transfiguration. It was just the kind of day to make the scene glorious indescribably. The clouds and sky were in the happiest disposition for the brilliant plays and pictures of light and shade, and dissolving views of fascinating splendor succeeded and surpassed each other at a minute's interval. Now, the great land-lake, on whose bosom floated in the sunlight a thousand islands oat-and-barley-gilded, and rimmed with the green and purple verdure of the turnip and rutabaga, was all set a-glow by a luminous flood from the opening clouds above. The next moment they closed this disparted seam in their drapery, and opened a side one upon the still, grave faces of the surrounding mountains; and, for a few minutes, the smile went round from one to the other, and the great centurions of the hills looked happy and almost human in the gleam. Then shade's turn came in the play, and it played its part as perfectly as light. It put in the touch of the old Italian masters, giving an everchanging background to all the sublime pictures of the panorama. I was not alone in the enjoyment of this scenery. For the first time in this Walk I had a companion for a day. A clergyman from near Edinburgh joined me at Kingussie, with whom I shared the luxury of one of the most splendid views to be found in Scotland. Indeed, few minds are so constituted as to prefer to see such natural pictures alone. After a day's walk among these sceneries, we came to the small village of Aviemore in the dusk of the evening. Here we found that the only inn had been closed and turned into a private residence, and that it was doubtful if a bed could be had for love or money in the place. The railway through it to Inverness had just been opened, and the navvies seemed still to constitute the largest portion of the population. Neither of us had eaten any dinner, and we were hungry as well as tired. Seeing a little, low cottage near the railroad, with the sign of something for the public good over the door, we went to it, and found that it had two rooms, one a kind of rough, stone-floored shed, the other an apartment full ten feet square, with two beds in it, which occupied half the entire space. But, small as it was, the good man and woman made the most of it in the way of entertainment, getting up a tea occasionally for persons stopping over in the village at a meal-time, also selling small articles of grocery to the laborers. Everything was brought from a distance, even their bread, bacon and butter. Their stock of these fundamentals was exhausted, so that they could not give us anything with our tea until the arrival of the train from the north, which we all watched with common interest. In the course of half an hour it came, and soon our cabin-landlord brought in a large basket full of the simplest necessaries of life, which we were quite prepared to enjoy as its best luxuries. Soon a wood fire blazed for us in the double-bedded parlor, and the unpainted deal table was spread in the fire-light with a repast we relished with a pleasant appreciation. My companion was bound northward by the next train in that direction, and was sure to find good quarters for the night; but as there was not an inn for ten miles on the route I was to travel, and as it was now quite night and the road mostly houseless and lonely, I felt some anxiety about my own lodging. But on inquiry I was very glad to find that one of the two beds in the room was unoccupied and at my disposal. So, having accompanied my fellow-traveller to the station and seen him off with mutual good wishes, I returned to the cottage, and the mistress replenished the fire with a new supply of chips and faggots, and I had two or three hours of rare enjoyment, enhanced by some interesting books I found on a shelf by the window. And this is a fact worthy of note and full of good meaning. You will seldom find a cottage in Scotland, however poor and small, without a shelf of books in it. I retired rather earlier than usual; but before I fell asleep, the two regular lodgers, who occupied the other bed, came in softly, and spoke in a suppressed tone, as if reluctant to awaken me. And here I was much impressed with another fact affiliated with the one I have mentioned--that of praying as well as reading in the Scotch cottage. After a little conversation just above a whisper, the elder of the two--and he not twenty, while the other was apparently only sixteen--first read, with full Scotch accent, one of the hard-rhymed psalms used in the Scotch service. Then, after a short pause, he read with a low, solemn voice a chapter in the Bible. A few minutes of silence succeeded, as if a wordless prayer was going upward upon the still wings of thought, which made no audible beating in their flight. It was very impressive; an incident that I shall ever hold among the most interesting of all I met with on my walk. They were not brothers evidently, but most likely strangers thrown together on the railroad. They doubtless came from different directions, but, from Highlands or Lowlands, they came from Bible-lighted homes, whose "voices of the night" were blended with the breathings of religious life and instruction. Separated from such homes, they had agreed to make this one after the same spiritual pattern, barring the parental presence and teaching. The next day after breakfast, took leave of my kind cottage hosts, exchanging good wishes for mutual happiness. Went out of the amphitheatre of Strathspey by a gateway into another, surrounded by mountains less lofty and entirely covered with heather. For several miles beyond Carr Bridge I passed over the wildest moorland. The road was marked by posts about ten feet high, painted white within two feet of the top and black above. These are planted about fifteen rods apart, to guide the traveller in the drifting and blinding snows of winter. The road over this cold, desolate waste exceeded anything I ever saw in America, even in the most fashionable suburbs of New York and Boston. It was as smooth and hard as a cement floor. Here on this treeless wild, I met several men at work trimming the edges of the road by a line, with as much precision and care as if they were laying out an aisle in a flower garden. After a walk of about seventeen miles, I reached Freeburn Inn about the middle of the afternoon, and as it began to rain and to threaten bad weather for walking, I concluded to stop there for the night, and found good quarters. The rain continued in showers, and I feared I should be unable to reach Inverness to spend the Sabbath. There was a cattle fair at the inn, and a considerable number of farmers and dealers came together notwithstanding the weather. Indeed, there were nearly as many men and boys as animals on the ground. A score or more had come in, each leading or driving a single cow or calf. The cattle generally were evidently of the Gaelic origin and antecedents-- little, chubby, scraggy creatures, of all colors, but mostly black, with wide-branching horns longer than their fore-legs. Their hair is long and as coarse as a polar seal's, and they look as if they knew no more of housing against snow, rain and wintry winds, or of a littered bed, than the buffaloes beyond the upper waters of the Missouri. One would be inclined to think they had lived from calf- hood on nothing but heather or gorse, and that the prickly fodder had penetrated through their hides and covered them with a growth midway between hair and bristles. They will not average over 350 lbs. when dressed; still they seem to hold their own among other breeds which have attracted so much attention. This is probably because they can browse out a living where the Durham and Devon would starve. The sheep in this region are chiefly the old Scotch breed, with curling horns and crocked faces and legs, such as are represented in old pictures. The black seems to be spattered upon them, and looks as if the heather would rub it off. The wool is long and coarse, giving them a goat-like appearance. They seem to predominate over any other breed in this part of Scotland, yet not necessarily nor advantageously. A large sheep farmer from England was staying at the inn, with whom I had much conversation on the subject. He said the Cheviots were equally adapted to the Highlands, and thought they would ultimately supplant the black faces. Although he lived in Northumberland, full two hundred miles to the south, he had rented a large sheep-walk, or mountain farm, in the Western Highlands, and had come to this section to buy or hire another tract. He kept about 4,000 sheep, and intended to introduce the Cheviots upon these Scotch holdings, as their bodies were much heavier and their wool worth nearly double that of the old black-faced breed. Sheep are the principal source of wealth in the whole of the North and West of Scotland. I was told that sometimes a flock of 20,000 is owned by one man. The lands on which they are pastured will not rent above one or two English shillings per acre; and a flock even of 1,000 requires a vast range, as may be indicated by the reply of a Scotch farmer to an English one, on being asked by the latter, "How many sheep do you allow to the acre?" "Ah, mon," was the answer, "that's nae the way we count in the Highlands; it's how monie acres to the sheep." At about two p.m., the showers becoming less frequent, I set out with the hope of reaching Inverness before night. The wind was high, the road muddy, or _dirty_, as the English call that condition; and the rain frequently compelled me to seek shelter in some wayside cottage, or under the fir-trees that were planted in groves at narrow intervals. The walking was heavy and slow in face of the frequent showers, and a strong gale from the north-east; so that I was exceedingly glad to reach an inn within four miles of Inverness, where I promised myself comfortable lodgings for the night. It was a rather large, but comfortless-looking house, evidently concentrating all its entertainment for travellers in the tap-room. After considerable hesitation, the landlady consented to give me bed and board; and directed "the lassie" to make a fire for me in a large and very respectable room on the second floor. I soon began to feel quite at home by its side. My boots had leaked on the way and my feet were very wet and cold; and it was with a pleasant sense of comfort that I changed stockings, and warmed myself at the ruddy grate, while the storm seemed to increase without. After waiting about an hour for tea, I heard the lassie's heavy footstep on the stairs; a knock--the door opens--now for the tray and the steaming tea-pot, and happy vision of bread, oatcake and Scotch _scones_! Alas! what a falling-off was there from this delicious expectation! The lassie had brought a severe and peremptory message from the master, who had just returned home. And she delivered it commiseratingly but decidedly. She was to tell me from him that there was nothing in the house to set before me; that the fair the day before had eaten out the whole stock of his provisions; in short, that I was to take my staff and walk on to Inverness. It was in vain that I remonstrated, pleaded and urged wet feet, the darkness, the wind and rain. "It is so," said the lassie, "and can't be otherwise." She tried to encourage me to the journey by shortening the distance by half its actual miles, saying it was only two, when it was full four, and they of the longest kind. So I went out into the night in my wet clothes, and put the best face and foot to the head-wind and rain that I could bring to bear against them. Both were strong, beating and drenching; and it was so dark that I could hardly see the road. In the course of half an hour, I made the lassie's two miles, and in another, the whole of the actual distance, and found comfortable quarters in one of the temperance inns of Inverness, reaching it between nine and ten at night. Here I spent a quiet Sabbath, which I greatly enjoyed. CHAPTER XVIII. INVERNESS--ROSS-SHIRE--TAIN--DORNOCH--GOLSPIE--PROGRESS OF RAILROADS--THE SUTHERLAND EVICTION--SEA-COAST SCENERY--CAITHNESS-- WICK: HERRING FISHERIES--JOHN O'GROAT'S: WALK'S END. Inverness is an interesting, good-sized town, with an intellectual and pleasing countenance, of somewhat aristocratic and self- complacent expression. It is considered the capital of the Highlands, and wears a decidedly metropolitan air. It is well situated on the Ness, just at its debouchement into the Moray Firth,--a river that runs with a Rhine-like current through the town and is spanned with a suspension bridge. It has streets of city- built and city-bred buildings, showing wealth and elegance. Several edifices are in process of erection that will rank with some of the best in Edinburgh and Glasgow. It has a long and pretentious history, reaching back to the Romans, and dashed with the romance of the wild ages of the country. Oliver Cromwell, or Sledgehammer II., Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor, Queen Mary, Prince Charlie, and other historical celebrities, entered their names and doings on the records of this goodly town. On Monday, Sept. 21st, I set out with a good deal of animation on the last week-stage of my journey, which I was anxious to accomplish as soon as possible, as the weather was becoming unsettled with frequent rain. Reached Invergordon, passing through a most interesting section of country, full of very fertile straths. It was the part of Ross-shire lying on the Moray and Beauly Firths and divided by rivers dashing down through the wooded gorges of the mountains. I saw here some of the most productive land in Scotland. Hundreds of acres were studded with wheat and barley stooks, and about an equal space was covered with standing grain, though so near the month of October. Plantations, parks, gentlemens' seats, glens deep and grand, fir-clad mountains, villages, hamlets and scattered cottages made up the features of every changing view. Indeed, one travelling for a week between Perth and Inverness comes upon such a region as this with pleasant surprise, as upon an exotic section, imported from another latitude. The next day I held on northward, though the weather was very unfavorable and the walking heavy and fatiguing. Passed what seemed the bold and ridgy island of Cromarty, so associated with the venerated memory of Hugh Miller. The beating rain drove me frequently to the wayside cottages for shelter; and in every one of them I was received with kind words and pleasant looks. One of these was occupied by an old woman in the regular Scotch cap--a venerable old saint, with her Bible and psalm-book library on her window-sill, and her peat fire burning cheerily. When on leaving I intimated that I was from America, she followed me out into the road, asking me a hundred questions about the country and its condition. She had three sons in Montreal, and felt a mother's interest in the very name America. The cottage was one of a long street of them by the sea-side, and I supposed it was a fishing village; but I learned from her that the people were mostly the evicted tenants of the Duke of Sutherland, who were turned out of his county some thirty years ago to make room for sheep. I made only eleven miles this day on account of the rain, and was glad to find cheery and comfortable quarters in an excellent inn kept by a widow and her three daughters in Tain. Nothing could exceed their kindness and attention, which evidently flowed more from a disposition than from a professional habit of making their guests at home for a pecuniary or business consideration. I reached their house about the middle of the afternoon, cold and wet, after several hours' walk in the rain, and was received as one of the family; the eldest daughter, who had all the grace and intelligence of a cultivated lady, helping me off with my wet overcoat, and even offering to pull off my water-soaked boots--an office no American could accept, and which I gently declined, taking the will for the deed. A large number of Scotch _navvies_ were at the inns of the town, making an obstreperous auroval in celebration of the monthly pay-day. They had received the day preceding a month's wages, and they were now drinking up their money with the most reckless hilarity; swallowing the pay of five long hours at the pick in a couple of gills of whiskey. How strange that men can work in rain, cold and heat at the shovel for a whole day, then drink up the whole in two hours at the gin-shop! These pickmen pioneers of the Iron Horse, with their worst habits, are yet a kind of John-the-Baptists to the march and mission of civilization, preparing its way in the wilderness, and bringing secluded and isolated populations to its light and intercourse. It is wonderful how they are working their way northward among these bald and thick-set mountains. When I first visited Scotland, in 1846, the only piece of railroad north of the Forth was that between Dundee and Arbroath, hardly an hour long. Now the iron pathways are running in every direction, making grand junctions at points which had never felt the navvy's pick a dozen years ago. Here is one heading towards John O'Groat's, grubbing its way like a mole around the firths, cutting spiral gains into the rock-ribbed hills, bridging the deep and dark gorges, and holding on steadily north-poleward with a brave faith and faculty of patience that moves mountains, or as much of them as blocks its course. The progress is slow, silent, but sure. The world, busy in other doings, does not hear the pick, nor the speech of the powder when it speaks to a huge rock a-straddle the path. The world, even including the shareholders, hears but little, if anything, of the progress of the work for months, perhaps for a year. Then the consummation is announced in the form of an invitation to the public to "assist" at the opening of a railroad through towns and villages that never saw the daylight the locomotive brings in its wake. So it will be here. Some day, in the present decade, there will be an excursion train advertised to run from London to John O'Groat's; and perhaps the lineal descendant of Sigurd, or some other old Norse jarl, will wear the conductor's belt and cap or drive the engine. The weather was still unsettled, with much wind and rain. Resumed my walk, and at about four miles from Tain, crossed the Dornoch Firth in a sail ferry boat, and at noon reached Dornoch, the capital of Sutherlandshire. This was one of the fourteen cities of Scotland; and its little, chubby cathedral, and the tower of the old bishop's palace still give it a kind of Canterbury air. The Earls of Sutherland for many generations lie interred within the walls of this ancient church. After stopping here for an hour or two for dinner, I continued on to Golspie, the residence of the mighty lord of the manor, or the owner, master and human disposer of this great mountain county of Scotland. It is stated that full four-fifths of it belong to him who now holds the title, and that his other great estates, added to this territory, make him the largest landowner in Great Britain and probably in Europe. Just before reaching Golspie, a lofty, sombre mountain, with its bald head enveloped in the mist, and which I had been two hours apparently in passing, cleared away and revealed its full stature--and more. Towering up from its topmost summit, a tall column lifted a human figure in bronze skyward cloud-high and frequently higher still. I believe the brazen face that thus looks into the pure and holy skies without blushing, is a duplicate of the one worn in human flesh by His Grace, Evictor I., who unpeopled his great county of many thousands of human inhabitants, and made nearly its whole area of 18,000 square miles a sheep-walk. But I will not break the seal of that history. It was full of bitter experience to multitudes. Not for the time being was it joyous, but grievous exceedingly--surpassing endurance to many. But it is all over now. The ship-loads of evicted men and women who looked their last upon Scotland while its mountains and glens were reddened with the flames of their burning cottages, carried away with them a bitter feeling in their hearts which years of better experience did not soften. Not for their good did it seem in the motive of the transaction; but for their good it worked most blessedly. It was a rough transplanting, and the tenderest fibres of human affection broke and bled under the uptearing; but they took root in the Western World, and grew luxuriantly under the light and dew of a happier destiny. It was hard for fathers and mothers who were taking on the frostwork of age upon their brows; but for their children it was the birth of a new life; for them it was the introduction to a future which had a sun in it, rayful and radiant with the beams of hope and promise. Let those who denounce and deplore this harsh unpeopling come and stand upon the cold, bleak summit of one of these Sutherland mountains. Let them bring their compasses, or some other instrument for measuring the angles, sines and cosines of human conditions. Plant your theodolite here; wipe the telescope's eye with your handkerchief; look your keenest in the line of the lineage of these evicted thousands. Steady, now! while the most tranquil light of the future is on the pathway of your eye. This first reach of your vision is the life-track of the fathers and mothers unhoused among these mountains. Look on beyond, over the longer life-line of their children; then farther still under the horizon of the remotest future to the track of their childrens' children. Can you make an angle of a single degree's subtension in the hereditary conditions of these generations, or a dozen beyond? Can you detect a point of departure by which the second generation would have diverged from the first, or the third from the second, and have attained to a higher life of comfort, intelligence, social and political position had they remained in these mountain cottages, grubbed on their cottage farms, and lived from hand to mouth on stinted rations of oatmeal and potatoes, as their ancestors had done from time immemorial? Can you see among all the hopeful possibilities of Time's tomorrows, any such change for the better? You can sight no such prospect with your telescope in that direction. Turn it around and sweep the horizon of that other condition into which they were thrust, weeping and wrathful against their will. Follow them across the Atlantic to North America, to their homes in the States and in the Canadas. Measure the angle they made in this transposition, and the latitude and longitude of social and moral life they have reached from this Sutherland point of departure. The sons of the fathers and mothers who had their family nests stirred up so cruelly, and scattered, like those of rooks, from their holdings in the cliffs, gorges and glens of these cold mountains, are now among the most substantial and respected men of the Western World. Some of them to-day are mayors of towns of larger population than the whole county of Sutherland. Some, doubtless, are Members of Congress, representing each a constituency of one hundred thousand persons, and a vast amount of intelligence, wealth and industry. They are merchants, manufacturers, farmers, teachers and preachers, filling all the professions and occupations of the continent. Is not that an angle of promise to your telescope? Is not that a line of divergence which has conducted these evicted populations, at a small distance from this point of departure, into the better latitudes of human experience? The selling of this Scotch Joseph to America was more purely and simply a pecuniary transaction than that recorded in Scripture; for in that the unkind and jealous brothers sold the innocent boy for envy, not for the love of pelf, though the Ishmaelites bought him on speculation. But not for envy was the Sutherland lad sold and shipped to a foreign land, but rather for a contemptuous estimate of his money value. The proprietor-patriarch of the county took to a more quiet and profitable favorite--the sheep, and sent it to feed on a pasture enriched with the ashes of Joseph's cottage. It is to be feared he meant only money; but Providence meant a blessing beyond the measurement of money to the evicted; and what Providence meant it made for him and his posterity, and they are now enjoying it. Dunrobin Castle, the grand residence of the Duke of Sutherland, looks off upon the sea at Golspie. It is truly a magnificent edifice, ranking with the first palaces in Christendom. Nearly eight hundred years has it been in building, though, I believe, all that commands admiration for stature and style is the work of the present century. Whatever the Sutherland family may have been in local position and history in past centuries, one of the noblest women that ever ennobled the nobility of Great Britain, has given the name a celebrity and an estimation in America which all who ever wore it before never won for it. The Duchess of Sutherland, the noble and large-hearted sister of Lord Morpeth-Carlisle, has given to the coronet she wore a lustre brighter to the American eye than the light of diadems which have dazzled millions in Europe. When the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Men shall come to its high place in the hearts of nations as the crown-faith of all their creeds, what this noble woman felt, said and did for the Slave in his bonds shall be mentioned of her by the preachers of that great doctrine in years to come. When the jewels of Humanity's memories shall be made up, she who, as it were, bent down to him in his prison-house and put her jewelled hands to the breaking of his fetters, shall stand, with women of the same sympathy, only next to her who broke her box of ointment on the Saviour's feet. The next day made a walk to Helmsdale, a distance of about eighteen miles. The weather was favorable, the scenery grand and varied with almost every feature that could give it interest. The finest of roads wound in and out around the mountain headlands, so that alternately I was walking upon a lofty esplanade overlooking the still expanse of the steel-blue sea, then facing inward to the gorges of the grand and solemn hills. Found comfortable quarters in one of the inns of Helmsdale, a vigorous, busy, fishing village nestling under the shadow of the mountains at the mouth of a little river of the same name. After tea, went down to the wharf or quay and had some conversation with one of the masters of the business. He cured and put up about 30,000 barrels of herrings himself in a season, employing, while it lasted, 500 persons. Their chief market is the North of Europe, especially Poland, and the business was consequently much depressed on account of the troubles in that country. The occupation of this little sea-side village illustrated the ramifications of commerce. They imported their salt from Liverpool, their staves from Norway and their hoops from London. Set out again immediately after breakfast, feeling that I was drawing near to the end of my journey. I was soon in the treeless county of Caithness, so fraught with the wild romance of the Norsemen. Passed over the bleakest district I had yet seen, called Old Ord, a cold, rough, cloud-breeding region that the very heavens above seem to frown upon with a scowl of dissatisfaction. Still, the road over this dark, mountain desert, though staked on each side to keep the traveller from wandering in the blinding snows of winter, was as beautifully kept as the carriage-way in the park of Dunrobin Castle. The sending of an English queen to conciliate the Welsh, by giving birth to a son in one of their castles, was not a much better stroke of policy than that of England in perforating Scotland to the Northern Sea with this unparalleled and splendid road, constructed at first for a military purpose. I heard a man repeat a couplet, probably of unwritten poetry, in popular vogue among the Highlands, and which has quite an Irish collocation of ideas. It is spoken thus, as far as I can recollect-- Who knew these roads ere they were made Should bless the Lord for General Wade. I doubt if there are ten consecutive miles of carriage-road in America that could compare for excellence with that over the desert of Old Ord. I was overtaken by a heavy shower before I had made the trajet, and was glad to reach one of the most comfortable inns of the Highlands, in the beautiful, romantic and picturesque glen of Berriedale. Here, nestling between lofty mountain ridges, which warded off the blasting sea-winds sweeping across from Norway, were plantations and groves of trees, almost the only ones I saw in the county. Nothing could exceed the hospitality of the family that kept the large, white-faced hotel at the bottom of this pleasant valley; especially after I incidentally said that I had walked all the way from London to see the country and people. They admitted me into the kitchen and gave me a seat by the great peat fire, where I had a long talk with them, beginning with the mother. Having intimated that I was an American, the whole family, old and young, including the landlord, gathered around me and had a hundred questions to ask. They related many incidents about the great eviction in Sutherland, which was an event that seems to make a large stock of legendary and unwritten stories, like the old Sagas of the Northmen. When I had dried my clothes and eaten a comfortable dinner before their kitchen fire and resumed my staff, they all followed me out to the road, and then with their wishes for a good journey as long as I was in hearing distance. Continued my walk around headlands, now looking seaward, now mountainward, now ascending on heather-bound esplanades, now descending in zig-zag directions into deep glens, over massive and elegant bridges that spanned the mountain streams and their steep and jagged banks. After a walk of eighteen miles, put up at an inn a little north of the village of Dunbeath, kept by an intelligent and industrious farmer. The rain had continued most of the day, and I was obliged to seek shelter sometimes under a stunted tree which helped out the protecting power of a weather-beaten umbrella; now in the doorway of an open stable or cow-shed, and once with my back against the door of a wayside church, which kept off the rain in one direction. This being a kind of border-season between summer and autumn, there were no fires in the inns generally except in the kitchen, and I soon learned to make for that, and always found a kindly welcome to its comforts; though sometimes the good woman and her lassie would look a little flushed at having their busiest culinary operations revealed so suddenly to a stranger. Some of these kitchens are fitted for sleeping apartments; occasionally having two tiers of berths like a ship's cabin, slightly and rudely curtained. The family of this wayside inn, seemingly like every other family in the country, had connections in America, embracing brothers, uncles and cousins. I was shown a little paper casket of hair flower-work, sent by _post_! It was wrought of locks of every shade and tint, from the snow of a grandmother over one hundred years of age to the little, sunny curls of the youngest child in the circle of kindred families. The Scotch branch had collected specimens from relatives in Great Britain and forwarded them to the family in America, one of whose daughters had worked them into two bouquets of flowers, sending one of them by post to this little, white cottage on the Northern Sea, as a memento of affection. What enhanced the beauty of this interchange was the fact, that forty-eight years had elapsed since the landlord's brother left his native land for New England, and had never seen it since. Still, the cousins, who had never seen each other's faces, had kept up an affectionate correspondence. A son and son-in-law of the brother in America were in the Federal army, and here was a sea-divided family filled with all the sad, silent solicitude of affection for beloved ones exposed to the fearful hazards of a war sundering more ties of blood-relationship than any other ever waged on earth. Saturday, September 27th. Resumed my walk with increased animation, feeling myself within two days' distance of its end. The scenery softens down to an agricultural aspect, the country declining northerly toward the sea. Passed through a well-cultivated district, never unpeopled or wasted by eviction, but held by a kind of even yeomanry of proprietors. The cottages are comfortable, resembling the white houses of New England considerably. They are nearly all of one story, with a chimney at each end, broadside to the road, and a door in the middle, dividing the house into two apartments. They are built of stone, the newest ones having a slate roof. Some of them are whitewashed, others so liberally jointed with mortar as to give them a bright and cheery appearance. These, of course, are the last edition of cottages, enlarged and amended in every way. The old issues are ragged volumes, mostly bound in turf or bog grass, well corded down with ropes of heather, giving the roof a singular ribby look, rounded on the ridge. In many cases a stone is attached to each end of the rope, so as to make it hug the thatch closely. I noticed that in a considerable number of the old cottages, the stone wall only reached up a foot or two from the ground, the rest being made up of blocks of peat. Some of the oldest had no premonitory symptoms of a chimney, except a hole in the roof for the smoke. These in no way differed from the stone- and-turf cottages in Ireland. Again occasional showers brought me into acquaintance with the people living near the road. In every case I found them kind and hospitable, giving me a pleasant welcome and the best seat by their peat-fire. I sat by one an hour while the rain fell cold and fast outside. The good woman and her daughter were busy baking barley- cakes. They were the first I had seen, and I ate them with a peculiar zest of appetite. Told them many stories about America in return for a great deal of information about the customs and condition of the working-people. They generally built their own cottages, costing from 40 to 50 pounds, not counting their own labor. I met on the road scores of fishermen returning to their homes at the conclusion of the herring season; and was struck with their appearance in every way. They are truly a stalwart race of men, broad-chested, of intelligent physiognomy, with Scandinavian features fully developed. A half dozen of them followed a horse- cart containing their nets, all done up in a round ball, like a bladder of snuff, with the number of their boat marked upon it. At about four p.m., I came in sight of the steeples of Wick, a brave little city by the Norse Sea, which may not only be called the Wick but the Candle of Northern Scotland; lighting, like a polar star, this hyperborean shoreland of the British isle. I never entered a town with livelier pleasure. It is virtually the last and farthest on the mainland in this direction. Its history is full of interest. Its great business is full of vigor, daring and danger. Here is the great land-home of the Vikings of the nineteenth century; the indomitable men who walk the roaring and crested billows of this Northern Ocean in their black, tough sea-boats and bring ashore the hard-earned spoils of the deep. This is the great metropolis of Fishdom. Eric the Red, nor any other pre-Columbus navigator of the North American Seas, ever mustered braver crews than these sea-boats carry to their morning beats. Ten thousand of as hardy men as ever wrestled with the waves, and threw them too, are out upon that wide water-wold before the sun looks on it--half of them wearing the features of their Norse lineage, as light-haired and crisp-whiskered as the sailors of Harold the Fair-haired a thousand years ago. They come from all the coasts of Scotland, from Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides and Lewis islands, and down out of the heart of the Highlands. It is a hard and daring industry they follow, and hundreds of graves on the shore and thousands at the bottom of the sea have been made with no names on them, as the long record of the hazards they run in the perilous occupation. But they keep their ranks full from year to year, pushing out new boats marked with higher numbers. The harbor has been dangerous and difficult of access, but of late a great effort has been made to render it more safe and commodious. The Scotch fisheries now yield from 600,000 to 700,000 barrels of herrings annually, employing about 17,000 fishermen; Wick stands first among all the fishing ports of the kingdom. It is a thriving town, well supplied with churches, schools, hotels, banks and printing-offices. Several new buildings are now being erected which will rank high in architecture and add new features of elegance to the place. The population is a vigorous, intelligent, highly moral and well-read community, as I could not fail to notice on attending service on the Sabbath at different places of worship. Wick is honored with this distinction--it assembles a larger congregation of men to listen to the glad Evangel on Sunday than any city of the world ever musters under one roof for the same purpose. It is the out-door church of the fishermen. They sometimes number 5,000 adult men, sea-beaten and sun-burnt, gathered in from mountainous island and mainland all around the northern coasts of Scotland. Monday, Sept. 28th. The weather was favorable, and I set out on my last day's walk northward with a sense of satisfaction I could hardly describe. The scenery was beautiful in every direction. The road was perfect up to the last rod; as well kept as if it ran through a nobleman's park. The country most of the way was well cultivated--oats being the principal crop. Here, almost within sight of the Orkneys, I heard the clatter of the reaping machine, which, doubtless, puts out the same utterance over and upon the sea at Land's End. It has travelled fast and far since 1851, when it first made its appearance in Europe in the Crystal Palace, as one of the wild, impracticable "notions" of American genius. In Wick I visited a newspaper establishment, and saw in operation one of the old "Columbians," or the American printing-press, surmounted by the eagle of the Republic. The sewing-machine is in all the towns and villages on the island. If there is not an American clock at John O'Groat's, I hope some of my fellow townsmen will send one there, Bristol-built. They are pleasant tokens of free-labor genius. No land tilled by slaves could produce them. I saw many large and highly-cultivated farms on these last miles of my walk. The country was proportionately divided between food and fuel. Oats and barley constitute the grain-crops. The uncultivated land interspersed with the yellow fields of harvest, is reserved for _peat_--the poor man's fuel and his wealth. For, were it not for the inexhaustible abundance of this cheap and accessible firing, he could hardly inhabit this region. It would seem strange to an American, who had not realised the difference of the two climates, to see fields full of reapers on the very threshold of October, as I saw them on this last day's walk. I counted twelve women and two men in one field plying the sickle, all strongly-built and good-looking and well- dressed withal. The sea was still and blue as a lake. A lark was soaring and warbling over it with as happy and hopeful a voice as if it were singing over the greenest acres of an English meadow. When I had made half of the seventeen miles between Wick and John O'Groat's, I began to look with the liveliest interest for the first glimpse of the Orkneys; but projecting and ragged headlands intercepted the prospect. About three p.m., as the road emerged from behind one of them, those famous islands burst suddenly into view! There they were!--in full sight, so near that their grain-fields and white cottages and all their distinguishing features seemed within half a mile's distance. This was the most interesting coup d'oeil that I ever caught in any country. Here, then, after weeks and months of travel on foot, I was at the end of my journey. Through all the days of this period I had faced northward, and here was the Ultima Thule, the goal and termination of my tour. The road to the sea diverged from the main turnpike, which continued around the coast to Thurso. Followed this branch a couple of miles, when it ended at the door of a little, quiet, one-story inn on the very shore of the Pentland Firth. It was a moment of the liveliest enjoyment to me. When I left London, about the middle of July, I was slowly recovering from a severe indisposition, and hardly expected to be able to make more than a few miles of my projected walk. But I had gathered strength daily, and when I brought up at this little inn at the very jumping-off end of Scotland, I was fresher and more vigorous on foot than at any previous stage of the journey. Having found to my great satisfaction that they could give me a bed for the night, I went with two gentlemen of the neighborhood to see the site of the celebrated John O'Groat's House, about a mile and a half from the inn. There was only a footpath to it across intervening fields, and when we reached it, a rather vigorous exercise of the organ of individuality was requisite to "locate" the foundations of "the house that Jack built." Indeed, pilgrims to the shrine of this famous domicile are liable to much disappointment at finding so little remaining of a residence so historical. Literally not one stone is left upon another. A large stone granary standing near is said to have been built of the debris of the house, and this helps out one's faith when struggling to believe in the existence of such a building at all. A certain ridgy rising in the ground, to which you try to give an octagonal shape, is pointed out as indicating the foundations; but an unsatisfactory obscurity rests upon the whole history of the establishment. Whether true or not, that history of the house which one would prefer to believe runs thus:-- In the reign of James IV. of Scotland, three brothers, Malcolm, Gavin, and John de Groat, natives of Holland, came to this coast of Caithness, with a letter in Latin from that monarch recommending them to the protection and countenance of his subjects hereabout. They got possession of a large district of land, and in process of time multiplied and prospered until they numbered eight different proprietors by the name of Groat. On one of the annual dinners instituted to commemorate their arrival in Caithness, a dispute arose as to the right of precedency in taking the door and the head of the table. This waxed very serious and threatened to break up these annual gatherings. But the wisdom and virtue of John prevented this rupture. He made a touching speech to them, soothing their angry spirits with an appeal to the common and precious memories of their native land and to all their joint experiences in this. He entreated them to return to their homes quietly, and he would remedy the current difficulty at the next meeting. Won by his kindly spirit and words, they complied with his request. In the interval, John built a house expressly for the purpose, of an octagonal form, with eight doors and windows. He then placed a table of oak, of the same shape, in the middle; and when the next meeting took place, he desired each head of the different Groat families to enter at his own door and sit at the head of his own table. This happy and ingenious plan restored good feeling and a pleasant footing to the sensitive families, and gave to the good Dutchman's name an interest which it will carry with it forever. After filling my pockets with some beautiful little shells strewing the site of the building, called "John O'Groat's buckies," I returned to the inn. One of the gentlemen who accompanied me was the tenant of the farm which must have been John's homestead, containing about two hundred acres. It was mostly in oats, still standing, with a good promise of forty bushels to the acre. He resided at Thurso, some twenty miles distant, and found no difficulty in carrying on the estate through a hired foreman. I never passed a more enjoyable evening than in the little, cozy, low- jointed parlor of this sea-side inn. Scotch cakes never had such a relish for me nor a peat-fire more comfortable fellowship of pleasant fancies, as I sat at the tea-table. There was a moaning of winds down the Pentland Firth--a clattering and chattering of window shutters, as if the unrestful spirits of the old Vikings and Norse heroes were walking up and down the scene of their wild histories and gibbering over their feats and fates. Spent an hour or two in writing letters to friends in England and America, to tell them of my arrival at this extreme goal of my walk, and a full hour in poring over the visitors' book, in which there were names from all countries in Christendom, and also impressions and observations in prose, poetry, English, French, Latin, German and other languages. Many of the comments thus recorded intimated some dissatisfaction that John O'Groat's House was so _mythical_; that so much had to be supplied by the imagination; that not even a stone of the foundation remained in its place to assist fancy to erect the building into a positive fact of history. But they all bore full and sometimes fervid testimony to the good cheer of the inn at the hands of the landlady. There was one record which blended loyalty to palate and patriotism--"The Roast Beef of Old England" and "God save the Queen"--rather amusingly. A party wrote their impressions after this manner--"Visited John O'Groat's House; found little to see; came back tired and hungry; walked into a couple of tender chickens and a good piece of bacon: God save Mrs. Manson and all the Royal Family!" This concluding "sentiment" was doubtless sincere and honest, although it involved a question of precedence in the rank of two feelings which John the Dutchman could have hardly settled by his eight-angled plan of adjustment. The next morning, for the first time for nearly three months of continuous travel, I faced southward, leaving behind me the Orkneys unvisited, though I had a strong desire to see those celebrated islands--the theatre of so much interesting history. Twenty years ago I translated all the "Sagas" relating to the voyages and exploits of the Northmen in these northern seas and islands, their explorations of the coast of North America centuries before Columbus was born, their doings in Iceland and on all the islands great and small now forming the British realms. This gave an additional zest to my enjoyment in standing on the shore of the Pentland Firth and looking over upon the scene of old Haco's and Sigurd's doing, daring and dying. Footed it back to Wick, and there terminated my walk, having measured, step by step, full seven hundred miles since I left London, counting in the divergences from a straight line which I had made. In the evening I addressed a large and intelligent audience which had been convened at short notice, and I never stood up before one with such peculiar satisfaction as in that North-star town of Scotland. I had travelled nearly the whole distance incog., without hearing my own name on a pair of human lips for weeks. To lay aside this embargo and to speak to such a large congregation, face to face, was like coming back again into the great communions of humanity after a long and private fellowship with the secluded quietudes of Nature. At four p.m. the next day, I took the Thurso coach and passed over in the night the whole distance that had occupied me a week in travelling by staff. Stopped a night in Inverness, another at Elgin, and spent the Sabbath with my friend, Anthony Cruickshank, at Sittyton, about fifteen miles north of Aberdeen. CHAPTER XIX. ANTHONY CRUICKSHANK--THE GREATEST HERD OF SHORTHORNS IN THE WORLD-- RETURN TO LONDON AND TERMINATION OF MY TOUR. Sittyton designates hardly a village in Aberdeenshire, but it has become a point of great interest to the agricultural world--a second Babraham. In this quiet, rural district, Anthony Cruickshank, a quiet, modest, meek-voiced member of the Society of Friends, "generally called Quakers," has made a history and a great enterprise of vast value to the world. He is one of those four- handed but one-minded men who, with a pair to each, build up simultaneously two great businesses so symmetrically that you would think they gave their whole intellect, will and genius to one. Anthony Cruickshank, the Quaker of Sittyton, has made but little more noise in the world than Nature makes in building up some of her great and beautiful structures. His footsteps were so light and gentle that few knew that he was running at all, until they saw him lead the racers by a head at the end of the course. The world is wide, and dews of every temperature fall upon its meadow and pasture lands. Vast regions are fresh and green all the year round, yielding food for cattle seemingly in the best conditions created for their growth and perfection. The highest nobility and gentry of this and other countries are giving to the living statuary of these animals that science, taste and genius which the most enthusiastic artists are giving to the still but speaking statuary of the canvas. The competition in this cultivation of animal life is wide and eager, and spreading fast over Christendom; emperors, kings, princes, dukes and belted barons are on the lists. Antipodean agriculturists meet in the great international concours of cattle, horses, sheep and swine. Never was royal blood or the inheritance of a crown threaded through divergent veins to its source with more care and pride than the lineage of these four-footed "princes" and "princesses," "dukes" and "duchesses," and "knights" and "ladies" of the stable and pasture. No peerage ever kept a more jealous heraldry than the herd-book of this great quadruped noblesse. The world, by consent, has crowned the Shorthorn Durham as the best blood that ever a horned animal carried in its veins. Princely connoisseurs and amateurs, and all the dilettanti as well as practical agriculturists of Christendom, are giving more thought to the perfection and perpetuation of this blood than to any other name and breed. Still--and this distinction is crowned with double merit by the fact--Anthony Cruickshank, draper of Aberdeen, has worked his way, gradually and noiselessly, to the very head and front of the Shorthorn knighthood of the world. While pursuing the occupation to which he was bred with as much assiduity and success as if it had every thought and activity which a man should give to a business, he built up, at a considerable distance from his warehouse, an enterprise of an entirely different nature, to a magnitude which no other man has ever equalled. He now owns the largest herd of Shorthorns in the world, breeding and feeding them to the highest perfection in the cold and naturally unfertile county of Aberdeen, which no man of less patience and perseverance would select as the ground on which to enter the lists against such an array of competitors in Great Britain and other countries. I regret that my Notes have already expanded to such a volume as to preclude a more extended account of his operations in this great field of usefulness. A few simple facts will suffice to give the reader an approximate idea of what he has done in this department. About the year 1825, young Cruickshank was put to a Friends' school in Cumberland. He was a farmer's son, and seems to have conceived a great fancy for cattle from childhood. A gentleman resided not far from the school, who was an owner and amateur of Shorthorns, and Anthony would frequently spend his half-holidays with him, inspecting and admiring his herd, and asking him questions about their qualities and his way of treating them. From this school he was sent as an apprentice to a trading establishment in Edinburgh, and at the end of his term set up business for himself as a draper in Aberdeen. All through this period he carried with him his first interest in cattle-culture, but was unable to make a beginning in it until 1837, when he purchased a single Shorthorn cow in the county of Durham, and soon afterward two other animals of the same blood. These constituted the nucleus of his herd at Sittyton. One by one he added other animals of the same stock, purchased in different parts of England, Ireland and Scotland. With these accessions by purchase, and from natural increase, his herd grew rapidly and prospered finely, so that he was obliged to add field to field and farm to farm to produce feed for such a number of mouths. In a few years he reached his present maximum which he does not wish to exceed. That is, his herd now averages annually three hundred head of this noble and beautiful race of animals, or the largest number of them owned by any one man in the world. In 1841, he announced his first sale of young bulls, and every year since that date has put up at public auction the male progeny of the herd. These sales usually take place in the first week of October, and are attended by from 300 to 500 persons from all parts of the kingdom. After carefully inspecting the various lots, they adjourn to a substantial luncheon at twelve o'clock, and at one p.m. they repair to the sale ring and the bidding begins in good earnest, and the auctioneer's hammer falls quick and often, averaging about a minute and a half to each lot. Thus the forty lots of young bulls from six to ten months old are passed away, averaging from 33 to 44 guineas each. Besides these, from fifty to sixty young bulls, cows and heifers are disposed of by private sale during the season, ranging from 50 to 150 guineas, going to buyers from all parts of the world. It is Mr. Cruickshank's well-matured opinion, resulting from long experience and observation, that there is no breed of cattle so easily maintained in good condition as the Shorthorns. His are fed on pasture grass from the 1st of May to the middle of October, lying in the open field night and day. In the winter they are fed _entirely on oat-straw and turnips_. Not a handful of hay or of meal is given them. The calves are allowed to suck their dams at pleasure. He is convinced that with this simple system of feeding, together with the bracing air of Aberdeenshire, he has obtained a tribe of animals of hardy and robust constitutions, of early maturity, well calculated to improve the general stock of the country. It was to me a delight to see this, the greatest herd of Shorthorns in the world, numbering animals of apparently the highest perfection to which they could attain under human treatment. What a court and coterie of "princes," "dukes," "knights" and "ladies" those stables contained--creatures that would not have dishonored higher names by wearing them! I was pleased to find that Republics and their less pretentious titles were not excluded from the goodly fellowship of this short-horned aristocracy. There was one grand and noble bull called "President Lincoln," not only, I fancy, out of respect to "Honest Old Abe," but also in reference to the disposition and capacities of the animal. Truly, if let loose in some of our New England fields, he would prove himself a tremendous "railsplitter." After spending a quiet Sabbath with this old friend and host at his farm-house at Sittyton, I took the train for Edinburgh and had a week of the liveliest enjoyment in that city, attending the meetings of the Social Science Congress. There I saw and heard for the first time the venerable Lord Brougham, also men and women of less reputation, but of equal heart and will to serve their kind and country. I had intended to make a separate chapter on these meetings and another on the re-unions of the British Association at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but the space to which this volume must be limited precludes any notice of these most interesting and important gatherings. Stopping at different points on the way, I reached London about the middle of October, having occupied just four months in my northern tour; bringing back a heartful of sunny memories of what I had seen and enjoyed. 
12140	----	Proofreading Team. [Transcriber's note: The extensive and lengthy footnotes have been renumbered and placed at the end of the book.] ROMAN FARM MANAGEMENT THE TREATISES OF CATO AND VARRO DONE INTO ENGLISH, WITH NOTES OF MODERN INSTANCES BY A VIRGINIA FARMER 1918 PREFACE The present editor made the acquaintance of Cato and Varro standing at a book stall on the Quai Voltaire in Paris, and they carried him away in imagination, during a pleasant half hour, not to the vineyards and olive yards of Roman Italy, but to the blue hills of a far distant Virginia where the corn was beginning to tassel and the fat cattle were loafing in the pastures. Subsequently, when it appeared that there was then no readily available English version of the Roman agronomists, this translation was made, in the spirit of old Piero Vettori, the kindly Florentine scholar, whose portrait was painted by Titian and whose monument may still be seen in the Church of Santo Spirito: in the preface of his edition of Varro he says that he undertook the work, not for the purpose of displaying his learning, but to aid others in the study of an excellent author. Victorius was justified by his scholarship and the present editor has no such claim to attention: he, therefore, makes the confession frankly (to anticipate perhaps such criticism as Bentley's "a very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but don't call it Homer") and offers the little book to those who love the country, and to read about the country amidst the crowded life of towns, with the hope that they may find in it some measure of the pleasure it has afforded the editor. The texts and commentaries used have been those of Schneider and Keil, the latter more accurate but the former more sympathetic. F.H. BELVOIR, Fauquier County, Virginia. December, 1912. FOREWORD TO SECOND EDITION The call for a reprint of this book has afforded the opportunity to correct some errors and to make several additions to the notes. In withholding his name from the title page the editor sought not so much to conceal his identity as to avoid the appearance of a parade in what was to him the unwonted field of polite literature. As, however, he is neither ashamed of the book nor essays the _rôle_ of A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye, he now and here signs his name. FAIRFAX HARRISON. BELVOIR HOUSE, Christmas, 1917. CONTENTS NOTE UPON THE ROMAN AGRONOMISTS NOTE ON THE OBLIGATION OF VIRGIL TO VARRO * * * * * CATO'S _DE AGRICULTURA_ SYNOPSIS Introduction: Of the Dignity of the Farmer Of Buying a Farm Of the Duties of the Owner Of Laying out the Farm Of Stocking the Farm Of the Duties of the Overseer Of the Duties of the Housekeeper Of the Hands Of Draining Of Preparing the Seed Bed Of Manure Of Soil Improvement Of Forage Crops Of Planting Of Pastures Of Feeding Live Stock Of the Care of Live Stock Of Cakes and Salad Of Curing Hams VARRO'S _RERUM RUSTICARUM LIBRI TRES_ SYNOPSIS BOOK I THE HUSBANDRY OF AGRICULTURE CHAPTER I. Introduction: the literary tradition of country life Of the definition of Agriculture: II. a. What it is not III. b. What it is IV. The purposes of Agriculture are profit and pleasure V. The four-fold division of the study of Agriculture _I° Concerning the farm itself_: VI. How conformation of the land affects Agriculture VII. How character of soil affects Agriculture VIII. (A digression on the maintenance of vineyards) IX. Of the different kinds of soils X. Of the units of area used in measuring land Of the considerations on building a steading: XI. a. Size b. Water supply XII. c. Location, with regard to health XIII. d. Arrangement Of the protection of farm boundaries: XIV. a. Fences XV. b. Monuments XVI. Of the considerations of neighbourhood _2° Concerning the equipment of a farm_: XVII. } & }Of agricultural labourers XVIII.} XIX. } & }Of draught animals XX. } XXI. Of watch dogs XXII. Of farming implements _3° Concerning the operation of a farm_: XXIII. Of planting field crops XXIV. Of planting olives XXV. } & } Of planting vines XXVI.} _4° Concerning the agricultural seasons_: XXVII. } & }Of the solar measure of the year, illustrated by XXVIII.} A CALENDAR OF AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS throughout the year, in eight seasons, viz: XXIX. 1° February 7-March 24 XXX. 2° March 24-May 7 XXXI. 3° May 7-June 24 XXXII. 4° June 24-July 21 XXXIII. 5° July 21-September 26 XXXIV. 6° September 26-October 28 XXXV. 7° October 28-December 24 XXXVI. 8° December 24-February 7 XXXVII. Of the influence of the moon on Agriculture to which is added ANOTHER CALENDAR OF SIX AGRICULTURAL SEASONS with a commentary on their several occupations, viz: CHAPTER _1° Preparing time_: Of tillage, XXXVIII. Of manuring, XXXIX. _2° Planting time_: Of the four methods of propagating plants, viz: XL. a. Seeding and here of seed selection b. Transplanting c. Cuttage d. Graftage, and e. A "new" method, inarching XLI. Of when to use these different methods XLII. Of seeding alfalfa XLIII. Of seeding clover and cabbage XLIV. Of seeding grain _3° Cultivating time_: XLV. Of the conditions of plant growth XLVI. Of the mechanical action of plants XLVII. Of the protection of nurseries and meadows XLVIII. Of the structure of a wheat plant XLIX. _4° Harvest time_: Of the hay harvest L. Of the wheat harvest LI. The threshing floor LII. Threshing and winnowing LIII. Gleaning LIV. Of the vintage LV. Of the olive harvest _5° Housing time_: LVI. Of storing hay LVII. Of storing grain LVIII. Of storing legumes LIX. Of storing pome fruits LX. Of storing olives LXI. Of storing amurca LXII. _6° Consuming time_: LXIII. Of cleaning grain LXIV. Of condensing amurca LXV. Of racking wine LXVL. Of preserved olives LXVIL. Of nuts, dates and figs LXVIII. Of stored fruits LXIX. Of marketing grain Epilogue: the dangers of the streets of Rome BOOK II THE HUSBANDRY OF LIVE STOCK Introduction:--the decay of country life I. Of the origin, the importance and the economy of live stock husbandry II. Of sheep III. Of goats IV. Of swine V. Of neat cattle VI. Of asses VII. Of horses VIII. Of mules IX. Of herd dogs N. Of shepherds XI. Of milk and cheese and wool BOOK III THE HUSBANDRY OF THE STEADING I. Introduction: the antiquity of country life II. Of the definition of a Roman villa III. Of the Roman development of the industries of the steading IV. Of aviaries V. a. for profit b. for pleasure (including here the description of Varro's own aviary) VI. Of pea-cocks VII. Of pigeons VIII. Of turtle doves IX. Of poultry X. Of geese XI. Of ducks XII. Of rabbits XIII. Of game preserves XIV. Of snails XV. Of dormice XVI. Of bees XVII. Of fish ponds INDEX. ROMAN FARM MANAGEMENT NOTE UPON THE ROMAN AGRONOMISTS Quaecunque autem propter disciplinam ruris nostrorum temporum cum priscis discrepant, non deterrere debent a lectione discentem. Nam multo plura reperiuntur, apud veteres, quae nobis probanda sint, quam quae repudianda. COLUMELLA I, I. The study of the Roman treatises on farm management is profitable to the modern farmer however practical and scientific he may be. He will not find in them any thing about bacteria and the "nodular hypothesis" in respect of legumes, nor any thing about plant metabolism, nor even any thing about the effects of creatinine on growth and absorption; but, important and fascinating as are the illuminations of modern science upon practical agriculture, the intelligent farmer with imagination (every successful farmer has imagination, whether or not he is intelligent) will find some thing quite as important to his welfare in the body of Roman husbandry which has come down to us, namely: a background for his daily routine, an appreciation that two thousand years ago men were studying the same problems and solving them by intelligent reasoning. Columella well says that in reading the ancient writers we may find in them more to approve than to disapprove, however much our new science may lead us to differ from them in practice. The characteristics of the Roman methods of farm management, viewed in the light of the present state of the art in America, were thoroughness and patience. The Romans had learned many things which we are now learning again, such as green manuring with legumes, soiling, seed selection, the testing of soil for sourness, intensive cultivation of a fallow as well as of a crop, conservative rotation, the importance of live stock in a system of general farming, the preservation of the chemical content of manure and the composting of the rubbish of a farm, but they brought to their farming operations some thing more which we have not altogether learned--the character which made them a people of enduring achievement. Varro quotes one of their proverbs "Romanus sedendo vincit," which illustrates my present point. The Romans achieved their results by thoroughness and patience. It was thus that they defeated Hannibal and it was thus that they built their farm houses and fences, cultivated their fields, their vineyards and their oliveyards, and bred and fed their live stock. They seem to have realized that there are no short cuts in the processes of nature, and that the law of compensations is invariable. The foundation of their agriculture was the fallow[1] and one finds them constantly using it as a simile--in the advice not to breed a mare every year, as in that not to exact too much tribute from a bee hive. Ovid even warns a lover to allow fallow seasons to intervene in his courtship. While one can find instruction in their practice even today, one can benefit even more from their agricultural philosophy, for the characteristic of the American farmer is that he is in too much of a hurry. The ancient literature of farm management was voluminous. Varro cites fifty Greek authors on the subject whose works he knew, beginning with Hesiod and Xenophon. Mago of Carthage wrote a treatise in the Punic tongue which was so highly esteemed that the Roman Senate ordered it translated into Latin, but, like most of the Greeks,[2] it is now lost to us except in the literary tradition. Columella says that it was Cato who taught Agriculture to speak Latin. Cato's book, written in the middle of the second century B. C, was the first on the subject in Latin; indeed, it was one of the very first books written in that vernacular at all. Of the other Latin writers whose bucolic works have survived, Varro and Virgil wrote at the beginning of the Augustan Age and were followed by the Spanish Columella under Tiberius, and by Pliny (with his Natural History) under Titus. After them (and "a long way after," as Mr. Punch says) came in the fourth century the worthy but dull Palladius, who supplied the hornbook used by the agricultural monks throughout the Dark Ages. MARCUS PORCIUS CATO (B.C. 234-149), known in history as the elder Cato, was the type of Roman produced by the most vigorous days of the Republic. Born at Tusculum on the narrow acres which his peasant forefathers had tilled in the intervals of military service, he commenced advocate at the country assizes, followed his fortunes to Rome and there became a leader of the metropolitan bar. He saw gallant military service in Spain and in Greece, commanded an army, held all the curule offices of state and ended a contentious life in the Senate denouncing Carthage and the degeneracy of the times. He was an upstanding man, but as coarse as he was vigorous in mind and in body. Roman literature is full of anecdotes about him and his wise and witty sayings. Unlike many men who have devoted a toilsome youth to agricultural labour, when he attained fame and fortune he maintained his interest in his farm, and wrote his _De re rustica_ in green old age. It tells what sort of farm manager he himself was, or wanted to be thought to be, and, though a mere collection of random notes, sets forth more shrewd common sense and agricultural experience than it is possible to pack into the same number of English words. It remains today of much more than antiquarian interest. MARCUS TERENTIUS VARRO (B.C. 116-28) whom Quintilian called "the most learned of the Romans," and Petrarch "il terzo gran lume Romano," ranking him with Cicero and Virgil, probably studied agriculture before he studied any thing else, for he was born on a Sabine farm, and although of a well to do family, was bred in the habits of simplicity and rural industry with which the poets have made that name synonymous. All his life he amused the leisure snatched from his studies with intelligent supervision of the farming of his several estates: and he wrote his treatise _Rerum Rusticarum_ in his eightieth year.[3] He had his share of active life, but it was as a scholar that he distinguished himself.[4] Belonging to the aristocratic party, he became a friend and supporter of Pompey, and, after holding a naval command under him in the war against the Pirates in B.C. 67, was his legatus in Spain at the beginning of the civil wars and there surrendered to Caesar. He was again on the losing side at the battle of Pharsalia, but was pardoned by Caesar, who selected him to be librarian of the public library he proposed to establish at Rome.[5] From this time Varro eschewed politics and devoted himself to letters, although his troubles were not yet at an end: after the death of Caesar, the ruthless Antony despoiled his villa at Casinum (where Varro had built the aviary described in book Three), and like Cicero he was included in the proscriptions which followed the compact of the triumvirs, but in the end unlike Cicero he escaped and spent his last years peacefully at his villas at Cumae and Tusculum. His literary activity was astonishing: he wrote at least six hundred books covering a wide range of antiquarian research. St. Augustine, who dearly loved to turn a balanced phrase, says that Varro had read so much that it is difficult to understand when he found time to write, while on the other hand he wrote so much that one can scarcely read all his books. Cicero, who claimed him as an intimate friend, describes (_Acad_. Ill) what Varro had written before B.C. 46, but he went on producing to the end of his long life, eighteen years later: "For," says Cicero, "while we are sojourners, so to speak, in our own city and wandering about like strangers, your books have conducted us, as it were, home again, so as to enable us at last to recognize who and whence we are. You have discussed the antiquities of our country and the variety of dates and chronology relating to it. You have explained the laws which regulate sacrifices and priests: you have unfolded the customs of the city both in war and peace: you have described the various quarters and districts: you have omitted mentioning none of the names, or kinds, or functions, or causes of divine or human things: you have thrown a flood of light on our poets and altogether on Latin literature and the Latin language: you have yourself composed a poem of varied beauties and elegant in almost every part: and you have in many places touched upon philosophy in a manner sufficient to excite our curiosity, though inadequate to instruct us." Of Varro's works, beside the _Rerum Rusticarum_, there have survived only fragments, including a considerable portion of the treatise on the Latin language: the story is that most of his books were deliberately destroyed at the procurement of the Church (something not impossible, as witness the Emperor Theodosius in _Corpus Juris Civilis_. Cod. Lib. I, tit. I, cap. 3, § I) to conceal St. Augustine's plagiarism from them; yet the _De Civitate Dei_, which is largely devoted to refuting Varro's pagan theology, is a perennial monument to his fame. St. Augustine says (VI, 2): "Although his elocution has less charm, he is so full of learning and philosophy that ... he instructs the student of facts as much as Cicero delights the student of style." Varro's treatise on farm management is the best practical book on the subject which has come down to us from antiquity. It has not the spontaneous originality of Cato, nor the detail and suave elegance of Columella. Walter Harte in his _Essays on Husbandry_ (1764) says that Cato writes like an English squire and Varro like a French academician. This is just comment on Cato but it is at once too much and too little to say of Varro: a French academician might be proud of his antiquarian learning, but would balk at his awkward and homely Latin, as indeed one French academician, M. Boissier, has since done. The real merit of Varro's book is that it is the well digested system of an experienced and successful farmer who has seen and practised all that he records. The authority from which Virgil drew the practical farming lore, for which he has been extolled in all ages, was Varro: indeed, as a farm manual the _Georgics_ go astray only when they depart from Varro. It is worth while to elaborate this point, which Professor Sellar, in his argument for the originality of Virgil, only suggests.[6] After Philippi the times were ripe for books on agriculture. The Roman world had been divided between Octavian and Antony and there was peace in Italy: men were turning "back to the land." An agricultural regeneration of Italy was impending, chiefly in viticulture, as Ferrero has pointed out. With far sighted appreciation of the economic advantages of this, Octavian determined to promote the movement, which became one of the completed glories of the Augustan Age, when Horace sang Tua, Caesar, aetas Fruges et agris rettulit uberes. Varro's book appeared in B.C. 37 and during that year Maecenas commissioned Virgil to put into verse the spirit of the times; just as, under similar circumstances, Cromwell pensioned Samuel Hartlib. Such is the co-incidence of the dates that it is not impossible that the _Rerum Rusticarum_ suggested the subject of the _Georgics_, either to Virgil or to Maecenas. There is no evidence in the _Bucolics_ that Virgil ever had any practical knowledge of agriculture before he undertook to write the _Georgics_. His father was, it is true, a farmer, but apparently in a small way and unsuccessful, for he had to eke out a frugal livelihood by keeping bees and serving as the hireling deputy of a _viator_ or constable. This type of farmer persists and may be recognized in any rural community: but the agricultural colleges do not enlist such men into their faculties. So it is possible that Virgil owed little agricultural knowledge to his father's precepts or example. Virgil perhaps had tended his father's flock, as he pictures himself doing under the guise of Tityrus; certainly he spent many hours of youth "patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi" steeping his Celtic soul with the beauty and the melancholy poetry of the Lombard landscape: and so he came to know and to love bird and flower and the external aspects of wheat and woodland tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd, but it does not appear that he ever followed the plough, or, what is more important, ever laid off a ploughgate. As a poet of nature no one was ever better equipped (the highest testimony is that of Tennyson), but when it came to writing poetry around the art of farm management it was necessary for him to turn to books for his facts. He acknowledges (_Geo_. I, 176) his obligation only to _veterum praecepta_ without naming them, but as M. Gaston Boissier says he was evidently referring to Varro "le plus moderne de tous les anciens."[7] Virgil evidently regarded Varro's treatise as a solid foundation for his poem and he used it freely, just as he drew on Hesiod for literary inspiration, on Lucretius for imaginative philosophy, and on Mago and Cato and the two Sasernas for local colour. Virgil probably had also the advantage of personal contact with Varro during the seven years he was composing and polishing the _Georgics_. He spent them largely at Naples (_Geo_. IV, 563) and Varro was then established in retirement at Cumae: thus they were neighbours, and, although they belonged to different political parties, the young poet must have known and visited the old polymath; there was every reason for him to have taken advantage of the opportunity. Whatever justification there may be for this conjecture, the fact remains that Varro is in the background every where throughout the _Georgics_, as the "deadly parallel" in the appended note will indicate. This is perhaps the most interesting thing about Varro's treatise: instructive and entertaining as it is to the farmer, in the large sense of the effect of literature on mankind, Virgil gave it wings--the useful cart horse became Pegasus. As a consequence of the chorus of praise of the _Georgics_, there have been those, in all ages, who have sneered at Virgil's farming. The first such _advocatus diaboli_ was Seneca, who, writing to Lucilius (_Ep_. 86) from the farm house of Scipio Africanus, fell foul of the advice (_Geo_, I, 216) to plant both beans and millet in the spring, saying that he had just seen at the end of June beans gathered and millet sowed on the same day: from which he generalized that Virgil disregarded the truth to turn a graceful verse, and sought rather to delight his reader than to instruct the husbandman. This kind of cheap criticism does not increase our respect for Nero's philosophic minister.[8] Whatever may have been Virgil's mistakes, every farmer of sentiment should thank God that one of the greatest poems in any language contains as much as it does of a sound tradition of the practical side of his art, and here is where Varro is entitled to the appreciation which is always due the schoolmaster of a genius. NOTE ON THE OBLIGATION OF VIRGIL TO VARRO At the beginning of the first _Georgic_ (1-5) Virgil lays out the scope of the poem as dealing with three subjects, agriculture, the care of live stock and the husbandry of bees. This was Varro's plan (R.R. I, I, 2, and I, 2 passim) except that under the third head Varro included, with bees, all the other kinds of stock which were usually kept at a Roman steading. Varro asserts that his was the first scientific classification of the subject ever made. Virgil (G. I, 5-13) begins too with the invocation of the Sun and the Moon and certain rural deities, as did Varro (R.R. I, I, 4). The passages should be compared for, as M. Gaston Boissier has pointed out, the difference in the point of view of the two men is here illustrated by the fact that Varro appeals to purely Roman deities, while Virgil invokes the literary gods of Greece. Following the _Georgics_ through, one who has studied Varro will note other passages for which a suggestion may be found in Varro, usually in facts, but some times in thought and even in words, viz: Before beginning his agricultural operations a farmer should study the character of the country (G. I, 50: R.R. I, 6), the prevailing winds and the climate (G. I, 51: R.R. I, 2, 3), the farming practice of the neighbourhood (G. I, 52: R.R. I, 18, 7), "this land is fit for corn, that for vines, and the other for trees," (G. I, 54: R.R. I, 6, 5). He should practise fallow and rotation (G. I, 71: R.R. I, 44, 2), and compensate the land by planting legumes (G. I, 74: R.R. I, 23); he should irrigate his meadows in summer (G. I, 104: R.R. I, 31, 5), and drain off surface water in winter (G. I, 113: R.R. I, 36). Man has progressed from a primitive state, when he subsisted on nuts and berries, to the domestication of animals and to agriculture (G. I, 121-159: R.R. II, 1, 3). The threshing floor must be protected from pests (G. I, 178: R.R. I, 51). Seed should be carefully selected (G. I, 197: R.R. 40, 2); the time for sowing grain is the autumn (G. I, 219: R.R. I, 34). "Everlasting night" prevails in the Arctic regions (G. I, 247: R.R. I, 2, 5); the importance to the farmer of the four seasons (G.I. 258; R.R. I, 27) and the influence of the Moon (G.I. 276: R.R. I, 37). The several methods of propagating plants described (G. II, 9-34: R.R. I, 39), but here Varro follows Theophrastus (H.P. II, 1); trees grow slowly from seed (G. II, 57; R.R. I, 41, 4); olives are propagated from truncheons (G. II, 63; R.R. I, 41, 6). "The praise of Italy" (G. II, 136-176: R.R. I, 2, 6), where trees bear twice a year (G. II, 150: R.R. I, 7, 6). Certain plants affect certain soils (G. II, 177: R.R. I, 9). A physical experiment (G. II, 230; R.R. I, 7); the advantage of the quincunx in planting (G. II, 286: R.R. I, 7). Fence the vineyard to keep out live stock (G. II, 371: R.R. I, 14); the goat a proper sacrifice to Bacchus (G. II, 380: R.R. I, 2, 19). Be the first to put your vine props under cover (G. II, 409: R.R. I, 8, 6). The points of cattle (G. III, 50: R.R. II, 5, 7); their breeding age (G. III, 61: R.R. II, 5, 13); segregate the bulls before the breeding season (G. III, 212: R.R. II, 5, 12). Recruit your herd with fresh blood (G. III, 69: R.R. II, 5, 17). How to break young oxen (G. III, 163: R.R. I, 20). Of breeding live stock, the males should be fat, the females lean (G. III, 123-129: R.R. II, 5, 12). The points of a horse (G. III, 79: R.R. II, 7, 5). Mares fecundated by the wind (G. III, 273: R.R. II, 1, 19). The care of the brood mare (G. III, 138: R.R. II, 7, 10). The bearing of a spirited colt in the field (G. III, 75: R.R. II, 7, 6); the training of a colt, "rattling bridles" in the stable (G. III, 184: R.R. II, 7, 12). Supply bedding for the sheep (G. III, 298: R.R. II, 2, 8), the goat stable should face southeast (G. III, 302: R.R. II, 3, 6). Goats' hair used for military purposes (G. III, 313: R.R. II, 11, 11.) Goats affect rough pasture (G. III, 314: R.R. II, 3, 6). A shepherd's daily routine (G. III, 322; R.R. II, 2, 10-11). The life of shepherds in the saltus (G. III, 340: R.R. II, 10, 6). Beware of a ram with a spotted tongue (G. III, 387: R.R. II, 2, 4). Anoint sheep as a precaution against scab (G. III, 448: R.R. II, 11, 7). The location of the bee-stand: a drinking pool with stones in it (G. IV, 26: R.R. III, 16, 27); planted round with bee plants (G. IV, 25: R.R. III, 16, 13), and free from an echo (G. IV, 50: R.R. III, 16, 12). When saving a swarm sprinkle bees balm and beat cymbals (G. IV, 62: R.R. III, 16, 7 and 30). Bees at war obey their leaders 'as at the sound of a trumpet,' but may be quelled by the bee-keeper (G. IV, 70-87: R.R. III, 16, 9 and 35). Keep the mottled king and destroy the black one (G. IV, 90: R.R. III, 16, 18); the "old Corycian" and the brothers Veiani (G. IV, 125: R.R. III, 16, 10): the bees' care of their king (G. IV, 212: R.R. III, 16, 8). Take off the honey twice in the season (G. IV, 221: R.R. III, 16, 34); the generation of bees from the carcase of an ox (G. IV, 281: R.R. II, 5, 5) and cf. the wisdom on this subject attributed to Varro by the _Geoponica_ (XV, 2). CATO'S DE AGRICULTURA _Introduction: of the dignity of the farmer_ The pursuits of commerce would be as admirable as they are profitable if they were not subject to so great risks: and so, likewise, of banking, if it was always honestly conducted. For our ancestors considered, and so ordained in their laws, that, while the thief should be cast in double damages, the usurer should make four-fold restitution. From this we may judge how much less desirable a citizen they esteemed the banker than the thief. When they sought to commend an honest man, they termed him good husbandman, good farmer. This they rated the superlative of praise.[9] Personally, I think highly of a man actively and diligently engaged in commerce, who seeks thereby to make his fortune, yet, as I have said, his career is full of risks and pitfalls. But it is from the tillers of the soil that spring the best citizens, the stanchest soldiers; and theirs are the enduring rewards which are most grateful and least envied. Such as devote themselves to that pursuit are least of all men given to evil counsels. And now, to get to my subject, these observations will serve as preface to what I have promised to discuss. _Of buying a farm_ (I)[10] When you have decided to purchase a farm, be careful not to buy rashly; do not spare your visits and be not content with a single tour of inspection. The more you go, the more will the place please you, if it be worth your attention. Give heed to the appearance of the neighbourhood,--a flourishing country should show its prosperity. "When you go in, look about, so that, when needs be, you can find your way out." Take care that you choose a good climate, not subject to destructive storms, and a soil that is naturally strong. If possible, your farm should be at the foot of a mountain, looking to the South, in a healthy situation, where labour and cattle can be had, well watered, near a good sized town, and either on the sea or a navigable river, or else on a good and much frequented road. Choose a place which has not often changed ownership, one which is sold unwillingly, that has buildings in good repair. Beware that you do not rashly contemn the experience of others. It is better to buy from a man who has farmed successfully and built well.[11] When you inspect the farm, look to see how many wine presses and storage vats there are; where there are none of these you can judge what the harvest is. On the other hand, it is not the number of farming implements, but what is done with them, that counts. Where you find few tools, it is not an expensive farm to operate. Know that with a farm, as with a man, however productive it may be, if it has the spending habit, not much will be left over.[12] _Of the duties of the owner._ (II) When you have arrived at your country house and have saluted your household, you should make the rounds of the farm the same day, if possible; if not, then certainly the next day. When you have observed how the field work has progressed,[13] what things have been done, and what remains undone, you should summon your overseer the next day, and should call for a report of what work has been done in good season and why it has not been possible to complete the rest, and what wine and corn and other crops have been gathered. When you are advised on these points you should make your own calculation of the time necessary for the work, if there does not appear to you to have been enough accomplished. The overseer will report that he himself has worked diligently, but that some slaves have been sick and others truant, the weather has been bad, and that it has been necessary to work the public roads. When he has given these and many other excuses, you should recall to his attention the program of work which you had laid out for him on your last visit and compare it with the results attained. If the weather has been bad, count how many stormy days there have been, and rehearse what work could have been done despite the rain, such as washing and pitching the wine vats, cleaning out the barns, sorting the grain, hauling out and composting the manure, cleaning seed, mending the old gear, and making new, mending the smocks and hoods furnished for the hands. On feast days the old ditches should be mended, the public roads worked, briers cut down, the garden dug, the meadow cleaned, the hedges trimmed and the clippings collected and burned, the fish pond cleaned out. On such days, furthermore, the slaves' rations should be cut down as compared with what is allowed when they are working in the fields in fine weather. When this routine has been discussed quietly and with good humour and is thoroughly understood by the overseer, you should give orders for the completion of the work which has been neglected. The accounts of money, supplies and provisions should then be considered. The overseer should report what wine and oil has been sold, what price he got, what is on hand, and what remains for sale. Security should be taken for such accounts as ought to be secured. All other unsettled matters should be agreed upon. If any thing is needed for the coming year, it should be bought; every thing which is not needed should be sold. Whatever there is for lease should be leased. Orders should be given (and take care that they are in writing) for all work which next it is desired to have done on the farm or let to contract. You should go over the cattle and determine what is to be sold. You should sell the oil, if you can get your price, the surplus wine and corn, the old cattle, the worn out oxen, and the cull sheep, the wool and the hides, the old and sick slaves, and if any thing else is superfluous you should sell that. The appetite of the good farmer is to sell, not to buy.[14] (IV) Be a good neighbour. Do not roughly give offence to your own people. If the neighbourhood regards you kindly, you will find a readier market for what you have to sell, you will more easily get your work done, either on the place or by contract. If you build, your neighbours will aid you with their services, their cattle and their materials. If any misfortune should overtake you (which God forbid!) they will protect you with kindly interest.[15] _Of laying out the farm_ (I) If you ask me what is the best disposition to make of your estate, I would say that should you have bought a farm of one hundred _jugera_ (about 66 acres) all told,[16] in the best situation, it should be planted as follows: 1° a vineyard, if it promises a good yield, 2° an irrigated garden, 3° an osier bed, 4° an olive yard, 5° a meadow, 6° a corn field, 7° a wood lot, 8° a cultivated orchard, and 9° a mast grove[17]. (III) In his youth, the farmer ought, diligently to plant his land, but he should ponder before he builds. Planting does not require reflection, but demands action. It is time enough to build when you have reached your thirty-sixth year, if you have farmed your land well meanwhile. When you do build, let your buildings be proportioned to your estate, and your estate to your buildings[18]. It is fitting that the farm buildings should be well constructed, that you should have ample oil cellars and wine vats, and a good supply of casks, so that you can wait for high prices, something which will redound to your honour, your profit and your self-respect. (IV) Build your dwelling house in accordance with your means. If you build well in a good situation and on a good property, and furnish the house suitably for country life, you will come there more often and more willingly[19]. The farm will then be better, fewer mistakes will be made, and you will get larger crops. The face of the master is good for the land.[20] (VI) Plant elm trees along the roads and fence rows, so that you may have the leaves to feed the sheep and cattle, and the timber will be available if you need it. If any where there are banks of streams or wet places, there plant reeds; and surround them with willows that the osiers may serve to tie the vines. (VII) It is most convenient to set out the land nearest the house as an orchard, whence fire wood and faggots may be sold and the supply of the master obtained. In this enclosure should be planted every thing fitting to the land and vines should be married to the trees.[21] (VIII) Near the house lay out also a garden with garland flowers and vegetables[22] of all kinds, and set it about with myrtle hedges, both white and black, as well as Delphic and Cyprian laurel. _Of stocking the farm_ (X) An olive farm of two hundred and forty _jugera_ (160 acres) ought to be stocked as follows: an overseer, a house keeper, five labourers, three ox drivers, one swineherd, one ass driver, one shepherd; in all thirteen hands: three pair of oxen,[23] three asses with pack saddles, to haul out the manure, one other ass to turn the mill, and one hundred sheep.[24] _Of the duties of the overseer._[25] (V) These are the duties of the overseer: He should maintain discipline. He should observe the feast days. He should respect the rights of others and steadfastly uphold his own. He should settle all quarrels among the hands; if any one is at fault he should administer the punishment. He should take care that no one on the place is in want, or lacks food or drink; in this respect he can afford to be generous, for he will thus more easily prevent picking and stealing.[26] Unless the overseer is of evil mind, he will himself do no wrong, but if he permits wrong-doing by others, the master should not suffer such indulgence to pass with impunity. He should show appreciation of courtesy, to encourage others to practise it. He should not be given to gadding or conviviality, but should be always sober. He should keep the hands busy, and should see that they do what the master has ordered. He should not think that he knows more than his master. The friends of the master should be his friends, and he should give heed to those whom the master has recommended to him. He should confine his religious practices to church on Sunday, or to his own house.[27] He should lend money to no man unbidden by the master, but what the master has lent he should collect. He should never lend any seed reserved for sowing, feed, corn, wine, or oil, but he should have relations with two or three other farms with which he can exchange things needed in emergency. He should state his accounts with his master frequently. He should not keep any hired men or day hands longer than is necessary. He should not sell any thing without the knowledge of the master, nor should he conceal any thing from the master. He should not have any hangers-on, nor should he consult any soothsayer, fortune teller, necromancer, or astrologer. He should not spare seed in sowing, for that is bad economy. He should strive to be expert in all kinds of farm work, and, without exhausting himself, often lend a hand. By so doing, he will better understand the point of view of his hands, and they will work more contentedly; moreover, he will have less inclination to gad, his health will be better, and he will sleep more refreshingly. First up in the morning, he should be the last to go to bed at night; and before he does, he should see that the farm gates are closed, and that each of the hands is in his own bed, that the stock have been fed. He should see that the best of care is taken of the oxen, and should pay the highest compliments to the teamsters who keep their cattle in the best condition. He should see to it that the ploughs and plough shares are kept in good repair. Plan all the work in ample time, for so it is with farm work, if one thing is done late, every thing will be late. (XXXIX) When it rains try to find some thing to do indoors. Clean up, rather than remain idle. Remember that while work may stop, expenses still go on. _Of the duties of the housekeeper_ (CXLIII) The overseer should be responsible for the duties of the housekeeper. If the master has given her to you for a wife, you should be satisfied with her, and she should respect you. Require that she be not given to wasteful habits; that she does not gossip with the neighbours and other women. She should not receive visitors either in the kitchen or in her own quarters. She should not go out to parties, nor should she gad about.[28] She should not practise religious observances, nor should she ask others to do so for her without the permission of the master or the mistress. Remember that the master practises religion for the entire household. She should be neat in appearance and should keep the house swept and garnished. Every night before she goes to bed she should see that the hearth is swept and clean. On the Kalends, the Ides, the Nones, and on all feast days, she should hang a garland over the hearth. On those days also she should pray fervently to the household gods. She should take care that she has food cooked for you and for the hands. She should have plenty of chickens and an abundance of eggs.[29] She should diligently put up all kinds of preserves every year. _Of the hands_ (LVI) The following are the customary allowances for food: For the hands, four pecks of meal for the winter, and four and one-half for the summer. For the overseer, the housekeeper, the wagoner, the shepherd, three pecks each. For the slaves, four pounds of bread for the winter, but when they begin to cultivate the vines this is increased to five pounds until the figs are ripe, then return to four pounds. (LVII) The sum of the wine allowed for each hand per annum is eight quadrantals, or Amphora, but add in the proportion as they do work. Ten quadrantals per annum is not too much to allow them to drink. (LVIII) Save the wind fall olives as much as possible as relishes for the hands. Later set aside such of the ripe olives as will make the least oil. Be careful to make them go as far as possible. When the olives are all eaten, give them fish pickles and vinegar. One peck of salt per annum is enough for each hand. (LIX) Allow each hand a smock and a cloak every other year. As often as you give out a smock or cloak to any one take up the old one, so that caps can be made out of it. A pair of heavy wooden shoes should be allowed every other year. _Of draining_ (XLIII) If the land is wet, it should be drained with trough shaped ditches dug three feet wide at the surface and one foot at the bottom and four feet deep. Blind these ditches with rock. If you have no rock then fill them with green willow poles braced crosswise. If you have no poles, fill then with faggots. Then dig lateral trenches three feet deep and four feet wide in such way that the water will flow from the trenches into the ditches. (CLV) In the winter surface water should be drained off the fields. On hillsides courses should be kept clear for the water to flow off. During the rainy season at the beginning of Autumn is the greatest risk from water. When it begins to rain all the hands should go out with picks and shovels and clear out the drains so that the water may flow off into the roads, and the crops be protected. _Of preparing the seed bed_ (LXI) What is the first principle of good agriculture? To plough well. What is the second? To plough again; and the third is to manure. When you plough corn land, plough well and in good weather, lest you turn a cloddy furrow. The other things of good agriculture are to sow seed plentifully, to thin the young sprouts, and to hill up the roots with earth. (V) Never plough rotten land[30] nor drive flocks or carts across it. If care is not taken about this, the land so abused will be barren for three years. _Of manure_ (V) Plan to have a big compost heap and take the best of care of the manure. When it is hauled out see that it is well rotted and spread. The Autumn is the time to do this. (XXXVII) You can make manure of litter, lupine straw, chaff, bean stalks, husks and the leaves of ilex and of oak.[31] (XXX) Fold your sheep on the land which you are about to seed, and there feed them leaves.[32] _Of soil improvement_ (XXXVII) The things which are harmful to corn land are to plough the ground when it is rotten, and to plant chick peas which are harvested with the straw and are salt. Barley, fenugreek and pulse all exhaust corn land, as well as all other things which are harvested with the straw. Do not plant nut trees in the corn land. On the other hand, lupines, field beans and vetch manure corn land.[33] (VI) Where the soil is rich and fertile, without shade, there the corn land ought to be. Where the land lies low, plant rape, millet, and panic grass. _Of forage crops_ (VIII) If you have a water meadow you will not want forage, but if not then sow an upland meadow, so that hay may not be lacking. (LIII) Save your hay when the times comes, and beware lest you mow too late. Mow before the seed is ripe. House the best hay by itself, so that you may feed it to the draft cattle during the spring ploughing, before the clover is mature. (XXVII) Sow, for feed for the cattle, clover, vetch, fenugreek, field beans and pulse. Sow these crops a second and a third time. _Of planting_ (XXXIV) Wherever the land is cold and wet, sow there first, and last of all in the warmest places. _Of pastures_ (L) Manure the pastures in early spring in the dark of the moon, when the west wind begins to blow. When you close your pastures (to the stock) clean them and root out all weeds. _Of feeding live stock_ (XXX) As long as they are available, feed green leaves of elm, poplar, oak and fig to your cattle and sheep. (V) Store leaves, also, to be fed to the sheep before they have withered.[34] (XXX) Take the best of care of your dry fodder, which you house for the winter, and remember always how long the winter may last. (IV) Be sure you have well constructed stables furnished with substantial stalls and equipped with latticed feed racks. The intervals between the bars of the racks should be one foot. If you build them in this way, the cattle will not waste their food. (LIV) This is the way that provender should be prepared and fed: When the seeding is finished, gather mast and soak it in water. Feed a measure of it every day to each steer; or if they have not been worked it will be sufficient to let them pasture the mast beds. Another good feed is a measure of grape husks which you shall have preserved in jars. By day turn the cattle out and at night feed twenty-five pounds of hay to each steer. If hay is short, feed the leaves of the ilex and ivy.[35] Stack the straw of wheat, barley, beans, vetch and lupine, indeed all the grain straws, but pick out and house the best of it. Scatter your straw with salt and you can then feed it in place of hay. When in the spring you begin to feed (more heavily to prepare for work), feed a measure of mast or of grape husks, or a measure of ground lupines, and fifteen pounds of hay. When the clover is ripe, feed that first. Gather it by hand so that it will bloom a second time, for what you harvest with the sickle blooms no more. Feed clover until it is dry, then feed vetch and then panic grass, and after the panic grass feed elm leaves. If you have poplar, mix that with the elm so that the elm may last the longer. If you have no elm feed oak and fig leaves. Nothing is more profitable than to take good care of your cattle. Cattle should not be put out to graze except in winter when they are not worked; for when they eat green stuff they expect it all the time, and it is then necessary to muzzle them while they plough. _Of the care of live stock_ (V) The flocks and herds should be well supplied with litter and their feet kept clean. If litter is short, haul in oak leaves, they will serve as bedding for sheep and cattle. Beware of scab among the sheep and cattle. This comes from hunger and exposure to rain. (LXXII) To prevent the oxen from wearing down their hoofs, anoint the bottom of the hoof with liquid pepper before driving them on the highroad. (LXXIII) Take care that during the summer the cattle drink only sweet and fresh water. Their health depends on it. (XCVI) To prevent scab among sheep, make a mixture of equal parts of well strained amurca,[36] of water in which lupine has been steeped, and of lees of good wine. After shearing, anoint all the flock with this mixture, and let them sweat profusely for two or three days. Then dip them in the sea. If you have no sea water, make salt water and dip then in that. If you will do this they will suffer no scab, they will have more and better wool and they will not be molested by ticks. (LXXI) If an ox begins to sicken, give him without delay a raw hen's egg and make him swallow it whole. The next day make him drink from a wooden bowl a measure of wine in which has been scraped the head of an onion. Both the ox and his attendant should do these things fasting and standing upright. (CII) If a serpent shall bite an ox, or any other quadruped, take a cup of that extract of fennel, which the physicians call smyrnean, and mix it with a measure of old wine. Inject this through his nostrils and at the same time poultice the wound with hogs' dung.[37] You can treat a man the same way. (CLX) If a bone is dislocated it can be made sound by this incantation. Take a green reed four or five feet long, split it down the middle and let two men hold the pieces against your hips. Begin then to chant as follows: "In Alio. S.F. Motas Vaeta, Daries Dardaries Astataries Dissunapiter" and continue until the free ends of the reed are brought slowly together in front of you. Meanwhile, wave a knife above the reeds, and when they come together and one touches the other, seize them in your hand and cut them right and left. These pieces of reed bound upon a dislocated or fractured bone will cure it.[38] But every day repeat the incantation, or in place of it this one: "Huat Hanat Huat Ista Pista Sista Domiabo Damnaustra"[39] _Of cakes and salad_[40] (LXXV) This is the recipe for cheese cake (_libum_): Bray well two pounds of cheese in a mortar, and, when this is done, pour in a pound of corn meal (or, if you want to be more dainty, a half pound of flour) and mix it thoroughly with the cheese. Add one egg and beat it well. Pat into a cake, place it on leaves and bake slowly on a hot hearth stone under a dish. (CXIX) This is the recipe for olive salad (_epityrum_): Select some white, black and mottled olives and stone them. Mix and cut them up. Add a dressing of oil, vinegar, coriander, cumin, fennel, rue and mint. Mix well in an earthen ware dish, and serve with oil. (CXXI) This is the recipe for must cake (_mustaceus_): Sprinkle a peck of wheat flour with must. Add anise, cumin, two pounds of lard, a pound of cheese and shredded laurel twigs. When you have kneaded the dough, put laurel leaves under it and so bake. _Of curing hams_ (CLXII) This is the way to cure hams in jars or tubs: When you have bought your hams trim off the hocks. Take a half peck (_semodius_) of ground Roman salt for each ham. Cover the bottom of the jar or tub with salt and put in a ham, skin down. Cover the whole with salt and put another ham on top, and cover this in the same manner. Be careful that meat does not touch meat. So proceed, and when you have packed all the hams, cover the top with salt so that no meat can be seen, and smooth it out even. When the hams have been in salt five days, take them all out with the salt and repack them, putting those which were on top at the bottom. Cover them in the same way with salt and press them down. After the twelfth day remove the hams finally, brush off the salt and hang them for two days in the wind. On the third day wipe them off clean with a sponge and rub them with (olive) oil. Then hang them in smoke for two days, and on the third day rub them with a mixture of (olive) oil and vinegar. Then hang them in the meat house, and neither bats nor worms will touch them.[41] VARRO'S RERUM RUSTICARUM LIBRI TRES BOOK I THE HUSBANDRY OF AGRICULTURE _Introduction: the literary tradition of country life_ I Had I leisure, Fundania, this book would be more worthy of you, but I write as best I may, conscious always of the necessity of haste: for, if, as the saying is, all life is but a bubble, the more fragile is that of an old man, and my eightieth year admonishes me to pack my fardel and prepare for the long journey. You have bought a farm and wish to increase its fertility by good cultivation, and you ask me what I would do with it were it mine. Not only while I am still alive will I try to advise you in this, but I will make my counsel available to you after I am dead. For as it befel the Sibyl to have been of service to mankind not alone while she lived, but even to the uttermost generations of men after her demise (for we are wont after so many years still to have solemn recourse to her books for guidance in interpretation of strange portents), so may not I, while I still live, bequeath my counsel to my nearest and dearest.[42] I will then write three books for you, to which you may have recourse for guidance in all things which must be done in the management of a farm. And since, as men say, the gods aid those who propitiate them, I will begin my book by invoking divine approval, not like Homer and Ennius, from the Muses, nor indeed from the twelve great gods of the city whose golden images stand in the forum, six male and as many female, but from a solemn council of those twelve divinities who are the tutelaries of husbandmen. * * * * * First: I call upon Father Jupiter and Mother Earth, who fecundate all the processes of agriculture in the air and in the soil, and hence are called the great parents. _Second_: I invoke the Sun and the Moon by whom the seasons for sowing and reaping are measured. _Third_: I invoke Ceres and Bacchus because the fruits they mature are most necessary to life, and by their aid the land yields food and drink. _Fourth_: I invoke Robigus and Flora by whose influence the blight is kept from crop and tree, and in due season they bear fruit (for which reason is the annual festival of the _robigalia_ celebrated in honour of Robigus, and that of the _floralia_ in honour of Flora).[43] _Next_: I supplicate Minerva, who protects the olive; and Venus, goddess of the garden, wherefore is she worshipped at the rural wine festivals. _And last_: I adjure Lympha, goddess of the fountains, and Bonus Eventus, god of good fortune, since without water all vegetation is starved and stunted and without due order and good luck all tillage is in vain. * * * * * And so having paid my duty to the gods, I proceed to rehearse some conversations[44] concerning agriculture in which I have recently taken part. From them you will derive all the practical instruction you require, but in case any thing is lacking and you wish further authority, I refer you to the treatises of the Greeks and of our own countrymen. The Greek writers who have treated incidentally of agriculture are more than fifty in number. Those whom you may consult with profit are Hieron of Sicily and Attalus Philometor, among the philosophers; Democritus the physicist; Xenophon the disciple of Socrates; Aristotle and Theophrastus, the peripatetics; Archytas the pythagorean; likewise the Athenian Amphilochus, Anaxipolis of Thasos, Apollodorus of Lemnos, Aristophanes of Mallos, Antigonus of Cyme, Agathocles of Chios, Apollonius of Pergamum, Aristandrus of Athens, Bacchius of Miletus, Bion of Soli, Chaeresteus and Chaereas of Athens, Diodorus of Priene, Dion of Colophon, Diophanes of Nicaea, Epigenes of Rhodes, Evagon of Thasos, Euphronius of Athens, and his name sake of Amphipolis, Hegesias of Maronea, the two Menanders, one of Priene, the other of Heraclaea, Nicesius of Maronea, Pythion of Rhodes. Among the rest whose countries I do not know, are Andiotion, Aeschrion, Aristomenes, Athenagoras, Crates, Dadis, Dionysius, Euphiton, Euphorion, Eubulus, Lysimachus, Mnaseas, Menestratus, Plentiphanes, Persis, and Theophilus. All those whom I have named wrote in prose, but there are those also who have written in verse, as Hesiod of Ascra and Menecrates of Ephesus. The agricultural writer of the greatest reputation is, however, Mago the Carthaginian[45] who wrote in the Punic tongue and collected in twenty-eight books all the wisdom which before him had been scattered in many works. Cassius Dionysius of Utica translated Mago into Greek in twenty books (and dedicated his work to the praetor Sextilius), and notwithstanding that he reduced Mago by eight books he cited freely from the Greek authors whom I have named. Diophanes made a useful digest of Cassius in six books, which he dedicated to Deiotarus, King of Bithynia. I have ventured to compress the subject into the still smaller compass of three books, the first on the husbandry of agriculture, the second on the husbandry of live stock and the third on the husbandry of the steading. From the first book I have excluded all those things which I do not deem to relate immediately to agriculture: thus having first limited my subject I proceed to discuss it, following its natural divisions. My information has been derived from three sources, my own experience, my reading, and what I have heard from others. _Of the definition of agriculture_ _a. What it is not_ II. On the holiday which we call Sementivae I came to the temple of Tellus at the invitation of the Sacristan (I was taught by my ancestors to call him _Aeditumus_ but the modern purist tells me I must say _Aedituus_). There I found assembled C. Fundanius, my father-in-law, C. Agrius, a Roman Knight and a disciple of the Socratic school, and P. Agrasius, of the Revenue service: they were gazing on a map of Italy painted on the wall. "What are you doing here?" said I. "Has the festival of the seed-sowing drawn you hither to spend your holiday after the manner of our ancestors, by praying for good crops?" "We are here," said Agrius, "for the same reason that you are, I imagine--because the Sacristan has invited us to dinner. If this be true, as your nod admits, wait with us until he returns, for he was summoned by his chief, the aedile, and has not yet returned though he left word for us to wait for him." "Until he comes then," said I, "let us make a practical application of the ancient proverb that 'The Roman conquers by sitting down.'" "You're right," cried Agrius, and, remembering that the first step of a journey is the most difficult,[46] he lead the way to the benches forthwith and we followed. When we were seated Agrasius spoke up. "You who have travelled over many lands," said he, "have you seen any country better cultivated than Italy?" "I, for one, don't believe," replied Agrius, "that there is any country which is so intensely cultivated. By a very natural division Eratosthenes has divided the earth into two parts, that facing South and that facing North: and as without doubt the North is healthier than the South, so it is more fertile, for a healthy country is always the most fertile. It must be admitted then that the North is fitter for cultivation than Asia, and particularly is this true of Italy; first, because Italy is in Europe, and, second, because this part of Europe has a more temperate climate than the interior. For almost everlasting winter grips the lands to the North of us. Nor is this to be wondered at since there are regions within the Arctic Circle and at the pole where the sun is not seen for six months at a time. Yea, it is even said that it is not possible to sail a ship in those parts because the very sea is frozen over." "Would you think it possible," said Fundanius, "for any thing to grow in such a region, and, if it did grow, how could it be cultivated? The tragedian Pacuvius has spoken sooth where he says: 'Should sun or night maintain e'er lasting reign, Then all the grateful fruits of earth must die, Nipped by the cold, or blasted by the heat.' Even here in this pleasant region, where night and day revolve punctually, I am not able to live in summer unless I divide the day with my appointed midday nap. How is it possible to plant or to cultivate or to harvest any thing there where the days and nights are six months long. On the other hand, what useful thing is there which does not only grow but flourish in Italy? What spelt shall I compare with that of Campania? What wheat with that of Apulia? What wine with that of Falernum? What oil with that of Venafrum? Is not Italy so covered with fruit trees that it seems one vast orchard? Is Phrygia, which Homer calls [Greek: ampeloessa], more teeming with vines, or is Argos, which the same poet calls [Greek: polupuros] more rich in corn?[47] In what land does one jugerum produce ten, nay even fifteen, cullei of wine, as in some regions of Italy? Has not M. Cato written in his book of _Origines_ 'That region lying this side of Ariminium and beyond Picenum, which was allotted to colonists, is called Roman Gaul. There in several places a single jugerum of land produces ten cullei of wine.' Is it not the same in the region of Faventia where the vines are called _tre centaria_ because a jugerum yields three hundred amphorae of wine," and, looking at me, he added, "indeed L. Martius, your chief engineer, said that the vines on his Faventine farm yielded that much.[48] The Italian farmer looks chiefly for two things in considering a farm, whether it will yield a harvest proportioned to the capital and labour he must invest, and whether the location is healthy. Whoever neglects either of these considerations and despite them proposes to carry on a farm, is a fool and should be taken in charge by a committee of his relatives.[49] For no sane man is willing to spend on an agricultural operation time and money which he knows he cannot recoup, nor even if he sees a likely profit, if it must be at the risk of losing all by an evil climate. "But there are here present those who can discourse on this subject with more authority than I, for I see C. Licinius Stolo and Cn. Tremelius Scrofa approaching. It was the ancestor of the first of these who brought in the law for the regulation of land-holding; for the law which forbade a Roman citizen to own more than 500 jugera of land was proposed by that Licinius who acquired the cognomen of Stolo on account of his diligence in cultivating his land: he is said to have dug around his trees so thoroughly that there could not be found on his farm a single one of those suckers which spring up from the ground at the roots of trees and are called _stolones_. Of the same family was that other C. Licinius who, when he was tribune of the people, 365 years after the expulsion of the Kings, first transferred the Sovereign function of law making from the Comitium to the Forum, thus as it were constituting that area the 'farm' of the entire people.[50] The other whom I see come hither is Cn. Tremelius Scrofa, your colleague on the Committee of Twenty for the division of the Campanian lands, a man distinguished by all the virtues and considered to be the Roman most expert in agriculture.[51] "And justly so," I exclaimed, "for his farms are a more pleasing spectacle to many on account of their clean cultivation than the stately palaces of others;[52] when one goes to visit his country place, one sees granaries and not picture galleries, as at the 'farm' of Lucullus.[53] Indeed," I added, "the apple market at the head of the Sacred Way is the very image of Scrofa's fruit house." As the new comers joined us, Stolo inquired: "Have we arrived after dinner is over, for we do not see L. Fundilius who invited us." "Be of good cheer," replied Agrius, "for not only has that egg which indicates the last lap of the chariot race in the games at the circus not yet been removed, but we have not even seen that other egg which is the first course of dinner.[54] And so until the Sacristan returns and joins us do you discourse to us of the uses or the pleasures of agriculture, or of both. For now the sceptre of agriculture is in your hands, which formerly, they say, belonged to Stolo." "First of all," began Scrofa, "we must have a definition. Are we to be limited in discussing agriculture to the planting of the land or are we to touch also on those other occupations which are carried on in the country, such as feeding sheep and cattle. For I have observed that those who write on agriculture, whether in Greek or Punic or Latin, wander widely from their subject." "I do not think that those authors should be imitated in that," said Stolo, "for I deem them to have done better who have confined the subject to the straitest limits, excluding all considerations which are not strictly pertinent to the subject. Wherefore the subject of grazing, which many writers treat as a part of agriculture, seems to me to belong rather to a treatise on live stock. That the occupations are different is apparent from the difference in the names of those we put in charge of them, for we call one the farmer (_villicus_) and the other the herdsman (_magister pecoris_). The farmer is charged with the cultivation of the land and is so called from the _villa_ or farm house to which he hauls in the crops from the fields and from which he hauls them away when they are sold. Wherefore also the peasants say _vea_ for _via_, deriving their word for the road over which they haul from the name of the vehicle in which they do the hauling, _vectura_, and by the same derivation _vella_ for _villa_, the farm house to and from which they haul. In like manner the trade of a carrier is called _vellatura_ from the practice of driving a _vectura_, or cart." "Surely," said Fundanius, "feeding cattle is one thing and agriculture is another, but they are related. Just as the right pipe of the _tibia_ is different from the left pipe, yet are they complements because while the one leads, it is to carry the air, and the other follows, it is for the accompaniment." "And, to push your analogy further, it may be added," said I, "that the pastoral life, like the _tibia dextra_, has led and given the cue to the agricultural life, as we have on the authority of that learned man Dicaearchus who, in his _Life of Greece_ from the earliest times, shows us how in the beginning men pursued a purely pastoral life and knew not how to plough nor to plant trees nor to prune them; only later taking up the pursuits of agriculture; whence it may be said that agriculture is in harmony with the pastoral life but is subordinate to it, as the left pipe is to the right pipe." "Beware," exclaimed Agrius, "of pushing your musical analogy too far, for you would not only rob the farmer of his cattle and the shepherd of his livelihood but you would even break the law of the land in which it is written that a farmer may not graze a young orchard with that pestiferous animal which astrology has placed in the heavens near the Bull." "See here, Agrius," said Fundanius, "let there be no mistake about this. The law you cite applies only to certain designated kinds of cattle, as indeed there are kinds of cattle which are the foes and the bane of agriculture such as those you have mentioned--the goats--for by their nibbling they ruin young plantations, and not the least vines and olives. But, because the goat is the greatest offender in this respect, we have a rule for him which works both ways, namely: that victims of his family are grateful offerings on the altar of one god but should never come near the fane of another; since by reason of the same hate one god is not willing even to see a goat and the other is pleased to see him killed. So it is that goats found among the vines are sacrificed to Father Bacchus as it were that they should pay the penalty of their evil doing with their lives; while on the contrary nothing of the goat kind is ever sacrificed to Minerva, because they are said to make the olive sterile even by licking it, for their very spittle is poison to the fruit. For this reason goats are never driven into the Acropolis of Athens, except once a year for a certain necessary sacrifice, lest the olive tree, which is said to have its origin there,[55] might be touched by a goat." "No kind of cattle," said I, "are of any use to agriculture except those which aid in the cultivation of the land, as they do when they are yoked to the plough." "If this was so," said Agrasius, "how could we afford to take cattle off the land, since it is from our flocks and herds that we derive the manure which is of the greatest benefit to our purely agricultural operations." "On your argument of convenience," said Agrius, "we might claim that slave dealing was a branch of agriculture, if they were agricultural slaves which we dealt in. The error lies in the assumption that because cattle are good for the land, they make crops grow on the land. It does not follow, for by that reasoning other things would become part of agriculture which have nothing to do with it: as for example spinsters and weavers and other craftsmen which you might keep on your farm." "Let us then agree," said Scrofa, "to exclude live stock from our consideration of the art of agriculture. Does any one want to exclude any thing else?" "Are we to follow the book of the two Sasernas," I inquired, "and discuss whether the manufacture of pottery is more related to agriculture than mining for silver or other metals? Doubtless the material comes out of the ground in both cases, but no one claims that quarrying for stone or washing sand has any thing to do with agriculture, so why bring in the potter? It is not a question of what comes out of the land, nor of what can be done profitably on a farm, for if it were it might as well be argued that had one a farm lying along a frequented road and a site on it convenient to travellers, it would be the farmer's business to build a cross-roads tavern. But surely, however profitable this might prove, it would not make the speculation any part of agriculture. It is not, I repeat, whether the business is carried on on account of the land, nor out of the land, that it may be classed as a part of agriculture, but only if from planting the land one gains a profit." "You are jealous of this great writer," interrupted Stolo. "Because of his unfortunate potteries you rebuke him captiously and give him no credit for all the admirable things which he says about matters which certainly relate to agriculture." At this sally, Scrofa, who knew the book and justly contemned it, smiled, whereupon Agrasius, who thought that he and Stolo alone knew the book demanded of Scrofa a quotation from it. "Here is his recipe for getting rid of bugs," said Scrofa. "'Steep a wild cucumber in water and where-ever you sprinkle it the bugs will disappear,' and again, 'Grease your bed with ox gall mixed with vinegar.'" Fundanius looked at Scrofa. "And yet Saserna gives good advice even if it is in a book on agriculture," he said. "Yes, by Hercules," said Scrofa, "and especially in his recipe for removing superfluous hair, in which he bids you take a yellow frog and stew it down to a third of its size and then rub the body with what is left."[56] "I would rather cite," said I, "Sasernas' prescription for the malady from which Fundanius suffers, for his corns make wrinkles on his brow." "Tell me, pray, quickly," exclaimed Fundanius, "for I had rather learn how to root out my corns than how to plant beet roots." "I will tell you," said Stolo, "in the very words he wrote it, or at least as I heard Tarquenna read it: 'When a man's feet begin to hurt he should think of you to enable you to cure him.'" "I am thinking of you," said Fundanius, "now cure my feet." "Listen to the incantation," said Stolo. 'May the earth keep the malady, May good health remain here.' Saserna bids you chant this formula thrice nine times, to touch the earth, to spit and be sure that you do it all before breakfast." "You will find," said I, "many other wonderful secrets in Saserna, all equally foreign to agriculture, and so all to be left where they are. But it must be admitted that such digressions are found in many other authors. Does not the agricultural treatise of the great Cato himself fairly bristle with them, as for instance his instructions how to make must cake and cheese cake, and how to cure hams?" "You forget," said Agrius, "his most important precept: 'If you wish to drink freely and dine well in company, you should eat five leaves of raw cabbage steeped in vinegar, before sitting down to the table.'" _b. What agriculture is_ III. "And so," said Agrasius, "as we have agreed upon and eliminated from the discussion all those things which agriculture is not, it remains to discuss what it is. Is it an art, and, if so, what are its principles and its purposes?" Stolo turned to Scrofa and said: "You are our senior in age, in reputation and in experience, you should speak." And Scrofa, nothing loath, began as follows: "In the first place, agriculture is not only an art but an art which is as useful as it is important. It is furthermore a science, which teaches how every kind of land should be planted and cultivated, and how to know what kind of land will produce the largest crops for the longest time.[57]" _The purposes of agriculture are profit and pleasure_ IV. The elements with which this science deals are the same as those which Ennius says are the elements of the universe--water, earth, air and fire. Before sowing your seed it behooves you to study these elements because they are the origin of all growing things. So prepared, the farmer should direct his efforts to two ends: profit and pleasure,[58] one solid the other agreeable: but he should give the preference to the pursuit of profit.[59] And yet those who have regard for appearances in their farming, as for instance by planting their orchards and olive yards in orderly array, often add not only to the productiveness of the farm but as well to its saleability, and so doubly increase the value of their estate. For of two things of equal usefulness, who would not prefer to buy the better looking? The farm which is healthiest is the most valuable, for there the profit is certain. On the other hand, on an unhealthy farm, however fertile it may be, misfortune dogs the steps of the farmer. For where the struggle is against Death, there not only is the profit uncertain, but one's very existence is constantly at risk: and so agriculture becomes a gamble in which the farmer hazards both his life and his fortune. And yet this risk can be diminished by forethought, for, when health depends upon climate, we can do much to control nature and by diligence improve evil conditions. If the farm is unhealthy by reason of the plight of the land itself, or of the water supply, or is exposed to the miasma which breeds in some localities, or if the farm is too hot on account of the climate, or is exposed to mischievous winds, these discomforts can be mitigated by one who knows what to do and is willing to spend some money. What is of the greatest importance in this respect is the situation of the farm buildings, their plan and convenience, and what is the aspect of their doors and gates and windows. During the great plague, Hippocrates the physician saved not merely one farm but many cities because he knew this. But why should I summon him as a witness: for when the army and the fleet lay at Corcyra[60] and all the houses were crowded with the sick and dying, did not our Varro here contrive to open new windows to the healthy North wind and close those which gave entrance to the infected breezes of the South, to change doors and to do other such things, and so succeed in restoring his comrades safe and sound to their native land? _The fourfold division of the study of agriculture_ V. I have rehearsed the elements and the purposes of agriculture, it now remains to consider in how many divisions this science is to be studied." "I have supposed these to be without number," said Agrius, "when I have read the many books which Theophrastus wrote on _The History of Plants_ and _The Causes of Vegetation_. "These books," said Stolo, "have always seemed to me to be fitter for use in the schools of the philosophers than in the hands of a practical farmer. I do not mean to say that they do not contain many things which are both useful and practical. However that may be, do you rather explain to us the divisions in which agriculture should be studied." "There are four chapters for the study of agriculture, of the highest practical importance," resumed Scrofa, "namely:" 1° What are the physical characteristics of the land to be cultivated, including the constitution of the soil; 2° What labour and equipment are necessary for such cultivation; 3° What system of farming is to be practised; 4° What are the season? at which the several farming operations are to be carried out. Each of these four chapters may be divided in at least two subdivisions: The first into (_a_) a study of the soil, and (_b_) a survey of the buildings and stabling. The second into an enquiry as to (_c_), the men who will carry on the farming operations, and (_d_) the implements they will require. The third into (_e_) the kind of work to be planned, and (_f_) where that work is to be done. The fourth into what relates (_g_) to the annual revolution of the sun, and (_h_) the monthly revolution of the moon. I will speak of the four principal parts first, and then in detail of the eight subdivisions. 1° CONCERNING THE FARM ITSELF _How conformation of the land affects agriculture_ VI. Four things must be considered in respect of the physical characteristics of the farm: its conformation, the quality of the soil, its extent, and whether it is naturally protected. The conformation is either natural, or artificial as the result of cultivation, and may be good or bad in either case. I will speak first of natural conformation, of which there are three kinds: plain, hill and mountain--although there is a fourth kind made up of a combination of any two or all three of those mentioned, as may be seen in many places. A different system of cultivation is required for each of these three kinds of farms, for without doubt that which is suited for the hot plain would not suit the windy mountain, while a hill farm enjoys a more temperate climate than either of the other two kinds and so demands its own system of cultivation. These distinctions are most apparent when the several characteristic conformations are of large extent, as for example the heat and the humidity are greater in a broad plain, like that of Apulia, while on a mountain like Vesuvius the climate is usually fresher and so more healthy. Those who cultivate the lowlands feel the effects of their climate most in summer, but they are able to do their planting earlier in the spring, while those who dwell in the mountains suffer most from their climate in winter, and both sow and reap at later seasons. Frequently the winter is more propitious to those who dwell in the plains because then the pastures are fresh there and the trees may be pruned more readily. On the other hand the summer is more kindly in the mountains for then the upland grass is rich when the pastures of the plains are burnt, and it is more comfortable to cultivate the trees in a keen air. A lowland farm is best when it is gently sloping rather than absolutely flat, because on a flat farm water cannot run off and so forms swampy places. But it is a disadvantage to have the surface too rolling because that causes the water to collect and form ponds. Certain trees, like the fir and the pine, flourish most in the mountains on account of the eager air, while in this region where it is more temperate the poplars and the willows thrive best. Again the arbute and the oak prefer the more fertile lands, while the almond and the fig trees love the lowlands.[61] The growth on the low hills takes on more of the character of the plains, on the high hills that of the mountains. For these reasons the kind of crops to be planted must be suited to the physical characteristics of the farm, as grain for the plains, vines for the hills and forests for the mountains. All these considerations should be weighed separately with reference to each of the three kinds of conformation. VII. "It seems to me," said Stolo, "that, so far as concerns the natural situation of a farm, Cato's opinion is just. He wrote, you will recall, that the best farm was one which lay at the foot of a mountain looking to the South." Scrofa resumed: "So far as concerns the laying out of the farm, I maintain that the more appearances are considered the greater will be the profit, as, for instance, orchards should be planted in straight lines arranged in quincunxes and at a reasonable distance apart. It is a fact that, because of their unintelligent plan of planting, our ancestors made less wine and corn to the acre than we do. The point is that if each plant is set with due reference to the others they occupy less land and are less likely to screen from one another the influence of the sun and the moon and the air. This may be illustrated by an experiment: you can press a parcel of nuts with their shells on into a measure having only two thirds of the capacity of what is required to contain them after they have been cracked, because the shells keep them naturally compacted. When trees are planted in rows the sun and the moon have access to them equally from all sides, with the result that more raisins and olives are developed and then mature more quickly, a double result with the double consequence of a larger crop of must and oil and a greater profit." _How character of soil affects agriculture_ "We will now take up the second consideration in respect of the physical characteristics of a farm, namely: the quality of the soil, which partly, if not entirely, determines whether it is considered a good or a bad farm: for on this depends what crops can be planted and harvested and how they should be cultivated, as it is not possible to plant everything successfully on the same soil. For one soil is suitable for vines, another for corn, and others for other things. In the island of Crete, near Cortynia, there is said to be a plane tree which does not lose its leaves even in winter--a phenomenon due doubtless to the quality of the soil. There is another of the same kind in Cyprus, according to Theophrastus. Likewise within sight of the city of Sybaris (which is now called Thurii) stands an oak having the same characteristic. Again at Elephantine neither the vines nor the fig trees lose their leaves, something that never happens with us. For the same reason many trees bear fruit twice a year, as do the vines near the sea at Smyrna, and the apples in the fields of Consentinium. The effect of soil appears also from the fact that those plants which bear most profusely in wild places produce better fruit under cultivation. The same explanation applies to those plants which cannot live except in a marshy place, or indeed in the very water: they are even nice about the kind of water, some grow in ponds like the reeds at Reate, others in streams like the alders in Epirus, some even in the sea like the palms and the squills of which Theophrastus writes. When I was in the army, I saw in Transalpine Gaul, near the Rhine, lands where neither the vine, nor the olive, nor the pear tree grew, where they manured their fields with a white chalk which they dug out of the ground:[62] where they had no salt, either mineral or marine, but used in place of it the salty ashes obtained from burning a certain kind of wood." Stolo here interrupted. "You will recall," he said, "that Cato in comparing the different kinds of soil, ranked them by their merit in nine classes according to what they would produce, of which the first was that on which the vine would grow a plentiful supply of good wine; the second that fit for an irrigated garden; the third for an osier bed; the fourth for an olive yard; the fifth for a meadow; the sixth for a corn field; the seventh for a wood lot; the eighth for a cultivated orchard, and the ninth for a mast grove." "I know he wrote that," replied Scrofa, "but every one does not agree with him. There are some who put a good pasture first, and I am among them." Our ancestors were wont to call them not _prala_, as we do, but _parata_ (because they are always ready for use). The sedile Caesar Vopicus, in pleading a cause before the Censors, once said that the prairie of Rosea was the nurse of Italy, because if one left his surveying instruments there on the ground over night they were lost next day in the growth of the grass.[63] (_A digression on the maintenance of vineyards_) VIII. There be those who assert that the cost of maintaining a vineyard eats up the profit. What kind of vineyard? I ask. For there are several: in one the vines grow on the ground without props, as in Spain; in another, which is the kind common in Italy, the vines climb and are trained either separately on props or one with another on a trellis, which last is what is called marrying the vine. There are four kinds of trellis in use--made out of poles, of reeds, of ropes and of vines themselves, which are in use respectively in Falerum, in Arpinum, in Brundisium and in Mediolanum. There are two methods of training the vine on trellises, one upright, as is done in the country of Canusium; the other crossed and interwoven, as is the practice generally throughout Italy. If one obtains the material for his trellises from his own land, the expense of maintaining that kind of vineyard is negligible, nor is it burdensome if the material is procured from the neighbourhood. Such trellis material, as has been described, can be grown at home by planting willows, reeds and rushes, or some thing of that kind; but if you propose to rely on the vines to form their own trellis, then you must plant an _arbustum_ where the vines can be trained on trees, such as maples, which the inhabitants of Mediolanum use for that purpose; or fig trees, on which the people of Canusium train their vines. Likewise there are four kinds of props used for the cultivation of unwedded vines; first, the planted post, which is called _ridicum_ and is best when fashioned out of oak or juniper; second, poles cut in the swamp, and the more seasoned they are the longer they will last, but it is the practice to reset them upside down when they rot out in the ground; third, for lack of some thing better, a bundle of reeds tied together and thrust into a pointed tube of baked clay, which is then planted in the ground and serves to preserve the reeds from water rot; the fourth is what may be called the natural prop, when vines are swung from tree to tree. Vines should be trained to the height of a man and the interval between the props should be sufficient to give room for a yoke of oxen to plough. The least expensive kind of a vineyard is that which brings wine to the jug without the aid of any sort of prop. There are two of this kind, one in which the earth serves as a bed for the grapes, as in many places in Asia, and where usually the foxes share the crop with man;[64] or, if mice appear, it is they who make the vintage, unless you put a mouse trap in every vine, as they do on the island of Pandataria. The other kind of vineyard, is that where each shoot which promises to bear grapes is lifted from the earth and supported about two feet off the ground by a forked stick: by this means the grapes, as they form, learn to hang as it were from a branch and do not have to be taught after the vintage; they are held in place with a bit of cord or by that kind of tie which the ancients called a _cestus_. As soon as the farmer sees the vintagers turn their backs he carries these props under cover for the winter so that he may use them another year without expense for that account. In Italy the people of Reate practise this custom. Thus there are as many methods of cultivating the vine as there are kinds of soil. For where the land is wet the vine must be trained high because when wine is being made and matured on the vine, it needs sun, not water--as when it is in the cup! For this reason it was, I think, that first the vine was made to grow on trees. _Of the different kinds of soil_ IX. It is expedient then, as I was saying, to study each kind of soil to determine for what it is, and for what it is not, suitable. The word _terra_ is used in three senses: general, particular and mixed. It is a general designation when we speak of the orb of the earth, the land of Italy or any other country. In this designation is included rock and sand and other such things. In the second place, _terra_ is referred to particularly when it is spoken of without qualification or epithet. In the third place, which is the mixed sense, when one speaks of _terra_ as soil--that in which seeds are sown and developed; as for example, clay soil or rocky soil or others. In this sense there are as many kinds of earth as there are when one speaks of it in the general sense, on account of the mixtures of substances in it in varying quantities which make it of different heart and strength, such as rock, marble, sand, loam, clay, red ochre, dust, chalk, gravel, carbuncle (which is a condition of soil formed by the burning of roots in the intense heat of the sun); from which each kind of soil is called by a particular name, in accordance with the substances of which it is composed, as a chalky soil, a gravelly soil, or what ever else may be its distinguishing quality. And as there are different varieties of soil so each variety may be subdivided according to its quality, as, for example, a rocky soil is either very rocky, moderately rocky or hardly rocky at all. So three grades may be made of other mixed soils. In turn each of these three grades has three qualities: some are very wet, some very dry, some moderate, These distinctions are of the greatest importance in respect of the crops, for the skilled husbandman plants spelt rather than wheat in wet land, and on dry land barley rather than spelt, in medium land both. Furthermore there are still more subtle distinctions to be made in respect of all these kinds of soil, as for example it must be considered in respect of loam, whether it is white loam or red loam, because white loam is unfit for nursery beds, while red loam is what they require. But the three great distinctions of quality of soil are whether it is lean or fat, or medium. Fat soils are apparent from the heavy growth of their vegetation, and the lean lie bare; as witness the territory of Pupinia (in Latium), where all the foliage is meagre and the vines look starved, where the scant straw never stools, nor the fig tree blooms, while for the most part the trees are as covered with moss as are the arid pastures. On the other hand, a rich soil like that of Etruria reveals itself heavy with grain and forage crops and its umbrageous trees are clean of moss. Soil of medium strength, like that near Tibur, which one might say is rather hungry than starved, repays cultivation in proportion as it takes on the quality of rich land." "Diophanes of Bithynia," said Stolo, "was very much to the point when he wrote that the best indication of the suitability of soil for cultivation can be had either from the soil itself or from what grows in it: so one should ascertain whether it is white or black, if it is light and friable when it is dug, whether its consistency is ashy, or too heavy: or it can be tested by evidence that the wild growth upon it is heavy and fruitful after its kind.[65] But proceed and tell us of your third division, which relates to the measurement and laying out of the farm." _Of the units of area used in measuring land_ X. Scrofa resumed: "Every country has its own system for measuring land. In Further Spain the unit of area is the _jugum_, in Campania the _versus_, here in the Roman country and among the Latins it is the _jugerum_. They call a _jugum_ the area which a pair of oxen can plough in a day. The _versus_ is one hundred feet square: the _jugerum_ is the area containing two square _actus_: the _actus quadratus_ or _acnua_, as it is called by the Latins, measuring 120 feet in width and as much in length.[66] The smallest fraction of a jugerum is called a _scripulum_ and is ten feet square. From this base the surveyors some times call the butts of land which exceed a jugerum _unciae_ (twelfths) or _sextantes_ (seventy seconds) or some other such duodecimal division, for the jugerum contains 288 scripula, like the ancient pound weight which was in use before the Punic wars. Two jugera, which Romulus first made the headright and which thus became the unit of inheritance, are called an _haeredium_:[67] later one hundred haeredia were called a _centuria_, which is 2,400 _unciae_ square. Four centuriae adjoining, so that there are two on each side, are called a _saltus_ in the distribution of the public lands." _Of the considerations on building a steading_ _a. Size_ XI. As the result of faulty surveys of the farm it often happens that the steading is constructed either too small or too large for the farm, a mistake which in either case is of prejudice both to the property and its revenue. If one builds too large or too many buildings he is eaten up by the expense of maintenance, while if one builds less than the farm requires the harvest is lost, for there is no doubt that the largest wine cellar must be provided for that farm on which the vintages are largest, or granary, if it is a grain farm. _b. Water supply_ If possible, the steading should be so built that it shall have water within the walls, or certainly near at hand: it is preferable that this should be derived from a spring, or, if not, then from an unfailing stream. If no running water is available a cistern should be constructed within doors, and a pond in the open, the one for the use of the men, the other for the use of the cattle. _c. Location, with regard to health_ XII. When you plan to build, try your best to locate the steading at the foot of a wooded hill where the pastures are rich, and turn it so as to catch the healthiest prevailing breeze. The best situation is facing the east so to secure shade in summer and sun in winter. But if you must build on the bank of a river, take care that you do not let the steading face the river, for it will be very cold in winter and unhealthy in summer. Like precautions must be taken against swampy places for the same reasons and particularly because as they dry, swamps breed certain animalculae which cannot be seen with the eyes and which we breathe through the nose and mouth into the body where they cause grave maladies."[68] "But," said Fundanius, "suppose I inherited a farm like that, what should I do to avoid the malady you describe?" "The answer to that question is easy," said Agrius. "You should sell the farm for what you can get for it: and if you can't sell it, give it away." Scrofa resumed: "Take care to avoid having the steading face the direction from which disagreeable winds blow, yet you should not build in a hollow. High ground is the best location for a steading: for by ventilation all noxious gases are dissipated, and the steading is healthier if exposed to the sun all day: with the further advantage that any insects which may be bred in or brought upon the premises are either blown away or quickly perish where there is no damp. Sudden rains and overflowed streams are dangerous to those who have their steadings in low or hollow places, and they are more at the hazard of the ruthless hand of the robber because he is able to take advantage of those who are unprepared. Against either of these risks the higher places are safer." _d. Arrangement_ XIII. In arranging the steading, see that the cattle are put where they will be warm in winter. Such crops as wine and oil should be housed below ground in cellars, or rather in jars placed in such cellars, while dry crops like beans, and hay, are best stored on high board floors. A rest room should be provided for the comfort of the hands where they can gather after the day's work or for protection from cold or heat and there recruit themselves in quiet. The room of the overseer should be near the entrance to the farm house so that he may know who comes in and who goes out during the night, and what they bring in or out, especially if there is no gate-keeper. The kitchen also should be near the overseer's room because there in winter is great activity before daylight when food is being prepared and eaten. Good sized sheds should be built in the barn yard for the wagons and other implements which might be damaged by the rain. For while they may be kept safe from the thief within the gates, yet if they are exposed to the weather they will be lost nevertheless. It is better to have two barn yards for a large farm. The inner court should contain a cistern like a little fish pond into which the drainage from the eaves may collect: as here the cattle and swine and geese can drink and bathe in summer when they are driven in from work or pasture. In the outer court there should be another pond where you can handle lupines and such other things as must be soaked in water. This exterior court yard should be strewn thick with straw and chaff, which, by being trampled under the feet of the cattle, becomes the handmaid of the farm by reason of the service it renders when it is hauled out. Every farm should have two manure pits, or one divided into two parts; into one division should be put the new manure from the barn, in the other the old manure which is ready for use on the farm: for new manure is not as good as that which is well rotted.[69] The manure pit is more serviceable when its sides and top are protected from the sun by leaves and branches, for the sun draws out from the manure those elements which the land requires; for this reason experienced farmers sprinkle water on their manure pits, and so largely preserve its quality: here too some establish the privies for the slaves. One should build a barracks (what we call a _nubilarium_ because it affords protection from the weather) and it should be large enough to contain under its roof the entire crop of the farm: this should be placed near the threshing floor and left open only on the side of the threshing floor, so that while threshing you may conveniently throw out the corn and if it begins to cloud up then quickly throw it back again under shelter. There should be windows in this barracks on the side most fitted for ventilation." "A farm would be more of a farm," said Fundanius, "if the buildings were constructed with reference to the diligence of our ancestors rather than the luxury of their descendants. For they built for use, while we build to gratify an unbridled luxury. Their barns were bigger than their houses, but the contrary is often the case today. Then a house was praised if it had a good kitchen, roomy stables and a cellar for wine and oil fitted, according to the custom of the country, with a floor draining into a reservoir, into which the wine can flow when, as often happens after the new wine has been laid by, the fermentation of the must bursts both Spanish butts and our own Italian tuns. In like manner our ancestors equipped a country house with whatever other things were necessary to agriculture, but now on the contrary it is the effort to make such a house as vast and as elegant as possible, and we vie with those palaces which men like Metellus and Lucullus have built, to the detriment of the very state itself: in them the effort is to contrive summer dining rooms fronting the cool east, and those designed for use in winter facing the western sun, rather than, as the ancients did, to adjust their windows with regard chiefly to the cellars, since wine in casks keeps best when it is cool, while oil craves warmth. For this reason also it would seem that the best place to put a house is on a hill, if nothing obstructs it." _Of the protection of farm boundaries_ _a. Fences_ XIV. "Now," resumed Scrofa, "I will speak of fences, which are constructed for the protection of the farm or for dividing the fields. There are four kinds of such barriers: natural, dead wood, military and masonry. The first is the natural fence of live hedge, consisting of planted shrubs or thorns, and, as it has roots, runs no risk from the flaming torch of the passing traveller who may be inclined to mischief. The second kind is built of the wood of the country, but is not alive. It is made either of palings placed close together and wattled with twigs, or posts placed at some distance apart and pierced to receive the ends of rails, which are generally built two or three to the panel, or else of trunks of trees laid on the ground and joined in line. The third, or military fence, consists of a ditch and a mound: but such a ditch should be so constructed to collect all the rain water, or it should be graded to drain the surface water off the farm. The mound is best when constructed close adjoining the ditch, or else it should be steep so that it will be difficult to scale. It is customary to construct this kind of fence along the public roads or along streams. In the district of Crustumeria one can see in many places along the via Salaria ditches and mounds constructed as dikes against damage by the river (Tiber).[70] Mounds are some times built without ditches and are called walls, as in the country around Reate. The fourth and last kind of fence is of built up masonry. There are usually four varieties: those of cut stone, as in the country around Tusculum; those of burned brick, as in Gaul; those of unburned brick as in the Sabine country; those of gravel concrete,[71] as in Spain and about Tarentum." _b. Monuments_ XV. Lacking fences, the more discreet establish the boundaries of their property, or of their sowings, by blazed trees, and so prevent neighbourhood quarrels and lawing about corners. Some plant pines around their boundaries, as my wife did on her Sabine farm, or cypresses, as I have on my property on Vesuvius.[72] Others plant elms, as many have done in the district of Crustumeria: indeed, for planting in plains where it flourishes there is no tree which can be set out with such satisfaction or with more profit than the elm, for it supports the vine and so fills many a basket with grapes, yields its leaves to be a most agreeable forage for flocks and herds, and supplies rails for fences and wood for hearth and oven. "And now," said Scrofa, "I have expounded my four points upon the physical characteristics of a farm, which were, its conformation, the quality of the soil, its extent and layout, its boundaries and their protection." _Of the considerations of neighbourhood_ XVI. It remains to discuss the conditions outside the farm itself, for the character of the neighbourhood is of the utmost importance to agriculture on account of the necessary relations with it. There are four considerations in this respect also, namely: whether the neighbourhood bears a bad reputation; whether it affords a market to which our products can be taken and whence we can bring back what we may require at home; whether there is a road or a river leading to that market, and, if so, whether it is fit for use; and fourth whether there is in our immediate vicinity any thing which may be to our advantage or disadvantage. Of these four considerations the most important is whether the neighbourhood bears a bad reputation: for there are many farms which are fit for cultivation but not expedient to undertake on account of the brigandage in the neighbourhood, as in Sardinia those farms which adjoin Oelium, and in Spain those on the borders of Lusitania. On the second point those farms are the most profitable which have opportunities in the vicinity for marketing what they raise and buying what they must consume: for there are many farms which must buy corn or wine or what ever else they lack, and not a few which have a surplus of these commodities for sale. So in the suburbs of a city it is fitting to cultivate gardens on a large scale, and to grow violets and roses and many other such things which a city consumes, while it would be folly to undertake this on a distant farm with no facilities for reaching the market. So, again, if there is nearby a town or a village or even the well furnished estate of a rich man where you can buy cheap what you require on the farm, and where you can trade your surplus of such things as props and poles and reeds, your farm will be more profitable than if you had to buy at a distance; nay, more profitable even than if you were able to produce all you require at home: because in this situation you can make annual arrangements with your neighbours to furnish on hire the services of physicians, fullers and blacksmiths to better advantage than if they were your own: for the death of a single such skilled slave wipes out the entire profit of a farm. In carrying on the operation of a vast estate, the rich can afford to provide such servants for every department of the work: for if towns and villages are far distant from the farm, they supply blacksmiths and all other necessary craftsmen and keep them on the place, in order to prevent the hands from leaving the farm and spending working days in going leisurely to and from the shop when they might more profitably be engaged on what should be done in the fields. So Saserna's book lays down the rule that "No one may leave the farm except the overseer, the butler, or such a one as the overseer sends on an errand. If any one disobeys this rule, he shall be punished for it, but if he disobeys a second time the overseer shall be punished." This rule may be better stated that no one should leave the farm without the approval of the overseer, and, without the consent of the master, not even the overseer, for more than a day at a time, but in no event more frequently than the business of the farm requires. On the third point, conveniences of transportation make a farm more profitable, and these are whether the roads are in such condition that wagons can use them smoothly, or whether there are rivers nearby which can be navigated. We know that each of these means of transportation is available to many farms. The fourth point, which is concerned with how your neighbour has planted his land, also relates to your profits: because if he has an oak forest near your boundary, you cannot profitably plant olives in that vicinity, for the oak is so perverse in its effect upon the olive that not only will your trees bear less but they will even avoid the oaks and bend away from them until they are prostrate on the ground, as the vine is wont to do when planted near vegetables. Like the oak, a grove of thickly planted full grown walnut trees renders sterile all the surrounding land. 2° CONCERNING THE EQUIPMENT OF A FARM XVII. I have spoken of the four points of husbandry which relate to the land to be cultivated and also of those other four points which have to do with the outside relations of that land: now I will speak of those things which pertain to the cultivation of the land. Some divide this subject into two parts, men and those assistants to men without which agriculture cannot be carried on. Others divide it into three parts, the instruments of agriculture which are articulate, inarticulate and mute: the articulate being the servants,[73] the inarticulate the draught animals, and the mute being the wagons and other such implements. _Of agricultural labourers_ All men carry on agriculture by means of slaves or freemen or both. The freemen who cultivate the land do so either on their own account, as do many poor people with the aid of their own children, or for wages,[74] as when the heaviest farm operations, like the vintage and the harvest, are accomplished with the aid of hired freemen: in which class may be included those bond servants whom our ancestors called _obaerati_, a class which may still be found in Asia, in Egypt and in Illyricum. With respect to the use of freemen in agriculture, my own opinion is that it is more profitable to use hired hands than one's own slaves in cultivating unhealthy lands, and, even where the country is salubrious, they are to be preferred for the heaviest kind of farm work, such as harvesting and storing grapes and corn. Cassius has this to say on the subject: 'Select for farm hands those who are fitted for heavy labour, who are not less than twenty-two years of age and have some aptitude for agriculture, which can be ascertained by trying them on several tasks and by enquiring as to what they did for their former master.' Slaves should be neither timid nor overconfident. The foreman should have some little education, a good disposition and economical habits, and it is better that they should be some what older than the hands, for then they will be listened to with more respect than if they were boys. It is most important to choose as foremen those who are experienced in agricultural work, for they should not merely give orders but lend a hand at the work, so that the labourers may learn by imitation and may also appreciate that it is greater knowledge and skill which entitles the foreman to command. The foreman should never be authorized to enforce his discipline with the whip if he can accomplish his result with words. Avoid having many slaves of the same nation, for this gives rise to domestic rows. The foremen will work more cheerfully if rewards are offered them, and particularly pains must be taken to see that they have some property of their own, and that they marry wives among their fellow servants, who may bear them children, some thing which will make them more steady and attach them to the place.[75] On account of such relationships families of Epirote slaves are esteemed the best and command the highest prices. Marks of consideration by the master will go far in giving happiness to your hands: as, for instance, by asking the opinion of those of them who have done good work, as to how the work ought to be done, which has the effect of making them think less that they are looked down upon, and encourages them to believe that they are held in some estimation by the master. Those slaves who are most attentive to their work should be treated more liberally either in respect of food or clothes, or in holidays, or by giving them permission to graze some cattle of their own on the place, or some thing of that kind. Such liberality tempers the effect of a harsh order or a heavy punishment, and restores the slaves' good will and kindly feeling towards their master. XVIII. On the subject of the number of slaves one will require for operating a farm, Cato lays down the two measures of the extent of the farm and the kind of farming to be carried on. Writing about the cultivation of olives and vines he gives these formulas, viz.: For carrying on an olive farm of two hundred and forty jugera, thirteen slaves are necessary, to-wit: an overseer, a housekeeper, five labourers, three teamsters, an ass driver, a swineherd and a shepherd: for carrying on a vineyard of one hundred jugera, fifteen slaves are necessary, to-wit: an overseer, a housekeeper, ten labourers, a teamster, an ass driver and a swineherd. On the other hand Saserna says that one man is enough for every eight jugera,[76] as a man should cultivate that much land in forty-five days: for while one man can cultivate a jugerum in four days, yet he allows thirteen days extra for the entire eight jugera to provide against the chance of bad weather, the illness or idleness of the labourer and the indulgence of the master.[77] At this Licinius Stolo put in. "Neither of these writers has given us an adequate rule," he said. "For if Cato intended, as he doubtless did, that we should add to or subtract from what he prescribes in proportion as our farm is of greater or less extent than that he describes, he should have excluded the overseer and the housekeeper from his enumeration. If you cultivate less than two hundred and forty jugera of olives you cannot get along with less than one overseer, while if you cultivate twice or more as much land you will not require two or three overseers. It is the number of labourers and teamsters only which must be added to or diminished in proportion to the size of the farm: and this applies only if the land is all of the same character, for if part of it is of a kind which cannot be ploughed, as for example very rocky, or on a steep hillside, there is that much less necessity for teams and teamsters. I pass over the fact that Cato's example of a farm of two hundred and forty jugera is neither a fair nor a comparable unit.[78] The true unit for comparison of farms is a centuria, which contains two hundred jugera, but if one deducts forty jugera, or one-sixth, from Cato's two hundred and forty jugera, I do not see how in applying this rule one can deduct also one-sixth of his thirteen slaves; or, even if we leave out the overseer and the housekeeper, how one can deduct one-sixth of eleven slaves. Again, Cato says that one should have fifteen slaves for one hundred jugera of vineyard, but suppose one had a _centuria_ half in vines and half in olives, then, according to Cato's rule, one would require two overseers and two housekeepers, which is absurd. Wherefore it is necessary to find another measure than Cato's for determining the number of slaves, and I myself think better of Saserna's rule, which is that for each jugerum it suffices to provide four days work of one hand. Yet, if this was a good rule on Saserna's farm in Gaul, it might not apply on a mountain farm in Liguria. In fine you will best determine what number of slaves and what other equipment you will require if you diligently consider three things, that is to say, what kind of farms are there in your neighbourhood, how large are they, and how many hands are engaged in cultivating them, and you should add to or subtract from that number in proportion as you take up more or less work. For nature gave us two schools of agriculture, which are experience and imitation. The most ancient farmers established many principles by experiment and their descendants for the most part have simply imitated them. We should do both these things: imitate others and on our own account make experiments, following always some principle, not chance:[79] thus we might work our trees deeper or not so deep as others do to see what the effect would be. It was with such intelligent curiosity that some farmers first cultivated their vines a second and a third time, and deferred grafting the figs from spring to summer." _Of draught animals_ XIX. In respect of those instruments of agriculture which are called inarticulate, Saserna says that two yokes of oxen will be enough for two hundred jugera of arable land, while Cato prescribes three yokes for two hundred and forty jugera in olives: thus if Saserna is correct, one yoke of oxen is required for every hundred jugera, but if Cato is correct a yoke is needed for every eighty jugera. My opinion is that neither of these standards is appropriate for all kinds of land, but each for some kind: for some land is easy and some difficult to plough, and oxen are unable to break up some land except by great effort and often they leave the ploughshare in the furrow broken from the beam: wherefore in this respect we should observe a triple rule on every farm, when we are new to it, namely: find out the practice of the last owner; that of the neighbours, and make some experiments of our own. "Cato adds," resumed Scrofa, "that on his olive farm there are required three asses to haul out the manure and one to turn the mill, and on his hundred jugera vineyard a yoke of oxen and a pair of asses for the manure, and an ass for the wine press." In respect of cattle kept for all these purposes, which it is customary to feed in the barn yard, it should be added that you should keep as many and only as many as you need for carrying on the work of the farm, so that more easily you can secure diligent care of them from the servants whose chief care is of themselves. In this connection the keeping of sheep is preferable to hogs not only by those who have pastures but also by those who have none, for you should keep them not merely because you have pasture, but for the sake of the manure. Watch dogs should be kept in any event for the safety of the farm. XX. The most important consideration with respect to barn yard cattle is that the draft oxen should be fit for their work: when bought unbroken they should not be less than three years old nor more than four, strong, but well matched, lest the stronger wear out the weaker: with large horns, black rather than any other color, broad foreheads, flat noses, deep chests and heavy quarters. Old steers which have worked in the plains cannot be trained to service in rough and mountain land; a rule as applicable when reversed. In breaking young steers it is best to begin by fastening a fork shaped yoke on their necks and leaving it there even when they are fed; in a few days they will become used to it and disposed to be docile. Then they should be broken to work gradually until they are accustomed to it, as may be done by yoking a young ox with an old one, so that he may learn what is expected of him by imitation. It is best to work them first on level ground without a plough, then with a light plough, so that their first lessons may be easy and in sand and mellow soil. Oxen intended for the wagon should be broken in the same way, at first by drawing an empty cart, if possible through the streets of a village or a town, where they may become quickly inured to sudden noises and strange sights. You should not work an ox always on the same side of the team, for an occasional change from right to left relieves the strain of the work. Where the land is light, as in Campania, they do not plough with heavy steers but with cows or asses, as they can be driven more easily to a light plough. For turning the mill and for carrying about the farm some use asses, some cows and others mules: a choice determined by the supply of provender. For an ass is cheaper to feed than a cow, though a cow is more profitable.[80] In the choice of the kind of draft animals he is to keep, a farmer should always take into consideration the characteristics of his soil: thus on rocky and difficult land the prime requirement is doubtless strength, but his purpose should be to keep that kind of stock which under his conditions yields the largest measure of profit and still do all the necessary work. _Of watch dogs_ XXI. It is more desirable to keep a few dogs and fierce ones than a pack of curs. They should be trained to watch by night and to sleep by day chained in the kennel [so that they may be the more alert when set loose.] It remains to speak elsewhere of unyoked cattle, like the flocks, but if there are meadows on the farm and the owner keeps no live stock, it is the business of a good farmer after he has sold his hay to graze and feed another's cattle on his land. _Of farming implements_ XXII. Concerning the instruments of agriculture which are called mute, in which are included baskets, wine jars and such things, this may be said: Those utensils which can be produced on the farm or made by the servants should never be bought, among which are what ever may be made out of osiers or other wood of the country, such as hampers, fruit baskets, threshing sledges, mauls and mattocks, or what ever is made out of the fibre plants like hemp, flax, rushes, palm leaves and nettles, namely: rope, twine and mats. Those implements which cannot be manufactured on the farm should be bought more with reference to their utility than their appearance that they may not diminish your profit by useless expense, a result which may be best secured by buying where the things you need may be found at once of good quality, near at hand and cheap. The requirement of the kind and number of such implements is measured by the extent of the farm because the further your boundaries lie apart the more work there is to do." "In this connection," put in Stolo, "given the size of the farm, Cato recommends with respect to implements as follows: he who cultivates 240 jugera in olives should have five sets of oil making implements, which he enumerates severally, such as the copper utensils, including kettles, pots, ewers with three spouts, etc.; the implements made out of wood and iron, including three large wagons, six ploughs with their shares, four manure carriers, etc. So of the iron tools, what they are and how many are needed, he speaks in great detail, as eight iron pitch forks, as many hoes and half as many shovels, etc. "In like manner he lays down another formula of implements for a vineyard, viz.: if you cultivate 100 jugera you should have three sets of implements for the wine press and also covered storage vats of a capacity of eight hundred _cullei_, as well as twenty harvesting hampers for grapes and as many for corn, and other things in like proportion. "Other writers advise a smaller quantity of such conveniences, but I believe Cato prescribed so great a capacity in order that one might not be compelled to sell his wine every year, for old wine sells better than new, and the same quality sells better at one time than another. Cato writes further in great detail of the kind and number of iron tools which are required for a vineyard, such as the falx or pruning hook, spades, hoes. So also several of these instruments are of many varieties, as for instance the falx, of which this author says that there must be provided forty of the kind suitable for use in a vineyard, five for cutting rushes, three for pruning trees and ten for cutting briers." So far Stolo, when Scrofa began again. "The owner should have an inventory of all the farm implements and equipment, with a copy on file both at the house and at the steading, and it should be the duty of the overseer to see that everything is checked against this inventory and is assigned its appropriate keeping place in the barn. What cannot be kept under lock and key should be kept in plain sight, and this is particularly necessary in respect of the utensils which are used only at intervals, as at harvest time, like the grape baskets and such things, for what ever one sees daily is in the least danger from the thief." 3° CONCERNING THE OPERATION OF A FARM XXIII. "And now," interposed Agrasius, "as we have discussed the two first parts of the four-fold division of agriculture, namely: concerning the farm itself and the implements with which it is worked, proceed with the third part." _Of planting field crops_ "As I hold," said Scrofa, "that the profit of a farm is that only which comes from sowing the land, there are two considerations which remain for discussion, what one should sow and where it is most expedient to sow it, for some lands are best suited for hay, some for corn, some for wine and some for oil. So also should be considered the forage crops like basil, mixed fodder, vetch, alfalfa, snail clover and lupines. All things should not be sown in rich land, nor should thin land be left unsown, for it is better to sow in light soil those things which do not require much nourishment, such as snail clover and the legumes, except always chick peas (for this also is a legume like the other plants which are not reaped but from which the grain is plucked) because those things which it is the custom to pluck (legere) are called legumes. In rich land should be sown what ever require much nourishment, such as cabbage, spring and winter, wheat and flax. Certain plants are cultivated not so much for their immediate yield as with forethought for the coming year, because cut and left lying they improve the land. So, if land is too thin it is the practice to plough in for manure, lupines not yet podded, and likewise the field bean, if it has not yet ripened so that it is fitting to harvest the beans.[81] "Not less should you make provision for cultivating what yields you profit in mere pleasure, like arbours and flower gardens: and those plantations which do not serve either for the support of man or the delight of the senses, but are not the less useful in the economy of the farm. Thus suitable places must be set aside for growing willows and reeds and other such things which affect wet places. On the other hand, you should sow field beans as much as possible in your corn land. There are other plants which seek dry places, and still others demand shade, like asparagus, both when wild and cultivated: while violets and garden flowers, which flourish in the sun should be set out in the open. "So other things demand other planting conditions, like the osiers from which you derive your material for making basket ware, for wagon frames, winnowing baskets and grape hampers. Elsewhere you might plant and cultivate a forest for cut wood and a spinney for fowling. "So you should reserve ground for planting hemp, flax, rush and Spanish broom (spartum) which serve to make shoes for the cattle, thread, cord and rope. Other situations are suitable for still other kinds of planting, as, for example, some plant garden truck and some plant other things, in a nursery, or between the rows of a young orchard before the roots of the trees have spread far out, but this should never be done when the trees have grown lest the roots be injured." "In this respect," said Stolo, "what Cato says about planting is in point, that a field which is rich and in good heart and without shade should be planted in corn, while a low lying field should be set in turnips, radishes, millet and panic grass." _Of planting olives_ XXIV. Scrofa resumed: "The varieties of olives to plant in rich and warm land are the preserving olive _radius major_, the olive of Sallentina, the round _orchis_, the bitter _posea_, the Sergian, the Colminian, and the waxy _albicera_: which ever of these does best in your locality, plant that most extensively. An olive yard is not worth cultivating unless it looks to the west wind and is exposed to the sun; if the soil is cold and thin there you should plant the Licinian olive, for if you set out this variety in a rich and warm soil it will never make a _hostus_ and the tree will exhaust itself in bearing and will become infected with red moss. (_Hostus_ is the country name for the yield of oil from a single tree at each _factus_ or pressing: some claim this should amount to 160 _modii_, while others reduce it to 120 _modii_, and even less in proportion to the size and number of their storage vats.) "Cato advises you to plant elms and poplars around the farm so as to obtain from them leaves to feed the sheep and cattle as well as a supply of lumber: while this is not necessary on all farms, nor in some for the forage alone, it may be done with advantage as a wind break against the north where the trees will not shut out the sun." Stolo added the following advice from the same author: 'If you have a piece of wet ground there plant cuttings of poplars, and also reeds which are set out as follows: having turned the sod with a hoe plant the scions of reed three feet one from the other. Wild asparagus (from which you may cultivate garden asparagus) should also be set out in such a place because the same kind of cultivation is suitable for it as for reeds. You should set out Greek willows around the reed bed to supply ties for your vines.' _Of planting vines_ XXV. "In respect of planting vines," resumed Scrofa, "it should be observed that the varieties fitted for the best land and exposure to the sun are the little Aminean, the twin _Eugeneam_ and the little yellow kind: while on rich or wet land the best varieties are the large Aminean, the Murgentine, the Apician and the Lucanian. Other vines, and especially the mixed varieties, do well in any kind of land." XXVI. "In all vineyards care is taken that the prop should shelter the vine against the north wind. And if live cypresses are used as props they are planted in alternate rows and are not allowed to grow higher than is necessary for use as a prop. Cabbages are never planted near vines because they do each other damage." "I fear," said Agrius, turning to Fundanius, "that the Sacristan may get back before we have reached the fourth head of our subject, that of the vintage, for I am looking forward thirstily to the vintage." "Be of good cheer," said Scrofa, "and prepare the grape baskets and the ewer." 4° CONCERNING THE AGRICULTURAL SEASONS XXVII. We have two standards of time, the first that of the revolution of the year, because in it the sun completes his circuit, the other the measure of the month, because it includes the waxing and the waning of the moon. _Of the solar measure of the year_ First I will speak of the sun, whose recurring journey is divided with reference to the pursuits of agriculture into four seasons of three months each, or more accurately into eight seasons of a month and a half each. The four seasons are Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. In Spring certain crops are sown and the sod fields are broken up,[82] so that the weeds in them may be destroyed before they have seeded themselves again, and the clods, by drying out in the sun, may become more accessible to the rain and when broken down by its action easier to cultivate. Such land should be ploughed not less than twice, but three times is better.[83] The Summer is the season of the grain harvest; the Autumn, when the weather is dry, that of the vintage: and it is also the fit time for thinning out the woods, when the trees to be removed should be cut down close to the ground and the roots should be dug up before the first rains to prevent them from stooling. In Winter the trees may be pruned, provided this is done at a time when the bark is free from frost and rain and ice. XXVIII. Spring begins when the sun is in Aquarius, Summer when it is in Taurus, Autumn when it is in Leo, and Winter when it is in Scorpio. Since the beginning of each of the four seasons is the twenty-third day after the entrance of the sun in these signs respectively, it follows that Spring has ninety-one days, Summer ninety-four, Autumn ninety-one and Winter eighty-nine: which, reduced to the dates of our present official calendar,[84] makes the beginning of Spring on the seventh day before the Ides of February (February 7), of Summer on the seventh day before the Ides of May (May 9), of Autumn on the third day before the Ides of August (August 11), and of Winter on the fourth day before the Ides of November (November 10). A CALENDAR OF AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS By a more exact definition of the seasons, the year is divided into eight parts, the first of forty-five days from the date of the rising of the west wind (February 7) to the date of the vernal equinox (March 24), the second of the ensuing forty-four days to the rising of the Pleiades (May 7), the third of forty-eight days to the summer solstice (June 24), the fourth of twenty-seven days to the rising of the Dog Star (July 21), the fifth of sixty-seven days to the Autumn equinox (September 26), the sixth of thirty-two days to the setting of the Pleiades (October 28), the seventh of fifty-seven days to the winter solstice (December 24), and the eighth of forty-five days to the beginning of the first.[85] _1° February 7-March 24_ XXIX. These are the things to be done during the first of the seasons so enumerated: All kinds of nurseries should be set out, the vines should be first pruned, then dug, and the roots which have protruded from the ground should be cut out, the meadows should be cleaned, willows planted and the corn hoed. We call that corn land (_seges_) which has been ploughed and sowed as distinguished from plough land (_arva_) which has been ploughed but not yet sowed, while that land which was formerly sowed and lies awaiting a new ploughing is called stubble (_novalis_). When land is ploughed for the first time it is said to be broken up (_proscindere_), and at the second ploughing to be broken down (_offringere_) because at the first ploughing large clods are turned up and at the second ploughing these are reduced. The third cultivation, after the seed has been sown, is called ridging (_lirare_), that is, when by fastening mould boards on the plough, the sown seed is covered up in ridges[86] and at the same time furrows are cut by means of which the surface water may drain off. Some farmers who cultivate small farms, as in Apulia, are wont to harrow their land after it is ridged, if perchance any large clods have been left in the seed bed. The hollow channel left by the share of the plough is called the furrow, the raised land between two furrows is called the ridge (_porca_,) because there the seed is as it were laid upon an altar (_porricere_) to secure a crop, for when the entrails are offered to the gods this word _porricere_ is used to describe the oblation. 2° _March 24-May 7_ XXX. These are the things to be done during the second season between the vernal equinox and the rising of the Pleiades. Weed the corn land, break up old sod, cut the willows, close the pastures (to the stock) and complete any thing left undone in the preceding season. Plant trees before the buds shoot and they begin to blossom, for deciduous trees are not fit to transplant after they put forth leaves. Plant and prune your olives. 3° _May 7-June 24_ XXXI. These are the things to be done during the third season between the rising of the Pleiades and the summer solstice. Dig the young vines or plough them, and afterwards put the land in good order; that is to say, fine the soil so that no clods shall remain. This is called fining the soil (_occare_) because it breaks down (_occidare_) the clods. Thin out the vines, but let it be done by one who knows how, for this operation which is considered of great importance is performed only on vines and not on the orchard. To thin a vine is to select and reserve the one, two and some times even three best new tendrils sprung from the stem of the vine, cutting off all the others, lest the stem may be unable to furnish nourishment for those which have been reserved. So in a nursery it is the custom to cut it back at first so that the vine may grow with a stronger stem and may have greater strength to produce fruitful tendrils: for a stem which grows slender like a rush is sterile through weakness and cannot throw out tendrils. Thus it is the custom to call a weak stem a flag, and a strong stem, which bears grapes, a palm. The name _flagellum_, indicating something as unstable as a breeze, is derived from _flatus_, by the change of a letter, just as in the case of the word _flabellum_, which means fly fan. The name _palma_, which is given to those vine shoots which are fruitful in grapes, was it seems, at first, parilema, derived from _parire_ (to produce), whence by a change of letters, such as we find in many instances, it came to be called _palma_. From another part of the vine springs the _capreolus_, which is a little spiral tendril, like a curled hair, by means of which the vine holds on while it creeps towards the place of which it would take possession, from which quality of taking hold of things (_capere_) it is called _capreolus_. All forage crops should be saved at this season; first, basil, then mixed fodder (_farrago_)[87] and vetch, and last of all the hay. Our name for basil is _ocinum_, which is derived from the Greek word [Greek: ocheos] and signifies that it comes quickly, like the pot herb of the same name. It has this name also because it quickens the action of the bowels of cattle and so is fed to them as a purgative. It is cut green from a bean field before the pods are formed. On the other hand that forage which is cut with a sickle from a field in which barley and vetch and other legumes have been sown in mixture for forage, is called _farrago_ from the instrument (_ferro_) with which it is cut, or perhaps because it was first sown in the stubble of a field of corn (_far_). It is fed to horses and other cattle in the spring to purge and to fatten them. Vetch (_vicia_) is so called from its quality of conquering (_vincire_) because this plant, like the vine, has tendrils by means of which it creeps twisting upward on the stalks of lupines or other plants where it clings until it over-tops its host. If you have irrigated meadows, proceed to water them at this season, as soon as you have saved the hay. During droughts water your grafted fruit trees every evening. They probably derive their name, (_poma_), from their appetite for drink (_potus_). 4° _June 24-July 21_ XXXII. During the fourth season between the summer solstice and the rising of the Dog Star most farmers make their harvest, because it is claimed that to mature properly corn should be allowed fifteen days to germinate and shoot, fifteen days to bloom and fifteen days to ripen. Finish your ploughing: it will be more profitable in proportion as the earth is ploughed warm, when the land is broken up, fine it, that is, work it again in order that all the clods may be reduced, for at the first ploughing large clods are always turned up. This is the time also to sow vetch, lentils, the small variety of chick peas, pulse (_ervilia_) and the other things which we call legumes, but which others, as for example the Gauls, call _legarica_, both of which names come from the practice of picking their fruit (_legere_) because they are not cut but gathered. Work the old vines a second time and the young ones thrice, especially if there are any clods left. 5° _July 21-September 26_ XXXIII. During the fifth season between the rising of the Dog Star and the autumn equinox thresh your straw and rick it, continue the harrowing of your fallow land, prune your fruit trees, and mow your irrigated meadow the second time. 6° _September 26-October 28_ XXXIV. The authorities advise you to begin to sow at the commencement of the sixth season immediately after the autumn equinox and to keep it up for the following 91 days, but not to attempt to sow any thing after the winter solstice, unless it is absolutely necessary, because seed sown before the winter solstice germinates in seven days, while that sown later hardly ever sprouts for 40 days. In like manner the authorities say that you should not begin your sowing before the equinox, lest continued rains cause the seed to rot in the ground. The best time to plant beans is at the setting of the Pleiades, but gather the grapes and make the vintage between the equinox and the setting of the Pleiades. Immediately afterward begin to prune the vines, to propagate them and plant fruit trees, but in those regions where the frost comes early it is better to postpone these operations until the following spring. 7° _October 28-December 24._ XXXV. These are the things to do during the seventh season between the setting of the Pleiades and the winter solstice. Plant lilies and crocuses and propagate roses, which may be done by making cuttings about three inches in length from a stem already rooted, set these out and later, after they have formed their own roots, transplant them. The cultivation of violets has no place on a farm because they require elevated beds for which the soil is scraped up and these are damaged or even washed away by heavy rains, thus wasting the fertility of the land. At any time of the year between the rising of the west wind and the rising of Arcturus (February-September) it is proper to transplant from the seed beds thyme, an herb, which owes its name, _serpyllum_, to its creeping habit (_quod serpit_). This is the season also to dig new ditches, clean the old ones, and to prune the trees in the arbustum and the vines which are married to them, but be careful that you suspend most of your work during the fifteen days before and after the winter solstice: it is fitting, however, to set out some trees during this period, as, for example, elms. 8° _December 24-February 7_ XXXVI. These are the things to do during the eighth season between the winter solstice and the rising of the west wind. Drain the fields, if any water is standing on them, but if they are dry and the land is friable, harrow them. Prune the vines and the orchard. When it is not fitting to work in the fields then those things should be done which can be done under cover during the winter twilight. All these rules should be written out and posted in the farmstead and the overseer especially should have them at the tip of his tongue. _Of the influence of the moon on agriculture_ XXXVII. The lunar seasons also must be considered. They are divided into two terms, that from the new moon to the full, and that from the full moon to the next moon, or until that day which we call _intermenstruus_, or the last and the first of a moon, whence at Athens this day is called [Greek: henae kai nea] (the old and the new), though the other Greeks call it [Greek: triakas] the thirtieth day. Some agricultural operations may be undertaken with more advantage during the increase of the moon, others during the decrease,[88] as, for example, the harvest or cutting of wood." "I observe a practice which I learned from my father," said Agrasius, "not only never to shear my sheep, but not even to have my own hair cut on the decrease of the moon, for fear that I might become bald." "What are the quarters of the moon," said Agrius, "and what bearing have they on agriculture?" "Have you never heard in the country," said Tremelius, "the lore about the influence of Jana (Diana) on the eighth day before her waxing, and again on the eighth day before her waning; how certain things which ought to be done during the increase can be done to better advantage in the second quarter than the first, and that what ever is fitting to do on the wane of the moon can be better done when her light is less? This is all I know about the effect of the four quarters of the moon upon agriculture." ANOTHER CALENDAR OF SIX AGRICULTURAL SEASONS "There is another division of the year," said Stolo, "which takes account of both the sun and the moon, namely: into six seasons, because almost all the cultivated fruits of the earth come to maturity and reach the vat or the granary after five successive agricultural operations and are put to use by a sixth, and these are, first, the preparing (_praeparandum_); second, the planting (_serendum_); third, the cultivating of the growing crop (_nutricandum_); fourth, the ingathering (_legendum_); fifth, the storing (_condendum_), and sixth, the consuming (_promendum_)." 1° PREPARING TIME _Of tillage_ In the matter of preparation there are different things to be done for different crops, as, if you wish to make an orchard or an arbustum, you trench and grub and plough; if you plant grain, you plough and harrow; while, if you cultivate trees, you mulch their roots by breaking the earth with a mattock, more or less according to the nature of the tree, for some trees, like the cypress, have a small, and others like the plane tree have a large, root system (for example, that in the Lyceum at Athens described by Theophastus, which, when it was still a young tree, had a spread of roots to the extent of 33 cubits). If you break the ground with a plough and cattle, it is well to work the land a second time before you sow your seed. So, if you are making a meadow the preparation is to close it to the stock, and this is usually done when the pear tree is in bloom: if it is an irrigated meadow the preparation is to turn in the water at the proper time. _Of manuring_ XXXVIII. As part of this same operation should be considered what places in a field need manure and what kind of manure you can use to the greatest advantage, for the several kinds have different qualities. Cassius says that the best manure is that of birds, except swamp and sea birds,[89] but the best of all is, he claims, the manure of pigeons because it is the hottest and causes the land to ferment. This ought to be sown on the land like seed, not distributed in heaps like the dung of cattle. I myself think the best manure is that from aviaries in which thrushes and blackbirds are kept, because it is not only good for the land but serves as a fattening food for cattle and hogs: for which reason those who farm aviaries pay less rent when the owner stipulates that the manure is to be used on the farm, than those to whom it is a perquisite. Cassius advises that the manure next in value to that of doves is human feces, and third that of goats and sheep and asses. The manure of horses is of the least value on corn land, but on meadows it is the best, because, like the manure of other draught animals fed on barley, it brings a heavy stand of grass. The manure pit should be near the barn in order that it may be available with the least labour. If you plant a stake of oak wood in the manure pit it will not harbour serpents. 2° PLANTING TIME _Of the four methods of propagating plants_ XXXIX. The second operation, namely that of propagating, must be considered in relation to the proper time for sowing each kind of seed, for this concerns the aspect of the field you are to sow and the season fitting for what you are to plant. Do we not see some things grow best in the spring, others in summer, some in autumn, and others again in winter? For each plant is sowed or propagated or harvested in season according to its nature: so while most trees are grafted most successfully in spring, rather than the autumn, yet figs may be grafted at the summer solstice, and cherries even in winter. And since there are four methods of propagation of plants, by nature and by the several processes of art, namely: transplanting from one place to another, as is done in layering vines, what is called cuttage or propagating quick sets cut from trees, and graftage, which consists in transferring scions from one tree to another, let us consider at what season and in what locality you should do each of these things. _a. Seeding, and here of seed selection_ XL. In the first place, the seed, which is the principle of all germination, is of two kinds, that which is not appreciable by our senses and that which is. Seed is hidden from us when it is disseminated in the air, as the physicist Anaxagoras holds, or is distributed over the land by the surface water, as Theophrastus maintains. The seeds which the farmer can see should be studied with the greatest care. There are some varieties, like that of the cypress, which are so small as to be almost invisible, for those nuts which the cypress bears, that look like little balls covered with bark, are not the seed but contain it. Nature gave the principle of germination to seed, the rest of agriculture was left for the experience of man to discover, for in the beginning before the interference of man plants were generated before they were sown, afterwards those seeds which were collected by man from the original plants did not generate until after they had been sown. Seed should be examined to ascertain that it is not sterile by age, that it is clean, particularly that it is not adulterated with other varieties of similar appearances: for age has such effect upon seed as in some respects to change its very nature, thus it is said that rape will grow from old cabbage seed, and vice versa.[90] _b. Transplanting_ In respect of transplanting, care should be taken that it is done neither too soon nor too late. The fit time, according to Theophrastus, is spring and autumn and midsummer, but the same rule will not apply in all places and to all kinds of plants: for in dry and thin clay soil, which has little natural moisture, the wet spring is the time, but in a rich and fat soil it is safe to transplant in autumn. Some limit the practice of transplanting to a period of thirty days. _c. Cuttage_ In respect of cuttage, which consists in planting in the ground a live cutting from a tree, it behooves you especially to see that this is done at the proper time, which is before the tree has begun to bud or bloom: that you take off the cutting carefully rather than break it from the parent tree, because the cutting will be more firmly established in proportion as it has a broad footing which can readily put out roots: and that it is planted promptly before the sap dries out of it. In propagating olives select a truncheon of new grown wood about a foot in length and the same size at each end: some call these _clavolae_ and others call them _taleae_. _d. Graftage_ In respect of graftage, which consists in transferring growing wood from one tree to another, care must be taken in selecting the tree from which the scion is taken, the tree on which it is grafted, and the time and the manner in which it is done: for the pear cannot be grafted on an oak, even though it may upon the apple. In this operation many men who have great faith in the sayings of the soothsayers give heed to their warning that as many kinds of grafts there may be on a tree so many bolts of lightning will strike it, because a bolt of lightning is generated by each graft (_ictu_).[91] If you graft a cultivated pear upon a wild pear tree no matter how good it may be, the result will not be as fortunate as if you had grafted on another cultivated pear. Having regard for the result, on what ever kind of tree you graft, if it is of exactly the same kind, as, for instance, apple on apple, you should take care that the scion comes from a better tree than that on which it is grafted. _e. A "new" method--inarching_ There is another operation recently suggested,[92] for propagating one tree from another, when the trees are neighbours. From the tree from which you wish to take a scion a branch is trained to that on which you wish to make the graft and the scion is bound upon an incision in a branch of the stock. The place of contact of both scion and stock is cut away with a knife so that the bark of one joins evenly with the bark of the other at the point of exposure to the weather. Care should be taken that the growing top of the scion is pointed straight upwards. The following year when the graft has knitted, the scion may be cut from its parent tree. _Of when to use these different methods_ XLI. The most important consideration in propagating is, however, the time at which you do it: thus things which formerly were propagated in the spring now are propagated in summer, like the fig, whose wood is not heavy and so craves heat, as a consequence of which quality figs cannot be grown in cold climates. For the same reason water is dangerous to a new fig graft because its soft wood rots easily. For these reasons it is now considered that midsummer is the best season to propagate figs. On the other hand it is the custom to tie a pot of water above a graft of hard wood trees so that it may drip on the graft and prevent the scion from drying up before it has been incorporated with the stock. Care must be taken that the bark of the scion is kept intact, and to that end it should be sharpened but so that the pith (_medulla_) is not exposed. To prevent the rain or the heat from injuring it from without, it should be smeared with clay and bound with bark. It is customary to take off the scion of a vine three days before it is to be grafted so that the superfluity of moisture may drain out before the scion is inserted, or, if the graft is already in place, an incision is made in the stock a little below the graft from which the adventitious moisture may drain off: but this is not done with figs and pomegranates, for in all trees of a comparatively dry nature the graft is made immediately. Indeed, some trees, like the fig, are best grafted when the scion is in bud. Of the four kinds of propagation which I have discussed, that of graftage is preferred in respect of those trees which, like the fig, are slow in developing: for the natural seeds of the fig are those grains seen in the fruit we eat and are so small as scarcely to be capable of sprouting the slenderest shoots. For all seeds which are small and hard are slow in germinating, while those which are soft are more spontaneous, just as girls grow faster than boys. Thus by reason of their feminine tenderness the fig, the pomegranate and the vine are quicker to mature than the palm, the cypress and the olive, which are rather dry than humid by nature. Wherefore we some times propagate figs in nurseries from cuttings rather than attempt to raise them from seed: unless there is no other way to secure them, as happens when one wishes to send or receive seed across the sea. For this purpose the ripe figs which we eat are strung together and when they have dried out are packed and shipped wheresoever we wish, and thereafter being planted in a nursery they germinate. In this way the Chian, the Chalcidian, the Lydian, the African and other foreign varieties of figs were imported into Italy. For the same reason olives are usually propagated in nurseries from truncheons such as I have described, rather than from its seed, which is hard like a nut and slow to germinate. _Of seeding alfalfa_ XLII. You should take care not to plant alfalfa[93] in soil which is either too dry or half wet,[94] but in good order. The authorities say that if the soil is in proper condition a _modius_ (peck) and a half of alfalfa seed will suffice to sow a _jugerum_ of land. This seed is sowed broad-cast on the land like grass and grain. _Of seeding clover and cabbage_ XLIII. Snail clover (_cytisus_) and cabbage is sowed in beds well prepared and is transplanted from them and set out so that the plants are a foot and a half apart, also cuttings are taken from the stronger plants and set out like those which were raised from seed. _Of seeding grain_ XLIV. The quantity of seed required for one _jugerum_ is, of beans, four modii, of wheat five modii, of barley six modii, and of spelt ten modii: in some places a little more or a little less; if the soil is rich, more; if it is thin, less. Wherefore you should observe how much it is the custom to sow in your locality in order that you may do what the region and the quality of the soil demands, which is the more necessary as the same amount of seed will yield in some localities ten for one, and in others fifteen for one, as in Etruria. In Italy also, in the region of Sybaris it is said that seed yields as much as one hundred for one, and as much is claimed for the soil of Syria at Gadara, and in Africa at Byzacium.[95] It is also important to consider whether you will sow in land which is cropped every year which we call _restibilis_, or in fallow land (_vervactum_), which is [ploughed in the spring and so] allowed an interval of rest." "In Olynthia," said Agrius, "they are said to crop the land every year but to get a greater yield every third year." "A field ought to lie fallow every other year," said Stolo, "or at least be planted with some crop which makes less demand upon the soil." 3° CULTIVATING TIME "Tell us," said Agrius, "about the third operation which relates to the cultivation and the nourishment of the crops." _Of the conditions of plant growth_ "All things which germinate in the soil," replied Licinius, "in the soil also are nourished, come to maturity, conceive, are pregnant and in due time bear fruit or ear, so each fruit after its kind yields seed similar to that from which it is sprung. Thus if you pluck a blossom or a green pear from a pear tree, or the like from any other tree, nothing will grow again in that place during the same year, because a tree cannot have two periods of fruition in the same season. They produce only as women bear children, when their time has come." XLV. Barley usually sprouts in seven days after it has been sowed, and wheat not much later, while the legumes almost always sprout in four or five days, except the bean, which is somewhat later. Millet and sesame and the other similar grains sprout in the same time unless some thing in the nature of the soil or the weather retards them. If the locality is cold, those plants which are propagated in the nursery and are tender by nature ought to be protected from the frosts by coverings of leaves or straw, and, if rains follow, care should be taken that water is not permitted to stand any where about them, for ice is a poison to tender roots under ground, as to sprouts above, and prevents them from developing normally. In autumn and winter the roots develop more than does the leaf of the plant because they are nourished by the warmth of the roof of earth, while the leaf above is cut down by the frosty air. We can learn this by observation of the wild vegetation which grows without the intervention of man, for the roots grow more rapidly than that which springs from them, but only so far as they are actuated by the rays of the sun. There are two causes of the growth of roots, the vitality of the root itself by which nature drives it forward, and the quality of the soil which yields a passage more easily in some conditions than in others. _Of the mechanical action of plants_ XLVI. In their effect upon plants such natural forces as I have mentioned produce some curious mechanical results. Thus it is possible to determine the time of the year from the motion of the leaves of certain trees like the olive, the white poplar and the willow, for when the summer solstice has arrived their leaves turn over. Not less curious is the habit of that flower which is called the heliotrope, which in the morning looks upon the rising sun and, following its journey to its setting, never turns away its face. _Of the protection of nurseries and meadows_ XLVII. Those plants, which, like olives and figs, are grown in the nursery from cuttings and are of a tender nature, should be protected by sheds built of two planks fastened at each end: moreover they should be weeded, and this should be done while the weeds are still young, for after they have become dry they offer resistance, and more readily break off in your hand than yield to your pull. On the other hand the grass which springs in the meadows and gives you hope of forage not only should not be rooted out while it is growing, but should not even be walked upon; hence both the flock and the herd should be excluded from the meadow at this time and even man himself should keep away, for grass disappears under the foot and the track soon becomes a path. _Of the structure of a wheat plant_ XLVIII. A corn plant consists of a culm bearing at its head a spike, which, when it is not mutilated, has, as in barley and wheat, three parts, namely: the grain, the glume and the beard, not to speak of the sheath which contains the spike while it is being formed. The grain is that solid interior part of the spike, the glume is its hull and the beard those long thin needles which grow out of the glume. Thus as the glume is the pontifical robe of the grain, the beard is its apex. The beard and the grain are well known to almost every one, but the glume to very few: indeed I know only one book in which it is mentioned, the translation which Ennius made of the verses of Evhemerus. The etymology of the word _gluma_ seems to be from _glubere_, to strip, because the grain must be stripped from this hull: and by a like derivation the hull of the fig which we eat is called a glume. The beard we call _arista_ because it is the first part of the corn to dry (_arescere_), while we call the grain _granum_ from the fact that it is produced (_gerere_), for we plant corn to produce grain, not glumes or beards, just as vines are planted to produce grapes, not tendrils. The spike, which, by tradition, the country people call _speca_, seems to get its name from _spes_, hope. For men plant with hope of the harvest. A spike which has no beard is called polled (_muticus_), for, when the spike is first forming, the beard, like the horns of a young animal, is not apparent but lies hid like a sword in its scabbard under a wrapping of foliage which hence is called the sheath. When the spike is mature its taper end above the grain is called the _frit_, while that below, where the spike joins the straw culm, is called the _urruncum_. XLIX. When Stolo drew breath, no one asked any questions, and so, believing that enough had been said on the subject of the care of the growing crops, he resumed. 4° HARVEST TIME "I will now speak about the gathering of the crops." _Of the hay harvest_ And first of the meadows: when the grass ceases to grow and begins to dry out with the heat, then it should be cut with scythes and, as it begins to cure, turned with forks. When it is cured it should be tied in bales and hauled into the steading; then what hay was left lying should be raked together and stacked, and, finally, when this has all been done, the meadow should be gleaned, that is, gone over with the sickle to save what ever grass escaped the mowing, such as that left standing on tussocks. From this act of cutting (_sectare_) I think that the word _sicilire_ (to glean with a sickle) is derived. _Of the wheat harvest_ L. The word harvest (_messis_) is properly used with respect to the ingathering of those crops which are reaped, and from this action (_metere_) its name is derived, but it is mostly used in respect of corn. There are three methods of harvesting corn, one as in Umbria, where they cradle the straw close to the earth and shock up the sheaves as they are cut: when a sufficient number of shocks has been made, they go over them again and cut each sheaf between the spikes and the straw, the spikes being thrown into baskets and sent off to the threshing floor, while the straw is left in the field and stacked. A second method of harvesting is practised in Picenum, where they have a curved wooden header[96] on the edge of which is fixed an iron saw: when this instrument engages the spikes of grain it cuts them off, leaving the straw standing in the field, where it is afterwards cut. A third method of harvesting, which is used in the vicinity of Rome and in most places, is to cut the straw in the middle and take away the upper part with the left hand (whence the word to reap [_metere_] is, I think, derived from the word _medium_--connoting a cutting in the middle). The lower part of the straw which remains standing is cut later,[97] while the rest, which goes with the grain, is hauled off in baskets to the threshing floor and there in an airy place is winnowed with a shovel (_pala_) from which perhaps the chaff (_palea_) takes its name. Some derive the name of straw (_stramentum_) from the fact that it stands (_stare_), as they think the word _stamen_ is also derived, while others derive it from the fact that it is spread (_strare_), because straw is used as litter for cattle. The grain should be harvested when it is ripe: it is considered that under normal conditions and in an easy field one man should reap almost a jugerum a day and still have time to carry the grain in baskets to the threshing floor. _The threshing floor_ LI. The threshing floor should be on high ground so that the wind can blow upon it from all directions. It should be constructed of a size proportioned to your crops, preferably round and with the centre slightly raised so that if it rains the water may not stand on it but drain off as quickly as possible, and there is no shorter distance from the centre to the circumference of a circle than a radius:[98] it should be paved with well packed earth, best of all of clay, so that it may not crack in the sun and open honeycombs in which the grain can hide itself, and water collect and give vent to the burrows of mice and ants. It is the practice to anoint the threshing floor with amurca,[99] for that is an enemy of grass and a poison to ants and to moles. Some build up and even pave their threshing floor with rock to make it permanent, and some, like the people of Bagiennae, even roof it over because in that country storms are prevalent at the threshing season. In a hot country where the threshing floor is uncovered it is desirable to build a shelter near by where the hands can resort in the heat of the day. _Threshing and winnowing_ LII. The heaviest and best of the sheaves should be selected on the threshing floor and the spikes laid aside for seed. The grain is threshed from the spikes on the threshing floor, an operation which some perform by means of a sledge drawn by a yoke of oxen: this sledge consisting of a wooden platform, studded underneath with flints or iron spikes, on which either the driver rides or some heavy weight is imposed in order, as it is drawn around, to separate the grain from the chaff: others use for this purpose what is called the punic cart, consisting of a series of axle trees, equipped with toothed rollers, on which some one sits and drives the cattle which draw it, as they do in hither Spain and other places. Others cause the grain to be trodden out under the hoofs of a herd of driven cattle, which are kept moving by goading them with long poles. When the grain has been threshed it should be tossed from the ground by means of a winnowing basket or a winnowing shovel when the wind is blowing gently, and this is done in such way that the lightest part, which is called the chaff, is blown away beyond the threshing floor, while the heavy part, which is the corn, comes clean into the basket.[100] _Gleaning_ LIII. After the harvest is over the grain fields should be gleaned of shattered grain, and the straw left in the field should be gathered and housed, but if there is little to be gained by such work, and the expense is disproportionate, the stubble should be grazed: for in farming it is of the greatest importance that the expense of an operation shall not exceed the return from it. _Of the vintage_ LIV. In vineyards the vintage should begin when the grape is ripe, but care must be taken with what kind of grapes and in what part of the vineyard you begin: for the early grapes and the mixed variety, which is called black, ripen some time before the others and should be gathered first, like the fruit grown on the side of the arbustum, or of the vineyard, which is exposed to the sun. During the gathering those grapes from which you expect to make wine should be separated from those reserved for the table: the choicer being carried to the wine press and collected in empty jars, while those reserved to eat are collected in separate baskets, transferred to little pots and stored in jars packed with marc, though some are immersed in the pond in jars daubed with pitch and some raised to a shelf in the store room. The stems and the skins of the grapes which have been trodden out should be put under the press so that any must left in them may be added to the supply in the vat. When this marc ceases to yield a flow, it is chopped with a knife and pressed again, and the must expressed by this final operation is hence called _circumcisitum_[101] and is kept by itself because it smacks of the knife. The marc finally remaining is thrown into jars, to which water is added, thus preparing a drink which is called after-wine or grape juice, and is given to the hands in the winter instead of wine. _Of the olive harvest_ LV. And now of the harvest of the olive yard.[102] You should pick by hand, rather than beat from the tree, all the olives which can be reached from the ground or from a ladder, because this fruit becomes arid when it has been struck and does not yield so much oil: and in picking by hand it is better to do so with the bare fingers rather than with a tool because the texture of a tool not only injures the berry but barks the branches and leaves them exposed to the frost. So it is better to use a reed than a pole to strike down the fruit which cannot be reached by hand, for (as the proverb is) the heavier the blow, the more need there is for a surgeon. He who beats his trees should beware of doing injury, for often an olive when it is struck away brings down with it from the branch a twig, and when this happens the fruit of the following year is lost: and this is not the least reason why it is said that the olive bears fruit, or much fruit, only every other year. Like the grape, the olive serves a two-fold function after it is gathered. Some are set aside to be eaten and the rest are made into oil, which comforts the body of man not only within but without, for it follows us into the bath and the gymnasium. Those berries from which it is proposed to make oil are usually stored in heaps on tables for several days where they may mellow a little. Each heap in turn is carried in crates to the oil jars and to the _trapetus_, or pressing mill, which is equipped with both hard and rough stones. If the olives are left too long in the heap they heat and spoil and the oil is rancid, so if you are unable to grind promptly the heaps of olives should be ventilated by moving them. The yield of the olive is of two kinds, oil which is well known and _amurca_, of the use of which many are so ignorant that one can often see it streaming from the mill and wasting upon the ground where it not only discolours the soil, but in places where it collects even makes it sterile: while if applied intelligently it has many uses of the greatest importance to agriculture, as, for instance, by pouring it around the roots of trees, chiefly the olive itself, or wherever it is desired to destroy weeds.[103] _5° HOUSING TIME_ LVI. "Up to this moment," cried Agrius, "I have been sitting in the barn with the keys in my hands waiting for you, Stolo, to bring in the harvest." "Lo, I am here at the threshold," replied Stolo. "Open the gates for me." _Of storing hay_ In the first place, it is better to house your hay than to leave it stacked in the field, for thus it makes more palatable provender, as may be proven by putting both kinds before the cattle. _Of storing grain_ LVII. But corn should be stored in an elevated granary, exposed to the winds from the east and the north, and where no damp air may reach it from places near at hand. The walls and the floors should be plastered with a stucco of marble dust or at least with a mixture of clay and chaff and amurca, for amurca will serve to keep out mice and weevil and will make the grain solid and heavy. Some men even sprinkle their grain with amurca in the proportion of a quadrantal to every thousand modii of grain: others crumble or scatter over it, for the same purpose, other vermifuges like Chalcidian or Carian chalk or wormwood, and other things of that kind. Some farmers have their granaries under ground, like caverns, which they call silos, as in Cappadocia and Thrace, while in hither Spain, in the vicinity of Carthage, and at Osca pits are used for this purpose, the bottoms of which are covered with straw: and they take care that neither moisture nor air has access to them, except when they are opened for use, a wise precaution because where the air does not move the weevil will not hatch. Corn stored in this way is preserved for fifty years, and millet, indeed, for more than a century. On the ether hand again, in hither Spain and in certain parts of Apulia they build elevated granaries above ground, which the winds keep cool, not only by windows at the sides but also from underneath the floor. _Of storing legumes_ LVIII. Beans and other legumes keep safe a long time in oil jars covered with ashes. Cato says the little Aminnean grape, as well as the large variety and that called Apician, keep very well when buried in earthen pots: or they may be preserved quite as well in boiled new wine, or in fresh after-wine. The varieties which keep best when hung up are the hard grapes and those known as the Aminnean Scantian. _Of storing pome fruits_ LIX. The pome fruits, like the preserving sparrow apples, quinces and the varieties of apples known as Scantian, and 'little rounds' (_orbiculata_) and those which formerly were called winesap (_mustea_), and now are called honey apples (_melimela_), can all be kept safely in a cold and dry place when laid on straw, and so those who build fruit houses take care to have the windows give upon the north wind and that it may blow through them: but they should not be left without shutters for fear that the fruits should lose their moisture and become shrivelled by the effect of the continuous wind. The vaults, the walls and the pavements of these fruiteries are usually laid in stucco to keep them cool: thus rendering them such pleasant resorts that some men even spread there their dining couches: as well they may, for if the pursuit of luxury impels some of us to turn our dining rooms into picture galleries in order to regale even our eyes with works of art [while we eat], should we not find still greater gratification in contemplating the works of nature displayed in a savory array of beautiful fruits, especially if this was not procured, as has been done, by setting up in your fruitery on the occasion of a party a supply of fruit purchased for the purpose in town? Some think best to dispose their apples in the fruitery on concrete tables, others on beds of straw, and some even on flocks of wool. Pomegranates are preserved by sticking their twigs in jars of sand, quinces and sparrow apples are strung together and hung up, but the late maturing Anician pears are best preserved in boiled must. Sorbs and pears also are some times cut up and dried in the sun, though the sorb may be easily preserved intact by keeping them in a dry place: turnips are cut up and preserved in mustard, while walnuts keep well in sand, as I have explained with respect to ripe pomegranates. There is a similar way of ripening pomegranates: put the fruit, while it is still green and attached to its branch, in a pot without a bottom, bury this in the earth and scrape the soil around the protruding branch so as to keep out the air, and when the pomegranates are dug up they will be found to be not only intact but larger than if they had hung all the time on the tree. _Of storing olives_ LX. With respect to preserving olives, Cato advises that table olives, both the round and the bitter berried kinds, keep best in brine both when they are dry and when they are green, but if they are bruised it is well to put them in mastich oil. Round olives will retain their black colour if they are packed in salt for five days, and then, the salt having been brushed away, are exposed for two days in the sun: or they may be preserved in must boiled down to one-third, without the use of salt. _Of storing amurca_ LXI. Experienced farmers do well to save their amurca as they do their oil and their wine. The method of preserving it is this: immediately after the oil has been pressed out, draw off the amurca and boil it down to one-third and, when it has cooled, store it in vats. There are other methods also, as that in which must is mingled with the amurca. 6° CONSUMING TIME LXII. Since no one stores his crops except to bring them out again, it remains to make a few observations upon the sixth and last operation in our round of agriculture. Crops which have been stored are brought out either to care for them, to consume them or to sell them, and as all crops are not alike there are different times for caring for them and for consuming them. _Of cleaning grain_ LXIII. Grain is taken out of store to be cleaned, when the weevil begins to damage it. When this is apparent the grain should be laid out in the sun and bowls of water placed nearby and the weevil will swarm on this water and drown themselves. Those who store their grain in the pits which are called silos should not attempt to bring out the grain for some time after the silo has been opened because there is danger of suffocation in entering a recently opened silo. The corn which, during the harvest time, you stored in the ear and which you contemplate using for food, should be brought out during the winter to be crushed and ground in the grist mill. _Of condensing amurca_ LXIV. When it flows from the oil mill, amurca is a watery fluid full of dregs. It is the custom to store it in this state in earthen jars and fifteen days later to skim off the scum from the top and transfer this to other jars, an operation which is repeated at regular intervals twelve times during the following six months, taking care that the last skimming is done on the wane of the moon. Then it is boiled in a copper kettle over a slow fire until it is reduced two-thirds, when it may be drawn off for use. _Of racking wine_ LXV. When the must is stored in the vat to make wine, it should not be racked off while it is fermenting nor until this process has advanced so far that the wine may be considered to be made. If you wish to drink old wine, it is not made until a year is completed; when it is a year old, then draw it out. But if your vineyard contains that kind of grape which turns sour early, you should eat the fruit, or sell it before the succeeding vintage. There are kinds of wine, like that of Falernum, which improve the longer you keep them. _Of preserved olives_ LXVI. If you attempt to eat white olives immediately after you have put them up and before they are cured your palate will reject them on account of their bitterness (and the same is true of the black olive) unless you dip them in salt to make them palatable. _Of nuts, dates and figs_ LXVII. The sooner you use nuts, dates and figs after they have been stored, the more palatable they will be, for by keeping figs lose their flavour, dates rot and nuts dry up. _Of stored fruits_ LXVIII. Fruits which are strung, such as grapes, apples and sorbs show by their appearance when they may be taken down for use, for by their change of colour and shrinking they reveal themselves as destined to the garbage pile unless they are eaten in time. Sorbs which have been laid by when they are already dead-ripe should be used promptly, but those which were picked green are slower to decay: for green fruit in the store house must there go through the process of ripening which was denied it on the tree. _Of marketing grain_ LXIX. The spelt which you wish to have prepared for food should be taken out in the winter to be ground in the mill: but your seed corn should not be taken out until the fields are ready to receive it, a rule which obtains in respect of all kinds of seed. What you have for sale should be taken out at the appropriate time also, for some things which cannot be kept long without spoiling should be taken out and sold promptly, while others which keep should be retained so that you may sell when the price is high, for often commodities which are kept on hand a long time, will, if put on the market at the proper time, not only yield interest for the time you held them but even a double profit. As Stolo was speaking, the freedman of the Sacristan ran up to us with his eyes full of tears and, begging our pardon for having kept us waiting so long, invited us to come to the funeral on the following day. We all sprang up and cried out together "What? To the funeral? Whose funeral? What has happened?" The freedman, weeping, told us that his master had been struck down by a blow with a knife, but who did it he had been unable to discover by reason of the crowd, all that he heard being an exclamation that a mistake had been made. He added that when he had carried his master home and had sent the servants to call a doctor, whom they brought back with them quickly, he trusted that it might seem reasonable to us that he had waited to attend upon the doctor rather than come to notify us at once, and while he had not been able to be of any service to his master, who had given up the ghost in a few minutes, yet he hoped we might approve his conduct. Accepting these excuses as amply justified, we descended from the temple bewildered more by the hazard of human life than surprised that such a fate should be possible at Rome:[104] and so we went our several ways. BOOK II THE HUSBANDRY OF LIVE STOCK _Introduction: the decay of country life_ Those great men our ancestors did well to esteem the Romans who lived in the country above those who dwelt in town. For as our peasants today contemn the tenant of a villa as an idler in comparison with the busy life of an agricultural labourer, so our ancestors regarded the sedentary occupations of the town as waste of time from their habitual rural pursuits: and in consequence they so divided their time that they might have to devote only one day of the week to their affairs in town, reserving the remaining seven for country life.[105] So long as they persisted in this practice they accomplished two things both that their farms were fertile through good cultivation and that they themselves enjoyed the best of health: they felt no need of those Greek gymnasia which now every one of us must have in his town house, nor did they deem that in order to enjoy a house in the country one must give sounding Greek names to all its apartments, such as [Greek: prokoiton] (antechamber) [Greek: palaistra] (exercising room) [Greek: apodutaerion] (dressing room) [Greek: peristulon] (arcade) [Greek: ornithon] or (poultry house) [Greek: peristereon] (dove cote) [Greek: oporothaekae] (fruitery) and the like. Since now forsooth most of our gentry crowd into town, abandoning the sickle and the plough and prefer to exercise their hands in the theatre and the circus rather than in the corn field and the vineyard, it has resulted that we must fain buy the very corn that fills our bellies and have it hauled in for us, yea, out of Africa and Sardinia, while we bring home the vintage in ships from the islands of Cos and Chios! And so it has happened that those lands which the shepherds who founded the city taught their children to cultivate are now, by their later descendants, converted again from corn fields back to pastures, thus in their greed of gain violating even the law, since they fail to distinguish the difference between agriculture and grazing.[106] For a shepherd is one thing and a ploughman another, nor for all that he may feed his stock on farm land is a drover the same as a teamster: herded cattle, indeed, do nothing to create what grows in the land, but destroy it with their teeth, while the yoked ox on the contrary conduces to the maturity of grain in the corn fields and forage in the fallow land. The practice and the art of the farmer is one thing, I say; that of the shepherd another; the farmer's object being that what ever may be produced by cultivating the land should yield a profit; that of the shepherd to make his profit from the increase of his flock; and yet the relation between them is intimate because it is much more desirable for a farmer to feed his forage on the land than to sell it, and a herd of cattle is the best source of supply of that which is the most available food of growing plants, namely, manure:[107] so it follows that whoever has a farm ought to practise both arts, that of agriculture and that of grazing cattle, indeed, also that of feeding game, as is done at our country houses, since no little profit may be derived from aviaries and rabbit warrens and fish ponds. And since I have written a book concerning the first of these occupations--that of the husbandry of agriculture--for my wife Fundania because of her interest in that subject, now, my dear Turranius Niger, I write this one on the husbandry of live stock for you, who are so keen a stock fancier that you are a frequent attendant at the cattle market at Macri Campi, where, by your fortunate speculations, you have found means to make provision for many crying expenses. I could do this on my own authority because I am myself a considerable owner of live stock with my flocks of sheep in Apulia and my stud of horses at Reate, but I will run through the subject, briefly and summarily rehearsing what I gathered from conversation with certain large stock feeders in Epirus at the time when, being in command of the fleet in Greece during the war with the pirates, I lay between Delos and Sicily.[108] _Of the origin, the importance and the economy of live stock husbandry_ I.[109] When Menates had gone, Cossinius said to me: "We shall not let you go until you have explained those three points which you began to discuss the other day when we were interrupted." "What three points," said Murrius. "Are they those concerning feeding cattle, of which you spoke to me yesterday?" "Yes," replied Cossinius, "they are the considerations of what was the origin, what the importance, and what the economy of the husbandry of live stock. Varro here had begun to discourse upon them while we were calling on Petus during his illness, when the arrival of the physician interrupted us." "Of the three divisions of the [Greek: historikon] or interpretation of this subject, which you have mentioned, I will venture," said I, "to speak only of the first two, of the origin and of the importance of this industry. The third division, of how it should be practised, Scrofa shall undertake for us, as one, if I may speak Greek to a company of half Greek shepherds [Greek: hos per mou pollon ameinon] (who is better qualified than I am),[110] for Scrofa was the teacher of C. Lucilius Hirrus, your son-in-law, whose flocks and herds in Bruttii have such reputation." "But," interrupted Scrofa, "you shall hear what we have to say only on condition that you, who come from Epirus and are masters of the art of feeding cattle, shall recompense us and shall give public testimony of what you know on the subject: for none of us knows it all." Having thus assumed that my share of the discussion should be the first or theoretical part of the subject (which I did, although I have a stock farm in Italy, because, as the proverb is, not every one who owns a lyre is a musician), I began: "Doubtless in the very order of nature both man and cattle have existed since the beginning of time, for whether we believe that there was a First Cause of the generation of animals, as Thales of Miletus and Zeno of Citium maintained, or that there was none as was the opinion of Pythagoras of Samos and Aristotle of Stagira, it is, as Dicaearchus points out, a necessity of human life to have descended gradually from the earliest time to the present day: thus in the beginning was the primitive age when man lived on whatever the virgin soil produced spontaneously; thence he descended to the second or pastoral age, when, as he had formerly gathered for his use acorns,[111] strawberries, mulberries and apples by picking them from trees and bushes, so now, to satisfy a like need, he captured in the woods such as he could of the wild beasts of the field, and, having enclosed, began to domesticate them. Among these it is considered not without reason that sheep were foremost, both because of their utility and because of their docile nature, for this animal is the gentlest of all and most readily accommodated to the life of man, and supplies him with milk and cheese for food, and skins and wool to clothe his body. "Finally, by the third step, man descended from the pastoral age to that of agriculture. In this there have persisted many relics of the two preceding ages, which, long remaining in their original state, are found even in our day: for in many places may yet be seen some kinds of our domestic cattle still in their wild state, such as the large flocks of wild sheep in Phrygia, and in Samothrace a species of wild goats like those which are called "big horns" (platycerotes) and abound in Italy on the mountains of Fiscellum and Tetrica. Every body knows that there are wild swine, unless you maintain that the wild boar is not a true member of the swine family. "There are still many cattle running at large in Dardania, Medica and Thrace, while there are wild asses in Phrygia and Lycaonia, and wild horses in certain regions of hither Spain. "I have now told you of the origin of the industry of feeding cattle. As to its importance, I have this to say: "The most important persons of antiquity were all keepers of live stock, as both the Greek and Latin languages reveal, as well as the earliest poets, who describe their heroes some as [Greek: polyarnos] (rich in lambs), some as [Greek: polymaelos] (rich in sheep), and others as [Greek: polyboutaes] (rich in herds), and tell of flocks which on account of their value were said to have golden fleeces, like that of Atreus in Argos which he complained that Thyestes stole away from him: or that ram which Aeetes sacrificed at Colchis, whose fleece was the quest of those princes known as the Argonauts: or again like those so called golden apples (_mala_) of the Hesperides that Hercules brought back from Africa into Greece, which were, according to the ancient tradition, in fact goats and sheep which the Greeks, from the sound of their voice, called [Greek: maela]: indeed, much in the same way our country people, using a different letter (since the bleat of a sheep seems to make more of the sound of _bee_ than of _me_) say that sheep "be-alare," whence by the elision of a letter as often happens, is derived the word _belare_ (or _balare_), to bleat. "If cattle had not been held in the highest esteem among the ancients the astrologers would not have called the signs of the zodiac by their names in describing the heavens: and they not only did not hesitate to place them there but many even begin their enumeration of the twelve signs with these animal names, thus giving Aries and Taurus precedence over Apollo and Hercules, whose signs, very gods as they are, are subordinated under the name of Gemini: nor did they deem that a sixth of these twelve signs was a sufficient proportion for the names of cattle, but they must even add Capricornus and make it a quarter. Furthermore, in naming the constellations they selected other names of cattle, as the goat, the kid, and the dog. And in like manner have not certain parts both of the sea and of the land taken their names from cattle, as witness the Aegean Sea, which is called after the Greek name for goat [Greek: aigeos], and Mount Taurus in Syria after the bull, and Mount Cantherius in the Sabine country after the horse, and the Thracian, as well as the Cimmerian, Bosphorus, after the ox: and again many place names on land like the town in Greece known as [Greek: hippion Argos], or horse breeding Argos. Yea, Italy itself derives its name, according to Piso, from _vitula_, our word for heifer. "Who can deny that the Roman people themselves are sprung from a race of shepherds, for every one knows that Faustulus, the foster father of Romulus and Remus, who brought them up, was a shepherd. Is it not proof that they were shepherds that they chose the Parilia, or feast of the goddess of the shepherds, in preference to all other days, for the founding of the city; that a penalty even to this day is assessed in terms of cattle or sheep, according to the ancient custom; that our most ancient money, the _as_ of cast copper, always bore the effigy of some domestic animal; that whenever a town was founded the limits of the walls and the gates were laid off with a plough drawn by a bull and a cow yoked together; that when the Roman people are purified it is done by driving around them a boar, a ram and a bull, whence the sacrifice is known as the Suovetaurilia; that we have many family names among us derived from both the great and small cattle: thus from small cattle Porcius, Ovinius, Caprilius, and from great cattle Equitius, Taurius, and some of our families have received from cattle cognomens which signify for what they are esteemed, as, for instance, the Annius family are called Capra, the Statilius family are called Taurus and the Pomponius family are called Vitulus, and so many others are derived from cattle. "It remains now to discuss the art of animal husbandry, and on this subject our friend Scrofa, to whom this age has awarded the palm for excellence in all branches of farm management, will say what ever is to be said, as he is better qualified than am I." When all eyes had been turned upon him, Scrofa began: "Doubtless the art of breeding and of feeding cattle consists in getting the maximum profit out of those things from which the very name of money is derived, for our word for money (_pecunia_) comes from _pecus_, cattle, which is the foundation of all wealth. "Our enquiry may be divided into nine subjects, or three parts each with three subdivisions, namely: (i) concerning small cattle, of which the three kinds are sheep, goats and swine: (2) concerning large cattle, which are likewise divided by nature into three species, neat cattle, asses and horses: and (3) concerning those instruments of animal husbandry which are not kept for profit but for convenience, namely: mules, dogs and shepherds. Each of these nine subjects must be considered under nine heads: (a) four relating to the acquisition of cattle, (b) four to the care of them, and (c) one which has to do with all the others. So there are at least eighty-one chapters for discussion of the subject, all indispensable and all of great importance. "Under the head (a) of acquisition, it is first of all necessary, to enable you to buy good live stock, that you should know at what age it is best to buy and to keep each different kind. For instance, you may buy neat cattle for less money before they are a year old and after they are ten, because they begin to breed at two or three years and leave off soon after the tenth year, the beginning and the end of the life of all live stock being sterile. The second consideration under this head is a knowledge of the conformation of each kind of cattle and what it should be, for this is of great importance in determining the value of all animals. Thus experienced stockmen buy cattle with black horns rather than white, large goats rather than small, and swine with long bodies and short heads. The third consideration under this head is to make sure of the breeding. On this account the asses of Arcadia are celebrated in Greece, as are those of Reate in Italy, so that I remember an ass that brought sixty thousand sesterces, and a four-in-hand team at Rome that was held at four hundred thousand. The fourth consideration is of the legal precautions to be observed in buying live stock, for in order that title may pass from one to another certain formalities must intervene, since neither a contract nor even the payment of the purchase money suffices in all cases to transfer a title: thus in buying you some times stipulate that the animal is in good health, some times that it comes out of a healthy flock or herd, and some times no stipulation at all is made. "Under the head (b) of the care of live stock, the four considerations are what should be done, after you have bought your cattle, in respect of feeding, of breeding, of raising them, and of maintaining their health. In the matter of feeding, which is the first of these considerations, the three things to be observed are where and how much, when, and on what your cattle will graze: thus it suits goats better to graze on rough and mountain land than in fat pastures, while the contrary is true of horses. Nor are the same places fit for grazing for all kinds of cattle both in summer and winter: thus flocks of sheep are driven from Apulia a long distance into Samnium to spend the summer, and are reported to the tax farmer to be registered lest they violate the regulations of the censor.[112] "In the same way mules are driven in the summer from the prairie of Rosea to the high mountains of Gurgures. "The rules for feeding each kind of live stock in the barn yard must also be studied, as, for instance, that hay is fed to the horse and the ox, while it will not do for swine which require mast, and that barley and beans should at intervals be fed to some kinds of stock, lupines to draft cattle and alfalfa and clover to milch cows. Furthermore, it is desirable to feed the ram and the bull more heavily for thirty days before admitting them to the flock and the herd, the purpose being to increase their strength, while on the other hand the feed of the cows is cut down at that time because it is deemed that they breed most successfully when they are thin. "The next consideration is concerning breeding, which I call the period between conception and birth, for these are the beginning and the end of pregnancy. First of all then we should consider the stinting and the season at which this should be accomplished, for as the season from the rising of the west wind to the vernal equinox (February-March) is considered best for swine, so that from the setting of Arcturus to the setting of Aquila (May-July) is best for sheep. Furthermore, a rule should be made that the male animals are kept apart from the females for some time before they are bred, a period which neatherds and shepherds usually fix at two months. The next consideration is of the rules to be observed while the animal is pregnant, because the periods of gestation differ in the several domestic animals: thus the mare goes twelve months, the cow ten, the ewe and the goat five and the sow four. "In Spain is reported a phenomenon of breeding which seems incredible, but is nevertheless true, namely: that on Mount Tagnus on that part of the coast of Lusitania near the town of Olisippo, mares are some times impregnated by the wind,[113] some thing which often happens with respect to chickens, whence their eggs are called [Greek: hypaenemios] (conceived by the wind),[114] but the foals born of such mares never live more than three years. "When lambs are born in due season, or what we call _chordi_ (that is to say those lambs which are born late and have remained beyond their season in the belly of the dam, the name _chordi_, being derived from [Greek: chorion] the Greek name for the membrane which is called the after birth), care must be taken to clean them and set them gently on their feet and to prevent the dam from crushing them. "On the third consideration with respect to raising young animals, you must consider for how long they should be permitted to suck the dam and when and where, and if the mother has an insufficient supply of milk, how you may put the young one to nurse at the udder of another: in which case they are called _subrumi_, that is to say, under the udder, for I think that rumis is an old word for udder. "Lambs are weaned usually at the end of four months, kids in three, pigs in two. Weanling pigs, from the fact that they are considered fit to be offered for sacrifice at that age, were formerly called _sacres_ as Plautus calls them when he says, "What's the price of sacred pigs?"[115] In like manner stall fed cattle, which are being fattened for the public sacrifices, are called _opimi_. "The fourth consideration relates to the health of the cattle, a subject as important as it is complex, for a single beast which may be sick or infected and ailing often brings a great calamity on an entire herd. There are two degrees of the healing art, one which requires consultation with a surgeon, as for men: the other which the skilful shepherd can himself practise, and this consists of three parts, namely: the consideration of what are the causes, the symptoms and the treatment which should be followed in relation to each malady. The common causes of disease in cattle are excess of heat or of cold, overwork, or its opposite lack of exercise, or, if when they have been worked, you give them food and drink at once without an interval of rest. The symptoms of fever due to heat or overwork are a gaping mouth, heavy humid breath and a burning body. The cure when such is the malady is this: bathe the animal with water, rub it with a warm mixture of oil and wine, put it on a nourishing diet, blanket it as protection against chills and give it tepid water when it is thirsty.[116] If this treatment does not suffice, let the blood, chiefly from the head. "So there are different causes and different symptoms of the maladies peculiar to each kind of cattle, and the flock master should have them all written down. "It remains to speak of the ninth head (c), which I mentioned, and this relates to the number of cattle to be kept and so concerns both of the other heads. "For whoever buys cattle must consider the number of herds and how many in each herd he can feed on his land, lest his pastures prove short or more than he need, as so in either case the profit be lost. Further more, one should know how many breeding ewes there are in the flock, how many rams, how many lambs of each sex, how many culls to be weeded out. Thus, if a ewe has more lambs at a birth than she can nourish, you should do what some shepherds practise--take part of them away from her, which is done to the end that those remaining may prosper." "Beware!" put in Atticus, "that your generalisations do not lead you astray, and that your insistence on the rule of nine does not contradict your own definition of small and large cattle: for how can all your principles be applied to mules and to shepherds, since those with respect to breeding certainly cannot be followed so far as they are concerned. As to dogs I can see their application. I admit even that men may be included in them, because they have their wives on the farm in winter, and indeed even in their summer pasture camps, a concession which is deemed beneficial because it attaches the shepherds to their flocks, and by begetting children they increase the establishment and with it the profit on your investment." "If Scrofa's number cannot be measured with a carpenter's rule," said I, "neither can many other generalisations, as, for instance, when we say that a thousand ships sailed against Troy, or that a certain court of Rome consists of a hundred judges (_centumviri_). Leave out, if you wish, the two chapters relating to breeding in so far as mules are concerned." "But why should we," exclaimed Vaccius, "for it is related that on several occasions at Rome a mule has had a foal." To back up what Vaccius had said, I cited Mago and Dionysius as writing that when mules and mares conceive they bear in the twelfth month. "If," I added, "it is considered a prodigy in Italy when a mule has a foal, it is not necessarily so in all countries. For is it not true that swallows and swans breed in Italy, which do not lay in other lands, and don't you know that the Syrian date palm, which bears fruit in Judea, does not yield in Italy?" "If you prefer," said Scrofa, "to make out the entire eighty-one chapters without any on the care of mules during the breeding season, there are subjects with which you can fill this double vacancy by adding those two kinds of extraordinary profit which is derived from live stock. One of these is the fleece which men shear or pull from sheep and goats, the other, which is more widely practised, that from milk and cheese: the Greek writers indeed actually treat this separately under the title [Greek: turopoiia], and have written extensively about it." _Of sheep_ II. "And now, since I have completed my task and the economy of live stock husbandry has been defined, do you, men of Epirus, requite us by expounding the subject in detail, so that we may see of what the shepherds of Pergamis and Maledos are capable." At this challenge, Atticus (who then was known as T. Pomponius but now as Q. Caecilius retaining the same cognomen)[117] began as follows: "I gather that I must make the beginning since you seem to turn your eyes upon me: so I will speak of those cattle which you, Varro, have called primitive, for you say that sheep were the first of the wild beasts of the field which were captured and domesticated by man. "In the first place you should buy good sheep, and they are so judged primarily in respect of their age, that they are not what is known as aged nor yet undeveloped lambs, because neither can yield you any profit, the one no longer, the other not yet: but you may deem that age which holds out a promise preferable to that whose only future is death. So far as concerns conformation, a sheep should have a round barrel, wool thick and soft and with long fibre, and, while heavy all over the body, it should be thickest on the back and neck, and yet the belly also should be covered, for unless the belly was covered our ancestors were wont to call a sheep _apica_ and throw it out. They should have short legs,[118] and, if they are of the Italian breed, long tails, or short tails if they come from Syria. The most important point to guard is that your flock is headed by a good sire. The quality of a ram can usually be determined from his conformation and from his get. So far as concerns conformation, a ram should have a face well covered with wool, horns twisted and converging on the muzzle, tawny eyes, woolly ears, a deep chest, wide shoulders and loin, a long and large tail. You should see also whether he has a black or a spotted tongue,[119] for such rams usually get black or spotted lambs. You may judge them by their get, if their lambs are of good quality. In buying sheep we practise the formalities which the law requires, following them more or less strictly in particular cases. Some men in fixing a price per head stipulate that two late lambs or two toothless ewes shall be counted as one. In other respects the traditional formula is employed thus: the buyer says to the seller, "Do you sell me these sheep for so much?" And the seller answers, "They are your sheep," and states the price. Whereupon the buyer stipulates according to the ancient formula: "Do you guarantee that these sheep, for which we have bargained, are in such good health as sheep should be; that there is none among them one-eyed, deaf or bare-bellied; that they do not come out of an infected flock and that I will take them by good right and title?" "Even when this is done the title to the flock does not pass until they have been counted, but, nevertheless, the purchaser can hold the seller to the bargain if he does not make delivery, even though the purchase money has not passed, and by a like right the seller can hold the buyer if he does not pay up. "I will next speak about those other four subjects which Scrofa outlined, namely: the feeding, breeding, raising and physicking of sheep. In the first place, one should see that provision is made for feeding the flock throughout the entire year, as well indoors as out. The stable should be in a suitable location, protected against the wind, looking rather to the East than the South, on cleared and sloping ground so that it can be easily swept out and kept clean, for moisture not only rots the wool of the sheep but their hoofs as well and causes scab. When sheep have stood for several days you should strew the stable with new bedding, so that they may be more comfortable and be kept cleaner, and thus eat with more appetite. You should also contrive stalls separated from the others in which you may segregate the ewes about to yean, as well as any which may be ailing. This precaution is practicable, however, only with sheep fed at the steading, but those who graze their sheep in the mountain pastures and far from cover, carry with them wicker hurdles or nets, and other such conveniences with which they contrive folds for such separation. Sheep indeed are grazed far and wide so that often it happens that their winter quarters are many miles from their summer pastures." "I know that to be true," said I, "for my flocks winter in Apulia and spend the summer in the mountains above Reate: thus the public cattle drifts between these two localities balance the separated pastures, as a yoke balances two baskets."[120] Atticus resumed: "When sheep are fed continually in the same locality distinction must be made in the times of feeding them according to the seasons: thus in summer they are driven out[121] to pasture at day break because then the dewy grass is more appetizing than at midday, when it is dry. At sunrise they are driven to water, to make them more lickerish on their return. About noon and during the heat of the day they are permitted to lie in the shade of rocks or under broad spreading trees until the fresher evening air invites them to feed again until sunset.[122] A sheep should always graze with the sun behind it, because its head is very sensitive to heat. At sunset the flock should be given a short rest and then driven again to water, and so brought back to feed again until it is dark, for at that time of day the grass has renewed its pleasant savour. This routine is usually followed from the rising of the Pleiades until the autumn equinox. "After the harvest it is of two-fold advantage to turn the flock in on the stubble, as they will fatten on the shattered grain and improve the land for next year's planting by spreading their manure in the trampled straw. "The rules for pasturing sheep in winter and spring differ from the summer rules in this, that at those seasons the flock is not driven to pasture until the hoar frost has evaporated and they feed all day long, one watering about noon being enough. "This is about all there to say on the subject of feeding sheep, so I pass to the consideration of breeding. The rams which you are about to use for breeding should be separated from the flock for two months before the season, and fed heavily by giving them a ration of barley when they come into the stable from the pasture: it will make them stronger for their duty. "The best breeding season is from the setting of Arcturus to the setting of Aquila, (May-July) because lambs begotten later are apt to be born runts, and weak. As a ewe is pregnant for one hundred and fifty days, this arrangement causes her to drop her lambs at the end of autumn when the temperature is mild and the grass is renewed by the first rains. During the breeding season the flock should drink only the same kind of water, since a change not only makes spotted wool but injures the offspring. When all the ewes have been stinted, the rams should be separated from them again, because it injures ewes to be teased while they are pregnant. Ewe lambs should never be bred before they are two years old, as they cannot earlier produce strong lambs, but will themselves degenerate: indeed, it is better to keep them until the third year. To this end some shepherds protect their ewe lambs from the ram by tying baskets made of rushes or something of that kind over their rumps, but it is better to feed them apart from the flock. "I come now to the consideration of how lambs should be raised. "When the ewes begin to yean they are driven into a stable which has stalls set apart for the purpose, where the new born lambs can be placed near a fire to strengthen them, and there the ewes are kept two or there days until the lambs know their dams and are able to feed themselves. Thereafter the lambs are still kept up but the ewes are driven out to pasture with the flock, being brought back to them in the evening to be suckled and then once more separated, lest the lambs be trampled by the ewes at night. In the morning before the ewes go out to pasture they are given access to their young again until the lambs are satisfied with milk. After about ten days have elapsed the lambs are picketed out of doors, being tethered with fibre or such other light material, to stakes planted some distance apart so that the little fellows may not injure themselves as they frisk together all day. "If a lamb will not suck, it should be held up to the teat and its lips greased with butter or suet, and so made to smell at the milk. A few days later some soft vetch or tender grass may be given them before they go out to pasture and after they come in. And so they are nursed until they are four months old. "There are some shepherds who do not milk the ewes during the nursing period, but those who do not milk them at all do better, as thus they bear more wool and more lambs. "When the lambs are weaned great attention is necessary to prevent them from wasting away in their longing for the dam: they should be tempted to eat by giving them appetizing food, and care should be taken that they do not suffer from cold or heat. When at last they have forgotten the taste of milk and no longer yearn for the dam, they may be driven out with the flock. "A ram lamb should not be altered until he is five months old, nor yet in very hot or very cold weather. Those which you wish to keep for rams should be chosen as far as possible from dams who are in the habit of having twin lambs. "Most of these recommendations apply equally to those fine wool sheep which are called _pellitae_, because they are jacketed with skins, as is done at Tarentum and in Attica, to protect their wool from fouling, for by this precaution the fleece is kept in better plight for dyeing, washing or cleaning. Greater diligence is required to keep clean the folds and stables of such sheep than is necessary for the ordinary breeds: so they are paved with stone to the end that no urine may stand anywhere in the stable. "Sheep eat whatever is put before them--fig leaves, marc, even straw. Bran should be fed to them in moderation, lest they eat either too much or too little of it, in either of which cases it is bad for the digestion, but clover and alfalfa agree with them best and make both fat and milk with the utmost facility. "So far as concerns the health of the flock, there are many things I might add, but, as Scrofa has said, the flock master keeps his prescriptions written down in a book and carries with him what he needs in the way of physic. "It remains to speak of the number of sheep in a flock. Some make this more, some less, for there is no natural limit. In Epirus almost all of us have a rule not to allow more than one hundred short wool sheep or fifty fine wool jacketed sheep to a shepherd." _Of goats_ III. As Atticus stopped, Cossinius took him up. "Come, my dear Faustulus," he cried, "you have bleated long enough. Take now from me, as from a late born Homeric Melanthius,[123] a small offering from my flock of goats, and at the same time learn a lesson in brevity. He who wishes to form a flock of goats should consider in choosing them: first of all that they are of an age capable of breeding, and that for some time to come, for a tiro is more useful for that purpose than a veteran. As to conformation, see to it that they are strong and large, with a smooth body and thick coat: but beware of the short haired goat, for there are both kinds. The she goat should have two excrescences, like little teats, hanging under the muzzle: those which have them are fecund:[124] the larger the udder the more milk and butter fat she will yield. The qualities of a buck are that his coat should be largely white: his crest and neck short and his gullet long. You will have a better flock if you buy at one time goats which have been accustomed to run together, rather than by putting together a lot of goats picked up here and there. "Concerning breeding, I refer to what Atticus has said about sheep, with this difference: that while you select a breed of sheep which are slow of foot, because they are of quieter disposition, all goats are as excitable as they are agile. Of, this last characteristic Cato records in his book _Origines_: 'In the mountains of Socrate and Fiscellus there are wild goats which leap from rock to rock a distance of more than sixty feet.' For as the sheep which we feed are sprung from wild sheep, so the goats which we herd are sprung from wild goats: and it is from them that the island of Caprasia, near the coast of Italy, gets its name. "As it is recognized that the best breed of goats is one which bears two kids at a birth, breeding bucks are chosen from such a race whenever possible. Some fanciers even take the trouble to import bucks from the island of Melia, where are bred what are considered the largest and most beautiful specimens of the race. "I hold that the formula for buying sheep cannot altogether apply to goats because no sane man ever guaranteed that goats are without malady, for the fact is that they are forever in a fever. For this reason the usual stipulation has had a few words cut out of it for use in respect of goats, and, as Manilius gives it in his treatise on the law of Sales, runs as follows: 'Do you guarantee that these goats are well today; that they are able to drink, and that I will get good title to them?' "There is a wonderful fact concerning goats which has been stated by certain ingenious shepherds and is even recorded in the book of Archelaus, namely, that they do not breathe through their nostrils, like other animals, but through their ears.[125] "Upon Scrofa's four considerations which relate to the care of goats I have this to say. The flock is better stabled in the winter if its quarters look toward the Southeast, because goats are very sensitive to cold. So also, as for most cattle, the goat stable should be paved with stone or brick that the flock may be less exposed to damp and mud. When the flock passes the night out of doors, a place should be selected having the same exposure and the fold strewn with leaves to protect the flock from fouling themselves. "There is not much difference in the method of handling goats in the pasture from sheep, but goats have this characteristic, that they prefer the mountain woodland pastures to meadows, for they feed eagerly on the brushwood and in cultivated places crop the shrubbery; indeed, their name _caprae_ is derived from _carpere_, to crop. For this reason it is customary to stipulate in farm leases that the tenant shall not graze any goat on the leased land, for their teeth are the enemies of all planted crops: wherefore the astrologers were careful to station them in the heavens outside of the pale of the twelve signs of the zodiac, but there are two kids and a goat not far from Taurus. "So far as concerns breeding, it is the custom to separate the bucks from the pastured flock at the end of autumn and confine them apart, as has been said with respect to rams. The nannies which conceive at this time drop their kids in four months, and so in the spring. In what regards rearing the kids, it is enough to say that when they are three months old they are raised and may join the flock. What shall I say of the health of these animals who never have any? yet the flock master should have written down what remedies are used for certain of their maladies and especially for the wounds which often befall them by reason of their constant fighting among themselves and their feeding in thorny places. It remains to speak of number: this is less to the herd in the case of goats than with sheep because of the wantonness and wandering habit of the goat: sheep, on the other hand, are wont to flock together and keep in one place. "For another reason it is the custom in Gaul to divide the goats into many flocks rather than concentrate them in large ones, because a pestilence quickly takes possession of a large herd and sweeps it to destruction. About fifty goats is considered to be a large enough flock. "The experience of Gaberius, a Roman of the equestrian order, will illustrate the reason for this: for he, who had a thousand jugera of land near Rome, met one day a certain goatherd leading ten goats to town, and heard him say that he made a denier[126] a day out of each goat, whereupon Gaberius bought a thousand goats, hoping that he might thereby derive from his property an income of a thousand deniers a day: but so it fell out that he lost all his goats after a brief illness. On the other hand, among the Sallentini and near Casinum they graze their goats in flocks of one hundred. "Almost the same difference of opinion exists as to the relative number of bucks to nannies, for some, and I am among them, allow a buck to every ten nannies, but others, like Menas, make it fifteen, and some even twenty, like Murrius." _Of swine_ IV. "And now," concluded Cossinius, "which of you Italian swine breeders will stand forth and tell us of his herd? Surely he should be able to speak with the most authority whose cognomen is Scrofa." At this pleasantry, Tremelius turned upon Cossinius and said: "You seem to be ignorant why I am called Scrofa, but, in order that our friends sitting beside you may understand, you should know my family did not always bear this swinish cognomen, nor am I of the race of Eumaeus. The first of us to be called Scrofa was my grandfather who, when he was quaestor under the praetor Licinius Nerva, and was left in command of the army in the province of Macedonia during the absence of the praetor, it so happened that the enemy thought they had an opportunity to gain a victory and began to attack the camp. My grandfather, in exhorting the soldiers to take up their arms and go out against the enemy, exclaimed that he would soon scatter them as a sow (scrofa) does her pigs, and he was as good as his word. For in that battle he so overwhelmed and discomfited the enemy, that on account of it the praetor Nerva was hailed Imperator and my grandfather obtained his cognomen and so was called Scrofa.[127] So, while neither my great grandfather nor any of my ancestors of the Tremelian family was ever called Scrofa, yet as I am not less than the sixth of our family in succession who has attained praetorian rank, it ill becomes me to run away in the face of your challenge, so I will tell you what I know about swine. Indeed from my youth I have been devoted to agriculture, so that I am perhaps as well acquainted with that animal as is any of you great stockmen: for who of us cultivates a farm but keeps hogs, and who has not heard his father say that that man is either lazy or a spendthrift who hangs in the meat house a flitch of bacon obtained from the butcher rather than from his own farm. "He who wishes to have a proper herd of swine ought to choose them, in the first place, of the right age, and in the second place, of good conformation: which means large everywhere except in the head and feet and of a solid colour rather than spotted: but the boar should have without fail a thick neck in addition to these other qualities. Swine of good breed may be known from their appearance, if both boar and sow are of good conformation; from their get, if they have many pigs at a birth; and from their origin, if you buy them in a place with a reputation for producing fat rather than lean hogs. The usual formula for buying runs thus: 'Do you warrant that these hogs are in good health; that I shall take good title to them; that they have committed no tort, and that they do not come out of a diseased herd?' "Some add a particular stipulation that they are not affected with cholera. "In the matter of pasture, a marshy place is well fitted for hogs, because they delight not only in water, but in mud, the reason for which appears in the tradition that when a wolf has fallen upon a hog he always drags the carcass into the water because his teeth cannot endure the natural heat of hog flesh. "Swine are fed mostly on mast, though also on beans, barley and other kinds of corn, which not only make them fat but give the meat an agreeable relish. In summer they go out to pasture early in the morning and before the heat of the day: at midday they are brought into some shady place, preferably where there is water: in the afternoon, when the heat has abated, they are fed again. In the winter time they do not go out to pasture until the hoar frost has evaporated and the ice has melted. "In the matter of breeding, the boar should be separated from the herd for two months before the season, which should be arranged between the rising of the west wind and the vernal equinox, for thus it will befall that the sows (which are big for four months) will have their litters in summer when forage is plenty. Sows should not be bred under a year old, but it is better to wait until the twentieth month so that they may have pigs at two years. They are said to breed regularly for seven years after the first litter. During the breeding season they should be given access to muddy ditches and sloughs, so that they may wallow in the mud, which is the same relaxation to them that a bath is to a man. When all the sows are stinted, the boars should be segregated again. A boar is fit for service at eight months and so continues until his prime, after which his vigor decreases until he is fit only for the butcher to make of his flesh a dainty offering for the people. Our name for the hog, _sus_, is called [Greek: hus] in Greek, but formerly it was [Greek: thus], derived from [Greek: thuein], meaning to offer as a sacrifice, for it seems that victims were chosen from the race of swine for the earliest sacrifices; evidence of which remains in the tradition that pigs are sacrificed at the initiation to the mysteries of Ceres, that when a treaty is ratified peace begins with the slaughter of a pig, and that in solemnizing a marriage the ancient kings and mighty men of Etruria caused the bride and the bridegroom to sacrifice a pig at the beginning of the ceremony, a practice which the earliest Latins and the Greek colonists in Italy seem also to have followed: nam et nostrae mulieres, maxime nutrices, naturam qua feminae sunt in virginibus appellant porcum, et graecae [Greek: choiron], significantes esse dignum insigni nuptiarum.[128] "The hog is said to be created by nature for the food of man[129] and so life and salt perform the same functions for him, as they both preserve his flesh. "The Gauls[130] are reputed to put up not only the largest quantity but the best quality of pork: evidence of its quality being that even now hams, sausage,[131] bacon and shoulders are imported every year from Gaul to Rome: while Cato writes concerning the amount of pork cured by the Gauls: 'In (northern) Italy the Insubres are wont to put up three or four thousand cuts of pork [the bulk of which can be appreciated from the fact that among that people][132] the hog some times grows so fat that it is not able to stand on its feet or to walk, so that it is necessary to put it on a cart to move it any where.' Atilius the Spaniard, who is a truthful man and learned in many things, tells of a hog which was killed in further Spain or Lusitania from which two chops, sent to the Senator L. Volumnius, were found to weigh three and twenty pounds, the fat on them being so thick that it measured a foot and three fingers from the skin to the bone." "I can testify to some thing not less extraordinary than what you have related," said I, "for in Arcadia I saw with my own eyes a hog which was so fat that not only was it unable to get up but a shrew mouse having eaten a hole in its back had there made its nest and was rearing a family. I have heard that this same thing happened in the country of the Veneti." "Usually," resumed Scrofa, "the fecundity of a sow may be learned from her first litter, for in later litters she does not vary much from the number of pigs in the first. "In the matter of rearing young swine, which we call _porculatio_ it is customary to leave pigs with the sow for two months, and then when they are able to feed themselves to separate them. Pigs born in the winter are apt to be runts on account of the cold and because the sow refuses to suckle them, partly by reason of her lack of milk at that season and partly to protect her teats from the teeth of the hungry pigs. "Each sow should suckle her pigs in her own stye, because a sow will not drive strange pigs away from her, and it results that if the litters are mingled the breed deteriorates. The year is naturally divided for the sow into two parts, because they breed twice a year, being heavy in pig for four months and suckling for two. The stye should be built about three feet deep and a little more in width and such a height from the ground as will permit a pregnant sow to get out without straining herself, as that might cause her to abort. A good measure of the proper height from the ground is what is necessary to enable the swineherd to keep watch that no little pigs are crushed by the sow, and to clean out the bedding easily. There should be a door to the stye with the lower sill elevated a foot and a palm high so as to prevent the pigs from following the sow when she goes out. As often as the swineherd cleans out the stye he should strew the floor with sand, or some thing else to absorb moisture. "When a sow has had her pigs she should be fed liberally to enable her to make milk: for this the ration is usually two pounds of boiled barley, indeed some feed this both at morning and at night if other feed is lacking. When pigs are taken from their dam they are sometimes called _delici_ or weanlings being then no longer _lactantes_ or sucklings. "Pigs are considered to be clean ten days after birth, and for that reason were then called by the ancients sacred, as being then first fit for sacrifice: and so in the _Menaechmi_ of Plautus, when a character thinking some one in Epidamnus to be out of his wits and seeking to purify him, asks: 'How much are sacred pigs here.' "If the farm affords them, pigs should be fed grape husks and stalks. "After they have lost the name of _lactantes_ the shoats are called _nefrendes_ because they are not yet able to break down (_frendere_ that is _frangere_) the bean stalks. _Porcus_ is the ancient Greek name for them but is fallen into disuse, for the Greeks now call them [Greek: choiros]. "While she is giving suck the sow should be watered twice a day to promote the flow of milk. A sow should bear as many pigs as she has teats: if she has less it is considered that she is unprofitable, but if more, a prodigy. In this respect there is the ancient tradition that the sow of Aeneas bore thirty white (_albos_) pigs at Lavinium,[133] which portended that after thirty years the inhabitants of Lavinium would found the town of Alba: indeed, vestiges of this sow and of her pigs may still be seen at Lavinium where there is a brazen image of them now in the public square, and the true body of the sow is shown by the priests, preserved in pickle. "Sows are able at first to suckle eight little pigs, but as they grow larger half of them are usually taken away by experienced swineherds, because the sow cannot supply milk enough for all, and too many pigs fed together do not prosper in any event. A sow should not be driven out of the stye for ten days after having her litter except for water, but after that time she is permitted to graze in a paddock so conveniently near at hand that she may return to the stye frequently to suckle the pigs. When the pigs are large enough they are permitted to follow the sow to pasture, but at home they should be penned apart from the sow and fed by themselves until they overcome their yearning for the dam, which usually happens in ten days. The swineherd should train his shoats to do every thing at the sound of the trumpet. This training is begun by letting the shoats hear the trumpet outside their pens and then at once come out to a place where barley has been scattered broad cast (for thus less is wasted than if the feed is put in heaps and more of the shoats can get to it easily). By such education it is possible to collect pasturing hogs at the sound of a trumpet and prevent their being lost when scattered in the woods.[134] "Boars are altered most successfully when they are a year old, but in no case should this be done when they are less than six months old. After the operation they are no longer called boars, but barrows. "Concerning the health of swine, I will say one thing only by way of example: if the sow is not able to supply milk the sucking pigs should be fed, until they are three months old, on roasted wheat (for when it is raw it loosens the bowels) or on barley boiled in water. "As to number: it is considered that ten boars to an hundred sows is enough; some even reduce this proportion. "The practice varies as to the number to a herd, but my judgment is that a hundred is a moderate number: some make it more, say 150: some feed two herds together, and some do even more than that. A small herd is less expensive than a large one because the swineherd requires less assistance. A swinefeeder should fix the number to be fed as a herd on a principle of utility, not by the number of boars he may happen to have, for that is determined by nature." So far Scrofa. _Of neat cattle_ V. At this point we were joined by the Senator Q. Lucienus, a man as learned as he is agreeable and intimate with us all. "Hail, my fellow citizens of Epirus," he exclaimed in Greek,[135] "and you, my dear Varro, 'shepherd of men,' for I have already greeted Scrofa this morning." While one saluted him, another reproached him for having come so late to our club. "I will see to that, my merry men, for I am about to offer you my back and a scourge: or else, Murrius, you who are my friend: come with me while I pay a forfeit to the goddess Pales, so that you may bear me witness if our friends here seek to make me do it again." "Tell him," said Atticus, turning to Murrius, "what we have been talking about and what is still on the programme, so that when his turn comes he may be prepared. In the meantime we will take up the second order of domestic live stock and proceed to a discussion of the larger cattle." "In this," said Vaccius, "my name would seem to assign me a part, since cows (_vaccae_) are included in that category. Wherefore I will tell what I know about neat cattle, so that he who knows less may learn, while he who knows more may correct me when I fall down." "Be careful what you do, Vaccius," said I, "for the genus _Bos_ is of the first importance among cattle, certainly in Italy, which is thought to have taken its very name from that family, for, as Timaeus records, in ancient Greece a bull was called [Greek: italos], whence is derived our word _vitula_, and from this Italy is supposed to have taken its name because of the number and beauty of its breed, of cattle (_vituli_). Others claim that the name comes from that of the famous bull Italus which Hercules drove out of Sicily into this country. "The ox is indeed the companion and fellow labourer of man and the minister of Ceres: wherefore the ancients, holding him inviolable, made it a capital offence to kill an ox.[136] Both Attica and Peloponnesus bear witness of the regard in which the ox was held: for he who first yoked oxen to the plough is celebrated at Athens under the name Buzyges and at Argos under that of Homogyros." "I know," replied Vaccius, "the importance of the ox and that his very name is used to signify that quality, as in words like [Greek: bousukon](big fig), [Greek: boupais](a big boy), [Greek: boulimos] (a ravenous hunger),[Greek: boopis] (large eyed), and again that a certain large grape is called _bumamma_ (cow teat). Furthermore, I know it was the form of a bull that Jupiter assumed when he wooed Europa and bore her across the sea from Phoenicia: that it was a bull which protected the children of Neptune and Melanippe from being crushed in a stable by a herd of cattle: I know too that the bees which give the sweetest honey are generated from the carcase of an ox, whence the Greeks call them [Greek: bougeneis] (born of an ox), an expression which Plautius latinized on the occasion where the praetor Hirrius, was accused at Rome of having libeled the Senate. 'But be of good cheer, I will give you at least as great satisfaction as did he who wrote the Bugonia.'[137] "In the first place there are said to be four ages of cattle, during which they are known by the successive designation of calf (_vitulus_), yearling (_juvencus_), prime (_novellus_) and aged (_vetulus_). These designations are further divided according to sex, as bull-calf and heifer-calf, or bull and cow. "A cow which is sterile is called _taura_: when pregnant, _horda_, from which last name a certain festival is called the _hordicalia (Fordicidia_) because cows in calf are sacrificed upon it. "He who wishes to buy a herd of neat cattle should take care first that they are of an age to produce, rather than past breeding; that they are well set up, clean limbed, square bodied, large, with black horns and broad brows, large black eyes, hairy ears, flat cheek bones, snub-nosed, not hump-backed but rather with the back bone slightly roached, wide nostrils, blackish lips, a neck muscular and long with dew laps hanging from it, the barrel large and well ribbed, the shoulders broad and the quarters good, a tail sweeping the heels, the end being frizzled in a heavy brush, the legs rather short and straight with knees projecting a little and well separated, the feet narrow and not inclined to spread in walking, the hoofs not being splayed but consisting of light and even bones, and a hide which is not rough and hard to the touch. The best colour is black, next red, third chestnut and last white: for a white coat indicates weakness, as black indicates endurance: of the other two colours red is more common than chestnut, and both than black and white. In addition you should be particular that the bull is of good breed, which is determined from his conformation and his get, as calves usually reproduce the qualities of their sire. And, finally, it is of importance whence they come. Gallic cattle are considered in Italy to be the best for work, while on the other hand Ligurian cattle are worthless. The foreign cattle of Epirus are not only better than all the Greek cattle but even than the Italian: nevertheless, there are those who choose Italian cattle for victims and to serve as offerings to the gods on account of their size: and without doubt they may be preferred for such holy offices, so great is the distinction of their majestic bulk and their candid coats: and they are the more suitable for such use because white cattle are not so common in Italy as in Thrace at the gulf of Melas, where there are few of any other colour. "When cattle are bought already broken for work we stipulate thus: 'Do you guarantee these cattle to be in good health and warrant me against liability for any tort committed by them?' "When we buy them unbroken, we say: 'Do you guarantee these yearlings to be in good health and to come out of a healthy herd, and warrant me against liability for tort?' "When butchers buy for the shambles they use a fuller formula recommended by Manilius: but those who buy for the altar do not usually stipulate for health in their victims. "Neat cattle pasture best in groves where there is brushwood and much leafage: and so when they are wintered by the sea they are driven up to pasture in summer in the hills where shrubbery abounds. "These are my breeding rules: "For a month before breeding I cut down the food and drink of the cows because it is deemed that they breed more certainly when they are thin. On the other hand, I fatten the bulls up on grass and straw and hay for two months before the breeding season, and during that time I keep them apart from the cows. Like Atticus, I have two for seventy cows, one a yearling, the other two years old. When that constellation has risen which the Greeks call Lyra, and we Romans, Fides, I turn the bull into the herd again. The bull indicates whether a male or a female calf has been conceived by the side on which he leaves the cow: if male, on the right; if female, on the left. "Why this is so," said Vaccius, turning to me, "I leave to you who read Aristotle." "A cow should not be served under two years, so that she may have her first calf in the third year: it would be better in the fourth. Most cows bear for ten years, some even more. The most suitable time for stinting cows is during the forty days following the rising of the Dolphin, or even a little later, for thus they will drop their calves at the most temperate season of the year, for a cow goes ten months pregnant. On this subject I have come upon an extraordinary statement in a book that a bull which has just been altered can get a cow with calf. "Breeding cows should be pastured where there is abundant grass and plenty of water, and care should be taken to protect them from crowding too close together, and from being struck, or from fighting with one another: moreover, to protect them against being worried in summer by cattle flies and those minute insects which get under their tails, some farmers shut them up during the heat of the day in pens, which should be strewn with leaves or some other bedding on which they can rest comfortably. In summer they are driven to water twice a day, in winter once. Against the time when they are due to drop their calves you should arrange to give them access to fresh forage near the stable which they can eat with appetite as they go out, for at that time they are very dainty about their food. A watch out must be kept to prevent their frequenting chilly places, for cold depresses the vitality as much as hunger. "These are the rules for raising neat cattle: the suckling calves should not be suffered to sleep with their dams, for they might crush them, but should be given access to them in the morning and when they return from pasture. When the calves are weaned the dams should be comforted by having green stuff thrown into their stalls for them to eat. The floor of a calf stable, like most others, should be paved with stone to keep their hoofs from rotting. The calves may be pastured with their dams after the autumn equinox. Bull calves should not be altered before they are two years old, as they recover with difficulty if the operation is performed sooner, while if it is done later they are apt to be stubborn and useless. "As in the case of other cattle, the herd should be gone over every year and the culls thrown out because they occupy the room of those which might be profitable. If a cow loses her calf she should be given another to nurse, taken from a cow which has not a sufficient supply of milk. Calves six months old are fed wheat bran and barley meal and young grass, and care should be taken that they are watered morning and evening. "The rules for taking care of the health of neat cattle are many. I have those which Mago has recorded written out and I take care that my herdsman reads them frequently. "I have already said that a yearling and a two-year old bull should be provided for every sixty cows, though some have more or less cows in the herd: thus Atticus has two bulls for every seventy cows. Some observe one rule as to the number of cattle to the herd, some another. I am among those who think that one hundred is enough, but Atticus here, like Lucienus, has one hundred and twenty." So far Vaccius. _Of asses_ VI. While Vaccius was speaking, Murrius had returned with Lucienus and now began: "I propose to tell about asses as well I may, because I am from Reate where the best and the largest are found; indeed, I have sold to the Arcadians themselves asses of this race and of my own breeding. He who wishes to establish a good herd of asses should see in the first place that he procures jacks and jennies of prime age so that they may breed as long as possible, strong, well made in all parts, of full body and of a good breed, that is to say derived from those localities whence the best specimens come; thus the Peloponnesians, so far as possible, buy asses bred in Arcadia and we in Italy those from the valley of Reate. For if the best of those delicious fish we call _muraenae flutae_ are taken on the coast of Sicily and the best sturgeons at Rhodes, it does not follow that they are of equal delicacy in all seas. "There are two kinds of asses, one wild, which is called the onager, of which there, are many herds in Phrygia and Lycaonia; the other domestic, as they are all over Italy. The onager is fit for use for breeding because he is easily tamed and once domesticated never reverts to a wild life.[138] "Because their young take after their parents, it is important to choose both jack and jenny of good conformation. The conditions of buying and selling asses are much the same as for other kinds of cattle and include stipulations as to their health and against tort. They are best fed on corn and barley bran. The jennies are bred before the solstice so that they may have their foals at the same season in the following year, for their period of gestation is twelve months. The jennies should be relieved from work while in foal for fatigue at that time injures the offspring: but the jacks, on the contrary, are worked all the time, because it is lack of exercise which is bad for them. "In the matter of rearing, practically the same rules apply to asses as to horses. The foals are not separated from their dams for the first year after they are born: during the second year they are permitted to stay with their dams at night, but they should then be tied with a loose halter or some other such restraint. In the third year you begin to break them for whatever service they are intended. "As to the number: they are not usually kept in herds unless it may be for transport service; generally they are used to turn the mill, or for carrying about the farm, or even for the plough where the soil is light, as in Campania. Herds of asses are some times employed by merchants, like those who transport wine, or oil, or corn, or any other commodity, from Brundisium or Apulia to the sea, by pack trains." _Of horses_ VII. Here Lucienus took up the discourse. "It is my turn," he said, "to open the barrier and drive in my horses: and they are not only stallions, of which, like Atticus, I keep one for every ten breeding mares, but mares as well, such as Q. Modius Equiculus, that gallant soldier, was wont to esteem for use even in war nearly as much as stallions.[139] "He who wishes to have such studs of stallions and mares as may be seen in Peloponnesus and in Apulia should first consider age and see that he obtains them not less than three nor more than ten years old. The age of a horse, as also of nearly all animals whose hoofs are not cloven, even horned animals, may be known from the condition of the teeth: thus at thirty months of age a colt is said to lose the milk incisors from the middle of his mouth, two above and two below. At the beginning of the fourth year, in like manner he sheds the same number, being the incisors adjoining those previously lost, and at that age also the teeth called canine begin to appear. At the beginning of the fifth year he loses two more incisors, and at that time the new teeth show hollow. In the sixth year the new teeth begin to fill out their cavities, and by the seventh usually all have been renewed and the permanent mouth is made. What is the age of a horse beyond this point it is not possible to determine accurately, except that when the teeth project and the eye brows are white and have hollows under them, it is considered that a horse is sixteen years old. "A breeding mare should be of medium size, for it is not fitting that they should be either very large or very small, but the quarters and belly should be broad. "A breeding stallion on the other hand should be chosen with a large body, well made and all his parts in harmony. What sort of horse it will turn out to be can be determined from the points of the foal, for it should exhibit a small head: limbs well knit together: a black eye, wide nostrils: ears well pricked: a mane which is thick, dark and curly, of fine hairs and falling on the right side of the neck: a breast broad and well developed: strong shoulders: a moderate belly: the loins flat and rising to the quarters: long shoulder blades: a back bone well doubled [with ridges of meat] but if these are not prominent in no event should the bone itself stand out: a tail large and curly: legs straight and even and rather long: knees round and small and not turned in as you look at them: hard hoofs: veins visible all over the body (for a horse of this kind is fit for treatment when he is sick). "The breed is of the greatest importance, for there are many. In this respect the celebrated breeds take the names of the countries from which they come: thus in Greece we have the Thessalian breed: in Italy the Apulian from Apulia, and the Rosean from Rosea.[140] "It is a sign that they will make good horses if, when at pasture with the herd, the colts contend with one another for superiority in running or in any thing else, or if when a stream is to be crossed they leap it at the head of the herd and do not look back for the others. "Horses are bought in almost the same manner as cattle or asses, because they change ownership by similar formalities, all of which are set forth in the book of Manilius. "Horses should be pastured whenever possible in meadows of grass, and in the stable and stall they are fed on hay. "When a mare has foaled she should be fed on barley and watered twice a day. "In the matter of breeding, the period of service is from the vernal equinox to the solstice so that the foal may come at a suitable season, for they are supposed to be born on the tenth day of the twelfth month after the mare was stinted. Those which are born after the time are usually defective and unfit for use. When the season has come the stallion should be admitted to the mare twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, under the direction of the _origa_ (so the studgroom is called), for a mare held in hand is stinted more quickly, nor does the stallion waste his seed by excess of ardor. When a mare is stinted she makes it known by defending herself. If the stallion shows an aversion for a mare, her parts should be smeared when she is in heat with the marrow of a shrimp macerated in water to the consistency of honey, and the stallion allowed to smell of it. "Although it may seem incredible, what I am about to relate is true and should be remembered. Once upon a time a studgroom tried to make a stallion cover his mother, but could never get him to come near her: so one day the groom muffled the stallion's head and put him to his mother successfully: but when the bandage was removed and the stallion saw what he had done, he fell upon the groom and killed him with his teeth. "When the mares have been stinted it must be seen to that they are worked only in moderation and are kept out of cold places, because cold is of the greatest prejudice to a mare in that condition. For this reason the floor of their stable should be kept dry and the windows and doors should be kept shut: and furthermore the mares should be separated one from another by long poles fastened back from the manger so that they may not fight. "Mares in foal should neither be over-fed nor starved. "There are some who breed their mares only every other year and claim they get better colts, on the same principle that as corn land is exhausted by continuous cropping, so is a mare which is bred every year.[141] "The foal should be led out to pasture with its dam on the tenth day after it is born, so to avoid burning its tender hoofs by standing on manure in the stable. When five months old a colt should be fed, whenever he is brought into the stable, a ration of barley meal whole with its bran, or any other product of the earth which he will eat with appetite. When they are a year old they may be fed barley in the grain mixed with bran, and this should be kept up as long as they suckle, for they should not be weaned until they have completed the second year. From time to time while they are still with their dams they should be handled so that they may not be wild after they are separated. To the same end it is well to hang bridles in their stalls so that while they are still colts they may become accustomed to the sight of them and the sound of their clanking as well. When a colt has learned to come to an outstretched hand you should put a boy on his back, for the first two or three times stretched out flat on his belly, but afterwards sitting upright. The time to do this is when the colt is three years old, for then he has his full growth and is beginning to develop muscles. "There are those who say that a colt may be broken at eighteen months, but it is better to wait until the third year. Then is the time too to begin to feed him that mixture of grain in the milk which we call _farrago_, for this is very good for a horse as a purgative. It should be fed for ten days to the exclusion of all other food. On the eleventh day and until the fourteenth you should feed barley, adding a little to the ration every day for four days and then maintaining that quantity for the ten days succeeding: during this period the horse should be exercised moderately, and when in a sweat rubbed down with oil. If it is cold a fire should be lit in the stable. "As some horses are suitable for military service, some for the cart, some for breeding, some for racing, and others for the carriage, it follows that the methods of handling and looking after them all are not the same. Thus the soldier chooses some and rears and trains them for his particular use, and so in turn does the charioteer and the circus rider. Nor does he who wishes a cart horse choose the same conformation or give the same training as to a horse intended for the saddle or the carriage: for as the one desires mettle for military service, the other prefers a gentle disposition for use on the road. It was to provide for this difference of use that the practice of castrating horses was inaugurated, for horses that are altered are of a quieter disposition: they are called geldings, as hogs in the same state are called barrows and chickens are called capons. "As to medicine for the horse, there are so many symptoms of their maladies and so many cures that the studgroom must have them written down: indeed, on this account in Greece the veterinarians are mostly called [Greek: hippiatroi] (horse leeches)." _Of mules_ VIII. While we were talking a freedman came from Menas and said that the sacrificial cakes were cooked and every thing ready for the sacrifice--that whoever wishes to take part had only to come. "But I will not suffer you to go," I protested, "until you have fulfilled your promise and given me the third chapter of our subject, that concerning mules and dogs and shepherds." "What is to be said about mules,"[142] replied Murrius, "may be said briefly. Mules and hinnies are mongrels and grafts as it were on a stock of a different species, for a mule is got by an ass out of a mare, and a hinny by a horse out of a she ass. Both have their uses, but neither is fit to reproduce its kind. For this purpose it is the custom to put a newborn ass colt to nurse to a mare because mares' milk will make it more vigorous: it is considered better than asses' milk, or indeed than any other kind of milk. Later they are fed on straw, hay and barley. The foster mother must be given good attention also, as she must bring up her own colt in addition to her service as a wet nurse. An ass raised in this way is fit to get mules when he is three years old, nor will he contemn the mares because he has become used to their kind. If you use him for breeding earlier he will quickly exhaust himself and his get will be poor. "If you have no ass foal to have brought up by a mare and you wish a breeding jackass, you should buy the largest and handsomest you can find; the best breed, as the ancients said, was that of Arcadia, but nowadays we who know maintain that the breed of Reate is best: where breeding jacks have brought thirty and even forty thousand sesterces ($1,800-$2,000). "Jacks are bought like horses, with the same stipulations and guarantees. We feed them principally on hay and barley, increasing the ration at the breeding season so as to infuse strength into their get by means of their food. The breeding season is the same as for horses, and, like them again, we have the jack handled by a studgroom. "When a mare has dropped a mule colt or filly we bring it up with care. Those which are born in marshy and swampy country have soft hoofs, but if they are driven up into the mountain in summer, as we do at Reate, their hoofs become hardened. "In buying mules you must consider age and conformation, the one that they may be able to work under a load, the other that the eye may have pleasure in looking at them: for a team of two good mules is capable of drawing any kind of a wagon on the road. "You, my friend from Reate," Murrius added, turning to me, "can vouch for what I have said, as you yourself have herds of breeding mares at home and have bred and sold many mules. "The get of a horse out of a she ass is called a hinny: he is smaller in the body and usually redder in colour than a mule, and has ears like a horse, but mane and tail like an ass. Hinnies are carried by the dam twelve months, like a horse, and, like the horse too, they are raised and fed, and their age can be told by their teeth." _Of herd dogs_ IX. "It remains," said Atticus, "to speak of the last of the quadrupeds on our programme, that is to say, of dogs, which are of the greatest importance to us who feed the woolly flock, for the dog is the guardian of such cattle as lack the means to defend themselves, chiefly sheep and goats. For the wolf is wont to lie in wait for them and we oppose our dogs to him as defenders. Hogs can defend themselves, as well pigs, boars, barrows and sows, for they are near akin to the wild boar, which we know often kills dogs in the woods, with their tusks. What shall I say of large cattle? I know of an instance of a herd of mules pastured together, which, when they were attacked by a wolf, joined in forming a circle about him and killed him with blows of their hoofs: and again, bulls often stand together, rump to rump, and drive off wolves with their horns. But of dogs there are two kinds, hunting dogs, which are used against wild beasts and game, and herd dogs, which are used by the shepherd. I will discuss the latter methodically, following Scrofa's nine heads. "Of the first importance is the choice of dogs of suitable age, for puppies and old dogs cannot protect themselves, much less the sheep, and so often become themselves the prey of wild beasts. "In appearance they should be handsome, of good size, with black or tawny eyes: a symmetrical nose: lips blackish or ruddy, neither drawn back above nor hanging underneath: a short muzzle, showing two teeth on either side, those of the lower jaw projecting a little, those above rather straight and not so apparent, and the other teeth, which are covered by the lips, very sharp: a large head, ears large and turned over: a thick crest and neck: long joints: straight legs, rather bowed than knock-kneed: feet large and well developed, so that in walking they may spread out: toes slightly splayed: claws hard and curved: the pad of the foot neither horny nor hard but as it were puffed and soft: short-coupled: a back bone neither projecting nor roached: a heavy tail: a deep bark, and wide gaping chops. The colour to be preferred is white because it gives the dog a lion-like aspect in the dark.[143] Finally, the females should have large teats equally distributed. Care should be taken that they are of good breed, such as those called for their place of origin, Laconian, Epirot and Sallentian. Be careful not to buy a sheep dog from a professional hunter or a butcher, because the one is apt to be lazy about following the flock, while the other is more likely to make after a hare or a deer which it might see, than to tend the sheep. "It is better either to buy, from a shepherd, dogs which are accustomed to follow sheep or dogs which are without any training at all. While a dog does readily whatever he has been trained to do, his affection is apt to be stronger for the shepherds than for the flock.[144] "Once P. Aufidius Pontianus of Amiternum bought certain flocks of sheep in further Umbria, the dogs which herded them being included in the bargain, but not the shepherds, who were, however, to make the delivery at the Saltus of Metapontum and the market of Heraclea: when these shepherds had returned home, their dogs, longing for their masters, a few days later of their own will came back to the shepherds in Umbria, having made several days journey without other food than what the fields afforded. Nor had any one of those shepherds done what Saserna advises in his books on agriculture, 'Whoever wishes to be followed by a dog should throw him a cooked frog.'[145] "It is of importance that all your dogs should be of the same breed, for when they are related they are of the greatest aid to one another. "Now as to Scrofa's fourth consideration, that concerning the manner of buying: this is accomplished by delivery by the former owner to the purchaser. "The same stipulations as to health and against liability for tort are made as in the case of cattle, leaving out whatever is inapplicable to dogs. Some make a price on dogs at so much per head, others stipulate that the puppies shall go with the mother, others that two puppies shall count as one dog--as two lambs usually count as a sheep. Usually it is provided that all the dogs which have been accustomed to be together should be included in the bargain. "The food appropriate for dogs is more like that of man than of sheep, for they are fed on scraps and bones rather than on grass and leaves. Care must be taken that they are fed regularly, for, if food is not provided, hunger will lead them in search of it away from the flock, unless, indeed, they shall find it in one another, thereby contradicting the old proverb,[146] or perchance they may realize the fable of Actaeon and turn their teeth against their master himself. You would do well to feed them on barley bread soaked in milk, because when they have become accustomed to that diet they will not readily desert the flock. They should never be suffered to taste the flesh of a carrion sheep lest the relish should tempt them to indulge in such food again. They may be fed also broth made out of bones, or bones themselves when broken up, for that makes their teeth stronger and the mouth wider: and thereby the jaws are stretched, while the zest of the marrow makes the dog fiercer. They should be accustomed to take their food in the day time where the flock is feeding and at night where the flock is folded. "In the matter of breeding it is the practice to line the bitch at the beginning of spring, for then she is said to be in heat, that is to say, to show a readiness for breeding. When they are lined at this season they pup about the solstice, for they go three months. While they are in pup they should be fed barley bread rather than wheat bread, for it is more nourishing and makes more milk. "In the matter of bringing up the puppies after birth: if there are many in the litter you should choose those you wish to keep and destroy the others: the fewer you keep the better they will be nourished, for then their portion of the mother's milk will be larger. "Chaff or some thing else of that sort should be spread under them, because the better they are bedded the more easily they are brought up. Puppies open their eyes twenty days after birth.[147] During the first two months they are not separated from their mother, but wean themselves gradually. A number of puppies should be kenneled together, where they may be encouraged to fight, which will make them fiercer, but they should never be suffered to tire themselves since weariness develops cowardice. They should also be accustomed to be tied, at first with a light leash, and if they attempt to gnaw it they should be punished by whipping, so that they may not get the habit. On rainy days their kennels should be bedded with leaves or grass, for two reasons: that they may not soil themselves or suffer from cold. Some castrate their puppies thinking them less likely to leave the flock, but others do not, thinking that the operation makes them less fierce. Some rub their ears and between their toes with a suffusion of bitter almonds steeped in water because flies, ticks and fleas usually develop sores in those parts, unless it is your practice to so anoint them. To protect them from wounds from wild beasts we place collars on them, of the kind which we call _melium_, which is a girth around the neck made from strong leather studded with nails and lined with soft leather to protect the neck from being chafed by the hard iron heads of the nails: for if a wolf or other wild beast is once wounded by these nails all the other dogs are safe from his attack, even if they have no collars. "The number of dogs to be kept is determined by the size of the flock, usually one dog for every shepherd is considered enough, but the practice varies. Thus there should be more in localities where wild beasts are plentiful, and those increase the number also who are wont to drive their flocks over the long forest drift ways to their summer or their winter feeding grounds. "But two dogs are enough for a flock kept on a farm: in which case they should be male and female, for they are more attached and, by emulation, fiercer, and if one is sick for a protracted time the flock will not be without a dog." Here Atticus looked around as if to enquire whether he had omitted any thing. "This is the silence," said I, "which summons another player on the boards." _Of shepherds_ X. "The rest of this act," I added, "relates to how many and what kind of shepherds are necessary." Cossinius took the cue. "For large cattle," he said, "men of full age are required; for small cattle boys will do: but in either case those who drive their flocks and herds on the drift ways must be stouter than those who remain on the farm and return to the steading every day. "So in the wood pastures _(saltus)_ it behooves one to have young men and usually armed men, while on the farm boys or even girls may tend the flock. Those who use the distant feeding grounds should require their shepherds to feed their flocks together all day, but at night to remain each one with his own flock. They should all be under the supervision of one flock master, who should be older and more experienced than the others, because they will obey more cheerfully one who surpasses them in age and knowledge; and yet the flock master should be of such years that he may not be prevented by age from hard work: for neither old men nor boys can endure the steeps of the drift ways, nor the ardours and roughness of the mountains, which must be suffered by those who follow flocks, especially cattle and goats, to whom the rocks and the forests are pleasant grazing places. "So far as concerns the conformation of the men chosen for these occupations, they should be strong and swift and active, with ready limbs not only able to follow the cattle but to defend them from the incursions of wild beasts and of brigands: men who can load the packs on the sumpter beasts: can run and throw a javelin.[148] "Every nation is not fit for tending cattle, especially the Basculi and the Turduli [of Spain]. The Gauls are the best of all, particularly for draught cattle. "In the matter of the purchase of shepherds, there are six usual methods of obtaining lawful title to a slave: (i) by inheritance, (2) by due form of mancipation, which is delivery of possession by one who has the legal right, (3) by the legal process called surrender in court (_cessio in jure_) from one who has that right, the transfer taking place where it should, (4) by prescriptive use (_usucapion_), (5) by purchase of a prisoner of war "under the crown" (6) by auction at the distribution of some one's property by order of court under the process known as _bonorum emptio_.[149] "The _peculium_ or personal property of the slave usually passes with him to a new master unless it is specially excepted in the terms of sale: there is also the usual guaranty as to the health of the slave and that he has committed no theft or tort for which his master is legally responsible, and, unless the purchase is by mancipation, the bargain is bound by an obligation of double indemnity, or in the amount of the purchase price alone, if that is the agreement. "The shepherds should take their meals separately during the day, each one with his flock, but in the evening they should meet at a common supper under the supervision of the flock master.[150] It should be the duty of the flock master to see that every thing is provided which may be required by the flock or by the shepherds, chiefly the victuals for the men and medicine for the flock: for which the master should provide beasts of burden, either horses or some thing else which can carry a load on its back. "As to what relates to the breeding of shepherds, it is easy, so far as concerns those who remain on the farm all the time because they can have a fellow servant to wife at the farmstead, for Venus Pastoralis demands no more. Some hold that it is expedient also to furnish women[151] for those who pasture the flocks in the Saltus and the forests and have no residence but find their shelter from the rain under improvised sheds: that such women following the flocks and preparing the food for the shepherds keep the men better satisfied and more devoted to their duty. But they must needs be strong though not deformed, and not less capable of work then the men themselves, as they are in many localities and as may be seen throughout Illyricum, where the women feed the flocks or carry in wood for the fire and cook the food, or keep watch over the household utensils in their cottages. "As to the method of raising their children, it suffices to say that the shepherd women are usually both mothers and nurses at the same time." At this Cossinius looked at me and said: "I have heard you relate that, when you were in Liburnia, you saw women big with child bringing in fire wood and at the same time carrying a nursing child, or even two of them, thus putting to shame those slender reeds, the women of our class, who are wont to lie abed under mosquito bars for days at a time when they are pregnant." "That is true," I replied, "and the contrast is even more marked in Illyricum, where it often happens that a pregnant woman whose time has come will leave her work for a little while and return with a new born child which you would think she had found rather than borne.[152] "Not only this, the custom of that country permits the girls as much as twenty years of age, whom they call virgins, to go about unprotected and to give themselves to whomever they wish and to have children before marriage." "As to what pertains to the health of man and beast," resumed Cossinius, "and the leech craft which may be practised without the aid of a physician, the flock master should have the rules written down: indeed, the flock master must have some education, otherwise he can never keep his flock accounts properly.[153] "As to the number of shepherds, some make a narrow, some a broad, allowance. I have one shepherd for every eighty long wool sheep: Atticus here has one for every hundred. One can reduce the number of men required in respect of large flocks (like those containing a thousand head or more) much more readily than in respect of comparatively small flocks, like Atticus' and mine, for I have only seven hundred head of sheep, and you, Atticus, have, I believe, eight hundred, though we are alike in providing a ram for every ten ewes. Two men are required to care for a herd of fifty mares: and each of them should have a mare broken for riding to serve as a mount in those localities where it is the custom to drive the mares to pasture, as often happens in Apulia and Lucania." _Of milk and cheese and wool_ XI. "And now that we have fulfilled our promise, let us go," said Cossinius. "Not until you have added some thing," I cried, "concerning that supplemental profit from cattle which was promised; namely, of milk and cheese and the shearing of wool." So Cossinius resumed: "Ewes' milk, and, after it, goats' milk, is the most nourishing of all liquids which we drink. As a purgative, mares' milk ranks first, and, after it, in order, asses' milk, cows' milk and goats' milk, but the quality depends upon what has been fed to the cattle, upon the condition of the cattle, and upon when it is milked. "So far as concerns the food of the cattle, milk is nourishing which is made from barley and stover and other such kinds of dry and hard cattle food. "So far as concerns its purgative qualities, milk is good when made from green stuff, especially if it is grass containing plants which, taken by themselves, have a purgative effect upon the human body. "So far as concerns the condition of the cattle, that milk is best which comes from cattle in vigorous health and from those still young. "So far as concerns the time of milking, that milk is best which comes neither from a 'stripper' nor from a recently fresh dam. "The cheese made of cows' milk is the most agreeable to the taste but the most difficult to digest: next, that of ewes' milk, while the least agreeable in taste, but the most easily digested, is that of goats' milk. "There is also a distinction between cheese when it is soft and new made and when it is dry and old, for when it is soft it is more nourishing and digestible, but the opposite is true of old and dry cheese. "The custom is to make cheese from the rising of the Pleiades in spring to their rising in summer, and yet the rule is not invariable, because of difference in locality and the supply of forage. "The practice is to add a quantity of rennet, equal to the size of an olive, to two _congii_ of milk to make it curdle. The rennet taken from the stomachs of the hare and the kid is better than that from lambs, but some use as a ferment the milk of the fig tree mixed with vinegar, and some times sprinkled with other vegetable products. In parts of Greece this is called [Greek: opos], elsewhere [Greek: dakruos]." "I am prepared to believe," I said, "that the fig tree standing beside the chapel of the goddess Rumina[154] was planted by shepherds for the purpose you mention, for there is it the practice to make libations of milk rather than of wine or to sacrifice suckling pigs. For men used to use the word _rumis_ or _ruma_ where we now say _mamma_, signifying a teat: hence even now suckling lambs are called _subrumi_ from the teat they suck, just as we call suckling pigs _lactantes_ from _lac_, the milk that comes from the teat." Cossinius resumed: "If you sprinkle your cheese with salt it is better to use the mineral than the marine kind. "Concerning the shearing of sheep, the first thing to be looked into before you begin is that the sheep are not suffering from scab or sores, as it is better to wait, if necessary, until they are cured before shearing. "The time to shear is between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice, when the sheep begin to sweat (it is the sweat which gives new clipped wool its name _sucida_). As soon as the sheep are sheared they are smeared with a mixture[155] of wine and oil, some add white wax and hogs' grease. If they are sheep which are kept blanketed, the inside of the blanket should be anointed with this mixture before it is put on again. "If the sheep has suffered any wound during the shearing, it should be treated with liquid tar. "Long wool sheep are usually sheared about the time of the barley harvest: in some places before the hay harvest. "Some men shear their sheep twice a year, as in hither Spain, investing double work because they think they get more wool, just as some men mow their meadows twice a year. Careful shepherds are wont to shear on a mat so as not to lose any of the wool. A clear day should be chosen for the shearing and it is usually done between the fourth and the tenth hours (10 a.m.-4 p.m.) since wool sheared in the hot sun is softer, heavier and of better colour by reason of the sweat of the sheep. Wool which has been collected and packed in bags is called _vellera_ or _velamina_, words derived from _vellere_, to pull, whence it may be concluded that the practice of pulling wool is older than shearing. Those who pull the wool today make a practice of starving their sheep for three days before, because when they are weak the wool yields more readily." "Speaking of shearing," I said, "it is reported that the first barbers were brought into Italy from Sicily in the year 453 after the foundation of Rome (B.C. 300) by P. Ticinius Menas, as appears from the inscription in the public square of Ardea. The statues of the ancients show that formerly there were no barbers because most of them have long hair and a heavy beard."[156] Cossinius resumed: "As the wool of the sheep serves to make clothes, so the hair of goats is employed: on ships, in making military engines and certain implements of industry. Certain nations, indeed, are clad in goat skins, as in Gaetulia and Sardinia. Their use for this purpose by the ancient Greeks is apparent, because old men in the tragedies are called [Greek: diphtheriai], from the fact that they were clad in goat skins: and it is the custom also in our comedies to dress rustic characters in goat skins, like the youth in the _Hypobolimaeus_ (the Counterfeit) of Caecilius, and the old man in the _Heautontimorumenos_ (the Self Tormentor) of Terence. "It is the practice to shear goats in the greater part of Phrygia because there the goats have heavy coats, of which cilicia (so called because the practice of shearing goats began in the city of that name) and other hair cloth materials of that kind are made." With this Cossinius stopped, and, while he was waiting for criticism of what he had said, Vitulus' freedman, coming into town from the gardens [of his master] turned to us and said, "I was on my way to your house to invite you to come early so as not to shorten the holiday." And so, my dear Turranius Niger, we separated: Scrofa and I going to the gardens of Vitulus; the others, some home and some to see Menas. BOOK III THE HUSBANDRY OF THE STEADING _Introduction: the antiquity of country life_ I There are two modes of human life, my dear Pinnius, which are manifestly as different in the time of their origin as they are in their habitat, that of the country and that of the town. Country life is much the more ancient, for time was when men lived altogether in the country and had no towns: indeed, the oldest town in Greece, according to the tradition, is the Boeotian Thebes, which was founded by King Ogyges, and in our own land that of Rome, founded by King Romulus of which now it may be affirmed with confidence, as was not possible when Ennius wrote: "'Tis seven hundred years, or more or less, Since first illustrious Rome began her sway, With hallowed augury." Now, if it is admitted that Thebes was founded before the deluge, which is known by Ogyges' name, its age is not more than about twenty-one hundred years: and if that period is compared with the lapse of time since men began to cultivate the land and to live in huts and hovels, knowing naught of city walls and gates, it is evident that life in the country preceded life in town by a tale of immemorial years. Nor is this to be wondered at since 'God made the country and man made the town.'[157] While the tradition is that all the arts were invented in Greece within a thousand years, there never was a time when the earth could not be cultivated. And, as life in the country is the more ancient, so it is the better life: for it was not without good reason that our ancestors were wont to plant colonies of citizens in the country, because by them they were both fed in times of peace and protected in times of war: nor was it without significance that they called both the Earth and Ceres by the common name of Mother and esteemed that those who worshipped her lead a life at once pious and useful and were the sole representatives left on earth of the race of Saturn. A proof of this is that the mysteries peculiar to the cult of Ceres were called _Initia_, the very name indicating that they related to the beginning of things. A further proof that country life was earlier than that of town is found in the name of the town of Thebes, which was bestowed from the character of its situation rather than from the name of its founder: for in the ancient language, and among the Aeolians who had their origin in Boeotia, a small hill is called _tebas_ without the aspirate; and in the Sabine country, where Pelasgians from Greece settled, they still have the same locution: witness that hill called Tebae which stands in the Sabine country on the via Salaria not far from the mile stone of Reate. At first agriculture was conducted on so small a scale that it had little distinction, since those who followed it, being sprung from shepherds, at once sowed their corn and pastured their flocks on the same land, but as later this art grew in importance the husbandry of live stock was separated, and it befel that some men were called farmers and others shepherds. The art of feeding live stock should really be divided into two branches, as is not yet fully appreciated, one relating to the stock kept at the steading, the other to the stock pastured in the fields. The latter, which is designated by the name _pecuaria_, is well known and highly esteemed so that rich men, either lease or buy much pasture land in order to carry it on: the other, which is known as _villatice_, has, because it seemed to be of less importance, been treated by some as an incident of the husbandry of agriculture, when in fact it should be made a part of the husbandry of live stock: nor has it been described separately and at length by any one, so far as I know. And so, as I think that there are three branches of farm management which are undertaken for profit, namely: agriculture, live stock and the industries peculiar to the steading, I have planned three books, of which I have already written two, the first concerning the husbandry of agriculture, which I dedicated to my wife Fundania, and the second concerning the husbandry of live stock to Turranius Niger: the third, relating to the profits of those industries which are carried on at the steading, I now send herewith to you; for the fact that we are neighbours and entertain a mutual affection seems to demand that it should be dedicated to you above all others. Although you have a villa, which is remarkable for the beauty of its workmanship within and without, and for the splendour of its mosaic pavements, still you deem it to be bare unless you have the walls decorated also with books: so in like manner that your villa may be more distinguished by the profits you derive from it than by the character of its construction, and that I may be of assistance to that end, so far as may be, I have sent you this book, which is a summary of some conversations which we have had on the subject of what makes the perfectly equipped villa: and so I begin as follows: _Of the definition of a Roman villa_ II. The Senator Q. Axius, my fellow tribesman, and I had cast our votes at the comitia for the election of aediles, and, although it was the heat of the day, we wished to be on hand when the candidate whom we were supporting should go home. So Axius said to me: "What would you think of taking shelter in the _villa publica_[158] while the votes are being sorted rather than in the booth of our candidate." "I hold," said I, "not only with the proverb that bad advice is worst for him who gives it, but that good advice is good for both the giver and the taker." And so we made our way to the _villa publica_, where we found Appius Claudius,[159] the Augur, seated on a bench waiting for any call for his services by the Consul: on his left was Cornelius Merula (blackbird) of the Consular family of that name, and Fircellius Pavo (pea-cock) of Reate, and on his right Minutius Pica (mag-pie) and M. Petronius Passer (sparrow). When we had approached them Axius, smiling, said to Appius: "May we come into your aviary where you are sitting among the birds?" "By all means," replied Appius, "and especially you who set before me such birds as still make my mouth water, when I was your guest a few days ago at your Reatine villa on my way to lake Velinus to settle the controversy between the people of Interamna and Reate.[160] "But" he added, "is not this villa, which our ancestors constructed, simpler and so better than that elaborate one of yours at Reate: do you see any where here any furniture of citrus wood or ormolu, any decorations of vermillion or blue, any tessellations or mosaic work, all of which on the other hand were displayed in your house? And while this is open to the entire people, yours is available to you alone: this is the resort for the citizens after the comitia in the Campus Martius, and for all alike, while yours is reserved for mares and asses. And furthermore it should be considered that this building is useful in carrying on the public business, for here the consuls review the army on parade, here the arms are inspected, here the censors enumerate the people." "Tell me," retorted Axius, "which is useful, this villa of yours giving on the Campus Martius, more extravagantly arrayed with objects of art than all Reate put together, so bedizened is it with pictures and garnished with statues, or mine where there is no trace of the artists Lysippus or Antiphilus, but there are many of the farm hand and the shepherd? "And since there can be no villa where there is no farm and that well cultivated, how can you call this house of yours a villa which has no land appurtenant to it and no cattle or horses? Again, tell me, pray, how does your villa compare with that of your grandfather and great grandfather, for one cannot see at yours, as one could always see at theirs, cured hay in the mows, the vintage in the cellar, and the harvest in the granary? Because, forsooth, a house is situated out of town, it is no more a villa for that reason than the houses of those who dwell beyond the Porta Flumentaria or in the Aemiliana suburb." "Since it appears that I do not know what a villa is," replied Appius, smiling, "I wish you would be good enough to instruct me, so that I may not make a fool of myself, as I am planning to buy from M. Seius his villa at Ostia: for if a mere house is not a villa unless it is equipped with a jackass costing forty thousand sesterces ($2,000), like that you showed me at your place, I fear that I would be making a mistake in buying Seius' house on the shore at Ostia in the belief that it is a villa. But it was our friend Merula here who put me in mind of buying this house, for he told me that he had spent several days there and that he had never seen a more delightful villa, and yet he saw there no paintings, nor any bronze or marble statues, neither did he see any wine press, or oil mill, or oil jars." "And what kind of a villa is this," said Axius, turning to Merula, "where there are neither the ornaments of a town house nor the utensils of a farm?" "Do you consider," said Merula, "that your house on the bank of Velinus, which neither painter nor architect has ever seen, is any less a villa than the one you have in Rosea so elegantly decorated with the work of an architect and which you share with your famous jackass?" Axius admitted, with a nod, that a simple farm house was as much entitled to be called a villa as any house which united the characteristics of both town and country, and asked what he deduced from this. "What?" said Merula. "Why, if your estate in Rosea is to be approved by reason of the husbandry which you carry on, and is properly called a villa because there cattle are fed and stabled, then, by the same reasoning, all those houses should be called villas in which large profits are derived from husbandry: for what difference does it make whether you derive your profit from sheep or from birds? Is the income any sweeter which comes from cattle in which bees are generated, than from the bees themselves, such as work in their hives at the villa of Seius? Do you sell to the butcher the hogs which you raise at your farm for more than Seius sells his wild boars to the meat market?" "Am I any less able," replied Axius, "to have these things at my farm at Reate: is Sicilian honey made at Seius' place and only Corsican honey at Reate,[161] and does the mast which he buys for his wild boars make them fat while that which I get for nothing from my woods makes mine lean?" "But," said Appius, "Merula does not deny that you _can_ carry on at your villa the kind of husbandry which Seius does at his, yet I myself have seen that you don't. "For there are two kinds of husbandry of live stock: one in the fields, as of cattle; and the other at the steading, as of chickens and pigeons and bees and other such things which are usually kept at a villa. "About the latter, Mago the Carthaginian, and Cassius Dionysius and others have treated specially in different parts of their books, and it would seem that Seius has read their precepts and so has learned how to make more profit from his villa alone by such husbandry than others make out of an entire farm." "Certainly," agreed Merula, "for I have seen there great flocks of geese, chickens, pigeons, cranes and pea-cocks: also dormice, fish, wild boars and other such game.[162] The freedman who keeps his books which Varro has seen, assured me when he was doing the honours in the absence of his master, that Seius derives an income of more than fifty thousand sesterces ($2,500) per annum from his villa." As Axius seemed astonished, I asked him: "Surely you know the estate of my aunt in the Sabine country which is at the twenty-fourth mile stone from Rome on the via Salaria." "Of course, I do," Axius replied, "for it is there that I am wont to divide the day in summer on my way from Reate to town and to spend the night when I come thence in winter." "Well," I continued, "in that villa there is an aviary from which I know that there were taken in one season five thousand thrushes, which, at three deniers apiece, means that that department of the establishment brought in a revenue of sixty thousand sesterces that year, or twice the yield of the entire two hundred jugera of your farm at Reate."[163] "What, sixty thousand," exclaimed Axius, "sixty thousand: you are making game of me!" "Sixty thousand," I affirmed, "but in order that you might realize such a lucky throw you will require either a public banquet or a triumph on the scale of that of Scipio Metellus, or club dinners, which indeed have now become so frequent as to raise the price of provisions of the market." "You will perchance expect this return every year," said Merula, "so I trust that your aviary may not lead you into a loss. But surely in such good times as these it could not happen that you would fail, except rarely, for what year is there that does not see such a feast or a triumph, or club dinners, such as now-a-days consume victuals without number. Nay," he added, "it seems that in our habit of luxury such a public banquet is a daily occurrence within the gates of Rome."[164] To supplement the examples of such profits: L. Albutius, a learned man and, as you know, the author of certain satires in the manner of Lucilius, has said that the returns from feeding live stock on his Alban farm are always less than his income from his villa, for the farm yields less than ten thousand sesterces and the villa more than twenty. He even maintains that if he should establish a villa near the sea in such a place as he might choose he could derive from it an income of more than a hundred thousand sesterces. Did not M. Cato recently sell forty thousand sesterces worth of fishes from the fish ponds of Lucullus after he had accepted the administration of his estate?" "My dear Merula," exclaimed Axius, "take me, I beg of you, as your pupil in the art of the husbandry of the steading." "I will begin," replied Merula, "as soon as you promise me a minerval in the form of a dinner."[165] "You shall have it," said Axius, "both today, and hereafter as well, off those delicacies you will teach me to rear." "I fear," replied Merula, "that what you may offer me at the beginning of your experience with villa feeding will be dead geese or deceased pea-cocks." "And what difference will it make to you," retorted Axius, "if I do serve you fish or fowl which has come to an untimely end: for in no event could you eat them unless they were dead: but I beg you," he added, "matriculate me in the school of villa husbandry and expound to me the theory and the practice of it." Merula accepted the invitation cheerfully. _Of the Roman development of the industries of the steading_ III. "In the first place," he said, "you should know what kind of creatures you may raise or feed in or about a villa, either for your profit or for your pleasure. There are three divisions for this study: poultry houses, warrens and fish ponds. "I include under the head of poultry houses the feeding of all kinds of fowls which are usually kept within the walls of a steading: under the head of warrens not merely what our great grandfathers meant--places where rabbits were usually kept--but any enclosure adjoining a villa in which game animals are enclosed to be fed. In like manner I include under the head of fish ponds all those places in which fish are kept at a villa either in fresh or salt water. "Each of these divisions may be separated into at least two parts: thus the first, that with respect to poultry houses, should be treated with reference to a classification of fowls as between those which are content on land alone, such as pea-cocks, turtle doves, thrushes; and those which require access to water as well as land, such as geese, widgeons and ducks. So the second division, that relating to game, has two different classifications: one which includes the wild boar, the roe buck and hares; the other bees, snails and dormice. "The third, or aquatic division, likewise has two classifications, one including fresh water fish, the other salt water fish. "In order to secure and maintain a supply of these six classes of stock it is necessary to provide a force of three kinds of artificers, namely: fowlers, hunters and fishermen, or else you may buy breeding stock from such men, and trust to the diligence of your servants to rear and fatten their offspring until they are ready for market. Certain of them, such as dormice, snails and chickens, may, however, be obtained without the aid of a hunter's net, and doubtless the business of keeping them began with the stock native to every farm: for the breeding even of chickens has not been a monopoly of the Roman augurs, to make provision for their auspices, but has been practised by all farmers from the beginning of time.[166] From such a start in the kind of husbandry we are now discussing, the next step was to provide masonry enclosures near the steading to confine game, and these served as well for shelter for the bee-stand, for originally the bees were wont to make their hives under the eaves of the farm house itself. "The third division, that of keeping fish, had its origin in simple fresh water ponds in which fish taken in the streams were kept. "There have been two steps in the development of each of these three conveniences; the earlier distinguished by the ancient simplicity, the later by our modern luxury. The earlier stage was that of our ancestors, who had but two places for keeping poultry: one the court yard of the steading in which chickens were fed and their profit derived from eggs and pullets, the other above ground, for their pigeons were kept in the dormers or on the roof of the farm house. "Now-a-days, on the contrary, what our ancestors called hen-houses are known as _ornithones_, and serve to house thrushes and pea-cocks to cater to the delicate appetite of the master: and indeed such structures now have larger roofs than formerly sufficed to cover an entire farm house. "Such has been the progress in respect of warrens also: your father, Axius, never saw any game but rabbits, nor did there exist in his time any such extensive enclosures as now are made, many jugera in extent, to hold wild boars and roe bucks. You can witness," he said, turning to me, "that you found many wild boars in the warren of your farm at Tusculum, when you bought it from M. Piso." In respect of the third class, who was there who used to have any kind of a fish pond, except of fresh water, stocked merely with cat fish and mullets, while today our elegants declare that they would as soon have a pond stocked with frogs as with those fish I have named. You will recall the story of Philippus when he was entertained at Casinum by Ummidius: a pickerel caught in your river, Varro, was put before him, he tasted it and forthwith spat it out, exclaiming "May I perish, but I thought it was fish!"[167] As the luxury of this age has enlarged our warrens, so has it carried our fish ponds even to the sea itself and has herded shoals of sea fish into them. Have not Sergius Orata (goldfish) and Licinius Murena (lamprey) taken their cognomens from fishes for this reason? And who does not know the fame of the fish ponds of Philippus, of Hortensius, and of the brothers Lucullus? "Where, then, Axius, do you wish me to begin?" _Of aviaries_ IV. "I prefer," replied Axius, "that you should begin with the sequel--_postprincipia_, as they say in the camps--that is, with the present day rather than with the past, because the profits from pea-cocks are greater than those from hens, I will not dissemble that I wish to hear first of _ornithones_ because the thrushes which are kept in them make the very name sound like money: indeed, the 60,000 sesterces of Fircelina have consumed me with avarice." "There are two kinds of _ornithones_," replied Merula; "one for pleasure, like that so much admired which our friend Varro here has at his villa near Casinum: the other for profit, such as are maintained commercially, some even indoors in town, but chiefly in the Sabine country which abounds in thrushes. There is a third kind, consisting of a combination of the two I have mentioned, such as Lucullus maintained at his Tusculan villa, where he contrived a dining room under the same roof as his aviary to the end that he might feast delicately, satisfying two senses, now by eating the birds cooked and spread on a platter, now by seeing them flying about the windows: but the truth is that he was disappointed, for the eyes did not take as much pleasure from the sight of the flying birds as the nostrils were offended by their odour." _a. For profit_ V. "But, as I gather you would prefer, Axius, I will speak of that kind of _ornithon_ which is established for profit, whence, but not where, fat thrushes are served. "For this purpose is built a dome, in the form of a peristyle, with a roof over it and enclosed with netting, sufficiently large to accommodate several thousand thrushes[168] and blackbirds; indeed, some also include other kinds of birds, such as ortolans and quail, which sell for a good price when fat. Into this enclosure water should be conducted through a conduit and so disposed as to wind through the aviary in channels narrow enough to be cleaned easily (for if the water spreads out it is quickly polluted and rendered unfit to drink) and draining like a running stream to find its vent through another conduit, so that the birds may not be exposed to the risk of mud. The door should be low and narrow and well balanced on its hinges like the doors they have in the amphitheatres where bulls are fought: few windows and so placed that the birds cannot see trees and wild birds without, for that makes the prisoners pine and grow thin. The place should have only so much light as may be necessary to enable the birds to see where they are to perch and to eat and drink. The doors and the windows should be lightly stuccoed round about to keep out rats and other such vermin. "Around the wall of the building on the inside are fastened many perches where the birds can sit, and another such convenience should be contrived from poles set on the ground and leaning against the walls and tied together with other poles fastened transversely at regular intervals, thus giving the appearance of the rising degrees of a theatre. Down on the ground near the drinking water you should place the birds' food, which usually consists of little balls of a paste made out of figs and corn meal: but for twenty days before you intend to market your thrushes it is customary to feed them more heavily, both by giving them more food and that chiefly of finer meal. "In this enclosure there should also be cages with wooden floors which may serve the birds as resting places supplementing the perches. "Next to the aviary should be contrived a smaller structure, called the _seclusorium_, in which the keeper may array the birds found dead, to render an account of them to his master, and where he may drive the birds which are ready for market from the larger aviary: and to this end this smaller room is connected with the main cage by a large door and has more light: and there, when he has collected the number he wishes to market, the keeper kills them, which is done secretly, lest the others might despond at the sight and themselves die before they are ready for market. "Thrushes are not like other birds of passage which lay their eggs in particular places, as the swan does in the fields and the swallows under the roof, but they lay anywhere: for, despite their masculine name (_turdus_) there are female thrushes, just as there are male blackbirds, although they have a purely feminine name (_merula_). "All birds are divided as between those which are of passage, like swallows and cranes, and those which are domestic, like chickens and pigeons: thrushes are birds of passage and every year fly from across the sea into Italy about the time of the autumn equinox, returning about the spring equinox. At another season doves and quail do the same in immense numbers, as may be seen in the neighbouring islands of Pontia, Palmaria and Pandataria, for there they are wont to rest a few days on their arrival and again before they set out across the sea from Italy." _b. For pleasure_ "So," said Appius to Axius, "if you enclose five thousand thrushes in such an aviary as Merula has described and there happens to be a banquet or a triumph, you will gain forthwith that sixty thousand sesterces which you so keenly covet and be able to lend the money out at good interest." And then, turning to me, he added, "Do you tell us of that other kind of ornithon, namely: for pleasure merely, for it is said that you have constructed one near Casinum which surpasses not only the original built by the inventor of such flying cages, our friend M. Laenius Strabo of Brundisium (who was the first to keep birds confined in the chamber of a peristyle and to feed them through the net), but also the vast structures of Lucullus at Tusculum." "You know," I said, "that there flows through my estate near Casinum[169] a stream which is both deep and clear and fifty-seven feet wide between the masonry embankments, so that it is necessary to use bridges to get from one part of the property to the other. On the upper reach of this stream is situated my Museum[170] and at a distance of 950 feet below is an island formed by the confluence of another stream. Along the bank for this distance is an uncovered walk ten feet broad and between this walk and the field is the location of my aviary enclosed on both sides, right and left, with high masonry walls. The _ornithon_ itself is built in the shape of a writing tablet with a capital on it, the main quadrangle being forty-eight feet wide and seventy-two feet long, the capital semi-circular with a radius of twenty-seven feet. To this a covered walk or portico is joined, as it were across the bottom of the page of the tablet, with passages leading on either side of the _ornithon_ proper which contains the cages, to the upper end of the interior quadrangle [_adjoining the capital_]. This portico is constructed of a series of stone columns between which and the main outside walls are planted dwarf shrubs, a net of hemp being stretched from the top of the walls to the architrave of the portico, and thence down to the stylobate or floor. The exterior spaces thus enclosed are filled with all kinds of birds which are fed through the net, water being provided by a small running stream. On the interior sides of the porticos, and adjoining them at the upper end of the interior quadrangle, are constructed on both sides two narrow oblong basins. Between these basins a path leads to the _tholus_, or rotunda, which is surrounded with two rows of columns, like that in the house of Catulus, except that I have substituted columns for walls. Beyond these columns at the end is a grove of large transplanted trees forming a roof of leaves, but admitting light underneath, as that is entirely cut off by the high walls on the sides. Between the exterior row of columns of the _tholus_, which are of stone, and the interior row, which are of pine, there is a narrow space, five feet in width. The exterior columns are filled in with a transparent net instead of walls, thus permitting the birds to look out upon the grove and the wild birds there but without escaping: the interior columns being filled in with the net of the main aviary. The space between the two rows of columns thus enclosed is equipped with perches for the birds in the form of many rods let into all the columns in ascending array like the degrees of a theatre; and here are enclosed all kinds of birds, but chiefly singing birds, like nightingales and blackbirds, for whom water is conducted by means of a small canal and food is supplied under the net. [_Under the lantern of the tholus is a basin of water: and around this_] a foot and nine inches below the stylobate or pedestal of the interior row of columns, runs a stone platform. This is five feet in width and two feet above the level of the basin, thus affording a space on which my bird guests may hop about from the cushions to the little columns [_which are there provided for them_].[171] "The basin is immediately surrounded with a quay a foot in width adjoining [but below the level of] the platform and has a little island in the middle. Around the platform and the quay are contrived docks for ducks. On the island is a little column arranged to turn on its axis and carrying a wheel-shaped table with hollow drum-like dishes fashioned at the ends of the spokes two and a half feet wide and a palm in depth. This is turned by a boy whose business that is, so that meat and drink is put before all my bird guests in turn. From the elevation of the platform, where mats are usually placed, the ducks go out to swim in the basin, and from this streams flow into the two basins I have already described, and little fish may be seen darting from one to the other, while warm or cold water may be turned on the guests from the circumference of the revolving table, which I have described as equipped with spokes. "Within the dome is an arrangement to tell the hours by marking the position in the heavens of the sun by day and Hesperus by night: and furthermore, as in the clock which [Andronicus] Cyrrestes constructed at Athens, the eight winds are depicted on the dome, and, by means of an arrow connecting with a vane, the prevailing wind is indicated to those within."[172] As we were talking an uproar was heard on the Campus Martius. While this did not astonish old parliamentary hands[173] like ourselves, who knew the enthusiasm of an election, yet we were anxious to know what it meant, and at this moment Pantuleius Parra came up and told us that while the votes were being sorted some one was caught stuffing the ballot box[174] and had been haled before the consul by the supporters of the rival candidate. Pavo rose to go, for it was understood that he who had been arrested was the campaign manager of Pavo's own candidate. _Of pea-cocks_ VI. "Now that Fircellius is gone you can speak freely of pea-cocks," said Axius, "for if you should say any thing to their disadvantage in his presence, you might perchance have a crow to pluck with him on account of his relationship."[175] "Within my memory," said Merula, "the practice of keeping commercial flocks of pea-cocks has largely developed and it has so developed that M. Aufidius Lurco is said to derive an income of sixty thousand sesterces per annum from them. If you keep them for profit it is well to have somewhat fewer males than females; while the contrary is true if you keep them for pleasure, for the pea-cock far surpasses his hen in beauty. With us they are fed in the country, but abroad it is said that they are kept on islands, as at Samos in the grove of Juno and at Planasia, the island of M. Piso. In setting up a flock age and beauty must be considered, for nature has given the palm of beauty to the pea-cock among all the birds. The hens are not fit for breeding under two years of age, nor when they are aged. They are fed all kinds of grain but chiefly barley. Scius makes a practice of feeding them a modius of barley apiece for the month before they begin to breed, his purpose being to make them more productive. He expects his overseer to raise three pea fowl for every hen, and he sells them when matured for fifty deniers ($10) a piece, a price such as one never obtains for a sheep.[176] "Furthermore, he buys eggs and sets them under dunghill hens, transferring the young pea fowls so hatched to the shelter set apart for their kind. This house should be built large enough for the number of pea fowl to be kept and should be equipped with separate roosting places smoothly stuccoed, so that snakes and such vermin may not be able to get into it: and, furthermore, it should have attached to it a run in which the pea fowl may feed on sunny days, and both these places should be kept clean, as this kind of fowl demands. The keeper should make the rounds often with a shovel to collect and preserve their manure, which is not only fit for use in agriculture but serves also as bedding for your pea chicks. "It is said that Q. Hortensius was the first to serve pea-cocks at dinner, on the occasion of his inauguration as an augur, an evidence of prodigality which was more approved by the luxurious than by good men of simple manners: but many others quickly followed his example, so that the price of pea fowl was raised until an egg sold for five deniers ($1) and a pea fowl itself readily for fifty ($10), thus a flock of an hundred of them easily yields an income of forty thousand sesterces, ($2,000), or even sixty ($3,000), if, as Abuccius advises, one obtains three chickens from every pea hen." _Of pigeons_ VII. In the meanwhile an apparitor came to Appius from the Consul and said that the augurs were summoned. As Appius went out from the _villa publica_, a flock of pigeons flew in, whereupon Merula said to Axius: "If you had established a [Greek: peristerogropheion] you would think that these were your pigeons, although they are wild, for it is the custom to keep both kinds in a [Greek: peristerotropheion]. One is the wild dove (or, as some call them the rock dove, or _saxatilis_), such as live in the towers and dormers (_columines_) of a farm house, whence they get the name _columbae_, because, on account of their natural timidity, they seek the highest places on the roof. On this account wild doves usually frequent towers, to which they may fly from the fields of their own accord, and return.[177] The other kind of pigeons is tamer and are wont to seek their food at the very threshold of a house. This kind is usually white in colour, the wild variety being mottled but without any white. From these two stocks a third or mixed variety has been developed for commercial profit and these are collected in the place which some call a _peristereon_ (pigeon house), and others a _peristerotropheion_ (place for raising pigeons), where there are often confined as many as five thousand at a time. "A pigeon house is made like a great dome, with arched roof, a narrow entrance, and grilled windows or with wider lattices on all sides so that the interior may be well lighted and yet no snake or other such pest may have access. The walls and the dome within and the edges of the windows without should be smeared with light stucco to keep out rats and lizards, for nothing is so timid as a pigeon. A round nest should be provided for each pair of pigeons and these should be arranged in close order so that there may be established as many as possible of them ranked from the ground to the very dome. Each nest should have a door no bigger than necessary to enable the pigeons to go in and out but within should be of three palms in diameter. Under each rank of nests should be fastened planks two palms broad for the use of the pigeons as a vestibule on coming out. Water should be led into the pigeon house, both for them to drink and to bathe in, for pigeons are very clean birds. For this reason the keeper of the pigeons should sweep out the house several times a month, for that which soils it has so great a. value in agriculture that some writers even claim that it is the best of all manures. Furthermore, the keeper in these rounds may tend any pigeon which is ailing, remove any which are dead, and take out such squabs as are fit for market. Likewise, those which are setting should be transferred to a particular place, separated from the others by a net but from which the mothers may be free to get out of doors: which is done for two reasons: first, because if they become weary or decrepit from being cooped too long, they will be refreshed by the free air when they go abroad: secondly, because they serve as decoys for other pigeons, for their squabs will always bring them home themselves unless they are struck down by a crow or cut off by a hawk. Pigeon breeders rid themselves of the last mentioned pests by planting in the ground two rods smeared with birdlime and bent in one upon the other, and then tie on some bait so disposed that when the hawk falls upon his prey he finds himself entangled in the birdlime and is taken. "It may be noted that the pigeon has a homing instinct, as is proved by the practice of many in letting pigeons loose from their bosoms in the theatre expecting them to return home, for if they did not return the practice would not persist. "The food for pigeons is placed in mangers fastened around the walls and filled from the outside by means of conduits. They thrive on millet, wheat, barley, peas, beans and vetch. This regimen should be followed also, as far as possible, in the care of the wild pigeons, which live on the towers and the roofs of the barn. "In equipping a [Greek: peristereon] pigeons of good age should be secured, neither squabs nor veterans, and as many males as females. Nothing is more prolific than the pigeon, for in forty days they conceive, lay, hatch and raise a brood, and they keep this up nearly all the year, stopping only from the winter solstice until spring. Squabs are hatched in pairs, and as soon as they have grown up and have strength breed with their own mothers. Those who fatten squabs in order to sell them dearer, make a practice of isolating them as soon as they are covered with feathers, then they cram them with white bread which has been chewed:[178] in winter this is fed twice a day, in summer three times a day, morning, noon and night, the midday meal being omitted in winter. Those which are just beginning to have feathers are left in the nests, but their legs are broken, and, in order that they may be crammed, the food is put before the mothers, for they will feed themselves and their squabs on it all day long. Squabs which are reared in this way become fat more quickly than others and have whiter flesh. "A pair of pigeons will commonly sell at Rome for two hundred _nummi_, if they are well made, of good colour, without blemish, and of good breed: some times they even bring a thousand _nummi_, and there is a report that recently L. Axius, a Roman of the equestrian order, declined that sum, refusing to sell for less than four hundred deniers."[179] "If I could procure a fully equipped [Greek: peristereon]," cried Axius, "as readily as I have bought a supply of earthen ware nests, I would have had it already on the way to my farm." "As if," remarked Pica, "there were not many of them here in town. But perhaps those who have pigeon houses on their roofs do not seem to you to be justified in calling them [Greek: peristereonas] even though some of them represent an investment of more than one hundred thousand sesterces. I advise you to buy out one of them and learn how to pocket a profit here in town, before you build on a large scale in the country." _Of turtle doves_ VIII. "So much for that then," said Axius. "Proceed, please, to the next subject, Merula." "For turtle doves," said Merula, "in like manner a house should be constructed proportioned to the number you intend to feed, and this, like the pigeon house, I have described, should have a door and windows and fresh water and walls and a vaulted roof, but in place of breeding nests the mutules should be extended through the walls or poles set in them in regular order with hempen mats on them, the lowest rank being not more than three feet from the floor, the rest at intervals of nine inches, the top rank six inches from the vault, and of equal breadth as the mutule stands out from the wall. On these the doves are fed day and night. For food they are given dry wheat, usually a half modius for every one hundred and twenty doves. Every day the house should be cleaned out, that they may not be injured by the accumulation of manure, and because also it has its place in the economy of the farm. The best time for fattening doves is about the harvest, for then the mothers are in their best condition and produce young ones not only in the largest number but the best for cramming: so that is the time when they are most profitable." _Of poultry_ IX. "Tell me now, if you please, Merula," said Axius, "what I should know of raising and fattening poultry and wood pigeons, then we can proceed to the discussion of the remainder of our programme." "There are three kinds of fowls usually classed as poultry," replied Merula, "dunghill fowl, jungle fowl and guinea fowl. The dunghill fowl are those which are constantly kept in the country at farms. "He who wishes to establish an [Greek: ornithoboskeion] from which, by the exercise of intelligence and care, he can take large profits, as the people of Delos do with such great success,[180] should observe five principal rules: 1° in regard to buying, what kind and how many he will keep: 2° in regard to breeding: 3° in regard to eggs, how they are set and hatched: 4° in regard to chicks, how and by whom they are reared, and 5°, which is a supplement of all the foregoing, how they are fattened. "The females of the dunghill fowl are called hens, the breeding males cocks, and the males which have been altered capons. Cocks are caponized by burning the spurs[181] with a hot iron until the skin is broken, the wound being poulticed with potters' clay. "He who wishes to have a model [Greek: ornithoboskeion] should equip it with all three kinds of fowls, though chiefly the dunghill variety. In purchasing these last it is important to choose fertile hens, which are indicated by red feathers, black wings, unequal toes, large heads, combs upstanding and heavy, for such hens are more likely to lay. "A lusty cock may be known by his muscular carriage, his red comb, a beak short, strong and sharp, eyes tawny or black, wattles a whitish red, neck spotted or tinged with gold, the second joint of his legs well covered with feathers, short legs long spurs, a heavy tail, and profuse feathers, also by his spirit and his frequent crowing, his readiness to fight, and that he is not only not afraid of such animals as do the hens harm, but even goes out to fight them. You must be careful, however, not to buy for breeding any fowls of the breeds known as Tanagran, Medean and Chalcidean, for, while they are beautiful to look at and are fit for fighting with one another, they are practically sterile. "If you wish to keep a flock of two hundred, choose an enclosed place and there construct two large poultry houses side by side and looking to the East, each about ten by five feet and a little less than five feet in height, and furnished with windows three by four feet in which are fitted shutters of wickerwork, which will serve to let in plenty of fresh air and light and yet keep out such vermin as prey upon chickens. "Between the two houses should be a door by which the _gallinarius_ who takes care of them, may have access. Within the houses enough poles are arranged to serve as roosts for all the chickens: opposite each roost a nest should be set in the wall. In front of the house should be an enclosed yard to which the fowls may have access in the day time and where they can dust themselves,[182] and there should be constructed the keeper's house, which should be equipped all about with nests, either set into the walls or firmly fastened to them, for the least disturbance injures eggs when they are setting. "When the hens begin to lay, straw should be spread in their nests and this should be renewed when they begin to set, for in such bedding are bred mites and other insects which will not suffer the hen to be quiet, with the result that the eggs are hatched unequally or rot. "A hen should not be allowed to set on more than twenty-five eggs, although such is her fecundity that she lays more than that in a season. The best time for hatching is from the spring to the autumn equinox. Eggs laid before or after this season, or the first eggs laid by a pullet, should never be set. Hens used for setting should be old rather than young, without sharp beaks and claws, for those so equipped are better employed in laying than in setting. Hens a year or two years old are better fitted for laying. "If you set pea-cock eggs under a hen, you should wait ten days before adding hen eggs to the nest, to insure them all hatching together, for the period of incubation of chicken eggs is thrice seven days and that of the eggs of pea-fowl is thrice nine. Sitting hens should be shut up day and night, except for a time in the morning and evening, when they are let out to eat and drink. "The keeper should make the rounds every few days and turn the eggs, so that they may be kept warm all over. It is said that you can tell whether an egg is fertile or sterile by putting it in water: for if it is sterile it will float, while if it is fertile it will sink. Those who shake their eggs to ascertain this fact make a mistake for thereby they destroy the germ in them. It is also said that you can tell a sterile egg by the fact that it is transparent when held against the light. "To preserve eggs they should be rubbed with fine salt or soaked for three or four hours in brine, and then cleaned off or packed in chaff or straw. Care should be taken to set eggs only in uneven numbers. The keeper can tell whether an egg is fertile or not four days after it is set, by holding it to the light, when he should throw it out if it is found to be empty and substitute another for it. "The new hatched chickens should be taken from every nest and given to a hen who has only a few to care for. When in this way a setting hen has less than half her eggs left unhatched, they should be taken from her and put under another hen which has eggs still unhatched. It is not well to give more than thirty chicks to a hen. Chicks should be fed for the first fifteen days in the dust to protect them from injuring their tender beaks on the hard ground: their diet being crushed barley mixed with cress seed and soaked in wine, for prepared in this way the grain is digestible. They should be kept away from water in the beginning. When they begin to have feathers on their legs the mites should be carefully picked off their heads and necks, for these banes often destroy them. Deer's horn should be burnt around their coops to keep snakes away, for the very smell of those vermin is fatal to young chickens. They should be allowed to run in the sun and to scratch in a dung heap, which serves to develop them. This rule applies not only to young chickens but also to the entire [Greek: ornithoboskeion], and should be practised all summer and even in winter on mild and sunny days. A net should be stretched over the chicken yard to keep the fowls themselves from flying out and to protect them from hawks and other birds of prey. Fowls should be protected from heat as well as cold, for both are harmful to them. When the chicks have got their feathers it is best to accustom them to follow one or two hens, leaving the other hens free to go to laying, in which occupation they are more useful than in rearing chicks. "A hen should be set after the new moon, for those which begin earlier seldom hatch many chicks. "They hatch usually in twenty days. "And now since I have discussed the dunghill fowl at some length, I will make up to you by brevity with respect to the other kinds of fowls. "Jungle fowl are rarely seen at Rome, and then usually in cages. They resemble guinea chickens more than dunghill fowls. When perfect in form and appearance they are often carried in the public processions with parrots and white blackbirds and other such rarities. They do not usually lay or raise their chickens on a farm, but in the forests. The island of Gallinaria, which lies in the Tuscan sea off the coast of Italy, opposite the Ligurian mountains (and the towns of Intermelii and Alba Ingannua) derives its name from them, though some maintain that the name comes from dunghill fowl which were carried to that island by sailors and have there run wild. Guinea fowl (_gallinae africanae_) are large, mottled and have their humps in their backs. The Greeks call them [Greek: meleagrís].[183] They are the last fowls which the culinary art has introduced to our dining tables, on account of their gamy flavour.[184] By reason of their rarity they sell for a high price. "Of the three kinds of fowls, the ordinary dunghill fowl is used chiefly for cramming. For this purpose they are shut up in a small confined and darkened coop, because both exercise and light are enemies of fat. Any large chickens may be selected for this operation, not necessarily of that breed which the peasants call Melica incorrectly, for as the ancients said Thelis when they meant Thetis, so the country people still say Melica for Medica. This name was given at first to the fowls which were imported from Medea on account of their great size and then to all of that breed, but now the name is given indiscriminately to all large fowls by reason of their general resemblance. After the feathers have been pulled from their tails and wings they are crammed with balls of barley paste, with which may be mixed darnel meal, or flax seed soaked in soft water. They are fed twice a day but care must be taken to see that the last meal is digested before another is put before them. After they have been fed and their heads have been cleaned of mites, they are shut up again. This process is kept up for twenty-five days, when they will be fat. "Some cram them on wheat bread soaked in water, or even in wine of good flavour and bouquet, claiming that they are thereby made fat and tender in twenty days.[185] "If in the process of cramming the fowls lose their appetite from too much food, the ration should be reduced daily during the last ten days in the same proportion as it was increased during the first ten days, so that the ration will be the same on the twentieth as on the first day. "Wood pigeons are crammed and fattened in the same way." _Of geese_ X. "Let us now pass," said Axius, "to that tribe which cannot live in the barn yard all the time, or even on land, but requires access to ponds. I mean those whom you philhellenes call amphibia. I understand that you call the places in which geese are kept by the Greek name [Greek: chaenoboskeion], and that Scipio Metellus and M. Seius have several large flocks of geese." "It is Seius' practice," said Merula, "to maintain his flocks of geese[186] in accordance with the five rules I have laid down for poultry, namely: with respect to choice of individuals, breeding, eggs, goslings and the process of cramming. "On the first point he requires the slave who buys his geese to select them of good size and of white plumage, because they reproduce their own qualities in their goslings. This is necessary for there is another kind of geese of variegated plumage, which are called wild, and do not flock freely with the other kind and are domesticated with difficulty. "The best time for breeding geese is at the end of winter and for laying and hatching from the beginning of February or March until the summer solstice. They breed usually in the water, diving to the bottom of the stream or pond.[187] A goose lays only three times a year: and each one should be furnished with a coop about two and a half feet square and bedded with straw: each of their eggs should be marked for identification, for they will not hatch any eggs but their own. They are usually set on nine or eleven eggs, never more than fifteen, nor less than five. In cold weather they set for thirty days, in warm weather twenty-five. When they are hatched the goslings are suffered to remain with their mother for five days, and then daily, when the weather is fine, they are driven out to the meadows or to the ponds or some swampy place. The gosling houses may be built either above or below ground, but never more than twenty should be housed together and care must be taken lest the floor be damp and that they are bedded on chaff or some thing of that kind, and that the house is so constructed as to keep out weasels and other beasts which prey on goslings. Geese are fed in wet places and it is the practice to sow especially for their food supply, using for this purpose any kind of grain, but particularly that salad plant called endive[188] which keeps green wherever there is water, freshening at the mere contact of water however dry it may be. This is gathered to be fed to them, for if they have access to the place where it is growing they will destroy the plant by trampling on it, or else kill themselves by eating too much of it, for they are greedy by nature. For this reason they must be watched, as often in feeding their greediness leads them to seize a root and to break their own necks in attempting to pull it from the ground: for the neck is weak, as the head is soft. "If there is none of this plant they should be fed barley or some other grain. When the farrago season is on, feed that to them, but in the same manner as I have described in respect of endive. While they are setting they may be fed ground barley soaked in water. The goslings may be fed for the first two days on barley cake (_pollenta_) or raw barley, and for the next three days fresh water cress chopped fine in a dish. When they are of an age to be kept by themselves in flocks of twenty, in the kind of house I have described, they are fed on barley meal or farrago or some kind of young herbage cut up. "For cramming, goslings are picked out when they are about six months old, and are shut up in the fattening pen and there are fed three times a day as much as they will eat, of crushed barley and flour dust mixed with water, and after meals they should be made to drink copiously. Kept on this diet they will be fat in about two months.[189] After every meal the feeding place must be cleaned, for, while geese like a clean place, they never leave any place clean in which they have been." _Of ducks_ XI. "Whoever wishes to keep a flock of ducks and to establish a [Greek: naessotropheion], should choose for it, above all others if it is possible, a swampy location because that is most agreeable to the ducks, but, if not, then a situation sloping to a natural lake or pool, or to an artificial pond, with steps leading down to it, practicable for the ducks. The enclosure where they are kept should have a wall fifteen feet high, such as you saw at Seius' villa, with only one door opening into it. All around the wall on the inside should run a broad platform on which are built against the wall the duck houses, fronting on a level concrete vestibule in which is constructed a permanent channel in which their food can be placed in water, for ducks are fed in that way. The entire wall should be given a smooth coating of stucco to keep out polecats[190] and other animals of prey, and the enclosure should be covered with a net of large mesh to prevent eagles from pouncing in and the ducks themselves from flying out.[191] "For food they are given wheat, barley, grape marc, and some times even lobsters and other such aquatic animals. The pond in the enclosure should be fed with a large head of water so that it may be kept always fresh. "There are other kinds of similar birds, like teals and coots which may be fed in the same way. "Some even keep partridges, which, as Archelaus writes, conceive when they hear the voice of the male bird. By reason of the natural abundance and the delicacy of their flesh, these last are not crammed like those domestic fowls I have described, but they are fattened by feeding in the ordinary way. "And now, as I think that I have completed the first act of the drama of the barn yard, I am done." _Of rabbits_ XII. At this point Appius returned and, after an exchange of questions and answers as to what had been said and done during his absence, he said: "Here beginneth the second act of those industries which are wont to be practised at a villa, namely of those enclosures which are still known as _leporaria_ from their ancient special designation. Today a warren no longer means an acre or two in which hares are kept, but some times forests of vast extent in which troops of red deer and roe deer are enclosed. Q. Fulvius Lippinus is said to have forty jugera enclosed in the neighbourhood of Tarquinii[192] where he keeps not only those animals I have named but wild sheep as well. Parks of still larger extent are found in the territory of Statonia (in Etruria) and in certain other places: indeed, in transalpine Gaul T. Pompeius has so great a game preserve that the enclosure is about four miles in extent.[193] "It is the practice to keep in such enclosures not only the animals I have named, but also snail houses and bee hives and jars in which dormice are fed, but the care and the increase and the feeding of all these things are easy, except in the case of bees. Who does not know that a _leporarium_ should be enclosed with masonry walls which are at once smooth and high the one to keep out wild cats and badgers and other such beasts: the other to prevent wolves from getting over. Within should be coverts where the hares may lurk in the day time under bushes and grass, and trees with broad spreading branches to ward off the attacks of the eagle. "Who does not know also that if he introduces only a few hares of both sexes in a short time the place will be full of them, for such is the fecundity of this quadruped that two pair are enough to stock an entire warren in a short time. Often a mother who has just had her litter is found to be big with another: indeed, Archelaus says that if you want to know how old a hare is you have only to count the number of openings in her belly, for without doubt there is one for every year of her life. "It has recently become the practice to cram hares as well as poultry, and for this purpose they are taken out of the warren and shut up in small hutches where they are fattened. There are three kinds of hares: the first, our common Italian kind, which has short front legs and long hind legs, the upper part of the body dark coloured, the belly white, and long ears. Some say that our hare conceives a second time while it is still big. In transalpine Gaul and Macedonia they grow to a great size, but in Spain and in Italy they are not so large. The second kind is native in Gaul near the Alps, and is white all over the body: these are brought to Rome, but rarely. The third kind is native in Spain and is like our hare in every way except that it is smaller and is called rabbit (_cuniculus_).[194] L. Aelius thinks that the hare (_lepus_) gets his name from his swiftness, as it were that he is light of foot (_levipes_), but I think the name is derived from the ancient Greek, because the Aeolians of Boeotia call him [Greek: leporis]. The rabbits derive their latin name of _cuniculi_ from the habit of making underground burrows to hide in [for _cuniculus_ is a Spanish word for mine]. If possible you should have all these three kinds in your warren. I am sure you already have the first two kinds," Apius added, turning to me, "and, as you were so many years in Spain doubtless some rabbits followed you home."" _Of game preserves_ XIII. Then addressing himself again to Axius, Appius continued: "You know, of course, that wild boars are kept in game parks, and that those which are brought in wild are fattened with as little trouble as the tame ones which are born in the park, for you have doubtless seen at the farm near Tusculum, which Varro here bought from M. Pupius Piso, wild boars and roe bucks assemble at the sound of the trumpet to be fed at regular hours, when from a platform, the keeper scatters mast to the wild boars and vetch or some such forage to the roe bucks." "I saw this done," put in Axius, "more dramatically when I was a visitor at the villa of Q. Hortensius in the country near Laurentum. He has there a wood of more than fifty jugera in extent, all enclosed, but it might better be called a [Greek: theriotropheion] than a warren; there on high ground he caused his dinner table to be spread, and while we supped Hortensius gave orders that Orpheus be summoned: when he came, arrayed in his long robe, with a cithara in his hands, he was desired to sing. At that moment a trumpet was sounded and at once Orpheus was surrounded by a large audience of deer and wild boars and other quadrupeds: it seemed to be not less agreeable a spectacle than the shows of game, without African beasts, which the Aediles provide in the Circus Maximus." _Of snails_ XIV. And turning to Merula, Axius continued: "Appius has lightened your task, my dear Merula, so far as concerns the matter of game, and briefly the second act of our drama may be brought to an end, for I do not seek to learn any thing about snails and dormice, which is all that is left on the programme, for there can be no great trouble in keeping them." "It is not so simple as you seem to think, my dear Axius," replied Merula, "for a place suitable for keeping snails[195] I must be not only in the open air but entirely surrounded by water, otherwise you will be kept running not only after the children but also the parents which you have supplied for breeding." "In other words," said I, "they must be enclosed by water to save the maintenance of a slave catcher." "A place which is not baked by the sun and on which the dew remains is preferable," continued Merula. "If the place you use for your snails is not supplied with dew naturally, as often is the case in sunny situations, and there is no available shady recess, such as is found under rocks or hills whose feet are laved by a lake or a stream, then you must supply dew artificially. This may be done by leading into the snailery a pipe on the end of which is fixed a rose nozzle, through which water is forced against a rock so that it scatters in spray. The problem of feeding snails is small, for they supply themselves without help, finding what they require as they creep over the level ground and also while clinging to the sides of a wall, if no running water prevents their access to it. On the hucksters' stands they keep alive a long time, as it were chewing their own cud, all that is done for them being to supply a few laurel leaves and scatter a little bran over them: so a cook never knows whether he is cooking them alive or dead. "There are many kinds of snails, such as the small white ones, which come from Reate: the large variety which are imported from Illyricum, and the medium size which come from Africa: but they vary in size in certain localities of each of those countries. Thus, there is found in Africa a variety which are called _solitannae_ of so great size that their shells will hold ten quarts:[196] and so in the other countries I have named they are found together of all sizes. They produce an innumerable progeny, which at first are very small and soft but develop their hard shell with time. If you have large islands in the enclosure you may expect a rich haul from your snails. "Snails are fattened by placing them in a jar smeared with boiled must and corn meal, on which they feed, and pierced with holes to admit the air, but they are naturally hardy." _Of dormice_ XV. "Dormice[197] are preserved on a different systern than snails, for while the one is confined by barriers of water, the other is kept in by a wall which must be coated on the inside with smooth stone or stucco to prevent their escape. Young nut trees should be planted in the enclosure, and when these are not bearing, mast and chestnuts should be thrown in to the dormice, for that is what makes them fat. Roomy cages should be provided for them in which to rear their young.[198] Little water is necessary, for dormice do not require much water, but on the contrary affect dry places. They are fattened in jars which are usually kept indoors. The potters make these jars in different shapes, but with paths for the dormice to use contrived on the sides and a hollow to hold their food, which consists of mast, walnuts and chestnuts.[199] Covers are placed on the jars and there in the dark the dormice are fattened." _Of bees_ XVI. "It remains now," said Appius, "to rehearse the third and last act of our drama of the husbandry of the steading and to discuss the keeping of fishes." "The third, indeed," exclaimed Axius, "shall we deprive ourselves of honey because in your youth you never drank mead in your own house, such was your practice of frugality?" "He speaks the truth," said Appius, to us, "for I was indeed left a poor orphan with two brothers and two sisters to provide for, and it was not until I had married one of them to Lucullus without portion and he had named me his heir that I began to drink mead in my own house and to supply it to my household: but there never was a day when I did not offer it to all my guests. But apart from that, it has been my fortune, not yours,[200] Axius, to have known these winged creatures whom nature has endowed so richly with industry and art, and that you may appreciate that I know more than you do of their almost incredible natural art, listen to what I am to say. It will then be for Merula to develop the practice of the bee keeper, or, as the Greeks call it, [Greek: melittourgia], as methodically as he has his other subjects. "To begin then,[201] bees are generated partly by other bees and partly from the decaying carcase of an ox: so Archelaus in one of his epigrams calls them 'flitting offspring of decaying beef,' and else where he says, 'wasps spring from horses, bees from calves.' "Bees are not of a solitary habit like eagles, but are of a social nature, like men, a characteristic they share with daws, but not for the same reason, for bees live in colonies, the better to work and build, while daws congregate for gossip. Thus the life of a bee is one of intelligence and art, for man has learned from them to manufacture, to build, and to store his food: three occupations which are not the same but are diverse in their nature, for it is one thing to provide food, another to manufacture wax and honey, and still another to build a house. Has not each cell in a honey comb six sides, or as many as a bee has feet, the art of which arrangement appears in the teaching of the geometricians that of all polygons the hexagon covers the largest area within a circle.[202] Bees feed out of doors, but it is at home that they manufacture that which is the sweetest of all things, acceptable to gods and men alike: for honey comb is offered on the altars and honey is served at the beginning of a dinner and again at dessert. "Bees have institutions like our own, consisting of royalty, government and organized society. Cleanliness in all things is their aim: and so they never alight in any place where there is filth or an evil odour, or even where there is a strong savour of such an unguent as we may consider agreeable. For the same reason if one who approaches them is covered with perfume,[203] they do not lick him as flies do, but they sting him, and by the same token no one ever sees bees crawling on meat and blood and grease, as flies do. And so they only settle in places of sweet savour. They do a minimum of damage because in their harvesting they leave what they touch none the worse.[204] They are not so cowardly as not to resist who ever attempts to disturb them, and yet they are fully conscious of their own weakness. They are called the Winged Servants of the Muses, because when they swarm they are quickly brought together by the music of cymbals and the clapping of hands: and as men assign Helicon and Olympus to be the haunts of the Muses, so nature has attributed the flowery and uncultivated mountains to the bees. They follow their king[205] wheresoever he goes, supporting him when he is tired and even taking him upon their backs if he is unable to fly, so do they wish to serve him.[206] As they are not idlers themselves, so do they hate those who are, and thus driving out the drones, they exclude them from the hive, because they are of no service but merely consume honey: and it happens that a few bees, buzzing with wrath, will drive out a number of drones. "They smear every thing about the entrance to the hive with a gum which is found between the cells which the Greeks call [Greek: erithakae]. They live under the discipline of an army, taking turns in resting and all doing their equal share of work, and they send out colonies and carry out the orders of their leaders, given with the voice, but as it were with a trumpet: and in like manner they have signs of peace and of war. "But, Merula, now in my course I pass on the torch to you, as our Axius here is doubtless languishing while he has listened to all this natural history, for I have said nothing of profit." "I do not know," said Merula, "whether what I can say on the subject of the profit to be derived from bees will satisfy you, Axius, but I have as my authorities not only Seius, who takes five thousand pounds of honey every year from the hives he leases,[207] but also our friend Varro here, for I have heard him tell of two brothers Veiani, from the Falerian territory, whom he had under his command in Spain and who, although their father left them only a small house with a curtilage of not exceeding a jugerum in extent, nevertheless made themselves rich. They set bee hives all about the house and planted part of the land in a garden and filled up the rest with thyme and clover and that bee plant known to us as _apiastrum_, though some call it [Greek: meliphullon], others [Greek: mellissophullon] and still others _melittaena_: and by this means they were wont to derive, as they estimated, an average income of not less than ten thousand sesterces per annum from honey; but they did this by being willing to wait until they could sell at their own time and price rather than by forcing the market." "Tell me," exclaimed Axius, "where and how I should establish a bee-stand to make such a handsome profit." "The apiary," replied Merula, "which some call by the Greek names [Greek: melitton] and [Greek: melittotropheion], and others _mellarium_, should preferably be placed near the house[208] in a location where there is no echo (for such sounds are deemed to put them to flight, as timid men are by the din of a battle) and where the temperature is mild, exposed neither to the heat of summer nor the cold of winter, giving preferably to the Southeast and near of access to places where their food is abundant and there is a supply of fresh water. If there is no natural supply of food available you should plant such things as best serve bees for pasture, namely: roses, thyme, bee balm,[209] poppies, beans, lentils, peas, basil, gladiolus, alfalfa, and especially clover which is of great service to the bees which are sick, for it begins to bloom at the vernal equinox and lasts until that of autumn. As clover is the best food for sick bees, so thyme is the best for making honey, and it is because Sicily abounds in good thyme that it takes the palm for producing honey. On this account some men bruise thyme in a mortar and mix warm water with it and then spray all their nursery plants with it for the sake of the bees. "The hives should be set as near the house as convenient: some men even put them under the very portico for greater safety. Hives are made in various shapes and sizes and of different material;[210] thus some make them round out of wicker work: others of frame covered with bark: others use hollow tree trunks: others vessels of pottery: some even build them square out of rods, allowing about three feet in length and a foot in height, but these dimensions should be reduced where you have not enough bees to fill a hive of that size, for fear that the bees might become discouraged by too large an empty space. "The bee hive derives its name _alvus_, which is the same as our word for belly, from the fact that it holds food, that is to say, honey; and it is on this analogy that hives are usually shaped to imitate the form of the belly, small in the waist and bulging out below. When the hives are made of wicker work they should be coated evenly within and without with ox dung[211] so that the bees may not be driven away by the roughness of their roof. The hives should be so ordered under the shelter of a wall that they may not be disturbed nor touch one another when arranged in ranks, for it is the practice to place hives in two and some times three separated ranks, but the opinion is that it is better to reduce the ranks to two than to increase them to four. In the middle of the hive small openings are made on the right and the left to serve as entrances for the bees, and on top is placed a practicable cover, which may be removed to give access to the honey comb. This is best when made of bark, and worst of pottery, because that is strongly affected both by the cold of winter and the heat of summer. In spring and summer the bee keeper should inspect each hive at least three times a month, fumigating them lightly, cleaning and throwing out dirt and worms. At the same time he should take precautions to keep down the number of princes, for they keep the bees from work by stirring up sedition. There are said to be three kinds of royalties among the bees: the black, the red and the mottled, or, as Menecrates writes, two: the black and the mottled: and as the latter is the better it behooves the bee keeper, when he finds both kinds in a hive, to kill the black one, as he is forever playing politics[212] against the other king, whereby the hive must suffer, for inevitably one of the kings will flee or be driven out, in either case taking his party with him. "Of working bees the small round mottled variety is considered the best. The drone, or, as some call him, the thief,[213] is black with a large belly. The wasp, which has some resemblance to a bee, is not, however, a fellow labourer, but attacks the bees with his sting, wherefore the bees keep him at a distance. "Bees are themselves distinguished as wild and tame. I call those wild which feed in the forests, and those tame which feed in cultivated places. The forest bees are smaller in size and hairy but better workmen. "In buying bees it behooves the purchaser to see whether they are well or ailing. The signs of health are a thick swarm, well groomed appearance and a hive being filled in a workmanlike manner. The signs of lack of condition on the other hand are a hairy and bristling appearance and a dusty coat, unless this last is caused by a pressure of work, for under such circumstances they often wear themselves down and become thin. "If the hives are to be transferred from one place to another it is necessary to choose a fit time to make the move and a suitable place to receive them. As to time, spring is preferable to winter because in winter they have difficulty in adjusting themselves to a new location and so often run away, as they do also if you move them from a good location to a place where proper pasture is not available. Nor is a transfer from one hive to another in the same place to be undertaken carelessly, but that to which the bees are to be transferred should be rubbed with bee balm, which will serve as a bait for them, and some pieces of honey comb should be placed in it, not far from the entrances, for fear that the bees might run away if they found the larder of their new home empty. "Menecrates says that bees contract a malady of the bowels from their first spring pasture on the blossoms of the almond and the cornel cherry and are cured by giving them urine to drink.[214] "That gummy substance which the bees use, chiefly in summer to construct a sort of curtain between the entrance and the hive, is called _propolis_, and by the same name is used by physicians in making plasters: by reason of which use it sells in the Via Sacra for more than honey itself. That substance which is called _erithacen_, and is used to glue the cells together, is different from both honey and _propolis_: it is supposed to have a quality of attraction for bees and is accordingly mixed with bee balm and smeared on the branch or other place on which it is desired to have a swarm light. The comb is made of wax and is multicellular, each cell in it having six sides or as many as nature has given the bee feet. It is said that bees do not gather from the same plants all the materials which enter in these four substances which they manufacture, namely: propolis, erithacen, wax and honey. Thus from the pomegranate and the asparagus they gather food alone, wax from the olive tree, honey from the fig, but not of good quality: other plants like the bean, the bee balm, the gourd and the cabbage serve a double purpose and yield both wax and food: while the apple and the wild pear serve a similar double purpose but for food and honey and the poppy again for wax and honey. "Others again provide material for three purposes, food, honey and wax, such as the almond and the charlock.[215] In like manner there are flowers from each of which they derive a different one of these substances, and others from which they derive several of them: while they make distinctions in respect of plants according to the quality of the product they yield,--or rather the plants make the distinction for them--as with respect to honey, some yield liquid honey, like the skirwort,[216] and others thick honey like the rosemary. So again honey of insipid flavour is made from the fig, good honey from clover, and the best of all from thyme. "And since drink is part of a bee's diet and water is the liquid they use, there should be provided near the stand a place for them to drink, which may be either a running stream or a reservoir not more than two or three fingers deep in which bricks or stones are placed in such a way as to project a little from the water, and so furnish a place for the bees to sit and drink; but the greatest care must be taken to keep this water fresh, as it is of high importance to the making of good honey. "As the bees cannot go out to distant pasture in all weathers, food must be prepared for them, as otherwise they will live on their supply of honey and so deplete the store in the hive. For this purpose ten pounds of ripe figs may be boiled in six congii of water and bits of the paste thus prepared should be set out near the hives. Others provide honey water in little dishes and float flocks of clean wool on them through which the bees may suck without risk of either getting more than is good for them or of being drowned. One such dish should be provided for each hive and they should be kept filled. Others again bray dried grapes and figs together and, mixing in some boiled must, make a paste of which bits are exposed near the hives during such part of the winter as the bees are still able to go forth in search of food. "When a swarm is about to come out of the hive (which happens when a number of young bees have matured, and the hive determines to send their youth out to found a colony, as formerly the Sabines often were compelled to do on account of the number of their children)[217] there are two signs by which the intention may be known: one that for several days before hand, and especially in the evening, many bees weave themselves together and hang upon the entrance of the hive like grapes: the other that when they are about to go forth or have already begun to go they buzz together lustily, as soldiers do when they break camp. Those who have come forth first fly about the hive waiting for the others, who have not yet collected, to join them. When the bee keeper notices this he has only to throw dust on them and at the same time beat upon some copper vessel to collect them, thoroughly frightened, where he desires in some nearby place on which he has smeared erithacen and bees' balm and other things in which they delight. When they have settled down he should place near them a hive smeared within with the same baits, and then, by blowing a light smoke around them, compel them to enter the hive. When thus introduced into their new abode the swarm makes itself at home cheerfully, so that even if placed next to the parent hive they will prefer their new colonial settlement. "And now, having told you all I know about the care of bees, I will speak of that for which the industry is carried on, that is to say, of the profit. "The honey is taken off when the hive is full, as may be determined by removing the cover of the hive, for if the openings of the combs are seen to be sealed, as it were with a skin, then the hive is full of honey: but the bees themselves give notice of this condition by keeping up a loud buzzing within, by their agitation when they go in and out and by driving out the drones. "In taking off honey some say that you should be content with nine parts, leaving the tenth, because if you take it all the bees will desert the hive: others leave a still larger proportion than I have mentioned. "As those who crop their corn land every year obtain good yields only at intervals, so it is with bee hives: you will have more industrious and more profitable bees if you do not exact of them the same tribute every year. "It is considered that honey should be taken off for the first time at the rising of the Pleiades, for the second time at the end of summer before Arcturus has reached the zenith, and for the third time after the setting of the Pleiades, but this last time beware not to take more than one-third of the store even if the hive is full, leaving the other two-thirds for the winter supply, but if the hive is only partially filled nothing should be taken off. In any event, when a large amount of honey is to be taken off a hive it should not be done all at once or ostentatiously less the bees be discouraged. Those combs which, on being taken off, are found to be partly unfilled with honey or to be soiled, should be pared with a knife. "Care must be taken that the weaker bees in a hive are not oppressed by the stronger, for this diminishes the profit: to this end the minority party[218] may be colonized under another king. When bees are given to fighting with one another, you should sprinkle them with honey water, upon which they will not only cease fighting but will crowd together and kiss one another: and this will prove the case even more if they are sprinkled with mead, for the savour of the wine in it will cause them to apply themselves so greedily that they will fuddle themselves in sucking it. If the bees seem lazy about coming out to work and any part of them get the habit of remaining in the hive, they should be fumigated and odoriferous herbs, like bees' balm and thyme, should be placed near the hive. Watchful care is necessary to protect them from ruin by heat or cold. If the bees are overtaken by a sudden rain or cold while at pasture (which rarely happens for they usually foresee such things) and are stricken down by the heavy rain drops and laid low and stunned, you should gather them in a dish and place them under cover in a warm place until the weather has cleared, when they should be sprinkled with ashes of fig wood (making sure that the ashes are rather hot than warm) the dish should then be shaken gently without touching the bees with your hand, and placed in the sun. When the bees feel this warmth they revive and get on their feet again, just as flies do after they have been apparently drowned. This should be done near the hive so that when the bees have come to themselves they may return home and to work." _Of fish ponds_ XVII. Here Pavo returned and said: "You may weigh anchor now if you wish. The drawing of the lots of the tribes to determine a tie vote is over and the herald is announcing the result of the election." Appius arose without delay and went to congratulate his candidate, and escort him home. Merula said: "I will leave the third act of our drama of the husbandry of the steading to you, Axius," and went out with the others, leaving Axius with me to wait for our candidate whom we knew would come to join us. Axius said to me: "I do not regret Merula's departure at this point, for I am quite well up on the subject of fish ponds, which still remains to complete our programme. "There are two kinds of fish ponds, of fresh water and salt water. The former are commonly maintained by farmers and without much expense, for the Lymphae, the homely goddesses of the Fountains, supply the water for them, while the latter, the sea ponds, are the play things of our nobles and are furnished with both water and fishes, as it were by Neptune himself: serving more the purposes of pleasure than of utility, their accomplishment being rather to empty than to fill the exchequers of their lords. For in the first place they are built at great expense, then they are stocked at great expense, and finally they are maintained at great expense. "Hirrus was wont to derive an income of twelve thousand sesterces from the buildings surrounding his fish ponds, all of which he spent for food for his fishes: and no wonder, for I remember that on one occasion he lent two thousand _murenae_ to Caesar[219] by weight (stipulating for their return in kind), so that his villa (which was not otherwise extraordinary) sold for four million sesterces on account of the stock of fish. "In sooth, the inland ponds of our farmer folk may well be called _dulcis_, and those other _amara_.[220] "A single fish pond suffices us simple folk, but those amateurs must have a series of them linked together: for as Pausias and other painters of his school have boxes with as many compartments as they have different coloured wax, so must they fain have as many ponds as they have different varieties of fish. "These fish are furthermore sacred, more sacred, indeed, than those fish which you, Varro, say you saw in Lydia, (at the same time that you saw the dancing isles)[221] which came to the shore, where the altar was erected for a sacrifice, in shoals at the sound of the Greek pipe, because no one ever ventured to molest them; so no cook has ever been known to have 'sauced' one of these fishes.[222] "When our friend Hortensius had those fish ponds at Baulii, which represented so large an investment, he was wont to send to Puteoli to buy the fish he served on his table, as I have often seen when I was visiting him. And it was not enough that his fishes did not supply his table, but he was at pains to supply theirs, taking greater precautions lest his mullets (_mulli_) should go hungry than I do for my mules in Rosea, and it was not at less cost that he supplied meat and drink to his stock than I do to mine. For I raise my asses, which bring such fancy prices, at the cost of one servant, a little barley and the water which springs from my land, while Hortensius must needs maintain a fleet of fishermen to keep him supplied with small fry to feed to his fish, or, when the sea runs high and such deep sea forage is cut off by a storm, and it is not possible even to draw live bait ashore in a net, he is fain to buy in the market for the delectation of the denizens of his ponds the very salt fish which is the food of the people." "Doubtless," said I, "Hortensius would prefer to have you take the carriage mules out of his stable than one of his barbel mules from the fish pond." "Yes, indeed," agreed Axius, "and he would rather have a sick slave drink cold water than that his beloved fish should be risked in that which is fresh. On the other hand, M. Lucullus was reputed to be so careless and neglectful of his fish ponds that he did not provide any suitable quarters for his fishes in hot weather, but permitted them to remain in ponds which were unhealthy with stagnant water: a practice very different from that of his brother L. Lucullus, who yielded nothing to Neptune himself in his care of his fishes, for he pierced a mountain at Naples, and so contrived that the sea water in his fish ponds should be renewed by the action of the tides. Furthermore, he has arranged that his beloved fishes may be driven into a cool place during the heat of the day, just as the Apulian shepherds do when they drive their flocks along the drift ways to the Sabine mountains: for so great was his ardour for the welfare of his fishes that he gave a commission to his architect to drive at his sole cost a tunnel from his fish ponds at Raise to the sea, and by throwing out a mole contrived that the tide should flow in and out of his fish ponds twice a day, from moon to moon, and so cool them off." At this moment, while we were talking, there was a sound of foot steps on the right and our candidate came into the _villa publica_ arrayed in the broad purple of his new rank as an aedile. We went to meet him and, after congratulations, escorted him to the Capitol, whence he departed for his home and we to ours. So there, my dear Pinnius, is the brief record of our discourse on the husbandry of the steading. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: "The manner in which the ancients managed their fallow is certainly most worthy of our attention: their care in ploughing, according to the situation of the land, and nature of the climate, and their manner of adapting the kind of ploughing to answer the purposes intended by the operation, are also most worthy of our imitation. Their exactness in these things exceeds any thing of the kind found amongst the moderns, and is even beyond what any practical writer on agriculture has proposed. This is an evidence that tillage is not even in this age brought to that perfection of which it is capable: and that, notwithstanding all the improvements lately introduced, we may yet receive some instruction from a proper attention to the precepts and practices of the ancients. I am desirous to add that this attention may be useful by preventing improvers from running into every specious scheme of agriculture produced by a lively imagination and engaging them to study the great variety of soils and even climates in this island, and to be careful in adapting to these their several operations." Dickson _Husbandry of the Ancients_, XXIII. The Rev. Andrew Dickson, who died in 1776, was minister of Aberlady in the county of East Lothian, the son of a progressive and successful Scots farmer, and had experience in practical agriculture, as well as in scholarship, as his book shows.] [Footnote 2: The compilation of rural lore, known as the _Geoponica_, which exists in Greek, was made at Byzantium for the Emperor Constantine VII about the middle of the tenth century A.D. It is very largely a paraphrase of the Roman authors, and is useful principally in elucidating their textual difficulties.] [Footnote 3: Donald G. Mitchell made an interesting collation, in his _Wet Days at Edgewood_, of the large number of books on agriculture which have been written in old age and by men of affairs, in many lands and many languages.] [Footnote 4: It is interesting to record, however, that Varro received the _Navalis Corona_ for personal gallantry in the war against the pirates. This distinction was even more rare than our modern Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross, and was awarded only to a commander who leapt under arms on the deck of an enemies' ship and then succeeded in capturing her.] [Footnote 5: Caesar did not live to accomplish this, but some years after his death a public library was established at Rome by Asinius Pollio, which Pliny says (H.N. VII, 31) was the first ever built, those at Alexandria and Pergamus having been private institutions of the kings. In a land where public libraries have been every where founded out of the accumulations of Big Business, it is interesting to note that Pollio derived the funds with which this the first of their kind was endowed, from the plunder of the Illyrians!] [Footnote 6: Cf. Sellar, _Roman Poets of the Augustan Age_. Virgil Ch. V. Boissier, _Etudes sur M.T. Varron_, Ch. IX. Servius _Comm. in Verg. Georg_. I, 43. It does not appear that many of the commentators on Virgil have taken the trouble to study Varro thoroughly. They are usually better scholars than farmers.] [Footnote 7: It is not remarkable that Virgil failed to make acknowledgment to Varro in the _Georgics_ when he failed to make acknowledgment to Homer in the _Aeneid_. See Petrarch's _Epistle to Homer_ for a loyal but vain attempt to justify this neglect.] [Footnote 8: _Cf_. W.H. Myers' _Classical Essays_, p. 110: "For in the face of some German criticism it is necessary to repeat that in order to judge poetry it is, before all things, necessary to enjoy it. We may all desire that historical and philological science should push her dominion into every recess of human action and human speech, but we must utter some protest when the very heights of Parnassus are invaded by a spirit which surely is not science, but her unmeaning shadow; a spirit which would degrade every masterpiece of human genius into the mere pabulum of hungry professors, and which values a poet's text only as a field for the rivalries of sterile pedantry and arbitrary conjecture."] [Footnote 9: It was perhaps this encomium upon the farmer at the expense of the banker which inspired Horace's friend Alfius to withdraw his capital from his banking business and dream a delicious idyl of a simple carefree country life: but, it will be recalled (Epode II, the famous "Beatus ille qui procul negotiis") that Alfius, like many a modern amateur farmer, recruited from town, soon repented that he had ever listened to the alluring call of "back to the land" and after a few weeks of disillusion in the country, returned to town and sought to get his money out again at usury. Columella (I, praef.) is not content with Cato's contrast of the virtue of the farmer with the iniquity of the banker, but he brings in the lawyer's profession for animadversion also. This, he says, the ancient Romans used to term a canine profession, because it consisted in barking at the rich.] [Footnote 10: The Roman numerals at the beginning of the paragraphs indicate the chapters of Cato from which they are translated. If Cato had not pretended to despise every thing which smacked of Greek literary art he might have edited and arranged his material, in which event his book would have been easier to read than it is, and no less valuable. Modern scholarship would not now venture to perform such an office for such a result, because it involves tampering with a text (as who should say, shooting a fox!) and yet modern scholarship wonders at the decay of classical studies in an impatient age. At the risk of anathema the present version has attempted to group Cato's material, and in so doing has omitted most of those portions which are now of merely curious interest.] [Footnote 11: This, of course, means buying at a high price, except in extraordinary cases. There is another system of agriculture which admits of the pride of making two blades of grass grow where none was before, and the profit which comes of buying cheap and selling dear. This is farming for improvement, an art which was well described two hundred years before Cato. Xenophon (_Economicus_ XX, 22) says: "For those who are able to attend to their affairs, however, and who will apply themselves to agriculture earnestly, my lather both practised himself and taught me a most successful method of making profit; for he would never allow me to buy ground already cultivated, but exhorted me to purchase such as from want of care or want of means in those who had possessed it, was left untilled and unplanted. He used to say that well cultivated land cost a great sum of money and admitted of no improvement, and he considered that land which is unsusceptible of improvement did not give the same pleasure to the owner as other land, but he thought that whatever a person had or bought up that was continually growing better afforded him the highest gratification."] [Footnote 12: Every rural community in the Eastern part of the United States has grown familiar with the contrast between the intelligent amateur, who, while endeavoring earnestly to set an example of good agriculture, fails to make expenses out of his land, and the born farmer who is self-supporting in the practice of methods contemned by the agricultural colleges. Too often the conclusion is drawn that scientific agriculture will not pay; but Cato puts his finger on the true reason. The man who does not depend on his land for his living too often permits his farm to get what Cato calls the "spending habit." Pliny (_H.N._ XVIII, 7) makes some pertinent observations on the subject: "I may possibly appear guilty of some degree of rashness in making mention of a maxim of the ancients which will very probably be looked upon as quite incredible, 'that nothing is so disadvantageous as to cultivate land in the highest style of perfection.'" And he illustrates by the example of a Roman gentleman, who, like Arthur Young in eighteenth century England, wasted a large fortune in an attempt to bring his lands to perfect cultivation. "To cultivate land well is absolutely necessary," Pliny continues, "but to cultivate it in the very highest style is mere extravagance, unless, indeed, the work is done by the hands of a man's own family, his tenants, or those whom he is obliged to keep at any rate."] [Footnote 13: In this practice has been the delight of men of affairs of all ages who turn to agriculture for relaxation. Horace cites it with telling effect in the ode (III, 5) in which he describes the noble serenity of mind with which Regulus returned to the torture and certain death which awaited him at Carthage: and Homer makes an enduring picture of it in the person of the King supervising his fall ploughing, which Hephsestus wrought upon the shield of Achilles (_Iliad_, XVIII, 540). "Furthermore, he set in the shield a soft fresh ploughed field, rich tilth and wide, the third time ploughed, and many ploughers therein drove their yokes to and fro as they wheeled about. Whensoever they came to the boundary of the field and turned, then would a man come to each and give into his hands a goblet of sweet wine: while others would be turning back along the furrows, fain to reach the boundary of the deep tilth, ... and among them the King was standing in silence, with his staff, rejoicing in his heart."] [Footnote 14: This advice to sell the worn out oxen and the sick slaves justly excited Plutarch's generous scorn, and has been made the text of a sweeping denunciation by Mommsen of the practice of husbandry by men of affairs in Cato's time. "The whole system," says Mommsen, "was pervaded by the utterly unscrupulous spirit characteristic of the power of capital." And he adds, "If we have risen to that little-to-be-envied elevation of thought which values no feature of an economy save the capital invested in it, we cannot deny to the management of the Roman estates the praise of consistency, energy, punctuality, frugality and solidity." Without any desire to defend Cato, one may suggest, out of an experience in a kind of farm management not very different from that Cato pictures, that it is doubtful whether even Cato himself was quite as economical and efficient, and so as capitalistic in his farming, as he advises others to be: certainly a whole race of contemporary country gentlemen was not equal to it. It is much easier to write about business-like farming than to practise it.] [Footnote 15: Hesiod (W. & D. 338) had already given this same advice to the Greek farmer: "Invite the man that loves thee to a feast, but let alone thine enemy, and especially invite him that dwelleth near thee, for if, mark you, any thing untoward shall have happened at home neighbours are wont to come ungirt, but kinsfolk gird themselves first." This agreement of the Socialist Hesiod with the Capitalist Cato is remarkable only as it illustrates that both systems when wisely expounded rest on human nature. That upon which they here agree is the foundation of the modern European societies for rural co-operative credit which President Taft recommended to the American people. These societies, says the bulletin of the International Institute of Agriculture published at Rome in 1912, rest on three chief safeguards: (a) That membership is confined to persons residing within a small district, and, therefore, the members are personally known to one another; (b) That the members, being mutually responsible, it will be to the interest of all members to keep an eye upon a borrower and to see that he makes proper use of the money lent to him; (c) That in like manner, it is to the interest of all members to help a member when he is in difficulties.] [Footnote 16: This was an estate of average size, probably within Virgil's precept, (_Georgic_ II, 412). "Laudato ingentia rura, exiguum colito." Some scholars have deemed this phrase a quotation from Cato, but it is more likely derived from Mago the Carthaginian who is reported to have said: "Imbecilliorem agrum quam agricolam, esse debere,"--the farmer should be bigger than his farm.] [Footnote 17: The philosophy of Cato's plan, of laying out a farm is found in the agricultural history of the Romans down to the time of the Punic wars. Mommsen (II, 370) gives the facts, and Ferrero in his first volume makes brilliant use of them. There is sketched the old peasant aristocrat living on his few acres, his decay and the creation of comparatively large estates worked by slaves in charge of overseers, which followed the conquest of the Italian states about B.C. 300. This was the civilization in which Cato had been reared, but in his time another important change was taking place. The Roman frontier was again widened by the conquest of the Mediterranean basin: the acquisition of Sicily and Sardinia ended breadstuff farming as the staple on the Italian peninsular. The competition of the broad and fertile acres of those great Islands had the effect in Italy which the cultivation of the Dakota wheat lands had upon the grain farming of New York and Virginia. About 150 B.C. the vine and the olive became the staples of Italy and corn was superseded. Although this was not accomplished until after Cato's death, he foresaw it, and recommended that a farm be laid out accordingly, and his scheme of putting one's reliance upon the vine and the olive was doubtless very advanced doctrine, when it first found expression.] [Footnote 18: Pliny quotes Cato as advising to buy what others have built rather than build oneself, and thus, as he says, enjoy the fruits of another's folly. The _cacoethes aedificandi_ is a familiar disease among country gentlemen.] [Footnote 19: Columella (I,4) makes the acute observation that the country house should also be agreeable to the owner's wife if he wishes to get the full measure of enjoyment out of it. Mago, the Carthaginian, advised to, "if you buy a farm, sell your house in town, lest you be tempted to prefer the cultivation of the urban gods to those of the country."] [Footnote 20: According to German scholarship the accepted text of Cato's version of this immemorial epigram is a model of the brevity which is the test of wit, "Frons occipitio prior est." Pliny probably quoting from memory, expands it to "Frons domini plus prodest quam occípitíum." Palladius (I, 6) gives another version: "Praesentia domini provectus est agri." It is found in some form in almost every book on agriculture since Cato, until we reach the literature in which science has taken the place of wisdom--in the Byzantine _Geoponica_, the Italian _Crescenzi_, the Dutch _Heresbach_, the French _Maison Rustique_, and the English _Gervase Markkam. Poor Richard's Almanack_ gives it twice, as "the foot of a master is the best manure" and "the eye of a master will do more work than both his hands." It is perennial in its appeal. The present editor saw it recently in the German comic paper _Fliegende Blätter_. But the jest is much older than Cato. It appears in Aeschylus, _Persae_, 171 and Xenophon employs it in _Oeconomicus_ (XII, 20): "The reply attributed to the barbarian," added Ischomachus, "appears to me to be exceedingly to the purpose, for when the King of Persia having met with a fine horse and wishing to have it fattened as soon as possible, asked one of those who were considered knowing about horses what would fatten a horse soonest, it is said that he answered 'the master's eye.'"] [Footnote 21: The English word "orchard" scarcely translates _arbustum_, but every one who has been in Italy will recall the endless procession of small fields of maize and rye and alfalfa through which serried ranks of mulberry or feathery elm trees, linked with the charming drop and garland of the vines, seem to dance toward one in the brilliant sunlight, like so many Greek maidens on a frieze. These are _arbusta_.] [Footnote 22: Cato was a strong advocate of the cabbage; he called it the best of the vegetables and urged that it be planted in every garden for health and happiness. Horace records (Odes. III, 21, 11) that old Cato's virtue was frequently warmed with wine, and Cato himself explains (CLVI) how this could be accomplished without loss of dignity, for, he says, if, after you have dined well, you will eat five cabbage leaves they will make you feel as if you had had nothing to drink, so that you can drink as much more as you wish--"bibesque quantum voles!" This was an ancient Egyptian precaution which the Greeks had learned. Cf. Athenaeus, I, 62.] [Footnote 23: Henry Home, Lord Kames, a Scots judge of the eighteenth century, whom Dr. Johnson considered a better farmer than judge and a better judge than scholar, but who had many of the characteristics of our _priscus_ Cato, argues (following an English tradition which had previously been voiced by Walter of Henley and Sir Anthony Fitzherbert) in his ingenious _Gentleman Farmer_ against the expense of ploughing with horses and urges a return to oxen. He points out that horses involve a large original investment, are worn out in farm work, and after their prime steadily depreciate in value; while, on the other hand, the ox can be fattened for market when his usefulness as a draught animal is over, and then sell for more than his original cost; that he is less subject to infirmities than the horse; can be fed per tractive unit more economically and gives more valuable manure. These are strong arguments where the cost of human labour is small and economical farm management does not require that the time of the ploughman shall be limited if the unit cost of ploughing is to be reasonable. The ox is slow, but in slave times he might reasonably have been preferred to the horse. Today Lord Kames, (or even old Hesiod, who urged that a ploughman of forty year and a yoke of eight year steers be employed because they turned a more deliberate and so a better furrow) would be considering the economical practicability of the gasolene motor as tractive power for a gang of "crooked" ploughs.] [Footnote 24: Cato adds a long list of implements and other necessary equipment.] [Footnote 25: The Roman overseer was usually a superior, and often a much indulged, slave. Cf. Horace's letter (_Epist._ I, 14) to his overseer.] [Footnote 26: This was the traditional wisdom which was preached also in Virginia in slave times. In his Arator (1817) Col. John Taylor of Caroline says of agricultural slaves: "The best source for securing their happiness, their honesty and their usefulness is their food.... One great value of establishing a comfortable diet for slaves is its convenience as an instrument of reward and punishment, so powerful as almost to abolish the thefts which often diminish considerably the owner's ability to provide for them."] [Footnote 27: Reading "compitalibus in compito," literally "the cross roads altar on festival days."] [Footnote 28: It is evident that Cato's housekeeper would have welcomed a visit from Mr. Roosevelt's Rural Uplift Commission. We may add to this Sir Anthony Fitzherbert's description of the duties of a farmer's wife in sixteenth century England: "It is a wyues occupation to wynowe all maner of cornes, to make malte, to wasshe and wrynge, to make heye, shere corne, and in tyme of nede to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke-wayne or dounge-carte, dryue the ploughe, to loode hey, corne and suche other. And to go or ride to the market, to sel butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekyns, capons, hennes, pygges, gese, and all maner of cornes. And also to bye all maner of necessarye thynges belongynge to houssholde, and to make a trewe rekenynge and acompte to her husbande what she hath payed." Sir Anthony Fitzherbert (1470-1538) was the English judge whose law books are, or should be, known to all lawyers. His _Boke of Husbandry_, published in 1534, is one of the classics of English agriculture, and justly, for it is full of shrewd observation and deliberate wisdom expressed in a virile style, with agreeable leaven of piety and humour. Fitzherbert anticipated a modern poet, Henley, in one of his most happy phrases: "Ryght so euery man is capitayne of his owne soule". The Husbandry is best available to the modern reader in the edition by Skeat published for the English Dialect Society in 1882.] [Footnote 29: Cato is careful not to undertake to say how this may be assured; another evidence of his wisdom.] [Footnote 30: In his instructive discourse on ploughing, Columella (II, 4) gives the key to Cato's warning against ploughing land when it is in the condition he calls rotten (_cariosa_): "Rich land, which holds moisture a long time, should be broken up (_proscindere_) at the season when the weather is beginning to be warm and the weeds are developing, so that none of their seed may mature: but it should be ploughed with such close furrows that one can with difficulty distinguish where the plough share has been, for in that way all the weeds are uprooted and destroyed. "The spring ploughing should be followed up with frequent stirring of the soil until it is reduced to dust, so that there may be no necessity, or very little, of harrowing after the land is seeded: for the ancient Romans said that a field was badly ploughed which had to be harrowed after the seed had been sown. "A farmer should himself make sure that his ploughing has been well done, not alone by inspection, for the eye is often amused by a smooth surface which in fact conceals clods, but also by experiment, which is less likely to be deceived, as by driving a stout stick through the furrows: if it penetrates the soil readily and without obstruction, it will be evident that all the land there about is in good order: but if some part harder than the rest resists the pressure, it will be clear that the ploughing has been badly done. When the ploughmen see this done from time to time they are not guilty of clod hopping. "Hence wet land should be broken up after the Ides of April, and, when it has been ploughed at that season, it should be worked again, after an interval of twenty days, about the time of the solstice, which is the eighth or ninth day before the Kalends of July, and again the third time about the Kalends of September, for it is not the practice of experienced farmers to till the land in the interval after the summer solstice, unless the ground shall have been soaked with a heavy down-pour of sudden rain, like those of winter, as does some times happen at this season. In that event there is no reason why the fallow should not be cultivated during the month of July. But when you do till at this season beware lest the land be worked while it is muddy: or when, having been sprinkled by a shower, it is in the condition which the country people call _varia_ and _cariosa_, that is to say, when, after a long drought, a light rain has moistened the surface of the upturned sod but has not soaked to the bottom of the furrow. "Those plough lands which are cultivated when they are miry are rendered useless for an entire year--they can be neither seeded nor harrowed nor hoed--but those which are worked when they are in the state which has been described as varia, remain sterile for three years on end. We should, therefore, follow a medium course and plough when the land neither lacks moisture nor yet is deep in marsh."] [Footnote 31: Columella (II, 13) justly says about manure, "Wherefore if it is, as it would seem to be, the thing of the greatest value to the farmer, I consider that it should be studied with the greatest care, especially since the ancient authors, while they have not altogether neglected it, have nevertheless discussed it with too little elaboration." He goes on (II, 14) to lay down rules about the compost heap which should be written in letters of gold in every farm house. "I appreciate that there are certain kinds of farms on which it is impossible to keep either live stock or birds, yet even in such places it is a lazy farmer who lacks manure: for he can collect leaves, rubbish from the hedge rows, and droppings from the high ways: without giving offence, and indeed earning gratitude, he can cut ferns from his neighbour's land: and all these things he can mingle with the sweepings of the courtyard: he can dig a pit, like that we have counselled for the protection of stable manure, and there mix together ashes, sewage, and straw, and indeed every waste thing which is swept up on the place. But it is wise to bury a piece of oak wood in the midst of this compost, for that will prevent venomous snakes from lurking in it. This will suffice for a farm without live stock." One can see in Flanders today the happy land smiling its appreciation of farm management such as this, but what American farmer has yet learned this kind of conservation of his natural resources.] [Footnote 32: The occupants of the motor cars which now roll so swiftly and so comfortably along the French national highway from Paris to Tours, through the pleasant _pays de Beauce_, can see this admirable and economical method of manuring still in practice. The sheep are folded and fed at night, under the watchful eye of the shepherd stretched at ease in his wheeled cabin, on the land which was ploughed the day before.] [Footnote 33: These of course are all legumes. The intelligent farmer today sits under his shade tree and meditates comfortably upon the least expensive and most profitable labour on his farm, the countless millions of beneficent bacteria who, his willing slaves, are ceaselessly at work during hot weather forming root tubercles on his legumes, be it clover or cow peas, and so fixing for their lord the free atmospheric nitrogen contained in the soil. As Macaulay would say, "every school boy knows" now that leguminous root nodules are endotrophic mycorrhiza,--but the Romans did not! Nevertheless their empirical practice of soil improvement with legumes was quite as good as ours. Varro (I, 23) explains the Roman method of green manuring more fully than Cato. Columella (II, 13) insists further that if the hay is saved the stubble of legumes should be promptly ploughed for he says the roots will evaporate their own moisture and continue to pump the land of its fertility unless they are at once turned over. If the Romans followed this wise advice they were better farmers than most of us today, for we are usually content to let the stubble dry out before ploughing.] [Footnote 34: Was this ensilage? The ancients had their silo pits, but they used them chiefly as granaries, and as such they are described, by Varro (I, 57, 63), by Columella (I, 6), and by Pliny (XVIII, 30, 73).] [Footnote 35: The extravagant American farmer has not yet learned to feed the leaves of trees, but in older and more economical civilizations the practice is still observed.] [Footnote 36: Amurca was the dregs of olive oil. Cato recommends its use for many purposes in the economy of the farm, for a moth proof (XCVIII), as a relish for cattle (CIII), as a fertilizer (CXXX), and as an anointment for the threshing floor to kill weevil (XCI).] [Footnote 37: There is a similar remedy for scratches in horses, which is traditional in the cavalry service today, and is extraordinarily efficacious.] [Footnote 38: Cf. Pliny _H.N._ XVII, 267 and Fraser, _The Golden Bough_, XI, 177. The principle is one of magical homeopathy: as the split reed, when bound together, may cohere and heal by the medicine of the incantation, so may the broken bone.] [Footnote 39: These examples will serve to illustrate how far Cato's veterinary science was behind his agriculture, and what a curious confusion of native good sense and traditional superstition there was in his method of caring for his live stock. On questions of preventing malady he had the wisdom of experience, but malady once arrived he was a simple pagan. There was a notable advance in the Roman knowledge of how to treat sick cattle in the century after Cato. Cf. Varro, II, 5. The words of the incantations themselves are mere sound and fury signifying nothing, like the "counting out" rhythms used by children at their games.] [Footnote 40: Cato gives many recipes of household as well as agricultural economy. Out of respect for the pure food law most of them have been here suppressed, but these samples are ventured because Varro mentions them and the editor is advised that some enterprising young ladies in Wisconsin have recently had the courage to put them to the test, and vow that they ate their handiwork! As they live to tell the tale, it is assumed that the recipes are harmless.] [Footnote 41: Cf. the following traditional formula as practised in Virginia: A VIRGINIA RECIPE FOR CURING HAMS "Rub each ham separately with ½ teaspoonful of saltpetre (use a small spoon); then rub each ham with a large tablespoonfulof best black pepper; then rub each ham with a gill of molasses (black strap is best). Then for 1,000 lbs. of ham take 3-1/4 pecks of coarse salt, 2-1/2 lbs. of saltpetre, 2 qts. hickory ashes, 2 qts. molasses, 2 teacupfuls of red pepper. "Mix all together on the salting table. Then rub each ham with this mixture, and, in packing, spread some of it on each layer of ham. Use no more salt than has been mixed. Pack skin down and let stand for five weeks, then hang in the smoke house for five or six weeks, and smoke in damp weather, using hickory wood. "As a ham, however well cured, is of no use to civilized man until it is cooked, and as this crowning mystery is seldom revealed out of Virginia, it may not be out of place to record here the process." A VIRGINIA RECIPE FOR COOKING HAMS Soak over night in cold water, having first scrubbed the ham with a small brush to remove all the pepper, saltpetre, etc., left from the curing process. Put on to boil next morning in tepid water, skin downwards, letting it simmer on back of stove, never to boil hard. This takes about four hours (or until it is done, when the ham is supposed to turn over, skin upwards, of its own accord, as it will if the boiler is large enough). Set aside over another night in the water it has boiled in. The _following_ day, skin and bake in the oven, having covered the ham well with brown sugar, basting at intervals with cider. When it is well baked, take it out of the oven and baste another ten to twenty minutes in the pan on top of the stove. The sugar crust should be quite brown and crisp when done. To be thoroughly appreciated a ham should be carved on the table, by a pretty woman. A thick slice of ham is a crime against good breeding.] [Footnote 42: It is interesting that Varro has realized the hope, here expressed, that his wisdom might survive for the benefit of the "uttermost generations of men" chiefly in the case of this treatise on Husbandry among the many monuments of his industry and learning. Petrarch in his _Epistle to Varro_ in that first delightful book of Letters to Dead Authors (_de rebus familiaribus_ XXIV, 6) rehearses the loss of Varro's books and, adapting the thought here expressed in the text, regrets for that reason that Varro cannot be included in that company of men "whom we love even after their death owing to the good and righteous deeds that live after them, men who mold our character by their teaching and comfort us by their example, when the rest of mankind offends both our eyes and our nostrils; men who, though they have gone hence to the common abode of all (as Plautus says in Casina), nevertheless continue to be of service to the living." If Petrarch had been a farmer he might have saved some of his regret, for Varro is surely, by virtue of the _Rerum Rusticarum_, a member of the fellowship Petrarch describes.] [Footnote 43: Varro was essentially an antiquary and it is amusing to observe that he is unable to suppress his learning even in his prayers. One is reminded of the anecdote of the New England minister, who, in the course of an unctuous prayer, proclaimed, with magisterial authority, "Paradoxical as it may appear, O Lord, it is nevertheless true, etc."] [Footnote 44: Following Plato and Xenophon and Cicero, Varro cast his books into the form of dialogues to make them entertaining ("and what is the use of a book," thought Alice in Wonderland, "without pictures or conversations."): for the same reason he was careful about his local colour. Thus the scene of this first book, which relates to agriculture proper, is laid at Rome in the temple of Earth on the festival of the Seed Sowing, and the characters bear names of punning reference to the tilling of the soil. Varro was strong on puns, avowing (Cicero _Acad_. I, 2) that that form of humour made it easier for people of small intelligence to swallow his learning.] [Footnote 45: The story is that when Scipio captured Carthage he distributed the Punic libraries among the native allies, reserving only the agricultural works of Mago, which the Roman Senate subsequently ordered to be translated into Latin, so highly were they esteemed. Probably more real wealth was brought to Rome in the pages of these precious volumes than was represented by all the other plunder of Carthage. "The improving a kingdom in matter of husbandry is better than conquering a new kingdom," says old Samuel Hartlib, Milton's friend, in his _Legacie_. It is a curious fact that as the Romans derived agricultural wisdom from their ancient enemies, so did the English. Cf. Thorold Rogers' _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_. "We owe the improvements in English agriculture to Holland. From this country we borrowed, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the cultivation of winter roots, and, at that of the eighteenth, the artificial grasses. The Dutch had practised agriculture with the patient and minute industry of market gardeners. They had tried successfully to cultivate every thing to the uttermost, which could be used for human food, or could give innocent gratification to a refined taste. They taught agriculture and they taught gardening. They were the first people to surround their homesteads with flower beds, with groves, with trim parterres, with the finest turf, to improve fruit trees, to seek out and perfect edible roots and herbs at once for man and cattle. We owe to the Dutch that scurvy and leprosy have been banished from England, that continuous crops have taken the place of barren fallows, that the true rotation of crops has been discovered and perfected, that the population of these islands has been increased and that the cattle and sheep in England are ten times what they were in numbers and three times what they were in size and quality."] [Footnote 46: The Roman proverb which Agrius had in mind reminds one of the witty French woman's comment upon the achievement of St. Denis in walking several miles to Montmartre, after his head had been cut off, (as all the world can still see him doing in the verrières of Notre Dame de Chartres): "en pareil cas, ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte."] [Footnote 47: To this glowing description of agricultural Italy in the Augustan age may be annexed that of Machiavelli on the state of Tuscany in his youth: "Ridotta tutta in somma pace e tranquillità, coltivata non meno ne' luoghi più montuosi e più sterili che nelle pianure e regioni più fertili...." It is our privilege to see the image of this fruitful cultivation of the mountain tops not only in Machiavelli's prose, but on the walls of the Palazzo Riccardi in Gozzoli's _Journey of the Magi_, where, like King Robert of Sicily, the Magi crossed "Into the lovely land of Italy Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade." It seems almost a pity to contrast with these the comment of a careful and sympathetic student of the agricultural Italy of the age of King Umberto: "To return to the question of the natural richness of agricultural Italy," says Dr. W.N. Beauclerk in his _Rural Italy_ (1888), "we may compare the words of the German ballad: 'In Italy macaroni ready cooked rains from the sky, and the vines are festooned with sausages,' with the words today rife throughout the Kingdom, 'Rural Italy is poor and miserable, and has no future in store for her.' The fact is that Italy is rich in capabilities of production, but exhausted in spontaneous fertility. Her vast forests have been cut down, giving place to sterile and malarious ground: the plains and shores formerly covered with wealthy and populous cities are now deserted marshes: Sardinia and other ancient granaries of the Roman Empire are empty and unproductive: two-thirds of the Kingdom are occupied by mountains impossible of cultivation, and the remainder is to a large extent ill-farmed and unremunerative. To call Italy the 'Garden of Europe' under these circumstances seems cruel irony."] [Footnote 48: As we may assume that the yields of wine of which Fundanius boasts were the largest of which Varro had information in the Italy of his time, it is interesting to compare them with the largest yields of the most productive wine country of France today. Fifteen cullei, or three hundred amphorae per jugerum, is the equivalent of 2700 gallons per acre: while according to P. Joigneaux, in the _Livre de la Ferme_, the largest yields in modern France are in the Midi (specifically Herault), where in exceptional cases they amount to as much as 250 hectolitres to the hectare, or say 2672 gallons per acre. It may be noted that the yields of the best modern wines, like Burgundy, are less than half of this, and it is probable that the same was true of the _vinum Setinum_ of Augustus, if not of the Horatian Massic.] [Footnote 49: The modern Italian opinion of farming in a fertile but unhealthy situation is expressed with a grim humour in the Tuscan proverb: "in Maremma s'arricchisce in un anno, si muore in sei mesi."] [Footnote 50: This is Keil's ingenious interpretation of an obscure passage. We may compare the English designation of a church yard as "God's acre." What Licinius Crassus actually did was, while haranguing from the rostra, to turn his back upon the Comitium, where the Senators gathered, and address himself directly to the people assembled in the Forum. The act was significant as indicating that the sovereignty had changed place.] [Footnote 51: Tremelius Scrofa was the author of a treatise on agriculture, which Columella cites, but which has not otherwise survived.] [Footnote 52: "It was a received opinion amongst the antients that a large, busy, well peopled village, situated in a country thoroughly cultivated, was a more magnificent sight than the palaces of noblemen and princes in the midst of neglected lands." Harte's _Essays on Husbandry_, p. 11. This is a delightful book, the ripe product of a gentleman and a scholar. In the middle of the eighteenth century it advocated what we are still advocating--that agriculture, as the basis of national wealth, deserves the study and attention of the highest intelligence; specifically it proposed the introduction of new grasses and forage crops (alfalfa above all others) to enable the land to support more live stock. It was published in 1764, just after France had ceded to England by the Treaty of Paris all of her possessions in America east of the Mississippi River; and not the least interesting passages of Harte's book are those proposing an agricultural development of the newly acquired territory between Lake Illinois (Michigan) and the Mississippi, which he suggests may be readily brought under cultivation with the aid of the buffaloes of the country. He shrewdly says: "Maize may be raised in this part of Canada to what quantity we please, for it grows there naturally in great abundance." It happened, however, that a few years later, in 1778, Col. George Rogers Clark of Virginia made a certain expedition through the wilderness to the British outpost at Vincennes, which saved England the trouble of taking Harte's advice, but that it has not been neglected may be evident from the fact that less than a century and a half later, or in 1910, the State of Illinois produced 415 million bushels of maize, besides twice as much oats and half as much wheat as did old England herself in the same year of grace. Harte was the travelling governor of that young Mr. Stanhope, to whom my lord Chesterfield wrote his famous worldly wise letters. He was the author also of a _Life of Gustavus Adolphus_, which was a failure. Dr. Johnson, who liked Harte, said: "It was unlucky in coming out on the same day with Robertson's _History of Scotland_. His _Husbandry_, however, is good." (_Boswell_, IV, 91). With this judgment of Dr. Johnson there has been, and must be, general concurrence.] [Footnote 53: Pliny records (H.N. XVIII, 7) that at Lucullus' farm there was less ground for ploughing than of floor for sweeping.] [Footnote 54: Eggs were the first course, as apples were the last, at a Roman dinner, hence the saying "ab ovo usque ad mala."] [Footnote 55: Cf. Gilbert Murray's version of Euripides' _Troades_, 799: In Salamis, filled with the foaming Of billows and murmur of bees, Old Telamon stayed from his roaming, Long ago, on a throne of the seas; Looking out on the hills olive laden, Enchanted, where first from the earth. The gray-gleaming fruit of the Maiden Athena had birth. The physical reason why the olive flourished in Attica, as Theophrastus points out (C.P.V. II, 2), was because it craves a thin soil, and that of Attica, with its out-croppings of calcareous rock, suits the olive perfectly, while fit for little else agricultural.] [Footnote 56: In the _Geoponica_ (XIII, 15) there has been preserved a remedy for a similar evil, which, in all fairness, should be credited to Saserna. In any event, it is what the newspapers used to call "important, if true," viz: "If ever you come into a place where fleas abound, cry Och! Och! ([Greek: och, och]) and they will not touch you."] [Footnote 57: The editor of an Iowa farm journal, who has been making a study of agricultural Europe, has recently reported an interesting comparison between the results of extensive farming as practised in Iowa and intensive farming as practised in Bavaria. He begins with the thesis that the object of agriculture is to put the energy of the sun's rays into forms which animals and human beings can use, and, reducing the crop production of each country to thermal units, he finds "that for every man, woman and child connected with farming in Iowa 14,200 therms of sun's energy were imprisoned, while for every man, woman and child connected with farming in Bavaria only 2,600 therms were stored up. In other words, the average Iowa farmer is six times as successful in his efforts to capture the power of the sun's rays as the average Bavarian farmer. On the other hand, the average acre of Iowa land is only about one-seventh as successful as the average acre of Bavarian land in supporting those who live on it. If we look on land as the unit, then the Bavarians get better results than we in Iowa, but if we look on human labor as the unit, then the Iowa farmers are far ahead of those of Bavaria." It may be remarked that if the Iowa farmer, who gets his results by the use of machinery, was to adopt also the intensive practice of the Bavarian farmer, he would secure at once the greatest efficiency per acre and per man, and that is the true purpose of agriculture.] [Footnote 58: It is one of the charms of Varro's treatise that he always insists cheerfully on the pleasure to be derived from the land. It is the same spirit which Conington has remarked cropping out in many places in Virgil's _Georgics_--the joy of the husbandman in his work, as in the "iuvat" of "iuvat Ismara Baccho Conserere, atque olea magnum vestire Taburnum." This is the blessed "surcease of sorrow" of which the crowded life of the modern city knows nothing: but, as the practical Roman indicates, it will not support life of its own mere motion. Cf. Dr. Johnson's picture of Shenstone: "He began from this time to entangle his walks and to wind his waters: which he did with such judgment and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skillful. His house was mean, and he did not improve it: his care was of his grounds.... In time his expences brought clamours about him, that overpowered the lambs' bleat and the linnets' song; and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fawns and fairies."] [Footnote 59: Walter of Henley, in thirteenth century England, drove home a shrewd comment on the country gentleman who farms without keeping accounts and thinks he is engaged in a profitable industry. "You know surely," he says, "that an acre sown with wheat takes three ploughings, except lands which are sown yearly, and that one with another each ploughing is worth six pence, and harrowing a penny, and on the acre it is necessary to sow at least two bushels. Now two bushels at Michaelmas are worth at least twelve pence, and weeding a half penny and reaping five pence, and carrying in August a penny: the straw will pay for the threshing. At three times your sowing you ought to have six bushels, worth three shillings; and the cost amounts to three shillings and three half pence, and the ground is yours and not reckoned." Of Walter of Henley little is known, but it is conjectured that he was the bailiff of the manors near Henley which belonged to the Abbey of Canterbury. His curious and valuable _Dite de Hosebondrie_, which is as original in its way as Cato's treatise, being entirely free from mere literary tradition, is now available to the modern reader in a translation, from the original barbarous English law French, by Elizabeth Lamond, made for the Royal Historical Society in 1890.] [Footnote 60: This was just before Pharsalia, and the army was that of Pompey which Varro had joined after surrendering to Caesar in Spain.] [Footnote 61: In this enumeration of trees Varro does not include the chestnut which is now one of the features of the Italian mountain landscape and furnishes support for a considerable part of the Italian population, who subsist on _necci_, those indigestible chestnut flour cakes, just as the Irish peasants do on potatoes. The chestnut was late in getting a foothold in Italy but it was there in Varro's day. He mentions the nuts as part of the diet of dormice (III, 15). By the thirteenth century chestnuts had become an established article of human food in Italy. Pietro Crescenzi (1230-1307) describes two varieties, the cultivated and the wild, and quotes the Arabian physician Avicenna to the effect that chestnuts are "di tarda digestione ma di buono nuttimento." It is perhaps for this very reason that chestnut bread is acceptable to those engaged in heavy labor. Fynes Moryson says in his _Itinerary_ (1617) that maslin bread made of a mixture of rye and wheat flour was used by labourers in England because it "abode longer in the stomach and was not so soon digested with their labour." Crescenzi, who was a lawyer and a judge, says in his preface that he had left his native Bologna because of the civil strifes, had taken foreign service in several parts of Italy, and so had opportunity to see the world. He wrote his book on agriculture because, as he says, of all the things he learned on his travels there was nothing "piu a bondevole, niuna piu dolce, et niuna piu degna de l'huomo libero," a sentiment which Socrates had expressed sixteen hundred years earlier and which was echoed six hundred years later by another far-sighted Italian, the statesman Cavour.] [Footnote 62: The white chalk which Scrofa saw used as manure in Transalpine Gaul, when he was serving in the army under Julius Caesar, was undoubtedly marl, the use of which in that region as in Britain was subsequently noted by Pliny (H.N. XVII, 4). There were no deposits of marl in Italy, and so the Romans knew nothing of its use, from experience, but Pliny's treatment of the subject shows a sound source of information. In England, where several kinds of marl are found in quantities, its use was probably never discontinued after the Roman times. Walter of Henley discusses its use in the thirteenth century, and Sir Anthony Fitzherbert continues the discussion in the sixteenth century. In connection with the history of the use of marl in agriculture may be cited the tender tribute which Arthur Young recorded on the tombstone of his wife in Bradfield Church. The lady's chief virtue appears to have been, in the memory of her husband, that she was "the great-grand-daughter of John Allen, esq. of Lyng House in the County of Norfolk, the first person according to the Comte de Boulainvilliers, who there used marl." The Romans did not have the fight against sour land which is the heritage of the modern farmer after years of continuous application to his land of phosphoric and sulphuric acid in the form of mineral fertilizers. What sour land the Romans had they corrected with humus making barnyard manure, or the rich compost which Cato and Columella recommend. They had, however, a test for sourness of land which is still practised even where the convenient litmus paper is available. Virgil (_Georgic_ II, 241) gives the formula: "Fill a basket with soil, and strain fresh water through it. The taste of water strained through sour soil will twist awry the taster's face."] [Footnote 63: This sounds like the boast of the modern proprietor of an old blue grass sod in Northern Virginia or Kentucky. On the general question of pasture vs. arable land, cf. Hartlib's _Legacie_: "It is a misfortune that pasture lands are not more improved. England abounds in pasturage more than any other country, and is, therefore, richer. In France, acre for acre, the land is not comparable to ours: and, therefore, Fortescue, chancellor to Henry VI, observes that we get more in England by standing still (alluding to our meadows) than the French do by working (that is, cultivating their vineyards and corn lands)." We may permit Montesquieu (_Esprit des Lois_ II, 23, 14) to voice the French side of this question. "Les pais de pâturage sont pen peuplês. Les terres à bled occupent plus d'hommes et les vignobles infiniment d'avantage. En Angleterre on s'est souvent plaint que l'augmentation des pâturage diminuoit les habitans." In the introduction to his Book Two (_post_, p. 179) Varro states the sound conclusion, that the two kinds of husbandry should be combined on the same land. Sir Anthony Fitzherbert knew this: "An housbande can not well thryue by his corne without he haue other cattell, nor by his cattell without corne. For els he shall be a byer, a borrower or a beggar."] [Footnote 64: This is the explanation of why Aesop's fox found the grapes to be sour which grew on a trellis, for he had expected to find them of easy access on the ground. Aesop was a Phrygian, and, while Bentley has proved that Aesop never wrote the existing fables which go by that name, yet it is recognized that they are of Oriental origin and it is evident that that of the Fox and the Grapes came out of Asia, where, as Varro says, the grapes were usually allowed to grow on the ground.] [Footnote 65: One is tempted to include here Pliny's observations upon the tests of good soil if only for the sake of his description of one of the sweetest sensations of the farmer every where, the aroma of new ploughed fertile land:-- "Those unguents which have a taste of earth are better," says Cicero, "than those which smack of saffron," it seeming to him more to the purpose to express himself by the word taste than smell. And such is the fact no doubt, that soil is the best which has the savour of a perfume. If the question should be put to us, what is this odour of the earth that is held in such estimation; our answer is that it is the same that is often to be recognized at the moment of sunset without the necessity even of turning up the ground, at the spots where the extremities of the rainbow have been observed to meet the earth: as also, when after long continued drought, the rain has soaked the ground. Then it is that the earth exhales the divine odour that is so peculiarly its own, and to which, imparted to it by the sun, there is no perfume however sweet that can possibly be compared. It is this odour which the earth, when turned up, ought to emit, and which, when once found, can never deceive any person: and this will be found the best criterion for judging of the quality of the soil. Such, too, is the odour that is usually perceived in land newly cleared when an ancient forest has been just cut down; its excellence is a thing that is universally admitted.] [Footnote 66: The _actus_ was the head land or as much land as a yoke of oxen could plough at a single spell without stopping, and measured 120 feet in length and four feet in width. Cf. Pliny, H.N. XVIII, 3. Hence the square of the head land became the basis of the Roman land measure. With the derivation of the _actus_ may be compared that of the English furlong (furrow-long) and the French _arpent_ (literally, head land).] [Footnote 67: On the socialistic principle of Strepsiades in Aristophanes' _Clouds_ that the use of geometry is to divide the land into _equal_ parts.] [Footnote 68: As it is difficult to appreciate that the Roman Campagna was formerly populous with villas, when one contemplates its green solitudes today, so when one faces the dread malaria which there breeds, one wonders how the Romans of the Republic maintained so long their hardy constitutions. It is now agreed that there was no malaria in the Land of Saturn so long as the volcanos in the Alban hills were active, because their gases purified the air and kept down the mosquitoes, and geology tells us that Monte Pila was in eruption for two or three centuries after the foundation of Rome. By the beginning of the second century B.C. the fever seems to have become endemic. Plautus and Terence both mention it and Cato (CLVII) describes its symptoms unmistakably. In his book on the effect of malaria in history, W.H. Jones expresses the opinion that the malady was brought into Italy from Africa by Hannibal's soldiers, but it is more probable that it was always there. See the discussion in Lanciani's _Wanderings in the Roman Campagna_. In Varro's time the Roman fever had begun to sap the vitality of the Roman people, and the "animalia minuta" in this passage suggests that Varro had a curious appreciation of what we call the modern science of the subject. Columella (I, 5, 6) indeed specifically mentions mosquitoes (infestis aculeis armata animalia) as one of the risks incident to living near a swamp.] [Footnote 69: In the thirteenth century Ibn-al-Awam, a learned Moor, wrote at Seville his _Kitab al-felahah_, or Book of Agriculture, which has preserved for us not only the wisdom of the Moorish practice in agriculture and gardening which made Spain an enchanted paradise, but also the tradition of the Arabs in such matters, purporting to go back, through the Nabataeans to the Chaldaean books, which recorded the agricultural methods that obtained "by the waters of Babylon." Ibn-al-Awam's book has, therefore, a double interest for us, and we are fortunate in having it available in an admirable French translation from the Arabic by J.J. Clement-Mullet (Paris, Librairie A. Franck, 1864). Not the least profitable chapters in this book are those devoted to the preparation of manure in composts, to be ripened in pits as Varro advises in the text. They show a thoroughness, a care and an art in the mixing of the various animal dungs, with straw, woodsearth and cinders, which few modern gardeners could equal. German scholarship has questioned the Chaldaean origin of the authorities quoted, but there is internal evidence which smacks of an oriental despotism that might well be Babylonian. In a recipe for a rich compost suitable for small garden plants, we are advised (I, 2, I, p. 95), without a quiver, to mix in blood--that of the camel or the sheep if necessary--_but human blood is to be preferred!_] [Footnote 70: What Varro describes as the military fence of ditch and bank was doubtless the typical Herefordshire fence of modern England which Arthur Young, in _The Farmers' Letters_, recommends so highly as at once most effective and most economical. The bank is topped with a plashed hedge of white thorn in which sallow, ash, hazel and beech are planted for "firing." The fencing practice of the American farmer has followed the line of least resistance and is founded on the lowest first cost: the original "snake" fences of split rails, upon the making of which a former generation of pioneer American boys qualified themselves for Presidential campaigns, being followed by woven wire "made by a trust" and not the most enduring achievement of Big Business. The practical farmer, as well as the lover of rural scenery, has cause for regret that American agricultural practice has not yet had the patience to enclose the land within live hedges and ditches.] [Footnote 71: The kind of fence which Varro here describes as "ex terra et lapillis compositis in formis" is also described by Pliny (H.N. XXXV, 169), as formaceos or moulded, and he adds, "aevis durant." It would thus clearly appear to have been of gravel concrete, the use of which the manufacturers of cement are now telling us, is the badge of the modern progressive farmer. Cato (XXXVIII) told how to burn lime on the farm, and these concrete fences were, of course, formed with lime as the matrix. When only a few years ago, Portland cement was first produced in America at a cost and in a quantity to stimulate the development of concrete construction, engineers began with rough broken stone and sand as the constituents of what they call the aggregate, but some one soon "discovered" that the use of smooth natural gravel made more compact concrete and "gravel concrete" became the last word in engineering practice. But it was older even than Varro. A Chicago business man visiting Mycenae picked up and brought home a bit of rubbish from Schliemann's excavations of the ancient masonry: lying on his office desk it attracted the attention of an engineering friend who exclaimed, "That is one of the best samples of the new gravel concrete I have seen. Did it come out of the Illinois tunnel?" "No," replied the returned traveller, "it came out of the tomb of Agamemnon!"] [Footnote 72: Varro here seems to forget the unities. He speaks in his own person, when Scrofa has the floor.] [Footnote 73: It will be recalled that Aristotle described slaves as living tools. In Roman law a slave was not a _persona_ but a _res_. Cf. Gaius II, 15.] [Footnote 74: One of the most interesting of these freemen labourers of whom we know is that Ofellus whom Horace (Satire II, 2) tells us was working with cheerful philosophy as a hired hand upon his own ancestral property from which he had been turned out in the confiscations following the battle of Philippi. This might have been the fate of Virgil also had he not chanced to have powerful friends.] [Footnote 75: "Mais lorsque, malgré le dégoût de la chaîne domestique, nous voyons naître entre les males et les femelles ces sentiments que la nature a partout fondés sur un libre choix: lorsque l'amour a commencé a unir ces couples captifs, alors leur esclavage, devenu pour eux aussi doux que la douce liberté, leur fait oublier peu à peu leur droits de franchise naturelle et les prérogatives de leur état sauvage; et ces lieux des premiers plaisirs, des premières amours, ces lieux si chers à tout être sensible, deviennent leur demeure de prédilection et leur habitation de choix: l'éducation de la famille rend encore cette affection plus profonde et la communique en même temps aux petits, qui s'étant trouvés citoyens par naissance d'un séjour adopté par leur parents, ne cherchent point à en changer: car ne pouvant avoir que pen ou point d'idée d'un état different ni d'un autre séjour ils s'attachent au lieu ou ils sont nés comme à leur patrie; et l'on sait que la terre natale est chère a ceux même qui l'habitent en esclaves." One might assume that this eloquent and comfortable essay on contentment in slavery had been written to illustrate Varro's text at this point, but, as a matter of fact, it is Buffon's observation (VIII, 460) on the domestication of wild ducks!] [Footnote 76: Saserna's rule would be the equivalent of one hand to every five acres cultivated. With slave labour, certainly with negro slave labour, the experience of American cotton planters in the nineteenth century very nearly confirmed this requirement, but one of the economic advantages of the abolition of slavery is illustrated by this very point. In Latimer's _First Sermon before King Edward VI_, animadverting on the advance in farm rents in his day, he says that his father, a typical substantial English yeoman of the time of the discovery of America, was able to employ profitably six labourers in cultivating 120 acres, or, say, one hand for each twenty acres, which was precisely what Arthur Young recommended as necessary for high farming at the end of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century the American farmer seldom employs more than one hand for every eighty acres cultivated, but this is partly due to the use of improved machinery and partly to the fact that his land is not thoroughly cultivated.] [Footnote 77: This example of Roman cost accounting is matched by Walter of Henley in thirteenth century England. "Some men will tell you that a plough cannot work eight score or nine score acres yearly, but I will show you that it can. You know well that a furlong ought to be forty perches long and four wide, and the King's perch is sixteen feet and a half: then an acre is sixty-six feet in width. Now in ploughing go thirty-six times round to make the ridge narrower, and when the acre is ploughed then you have made seventy-two furlongs, which are six leagues, for be it known that twelve furlongs are a league. And the horse or ox must be very poor that cannot from the morning go easily in pace three leagues in length from his starting place and return by three o'clock. And I will show you by another reason that it can do as much. You know that there are in the year fifty-two weeks. Now take away eight weeks for holy days and other hindrances, then are there forty-four working weeks left. And in all that time the plough shall only have to plough for fallow or for spring or winter sowing three roods and a half daily, and for second fallowing an acre. Now see if a plough were properly kept and followed, if it could not do as much daily."] [Footnote 78: Stolo is quibbling. Cato's unit of 240 jugera was based on the duodecimal system of weights and measures which the Romans had originally derived from Babylon but afterwards modified by the use of a decimal system. The enlightened and progressive nations of the modern world who have followed the Romans in adopting a decimal system may perhaps approve Stolo's remarks, but it behooves those of us who still cling to the duodecimal system to defend Cato, if only to keep up our own courage.] [Footnote 79: Here, in a few words, is the whole doctrine of intelligent agriculture. Cf. Donaldson's _Agricultural Biography, tit_. Jethro Tull. "The name of Tull will ever descend to posterity as one of the greatest luminaries, if not the very greatest benefactor, that British agriculture has the pride to acknowledge. His example furnishes the vast advantages of educated men directing their attention to the cultivation of the soil, as they bring enlightened minds to bear upon its practice and look at the object in a naked point of view, being divested of the dogmas and trammels of the craft with which the practitioners of routine are inexpugnably provided and entrenched."] [Footnote 80: Pliny quotes Cato: "What ever can be done by the help of the ass costs the least money," which is the philosophy of modern power machinery on the farm, as elsewhere. It is largely a question of the cost of fuel, as Varro says.] [Footnote 81: Green manuring is one of the oldest, as it is one of the best, of agricultural practices. Long before Varro, Theophrastus (II.P. 9, I) had recorded what the agricultural colleges teach today--that beans are valuable for this purpose because they rot readily, and, he adds, in Macedonia and Thessaly it has always been the custom to turn them under when they bloom.] [Footnote 82: Although Varro advises the first ploughing in the spring, the ancients were not unmindful of the advantages of winter ploughing of stiff and heavy clay. Theophrastus, who died in B.C. 287, advises it "that the earth may feel the cold." Indeed, he was fully alive to the reasons urged by the modern professors of agronomy for intensive cultivation. "For the soil," he says (C.P. III, 25), "often inverted becomes free, light and clear of weeds, so that it can most easily afford nourishment." King Solomon gives the same advice, "The sluggard will not plough by reason of the winter, therefore shall he begin harvest and have nothing." _Proverbs_, XX, 4.] [Footnote 83: The Romans understood the advantages of thorough cultivation of the soil. As appears from the text, they habitually broke up a sod in the spring, ploughed it again at midsummer, and once more in September before seeding. Pliny prescribes that the first ploughing should be nine inches deep, and says that the Etruscans some times ploughed their stiff clay as many as nine times. The accepted Roman reason for this was the eradication of weeds, but it also accomplished in some measure the purpose of "dry farming"--the conservation of the moisture content of the soil, as that had been practised for countless generations in the sandy Valley of Mesopotamia. Varro makes no exception to this rule, but Virgil was here, as in other instances, induced to depart from Varro's wisdom, with the result that he imposed upon Roman agriculture several thoroughly bad practices. Thus, while he applies Varro ploughing rules to rich land and bids the farmer "exercetque frequens tellurem atque imperat arvis," he says (Geo. I, 62) that it will suffice to give sandy land a single shallow ploughing in September immediately before seeding, for fear, forsooth, that the summer suns will evaporate whatever moisture there is in it! Again, Virgil recommends, what Varro does not, cross-ploughing and burning the stubble and Virgil's advice was generally followed. In William Benson's edition (1725) of the _Georgics_ "with notes critical and rustick," it is stated that "the husbandry of England in general is Virgilian, which is shown by paring and burning the surface: by raftering and cross-ploughing, and that in those parts of England where the Romans principally inhabited all along the Southern coast Latin words remain to this hour among shepherds and ploughmen in their rustick affairs: and what will seem more strange at first sight to affirm though in fact really true, there is more of Virgil's husbandry put in practice in England at this instant than in Italy itself." That this was the fact in the thirteenth century is clear from the quotations we have made from Walter of Henley's _Dite de Hosebondrie_. Cf. also Sir Anthony Fitzherbert and the account of the manorial system of farming in England in Prothero's _English Farming Past and Present_. It remained for Jethro Tull of the _Horseshoeing Husbandry_ to unloose in England the long spell of the magic of Virgil's poetry upon practical agriculture.] [Footnote 84: The Julian calendar, which took effect on January 1, B.C. 45, had been in use only eight years when Varro was writing.] [Footnote 85: Schneider and others have attempted to emend the enumeration of the days in this succession of seasons, but Keil justly observes: "As we do not know what principle Varro followed in establishing these divisions of the year, it is safer to set them down as they are written in the codex than to be tempted by uncertain emendation." I have accordingly followed Keil here.] [Footnote 86: The practice of ridging land seeded to grain was necessary before the invention of the modern drill. Dickson, in his _Husbandry of the Ancients_, XXIV, argues that, while wasteful of land, it had the advantage of preventing the grain from lodging. Walter of Henley, who followed the Roman methods by tradition without knowing it, advises with them that to be successful in this kind of seeding the furrow at the last ploughing of the fallow should be so narrow as to be indistinguishable. "At sowing do not plough large furrows," he says, "but little and well laid together that the seed may fall evenly: if you plough a large furrow to be quick you will do harm. How? I will tell you. When, the ground is sown then the harrow will come and pull the corn into the hollow which is between the two ridges and the large ridge shall be uncovered, then no corn shall grow there. And will you see this? When the corn is above ground go to the end of the ridge and you will see that I tell you truly. And if the land must be sown below the ridge see that it is ploughed with small furrows and the earth raised as much as you are able. And see that the ridge which is between the two furrows is narrow. And let the earth, which lies like a crest in the furrow under the left foot after the plough, be over-turned, and then shall the furrow be narrow enough."] [Footnote 87: Farrago was a mixture of refuse _far_, or spelt, with vetch, sown thick and cut green to be fed to cattle in the process now called soiling. The English word "forage" comes from this Latin original.] [Footnote 88: Spanish American engineers today insert in their specifications for lumber the stipulation that it be cut on the wane of the moon. The rural confidence in the influence of the moon upon the life of a farm still persists vigorously: thus as Pliny (H.N. XVIII, 75) counselled that one wean a colt only when the moon is on the wane, so it will be found that the moon is consulted before a colt is weaned on most American farms today: for that may be safely done, says the rural oracle, only when the moon's sign, as given in the almanack, corresponds with a part of the almanack's "moon's man" or "anatomic" at or below the knees, i.e., when the moon is in one or the other of the signs Pisces, Capricornus or Aquarius: but never at a time of day when the moon is in its "Southing."] [Footnote 89: Modern agricultural chemistry has contradicted this judgment of Cassius, for the manure of sea birds, especially that brought from the South American islands in the Pacific, known commercially as Peruvian guano, is found on analysis to be high in the elements which are most beneficial to plant life.] [Footnote 90: Seed selection, which is now preached so earnestly by the Agricultural Department of the United States as one of the things necessary to increase the yield of wheat and corn, has ever been good practice. Following Varro Virgil (_Georgic_ I, 197) insists upon it: "I have seen those seeds on whose selection much time and labour had been spent, nevertheless degenerate if men did not every year rigorously separate by hand all the largest specimens."] [Footnote 91: Cicero (de Div. II, 24) records a _mot_ of Cato's that he wondered that an haruspex did not laugh when he saw another--"qui mirari se aiebat, quod non rideret aruspex, aruspicem quum vidisset."] [Footnote 92: This process of propagation which Varro describes as "new" is still practised by curious orchardists under the name "inarching." The free end of a growing twig is introduced into a limb of its own tree, back of a specimen fruit, thus pushing its development by means of the supplemental feeding so provided. Cf. Cyc. Am. Hort. II, 664.] [Footnote 93: _Alfalfa_ is the Moorish name which the Spaniards brought to America with the forage plant _Medicago Sativa_, Linn., which all over Southern Europe is known by the French name _lucerne_. It is proper to honour the Moors by continuing in use their name for this interesting plant, because undoubtedly they preserved it for the use of the modern world, just as undoubtedly they bequeathed to us that fine sentiment known as personal honour. Alfalfa was one of the standbys of ancient agriculture. According to Pliny, it was introduced into Italy from Greece, whence it had been brought from Asia during the Persian wars, and so derived its Greek and Roman name _Medica_. As Cato does not mention it with the other legumes he used, it is probable that the Romans had not yet adopted it in Cato's day, but by the time of Varro and Virgil it was well established in Italy. In Columella's day it was already a feature of the agriculture of Andalousia, and there the Moors, who loved plants, kept it alive, as it were a Vestal fire, while it died out of Italy during the Dark Ages: from Spain it spread again all over Southern Europe, and with America it was a fair exchange for tobacco. Alfalfa has always been the subject of high praise wherever it has been known. The Greek Amphilochus devoted a whole book to it, as have the English Walter Harte in the middle of the eighteenth century and the American Coburn at the beginning of the twentieth century, but none of them is more instructive on the subject of its culture than is Columella in a few paragraphs. Because of the difficulty of getting a stand of it in many soils, it is important to realize the pains which the Romans took with the seed bed, for it is on this point that most American farmers fail. Says Columella (II, 10): "But of all the legumes, alfalfa is the best, because, when once it is sown, it lasts ten years: because it can be mowed four times, and even six times, a year: because it improves the soil: because all lean cattle grow fat by feeding upon it: because it is a remedy for sick beasts: because a jugerum (two-thirds of an acre) of it will feed three horses plentifully for a year. We will teach you the manner of cultivating it, as follows: The land which you wish to set in alfalfa the following spring should be broken up about the Kalends of October, so that it may mellow through the entire winter. About the Kalends of February harrow it thoroughly, remove all the stones and break up the clods. Later, about the month of March, harrow it for the third time. When you have so got the land in good order, lay it off after the manner of a garden, in beds ten feet wide and fifty feet long, so that it may be possible to let in water by the paths, and access on every side may be had by the weeders. Then cover the beds with well rotted manure. At last, about the end of April, sow plentifully so that a single measure (cyanthus) of seed will cover a space ten feet long and five wide. When you have done this brush in the seed with wooden rakes: this is most important for otherwise the sprouts will be withered by the sun. After the sowing no iron tool should touch the beds; but, as I have said, they should be cultivated with wooden rakes, and in the same manner they should be weeded so that no foreign grass can choke out the young alfalfa. The first cutting should be late, when the seed begins to fall: afterwards, when it is well rooted, you can cut it as young as you wish to feed to the stock. Feed it at first sparingly, until the stock becomes accustomed to it, for it causes bloat and excess of blood. After cutting, irrigate the beds frequently, and after a few days, when the roots begin to sprout, weed out all other kinds of grass. Cultivated in this way alfalfa can be mowed six times a year, and it will last for ten years."] [Footnote 94: See the explanation of what the Romans meant by _terra varia_ in the note on Cato V. _ante_, p. 40.] [Footnote 95: It is interesting to note from the statements in the text that in Varro's time the Roman farmer in Italy both sowed and reaped substantially the same amount of wheat as does the American farmer today. Varro says that the Romans sowed five modii of wheat to the jugerum and reaped on the maximum fifteen for one. As the modius was nearly the equivalent of our peck, the Roman allowance for sowing corresponds to the present American practice of sowing seven pecks of wheat to the acre: and on this basis a yield of 26 bushels to the acre, which is not uncommon in the United States, is the equivalent of the Roman harvest of fifteen for one. It is fair to the average Italian farmer of the present day who is held up by the economists to scorn because he does not produce more than eleven bushels of wheat to the acre, to record that in Columella's time, when agriculture had declined as compared with Varro's experience, the average yield of grain in many parts of Italy did not exceed four for one (_Columella_, III, 3), or say seven and a half bushels to the acre. Varro's statement that at Byzacium in Africa wheat yielded 100 for one, which Pliny (_II.N._ XVIII, 23) increases to 150 for one, means from 175 to 260 bushels per acre, seems incredible to us, but is confirmed by the testimony of agricultural practice in Palestine. Isaac claimed to reap an hundred fold, and the parable of the Sower alludes to yields of 30, 60 and 100 fold. Harte _Essays on Husbandry_, 91, says that the average yield in England in the middle of the eighteenth century was seven for one, though he records the case of an award by the Dublin Society in 1763 to an Irish gentleman who raised 50 bushels of wheat from a single peck of seed! Harte was a parson, but apparently he did not bring the same unction into his agriculture as did the Rev. Robert Herrick to the husbandry of his Devonshire glebe, a century earlier. In Herrick's _Thanksgiving to God for his House_ he sings: "Lord, 'tis thy plenty dropping hand That soils my land And giv'st me for my bushel sown Twice ten for one. Thou makst my teeming hen to lay Her egg each day: Besides my healthful ewes to bear Me twins each year."] [Footnote 96: As the Gallic header here described by Varro is the direct ancestor of our modern marvellous self-binding harvester, it is of interest to rehearse the other ancient references to it. Pliny (_H. N_. XVIII, 72) says: "In the vast domains of the provinces of Gaul a large hollow frame armed with teeth and supported on two wheels is driven through the standing corn, the beasts being yoked behind it, the result being that the ears are torn off and fall within the frame." Palladius (VII, 2) goes more into detail: "The people of the more level regions of Gaul have devised a method of harvesting quickly and with a minimum of human labour, for thereby a single ox is made to bear the burden of the entire harvest. A cart is constructed on two low wheels and is furnished with a square body, of which the side boards are adjusted to slope upward and outward to make greater capacity. The front of the body is left open and there across the width of the cart are set a series of lance shaped teeth spaced to the distance between the grain stalks and curved upward. Behind the cart two short shafts are fashioned, like those of a litter, where the ox is yoked and harnessed with his head towards the cart: for this purpose it is well to use a well broken and sensible ox, which will not push ahead of his driver. When this machine is driven through the standing grain all the heads are stripped by the teeth and are thrown back and collected in the body of the cart, the straw being left standing. The machine is so contrived that the driver can adjust its height to that of the grain. Thus with little going and coming and in a few short hours the entire harvest is made. This method is available in level or prairie countries and to those who do not need to save the straw." That ingenious Dutchman Conrad Heresbach refers, in his _Husbandry_, to Palladius' description of the Gallic header with small respect, which indicates that in the sixteenth century it was no longer in use. I quote from Barnaby Googe's translation of Heresbach (the book which served Izaak Walton as the model for his _Compleat Angler_): "This tricke might be used in levell and champion countries, but with us it would make but ill-favoured worke." Dondlinger, in his excellent _Book of Wheat_ (1908), which should be in the hands of every grain farmer, gives a picture reproducing the Gallic header and says: "After being used during hundreds of years the Gallic header disappeared, and it seems to have been completely forgotten for several centuries. Only through literature did it escape the fate of permanent oblivion and become a heritage for the modern world. The published description of the machine by Pliny and Palladius furnished the impulse in which modern harvesting inventions originated. Its distinctive features are retained in several modern inventions of this class, machines which have a practical use and value under conditions similar to those which existed on the plains of Gaul. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the social, economic and agricultural conditions in England, on account of increasing competition and the higher value of labour, were ripe for the movement of invention that was heralded by the printed account of the Gallic header. The first header was constructed by William Pitt in 1786. It was an attempted improvement on the ancient machine in that the stripping teeth were placed in a cylinder which was revolved by power transmitted from the wheels. This 'rippling cylinder' carried the heads of the wheat into the box of the machine, and gradually evolved into the present day reel." It may be added that the William Pitt mentioned was not the statesman, but a contemporary agricultural writer of the same name.] [Footnote 97: According to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert it was the custom in England to shear wheat and rye and to leave the straw standing after the third method described by Varro, the purpose being to preserve the straw to be cut later for thatching, as threshing it would necessarily destroy its value for thatching. It was the custom in England, however, to mow barley and oats.] [Footnote 98: Pliny advises that the grain which collects on the circumference of a threshing floor of this description be saved for seed because it is evidently the heaviest.] [Footnote 99: In the Apennines today the threshing floor, or _aja_, is anointed with cow dung smeared smooth with water, doubtless for the same reason that the Romans so used amurca.] [Footnote 100: Between harvests the winnowing basket is quite generally used in Italy today for a cradle, as it was from the beginning of time, for there is an ancient gem representing the infant Bacchus asleep in a winnowing basket.] [Footnote 101: What the French call, from the same practice, _vin de rognure_.] [Footnote 102: Varro does not mention the season of the olive harvest, but Virgil tells us (G. II, 519) that in their day as now it was winter. Cato (XX-XXII) described the construction and operation of the _trapetus_ in detail. 'It can still be seen in operation in Italy, turned by a patient donkey and flowing with the new oil of an intense blue-green colour. It is always flanked by an array of vast storage jars (Cato's _dolii_ now called _orci_), which make one realize the story of _Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves_.] [Footnote 103: The Roman waste of amurca, through ignorance of its value, was like the American waste of the cotton seed, which for many years was thrown out from the gin to rot upon the ground, even its fertilizing use being neglected. Now cotton seed has a market value equivalent to nearly 20 per cent of that of the staple. It is used for cattle feed and also is made into lard and "pure olive oil," being exported in bulk and imported again in bottles with Italian labels.] [Footnote 104: Cf. Fowler, _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_. "Let us consider that in a large city today the person and property of all, rich or poor, are adequately protected by a sound system of police and by courts of first instance which are sitting every day. Assault and murder, theft and burglary are exceptional. It might be going too far to say that at Rome they were the rule: but it is the fact that in what we may call the slums of Rome there was no machinery for checking them.... It is the great merit of Augustus that he made Rome not only a city of marble but one in which the persons and property of all citizens were fairly secure." There are several contemporary references to the crowded and dangerous condition of the streets of Rome at the end of the Republic. Cicero (_Plancius_, 7) tells how he was pushed against the arch of Fabius while struggling through the press of the Via Sacra, and exonerates from blame the man who was the immediate cause of his inconvenience, holding that the one next beyond was more responsible: in which judgment Cicero was of the opinion of Mr. Justice Blackstone in the famous leading case of Scott _v_. Shepherd (1 _Smith's L.C._, 480), where the question was who was liable for the damage eventually done by the burning squib which was passed about the market house by successive hands. The majority of the court held, however, against Blackstone and Cicero, and established the doctrine of proximate cause.] [Footnote 105: The Roman week (_nundinum_, or more properly _inter nundinum_) was of eight days, the last being the market day on which the citizens rested from agricultural labour and came into town to sell and buy and talk politics. Cf. Pliny, XVIII, 3. This custom which Varro regrets had fallen into desuetude so far as Rome was concerned was in his day still practised in the provinces. Thus the five tenants on Horace's Sabine farm were wont to go every _nundinum_ to the market town of Varia (the modern Vicovaro) to transact public business (_Epist_. I, 14, 2).] [Footnote 106: Varro here refers to the great economic change which was coming over Italian husbandry in the last days of the Republic, the disappearance of the small farms, the "septem jugera" which nurtured the early Roman heroes like Cincinnatus and Dentatus, and even the larger, but still comparatively small, farms which Cato describes, and the development of the _latifundia_ given over to grazing.] [Footnote 107: The tradition is, says Pliny, that King Augeas was the first in Greece to use manure, and that Hercules introduced the practice into Italy. To the wise farmer the myth of the Augean stables is the genesis of good agriculture.] [Footnote 108: This was the "crowded hour" in Varro's life, and, as M. Boissier has pointed out, he loved to dwell upon its episodes. It will be recalled that Pompey divided the Mediterranean into thirteen districts for the war with the Pirates and put a responsible lieutenant in command of each, thus enabling him by concurrent action in all the districts to clear the seas in three months. Appian gives the list of officers and the limits of their commands, saying: "The coasts of Sicily and the Ionian sea as far as Acarnania were entrusted to Plotius and Varro." It is difficult to understand Varro's own reference to Delos, but Appian makes clear how it happened that Varro was stationed on the coast of Epirus and so fell in with the company of "half Greek shepherds" who are the _dramatis personae_ of the second book. As the scene of the first book was laid in a temple of Tellus, so this relating to live stock is cast in a temple of Pales, the goddess of shepherds, on the occasion of the festival of the Parilia, and the names of the characters have a punning reference to live stock.] [Footnote 109: The codices here contain an interpolation of the words "HIC INTERMISIMUS," to indicate that a part of the text is missing, with which judgment of some early student of the archetype Victorius, Scaliger and Ursinus, as well as their successors among the commentators on Varro, have all agreed. It is a pleasure to record the agreement on this point, because it is believed to be unique: but many precedents for plunging the reader _in medias res_, as does the surviving text, might be found in the modern short story of the artist in style. As M. Boissier points out Varro might have cited the beginning of the Odyssey as a precedent for this.] [Footnote 110: This is a paraphase of a favorite locution of Homer's heroes, whose characteristic modesty does not, however, permit them to apply it to themselves, as Varro does. Thus in _Iliad_, VII, 114, Agamemnon advises Menelaos not to venture against Hector, whom "even Achilles dreadeth to meet in battle, wherein is the warrior's glory, and Achilles is better far than thou."] [Footnote 111: Virgil (Aen. VII, 314) made a fine line out of this tradition, endowing the sturdy race of Fauns and Nymphs who inhabited the land of Saturn before the Golden Age, with the qualities of the trees on whose fruit they subsisted, "gensque virum truncis et duro robore nata."] [Footnote 112: In the registers of the censors every thing from which the public revenues were derived was set down under the head of _pascua_, or "pasture lands," because for a long time the pasture lands were the only source of such revenue. Cf. Pliny, _H.N._ XVIII, 3.] [Footnote 113: Olisippo is the modern Lisbon. This tradition about the mares of the region is repeated by Virgil (Geo. III, 272) by Columella (VI, 27) and by Pliny (VIII, 67). Professor Ridgeway in _The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_ describes it as "an aetiological myth to explain the swiftness of horses" for the fleetest horses came out of the West; thus Pegasus was born at the springs of the ocean, and there is the passage in Homer (_Iliad_, XVI, 149) about the horses "that flew as swift as the winds, the horses that the harpy Podarge (Swift Foot) bare to the West Wind as she grazed on the meadows by the stream of the Ocean." Hence we may conclude that there was a race of swift horses in Portugal in the earliest times, which Professor Ridgeway would doubtless like very much to prove, in support of his interesting thesis, were derived from Libya.] [Footnote 114: _Hypenemia_, or barren eggs, are described intelligently by Aristotle (H.A.V. 1, 4, VI. 2, 5), and, with Varro's confidence in the country traditions, by Pliny, H.N. X, 80. If he had known it, Varro might have here cited the fact that the unfertilized queen bee is parthenogenetic, though producing only male bees; i.e., drones: but it remained for a German clergyman, Dzierzon, to discover this in the eighteenth century.] [Footnote 115: Cf. Plautus _Menaechmi_, II, 2, 279. One of the two Menaechmi is, on his arrival at Epidamnus, mistaken for his brother, of whose existence he does not know, and much to his amazement is introduced into the brother's life and possessions. At first he expostulates, accusing the slave of the brother, who has mistaken his identity, of being crazy and offers to exorcise him by a sacrifice of weanling pigs, wherefore he asks the question quoted in the text. Varro was evidently fond of this passage, as he quotes it again, _post_, p. 221. The _Menaechmi_ is one of the immortal comedies and has survived in many forms on the modern stage all over Europe. From it Shakespeare derived the plot of the _Comedy of Errors_.] [Footnote 116: It is interesting to compare these sane therapeutics with Cato's practice less than two hundred years previous (_ante_, p. 47), which was characteristic of the superstitious peasant who in Italy still seeks the priest to bless his ailing live stock.] [Footnote 117: This Atticus was Cicero's intimate friend to whom he addressed so many of his charming letters. He changed his name as stated in the text, the new name being that of an uncle who adopted him, as we learn from his life by Nepos. As is well known to all students of Cicero, Atticus had dwelt in Athens many years and derived his income from estates in Epirus, which is the point of Scrofa's jest.] [Footnote 118: This requirement of short legs is the more remarkable because of the long journeys which Varro says the Roman sheep were required to make between their summer and winter pastures. A similar necessity and bad roads created in England, before the eighteenth century, a demand for long legged sheep. Prothero (_English Farming Past and Present_) quotes a description of the "true old Warwickshire ram" in 1789: "His frame large and remarkably loose. His bone throughout heavy. His legs long and thick, terminating in large splaw feet." One of the things which Bakewell accomplished was to shorten the legs as well as to increase the mutton on his New Leicesters. Of Bakewell, Mr. Prothero justly says, "By providing meat for the million he contributed as much to the wealth of the country as Arkwright or Watt."] [Footnote 119: Shepherds still look for the black or spotted tongue in the mouth of the ram, for the reason given by Varro, but the warning is no longer put in the shepherds' manual.] [Footnote 120: Varro would still feel at home in Apulia, for there the sheep industry is carried on much as it was in his time, and thence the _calles publicae_, to which he refers, still lead to the summer pastures in the Apennines. Cf. Beauclerk _Rural Italy_, chap. V. "The extensive pasturages of the 'Tavoliere di Puglia' (Apulia) are of great importance and have a history of their own. This vast domain covers 750,000 acres: its origin belongs to the time of the Roman Conquests and the protracted wars of the Republic, which were fought out in the plains, whence they became deserted and uncultivated, fit only for public pastures in winter time ... the periodical emigrations of the flocks continue as in the past times: they descend from the mountains into the plains by a network of wide grassy roads which traverse the region in every direction and are called _tratturi_. These lanes are over 100 yards in width and cover a total length of 940 miles.... Not less than 50,000 animals are pastured on the Tavoliere, requiring over 1,500 square miles of land for their subsistence.... Five thousand persons are employed as shepherds."] [Footnote 121: Varro quite uniformly uses words which indicate that he was accustomed to see sheep driven (_abigere, propellere, adpellere_) but we can see the flocks _led_ in Italy today, as they were in Palestine soon after Varro's death, according to the testimony of that beautiful figure of the Good Shepherd (_St. John_, X, 4): "And when he putteth forth his own sheep he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice." R. Child, in his "Large Letter" in Hartlib's _Legacie_, gives the explanation of the difference in the custom: "Our sheep do not follow their shepherds as they do in all other countries: for the shepherd goeth before and the sheep follow like a pack of dogs. This disobedience of our sheep doth not happen to us, as the Papist Priests tell their simple flocks, because we have left their great shepherd the Pope; but because we let our sheep range night and day in our fields without a shepherd: which other countries dare not for fear of wolves and other ravenous beasts, but are compelled to guard them all day with great dogs and to bring them home at night, or to watch them in their folds."] [Footnote 122: Cf. Dante, _Purg_. XXVII, 79. "Le capre Tacite all' ombra mentre che'l sol ferve Guardate dal pastor che'n su la verga Poggiato s'e, e lor poggiato serve."] [Footnote 123: It will be recalled that when Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, was making his way to his house in company with the faithful swineherd Eumaeus, they met the goatherd Melanthius "leading his goats to feast the wooers, the best goats that were in all the herds." (_Odyssey_, XVII, 216), and that subsequently he suffered a terrible punishment for this unfaithfulness to his master's interests.] [Footnote 124: Pliny (VIII, 76) calls these excrescences _lanciniae_, or folds, and attributes them exclusively to the she goat, as Varro seems to do also, but Columella (VII, 6) attributes them to the buck.] [Footnote 125: Aristotle (H.A. I, 9.1) refers to this opinion and denounces it as erroneous.] [Footnote 126: The Roman _denarius_, which has been here and later translated _denier_, may be considered for the purpose of comparing values as, roughly, the equivalent of the modern franc, or lira, say 20 cents United States money.] [Footnote 127: Macrobius (_Saturn_. I, 6) tells another story of the origin of this cognomen, which, if not so heroic as that in the text, is entertaining. It is related that a neighbour's sow strayed on Tremelius' land and was caught and killed as a vagrant. When the owner came to claim it and asserted the right to search the premises Tremelius hid the carcass in the bed in which his wife was lying and then took a solemn oath that there was no sow in his house except that in the bed.] [Footnote 128: It would seem, as Gibbon says of the Empress Theodora, that this passage could be left "veiled in the obscurity of a learned language"; but it may be noted that the _locus classicus_ for the play on the word is the incident of the Megarian "mystery pigs" in Aristophanes' _Acharnians_, 728 ff. Cf. also Athenaeus, IX, 17, 18.] [Footnote 129: Cf. Pliny (_H.N._ VIII, 77): "There is no animal that affords a greater variety to the palate of the epicure: all the others have their own peculiar flavour, but the flesh of the hog has nearly fifty different flavours."] [Footnote 130: In his stimulating book, _Comment la route crée le type Social_, Edmond Desmolins submits an ingenious hypothesis to explain the pre-eminence of the Gauls in the growing and making of pork, and how that pre-eminence was itself the explanation of their early success in cultivating the cereals. He describes their migrating ancestors, the Celts, pushing their way up the Danube as hordes of nomad shepherds with their vast flocks and herds of horses and cattle, on the milk of which they had hitherto subsisted. So long as they journeyed through prairie steppes, the last of which was Hungary, they maintained their shepherd character, but when they once passed the site of the present city of Vienna and entered the plateau of Bavaria, they found new physical conditions which caused them to reduce and to separate their herds of large cattle--an unbroken forest affording little pasture of grass. Here they found the wild boar subsisting upon the mast of the forest, and him they domesticated out of an economic necessity, to take the place of their larger cattle as a basis of food supply. Until then they had not been meat eaters, and so had known no necessity for cereals, for milk is a balanced ration in itself. But this change of diet required them also to take to agriculture and so to abandon their nomad life. 'By reason of the habits of the animal, swine husbandry has a tendency in itself to confine those engaged in it to a more or less sedentary life, but we are about to see how the Celts were compelled to accomplish this important evolution by an even more powerful force. Meat cannot be eaten habitually except in conjunction with a cereal ... and of all the meats pork is the one which demands this association most insistently, because it is the least easily digested and the most heating of all the meats.... So that is how the adoption of swine husbandry and a diet of pork compelled our nomad Celts to take the next step and settle down to agriculture.'] [Footnote 131: This Gallic _tomacina_ was doubtless the ancestor of the _mortadella_ now produced in the Emilia and known to English speaking consumers as "Bologna" sausage.] [Footnote 132: The Gaul of which Cato was here writing is the modern Lombardy, one of the most densely populated and richest agricultural districts in the world. Here are found today those truly marvellous "marchite" or irrigated meadows which owe the initiative for their existence to the Cistercian monks of the Chiaravalle Abbey, who began their fruitful agricultural labours in the country near Milan in the twelfth century. There is a recorded instance of one of these meadows which yielded in a single season 140 tons of grass per hectare, equal to 75 tons of hay, or 30 tons per acre! The meadows are mowed six times a year, and the grass is fed green to Swiss cows, which are kept in great numbers for the manufacture of "frommaggio di grana," or Parmesan cheese. This system of green soiling maintains the fertility of the meadows, while the by-product of the dairies is the feeding of hogs, which are kept in such quantity that they are today exported as they were in the times of Cato and Varro. There is no region of the earth, unless it be Flanders, of which the aspect so rejoices the heart of a farmer as the Milanese. Well may the Lombard proverb say, "Chi ha prato, ha tutto."] [Footnote 133: Virgil (_Aen_. VII, 26) subsequently made good use of this tradition of the founding of Lavinium, the sacred city of the Romans where the Penates dwelt and whither solemn processions were wont to proceed from Rome until Christianity became the State religion. The site has been identified as that of the modern village of Practica, where a few miserable shepherds collect during the winter months, fleeing to the hills at the approach of summer and the dread _malaria_.] [Footnote 134: Cf. Polybius, XII, 4: 'For in Italy the swineherds manage the feeding of their pigs in the same way. They do not follow close behind the beasts, as in Greece, but keep some distance in front of them, sounding their horn every now and then: and the animals follow behind and run together at the sound. Indeed, the complete familiarity which the animals show with the particular horn to which they belong seems at first astonishing and almost incredible. For, owing to the populousness and wealth of the country, the droves of swine in Italy are exceedingly large, especially along the sea coast of the Tuscans and Gauls: for one sow will bring up a thousand pigs, or some times even more. They, therefore, drive them out from their night styes to feed according to their litters and ages. When if several droves are taken to the same place they cannot preserve these distinctions of litters: but they, of course, get mixed up with each other both as they are being driven out and as they feed, and as they are being brought home. Accordingly, the device of the horn blowing has been invented to separate them when they have got mixed up together, without labour or trouble. For as they feed one swineherd goes in one direction sounding his horn, and another in another and thus the animals sort themselves of their own accord and follow their own horn with such eagerness that it is impossible by any means to stop or hinder them. But in Greece when the swine get mixed up in the oak forests in their search for the mast, the swineherd who has most assistants and the best help at his disposal, when collecting his own animals drives off his neighbours' also. Some times, too, a thief lies in wait and drives them off without the swineherd knowing how he has lost them, because the beasts straggle a long way from their drivers in their eagerness to find acorns, when they are just beginning to fall.' Bishop Latimer in one of his sermons quotes the phrase used in his youth, at the time of the discovery of America, in calling hogs: 'Come to thy minglemangle, come pur, come pur.' It would be impossible to transcribe the traditional call used in Virginia. One some times thinks that it was the original of the celebrated 'rebel yell' of General Lee's army.] [Footnote 135: The use of the Greek salutation was esteemed by the more austere Romans of the age of Scipio an evidence of preciosity, to be laughed at: and so Lucienus' jesting apology for the use of it here doubtless was in reference to Lucilius' epigram which Cicero has preserved, _de Finibus_, I, 3. "Graece ergo praetor Athenis Id quod maluisti te, quum ad me accedi, saluto [Greek: Chaire] inquam, Tite: lictores turma omni cohorsque [Greek: Chaire] Tite! Hinc hostis mi Albucius, hinc inimicus." It was the word which the Romans taught their parrots. Cf. Persius, _Prolog_. 8.] [Footnote 136: The working ox was respected by the ancient Romans as a fellow labourer. Valerius Maximus (VIII, 8 _ad fin_.) cites a case of a Roman citizen who was put to death, because, to satisfy the craving of one of his children for beef to eat, he slew an ox from the plough. Ovid puts this sentiment in the mouth of Pythagoras, when he agrees that pigs and goats are fit subjects for sacrifice, but protests against such use of sheep and oxen. (_Metamor_. XV, 139.) "Quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque Innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores? Immemor est demum, nee frugum manere dignus Qui potuit curvi demto modo pondere arati Ruricolam mactare suum: qui trita labore Ilia quibus toties durum renovaverat arvum Tot dederse messes, percussit colla securi."] [Footnote 137: The learned commentators have been able to discover nothing about either this Plautius or this Hirrius, but it appears that Archelaus wrote a book under the title Bugonia, of which nothing survives. It may be conjectured, however, on the analogy of Samson's riddle to the Philistines, "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness," (_Judges_, XIV, 14), that Plautius meant to imply that some good might be the consequence of the evil Hirrius had done: and that Vaccius cited the allusion to suggest to Varro that, while he might know nothing much about cattle, his attempt to deal with the subject might provoke some useful discussion.] [Footnote 138: Darwin, _Animals and Plants_, II, 20, cites this passage and says that "at the present day the natives of Java some times drive their cattle into the forests to cross with the wild Banteng." The crossing of wild blood on domestic animals is not, however, always successful. A recent visitor to the German agricultural experiment station at Halle describes "a curious hairy beast with great horns, a wild look in his eye, a white streak down his back and a bumpy forehead, which had in it blood from cattle which had lived on the plains of Thibet, which had grazed on the lowland pastures of Holland, which had roamed the forests of northeast India and of the Malay Peninsular, and had wandered through the forests of Germany. We Americans had sympathy for this beast. He was some thing like ourselves, with the blood of many different races flowing through his veins."] [Footnote 139: Pliny (VIII, 66) cites the fact that the Scythians always preferred mares to stallions for war, and gives an ingenious reason for the preference. Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 22) says that the Scythians rode their pregnant mares until the very last, saying that the exercise rendered parturition more easy. Every breeder of heavy draft horses has seen a mare taken from the plough and have her foal in the field, with no detriment to either: and the story of the mare Keheilet Ajuz, who founded the best of the Arab families, is well known, but bears repetition. I quote from Spencer Borden, _The Arab Horse_, p. 44: "It is related that a certain Sheik was flying from an enemy, mounted on his favourite mare. Arab warriors trust themselves only to mares, they will not ride a stallion in war. The said mare was at the time far along toward parturition: indeed she became a mother when the flying horseman stopped for rest at noonday, the new comer being a filly. Being hard pressed the Sheik was compelled to remount his mare and again seek safety in flight, abandoning the newborn filly to her fate. Finally reaching safety among his own people, great was the surprise of all when, shortly after the arrival of the Sheik on his faithful mare, the little filly less than a day old came into camp also, having followed her mother across miles of desert. She was immediately given into the care of an old woman of the tribe (Ajuz = an old woman), hence her name Keheilet Ajuz, 'the mare of the old woman,' and grew to be the most famous of all the animals in the history of the breed."] [Footnote 140: Varro does not describe the livery of the horses of his day, as he does of cattle, but Virgil (_Georg_. III, 81) supplies the deficiency, asserting that the best horses were bay (_spadices_) and roan (_glauci_) while the least esteemed were white (_albi_) and dun (_gilvi_), which is very interesting testimony in support of the most recent theory of the origin of the thoroughbred horse. Professor Ridgeway who, opposing Darwin's conclusion, contends for a multiple origin of the historic and recent races of horses, has collected a mass of information about the marking of famous horses of all ages in his _Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_. He maintains that a bay livery, with a white star and stockings, the development of protective coloration from an originally striped coat, such as has gone on more recently in the case of the quaggas, is absolute evidence of the North African origin of a horse, and he shows that all the swiftest horses mentioned in history are of that race, while the heavier and less mettlesome horses of Northern origin have been, when pure bred, dun coloured or white. Of the Italian breeds mentioned by Varro, Professor Ridgeway conjectures that the Etruscan (or Rosean) was probably an improved Northern horse, while the Apulian, from the South of Italy, represented an admixture of Libyan blood.] [Footnote 141: Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 22) preceded Varro with this good advice, saying that a mare "produces better foals at the end of four or five years. It is quite necessary that she should wait one year and should pass through a fallow, as it were--[Greek: poiein osper neion]."] [Footnote 142: Mules were employed in antiquity from the earliest times. In Homer they were used for drawing wagons: thus Nausicaa drove a mule team to haul out the family wash, and Priam made his visit to Achilles in a mule litter. Homer professes to prefer mules to oxen for ploughing. There were mule races at the Greek games. Aristotle (_Rhetoric_, III, 2) tells an amusing story of Simonides, who, when the victor in the mule race offered him only a poor fee, refused to compose an ode, pretending to be shocked at the idea of writing about "semi-asses," but, on receipt of a proper fee, he wrote the ode beginning: "Hail, daughters of storm-footed mares," although they were equally daughters of the asses.] [Footnote 143: The breed of Maremma sheep dogs, still preferred in Italy, is white. He is doubtless the descendant of the large woolly "Spitz" or Pomeranian wolf dog which is figured on Etruscan coins.] [Footnote 144: In his essay,_Notre ami le chien_, Maeterlinck maintains eloquently that the dog alone among the domestic animals has given his confidence and friendship to man. "We are alone, absolutely alone, on this chance planet: and amid all the forms of life that surround us not one excepting the dog has made alliance with us. A few creatures fear us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves: but they serve us in spite of themselves.... The rose and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach, like birds. Among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing ... the cow and the ox happy so long as they are eating and docile because for centuries they have not had a thought of their own.... I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat whose side long contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in our own homes. She at least curses us in her mysterious heart: but all the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree." The effective use of this thesis in the scene of the revolt of the domestic animals in the Blue Bird will be remembered.] [Footnote 145: This method of securing the faithful affection of a dog is solemnly recommended, without acknowledgment to Saserna, in the seventeenth century editions of the _Maison Rustique_ (I, 27).] [Footnote 146: Keil happily points out that in his book on the Latin language (VII, 31), Varro quotes the "ancient proverb" to which he here refers, viz.: "canis caninam non est" dog doesn't eat dog.] [Footnote 147: Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 20) says that puppies are blind from twelve to seventeen days, depending upon the season of the year at which they are born. Pliny (_H N._ VIII, 62) says from seven to twenty days, depending upon the supply of the mother's milk.] [Footnote 148: It was among these hardy shepherd slaves that Spartacus recruited his army in 72-71 B.C., as did Caelius and Milo in 48 B.C., while their descendants were the brigands who infested Southern Italy even in the nineteenth century.] [Footnote 149: Gaius, I, 119, II, 24, 41, describes in detail the processes here referred to by which a slave was acquired under the Roman law.] [Footnote 150: Dennis, in his _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, draws a picture of modern Italy which may serve to illustrate Varro's sketch of the mountain life of the shepherds of his day: "Occasionally in my wanderings on this site (Veii) I have entered, either from curiosity or for shelter, one of the _capanne_ scattered over the downs. These are tall conical thatched huts which the shepherds make their winter abode. For in Italy, the lowlands being generally unhealthy in summer, the flocks are driven to the mountains about May, and as soon as the great heats are past are brought back to the rich pastures of the plains. It is a curious sight, the interior of a _capanna_, and affords an agreeable diversity to the antiquity hunter. A little boldness is requisite to pass through the pack of dogs, white as new dropt lambs, but large and fierce as wolves, which, were the shepherd not at hand, would tear in pieces whoever might venture to approach the hut: but with one of the _pecoraj_ for a Teucer, nothing is to be feared. The _capanne_ are of various sizes. One I entered not far from Veii was thirty or forty feet in diameter and fully as high, propped in the centre by two rough masts, between which a hole was left in the roof for the escape of smoke. Within the door lay a large pile of lambs, there might be a hundred, killed that morning and already flayed, and a number of shepherds were busied in operating on the carcases of others: all of which were to be dispatched forthwith to the Roman market. Though a fierce May sun blazed without, a huge fire roared in the middle of the hut: but this was for the sake of the _ricotta_, which was being made in another part of the _capanna_. Here stood a huge cauldron, full of boiling ewes' milk. In a warm state this curd is a delicious jelly and has often tempted me to enter a _capanna_ in quest of it, to the amazement of the _pecoraj_, to whom it is _vilior alga_. Lord of the cauldron, stood a man dispensing ladlefuls of the rich simmering mess to his fellows, as they brought their bowls for their morning allowance: and he varied his occupation by pouring the same into certain small baskets, the serous part running off through the wicker and the residue caking as it cooled. On the same board stood the cheeses, previously made from the cream. In this hut lived twenty-five men, their nether limbs clad in goat skins, with the hair outwards, realizing the satyrs of ancient fable: but they had no nymphs to tease, nor shepherdesses to woo, and never 'sat all day Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love To amorous Phillida.' They were a band of celibates without the vows. In such huts they dwell all the year round, flaying lambs or shearing sheep, living on bread, _ricotta_ and water, very rarely tasting meat or wine and sleeping on shelves ranged round the hut, like berths in a ship's cabin. Thus are the dreams of Arcadia dispelled by realities."] [Footnote 151: In modern Italy the shepherds do not take their women with them to the _saltus_, but, as Dennis says, lead there the life of "celibates, without the vows."] [Footnote 152: In the Venitian provinces of Italy today the women are still seen at work in the harvest and rice fields with their babes in their bosoms: but the most amazing modern spectacle of this kind is that of women coaling ships in the East, carrying their unhappy youngsters up and down the coal ladders throughout the work.] [Footnote 153: The author of _Maison Rustique_ did not agree with Varro in this opinion. I quote from Surflet's translation of 1606 (I, 7): "And for writing and reading it skilleth not whether he be able to doe it or no, or that he should have any other charge to looke unto besides that of yours, or else that he should use another to set downe in writing such expences as he hath laid out: for paper will admit any thing."] [Footnote 154: This temple and fig tree stood in Rome at the foot of the Palatine hill, in the neighbourhood of the Lupercal. It was under this fig tree that Romulus and Remus were supposed to have been suckled by the wolf.] [Footnote 155: 'That is the beste grease that is to a shepe, to grease hym in the mouthe with good meate,' says Sir Anthony Fitzherbert.] [Footnote 156: Pliny (VII, 59) says that most nations learn the use of barbers next after that of letters, but that the Romans were late in this respect. Varro himself wore a beard, as appears on the coin he struck during the war with the Pirates. It is reproduced in Smiths _Dict. Gr. and Rom. Biog_., III, p. 1227.] [Footnote 157: Cowper's verse in _The Task_ seems to be all that is happy in the way of translation of Varro's text, "divina natura dedit agros, ars humana aedificavit urbes": but Cowley's "God the first garden made, and the first city Cain" was probably Cowper's source. Cowley was a reader of Varro, as his pleasant and sane essay _Of Agriculture_ shows.] [Footnote 158: Following the precedent of the first and second books in the matter of local colour, the scene of this third book, relating to villas and the "small deer," which were there reared, is laid in the _villa publica_ at Rome, and the characters of the dialogue are selected for the suggestion which their names may make of the denizens of the aviary, the barn yard and the bee-stand.] [Footnote 159: This Appius Claudius Pulcher served in Asia under his brother-in-law Lucullus, was Augur in B.C. 59, Consul in 54 and Censor in 50. He wrote a book on augural law and the habits of birds at which Cicero poked some rather mean fun. He fixes the date of the dialogue.] [Footnote 160: In Varro's time, as today, the river Velinus drained the fresh pastures of the Umbrian prairie of Rosea, "the nurse of Italy," which lay below the town of Reate (the modern Rieti), and was originally the bed of a lake. Its waters are so strongly impregnated with carbonate of lime that by their deposit of travertine they tend to block their own channel. The drainage of Rosea has, therefore, always been a matter of concern to the live stock industry of Reate, and in B.C. 272 M. Curius Dentatus opened the first of several successful artificial canals (the last dating from the sixteenth century, A.D.), which still serve to lead the Velinus into the Nar at the renowned Cascate delle Marmore. For two hundred years the people of Interamna (the modern Terni) had complained that their situation below the falls was endangered by Curius' canal, and finally in B.C. 54 the Roman Senate appointed the commission to which Appius Claudius refers in the text, to hear the controversy. Cicero was retained as counsel for the people of Reate, and during the hearing stopped, as Appius Claudius did, with our friend Axius at his Reatine villa, and wrote about the visit to the same Atticus whom we met in Varro's second book, as follows (_ad Atticum_, IV, 15): "After this was over the people of Reate summoned me to their Tempe to plead their cause against the people of Interamna, before the Consul and ten commissioners, the question being concerning the Veline lake, which, drained by M. Curius by means of a channel cut through the mountain, now flows into the Nar: by this means the famous Rosea has been reclaimed from the swamp, though still fairly moist. I stopped with Axius, who took me also to visit the Seven Waters." What was once deemed a danger is a double source of profit to the modern folk of Interamna. Tourists today crowd to see the same waterfall which Cicero visited, taking a tram from the busy little industrial town of Terni: and the waters which flow from Velinus now serve to generate power with which armour plates are manufactured for the Italian navy on the site of the ancient Interamna.] [Footnote 161: Sicilian honey was famous for its flavour because of the bee pasture of thyme which there abounded, especially at Hybla. Theophrastus (H.P. III, 15, 5) explains that the honey of Corsica had an acrid taste, because the bees pastured there largely on box trees.] [Footnote 162: These denizens of the Roman villa are all enumerated by Martial in his delightful verses (III, 38) upon Faustinus' villa at Baiae. The picture of the barn yard is very true to life in all ages, especially the touch of the hungry pigs sniffing after the pail of the farmer's wife: "Vagatur omnis turba sordidae cortis Argutus anser, gemmeique pavones Nomenque debet quae rubentibus pennis, Et picta perdix, Numidicaeque guttatae Et impiorum phasiana Colchorum. Rhodias superbi feminas prement galli Sonantque turres plausibus columbarum, Gemit hinc palumbus, inde cereus turtur Avidi sequuntur villicae sinum porci: Matremque plenam mollis agnus exspectat."] [Footnote 163: The _sestertius_ was one quarter of a _denarius_, or, say, the equivalent of five cents. It was also called _nummus_, as we say "nickel." The ordinary unit used by the Romans in reckoning considerable sums of money was 1,000 sesterces, which may accordingly be translated as the equivalent of (say) $50. Axius' jackass thus cost $2,000, while Seius' income from his villa was $2,500 per annum, that of Varro's aunt from her aviary was $3,000, and that of Axius from his farm $1,500. Cicero records that Axius was a money lender, which explains the fun here made of his avarice.] [Footnote 164: Columella, writing about one hundred years after Varro, refers to this passage and says that luxury had so developed since Varro's time that it no longer required an extraordinary occasion, like a triumph, to bring the price of thrushes to three _denarii_ a piece, but that that had become a current quotation.] [Footnote 165: A minerval was the fee (of Minerva) paid to a school teacher.] [Footnote 166: The inventor of the auspices _ex tripudiis_ or the feeding of chickens was evidently an ingenious poultry fancier who succeeded in securing the care of his favourites at the public charge.] [Footnote 167: This was L. Marcius Philippus, the orator mentioned by Horace (_Epist_. I, 7, 46), who was Consul in B.C. 91, and was celebrated for his luxurious habits, which his wealth enabled him to gratify. His son married the widow of C. Octavius and so became the step-father of the Emperor Augustus.] [Footnote 168: This was _turdus pilaris_, the variety of thrush which is called field fare.] [Footnote 169: The traveller by railway from Rome to Naples passes near Varro's estate of Casinum, and if he stops at the mediaeval town of San Germano to visit the neighbouring Badia di Monte Cassino, where the "angelic doctor" Thomas Aquinas was educated, he will find Varro's memory kept green: for he will be entertained at the _Albergo Varrone_ ("very fair but bargaining advisable," sagely counsels Mr. Baedeker) and on his way up the long winding road to the Abbey there will be pointed out to him the river Rapido, on the banks of which Varro's aviary stood, and nearby what is reputed to be the site of the old polymath's villa which Antony polluted with the orgies Cicero described in the second Philippic. Antony's destruction of his library was a great blow to Varro, but one likes to think that his ghost can take satisfaction in the maintenance, so near the haunts of his flesh, of such a noble collection of books as is the continuing pride of the Abbey on the mountain above.] [Footnote 170: Varro's Museum, or study where he wooed the Muses, on his estate at Casinum was not unlike that of Cicero at his native Arpinum, which he described (de Leg. II, 3) agreeably as on an island in the cold and clear Fibrenus just above its confluence with the more important river Liris, where, like a plebeian marrying into a patrician family, it lost its name but contributed its freshness. The younger Pliny built a study in the garden of his Laurentine villa near Ostia, which he describes (II, 17) with enthusiasm: "horti diaeta est, amores mei, re vera amores": and here he found refuge from the tumult of his household during the festivities of the Saturnalia, which corresponded with our Christmas. In the ante bellum days every Virginia gentleman had such an "office" in his house yard where he pretended to transact his farm business, but where actually he was wont to escape from the obligations of family and continuous hospitality.] [Footnote 171: The commentators on this interesting but obscure description of Varro's aviary have at this point usually endeavoured to explain the arrangements of the chamber under the lantern of the _tholus_ with respect to its use as a dining room which Varro frequented himself, and hence have been amused into all kinds of difficulties of interpretation. The references to the _convivae_ are what lead them astray, and it remained for Keil to suggest that this was a playful allusion to the birds themselves, a conclusion which is strengthened by Varro's previous statement of the failure of Lucullus' attempt to maintain a dining room in his aviary.] [Footnote 172: Cf. Vitruvius, I, 6: "Andronicus Cyrrhestes built at Athens an octagonal marble tower, on the sides of which were carved images of the eight winds, each on the side opposite that from which it blew. On the pyramidal roof of this tower he placed a bronze Triton holding a rod in his right hand, and so contrived that the Triton, revolving with the wind, always stood opposed to that which prevailed, and thus pointed with his rod to the image on the tower of the wind that was blowing at the moment." The ruins of this Tower of the Winds may still be seen in Athens. There is a picture of it in Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities in the article _Andronicus_.] [Footnote 173: One ventures to translate _athletoe comitiorum_ by Mr. Gladstone's famous phrase.] [Footnote 174: Reading "tesserulas coicientem in loculum."] [Footnote 175: A French translator might better convey the intention of the pun, contained in the _ducere serram_ of the text, by the locution, _une prise de bec_.] [Footnote 176: It probably will not comfort the ultimate consumer who holds in such odium the celebrated "Schedule K" of the Payne-Aldrich tariff, to realize that the American wool grower puts no higher value on his sheep than did his Roman ancestor, as revealed by this quotation from the stock yards of Varro's time. It is interesting, however, to the breeder to know that a good price for wool has always stimulated the production of the best stock. Strabo says that the wool of Turdetania in Spain was so celebrated in the generation after Varro that a ram of the breed (the ancestors of the modern Merino) fetched a talent, say $1,200; a price which may be compared with that of the prize ram recently sold in England for export to the Argentine for as much as a thousand pounds sterling, and considered a good commercial investment at that. Doubtless the market for Rosean mules comforted Axius in his investment of the equivalent of £400 in a breeding jack.] [Footnote 177: In feudal times the right to maintain a dove cote was the exclusive privilege of the lord of the manor. According to their immemorial custom, which Varro notices, the pigeons preyed on the neighbourhood crops and were detested by the community in consequence. During the French revolution they were one of the counts in the indictment of the land-owning aristocracy, and in the event the pigeons as well as their owners had the sins of their forefathers justly visited upon them. The American farmer who has a pigeon-keeping neighbour and is restrained by the pettiness of the annoyance from making a point on their trespasses, feels something of the blind and impotent wrath of the French peasant against the whole pigeon family.] [Footnote 178: It appears that the Romans actually hired men to chew the food intended for cramming birds, so as to relieve the unhappy victims even of such exercise as they might get from assimilating their diet. Columella (VII, 10) in discussing the diet of thrushes deprecates this practice, sagely saying that the wages of the chewers are out of proportion to the benefit obtained, and that any way the chewers swallow a good part of what they are given to macerate. The typical tramp of the comic papers who is forever looking for occupation without work might well envy these Roman professional chewers. Not even Dr. Wiley's "poison squad" employed to test food products could compare with them.] [Footnote 179: These prices of $10 and $50 and even $80 a pair for pigeons, large as they seem, were surpassed under the Empire. Columella says (VIII, 8): "That excellent author, M. Varro, tells us that in his more austere time it was not unusual for a pair of pigeons to sell for a thousand sesterces, a price at which the present day should blush, if we may believe the report that men have been found to pay for a pair as much as four thousand _nummi_." ($200.)] [Footnote 180: The market for chickens and eggs in the United States would doubtless astonish the people of Delos as much as the statistics do us (ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messes!). It is solemnly recorded that the American hen produces a billion and a quarter dozen eggs per annum, of a value greater than that of either the wheat or cotton crops, and yet there are many of us who cannot get our hens to lay more than a hundred eggs a year!] [Footnote 181: Reading _ad infirma crura_. This practice is explained more at length by Columella (VIII, 2, 3) who specifies the spurs, _calcaribus inustis_. Buffon, who describes a 'practice of trimming the combs of capons, adds (V, 302) an interesting account of an experiment which he says he had made "une espece de greffe animale": after trimming the comb of a growing cockerel his budding spurs were cut out and grafted on the roots of the comb, where they took root and flourished, growing to a length of two and a half inches, in some cases curving forward like the horns of a ram, and in others turning back like those of a goat.] [Footnote 182: The dusting yard which Varro here describes was in the open, but Columella (VIII, 3) advises what modern poultry farmers pride themselves upon having recently discovered,--a covered scratching pen strewn with litter to afford exercise for the hens in rough weather. It will be observed that, so far as ventilation is concerned, Varro recommends a hen house open to the weather: this is another standard of modern practice which has had a hard struggle against prejudice. Columella adds two more interesting bits of advice, that for the comfort of the hens the roosts should be cut square, and for cleanliness their water trough should be enclosed leaving only openings large enough to receive a hen's head. With so much enlightenment and sanitation one would expect one or the other of these Romans to tell us of some "teeming hen" like Herrick's who laid "her egg each day." We are proud to be able to cite the eminent Roseburg Industrious Biddy who, in the year of grace 1912, achieved the championship of America with a record of 266 eggs in ten months and nineteen days, and was sold for $800: but Varro is content to suggest that a hen will lay more eggs in a season than she can hatch, and the conservative Columella (VIII, 5) that the number of eggs depends upon diet.] [Footnote 183: The guinea fowl got their Greek name, _meleagrides_, because the story was that the sisters of Meleager were turned into guinea hens. Pliny (_H.N._ X, 38) says that they fight every year on Meleager's tomb. It is a fact that they are a pugnacious fowl. Buffon says that guinea fowl disappeared from Europe in the Dark Ages and were not known again until the route to the Indies via the Cape of Good Hope was opened when they were imported anew from the west coast of Africa.] [Footnote 184: Reading, "propter fastidium hominum." Cf. Pliny (X, 38), whose explanation is "propter ingratum virus."] [Footnote 185: There is a Virginia practice of feeding a fat turkey heavily on bread soaked in wine or liquor just before he is killed, the result being that as the turkey gets into that condition which used to put our ancestors under the table, he relaxes all his tendons and so is sweeter and more tender when he comes above the table. There is a humanitarian side to the practice which should recommend it even to the W.C.T.U. as well as to the epicure.] [Footnote 186: Many thousands of geese used to be driven every year to Rome from the land of the Morini in Northern Gaul, but the Germans are the modern consumers. A British consular report says that in addition to the domestic supply a special "goose train" of from fifteen to forty cars is received daily in Berlin from Russia. It would seem that the goose that lays the golden egg has emigrated to Muscovy. Buffon says that the introduction of the Virginia turkey into Europe drove the goose off the tables of all civilized peoples.] [Footnote 187: Columella (VIII, 14) repeats this myth, but Aristotle (_H.A._ V, 2, 9) says that geese bathe _after_ breeding. Buffon gives a Gallic touch, "ces oiseaux preludent aux actes de l'amour en allant d'abord s'egayer dans l'eau."] [Footnote 188: Reading _seris_. It is the _Cichorium endivia_ of Linnaeus. Cf. Pliny (_H.N._ XX, 32.)] [Footnote 189: Varro does not mention it, but the Romans knew and prized _pâté de foie gras_ under the name _ficatum_, which indicates that they produced it by cramming their geese with a diet of figs. Cf. Horace's verse "pinguibus et ficis pastum iecur anseris albi." In Toulouse, whence now comes the best of this dainty of the epicure, the geese are crammed daily with a dough of corn meal mixed with the oil of poppies, fed through a tin funnel, which is introduced into the esophagus of the unhappy bird. At the end of a month the stertorous breathing of the victim proclaims the time of sacrifice to Apicius. The liver is expected to weigh a kilogram, (say two pounds), while at least two kilograms of fat are saved in addition, to garnish the family _plat_ of vegetables during the remainder of the year.] [Footnote 190: Reading _foeles_, which Keller, in his account of the fauna of ancient Italy in the Cambridge _Companion to Latin Studies_, identifies with _Martes vulgaris_. Sir Anthony Fitzherbert calls them fullymartes. It does not appear that the Romans had in Varro's time brought from Egypt our household cat, _F. maniculata_. They used weasels and tame snakes for catching mice.] [Footnote 191: Darwin (_Animals and Plants_, I, 8) cites this passage and argues that Varro's advice to cover the duck yard with netting to keep the ducks from flying out is evidence that in Varro's time ducks were not entirely domesticated, and hence that the modern domestic duck is the same species as the wild duck. It may be noted, however, that Varro gives the same advice about netting the chicken yard, having said that chickens had been domesticated from the beginning of time.] [Footnote 192: The ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinii is now known as Corneto. The wild sheep which Lippinus there kept in his game preserves were probably the _mouflon_ which are still hunted in Sardinia and Corsica, though they may have been the Phrygian wild sheep (_Aegoceros argali_) which Varro mentions in Book II. Pliny (_H.N._ VIII, 211) says that this Lippinus was the first of the Romans to keep wild animals enclosed; that he established his preserves shortly before the Civil Wars, and that he soon had imitators.] [Footnote 193: Reading * * * * [Transcriber's note: the preceding four *s are actually four instances of the "infinity" symbol (like a digit 8 rotated horizontally)]_passum_. The Roman mile, _mille passuum_, was 142 yards less than the English mile.] [Footnote 194: Of the three kinds of hares mentioned by Varro the "common Italian kind" was _L. timidus_, a roast shoulder of which Horace vaunts as a delicacy: the Alpine hare was _L. variabilis_, which grows white on the approach of winter: and the _cuniculus_ was the common rabbit known to our English ancestors as the coney. Strabo records (Casaub, 144) that the inhabitants of the Gymnesian (Balearic) Islands in Spain sent a deputation to Augustus to request a military force to exterminate the pest of rabbits, for such was their multitude that the people were being crowded out of their homes by them, in which their plight was that of modern Australia. They were usually hunted in Spain with muzzled ferrets imported from Africa.] [Footnote 195: The edible snail, _helix pomatia_, L., is still an article of commerce in France and Italy. They prey upon vines and give evidence of their appreciation of the best by abounding in the vineyards of the _Cote d'or_, the ancient Burgundy. There at the end of summer they are gathered for the double purpose of protecting the vines and delighting the epicure: are then stored in a safe place until cold weather, when they considerately seal up their own shells with a calcareous secretion and so are shipped to market. Here is the recipe for 'escargots à la bourguignonne,' which despite the prejudice engendered by _Leviticus_ (XI, 30.) may be recommended to the American palate jaded by beefsteak and potatoes and the high cost of living: "Mettre les escargots a bouillir pendant 5 a 10 minutes dans de l'eau salée, les retirer de leur coquille, les laver a l'eau froide pour les debarrasser du limon, les cuire dans un court-bouillon fortement assaisonné. Apres cuisson les replacer dans le coquille bien nettoyee, en les garnissant au fond et par dessus d'une farce de beurre frais manipule avec un fin hachis de persil, cerfeuil, ail, echalote, sel et poivre. Avant de servir, faire chauffer au four."] [Footnote 196: Reading LXXX _quadrantes_. A comparison may be made of this capacity with that of the ordinary snail known to the Romans, for their smallest unit of liquid measure was called a _cochlear_, or snail shell, and contained.02 of a modern pint, or, as we may say, a spoonful: indeed the French word _cuiller_ is derived from _cochlear_.] [Footnote 197: It is perhaps well to remind the American reader that the European dormouse (_Myoxus glis_. Fr. _loir_. Ger. _siebenschlafer_) is rather a squirrel than a mouse, and that he is still esteemed a dainty edible, as he was by the Romans: indeed when fat, just before he retires to hibernate, he might be preferred to 'possum and other strange dishes on which some hospitable Americans regale themselves and the patient palates of touring Presidents. In his treatise _De re culinaria_ Apicius gives a recipe for a ragout of dormice which sounds appetizing.] [Footnote 198: Darwin (_Animals and Plants_, XVIII) says: "I have never heard of the dormouse breeding in captivity."] [Footnote 199: Varro makes no mention of tea and bread and butter as part of the diet of a dormouse; so we are better able to understand his abstinence at the mad tea party in _Alice in Wonderland_. As Martial (III, 58) calls him _somniculosus_, it is probable that his table manners on that occasion were nothing new and that his English and German names were always justified.] [Footnote 200: This is one of Varro's puns which requires a surgical operation to get it into one's head. Appius is selected to talk about bees because his name has some echo of the sound of _apis_, the word for bee.] [Footnote 201: The study of bees was as interesting to the ancients as it is to us. There have survived from among many others the treatises of Aristotle, Varro, Virgil, Columella and Pliny, but they are all made up, as Maeterlinck has remarked, of "erreurs charmantes," and for that reason the antique lore of bees is read perhaps to best advantage in the mellifluous verses of the fourth _Georgic_, which follow Varro closely.] [Footnote 202: He might have said also that the hexagonal form of construction employed by bees produces the largest possible result with the least labour and material. Maeterlinck rehearses (_La Vie des Abeilles_, 138) the result of the study of this problem in the highest mathematics: "Réaumur avait proposé au célèbre mathematicien Koenig le problem suivant: 'Entre toutes les cellules hexagonales a fond pyramidal compose de trois rhombes semblables et égaux, determiner celle qui peut être construite avec le moins de matière?' Koenig trouva qu'une telle cellule avait son fond fait de trois rhombes dont chaque grand angle était de 109 degrés, 26 minutes et chaque petit de 70 degrés, 34 minutes. Or, un autre savant, Maraldi, ayant mesuré aussi exactement que possible les angles des rhombes construits par les abeilles fixa les grands à 109 degrés, 28 minutes, et les petits a 70 degrés, 32 minutes. Il n'y avait done, entre les deux solutions qu'une difference de 2 minutes. II est probable que l'erreur, s'il y en a une, doit être imputee a Maraldi plutot qu'aux abeilles, car aucun instrument ne permet de mesurer avec une precision infaìllible les angles des cellules qui ne sont pas assez nettlement definis." Maclaurin, a Scotch physicist, checked Koenig's computations and reported to the Royal Society in London in 1743 that he found a solution in exact accord with Maraldi's measurements, thereby completely justifying the mathematics of the bee architect.] [Footnote 203: The Romans were as curious and as constant in the use of perfumes as we are of tobacco. It is perhaps well to remember that they might find our smoke as offensive as we would their unguents.] [Footnote 204: Indeed one of the marvels of nature is the service which certain bees perform for certain plants in transferring their fertilizing pollen which has no other means of transportation. Darwin is most interesting on this subject.] [Footnote 205: The ancients, even Aristotle, did not know that the queen bee is the common mother of the hive. They called her the king, and it remained for Swammerdam in the seventeenth century to determine with the microscope this important fact. From that discovery has developed our modern knowledge of the bee; that the drones are the males and are suffered by the (normally) sterile workers to live only until one of them has performed his office of fertilizing once for all the new queen in that nuptial flight, so dramatically fatal to the successful swain, which Maeterlinck has described with wonderful rhetoric, whereupon the workers massacre the surviving males without mercy. This is the "driving out" which Varro mentions.] [Footnote 206: This picture of the queen bee is hardly in accord with modern observations. It seems that while the queen is treated with the utmost respect, she is rather a royal prisoner than a ruler, and, after her nuptial flight, is confined to her function of laying eggs incessantly unless she may be unwillingly dragged forth to lead a swarm. Maeterlinck thus pictures (_La Vie des Abeilles_, 174) her existence with a Gallic pencil: "Elle n'aura aucune des habitudes, aucunes des passions que nous croyons inherentes à l'abeille. Elle n'eprouvera ni le desir du soleil, ni le besoin de l'espace et mourra sans avoir visite une fleur. Elle passera son existence dans l'ombre et l'agitation de la foule à la recherche infatigable de berceaux à peupler. En revanche, elle connaitra seule l'inquietude de l'amour."] [Footnote 207: It would have interested Axius to know that the annual consumption of honey in the United States today is from 100 to 125 million pounds and that the crop has a money value of at least ten million dollars. To match Seius, we might put forward a bee farmer in California who produces annually 150,000 pounds of honey from 2,000 hives.] [Footnote 208: Maeterlinck has made a charming picture of this habit of propinquity of the bee-stand to the human habitation. He describes (_La Vie des Abeilles_, 14) the old man who taught him to love bees when he was a boy in Flanders, an old man whose entire happiness "consistait aux beautés d'un jardin et parmi ces beautés la mieux aimee et la plus visitées etait un roucher, composé de douze cloches de paille qu'il avait peint, les unes de rose vif, les autres de jaune clair, la plupart d'un bleu tendre, car il avail observé, bien avant les experiences de Sir John Lubbock, que le bleu est la couleur preferée des abeilles. Il avait installé ce roucher centre le mur blanchi de la maison, dans l'angle que formait une des ces savoureuses et fraiches cuisines hollondaises aux dressoirs de faience ou étincalaient les etains et les cuivres qui, par la porte ouverte, se reflétaient dans un canal paisible. Et l'eau chargés d'images familières, sous un rideau de peupliers, guidait les regards jusqu'au répos d'un horizon de moulins et de prés."] [Footnote 209: Reading _Apiastro_. This is the _Melissa officinalis_ of Linnaeus. Cf. Pliny, XX, 45 and XXI, 86.] [Footnote 210: Bee keepers attribute to Reaumur the invention of the modern glass observation hive, which has made possible so much of our knowledge of the bee, but it may be noted that Pliny (_H.N._ XXI, 47) mentions hives of "lapis specularis," some sort of talc, contrived for the purpose of observing bees at work. The great advance in bee hives is, however, the sectional construction attributed to Langstroth and developed in America by Root.] [Footnote 211: Columella, (IX, 14) referring to the myth of the generation of bees in the carcase of an ox (out of which Virgil made the fable of the pastor Aristaeus in the Fourth Georgic), explains the practice mentioned in the text with the statement "hic enim quasi quadam cognatione generis maxime est apibus aptus." The plastering of wicker hives with ox dung persisted and is recommended in the seventeenth century editions of the _Maison Rustique_.] [Footnote 212: Reading _seditiosum_.] [Footnote 213: This is a mistake upon which Aristotle could have corrected Varro.] [Footnote 214: After studying the commentators on this obscure passage, I have elected to follow the emendation of Ursinus, which, although Keil sneers at its license, has the advantage of making sense.] [Footnote 215: _Sinapis arvensis_, Linn.] [Footnote 216: _Sium sisarum_, Linn.] [Footnote 217: The philosophy of the bee is not as selfish as that human principle which Varro attributes to them. The hive does not send forth its "youth" to found a colony, but, on the contrary, abandons its home and its accumulated store of wealth to its youth and itself ventures forth under the leadership of the old queen to face the uncertainties of the future, leaving only a small band of old bees to guard the hive and rear the young until the new queen shall have supplied a new population.] [Footnote 218: Reading _imbecilliores_.] [Footnote 219: Pliny (_H.N_. IX, 81) relates that this loan was made to supply the banquet on the occasion of one of the triumphs of Caesar the dictator, but Pliny puts the loan at six thousand fishes.] [Footnote 220: It is impossible to translate this pun into English, _dulcis_ being the equivalent of both "fresh" and "agreeable," and _amara_ of "salt" and "disagreeable." A French translator would have at his command _doux_ and _amer_.] [Footnote 221: Cf. Pliny (_H.N_. II, 96): "In Lydia the islands called Calaminae are not only driven about by the wind, but may even be pushed at pleasure from place to place, by which means many people saved themselves in the Mithridatic war. There are some small islands in the Nymphaeus called the Dancers, because, when choruses are sung, they move in tune with the measure of the music."] [Footnote 222: Reading _in ius vocare_, with the _double entendre_ of service in a sauce and bringing to justice.] INDEX _Actus (actus guadratus)_, unit of area in land measurement Aegean Sea, derivation of name Aesop's fable of the fox Agriculture, distinguished from grazing, pottery-making, etc. definition of scope of purposes of, are profit and pleasure four divisions for the study of effect of conformation of the land on, effect of character of soil Albutius, L. Alfalfa, advice concerning Alfius, Roman farmer banker Alpine hares Amurca, farm uses of used for anointing threshing floors waste of, by Romans method of preserving condensing Apiaries, location of _See_ Bees. Apicius, recipe for ragout of dormice by, Appian, quoted Appius Claudius Pulcher Apples, storing Apulian breed of horses Aquinas, Thomas _Arbusta_, the Italian _Arista_, etymology of word Aristotle, on blindness of puppies cited on goats' breathing through their ears on exercising of pregnant mares on breeding of mares story related by _Arpent_, derivation of Asparagus planting, Asses, use of, as compared with other draught animals manure of certain choice breeds of buying, breeding, care of, etc. milk of Atticus, T. Pomponius Augeas, King, tradition concerning Augustine, St., on Varro indebtedness of, to works of Varro Aviaries, profits from two classes of those kept for profit those kept for pleasure Aviary, Varro's, at Casinum B Bakewell, breeding of sheep by Barbers, the first, in Italy Barn yards, arrangement of Barrows, hogs called Bavaria, agriculture in Iowa contrasted with that in Beans, use of, for green manuring storing Beauclerk, W.N., on agriculture in modern Italy quoted Bees, eggs of unfertilized queen the keeping of theories concerning generation of treatises on, by ancient writers habits and houses of money to be made from location of stands for food for; structure and care of hives kinds of selection of moving swarming of removal of honey general care of Benson, William, edition of _Georgics_ by, quoted Birds, manure of Blackbirds, houses for keeping Blackstone, opinion by, cited Bleat, etymology of word Blood, use of, in composts Boars, advice concerning altering; wild Boissier, Gaston quoted and cited _Boke of Husbandry_, Fitzherbert's Bologna sausages Bones, remedy for injuries to Borden, Spencer, _The Arab Horse_ by, quoted Boundaries, protection of farm Buffon, quotations from cited Bugs, recipe for exterminating Buildings on farm C Cabbage, Cato's advocacy of the planting seeding Cakes, recipes for Calendar of agricultural operations Capons, chickens called method of caponizing cocks _Caprae_, goats, derivation of word _Capreolus_, a spiral tendril Cascate delle Marmore Casinum, Varro's estate of Cassius, quoted Cassius Dionysius Cat, the modern household, unknown to Varro Cato, Marcus Porcius the _De re rustica_ of literary style of, compared with Varro Cats, contrasted with dogs in relations with man Cattle, leaves as fodder for feeding of care of number and selection of, for a farm honour paid to, in naming Zodiacal signs and the constellations advice on breeding and feeding number of, to be kept advice on neat cattle _Centuria_, defined Chaff, derivation of word Cheese, varieties and qualities of Cheese cake Chestnuts as food in Italy Child, R., quoted Cicero, quoted concerning Varro verse from Cleaning grain Clement-Mullet, J.J., translation by Climate, choice of, in buying a farm connection between conformation of land and Clover, advice on seeding Coburn, book on alfalfa by Colours of horses, significance of Columella cited on ploughing rules about the compost heap on soil improvement with legumes on dangers from mosquitoes on alfalfa quoted _Comedy of Errors_, origin of Compost heap, rules concerning the Concrete, fences of Conformation of land, effect of, on agriculture Constellations, names of cattle given to Coots Corn, structure of plant storing _See_ Grain Corn land as distinguished from plough land Corsican honey Cotton seed, utilization of Country life, antiquity of Cowper and Cowley, lines by Crescenzi, Pietro, cited Cultivating time Curing hams Cuttage of plants Cyrrhestes, Tower of the Winds built by D Dante, quotation from Darwin, Charles, _Animals and Plants_ by quoted on dormice Dates, eating preserved _Denarius_, value of the Dennis, _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_ by, quoted _De re rustica_, Cato's Desmolins, Edmond, cited Dickson, Andrew, quoted cited Diophanes of Bithynia Disease in cattle, and remedies Dislocations of bones, remedy for Dogs, watch herd Donaldson's _Agricultural Biography_, quoted Dondlinger, _Book of Wheat_ by, quoted Dormice, enclosures for, feeding, etc. Draining period for Draught animals on farm number and choice of Dry farming Ducks, housing, care of, etc. Dunghill fowl Dusting yard for poultry E Eggs, the first course in Roman dinners barren number for setting preserving Elm trees, planting of for marking boundaries Endive, as food for geese Ensilage, question of use of, by ancients Equipment of a farm F Fallow, as managed by the Romans Farm, buying a laying out of the stocking the as a source of both profit and pleasure effect of conformation of the land effect of character of the soil Farm hands, allowances for selection, treatment, number of, etc., _Farrago_, mixed fodder as food for geese Feast days, observance of Feed racks, construction of Fences Ferrero, cited Field crops, planting of Figs, season for propagating eating preserved Fining the soil Fishes, feeding and care of Fish ponds fresh-water and salt-water number of, on one estate Fitzherbert, Sir Anthony quoted; cited on combining two kinds of husbandry on greasing of sheep Flock masters, duties of Forage, derivation from _farrago_ Forage crops Foremen of farm hands, qualifications of Fowl. _See_ Poultry Fowler, _Social Life at Rome_ by, quoted France, yields of wine in Freemen as agricultural labourers Fruits, preserving time for using stored Furlong, derivation of G Game preserves Gauls, pre-eminence of, in growing and making of pork high qualities as shepherds Geese, selection of, breeding, care, etc. Geldings, horses called _Geoponica_, the; cited _Georgics_, Virgil's, passages based on information from Varro Gestation, periods of Gleaning of grain fields _Gluma_, etymology of word Goats, as foes of agriculture characteristics, breeding and handling milk of; use of hair and skins of; shearing of Googe, Barnaby, translation of Heresbach by Graftage of plants Grain, advice on seeding storing of cleaning, when taken out of storage time for marketing Granaries, varieties of _Granum_, etymology of word Grapes, harvesting of advice on storing Grapevines, trellises and props for Grazing, to be distinguished from agriculture Greek writers on agriculture Green manuring Guano Guinea fowl H _Haeredium_, defined Hair, removal of superfluous Hams, recipes for curing and cooking Hares, varieties of _See_ Rabbits Harte, Walter, _Essays on Husbandry_ by on alfalfa quoted Hartlib, Samuel quoted on pasture _vs._ arable land Harvester, ancient forerunners of the modern Harvest time Hay, harvesting the storing of Haymaking Health, location of farm steading with regard to Healthfulness of farms, importance of Hedges, myrtle Heliotrope, habits of the Hens Herd dogs Heresbach, Conrad, cited Herrick, Robert, quoted Hesiod quoted and cited Hinnies Hives for bees, location and structure inventors of modern devices Hogs Homer, quoted on use of mules Honey, Sicilian and Corsican profits from removal of, from hive Honeycomb, structure of the Horace, cited quoted Horses, oxen _vs._ manure of breeding, feeding, care of, etc. House for residence on farm Housekeeper, duties of the I Ibn-al-Awam, book of agriculture by Implements, farming Inarching, propagation by Incantations as cures Interamna, town of Iowa, farming in Bavaria and Italy, agriculture in modern J Johnson, Samuel, on Harte's _Husbandry_ quoted on Shenstone Joigneaux, P., on yields of wine in France Jones, W.H., on malaria in the Roman Campagna _Jugerum_, defined _Jugum_, defined Jungle fowl K Kames, Lord, quoted Keil, quoted cited Keller, cited _Kitab al-felahah_ of Ibn-al-Awam L Labourers, agricultural Lanciani, cited Land, effect of conformation of, on agriculture Leaves as fodder for cattle Legumes, soil improvement with storing _Leporaria_ Library, public, at Rome Literature of farm management, ancient Live stock, feeding care of origin and importance of husbandry of _See_ Cattle Lombardy, agriculture in ancient and modern M Machiavelli, quoted Maeterlinck, quoted on dogs on the antique lore of bees on the mathematics of the honeycomb on the queen bee's life on the nearness of the bee-stand to the dwelling-house Mago the Carthagenian, treatise on farm management by quoted Varro's account of _Maison Rustique_, cited and quoted Malaria in Roman Campagna Manure, preparation of best kinds of Manure pits, arrangement of Manuring, importance of green Maremma sheep dogs Mares, use of, for war horses milk of Market day among the Romans Marl, use of, as manure Marrying the vine Martial, quotation from Meadows, protection of irrigated, of Lombardy Measurement of land, units of area used in Mile, the Roman Military fences Milk and milking, advice on Minerval, a Mitchell, Donald G. Mommsen, quoted Montesquieu, quoted Moon, influence of, on agriculture Moryson, Fynes, quoted Mosquitoes, perception by Varro of damages from Mules, remarks on foaling by uses, care of, etc. Murray, Gilbert, translation of Euripides by Must cake Myers, F.W.H., cited N Neat cattle, buying, breeding, feeding, etc. Neighbourhood, considerations of, in locating farm Neighbours, treatment of one's _Nummus_, a "nickel," _Nundinum_, the Roman week Nurseries, protection of Nuts, eating preserved O Oaks, effect of, on olive trees _Oboerati_, class of bondservants called _Ocinum_, basil Oil, manufacture of, from olives Oil-making implements Olive farm, number of hands for working an Olives, allowances of, for farm hands reasons for growth in Attica effect of oaks in neighbourhood of advice on planting propagating from truncheons harvesting of methods of preserving eating preserved Olive salad Onager, wild ass Orchards laying out and planting of olive _Ornithones_ _See_ Aviaries Ortolans, houses for keeping Overseer duties of the location of room of Ovid, quoted Oxen selling of worn-out comparison of horses and care of hoofs of treatment of sick number of, suitable for a farm qualities of, to be considered breaking of respect in which held by ancient Romans P Palladius quoted on the Gallic harvester _Palma_, palm Partridges Pastures care of _vs_. arable land Pâté de foie gras, known and prized by Romans Peacocks, discussion of Perfumes among the Romans Persius, cited Petrarch on Varro on the loss of Varro's books Philippus, L. Marcius Pigeon houses Pigeons manure of kinds and care of Pigs, weanling, called "sacred" Planting field crops olives vines time of Plants four methods of propagating transplanting cuttage graftage inarching time for using different methods of propagation mechanical action of Plautus _Menaechmi_ of quoted Plautius Pleasure as a main purpose of agriculture Pliny quoted use of marl as manure noted by on the Gallic harvester cited Pliny the Younger, study in garden of Ploughing, importance of thorough of rotten land Plough land, as distinguished from corn land Polecats Pollio, Asinius, library at Rome founded by Polybius, quoted Pome fruits, storing Pomegranates, preserving Poultry, kinds, feeding, and care of Poultry houses Protection of nurseries and meadows Prothero, quoted Punning, Varro's use of Pythagoras Q Quail, houses for keeping migrations of Queen bees, recency of knowledge about Quinces, storing Quintilian, on Varro R Rabbits, warrens for breeding and feeding of derivation of Latin name for Racking wine Reate, asses from Recipes _Rerum Rusticarum_ of Varro Virgil's indebtedness to Rest room for farm hands Ridgeway, quoted on markings of horses Ridging land, custom of Rogers, Thorold, quoted Roman fever Rome, insecurity of life in ancient Rosea, drainage of, by artificial canals Rosean breed of horses Rotten land, precautions regarding S Sacred pigs Salad, olive Salt, allowance of, for farm hands _Saltus_, defined Salutations, Greek, as used by Romans Saserna, as a writer on agriculture quoted on number of farm hands necessary on securing allegiance of dogs Sausages Scab among sheep and cattle Scratches in horses, remedy for Scratching pen for hens _Scripulum_, defined Scrofa, Tremelius origin of name Sea birds, manure of Seasons, agricultural Seed, selection of Seed bed, preparing the Sellar, cited Seneca, on Virgil's farming _Sestertius_, value of the Sheep, value of, for their manure buying of feeding, breeding, and care of shearing of Sheep dogs Shepherds, distinguished from farmers number and kind of, requisite purchase of slaves for life of Sicilian honey Silos Size of farm Slaves, selling of old and sick importance of food to contentment of selection of, for farm hands number of, for operating a farm buying, to act as shepherds Snails, recipe for preparing cooked method of keeping in enclosures varieties of fattening of Snakebite, remedy for Soil, improvement of effect of character of, on agriculture different kinds of fining the Solar measure of year Solomon, quotation on ploughing from Sour land, treatment of Sowing, period for Spring ploughing Squabs Stables for live stock Steading, building a husbandry of the development of the industries of the Stamen, etymology of Stocking a farm Storing crops Strabo, inventor of aviaries cited Straw, derivation of word Swine, selecting, feeding, breeding, etc. T Tarquinii, ancient Etruscan city Taylor, John, _Arator_ by, quoted Teals Teeth, telling age of animals by the _Terra_, different senses of word Thales of Miletus Thebes, derivation of name Theophrastus, works by cited quoted on honey of Corsica Thessalian horses Thinning vines Threshing Threshing floor, the Thrushes, profits from houses for keeping Tillage, advice on Time, standards of the Roman week Tools, farming Toulouse, production of pâté de foie gras in Transplanting Transportation, importance of ease of Trellises in vineyards Trumpet, training hogs to obey sound of assembling wild boars and roebucks by the Tull, Jethro Turkeys, fattening effect of introduction into Europe, on geese Turtle doves, housing and care of V Varro, Marcus Terentius the _Rerum Rusticarum_ of works of, besides _Rerum Rusticarum_, activities of, in war against pirates estate and museum of Vegetable gardens _Versus_, the, defined Vetch, derivation of name Veterinary science of ancient Romans Villa, discussion of the Roman Vines, for marking farm boundaries advice on planting thinning Vineyards, the maintenance of implements for Vintage, work of the Virgil indebtedness of, to Varro formula for testing sour land by advice on ploughing cited on colours of horses Vitruvius, quoted on Cyrrhestes' Tower of the Winds W Walnut trees, effect of, on surrounding land Walter of Henley quoted on use of marl as manure Warrens, defined Watch dogs, 116 Water for cattle Water supply for a steading Weaning, of young cattle of lambs Weanling pigs Week, the Roman Wheat, seeding yields of structure of plant harvesting of Wild asses Wild boars, keeping of, in game preserves Wind, impregnating of mares by the Wind breaks for olive orchards Wine, cabbage as an offset to effects of allowances of, for farm hands yields of, in ancient Italy racking, 173 used in cramming fowls Winnowing Winnowing basket, use of, for a cradle Winter ploughing Wood pigeons, cramming and fattening Wool, shearing sheep for X Xenophon, as a writer on agriculture quoted Y Year, solar measure of the Young, Arthur inscription on tombstone of wife fences recommended by on necessary number of farm labourers Z Zeno of Citium Zodiacal signs, honour paid to cattle in 
18298	----	ESSAYS IN NATURAL HISTORY AND AGRICULTURE. BY THE LATE THOMAS GARNETT, OF LOW MOOR, CLITHEROE. LONDON: PRINTED AT THE CHISWICK PRESS. 1883. CONTENTS. FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SALMON. Introductory Observations The Salmon enters and ascends Rivers for other purposes besides Propagation Suggestions for an alteration in the Laws regarding Salmon Artificial Breeding of Fish Artificial Propagation of Fish Remarks on a Proposed Bill for the better Preservation of Salmon LETTERS ON AGRICULTURAL SUBJECTS. On the Cultivation of Wheat on the same Land in Successive Years The Cultivation of Wheat On the Gravelling of Clay Soils Cotton PAPERS ON NATURAL HISTORY. Wrens' Nests The Long-tailed Titmouse Identity of the Green with the Wood Sandpiper The Stoat The Marsh Titmouse Creeper Wrens' Nests Alarm-note of one Bird understood by other Species of Birds Dates of the appearance of some Spring Birds in 1832, at Clitheroe The Rook Serviceable to Man.--Prejudice against it Sandpipers On Birds Dressing their Feathers with Oil from a Gland Mocking powers of the Sedge-warbler The Water Ouzel Scolopax, Sabines, Sabine's Snipe Fish and other River Phenomena Lampreys On the Spawning of the Minnow Eels On the Possibility of Introducing Salmon into New Zealand and Australia On the Formation of Ice at the bottom of Rivers On the Production of Ice at the bottoms of Rivers Gossamer * * * * * FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SALMON. * * * * * FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SALMON. In the following observations I intend to offer some remarks on the various migratory fish of the _genus Salmo_; and then some facts and opinions which tend to show the importance of some change in the laws which are now in force regarding them. We have first the Salmon; which, in the Ribble, varies in weight from five to thirty pounds. We never see the fish here before May, and then very rarely; a few come in June, July, and August if there are high floods in the river, and about the latter end of September they become tolerably abundant; as the fisheries near the mouth of the river have then ceased for the season, and the Salmon run very freely up the river from that time to the middle or end of December. They begin to spawn at the latter end of October, but the greater part of those that spawn here do so in December. I believe nearer the source of the river they are earlier, but many fish are seen on the spawning beds in January; and I have even seen a pair so late as March; but this last is of very rare occurrence. Some of the male Kipper (Kelts) come down in December and January, but the greater part of the females remain in the river until April, and they are occasionally seen herding with shoals of Smolts in May. In this state they will take a worm very readily, and are, many of them, caught with the fly in the deeps; but they are unfit to eat, the flesh being white, loose, and insipid; although they have lost the red dingy appearance which they had when about to spawn, and are almost as bright as the fresh fish, their large heads and lank bodies render it sufficiently easy to distinguish them from fish which are only ascending the river, even if the latter were plentiful at this season; but this is unfortunately not the case. Secondly, we have the Mort. I am not sure whether this fish is what is called the Grilse in Scotland, or whether it is the Sea Trout of that country; it is a handsome fish, weighing from one and a half to three pounds. We first see Morts in June; from that time to the end of September they are plentiful in favourable seasons in the Hodder, a tributary stream of the Ribble, although they are never very numerous in the Ribble above the mouth of that stream. It is the opinion of the fishermen here that this is a distinct species; my own opinion is, that it is a young Salmon, and yet, if I were called upon to give reasons for thinking so, I could not offer any very conclusive ones: the best I have is, that there is no perceptible difference in the fry when going down to sea. It may be said, How do you know that one of the three or four varieties of Smolts which you describe further on, is not the fry of the Mort? To this objection, if made, I say that these varieties exist in the Wharfe, where, owing either to natural or artificial causes, there is never either a Mort or a Sprod (Whitling?) seen. Thirdly, we have the Sprod, which is, I believe, synonymous with the Whitling, Whiting, or Birling of Scotland. It is a beautiful fish of six or eight ounces in weight, and has more the appearance of the Salmon than the Mort; it seldom ascends the river before July, and, like the Mort, is far more abundant in the Hodder than in the Ribble; this fish sometimes rises pretty freely at the fly, and when it does so, makes a very handsome addition to the angler's basket, but at other times it is difficult to hook, because of its shyness. It disappears in a great measure about September. Fourthly, we have the Pink, or Par, which is found of two or three sizes in the Ribble; the largest are all males, and in October the milt in them is large; they are small fishes, ranging in weight from about one to three ounces each, and it is well remarked by the author of that delightful book "Wild Sports of the West," they have very much the appearance of Hybrids between the Salmon and the Trout; they rise very freely at the fly and maggot, from July to October, and afford good sport to the angler who is satisfied with catching small fish. I trust I shall be able in the following pages to give some information respecting this fish which will assist in dispelling the mystery in which its natural history has been enveloped. I will now mention a few of the opinions respecting the various species of the Salmon, and also my own, when they are at variance with the generally received ones, and give the facts and reasonings which have induced me to form those opinions, and I shall be very glad, if I am in error on any of these points, if some one of my readers, better acquainted with the subject than I am, will take the trouble to set me right. It seems to be the opinion of many, indeed of most persons, that the Salmon spawns from November to February, that the young fry, or Smolts, go down to the sea in the April or May following; my own opinion is that they stay in the river much longer. The Grilse is by many believed to be a distinct species, whilst others stoutly maintain that it is a young Salmon. The testimony of the witnesses from the Severn, the Wye, the Lee, near Cork, and the Ness (see the evidence given before the Select Committees of the House of Commons in 1824 and 1825), would lead one to suppose that the fish were in best season from November to March, whilst the evidence of the witnesses from other parts of the kingdom goes to prove that this is the very worst period for catching them. One maintains that each river has its own variety of fish, which can be distinguished from the fish of any other river; another contends that there is no such difference; a third states that stake nets are exceedingly injurious to the breed of the fish; and a fourth attests that stake nets only catch the fish when they are in the best season, that neither Kelt nor fry are taken in them, and that if they were prohibited it would only be preserving the fish for the grampuses and seals;--in short, the evidence regarding both their habits, and the best mode of catching them, having in view the preservation and increase of the breed, is so completely contradictory as to leave a doubt in the mind of every one who reads it, and has no other means of forming an opinion. I will endeavour to show in some instances which of the testimonies is correct, and it will be for my readers to judge how far I succeed, and I hope they will be so obliging as to correct any error into which I may fall. First.--It is my opinion that the fry of Salmon are much older when they leave the river than seems to be generally supposed, and that the growth of this fish is by no means so rapid as it is considered to be by those who have written upon the subject. For several years previous to 1816 the Salmon were unable to ascend into the upper parts of the river Wharfe, being prevented either by the high weirs in the lower parts, or by some other cause, and of course there were no Smolts or Par; but in that year either the incessant rains of that summer or rumours of the formation of an association for the protection of fish, or some other unknown cause, enabled some Salmon to ascend the river, thirty or forty miles, and to spawn there. In the next spring, 1817, there were no Smolts, but about September they began to rise at the very small flies which the anglers use in that river--they were then a little larger than Minnows. In the spring of 1818 there were blue Smolts, or what are generally known as Salmon fry, which went down to the sea in the May of that year; but these were only part of the brood, the females only, the males remaining all that summer, being at the period when the females went down very much smaller than they, and what was called at the Wharfe Grey Smolt and Pinks, or Par elsewhere. I have shown that there were two migrations from the spawn of 1816; but this was not all--there still remained a few Smolts through the summer of 1819, which by that time were from four to six ounces in weight, and which are known by the anglers there as Brambling Smolts. The blue marks on their sides are very distinct, and the fish is a perfect Smolt, except that it is considerably larger. It is quite different from the Whitling, or Sprod, which is not known in the Wharfe, at least not in the upper parts of that river, whilst the Brambling is never seen in the Ribble. [1] The Brambling is a beautiful fish, and it rises very freely both at the May fly and the artificial fly through the summer; it is occasionally caught by anglers with the worm on the Salmon spawning beds in the autumn, with the milt perfectly developed, and in a fluid state. Although this fish is not found in the Ribble, so far as my observations and inquiries have gone, I believe that it is found in the Tweed, and perhaps also in other rivers running into the German Ocean; for a letter addressed to Mr. Kennedy, who was chairman of the select committee appointed to investigate this subject, by a Mr. George Houy, states that the Smolts are sometimes found there ten inches long, which he attributes to their not being able to get down at the proper period for want of a flood in the river. But I know that in the Ribble Smolts will go down to the sea without there being a flood at all, if that does not come within ten days or a fortnight of the time at which they usually descend to the sea. I also know that Brambling are found in the Wharfe, in years where there has been no deficiency in that respect; yet why they should be common in that river, when they are never met with in the Ribble, which has ten times as many Salmon and Smolts in it, I am unable to comprehend. It is my opinion that the ova of the Salmon are not hatched before March or April. Two anglers, who were in April wading in the river Wharfe, came upon a spawning bed, which they had the curiosity to examine; they found a number of ova, in which they could see the young fry already alive, and one of them took these eggs home with him. By regularly and frequently supplying them with fresh water, he succeeded in hatching them, and kept some of the young fishes alive for some time; but they died in consequence of neglect, and were even then very diminutive. The opinion generally received in Scotland seems to be, if I may judge from the evidence given before the House of Commons, that the Smolts go down to the sea in the spring after they are spawned, and that they return in the summer and autumn of the same year as Grilse. When they return, and what size they are on their first visit, I have hitherto been unable to ascertain; but I think I have succeeded in proving that they do not go to the sea so soon as is generally believed, nor do any of the witnesses give their reasons for thinking that they do. I should very much like to learn what evidence they have to offer in behalf of this opinion. I remember seeing an article in the "Scotsman," perhaps about twelve months ago, in which it was stated that Dr. Knox had made some important discoveries in the natural history of the Salmon and Herring, both in their food and propagation, and, if I recollect aright, it stated that he had ascertained that the eggs remained several months in the gravel, and that then, in a few days or weeks after, they (_i.e._ the fish hatched from them) were so much grown as to go down to the sea; but none of the data which enabled him to arrive at this conclusion were given, and since then I have heard nothing about the matter. As it is so long since I read this article, I may have quoted it incorrectly, but I believe its substance was what I have stated. The only conclusive evidence I can find about the hatching of Salmon fry is that of Mr. George Hogarth (second Parl. Report, p. 92), and his account agrees with my own: he states that he took Salmon spawn from the spawning beds, and by keeping it freely supplied with fresh water, he succeeded in hatching some of the eggs; he gives drawings of the appearance of the fry in three or four different stages, from the egg to the age of eight days (see Appendix to second Parl. Report), that the young fry, by keeping them well supplied with fresh water, were very lively and vigorous for three weeks, but that they after this time appeared to grow languid and uneasy, and as they would eat nothing they died when one inch long. Unfortunately he does not state at what time of the year they were hatched, but if this were in March or April, which I see no reason to doubt, it is sufficient to prove that they would not reach the size that Smolts are when they leave the river for the sea; for supposing them to be hatched the last week in March, and that they lived a month, this would bring us to the time when they are about to migrate, at which time they average more than six inches long; many of them are eight inches, and at this period they are fond of feeding upon worms, flies, maggots, and caddis worms, as is known to every schoolboy living on the banks of a river frequented by Salmon. It is also my opinion that neither Salmon nor Trout spawn every year, [2] for Salmon ascend the river as early as January, in the highest condition, with roe in them no bigger than mustard seed: these could not have spawned that season, as the Kelts, particularly the females, do not return to the sea until March or April, [3] and at that time they are in very bad condition, and do not appear to have a particle of spawn in them; and in the evidence of Mr. Mackenzie (see Parl. Rep., p. 21), we have an account of a Grilse Kelt which was caught and marked in March, 1823, and was again caught as a Salmon on its return to the river in March, 1824. In this case the fish had evidently required a residence of twelve months in the sea before it was in a condition to visit the river a second time, and in the Wharfe it is the constant practice of the angler to catch Trout through the winter with very minute roe in them, and in high condition with the worm and Salmon roe, and also with night lines. In fact, one of the fishermen has frequently remarked to me that he occasionally caught dishes of Trout with the fly in January, and in finer condition, than he has found them in April, which he accounted for by saying that the spawned fish (Kelts) of that season had not begun to rise freely at the fly at the former period, but they had at the latter, so that his pannier contained as many Kelts as fresh fish. Another reason has just occurred to me: it is, that in January the spawned fish will still be in the small brooks in which they are so fond of breeding, and of course the bulk of the fish remaining in the river at that time would be fish in good season. As it is some years since I acquired this information, or at least a part of it, I felt afraid of giving it incorrectly; and I therefore addressed a letter to a friend living on the banks of the Wharfe, requesting him to send me all the information in his possession on this subject, that derived from his own observations, as well as that collected from others. He has since the above was written sent me the following reply:--"I have seen Robinson (one of the best anglers and fly makers between Cornwall and Caithness), and have had some conversation with him on the subject of Salmon, &c. He is of opinion that the spawn of the Salmon remains five months in the gravel before hatching; he examined the spawn in April, and found the young fry alive in the eggs, and Ingham, another angler, took some home and kept one of the Smolts two or three months. I have subsequently seen Ingham, and he has given me the same account. All the fishermen here are of opinion that the female Smolts remain one year, and the males two years, before they go down to the sea. The Bramblings are supposed to be Smolts which remain a year longer than the usual time; they are few in number, and are generally taken with the May fly. I have no doubt that the above opinions are correct, for we have now three distinct sizes of Smolts in the river exclusive of Bramblings, the largest of which are nearly four ounces in weight, and are all males, as they contain milt in October and November. The next are the females of the present year: I have had one since the receipt of your letter, which weighed half an ounce and measured five inches in length; this was a real blue Smolt; the third are the males of the same age, and are much smaller; these are occasionally taken with the worm, and will rise at the fly all the next summer." "We were for several years, but I do not know the dates, entirely without Salmon, and of course without Smolts; and we invariably found that the Smolts made their appearance the year after the Salmon, but were very small till the second year, when we had what we call blue Smolts, which disappeared in May or June; and what you called Pinks, which remained till the following year; and Brambling Smolts, which remained another year. The fishermen here are also of opinion that neither Salmon nor Trout spawn every year. Robinson says that one day lately (the letter is dated December 13th) he caught seven Trouts, six of which were in good season; and he brought me two the other day, one of which contained roe, and the other was in excellent condition." My friend states, in a subsequent communication, that one of the fishermen had told him that he had caught the male Smolt (Par) more abundantly on the Salmon spawning beds than elsewhere, and my friend adds that the opinion there is, that if a female Salmon gets up to the spawning beds, and if no male accompanies her, yet her eggs are fecundated by the male Smolts; and they allege, in support of this opinion, that a female got up one season and spawned, and though no male was seen near her her eggs were prolific. I mention this, although I apprehend it is evidence which the unbeliever will consider inadmissible, for though no male was seen, still there may have been one, or admitting that one did spawn, without being accompanied by a male, yet another, which contrived to bring her mate along with her, may have spawned in the same place the same season; yet, notwithstanding its liability to these objections, I have no doubt myself that if a female were to come alone her eggs would be impregnated by the Par. It is an excellent maxim, that Nature makes no useless provisions; yet, if we admit that Par are young Salmon, for what purpose is the milt if not to impregnate Salmon roe? and if we deny this to be the fact, we must endeavour to show that there are female Par, but in all my examinations, I have never been able to meet with one that contained roe. That the Grilse are Salmon is proved I think sufficiently by the evidence given before the House of Commons. Mr. Wm. Stephens states (see Rep., p. 52) that he has known Grilse kept in a salt-water pond until they became Salmon, and that fry that had been marked came back that year as Grilse, and the year after as Salmon; and Mr. George Hogarth states that he has often seen a Salmon and a Grilse working together on the spawning beds, as two Salmon, or two Grilse; and Mr. Mackenzie states (page 21) that he, in March, 1823, marked a Grilse Kelt with brass wire, and caught it again in March, 1824, a Salmon of seven pounds weight. The testimony of the witnesses from the Ness, the Severn, the Lee, and some other rivers, is too positive and too well supported to admit of any doubt as to the excellent condition of many of the fish ascending those rivers in November, December, and January--a period when they are out of season, and full of spawn generally, and even when many fish are caught in those rivers in the same unseasonable condition. The fact that there are many fish in fine season in those months may be, I think, accounted for, if we admit that Salmon spawn every other year, which I have I think shown to be very probable; but what it is that induces those fish to ascend rivers so many months before the spawning season, I cannot explain. Probably there may be some quality in the waters of these rivers, all the year, which is congenial to the habits of the fish, while the same quality may only be found during part of the year in others; it is certain that the quality of the waters in rivers generally varies very much with the season: thus the water of the Ribble, after a flood in summer, is always of a dark brown colour, being so coloured by the peat moss over which it passes, while in winter no such tinge can be observed; and there may be other differences with which we are unacquainted; however, whether this is the true reason or not, it certainly cannot be that the fish which spawn in October are impelled by their desire to propagate their species to ascend the river the January before; and if this long residence in fresh water were necessary for the proper development of the ova in one river, we might suppose it would be necessary in all; yet this is not the case, as the red fish which ascend the river in November and December have at that time the spawn in them nearly ready for exclusion. On one point, about which there is great difference of opinion, viz. whether the fish which are bred in the river generally resort to it again, and whether each river has its own variety of fish, I am not a competent judge, as I am acquainted with too few rivers to pretend to decide. I may, however, just remark that the Hodder, though it is a much smaller river than the Ribble, is always much better stocked with Salmon, Morts, Sprods, Smolts, and Par than is the latter river, which I attribute to the fact that more fish spawn in the river Hodder, which runs for many miles through the Forest of Bowland (the property of the Duke of Buccleuch) and other large estates, and the fish are much better protected there than in the Ribble, where, with one or two exceptions, the properties are very much divided, and few people think it worth their while to trouble themselves on the subject. Dr. Fleming, in his letter to Mr. Kennedy (Appendix to the first Rep., 1825), seems to doubt that Salmon enter rivers for any other purpose than of propagation, but lest I should misrepresent his opinions, I will quote what he has said on the subject:--"In the evidence taken before the Select Committee during the last season of Parliament, and appearing in the report, there are several statements of a somewhat imposing kind, which, as they appear to me to be erroneous and apt to mislead, I shall here take the liberty of opposing." He then enumerates several opinions expressed before the Select Committee, one of which is, that Salmon enter and leave rivers for other purposes than those connected with spawning (see the evidence of Messrs. Little, Halliday, and Johnstone). First, "That they enter rivers to rid themselves of sea lice (_Monoculus piscinus_);" secondly, "That they forsake rivers to save themselves from being exhausted by residence in fresh water, and from having their gills devoured by a maggot (_Lernaea salmonea_)." The whole history of the Salmon contradicts this hypothesis. Another of these errors is, that it is asserted (Rep., 1824, p. 145), "That Salmon always return to the same river;" this is not probable, when we consider the circumstances in which they are placed during their residence in the sea. On the first of these opinions, I am not a competent judge; but I think that the fact that Salmon enter rivers nine or ten months before they are ready to spawn, is of itself sufficient to show that there are other reasons for their entering rivers than those connected with propagation. With respect to the second, I believe that after Salmon have once entered rivers, at least when they have ascended into the upper parts of them, they never offer to descend again until they have spawned. On the third opinion I would remark, that although I do not think that Salmon always come to the same river in which they were bred, yet I think they will do so if they can; and I think that the fact which I have mentioned of the Hodder, a smaller and a tributary stream to the Ribble, containing many more Salmon, as well as more Morts and Sprods, countenances this supposition, for why should the larger number of fish ascend the smaller river except for such a reason? I am of opinion that Salmon do not grow so fast in the sea as is generally supposed. It is here generally believed that the Smolts, which go down in the spring, come up again in the August or September following, five or six pounds in weight; and George Little, Esq., in his evidence states that as his opinion, but he does not give any other reason for it than this: "That the Grilse that ascend the river in June weigh one and a half or two pounds, and that those which come in September weigh five or six pounds," --but opposed to this supposition is the evidence of Mr. Mackenzie, before referred to (second Parl. Report, p. 21), who states that he caught in March a Grilse Kelt which weighed three and a half pounds, that he marked it with a brass wire, and let it go, and that in the March following he caught it again a Salmon of seven pounds weight. Now a fish which weighed three and a half pounds as a Kelt, would weigh five pounds or six pounds when in high condition the summer before, and if this were so, which I believe all persons who are acquainted with Salmon will admit, the fish would have gained only one pound or two pounds in fifteen or eighteen months. Besides, if Salmon grew as fast as is stated and believed by many persons, the breeds of different years would vary very much in weight, whereas it is known to everybody that we have them of all sizes, from five pounds to forty pounds; and it is contrary to analogy to suppose that a fish which is two or three years in arriving at the weight of as many ounces, should in two or three months acquire as many pounds. There are, however, two or three things about which all persons agree in opinion--one of these is: that the breed of Salmon is decreasing every year, and that the great cause of this decrease is the want of protection, and a consequent destruction in the spawning season. The complaint on this head is universal from north to south; from the Shannon to the Tweed, the cry is--"Protect the breeding fish, or we shall very soon have none to protect." And yet, although the destruction of the spawning fish, and the destruction of the fry in the Spring, are the chief reasons for this alarming falling off, no one seems able to devise a remedy; no one seems inclined to make the necessary sacrifices for so desirable an object, and without these sacrifices it would be absurd to expect the fish to become plentiful; and instead of furnishing an abundant supply of cheap and wholesome food to all classes, which they certainly would do if the fisheries were properly regulated, they will either become wholly extinct, or so rare as to be found only at the tables of the wealthy. James Gillies, in his evidence, states that his brother had in one night killed in the Tweed four hundred Salmon at one landing-place in close time; and all the reports are full of statements showing how unceasing and universal is the persecution the Salmon undergo, not only when in season, but at all times, and most of all when every one should do his utmost to preserve them--I mean when they are spawning. In this neighbourhood the properties generally are so much divided, and so few good fish are allowed to ascend the river, that no one has any interest in protecting them in close time, and the consequence is, as might be expected, that all sorts of contrivances for taking them are resorted to: they are speared and netted in the streams by day and night; they are caught with the fly, they are taken with switch hooks (large hooks fixed to the ends of staves), or with a triple hook fixed to the end of a running line and a salmon rod; if the river becomes low, parties of idle fellows go up each side of it in search of them, and by stoning the deeps, or dragging a horse's skull, or large bone of any kind through them, they compel the fish to _side_, and there they fall an easy prey, in most cases where the pool is of small extent. In a river so small as the Ribble, it will be readily believed that not many fish can deposit their spawn in safety, when practices of this kind are followed almost openly, and when no one feels a sufficient interest in the matter to put a stop to them. A single party of poachers killed four hundred Salmon in one spawning season near the source of the river; the roe of which, when potted, they sold for L20. Need we be surprised, then, if the breed decreases? The only wonder is that they have not been exterminated long ago. I may perhaps be allowed to say what, in my opinion, would remedy this alarming destruction, particularly as no one hitherto seems to have devised an efficient preventive. I believe that in 1826 there was an Act of Parliament passed which either repealed or modified some of the old laws on the subject, and I have also understood that the good effects of this new law are already perceptible in Scotland, to which it is exclusively applied. There was a bill introduced into Parliament in 1825 which was intended to apply to the whole kingdom; but some of the clauses were so very objectionable, that if they had been carried they could not possibly have been enforced without stopping and ruining the manufactories which were carried on by water-power, and the bill was consequently abandoned. The first thing to be done is to give the proprietors on the upper part of the river such an interest in the fisheries as will make them anxious about the preservation of the fish in the spawning season; and to accomplish so desirable an object no one ought to fish or keep a net stretched across a river for more than twelve hours each day, or from sunrise to sunset; and every mill-owner ought to be compelled to facilitate the passage of the fish over his weir by every means consistent with the proper supply of water to his wheels. At present the fisheries at the mouths and lower parts of rivers so completely prevent the access of the fish to the upper parts, that unless there happen to be high floods, which prevent the fishermen below from keeping their nets in, the upper proprietors comparatively seldom see any until the season is at an end. The evidence before the House of Commons on this point is exceedingly amusing. One person thinks the upper proprietors have no right to expect any fish, as they have never paid any consideration for them when they bought their estates; another states that he pays L7,000 a year to the Duke of Gordon, and that if he is compelled to observe a weekly (not a daily) close time, he will lose that proportion of his rent; another observes the weekly close time, and opens a passage for the fish, but places a crocodile, painted in very glaring colours, in the gap to frighten them back again; another says he observes the weekly close time in his cruive fishing, but no one is allowed to inspect the cruives; another sends men to break down the stake nets in the estuary, which reach from high to low water-mark, and at the same time stretches a net completely across the river from March to August, so that a fish cannot pass without his permission. No wonder that fish are scarce in the upper parts of the river, when such samples of _disinterestedness_ are manifested by the proprietors of the fisheries below. No wonder that the upper proprietors should be careless about the protection of fish from which they are not allowed to derive any benefit. No wonder that they should connive at, and even encourage, the shameful destruction of fish in close time, since that is the only time they are allowed to have any. Let the fishermen below make it worth the while of the upper proprietors to protect the fish, and they will receive that protection; but it is too much to expect from human nature that these proprietors will take all the odium and trouble of preserving them when others reap all the benefit. There ought to be conservators employed, to see that the fisheries are properly regulated, and these should be paid by an assessment on all the proprietors in proportion to the value of their fisheries. I should also recommend an extension and uniformity of close time in all the rivers in the kingdom, for although it is an undoubted fact that some clean fish are caught in the river early in the season, yet they are comparatively few in number, and their capture involves that of a far greater number of spawning and Kelt fish, which are not only of no value for the table, but the destruction of which is in effect the destruction of millions of fish which would proceed from them. In the first Parl. Rep., p. 11, Mr. Walter Jamieson says, that in the river Tweed, from January 10th to February 1st, he caught one hundred and twenty-one fish, only one of which had spawned; from February 1st to March 1st he took forty-four fish, twenty-five of which had not spawned --fifteen were Kelts and four were clean fish; from March 1st to March 10th he took seventeen fish, seven of which had not spawned (four of them on the 10th)--six were Kelts and one clean fish. Now the close time varies in almost every river, and some have no close time at all; thus in the Ribble the close time begins on September 15th and ends on December 31st, and in the Hodder there is no legal close time; but there is no practical difference between them in this respect, every one thinking himself entitled to kill all the fish he can, at all times of the year, in both of them. The observance of the weekly close time, that is, opening a passage for the fish from sunset on Saturday night to sunrise on Monday morning, is a mere farce, even if it could not be evaded, as it almost invariably is, for it is well known to every one conversant with the habits of Salmon, that they only ascend the rivers when there are freshes (floods) in them, and in summer the ground is generally so dry, and vegetation absorbs so much moisture, and the evaporation is so great, that it not only requires twice as much rain to produce a flood in the river then as it does in winter, but when the rain does come its effects are only visible in the river for a short time. I have known a strong fresh in the Ribble in the morning, and the river low again in the afternoon of the same day. A fresh coming at the beginning of a week, would disappear long before the close of it, unless the rainy weather continued; and thus the strict observance of the weekly close time would be of little service to the upper proprietors unless the fresh came at the right end of the week. The Smolts and the Par ought to be protected as strictly as the Salmon; and there ought to be a penalty attached to the killing of them, or having them in possession, and conservators of rivers ought to have the power of inspecting all mills and manufactories driven by those rivers, to ascertain that they have no contrivances for taking the fry on their way to the sea, as it appears that in some rivers they are taken in large quantities. There ought also to be a penalty attached to the killing of Kelt fish, which in that state are not only tasteless and insipid, but actually unwholesome; yet they are pursued and destroyed with as much avidity as the fresh fish, and a very small number of the few that spawn in safety ever return to the sea. A penalty ought also to be inflicted for selling, buying, using, or having in possession Salmon roe, either in a fresh or salted state, as its excellence as a bait for Trout and Eels, and the consequent high price at which it sells, are sufficient temptations to poachers to kill the Salmon in the spawning season even if they could not sell or use any other part. Yet destructive as this practice is, there is an extensive trade in this article-- a fishing-tackle maker in Liverpool having told a friend of mine that he sold 300 lbs. in a season, which, supposing every egg to hatch, would produce perhaps five times as many Salmon as are caught in one year throughout the whole kingdom. [4] In concluding this imperfect sketch, I may remark that I have omitted many things concerning the natural history and habits of the Salmon, fearing to trespass too much on the patience of my readers; but I have wished, in addition to communicating some facts in the natural history of this fish, which I believe are not generally known, to call the attention of the public to the present state of the Salmon fisheries in England. Many of the preceding observations are founded on the evidence of persons connected with the fisheries in Scotland, and are perhaps no longer applicable to that part of the kingdom, since there has been an alteration in the laws; whether this is the case or not, I have no present means of ascertaining. I shall be glad if any one having a knowledge of the subject will say what benefit, if any, has been derived from the alteration; however, it is sufficient for my present purpose to show what is the state of things when there are no laws on the subject, or, which is the same thing, when there is no attention paid to them; a state of things which, instead of promoting an abundant supply of these excellent fish, and rendering the Salmon fisheries nationally important, tends by the habitual disregard of the laws by one party, the selfishness of another, and the neglect of a third, to render these fisheries of little and decreasing value; whereas if the lower proprietors would allow a tolerable supply of Salmon to come up the river when they were worth taking, and the upper ones would preserve them during close time, there would be plenty for each and for all. I am aware it will be difficult to legislate upon this subject without injury to what is of infinitely greater importance--I mean the manufactories of the country. The absurd and impracticable clauses which were contained in the bill for the protection of the fisheries, which was introduced into Parliament in 1825, show this; yet notwithstanding this difficulty, I think it is possible to protect the fish without interfering with the interest of the mill-owners, and to make such laws on the subject as will be effectual, without calling forth a single objection from any unprejudiced person. I shall be glad if what I have said on this subject should induce any gentleman to turn his attention to it. There must be many whose opportunities of observation will enable them to determine whatever is doubtful in the natural history of the Salmon tribe; whose experience will teach them the defects and absurdities of the present laws on the fisheries; and whose influence will, if they can be induced to exert it, materially contribute to their amendment. CLITHEROE, _January_, 1834. * * * * * THE SALMON ENTERS AND ASCENDS RIVERS FOR OTHER PURPOSES BESIDES PROPAGATION. [5] In addition to the objections which I have offered to the seeming doubt of Dr. Fleming, whether Salmon enter rivers for any other purpose besides propagation, the following have come to mind; and though they do not apply to the Salmon, they confirm me in the opinion that there are reasons, of which we know nothing, for fish ascending rivers, which are not at all connected with propagation. One is the habit of what is here called streaming. In the winter the fish not engaged in spawning (I speak of Trout, Grayling, Chub, Dace, &c.) leave the streams and go into deep water; either because the water is warmer there, or because they there find more food; and it is well known to fly-fishers that they do not catch many fish in the streams if they begin early, say in February. It is proverbial here that fish begin to stream when the great grey, or what is called in other districts the devil or dule crook, and in March brown or brown drake, comes upon the water; and I have seen Trout by scores leaping at a weir in the beginning of May, whether in search of food or an instinct implanted in them to keep all parts equally stocked with them, I do not know; but it has certainly nothing to do with their spawning. Is it presumptuous to suppose that God in His providence has implanted this instinct in Salmon for our good, that we might have a supply of excellent food, which without this would be in a great measure unattainable? Whether this is the true cause, and the only one, I am unable to determine; but this is the effect produced, and in the absence of other reasons it is, in my opinion, one that ought to be admitted. Another reason why fish ascend rivers is their impatience of heat. I speak now more particularly of Grayling; if the weather is very hot at the end of May or the beginning of June, the Grayling in the Wharfe (they are almost unknown in this part of the Ribble) ascend the mill streams by hundreds, and go up the wheel races as far as they can get, and stay there until the stoppage of the wheels (many a ducking have I had in pursuit of them), when they are obliged to beat a retreat, and this often proves a disastrous one to many of them. The ascent of young Eels by millions, and the ascent of the Flounder, are neither of them connected with the propagation of their kind, and though I cannot say for what purposes they do ascend, I am, I think, justified in doubting assertions which seem to have nothing to support them but the positive manner in which they are made. The Salmon Par is neither a Hybrid nor a distinct species of the _genus Salmo_, but a state of the common Salmon. The author of "Wild Sports of the West" says of the Par, as I have noted previously, "That it has very much the appearance of a Hybrid between the Salmon and the Trout, and (in a note) that the natural history of this fish is doubtful. Some conjecture that it is a Hybrid between the Salmon and Trout, because it is only found in rivers which are frequented by Salmon. Others think it a cross breed between the sea Trout and river Trout," and then he speaks of this "hybridous diminutive," as if he thought one of these opinions was correct. That the Par is not the result of a cross between a sea Trout and a river Trout, is proved by the fact that there are no sea Trouts in the Wharfe, the Par (admitting it to be a distinct species, which I do not), the Salmon, and common Trout being the only kinds of Salmonidae which are found in that river, at least where I am acquainted with it. If the Par be the result of a cross between the Salmon and the Trout, what becomes of it in the spring, and where are all the Par, which were so abundant in October, gone to in April? Did they migrate to the sea, the shoals would be met with by somebody; and did they stay in the river they would be caught at one time or other. However, as it is well known that neither of these cases is ever realized, we must suppose another, which I have already done in my former communication. In fact, in angling in the beginning of March, fish are often caught which would puzzle the most experienced fisherman to determine whether they are Par or Smolts, especially after they have been caught some time; and in a large number caught at that time there are all the intermediate shades of appearance between the perfect Par and the real blue Smolt. CLITHEROE, _May 29th_, 1834. * * * * * CLITHEROE, _March 18th_, 1846. TO MR. PAKINGTON (LORD HAMPTON). SIR,--Through the polite attention of Mr. Cardwell I have been favoured with a copy of your bill--"For the better preservation of Salmon." As this is a subject to which I have paid some attention, I trust it will not be deemed impertinent if I offer some suggestions for your consideration with regard to the free gap. It appears to me that it will be desirable to specify the width and depth of this free gap, or it may on the one hand degenerate into a mouse-hole, or on the other hand the surveyor, by the provisions of the 13th section of the Act, may insist on such a gap being made that the whole of the water may be diverted through it, which in small rivers, where there are ancient and legal hecks or cruives for the purpose of taking Salmon, will destroy the value of the fishery. Then, with regard to fence time:--In the 6th section of the Act, I presume you do not intend that night fishing shall be allowed at any season of the year; but it appears to me that the expressions in the 6th section would scarcely prevent the owners of cruives from keeping them open, as they need not go near them between sunset and sunrise, and then they will neither lay, draw, nor fish with any net, device, or engine. Would it not be better to expressly insist upon all cruive fisheries being positively closed from sunset to sunrise? or, what would be still better, that the cruive or heck should have a free gap in it, of a specified size, which should be kept constantly open between sunset and sunrise. As this is one of the most important sections of the Act, I may be pardoned for calling your particular attention to it; for unless this section be vigorously enforced, it will be in vain to legislate on the subject;--for the proprietors near the sources of rivers (where most of the fish spawn) will never interest themselves about the preservation of fish which they are not allowed to see when in season, and which has hitherto been the case in this neighbourhood at all events; but if the fish are allowed a free passage everywhere, and at all times, between sunset and sunrise, the upper proprietors will then have some inducement to take care of the fish in the spawning season. Until now, all the good fish have been taken in the fisheries near the mouth of the river. There is at present a great trade carried on in this neighbourhood in Salmon roe, as a bait for Trout and Eels, and scores of spawning Salmon are now destroyed for little else than the spawn they contain. Cannot this be prevented? * * * * * _May 5th_, 1846. H. GEORGE, ESQ. SIR,--I enclose a letter I had addressed to Mr. Pakington on the subject of the preservation of the breed of Salmon. I had written to him because I perceived that he had introduced the bill into the House of Commons, but since that letter was written I have been favoured with your address through the politeness of Sir Thomas Winnington, to a friend of mine, and as he requests that any suggestion about weirs may be addressed to you, I make no apology for enclosing the letter I had addressed to Mr. Pakington with some further suggestions, which on looking over my letter I find I have omitted to notice. In one of the clauses of the bill (I do not remember which, and I have not the bill at hand to refer to) you require that a grating, the bars of which shall not be more than three inches distant from each other, and which shall be placed at the junction of the tail- goit with the river, as well as in front of the wheel. This I presume is to prevent any fish being injured by the wheels, but I assure you that during the twenty-two years in which I have had the management of the works here, I never knew an instance of a Salmon being either killed or hurt by the wheels. Indeed, I do not know half-a-dozen instances of Salmon ever ascending the tail-goit to the wheel, and I must have seen many instances if this was a common occurrence. This may, however, happen, and the fish may be occasionally injured where there is much fall lost, and a strong stream running from a wheel constituted in the old way with open float boards. But the objections to such a plan on the part of the manufacturers will be insuperable, in fact, the accumulation of sticks and leaves in the autumn, and ice in the winter, will be so great at the grating in the tail-goit, that the wheels will be thrown into back water and the works stopped, and all this loss and inconvenience will be incurred because of the possibility of a Salmon being killed or hurt by the wheel. There is not much probability of this frequently happening, because, as I said in my other letter, Salmon seldom migrate except where there are freshes in the rivers, and then there is so much water flowing down the usual course of the stream, that the fish have no inducement to leave it to seek for a passage elsewhere. I would, however, suggest that power be given to conservators to go at all times up the tail-goits and into the wheelhouses, to see that there are no illegal contrivances in them for catching the Salmon and Smolts in their migration, as I have certainly heard of such things occurring. In Sir Thomas Winnington's note to my friend, he says we have difficulty enough in endeavouring to obtain support for one day's clear course; two we could not carry, however desirable. Allow me to suggest, that in endeavouring to carry so little you rouse up your opponents, while there is not enough to stimulate the zeal of your friends, for it will be in vain to look for the zealous co- operation of the proprietors on the upper part of rivers unless you give them some inducement. This one day in the week will not effect, and besides this, you make it illegal to catch Smolts, even with the rod, which is destroying one of the greatest amusements of the anglers, and depriving them of the most delicate of fish, and for no object: because, if the provisions of your bill are carried (without this clause), there will be an abundant supply of fish for all purposes, even after the anglers have enjoyed their sport. I do not see the propriety and utility of prohibiting the killing of Smolts, because if they lived they would become Salmon, any more than I see the propriety of prohibiting the eating of eggs, because if they were hatched and lived long enough they would become barn-door fowls. Let the legislature and the estuary fisheries give the upper proprietors a fair share of Salmon when in season, and they will be glad to see the angling for Smolts abolished; but it is rather too bad for the estuary fisheries to catch all the good Salmon, and then grudge to the upper proprietors the angling for Smolts. In conclusion, allow me to urge on you the propriety of endeavouring to obtain such a bill as will give the proprietors of land on the upper parts of rivers a strong inducement to support you, and at the same time that it does this will not injure the mill-owners; and, with the modifications I have pointed out, I think this may be accomplished. I speak on this subject as a practical man, having some knowledge of the habits of Salmon, and superintending a mill driven by water-power which employs nearly a thousand people; so that if a bill like yours could be worked in a satisfactory manner here, on so small a stream as the Ribble, it may anywhere in the kingdom. But if you make a tinkering job of it, and ask for too little, you will rouse your opponents and discourage your friends. By all means go for a free passage for the fish every night from sunset to sunrise in all cases where this does not interfere with manufactories, and then there will be some inducement to support you. I refer you to some papers which I wrote on this subject in the Magazine of Natural History, in the year 1834, and if you think it worth while to ask for further information on the subject, I shall be happy to give you any I may possess. * * * * * LOW MOOR, _July 1st_, 1846. To the Editor of "The Times." The attempt which is now making to amend the laws relating to the Salmon fisheries, appears to run such a great risk of failure, from the opposition of interested persons, that I think a short sketch of the defects of the present laws and their effects on the breed of fish, and a comparison of them with the proposed amendment, may be interesting to some of your readers, and may, perhaps, induce some influential gentlemen to throw their influence into the right scale, in the approaching discussion on this subject. The Salmon fisheries in former times appear to have supplied food for a large portion of the people, as there are still traditions current on the banks of various rivers in the north, that the indentures of apprenticeship always stipulated that the apprentice should not be compelled to eat Salmon more frequently than three days a week, and however exaggerated this story may appear at the present day, I hope to succeed in showing that it is neither improbable that it has been so, nor impossible that it may be so again,--if good laws are made for their protection, and these laws are properly enforced. At present there is no doubt the fisheries are rapidly declining, and in some rivers which used to have a good many Salmon in them, and which used to swarm with Smolts (or fry) in the spring within my remembrance, they are now rarely seen. To show their scarcity I may mention a circumstance which occurred in the Wharfe, which was formerly one of the finest rivers in Yorkshire for Salmon. A few years ago a pair of Salmon were seen on a spawning bed in the Wharfe, about forty miles from its mouth. This became known at the anglers' club, and it was deemed so important to preserve them, that the club divided themselves into three or four watches, and guarded the spawning bed night and day, whilst the fish were spawning, and this spawning lasted about a week. Here in the Ribble the Salmon fisheries are not quite so near extinction (though they are rapidly progressing in that direction), for although we are very seldom allowed to see or catch fish in seasonable condition, a good many come up the river to spawn, though very few of them ever do so, and very few of those that do ever reach the sea again. The reason is obvious, no one here has any interest in preserving the spawning fish, and they are openly killed by the poachers, who never dream of being prosecuted for it. I am credibly informed that in a stream not five hundred yards from where I write, sixty spawning fish were killed last winter. Some years ago one gang of poachers killed three hundred Salmon on the spawning beds in one season, and sold potted Salmon roe (which is a most destructive bait for Trout) to the value of L20. In the Lune the proprietors of the fisheries near Lancaster sent men to protect the spawning fish in the streams above; but these men were warned off by the landed proprietors, who said, If you catch all the good fish you must at least allow us to catch the bad ones. In the Tweed and its tributaries it used to be quite as bad (what the new Scotch law has done I do not know), but a poacher who gave evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1825 said that he had assisted to take four hundred Salmon at one haul in close time in the Tweed. Sir Walter Scott's vivid description of burning the water, which occurs in "Guy Mannering," shows that he knew how to kill Salmon in close time. In fact, his account, and that of Hogg (the Ettrick Shepherd), show that both were regular black fishers. There are various devices for killing the fish in close time: they are speared, netted, and hooked on the spawning beds, and when the rivers get low, gangs of idle fellows range up and down on the banks, stoning and beating the water by poles, or, what is more effective still, a large bone, or horse's skull, and by fastening a cord to it, one end of which is passed to each side of the river, they draw this skull up and down in the pools where they know there are Salmon, and the fish are so foolish and timid, that they thrust their heads under any stone or cover they can find, and are taken without trouble; it being common enough in such cases to slip a noose over the tail, then tightening it, and the fish is hauled out immediately. Then again, gentlemen who want to have the reputation of being skilful anglers, employ their game-keepers to find the Kippers (Scottice Kelts) or spawned fish in the pools, which is a very easy matter in low water, and dropping a hook baited with a lob worm before their noses, it is greedily taken, and the poor fish (which are unfit for food) are caught. It is then trumpeted forth to the angling world that Mr. A. B. has had splendid sport--he has caught a dozen Salmon with the rod in a single day, meaning it to be understood that these fish have been caught with the fly. I by no means uphold these practices, neither do I think them very deserving of censure in the present state of the law, for all the good fish are taken near the mouths of the rivers. This leads me to consider the defects of the present law, which is by no means adapted to protect and increase the breed of Salmon. In the first place, the close time is too short. It commences in the Ribble nominally (for in reality the fish are openly killed all the year through) on the 15th September, and ends on the 31st of December; whereas it ought to extend to the end of April, for the following reasons. A very large proportion of the fish are spawning in January and February, and I have even seen a spawning fish as late as the 3rd of April. In the evidence given before the House of Commons in 1825, it was proved by a fisherman from the Tweed, that in March for one clean fish that was caught there were ten caught that were not so, as they were either fish that had not spawned, or Kelts, that is, fish which have finished spawning but have not returned to the sea, and are then flabby, unwholesome, and unfit for food. A very large proportion of these Kippers or Kelts do not go to the sea until April, and not then without there is a fresh in the river, for, like the Smolts, they seem disposed to remain in the rivers until they can avail themselves of the assistance of a flood, to enable them more easily to reach the sea. Another defect in the present law is that it fails to secure a supply of good fish to the upper proprietors. There are no provisions in it (or they are not enforced) for giving the fish a free passage, no prohibition of nets, traps, or devices for stopping them in their progress up the rivers. No daily or weekly close time, but everywhere there is so short-sighted a selfishness, that it is completely realizing the fable of the man who killed the goose which laid the golden egg. The fisheries are declining so rapidly, that unless something is done, and done quickly, the breed of Salmon will be extinct in the rivers in this neighbourhood. Again, there is no power to appoint or pay conservators, and without their assistance there is no chance of preserving Salmon in the spawning beds. Game-keepers are most certainly not to be depended upon. In pointing out the defects of the present laws I have, in fact, given an opinion how they should be remedied. I would extend the close time from the end of September to the end of April. I would establish a daily close time, allowing no net, device, or engine to be employed in taking Salmon between sunset and sunrise above tideway in any river; and below, I would only allow nets to be set for twelve hours per diem. I would appoint conservators, whom I would pay by a tax on the fisheries on the whole course of the river, which tax should be determined by a valuation of the fisheries, and paid accordingly. I would fine every one who sold, used, or had in his possession any potted or prepared Salmon roe for the purpose of angling, and I would give conservators the power of examining all mill goits and races, for the purpose of seeing that no unfair practices were resorted to for the taking of Salmon or Salmon fry; and I would give the upper proprietors the power of making any alterations in mill weirs and dams which did not impair their stability or the efficiency of the water power. If some such enactments as these were made and properly enforced, there is no doubt Salmon would swarm in every river, for their fecundity is such, that a very few Salmon spawning in a river under favourable circumstances stock it abundantly with Smolts. A large Salmon having not less than 25,000 eggs in it, how soon, with a little forbearance and care, would every river swarm with this delicious fish, even to such a degree as to be a cheap food for the poor! But to obtain such results it must be made the interest of every person to protect them. In reading over the evidence on the Salmon fisheries, which was given before the House of Commons in 1825, I was exceedingly amused by the reasons given by the tenants of some of the fisheries in Scotland why there should be no weekly close time, and the shifts and evasions practiced by others. One said he paid L7,000 a year rent to the Duke of Gordon for his fishery, and if one day in the week were allowed for close time he would lose L1,000 a year. Another said he kept the close time, but he would allow nobody to go and see whether he kept the free gap open or not. Another proved that he kept open the free passage, but it was also proved that he had a crocodile placed in the gap, painted with very glaring colours, in order to frighten back any fish that attempted to pass. Another sent his boats to break down the stake nets which were set in the estuary, but acknowledged that he kept his own nets set across the river day and night. There would be no difficulty in stocking every suitable river in the kingdom with Salmon, either by putting into them a few pairs of breeding fish, or by artificially fecundating the eggs, and placing them in artificial spawning beds. It is a plan I have frequently adopted, and sometimes successfully; but in other experiments I have failed, from the difficulty of choosing a suitable locality in the river. If too rapid a stream was chosen, the eggs and gravel were all washed away; and if too calm and still a place was selected, the gravel was filled up with sand and mud, and the eggs rotted instead of hatching. I am even of opinion that where there is already a breed of Salmon fry in a river, it is not absolutely necessary that any male Salmon should come up the river in the spawning season, the male Par, or Penks, as we call them in the Ribble, being sufficient to fecundate the eggs. If this is doubted, I would ask how it happens that in the autumn they have fluid milt in them? for as nature makes no unnecessary provisions, for what purpose is this, if not to provide for the possibility of a female Salmon coming alone? These Pars swarm on the Salmon spawning beds. * * * * * SUGGESTIONS FOR AN ALTERATION IN THE LAWS REGARDING SALMON. CLITHEROE, _October 12th_, 1851. To the Editor of the "Gardeners' Chronicle." As the amusement of fly-fishing is one which holds a first place in the opinion of every one who understands it, and as the Trout and the Salmon are the only fish which afford genuine sport to the angler, and as I believe that the latter in some of the southern counties is nearly extinct, whilst the former is far from being abundant, I wish to call the attention of such of your readers as are possessed by the true _piscatorial furor_, to the facility with which these fish can be bred artificially. And as many experiments have been made under my direction, and having witnessed the results, I unhesitatingly say that there is little risk of failure, if due care be taken. The experiments of Shaw and Agassiz, my own also included, have proved that fish can be bred artificially. The experiments of Boccius I have not yet tried, although he proposes to arrive at the same result in another manner, and acting in the manner recommended by them, Trout and Salmon have been bred by thousands during the last ten years. As the season for making the experiment will shortly be here, I hope that those who intend to try the plan will lose no time in looking after their supply of breeding fish. To begin with Trout:--Catch as many as you can conveniently obtain upon the spawning beds, [6] and examine them carefully one by one, to see that the spawn and milt are in a fit state for exclusion; and also to enable you to separate the males from the females. If they are in a fit state to be operated upon (which may be known by the facility with which the milt and the roe run from them on a slight pressure), squeeze the milt of the males into a little water, and when you have obtained all the milt you can get, add so much water that the mixture remains slightly opalescent--say about equal in colour to a tablespoonful of milk mixed in a quart of water; pour this into a deep dish or bowl, large enough to hold the largest of your female Trouts; take one of these and put it into the water so prepared, and gently squeeze the roe from it whilst the vent is immersed in the water. [7] Do this as quickly as possible, and return the fish into fresh water, and then pour off the water containing the impregnated roe, through a strainer, carefully preserving it for the remaining fish, and immediately return the roe into fresh spring or brook water. Repeat the operation for every female Trout, and you will then have a quantity of impregnated roe, which if properly managed will hatch with great certainty. Have ready as many boxes as you are able to stock with spawn (three feet long, two feet broad, and six inches deep). Fill them to the depth of two inches of river sand, which ought to be previously so well washed that there is not a particle of mud left in it, and upon that put two inches of river gravel, also exceedingly well washed, the pebbles varying in size from a hazel nut to a pigeon or pullet's egg. These boxes must be so placed that the water from a spring will flow into the first, and from the surface of that into the second, and below the whole nest of boxes there ought to be a small reservoir made--say three yards by two and eighteen inches deep, and well gravelled at the bottom. All these matters having been previously arranged, and the water flowing nicely over the gravel, sprinkle the impregnated roe equally over the surface of the gravel, say a quarter of a pint to each box, and it will roll down into the interstices of the gravel and find a bed in which it will remain snugly until the spring, when, about March, if all has been properly managed, you will find, on a careful examination, that the young Trout are coming to life by hundreds. I am very particular in recommending spring rather than brook water, for several reasons. In the first place, brooks are liable to be flooded, and are sometimes so overcharged with sand and mud that the gravel in the spawning-boxes is completely choked with it and the spawn is lost, as I know to my great and frequent disappointments. At other times all is washed away together. In the second place, the gravel of brooks swarms with water-lice (shrimps) and the larvae of aquatic insects, as well as bull-heads and loaches, all of which prey upon the spawn of the Trout and Salmon. In the third place, if you put your spawning-boxes in a brook, you will find it difficult to prevent the escape of the fry when hatched, and you are left in doubt as to the success of your experiment. With spring water all these inconveniences are avoided. But if your watercourse should contain water-lice or aquatic larvae, it is a very easy matter to destroy them before putting in your boxes, with a little salt or quicklime. It is also desirable to cover your spawning-boxes with a wire grating, to exclude the light, and to protect them in severe weather from the chance of being frozen. When they begin to hatch, open a communication between the boxes and the little reservoir below, and if this communicates with a watercourse in which aquatic plants are growing, so much the better. The fry, as soon as they are strong enough, will make their way into this ditch, and will find abundance of food among the water plants; thence they ought to be able to make their way into the brook, river, or lake which it is intended to store with them. All ducks, wild and tame, should be driven from this ditch, or few of the Trout will be allowed to find their way to their final place of destination. These rules, with some modification, are applicable to the breeding of Salmon as well as Trout; the only difference being in the mode of placing the female fish, when obtaining the roe, and the size of the gravel in which the spawn is deposited in the boxes. The Salmon is too large a fish to put into the vessels in which the diluted milt is placed, but I think that she should be held by an assistant, in such a manner that the tail and lower part of the body up to the vent are immersed in the water containing the milt. And it is also very necessary to hold her firmly, otherwise a large fish, in the struggles which it makes to get free, is apt to upset the vessel containing the milt, and then the experiment is at an end, at least for the time. Being held firmly by the assistant, as above stated, the belly of the fish must be gently pressed by the hands to promote the exclusion of the spawn, which on exclusion must be gently stirred in the diluted milt, to bring every grain into contact with it; but the roe ought not to remain in contact with the milt a minute, if it can sooner be got out, as I have found that if the diluted milt be too strong, or if the ova remain too long in contact with it, they become opaque, and never hatch at all, apparently because they are over-impregnated. In the ordinary way in which Salmon and Trout are bred, the milt must be largely diluted with water, and the contact between the milt and ova can only be momentary, for the streams in which these fish spawn (particularly the Salmon) are so rapid, that the milt on exclusion must be carried away immediately. There is another method, which is preferred by Ramsbottom, to the one I have been describing, and it is certainly less troublesome. This is to take the ova from the female fish in the first place (taking care to exclude the air from it, by immersing the fish into water up to the vent), and when all the roe has been collected into a large bowl or basin, then mix the milt with it, the same diluted in the proportion which has been before described, namely, until the water which covers the roe becomes lightly opalescent. I am quite aware that there is another theory which assumes that impregnation takes place twelve months before the exclusion of the ova. [8] But a very careful and long continued examination of the spawning of minnows and lampreys (I have never been able closely to examine the spawning of Salmon), convinces me that it is not a correct one. Besides, did any one ever succeed in hatching the ova of a fish which had not been allowed to come in contact with milt after exclusion? If they have, when, where, and how has this been accomplished, and where is it recorded? I know that I could never succeed, although I have often tried the experiment. On the other hand, it is the easiest thing imaginable, with due care and a suitable situation, to hatch those which have been properly impregnated after exclusion. But if, to avoid argument, I admit that this theory is correct, it will not at all interfere with artificial breeding of Trout and Salmon; on the contrary, it will materially facilitate it. It will only be necessary to catch female fish with the ova ready for exclusion, and place these ova in clean gravel in a box, as before described, but there will be no occasion for males. But supposing Trout and Salmon can be bred in this manner, which I by no means believe, there would be no means of breeding hybrids, which I consider a far more important achievement, and to which I will now refer. Ever since my attention was turned to the artificial breeding of fish, it has always appeared to me exceedingly desirable and important to breed hybrids between the Trout and the Salmon. The fry of the Salmon, which, by-the-bye, is perhaps the most delicately flavoured fish that exists in this country, although it lives and thrives in fresh water for two or three years, if kept in a locality where it cannot escape to the sea, yet, if kept longer than that time, pines away and dies. If, therefore, we could obtain a hybrid fish, bred between the river Trout and the Salmon, we should probably produce a fish which, being a mule, would be always in good condition; being crossed with a river fish, it would probably never require a visit to salt water to keep it in good health. Being crossed with a Salmon, it ought to get to a good size in a comparatively short period; and, if it would rise at the artificial fly, or the minnow, ought to afford first-rate sport to the angler. There does not appear to be a greater specific difference between the Trout and the Salmon than there is between the horse and the ass, between the mallard and the musk duck, or between a cabbage and a turnip. But hitherto, in all my experiments, I have never succeeded in producing a hybrid between the Trout and the Salmon. [9] Yet I do not despair of doing so, for there was always a something to complain of, and to doubt about, in every one I tried, and I still think I shall succeed by perseverance. Even if I shall succeed, the result may not prove quite so favourable as I anticipate, but may turn out as unfortunately as the marriage of the gentleman in the story, which relates that, being good- tempered but ugly himself, he married a handsome ill-tempered wife, hoping that his children would have his good-temper and their mother's good looks; but when they came, they were as ugly as the father and as ill-tempered as the mother. So it may prove with these hybrids--they may not always thrive in fresh water; they may not grow to a good size; they may not rise at the artificial fly; they may be worthless for the table. Nevertheless, it is desirable if possible that this should be ascertained. The progeny of a male Salmon and a female Trout may be much better or much worse fitted for a continual residence in fresh water than the descendants of a male Trout and a female Salmon; but this can only be determined by experiment. Dr. Lindley says, in his introduction to the "Guide to the Orchard," that in the cross fertilization of fruits, the seedlings always partake more of the character of the male than of the female parent. But I believe that in breeding mules it is found more desirable that the father should be an ass than a horse. In my poultry yard I breed hybrids between the musk duck and the common duck, and I find that I have a much better progeny from the musk drake and the common duck than from the common drake and the musk duck. In the latter cross, although the males are fine birds, the females are not larger than a widgeon, and fly about almost like wild ducks. This may not always be the case, but it has proved so with me. But to return to the fish. If any gentleman who is interested in such matters will do me the honour to read this paper, and wishes for further information on the subject, I shall be happy to give it, so far as I am able. Very sure I am that the sportsman who once fairly starts as a fly-fisher, and is so fortunate as to hook a Salmon or a large Trout, will thenceforward despise or lightly esteem corks and floats, ground-bait and trimmers, punts and Perch fishing, and will fairly wish them all exchanged for a nice stream well stocked with Trout--as a gentleman lately said to me, fly- fishing is a perfect infatuation! He was quite right. The extreme avidity with which it is followed by the thoroughly initiated, can only be explained on that supposition; to the casual observer, there does not appear to be any strong excitement in it. But that is a great mistake. Let me get to the bank of a river well stocked with Trout in a good humour, early in the morning, and I feel neither hunger, thirst, nor fatigue if I fish until dark without tasting of anything. And the excitement of hooking a ten or twelve pound Salmon is not much inferior to that produced by a long run after the hounds. I cannot conclude without calling the attention of all interested, and who are able to render assistance in remedying the evil, to the great falling off in the quantity of fish there is in all the Salmon rivers in England. With those in Scotland and Ireland I am not acquainted, but believe that matters are not in a much better state there. I believe that the unsatisfactory state of the laws has a great deal to do with this decline in the value of the fisheries, and I also believe that it is quite possible so to alter the law as to very greatly improve them, and that without improperly interfering with what is of far more importance--I mean the manufactories of the country. As the law stands at present the proprietors of the upper parts of rivers have not the slightest interest in the preservation of the fish in the breeding season, for, as they are seldom allowed to see a fish when it is fit for the table, why should they look after the poachers in close time? Why should they be put to much expense and trouble, as well as the risk of the lives of their game-keepers, merely to breed fish for the proprietors of stake nets and estuary fisheries, who don't spend a farthing in the preservation of the fish when breeding, and yet reap all the benefit? I had occasion, some years ago, to examine the evidence on this subject given before the House of Commons in 1825, and was exceedingly amused at the schemes resorted to to evade the law, moderate and inefficient as was the law at that time. (Since then the law has been altered both in Scotland and Ireland, but I do not know what are the provisions, nor what has been the effect of the new law.) It required that there should be a free passage for the fish (Salmon) through all the traps, nets, weirs, and devices that were used to catch or detain them, from sunset on Saturday night to sunrise on Monday morning. One man said he paid L7,000 a year for his fishery, and should lose one-seventh of his catch. Another said he allowed a free passage on Sundays, but would not permit anybody to go and examine for themselves. A third proved that he allowed the fish a free passage on Sundays, but his neighbours proved that he placed in the gap a crocodile, painted red. And a fourth was convicted of breaking down the stake nets in the estuary of a river--at the same time he had a net stretched entirely across the river above, both day and night. And so with many others, every one striving with all his might to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. This is not the way to improve the Salmon fisheries. To do this effectually the upper proprietors must have a strong interest in the preservation of the breeding of fish, and in order to give them this interest they ought to have an ample supply of fish when they are in the best condition; but to give them this supply the law ought to be altered. At present I believe the law does not require a free passage for the fish (at least in English rivers) except from Saturday night to Monday morning; in many of them I believe this is not insisted upon; whereas the law ought to prohibit fishing for or obstructing the passage of the fish every night from sunset to sunrise, and this regulation ought to be rigorously enforced. This would give the upper proprietors a chance of having good fish, and a corresponding inducement to take care of them. Nobody would be so much benefited as the owners of fisheries at the mouths of rivers; they would be the first takers, and would still get the lion's share of all the fish that ascended the river. If this regulation were enforced, the expenses of conservators might be defrayed by levying a small tax, in the shape of a licence for angling, which all true sportsmen would be glad to pay if it gave a reasonable prospect of a well-stocked river. Now matters are getting worse every day, and notwithstanding the enormous fecundity of the Salmon (a large one producing 25,000 ova in a season), they are now extinct in some rivers where they used to be found in my recollection, and in others where they were once abundant they are now very scarce. No one need to wonder at this, when he is told that gangs of poachers are on the look-out for them all through the spawning season. In one winter, some years ago, I am credibly informed that two hundred Salmon were taken in one stream within five hundred yards of the spot where I am now writing. It is nobody's business and nobody's interest to prevent this, and therefore it goes on openly night and day. Are there no influential gentlemen in the House of Commons who will take up this matter and endeavour to get an equitable and comprehensive law passed for the preservation and increase of the breed of Salmon? It is a matter of even national importance, and if duly provided for and properly attended to, I see no improbability in the supposition that Salmon would again be as abundant as they were when the apprentices on the banks of the Ribble stipulated that they should not be compelled to eat Salmon oftener than three days in the week. The apathy of country gentlemen in this matter is to me unaccountable. I have some reason to believe, however, that Government have at all times been so far from lending their influence to the promotion of any attempts to amend these laws, that they have obstructed rather than assisted them, most probably from an idea that the preservation of the fish would interfere with manufactories. If I thought that this would be the case, I should not say a word on the subject; but I am very far from holding such an opinion. So far from this being the case, I assert without hesitation that weirs need form no obstruction to the free passage of fish, and that without impairing the efficiency of the water power. With the poisonous and filthy mixtures sent by some manufactories down the rivers, the case is far different, and where this is done the case is hopeless. Salmon and Trout will rapidly disappear from such rivers, never to be seen there again, so long as these noxious contaminations are permitted to flow into them. * * * * * ARTIFICIAL BREEDING OF FISH. CLITHEROE, _December 26th_, 1853. To the Editor of the "Manchester Guardian." SIR,--I have read with some interest the letter of your correspondent, Salmo Salar, on the artificial breeding of fish; and knowing, as I do, the great interest which the writer feels in the preservation and increase of his namesakes, I shall be most happy if my humble efforts in the same cause throw any more light on the same subject, and in any degree contribute to the same end. But Mr. Salmo Salar is quite wrong in saying that, with the exceptions of the experiments made on the banks of the Hodder, by Ramsbottom, no efforts have been made to increase the number of Salmon by providing artificial breeding-places. Passing over my own numerous experiments here for the last fourteen or fifteen years (which you, Sir, are aware of, though the fishing world is not), I may refer to the extensive experiments made by Mr. Fawkes, of Farnley, in 1841 and 1842, and renewed again in 1848 and 1849; and the whole of which (with the exception of a portion of these in 1842) were successful. The experiments of Salmo Salar were not made until 1851 and 1852, and were intended merely to test the accuracy of an assumption that the impregnation of the ova takes place long prior to their exclusion; which experiments terminated in a complete failure. Salmo Salar says that the quantity of Salmon fry in the river is enormous; and that he has caught five pounds of them in a single pool in a single day. I have known three times that quantity caught in the same way. But still this proves nothing at all, for it is well known that almost all migratory animals, however solitary their general habits may be, are gregarious at the time of migration. Witness swallows, fieldfares, and even woodcocks. Witness also the clouds of small Eels ascending the rivers in May and June; and if we are to believe the accounts of travellers, the enormous flocks of antelopes in Africa, and of bisons in America, are proofs of the same general law. No doubt Salmo Salar will find, as he says, that the Samlets are exceedingly abundant in some of the pools, when they have flocked together for the purpose of migration; but he may perhaps travel for miles either up or down the river before he will find any more. It is notorious that, in the tributaries of the Hodder, they are walled in, in many places, for the purpose of detaining them, that unscrupulous anglers may get as many of them as possible before they go to the sea. Salmo Salar is in error also when he says that Ramsbottom deposited 40,000 in the ponds of Galway, of which 20,000 are expected to be fruitful. The fact is, that he deposited 40,000 in December, 1852, of which above 20,000 are now alive and in the ponds, varying from four to five inches long to two or three, notwithstanding that experiment was made under very unfavourable circumstances; for there was so much mud in the stream that supplied the spawning-boxes, that when Ramsbottom left Galway he was afraid all the ova would be choked by it. Salmo Salar seems to think that almost all the ova deposited naturally come to life, and that very few of those deposited artificially do so. This, however, is quite contrary to my experience, and I think that if Salmo Salar will listen to the evidence he will change his opinion. It is well known that Salmon are very fond of particular streams, their instinct no doubt informing them which are suitable to their purpose; and when one pair of fish have finished spawning, another pair will come and occupy the same place. Now, what takes place under such circumstances? The ova which were deposited by the first pair are rooted up by the second, and their specific gravity is so near that of the water, that they roll down out of the loose gravel and are picked up by the Trouts, Par, and other fish that are always lying in wait just below for that purpose. When Ramsbottom was in Galway he caught a large Trout, out of whose throat he squeezed a thousand ova, which were deposited in a spawning-box, many of which came to life notwithstanding the pit they had escaped from. The extraordinary avidity with which Trout take Salmon roe as a bait is also a proof (if that were needed) of their preying upon it in the spawning beds. Yet, in addition to them, are all the Par, Bullheads, Eels, Loaches, and aquatic larvae which may be found swarming in every spawning bed by any one who will look for them. In addition to these enemies, millions of the ova are destroyed by being washed away by heavy floods, and as many more are destroyed by being choked with mud and sand in the spawning beds as well as by being left dry at low water owing to the Salmon spawning in places which frequently become quite dry in early spring. No doubt many of the Salmon fry when they have reached the sea are destroyed by enemies there, of which we know nothing. But still, if 500,000 are bred, in addition to all that are reared naturally, it will represent a larger proportion of the whole than Salmo Salar seems to suppose; otherwise, how is it that in rivers where Salmon are protected, or still more in unsettled countries, the Salmon are so numerous? The Salmon in the Columbia river, on the north-west coast of America, are cast dead upon the shores by myriads after the spawning season, and these are merely the fish dying from exhaustion, as a small portion always do here. How numerous, then, are those which ascend the river to spawn, and go down again to the sea afterwards! No doubt the grand object to be attained is to make Salmon abundant, and the most important step towards the attainment of this object will be to give an efficient protection to the spawning fish, and the only way to do this effectually is to give the upper proprietors of rivers such an interest in the Salmon fisheries as will make them worth attention. At present this is far from being the case. Now the upper proprietors are merely considered as so many clucking hens, whose business and whose duty it is to hatch Salmon for the proprietors of fisheries at the mouths of rivers, who do not in many cases spend a farthing in their protection when spawning, and who grievously begrudge the upper proprietors every fish that is able to pass their nets and other engines of destruction. Let the upper proprietors of Salmon rivers bestir themselves so to amend the law as to give them a chance of having a supply of Salmon when they are in season. They cannot and will not have a more efficient ally than Salmo Salar. Salmo Salar is in my opinion quite right when he says that the fish kept in ponds will not be quite so well able to take care of themselves as fish which have been bred and lived all their lives in the river. Nor do I think that this is necessary for any longer period than until the young fry get rid of the umbilical vessel; after which they are quite able to take care of themselves. Before that time they are scarcely able to move, and thousands of them fall a prey, not only to the other fish, but to the larvae of aquatic insects which prey upon them very greedily. As I happen to know from my own observations, the larva of the stone fly (May fly of Lancashire) and those of all the larger ephemera (drakes), to say nothing of the fresh-water shrimps, swarm in all the spawning beds, and no doubt destroy myriads of the ova. All these would be saved by proper precautions and well formed spawning-boxes, with good supplies of spring water to feed them. I think Salmo Salar has very greatly over-estimated the quantity of Salmon fry that go down to the sea from the rivers. He speaks of them going down by millions. Now we will take the river Hodder as a river with which both Salmo Salar and myself are well acquainted, and I will venture to say that, so far is this an over-estimate, that if he would take the hundredth part of the number he would be much nearer the truth. The Samlets when they go to the sea may be reckoned to weigh eight to the pound, and two millions would at that rate weigh one hundred and ten tons. Does Salmo Salar think that one ton and a tenth of Smolts go down the river Hodder to the sea on an average of years? I have more favourable means of judging of the quantity that go down the river Ribble than I have of those of the Hodder, and I believe I should very greatly exaggerate their numbers if I estimated them at any such weight as a fourth of that quantity. Again, the Hodder and the Ribble are, in some respects, far more favourable for spawning than many other rivers; for partly owing to the country through which they pass, and partly owing to the rapidity of their streams, the gravel is large and very suitable for spawning in; there is also far less mud and sand in them, and the spawning beds are much less liable to be choked up than they are in many other rivers. No doubt the Salmon will make the best selection in their power, but they can only select from such places as there are; and if those are not suitable the ova must be in a great measure destroyed. Since Ramsbottom returned from Scotland he has visited the river Dee, about forty miles from Chester, and there he found the spawning beds (ridds as Salmo Salar calls them) silted up with mud and sand, and the ova buried in them to the depth of eighteen inches. How or when were the newly hatched fish (supposing, which is very improbable, that they ever did hatch) to make their escape from such a heap of filth? It would be quite impossible. In conclusion, it seems desirable and quite necessary to say a few words as to the priority of discovery of this process of fish propagation. The French claim it; the Irish seem to claim it; the Messrs. Ashworth take great credit for it; and now Salmo Salar says he first suggested it. Allow me, as there are so many claimants in the field, to suggest one or two more. In the year 1832, without knowing that such a thing had ever been done or even thought of, I made some experiments on the spawning of fish and the artificial impregnation of their ova, which I communicated to "Loudon's Magazine of Natural History," in which they appeared. After that came the Duke of Buccleuch's game-keeper, Shaw, whose experiments were both satisfactory and conclusive. This was in 1836 or 1838. Then after my experiments at home, I induced Mr. Fawkes to take up the matter in 1841, and they were resumed in 1842, and again in 1848 and 1849, both with Salmon and Trout. It was at this period that Ramsbottom came into the field. At Mr. Fawkes's request I instructed him in the art, and sent him to Farnley, where he was perfectly successful; and since then, I believe he has had more experience and been more successful than any other propagator in the kingdom. The principle of this system is very easily comprehended; but success depends on many niceties of manipulation, and much experience in judging whether the fish, both male and female, are in the proper condition for operating upon. This experience is not gained without much practice. This practice Ramsbottom has in great perfection. There is no doubt the artificial breeding of fish will be found exceedingly beneficial, if properly carried out; and I hope to see the time when Salmo Salar may catch half-a-dozen of his namesakes at Whitewell, any good day in the season. I am, Sir, Yours very truly, THOMAS GARNETT. * * * * * ARTIFICIAL BREEDING OF FISH--(CONTINUED). CLITHEROE, _9th January_, 1854. To the Editor of the "Manchester Guardian." SIR,--As I believe that Salmo Salar is quite as desirous of increasing the breed of Salmon as myself, the controversy between us may be reduced to very narrow limits. He believes that Trout eat very few of the Salmon ova, and therefore cannot do much harm. I will just mention a few facts which make me think otherwise. When Ramsbottom was in Galway he caught in one night twenty-five Trout on the spawning ground, which had on the average not less than five hundred ova in each of their stomachs; from one of their throats he squeezed a thousand. As the net would not take a fish of less than two pounds, how many had passed through it? When he was at Knowlmere, in sweeping the river for spawning fish he caught nine Par, two Trouts, and a Sprod on the spawning bed, all of which were gorged with Salmon spawn; when he went into the brooks there he never found a pair of Trout spawning without also finding a number of smaller fish behind, some of which he caught, and in all such cases found them gorged with roe up to the throat; the male Trout would occasionally drive them off, but as soon as he returned to the female they were again close in the rear. In the "Perthshire Courier" of the 22nd December is the following statement: The men employed in taking the breeding fish secured a Whitling on Tuesday about three-quarters of a pound, and as they observed Salmon ova coming out of his mouth he was brought to the office of Mr. Buist for examination; on being opened, upwards of three hundred impregnated Salmon ova were taken from his stomach quite undigested. It may be, therefore, fairly presumed, that this youngster had taken this quantity for his breakfast; if he dined and breakfasted in the same style each day during the breeding season, it is difficult to estimate the expense of his keep. Such is the amount of loss of impregnated roe in one morning from one trifling fish; what must it be throughout the season from the various enemies it has to encounter? Salmo Salar is facetious about the destruction of the roe by insects, and says, "because an aquatic insect will devour a minnow's egg, which is not as large as a pin's head, we have no right to infer that it will devour that of a Salmon, which is as large as a pea; it would be just as reasonable to suppose that because a wasp feasts upon a cherry, or a strawberry, therefore he will eat a turnip or a mangold wurtzel." As he seems to have made a slip of the pen in naming the two last _fruits_, allow me to supply what I suppose he meant to say, which I presume was that because a wasp eats a cherry or a strawberry, we must not therefore infer that he will either eat a pear or a plum; if that is his meaning, I think I can understand it. If he adheres to his own version, I would merely observe that there is no analogy in the two cases. But the inference does not rest upon mere supposition; the freshwater shrimps at Knowlmere were seen devouring the ova in the spawning-boxes. We have seen above that Par eat ova as well as Trout. Let us suppose that the millions of Smolts (as Par) have only one meal each of Salmon roe, and we will stint them to twenty ova apiece. I fear that very few of the five millions which Salmo Salar says are deposited in the Hodder will be left to grow into Salmon. In addition to these, ducks, both wild and tame, eat them greedily. When Ramsbottom was in Galway he saw that the tame ducks frequented the spawning ford, and the superintendent bought one, and found its crop quite full of Salmon roe. If this had been buried eighteen inches in the gravel (as Salmo Salar suggests), the duck would have had some difficulty in extracting it; but so far as my experience goes, it is not usually one-half that depth, although this varies in different rivers. Then, if one Salmon is able to plough up gravel which is cemented together by sand and long continuance in one place, why should not another be able to do the same when the gravel is loose and easily removed? But there is another enemy whom Salmo Salar has not mentioned, who does more harm than all the rest: that is the poacher, and I fear that many of the Salmon which Salmo Salar saw spawning in the Hodder and its tributaries have since then made a journey overland. At all events, I am credibly informed that in one season a gang of poachers took seventy Salmon in the Hodder. Is he sure they have taken none this season? Salmo Salar seems to think that one pair of Salmon will not spawn on the same ground, which has been previously occupied by another pair; but he has only to watch the same ridd for a week or two to be convinced he is mistaken. As to fish refusing to spawn on new gravel, I may state that when Mr. Fawkes was making his experiments at Farnley he put some new gravel into his brook, and there were sixteen pairs of Trout spawning on it the next morning. Salmo Salar says that if he can have those simple checks which he enumerates to the present practices, he will restore abundance of Salmon to the Ribble; they are all very good in their way, but do not go quite far enough, and they would do very little good without a fourth, namely, protection from the poacher for the fish on the spawning beds. Until this can be given more efficiently than it is at present, all the rest will be unavailing; and until the upper proprietors can have a greater interest in the preservation of Salmon than they now have, they cannot be expected to give themselves much trouble on the subject. My readers would not be much edified by strong assertion and counter-assertion of what Trout do, and what they cannot do; nor is it probable that where we differ we should convince each other; neither do I see any occasion for personality, when both parties are actuated by the same motives--a desire to see the Salmon fisheries restored to a state of great prosperity. I therefore avoid noticing some of Salmo Salar's remarks, which seem to me a little tinged with this spirit, and hope we shall be able to act in concert for the attainment of that desirable result. Salmo Salar will find that the number of Smolts is not always determined by the quantity of ova deposited: if he will examine the bed of the Hodder the next low water, he will find many of the ridds disturbed by the ice floods of yesterday; and if he doubts this, I shall be happy to examine them along with him, if he will give me previous notice of his intention. Since the above was written I have seen Ramsbottom, who tells me that the stream in the Tay, where he caught the whole of the fish from which he obtained 300,000 to 400,000 ova, was on one side of it one continuous ridd, and that the fish could not avoid ploughing up the gravel which previous fish had spawned in, and at Oughterard, where 300 pairs of fish spawned in the same number of yards, it was the same; and they found thousands of ova buried so deep that they were rotting in great quantities. With regard to what Salmo Salar says about the infrequency of a veritable spawning bed being washed away by floods, I refer him to what I have said previously; but Ramsbottom tells me the game- keeper at Harden (Haworth) will be able to give him sufficient proof that in the Langden Brook this has occurred, as he found the ova on the dry land by thousands, which had been left there by the flood. When Ramsbottom was at Perth he found on one of the fords, a space of twenty yards long and fourteen yards wide, filled with ridds, which was entirely left dry. What would become of all the spawn deposited there? Salmo Salar seems to think nature is quite sufficient to take care of her own interests without our interference, and that without some counter-acting influence to keep the breed of fish in check, the river would not hold all that would be bred. I quite agree with him in this, provided nature had fair play; but she has not, and occasionally needs a little help: else why do we employ game- keepers to trap cats, foxes, and weasels, to shoot hawks, carrion crows, and magpies, and to breed pheasants, as well as to prevent poaching? If these precautions are unnecessary, why go to such expense? and if they are necessary for hares and birds, may they not be also for fish? I hope Salmo Salar will investigate what I said about walling in of the Smolts in Langden Brook. I fancy he may have seen these enclosures himself; at all events, I have, and although I cannot prove they were erected for that purpose, I do not doubt the accuracy of my information. I am, Sir, Yours very truly, THOMAS GARNETT. * * * * * The following letter was sent to me from Chester:-- CHESTER, _3rd February_, 1854. SIR,--We are about to make application to Parliament for a Commission of Inquiry into the state of laws respecting the fisheries of England and Wales. And Mr. Ashworth, of Poynton, has been so good as to refer me to you, as able and willing to furnish us with information on the subject. The annual meeting of the river Dee fishery association will be held on the 20th instant, when I purpose to lay before them the draft of a petition to Parliament for their approval. I am anxious in the meantime to obtain all the information possible relative to the working of the present laws, their defects, and the alterations to be proposed in them, in order that a condensed statement may be embodied in the petition as the ground of our application. I should be exceedingly obliged for any remarks your experience may suggest, and trust you will accept the cause which dictates my writing as a sufficient apology for troubling you on the subject. I have had great pleasure in reading your able replies to Salmo Salar's letters. On the appearance of the first, I was strongly prompted to reply to it myself, but rejoiced to find him in much better hands. I remain, Sir, Yours very truly, WILLIAM AYRTON. * * * * * CLITHEROE, _4th February_, 1854. TO WM. AYRTON, ESQ. DEAR SIR,--I am favoured with your letter of yesterday, and shall be glad to give you any information I may possess on the habits of Salmon, or the requirements of any act of Parliament necessary for the preservation and increase of this valuable fish. Being a mill- owner, I have interests which are supposed to clash with those of fish preservers; but I hope to be able to show that all mill- owners are able to give a passage over their weirs at all times when the fish are inclined to run; that is, when there are freshes in the river. I say this the more confidently, as I believe the works here are the largest in England for the power of the stream they stand upon, and I find it necessary to employ 150 horse-power of steam. Yet I find from a careful register, which has been kept here since the year 1838, that we are able, without interfering with the efficiency of the water power, to give the fish a passage over the weir 181 days, or part of days, annually, and this at times when alone they are disposed to avail themselves of such a passage--that is in floods. The suggestions that occur to me from time to time I will not fail to send you. At present the following seem to me to be essential, to give efficacy to any Act of Parliament framed for the purpose of preserving and increasing the breed of Salmon, for without some such provisions the gentlemen on the upper parts of rivers will have no inducement to exert themselves in the matter. First.--No nets or other engines, except rod and line, should be used for taking fish from six o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning, and all fish should be allowed a free passage up the stream every night when this does not destroy or impair the efficacy of the water power. Second.--No mill-owner nor his servants, nor any other person, should be allowed to take fish at his weir, or within fifty yards of it. Third.--Conservators should be allowed to go into all wheel-races, wheel-houses and tail-goits, and also upon all lands on the banks of Salmon rivers, as well as inspect all cruives, weirs, &c., without being deemed guilty of trespass. Fourth.--All weirs kept solely for fishing purposes, cruives, &c., should be compelled to give a free passage to the fish every night from six o'clock to six o'clock in the morning; and any obstruction placed in the gap calculated to hinder or frighten the fish back, should be deemed breaches of the Act of Parliament and liable to a penalty. Fifth.--All nets and other devices for catching Eels should be prohibited in April, May, and June. Sixth.--Close time should be altered and extended, as well as made uniform, in all rivers. Seventh.--The sale and use of Salmon roe should be prohibited. Eighth.--Justices should be enabled to assist the passage of fish over weirs by any contrivance which did not impair their stability nor the efficiency of the water power. Ninth.--All cruives should be formed of vertical bars, and should have the intervening spaces to measure not less than three inches. Tenth.--No nets used in a Salmon river should measure in the mesh less than two inches and a half from knot to knot. Eleventh.--Any person having no right of fishing found with a net in his possession or a Salmon out of season, should be guilty of misdemeanour. Twelfth.--A ten shillings' licence for angling for Salmon. The reasons for most of these suggestions will be obvious to you, but there are some which may not be so; I will therefore give a short comment on such. Third and fourth.--The conservators shall have the right to inspect all wheel-races, cruives, &c., to see they are properly regulated, and also to see that no contrivance is used to drive the fish back. In the evidence given before the House of Commons in 1825, it was proved that the lessee of a fishery in Scotland used to place a crocodile painted red in the king's gap, which the law compelled him to give from Saturday night till Monday morning. Fifth.--The prohibition to set Eel nets in April, May, and June is to prevent the destruction of Smolts when going down to the sea. Seventh.--Salmon are destroyed here when spawning chiefly for the sake of the roe. If a man were fined for selling it or having it in his possession, this inducement would be weakened. Eleventh.--There is the same reason for seizing the net of the black fisher that there is for seizing the snare of the poacher, and if the latter can be convicted for having hares or snares in his possession, I do not see why the former should not for having nets and Salmon. A meeting of the gentlemen interested in the fisheries of the Ribble and the Hodder will be held on Friday, the 17th instant, previous to which time I should be glad of your criticism. I am, dear Sir, Yours very truly, THOMAS GARNETT. P.S.--It occurs to me since closing my letter that I have forgotten one important provision required in any new Act of Parliament--namely, protection to the Smolts in their downward migration. Here the pools are swept with small meshed trammel nets of all the fish that they contain. * * * * * ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION OF FISH. CLITHEROE, _23rd April_, 1863. To the Editors of the "Leeds Mercury." GENTLEMEN,--I am somewhat at a loss to understand the object of Mr. Horsfall's letter on this subject which appears in the "Mercury" of to-day. If he means that fish hatched by this process are as much at the mercy of their natural enemies as they are in their natural spawning beds I differ from him entirely; but if he means that there is no good in breeding migratory fish like Salmon, when the obstacles to their return in the shape of stake nets, impassable weirs, and poisonous waters are so numerous as they are at present in many rivers (the Wharfe and the Aire are examples of both), I entirely agree with him. Let us consider both suppositions, for the more this subject is ventilated the more likely is good to arise from the discussion. I think Mr. Horsfall is entirely wrong in the first supposition, for the following reasons: By artificial propagation the young fish escape all damage from floods, and particularly ice floods, which scoop out all the loose gravel from the spawning beds, which are frequently entirely carried away by these floods. They escape all danger from drought, which in some rivers is almost as bad, there being now several mounds of dry gravel in my length of the Ribble which were spawning grounds last December. They escape being destroyed as ova by Trout, Eels, Bullheads, Loaches, the larva of aquatic insects, ducks (wild and tame), water rats, and water shrews. The last are said to be destructive to the spawn; but this I do not vouch for, as these two last-mentioned animals have not come under my own observation as devourers of spawn. With regard to the 500 Salmon ova said to have been taken from the stomach of a Trout, Ramsbottom is the authority for it, only he says there were nearer 1,000 than 500, and he took them from the maw of a large lake Trout at Oughterard, when netting the spawning Salmon for his artificial propagation. When Ramsbottom was fish breeding for Mr. Peel the year after he first went to Ireland for that purpose, he went into the brooks at night with a light. He never found a pair of spawning fish without also finding several waiters on Providence in the shape of small Trout, which were picking up the ova that descended the streams towards them. Several of these he caught, and they were perfectly gorged with spawn. With regard to the ducks, Ramsbottom is again my authority. He found that a flock of tame ducks frequented the spawning beds at Oughterard; he bought one for the purpose of ascertaining whether they eat spawn or not, and he found its crop quite full of spawn. With regard to the aquatic larvae of insects, Mr. Horsfall may easily satisfy himself that they destroy spawn if he will turn some into an artificial spawning bed. One of my friends failed to hatch his Trout ova because he could not keep out the fresh-water shrimps. Mr. Horsfall seems to think that nature would be sufficient to take care of her own interests if man did not step in to aid her endeavours; but if he is a sportsman he no doubt has a game- keeper, who not only preserves the ground from poachers, but traps cats and weasels, shoots hawks, magpies and carrion crows, breeds tame pheasants, and generally looks to the well being of the game without trusting to the efforts of unassisted nature. Let us take the second supposition, that there is no good in artificial propagation when the fish which are sent to the sea can never come back again by reason of insurmountable obstacles. If Mr. Horsfall means this he is quite right; there is no good in the upper proprietors of Salmon rivers becoming brood hens for the owners of fisheries at the mouths of rivers or the proprietors of impassable weirs, who take all the fish which get to the foot of these weirs. I quite agree with Mr. Horsfall that it is in most cases easy to build practicable fish passes, and at a slight expense, if people were willing to do so; but I wish to show that notwithstanding the boasted effects of the Act of 1861, the upper riparian proprietors have not a sufficient inducement to build fish passes, and will not do so unless the expense can be made very moderate indeed. I will take the river Ribble to illustrate my meaning. As a general rule we have no fresh run Salmon until May, and the upper proprietors are supposed to have a sufficient share of the fish that ascend the stream if the owners of the fisheries in the estuary and the tidal part of the river cease to net from six o'clock on the Saturday night to six o'clock on the Monday morning. That is a day and a half per week. The fishing for Salmon (except angling) ceases on the 31st of August, and from the 1st of May to the 31st of August there are 123 days. Call the period eighteen weeks, which gives us twenty-seven days during which time the Salmon have liberty to pass to the upper parts of the river. But on the average of seasons, owing to droughts, the rapid absorption of moisture by vegetation, and the great evaporation, there is no fresh water to enable the fish to ascend during two- thirds of that time. Every one who knows anything of the habits of Salmon is aware that they never ascend the rivers from the estuary unless there is a fresh in the river; and, as I said before, on the average of seasons there is no fresh for two-thirds of the time from May to August. This reduces the twenty-seven days (which are supposed to feed the upper proprietors with Salmon to repletion) to nine days, and these nine days are expected to stock the river and its tributaries for one hundred miles. It is true I have not taken into consideration the privileges which the upper proprietors have of angling to the 1st of November; but besides the fact that the fish are then full of spawn, and ought not to be killed at all, very few rise at the fly, and when they are taken they can neither be sold nor used by any one who knows what a fresh Salmon is. It is a greater crime against public polity to kill a spawning Salmon than it is to steal a sheep; for, supposing it produces 10,000 ova, and one in a hundred returns as a Salmon, it returns from a place (the sea) where it has cost nothing in rent, taxes, or superintendence, and, in the finest condition imaginable, it invites us to take it. Mr. Horsfall and I both wish for the same results (rivers swarming with fish), and although we may somewhat differ as to details, I have no doubt both would be glad to see public attention directed to these matters rather more than it is at present. If Mr. Horsfall will do me the honour to come and see me, I will show him an efficient fish-pass which has been in operation forty years. It may suggest some ideas to him, and he may be able to suggest some improvements in it which I should be glad to receive. I am, Gentlemen, Your obedient Servant, THOMAS GARNETT. * * * * * LOW MOOR, _4th January_, 1865. DEAR SIR,--As I believe Mr. Eden, the Commissioner of Salmon fisheries, is visiting various districts connected with Salmon rivers in England and Wales, with a view of explaining the proposed alterations and additions to the bill of 1861, and as I think from what I have learnt that the proposed alterations and additions will not be satisfactory to the upper proprietors of Salmon rivers, I wish to call your attention to the matter, that, if he should come into this district, the gentlemen interested may be able to point out to him how far these alterations are from meeting their wishes. Supposing that the new bill (as published in the "Field" newspaper, and explained and commented on by Mr. Eden) is to be understood as a government measure and one in which they will allow of no alterations, I maintain that it is very objectionable both from what it omits and what it purposes to do. To begin with the former, or, in other words, to take the recommendations of the Worcester meeting as the groundwork of new legislation, it does not touch on several of them; they were, so far as I remember (for I have no memoranda to refer to) an extension of the weekly and annual close time--minimum penalties: --a close time for Trout, and a right of way on the banks of Salmon rivers for all water-bailiffs, duly appointed, without their being deemed guilty of trespass; and a tax on fishery nets and implements, for the purpose of defraying the expenses of protection. Now, so far as I understand the bill as proposed, the only one of these recommendations included in it is the tax. I am wrong in this--the taxation is not included in the bill, but was suggested by Mr. Eden at the meeting he attended lately at Chester. The bill proposes that the choice of conservators shall be vested in the magistrates at quarter sessions, and the conservators shall have power to expend all the funds raised by voluntary subscriptions for certain purposes mentioned in the act. But Mr. Eden suggested at Chester that if these funds were inadequate the conservators should have the power of supplementing them by a rate on the owners and lessees of fisheries in proportion to their extent. Now one man may have an estate on the banks of a river extending for miles from which he derives little or no revenue; while another may have a fishery not extending more yards than the other does miles, but from which he derives a revenue of as many pounds as the other does pence. If Mr. Eden's meaning is lineal extent, I feel very sure it will not meet with the approval of the upper riparian proprietors. Again, why should the magistrates in quarter sessions (nine-tenths of whom know nothing of Salmon or Salmon rivers) choose the conservators? What, for instance, would the magistrates meeting at Wakefield know of the Ribble or the Hodder? What would they care about the matter? They would choose the men who had power to tax the riparian proprietors and lessees; but as they would not be taxed themselves, they would look on with great composure. No; if we are to be taxed, let us tax ourselves, and not leave it to those who will have no interest in the matter, and who may involve us in litigation and expense over which we shall have no control. The recommendations of the Worcester committee deserved more consideration on the part of Government. They were suggested by men of great experience, and, moreover, unless they are adopted and legalized by Parliament there can be no permanent prosperity for Salmon rivers. Take the extension of close time as an instance. It cannot be right that the owners or lessees of estuary fisheries shall be allowed to take ninety per cent. of the fish which they have neither bred nor fed, and whose well-being and increase they have done nothing to promote; while the upper proprietors, on whom devolve all the care, trouble, and expense, are to rest satisfied with what the thirty-six hours per week can give them. What did they give the upper proprietors on the Ribble and the Hodder last season? Little or nothing. When the bill of 1861 was before the House of Commons, I had an opportunity of suggesting (indirectly) to the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis the propriety and desirableness of an extension of the weekly close time for the benefit of the upper proprietors. He replied, "You might as well propose to restrict the shooting of partridges to three days a week as to restrict the netting of Salmon." But with all due deference to so great an authority, there is no analogy between the two cases. If partridges had all to migrate and return before they could be legally shot, and had, like the Salmon, all to return by the same road, ninety per cent. of them before reaching the district where they were reared would become the prey of men who had neither bred nor fed them. I fancy sportsmen would want protection for them; and if they were not able to obtain it, they would do what is seriously proposed by many people with regard to the Salmon--they would do all they could to exterminate them, rather than continue to act as brood hens to hatch chickens for other men's eating. Then take the annual close time and the pretended compensation it offers in the two months' rod-fishing (September and October). After the nets have been withdrawn, what is it worth? Or, what is the value of black fish full of spawn? They cannot be sold; they are not fit to eat; the spawn has nearly arrived at maturity, and the only value the fish has is in the spawn, which is potted and sold in many instances by the poacher who kills the fish. He deserves no other name, whatever may be his rank or station. Again, in the 21st section, regulating the weekly close time, it is enacted "That any person acting in contravention of this section shall forfeit all the fish taken by him, and any net or movable instrument used by him in taking the same, and, in addition thereto, shall incur a penalty of not exceeding five pounds, and a further penalty of not exceeding one pound for each fish." But in the 17th section, which regulates the annual close time, though there is a penalty for the contravention and forfeiture of the Salmon so taken, there is no forfeiture of nets and implements. You will no doubt remember how this worked when the watchers took a net and boat, near Preston, last season, after the setting in of the annual close time. How the owner of the net and boat came to claim them, on the pretence that the net had been stolen from the bank, where it had been left to dry, although his own men were the parties who were so illegally using them. Minimum penalties.--I see no mention of them in the new bill, although it is notorious that many magistrates have fined convicted poachers in the penalty of a farthing or a shilling. What is this but an encouragement to do so again? Close time for Trout.--This is greatly needed in Salmon rivers, as it is well known that many a poacher pretends to be fishing for Trout when he is looking after Salmon. This is doubly needed when the Salmon ascend the small tributaries to spawn. The right of way for water bailiffs.--There is no clause or section in the new bill giving the right of way on the banks of Salmon rivers to duly authorized persons without their being deemed guilty of trespass. But there is one by which they are permitted to examine weirs. There is on my part no objection to this examination, but why are millowners stigmatized by being subjected to exceptional legislation? Are not the gamekeepers of gentlemen who have many miles of river subject to no surveillance on the part of the water bailiffs as likely to act illegally as the servants of the millowners? Let both be watched with equal care, and I do not mind how vigilant the watching may be; but I do object to being made the object of special and exceptional legislation. The tax ought to be upon nets and rods and other implements in proportion to their value. But if a tax is laid on the extent of the fishery, we may bid adieu to voluntary subscriptions. In conclusion, if Mr. Eden comes into this district, I think it ought to be distinctly intimated to him that no bill would be satisfactory to the upper proprietors which did not give them a greater interest in the increase and improvement of rivers. There are three ways of doing this. The mesh of the Salmon net might be enlarged from eight to twelve inches round. This would allow grilse to pass, and fill the river with breeding fish. Or, secondly, the weekly close time might be extended so as to include Friday as well as Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Or, thirdly, the annual close time for net and rod fishing might commence a month earlier than at present; say net fishing to close on the 1st of August, and rod fishing on the 1st of October. Any of these measures would give the upper proprietors a much better supply of fish than they now have. They all, I think, deserve consideration. One thing at least is certain, that unless the upper proprietors have a better share of the fish than they have at present, they will soon cease to take an interest in their preservation. To Colonel J. Wilson Patten, M.P. * * * * * LOW MOOR, _10th January_, 1865. MY DEAR SIR,--I shall be very glad if I can induce you to read my opinions on the Salmon question. It is one which I think may become of even national importance, if properly managed. But the sad tinkering it has hitherto received in the nine hundred and ninety-nine Acts of Parliament wholly or partly devoted to the subject makes me almost hopeless about future legislation. Yet it seems to me that the only way to greatly increase the breed of Salmon is so simple and obvious, that its not having been adopted long since can only be accounted for by supposing that all the parties interested in the matter are like the man in the fable, who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. Hitherto the law has never properly recognized the claims of the upper riparian proprietors. These men have all the trouble and expense of rearing and protecting the young fish, whilst the owners of estuary fisheries, men who never lift a hand nor spend a penny in taking care of the brood, take above ninety per cent. of the grown Salmon when in season; and even then think they are hardly used. How can it be expected that the upper proprietors should be very earnest in their protection of fish from which they derive little or no benefit, merely acting the part of brood hens and hatching the chickens for the benefit of other people? In June, 1769, 3,384 Salmon and Salmon Trout were taken at a single haul of the net in the Ribble, near Penwortham. Now the sea is as wide, and, for anything we know to the contrary, as capable of feeding them as it was a hundred years ago; and the rivers are as capable of breeding and rearing them now as they were at that time; and therefore I do not see why, if proper steps were taken, they should not be as abundant now as they were then. If we take a sheep or a bullock, and to his first cost add the rent of the land on which he has pastured, and something for insurance and interest on capital, the transaction is not a very profitable one in the long run. But in the case of the Salmon, we send a little fish down to the sea which is not worth a penny, and he remains there, paying neither rent nor taxes, neither gamekeepers' nor bailiffs' wages, costing nothing to anyone, until he returns to the river, worth ten or twenty shillings, as the case may be. Surely this is a branch of the public wealth that deserves sedulous cultivation. I think with you that the Calder can never become a Salmon river, so long as manufactories flourish on its banks, and it is not desirable that it ever should become so at their expense; but even in the Calder (and its tributaries) a little care would prevent immense mischief. Some people at Church, a few years ago, very carelessly pushed a quantity of poisonous matter into the Hyndburn brook, and the first thunderstorm that followed carried it down the Calder into the Ribble, and poisoned all the fish between Calder foot and Ribchester. Take another instance of carelessness in the Ribble, the emptying of the gas-holder tank at Settle, which when turned into the river killed nearly all the fish between that town and Mitton. Several other instances occur to me, but these two are sufficient to show the great mischief occasioned by avoidable neglect and carelessness. Such mischief should not be perpetrated with impunity. The act of 1861 was very good as far as it went, notwithstanding some oversights; but it did not go far enough. It did not give to the upper riparian proprietors such an interest in the fish as they are entitled to, nor is the interest they now have sufficient to induce them to exert themselves in the preservation and increase of the Salmon as they might and would do if such additional stimulus were given to them. The law now is, that no nets shall be used in the taking of Salmon between twelve o'clock at noon on Saturdays, and six o'clock on Monday mornings. That is, forty-two hours per week. But in the Ribble, as a rule, we never see seasonable Salmon until May. Now from that time to the 1st of September, is, say sixteen weeks, and at forty-two hours per week (the length of the weekly close time) this gives twenty-eight days during which time the fish may pass up the river without interruption; but this is by no means the true state of the case. Everyone conversant with the habits of Salmon knows that they never ascend rivers except when they are in a state of flood; and in average summers, partly owing to droughts, and partly to the rapid evaporation and absorption of moisture by vegetation, these twenty-eight days may fairly be reduced by two-thirds, to give the true time allowed for the ascent of the fish. But say ten days, which are supposed to give an adequate supply of fish to a hundred miles of river,--the extent of the Ribble and its Salmon-breeding tributaries. Is it surprising that the upper proprietors are not satisfied with this state of things? It would be surprising if they were content with such a cheeseparing allowance. When the bill of 1861 was before the House of Commons, I had an opportunity (indirectly) of suggesting to the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis the propriety of a considerable extension of the weekly close time. He replied, "You might as well propose to shoot partridges only three days a week, as to restrict the netting of Salmon to only three days." With all due deference to such an authority, there is no analogy between the two cases. But if partridges had all to migrate and return before they could be legally shot, and had, like Salmon, to come by one road, and if, like them, ninety per cent. of them became the prey of men who had neither bred nor fed them, I fancy the sportsman who reared them would want some restrictions placed on their being shot by men who had not spent a farthing in breeding and protecting them, but who took the lion's share in their appropriation. I saw Lord Derby on the subject last spring. He had, however, so little time at his disposal that he could only give me a few minutes. He said a good deal must be allowed for vested interests. I said, "My Lord, I am a manufacturer. When the Ten Hours Bill was passed, manufacturers were deprived of one-sixth of their fixed capital at a stroke, and had not a farthing allowed for their vested interests; nay, more, that measure involved the destruction of machinery which had cost millions. All this was done on grounds of public policy. And is not the Salmon question one of public policy? If, as I suppose, the measure I advocate produced a great increase in the breed of Salmon, the estuary fisheries would be the first to profit by it. They are the first on the river. Indeed, the stake nets in the estuaries are taking fish daily in times of drought, when fish will not ascend the river at all." In 1859 we had not a fresh in the river between the 10th of April and the 1st of August. And last year we had only a few days of flood between the beginning of May and the 31st August, when close time (for nets) commences. I have said above that only ten days per year are allowed for the supply of fish to the upper proprietors. I may be told that they have two months (September and October) in which they are allowed to angle for them. True, but what are they worth? They are not allowed to be sold, they are not fit to eat, the fish are black (or red), the milt and spawn nearly at maturity, and the only temptation they offer is to the poacher (who often pots the roe as a bait for Trout); and he is a poacher, whatever his rank or station, who will kill an October fish when full of spawn. Last year, at my suggestion, a meeting of gentlemen interested in Salmon fisheries was convened at Worcester, during the meeting there of the Royal Agricultural Society, and a number of suggestions were made, and resolutions were come to, which were intended to serve as a basis for the desired alterations in the Salmon Bill of 1861. I have no memoranda to which I can now refer, but the most important, according to my recollection, were the following:--The extension of the weekly close time; the annual close time to be extended to Trout; a right to be given to all conservators and water-bailiffs, duly appointed, to pass along the banks of Salmon rivers without being deemed guilty of trespass; a tax on fishing-nets, rods, and implements, to defray the expenses of protecting the rivers from poachers. The Commissioner of Salmon Fisheries, Mr. Eden, has been convening meetings of gentlemen interested in Salmon rivers at Chester, Conway, York, and various other places, to explain the provisions of the bill which Government introduced at the end of last session and intend to bring forward again. I have not attended any of these meetings, but expect he will be at Whalley or Preston shortly, when we shall hear what he has got to say. The new bill, as printed last year, does not embody any of the suggestions of the Worcester meeting; but as I learn from private sources, Mr. Eden, at the various meetings he has lately attended, has thrown out various suggestions, some of which are highly objectionable. For instance, he suggests that the magistrates in quarter sessions assembled shall have the power to appoint conservators, and that the conservators shall have the power to expend all the money raised by subscription in having water-bailiffs to put up fish- ladders, commencing actions at law in certain cases; and if the subscriptions are not adequate to defray all these expenses, that they (the conservators) shall have the power to levy a rate in aid on the riparian proprietors. I cannot see how this can be made to work equitably. If the rate be laid on the extent of frontage to the river, one man may have a great extent of no value for fishing purposes, another may have only one pool, so conveniently formed and placed for netting that he will be able to catch ten times as many fish as the other. Then how are the fisheries in the estuary and just above tideway to be valued? They probably take ninety per cent. of all the seasonable fish. Will they be willing to pay ninety per cent. of the rate? Again, the college at Stonyhurst claims a right of _several fishery_, both in the Ribble and the Hodder. That is, they exercise a right to fish in both rivers, where they have no land, and they exercise this right so freely that they take more fish than all the other upper proprietors added together. If, then, the tax is laid on the extent of frontage to the rivers, these reverend gentlemen would escape entirely, so far as the right of _several fishery_ extends, and would only pay the rate on their own extent of frontage. Again, the new bill does not embody the suggestions of the Worcester meeting as to the right of way for the water-bailiffs; but according to Mr. Eden's comment upon it at Chester and elsewhere, a strict surveillance is to be kept on weirs, to which the water-bailiffs are to have free access. Personally I have no objection to this, provided the water-bailiffs are allowed free access to the banks of the river elsewhere; but I have a strong objection to be made the subject of offensive exceptional legislation. Are not gamekeepers as likely to need looking after as mill-owners? Again, the bill does not touch on minimum penalties. This it ought to do, for in some districts (Wales, for instance) there is a strong animus against all attempts at preserving the Salmon, and notorious poachers, duly convicted of offences against the act of 1861, in some instances have been fined a shilling, in others a farthing. To W. H. Hornby, Esq., M.P. * * * * * REMARKS ON A PROPOSED BILL FOR THE BETTER PRESERVATION OF SALMON. CLITHEROE, _August 27th_, 1860. HENRY GEORGE, ESQ. DEAR SIR,--I am favoured by the receipt of your letter of the 25th inst., and the accompanying draft of a proposed bill "for the better Preservation of Salmon," and proceed at once to offer such remarks and suggestions as occur to me, and shall be glad to learn that they meet with your approval. In the third clause (section) you give an interpretation of the names under which you wish to include all fish of the Salmon kind. Does not this include common Trout? You specially include Char by name. Would it not be better to limit your intentions to all migratory fish of the Salmon kind, to wit, Salmon, Grilse, &c. &c.? I think also the meaning of a fixed net wants defining more rigorously. As it now stands it appears to me that it would include any net which should be fastened on a root or stone whilst it was being drawn through a pool, if the men employed in doing this were to let go the cords whilst they loosed the net from the obstruction. Fourth clause.--I quite agree with you on the period allotted to annual close time, but think there ought to be a penalty for buying, selling, or having in possession Salmon roe (save and except for the purpose of artificial propagation). Seventh.--I do not agree with you at all on the subject of the weekly close time, which in my opinion ought to be for one-half of every day, except Sunday, and the whole of that day. Why should the owners of fisheries at the mouths of rivers, who are at neither trouble nor expense in breeding or preserving the spawning fish, have all the benefit derivable from their increase? Why should the upper proprietors act the part of brood hens for these, hatching and preserving the fish for the benefit of those who take no trouble about these things themselves? Twelfth.--I do not agree with you as to the size of the mesh: I do not think that a mesh of twelve inches in circumference, or three inches from knot to knot, at all too large; it would permit fish below six pounds to escape, and this being done, there would under any circumstances be a fair supply of breeding fish. Fifteenth.--I think your leister requires a more rigorous definition. A man in this neighbourhood is reputed to have killed a good many Salmon with a hay or a dung fork. Are either of these leisters? Your sixteenth section is utterly impracticable. How could such hecks or grates be prevented from choking with leaves in the autumn and ice in the winter, thus stopping the wheels? You might as well require a farmer to hedge out the game. Impose a penalty, if you like, upon any millowner who may kill Salmon in his mill lead; and as you give your conservators power to inspect everywhere, you will readily detect such practices. But it will never do to close the mills by pretexts that the fish may be taken or killed there. Twenty-first.--I do not understand the meaning of this. But taken in its ordinary sense, it seems to me to be very unjust. Many persons have traps in their weirs for the purpose of taking Salmon to which they plead a prescriptive right. Do you mean to do away with these? You may succeed in this, but why should not a man be allowed to fish in the river above the weir where there are no obstructions to the passage of the fish? And why should not a man be allowed to fish with a rod and line below the weir, and as near to it as he chooses? I think weirs might be safely divided into two classes: those used for manufacturing purposes and those for fishery purposes; that a man should be allowed to say in which class his weir should be included. If for manufacturing purposes he should not be allowed to catch Salmon (except with rod and line) within a certain distance below the weir. If he choose to class his weir as one for fishery purposes, he should then be compelled to give a free passage to the fish for twelve hours every day; but he should be compelled to make his election as to the class in which he would include his weir. Twenty-fifth.--It would never do to allow the commissioners to make bye-laws. Suppose the case of a millowner who got into a dispute with them: he might be utterly ruined by their bye-laws; they might make bye-laws which deprived him of his water-power, under a pretext that they were taking more efficient care of the Salmon. Thirty-first.--I think the licence to angle should be compulsory, and not at the discretion of the commissioner. That it should be in the nature of a game licence, qualifying and enabling the holder to angle in any river of Great Britain and Ireland, provided he had the consent of the owner of the fishery where he was angling. (_Additional observations_). Twelfth.--You say that no double net shall be used. Do you mean to prohibit the trammel, which is usually a treble and not a double net? You also prohibit one net behind another, but you do not specify the distance outside of which a second net would be lawful. If neither a series of Scotch nets nor a single trammel is to be used, by what sort of net do you propose to catch the Salmon? Nineteenth.--You say the sluices which admit water to wheels or factories shall be kept closed from six o'clock on Saturday night to six o'clock on Monday morning. How, then, are the repairs of shafting and machinery to be made? These are generally done when the workpeople have gone home on Saturdays. Besides, what is your object? If the river is low, the Salmon will not be running up the stream, and if it be in flood there will always be an abundant supply running over the weir in addition to that which would be required to turn the wheel. You add that the water may be allowed to flow freely through the waste-gate, provided the opening of such a waste-gate shall not deprive the mill of the necessary supply of water. Eighteenth.--In this clause you say that in weirs already constructed it shall be lawful for the commissioner, on the application of any two or more persons interested in the fisheries of such river, and at the proper costs and charges of the persons making such application--proof having been first given, &c.--to cause a survey to be made of such dam or weir by a competent engineer, and to direct such alterations to be made therein as shall, in the opinion of the commissioner, be necessary and desirable, &c. In this clause, which so far as it goes is very desirable, you have omitted a proviso without which it could never pass into a law. You have forgotten to provide for the legal right of the millowner, which would, or might, be taken away by the alteration made in the weir unless there were some provision in the act which prevented this being done. At present there is no such proviso in your act. Here I have offered for years to allow the upper proprietors to make any alteration they liked in the weir, provided such alterations did not affect the milling power, the stability of the weir, or my legal title to the weir as existing at present. And my legal adviser tells me that any alteration made in the weir without a guarantee from the upper proprietors would very probably deprive me of my present title. * * * * * LETTERS ON AGRICULTURAL SUBJECTS. * * * * * ON THE CULTIVATION OF WHEAT ON THE SAME LAND IN SUCCESSIVE YEARS. _To The Editor of the "Manchester Guardian."_ CLITHEROE, October 5th, 1843. SIR,--I PROMISED to send you some details of my attempt to grow wheat on the same soil year after year. These I now forward, and hope they may prove interesting. I was led into these experiments by reading Liebig's book on the "Chemistry of Agriculture;" for, assuming his theory to be true, it appeared to me to be quite possible to grow wheat on the same land year after year; as, according to that theory, the carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, which constitute the great bulk of all cereal crops (both grain and straw), are supplied in abundance from the soil and atmosphere (or perhaps, to speak more correctly, from the latter), and we have only to supply those inorganic substances, which, however numerous, form but a small part of the whole weight of the crop. With the view of testing this theory, and hoping that I might be able to find out what were the elements which built up and cemented the carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen together--or, in other words, which constituted fertility--I begun, in the autumn of 1841, to experiment on a field which had been exhausted by a succession of crops, and which had just been cleared of one of oats. I chose an exhausted field in preference to any other, as the only one in which I could test the truth of the theory. It was very foul, being full of couch grass and weeds of all kinds. It was ploughed up and hastily picked over, for the season was so unfavourable for cleaning the land (from the great quantity of rain that fell) that I was almost induced to abandon the experiment. Previously to sowing the seed, one-fourth of the field was manured with a compost of night-soil and coal-ashes, at the rate of forty tons to the customary acre (7840 yards); the remaining three-fourths having the seed put in without any manure whatever. The winter was very unfavourable for the plants in our cold wet soil, and in the unmanured part of the field many of them perished, and those that survived made very little progress, from having no stimulus at the roots. Thinking it desirable to apply my experimental manures in moist weather, I waited until the 6th May, when I treated that part of the field which had _not_ been manured (three-fourths of the whole) in the following manner. I applied guano to one-fourth, at the rate of two hundredweight to the statute acre, and the same weight of nitrate of soda over another fourth, leaving one-fourth entirely without manure. The wheat manured with the guano and nitrate of soda grew vigorously, and the ears, more particularly in the part manured with guano, were the finest I had ever seen, but when it came to ripen it shrivelled in the ear, and the sample was very indifferent; the soil being evidently deficient in some property necessary for perfecting the grain. The crop also suffered much from the depredations of the birds. The portion manured with night-soil produced to the statute acre 32 bushels of 60 lbs. each. Guano " " 27 " " " Nitrate of Soda " " 27 " " " Unmanured part " " 19 2/3 " " " I give these details to show that the land was in an exhausted state previous to the commencement of the experiment I am now about to detail. After the crop of 1842 was reaped, the land was immediately ploughed up, and the season being very favourable, it was tolerably well cleaned, and the seed was sown (without any manure) about the first week in October. After the wheat came up, it was manured with a dusting of one hundredweight of guano, over the entire field (about one acre, three roods), to keep the plants alive through the winter. In the spring, being divided into three portions, it was manured with the same number of experimental manures, which were furnished to me by Mr. Blyth, of Church, near Accrington, who also analyzed the soil and subsoil for me. These manures were applied about the 10th of April, and the experiment was still further varied by covering a portion of each division with guano a fortnight afterwards, at the rate of two hundredweight to the acre, but all the manure applied to the crop, including the hundredweight of guano put on in the autumn, did not exceed 6 1/2 hundredweight. The crop, which was a very thin one in the spring, improved so much by the application of these manures, that when it came into ear, it was allowed by all who saw it to be the best in the neighbourhood; but the heavy rains of July caused it to lodge in the best part of the field, and there it was attacked by rust, and the sample was very indifferent. In addition to this drawback, there being very little wheat grown in the neighbourhood of the town, and this being much earlier than any of the other fields, was attacked by the birds as soon as the grain was formed in the ear. Notwithstanding all the efforts made to prevent them, they continued feeding upon it until it was cut; and it is a very moderate estimate of the damage, to say that they destroyed one- fourth of the crop throughout the field. That part of the field covered with manure (No. 1) being the earliest, suffered most. There were patches of several square yards where there did not appear to be a single grain left; and wherever the birds took a grain from the middle of the ear, when in the milky state, the grains on each side of it appeared to grow no more, but shrivelled up in the ear. I have little doubt that in this portion of the field one-third of the crop was destroyed. All this seems to reduce the experiment to little more than guess-work; and it will, probably, be very difficult to persuade those who did not see the field when it was cut, to credit this report of the devastation made by the birds; even when they are told that Clitheroe is a town of 7,000 inhabitants, and probably as many sparrows, and that apparently they were all assembled to feed in this field; and they became so accustomed to the good living they found there, that even when our neighbours' wheat was fit to eat, they continued to favour this field with their visits in preference to going elsewhere. I estimate the damage on No. 1 at one-third, No. 2 at one-fourth, No. 3 at one-fifth; this was later than the others, and suffered more from rust than birds. The following are the results:--From 3,060 yards manured with No. 1, there were obtained 1,042 lbs. of wheat, or 27 1/2 bushels of 60 lbs. each to the statute acre; if we add one-half to this, as we assume that one-third was destroyed by the birds, it will give 41 1/4 bushels to the statute acre. The weight of straw from this portion was 188 stones 5 lbs., 14 lbs. to the stone. From 2,856 yards manured with No. 2, 962 lbs. of wheat were obtained, and 155 stones 9 lbs. of straw; this is equal to 27 1/4 bushels per acre, or with one-third added, for estimated damage, it is equal to 36 bushels per statute acre. From 2610 yards manured with No. 3, there were 1,067 lbs. of wheat, and 211 stones 7 lbs. of straw, or 33 bushels to the statute acre, to which if we add one-fourth, according to the estimate of damage, it will be equal to 41 1/4 bushels per acre. It will be observed that this portion yielded a far greater weight of straw per acre than either of the others, and from the sort of manure applied, it was expected that this would be the case. No. 1 yielded straw at the rate of 297 3/4 stones per acre. " 2 " " " " 246 3/4 " " " 3 " " " " 392 1/3 " " Many people may feel inclined to say, that all these apparent data are mere guesses, and that a crop may be made into anything one likes, if they assume so much for damages; but, fortunately, it is not all guess-work. I have stated previously that I covered a part of each division with guano a fortnight after the application of the manures in April, intending to see what advantage was obtained by the use of it; but, owing to the depredations of the birds, the portions of the first and second divisions manured with guano were not kept separate from those which were left without guano; but the third being later, and, therefore, not so much injured by them, gave me an opportunity of ascertaining the effect. I measured off a land which had been so manured, and reaped and thrashed it out separately. From this land of 100 yards long and 10 feet wide (3,000 square feet), there was obtained 220 lbs. of wheat, or 53 bushels of 60 lbs. per statute acre; and this was far from being the best portion of the field. I don't mean that it was not the best portion of the crop, but I mean that the soil was not so good there as it was in other parts of the field; as I have before stated, in the best part of the field the crop was spoiled by being lodged by the rain, and subsequently attacked by rust. I communicate this to you, in the hope that the publication of it in your paper maybe the means of stimulating others to try the same experiments. It is not too late yet to try for the next year's crop, and I have no doubt that Mr. Blyth will be happy to supply both material and information to any who may require them from him. It is the duty of everyone to promote the advancement of agriculture; and this is my contribution towards it. I have not yet done, for I have sown the same field with wheat again, and hope, with a favourable season, to reap a still more abundant crop next year. * * * * * _To the same._ CLITHEROE, _October 12th_, 1844. SIR,--Last October you published an account of an attempt of mine to grow wheat on the same land year after year; and, as I have repeated the experiment this year, I shall be obliged if you will be kind enough to insert the account of it in the "Guardian," as the subject appears to me to be an important one; and, as many persons who may read this letter may either not have seen the former, or may have forgotten it, I trust that a short summary of the former experiments may not be out of place. These experiments took place in the autumn of 1841, after the field had been cleared of a crop of oats, which was a very bad one; the land being not only naturally poor, but foul and exhausted by long cropping. As the season was very wet, it was indifferently cleaned, and one-fourth of it manured with a compost of night-soil and ashes, and then the field was sowed with wheat. Two of the remaining three-fourths were manured on the 6th of May, 1842 (the spring being a very dry one, no rain came until that day), one with guano, the other with nitrate of soda, each at the rate of two hundredweight to the statute acre, and the remaining fourth was left unmanured. The following were the results at harvest:--That manured with night-soil and ashes produced 32 bushels of 60 lbs. per acre; guano, 27 bushels; nitrate of soda, 27 bushels; unmanured, 19 2/3 bushels. When the field had been cleared of the crop, it was immediately ploughed up, and, as the season was favourable, the land was well cleaned and sowed with wheat in October, 1842, without any manure except 1 cwt. of guano, which was scattered over it when the wheat was coming up. The field was divided into three portions, and in April, 1843, was manured as follows:--No. 1, with 90 lbs. of sulphate of magnesia, and 2 cwt. nitrate of soda to the statute acre; No. 2, with a compound from a manufacturer of chemical manures; No. 3, with 60 lbs. of silicate of soda and 2 cwt. of nitrate of soda to the acre; and, with the view of still further varying the experiment, a part of each portion was sowed with guano a fortnight after the application of the chemical manures. The crop promised to be a very good one, but it was much plundered by the birds, and as the summer was wet, it suffered also much from rust. Allowing for the destruction occasioned by the birds, the crop was estimated at: 41 1/4 bushels in patch No. 1, 36 " " No. 2, 41 1/4 " " No. 3, and in that part of No. 3 which was also covered with guano, it reached by actual weight (not by estimate), 53 bushels of 60 lbs. to the acre. Those patches in Nos. 1 and 2 which had guano put on them, suffered so much from the depredations of the birds, that no account was taken of them separately. The crop was cleared off the land, which was cleaned, and again sowed with wheat on 3rd October, 1843. It was drilled in rows seven inches apart, and at the rate of 2 1/2 bushels to the acre. It is to the results of this crop that I now wish to call your attention. Before sowing, the land was subsoiled to the depth of from 14 to 16 inches; except a strip of about 10 feet in width, down the middle of the field, which was left untouched for the purpose of determining what were the advantages derived from subsoiling. If the advantage was merely that of thorough draining (for the field had not been thoroughly drained previous to the subsoiling), it was thought probable that this strip of 10 feet wide would be drained by the subsoiling on each side of it; but if, in addition to this, the wheat plant derived more nourishment by striking its root deeper into the soil, where that was loosened by the subsoil plough, the crop ought to be better in the subsoiled than in the unsubsoiled part. The field runs over the ridge of a hill, and upon that ridge the soil is so poor and thin, that it was deemed expedient to give it a slight dressing of coal-ashes and night-soil, from an idea that the plant would scarcely survive the winter unless some stimulus were applied there; but the ashes contained little manure, and were only applied to the worst part of the field, covering about one-third of its surface. The wheat was Spalding's Prolific; it came up evenly and well all over the field. It was hand-sowed with lime early in February to the extent of about 24 cwt. of dry lime on the acre. In order to ascertain the value of lime, and the proper quantity, I had the field uniformly covered with it, except one land, which was left entirely without, and the headlands, which had one three, the other six times as much lime put upon them as any other part. The field was also dressed with a chemical manure of the following ingredients on the 16th March, costing:-- L. s. d. 1 1/4 cwt. nitrate of soda 0 17 6 1 " impure sulphate of magnesia 0 5 0 3/4 " silicate of soda 0 11 3 3/4 " common salt 0 2 0 1 1/4 " gypsum 0 2 0 Mixing and applying it, say 0 2 3 Total for statute acre L2 0 0 Speculating on the probability of a dry summer, I gave it an extra quantity of manure, and I think where guano is used afterwards, as it is by me, the nitrate of soda might be dispensed with, which would bring the cost to L1 2s. 6d. per acre. I should prefer guano to nitrate of soda, because of the phosphates contained in the former. At the distance we are from the sea (about thirty miles) it would seldom be necessary to apply common salt, as the gales of winter generally bring as much as is needed; but last winter we had no high winds, and I thought that where salt was applied with other chemical manures, the wheat was more luxuriant than where there was none; but owing to a misunderstanding of the instructions to that effect, the produce was not kept separate. When the chemical manure was applied, one land was left without, for the purpose of comparison. Guano was sowed on the land on the 29th March, at the rate of something less than 2 cwt. to the statute acre, one side of the field being covered with Peruvian, the other with African, and the land on which no chemical manure had been sowed was half of it covered with guano, and the other half left without anything except lime; but as it was thought desirable to ascertain the value of the chemical manure without guano, half of this patch was sowed with the chemical manure in April, after the long drought of the last spring had set in. A small patch was left without manure, to show the natural condition of the field, and to serve as a comparison with the manured part alongside it, and also with the condition of the field when the experiment commenced, 1841-2, when the unmanured portion yielded only 19 2/3 bushels to the acre. This part of the experiment, however, was frustrated by the carelessness of the men who thrashed out the wheat. The crop was a very good one throughout the field, but was evidently shorter and thinner where there was no lime, and also where guano was applied alone. It was best on the headlands where more lime had been applied. The weather was extremely favourable until the wheat was going out of bloom, but it then changed, and the crop was beaten down by the rain, in some places so thoroughly that it never rose again; and from that time to the day it was reaped (21st August), there were not more than six fine warm days. This cold and ungenial weather would, no doubt, materially affect both the quantity and quality of the crop,--the sample only being just fair. On thrashing out the crop, I find the result to be as follows:--Where the guano and chemical manure were applied, but no lime, the yield was 49 1/5 bushels of 60 lbs. per statute acre; where the land was left unsubsoiled, it was 52 1/2 bushels; when guano alone was applied, it was 42 1/3 bushels; where the chemical manure alone was applied, it was 43 1/2 bushels; where the African guano was applied, it was 45 bushels; where the Peruvian was applied, it was 52 2/3 bushels; on the headlands, where three times the quantity of lime (or 3 1/2 tons per acre) was applied, it was nearly 62 bushels; and where six times the quantity of lime (or 7 tons to the acre), it was 49 2/3 bushels. I give this last result as it was ascertained, but do not consider it conclusive, for the wheat plant on this headland looked quite as well as the other, until it went out of bloom, when from some unknown cause it was partially blighted; an irregular patch from a foot to a yard in width and extending almost from end to end of the headland becoming brown and parched, as if affected by lightning or some atmospheric visitation. With the view of making these results a little clearer to the eye, I subjoin the following tabular statement of the produce per acre in the different parts of the field:-- Bushels of 60 lbs. per statute acre. Guano alone 42 1/3 Chemical manure alone 43 1/2 Guano and chemical manure, with 24 cwt. lime to the acre, but land unsubsoiled 52 2/3 Guano and chemical manure, but no lime 49 1/5 African guano and lime 45 Peruvian " " 52 2/3 " " and 3 times as much lime 62 " " and 6 " " 49 2/3 Average crop throughout the field 50 It may be as well to observe, that the total expense of manure, and of its application to that portion of the field which produced sixty-two bushels per acre (including the guano and the additional quantity of lime used), was at the rate of 81s. per statute acre. Deducting the cost of the nitrate of soda, the utility of which, under the circumstances, I am inclined to doubt, it would have been 63s. 6d. I consider these to be very favourable results, and as offering strong inducements to continue the experiment. I have accordingly had the land ploughed up and cleaned; and it was again sowed with wheat on the 9th inst. Having detailed the general results of the experiment, I beg to offer the following remarks upon some points in it, which seem to me to require a little elucidation. I consider the success of this experiment to be in a great measure owing to the use of soluble silica and magnesia; because, although there is an abundance of silica in the soil, my first crop showed very miserable results, the grain being ill-fed and poor, and the straw soft and discoloured, although the year 1842 was, in this district, very favourable for wheat, the month of August being singularly fine and warm; but when I combined the nitrate of soda with sulphate of magnesia, as in experiment No. 1 in 1843, but still more so when I combined it with the silicate of soda, as in No. 3 of that year, the straw became as strong, firm, and bright as need be desired; and this year when both these salts are combined with nitrate of soda, common salt, and gypsum, I have not only good and bright straw, but also an abundant crop of wheat. With respect to the lime used, it may be as well to state that the field had not been limed for many years, and although in a limestone district, showed a deficiency of lime on analysis. The soil is a strong loam, on a brick clay subsoil, in which there is little or no lime, although the stony clays, which form the subsoil in a great part of the district, abound in it, containing from twenty to thirty per cent. of carbonate of lime. I had always believed that lime was used in great excess in this neighbourhood, and had, in fact, an idea that its good qualities were overrated, inasmuch as it does not enter into the composition of the plant, except in very minute proportion; but last winter I saw a paper (by Mr. Briggs of Overton) on the possibility of growing wheat on the same land year after year, in which the utility of lime in preventing rust was incidentally touched upon. I also saw Liebig's letters explaining the action of quicklime in liberating potash from the clay; and then I considered it very important to ascertain the proper quantity to be applied. The quantity required to decompose the phosphate of iron was not great, and assuming Liebig's theory of its action in liberating the potash to be true, it seemed to me that an excess of lime would permanently impoverish the land; for, supposing that the crop required 100 lbs. of potash, and as much lime was applied as liberated 500 lbs., what became of the 400 lbs. which did not enter into the composition of the plant? was not a large portion of this 400 lbs. washed down the drains by the rain, and so lost for ever? Perhaps the absence of lime in this field accounts for its beneficial action in the experiment just detailed; but if my supposition is correct, that any excess of potash which may be liberated from the clay by the use of quicklime (that is, any more than may be required to perfect the crop), is washed down the drains, and thus the land is permanently impoverished by the excessive use of lime, it behoves landed proprietors to ascertain what is required, and they should take care to apply no more than is necessary. This caution is most particularly needed in this neighbourhood, where lime is cheap, and where the opinion is prevalent that the more there is applied the better it is for the land, and where it is common to apply ten or twelve tons to the acre. I have stated above that chemical manure was applied to a small portion of the field after the setting-in of the drought in April. The action of this manure showed that a good thing may be very injurious if applied at an improper time; for, although it produced a stimulating effect on the plant immediately after its application, there was too little moisture in the land to dissolve it thoroughly, and thus enable the plants to appropriate it, until the rain came, about the end of June, when the wheat had been in flower some time; but the stimulus was then so great that all the plants threw up fresh stalks (from the roots), which were in flower when the wheat was cut, and it was then found that they had not only impoverished the plants, but had prevented the grain from ripening. This was the case not only in the experimental field, but in several others also, where the chemical manure was sowed after the setting-in of the drought. When the field was sowed with guano, it was thought desirable to cover one part of it with the African, and the other with Peruvian, for the sake of comparison; but as the African did not appear to produce the same stimulating effect as the other, fifty per cent. more was applied, that the cost might be equal (the Peruvian cost 10s., the African 7s. per cwt.); but as the latter application of the African was made when the wheat was just shooting into ear, the same objection applies to the experiment which does to the chemical manure applied after the drought had set in--viz., that there was not sufficient moisture in the soil to dissolve it thoroughly until the plant was too far advanced to benefit by it; and therefore its failure would be no proof of the value of the African as compared with the Peruvian, which was the object of the experiment. It is true, no bad effects followed the application similar to those produced by the misapplication of the chemical manure in dry weather, yet if soluble salts like the latter did not find sufficient moisture in the ground when applied in April, there is reason to suppose that the former would not do so when applied in May. I regret the failure of the experiment without any manure, as I think the result would have shown satisfactorily that the land is so far from being impoverished by this system of cropping, that it is improving every year. I think, however, that this is shown by the produce of the land manured with guano alone. In the first year's experiment the produce from guano alone was 27 bushels per acre, and both straw and wheat were very indifferent in quality. This year the produce from guano alone is 42 1/3 bushels; and although neither straw nor wheat are so good as upon the adjoining lands, they are both very much better than they were in 1842. It will be observed that the result from the unsubsoiled portion is very good, and if nothing more were said about it, people would be led to conclude that there was no advantage in subsoiling. But this, in my opinion, would be a great mistake; for to say nothing of the advantage which the unsubsoiled portion would derive from the drainage which it received from the subsoiling on each side of it, I found, when the field was ploughed up this autumn, that whilst the unsubsoiled portion was stiff and heavy, the subsoiled part was comparatively friable and loose, like a garden, and will, I expect, show its superiority in the succeeding crops. It must be borne in mind, in reading these experiments, that we have here one of the most unfavourable climates in the kingdom for growing wheat, from the excessive quantity of rain that falls, three times more rain falling annually in the north of Lancashire than at York, and this, no doubt, is very prejudicial to the success of such a series of experiments as I have been detailing. It has been objected to these experiments, that allowing all to have been done which is here detailed, it leads to no important conclusion; for although it may be practicable to grow wheat every year, in a small field like the one experimented on, it is not so on a large scale. But the objectors should remember that there is not the seed of a single weed sowed with the manure; and therefore if the land is thoroughly cleaned, and kept so, by hoeing the crop in the spring, it will require very little labour to fit it for another. But I shall be better able to speak on this head next harvest, having sowed wheat on an oat stubble with once ploughing. It is said there are no weeds in Chinese husbandry, and if they can eradicate them completely, so may we, if we adopt the same methods and follow them up as perseveringly. Again, admitting that it is not practicable to grow wheat on the same land year after year on a large scale, yet if we can double the crop in those years in which we do grow it, by the application of chemical manures (and the same manures are applicable to all cereal crops), will not that be a conclusion worth arriving at? That it is possible to do so, is, I think, sufficiently shown by the results I have obtained. What, then, may we expect when these experiments are infinitely multiplied and varied, under the superintendence of skilful and experienced men, who will devote their whole time and attention to the subject? Will raising the average produce from twenty-five to fifty bushels per acre be the utmost limit to which improvement can be carried? I believe not. In conclusion, I would urge on all owners and occupiers of land, the importance of devoting at least a small field to agricultural experiments, as I think there can be no doubt that, if these are carefully and systematically made and followed up by agriculturists generally, we shall be so far from needing an importation of corn in average years that we shall have a large surplus to spare for our neighbours. NOTE.--In the use of silicates of soda and potash one precaution is very necessary--viz., that you really have a soluble silicate, and not a mere mechanical mixture of ground flint and soda: this is a very different thing, and one, if it be not carefully guarded against, which will lead to nothing but disappointment. Again, the silicate may be properly made in the first place, but in a long exposure to the atmosphere the soda attracts carbonic acid, and the soda is liberated, and this has defeated my expectations more than once. Again, though I consider it desirable to defer the application of it until vegetation has fairly started in the spring, yet, in one instance, I delayed the application of it so long, that there was not moisture to dissolve it until the end of June, and then the wheat began to shoot afresh from the roots and the crop was seriously injured by it: but this was in an exceedingly dry spring, and might not happen again for many years. * * * * * _To the same._ LOW MOOR, _18th December_, 1845. SIR,--I promised to communicate to you the results of my attempt to grow wheat on the same land year after year, this being the fourth crop of wheat (the fifth white crop) grown in successive years on the same soil, and though I consider the crop an indifferent one, I don't think the failure ought in any degree to be attributed to the over-cropping, but to the wetness and coldness of the season, as well as other untoward circumstances hereafter to be mentioned. In a former letter of mine of the 12th October, 1844--which was published in the "Guardian" a few days after--I gave an account of the crop of 1844, which was a very good one, being fifty bushels to the acre throughout the field, and as much as fifty-two bushels in the best part of it. This I considered so satisfactory that I had the field again ploughed up and sowed with wheat on the 9th October, 1844, and it is to the results of this crop that I wish to call your attention. As remarked in my former letter, the field was subsoil ploughed in the autumn of 1843, and this subsoiling was carried to such a depth that most of the drains in the field were more or less injured by it; and although this did no injury to the crop of 1844, owing to the very dry season, yet when the rain came in the winter of 1844, the want of drainage was found to be very prejudicial, and in the wet places large patches of the young wheat went off altogether, and there was a great deficiency of roots in many parts of the field; the long continuance of frost and after that the ungenial weather which continued so long in the spring (of 1845) were also unfavourable, yet with all these drawbacks the appearance of the plant after the growing weather _did_ come, was very promising, and many of my friends predicted that I should have as good a crop as in 1844. On the 24th March I applied chemical manure of the same kind as I had done in 1844, at the rate of about 3 1/4 cwt. to the acre (costing 23s. 6d.), and a fortnight after I had it sowed with 2 cwt. of guano to the acre. When the warm weather came, these manurings seemed to help it wonderfully, and it was, as I have before stated, a very promising crop; but the cold, ungenial weather we had through a great part of the summer, and the continued rain we had whilst the wheat was in flower, destroyed all the former promise: and the manuring with guano, so far from being beneficial, was very injurious--so much so, that I believe every shilling's-worth of it applied to my wheat this year, made the crop a shilling worse than if nothing had been applied; and all ammoniacal manures had the same effect. It may be asked how I know it was the guano, and not the chemical manure. In answer to this inquiry, if made, I may observe, that I supplied two of my neighbours with the chemical manure, and they applied it without guano on very poor land, and they both assert they had never such good crops of wheat before; but everywhere in this neighbourhood, the only good samples of wheat that I saw or heard of were grown on exhausted soil. This appears to me to be a strong proof that chemistry has a great deal to learn before it can adapt its measures to all varieties of seasons, particularly as it cannot know beforehand how the season may turn out. If further proof be required of the injurious effect upon grain crops of ammoniacal manures in general, and of guano in particular, I may mention that in another field of wheat, sowed on the 21st December, and which did not come up until the frost broke, in March (the previous crop having been Swedes), the blade was so yellow and the plant altogether so small and sickly in appearance, that I had it manured with a water-cart from a cesspool in April. This appeared to produce a wonderful improvement immediately, as the plant assumed a deep green and grew very fast, but when it ought to have shot, the heads seemed to stick in the sockets, the blade and straw became mildewed and made no progress in ripening. It was not fit to cut for three weeks after the experimental field, although it was an early white wheat, and the result was a miserable crop--far worse than the experimental field. The instance of injury from the use of guano, I had from a neighbour, who told me he had sowed a patch of oats with it, and that they never ripened at all, and that he was compelled to cut them green as fodder for his cattle. I had a striking proof this season of the much lower temperature required by oats than wheat, when strongly stimulated by manuring. I had gathered an ear of wheat and a panicle of oats the previous season, which seemed to me to be superior varieties; and that they might have every chance, I dibbled them alongside each other in my garden, and determined to manure them with every kind of manure I could procure, as I had an idea that it was not easy to over-manure grain crops, if all the elements entering into the composition of the plant were applied in due proportion to each other, and I also wished to ascertain whether wheat and oats would thrive equally well with the same sort of manuring. I accordingly limed the land soon after the wheat came up, and in March I applied silicate of soda, sulphate of magnesia, gypsum, common salt, and nitrate of soda. A fortnight after this I applied guano, then bones dissolved in sulphuric acid, then woollen rags dissolved in potash (the two latter in weak solution); and the consequence was, that I don't think there was a single grain in the whole parcel--at least I could not find one--the straw was no great length, and the blade much discolored with mildew, whilst the oats were seven feet high, and with straws through which I could blow a pea, and large panicles, although the oat was not particularly well-fed. The inference I have drawn from these experiments is, that as far as is practicable the manuring should be adapted to the temperature, but as this is obviously impossible in a climate like ours, the only way is to rather under than over manure, and to apply no ammoniacal manure to the wheat crop, or at all events very little; for although guano was beneficial to wheat when used in conjunction with silicates, &c. &c. in 1844, yet the injury it did in 1845 may very fairly be set against that benefit. I should feel obliged if any of your readers who may have tried the experiment of manuring grain crops with guano, the last season (1845) would publish the result as compared with a similar crop without such manuring. I feel convinced that such result would be against the use of guano for wheat in 1845. I am the more confirmed in the opinion that ammoniacal manures are unfavourable for wheat, by a series of articles in the "Gardener's Chronicle" on the "Geo-Agriculture of Middlesex," in which the writer states that land in that county which in Queen Elizabeth's time produced such good wheat that it was reserved for her especial use, will now scarcely grow wheat at all, and when that grain is sowed upon it, the straw is always mildewed, and the sample very poor; and this is attributed--and no doubt justly so--to the extensive use of London manure. My crop was only 32 bushels to the acre of 60 lbs. to the bushel; last year the crop, as I have said before, was 50 bushels of the same weight. * * * * * _To the same._ CLITHEROE, _7th March_, 1848. On continuing my attempts to grow wheat on the same land year after year, I observed that the crop of 1845 was very seriously injured by the deficient drainage--the old drains having been destroyed by the subsoil plough. It was therefore necessary to replace them: they were accordingly put in four feet deep. This occupied so much time that the season for sowing wheat had gone by, and the ground was cropped with potatoes, which were got up in September, and the wheat might have been got in early in October. But seeing in your paper that sowing too early was not advisable, and also being carried away by the arguments of the thin-seeders, I deferred sowing until the middle of November, and then put in little seed; and the winter proving very unfavourable, when the wheat was coming up, there was not half plant enough in the spring, and I hesitated whether to plough up the ground or drill in barley. I determined to do the latter, which was done on the 18th April, and wheat and barley grew up together, and when cut and threshed, proved to be equal to 48 bushels to the acre. * * * * * LOW MOOR, _31st December_, 1844. HENRY BRIGGS, ESQ. I duly received your obliging letter in reply to my pamphlet on the growth of wheat year after year on the same land, and now offer my rejoinder to your remarks. You seem to consider the expense is too great under the system pursued by me; and that it was more than was required by the crop, is proved in my opinion by the fact that the fertility of the land is very much augmented since the commencement of the experiment in 1841: as my first crop with guano alone produced only 27 bushels per acre, whilst this year from guano alone the produce was 42 bushels. But still I think that your allowance of manure is far too little, and not exactly what I should apply, and I shall frankly state my objections and opinions, in the hope that they may elicit a reply from you, as it will be from discussion and the experiments instituted to test the various theories propounded, that agriculture will be most materially benefited. You state that Liebig's present theory is, that plants obtain the necessary oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen from the rain and atmosphere, and that the plants merely require the supply of inorganic constituents, and that you are inclined to agree with him. My copy of his work on the Chemistry of Agriculture is his first edition; and I don't know how far he has since modified or altered the opinions therein expressed, which are in some degree at variance with each other. He states that it may be received as an axiom in agricultural chemistry that the nitrogen of the atmosphere is never assimilated by plants, except in the form of ammonia or nitric acid. He certainly states that plants and animals derive their nitrogen from the atmosphere; but why, if this be true, does he attach so much importance to the excrements (particularly urine), of men and animals being husbanded with so much care? and he states that for every pound of urine wasted, a pound of wheat is thrown away. But even if he said it was utterly worthless, every practical farmer who has tried it knows how exceedingly valuable it is. It may be said there are other ingredients in urine besides ammonia, and these are what make it valuable; and in reply to this I would ask what is it that makes the ammoniacal liquor from gasworks so valuable? There are no phosphates or alkalies there, and yet what a powerful stimulant it is. Again, Liebig states that the carbon is derived from the atmosphere; but to say nothing of the argument which might be deduced from the advantage which is derived by plants from having their soil loosened about their roots, the experiments of Dumas and Boussingault prove that a tree which was cut off below the branches expired a large quantity of carbonic acid. It may be asked how I know this was not precipitated by the rain. I don't know; but if the plant would assimilate this, why should it not assimilate that which arises from the decomposition of the carbonaceous matter in the soil? My idea is that it does both, and that carbon in the soil does good if it offers an abundant supply of carbonic acid to the plant when it is in a condition to appropriate it. Your allowance of lime appears to me to be far too small, for if any reliance can be placed on my experiments, lime can be profitably used to far greater extent than you seem to imagine. And, again, you seem to think that where there is plenty of silex in the soil, the plant will be able to obtain as much as it requires. I think that it is quite necessary that the silex should be in a soluble state, as I think that it is not only desirable that all the elements necessary to fertility should be in the soil, but that they should be in such a form that they can be assimilated by the plant. Some of our compounds for producing fertility may perhaps be as absurd as it would be to give muriatic acid to a man troubled with indigestion, because free muriatic acid is found in the stomach of a healthy person. Let me recommend you to try both silex and magnesia in a soluble state, and I think you will be satisfied with the benefit derived from their use. Recurring again to the quantity of manure necessary to grow thirty-six bushels of wheat, I would ask, why limit yourself to so small a crop? The difference in the cost of your manuring a field, and my manuring it, is more than made up by the increase of fourteen bushels of wheat and the corresponding increase of straw, even if the land did not improve every year by the application; and as the seed, rent, labour, and liabilities of the land are the same whether you grow a small crop or a large one, why not have it as large as possible? Again, if I applied far more manure than was necessary, I ought to have had the crop equally good throughout the field; but on the ridge of the hill, where the soil was thin and poor, neither straw nor wheat were so good as they were where it was deeper and richer. My own opinion is, that the plant is never able to extract from the soil all the manure, and therefore it ought to be brought up to a good standard before good crops can be expected. I am not satisfied with any analogy that I can think of, but the best that occurs to me is that of a cloth in a dye- copper. You can never get it to absorb either all or half the colouring matter, and if you don't use far more than is taken up by the cloth, you will never obtain the desired results. Besides, in chemical combinations it is desirable to use far more than the chemical equivalents, or the experiments don't succeed. I perceive that you intend to use guano next year, and that you intend to use it along with the seed. I trust it will not be sowed in contact with either the seed or the quicklime, which you proposed to use in some of your land. The best time I have found for applying guano is in wet weather, just when vegetation is making a start in the spring--say the last week in March, or the first week in April--as I fear a large part of the soluble portion of it would be washed away by the rains of winter. It is true we have had none this winter, but when shall we have such another? Did you ever use woollen rags as manure? They ought to be excellent, as they are almost all albumen, and are, I fancy, to be had at a very moderate price, not far from you. Can you inform me what it is that causes the land to be clover-sick? If it is the abstraction of something from the soil, what is that something? Sir Humphrey Davy said that a dressing of gypsum would prevent it; but clover does not succeed here (even when dressed with gypsum), if sowed every four years. One reason why I think so small a quantity of manure will not succeed, is based on the theory of excrementitious secretion. Decandolle proved that this secretion took place, but he did not succeed in proving that it poisoned the land for a similar crop. I can only reason from analogy, and it does not follow that an analogy drawn from animal life will hold good when applied to plants; but if we were to feed an animal with pure gluten and pure starch, with the proper quantity of phosphates, &c., are we to suppose it would have no excrements? Let this be applied to plants: are we to suppose that the plant assimilates all that is absorbed by its roots and leaves? When that which is absorbed is what would enter into the composition of the plant, is it not more rational to suppose that the inorganic and gaseous constituents only combine in fixed proportions, and that although the plant may absorb a much larger proportion of one than is required, the surplus is discharged excrementitiously, and perhaps may be unfitted for entering into the plant until it has undergone a decomposition? In conclusion, I trust you will pardon my frankness in so boldly canvassing your opinions; but it is in this collision of opinion that the truth will be elicited, and if I judge you aright, it is that you wish to discover whether it harmonizes with your preconceived notions or not. * * * * * LOW MOOR, _1st May_, 1845. HENRY BRIGGS, ESQ. I duly received your pamphlet on the use of lime, for which I am much obliged, and am delighted to perceive that you confirm the idea (expressed in my pamphlet on the growth of wheat every year on the same land) that the excessive use of lime is ultimately injurious to the fertility of the soil to which it is applied. This, coming from a gentleman of your reputation and experience, will, I hope, induce someone capable of performing the experiment to endeavour to ascertain with precision how much lime it is desirable to apply to an acre to give the best results, and with the least waste, assuming that the land contained little or none previous to the experiment; and it would also be desirable to ascertain whether it is better, in an economical point of view, to apply a small quantity every year, or a larger quantity every third or fourth. My own opinion is in favour of the former method, except that it is difficult to get it ploughed in, particularly in wet weather, immediately after spreading (which is essential where you grow wheat on the same land every year) without injuring the feet of the horses. You speak of ten days or a fortnight being necessary to neutralize caustic lime, but our horses had their feet injured by it six weeks after it had been spread on the land, last year, although the weather had been wet almost the whole of the time, say from the beginning of February to the middle of March. You appear to think that lime will replace silica in the wheat plant. Whose authority have you for this? It will be very important to establish this supposition, but I fear it is too good news to be true. On referring to your letter, I find you don't say what I supposed you did, but that the lime liberates the soluble silicates, potash, &c. This may be, and certainly the beneficial effects of lime in growing wheat are not to be explained by any other hypothesis with which I am acquainted. I am this year trying some experiments to ascertain (if I can) the cause of clover- sickness, and I hope to be in a position to say whether your supposition that lime, gypsum, &c. will prevent it, is correct. My experiments so far are opposed to this theory, but it is not very safe or philosophical to draw conclusions from one or two experiments only. I doubt the possibility of making silicate of soda by merely mixing lime, sand, and salt together, as my chemical friends tell me this cannot be accomplished unless the silex and the alkali are fused together. If a soluble silicate of soda can be made in the way you mention, it will be a great saving of expense. Has it been tried? You have no doubt seen a report of the enormous crop of wheat grown in a field in Norfolk last year (90 bushels to the acre), and that the Royal Agricultural Society have determined to have the soil analyzed by Dr. Playfair. This is very desirable, but as Dr. Playfair is more of a lecturing than an analyzing chemist, I think it is very necessary that his analysis should be checked by another, made by the most eminent chemist that Europe can produce, for 90 bushels is so unheard-of a crop, that no expense should be spared which would enable us to ascertain what the soil contained to enable it to produce such a crop, which is the more remarkable as the field seems to have been a good many years under the plough. As your Wakefield Farmers' Club has many wealthy members in it, allow me to hint the desirableness of your undertaking this analysis, which, if properly performed, will be worth a thousand times more than its cost. When you are aware that even Davy missed 16 per cent. of alumina in one of his analyses and that the chemists of the present day don't seem to have detected the potash which exists so abundantly in potato-tops, you will, I think, agree how exceedingly important it is that such analysis should be checked by others, made without any communication between the parties. You speak of an original letter of Liebig's appearing in the "Farmer's Journal." On what subject is it? as I have no means of referring to the periodical in question. Does it throw any light upon the new manure for which he is said to be taking out a patent? You speak of humus and humic acid. What do you understand by humus? as, according to Liebig, humus sometimes means one thing and sometimes another, and he appears to treat it very much as modern chemists treat phlogiston, as something which they don't comprehend, but which they need to explain the phenomena of vegetation. If you are a believer in humus, what is it composed of, and how does it act in forwarding vegetation? I suppose you will reply, By combining with oxygen and forming humic acid. But would not the theory of the decomposition of carbon do quite as well? I don't perceive the injurious effects of quicklime upon grass land which you anticipate in your paper, but the contrary, and the more caustic it is the more beneficial is its action, so far as I can judge from my own experiments; and it is my practice in liming grass land to spread it as soon as I can get it into the state of flour. I shall be glad to hear the result of your electrical experiment--at present I am rather sceptical on the subject. P.S.--Am I to suppose that you have abandoned the idea of manuring an acre of wheat for thirteen shillings? * * * * * THE CULTIVATION OF WHEAT. _October 1st_, 1852. To the Editor of the "Manchester Guardian." The increasing quantity of agricultural produce consumed in this country makes it desirable that the cultivation of the land should be carried to the highest point consistent with profit; and the increasing scarcity of agricultural labourers will shortly render it difficult for the farmers in some districts to gather in their crops. It therefore becomes increasingly desirable that every mechanical contrivance which will facilitate their doing so should be made as perfect as possible; and also that the crops themselves should be so cultivated as to make these mechanical aids to work to the greatest advantage. But it has been a difficult matter (at least in the wet climate of Lancashire) to ascertain how far it is prudent to manure for wheat, for in unfavourable seasons the plant runs so much to straw that it is liable to lodge, and become mildewed; in which cases the manure is not only wasted, but becomes positively injurious, as appears to be the case in the South of England this year, and as was also the case in the North in 1845, when every shilling expended in manuring the wheat crops of that year made the crop at least a shilling worse than if no manure had been applied. But if we could find a wheat so short in the straw that it would bear heavy manuring without being lodged, wheat-growing would be a far less hazardous occupation than it is at present, and we might confidently calculate on a far greater production than we can now. The following appear to me to be some of the advantages of growing a short-strawed wheat:-- 1st. It will bear highly manuring without lodging, and with much less liability to mildew, than a long-strawed wheat. 2nd. The proportion of grain to straw is greater in short than in long-strawed wheat. 3rd. As it very rarely lodges, it will be far better suited to the reaping-machine than a long-strawed wheat; and no doubt other advantages will occur to the minds of experienced agriculturists. When making these assertions I ought to state that my experience of wheat-growing does not extend beyond the counties of York and Lancaster, but from what I can learn of the agriculture of more southerly districts, I fancy these opinions of mine will be found correct even there. I may be asked to prove my assertion, and I will endeavour to do so. I have been experimenting on the growth of wheat for the last ten or eleven years--particularly with reference to the practicability of doing this on the same land year after year; and that I might do it in the most satisfactory manner, I have varied my seed-wheat and my manure very frequently: but I very soon discovered that the advantages of abundance of manure and high cultivation did not insure good crops of wheat, inasmuch as in our moist climate, we had not one summer in five that was favourable, and consequently the crop was generally lodged, and the straw mildewed. I found that the time of sowing, and also of applying the manure, were matters of great importance, and it occurred to me that the remedy would be--a straw so short, that it would not lodge when highly manured. I consequently addressed a query to the "Gardener's Chronicle," asking what was the shortest-strawed variety of wheat known, and was told that Piper's Thickset was so; I therefore got some of this sort from Mr. Piper, which I have cultivated since 1847. It is a coarse red wheat, but the quality has improved with me every year, and this season _being the third successive crop on the same land_, I have nearly eight quarters to the statute acre from this variety. 2. The proportion of wheat in Piper's Thickset is 38 per cent. of the gross weight of the crop; in the Hopetown wheat (I speak of my own crops only), 34 per cent. 3. Not having seen a reaping-machine, it may seem absurd in me to say that short-strawed wheat is better adapted to it than long- strawed; but every report of the working of these machines goes to show that, so far, they are not well adapted to the cutting of laid corn; therefore a variety that always stands upright will be much better suited to the working of them. I have been trying for the last six years to obtain (by cross- breeding) a wheat of good quality, and with a straw shorter than Piper's, but hitherto with indifferent success; but, thanks to the kindness of Messrs. Brownells, of Liverpool, who furnished me with many samples of Chilian wheat about three years ago, I have now got varieties much shorter in the straw than Piper's, and some which appear to be of much better quality, but these will require to be tested for a year or two before I can speak decisively about them. The Chilian varieties are very difficult to acclimatize. The original samples were beautiful white wheats, very much resembling the Australian, but when grown in Lancashire they resemble rye more than wheat, and three years' sowing has not much improved them. It has, however, enabled me to obtain crosses which seem better adapted to the soil and climate, and so short in the straw that the highest manuring produces no tendency to lodge. If we could obtain a variety of wheat of good quality, which, instead of two tons of straw and one of wheat to the acre, produced a ton and a half of each, it might be profitably cultivated, and the differences in the chemical composition of grain and straw are not so very great as to make me despair of this being done some time or other. It may be asked, Where can a short-strawed wheat of good quality be procured? To this I am afraid the reply will be, Nowhere at present. But can none of our expert manipulators, who rejoice exceedingly when they cross-breed a geranium or a fuchsia, turn their attention to the cross-breeding of wheat? Cannot the Royal Agricultural Society offer a premium for a short-strawed wheat of good quality? Do none of the great agriculturists themselves see how desirable such a wheat would be for the agriculture of this country? Apparently not; for with the exception of Mr. Raynbird, of Hampshire, I am not aware of one scientific operator who is endeavouring to produce such a wheat. My own attempts at cross-breeding are such as may be tried by anyone who has sufficient perseverance, and (with one or two exceptions, of doubtful success) have been confined to sowing the different varieties I wished to cross in contiguous drills, and then sowing the produce of these. At the second harvest I carefully select such ears as differ from both varieties, and at the same time seem by their quality of grain and the shortness of their straw to be the best suited to my wishes. It has been, no doubt, to the accidental contact of distinct varieties that we owe the numerous kinds now known to agriculturists, and which differ from each other in colour, quality, yield, and comparative value in the various districts in which they are grown. Fully sensible of my inability to do justice to this important subject, I yet hope (if you do me the honour to publish my letter) that my remarks may induce scientific men to consider it; for it appears unaccountable to me that hitherto they seem to have thought it unworthy of their attention. P.S.--There is still time to try the experiment during the present season. If any gentleman wishes to try the short-strawed Chilian wheat, I shall be glad to give him a sample of it for the purpose of cross-breeding. Samples were sent to Mr. H. Briggs, Mr. Raynbird, and Mr. Stevenson, Stockport. * * * * * _January 27th_, 1848. To the Editor of the "Agricultural Gazette." You invite persons who have grown good crops of grain or turnips to forward you the particulars. I therefore enclose you an account of an attempt which I made to grow wheat on the same land year after year, that account reaching to the fourth white crop in 1844. As I still continue the experiment, I shall be in a position to continue the account up to the present time (as I am now threshing out the last year's crop), and will send it to you if you think it worthy of insertion in the "Agricultural Gazette." If the account I now send is not worth inserting, please to send it to your correspondent A. W., who doubted whether there were authenticated instances of land producing eighty, seventy, or even fifty bushels to the acre. I attribute my success in growing wheat to the use of silicate of soda, and yet, singularly enough, until now I have been unable to induce anyone else to try it. This season, however, several persons have applied to me to procure it for them. Among them is the talented editor of the "Liverpool Times," whose farm at Barton Moss shows what good management will accomplish on very unpromising soils. If, as I hope will be the case, the silicate of soda should supply to peat its greatest deficiency, no one will more readily discover it than Mr. Baines. In the use of silicates of soda and potash, one precaution is very necessary, namely, that you really have a soluble silicate, not a mere mechanical mixture of ground flint and alkali. This is a very different thing, and one which, if it be not carefully guarded against, will lead to nothing but disappointment. Again, the silicate of soda may be properly made, in the first instance, but in a long exposure to the atmosphere, the soda attracts carbonic acid, and is liberated from the silex, and this has disappointed my expectation more than once. Again, though I consider it desirable to defer the application of soluble silicates until vegetation has made a fair start in the spring, yet in one instance I delayed the application of it so long that there was not moisture to dissolve it until the end of June, and then the plant began to send up suckers from the roots, and the crop was seriously injured by it; but this was in an exceedingly dry spring, and may not happen again for many years. * * * * * CLITHEROE, _March 7th_, 1848. In continuing my attempts to grow wheat on the same land year after year, I observed that the crop of 1845 was very seriously injured by the deficient drainage--the old drains having been destroyed by the subsoil plough. It was therefore necessary to replace them; they were accordingly put in four feet deep. This took up so much time, that the season for sowing wheat had gone by, and the ground was cropped with potatoes, which were dug up in September, and the wheat might have been got in early in October; but seeing in your paper that sowing too early was not advisable, and also being carried away by the arguments of the thin-seeders, I deferred sowing until the middle of November, and also put in little seed, and the weather proving very unfavourable when the wheat was coming up, there was not half plant enough in the spring, and I hesitated whether to plough up the ground or to drill in barley. I determined to do the latter. It was put in on the 18th April, and wheat and barley grew up together, and when cut and threshed, it yielded 48 bushels to the acre. * * * * * ON THE GRAVELLING OF CLAY SOILS. There is an old story of a man, who, having a very stony field, determined to experiment on the value of these stones in the growth of his crops. With this view he divided his field into three equal parts. From No. 1 he gathered all the stones, which he spread upon No. 3, leaving No. 2 in its original condition. He then sowed barley over the whole field, and carefully noted the results. The story ends by saying that No. 1 bore a miserably poor crop, No. 2 a tolerable one, and No. 3 a splendid one. I quote this story as a text on which I wish to speak as to the advantage of gravelling heavy clay soils. Some weeks since I spent a few days at the village of Milnthorpe, in Westmoreland, and during one day with Mr. Hutton, the celebrated bone-setter, I remarked that the land was very stony, being covered with stones (not pebbles) having very much the appearance of road metal. He replied, that these stones were essential to the fertility of the soil, and said that some years before there was a great demand for such material in the neighbourhood of Preston, and the high prices stimulated the farmers to gather these stones from their land, and send them to Preston; but the consequences were so injurious to the growth of their crops, that they were compelled--at least those who had the means of doing so--to lead stones again upon their land before their crops would grow again with the vigour which they had before the stones were abstracted. This brought to mind what had occurred in my own farm practice. A church was built in the neighbourhood, and the stones for it were hewn on the corner of a field which was afterwards sown with wheat, and I remarked that the straw was much brighter, the ripening was forwarded ten days, and the sample was much better where the stones had been hewn than elsewhere in the field. (The stones of which the church was built were of ordinary sandstone, probably millstone grit.) Borrowing from this hint, I had the field covered with about 400 cartloads of alluvial gravel (from the bed of the river) to the acre, and the land was then ploughed two furrows deep, one plough following the other. Previous to this gravelling, the land was a stiff, obdurate clay nearly to the surface. The subsequent effect was the doubling, or more probably trebling the value of the land, which has now become a nice friable soil. I was much amused with the criticisms of some of the neighbouring farmers (men of the old school), one of whom remarked that he had seen land tilled (manured) in various ways before my time, but until now he had never seen a field tilled with cobble-stones. I said, "What is your objection to it, John?" "Why, ye see, it makes th' land so poor." I replied, "Making anything or anybody poor, means robbing them of something. If you had twenty shillings in your pocket, and I filled it up with these cobble-stones, how much poorer would you be? Of what have I robbed this field by putting gravel into it?" "Why, of nothing; but it looks so queer." I said, "John, did you never hear of a man gathering the stones off his field, and then having to lead them back again?" "Yes, I have; but then they were _natural_ to the soil." I said, "What does manuring land mean, but putting something into it of which it is deficient? You don't till a muck-midden. If in stony land stones are essential for the vigorous growth of the crop, is it not exceedingly probable that they will be still more beneficial on stiff land which has no stones in it?" This is a doctrine I tried many years since to inculcate upon our friend Mechi, and some of his land (I speak of its condition twenty years since) needed such a gravelling as much as any land I ever saw. Whether he adopted my suggestion, or his land remains in the same condition now as then, I don't know; but if it does, I would just suggest to him and to all landed proprietors who own stiff clay lands, if they are near to gravel-pits, to try a small portion by gravelling it freely, and let us hear the results. _December 2nd_, 1871. * * * * * COTTON. _June 1st_, 1842. J. KINDERMANN, ESQ. I have for some time intended to call your attention to the importance of attempting to grow fine cotton in Peru, but my inability to do justice to the subject, both from my being practically unacquainted with any mode of growing cotton and my general want of information, has hitherto prevented me; but as I made you a promise to that effect yesterday, I have endeavoured to put a few suggestions on paper, and hope that if they be carefully acted upon, some benefit may be derived from the experiments. We have been (as you are aware) consumers of Peruvian cotton to some extent for the last six or eight months, and from the observations I have made on it during that time, I have no hesitation in saying that it possesses many excellences: it is long enough (almost too long), very sound in staple, and where well managed of a very good colour. Its defects are coarseness and harshness of staple, and if these could be removed I don't see what is to prevent its rivalling the Egyptian and Sea Islands cotton, any considerable approximation to which would very materially enhance its value, seeing that the highest quotation for Sea Island, was last week 30d. per lb. (2s. 6d.), whilst the highest for Peruvian was no more than 6 1/2 d. With the view of improving the quality of the cotton in Peru, I would strongly recommend you to send seeds of various kinds, packed in air-tight boxes, particularly Sea Island and Egyptian, which some of the cotton-brokers would easily procure from the spinners using these descriptions, and, judging from what I hear of the climate of both countries, I should think the Egyptian would go to a very similar atmosphere and mode of cultivation to that of the country where it had been raised, which would probably render it more easy to acclimatize, and, of course, make it more likely to succeed than a sort of cotton which had been grown under dissimilar circumstances of soil, climate, and mode of cultivation. These seeds when sown, ought (with the exceptions hereafter to be mentioned) to be planted at such a distance from all other cottons as to render it very unlikely for the wind or insects to carry the pollen from the flowers of one kind to those of another; for without this precaution, such is the tendency in many genera of plants to hybridize (and I believe, from what I have heard, there is this tendency in the different varieties of cotton) or cross- breed with each other, that, however good the quality in the first instance, they would all revert to the old variety in a year or two in consequence of the great preponderance of that variety over any newly-introduced ones. So much are the growers of turnip-seed for sale in England aware of the importance of attending to this, that the greatest precautions are taken to remove all _cruciform plants_ from the vicinity of the field whilst their turnips are in flower, as there is such a tendency in them all to hybridize that the quality of the seed is often injured by the wild mustard (_Sinapis arvensis_) springing up in the same or the adjoining fields; whilst, on the other hand, by carefully selecting the best bulbs for seed, and by judiciously crossing one variety with another, new sorts are obtained, combining the excellences of both. This leads me to observe, that probably seed of foreign varieties of cotton may not thrive well in the first instance, and I would therefore strongly recommend the gentlemen who may make the experiment carefully to select seed from the plants on their estates which they see are growing the best and finest cotton, and sow them in contact with a few seeds of each of the sorts you may send out, carefully removing them in every instance as far as may be practicable from the vicinity of all other cotton; and then again sowing the seeds which are obtained from the plants thus raised in contiguity to each other, and carefully examining the cotton grown upon each of them, it is more than probable they will find that _some_ of the plants will be varieties partaking of the character of both the parent kinds, and by selecting the best of these and sowing them only (still apart from all other cotton), there is little doubt that much benefit will be derived by the persevering and skilful cultivator. I have heard it stated that the origin of Sea Island cotton is to be traced to something of this kind. An observing and experimental planter, by carefully examining his cotton, and by sowing his seed only from those plants that produced the finest and longest staple, at last arrived at the excellent quality which is now known by that name. Look, again, at what has been done in Egypt by the introduction of better varieties of cotton. There these improved varieties have by no means had a fair chance of showing what they are capable of becoming, inasmuch as the wretched cultivator has not the slightest inducement to improve their quality--he gets no more per pound for the finest and cleanest cotton than he does for the coarsest and dirtiest, and therefore it is not very likely to improve under his care. But with all this neglect and want of management, we can see by what it is, what it would most probably become in the hands of an enterprising and intelligent man who knew that every improvement he made in its quality would be to his own advantage. Assuming that your Peruvian friends could so far improve the quality of their cotton as to double its value in this market (and I don't think myself too sanguine in expecting more than this), with very little extra labour nearly all the additional price would be profit. But supposing even that cross-breeding, or hybridizing, as the horticulturists call it, does not frequently occur naturally in cotton, it is well known that it is very easy to effect it artificially by prematurely unfolding the petals and with fine scissors cutting away all the stamens before impregnation takes place. This requires to be carefully done, so as not to injure the petals, and they will then close again of themselves, and when they expand naturally, then impregnate the stigma of the flower with the pollen of the kind you want to cross with. We owe many of our finest varieties of fruits to this practice. The late Mr. Payne Knight was very successful in raising new varieties of many sorts of fruit in this way, and it appears to me from the experiments I have made that the more frequently this cross- breeding takes place, the more easy (within certain limits) is it to extend it until cultivation has so completely changed the character of the plant that it bears very little resemblance to its original stock. There is nothing growing wild like our cabbages, turnips, and cauliflowers; nor even like our carrots, celery, and asparagus. Where are the originals of our wheat, barley, rye, beans, and peas? Many of these appear to be so completely transformed by cultivation that we don't know where to look for the parent stocks from which they originated. But I am forgetting cotton altogether, yet beg to refer to the preceding paragraph to show how much is owing to careful cultivation, and trust that it may not be without its use if my letter induces your friends to make the experiments here suggested, even though their first attempts are unsuccessful. This letter was translated into Spanish and circulated in Peru, but with what success I do not know. It was also published in the "Gardener's Chronicle," and led to a reply from Dr. Royle, which occasioned the following letter. * * * * * _August 14th_, 1845. To the Editor of the "Gardener's Chronicle." I am very glad that my letter and your remarks on the improvement of cotton in India have attracted the attention of so able a correspondent as G. F. R. (Dr. Royle), who appears to be conversant with a good deal of what has been attempted there. No doubt there are, as he states, great diversities of soil and climate in so extensive a country as India; and if so, although there may be some which are not adapted to the growth of either the _Gossypium Barbadense_ or the _Gossypium Peruvianum_, there must be both soil and climate suited to them in various localities in that country. My chief reason for suspecting that the injury arises from the new kinds hybridizing with the indigenous cotton, is, that very good cotton has been grown from both varieties in the first generation, but when the seed from this first crop is sown again, the quality always deteriorates (at least all the gentlemen say so with whom I have conversed on this subject). I have a sample of Indian-grown cotton of excellent quality from Pernambuco seed, worth twice as much as the best Surat cotton I ever saw; but I cannot learn that anything deserving the name of aught but a sample was ever obtained. We hear of no increase in the quantity of this improved variety; it does not--like cotton in the United States--go on from ten bags to ten thousand, in eight or ten years; on the contrary, so far as I can learn, it dwindles away to nothing. The Tinnivelly cotton brought forward as an example by your correspondent is no exception to this--it is no more like Bourbon cotton, than Bowed cotton is like Sea Island--at least none that I ever saw. Bourbon is a long, silky-stapled cotton, whilst Tinnivelly has the shortness and inequality of fibre common to most of the cotton of India. It is generally much cleaner than the cotton grown on the western side of India, but this arises from the greater care in picking it. An intelligent friend of mine, now in India, says that the pod of cotton is overhung by a brown leaf (bractea?), and if the cotton is gathered early in the morning, whilst the dew is on the plant, this leaf is tough and does not break, and the cotton is gathered clean; but if it is picked after the dew has evaporated, this leaf is brittle, and gets mixed with the cotton in the picking. But he says that no persuasion can induce the ryots to keep that which is picked in the morning from that which is gathered in the heat of the day. He also suggests that the cotton should be irrigated during its growth, and alleges as a motive for doing this, that in Egypt and Peru no good cotton can be grown without resorting to it. But the cases are not exactly parallel, inasmuch as no rain falls in either of these countries, whilst rain is most abundant in India, eighty or ninety inches of rain sometimes falling at Bombay in three months during the monsoon. Another intelligent gentleman with whom I have conversed on this subject since my former letter was written, and who has resided at Bombay many years, where he has paid much attention to this subject, tells me that the gentleman entrusted by the East India Company with the management of one of the experimental cotton estates, assures him he has grown excellent Orleans cotton, and that the ryots were so satisfied with its superiority over the indigenous kind that 1,200 begahs (say 300 acres) were planted with it. But this was two years ago, and as the disturbances took place in this very neighbourhood, he fears these plantations have perished, as he heard no more of the matter, and had omitted to inquire of the gentleman entrusted with the management. I reserved this until I saw the second letter from your correspondent G. F. R., which I have now read, as well as an article on the same subject in the "Manchester Guardian," in which it is stated that 20,000 acres are now under cultivation, planted with this improved cotton. I fear this is too good news to be true. My informant is a gentleman who was in correspondence with Mr. Mercer, the superintendent of these cotton estates, or some of them, and I have again questioned him. He says that the crop which would be gathered in March last, would amount to what I have stated (1,200 begahs), according to Mr. Mercer's letter to him, but he says it is now twelve months since he heard from Mr. Mercer, as he left Bombay for England shortly after. His fear was that none of this cotton would be gathered, as the disturbances which took place in Central India, and which required so long a time to quell them, were in this very district. If your correspondent G. F. R. has got samples of this improved cotton, of the second or third generation, he would confer a great obligation upon me by sending me a small sample of it by post. But this is wandering from what I intended to say, which was most heartily to thank your correspondent for his second communication, which goes far to prove the truth of what I had previously supposed, that the cotton of India is capable of great improvement by being judiciously crossed with suitable foreign varieties. Your correspondent thinks if the old varieties deteriorate the new when growing in proximity to each other, the new ought, for the same reason, to improve the old; and no doubt they will, but to a much smaller extent. It is said that a man leaping up into the air attracts the earth (proportionately) as much as the earth attracts him, and it may be so with the old and new cotton. What I mean to say is, that although some of the old sort of cotton might be hybridized by the new, the improved variety would be in so small a quantity that a thousand to one the cultivator would never observe it; and such is the aversion or indifference to anything new among the natives of India, that if an improved plant were observed, it is again a thousand to one he would take no pains to preserve it; and if he did, it is again perhaps a thousand to one that it would be entirely spoilt in the next generation by being planted among the indigenous sorts. I trust your correspondent will continue to favour us with his communications whenever he has any fresh information on the subject, which, the more it is considered the more important it seems to be. * * * * * PAPERS ON NATURAL HISTORY. * * * * * WRENS' NESTS. THE Editor of Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," and one of his contributors, Mr. Jennings, were of opinion that the common Wren never lined its nest with feathers. The following contribution was sent to the "Magazine of Natural History" in consequence of this, and led to some discussion afterwards:-- _April 17th_, 1829. Mr. Jennings and yourself, in opposition to Montagu, are of opinion that the Wren never lines its nest with feathers; like the knights of the gold-and-silver shield, both sides are right. It is true, many Wrens' nests may be found in which there are no feathers; but did you ever find either eggs or young ones in them? As far as my observations go, the nest in which the Wren lays its eggs is profusely lined with feathers; but during the period of incubation, the male--apparently from a desire to be doing something--constructs several nests in the vicinity of the first, none of which are lined; and whilst the first nest is so artfully concealed as to be found with difficulty, the last is very often seen. The Wren does not appear to be very careful in the selection of a site for these cock-nests, as they are called in Yorkshire by the schoolboys. I have frequently seen them in the twigs of a thick thorn hedge, under banks, in haystacks, in ivy bushes, in old stumps, in the loopholes of buildings, and in one instance in an old bonnet, which was placed among some peas to frighten away the blackcaps. * * * * * _August 15th_, 1831. TO PROFESSOR RENNIE. In your edition of Montagu's "Ornithological Dictionary," just published, you say--speaking of the Wren--"An anonymous correspondent of Loudon's 'Magazine of Natural History,' &c. &c.;" and you remark, "There can be no doubt of these supposed 'cock- nests' being nothing more than unfinished structures of paired birds; otherwise, the story would require the support of very strong evidence to render it credible." As I am the anonymous correspondent alluded to, I forward you a few observations of facts tending, as I think, to confirm my view of the question. In the first place, these nests are far too abundant for the birds, which are not plentiful--at least, in this neighbourhood. Again, it is at least five to one that any Wren's nest which is found during the summer without a lining of hair or feathers is ever completed, or has any eggs in it. This I have verified in a hundred instances, when, having found Wrens' nests, I have visited them again at intervals, for the purpose of ascertaining whether my opinion of cock-nests was correct. Farther, in a small wood adjoining my garden, where I was certain there was only one pair of Wrens, I found at least half-a-dozen nests, not one of which was either lined with feathers or ever had eggs in it; although I discovered they were not all deserted, as I found an old bird roosting in one of them. I was induced to be more particular in my remarks in consequence of my seeing Mr. Jennings's remarks in the "Magazine of Natural History;" and I searched, as I supposed, every bank, bush, and stump in the wood two or three times before I could find the breeding-nest, which I at last discovered in the twigs of a willow on the bank of the river, in the centre of a bunch of tangled grass, cotton waste, and straws which had been left there by the floods, and which the bird had apparently excavated and in it formed its nest, which was profusely lined with rooks' feathers. The fear of being thought tedious prevents my giving other facts which tend, as I think, to prove the correctness of my opinion; however, I will just add that all the persons with whom I have conversed who take an interest in such pursuits, agree with me in opinion in this matter. The nest I have just spoken of was also a strong proof that Wrens, although they may not always adapt their materials to the locality they have chosen for a nest, frequently do so; and if this is not with the intention of concealing it, but merely because the materials are at hand, it serves the purpose of concealment also, and very effectually. The one I am speaking of was so exactly like the other lumps of rubbish which had been left by the floods in the same bush, that I did not discover that it was a Wren's nest until I had pulled it out of the twigs; and if a Wren builds its nest in a haystack--which it frequently does--the front of the nest is almost invariably composed of the hay from the stack, which prevents its being seen much more effectually than if the moss of which the body of the nest is composed were visible on the outside. The fact that the long-tailed tits occasionally associate to the number of six or seven, and have a nest in common, which is mentioned in the same page of the "Magazine of Natural History" as the Wrens' nests, I could prove by the testimony of twenty people who saw the nest and young there spoken of. I should be glad to learn whether the same thing has been noticed by other people. Among the few rare birds which it has been my good fortune to procure is a Woodpecker, which I killed this summer, and which is not mentioned in your edition of Montagu, although spoken of by Bewick as a dubious species, under the name of the Middle Spotted Woodpecker. A pair of these birds had built their nest, or rather hatched their young (for there was no nest), in a hole in a decayed ash tree about twenty feet from the ground. There were two young ones, which I secured, as well as one of the old ones, and they are all in the possession of a professional friend of mine, who is a collector of ornithological specimens. The old one measures 9 1/2 inches long, and weighed 46 1/2 dwts. an hour after it was killed. The forehead is a dirty buff, the whole crown of the head a bright crimson; the irides a dark lead colour, and it has a white ring round its neck. In other respects it corresponds with your description of the _Picus major_. The sex was not ascertained. The young ones have also the bright crimson head, and differ very materially from the old one. The Chevy Linnet, as the lesser Redpole is called, is found here throughout the year, and is at no time a scarce bird with us. It frequently builds its nest in the alder and willow bushes, on the banks of the brooks or rivers. It is a late breeder, the nests being often met with containing eggs or young in July. In the winter it feeds upon the seeds of the alder or the cones of the larch, hanging suspended from the twigs like the titmouse. We have also the Gray Wagtail (_Motacilla sulphurea_) with us the whole year, but it is rather a rare bird at all times and in all localities with which I am acquainted. (1853:--It is more plentiful now than it was in 1831.) I very strongly suspect Selby is mistaken when he says, "that previous to its departure in September, it assembles in small flocks or families, which haunt the meadows or bare pastures." This does not agree with my observations of this bird, although quite true when applied to the Spring Wagtail (_Motacilla flava_); on the contrary, the Grey Wagtail is solitary throughout the year, except in the breeding season, and never frequents the meadows, but is found in the beds of the rivers, brooks, or ditches, where its shrill note often betrays it to eyes which would otherwise never see it. This bird may be easily distinguished from the Spring Wagtail by its note when flying--yet, notwithstanding the difference is very apparent to a person who hears them both, it is not so easily described. In attempting to do so, therefore, I hope I shall be excused if I don't make the difference so apparent in the description as it is in reality. The latter part of the note of the Grey Wagtail when flying is higher in the musical scale than the former part, and is very staccato, thus: [BAR OF MUSIC] generally being uttered as the bird makes a spring in the air, [10] whilst the latter part of the note of the summer-bird is lower in the scale than the former part, which is more prolonged than in the note of the Grey Wagtail, and is slurred into the latter part, something in the following manner: [BAR OF MUSIC] Of course I don't mean it to be understood that these notes are either of the same pitch, or that they bear the same relation to each other that the notes of the bird do, but as a rude attempt at illustrating what I could not explain in any other way. A singular habit which I have noticed in several individuals of this species (_M. sulphurea_) has amused me exceedingly. They were in the habit of looking at their own images in the windows and attacking them, uttering their peculiar cry, and pecking and fluttering against the glass as earnestly as if the object they saw was a real rival instead of an imaginary one (a friend who observed it, insisted that, Narcissus-like, it was in an ecstasy of self-admiration). What is more remarkable, two of these instances occurred in the autumn, when one would not suppose the same motives for animosity to exist that would probably actuate them in the spring. The first of these instances was when I was a boy, and was repeated daily for several weeks, both against the windows of my father's house and those of our neighbour, who, being rather superstitious, was alarmed about it, and came to consult my mother on the subject. She said there was a bird which her brother told her was a barley-bird (_Motacilla flava_), which was continually flying against her windows, and as birds were not in the habit of doing so generally, she thought something serious was portended by it. My mother comforted her as well as she could, and I undertook to rid her of the annoyance, which I did by setting a horsehair- noose on one of the window-ledges which it frequented. I soon caught it, and by plucking out the under-tail coverts, with which I wanted to dress _yellow duns_, I effectually cured it of the propensity--whether, Narcissus-like, it was in an ecstasy of self- admiration, or like the cock which attacked its own image in the boot (which Mr. Robert Warren's poet and painter have immortalized), it would admit of no rival. It has been suggested, and I think with great probability, that the bird was merely attempting to catch the flies which it saw on the inside of the panes of glass; but certainly it was not so silent about it as these birds generally are when they are feeding. * * * * * THE LONG-TAILED TITMOUSE. To the Editor of "Loudon's Magazine." Some years ago, when my brother and myself were seekers of birds' nests, we found one of the Long-tailed Titmouse (_Parus caudatus_), about two miles from home, containing young ones half- fledged. Being anxious to rear them, we hit upon the plan of catching the old ones, and giving them the trouble instead of ourselves. We accordingly set lime-twigs near the nest, and caught six old ones out of the seven of which the colony consisted, and brought them away in triumph; but the old ones would not eat in confinement, and all died but one, which we allowed to escape, in the hope that it would come back and rear the young ones. This it did, and by the most unwearied exertion reared the whole brood, sometimes feeding them ten times in a minute. Never having seen this social habit stated in any ornithological work to which I have access, I am not aware that it is generally known to naturalists; but it is right to state that I have only found one nest of the species since, and this my avocations would not permit me to examine. I am therefore not aware whether the fact I have stated was an exception to the general habit of the bird, or whether such is invariably the case. Some of your correspondents will, no doubt, be able to give an answer to this inquiry. * * * * * IDENTITY OF THE GREEN WITH THE WOOD-SANDPIPER. To the Editor of the "Magazine of Natural History." The question whether the Green and the Wood-Sandpiper are the same species seems from Rennie's edition of Montagu's "Ornithological Dictionary" to be undecided; but as a specimen has just come under my notice which appears to me to clear up this difficulty, I shall offer no apology for sending a description of it. The length from the bill to the tail is 10 inches, to the end of the toes, 11 3/4 inches; breadth, 17 inches; thigh-joint to the toe, 5 1/2 inches. The bill measures 1 5/8 inches from the corner of the mouth, and is very slender; the upper mandible, which is black and slightly curved at the point, is a little longer than the lower one, which is a dark green at the base and black at the point; a dark streak extends from the base of the upper mandible to the corner of the eye, and above it is a patch of dirty white intermixed with minute dusky spots; a small circle of dirty white surrounds the eyes; the chin is white; the cheeks, throat, and forepart of the neck white, spotted with dusky, with which colour a few laminae of each feather are marked their whole length. The breast has a dappled stripe of the same colour as the throat running down the middle of it; with this exception it is white, as are also the belly, vent, and under tail-coverts. The crown of the head and hinder part of the neck are a dingy brown, which on the neck has a shade of ash colour; the bend of the wing and lesser wing-coverts are a brownish black; the whole upper surface of the plumage is of a glossy brownish-green, which is spotted on the middle wing-coverts with minute white spots, that change to a dingy yellow on the back, scapulars, and tertials, the last of which have twelve spots on the outer margin of the feathers, and six on the inner one; the tertials are very long, the longest of them reaching to within a quarter of an inch of the extreme top of the wing, which reaches to the end of the tail; the quill feathers are wholly black, as are also the secondaries; the upper part of the rump is black, and each feather is slightly tipped with white, which forms small wavy lines on that part of the plumage; the lower part of the rump and upper tail-coverts are pure white; the tail, which is even at the end, consists of twelve feathers, which are barred with black and white alternately. At the end of Bewick's description of the Green Sandpiper there is a very exact representation of a covert feather of the tail, and an inner-wing covert, which will give a better idea of their appearance than a page of letterpress. The legs are dark green, the outer toe connected with the middle one by a membrane as far as the first joint; toes very slender, middle one 1 1/4 inch long; weight, 2 3/4 oz. Killed on the 17th September, 1831, near Stonyhurst. I have been thus minute in my description from a wish to clear up the doubt that appears to exist as to the identity of these two birds. The one I have now before me is, undoubtedly, the Green Sandpiper of Bewick, but it corresponds in so many particulars with the Wood Sandpiper of Montagu, and appears to combine so many of the peculiarities of both without exactly agreeing with either, that I think it proves their identity satisfactorily. The glossy green of the upper plumage and the barring of the under wing- coverts and the tail identify this bird with the Green Sandpiper; whilst on the other side the yellowish spots on the scapulars and tertials, the black rump, the length of the leg, and the web between the outer and middle toes are characteristic of the Wood Sandpiper of Montagu. * * * * * THE STOAT. I. M. (in the "Magazine of Natural History") says that the Stoat is more timid than the weasel, and that it does not change its colour as in the more northern parts of the world. I know not why he calls it timid, even relatively, as I think it is the most fearless wild animal we have in the kingdom, in proof of which I will mention an incident I witnessed myself. I one day saw a Stoat carrying off a large rat it had killed, and I immediately pursued it, but it stuck so tenaciously to its prey (although it was so encumbered with its load as to be scarcely able to run at all) that I was close upon it before it would abandon it; however, it then took refuge in a wall that happened to be close by. I took up the rat, and the Stoat put its head out of the wall, spitting and chattering with every appearance of the most lively indignation against me for having so unjustly robbed it of a lawful prize. I amused myself with watching it for some time, and then being desirous of seeing how far its evident desire to recapture its booty would overcome its fear of me, I held the rat just before the hole in which it was, when after several attempts, in which its discretion got the better of its valour, it at length screwed up its courage to the sticking-place, came boldly out of the wall, and dragged it out of my hand into the hole. I know not in what county I. M. lives, nor do I know whether he means to include any part of England in the more northern parts of the world, but I do know that the Stoat is white in the winter in Yorkshire, as I have caught and still more frequently seen specimens of this colour. * * * * * THE MARSH TITMOUSE. I have been much interested this spring at witnessing in two or three instances the tenacity with which the Marsh Titmouse sits on its nest. Being in a wood near my own house, I perceived a pair of these birds in one of the trees, and having seen them in the same place several times before, and being desirous of finding the nest, I sat down to watch their motions. After examining me on all sides with much chattering and many gesticulations, indicative of dislike and suspicion, the female flew to the root of a tree, three or four yards off, and disappeared, as she had gone to the opposite side of the tree to that on which I sat; and as there were several holes about the root I was at a loss to know in which the nest was built, and began to strike the root with a stick, expecting her to fly out, but nothing appeared. I then examined the holes one by one, and whilst doing so heard her hissing and puffing from within, in such a way that if I had not known she was there I should have thought it was a snake rather than a bird. However, as she would not come out, and the hole was so small that I could not get my hand in, I was obliged to raise the siege until next morning, when I returned armed with a hammer and chisel with which to storm her citadel. As the wood was sound, the hole small, and the nest six or eight inches within the tree, I was five or ten minutes before I could get to it, during which I gave her repeated opportunities of escaping if she chose; but she still sat on her nest, puffing and pecking at the stick that I thrust in in order to drive her off. She at last crept to the further edge of the nest, which I then took out, as I wanted it for one of my friends who is a collector of eggs, but on attempting to blow one I found they had been sat upon too long, and I then felt desirous of seeing whether the old bird would hatch them after having her nest torn from under her, and I turned back to the tree whence I had taken them, and found her still sitting in the hole where I had left her. I regret to add that the humane part of my experiment did not succeed, for although she remained after I had returned the nest to its place, she left it immediately after, and did not return to it again. Another instance which I witnessed was in a nest containing young ones. This was also at the root of a tree, but the situation did not appear to be so well chosen as is usually the case with the Titmouse tribe; for in this instance the hole went quite through the tree, and on one side was large enough to admit the hand. As the young ones were exposed to the weather, and were also liable to be seen by anyone going along the adjoining footpath, I attempted to remedy this defect by covering the larger hole with a sod, which to a casual observer would appear to have grown there. On taking the sod off one day, to see how the nestlings were going on, I perceived that a clod of earth had fallen from the sod upon them, and I took a stick and hooked it out, lest it should smother them. Whilst I was doing this I perceived the old one sat on the further side of the nest, so still and quiet that until I perceived her eye I fancied she was dead; and she also endured several pokings with the stick before she would move, although the hole on the opposite side of the tree enabled her to escape whenever she thought proper. Perhaps Mr. Rennie, in his next edition of Montagu's Dictionary, will give us a new name for this bird, as the one it has at present is no more applicable to this species than it is to the _Parus caeruleus_, or the _Parus major_, and not half so much so as it would be to the _Parus biarnicus_; and he has changed good names into bad ones with far less reason, witness _Corvus frugilegus_ into _Corvus predatorius_. The former name is strictly applicable to that species, and to that alone; and so useful a bird does not deserve the name of a thief. The Chaffinch (which received its name of _Coelebs_ from Linnaeus on account of the males alone remaining in Sweden in the winter, which fact is corroborated by White, who found scarcely any but females in Hampshire during that season) has had its name changed by Mr. Rennie into _Spiza_. The old name is characteristic of a remarkable fact in the habits of this bird; why the new one is more appropriate (neither understanding Greek, nor having read Aristotle), I cannot say. Will Mr. Rennie condescend to enlighten me? Once for all--if we are to have a new nomenclature, let a committee of able naturalists decide upon it, or let us submit to the authority of a master (for instance Linnaeus or Temminck), but don't let every bookmaker who publishes a work on Natural History, rejecting names long established and universally received, give new ones in such a way as serves only to show his own presumption and to confuse what it ought to be his business to elucidate. * * * * * CREEPER. The Nuthatch does not occur in this, and I doubt if in any part of Lancashire, but the Creeper is very common, and is a bird with the habits and peculiar call of which I have been acquainted from my childhood. Mr. Bree, who combines with accurate and extensive information, an amiable and pleasant manner of communicating it, has not, I perceive, witnessed the Creepers associating with the Titmice in winter, at which I am rather surprised, and think if they are numerous in his neighbourhood, he will hereafter not fail to perceive them among the small flocks of Titmice which associate through the winter. * * * * * WRENS' NESTS. In Mr. Rennie's edition of Montagu's Dictionary, and also in his "Architecture of Birds," after copying what I have said on the subject of Wrens' nests being lined with feathers, he says:-- "There can be no doubt, I apprehend, of these supposed cock-nests being nothing more than the unfinished structures of paired birds; otherwise the story would require the support of strong evidence to render it credible." Mr. Rennie afterwards goes on to say that in two instances he had seen nests which had about half-a-dozen feathers interwoven into the linings with hair; and Mr. Jennings, if I recollect aright, as I have not the work to refer to at present, says that Wrens don't line their nests with anything but moss, and he thinks Montagu is in error when he says they are lined with feathers. Along with this I send you three or four Wrens' nests, which you will perceive have abundance of feathers in the inside; and although the Wren will occasionally use cows' hair along with the feathers, yet I am persuaded from the localities in which I have met with them, that cows' hair has been used because feathers were not to be found; but when the nests are in the vicinity of a rookery, a farm-yard, or any other locality where feathers are abundant, the Wrens will use them exclusively. What the "strong evidence" must be which will convince Mr. Rennie about cock-nests, I don't know; but I know of a dozen of these nests at the present moment, several of which have remained in the state in which they were left in the middle of April. Other nests found about the same time have now young ones in them. I doubt not these nests are occasionally used for breeding in: for instance, if the first nest of a Wren be taken, or if it breed a second time, it will occasionally take possession of a cock-nest; as I have sometimes found that after remaining in the same unfinished state for several weeks, they have afterwards been fitted up with a lining, and bred in. Mr. Rennie asserts that Montagu is wrong when he says that the Wren always adapts its materials to its locality. Although it certainly is not always the case, yet so very generally is it so, that I think it is not surprising that Montagu made this assertion. Thus, if a Wren build in a haystack, the front of the nest is generally composed of the hay from the stack; if it be built in a bush by the side of a river, and (which is frequently the case) below flood mark, it is generally covered on the outside with the rubbish which has been left there by the flood; and if it build in a mossy stump, the front of the nest is composed of the dark- coloured moss which grows there. (May 22, 1832.) Along with my last letter, I sent some Wrens' nests lined with feathers, and I could easily have increased them to a dozen of the same sort, only I did not wish to deprive so many of my little favourites of their eggs and young. Every day convinces me more decidedly, that I am right both with regard to the lining of the Wrens' nests, and as to the cock-nests also. The nests I sent you will prove the former, and I know of at least twenty instances of the latter, in nests which I have known of all through the spring, from April to the present time, which have remained in the same unfinished state, although they are not forsaken, as I have found the birds in them, in several instances, when I have examined them. I found one of these nests on the 10th of April, under a bank on the side of the river; and I examined it repeatedly through April and May, and always found it in the same state, although there was always a pair of Wrens about, and I could find no other nest; yet I am sure there was another, for in the beginning of this month (June) there were some young Wrens, which had evidently only just come out of the nest; and there were only two or three bushes grew thereabouts, so that it is not probable they had come from any other quarter, but the bushes were filled with dead leaves, and other rubbish brought down by the flood. However, when I heard them, I looked out for another nest, as I believe (notwithstanding what Montagu says, that there are few birds, if any, that would produce a second lot of eggs if the first were unmolested) that most of the small birds which are early breeders build a second time the same year, even when they succeed in rearing the first brood. I have had proof of this (if anything can be considered proof, except marking the birds), in the Throstle, the Blackbird, the Wren, the Redbreast, and the Hedge Sparrow, whose second nests may be found contiguous to the first; and in point of time, this always happens just when the first brood have left the nest. The cock-bird, too, who had been silent whilst his young were unfledged, begins to sing again, and throwing off the anxious and care-beset manners of a parent, again assumes that of a bridegroom. But to return to Wrens' nests. I found one within ten yards of the one I had known of since the 10th of April, lined, and ready for an egg. As I was anxious to prove what I had so long believed, I pulled out this nest, thinking that the old bird was ready for laying a second lot of eggs; and that when I had destroyed this, as she had no other nest ready, she would probably take up with the cock-nest. As it was half a mile from my house, I did not visit it again until the 16th of June, and was then delighted to find the old bird sitting on six or seven eggs in the cock-nest, which had remained so long unoccupied. I believe that in this instance there is very little lining (fur, feathers, &c.) in the nest, although I should be sorry to examine it minutely until the young have left it; but I consider it an exception to the general rule, inasmuch as I believe the bird was ready to lay when I pulled out the other nest. As she would have to find another with as little delay as possible, she would not have time to embellish the inside in the same manner as she probably would have done if she had had more time. On examining another Wrens' nest a few evenings ago, I found the young ones had flown, and as there was a cock-nest in some wrack left by the river in a bush a few yards off, I gave it a shake to see if the old ones had taken possession of it for another brood; and I was surprised to see one, and then a second young one come flying out, and a third putting out its head to reconnoitre. Whether the whole brood was there I don't know, as I did not disturb them further. As I had examined this nest only ten days before, when it had not an egg in it, I was at first at a loss to account for these young ones; but I have now no doubt they were the young from the adjoining nest, which had taken up their quarters for the night in the new house. But how had they learnt the way? Young birds generally roost where night finds them, and if I had found only one, I should not have been surprised, but to find at least three, probably six or seven, in a nest where I am certain they were not bred, was something new to me. I went several times in the evening after this, but never found them; I suppose the fright I gave them deterred them from lodging there again. The editor of "Loudon's Magazine," in a paragraph appended to this article, says: "We have examined the Wrens' nests sent; their staple materials are moss, feathers, and hair. Into the moss on the exterior of the nest are woven a more or less perfect but feeble frond or two, and separate pinnae as well of Aspidium Filix-Mas, and leaves of apple, elm, and oak trees. Interiorly cows' hair is not scarce, and is partly inwoven with the moss and laces it together, and partly mingled with the feathers; a horse- hair or two are also observable. The feathers in each nest, apparently those of domestic fowls, are numerous enough to fill the hollow of the hand when the fingers are so folded over as not to much compress the feathers." * * * * * ALARM-NOTE OF ONE BIRD UNDERSTOOD BY OTHER SPECIES OF BIRDS. In Montagu's "Ornithological Dictionary," under the article "Song of Birds," there is the following remark: "Regarding the note of alarm which birds utter on the approach of their natural enemies, whether a Hawk, an Owl, or a Cat, we consider it to be a general language perfectly understood by all small birds, though each species has a note peculiar to itself." I was last April very much pleased at witnessing an illustration of the truth of this opinion. I found a nest of young Throstles at the root of a hazel, and although they could scarcely fly, yet as they were near a footpath, and the next day was Sunday, when many idle and mischievous lads would be rambling about, I thought they would be safer out of their nest than in it; and as I knew that when so far fledged, if they were once disturbed they would not continue in the nest, I took one from the nest and made it cry out, and then put it back again; but in one minute, not only it but its three companions had disappeared in the long dry grass which was round about. On hearing the cry of their young one, the parent bird set up such shrieks of alarm as brought all the birds in the wood to see what was the matter. I noticed the Blackbird, the Chaffinch, the Titlark, the Robin, the Oxeye (greater Titmouse), the Blue and Marsh Titmouse, and the Wren all uttering their cries of alarm and apprehension; even the golden-crested Wren, which usually seems to care for nothing, was as forward and persevering as any of them in expressing its fears on this occasion; indeed, the only bird which seemed indifferent to all these manifestations of alarm was the Creeper, which continued its anxious and incessant search for food, as it flitted from one tree to another, examining them from root to branch without ever seeming to understand or to care for what seemed to have so much frightened the others. (June 30th, 1832.) * * * * * DATES OF THE APPEARANCE OF SOME SPRING BIRDS IN 1832, AT CLITHEROE. Young Rooks heard, 5th April; House Martin seen, 14th; Sandpiper, 14th; Willow Wren, Spring Wagtail, and Redstart, 17th; Wheatear, 19th (this is generally the first spring bird seen); Sand Martin and Swallow, 22nd; Cuckoo heard, 26th; Wood Wren, Blackcap, and Whinchat, 28th; Mocking-bird and Whitethroat, 4th May; Swift, 7th; Flycatcher, 11th; and Fieldfares were not seen until the 2nd of May, which is later than I ever observed them before. (In the parish of Allesby, near Coventry, Fieldfares were observed as late as the 14th of May.) No doubt many of these birds were in the neighbourhood earlier than the dates I have attached to them, but they are the periods at which I saw or heard them. The study of Natural History is perhaps as little followed in this neighbourhood as in any part of the kingdom, notwithstanding the facilities which are offered. Our flora is beautiful, varied, and possesses many rare plants, yet I only know of two herbaria; the birds are abundant, yet there is but one collector of them; and as for insects, although I frequently take what I consider rare species, yet I cannot find an entomologist in the whole district, or I would send them to him. In conclusion, allow me to say, that the leisure hours a somewhat busy life has enabled me to spend in these pursuits, have been some of the happiest of my existence, and have awakened and cherished such an admiration of nature and such a love for the country and its scenes, as I think can never be appreciated by the inhabitants of large towns, and which I cannot describe so well as in the words of one of my friends in a beautiful apostrophe to England, when leaving it--never to return: [11]-- "To thee Whose fields first fed my childish fantasy, Whose mountains were my boyhood's wild delight, Whose rocks, and woods, and torrents were to me The food of my soul's youthful appetite; Were music to my ear--a blessing to my sight." * * * * * THE ROOK SERVICEABLE TO MAN.--PREJUDICE AGAINST IT. A strong prejudice is felt by many persons against Rooks, on account of their destroying grain and potatoes, and so far is this prejudice carried, that I know persons who offer a reward for every Rook that is killed on their land; yet so mistaken do I deem them as to consider that no living creature is so serviceable to the farmer as the Rook, except his own live stock. In the neighbourhood of my native place is a rookery belonging to William Vavasour Esq., of Weston in Wharfdale, in which it is estimated there are 10,000 Rooks, that 1 lb. of food a week is a very moderate allowance for each bird, and that nine-tenths of such food consists of worms, insects, and their larvae: for although they do considerable damage to the crops for a few weeks in seed-time and harvest, particularly in backward seasons, yet a very large proportion of their food, even at these times, consists of insects and worms, which (if we except a few acorns, walnuts, and potatoes in autumn) at all other times form the whole of their subsistence. Here, then, if my data be correct, there is the enormous quantity of 468,000 lbs., or 209 tons of worms, insects, and their larvae destroyed by the birds of a single rookery, and to everyone who knows how very destructive to vegetation are the larvae of the tribes of insects (as well as worms) fed upon by Rooks, some slight idea may be formed of the devastation which Rooks are the means of preventing. I have understood that in Suffolk and in some of the southern counties, the larvae of the cockchafer are so exceedingly abundant that the crops of corn are almost destroyed by them, and that their ravages do not cease even when they have become perfect insects. Various plans have been proposed to put a stop to their ravages, but I have little doubt that their abundance is to be attributed to the scarcity of Rooks, as I have somewhere seen an account that these birds are not numerous in those counties (I have never been there), either from the trees being felled in which they nested, or from their having been destroyed by the prejudiced farmer. I am the more inclined to be of this opinion, because we have many Rooks in this neighbourhood where the cockchafer is not known as a destructive insect, and I know that insects of that class and their larvae are the most favourite food of the Rook, which may be seen in the twilight catching both cockchafers and the large blackbeetles which are flying at that time in the evening. I will mention another instance of the utility of the Rook which occurred in this neighbourhood. Many years ago a flight of locusts visited Craven, and they were so numerous as to create considerable alarm among the farmers of the district. They were, however, soon relieved from their anxiety, for the Rooks flocked in from all quarters by thousands and tens of thousands, and devoured the locusts so greedily that they were all destroyed in a short time. Such, at least, is the account given, and I have heard it repeatedly mentioned as the reason why the late Lord Ribblesdale was so partial to Rooks. But I have no means of ascertaining how far this is true. It was stated in the newspapers a year or two back that there was such an enormous quantity of caterpillars upon Skiddaw, that they devoured all the vegetation on the mountain, and people were apprehensive they would attack the crops in the enclosed lands; but the Rooks (which are fond of high ground in the summer) having discovered them, put a stop to their ravages in a very short time. (June 30th, 1832.) These remarks are confirmed by a writer in the "Essex Herald" and by Mr. Waterton. The former says:--"An extensive experiment appears to have been made in some of the agricultural districts on the Continent, the result of which has been the opinion that farmers do wrong in destroying Rooks, Jays, Sparrows, and, indeed, birds in general on their farms, particularly where there are orchards." That birds do mischief occasionally among ripe corn there can be no doubt; but the harm they do in autumn is amply compensated by the good they do in spring by the havoc they make among the insect tribes. The quantity of grubs destroyed by Rooks and of caterpillars and grubs by the various small birds, must be annually immense. Other tribes of birds which feed on the wing--as Swifts, Swallows, and Martins--destroy millions of winged insects which would otherwise infest the air and become insupportably troublesome. Even the Titmouse and the Bullfinch, usually supposed to be so mischievous in gardens, have actually been proved only to destroy those buds which contain a destructive insect. Ornithologists have of late determined these facts to be true, and parish officers would do well to consider them before they waste the public money in paying rewards to idle boys and girls for the heads of dead birds, which only encourages children and other idle persons in the mischievous employment of fowling instead of minding their work or their schooling. But to return to the experiment alluded to. On some very large farms in Devonshire the proprietors determined a few summers ago to try the result of offering a great reward for the heads of Rooks, but the issue proved destructive to the farms, for nearly the whole of the crops failed for three succeeding years, and they have since been forced to import Rooks and other birds wherewith to re-stock their farms. Of late years the extensive destruction of the foliage and young fruit in orchards by a species of caterpillar has excited the attention of the naturalist, and it has been found to have arisen from the habit of destroying those small birds about orchards which if left unmolested would have destroyed or kept down those rapacious insects. * * * * * SANDPIPERS. Sandpipers breed about Clitheroe. I this year (1832) started an old one from her nest at the root of a Weymouth pine. She screamed out, and rolled about in such a manner, and seemed so completely disabled, that, although perfectly aware that her intention was to allure me from her nest, I could not resist my inclination to pursue her, and in consequence I had great difficulty in finding the nest again. It was built of a few dried leaves of the Weymouth pine, and contained three young ones just hatched, and an egg through which the bill of a young one was making its way. Yet, young as they were, on my taking out the egg to examine it, the little things, which could not have been out of the shell more than an hour or two, set off out of the nest with as much celerity as if they had been running about a fortnight. As I thought the old one would abandon the egg if the young ones left the nest, I caught them again and covering them up with my hand for some time, they settled down again. Next day all four had disappeared. Montagu says: "It is probable many of the Sandpipers are capable of swimming if by accident they wade out of their depth. Having shot and winged one of this species as it was flying across a piece of water, it fell, and floated towards the side, and as we reached to take it up, the bird instantly dived, and we never saw it rise again to the surface; possibly it got entangled in the weeds and was drowned." I quote this remark because the same thing has happened to myself. I winged a Sandpiper, and on going to take it up, it fluttered into the water and dived, but never rose again to the surface that I could perceive, although I watched long and attentively for it. In this instance the bird could not have been entangled by the weeds, inasmuch as the bottom of the river was covered with gravel and not a weed was growing there. Whether the Sandpiper laid hold of the gravel at the bottom with its feet, or how it managed, I cannot tell, nor have I ever been able to account for it. (June 30th, 1832.) * * * * * ON BIRDS DRESSING THEIR FEATHERS WITH OIL FROM A GLAND. Mr. Waterton doubts ("Mag. of Nat. History," vol. v. p. 413) if the small nipple on the rump of birds is an oil-gland, or that birds ever oil their feathers with matter obtained from it; and he asks if any naturalist will say that he has ever witnessed this process, and if so how it is that the bird contrives to take this oil in its bill and how it manages to oil its head and neck? I will therefore state what I think I have witnessed, and trust to Mr. Waterton's forbearance if I am in error; yet I cannot help suspecting that Mr. Waterton's queries are (like those of Charles the Second to the Royal Society) more for the purpose of laughing at our ignorance than from any wish he has to obtain information, for I can scarcely suppose that so acute an observer can have failed to perceive everything perceptible on the point at issue. I have just watched a Muscovy Duck go through the operation of preening and dressing its feathers, and it certainly appears obvious enough to me that this bird uses the gland on the rump for the purpose for which birds are generally supposed to use it. The bird erected the feathers on the rump so as to exhibit the gland very distinctly, and then, after pressing it with the bill, rubbed the under mandible and chin down to the throat upon it, and then, after drawing some of the feathers through the bill, rubbed the lower mandible and chin upon the back and scapulars, apparently to apply the oil which adhered to them, and then, turning its head back, it rubbed the crown and sides of the head and neck upon those parts which it had previously rubbed with the chin and under mandible. By this rubbing of the head and neck it is easy to perceive how birds can oil these parts if it be allowed that birds oil themselves at all. I cannot see how we can explain this action of birds in relation to any other object. It certainly does not seem calculated to expel or disturb any vermin lodged there, and I remarked that it never occurred except when the bird had been applying its bill to the gland as above mentioned. However, Mr. Waterton, and anyone who doubts this oiling, may readily judge for themselves. Let them take a common duck, and shut it up for two or three days, so that it can have no access to water except for drinking, and at the end of that time let them turn it out, and allow it to go to a brook or pond; it will give itself a thorough ablution--ducking, diving, and splashing with its wings--and on coming out, will begin to dress and arrange its feathers, very frequently applying its bill to the gland on its rump. If this application is not for the purpose of procuring a supply of oil, perhaps Mr. Waterton will have the goodness to inform us what it is for, and what end this gland answers in the economy of the feathered tribes if not that which has hitherto been supposed. (June 30, 1832.) * * * * * MOCKING POWERS OF THE SEDGE-WARBLER. In the article "Sedge Bird," in Montagu's "Dictionary of Ornithology" (Rennie's edition, p. 455), the writer says: "It has a variety of notes, which partake of those of the Skylark and the Swallow, as well as the chatter of the House-Sparrow." According to my observation, it has a much greater variety than this. I have heard it imitate in succession (intermixed with its own note, _chur, chur_), the Swallow, the House-Martin, the Greenfinch, the Chaffinch, the Lesser-Redpole, the House-Sparrow, the Redstart, the Willow-Wren, the Whinchat, the Pied-Wagtail, and the Spring- Wagtail; yet its imitations are chiefly confined to the notes of alarm (the fretting-notes as they are called here) of those birds, and so exactly does it imitate them in tone and modulation, that if it were to confine itself to one (no matter which), and not interlard the wailings of the little Redpole and the shrieks of the Martin with the _curses_ of the House-Sparrow, the _twink, twink_ of the Chaffinch, and its own _care-for-naught_ chatters, the most practiced ear would not detect the difference. After being silent for awhile, it often begins with the _chue, chue_ of the House-Sparrow, so exactly imitated in every respect that were it not for what follows, no one would suppose it to be any other bird. It is called a Mocking-Bird here, and it well deserves the name, for it is a real scoffer at the sorrows of other birds, which it laughs to scorn and turns into ridicule by parodying them so exactly. I never heard it attempt to imitate any of the Larks or Thrushes, although I have listened to it for hours. This bird was very plentifully met with in Wharfdale ten years ago, and is also found in this neighbourhood, but I am not aware that anybody in either of these districts ever attempted to keep one in confinement, although from their powers of imitation, I think the experiment well worth trying; probably the idea that it would be difficult to supply them with proper food has prevented the experiment being made. (May 2nd, 1832.) I am surprised that no other writer on Natural History has noticed the wonderful imitative power of this bird. So far is the above notice from overstating this bird's powers of imitation, that I have scarcely enumerated half the notes which it hits off with such wonderful exactness. In listening to one the other day for about a quarter of an hour, I heard it give three notes of the Swallow, two of the Martin, and two of the Spring-Wagtail; and in addition, notes of the House- Sparrow, Whinchat, Starling, Chaffinch, Whitethroat, Greenfinch, Little Redpole, and Whin-Linnet, besides the notes of half-a-dozen birds which I did not know; at least, a reasoning from analogy would induce me to think them imitations, and I have no right to suppose they were not because I did not happen to recognize them. I am not strictly correct when I say that it only imitates the alarm-notes (called here fretting-notes) of other birds, for although this is generally the case, it is not invariably so. For instance, in addition to the alarm-note of the Swallow, _chizzic, chizzic_, it also had the _whit, whit_, which the Swallow uses when flying about, and the chatter of self-satisfaction (not the song) which one often hears in a barn when two Swallows are arranging their plan of operations in the spring. Again, in addition to the shriek of the Martin, there was the note which it utters when on the wing in pursuit of its food. There was also the chirrup of the Greenfinch, and the _whee, whee, whee_ which is the climax of the Linnet's song, by which it is so irresistible as a call-bird, and which appears to bring down the flock in spite of themselves. Although the Sedge-Bird imitated all I have mentioned, it made much more frequent use of the notes of some than of others--the Sparrow, the Whinchat, the Swallow, and the Starling appeared to be its chief favourites, whilst it only touched once or twice on the notes of the Greenfinch and the Linnet. It had been very sparing also in its use of the Chaffinch's note, until one in the neighbourhood had begun to _twink, twink, twink_; then the Mocking-Bird took it up, and _twinked_ away for fifty times together. Next morning the Linnet's note was much more frequent in request, and it also made more use of notes with which I was not acquainted. On neither day did it touch upon the notes of the Redstart, or Pied-Wagtail, both of which I had heard frequently used by the Mocking-Bird before. On the other hand, I had not previously observed the notes of the Starling and Whin-Linnet, and therefore, although I have said that I have never heard it make use of the notes of any of the Larks or the Thrushes, I would not be understood to say that this never happens. It is, perhaps, difficult to say whether it has a note which is not an imitation of some other bird, but there is one which it always makes use of when any person approaches its nest (intermixed, however, with the notes of the Swallow, Whinchat, and Whitethroat). This is something like _chur-r-r, chur-r-r_, prolonging the sound of the _r_ very considerably, and in a style which would be quite an acquisition to the Northumbrians if they could attain it. (May 29th, 1834.) * * * * * THE WATER OUZEL. The Water Ouzel sings very frequently, and as much in winter as at any time. Perched on a stone or a piece of ice, it chirps away at a famous rate, but its song consists almost entirely of its note _zeet, zeet_, which it hashes up in all sorts of ways, lengthening and shortening--now a crotchet, then a semiquaver, rising an octave or so, and then descending again. It makes as much of it as can be made, but with all its efforts its song is a very _so-so_ affair, all its syllables beginning with _z_, and almost ending with it too. Yet, although it is not much of a songster, it is almost a sacred bird with me, in consequence of the associations connected with it. A pair had built for forty years, according to tradition, in a wheel-race near to where I was born, and had never been molested by anybody until a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who was a great ornithologist, employed his gamekeeper to shoot this pair. I think the natives of Calcutta were not more indignant when an unlucky Englishman got one of their sacred bulls into his compound and baited him, than was our little community at what we considered so great an outrage. The gamekeeper narrowly escaped being stoned by myself and some more lads, any one of whom would have shot fifty Blackbirds or Fieldfares without any misgivings. This bird very much resembles the Wren in its habits and motions, its nods and curtsies, and cocks its tail in exactly the same manner. Its nest is also similar in form to that of the Wren. Some persons seem to think that it is impossible for the Water Ouzel to walk at the bottom of the water, owing to its body being of less specific gravity. I will not argue the point with them, but disbelieving my own eyes, I will endeavour to submit with a good grace; otherwise I should have said that I have repeatedly seen it doing so, from a situation where I had an excellent opportunity of observing it, the window of a building directly over the place where it was feeding. It walked into the water and began to turn over the pebbles with its bill, rooting almost like a pig, and it seemed to have no difficulty whatever in keeping at the bottom at all depths where I could see it; and I have frequently observed it when the water just covered it, and its head appeared above the water every time it lifted it up, which it did incessantly, turning over a pebble or two, then lifting its head, and again dipping it below to seize the creepers (_aquatic larvae_) it had disturbed from their hiding-places. Besides, its speed was too slow for diving. Every aquatic bird with which I am acquainted moves much faster when diving than when it is swimming or walking, and its course is generally in a straight line, or nearly so; but the Water Ouzel, when feeding, turns to the right or left, or back again to where it started, stops and goes on again, just as it does when out of the water. Yet when it wished, it seemed to have the power of altering its own gravity, as after wading about two, or perhaps five minutes, where it could just get its head out, it would suddenly rise to the surface and begin to swim, which it does quite as well as the Water-hen. The awkward, tumbling, shuffling wriggle which it appears to have, is occasioned by the incessant motion of its head as it turns over the gravel in search of creepers, which appear to me to form the bulk of its food. Sir George Mackenzie seems to think that these birds destroy salmon spawn, and this opinion is prevalent in Scotland. If it is correct, it would go far towards putting an end to my partiality for them; but I rather think that they are unjustly accused, and believe they are catching creepers when they are supposed to be eating spawn. If this is the fact (and it is well worth ascertaining) they are rendering an essential service to the fisheries instead of injuring them, because these creepers (the larvae of the stone-fly, bank-fly, and all the drakes) are exceedingly destructive to spawning-beds, and as the Water Ouzel feeds on them at all other times, and as they are more abundant in the winter than at any other season, I think this is the more probable supposition. Of course, if Sir George Mackenzie has shot the bird, and speaks from his own knowledge, after dissecting it, there can be no doubt of the fact that it destroys spawn; but if he merely supposes so because the Water Ouzel feeds in the same streams where the salmon are spawning, it is very probable he is mistaken, for the reasons before mentioned. (May 29th, 1834). * * * * * SCOLOPAX, SABINES, SABINE'S-SNIPE. Some years ago I killed what I am now persuaded was a Sabine's- Snipe, but unfortunately it was not preserved, for hanging it up in the larder with the other birds I had killed, I found to my great mortification that the cook had stripped it of every feather before I was aware, and before I had noted down the markings of the plumage. The dry weather of August, 1820, had driven a flock of the Golden Plover from the moors to the banks of the river Wharfe, and on the 14th of that month I had been out with my gun, endeavouring to shoot some of them. On my return I sprung this Snipe from a pond near home, and killed it. When I picked it up, I was astonished to find a Snipe with the plumage of a Woodcock, and showed it to a friend of mine, who is a good practical ornithologist, but he was as much puzzled as myself to give it a name; so not being able to find a description of it in any books to which we had access, we jumped to the conclusion that it was a hybrid between the Snipe and the Woodcock, and called it a bastard Woodcock. According to the recollection I have of it, it was as large as the solitary Snipe, and the bill was a little longer; the general appearance of the plumage on the wings and back resembled a dark- coloured Woodcock; but under the wings the fine blue inner coverts exactly resembled those of the Snipe. In those days I had no idea of the value attached to rare birds, nor did I know anything of the art of preserving birds, or of bird-preservers, and no doubt some of these gentlemen will pronounce me a great Goth when I tell them that what I regretted most, when I found that the bird was plucked, was the loss of the wings, the feathers of which I wanted to dress artificial flies with. Three days after I had killed this, I saw another in a ditch adjoining Sir Henry Ibbetson's park, at Denton, but being in his preserve I had no opportunity of procuring it. I had never seen one since, and until I had seen the sixth edition of Bewick's "Birds," I was unable to make out its name, about which I may still be mistaken. (May 29th, 1834.) * * * * * FISH AND OTHER RIVER PHENOMENA. A writer in the "British Naturalist" says, that "fish don't feed, and therefore we may conclude they don't discern in sunny weather." If the author had ever been a May-fly-fisher he would have known that bright weather and clear water were essentially necessary to his success. This fly is one of the best baits I know for large Trout, and is much used by the anglers in some of the rivers in Yorkshire (perhaps in other counties also), where two methods of fishing it are practised. The one is bobbing, which with one sort of bait or another is universal, and therefore needs no description. However, it is always practised in bright weather. In the other method (which I believe is peculiar to the North of England) the May-fly (stone-fly) is fished with a long line in rapid streams, in the same way as the artificial fly, except that it is fished up the stream; that is, the angler throws his line into the stream above where he stands, and allows it to float down opposite to him, when he makes another throw; by this means he always keeps his line slack, and the May-fly floats on the surface, which is essential to his success. I mention these two methods of angling because both are practised in bright weather, and therefore prove that fish both discern and feed in such days. I believe the fact is, that at such times they frequently see too well for the angler, and are consequently aware that his artificial flies are not what they seem to be. Fishes, particularly Par and Grayling, may be seen rising by dozens at the small flies (midges) which abound in sunny weather, yet the angler is unable to hook a single fish. First-rate anglers are well aware of this, and abandon their larger flies as the summer advances, use smaller hooks, dress their flies much finer, and substitute horsehair for the fishing- gut, when they can procure it of good quality. * * * * * LAMPREYS. Lampreys abound in the Ribble. Some of them, of the large species (_Petromyzon marinus_), weigh three and four pounds each, [12] but owing to a prejudice against them (I suppose on account of their ugliness) they are seldom eaten. I will illustrate this prejudice by giving the remark of a keen fisherman to myself, on my saying that I should eat a large one I had just caught. "Well," said he, "if you can manage to eat such a thing as that, you would not stick at devouring a child in the small-pox." This, if not an elegant, was at least a forcible expression of his opinion on the subject, and this dislike of them is almost universal in this neighbourhood. (Jan. 17th 1832.) "An Old Angler," in the "Magazine of Natural History," having questioned the assertion of Sir Everard Home that the Lamprey was hermaphrodite--in fact, that all were spawners and emitted eggs-- the following was addressed to the "Magazine of Natural History":-- When I had the pleasure of writing to you before, I had either overlooked or forgotten the queries of "An Old Angler" respecting the Lamprey. However, your remarks have induced me to pay a little more attention to the subject. I can now confirm in the strongest and most conclusive manner the supposition of "An Old Angler" that the sexes are as distinct in the Lamprey as they are in the Cod or Herring. How so distinguished an anatomist as Sir Everard Home fell into such a mistake, it is not for me to say; but I am as certain that the sexes are distinct in the Lamprey as that they are so in any other animal, and I will now give my reasons for making this positive assertion. On the 8th of May, chancing to cross a small stream, I saw a number of Lampreys in the act of spawning, and remembering the queries of your correspondent, I stood to watch their motions. After observing them for some time, I observed one twist its tail round another in such a manner, and they both stirred up the sand and small gravel from the bottom in such a way, as convinced me it was a conjunction of the sexes. However, there were so many of them together, and they kept so continually moving about, that I could not single out the two individuals, and thus ascertain whether they were male and female; but I felt so desirous of being able to set this question at rest, that I went again next morning, and was fortunate enough to find only two, a male and a female. I then witnessed several sexual conjunctions, during which the sand and small gravel was stirred up by them, and each of which was followed by the ejection of a jet of eggs from the female. I then caught them both, and dissected them. The sexual organ in the male was projected above a quarter of an inch, and the body filled with milt; the female, although she seemed to have shed a considerable quantity of her spawn, had still a tolerable stock remaining. I frequently afterwards witnessed the same thing, and always found the same difference of sexes; in fact, there was generally no difficulty in distinguishing the male from the female, without taking them out of the water: the latter might be readily known by the enlargement of her body, and the former by a still more incontestable token. I have been induced to describe this more minutely than I otherwise should have done, in consequence of the mystery in which the propagation of fish has been wrapped hitherto; and I am not aware that what I have described has been witnessed by anyone before--at least I don't know that it has been recorded. I caught half-a-dozen Lampreys, four males and two females, and preserved them in spirits, and these I now forward to you. I am unable to give the same information concerning the large Lamprey, having never seen it in the act of spawning; but I have repeatedly caught both milters and spawners of species with the milt and roe as distinctly visible in them as it is in the Salmon or any other fish. I am of opinion that the _P. marinus_ and the _P. fluviatilis_ are distinct species, for the following reasons:--1st. Because the latter stays with us the whole year, while the former only ascends the rivers to spawn, and then returns to the sea immediately. 2nd. Because fish that are in the habit of descending to the sea, never (unless the small Lamprey be an exception to the general rule) arrive at maturity [13] until they have visited it; and, 3rdly, because there are no intermediate sizes (at least in the Ribble) between the one which, although only six or seven inches long, and an ounce in weight, is yet capable of propagation, and the one of a pound. Not having one of the larger kind to refer to, I am unable to point out any specific difference of form. (May 2nd, 1832.) * * * * * ON THE SPAWNING OF THE MINNOW. As I had been so fortunate in observing the Lampreys, I felt desirous of ascertaining whether the same thing could be seen in other fish (as in Natural History it is not always safe to reason from analogy), and as there was a large shoal of Minnows spawning near the place where I had seen the Lampreys, I determined to watch their motions. They happened to have chosen a very convenient place for being observed, being between two large stones in the river, which lay about three feet from each other; so that by cautiously approaching them from behind one of the stones, I got close to without disturbing them, but after watching them carefully and repeatedly within the distance of two feet, I can only speak doubtfully of their operations, for they were so numerous, and their motions were so incessant; and when a female was about to shed her spawn, the males (which were ten times more numerous than the females) crowded round her in such a manner as to render it very difficult, if not impossible, to speak with certainty on the subject. I will state what steps I took to satisfy myself, and perhaps the history of my failure may be of use to future observers. It occurred to me from what I observed, that it was probable the males had the power of absorbing the eggs after their exclusion by the female, and impregnating them within their own bodies; and I caught a dozen males at different times, when they were attending on females, and opened them, but I could discover nothing like an egg. I then caught a female, and scattered the spawn (which was expelled by the slightest pressure) in a place frequented by a number of males, but they took no notice of it whatever. I after this caught a female when she was surrounded by a number of males, and apparently in the act of shedding her spawn, and examined whether the spawn which I pressed from her body was impregnated; but it appeared perfectly homogeneous, and so delicate in its texture that it burst with the slightest touch, whilst in that which I picked up from among the gravel where it was scattered abundantly, the impregnation was visible with the assistance of a microscope, and it was so much tougher in its covering as to bear rolling about in my hand without injury. I then tried to impregnate the eggs _mechanically_, and applied a drop of the spermatic fluid to the egg at the moment of exclusion, and it certainly seemed, in one instance, both to increase the size and to alter the colour of the ova it was applied to; but I was not able to produce the same effect so decidedly in any of my subsequent attempts. My observations, which were often repeated, induce me to believe that the egg is impregnated at the moment of exclusion, and that two males have (almost invariably) access to the female at the same time; for I frequently remarked, that when a female came among a number of males, they immediately pursued her: if she was not ready for shedding her spawn, she made a precipitate retreat; but if she was, she came boldly in among them, and was immediately pressed closely by a male on each side, who when they had been in that situation a short time, were superseded by other two, who wedged themselves in between them and the female, who appeared to treat all her lovers with the same kindness. One difficulty is, that the spermatic fluid mixes very readily with water; and I cannot imagine how its virtue is preserved, [14] if (as I suppose must be the case) the egg is impregnated after exclusion; but I also think it probable that the ventral fins of the female serve to conduct this fluid to the place where it is needed, and the chemical affinity between it and the egg may be sufficient for impregnation. P.S. July 27th. I tried to hatch some of the eggs I had endeavoured to fecundate. The attempt was unsuccessful. I placed the eggs, which I had put into some clean-washed gravel, in a shallow vessel (open at the top, and with holes drilled through the sides) in a small stream of water, but I found to my great mortification on looking for them a day or two after that there was not one left, but that in their stead were many aquatic insects, which had no doubt feasted on them as long as they lasted, and after this I was not able to meet with another shoal of Minnows in the act of spawning. The head of the Minnow in the spawning season is spotted over with small white knobs, apparently osseous in their structure, which make their appearance immediately before the fish begins to spawn, and which disappear again as shortly after, and I think they are intended as a protection to the head of the fish during the spawning; as I remarked that they generally thrust their heads in between two pebbles, and had their tails sticking up almost perpendicularly. Yet this was not always the case, as they sometimes ran nearly out of the water, and it was in this situation that I observed what I have before mentioned, as I found it impossible to discover anything that was done by those in deeper water; for when a female went into such a situation, there was such a crowd of males rushed to the place that I lost sight of her in a moment. I was astonished to find how quickly the eggs were hatched. I discovered a large shoal spawning on the 11th of May; on the 12th they were diminished to one-tenth of the number, and on the 14th (the 13th being Sunday) there was not one left. As I had by no means satisfied myself on the subject, I felt disappointed that they had so soon finished their operations, and I took up a handful of the gravel where they had been spawning, and examined it with the microscope, to see whether I could discover any ova, and how they were going on, when to my great surprise I found them already hatching and some of them already excluded from the egg. One of them, which I took on the point of a knife, swam briskly away, and another was the means of pointing out an enemy to me which I had not previously suspected, and that I had always hitherto believed to be the prey of and not the preyer upon fish. The poor Minnow had somehow got fast to the point of the knife, and in its struggles to free itself it attracted the attention of a creeper--the larva of one of the aquatic flies called drakes (_Ephemerae_)--which pounced upon it as fiercely as the water staphylinus does on the luckless tadpole, but, fortunately for the Minnow, either the glittering of the knife-blade or the motion of my hand, scared it away again without its prey. The young Minnows in this state were quite transparent, except the eyes, which were disproportionately large; and they seemed to be perfectly aware that they owed their safety to concealment, as those that I saw immediately buried themselves in the gravel when they were set at liberty. (July 27th, 1832.) * * * * * EELS. To the Editor of the "Gardener's Chronicle." My attention has been called to a paragraph in a Worcester paper giving an account of a (so-called) discovery by Mr. Boccius, that Eels are propagated by spawn, like other fish, and that they are not brought forth alive, as had hitherto been supposed. This may be true, but before I can give an unqualified belief to the assertion, I should like to have a few questions answered by Mr. Boccius. Who saw the fish from which those thousands of eggs were extracted at the time this dissection was made? Are the parties who saw these eggs quite certain that the fish was an Eel and not a Lamprey? Who saw the eggs from which Mr. Boccius produced living Eels? Who beside Mr. Boccius ever saw Eel-fry in a pond which had no communication with a river? Will Mr. Allees and Mr. Reed (the gentlemen to whom the spawn was exhibited) say whether the ovary which was shown to them was pretty much of the same form as that of the Lamprey? and if not, in what respect did it differ? I am induced to ask these questions, both because by inference they show my own opinions on the subject, and because I am led on undoubted authority to believe that Mr. Boccius is inclined to claim at _least_ all that belongs to him; and also because I have my doubts about the scientific attainments of Mr. Boccius in the Natural History of Fishes. It is difficult to prove a negative. My never having seen the strange things above mentioned certainly does not prove that other people with better eyes and more discrimination have likewise failed to do so; but I can't help doubting, and I publish my doubts in the hope that the subject may be further inquired into. A true naturalist ought only to wish for the truth, without reference to his own preconceived notions; but so far as my examinations have gone, I have failed altogether to detect spawn in the fringes which I have fancied were the ovaria of the fish, or elsewhere, and I don't believe that Eels are bred in fresh water at all. I see the fry ascending from the sea in May and June by thousands and millions, but I never met with one of these in a pond having no communication with a river. I have little doubt that I shall be pronounced in error touching this matter, except perhaps by those who know how perseveringly these little Eels make their way up every stream, ditch, and driblet of water into which they can gain access. They penetrate into the water-pipes and pumps; they climb up the perpendicular faces of the rocks and weirs which obstruct the course of the rivers, even when they are only moist--adhering to the moss and stones like snails. The downward migration of Eels is observed here from July to the middle of September, but in the Manchester market I find them up to this time (the end of November), and am informed that they are caught at the foot of Windermere in their downward migration. Would a dissection of the Conger at various seasons throw any light on the propagation of Eels? One would think that in such large fish the ovaria would be much more easily distinguished than in smaller specimens. (November, 1850.) _The above elicited the following reply:_-- T. G. denies the possibility of Eels breeding in fresh water. We have a pond here covering three or four acres which swarms with Eels of all sizes. I have caught them from the size of my little finger up to the weight of five pounds. The supply of water is from nothing else than land springs--there being no communication between the pond and any river. When much rain occurs I am obliged to put up a sluice-board, in order to prevent the banks from overflowing. I have taken from one to two hundredweight at a time from a box which the water flows through at the bottom of the sluice-board. The large quantity that has been taken out of this pond leaves no doubt that they breed there to a great extent, but whether they are propagated by spawn or brought forth alive I am unable to say.--G. H., _Finedon Hall_. _Reply to the foregoing._ Your correspondent G. H. says T. G. denies the possibility of Eels breeding in fresh water. This is rather too strong. I don't deny the _possibility_ of Eels being bred in fresh water, I only deny the _probability_. The expression I used was that I did not believe they were bred in fresh water at all, and I distinctly stated that my not having seen these things (Eel spawn, &c.), did not prove that other people had not done so. But to the question. G. H. says that he has caught them of all sizes, from the thickness of his little finger to five pounds weight. No doubt he may have done so, but did he catch them of the thickness of a crow's quill, and three inches long? because that is the size at which they usually ascend rivers. He says his pond does not communicate with any river. Is there no escape of water from it? I mean, is the evaporation from its surface equal to the supply of water? If not, where does the surplus go to? Does it not directly or indirectly flow into a river or the sea? I am the more inclined to think that this is the case, because G. H. says he caught a hundredweight at a time from a box which the water flows through at the bottom of the sluice-board. This is exceedingly like what is done here and elsewhere from July to the end of November, when the Eels are on their downward migration. Will G. H. be kind enough to say whether he does not catch his about the same time? will he also say whether the Eels he catches are not Silver Eels? and will he also state whether he does not catch them principally after heavy rains have increased the flow of water out of the pond? If he answers these questions in the affirmative, I shall still think I am right, and request him to keep a sharp look-out after rains in May and June, when I think he would probably see the grigs passing through his box into the pond. If, on the other hand, there is no escape of water from the pond at any time, I must admit that I am wrong, but at present I don't know how to reconcile the impounding the water so completely with what he says about the flow of the water through the box at the bottom of the sill. Where does the water flow to, and for what is this sill? _G. H. replied as follows._ T. G. asks if I have caught Eels of the size of a crow's quill. I have caught them of the size of a tobacco-pipe, and from three to four inches in length. Our surplus water flows indirectly into the river Nene from our sluice. It supplies some stews where we have been in the habit of keeping reserve fish, and passing over several waterfalls, it enters into a ditch which is about three-quarters of a mile long, and then reaches the river I have just named. The greatest take of Eels I have had was on the 23rd of December, but the time of the year is of little consequence with us, provided the water is thick and muddy and the weather rather warm, which, of course, only occurs during very heavy rains. If I were to draw all the water out of the pond when in a clear state, I should not catch a fish. The variety is the Silver Eel. Our pond is upwards of fifty miles from the sea; therefore how is it that those little Eels had got no larger during their long journey, interrupted as it is by numerous and almost insurmountable obstacles, before they could reach the little ditch, three- quarters of a mile long, that would conduct them to our pond? And, last of all, after this long and tedious journey, within a hundred yards of their destination they would have to climb four waterfalls and a perpendicular sluice-board. It appears to me they should have grown much larger than a common tobacco-pipe and longer than three or four inches in that time, but I will leave this point for T. G. to explain.--G. H., _Finedon Hall_. _Reply to the foregoing._ Many thanks to G. H. for his second letter on this subject. It appears to me that we think very much alike about Eels. He says his pond is fifty miles from the sea; "therefore, how is it that these little Eels get no larger in their long and tedious journey? interrupted as it is by numerous and almost insurmountable obstacles, before they could reach the little ditch, three-quarters of a mile long, which would conduct them to our pond? and last of all, after this long and tedious journey, within a hundred yards of their destination, they would have to climb four waterfalls and a perpendicular sluice-board. It appears to me they should have grown much larger than a common tobacco-pipe during that time; but I will leave that point to T. G. to explain." This is so fairly put, that I will tell what I have seen, hoping that this will be a sufficient explanation. In June, 1850, I chanced to go down to the bank of the Ribble, and there I saw a column of small Eels steadily making their way up the stream. I should suppose there might be fifty in every lineal yard, for they kept pretty close to the bank, apparently because they met with less resistance from the stream, and without pretending to accuracy I supposed they travelled at the rate of a mile an hour. This was about five o'clock in the afternoon, and I went to look for them about nine in the evening--they were still going in one unbroken column. How long they had been going when I first saw them, and how long they continued to go after my second visit, I don't know, but many thousands--perhaps millions--must have passed that day. At this rate (of a mile an hour) they would have required little more than two days to reach G. H.'s pond, fifty miles from the sea; but he says they had to pass over three or four waterfalls and a perpendicular sluice-board. If these waterfalls and the sluice-board were covered with moss, they would climb them as readily as a cat does a ladder. I have seen them in swarms at a perpendicular weir here, winding their way through the damp moss with which the stones are covered; but this was not all: where there was no moss, the little things seemed to have the power of adhering to the perpendicular face of the stones, like so many snails. I must not omit to remark, that although they seemed to choose the margin of the stream for the sake of easier travelling, yet they took care to keep in the stream, as I had a nice opportunity of observing. At the point where I first saw them, the tail goit of a water- wheel had its junction with the river, but being Sunday there was no current there--not a single Eel took its course up the goit, although the water was deeper there than where they went. The water being low and perfectly clear, I could trace their course both above and below the place where I stood without any difficulty. If we allowed that they travelled a mile in the hour, and that the obstructions of the waterfalls and sluice-board took as long to get over as all the rest of the journey, they would be able to reach G. H.'s pond in four days from the sea; and from what I have seen of their ability to surmount such obstructions, I am quite convinced that they would travel that distance in the time. But say they were a week--they would not grow much in that time, particularly if they had been travelling without food the whole of the distance, and that they must have done so, is proved to my mind by their keeping in column; for if they had dispersed to seek for food, by what contrivance were they marshalled into line again, to enable them to proceed? Now the place I saw them is forty miles from the sea, although not that distance from salt- water. T. says it is no proof that Eels are bred in fresh water because they may be found in ponds having no connection with a river--the proof required is _ab ovo_. If we wait for this proof I fear we will have to wait for some time, for I fancy that no one but Mr. Boccius ever saw the ova of Eels, and he will not condescend to enlighten us on the subject. At the same time I admit that finding them there is no proof that they were bred there, inasmuch as I have myself stocked such ponds for my friends, and what I have done may be done by others. T. says further there is also room for inquiry into another curious subject--do Eels return to fresh water after having gone to the sea for spawning? In reply to this, I can only say, that no trace of such a migration is ever seen here, and I think if it existed at all, I should have observed it, for the following reasons. The Ribble here supplies a large mill, the water-wheels of which are 150 horse-power; therefore, when they are at work in the daytime, the whole force of the river is often passing through the mill-lead (goit) and the bed of the river between the weir, and the tail goit in such times is left dry, except in a few pools. If there was a shoal of Eels between these two points it would have been seen at one time or another, and this has never happened, so far as I know. It may be said that they migrate singly, but they don't do so in their first migration, and, so far as I am aware, it is not the habit of any animal to do so. Herrings, Pilchards, Smelts, Flounders, Sturgeon, Bisons, Antelopes, Woodcocks, Swallows, Fieldfares, Locusts, and even Butterflies congregate together previous to migration. NOTE.--The last paragraph requires some modification, as I have since proved that Eels migrate singly when going to the sea, as I have had occasion to know in a hundred cases when watching my Eel- trap, where every Eel may be seen as it descends into the trap. _On the same subject._ I [Jeremiah Garnett, brother of the writer, and editor of the "Manchester Guardian,"] having noticed the communications on this subject which have recently appeared in your columns, am desirous of mentioning a fact which appears to me to throw some light upon the localities in which Eels are bred, though it leaves the question of the mode of generation precisely where it stood before. Like your correspondent T. G., I have many times seen columns of small Eels ascending the Ribble and other rivers in the months of May and June, at considerable distances from the sea, but only on one occasion have I seen them under circumstances which evidently brought them near the place of their nativity. I happened to be attending the Lancaster Spring Assizes in the month of March in the year 1826, and learning that there was a remarkably high tide in the estuary of the Lune, I walked down to the riverside about the time of high water, and found that the tide had covered the grass in many places; and as it began to ebb, I observed something moving in every small hollow which had been overflowed, and in which a little water had been left behind. On examination I found that the moving bodies were exceedingly diminutive Eels, rather less, to the best of my recollection, than three-quarters of an inch long, and almost transparent, but exhibiting in every respect the true form of the mature Eel. They had evidently followed the water to its extreme verge, where it could not have been more than an inch deep, and that they must have been very numerous was clear from the large numbers which were left behind and had perished--for that they did perish I found on the following day, when they were lying dead on the grass by hundreds. Some of your correspondents who reside in localities favourable for making observations on this subject may be induced to pay attention to it; the exact appearance may be ascertained, with probably other facts calculated to throw light on the obscure question of their generation. * * * * * ON THE POSSIBILITY OF INTRODUCING SALMON INTO NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA. _October_, 1859. The colonists of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand appear to wish for the introduction of Salmon and Trout into the rivers of these colonies, and one of them, Tasmania, is said to have offered the reward of L500 for the first pair of live Salmon which reaches that colony. If this is true it is a liberal offer, and one that is likely to induce various persons, both in England and France, to make the attempt. I should be sorry to say anything to check so laudable an endeavour, but I greatly fear that Van Diemen's Land (to say nothing of the Australian colonies) is too near the tropics to offer a reasonable chance of success. I think it is practicable to take these fish there (or at least fertilized ova), but I don't think they would live and thrive in the rivers of that colony. Never having been there, I can, of course, only reason from European experience, but the best inquiries I can make lead me to suppose that there are no Salmon in France (south of Brittany), Spain, or any of the countries washed by the Mediterranean Sea; and in America (although I confess I am not so well informed on that country) I have never heard of Salmon being seen to the south of the tributaries of the St. Lawrence. Supposing this to be so, I think that we may fairly infer that if Salmon are not found south of a certain latitude in Europe and America, it must be that the climate of these southern countries is not congenial to the habits of this fish. I believe, however, that the Trout lives and thrives much further south than the Salmon; for instance, it is found in the Pyrenees and in the lakes of Northern Italy (Lady M. W. Montagu). It is also found in Northern Turkey, and probably Albania also (Spencer); and therefore I think it is quite probable that it might live in Tasmania--that is, if the streams are never dried up and the rivers reduced to a number of water-holes, which appears to be the case in Australia. Should this be the case in Tasmania also, I doubt whether even Trout would thrive, for here in Lancashire I have known the Trout to die in great numbers from the heat, when, owing to the water-wheels of the mill diverting the river from its usual channel, there was no stream, but merely a series of detached pools or water-holes; and the Grayling seem to be more incommoded by heat than the Trout, and it was one of the diversions of my boyhood to wait until the wheels of my father's mill were stopped in the hot weather, and then go up the covered wheel-races in search of the Grayling that had gone there to get out of the sunshine. I used to catch them there in great numbers. However, this has nothing to do with the matter, except to suggest that although Grayling are very desirable fish to introduce into the colonies, I fear they would be too impatient of heat to thrive there. But my object in addressing you is to ask whether it is true that the legislature of Tasmania has offered the prize of L500 for the first pair of live Salmon taken there? Secondly, whether they offer a prize for the introduction of Salmon fry; and if so, what is the amount offered? Thirdly, whether they offer a prize for the introduction of fertilized ova of Salmon or Trout, and what is the amount? I ask these questions because I happen to know a good deal on such matters, and I have been applied to this day by James Birch, the head water-bailiff of our river (Ribble), to obtain some information for him on the subject, as he seems seriously bent on making the experiment, provided the reward be an adequate one; for, to be successful, it would involve the necessity of his making the voyage himself, and it would be a cruel thing to induce him to do so, and in the end to find that he was entitled to no reward. I'll say this for him, that if he tries he will succeed, if success be possible; but his pecuniary resources are too limited for him to undertake such a risk. I have reason to believe that he has been applied to by Ramsbottom to go to Tasmania, but this he declines to do under Ramsbottom's auspices. As he (R.) professes to be in communication with the authorities of Tasmania (or at all events with influential persons there) let him make the first attempt, and if he succeed, there will be no necessity to apply to me on the subject; but if he should fail--as I think he will--why, then the persons interested in the matter may, if they wish to try again, let me know their wishes and the amount of remuneration they mean to give. I should certainly suggest that both Salmon and Salmon Trout (as well as the common Trout) should be included in their list of desiderata, and although for reasons previously given I have no great hopes of success with the two former, I think it quite probable that the common Trout would succeed better. Of course I know nothing of the fish already in the rivers of Tasmania; for aught I know there may be fish in all those rivers quite as voracious and destructive as the Pike are here. If this is the case, the chances of success would be materially lessened, as Trout and Salmon fry are rare in all rivers stocked with Pike. However, those who are making the attempt ought to know what they are about, and will, no doubt, have considered such obstacles, if there are any such in the way. Will you, therefore, be kind enough to answer the questions I have asked above, at your earliest convenience, and if your replies offer any inducement to Birch to make the attempt, I have no doubt that he will be quite ready to do so. For various reasons he can only start from here in the autumn or winter, and he should, if he reaches Tasmania with either live fish or fertilized ova, have someone to render him prompt and cordial assistance to enable him to deposit the fish or ova, or fish and ova, in suitable places for spawning and hatching; and therefore if this letter be replied to, the answer ought to say to whom Birch should apply on his arrival in Tasmania. It may be asked, who is the man who obtrudes his opinions on the colony unasked, and what can be his motives? As I am not aware that I know a single person in Tasmania, I cannot refer to anyone there; but I happen to know one or two gentlemen in Melbourne, and if you will take the trouble to refer there to Messrs. W. and B. Hick, or to W. Bailey, the corn merchant, they will be able to satisfy all inquiries. If it be asked what I know of the habits of fish, and Salmon in particular, I beg to refer the inquirers to Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History" for 1834 (if there is a copy of that work in the colony), and they will there find two papers (signed "T.G.," Clitheroe) which will show that I then knew all that has since been proved by the elaborate experiments made at Perth by Ramsbottom, and moreover I taught Ramsbottom himself the art of propagating fish artificially. I want no compensation: the honour of being the first man who succeeded in introducing these valuable fish into the colonies would be a sufficient reward to me. But with Birch the case is different: he is a working man, and L500 would be a fortune to him. On the other hand, he could not afford to come to Hobart Town from England at his own expense, as he has not the means. Would the colony, if other attempts failed, be willing to pay Birch's passage out and home if he failed also, and would he receive the L500 if he succeeded? By success I mean that he would either bring live fish or ova that would hatch into live fish. Either of these objects being accomplished, he ought, in my opinion, to receive the reward; for although he would attempt both, he would probably fail in the former. Should he attempt this under my advice, I should not only send Salmon and Salmon Trout and their ova, but the common brown Trout and its ova also, for the reason previously given in this letter; and although I am by no means sanguine of success, on account of the temperature, the experiment is too important to be abandoned for a mere theoretical objection which may be erroneous. I think New Zealand offers far greater chances of success. It is not only further removed from the tropics, but, if I am rightly informed, the streams are more abundant and constant than those of Australia and Tasmania--in fact, I believe it is as well watered as this country; and if the authorities there are as much alive to the importance of introducing these fish into their rivers, I would undertake to do this with much greater confidence of ultimate success than I should have if I undertook to introduce them into Tasmania or the sister colonies. Some time since (it may be eighteen months or two years ago) there was a very intelligent correspondent of the "Field" newspaper, whose _nom de plume_ was the Maori one, "Wetariki no te wai Herekeke," or a similar one; and I having written something in the "Field" on this subject, the New Zealander asked for my address, which, for some private reason of his own, the Editor declined to give until so long a time had elapsed that Wetariki Herekeke had returned to the colony--this I learnt from an indirect source-- otherwise I should have tried to induce him to undertake the experiment of introducing all the various species of the genus Salmo which are to be found in our rivers. If the colonists of New Zealand wish to make the attempt, I shall be most happy to render them all the assistance in my power, and I know no one so qualified as Birch to undertake the management of such an experiment; for he is exceedingly intelligent, has a perfect knowledge of the habits of both Trout and Salmon, and thoroughly understands the feeding of fish, both in their natural haunts and artificially, and would consequently be able to select suitable localities for conducting such an experiment to a successful issue. NOTE.--No reply was given to this by the authorities of Tasmania, but a similar communication, addressed to the Governor of New Zealand, elicited a very polite reply from his secretary, in which he said that there were no funds available for such a purpose, but that the subject would be brought before the legislature on their assembling, and would no doubt meet with their favourable consideration; but the Maori troubles broke out immediately after, and I heard no more about it. * * * * * CLITHEROE, _October 14th_, 1859. To the Editor of the "Field." In the "Field" of some weeks since, it was stated that the colonists of Tasmania were offering a large reward for the introduction of live Salmon, Salmon fry, or the fertilized ova of Salmon. Will you have the kindness to say what was the amount offered? who were the parties who made themselves responsible for the payment? and what time did they give within which they would pay for a successful attempt? I am the more anxious to have this information, because I have been applied to for advice by an exceedingly likely person, as the reward (L500) which he understood to be offered is to him so tempting a sum, that he would need very little encouragement to undertake the management of the experiment; and from what I know of him I will venture to assert that he will succeed, if success be practicable. But before I speak confidently of success, I would like a little more information, and will thank any of your readers who are able to do so, to give me replies to the following questions:-- Are there any Salmon in the rivers of Spain, or in France, south of the Loire, or even in that river? If not, why not? Are there any Salmon in North America, in any river (not a tributary of the St. Lawrence), south of that river? If there are, what rivers in the States contain Salmon. Do any of the rivers on the west coast of America below the latitude of 40 degrees N. contain Salmon? Do any of the rivers of China (not Chinese Tartary) contain Salmon? If I am right in supposing that the rivers I have pointed out have no Salmon in them, is it not exceedingly probable that the high temperature of these southern countries is unsuited to the habits and uncongenial to the health of these fish? Or how is it when they are on the same seaboard further north, they don't ascend these rivers, unless there are some such objections to their doing so? And if these objections really exist, then do they not equally exist in the rivers of Australia and Tasmania? But there may be other objections equally fatal: there may be fish in their rivers as voracious and destructive as our Pike; there may be Sharks and other fish in their seas and estuaries, which would snap up every Salmon that entered them. There may be Seals, Porpoises, Albatrosses, Man-of-War birds, and Cormorants, as well as fifty other nameless enemies, all combining their efforts to defeat so desirable a consummation; and, after all, there may be no one willing to make himself responsible for a repayment of the necessary expenses, for corporations and public bodies are proverbially untrustworthy. Yet, notwithstanding all these doubts of success, I think the experiment ought to be made; for its success would confer so great a boon on the colony in which it was made, that they (the colonists) ought to incur considerable risk and outlay for the chance of success, however small. I don't think there will be much difficulty in carrying fertilized ova there, but when hatched I fear they would not thrive. I think New Zealand offers far better chances of success: it is further from the tropics, it abounds in suitable rivers, the climate and temperature are more like England, and I believe the rivers never degenerate into mere water-holes, as they seem to do in Australia; and I think the residents of that colony ought to make a vigorous attempt to introduce Salmon, Salmon Trout, and the common brown Trout into their rivers immediately; and I should be delighted to render all the assistance in my power to accomplish so desirable an object. * * * * * ON THE FORMATION OF ICE AT THE BOTTOM OF RIVERS. _Anchor Frosts._ A correspondent of the "Magazine of Natural History," in endeavouring to explain the causes why water freezes at the bottom in rapid streams, says this unusual phenomenon may be rationally accounted for by anyone who has attended to it; that the streams in which anchor frosts occur generally are those which contain water of different temperatures--viz., surface-drainage and land springs and main springs, the first being always colder than the latter, in winter these never being less than 40 degrees, even in severe frosts. These colder globules being first frozen, float on the surface of the water individually, being prevented from coalescing by the intermediate main-spring-water, and where the water passes in a shallow stream over the pebbles the crystals are intercepted by the interstices of the stones, and then become heaped together in thick beds. The fact of the crystals of ice (which are specifically lighter than the water) sinking below the surface, is a circumstance requiring explanation. They do not sink from their specific gravity, but in the commotion of the current they are occasionally submerged, and while so are stopped by any obstruction, when they commence and compose the aggregation. Thinking this was an erroneous view of the matter, I replied as follows:-- J. M., in his remarks on anchor frosts, appears to me to have fallen into several errors in endeavouring to account for them (they are called bottom frosts in Yorkshire); for, admitting that main springs are of the temperature stated (40 degrees) when they issue from the earth, I am by no means prepared to believe that they keep that temperature long, or that the water issuing from them does not mingle intimately and immediately with the water of the river into which it flows; especially in the situations where anchor frosts are most common, which are rough and rapid streams. From J. M.'s statement it would appear that globules of water of different temperatures mix together without the one imparting its excess of caloric to the other, which is contrary to the experience of everyone; it is true, that in still places there will be different temperatures in the same body of water, but it is not owing to the main springs of which J. M. speaks, but to the peculiar way in which water is affected by cold. It is well known that water increases in density down to 40 degrees, below which temperature it begins to expand, and this expansion continues until it reaches the freezing-point, so that in severe frosts there will be strata of different temperatures from 32 degrees to 40 degrees. Again, he says that "the crystals of ice are intercepted by the interstices of the stones, and then become heaped together in thick beds;" but if my observations are correct, these depositions begin first round the large stones, which are not likely to stop small spiculae any more than are the water-gates of mills, where, he says, the accumulations also take place. Anchor frosts are most common in the rapid streams occurring below deeps in rivers, and I have seen a weir on the river Wharfe which had a wall of ice four feet high formed upon it in a single night by a sharp north wind. In my opinion a sufficient explanation of this freezing at the bottom of rivers is to be found in the fact that water when kept still may be cooled down below the freezing- point without being congealed; but if the vessel in which it is kept be shaken, a portion of it will be converted into a porous, spongy ice, and the temperature immediately rises to 32 degrees. In the deeps of rivers the same cooling below the freezing-point takes place without congelation, but as soon as this water reaches the stream below, the agitation immediately converts a portion of it into ice, which collects round the large stones at the bottom in the same way that crystallization commences in a solution of salt or sugar around a piece of thread or other substance which may be suspended in it. If a severe frost is followed by a bright day, thousands of these detached pieces of spongy ice may be seen rising from the stones which have served as nuclei for them; which proves that the detention of them is not merely mechanical, but that precipitation (if I may be allowed to call it so) takes place in the first instance, the stone serving as a nucleus, and that this adhesion is destroyed by the action of the sun's rays. I have never seen any attempt to explain the phenomenon of bottom- frosts before this of J. M.'s, and I am not philosopher enough to speak positively on the subject; but the above is the way in which I have always endeavoured to account for it. Perhaps some of your scientific readers may be able to give much better reasons for it than have been offered either by J. M. or myself. (January 17th, 1832.) Another writer (J. Carr, of Alnwick,) says that anchor frosts are merely long and severe ones where long masses of ice are frozen to the stones at the bottom of rapid streams, and this is simply owing to these stones acquiring a degree of cold far below the freezing-point, and the water in contact with them freezing and spreading into large sheets of ice, which are sometimes torn up and carry away the gravel adhering to the under surface. Thinking that this was an error, I again wrote to the "Magazine of Natural History" as below:-- I perceive that others beside myself have endeavoured to account for anchor frosts. Mr. Carr says they never occur except in long and severe frosts, and that the adhesion of the ice to the stones at the bottom is owing to their acquiring a degree of cold far below the freezing-point. He is in error when he says they never occur except in long-continued frosts, as the walls of ice which are sometimes raised on the crowns of weirs are invariably (so far as my observations have extended) deposited there _before_ the water in the reservoir above is frozen over, which proves that the frost has not been of long continuance, although it may have been severe. As to what he says about the stones acquiring a degree of cold far below the freezing-point, and imparting that coldness to the water, I would just ask how it is that a stone at the bottom of a river acquires this excess of cold, and if it is not more probable that the stones impart warmth to the surrounding water? I can easily conceive how the stones may, by the action of the sun's rays upon them, warm the surrounding water; but I do not see how they can impart cold, or, in other words, how their temperature can be reduced below that of the water by which they are surrounded. Stones certainly impart warmth to the water they are in, in bright weather, as the rays of the sun do not give much warmth in passing through any transparent medium; but on coming in contact with any opaque bodies, the heat is absorbed or reflected as the case may be, and in this way transparent media such as air and water acquire a warmth by contact which they would not otherwise possess. Thus, if an anchor frost is followed by a bright day, the rays of the sun impart so much warmth to the stones at the bottom of the river as is sufficient to liberate the ice from them, and on such days thousands of pieces of ice may be seen rising from the bottom and floating down the streams. Since my former observations were written I have had the satisfaction of finding my views on the subject confirmed by a very eminent chemist, [15] and if the discussions in your Magazine were to be settled by authority, and not by argument (which I trust will never be the case), he is one to whom many would be inclined to appeal, and to whom few would refuse to submit. (May 2nd, 1832.) * * * * * To the Editor of the "Agricultural Gazette." In a leading article of the 10th of January, 1852, after an account of the effects produced on water by radiation and the protection afforded to plants by the ice with which ponds are covered in winter, you go on to say that there are some circumstances under which water-plants suffer greatly, and from a singular cause, but one which when looked into is sufficiently simple and intelligible. As you do not appear to have hit upon the true reason, allow me to quote a little further, and then give my reason for this singular effect. You say that on a very fine but still night, water is cooled less rapidly than the earth: under such circumstances the bottom of the pond cools more rapidly than the surface, the plants become colder--in fact, some degrees below the freezing-point, &c. &c. I submit that such reasons are inadmissible, for there would be an immediate upward current, which, as water is such an excellent conductor of heat, would immediately equalize the temperature of all the water above 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and stratified (if I may use the expression) above the water of this temperature there would be another layer of water of equal but gradually decreasing temperature until it fell below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The explanation I offer is this. It is well known that if water is kept perfectly still it may be cooled down considerably, or at least some degrees below 32 degrees, without freezing; but the moment it is shaken a portion of it is converted into a spongy, porous ice, and the temperature rises to 32 degrees. What may be the case in the rivers of the South of England I do not know, but in the rapid streams of the North this process may be seen on a very extensive scale in severe frosts. The water in the still pools (before they are frozen over) is cooled down to below 32 degrees, and so soon as this cooled water reaches the next stream, precipitation (if I may so call it) takes place, and the spongy ice lays hold of every projecting pebble, which serves as a nucleus in the same way as threads and bits of stick serve in the crystallization of salts. After a severe frost, when followed by bright sunshine the next morning, I have seen thousands of these bits of spongy ice rising from the stones to which they had been attached to the surface of the water. I have seen after long- continued frost the course of a stream completely altered by this bottom-ice (as it is called here), and I have also seen a weir with a wall of ice on it three feet high (raised in a single night) by the same cause. Now apply this to the bottom-ice in ponds (which however I must confess I never saw). The night being calm, the water gets cool below 32 degrees, but then a breeze springing up the water becomes agitated, precipitation takes place, and the plants serving as nuclei become immediately clothed with this spongy ice, and the sun shining next morning imparts so much warmth to the plants that the ice thaws which is in contact with them, and rises to the surface. Of course if the sun does not shine next morning, and the frost continues, the plants may be clothed with ice for a long time. To the foregoing the Editor of the "Agricultural Gazette" replied as follows:-- We cannot admit the soundness of our correspondent's explanation of the formation of bottom-ice or ground _gore_. We are well acquainted with the statements of Arago and other writers as to the cause of this curious phenomenon, and after a careful consideration of the subject believe that it is due to radiation and not to any other cause. Bottom-ice has been observed in ponds on perfectly still nights when there was no breeze to agitate the surface of the water. The waters in the pools between the rapids of rivers can hardly ever be still enough for the water to fall below the freezing- point and yet remain fluid; the temperature of water in such situations is not below 33 degrees. The following was my rejoinder:-- You say at the end of remarks about bottom-ice that you cannot admit the soundness of my explanation, and that you are well aware of what is said by Arago and others on this curious phenomenon, and that bottom-ice has been observed in ponds when there was no breeze, and that the water in pools between the rapids of weirs can hardly ever be still enough to fall below the freezing-point, and yet remain fluid. I was not aware before seeing your remarks that either Arago or any other philosopher had ever written about bottom-ice, and even now I do not know what are their opinions on the subject, and if the discussions in your paper are to be settled by authority and not by argument, I can only make my bow and withdraw; but if it meets your views to allow your correspondents to state their opinions temperately, and support them by such arguments as occur to them, I do not yet feel inclined to give up my notions about bottom-ice. Will you allow me to ask whether you ever personally saw ice at the bottom of a pond when there was none on the surface? and if so, under what circumstances? I have heard of such an occurrence, but never witnessed it, and feel inclined to doubt the fact unless you will vouch for it; for it appears to me that the moment the water at the bottom falls below 40 degrees it will begin to rise to the surface, and it is so excellent a conductor that it will instantly equalize the temperature of the mud at the bottom with that of its own temperature. I am neither chemist nor meteorologist, and therefore I am not able to say much about radiation; but my idea of it is, that its effects in water would be much greater in still pools than in rapid streams, and that, therefore, if radiation was the cause of bottom-ice, there ought to be more of it in the pools than in the rapid streams. But the contrary is the fact, for after a severe night's frost, I can frequently find the streams filled with this bottom-ice, when none can be observed in the pools. Again, can the fact of the weir which had a wall of this bottom- ice three feet high in a single night, be accounted for by radiation? It appears to me to be very easily accounted for by supposing that the water in the deep above was so quietly cooled down as to retain its fluidity until the shaking it got on flowing over the weir suddenly produced congelation. I think that radiation would not go on at the crown of the weir alone. Why do you think that the water in pools is never still enough to allow it to get below 32 degrees without freezing on still clear nights? In long deep pools, where the body of the water is perhaps a hundred times as great as the current flowing into it, the motion is so extremely slow that I cannot for a moment doubt that it gets below 32 degrees without congelation, but when it arrives at a rapid, this ice is immediately formed. The Editor closed the discussion at this point by saying that the subject was not of sufficient agricultural importance to be continued further. The following is my brother Richard Garnett's [16] account of his observations on bottom-frosts. (The paper was written in 1818, and published in the "Journal of the Royal Institution.") * * * * * ON THE PRODUCTION OF ICE AT THE BOTTOMS OF RIVERS. The phenomenon of the production of ice at the bottoms of rivers has been repeatedly noticed, but I am not aware that any satisfactory solution of the cause has hitherto been given. In Nicholson's "Dictionary of Chemistry," several different hypotheses are enumerated, which I shall not stop now to examine, since it may be safely asserted that they neither accord with the established principles of chemistry, nor with the facts for which they endeavour to account. The most recent theory with which I am acquainted is that of Mr. A. Knight, who in a paper lately published in the "Philosophical Transactions," seems to consider the particles of ice as originally formed at the surface, and afterwards absorbed by the eddies of streams to the bottom. He states, in support of this idea, that he did not observe any similar phenomenon in still water. I shall advert to this hypothesis in the sequel, and at present it may suffice to remark of it and all others which I have hitherto seen, that supposing any of them to be correct, the same effects ought regularly to be produced whenever the atmosphere is at a similar temperature, or in other words, that whenever the frost is so intense as materially to affect the water of a river, we may then expect to find ice at the bottom. Now this is certainly not the case, since the appearance we are treating of never occurs but under peculiar _atmospherical_ circumstances, and rivers are frequently frozen over, and remain so for a length of time without a particle of ice being visible at the bottom of their streams. I do not now profess to have developed this mystery, but merely intend to state the circumstances under which the phenomenon takes place, as well as a few particulars connected with it, which are perhaps not generally known, and which may hereafter be serviceable as data for investigating the cause. It is well known to meteorologists that a severe frost in winter does not always commence in a uniform manner. Sometimes it begins with a gentle wind from the E. or N.E., and is at first comparatively mild in its operations, but afterwards gradually increases in intensity. Frosts of this kind are generally more lasting than others, and during such, I have not observed that any ice is generated at the bottoms of streams; though the deep and still parts of rivers are often frozen over to a considerable extent. At other times, during the continuance of the violent south-westerly gales which are so prevalent in this country in the winter months, the wind frequently shifts on a sudden from S.W. to N.W., commonly about an hour before sunset, and blows with great impetuosity in the latter direction, attended with a severe frost, and sometimes with a heavy fall of snow. The effects of this frost, in places exposed to the wind, are extremely rapid, so as to render the ground impenetrably hard in about a couple of hours from its commencement. Situations that are not so much exposed seem comparatively little affected--at least, I have repeatedly observed that a small sheltered pond in a field was nearly free from ice, while the current of a large and rapid river at no great distance was nearly choked up by it. I believe that the phenomenon under consideration seldom occurs except during such frosts as these, and the following are the principal circumstances connected with it which I am able to state from my own observation. It may here be premised that ice of this description is seldom seen adhering to anything beside rock, stone, or gravel, and that it is more abundantly produced in proportion to the greater magnitude and number of the stones composing the bed of the river, combined (as will be further noticed) with the velocity of the current. I have been informed by a friend that he has occasionally seen it attached to solid wooden piles at a considerable depth below the surface of the water, but I never saw or heard of any on earth, mud, or clay. It is not easy to ascertain the precise time at which the process begins to take place. It appears, however, almost invariably to commence during the first night of the frost, and probably within a few hours after sunset. On the ensuing morning the first thing which strikes an observer is an immense quantity of detached plates of ice floating down the stream. Mr. Knight naturally enough supposed these to have been formed at the surface by the influence of the freezing atmosphere, and afterwards absorbed by the current; but I think that a minute inspection would have led him to form a different conclusion-- viz., that they are first formed in the bed of the river, and afterwards rise to the surface. It is true that none are to be seen in situations where there is no sensible current, and that they abound most in rough and rapid places; but on closely examining any stream of moderate velocity, yet smooth, equable, and free from all appearance of eddy or rippling, a great number of these plates of ice will be found adhering to the rock, stone, or gravel at the bottom. If they are watched with attention, they will be observed to rapidly increase in bulk, till at last, on account of their inferior specific gravity, aided, perhaps, by the action of the current, they detach themselves from the substances to which they first adhered, and rise to the surface of the water. The form of these pieces of ice is very irregular, depending in a great measure on the size and shape of the stones or other substances to which they were originally attached. Most of them seem to be of an oblong or circular figure; they are generally convex on the upper surface, and have a number of laminae and spiculae shooting from them in various directions, especially from their circumference. Sometimes when those floating pieces or plates meet with any obstruction in the channel of the river, they accumulate in such quantities as to cover the surface of the water, and become frozen together in one large sheet, but this kind of ice may be always readily distinguished from that produced in the usual way by the action of the cold air on the surface, which is smooth, transparent, and of an uniform texture; on the contrary, one of these conglomerated fields or sheets is opaque, uneven, full of asperities, and the form of each separate plate composing it may be distinctly traced. In this situation, they generally assume the shape of irregular polygons, with angles somewhat rounded; a form apparently caused by the lateral pressure of the contiguous pieces. On the river Wharfe, near Otley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, is a weir or milldam where this phenomenon is sometimes manifested in a striking manner. This structure is of hewn stone, forming a plane inclined at an angle of from 35 degrees to 50 degrees, fronting the north and extending from west to east, to the length of 250 or 300 yards. When one of the above-mentioned frosts occurs, the stone which composes the weir soon becomes incrusted with ice, which increases so rapidly in thickness as in a short time to impede the course of the stream, which falls over it in a tolerably uniform sheet, and with considerable velocity; at the same time, the wind blowing strongly from the north-west, contributes to repel the water and freeze such as adheres to the crest of the weir when its surface comes nearly in contact with the air. The consequence is that in a short time the current is entirely obstructed, and the superincumbent water forced to a higher level. But as the above-mentioned causes continue to act, the ice is also elevated by a perpetual aggregation of particles, till by a series of similar operations an icy mound or barrier is formed, so high as to force the water over the opposite bank, and thus produce an apparent inundation. But in a short time the accumulated weight of a great many thousand cubic feet of water presses so strongly against the barrier as to burst a passage through some weak part, through which the water escapes and subsides to its former level, leaving the singular appearance of a wall or rampart of ice three or four feet high, and about two feet in thickness, along the greatest part of the upper edge of the weir. The ice composing this barrier where it adheres to the stone, is of solid consistency, but the upper part consists of a multitude of thin laminae or layers resting upon each other in a confused manner, and at different degrees of inclination, their interstices being occupied by innumerable icy spiculae, diverging and crossing each other in all directions. The whole mass much resembles the white and porous ice which may be seen at the edge of a pond or small rill where the water has subsided during a frost. It may be further observed that a frost of this kind is very limited in its duration, seldom lasting more than thirty-six or forty hours. On the morning of the second day after its commencement, a visible relaxation takes place in the temperature of the atmosphere. Usually before noon, the wind on a sudden shifts to the south-west, and a rapid thaw comes on, frequently attended with rain. What appears somewhat remarkable is, that during several hours after the commencement of the thaw, the production of ice at the bottom of rivers seems to go on without abatement, and upon examining a rapid stream, the stones over which it flows will be found at this period completely incrusted with the above description of icy plates. It seems evident from this that the bed of the river, which has been reduced below the freezing temperature, is not for some time affected by the change of the atmosphere. This may be in some measure illustrated by the well-known fact, that rain which falls upon a rock or stone wall, is frequently converted into ice, though the air and the ground are evidently in a state of thaw. Before the following morning, the ice of which we have been speaking generally disappears, being carried away by the current or dissolved by the thaw. The last time that I remarked this phenomenon, was in a stream of the river Aire, near Bradford, in Yorkshire, on the 1st of January, 1814. This instance did not precisely accord with what I have stated to be the usual circumstances of the case, as the frost then had existed several days without any previous appearance of this kind; but there were several indications of approaching change of temperature, and the day following there was a partial thaw attended with rain, the wind having veered from north-west to south-west. This thaw, however, did not continue long, and was succeeded by a frost which surpassed all within my recollection in severity and duration. Yet during the whole of the period, though the thermometer often stood below 18 degrees Fahrenheit, and the estuary of the Tees several miles below Stockton, where the spring-tides rise from twelve to eighteen feet, was for two months frozen over, so as to allow the passage of a loaded waggon, I could never perceive a particle of ice adhering to the rock or gravel, in the bed of the small and rapid river Leven in Cleveland, where I then resided. This circumstance seems decisively to prove that the phenomenon does not merely depend on an intensity of cold. I confess I am unable to frame any hypotheses respecting the above-mentioned facts which would not be liable to numerous and formidable objections. The immediate cause of the formation of the ice seems to be a rapid diminution of the temperature in the stone or gravel in the bed of the river, connected with the sudden changes in the state of the atmosphere, but it does not seem very easy to explain the precise nature of this connection. We may easily conceive that by a sudden change from a state of thaw to an intense frost attended by a strong wind, the whole body of water in a river may become quickly cooled, and consequently diminish the temperature of the stone or gravel over which it flows; but to suppose that water which is not itself at freezing- point is capable of reducing the substances in contact with it by means of a continual application of successive particles so far _beneath_ that temperature as in process of time to convert the contiguous water to ice, seems not to accord very well with the usually received theory of the equilibrium of caloric. However, the fact that the quantity of ice thus produced is always greater in proportion to the superior velocity of the stream, little or none being found where there is no sensible current, seems in some degree to countenance the above idea. I cannot learn that any experiments have ever been instituted on this subject, though it seems that they might easily be made by a person conveniently situated and possessed of the necessary instruments. A careful examination by properly contrived thermometers of the relative temperatures of the air, the water, and the bed of the river and of the changes undergone by them during the above process, would probably go a great way towards solving the problem. I know no one better qualified for this undertaking than Mr. Knight, if he should at any future time have leisure and opportunity to direct towards it the same acuteness of observation and accuracy of investigation which have enabled him to make such important discoveries in the economy of the vegetable kingdom, and if the explanation of this phenomenon should ever lead to results of any importance to the cause of science, I shall feel sufficiently satisfied if it be deemed that I have been of any service in pointing out the way. RICHARD GARNETT. BLACKBURN, _May 16th_, 1818. * * * * * GOSSAMER. CLITHEROE, _October 20th_, 1859. To the Editor of the "Field." "A Young Inquirer" asks what is the cause of that appearance so often met with in the autumn, resembling spider-webs. He says, if it be the production of that insect, how do you account for their hanging apparently unsuspended in the air, as it is seen fifty or sixty feet high, without a tree or any other object near to which it could be attached? I suppose you have not time to give to such questions minutely, as your reply would lead one to infer that Gossamer proceeded from spiders in general; and if it be meant that all true spiders spin, it is no doubt correct; but the Gossamer which "A Young Inquirer" asks about is the production of a small black spider about the size of a flea, which was a true aeronaut long before Montgolfier or Lunardi, and if "A Young Inquirer" has access to either the "Linnean Transactions" or the first series of Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," he will find particulars in the latter, showing that a violent controversy raged through the three first volumes between Mr. Blackwall and Dr. Murray on the question whether the ascent of this spider (_A. AEronautica_) was electric, or whether it merely travelled in the direction of the wind. But if "A Young Inquirer" would deserve his name, let him begin with these spiders and observe for himself; he will find the inquiry highly interesting. He has no doubt frequently seen a small black spider creeping on his hat or clothes (if he lives in the country this must have occurred to him many times); this is the aeronautic spider. Let him take this upon his hand, and if he be in the house let him carry it to the open door or window, and allow it to creep up to the tip of his finger, which he must then hold in a horizontal position. When the spider finds it can proceed no further by creeping, it generally drops a few inches, where it remains suspended for a short time, apparently quite still, but if very closely observed another thread (Gossamer) may be seen proceeding from its vent, and when this has reached the length which the spider's instinct tells it is sufficient for the purpose, it cuts off the connection till then existing between it and the thread by which it has hitherto been suspended from the finger, and floats away into space. Very often it rises almost vertically, sometimes its course is nearly horizontal, and sometimes it is oblique. I cannot say, as Mr. Murray does, that I have seen the spider go _against_ the wind, neither can I confirm Mr. Blackwall's assertions that he always goes right before the wind, for I have seen him go apparently across the current, so far as I could judge of the direction of the wind at the time. If "A Young Inquirer" makes the experiment I have suggested, let him not be discouraged if the first he tries does not go off at all, as I have sometimes found this to be the case, which I accounted for by supposing that possibly the supply of materials might be exhausted at the time. I do not remember that I ever saw one of these aeronautic spiders preying upon any insect, yet it must be for some such purpose that they ascend to great altitudes, sometimes in countless numbers, and the way they come down again is quite as curious as the manner in which they ascend. Many years since, as I was walking over the hills in the neighbourhood of Blackburn, on a bright, still morning in September, thousands of small locks of what looked like cotton wool were slowly descending to the ground from various altitudes-- some as high as I could see--and tens of thousands of similar locks were lying on the ground on both sides of the path by which I was travelling; and on examination I found that all these locks were Gossamer, some with the spider still with them, but generally deserted. The spiders when they wanted to come down, finding there was no descending current of air, or perhaps, as Mr. Murray says, no electricity, determined to descend in _parachutes_; they therefore had drawn up their cables hand over hand (as they may often be seen to do when they wish to ascend their own lines) until they accumulated a mass heavy enough to fall by its own weight, and carry them along with it. I have seen Gossamer in this form at other times before and since, but in the likeness of a snow-shower I never saw it except on that occasion, and, if I recollect aright, the same enormous shower of Gossamer was observed to extend as far as Liverpool. What induced these millions of spiders to go up at the same time, of course I do not know, and can only suppose that they went up to feed; but, as I have said previously, I never saw one of this species preying upon anything. The idea that they go aloft to kill the _Furia Infernalis_ is too fanciful to deserve credit. Who knows whether the _Furia Infernalis_ is anything else than a murderous Mrs. Harris--at all events, who has seen one, and what was it like? I suppose they are true sportsmen, and disdaining to take their fish in nets, they, like thorough brothers of the angle, fish only _with fine gut_. Gilbert White noticed one of these showers of Gossamer, and as his account is very interesting, I quote it. He says that on the 21st of September, 1741, intent upon field diversions, he rose before daybreak, but on going out he found the whole face of the country covered with a thick coat of cobweb drenched with dew, as if two or three setting-nets had been drawn one over the other. When his dogs attempted to hunt, their eyes were blinded and hoodwinked, so much that they were obliged to lie down and scrape themselves. This appearance was followed by a most lovely day. About 9 A.M. a shower of these webs (formed not of single threads, but of perfect flakes, some near an inch broad and five or six long) was observed falling from very elevated regions, which continued without interruption during the whole of the day, and they fell with a velocity which showed they were considerably heavier than the atmosphere. When the most elevated station in the country where this was observed was ascended, the webs were still to be seen descending from above, and twinkling like stars in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most incurious. The flakes of the web on this occasion hung so thick upon the hedges and trees, that basketsful might have been collected. No one doubts (he observes) but that these webs are the production of small spiders. These aerial spiders are of two sizes, although of the same colour and general appearance; they are probably male and female. At all events they do not vary in size more than other species of spiders when the sexes differ. Has it been observed by naturalists that spiders eat their own webs? A large one that I used to feed when I was a lad with wasps, humble bees, and flesh-flies, used to do so occasionally. These insects were so strong that they often ruined the web in their efforts to escape, and the spider, quite aware of the rough customers it had to deal with, would often coil a cable of many folds round them before venturing to seize them with its mandibles. It would, if the web was ruined by the struggles of the insect, deliberately gorge it, which I accounted for by supposing that unless it did so it would not be able to secrete a sufficient supply of material to enable it to spin another. The leaping spiders are another curious species, which construct no webs, although they spin threads. This spider may be seen frequently on the walls of houses, and if carefully watched it will be seen to range up and down in quest of small gnats and other insects; when it observes one it creeps to within about two inches of it, and backing slightly, it appears to hesitate for a moment, and then springs upon the fly, but always before doing so it fixes a thread to the spot from whence it springs, so that if the fly happens to be too strong for it, and is able to detach itself from the wall, they both remain suspended from the thread which has been previously fixed by the spider. This I have seen more than once. They sometimes venture on larger game than the small gnats. One I was watching one day came upon one of the large _Ephemera_ (the Browndrake), an insect ten times as large as the spider, but after many points (for the setting of the spider before it springs is very similar in manner to that of a thoroughbred pointer [17]), in which it kept varying its position, apparently to gain some advantage, it gave up the attempt, discretion proving the better part of valour. When botanizing on Erris Begh (in Connemara), this summer, I passed through many spider-lines so strong as to offer a very sensible resistance before breaking. I don't remember to have ever before met with them so strong and tenacious, and the makers of optical instruments might there have found abundance of threads which I am told are valuable as _cross-wires_ for transit- instruments and theodolites. I did not meet with any of the spiders that had thrown out these lines, but judging of them by their works I suppose they must have been large ones. One of your correspondents was inquiring a few weeks since how it was that a spider could throw out a long line between two trees or buildings at a considerable distance from each other. This seems to me to be very easily explained, if we reason from the analogy of the flying spider. The spider seems to throw out a line, trusting it will catch somewhere or other, and it is able to ascertain it has done so by pulling at it, and when it finds that it is firmly fixed it starts off to travel upon it, as I have occasionally noticed. Everyone has noticed how carefully the spider carries her cocoon of eggs attached to the vent, and how disconsolate she appears to be when deprived of them; but I don't think it is so generally known that some of the spiders carry their young on their backs for some time after they are hatched. I remember seeing an instance of this one day when on the Moors, grouse-shooting. I saw what seemed to be a very curious insect travelling on the ling (heather), and on stooping down to examine it I found it was a large spider, upon the back of which (in fact, all over it) were clustered some dozens of young ones, about the size of pins' heads; she also seemed to guard them with great care, and seemed much afraid of losing them. FINIS. NOTES. [1] There is a fish somewhat resembling the Brambling in the Dunsop, a tributary of the Hodder, where it is known by the name of the Bull Penk. [2] My opinion that neither Trout nor Salmon spawn every year is I think strongly corroborated by the fact, that previous to the Act of 1861 the London fish market was supplied with Salmon of the largest size, and of the best quality, in October, November, and December. When these fish were examined, it was found that the ovaries were but small, and the individual ova were not larger than mustard seed. These fish could not have spawned that season, nor would they have done so if left alive, if the growth of the ova in the ovaries is uniform--I mean if the growth of the ova is as great in one month as another--because in May and June the ova in a female Salmon is four times as large as these were in November. Again, when the gas tank at Settle was emptied into the Ribble, in September, 1861, all the fish so far as was known were killed between that place and Mitton, Salmon as well as Par and Trout. Supposing that Salmon spawn every year, and that the Smolts come up the river, as Grilse in the summer of the same year in which they have gone to the sea in the spring, there ought to have been a great scarcity of both Grilse and Salmon in the Ribble in the year 1862, but so far was this from being the case, that both Grilse and Salmon were more abundant that season than they had been for some years previously, but there was a scarcity of both in 1863. Again, when the Smolts were turned out of the breeding ponds at Dohulla, Galway, the experiment was looked upon as a failure because no Grilse returned the same season, not one having showed itself, but many came the summer after, proving pretty conclusively that in some rivers, at all events, the Smolt requires a year's residence in the sea before it returns as Grilse. [3] In the evidence of Mr. George Hogarth, it is stated that he saw upwards of ninety Kelt fish in the mill lead at Grandholme, on the Don, May 6th. [4] Salmon are said to produce 18,000 or 20,000 eggs each, and I have no doubt that a large Salmon will produce more, as one I examined a year or two ago, of about ten pounds weight, had a roe which weighed two pounds nine ounces, and the skin in which the eggs were enveloped (they were not in the loose state in which they are found just before exclusion) weighed three ounces, after all the eggs were washed from it; so that there were thirty-eight ounces of eggs. I weighed fifty of them, and found they weighed sixty-five grains. At that rate, thirty-eight ounces would give 12,788, and 300 lbs. 1,615,000; but as they would be much lighter when dried and potted than when taken from the belly of the fish, we may safely estimate that the 300 lbs. would contain 2,000,000, a prodigious number to pass through the hands of one tackle maker in a season. [5] From "Loudon's Magazine of Natural History." [6] I have frequently found, when catching Trout for this purpose, that the milt and roe were not ready for exclusion; when this was the case, I put them into a wire cage, which I sunk in the water, examining the fish every week, until I found they were in a fit state for the experiment. [7] I fancy that if the ova come in contact with the air on exclusion, they are not so readily impregnated as if they are always covered with the water, and therefore I have laid some stress on the desirableness of keeping the air excluded from the ova as much as possible. [8] There is, however, one fact which must lead a casual observer to suppose that the ova are impregnated twelve months before exclusion. It is this: the male Par (Salmon fry) are at this season, October, full of milt, almost ready for exclusion; whilst, in the female, the ova are so small that they require a microscope to see them individually, and the whole ovary is merely like a thread, leading to the conclusion that either the milt of the male is not required for the female Par, or the ova are impregnated twelve months before exclusion. The fact is, that the milt of the Par is used to impregnate the ova of the Salmon on the spawning beds. [9] When I commenced this paper I had no doubt that hybrids had been produced between the Sprod (sea Trout) and the common Trout; since then, having seen the fry said to be so produced, and on making some further inquiries, I find there is some doubt whether the female was a _Sprod_, or merely a white Trout, and therefore I cannot confidently assert (as some time ago I believed I could) that hybrid fish had already been produced. As some of my readers may not know what a _Sprod_ is, it may be necessary to explain. In the Ribble we have a fish ascending from the sea in July and August, weighing from six to ten ounces, which, in appearance at least, is a miniature Salmon. I believe the same fish is called a Whitling in Scotland. Besides this, we have a similar but larger fish, which begins to come a little earlier, and which weighs from one to three pounds; this, in the Ribble, is called a Mort (in Scotland a sea Trout). Both these fish (if they are two species) afford splendid sport to the angler, who must never consider them beaten until he has them in the landing-net. They are also delicate eating. _Note on cross-breeding of Fish._ Since the above paper was published, the breeding of Hybrids has been successfully accomplished. I have had fish sent from two different gentlemen living on the banks of the reservoirs belonging to the Liverpool Waterworks; these were beautiful fish (three in number), more like the sea Trout than the Salmon, and the largest of them weighing two pounds. I had put them into the brooks running into the reservoirs three years before. I also learn from a friend that a beautiful specimen of the _ombre Chevalier_ (French Char) was taken out of the Rivington reservoir. About a thousand had been put there by me two years before. [10] Persons conversant with the habits of birds will readily comprehend me; for the sake of those who do not, I will just observe that the flight of all the Wagtails is very peculiar, being a succession of great leaps in the air (if I may be allowed the expression), which form a series of curves, the bird rising considerably at the commencement of each effort, and sinking again at the close. [11] The intrepid and unfortunate traveller Joseph Ritchie, who accompanied Captain Lyon's expedition to Fezzan, and died there in 1819. Mr. Ritchie was a native of Otley, and an intimate friend of Mr. Garnett and his brothers. The beautiful poem from which the quotation is taken is printed in Alaric Watts's "Poetical Album." [12] 1853.--I regret that in 1853, and for some years previous, we have not seen one. I fear they are extinct. The smaller kind are still numerous. [13] The male Par is an exception to this rule. [14] It appears to be a beautiful provision of Nature that mixture with water should increase the sphere of its action. Spallanzani found by actual experiment that three grains of the seed of a male frog might be diluted with a pint of water without destroying its stimulating power. See "Dissertations," vol. ii. p. 142, chap. 3, Ed. "Mag. Nat. History." [15] Mr. Thomson, of Primrose. [16] Assistant Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum. Author of "Philological Essays," &c. [17] The toad, when going to take a bee, points for a second or two as beautifully as the best-trained pointer before it strikes with its tongue. 
20772	----	This file is gratefully uploaded to the PG collection in honor of Distributed Proofreaders having posted over 10,000 ebooks. AGRICULTURE FOR BEGINNERS BY CHARLES WILLIAM BURKETT EDITOR OF THE _AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST_ FORMERLY DIRECTOR OF AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION KANSAS STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FRANK LINCOLN STEVENS PROFESSOR OF PLANT PATHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FORMERLY TEACHER OF SCIENCE IN HIGH SCHOOL COLUMBUS, OHIO AND DANIEL HARVEY HILL FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND MECHANIC ARTS _REVISED EDITION_ GINN AND COMPANY BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON ATLANTA · DALLAS · COLUMBUS · SAN FRANCISCO COPYRIGHT, 1903, 1904, 1914, BY CHARLES WILLIAM BURKETT, FRANK LINCOLN STEVENS AND DANIEL HARVEY HILL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 329.7 The Athenæum Press GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U.S.A. [Illustration: GETTING READY FOR WINTER] PREFACE Since its first publication "Agriculture for Beginners" has found a welcome in thousands of schools and homes. Naturally many suggestions as to changes, additions, and other improvements have reached its authors. Naturally, too, the authors have busied themselves in devising methods to add to the effectiveness of the book. Some additions have been made almost every year since the book was published. To embody all these changes and helpful suggestions into a strictly unified volume; to add some further topics and sections; to bring all farm practices up to the ideals of to-day; to include the most recent teaching of scientific investigators--these were the objects sought in the thorough revision which has just been given the book. The authors hope and think that the remaking of the book has added to its usefulness and attractiveness. They believe now, as they believed before, that there is no line of separation between the science of agriculture and the practical art of agriculture. They are assured by the success of this book that agriculture is eminently a teachable subject. They see no difference between teaching the child the fundamental principles of farming and teaching the same child the fundamental truths of arithmetic, geography, or grammar. They hold that a youth should be trained for the farm just as carefully as he is trained for any other occupation, and that it is unreasonable to expect him to succeed without training. If they are right in these views, the training must begin in the public schools. This is true for two reasons: 1. It is universally admitted that aptitudes are developed, tastes acquired, and life habits formed during the years that a child is in the public school. Hence, during these important years every child intended for the farm should be taught to know and love nature, should be led to form habits of observation, and should be required to begin a study of those great laws upon which agriculture is based. A training like this goes far toward making his life-work profitable and delightful. 2. Most boys and girls reared on a farm get no educational training except that given in the public schools. If, then, the truths that unlock the doors of nature are not taught in the public schools, nature and nature's laws will always be hid in night to a majority of our bread-winners. They must still in ignorance and hopeless drudgery tear their bread from a reluctant soil. The authors return hearty thanks to Professor Thomas F. Hunt, University of California; Professor Augustine D. Selby, Ohio Experiment Station; Professor W. F. Massey, horticulturist and agricultural writer; and Professor Franklin Sherman, Jr., State Entomologist of North Carolina, for aid in proofreading and in the preparation of some of the material. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE SOIL SECTION PAGE I. ORIGIN OF THE SOIL 1 II. TILLAGE OF THE SOIL 6 III. THE MOISTURE OF THE SOIL 9 IV. HOW THE WATER RISES IN THE SOIL 13 V. DRAINING THE SOIL 14 VI. IMPROVING THE SOIL 17 VII. MANURING THE SOIL 21 CHAPTER II. THE SOIL AND THE PLANT VIII. ROOTS 25 IX. HOW THE PLANT FEEDS FROM THE SOIL 29 X. ROOT-TUBERCLES 30 XI. THE ROTATION OF CROPS 33 CHAPTER III. THE PLANT XII. HOW THE PLANT FEEDS FROM THE AIR 39 XIII. THE SAP CURRENT 40 XIV. THE FLOWER AND THE SEED 42 XV. POLLINATION 46 XVI. CROSSES, HYBRIDS, AND CROSS-POLLINATION 48 XVII. PROPAGATION BY BUDS 51 XVIII. PLANT SEEDING 59 XIX. SELECTING SEED CORN 66 XX. WEEDS 69 XXI. SEED PURITY AND VITALITY 72 CHAPTER IV. HOW TO RAISE A FRUIT TREE XXII. GRAFTING 78 XXIII. BUDDING 81 XXIV. PLANTING AND PRUNING 83 CHAPTER V. HORTICULTURE XXV. MARKET-GARDENING 89 XXVI. FLOWER-GARDENING 108 CHAPTER VI. THE DISEASES OF PLANTS XXVII. THE CAUSE AND NATURE OF PLANT DISEASE 122 XXVIII. YEAST AND BACTERIA 127 XXIX. PREVENTION OF PLANT DISEASE 129 XXX. SOME SPECIAL PLANT DISEASES 130 CHAPTER VII. ORCHARD, GARDEN, AND FIELD INSECTS XXXI. INSECTS IN GENERAL 144 XXXII. ORCHARD INSECTS 152 XXXIII. GARDEN AND FIELD INSECTS 165 XXXIV. THE COTTON-BOLL WEEVIL 173 CHAPTER VIII. FARM CROPS XXXV. COTTON 180 XXXVI. TOBACCO 189 XXXVII. WHEAT 192 XXXVIII. CORN 197 XXXIX. PEANUTS 202 XL. SWEET POTATOES 204 XLI. WHITE, OR IRISH, POTATOES 206 XLII. OATS 209 XLIII. RYE 213 XLIV. BARLEY 215 XLV. SUGAR PLANTS 217 XLVI. HEMP AND FLAX 226 XLVII. BUCKWHEAT 229 XLVIII. RICE 231 XLIX. THE TIMBER CROP 232 L. THE FARM GARDEN 235 CHAPTER IX. FEED STUFFS LI. GRASSES 238 LII. LEGUMES 244 CHAPTER X. DOMESTIC ANIMALS LIII. HORSES 262 LIV. CATTLE 270 LV. SHEEP 276 LVI. SWINE 279 LVII. FARM POULTRY 282 LVIII. BEE CULTURE 286 LIX. WHY WE FEED ANIMALS 290 CHAPTER XI. FARM DAIRYING LX. THE DAIRY COW 293 LXI. MILK, CREAM, CHURNING, AND BUTTER 297 LXII. HOW MILK SOURS 302 LXIII. THE BABCOCK MILK-TESTER 304 CHAPTER XII. MISCELLANEOUS LXIV. GROWING FEED STUFFS ON THE FARM 309 LXV. FARM TOOLS AND MACHINES 313 LXVI. LIMING THE LAND 315 LXVII. BIRDS 318 LXVIII. FARMING ON DRY LAND 323 LXIX. IRRIGATION 326 LXX. LIFE IN THE COUNTRY 330 APPENDIX 339 GLOSSARY 342 INDEX 351 TO THE TEACHER Teachers sometimes shrink from undertaking the teaching of a simple textbook on agriculture because they are not familiar with all the processes of farming. By the same reasoning they might hesitate to teach arithmetic because they do not know calculus or to teach a primary history of the United States because they are not versed in all history. The art of farming is based on the sciences dealing with the growth of plants and animals. This book presents in a simple way these fundamental scientific truths and suggests some practices drawn from them. Hence, even though many teachers may not have plowed or sowed or harvested, such teachers need not be embarrassed in mastering and heartily instructing a class in nature's primary laws. If teachers realize how much the efficiency, comfort, and happiness of their pupils will be increased throughout their lives from being taught to coöperate with nature and to take advantage of her wonderful laws, they will eagerly begin this study. They will find also that their pupils will be actively interested in these studies bearing on their daily lives, and this interest will be carried over to other subjects. Whenever you can, take the pupils into the field, the garden, the orchard, and the dairy. Teach them to make experiments and to learn by the use of their own eyes and brains. They will, if properly led, astonish you by their efforts and growth. You will find in the practical exercises many suggestions as to experiments that you can make with your class or with individual members. Do not neglect this first-hand teaching. It will be a delight to your pupils. In many cases it will be best to finish the experiments or observational work first, and later turn to the text to amplify the pupil's knowledge. Although the book is arranged in logical order, the teacher ought to feel free to teach any topic in the season best suited to its study. Omit any chapter or section that does not bear on your crops or does not deal with conditions in your state. The United States government and the different state experiment stations publish hundreds of bulletins on agricultural subjects. These are sent without cost, on application. It will be very helpful to get such of these bulletins as bear on the different sections of the book. These will be valuable additions to your school library. The authors would like to give a list of these bulletins bearing on each chapter, but it would soon be out of date, for the bulletins get out of print and are supplanted by newer ones. However, the United States Department of Agriculture prints a monthly list of its publications, and each state experiment station keeps a list of its bulletins. A note to the Secretary of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., or to your own state experiment station will promptly bring you these lists, and from them you can select what you need for your school. AGRICULTURE FOR BEGINNERS CHAPTER I THE SOIL SECTION I. ORIGIN OF THE SOIL The word _soil_ occurs many times in this little book. In agriculture this word is used to describe the thin layer of surface earth that, like some great blanket, is tucked around the wrinkled and age-beaten form of our globe. The harder and colder earth under this surface layer is called the _subsoil_. It should be noted, however, that in waterless and sun-dried regions there seems little difference between the soil and the subsoil. Plants, insects, birds, beasts, men,--all alike are fed on what grows in this thin layer of soil. If some wild flood in sudden wrath could sweep into the ocean this earth-wrapping soil, food would soon become as scarce as it was in Samaria when mothers ate their sons. The face of the earth as we now see it, daintily robed in grass, or uplifting waving acres of corn, or even naked, water-scarred, and disfigured by man's neglect, is very different from what it was in its earliest days. How was it then? How was the soil formed? Learned men think that at first the surface of the earth was solid rock. How was this rock changed into workable soil? Occasionally a curious boy picks up a rotten stone, squeezes it, and finds his hands filled with dirt, or soil. Now, just as the boy crumbled with his fingers this single stone, the great forces of nature with boundless patience crumbled, or, as it is called, disintegrated, the early rock mass. The simple but giant-strong agents that beat the rocks into powder with a clublike force a millionfold more powerful than the club force of Hercules were chiefly (1) heat and cold; (2) water, frost, and ice; (3) a very low form of vegetable life; and (4) tiny animals--if such minute bodies can be called animals. In some cases these forces acted singly; in others, all acted together to rend and crumble the unbroken stretch of rock. Let us glance at some of the methods used by these skilled soil-makers. Heat and cold are working partners. You already know that most hot bodies shrink, or contract, on cooling. The early rocks were hot. As the outside shell of rock cooled from exposure to air and moisture it contracted. This shrinkage of the rigid rim of course broke many of the rocks, and here and there left cracks, or fissures. In these fissures water collected and froze. As freezing water expands with irresistible power, the expansion still further broke the rocks to pieces. The smaller pieces again, in the same way, were acted on by frost and ice and again crumbled. This process is still a means of soil-formation. Running water was another giant soil-former. If you would understand its action, observe some usually sparkling stream just after a washing rain. The clear waters are discolored by mud washed in from the surrounding hills. As though disliking their muddy burden, the waters strive to throw it off. Here, as low banks offer chance, they run out into shallows and drop some of it. Here, as they pass a quiet pool, they deposit more. At last they reach the still water at the mouth of the stream, and there they leave behind the last of their mud load, and often form of it little three-sided islands called _deltas_. In the same way mighty rivers like the Amazon, the Mississippi, and the Hudson, when they are swollen by rain, bear great quantities of soil in their sweep to the seas. Some of the soil they scatter over the lowlands as they whirl seaward; the rest they deposit in deltas at their mouths. It is estimated that the Mississippi carries to the ocean each year enough soil to cover a square mile of surface to a depth of two hundred and sixty-eight feet. [Illustration: FIG. 1. ROCK MARKED BY THE SCRAPING OF A GLACIER OVER IT] The early brooks and rivers, instead of bearing mud, ran oceanward either bearing ground stone that they themselves had worn from the rocks by ceaseless fretting, or bearing stones that other forces had already dislodged. The large pieces were whirled from side to side and beaten against one another or against bedrock until they were ground into smaller and smaller pieces. The rivers distributed this rock soil just as the later rivers distribute muddy soil. For ages the moving waters ground against the rocks. Vast were the waters; vast the number of years; vast the results. Glaciers were another soil-producing agent. Glaciers are streams "frozen and moving slowly but irresistibly onwards, down well-defined valleys, grinding and pulverizing the rock masses detached by the force and weight of their attack." Where and how were these glaciers formed? Once a great part of upper North America was a vast sheet of ice. Whatever moisture fell from the sky fell as snow. No one knows what made this long winter of snow, but we do know that snows piled on snows until mountains of white were built up. The lower snow was by the pressure of that above it packed into ice masses. By and by some change of climate caused the masses of ice to break up somewhat and to move south and west. These moving masses, carrying rock and frozen earth, ground them to powder. King thus describes the stately movement of these snow mountains: "Beneath the bottom of this slowly moving sheet of ice, which with more or less difficulty kept itself conformable with the face of the land over which it was riding, the sharper outstanding points were cut away and the deeper river cañons filled in. Desolate and rugged rocky wastes were thrown down and spread over with rich soil." The joint action of air, moisture, and frost was still another agent of soil-making. This action is called _weathering_. Whenever you have noticed the outside stones of a spring-house, you have noticed that tiny bits are crumbling from the face of the stones, and adding little by little to the soil. This is a slow way of making additions to the soil. It is estimated that it would take 728,000 years to wear away limestone rock to a depth of thirty-nine inches. But when you recall the countless years through which the weather has striven against the rocks, you can readily understand that its never-wearying activity has added immensely to the soil. In the rock soil formed in these various ways, and indeed on the rocks themselves, tiny plants that live on food taken from the air began to grow. They grew just as you now see mosses and lichens grow on the surface of rocks. The decay of these plants added some fertility to the newly formed soil. The life and death of each succeeding generation of these lowly plants added to the soil matter accumulating on the rocks. Slowly but unceasingly the soil increased in depth until higher vegetable forms could flourish and add their dead bodies to it. This vegetable addition to the soil is generally known as _humus_. [Illustration: FIG. 2. GROUND ROCK AT END OF A GLACIER] In due course of time low forms of animal life came to live on these plants, and in turn by their work and their death to aid in making a soil fit for the plowman. Thus with a deliberation that fills man with awe, the powerful forces of nature splintered the rocks, crumbled them, filled them with plant food, and turned their flinty grains into a soft, snug home for vegetable life. SECTION II. TILLAGE OF THE SOIL A good many years ago a man by the name of Jethro Tull lived in England. He was a farmer and a most successful man in every way. He first taught the English people and the world the value of thorough tillage of the soil. Before and during his time farmers did not till the soil very intelligently. They simply prepared the seed-bed in a careless manner, as a great many farmers do to-day, and when the crops were gathered the yields were not large. Jethro Tull centered attention on the important fact that careful and thorough tillage increases the available plant food in the soil. He did not know why his crops were better when the ground was frequently and thoroughly tilled, but he knew that such tillage did increase his yield. He explained the fact by saying, "Tillage is manure." We have since learned the reason for the truth that Tull taught, and, while his explanation was incorrect, the practice that he was following was excellent. The stirring of the soil enables the air to circulate through it freely, and permits a breaking down of the compounds that contain the elements necessary to plant growth. You have seen how the air helps to crumble the stone and brick in old buildings. It does the same with soil if permitted to circulate freely through it. The agent of the air that chiefly performs this work is called carbonic acid gas, and this gas is one of the greatest helpers the farmer has in carrying on his work. We must not forget that in soil preparation the air is just as important as any of the tools and implements used in cultivation. [Illustration: FIG. 3. SLOPE TO WATER SHOWS SOIL WEATHERED FROM FACE OF CLIFF] If the soil is fertile and if deep plowing has always been done, good crops will result, other conditions being favorable. If, however, the tillage is poor, scanty harvests will always result. For most soils a two-horse plow is necessary to break up and pulverize the land. A shallow soil can always be improved by properly deepening it. The principle of greatest importance in soil-preparation is the gradual deepening of the soil in order that plant-roots may have more comfortable homes. If the farmer has been accustomed to plow but four inches deep, he should adjust the plow so as to turn five inches at the next plowing, then six, and so on until the seed-bed is nine or ten inches deep. This gradual deepening will not injure the soil but will put it quickly in good condition. If to good tillage rotation of crops be added, the soil will become more fertile with each succeeding year. [Illustration: FIG. 4. MIXED GRASSES GROWN FOR FORAGE] The plow, harrow, and roller are all necessary to good tillage and to a proper preparation of the seed-bed. The soil must be made compact and clods of all sizes must be crushed. Then the air circulates freely, and paying crops are the rule and not the exception. Tillage does these things: it increases the plant-food supply, destroys weeds, and influences the moisture content of the soil. =EXERCISE= 1. What tools are used in tillage? 2. How should a poor and shallow soil be treated? 3. Why should a poor and shallow soil be well compacted before sowing the crop? 4. Explain the value of a circulation of air in the soil. 5. What causes iron to rust? 6. Why is a two-horse turning-plow better than a one-horse plow? 7. Where will clods do the least harm--on top of the soil or below the surface? 8. Do plant roots penetrate clods? 9. Are earthworms a benefit or an injury to the soil? 10. Name three things that tillage does. SECTION III. THE MOISTURE OF THE SOIL Did any one ever explain to you how important water is to the soil, or tell you why it is so important? Often, as you know, crops entirely fail because there is not enough water in the soil for the plants to drink. How necessary is it, then, that the soil be kept in the best possible condition to catch and hold enough water to carry the plant through dry, hot spells! Perhaps you are ready to ask, "How does the mouthless plant drink its stored-up water?" The plant gets all its water through its roots. You have seen the tiny threadlike roots of a plant spreading all about in fine soil; they are down in the ground taking up plant food and water for the stalk and leaves above. The water, carrying plant food with it, rises in a simple but peculiar way through the roots and stems. The plants use the food for building new tissue, that is, for growth. The water passes out through the leaves into the air. When the summers are dry and hot and there is but little water in the soil, the leaves shrink up. This is simply a method they have of keeping the water from passing too rapidly off into the air. I am sure you have seen the corn blades all shriveled on very hot days. This shrinkage is nature's way of diminishing the current of water that is steadily passing through the plant. A thrifty farmer will try to keep his soil in such good condition that it will have a supply of water in it for growing crops when dry and hot weather comes. He can do this by deep plowing, by subsoiling, by adding any kind of decaying vegetable matter to the soil, and by growing crops that can be tilled frequently. The soil is a great storehouse for moisture. After the clouds have emptied their waters into this storehouse, the water of the soil comes to the surface, where it is evaporated into the air. The water comes to the surface in just the same way that oil rises in a lamp-wick. This rising of the water is called _capillarity_. [Illustration: FIG. 5. AN ENLARGED VIEW OF A SECTION OF MOIST SOIL, SHOWING AIR SPACES AND SOIL PARTICLES] It is necessary to understand what is meant by this big word. If into a pan of water you dip a glass tube, the water inside the tube rises above the level of the water in the pan. The smaller the tube the higher will the water rise. The greater rise inside is perhaps due to the fact that the glass attracts the particles of water more than the particles of water attract one another. Now apply this principle to the soil. [Illustration: FIG. 6. THE RIGHT WAY TO PLOW] The soil particles have small spaces between them, and the spaces act just as the tube does. When the water at the surface is carried away by drying winds and warmth, the water deeper in the soil rises through the soil spaces. In this way water is brought from its soil storehouse as plants need it. [Illustration: FIG. 7. APPARATUS FOR TESTING THE HOLDING OF WATER BY DIFFERENT SOILS] Of course when the underground water reaches the surface it evaporates. If we want to keep it for our crops, we must prepare a trap to hold it. Nature has shown us how this can be done. Pick up a plank as it lies on the ground. Under the plank the soil is wet, while the soil not covered by the plank is dry. Why? Capillarity brought the water to the surface, and the plank, by keeping away wind and warmth, acted as a trap to hold the moisture. Now of course a farmer cannot set a trap of planks over his fields, but he can make a trap of dry earth, and that will do just as well. When a crop like corn or cotton or potatoes is cultivated, the fine, loose dirt stirred by the cultivating-plow will make a mulch that serves to keep water in the soil in the same way that the plank kept moisture under it. The mulch also helps to absorb the rains and prevents the water from running off the surface. Frequent cultivation, then, is one of the best possible ways of saving moisture. Hence the farmer who most frequently stirs his soil in the growing season, and especially in seasons of drought, reaps, other things being equal, a more abundant harvest than if tillage were neglected. =EXERCISE= 1. Why is the soil wet under a board or under straw? 2. Will a soil that is fine and compact produce better crops than one that is loose and cloddy? Why? 3. Since the water which a plant uses comes through the roots, can the morning dew afford any assistance? 4. Why are weeds objectionable in a growing crop? 5. Why does the farmer cultivate growing corn and cotton? SECTION IV. HOW THE WATER RISES IN THE SOIL [Illustration: FIG. 8. USING LAMP-CHIMNEYS TO SHOW THE RISE OF WATER IN SOIL] When the hot, dry days of summer come, the soil depends upon the subsoil, or undersoil, for the moisture that it must furnish its growing plants. The water was stored in the soil during the fall, winter, and spring months when there was plenty of rain. If you dig down into the soil when everything is dry and hot, you will soon reach a cool, moist undersoil. The moisture increases as you dig deeper into the soil. Now the roots of plants go down into the soil for this moisture, because they need the water to carry the plant food up into the stems and leaves. You can see how the water rises in the soil by performing a simple experiment. =EXPERIMENT= Take a lamp-chimney and fill it with fine, dry dirt. The dirt from a road or a field will do. Tie over the smaller end of the lamp-chimney a piece of cloth or a pocket handkerchief, and place this end in a shallow pan of water. If the soil in the lamp-chimney is clay and well packed, the water will quickly rise to the top. By filling three or four lamp-chimneys with as many different soils, the pupil will see that the water rises more slowly in some than in others. Now take the water pan away, and the water in the lamp-chimneys will gradually evaporate. Study for a few days the effect of evaporation on the several soils. SECTION V. DRAINING THE SOIL A wise man was once asked, "What is the most valuable improvement ever made in agriculture?" He answered, "Drainage." Often soils unfit for crop-production because they contain too much water are by drainage rendered the most valuable of farming lands. Drainage benefits land in the following ways: 1. It deepens the subsoil by removing unnecessary water from the spaces between the soil particles. This admits air. Then the oxygen which is in the air, by aiding decay, prepares plant food for vegetation. 2. It makes the surface soil, or topsoil, deeper. It stands to reason that the deeper the soil the more plant food becomes available for plant use. 3. It improves the texture of the soil. Wet soil is sticky. Drainage makes this sticky soil crumble and fall apart. 4. It prevents washing. 5. It increases the porosity of soils and permits roots to go deeper into the soil for food and moisture. 6. It increases the warmth of the soil. 7. It permits earlier working in spring and after rains. [Illustration: FIG. 9. LAYING A TILE DRAIN] 8. It favors the growth of germs which change the unavailable nitrogen of the soil into nitrates; that is, into the form of nitrogen most useful to plants. 9. It enables plants to resist drought better because the roots go into the ground deeper early in the season. A soil that is hard and wet will not grow good crops. The nitrogen-gathering crops will store the greatest quantity of nitrogen in the soil when the soil is open to the free circulation of the air. These valuable crops cannot do this when the soil is wet and cold. Sandy soils with sandy subsoils do not often need drainage; such soils are naturally drained. With clay soils it is different. It is very important to remove the stagnant water in them and to let the air in. When land has been properly drained the other steps in improvement are easily taken. After soil has been dried and mellowed by proper drainage, then commercial fertilizers, barnyard manure, cowpeas, and clover can most readily do their great work of improving the texture of the soil and of making it fitter for plant growth. [Illustration: FIG. 10. A TILE IN POSITION] =Tile Drains.= Tile drains are the best and cheapest that can be used. It would not be too strong to say that draining by tiles is the most perfect drainage. Thousands of practical tests in this country have proved the superiority of tile draining for the following reasons: 1. Good tile drains properly laid last for years and do not fill up. 2. They furnish the cheapest possible means of removing too much water from the soil. 3. They are out of reach of all cultivating tools. 4. Surface water in filtering through the tiles leaves its nutritious elements for plant growth. =EXPERIMENTS= =To show the Effect of Drainage.= Take two tomato cans and fill both with the same kind of soil. Punch several holes in the bottom of one to drain the soil above and to admit air circulation. Leave the other unpunctured. Plant seeds of any kind in both cans and keep in a warm place. Add every third day equal quantities of water. Let seeds grow in both cans and observe the difference in growth for two or three weeks. =To show the Effect of Air in Soils.= Take two tomato cans; fill one with soil that is loose and warm, and the other with wet clay or muck from a swampy field. Plant a few seeds of the same kind in each and observe how much better the dry, warm, open soil is for growing farm crops. SECTION VI. IMPROVING THE SOIL We hear a great deal about the exhaustion or wearing out of the soil. Many uncomfortable people are always declaring that our lands will no longer produce profitable crops, and hence that farming will no longer pay. Now it is true, unfortunately, that much land has been robbed of its fertility, and, because this is true, we should be most deeply interested in everything that leads to the improvement of our soils. When our country was first discovered and trees were growing everywhere, we had virgin soils, or new soils that were rich and productive because they were filled with vegetable matter and plant food. There are not many virgin soils now because the trees have been cut from the best lands, and these lands have been farmed so carelessly that the vegetable matter and available plant food have been largely used up. Now that fresh land is scarce it is very necessary to restore fertility to these exhausted lands. What are some of the ways in which this can be done? [Illustration: FIG. 11. CLOVER IS A SOIL-IMPROVER] There are several things to be done in trying to reclaim worn-out land. One of the first of these is to till the land well. Many of you may have heard the story of the dying father who called his sons about him and whispered feebly, "There is great treasure hidden in the garden." The sons could hardly wait to bury their dead father before, thud, thud, thud, their picks were going in the garden. Day after day they dug; they dug deep; they dug wide. Not a foot of the crop-worn garden escaped the probing of the pick as the sons feverishly searched for the expected treasure. But no treasure was found. Their work seemed entirely useless. [Illustration: FIG. 12. INCREASING THE PRODUCTIVE POWER OF THE SOIL Second crop of cowpeas on old, abandoned land] "Let us not lose every whit of our labor; let us plant this pick-scarred garden," said the eldest. So the garden was planted. In the fall the hitherto neglected garden yielded a harvest so bountiful, so unexpected, that the meaning of their father's words dawned upon them. "Truly," they said, "a treasure was hidden there. Let us seek it in all our fields." The story applies as well to-day as it did when it was first told. Thorough culture of the soil, frequent and intelligent tillage--these are the foundations of soil-restoration. Along with good tillage must go crop-rotation and good drainage. A supply of organic matter will prevent heavy rains from washing the soil and carrying away plant food. Drainage will aid good tillage in allowing air to circulate between the soil particles and in arranging plant food so that plants can use it. But we must add humus, or vegetable matter, to the soil. You remember that the virgin soils contained a great deal of vegetable matter and plant food, but by the continuous growing of crops like wheat, corn, and cotton, and by constant shallow tillage, both humus and plant food have been used up. Consequently much of our cultivated soil to-day is hard and dead. There are three ways of adding humus and plant food to this lifeless land: the first way is to apply barnyard manure (to adopt this method means that livestock raising must be a part of all farming); the second way is to adopt rotation of crops, and frequently to plow under crops like clover and cowpeas; the third way is to apply commercial fertilizers. To summarize: if we want to make our soil better year by year, we must cultivate well, drain well, and in the most economical way add humus and plant food. =EXPERIMENT= Select a small area of ground at your home and divide it into four sections, as shown in the following sketch: On Section _A_ apply barnyard manure; on Section _B_ apply commercial fertilizers; on Section _C_ apply nothing, but till well; on Section _D_ apply nothing, and till very poorly. _A_, _B_, and _C_ should all be thoroughly plowed and harrowed. Then add barnyard manure to _A_, commercial fertilizers to _B_, and harrow _A_, _B_, and _C_ at least four times until the soil is mellow and fine. _D_ will most likely be cloddy, like many fields that we often see. Now plant on each plat some crop like cotton, corn, or wheat. When the plats are ready to harvest, measure the yield of each and determine whether the increased yield of the best plats has paid for the outlay for tillage and manure. The pupil will be much interested in the results obtained from the first crop. [Illustration: FIG. 13] Now follow a system of crop-rotation on the plats. Clover can follow corn or cotton or wheat; and cowpeas, wheat. Then determine the yield of each plat for the second crop. By following these plats for several years, and increasing the number, the pupils will learn many things of greatest value. SECTION VII. MANURING THE SOIL In the early days of our history, when the soil was new and rich, we were not compelled to use large amounts of manures and fertilizers. Yet our histories speak of an Indian named Squanto who came into one of the New England colonies and showed the first settlers how, by putting a fish in each hill of corn, they could obtain larger yields. If people in those days, with new and fertile soils, could use manures profitably, how much more ought we to use them in our time, when soils have lost their virgin fertility, and when the plant food in the soil has been exhausted by years and years of cropping! To sell year after year all the produce grown on land is a sure way to ruin it. If, for example, the richest land is planted every year in corn, and no stable or farmyard manure or other fertilizer returned to the soil, the land so treated will of course soon become too poor to grow any crop. If, on the other hand, clover or alfalfa or corn or cotton-seed meal is fed to stock, and the manure from the stock returned to the soil, the land will be kept rich. Hence those farmers who do not sell such raw products as cotton, corn, wheat, oats, and clover, but who market articles made from these raw products, find it easier to keep their land fertile. For illustration: if instead of selling hay, farmers feed it to sheep and sell meat and wool; if instead of selling cotton seed, they feed its meal to cows, and sell milk and butter; if instead of selling stover, they feed it to beef cattle, they get a good price for products and in addition have all the manure needed to keep their land productive and increase its value each year. [Illustration:FIG. 14. RELATION OF HUMUS TO GROWTH OF CORN 1, clay subsoil; 2, same, with fertilizer; 3, same, with humus] If we wish to keep up the fertility of our lands we should not allow anything to be lost from our farms. All the manures, straw, roots, stubble, healthy vines--in fact everything decomposable--should be plowed under or used as a top-dressing. Especial care should be taken in storing manure. It should be watchfully protected from sun and rain. If a farmer has no shed under which to keep his manure, he should scatter it on his fields as fast as it is made. [Illustration: FIG. 15. THE COTTON PLANT WITH AND WITHOUT FOOD In left top pot, no plant food; in left bottom pot, plant food scanty; in both right pots, all elements of plant food present] He should understand also that liquid manure is of more value than solid, because that important plant food, nitrogen, is found almost wholly in the liquid portion. Some of the phosphoric acid and considerable amounts of the potash are also found in the liquid manure. Hence economy requires that none of this escape either by leakage or by fermentation. Sometimes one can detect the smell of ammonia in the stable. This ammonia is formed by the decomposition of the liquid manure, and its loss should be checked by sprinkling some floats, acid phosphate, or muck over the stable floor. Many farmers find it desirable to buy fertilizers to use with the manure made on the farm. In this case it is helpful to understand the composition, source, and availability of the various substances composing commercial fertilizers. The three most valuable things in commercial fertilizers are nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid. The nitrogen is obtained from (1) nitrate of soda mined in Chile, (2) ammonium sulphate, a by-product of the gas works, (3) dried blood and other by-products of the slaughter-houses, and (4) cotton-seed meal. Nitrate of soda is soluble in water and may therefore be washed away before being used by plants. For this reason it should be applied in small quantities and at intervals of a few weeks. Potash is obtained in Germany, where it is found in several forms. It is put on the market as muriate of potash, sulphate of potash, kainite, which contains salt as an impurity, and in other impure forms. Potash is found also in _unleached_ wood ashes. Phosphoric acid is found in various rocks of Tennessee, Florida, and South Carolina, and also to a large extent in bones. The rocks or bones are usually treated with sulphuric acid. This treatment changes the phosphoric acid into a form ready for plant use. These three kinds of plant food are ordinarily all that we need to supply. In some cases, however, lime has to be added. Besides being a plant food itself, lime helps most soils by improving the structure of the grains; by sweetening the soil, thereby aiding the little living germs called _bacteria_; by hastening the decay of organic matter; and by setting free the potash that is locked up in the soil. CHAPTER II THE SOIL AND THE PLANT SECTION VIII. ROOTS [Illustration: FIG. 16. ROOT-HAIRS ON A RADISH] You have perhaps observed the regularity of arrangement in the twigs and branches of trees. Now pull up the roots of a plant, as, for example, sheep sorrel, Jimson weed, or some other plant. Note the branching of the roots. In these there is no such regularity as is seen in the twig. Trace the rootlets to their finest tips. How small, slender, and delicate they are! Still we do not see the finest of them, for in taking the plant from the ground we tore the most delicate away. In order to see the real construction of a root we must grow one so that we may examine it uninjured. To do this, sprout some oats in a germinator or in any box in which one glass side has been arranged and allow the oats to grow till they are two or more inches high. Now examine the roots and you will see very fine hairs, similar to those shown in the accompanying figure, forming a fuzz over the surface of the roots near the tips. This fuzz is made of small hairs standing so close together that there are often as many as 38,200 on a single square inch. Fig. 17 shows how a root looks when it has been cut crosswise into what is known as a cross section. The figure is much increased in size. You can see how the root-hairs extend from the root in every direction. Fig. 18 shows a single root-hair very greatly enlarged, with particles of sand sticking to it. [Illustration: FIG. 17. A SLICE OF A ROOT Highly magnified] These hairs are the feeding-organs of the roots, and they are formed only near the tips of the finest roots. You see that the large, coarse roots that you are familiar with have nothing to do with _absorbing_ plant food from the soil. They serve merely to _conduct_ the sap and nourishment from the root-hairs to the tree. When you apply manure or other fertilizer to a tree, remember that it is far better to supply the fertilizer to the roots that are at some distance from the trunk, for such roots are the real feeders. The plant food in the manure soaks into the soil and immediately reaches the root-hairs. You can understand this better by studying the distribution of the roots of an orchard tree, shown in Fig. 19. There you can see that the fine tips are found at a long distance from the main trunk. [Illustration: FIG. 18. A ROOT-HAIR WITH PARTICLES OF SOIL STICKING TO IT] You can now readily see why it is that plants usually wilt when they are transplanted. The fine, delicate root-hairs are then broken off, and the plant can but poorly keep up its food and water supply until new hairs have been formed. While these are forming, water has been evaporating from the leaves, and consequently the plant does not get enough moisture and therefore droops. [Illustration: FIG. 19. DISTRIBUTION OF APPLE-TREE ROOTS] Would you not conclude that it is very poor farming to till deeply any crop after the roots have extended between the rows far enough to be cut by the plow or cultivator? In cultivating between corn rows, for example, if you find that you are disturbing fine roots, you may be sure that you are breaking off millions of root-hairs from each plant and hence are doing harm rather than good. Fig. 20 shows how the roots from one corn row intertangle with those of another. You see at a glance how many of these roots would be destroyed by deep cultivation. Stirring the upper inch of soil when the plants are well grown is sufficient tillage and does no injury to the roots. [Illustration: FIG. 20. CORN ROOTS REACH FROM ROW TO ROW] A deep soil is much better than a shallow soil, as its depth makes it just so much easier for the roots to seek deep food. Fig. 21 illustrates well how far down into the soil the alfalfa roots go. [Illustration: FIG. 21 ALFALFA ROOT] =EXERCISE= Dig up the roots of several cultivated plants and weeds and compare them. Do you find some that are fine or fibrous? some fleshy like the carrot? The dandelion is a good example of a tap-root. Tap-roots are deep feeders. Examine very carefully the roots of a medium-sized corn plant. Sift the dirt away gently so as to loosen as few roots as possible. How do the roots compare in area with the part above the ground? Try to trace a single root of the corn plant from the stalk to its very tip. How long are the roots of mature plants? Are they deep or shallow feeders? Germinate some oats or beans in a glass-sided box, as suggested, and observe the root-hairs. SECTION IX. HOW THE PLANT FEEDS FROM THE SOIL Plants receive their nourishment from two sources--from the air and from the soil. The soil food, or mineral food, dissolved in water, must reach the plant through the root-hairs with which all plants are provided in great numbers. Each of these hairs may be compared to a finger reaching among the particles of earth for food and water. If we examine the root-hairs ever so closely, we find no holes, or openings, in them. It is evident, then, that no solid particles can enter the root-hairs, but that all food must pass into the root in solution. An experiment just here will help us to understand how a root feeds. [Illustration: FIG. 22. EXPERIMENT TO SHOW HOW ROOTS TAKE UP FOOD] =EXPERIMENT= Secure a narrow glass tube like the one in Fig. 22. If you cannot get a tube, a narrow, straight lamp-chimney will, with a little care, do nearly as well. From a bladder made soft by soaking, cut a piece large enough to cover the end of the tube or chimney and to hang over a little all around. Make the piece of bladder secure to the end of the tube by wrapping tightly with a waxed thread, as at B. Partly fill the tube with molasses (or it may be easier in case you use a narrow tube to fill it before attaching the bladder). Put the tube into a jar or bottle of water so placed that the level of the molasses inside and the water outside will be the same. Fasten the tube in this position and observe it frequently for three or four hours. At the end of the time you should find that the molasses in the tube has risen above the level of the liquid outside. It may even overflow at the top. If you use the lamp-chimney the rise will not be so clearly seen, since a greater volume is required to fill the space in the chimney. This increase in the contents of the tube is due to the entrance of water from the outside. The water has passed through the thin bladder, or membrane, and has come to occupy space in the tube. There is also a passage the other way, but the molasses can pass through the bladder membrane so slowly that the passage is scarcely noticeable. There are no holes, or openings, in the membrane, but still there is a free passage of liquids in both directions, although the more heavily laden solution must move more slowly. A root-hair acts in much the same way as the tube in our experiment, with the exception that it is so made as to allow certain substances to pass in only one direction, that is, toward the inside. The outside of the root-hair is bathed in solutions rich in nourishment. The nourishment passes from the outside to the inside through the delicate membrane of the root-hair. Thus does food enter the plant-root. From the root-hairs, foods are carried to the inside of the root. From this you can see how important it is for a plant to have fine, loose soil for its root-hairs; also how necessary is the water in the soil, since the food can be used only when it is dissolved in water. This passage of liquids from one side of a membrane to another is called _osmosis_. It has many uses in the plant kingdom. We say a root takes nourishment by osmosis. SECTION X. ROOT-TUBERCLES Tubercle is a big word, but you ought to know how to pronounce it and what is meant by root-tubercles. We are going to tell you what a root-tubercle is and something about its importance to agriculture. When you have learned this, we are sure you will want to examine some plants for yourself in order that you may see just what tubercles look like on a real root. Root-tubercles do not form on all kinds of plants that farmers grow. They are formed only on those kinds that botanists call _legumes_. The clovers, cowpeas, vetches, soy beans, and alfalfa are all legumes. The tubercles are little knotty, wart-like growths on the roots of the plants just named. These tubercles are caused by tiny forms of life called, as you perhaps already know, bacteria, or _germs_. [Illustration: FIG. 23. TUBERCLES ON CLOVER ROOTS The specimen at the right was grown in soil inoculated with soil from an old clover field. The one at the left was grown in soil not inoculated] Instead of living in nests in trees like birds or in the ground like moles and worms, these tiny germs, less than one twenty-five thousandth of an inch long, make their homes on the roots of legumes. Nestling snugly together, they live, grow, and multiply in their sunless homes. Through their activity the soil is enriched by the addition of much nitrogen from the air. They are the good fairies of the farmer, and no magician's wand ever blessed a land so much as these invisible folk bless the land that they live in. Just as bees gather honey from the flowers and carry it to the hives, where they prepare it for their own future use and for the use of others, so do these root-tubercles gather nitrogen from the air and fix it in their root homes, where it can be used by other crops. [Illustration: FIG. 24. SOY BEANS AND COWPEAS, TWO GREAT SOIL-IMPROVERS] In the earlier pages of this book you were told something about the food of plants. One of the main elements of plant food, perhaps you remember, is nitrogen. Just as soon as the roots of the leguminous plants begin to push down into the soil, the bacteria, or germs that make the tubercles, begin to build their homes on the roots, and in so doing they add nitrogen to the soil. You now see the importance of growing such crops as peas and clover on your land, for by their tubercles you can constantly add plant food to the soil. Now this much-needed nitrogen is the most costly part of the fertilizers that farmers buy every year. If every farmer, then, would grow these tubercle-bearing crops, he would rapidly add to the richness of his land and at the same time escape the necessity of buying so much expensive fertilizer. =EXPERIMENT= Take a spade or shovel and dig carefully around the roots of a cowpea and a clover plant; loosen the earth thoroughly and then pull the plants up, being careful not to break off any of the roots. Now wash the roots, and after they become dry count the nodules, or tubercles, on them. Observe the difference in size. How are they arranged? Do all leguminous plants have equal numbers of nodules? How do these nodules help the farmer? SECTION XI. THE ROTATION OF CROPS Doubtless you know what is meant by rotation, for your teacher has explained to you already how the earth rotates, or turns, on its axis and revolves around the sun. When we speak of crop-rotation we mean not only that the same crop should not be planted on the same land for two successive years but that crops should follow one another in a regular order. Many farmers do not follow a system of farming that involves a change of crops. In some parts of the country the same fields are planted to corn or wheat or cotton year after year. This is not a good practice and sooner or later will wear out the soil completely, because the soil-elements that furnish the food of that constant crop are soon exhausted and good crop-production is no longer possible. Why is crop-rotation so necessary? There are different kinds of plant food in the soil. If any one of these is used up, the soil of course loses its power to feed plants properly. Now each crop uses more of some of the different kinds of foods than others do, just as you like some kinds of food better than others. But the crop cannot, as you can, learn to use the kinds of food it does not like; it must use the kind that nature fitted it to use. Not only do different crops feed upon different soil foods, but they use different quantities of these foods. Now if a farmer plant the same crop in the same field each year, that crop soon uses up all of the available plant food that it likes. Hence the soil can no longer properly nourish the crop that has been year by year robbing it. If that crop is to be successfully grown again on the land, the exhausted element must be restored. [Illustration: FIG. 25. GRASS FOLLOWING CORN] This can be done in two ways: first, by finding out what element has here been exhausted, and then restoring this element by means either of commercial fertilizers or manure; second, by planting on the land crops that feed on different food and that will allow or assist kind Mother Nature "to repair her waste places." An illustration may help you to remember this fact. Nitrogen is, as already explained, one of the commonest plant foods. It may almost be called plant bread. The wheat crop uses up a good deal of nitrogen. Suppose a field were planted in wheat year after year. Most of the available nitrogen would be taken out of the soil after a while, and a new wheat crop, if planted on the field, would not get enough of its proper food to yield a paying harvest. This same land, however, that could not grow wheat could produce other crops that do not require so much nitrogen. For example, it could grow cowpeas. Cowpeas, aided by their root-tubercles, are able to gather from the air a great part of the nitrogen needed for their growth. Thus a good crop of peas can be obtained even if there is little available nitrogen in the soil. On the other hand wheat and corn and cotton cannot use the free nitrogen of the air, and they suffer if there is an insufficient quantity present in the soil; hence the necessity of growing legumes to supply what is lacking. [Illustration: FIG. 26. COWPEAS AND CORN--AUGUST] Let us now see how easily plant food may be saved by the rotation of crops. If you sow wheat in the autumn it is ready to be harvested in time for planting cowpeas. Plow or disk the wheat stubble, and sow the same field to cowpeas. If the wheat crop has exhausted the greater part of the nitrogen of the soil, it makes no difference to the cowpea; for the cowpea will get its nitrogen from the air and not only provide for its own growth but will leave quantities of nitrogen in the queer nodules of its roots for the crops coming after it in the rotation. [Illustration: FIG. 27. COWPEAS AND CORN--OCTOBER] If corn be planted, there should be a rotation in just the same way. The corn plant, a summer grower, of course uses a certain portion of the plant food stored in the soil. In order that the crop following the corn may feed on what the corn did not use, this crop should be one that requires a somewhat different food. Moreover, it should be one that fits in well with corn so as to make a winter crop. We find just such a plant in clover or wheat. Like the cowpea, all the varieties of clover have on their roots tubercles that add the important element, nitrogen, to the soil. From these facts is it not clear that if you wish to improve your land quickly and keep it always fruitful you must practice crop-rotation? AN ILLUSTRATION OF CROP-ROTATION Here are two systems of crop-rotation as practiced at one or more agricultural experiment stations. Each furnishes an ideal plan for keeping up land. ---------------------++----------------------++---------------------- ---------------------++----------------------++---------------------- FIRST YEAR || SECOND YEAR || THIRD YEAR ----------+----------++-----------+----------++-----------+---------- Summer | Winter || Summer | Winter || Summer | Winter ----------+----------++-----------+----------++-----------+---------- Corn | Crimson || Cotton | Wheat || Cowpeas | Rye for | clover || | || | pasture ----------+----------++-----------+----------++-----------+---------- or ----------+----------++-----------+----------++-----------+---------- Summer | Winter || Summer | Winter || Summer | Winter ----------+----------++-----------+----------++-----------+---------- Corn | Wheat || Clover | Clover || Grass | Grass for | || and grass | and grass|| |pasture or | || | || | meadow ----------+----------++-----------+----------++-----------+---------- ----------+----------++-----------+----------++-----------+---------- In these rotations the cowpeas and clovers are nitrogen-gathering crops. They not only furnish hay but they enrich the soil. The wheat, corn, and cotton are money crops, but in addition they are cultivated crops; hence they improve the physical condition of the soil and give opportunity to kill weeds. The grasses and clovers are of course used for pasturage and hay. This is only a suggested rotation. Work out one that will meet your home need. =EXERCISE= Let the pupils each present a system of rotation that includes the crops raised at home. The system presented should as nearly as possible meet the following requirements: 1. Legumes for gathering nitrogen. 2. Money crops for cash income. 3. Cultivated crops for tillage and weed-destruction. 4. Food crops for feeding live stock. CHAPTER III THE PLANT SECTION XII. HOW A PLANT FEEDS FROM THE AIR If you partly burn a match you will see that it becomes black. This black substance into which the match changes is called _carbon_. Examine a fresh stick of charcoal, which is, as you no doubt know, burnt wood. You see in the charcoal every fiber that you saw in the wood itself. This means that every part of the plant contains carbon. How important, then, is this substance to the plant! You will be surprised to know that the total amount of carbon in plants comes from the air. All the carbon that a plant gets is taken in by the leaves of the plant; not a particle is gathered by the roots. A large tree, weighing perhaps 11,000 pounds, requires in its growth carbon from 16,000,000 cubic yards of air. Perhaps, after these statements, you may think there is danger that the carbon of the air may sometime become exhausted. The air of the whole world contains about 1,760,000,000,000 pounds of carbon. Moreover, this is continually being added to by our fires and by the breath of animals. When wood or coal is used for fuel the carbon of the burning substance is returned to the air in the form of gas. Some large factories burn great quantities of coal and thus turn much carbon back to the air. A single factory in Germany is estimated to give back to the air daily about 5,280,000 pounds of carbon. You see, then, that carbon is constantly being put back into the air to replace that which is used by growing plants. The carbon of the air can be used by none but green plants, and by them only in the sunlight. We may compare the green coloring matter of the leaf to a machine, and the sunlight to the power, or energy, which keeps the machine in motion. By means, then, of sunlight and the green coloring matter of the leaves, the plant secures carbon. The carbon passes into the plant and is there made into two foods very necessary to the plant; namely, starch and sugar. Sometimes the plant uses the starch and sugar immediately. At other times it stores both away, as it does in the Irish and the sweet potato and in beets, cabbage, peas, and beans. These plants are used as food by man because they contain so much nourishment; that is, starch and sugar which were stored away by the plant for its own future use. =EXERCISE= Examine some charcoal. Can you see the rings of growth? Slightly char paper, cloth, meat, sugar, starch, etc. What does the turning black prove? What per cent of these substances do you think is pure carbon? SECTION XIII. THE SAP CURRENT The root-hairs take nourishment from the soil. The leaves manufacture starch and sugar. These manufactured foods must be carried to all parts of the plant. There are two currents to carry them. One passes from the roots through the young wood to the leaves, and one, a downward current, passes through the bark, carrying needed food to the roots (see Fig. 28). If you should injure the roots, the water supply to the leaves would be cut off and the leaves would immediately wither. On the other hand, if you remove the bark, that is, girdle the tree, you in no way interfere with the water supply and the leaves do not wither. Girdling does, however, interfere with the downward food current through the bark. [Illustration: FIG. 28 MOVEMENT OF THE SAP CURRENT] If the tree be girdled the roots sooner or later suffer from lack of food supply from the leaves. Owing to this food stoppage the roots will cease to grow and will soon be unable to take in sufficient water, and then the leaves will begin to droop. This, however, may not happen until several months after the girdling. Sometimes a partly girdled branch grows much in thickness just above the girdle, as is shown in Fig. 29. This extra growth seems to be due to a stoppage of the rich supply of food which was on its way to the roots through the bark. It could go no farther and was therefore used by the tree to make an unnatural growth at this point. You will now understand how and why trees die when they are girdled to clear new ground. [Illustration: FIG. 29. A THICKENING ABOVE THE WIRE THAT CAUSED THE GIRDLING] It is, then, the general law of sap-movement that the upward current from the roots passes through the woody portion of the trunk, and that the current bearing the food made by the leaves passes downward through the bark. =EXERCISE= Let the teacher see that these and all other experiments are performed by the pupils. Do not allow them to guess, but make them see. Girdle valueless trees or saplings of several kinds, cutting the bark away in a complete circle around the tree. Do not cut into the wood. How long before the tree shows signs of injury? Girdle a single small limb on a tree. What happens? Explain. SECTION XIV. THE FLOWER AND THE SEED Some people think that the flowers by the wayside are for the purpose of beautifying the world and increasing man's enjoyment. Do you think this is true? Undoubtedly a flower is beautiful, and to be beautiful is one of the uses of many flowers; but it is not the chief use of a flower. You know that when peach or apple blossoms are nipped by the spring frost the fruit crop is in danger. The fruit of the plant bears the seed, and the flower produces the fruit. That is its chief duty. [Illustration: FIG. 30. PARTS OF THE PISTIL] Do you know any plant that produces seed without flowers? Some one answers, "The corn, the elm, and the maple all produce seed, but have no flower." No, that is not correct. If you look closely you will find in the spring very small flowers on the elm and on the maple, while the ear and the tassel are really the blossoms of the corn plant. Every plant that produces seed has flowers, although they may sometimes seem very curious flowers. [Illustration: FIG. 31. A BUTTERCUP] Let us see what a flower really is. Take, for example, a buttercup, cotton, tobacco, or plum blossom (see Figs. 31 and 32). You will find on the outside a row of green leaves inclosing the flower when it is still a bud. These leaves are the _sepals_. Next on the inside is a row of colored leaves, or _petals_. Arranged inside of the petals are some threadlike parts, each with a knob on the end. These are the _stamens_. Examine one stamen closely (Fig. 33). On the knob at its tip you should find, if the flower is fully open, some fine grains, or powder. In the lily this powder is so abundant that in smelling the flower you often brush a quantity of it off on your nose. This substance is called _pollen_, and the knob on the end of the stamen, on which the pollen is borne, is the _anther_. [Illustration: FIG. 32. A PLUM BLOSSOM] The pollen is of very great importance to the flower. Without it there could be no seeds. The stamens as pollen-bearers, then, are very important. But there is another part to each flower that is of equal value. This part you will find in the center of the flower, inside the circle of stamens. It is called the _pistil_ (Fig. 32). The swollen tip of the pistil is the _stigma_. The swollen base of the pistil forms the _ovary_. If you carefully cut open this ovary you will find in it very small immature seeds. [Illustration: FIG. 33. STAMENS _a_, anther; _f_, filament] Some plants bear all these parts in the same flower; that is, each blossom has stamens, pistil, petals, and sepals. The pear blossom and the tomato blossom represent such flowers. Other plants bear their stamens and pistils in separate blossoms. Stamens and pistils may even occur in separate plants, and some blossoms have no sepals or petals at all. Look at the corn plant. Here the tassel is a cluster of many flowers, each of which bears only stamens. The ear is likewise a cluster of many flowers, each of which bears only a pistil. The dust that you see falling from the tassel is the pollen, and the long silky threads of the ear are the stigmas. [Illustration: FIG. 34. A TOMATO BLOSSOM] Now no plant can bear seeds unless the pollen of the stamen falls on the stigma. Corn cannot therefore form seed unless the dust of the tassel falls upon the silk. Did you ever notice how poorly the cob is filled on a single cornstalk standing alone in a field? Do you see why? It is because when a plant stands alone the wind blows the pollen away from the tassel, and little or none is received on the stigmas below. [Illustration: FIG. 35. CUCUMBER BLOSSOMS] In the corn plant the stamens and pistils are separate; that is, they do not occur on the same flower, although they are on the same plant. This is also true of the cucumber (see Fig. 35). In many plants, however, such as the hemp, hop, sassafras, willow, and others, the staminate parts are on one plant and the pistillate parts are on another. This is also true in several other cultivated plants. For example, in some strawberries the stamens are absent or useless; that is, they bear no good pollen. In such cases the grower must see to it that near by are strawberry plants that bear stamens, in order that those plants which do not bear pollen may become _pollinated_; that is, may have pollen carried to them. After the stigma has been supplied with pollen, a single pollen grain sends a threadlike sprout down through the stigma into the ovary. This process, if successfully completed, is called _fertilization_. =EXERCISE= Examine several flowers and identify the parts named in the last section. Try in the proper season to find the pollen on the maple, willow, alder, and pine, and on wheat, cotton, and the morning-glory. How fast does the ovary of the apple blossom enlarge? Measure one and watch it closely from day to day. Can you find any plants that have their stamens and ovaries on separate individuals? SECTION XV. POLLINATION Nature has several interesting ways of bringing about pollination. In the corn, willow, and pine the pollen is picked up by the wind and carried away. Much of it is lost, but some reaches the stigmas, or receptive parts, of other corn, willow, or pine flowers. This is a very wasteful method, and all plants using it must provide much pollen. Many plants employ a much better method. They have learned how to make insects bear their pollen. In plants of this type the parts of the blossom are so shaped and so placed as to deposit pollen from the stamen on the insect and to receive pollen from the insect on the stigmas. When you see the clumsy bumblebee clambering over and pushing his way into a clover blossom, you may be sure that he is getting well dusted with pollen and that the next blossom which he visits will secure a full share on its stigmas. When flowers fit themselves to be pollinated by insects they can no longer use the wind and are helpless if insects do not visit them. They therefore cunningly plan two ways to invite the visits of insects. First, they provide a sweet nectar as a repast for the insect visitor. The nectar is a sugary solution found in the bottom of the flower and is used by the visitor as food or to make honey. Second, flowers advertise to let each insect know that they have something for it. The advertising is done either by showy colors or by perfume. Insects have wonderful powers of smell. When you see showy flowers or smell fragrant ones, you will know that such flowers are advertising the presence either of nectar or of pollen (to make beebread) and that such flowers depend on insects for pollination. [Illustration: FIG. 36. BEES CARRYING POLLEN] A season of heavy, cold rains during blossoming-time may often injure the fruit crop by preventing insects from carrying pollen from flower to flower. You now also understand why plants often fail to produce seeds indoors. Since they are shut in, they cannot receive proper insect visits. Plants such as tomatoes or other garden fruits dependent upon insect pollination must, if raised in the greenhouse where insects cannot visit them, be pollinated by hand. =EXERCISE= Exclude insect visitors from some flower or flower cluster, for example, clover, by covering with a paper bag, and see whether the flower can produce seeds that are capable of growing. Compare as to number and vitality the seeds of such a flower with those of an uncovered flower. Observe insects closely. Do you ever find pollen on them? What kinds of insects visit the clover? the cowpea? the sourwood? the flax? Is wheat pollinated by insects or by the wind or by some other means? Do bees fly in rainy weather? How will a long rainy season at blossoming-time affect the apple crop? Why? Should bees be kept in an orchard? Why? SECTION XVI. CROSSES, HYBRIDS, AND CROSS-POLLINATION In our study of flowers and their pollination we have seen that the seed is usually the descendant of two parents, or at least of two organs--one the ovary, producing the seed; the other the pollen, which is necessary to fertilize the ovary. It happens that sometimes the pollen of one blossom fertilizes the ovary of its own flower, but more often the pollen from one plant fertilizes the ovary of another plant. This latter method is called _cross-pollination_. As a rule cross-pollination makes seed that will produce a better plant than simple pollination would. Cross-pollination by hand is often used by plant-breeders when, for purposes of seed-selection, a specially strong plant is desired. The steps in hand pollination are as follows: (1) remove the anthers before they open, to prevent them from pollinating the stigma (the steps in this process are illustrated in Figs. 37, 38-39); (2) cover the flower thus treated with a paper bag to prevent stray pollen from getting on it (see Fig. 40); (3) when the ovary is sufficiently developed, carry pollen to the stigma by hand from the anthers of another plant which you have selected to furnish it, and rebag to keep out any stray pollen which might accidentally get in; (4) collect the seeds when they are mature and label them properly. Hand pollination has this advantage--you know both parents of your seed. If pollination occur naturally you know the maternal but have no means of judging the paternal parent. You can readily see, therefore, how hand pollination enables you to secure seed derived from two well-behaved parents. Sometimes we can breed one kind of plant on another. The result of such cross-breeding is known as a _hybrid_. In the animal kingdom the mule is a common example of this cross-breeding. Plant hybrids were formerly called mules also, but this suggestive term is almost out of use. [Illustration: FIG. 37 The bud on right at top is in proper condition for removal of anthers; the anthers have been removed from the buds below] It is only when plants of two distinct kinds are crossed that the result is called a hybrid; for example, a blackjack oak on a white oak, an apple on a pear. If the parent plants are closely related, for example, two kinds of apples, the resulting plant is known simply as a _cross_. Hybrids and crosses are valuable in that they usually differ from both parents and yet combine some qualities of each. [Illustration: FIG. 38. ORANGE BLOSSOM PREPARED FOR CROSSING First, bud; second, anthers unremoved; third, anthers removed] [Illustration: FIG. 39. TOMATO BLOSSOM READY TO CROSS First, bud; second, anthers unremoved; third, anthers removed] [Illustration: FIG. 40. First, blossom bagged to keep out stray pollen; second, fruit bagged for protection] They often leave off some of the qualities of the parent plants and at other times have such qualities more markedly than did their parents. Thus they often produce an interesting new kind of plant. Sometimes we are able by hybridization to combine in one plant the good qualities of two other plants and thus make a great advance in agriculture. The new forms brought about by hybridization may be fixed, or made permanent, by such selection as is mentioned in Section XVIII. Hybridization is of great aid in originating new plants. It often happens that a plant will be more fruitful when pollinated by one variety than by some other variety. This is well illustrated in Fig. 41. A fruit-grower or farmer should know much about these subjects before selecting varieties for his orchard, vineyard, etc. =EXERCISE= With the help of your teacher try to cross some plants. Such an experiment will take time, but will be most interesting. You must remember that many crosses must be attempted in order to gain success with even a few. SECTION XVII. PROPAGATION BY BUDS It is the business of the farmer to make plants grow, or, as it is generally called, to propagate plants. This he does in one of two ways: by buds (that is, by small pieces cut from parent plants), or by seeds. The chief aim in both methods should be to secure in the most convenient manner the best-paying plants. Many plants are most easily and quickly propagated by buds; for example, the grape, red raspberry, fig, and many others that we cultivate for the flower only, such as the carnation, geranium, rose, and begonia. [Illustration: FIG. 41. Brighton pollinated by 1, Salem; 2, Creveling; 3, Lindley; 4, Brighton; 5, Self-pollinated; 6, Nectar; 7, Jefferson; 8, Niagara] In growing plants from cuttings, a piece is taken from the kind of plant that one wishes to grow. The greatest care must be exercised in order to get a healthy cutting. If we take a cutting from a poor plant, what can we expect but to grow a poor plant like the one from which our cutting was taken? On the other hand, if a fine, strong, vigorous, fruitful plant be selected, we shall expect to grow just such a fine, healthy, fruitful plant. We expect the cutting to make exactly the same variety of plant as the parent stock. We must therefore decide on the variety of berry, grape, fig, carnation, or rose that we wish to propagate, and then look for the strongest and most promising plants of this variety within our reach. The utmost care will not produce a fine plant if we start from poor stock. [Illustration: FIG. 42. GERANIUM CUTTING Dotted line shows depth to which cutting should be planted] What qualities are most desirable in a plant from which cuttings are to be taken? First, it should be productive, hardy, and suited to your climate and your needs; second, it should be healthy. Do not take cuttings from a diseased plant, since the cutting may carry the disease. Cuttings may be taken from various parts of the plant, sometimes even from parts of the leaf, as in the begonia (Fig. 46). More often, however, they are drawn from parts of the stem (Figs. 43-45). As to the age of the twig from which the cutting is to be taken, Professor Bailey says: "For most plants the proper age or maturity of wood for the making of cuttings may be determined by giving the twig a quick bend; if it snaps and hangs by the bark, it is in proper condition. If it bends without breaking, it is too young and soft or too old. If it splinters, it is too old and woody." Some plants, as the geranium (Fig. 42), succeed best if the cuttings from which they are grown are taken from soft, young parts of the plant; others, for example, the grape or rose, do better when the cutting is made from more mature wood. [Illustration: FIG. 43 GRAPE CUTTING Showing depth to which cutting should be planted] [Illustration: FIG. 44. CARNATION CUTTING] Cuttings may vary in size and may include one or more buds. After a hardy, vigorous cutting is made, insert it about one half or one third of its length in soil. A soil free from organic matter is much the best, since in such soil the cuttings are much less liable to disease. A fine, clean sand is commonly used by professional gardeners. When cuttings have rooted well--this may require a month or more--they may be transplanted to larger pots. Sometimes, instead of cutting off a piece and rooting it, portions of branches are made to root before they are separated from the parent plant. This method is often followed, and is known as _layering_. It is a simple process. Just bend the tip of a bough down and bury it in the earth (see Fig. 47). The black raspberry forms layers naturally, but gardeners often aid it by burying the over-hanging tips in the earth, so that more tips may easily take root. Strawberries develop runners that root themselves in a similar fashion. Grafts and buds are really cuttings which, instead of being buried in sand to produce roots of their own, are set on the roots of other plants. [Illustration: FIG. 45. ROSE CUTTING] Grafting and budding are practiced when these methods are more convenient than cuttings or when the gardener thinks there is danger of failure to get plants to take root as cuttings. Neither grafting nor budding is, however, necessary for the raspberry or the grape, for these propagate most readily from cuttings. It is often the case that a budded or grafted plant is more fruitful than a plant on its own roots. In cases of this kind, of course, grafts or buds are used. The white, or Irish, potato is usually propagated from pieces of the potato itself. Each piece used for planting bears one eye or more. The potato itself is really an underground stem and the eyes are buds. This method of propagation is therefore really a peculiar kind of cutting. Since the eye is a bud and our potato plant for next year is to develop from this bud, it is of much importance, as we have seen, to know exactly what _kind_ of plant our potato comes from. If the potato is taken from a small plant that had but a few poor potatoes in the hill, we may expect the bud to produce a similar plant and a correspondingly poor crop. We must see to it, then, that our seed potatoes are drawn from vines that were good producers, because new potato plants are like the plants from which they were grown. Of course when our potatoes are in the bin we cannot tell from what kind of plants they came. We must therefore _select our seed potatoes in the field_. Seed potatoes should always be selected from those hills that produce most bountifully. Be assured that the increased yield will richly repay this care in selecting. It matters not so much whether the seed potato be large or small; it must, however, come from a hill bearing a large yield of fine potatoes. [Illustration: FIG. 46. BEGONIA-LEAF CUTTING] Sweet-potato plants are produced from shoots, or growing buds, taken from the potato itself, so that in their case too the piece that we use in propagating is a part of the original plant, and will therefore be like it under similar conditions. Just as with the Irish potato, it is important to know how good a yielder you are planting. You should watch during harvest and select for propagation for the next year only such plants as yield best. We should exercise fully as much care in selecting proper individuals from which to make a cutting or a layer as we do in selecting a proper animal to breed from. Just as we select the finest Jersey in the herd for breeding purposes, so we should choose first the variety of plant we desire and then the finest individual plant of that variety. If the variety of the potato that we desire to raise be Early Rose, it is not enough to select _any_ Early Rose plants, but the very best Early Rose plants, to furnish our seed. [Illustration: FIG. 47. LAYERING] It is not enough to select large, fine potatoes for cuttings. A large potato may not produce a bountifully yielding plant. _It will produce a plant like the one that produced it._ It may be that this one large potato was the only one produced by the original plant. If so, the plant that grows from it will tend to be similarly unproductive. Thus you see the importance of _selecting in the field a plant that has exactly the qualities desired in the new plant_. One of the main reasons why gardeners raise plants from buds instead of from seeds is that the seed of many plants will not produce plants like the parent. This failure to "come true," as it is called, is sometimes of value, for it occasionally leads to improvement. For example, suppose that a thousand apple or other fruit or flower seeds from plants usually propagated by cuttings be planted; it may be that one out of a thousand or a million will be a very valuable plant. If a valuable plant be so produced, it should be most carefully guarded, multiplied by cuttings or grafts, and introduced far and wide. It is in this way that new varieties of fruits and flowers are produced from time to time. Sometimes, too, a single bud on a tree will differ from the other buds and will produce a branch different from the other branches. This is known as _bud variation_. When there is thus developed a branch which happens to be of a superior kind, it should be propagated by cuttings just as you would propagate it if it had originated from a seed. [Illustration: FIG. 48. CURRANT CUTTING] Mr. Gideon of Minnesota planted many apple seeds, and from them all raised one tree that was very fruitful, finely flavored, and able to withstand the cold Minnesota winter. This tree he multiplied by grafts and named the Wealthy apple. It is said that in giving this one apple to the world he benefited mankind to the value of more than one million dollars. It will be well to watch for any valuable bud or seed variant and never let a promising one be lost. Plants grown in this way from seeds are usually spoken of as seedlings. [Illustration: A LUSCIOUS AND EASILY GROWN BERRY] PLANTS TO BE PROPAGATED FROM BUDS The following list gives the names and methods by which our common garden fruits and flowers are propagated: _Figs_: use cuttings 8 to 10 inches long or layer. _Grapes_: use long cuttings, layer, or graft upon old vines. _Apples_: graft upon seedlings, usually crab seedlings one year old. _Pears_: bud upon pear seedlings. _Cherries_: bud upon cherry stock. _Plums_: bud upon peach stock. _Peaches_: bud upon peach or plum seedlings. _Quinces_: use cuttings or layer. _Blackberries_: propagate by suckers; cut from parent stem. _Black raspberries_: layer; remove old stem. _Red raspberries_: propagate by root-cuttings or suckers. _Strawberries_: propagate by runners. _Currants_ and _gooseberries_: use long cuttings (these plants grow well only in cool climates; if attempted in warm climates, set in cold exposure). _Carnations_, _geraniums_, _roses_, _begonias_, etc.: propagate by cuttings rooted in sand and then transplanted to small pots. =EXERCISE= Propagate fruits (grape, fig, strawberry) of various kinds; also ornamental plants. How long does it take them to root? Geraniums rooted in the spring will bloom in the fall. Do you know any one who selects seed potatoes properly? Make a careful selection of seed at the next harvest-time. SECTION XVIII. PLANT SEEDING In propagating by seed, as in reproducing by buds, we select a portion of the parent plant--for a seed is surely a part of the parent plant--and place it in the ground. There is, however, one great difference between a seed and a bud. The bud is really a piece of the parent plant, but a piece of _one_ plant only, while a seed comes from the parts of two plants. You will understand this fully if you read carefully Sections XIV-XVI. Since the seed is made of two plants, the plant that springs from a seed is much more likely to differ from its mother plant, that is, from the plant that produces the seed, than is a plant produced merely by buds. In some cases plants "come true to seed" very accurately. In others they vary greatly. For example, when we plant the seed of wheat, turnips, rye, onions, tomatoes, tobacco, or cotton, we get plants that are in most respects like the parent plant. On the other hand the seed of a Crawford peach or a Baldwin apple or a Bartlett pear will not produce plants like its parent, but will rather resemble its wild forefathers. These seedlings, thus taking after their ancestors, are always far inferior to our present cultivated forms. In such cases seeding is not practicable, and we must resort to bud propagation of one sort or another. While in a few plants like those just mentioned the seed does not "come true," most plants, for example, cotton, tobacco, and others, do "come true." When we plant King cotton we may expect to raise King cotton. There will be, however, as every one knows, some or even considerable variation in the field. Some plants, even in exactly the same soil, will be better than the average, and some will be poorer. Now we see this variation in the plants of our field, and we believe that the plant will be in the main like its parent. What should we learn from this? Surely that if we wish to produce sturdy, healthy, productive plants we must go into our fields and _pick out just such plants to secure seed from as we wish to produce another year_. If we wait until the seed is separated from the plant that produced it before we select our cotton seed, we shall be planting seed from poor as well as from good plants, and must be content with a crop of just such stock as we have planted. By selecting seed from the most productive plants _in the field_ and by repeating the selection each year, you can continually improve the breed of the plant you are raising. In selecting seed for cotton you may follow the plan suggested below for wheat. [Illustration: FIGS. 49 AND 50. CHRYSANTHEMUMS AND ASPARAGUS] The difference that you see between the wild and the cultivated chrysanthemums and between the samples of asparagus shown in Figs. 49 and 50 was brought about by just such continuous seed-selection from the kind of plant wanted. [Illustration: FIG. 51. TWO VARIETIES OF FLAX FROM ONE PARENT STOCK] By the careful selection of seed from the longest flax plants the increase in length shown in the accompanying figure was gained. The selection of seed from those plants bearing the most seed, regardless of the height of the plant, has produced flax like that to the right in the illustration. These two kinds of flax are from the same parent stock, but slight differences have been emphasized by continued seed-selection, until we now have really two varieties of flax, one a heavy seed-bearer, the other producing a long fiber. You can in a similar way improve your cotton or any other seed crop. Sugar beets have been made by seed-selection to produce about double the percentage of sugar that they did a few years ago. Preparing and tilling land costs too much in money and work to allow the land to be planted with poor seed. When you are trying by seed-selection to increase the yield of cotton, there are two principles that should be borne in mind: first, seed should be chosen only from plants that bear many well-filled bolls of long-staple cotton; second, seed should be taken from no plant that does not by its healthy condition show hardihood in resisting disease and drouth. The plan of choosing seeds from selected plants may be applied to wheat; but it would of course be too time-consuming to select enough single wheat plants to furnish all of the seed wheat for the next year. In this case adopt the following plan: In Fig. 52 let _A_ represent the total size of your wheat field and let _B_ represent a plat large enough to furnish seed for the whole field. At harvest-time go into section _A_ and select the best plants you can find. Pick the heads of these and thresh them by hand. The seed so obtained must be carefully saved for your next sowing. [Illustration: FIG. 52.] In the fall sow these selected seeds in area _B_. This area should produce the best wheat. At the next harvest cull not from the whole field but from the finest plants of plat _B_, and again save these as seed for plat _B_. Use the unculled seed from plat _B_ to sow your crop. By following this plan continuously you will every year have seed from several generations of choice plants, and each year you will improve your seed. It is of course advisable to move your seed plat _B_ every year or two. For the new plat select land that has recently been planted in legumes. Always give this plat unwearying care. In the selection of plants from which to get seed, you must know what kind of plants are really the best seed plants. First, _you must not regard single heads or grains, but must select seed from the most perfect plant_, looking at the plant as a whole and not at any single part of it. A first consideration is yield. Select the plants that yield best and are at the same time resistant to drouth, resistant to rust and to winter, early to ripen, plump of grain, and nonshattering. What a fine thing it would be to find even one plant free from rust in the midst of a rusted field! It would mean a _rust-resistant plant_. Its offspring also would probably be rust-resistant. If you should ever find such a plant, be sure to save its seed and plant it in a plat by itself. The next year again save seed from those plants least rusted. Possibly you can develop a rust-proof race of wheat! Keep your eyes open. In England the average yield of wheat is thirty bushels an acre, in the United States it is less than fifteen bushels! In some states the yield is even less than nine bushels an acre. Let us select our seed with care, as the English people do, and then we can increase our yield. By careful seed-selection a plant-breeder in Minnesota increased the yield of his wheat by one fourth. Think what it would mean if twenty-five per cent were added to the world's supply of wheat at comparatively no cost; that is, at the mere cost of careful seed-selection. This would mean an addition to the world's income of about $500,000,000 each year. The United States would get about one fifth of this profit. It often happens that a single plant in a crop of corn, cotton, or wheat will be far superior to all others in the field. Such a plant deserves special care. Do not use it merely as a seed plant, but carefully plant its seeds apart and tend carefully. The following season select the best of its offspring as favorites again. Repeat this selection and culture for several years until you fix the variety. This is the way new varieties are originated from plants propagated by seed. In 1862 Mr. Abraham Fultz of Pennsylvania, while passing through a field of bearded wheat, found three heads of beardless, or bald, wheat. These he sowed by themselves that year, and as they turned out specially productive he continued to sow this new variety. Soon he had enough seed to distribute over the country. It became known as the Fultz wheat and is to-day one of the best varieties in the United States and in a number of foreign countries. Think how many bushels of wheat have been added to the world's annual supply by a few moments of intelligent observation and action on the part of this one man! He saw his opportunity and used it. How many similar opportunities do you think are lost? How much does your state or country lose thereby? =EXERCISE= Select one hundred seeds from a good, and one hundred from a poor, plant of the same variety. Sow them in two plats far enough apart to avoid cross-pollination, yet try to have soil conditions about the same. Give each the same care and compare the yield. Try this with corn, cotton, and wheat. Select seeds from the best plant in your good plat and from the poorest in your poor plat and repeat the experiment. This will require but a few feet of ground, and the good plat will pay for itself in yield, while the poor plat will more than pay in the lesson that it will teach you. Write to the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., and to your state experiment station for bulletins concerning seed-selection and methods of plant-improvement. SECTION XIX. SELECTING SEED CORN If a farmer would raise good crops he must, as already stated, select good seed. Many of the farmer's disappointments in the quantity and quality of his crops--disappointments often thought to come from other causes--are the result of planting poor seed. Seeds not fully ripened, if they grow at all, produce imperfect plants. Good seed, therefore, is the first thing necessary for a good crop. The seed of perfect plants only should be saved. By wise and persistent selection, made in the field before the crop is fully matured, corn can be improved in size and made to mature earlier. Gather ears only from the most productive plants and save only the largest and best kernels. [Illustration: FIG. 53. THE KIND OF EAR TO SELECT] You have no doubt seen the common American blackbirds that usually migrate and feed in such large numbers. They all look alike in every way. Now, has it ever occurred to you to ask why all blackbirds are black? The blackbirds are black simply because their parents are black. Now in the same way that the young blackbirds resemble their parents, corn will resemble its parent stock. How many ears of corn do you find on a stalk? One, two, sometimes three or four. You find two ears of corn on a stalk because it is the nature of that particular stalk to produce two ears. In the same way the nature of some stalks is to produce but one ear, while it is the nature of others sometimes to produce two or more. This resemblance of offspring to parent is known to scientists as heredity, or as "like producing like." Some Southern corn-breeders take advantage of this law to improve their corn crop. If a stalk can be made to produce two ears of corn just as large as the single ear that most stalks bear, we shall get twice as much corn from a field in which the "two-eared" variety is planted. In the North and West the best varieties of corn have been selected to make but one ear to the stalk. It is generally believed that this is the best practice for the shorter growing seasons of the colder states. [Illustration: FIG. 54. SELECT SEED FROM A STALK LIKE THAT ON LEFT] These facts ought to be very helpful to us next year when our fathers are planting corn. We should get them to plant seed secured only from stalks that produced the most corn, whether the stalk had two or more ears or only one. If we follow this plan year by year, each acre of land will be made to produce more kernels and hence a larger crop of corn, and yet no more work will be required to raise the crop. In addition to enlarging the yield of corn, you can, by proper selection of the best and most productive plants in the field, grow a new variety of seed corn. To do this you need only take the largest and best kernels from stalks bearing two ears; plant these, and at the next harvest again save the best kernels from stalks bearing the best ears. If you keep up this practice with great care for several years, you will get a vigorous, fruitful variety that will command a high price for seed. =EXPERIMENT= [Illustration: FIG. 55. IMPROVEMENT OF CORN BY SELECTION Boone County white corn on left, and original type, from which it was developed by selection, on right] Every school boy and girl can make this experiment at leisure. From your own field get two ears of corn, one from a stalk bearing only one ear and the other from a stalk bearing two well-grown ears. Plant the grains from one ear in one plat, and the grains from the other in a plat of equal size. Use for both the same soil and the same fertilizer. Cultivate both plats in the same way. When the crop is ready to harvest, husk the corn, count the ears, and weigh the corn. Then write a short essay on your work and on the results and get your teacher to correct the story for your home paper. SECTION XX. WEEDS Have you ever noticed that some weeds are killed by one particular method, but that this same method may entirely fail to kill other kinds of weeds? If we wish to free our fields of weeds with the greatest ease, we must know the nature of each kind of weed and then attack it in the way in which we can most readily destroy it. [Illustration: FIG. 56. PIGWEED] The ordinary pigweed (Fig. 56) differs from many other weeds in that it lives for only one year. When winter comes, it must die. Each plant, however, bears a great number of seeds. If we can prevent the plant from bearing seed in its first year, there will not be many seeds to come up the next season. In fact, only those seeds that were too deeply buried in the soil to come up the previous spring will be left, and of these two-year-old seeds many will not germinate. During the next season some old seeds will produce plants, but the number will be very much diminished. If care be exercised to prevent the pigweed from seeding again, and the same watchfulness be continued for a few seasons, this weed will be almost entirely driven from our fields. A plant like the pigweed, which lives only one year, is called an _annual_ and is one of the easiest weeds to destroy. Mustard, plantain, chess, dodder, cockle, crab grass, and Jimson weed are a few of our most disagreeable annual weeds. The best time to kill any weed is when it is very small; therefore the ground in early spring should be constantly stirred in order to kill the young weeds before they grow to be strong and hardy. [Illustration: FIG. 57. WILD CARROT] The wild carrot differs from an annual in this way: it lives throughout one whole year without producing seeds. During its first year it accumulates a quantity of nourishment in the root, then rests in the winter. Throughout the following summer it uses this nourishment rapidly to produce its flowers and seeds. Then the plant dies. Plants that live through two seasons in this way are called _biennials_. Weeds of this kind may be destroyed by _cutting the roots below the leaves_ with a grubbing-hoe or spud. A spud may be described as a chisel on a long handle (see Fig. 58). If biennials are not cut low enough they will branch out anew and make many seeds. Among the most common biennials are the thistle, moth mullein, wild carrot, wild parsnip, and burdock. [Illustration: FIG. 58. A SPUD] [Illustration: FIG. 59. HOUND'S TONGUE] A third group of weeds consists of those that live for more than two years. These weeds are usually most difficult to kill. They propagate by means of running rootstocks as well as by seeds. Plants that live more than two seasons are known as _perennials_ and include, for example, many grasses, dock, Canada thistle, poison ivy, passion flower, horse nettle, etc. There are many methods of destroying perennial weeds. They may be dug entirely out and removed. Sometimes in small areas they may be killed by crude sulphuric acid or may be starved by covering them with boards or a straw stack or in some other convenient way. A method that is very effective is to smother the weeds by a dense growth of some other plant, for example, cowpeas or buckwheat. Cowpeas are to be preferred, since they also enrich the soil by the nitrogen that the root-tubercles gather. [Illustration: FIG. 60. CANADA THISTLE] Weeds do injury in numerous ways; they shade the crop, steal its nourishment, and waste its moisture. Perhaps their only service is to make lazy people till their crops. =EXERCISE= You should learn to know by name the twenty worst weeds of your vicinity and to recognize their seeds. If there are any weeds you are not able to recognize, send a sample of each to your state experiment station. Make a collection, properly labeled, of weeds and weed seeds for your school. SECTION XXI. SEED PURITY AND VITALITY Seeds produce plants. The difference between a large and a small yield may depend upon the kind of plants we raise, and the kind of plant in turn is dependent upon the seeds that we sow. Two things are important in the selection of seeds--purity and vitality. Seeds should be _pure_; that is, when sown they should produce no other plant than the one that we wish to raise. They should be able to grow. The ability of a seed to grow is termed its _vitality_. Good seed should be nearly or quite pure and should possess high vitality. The vitality of seeds is expressed as a per cent; for example, if 97 seeds out of 100 germinate, or sprout, the vitality is said to be 97. The older the seed the less is its vitality, except in a few rare instances in which seeds cannot germinate under two or three years. Cucumber seeds may show 90 per cent vitality when they are one year old, 75 per cent when two years old, and 70 per cent when three years old--the per cent of vitality diminishing with increase of years. The average length of life of the seeds of cultivated plants is short: for example, the tomato lives four years; corn, two years; the onion, two years; the radish, five years. The cucumber seed may retain life after ten years; but the seeds of this plant too lose their vitality with an increase in years. It is important when buying seeds to test them for purity and vitality. Dealers who are not honest often sell old seeds, although they know that seeds decrease in value with age. Sometimes, however, to cloak dishonesty they mix some new seeds with the old, or bleach old and yellow seeds in order to make them resemble fresh ones. It is important, therefore, that all seeds bought of dealers should be thoroughly examined and tested; for if they do not grow, we not only pay for that which is useless but we are also in great danger of producing so few plants in our fields that we shall not get full use of the land, and thus we may suffer a more serious loss than merely paying for a few dead seeds. It will therefore be both interesting and profitable to learn how to test the vitality of seeds. To test vitality plant one hundred seeds in a pot of earth or in damp sand, or place them between moist pieces of flannel, and take care to keep them moist and warm. Count those that germinate and thus determine the percentage of vitality. Germinating between flannel is much quicker than planting in earth. Care should be used to keep mice away from germinating seeds. (See Fig. 61.) [Illustration: FIG. 61. A SEED-GERMINATOR Consisting of two soup plates, some sand, and a piece of cloth] Sometimes the appearance of a package will show whether the seed has been kept in stock a long time. It is, however, much more difficult to find out whether the seeds are pure. You can of course easily distinguish seeds that differ much from those you wish to plant, but often certain weed seeds are so nearly like certain crop seeds as not to be easily recognized by the eye. Thus the dodder or "love vine," which so often ruins the clover crop, has seeds closely resembling clover seeds. The chess, or cheat, has seeds so nearly like oats that only a close observer can tell them apart. However, if you watch the seeds that you buy, and study the appearance of crop seeds, you may become expert in recognizing those that have no place in your planting. One case is reported in which a seed-dealer intentionally allowed an impurity of 30 per cent to remain in the crop seeds, and this impurity was mainly of weed seeds. There were 450,000 of one kind and 288,000 of another in each pound of seed. Think of planting weeds at that rate! Sometimes three fourths of the seeds you buy are weed seeds. In purchasing seeds the only safe plan is to buy of dealers whose reputation can be relied upon. It not seldom happens that seeds, like corn, are stored in open cribs or barns before the moisture is entirely dried out of the seeds. Such seeds are liable to be frozen during a severe winter, and of course if this happens they will not sprout the following spring. The only way to tell whether such seeds have been killed is to test samples of them for vitality. Testing is easy; replanting is costly and often results in a short crop. [Illustration: FIG. 62. IMPURITIES IN SEEDS Tube 1 represents one pound of redtop grass as bought; Tube 2, amount of pure redtop grass seeds in Tube 1; Tube 3, amount of chaff and dirt in Tube 1; Tube 4, amount of weed seeds in Tube 1; Tube 5, amount of total waste in Tube 1; Tube 6, amount of pure germinable seeds in Tube 1] =EXERCISE= Examine seeds both for vitality and purity. Write for farmers' bulletins on both these subjects. What would be the loss to a farmer who planted a ten-acre clover field with seeds that were 80 per cent bad? Can you recognize the seeds of the principal cultivated plants? Germinate some beet seeds. What per cent comes up? Can you explain? Collect for your school as many kinds of wild and cultivated seeds as you can. CHAPTER IV HOW TO RAISE A FRUIT TREE Let each pupil grow an apple tree this year and attempt to make it the best in his neighborhood. In your attempt suppose you try the following plan. In the fall take the seed of an apple--a crab-apple is good--and keep it in a cool place during the winter. The simplest way to do this is to bury it in damp sand. In the spring plant it in a rich, loose soil. Great care must be taken of the young shoot as soon as it appears above the ground. You want to make it grow as tall and as straight as possible during this first year of its life, hence you should give it rich soil and protect it from animals. Before the ground freezes in the fall take up the young tree with the soil that was around it and keep it all winter in a cool, damp place. Now when spring comes it will not do to set out the carefully tended tree, for an apple tree from seed will not be a tree like its parent, but will tend to resemble a more distant ancestor. The distant ancestor that the young apple tree is most likely to take after is the wild apple, which is small, sour, and otherwise far inferior to the fruit we wish to grow. It makes little difference, therefore, what kind of apple seed we plant, since in any event we cannot be sure that the tree grown from it will bear fruit worth having unless we force it to do so. [Illustration: FIG. 63. A YOUNG FRUIT-GROWER] SECTION XXII. GRAFTING By a process known as _grafting_ you can force your tree to produce whatever variety of apple you desire. Many people raise fruit trees directly from seed without grafting. Thus they often produce really worthless trees. By grafting they would make sure not only of having good trees rather than poor ones but also of having the particular kind of fruit that they wish. Hence you must now graft your tree. First you must decide what variety of apple you want to grow on the tree. The Magnum Bonum is a great favorite as a fall apple. The Winesap is a good winter apple, while the Red Astrachan is a profitable early apple, especially in the lowland of the coast region. The Northern Spy, Æsop, and Spitzenburg are also admirable kinds. Possibly some other apple that you know may suit your taste and needs better than any of these varieties. If you have decided to raise an Æsop or a Magnum Bonum or a Winesap, you must now cut a twig from the tree of your choice and graft it upon the little tree that you have raised. Choose a twig that is about the thickness of the young tree at the point where you wish to graft. Be careful to take the shoot from a vigorous, healthy part of the tree. [Illustration: FIG. 64. TONGUE GRAFTING] There are many ways in which you may join the chosen shoot or twig upon the young tree, but perhaps the best one for you to use is known as _tongue grafting_. This is illustrated in Fig. 64. The upper part, _b_, which is the shoot or twig that you cut from the tree, is known as the _scion_; the lower part, _a_, which is the original tree, is called the _stock_. Cut the scion and stock as shown in Fig. 64. Join the cut end of the scion to the cut end of the stock. When you join them, notice that under the bark of each there is a thin layer of soft, juicy tissue. This is called the _cambium_. To make a successful graft the cambium in the scion must exactly join the cambium in the stock. Be careful, then, to see that cambium meets cambium. You now see why grafting can be more successfully done if you select a scion and stock of nearly the same size. [Illustration: FIG. 65. A COMPLETED GRAFT Showing scion and stock from which it was made] After fitting the parts closely together, bind them with cotton yarn (see Fig. 65) that has been coated with grafting wax. This wax is made of equal parts of tallow, beeswax, and linseed oil. Smear the wax thoroughly over the whole joint, and make sure that the joint is completely air-tight. [Illustration: FIG. 66. To make a root graft, cut along the slanting line] The best time to make this graft is when scion and stock are dormant, that is, when they are not in leaf. During the winter, say in February, is the best time to graft the tree. Set the grafted tree away again in damp sand until spring, then plant it in loose, rich soil. Since all parts growing above the graft will be of the same kind as the scion, while all branches below it will be like the stock, it is well to graft low on the stock or even upon the root itself. The slanting double line in Fig. 66 shows the proper place to cut off for such grafting. [Illustration: FIG. 67. A COMPLETED ROOT GRAFT] If you like you may sometime make the interesting and valuable experiment of grafting scions from various kinds of apple trees on the branches of one stock. In this way you can secure a tree bearing a number of kinds of fruit. You may thus raise the Bonum, Red Astrachan, Winesap, and as many other varieties of apples as you wish, upon one tree. For this experiment, however, you will find it better to resort to _cleft grafting_, which is illustrated in Fig. 68. [Illustration: FIG. 68. CLEFT GRAFTING] Luther Burbank, the originator of the Burbank potato, in attempting to find a variety of apple suited to the climate of California, grafted more than five hundred kinds of apple scions on one tree, so that he might watch them side by side and find out which kind was best suited to that state. SECTION XXIII. BUDDING If, instead of an apple tree, you were raising a plum or a peach tree, a form of propagation known as _budding_ would be better than grafting. Occasionally budding is also employed for apples, pears, cherries, oranges, and lemons. Budding is done in the following manner. A single bud is cut from the scion and is then inserted under the bark of a one-year-old peach seedling, so that the cambium of the bud and stock may grow together. [Illustration: FIG. 69. HOW TO CUT A BUD FROM A SCION] [Illustration: FIG. 70. THE STEPS IN BUDDING] Cut scions of the kind of fruit tree you desire from a one-year-old twig of the same variety. Wrap them in a clean, moist cloth until you are ready to use them. Just before using cut the bud from the scion, as shown in Fig. 69. This bud is now ready to be inserted on the north side of the stock, just two or three inches above the ground. The north side is selected to avoid the sun. Now, as shown at _a_ in Fig. 70, make a cross and an up-and-down incision, or cut, on the stock; pull the bark back carefully, as shown in _B_; insert the bud _C_, as shown in _D_; then fold the bark back and wrap with yarn or raffia, as shown in _E_. As soon as the bud and branches have united, remove the wrapping to prevent its cutting the bark and cut the tree back close to the bud, as in Fig. 71, so as to force nourishment into the inserted bud. [Illustration: FIG. 71. Sloping line shows where to cut tree] Budding is done in the field without disturbing the tree as it stands in the ground. The best time to do budding is during the summer or fall months, when the bark is loose enough to allow the buds to be easily inserted. Trees may be budded or grafted on one another only when they are nearly related. Thus the apple, crab-apple, hawthorn, and quince are all related closely enough to graft or bud on one another; the pear grows on some hawthorns, but not well on an apple; some chestnuts will unite with some kinds of oaks. [Illustration: FIG. 72. Lines show where to trim] By using any of these methods you can succeed in getting with certainty the kind of tree that you desire. [Illustration: BOTH BUSY STORING APPLES] SECTION XXIV. PLANTING AND PRUNING The apple tree that you grafted should be set out in the spring. Dig a hole three or four feet in diameter where you wish the tree to grow. Place the tree in the hole and be very careful to preserve all the fine roots. Spread the roots out fully, water them, and pack fine, rich soil firmly about them. Place stakes about the young tree to protect it from injury. If the spot selected is in a windy location, incline the tree slightly toward the prevailing wind. [Illustration: FIG. 73. Present shape comes from pruning] [Illustration: FIG. 74. Correct shape] You must prune the tree as it grows. The object of pruning is to give the tree proper shape and to promote fruit-bearing. If the bud at the end of the main shoot grows, you will have a tall, cone-shaped tree. If, however, the end of the young tree be cut or "headed back" to the lines shown in Fig. 72, the buds below this point will be forced to grow and make a tree like that shown in Fig. 73. The proper height of heading for different fruits varies. For the apple tree a height of two or three feet is best. Cutting an end bud of a shoot or branch always sends the nourishment and growth into the side buds. Trimming or pinching off the side buds throws the growth into the end bud. You can therefore cause your tree to take almost any shape you desire. The difference between the trees shown in Figs. 73 and 74 is entirely the result of pruning. Fig. 74 illustrates in general a correctly shaped tree. It is evenly balanced, admits light freely, and yet has enough foliage to prevent sun-scald. Figs. 75 and 76 show the effect of wisely thinning the branches. [Illustration: FIG. 75. Unthinned] [Illustration: FIG. 76. Properly thinned] The best time to prune is either in the winter or before the buds start in the spring. Winter pruning tends to favor wood-production, while summer pruning lessens wood-production and induces fruitage. Each particular kind of fruit requires special pruning; for example, the peach should be made to assume the shape illustrated in Fig. 77. This is done by successive trimmings, following the plan illustrated in Figs. 71, 78, 79. You will gain several advantages from these trimmings. First, nourishment will be forced into the peach bud that you set on your stock. This will secure a vigorous growth of the scion. By a second trimming take off the "heel" (Fig. 78, _h_) close to the tree, and thus prevent decay at this point. One year after budding you should reduce the tree to a "whip," as in Fig. 79, by trimming at the dotted line in Fig. 78. This establishes the "head" of the tree, which in the case of the peach should be very low,--about sixteen inches from the ground,--in order that a low foliage may lessen the danger of sun-scald to the main trunk. [Illustration: FIG. 77. THE CUSTOMARY WAY OF PRUNING A PEACH] [Illustration: FIG. 78. TWO-YEAR-OLD TREE Cut off heel, _h_] In pruning never leave a stump such as is shown in Fig. 78, _h_. Such a stump, having no source of nourishment, will heal very slowly and with great danger of decay. If this heel is cleanly cut on the line _ch_ (Fig. 78), the wound will heal rapidly and with little danger of decay. Leaving such a stump endangers the soundness of the whole tree. Fig. 80 shows the results of good and poor pruning on a large tree. When large limbs are removed it is best to paint the cut surface. The paint will ward off fungous disease and thus keep the tree from rotting where it was cut. Pruning that leaves large limbs branching, as in Fig. 74, _a_, is not to be recommended, since the limbs when loaded with fruit or when beaten by heavy winds are liable to break. Decay is apt to set in at the point of breakage. The entrance of decay-fungi through some such wound or through a tiny crevice at such a crotch is the beginning of the end of many a fruitful tree. [Illustration: FIG. 79. THREE-YEAR-OLD TREE CUT BACK] Sometimes a tree will go too much to wood and too little to fruit. This often happens in rich soil and may be remedied by another kind of pruning known as _root-pruning_. This consists in cutting off a few of the roots in order to limit the food supply of the plant. You ought to learn more about root-pruning, however, before you attempt it. [Illustration: FIG. 80. Refuses to Heal--Heals promptly] How is a peach tree made? First, the blossom appears. Then pollination and fertilization occur. The fruit ripens. The pit, or seed, is saved. In the spring of the next year the seed is planted. The young tree, known as the stock, comes up quickly. In August of that year a bud of the variety which is wanted is inserted in the little stock, near the ground. One year later, in the spring, the stock is cut off just above the bud. The bud throws out a shoot, which grows to a height of about six feet, and in the fall this little peach tree is sold as a one-year-old tree. However, as is seen, the root is two years old. [Illustration: FIG. 81. READY TO BEAR] How is an apple tree made? The seeds are saved in the fall of one year and planted the following year. The seedlings of the apple do not grow so rapidly as those of the peach. At the end of the year they are taken up and sorted, and in the following spring they are planted. In July or August they are budded. In the spring of the next year the stock is cut off above the bud, and the bud-shoot grows three or four feet. One year later the shoot branches and the top begins to form; and in the fall of the following year the tree may be sold as a two-year-old, although most persons prefer to buy it a year later as a three-year-old. In some parts of the country, particularly in the West, the little seedling is grafted in the second winter, in a grafting room, and the young grafts are set in the nursery row in the spring to complete their growth. The planting in the orchard of the young peach and the young apple tree is done in practically the same way. After the hole for the tree has been dug and after proper soil has been provided, the roots should be spread and the soil carefully packed around them. =EXERCISE= Do you know any trees in your neighborhood that bear both wild and budded or grafted fruit? What are the chief varieties of apples grown in your neighborhood? grapes? currants? plums? cherries? figs? What is a good apple tree worth? Is there any land near by that could support a tree and is not now doing so? Examine several orchards and see whether the trees have the proper shape. Do you see any evidence of poor pruning? Do you find any heels? Can you see any place where heels have resulted in rotten or hollow trees? How could you have prevented this? Has the removal of branches ever resulted in serious decay? How is this to be prevented? If your home is not well stocked with all the principal kinds of fruit, do you not want to propagate and attend to some of each kind? You will be surprised to find how quickly trees will bear and how soon you will be eating fruit from your own planting. Growing your own trees will make you feel proud of your skill. CHAPTER V HORTICULTURE SECTION XXV. MARKET-GARDENING The word _horticulture_ is one of those broad words under which much is grouped. It includes the cultivation of orchard fruits, such as apples and plums; of small fruits, such as strawberries and raspberries; of garden vegetables for the table; of flowers of all sorts, including shrubbery and ornamental trees and their arrangement into beautiful landscape effects around our homes. Horticulture then is a name for an art that is both far-reaching and important. The word _gardening_ is generally given to that part of horticulture which has for its chief aim the raising of vegetables for our tables. Flower-gardening, or the cultivation of plants valued for their bloom in making ornamental beds and borders and furnishing flowers for the decoration of the home, is generally called _floriculture_. Landscape-gardening is the art of so arranging flower-beds, grass, shrubbery, and trees as to produce pleasing effects in the grounds surrounding our homes and in great public parks and pleasure grounds. Landscape-gardening, like architecture, has developed intoll as the artist makes them on canvas, but uses natural objects in his pictures instead of paint and canvas. =Market-Gardening.= Formerly market-gardening was done on small tracts of land in the immediate vicinity of large cities, where supplies of stable manure could be used from the city stables. But with the great increase in the population of the cities, these small areas could no longer supply the demand, and the introduction of commercial fertilizers and the building of railroads enabled gardeners at great distances from city markets to grow and ship their products. Hence the markets, even in winter, are now supplied with fresh vegetables from regions where there is no frost. Then, as spring opens, fruits and vegetables are shipped from more temperate regions. Later vegetables and fruits come from the sections nearer the great cities. This gradual nearing of the supply fields continues until the gardens near the cities can furnish what is needed. [Illustration: FIG. 82. STRAWBERRY-GROWING IS AN ART] The market-gardeners around the great Northern cities, finding that winter products were coming from the South and from warmer regions, began to build hothouses and by means of steam and hot-water pipes to make warm climates in these glass houses. Many acres of land in the colder sections of the country are covered with heated glass houses, and in them during the winter are produced fine crops of tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, cauliflowers, eggplants, and other vegetables. The degree of perfection which these attain in spite of having such artificial culture, and their freshness as compared to the products brought from a great distance, have made winter gardening under glass a very profitable business. But it is a business that calls for the highest skill and the closest attention. [Illustration: FIG. 83. SETTING PLANTS IN A COLD-FRAME] No garden, even for home use, is complete without some glass sashes, and the garden will be all the more successful if there is a small heated greenhouse for starting plants that are afterwards to be set in the garden. =Hotbeds.= If there is no greenhouse, a hotbed is an important help in the garden. The bed is made by digging a pit two feet deep, seven feet wide, and as long as necessary. The material for the hotbed is fresh horse manure mixed with leaves. This is thrown into a heap to heat. As soon as steam is seen coming from the heap the manure is turned over and piled again so that the outer part is thrown inside. When the whole is uniformly heated and has been turned two or three times, it is packed firmly into the pit already dug. A frame six feet wide, twelve inches high on the north side and eight inches on the south side and as long as the bed is to be, is now made of plank. This is set upon the heated manure, thus leaving six inches on each side outside the frame. More manure is then banked all around it, and three or four inches of fine light and rich soil are placed inside the frame. [Illustration: FIG. 84. THE GLADIOLUS] The frame is then covered with hotbed sashes six feet long and three feet wide. These slide up and down on strips of wood let into the sides of the frame. A thermometer is stuck into the soil and closely watched, for there will be too much heat at first for sowing seed. When the heat in the early morning is about 85°, seeds may be sowed. The hotbed is used for starting tomato plants, eggplants, cabbage plants, and other vegetables that cannot stand exposure. It should be made about eight or ten weeks before the tender plants can be set out in the locality. In the South and Southwest it should be started earlier than in the North. For growing the best tomato plants, and for such hardy plants as lettuce and cabbage, it will be better to have cold-frames in addition to the hotbed; these need not be more than two or three sashes. =Cold-Frames.= A cold-frame is like the frame used for a hotbed, but it is placed on well-manured soil in a sheltered spot. It is covered with the same kind of sashes and is used for hardening the plants sowed in the hotbed. The frame must be well banked with earth on the outside, and the glass must be covered on cold nights with straw, mats, or old carpets to keep out frost. [Illustration: FIG. 85. FRAME TO CARRY THE SASH OF A HOTBED OR COLD-FRAME] =Care of Hotbed and Cold-Frame.= If the sun be allowed to shine brightly on the glass of a cold-frame or hotbed, it will soon raise the temperature in the hotbed to a point that will destroy the plants. It is necessary, then, to pay close attention to the bed and, when the sun shines, to slip the sashes down or raise them and place a block under the upper end to allow the steam to pass off. The cold-frame also must be aired when the sun shines, and the sashes must be gradually slipped down in mild weather. Finally, they may be removed entirely on sunshiny days, so as to accustom the plants to the open air, but they must be replaced at night. For a while before setting the plants in the open gardens, leave the sashes off night and day. [Illustration: FIG. 86. GREENHOUSE AND COLD-FRAMES] While the hotbed may be used for starting plants, it is much better and more convenient to have a little greenhouse with fire heat for this purpose. A little house with but four sashes on each side will be enough to start a great many plants, and will also give room for some flowers in pots. With such a house a student can learn to manage a more extensive structure if he gives close attention to airing, watering, and keeping out insects. =Sowing.= The time for sowing the different kinds of seeds is an important matter. Seeds vary greatly in their requirements. All need three conditions--a proper degree of heat, moisture, and air. Some seeds, like English peas, parsnips, beets, and radishes, will germinate and grow when the soil is still cool in the early spring, and peas will stand quite a frost after they are up. Therefore we plant English peas as early as the ground can be worked. But if we should plant seeds like corn, string (or snap) beans, squashes, and other tender plants before the ground is warm enough, they would decay. Seeds cannot germinate in soil that is perfectly dry, for there must be moisture to swell them and to start growth. The oxygen of the air is also necessary, and if seeds are buried so deeply that the air cannot reach them, they will not grow, even if they are warm and moist. [Illustration: FIG. 87. GATHERING AND SHIPPING CELERY] The depth of planting must vary with the character and size of the seed. English peas may be covered six inches deep and will be all the better for such covering, but if corn be covered so deep, it hardly gets above the ground. In planting small seeds like those of the radish, cabbage, turnip, lettuce, etc., a good rule is to cover them three times the thickness of the seed. In sowing seeds when the ground is rather dry, it is a good plan, after covering them, to tramp on the row so as to press the soil closely to the seeds and to help it to retain moisture for germination, but do not pack the soil if it is damp. In spring never dig or plow the garden while it is still wet, but always wait until the soil is dry enough to crumble freely. =What Crops to grow.= The crops to be raised will of course depend upon each gardener's climate, surroundings, and markets. Sometimes it may pay a grower, if his soil and climate are particularly suited to one crop, to expend most of his time and energy on this crop; for example, in some sections of New York, on potatoes; in parts of Michigan, on celery; in Georgia, on watermelons; in western North Carolina, on cabbage. If circumstances allow this sort of gardening, it has many advantages, for of course it is much easier to acquire skill in growing one crop than in growing many. [Illustration: FIG. 88. A LARGE YIELD OF CABBAGES] On the other hand, it often happens that a gardener's situation requires him to grow most of the crops known to gardening. Each gardener then must be guided in his selection of crops by his surroundings. =Care of Crops.= The gardener who wishes to attain the greatest success in his art must do four things: First, he must make his land rich and keep it rich. Much of his success depends on getting his crops on the market ahead of other growers. To do this, his crops must grow rapidly, and crops grow rapidly only in rich soil. Then, too, land conveniently situated for market-gardening is nearly always costly. Hence the successful market-gardener must plan to secure the largest possible yield from as small an area as is practicable. The largest yield can of course be secured from the richest land. Second, the gardener must cultivate his rich land most carefully and economically. He crowds his land with products that must grow apace. Therefore he, least of all growers, can afford to have any of his soil go to feed weeds, to have his land wash, or to have his growing crops suffer for lack of timely and wise cultivation. To cultivate his land economically the gardener must use the best tools and machines and the best methods of soil management. Third, to get the best results he must grow perfect vegetables. To do this, he must add to good tillage a knowledge of the common plant diseases and of the ways of insects and bacterial pests; he must know how and when to spray, how and when to treat his seed, how and when to poison, how and when to trap his insect foes and to destroy their hiding-places. Fourth, not only must the gardener grow perfect vegetables, but he must put them on the market in perfect condition and in attractive shape. Who cares to buy wilted, bruised, spoiling vegetables? Gathering, bundling, crating, and shipping are all to be watched carefully. Baskets should be neat and attractive, crates clean and snug, barrels well packed and well headed. Careful attention to all these details brings a rich return. Among the gardener's important crops are the following: =Asparagus.= This is a hardy plant. Its seed may be sowed either early in the spring or late in the fall. The seeds should be planted in rows. If the plants are well cultivated during the spring and summer, they will make vigorous roots for transplanting in the autumn. In the fall prepare a piece of land by breaking it unusually deep and by manuring it heavily. After the land is thoroughly prepared, make in it furrows for the asparagus roots. These furrows should be six inches deep and three feet apart. Then remove the roots from the rows in which they have been growing during the summer, and set them two feet apart in the prepared furrows. Cover carefully at once. [Illustration: FIG. 89. A CRATE OF ASPARAGUS] In the following spring the young shoots must be well cultivated. In order to economize space, beets or lettuce may be grown between the asparagus rows during this first season. With the coming of cold weather the asparagus must again be freely manured and all dead tops cut off. Some plants will be ready for market the second spring. If the bed is kept free from weeds and well manured, it will increase in productiveness from year to year. =Beans.= The most generally planted beans are those known as string, or snap, beans. Of the many varieties, all are sensitive to cold and hence must not be planted until frost is over. Another widely grown kind of bean is the lima, or butter, bean. There are two varieties of the lima bean. One is large and generally grows on poles. This kind does best in the Northern states. The other is a small bean and may be grown without poles. This kind is best suited to the warmer climates of the Southern states. =Cabbage.= In comparatively warm climates the first crop of cabbage is generally grown in the following way. The seeds are sowed in beds in September, and the plants grown from this sowing are in November transplanted to ground laid off in sharp ridges. The young plants are set on the south side of the ridges in order that they may be somewhat protected from the cold of winter. As spring comes on, the ridge is partly cut down at each working until the field is leveled, and thereafter the cultivation should be level. [Illustration: FIG. 90. CABBAGE READY FOR SHIPMENT] Early cabbages need heavy applications of manure. In the spring, nitrate of soda applied in the rows is very helpful. Seeds for the crop following this early crop should be sowed in March. Of course these seeds should be of a later variety than the first used. The young plants should be transplanted as soon as they are large enough. Early cabbages are set in rows three feet apart, the plants eighteen inches apart in the row. As the later varieties grow larger than the earlier ones, the plants should be set two feet apart in the row. In growing late fall and winter cabbage the time of sowing varies with the climate. For the Northern and middle states, seeding should be done during the last of March and in April. South of a line passing west from Virginia it is hard to carry cabbages through the heat of summer and get them to head in the fall. However, if the seeds are sowed about the first of August in rich and moist soil and the plants set in the same sort of soil in September, large heads can be secured for the December market. [Illustration: FIG. 91. CELERY TRIMMED, WASHED, AND BUNCHED] =Celery.= In the extreme northern part of our country, celery seeds are often sowed in a greenhouse or hotbed. This is done in order to secure plants early enough for summer blanching. This plan, however, suits only very cool climates. In the middle states the seeds are usually sowed in a well-prepared bed about April. The young plants are moved to other beds as soon as they need room. Generally they are transplanted in July to rows prepared for them. These should be four feet apart, and the plants should be set six inches apart in the row. The celery bed should be carefully cultivated during the summer. In the fall, hill the stalks up enough to keep them erect. After the growing season is over dig them and set them in trenches. The trenches should be as deep as the celery is tall, and after the celery is put in them they should be covered with boards and straw. In the more southern states, celery is usually grown in beds. The beds are generally made six feet wide, and rows a foot apart are run crosswise. The plants are set six inches apart, in September, and the whole bed is earthed up as the season advances. Finally, when winter comes the beds are covered with leaves or straw to prevent the plants from freezing. The celery is dug and bunched for market at any time during the winter. By means of cold-frames a profitable crop of spring celery may be raised. Have the plants ready to go into the cold-frames late in October or early in November. The soil in the frame should be made very deep. The plants should make only a moderately rapid growth during the winter. In the early spring they will grow rapidly and so crowd one another as to blanch well. As celery grown in this way comes on the market at a time when no other celery can be had, it commands a good price. In climates as warm as that of Florida, beds of celery can be raised in this way without the protection of cold-frames. A slight freeze does not hurt celery, but a long-continued freezing spell will destroy it. Some kinds of celery seem to turn white naturally. These are called self-blanching kinds. Other kinds need to be banked with earth in order to make the stalks whiten. This kind usually gives the best and crispest stalks. =Cucumbers and Cantaloupes.= Although cucumbers and cantaloupes are very different plants, they are grown in precisely the same way. Some gardeners plant them in hills. However, this is perhaps not the best plan. It is better to lay the land off in furrows six feet apart. After filling these with well-rotted stable manure, throw soil over them. Then make the top flat and plant the seeds. After the plants are up thin them out, leaving them a foot or more apart in the rows. Cultivate regularly and carefully until the vines cover the entire ground. It is a good plan to sow cowpeas at the last working of cantaloupes, in order to furnish some shade for the melons. As both cucumbers and cantaloupes are easily hurt by cold, they should not be planted until the soil is warm and all danger of frost is past. Cucumbers are always cut while they are green. They should never be pulled from the vine, but should always be cut with a piece of the stem attached. Cantaloupes should be gathered before they turn yellow and should be ripened in the house. [Illustration: FIG. 92. STRIPED CUCUMBER BEETLE AND LARVA All magnified] In some sections of the country the little striped cucumber-beetle attacks the melons and cucumbers as soon as they come up. These beetles are very active, and if their attacks are not prevented they will destroy the tender plants. Bone dust and tobacco dust applied just as the plants appear above the ground will prevent these attacks. This treatment not only keeps off the beetle, but also helps the growth of the plants. =Eggplants.= Eggplants are so tender that they cannot be transplanted like tomatoes to cold-frames and gradually hardened to stand the cold spring air. These plants, started in a warm place, must be kept there until the soil to which they are to be transplanted is well warmed by the advance of spring. After the warm weather has fully set in, transplant them to rich soil, setting them three feet apart each way. This plant needs much manure. If large, perfect fruit is expected, the ground can hardly be made too rich. Eggplants are subject to the same bacterial blight that is so destructive to tomatoes. The only way to prevent this disease is to plant in ground not lately used for tomatoes or potatoes. [Illustration: FIG. 93. AN ONION HARVEST] =Onions.= The method of growing onions varies with the use to which it is intended to put them. To make the early sorts, which are eaten green in the spring, little onions called _sets_ are planted. These are grown from seeds sowed late in the spring. The seeds are sowed thickly in rows in rather poor land. The object of selecting poor land is that the growth of the sets may be slow. When the sets have reached the size of small marbles, they are ready for the fall planting. In the South the sets may be planted in September. Plant them in rows in rich and well-fertilized soil. They will be ready for market in March or April. In the more northerly states the sets are to be planted as early as possible in the spring. To grow ripe onions the seeds must be sowed as early in the spring as the ground can be worked. The plants are thinned to a stand of three inches in the rows. As they grow, the soil is drawn away from them so that the onions sit on top of the soil with only their roots in the earth. [Illustration: FIG. 94. HOTBED FOR STARTING TOMATO PLANTS] As soon as the tops ripen pull the onions and let them lie in the sun until the tops are dry. Then put them under shelter. As onions keep best with their tops attached, do not remove these until it is time for marketing. =Peas.= The English pea is about the first vegetable of the season to be planted. It may be planted as soon as the ground is in workable condition. Peas are planted in rows, and it is a good plan to stretch wire netting for them to climb on. However, where peas are extensively cultivated they are allowed to fall on the ground. There are many sorts of peas, differing both in quality and in time of production. The first to be planted are the extra-early varieties. These are not so fine as the later, wrinkled sorts, but the seeds are less apt to rot in cold ground. Following these, some of the fine, wrinkled sorts are to be planted in regular succession. Peas do not need much manure and do best in a light, warm soil. =Tomatoes.= There is no vegetable grown that is more widely used than the tomato. Whether fresh or canned it is a staple article of food that can be served in many ways. By careful selection and breeding, the fruit of the tomato has in recent years been much improved. There are now many varieties that produce perfectly smooth and solid fruit, and the grower can hardly go amiss in his selection of seeds if he bears his climate and his particular needs in mind. Early tomatoes are started in the greenhouse or in the hotbed about ten weeks before the time for setting the plants in the open ground. They are transplanted to cold-frames as soon as they are large enough to handle. This is done to harden the plants and to give them room to grow strong before the final transplanting. In kitchen gardens tomatoes are planted in rows four feet apart with the plants two feet apart in the rows. They are generally trained to stakes with but one stalk to a stake. When there is plenty of space, however, the plants are allowed to grow at will and to tumble on the ground. In this way they bear large crops. During the winter the markets are supplied with tomatoes either from tropical sections or from hothouses. As those grown in the hothouses are superior in flavor to those shipped from Florida and from the West Indies, and as they command good prices, great quantities are grown in this way. In the South the bacterial blight which attacks the plants of this family is a serious drawback to tomato culture. The only way to escape this disease is to avoid planting tomatoes on land in which eggplants, tomatoes, or potatoes have been blighted. Lime spread around the plants seems to prevent the blight for one season on some soils. At the approach of frost in the fall, green tomatoes can easily be preserved by wrapping them in paper. Gather them carefully and wrap each separately. Pack them in boxes and store in a cellar that is close enough to prevent the freezing of the fruit. A few days before the tomatoes are wanted for the table unpack as many as are needed, remove the paper, and allow them to ripen in a warm room. Tomatoes require a rich soil. Scattering a small quantity of nitrate of soda around their roots promotes rapid growth. =Watermelons.= As watermelons need more room than can usually be spared in a garden, they are commonly grown as a field crop. A very light, sandy soil suits watermelons best. They can be grown on very poor soil if a good supply of compost be placed in each hill. The land for the melons should be laid off in about ten-foot checks; that is, the furrows should cross one another at right angles about every ten feet. A wide hole should be dug where the furrows cross, and into this composted manure should be put. The best manure for watermelons is a compost of stable manure and wood-mold from the forest. Pile the manure and wood-mold in alternate layers for some time before the planting season. During the winter cut through the pile several times until the two are thoroughly mixed and finely pulverized. Be sure to keep the compost heap under shelter. Compost will lose in value if it is exposed to rains. At planting-time, put two or three shovelfuls of this compost into each of the prepared holes, and over the top of the manure scatter a handful of any high-grade complete fertilizer. Then cover fertilizer and manure with soil, and plant the seeds in this soil. In cultivating, plow both ways of the checked rows and throw the earth toward the plants. Some growers pinch off the vines when they have grown about three feet long. This is done to make them branch more freely, but the pinching is not necessary. A serious disease, the watermelon wilt, is rapidly spreading through melon-growing sections. This disease is caused by germs in the soil, and the germs are hard to kill. If the wilt should appear in your neighborhood, do not allow any stable manure to be used on your melon land, for the germs are easily scattered by means of stable manure. The germs also cling to the seeds of diseased melons, and these seeds bear the disease to other fields. If you treat melon seeds as you are directed on page 135 to treat oat seeds, the germs on the seeds will be destroyed. By crossing the watermelon on the citron melon, a watermelon that is resistant to wilt has recently been developed and successfully grown in soils in which wilt is present. The new melon, inferior in flavor at first, is being improved from season to season and bids fair to rival other melons in flavor. [Illustration: FIG. 95. DEWBERRIES] SECTION XXVI. FLOWER GARDENING The comforts and joys of life depend largely upon small things. Of these small things perhaps none holds a position of greater importance in country life than the adornment of the home, indoors and outdoors, with flowers tastefully arranged. Their selection and planting furnish pleasant recreation; their care is a pleasing employment; and each little plant, as it sprouts and grows and develops, may become as much a pet as creatures of the sister animal kingdom. A beautiful, well-kept yard adds greatly to the pleasure and attractiveness of a country home. If a beautiful yard and home give joy to the mere passer-by, how much more must their beauty appeal to the owners. The decorating of the home shows ambition, pride, and energy--important elements in a successful life. [Illustration: FIG. 96. AN EASY WAY TO BEAUTIFY THE HOME] Plant trees and shrubs in your yard and border your masses of shrubbery with flower-beds. Do not disfigure a lawn by placing a bed of flowers in it. Use the flowers rather to decorate the shrubbery, and for borders along walks, and in the corners near steps, or against foundations. If you wish to raise flowers for the sake of flowers, not as decorations, make the flower-beds in the back yard or at the side of the house. [Illustration: FIG. 97. A BACK YARD TO REFINE THE CHILDREN OF THE FAMILY] Plants may be grown from seeds or from bulbs or from cuttings. The rooting of cuttings is an interesting task to all who are fond of flowers. Those who have no greenhouse and who wish to root cuttings of geraniums, roses, and other plants may do so in the following way. Take a shallow pan, an old-fashioned milk pan for instance, fill it nearly full of clean sand, and then wet the sand thoroughly. Stick the cuttings thickly into this wet sand, set the pan in a warm, sunny window, and keep the sand in the same water-soaked condition. Most cuttings will root well in a few weeks and may then be set into small flower-pots. Cuttings of tea roses should have two or three joints and be taken from a stem that has just made a flower. Allow one of the rose leaves to remain at the top of the cutting. Stick this cutting into the sand and it will root in about four weeks. Cuttings of Cape jasmine may be rooted in the same way. Some geraniums, the rose geranium for example, may be grown from cuttings of the roots. [Illustration: FIG. 98. REPOTTING] Bulbs are simply the lower ends of the leaves of a plant wrapped tightly around one another and inclosing the bud that makes the future flower-stalk. The hyacinth, the narcissus, and the common garden onion are examples of bulbous plants. The flat part at the bottom of the bulb is the stem of the plant reduced to a flat disk, and between each two adjacent leaves on this flat stem there is a bud, just as above-ground there is a bud at the base of a leaf. These buds on the stem of the bulb rarely grow, however, unless forced to do so artificially. The number of bulbs may be greatly increased by making these buds grow and form other bulbs. In increasing hyacinths the matured bulbs are dug in the spring, and the under part of the flat stem is carefully scraped away to expose the base of the buds. The bulbs are then put in heaps and covered with sand. In a few weeks each bud has formed a little bulb. The gardener plants the whole together to grow one season, after which the little bulbs are separated and grown into full-sized bulbs for sale. Other bulbs, like the narcissus or the daffodil, form new bulbs that separate without being scraped. [Illustration: FIG. 99. A CLEMATIS] There are some other plants which have underground parts that are commonly called bulbs but which are not bulbs at all; for example, the gladiolus and the caladium, or elephant's ear. Their underground parts are bulblike in shape, but are really solid flattened stems with eyes like the underground stem of the Irish potato. These parts are called _corms_. They may be cut into pieces like the potato and each part will grow. The dahlia makes a mass of roots that look greatly like sweet potatoes, but there are no eyes on them as there are on the sweet potato. The only eyes are on the base of the stem to which they are joined. They may be sprouted like sweet potatoes and then soft cuttings made of the green shoots, after which they may be rooted in the greenhouse and later planted in pots. There are many perennial plants that will bloom the first season when grown from the seed, though such seedlings are seldom so good as the plants from which they came. They are generally used to originate new varieties. Seeds of the dahlia, for instance, can be sowed in a box in a warm room in early March, potted as soon as the plants are large enough to handle, and finally planted in the garden when the weather is warm. They will bloom nearly as soon as plants grown by dividing the roots or from cuttings. [Illustration: FIG. 100. OUTDOOR-GROWN CHRYSANTHEMUMS] In growing annual plants from seed, there is little difficulty if the grower has a greenhouse or a hotbed with a glass sash. Even without these the plants may be grown in shallow boxes in a warm room. The best boxes are about four inches deep with bottoms made of slats nailed a quarter of an inch apart to give proper drainage. Some moss is laid over the bottom to prevent the soil from sifting through. The boxes should then be filled with light, rich soil. Fine black forest mold, thoroughly mixed with one fourth its bulk of well-rotted manure, makes the best soil for filling the seed-boxes. If this soil be placed in an oven and heated very hot, the heat will destroy many weeds that would otherwise give trouble. After the soil is put in the boxes it should be well packed by pressing it with a flat wooden block. Sow the seeds in straight rows, and at the ends of the rows put little wooden labels with the names of the flowers on them. [Illustration: FIG. 101. THE CARNATION (ELDORADO)] Seeds sowed in the same box should be of the same general size in order that they may be properly covered, for seeds need to be covered according to their size. After sowing the seed, sift the fine soil over the surface of the box. The best soil for covering small seeds is made by rubbing dry moss and leaf-mold through a sieve together. This makes a light cover that will not bake and will retain moisture. After covering the seeds, press the soil firm and smooth with a wooden block. Now sprinkle the covering soil lightly with a watering-pot until it is fairly moistened. Lay some panes of glass over the box to retain the moisture, and avoid further watering until moisture becomes absolutely necessary. Too much watering makes the soil too compact and rots the seed. As soon as the seedlings have made a second pair of leaves, take them up with the point of a knife and transplant them into other boxes filled in the same way. They should be set two inches apart so as to give them room to grow strong. They may be transplanted from the boxes to the flower-garden by taking an old knife-blade and cutting the earth into squares, and then lifting the entire square with the plant and setting it where it is wanted. There are many flower-seeds which are so small that they must not be covered at all. In this class we find begonias, petunias, and Chinese primroses. To sow these prepare boxes as for the other seeds, and press the earth smooth. Then scatter some fine, dry moss thinly over the surface of the soil. Sprinkle this with water until it is well moistened, and at once scatter the seeds thinly over the surface and cover the boxes with panes of glass until the seeds germinate. Transplant as soon as the young plants can be lifted out separately on the blade of a penknife. [Illustration: FIG. 102. THE POET'S NARCISSUS] Many kinds of flower-seeds may be sowed directly in the open ground where they are to remain. The sweet pea is one of the most popular flowers grown in this way. The seeds should be sowed rather thickly in rows and covered fully four inches deep. The sowing should be varied in time according to the climate. From North Carolina southward, sweet peas may be sowed in the fall or in January, as they are very hardy and should be forced to bloom before the weather becomes hot. Late spring sowing will not give fine flowers in the South. From North Carolina northward the seeds should be sowed just as early in the spring as the ground can be easily worked. When the plants appear, stakes should be set along the rows and a strip of woven-wire fence stretched for the plants to climb on. Morning-glory seeds are also sowed where they are to grow. The seeds of the moonflower are large and hard and will fail to grow unless they are slightly cut. To start their growth make a slight cut just through the hard outer coat of the seed so as to expose the white inside. In this way they will grow very readily. The seeds of the canna, or Indian-shot plant, are treated in a similar way to start them growing. [Illustration: FIG. 103. A CYCLAMEN] [Illustration: FIG. 104. A MODERN SWEET PEA] The canna makes large fleshy roots which in the North are taken up, covered with damp moss, and stored under the benches of the greenhouse or in a cellar. If allowed to get too dry, they will wither. From central North Carolina south it is best to cover them up thickly with dead leaves and let them stay in the ground where they grew. In the early spring take them up and divide for replanting. [Illustration: FIG. 105. DAHLIAS] Perennial plants, such as our flowering shrubs, are grown from cuttings of the ripe wood after the leaves have fallen in autumn. From North Carolina southward these cuttings should be set in rows in the fall. Cuttings ten inches long are set so that the tops are just even with the ground. A light cover of pine leaves will prevent damage from frost. Farther north the cuttings should be tied in bundles and well buried in the ground with earth heaped over them. In the spring set them in rows for rooting. In the South all the hardy hybrid perpetual roses can be grown in this way, and in any section the cuttings of most of the spring-flowering shrubs will grow in the same manner. The Japanese quince, which makes such a show of its scarlet flowers in early spring, can be best grown from three-inch cuttings made of the roots and planted in rows in the fall. [Illustration: FIG. 106. FOUR-O'CLOCKS SET IN A GOOD PLACE] Many of our ornamental evergreen trees, such as the arbor vitæ, can be grown in the spring from seeds sowed in a frame. Cotton cloth should be stretched over the trees while they are young, to prevent the sun from scorching them. When a year old they may be set in nursery rows to develop until they are large enough to plant. Arbor vitæ may also be grown from cuttings made by setting young tips in boxes of sand in the fall and keeping them warm and moist through the winter. Most of them will be rooted by spring. The kinds of flowers that you can grow are almost countless. You can hardly make a mistake in selecting, as all are interesting. Start this year with a few and gradually increase the number under your care year by year, and aim always to make your plants the choicest of their kind. Of annuals there are over four hundred kinds cultivated. You may select from the following list: phlox, petunias, China asters, California poppies, sweet peas, pinks, double and single sunflowers, hibiscus, candytuft, balsams, morning-glories, stocks, nasturtiums, verbenas, mignonette. [Illustration: FIG. 107. A WINDOW BOX] Of perennials select bleeding-hearts, pinks, bluebells, hollyhocks, perennial phlox, perennial hibiscus, wild asters, and goldenrods. From bulbs choose crocus, tulip, daffodil, narcissus, lily of the valley, and lily. Some climbers are cobæa, honeysuckle, Virginia creeper, English ivy, Boston ivy, cypress vine, hyacinth bean, climbing nasturtiums, and roses. To make your plants do best, cultivate them carefully. Allow no weeds to grow among them and do not let the surface of the soil dry into a hard crust. Beware, however, of stirring the soil too deep. Loosening the soil about the roots interrupts the feeding of the plant and does harm. Climbing plants may be trained to advantage on low woven-wire fences. These are especially serviceable for sweet peas and climbing nasturtiums. Do not let the plants go to seed, since seeding is a heavy drain on nourishment. Moreover, the plant has served its end when it seeds and is ready then to stop blossoming. You should therefore pick off the old flowers to prevent their developing seeds. This will cause many plants which would otherwise soon stop blossoming to continue bearing flowers for a longer period. [Illustration: FIG. 108. A WINDOW-GARDEN] =Window-Gardening.= Growing plants indoors in the window possesses many of the attractions of outdoor flower-gardening, and is a means of beautifying the room at very small expense. Especially do window-gardens give delight during the barren winter time. They are a source of culture and pleasure to thousands who cannot afford extended and expensive ornamentation. The window-garden may vary in size from an eggshell holding a minute plant to boxes filling all the available space about the window. The soil may be in pots for individual plants or groups of plants or in boxes for collections of plants. You may raise your flowers inside of the window on shelves or stands, or you may have a set of shelves built outside of the window and inclosed in glazed sashes. The illustration on page 119 gives an idea of such an external window-garden. [Illustration: FIG. 109. AN INSIDE WINDOW BOX IN ITS FULL GLORY] The soil must be rich and loose. The best contains some undecayed organic matter such as leaf-mold or partly decayed sods and some sand. Raise your plants from bulbs, cuttings, or seed, just as in outdoor gardens. Some plants do better in cool rooms, others in a warmer temperature. [Illustration: FIG. 110. MAKING THE OUTSIDE OF A WINDOW BLOOM] If the temperature ranges from 35° to 70°, averaging about 55°, azaleas, daisies, carnations, candytuft, alyssum, dusty miller, chrysanthemums, cinerarias, camellias, daphnes, geraniums, petunias, violets, primroses, and verbenas make especially good growths. [Illustration: A BEAUTIFUL WINDOW FLOWER] If the temperature is from 50° to 90°, averaging 70°, try abutilon, begonia, bouvardia, caladium, canna, Cape jasmine, coleus, fuchsia, gloxinia, heliotrope, lantana, lobelia, roses, and smilax. If your box or window is shaded a good part of the time, raise begonias, camellias, ferns, and Asparagus Sprengeri. [Illustration: FIG. 111. FERNS FOR BOTH INDOORS AND OUTDOORS] When the soil is dry, water it; then apply no more water until it again becomes dry. Beware of too much water. The plants should be washed occasionally with soapsuds and then rinsed. If red spiders are present, sponge them off with water as hot as can be borne comfortably by the hand. Newspapers afford a good means of keeping off the cold. CHAPTER VI THE DISEASES OF PLANTS SECTION XXVII. THE CAUSE AND NATURE OF PLANT DISEASE Plants have diseases just as animals do; not the same diseases, to be sure, but just as serious for the plant. Some of them are so dangerous that they kill the plant; others partly or wholly destroy its usefulness or its beauty. Some diseases are found oftenest on very young plants, others prey on the middle-aged tree, while still others attack merely the fruit. Whenever a farmer or fruit-grower has disease on his plants, he is sure to lose much profit. You have all seen rotten fruit. This is diseased fruit. Fruit rot is a plant disease. It costs farmers millions of dollars annually. A fruit-grower recently lost sixty carloads of peaches in a single year through rot which could have been largely prevented if he had known how. Many of the yellowish or discolored spots on leaves are the result of disease, as is also the smut of wheat, corn, and oats, the blight of the pear, and the wilt of cotton. Many of these diseases are contagious, or, as we often hear said of measles, "catching." This is true, among others, of the apple and peach rots. A healthy apple can catch this disease from a sick apple. You often see evidence of this in the apple bin. So, too, many of the diseases found in the field or garden are contagious. Sometimes when the skin of a rotten apple has been broken you will find in the broken place a blue mold. It was this that caused the apple to decay. This mold is a living plant; very small, certainly, but nevertheless a plant. Let us learn a little about molds, in order that we may better understand our apple and potato rots, as well as other plant diseases. If you cut a lemon and let it stand for a day or two, there will probably appear a blue mold like that you have seen on the surface of canned fruit. Bread also sometimes has this blue mold; at other times bread has a black mold, and yet again a pink or a yellow mold. These and all other molds are tiny living plants. Instead of seeds they produce many very small bodies that serve the purpose of seeds and reproduce the mold. These are called _spores_. Fig. 112 shows how they are borne on the parent plant. [Illustration: FIG. 112. TANGLED THREADS OF BLUE MOLD The single stalk on the left shows how spores are borne] It is also of great importance to decide whether by keeping the spores away we may prevent mold. Possibly this experiment will help us. Moisten a piece of bread, then dip a match or a pin into the blue mold on a lemon, and draw the match across the moist bread. You will thus plant the spores in a row, though they are so small that perhaps you may not see any of them. Place the bread in a damp place for a few days and watch it. Does the mold grow where you planted it? Does it grow elsewhere? This experiment should prove to you that molds are living things and can be planted. If you find spots elsewhere, you must bear in mind that these spores are very small and light and that some of them were probably blown about when you made your sowing. When you touch the moldy portion of a dry lemon, you see a cloud of dust rise. This dust is made of millions of spores. [Illustration: FIG. 113. MAGNIFIED ROSE MILDEW] If you plant many other kinds of mold you will find that the molds come true to the kind that is planted; that like produces like even among molds. [Illustration: FIG. 114. A MILDEWED ROSE] You can prove, also, that the mold is caused only by other mold. To do this, put some wet bread in a wide-mouthed bottle and plug the mouth of the bottle with cotton. Kill all the spores that may be in this bottle by steaming it an hour in a cooking-steamer. This bread will not mold until you allow live mold from the outside to enter. If, however, at any time you open the bottle and allow spores to enter, or if you plant spores therein, and if there be moisture enough, mold will immediately set in. [Illustration: FIG. 115. A HIGHLY MAGNIFIED SECTION OF DISEASED PEAR LEAF Showing how spores are borne] The little plants which make up these molds are called _fungi_. Some fungi, such as the toadstools, puffballs, and devil's snuff-box, are quite large; others, namely the molds, are very small; and others are even smaller than the molds. Fungi never have the green color of ordinary plants, always reproduce by spores, and feed on living matter or matter that was once alive. Puffballs, for example, are found on rotting wood or dead twigs or roots. Some fungi grow on living plants, and these produce plant disease by taking their nourishment from the plant on which they grow; the latter plant is called the _host_. The same blue mold that grows on bread often attacks apples that have been slightly bruised; it cannot pierce healthy apple skin. You can plant the mold in the bruised apple just as you did on bread and watch its rapid spread through the apple. You learn from this the need of preventing bruised or decayed apples from coming in contact with healthy fruit. [Illustration: FIG. 116. SPORES OF THE PEAR SCAB The spores are borne on stalks] Just as the fungus studied above lives in the apple or bread, so other varieties live on leaves, bark, etc. Fig. 113 represents the surface of a mildewed rose leaf greatly magnified. This mildew is a fungus. You can see its creeping stems, its upright stalk, and numerous spores ready to fall off and spread the disease with the first breath of wind. You must remember that this figure is greatly magnified, and that the whole portion shown in the figure is only about one tenth of an inch across. Fig. 114 shows the general appearance of a twig affected by this disease. Mildew on the rose or on any other plant may be killed by spraying the leaves with a solution of liver of sulphur; to make this solution, use one ounce of the liver of sulphur to two gallons of water. The fungus that causes the pear-leaf spots has its spores in little pits (Fig. 115). The spores of some fungi also grow on stalks, as shown in Fig. 116. This figure represents an enlarged view of the pear scab, which causes so much destruction. You see, then, that fungi are living plants that grow at the expense of other plants and cause disease. Now if you can cover the leaf with a poison that will kill the spore when it comes, you can prevent the disease. One such poison is the Bordeaux (_bôr-do_') mixture, which has proved of great value to farmers. Since the fungus in most cases lives within the leaves, the poison on the outside does no good after the fungus is established. The treatment can be used only to _prevent_ attack, not to cure, except in the case of a few mildews that live on the outside of the leaf, as does the rose mildew. =EXERCISE= Why do things mold more readily in damp places? Do you now understand why fruit is heated before it is canned? Try to grow several kinds of mold. Do you know any fungi which may be eaten? Transfer disease from a rotten apple to a healthy one and note the rapidity of decay. How many really healthy leaves can you find on a strawberry plant? Do you find any spots with reddish borders and white centers? Do you know that this is a serious disease of the strawberry? What damage does fruit mold do to peaches, plums, or strawberries? Write to your experiment station for bulletins on plant diseases and methods for making and using spraying mixtures. SECTION XXVIII. YEAST AND BACTERIA Can you imagine a plant so small that it would take one hundred plants lying side by side to equal the thickness of a sheet of writing-paper? There are plants that are so small. Moreover, these same plants are of the utmost importance to man. Some of them do him great injury, while others aid him very much. You will see their importance when you are told that certain of them in their habits of life cause great change in the substances in which they live. For example, when living in a sugary substance they change the sugar into a gas and an alcohol. Do you remember the bright bubbles of gas you have seen rising in sweet cider or in wine as it soured? These bubbles are caused by one of these small plants--the yeast plant. As the yeast plant grows in the sweet fruit juice, alcohol is made and a gas is given off at the same time, and this gas makes the bubbles. [Illustration: FIG. 117. YEAST PLANTS _A_, a single plant; _B_, group of two budding cells; _C_, group of several cells] Later, other kinds of plants equally small will grow and change the alcohol into an acid which you will recognize as vinegar by its sour taste and peculiar odor. Thus vinegar is made by the action of two different kinds of little living plants in the cider. That these are living beings you can prove by heating the cider and keeping it tightly sealed so that nothing can enter it. You will find that because the living germs have been killed by the heat, the cider will not ferment or sour as it did before. The germs could of course be killed by poisons, but then the cider would be unfit for use. It is this same little yeast plant that causes bread to rise. When you see any decaying matter you may know that in it minute plants much like the yeast plant are at work. Since decay is due to them, we take advantage of the fact that they cannot grow in strong brine or smoke; and we prepare meat for keeping by salting it or by smoking it or by both of these methods. You see that some of the yeast plants and _bacteria_, as many of these forms are called, are very friendly to us, while others do us great harm. Some bacteria grow within the bodies of men and other animals or in plants. When they do so they may produce disease. Typhoid fever, diphtheria, consumption, and many other serious diseases are caused by bacteria. Fig. 118, _e_, shows the bacterium that causes typhoid fever. In the picture, of course, it is very greatly magnified. In reality these bacteria are so small that about twenty-five thousand of them side by side would extend only one inch. These small beings produce their great effects by very rapid multiplication and by giving off powerful poisons. [Illustration: FIG. 118. FORMS OF BACTERIA _a_, grippe; _b_, bubonic plague; _c_, diphtheria; _d_, tuberculosis; _e_, typhoid fever] Bacteria are so small that they are readily borne on the dust particles of the air and are often taken into the body through the breath and also through water or milk. You can therefore see how careful you should be to prevent germs from getting into the air or into water or milk when there is disease about your home. You should heed carefully all instructions of your physician on this point, so that you may not spread disease. SECTION XXIX. PREVENTION OF PLANT DISEASE In the last two sections you have learned something of the nature of those fungi and bacteria that cause disease in animals and plants. Now let us see how we can use this knowledge to lessen the diseases of our crops. Farmers lose through plant diseases much that could be saved by proper precaution. First, you must remember that every diseased fruit, twig, or leaf bears millions of spores. These must be destroyed by burning. They must not be allowed to lie about and spread the disease in the spring. See that decayed fruit in the bin or on the trees is destroyed in the same manner. Never throw decayed fruit into the garden or orchard, as it may cause disease the following year. Second, you can often kill spores on seeds before they are planted and thus prevent the development of the fungus (see pp. 134-137). Third, often the foliage of the plant can be sprayed with a poison that will prevent the germination of the spores (see pp. 138-140). Fourth, some varieties of plants resist disease much more stoutly than others. We may often select the resistant form to great advantage (see Fig. 119). Fifth, after big limbs are pruned off, decay often sets in at the wound. This decay may be prevented by coating the cut surface with paint, tar, or some other substance that will not allow spores to enter the wound or to germinate there. Sixth, it frequently happens that the spore or fungus remains in the soil. This is true in the cotton wilt, and the remedy is so to rotate crops that the diseased land is not used again for this crop until the spores or fungi have died. SECTION XXX. SOME SPECIAL PLANT DISEASES =Fire-Blight of the Pear and Apple.= You have perhaps heard your father speak of the "fire-blight" of pear and apple trees. This is one of the most injurious and most widely known of fruit diseases. Do you want to know the cause of this disease and how to prevent it? First, how will you recognize this disease? If the diseased bough at which you are looking has true fire-blight, you will see a blackened twig with withered, blackened leaves. During winter the leaves do not fall from blighted twigs as they do from healthy ones. The leaves wither because of the diseased twig, not because they are themselves diseased. Only rarely does the blight really enter the leaf. Sometimes a sharp line separates the blighted from the healthy part of the twig. This disease is caused by bacteria, of which you have read in another section. The fire-blight bacteria grow in the juicy part of the stem, between the wood and the bark. This tender, fresh layer (as explained on page 79) is called the _cambium_, and is the part that breaks away and allows you to slip the bark off when you make your bark whistle in the spring. The growth of new wood takes place in the cambium, and this part of the twig is therefore full of nourishment. If this nourishment is stolen the plant of course soon suffers. The bacteria causing fire-blight are readily carried from flower to flower and from twig to twig by insects; therefore to keep these and other bacteria away from your trees you must see to it that all the trees in the neighborhood of your orchard are kept free from mischievous enemies. If harmful bacteria exist in near-by trees, insects will carry them to your orchard. You must therefore watch all the relatives of the pear; namely, the apple, hawthorn, crab, quince, and mountain ash, for any of these trees may harbor the germs. [Illustration: FIG. 119. A RESISTANT VARIETY OF SEA ISLAND COTTON All the other plants in this field died. This one row lived because it could resist the cotton wilt] When any tree shows blight, every diseased twig on it must be cut off and burned in order to kill the germs, and you must cut low enough on the twig to get all the bacteria. It is best to cut a foot below the blackened portion. If by chance your knife should cut into wood containing the living germs, and then you should cut into healthy wood with the same knife, you yourself would spread the disease. It is therefore best after each cutting to dip your knife into a solution of carbolic acid. This will kill all bacteria clinging to the knife-blade. The surest time to do complete trimming is after the leaves fall in the autumn, as diseased twigs are most easily recognized at that time, but the orchard should be carefully watched in the spring also. If a large limb shows the blight, it is perhaps best to cut the tree entirely down. There is little hope for such a tree. A large pear-grower once said that no man with a sharp knife need fear the fire-blight. Yet our country loses greatly by this disease each year. [Illustration: FIG. 120. FIRE-BLIGHT BACTERIA Magnified] It may be added that winter pruning tends to make the tree form much new wood and thus favors the disease. Rich soil and fertilizers make it much easier in a similar way for the tree to become a prey to blight. =EXERCISE= Ask your teacher to show you a case of fire-blight on a pear or apple tree. Can you distinguish between healthy and diseased wood? Cut the twig open lengthwise and see how deep into the wood and how far down the stem the disease extends. Can you tell surely from the outside how far the twig is diseased? Can you find any twig that does not show a distinct line of separation between diseased and healthy wood? If so, the bacteria are still living in the cambium. Cut out a small bit of the diseased portion and insert it under the bark of a healthy, juicy twig within a few inches of its tip and watch it from day to day. Does the tree catch the disease? This experiment may prove to you how easily the disease spreads. If you should see any drops like dew hanging from diseased twigs, touch a little of this moisture to a healthy flower and watch for results. Cut and burn all diseased twigs that you can find. Estimate the damage done by fire-blight. Farmers' bulletins on orchard enemies are published by the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., and can be had by writing for them. They will help your father much in treating fire-blight. =Oat Smuts.= Let us go out into a near-by oat field and look for all the blackened heads of grain that we can find. How many are there? To count accurately let us select an area one foot square. We must look carefully, for many of these blackened heads are so low that we shall not see them at the first glance. You will be surprised to find as many as thirty or forty heads in every hundred so blackened. These blackened heads are due to a plant disease called _smut_. [Illustration: FIG. 121. LOOSE SMUT OF OATS The glumes at _a_ more nearly destroyed than the glumes at _b_] When threshing-time comes you will notice a great quantity of black dust coming from the grain as it passes through the machine. The air is full of it. This black dust consists of the spores of a tiny fungous plant. The fungous smut plant grows upon the oat plant, ripens its spores in the head, and is ready to be thoroughly scattered among the grains of the oats as they come from the threshing-machine. These spores cling to the grain and at the next planting are ready to attack the sprouting plantlet. A curious thing about the smut is that it can gain a foothold only on very young oat plants; that is, on plants about an inch long or of the age shown in Fig. 121. When grain covered with smut spores is planted, the spores develop with the sprouting seeds and are ready to attack the young plant as it breaks through the seed-coat. You see, then, how important it is to have seed grain free from smut. A substance has been found that will, without injuring the seeds, kill all the smut spores clinging to the grain. This substance is called _formalin_. Enough seed to plant a whole acre can be treated with formalin at a cost of only a few cents. Such treatment insures a full crop and clean seed for future planting. Try it if you have any smut. [Illustration: FIG. 122. A CROP FROM OATS TREATED WITH FORMALIN] Fig. 122 illustrates what may be gained by using seeds treated to prevent smut. The annual loss to the farmers of the United States from smut on oats amounts to several millions of dollars. All that is needed to prevent this loss is a little care in the treatment of seed and a proper rotation of crops. =EXERCISE= Count the smutted heads on a patch three feet square and estimate the percentage of smut in all the wheat and oat fields near your home. On which is it most abundant? Do you know of any fields that have been treated for smut? If so, look for smut in these fields. Ask how they were treated. Do you know of any one who uses bluestone for wheat smut? Can oats be treated with bluestone? At planting time get an ounce of formalin at your drug store or from the state experiment station. Mix this with three gallons of water. This amount will treat three bushels of seeds. Spread the seeds thinly on the barn floor and sprinkle them with the mixture, being careful that all the seeds are thoroughly moistened. Cover closely with blankets for a few hours and plant very soon after treatment. Try this and estimate the per cent of smut at next harvest-time. Write to your experiment station for a bulletin on smut treatment. [Illustration: FIG. 123. A SCABBY SEED POTATO] [Illustration: FIG. 124. A HEALTHY SEED POTATO] =Potato Scab.= The scab of the white, or Irish, potato is one of the commonest and at the same time most easily prevented of plant diseases. Yet this disease diminishes the profits of the potato-grower very materially. Fig. 123 shows a very scabby potato, while Fig. 124 represents a healthy one. This scab is caused by a fungous growth on the surface of the potato. Of course it lessens the selling-price of the potatoes. If seed potatoes be treated to a bath of formalin just before they are planted, the formalin will kill the fungi on the potatoes and greatly diminish the amount of scab at the next harvest. Therefore before they are planted, seed potatoes should be soaked in a weak solution of formalin for about two hours. One-half pint of formalin to fifteen gallons of water makes a proper solution. [Illustration: FIG. 125 From a scabby potato, like the one in Fig. 123, this yield was obtained] [Illustration: FIG. 126 From a healthy potato, like the one in Fig. 124, this yield was obtained] [Illustration: FIG. 127. EFFECT OF SPRAYING Sprayed potatoes on left; unsprayed on right] One pint of formalin, or enough for thirty gallons of water, will cost but thirty-five cents. Since this solution can be used repeatedly, it will do for many bushels of seed potatoes. =Late Potato Blight.= The blight is another serious disease of the potato. This is quite a different disease from the scab and so requires different treatment. The blight is caused by another fungus, which attacks the foliage of the potato plant. When the blight seriously attacks a crop, it generally destroys the crop completely. In the year 1845 a potato famine extending over all the United States and Europe was caused by this disease. [Illustration: FIG. 128. YIELD FROM TWO FIELDS OF THE SAME SIZE The one at the top was sprayed; the one at the bottom was unsprayed] Spraying is the remedy for potato blight. Fig. 128 shows the effect of spraying upon the yield. In this case the sprayed field yielded three hundred and twenty-four bushels an acre, while the unsprayed yielded only one hundred bushels to an acre. Fig. 127 shows the result of three applications of the spraying mixture on the diseased field. Figs. 129 and 130 show how the spraying is done. [Illustration: FIG. 129. SPRAYING MACHINE] [Illustration: FIG. 130. SPRAYING MACHINE] =EXERCISE= Watch the potatoes at the next harvest and estimate the number that is damaged by scab. You will remember that formalin is the substance used to prevent grain smuts. Write to your state experiment station for a bulletin telling how to use formalin, as well as for information regarding other potato diseases. Give the treatment a fair trial in a portion of your field this year and watch carefully for results. Make an estimate of the cost of treatment and of the profits. How does the scab injure the value of the potato? The late blight can often be recognized by its odor. Did you ever smell it as you passed an affected field? [Illustration: FIG. 131. CLUB ROOT] =Club Root.= Club root is a disease of the cabbage, turnip, cauliflower, etc. Its general effect is shown in the illustration (Fig. 131). Sometimes this disease does great damage. It can be prevented by using from eighty to ninety bushels of lime to an acre. =Black Knot.= Black knot is a serious disease of the plum and of the cherry tree. It attacks the branches of the tree; it is well illustrated in Fig. 132. Since it is a contagious disease, great care should be exercised to destroy all diseased branches of either wild or cultivated plums or cherries. In many states its destruction is enforced by law. All black knot should be cut out and burned some time before February of each year. This will cost little and save much. [Illustration: FIG. 132. BLACK KNOT] =Peach Leaf Curl.= Peach leaf curl does damage amounting to about $3,000,000 yearly in the United States. It can be almost entirely prevented by spraying the tree with Bordeaux mixture or lime-sulphur wash before the buds open in the spring. It is not safe to use strong Bordeaux mixture on peach trees when they are in leaf. [Illustration: FIG. 133. MOLDY PEACHES] =Cotton Wilt.= Cotton wilt when it once establishes itself in the soil completely destroys the crop. The fungus remains in the soil, and no amount of spraying will kill it. The only known remedy is to cultivate a resistant variety of cotton or to rotate the crop. [Illustration: FIG. 134. PEACH MUMMIES] =Fruit Mold.= Fruit mold, or brown rot, often attacks the unripe fruit on the tree, and turns it soft and brown and finally fuzzy with a coat of mildew. Fig. 133 shows some peaches thus attacked. Often the fruits do not fall from the trees but shrivel up and become "mummies" (Fig. 134). This rot is one of the most serious diseases of plums and peaches. It probably diminishes the value of the peach harvest from 50 to 75 per cent. Spraying according to the directions in the Appendix will kill the disease. [Illustration: FIG. 135. HALF OF TREE SPRAYED TO PREVENT PEACH CURL Note the difference in foliage and fruit on the sprayed and unsprayed halves of the tree, and the difference in yield shown below] CHAPTER VII ORCHARD, GARDEN, AND FIELD INSECTS SECTION XXXI. INSECTS IN GENERAL The farmer who has fought "bugs" on crop after crop needs no argument to convince him that insects are serious enemies to agriculture. Yet even he may be surprised to learn that the damage done by them, as estimated by good authority, amounts to millions and millions of dollars yearly in the United States and Canada. [Illustration: FIG. 136. ANTS] Every one thinks he knows what an insect is. If, however, we are willing in this matter to make our notion agree with that of the people who have studied insects most and know them best, we must include among the true insects only such air-breathing animals as have six legs, no more, and have the body divided into three parts--head, thorax, and abdomen. These parts are clearly shown in Fig. 136, which represents the ant, a true insect. All insects do not show the divisions of the body so clearly as this figure shows them, but on careful examination you can usually make them out. The head bears one pair of feelers, and these in many insects serve also as organs of smell and sometimes of hearing. Less prominent feelers are to be found in the region of the mouth. These serve as organs of taste. [Illustration: FIG. 137. PARTS OF AN INSECT] [Illustration: FIG. 138. COMPOUND EYE OF DRAGON FLY] The eyes of insects are especially noticeable. Close examination shows them to be made up of a thousand or more simple eyes. Such an eye is called a _compound eye_. An enlarged view of one of these is shown in Fig. 138. Attached to the thorax are the legs and also the wings, if the insect has wings. The rear portion is the abdomen, and this, like the other parts, is composed of parts known as segments. The insect breathes through openings in the abdomen and thorax called _spiracles_ (see Fig. 137). An examination of spiders, mites, and ticks shows eight legs; therefore these do not belong to the true insects, nor do the thousand-legged worms and their relatives. [Illustration: FIG. 139. THE HOUSE FLY _a_, egg; _b_, larva, or maggot; _c_, pupa; _d_, adult male. (All enlarged)] The chief classes of insects are as follows: the flies, with two wings only; the bees, wasps, and ants, with four delicate wings; the beetles, with four wings--two hard, horny ones covering the two more delicate ones. When the beetle is at rest its two hard wings meet in a straight line down the back. This peculiarity distinguishes it from the true bug, which has four wings. The two outer wings are partly horny, and in folding lap over each other. Butterflies and moths are much alike in appearance but differ in habit. The butterfly works by day and the moth by night. Note the knob on the end of the butterfly's feeler (Fig. 143). The moth has no such knob. It is important to know how insects take their food, for by knowing this we are often able to destroy insect pests. Some are provided with mouth parts for chewing their food; others have a long tube with which they pierce plants or animals and, like the mosquito, suck their food from the inside. Insects of this latter class cannot of course be harmed by poison on the surface of the leaves on which they feed. [Illustration: FIG. 140. A TYPICAL BUG _a_, adult; _b_, side view of sucking mouth-part Both _a_ and _b_ are much enlarged] [Illustration: Fig. 141. BEETLE _a_, larva; _b_, pupa; _c_, adult; _d_, burrow] Many insects change their form from youth to old age so much that you can scarcely recognize them as the same creatures. First comes the egg. The egg hatches into a worm-like animal known as a grub, maggot, or caterpillar, or, as scientists call it, a _larva_. This creature feeds and grows until finally it settles down and spins a home of silk, called a _cocoon_ (Fig. 145). If we open the cocoon we shall find that the animal is now covered with a hard outside skeleton, that it cannot move freely, and that it cannot eat at all. The animal in this state is known as the _pupa_ (Figs. 145 and 146). Sometimes, however, the pupa is not covered by a cocoon, sometimes it is soft, and sometimes it has some power of motion (Fig. 141). After a rest in the pupa stage the animal comes out a mature insect (Figs. 142 and 143). From this you can see that it is especially important to know all you can about the life of injurious insects, since it is often easier to kill these pests at one stage of their life than at another. Often it is better to aim at destroying the seemingly harmless beetle or butterfly than to try to destroy the larvæ that hatch from its eggs, although, as you must remember, it is generally the larvæ that do the most harm. Larvæ grow very rapidly; therefore the food supply must be great to meet the needs of the insect. [Illustration: FIG. 142. MOTH AND COCOON] Some insects, the grasshopper for example, do not completely change their form. Fig. 147 represents some young grasshoppers, which very closely resemble their parents. [Illustration: FIG. 143. BUTTERFLY] [Illustration: FIG. 144. STRUCTURE OF THE CATERPILLAR] [Illustration: FIG. 145. MOTH PUPA IN COCOON] Insects lay many eggs and reproduce with remarkable rapidity. Their number therefore makes them a foe to be much dreaded. The queen honeybee often lays as many as 4000 eggs in twenty-four hours. A single house fly lays between 100 and 150 eggs in one day. The mosquito lays eggs in quantities of from 200 to 400. The white ant often lays 80,000 in a day, and so continues for two years, probably laying no less than 40,000,000 eggs. In one summer the bluebottle fly could have 500,000,000 descendants if they all lived. The plant louse, at the end of the fifth brood, has laid in a single year enough eggs to produce 300,000,000 young. Of course every one knows that, owing to enemies and diseases (for the insects have enemies which prey on them just as they prey on plants) comparatively few of the insects hatched from these eggs live till they are grown. [Illustration: FIG. 146. A BUTTERFLY PUPA Note outline of the butterfly] The number of insects which are hurtful to crops, gardens, flowers, and forests seems to be increasing each season. Therefore farm boys and girls should learn to recognize these harmful insects and to know how they live and how they may be destroyed. Those who know the forms and habits of these enemies of plants and trees are far better prepared to fight them than are those who strike in the dark. Moreover such knowledge is always a source of interest and pleasure. If you begin to study insects, you will soon find your love for the study growing. [Illustration: FIG. 147. THE GROWTH OF A GRASSHOPPER] =EXERCISE= Collect cocoons and pupæ of insects and hatch them in a breeding-cage similar to the one illustrated in Fig. 149. Make several cages of this kind. Collect larvæ of several kinds; supply them with food from plants upon which you found them. Find out the time it takes them to change into another stage. Write a description of this process. The plant louse could produce in its twelfth brood 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 offspring. Each louse is about one tenth of an inch long. If all should live and be arranged in single file, how many miles long would such a procession be? [Illustration: FIG. 148. PLANT LICE] [Illustration: FIG. 149. CAGE IN WHICH TO BREED INSECTS Flower-pot, lamp-chimney, and cloth] SECTION XXXII. ORCHARD INSECTS =The San Jose Scale.= The San Jose scale is one of the most dreaded enemies of fruit trees. It is in fact an outlaw in many states. It is an unlawful act to sell fruit trees affected by it. Fig. 150 shows a view of a branch nearly covered with this pest. Although this scale is a very minute animal, yet so rapidly does it multiply that it is very dangerous to the tree. Never allow new trees to be brought into your orchard until you feel certain that they are free from the San Jose scale. If, however, it should in any way gain access to your orchard, you can prevent its spreading by thorough spraying with what is known as the lime-sulphur mixture. This mixture has long been used on the Pacific coast as a remedy for various scale insects. When it was first tried in other parts of the United States the results were not satisfactory and its use was abandoned. However, later experiments with it have proved that the mixture is thoroughly effective in killing this scale and that it is perfectly harmless to the trees. Until the lime-sulphur mixture proved to be successful the San Jose scale was a most dreaded nursery and orchard foe. It was even thought necessary to destroy infected trees. The lime-sulphur mixture and some other sulphur washes not only kill the San Jose scale but are also useful in reducing fungous injury. [Illustration: FIG. 150 SAN JOSE SCALE] [Illustration: FIG. 151. SINGLE SAN JOSE SCALE Magnified] There are several ways of making the lime-sulphur mixture. It is generally best to buy a prepared mixture from some trustworthy dealer. If you find the scale on your trees, write to your state experiment station for directions for combating it. [Illustration: FIG. 152. THE CODLING MOTH _a_, burrow of worm in apple; _b_, place where worm enters; _c_, place where worm leaves; _e_, the larva; _d_, the pupa; _i_, the cocoon; _f_ and _g_, moths; _h_, magnified head of larva] =The Codling Moth.= The codling moth attacks the apple and often causes a loss of from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent of the crop. In the state of New York this insect is causing an annual loss of about three million dollars. The effect it has on the fruit is most clearly seen in Fig. 152. The moth lays its egg upon the young leaves just after the falling of the blossom. She flies on from apple to apple, depositing an egg each time until from fifty to seventy-five eggs are deposited. The larva, or "worm," soon hatches and eats its way into the apple. Many affected apples ripen too soon and drop as "windfalls." Others remain on the tree and become the common wormy apples so familiar to growers. The larva that emerges from the windfalls moves generally to a tree, crawls up the trunk, and spins its cocoon under a ridge in the bark. From the cocoon the moth comes ready to start a new generation. The last generation of the larvæ spends the winter in the cocoon. [Illustration: FIG. 153. SPRAYING THE ORCHARD BRINGS LUSCIOUS FRUIT The picture in the corner at the top shows the right time to spray for codling moth] _Treatment._ Destroy orchard trash which may serve as a winter home. Scrape all loose bark from the tree. Spray the tree with arsenate of lead as soon as the flowers fall. A former method of fighting this pest was as follows: bands of burlap four inches wide tied around the tree furnished a hiding-place for larvæ that came from windfalls or crawled from wormy apples on the tree. The larvæ caught under the bands were killed every five or six days. We know now, however, that a thorough spraying just after the blossoms fall kills the worms and renders the bands unnecessary. Furthermore, spraying prevents wormy apples, while banding does not. Follow the first spraying by a second two weeks later. It is best to use lime-sulphur mixture or the Bordeaux mixture with arsenate of lead for a spray. Thus one spraying serves against both fungi and insects. [Illustration: FIG. 154. PLUM CURCULIO Larva, pupa, adult, and mark on the fruit. (Enlarged)] =The Plum Curculio.= The plum curculio, sometimes called the plum weevil, is a little creature about one fifth of an inch long. In spite of its small size the curculio does, if neglected, great damage to our fruit crop. It injures peaches, plums, and cherries by stinging the fruit as soon as it is formed. The word "stinging" when applied to insects--- and this case is no exception--means piercing the object with the egg-layer (ovipositor) and depositing the egg. Some insects occasionally use the ovipositor merely for defense. The curculio has an especially interesting method of laying her egg. First she digs a hole, in which she places the egg and pushes it well down. Then with her snout she makes a crescent-shaped cut in the skin of the plum, around the egg. This mark is shown in Fig. 154. As this peculiar cut is followed by a flow of gum, you will always be able to recognize the work of the curculio. Having finished with one plum, this industrious worker makes her way to other plums until her eggs are all laid. The maggotlike larva soon hatches, burrows through the fruit, and causes it to drop before ripening. The larva then enters the ground to a depth of several inches. There it becomes a pupa, and later, as a mature beetle, emerges and winters in cracks and crevices. [Illustration: FIG. 155. LEAF GALLS OF PHYLLOXERA ON CLINTON GRAPE LEAF] _Treatment._ Burn orchard trash which may serve as winter quarters. Spraying with arsenate of lead, using two pounds of the mixture to fifty gallons of water, is the only successful treatment for the curculio. For plums and peaches, spray first when the fruit is free from the calyx caps, or dried flower-buds. Repeat the spraying two weeks later. For late peaches spray a third time two weeks after the second spraying. This poisonous spray will kill the beetles while they are feeding or cutting holes in which to lay their eggs. [Illustration: FIG. 156. THE CANKERWORM] Fowls in the orchard do good by capturing the larvæ before they can burrow, while hogs will destroy the fallen fruit before the larvæ can escape. =The Grape Phylloxera.= The grape phylloxera is a serious pest. You have no doubt seen its galls upon the grape leaf. These galls are caused by a small louse, the phylloxera. Each gall contains a female, which soon fills the gall with eggs. These hatch into more females, which emerge and form new galls, and so the phylloxera spreads (see Fig. 155). _Treatment._ The Clinton grape is most liable to injury from this pest. Hence it is better to grow other more resistant kinds. Sometimes the lice attack the roots of the grape vines. In many sections where irrigation is practiced the grape rows are flooded when the lice are thickest. The water drowns the lice and does no harm to the vines. =The Cankerworm.= The cankerworm is the larva of a moth. Because of its peculiar mode of crawling, by looping its body, it is often called the looping worm or measuring worm (Fig. 157, _c_). These worms are such greedy eaters that in a short time they can so cut the leaves of an orchard as to give it a scorched appearance. Such an attack practically destroys the crop and does lasting injury to the tree. The worms are green or brown and are striped lengthwise. If the tree is jarred, the worm has a peculiar habit of dropping toward the ground on a silken thread of its own making (Fig. 156). [Illustration: FIG. 157. THE SPRING CANKERWORM _a_, egg mass; _b_, egg, magnified; _c_, larva; _d_, female moth; _e_, male moth] In early summer the larvæ burrow within the earth and pupate there; later they emerge as adults (Fig. 157, _d_ and _e_). You observe the peculiar difference between the wingless female, _d_, and the winged male, _e_. It is the habit of this wingless female to crawl up the trunk of some near-by tree in order to deposit her eggs upon the twigs. These eggs (shown at _a_ and _b_) hatch into the greedy larvæ that do so much damage to our orchards. Nearly all the common birds feed freely upon the cankerworm, and benefit the orchard in so doing. The chickadee is perhaps the most useful. A recent writer is very positive that each chickadee will devour on an average thirty female cankerworm moths a day; and that if the average number of eggs laid by each female is one hundred and eighty-five, one chickadee would thus destroy in one day five thousand five hundred and fifty eggs, and, in the twenty-five days in which the cankerworm moths crawl up the tree, would rid the orchard of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty. These birds also eat immense numbers of cankerworm eggs before they hatch into worms. [Illustration: FIG. 158. EGGS OF THE FALL CANKERWORM] _Treatment._ The inability of the female to fly gives us an easy way to prevent the larval offspring from getting to the foliage of our trees, for we know that the only highway open to her or her larvæ leads up the trunk. We must obstruct this highway so that no crawling creature may pass. This is readily done by smoothing the bark and fitting close to it a band of paper, and making sure that it is tight enough to prevent anything from crawling underneath. Then smear over the paper something so sticky that any moth or larva that attempts to pass will be entangled. Printer's ink will do very well, or you can buy either dendrolene or tanglefoot. [Illustration: FIG. 159. APPLE-TREE TENT CATERPILLAR _a_, eggs; _b_, cocoon; _c_, caterpillar] Encourage the chickadee and all other birds, except the English sparrow, to stay in your orchard. This is easily done by feeding and protecting them in their times of need. =The Apple-Tree Tent Caterpillar.= The apple-tree tent caterpillar is a larva so well known that you only need to be told how to guard against it. The mother of this caterpillar is a reddish moth. This insect passes the winter in the egg state securely fastened on the twigs as shown in Fig. 159, _a_. _Treatment._ There are three principal methods, (1) Destroy the eggs. The egg masses are readily seen in winter and may easily be collected and burned by boys. The chickadee eats great quantities of these eggs. (2) With torches burn the nests at dusk when all the worms are within. You must be very careful in burning or you will harm the young branches with their tender bark. (3) Encourage the residence of birds. Urge your neighbors to make war on the larvæ, too, since the pest spreads rapidly from farm to farm. Regularly sprayed orchards are rarely troubled by this pest. [Illustration: FIG. 160. THE TWIG GIRDLER AT ITS DESTRUCTIVE WORK _a_, the girdler; _b_, the egg-hole; _c_, the groove cut by girdler; _e_, the egg] =The Twig Girdler.= The twig girdler lays her eggs in the twigs of pear, pecan, apple, and other trees. It is necessary that the larvæ develop in dead wood. This the mother provides by girdling the twig so deeply that it will die and fall to the ground. _Treatment._ Since the larvæ spend the winter in the dead twigs, burn these twigs in autumn or early spring and thus destroy the pest. =The Peach-Tree Borer.= In Fig. 161 you see the effect of the peach-tree borer's activity. These borers often girdle and thereby kill a tree. Fig. 162 shows the adult state of the insect. The eggs are laid on peach or plum trees near the ground. As soon as the larva emerges, it bores into the bark and remains there for months, passing through the pupa stage before it comes out to lay eggs for another generation. [Illustration: FIG. 161. BORER SIGNS AROUND BASE OF PEACH TREE] _Treatment._ If there are only a few trees in the orchard, digging the worms out with a knife is the best way of destroying them. You can know of the borer's presence by the exuding gum often seen on the tree-trunk. If you pile earth around the roots early in the spring and remove it in the late fall, the winter freezing and thawing will kill many of the larvæ. =EXERCISE= How many apples per hundred do you find injured by the codling moth? Collect some cocoons from a pear or an apple tree in winter, place in a breeding-cage, and watch for the moths that come out. Do you ever see the woodpecker hunting for these same cocoons? Can you find cocoons that have been emptied by this bird? Estimate how many he considers a day's ration. How many apples does he thus save? [Illustration: FIG. 162. PEACH-TREE BORERS, MALE AND FEMALE Female with broad yellow band across abdomen] Watch the curculio lay her eggs in the plums, peaches, or cherries. What per cent of fruit is thus injured? Estimate the damage. Let the school offer a prize for the greatest number of tent-caterpillar eggs. Watch such trees as the apple, the wild and the cultivated cherry, the oak, and many others. Make a collection of insects injurious to orchard fruits, showing in each case the whole life history of the insect, that is, eggs, larva, pupa, and the mature insects. [Illustration: THE TROUBLESOME CHINCH BUG (ENLARGED) 1, bugs on plant; 2, eggs; 3, young bug; 4 and 5, older bugs; 6, long-winged bug; 7 and 8, short-winged bug] SECTION XXXIII. GARDEN AND FIELD INSECTS =The Cabbage Worm.= The cabbage worm of the early spring garden is a familiar object, but you may not know that the innocent-looking little white butterflies hovering about the cabbage patch are laying eggs which are soon to hatch and make the dreaded cabbage worms. In Fig. 164 _a_ and _b_ show the common cabbage butterfly, _c_ shows several examples of the caterpillar, and _d_ shows the pupa case. In the pupa stage the insects pass the winter among the remains of old plants or in near-by fences or in weeds or bushes. Cleaning up and burning all trash will destroy many pupæ and thus prevent many cabbage worms. In Fig. 164 _e_ and _f_ show the moth and zebra caterpillar; _g_ represents a moth which is the parent of the small green worm shown at _h_. This worm is a common foe of the cabbage plant. [Illustration: FIG. 163. THE DREADED CHINCH BUG] _Treatment._ Birds aid in the destruction of this pest. Paris green mixed with air-slaked lime will also kill many larvæ. After the cabbage has headed, it is very difficult to destroy the worm, but pyrethrum insect powder used freely is helpful. =The Chinch Bug.= The chinch bug, attacking as it does such important crops as wheat, corn, and grasses, is a well-known pest. It probably causes more money loss than any other garden or field enemy. In Orange county, North Carolina, farmers were once obliged to suspend wheat-growing for two years on account of the chinch bug. In one year in the state of Illinois this bug caused a loss of four million dollars. [Illustration: FIG. 164. CABBAGE WORMS AND BUTTERFLIES] _Treatment._ Unfortunately we cannot prevent all of the damage done by chinch bugs, but we can diminish it somewhat by good clean agriculture. Destroy the winter homes of the insect by burning dry grass, leaves, and rubbish in fields and fence rows. Although the insect has wings, it seldom or never uses them, usually traveling on foot; therefore a deep furrow around the field to be protected will hinder or stop the progress of an invasion. The bugs fall into the bottom of the furrow, and may there be killed by dragging a log up and down the furrow. Write to the Division of Entomology, Washington, for bulletins on the chinch bug. Other methods of prevention are to be found in these bulletins. [Illustration: FIG. 165. A PLANT LOUSE COLONY] =The Plant Louse.= The plant louse is very small, but it multiplies with very great rapidity. During the summer the young are born alive, and it is only toward fall that eggs are laid. The individuals that hatch from eggs are generally wingless females, and their young, born alive, are both winged and wingless. The winged forms fly to other plants and start new colonies. Plant lice mature in from eight to fourteen days. The plant louse gives off a sweetish fluid of which some ants are very fond. You may often see the ants stroking these lice to induce them to give off a freer flow of the "honey dew." This is really a method of milking. However friendly and useful these "cows" may be to the ant, they are enemies to man in destroying so many of his plants. _Treatment._ These are sucking insects. Poisons therefore do not avail. They may be killed by spraying with kerosene emulsion or a strong soap solution or with tobacco water. Lice on cabbages are easily killed by a mixture of one pound of lye soap in four gallons of warm water. [Illustration: FIG. 166. A CHEAP SPRAYING OUTFIT] =The Squash Bug.= The squash bug does its greatest damage to young plants. To such its attack is often fatal. On larger plants single leaves may die. This insect is a serious enemy to a crop and is particularly difficult to get rid of, since it belongs to the class of sucking insects, not to the biting insects. For this reason poisons are useless. [Illustration: FIG. 167. A SQUASH BUG] _Treatment._ About the only practicable remedy is to pick these insects by hand. We can, however, protect our young plants by small nettings and thus tide them over the most dangerous period of their lives. These bugs greatly prefer the squash as food. You can therefore diminish their attack on your melons, cucumbers, etc. by planting among the melons an occasional squash plant as a "trap plant." Hand picking will be easier on a few trap plants than over the whole field. A small board or large leaf laid beside the young plant often furnishes night shelter for the bugs. The bugs collected under the board may easily be killed every morning. =The Flea-Beetle.= The flea-beetle inflicts much damage on the potato, tomato, eggplant, and other garden plants. The accompanying figure shows the common striped flea-beetle which lives on the tomato. The larva of this beetle lives inside of the leaves, mining its way through the leaf in a real tunnel. Any substance disagreeable to the beetle, such as plaster, soot, ashes, or tobacco, will repel its attacks on the garden crops. [Illustration: FIG. 168. FLEA-BEETLE AND LARVA _a_, larva; _b_, adult. Lines on sides show real length of insects] =The Weevil.= The weevil is commonly found among seeds. Its attacks are serious, but the insect may easily be destroyed. _Treatment._ Put the infected seeds in an air-tight box or bin, placing on the top of the pile a dish containing carbon disulphide, a tablespoonful to a bushel of seeds. The fumes of this substance are heavy and will pass through the mass of seeds below and kill all the weevils and other animals there. The bin should be closely covered with canvas or heavy cloth to prevent the fumes from being carried away by the air. Let the seeds remain thus from two to five days. Repeat the treatment if any weevils are found alive. Fumigate when the temperature is 70° Fahrenheit or above. In cold weather or in a loose bin the treatment is not successful. _Caution:_ Do not approach the bin with a light, since the fumes of the chemical used are highly inflammable. =The Hessian Fly.= The Hessian fly does more damage to the wheat crop than all other insects combined, and probably ranks next to the chinch bug as the second worst insect enemy of the farmer. It was probably introduced into this country by the Hessian troops in the War of the Revolution. [Illustration: FIG. 169. THE HESSIAN FLY] In autumn the insect lays its eggs in the leaves of the wheat. These hatch into the larvæ, which move down into the crown of the plant, where they pass the winter. There they cause on the plant a slight gall formation, which injures or kills the plant. In the spring adult flies emerge and lay eggs. The larvæ that hatch feed in the lower joints of the growing wheat and prevent its proper growth. These larvæ pupate and remain as pupæ in the wheat stubble during the summer. The fall brood of flies appears shortly before the first heavy frost. _Treatment._ Burn all stubble and trash during July and August. If the fly is very bad, it is well to leave the stubble unusually high to insure a rapid spread of the fire. Burn refuse from the threshing-machine, since this often harbors many larvæ or pupæ. Follow the burning by deep plowing, because the burning cannot reach the insects that are in the base of the plants. Delay the fall planting until time for heavy frosts. =The Potato Beetle; Tobacco Worm.= The potato beetle, tobacco worm, etc., are too well known to need description. Suffice it to say that no good farmer will neglect to protect his crop from any pest that threatens it. The increase, owing to various causes, of insects, of fungi, of bacterial diseases, makes a study of these pests, of their origin, and of their prevention a necessary part of a successful farmer's training. Tillage alone will no longer render orchard, vineyard, and garden fruitful. Protection from every form of plant enemies must be added to tillage. [Illustration: FIG. 170. SPRAYING THE ORCHARD One way of increasing the yield of fruit] In dealing with plants, as with human beings, the great object should be not the cure but the prevention of disease. If disease can be prevented, it is far too costly to wait for it to develop and then to attempt its cure. Men of science are studying the new forms of diseases and new insects as fast as they appear. These men are finding ways of fighting old and new enemies. Young people who expect to farm should early learn to follow their advice. =EXERCISE= How does the squash bug resemble the plant louse? Is this a true bug? Gather some eggs and watch the development of the insects in a breeding-cage. Estimate the damage done to some crops by the flea-beetle. What is the best method of prevention? [Illustration: FIG. 171. AN APPLE TREE SHOWING PROPER CARE] Do you know the large moth that is the mother of the tobacco worm? You may often see her visiting the blossoms of the Jimson weed. Some tobacco-growers cultivate a few of these weeds in a tobacco field. In the blossom they place a little cobalt or "fly-stone" and sirup. When the tobacco-worm moth visits this flower and sips the poisoned nectar, she will of course lay no more troublesome eggs. SECTION XXXIV. THE COTTON-BOLL WEEVIL So far as known, the cotton-boll weevil, an insect which is a native of the tropics, crossed the Rio Grande River into Texas in 1891 and 1892. It settled in the cotton fields around Brownsville. Since then it has widened its destructive area until now it has invaded the whole territory shown by the map on page 177. [Illustration: FIG. 172. ADULT COTTON-BOLL WEEVIL Enlarged] This weevil is a small gray or reddish-brown snout-beetle hardly over a quarter of an inch in length. In proportion to its length it has a long beak. It belongs to a family of beetles which breed in pods, in seeds, and in stalks of plants. It is a greedy eater, but feeds only on the cotton plant. The grown weevils try to outlive the cold of winter by hiding snugly away under grass clumps, cotton-stalks, rubbish, or under the bark of trees. Sometimes they go down into holes in the ground. A comfortable shelter is often found in the forests near the cotton fields, especially in the moss on the trees. The weevils can stand a good deal of cold, but fortunately many are killed by winter weather. Moreover birds destroy many; hence by spring the last year's crop is very greatly diminished. In the spring, generally about the time cotton begins to form "squares," the weevils shake off their long winter sleep and enter the cotton fields with appetites as sharp as razors. Then shortly the females begin to lay eggs. At first these eggs are laid only in the squares, and generally only one to the square. The young grub hatches from these eggs in two or three days. The newly hatched grub eats the inside of the square, and the square soon falls to the ground. Entire fields may at times be seen without a single square on the plants. Of course no fruit can be formed without squares. [Illustration: FIG. 173. EGGS AMONG THE ANTHERS OF A SQUARE AT THE POINT INDICATED BY THE ARROW] [Illustration: FIG. 174. CROSS SECTION SHOWING ANTHERS OF A SQUARE WITH EGG OF WEEVIL, AND SHOWING THE HOLE WHERE THE EGG WAS DEPOSITED Greatly enlarged] In from one to two weeks the grub or larva becomes fully grown and, without changing its home, is transformed into the pupa state. Then in about a week more the pupæ come out as adult weevils and attack the bolls. They puncture them with their snouts and lay their eggs in the bolls. The young grubs, this time hatching out in the boll, remain there until grown, when they emerge through holes that they make. These holes allow dampness to enter and destroy the bolls. This life-round continues until cold weather drives the insects to their winter quarters. By that time they have increased so rapidly that there is often one for every boll in the field. [Illustration: FIG. 175. THE LARVA OF THE COTTON-BOLL WEEVIL INJURING A SQUARE] This weevil is proving very hard to destroy. At present there seem but few ways to fight it. One is to grow cotton that will mature too early for the weevils to do it much harm. A second is to kill as many weevils as possible by burning the homes that shelter them in winter. [Illustration: FIG. 176. PUPA OF COTTON-BOLL WEEVIL FROM ABOVE AND BELOW Greatly enlarged] [Illustration: FIG. 177. THE PUPA OF THE COTTON-BOLL WEEVIL IN A SQUARE] The places best adapted for a winter home for the weevil are trash piles, rubbish, driftwood, rotten wood, weeds, moss on trees, etc. A further help, therefore, in destroying the weevil is to cut down and burn all cotton-stalks as soon as the cotton is harvested. [Illustration: FIG. 178. A COTTON BOLL WITH FEEDING-HOLES OF WEEVIL, AND BEARING THREE SPECIMENS OF THE INSECT] [Illustration: FIG. 179. THE MEXICAN COTTON-BOLL WEEVIL, SHOWING STRUCTURE] This destroys countless numbers of larvæ and pupæ in the bolls and greatly reduces the number of weevils. In addition, all cornstalks, all trash, all large clumps of grass in neighboring fields, should be burned, so as to destroy these winter homes of the weevil. Also avoid planting cotton near trees. The bark, moss, and fallen leaves of the tree furnish a winter shelter for the weevils. [Illustration: FIG. 180. A SERIES OF FULL GROWN WEEVILS, SHOWING VARIATIONS IN SIZE] A third help in destroying the weevil is to rotate crops. If cotton does not follow cotton, the weevil has nothing on which to feed the second year. [Illustration: FIG. 181. MAP SHOWING DISTRIBUTION OF THE COTTON-BOLL WEEVIL IN 1913] In adopting the first method mentioned the cotton growers have found that by the careful selection of seed, by early planting, by a free use of fertilizers containing phosphoric acid, and by frequent plowing, they can mature a crop about thirty days earlier than they usually do. In this way a good crop can be harvested before the weevils are ready to be most destructive. CHAPTER VIII FARM CROPS Every crop of the farm has been changed and improved in many ways since its forefathers were wild plants. Those plants that best serve the needs of the farmer and of farm animals have undergone the most changes and have received also the greatest care and attention in their production and improvement. While we have many different kinds of farm crops, the cultivated soil of the world is occupied by a very few. In our country the crop that is most valuable and that occupies the greatest land area is generally known as the _grass crop_. Included in the general term "grass crop" are the grasses and clovers that are used for pasturage as well as for hay. Next to grass in value come the great cereal, corn, and the most important fiber crop, cotton, closely followed by the great bread crop, wheat. Oats rank fifth in value, potatoes sixth, and tobacco seventh. (These figures are for 1913.) Success in growing any crop is largely due to the suitableness of soil and climate to that crop. When the planter selects both the most suitable soil and the most suitable climate for each crop, he gets not only the most bountiful yield from the crop but, in addition, he gets the most desirable quality of product. A little careful observation and study soon teach what kinds of soil produce crops of the highest excellence. This learned, the planter is able to grow in each field the several crops best adapted to that special type of soil. Thus we have tobacco soils, trucking soils, wheat and corn soils. Dairying can be most profitably followed in sections where crops like cowpeas, clover, alfalfa, and corn are peculiarly at home. No one should try to grow a new crop in his section until he has found out whether the crop which he wants to grow is adapted to his soil and his climate. [Illustration: FIG. 182. ALFALFA IN THE STACK This is the second cutting of the season] The figures below give the average amount of money made annually an acre on our chief crops: Flowers and plants, $1911; nursery products, $261; onions, $140; sugar cane, $55; small fruits, $110; hops, $175; vegetables, $78; tobacco, $80; sweet potatoes, $55; hemp, $53; potatoes, $78; sugar beets, $54; sorghum cane, $22; cotton, $22; orchard fruits, $110; peanuts, $21; flax-seed, $14; cereals, $14; hay and forage, $11; castor beans, $6 (United States Census Report). SECTION XXXV. COTTON Although cotton was cultivated on the Eastern continent before America was discovered, this crop owes its present kingly place in the business world to the zeal and intelligence of its American growers. So great an influence does it wield in modern industrial life that it is often called King Cotton. Thousands upon thousands of people scan the newspapers each day to see what price its staple is bringing. From its bounty a vast army of toilers, who plant its seed, who pick its bolls, who gin its staple, who spin and weave its lint, who grind its seed, who refine its oil, draw daily bread. Does not its proper production deserve the best thought that can be given it? In the cotton belt almost any well-drained soil will produce cotton. The following kinds of soil are admirably suited to this plant: red and gray loams with good clay subsoil; sandy soils over clay and sandstone and limestone; rich, well-drained bottom-lands. The safest soils are medium loams. Cotton land must always be well drained. Cotton was originally a tropical plant, but, strange to say, it seems to thrive best in temperate zones. The cotton plant does best, according to Newman, in climates which have (1) six months of freedom from frost; (2) a moderate, well-distributed rainfall during the plant's growing period; and (3) abundant sunshine and little rain during the plant's maturing period. [Illustration: FIG. 183. GROWTH OF COTTON FROM DAY TO DAY In America the Southern states from Virginia to Texas have these climatic qualities, and it is in these states that the cotton industry has been developed until it is one of the giant industries of the world. This development has been very rapid. As late as 1736 the cotton plant was grown as an ornamental flowering plant in many front yards; in 1911, 16,250,276 bales of cotton were grown in the South. In recent years the soil and climate of lower California and parts of Arizona and New Mexico have been found well adapted to cotton. [Illustration: FIG. 184. COTTON IN THE GROWING SEASON] There are a great many varieties of cotton. Two types are mainly grown by the practical American farmer. These are the short-stapled, upland variety most commonly grown in all the Southern states, and the beautiful, long-stapled, black-seeded sea-island type that grows upon the islands and a portion of the mainland of Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida. The air of the coast seems necessary for the production of this latter variety. The seeds of the sea-island cotton are small, smooth, and black. They are so smooth and stick so loosely to the lint that they are separated from it by roller-gins instead of by saw-gins. When these seeds are planted away from the soil and air of their ocean home, the plant does not thrive. Many attempts have been made and are still being made to increase the length of the staple of the upland types. The methods used are as follows: selection of seed having a long fiber; special cultivation and fertilization; crossing the short-stapled cotton on the long-stapled cotton. This last process, as already explained, is called _hybridizing_. Many of these attempts have succeeded, and there are now a large number of varieties which excel the older varieties in profitable yield. The new varieties are each year being more widely grown. Every farmer should study the new types and select the one that will best suit his land. The new types have been developed under the best tillage. Therefore if a farmer would keep the new type as good as it was when he began to grow it, he must give it the same good tillage, and practice seed-selection. [Illustration: FIG. 185. COTTON READY FOR PICKING] The cotton plant is nourished by a tap-root that will seek food as deeply as loose earth will permit the root to penetrate; hence, in preparing land for this crop the first plowing should be done at least with a two-horse plow and should be deep and thorough. This deep plowing not only allows the tap-root to penetrate, but it also admits a circulation of air. On some cotton farms it is the practice to break the land in winter or early spring and then let it lie naked until planting-time. This is not a good practice. The winter rains wash more plant food out of unprotected soil than a single crop would use. It would be better, in the late summer or fall, to plant crimson clover or some other protective and enriching crop on land that is to be planted in cotton in the spring. This crop, in addition to keeping the land from being injuriously washed, would greatly help the coming cotton crop by leaving the soil full of vegetable matter. In preparing for cotton-planting, first disk the land thoroughly, then break with a heavy plow and harrow until a fine and mellow seed-bed is formed. Do not spare the harrow at this time. It destroys many a weed that, if allowed to grow, would have to be cut by costly hoeing. Thorough work before planting saves much expensive work in the later days of the crop. Moreover, no man can afford to allow his plant food and moisture to go to nourish weeds, even for a short time. The rows should be from three to four feet apart. The width depends upon the richness of the soil. On rich land the rows should be at least four feet apart. This width allows the luxuriant plant to branch and fruit well. On poorer lands the distance of the rows should not be so great. The distribution of the seed in the row is of course most cheaply done by the planter. As a rule it is best not to ridge the land for the seed. Flat culture saves moisture and often prevents damage to the roots. In some sections, however, where the land is flat and full of water, ridging seems necessary if the land cannot be drained. [Illustration: FIG. 186. PICKING COTTON] The cheapest way of cultivating a crop is to prevent grass and weeds from rooting, not to wait to destroy them after they are well rooted. To do this, it is well to run the two-horse smoothing-harrow over the land, across the rows, a few days after the young plants are up. Repeat the harrowing in six or eight days. In addition to destroying the young grass and weeds, this harrowing also removes many of the young cotton plants and thereby saves much hoeing at "chopping-out" time. When the plants are about two inches high they are "chopped out" to secure an evenly distributed stand. It has been the custom to leave two stalks to a hill, but many growers are now leaving only one. The number of times the crop has to be worked depends on the soil and the season. If the soil is dry and porous, cultivate as often as possible, especially after each rain. Never allow a crust to form after a rain; the roots of plants must have air. Cultivation after each rain forms a dry mulch on the top of the soil and thus prevents rapid evaporation of moisture. If the fiber (the lint) only is removed from the land on which cotton is grown, cotton is the least exhaustive of the great crops grown in the United States. According to some recent experiments an average crop of cotton removes in the lint only 2.75 pounds of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash, lime, and magnesia per acre, while a crop of ten bushels of wheat per acre removes 32.36 pounds of the same elements of plant food. Inasmuch as this crop takes so little plant food from the soil, the cotton-farmer has no excuse for allowing his land to decrease in productiveness. Two things will keep his land in bounteous harvest condition: first, let him return the seeds in some form to the land, or, what is better, feed the ground seeds to cattle, make a profit from the cattle, and return manure to the land in place of the seeds; second, at the last working, let him sow some crop like crimson clover or rye in the cotton rows to protect the soil during the winter and to leave humus in the ground for the spring. The stable manure, if that is used, should be broadcasted over the fields at the rate of six to ten tons an acre. If commercial fertilizers are used, it may be best to make two applications. To give the young plants a good start, apply a portion of the fertilizer in the drill just before planting. Then when the first blooms appear, put the remainder of the fertilizer in drills near the plants but not too close. Many good cotton-growers, however, apply all the fertilizer at one time. [Illustration: FIG. 187. WEIGHING A DAY'S PICKING OF COTTON] _Relation of Stock to the Cotton Crop_. On many farms much of the money for which the cotton is sold in the fall has to go to pay for the commercial fertilizer used in growing the crop. Should not this fact suggest efforts to raise just as good crops without having to buy so much fertilizer? Is there any way by which this can be done? The following suggestions may be helpful. Raise enough stock to use all the cotton seed grown on the farm. To go with the food made from the cotton seed, grow on the farm pea-vine hay, clover, alfalfa, and other such nitrogen-gathering crops. This can be done at small cost. What will be the result? First, to say nothing of the money made from the cattle, the large quantity of stable manure saved will largely reduce the amount of commercial fertilizer needed. The cotton-farmer cannot afford to neglect cattle-raising. The cattle sections of the country are likely to make the greatest progress in agriculture, because they have manure always on hand. [Illustration: FIG. 188. MODERN COTTON BALES] Second, the nitrogen-gathering crops, while helping to feed the stock, also reduce the fertilizer bills by supplying one of the costly elements of the fertilizer. The ordinary cotton fertilizer consists principally of nitrogen, of potash, and of phosphoric acid. Of these three, by far the most costly is nitrogen. Now peas, beans, clover, and peanuts will leave enough nitrogen in the soil for cotton, so that if they are raised, it is necessary to buy only phosphoric acid and sometimes potash. SECTION XXXVI. TOBACCO The tobacco plant connects Indian agriculture with our own. It has always been a source of great profit to our people. In the early colonial days tobacco was almost the only money crop. Many rich men came to America in those days merely to raise tobacco. Although tobacco will grow in almost any climate, the leaves, which, as most of you know, are the salable part of the plant, get their desirable or undesirable qualities very largely from the soil and from the climate in which they grow. The soil in which tobacco thrives best is one which has the following qualities: dryness, warmth, richness, depth, and sandiness. Commercial fertilizers also are almost a necessity; for, as tobacco land is limited in area, the same land must be often planted in tobacco. Hence even a fresh, rich soil that did not at first require fertilizing soon becomes exhausted, and, after the land has been robbed of its plant food by crop after crop of tobacco, frequent application of fertilizers and other manures becomes necessary. However, even tobacco growers should rotate their crops as much as possible. [Illustration: FIG. 189. A LEAF OF TOBACCO] Deep plowing--from nine to thirteen inches--is also a necessity in preparing the land, for tobacco roots go deep into the soil. After this deep plowing, harrow until the soil is thoroughly pulverized and is as fine and mellow as that of the flower-garden. Unlike most other farm crops the tobacco plant must be started first in a seed-bed. To prepare a tobacco bed the almost universal custom has been to proceed as follows. Carefully select a protected spot. Over this spot pile brushwood and then burn it. The soil will be left dry, and all the weed seeds will be killed. The bed is then carefully raked and smoothed and planted. Some farmers are now preparing their beds without burning. A tablespoonful of seed will sow a patch twenty-five feet square. A cheap cloth cover is put over the bed. If the seeds come up well, a patch of this size ought to furnish transplants for five or six acres. In sowing, it is not wise to cover the seed deeply. A light raking in or an even rolling of the ground is all that is needed. [Illustration: FIG. 190. A PROMISING CROP OF TOBACCO] The time required for sprouting is from two to three weeks. The plants ought to be ready for transplanting in from four to six weeks. Weeds and grass should of course be kept out of the seed-bed. The plants, when ready, are transplanted in very much the same way as cabbages and tomatoes. The transplanting was formerly done by hand, but an effective machine is now widely used. The rows should be from three to three and a half feet apart, and the plants in the rows about two or three feet apart. If the plants are set so that the plow and cultivator can be run with the rows and also across the rows, they can be more economically worked. Tobacco, like corn, requires shallow cultivation. Of course the plants should be worked often enough to give clean culture and to provide a soil mulch for saving moisture. [Illustration: FIG. 191. TOPPING TOBACCO] In tobacco culture it is necessary to pinch off the "buttons" and to cut off the tops of the main stalk, else much nourishment that should go to the leaves will be given to the seeds. The suckers must also be cut off for the same reason. The proper time for harvesting is not easily fixed; one becomes skillful in this work only through experience in the field. Briefly, we may say that tobacco is ready to be cut when the leaves on being held up to the sun show a light or golden color, when they are sticky to the touch, and when they break easily on being bent. Plants that are overripe are inferior to those that are cut early. The operations included in cutting, housing, drying, shipping, sweating, and packing require skill and practice. SECTION XXXVII. WHEAT Wheat has been cultivated from earliest times. It was a chief crop in Egypt and Palestine, and still holds its importance in the temperate portions of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and America. [Illustration: FIG. 192. A HAND] [Illustration: FIG. 193. WHEAT HEADS] This crop ranks third in value in the United States. It grows in cool, in temperate, and in warm climates, and in many kinds of soil. It does best in clay loam, and worst in sandy soils. Clogged and water-soaked land will not grow wheat with profit to the farmer; for this reason, where good wheat-production is desired the soil must be well drained and in good physical condition--that is, the soil must be open, crumbly, and mellow. Clay soils that are hard and lifeless can be made valuable for wheat-production by covering the surface with manure, by good tillage, and by a thorough system of crop-rotation. Cowpeas and other legumes make a most valuable crop to precede wheat, for in growing they add atmospheric nitrogen to the soil, and their roots loosen the root-bed, thereby admitting a free circulation of air and adding humus to the soil. Moreover, the legumes leave the soil with its grains fairly close packed, and this is a help in wheat growing. One may secure a good seed-bed after cotton and corn as well as after cowpeas and other legumes. They are summer-cultivated crops, and the clean culture that has been given them renders the surface soil mellow and the undersoil firm and compact. They are not so good, however, as cowpeas, since they add no atmospheric nitrogen to the soil, as all leguminous crops do. [Illustration: FIG. 194. ROOTS OF A SINGLE WHEAT PLANT] From one to two inches is the most satisfactory depth for planting wheat. The largest number of seeds comes up when planted at this depth. A mellow soil is very helpful to good coming up and provides a most comfortable home for the roots of the plant. A compact soil below makes a moist undersoil; and this is desirable, for the soil water is needed to dissolve plant food and to carry it up through the plant, where it is used in building tissue. There are a great many varieties of wheat: some are bearded, others are smooth; some are winter and others are spring varieties. The smooth-headed varieties are most agreeable to handle during harvest and at threshing-time. Some of the bearded varieties, however, do so well in some soils and climates that it is desirable to continue growing them, though they are less agreeable to handle. No matter what variety you are accustomed to raise, it may be improved by careful seed-selection. [Illustration: FIG. 195. SELECTING WHEAT SEED] The seed-drill is the best implement for planting wheat. It distributes the grains evenly over the whole field and leaves the mellow soil in a condition to catch what snow may fall and secure what protection it affords. [Illustration: FIG. 196. ADJOINING WHEAT FIELDS The yield of the lower field, forty-five bushels per acre, is due to intelligent farming] In many parts of the country, because not enough live stock is raised, there is often too little manure to apply to the wheat land. Where this is the case commercial fertilizers must be used. Since soils differ greatly, it is impossible to suggest a fertilizer adapted to all soils. The elements usually lacking in wheat soils are nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. The land may be lacking in one of these plant foods or in all; in either case a maximum crop cannot possibly be raised. The section on manuring the soil will be helpful to the wheat-grower. [Illustration: FIG. 197. A BOUNTIFUL CROP OF WHEAT] It should be remembered always in buying fertilizers for wheat that whenever wheat follows cowpeas or clover or other legumes there is seldom need of using nitrogen in the fertilizer; the tubercles on the pea or clover roots will furnish that. Hence, as a rule, only potash and phosphoric acid will have to be purchased as plant food. The farmer is assisted always by a study of his crop and by a knowledge of how it grows. If he find the straw inferior and short, it means that the soil is deficient in nitrogen; but on the other hand, if the straw be luxuriant and the heads small and poorly filled, he may be sure that his soil contains too little phosphoric acid and potash. =EXERCISE= Let the pupils secure several heads of wheat and thresh each separately by hand. The grains should then be counted and their plumpness and size observed. The practical importance of this is obvious, for the larger the heads and the greater the number of grains, the larger the yield per acre. Let them plant some of the large and some of the small grains. A single test of this kind will show the importance of careful seed-selection. [Illustration: FIG. 198 A WIDELY GROWN CROP] SECTION XXXVIII. CORN When the white man came to this country he found the Indians using corn; for this reason, in addition to its name _maize_, it is called _Indian corn_. Before that time the civilized world did not know that there was such a crop. The increase in the yield and the extension of the acres planted in this strictly American crop have kept pace with the rapid and wonderful growth of our country. Corn is king of the cereals and the most important crop of American agriculture. It grows in almost every section of America. There is hardly any limit to the uses to which its grain and its stalks are now put. Animals of many kinds are fed on rations into which it enters. Its grains in some form furnish food to more people than does any other crop except possibly rice. Its stalk and its cob are manufactured into many different and useful articles. A soil rich in either decaying animal or vegetable matter, loose, warm, and moist but not wet, will produce a better crop of corn than any other. Corn soil should always be well tilled and cultivated. The proper time to begin the cultivation of corn is before it is planted. Plow well. A shallow, worn-out soil should not be used for corn, but for cowpeas or rye. After thorough plowing, the harrow--either the disk or spring-tooth--should be used to destroy all clods and leave the surface mellow and fine. The best results will be obtained by turning under a clover sod that has been manured from the savings of the barnyard. When manure is not available, commercial fertilizers will often prove profitable on poor lands. Careful trials will best determine how much fertilizer to an acre is necessary, and what kinds are to be used. A little study and experimenting on the farmer's part will soon enable him to find out both the kind and the amount of fertilizer that is best suited to his land. The seed for this crop should be selected according to the plan suggested in Section XIX. [Illustration: FIG. 199. CORN SHOCKED FOR THE SHREDDER] The most economical method of planting is by means of the horse planter, which, according to its adjustment, plants regularly in hills or in drills. A few days after planting, the cornfield should be harrowed with a fine-tooth harrow to loosen the top soil and to kill the grass and the weed seeds that are germinating at the surface. When the corn plants are from a half inch to an inch high, the harrow may again be used. A little work before the weeds sprout will save many days of labor during the rest of the season, and increase the yield. [Illustration: FIG. 200. THE DIFFERENCE IS DUE TO TILLAGE] Corn is a crop that needs constant cultivation, and during the growing season the soil should be stirred at least four times. This cultivation is for three reasons: 1. To destroy weeds that would take plant food and water. 2. To provide a mulch of dry soil so as to prevent the evaporation of moisture. The action of this mulch has already been explained. 3. Because "tillage is manure." Constant stirring of the soil allows the air to circulate in it, provides a more effective mulch, and helps to change unavailable plant food into the form that plants use. Deep culture of corn is not advisable. The roots in their early stages of growth are shallow feeders and spread widely only a few inches below the surface. The cultivation that destroys or disturbs the roots injures the plants and lessens the yield. We cultivate because of the three reasons given above, and not to stir the soil about the roots or to loosen it there. [Illustration: FIG. 201.] In many parts of the country the cornstalks are left standing in the fields or are burned. This is a great mistake, for the stalks are worth a good deal for feeding horses, cattle, and sheep. These stalks may always be saved by the use of the husker and shredder. Corn after being matured and cut can be put in shocks and left thus until dry enough to run through the husker and shredder. This machine separates the corn from the stalk and husks it. At the same time it shreds tops, leaves, and butts into a food that is both nutritious and palatable to stock. For the amount that animals will eat, almost as much feeding value is obtained from corn stover treated in this way as from timothy hay. The practice of not using the stalks is wasteful and is fast being abandoned. The only reason that so much good food is being left to decay in the field is because so many people have not fully learned the feeding value of the stover. =EXERCISE= To show the effect of cultivation on the yield of corn, let the pupils lay off five plats in some convenient field. Each plat need consist of only two rows about twenty feet long. Treat each plat as follows: Plat 1. No cultivation: let weeds grow. Plat 2. Mulch with straw. Plat 3. Shallow cultivation: not deeper than two inches and at least five times during the growing season. Plat 4. Deep cultivation: at least four inches deep, so as to injure and tear out some of the roots (this is a common method). Plat 5. Root-pruning: ten inches from the stalk and six inches deep, prune the roots with a long knife. Cultivate five times during the season. Observe plats during the summer, and at husking-time note results. SECTION XXXIX. PEANUTS This plant is rich in names, being known locally as "ground pea," "goober," "earthnut," and "pindar," as well as generally by the name of "peanut." The peanut is a true legume, and, like other legumes, bears nitrogen-gathering tubercles upon its roots. The fruit is not a real nut but rather a kind of pea or bean, and develops from the blossom. After the fall of the blossom the "spike," or flower-stalk, pushes its way into the ground, where the nut develops. If unable to penetrate the soil the nut dies. In the United States, North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee have the most favorable climates for peanut culture. Suitable climate and soil, however, may be found from New Jersey to the Mississippi valley. A high, porous, sandy loam is the most suitable. Stiffer soils, which may in some cases yield larger crops than the loams, are yet not so profitable, for stiff soils injure the color of the nut. Lime is a necessity and must be supplied if the soil is deficient. Phosphoric acid and potash are needed. Greater care than is usually bestowed should be given to the selection of the peanut seed. In addition to following the principles given in Section XVIII, all musty, defective seeds must be avoided and all frosted kernels must be rejected. Before it dries, the peanut seed is easily injured by frost. The slightest frost on the vines, either before or after the plants are dug, does much harm to the tender seed. [Illustration: FIG. 202. A PEANUT PLANT] In growing peanuts, thorough preparation of the soil is much better than later cultivation. Destroy the crop of young weeds, but do not disturb the peanut crop by late cultivation. Harvest before frost, and shock high to keep the vines from the ground. The average yield of peanuts in the United States is twenty-two bushels an acre. In Tennessee the yield is twenty-nine bushels an acre, and in North Carolina and Virginia it reaches thirty bushels an acre. SECTION XL. SWEET POTATOES The roots of sweet potatoes are put on the market in various forms. Aside from the form in which they are ordinarily sold, some potatoes are dried and then ground into flour, some are canned, some are used to make starch, some furnish a kind of sugar called glucose, and some are even used to make alcohol. The fact that there are over eighty varieties of potatoes shows the popularity of the plant. Now it is evident that all of these varieties cannot be equally desirable. Hence the wise grower will select his varieties with prudent forethought. He should study his market, his soil, and his seed (see Section XVIII). [Illustration: FIG. 203. SWEET POTATOES] Four months of mild weather, months free from frost and cold winds, are necessary for the growing of sweet potatoes. In a mild climate almost any loose, well-drained soil will produce them. A light, sandy loam, however, gives a cleaner potato and one, therefore, that sells better. The sweet potato draws potash, nitrogen, and phosphoric acid from the soil, but in applying these as fertilizers the grower must study and know his own soil. If he does not he may waste both money and plant food by the addition of elements already present in sufficient quantity in the soil. The only way to come to reliable conclusions as to the needs of the soil is to try two or three different kinds of fertilizers on plats of the same soil, during the same season, and notice the resulting crop of potatoes. Sweet potatoes will do well after almost any of the usual field crops. This caution, however, should be borne in mind. Potatoes should not follow a sod. This is because sods are often thick with cutworms, one of the serious enemies of the potato. It is needless to say that the ground must be kept clean by thorough cultivation until the vines take full possession of the field. In harvesting, extreme care should be used to avoid cutting and bruising the potato, since bruises are as dangerous to a sweet potato as to an apple, and render decay almost a certainty. Lay aside all bruised potatoes for immediate use. For shipment the potatoes should be graded and packed with care. An extra outlay of fifty cents a barrel often brings a return of a dollar a barrel in the market. One fact often neglected by Southern growers who raise potatoes for a Northern market is that the Northern markets demand a potato that will cook dry and mealy, and that they will not accept the juicy, sugary potato so popular in the South. The storage of sweet potatoes presents difficulties owing to their great tendency to decay under the influence of the ever-present fungi and bacteria. This tendency can be met by preventing bruises and by keeping the bin free from rotting potatoes. The potatoes should be cleaned, and after the moisture has been dried off they should be stored in a dry, warm place. The sweet-potato vine makes a fair quality of hay and with proper precaution may be used for ensilage. Small, defective, unsalable potatoes are rich in sugar and starch and are therefore good stock food. Since they contain so much water they must be used only as an aid to other diet. SECTION XLI. WHITE, OR IRISH, POTATOES Maize, or Indian corn, and potatoes are the two greatest gifts in the way of food that America has bestowed on the other nations. Since their adoption in the sixteenth century as a new food from recently discovered America, white potatoes have become one of the world's most important crops. [Illustration: FIG. 204. CULTIVATING AND RIDGING POTATOES] No grower will harvest large crops of potatoes unless he chooses soil that suits the plant, selects his seed carefully, cultivates thoroughly, feeds his land sufficiently, and sprays regularly. The soil should be free from potato scab. This disease remains in land for several years. Hence if land is known to have any form of scab in it, do not plant potatoes in such land. Select for this crop a deep and moderately light, sandy loam which has an open subsoil and which is rich in humus. The soil must be light enough for the potatoes, or tubers, to enlarge easily and dry enough to prevent rot or blight or other diseases. Potato soil should be so close-grained that it will hold moisture during a dry spell and yet so well-drained that the tubers will not be hurt by too much moisture in wet weather. If the land selected for potatoes is lacking in humus, fine compost or well-rotted manure will greatly increase the yield. However, it should be remembered that green manure makes a good home for the growth of scab germs. Hence it is safest to apply this sort of manure in the fall, or, better still, use a heavy dressing of manure on the crop which the potatoes are to follow. Leguminous crops supply both humus and nitrogen and, at the same time, improve the subsoil. Therefore such crops are excellent to go immediately before potatoes. If land is well supplied with humus, commercial fertilizers are perhaps safer than manure, for when these fertilizers are used the amount of plant food is more easily regulated. Select a fertilizer that is rich in potash. For gardens unleached wood ashes make a valuable fertilizer because they supply potash. Early potatoes need more fertilization than do late ones. While potatoes do best on rich land, they should not be overfed, for a too heavy growth of foliage is likely to cause blight. Be careful to select seed from sound potatoes which are entirely free from scab. Get the kinds that thrive best in the section in which they are to be planted and which suit best the markets in which they are to be sold. Seed potatoes should be kept in a cool place so that they will not sprout before planting-time. As a rule consumers prefer a smooth, regularly shaped, shallow-eyed white or flesh-colored potato which is mealy when cooked. Therefore, select seed tubers with these qualities. It seems proved that when whole potatoes are used for seed the yield is larger than when sliced potatoes are planted. It is of course too costly to plant whole potatoes, but it is a good practice to cause the plants to thrive by planting large seed pieces. [Illustration: FIG. 205. GATHERING POTATOES] Like other crops, potatoes need a thoroughly prepared seed-bed and intelligent cultivation. Break the land deep. Then go over it with an ordinary harrow until all clods are broken and the soil is fine and well closed. The rows should be at least three feet from one another and the seeds placed from twelve to eighteen inches apart in the row, and covered to a depth of three or four inches. A late crop should be planted deeper than an early one. Before the plants come up it is well to go over the field once or twice with a harrow so as to kill all weeds. Do not fail to save moisture by frequent cultivation. After the plants start to grow, all cultivation should be shallow, for the roots feed near the surface and should not be broken. Cultivate as often as needed to keep down weeds and grass and to keep the ground fine. Allow potatoes to dry thoroughly before they are stored, but never allow them to remain long in the sunshine. Never dig them in damp weather, for the moisture clinging to them will cause them to rot. After the tubers are dry, store them in barrels or bins in a dry, cool, and dark place. Never allow them to freeze. Among the common diseases and insect pests that attack the leaves and stems of potato vines are early blight, late blight, brown rot, the flea-beetle, and the potato beetle, or potato bug. Spraying with Bordeaux mixture to which a small portion of Paris green has been added will control both the diseases and the pests. The spraying should begin when the plants are five or six inches high and should not cease until the foliage begins to die. Scab is a disease of the tubers. It may be prevented (1) by using seed potatoes that are free from scab; (2) by planting land in which there is no scab; and (3) by soaking the seed in formalin (see page 135). SECTION XLII. OATS The oat plant belongs to the grass family. It is a hardy plant and, under good conditions, a vigorous grower. It stands cold and wet better than any other cereal except possibly rye. Oats like a cool, moist climate. In warm climates, oats do best when they are sowed in the fall. In cooler sections, spring seeding is more generally practiced. There are a great many varieties of oats. No one variety is best adapted to all sections, but many varieties make fine crops in many sections. Any variety is desirable which has these qualities: power to resist disease and insect enemies, heavy grains, thin hulls, good color, and suitability to local surroundings. As oats and rye make a better yield on poor land than any other cereals, some farmers usually plant these crops on their poorest lands. However, no land is too good to be used for so valuable a crop as oats. Oats require a great deal of moisture; hence light, sandy soils are not so well adapted to this crop as are the sandy loams and fine clay loams with their closer and heavier texture. If oats are to be planted in the spring, the ground should be broken in the fall, winter, or early spring so that no delay may occur at seeding-time. But to have a thoroughly settled, compact seed-bed the breaking of the land should be done at least a month before the seeding, and it will help greatly to run over the land with a disk harrow immediately after the breaking. [Illustration: FIG. 206. OATS Common oats at left; side oats at right] Oats may be planted by scattering them broadcast or by means of a drill. The drill is better, because the grains are more uniformly distributed and the depth of planting is better regulated. The seeds should be covered from one and a half to two inches deep. In a very dry season three inches may not be too deep. The amount of seed needed to the acre varies considerably, but generally the seeding is from two to three bushels an acre. On poor lands two bushels will be a fair average seeding; on good lands as much as three bushels should be used. [Illustration: FIG. 207. HARVESTING OATS] This crop fits in well, over wide areas, with various rotations. As the purpose of all rotation is to keep the soil productive, oats should alternate every few years with one of the nitrogen-gathering crops. In the South, cowpeas, soy beans, clovers, and vetches may be used in this rotation. In the North and West the clovers mixed with timothy hay make a useful combination for this purpose. Spring-sowed oats, since they have a short growing season, need their nitrogenous plant food in a form which can be quickly used. To supply this nitrogen a top-dressing of nitrate of soda or sulphate of lime is helpful. The plant can gather its food quickly from either of these two. As fall-sowed oats have of course a longer growing season, the nitrogen can be supplied by well-rotted manure, blood, tankage, or fish-scrap. Use barnyard manure carefully. Do not apply too much just before seeding, and use only thoroughly rotted manure. It is always desirable to have a bountiful supply of humus in land on which oats are to be planted. The time of harvesting will vary with the use which is to be made of the oats. If the crop is to be threshed, the harvesting should be done when the kernels have passed out of the milk into the hard dough state. The lower leaves of the stalks will at this time have turned yellow, and the kernels will be plump and full. Do not, however, wait too long, for if you do the grain will shatter and the straw lose in feeding value. On the other hand, if the oats are to be cut for hay it is best to cut them while the grains are still in the milk stage. At this stage the leaves are still green and the plants are rich in protein. Oats should be cured quickly. It is very important that threshed oats should be dry before they are stored. Should they on being stored still contain moisture, they will be likely to heat and to discolor. Any discoloring will reduce their value. Nor should oats ever be allowed to remain long in the fields, no matter how well they may seem to be shocked. The dew and the rain will injure their value by discoloring them more or less. Oats are muscle-builders rather than fat-formers. Hence they are a valuable ration for work animals, dairy cows, and breeding-stock. SECTION XLIII. RYE Rye has the power of gathering its food from a wider area than most other plants. Of course, then, it is a fine crop for poor land, and farmers often plant it only on worn land. However, it is too good a cereal to be treated in so ungenerous a fashion. As a cover-crop for poor land it adds much humus to the soil and makes capital grazing. [Illustration: FIG. 208. RYE READY FOR CUTTING] There are two types of rye--the winter and the spring. The winter type is chiefly grown in this country. Rye seeds should be bought as near home as possible, for this plant thrives best when the new crop grows under the same conditions as the seed crop. Rye will grow on almost any soil that is drained. Soils that are too sandy for wheat will generally yield good crops of rye. Clay soils, however, are not adapted to the plant nor to the grazing for which the plant is generally sowed. For winter rye the land should be broken from four to six inches. Harrows should follow the plows until the land is well pulverized. In some cold prairie lands, however, rye is put in with a grain-drill before a plow removes the stubble from the land. The purpose of planting in this way is to let the stubble protect the young plants from cold, driving winds. Rye should go into the ground earlier than wheat. In cold, bleak climates, as well as on poor land, the seeding should be early. The young plant needs to get rooted and topped before cold weather sets in. The only danger in very early planting is that leaf-rust sometimes attacks the forward crop. Of course the earlier the rye is ready for fall and winter pasturage, the better. If a drill is used for planting, a seeding of from three to four pecks to the acre should give a good stand. In case the seeds are to be sowed broadcast, a bushel or a bushel and a half for every acre is needed. The seed should be covered as wheat seed is and the ground rolled. Rye is generally used as a grazing or as a soiling crop. Therefore its value will depend largely on its vigorous growth in stems and leaves. To get this growth, liberal amounts of nitrogenous fertilizer will have to be applied unless the land is very rich. Put barnyard manure on the land just after the first breaking and disk the manure into the soil. Acid phosphate and kainite added to the manure may pay handsomely. A spring top-dressing of nitrate of soda is usually helpful. Rye has a stiff straw and does not fall, or "lodge," so badly as some of the other cereals. As soon as rye that is meant for threshing is cut, it should be put up in shocks until it is thoroughly dry. Begin the cutting when the kernels are in a tough dough state. The grain should never stand long in the shocks. SECTION XLIV. BARLEY Barley is one of the oldest crops known to man. The old historian Pliny says that barley was the first food of mankind. Modern man however prefers wheat and corn and potatoes to barley, and as a food this ancient crop is in America turned over to the lower animals. Brewers use barley extensively in making malt liquors. Barley grows in nearly all sections of our country, but a few states--namely, Minnesota, California, Wisconsin, Iowa, and North and South Dakota--are seeding large areas to this crop. For malting purposes the barley raised on rather light, friable, porous soil is best. Soils of this kind are likely to produce a medium yield of bright grain. Fertile loamy and clay soils make generally a heavier yield of barley, but the grain is dark and fit only to be fed to stock. Barley is a shallow feeder, and can reach only such plant food as is found in the top soil, so its food should always be put within reach by a thorough breaking, harrowing, and mellowing of the soil, and by fertilizing if the soil is poor. Barley has been successfully raised both by irrigation and by dry-farming methods. It requires a better-prepared soil than the other grain crops; it makes fine yields when it follows some crop that has received a heavy dressing of manure. Capital yields are produced after alfalfa or after root crops. This crop usually matures within a hundred days from its seeding. [Illustration: FIG. 209. BARLEY] When the crop is to be sold to the brewers, a grain rich in starch should be secured. Barley intended for malting should be fertilized to this end. Many experiments have shown that a fertilizer which contains much potash will produce starchy barley. If the barley be intended for stock, you should breed so as to get protein in the grain and in the stalk. Hence barley which is to be fed should be fertilized with mixtures containing nitrogen and phosphoric acid. Young barley plants are more likely to be hurt by cold than either wheat or oats. Hence barley ought not to be seeded until all danger from frost is over. The seeds should be covered deeper than the seeds of wheat or of oats. Four inches is perhaps an average depth for covering. But the covering will vary with the time of planting, with the kind of ground, with the climate, and with the nature of the season. Fewer seeds will be needed if the barley is planted by means of a drill. Like other cereals, barley should not be grown continuously on the same land. It should take its place in a well-planned rotation. It may profitably follow potatoes or other hoed crops, but it should not come first after wheat, oats, or rye. Barley should be harvested as soon as most of its kernels have reached the hard dough state. It is more likely to shatter its grain than are other cereals, and it should therefore be handled with care. It must also be watched to prevent its sprouting in the shocks. Be sure to put few bundles in the shock and to cap the shock securely enough to keep out dew and rain. If possible the barley should be threshed directly from the shock, as much handling will occasion a serious loss from shattering. SECTION XLV. SUGAR PLANTS In the United States there are three sources from which sugar is obtained; namely, the sugar-maple, the sugar-beet, and the sugar-cane. In the early days of our country considerable quantities of maple sirup and maple sugar were made. This was the first source of sugar. Then sugar-cane began to be grown. Later the sugar-beet was introduced. =Maple Products.= In many states sirup and sugar are still made from maple sap. In the spring when the sap is flowing freely maple trees are tapped and spouts are inserted. Through these spouts the sap flows into vessels set to catch it. The sap is boiled in evaporating-pans, and made into either sirup or sugar. Four gallons of sap yield about one pound of sugar. A single tree yields from two to six pounds of sugar in a season. The sap cannot be kept long after it is collected. Practice and skill are needed to produce an attractive and palatable grade of sirup or of sugar. =Sugar-Beets.= The sugar-beet is a comparatively new root crop in America. The amount of sugar that can be obtained from beets varies from twelve to twenty per cent. The richness in sugar depends somewhat on the variety grown and on the soil and the climate. So far most of our sugar-beet seeds have been brought over from Europe. Some of our planters are now, however, gaining the skill and the knowledge needed to grow these seeds. It is of course important to grow seeds that will produce beets containing much sugar. [Illustration: FIG. 210. CATCHING MAPLE SAP] These beets do well in a great variety of soils if the land is rich, well prepared, and well drained, and has a porous subsoil. Beets cannot grow to a large size in hard land. Hence deep plowing is very necessary for this crop. The soil should be loose enough for the whole body of the beet to remain underground. Some growers prefer spring plowing and some fall plowing, but all agree that the land should not be turned less than eight or ten inches. The subsoil, however, should not be turned up too much at the first deep plowing. Too much care cannot be taken to make the seed-bed firm and mellow and to have it free from clods. If the soil is dry at planting-time and there is likelihood of high winds, the seed-bed may be rolled with profit. Experienced growers use from ten to twelve pounds of seeds to an acre. It is better to use too many rather than too few seeds, for it is easy to thin out the plants, but rather difficult to transplant them. The seeds are usually drilled in rows about twenty inches apart. Of course, if the soil is rather warm and moist at planting-time, fewer seeds will be needed than when germination is likely to be slow. [Illustration: FIG. 211. SUGAR-BEET] A good rotation should always be planned for this beet. A very successful one is as follows: for the first year, corn heavily fertilized with stable manure; for the second year, sugar-beets; for the third year, oats or barley; for the fourth year, clover; then go back again to corn. In addition to keeping the soil fertile, there are two gains from this rotation: first, the clean cultivation of the corn crop just ahead of the beets destroys many of the weed seeds; second, the beets must be protected from too much nitrogen in the soil, for an excess of nitrogen makes a beet too large to be rich in sugar. The manure, heavily applied to the corn, will leave enough nitrogen and other plant food in the soil to make a good crop of beets and avoid any danger of an excess. When the outside leaves of the beet take on a yellow tinge and drop to the ground, the beets are ripe. The mature beets are richer in sugar than the immature, therefore they should not be harvested too soon. They may remain in the ground without injury for some time after they are ripe. Cold weather does not injure the roots unless it is accompanied by freezing and thawing. [Illustration: FIG. 212. SUGAR-BEETS ON THE WAY TO A FACTORY] The beets are harvested by sugar-beet pullers or by hand. If the roots are to be gathered by hand they are usually loosened by plowing on each side of them. If the roots are stored they should be put in long, narrow piles and covered with straw and earth to protect them from frost. A ventilator placed at the top of the pile will enable the heat and moisture to escape. If the beets get too warm they will ferment and some of their sugar will be lost. =Sugar-Cane.= Sugar-cane is grown along the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic coast. In Mississippi, in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, northern Louisiana, and in northern Texas it is generally made into sirup. In southern Louisiana and southern Texas the cane is usually crushed for sugar or for molasses. [Illustration: FIG. 213. STALK OF SUGAR-CANE _A-B_, joints of cane showing roots; _B-C_, stem; _C-D_, leaves] The sugar-cane is a huge grass. The stalk, which is round, is from one to two inches in thickness. The stalks vary in color. Some are white, some yellow, some green, some red, some purple, and some black, while others are a mixture of two or three of these colors. As shown in Fig. 214 the stalk has joints at distances of from two to six inches. These joints are called nodes, and the sections between the nodes are known as internodes. The internodes ripen from the roots upward, and as each ripens it casts its leaves. The stalk, when ready for harvesting, has only a few leaves on the top. [Illustration: Fig. 214. STICK OF SUGAR-CANE _A_, buds, or eyes; _C_, nodes; _D_, internodes; _X_, semi-transparent dots in rows] Under each leaf and on alternate sides of the cane a bud, or "eye," forms. From this eye the cane is usually propagated; for, while in tropical countries the cane forms seeds, yet these seeds are rarely fertile. When the cane is ripe it is stripped of leaves, topped, and cut at the ground with a knife. The sugar is contained in solution in the pith of the cane. Cane requires an enormous amount of water for its best growth, and where the rainfall is not great enough, the plants are irrigated. It requires from seventy-five to one hundred gallons of water to make a pound of sugar. Cane does best where there is a rainfall of two inches a week. At the same time a well-drained soil is necessary to make vigorous canes. The soils suited to this plant are those which contain large amounts of fertilizing material and which can hold much water. In southern Louisiana alluvial loams and loamy clay soils are cultivated. In Georgia, Alabama, and Florida light, sandy soils, when properly fertilized and worked, make good crops. [Illustration: FIG. 215. PLANTING SUGAR-CANE] [Illustration: FIG. 216. LOADING SUGAR-CANE] Cane is usually planted in rows from five to six feet apart. A trench is opened in the center of the row with a plow and in this open furrow is placed a continuous line of stalks which are carefully covered with plow, cultivator, or hoe. From one to three continuous lines of stalks are placed in the furrow. From two to six tons of seed cane are needed for an acre. In favorable weather the cane soon sprouts and cultivation begins. Cane should be cultivated at short intervals until the plants are large enough to shade the soil. In Louisiana one planting of cane usually gives two crops. The first is called plant cane; the second is known as first-year stubble, or ratoon. Sometimes second-year stubble is grown. [Illustration: FIG. 217. A COMMON TYPE OF SIRUP FACTORY] In Louisiana large quantities of tankage, cotton-seed meal, and acid phosphate are used to fertilize cane-fields. Each country has its own time for planting and harvesting. In Louisiana, for example, canes are planted from October to April. In the United States cane is harvested each year because of frost, but in tropical countries the stalks are permitted to grow from fifteen to twenty-four months. On many farms a small mill, the rollers of which are turned by horses, is used for crushing the juice out of the cane. The juice is then evaporated in a kettle or pan. This equipment is very cheap and can easily be operated by a small family. While these mills rarely extract more than one half of the juice in the cane, the sirup made by them is very palatable and usually commands a good price. Costly machinery which saves most of the juice is used in the large commercial sugar houses. SECTION XLVI. HEMP AND FLAX In the early ages of the world, mankind is supposed to have worn very little or no clothing. Then leaves and the inner bark of trees were fashioned into a protection from the weather. These flimsy garments were later replaced by skins and furs. As man advanced in knowledge, he learned how to twist wool and hairs into threads and to weave these into durable garments. Still later, perhaps, he discovered that some plants conceal under their outer bark soft, tough fibers that can be changed into excellent cloth. Flax and hemp were doubtless among the first plants to furnish this fiber. =Flax.= Among the fiber crops of the world, flax ranks next to cotton. It is the material from which is woven the linen for sheets, towels, tablecloths, shirts, collars, dresses, and a host of other articles. Fortunately for man, flax will thrive in many countries and in many climates. The fiber from which these useful articles are made, unlike cotton fiber, does not come from the fruit, but from the stem. It is the soft, silky lining of the bark which lies between the woody outside and the pith cells of the stem. The Old World engages largely in flax culture and flax manufacture, but in our country flax is grown principally for its seed. From the seeds we make linseed oil, linseed-oil cake, and linseed meal. Flax grows best on deep, loamy soils, but also makes a profitable growth on clay soils. With sufficient fertilizing material it can be grown on sandy lands. Nitrogen is especially needed by this plant and should be liberally supplied. To meet this demand for nitrogen, it pays to plant a leguminous crop immediately before flax. [Illustration: FIG. 218. FLAX] After a mellow seed-bed has been made ready and after the weather is fairly warm, sow, if a seed crop is desired, at the rate of from two to three pecks an acre. A good seed crop will not be harvested if the plants are too thick. On the other hand, if a fiber crop is to be raised, it is desirable to plant more thickly, so that the stalks may not branch, but run up into a single stem. From a bushel to two bushels of seed is in this case used to an acre. Flax requires care and work from start to finish. When the seeds are full and plump the flax is ready for harvesting. In America a binder is generally used for cutting the stalks. Our average yield of flax is from eight to fifteen bushels an acre. =Hemp.= Like flax, hemp adapts itself wonderfully to many countries and many climates. However, in America most of our hemp is grown in Kentucky. [Illustration: FIG. 219. CUTTING HEMP] Hemp needs soil rich enough to give the young plants a very rapid growth in their early days so that they may form long fibers. To give this crop abundant nitrogen without great cost, it should be grown in a rotation which includes one of the legumes. Rich, well-drained bottom-lands produce the largest yields of hemp, but uplands which have been heavily manured make profitable yields. The ground for hemp is prepared as for other grain crops. The seed is generally broadcasted for a fiber crop and then harrowed in. No cultivation is required after seeding. If hemp is grown for seed, it is best to plant with a drill so that the crop may be cultivated. The stalks after being cut are put in shocks until they are dry. Then the seeds are threshed. Large amounts of hemp seed are sold for caged birds and for poultry; it is also used for paint-oils. SECTION XLVII. BUCKWHEAT Buckwheat shares with rye and cowpeas the power to make a fairly good crop on poor land. At the same time, of course, a full crop can be expected only from fertile land. The three varieties most grown in America are the common gray, the silver-hull, and the Japanese. The seeds of the common gray are larger than the silver-hull, but not so large as the Japanese. The seeds from the gray variety are generally regarded as inferior to the other two. This crop is grown to best advantage in climates where the nights are cool and moist. It matures more quickly than any other grain crop and is remarkably free from disease. The yield varies from ten to forty bushels an acre. Buckwheat does not seem to draw plant food heavily from the soil and can be grown on the same land from year to year. In fertilizing buckwheat land, green manures and rich nitrogenous fertilizers should be avoided. These cause such a luxuriant growth that the stalks lodge badly. The time of seeding will have to be settled by the height of the land and by the climate. In northern climates and in high altitudes the seeding is generally done in May or June. In southern climates and in low altitudes the planting may wait until July or August. The plant usually matures in about seventy days. It cannot stand warm weather at blooming-time, and must always be planted so that it may escape warm weather in its blooming period and cold weather in its maturing season. The seeds are commonly broadcasted at an average rate of four pecks to the acre. If the land is loose and pulverized, it should be rolled. [Illustration: FIG. 220. BUCKWHEAT IN SHOCK] Buckwheat ripens unevenly and will continue to bloom until frost. Harvesting usually begins just after the first crop of seeds have matured. To keep the grains from shattering, the harvesting is best done during damp or cloudy days or early in the morning while the dew is still on the grain. The grain should be threshed as soon as it is dry enough to go through the thresher. Buckwheat is grown largely for table use. The grain is crushed into a dark flour that makes most palatable breakfast cakes. The grain, especially when mixed with corn, is becoming popular for poultry food. The middlings, which are rich in fats and protein, are prized for dairy cows. SECTION XLVIII. RICE The United States produces only about one half of the rice that it consumes. There is no satisfactory reason for our not raising more of this staple crop, for five great states along the Gulf of Mexico are well adapted to its culture. [Illustration: FIG. 221. THRESHING RICE] There are two distinct kinds of rice, upland rice and lowland rice. Upland rice demands in general the same methods of culture that are required by other cereals, for example, oats or wheat. The growing of lowland rice is considerably more difficult and includes the necessity of flooding the fields with water at proper times. A stiff, half-clay soil with some loam is best suited to this crop. The soil should have a clay subsoil to retain water and to give stiffness enough to allow the use of harvesting-machinery. Some good rice soils are so stiff that they must be flooded to soften them enough to admit of plowing. Plow deeply to give the roots ample feeding-space. Good tillage, which is too often neglected, is valuable. Careful seed-selection is perhaps even more needed for rice than for any other crop. Consumers want kernels of the same size. Be sure that your seed is free from red rice and other weeds. Drilling is much better than broadcasting, as it secures a more even distribution of the seed. The notion generally prevails that flooding returns to the soil the needed fertility. This may be true if the flooding-water deposits much silt, but if the water be clear it is untrue, and fertilizers or leguminous crops are needed to keep up fertility. Cowpeas replace the lost soil-elements and keep down weeds, grasses, and red rice. Red rice is a weed close kin to rice, but the seed of one will not produce the other. Do not allow it to get mixed and sowed with your rice seed or to go to seed in your field. SECTION XLIX. THE TIMBER CROP Forest trees are not usually regarded as a crop, but they are certainly one of the most important crops. We should accustom ourselves to look on our trees as needing and as deserving the same care and thought that we give to our other field crops. The total number of acres given to the growth of forest trees is still enormous, but we should each year add to this acreage. Unfortunately very few forests are so managed as to add yearly to their value and to preserve a model stand of trees. Axmen generally fell the great trees without thought of the young trees that should at once begin to fill the places left vacant by the fallen giants. Owners rarely study their woodlands to be sure that the trees are thick enough, or to find out whether the saplings are ruinously crowding one another. Disease is often allowed to slip in unchecked. Old trees stand long after they have outlived their usefulness. The farm wood-lot, too, is often neglected. As forests are being swept away, fuel is of course becoming scarcer and more costly. Every farmer ought to plant trees enough on his waste land to make sure of a constant supply of fuel. The land saved for the wood-lot should be selected from land unfit for cultivation. Steep hillsides, rocky slopes, ravines, banks of streams--these can, without much expense or labor, be set in trees and insure a never-ending fuel supply. [Illustration: FIG. 222. WOOD LOT Before proper treatment] The most common enemies of the forest crop are: First, forest fires. The waste from forest fires in the United States is most startling. Many of these fires are the result of carelessness or ignorance. Most of the states have made or are now making laws to prevent and to control such fires. Second, fungous diseases. The timber loss from these diseases is exceedingly great. Third, insects of many kinds prey on the trees. Some strip all the leaves from the branches. Others bore into the roots, trunk, or branches. Some lead to a slow death; others are more quickly fatal. Fourth, improper grazing. Turning animals into young woods may lead to serious loss. The animals frequently ruin young trees by eating all the foliage. Hogs often unearth and consume most of the seeds needed for a good growth. [Illustration: FIG. 223. WOOD LOT After proper treatment] The handling of forests is a business just as the growing of corn is a business. In old forests, dead and dying trees should be cut. Trees that occupy space and yet have little commercial value should give way to more valuable trees. A quick-growing tree, if it is equally desirable, should be preferred to a slow grower. An even distribution of the trees should be secured. In all there are about five hundred species of trees which are natives of the United States. Probably not over seventy of these are desirable for forests. In selecting trees to plant or to allow to grow from their own seeding, pick those that make a quick growth, that have a steady market value, and that suit the soil, the place of growth, and the climate. SECTION L. THE FARM GARDEN Every farmer needs a garden in which to grow not only vegetables but small fruits for the home table. The garden should always be within convenient distance of the farmhouse. If possible, the spot selected should have a soil of mixed loam and clay. Every foot of soil in the garden should be made rich and mellow by manure and cultivation. The worst soils for the home garden are light, sandy soils, or stiff, clayey soils; but any soil, by judicious and intelligent culture, can be made suitable. In laying out the garden we should bear in mind that hand labor is the most expensive kind of labor. Hence we should not, as is commonly done, lay off the garden spot in the form of a square, but we should mark off for our purpose a long, narrow piece of land, so that the cultivating tools may all be conveniently drawn by a horse or a mule. The use of the plow and the horse cultivator enables the cultivation of the garden to be done quickly, easily, and cheaply. Each vegetable or fruit should be planted in rows, and not in little patches. Beginning with one side of the garden the following plan of arrangement is simple and complete: two rows to corn for table use; two to cabbages, beets, radishes, and eggplants; two to onions, peas, and beans; two to oyster-plants, okra, parsley, and turnips; two to tomatoes; then four on the other side can be used for strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, currants, and gooseberries. [Illustration: FIG. 224. WHERE DELICIOUS GARDEN VEGETABLES GROW] The garden, when so arranged, can be tilled in the spring and tended throughout the growing season with little labor and little loss of time. In return for this odd-hour work, the farmer's family will have throughout the year an abundance of fresh, palatable, and health-giving vegetables and small fruits. The keynote of successful gardening is to stir the soil. Stir it often with four objects in view: 1. To destroy weeds. 2. To let air enter the soil. 3. To enrich the soil by the action of the air. 4. To retain the moisture by preventing its evaporation. corn corn cabbage beets radishes cabbage beets eggplants onions peas beans onions peas beans oyster-plants okra parsley parsnips oyster-plants okra parsley parsnips tomatoes tomatoes strawberries currants raspberries blackberries strawberries currants raspberries blackberries strawberries currants raspberries blackberries strawberries currants raspberries blackberries [Illustration: FIG. 225. HOW TO LAY OUT THE GARDEN[1]] This illustration shows that practically every garden vegetable and all the small fruits can be included in the farm garden, and all the work be done by horse-drawn tools. [Footnote 1: The number of rows and arrangement of the vegetables in the outline above are merely suggestive. They should be changed to meet the needs and the tastes of each particular family.] CHAPTER IX FEED STUFFS SECTION LI. GRASSES Under usual conditions no farmer expects to grow live stock successfully and economically without setting apart a large part of his land for the growth of mowing and pasture crops. Therefore to the grower of stock the management of grass crops is all-important. In planting either for a meadow or for a pasture, the farmer should mix different varieties of grass seeds. Nature mixes them when she plants, and Nature is always a trustworthy teacher. In planting for a pasture the aim should be to sow such seeds as will give green grass from early spring to latest fall. In seeding for a meadow such varieties should be sowed together as ripen about the same time. Even in those sections of the country where it grows sparingly and where it is easily crowded out, clover should be mixed with all grasses sowed, for it leaves in the soil a wealth of plant food for the grasses coming after it to feed on. Nearly every part of our country has some clover that experience shows to be exactly suited to its soil and climate. Study these clovers carefully and mix them with your grass seed. The reason for mixing clover and grass is at once seen. The true grasses, so far as science now shows, get all their nitrogen from the soil; hence they more or less exhaust the soil. But, as several times explained in this book, the clovers are legumes, and all legumes are able by means of the bacteria that live on their roots to use the free nitrogen of the air. Hence without cost to the farmer these clovers help the soil to feed their neighbors, the true grasses. For this reason some light perennial legume should always be added to grass seed. [Illustration: FIG. 226. SINGLE PLANT OF GIANT MILLET] It is not possible for grasses to do well in a soil that is full of weeds. For this reason it is always best to sow grass in fields from which cultivated crops have just been taken. Soil which is to have grass sowed in it should have its particles pressed together. The small grass seeds cannot take root and grow well in land that has just been plowed and which, consequently, has its particles loose and comparatively far apart. On the other hand, land from which a crop of corn or cotton has just been harvested is in a compact condition. The soil particles are pressed well together. Such land when mellowed by harrowing makes a splendid bed for grass seeds. A firm soil draws moisture up to the seeds, while a mellow soil acts as a blanket to keep moisture from wasting into the air, and at the same time allows the heated air to circulate in the soil. In case land has to be plowed for grass-seeding, the plowing should be done as far as possible in advance of the seeding. Then the plowed land should be harrowed several times to get the land in a soft, mellow condition. If the seed-bed be carefully prepared, little work on the ground is necessary after the seeds are sowed. One light harrowing is sufficient to cover the broadcast seeds. This harrowing should always be done as soon as the seeds are scattered, for if there be moisture in the soil the tiny seeds will soon sprout, and if the harrowing be done after germination is somewhat advanced, the tender grass plants will be injured. There are many kinds of pasture and meadow grasses. In New England, timothy, red clover, and redtop are generally used for the mowing crop. For permanent pasture, in addition to those mentioned, there should be added white clover and either Kentucky or Canadian blue grass. In the Southern states a good meadow or pasture can be made of orchard grass, red clover, and redtop. For a permanent pasture in the South, Japan clover, Bermuda, and such other local grasses as have been found to adapt themselves readily to the climate should be added. In the Middle States temporary meadows and pastures are generally made of timothy and red clover, while for permanent pastures white clover and blue grass thrive well. In the more western states the grasses previously suggested are readily at home. Alfalfa is proving its adaptability to nearly all sections and climates, and is in many respects the most promising grass crop of America. [Illustration: FIG. 227. BERMUDA] It hardly ever pays to pasture meadows, except slightly, the first season, and then only when the soil is dry. It is also poor policy to pasture any kind of grass land early in the spring when the soil is wet, because the tramping of animals crushes and destroys the crowns of the plants. After the first year the sward becomes thicker and tougher, and the grass is not at all injured if it is grazed wisely. [Illustration: FIG. 228. ALFALFA THE WONDERFUL The first crop of the season is being cut and stored for winter] The state of maturity at which grass should be harvested to make hay of the best quality varies somewhat with the different grasses and with the use which is to be made of the hay. Generally speaking, it is a good rule to cut grass for hay just as it is beginning to bloom or just after the bloom has fallen. All grasses become less palatable to stock as they mature and form seed. If grass be allowed to go to seed, most of the nutrition in the stalk is used to form the seed. [Illustration: FIG. 229. HARVESTING ALFALFA] Hence a good deal of food is lost by waiting to cut hay until the seeds are formed. Pasture lands and meadow lands are often greatly improved by replowing and harrowing in order to break up the turf that forms and to admit air more freely into the soil. The plant-roots that are destroyed by the plowing or harrowing make quickly available plant food by their decay, and the physical improvement of the soil leads to a thicker and better stand. In the older sections of the country commercial fertilizer can be used to advantage in producing hay and pasturage. If, however, clover has just been grown on grass land or if it is growing well with the grass, there is no need to add nitrogen. If the grass seems to lack sufficient nourishment, add phosphoric acid and potash. However, grass not grown in company with clover often needs dried blood, nitrate of soda, or some other nitrogen-supplying agent. Of course it is understood that no better fertilizer can be applied to grass than barnyard manure. SECTION LII. LEGUMES Often land which was once thought excellent is left to grow up in weeds. The owner says that the land is worn out, and that it will not pay to plant it. What does "worn out" mean? Simply that constant cropping has used up the plant food in the land. Therefore, plants on worn-out land are too nearly starved to yield bountifully. Such wearing out is so easily prevented that no owner ought ever to allow his land to become poverty-stricken. But in case this misfortune has happened, how can the land be again made fertile? On page 24 you learned that phosphoric acid, potash, and nitrogen are the foods most needed by plants. "Worn out," then, to put it in another way, usually means that a soil has been robbed of one of these plant necessities, or of two or of all three. To make the land once more fruitful it is necessary to restore the missing food or foods. How can this be done? Two of these plant foods, namely, phosphoric acid and potash, are minerals. If either of these is lacking, it can be supplied only by putting on the land some fertilizer containing the missing food. Fortunately, however, nitrogen, the most costly of the plant foods, can be readily and cheaply returned to poor land. [Illustration: FIG. 230. ALFALFA READY FOR THE THIRD CUTTING] As explained on page 32 the leguminous crops have the power of drawing nitrogen from the air and, by means of their root-tubercles, of storing it in the soil. Hence by growing these crops on poor land the expensive nitrogen is quickly restored to the soil, and only the two cheaper plant foods need be bought. How important it is then to grow these leguminous plants! Every farmer should so rotate his planting that at least once every two or three years a crop of legumes may add to the fruitfulness of his fields. Moreover these crops help land in another way. They send a multitude of roots deep into the ground. These roots loosen and pulverize the soil, and their decay, at the end of the growing season, leaves much humus in the soil. Land will rarely become worn out if legumes are regularly and wisely grown. From the fact that they do well in so many different sections and in so many different climates, the following are the most useful legumes: alfalfa, clovers, cowpeas, vetches, and soy beans. =Alfalfa.= Alfalfa is primarily a hay crop. It thrives in the Far West, in the Middle West, in the North, and in the South. In fact, it will do well wherever the soil is rich, moist, deep, and underlaid by an open subsoil. The vast areas given to this valuable crop are yearly increasing in every section of the United States. Alfalfa, however, unlike the cowpea, does not take to poor land. For its cultivation, therefore, good fertile land that is moist but not water-soaked should be selected. Good farmers are partial to alfalfa for three reasons. First, it yields a heavy crop of forage or hay. Second, being a legume, it improves the soil. Third, one seeding lasts a long time. This length of life may, however, be destroyed by pasturing or abusing the alfalfa. [Illustration: FIG. 231. SHEEP FATTENING ON ALFALFA STUBBLE] Alfalfa is different from most plants in this respect: the soil in which it grows must have certain kinds of bacteria in it. These cause the growth of tubercles on the roots. These bacteria, however, are not always present in land that has not been planted in alfalfa. Hence if this plant is to be grown successfully these helpful bacteria must sometimes be supplied artificially. There are two very easy ways of supplying the germs. First, fine soil from an alfalfa field may be scattered broadcast over the fields to be seeded. Second, a small mass of alfalfa tubercle germs may be put into a liquid containing proper food to make these germs multiply and grow; then the seeds to be planted are soaked in this liquid in order that the germs may fasten on the seeds. Before the seeds are sowed the soil should be mellowed. Over this well-prepared land about twenty pounds of seed to the acre should be scattered. The seed may be scattered by hand or by a seed-sower. Cover with a light harrow. The time of planting varies somewhat with the climate. Except where the winters are too severe the seed may be sowed either in the spring or in the fall. In the South sow only in the fall. [Illustration: FIG. 232. HERD OF DAIRY CATTLE GRAZING ON ALFALFA STUBBLE] During the first season one mowing, perhaps more, is necessary to insure a good stand and also to keep down the weeds. When the first blossoms appear in the early summer, it is time to start the mower. After this the alfalfa should be cut every two, three, or four weeks. The number of times depends on the rapidity of growth. This crop rarely makes a good yield the first year, but if a good stand be secured, the yield steadily increases. After a good stand has been secured, a top-dressing of either commercial fertilizer or stable manure will be very helpful. An occasional cutting-up of the sod with a disk harrow does much good. =Clovers.= The different kinds of clovers will sometimes grow on hard or poor soil, but they do far better if the soil is enriched and properly prepared before the seed is sowed. In many parts of our country it has been the practice for generations to sow clover seed with some of the grain crops. Barley, wheat, oats, and rye are the crops with which clover is usually planted, but many good farmers now prefer to sow the seed only with other grass seed. Circumstances must largely determine the manner of seeding. Crimson clover, which is a winter legume, usually does best when seeded alone, although rye or some other grain often seems helpful to it. This kind of clover is an excellent crop with which to follow cotton or corn. It is most conveniently sowed at the last cultivation of these crops. Common red clover, which is the standard clover over most of the country, is usually seeded with timothy or with orchard grass or with some other of the grasses. In sowing both crimson and red clover, about ten to fifteen pounds of seed for each acre are generally used. To make good pastures, white and Japan clover are favorites. White clover does well in most parts of America, and Japan clover is especially valuable in warm Southern climates. Both will do well even when the soil is partly shaded, but they do best in land fully open to the sun. Careful attention is required to cure clover hay well. The clover should always be cut before it forms seed. The best time to cut is when the plants are in full bloom. [Illustration: FIG. 233. CRIMSON CLOVER] Let the mower be started in the morning. Then a few hours later run over the field with the tedder. This will loosen the hay and let in air and sunshine. If the weather be fair let the hay lie until the next day, and then rake it into rows for further drying. After being raked, the hay may either be left in the rows for final curing or it may be put in cocks. If the weather be unsettled, it is best to cock the hay. Many farmers have cloth covers to protect the cocks and these often aid greatly in saving the hay crop in a rainy season. In case the hay is put in cocks, it should be opened for a final drying before it is housed. =Cowpeas.= The cowpea is an excellent soil-enricher. It supplies more fertilizing material to turn into the soil, in a short time and at small cost, than any other crop. Moreover, by good tillage and by the use of a very small amount of fertilizer, the cowpea can be grown on land too poor to produce any other crop. Its roots go deep into the soil. Hence they gather plant food and moisture that shallow-rooted plants fail to reach. These qualities make it an invaluable help in bringing worn-out lands back to fertility. The cowpea is a warm-weather legume. In the United States it succeeds best in the south and southwest. It has, however, in recent years been grown as far north as Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Minnesota, but in these cold climates other legumes are more useful. Cowpeas should never be planted until all danger of frost is past. Some varieties make their full growth in two months; others need four months. There are about two hundred varieties of cowpeas. These varieties differ in form, in the size of seed and of pod, in the color of seed and of pod, and in the time of ripening. They differ, too, in the manner of growth. Some grow erect; others sprawl on the ground. In selecting varieties it is well to choose those that grow straight up, those that are hardy, those that fruit early and abundantly, and those that hold their leaves. The variety selected for seed should also suit the land and the climate. The cowpea will grow in almost any soil. It thrives best and yields most bountifully on well-drained sandy loams. The plant also does well on clay soils. On light, sandy soils a fairly good crop may be made, but on such soils, wilt and root-knot are dangerous foes. A warm, moist, well-pulverized seed-bed should always be provided. Few plants equal the cowpea in repaying careful preparation. [Illustration: FIG. 234. COWPEAS] If this crop is grown for hay, the method of seeding and cultivating will differ somewhat from the method used when a seed crop is desired. When cowpeas are planted for hay the seeds should be drilled or broadcasted. If the seeds are small and the land somewhat rich, about four pecks should be sowed on each acre. If the seeds are comparatively large and the soil not so fertile, about six pecks should be sowed to the acre. It is safer to disk in the seeds when they are sowed broadcast than it is to rely on a harrow to cover them. In sowing merely for a hay crop, it is a good practice to mix sorghum, corn, soy beans, or millet with the cowpeas. The mixed hay is more easily harvested and more easily cured than unmixed cowpea hay. Shortly after seeding, it pays to run over the land lightly with a harrow or a weeder in order to break any crust that may form. Mowing should begin as soon as the stalks and the pods have finished growing and some of the lower leaves have begun to turn yellow. An ordinary mower is perhaps the best machine for cutting the vines. If possible, select only a bright day for mowing and do not start the machine until the dew on the vines is dried. Allow the vines to remain as they fell from the mower till they are wilted; then rake them into windrows. The vines should generally stay in the windrows for two or three days and be turned on the last day. They should then be put in small, airy piles or piled around a stake that has crosspieces nailed to it. The drying vines should never be packed; air must circulate freely if good hay is to be made. As piling the vines around stakes is somewhat laborious, some growers watch the curing carefully and succeed in getting the vines dry enough to haul directly from the windrows to the barns. Never allow the vines to stay exposed to too much sunshine when they are first cut. If the sun strikes them too strongly, the leaves will become brittle and shatter when they are moved. When cowpeas are grown for their pods to ripen, the seeds should be planted in rows about a yard apart. From two to three pecks of seeds to an acre should be sufficient. The growing plants should be cultivated two or three times with a good cultivator. Cowpeas were formerly gathered by hand, but such a method is of course slow and expensive. Pickers are now commonly used. Some farmers use the cowpea crop only as a soil-enricher. Hence they neither gather the seeds nor cut the hay, but plow the whole crop into the soil. There is an average of about forty-seven pounds of nitrogen in each ton of cowpea vines. Most of this valuable nitrogen is drawn by the plants from the air. This amount of nitrogen is equal to that contained in 9500 pounds of stable manure. In addition each ton of cowpea vines contains ten pounds of phosphoric acid and twenty-nine pounds of potash. There is danger in plowing into the soil at one time any bountiful green crop like cowpeas. As already explained on page 10, a process called capillarity enables moisture to rise in the soil as plants need it. Now if a heavy cowpea crop or any other similar crop be at one plowing turned into the soil, the soil particles will be so separated as to destroy capillarity. Too much vegetation turned under at once may also, if the weather be warm, cause fermentation to set in and "sour the land." Both of these troubles may be avoided by cutting up the vines with a disk harrow or other implement before covering them. The custom of planting cowpeas between the rows at the last working of corn is a good one, and wherever the climate permits this custom should be followed. =Vetches.= The vetches have been rapidly growing in favor for some years. Stock eat vetch hay greedily, and this hay increases the flow of milk in dairy animals and helps to keep animals fat and sleek. Only two species of vetch are widely grown. These are the tare, or spring vetch, and the winter, or hairy, vetch. Spring vetch is grown in comparatively few sections of our country. It is, however, grown widely in England and northern continental Europe. What we say here will be confined to hairy vetch. After a soil has been supplied with the germs needed by this plant, the hairy vetch is productive on many different kinds of soil. The plant is most vigorous on fertile loams. By good tillage and proper fertilization it may be forced to grow rather bountifully on poor sandy and clay loams. Acid or wet soils are not suited to vetch. Lands that are too poor to produce clovers will frequently yield fair crops of vetch. If this is borne in mind, many poor soils may be wonderfully improved by growing on them this valuable legume. [Illustration: FIG. 235. VETCH] Vetch needs a fine well-compacted seed-bed, but it is often sowed with good results on stubble lands and between cotton and corn rows, where it is covered by a cultivator or a weeder. The seeds of the vetch are costly and are brought chiefly from Germany, where this crop is much prized. The pods ripen so irregularly that they have to be picked by hand. In northern climates early spring sowing is found most satisfactory. In southern climates the seeding is best done in the late summer or early fall. As the vetch vines have a tendency to trail on the ground, it is wisest to plant with the vetch some crop like oats, barley, rye, or wheat. These plants will support the vetch and keep its vines from being injured by falling on the ground. Do not use rye with vetch in the South. It ripens too early to be of much assistance. If sowed with oats the seeding should be at the rate of about twenty or thirty pounds of vetch and about one and a half or two bushels of oats to the acre. Vetch is covered in the same way as wheat and rye. Few crops enrich soil more rapidly than vetch if the whole plant is turned in. It of course adds nitrogen to the soil and at the same time supplies the soil with a large amount of organic matter to decay and change to humus. As the crop grows during the winter, it makes an excellent cover to prevent washing. Many orchard-growers of the Northwest find vetch the best winter crop for the orchards as well as for the fields. =Soy, or Soja, Bean.= In China and Japan the soy bean is grown largely as food for man. In the United States it is used as a forage plant and as a soil-improver. It bids fair to become one of the most popular of the legumes. Like the cowpea, this bean is at home only in a warm climate. Some of the early-ripening varieties have, however, been planted with fair success in cold climates. While there are a large number of varieties of the soy bean, only about a dozen are commonly grown. They differ mainly in the color, size, and shape of the seeds, and in the time needed for ripening. Some of the varieties are more hairy than others. Soy beans may take many places in good crop-rotations, but they are unusually valuable in short rotations with small grains. The grains can be cut in time for the beans to follow them, and in turn the beans can be harvested in the early fall and make way for another grain crop. It should always be remembered that soy beans will not thrive unless the land on which they are to grow is already supplied, or is supplied at the time of sowing, with bean bacteria. [Illustration: FIG. 236. CHINESE SOY BEANS] The plant will grow on many different kinds of soil, but it needs a richer soil than the cowpea does. As the crop can gather most of its own nitrogen, it generally requires only the addition of phosphoric acid and potash for its growth on poor land. When the first crop is seeded, apply to each acre four hundred pounds of a fertilizing mixture which contains about ten per cent of phosphoric acid, four per cent of potash, and from one to two per cent of nitrogen. If the crop is planted for hay or for grazing, mellow the ground well, and then broadcast or drill in closely about one and a half bushels of seed to each acre. Cover from one to two inches deep, but never allow a crust to form over the seed, for the plant cannot break through a crust well. When the beans are planted for seeds, a half bushel of seed to the acre is usually sufficient. The plants should stand in the rows from four to six inches apart, and the rows should be from thirty to forty inches from one another. Never plant until the sun has thoroughly warmed the land. The bean may be sowed, however, earlier than cowpeas. A most convenient time is just after corn is planted. The rows should be cultivated often enough to keep out weeds and grass and to keep a good dust mulch, but the cultivation must be shallow. [Illustration: FIG. 237. SOY BEANS] As soy beans are grown for hay and also for seed, the harvesting will, as with the other legumes, be controlled by the purpose for which the crop was planted. In harvesting for a hay crop it is desirable to cut the beans after the pods are well formed but before they are fully grown. If the cutting is delayed until the pods are ripe, the fruit will shatter badly. There is a loss, too, in the food value of the stems if the cutting is late. The ordinary mowing-machine with a rake attached is generally the machine used for cutting the stalks. The leaves should be most carefully preserved, for they contain much nourishment for stock. [Illustration: FIG. 238. SOY BEANS IN CORN] Whenever the beans are grown for seeds, harvesting should begin when three fourths of the leaves have fallen and most of the pods are ripe. Do not wait, however, until the pods are so dry that they have begun to split and drop their seeds. A slight amount of dampness on the plants aids the cutting. The threshing may be done with a flail, with pea-hullers, or with a grain-threshing machine. The beans produce more seed to the acre than cowpeas do. Forty bushels is a high yield. The average yield is between twenty and thirty bushels. DESCRIPTIVE TABLE ADAPTATION AS Crop FOOD FOR ANIMALS LIFE REMARKS Alfalfa Hay Perennial All animals like it; hogs eat it even when it is dry. Red clover Hay and pasture Perennial Best of the clovers for hay. Alsike clover Hay and pasture Perennial Seeds itself for twenty years. This clover is a great favorite with bees. Mammoth clover Hay and pasture Perennial Best for green manure. White clover Pasture Perennial Excellent for lawns and bees. Japan clover Pasture Perennial Excellent for forest and old soils. Cowpea Hay and grain Annual Used for hay, green manure, and pastures. Soy bean Hay and grain Annual Often put in silo with corn. Vetches Hay and soiling Annual Pasture for sheep and swine. With cereals it makes excellent hay and soiling-food. CHAPTER X DOMESTIC ANIMALS The progress that a nation is making can with reasonable accuracy be measured by the kind of live stock it raises. The general rule is, poor stock, poor people. All the prosperous nations of the globe, especially the grain-growing nations, get a large share of their wealth from raising improved stock. The stock bred by these nations is now, however, very different from the stock raised by the same nations years ago. As soon as man began to progress in the art of agriculture he became dissatisfied with inferior stock. He therefore bent his energies to raise the standard of excellence in domestic animals. By slow stages of animal improvement the ugly, thin-flanked wild boar of early times has been transformed into the sleek Berkshire or the well-rounded Poland-China. In the same manner the wild sheep of the Old World have been developed into wool and mutton breeds of the finest excellence. By constant care, attention, and selection the thin, long-legged wild ox has been bred into the bounteous milk-producing Jerseys and Holsteins or into the Shorthorn mountains of flesh. From the small, bony, coarse, and shaggy horse of ancient times have descended the heavy Norman, or Percheron, draft horse and the fleet Arab courser. The matter of meat-production is one of vital importance to the human race, for animal food must always supply a large part of man's ration. Live stock of various kinds consume the coarser foods, like the grasses, hays, and grains, which man cannot use. As a result of this consumption they store in their bodies the exact substances required for building up the tissues of man's body. When the animal is used by man for food, one class of foods stored away in the animal's body produces muscle; another produces fat, heat, and energy. The food furnished by the slaughter of animals seems necessary to the full development of man. It is true that the flesh of an animal will not support human life so long as would the grain that the animal ate while growing, but it is also true that animal food does not require so much of man's force to digest it. Hence the use of meat forces a part of man's life-struggle on the lower animal. When men feed grain to stock, the animals receive in return power and food in their most available forms. Men strengthen the animal that they themselves may be strengthened. One of the great questions, then, for the stock-grower's consideration is how to make the least amount of food fed to animals produce the most power and flesh. SECTION LIII. HORSES While we have a great many kinds of horses in America, horses are not natives of this country. Just where wild horses were first tamed and used is not certainly known. It is believed that in early ages the horse was a much smaller animal than it now is, and that it gradually attained its present size. Where food was abundant and nutritious and the climate mild and healthful, the early horses developed large frames and heavy limbs and muscles; on the other hand, where food was scarce and the climate cold and bleak, the animals remained as dwarfed as the ponies of the Shetland Islands. [Illustration: FIG. 239. THE FAMILY PET] One of the first records concerning the horse is found in Genesis xlix, 17, where Jacob speaks of "an adder that biteth the horse heels." Pharaoh took "six hundred chosen chariots" and "with all the horses and chariots" pursued the Israelites. The Greeks at first drove the horse fastened to a rude chariot; later they rode on its back, learning to manage the animal with voice or switch and without either saddle or bridle. This thinking people soon invented the snaffle bit, and both rode and drove with its aid. The curb bit was a Roman invention. Shoeing was not practiced by either Greeks or Romans. Saddles and harnesses were at first made of skins and sometimes of cloth. Among the Tartars of middle and northern Asia and also among some other nations, mare's milk and the flesh of the horse are used for food. Old and otherwise worthless horses are regularly fattened for the meat markets of France and Germany. Various uses are made of the different parts of a horse's body. The mane and tail are used in the manufacture of mattresses, and also furnish a haircloth for upholstering; the skin is tanned into leather; the hoofs are used for glue, and the bones for making fertilizer. [Illustration: FIG. 240. PERCHERON HORSE (A DRAFT TYPE)] Climate, food, and natural surroundings have all aided in producing changes in the horse's form, size, and appearance. The varying circumstances under which horses have been raised have given rise to the different breeds. In addition, the masters' needs had much to do in developing the type of horses wanted. Some masters desired work horses, and kept the heavy, muscular, stout-limbed animals; others desired riding and driving horses, so they saved for their use the light-limbed, angular horses that had endurance and mettle. The following table gives some of the different breeds and the places of their development: [Illustration: FIG. 241. Diagram shows the proper shape of the fore and hind legs of a horse. When the straight lines divide the legs equally, the leg action is straight and regular] I. _Draft, or Heavy, Breeds_ 1. Percheron, from the province of Perche, France. 2. French Draft, developed in France. 3. Belgian Draft, developed by Belgian farmers. 4. Clydesdale, the draft horse of Scotland. 5. Suffolk Punch, from the eastern part of England. 6. English Shire, also from the eastern part of England. II. _Carriage, or Coach, Breeds_ 1. Cleveland Bay, developed in England. 2. French Coach, the gentleman's horse of France. 3. German Coach, from Germany. 4. Oldenburg Coach, Oldenburg, Germany. 5. Hackney, the English high-stepper. III. _Light, or Roadster, Breeds_ 1. American Trotter, developed in America. 2. Thoroughbred, the English running horse. 3. American Saddle Horse, from Kentucky and Virginia. There is a marked difference in the form and type of these horses, and on this difference their usefulness depends. [Illustration: FIG. 242. WIDE HOCK This horse stands great strains and is not fatigued easily] [Illustration: FIG. 243. NARROW HOCK This horse becomes exhausted very easily] The draft breeds have short legs, and hence their bodies are comparatively close to the ground. The depth of the body should be about the same as the length of leg. All draft horses should have upright shoulders, so as to provide an easy support for the collar. The hock should be wide, so that the animal shall have great leverage of muscle for pulling. A horse having a narrow hock is not able to draw a heavy load and is easily exhausted and liable to curb-diseases (see Figs. 242 and 243). [Illustration: FIG. 244. THE ROADSTER TYPE] The legs of all kinds of horses should be straight; a line dropped from the point of the shoulder to the ground should divide the knees, canon, fetlock, and foot into two equal parts. When the animal is formed in this way the feet have room to be straight and square, with just the breadth of a hoof between them (Fig. 241). Roadsters are lighter in bone and less heavily muscled; their legs are longer than those of the draft horses and, as horsemen say, more "daylight" can be seen under the body. The neck is long and thin, but fits nicely into the shoulders. The shoulders are sloping and long and give the roadster ability to reach well out in his stride. The head is set gracefully on the neck and should be carried with ease and erectness. Every man who is to deal with horses ought to become, by observation and study, an expert judge of forms, qualities, types, defects, and excellences. [Illustration: FIG. 245. SIDE VIEW OF LEGS The diagram shows how the straight lines ought to cross the legs of a properly shaped horse] The horse's foot makes an interesting study. The horny outside protects the foot from mud, ice, and stones. Inside the hoof are the bones and gristle that serve as cushions to diminish the shock received while walking or running on hard roads or streets. When shoeing the horse the frog should not be touched with the knife. It is very seldom that any cutting need be done. Many blacksmiths do not know this and often greatly injure the foot. Since the horse has but a small stomach, the food given should not be too bulky. In proportion to the horse's size, its grain ration should be larger than that of other animals. Draft horses and mules, however, can be fed a more bulky ration than other horses, because they have larger stomachs and consequently have more room to store food. [Illustration: FIG. 246. HOW TO MEASURE A HORSE] The horse should be groomed every day. This keeps the pores of the skin open and the hair bright and glossy. When horses are working hard, the harness should be removed during the noon hour. During the cool seasons of the year, whenever a horse is wet with sweat, it should on stopping work, or when standing for awhile, be blanketed, for the animal is as liable as man to get cold in a draft or from moisture evaporating rapidly from its skin. EXERCISE If the pupil will take an ordinary tape measure, he can make some measurements of the horse that will be very interesting as well as profitable. Let him measure: 1. The height of the horse at the withers, 1 to 1. 2. The height of the horse at croup, 2 to 2. 3. Length of shoulder, 1 to 3. 4. Length of back, 4. 5. Length of head, 5. 6. Depth of body, 6 to 6. 7. Daylight under body, 7 to 7. 8. Distance from point of shoulder to quarter, 3 to 3. 9. Width of forehead. 10. Width between hips. NOTE. Many interesting comparisons can be made (1) by measuring several horses; (2) by studying the proportion between parts of the same horse. PROPORTIONS OF A HORSE 1. How many times longer is the body than the head? Do you get the same result from different horses? 2. How does the height at the withers compare with the height at the croup? 3. How do these compare with the distance from quarter to shoulder? 4. How does the length of the head compare with the thickness of the body and with the open space, or "daylight," under the body? SECTION LIV. CATTLE All farm animals were once called _cattle_; now this term applies only to beef and dairy animals--neat cattle. Our improved breeds are descended from the wild ox of Europe and Asia, and have attained their size and usefulness by care, food, and selection. The uses of cattle are so familiar that we need scarcely mention them. Their flesh is a part of man's daily food; their milk, cream, butter, and cheese are on most tables; their hides go to make leather, and their hair for plaster; their hoofs are used for glue, and their bones for fertilizers, ornaments, buttons, and many other purposes. [Illustration: FIG. 247. A PRIZE-WINNER] There are two main classes of cattle--beef breeds and dairy breeds. The principal breeds of each class are as follows: I. _Beef Breeds_ 1. Aberdeen-Angus, bred in Scotland, and often called _doddies_. 2. Galloway, from Scotland. 3. Shorthorn, an English breed of cattle. 4. Hereford, also an English breed. 5. Sussex, from the county of Sussex, England. II. _Dairy Breeds_ 1. Jersey, from the Isle of Jersey. 2. Guernsey, from the Isle of Guernsey. 3. Ayrshire, from Scotland. 4. Holstein-Frisian, from Holland and Denmark. 5. Brown Swiss, from Switzerland. Other breeds of cattle are Devon, Dutch Belted, Red-Polled, Kerry, and West Highland. In general structure there is a marked difference between the beef and dairy breeds. This is shown in Figs. 248, 249. The beef cow is square, full over the back and loins, and straight in the back. The hips are covered evenly with flesh, the legs full and thick, the under line, or stomach line, parallel to the back line, and the neck full and short. The eye should be bright, the face short, the bones of fine texture, and the skin soft and pliable. [Illustration: FIG. 248. ABERDEEN-ANGUS COW (A BEEF TYPE)] The dairy cow is widely different from the beef cow. She shows a decided wedge shape when you look at her from front, side, or rear. The back line is crooked, the hip bones and tail bone are prominent, the thighs thin and poorly fleshed; there is no breadth to the back, as in the beef cow, and little flesh covers the shoulders; the neck is long and thin. The udder of the dairy cow is most important. It should be full but not fleshy, be well attached behind, and extend well forward. The larger the udder the more milk will be given. The skin of the dairy cow, like that of the beef breeds, should be soft and pliable and the bones fine-textured. =The Dairy Type.= Because of lack of flesh on the back, loins, and thighs, the cow of the dairy type is not profitably raised for beef, nor is the beef so good as that of the beef types. This is because in the dairy-animal food goes to produce milk rather than beef. In the same way the beef cow gives little milk, since her food goes rather to fat than to milk. For the same reasons that you do not expect a plow horse to win on the race track, you do not expect a cow of the beef type to win premiums as a milker. [Illustration: FIG. 249. JERSEY COW (A DAIRY TYPE)] "Scrub" cattle are not profitable. They mature slowly and consequently consume much food before they are able to give any return for it. Even when fattened, the fat and lean portions are not evenly distributed, and "choice cuts" are few and small. By far the cheapest method of securing a healthy and profitable herd of dairy or beef cattle is to save only the calves whose sires are pure-bred animals and whose mothers are native cows. In this way farmers of even little means can soon build up an excellent herd. =Improving Cattle.= The fact that it is not possible for every farmer to possess pure-bred cattle is no reason why he should not improve the stock he has. He can do this by using pure-bred sires that possess the qualities most to be desired. Scrub stock can be quickly improved by the continuous use of good sires. It is never wise to use grade, or cross-bred, sires, since the best qualities are not fixed in them. [Illustration: FIG. 250. HEAD OF A GALLOWAY COW] Moreover, it is possible for every farmer to determine exactly the producing-power of his dairy cows. When the cows are milked, the milk should be weighed and a record kept. If this be done, it will be found that some cows produce as much as five hundred, and some as much as ten hundred, gallons a year, while others produce not more than two or three hundred gallons. If a farmer kills or sells his poor cows and keeps his best ones, he will soon have a herd of only heavy milkers. Ask your father to try this plan. Read everything you can find about taking care of cows and improving them, and then start a herd of your own. =Conclusions.= (1) A cow with a tendency to get fat is not profitable for the dairy. (2) A thin, open, angular cow will make expensive beef. (3) "The sire is half the herd." This means that a good sire is necessary to improve a herd of cattle. The improvement from scrubs upward is as follows: the first generation is one-half pure; the second is three-fourths pure; the third is seven-eighths pure; the fourth is fifteen-sixteenths pure, etc. (4) By keeping a record of the quantity and quality of milk each cow gives you can tell which are profitable to raise from and which are not. (5) Good food, clean water, kindness, and care are necessary to successful cattle-raising. [Illustration: FIG. 251. HOLSTEIN COW] The ownership of a well-bred animal usually arouses so much pride in the owner that the animal receives all the care that it merits. The watchful care given to such an animal leads to more thought of the other animals on the farm, and often brings about the upbuilding of an entire herd. SECTION LV. SHEEP The sheep was perhaps the first animal domesticated by man, and to-day the domesticated sheep is found wherever man lives. It is found domesticated or wild in almost every climate, and finds means to thrive where other animals can scarcely live; it provides man with meat and clothing, and is one of the most profitable and most easily cared-for of animals. [Illustration: FIG. 252. A YOUNG SHEPHERD] Sheep increase so rapidly, mature at such an early age, and have flesh so wholesome for food that nearly every farm should have its flock. Another consideration that may be urged in favor of sheep-raising is that sheep improve the land on which they are pastured. Sheep are docile and easily handled, and they live on a greater diversity of food and require less grain than any other kind of live stock. In mixed farming there is enough food wasted on most farms to maintain a small flock of sheep. [Illustration: FIG. 253. SHEEP HAVE LONG BEEN CALLED THE GOLDEN-HOOFED ANIMALS] Sheep may be divided into three classes: I. _Fine-Wooled Breeds_ 1. American Merino. 2. Delaine Merino. 3. Rambouillets. 4. Hampshire Down. 5. Oxford Down. 6. Cheviot. II. _Medium-Wooled Breeds_ 1. Southdown. 2. Shropshire. 3. Horned Dorset. III. _Long-Wooled Breeds_ 1. Leicester. 2. Lincoln. 3. Cotswold. [Illustration: FIG. 254. IN THE PASTURE] The first group is grown principally for wool, and mutton is secondary; in the second group, mutton comes first and wool second; in the third group both are important considerations. Wool is nature's protection for the sheep. Have you ever opened the fleece and observed the clean skin in which the fibers grow? These fibers, or hairs, are so roughened that they push all dirt away from the skin toward the outside of the fleece. Wool is valuable in proportion to the length and evenness of the fiber and the density of the fleece. EXERCISE 1. How many pounds ought a fleece of wool to weigh? 2. Which makes the better clothing, coarse or fine wool? 3. Why are sheep washed before being sheared? 4. Does cold weather trouble sheep? wet weather? SECTION LVI. SWINE The wild boar is a native of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The wild hogs are the parents from which all our domestic breeds have sprung. In many parts of the world the wild boar is still found. These animals are active and powerful, and as they grow older are fierce and dangerous. In their wild state they seek moist, sandy, and well-wooded places, close to streams of water. Their favorite foods are fruits, grass, and roots, but when pressed by hunger they will eat snakes, worms, and even higher animals, like birds, fowls, and fish. [Illustration: FIG. 255. WHICH WILL YOU RAISE?] Man captured some of these wild animals, fed them abundant and nutritious food, accustomed them to domestic life, selected the best of them to raise from, and in the course of generations developed our present breeds of hogs. The main changes brought about in hogs were these: the legs became shorter, the snout and neck likewise shortened, the shoulders and hams increased their power to take on flesh, and the frame was strengthened to carry the added burden of flesh. As the animal grew heavier it roamed less widely, and as it grew accustomed to man its temper became less fierce. [Illustration: FIG. 256. A PAIR OF PORKERS] Meat can be more cheaply obtained from hogs than from any other animal. When a hog is properly fed and cared for it will make the farmer more money in proportion to cost than any other animal on the farm. The most profitable type of hog has short legs, small bones, straight back and under line, heavy hams, small well-dished head, and heavy shoulders. The scrub and "razorback" hogs are very unprofitable, and require an undue amount of food to produce a pound of gain. It requires two years to get the scrub to weigh what a well-bred pig will weigh when nine months old. Scrub hogs can be quickly changed in form and type by the use of a pure-bred sire. A boy whose parents were too poor to send him to college once decided to make his own money and get an education. He bought a sow and began to raise pigs. He earned the food for the mother and her pigs. His hogs increased so rapidly that he had to work hard to keep them in food. By saving the money he received from the sale of his hogs he had enough to keep him two years in college. Suppose you try his plan, and let the hog show you how fast it can make money. [Illustration: FIG. 257. A GOOD TYPE] We have several breeds of swine. The important ones are: I. _Large Breeds_ 1. Chester White. 2. Improved Yorkshire. 3. Tamworth. II. _Medium Breeds_ 1. Berkshire. 2. Poland-China. 3. Duroc-Jersey. 4. Cheshire. III. _Small Breeds_ 1. Victoria. 2. Suffolk. 3. Essex. 4. Small Yorkshire. Hogs will be most successfully raised when kept as little as possible in pens. They like the fields and the pasture grass, the open air and the sunshine. Almost any kind of food can be given them. Unlike other stock, they will devour greedily and tirelessly the richest feeding-stuffs. The most desirable hog to raise is one that will produce a more or less even mixture of fat and lean. Where only corn is fed, the body becomes very fat and is not so desirable for food as when middlings, tankage, cowpeas, or soy beans are added as a part of the ration. [Illustration: FIG. 258. DINNER IS OVER] When hogs are kept in pens, cleanliness is most important, for only by cleanliness can disease be avoided. SECTION LVII. FARM POULTRY Our geese, ducks, turkeys, and domestic hens are all descendants of wild fowls, and are more or less similar to them in appearance. The earliest recorded uses of fowls were for food, for fighting, and for sacrifice. To-day the domestic fowl has four well-defined uses--egg-production, meat-production, feather-production, and pest-destruction. [Illustration: STANDARD-BRED FOWLS Barred Plymouth Rocks, male and female; White Wyandottes, female and male] Hens of course produce most of our eggs. Some duck eggs are sold for table use. Goose and duck body-feathers bring good prices. As pest-destroyers turkeys and chickens are most useful. They eat large numbers of bugs and worms that are harmful to crops. A little proper attention would very largely increase the already handsome sum derived from our fowls. They need dry, warm, well-lighted, and tidily kept houses. They must have, if we want the best returns, an abundant supply of pure water and a variety of nutritious foods. In cold, rainy, or snowy weather they should have a sheltered yard, and in good weather should be allowed a range wide enough to give them exercise. Their bodies and their nests must be protected from every form of vermin. For eggs, the Leghorn varieties are popular. Some hens of this breed have been known to lay more than two hundred eggs in a year. Specially cared-for flocks have averaged eleven or even twelve dozen eggs a year. Farm flocks of ordinary breeds average less than eight dozen. Other excellent egg breeds are the Spanish, Andalusian, and Minorca. [Illustration: FIG. 259. COCK] The principal so-called meat breeds are the Brahma, Cochin, and Langshan. These are very large, but rather slow-growing fowls, and are not noted as layers. They are far less popular in America, even as meat-producers, than the general-purpose breeds. The Plymouth Rock, Wyandotte, Rhode Island Red, and Orpington are the leading general-purpose breeds. They are favorites because they are at once good-sized, good layers, tame, and good mothers. The chicks of these breeds are hardy and thrifty. In addition to these breeds, there are many so-called fancy breeds that are prized for their looks rather than for their value. Among these are the Hamburg, Polish, Sultan, Silkie, and the many Bantam breeds. The leading duck breeds are the Pekin, Aylesbury, Indian Runner, Muscovy, Rouen, and Cayuga. The principal varieties of geese are the Toulouse, Emden, Chinese, and African. Among the best breeds of turkeys are the Bronze, White Holland, Narragansett, Bourbon, Slate, and Buff. Geese, ducks, and turkeys are not so generally raised as hens, but there is a constant demand at good prices for these fowls. [Illustration: FIG. 260. BROODER] The varieties of the domestic hen are as follows: I. _Egg Breeds_ 1. Leghorn. 2. Minorca. 3. Spanish. 4. Blue Andalusian. 5. Anconas. II. _Meat Breeds_ 1. Brahma. 2. Cochin. 3. Langshan. 4. Dorking. 5. Cornish. III. _General-Purpose Breeds_ 1. Plymouth Rock. 2. Wyandotte. 3. Rhode Island Red. 4. Orpington. IV. _Fancy Breeds_ 1. Polish. 2. Game. 3. Sultan. 4. Bantam. [Illustration: FIG. 261. BREEDING YARDS] [Illustration: FIG. 262. INCUBATOR] As the price of both eggs and fowls is steadily advancing, a great many people are now raising fowls by means of an incubator for hatching, and a brooder as a substitute for the mother hen. The use of the incubator is extending each year and is now almost universal where any considerable number of chicks are to be hatched. Doubtless it will continue to be used wherever poultry-production is engaged in on a large scale. The brooder is employed to take care of the chickens as soon as they leave the incubator. SECTION LVIII. BEE CULTURE Stock-raisers select breeds that are best adapted to their needs. Plant-growers exercise great care in their choice of plants, selecting for each planting those best suited to the conditions under which they are to be grown. Undoubtedly a larger yield of honey could be had each year if similar care were exercised in the selection of the breed of bees. [Illustration: FIG. 263. A CARNIOLAN WORKER] To prove this, one has only to compare the yield of two different kinds. The common East Indian honey bee rarely produces more than ten or twelve pounds to a hive, while the Cyprian bee, which is a most industrious worker, has a record of one thousand pounds in one season from a single colony. This bee, besides being industrious when honey material is plentiful, is also very persevering when such material is hard to find. The Cyprians have two other very desirable qualities. They stand the cold of winter well and stoutly defend their hives against robber bees and other enemies. The Italian is another good bee. This variety was brought into the United States in 1860. While the yield from the Italian is somewhat less than from the Cyprian, the Italian bees produce a whiter comb and are a trifle more easily managed. The common black or brown bee is found wild and domesticated throughout the country. When honey material is abundant, these bees equal the Italians in honey-production, but when the season is poor, they fall far short in the amount of honey produced. The purchase of a good Cyprian or Italian hive will richly repay the buyer. Such a colony will cost more at the outset than an ordinary colony, but will soon pay for its higher cost by greater production. [Illustration: FIG. 264. A CARNIOLAN DRONE] A beehive in the spring contains one queen, several hundred drones, and from thirty-five to forty thousand workers. The duty of the queen is to lay all the eggs that are to hatch the future bees. This she does with untiring industry, often laying as many as four thousand in twenty-four hours. The worker bees do all the work. Some of them visit the flowers, take up the nectar into the honey-sac, located in their abdomens, and carry it to the hive. They also gather pollen in basketlike cavities in their hind legs. Pollen and nectar are needed to prepare food for the young bees. In the hive other workers create a breeze by buzzing with their wings and produce heat by their activity--all to cause the water to evaporate from the nectar and to convert it into honey before it is sealed up in the comb. After a successful day's gathering you may often hear these tireless workers buzzing till late into the night or even all through the night. You know that the bees get nectar from the flowers of various plants. Some of the chief honey plants are alfalfa, buckwheat, horsemint, sourwood, white sage, wild pennyroyal, black gum, holly, chestnut, magnolia, and the tulip tree. The yield of honey may often be increased by providing special pasturage for the bees. The linden tree, for example, besides being ornamental and valuable for timber, produces a most bee-inviting flower. Vetch, clover, and most of the legumes and mints are valuable plants to furnish pasture for bees. Catnip may be cultivated for the bees and sold as an herb as well. [Illustration: FIG. 265. A CARNIOLAN QUEEN] In spraying fruit trees to prevent disease you should always avoid spraying when the trees are in bloom, since the poison of the spray seriously endangers the lives of bees. The eggs laid by the queen, if they are to produce workers, require about twenty-one days to bring forth the perfect bee. The newly hatched bee commences life as a nurse. When about ten days old it begins to try its wings in short flights, and a few days later it begins active work. The life of a worker bee in the busy season is only about six weeks. You may distinguish young exercising bees from real workers by the fact that they do not fly directly away on emerging from the hive, but circle around a bit in order to make sure that they can recognize home again, since they would receive no cordial welcome if they should attempt to enter another hive. They hesitate upon returning from even these short flights, to make sure that they are in front of their own door. [Illustration: FIG. 266. GOOD FORM OF HIVE] There are several kinds of enemies of the bee which all beekeepers should know. One of these is the robber bee, that is, a bee from another colony attempting to steal honey from the rightful owners, an attempt often resulting in frightful slaughter. Much robbery can be avoided by clean handling; that is, by leaving no honey about to cultivate a taste for stolen sweets. The bee moth is another serious enemy. The larva of the moth feeds on the wax. Keep the colonies of bees strong so that they may be able to overcome this moth. [Illustration: FIG. 267. ANTI-ROBBING ENTRANCE _st_, stationary piece; _s_, slide; _p_, pin, or stop] Queenless or otherwise weak colonies should be protected by a narrow entrance that admits only one bee at a time, for such a pass may be easily guarded. Fig. 267 shows a good anti-robbery entrance which may be readily provided for every weak colony. Mice may be kept out by tin-lined entrances. The widespread fear of the kingbird seems unfounded. He rarely eats anything but drones, and few of them. This is also true of the swallow. Toads, lizards, and spiders are, however, true enemies of the honeybee. EXERCISE Can you recognize drones, workers, and queens? Do bees usually limit their visits to one kind of blossom on any one trip? What effect has the kind of flower on the flavor of the honey produced? What kinds of flowers should the beekeeper provide for his bees? Is the kingbird really an enemy to the bee? SECTION LIX. WHY WE FEED ANIMALS In the first place, we give various kinds of feed stuffs to our animals that they may live. The heart beats all the time, the lungs contract and expand, digestion is taking place, the blood circulates through the body--something must supply force for these acts or the animal dies. This force is derived from food. In the next place, food is required to keep the body warm. Food in this respect is fuel, and acts in the same way that wood or coal does in the stove. Our bodies are warm all the time, and they are kept warm by the food we eat at mealtime. Then, in the third place, food is required to enable the body to enlarge--to grow. If you feed a colt just enough to keep it alive and warm, there will be no material present to enable it to grow; hence you must add enough food to form bone and flesh and muscle and hair and fat. In the fourth place, we feed to produce strength for work. An animal poorly fed cannot do so much work at the plow or on the road as one that receives all the food needed. Both food and the force produced by it result from the activity of plants. By means of sunlight and moisture a sprouting seed, taking out of the air and soil different elements, grows into a plant. Then, just as the plant feeds on the air and soil to get its growth, so the animal feeds on the plant, to get its growth. Hence, since our animals feed upon plants, we must find out what is in plants in order to know what animal food consists of. Plants contain protein, carbohydrates, fat, mineral matter, water, and vitamins. You have seen protein compounds like the white of an egg, lean meat, or the gluten of wheat. The bodies of plants do not contain very much protein. On the other hand, all plant seeds contain a good deal of this substance. Animals make use of protein to form new blood, muscles, and organs. Because of the quality of protein, milk is the best food for children and young animals. The protein in some foods is of poor quality. To insure a well-balanced supply of protein a variety in foods is desirable. Do not rely on a single kind of mill feed, but combine several kinds, such as cotton-seed meal, linseed meal, wheat bran and middlings, gluten, and similar grain by-products. Tankage for young pigs and meat scraps for chickens are high-grade proteins and are of animal origin. It is no less important to get the necessary vitamins--those mysterious substances that keep the body healthy and promote growth and well-being. Scientists claim that many diseases are food-deficiency diseases--the body gets out of order because these peculiar vitamins are lacking in the food. Children require about one or two quarts of milk a day, fresh fruits, cereal breakfast foods, leafy vegetables as salads, and cooked vegetables. Farm animals require the vitamins also. The legume pasture or hay, milk, grain concentrates when supplied in variety, pasture grass, and green forage crops are basic foods for farm animals. Very young animals should have milk also. Let us next consider the carbohydrates. Sometimes the words _starchy foods_ are used to describe the carbohydrates. You have long known forms of these in the white material of corn and of potatoes. The carbohydrates are formed of three elements--carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The use of these carbohydrates is to furnish to animal bodies either heat or energy or to enable them to store fat. In the next place, let us look at the fat in plant food. This consists of the oil stored up in the seeds and other parts of the plant. The grains contain most of the oil. Fat is used by the animal to make heat and energy or to be stored away in the body. The next animal food in the plant that we are to think about is the mineral matter. The ashes of a burnt plant furnish a common example of this mineral matter. The animal uses this material of the plant to make bone, teeth, and tissue. The last thing that the plant furnishes the animal is water--just common water. Young plants contain comparatively large quantities of water. This is one reason why they are soft, juicy, and palatable. But, since animals get their water chiefly in another way, the water in feed stuffs is not important. WHAT THESE COMPOUNDS DO IN THE BODY _Protein_ 1. Forms flesh, bone, blood, internal organs, hair, and milk. 2. May be used to make fat. 3. May be used for heat. 4. May be used to produce energy. _Carbohydrates_ 1. Furnish body heat. 2. Furnish energy. 3. Make fat. _Fat_ 1. Furnishes body heat. 2. Furnishes energy. 3. Furnishes body fat. _Mineral Matter_ Furnishes mineral matter for the bones in the body. _Water_ Supplies water in the body. CHAPTER XI FARM DAIRYING SECTION LX. THE DAIRY COW Success in dairy farming depends largely upon the proper feeding of stock. There are two questions that the dairy farmer should always ask himself: Am I feeding as cheaply as I can? and, Am I feeding the best rations for milk and butter production? Of course cows can be kept alive and in fairly good milk flow on many different kinds of food, but in feeding, as in everything else, there is an ideal to be sought. [Illustration: FIG. 268. MILKING-TIME] What, then, is an ideal ration for a dairy cow? Before trying to answer this question the word _ration_ needs to be explained. By ration is meant a sufficient quantity of food to support properly an animal for one day. If the animal is to have a proper ration, we must bear in mind what the animal needs in order to be best nourished. To get material for muscle, for blood, for milk, and for some other things, the animal needs, in the first place, food that contains protein. To keep warm and fat, the animal must, in the second place, have food containing carbohydrates and fats. These foods must be mixed in right proportions. [Illustration: FIG. 269. A DAIRY] With these facts in mind we are prepared for an answer to the question, What is an ideal ration? First, it is a ration that, without waste, furnishes both in weight and bulk of dry matter a sufficient amount of digestible, nutritious food. Second, it is a ration that is comparatively cheap. Third, it is a ration in which the milk-forming food (protein) is rightly proportioned to the heat-making and fat-making food (carbohydrates and fat). Any ration in which this proportion is neglected is badly balanced. Now test one or two commonly used rations by these rules. Would a ration of cotton-seed meal and cotton-seed hulls be a model ration? No. Such a ration, since the seeds are grown at home, would be cheap enough. However, it is badly balanced, for it is too rich in protein; hence it is a wasteful ration. Would a ration of corn meal and corn stover be a desirable ration? This, too, since the corn is home-grown, would be cheap for the farmer; but, like the other, it is badly balanced, for it contains too much carbohydrate food and is therefore a wasteful ration. A badly balanced ration does harm in two ways: first, the milk flow of the cow is lessened by such a ration; second, the cow does not profitably use the food that she eats. The following table gives an excellent dairy ration for the farmer who has a silo. If he does not have a silo, some other food can be used in place of the ensilage. The table also shows what each food contains. As you grow older, it will pay you to study such tables most carefully. =============================================================== | DIGESTIBLE MATTER |---------------------------------- FEED STUFFS | Dry |Protein|Carbohydrates| Fat |matter| | | --------------------------------------------------------------- Cowpea hay = 15 pounds[1] | 13.50| 1.62 | 5.79 | .16 Corn stover = 10 pounds | 5.95| .17 | 3.24 | .07 Corn ensilage = 30 pounds | 6.27| .27 | 3.39 | .21 Cotton-seed meal = 2 pounds | 1.83| .74 | .33 | .24 --------------------------------------------------------------- Total = 57 pounds | 27.55| 2.80 | 12.75 | .68 =============================================================== [Footnote 1: Alfalfa or clover hay may take the place of cowpea hay.] =Care of the Cow.= As the cow is one of the best money-makers on the farm, she should, for this reason, if for no other, be comfortably housed, well fed and watered, and most kindly treated. In your thoughts for her well-being, bear the following directions in mind: 1. If you are not following a balanced ration, feed each day several different kinds of food. In this way you will be least likely to waste food. 2. Feed at regular hours. Cows, like people, thrive best when their lives are orderly. 3. Milk at regular hours. 4. Brush the udder carefully with a moist cloth before you begin to milk. Cleanliness in handling makes the milk keep longer. 5. Always milk in buckets or cups that have been scalded since the last using. The hot water kills the bacteria that collect in the dents or cracks of the utensil. 6. Never let the milk pail remain in the stable. Milk rapidly absorbs impurities. These spoil the flavor and cause the milk to sour. 7. Never scold or strike the cow. She is a nervous animal, and rough usage checks the milk flow. [Illustration] [Illustration: THREE GENERATIONS OF HIGH-BRED COWS] SECTION LXI. MILK, CREAM, CHURNING, AND BUTTER =Milk.= Milk is, as you know, nature's first food for mammals. This is because milk is a model food--it contains water to slake thirst, ash to make bone, protein to make flesh and muscle, and fat and sugar to keep the body warm and to furnish energy. =The Different Kinds of Milk.= Whole, or unskimmed, milk, skimmed milk, and buttermilk are too familiar to need description. When a cow is just fresh, her milk is called _colostrum_. Colostrum is rich in the very food that the baby calf needs. After the calf is a few days old, colostrum changes to what is commonly known as milk. The following table shows the composition of each of the different forms of milk: ======================================================= | DIGESTIBLE MATTER IN 100 POUNDS |---------------------------------- COMPOSITION OF MILK | Dry |Protein|Carbohydrates| Fat |matter| | | ------------------------------------------------------- Colostrum | 25.4 | 17.6 | 2.7 | 3.6 Milk (unskimmed) | 12.8 | 3.6 | 4.9 | 3.7 Skimmed milk | 9.4 | 2.9 | 5.2 | 1.3 Buttermilk | 9.9 | 3.9 | 4.0 | 1.1 ======================================================= A noticeable fact in this table is that skimmed milk differs from unskimmed mainly in the withdrawal of the fat. Hence, if calves are fed on skimmed milk, they should have in addition some food like corn meal to take the place of the fat withdrawn. A calf cannot thrive on skimmed milk alone. The amount of nourishing fat that a calf gets out of enough milk to make a pound of butter can be bought, in the form of linseed or corn meal, for a very small amount, while the butter-fat costs, for table use, a much larger sum. Of course, then, it is not economical to allow calves to use unskimmed milk. Some people undervalue skimmed milk; with the addition of some fatty food it makes an excellent ration for calves, pigs, and fowls. Along with its dry matter, its protein, its carbohydrates, and its fats, milk and its products possess another most important property. This property is hard to describe, for its elements and its powers are not yet fully understood. We do, however, know certainly this much: milk and the foods made from it have power to promote health and favor growth in a more marked degree than any other foods. It is generally agreed that this is due to the health-promoting and health-preserving substances which are called vitamines. Men of science are working with much care to try to add to our knowledge of these vitamines, which have so marvelous an influence on the health of all animals. Unless food, no matter how good otherwise, contains these vitamines, it does not nourish the body nor preserve bodily health as it should. A complete lack of vitamines in our food would cause death. Since, then, milk and its products--butter, cheese, curds--are rich in vitamines, these health-giving and health-preserving foods should form a regular part of each person's diet. [Illustration: FIG. 270. AIRING THE CANS] =Cream.= Cream is simply a mixture of butter-fat and milk. The butter-fat floats in the milk in little globe-shaped bodies, or globules. Since these globules are lighter than milk, they rise to the surface. Skimming the milk is a mere gathering together of these butter-fat globules. As most of the butter-fat is contained in the cream, pains should be taken to get all the cream from the milk at skimming time. After the cream has been collected, it must be allowed to "ripen" or to "sour" in order that it may be more easily churned. Churning is only a second step to collect in a compact shape the fat globules. It often happens that at churning-time the cream is too warm for successful separation of the globules. Whenever this is the case the cream must be cooled. [Illustration: FIG. 271. A HAND SEPARATOR] =The Churn.= Revolving churns without inside fixtures are best. Hence, in buying, select a barrel or a square box churn. This kind of churn "brings the butter" by the falling of the cream from side to side as the churn is revolved. Never fill the churn more than one-third or one-half full of cream. A small churn is always to be avoided. =Churning.= The proper temperature for churning ranges from 58° to 62° Fahrenheit. Test the cream when it is put into the churn. If it be too cold, add warm water until the proper temperature is reached; if too warm, add cold water or ice until the temperature is brought down to 62°. Do not churn too long, for this spoils butter. As soon as the granules of butter are somewhat smaller than grains of wheat, stop the churn. Then draw off the buttermilk and at a temperature as low as 50° wash the butter in the churn. This washing with cold water so hardens the granules that they do not mass too solidly and thus destroy the grain. =Butter.= The butter so churned is now ready to be salted. Use good fine dairy salt. Coarse barrel salt is not fit for butter. The salt can be added while the butter is still in the churn or after it is put upon the butter-worker. Never work by hand. The object of working is to get the salt evenly distributed and to drive out some of the brine. It is usually best to work butter twice. The two workings bring about a more even mixture of the salt with the butter and drive off more water. But one cannot be too particular not to overwork butter. Delicate coloring, attractive stamping with the dairy owner's special stamp, and proper covering with paper cost little and of course add to the ready and profitable sale of butter. [Illustration: FIG. 272. A POWER CHURN] DAIRY RULES _Stable and Cows_ 1. Whitewash the stable once or twice each year; use land plaster, muck, or loam daily in the manure-gutters. 2. On their way to pasture or milking-place, do not allow the cows to be driven at a faster gait than a comfortable walk. 3. Give abundance of pure water. 4. Do not change feed suddenly. 5. Keep salt always within reach of each cow. _Milking_ 1. Milk with dry hands. 2. Never allow the milk to touch the milker's hands. 3. Require the milker to be clean in person and dress. 4. Milk quietly, quickly, thoroughly. Never leave a drop of milk in the cow's udder. 5. Do not allow cats, dogs, or other animals around at milking-time. _Utensils_ 1. Use only tin or metal cans and pails. 2. See that all utensils are thoroughly clean and free from rust. 3. Require all cans and pails to be scalded immediately after they are used. 4. After milking, keep the utensils inverted in pure air, and sun them, if possible, until they are wanted for use. 5. Always sterilize the churn with steam or boiling water before and after churning. This prevents any odors or bad flavors from affecting the butter. All cans, pails, and bottles should also be sterilized daily. [Illustration] SECTION LXII. HOW MILK SOURS [Illustration: FIG. 273. MICROSCOPIC APPEARANCE OF PURE AND IMPURE MILK At the left, pure milk; at the right, milk after standing in a warm room for a few hours in a dirty dish, showing, besides the fat-globules, many forms of bacteria] On another page you have been told how the yeast plant grows in cider and causes it to sour, and how bacteria sometimes cause disease in animals and plants. Now you must learn what these same living forms have to do with the souring of milk, and maybe you will not forget how you can prevent your milk from souring. In the first place, milk sours because bacteria from the air fall into the milk, begin to grow, and very shortly change the sugar of the milk to an acid. When this acid becomes abundant, the milk begins to curdle. As you know, the bacteria are in air, in water, and in barn dust; they stick on bits of hay and stick to the cow. They are most plentiful, however, in milk that has soured; hence, if we pour a little sour milk into a pail of fresh milk, the fresh milk will sour very quickly, because we have, so to speak, "seeded" or "planted" the fresh milk with the souring germs. No one, of course, ever does this purposely in the dairy, yet people sometimes do what amounts to the same thing--that is, put fresh milk into poorly cleaned pails or pans, the cracks and corners of which are cozy homes for millions of germs left from the last sour milk contained in the vessel. It follows, then, that all utensils used in the dairy should be thoroughly scalded so as to kill all germs present, and particular care should be taken to clean the cracks and crevices, for in them the germs lurk. In addition to this thorough cleansing with hot water, we should be careful never to stir up the dust of the barn just before milking. Such dusty work as pitching hay or stover or arranging bedding should be done either after or long before milking-time, for more germs fall into the milk if the air be full of dust. To further avoid germs the milker should wear clean overalls, should have clean hands, and, above all, should never wet his hands with milk. This last habit, in addition to being filthy, lessens the keeping power of the milk. The milker should also moisten the parts of the cow which are nearest him, so that dust from the cow's sides may not fall into the milker's pail. For greater cleanliness and safety many milkmen curry their cows. The first few streams from each teat should be thrown away, because the teat at its mouth is filled with milk which, having been exposed to the air, is full of germs, and will do much toward souring the other milk in the pail. Barely a gill will be lost by throwing the first drawings away, and this of the poorest milk too. The increase in the keeping quality of the milk will much more than repay the small loss. If these precautions are taken, the milk will keep several hours or even several days longer than milk carelessly handled. By taking these steps to prevent germs from falling into the milk, a can of milk was once kept sweet for thirty-one days. The work of the germ in the dairy is not, however, confined to souring the milk. Certain kinds of germs give to the different sorts of cheeses their marked flavors and to butter its flavor. If the right germ is present, cheese or butter gets a proper flavor. Sometimes undesirable germs gain entrance and give flavors that we do not like. Such germs produce cheese or butter diseases. "Bitter butter" is one of these diseases. To keep out all unpleasant meddlers, thoroughly cleanse and scald every utensil. EXERCISE What causes milk to sour? Why do unclean utensils affect the milk? How should milk be cared for to prevent its souring? Prepare two samples, one carefully, the other carelessly. Place them side by side. Which keeps longer? Why? SECTION LXIII. THE BABCOCK MILK-TESTER It is not sufficient for a farmer or a dairyman to know how much milk each of his cows yields. He should also know how rich the milk is in butter-fat. Wide-awake makers of butter and cheese now buy milk, not by the pound or by the gallon, but by the amount of butter-fat contained in each pound or gallon of milk. A gallon of milk containing four and a half per cent of fat will consequently be worth more than a gallon containing only three per cent of fat. So it may happen that a cow giving only two gallons of milk may pay a butter-maker more than a cow giving three gallons of milk. Of course it is easy to weigh or measure the quantity of milk given by a cow, and most milkers keep this record; but until recent years there was no way to find out the amount of fat in a cow's milk except by a slow and costly chemical test. Dairymen could only guess at the richness of milk. In 1890 Dr. S. M. Babcock of the Wisconsin Experiment Station invented a wonderful little machine that quickly and cheaply measures the fat in milk. Few machines are more useful. So desirous was Dr. Babcock of helping the farmers that he would not add to the cost of his machine by taking out a patent on his invention. His only reward has been the fame won by the invention of the machine, which bears his name. This most useful tester is now made in various sizes so that every handler of milk may buy one suited to his needs and do his own testing at very little cost. The operation of the machine is very simple. Suppose that the members of the class studying this book have been asked to take a Babcock machine and test the milk of a small herd of cows. They can readily do so by following these directions: While the milk is still warm from the first cow to be tested, mix it thoroughly by pouring it at least four times from one vessel to another. A few ounces of this mixed milk is then taken for a sample, and carefully marked with the name of the cow. A number is also put on the sample, and both the cow's name and the number entered in a notebook. A small glass instrument, called a pipette, comes with each machine. Put one end of the pipette into the milk sample and the other end into the mouth. Suck milk into the pipette until the milk comes up to the mark on the side of the pipette. As soon as the mark is reached, withdraw the pipette from the mouth and quickly press the forefinger on the mouth end. The pressure of the finger will keep the milk from running out. Then put the lower end of the pipette into one of the small long-necked bottles of the machine, and, lifting the finger, allow the milk to flow gently into the bottle. Expel all the milk by blowing through the pipette. The next step is to add a strong, biting acid known as sulphuric acid to the test-bottle into which you have just put the milk. A glass marked to show just how much acid to use also comes with the machine. Fill this glass measure to the mark. Then pour the acid carefully into the test-bottle. Be sure not to drop any of the acid on your hands or your clothes. As the acid is heavier than the milk, it will sink to the bottom of the bottle. With a gentle whirling motion, shake the bottle until the two fluids are thoroughly mixed. The mixture will turn a dark brown and become very warm. Now fill the other bottles in the same way with samples drawn from different cows. Treat all the samples precisely as you did the first. Do not forget to put on each sample the name of the cow giving the milk and on each test-bottle a number corresponding to the name of the cow. You are now ready to put the test-bottles in the sockets of the machine. Arrange the bottles in the sockets so that the whirling frame of the machine will be balanced. Fit the cover on the machine and turn the handle slowly. Gradually gain in speed until the machine is whirled rapidly. Continue the turning for about seven minutes at the speed stated in the book of directions. After this first turning is finished, pour enough hot water into each test-bottle to cause the fat to rise to the neck of the bottle. Re-cover the machine and turn for one minute. Again add hot water to each bottle until all the fat rises into the neck of the bottle and again turn one minute. There remains now only the reading of the record. On the neck of each bottle there are marks to measure the amount of fat. If the fat inside the tube reaches only from the lowest mark to the second mark, then there is only one per cent of fat in this cow's milk. This means that the owner of the cow gets only one pound of butter-fat from each hundred pounds of her milk. Such a cow would not be at all profitable to a butter-seller. If the fat in another test-bottle reaches from the lowest mark to the fourth mark, then you put in your record-book that this cow's milk contains four per cent of butter-fat. This record shows that the second cow's milk yields four pounds of fat to every hundred pounds of milk. This cow is three times more valuable to a butter-maker than the first cow. In the same way add one more per cent for each higher mark reached by the fat. Four and one-half per cent is a good record for a cow to make. Some cows yield as high as five or six per cent but they do not generally keep up this record all the year. [Illustration: FIG. 274. BABCOCK TESTER AND HOW TO USE IT The tester, acid, acid measure, test-bottle, and thermometer at bottom; filling the pipette on right; adding the acid and measuring the fat at top] The Babcock tester shows only the amount of pure butter-fat in the milk. It does not tell the exact amount of finished butter which is made from 100 pounds of milk. This is because butter contains a few other things in addition to pure butter-fat. Finished and salted butter weighs on an average about one sixth more than the fat shown by the tester. Hence to get the exact amount of butter in every 100 pounds of milk, you will have to add one sixth to the record shown by the tester. Suppose, for example, you took one sample from 600 pounds of milk and that your test showed 4 per cent of fat in every 100 pounds of milk. Then, as you had 600 pounds of milk, you would have 24 pounds of butter-fat. This fat, after it has been salted and after it has absorbed moisture as butter does, will gain one sixth in weight. As one sixth of 24 is 4, this new 4 pounds must be added to the weight of the butter-fat. Hence the 600 pounds of milk would produce about 28 pounds of butter. EXERCISE 1. Find the number of pounds of butter in 1200 pounds of milk that tests 3 per cent of butter-fat. 2. A cow yields 4800 pounds of milk in a year. Her milk tests 4 per cent of butter-fat. Find the total amount of butter-fat she yields. Find also the total amount of butter. 3. The milk of two cows was tested: one yielded in a year 6000 pounds of milk that tested 3 per cent of fat; the other yielded 5000 pounds that tested 4 per cent. Which cow yielded the more butter-fat? What was the money value of the butter produced by each if butter-fat is worth twenty-five cents a pound? CHAPTER XII MISCELLANEOUS SECTION LXIV. GROWING FEED STUFFS ON THE FARM Economy in raising live stock demands the production of all "roughness" or roughage materials on the farm. By roughness, or roughage, of course you understand that bulky food, like hay, grass, clover, stover, etc., is meant. It is possible to purchase all roughage materials and yet make a financial success of growing farm animals, but this certainly is not the surest way to succeed. Every farm should raise all its feed stuffs. In deciding what forage and grain crops to grow we should decide: 1. The crops best suited to our soil and climate. 2. The crops best suited to our line of business. 3. The crops that will give us the most protein. 4. The crops that produce the most. 5. The crops that will keep our soil in the best condition. 1. _The crops best suited to our soil and climate._ Farm crops, as every child of the farm knows, are not equally adapted to all soils and climates. Cotton cannot be produced where the climate is cool and the seasons short. Timothy and blue grass are most productive on cool, limestone soils. Cowpeas demand warm, dry soils. But in spite of climatic limitations, Nature has been generous in the wide variety of forage she has given us. Our aim should be to make the best use of what we have, to improve by selection and care those kinds best adapted to our soil and climate, and to secure, by better methods of growing and curing, the greatest yields at the least possible cost. 2. _The crops best suited to our line of business._ A farmer necessarily becomes more or less of a specialist; he gathers those kinds of live stock about him which he likes best and which he finds the most profitable. He should, on his farm, select for his main crops those that he can grow with the greatest pleasure and with the greatest profit. [Illustration: FIG. 275. FILLING THE BARN WITH ROUGHAGE FROM THE FARM] The successful railroad manager determines by practical experience what distances his engines and crews ought to run in a day, what coal is most economical for his engines, what schedules best suit the needs of his road, what trains pay him best. These and a thousand and one other matters are settled by the special needs of his road. Ought the man who wants to make his farm pay be less prudent and less far-sighted? Should not his past failures and his past triumphs decide his future? If he be a dairy farmer, ought he not by practical tests to settle for himself not only what crops are most at home on his land but also what crops in his circumstances yield him the largest returns in milk and butter? If swine-raising be his business, how long ought he to guess what crop on his land yields him the greatest amount of hog food? Should a colt be fed on one kind of forage when the land that produced that forage would produce twice as much equally good forage of another kind? All these questions the prudent farmer should answer promptly and in the light of wise experiments. 3. _The crops that will give us the most protein._ It is the farmer's business to grow all the grass and forage that his farm animals need. He ought never to be obliged to purchase a bale of forage. Moreover, he should grow mainly those crops that are rich in protein materials, for example, cowpeas, alfalfa, and clover. If such crops are produced on the farm, there will be little need of buying so much cotton-seed meal, corn, and bran for feeding purposes. 4. _The crops that produce the most._ We often call a crop a crop without considering how much it yields. This is a mistake. We ought to grow, when we have choice of two crops, the one that is the best and the most productive on the farm. Average corn, for instance, yields on an acre at least twice the quantity of feeding-material that timothy does. 5. _The crops that will keep our soil in the best condition._ A good farmer should always be thinking of how to improve his soil. He wants his land to support him and to maintain his children after he is dead. Since cowpeas, clover, and alfalfa add atmospheric nitrogen to the soil and at the same time are the best feeding-materials, it follows that these crops should hold an important place in every system of crop-rotation. By proper rotating, by proper terracing, and by proper drainage, land may be made to retain its fertility for generations. EXERCISE 1. Why are cowpeas, clover, and alfalfa so important to the farmer? 2. What is meant by the protein of a food? 3. Why is it better to feed the farm crops to animals on the farm rather than to sell these crops? SECTION LXV. FARM TOOLS AND MACHINES The drudgery of farm life is being lessened from year to year by the invention or improvement of farm tools and machines. Perhaps some of you know how tiresome was the old up-and-down churn dasher that has now generally given place to the "quick-coming" churns. The toothed, horse-drawn cultivator has nearly displaced "the man with the hoe," while the scythe, slow and back-breaking, is everywhere getting out of the way of the mowing-machine and the horserake. The old heavy, sweat-drawing grain-cradle is slinking into the backwoods, and in its place we have the horse-drawn or steam-drawn harvester that cuts and binds the grain, and even threshes and measures it at one operation. Instead of the plowman's wearily making one furrow at a time, the gang-plows of the plains cut many furrows at one time, and instead of walking the plowman rides. The shredder and husker turns the hitherto useless cornstalk into food, and at the same time husks, or shucks, the corn. The farmer of the future must know three things well: first, what machines he can profitably use; second, how to manage these machines; third, how to care for these machines. [Illustration: FIG. 276. PROPERLY PROTECTED TOOLS AND MACHINES] [Illustration: FIG. 277. UNPROTECTED TOOLS AND MACHINES] [Illustration: FIG. 278. THE HARVESTER AT WORK] [Illustration: FIG. 279. IN NEED OF IMPROVEMENT] The machinery that makes farming so much more economical and that makes the farmer's life so much easier and more comfortable is too complicated to be put into the hands of bunglers who will soon destroy it, and it is too costly to be left in the fields or under trees to rust and rot. If it is not convenient for every farmer to have a separate tool-house, he should at least set apart a room in his barn, or a shed for storing his tools and machines. As soon as a plow, harrow, cultivator--indeed any tool or machine--has finished its share of work for the season, it should receive whatever attention it needs to prevent rusting, and should be carefully housed. Such care, which is neither costly nor burdensome, will add many years to the life of a machine. SECTION LXVI. LIMING THE LAND Occasionally, when a cook puts too much vinegar in a salad, the dish becomes so sour that it is unfit to eat. The vinegar which the cook uses belongs to a large group of compounds known as acids. The acids are common in nature. They have the power not only of making salads sour but also of making land sour. Frequently land becomes so sour from acids forming in it that it will not bear its usual crops. The acids must then be removed or the land will become useless. The land may be soured in several ways. Whenever a large amount of vegetable matter decays in land, acids are formed, and at times sourness of the soil results. Often soils sour because they are not well drained or because, from lack of proper tillage, air cannot make its way into the soil. Sometimes all these causes may combine to produce sourness. Since most crops cannot thrive on very sour soil, the farmer must find some method of making his land sweet again. So far as we now know, liming the land is the cheapest and surest way of overcoming the sourness. In addition to sweetening the soil by overcoming the acids, lime aids the land in other ways: it quickens the growth of helpful bacteria; it loosens stiff, heavy clay soils and thereby fits them for easier tillage; it indirectly sets free the potash and phosphoric acid so much needed by plants; and it increases the capillarity of soils. However, too much must not be expected of lime. Often a farmer's yield is so increased after he has scattered lime over his fields that he thinks that lime alone will keep his land fertile. This belief explains the saying, "Lime enriches the father but beggars the son." The continued use of lime without other fertilization will indeed leave poor land for the son. Lime is just as necessary to plant growth as the potash and nitrogen and phosphoric acid about which we hear so much, but it cannot take the place of these plant foods. Its duty is to aid, not to displace them. We can tell by the taste when salads are too sour; it is more difficult to find out whether land is sour. There are, however, some methods that will help to determine the sourness of the soil. In the first place, if land is unusually sour, you can determine this fact by a simple test. Buy a pennyworth of blue litmus paper from a drug store. Mix some of the suspected soil with a little water and bury the litmus paper in the mixture. If the paper turns red the soil is sour. In the second place, the leguminous crops are fond of lime. Clover and vetch remove so much lime from the soil that they are often called lime plants. If clover and vetch refuse to grow on land on which they formerly flourished, it is generally, though not always, a sign that the land needs lime. In the third place, when water grasses and certain weeds spring up on land, that land is usually acid, and lime will be helpful. Moreover, fields adjoining land on which cranberries, raspberries, blackberries, or gallberries are growing wild, may always be suspected of more or less sourness. Four forms of lime are used on land. These, each called by different names, are as follows: First, quicklime, which is also called burnt lime, caustic lime, builders' lime, rock lime, and unslaked lime. Second, air-slaked lime, which is also known as carbonate of lime, agricultural lime, marl, and limestone. Third, water-slaked, or hydrated, lime. Fourth, land plaster, or gypsum. This form of lime is known to the chemists as sulphate of lime. Do not forget that this last form is never to be used on sour lands. We shall therefore not consider it further. Air-slaked lime is simply quicklime which has taken from the air a gas called carbon dioxide. This is the same gas that you breathe out from your lungs. Water-slaked lime is quicklime to which water has been added. In other words, both of these are merely weakened forms of quicklime. One hundred pounds of quicklime is equal in richness to 132 pounds of water-slaked lime and to 178 pounds of air-slaked lime. These figures should be remembered by a farmer when he is buying lime. If he can buy a fair grade of quicklime delivered at his railway station for $5.00 a ton, he cannot afford to pay more than $3.75 a ton for water-slaked lime, nor more than $2.75 for air-slaked lime of equal grade. Quicklime should always be slaked before it is applied to the soil. As a rule lime should be spread broadcast and then harrowed or disked thoroughly into the soil. This is best done after the ground has been plowed. For pastures or meadows air-slaked lime is used as a top-dressing. When air-slaked lime is used it may be spread broadcast in the spring; the other forms should be applied in the fall or in the early winter. SECTION LXVII. BIRDS What do birds do in the world? is an important question for us to think about. First, we must gain by observation and by personal acquaintance with the living birds a knowledge of their work and their way of doing it. In getting this knowledge, let us also consider what we can do for our birds to render their work as complete and effective as possible. Think of what the birds are doing on every farm, in every garden, and about every home in the land. Think of the millions of beautiful wings, of the graceful and attractive figures, of the cunning nests, and of the singing throats! Do you think that the whole service of the birds is to be beautiful, to sing charmingly, and to rear their little ones? By no means is this their chief service to man. Aside from these services the greatest work of birds is to destroy insects. It is one of the wise provisions of nature that many of the most brilliantly winged and most enchanting songsters are our most practical friends. Not all birds feed on insects and animals; but even those that eat but a small amount of insect food may still destroy insects that would have damaged fruit and crops much more than the birds themselves do. As to their food, birds are divided into three general classes. First, those that live wholly or almost wholly on insects. These are called insectivorous birds. Chief among these are the warblers, cuckoos, swallows, martins, flycatchers, nighthawks, whippoorwills, swifts, and humming-birds. We cannot have too many of these birds. They should be encouraged and protected. They should be supplied with shelter and water. Birds of the second class feed by preference on fruits, nuts, and grain. The bluebird, robin, wood thrush, mocking-bird, catbird, chickadee, cedar-bird, meadow lark, oriole, jay, crow, and woodpecker belong to this group. These birds never fail to perform a service for us by devouring many weed seeds. [Illustration: FIG. 280. A KINGBIRD] The third class is known as the hard-billed birds. It includes those birds which live principally on seeds and grain--the canary, goldfinch, sparrow, and some others. Birds that come early, like the bluebird, robin, and redwing, are of special service in destroying insects before the insects lay their eggs for the season. The robins on the lawn search out the caterpillars and cutworms. The chipping sparrow and the wren in the shrubbery look out for all kinds of insects. They watch over the orchard and feed freely on the enemies of the apple and other fruit trees. The trunks of these trees are often attacked by borers, which gnaw holes in the bark and wood, and often cause the death of the trees. The woodpeckers hunt for these appetizing borers and by means of their barbed tongues bring them from their hiding-places. On the outside of the bark of the trunk and branches the bark lice work. These are devoured by the nuthatches, creepers, and chickadees. During the winter the bark is the hiding-place for hibernating insects, which, like plant lice, feed in summer on the leaves. Throughout the winter a single chickadee will destroy great numbers of the eggs of the cankerworm moth and of the plant louse. The blackbirds, meadow larks, crows, quail, and sparrows are the great protectors of the meadow and field crops. These birds feed on the army worms and cutworms that do so much injury to the young shoots; they also destroy the chinch bug and the grasshopper, both of which feed on cultivated plants. [Illustration: FIG. 281. A WARBLER] A count of all the different kinds of animals shows that insects make up nine tenths of them. Hence it is easy to see that if something did not check their increase they would soon almost overrun the earth. Our forests and orchards furnish homes and breeding-places for most of these insects. Suppose the injurious insects were allowed to multiply unchecked in the forests, their numbers would so increase that they would invade our fields and create as much terror among the farmers as they did in Pharaoh's Egypt. The birds are the only direct friends man has to destroy these harmful insects. What benefactors, then, these little feathered neighbors are! It has been estimated that a bird will devour thirty insects daily. Even in a widely extended forest region a very few birds to the acre, if they kept up this rate, would daily destroy many bushels of insects that would play havoc with the neighboring orchards and fields. Do not imagine, however, that to destroy insects is the only use of birds. The day is far more delightful when the birds sing, and when we see them flit in and out, giving us a glimpse now and then of their pretty coats and quaint ways. By giving them a home we can surround ourselves with many birds, sweet of song and brilliant of plumage. [Illustration: FIG. 282. THE HAIRY WOODPECKER] If the birds felt that man were a friend and not a foe, they would often turn to him for protection. During times of severe storm, extreme drought, or scarcity of food, if the birds were sufficiently tamed to come to man as their friend, as they do in rare cases now, a little food and shelter might tide them over the hard time and their service afterwards would repay the outlay a thousandfold. If the boys in your families would build bird-houses about the house and barn and in shade trees, they might save yearly a great number of birds. In building these places of shelter and comfort, due care must be taken to keep them clear of English sparrows and out of the reach of cats and bird-dogs. Whatever we do to attract the birds to make homes on the premises must be done at the right time and in the right way. Think out carefully what materials to provide for them. Bits of string, linen, cotton, yarn, tow and other waste material, all help to induce a pair to build in the garden. [Illustration: FIG. 283. PROTECTING OUR FRIENDS] It is an interesting study--the preparation of homes for the birds. Trees may be pruned to make inviting crotches. A tangled, overgrown corner in the garden will invite some birds to nest. Wrens, bluebirds, chickadees, martins, and some other varieties are all glad to set up housekeeping in man-made houses. The proper size for a bird-room is easily remembered. Give each room six square inches of floor space and make it eight inches high. Old, weathered boards should be used; or, if paint is employed, a dull color to resemble an old tree-trunk will be most inviting. A single opening near the top should be made two inches in diameter for the larger birds; but if the house is to be headquarters for the wren, a one-inch opening is quite large enough, and the small door serves all the better to keep out English sparrows. The barn attic should be turned over to the swallows. Small holes may be cut high up in the gables and left open during the time that the swallows remain with us. They will more than pay for shelter by the good work they do in ridding the barn of flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. SECTION LXVIII. FARMING ON DRY LANDS Almost in the center of the western half of our continent there is a vast area in which very little rain falls. This section includes nearly three hundred million acres of land. It stretches from Canada on the north into Texas on the south, and from the Missouri River (including the Dakotas and western Minnesota) on the east to the Rocky Mountains on the west. In this great area farming has to be done with little water. This sort of farming is therefore called "dry-farming." The soil in this section is as a rule very fertile. Therefore the difference between farming in this dry belt and farming in most of the other sections of our country is a difference mainly due to a lack of moisture. As water is so scarce in this region two things are of the utmost importance: first, to save all the rain as it falls; second, to save all the water after it has fallen. To save the falling rain it is necessary for the ground to be in such a condition that none of the much-needed rain may run off. Every drop should go into the soil. Hence the farmer should never allow his top soil to harden into a crust. Such a crust will keep the rain from sinking into the thirsty soil. Moreover the soil should be deeply plowed. The deeper the soil the more water it can hold. The land should also be kept as porous as possible, for water enters a porous soil freely. The addition of humus in the form of vegetable manures will keep the soil in the porous condition needed. Second, after the water has entered the soil it is important to hold it there so that it may supply the growing crops. If the land is allowed to remain untilled after a rain or during a hot spell, the water in it will evaporate too rapidly and thus the soil, like a well, will go dry too soon. To prevent this the top soil should be stirred frequently with a disk or smoothing harrow. This stirring will form a mulch of dry soil on the surface, and this will hold the water. Other forms of mulch have been suggested, but the soil mulch is the only practical one. It must be borne in mind that this surface cultivation must be regularly kept up if the moisture is to be retained. [Illustration: FIG. 284. THE DISK HARROW] Some experiments in wheat-growing have shown how readily water might be saved if plowing were done at the right time. Wheat sowed on land that was plowed as soon as the summer crops were taken off yielded a very much larger return than wheat sowed on land that remained untilled for some time after the summer crops were gathered. This difference in yield on lands of the same fertility was due to the fact that the early plowing enabled the land to take up a sufficient quantity of moisture. [Illustration: FIG. 285. RED KAFIR CORN IN SHOCK] In addition to a vigilant catching and saving of water, the farmer in these dry climates must give his land the same careful attention that lands in other regions need. The seed-bed should be most carefully prepared. It should be deep, porous, and excellent in tilth. During the growing season all crops should be frequently cultivated. The harrow, the cultivator, and the plow should be kept busy. The soil should be kept abundantly supplied with humus. Some crops need a little different management in dry-farming. Corn, for example, does best when it is listed; that is, planted so that it will come up three or four inches beneath the surface. If planted in this way, it roots better, stands up better, and requires less work. Just as breeders study what animals are best for their climates, so farmers in the dry belt should study what crops are best suited to their lands. Some crops, like the sorghums and Kafir corn, are peculiarly at home in scantily watered lands. Others do not thrive. Experience is the only sure guide to the proper selection. To sum up, then, farmers can grow good crops in these lands only when four things are done: first, the land must be thoroughly tilled so that water can freely enter the soil; second, the land must be frequently cultivated so that the water will be kept in the soil; third, the crops must be properly rotated so as to use to best advantage the food and water supply; fourth, humus must be freely supplied so as to keep the soil in the best possible condition. SECTION LXIX. IRRIGATION Irrigation is the name given to the plan of supplying water in large quantities to growing crops. Since the dawn of history this practice has been more or less followed in Asia, in Africa, and in Europe. The Spanish settlers in the southwestern part of America were probably the first to introduce this custom into our country. In New Mexico there is an irrigating trench that has been in constant use for three hundred years. [Illustration: FIG. 286. PUMPING WATER FOR IRRIGATION] The most common source of water for irrigating purposes is a river or a smaller stream. Artesian wells are used in some parts of the country. Windmills are sometimes used when only a small supply of water is needed. Engines, hydraulic rams, and water-wheels are also employed. The water-wheel is one of the oldest and one of the most useful methods of raising water from streams. There are thousands of these in use in the dry regions of the West. Small buckets are fastened to a large wheel, which is turned by the current of a stream. As the wheel turns, the buckets are filled, raised, and then emptied into a trough called a flume. The water flows through the flume into the irrigating ditches, which distribute it as it is needed in the fields. In some parts of California and other comparatively dry sections, wells are sunk in or near the beds of underground streams, and then the water is pumped into ditches which convey it to the fields to be irrigated. Engines are often used for pumping water from streams and transferring it to ditches or canals. The canals distribute the water over the land or over the growing crops. [Illustration: FIG. 287. THE MAIN DITCH OF AN IRRIGATION PLANT] None of these methods, however, can be used for watering very large areas of land. Hence, as the value of farm lands increased other methods were sought. Shrewd men began to turn longing eyes on the wide stretches of barren land in the West. They knew that these waste lands, seemingly so unfertile, would become most fruitful as soon as water was turned on them. Could water enough be found? New plans to pen up floods of water were prepared, and immense sums were spent in carrying out these plans. Enormous dams of cemented stone were thrown across the gorges in the foothills of the mountains. Behind these solid dams the water from the rains and the melting snow of the mountains was backed for miles, and was at once ready to change barrenness into fruitfulness. The stored water is led by means of main canals and cross ditches wherever it is needed, and countless acres have been brought under cultivation. Water is generally applied either by making furrows for its passage through the fields or by flooding the land. The latter plan is the cheaper, but it can be used only on level lands. Where the land is somewhat irregular a checking system, as it is called, is used to distribute the water. It is taken from check to check until the entire field has been irrigated. [Illustration: FIG. 288. THE PROCESS OF IRRIGATING CORN] The furrow method is usually employed for fruits and for farm and garden crops. In many places the grass and grain crops are now supplied with water by furrows instead of by flooding. Irrigated lands should be carefully and thoroughly tilled. The water for irrigation is costly, and should be made to go as far as possible. Good tillage saves the water. Moreover, all cultivated crops like corn, potatoes, and orchard and truck crops ought to be cultivated frequently to save the moisture, to keep the soil in fit condition, and to aid the bacteria in the soil. It was a wise farmer who said, "One does not need to grow crops many years in order to learn that nothing can take the place of stirring the soil." METHODS OF IRRIGATING CROPS _Tree fruits._ Water is conducted through very narrow furrows from three to five feet apart, and allowed to sink about four feet deep, and to spread under the ground. Then the supply is cut off. The object is to wet the soil deeply, and then by tillage to hold the moisture in the soil. _Small fruits._ The common practice is to run water on each side of the row until the rows are soaked. _Potatoes._ A thorough soaking is given the land before planting-time, and then no more than is absolutely necessary until blossoming-time. After the blossoms appear keep the soil moist until the crop ripens. _Garden crops._ Any method may be employed, but the vital point is to cultivate the ground as early as it can be worked after it has been irrigated. _Meadows and alfalfa._ Flooding is the most common method in use. The first irrigation comes early in the spring before growth has advanced much, and the successive waterings after the harvesting of each crop. SECTION LXX. LIFE IN THE COUNTRY As ours is a country in which the people rule, every boy and every girl ought to be trained to take a wide-awake interest in public affairs. This training cannot begin too early in life. A wise old man once said, "In a republic you ought to begin to train a child for good citizenship on the day of its birth." [Illustration: FIG. 289. BEAUTY FROM FLOWERS AND GRASS] [Illustration: FIG. 290. A COUNTRY ROAD IN MECKLENBURG COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA] Happy would it be for our nation if all the young people who live in the country could begin their training in good citizenship by becoming workers for these four things: First, attractive country homes. Second, attractive country schoolhouses and school grounds. Third, good country schools. Fourth, good roads. If the thousands on thousands of pupils in our schools would become active workers for these things and continue their work through life, then, in less than half a century, life in the country would be an unending delight. One of the problems of our day is how to keep bright, thoughtful, sociable, ambitious boys and girls contented on the farm. Every step taken to make the country home more attractive, to make the school and its grounds more enjoyable, to make the way easy to the homes of neighbors, to school, to post-office, and to church, is a step taken toward keeping on the farm the very boys and girls who are most apt to succeed there. Not every man who lives in the country can have a showy or costly home, but as long as grass and flowers and vines and trees grow, any man who wishes can have an attractive house. Not every woman who is to spend a lifetime at the head of a rural home can have a luxuriously furnished home, but any woman who is willing to take a little trouble can have a cozy, tastefully furnished home--a home fitted with the conveniences that diminish household drudgery. Even in this day of cheap literature, all parents cannot fill their children's home with papers, magazines, and books, but by means of school and Sunday-school libraries, by means of circulating book clubs, and by a little self-denial, earnest parents can feed hungry minds just as they feed hungry bodies. [Illustration: THE QUEEN OF FLOWERS FOR THE HOME] [Illustration: FIG. 291. AN ATTRACTIVE COUNTRY HOME] Agricultural papers that arouse the interest and quicken the thought of farm boys by discussing the best, easiest, and cheapest ways of farming; journals full of dainty suggestions for household adornment and comfort; illustrated papers and magazines that amuse and cheer every member of the family; books that rest tired bodies and open and strengthen growing minds--all of these are so cheap that the money reserved from the sale of one hog will keep a family fairly supplied for a year. [Illustration: FIG. 292. AN UNIMPROVED SCHOOLHOUSE] [Illustration: FIG. 293. AN IMPROVED SCHOOLHOUSE] [Illustration: FIG. 294. THE SAME ROAD AFTER AND BEFORE IMPROVEMENT] If the parents, teachers, and pupils of a school join hands, an unsightly, ill-furnished, ill-lighted, and ill-ventilated school-house can at small cost be changed into one of comfort and beauty. In many places pupils have persuaded their parents to form clubs to beautify the school grounds. Each father sends a man or a man with a plow once or twice a year to work a day on the grounds. Stumps are removed, trees trimmed, drains put in, grass sowed, flowers, shrubbery, vines, and trees planted, and the grounds tastefully laid off. Thus at scarcely noticeable money cost a rough and unsightly school ground gives place to a charming school yard. Cannot the pupils in every school in which this book is studied get their parents to form such a club, and make their school ground a silent teacher of neatness and beauty? [Illustration: FIG. 295. WASHINGTON'S COUNTRY HOME] Life in the country will never be as attractive as it ought to be until all the roads are improved. Winter-washed roads, penning young people in their own homes for many months each year and destroying so many of the innocent pleasures of youth, build towns and cities out of the wreck of country homes. Can young people who love their country and their country homes engage in a nobler crusade than a crusade for improved highways? APPENDIX SPRAYING MIXTURES FOR BITING INSECTS DRY PARIS GREEN Paris green 1 lb. Lime or flour 4 to 16 lb. WET PARIS GREEN Paris green 1/4 to 2 lb. Lime 1/4 to 1/2 lb. Water 50 gal. FOR SOFT-BODIED SUCKING INSECTS KEROSENE EMULSION Hard soap (in fine shavings) 1/2 lb. Soft water 1 gal. Kerosene 2 gal. Dissolve soap in boiling water, add kerosene to the hot water, churn with spraying pump for at least ten minutes, until the mixture changes to a creamy, then to a soft, butterlike, mass. This gives three gallons of 66-per-cent oil emulsion, which may be diluted to the strength desired. To get 15-per-cent oil emulsion add ten and one-half gallons of water. FOR FUNGOUS DISEASES COPPER SULPHATE Copper sulphate 1 lb. Water 18 to 25 gal. Use only before foliage opens, to kill wintering spores. BORDEAUX MIXTURE Copper sulphate (bluestone) 4 to 5 lb. Lime (good, unslaked) 5 to 6 lb. Water 50 gal. Dissolve the copper sulphate (bluestone) in twenty-five gallons of water. Slake the lime slowly so as to get a smooth, thick cream. Never cover the lime with too much water. After thorough slaking add twenty-five gallons of water. When the lime and the bluestone have dissolved, pour the two liquids into a third vessel. Be sure that each stream mixes with the other before either enters the vessel. Strain through a coarse cloth. Mix fresh for each time. Use for molds and fungi generally. Apply in fine spray with a good nozzle. BORDEAUX-PARIS-GREEN MIXTURE Ordinary Bordeaux mixture 50 gal. Paris green 4 oz. to 2 lb. Use for both fungi and insects on apple, potato, etc. BORDEAUX-ARSENATE-OF-LEAD MIXTURE Ordinary Bordeaux mixture 50 gal. Arsenate of lead 2 to 3 lb. Used for fungous and insect enemies of the potato, and of the apple when bitter rot is troublesome. COMMERCIAL LIME-SULPHUR ARSENATE OF LEAD Commercial lime-sulphur 1-1/2 gal. Arsenate of lead 2 to 3 lb. Water 50 gal. Use for spraying apples. AMMONIACAL COPPER CARBONATE Copper carbonate 5 oz. Ammonia (26° Baumé) about 3 pt. Water 50 gal. Dissolve the copper carbonate in the smallest possible amount of ammonia. This solution may be kept in stock and diluted to the proper strength as needed. Use this instead of the Bordeaux mixture after the fruit has reached half or two thirds of the mature size. It leaves no spots as does the lime-sulphur wash or the Bordeaux mixture. SPRAYS FOR BOTH FUNGOUS AND INSECT PESTS HOME-MADE LIME-SULPHUR WASH Lime 20 lb. Sulphur 15 lb. Water 50 gal. The lime, the sulphur, and about half of the water required are boiled together for forty-five minutes in a kettle over a fire, or in a barrel or other suitable tank by steam, strained, and then diluted to 50 gallons. This is the wash regularly used against the San Jose scale. It may be substituted for Bordeaux mixture when spraying trees in the dormant state. Commercial lime-sulphur may also be used in place of this homemade wash. Use one gallon of the commercial lime-sulphur to nine gallons of water in the dormant season. SELF-BOILED LIME-SULPHUR WASH The self-boiled lime-sulphur wash is a combination of lime and sulphur boiled only by the heat of the slaking lime, and is used chiefly for summer spraying on peaches, plums, cherries, etc. as a substitute for the Bordeaux mixture. Lime 8 lb. Sulphur 6 to 8 lb. Water 50 gal. The lime should be placed in a barrel and enough water poured on it to start it slaking and to keep the sulphur off the bottom of the barrel. The sulphur, which should first be worked through a sieve to break up the lumps, may then be added, and, finally, enough water to slake the lime into a paste. Considerable stirring is necessary to prevent caking on the bottom. After the violent boiling which accompanies the slaking of the lime is over, the mixture should be diluted ready for use, or at least enough cold water added to stop the cooking. From five to fifteen minutes are required for the process. If the hot mass is permitted to stand undiluted as a thick paste, a liquid is produced that is injurious to peach foliage and, in some cases, to apple foliage. The mixture should be strained through a sieve of twenty meshes to the inch in order to remove the coarse particles of lime, but all the sulphur should be worked through the strainer. GLOSSARY To enable young readers to understand the technical words necessarily used in the text only popular definitions are given. =Abdomen=: the part of an insect lying behind the thorax. =Acid=: a chemical name given to many sour substances. Vinegar and lemon juice owe their sour taste to the acid in them. =Adult=: a person, animal, or plant grown to full size and strength. =Ammonia= (_ammonium_): a compound of nitrogen readily usable as a plant food. It is one of the products of decay. =Annual=: a plant that bears seed during the first year of its existence and then dies. =Anther=: the part of a stamen that bears the pollen. =Atmospheric nitrogen=: nitrogen in the air. Great quantities of this valuable plant food are in the air; but, strange to say, most plants cannot use it directly from the air, but must take it in other forms, as nitrates, etc. The legumes are an exception, as they can use atmospheric nitrogen. =Available plant food=: food in such condition that plants can use it. =Bacteria=: a name applied to a number of kinds of very small living beings, some beneficial, some harmful, some disease-producing. They average about one twenty-thousandth of an inch in length. =Balanced ration=: a ration made up of the proper amounts of carbohydrates, fats, and protein, as explained in text. Such a ration avoids all waste of food. =Biennial=: a plant that produces seed during the second year of its existence and then dies. =Blight=: a diseased condition in plants in which the whole or a part of a plant withers or dries up. =Bluestone=: a chemical; copper sulphate. It is used to kill fungi, etc. =Bordeaux Mixture=: a mixture invented in Bordeaux, France, to destroy disease-producing fungi. =Bud= (noun): an undeveloped branch. =Bud= (verb): to insert a bud from the scion upon the stock to insure better fruit. =Bud variation=: occasionally one bud on a plant will produce a branch differing in some ways from the rest of the branches; this is bud variation. The shoot that is produced by bud variation is called a _sport_. =Calyx=: the outermost row of leaves in a flower. =Cambium=: the growing layer lying between the wood and the bark. =Canon=: the shank bone above the fetlock in the fore and hind legs of a horse. =Carbohydrates=: carbohydrates are foods free from nitrogen. They make up the largest part of all vegetables. Examples are sugar, starch, and cellulose. =Carbolic acid=: a chemical often used to kill or prevent the growth of germs, bacteria, fungi, etc. =Carbon=: a chemical element. Charcoal is nearly pure carbon. =Carbon disulphide=: a chemical used to kill insects. =Carbonic acid gas=: a gas consisting of carbon and oxygen. It is produced by breathing, and whenever carbon is burned. It is the source of the carbon in plants. =Cereal=: the name given to grasses that are raised for the food contained in their seeds, such as corn, wheat, rice. =Cobalt=: a poisonous chemical used to kill insects. =Cocoon=: the case made by an insect to contain its larva or pupa. =Commercial fertilizer=: an enriching plant food bought to improve soil. =Compact=: a soil is said to be compact when the particles are closely packed. =Concentrated=: when applied to food the word means that it contains much feeding value in small bulk. =Contagious=: a disease is said to be contagious when it can be spread or carried from one individual to another. =Cross=: the result of breeding two varieties of plant together. =Cross pollination=: the pollination of a flower by pollen brought from a flower on some other plant. =Croup=: the top of the hips. =Culture=: the art of preparing ground for seed and raising crops by tillage. =Curb disease=: a swelling on the back part of the hind leg of a horse just behind the lowest part of the hock joint. It generally causes lameness. =Curculio=: a kind of beetle or weevil. =Dendrolene=: a patented substance used for catching cankerworms. =Digestion=: the act by which food is prepared by the juices of the body to be used by the blood. =Dormant=: a word used to describe sleeping or resting bodies,--bodies not in a state of activity. =Drainage=: the process by which an excess of water is removed from the land by ditches, terraces, or tiles. =Element=: a substance that cannot be divided into simpler substances. =Ensilage=: green foods preserved in a silo. =Evaporate=: to pass off in vapor, as a fluid often does; to change from a solid or liquid state into vapor, usually by heat. =Exhaustion=: the state in which strength, power, and force have been lost. When applied to land, the word means that land has lost its power to produce well. =Fermentation=: a chemical change produced by bacteria, yeast, etc. A common example of fermentation is the change of cider into vinegar. =Fertility=: the state of being fruitful. Land is said to be fertile when it produces well. =Fertilization=: the act which follows pollination and enables a flower to produce seed. =Fetlock=: the long-haired cushion on the back side of a horse's leg just above the hoof. =Fiber=: any fine, slender thread or threadlike substance, as the rootlets of plants or the lint of cotton. =Filter=: to purify a liquid, as water, by causing it to pass through some substance, as paper, cloth, screens, etc. =Formalin=: a forty per cent solution of a chemical known as formaldehyde. Formalin is used to kill fungi, bacteria, etc. =Formula=: a recipe for the making of a compound; for example, fertilizer or spraying compounds. =Fungicide=: a substance used to kill or prevent the growth of fungi; for example, Bordeaux Mixture or copper sulphate. =Fungous=: belonging to or caused by fungi. =Fungus= (plural =fungi=): a low kind of plant life lacking in green color. Molds and toadstools are examples. =Germ=: that from which anything springs. The term is often applied to any very small organism or living thing, particularly if it causes great effects such as disease, fermentation, etc. =Germinate=: to sprout. A seed germinates when it begins to grow. =Girdle=: to make a cut or groove around a limb or tree. =Glacier=: an immense field or stream of ice formed in the region of constant snow and moving slowly down a slope or valley. =Globule=: a small particle of matter shaped like a globe. =Glucose=: a kind of sugar very common in plants. The sugar from grapes, honey, etc. is glucose. That from the sugar cane is not. =Gluten=: a vegetable form of protein found in cereals. =Graft=: to place a living branch or stem on another living stem so that it may grow there. It insures the growth of the desired kind of plant. =Granule=: a little grain. =Gypsum=: land plaster. "=Head back=": to cut or prune a tree so as to form its head, that is, the place where the main trunk first gives off its branches. =Heredity=: the resemblance of offspring to parent. =Hibernating=: to pass the winter in a torpid or inactive state in close quarters. =Hock=: the joint in the hind leg of quadrupeds between the leg and the shank. It corresponds to the ankle in man. =Host=: the plant upon which a fungus or insect is preying. =Humus=: the portion of the soil caused by the decay of animal or vegetable matter. =Hybrid=: the result of breeding two different kinds of plants together. =Hydrogen=: a chemical element. It is present in water and in all living things. =Individual=: a single person, plant, animal, or thing of any kind. =Inoculate=: to give a disease by inserting the germ that causes it in a healthy being. =Insectivorous=: anything that eats insects. =Kainit=: salts of potash used in making fertilizers. =Kernel=: a single seed or grain, as a kernel of corn. =Kerosene emulsion=: see Appendix. =Larva= (plural =larvæ=): the young or immature form of an insect. =Larval=: belonging to larva. =Layer=: to propagate plants by a method similar to cutting, but differing from cutting in that the young plant takes root before it is separated from the parent plant. =Legume=: a plant belonging to the family of the pea, clover, and bean; that is, having a flower of similar structure. =Lichen=: a kind of flowerless plant that grows on stones, trees, boards, etc. =Loam=: an earthy mixture of clay and sand with organic matter. =Magnesia=: an earthy white substance somewhat similar to lime. =Magnify=: to make a thing larger in fact or in appearance; to enlarge the appearance of a thing so that the parts may be seen more easily. =Membrane=: a thin layer or fold of animal or vegetable matter. =Mildew=: a cobwebby growth of fungi on diseased or decaying things. =Mold=: see mildew. =Mulch=: a covering of straw, leaves, or like substances over the roots of plants to protect them from heat, drought, etc., and to preserve moisture. =Nectar=: a sweetish substance in blossoms of flowers from which bees make honey. =Nitrate=: a readily usable form of nitrogen. The most common nitrate is saltpeter. =Nitrogen=: a chemical element, one of the most important and most expensive plant foods. It exists in fertilizers, in ammonia, in nitrates, and in organic matter. =Nodule=: a little knot or bump. =Nutrient=: any substance which nourishes or promotes growth. =Organic matter=: substances made through the growth of plants or animals. =Ovary=: the particular part of the pistil that bears the immature seed. =Ovipositor=: the organ with which an insect deposits its eggs. =Oxygen=: a gas present in the air and necessary to breathing. =Particle=: any very small part of a body. =Perennial=: living through several years. All trees are perennial. =Petal=: a single leaf of the corolla. =Phosphoric acid=: an important plant food occurring in bones and rock phosphates. =Pistil=: the part of the blossom that contains the immature seeds. =Pollen=: the powdery substance borne by the stamen of the flower. It is necessary to seed production. =Pollination=: the act of carrying pollen from stamens to pistils. It is usually done by the wind or by insects. =Porosity=: the state of having small openings or passages between the particles of matter. =Potash=: an important part of plant foods. The chief source of potash is kainit, muriate of potash, sulphate of potash, wood ashes, and cotton-hull ashes. =Propagate=: to cause plants or animals to increase in number. =Protein=: the name of a group of substances containing nitrogen. It is one of the most important of feeding stuffs. =Pruning=: trimming or cutting parts that are not needed or that are injurious. =Pulverize=: to reduce to a dustlike state. =Pupa=: an insect in the stage of its life that comes just before the adult condition. =Purity= (of seed): seeds are pure when they contain only one kind of seed and no foreign matter. =Ration=: a fixed daily allowance of food for an animal. =Raupenleim=: a patented sticky substance used to catch the cankerworm. =Resistant=: a plant is resistant to disease when it can ward off attacks of the disease; for example, some varieties of the grape are resistant to the phylloxera. =Rotation= (of crops): a well-arranged succession of different crops on the same land. =Scion=: a shoot, sprout, or branch taken to graft or bud upon another plant. =Seed bed=: the layer of earth in which seeds are sown. =Seed selection=: the careful selection of seed from particular plants with the object of keeping or increasing some desirable quality. =Seedling=: a young plant just from the seed. =Sepal=: one of the leaves in the calyx. =Set=: a young plant for propagation. =Silo=: a house or pit for packing away green food for winter use so as to exclude air and moisture. =Sire=: father. =Smut=: a disease of plants, particularly of cereals, which causes the plant or some part of it to become a powdery mass. =Spike=: a lengthened flower cluster with stalkless flowers. =Spiracle=: an air opening in the body of an insect. =Spore=: a small body formed by a fungus to reproduce the fungus. It serves the same use as seeds do for flowering plants. =Spray=: to apply a liquid in the form of a very fine mist by the aid of a spraying pump for the purpose of killing fungi or insects. =Stamen=: the part of the flower that bears the pollen. =Stamina=: endurance. =Sterilize=: to destroy all the germs or spores in or on anything. Sterilizing is often done by heat or chemicals. =Stigma=: the part of the pistil that receives the pollen. =Stock=: the stem or main part of a tree or plant. In grafting or budding the scion is inserted upon the stock. =Stover=: as used in this book the word means the dry stalks of corn from which the ears have been removed. =Subsoil=: the soil under the topsoil. =Sulphur=: a yellowish chemical element; brimstone. =Taproot=: the main root of a plant, which runs directly down into the earth to a considerable depth without dividing. =Terrace=: a ridge of earth run on a level around a slope or hillside to keep the land from washing. =Thorax=: the middle part of the body of an insect. The thorax lies between the abdomen and the head. =Thermometer=: an instrument for measuring heat. =Tillage=: the act of preparing land for seed, and keeping the ground in a proper state for the growth of crops. =Transplant=: a plant grown in a bed with a view to being removed to other soil; a technical term used by gardeners. =Tubercle=: a small, wart-like growth on the roots of legumes. =Udder=: the milk vessel of a cow. =Utensil=: a vessel used for household purposes. =Variety=: a particular kind. For example, the Winesap, Bonum, Æsop, etc., are different varieties of apples. =Ventilate=: to open to the free passage of air. =Virgin soil=: a soil which has never been cultivated. =Vitality= (of seed): vitality is the ability to grow. Seed are of good vitality if a large per cent of them will sprout. =Weathering=: the action of moisture, air, frost, etc. upon rocks. =Weed=: a plant out of place. A wheat plant in a rose bed or a rose in the wheat field would be regarded as a weed, as would any plant growing in a place in which it is not wanted. =Wilt= (of cotton): a disease of cotton in which the whole plant droops or wilts. =Withers=: the ridge between the shoulder bones of a horse, at the base of the neck. =Yeast=: a preparation containing the yeast plant used to make bread rise, etc. INDEX Acid phosphate, 23, 214, 225 Alfalfa, 28, 179, 187, 242, 244, 245, 246-248 Alfalfa root, 28 Animals, domestic, 261-292 why we feed, 290 Annual, 69, 112, 118, 260 Ant, 144, 150 Anther, 43 Apple, 42, 59, 76, 78, 83-85, 123 fire-blight of, 130 Apple-tree tent caterpillar, 161, 162 Arsenate of lead, 156, 157 Ashes, 207 Asparagus, 98 Babcock milk-tester, 304 Bacteria, 24, 127, 128, 129, 131, 133 Balanced ration, 294-295 Barley, 215-217 Beans, 95, 98 Bee, 286-290 Beehive, anti-robbing entrance of, 289 Beet, 95, 96 sugar-, 218-221 Beet sugar, 218 Beetle, 146, 148 cucumber, 102 potato, 170 Biennials, 70 Bird homes, 322 Birds, 318-323 Black knot, 140 Blackberry, 59 Blight, 106 eggplant, 103 pear and apple, 130 potato, 138, 209 tomato, 106 Bordeaux mixture, 127, 141, 142, 156, 209 Borer, peach, 163, 164 Breeding-cage, insect, 152 Buckwheat, 229-230 Bud variation, 58 Budding, 55, 81-82 Buds, 51, 59 Bug, 147 Bulbs, 109, 110, 111 Burbank, Luther, 80 Butter, 297, 300 Butterfly, 146, 148, 149 Cabbage, 93, 95, 96, 99 Cabbage worm, 165, 166 Caladium, 111 Cambium, 79, 131 Cankerworm, 159, 160 Canna, 116 Cantaloupes, 101 Cape jasmine, 110 Capillarity, 10 Carbohydrates, 291, 292, 295 Carbon, 39, 40, 291 Carbon disulphide, 169 Carbonic acid gas, 6, 317 Caterpillar, 147, 149, 161 Cattle, 270-275 beef type of, 272 dairy type of, 273 improving of, 274 Cauliflower, 91, 140 Celery, 100, 101 Cherries, 59, 81, 164 Chinch bug, 165, 167 Churn, the, 297, 299, 300 Churning, 299 Cleft grafting, 80 Clover, 187, 249-251 Club root, 140 Cocoon, 147, 148, 150, 151 Codling moth, 154, 156, 164 Cold-frame, 93-97, 101 Colostrum, 297 Consumption, germ of, 129 Corms, 111 Corn, 197-202 blossom of, 45 freezing of seed, 75 roots of, 27, 28 selection of seed, 66, 67, 68 Cotton, 180-188 resistant variety of, 132 Sea Island, 132, 182 short-stapled, 182 Cotton wilt, 142 Cotton-boll weevil, 173 Cotton-seed meal, 24, 225, 295 Cow Aberdeen Angus, 272 Galloway, 274 Holstein, 275 Jersey, 273 care of, 296 the dairy, 293-296 Cowpeas, 251-254 Cream, 297, 298 Crop-rotation, 33-37 Crops, 178-237 rotation of, 20, 33, 189, 211, 217, 219, 228 value of, per acre, 179 Cross section, 26 Crosses, 49 Cross-pollination, 48 Cucumber, 73, 101 Cucumber beetle, 102 Curculio, plum, 156 Currant, 59 Cuttings, 52, 53, 54, 55, 109 Cyclamen, 115 Dahlia, 111, 112, 116 Dairy rules, 301 Dairying, 297-301 Dendrolene, 160 Diphtheria, germ of, 129 Diseases of plants, 122-143 Domestic animals, 261-292 Drainage, benefits of, 15 Dry farming, 323-326 Ducks, 282 Eggplants, 102, 103 Ensilage, 295 Farm crops, 178-237 Farm garden, 235-237 Farm tools, 313-315 Farming on dry lands, 323-330 Fats, 291, 292, 295 Feed stuffs, 238-260 digestible nutrients in, 290-292 growing, on the farm, 309-313 Feeding animals, 290 reasons for, 290, 292 Fertilization, 45 Fertilizers, 22-24 Field insects, 144-177 Figs, 51, 59 Fire-blight, 130 Flax, 226-229 Flea-beetle, 169, 172, 209 Floriculture, 89, 108 Flower, the, 42, 43 Flower box, 112 Flower gardening, 108-121 Fly, 146, 150 Formalin, 135, 136, 138 Fowls, 282-286 Fruit mold, 126, 142 Fruit rot, 122 Fruit tree, how to raise a, 76-87 Fultz, Abraham, 65 Fungi, 125, 126, 127 Garden, 235-237 Garden insects, 165-177 Gardening, market-, 89-90 Geese, 284 Geranium, 52, 54, 109, 110 Germs, 24, 127, 129, 131, 135; _see also_ Bacteria Girdler, 162 Girdling, 41 Glacier, 3, 4, 5 Gladiolus, 92, 111 Gooseberries, 59 Grafting, 55, 78-81 cleft, 80 root, 79 time for, 79 tongue, 79, 80 Grafting wax, 79 Grape, 51, 53, 58, 59 Grape cutting, 54 Grape phylloxera, 157, 158 Grape pollination, 52, 53 Grasses, 238-244 Grasshopper, 148, 151 Greenhouse, 91-94 Heading back, 83 Hemp, 226-229 Hens, 282-286 Heredity, 67 Hessian fly, 170 Homes, country, 330-337 Honey dew, 167 Horse, 262-270 diagrams by which to judge, 265-269 Percheron, 264 proportions of, 270 roadster, 267 Horticulture, 89-121 Host, 126 Hotbed, 91-97 How to raise a fruit tree, 76-87 Humus, 5, 20, 21, 22, 193, 207 Husker and shredder, 201 Hybrids, 49, 50, 51, 183 Insects, cage for breeding, 152 classes of, 146 eggs of, 150 eyes of, 145 field, 144, 165 garden, 144-177 general, 144 how they feed, 146, 147 orchard, 144 parts of, 145 Irish, or white, potato, 206-209 propagation of, 56, 57 Irrigation, 326-330 method of, 330 Kafir corn, 325, 326 Kainite, 214 Kerosene emulsion, 168 Land, improvement of, 17, 21, 31, 34, 244 Landscape-gardening, 89 Larva, 147, 148 Layering, 55, 57 Legumes, 31, 207, 244-260 Lettuce, 91, 93, 95 Life in the country, 330-337 Lime, 140 Lime-sulphur wash, 141, 142, 153, 154, 156 Liming land, 315-318 Louse, plant, 150, 151, 152, 167 Machines, farm, 313-315 Maize, 197 Manures, 20, 21-24 Maple sugar, 217 Market-gardening, 89, 90 Meadows, 240, 242 Melons, 101, 106 Mildew, 124 how to prevent, 126 Milk, 297 sours, how, 302 Milk-tester, Babcock, 304 Mineral matter, 291, 292 Moisture, 9 Mold, 123, 124, 125 Moonflower, 115 Morning-glory, 115 Moth, 148 codling, 154, 156, 164 mosquito, 150 Mulch, 12 Narcissus, 114 Nectar, 46, 47 Nitrate of soda, 24, 99, 211, 214 Nitrogen, 15, 23, 24, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 188, 246 Nitrogen-gathering crops, 15, 18, 244-260 Nodules, 36 Oats, 209-215 Oat smut, 134 Onion, 103, 104 Orchard insects, 143 Osmosis, 30 Ovary, 44 Ovipositor, 157 Paris green, 165, 209 Parsnips, 94 Pasture grasses, 238-244 Peach, 42, 59, 81, 84, 85, 87, 141, 142 Peach curl, 141, 143 Peach mold, 142 Peach mummies, 142 Peach tree, how made, 86-87 Peach-tree borer, 163, 164 Peanuts, 202-203 Pear, 44, 49, 59, 81, 130 Pear fire-blight, 130 Peas, 95, 104, 251-254 Perennials, 71, 112, 116, 118, 260 Petal, 43 Phosphoric acid, 23, 24, 186, 188, 196, 216, 244, 254 Phylloxera, 157, 158 Pipette, 305 Pistil, 43, 44 Plant, the, 25, 39 Plant disease, cause of, 122 nature of, 122 prevention of, 122, 129 Plant food, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24 from air, 39 from soil, 29 kinds of, 33 Plant louse, 150, 152, 167, 168 Plant seeding, 59, 109 Planting a tree, 76-87 Plant-propagation, 51-59 by buds, 51 Plants grown from seed, 109 from bulbs, 109 Plow, right way to, 11 Plum curculio, 156, 157 Plums, 43, 59, 81, 164 Pollen, 43, 47, 48 Pollination, 45-48 by hand, 49 cross-, 49, 50 grape, 52, 53 Potash, 23, 24, 186, 188, 196, 207, 216, 244, 246, 254 Potato, sweet, 204, 205 white, or Irish, 56, 57, 206-209 Potato beetle, 170, 209 Potato blight, 138, 209 Potato scab, 136, 205, 209 Potato seed, 56, 57 Poultry, 282-286 Prevention of plant diseases, 129, 130 Propagation of plants by buds, 58 by cuttings, 52 Protein, 212, 291, 294, 295, 297 Pruning, 83, 84-87 root, 85, 86 Pupa, 147, 150, 151 Purity of seed, 72-75 Pyrethrum powder, 165 Quince, 59 Radish, 95 Raspberry, 59 Ration, balanced, 294, 295 Ratoon, 225 Red raspberry, 59 Rice, 231-232 Roads, 332, 337 Root-hairs, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32 Root-pruning, 86 Roots, 25, 26, 27, 28 Root-tubercles, 30, 37 Rose, 109, 121, 124 Rot of fruit, 122 Rotation of crops, 8, 20, 21, 33-37, 189, 211, 217, 219, 258 Rye, 213-215 San Jose scale, 152, 153 Sap current, the, 40 Scab, 136, 209 Schoolhouses, 334 Scion, 79, 81, 82 Seed, 42 Seed purity, 72-75 Seed vitality, 72-75 Seed-germination, 74 Seed-germinator, 74 Seeding, 60, 114 Seed-selection, 56, 62, 64, 66 in the field, 56, 62, 68 of corn, 66 of cotton, 60, 61 of potatoes, 56, 57 of wheat, 64, 65 Seed-selection plat, 63, 64 Selection of seed. _See_ Seed-selection Sepal, 43 Sheep, 276-279 Silo, 295 Smuts, 134, 135 Soil, 1 bacteria in, 24 deepening of, 8 definition of, 1 drainage of, 14 Soil, how formed, 2, 3 how water rises in, 13 improving, 17 manuring of, 21 moisture of, 9 origin of, 1 particles of, magnified, 10 and plant, 25 retention of water by, 12 tillage of, 6 virgin, 17, 18 Sowing seed, 94 Soy beans, 256-260 Spiders, red, 121 Spiracles, 145 Spores, 123, 124, 125, 130, 135 prevention of, 130 Spraying, 137, 138, 139, 155, 156, 157, 209 Spraying outfit, 138, 155, 168, 171 Squanto, 21 Squash, 45, 95 Squash bug, 168 Stamen, 43-48 Starch, 40 Starchy food, 291 Stigma, 44-45 Stock, 79, 82 Strawberry, 45, 55, 59, 90 Style, 43 Subsoil, 1 Subsoiling, 10 Sugar, 40 Sugar plants, 217 Sugar-beet, 218-221 Sugar-cane, 221 Sugar-maple, 217 Sulphate of ammonia, 211 Sun-scald, 84 Sweet pea, 114, 115 Sweet potato, 56, 57, 111, 204-205 Swine, 279-282 Tent caterpillar, 162 Tile drain, 15, 16 benefits of, 14 Tillage, 6-9, 19, 28, 200 Timber, 232-235 enemies of, 233 Tobacco, 189-192 Tobacco worm, 170, 172 Tomato, 40, 105 Tongue grafting, 79, 80 Tools, 313 Topping tobacco, 191 Trap plant, 168 Tree, manuring of, 26 Truck crops, 98-107 Tubercle, 30, 32 Tull, Jethro, 6 Turkeys, 282 Turnip, 95 Twig girdler, 162 Typhoid fever, germ of, 129 Vetches, 255-257 Vitality of seed, 72-75 Vitamines, 298 Wasp, 146 Water, 10 absorption of, by plants, 10 retention of, by soil, 9 rise of, in soil, 13 saved by plants, 10 saved by soils, 12 Watermelons, 106 Wax, 79 Weathering, 4, 7 Weeds, 69, 74 annual, 69 biennial, 70 perennial, 71 Weevil, 169 cotton-boll, 173-177 plum, 156 Wheat, 192-197 selection of seed, 63 yield of, 64 Why feed animals, 290 Wilt cotton, 142 watermelon, 107 Window box, 118 Window-garden, 119-121 Window-gardening, 119 Worn-out land, reclaiming of, 19, 244 Yeast, 127, 128 
21657	----	DEEP FURROWS Which Tells of Pioneer Trails Along Which the Farmers of Western Canada Fought Their Way to Great Achievements in Co-Operation By HOPKINS MOORHOUSE TORONTO AND WINNIPEG GEORGE J. McLEOD, LIMITED PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1918 BY GEORGE J. McLEOD, LIMITED TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE SOIL CONTENTS CHAPTER Foreword I The Man on the Qu'Appelle Trail II A Call to Arms III The First Shot is Fired IV "That Man Partridge!" V "The House With the Closed Shutters" VI On a Card in the Window of Wilson's Old Store VII A Fight for Life VIII A Knock on the Door IX The Grain Exchange Again X Printers' Ink XI From the Red River Valley to the Foothills XII The Showdown XIII The Mysterious "Mr. Observer" XIV The Internal Elevator Campaign XV Concerning the Terminals XVI The Grip of the Pit XVII New Furrows XVIII A Final Test XIX Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan XX What Happened in Alberta XXI In the Drag of the Harrows XXII The Width of the Field XXIII The Depth of the Furrows XXIV And the End is Not Yet Appendix FOREWORD Once in awhile, maybe, twenty-five or thirty years ago, they used to pack you off during the holidays for a visit on Somebody's Farm. Have you forgotten? You went with your little round head close clipped till all the scar places showed white and you came back with a mat of sunbleached hair, your face and hands and legs brown as a nut. Probably you treasure recollections of those boyhood days when a raw field turnip, peeled with a "toad-stabber," was mighty good eatin'. You remember the cows and chickens, the horses, pigs and sheep, the old corn-crib where generally you could scare up a chipmunk, the gnarled old orchard--the Eastern rail-fenced farm of a hundred-acres-or-so. You remember Wilson's Emporium at the Corners where you went for the mail--the place where the overalled legs of the whole community drummed idly against the cracker boxes and where dried prunes, acquired with due caution, furnished the juvenile substitute for a chew of tobacco! Or perhaps you did not know even this much about country life--you of the Big Cities. To you, it may be, the Farmer has been little more than the caricatures of the theatres. You have seen him wearing blue jeans or a long linen duster in "The Old Homestead," wiping his eyes with a big red bandana from his hip pocket. You have seen him dance eccentric steps in wrinkled cowhide boots, his hands beneath flapping coat-tails, his chewing jaws constantly moving "the little bunch of spinach on his chin!" You have heard him fiddle away like two-sixty at "Pop Goes the Weasel!" You have grinned while he sang through his nose about the great big hat with the great big brim, "All Ba-ound Ra-ound With a Woolen String!" Yes, and you used to read about the Farmer, too--Will Carleton's farm ballads and legends; Riley's fine verses about the frost on the pumpkin and "Little Orphant Annie" and "Over the Hill to the Poorhouse!" And when Cousin Letty took you to the Harvest Home Supper and Grand Entertainment in the Town Hall you may have heard the village choir wail: "Oh, _Shall_ We Mortgage the Farm?" Perhaps even yet, now that you are man grown--business or professional man of the great cities--perhaps even yet, although you long have studied the market reports and faithfully have read the papers every day--perhaps that first impression of what a farmer was like still lingers in a more or less modified way. So that to you pretty much of an "Old Hayseed" he remains. Thus, while you have been busy with other things, the New Farmer has come striding along until he has "arrived in our midst" and to you he is a stranger. Remember the old shiny black mohair sofa and the wheezy, yellow-keyed melodeon or the little roller hand-organ that used to play "Old Hundred"? They have given place to new styles of furniture, upright pianos and cabinet gramophones. Coffin-handles and wax flowers are not framed in walnut and hung in the Farmer's front parlor any more; you will find the grotesque crayon portrait superseded by photo enlargements and the up-to-date kodak. The automobile has widened the circle of the Farmer's neighbors and friends, while the telephone has wiped distance from the map. In the modern farm kitchen hot and cold water gushes from bright nickel taps into a clean white enamel sink, thanks to the pneumatic water supply system. The house and other farm buildings are lighted by electricity and perhaps the little farm power plant manages to operate some machinery--to drive the washing machine, the cream separator, the churn and the fodder-cutter or tanning-mill. There is also a little blacksmith shop and a carpenter shop where repairs can be attended to without delay. True, all these desirable conveniences may not be possessed generally as yet; but the Farmer has seen them working on the model farmstead exhibited by the Government at the Big Fair or in the Farm Mechanics car of the Better Farming Special Trains that have toured the country, and he dreams about them. More scientific methods of agriculture have been adopted. The Farmer has learned what may be accomplished by crop rotations and new methods of cultivation. He has learned to analyze the soil and grow upon his land those crops for which it is best suited. If he keeps a dairy herd he tests each cow and knows exactly how her yield is progressing so that it is impossible for her to "beat her board bill." No longer is it even considered good form to chop the head off the old rooster; the Farmer sticks him scientifically, painlessly, instantaneously dressing him for market in the manner that commands the highest price. So with the butter, the eggs and all the rest of the farm products. Do you wonder that the great evolution of farming methods should lead to advanced thought upon the issues of the day? In the living room the Family Bible remains in its old place of honor, perhaps with the crocheted mat still doing duty; but it is not now almost the only book in the house. There is likely to be a sectional bookcase, filled with solid volumes on all manner of practical and economic subjects--these as well as the best literature, the latest magazines and two or three current newspapers. Yes, a whole flock of tin roosters have rusted away on top of the barn since the Farmer first began to consider himself the Rag Doll of Commerce and to seek adjustments. It is the privilege of rag dolls to survive a lot of abuse; long after wax has melted and sawdust run the faithful things are still on hand. And along about crop time the Farmer finds himself attracting a little attention. That is because this business of backbone farming is the backbone of Business In General. As long as money is circulating freely Business In General, being merely an exchange in values, wears a clean shirt and the latest cravat. But let some foreign substance clog the trade channels and at once everything tightens up and squeezes everybody. Day by day the great mass of the toilers in the cities go to work without attempting to understand the fluctuations of supply and demand. They are but cogs on the rim, dependent for their little revolutions upon the power which drives the machinery. That power being Money Value, any wastage must be replaced by the creation of new wealth. So men turn to the soil for salvation--to the greatest manufacturing concern in the world, Nature Unlimited. This is the plant of which the Farmer is General Manager. On state occasions, therefore, it has been the custom in the past to call him "the backbone of his country"--its "bone and sinew." Without him, as it were, the Commercial Fabric could not sit up in its High Chair and eat its bread and milk. Such fine speeches have been applauded loudly in the cities, too frequently without due thought--without it occurring to anyone, apparently, that perhaps the Farmer might prefer to be looked upon rather as an ordinary hard-working human being, entitled as such to "a square deal." But all these years times have been changing. Gradually Agriculture has been assuming its proper place in the scheme of things. It is recognized now that successful farming is a business--a profession, if you like--requiring lifelong study, foresight, common sense, close application; that it carries with it all the satisfaction of honest work well done, all the dignity of practical learning, all the comforts of modern invention, all the wider benefits of clean living and right thinking in God's sunny places. And with his increasing self-respect the New Farmer is learning to command his rights, not merely to ask and accept what crumbs may fall. He is learning that these are the days of Organization, of Co-Operation among units for the benefit of the Whole; that by pooling his resources he is able to reach the Common Objective with the least waste of effort. He has become a power in the land. These pages record a story of the Western Canadian farmer's upward struggle with market conditions--a story of the organized Grain Growers. No attempt is made to set forth the full details of the whole Farmer's Movement in Western Canada in all its ramifications; for the space limits of a single volume do not permit a task so ambitious. The writer has endeavored merely to gather an authentic record of the earlier activities of the Grain Growers' Associations in the three Prairie Provinces--why and how they came to be organized, with what the farmers had to contend and something of their remarkable achievements in co-operative marketing during the past decade. It is a tale of strife, limned by high lights and some shadows. It is a record worthy of preservation and one which otherwise would pass in some of its details with the fading memories of the pathfinders. If from these pages the reader is able to glean something of interest, something to broaden--be it ever so slightly--his understanding of the Western Canadian farmers' past viewpoint and present outlook, the undertaking will have found its justification and the long journeys and many interviews their reward. For, under the alchemy of the Great War, many things are changing and in the wonderful days of reconstruction that lie ahead the Farmer is destined to play an upstanding part in the new greatness of our country. Because of this it behooves the humblest citizen of us to seek better understanding, to meet half way the hand of fellowship which he extends for a new conception of national life. The writer is grateful to those farmers, grain men, government officials and others who have assisted him so kindly in gathering and verifying his material. Indebtedness is acknowledged also to sundry Dominion Government records, to the researches of Herbert N. Casson and to the press and various Provincial Departments of Agriculture for the use of their files. H.M. WINNIPEG, March 1st, 1918. DEEP FURROWS CHAPTER I THE MAN ON THE QU'APPELLE TRAIL Among the lonely lakes I go no more, For she who made their beauty is not there; The paleface rears his tepee on the shore And says the vale is fairest of the fair. Full many years have vanished since, but still The voyageurs beside the camp-fire tell How, when the moon-rise tips the distant hill, They hear strange voices through the silence swell. --_E. Pauline Johnson._ _The Legend of Qu'Appelle._ To the rimming skyline, and beyond, the wheatlands of Assiniboia[1] spread endlessly in the sunshine. It was early October in the year 1901--one of those clear bright days which contribute enchantment to that season of spun gold when harvest bounties are garnered on the Canadian prairies. Everywhere was the gleam of new yellow stubble. In serried ranks the wheat stocks stretched, dwindling to mere specks, merging as they lost identity in distance. Here and there stripes of plowed land elongated, the rich black freshly turned earth in sharp contrast to the prevailing gold, while in a tremendous deep blue arch overhead an unclouded sky swept to cup the circumference of vision. Many miles away, yet amazingly distinct in the rarefied air, the smoke of threshers hung in funnelled smudges above the horizon--like the black smoke of steamers, hull down, at sea. On this particular autumn afternoon a certain black dot might have been observed, so lost in the immensity of landscape that it appeared to be stationary. It was well out upon the trail that wound northward from Indian Head into the country of the Fishing Lakes--the trail that forked also eastward to dip through the valley of the Qu'Appelle at Blackwood before striking north and east across the Kenlis plain towards the Pheasant Hills. In reality the well kept team which drew the big grain wagon was swinging steadily ahead at a smart pace; for their load of supplies, the heaviest item of which was a new plow, was comparatively light, they were homeward bound and the going in the earlier stages of the long journey was smooth. The driver sat hunched in his seat, reins sagging. He was a man of powerful physique, his skin deep coppered by long exposure to prairie winds and sun. In repose the face that was shadowed by the wide felt hat would have appeared somewhat deceptive in its placidity owing to the fact that the strong jaw and firm mouth were partly hidden by a heavy moustache and a thick, black beard, trimmed short. Just now it was evident that the big farmer's mood was far from pleasant. Forearm on knee, he had surrendered completely to his thoughts. His fists clenched spasmodically and there was an angry glint in his eyes. Occasionally he shook his head as if the matter in mind were almost too hopeless for consideration. A sudden surge of resentment made him lash his booted leg with the ends of the lines. "Confound them!" he muttered aloud. He had just delivered his first load of the season's new wheat. Three nights before, by lantern light, he had backed his horses to the wagon and hauled it twenty-five miles to the railway at Indian Head. His stay there had not been conducive to peace of mind. To reach the rails with a heavy load in favorable weather was simple enough; it merely required time. But many such trips would be necessary before his crop was marketed. Some of the farmers from beyond the Qu'Appelle would be hauling all winter; it was in winter that the haul was long and cruel. Starting at one, two or three o'clock in the morning, it would be impossible to forecast the weather with any degree of accuracy, so that often they would be overtaken by blizzards. At such times the lack of stopping-places and shelter in the sparsely settled reaches of the trail encompassed the journey with risks every whit as real as pioneer perils of marauding Indians or trailing wolf-packs. Snow and wind, however, had no place in the thoughts of the lonely farmer at the moment. Such things he had been used to ever since he first homesteaded; this long haul with the products of his toil he had been making for many years. What immediately concerned him was the discouraging prospect of another wheat blockade instead of any improvement in conditions which had become unbearable. With the country as full of wheat as it was this year it required no great gift of prophecy to foretell what would happen. It was happening already. The railway people were ignoring completely the car-distribution clauses of the Grain Act and thereby playing in with the elevator interests, so that the farmers were going to be just where they were before--at the mercy of the buyers, their legitimate profits filched by excessive dockage, low grades, depressed prices, exorbitant storage charges, even short weights in some cases. All this in spite of the strong agitation which had led to Government action, in spite of the Royal Commission which had investigated the farmers' claims and had recommended the Grain Act, in spite of the legislation on the statutes! Law or no law, the farmer was still to be preyed upon, apparently, without a single weapon left with which---- The eyes of the man in the broad-brimmed hat grew grave. Scoff as he might among the men of the district when the serious ones voiced their fears to him, his own thoughts always came back to those fears. From the Red River Valley to the foothills long-smouldering indignation was glowing like a streak of fire in the prairie grass; a spark or two more and nothing could stop the conflagration that would sweep the plains country. If the law were to fail these red-blooded and long-suffering homesteaders there would be final weapons alright--real weapons! It was no use shutting one's eyes to the danger. Some fool would do something rash, and with the farmers already inflamed and embittered, there was no telling what desperate things might be attempted. That was the fear which stirred and perplexed the solitary traveller; for he had heard things that afternoon--seen things that he did not like but could not ignore. He recognized an undercurrent of feeling, a silence more ominous than all the heated talk, and that was where the danger lay. Something would have to be done, and that soon. But what? What? So engrossed was he that beyond an occasional flip of the reins or a word to the horses he paid no heed to his surroundings. A huge jack-rabbit sprang up, almost from beneath the noses of the team, and went flying off in great leaps over the stubble. A covey of prairie chicken, fat and fit, whirred into the air and rocketed away. But he scarcely saw them. Had he looked up he might have noticed a horseman loping down a cross trail with the evident intention of heading off the wagon. But the rider had pounded almost within hailing distance before the other was aware of his approach. It was Bob McNair of the "Two-Bar Ranch," as he insisted upon calling his wheat farm. He waved an oil-spattered Stetson and came into the trail with a rush, pulling up the wiry broncho with a suddenness that would have unseated one less accustomed than McNair, former corporal, Royal North-West Mounted Police. "Howdy, W. R. Thought 'twas your outfit. Good job I aint a Blackfoot on the warpath," he laughed. "I'd sure 'a' had your scalp sneaked before you could draw a bead!" He swung alongside, stepped into the wagon, looped the bridle-rein over the handle of the new plow and, climbing forward, shook hands heartily and sat down. "You're looking fit, Bob," welcomed the other with evident pleasure. "What brings you over this way? Everything going alright?" "So-so," nodded McNair. "Been over Sintaluta to see about gettin' a car, among other things." "Of course you got it?" "Sure! Oh, sure I got it--got it still to get!" and McNair burst into a flow of language that did even him justice. More or less vehement at all times, the one-time corporal exhibited so much vigor in his remarks that his good-natured auditor had to laugh. "I ain't tryin' to be funny!" finished McNair. "I mean every dashed word of it, Motherwell. If I don't get some of it out o' my system I'll bust to bits, that's what. Say, I met Sibbold. He told me some of you fellows was meetin' over at the Head to-day. What about it?" "Why, yes, Johnny Millar got a few of us together to talk things over. Lot of talk alright. Some of the boys were feeling pretty hot, I can tell you! But I can't see that anything came of it except some resolutions--the usual sort, you know." "Pshaw! I was hopin' it meant action of some kind." The ex-rancher was silent for a moment. Then his right fist went into his left palm with a smack. "The only kind o' resolution that'll get anythin' is made o' lead and fits in a rifle breech! And I want to tell you, old man, if there ain't some pretty quick right-about-facin' in certain quarters, I'll be dashed if I ain't for it! An' I won't be standin' alone, either!" he added grimly. W. R. Motherwell[2] glanced sharply at the tense face. "Don't talk nonsense!" he reproved quietly. "I ain't talkin' nonsense. Not on your life! If I am, then I reckon I know a hundred or so hard-headed farmers who're doin' the identical same. An' if I know that many in my territory, W. R., how many d'you suppose there are if we take in Manitoba and clean through to the mountains?" "Then all I've got to say is: there are more and bigger fools in the country than I had any idea of." "What d'you mean, talkin' like that?" "That's just what I've got to say to you, McNair," retorted the big farmer with heat. "What do _you_ mean, talking like that? If you're serious in what you say----" "I said I was, didn't I?" snapped the other. "Then you ought to be tied up on the Two-Bar and muzzled, for you're plumb mad, McNair! It's just that kind of firebrand talk that's hurting our cause. The farmers have got enough enemies now, God knows, without making a lot of new ones. Doggone your hide, Mac, what're you trying to do?--Stir up another rebellion like that of '85?" "If it's necessary--you bet I am!" he brazened. "You, of all men!" "An' why not me? Just because I've worn the Queen's uniform, eh? Well, let me tell you, sir, I belonged to a body of men who stood for British justice an' a square deal to even the meanest Injun in the Territories." The ex-mounted policeman spoke with pride. "We'd never have handled the beggars if it hadn't been for that. Even the Injuns were men enough to recognize justice, an' that's more'n these commercial blood-suckers to-day can do! If our case was in the hands of the Force it'd rest on its merits an' us grain growers'd get justice. Instead, where is it?--in the hands of a pussy-footed, hifalutin' bunch o' political windbags in the East who don't care a damn about us hayseeds out West! An' what's more----" "The Royal Mounted stood for law and order, Bob; but you'd class yourself with the half-breeds, would you? Have another little rebellion like that of '85 with all the----" "Not like '85," interrupted the rancher. "No, sir, this one'll be bloodless; but it'll knock the spots off the 'breeds' little shindig all the samee!" "You spoke of rifles, McNair. Guns go off," interpolated the other sententiously. "What'n the mischief do you expect to gain by that sort of thing?" "A hearing, by Jingo! That's more'n all your letters to the papers an' your meetin's an' resolutions have got us. We'll show 'em we mean business----" "Rot! How did we get the Royal Commission except by those letters and meetings? That put the Manitoba Grain Act on the statutes, didn't it? Mean to say we're no farther ahead? We've got the whole grain trade under control and supervision----" "Like ducks you have!" The former rancher threw back his head and laughed. "We've got the privilege of loading our wheat direct on cars through the flat warehouses or any other way we like----" "What's the good o' that if a man can't get a car when he wants it?" demanded McNair impatiently. "The elevator gang 've organized to grab everything in sight. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it, by heaven! So what's the use o' talkin'?" "We've got to be fair, though. The elevator people have put a lot of money--Say, why can't we organize, too?" suggested Motherwell with a flash of inspiration. "We haven't tried that yet. That's constitutional. That's what the livestock breeders have done," he said eagerly. McNair shook his head. "I tell you, Bill, it's too late for that sort o' thing," he objected. "Unless you mean organizin' to fight--" "Exactly." "With guns, if necessary?" "It won't be necessary." "Possibly not to shoot anybody. The showin' mebbe'll turn the trick. Now, look here. My idea is that if a bunch of us fellows got together on the quiet some night an' seized a few elevators--Say, wouldn't it bring things to a head so quick we'd get action? The law's there, but these fellows are deliberately breakin' it an' we got to show 'em----" "The action you'd get would be the wrong kind, Mac," protested W. R. Motherwell emphatically. "You'd land in jail!" "Don't see it that way," persisted McNair. "Wouldn't give a continental if I did so long's it woke a few people up." "I tell you you're on the wrong trail unless you want to get it where the chicken got the axe!" "Doggone it, man! Ain't that where we're gettin' it _now_?" "Whereas with the right kind of organization----" "Don't believe it," grunted McNair, starting to climb back to his horse. "The time for any more o' these here granny tea-parties is past to my way o' thinkin' an' if we can't agree on it, we'd better shut up before we get mad." He vaulted easily into the saddle. "But I'll tell you one thing, W. R.--there's the sweetest little flare-up you ever saw on its way. I was talkin' the other day to Ed. Partridge, the Railton boys, Al. Quigley, Billy Bonner and some more----" "And I'll bet they gave you a lot of sound advice, Mac!" laughed Motherwell confidently. "That's alright," resented McNair, the tan of his cheek deepening a trifle. "They're a pretty sore bunch an' a fellow from down Turtle Mountain way in Manitoba told me----" "That the mud-turtle and the jack-rabbit finally agreed that slow and steady----" "Bah! You're sure hopeless," grinned the owner of the Two-Bar, giving his horse the rein. "Hope_ful_," corrected W. R. Motherwell with a laugh. "Tell Wilson, if you see him, that Peter Dayman and I are expecting him over next week, will you? And I say, Mac, don't kill too many before you get home!" he called in final jocularity. The flying horseman waved his hat and his "S'long" came back faintly. The other watched till horse and rider lost themselves among the distant wheat stocks. The twinkle died out of his eyes as he watched. So McNair was another of them, eh? After all, that was only to be expected of an old Indian fighter and cow-puncher like him. Poor Bob! He had his reputation to sustain among the newcomers--hard rider, hard fighter, hard drinker; to do it under the changed conditions naturally required some hard talking on occasion. While Mac had become civilized enough to keep one foot in a cowhide boot planted in the practical present, the other foot was still moccasined and loath to forget the days of war-paint and whiskey-traders, feathers and fears. Over the crudities and hardships, the dirt and poverty, the years between had hung a kindly curtain of glamor; so that McNair with his big soft kerchiefs, his ranger's hat, his cow-puncher's saddle and trappings and his "Two-Bar" brand was a figure to crane an Eastern neck. Likeable enough chap--too much of a man to be treated as a joke to his face, but by no means to be taken seriously--not on most occasions. In the present instance, with feeling running as high as it was in some quarters, that crazy idea of seizing a few elevators at the point of a gun--! What in heaven's name would they do with them after they got them? Nevertheless, McNair might find rattle-brained listeners enough to cause a heap of trouble. There were always a few fellows ready for excitement; they might go in for the fun of it, then before they knew it the thing would curdle over night like a pan of milk in a thunder-storm. "He's just darn fool enough to try some funny work," muttered the anxious driver of the grain wagon. "Jailing him only makes a hero of him and that's the kind of thing the beggar glories in. The son-of-a-gun!" One by one throughout the afternoon the miles crept tediously beneath the wagon. The sun which had steeped the stubble in gold all day had turned the sky and was poising for its nightly dip below the horizon by the time the long misty blue line of the Qu'Appelle hills began to creep from the prairie. When the lone traveller at last could count the deep shadowy coulees the sun had disappeared, but the riot of after-fires still burned brightly in the west. He had passed his own place hours before, but had stopped there only for a change of horses and a brief rest; a parcel and an important message which he wished to deliver in person at Fort Qu'Appelle without delay was extending his day's journey. Six hundred feet below the level of the plain the grassy slopes of the Qu'Appelle Valley bowled to the blue lakes. Hugging the water's edge, the buildings of the romantic old fort scattered in the twilight. The winding trail stood out like a white thread that reached down the valley towards the Catholic Mission of Lebret. Before heading into the steep descent the farmer from over Abernethy way slipped on his heavy cardigan jacket; for behind the rim of the hills the sunset fires were dying and already the coolness of the October night was making itself felt. At the mouth of a coulee he spoke to a solitary Indian, standing motionless before a camp fire. The appetizing odor of roasting wild fowl reminded him that he was more than ready for the "bite to eat" which he would enjoy with the good Father Hugonard at the Indian Mission--he of the dark, gentle eyes, the quick understanding, the quiet tones. There would be much to talk about. So it proved. The hour was growing late when finally he bade good-bye to his pleasant host and resumed his journey in the starlight, refreshed and encouraged. For here in the seclusion of this peaceful valley, since the days of the great buffalo herds, Father Hugonard had ministered to the Indians, starved with them, worked patiently with them through many seasons of flowers and snows. Nevertheless, out of many discouragements and privations had this sterling man retained an abiding faith in the triumph of righteousness in all things. In the quiet beauty of the wonderful October night was little place for the anxious thoughts of the day. Bitterness of spirit, the bickerings of men, commercial Oppression and injustice--these were things far removed from the planets of the Ages that sparkled like jewels in the vault of Night. A vagrant breeze whispered in the valley sedges to the placid lake. High in the air, invisible, migrating _wavies_ winged into the south, the distant gabble of their passing falling weirdly earthward. The trail began to ascend sharply. Off to the right the sky was growing rapidly lighter behind a distant hill and presently a lop of yellow moon crept slowly over the edge and rose into the air like a broken chalice, chasing the shadows to their retreats. As he watched it the driver of the grain wagon recalled again the old Indian legend that haunted this valley and had given it its name--how, long ago, a young Indian chieftain was paddling his canoe through these waters on his way to win a bride when suddenly above "the night wind's melancholy song" he heard a voice calling him through the twilight. "Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?" he answered in French. "Who calls?" But only his own voice came back in echoes while the gloom of night deepened and a wan moon rose silently behind the distant hill. Then when he reached the Indian encampment it was only to see the death fires lighted on the shore, to hear the wail of women and to learn that just before her lips had closed forever, his beloved had called for him--just at the moon-rise. Thus, ever since, the Indians claimed, strange spirit voices spoke through the lone valley at every rising of the moon. Thrilled by the beauty of the valley scene, misty in the moonlight, the big farmer half unconsciously drew rein and listened. All he could hear at first was the impatient stamp of his horses' feet, the mouthing of the bits as the animals tossed their heads restlessly, the clink of the trace-chains; but presently he sensed a subdued undertone of night noises that wafted mysteriously over the silver water. It was nothing that could be recognized definitely; rather was it an impression of strangely merged minor sounds that grew upon him as imagination was given play under the influence of time and place. It was easy to supply interpretations of that faint medley, even while one knew that it was merely the murmur of night airs in the dry grasses, the whisper of the water-edges, the stirring of restless water-fowl in the dying reeds. The man who had ridden all day with his thoughts began unconsciously to apply other meanings to the sound, to people the night with dim faces and shapes that came trooping over the edge of the tablelands above--toil-bent figures of old pioneer farmers, care-worn faces of women and bright eager faces of little children who were holding out their hands trustfully to the future. There seemed to be a never-ending procession--faces that were apathetic from repeated disappointments, faces that scowled threateningly, brave faces tense with determination and sad faces on which was written the story of struggle hidden within many a lonely wind-buffeted shack on the great bosom of the prairie. Was it, then, that all the years of toil and hardship were to come to naught for this great company of honest workers, these brave pioneer men and women of the soil? Was all their striving forward to find them merely marking time, shouldered into the backwater while the currents of organized commercialism swept away their opportunities? Were not these producers of the world's bread themselves to partake of the fruits of their labor? Yes! Surely the answer was _Yes_! It was their Right. Wrong could not endure forever in the face of Right; else were the world a poor place, Life itself a failure, the mystic beauty of God's calm night a mockery. The man from Abernethy roused himself. It would be nearly dawn before his team would reach their home stalls. He whistled to the horses and they plunged into the black shadows of the coulee up which the trail rose in steep ascent from the valley. When they emerged into the moonlight he drew rein for a moment. Somewhere back in a forgotten arroyo a coyote yapped lonesomely. Around through the night were flung the distant glow-dots of the burning straw piles, and as he filled his lungs with the fresh sweet air the hope of better days warmed the heart of the belated traveller. The Hand which set the orbits of the universe created the laws of Truth and Justice and these never could be gainsaid. Everything would come out aright if only men were steadfast in faith and duty. He gave the horses their heads and they were off once more through the cool night upon the wheatland sea that was bounded only by far purple shadows. [1] The provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, Western Canada, were not created until 1906. Prior to that the entire country west of the Province of Manitoba was known as the North-West Territories, of which the District of Assiniboia was a part, the part which subsequently formed the southern portion of the Province of Saskatchewan. [2] Hon. W. R. Motherwell, Minister of Agriculture, Province of Saskatchewan. CHAPTER II A CALL TO ARMS And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth.--_Isaiah_ 10:14. For five thousand years Man has grown wheat for food. Archaeologists have found it buried with the mummies of Egypt; the pictured stones of the Pyramids record it. But it was the food of princes, not of peasants--of the aristocracy, not of the people; for no man could harvest enough of it with his sickle to create a supply which would place it within the reach of the poor. While century after century[1] has passed since wheat was first recognized as the premier nourishment for the human body, it is only of recent times that it has become the food of the nations. The swift development of grain growing into the world's greatest industry goes back for a small beginning to 1831. It was in that year that a young American-born farm boy of Irish-Scotch extraction was jeered and laughed at as he attempted to cut wheat with the first crude reaper; but out of Cyrus Hall McCormick's invention soon grew the wonderful harvesting machinery which made possible the production of wheat for export. Close on heel the railways and water-carriers began competing for the transportation of the grain, the railways pushing eagerly in every direction where new wheat lands could be tapped. In 1856 wheat was leaving Chicago for Europe and four years later grain vessels from California were rounding Cape Horn. The nine years that followed saw the conquest of the vast prairies of the American West which were crossed by the hissing, iron monsters that stampeded the frightened bison, out-ran the wild horses and out-stayed the lurking Indian. No sooner had the railways pushed back the frontier than wheat began to trickle steadily upon the market, to flow with increased volume, then to pour in by train-loads. Sacks were discarded for quicker shipment in bulk; barns and warehouses filled and spilled till adequate storage facilities became the vital problem and, the need mothering invention, F. H. Peavey came forward with an idea--an endless chain of metal cups for elevating grain. From this the huge modern elevator evolved to take its place as the grain's own particular storehouse. With the establishment of exchanges for conducting international buying and selling the universalizing of wheat was complete. These things had come to pass while that great region which is now Western Canada was still known as a Great Lone Land. Pioneer settlers, however, were beginning to venture westward to the newly organized Province of Manitoba and beyond. The nearest railroad was at St. Paul, Minnesota, from which point a "prairie schooner" trail led north for 450 miles to Winnipeg at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers; the alternative to this overland tented-wagon route was a tedious trip by Red River steamer. It was not until 1878 that a railway was built north into Manitoba from St. Paul; but it was followed shortly after by the projection of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which reached Vancouver in 1886. Then began what has been called the greatest wheat-rush ever known. Land, land without end, to be had for the asking--rich land that would grow wheat, forty bushels to the acre, millions of acres of it! Fabulous tales, winging east and south, brought settlers pouring into the new country. They came to grow wheat and they grew it, the finest wheat in the world. They grew it in ever increasing volume. Successful operation of new railroads--even ordinary railroads--is not all glistening varnish and bright new signal flags. The Canadian Pacific was no ordinary railway. It was a young giant, reaching for the western skyline with temerity, and it knew Trouble as it knew sun and wind and snow. The very grain which was its life-blood gorged the embryo system till it choked. The few elevators and other facilities provided could not begin to handle the crop, even of 1887, the heavy yield upsetting all calculations. The season for harvesting and marketing being necessarily short, the railroad became the focus of a sudden belch of wheat; it required to be rushed to the head of the lakes in a race with the advancing cold which threatened to congeal the harbor waters about the anxiously waiting grain boats before they could clear. With every wheel turning night and day no ordinary rolling stock could cope with the demands; for the grain was coming in over the trails to the shipping points faster than it could be hauled out and the railroad was in a fix for storage accommodation. It was easy to see that such seasonal rushes would be a permanent condition in Western Canada, vital but unavoidable; so the Canadian Pacific Railway Company cast about for alleviations. They hit upon the plan of increasing storage facilities rapidly by announcing that the Company would make special concessions to anyone who would build elevators along the line with a capacity of not less than 26,000 bushels and equipped with cleaning machinery, steam or gasoline power--in short, "standard" elevators. The special inducement offered was nothing more nor less than an agreement that at points where such elevators were erected the railway company would not allow cars to be loaded with grain through flat warehouses, direct from farmers' vehicles or in any other way than through such elevators; the only "condition" was that the elevator owners would furnish storage and shipping facilities, of course, for those wishing to store or ship grain. At once the noise of hammer and saw resounded along the right-of-way. Persons and corporations whose business it was to mill grain, to buy and export it, were quick to take advantage of the opportunity; for the protection offered by the railway meant that here was shipping control of the grain handed out on a silver platter, garnished with all the delectable prospects of satisfying the keenest money hunger. On all sides protests arose from the few owners of ordinary warehouses who found their buildings useless, once the overtopping elevator went up alongside--from small buyers who found themselves being driven out of the market with the flat warehouses. But these voices were drowned in the swish of grain in the chutes and the staccato of the elevator engines--lost in the larger exigencies of the wheat. The railway company held to their promises and the tall grain boxes reared their castor tops against the sky in increasing clusters. To operate a standard elevator at a country point with profit it was considered necessary in the early days to fill it three times in a season unless the owner proposed to deal in grain himself and make a buyer's profit in addition to handling grain for others. The cost of building and operating the class of elevator demanded by the railway company was partly responsible for this. Before long the number of elevators in Manitoba and the North-West Territories increased till it was impossible for all of them to obtain the three fillings per season even had their owners been inclined to perform merely a handling service. But those who had taken up the railway's offer with such avidity and had invested large sums of shareholders' capital in building the elevator accommodation were mostly shrewd grain dealers whose primary object was to buy and sell. These interested corporations were not constructing elevators in order to admire their silhouettes against the beautiful prairie sunsets! In every corner of the earth the Dollar Almighty, or its equivalent, was being stalked by all sorts and conditions of men, some of whom chased it noisily and openly while others hunted with their boots in one hand. Properly enough, the grain men were out for all that their investment could earn and for all the wheat which they could buy at one price and sell at another. That was their business, just as it was the business of the railway company to transport the grain at a freight rate which would net a profit, just as it was the farmer's business-- But to the farmer it seemed that he had no business! He merely grew the grain. Apparently a farmer was a pair of pants, a shirt and a slouch hat that sat on a wagon-load of wheat, drove it up the incline into the elevator and rattled away again for another load! To farm was an occupation easily parsed--subjunctive mood, past tense, passive voice! The farmer was third person, singular! He came and went in single file like an Indian or a Chinaman--John Doe, Yon Yonson and Johann X (his mark)--every kind of Johnny on no spot but his own! As soon as his grain was dumped each of him went back to the land among the dumb animals where the pomp and vanity of this wicked world would not interfere with preparations for next year's crop! Wheat was bought upon the grading system--so much per bushel for this grade, so much for that, according to the fluctuations of supply and demand upon the world's markets. But the average farmer at that time knew little or nothing about what went on in the great exchanges of the cities; there was no means of learning the intricacies of the grain business and many farmers even did not know what a grain exchange was. All such a man knew was that his wheat was graded and he received a certain price for it. The railway company's refusal to furnish cars for loading direct from the farmer's wagon compelled the shipper to sell to the elevator operator for whatever price he could get, accepting whatever weights the operator allowed and whatever "dockage" he chose to decree. The latter represented that portion of the farmer's delivery which was supposed to come through the cleaning sieves as waste material such as dirt, weed seeds, broken wheat kernels, etc. To determine the percentage of dockage in any given load of wheat the ordinary human being would require to weigh and clean a pound of it at least; but so expert were many of the elevator operators of those days that they had no trouble at all in arriving at the dockage by a single glance. Nor were they disconcerted by the fact that the country was new and grain frequently came from the thresher in a remarkably clean condition. With everything thus fallow for seeds of discord the Big Trouble was not long in making itself manifest. All over the country the Bumping of the Bumpkins apparently became the favorite pastime of elevator men. Certain persons with most of their calluses on the inside cracked the whip and the three-ring circus began. Excessive dockage, short weights, depressed prices! The farmers grew more and more bitter as time passed. To begin with, they resented being compelled by the railway to deal with the elevators; it was a violation of that liberty which they had a right to enjoy as British citizens. The grain was theirs to sell where they liked, and when on top of the refusal to let them do it came this bleeding of their crops, their indignation was fanned to white heat. It was useless for the farmers to build elevators of their own; for these had to conform to the requirements of the railway and, as already stated, it was impossible to run them profitably without making a buyer's profit in addition to the commission for handling and storage. The farmers were not buyers but sellers of grain and with very few exceptions, where conditions were specially favorable, the farmers' elevators that were attempted were soon in difficulties. Leading farmers began to write strong letters to the newspapers and it was not long before the agitation became so widespread that it reached the floor of Parliament. Mr. James M. Douglas, member for East Assiniboia, during two successive sessions introduced Bills to regulate the shipping and transportation of grain in Manitoba and the North-West Territories and these were discussed in the House of Commons. A Special Committee of the House was appointed finally to investigate the merits of the case and as considerable difference of opinion was expressed as to the actual facts, the appointment of a Royal Commission to make a full and impartial investigation of the whole subject in the public interest was recommended. This Royal Commission accordingly was appointed on October 7th, 1899, and consisted of three Manitoba farmers--W. F. Sirett, of Glendale; William Lothian, of Pipestone, and Charles C. Castle, of Foxton--with His Honor E. J. Senkler, of St. Catharines, Ontario, as Chairman; Charles N. Bell, of Winnipeg, acted as Secretary. Owing to the illness and death of Judge Senkler, Albert Elswood Richards (afterwards the late Hon. Mr. Justice Richards, of Winnipeg), succeeded as Chairman in February, 1900. Sittings were held at many places throughout Manitoba and the North-West Territories and much evidence was taken as to the grievances complained of, these being mainly: (1) That vendors of grain were being subjected to unfair and excessive dockage at the time of sale; (2) That doubt existed as to the fairness of the weights allowed or used by owners of elevators; (3) That the owners of elevators enjoyed a monopoly in the purchase of grain by refusing to permit the erection of flat warehouses where standard elevators were situated and were thus able to keep prices of grain below true value to their own benefit and the disadvantage of the public generally as well as others who were specially interested in the grain trade. Meanwhile the railway companies had hastened to announce that they would furnish cars to farmers who wished to ship direct and do their own loading. This concession, made in 1898-9, resulted in somewhat better prices and better treatment from the elevator operators. But farmers who lived more than four or five miles from the shipping points could not draw in their grain fast enough to load a car within the time allowed by the railway; so that the situation, so far as these farmers were concerned, remained practically unchanged. In March, 1900, the Royal Commission made a complete report. They had done their work thoroughly. They found that so long as any farmer was hampered in shipping to terminal markets himself he would be more or less at the mercy of elevator operators and that the only proper relief from the possibility of undue dockage and price depression was to be found in the utmost freedom of shipping and selling. To this end they considered that the railroads should be compelled by law to furnish farmers with cars for shipping their own grain and that flat warehouses should be allowed so that the farmer could have a bin in which to accumulate a carload of grain, if he so wished. This, the commissioners thought, should be the farmer's legal right rather than his privilege. Loading platforms for the free use of shippers were also recommended. It was the further opinion of the Commission that the law should compel elevator and warehouse owners to guarantee the grades and weights of a farmer's grain and to do this the adoption of a uniform grain ticket system was suggested. At the same time, the commissioners pointed out, these guarantees might lead to such careful grading and docking by the elevator operator as might appear to the farmer to be undergrading or overdocking; so that the farmer's right to load direct on cars was a necessary supplementary protection. The annual shortage of cars during the rush season following harvest was found to be a direct cause of depression in prices. When cars were not available for immediate shipments the grain soon piled up on the elevator companies who were thereby forced to miss the cheaper transportation by boat from the head of the lakes or assume the risk of carrying over the grain until the following spring; in buying, therefore, they naturally allowed a wide margin to cover all possible contingencies. Increase of transportation facilities during October and November accordingly was imperative. With no rules to regulate the grain trade except those laid down by the railways and the elevator owners, the need was great for definite legislation similar to that which obtained in the State of Minnesota and, as a result of the Royal Commission's recommendations, the Manitoba Grain Act was placed upon the statutes and became operative in 1900. To supervise the carrying out of the law in connection with the grain trade a Warehouse Commissioner was appointed, Mr. C. C. Castle who acted on the Royal Commission being selected for this responsible office. A sigh of relief went up from many intelligent farmers who had begun to worry over the conditions developing; for they looked upon the Manitoba Grain Act as a sort of Magna Charta. With the grain trade under official control and supervision along the lines laid down by the Royal Commission, they felt that everything would be alright now. It was like calling in a policeman to investigate suspicious noises in the house; like welcoming the doctor's arrival upon an occasion of sudden and severe illness. Unfortunately, the patient's alarming symptoms sometimes continue; sometimes the thief makes a clean get-away; King John had no sooner left Runnymede than he proceeded to ignore the Great Charter and plan new and heavier scutages upon the people! Up till now the elevator owners had been operating with nothing more definite than a fellowship of interests to hold them together; but upon appearance of the Grain Act they proceeded to organize the North West Elevator Association, afterwards called the North West Grain Dealers' Association. By agreeing on the prices which they would pay for wheat out in the country and by pooling receipts the members of such an organization, the farmers suspected, would be in a position to strangle competition in buying. The new Act was aiming point blank at these very things by affording the farmer an opportunity of loading his grain direct into cars through flat warehouses, if he chose, and shipping where he liked. But because many farmers did not know with just what the new weapon was loaded or how to pull the trigger, the railways and elevators merely stepped up and smilingly brushed the whole thing aside as something which were better hanging on a high peg out of harm's way. The crop of 1900 being comparatively light, the ignoring of the car-distribution clauses of the Act did not obtrude as brazenly as it did the year following. But when grain began to pour in to the shipping points in 1901 and the farmers found the railway unheeding their requests for cars their disgust and disappointment were as complete as their anger was swift. It was the rankling disappointment of men whose rights have been officially decreed only to be unofficially annulled; it was the hot anger of a slap in the face--the anger that makes men fight with every ounce of their strength. The quick welling of it planted anxiety in the minds of such level-headed farmers as W. R. Motherwell and Peter Dayman, of Abernethy; Williams, of Balcarres; Snow, of Wolseley; Sibbold and Millar, of Indian Head. While the two latter were riding into town with wheat one day John Sibbold suggested to John Millar that, as secretary of the local Agricultural Society, it might be a good thing if he called a meeting to talk things over. It was the high state of feeling manifested at this meeting which furnished W. R. Motherwell with food for thought on the lonely Qu'Appelle trail. And it was the idea that it might be advisable to hold similar mass meetings throughout the country that brought Peter Dayman driving over to the Motherwell place, not long after, to discuss it. These two men had been friends and neighbors since 1883. Each of them felt that the time had come for definite action of some kind and they spent the greater part of the day in talking over the situation in search of the most practical plan of campaign. There was little use in the farmers attempting to organize in defence of their own interests unless the effort were absolutely united and along broader lines than those of any previous farmers' organization. Politics, they both agreed, would have to be kept out of the movement at all costs or it would land on the rocks of defeat in the same way that the Farmers' Union and Patrons of Industry had been wrecked. It was in the middle eighties when the West was settled but sparsely that the farmers had attempted to improve their lot by the formation of "Farmers' Unions." The movement had had a brief and not very brilliant career and as the offspring of this attempt at organization some progressives with headquarters at Brandon, Manitoba, had tried to enter the grain trade as an open company. When one of the chief officers of this concern defected in an attempt to get rich the failure dragged down the earnest promoters to deep financial losses. Again in the early nineties the farmers had rebelled at their pioneer hardships by organizing the "Patrons of Industry," a movement which had gained strength and for a while looked healthy. It had got strong enough to elect friends to the Legislature and was sowing good seed when again temptation appeared, centred in the lure of commercial success and politics. Some of the chief officers began to misuse the organization for selfish ends and away went the whole thing. There was no use in repeating these defeats. Couldn't some way be devised of sidestepping such pitfalls? The great weakness of the farmers was their individual independence; if they could be taught to stand together for their common interests there was hope that something might be accomplished. The sitting-room clock ticked away the hours unheeded as these two far-sighted and conscientious farmers lost themselves in earnest discussion. The lamps were lighted, but still they planned. Finally W. R. Motherwell reached across the table for a pad of note-paper and drafted the call to arms--a letter which summoned the men of Wolseley, Sintaluta and Indian Head, of Qu'Appelle, Wideawake and other places to gather for _action_. There and then copies were written out for every leading farmer within reach, and in order that no political significance might be attached to the call, both men signed the letters. When Peter Dayman drove away from the Motherwell place that night perhaps he scarcely realized that he carried in his pocket the fate of the farmers of Western Canada. Neither he, W. R. Motherwell, nor any other man could have foretold the bitter struggles which those letters were destined to unleash--the stirring events that were impending. [1] Wheat was first grown in Canada in 1606 at Port Royal (now Annapolis) in Nova Scotia, where Champlain and Pourtincourt built a fort and established a small colony. A plot of ground was made ready and wheat planted. "It grew under the snow," said Pourtincourt, "and in the following midsummer it was harvested." CHAPTER III THE FIRST SHOT IS FIRED Let us have faith that Right makes Might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it.--_Abraham Lincoln_. The eighteenth of December, 1901, was a memorable day in the little prairie town of Indian Head. Strangers from East and West had begun to arrive the night before and early in the day the accommodations were taxed to the limit while the livery stables were overflowing with the teams of farmers from every direction. All forenoon the trails were dotted with incoming sleighs and the groups which began to congregate on Main Street grew rapidly in size and number. The shop-keepers had stayed up half the night to put the final touches to their holiday decorations and make their final preparations for the promised rush of Christmas buying. Many prominent men would grace the town with their presence before nightfall. The Premier of the North-West Territories, Hon. F. W. G. Haultain, would be on hand, as well as Hon. G. H. V. Bulyea and Senator William D. Perley; coming to meet them here would be Premier R. P. Roblin and other gentlemen of Manitoba. Certain boundary matters, involving the addition of a part of Assiniboia to the Province of Manitoba, were to be discussed at a public meeting in the Town Hall at night. Messrs. Motherwell and Dayman had chosen their date well, many farmers having planned already to be at Indian Head on the 18th. The grain growers' meeting was announced for the afternoon and so keen was the interest that when order was called the chairman faced between sixty and seventy-five farmers, as well as a number of public men, instead of the dozen-or-so whom W. R. Motherwell had ventured to expect. Although it was December out of doors, the temperature of that meeting was about one hundred in the shade! As the discussion expanded feeling ran high. Farmer after farmer got to his feet and told the facts as he knew them, his own personal experiences and those of his neighbors. There was no denying the evidence that it was full time the farmers bestirred themselves. W. R. Motherwell and Peter Dayman spoke earnestly in favor of immediate organization along strong, sane lines. The farmer was always referred to as the most independent man on earth, and so he was; but it was individual independence only. He had come lumbering into the country behind his own oxen with his family and all his worldly goods in his own wagon; had built a roof over their heads with his own hands. Alone on the prairie, he had sweated and wrestled with the problem of getting enough to eat. One of the very first things the pioneer learned was to stand on his own two feet--to do things by himself. His isolation, the obstacles he had overcome by his own planning, the hardships he had endured and survived--these were the excuses for his assertiveness, his individualism, his hostility to the restrictions of organization. He was a horse for work; but it was an effort for him to do team work because he was not used to it. This was the big barrier which would have to be surmounted in the beginning if battle were to be waged successfully against present oppressive conditions. The right kind of organization was the key that would unlock a happier future. The farmer was as much a producer as any manufacturer who made finished articles out of raw material; but his was the only business in which full energies were expended upon production of goods to sell while the marketing end was left for the "other fellow" to organize. That was why he was obliged to do as he was told, take what was given him or haul his wheat home and eat it himself. Like all such meetings, it was not without its few pails of cold water. These were emptied by some who hinted dark things about "political reasons," and it was easy to make the trite statement that history repeats itself and to predict that the formation of such a farmers' association as was proposed would be riding only for the same fall which had overtaken former attempts. The enthusiasm refused to be dampened and it broke out in unmistakable accents when without waste of words Angus McKay nominated W. R. Motherwell as provisional President of the "Territorial Grain Growers' Association." John Millar as provisional Secretary and a board of directors[1] were quickly chosen. When it was all over and Senator William D. Perley rose slowly to his feet, it was to deliver a parting message of confidence that the farmers were taking the right step in the right manner. There were few men who could be listened to with greater respect than the elderly Senator and as the silence of his audience deepened it was almost as if the white-haired gentleman's dignified words were prophetic. He had been familiar with a somewhat similar movement in New Brunswick, he said, and back there by the Atlantic this movement was still very much alive and doing good work. Long after those who were present at this meeting had passed away, it was his prediction that this newborn organization of prairie farmers would be living still, still expanding and still performing a useful service to the farmers generally. The meeting adjourned with the general feeling that at last matters were advancing beyond mere talk. The sixth of January was set as the date for a second meeting to draft a constitution and prepare a definite plan of campaign. Emphasis was laid upon the importance of a good attendance; but when the date arrived the leaders of the new movement were disappointed to find that, including themselves, there were just eleven farmers present. While this did not look very promising, they proceeded with their plans and it is a tribute to the careful thought expended at that time that the constitution then framed has stood the test of many years, even much of the exact phraseology remaining to-day. The idea of having local associations scattered throughout the country, each with its own officers, governed by a central organization with its special officers, was adopted from the first. Among those present was C. W. Peterson, Deputy Commissioner of Agriculture for the North-West Territories. He freely offered his services in the capacity of secretary; but the offer was turned down so flat and so quickly that it was breath-taking. The incident reflected very vividly the jealousy with which the farmers were guarding the new movement rather than any depreciation of the Deputy Commissioner's ability; every man of them was on the alert to deflect the thinnest political wedge, imagined or otherwise, that might come along. They would trust nobody with an official connection and the appointment of John Millar, who was one of themselves, was confirmed without loss of time. There was no salary attached to any office, of course; nobody thought of salaries. The farmers who knew the feel of spare cash in those days were seventh sons of seventh sons. Winter and all as it was, the leaders of the young organization did not let the snow pack under their feet. No sooner were the preliminaries over than they set about preparing for the first convention of the Association by hitching up and travelling the country, organizing local associations. W. R. Motherwell, John Millar and Matt. Snow, of Wolseley, tucked the robes around them and jingled away in different directions. Wherever they went they were listened to eagerly and the resulting action was instantaneous. The movement took hold of the farmers like wildfire; so that by February thirty-eight local grain growers' associations had been formed, each sending enthusiastic delegates to the first Annual Convention, which was held at Indian Head in February, 1902. All that summer, pacing the rapidly growing wheat, the Territorial Grain Growers' Association spread and took root till by harvest time it was standing everywhere in the field, a thrifty and full-headed champion of farmers' rights, lacking only the ripening of experience. There had been as yet no particular opportunity to demonstrate its usefulness in dollars and cents; but with the approach of the fall and market season the whole organization grew tense with expectancy. There seemed little reason to believe that the railway people would do other than attempt to continue their old methods of distributing cars where and when they chose and to disregard, as before, those provisions of the Grain Act which aimed to protect the farmer in getting his fair share of cars in which to load direct. Thus it soon turned out. The officers of the Association at once warned the Canadian Pacific Railway Company that if they persisted in such practice the farmers would be compelled to take legal action against them. It looked so much like the attack of a toddling child against a man full grown that the big fellow laughed good-naturedly. Who, pray, were the "Territorial Grain Growers' Association"? "We represent the farmers of Western Canada," retorted the unabashed officers of the little organization "and we want what the law allows us as our right. What's more, we propose to get it!" That was about the message which W. R. Motherwell and Peter Dayman went down to Winnipeg to deliver in person to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The official whom they interviewed manipulated the necessary levers to start the matter on its way through the "proper channels" towards that "serious consideration" into which all good politicians and corporation officials take everything that comes unexpectedly before them. W. R. Motherwell could not wait for the unfolding of this hardy perennial and left Peter Dayman at Winnipeg to follow up developments. When the latter got back home he brought with him a bagful of promises. The practical improvement in the situation which was to support these promises, however, evidently got wrapped up in somebody else's order and delivered to another address. As soon as the Association were satisfied that relief was not to be forthcoming they promptly filled out a standard form of information and complaint and notified the railway that they were going to take legal action at Sintaluta against the Company's station agent; if no results were forthcoming there, they assured the Company, they would take action against every railway agent in the Territories who was guilty of distributing cars contrary to the provisions of the Grain Act. The complaint went before Mr. C. C. Castle, the official Warehouse Commissioner; the information was laid before Magistrate H. O. Partridge at Sintaluta. All over the country the newspapers began to devote valuable space to the impending trial. It was talked about in bar-rooms and barber-shops. Some anti-railroaders declared at once that the farmers hadn't a minute's chance to win against the C. P. R. The news percolated eastward, its significance getting lighter till it became merely: "a bunch of fool hayseeds out West in some kind of trouble with the C. P. R.--cows run over, or something." At Ottawa, however, were those who saw handwriting on the wall and they awaited the outcome with considerable interest. Several public men, especially from Regina, made ready to be in actual attendance at the preliminary trial. The farmers were out in force, for they realized the importance of this test case. It was not the agent at Sintaluta they were fighting, but the railway itself; it was not this specific instance of unjust car distribution that would be settled, but all other like infringements along the line. The very efficacy of the Grain Act itself was challenged. Two hours before the Magistrate's Court sat to consider the case, J. A. M. Aikins (now Sir James Aikins, Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba), who was there as the legal representative of the C. P. R., tapped the President of the farmers' Association on the elbow. "Let's make a real case of it while we're at it," he smiled, and proceeded to suggest that instead of laying information against the railway company on two charges, the Association should charge them also with violating some five or six other sections of the Act. "Then we'll have a decision on them, too, you see. For the purpose of this case the Company will plead guilty to the offences. What do you say?" "Don't you do it, W. R.! Not on your life, Mister!" The farmers within earshot crowded about the two. They suspected trickery in such a last-minute suggestion; either the railway people were very sure they had the case in their pocket or they were up to some smooth dodge, you bet! President Motherwell shook his head dubiously. "How can we change the information on such short notice?" he objected. "It would mean risking an adjournment of the court." "That's what they're after! Stick to him, Motherwell!" But it did seem very advisable to have the meaning of those other doubtful sections of the Act cleared up, and as C. P. R. counsel went more fully into the matter the desirability of it for both sides became even more apparent. "Tell you what we'll do, Mr. Aikins," said W. R. Motherwell, finally turning to him after consulting the others, "if you'll give your pledged word before this assembled crowd of farmers that you won't take any technical advantage of the change you've suggested us making in the information--by raising objections when court opens, I mean--why, we'll make the change." "Certainly," agreed Mr. Aikins without hesitation, and in solemn silence he and the President of the Association shook hands. This alteration in the information made the issue even more far-reaching and it was a tense moment for the farmers who packed the little court room when the Magistrate opened proceedings and on behalf of the Warehouse Commissioner, Mr. T. Q. Mathers (now Chief Justice Mathers, of Winnipeg), rose to his feet for argument. After the evidence was complete and the Magistrate at last handed down his decision--fifty dollars fine and costs, to be paid by the defendant--the victorious grain growers were jubilant and especially were the officers of the young Association proud of the outcome. The case was carried to the Supreme Court by the Railway Company, which made every effort to have the decision of the lower court reversed. When the appeal case came to trial, much to the disgust and chagrin of the railway authorities and the corresponding elation of the farmers, the Magistrate's decision was sustained. At once the newspapers all over the country were full of it. Oracles of bar-room and barber-shop nodded their heads wisely; hadn't they said that even the C. P. R. couldn't win against organized farmers, backed up by the law of the land? Away East the news was magnified till it became: "The farmers out West have licked the C. P. R. in court and are threatening to tear up the tracks!" At Ottawa Members of Parliament dug into Hansard to see if they had said anything when the Manitoba Grain Act was passed. Empty cars began to roll into Western sidings and they were not all spotted to suit the elevators but were for farmers who had signified a desire to load direct. It was unnecessary to carry out the threat of proceeding against every delinquent railway agent in the Territories; for the delinquencies were no longer deliberate. The book in which by turn the orders for cars were listed began to be a more honest record of precedence in distribution, as all good car-order books should be. For the railway authorities were men of wide experience and ability, who knew when they were defeated and how to accept such defeat gracefully. It meant merely that the time had come to recognize the fact that there was a man inside the soil-grimed shirt. The farmer had won his spurs. While the railway people did not like the action of the Association in hauling them into court, in all fairness they were ready to admit that they had received full warning before such drastic action was taken. If the railway officials began to regard the farmer in a new light, the latter on his part began to appreciate somewhat more fully the task which faced these energetic men in successfully handling the giant organization for which they assumed responsibility. After the tilt, therefore, instead of the leaders of the grain growers and the railway looking at each other with less friendly eyes, their relations became more kindly as each began to entertain for the other a greater respect. Best of all, applications were beginning to pour in upon the Secretary of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association--applications from farmers everywhere for admission to the organization. Skeptics who had been holding out now enrolled with their local association and, as fast as they could be handled, new locals were being formed. And at this very time, over in the hotel at Sintaluta, a grain grower of great ability and discernment was warning an interested group of farmers against the dangers of over-confidence. "At present we are but pygmies attacking giants," declared E. A. Partridge. "Giants may compete with giants, pygmies with pygmies, but pygmies with giants, never. We are not denizens of a hamlet but citizens of a world and we are facing the interlocking financial, commercial and industrial interests of a thousand million people. If we are to create a fighting force by co-operation of the workers to meet the giants created by the commercial co-operation of the owners, we have scarcely started. If we seek permanent improvement in our financial position and thereby an increase of comfort, opportunity and sense of security in our lives and the lives of our families, the fight will be long and hard. "And we are going to need every man we can muster." [1] See Appendix--Par. 1. CHAPTER IV "THAT MAN PARTRIDGE!" Any man can work when every stroke of his hand brings down the fruit rattling from the tree to the ground; but to labor in season and out of season, under every discouragement, by the power of faith . . . that requires a heroism which is transcendent. And no man, I think, ever puts the plow into the furrow and does not look back, and sows good seed therein, that a harvest does not follow.--_Henry Ward Beecher_. It was a handy place to live, that little tar-paper shanty around which the prairie wind whooed and whiffed with such disdain. So small was it that it was possible to wash oneself, dress oneself and get breakfast without getting out of bed. On the wall was a shelf which did duty as a table. There were also a little box stove and some odds and ends. When the roof leaked, which was every time it rained, it was necessary to put pans on the bed to catch the drip. But it was better than the tent in which E. A. Partridge and his brother slept through their first star-strewn winter nights on the open prairie--more pretentious than the tent and assuredly not so cold. The two boys were proud of it, even though they were fresh from civilization--from Simcoe County, Ontario, where holly-hocks topped the fences of old-fashioned flower gardens in summer and the houses had shingles on top to keep out the weather, and where there were no coyotes to howl lonesomely at night, where--Well, never mind. Those houses belonged to other people; the shanty was theirs. All around stretched acres and acres of snow; but there was land under that snow--rich, new land--and that was theirs, too, by right of homesteading. It was about Christmas time in 1883 when E. A. Partridge was twenty-one. The place was near Sintaluta, District of Assiniboia, North-West Territories, and homesteading there in the days before the Rebellion was no feather bed for those who tackled it. A piece of actual money was a thing to take out and look at every little while, to show to one's friends and talk about. Season after season the half starved agricultural pathfinders lost their hard-earned crops by drouth and what was not burned out by the sun was eaten by ubiquitous gophers. The drouth was due, no doubt, to the frequent prairie fires which swept the country; these found birth in the camp-fire coals left by ignorant or careless settlers on their way in. Under the rays of the summer sun the blackened ground became so hot that from it ascended a column of scorching air which interfered with the condensation of vapor preceding the falling of rain. Clouds would bank up above the prairie horizon, eagerly watched by anxious homesteaders; but over the burned area the clouds seemed to thin out without a drop falling upon the parching crops. Forty-three acres, sown to wheat, was the first crop which the Partridge brothers put in. The total yield was seven bushels, obtained from around the edges of a slough! One by one discouraged settlers gathered together their few belongings and sought fresh trails. Lone men trudged by, pack on back, silent and grim. Swearing at his horses, wheels squealing for axle-grease, tin pans rattling and flashing in the hot morning sun, a settler with a family stopped one day to ask questions of the two young men. He was on his way--somewhere--no place in particular. "I tell ye, boys, this country ain't no place fer a white man," he volunteered. "When y'ain't freezin' ye're burnin' up, an' that's what happens in hell!" He spat a stream of tobacco juice over the wagon wheel and clawed his beard, his brown face twisted quizzically. "God A'mighty ain't nowheres near here! He didn't come this fur West--stopped down to Rat Portage![1] Well, anyways, good luck to ye both; but ef ye don't git it, young fellers, don't ye go blamin' me, by Jupiter!" He cracked his whip. "Come up out o' that, ye God-forsaken old skates!" And, mud-caked wheels screeching, tin pans banging and glaring, he jolted back to the trail that led away in distance to No Place In Particular. But along with some others who confessed to being poor walkers, the Partridge boys stuck right where they were. They set about the building of a more permanent and comfortable shack--a sod house this time. It took more than seven thousand sods, one foot by three, three inches thick; but when it was finished it was a precocious raindrop or a mendacious wind that could find its way in. About thirteen miles distant was a little mud schoolhouse, and one day E. A. Partridge was asked to go over and teach in it. It was known that back East, besides working on his father's farm, he had taught school for awhile. Learning was a truant for the younger generation on the prairies at that time, there being only a few private schools scattered here and there. Though it was not much of an opportunity for anything but something to do, the offer was accepted, and every morning, after sucking a couple of eggs for a breakfast, E. A. Partridge took to loping across the prairie on a "Shag" pony. But the little school put an idea into his head. He wondered if it might be worth while starting a private school of his own, and in 1885 he thought the Broadview locality offered profitable prospects. He decided to go down there and look over the situation. By this time the occupants of the sod house numbered four--three Partridge brothers and a friend. The problem of fitting out the school-teacher for his Broadview trip so that he would create the necessary impression among strangers was one which called for corrugated brows. The solution of it was not to be found in any of the teacher's few text-books; it quite upset Euclid's idea that things which were equal to the same thing were equal to one another--when it came to finding enough parts to make a respectable whole! For among the four bachelors was not one whole suit of clothes sufficiently presentable for social events. Everything was rough and ready in those days and in spite of the hardships the friendly pioneer settlers had some good times together; but the sod house quartette had never been seen at any of these gatherings--not all four at one time! Three of them were always so busy with this or that work that they had to stay home, you know; it would have been embarrassing to admit that it was only by pooling their clothes they could take turns in exhibiting a neighborly spirit. As it was, there was often a secret fear of exhibiting even more--an anxiety which led the visitor to keep the wall at his back like a man expecting general excitement to break loose at any moment! On reaching Broadview the prospects for the new school looked bright, so the hopeful pedagogue sent back word to the sod house to this effect. "And don't you fellows forget to send my linen," he wrote jokingly. "Make the trunk heavy, too. I don't know how long it will have to represent my credit!" When the trunk arrived it was so heavy that it took two men to carry it into the hotel. When in the secrecy of his own room E. A. Partridge ventured to look inside he found his few books, a pair of "jumper" socks--and a lot of stones! Also there was an old duster with a piece of paper pinned to it, advising: "Here's your linen!" The Broadview school did not last long for the reason that the second North-West Rebellion broke out that year and the teacher joined the Yorkton Rangers. Fifty cents a day and grub was an alluring prospect; many a poor homesteader would have joined the ranks on active service for the grub alone, especially when the time of his absence was being allowed by the Government to apply on the term set for homestead duties before he could come into full possession of his land. Many farmers earned money, also, teaming supplies from the railway north to Battleford and Prince Albert. In common with his fellow grain growers, the five years that followed were years of continuous struggle for E. A. Partridge. The railway came and the country commenced to settle quickly. The days of prairie fires that ran amuck gave way to thriving crops; but at thirty and forty cents per bushel the thriving of those who sowed them was another matter. This man with the snappy blue eyes and caustic tongue was among the first to foresee "the rising colossus," the shadow of which was creeping slowly across the farmer's path, and he watched the "brewing menace" with growing concern. With every ounce of his tremendous energy he resented the encroachment of Capital upon the liberties of Labor. Being of the people and temperamentally a democrat, he had a great yearning for the reorganization of society in the general interest. His championship in this direction earned him the reputation in some quarters of being full of "fads," a visionary. But his neighbors, who had toiled and suffered beside him through the years, knew "Ed." Partridge, man to man, and held him in high regard; they admired him for his human qualities, respected him for his abilities, and wondered at his theories. On occasion they, too, shook their heads doubtfully. They could not know the big part in their emancipation which this friend and neighbor of theirs was destined to play through many days of crisis. Not yet had the talley begun. But events even now slowly were shaping. With the winning of their first clash the farmers' movement was achieving momentum. In the latter part of December, 1902, down in the town of Virden, Manitoba, a committee was appointed at a meeting of the Virden Agricultural Society, to arrange a district meeting for the purpose of organizing the first Grain Growers' Association in Manitoba. As soon as the date was set J. W. Scallion wrote to W. R. Motherwell, urgently asking him to assist in the organization. Although roads and weather were rough, the President of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association at considerable inconvenience went down to Virden, taking with him Matt. Snow and copies of the constitution and by-laws upon which the Territorial Association was founded, With this assistance a strong local association was formed at Virden on January 9th, 1903, with capable officers[2] and a first-year membership of one hundred and twenty-five. The same difficulties that faced the farmers farther West were being experienced in Manitoba and the newspapers were full of protesting letters from country points. As President of the Virden Grain Growers' Association, J. W. Scallion wrote letters to every place where complaints were being voiced and urged organization. At every opportunity it was advocated through the press that from the eastern boundary of Manitoba to the Rocky Mountains the farmers should organize themselves for self-defence against oppression, present or possible, by "the interests." In about six weeks over fifteen local associations had been formed in Manitoba and Virden began calling for a Provincial association. Accordingly, on March 3rd and 4th, 1903, the Manitoba grain growers held their first convention at Brandon with one hundred delegates present, representing twenty-six local associations. Great enthusiasm marked the event and the officers[3] chosen were all men of initiative. The members of the parent organization watched the rapid expansion on all sides with sparkling eyes. Their own second annual convention at Indian Head revealed considerable progress and the promise of greater things to come. On the invitation of the delegates from the Regina district it was decided to hold the third annual convention at the capital and the rousing gathering which met there in due course was productive of such stimulus and publicity that its effect was felt long afterward. At every convention the farmers found some additional weak spot in the Grain Act and suggested remedial legislation. Records are lacking to show in what order the various changes came; but step by step the farmers were gaining their rights. It all seemed so wonderful--to get together thus and frame requests of the Government at Ottawa, to find their very wording incorporated in the Act. The farmers scarcely had dared to think of such a thing before. To them the ear of a government was a delicate organism beyond reach, attuned to the acoustics of High Places only; that it was an ear to hear, an ear to the ground to catch the voice of the people was a discovery. At any rate when W. R. Motherwell and J. B. Gillespie, of the Territories, D. W. McCuaig and R. C. Henders, of Manitoba, went to Ottawa for the first time they were received with every consideration and many of their requests on behalf of the farmers granted. With such recognition and the recurring evidence of advantageous results the jeering grins of a certain section of the onlooking public began to sober down to a less disrespectful mien. Those who talked glibly at first of the other farmers' organizations which they had seen go to pieces became less free with their forebodings. In 1904 the farmers began to press for something more than the proper distribution of cars and the freedom of shipment. They were dissatisfied with the grading system and the re-inspection machinery. Some of them claimed that the grading system did not classify wheat according to its milling value. Some wanted a change in the Government's staff at the office of the Chief Grain Inspector where the official grading was done. Some wanted a sample market; some didn't. The farmers were about evenly divided. The Department of Agriculture for the Territories commissioned Professor Robert Harcourt, Chemist of the Ontario Agricultural College, to conduct tests as to the comparative values of the different grades of wheat. E. A. Partridge, of Sintaluta, and A. A. Perley, of Wolseley, undertook to secure eight-bushel samples of the various grades from their districts. These were carefully sacked and shipped to the Chief Grain Inspector at Winnipeg, where he graded them and forwarded them to Professor Harcourt, sealed in such a way that any tampering with the shipment would be detected readily. These samples were all of 1903 crop. There had been a bad snowstorm in September of that year and much wheat had been standing in stook. The farmers believed that the grain was not frozen or injured in any way and that they were defrauded to some extent in the grading of their wheat. The samples represented all grades from "No. 1 Hard" to "Feed." They were milled with exceptional care to prevent mixing of the various lots and the flours obtained were put through three different baking tests. The conclusion reached was that there did not appear to be much difference in the value of the different grades of wheat. Even the "Feed" sample proved by no means useless for bread-making purposes, either in yield or quality; the only thing that rendered it less available for bakers' use was its darker color. All who saw the loaves were surprised at the quality of this bread. The tests on these 1903 samples confirmed the farmers in their opinion that on 1903 wheat the spread in price between No. 1 Hard and No. 4 was not in harmony with the milling quality. From No. 1 Hard the amount of flour obtained was 70.8 per cent. as against 68 per cent. from the No. 4 grade. The large percentage of stook-frozen grain that went into the lower grades because it was technically debarred from the higher ones no doubt raised the milling value, it was thought, of all the grades that year. The Department of Agriculture for the Territories therefore decided to repeat the tests with 1904 wheat. The samples with which Professor Harcourt was furnished represented the grain just as it was sold by the farmer and graded either at the elevator or by the Chief Grain Inspector; it was not a composite sample of the commercial grades. The second tests practically confirmed the work done the previous year. The milling, chemical and baking tests failed to show very wide differences in the composition and milling value of the grades submitted. The conclusion reached was that the difference in composition and milling value was nearly as great between samples of any one grade as between the various grades. The farmers began to feel that it would be a good thing to have a representative at Winnipeg to watch the grading of their cars and to look after their interests generally. The Department of Agriculture for the Territories was asked by the Sintaluta grain growers to appoint a man and W. H. Gaddes was commissioned to act for two weeks. Then the farmers began to wonder if they could not send down a man of their own; at one of their meetings the question was put and those present subscribed five dollars apiece for the purpose. Thus it came about that on the 7th of January, 1905, there stepped from the train at the C. P. R. depot in Winnipeg a man who looked no different from any one of a dozen other farmers who daily reached the city, tanned of cheek and bright of eye. But his business in town was of a very special nature. In his pocket was a hundred dollars and the grip in his hand was packed for a month's stay. It was a month of "cold shoulders" and patronizing manners for E. A. Partridge. No band music was played in his honor, no festive board was spread, nor was he taken around and shown the sights of the city. On the contrary, he was made to feel like a spy in the camp of an enemy; for he found himself entirely without status, the grain dealers recognizing him merely as a farmers' representative, whatever that was. Even at the office of the Chief Grain Inspector he was looked upon as a man who was meddling with something which he wasn't supposed to know anything about. Nevertheless, the Chief Inspector himself gave him information at times and there were one or two others who took the trouble to explain some things about which he asked questions. Among the latter was a grain man by the name of Tom Coulter. For the most part, however, the presence of the "farmers' representative" at Winnipeg was looked upon as a joke; so that information as to the grain business became for him largely a still hunt. He visited offices, listened to how interviews were conducted over the telephone and picked up whatever loose ends he could find to follow up. "Who is that fellow, anyway?" asked a grain man who had just got back to the city. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Oh, him!" laughed his partner as he saw who was indicated. "Only that gazabo from Sintaluta who's been nosing around lately. Some hayseeds out the line sent him down here to learn the grain business. They believe that all wheat's No. 1 Hard, all grain buyers are thieves, and that hell's to be divided equally between the railways and the milling companies!" "So that's the guy, eh?--that's that man Partridge!" [1] The new name of Rat Portage is Kenora (Ontario). [2] See Appendix--Par. 2. [3] See Appendix--Par. 8. CHAPTER V "THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOSED SHUTTERS" Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name of Beelzebub? Here's a farmer . . .--_Macbeth_. When wheat ceased to be grown for local needs and overflowed upon the markets of the world, becoming a factor in finance, arenas where its destiny was decided were established in the large centres of trade. In these basins of commerce the never-ending flow concentrated and wheeled for a short space before in re-directed currents it rolled on its way to ocean ports. Here, according to the novelists, frantic men were sucked into the golden eddies, their cries strangled and their fate forgotten even as they were engulfed by the Leviathan with which they adventured; or they emerged with eyes bloodshot, voices gone and clothes torn, successful speculators of a day. Perhaps the general reader is more familiar with these mad scenes of "The Pit," as the trading floor is called, than with the steadily turning marketing machinery of which they are but a penumbra. The modern grain exchange is much more than a mere roulette wheel for the speculator. Its real purpose is to provide a centre for the legitimate trader. It is a great information bureau of world happenings where every item of news concerning the wheat in any way is gathered and classified--drouth, rain, frost, rust, locusts, hail, Hessian fly, monsoon or chinch bug. In every corner of the earth where the wheat streams take their rise, from green blade to brown head the progress of the crop is recorded and the prospects forecasted--on the steppes of Russia, the pampas of the Argentine, the valley of the San Joaquin, the prairies of Western Canada and the Dakotas, the fields of India, Iowa, Illinois and Kansas. Good news, bad news, the movements of ships, the prices on the corn exchanges of London and Liverpool, at Chicago, on the bourses of Paris, Antwerp and Amsterdam--all are listed. With such a Timepiece of International Exchange ticking out the doings of nations, both buyer and seller can know what prices will govern their dealings. In office or farmhouse an ear to a telephone is all that is necessary. A grain exchange, then, is the market-place where grain dealers meet to secure information and maintain regulations for the prompt performance of contracts. The exchange organization does not deal in grain, but has for its sole purpose the protection of those who do and the facilitating of transactions; in other words, it is on the ground to see that the grain trade is carried on in an honest and capable manner and to punish offenders against proper business ethics and established rules. Its membership is composed of grain dealers doing business in the exchange's territory--milling companies, exporting companies, line elevator companies as well as independent dealers and "commission men." Besides seeking a supply of wheat to keep their mills busy for the season, the milling companies sell wheat. It is the business of the exporters to make shipment to other countries. Wheat is sold to exporters and millers by the elevator companies, who are interested in running as much grain as possible through their elevators at country points. The chief business of independent dealers is to handle wheat that stands "on track," ready for shipment, either buying outright from the farmer or handling it for him on a commission basis. The "commission man" is in an especially good position to do a clean-cut business. He assumes no burden of large capital investment and operating expense, as do the elevator companies. His chief need is a line of credit at a bank and from this he pays advances to his clients, his security being the bills of lading of wheat consigned to him. He does not need to buy or sell on his own account and, unlike the exporter, he does not have to risk changes in freight rates or in prices or make deliveries by given dates. As for the satisfactory milling quality of the crop--that is something for the miller to worry over. In order to do business it is necessary only for the commission man to be a member of the exchange and to obey its rules. For a long time Winnipeg has been known as the greatest primary wheat market in the world. That means that a greater volume of new wheat, direct from the producer, passes through the Winnipeg market than anywhere else, not even excepting Chicago where the first grain exchange to reach international development was established in 1848. The Winnipeg market is fed by the vast wheat area of Western Canada and frequently between two and three million bushels of wheat go through Winnipeg in a single day. During the rush season sixty or seventy cars of wheat leave Winnipeg for the East every twenty minutes of every twenty-four hours. The freight boats on the lakes load 460,000 bushels in three-and-a-half hours.[1] It is interesting to note that nowhere else in the world is a great public grain market like the Winnipeg market found located four hundred miles away from the storage point where grain dealt in is kept for sale delivery. Geographically Fort William and Port Arthur at the head of the great lakes water route would provide the natural delivery point for Western grain which has been routed eastward[2] and there the location of the exchange might be looked for logically. It so happens, however, that the eastern edge of the vast grain fields lies four hundred miles west of the twin harbors, the country between not being adapted for farming, and to avoid the delay of mail transit and to operate the trading effectively it was necessary to locate the exchange at Winnipeg, the great metropolitan railway centre where the incoming grain concentrated. In Western Canada the grain is stored in bulk by grades, thereby cheapening handling cost. Unlike most countries--which sell grain on sample--Western Canadian grain has been sold by grade. The inspection and grading of wheat, therefore, is a very important factor in the grain trade of Canada and is in full charge of Dominion Government officials. Upon their verdict depends the price per bushel which will be paid for any shipment of grain, market quotations varying for different grades; whether stored, sold at home or sold abroad their certificate of grade brands that particular wheat throughout. The huge river of grain flows in upon them unceasingly; at times the inspectors have to work at top speed to avoid being engulfed. The variety of Nature's response to the growing conditions in changing seasons must not confuse them from year to year; but with sharpened senses and sound judgment they must steer a sure course through the multiplicity of grades and grade subdivisions. The thoroughness of the system adopted by the Grain Inspection Department is shown by description of the work done at Winnipeg. Offices and staffs in charge of deputy inspectors are maintained in the different railway yards. They work in shifts night and day; for during the mad seventy-or-so days in which the Western crop stampedes for the lakefront there is no let-up to the in-rolling wheat-bins which come swaying and grinding in over the rails like beads on a string--the endless rosary of harvest thanksgiving. Wheat samples must be obtained from each car and no train can be moved until a placard has been placed at the end of it, reading: "Grain Inspectors have finished this train." A fifty-car train can be sampled in about an hour and a half, which is comfortable time for a change of engines and crews. The sampling gangs work with all the precision of gun crews--each man with a particular thing to do. One goes down the train, opening car doors and leaving an empty sample bag in each car. Running up a short ladder, the sampler climbs over the top of the inner door, which extends above the "load line"; the standard sampler which he uses is a cylindrical brass rod, so constructed that when it is "stabbed" to the bottom of the car the grain which fills it is a correct sample of wheat at every depth. Seven such samples are procured from different sections of the car, and the track foreman, standing on a ladder, watches these poured onto a cloth with an eye to detecting evidence of "plugging" with an inferior quality of grain; these seven samples having been mixed thoroughly, a canvas bag is filled from the result and the two-and-one-half pounds which it will hold become the official sample. The rest of the mixture is dumped back and the car resealed. The foreman has filled out a sample ticket with car number, date, load line, initials of sampler and any other notations necessary--such as leakages, etc. His own name is stamped on the back of the ticket, which goes into the sample sack. Copies of the way bills with full information as to all cars, shipping points, consignees or advisees and destinations are obtained from the railway yard office and these, together with the samples, are sent twice a day to the Chief Grain Inspector's office at the Grain Exchange. Here the samples are inspected and graded in a room with special lighting facilities. The grading is done only in broad daylight. The quality of the grain, its condition and the admixtures are determined respectively by judgment of hand and eye, by elaborate mechanical moisture tests and by a sieving and weighing process. The whole sample is examined closely for color, plumpness, weight, etc., in order to fix its grade as No. 1 Hard, No. 1 Northern, 2 Northern, 3 Northern; 1 Hard and 1 Northern must weigh at least sixty pounds, 2 Northern fifty-eight pounds, and so on. Grades below these are set by the Grain Standards Board. Damp or wet grain is marked "No Grade," which means that it is considered unfit for storing and therefore has a lower market value. Grain which is heated or bin-burnt is "condemned." If it is unsound, musty, dirty, smutty, sprouted or badly mixed with other grain, etc., it is "rejected." Grain which, because of weather or other conditions, cannot be included in the grades provided by statute is given a "commercial grade." It will be seen at once that here is work requiring great nicety of judgment and that long experience is necessary to enable the grader to reach his decisions quickly and accurately. When the grading is completed the sample is placed in a small tin box and filed systematically; it is supposed to remain thus stored until there is no longer the possibility of a demand for re-inspection and finally the samples are sacked and sold to the miller with the highest bid, the money being paid to the Dominion Government. Grade certificates, bearing the Chief Grain Inspector's signature, are issued for each shipment and sent at once to the elevator company, miller or commission agent to whom the car is consigned. These grade certificates, together with the weight certificate and the bill of lading, make the grain negotiable on the market; the dealer does not see the actual grain, merely handling these papers. If dissatisfaction with grade or dockage arises, the owner of the grain or his agent can obtain re-inspection at the office of the Chief Grain Inspector free of charge, and, if still dissatisfied, appeal can be made to the Survey Board. This is a board of twelve men; the governing rules and regulations are established by the Grain Commission. Six members are recommended by the Winnipeg Board of Trade and two each by the Minister of Agriculture in each of the three prairie provinces.[3] The verdict of the Survey Board is final. Now, back in 1905 the machinery for moving the crop upon its way was little understood by the average Western Canadian farmer. The wheels went around, gave a click and away went his wheat; but in approaching it all with the idea of understanding everything he was in the position of the small boy examining the works of a watch to see how it told the time. He felt that he ought to understand what went on down at Winnipeg; for of course where there were so many rules and regulations to be broken there must be "funny work." It was the natural suspicion of the man who lived much to himself in the quiet spaces, who could not believe that grain dealers could be honest and build palatial residences in Winnipeg while his own toil in producing the grain was rewarded with a living only. It looked as if the roost was being robbed and with his newborn initiative he wanted to find out how it was done and who was doing it. The satisfactory manner in which things are conducted in the grain trade to-day is the result of long experience and gradual improvement of conditions. It must be remembered that in the earlier days the trade was not so well organized for efficiency and in 1905 when E. A. Partridge began to probe for "plugging" he had a big job on his hands, especially in view of the fact that he was treated for the most part as a meddler who was not entitled to reliable information. There are two ways of reaching a conclusion--one by approaching it logically on facts laid down; the other by jumping to it across a yawning lack of detail. At the end of his month of investigation the farmer's scout had a regular rag-bag of material out of which to fashion a patchwork report. A grain man might have condemned it as a "crazy quilt" because bits of high color obtruded inharmoniously. But if here and there an end was short or a bit of information on the bias, it was because the "Farmers' Representative" had not been treated with sufficient frankness. He had to make the best of the materials allowed him and his natural tendency to bright-colored metaphor may have been quickened. He hit out straight from the shoulder in all sincerity at conditions as they appeared to him. He thought he saw five companies controlling the exporting business, and also their margin of profit, so that they were able to keep out smaller dealers who might have the temerity and the necessary capital to try exporting on their own account. He saw the smaller dealers in turn stem-winding their prices by those of the exporters, controlling the prices paid for street and track wheat throughout the country; thereby, he reasoned, it became possible to set special prices at any given point by the simple expedient of wiring the necessary instructions to the operator at that point to pinch independent competition. He saw elevator companies cutting their charges at certain points to kill off competition from "farmers' elevators" which sold to independent dealers. All this he was sure he saw. The sampling appeared to be carried on in a systematic and satisfactory manner. The grading, too, appeared to be uniform enough as regarded the standard grades; but in the item of color there seemed just cause for complaint. Lack of color, a trifling number of imperfectly formed kernels or the suspicion of a wrinkle on the bran apparently doomed a sample to low grade no matter how heavy and flinty the wheat might be. This seemed scarcely fair to Partridge, who bore in mind that the sunny seasons of past years had been succeeded by cloudier ones, the dry autumns by wet ones and that with stacking discontinued and much of the farmers' wheat left long in stock, bleaching was bound to follow. So that if the Chief Grain Inspector were a "crank on color," he should remember that beauty was only skin deep. The fracture and microscopic and weighing tests seemed to be the only reasonable tests which could be applied quickly; the milling test was the only one which was absolutely correct. Any rapid eye test which pretended to determine whether there was sixty-one per cent. or fifty-nine per cent. of Red Fife wheat in a given sample struck the Farmers' Representative as farcical; yet this was sufficient to make the difference of a grade and sometimes a difference of seven cents per bushel in the price obtained. The whim of the Inspector likewise decided how many lean berries in a plump sample would disqualify it for "plump" classification and how many mature or defective berries among sound wheat, would disqualify it from being classed as "sound." With a single concocted sample as a basis of judgment Partridge considered that the grading of the lower grades often was very unjust to the producer, especially to the owners of plump frosted wheat; the process of concocting the basic sample was very interesting; but the result was "a nightmare." W. H. Gaddes, who had preceded him to Winnipeg, agreed with him in this. Also, Mr. Gaddes denounced the Survey Board at that time as unsatisfactory in its composition, open to suspicion in its findings and in practice--so far as outsiders' wheat was concerned--simply a machine to register confirmation of the Inspector's previous grading. It was Partridge's belief that "many a fraud perpetrated in a line elevator" was added to the "iniquities" of the Inspector, in whose personal integrity he had every confidence. For this reason he was inclined to be lenient with the hard-working and conscientious officials of the Government. Nevertheless, it appeared wise that a farmers' special agent be maintained permanently at Winnipeg to safeguard the interests of the farmers, especially if certain powers were allotted to him under the Inspection Act. In making his report to the Territorial Grain Growers' Association Partridge went into the whole situation as he saw it and particularly was he outspoken in regard to "that House with the Closed Shutters," as he called the Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange. In fact, his gas attack upon the Exchange was ablaze with the fires of hostility. And for the use of his reckless language Partridge was to be called to account in due course. [1] Although only about ten per cent. of the arable area in Western Canada is under cultivation there are already 3,500 country elevators. Terminal elevators at the head of the lakes with a storage capacity of forty-four million bushels and interior Government terminals with ten and one-half million bushels capacity are overflowing already. Wheat exports of Canada have increased from 2,284,702 bushels in 1867 to 157,745,469 bushels in 1916. Per capita Canada has more railway mileage than any country in the world. [2] In early days nearly all grain was routed eastward via Winnipeg; but with the development of the grain trade and the opening of the Panama Canal some Western Canadian grain travels west and south. Facilities for inspection and grading have been established at Calgary, Superior, Duluth, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat and Vancouver. [3] In 1905 three members of the Survey Board were recommended by the Winnipeg Board of Trade and three each by the respective Departments of Agriculture in the three Prairie Provinces. CHAPTER VI ON A CARD IN THE WINDOW OF WILSON'S OLD STORE . . . Is it vain to hope The sons of such a land will climb and grope Along the undiscovered ways of life, And neither seek nor be found shunning strife, But ever, beckoned by a high ideal, Press onward, upward, till they make it real; With feet sure planted on their native sod, And will and aspirations linked with God? --Robert J. C. Stead. Ideas grow. The particular idea which now began to occupy the thoughts of E. A. Partridge to the exclusion of everything else was a big idea to begin with; but it kept on growing so rapidly that it soon became an obsession. Why couldn't the farmers themselves form a company to undertake the marketing of their own wheat? That was the idea. If a thousand farmers got together in control of ten million bushels of wheat and sold through a single accredited agency, they would be in the same position exactly as a single person who owned ten million bushels. If the owner of ten thousand bushels was able to make a better bargain than the owner of one thousand, what about the owner of ten million bushels? "Would the owner of ten million bushels peddle his wheat by the wagonload at the local shipping point or by the carload in Winnipeg?" mused Partridge. "Would he pay one hundred thousand dollars to a commission man to sell his wheat, with perhaps a nice rake-off to an exporter, who turns it over at a profit by selling it to a British dealer, who blends it and makes a good living by selling the blend to a British miller?" His pencil travelled swiftly on the back of an envelope. "Would he pay one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars to the line elevator and stand a dockage of one hundred thousand bushels in addition? Would he pay the terminal elevator seventy-five thousand dollars' worth of screenings? Would he pay two and one-half million dollars for transportation when 'by a little method known to large exporters' he could save one and a quarter million dollars out of this item? "You just bet he wouldn't!" concluded this man Partridge. "And supposing we had ten thousand farmers in one company and each farmer produced, on an average, five thousand bushels of wheat--that would put the company in control of the sale of _fifty_ million bushels, not ten! Why, there's the answer to the whole blame thing--so simple we've been stepping right over it!" Pools, mergers, combines, trusts and monopolies were but various forms of the same co-operative principle acting within narrow limits to the benefit of the co-operatives and the prejudices of the outsiders. The remedy lay not in legislative penalties against co-operation but in the practice of co-operation on a large scale by the people. That would provide the most powerful weapon of defence against financial buccaneering. Universally employed, it would bring about an industrial millennium! But this was dreaming, of course. None knew better than E. A. Partridge that if even a small part of it was to come true, there lay immediately ahead a great educational campaign. Ignorance and suspicion would require to be routed. It would be difficult to convince some farmers that his motives were unselfish. Others would be opposed to the idea of a farmers' trading company in the belief that it would wreck the Association. "We must keep our organization non-partizan, non-political and non-trading" had been the slogan from the first. Nothing daunted by the difficulties which loomed in the foreground, Partridge obtained permission from his Territorial associates to tell the central Manitoba Grain Growers' Association the result of his investigations at Winnipeg. The Manitoba convention was about to be held at Brandon and on his way back home he remained over to address the delegates. They listened carefully to what he had to say; but when he began to urge the necessity of the farmers themselves going into trading in grain his fire and enthusiasm caused more excitement where he was standing on the platform than in the audience. The best he could do by his earnestness was to create sufficient interest for a committee[1] to be appointed with instructions to investigate the possibilities of the scheme and report at the next annual convention of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association. On arrival at Sintaluta, however, he succeeded in stirring up his neighbors to the proper pitch of enthusiasm. They knew him at Sintaluta, listened to him seriously, and the leaders of the little community shook hands on the idea of organizing, in the form of a joint stock company, "a scheme for the co-operative marketing of grain by farmers." When he made his report of the Winnipeg investigations at the annual convention of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association at Moose Jaw he found that while the principle which he advocated was favorably received--just as it had been in Manitoba--many farmers drew back distrustfully from the idea of "going into business." Their experience with business in the past had not been of a nature to instill confidence in such a venture and if the enterprise failed, they feared it would discredit the Association. There was a strong prejudice against any Association director or officer being closely identified with such a propaganda. Back to Sintaluta went E. A. Partridge. A public meeting was called to discuss the situation. It was to be held in the Town Hall on January 27th (1906) and in preparation for it a preliminary meeting was held in the sitting-room of the hotel and a committee[2] appointed to prepare a synopsis of what was to be done. This synopsis was presented to the thirty farmers who gathered in the Town Hall and a lengthy resolution was passed unanimously, setting forth the aims and objects of the prospective trading company. Everybody present undertook to subscribe for shares. Justification for what they were attempting was found in "the widespread discontent existing among the grain growers of the West with conditions governing the marketing of their grain." It was pointed out also that the isolation of farmers from each other, their distance from the secondary and ultimate markets and their ignorance of the details of the grain business--that these things rendered them individually liable to suffer grave injustices, even without their knowledge and certainly without hope of remedy by individual efforts. The scientific selling of wheat was just as important to the farmer as the scientific growing of it and this scientific knowledge could be obtained only by actually engaging in the business at some important commercial centre where the methods of successful operators could be studied. There was every reason to believe that a scheme which limited its activities at first to acquiring a seat on the Grain Exchange and doing a straight commission business, or at most a commission and track-buying business--that such a co-operative scheme stood an excellent chance of success. Without much financial risk, it should prove immediately profitable, afford protection from crooked practices and at the same time the shareholders could gain an insight into the whole grain business and thereby equip themselves for greater enterprises; it would not be long before they would be in a position to deal intelligently with their problems and pertaining legislation. Besides all this there was the possible piling up of a surplus revenue, over and above dividends, which could be turned to good account in uncovering conditions in Eastern Canadian and European markets and learning the best ways to meet those conditions. For these reasons the grain growers of Sintaluta, Saskatchewan, went on record at this meeting in the little Town Hall as heartily recommending the formation of a joint stock company which was to be composed wholly of farmers and to be known as "The Grain Growers' Grain Company, Limited," with shares at twenty-five dollars each. It was stipulated that no one person could hold more than four shares, that even these were not to be transferable except by vote at annual meeting, and that no man could have more than one vote at annual meetings. With this single far-sighted stroke the possibility of control passing into the hands of any clique was removed. In furtherance of the plans set forth a committee[3] was named to take charge of the preliminary organization work until relieved by the election of a provisional directorate at an organization meeting which it was hoped to hold at Brandon the following March. This committee was authorized to conduct a campaign for subscriptions in the meantime, printed receipts to be issued for the same. Such was the scheme to which the farmers of Sintaluta subscribed to a man. Two hundred shares at Sintaluta to begin with and Sintaluta only one point in the West! The Committee went to work with enthusiasm. Ten dollars was spent in printing a prospectus. E. A. Partridge got a card and blocked out on it: GRAIN GROWERS' GRAIN COMPANY. This he hung in the window of Wilson's old store at Sintaluta, where a dollar was paid for the use of a desk. Here in the evenings would assemble William Hall, Al Quigley, William Bonner and E. A. Partridge to send out circulars and keep the pot boiling till enough funds were on hand to let Quigley out canvassing on board wages. On February 28th the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association held their 1906 convention and as chairman of the committee appointed the year before to report upon the matter, E. A. Partridge again urged the advisability of establishing a company to handle the farmers' grain. By this time the plan had taken more definite shape and he pressed the claims of the proposed commission company with such logic and eloquence that besides having the committee's report adopted by the Association unanimously, he secured the interest of quite a few delegates. There was, nevertheless, much adverse criticism, not a little apathy and some levity. "Let's hold a meeting of our own," suggested someone. The word was passed for all who were interested to meet in the council chamber of the Brandon Town Hall. Between twenty and thirty farmers attended this meeting and the plans of the Sintaluta men for a co-operative trading company were approved. It was decided to meet at the Leland Hotel in Winnipeg some time in March or April to formulate plans for an active campaign. For two days those in attendance at this second meeting discussed the details of the undertaking. A great many different views were expressed, not all of them favorable. There were those who objected to the chosen name of the prospective company as being a handicap upon the Association movement in case the venture failed. The Sintaluta provisional directorate was allowed to stand and the canvassing committee was enlarged to include a number of Manitoba men who were to take the field for a stock canvass. That stock-selling campaign will dodder through to the Final Memory of those who took part in it. The man who stood on the street-corner and offered ten-dollar gold-pieces for a dollar had no harder task. Blood from stones! Milk from dry cows! Although ten per cent. on each share was all the cash that was asked apparently some farmers were so hard up that if yarn were selling at five cents per mile, they couldn't buy enough of it to make a pair of mitts for a doodlebug! "If you take four shares," admitted Al Quigley at his meetings, "I can't guarantee that you're not losing four times $2.50, which is ten dollars. But you lose that much when you draw a load of wheat up to the elevator anyway," he argued. "You might just as well let another ten go to see what's become of the first ten!" "Huh!" grunted a skeptical farmer after one of E. A. Partridge's meetings. "This here thing's just a scheme for Partridge to feather his nest! You bet he didn't get any o' my money," he bragged. "Did he get you, Pete?" "He did, Ben, an' I'll tell you why. This thing'll probably go bust; but I put a hundred into it. Supposin' I put a hundred in a horse an' he dies on me. Same thing, ain't it? I got to have horses to do farmin' an' I just go an' buy another one. I figure it's worth takin' a hundred-dollar chance on this thing to try her out." Up in the northern part of Manitoba was one man who was meeting with pretty fair success. His name was Kennedy and his friends who knew him best called him "Honest John." His plan was simple--to start talking, talk for awhile, then keep right on talking. "For God's sake, Kennedy, if $2.50 will stop you talking, here it is! We're sleepy!" Then he would stop talking. One by one the original canvassers dropped out of the field till almost the only one left besides E. A. Partridge was this hard-talking enthusiast up in the Swan River country who wound himself up for the night and tired them out--but got the money! [1] See Appendix--Par. 4. [2] See Appendix--Par. 5. [3] See Appendix--Par. 6. CHAPTER VII A FIGHT FOR LIFE! My dear little Demus! you'll find it is true, He behaves like a wretch and a villain to you . . . --Aristophanes. It was characteristic of John Kennedy to keep everlastingly at it. He was used to hard things to do. In this life some men seem to get rather more than their share of tacks in the boots and crumbs in bed! But every time Fate knocked him down he just picked himself up again. Always he got up and went at it once more--patiently, conscientiously, smiling. Even Fate cannot beat a man like that and John Kennedy was a hard fighter in a quiet way who did not know how to quit. With four younger brothers and an equal number of younger sisters to crowd up to the home table down there on the farm near Beaverton, Ontario County, Ontario, it was advisable for the eldest son to work out as a farm boy. He was thirteen years old when he first hired out to a farmer for the summer and he was to receive twenty-four dollars for the season. But the farmer had a hard time that year and at the end of the summer-- "John," said the poor fellow with ill-concealed embarrassment, "I--I'm afraid I can't pay you that money. But you know that big flock of sheep down in the back pasture? Well, tell you what we'll do. Over at Beaverton I've got an uncle who's a tailor. I can give you a suit of full cloth of homespun and call it square," and though the boy wanted the money for fifty things he had to take the homespun suit. Three or four hobble-de-hoy years of it on the farms of the neighborhood and young Kennedy literally took to the woods and drove the rivers in Muskoka and Michigan as a lumberjack till he was a chunk of whalebone in a red flannel shirt and corked boots and could pull the whiskers out of a wild-cat! With varying success he fought the battle of life and learned that many things glitter besides gold and that the four-leafed clover in this life after all is a square deal between men. The appeal of E. A. Partridge at the convention of the Manitoba Grain Growers in 1906 therefore found John Kennedy feeling responsive. He knew the unjust position in which the farmers were placed; for he was a farmer himself--up in the Swan River Valley--and he was a delegate from the Swan River Grain Growers' Association. The idea of forming a farmers' commission company for handling the farmers' grain sounded like a very satisfactory solution of a very unsatisfactory state of affairs and he threw himself whole-heartedly into the campaign to sell enough stock to obtain a charter. Up in the newer part of the country, which was his own particular territory, he found the farmers ready enough to listen; for they had suffered up there from the evils at which the new movement was aiming. He found also that the most interested members of his audiences were men who could least afford to lose any money. An effort was made to discredit the whole proposition as a political move of the Conservative Party. Throughout the Swan River district, the Dauphin district and all the way down to Neepawa the rumor spread ahead of the meetings; so that the speakers were asked many pertinent and impertinent questions, J. W. Robson, a Swan River farmer who was at that time a Conservative Member of the Manitoba Legislature, was giving his services free as a speaker on behalf of the proposed company; John Kennedy was known to be a political supporter of J. W. Robson. One and one make two; two and two sometimes make a fairly large-sized political rumor. But Mr. Robson was a ready and convincing speaker who was known to be a farmer first and last and Mr. Kennedy attributes the practical results obtained as due largely to Mr. Robson's logic and sincerity. Along in June Kennedy received a telegram from Winnipeg that startled him. It contained the first intimation that difficulties were arising at Ottawa to prevent the proposed farmers' company from getting their charter. Taking the first train, he found on his arrival at Winnipeg that Francis Graham and W. A. Robinson, the two committeemen who met him, had not yet notified E. A. Partridge. A wire was despatched at once to Sintaluta and the Chairman joined them by first train. For two days the Board wrestled with this unexpected difficulty which threatened to annihilate the company before it got started. The application of the Organization Committee for a charter was refused on the ground that the shares of a company with a capital of $250,000 could not be less than $100 each. Their solicitor tried in vain to induce the Department to change its views, all canvassing to sell stock being discontinued by the Committee in the meantime. "Well, let 'em keep their charter if they want to," said Kennedy finally. "This discussion's not getting us anywhere and if we can't get a Dominion charter, why we can't get it." "Guess you're right, John. We might as well quit and go on home." "Who said anything about quitting?" Kennedy brought down his big fist on the table with a thump. "We'll get a Manitoba charter. That's what I mean." The others shook their heads. A Provincial charter would be useless for what they were proposing to do, they contended. Kennedy disagreed so emphatically that he refused to stop arguing about it till at last he and John Spencer were delegated to see the Manitoba authorities. In the course of a few days the arrangements for a Provincial charter were complete, and the Committee turned its attention to selling enough stock to be ready for business by the middle of the following month. By this time the harvest season was so near at hand that prompt action was necessary if they were to do any business that fall. Under the Manitoba charter the company could open for business with a provisional directorate and as five members of the original committee were in Winnipeg and available for quick action, it was decided to go ahead as it would be impossible to hold a representative general meeting of the shareholders before harvest and it was advisable in the interests of the subscribers to take advantage of the opportunity to do business in the meantime. Provisional organization therefore was undertaken during the week of the Winnipeg Industrial Exhibition, in a tent on the Fair grounds, and July 26th was set as the date. When space was sought for the erection of their sixteen-foot tent, however, they found themselves classed with the "Sunflower Belles" and "Katzenjammer Castle" and it was only after the payment of fifty dollars that permission was granted for the erection of the tent. Here to the accompaniment of a raucous medley of sounds--the beating of tom-toms, the ballyhooing of the sideshows, the racket of the machinery exhibits and the cries of the peanut and lemonade vendors--the farmers' trading company was organized with provisional officers[1] and directorate in legal shape to start the wheels in motion as a joint stock company. But before actual business could begin a manager must be located who knew all the ins and outs and ups and downs of the grain business; also a seat upon the Winnipeg Grain Exchange must be purchased before the farmers could enter the arena as dealers in grain. None of the officers of the young company which was about to try its wings overlooked the fact that nothing could be more foolhardy than for farmers like themselves, direct from the green pastures, to attempt the plunge they were about to take without proper guidance as to the depth of the water and the set of the currents. They knew they were embarking in a most intricate and difficult business and with so much at stake on behalf of the whole farming population of Western Canada it was necessary to place the helm in the hands of somebody who could pilot them through the shoals. At best it promised to be a stormy passage. About the only man in sight for the position was Thomas Coulter, of the Independent Grain Company. He had treated E. A. Partridge with more consideration as the "Farmers' Representative" than most of the other grain men and there was a possibility that he might be persuaded to take the offer seriously. But on approaching him, Mr. Coulter did not become excited over the prospect of managing a farmers' company in the grain business; even he was not inclined to take too seriously the effort of the farmers to do their own trading. How long would the farmers stand behind the company in the face of the competition that would be brought to bear? That was the question that bulged right out in front; for, as everybody knew, farmers never had been able to hang together very long when it came down to a matter of dollars and cents in their individual pockets. Finally, however, he agreed that there might be a fighting chance and accepted the management. So far so good. But what about the seat on the Grain Exchange? The price of it was $2,500. One thousand shares of the company's stock had been disposed of with ten per cent. paid up and from the $2,500 thus realized the expenses of organization had to be met, the charter paid for, the legal fee and expenses at Ottawa in connection with the effort to secure a Dominion charter, office rent, printing bills and what not. "Which leaves us about $1,000 to buy a $2,500 seat and finance our first business operations," said John Spencer with the look of a worried Secretary-Treasurer. "We'll have to issue a twenty per cent. call on subscribed stock," admitted the President reluctantly. "In the meantime I'll have to see if some of the boys out at Sintaluta will go security for the fifteen hundred. Thank heaven, these fellows down here think we're a hilarious joke! The only chance we've got to get through the fence with this thing is for them to keep right on laughing at us till we get our toes in the sand!" He wrote to Sintaluta, explaining the situation, and five of E. A. Partridge's friends[2] at once responded by going to the bank with their personal notes for the amount needed. "With support like that we're going to win, boys," cried the President proudly when the bank notified them that the money was available. Financial arrangements were established with the Bank of British North America and when a room had been rented on the top floor of the old Tribune building and circulars sent broadcast among the farmers, soliciting grain, the wheels began to turn. The little office was opened for business on September 5th (1906). It was so small that even two or three people got in each other's way, though all they were doing was to watch the mails anxiously for the first indications as to whether the farmers would stand behind the big idea that was now put to the test. Then came the bill of lading for the first carload of grain consigned to the new company, followed quickly by the second, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth--two at a time, three, ten, fifteen per day! Every foot of space in the little office was a busy spot and the lone typewriter clickety-clacked on the second-hand table with cheerful disregard of lunch hours. By the end of the month the weekly receipts had risen to one hundred cars of grain. It became necessary to move to a larger office and accommodation was obtained in the Henderson Block. At the present rate, a whole floor would be needed soon. Over at the Grain Exchange some men were talking seriously. They were talking about E. A. Partridge and they were not laughing. The Secretary of the Exchange was instructed to write a letter. Partridge hit the desk so hard that the paper-knife with which he had sliced open that letter hopped to the floor. "They're after us already!" he exploded. It looked that way. The Company's seat on the Grain Exchange was held in the name of the President and the letter summoned him to appear before the Council of the Exchange to answer to a charge of having sinned against the honor and "diginity" of that institution and of violating its rules. A short time before the young company had issued a circular setting forth their intention of dividing co-operatively whatever profits were earned; in other words, the man sending the larger amount of grain would receive the larger profits. This, the Exchange claimed, was a violation of the strict rules of the Grain Exchange and would have to be abandoned. "You are virtually splitting the commission with the shipper," claimed the Exchange, "and we can't allow that for a minute." "It's up to you to prove I'm guilty, not up to me to come here and commit myself," argued Partridge. "If you can find any profits that have been distributed co-operatively by the Grain Growers' Grain Company, go ahead. Nor have I sinned against your 'diginity'!" he added, sarcastically taking advantage of the stenographer's error in spelling. "For that matter, you've been digging into me ever since I came on here!" "You can't do any more business with our members till you change your ways," declared the Exchange and forthwith, on October 25th, notice was posted to all Exchange members that any of them found dealing with the farmers' company would be penalized themselves. Expelled from trading privileges! Practically boycotted! It was a straight punch on the nose that threatened to put the young organization out of business for the final count. Membership in the Exchange was absolutely imperative if the farmers were to be in a position to sell grain to exporters; they were not strong enough yet to export direct to Old Country markets and all the exporters through whom they were compelled to deal were members of the Exchange. "The whole thing's just a pretext!" cried Partridge vehemently. "We haven't got any by-law regarding distribution of profits co-operatively; the only thing they've got to go on is that circular. They're beginning to get scared of us and they see a chance to put us out of business." If this were the object, it looked as if it might be achieved in short order. The grain was pouring in steadily by the carload and with no buyer daring to deal with them in face of the mandate from the Exchange, of which they were all members, the new company was in a quandary to dispose of the incoming grain on a falling market. The only thing they could do was to wait until they had sufficient of any grade to make a shipment of from 8,000 to 10,000 bushels of that grade and try to place it somewhere in the East. The Manager was sent east hurriedly to see what connections he could establish while his office assistant mailed letter after letter to eastern points in an endeavor to work several contracts. The farmers who shipped their grain to the new company were expecting to receive seventy-five per cent. of an advance from the bank on their bills of lading and a prompt remittance of the balance when the Inspection Certificate and Outturn were in the hands of the Company. With the grain piling up on their company day by day, it was not long before the overdraft at the bank began to assume alarming proportions. Luckily the Assistant Manager succeeded in making several sales in the East, which eased away from the crisis which was shaping. It was quite patent that it would have been suicide for the young trading organization to notify the farmers to stop sending in business. They dare not do that. In desperation the President and Vice-President went to the Manitoba Government and laid their case in full before the cabinet. Premier R. P. Roblin (now Sir Rodmond Roblin) was very much surprised to learn the facts. "The Government certainly cannot countenance any such action on the part of the grain dealers," he declared emphatically. "We cannot allow them to boycott a company composed of farmers who have as much right to sell grain as any other body of men." Accordingly the Government set a time limit within which the Exchange had the option of removing the ban against the farmers' company or of losing their Provincial charter. In the meantime, however, this did not obtain restoration of trading privileges, without which the farmers' company could not do business with Exchange members except by paying them the full commission of one cent per bushel. The situation, therefore, was approaching a crisis rapidly. The company was fortunate in having the friendship of their local bank manager; but even he could not go on forever making advances on consigned grain and there was some suspicion that letters were reaching the head office of the bank in Montreal, advising that the quicker this particular account was closed out the better off the bank would be. Then one morning the local manager called on the Executive and his face was grave. "This is not the first time I've heard from the Head Office about this account, as you know," he began at once, "but I'm afraid it's the last call, gentlemen." He handed a letter to the President. "As you see, I am instructed to close out your account at once unless further security is forthcoming. I'm sorry; for I believe you've merely run into hard luck in getting squared away. But--I'm not the bank, you understand." "What do you want us to do? What can we do?" asked Partridge anxiously. "This thing will straighten out, Mr. Machaffie. We're getting the business. You know that. We're going to get back our trading privileges and everything will be alright." The banker shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry, gentlemen. But do you know what your overdraft amounts to now?" "Three hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars," murmured the Secretary-Treasurer. "Exactly." "What are we to do?" "Before coming here I've been to see the Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Society about taking some of your wheat. Fisher is ready to help you out if he finds he's not overstepping the rules of the Exchange. I may be able to carry you along for a short time if you three gentlemen, the Executive of your company, will give the bank your personal bond without limit as to the amount. I have even gone so far as to draw up the document for signature, if it meets with your approval." "What about that, Kennedy? Spencer?" "Guess we've got to do it," nodded Kennedy. "Looks like it," agreed Spencer. "Then--down she goes!" decided Partridge, dipping his pen in the ink. The others signed after him. "That means we three go down with the ship," he remarked quietly after the door had closed upon the bank manager. "I appreciate you two fellows signing that thing." He got up and shook hands with each of them in turn. "If bad gets worse and we go to smash----" "It can't get worse and we're not going to smash," reassured the others. But that remained to be seen. Although placing grain in the East was robbing them of profits, it was the best that could be done to tide things over. The three active officials were on the anxious seat from morning till night. It had got down now to a question of meeting each day's events as they came and frequently the lights blazed in the little office till two and three in the morning while the provisional officers raked the situation from every angle in an endeavor to forecast the next day's difficulties and to prepare for them. For three months the overdraft at the bank had averaged $275,000, due almost entirely to the conditions resulting from the action of the Exchange. It was useless to worry over the amount of interest which this accommodation was costing and the profits which might have been rolled up had things been different; the real worry was to keep going at any cost. For, as the bank manager had intimated, the whole thing was just hard luck rather than any unsoundness in the business. It was a fine paradox that the more pronounced the success of the idea itself became, the greater grew the danger of complete failure because of the predicament! Death by wheat! An ironical fate indeed for a grain company! Upon investigation, the farmers' company discovered that their original idea of distributing their profits co-operatively--as embodied in the circular to which the Exchange had objected--was contrary to the provisions of the Manitoba Joint Stock Companies' Act under which they held their charter. Therefore the co-operative idea in connection with profits was formally dropped by the Grain Growers' Grain Company. This had been done at a directors' meeting on December 22nd (1906), when a resolution had been passed, cancelling the proposal contained in the objectionable circular.[3] But although the Exchange had been notified immediately and repeated applications for reinstatement had been made, the farmers' company was still struggling along in the throes of their dilemma--proof positive, concluded the farmers, that the Grain Exchange had used the co-operative suggestion as a mere pretext to oust the Company from the field altogether. In piled the wheat, car after car of it! A considerable portion of it had been bought on track and farmers who had consigned their grain were anxious, naturally, to have it disposed of without delay. With prices going down and navigation on the point of closing, the best hopes of the management became centred in getting a big shipment away to Buffalo by boat. That would enable them to escape a big item in storage charges and to place the grain in line for export at rates considerably below the all-rail figures. "With those bills of lading in the bank, we've no control of them and the bank can do just about as it likes," reviewed the President one night. "If they should come down on us to sell our wheat inside of forty-eight hours--we're goners, boys! All that those fellows over at the Exchange have got to do is to shove down the market thirty points and our name is _mud_! The loss to the farmers who've shipped us their grain will kill this movement and every one like it in the West for all time to come. This company will be as dead as a doornail and so will we financially as its bonded backers." Kennedy was running a finger tentatively down the window-pane. It left a streak in the forming frost. "What I want to know is, how long ought it to take to load up this whole boatload we're trying to move?" "Oh, about seventeen hours or so." "And how long have they been at it already? Five days, ain't it? And she's not away yet! What d'you suppose that means?" he snapped. He began to throw things into a grip. He made for the door. "Where'n the mischief are you going, John?" "Fort William--can just make the train if I hustle. The _J. P. Walsh_ gets out of that harbor with that wheat of ours, by Hickory!--if she has to be chopped out with an axe!" Two days later a telegram reached the little office: _S.S. J. P. Walsh_ cleared to-day for Buffalo. Three hundred and ten thousand bushels. Last boat out. KENNEDY. [1] See Appendix--Par. 7. [2] See Appendix--Par. 8. [3] This resolution was confirmed at a meeting of the shareholders, February 5th, 1907. CHAPTER VIII A KNOCK ON THE DOOR Every man is worth just as much as the things are worth about which he is concerned.--_Marcus Aurelius_. That big shipment to Buffalo, along with several others which were placed in the East with the market recovering, relieved the situation greatly. Also, the Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Society's Winnipeg office decided to stand by the farmers' co-operative marketing venture and risked disapproval to buy some of the young company's wheat; not only that, but the farmers' company was allowed the regular commission of one cent per bushel on the purchase and the cheque paid in to the bank amounted to $58,298. This friendly co-operation the farmers were not quick to forget and they still speak of it with gratitude. It began to look as if the struggling farmers' agency might worry through the winter after all. The strain of the past few months had told upon the men at the head of the young organization and especially upon the provisional President, who felt keenly the responsibilities of his office. Of a sensitive, high-strung temperament, E. A. Partridge suffered reaction to such a degree that at times he became almost despondent. He began to talk of resigning. He felt that he had done quite a lot in getting things under way and that the hard fight which the farmers would have to wage before the trading company was established permanently would be carried on more successfully by a younger man. So frequently had his motives been questioned by suspicious farmers at organization meetings that he thought it would be better for the company if he occupied a less prominent place in the conduct of its affairs. The idea seemed to be prevalent that the organizers were enthusiastic for direct financial reasons. "Those fellows are talking for what they are going to get out of it," was an open accusation at times--a misconception so unjust that on several occasions Partridge had refuted it by pledging to resign from the presidency as soon as the company was on its feet. "You men keep saying how much I've got out of this," he reproved in disheartened tones. "Gentlemen, I'll admit that I've got a little silver out of this. But it isn't in my pocket; it's in my hair!" Partridge had no respect for a "quitter," however. He did not propose to take it easy until the farmers' agency did get into proper running order. Although his associates tried to dissuade him altogether from the course he had planned, the best he would promise was to remain at his post until the first annual meeting. Immediately preceding the annual convention of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association at Brandon in February a general meeting of Grain Growers' Grain Company shareholders was held with about two hundred represented. Until now the company had been operating under a provisional directorate only and it was the purpose of the meeting to complete organization. Since opening for business the shareholders had practically doubled in number and over 1,500,000 bushels of farmers' grain had been handled by their own agency, its ability to dispose of wheat at good figures being demonstrated in spite of deprivation of trading privileges on the Exchange. Putting a conservative estimate upon the holdings of the farmers' venture into co-operative marketing, its paid-up capital remained intact, its organization expenses paid--including the membership on the Grain Exchange--and there still was left a respectable margin of profit. To this showing the shareholders responded by electing the provisional directorate as directors for the balance of the year, adding two[1] to their number, while the same officers were left in charge. In connection with the directorate it was pointed out that it might be better to have the trading company's directorate independent of the Association's directorate. The suggestion came from a tall young man who had a habit of thinking before he spoke and it was but one of many practical ideas which he had thrown out at the meeting. "That young chap, Crerar, of Russell--makings of an able man there, Ed," commented the re-elected Vice-president later. "Know anything about him?" "I know his father better than I do him," nodded the President thoughtfully. "I met his father in the old Patron movement years ago. I've got a great respect for his attitude of mind towards moral and economic questions. I like that young man's views, Kennedy; he seems to have a grasp of what this movement could accomplish--of the aims that might be served beyond the commercial side of it. In short, he seems to be somewhat of a student of economics and he has the education--used to be a school-teacher, I believe." "Remember when I went up to Russell, during their Fair in October, to tell them what the Exchange was trying to do to us? Well, he was at the meeting and came over to my room at the hotel afterward," remarked Kennedy. "That's how interested he was. We had quite a talk over the whole situation. Told me he had an arrangement to buy grain for Graves & Reilly, besides running the Farmers' Elevator at Russell, and he offered to ship us all the grain that wasn't consigned to his firm. We've got quite a few carloads from him during the season." "If there were only a few more elevator operators like him!" sighed Partridge. "When I was up there last July, selling stock, only eight men turned out," he recalled. "Crerar was one of them. I sold four shares. Crerar bought one. Say, he'd be a good man to have on the next directorate. How would it be if I wrote him a letter about it?" But "Alex." Crerar laid that letter aside and promptly forgot it; he did not take it seriously enough to answer it. If there was anything he could do to help along a thing in which he believed as thoroughly as he believed in the grain growers' movement and the farmers' agency he was more than willing to do it; but executive offices, he felt, were for older and more experienced men than he. As manager of an elevator in his home town, as buyer for a grain firm and as a farmer himself he had had opportunities for studying the situation from many angles. From the first he had followed the organization of the farmers with much interest and sympathy. He could not forget his own early experiences in marketing grain when the elevators offered him fifty-nine cents per bushel, nineteen cents under the price at the terminal at the time. The freight rate on his No. 1 Northern wheat he knew to be only nine cents per bushel and when he was docked a bushel and a half to a load of fifty bushels on top of it all he had been aroused to protest. A protest from young Crerar was no mild and bashful affair, either. It was big-fisted with vigor. But when, with characteristic spirit, he had pointed out the injustice of the price offered and the dockage taken--the elevator man, quite calmly, had told him to go to the devil! "There's no use going to the other elevators, for you're all alike," said young Crerar hotly. "Then take your damned grain home again!" grinned the elevator operator insolently. So the young farmer was compelled to sell his first wheat for what he could get. He was prepared to pay three cents per bushel on the spread, that being a reasonable charge; but although plenty of cars were available at the time, the spread cost him ten cents, a direct loss of seven cents per bushel. Besides this he was forced to see between twenty-five and thirty bushels out of every thousand appropriated for dockage, no matter how clean the wheat might be. That was in 1902. It was hard to forget that kind of treatment. And when, later on, young Crerar accepted an offer of $75 per month to manage a Farmers' Elevator at Russell he bore his own experience in mind and extended every possible consideration to the farmers who came to him. The elevator company, as a company, did not buy grain; but as representative of Graves & Reilly, a Winnipeg firm, he bought odd lots and for this service received an extra fifty dollars per month. Financially, it was better than teaching school. He had made ten dollars the first summer he taught school and to earn it he had walked three miles and a half each morning after milking the cows at home, arriving at the school soaking wet with dew from wading in the long prairie grass. And even at that, the trustees had wanted a "cheaper" teacher! A woman, they thought, might do it cheaper. The young schoolmaster objected so earnestly, however, that the argument was dropped. He needed this money to assist in a plan for attending the Collegiate at Portage la Prairie. He taught the school so well that after studying Latin at Manitoba College in 1899, the trustees were glad to get him back the following year at a salary of $35 per month. But milking cows at home night and morning and teaching school in between was not an exciting life at best for a young fellow ambitious to go farming. So at last he acquired a quarter-section of Hudson Bay Company land near Russell and took to "baching it" in a little frame shack. In the fall some lumber was required for buildings and it so happened that along came an old chap with a proposition to put in a portable sawmill on a timber limit up in the Riding Mountains nearby. The old man meant business alright; he had the engine within ten miles of its destination before he was overtaken and the whole machine seized for debt. It looked as if the thousands of logs which the residents of the district had taken out for the expected mill had been piled up to no purpose. Crerar, however, succeeded in making a deal for the engine and, with a couple of partners, began sawing up logs. The little sawmill proved so useful that he ran it for four winters. When finally it was burned down no attempt was made to rebuild. Its owner was entering wider fields of activity. After meeting Partridge and Kennedy his interest in the affairs of the farmers' little trading concern was quickened. He was much impressed with the fact that here were men so devoted to an idea--so profound in their belief that it was the right idea--that its advancement was their first and only thought at all times. Alex. Crerar liked that. If a thing were worth attempting at all, it was worth every concentration of effort. What these men were trying to accomplish appealed to him as a big thing, a bigger thing than most of the farmers yet realized, and it deserved all the help he could give it. The little agency was in the thick of a fight against tremendous odds and that, too, had its appeal; for to a natural born fighter the odds meant merely a bigger fight, a bigger triumph. Accordingly, the young man lost no opportunity to boost things along. He was able to consign many carloads of grain in a season. If an idea occurred to him that he thought might be of service he sat down and wrote a letter, offering the suggestion on the chance that it might prove useful to the Executive. He did everything he could to build up the Company's business in the Russell district and when he returned home from the shareholders' organization meeting he kept right on sending in business, offering helpful suggestions and saying a good word when possible. As the weeks went by and it became more apparent that they would wind up their first year's business satisfactorily, E. A. Partridge decided definitely that he would not accept another term as President. There were several good men available to succeed him; but he could not get it out of his head that the one man for the tasks ahead was the young fellow up at Russell. When he went there in June to speak at a Grain Growers' picnic he drew Crerar aside for an hour's chat, found out why he had not answered the letter suggesting that he play a more active part, and liked him all the better for his modesty. Without saying anything of what he had in mind he returned to Winnipeg and sent the Vice-President to Russell to size up the situation quietly. When Kennedy got back he agreed with the President's choice of a successor. The Company was holding its first annual meeting on July 16th and care was taken that the unsuspecting Crerar was on hand. The Vice-president button-holed him, explaining that he was wanted on the Board of Directors and in spite of his protest the President himself nominated him and he was elected promptly. But when at the directors' meeting that night the President told the Board that he had been looking around for a young man to take charge and that T. A. Crerar was the man--when everybody present nodded approval, the man from Russell was speechless. If they had asked him to pack his grip and leave at once for Japan to interview the Mikado, he could not have been more completely surprised. "Why, gentlemen" he objected, "I don't know anything about managing this company! I could not undertake it." "What is the next order of business?" asked E. A. Partridge. The shareholders were almost as much surprised as the newcomer himself when the name of the new president was announced. Many of them had never heard of T. A. Crerar. Had the young president-elect been able to see what lay ahead of him-- But, fortunately or unfortunately, that is one thing which is denied to every human being. [1] See Appendix--Par. 7. CHAPTER IX THE GRAIN EXCHANGE AGAIN "How many tables, Janet, are there in the Law?" "Indeed, sir, I canna just be certain; but I think there's ane in the foreroom, ane in the back room an' anither upstairs." --_Scotch Wit and Humor (Howe)_. The efforts of the elevator faction of the Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange, apparently to choke to death the Grain Growers' Grain Company, had awakened the farmers of the West to a fuller realization of the trading company's importance to the whole farmers' movement. The Grain Growers of the three prairie provinces had been watching things closely and they did not propose to let matters take their course unchallenged. A second Royal Commission had been appointed by the Dominion Government in 1906, under the chairmanship of John Millar, Indian Head, Saskatchewan, to probe conditions in the grain trade and the farmers felt that certain evidence which had been taken by this Commission at Winnipeg justified their claims that they were the victims of a combine. In the latter part of November (1906) the President of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association, D. W. McCuaig, laid formal charges against three members of the Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange--charges of conspiring in restraint of trade--and when these gentlemen appeared in the Police Court it was evident that the Exchange intended to fight the case every inch of the way. The farmers discovered that the legal talent of Winnipeg had been cornered; for of the twenty lawyers to whom their solicitor, R. A. Bonnar, K.C., could turn for assistance in the prosecution every one appeared to have been retained by the defendants. The case involved such wide investigation that such assistance was imperative and finally the Grain Growers secured the services of ex-Premier F. W. G. Haultain,[1] of Saskatchewan. The preliminary hearing in the Police Court proved to be most interesting and at times developed considerable heat among the battling legal lights. The defendants and their friends were so confident that commitment for trial would not be forthcoming at all that when the Magistrate decided that he was justified in so ordering, the grain men were shocked somewhat rudely out of their complacency. Following up this preliminary victory, the Manitoba Grain Growers turned to the Manitoba Government and demanded that the charter under which the Grain Exchange operated be amended in certain particulars. The deputation from the Grain Growers met the Committee on Agriculture, the House being in session, and asked that the powers of the charter be limited so that business would be conducted on an equitable basis between buyer and producer. They asked that the Exchange be allowed to set no limit as to the number of persons who might enjoy its privileges, the question of the reputability of such persons to be decided by a majority of the members and that a seat purchased for the use of any firm or corporation should entitle that firm to the privileges of the Exchange even though registration of membership was under the name of an individual; also that the right to membership should include the right to delegate the trading powers to anyone in the employ of the firm or corporation. The Grain Growers also asked that arbitrary interference with the business methods employed by individual firms or corporations and inquisitional inquiry into such be prohibited; also that the penalties and disabilities against those breaking the common rules and the maximum-price rule be abolished; that the right to define the eligibility of a person as an employee or fix a limit to salary in any way be denied; also that the expulsion of no member should be considered final until assented to by the Minister of Agriculture and that all by-laws should receive the assent of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council before becoming legal and binding. The farmers asked that the Government have full access to the minute books, papers and accounts of the Grain Exchange and that provision be made for the public to have free access to a gallery overlooking the trading room during the sessions of the Exchange so that the transactions occurring might be observed and the prices disseminated through the public press. They further wished to see gambling in futures made a criminal offence. Roderick McKenzie, Secretary of the Manitoba Association, told how the existing Grain Exchange had about three hundred members, of whom one hundred were active and fifty-seven of these active members represented the elevator interests. He said that the interests of the fifty-seven were looked after by twelve elevator men in the Exchange and that these twelve men agreed so well that they allowed one of their number to send out the price which should be paid for wheat for the day. The Committee on Agriculture promised to consider the requests and later, when they met to do so, members of the Grain Exchange attended in force to present their side of the case. They claimed that a great deal of the trouble existing between the producer and the Grain Exchange was due to misconception of the Exchange's methods of action. The Exchange was only a factor in the grain business and under their charter they were allowed to make by-laws and regulations, these being necessary in such an intricate business as handling grain. The wiring of prices to country points was done by the North-West Grain Dealers' Association, which had nothing to do with the Exchange but was a distinct and separate organization for the purpose of running elevators at country points as cheaply as possible. The highest possible prices were quoted and the plan was merely to avoid duplicate wiring. The grain men claimed that it was impossible to handle the wheat of the country unless futures were allowed while to carry on its business properly the Exchange must have the power to say who should be members and otherwise to regulate its business. If the producer was getting full value for his wheat why should the Grain Exchange be interfered with? The Exchange was willing that its membership should be extended. Their books always would be open to Government inspection in future and they would also repeal the rule regarding track-buyers' salaries. The press was already admitted and it would be found that when the new building which the Exchange was erecting was completed there would be a gallery for the use of the public during trading hours. If the Legislature were to amend the charter, declared the Exchange's spokesman, the Exchange would demand that the charter be cancelled _in toto_ and a receiver appointed to distribute the assets. The Exchange was tired of being branded thieves and robbers and they should be let alone to do their business. If this were not satisfactory, then they wished to be put out of business altogether. The Grain Growers protested that it was not their desire to have the charter cancelled. They were not blind to the usefulness of the Exchange if it were properly managed and all they asked was that this organization be compelled to do what was right. The reason the Exchange had admitted the Grain Growers' Grain Company, the farmers claimed, was so that they could have it under discipline, being afraid of a combination of farmers in the interests of the producer. The farmers had lost confidence in the manipulations of the Exchange and wanted official protection. The question of declaring deals in futures to be a criminal offence was outside provincial jurisdiction and the farmers withdrew that part of the request. They wished everything else to stand, however. At this juncture a recommendation was made that a conference be held between the Government, the Grain Growers, the Exchange, reeves of municipalities, bankers, railroads, etc., for discussion of everything pertaining to the handling of wheat, including amendments to the Grain Exchange charter. The idea appealed to the Premier and before the Committee he pledged that the resolutions passed at the proposed conference would be converted into legislation. After adopting the Agricultural Committee's report the Government did not act independently regarding the suggested charter amendments, as the farmers had hoped they would; instead, the whole thing was shelved, pending the suggested conference. When this conference was held in the latter part of February, however, the Government was duly impressed by the earnestness of the Grain Growers. Many strong speeches were made, including one powerful arraignment by J. W. Scallion, of Virden, whose energetic leadership had earned him the title: "Father of all the Grain Growers." The Government promised to amend the Exchange charter at the next session of the Legislature. The activity of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association was putting a new face upon the struggle of the Grain Growers' Grain Company for the restoration of their trading privileges on the floor of the Exchange. It demonstrated that the farmers could act in concert if occasion arose and that the Grain Growers' Associations were in accord with the principles for which the farmers' trading company was fighting. When, therefore, the Manitoba Association took a hand in the matter by officially urging the Manitoba Government to assist in restoring the Company to its former position on the Exchange in order that it could enjoy the rights of the seat for which it had paid, the Government was forced to take action. It is doubtful if a Minister of the Crown in Manitoba ever had been called upon to make a more remarkable official statement than that which now appeared in print in connection with this matter. In the absence of Hon. R. P. Roblin it became the duty of the Acting-Premier to make it. Hon. Robert Rogers, then Minister of Public Works in the Manitoba Government, was the official head of the Government in the Premier's absence and in the _Winnipeg Telegram_ of April 4th, 1907, the statement appeared as follows: "The action of the Council of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange in refusing trading privileges to the Grain Growers' Grain Company is regarded by the Government as an arbitrary exercise of the powers conferred upon them (the Exchange) through their charter from the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, and unless remedied by the Exchange, the Government will call the Legislature together during the present month for the purpose of remedying the conditions by Legislative amendments." On April 15th the farmers' trading company was admitted once more to the full privileges of their seat on the Exchange. The case against the three members of the Grain Exchange, who had been indicted under Section 498 of the Criminal Code, came to trial in the Assize Court a week later, on April 22nd, before Judge Phippen. It was now a matter for Crown prosecution and under direction of the Attorney-General, R. A. Bonnar, K.C., proceeded vigorously. The Grain Growers claimed that the Exchange had rules and regulations which had been carried out in restraint of trade and that in combination with the North-West Grain Dealers' Association there had been a practice of restricting the price to be paid for grain to certain daily figures, sent out by the parties conspiring. Also, they expected to show that there had been a combine in existence between the elevator companies so that there was no competition in the buying of grain at certain points while there was an agreement that only a certain amount of street wheat would be received at the various elevators, the whole thing amounting to the restriction of wheat buying within certain limits fixed by the combination of the buyers who belonged to the combine--this to the consequent barring out of the small buyer from the trade. The latter, the Grain Growers argued, was prevented from buying by the rule which called for the payment of a salary to track buyers and prohibited the hiring of men on commission; there were points where the quantity of grain offered for sale was too limited to justify the payment of a fifty-dollar salary to the buyer. Another point of complaint was that the Grain Exchange membership was restricted to three hundred, the members having agreed among themselves that no more seats be added although all present seats were sold and many more might be sold to eligible citizens. Also, claimed the prosecution, there was a practical boycott of expelled members in that the members of the Exchange were forbidden to deal with expelled members; it was practically impossible to do business in grain in Western Canada unless connected with the Grain Exchange, one firm having experienced this difficulty. The rule which barred the purchasing of grain on track during the hours of trading on the Exchange was, they would endeavor to show, an act in restraint of trade and the three men under indictment, the prosecution hoped to prove, had been active in the enactment of the alleged illegal by-laws of the Grain Exchange. Prior to the enactment of these obnoxious laws of the Exchange the farmers had been sought by the buyers, whereas since the rules had been established the farmer must seek the purchaser. While the prices given out were fixed by the Grain Exchange in what was claimed to be open competition, the prosecution intended to show that it was a gambling transaction pure and simple, the price-fixing being nothing more than the guess of the men who acted for their own gain. The trial lasted for a month, during which time a great many witnesses were examined--grain men and farmers--and the whole grain trade reviewed. The array of legal talent for the defence was very imposing and the case attracted much attention because, aside from its interest to the grain trade and the farming population, it promised to test the particular and somewhat obscure section of the Criminal Code under which the indictment was laid. At one stage of the proceedings the tension in court became so high and witnesses so unwilling that upon reproval by the court regarding his examination, leading counsel for the Grain Growers picked up his bag and walked out in protest, willing to risk punishment for the breach of etiquette rather than remain. After the Grain Growers' executive and counsel had conferred with the Government, however, the Grain Growers' counsel was prevailed upon to resume the case. The finding of the court did not come as much of a surprise; for it was apparent before the trial ended that the section of the Code was considered ambiguous by the presiding Judge. The latter held that all restraints suggested by the evidence were agreed to, whether justifiably or not, as business regulations and before finding the defendants guilty these restraints must appear to be "undue," according to his reading of the section. It was necessary to respect the right of a particular trade or business or of a particular class of traders to protect their property by regulations and agreements so long as the public interests were not thereby "unduly" impaired; to the Judge's mind there was no question that the public had not been _unduly_ affected. After reviewing the case the Judge held that the gravamen of the whole charge hung upon the Commission Rule of the Exchange--that one cent commission per bushel should be made in handling grain; so that the price paid would be the price at the terminal (Fort William) less the freight and one cent per bushel commission, neither more nor less. Witnesses agreed that this was the lowest profit on which the business could live. Fort William prices were the highest the world's markets could justify. Owing to the presence in the statute of the word, "unduly," therefore, the Judge could not find the defendants guilty. The Grain Growers were much dissatisfied with the decision; for they believed that they had adduced evidence to support their case and did not relish losing it on a technicality. Appeal was made, therefore; but the appeal court upheld the judgment of the assize court. Apparently, deduced the farmers, this meant that men could conspire to create monopolies by driving all competitors out of business so long as they did not do it out of pure malice--so long as they justified it on the grounds of "personal interest"--so long as the things they did were not "malicious restraints, unconnected with any business relations of the accused!" In other words, if men merely conspired to advance their own business interests they committed no offence under the then existing law; to be liable to punishment they must be actuated by malice. So that all the turmoil and talk, court proceedings and conferences, deputations and denunciations, evidence and evasions--all the excitement of the past few months practically left conditions just where they were. For the amendments to the Grain Exchange charter would not materialize till the Legislature met again next year. But there was one spot where the clouds had rifted and the light shone through. The Grain Growers' Grain Company had won back its place on the Exchange. More and more the farmers began to pin their faith to their little fighting trading company "at the front." It appeared to be the concentration point for the fire of enemy guns. In all probability hostilities would break out anew, but the men in charge were good men--loyal and determined; they could be relied upon to take a full-sized whack at every difficulty which raised its head. The first of these to threaten was on the way. [1] Now Chief Justice Haultain. CHAPTER X PRINTERS' INK The fewer the voices on the side of truth, the more distinct and strong must be your own.--_Channing_. As the farmers saw it, there was no reason in the world why the bank should do what it did. The Company had closed its first year with net profits sufficient to declare a seven per cent. cash dividend and the profits would have been augmented greatly had it not been for the heavy interest payments which accrued on the unusual overdrafts imposed by special conditions. In spite of their extremely limited resources and the handicaps forced upon them, the volume of business transacted had exceeded $1,700,000 during the first ten months that the farmers had been in business; their paid-up capital had been approximately eleven thousand dollars of which over seven thousand had been required for organization outlay. The number of shareholders had nearly doubled during the ten months and everything was pointing to rapid advancement. The Company had been a good customer of the bank, which had received about $10,000 in interest. The security offered for their line of credit was unquestioned. Yet the new directors had scarcely settled into place for the approaching busy season before, without warning, the bank notified them that they wished to close out the account. When men set themselves up in business they expect to have to compete for their share of trade. The farmers did not expect to find their path lined with other grain dealers cheering them forward and waving their hats. They expected competition of the keenest. What they could not anticipate, however, was the lengths to which the fight might go or the methods that might be adopted to put their Agency out of business altogether. Hitherto the grain grower had been in the background when it came to marketing and handling grain. He was away out in the country somewhere--busy plowing, busy seeding, busy harvesting, busy something-or-other. He was a Farm Hand who so "tuckered himself out" during daylight that he was glad to pry off his wrinkled boots and lie down when it got dark in order to yank them on again, when the rooster crowed at dawn, for the purpose of "tuckering himself out" all over again. It was true that without him there would have been no grain to handle; equally true that without the grain dealers the farmer would have been in difficulty if he tried to hunt up individual consumers to buy his wheat. The farmer interfering in the established grain trade was something new and it was not to be supposed that when the surprise of it wore off things were not liable to happen. The farmer was quick to infer that the action of the bank in cutting off the trading company's credit without apparent cause was another move of the opposing forces. It was so palpably a vital spot at which to strike. This time, however, the threatening cloud evaporated almost as soon as it appeared. The manager, W. H. Machaffie, resigned and assumed the management of another bank. He was a far-sighted financier, Mr. Machaffie, and almost the first account he sought for the Home Bank was that of the Grain Growers' Grain Company. The Home Bank was new in the West and in the East it had been an old loan company without big capitalistic interests, its funds being derived mostly from small depositors; but while at that time it was not among the wealthiest banking institutions of the country, it was quite able to supply full credit facilities. The opportunity for the farmers' company and the young bank to get together to mutual advantage was too good to be overlooked. Under the banking laws of Canada valuable special privileges are granted in view of the important part which the banks play in the country's development. Government returns indicate that the greater part of the business done by banks is carried on upon their deposits. If the working people and the farmers, as is generally accepted, form the majority of these depositors of money in banks, then were not many loans which went to monopolistic interests being used against the very people who furnished the money? If the farmers could acquire stock in a bank of their own, would they not be in a position to finance their own requirements rather than those of corporations which might be obtaining unreasonable profits from the people at large? Such an investment would be safe and productive at the same time that it strengthened the farmers' hands in their effort to do their own trading. With all this in view the directors of the Grain Growers' Grain Company made a heavy investment in Home Bank stock and were appointed sole brokers to sell a large block of the bank's stock to Western farmers, working men and merchants. On the sale of this they were to receive a commission which would, they expected, be enough to cover the expense of placing the stock. As the business expanded the Company would be assured of an extended line of credit as it was needed. And the business certainly was expanding. Although the prospects for the new crop were not as bright as they had been the year before, a substantial increase in the amount of grain they would handle--owing to the increase in the number of shareholders--was anticipated by the management. They were not prepared, however, for the heavy volume that poured in upon them when the crop began to move; it was double that of their first season and the office staff was hard pressed to keep pace with the rising work. There now seemed no reason to believe that the success of the farmers' venture was any longer in doubt so far as the commercial side of it was concerned. But the President and directors had in mind a much broader objective. It was not enough that the farmer should receive a few more cents per bushel for his grain. "We must bear clearly in mind," warned T. A. Crerar, "that there are still those interests who would delight in nothing more than in our failure and destruction. A great many improvements require yet to be made in our system of handling grain. The struggle for the bringing about of those reforms is not by any means accomplished. As a great class of farmers, composing the most important factor in the progress and development of our country, we must learn the lesson that we must organize and work together to secure those legislative and economic reforms necessary to well-being. In the day of our prosperity we must not forget that there are yet many wrongs to be righted and that true happiness and success in life cannot be measured by the wealth we acquire. In the mad, debasing struggle for material riches and pleasure, which is so characteristic of our age, we often neglect and let go to decay the finer and higher side of our nature and lose thereby that power of sympathy with our fellows which finds expression in lending them a helping hand and in helping in every good work which tends to increase human happiness and lessen human misery. In keeping this in view we keep in mind that high ideal which will make our organization not alone a material success but also a factor in changing those conditions which now tend to stifle the best that is in humanity." An important step towards the upholding of these ideals was now taken by the directors. The President and the Vice-President happened to be in a little printshop one day, looking over the proof of a pamphlet which the Company was about to issue, when the former picked up a little school journal which was just off the press for the Teachers' Association. "Why can't we get out a little journal like that?" he wondered. "It would be a great help to our whole movement." About this time the Company was approached by a Winnipeg farm paper which devoted a page to the doings of the grain growers. "If you'll help us to get subscriptions amongst the farmers," said the publisher, "we'll devote more space still to the doings of the grain growers." "But why should we build up another man's paper for him?" argued the President. "Why can't we get out a journal for ourselves?" The idea grew more insistent the longer it was entertained, and although at first E. A. Partridge, who was on the directorate, was opposed to such a venture, he finally agreed that it would be of untold assistance to the farmers if they had a paper of their own to voice their ideals. The logical editor for the new undertaking was E. A. Partridge, of course, and accordingly he began to gather material for the first issue of a paper, to be called the _Grain Growers' Guide_. Partridge had a few ideas of his own that had lived with him for a long time. On occasion he had introduced some of them to his friends with characteristic eloquence and the eloquence of E. A. Partridge on a favorite theme was something worth listening to; also, he gave his auditors much to think about and sometimes got completely beyond their depth. It was then that some of them were forced to shake their heads at theories which appeared to them to be so idealistic that their practical consummation belonged to a future generation. In connection with this new paper it was Partridge's idea to issue it as a weekly and as the official organ of the grain growers' trading company instead of the grain growers' movement as a whole. He thought, too, that it would be advisable to join hands with _The Voice_, which was the organ of the Labor unions. The President and the other officers could not agree that any of these was wise at the start; it would be better, they thought, to creep before trying to walk, to issue the paper as a monthly at first and to have it the official organ of the Grain Growers' Associations rather than the trading company alone. This failure of his associates to see the wisdom of his plan to amalgamate with the organ of the Labor unions was a great disappointment to Partridge; for he had been working towards this consummation for some time, devoutly wished it and considered the time opportune for such a move. He believed it to be of vital importance to "the Cause" and its future. In October he had met with an unfortunate accident, having fallen from his binder and so injured his foot in the machinery that amputation was necessary; he was in no condition to undertake new and arduous duties in organizing a publishing proposition as he was still suffering greatly from his injury. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, it required only the upsetting of the plans he had cherished to make him give up altogether and he resigned the editorship of the new magazine after getting out the first number. "I'm too irritable to get along with anybody in an office," he declared. "I know I'm impatient and all that, boys. You'd better send for McKenzie to come in from Brandon and edit the paper." This suggestion of his editorial successor seemed to the others to be a good one; for Roderick McKenzie had been Secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association from the first and had been a prime mover in its activities as well as wielding considerable influence in the other two prairie provinces where he was well known and appreciated. He was well posted, McKenzie. So the Vice-President wired him to come down to Winnipeg at once. Yes, he was well posted in the farming business, Rod. McKenzie. He had learned it in the timber country before he took to it in the land of long grass. At eleven years of age he was plowing with a yoke of oxen on the stump lands of Huron, helping his father to scratch a living out of the bush farm for a family of nine and between whiles attending a little log schoolhouse, going on cedar-gum expeditions, getting lost in the bush and indulging in other pioneer pastimes. Along in 1877, when people were talking a lot about Dakota as a farming country, McKenzie took a notion to go West; but he preferred to stay under the British flag and Winnipeg was his objective. A friend of his was running a flour-mill at Gladstone (then called Palestine), Manitoba, and young McKenzie decided to take a little walk out that way to visit him. It was a wade, rather than a walk! It was the year the country was flooded and during the first thirty days after his arrival he could count only three consecutive days without rain. In places the water was up to his hips and when he reached the flour-mill there was four feet of water inside of it. Such conditions were abnormal, of course, and due to lack of settlement and drainage. After helping to build the first railway through the country Roderick McKenzie eventually located his farm near Brandon and so far as the rich land and the climate were concerned he was entirely satisfied. Not so with the early marketing of his grain, though. He disposed of two loads of wheat at one of the elevators in Brandon one day and was given a grade and price which he considered fair enough. When he came in with two more loads of the same kind of wheat next day, however, the elevator man told him that he had sent a sample to Winnipeg and found out that it was not grading the grade he had given him the day before. "The train service wouldn't allow of such fast work, sir," said Roderick McKenzie. "I suppose you sent it by wire!" He picked up the reins. "That five cents a bushel you want me to give you looks just as good in my pocket as in yours." So he drove up town where the other buyers were and three of them looked at the wheat but refused to give a price for it. One of them was a son of the first elevator man to whom he had gone and, said he: "The Old Man gave you a knockdown for it, didn't he?" "Yes, but----" "Well, we're not going to bid against him and if you want to sell it at all, haul it back to him." As there was nothing else he could do under the conditions that prevailed, McKenzie was forced to pocket his loss without recourse. With such experiences it is scarcely necessary to say that when the grain growers' movement started in Manitoba Roderick McKenzie occupied a front seat. He was singled out at once for a place on the platform and was elected Secretary of the Brandon branch of the Association. At the annual convention of the Manitoba locals he was made Secretary of the Provincial Association, a position which he filled until 1916, when he became Secretary of the Canadian Council of Agriculture. His activities in the interests of the Association have made him a well-known figure in many circles. From the first he had been very much in favor of the farmers' trading company and only the restrictions of his official position with the Association had prevented him from taking a more prominent part in its affairs. As it was, the benefit of his experience was frequently sought. McKenzie was plowing in the field when the boy from the telegraph office reached him with John Kennedy's message. "They don't say what they want me for; but I guess I'm wanted or they wouldn't send a telegram--Haw! Back you!" And like Cincinnatus at the call of the State in the "brave days of old," McKenzie unhitched the horses and leaving the plow where it stood, made for the house, packed his grip and caught the next train for Winnipeg. John Kennedy met him at the station. "What's wrong?" demanded the Secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association at once. "I came right along as soon as I got your wire, Kennedy. What's up now?" "The editor of the _Grain Growers' Guide_. Partridge wants you to take his place." "ME? Why, I never edited anything in my life!" cried McKenzie, standing stock still on the platform. "Pshaw! Come along," laughed Kennedy reassuringly. "You'll be alright. It ain't hard to do." CHAPTER XI FROM THE RED RIVER VALLEY TO THE FOOTHILLS It ain't the guns or armament nor the funds that they can pay, But the close co-operation that makes them win the day; It ain't the individual, nor the army as a whole, But the everlastin' team-work of every bloomin' soul! --_Kipling_. At one of the early grain growers' conventions it had been voiced as an ideal that there were three things which the farmers' movement needed--first, a trading company to sell their products (with ultimately, it might be, the cheaper distribution of farm supplies); second, a bank in which they could own stock; third, a paper that would publish the farmers' views. So that if the new Executive of the Company had done little else than break ground for better financial arrangements and a farmers' own paper, their record for the year would have shown progress. But when the second annual meeting of the Company was held they were able to show that the volume of farmers' grain handled was almost five million bushels, double that of the first year, while the net profits amounted to over thirty thousand dollars. The number of farmer shareholders had increased to nearly three thousand with applications on file for another twelve hundred and a steady awakening of interest among the farmers was to be noticed all over the West. All this in spite of the general shortage of money, a reduced total crop yield and the keenest competition from rival grain interests. It had been apparent to the directors that if the business grew as conditions seemed to warrant it doing, it would require to be highly organized. Bit by bit the service to the farmer was being widened. For instance, the nucleus of a Claims Department had been established during the year; for under the laws governing the Canadian railway companies the latter were required to deliver to terminal elevators the amount of grain a farmer loaded into a car and to leave the car in a suitable condition to receive grain. The official weights at the terminal were unquestioned and if a farmer could furnish reasonable evidence of the quantity of grain he had loaded, any leakage in transit would furnish a claim case against the railway. During six months the farmers' company had collected for its shippers nearly two thousand dollars in such claims, a beginning sufficient to illustrate that the Company was destined to serve the farmers in many practical ways if they would only stand behind it. IF the farmers would stand behind it! But would they? It was a question which was forever popping up to obscure the future. Many tongues were busy with inuendo to belittle what the farmers had accomplished already and to befog their efforts to advance still farther. At every shipping point in the West industrious little mallets were knocking away on the Xylophone of Doubt, all playing the same tune: "Just Kiss Yourself Good-Bye!" No farmers' business organization ever had been a success in the past and none ever could be. This new trading venture was going to go off with a loud bang one of these fine days and every farmer who had shipped grain to it would stand a first-class chance of losing it. You betcha! The Grain Growers' Associations mightn't be so bad; yes, they'd done some good. But this concern in the grain business--run by a few men, wasn't it? Well, say, does a cat go by a saucer of cream without taking a lick? "Farmers' company" they called it, eh? Go and tell it to your grandmother! The worst of it was that in many localities were farmers who believed this very suggestion already--that the Company belonged to the men at the head of its affairs. Discouraged by past failures and without much respect for the dignity of their occupation, their attitude towards the Company was almost automatic. That it was a great co-operative movement of their class, designed to improve economic and social conditions, was something quite out of their grasp. And upon these strings, already out of tune, elevator men strummed diligently in an effort to create discord. From the first it had been like that. Friends who would speak a good word for the struggling venture at the time it was most needed were about as scarce as horns on a horse. On the other hand the organizers ran across "the knockers" at every turn. A traveller for one of the milling companies, for instance, happened to get into conversation on the train with E. A. Partridge one day. The latter was a stranger to him and he naturally supposed he was talking to "just a farmer." The subject of conversation was the grain trade and this traveller began to make a few remarks about the "little grain company" that had started up. "What about that company?" asked Partridge with visible interest. "I've heard a lot about it." "Oh, it's just a little dinky affair," laughed the traveller. "They've got a little office about ten feet square and they actually have a typewriter! They get a car or two a month. Don't amount to anything." For a full hour he kept the chutes open and filled his interested auditor with all the latest brands of misrepresentation and ridicule. He explained why it was that the farmers' effort was nothing but a joke and how foolish it would be for any farmer to send business to it. He was a good salesman, this traveller, and he was sure he had "sold" this rather intelligent hayseed when he got to the end of his talk and his station was called. "I've really enjoyed this," assured Partridge gratefully. "As a farmer I'm naturally interested in that sort of thing, you know, and I've got a particular interest in that little grain company. My name is Partridge and I only want to say----" But the traveller had grabbed his club bag and was off down the aisle as fast as he could go. Salesmanship is punctuated by "psychological moments" and good salesmen always know when to leave. He did not look around. His ears were very red. It was funny. No, it wasn't, either! Lies about the Company, thought the then President, would travel a thousand miles before the Truth could get its boots on! It was not a matter for amusement at all. As the "little dinky affair" became a competitor of increasing strength in the grain trade the efforts of a section of the grain men, particularly the elevator interests, to discredit it among the farmers became more and more marked. While the farmers' company was not openly attacked, influences nevertheless were constantly at work to undermine in roundabout ways. The elevator men were in a strong position to fight hard and they pressed every advantage. At practically every shipping point they had agents whose business it was to secure shipments of grain in car lots as well as buying on street. Many of these men were very popular locally and as individuals were good fellows, well liked by their farmer friends. A rebate on the charges for loading grain through an elevator or the mere fact that letting the elevator have it saved the bother of writing a letter--these were excellent inducements to the unthinking farmer, and when added to this was the element of personal acquaintance with the buyer, it was hard to refuse. For your farmer is a man of simple code. He is not versed in subterfuge and diplomacy. He takes words at their face value, unless he distrusts you, just as he hands them out himself. He lives a clean, honest life and earns his money. If in some cases his viewpoint is narrowed by treading much in the same furrows, it is at least an honest viewpoint in which he really believes. And one of the things in which the average farmer prides himself is that he will "never go back on a friend." Even a red Indian would not do that! In selling to the elevator these same farmers probably had no intention of unfriendliness to the farmers' trading company. They hoped to see it succeed but did not appreciate their individual responsibility in the matter or realize that while their own personal defection represented a loss to the Company of just one shipment, the loss became vital when multiplied many times all along the line. And the Company had no agent on the ground to argue this out, face to face. Although many requests for the appointment of such local agents reached the office, the directors decided that it would be poor policy as it would mean appointing agents everywhere and abuses might develop. It would be easy under such a system for an impression to get abroad that favoritism was being shown in appointments; jealousies and disappointments might be the result. On the other hand, one of the greatest sources of strength which the Company could foster would be a sense of individual responsibility among its farmer shareholders--each shareholder an agent for his own grain and that of his non-member neighbors, each doing his part to keep down the handling cost of his grain and build up his own company. In the meantime it were better to lose some grain than run the risk of disrupting the whole movement--to let the elevators enjoy their advantage until it became a nullity by education of the farmer himself. Such educational work was already a regular part of the routine. Pamphlets and circulars were issued from time to time, dealing with prevailing conditions, advocating amendments to the Grain Act, etc., and explaining the need for government ownership of elevators. The feeling that the Provincial governments should acquire and operate all storage facilities in the way of elevators and warehouses was spreading rapidly among farmers and business men. In the second year the Grain Growers' Grain Company began to export several small shipments, more for the sake of the experience than anything else. A very extensive line of credit was necessary to go into the export business and, until the arrangement with the Home Bank developed this, their hands were tied in the matter of exporting for themselves. Their third year in business, though, found their financial relations so improved that they were able to do a considerable and profitable business in the exporting of grain, thereby advancing definitely towards one objective which the farmers had had from the first. Most of the grain which the Company handled in this way was sold to exporters in the Eastern States and in Eastern Canada, this method being found more satisfactory than selling direct to buyers in the Old Country at this time. In spite of everything, therefore, things were swinging the farmers' way. The whole Farmers' Movement was expanding, solidifying, particularly in Alberta, which for so long had been primarily a cattle country. Grain production was now increasing rapidly in this Province of the Foothills and Chinooks and the future shipment of Alberta grain to the Pacific Coast and thence via the new Panama Canal route was a live topic. Owing to special conditions prevailing in the farthest west of the three Prairie Provinces the Grain Growers' movement there did not solidify until 1909 into its final cohesion under the name, "United Farmers of Alberta." Prior to this the farmers of Alberta had been organized into two groups--the Canadian Society of Equity and the Alberta Farmers' Association. The first had its beginnings among some farmers from the United States--mostly from Nebraska and Dakota--who settled near Edmonton and who in their former home had been members of the American Society of Equity. These farmers in 1904-5 organized some branches of the American Society after arrival in the new land and, becoming ambitious, formed the Canadian Society of Equity with the idea of owning and controlling their own flour and lumber mills and what not. For this Purpose they got together a concern called "The Canadian Society of Equity, Limited," and bought a timber limit, so called. They secured shareholders in all parts of Alberta and the concern went to smash in 1907, this unfortunate failure making doubly shy those farmers who had been bitten. Meanwhile, in 1905, the members of the local branch of the American Society of equity which had been established at Clover Bar had reached the conclusion that the work of the Society did not meet the requirements of conditions in Alberta and that it was not desirable to have the farmers of the province organized into two camps--the Society of Equity on one hand and the Alberta branches of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association on the other. Especially now that the Territories were to be established into the Provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, it was desirable that reorganization and a change of name take place. Accordingly the Clover Bar branch of the American Society of Equity and the Strathcona branch of the Territorial Grain Growers' Association got their heads together on a proposal to amalgamate into one farmers' organization under the name, Alberta Farmers' Association. Under the impression that this was a veiled scheme of the Grain Growers to swallow their organization whole, the Society of Equity turned down the idea of amalgamation. The Clover Bar farmers withdrew from the Society and joined the Strathcona Grain Growers in forming the nucleus of a provincial farmers' association as planned. Owing to the mixed nature of Alberta's agricultural population and to the general distrust of farmers' organizations the new Alberta Farmers' Association faced a difficult situation. But the principles laid down by their leaders were so fair, so sane and broad-minded, that in two years the Association became an influence in almost every line of trade in the province. They organized a very successful seed fair, a feature of which was a meeting to discuss improvement of the market for live stock, especially hogs; this resulted in the appointment of a Pork Commission. At their convention in 1906 the Association took stand on such important matters as the special grading of Alberta Hard Winter Wheat, the establishment of a terminal elevator at the Pacific Coast, of a pork-packing and beef-chilling plant by the Provincial Government, etc. In the discussion of everything affecting the welfare of the farmers the Association played an important part and it was at their request that the Provincial Government sent an agent to investigate the markets of British Columbia with the idea of closer relations. A second attempt to amalgamate with the Canadian Society of Equity, which had succeeded the American Society, had fallen through and there were still two farmers' organizations in the Province of Alberta. However, with the progress being made with the Provincial Government in connection with the pork-packing and beef-chilling plant and with the Dominion Government in regard to government ownership of terminal elevators, the farmers as a whole began to see the need of closer union. Such wide measures as a system of government-owned internal elevators were bringing the farmers of all three Western provinces into closer conference and in 1908 the feeling in favor of amalgamation of all Alberta farmers into one organization began to crystallize. Finally in September a conference was held between representatives of the Alberta Farmers' Association and the Canadian Society of Equity. The constitution drafted at this conference was submitted to the annual conventions of both bodies at Edmonton on January 13th, 1909. The following morning the delegates of the Canadian Society of Equity marched from their hall to the convention of the Alberta Farmers' Association and amid great cheers the two became one under the name, United Farmers of Alberta, with "Equity" as their motto, and with a strong coalition directorate.[1] Until now each of the organizations had had its separate official organ; but on amalgamation these were dropped and the _Grain Growers' Guide_ adopted as the official organ for Alberta. First published under the auspices of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association, the _Guide_ now represented the farmers' movement in all three provinces. The wisdom of its establishment was being proved steadily. Its circulation was gathering momentum with every issue. It was now coming out as a weekly and its pages were filled with valuable information for the farmer on every subject dealing with the marketing of his produce. Also it was proving a wonderful educator on such large questions as government ownership of elevators, the tariff, control of public service corporations and so forth. The farmer was getting information which he had never been able to obtain before and he was getting it without distortion, uncolored by convenient imagination, plain as Fact itself. An up-to-date printing plant had been installed to print the _Guide_ and do a general job-printing business, and this was organized as a separate company under the name of the "Public Press, Limited." In addition to all the difficulties which usually attend the building of a publishing enterprise to success, the farmers' own journal had to face many more which were due to the special nature of its policies. Manufacturers who disapproved of its attitude on the tariff, for instance, refused for a long while to use its advertising columns. Each year as the _Guide's_ struggle went on there was an annual deficit and had it not been for the grants with which the Grain Growers' Grain Company came to its rescue, the paper must have gone under. For this financial assistance the farmers' trading company got no return except the satisfaction of knowing that the money could not be spent to better advantage in the interests of Western farmers. With the rapid developments in Alberta and the probable future shipment of Alberta grain via the Panama Canal route, branch offices were being opened at Calgary by Winnipeg grain dealers. Not to be behind in the matter of service, the farmers' company followed suit. A Seed Branch Department to supply good seed grain was another improvement in service and the farmers by this time were taking a keen interest in their trading organization. When the third annual meeting came around, there was no longer any doubt that a farmers' business organization _could_ succeed--that this venture of the Grain Growers was _not_ going to go off with a loud bang--at least, not yet. But, as the President remarked, it seemed that they had no more than touched the fringe of what remained to be accomplished. One of the immediate questions pressing for solution, he considered, was government ownership of elevators. "Our Company's experience has demonstrated completely," he said, "that our grain marketing conditions can never reach a proper basis as long as the elevators necessary for that marketing are allowed to remain in private hands for private gain. The Grain Growers' Associations are the one thing above everything else that stands between the farmer and the power of merciless corporations. They have undoubtedly been the greatest shield this Company has had since its organization; they have helped the Company to prove, far beyond any question of doubt, the advantages of co-operation." And what had the elevator men to say about all this? Surely these farmers were becoming a menace! At the present rate of speed another three years would see them in control of the grain business and was that good for the grain business? Was it good for the farmer? The elevator men did not think so. Strangely enough, they were not worrying greatly about government ownership. They were more interested in the fact that the volume of grain which had flowed so faithfully all these years was being split up by all these commission men--these hangers-on who invested little or no capital but necked right up to the profits of the trade as if they owned the whole business! Trouble was brewing on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange--had been for some time. Then one day word reached the office of the Grain Growers' Grain Company that by a majority vote the Grain Exchange had suspended, for a period of one year, the Commission Rule under which grain was handled. Thus did things come to a showdown. [1] See Appendix--Par. 10. CHAPTER XII THE SHOWDOWN It's scarcely in a body's power Tae keep at times frae being sour Tae see how things are shared. --_Robert Burns_. A fight was on between the elevator interests and the commission merchants of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange--a fight for existence. For, with the Commission Rule of the Exchange eliminated, those firms which handled grain on a straight commission basis would be forced to meet the competition of the elevator buyers and the chances were they would be forced to handle grain at a loss; the best they could hope for would be to cover their costs. It will be remembered that this Commission Rule, established in 1899, was that a charge of one cent commission per bushel should be made for handling grain and that all members of the Exchange dealing in grain must show that the price paid was the price at the terminal (Fort William) less the freight and one cent per bushel commission. This commission could be neither more nor less than one cent; for at that time it was felt that business could not be done, offices maintained and an efficient and reliable service given for less. It was a charge which both farmers and grain men considered fair and reasonable. The trouble in the Exchange started when the commission men claimed the right to have country agents and to pay them on a commission basis of one-quarter cent per bushel. The elevator companies were able to buy at elevator points through their salaried representatives but the commission men were prohibited from having country agents except on a salary basis, and this they could not afford, handling grain on commission. For some years past there had been considerable dissatisfaction among Exchange members in regard to the operation of the Commission rule, doubt being entertained that all the members were keeping good faith in the collection of the full commission charge of one cent to non-members of the Exchange and one-half cent per bushel to members on country consigned and purchased grain. Although the Council of the Exchange had held many special meetings in an endeavor to find a remedy and to investigate the charges, the results had not been very marked owing to the difficulty of securing the evidence to support such charges. This was given as a reason for the doing away with the one cent commission restriction altogether for a trial period of one year. Thereby the trade was put on a "free for all" basis, as the President of the Exchange then in office pointed out. It meant that Exchange members were "enabled to pay owners of grain in the country any price they desired without regard to actual market values as regularly established on the floor of the Exchange." It was the personal opinion of the President that to preserve stable markets with uniformity and discipline amongst Exchange members a commission rule was absolutely necessary and he predicted that perhaps in a short while, after the suspension of the Commission Rule had been given a fair trial, the Exchange might see its way clear to rescind the suspension. "Just so," nodded the commission men among themselves. "The logical and certain result will be the weeding out of the commission men and track buyers, who give practically the only element of competition that exists in the trade! One of the curses of our Canadian commercialism is the strong tendency to monopoly and this looks like an effort to create an absolute elevator monopoly of the grain trade, which is the staple industry of the country." But if the small dealers on the Exchange were aroused, what about the farmers' trading company? They did business on a commission basis only and with the elevators offering to handle the farmers' grain for nothing, or next door to it, what would happen? Would the farmer be "unable to see past his nose," as was predicted? Would he forget the conditions of the early days and grab for a present saving of five or ten dollars per car? If the farmers did not stand together now, they were licked! It was a showdown. There was only one thing to do--take a referendum of the shareholders as to the basis on which they wished the year's business handled. The Board of Control of the Grain Growers' Grain Company therefore issued the following circular letter, which was mailed to every farmer shareholder: "This matter we now bring to your notice is the most important yet. "At a meeting of the Grain Exchange, held a few days ago, the Commission Rule was suspended for a year. This means that there is no fixed charge for handling grain, and any company or firm can, if they wish, handle car lots for nothing. How did this come about? The Elevator Companies did it with the aid of Bank Managers and other Winnipeg men outside of the Grain Trade, who hold seats on the Exchange, and voted with them. The intention of these Elevator Companies is to handle all grain for 1/2c. per bushel or for nothing in order to take it away from the Commission Men, who have no elevators, and especially to keep it away from the Grain Growers' Grain Company. "The Elevator Companies can handle farmers' cars for nothing and still not lose anything. How? In four ways-- "1st. They all buy street grain and the immense profits they make on this will make up for any loss they have in handling cars for nothing. "2nd. The dockage they get on street grain and on car lots passed through their elevators helps them. "3rd. The charges on the cars loaded through their elevators helps them. "4th. When they get your car it is sent to their own terminal elevator, and they earn the storage on it there which is very profitable. "The commission man, such as ourselves, has none of these things to fall back on. His profit is what is left out of the cent a bushel commission after all expenses such as rent, taxes, insurance, wages for office help, telegrams, telephone, etc., are paid. "The Elevator Combine know this. They know the weakness of the commission dealers' position and the strength of their own, and knowing it, deliberately cut out the commission and will offer to handle the farmers' grain for nothing in order to put the only opposition they have out of business. And mark you! this is aimed at our company more than any other, though we believe they are after all commission dealers. Some of them have said so. They want to kill us and they think they have at last found a way. Their dodge is simple. By handling cars for half a cent or nothing, they are going to bribe the farmers and our own shareholders to send cars away from us, and by keeping grain from us help to kill us and plant us that deep we shall never come up again. "In this way they hope to 'rule the roost' and get back the good old days they had ten or twelve years ago. "Can they succeed? It depends on the men who ship the grain. If they support the combine by giving the elevators (or the commission houses that work for the elevators under a different name) their cars, they may soon expect to find themselves in a worse position than they have ever been before. "As a prominent commission man said the other day, 'The elevator companies are asking the farmers to help at their own funeral.' It is an anxious time for our own company. We have shown that with anything like fair play it may succeed. We have been growing stronger and, we believe, doing some good. Are our shareholders and friends going to take the bribe that is meant to put us out of business? We hope and believe not. For this reason we are taking a referendum vote of our shareholders." It was at this crisis that the _Grain Growers' Guide_ had an opportunity of demonstrating its value to the farmers as a fighting weapon. It seized the cudgels and waded right into the thick of the controversy without fear or favor. It came out flat-footed in its charges against the elevator interests and emphasized the warning of the Company in language that carried no double meaning. "We have no quarrel with the Winnipeg Grain Exchange as an Exchange," said the _Guide_. "It is a convenience for gathering reports from other parts of the world, market conditions, and for drafting rules that facilitate and simplify business dealings. "As we have often pointed out, however, the Exchange is being used by the Elevator Interests that seem to dominate it, to further their own particular ends with the result that the nefarious methods of the Elevator Trust bring suspicion and condemnation upon the Exchange and its members. "The demand for the Royal Grain Commission arose from the methods pursued by the Elevator Companies in dealing with the farmers at country points. The pooling of receipts at country points is not forgotten by the farmers; heavy dockage and unfair grading and low prices paid when the farmers were compelled to sell and could not help themselves, are also not forgotten. "Every injustice and disturbance in the trade that has taken place since grain commenced to be marketed in Manitoba, can be traced to the Elevator Monopoly. "The farmers of this country owe nothing to the Elevator Trust and we have confidence enough in them to believe that they will not be bought over by them now. The Commission Men and Track Buyers certainly owe nothing to this trust either. They have helped in the past to carry the suspicion and sin arising from its methods and it commences to look as if they were getting tired of carrying the load." Column after column of such plain talk was given place in the _Guide_ week after week, together with reports of Grain Exchange proceedings, interviews with commission men and elevator men, pronouncements of Grain Exchange officials and comment upon pamphlets circulated amongst the farmers by the North-West Grain Dealers' Association, etc. Everything having a bearing upon the situation was brought to light and analyzed. Letters from farmers throughout the country were published as fast as they reached the editor's desk, and they were coming pretty fast, about as fast as the mail could bring them. They were reaching the office of the farmers' trading company by the bagful. The Company had asked three definite questions of the farmers in connection with the commission to be charged on grain shipped to the Company--whether or not the old rate should be maintained in spite of the action of the Exchange; whether the commission should be reduced; whether the whole matter should be left to the discretion of the directors. The letters poured in by the thousand and only two per cent. of the farmers recommended any reduction in the rates; of the remainder, seventy per cent. were in favor of the Company maintaining the one cent commission and the other twenty-eight per cent. were willing to abide by the decision of the directors. The comments contained in some of these letters revealed strong feeling. Many farmers were ready to pay two cents commission per bushel if necessary, rather than sell to "the monopolies." "I will pledge myself to ship every bushel of grain I grow to the Farmers' Company," wrote one, "even though the directors found it necessary to charge me five cents per bushel, coin." "No, they cauna draw the blinds ower the daylights o' a Scotchman," assured one old son of the heather. "I am verra pleased to leave the hale concern in your hands as I do believe you are thoroughly plumb and always square." With this encouragement the directors announced that they would continue to charge a commission of one cent per bushel on wheat shipped to them, just as if the Commission Rule had not been suspended by the Exchange. Other commission merchants, they knew, intended to reduce their charges to half a cent per bushel; the elevator men, they expected, would handle the grain for the same and in many cases for nothing in order to persuade the farmers to ship their way. It would be a great temptation to many farmers who had been sitting on the fence, shouting "Sic 'em!" but never lifting a little finger to help, and it was to be expected that those with limited vision would ship their grain where they could make the biggest saving at the time. Notwithstanding, the directors believed that the majority of the farmers would not prove one cent wise and many dollars foolish by failing to realize what the future might hold in store if the elevators succeeded in killing off competition. Finding that it was possible to handle oats on a smaller margin, they made the farmers a gift reduction of half a cent per bushel on oat shipments; otherwise the former rate was sustained. The wheat ripened. Harvesting began. The long grain trains commenced to drag into Winnipeg across the miles of prairie. By the middle of September the weekly receipts of the farmers' company were running to 744 cars. In 1907 they had handled about five per cent. of the crop and seven and one-half per cent. of the 1908 crop; of the total number of cars so far inspected in this year of "free for all" methods, the Grain Growers' Grain Company handled about fifteen per cent. When the end of the season brought the figures to a final total it was found that the farmers' organization had handled well over sixteen million bushels of farmers' grain. This was an increase over the preceding year of nearly nine million bushels, or 114 per cent. It was nearly one and one-half million bushels greater than all the previous years of operation and represented one-eighth of all the grain inspected during the year in Western Canada. CHAPTER XIII THE MYSTERIOUS MR. "OBSERVER" Observation tells me that you have a little reddish mold adhering to your instep. . . . So much is observation. The rest is deduction. --_Sherlock Holmes_. _Sign of Four (Doyle)_. In Prehistoric Days, when one man hied himself from his cave to impress his ideas upon another the persuasion used took the form of a wallop on the head with a stone axe. It was the age of Individual Opinion. But as Man hewed his way upward along Time's tangled trails personal opinions began to jog along together in groups, creating Force. With the growth of populations and the invention of printing this power was called Public Opinion and experience soon taught the folly of ignoring it. In the course of human aspiration Somebody who had a Bright Mind got the notion that in order to get his own way without fighting the crowd all he had to do was to educate the "Great Common Pee-pul" to his way of thinking and by sowing enough seed in public places up would come whatever kind of crop he wanted. Thus, by making Public Opinion himself he would avoid the hazard of opposing it. The name of this Sagacious Pioneer of Special Privilege who manufactured the first carload of Public Opinion is lost to posterity; all that is known about him is that he was a close student of the Art of concealing Artifice by Artlessness and therefore wore gum rubbers on his feet and carried around a lot of Presents to give away. It is quite possible to direct the thought of Tom-Dick-and-Harry. A skillful orator can swing a crowd from laughter to anger and back again. The politician who prepares a speech for a set occasion builds his periods for applause with every confidence. But it was to the public prints that they who sought the manufacture of Public Opinion were in the habit of turning. There has always been something very convincing about "cold print." The little boy believes that the cow really did jump over the moon; for isn't it right there in the nursery book with a picture of her doing it? And despite the disillusionments of an accelerated age many readers still cherish an old-time faith in their favorite newspaper--a faith which is a relic of the days when the freedom of the press was a new and sacred heritage and the public bought the paper to learn what Joseph Howe, George Brown, Franklin, Greeley or Dana thought about things. This period gave place gradually to the great modern newspaper, the product in some cases of a publishing company so "limited" that it thought mostly in terms of dollars and cents and political preferments. When the cub reporter rushed in to his city editor with eyes sparkling he cried out enthusiastically: "Gee, I've got a peach of a story! Old John Smith's daughter's eloped with the chauffeur. She's a movie fan and----" But it did not get into the paper for the very good reason that "Old John" was the proprietor of the big departmental store which took a full-page advertisement in every issue the year around. The editor would have used it soon enough, but--the business office--! Then there was the theatrical press-agent, a regular caller with his advance notices and free electros of coming attractions, his press passes. "Give us a chance, old man," he pleaded, perhaps laying down a good cigar. "Say, that was a rotten roast you handed us last week." "Yes, and it was a rotten show!" the editor would retort. "I saw it myself." The telephone rings, maybe--the business office again. "The Blank Theatre have doubled their space with us, Charlie. Go easy on 'em for awhile, will you?" The floor around the editor's desk was scuffed by the timid boots of the man who wanted his name kept out of the paper and the sure tread of the corporation representative who wanted his company's name mentioned on every possible occasion. Business interests, railway corporations, financial institutions--many of these had a regular department for the purpose of supplying "news" to the press. Some American railroads finally took to owning a string of papers outright, directly or indirectly, and one big Trust went so far as to control a telegraphic news service. In fact, to such a pass did things come in the United States that the exploitation of the press became a menace to public interest and a law was passed, requiring every publication to register the name of its proprietor; in the case of corporate ownerships the names of the shareholders had to be filed and the actual owners of stock held in trust had to be named also. This information had to be printed in every issue and the penalties for suppression or falsification were drastic. No such law was passed in Canada, although the reflection of the situation in the United States cast high lights and shadows across the northern boundary. Partizan politics were rife in Canada and too often have party "organs" and "subsidies" dampered down the fires of independence in the past. A few journals, however, even in the days before the great changes of the War, placed a jealous guard upon their absolute freedom from trammelling influences and to-day they reap the reward of public confidence. While not a newspaper, the _Grain Growers' Guide_ was a highly specialized journal for the Western farmer, aiming frankly at educating him to be the owner of his land, his produce, his self-respect and his franchise; to make him self-thinking and self-reliant and to defend him from unjust slurs. The editorial responsibility of carrying out such a programme in the face of existing conditions required a well chosen staff. In Roderick McKenzie, then Secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association, the farmers had an editor upon whose viewpoint they could depend; for he was one of themselves. But lacking practical experience in newspaper work, it was necessary to secure an Associate Editor who would figure largely in the practical management of the publication. McKenzie was finding that his duties as Secretary of the Association were becoming too heavy for him to attempt editorial services as well; so that not long after the appointment of an Associate Editor he decided to devote his whole time to his official duties. In its selection of a young man to take hold the _Guide_ was fortunate. George Fisher Chipman was not only a very practical newspaper man to meet the immediate needs of the young journal, but he was capable of expanding rapidly with his opportunities. Well versed in the economic problems of the day, he was known already in many magazine offices as a reliable contributor upon current topics. He was well poised and, as legislative reporter for the _Manitoba Free Press_, Chipman had made something of a reputation for himself on both sides of the political fence as a man who endeavored to be fair and who upheld at all times the traditional honor of the press. By training and inclination Chipman was in complete sympathy with the Farmers' Movement in Western Canada. Away east, in the Valley of Evangeline, near Grand Pré, Nova Scotia, he was brought up on a farm, learning the farmers' viewpoint as afterwards he came to know that of the big men in the cities. He believed in co-operation, his father having been a leader in every farmers' organization in Nova Scotia for more than twenty years. It was not long before the young editor's influence made itself manifest in the official paper of the Western farmers. He saw many ways of improving it and organizing it for the widest possible service in its field. Editorially he believed in calling a spade a spade and, being free from political restrictions, Chipman did not hesitate to "get after" politicians of all stripes whenever their actions seemed to provide fit subject for criticism. By the time the Commission Rule difficulty arose the _Guide_ had increased its weekly circulation by many thousands. The new editor seized the opportunity for "active service" and waged an effective campaign. The Grain Exchange finally restored the One-Cent Commission Rule and never since has it been dropped. Meanwhile, however, hostilities broke out anew in an unexpected direction. They took the form of "letters" to the press and they began to appear in five papers which were published in Winnipeg--two newspapers and three farm journals. Concealing his identity under the _nom-de-plume_, "Observer," the writer attacked the Grain Growers' Grain Company and the men at the head of it. Declaring himself to be a farmer, Mr. "Observer" endeavored to discredit the farmers' trading organization by casting suspicion upon its motives and methods of business. As letter followed letter it became evident that the object in view was to stir up discontent among the farmers with the way their own agency was being conducted. After issuing a single, dignified and convincing refutation of these attacks, the Company ignored the anonymous enemy. But the gauntlet was picked up by the _Grain Growers' Guide_. It lay right at the editor's feet. Chipman recognized a direct challenge and did not propose to drop the matter with a denial in the columns of his paper--even with a dozen denials. His old reportorial instinct was aroused. Who was this mysterious "Observer"? Why was he going to so much trouble as to launch a systematic campaign? One thing was certain--he was NOT a farmer! All good newspaper reporters have two qualifications well developed; they are able to recognize news values--having "a nose for news," it is called--and they are able to run down a "story" with the instinct of a detective. G. P. Chipman had been a good reporter--a good police reporter particularly. He had the detective's instinct and it did not take him long to recognize that he was facing a situation which could be uncovered only by detective work. In the first place, he reasoned, the letters were too cleverly written--so cleverly, in fact, that they could be the product of a professional writer only, most likely a Winnipeg man. This narrowed the search at once. By process of elimination the list of possible "Observers" was soon reduced to a few names. It was an easy matter to verify the suspicion that the "letters" were paid for at advertising rates and the question uppermost became: "Who are the greatest beneficiaries of these attacks?" "The elevator interests, of course!" was Chipman's answer to his own question. He began to make progress in his investigations and before long he became very much interested in an office which happened to be located in the Merchant's Bank Building, Winnipeg. Here a certain bright newspaper man with some farming experience had taken to business as a "Financial Agent"--telephone, stenographer and all the rest of the equipment. So sure was Chipman that he was on the right track in following this clue that finally he shut the door of his private office and wrote up the whole story of the "deal" which he expected to have been made between certain elevator men and this clever editorial writer who knew so much about money that he had opened up a Financial Agency. With the whole "exposure" ready for publication and the photograph of the "suspect" handy in a drawer of the desk, Chipman asked the "Financial Agent" to call at the _Guide_ office. "Thought you might like to look over that copy before we use it," explained the editor casually when his visitor's pipe was going well. He handed the write-up across his desk. "I want to be fair and there might be something----" There decidedly was!--a number of things, in fact! Not the least of them was the utter surprise of the pseudo Financial Agent. He did not attempt to deny the truth of the statements made for publication. According to the story which he told the editor of the _Guide_, it had been the original intention to have these "letters to the press" signed by leading elevator men themselves; but when it was decided to hire an expert press agent to mould public opinion in such a way as to offset the "onesidedness" of the farmers' movement, none of the elevator men cared to assume the publicity. The name, "Observer," would do just as well. A committee was organized to direct and supervise the work of the press agent and the chairman of this committee conducted the negotiations with the newspaper man who was to undertake the preparation of the "letters" and other material. By the terms of his contract the press agent was to be paid in equal monthly instalments at the rate of $4,000 per year, with a contract for two years. For this he was to write letters which would turn public opinion against this Grain Growers' Grain Company, which was getting so much of the farmers' grain, and minimize the growth of sentiment in favor of government ownership of internal and terminal elevators. These communications he was to have published in the various papers of Winnipeg and the West. Such was the story. The better to conceal the wires beneath this publicity campaign and the identity of the writer, Mr. "Observer" opened his office as a Financial Agency and became a subscriber to the _Grain Growers' Guide_--one paper, of course, which could not be approached for the purpose in view. It was necessary, nevertheless, to clip and file the _Guide_ very carefully for reference; hence the subscription. The space used by the "correspondence" was paid for at regular advertising rates. The advertising bill each week amounted to about $150. But one factor in the success of the plan had been overlooked--the influence of the _Guide_. No sooner had the official paper of the Grain Growers pointed out the situation to its readers and suggested that papers which accepted material antagonistic to the farmers' cause were no friends of the farmers--no sooner was this pointed out than letters began to arrive in batches at the offices of all the papers which were publishing the "Observer" attacks. Most of these letters cancelled subscriptions and so fast did they begin to come that one after another the papers refused to publish any more "Observations," paid for or not. For unknown reasons it was decided to call off the attempt to create public opinion against government ownership of elevators and with the letters aimed at the farmers' trading activities being refused publication, the employers of "Observer" had no further work for him to do. As they were still paying his interesting salary each month, they offered him $1,500 to tear up his contract, he said. But with more than a year and a half still to run--over $6,000 coming to him--Mr. "Observer" had a certain affection for that contract. Fifteen hundred dollars? Pooh, pooh! He would settle for--well, say So-Much. "You're talking through your hat!" scoffed his employers in effect. "It's a six-thousand-dollar hat!" smiled "Observer" pleasantly. "Well, we won't pay any such lump sum as you say," virtually declared his employers, not so pleasantly. "Just as you wish, gentlemen. I'll wait, then, and draw my salary--$333.33 1/3 every month, according to contract. I know you don't want me to sue for it; because we'd have to air the whole thing in the courts and there would be a lot of publicity. So we'll just let her toddle along and no hard feelings." He got his money. The alleged attempt of these elevator men, whether with or without the sanction of their associates, to make public opinion by means of the "Observer" letters began in the fall of 1909. It lasted but a few weeks. CHAPTER XIV THE INTERNAL ELEVATOR CAMPAIGN What constitutes a state? . . . Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain. --_Sir William Jones._ _Ode after Alcaeus._ Now, about this Government Ownership of Elevators. The Grain Growers had had it in mind right along. The elevators were the contact points between the farmer and the marketing machinery; therefore if his fingers got pinched it was here that he bled. Complaints of injustice in the matter of weights, dockage, grades and prices colored the conversation of farmers in many parts of the country and, rightly or wrongly, many farmers were profoundly dissatisfied with existing conditions at initial elevators. These elevators provided the only avenue by which grain could be disposed of quickly if transportation facilities were not fully adequate. It seemed to the farmers, therefore, that the only way to avoid monopolistic abuses was for the provincial governments to own and operate a system of internal storage elevators and for the Dominion authorities to own and operate the terminals. The elevators, declared the farmers, should be a public utility and not in private hands. This feeling first found definite expression in a request by the Manitoba Grain Growers prior to the Manitoba elections in 1907. The Manitoba Government declined to act on the request of the Grain Growers alone, but called a conference of municipal reeves and others interested. This conference was held in June and urgently requested the Manitoba Government to acquire and operate a complete system of storage elevators throughout the province, as asked for by the Grain Growers. Nothing was done at the first session of the renewed government, however. Meanwhile the Grain Growers were circularizing the three Prairie Provinces on the need for a government system of elevators and at the annual conventions of the organized farmers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1908 strong endorsement of the idea was made. An "Inter-Provincial Council of Grain Growers' and Farmers' Associations" [1] had been created, and this body urged the several executives to wait upon their respective governments and try to obtain definite action. At the suggestion of Premier Roblin, of Manitoba, a conference of the three premiers was arranged through the Secretary of the Inter-Provincial Council. It was the hope of the farmers that this might lead to uniform legislation, introducing government ownership of the elevators, and that the three provincial governments would join in an appeal to the Dominion Government for co-operation. In each province the whole subject had been dealt with exhaustively in the text prepared by the Grain Growers--the conditions making a government system of elevators necessary, how it could be created and the practicability of its operation, the question of financing and the beneficial results that would follow. It was the idea of the farmers that the provinces would purchase existing storage houses at a fair valuation, issuing government bonds to finance the undertaking and build new elevators where needed. The provincial Premiers met at Regina on May 4th, 1908, talked over the matter, then sent for George Langley, M.P.P., one of the directors of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association who occupied a seat in the Saskatchewan Legislature. They appointed Mr. Langley as a sort of ambassador in their negotiations with the Grain Growers' representatives, sending him to the Inter-Provincial Council to present verbally a couple of alternative propositions--that the Railways should be asked to build loading elevators with storage bins or that the management of the elevators should be taken away from the present owners and profits limited while the farmers' organizations became responsible for grades, weights, etc. Back came the Grain Growers with a document which repeated their former demands and amplified their argument. They claimed that they were entitled to what they were asking if only because the farmers formed the major part of the population and their demands could be granted without placing any tax upon the remainder of the people. They requested a conference with the three Premiers to go into the matter in detail. Not until November 4th, 1908, did this conference take place in Regina. When they did get together the Premiers were not posted well enough on details to promise anything more definite than that they would consult their colleagues and make reply in due course. It was the end of January, 1909, before the Inter-Provincial Council had an official reply. The Premiers pointed to grave and complicated questions which stood in the way of granting what the farmers were asking. Constitutional difficulties, financial difficulties, legislative difficulties--all were set forth in a lengthy and well written memorandum. The British North America Act would have to be amended to grant the provinces authority to create an absolute monopoly without which success would not be assured. In short, there was such a tangle of overlapping jurisdictions, public interest in trade and commerce, federal rights, railway rights and so on that the Premiers could not see their way clear at all in spite of their great desire to help the farmers at all times. The Grain Growers passed the document to their legal adviser and R. A. Bonnar, K.C., gave them his opinion in writing. That opinion was very complete, very authoritative, and poked so many holes in the "constitutional difficulties" that the farmers could see their way much more clearly than the Premiers, to whom they made dignified rejoinder. They handed on the holes while they were at it in the hope that the heads of the three Provincial Governments could take a peek through the "difficulties" for themselves and see just how clear the way really was after all. The Provincial Premiers, however, took the step which logically followed their reply to the farmers. Resolutions were introduced in the Alberta and Manitoba Legislatures that His Excellency the Governor-in-Council be memorialized in regard to the elevator question and asked to provide government ownership and operation or to have the necessary powers to deal with the matter conferred upon the provinces. Thus things rode until December 14th, 1909, when the Committee on Agriculture in the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly recommended the appointment of a commission to make searching enquiry into the subject of government control and operation of the internal elevators as asked for by the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association. Two days later, at the annual convention of the Manitoba Grain Growers, Hon. George Coldwell announced for the Manitoba Government that they had accepted the principle of establishing a line of internal elevators as a public utility, owned by the public and operated for the public. So unexpectedly did this good news come that the farmers were amazed at their own success. They had fought for it long and earnestly and victory meant a very great deal; but it had seemed still beyond reach. In the case of Manitoba it only remained now to get together and thresh out the details. A strong committee was appointed to conduct negotiations with the Government and there was prepared a memorandum of the plan which the farmers recommended the Government to follow. This was presented on January 5th, 1910. The Government and the Grain Growers then each got ready a bill for consideration by the Legislature. Many conferences took place. The Government refused the farmers' bill and the farmers did not approve of the Government's proposals. While leaving full financial control in the hands of the Government, the Grain Growers demanded that the operation of the elevators be undertaken by an absolutely independent commission without any political affiliations whatsoever; it was provided also that no officer of the Grain Growers could act on this commission. The Government did not deem it wise to let control of the managing commission out of its hands. So negotiations were broken off. The Manitoba Government now prepared a new bill, but did not remove the features to which the farmers were objecting. This bill was passed and the Government voted $50,000 for initial expenses and $2,000,000 for acquiring elevators. Beyond a weak protest from the North-West Grain Dealers' Association the elevator owners had not shown much excitement over the situation. While the Manitoba Grain Growers were not satisfied that the Government plan would work out successfully and therefore refused to assume responsibility in connection with it, they were ready nevertheless to lend their best co-operation to the Manitoba Elevator Commission when it got into action. In the Province of Saskatchewan an altogether different plan was evolved in due course. The investigating commission, appointed February 28th, 1910, consisted of three well qualified men--George Langley, M.P.P.; F. W. Green, Secretary of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association; Professor Robert Magill, of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, the latter acting as chairman. The commission held sittings at many points in Saskatchewan, taking evidence from a large number of farmers, went to Winnipeg to meet representatives of elevator companies, the Exchange and Government officials, and also visited several American cities. Their final report, consisting of 188 typewritten pages, was handed to the Saskatchewan Government on October 31st, 1910. In addition to the comprehensive scheme outlined by the Saskatchewan Grain Growers many different suggestions were considered by the commission, such as government ownership and operation, state aided Farmers' Elevators, municipal elevators and various modifications of these plans. All, however, were discarded by the commission in favor of an experiment in co-operative ownership and management by the farmers themselves, assisted financially by the Provincial Government. The scheme presented by the executive of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association appeared to be unworkable because it overstepped mere public ownership and operation of initial elevators to include methods of sampling, grading before shipment, bank and government loans, features outside the power of a provincial legislature. The schemes of municipal and district elevators, while appealing to local loyalty for patronage, did not secure the farmers' direct pecuniary interest to make the elevators successful in the face of competition. As to the Manitoba plan, the commission were unanimous in advising against it in view of the financial risk and the disadvantages of political influences which would tend to make themselves felt. Instead, therefore, of a plan aiming at ownership of initial elevators by the State and management by the Government of the day, the commission recommended ownership and management by the growers of grain. Such a co-operative scheme would aim equally well at removing initial storage from the ownership of companies interested in grain trading--would recognize as promptly the feeling of injustice in the minds of many farmers--would seek just as fully to create marketing conditions which would give the farmer satisfaction and confidence. While both the Manitoba scheme and the proposed co-operative scheme involved financial aid by the State, the commission saw reason to believe that with control and management in the hands of the farmers themselves many of the risks and limitations of other plans would be avoided. It is to be noted that in reporting upon general conditions in the grain trade of Canada in 1910 the Saskatchewan Elevator Commission pointed out the great change which had taken place since 1900. One factor in this had been the construction of new transcontinental lines and thousands of miles of branch railway lines together with a great increase in car supply and a more efficient and cheaper system of transportation. Again, the use of loading-platforms had introduced real competition with the elevators, almost fifteen million bushels of the 1908-09 crop in Western Canada having been shipped direct by the farmers. The development of co-operation among the farmers through the Grain Growers' Associations had led to much advantageous legislation, while Farmers' Elevators and Public Weigh Scales had had a salutary effect at many shipping points. The organization of the Grain Growers' Grain Company as a farmers' own selling agency likewise had exerted a wide influence for good all over the West, enabling the farmers to obtain first-hand information about existing methods of dealing in grain. Finally, the protection afforded by the Manitoba Grain Act was not to be questioned; for while it was impossible to draft any Act which would prevent all the abuses alleged, it had been the means of providing many weapons of defence for the farmer and unfamiliarity with these provisions by individual farmers was scarcely to be blamed upon the Act itself. The improvement in conditions, compared with earlier years, was recognized by most of the farmers appearing before the commission and many of them had no personal complaint to make in regard to weights, grades or prices. They were advocates of provincial ownership not so much on their own behalf as upon behalf of settlers in newer districts. The commission, therefore, while not saying that there were no cases of sharp practice or no grounds for dissatisfaction, were impressed by the fact that however powerless farmers had been in earlier days they were now in a very different position. The strong feeling which many farmers had against the line elevator companies was based upon experiences of rank injustice and bitter recollections of the past; for this the elevator people could blame nobody but themselves. But the factors enumerated undoubtedly had improved the situation from the farmers' standpoint and it only remained to strengthen these factors to give the farmer complete control in the matter of initial storage. The commission were unanimous in recommending co-operative organization of the farmers as the probable solution of the situation in Saskatchewan. They suggested the enactment of special legislation to provide for the financing of the undertaking by the farmers themselves, assisted by a government loan. That is, the farmers surrounding a point where an elevator was needed would subscribe the total amount of capital necessary to build it, paying fifteen per cent. in cash, the crop acreage of the shareholders at that point to total not less than 2,000 acres for each 10,000 bushels capacity of the proposed elevator; these conditions fulfilled, the government would advance the remaining eighty-five per cent. of the subscribed capital in the form of a loan, repayable in twenty equal annual instalments of principal and interest, first mortgage security. The commission also suggested that the responsibility of preliminary organization be thrown upon the farmers themselves by appointing the executive of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association as provisional directors of the new grain handling organization. When the matter came before the Saskatchewan Legislature the annual convention of the Saskatchewan Association was being held at Regina and the farmers declared themselves ready to assume responsibility and go ahead. A bill was introduced by the Government, embodying the recommendations of the Commission, and the Act incorporating The Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company, Limited, was assented to on March 14th, 1911. Because of the unusual financial arrangements with the Provincial Government the capital stock was not set at a fixed amount but left subject to change from time to time by the Government. In order to protect the credit of the Province the Government thus was able to control the amount of stock the company could issue and thereby the amount of money the Government might be called upon to advance for the construction or purchase of elevators. Shares were placed at $50 each, available for farmers only, and a limit was set upon individual holdings. It was provided that each local unit would have a local board of management and appoint delegates to an annual meeting where a Central Board of Management would be elected. The company was empowered not only to own and operate elevators and buy and sell grain, but to own and operate lumber yards, deal in coal and other commodities and "do all things incidental to the production, storing and marketing of grain." By June 16th, 1911, the Provisional Directors[1] were able to call the first annual meeting of the new organization, having fulfilled the requirement of the Act that twenty-five "locals" be first organized, and by July 6th--the date of the general meeting at Moose Jaw--an additional twenty-one "locals" were ready. Thus they were able to start with forty-six units, representing $405,050 capitalization with 8,101 shares held by 2,580 shareholders. The newly-elected directors[2] proceeded forthwith to let contracts for forty new elevators, standard type of thirty and forty thousand bushels capacity with cleaning machinery and special bins. Six existing elevators were purchased. The Grain Growers' Grain Company agreed to act as selling agents for this new baby sister and wide-spread interest became manifest as the Grain Growers took another step into commercial circles. [1] See Appendix--Par. 8. [2] See Appendix--Par. 12. [3] See Appendix--Par. 12. CHAPTER XV CONCERNING THE TERMINALS I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.--_Patrick Henry_. With the establishment of co-operative elevators for the storing of grain at interior points the farmers of Western Canada launched out upon the greatest experiment in co-operation this continent has seen. The success of these elevators, owned and controlled by the farmers themselves, in all probability would evolve the final phase of internal storage in connection with the Canadian grain fields. Co-incident with their agitation for government ownership of elevators at country points, the farmers were urging upon the federal authorities the desirability of government control and operation of terminal storage facilities. It was not enough that the Provincial Governments of the Prairie Provinces should protect the farmers within their boundaries; for the terminal storage of grain was a part of the system and the farmers contended that corporation control of the terminals by grain dealers was leading to abuses and manipulations of the grain that were not in the best interests of the country. Grateful as they were, therefore, for the efforts to improve early conditions by legislation, it was the opinion of the Grain Growers that these contraventions of the Grain Act would be prevented only by acquisition of the terminals by the Dominion Government. Mere legislation and supervision by the Government would not provide an effective remedy. At the head of the lakes the grain passed out of the control of the transportation companies into the hands of the grain dealers; it was the only point in transit where it became subject to manipulation. With the exception of those owned by the C. P. R., the terminal elevators were operated by dealers, largely controlled by United States concerns and managed by experts from across the line. It was frequently charged that terminal operators forgot that they ought to be warehousemen solely and sought profits outside those of legitimate elevation and storage charges, although these authorized charges paid ample return on capital investment. The farmers wanted this temptation of handling and mixing grain at the terminals removed so that terminal operators could not tamper with the grain while it was in their custody. The claims of the Grain Growers that mixing was going on at Fort William and Port Arthur were based upon the report of the Royal Grain Commission which had investigated the grain trade in 1906-7. The first definite step taken to lay these matters before the Dominion Government was in the winter of 1908 after the formation of the Inter-Provincial Council of Grain Growers' and Farmers' Associations. At a meeting of these representatives of all the organized farmers it was decided to send delegates to Ottawa. When these gentlemen reached their destination in May, 1909, they found themselves face to face with a large and active group of grain men, railway officials and bankers who had gathered to take a hand in the interview with Sir Richard Cartwright, then Minister of Trade and Commerce. Beyond some concessions regarding special binning of grain, nothing came of this trip apparently, although the Western farmers were supported strongly by the Dominion Millers' Association. A second memorandum was presented early in 1910 and the Grain Growers were granted a very respectful hearing by the Government; for, while the organized farmers represented but part of the farming constituency in the West, they had the sympathy of the entire farming community behind them in these requests. They went home, however, feeling the need of concentrating their energies on organization if they were to get actual action from politicians. They had not much more than got home safely before something happened which proved their assertions that all was not as it should be down on the lake-front. Mr. C. C. Castle, Warehouse Commissioner, one day held in his hand some official reports from the Inspection Department concerning certain elevator concerns and compared the figures with the returns made to the authorities by these concerns themselves. He shook his head at the discrepancies and started an investigation. There were three companies involved and after full evidence was taken legally these three companies were prosecuted for returning untrue statements and in the Police Court at Winnipeg they were fined a total of $5,550 by the Magistrate. The next thing was the drafting of a Grain Bill which aimed to improve certain matters. It was considered by the Senate and passed. It reached the House of Commons and Hon. Frank Oliver took it by the halter and led it about. Before anything could happen to it, however, and the judges get a chance to study its good and bad points, July (1911) came along and Parliament dissolved like a lump of sugar dropped into a cup of tea and in the hub-bubbles of a general election everything was _in statu quo_, as they say. And when the race was over and the Party Nags back in their stalls, lo! new tenants were taking their turn at sliding around on the polished Treasury Benches and having a sun bath! The new Minister of Trade and Commerce was Hon. George E. Foster. He looked over the Grain Bill, passed his hand along its withers and patted it on the rump. Then he sat down and made a copy of it, idealizing it by injecting a few "betterments," then trotted it out for inspection with tail and mane plaited and bells on its patent-leather surcingle. He did not claim to be its real father--only its foster-father. He introduced it to the House with a very lucid review of the whole agitation for improvement in the Grain and Inspection Acts since "Johnny" Millar, of Indian Head, Saskatchewan, handed in the Royal Grain Commission report in 1907. The new Government proposed to grant government control of terminal elevators only on a limited and experimental scale. They wanted to test out the principle by lease or construction of two or three terminals at the head of the lakes before undertaking the financial responsibility of handling the entire terminal system. Heretofore there had been government supervision merely; but now for an experiment there would be government operation as well while the management of the remaining terminals would have to be satisfactory to the Government. "The demand of the West is that the grain should not be manipulated at the terminals," declared Mr. Foster. "It does not matter a pin as to how that is brought about so that the thing itself is accomplished." The new bill provided for sample markets and the farmers did not like this unless the Government acquired the terminals as had been requested. Owing to the grain blockade, due to car shortage, feeling was running high in the West and the farmers eyed the new legislation closely. They came upon a clause which startled them and in the row that followed it looked at one time as if the new Bill would be led to the boneyard and killed. One of the proposals of the Government was the formation of a Board of Grain Commissioners with wide discretionary powers. They would be made responsible for the proper conduct of the entire grain trade and deal with all matters pertaining thereto. They were to have the absolute say-so in regard to car distribution and there was one clause that threatened this protection for which the Western farmers had fought so hard in earlier days. At once consternation spread among the Grain Growers, their apprehensions based upon bitter experience. They protested vehemently. Letters, petitions and resolutions slid all over the official Government desks and delegations followed to Ottawa. Not the organized grain growers alone, but the whole Western farming element was up in arms. Nevertheless, the new Grain Bill passed the House of Commons and browsed over to the Senate. It was the farmers' last chance to stop it. R. McKenzie and J. S. Wood, of the Manitoba Grain Growers; J. A. Maharg and F. W. Green, of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers, and E. J. Fream, of the United Farmers of Alberta--these practical men figuratively took off their coats and waded in when they got in conference with Senate members. They preferred to see the whole bill killed unless the objectionable clause regarding car distribution were struck out; they saw the old-time elevator abuses again becoming possible and quite nullifying the many good features which the new legislation possessed. The final upshot was that somewhat unexpectedly Hon. Senator Lougheed, leader in the Upper House, withdrew the offending clause on behalf of the Government, although the Government felt that the farmers were unduly excited. The new Board of Grain Commissioners was appointed without delay and consisted of three men who understood Western conditions--W. D. Staples, of Treherne, Manitoba; Frank E. Gibbs, of Fort William, and Dr. Robert Magill, now Secretary of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. Dr. Magill was made Chief Grain Commissioner, for he had rendered excellent services in the past and commanded the respect of the entire West. The Board was not long in reaching the conclusion that if grain dealing companies were to be eliminated from the business of owning and operating terminal elevators, outright purchase and breaking of leases would be necessary. The companies refused to lease to the Government voluntarily on any terms which the Board could recommend. Some would not lease on any terms whatever, claiming that to lease their terminals would dislocate their whole system of interior elevators, involving a loss of capital which had been invested legitimately. Apart from this, the Board had its hands so full with other important things that expropriation and all that it involved would claim their whole time and energy to the neglect of other urgent matters. Accordingly, the Grain Commissioners recommended that the Government meet the immediate need of increased terminal facilities at the head of the lakes by building a three-million-bushel elevator, thoroughly equipped for storing, cleaning, drying and handling grain and with provision for future extensions to a capacity of thirty million bushels. They also approved of the Grain Growers' Grain Company leasing one of the C. P. R. elevators. In this way both the Board and the Grain Growers would gain first-hand knowledge of terminal elevator conditions. While formulating a policy for terminal elevators the Grain Commissioners considered the need for terminal storage in the interior as well as at the lakefront. The increase in the area of the grain fields, particularly in Alberta, was straining the transportation facilities to the limit and the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific promised to open up still more acreage. Railway rolling stock, railway yard accommodations at Winnipeg and Fort William and elevator storage were not keeping pace with the annual volume of new grain. The Government Inspection Department was up to its eyes in grain, working night and day during the rush season, while lake and ocean tonnage likewise were inadequate. Even the eleven million bushels of extra storage capacity being built at the lake at the time the Board was considering the situation would soon fill and overflow. Congestion at eastern transfer houses or terminal points was threatening, water freight rates were up and the export market disturbed and there was no reserve of storage capacity in Western Canada to meet emergencies. In a wet season the drying plants at Fort William and Port Arthur were far from adequate. Delayed inspection returns and terminal outturns, due to the recurring car shortage, prevented the farmers from financing and widened the spread between street and track prices as the close of navigation approached. Reviewing all this, the Grain Commissioners came to the conclusion that it was time to consider seriously the erection of Government terminal facilities nearer the grain fields. Especially in Alberta was the need great for inspection and terminal storage to be nearer the producer. It would relieve congestion, benefit the whole grain trade and provide for the future possibility of alternate shipping routes via Hudson Bay or the Panama Canal. It was true that the Royal Grain Commission of 1906-7 had raised objections to interior terminals and inspection, such as the extra expense of handling, the extra loss to the grain in handling and re-handling, the possibility of the railways solving the car shortage problem, the difficulty of getting shippers to send their grain to such elevators and so forth. But the Board considered that, in view of other possible routes than the Eastern, these objections were not strong enough to balance the benefits. Accordingly they recommended the Government to take action, the elevators to be regarded as public terminals in which mixing of grades would be forbidden. While the farmers in all three Prairie Provinces were busy with these vital matters, the Grain Growers' Grain Company meanwhile was wading along through all the difficult seasons of car shortage, expanding its usefulness and trying its best to give the maximum of service the while it was reaching out into the export field in an experimental way. Then, in 1911, a situation arose unexpectedly that caused turmoil among the officers of the pioneer company and led to considerable anxiety among the Grain Growers all over the West. For, through an excess of zeal upon the part of an employee, the Grain Growers' Grain Company suddenly found itself dragged into the maelstrom of "The Pit." It was accused of trying to corner the oat market and was forced to fight for very life. So that at last it looked indeed as if Chance had delivered the farmers into the hands of those who preferred to see them eliminated altogether from the market. CHAPTER XVI THE GRIP OF THE PIT Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip! --_Merchant of Venice._ The visitors' gallery is an excellent vantage point from which to view the trading floor of the Exchange. It runs the full width of the south wall. The chairs entrenched behind the rail have acquired a slippery polish from the shiftings of countless occupants just as the wall behind has known the restless backs of onlookers who have stood for hours at a stretch. It is here that the curious foregather--good people from every walk of life except the grain business. The tourist who is "just passing through your beautiful city" and has heard that Winnipeg has the largest primary wheat market in the world--the tourist drops in to see the sights. Friend Husband is there, pretending to be very bored by these things while fulfilling his promise to take Friend Wife "some day when there's something doing." Young girls who only know that bulls hate anything red and that bears hug people to death--they are there, thrilled by the prospect of what they are about to witness with but a very vague idea of what it will be. A dear old lady from the quiet eddies of some sheltered spot has been brought in by the rest of her party to see "goin's on" of which she does not approve because gambling is a well-known sin. She is somewhat reassured by noting a few seats away a man who wears the garb of a clergyman; presently he will take notes for his forthcoming sermon on "The Propinquity of Temptation and Its Relation to the Christian Life." The two young women who whisper together in the corner have been reading stockmarket stories in the magazines and they are wondering which of the traders, assembling on the floor below, will have his coat and collar torn off and which will break down and give vent to those "big, dry man-sobs" when his fortune is wrecked! Not the least of the sights at the Grain Exchange is the Visitors' Gallery! Two tanned farmers are discussing quotations and general conditions in a matter-of-fact way. War demands, the unfavorable United States Government report and rumors of black rust are making for a bullish condition. Cables are up and the market promises to be wild this morning. The gong will go in five minutes. "The Pit" is out in the middle of the floor. There is an octagonal platform, raised a couple of feet from the floor level. In the centre of this platform three wide steps descend to floor level again; so that the traders standing on the different steps are able to see over one another's heads and note each other's bids. On the west side of the Pit is an elevated, built-in desk like those seen in court-rooms, somewhat resembling an old-fashioned pulpit; here three men sit throughout the session. One keeps his fingers on the switch-box which operates the big clock on the north wall where the fluctuations of the trading are flashed on a frosted dial in red-light figures. At his left sits a second man whose duty it is to record the bidding on an official form for the purpose. At the right is a telegraph operator who sends the record of the trading as it occurs to other big Exchanges--Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, etc. The telegraphic report registers in several instruments attached to the big blackboard that occupies the entire north wall. Operators with chalk and chalk-brush in hand move about the platform at the base of this blackboard, catching the quotations from the clicking instruments and altering the figures on the board to keep pace with the changing information. A glance at this great blackboard will furnish the latest quotations on wheat, oats, barley, flax, corn, etc., the world over. Ranged along the entire east wall are the clacking instruments of the various telegraph companies for the use of the brokers and firms trading on the Winnipeg Exchange. Telephone booths at the north, seats for friends of members on the west side, weather maps, etc., beneath the gallery--these complete the equipment of the big chamber. The group about the Pit, waiting for the market to open, grows rapidly as 9.30 approaches. Members of the Exchange saunter in from the smoking-room, swap good-natured banter or confer earnestly with their representatives on the floor. In response to the megaphoned bellow of a call boy, individuals hurry to the telephone booths. Messengers shove about, looking for certain brokers. The market is very unsteady; it may go up or down. The men are clustering about the Pit now; most of them are in their shirt-sleeves and they are on tip-toe like sprinters who wait for the starter's pistol. Some of them have instructions to dump wheat on the market; some have been told to buy. Hundreds of thousands of bushels will change hands in the first few minutes. The market may go up or it may go-- Bang goes the gong! They're off! Above the red abbreviation, OCT., at the bottom of the big clock the blood-red figure 5 indicates the opening of the market at $1.45 even. With a mad swirl the trading begins in a roar of voices. A small forest of arms waves wildly above jostling bodies. Traders dive for each other, clutch each other and watch the clock. The red figure 5 has gone out and 7/8 has in turn vanished in favor of 5/8--1/2--3/8--4--(?) Instead of going up, she's falling fast. Before the market closes the price may rebound to $1.55. Somebody will make a "clean-up" to-day and many speculators will disappear; for margins are being wiped out every minute. To the Gallery it is a pandemonium of noise, unintelligible in the volume of it that beats against the void of the high chamber. Only one shrill voice flings up out of the roar: "Sell fifty Oc, sev'-eights!" He offers 50,000 bushels of wheat for October delivery at $1.43 7/8 per bushel. It's that fellow down there with the blazing red tie half way up his collar. He hits out with both hands at the air as he yells. A surge of buyers overwhelms him. They scribble notes upon their sales cards and go at it again. Down there in the mêlée those men are thinking fast. With every flash of the clock the situation changes for many of them. Some pause, watching, listening; others who have been quiet till now suddenly break in with a bellow, seemingly on the point of punching the noses of the men with whom they are doing business. Lightning calculation; instantaneous decisions! "Use your discretion" many of them have been cautioned by their firms and they are using it. A moment's hesitation may cost a thousand dollars. Trading in the Pit is no child's play; rather is it a severe strain even upon those who know every trick, every firm and the character of its dealings, every trader and his individuality, his particular methods--who know every sign and its meaning, who can read the coming shout by the first movement of the lips. And always, in and out, are darting the telegraph messenger boys with yellow slips that cause upheavals. "Why don't they take their time and do their trading more quietly and systematically?" ventures Friend Wife up in the gallery. "And lose a cent a bushel while they're turning around, eh?" laughs Friend Husband. "On a hundred thousand bushels that'd only be a thousand dollars. Of course that's mere car-fare!" The dear old lady from the quiet eddies of Shelterville is shaking her head in disapprobation and communing with herself upon the iniquities of gambling. "My, oh my! What won't men do for money! Jt-jt! Just look at 'em! Fightin' like that for money they ain't earnt! An' that nice lookin' young feller with the intelligent gold specs!--Dear me, it's enough to make a body sad!" She could not know that but comparatively few of the traders below were representatives of brokerage firms which were trading on margins for speculating clients--that most of the traders were negotiating legitimate deals in futures for firms who actually had the grain for sale, for exporters who would take delivery of the actual wheat for shipment, for milling companies who would grind it into actual flour. Because trading for delivery in future months affords opportunity for speculation, it is not to be condemned necessarily. It is the balance wheel which steadies the entire grain business. Even the speculating element is not without its uses at times and the layman who ventures to condemn This or That out of hand will do well to make sure he understands what he is talking about; for the business of the grain dealer is so subject to varying conditions and so involved in its methods that it is one of the most difficult to be found in the commercial world. Trading in futures finds birth in the very natural disinclination of Mr. Baker to buy his flour by the warehouseful. He does not want to provide storage for a year's supply, even if he could stand such a large bite out of his capital without losing his balance. So while the bakery man is anxious to order his flour in large quantities for future use, he is equally anxious to have it delivered only as he needs it, paying for it only as it reaches him--say, every three months. Before contracting for the delivery of the flour on this basis Mr. Miller must look to his wheat supply on a similar basis of So-Much every So-Often and he, too, has an eye on storage and, like his friend the baker, he "needs the dough," as they say on the street, and he does not want to part with any more hard-working money than he can help. Accordingly he looks around for somebody who has wheat for sale and will sell it right now at a fixed price but defer delivery and payment to a future date. With the price of his wheat thus nailed down, Mr. Miller can set the future price on his flour to his customers, taking delivery and paying for the wheat as he requires it for filling his flour orders. In the meantime where is the wheat? Out near the fields where it was grown, in country elevators perhaps, ready for transportation to market as the law of supply and demand dictates instead of the whole crop being dumped at once and smothering prices below the cost of production. Or perhaps it is in store at the terminal where Mr. Exporter can handle it. It will be seen that the mutual arrangement to buy and sell for future delivery simplifies matters for everybody in the grain trade. The manner in which the legitimate trader in futures protects himself from price fluctuation is easily understood. While a deal in cash wheat would refer to a definite shipment as shown by warehouse receipts, a deal for future delivery is merely an obligation involving a given quantity of grain at a given time at a given price. Being merely a contract and not an actual shipment, the seller does not require to produce the grain immediately nor is the buyer required to hand over the purchase price when the trade is made. Thus it is possible to buy a thousand bushels to-day for October payment and sell a thousand bushels to-morrow for October delivery, cancelling the obligation. The trade can be balanced at any time before October 1st. Again, a thousand bushels of October wheat may be bought (or sold) to-day and the future switched to May 1st by the sale (or purchase) of a thousand bushels for May delivery. Take the man with the blazing red tie half way up his collar, the man who this morning offered to sell fifty thousand bushels for October delivery at $1.43 7/8. Suppose that he represents a company with a line of elevators at country points. To his office at Winnipeg has come word from country representatives that fifty thousand bushels have been purchased for the company. At once he enters the Pit and sells fifty thousand bushels for delivery at a future date, thereby "hedging" the cash purchase out in the country. Once this future of fifty thousand is sold the company no longer is interested in market prices so far as this grain is concerned. If the market goes up, their cash grain is that much more valuable, offsetting the loss of an equal amount on the future delivery; if the price goes down, what is lost on the cash wheat will be gained on the future. So that the difference between the price paid for the grain at the country elevators and the price at which they sold "the hedge" is the only thing which need concern the grain company and it is here they must look for expenses and profits. This method of hedging enables a grain company to make purchases in the country on much smaller margins than was possible in the early days when the marketing machinery was less completely organized. It eliminates to the greatest extent the necessity of speculating to cover risks. The speculator's opportunity comes in connection with the fluctuations of the market in deliveries. He merely bets that prices will go up or down, as the case may be. He is not dealing in actual wheat but in margins. He buys to-day through his broker, who has a seat on the Exchange, and deposits enough money to cover a fluctuation of say ten cents per bushel. If October wheat to-day is quoted at $1.45 his deposit will keep his purchase in good standing until the price has dropped to $1.35. He must put up a further deposit then or lose the amount he has risked already, the broker selling out his holding. If the speculator is on the right side of the market--if he has guessed that it will go up and it does go up--he can sell and pocket a profit of so-many-cents per bushel, according to the number of points the price has risen. If he has bet that the market will go down the situation merely is reversed. The machinery for handling the huge volume of business transactions in a grain exchange must be complete and smooth running to the last detail, so designed that every contingency which may arise will be under control. For simplicity and efficiency in this connection the Winnipeg Grain Exchange occupies a unique position among the great exchanges of the American continent; in fact, it is a matter for wonder that its methods have not been copied elsewhere. The Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange Clearing Association is a separate organization within the Exchange and to it belong all the Exchange members who deal largely in futures. Each day the market closes at 1.15 p.m. By two o'clock every firm trading on the floor must hand in a report sheet, showing every deal made that day by the firm--the quantity of wheat bought or sold, the firm with whom the trade was made, the price, etc. If on totalling the day's transactions it is found that they entail a loss, the firm must hand over a cheque to the Clearing House to cover the loss; if a gain in price is totalled the Clearing House will issue a cheque for it to the firm so gaining. Thus, if Jones & Brown have bought wheat at $1.39 and the market closes at $1.35 they lose four cents per bushel on their purchase and must settle the difference with the Clearing House. All differences between buyers and sellers must be settled each day and if the volume of trades has been heavy, the Clearing House staff work on their books--all night, if necessary--until everything has been cleared for next day's business. The firm which loses to-day may gain by to-morrow's trades, maintaining good average business health. Any private trading which may take place after official trading hours is known as "curb" trading. The rules of the Clearing House are very strict. Any firm which fails to report by two o'clock is fined. The Clearing House assumes responsibility for all purchases and sales and, being actually liable, keeps close tab on every firm. Each firm has a certain credit on the books of the Clearing House, allotted impartially, according to its standing, and this credit forms the fixed basis of that firm's dealings. If its activities exhaust the line of credit, the Clearing House calls for "original margins" at once--a deposit of so-many cents per bushel for every bushel involved and for every point which the market drops. The amount per bushel called for is entirely at the discretion of the Clearing House authorities and if the quantity of grain reaches dangerous proportions the deposit required may be set so high that it becomes practically equivalent to cash purchase. To "corner the market" under these conditions would require unlimited credit with the Clearing House. When Jones & Brown are "called" for deposit margins they drop everything and obey. They have just fifteen minutes to reach the bank with that cheque, have it "marked" and rushed to the Clearing House. If they fail to arrive with it the Manager of the Clearing House will step into their office and if there were any "hemming and hawing" Jones & Brown would be reported at once to the Secretary of the Exchange who would call a hurry-up meeting of the Exchange Council and Messrs. Jones & Brown would find themselves posted and all trades with them forbidden. All clerical errors in regard to trades are checked up by the Clearing House and fines paid in for mistakes. Only a nominal charge is made for its services--enough to pay overhead expenses--but the fines have enabled the Clearing House to accumulate a large Reserve Fund which gives it financial stability to provide for all responsibilities should occasion arise through failure of any firm. All futures which have not been cancelled before delivery date are negotiated through the Clearing House and with its assistance the grain can be placed just where it should go and tremendous quantities of it are handled without a hitch and with the utmost despatch. Excitement in the Pit is not always over wheat. It may be oats. It was Canadian Western Oats which became the storm centre in 1911 when the Grain Growers got into difficulty with the "bears." Traders who attempt to boost prices are known as "bulls"; those who are interested in depressing the market are "bears." A trader may be a bear to-day and a bull to-morrow; thus the opposing groups are constantly changing in make-up and the firm which was a chief opponent in yesterday's trading may be lined up alongside the day following, fighting with instead of against. It is all in the day's business and the strenuous competition on the floor, into which the uninitiated visitor reads all manner of animosity and open anger, is a very misleading barometer to the actual good feeling which prevails. In recording what now took place in the Pit in connection with the farmers' commission agency it will be well to remember that the rest of the traders would have acted in the same way toward any firm which was fool enough to leave the opening for attack. It may be that as the thing developed some of those who were specially interested in the downfall of the farmers' organization seized the opportunity to ride the situation beyond the pale of business ethics and in their eagerness to be "in at the death" revealed special vindictiveness. But in view of the long struggle with this element it was only what the Grain Growers should have expected when they ran their heads deliberately into the noose. The situation was this: Shortly after New Year's the export demand for Canadian Western Oats became heavy and it looked as if in Great Britain and all over Europe, where the oat crop had been small, there would continue to be a shortage of oats. In spite of this situation, however, no sooner was the proposed reciprocity agreement reached between the Canadian and United States governments of the day, on January 26th, than market prices began to go down. The then Manager of the Grain Growers' Grain Company came to the conclusion that this price lowering was a local condition and that the export market for oats was too strong to justify it or sustain it. "I'll just step into the market and buy some oats," said he. "Later on I'll sell for export at a satisfactory figure." Accordingly, one fine morning he went into the Pit and began to buy. The Manager's motive in attempting to sustain the market may have been of the best; but it was the first time that such methods had been attempted by the Grain Growers--methods which were not at all in keeping with the avowed principles of the Company. The Board of Control had every confidence in their Manager and, although he was merely a salaried employee and not an executive officer, he had been given a pretty free hand in the conduct of the Company's operations. Apparently it did not occur to him that he should consult the Board before entering the market on a speculative basis. Had the Board known what he was about to do they would have vetoed it; but when they did discover what was afoot it was too late to prevent the situation. It developed very swiftly. "The Grain Growers are up to the neck in May oats," was the whisper which passed about among the other traders. That was all that was necessary. "Sell May oats! Sell May oats!" On every side of the Pit they were being offered by thousands of bushels--five--twenty-five--fifty thousand! The idea was to load up the Grain Growers' Grain Company to the point where their line of credit with the Clearing House would become exhausted, after which every bushel would require a marginal deposit. Then when the Company could carry no further burden the Clearing House would be forced to dump back the oats onto the market, breaking it several cents per bushel. At this lower price the traders who had obligated themselves to make these big deliveries would buy back the necessary supply of oats at a profit and everything would resume the even tenor of its way--except the Grain Growers, of course. Their serviette would be folded. Their chair would be pushed back from the table! They would be _through_! Up until now all the troubles of the farmers in marketing their own grain may be said to have come from sources outside themselves; but in the present instance they had nobody to blame but themselves for the predicament. It arose at a time, too, when the other grain dealers were beginning to recognize the farmers as a force in the grain market--a force which had come to stay. It was unfortunate, therefore, that just as they were beginning to acquire a standing as a solid and sensible business concern, the Grain Growers' Grain Company should find themselves driven into a corner, their backs to the wall, the focus of pointing fingers and gleeful grins. The fact that a salaried employee, not an officer of the Company, had acted on his own initiative without the consent of the directors was no excuse for a reliable business concern to tender as such. The first question flung back at them naturally would be: "Then your 'Board of Control' doesn't control, eh?" For although the Board of Control did not know what their Manager was doing until it was too late to prevent it, they should have known. That is what they were there for--to protect the shareholders from managerial mistakes. However, there they were. The only thing they could do was to fight it out to a finish in the Pit and, if they survived, to see that no similar mistakes occurred in the future. All sorts of rumors were flying about the corridors of the Exchange, gathering momentum as they passed from lip to lip, swelling with the heat of the excitement until it was a general guess that the Grain Growers must be loaded with anywhere between five and eight million bushels of oats more than they had been able to sell. It was only a guess, though, and a wild one. Many traders would have given a good round sum to know exactly how the farmers' company stood on the books of the Clearing House. Only the Clearing House and the Company itself knew the true figures and the Clearing House officials were men of the highest integrity who dare not be approached for secret tips. Thanks to the splendid export connection which had been built up in the Old Country and to the equally solid financial relations with the Home Bank, the farmers' agency was selling oats for export very rapidly. It began to look as if they would get out from under the threatening avalanche without much loss, if any. The Company's old-time enemies apparently saw an opportunity to undermine its credit at this crisis; for attacks began to appear in print--accusations of speculation, of official negligence and so forth. If the Grain Growers could be prevented from paying for the large quantity of oats, delivery of which they would have to take on May 1st to complete the export sales made during the winter--if they could be made to fail in filling these export orders when navigation opened, they would be smashed. But in attacking the credit of the Grain Growers, these opponents overlooked the rapid increase in paid-up capital and the ability of the farmers to secure money outside of Winnipeg. It was not being forgotten by the Grain Growers that upon the first day of May there would be delivered to them over 2,200,000 bushels of oats. When the day arrived, therefore, the money was on hand to meet every contingency. Every bushel was paid for immediately. Within a few weeks half of the quantity was riding the waves of the Atlantic, bound for the Old Country to fill part of the sales already made there. Before long some of the grain companies which had sold the oats were trying to buy them back. Had the farmers' company been a speculating firm they might have turned upon the market and cornered the oats with a vengeance. It was one of those rare occasions when a corner could have been operated successfully to a golden, no-quarter finish; for the export demand was sustained and the local market could have been made to pay "through the nose" for its fun. CHAPTER XVII NEW FURROWS Fishes, beasts and fowls are to eat each other, for they have no justice; but to men is given justice, which is for the best.--_Hesiod_. The situation was changing indeed for the Grain Growers in Western Canada. In spite of all opposition the farmers had made themselves a factor in the grain trade and had demonstrated their ability to conduct their affairs on sound business principles. Co-operative marketing of grain no longer was an untried idea, advocated by a small group of enthusiasts. The manner in which the farmers' pioneer trading agency had weathered the stormy conditions of its passage from the beginning and the dignified stand of its directors--these gradually were earning status in the solid circles of the business world. Out in the country also things were different. Those farmers who at first had been most certain that the trading venture would crumble away like so many other organized business efforts of farmers in the past, now were ready to admit their error--to admit that a farmers' business organization, managed by farmers, could succeed in such ample measure that its future as a going concern was assured. Instead of hovering on the outskirts of its activities, like small boys surrounding a giant fire-cracker on Victoria Day--waiting for the loud bang so freely predicted--these gentlemen were beginning to look upon it as a safe investment. The success of the Grain Growers' Grain Company was an argument for co-operation which could not be overlooked and the co-operative spirit spread rapidly among the farmers in many districts. It will be remembered that the promoters of the grain company had intended originally to operate under a Dominion charter but were compelled by circumstances to content themselves with provincial powers. The farmers now were finding themselves too restricted and application was made for a new charter which would facilitate the transaction of business in other provinces than Manitoba. Special powers were asked for and by special Act of Parliament the charter was granted in 1911 in the face of considerable opposition at Ottawa from those whom the farmers regarded as representing the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and the Retail Merchants' Association. For the trend of the organized farmers was quite apparent. No secret had been made of the views entertained by the Grain Growers regarding co-operation. To familiarize every member of the various organizations with the history of co-operative achievements in other countries had been the object of many articles in the _Grain Growers' Guide_ and much speech-making from time to time. The possibility of purchasing farm supplies co-operatively in addition to co-operative marketing of grain was being urged convincingly. And during the long winter evenings when the farmer shoved another stick into the stove it was natural for him to ask himself questions while he stood in front of it and let the paring from another Ontario apple dangle into the ash-pan. "The fellow who made that stove paid a profit to the Iron an' Steel Trust who supplied the raw iron ore," considered he. "Then he turned around an' added a profit of his own before he let the wholesaler have it. Then the wholesaler chalked up more profit before he shipped it along to Joe Green over in town an' Joe just naturally had to soak me something before I got her aboard for home. That's profits on the profits! It's a hot proposition an' it's my money that goes up the flue!" When he added further profits which he figured might be due to agreements between supposed competitors in prices, the Grain Grower was quite ready to believe that he had paid about twice as much for that stove as the thing would cost him legitimately if he dealt with the maker direct. Here was the High Cost of Living that everybody was talking about. The remedy? The same chance as the Other Fellow for the farmer to use the resources of Nature and, by co-operation, the reduction to a minimum of production and distribution cost. "I've done it with my grain. Why can't I do it with what I need to buy?" That was what the Grain Grower was asking himself. "Why must I feed and clothe and buy the smokes for so many of these middlemen?" So when the directors of the grain-trading company came before him with the suggestion of buying a timber limit in British Columbia in order to put in their own saw-mills eventually to supply building materials on the prairie, the Grain Grower slapped his leg and said: "Good boy! An' say, what about a coal mine, too?" That was the beginning of great developments for the organized farmers of Western Canada. It was the beginning of new furrows--the opening up of new vistas of emancipation, as the farmer saw it. And as the furrows lengthened and multiplied they were destined to cause much heart-burning and antagonism in new directions. The timber limit which the Grain Growers' Grain Company purchased was estimated to contain two hundred and twenty-two million feet of lumber. A Co-Operative Department was opened with the manufacture and sale of more than 130 carloads of flour at a saving to the farmer of fifty cents per cwt, even this small beginning registering a drop in milling company prices. Next they got in touch with the Ontario Fruit Growers' Association and sold over 4,000 bbls. of apples to Western farmers at the Eastern growers' carload-lot price, plus freight, plus a commission of ten cents per barrel. More than one hundred carloads of coal were handled in one month and the farmers then got after the lumber manufacturers for lumber by the carload at a saving of several dollars per thousand feet. Still experimenting, the Grain Growers' Grain Company added to the list of commodities in 1912-13--fence posts, woven fence wire, barbed wire and binder twine. Followed other staples--cement, plaster, sash and doors, hardware and other builders' supplies; sheet metal roofing and siding, shingles, curbing, culverts, portable granaries, etc.; oil, salt and other miscellaneous supplies; finally, in 1914-15, farm machinery of all kinds, scales, cream separators, sewing machines and even typewriters. Of binder twine alone nearly seven million pounds was handled during this season. Thus did co-operative purchasing by the farmers pass from experiment to a permanent place in their activities. Expansion was taking place in other directions also. In 1912 the Company leased from the Canadian Pacific Railway a terminal elevator at Fort William, capacity 2,500,000 bushels. A small cleaning elevator was acquired at the same place and, with an eye to possible developments at the Pacific Coast, a controlling interest in a small terminal elevator in British Columbia was purchased. At Port Arthur, on a six-hundred-foot lake frontage, a new elevator has just been built with a storage capacity of 600,000 bushels. So much for terminal facilities of this farmers' pioneer trading organization. Now, what about the country elevators for government control of which the farmers had campaigned so vigorously in the three Prairie Provinces? As we have seen, the problem had been handled in Saskatchewan along very different lines to the method adopted in Manitoba. In Manitoba the 374 elevators, owned by the Provincial Government and operated by the Provincial Elevator Commission, showed a loss. It was even hinted in some quarters that the Manitoba Government had no intention in the first place of operating at anything but a loss. Whether or not there was any ground for these irreverent suspicions, the fact remained that the Government elevator system in Manitoba was beginning to assume the bulk of a snow-white elephant. The Government, not entering the field as buyers, had tried to run the elevators as a storage proposition solely. In 1910-11 the loss had exceeded $84,000 and the year following was not much better. At last the Government said in effect to the Grain Growers: "We've lost money on this proposition. We tried it out to please you farmers, but you're still dissatisfied. Try to run 'em yourselves!" "We'll just do that," replied the farmers, although the Grain Growers' Grain Company was not enthusiastic over the prospect of converting the elevator failure into immediate financial success. It was too much to expect. At many points the Government owned all the elevators in sight. In some places there was too much elevator accommodation for the district's volume of business. In certain cases the elevators which had been sold to the Government were practically discards to begin with. However, the need for improvement in the service which the farmers were getting at country points was so very great that finally, in 1912, the farmers assumed control of the government system in Manitoba. It was late in August when this came about. With only three or four weeks in which to prepare for the season's crop, make repairs, secure competent managers, travelling superintendents and office staff the results of the first season scarcely could offer a fair test. Even so, prices for street grain went up at competing points. Line elevator companies began asking the farmer for his grain instead of merely permitting him to place it in their elevators. The farmers were quick to note this and asked that the elevator service be continued by their company. With better organization the following season brought still greater improvement in service. Prices rose. The special binning service from their own elevators the farmers found genuine, not just a last-minute privilege granted to secure their grain. In spite of bad crop conditions in 1914-15, the elevators continued to succeed under the farmers' own management and, the year following, letters of highest praise from farmers everywhere marked the complete success of the undertaking. So excellent was the service now being rendered by the Company that independent Farmers' Elevators in several instances approached the Grain Growers and sought their management. The handling of co-operative supplies at elevator points began in 1913-14. Flour houses were erected where prices were out of proportion and at other places the elevator agents began to arrange for carload shipments and proper distribution of coal among the farmers at a saving of from two to three dollars per ton. These co-operative lines at elevator points soon were enlarged with much success. In addition to the elevators leased from the Manitoba Government the Grain Growers' Grain Company bought outright, erected or leased sixty elevators of its own. Those who were watching all this steadily grew more restive. The Farmers' Movement in the West was fast becoming a subject of bitter debate. "When farmers advance to the last furrow of plowed land on the farm they breast the fence which skirts the Public Highway," argued many Men of Business. "They are climbing over the fence!" But the organized farmers were not inclined to recognize fences in restriction of honest competition. They believed they were on the Open Range and held unswervingly on their way. CHAPTER XVIII A FINAL TEST We sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favors.--_Vicar of Wakefield_. While developing co-operative purchasing of farm supplies the pioneer business organization of the farmers had continued its policy of expansion in the grain business. The ideal of the farmers had been to reduce to the lowest possible point the cost between the producer in Western Canada and the Old Country consumer who bought most of the Western grain. By engaging in the export business they hoped to become an influence in keeping export values--the price at Port William, in other words--at a truer level. Prior to 1912 the export activities of the Grain Growers had been restricted necessarily to an experimental basis; but on January 1st, 1912, the "Grain Growers' Export Company," as it was called, was organized for business on a larger scale. It now becomes necessary to record a final test of the Grain Growers' Grain Company inasmuch as it demonstrated the mettle of the farmers in a significant manner--the test of serious internal disagreement. Of all the threatening situations through which this organization had passed none was more critical than this later development. The trouble was a brew which simmered for some time before the steam of it permeated beyond directors' meetings. It began early in 1912 as an aftermath of the unfortunate deal in oats, bubbled along to a boil with the fat finally in the fire at the annual meeting of the shareholders. The consequences were ladled out during 1913 and the bill was settled in full at the annual meeting that year with a cheque for nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Like most internal troubles in business organizations the personal equation entered into it. Certain of the directors were inclined to criticise other directors and to be somewhat dictatory as to how the farmers' business should be conducted. With the idea of improving the system of management, the directors at this stage abolished the Board of Control and the President was made Managing-Director with supervisory and disciplinary powers. Not long after this, at a special meeting of the directors to consider future management, four of the nine directors introduced a resolution to declare the position of Managing-Director vacant. They failed to carry it--and promptly resigned. This occurred in March. In the June columns of the _Guide_ these four directors addressed an open letter to the shareholders, urging full representation at the forthcoming annual meeting in order that their criticisms might be threshed out. President Crerar joined in the request for a full meeting of shareholders. If the loyalty or ability of any director was to be questioned because he refused to surrender his judgment to other directors who might disagree with him on certain matters, it was time to have an understanding. So far as he was concerned, he could not agree to become a mere speaking-tube for others who might want their own way against his own convictions of what was in the best interests of the farmers. When the annual meeting opened, on July 16th, there was a record attendance of shareholders and during the routine preliminaries it was evident that expectancy was on tip-toe among the farmers. The split in the directorate was a vital matter. In delivering his annual address the President detailed the business of the organization for the past year, referring but briefly to the facts which had led up to the resignation of the four directors. The Shareholders' Auditor followed with the balance sheet, giving detailed accounts of receipts, expenditures, assets and liabilities; he answered all questions asked. Then came a resolution, expressing the thanks of the shareholders to the President--and this moment was chosen by the leader of the revolt to spin his pin-wheels. The debate began at three o'clock in the afternoon. It did not end until ten at night. The President retired from the chair and the Auditor was called on for detailed information, covering a period of several years past. In the long speech which was then made by the leader of the critics the President was declared responsible for all the alleged mismanagement and his retention in office undesirable. To the surprise of everyone a fifth director now took the floor and joined the attack. Not having been one of the four directors who resigned, this new criticism was unexpected and the tension of the meeting grew. After amusing himself and the audience for awhile with a humorous speech, No. 5 ended by suggesting that the President was not sufficiently wicked to be driven from office. Arose the remaining three members of the resigning quartette and, one after another, had their say. Finally, when words failed them and they rested their case, the President spoke briefly. In the annual address, which he had delivered that morning, no attempt had been made to deny the inadequacy of the Company's office organization to cope with the exceptional crop conditions of 1911 and 1912. The latter season particularly had been very trying owing to the lateness of the crop and the wet harvesting conditions. Twenty-five per cent. of the grain, which started for market a month late, was tough, damp or wet. The arrival of snow had prevented hundreds of thousands of acres from being threshed and, on top of it all, railway traffic had become congested so that cars of grain got lost for weeks and even months and there were long delays in getting the outturns of cars after they were unloaded. Money was scarce and farmers who were being pressed for liabilities to merchants, banks and machinery companies found it hard to get cars; naturally, once they had shipped, they were in no mood for further delays. Owing to the condition of the grain, too, the grading was so uncertain that exceptional care had been necessary in accepting bank drafts on carloads of grain for amounts nearly double their possible value under the unusual current crop conditions. Even with the greatest care the Company found that in many instances they had given greater advances than were realized when the cars were sold. The refusal of drafts, passed by some local banks for amounts the managers should have known could not be met, led to many hard things being said against the farmers' agency. Under these conditions it was only to be expected that the work in the office would become congested badly for weeks at a stretch. Double the amount of work was entailed in handling a given quantity of grain, compared to the season before. The Company was handicapped for office space also and errors were bound to occur in a business involving so much detail that a simple mistake might lead to infinite trouble. Correspondence had not been answered as promptly as it should have been, the necessary information regarding shipments being unavailable. All of these things had been met frankly in the President's annual address and now when he brought the day's animated debate to a close he added merely a word or two regarding the strong financial position to which the farmers' pioneer trading organization had won its way in the commercial world. He pointed out the future that lay before it. Upon personal attacks he did not comment at all. Immediately a unanimous vote of thanks for his untiring work and loyalty was tendered Mr. Crerar. The debate was over. The following morning the officers for the ensuing year were chosen and only one of the four directors who had resigned from the old Board was re-elected. He withdrew and the whole incident was closed. But the real test was yet to come. The withdrawal of the four directors had left but five to cope with the difficult situation of the Export Company. It had found itself with a large amount of ocean freight on its hands--freight which had been secured on favorable terms from shipping agents for use later in transporting grain which the farmers' agency expected to sell in the Old Country. It was decided to cut off the export business entirely for the time being and to re-let the ocean shipping space to other exporters. The price of ocean freight fluctuated to such an extent, however, that rather than accept an immediate loss it was thought better to use the freight, after all, making shipment to fill. At the time of the sixth annual meeting the Export Company had stood about level on the books; but during the two succeeding months the grain shipped from Fort William went out of condition while crossing the ocean and when it arrived in port the Old Country buyers refused to look at it. Heavy charges had to be met in treating to bring it to sale condition and very heavy losses were incurred. Before the matter was cleaned up finally these losses totalled more than $230,000. When a quarter of a million dollars has been expended in a direction where tangible results have not been in evidence--when it has been sacrificed apparently for the sake of a principle--then does the manner in which such a loss is accepted become significant. The exporting of grain had begun to receive particular attention from the shareholders of the Grain Growers' Grain Company following the season of 1907-8 when they discovered the apparent margin of profit in the export business during much of the season to be from eight to twelve cents per bushel. This had been due, no doubt, to the fact that it was a time of financial stringency and only a few exporting firms could get the money necessary to carry on the business. The export value of grain, the farmers had figured, should be its value in the world's markets, less the cost of delivering it. By engaging in the export business, obtaining their cable offers regularly from the Old Country, they felt that their competition would be a factor in governing the prices paid the farmer, thereby benefiting every farmer in the West. That this had been accomplished the shareholders of the trading company were convinced. Therefore, instead of losing their heads as well as this large sum of money, they examined the situation coolly and sanely, making up their minds that the loss was due to the grain going out of condition because of the unusual weather which had characterized the season. No doubt the executive and directors had been handicapped by their lack of knowledge as to the methods and manner in which the export business was done; but that was to be expected and only by experience could they learn. "Can the export part of our business be developed successfully with a little more time?" asked the farmers. "Yes, we believe so," replied their officers. "That's all we want to know. Write a cheque to cover this loss, reorganize the Export Company and stick to it." This faith in their officers, in themselves and in the cause they had at heart was justified within the next two seasons when success was achieved with the subsidiary concern and the farmers were able to congratulate themselves that they had been sufficiently level-headed not to allow themselves to be stampeded from the exporting field altogether to the great weakening of their influence. The accomplishments of the Grain Growers in marketing their own grain cannot be dismissed with careless gesture. Their severest critic must admit that the manner in which the farmers conducted themselves in the face of the situation that threatened entitles them to respect. CHAPTER XIX MEANWHILE, IN SASKATCHEWAN-- An old man on the point of death summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He ordered his servants to bring in a faggot of sticks, and said to his eldest son: Break it. The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the bundle. The other sons also tried, but none of them was successful. Untie the faggots, said the father, and each of you take a stick. When they had done so, he called out to them: Now break; and each stick was easily broken. You see my meaning, said their father. Let affection bind you to one another. Together you are strong; separated you are weak.--_Aesop_. Eventful years, these through which the Grain Growers of Western Canada were passing. While the Grain Growers' Grain Company was undertaking the initial experiments in co-operative purchasing of farm supplies, showing the Manitoba Government that farmers could run elevators satisfactorily and fighting its way forward to success in the exporting field, how were things getting along in Saskatchewan? With $52,000 and another four or five hundred in loose change tucked away in its hip pocket as the net profit of its first season's operations the new system of co-operative elevators had struck out "on a bee line" for Success and was swinging along at a steady gait, full of confidence. The volume of business handled through these elevators the first year had been affected by the failure of the contractors to finish construction of all the elevators by the dates specified. Even so, the new company had handled 3,261,000 bushels of grain, more than half of it being special binned. In planning to build eighty-eight new elevators in 1912 and to purchase six, thereby bringing the total to 140 co-operative elevators, the directors thought it wise to form a construction department of their own instead of relying upon outside contractors. Also it was decided to open a commission department of their own at Winnipeg, the volume of business in sight being very encouraging. This move was not made, however, because of any dissatisfaction with the Grain Growers' Grain Company's services as selling agent; on the other hand, although crop conditions had been perhaps the most unfavorable in the history of Saskatchewan and the grain with its diversity of grades therefore very difficult to market satisfactorily, the Board of Directors acknowledged in their annual report that the wisdom of the arrangement with the Grain Growers' Grain Company had been proved by the satisfactory working of it. The volume of business handled by the 137 elevators in operation the second year jumped to 12,900,000 bushels with a net profit of approximately $168,000, and it was apparent that the general acceptance of the co-operative scheme throughout the province would mean organization upon a large scale. This was emphasized during the 1913 grain season when 192 elevators were in operation and about 19,500,000 bushels of grain were hauled in to the co-operative elevators by farmers. This rapid expansion of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company was entailing such an increase in staff organization that it became necessary to provide special office accommodation. Accordingly a site for a permanent building of their own was purchased in 1914 at Regina and the following year a modern, fireproof building was erected. It stands two storeys on a high basement, with provision for additional storeys, occupies a space of 9,375 square feet, has interior finish of oak and architecturally it is a matter of pride to the farmers who own it. This building has become the headquarters of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and likewise the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association, the offices of the latter occupying the entire top floor. While the erection of this building afforded visible proof of financial progress the Saskatchewan farmers were warned by the directors and the general manager of the "Co-Op" that co-operation which was allowed to degenerate into mere production of dividends would but reproduce in another form the evil it was intended to destroy. The ideal of service was the vital force which must be kept in mind and the work of the Grain Growers' Association in fostering this ideal must be encouraged. "The Association has its great work of organization, education and agitation," stated Charles A. Dunning, the elevator company's manager, "and the company the equally great work of giving practical effect to the commercial and co-operative ideals of the Association, both institutions being branches of one united Farmers' Movement having for its object the social and economic uplift of the farming industry." Not a little of the early success of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company was due to the energy and business ability which Dunning brought to bear upon its organization and development. The story of this young homesteader's rise from the ranks of the Grain Growers is worth noting. It was back in 1902 that he first reached the West--a seventeen-year-old Englishman, "green" as the grass that grew over there in Leicester. He did not know anything then about the historic meeting of pioneer grain growers which Motherwell and Dayman had assembled not long before at Indian Head. He was concerned chiefly with finding work on a farm somewhere and hired out near Yorkton, Saskatchewan, for ten dollars a month. After awhile he secured one of the Government's 160-acre slices of homestead land and proceeded to demonstrate that oxen could haul wheat twenty-five miles to a railway if their driver sat long enough on the load. There came a day when Dunning, filled with a new feeling of independence, started for Yorkton with a load of wheat and oats. It was along towards spring when the snow was just starting to go and at a narrow place in the trail, as luck would have it, he met a farmer returning from town with an empty sleigh. In trying to pass the other fellow Dunning's sleigh upset. While helping to reload the farmer imparted the information that oats were selling for eight cents and all he had been able to get for his wheat was something like thirteen cents in Yorkton the day before! The young Englishman's new feeling of "independence" slid into his shoe-packs as he stared speechless at his neighbor. Right-about went his oxen and back home he hauled his load, angry and dismayed and realizing that something was wrong with Western conditions that could bring about such treatment. When a branch of the Grain Growers' Association was formed at Beaverdale, not far from his homestead, it is scarcely necessary to say that young Dunning joined and took an active part in the debates. Finally he was chosen as delegate for the district at the annual Grain Growers' convention at Prince Albert on condition that he could finance the trip on $17.50. The story is told that Dunning figured by making friends with the furnace man of one of the hotels he might be allowed to sleep in the cellar for the week he would be in Prince Albert and manage to get through on this meagre expense fund! At any rate he did find a place to lay his head and, if reports be true, actually came back with money in his pocket. It was at this convention that the young man first attracted attention. The delegates had deadlocked over a discussion in regard to a scheme for insuring crops against hailstorms in Saskatchewan, half of them favoring it and half opposing it. The young homesteader from Beaverdale got up, ran his fingers through his pompadour and outlined the possibilities of co-operative insurance which would apply only to municipalities where a majority of the farmers favored the idea. He talked so convincingly and sanely that the convention elected him as a director of the Association and later when the co-operative elevator scheme was broached he was elected vice-president of the Association and the suggestion was made that he undertake the work of organizing the new elevator concern. Incidentally, the man who suggested this was E. A. Partridge, of Sintaluta--the same Partridge who had fathered the Grain Growers' Grain Company and who already had located T. A. Crerar, of Russell, Manitoba. Out of Dunning's suggestion at Prince Albert grew the Saskatchewan Hail Insurance Commission which was recommended to the Provincial Government by the Association in 1911 and brought into operation the following year. The legislation provided for municipal co-operative hail insurance on the principle of a provincial tax made operative by local option. Twenty-five or more rural municipalities having agreed to join to insure against hail the crops within the municipalities, authority would be granted to collect a special tax--not to exceed four cents per acre--on all land in the municipalities concerned. Administration would be in the hands of the Hail Insurance Commission, which would set the rate of the special tax. All claims and expenses would be paid from the pooled fund and all crops in the respective municipalities would be insured automatically. If damage by hail occurred insurance would be paid at the rate of five dollars per acre when crop was destroyed completely and _pro rata_ if only partially destroyed. This co-operative insurance scheme was instituted successfully in the fall of 1912, soon spread throughout Saskatchewan and was destined eventually to carry more than twenty-five million dollars of hail insurance. Shortly after the launching of co-operative hail insurance the discussions among the Saskatchewan farmers in regard to the co-operative purchasing of farm commodities for their own use came to a head in a request to the Provincial Government for the widening of charter powers in order that the Association might organize a co-operative trading department. In 1913 authorization to act as a marketing and purchasing agent for registered co-operative associations was granted and next year the privilege was extended to include local grain growers' associations. Thus the Trading Department of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association takes the form of a Central Office, or wholesale body, through which all the Locals can act collectively in dealing with miners, millers, manufacturers, etc. The Central sells to organized Locals only, they in turn selling to their members. The surplus earnings of the Central are distributed to the Locals which have invested capital in their Central, such distribution being made in proportion to the amount of business done with the Central by the respective Locals. During its first season of co-operative purchasing the Association handled 25,000 tons of coal and in a year or two there was turned over in a season enough binder twine to bind fifty million bushels of grain--about 4,500,000 pounds of twine. When the Western potato crop failed in 1915 the Association imported four and one-half million bushels of potatoes for its members, cutting the market price in some cases a dollar per bushel. Flour, apples, cord-wood, building supplies, vegetables and groceries likewise were purchased and distributed co-operatively. The savings effected by the farmers cannot be tallied alone from actual quantities of goods thus purchased through their own organization but must include a large aggregate saving due to reduction of prices by outside dealers. Such commodities as coal and flour being best distributed through local warehouses, it is likely that eventually the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company will take a hand in helping the Association and the Locals with the handling of co-operative supplies by furnishing the large capital investment needed to establish these warehouses. The necessary financial strength to accomplish this is readily conceived to be available after a glance at later developments in Saskatchewan. The co-operative elevators now exceed 300. The figures for the season of 1915-16 show a total of more than 39,000,000 bushels of grain handled with an additional 4,109,000 bushels shipped over the loading platforms. Without deducting war-tax the total profit earned by the Saskatchewan company within the year was in the neighborhood of three-quarters of a million dollars. The Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company in 1916 began building its own terminal elevator at Port Arthur with a capacity of 2,500,000 bushels. By this time there were 18,000 shareholders with a subscribed capital of $3,358,900, of which $876,000 was paid up. In these later years a remarkable development is recorded also by the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association until it is by far the largest and best organized secular body in the province with over 1,300 Locals and a membership exceeding 28,000. The Secretary of the Association--J. B. Musselman, himself a farmer--has done much hard work in office and looks forward to the time when the Locals will own their own breeding stock, assemble and fatten their own poultry, handle and ship their eggs, operate their own co-operative laundries and bakeries, kill and cure meat in co-operative butcher-shops for their own use--have meeting places, rest rooms, town offices, libraries, moving-pictures and phonographs with which to entertain and inform themselves. To stand with a hand on the hilt of such a dream is to visualize a revolution in farm and community life--such a revolution as would switch much attraction from city to country. Whatever the future may hold in store, the fact remains that already much valuable legislation has been secured from the Government of Saskatchewan by the farmers. Perhaps in no other province are the Grain Growers in as close touch with the Government, due to the nature of the co-operative enterprises which have been launched with Government support financially. Three members of the cabinet are men who have been identified closely with the Grain Growers' Movement. Hon. W. R. Motherwell has held portfolio as Minister of Agriculture for many years. Hon. George Langley, Minister of Municipal Affairs, helped to organize the farmers of Northern Saskatchewan in the early days. Finally in 1916 C. A. Dunning[1] resigned as general manager of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company to become the youngest Provincial Treasurer in Canada; for already the Saskatchewan Government had called upon him for service on two official commissions to investigate agriculture and finance in most of the European countries and his services were valuable. Langley has been a prominent figure in Saskatchewan affairs ever since his arrival in the country in 1903. He was forty-one years old when he came and he brought with him long training as a public speaker, a knowledge of human nature and a ready twinkle in his eye for everything humorous. According to himself, his first job was chasing sparrows from the crops. After leaving the English rural life in which he was reared, he had worked on the London docks and as a London business man. In politics he became a disciple of the Cobden-Bright school and was one of the first members of the Fabian Society under the leadership of the redoubtable Bernard Shaw. It was Langley's habit, it is said, to talk to London crowds on side thoroughfares, standing on a soap-box and ringing a hand-bell to attract attention. In becoming a Western Canadian farmer it did not take him long to slip around behind the problems of the farming class; for there was no greater adept at poking a cantankerous problem about with a sharp stick than the Honorable George. It was natural for this short, stout, bearded Englishman to gravitate into the first Legislature of the newly-formed Province of Saskatchewan and just as naturally he moved up to a place in the cabinet. As one of the sponsors of the co-operative elevator scheme, by virtue of his place on the commission which recommended it, Langley has taken much interest in the co-operative activities of the farmers and on many occasions has acted as their spokesman. With the relationships outlined it was to be expected that now and then opponents would hint that the Saskatchewan authorities had played politics with the farmers. Such charges, of course, are refuted indignantly. Knowing the widespread desire among the farmers themselves to keep free from political alliances, it would be a foolish government indeed which would fail to recognize that not to play politics was the best kind of politics that could be played. Other leaders of sterling worth have contributed to the acknowledged success of co-operation in Saskatchewan, not forgetting John A. Maharg who came from Western Ontario in 1890 to settle near Moose Jaw. From the very beginning J. A. Maharg has worked for the cause of the farmers. A pioneer himself, he has a deep understanding of the Western Canadian farmers' problems and his devotion to their solution has earned him universal appreciation among the Grain Growers of Saskatchewan. Year after year he has been elected to the highest office in the gift of the Association. He has been President many times of both the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association and the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company. The Grain Growers' Movement, then, in this Province of Saskatchewan where it had its beginning, has grown to wonderful proportions with the passing of the years. Co-operation has been a pronounced success. The old conditions have passed far back down the trail. The new order of things has been fought for by men who have known the taste of smoky tea, the sour sweat of toil upon the land, the smell of the smudge fires on a still evening and the drive of the wind on the open plain. Out of the pioneer past they have stepped forward to the larger opportunities of the times--times which call for clear heads and wise vision. For as they build for the future so will the Sons of the Movement watch and learn. [1] The Union Government at Ottawa decided in February, 1918, to replace the office of Food Controller by the Canada Food Board, organized as a branch of the Dominion Department of Agriculture under Hon. T. A. Crerar. Hon. Charles A. Dunning was selected as Director of Production. The other members of the Canada Food Board were: H. B. Thomson, Chairman and Director of Conservation; J. D. McGregor, Director of Agricultural Labor. (Mr. McGregor resigned after a year in office.) CHAPTER XX WHAT HAPPENED IN ALBERTA Beyond the fields we plough are others waiting, The fallows of the ages all unknown. Beyond the little harvests we are reaping Are wider, grander harvests to be grown. --_Gerald J. Lively._ Out in the great Range Country all this time the United Farmers were lickety-loping along the trail of difficulties that carried their own special brand. The round-up revealed increasing opportunities for service and one by one their problems were cut out from the general herd, roped, tied and duly attended to for the improvement of conditions in Alberta. Here and there a difficulty persisted in breaking away and running about bawling; but even these finally were coralled. Along with the Grain Growers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan the United Farmers of Alberta had campaigned consistently for government ownership of elevators, both provincial and terminal. They had received assurance from Premier Rutherford that if a satisfactory scheme could be evolved, the Provincial Government was prepared to carry out the establishment of a line of internal elevators in Alberta. It looked as if all that remained to be done was to follow the lead of Manitoba or Saskatchewan. But on careful consideration neither of the plans followed in the other two provinces appeared to fit the special needs of the Alberta farmers. The province at the western end of the grain fields accordingly experienced quite a delay in obtaining elevator action. In the meantime the discussion of terminal storage facilities was going on at Ottawa. The need for such facilities at Calgary and Vancouver was pressed by the Alberta representatives on various farmer delegations and finally the Dominion Government declared its intention of establishing internal elevators with full modern equipment at Moose Jaw and Saskatoon in Saskatchewan and at Calgary in Alberta; a Dominion Government terminal elevator at the Pacific Coast likewise was on the programme. By this time the government operation of the Manitoba elevators had proved a complete failure and they had been leased by the Grain Growers' Grain Company. In Saskatchewan, however, the co-operative elevators were proving successful. A close study of the co-operative scheme adopted in the province just east of them enabled the United Farmers of Alberta to work out a plan along similar lines. This was presented to the Premier, whose name meanwhile had changed from Rutherford to Sifton. The Act incorporating the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, Limited, was drafted in the spring of 1913 and passed unanimously by the Legislature. The new company held its first meeting in August, elected its officers[1] and went to work enthusiastically. It had been decided by the United Farmers that full control and responsibility must rest in their own hands. They proposed to provide the means for raising at each point where an elevator was built sufficient funds to finance the purchase of grain at that point from their own resources, at the same time providing for the handling of other business than grain. Under the Act the Provincial Government made cash advance of eighty-five per cent. of the cost of each elevator built or bought by the Company, but had no say whatever as to whether any particular elevator should be bought or built at any particular place, what it should cost or what its capacity or equipment should be. In security for the loan the Government took a first mortgage on the elevator and other property of the Company at the given point. The loans on elevators were repayable in twenty equal annual instalments. The Company started off with the organization of forty-six Locals instead of the twenty which the Act called for and the construction of forty-two elevators was rushed. Ten additional elevators were bought. Although construction was not completed in time to catch the full season's business the number of bushels handled was 3,775,000, the Grain Growers' Grain Company acting as selling agent. By the end of the second year twenty-six more elevators had been built and the volume of grain handled had expanded to 5,040,000 bushels. Now, this progress had been achieved in the face of continuous difficulties of one kind and another. Chief of these was the attempt to finance such a large amount of grain upon a small paid-up capital. The Company found that after finishing construction of the elevators they had no money with which to buy grain nor any assets available for bank borrowings. It was impossible to obtain credit upon the unpaid capital stock. The Provincial Government was approached for a guarantee of the account along the lines followed in Saskatchewan; but the Government refused to assume the responsibility. It was at this juncture that the enemies of co-operation were afforded a practical demonstration of the fact that they had to deal not with any one farmers' organization but with them all. For the Grain Growers' Grain Company stepped into the breach with its powerful financial assistance. The Alberta farmers were clamoring for the handling of farm supplies as well as grain; so that the young trading company in Alberta had its hands more than full to organize a full stride in usefulness from the start. The organization of the United Farmers of Alberta was growing very rapidly and the co-operative spirit was tremendously strong throughout the province. There was a demand for the handling of livestock shipments and soon it was necessary to establish a special Livestock Department. It will be recalled that one of the subjects in which the Alberta farmers were interested from the first was the possibility of persuading the Provincial Government to undertake a co-operative pork-packing plant. Following the report of the Pork Commission upon the matter, however, official action on the part of the authorities had languished. The various committees appointed from year to year by the United Farmers gradually had acquired much valuable data and at last were forced to the conclusion that the development of a packing industry along co-operative lines was not so simple as it had appeared at first. Even in much older settled countries than Alberta the question, they found, had its complications. The first thing to discover was whether the farmers of a community were able and willing to adjust themselves to the requirements of an association for shipping stock together in carload lots to be sold at the large markets. Until such demonstration had been made it seemed advisable to defer the organization of a co-operative packing business. After the formation of the Co-Operative Elevator Company, therefore, the Alberta farmers proceeded to encourage the co-operative shipment of livestock on consignment by their local unions. The Livestock Department entered the field first as buyers of hogs, handling 16,000 hogs in the first four months. The experiment bettered prices by half-a-cent per pound and the expansion of the Department began in earnest the following season when nearly 800 cars of hogs, cattle and sheep were handled. On top of all the other troubles of the first year the farmers lost a valuable leader in the death of the president of the Co-Operative Elevator Company, W. J. Tregillus. Complete re-organization of the Executive was made and the question of his successor was considered from every angle. It was vital that no mistake be made in this connection and two of the directors were sent to study the business methods and policies of the Grain Growers' Grain Company and the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and to secure a General Manager. They failed to get in touch with anyone to fill the requirements and the management of both the other farmers' concerns expressed grave doubts as to the wisdom of a farmers' company looking for a manager whose training had been received with line elevator companies and who had not seen things from the farmer's side. One of the remarkable features of the advance of the Farmers' Movement has been the manner in which strong leaders have stepped from their own ranks to meet every need. It has been a policy of the organized farmers to encourage the younger men to apply themselves actively in the work in order that they might be qualified to take up the responsibilities of office when called upon. There are many outstanding examples of the wisdom of this in the various farmers' executives to-day; so that with the on-coming of the years there is little danger that sane, level-headed management will pass. Several of the men occupying prominent places to-day in the Farmers' Movement have grown up entirely under its tutelage. So it turned out that in Alberta the man the farmers were seeking was one of themselves--one of the two directors sent out to locate a manager, in fact. His name was C. Rice-Jones. His father was an English Church clergyman whose work lay in the slum districts of London. This may have had something to do with the interest which the young man had in social problems. When at the age of sixteen he became a Canadian and went to work on various farms, finally homesteading in Alberta, that interest he carried with him. Out of his own experiences he began to apply it in practical ways and the Farmers' Movement drew him as a magnet draws steel. He became identified with the Veteran district eventually and there organized a local union. It was not long before he was in evidence in the wider field of the United Farmers' activities. Fortunately the new President and General Manager of the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company was not a man to lose his sense of direction in a muddle of affairs. Into the situation which awaited him he waded with consummate tact, discernment and push; so that it was not long before his associates were pulling with him for the fullest weight of intelligent effort. The difficulties were sorted and sifted and classified, the machinery oiled and running true, and with a valuable directorate at his back Rice-Jones "made good." The third season of the Alberta Farmers' Co-operative Elevator Company brought the final proof that the farmers knew how to support their own institutions. For through the 87 elevators that the farmers operated in Alberta flowed a total of nearly twenty million bushels of grain, with well over ten and one-quarter million bushels handled on commission. The Livestock Department in the face of severe competition achieved a permanent place in the livestock business of the province with offices of its own in the stock yards at Calgary and Edmonton. By this time livestock shipments had amounted to a value in excess of two million dollars. The Co-Operative Department had handled farm supplies to a total turnover of approximately $750,000. As in the case of the Grain Growers' Grain Company and the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association's trading department the list of articles purchased co-operatively by the Alberta farmers grew very rapidly to include flour, feed, binder twine, coal, lumber and fence posts, wire fencing, fruit and vegetables, hay, salt, etc. In 1915-16 a thousand cars of these goods were purchased and distributed co-operatively, besides which a considerable volume of business was done in less-than-carload lots. Coal sheds were built in connection with many elevators, the staff increased and the entire Co-Operative Department thoroughly organized for prompt and satisfactory service. [1] See Appendix--Par. 13. CHAPTER XXI IN THE DRAG OF THE HARROWS "I see the villain in your face!" "May it plaze yer worship, that must be a personal reflection, sure." --_Irish Wit and Humor (Howe)._ The "good old days" when the Farmer was a poor sheep without a shepherd, shorn to the pink hide with one tuft of wool left over his eyes--those "good old days" are gone forever. It is some time now since he became convinced that if a lion and a lamb ever did lie down together the lamb would not get a wink of sleep. As a matter of survival he has been making use of the interval to become a lion himself and the process has been productive of a great roaring in the Jungle. All this co-operative purchasing of commodities in the three Prairie Provinces has not been developed to its present great volume without arousing antagonism in the business world. The co-operative idea in merchandizing is not confined to the West by any means. From the Atlantic to the Pacific various organizations have been formed to carry on business along co-operative lines. A Co-Operative Union has been formed to propagate the movement and the subject is vast. But the establishment of an extending network of elevators under the control of the Western farmers has brought about possibilities which threaten to revolutionize the whole established commercial system. Farmers' Elevators in Dakota, Minnesota and Alberta have proved that it is practical to utilize the same staff at each point to manage the distribution of farm supplies as well as looking after elevator operation during the grain season. This being so, it is not difficult to visualize a great distributing system under centralized management with tremendous purchasing power. There are those whose imaginations stretch readily to the extreme view that the Grain Growers are a menace. Such are filled with foreboding. They see the country merchant out of business and the whole business fabric destroyed. "The farmers are talking everlastingly about 'a square deal,'" it is argued. "Why don't they practice what they preach and give the country merchant a square deal? What about the times of poor crops and money scarcity? Where would the farmer have been if the country merchant had not carried him on the books for the necessities of life?" "It didn't cost the merchant anything to carry me," denies the farmer. "He just raised his prices to me and got credit from the wholesaler." "Then what about the wholesaler?" "Raised his prices and got credit from the manufacturer and the bank." "Then the banks----" "Refused to give me the credit in the first place!" interrupts the farmer resentfully. "Do you dare to blame me, Mister, for cutting out all these unnecessary middle charges when by proper organization I am able to finance myself and take advantage of cash discounts on the cost of living?" That is the Farmer's motive for taking action. He wants to improve his scale of living for the sake of his family. By making the farm home a place of comfort his sons and daughters will be more content to remain on the land. He does not seek to hoard money; he intends to spend it. If middlemen are crowded out of his community it will be because there are too many of them. Instead of having to support parasites the community will be just that much more prosperous, the farms just that much better equipped, the land just that much more productive and thereby the country's wealth just that much greater. That is how it appears to the Farmer. "If the Farmer is to be a merchant, a wholesaler, a banker and all the rest of it he is no longer a farmer. Is nobody else to have a right to live?" enquires the Cynic. "Did these Grain Growers fight the elevator combine of the early days in order that they could establish a Farmers' Combine? Is one any better than the other?" The inference is that the Grain Growers are bluffing deliberately and aiming at all the abuses conjured by the word, "combine." The slander is self-evident to anyone who examines the constitution of the Farmers' Movement, so framed from the first that any possibility of clique control was removed for all time. It is impossible to have a "combine" of fifty thousand units and maintain the necessary appeal to the cupidity of the individual. It is not possible for designing leaders, if such there were, to take even the first step in manipulation without discovery. It simply cannot be done. Woe betide the man who even exhibited such tendencies among his fellow Grain Growers! These organized farmers have learned how to do their own thinking and every rugged ounce of them is assertive. They are not to be fooled easily nor stampeded from their objective. And what is that objective? "To play politics!" explodes the hidebound Party Politician knowingly. "To get a share in the Divvy and eventually hog it!" suggests the Financial Adventurer. "Equal opportunities to all; special privileges to none," the Grain Grower patiently reiterates. He believes in doing away with "the Divvy" altogether. He believes that "the spoils system" is bad government and that no stone should be left unturned to elevate the living conditions of the Average Citizen to the highest possible plane. He believes that the status of a nation depends upon the status of its Average Citizen and in that he does not consider himself to be preaching Socialism but Common Sense. Come back to the country store--to the Country Retailer who is pulling on the other end of the whiffle-tree with the Farmer for community progress. Each is necessary to the other and it is a vital matter if the co-operation of the Farmer is going to kill off a teammate, especially when tandeming right behind them are the Clydesdales of Commerce, the Wholesaler and the Manufacturer. With the Farmer kicking over the traces, the Retailer biting and squealing at the Wholesaler every little while and the Manufacturer with his ears laid back flat this distribution of merchandize in Western Canada is no easy problem. It is bringing the Bankers to their aristocratic portals all along the route and about the only onlooker who is calm and serene is the Mail-Order Man as he passes overhead post-haste in the Government flying machine. "I'd get along alright if the Farmer would pay up his debts to me," cries the Retailer. "I've been giving him too long a line of credit and now he's running rings around me and tying me up in a knot. When he gets some money he goes and buys from my competitors for cash or he buys more land and machinery. If I shorten the rope he busts it and runs away!" "I'd be alright if everybody else would mind their own business," grumbles the Wholesaler. "Just trot along there now! Pay your bills, Farmer. Improve your service, Retailer. Don't ask me about high or low tariff. I've got my hands full with established lines and it's my business to supply them as cheaply as is consistent with quality. I want to see everybody succeed and it isn't fair to include me in any mix-up. Only the humming of that confounded flying-machine up there--Can't somebody bring down that Mail-Order bird? He isn't paying his share of the taxes while I've helped to finance this country." "We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves," sings the Manufacturer. "Giddap, Dobbin!" "'Money makes the mare go,'" quotes the Finance Minister, taking another look out of the window at the War Cloud. "'Money comes from the Soil,'" and he push-buttons a buzz-bell over in the Department of Agriculture. "Send out the choir and let's have that 'Patriotism and Production' song again," is the order issued by some deputy sub-chief's assistant in response to the P. M.'s signal. "We must encourage our farmers to even nobler efforts." And all the while the Unearned Increment loafs around, studying the Interest Charges which are ticking away like a taxicab meter, and the "Common Pee-pul" gaze in frozen fascination at the High Cost of Living flying its kite and climbing the string! Seriously, though, the situation demands the earnest thought of all classes. The argument has so many facets that it is impossible within the limits of a few pages to present an adequate conception of all the vital problems that surround the Farmers' Movement. Each interest has its own data--packages of it--and it is difficult to know what to select and what to leave out and at the same time remain entirely fair to all concerned. There is some truth in many of the accusations which are bandied about. No new country can do without credit facilities. What about the homesteader or the poorer farmer who is starting on meagre resources? They will win through if given a chance. Who is to give it to them if business is put on a cash basis? On the other hand, is the man who has the cash to receive no consideration? The trouble with our banks is that their system falls down when the retailer or the farmer need them most--in times of stringency. It is true that the wholesaler has done much for the country, that the retailer is often at the mercy of careless or selfish customers who abuse credit privileges. It is true that the mail-order houses also have performed good services in the general task of making a new country. The solution can be arrived at only by co-operation in its true sense--getting together--everybody. Also, while one may joke about "Patriotism and Production," the fact remains that much has been accomplished by these campaigns. Asked if the organization of the farmers meant that the retailer would be forced out of business, the well posted Credit Manager of a large Winnipeg wholesale establishment admitted that it would not mean that necessarily. The same question put to C. Rice-Jones, President and Manager of the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, brought the same denial. "The only men who would be weeded out," said he, "are those who have gone into the local store business without knowing anything about it and who can remain in it only because the present system allows them to charge any price they like. The men who know their business will remain. Those who are objecting to us are objecting to the very thing they have been doing themselves for fifty years--organizing." "We want to farm, not to go into business," remarked H. W. Wood, President of the United Farmers of Alberta. "The local merchant gives us a local distribution service, a service which has to be given. We cannot destroy one single legitimate interest. But if there are four or five men living by giving a service that one man should give in a community and get just a living--that is what we are going to correct and we are absolutely entitled to do so. The selfishness we are accused of the accusers have practiced right along and these very things make it necessary for us to organize for self-protection. If they will co-operate with us to put their business on a legitimate basis we are willing to quit trying to do this business ourselves." That is straight talk, surely. It is a challenge to the business men to meet the farmers half way for a better understanding. No problem ever was solved by extremists on either side. Enmity and suspicion must be submerged by sane discussion and mutual concessions bring about the beginnings of closer unity. CHAPTER XXII THE WIDTH OF THE FIELD Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid." --_Robert Browning._ The Grain Growers' Movement in Western Canada now had attained potential proportions. In Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta the Provincial Associations with their many Locals were in a flourishing condition. Each province was headquarters for a powerful farmers' trading organization to market grain and provide co-operative supplies. Unlike the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, however, the pioneer business organization of the Grain Growers--the Grain Growers' Grain Company--was not provincial in scope but had a large number of shareholders in each of the three Prairie Provinces, in British Columbia and Ontario. Altogether, in 1916 the farmers owned and operated over 500 country elevators as well as terminal elevators to a capacity of three million bushels. The farmer shareholders in the three business concerns numbered more than 45,000. During 1916 the farmers handled over ninety million bushels of their own grain. With this remarkable growth the danger of rivalries and jealousies developing between their business organizations was a possibility upon which the farmers were keeping an eye. A certain amount of friendly competition was unavoidable. For some time, therefore, the necessity of closer union of their various organizations had been a serious topic among the leaders of the Grain Growers in all three provinces. It was the logical preparation for future achievements. At its regular meetings in 1915 the Canadian Council of Agriculture--comprising officials representing the whole Grain Growers' Movement--had agreed that definite action would be desirable. A meeting of representatives from the respective Associations and companies interested accordingly was held in the offices of the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company at Regina. The plan discussed was the formation of one large business concern, similar in a general way to the Wholesale Co-Operative Societies in the Old Country. The idea was that this wholesale company should market and export grain, control terminal elevators and any manufacturing that might be done later on as well as importing supplies when necessary. This would leave each provincial company with its own organization to look after collection and distribution of supplies and to operate along the lines already existing in Saskatchewan and Alberta. The provincial companies would be in absolute control of the central or wholesale company. A difference of opinion arose in regard to the method of selling grain. The representatives from the United Farmers of Alberta, the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association and the Grain Growers' Grain Company were unanimous in agreeing that it would be unwise to divide the marketing strength of the farmers into three parts instead of concentrating for fullest buying and selling power in the interest of the farmers in all three provinces. With the individual organizations each having a voice in the control of the central company there did not seem to them to be justification for carrying provincial divisions into the marketing machinery, thereby weakening it. With this view the Saskatchewan representatives could not agree, holding out for a separate selling channel for Saskatchewan grain. A committee was appointed to try to work out some other solution to the problem of federating all three farmers' companies and a new proposal was submitted at a meeting of the Canadian Council of Agriculture, held in Winnipeg in July, 1916. This second attempt to get together was along the line of joint ownership of subsidiary concerns which would look after certain phases of the work--an export company, a terminal elevator company, the Public Press, Limited, and so on. However, the plan did not work out satisfactorily. The feeling of the Alberta officials after the Regina meeting was that even if Saskatchewan were not ready at the present time to consider federation on a basis acceptable to the other provinces, this should not overthrow all idea of federation. In short, the Alberta directors were strongly of the opinion that, failing complete affiliation of the farmers' business organizations at this time, the organization in Alberta and the Grain Growers' Grain Company should get together nevertheless, and this suggestion they presented at the meeting of the Canadian Council of Agriculture in Winnipeg. As this was approved by the Grain Growers' Grain Company and the Manitoba Association officials steps were taken to go into the matter in detail, the Saskatchewan organization having signified its intention of withdrawing from present action. President C. Rice-Jones, of the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company, and President T. A. Crerar, of the Grain Growers' Grain Company, were asked to give the matter careful thought and make their recommendations to their respective boards of directors. There followed a joint meeting of all those interested. It was held at Winnipeg and the result was a recommendation that the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company and the Grain Growers' Grain Company be amalgamated under the name "United Grain Growers, Limited." [1] When the matter finally came before the farmers concerned--at their annual meetings in 1916--it was decided unanimously to go ahead with the amalgamation of these two farmers' business organizations. Accordingly application was made for necessary changes in the charter of the Grain Growers' Grain Company and these changes were granted by Act of the Dominion Parliament in June, 1917. The authorized capital stock of United Grain Growers is five million dollars. Its annual meetings are to be held in the different provinces alternately. The shareholders are formed into local groups, each represented by delegates at annual meetings, these delegates alone doing the voting. Proxy voting is not allowed. The charter is designed, in brief, to introduce the system of internal government that has been in practice by the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company and the Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company and has proved so satisfactory in every way. This "merger" is unique in that the objections to a monopoly cannot be urged against it. There is no watered stock. With proxy voting eliminated no group of men can gain control of the company's affairs. Stock holdings by individuals is limited to $2,000 on a capitalization of five million and no man can grow rich by speculation with assets. Instead of exploiting the public the aim is service--reduction of prices instead of inflation. United Grain Growers, Limited, have begun their first year's business as an amalgamated farmers' concern, all the final details having been settled to the entire satisfaction of the farmers interested. The fact that the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' executives did not decide to amalgamate their co-operative marketing machinery with that of the others just now must not be misconstrued as a lack of harmony among the leaders of these powerful institutions. For they are meeting constantly in their inter-provincial relations, for mutual business advantages and in the broader educational aspects of the entire Movement. It will be seen that with such complete and solid business resources established in the three Prairie Provinces the organized farmers have been in a position to widen their field of influence and to carry on much propaganda work. The Movement has spread steadily until it embraces organization in other than prairie provinces. There seems to be a tendency among the entire agricultural population of Canada to organize and co-operate; so that it is not impossible for Canadian farmers in time to have a unity of organization in every province of the Dominion. In Ontario for many years there have been various farmers clubs, associations or granges. Until 1914 these were merely disorganized units. At the annual meeting of the Dominion Grange, however--December 17th and 18th, 1913--the advisability of consolidating for greater co-operation was discussed at some length. Representatives from the Western Grain Growers were present and told the story of what the Western farmer had accomplished. A committee[2] was appointed and, after investigating rural conditions in Ontario, this committee called a convention for March 19th and 20th, 1914, at Toronto. Farmers and fruit growers turned out in strength, old-time organization was cast aside and there came into being the "United Farmers of Ontario," [2] and the "United Farmers' Co-Operative Company, Limited," [3] with aims and organization similar to those of the Grain Growers. Although practically born during the war--although conditions have been far from normal, the United Farmers of Ontario have progressed steadily and naturally, with the co-operative activities setting the pace and with efficient service as the watchword. By 1915 there were 126 local associations with a total membership of 5,000. In the face of bad climatic conditions and war disturbances 1916 found the young organization being looked upon by the Ontario agriculturists with interest instead of suspicion. It continued to grow of its own accord. By that is meant that no advertising or other energetic campaign was undertaken; yet the membership increased during the year to 8,000 with 200 Locals organized throughout the province. To-day there is a total membership in excess of twenty thousand throughout the Province. Local conventions, addressed by Western leaders and other qualified speakers, have become a feature of the development. The first month in business for the United Farmers' Co-Operative Company was September, 1914, when $827 was taken in. The next month the sales increased to $6,250, and in November to $8,214. The December sales jumped to $17,970. The sales for 1915 approximated $226,000. In 1916 this amount was nearly doubled and during the first five months of 1917 the business done reached a total of $513,000. All this on paid-up capital of only $5,000. The Ontario Company has secured a new charter, increasing its authorized capital from $10,000 to $250,000. This expansion has been very satisfactory in view of the special conditions which necessarily make the progress of the Movement in the East slower than in the West. Ontario crops varying widely in different districts, the same unity of interest which has made possible the large grain companies of the West does not obtain. The Ontario farmers have had to confine their efforts to commercial lines. Co-operative sale of livestock, cheese, etc., may develop in time. Also the farm population in Ontario is in the minority and there are few electoral divisions where the urban vote does not control, resulting in mixed issues unknown on the prairies. Powerful influences have been brought to bear to handicap the Farmers' Movement in Ontario; but nevertheless it is spreading so rapidly that with the proper educational campaign great possibilities lie ahead of the Ontario farmers. The United Farmers of Ontario now have become affiliated with the Canadian Council of Agriculture,[4] the inter-provincial body of the organized farmers of Canada. The farmers of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Quebec are showing much interest and have sought to have the Movement extended. Meetings have been held and no doubt in due course the Eastern farmers will be prepared for unity of action in every province. What about British Columbia? On February 16th, 1917, the "United Farmers of British Columbia" was a development in the Pacific Coast Province. Prior to this there had been quite a number of individual farmers' organizations scattered throughout the agricultural sections of British Columbia. The initiative for closer unity was taken by the Cowichan Creamery Association, which called a meeting of the farmers in the Cowichan district to discuss the cost of production and serious labor conditions which were threatening complete failure of agriculture in British Columbia. At this meeting what was called temporarily the "Vancouver Island Farmers' Union" was formed with over one hundred members. Representatives from other districts were on hand to assure the expansion of the movement and a provisional organization committee[5] was appointed to carry on the missionary work. This Provisional Committee--called into existence by a mass meeting of farmers held at Duncan, B.C., on November 4th, 1916--at once prepared a strong circular, setting forth the case of the farmers and the need for organization. This was sent out to the secretaries of all Farmers' Institutes and suggested that a special meeting of delegates should be held at Victoria when the usual farmers' conventions were in session a few months later. Thus came about the final large organization meeting of February 16th, 1917, which resulted in the "United Farmers of British Columbia," with strong membership under the guidance of enthusiastic officers.[6] Representatives of the Grain Growers, from Alberta and Manitoba, were present to lend the encouragement of their experience. Among them was Roderick McKenzie, then Secretary[7] of the Canadian Council of Agriculture. When the farmers commenced organization in Manitoba, he said, it was possible to find many old-fashioned farmers who could see no reason for organization. Had not their fathers been successful farmers? Had they not raised a family of eight or ten or a dozen or more without belonging to any organization?--educated them, too? These old-time farmers forgot that the world was making progress as the years went by and they were not living in the same age as their fathers before them. "Fifty years ago, when I was a boy," Mr. McKenzie continued, "there was no such thing as a joint stock company. We would not hear a word about combines or trusts or transportation organizations or financial institutions. At that time the business was carried on by individuals. Then it grew into partnerships. From partnerships it developed into joint stock corporations and now we have these forming into trusts and combines and holding companies. It is simply co-operation of the few in the interests of the few. It created a force in public affairs and this must be met by another force--the organization of the common people, led by the farmers. "Where would the British Army be as a disorganized army confronting the Germans? Nowhere! Place a body of disorganized farmers in front of organized industrial interests and you see where you are at! There is no form of industry, no form of labor, no form of finance, banking associations, loan associations, insurance compensation associations, transportation associations, that are not organized. In Winnipeg we have a Bootblack's Association and each of the little fellows contributes five dollars a year to the support of their organization and five dollars represents fifty pairs of boots to blacken at a dime the pair. "In our Grain Growers' associations the organization is simple and coherent. There is no pass-word. There is no grip. There is no riding of the goat. We don't ask a farmer whether he is a Grit or a Tory; we don't ask him anything about his nationality or his relations or where he comes from or anything else. One of the main aims of the organization is to make good Canadians of the different nationalities we have in this Western country. We are getting the Galicians and other nationalities gradually brought in--getting them together for the development of Canadianism and the community spirit. "The one thing we have steered clear of is letting party politics enter into our organization. The thing we are trying to do is to co-operate with our legislators by helping them to find out the things that need enacting into law and that have not been enacted into law or to find what laws already on the statute books are weak and ask that these weaknesses be corrected--not in a dominating spirit but in a spirit of equity." Public opinion is rallying to the leadership of the farmers. Their policy is progressive. Probably the first body in Canada to give Woman her proper place in its activities and councils was the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association. To-day the farm women of the West are organized with the Grain Growers in all three Prairie Provinces, working side by side. Their aims are to solve the many problems directly bearing upon home life, educational facilities, health and all things which affect the farm woman's life and they have been of great assistance in many ways, particularly in Red Cross and other patriotic endeavors. To do justice to the noble efforts of Western Canada's farm women would require a separate volume. Still another development with far-reaching possibilities is the tendency of the Grain Growers and the Church to get together. It first revealed itself in Alberta under the conscientious encouragement of President H. W. Wood, of the United Farmers of Alberta, when in 1916 he inaugurated "U.F.A. Sunday"--one Sunday in each year to be set aside as the Farmers' own particular day, with special sermons and services. It was born of a realization that something is fundamentally wrong with our social institutions and that "the Church will have to take broader responsibilities than it is now doing." "Is Christ to develop the individuals and Carl Marx mobilize and lead them?" asked Mr. Wood. "Is Christ to hew the stones and Henry George build them into the finished edifice? If Christ cannot mobilize His forces and build true civilization His name will be forgotten in the earth. The solution of the economic problems must be spiritual rather than intellectual. This is the work of the Church and the Church must take the responsibility for it." Not only did the idea of a special Sunday meet with hearty response from the churches and farmers in Alberta, but it was taken up in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In 1917 "Grain Growers' Sunday" was observed all over the West and led to many inspiring addresses. One of the most significant of these was delivered by President J. A. Maharg, of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association, at a mass meeting in Moose Jaw on Sunday, May 27th. "There has been a strong agitation against church union," said Mr. Maharg. "We hope to bring the churches together. The establishment of community churches is not altogether an impossibility. That groups of churches will be brought together for the holding of community services is not altogether impossible, and a farmers' organization is not an organization that is farthest away from doing this." In these days of revolutionary thought who shall set the length and width of the Farmers' field of influence, therefore? A string of co-related provincial organizations of farmers, stretching right across the Dominion, working harmoniously through the Canadian Council of Agriculture, will create a national force which in itself will represent Public Opinion--which cannot be denied the upward trend to wider and better citizenship for all classes in Canada. For Public Opinion governs legislation as legislation governs the country. [1] See Appendix--Par. 17. [2] See Appendix--Par. 14. [3] See Appendix--Par. 15. [4] See Appendix--Par. 11. [5] See Appendix--Par. 16. [6] See Appendix--Par. 16. [7] See Appendix--Par. 18. CHAPTER XXIII THE DEPTH OF THE FURROWS Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. --_Julius Caesar._ Because it was the logical and primary source of redress for the abuses which led the Western farmers to organize, the Grain Growers from the first have concerned themselves seriously with legislation. It took them a little while to discover that instead of being an all-sufficient panacea, mere legislation may become at times as flat and useless as a cold pancake. But by the time the farmers had come to close quarters with their difficulties their vision had widened so that they were able to look ahead, clearing the path for the next step forward. So frequently have they besought the Governments, both Federal and Provincial, that occasionally they have been accused by harassed politicians of "playing politics and nothing else." As their organizations grew and acquired knowledge it is true that these "petitioners" who "did humbly pray" began to straighten their backs a little, the while they wrestled with the kinks that were bothering them from too much stooping. It was a sort of chiropractic process for the alleviation of growing pains--the discovery of the proper nerve to ask and receive, to seek and find. As the People grew more accustomed to the sound of their own Voice it was only natural that the quaver of timidity began to disappear from the tones of it and that their speech grew stronger in the Legislative Halls dedicated to government "of, by and for" them. The "Backbone of His Country" set out to prove that he was not spineless, merely disjointed. And as he gained confidence in his vertebrae the Farmer began to sit up and take notice--began even to entertain the bold idea of getting eventually upon his feet. The intention was laudable. To make it audible he assembled a platform, stood up on it, and argued. His protests could be heard clean to the back of the Hall. Like the young elephant whose trunk was being stretched by the crocodile, he said: "You are hurting me!" In the nose-pulling game of Party Politics as it too often has been played, it sometimes takes a lusty holler to make itself heard above all the other hollering that is going on; if getting a hearing is "playing politics," then the Grain Growers have run up a pretty good score. They began with various amendments to the Grain Act. These included the famous "car distribution" clause, the farmer's right to a car and his procedure to obtain it and additional cars as he needed them, the provision of penalties for the purchase or sale of car rights, etc. Opposition to some of these amendments was keen and the farmers had to fight constantly; when they were not fighting for necessary amendments they were fighting to retain those already secured. Constant vigilance was required. Many delegations of Grain Growers visited Ottawa from time to time to plead for improvement of conditions in handling grain, more equitable inspection methods, government ownership and operation of terminal facilities and so on. Each year the annual conventions of the various associations in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta grew in size and importance; each year the Grain Growers' knowledge expanded, much of it gained by marketing experience. From these "Farmers' Parliaments" and the pages of the _Grain Growers' Guide_ they drew inspiration for many radical ideas and threshed them out into well defined policies. By the time Sir Wilfrid Laurier, then Premier of Canada, ventured West in 1910 the farmers were pretty well posted on national topics. Everywhere he went he faced thousands of ruddy, big-fisted men who read addresses to him and did a lot of extemporaneous talking which was no less forceful and complete than the prepared briefs. Six or eight hundred of them followed him back to Ottawa in December of that same year and laid siege to the Government on its own stamping-ground. It was the most remarkable red-seal record of the Voice from the Soil that hitherto had been known thereabouts. In order that there might be no doubt as to the planks on which they stood, the Grain Growers assembled a platform in full view of the audience. "We want reciprocal Free Trade between Canada and the United States in all horticultural, agricultural and animal products," declared the farmers; "also in spraying materials and fertilizers; illuminating, fuel and lubricating oils; cement, fish and lumber. "We want reciprocal Free Trade between the two countries in all agricultural implements, machinery, vehicles and parts of each of these. We want it carried into effect through the independent action of the respective Governments rather than by the hard and fast requirements of a treaty. "We want the duties on all British goods lowered to one-half the rates charged under the general tariff schedule, whatever that may be. Also, we want any trade advantages given to the United States in reciprocal trade relations to be extended to Great Britain. "We want such further gradual reduction of the remaining preferential tariff as will ensure the establishment of complete free trade between Canada and the Mother Land within ten years. We're willing to face direct taxation, in such form as may be advisable, to make up the revenue required under new tariff conditions." "This bunch wants the whole earth!" cried the Canadian Manufacturers indignantly. "Sub-soil and all!" nodded the Railways. "Certainly they're plowing deep," commented the Banks. "To eradicate weeds," admitted the Farmers. "Damn it all, anyway!" worried the Politicians. To show that they were talking neither Tory nor Grit, the Western farmers proceeded to waylay the Leader of the Opposition, Hon. R. L. Borden, the following year when he in turn decided to "Go West." He, too, came face to face with thousands of ruddy, big-fisted men and listened to their equally plain-spoken addresses, prepared and extemporaneous. And what came of it all? Did these farmers get what they wanted? Not yet! But while all this agitation of the Grain Growers one time and another seldom has resulted in assent to their full requests, certain compliances have been made on different occasions with beneficial results. For instance--to mention three--the Royal Grain Commission of 1906, the permanent Grain Commission, and the Government Terminal Elevators are an outcome of various requests and delegations of the Grain Growers. Certainly the organized farmers of Western Canada have attained a measure of self-confidence which enables them to declare themselves in definite language. While seeking wider markets and the real value of their products, they have been opposed always to any scheme which accomplishes higher prices at the expense of the consumer or of the British workman. They do not believe in import duties on food stuffs, clothing, fuel or building material. Rather do they favor bringing closer together the producer and consumer to the advantage of both. They believe in cheaper money for the development of agriculture and other industries and in such utilization of natural resources that the homes of the people may be improved. They have stood consistently behind woman suffrage and the abolition of the liquor traffic. They would adopt direct legislation through the Initiative and Referendum. They believe in the principles of Co-Operation in buying and selling. They have urged extension of the parcel post system, the reduction of traffic charges to a reasonable basis, Government control of waterways and all natural resources that they may be developed only in the public interest. Does a creed like this spell class legislation? Does it indicate that in his eagerness to improve the conditions surrounding his own life the Grain Grower is forgetting the general welfare of the Dominion of Canada? Listen to the doctrine which the leaders have inculcated on every occasion--to President T. A. Crerar before the War: "You have a very clear-cut and distinct responsibility in supporting the whole movement of the organized farmers in Western Canada; for this means that you are improving not alone your own environment and condition, but also creating the conditions and influences that will develop a higher and purer ideal of public service upon the part of our people than we have in Canada to-day. It should be a source of great satisfaction that upon all important matters the policies adopted and supported by the organized farmers in the past have been formed upon what in their judgment would benefit the country as a whole and not from the narrow view of selfish interest. "During the past ten years the people of Canada have mortgaged the prosperity of the future to far too great an extent. Our total borrowings as a nation, for public and private purposes, have run into such a colossal sum that it requires about $160,000,000 annually to pay interest on the amounts borrowed. This constitutes a very heavy task on a country with about eight millions of a population. Manufacturing industries have been built up with a view of developing home industry and furnishing home markets, but often at a very heavy cost to our agricultural development, with the result that we have been travelling in a circle, reaching nowhere, rather than along the road that leads to Progress. "We hear considerable nowadays of the necessity of a 'Back to the Land' movement. It is necessary, however, to do a little more than get people located on the land with a view of increasing agricultural production. It is necessary to free agriculture from the burdens now resting upon it and make it the first business of the country. "Much of our natural resources has been recklessly handled, and as a people we are faced with the necessity of overcoming the evil effects of our unbusinesslike methods as a nation in administering resources. If we are to surmount our shortcomings in this respect and pay our obligations as a nation to the outside world, we must place agriculture throughout Canada upon a thoroughly sound and profitable basis. The creation of wealth from our wonderfully rich natural resources, in which agriculture stands in the forefront, is the essential thing and should receive most consideration from our Governments--both Dominion and Provincial. "We must learn to respect each other's differences and, if we do, with the development of that democratic spirit which is now day by day becoming more manifest in Western Canada, we need have no fear of our usefulness as an agency in bringing about the ultimate triumph of the principles of justice between man and man." Listen to President J. A. Maharg, addressing the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association in 1914: "What is wanted is the general recognition by all classes of the importance of Agriculture and an honest desire by them to assist in placing it on a basis equal to that of any other industry--making it an occupation that will draw people to it instead of driving them away. In soliciting the aid of other classes I am not asking them to assist us in gaining any special favors whatever; all we ask is that they assist us to have Agriculture placed in the position its importance entitles it to." Hear the President of the United Farmers of Alberta, H. W. Wood: "This is the day of class co-operation. That means inter-class competition. In this competition of class against class ours is the losing class at every turn because we have been the least organized, the least co-operative; consequently the weakest. Before we can hope to hold our own in this struggle we will have to bring our full strength, thoroughly organized, to bear in protection of our rights. "I have an abiding faith that the organized farmers will receive that strength, not selfishly but unselfishly in the defence of the rights of all and for the spoliation of none. The highest ambition I have for our organization is that it may develop along the lines of safety and sanity, that we may hold to a steady determination to go forward unwaveringly in our efforts till the door of hope and opportunity is as wide open to the farmers as to any class in the world, that we may zealously cultivate unselfish co-operation and learn to treat fairly and justly every man and every class that is giving a useful service to society." And this from the Presidential address of R. C. Henders at the last Manitoba Grain Growers' convention: "In order to have legislation that will be equitable to the different interests concerned, all of these interests should be somewhat equally represented in the passing of such legislation. We do not desire to minimize in any way the great commercial interests of our people, yet we feel that the work of our associations is educational and legislative in its character. Democratic rule requires that the average citizen be an active, instructed and intelligent ruler of his country and therefore the success of democracy depends upon the education of the people along two principal lines--first, political knowledge; second, and what is of far more importance, political morality. Ideal government is found when we have righteous rulers governing a people of character and intelligence. Right education is right thinking and right thinking can only come through accurate information." Now, is all this preaching of the men who are leading the farmers just so much talk?--chaff?--prairie wind? If not, what lies back of it? The farmers have an organization which meets every so-often to harmonize and crystallize the thought among their various associations and business units. It is that same Canadian Council of Agriculture which has been mentioned already. It consists of the executive committees of eight farmers' co-operative, business and educational institutions, to wit: The United Farmers of Ontario, The United Farmers' Co-Operative Company of Ontario, The Grain Growers' Association of Manitoba, United Grain Growers (of the entire West), The Grain Growers' Association of Saskatchewan, The Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company, The United Farmers of Alberta, and the _Grain Growers' Guide_, the official organ of the whole movement. At a meeting of this influential body in Winnipeg in December, 1916--representing an affiliation of 60,000 farmers--a "National Political Platform" was adopted to embrace economic, political and social reforms not alone in the interests of the farmers but of Canada's citizens generally. The farmers are looking for the support of all who live in cities and towns as well as the rural districts; of organized Labor as well as organized farmers. This platform was referred to the provincial organizations which stand behind the Canadian Council of Agriculture. It was considered by each of the provincial boards and by them referred in turn to the three thousand local community associations into which the members are organized. Each Local was asked to call a meeting to consider the platform and vote upon its adoption. The next step was for the members to give their votes and financial support only to such candidates for the House of Commons as would pledge support of this National Platform in its entirety and who could be relied upon as Members of Parliament to live up to their pledges. And here is the National Political Platform on which the farmers stand without equivocation: THE CUSTOMS TARIFF WHEREAS the war has revealed the amazing financial strength of Great Britain, which has enabled her to finance not only her own part in the struggle, but also to assist in financing her Allies to the extent of hundreds of millions of pounds, this enviable position being due to the free trade policy which has enabled her to draw her supplies freely from every quarter of the globe and consequently to undersell her competitors on the world's markets, and because this policy has not only been profitable to Great Britain but has greatly strengthened the bonds of Empire by facilitating trade between the Motherland and her overseas Dominions--we believe that the best interests of the Empire and of Canada would be served by reciprocal action on the part of Canada through gradual reductions of the tariff on British imports, having for its object a closer union and a better understanding between Canada and the Motherland, and by so doing not only strengthen the hands of Great Britain in the life and death struggle in which she is now engaged, but at the same time bring about a great reduction in the cost of living to our Canadian people; AND WHEREAS the protective tariff has fostered combines, trusts and "gentlemen's agreements" in almost every line of Canadian industrial enterprise, by means of which the people of Canada--both urban and rural--have been shamefully exploited through the elimination of competition, the ruination of many of our smaller industries and the advancement of prices on practically all manufactured goods to the full extent permitted by the tariff; AND WHEREAS agriculture--the basic industry upon which the success of all other industries primarily depends--is almost stagnant throughout Canada as shown by the declining rural population in both Eastern and Western Canada, due largely to the greatly increased cost of agricultural implements and machinery, clothing, boots and shoes, building material and practically everything the farmer has to buy, caused by the protective tariff, so that it is becoming impossible for farmers generally to carry on farming operations profitably; AND WHEREAS the protective tariff is the most wasteful and costly method ever designed for raising national revenue, because for every dollar obtained thereby for the public treasury at least three dollars pass into the pockets of the protected interests, thereby building up a privileged class at the expense of the masses, thus making the rich richer and the poor poorer; AND WHEREAS the protective tariff has been and is a chief corrupting influence in our national life because the protected interests, in order to maintain their unjust privileges, have contributed lavishly to political and campaign funds, thus encouraging both political parties to look to them for support, thereby lowering the standard of public morality; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Canadian Council of Agriculture, representing the organized farmers of Canada, urges that as a means of bringing about these much needed reforms and at the same time reducing the high cost of living, now proving such a burden on the people of Canada, our tariff laws should be amended as follows: (1) By reducing the customs duty on goods imported from Great Britain to one half the rates charged under the general tariff and that further gradual, uniform reductions be made in the remaining tariff on British imports that will ensure complete free trade between Great Britain and Canada in five years. (2) That the Reciprocity Agreement of 1911, which still remains on the United States statute books, be accepted by the Parliament of Canada. (3) That all food stuffs not included in the Reciprocity Agreement be placed on the free list. (4) That agricultural implements, farm machinery, vehicles, fertilizer, coal, lumber, cement, illuminating fuel and lubricating oils be placed on the free list. (5) That the customs tariff on all the necessaries of life be materially reduced. (6) That all tariff concessions granted to other countries be immediately extended to Great Britain. TAXATION FOR REVENUE As these tariff reductions will very considerably reduce the national revenue derived from that source, the Canadian Council of Agriculture would recommend that in order to provide the necessary additional revenue for carrying on the government of the country and for the prosecution of the war to a successful conclusion, direct taxation be imposed in the following manner: (1) By a direct tax on unimproved land values, including all natural resources. (2) By a sharply graduated personal income tax. (3) By a heavy graduated inheritance tax on large estates. (4) By a graduated income tax on the profits of corporations. OTHER NECESSARY REFORMS The Canadian Council of Agriculture desires to endorse also the following policies as in the best interests of the people of Canada: (1) The nationalization of all railway, telegraph and express companies. (2) That no more natural resources be alienated from the Crown but brought into use only under short term leases, in which the interests of the public shall be properly safeguarded, such leases to be granted only by public auction. (3) Direct legislation, including the initiative and referendum and the right of recall. (4) Publicity of political campaign fund contributions and expenditures both before and after elections. (5) The abolition of the patronage system. (6) Full provincial autonomy in liquor legislation, including manufacture, export and import. (7) That the extension of the franchise to women in any province shall automatically admit them to the federal franchise. That is the official stand of the farmers and they point out that their political platform[1] is constructive, not destructive. The farmers are not trying to sidestep their fair share of the expenses in connection with government and public institutions; where they have torn down they have rebuilt. Admitting that the prosperity of Western Canada is essential to our national prosperity, it is not necessary to look far in order to understand why the farmers have taken this definite action. Western farmers and citizens generally are carrying extra burdens which offset the advantages of cheap and fertile land. Interest on mortgages and bank loans have been higher than in Eastern Canada. It is more expensive to distribute commodities West than East. On account of the lavish donations of Western lands to railway promoters the cost of railway construction has borne heavily on the West. Freight rates are about sixty per cent. higher and express rates about sixty-six per cent. higher than in Eastern Canada. Thanks to the protective tariff, Western people are paying high for everything they get without any return compensation. "Something has to be done to lift some of these unjust burdens," say the farmers, "if a prosperous country is to be developed West of the Great Lakes." Hence this platform. The Western farmers believe in it earnestly. It is their politics. They believe that the results which would follow its support in the House of Commons would be of untold benefit to the Canadian people as a whole. They will continue to believe it. When the crisis arose which brought about the last election, in which Union Government swept the West, the farmers saw the gravity of the situation and were prepared to forego immediate discussion of tariff amendments to concentrate on winning the war. Some of the farmers' candidates even withdrew in favor of Union candidates. All those who remained in the field were elected. After the war is won--what? Reforms of breathtaking sweep are taking place as the natural outcome of current conditions. The liquor traffic has been tossed aside like a useless boot. Woman has stepped forth to a sphere of active worth without upheaval. Just where lie the boundaries of the impossible and who shall define them? It is a far-seeing, clear-thinking New Farmer who has come forward in the last decade. Through his associations, his marketing experiences, his contact with railways and banks and manufacturers and governments he has become a student of economics. At the same time he has strengthened his thews and sinews for whatever may face him on the path ahead. And his eyes are wide open to the fact that there are "lions in the path!" Wait a minute, Mr. Business Man! Before condemning this Western farmer out of hand, put yourself in his place and try for a moment in all fairness to forget your own viewpoint. It may be that you have not even seen the prairies. Have you ever been at sea with not a thing in sight but water, sky, horizon? Imagine the water to be land, and yourself living in a one-room shack or a little low sod hut bewhiskered with growing grass. The nearest railway was fifty miles away and you got so lonesome that the howl of a coyote or the cry of owls in the night nearly drove you crazy. Neighbors so scarce your social pleasures were cut off by distance and you reared your family on that homestead twenty-five miles from a doctor, a church or a school. When you made the long trip in for supplies in those early days you found you had to pay anywhere up to twice as much as their market value while for what you had to sell you had to take from twenty-five to fifty per cent. less than the market value. The implements you simply had to have for your work you bought on the instalment plan with interest at ten and twelve per cent. for the privilege. When you had survived three years of this and with high hopes took your patent to the mortgage company to raise a loan at ten per cent. you found you couldn't get accommodation. Thereupon in marched your implement and other creditors with a chattel mortgage on everything you had--except the missus and the kids and the baby's bottley-by! Then in the beautiful hot month of August it blew up black one day and the chickens scurried for shelter and you and the wife stood with your noses flattened against the window-pane--unless it was only oiled paper--and watched the big ice-marbles bouncing and heard the hail drumming flat in a few minutes the acres of wheat you had worked so hard to produce. Or perhaps you escaped that time only to have your wheat frozen later on and when you took three days on purpose to haul in a wagonload to the elevator you couldn't get a decent offer for it. So that you pulled off your mitts and clenched your frost-cracked hands as you prepared to turn homeward with but a pitiful portion of the food and clothing you had promised the family you would bring. As you spread across your chest, inside your sheepskin coat, the old newspaper somebody had given you would your soul expand with the joy of living while you headed out into the snowy waste at forty degrees below zero? And if after you got home and the crying young ones had been put to bed in the corner behind the canvas curtain and your wife came and sat beside you, her own tears bravely dried--if then you read in the paper that the Government had decided you farmers were so prosperous you should contribute from your easily gained wealth a free gift to manufacturers, financiers, railway magnates or others--then would you say with a great booming, hearty enthusiasm and shining eyes: "I tell you, Wife, this is the life!"--would you? Or would you just proceed to swear--naturally, successfully, in what is known as "flowing" language? By just such pioneer hardships were the farmers of Western Canada driven to organize in self-defence. It has ever been the history of revolt that its wellspring was the suffering of the people. Pioneer hardships it was that caused the various movements which agitated the farmers of the Western States in earlier days. When fingers become hardened and crooked from unceasing toil that achieves nothing but premature old age; when hope withers in a treadmill that grinds to the very soul--then comes rebellion. [1] Since the formation of the organized farmers' National Political Platform several of its planks have been adopted as legislation at Ottawa, notably the abolition of the patronage system, extension of the franchise to women, total prohibition, and personal income taxation. CHAPTER XXIV AND THE END IS NOT YET. The principle of co-operation draws the whole community together. It breaks down barriers. It unites the State. It gives hope to the humblest toiler. And it strengthens the great moral ideal of duty, without which no State can endure.--_Earl Grey_. What is to be the final outcome of the Western farmers' revolt and its spread to rural communities in Eastern provinces? Is there to be greater harmony among opposing interests or is Canada on the threshold of internal strife which will plow deep furrows of dissension between class and class to an extent hitherto unknown in this country? If there is to be a pitched fight between capitalistic groups and the people at large, led by the farmers, what are the chances of victory for the latter? If they win, what will be the national effect? These were a few of the questions which first turned the writer's serious attention to the Grain Growers. It seems scarcely credible that this great economic movement has attained present momentum practically unheralded; yet such is the case. The writer had watched its early struggles to success from Government windows and as preparation for a brief historical sketch it seemed desirable to get out among the farmers themselves and study the situation from their angle. Frankly, the task was not approached without some skepticism as to the motives which might be uncovered. Almost the only occasions on which the Grain Growers revealed themselves to the public were when they waited upon politicians for this, that or the other. So often did this happen and so insistent were they that there seemed some grounds for the belief that to satisfy a Grain Grower was humanly impossible. From Legislative casements it even looked at times as if they were a new species of Indian, collecting political scalps! All manner of people accused them of all manner of things. In the East they were called "blacksmith-shop politicians, nail-keg economists, grousers and soreheads"; in the West they were dubbed "corner-grocer statesmen and political football players." When the caravans of the Eastern political chieftains, Liberal and Conservative, came West they knew they were going to be held up by the outlaws. Long before these respective expeditions started across the plains infested with wild and dangerous Grain Growers, their scouts--the Western M.P.'s--were ranging far and wide in preparation. And when those Grain Growers in turn rode East to take possession of Ottawa there was a popular expectation that they were about to whoop in and shoot up the town in the real old wild and woolly way. They were referred to cleverly as "Sod-Busters." It was rather startling to find them merely a new type of Business Farmer, trained to think on his feet, a student of economics. To gather and verify the facts here recorded has required two years. During that time the writer has listened to earnest farmers in prairie shacks, pioneers and newcomers, leaders and followers, and has watched these farmers at work in their "Farmers' Parliaments" where they assemble annually by the thousands. It is impossible thus to meet and know these men while examining the facts of their accomplishments without being impressed by the tremendous potentialities that underlie their efforts. Almost the first discovery is that the organized farmers have ideals beyond material advantage and that these ideals are national in scope, therefore involving responsibilities. Undeterred by these, the farmers are eager to push on to further achievements. Their hope for these ideals lies in the success of their business undertakings and it is because that success is the spinal column of the whole movement that it occupies such a prominent place in this historical outline. Not all the Grain Growers are men of vision, it must be admitted. Many have joined the movement for what they can get out of it. In all great aggregations of human beings it is quite possible to discover the full gamut of human failings. But loose threads sticking to a piece of cloth are no part of its warp and woof. It is the thinking Grain Grower who must be reckoned with and he is in the majority; the others are being educated. If there is doubt as to the sincerity of the organized farmers, why did their pioneer business agency spend its substance in educational directions instead of solely along the straight commercial lines of the concerns with which it was in competition? The very mould into which it poured its energies shaped special difficulties, generated special antagonisms and every possible obstruction to its progress. Its cash grants to the Associations in the West, to the official organ of the movement, even to the Ontario farmers, run over the hundred-thousand-dollar mark. Or, take the case of the Grain Growers at Virden, Manitoba, who proposed to bring into the district a large shipment of binder twine to supply their members. When the local merchant who had been handling this necessity learned of the plan he raised his voice, thus: "If you fellows are going to do that then I go out of binder twine this season. I won't handle a pound of it." "Not even to supply the farmers who don't belong to our Association?" "That's what I said. You're going to make a convenience of me when you rob me of all my cash business. The only business I could do would be with farmers who wanted credit." Did the Grain Growers say: "That's their lookout, then. Let them join us or go twineless"? No. They decided to bring in their co-operative shipment as planned, but to allow the merchant to handle it on commission in order to prevent any injustice to the other farmers. Incidents like that can be recorded from all over the country. It does not take very many of them to compel the honest conviction that equity of citizenship for all the people in every walk of life means more to these farmers than a high-sounding shibboleth. That being so, it becomes difficult to accept the slur of utter selfishness--the idea that the farmers are auto-intoxicated, a pig-headed lot who cause trouble for nothing. It is very hard to believe that Everybody Else is good and kind and sincere and true, affectionate one to another with brotherly love, not slothful in business; for one knows that the best of us need the prayers of our mothers! When these Grain Growers started out they did not know very much about what was going on. They had their suspicions; but that was all. To-day they know. Their business activities have taught them many things while providing the resources for the fight that is shaping unless the whole monopolistic system lets go its stranglehold. Yes, the farmers do talk about freedom in buying and selling; also about tariff reform. They point out that there are criminal laws to jail bankers who dared to charge from twenty-five per cent. to forty-two per cent. for the use of money; that food and clothing and the necessaries of life are the same as money and that high tariff protection which fosters combines and monopolies is official discrimination against the many in favor of the few; that there are other and more just forms of taxation and that all old systems of patronage and campaign funds have got to go if the grave problems of these grave times are to be met successfully. It is no old-time "Hayseed" who is discussing these things. It is a New Farmer altogether. The Farmers' Movement is no fancy of the moment either, but the product of Time itself. It is a condition which has developed in our rural life as the corolla of increased opportunities for education. The Farmer to-day is a different man to what he was ten years ago--indeed, five years ago. It has taken fifteen years of bitter struggle for the Western farmers to win to their present position and now that they are far enough along their Trail to Better Things to command respect they are going to say what they think without fear or favor. They believe the principles for which they stand to be fundamental to national progress. If there is to be any attempt to cram the old order of things down the people's throats; if, under cloak of all this present talk of winning the war, of new eras and of patriotism, profiteers should scheme and plan fresh campaigns--then will there be such a wrathful rising of the people as will sweep everything before it. In the forefront of that battle will stand the rugged legions of the organized farmers. Make no miscalculation of their ability to fight. This year, 1918, will see them sawing their own lumber in their own saw-mills in British Columbia. If necessary, they can grind their own flour in their own flour mills, dig their own coal from their own mines, run their own packing-plants, provide their own fidelity and fire-insurance, finance their own undertakings. They grow the grain. They produce the new wealth from the soil. They are the men who create our greatest asset, everything else revolving upon the axis of Agriculture in Canada. If, then, the farming population has learned to co-operate and stand solid; if in addition they have acquired the necessary capital to educate the masses and are prepared to spend it in advancing their ideals; if the working classes of the cities and the soldier citizens of Coming Days join their ranks--what chance will Special Privilege have against the public desire for Equal Rights? Is it to be co-operation in all sincerity or class warfare? If the other great interests in our national life will meet the Farmer in a fair spirit, approaching our national problems in an honest attempt to co-operate in their solution for the common good, they will find the Farmer meeting them eagerly. They will find that these farmer leaders are reasonable men, broad-minded, square-principled and just--no less so because the class they represent is organized to stand up for its rights. The situation is not hopeless. Most of these pages we have been turning are Back Pages. Old conditions and much of the bitterness which they generated have passed. The story of those old conditions has been told from the viewpoint of the Farmer in order that his attitude may be understood. But it must be remembered that the grain trade to-day is a very different proposition to what it was and that many of the men who have devoted their lives to it in the cities have played a big and honest part in its development. The Winnipeg Grain Exchange as an Exchange has done a great deal for Western Canada, a point that undoubtedly has been overlooked by many farmers. Gradually, however, the Farmer has learned that all is not evil in "Babylon"; for out of revolution has come evolution.[1] The key to that better future which is desired so earnestly and wisely is Education. The problems of the day are commanding the mental focus of the nation. The Banks, the Railways, the Manufacturers are considering them. The Joint Committee of Commerce and Agriculture has great opportunities for removing much old-time hostility on both sides. And now that true co-operation of all classes has become a national duty, surely out of the testing must come better understanding and a greater future. Just now, of course, there is only the War. It has brought the Canadian people to their feet. For the angry glare of the gun flashes has thrown in silhouette many fallacies, many foibles and rubbish heaps, and these must be swept out in preparation for the new nationhood which Canada is called upon to assume. With a third of the entire British Empire entrusted to her management and the hopeful gaze of homemakers the world over turning upon her Canada's responsibilities are great. But she will rise to her opportunities. Just now there is only the War. The history of mankind has no previous record of such chaos, such a solemn time. Thrones toppling, maps changing, whole peoples dying of starvation and misery while the fate of Democracy is balanced on the issue. Men are slaying each other on land, in the air, on the water and below it while the forces of Destruction are gnawing holes in the World's resources with the rapacity of swarming rats. It is costing Great Britain alone over thirty-five million dollars every day--a million and a half every hour! As for Canada--much figuring is being done by experts and others in attempts to estimate the total debt which the Canadian people will have to carry after the war. But the people themselves are too far immersed in war efforts to pause for futile reckonings. There will be time enough for that when the war is won, and won it shall be, no matter what the cost. It requires no great perspicacity to realize that our total national debt will be a sum which rolls so easily on its ciphers that it eludes the grasp of the average mind. It is going to cost a lot even to keep the wheels greased at five and one-half per cent. from year to year. Everybody knows it. _Win the War!_ When the lamp went out and the old world we had known blew up--away back in 1914--we spagged about anxiously, calling to each other: "Business as Usual!" Since then factory production has gone up fifty per cent.; export trade a hundred; profits on capital all the way up to the billion-and-a-quarter mark. We have got so used to things in four years that there is danger of forgetting that War has driven a sap beneath these ironical gifts of Mars and it is full time Business looked around for a place to light and got ready to dig itself in. Mobilization, co-operation of every interest, the full grapple of every individual--national effort, in short--these the State demands. The coverlet has been thrown back upon the realization that the State has claims upon each citizen which transcend his individual fortunes--that individual prosperity, in fact, is entirely dependent upon the prosperity of the national whole. Not all by himself can the Man Behind The Gun win a war like this. At his heels must stand the munition workers, the Man Back of The Desk, the people themselves, each guarding against waste and each contributing his or her part, great or small, for that national economy which alone can hope to sustain the terrific pace that victory demands. Finally, out in the great open spaces, faithful and unassuming and backing his country to the limit, must plod the Man Behind The Plow, working silently and steadily from dawn till dark to enlist and re-enlist the horizoned acres. Canada has reason for pride in her farmers. No class is more loyal to British traditions. No class is more determined to win this war. Thousands of their sons are at the front. Many a lonely mother has stood on a prairie knoll, straining her eyes for the last glimpse of the buggy and bravely waving "God-speed." In many a windswept prairie farm home reigns the sad pride of sacrifice. Out of the sanctifying fires is arising a national tendency to new viewpoints. The hope of Canada lies in a more active participation in affairs by the Average Citizen. In opposition to an awakened national interest what chance is there going to be for the silent partnerships of "invisible government"? 'Twill be a sorry partizan who allows his thoughts at this crisis to patter away at that old practice line, so full of past mistakes: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the Party." Win-the-War unity is the leaven at work in Canada to-day and regeneration is coming. What does it matter except that our country's leaders shall rise to their opportunities for true statesmanship with a deep sense of their responsibilities to the millions who turn to them for guidance in this time of national stress? What does it matter except that the people shall grant to their leaders their sympathy and co-operation in the cares of crisis? As this book goes to the publisher Union Government in Canada has become a fact. Not since Confederation has such a thing happened in this country. The vampire methods with which our political system has been cursed have been thrown under foot and thinking Canadians everywhere have drawn a breath of relief. The energies which have been wasted in jockeying for party position are now concentrating upon effective unity of action. Let us hope so indeed. There must be no want of confidence in the cheers which echo from Canadian trenches. For over there where Canada's first line of defence runs from the North Sea through Belgium into France your boy, Mr. Business Man, and your boy, Mr. Farmer, stand shoulder to shoulder. Think you that in the crucible which bares the very souls of men those boys have any thought of class criticism or of selfish grabbings? In those trenches you will find more practical Christianity, more unselfishness, more true brotherhood than can be realized at this distance. The spirit of sacrifice, the help-one-another idea, the equal share and charity of thought--these revitalizing principles will be brought back by our khaki citizens when they march home from victory. It is past belief that there should be anything but complete unity of purpose as they look back for their country's supports. A coat of arms on the red field of a British flag, a maple leaf on khaki cap or collar-band, a single name on every shoulder-strap--CANADA. All the nations of the earth salute that name. For it is emblazoned on the shell-churned fields of Ypres where, sweltering and bleeding, Canada "saved the day" for all humanity. It is inscribed for all time to come on the Somme--on Vimy Ridge--on the difficult slopes of Passchendaele. Just now, only the War. But when in the Years To Be we find ourselves in some far land or in some international circle which Chance, mayhap, has thrown together; when the talk turns upon the Great War and the wonderful victory of Civilization; when we are questioned as to who and what we are and we reply simply: "Gentlemen, I am a Canadian"---- Then may the light of pride in our eyes be undimmed by any sense of shame for duty shunned. May it be that out of it all has arisen a higher conception of individual and national life. So that in place of deep furrows of dissension there will be the level seed-bed of greater unity and justice among men. THE END. [1] Abnormal conditions in the grain trade at present, due to the war, have led to government control of the crop by means of a Board of Grain Supervisors, aside altogether from the permanent Board of Grain Commissioners. This government commission has very wide powers, superseding the Grain Act for the time being, and can fix the price at which grain stored in any elevator may be purchased, ascertain available supplies, fix conditions of removal from storage and determine the destination of grain, receive purchase offers and fix sale prices, take possession of grain in elevators and sell it, provide transportation, etc. The Board of Grain Supervisors consists of two representatives of the organized farmers--Hon. T. A. Crerar, Minister of Agriculture, and H. W. Wood, President of United Farmers of Alberta; one representative of unorganised farmers--S. K. Rathwell; three representatives of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange--J. C. Gage, W. E. Bawlf and Dr. Magill (Chairman); a representative of the British Food Commission--Jas. Stewart; two representatives of Labor--Controller Ainey (Montreal) and W. B. Best, of Locomotive Firemen; W. A. Matheson, of Lake of the Woods Milling Company, and Lionel H. Clarke, head of the Canada Malting Company and a member of the Toronto Harbor Commission. Dr. Robert Magill, the Chairman, is Secretary of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange and was formerly Chief Commissioner of the permanent Board of Grain Commissioners. APPENDIX FIRST OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, COMMITTEES, ETC., OF THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT IN WESTERN CANADA, ETC. 1. _Territorial_ (Saskatchewan) _Grain Growers' Association--1902_. President, W. R. Motherwell (Abernethy); Secretary, John Millar (Indian Head). Among those who acted on the first Board of Directors were: Messrs. Walter Govan and M. M. Warden (Indian Head); John Gillespie, Elmer Shaw and Peter Dayman (Abernethy); Matthew Snow (Wolseley). 2. _Virden_ (Manitoba) _Grain Growers' Association--1903_. President, J. W. Scallion; Vice-president, George Carefoot; Secretary-Treasurer, H. W. Dayton; Directors: J. A. Blakeman, Isaac Bennett, Peter McDonald and C. E. Ivens. 3. _Manitoba Grain Growers' Association--1903_. President, J. W. Scallion (Virden); Vice-President, R. C. Henders (Culross); Secretary-Treasurer, R. McKenzie (Brandon); Directors: Donald McEwan, Brandon; William Ryan (Boissevain), W. A. Robinson (Elva), D. W. McCuaig (Portage la Prairie), John Wilson (Lenore), and H. A. Fraser, Hamiota. 4. _Committee to Investigate Possibilities of Farmers Trading in Grain--1905_. The first step towards co-operative trading in grain by the farmers of Western Canada was a scheme, fathered by E. A. Partridge, of Sintaluta, Sask., the first official action being taken by the Manitoba Grain Growers' Association at their annual convention in 1905, when the following committee was ordered to investigate and report: Chairman, E. A. Partridge (Sintaluta, Sask.); J. A. Taylor (Cartwright, Man.); A. S. Barton (Boissevain, Man.). 5. _Local Committee to Organise Meeting of Sintaluta Farmers--1906_. The following committee of Sintaluta farmers made arrangements for a meeting of the farmers in the Sintaluta district to discuss co-operative trading in grain and to pledge support of the trading company proposed by E. A. Partridge: E. A. Partridge, Al Quigley, Dave Railton, W. J. Bonner, T. McLeod, James Ewart. 6. _Preliminary Organisation Committee of Sintaluta Farmers--1906_. E. A. Partridge (Chairman), A. J. Quigley (Secretary), William Hall (Treasurer), James Halford, James Ewart, D. Railton, Sr., J. O. Partridge, William J. Bonner, Thomas S. McLeod, W. Malhiot, H. O. Partridge, G. K. Grass, Harold Bird, H. T. Smith, George Hill--all of Sintaluta, Sask. Subsequently this committee was enlarged to include a number of Manitoba canvassers. 7. _Provisional Officers of Grain Growers' Grain Company--1906_. Provisional organization of the Western farmers' pioneer trading company finally took place at Winnipeg, July 26th, 1906, when the following officers were chosen: President, E. A. Partridge; Vice-President, John Kennedy; Secretary-Treasurer, John Spencer; Directors: W. A. Robinson (Elva, Man.), and Francis Graham (Melita, Man.). At a general meeting of the shareholders these same officers were elected subsequently and the directorate increased by two--Robert Cruise (Dauphin) and T. W. Knowles (Emerson). 8. _Sintaluta_ (Sask.) _Farmers Who Pledged Personal Securities--1906_. Finding themselves $1,500 short of the necessary $2,500 for the purchase of a seat on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, the young trading company of farmers had recourse to personal securities in order to finance their start in business. The friends to whom E. A. Partridge appealed and who immediately gave the bank their personal notes were the following Sintaluta men: Dave Railton, Al Quigley, Tom McLeod, Jim Ewart, William E. Hall. 9. _Inter-Provincial Council of Grain Growers' and Farmers' Associations--1907_. It was under this name that the executive officers of the various farmers' organizations in the three Prairie Provinces first came together to discuss problems affecting the Movement as a whole. The first officers of the Inter-Provincial Council were: President, E. N. Hopkins (Moose Jaw, Sask.); Secretary, M. D. Geddes (Calgary, Alberta). 10. _United Farmers of Alberta--1909_. Until January 14th, 1909, the farmers of Alberta had two provincial organizations--the "Canadian Society of Equity" and the "Alberta Farmers' Association." On this date amalgamation took place at Edmonton under the name, "United Farmers of Alberta" with officers and directors as follows: President, James Bower (Red Deer); Vice-President, Rice Sheppard (Strathcona); Secretary, Edward J. Fream (Calgary); Directors: G. A. Dixon (Fishburn), A. Von Mielecki (Calgary), George McDonald (Olds), George Long (Edmonton), Thomas Balaam (Vegreville), L. H. Jelliffe (Spring Coulee), E. Carswell (Penhold), H. Jamieson (Red Deer). 11. _Canadian Council of Agriculture--1910_. The name of the Inter-Provincial Council (Par. 9) was changed to the "Canadian Council of Agriculture" in 1909 when relations were established with The Grange, the early organization of Ontario farmers. The first officers of the new inter-provincial body were: President, D. W. McCuaig (Portage la Prairie, Man.); Vice-president, James Bower (Red Deer, Alberta); Secretary, E. C. Drury (Barrie, Ont.). 12. _Saskatchewan Co-Operative Elevator Company--1911_. _Provisional Officers_: President, J. A. Maharg (Moose Jaw); Vice-president, F. W. Green (Moose Jaw); Secretary-Treasurer, Charles A. Dunning (Beaverdale); Directors: A. G. Hawkes (Percival), James Robinson (Walpole), Dr. T. Hill (Kinley). Upon early withdrawal of F. W. Green for personal reasons, George Langley (Maymont) was called by the Board in an advisory capacity. _First Election_: President, J. A. Maharg (Moose Jaw); Vice-President, George Langley (Maymont); Secretary-Treasurer, Charles A. Dunning (Beaverdale); Directors: James Robinson (Walpole), W. C. Sutherland (Saskatoon), N. E. Baumunk (Dundurn), A. G. Hawkes (Percival), J. E. Paynter (Tantallon), Dr. E. J. Barrick. 13. _Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company--1913_. _Provisional Officers_: President, W. J. Tregillus (Calgary); Vice-President, E. Carswell (Red Deer); Secretary-Treasurer, E. J. Fream (Calgary); Directors: Joseph Quinsey (Noble), William S. Henry (Bow Island), Rice Sheppard (Edmonton), P. P. Woodbridge (Calgary). _First Election_: President, W. J. Tregillus; Vice-president, J. Quinsey (Noble); Secretary-Treasurer, E. J. Fream (Calgary); Directors: E. Carswell (Red Deer), Rice Sheppard (Edmonton), P. S. Austin (Ranfurly), J. G. McKay (Provost), R. A. Parker (Winnifred), C. Rice-Jones (Veteran). 14. _United Farmers of Ontario--1914_. _Organisation Committee--1913_: E. C. Drury (Barrie), J. J. Morrison (Arthur), Henry Glendinning (Manilla), Elmer Lick (Oshawa), H. B. Cowan (Peterboro), W. C. Good (Paris), Col. J. Z. Frazer (Burford). _First Election of Officers--1914_: President, E. C. Drury (Barrie); Secretary-Treasurer, J. J. Morrison (Arthur). 15. _United Farmers' Co-Operative Company, Limited--1914_. President, W. C. Good (Paris); Secretary-Treasurer, J. J. Morrison (Arthur); Executive: Anson Groh (Preston), C. W. Gurney (Paris), Col. J. Z. Fraser (Burford), E. C. Drury (Barrie). 16. _United Farmers of British Columbia--1917_. _Provisional Committee_ (Vancouver Island Farmers' Union)--_1916_: Chairman, R. M. Palmer (Cowichan Bay); Secretary-Treasurer, W. Paterson (Duncan); H. G. Helgesen (Metchosin), G. A. Cheeke (Shawnigan Lake), A. E. Brooke Wilkinson (Cobble Hill), E. H. Forrest (Hillbank), F. J. Bishop (Cowichan Station), G. H. Hadwen (Comiaken), C. G. Palmer, C.I.E. (Quamichan), F. Maris Hale (Deerholme), A. A. Mutter (Somenos), L. F. Solly (Westholme), R. U. Hurford (Courtenay), A. C. Aiken (Duncan). _First Election_ (United Farmers of British Columbia)--_1917_: President, C. G. Palmer (Quamichan); Vice-Presidents: J. W. Berry (Langley), R. A. Copeland (Kelowna), P. H. Moore (Saanich); Secretary, H. J. Ruscombe Poole (Duncan); Directors: J. Johnson (Nelson), R. U. Hurford (Comox), L. Dilworth (Kelowna), R. H. Helmer (Summerland), W. E. Smith (Revelstoke), W. Paterson (Koksiloh). 17. _United Grain Growers, Limited--1917_. By Act of Dominion Parliament, June, 1917, the necessary changes in the charter of the Grain Growers' Grain Company, Limited, were granted to enable amalgamation with the Alberta Farmers' Co-Operative Elevator Company under the name, "United Grain Growers, Limited"; authorized capital, $5,000,000. The first election of officers was as follows: President, T. A. Crerar; 1st Vice-president, C. Rice-Jones (Veteran, Alta.); 2nd Vice-president, John Kennedy; Secretary, E. J. Fream (Calgary, Alta.); Directors: C. F. Brown (Calgary), R. A. Parker (Winnifred, Alta.), J. J. McLellan (Purple Springs, Alta.), P. S. Austin (Banfurly, Alta.), H. C. Wingate (Cayley, Alta.), Roderick McKenzie (Brandon, Man.), F. J. Collyer (Welwyn, Sask.), John Morrison (Yellow Grass, Sask.), J. F. Reid (Orcadia, Sask.). 18. At the meeting of the Canadian Council of Agriculture in Winnipeg on July 5th, 1918, Norman P. Lambert was appointed Secretary-Treasurer to succeed Roderick McKenzie, who now occupies the position of Vice-president. 19. R. A. Bonnar, K.C. (Bonnar, Trueman, Hollands & Robinson), has been solicitor and counsel for the Grain Growers since 1906 and has been identified closely with them on many dramatic occasions. 
22973	----	[Transcriber's note Spellings are inconsistent, especially the use of ée and ee. Notes of changes that have been made for obvious misprints, and of other anomalies, are at the end of this etext. There are many sidenotes in the original. They are indicated thus: {SN: }, and have been grouped together at the start of the paragraph in which they appear.] THE ENGLISH HVSBANDMAN. * * * * * _The first Part_: CONTAYNING the Knowledge of the true Nature of euery Soyle within this Kingdome: how to Plow it; and the manner of the Plough, and other Instruments belonging thereto. _TOGETHER WITH THE_ Art of Planting, Grafting, and Gardening after our latest and rarest fashion. A worke neuer written before by any Author: and now newly compiled for the benefit of this KINGDOME. _By_ G. M. _Bramo assai, poco, spero nulla chieggio._ _LONDON:_ Printed by _T. S._ for _Iohn Browne_, and are to be sould at his shop in Saint _Dunstanes_ Church-yard. 1613. TO THE RIGHT HONOVRABLE, and his singular good Lord, the Lord _Clifton_, Baron of Layton. It was a custome (right Honorable, and my most singular good Lord) both amongst the auntient _Romans_, and also amongst the wise _Lacedemonians_, that euery idle person should giue an account of the expence of his howers: Now I that am most idle, and least imployed in your Familie, present here vnto your Lordships hands an account of the expence of my idle time, which how well, or ill, it is, your Noble wisedome must both iudge and correct; onely this I am acertain'd, that for the generall rules and Maximes of the whole worke, they are most infallibly true, and perfectly agreeing with our English climate. Now if your Lordship shall doubt of the true tast of the liquor because it proceedeth from such a vessell as my selfe, whom you may imagine vtterly vnseasoned vvith any of these knowledges, beleeue it (my most best Lord) that for diuers yeeres, wherein I liued most happily, I liued a Husbandman, amongst Husbandmen of most excellent knowledge; during all which time I let no obseruation ouer-slip me: for I haue euer from my Cradle beene naturally giuen to obserue, and albe I haue not that oylie tongue of ostentation which loueth euer to be babling all, and somewhat more then it knoweth, drawing from ignorance admiration, and from wisedome laughter, filling meale-times with much vnprofitable noyse; yet I thanke my maker I haue a breast which containeth contentment inough for my selfe, and I hope much benefit for the whole Kingdome; how euer or whatsoeuer it is, it is all your Lordships, vnder the couert of whose fauourable protection if it may finde grace it is the vttermost aime whereunto my wishes aspire, nor shall I feare the malignitie of the curious, for it is not to them but the honest plaine English Husbandman, I intend my labours, vvhose defender you haue euer beene, and for whose Honorable prosperitie both they and I will continually pray. _Your honours in all seruiceable humblenesse_, G. M. The Epistle to the generall and gentle Reader. Although (generall reader) the nature of this worst part of this last age hath conuerted all things to such vildnesse that whatsoeuer is truely good is now esteemed most vitious, learning being derided, fortitude drawne into so many definitions that it consisteth in meere words onely, and although nothing is happy or prosperous, but meere fashion & ostentation, a tedious fustian-tale at a great mans table, stuft with bigge words, with out sence, or a mimicke Iester, that can play three parts in one; the Foole, the Pandar and the Parasit, yet notwithstanding in this apostate age I haue aduentured to thrust into the world this booke, which nothing at all belongeth to the silken scorner, but to the plaine russet honest Husbandman, for whose particular benefit, and the kingdomes generall profit, I haue with much paine, care, and industry, passed through the same. Now for the motiues which first drew me to vndertake the worke, they were diuers: as first, when I saw one man translate and paraphrase most excellently vpon _Virgils Georgickes_, a worke onely belonging to the Italian climbe, & nothing agreeable with ours another translates _Libault & Steuens_, a worke of infinit excellency, yet onely proper and naturall to the French, and not to vs: and another takes collections from _Zenophon_, and others; all forrainers and vtterly vnacquainted with our climbes: when this I beheld, and saw with what good liking they were entertained of all men; and that euery man was dumbe to speake any thing of the _Husbandry_ of our owne kingdome, I could not but imagine it a worke most acceptable to men, and most profitable to the kingdome, to set downe the true manner and nature of our right English _Husbandry_, our soyle being as delicate, apt, and fit for increase as any forraine soyle whatsoeuer, and as farre out-going other kingdomes in some commoditie, as they vs in other some. Hence, and from these considerations, I began this worke, of which I haue here sent thee but a small tast, which if I finde accepted, according to mine intent, I will not cease (God permitting mee life) to passe through all manner of English _Husbandry_ and _Huswifery_ whatsoeuer, without omission of the least scruple that can any way belong to either of their knowledges. Now gentle reader whereas you may be driuen to some amazement, at two titles which insue in the booke, namely, a former part before the first, and the first part, you shall vnderstand that those first sheetes were detained both from the Stationer and me, till the booke was almost all printed; and my selfe by extreame sicknesse kept from ouer-viewing the same, wherefore I must intreate your fauour in this impression and the rather in as much as there wanteth neither any of the words or matter whatsoeuer: _Farewell_. Thine _G. M._ A FORMER PART, before the first Part: Being an absolute perfect Introduction into all the Rules of true Husbandry; and must first of all be read, or the Readers labour will be frustrate. CHAP. I. _The Proem of the Author. What a Husbandman is: His Vtilitie and Necessitie._ It is a common Adage in our English spéech, that a man generally séene in all things can bée particularly perfect or compleate in none: Which Prouerbe there is no question will both by the curious and enuious be heauily imposed vpon my backe, because in this, and other workes, I haue delt with many things of much importance, and such as any one of them would require a whole liues experience, whereas neither my Birth, my Education, nor the generall course of my life can promise no singularitie in any part of those Artes they treate of: but for suggestions (the liberty whereof the wisedome of Kings could neuer bridle) let them poison themselues with their owne gall, they shall not so much as make me looke ouer my shoulder from my labour: onely to the curteous and well meaning I giue this satisfaction, I am but onely a publique Notary, who record the most true and infallible experience of the best knowing Husbands in this land. Besides, I am not altogether vnséene in these misteries I write of: for it is well knowne I followed the profession of a Husbandman so long my selfe, as well might make mee worthy to be a graduate in the vocation: wherein my simplicitie was not such but I both obserued well those which were estéemed famous in the profession, and preserued to my selfe those rules which I found infallible by experience. _Virgill_ was an excellent Poet, and a seruant, of trusty account, to _Augustus_, whose court and study-imployments would haue said he should haue little knowledge in rurall businesse, yet who hath set downe more excellently the manner of Italian Husbandry then himselfe, being a perfect lanthorne, from whose light both Italie and other countries haue séene to trace into the true path of profit and frugallitie? _Steuens_ and _Libault_, two famous Phisitions, a profession that neuer medleth with the Plough, yet who hath done more rarely! nay, their workes are vtterly vncontrolable touching all manner of french Husbandry whatsoeuer; so my selfe although by profession I am onely a horse-man, it being the predominant outward vertue I can boast of, yet why may not I, hauing the sence of man, by the ayde of obseruation and relation, set downe all the rules and principles of our English Husbandry in as good and as perfect order as any of the former? there is no doubt but I may and this I dare bouldly assure vnto all Readers that there is not any rule prescribed through this whole worke, but hath his authoritie from as good and well experienced men, in the Art of which the rule treateth, as any this kingdome can produce: neither haue I béene so hasty, or willing, to publish this part as men may imagining, for it is well knowne it hath laine at rest this many yéeres, and onely now at the Instigation of many of my friends is bolted into the world, to try the censure of wits, and to giue aide to the ignorant Husbandman. Wherefore to leaue off any further digression, I will fall to mine intended purpose: and because the whole scope of my labour hath all his aime and reuerence to the English Husbandman, I will first shew you what a Husbandman is. {SN: The definition of a Husbandman.} A Husbandman is he which with discretion and good order tilleth the ground in his due seasons, making it fruitfull to bring forth Corne, and plants, meete for the sustenance of man. This Husbandman is he to whom God in the scriptures giueth many blessings, for his labours of all other are most excellent, and therefore to be a Husbandman is to be a good man; whence the auntients did baptise, and wée euen to this day doe seriously obserue to call euery Husbandman, both in our ordinary conference and euery particular salutation, goodman such a one, a title (if wée rightly obserue it) of more honour and vertuous note, then many which precede it at feasts and in gaudy places. {SN: The Vtillitie of the Husbandman.} A Husbandman is the Maister of the earth, turning sterillitie and barrainenesse, into fruitfulnesse and increase, whereby all common wealths are maintained and upheld, it is his labour which giueth bread to all men and maketh vs forsake the societie of beasts drinking vpon the water springs, féeding vs with a much more nourishing liquor. The labour of the Husbandman giueth liberty to all vocations, Arts, misteries and trades, to follow their seuerall functions, with peace and industry, for the filling and emptying of his barnes is the increase and prosperitie of all their labours. To conclude, what can we say in this world is profitable where Husbandry is wanting, it being the great Nerue and Sinew which houldeth together all the ioynts of a Monarchie? {SN: Of the necessitie of a Husbandman.} Now for the necessitie, the profit inferreth it without any larger amplification: for if of all things it be most profitable, then of all things it must néeds be most necessary, sith next vnto heauenly things, profit is the whole aime of our liues in this world: besides it is most necessary for kéeping the earth in order, which else would grow wilde, and like a wildernesse, brambles and wéeds choaking vp better Plants, and nothing remayning but a Chaos of confusednesse. And thus much of the Husbandman his vtillity and necessitie. CHAP. II. _Of the situation of the Husbandmans house; the necessaries there to belonging, together with the modell thereof._ Since couerture is the most necessariest thing belonging vnto mans life, and that it was the first thing that euer man inuented, I thinke it not amisse first to beginne, before I enter into any other part of Husbandry, with the Husbandmans house, without which no Husbandry can be maintained or preserued. And albeit the generall Husbandman must take such a house as hée can conueniently get, and according to the custome and abillitie of the soyle wherein he liueth, for many countries are very much vnprouided of generall matter for well building: some wanting timber, some stone, some lime, some one thing, some another: yet to that Husbandman whom God hath enabled with power both of riches and euery other necessary fit to haue all things in a comely conuenientnesse about him, if he desire to plant himselfe decently and profitable, I would then aduise him to chuse for his situation no high hill, or great promontary (the seate of Princes Courts) where hée may be gazed vpon by the eye of euery traueller, but some pretty hard knole of constant and firme earth, rather assending then descending, frée from the danger of water, and being inuironed either with some pretty groues, of tall young spiers, or else with rowes of greater timber, which besids the pleasure and profit thereof (hauing wode so neare a mans dore) the shelter will be most excellent to kéepe off the bleaknesse of the sharpe stormes and tempests in winter, and be an excellent wormestall for cattell in the summer. This house would be planted, if possible, neare to some riuer, or fresh running brooke, but by no meanes vpon the verge of the riuer, nor within the danger of the ouerflow thereof: for the one is subiect to too much coldnesse and moisture, the other to danger. You shall plant the face, or forefront, of your house vpon the rising of the Sunne, that the vigor of his warmth may at no time depart from some part thereof, but that as he riseth on the oneside so he may set on the other. You shall place the vpper or best end of your house, as namely, where your dining Parlor and cheifest roomes are, which euer would haue their prospect into your garden, to the South, that your buttery, kitching and other inferiour offices may stand to the North, coldnesse bringing vnto them a manifold benefit. Now touching the forme, fashion, or modell of the house, it is impossible almost for any man to prescribe a certaine forme, the world is so plentifull in inuention and euery mans minde so much adicted to nouelty and curiouity, yet for as much as it is most commended by the generall consent of all the auntients, and that from the modell of that proportion may be contracted and drawne the most curious formes that are almost at this day extant, I will commend vnto you that modell which beareth the proportion of the Roman _H._ which as it is most plaine of all other, and most easie for conuaiance, so if a man vpon that plaine song, (hauing a great purse) will make descant, there is no proportion in which he may with best ease show more curiositie, and therefore for the plaine Husbandmans better vnderstanding I will here shew him a _facsimile_ (for to adde a scale were néedlesse in this generall worke, all men not being desirous to build of one bignesse) & this it is: {Illustration} Here you behould the modell of a plaine country mans house, without plaster or imbosture, because it is to be intended that it is as well to be built of studde and plaster, as of lime and stone, or if timber be not plentifull it may be built of courser woode, and couered with lime and haire, yet if a man would bestow cost in this modell, the foure inward corners of the hall would be conuenient for foure turrets, and the foure gauell ends, being thrust out with bay windowes might be formed in any curious manner: and where I place a gate and a plaine pale, might be either a tarrisse, or a gatehouse: of any fashion whatsoeuer, besides all those windowes which I make plaine might be made bay windowes, either with battlements, or without, but the scope of my booke tendeth onely to the vse of the honest Husbandman, and not to instruct men of dignitie, who in Architecture are able wonderfully to controle me; therefore that the Husbandman may know the vse of this _facsimile_, he shall vnderstand it by this which followeth. _A._ Signifieth the great hall. _B._ The dining Parlor for entertainment of strangers. _C._ An inward closset within the Parlor for the Mistrisses vse, for necessaries. _D._ A strangers lodging within the Parlor. _E._ A staire-case into the roomes ouer the Parlor. _F._ A staire-case into the Good-mans roomes ouer the Kitchin and Buttery. _G._ The Skréene in the hall. _H._ An inward cellar within the buttery, which may serue for a Larder. _I._ The Buttery. _K._ The Kitchin, in whose range may be placed a bruing lead, and conuenient Ouens, the bruing vessels adioyning. _L._ The Dairy house for necessary businesse. _M._ The Milke house. _N._ A faire sawne pale before the formost court. _O._ The great gate to ride in at to the hall dore. _P._ A place where a Pumpe would be placed to serue the offices of the house. {Illustration: This figure signifieth the dores of the house.} {Illustration: This figure signifieth the windowes of the house.} {Illustration: This figure signifieth the Chimnies of the house.} Now you shall further vnderstand that on the South side of your house, you shall plant your Garden and Orchard, as wel for the prospect thereof to al your best roomes, as also because your house will be a defence against the Northerne coldnesse, whereby your fruits will much better prosper. You shall on the West side of your house, within your inward dairy and kitchin court, fence in a large base court, in the midst whereof would be a faire large Pond, well ston'd and grauelled in the bottome, in which your Cattell may drinke, and horses when necessitie shall vrge be washt: for I doe by no meanes alow washing of horses after instant labour. Néere to this Pond you shall build your Doue-coate, for Pigions delight much in the water: and you shall by no meanes make your Doue-house too high, for Pigions cannot endure a high mount, but you shall build it moderately, cleane, neate, and close, with water pentisses to kéepe away vermine. On the North side of your base-court you shall build your Stables, Oxe-house, Cow-house, and Swine-coates, the dores and windowes opening all to the South. On the South side of the base-court, you shall builde your Hay-barnes, Corne-barnes, pullen-houses for Hennes, Capons, Duckes, and Géese, your french Kilne, and Malting flowres, with such like necessaries: and ouer crosse betwixt both these sides, you shall build your bound houels, to cary your Pease, of good and sufficient timber, vnder which you shall place when they are out of vse your Cartes, Waynes, Tumbrels, Ploughs, Harrowes, and such like, together with Plough timber, and axletrées: all which would very carefully be kept from wet, which of all things doth soonest rot and consume them. And thus much of the Husbandmans house, and the necessaries there to belonging. CHAP. III. _Of the seuerall parts and members of an ordinarie Plough, and of the ioyning of them together._ If a workeman of any trade, or mistery, cannot giue directions how, and in what manner, the tooles where with he worketh should be made or fashioned, doubtlesse hée shall neuer worke well with them, nor know when they are in temper and when out. And so it fareth with the Husbandman, for if hée know not how his Plough should be made, nor the seuerall members of which it consisteth, with the vertue and vse of euery member, it is impossible that euer hée should make a good furrow, or turne ouer his ground in Husbandly manner: Therefore that euery Husbandman may know how a well shaped Plough is made, he shall vnderstand that the first member thereof, as being the strongest and most principallest péece of timber belonging to the same, is called the Plough-beame, being a large long péece of timber much bending, according to the forme of this figure. {Illustration} This beame hath no certaine length nor thicknesse, but is proportioned according to the ground, for if it be for a clay ground the length is almost seauen foote, if for any other mixt or lighter earth, then fiue or sixe foote is long inough. The second member or part of the Plough, is called the skeath, and is a péece of woode of two foote and a halfe in length, and of eight inches in breadth, and two inches in thicknesse: it is driuen extreamly hard into the Plough-beame, slopewise, so that ioyned they present this figure. {Illustration} The third part is called the Ploughes principall hale, and doth belong to the left hand being a long bent péece of woode, some what strong in the midst, and so slender at the vpper end that a man may easily gripe it, which being fixed with the rest presenteth this figure. {Illustration} The fourth part is the Plough head, which must be fixed with the sheath & the head all at one instant in two seuerall mortisse holes: it is a flat péece of timber, almost thrée foote in length if it be for clay ground, otherwise shorter, of breadth seauen inches, and of thicknesse too inches and a halfe, which being ioyned to the rest presenteth this figure. {Illustration} The fift part is the Plough spindels, which are two small round pieces of woode, which coupleth together the hales, as in this figure. {Illustration} The sixt part is the right hand hale, through which the other end of the spindels runne, and is much slenderer then the left hand hale, for it is put to no force, but is onely a stay and aide to the Plough houlder when hée cometh to heauy, stiffe, and strong worke, and being ioyned with the rest presenteth this figure. {Illustration} The seauenth part is the Plough-rest, which is a small péece of woode, which is fixt at one end in the further nicke of the Plough head, and the other end to the Ploughs right-hand hale, as you may sée by this figure. {Illustration} The eight part is called the shelboard, and is a broad board of more then an inche thicknesse, which couereth all the right side of the Plough, and is fastned with two strong pinnes of woode through the sheath, and the right-hand hale, according to this figure. {Illustration} The ninth part is the coulture, which is a long péece of Iron, made sharpe at the neather end, and also sharpe on one side and being for a stiffe clay it must be straight without bending, which passeth by a mortisse-hole through the beame, and to this coulture belongeth an Iron ring, which windeth about the beame and kéepeth it in strength from breaking as may appeare by this figure. {Illustration} The tenth part of a compleate Plough, is the share; which is fixed to the Plough head, and is that which cutteth and turneth vp the earth: if it be for a mixt earth then it is made without a wing, or with a very small one, but if it be for a déepe, or stiffe clay, then it is made with a large wing, or an outward point, like the figure following. {Illustration} The eleuenth part of a perfect Plough is called the Plough foote, and is through a mortisse-hole fastned at the farre end of all the beame with a wedge or two, so as the Husbandman may at his discretion set it higher or lower, at his pleasure: the vse of it is to giue the Plough earth, or put it from the earth, as you please, for the more you driue it downeward, the more it raiseth the beame from the ground, and maketh the Irons forsake the earth, and the more you driue it vpward the more it letteth downe the beame, and so maketh the Irons bite the sorer; the figure whereof is this. {Illustration} Thus haue you all the parts and members of a Plough, and how they be knit and ioyned together, wherein I would wish you to obserue to make your Plough-wright euer rather giue your Plough land then put her from the land, that is, rather leaning towards the earth and biting sore, then euer slipping out of the ground: for if it haue two much earth the Husbandman may help it in the houlding, but if it haue too little, then of necessitie it must make foule worke: but for as much as the error and amends lye both in the office of the Plough-wright, I will not trouble the Husbandman with the reformation thereof. Now you shall vnderstand that there is one other thing belonging to the Plough, which albe it be no member thereof, yet is it so necessary that the Husbandman which liueth in durty and stiffe clayes can neuer goe to Plough without it, and it is called the Aker-staffe, being a pretty bigge cudgell, of about a yarde in length, with an Iron spud at the end, according to this figure: {Illustration} This Akerstaffe the Husbandman is euer to carry within his Plough, and when at any time the Irons, shelboard, or Plough, are choaked with durt, clay, or filth, which will cling about the ould stubble, then with this Akerstaffe you shall put the same off (your Plough still going) and so kéepe her cleane and smooth that your worke may lye the handsomer; and this you must euer doe with your right hand: for the Plough choaketh euer on the shelboard side, and betwéene the Irons. And thus much touching the perfect Plough, and the members thereof. CHAP. IIII. _How the Husbandman shall temper his Plough, and make her fit for his worke._ A Plough is to a Husbandman like an Instrument in the hand of a Musition, which if it be out of tune can neuer make good Musicke, and so if the Plough, being out of order, if the Husbandman haue not the cunning to temper it and set it in the right way, it is impossible that euer his labour should come to good end. It is very necessary then that euery good Husbandman know that a Plough being perfectly well made, the good order or disorder thereof consisteth in the placing of the Plough-Irons and the Plough-foote. Know then, that for the placing of the Irons, the share would be set to looke a little into the ground: and because you shall not bruise, or turne, the point thereof, you shall knocke it fast vpon the head, either with a crooked Rams-horne, or else with some piece of soft Ash woode: and you shall obserue that it stand plaine, flat, and leuell, without wrying or turning either vpward or downeward: for if it runne not euen vpon the earth it will neuer make a good furrow, onely as before I said, the point must looke a little downeward. Now, for the coulture, you must place it slopewise through the beame, so as the point of it and the point of the share may as it were touch the ground at one instant, yet if the coulture point be a little thought the longer it shall not be amisse: yet for a more certaine direction and to try whether your Irons stand true I or no, you shall take a string, and measure from the mortisse-hole through which the coulture passeth, to the point of the coulture, and so kéeping your vpper hand constant lay the same length to the of point your share, and if one measure serue them both right, there being no difference betwéene them, then the Irons stand true for their length, otherwise they stand false. Now your coulture albe it stand true for the length, yet it may stand either too much to the land, or too much from the land, either of which is a great errour, and will kéepe the Plough from going true: your coulture therefore shall haue certaine wedges of ould dry Ash woode, that is to say, one before the coulture on the vpper side the beame, and another on the land side, or left side, the coulture on the vpper side the beame also; then you shall haue another wedge behinde the coulture vnderneath the beame, and one on the furrow side, or right side, the beame vnderneath also. Now, if your coulture haue too much land, then you shall driue in your vpper side wedge and ease the contrary: if it haue too little land, then you shall contrarily driue in your right side vnder wedge and ease the other: If your coulture stand too forward, then you shall driue in your vpper wedge which standeth before the coulture; and if it stand too backward and too néere your share, then you shall driue in your vnder wedge which standeth behinde the coulture: if your coulture standeth awry any way, then are either your side wedges too small, or else not euen and plaine cut, which faults you must amend, and then all will be perfect. Now, when your Irons are iust and truely placed, then you shall driue in euery wedge hard and firme, that no shaking or other straine may loosen them: as for the Plough foote it also must haue a wedge or two, which when your Plough goeth right and to your contentment (for the foote will kéepe it from sinking or rising) then you shall also driue them in hard, that the foote may not stirre from the true place where you did set it. And that these things when a man commeth into the field may not be to séeke, it is the office of euery good Husbandman neuer to goe forth with his Plough but to haue his Hatchet in a socket, fixt to his Plough beame, and a good piece of hard wedge woode, in case any of your wedges should shake out and be lost. {SN: Of holding the Plough.} When your Plough is thus ordered and tempered in good manner, and made fit for her worke, it then resteth that you know the skill and aduantages in holding thereof, which indéed are rules of much diuersitie, for if it be a stiffe, blacke clay which you Plow, then can you not Plow too déepe, nor make your furrowes too bigge: if it be a rich hassell ground, and not much binding, then reasonable furrowes, laid closse, are the best: but if it be any binding, stony, or sandy ground, then you cannot make your furrowes too small. As touching the gouerning of your Plough, if you sée shée taketh too much land, then you shall writh your left hand a little to the left side and raise your Plough rest somewhat from the ground: if shée taketh too little earth, then you shall raise vp your left hand, and carry your Plough as in a direct line: If your Plough-Irons forbeare and will not bite on the earth at all, then it is a signe that you hang too heauy on the Plough hales, raising the head of the Plough from the ground, which errour you must amend, and of the two rather raise it vp behind then before, but to doe neither is best, for the Plough hale is a thing for the hand to gouerne, and not to make a leaning stocke of: And thus much touching the tempring of the Plough and making her fit for worke. CHAP. V. _The manner of Plowing the rich, stiffe, blacke Clay, his Earings, Plough, and other Instruments._ Of all soyles in this our kingdome there is none so rich and fruitfull, if it be well handled and Husbanded, as is that which we call the stiffe, blacke, Clay, and indeed is more blacker to looke on then any other soyle, yet some times it will turne vp very blewish, with many white vaines in it, which is a very speciall note to know his fruitfulnesse; for that blewish earth mixt with white is nothing else but very rich Marle, an earth that in Cheshire, Lanckashire, and many other countries, serueth to Manure and make fat their barrainest land in such sort that it will beare Corne seauen yeeres together. This blacke clay as it is the best soyle, well Husbanded, so it is of all soyles the worst if it be ill Husbanded: for if it loose but one ardor, or seasenable Plowing, it will not be recouered in foure yéeres after, but will naturally of it selfe put forth wilde Oates, Thistels, and all manner of offensiue wéedes, as Cockle, Darnell, and such like: his labour is strong, heauy, and sore, vnto the cattell that tilleth it, but to the Husbandman is more easie then any other soyle, for this asketh but foure times Plowing ouer at the most, where diuers other soyles aske fiue times, and sixe times, as shalbe shewed hereafter. But to come to the Plowing of this soyle, I hold it méete to beginne with the beginning of the yéere, which with Husbandmen is at Plow-day, being euer the first Munday after the Twelft-day, at which time you shall goe forth with your draught, & begin to plow your Pease-earth, that is, the earth where you meane to sow your Pease, or Beanes: for I must giue you to vnderstand, that these Clayes are euer more naturall for Beanes then Pease, not but that they will beare both alike, only the Husbandman imployeth them more for Beanes, because pease & fitches wil grow vpon euery soyle, but Beanes wil grow no where but on the clayes onely. This Pease-earth is euer where barley grew the yéere before, & hath the stubble yet remayning thereon. You shal plow this Pease-earth euer vpward, that is, you shall beginne on the ridge of the land, & turne all your furrowes vp, one against another, except your lands lye too high (which seldome can be séene) and then you shall begin at the furrow, & cast downe your land. Now, when you haue plowed all your Pease-ground, you shall let it so lye, till it haue receiued diuers Frosts, some Raine, and then a fayre season, which betwixt plow-day and Saint _Valentines_ day you shalbe sure to inioy: and this is called, _The letting of Land lye to baite_: for without this rest, and these seasons, it is impossible to make these Clayes harrow, or yéelde any good mould at all. After your Land hath receiued his kindely baite, then you shall cast in your séede, of Beanes, or Pease: but in my conceit, an equall mixture of them is the best séede of all, for if the one faile, the other will be sure to hit: and when your land is sowne you shall harrow it with a harrow that hath woodden téeth. The next Ardor after this, is the sowing of your Barley in your fallow field: the next is the fallowing of your ground for Barley the next yéere: the next Ardor is the Summer-stirring of that which you fallowed: the next is the foyling of that which you Summer-stirde: and the last is the Winter rigging of that which you foil'd: of all which Ardors, and the manner of Plowing them, with their seasons, I haue written sufficiently in the first Chapter of the next part; where I speake of simple earths vncompounded. Now whereas I told you before that these clayes were heauy worke for your Cattell, it is necessary that I shew you how to ease them, and which way they may draw to their most aduantage, which onely is by drawing in beare-geares, an inuention the skilfull Husbandman hath found out, wherein foure horses shall draw as much as sixe, and sixe as eight, being geard in any other contrary fashion. Now because the name onely bettereth not your knowledge, you shall heare behould the figure and manner thereof. {Illustration} Now you shall vnderstand the vse of this Figure by the figures therein contayned, that is to say, the figure (1) presenteth the plough-cleuisse, which being ioyned to the plough-beame, extendeth, with a chaine, vnto the first Toastrée: and touching this Cleuisse, you shall vnderstand, that it must be made with thrée nickes in the midst thereof, that if the Plough haue too much land giuen it in the making, that is, if it turne vp too much land, then the chaine shall be put in the outwardmost nicke to the land side, that is, the nicke towards your right hand: but if it take too little land, then it shall be put in the nicke next the furrow, that is, towards the right hand: but if it goe euen and well, then you shall kéepe it in the middle nicke, which is the iust guide of true proportion. And thus this Cleuisse is a helpe for the euill making or going of a plough. (2) Is the hind-most Toastrée, that is, a broad piece of Ash woode, thrée inches broad, which going crosse the chaine, hath the Swingletrées fastned vnto it, by which the horses draw. Now you shall vnderstand that in this Toastrée is great helpe and aduantage: for if the two horses which draw one against the other, be not of equall strength, but that the one doth ouer-draw the other, then you shall cause that end of the Toastrée by which the weaker horse drawes, to be longer from the chaine then the other, by at least halfe a foote, and that shall giue the weaker horse such an aduantage, that his strength shall counterpoyse with the stronger horse. Now there be some especiall Husbandmen that finding this disaduantage in the Toastrée, and that by the vncertaine shortening, and lenthening of the Toastrée, they haue sometimes more disaduantaged the strong horse, then giuen helpe to the weake, therefore they haue inuented another Toastrée, with a double chaine, and a round ring, which is of that excellent perfection in draught, that if a Foale draw against an olde horse, yet the Foale shall draw no more then the abilitie of his owne strength, each taking his worke by himselfe, as if they drew by single chaines. Now because this Toastrée is such a notable Implement both in Plough, Cart, or Waine, and so worthy to be imitated of all good husbands, I thinke it not amisse to shew you the figure thereof. {Illustration: The Toastree with double chaines.} (3) The Swingletrées, being pieces of Ash wood cut in proportion afore-shewed, to which the Treates, by which the horses draw, are fastned with strong loopes. (4) The Treates by which the horses draw, being strong cords made of the best Hempe. (5) The place betwéene the Treats, where the horses must stand. (6) The Hames, which girt the Collers about, to which the other end of the Treats are fastned, being compassed pieces of wood, eyther cleane Ash, or cleane Oake. (7) The round Withes of wood, or broad thongs of leather, to put about the horses necke, to beare the maine chayne from the ground, that it trouble not the horses in their going. (8) The Single-linckes of Iron, which ioyne the Swingle-trées vnto the Toastrées. (9) The Belly-bands, which passe vnder the belly of the horse, and are made fast to both sides of the Treates, kéeping them downe, that when the horse drawes, his coller may not choake him: being made of good small line or coard. (10) The Backe-bands, which going ouer the horses backe, and being made fast to both sides of the Treates, doe hold them, so as when the horses turne, the Treates doe not fall vnder their féete. {SN: How many beasts in a plough.} Thus I haue giuen you the perfect portraiture of a well yoakt Plough, together with his Implements, and the vse of them, being the best which hath yet béene found out by any of our skilfullest English Husbandmen, whose practise hath béene vpon these déepe, stiffe, blacke clayes. Now you shall vnderstand, that for the number of Cattell to be vsed in these ploughes, that in fallowing your land, and plowing your Pease-earth, eight good Cattell are the best number, as being the strongest, and within the compasse of gouernment, whereas more were but troublesome, and in all your other Ardors, sixe good beasts are sufficient, yet if it be so, that eyther want of abilitie, or other necessity vrge, you shall know that sixe beasts will suffice eyther to fallow, or to plow Pease-earth, and foure beasts for euery other Ardor or earing: and lesse then this number is most insufficient, as appeares by daily experience, when poore men kill their Cattell onely by putting them to ouer-much labour. And thus much touching the plowing of the blacke clay. CHAP. VI. _The manner of plowing the white or gray Clay, his Earings, Plough, and Instruments._ Now as touching the white or gray clay, you shall vnderstand that it is of diuers and sundry natures, altering according to his tempers of wet or drynesse: the wet being more tough, and the dry more brittle: his mixture and other characters I haue shewed in a former Chapter, wherefore for his manner of plowing (obseruing my first methode, which is to beginne with the beginning of the yéere, I meane at Christmas) it is thus: {SN: Of sowing of Pease and Beanes.} If you finde that any of this white or gray clay, lying wet, haue lesse mixture of stone or chaulke in it, and so consequently be more tough, as it doth many times fall out, and that vpon such land, that yéere, you are to sow your Pease and Beanes: for as in the former blacke clay, so in this gray clay you shall begin with your Pease-earth euer: then immediately after Plow-day, you shall plow vp such ground as you finde so tough, in the selfe-same manner as you did plow the blacke clay, and so let it lye to baite till the frost haue seasoned it, and then sow it accordingly. But if you haue no such tough land, but that it holdes it owne proper nature, being so mixt with small stones and chaulke, that it will breake in reasonable manner, then you shall stay till the latter end of Ianuary, at what time, if the weather be seasonable, and inclining to drynesse, you shall beginne to plow your Pease-earth, in this manner: First, you shall cause your séedes-man to sow the land with single casts, as was shewed vpon the blacke clay, with this caution, that the greater your séede is, (that is, the more Beanes you sow) the greater must be your quantitie: and being sowne, you shall bring your plough, and beginning at the furrow of the land, you shall plow euery furrow downeward vpon the Pease and Beanes: which is called sowing of Pease vnder furrow: and in this manner you shall sow all your Pease and Beanes, which is cleane contrary to your blacke clay. Besides, whereas vpon the stiffe clay it is conuenient to take as large furrowes as you please, vpon this kinde of gray clay you shall take as small furrowes as is possible. Now the reason for this manner of plowing your Pease-earth, is, because it is a light kinde of breaking earth, so that should it be sowne according to the stiffe blacke clay, it would neuer couer your Pease, but leaue them bare, both to be destroyed by the Fowles of the ayre, and the bitternesse of the weather. As soone as your Pease and Beanes are risen a fingers length aboue the earth, then if you finde that any of your lands doe lye very rough, and that the clods be great, it shall not be amisse, to take a payre of woodden Harrowes, and harrow ouer all your rough lands, the benefit whereof is this, that it will both breake the hard clots, and so giue those Pease leaue to sprout through the earth, which before lay bound in and drowned, and also lay your lands smooth and cleane, that the Mowers when they come to mowe your Pease and Beanes, shall haue better worke, and mowe them with more ease, and much better to the owners profit. For you must vnderstand that where you sow Beanes, there it is euer more profit to mowe them with Sythes, then to reape them with Hookes, and much sooner, and with lesse charge performed. The limitation of time for this Ardor of earing, is from the latter end of Ianuary vntill the beginning of March, not forgetting this rule, that to sow your Pease and Beanes in a shower, so it be no beating raine is most profitable: because they, as Wheat, take delight in a fresh and a moyst mould. {SN: Of sowing of Barley.} After the beginning of March, you shall beginne to sow your Barley vpon that ground which the yéere before did lye fallow, and is commonly called your tilth, or fallow field: and if any part of it consist of stiffe and tough ground, then you shall, vpon such ground, sow your Barley vnder furrow, in such manner and fashion as I described vnto you for the sowing of your stiffe blacke clay: but if it be (as for the most part these gray and white clayes are) of a much lighter, and as it were, fussie temper, then you shall first plow your land vpward, cleane and well, without baukes or stiches: and hauing so plowed it, you shall then sow it with Barley, that is to say, with double casts, I meane, bestowing twise so many casts of Barley, as you would doe if you were to sow it with Pease. And as soone as you haue sowne your Barley, you shall take a payre of woodden Harrowes, and harrow it as small as is possible: and this is called sowing aboue furrow. {SN: Of sowing Oates.} Now if you haue any land, which eyther through the badnesse of the soyle, or for want of manure, is more barrayne, and hard to bring forth then generally the rest of your land is, then you shall not bestow Barley thereupon, but sow it with Oates, in such manner and fashion as is appointed for the sowing of Pease, that is to say, if it be stiffe ground you shall sow it aboue furrow, if it be light ground, then you shall sow it vnder furrow, knowing this for a rule, that the barraynest ground will euer beare indifferent Oates, but if the ground haue any small hart, then it will beare Oates in great abundance: neither néede you to be very precise for the oft plowing of your ground before you sow your Oates, because Oates will grow very well if they be sowne vpon reasonable ground, at the first plowing: whence it comes to passe that many Husbandmen doe oft sow their Oates where they should sow their Pease, and in the same manner as they doe sow their Pease, and it is held for a rule of good husbandry also: because if the ground be held any thing casuall for Pease, it is better to haue good Oates then naughty Pease: besides, your Oates are both a necessary graine in the house, as for Oate-meale, for the pot, for Puddings, and such like, and also for the stable, for Prouender, and the féeding of all manner of Poultry. The time for sowing of your Barley and Oates, is from from the first of March till the first of Aprill, obseruing euer to sow your Oates first, and your Barley after, for it being onely a Summer graine, would participate as little as may be with any part of the Winter. {SN: Of Fallowing.} {SN: Of sleighting Barley.} About the middest of Aprill you shall beginne to fallow that part of your ground, which you entend shall take rest that yéere, and so become your fallow or tilth-field. And in fallowing this gray or white clay, you shall obserue all those rules and ceremonies, which are formerly described for the fallowing of the stiffe blacke clay, knowing that there is in this worke no difference betwéene the blacke clay, and the gray clay, but both to be plowed after one manner, that is to say, to haue all the furrowes cast downeward, and the ridges of the lands laid largely open, and of a good depth, onely the furrowes which you turne vpon this gray clay must be much smaller and lesse then those which you turne vpon your stiffe blacke clay, because this earth is more naturally inclined to binde and cleaue together then that of the blacke clay. The time for fallowing of this ground, is from the middest of Aprill vntill the middest of May: at what time you shall perceiue your Barley to appeare aboue the ground, so that then you shall beginne to sleight and smooth it: but not with backe Harrowes, as was described for the blacke clay, because this gray clay being not so fat and rich, but more inclined to fastnesse and hardnesse, therefore it will not sunder and breake so easily as the other: wherefore when you will smooth or sleight this ground, you shall take a round piece of wood, being in compasse about at least thirty inches, and in length sixe foote, hauing at each end a strong pinne of Iron, to which making fast two small poales, by which the horse shall draw, yet in such sort that the round piece of wood may roule and turne about as the horse drawes it: and with this you shall roule ouer all your Barley, and by the waight of the round piece of wood bruise and breake all the hard clots asunder. This is called amongst Husbandmen a Rouler, and is for this purpose of sleighting and smoothing of grounds of great vse and profit. Now you shall vnderstand that you must not at any time sleight or smooth your Corne, but after a shower of Raine, for if the mould be not a little moistned the rouler will not haue power to breake it. Now for as much as this rouler is of so good vse and yet not generally vsed in this kingdome, I thinke it not amisse to shew you the figure thereof. {Illustration: The great Rouler.} As soone as you haue roulled ouer your Barley, & laid it so smooth as you can with your rouler, if then you perceiue any hard clots, such as the rouler cannot breake, then you shal send forth your seruants with long clotting béetels, made broad and flat, and with them you shall breake asunder all those hard clots, and so lay your Barley as smooth and cleane as is possible: the profit whereof you shall both finde in the multiplying of your Corne and also in the sauing of your sithes from breaking, at such time as you shall come to mowe your Corne, and gather in your Haruest. {SN: Of Summer-stirring.} {SN: Of weeding.} {SN: Of stone gathering.} Your Barley being thus laide smooth, you shall then follow your other necessary businesses, as preparing of your fewell, and other néedements for houshould, vntill the beginning of Iune, at which time you shall beginne to Summer-stirre your fallow field, which shalbe done in all points after the same manner as you did Summer-stirre your blacke Clay, that is to say, you shall beginne in the ridge of the land, and as when you fallowed your land you turned your furrowes downeward, so now in Summer-stirring, you shall turne your furrowes vpward and close the ridge of you land againe. As soone as this Ardor is finished, or when the vnseasonablenesse of the weather, as either too much wet, or too much drynesse shall hinder you from Plowing, you shall then looke into your Cornefields, that is to say: first into your Wheate and Rye field, and if there you shall finde any store of wéedes, as Thistell, Darnell, Tare-Cockle, or such like, you shall with weede-hookes, or nippers of woode, cut, or plucke them vp by the rootes; and also if you finde any annoyance of stones, which hinders the growth of your Corne, as generally it happens in this soyle, you shall then cause some Boyes and Girles, or other waste persons, to gather them vp and lay them in heapes at the lands ends, to be imployed either about the mending of high wayes or other occasions, and for this purpose their is a generall custome in most Villages, that euery houshoulder is bound to send out one seruant to be imployed about this businesse: whence it comes to passe, that it is called common worke, as being done at the generall charge of the whole Parish. After you haue wéeded your Wheate and Rye, you shall then wéede your Barley also, which being finished about the midst of Iuly, you shall then beginne to looke into your medowes and to the preparing of your Hay haruest. {SN: Of foyling.} Now at such time as either the vnseasonablenesse of the weather, or the growth of your grasse shall hinder you from following that businesse of Haruest, you shall then looke into your fallow or tilth field againe, and whereas before at your Summer-stirring you Plowed your land vpward, now you shall beginne to foile, that is to say, you shall cast your land downe againe, and open the ridge: and this Ardor of all other Ardors you must by no meanes neglect vpon the gray, white clay, because it being most subiect vnto wéede, and the hardest to bring to a fine mould, this Ardor of all others, doth both consume the one and makes perfect the other, and the drier season you doe foile your land in, the better it is, and the more it doth breake and sunder the clots in pieces: for as in Summer-stirring the greater clots you raise vp, and the rougher your land lies the better it is, because it is a token of great store of mould, so when you foile, the more you breake the clots in pieces the better season will your land take, and the richer it wilbe when the séede is sowne into it: And the season for the foiling of this soile is from the midst of Iuly till the midst of September. {SN: Of Manuring.} Now albe I haue omitted the Manuring of this land in his due place, as namely, from the midst of Aprill, till the end of May, yet you shall vnderstand that of all other things it is not in any wise to be neglected by the carefull Husbandman, both because the soyle being not so rich as the blacke Clay, will very hardly bring forth his séede without Manure, and also because it is for the most part subiect vnto much wet, and stones, both which are signes of cold and barrainenesse. Now for those Manures, which are best and most proper for this soile, you shall vnderstand that all those which I formerlie described for the blacke Claies, as namely, Oxe or Cowes dung, Horse dung and Shéepes dung, are also very good for this soile, and to be vsed in the same manner as is specified in the former Chapter: but if you haue not such store of this Manure as will serue to compasse your whole land, you shall then vnderstand, that the blacke mud, or durt which lies in the bottome of olde ponds, or else standing lakes, is also a very good manure for this soile, or else straw which is spread in high-wayes, and so rotted by the great concourse or vse of much trauelling, and after in the Spring-time shouelled vp in great heapes, is a good manure for this earth: but if you finde this soile to be subiect to extraordinary wet and coldnesse, you shall then know that the ashes eyther of wood, coale, or straw, is a very good manure for it. But aboue all other, and then which there is no manure more excellent for cold barraine clayes of this nature, the Pigions dung, or the dung of houshold Pullen, as Capons, Hennes, Chickens, Turkies, and such like, so there be no Goose-dung amongst it, is the best of all other: but not to be vsed in such sort as the other manures, that is to say, to be laid in great heapes vpon the land, or to be spread from the Cart vpon the land, for neyther is there such abundance of such manure to be gotten, nor if there were, it would not be held for good husbandrie to make lauish hauocke of a thing so precious. {SN: The vse of Pigion or Pullen-dung.} You shall then know that for the vse of Pigion or Pullen-dung, it is thus: you shall first with your hand breake it as small as may be, and then put it into the Hopper, in such sort as you put your corne when you sow it: and then looke how you sow your corne, in such sort you shall sow your Pigion or Pullen-dung: which done, you shall immediately put your Barley into the same Hopper, and so sow it after the Pigions or Pullen-dung: by which you are to vnderstand that this kinde of manuring is to be vsed onely in Séede-time, and at no other season. This manure is of the same nature that shéepes manure is, and doth last but onely for one yéere, onely it is much hotter, as being in the greatest extremitie of heate. Now if it happen that you cannot get any of this Pigions or Pullen-dung, because it is scarce, and not in euery mans power, if then you take Lime and sow it vpon your land in such sort as is before said of the Pigions-dung, and then sow your corne after it, you shall finde great profit to come thereon, especially in colde wet soiles, such as for the most part, these gray white clayes are. {SN: Of sowing Wheate.} After your land is foild, which worke would be finished by the middest of September, then you shall beginne to sow your Wheate, Rye, and Maslin, which in all things must be done as is before set downe for the blacke clay, the choice of séede, and euery obseruation being all one: for Wheate not taking delight in a very rich ground, doth prosper best vpon this indifferent soile. Whence it comes that in these gray white clayes, you shall for the most part, sée more Wheate sowne then any other Graine whatsoeuer. But as touching your Rye and Maslin, that euer desires a rich ground and a fine mould, and therefore you shall make choise of your better earth for that Séede, and also obserue to helpe it with manure, or else shéepes folding, in such manner as is described in the former Chapter, where I spake of the sowing of Wheate, Rye, and Maslin. {SN: Of winter-ridging.} As soone as you haue sowne your Wheate, Rye, and Maslin, you shall then about the latter end of October, beginne to Winter ridge, or set vp your land for the whole yéere: which you shall doe in all points, as you doe vpon the blacke clay, without any change or alteration. And the limitation for this Ardor is, from the latter end of October vntill the beginning of December, wherein your yéeres worke is made perfect and compleate. {SN: Obseruations.} Now you shall vnderstand, that although I haue in this generall sort passed ouer the Ardors and seuerall Earings of this white or gray clay, any of which are in no wise to be neglected: yet there are sundry other obseruations to be held of the carefull Husbandman, especially in the laying of his land: as thus, if the soile be of good temper, fruitfull, drie, and of a well mixed mould, not being subiect to any naturall spring or casting forth of moisture, but rather through the natiue warmth drying vp all kinde of fluxes or colde moistures, neyther binding or strangling the Séede, nor yet holding it in such loosenesse, that it loose his force of increasing, in this case it is best to lay your lands flat and leuell, without ridges or furrowes, as is done in many parts of Cambridge-shire, some parts of Essex, and some parts of Hartford-shire: but if the clay be fruitfull and of good temper, yet either by the bordering of great hils, the ouer-flow of small brookes, or some other casuall meanes it is subiect to much wet or drowning, in this case you shall lay your lands large and high, with high ridges and déepe furrowes, as generally you sée in Lincolne-shire, Nottingham-shire, Huntington-shire, and most of the middle Shires in England. But if the land be barraine, colde, wet, subiect to much binding, and doth bring forth great store of wéedes, then you shall lay your land in little stiches, that is to say, not aboue thrée or foure furrowes at the most together, as is generally séene in Middlesex, Hartford-shire, Kent and Surrey: for by that meanes neither shall the land binde and choake the Corne, nor shall the wéede so ouer-runne it, but that the Husbandman may with good ease helpe to strengthen and clense it, the many furrowes both giuing him many passages, whereby he may correct those enormities, and also in such sort conuaying away the water and other moistures, that there cannot be made any land more fruitfull. {SN: Of the Plough.} Now to speake of the Plough which is best and most proper for this gray or white clay, of which we now speake, you shall vnderstand that it differeth excéeding much from that of which we spake concerning the blacke clay: I, and in such sort, that there is but small alliance or affinitie betwéene them: as thus for example: First, it is not so large and great as that for the blacke clay: for the head thereof is not aboue twentie inches in length, and not aboue one inch and a halfe in thicknesse, the maine beame thereof is not aboue fiue foot long, & the rest is broader by an inch and more then that for the blacke clay: this Plough also hath but one hale, & that is onely the left hand Hale: for the Plough-staffe, or Aker-staffe serueth euer in stead of the right hand Hale, so that the Rough-staues are fixed, the vpper vnto the shelboard, and the neather vnto the Plough-rest, as for your better vnderstanding you may perceiue by this figure. {Illustration: The Plough with one Hale.} Now you shall vnderstand that the especiall care which is to be held in the making of this Plough, is, that it be wide and open in the hinder part, that it may turne and lay the furrowes one vpon another: whereas if it should be any thing straitned in the hinder part, considering that this clay naturally is somewhat brittle of it selfe, and that the furrowes which you plow must of necessitie be very narrow and little, it were not possible so to lay them, but that they would fall downe backe againe, and inforce the Plow-man to lose his labour. Also you shall vnderstand that whereas in the former plough, which is for the blacke clay, you may turne the shelboard, that is, when the one end is worne, you may eftsoones turne the other, and make it serue the like season: in this Plough you must neuer turne the shelboard, because the rising wing of the Share will so defend it, that it will euer last as long as the Plough-head, without change or turning. Now for the Irons belonging vnto this Plough, which is the Share and Coulture, there is more difference in them then in the Plough: for to speake first of the Share, whereas the former Share for the blacke clay, was made broad, plaine, and with a large wing, this Share must be made narrow, sharpe, and small, with no wing at all, hauing from the vpper part thereof, close by the shelboard, a certaine rising wing, or broad piece of Iron, which comming vp and arming that part of the shelboard which turnes ouer the land, defends the wood from the sharpe mould, which hauing the mixture of pible stone in it, would otherwise in lesse then one dayes worke consume the shelboard vnto nothing, forcing the Plow-man to much trouble and double cost. The fashion of the Share is presented in this Figure following. {Illustration: The Share.} This Share is onely made that it may take a small furrow, and so by breaking the earth oftner then any other Share, causeth the land to yéeld a good and plentifull mould, and also kéepe it from binding or choaking the séede when it is cast into it. Now for the Coulture, it differeth from the former Coulture both in breadth and thicknesse, but especially in compasse: for whereas the former Coulture for the blacke clay, was made straight, narrow, and thicke, this must be compassed like an halfe bent bow: it must be broader then thrée fingers, and thinner then halfe an inche, according to this Figure. {Illustration: The Coulture.} Now when these Irons, the Shelboard, and other implements are fixed vnto the Plough, you shall perceiue that the Plough will carry the proportion of this Figure following. {Illustration: The Plough for the gray Clay.} Hauing thus shewed you the substance, difference, and contraries of these two Ploughs, which belong to these two seuerall clayes, the blacke and gray, you shall vnderstand that there is no clay-ground whatsoeuer, which is without other mixture, but one of these Ploughs will sufficiently serue to eare and order it: for all clayes are of one of these tempers. {SN: The vse and handling.} Now for the vse and manner of handling or holding this Plough, it differeth nothing in particular obseruation from the vse and handling of the Plough formerly described, more then in the largenesse and smalnesse of the furrowes: for as before I said, whereas the blacke clay must be raised with a great furrow, and a broad stitch, this gray clay must be raised with a small furrow, and a narrow stitch: and although this plough haue nothing but a left hand Hale, yet considering the Plough-staffe, vpon which the Plow-man resteth his right hand, it is all one as if he had a right. And indéede, to make your knowledge the more perfect, you shall know that these gray clayes are generally in their owne natures so wet, tough, and slimy, and doe so clogge, cleaue, and choake vp the Plough, that hée which holds it shall haue enough to doe with his right hand onely to clense and kéepe the Plough from choaking, insomuch that if there were another Hale, yet the Plow-man should haue no leasure to hold it. {SN: Of the draught or Teame.} Now for the Draught or Teame which should draw this Plough, they ought in all points, as well in strength as tryuing to be the same with those before shewed for the vse of the blacke clay: as namely, eyther Oxen or Horse, or Horse and Oxen mixt together, according to the custome of the soile wherein the Plow-man liues, or his abilitie in prouision, obseruing euer to kéepe his number of beasts for his Plough certaine, that is to say, for fallowing, and Pease-earth, neuer vnder sixe, and for all other Ardors foure at the least. And thus much for the plowing of this gray or white clay. CHAP. VII. _The manner of plowing the red-Sand, his Earings, Plough, and Implements._ Next vnto these Clayes, which are soiles simple and vncompound, as being perfect in their owne natures, without the helpe of other mixtures, I place the Sand soiles, as being of like qualitie, not borrowing any thing but from their owne natures, nor bréeding any defects more then their owne naturall imperfections: and of Sands, sith the red Sand is the best and most fruitfull, therefore it is fit that it take prioritie of place, and be here first spoken of. You shall then vnderstand that this red Sand, albeit it is the best of Sands, yet it is the worst of many soiles, as being of it selfe of such a hot and drie nature, that it scorcheth the séede, and dryeth vp that nutriment and fatnesse which should occasion increase: whereby it comes to passe, that the Barley which growes vpon this red Sand is euer more yealow, leane and withered, then that which growes vpon the clayes or other mixt earths. This Sand especially taketh delight in Rye, because it is a Graine which loues warmth aboue all other, and yet notwithstanding, if it be well ordered, manured and plowed, it will bring forth good store of Barley, albeit the Barley be not so good as Clay-Barley, either for the colour, or for the yéeld, whether it be in meale or in Malt. {SN: Of Fallowing.} Now for the manner of Earing or plowing this redde Sand, it differeth much from both the former soyles, insomuch that for your better vnderstanding, I must in many places alter my former methode, yet so little as may be, because I am loath to alter or clogge the memory of the Reader: wherefore to pursue my purpose. As soone as Christmas is ended, that is to say, about the middest of Ianuary, you shall goe with your Plough into that field where the Haruest before did grow your Rye, and there you shall in your plowing cast your lands downe-ward, and open the ridges well, for this yéere it must be your fallow field: for as in the former soiles, wée did diuide the fields either into thrée parts, that is, one for Barley and Wheate, another for Pease, and the third fallow, which is the best diuision: or into foure parts, that is, one for Wheate and Rye, another for Barley, a third for Pease, and a fourth fallow, which is the worst diuision and most toilesome, so in this red Sand soile, we must euer diuide it into thrée parts, that is, one for Barley, another for Rye, and a third fallow. For this Sand-soile being hot, drie, and light, will neither bring forth good Beanes nor good Pease, and therefore that Ardor is in this place but onely to be spoke of by way of discourse in vrgent necessitie. Wherefore (as before I said) about the middest of Ianuary you shall beginne to lay fallow that field, where formerly did grow your Rye, the manner of plowing whereof differeth nothing from the manner of plowing the clayes before written of, onely that the discretion of the Plow-man must thus farre forth gouerne him, that in as much as this soile is lighter, dryer, and of a more loose temper, by so much the more he must be carefull to make his furrowes lesse, and to lay them the closer together: & also in as much as this soile, through his naturall warmth and temperate moisture, is excéeding apt to bring forth much wéede, especially Brakes, Ling, Brambles, and such like, therefore the Plow-man shall be very carefull to plow all his furrowes very cleane, without baukes or other impediments by which may be ingendred any of these inconueniences. {SN: Of Spring-foyling.} After you haue thus broke vp and fallowed your fallow or tilth-field, the limitation of which time is from the middest of Ianuary vntill the middest of February, you shall then at the middest of February, when the clay-men begin to sow their Beanes and Pease, goe with your plough into your other fallow-field, which all the yéere before hath laine fallow and already receiued at your hands at least foure seuerall Ardors; as Fallowing, Summer-stirring, Foyling, and Winter-rigging; and there you shall plow all that field ouer the fift time, which is called the Spring-foyling: and in this Ardor you shall plow all your lands vpward, in such sort as when you Winter-ridge it, by which meanes you shall plow vp all those wéedes which haue sprung forth in the Winter season. For you must vnderstand that in these light, hot, sandy soiles, there is a continuall spring (though not of good fruits) yet of wéeds, quicks, and other inconueniences: for it is a rule amongst Husbandmen, that warme soiles are neuer idle, that is, they are euer bringing forth something. {SN: Of Sowing March-Rye.} Now the limitation for this Ardor is from the middest of Februarie vntill the middest of March, at which time you shall, by comparing former experience with your present iudgement, take into your consideration the state, goodnesse, and powerfulnesse of your land, I meane especially of this fallow-field, which hath laine fallow the yéere before, and hath now receiued fiue Ardors: and if you finde any part of it, either for want of good ordoring in former times, or for want of manure in the present yéere, to be growne so leane and out of hart, that you feare it hath not strength enough to beare Barley, you shall then at this time, being the middest of March, sow such land with Rye, which of Husbandmen is called the sowing of March-Rye: and this Rye is to be sowne and harrowed in such sort as you did sow it vpon the clay soiles, that is to say, aboue furrow, and not vnder furrow, except the land be very full of quickes, that is, of Brakes, Ling, Brambles, Dockes, or such like, and then you shall first with a paire of Iron harrowes, that is, with harrowes that haue Iron téeth, first of all harrow the land ouer, and by that meanes teare vp by the rootes all those quickes, and so bring them from the land: which done, you shall sow the land ouer with Rye, and then plow it downeward which is vnder furrow: & as soone as it is plowed, you shall then with a paire of Iron Harrowes harrow it all ouer so excéedingly, that the mould may be made as fine, and the land lie as smooth as is possible. {SN: Of the harrow.} Now because I haue in the former Chapters spoke of Harrowes and harrowing, yet haue not deliuered vnto you the shape and proportion thereof, and because both the woodden harrow and the Iron harrow haue all one shape, and differ in nothing but the téeth onely, I thinke it not amisse before I procéede any further to shew you in this Figure the true shape of a right Harrow. {Illustration: The Harrow.} The parts of this Harrow consisteth of buls, staues, and téeth: of buls, which are broad thicke pieces eyther of well seasoned Willow, or Sallow, being at least thrée inches euery way square, into which are fastned the téeth: of staues, which are round pieces of well seasoned Ash, being about two inches and a halfe about, which going thorow the buls, holde the buls firmely in equall distance one from the other: and of téeth, which are either long pinnes of wood or Iron, being at least fiue inches in length, which are made fast, and set slope-wise through the buls. {SN: The diuersitie of Harrowes.} Now you shall vnderstand that Harrowes are of two kindes, that is, single and double: the single Harrow is called of Husbandmen the Horse-harrow, and is not aboue foure foote square: the double Harrow is called the Oxe-harrow, and it must be at least seauen foote square, and the téeth must euer be of Iron. Now whereas I spake of the Horse-harrow and the Oxe-harrow, it is to be vnderstood that the single Harrow doth belong to the Horse, because Horses drawing single, doe draw each a seuerall Harrow by himselfe, albeit in the common vse of harrowing, we couple two horses euer together, and so make them draw two single Harrowes: but Oxen not being in good Husbandry to be separated, because euer two must draw in one yoake, therefore was the double Harrow deuised, containing in substance and worke as much as two single Harrowes. {SN: The vse of Harrowes.} Now for the vse of Harrowes. The woodden Harrow which is the Harrow with woodden téeth, is euer to be vsed vpon clay grounds and light grounds, which through drynesse doth grow loose, and fals to mould of it owne nature, as most commonly Sand grounds doe also: and the Iron Harrow which is the Harrow with Iron téeth, is euer to be vsed vpon binding grounds, such as through drynesse grow so hard that they will not be sundered, and through wet turne soone to mire and loose durt. Now whereas there be mingled earths, which neither willingly yéeld to mould, nor yet bindes so sore, but small industry breaks it, of which earth I shall speake hereafter, to such grounds the best Husbands vse a mixture, that is to say, one woodden Harrow, and one Iron Harrow, that the woodden Harrow turning ouer and loosening the loosest mould, the Iron Harrow comming after, may breake the stiffer clots, and so consequently turne all the earth to a fine mould. And thus much for Harrowes. {SN: Of the sowing of Pulse.} {SN: Of Pease, Lentles, and Lupines.} Now to returne to my former purpose touching the tillage of this red Sand: if (as before I said) you finde any part of your fallow-field too weake to beare Barley, then is your March-Rye, a graine which will take vpon a harder earth: but if the ground be too weake either for Barley or Rye, (for both those Séedes desire some fatnesse of ground) then shall you spare plowing it at all vntill this time of the yéere, which is mid-March, and then you shall plow it, and sow it with either the smallest Pease you can get, or else with our true English Fitches, which by forraine Authors are called _Lentles_, that is, white Fitches, or _Lupines_, which are red Fitches: for all these thrée sorts of Pulse will grow vpon very barraine soiles, and in their growth doe manure and make rich the ground: yet your Pease desire some hart of ground, your _Lentles_, or white Fitches, lesse, and your _Lupines_, or red Fitches, the least of all, as being apt to grow vpon the barrainest soile: so likewise your Pease doe manure barraine ground well, your _Lentles_ better and your _Lupines_ the best of all. Now for the nature and vse of these graines, the Pease as all Husbandmen know, are both good for the vse of man in his bread, as are vsed in Leicester-shire, Lincolne-shire, Nottingham-shire, and many other Countries: and also for Horses in their Prouender, as is vsed generally ouer all England: for _Lentles_, or white Fitches, or the _Lupines_ which are redde Fitches, they are both indifferent good in bread for man, especially if the meale be well scalded before it be knodden (for otherwise the sauour is excéeding rancke) or else they are a very good foode being sodden in the manner of Leaps-Pease, especially at Sea, in long iourneyes where fresh meate is most exceeding scarce: so that rather then your land should lye idle, and bring forth no profit, I conclude it best to sow these Pulses, which both bring forth commoditie, and also out of their owne natures doe manure and inrich your ground, making it more apt and fit to receiue much better Séede. For the manner of sowing these thrée sorts of Pulse: you shall sow them euer vnder furrow, in such sort as is described for the sowing of Pease and Beanes vpon the white or gray clay which is of indifferent drinesse and apt to breake. {SN: Of Manuring.} Now the limitation for this Ardor or séede time, is from the middest of March, till the middest of Aprill: then from the middest of Aprill, till the middest of May, you shall make your especiall worke, to be onely the leading forth of your Manure to that field which you did fallow, or lay tilth that present yéere immediatelie after Christmas, and of which I first spake in this Chapter. And herein is to be vnderstood, that the best and principallest Manure for this redde-sand, is the ouldest Manure of beasts which can be-gotten, which you shall know by the excéeding blacknesse and rottennesse thereof, being in the cutting both soft and smooth, all of one substance, as if it were well compact morter, without any shew of straw or other stuffe which is vnrotted, for this dung is of all the fattest and coolest, and doth best agrée with the nature of this hot sand. Next to the dung of beasts, is the dung of Horses if it be old also, otherwise it is somewhat of the hottest, the rubbish of old houses, or the swéepings of flowres, or the scowrings of old Fish-ponds, or other standing waters where beasts and horses are vsed to drinke, or be washt, or wherevnto the water and moisture of dunghills haue recourse are all good Manures for this redde-sand: as for the Manure of Shéepe vpon this redde-sand, it is the best of all in such places as you meane to sow Rie, but not fully so good where you doe intend to sow your Barley: if it be a cold moist redde-sand (which is seldome found but in some particular low countries) then it doth not amisse to Manure it most with Shéepe, or else with Chaulke, Lime, or Ashes, of which you can get the greatest plentie: if this soile be subiect to much wéede and quickes, as generally it is, then after you haue torne vp the wéedes and quickes with Harrowes, you shall with rakes, rake them together, and laying them in heapes vpon the land, you shall burne them and then spreading the ashes they will be a very good Manure, and in short space destroy the wéedes also; likewise if your land be much ouergrowne with wéedes, if when you sheare your Rie you leaue a good long stubble, and then mowing the stubble burne it vpon the land, it is both a good Manure and also a good meanes to destroy the wéedes. {SN: Of sowing Barley.} After your Manure is lead forth and either spread vpon the lands, or set in great heapes, so as the land may be couered ouer with Manure (for it is to be obserued that this soile must be throughly Manured) then about the middest of May, which is the time when this worke should be finished, you shall repaire with your Plough into the other fallow field, which was prepared the yéere before for this yéeres Barley, & there you shall sow it all ouer with Barley aboue furrow, that is to say, you shall first Plough it, then sow it, and after Harrow it, making the mould as fine and smooth as may be, which is done with easie labour, because this sand of it owne nature is as fine as ashes. {SN: Of Summer-stirring.} {SN: Of sleighting.} Now the limitation for this séede time, is from the middest of May, till the middest of Iune, wherein if any man demand why it should not be sowne in March and Aprill, according as it is sowne in the former soiles, I answere, that first this redde-sand cannot be prepared, or receiue his full season in weather, and earings, before this time of the yéere, and next that these redde-sands, by how much they are hotter and drier then the other claies, by so much they may wel stay the longer before they receiue their séede, because that so much the sooner the séede doth sprout in them, & also the sooner ripen being kept warmer at the roote then in any could soile whatsoeuer. As soone as the middest of Iune approacheth, you shall then beginne to Summer-stirre your fallow field, and to turne your Manure into your land, in such sort as you did vpon your clay soiles, for this Ardor of Summer-stirring altereth in no soile, and this must be done from the middest of Iune, till the middest of Iuly, for as touching sleighting, clotting, or smoothing of this Barley field, it is seldome in vse, because the finenesse of the sand will lay the land smooth inough without sleighting: yet if you finde that any particular land lieth more rough then the rest, it shall not be amisse, if with your backe Harrowes you smooth it a little within a day or two after it is sowne. {SN: Of Foiling.} {SN: Of sowing Rye.} From the middest of Iuly vntill the middest of August, you shall foile and throw downe your fallow field againe, if your lands lie well and in good order, but if any of your lands doe lie in the danger of water, or by vse of Plowing are growne too flat, both which are hinderances to the growth of Corne, then when you foile your lands you shall Plow them vpward, and so by that meanes raise the ridges one furrow higher. After you haue foiled your land, which must be about the middest of August, then will your Barley be ready to mowe, for these hot soiles haue euer an earely haruest, which as soone as it is mowne and carried into the Barne, forthwith you shall with all expedition carry forth such Manure as you may conueniently spare, and lay it vpon that land from whence you receiued your Barley, which is most barraine: and if you want cart Manure, you shall then lay your fould of Shéepe thereupon, and as soone as it is Manured, you shall immediately Plow both it & the rest, which Ardor should be finished by the middest of September, and so suffered to rest vntill the beginning of October, at which time you shall beginne to sow all that field ouer with Rye in such sort as hath béene spoken of in former places. {SN: Obiection.} Now in as much as the ignorant Husbandman may very easiely imagine that I reckon vp his labours too thicke, and therein leaue him no leasure for his necessarie businesses, especially because I appoint him to foile his land from the middest of Iuly, till the middest of August, which is both a busie time for his Hay haruest, and also for his Rye shearing. {SN: Answere.} To this I make answere, that I write not according to that which poore men are able (for it were infinit to looke into estates) but according as euery good Husband ought, presupposing that he which will liue by the Plough, ought to pursue all things belonging vnto the Plough, and then he shall finde that there is no day in the yéere, but the Saboth, but it is necessarie that the Plough be going: yet to reconcile the poore and the rich together, they shall vnterstand, that when I speake of Plowing in the time of Haruest, I doe not meane that they should neglect any part of that principall Worke, which is the true recompence of their labour: but because whilst the dew is vpon the ground, or when there is either raine or mizling there is then no time for Haruest Worke, then my meaning is that the carefull Husbandman shall take those aduantages, and rising earelier in the mornings, be sure to be at his Plough two howers before the dew be from the ground, knowing that the getting but of one hower in the day compasseth a great worke in a month, neither shall hée néede to feare the ouer toiling of his cattell, sith at that time of the yéere Grasse being at greatest plenty, strongest and fullest of hart, Corne scattered almost in euery corner, and the mouth of the beast not being muzeld in his labour, there is no question but he will indure and worke more then at any other season. {SN: Of Winter ridging.} In the beginning of Nouember, you shall beginne to Winter-ridge your fallow, or tilth-field, which in all points shalbe done according to the forme described in the former soiles: for that Ardor of all other neuer altereth, because it is as it were a defence against the latter spring, which else would fill the lands full of wéedes, and also against the rigor of Winter, and therefore it doth lay vp the furrow close together, which taking the season of the frost, winde, and weather makes the mould ripe, mellow, and light: and the limitation for this Ardor, is from the beginning of Nouember, vntill the middest of December. {SN: Of the Plough.} {SN: Of the coulture.} Now as touching the Plough which is best and most proper for this redde-sand, it differeth nothing in shape and composure of members from that Plough which is described for the blacke Clay, hauing necessarily two hales, because the ground being loose and light, the Plough will with great difficulty hold land, but with the least disorder be euer ready to runne into the furrow, so that a right hand hale is most necessarie for the houlding of the plough euen, onely the difference of the two Ploughes consisteth in this, that the plough for this red-sand, must be much lesse then the plough for the blacke Clay houlding in the sizes of the timber the due proportion of the plough for the white or gray clay, or if it be somewhat lesse it is not amisse, as the head being eightéene inches, the maine beame not aboue foure foote, and betwéene the hinder part of the rest, and the out-most part of the plough head in the hinder end not aboue eight inches. Now for the Plough-Irons which doe belong vnto this plough, the Coulture is to be made circular, in such proportion as the coulture for the gray, or white clay, and in the placing, or tempering vpon the Plough it is to be set an inch at least lower then the share, that it may both make way before the share, and also cut déeper into the land, to make the furrow haue more easie turning. {SN: Of the share.} Now for the share, it differeth in shape from both the former shares, for it is neither so large nor out-winged, as that for the gray Clay, for this share is onely made broad to the Plough ward, and small to the point of the share, with onely a little peake and no wing according to this figure. {Illustration: The share.} {SN: Of the plough-slip.} These Plough-irons, both coulture and share, must be well stéeled and hardned at the points, because these sandy soiles being full of moisture and gréete, will in short space weare and consume the Irons, to the great hinderance and cost of the Husbandman, if it be not preuented by stéele and hardning, which notwithstanding will waste also in these soiles, so that you must at least twise in euery Ardor haue your Irons to the Smith, and cause him to repaire them both with Iron and stéele, besides these Irons, of coulture and share, you must also haue a long piece of Iron, which must be iust of the length of the Plough head, and as broad as the Plough head is thicke, and in thicknesse a quarter of an inch: and this piece of Iron must be nailed vpon the outside of the Plough head, next vnto the land, onely to saue the Plough head from wearing, for when the Plough is worne it can then no longer hould the land, and this piece of Iron is called of Husbandmen the Plough-slip and presenteth this figure. {Illustration: The Plough-slip.} {SN: Of Plough clouts.} Ouer and besides this Plough-slip, their are certaine other pieces of Iron which are made in the fashion of broad thinne plates, and they be called Plough clouts, and are to be nailed vpon the shelboard, to defend it from the earth or furrow which it turneth ouer, which in very short space would weare the woode and put the Husbandman to double charge. {SN: The houlding of the Plough.} Thus hauing shewed you the parts, members, and implements, belonging to this Plough, it rests that I procéede vnto the teame or draught: for to speake of the vse and handling of this Plough, it is néedelesse, because it is all one with those Ploughes, of which I haue spoken in the former Chapters, and he which can hould and handle a Plough in stiffe clayes must néedes (except he be excéeding simple) hould a Plough in these light sands, in as much as the worke is much more easie and the Plough a great deale lesse chargeable. {SN: Of the draught.} Now for the Draught or Teame, they ought to be as in the former Soiles, Oxen or Horses, yet the number not so great: for foure Beasts are sufficient to plow any Ardor vpon this soile, nay, thrée Horses if they be of reasenable strength will doe as much as sixe vpon either of the Clay-soiles: asfor their attire or Harnessing, the Beare-geares, before described, are the best and most proper. And thus much concerning this red Sand, wherein you are to take this briefe obseruation with you, that the Graines which are best to be sowne vpon it, are onely Rye, Barley, small Pease, _Lentles_ and _Lupines_, otherwise called Fitches, and the graines to which it is aduerse, are Wheat, Beanes and Maslin. CHAP. VIII. _The manner of plowing the white Sand, his Earings, Plough, and Implements._ Next vnto this red Sand, is the white sand, which is much more barraine then the red Sand, yet by the industry of the Husbandman in plowing, and by the cost of Manure it is made to beare corne in reasonable plentie. Now of white Sands there be two kindes, the one a white Sand mixt with a kinde of Marle, as that in Norffolke, Suffolke, and other such like places butting vpon the Sea-coast: the other a white Sand with Pible, as in some parts of Surrey, about Ancaster in Lincolne shire, and about Salisbury in Wil-shire. {SN: Of the white Sand with Pible.} Now for this white Sand with Pible, it is the barrainest, and least fruitfull in bringing forth, because it hath nothing but a hot dustie substance in it. For the manner of Earing thereof, it agréeth in all points with the redde Sand, the Ardors being all one, the Tempers, Manurings and all other appurtenances: the Séede also which it delights in is all one with the red Sand, as namely, Rye, Barley, Pease and Fitches. Wherefore who so shall dwell vpon such a soile, I must referre him to the former Chapter of the red Sand, and therein he shall finde sufficient instruction how to behaue himselfe vpon this earth: remembring that in as much as it is more barraine then the red Sand, by so much it craueth more care and cost, both in plowing and manuring thereof, which two labours onely make perfect the ill ground. {SN: Of the white Sand with Marle.} Now for the white Sand which hath as it were a certaine mixture, or nature of Marle in it, you shall vnderstand that albeit vnto the eye it be more dry and dustie then the red Sand, yet it is fully as rich as the red Sand: for albe it doe not beare Barley in as great plenty as the red Sand, yet it beareth Wheate abundantly, which the red Sand seldome or very hardly bringeth forth. {SN: Of Fallowing.} Wherefore to procéede to the Earings or tillage of this white Marly sand, you shall vnderstand that about the middest of Ianuary is fit time to beginne to fallow your field which shall be tilth and rest for this yéere: wherein by the way, before I procéede further, you shall take this obseruation with you, that whereas in the former soiles I diuided the fields into thrée & foure parts, this soile cannot conueniently, if it be well husbanded, be diuided into any more parts then two, that is to say, a fallow field, and a Wheat-field: in which Wheate-field if you haue any land richer then other, you may bestow Barley vpon it, vpon the second you may bestow Wheat, vpon the third sort of ground Rye, and vpon the barrainest, Pease or Fitches: and yet all these must be sowne within one field, because in this white sand, Wheate and Rye will not grow after Barley or Pease, nor Barley and Pease after Wheate or Rye. Your fields being then diuided into two parts, that is, one for corne, the other for rest, you shall as before I said, about the middest of Ianuary beginne to fallow your Tith-field, which in all obseruations you shall doe according as is mentioned for the red sand. {SN: Of sowing Pease.} About the middest of March, if you haue any barraine or wasted ground within your fallow field, or if you haue any occasion to breake vp any new ground, which hath not béene formerly broake vp, in eyther of these cases you shall sow Pease or Fitches thereupon, and those Pease or Fitches you shall sow vnder furrow as hath béene before described. {SN: Of Spring-fallowing.} About the middest of Aprill you shall plow your fallow-field ouer againe, in such manner as you plowed when you fallowed it first: and this is called Spring-fallowing, and is of great benefit because at that time the wéedes and quickes beginning to spring, nay, to flowrish, by reason that the heate of the climbe puts them forth sooner then in other soyles, if they should not be plowed vp before they take too strong roote, they would not onely ouer-runne, but also eate out the hart of the Land. {SN: Of sowing Barley.} About the middest of May you shall beginne to sow your Barley vpon the richest part of your old fallow-field, which at the Michaelmas before, when you did sow your Wheate, and Rye, and Maslin, you did reserue for that purpose: and this Barley you shall sow in such sort as is mentioned in the former Chapter of the red Sand, in so much that this Ardor being finished, which is the last part of your Séede-time, your whole field shall be furnished eyther with Wheate, if it hold a temperate fatnesse, or with Wheate and Barley, if it be rich and richer, or with Wheate, Barley and Pulse, if it be rich, poore or extreame barraine: and the manner of sowing all these seuerall séedes is described in the Chapters going before. {SN: Of Summer-stirring.} About the middest of Iune you shall beginne to Summer-stirre your fallow-field, in such sort as was spoken of in the former Chapters concerning the other soiles: for in this Ardor there is no alteration of methode, but onely in gouernment of the Plough, considering the heauinesse and lightnesse of the earth. During this Ardor you shall busily apply your labour in leading forth your Manure, for it may at great ease be done both at one season, neyther the Plough hindering the Cart, nor the Cart staying the Plough: for this soile being more light and easie in worke then any other soile whatsoeuer, doth euer preserue so many Cattell for other imployment that both workes may goe forward together, as shall be shewed when wee come to speake of the Plough, and the Teame which drawes it. {SN: Of Manuring.} Now as touching the Manures most fit for this soyle, they be all those of which we haue formerly written, ashes onely excepted, which being of an hot nature doe scald the Séede, and detaine it from all fruitfulnesse, being mixt with this hot soile, so is likewise Lyme, and the burning of stubble: other Manures are both good and occasion much fertilitie, as being of a binding and coole nature, and holding together that loosenesse which in his too much separation taketh all nutriment from the earth. {SN: Of Weeding.} After you haue ledde forth your Manure, and Summer-stird your Land, you shall then about the beginning of Iulie looke into your Corne-field, and if you perceiue any Thistles, or any other superfluous wéedes to annoy your Corne, you shall then (as is before said) either cut, or plucke them vp by the rootes. {SN: Of Foyling.} About the middest of August you shall beginne to foile or cast downe your fallow-field againe, and in that Ardor you shall be very carefull to plow cleane and leaue no wéedes vncut vp: for in these hot soiles if any wéedes be left with the least roote, so that they may knit and bring forth séede, the annoyance thereof will remaine for at least foure yéeres after, which is a double fallowing. And to the end that you may cut vp all such wéedes cleane, although both your Share and Coulture misse them, you shall haue the rest of your Plough in the vnder part which strokes alongst the earth filled all full of dragges of Iron, that is, of olde crooked nailes or great tenter-hookes, such as vpon the putting downe of your right hand when you come néere a wéed shall catch hold thereof and teare it vp by the rootes, as at this day is vsed be many particular Husbands in this kingdome, whose cares, skils, and industries are not inferiour to the best whatsoeuer. {SN: Of Sowing Wheate and Rye.} {SN: The choise of Seede.} About the middest of September, you shall beginne to sow your Wheate and Rye vpon your fallow field, which Graine vpon this soile is to be reckoned the most principall: and you shall sow it in the same manner that is described in the former Chapters, wherein your especiallest care is the choise of your séede: for in this soile your whole-straw Wheate, nor your great Pollard taketh any delight, neither your Organe, for all those thrée must haue a firme and a strong mould: but your Chilter-wheate, your Flaxen-wheate, your White-pollard, and your Red-wheate, which are the Wheates which yéeld the purest and finest meale, (although they grow not in so great abundance) are the séedes which are most proper and naturall for this soile. As for Rye or Maslin, according to the goodnesse of the ground so you shall bestow your séede: for it is a generall rule, that wheresoeuer your Wheate growes, there will euer Rye grow, but Rye will many times grow where Wheate will not prosper; and therefore for the sowing of your Rye, it must be according to the temper of the earth, and the necessitie of your houshold: for Wheate being a richer graine then Rye, if you be assured that your ground will beare Wheate well, it is small Husbandrie to sow more Rye or Maslin then for your house: but if it be too hot for Wheate, and kindly for Rye, then it is better to haue good Rye, then ill Wheate. Now for the sowing of your Rye or Maslin in this soile, it differeth nothing from the former soiles, either in plowing or any other obseruation, that is to say, it must be plowed aboue furrow: for Rye being the most tender graine, it can neither abide the waight of earth, nor yet moisture; the one, as it were, burying, and the other drowning the vigour and strength of the séede. {SN: Of Winter-ridging.} About the beginning of Nouember you shall Winter-ridge your fallow field, I meane that part which you doe preserue for Barley (for the other part is furnished with séede) and this Winter-ridging differeth nothing from the Winter ridging of other soiles, onely you shall a little more precisely obserue to set vp your lands more straight and high then in other soiles, both to defend them from wet, which this soile is much subiect vnto, because commonly some great riuer is neare it, and also for the preseruing of the strength and goodnesse of the Manure within the land which by lying open and vnclosed would soone be washt forth and consumed. {SN: Of the clensing of lands, or drawing of water-furrowes.} Now sith I haue here occasion to speake something of the draining of lands, and the kéeping of them from the annoyance of superfluous wet, whether it be by invndation or otherwise, you shall vnderstand that it is the especiall office and dutie of euery good Husbandman, not onely in this soile, but in all other whatsoeuer, to haue a principall respect to the kéeping of his land dry, and to that end hée shall diligently (as soone as he hath Winter-rigged his land) take a carefull view how his lands lie, which way the descent goes from whence annoyance or water may possibly come, and so consequently from those obseruations, with a Spade or strong Plough, of extraordinary greatnesse, draw certaine déepe furrowes from descent vnto descent, by which meanes all the water may be conuayed from his lands, eyther into some common Sewer, Lake, Brooke, or other maine Riuer: and to this end it is both a rule in the common Lawes of our Land, and a laudable custome in the Common-wealth of euery Towne, that for as much as many Townes haue their lands lie in common, that is to say, mixed neighbour with neighbour, few or none hauing aboue two or three lands at the most lying together in one place, therefore euery man shall ioyne, and make their water-furrowes one from another, vntill such time as the water be conuayed into some common issue, as well hée whose lands be without all danger, as he that is troubled with the greatest annoyance, and herein euery one shall beare his particular charge: which is an Act of great vertue and goodnesse. {SN: Of the Plough.} Now for the Plough which is to plow this white sand it doth differ nothing in size, proportion, and vse of handling from the Plough described for the red Sand, onely it hath one addition more, that is to say, at the further end of the maine Beame of the Plough, where you fixe your Plough-foote, there you shall place a little paire of round whéeles, which bearing the Beame vpon a loose mouing Axletrée, being iust the length of two furrows and no more, doth so certainly guide the Plough in his true furrow that it can neither lose the land by swaruing (as in these light soiles euery Plough is apt to doe) nor take too much land, eyther by the gréedinesse of the plough or sharpnesse of the Irons, neither can it drownd through the easie lightnesse of the earth, nor runne too shallow through the fussinesse of the mould, but the whéeles being made of a true proportion, which should not be aboue twelue inches from the centre, the Plough with a reasonable hand of gouernment shall runne in a direct and euen furrow: the proportion of which Plough is contained in this Figure. {Illustration: The Plough with Wheeles.} This plough of all others I hold to be most ancient, and as being the modell of the first inuention, and at this day is preserued both in France, Germany, & Italy, and no other proportion of Ploughes knowne, both as we perceiue by our experience in séeing them plow, & also by reading of their writings: for neither in _Virgil_, _Columella_, _Xenophon_, nor any olde Writer: nor in _Heresbachius_, _Steuens_, nor _Libault_, being later Writers, finde wée any other Plough bequeathed vnto our memories. Yet it is most certaine, that in many of our English soiles, this Plough is of little profit, as we finde by daily experience both in our clayes, and many of our mixt earths: for in truth this Plough is but onely for light, sandy, or grauelly soiles, as for the most part these forraine Countries are, especially about the sea-coast, or the borders of great Cities, from whence these Writers most generally tooke the presidents for their writings. {SN: Of the plough-Irons.} Now for the parts of this Plough, it consisteth of the same members which the former Ploughs doe, onely that in stead of the Plough-foote it hath a paire of whéeles. It hath also but one Hale, in such sort as the Plough for the gray or white clay. The beame also of this Plough is much more straight then the former, by which meanes the Skeath is not full so long. The Irons belonging vnto this Plough are of the fashion of the former Irons, onely they be somewhat lesse, that is to say, the Coulture is not so long, neyther so full bent as that for the red Sand, nor so straight as that for the blacke clay, but as it were holding a meane betwéene both: so likewise the Share is not fully so broad as that for the red sand, nor so narrow as that for the gray clay, but holds as it were a middle size betwéene both, somewhat leaning in proportion to the shape of that for the blacke clay. As for the Plough-slip, Plough-clouts, and other implements which are to defend the wood from the hardnesse of the earth, they are the same, and in the same wise to be vsed as those for the red Sand. {SN: Of the draught.} Now for the Draught or Teame which drawes this Plough, they are as in all other Draughts, Oxen or Horses, but for the number thereof they differ much from those which are formerly written of: for you shall vnderstand that in this white sandy soile, which is of all soiles the lightest, eyther two good Horses, or two good Oxen are a number sufficient to plow any Ardor vpon this soile whatsoeuer, as by daily experience we may sée in those countries whose soile consists of this white light Sand, of which wée haue now written: neyther shall the Plow-man vpon this soile néede any person to driue or order his Plough more then himselfe: for the soile being so light and easie to cut, the Plough so nimble, and the Cattell so few and so neare him, hauing euer his right hand at libertie (because his plough hath but onely a left hand Hale) he hath liberty euer to carry a goade or whip in his right hand, to quicken and set forward his Cattell, and also a line which being fastned to the heads of the Beasts, hée may with it euer when hée comes to the lands end, stop them and turne them vpon which hand he pleases. And thus much for the tillage and ordering of this white Sand. CHAP. IX. _The manner of plowing the Grauell with Pible stones, or the Grauell with Flint, their Earings, Plough, and implements._ Hauing in the plainest manner I can written sufficiently already of the foure simple and vncompounded soiles, to wit, two Clayes, blacke and gray, and two Sands, red and white, it now rests that I also giue you some perfect touch or taste of the mixt or compounded soiles, as namely, the grauell which is a kinde of hard sand, clay and stone mixt together: and of Grauels there be two kindes, that is to say, one that is mixt with little small Pible stones, as in many parts of Middlesex, Kent, and Surry: and the Grauell mixt with broad Flints, as in many parts of Hartford-shire, Essex, and sundry such places. These Grauels are both, in generall, subiect to much barrainnesse, especially if they be accompanied with any extraordinary moisture, yet with the good labour of plowing, and with the cost of much Manure, they are brought to reasonable fruitfulnesse, where it comes to passe that the Plow-man which is master of such a soile, if either he liue not neare some Citie or Market-towne, where great store of Manure, by the concourse of people, is daily bred, and so consequently is very cheape, or else haue not in his owne store and bréede, meanes to raise good store of Manure, hée shall seldome thriue and prosper thereupon. Now although in these grauell soiles there is a diuersity of mixture, as the one mingled with small Pibles, which indéede is the worst mixture, the other with broad Flints, which is the better signe of fruitfulnesse: yet in their order of tillage or Earings, in their wéeding and cleansing, and in all other ardors and obseruations, they differ nothing at all, the beginning and ending of each seuerall worke being all one. Now for the manner of worke belonging vnto these two soiles, it altereth in no respect nor obseruation eyther in Plough, plowing, manuring, weeding, or any other thing whatsoeuer, from that of the white sand, the same times of the yéere, the same Séedes, and the same Earings being euer to be obserued, wherefore it shall be needlesse to write so amply of these soiles as of the former, because being all one with the white Sand, without alteration, it were but to write one thing twice, and therefore I referre the Reader to the former Chapter, and also the Husbandman that shall liue vpon either of these soiles, onely with these few caueats: First, that for the laying his lands, hée shall lay them in little small stitches, that is, not hauing aboue foure furrowes laid together, as it were for one land, in such sort as you sée in Hartford-shire, Essex, Middlesex, Kent and Surry: for this soile being for the most part subiect to much moisture and hardnesse, if it should be laid in great lands, according to the manner of the North parts, it would ouer-burden, choake and confound the séed which is throwne into it. Secondly, you shall not goe about to gather off the stones which séeme as it were to couer the lands, both because the labour is infinite and impossible, as also because those stones are of good vse, and as it were a certaine Manuring and helpe vnto the ground: for the nature of this Grauell being colde and moist, these stones doe in the winter time, defend and kéepe the sharpnesse of the Frosts and bleake windes from killing the heart or roote of the séedes, and also in the Summer it defends the scorching heate of the Sunne from parching and drying vp the Séede, which in this grauelly soile doth not lie so well couered, as in other soyles, especially if this kinde of earth be inuironed with any great hils (as most commonly it is) the reflection whereof makes the heate much more violent. And lastly, to obserue that there is no manure better or more kindly for this kinde of earth then Chaulke, white Marle, or Lyme: for all other matters whatsoeuer the former Chapter of the white Sand, will giue you sufficient instructions. CHAP. X. _The manner of plowing the blacke Clay mixt with red Sand, and the white Clay mixt with white Sand, their Earings, Plough and Implements._ Next to these grauelly soiles, there be also two other compounded earths, as namely, the blacke Clay mixt with red Sand, and the white Clay mixt with white sand, which albe they differ in composition of mould, yet they hold one nature in their Tillage and Husbandry: wherefore first to speake of the blacke Clay mixt with red Sand, which (as before I said) is called of Husbandmen an hassell earth, you shall vnderstand that it is a very rich and good soile, very fruitfull both for Corne and Grasse: for Corne, being apt to beare any séede whatsoeuer: and for Grasse, as naturally putting it forth very earely in the yéere, by which your Cattell shall get reliefe sooner then in other soiles of colder nature: for both the blacke and white claies doe seldome flowrish with any store of Grasse before Iune, which is the time of wood-seare, and this soile will boast of some plenty about the beginning of Aprill at the furthest: but for Grasse we shall speake in his proper place. {SN: Of fallowing.} Now for his tillage it is thus: you shall about the middest of Ianuary, beginne to fallow that field which you intend that yéere shall lye at rest or tilth, and you shall fallow it in such sort as is specified in the Chapter of the blacke clay: onely you shall raise small furrowes and Plow the land cleane, being sure to open and cast the land downeward if the land lie high and round, otherwise you shall neuer at any time cast the land downe but ridge it vp, that is to say, when you fallow it, you shall cast the first furrow downeward, and so likewise the second, which two furrowes being cleane ploughed, will lay the land open inough, that is, there wilbe no part of the ridge vnploughed: which done, by changing your hand and the gate of your Plough, you shall plough those furrowes backe againe and lay them vpward, and so plough the whole land vpward, also laying it round and high: the reason for this manner of plowing being this, that for as much as this land being mixt of clay and sand, must néedes be a sore binding land, therefore if it should be laid flat, if any great raine or wet should fall, and a present drought follow it, neither should you possibly force your Plough to enter into it and breake it, or being broken should you get so much mould as to couer your Corne and giue the séede comfort, whereas vpon the contrary part, if it be laid high and vpright, it must necessarily be laid hollow and light, in so much that you may both Plough it at your pleasure, and also beget so perfect a mould as any other soile whatsoeuer, both because the wet hath liberty to auoide through the hollownesse, and also because the Sunne and weather hath power to enter and season it, wherefore in conclusion you shall fallow this field downeward if it lye high and vpright, otherwise you shall fallow it vpward as the meanes to bring it to the best Ardor. Now for this fallow field it must euer be made where the yéere before you did reape your Pease, in case you haue but thrée fields, or where you did reape your Wheate, Rye, and Maslin, in case you haue foure fields, according to the manner of the blacke clay. {SN: Of sowing Pease.} About the middest of February, which is within a day or two of Saint _Valentines_ day, if the season be any thing constant in fairenesse and drinesse, you shall then beginne to sow your Pease, for you must vnderstand that albeit this soile will beare Beanes, yet they are nothing so naturall for it as Pease, both because they are an hungry séede and doe much impaire and wast the ground, and also because they prosper best in a fat, loose, and tough earth, which is contrary to this hard and drie soile: but especially if you haue foure fields, you shall forbeare to sow any Beanes at all, least you loose two commodities, that is, both quantitie of graine (because Beanes are not so long and fruitfull vpon this earth, as vpon the clayes) and the Manuring of your ground, which Pease out of their owne natures doe, both by the smoothering of the ground and their owne fatnesse, when your Beanes doe pill and sucke the hart out of the earth. Now for the manner of sowing your Pease, you shall sow them aboue furrow, that is, first plough the land vpward, then immediately sow your Pease, and instantly after Harrow them, the Plough, the Séedes-man, and the Harrower, by due course, following each other, and so likewise you may sow Oates vpon this soile. {SN: Of sowing Barley.} About the middest of March, which is almost a fortnight before our Lady day, you shall beginne to sow your Barley, which Barley you shall sow neither vnder-furrow nor aboue, but after this order: first, you shall plow your land downeward, beginning at the furrow and so assending vpward to the ridge of the land, which as soone as you haue opened, you shall then by pulling the plough out of the earth, and laying the shelboard crosse the ridge, you shall fill the ridge in againe with the same mould which you plowed vp: this done, your séedes-man shall bring his Barley and sow the land aboue furrow: after the land is sowne, you shall then Harrow it as small as may be, first with a paire of woodden Harrowes, and after with a paire of Iron Harrowes, or else with a double Oxe Harrow, for this earth being somewhat hard and much binding, will aske great care and dilligence in breaking. {SN: Of sleighting.} After your Barley is sowne, you shall about the latter end of Aprill beginne to smooth and sleight your land, both with the backe Harrowes and with the rouler, and looke what clots they faile to breake, you shall with clotting beetles beate them asunder, making your mould as fine and laying your land as smooth as is possible. {SN: Of Summer-stirring.} About the middest of May, you shall, if any wet fall, beginne to Summer-stirre your land, or if no wet fall, you shall doe your indeauour to Summer-stirre your land, rather aduenturing to breake two ploughes, then to loose one day in that labour, knowing this, that one land Summer-stird in a dry season, is better then thrée Summer-stird in a wet or moist weather, both because it giues the earth a better temper, and kils the wéedes with more assurednesse, and as I speake of Summer-stirring, so I speake of all other Ardors, that the drier they are done the better they are euer done: and in this season you shall also gather the stones from your ground. {SN: Obiection.} Now it may be obiected, that if it be best to plough in drie seasons, it is then best to fallow also in a dry season, and by that meanes not to beginne to fallow vntill the beginning of May, as is prescribed for the blacke clay, and so to deferre the Summer-stirring till the next month after, sith of necessitie Ianuary must either be wet or else vnkindely. {SN: Answere.} To this I make answere, that most true it is, that the land which is last fallowed is euer the best and most fruitfull, yet this mixt earth which is compound of sand and clay, is such a binding earth, that if it be not taken and fallowed in a moist-time of the yéere, as namely, in Ianuary or February, but suffered to lye till May, at which time the drought hath so entered into him, that the greatest part of his moisture is decaied, then I say, the nature of the ground is such and so hard, that it wilbe impossible to make any plough enter into it, so that you shall not onely aduenture the losse of that speciall Ardor, but also of all the rest which should follow after, and so consequently loose the profit of your land: where contrary wise if you fallow it at the beginning of the yéere, as in Ianuary, and February, albe they be wet, yet shall you lay vp your furrowes and make the earth more loose, by which meanes you shall compasse all the other Earings which belong to your soile: for to speake briefely, late fallowing belongs vnto claies, which by drought are made loose and light, and earely fallowings vnto mixt soiles, such as these which by drinesse doe ingender and binde close together. {SN: Of weeding.} About the middest of Iune, you shall beginne to wéede your Corne, in such sort as hath béene before described in the former Chapters: and although this soile naturally of it selfe (if it haue receiued his whole Ardor in due seasons, and haue béene Ploughed cleane, according to the office of a good Husband) doth neither put forth Thistle or other wéede, yet if it want either the one or the other, it is certaine that it puts them forth in great abundance, for by Thistles and wéedes, vpon this soile, is euer knowne the goodnesse and dilligence of the Husbandman. {SN: Of Foiling.} About the middest of Iuly, you shall beginne to foile your land, in such sort also as hath béene mentioned in the former Chapters, onely with this obseruation that if any of your lands lie flat, you shall then, in your foiling, plough those lands vpward and not downeward, holding your first precept that in this soile, your lands must lie high, light, and hollow, which if you sée they doe, then you may if you please in your foiling cast them downeward, because at Winter ridging you may set them vp againe. {SN: Of Manuring.} Now for as much as in this Chapter I haue hitherto omitted to speake of Manuring this soile, you shall vnderstand that it is not because I hold it so rich that it néedeth no Manure, but because I know there is nothing more néedfull vnto it then Manure, in so much that I wish not the Husbandman of this ground to binde himselfe vnto any one particular season of the yéere for the leading forth of his Manure, but to bestow all his leasurable houres and rest from other workes onely vpon this labor, euen through the circuit of the whole yéere, knowing this most precisely, that at what time of the yéere so euer you shall lay Manure vpon this earth it will returne much profit. As for the choise of Manures vpon this soile they are all those whatsoeuer, of which I haue formerly intreated in any of the other Chapters, no Manure whatsoeuer comming amisse to this ground: prouided that the Husbandman haue this respect to lay vpon his moystest and coldest ground his hottest Manures, and vpon his hottest and driest earth his coolest and moistest Manures: the hot Manures being Shéepes-dung, Pigions-dung, Pullen-dung, Lyme, Ashes, and such like: the coole being Oxe-dung, Horse-dung, the scowrings of Ponds, Marle, and such like. {SN: Of Winter-ridging.} About the middest of September you shall beginne to Winter-ridge your Land, which in all points you shall doe according as is mentioned in the former Chapters of the Clayes: for in this Ardor there is neuer any difference, onely this one small obseruation, that you may aduenture to Winter-ridge this mixt earth sooner then any other: for many of our best English Husbandmen which liue vpon this soile doe hold this opinion, that if it be Winter-ridged so earely in the yéere, that through the vertue of the latter spring it put forth a certaine gréene wéede like mosse, bring short and soft, that the land is so much the better therefore, being as they imagine both fed and comforted by such a slender expression which doth not take from the land any hart, but like a warme couering doth ripen and make mellow the mould, and this cannot be effected but onely by earely Winter-ridging. {SN: Of Sowing of Wheate, Rye, and Maslin.} At the end of September you shall beginne to sow your Wheate, Rye, and Maslin, all which Graines are very naturall, good, and profitable vpon this soile, and are to be sowne after the same manner, and with the same obseruations which are specified in the former Chapter of the blacke clay, that is to say, the Wheate vnder furrow, and vnharrowed, the Rye and Maslin aboue furrow, and well harrowed. And herein is also to be remembred all those precepts mentioned in the Chapter of the blacke Clay, touching the diuision of the fields, that is to say, if you haue three fields, you shall then sow your Wheate, Rye and Maslin in your fallow-field, and so saue both the Foyling and double manuring of so much earth: but if you haue foure fields, then you shall sow those graines vpon that land from whence the same yéere you did reape your Pease; your Wheate hauing no other Manure then that which came by the Pease, your Rye hauing, if possible, eyther Manure from the Cart, or from the Folde, in such sort as hath béene shewed in the Chapter of the blacke Clay, and this of Husbandmen is called Inam-wheate or Inam-rye, that is, white-corne sowne after white-corne, as Barley after Barley, or hard-corne after hard-corne, which is wheate after Pease. {SN: Of the plough.} Now for the Plough which is most proper for this soile it is to be made of a middle size betwixt that for the blacke Clay, and that for the red Sand, being not all out so bigge and vnwieldy as the first, nor so slender and nimble as the latter, but taking a middle proportion from them both, you shall make your Plough of a competent fitnesse. {SN: Of the plough-Irons.} As for the Irons, the Share must be of the same proportion that the Share for the red Sand is, yet a little thought bigger, and the Coulture of the fashion of that Coulture, onely not full so much bent, but all-out as sharpe and as long: and these Irons must be euer well maintained with stéele, for this mixt earth is euer the hardest, and weareth both the Plough and Irons soonest, and therefore it is agréed by all Husbandmen that this Plough must not at any time want his Plough-slip, except at the first going of the Plough you shall finde that it hath too much land, that is to say, by the crosse setting on of the beame, that it runneth too gréedily into the land, which to helpe, you shall let your Plough goe without a plough-slip, till the plough-head be so much worne, that it take no more but an ordinary furrow, and then you shall set on your Plough-slips and Plough clouts also: but I write this in case there be imperfection in the Plough, which if it be otherwise, then this obseruation is néedlesse. {SN: Of the Teame.} Now for the Teame or Draught which shall draw this Plough, they are as the former, Oxen or Horses, and their number the same that is prescribed for the blacke Clay, as namely, eight or sixe Beasts for Pease-earth, for Fallowing, and Summer-stirring, and sixe or foure for all other Ardors: for you must vnderstand that this mixt and binding soile, through his hardnesse, and glutenous holding together, is as hard to plow as any clay-soile whatsoeuer, and in some speciall seasons more by many degrées. {SN: Of the white clay with white Sand.} Now for the white clay mixt with white sand, it is an earth much more barraine, then this former mixt earth, and bringeth forth nothing without much care, diligence, and good order: yet, for his manner of Earings, in their true natures euery way doe differ nothing from the Earings of this blacke clay and red Sand, onely the Séede which must be sowne vpon this soile differeth from the former: for vpon this soile in stead of Barley you must sow most Oates, as a Graine which will take much strength from little fertilitie: and in stead of Rye you shall sow more Wheate and more Pease, or in stead of Pease then you shall sow Fitches of eyther kinde which you please, and the increase will be (though not in abundance, yet) so sufficient as shall well quit the Plow-mans labour. {SN: Of Manuring.} Now for the Manuring of this ground, you shall vnderstand that Marle is the chiefest: for neyther will any man suppose that this hard soile should bring vp cattell sufficient to manure it, nor if it would, yet that Manure were not so good: for a barraine clay being mixt with a most barraine sand, it must consequently follow that the soile must be of all the barenest, insomuch that to giue perfect strength and life vnto it, there is nothing better then Marle, which being a fat and strong clay, once incorporated within these weake moulds, it must néedes giue them the best nourishment, loosening the binding substance, and binding that weaknesse which occasioneth the barrainnesse: but of this Marle I shall haue more occasion to speake hereafter in a particular Chapter, onely thus much I must let you vnderstand, that this soile, albe it be not within any degrée of praise for the bringing forth of Corne, yet it is very apt and fruitfull for the bréeding of grasse, insomuch that it will beare you corne for at least nine yéeres together (without the vse of any fallow or Tilth-field) if it be well marled, and immediately after it will beare you very good bréeding grasse, or else reasonable Medow for as many yéeres after, as by daily experience we sée in the Countries of Lancaster and Chester. So that the consequence being considered, this ground is not but to be held indifferent fruitfull: for whereas other soiles afore shewed (which beare abundance of Graine) are bound to be manured once in thrée yéeres, this soile, albe it beare neither so rich graine, nor so much plenty, yet it néedes marling not aboue once in sixtéene or eightéene yéeres: and albe Marle be a Manure of the greatest cost, yet the profit by continuance is so equall that the labour is neuer spent without his reward, as shall more largely appeare hereafter. {SN: Of the Plough.} As touching the Plough, it is the same which is mentioned in the other soile of the blacke Clay, and red Sand, altering nothing eyther in quantitie of timber, or strength of Irons: so that to make any large description thereof, is but to double my former discourses, and make my writings tedious. For to conclude briefely, these two soiles differ onely but in fatnesse and strength of nature, not in Earing, or plowing, so that the labours of tillage being equall there is not any alteration more then the true diligence of much manuring, which will bréede an affinitie or alyance betwixt both these soiles. And thus much for this blacke Clay and red Sand, or white Clay and white Sand. {Illustration} THE FIRST PART OF THE ENGLISH Husbandman: Contayning, the manner of plowing and Manuring all sorts of Soyles, together with the manner of planting and setting of Corne. CHAP. I. _Of the manner of plowing all simple Earths, which are vncompounded._ That many famous and learned men, both in Fraunce, Spaine, Italy and Germany, haue spent all their best time in shewing vnto the world the excellencie of their experiences, in this onely renowned Arte of Husbandry, their large and learned Volumes, most excellently written, in that kinde, are witnesses: from whence we by translations haue gotten some contentment, though but small profit; because those forraine clymates, differing much from ours, both in nature of earth, and temper of Ayre, the rules and obseruations belonging vnto them can be little auailable to vs, more then to know what is done in such parts, a thing more appertaining to our conference then practise. But now, that other kingdomes may sée though wée write lesse yet wée know as much as belongeth to the office of the English Husbandman, I, though the meanest of many millions, haue vndertaken to deliuer vnto the world all the true rudiments, obseruations and knowledges what soeuer, which hath any affinitie or alliance with English Husbandry. And for as much as the best and principallest part of Husbandry consisteth in the plowing and earring of the ground (for in that onely _Adam_ began his first labours) I thinke it not vnméete, first to treate of that subiect, procéeding so from braunch to braunch, till I haue giuen euery one sufficient knowledge. To speake then first of the Tilling of Grounds. You shall well vnderstand, that it is the office of euery good Husbandman before he put his plough into the earth, truly to consider the nature of his Grounds, and which is of which quallitie and temper. To procéede then to our purpose; all soyles what soeuer, in this our kingdome of England, are reduced into two kindes onely, that is to say, Simple or Compound. Simple, are those which haue no mixture with others of a contrary quallitie, as are your stiffe clayes, or your loose sands: your stiffe clayes are likewise diuers, as a blacke clay, a blew clay, and a clay like vnto Marble. Your sands are also diuers, as a red sand, a white sand, a yellow sand, and a sand like vnto dust. Your mixt earths are where any of these clayes and sands are equally or vnindifferently mixed together, as shalbe at large declared hereafter. Now as touching the tilling of your simple clayes, it is to be noted, that the blacke clay, of all earth, is the most fruitfull, and demandeth from the Husbandman the least toyle, yet bringeth forth his increase in the greatest abundance: it will well and sufficiently bring forth thrée crops, eare it desire rest: namely, the first of Barly, the second of Pease, and the third of Wheate: It doth not desire much Manure, for it is naturally of it selfe so fat, rich, and fruitfull, that if you adde strength vnto his strength, by heaping Manure or Compasse thereupon, you make it either blast, and mildew the Corne that growes, with the too much fatnesse of the earth, or else through his extreame rankenesse, to bring it vp in such abundance that it is not able to stand vpright when it is shot vp, but falling downe flat to the ground, and the eares of Corne smothering one another, they bring forth nothing but light Corne, like an emptie huske, without a kirnell. The best Manure or Compasse therefore that you can giue such ground, is then to plow it in orderly and dew seasons, as thus: you shall begin to fallow, or breake vp this soyle, at the beginning of May, at which time you shall plow it déepe, & take vp a large furrow, and if your Lands lye any thing flat, it shalbe méete that you begin on the ridge of the land, and turne all your furrowes vpward, but if your Lands lye high and vpright, then shall you begin in the furrow and turne all your furrowes downeward, which is called of Husbandmen, the casting downe of Land. This first plowing of ground, or as Husbandmen tearme it, the first ardor, is called fallowing: the second ardor, which we call stirring of ground, or sommer stirring, you shall begin in Iuly, which is of great consequence, for by meanes of it you shall kill all manner of wéedes and thistells that would annoy your Land. In this ardor you must oft obserue that if when you fallowed you did set vp your Land, then now when you stirre you must cast downe your Land, and so contrarily, if before you did cast downe, then now you must set vp: your third ardor, which is called of Husbandmen, winter ridgeing, or setting vp Land for the whole yéere, you shall begin at the latter end of September, and you must euer obserue that in this third ardor you doe alwaies ridge vp your Land, that is to say, you most turne euery furrow vpward and lay them as close together as may be, for should you doe otherwise, that is to say, either lay them flat or loosely, the winter season would so beat and bake them together, that when you should sow your séede you would hardly get your plough into the ground. Now your fourth and last ardor, which must be when you sow your séede, you shall begin euer about the midst of March, at least one wéeke before our Ladies day, commonly called the Annunciation of _Mary_, and this ardor you shall euer plow downeward, laying your ridges very well open, and you shall euer obserue in this ardor, first to sow your séede, and then after to plow your ground, turning your séede into the earth, which is called of Husbandmen, sowing vnderfurrow: as soone as your ground is plowed you shall harrow it with an harrow whose téeth are all of wood, for these simple earths are of easie temper and will of themselues fall to dust, then after you haue thus sowne your ground, if then there remaine any clots or lumpes of earth vnbroken, you shall let them rest till after the next shower of raine, at which time you shall either with a heauie rouler, or the backside of your harrowes, runne ouer your Lands, which is called the sleighting of ground, and it will not onely breake such clots to dust, but also lay your Land plaine and smoth, leauing no impediment to hinder the Corne from sprouting and comming forth. In this same ordor as you are appointed for this blacke clay, in this same manner you shall ordor both your blew clay & your clay which is like vnto marble. Now as touching the plough which is fittest for these clayes, it must be large and strong, the beame long and well bending, the head thicke and large, the skéeth broad, strong, and well sloaping, the share with a very large wing, craueing much earth, and the coulter long, thicke and very straight. Now touching those lands which are simple and vncompounded, you shall vnderstand that euery good Husbandman must begin his first ardor (which is to fallow them) at the beginning of Ianuary, hée must sooner stirre them, which is the second ardor, at the latter end of Aprill, he shall cast them downe againe, which is called foyling of Land, at the beginning of Iuly, which is the third ardor, and wherein is to be noted, that how soeuer all other ardors are plowed, yet this must euer be cast downward: the fourth ardor, which is winter-stirring or winter-ridgeing, must euer begin at the end of September, and the fift and last ardor must be performed when you sow your ground, which would be at the middest of May, at the soonest, and if your leasure and abilitie will giue you leaue, if you turne ouer your ground againe in Ianuary, it will be much better, for these sands can neuer haue too much plowing, nor too much Manure, and therefore for them both, you shall apply them so oft as your leasure will conueniently serue, making no spare when either the way or opportunitie will giue you leaue. Now for as much as all sands, being of a hot nature, are the fittest to bring foorth Rye, which is a graine delighting in drynesse onely, you shall vnderstand, that then you shall not néed to plow your ground aboue foure times ouer, that is, you shall fallow, sommer stirre, foyle, and in September sow your Corne: and as these ardors serue the red sand, so are they sufficient for your white sand, and your yealow sand also. As touching the ploughes fit for these light earths, they would be little and strong, hauing a short slender beame and a crooked; a narrow and thinne head, a slender skéeth, a share without a wing, a coulter thinne and very crooked, and a paire of hales much bending forward towards the man; and with this manner of plough you may plow diuers mixt and compounded earths, as the blacke clay and red sand, or the red sand and white grauell: and thus much as touching earths that are simple and vncompounded. CHAP. II. _Of the manner of plowing the blacke clay mixt with white sand, and the white clay mixt with red sand: their Earrings, Plough, and Implements._ As touching the mixture of these two seuerall soyles, that is to say, the blacke clay with white sand, and the white clay with red sand, they differ not in the nature of plowing, sowing, or in Manuring, from the soyle which is mixt of a blacke clay and red sand, of which I haue sufficiently intreated before: onely thus much you shall vnderstand, that the blacke clay mixt with white sand is so much better and richer then the white clay mixt with red sand, by as much as the blacke clay is better then the white clay: and although some Husbandmen in our Land, hould them to be both of one temper and goodnesse, reasoning thus, that by how much the blacke clay is better then the white, by so much the red sand is better then the white sand, so that what the mixture of the one addeth, the mixture of the other taketh away, and so maketh them all one in fruitfulnesse and goodnesse: but in our common experience it doth not so fall out, for wée finde that the blacke clay mixt with white sand, if it be ordered in the forme of good Husbandry, that is to say, be plowed ouer at least foure times, before it come to be sowne, and that it be Manured and compassed in Husbandly fashion, which is to allow at least eight waine-load to an Aker, that if then vpon such Land you shall sow either Organe Wheat (in the south parts called red Wheat) or flaxen, or white Pollard Wheat, that such Wheat will often mildew, and turne as blacke as soote, which onely showeth too much richnesse and fatnesse in the earth, which the white clay mixt with red sand hath neuer beene séene to doe, especially so long as it is vsed in any Husbandly fashion, neither will the white clay mixt with red sand indure to be deuided into foure fields, that is to say, to beare thrée seuerall crops, one after another, as namely, Barly, Pease, and Wheat, without rest, which the blacke clay mixt with white sand many times doth, and thereby againe showeth his better fruitfulnesse: neuerthelesse, in generalitie I would not wish any good Husbandman, and especially such as haue much tillage, to deuide either of these soyles into any more then thrée fields, both because hee shall ease himselfe and his Cattell of much toyle, shall not at any time loose the best seasons for his best workes, and make his commodities, and fruit of his hands labours, by many degrées more certaine. You shall also vnderstand, that both these soyles are very much binding, especially the white clay with red sand, both because the clay, procéeding from a chaukie and limie substance, and not hauing in it much fatnesse or fertillitie (which occasioneth seperation) being mixt with the red sand, which is of a much more hardnesse and aptnesse to knit together, with such tough matter, it must necessarilie binde and cleaue together, and so likewise the blacke clay, from whence most naturally procéedeth your best limestone, being mixt with white sand, doth also binde together and stifle the séede, if it be not preuented by good Husbandry. You shall therefore in the plowing and earring of these two soyles, obserue two especiall notes; the first, that by no meanes you plow it in the wet, that is, in any great glut of raine: for if you either lay it vp, or cast it downe, when it is more like morter then earth, if then any sunshine, or faire weather, doe immediately follow vpon it, it will so drie and bake it, that if it be sowne, neither will the séede haue strength to sprout thorrow it, nor being in any of your other summer ardors, shall you by any meanes make your plough enter into it againe, when the season falleth for other plowing. The second, that you haue great care you lay your Land high and round, that the furrowes, as it were standing vpright one by another, or lying light and hollow, one vpon another, you may with more ease, at any time, enter in your plough, and turne your moulde which way you please, either in the heate of Sommer, or any other time of the yéere whatsoeuer. Now as touching the plough, which is most best and proper for these soyles, it would be the same in sise which is formerly directed for the red sand, onely the Irons must be altered, for the Coulter would be more long, sharpe, and bending, and the share so narrow, sharpe, and small as can conueniently be made, according as is formerly expressed, that not hauing power to take vp any broad furrow, the furrowes by reason of there slendernesse may lye many, and those many both hollow, light and at any time easily to be broken. As for the Teame which is best to worke in this soyle, they may be either Horses or Oxen, or Oxen and Horse mixt together, according to the Husbandmans abillitie, but if hée be a Lord of his owne pleasure and may commaund, and haue euery thing which is most apt and proper, then in these two soyles, I preferre the Teame of Horses single, rather then Oxen, especially in any winter or moist ardor, because they doe not tread and foyle the ground making it mirie and durtie as the Oxe doth, but going all in one furrow, doe kéepe the Land in his constant firmenesse. As touching the clotting, sleighting, wéeding, and dressing of these two soyles, they differ in nothing from the former mixt earths, but desire all one manner of dilligence: and thus much for these two soyles the blacke clay mixt with white sand, and the white clay with white red sand. CHAP. III. _A comparison of all the former soyles together, and most especiall notes for giuing the ignorant Husbandman perfect vnderstanding, of what is written before._ The reason why I haue thus at large discoursed of euery seuerall soyle, both simple and compounded, is to show vnto the industrious Husbandman, the perfect and true reason of the generall alteration of our workes in Husbandry, through this our Realme of England: for if all our Land, as it is one kingdome, were likewise of one composition, mixture, and goodnesse, it were then excéeding preposterous to sée those diuersities, alterations, I, and euen contrary manners of procéedings in Husbandry, which are daily and hourely vsed: but euery man in his owne worke knowes the alteration of clymates. Yet for so much as this labour of Husbandry, consisteth not for the most part in the knowing and vnderstanding breast, but in the rude, simple, and ignorant Clowne, who onely knoweth how to doe his labour, but cannot giue a reason why he doth such labour, more then the instruction of his parents, or the custome of the Countrie, where it comes to passe (and I haue many times séene the same to mine admiration) that the skillfullest Clowne which is bred in the clay soyles, when hée hath béene brought to the sandy ground, hée could neither hould the plough, temper the plough, nor tell which way in good order to driue the Cattell, the heauinesse of the one labour being so contrary to the lightnesse of the other, that not hauing a temperance, or vnderstanding in his hands, hée hath béene put euen vnto his wittes ends; therefore I thinke it conuenient, in this place, by a slight comparison of soyles together, to giue the simplest Husbandman such direct & plaine rules that he shall with out the study of his braines, attaine to absolute knowledge of euery seuerall mixture of earth: and albeit hée shall not be able distinctly to say at the first that it is compounded of such and such earths, yet hée shall be very able to deliuer the true reason and manner how such ground (of what nature soeuer) shall be Husbanded and tilled. Therefore to begin the Husbandman, is to vnderstand, that generally there are but two soyles for him to regard, for in them consisteth the whole Arte of Husbandry: as namely, the open and loose earth, and the close and fast binding earth, and these two soyles being meare opposites and contraries, most necessarily require in the Husbandman a double vnderstanding, for there is no soyle, of what simplicitie or mixture soeuer it be, but it is either loose or fast. Now to giue you my meaning of these two words, _loose_ and _fast_, it is, that euery soyle which vpon parching and dry weather, euen when the Sunne beames scorcheth, and as it were baketh the earth, if then the ground vpon such excéeding drought doe moulder and fall to dust, so that whereas before when it did retaine moisture it was heauie, tough, and not to be seperated, now hauing lost that glewinesse it is light, loose, and euen with a mans foote to be spurnd to ashes, all such grounds are tearmed loose and open grounds, because at no time they doe binde in or imprison the séede (the frost time onely excepted, which is by accidence, and not from the nature of the soyle:) and all such grounds as in their moisture or after the fall of any sodaine raine are soft, plyable, light, and easie to be wrought, but after when they come to loose that moistnesse and that the powerfulnesse of the Sunne hath as it were drid vp their veynes, if then such earths become hard, firme, and not to be seperated, then are those soyles tearmed fast and binding soyles, for if there ardors be not taken in their due times, and their séede cast into them in perfect and due seasons, neither is it possible for the Plowman to plow them, nor for the séede to sprout through, the earth being so fastned and as it were stone-like fixt together. Now sithence that all soyles are drawne into these two heads, fastnes, and loosenesse, and to them is annexed the diuersitie of all tillage, I will now show the simple Husbandman which earths be loose, and which fast, and how without curiositie to know and to distinguish them. Breifely, all soyles that are simple and of themselues vncompounded, as namely, all claies, as blacke, white, gray, or blew, and all sands, as either red, white, or blacke, are open and loose soyles: the claies because the body and substance of them being held together by moistnes, that moisture being dryed vp, their strength and stifnesse decayeth, and sands by reason of their naturall lightnesse, which wanting a more moist and fixt body to be ioyned with them doe loose all strength of binding or holding together. Now all mixt or compound earths (except the compositions of one and the same kinds, as clay with clay, or sand with sand) are euer fast and binding earths: for betwixt sand and clay, or clay & grauell, is such an affinitie, that when they be mixt together the sand doth giue to the clay such hardnesse and drynesse, and the clay to the sand such moisture and coldnesse, that being fixt together they make one hard body, which through the warmth of the Sunne bindeth and cleaueth together. But if it be so that the ignorance of the Husbandman cannot either through the subtiltie of his eye sight, or the obseruations gathered from his experience, distinguish of these soyles, and the rather, sith many soyles are so indifferently mixt, and the colour so very perfect, that euen skill it selfe may be deceiued: as first to speake of what mixture some soyles consist, yet for as much as it is sufficient for the Husbandman to know which is loose and which is binding, hée shall onely when he is perplext with these differences, vse this experiment, hée shall take a good lumpe of that earth whose temperature hée would know, and working it with water and his wet hands, like a péece of past, he shall then as it were make a cake thereof, and laying it before an hot fire, there let it lye, till all the moisture be dried & backt out of it, then taking it into your hands and breaking it in péeces, if betwéene your fingers it moulder and fall into a small dust, then be assured it is a loose, simple, and vncompounded earth, but if it breake hard and firme, like a stone, and when you crumble it betwéene your fingers it be rough, gréetie, and shining, then be assured it is a compounded fast-binding earth, and is compounded of clay and sand, and if in the baking it doe turne red or redish, it is compounded of a gray clay and red sand, but if it be browne or blewish, then it is a blacke clay & white sand, but if when you breake it you finde therein many small pibles, then the mixture is clay and grauell. Now there be some mixt soyles, after they are thus bak't, although they be hard and binding, yet they will not be so excéeding hard and stone-like as other soyles will be, and that is where the mixture is vnequall, as where the clay is more then the sand, or the sand more then the clay. When you haue by this experiment found out the nature of your earth, and can tell whether it be simple or compounded, you shall then looke to the fruitfulnesse thereof, which generally you shall thus distinguish. First, that clayes, simple and of themselues vncompounded, are of all the most fruitfull, of which, blacke is the best, that next to clayes, your mixt earths are most fertill, and the mixture of the blacke clay and red sand, called a hasell earth, is the best, and that your sands are of all soyles most barraine, of which the red sand for profit hath euer the preheminence. Now for the generall tillage and vse of these grounds, you shall vnderstand that the simple and vncompounded grounds, being loose and open (if they lye frée from the danger of water) the Lands may be layd the flattest and greatest, the furrowes turned vp the largest and closest, and the plough and plough-Irons, most large and massie, onely those for the sandy grounds must be more slender then those for the clayes and much more nimble, as hath béene showed before. Now for the mixt earths, you shall lay your Lands high, round, and little, set your furrowes vpright, open, and so small as is possible, and make your plough and plow Irons most nimble and slender, according to the manner before specified: and thus I conclude, that hée which knoweth the loose earth and the binding earth, can either helpe or abate the strength of the earth, as is néedfull, and knowes how to sorte his ploughes to each temper, knowes the ground and substance of all tillage. CHAP. IIII. _Of the planting or setting of Corne, and the profit thereof._ Not that I am conceited, or carried away with any nouelty or strange practise, vnusually practised in this kingdome, or that I will ascribe vnto my selfe to giue any iudiciall approbation or allowance to things mearely vnfrequented, doe I publish, within my booke, this relation of the setting of Corne, but onely because I would not haue our English Husbandman to be ignorant of any skill or obscure faculty which is either proper to his profession, or agréeable with the fertillitie and nature of our clymates, and the rather, since some few yéeres agoe, this (as it then appeared secret) being with much admiration bruted through the kingdome, in so much that according to our weake accustomed dispositions (which euer loues strange things best) it was held so worthy, both for generall profit and perticular ease, that very fein (except the discréet) but did not alone put it in practise, but did euen ground strong beleifes to raise to themselues great common-wealthes by the profits thereof; some not onely holding insufficient arguments, in great places, of the invtilitie of the plough, but euen vtterly contemning the poore cart Iade, as a creature of no necessitie, so that Poulters and Carriers, were in good hope to buy Horse-flesh as they bought egges, at least fiue for a penie; but it hath proued otherwise, and the Husbandman as yet cannot loose the Horses seruice. But to procéede to the manner of setting or planting of Corne, it is in this manner. {SN: Of setting Wheate.} Hauing chosen out an aker of good Corne ground, you shall at the beginning of March, appoint at least sixe diggers or laborers with spades to digge vp the earth gardenwise, at least a foote and thrée inches déepe (which is a large spades graft) and being so digged vp, to rest till Iune, and then to digge it ouer againe, and in the digging to trench it and Manure it, as for a garden mould, bestowing at least sixtéene Waine-load of Horse or Oxe Manure vpon the aker, and the Manure to be well couered within the earth, then so to let it rest vntill the beginning of October, which being the time for the setting, you shall then digge it vp the third time, and with rakes and béetells breake the moulde somewhat small, then shall you take a board of sixe foot square, which shalbe bored full of large wimble holes, each hole standing in good order, iust sixe inches one from another, then laying the board vpon the new digged ground, you shall with a stick, made for the purpose, through euery hole in the board, make a hole into the ground, at least fore inches déepe, and then into euery such hole you shall drop a Corne of Wheate, and so remouing the board from place to place, goe all ouer the ground that you haue digged, and so set each seuerall Corne sixe inches one from another, and then with a rake you shall rake ouer and couer all the holes with earth, in such sort that they may not be discerned. And herein you are to obserue by the way that a quarte of Wheate will set your aker: which Wheate is not to be taken as it falles out by chance when you buy it in the market, but especially culd and pickt out of the eare, being neither the vppermost Cornes which grow in the toppes of the eares, nor the lowest, which grow at the setting on of the stalke, both which, most commonly are light and of small substance, but those which are in the midst, and are the greatest, fullest, and roundest. {SN: Of setting Barly, or Pease.} Now in the selfe-same sort as you dresse your ground for your Wheate, in the selfe same manner you shall dresse your ground for Barly, onely the first time you digge it shalbe after the beginning of May, the second time and the Manuring about the midst of October, wherein you shall note that to your aker of Barly earth, you shall alow at least foure and twentie Waine-load of Manure, and the last time of your digging and setting shalbe at the beginning of Aprill. Now for the dressing of your earth for the setting of Pease, it is in all things answerable to that for Barly, onely you may saue the one halfe of your Manure, because a dosen Waine-load is sufficient, and the time for setting them, or any other pulse, is euer about the midst of February. {SN: Of the profit of setting Corne.} Now for the profit which issueth from this practise of setting of Corne, I must néeds confesse, if I shall speake simply of the thing, that is, how many foulds it doubleth and increaseth, surely it is both great and wonderfull: and whereas ingenerall it is reputed that an aker of set Corne yéeldeth as much profit as nine akers of sowne Corne, for mine owne part I haue séene a much greater increase, if euery Corne set in an aker should bring forth so much as I haue séene to procéede from some thrée or foure Cornes set in a garden, but I feare me the generalitie will neuer hould with the particular: how euer, it is most certaine that earth in this sort trimmed and inriched, and Corne in this sort set and preserued, yéeldeth at least twelue-fold more commoditie then that which by mans hand is confusedly throwne into the ground from the Hopper: whence it hath come to passe that those which by a few Cornes in their gardens thus set, séeing the innumerable increase, haue concluded a publique profit to arise thereby to the whole kingdome, not looking to the intricacie, trouble, and casualtie, which attends it, being such and so insupportable that almost no Husbandman is able to vndergoe it: to which we néed no better testimony then the example of those which hauing out of meare couetousnesse and lucre of gaine, followed it with all gréedinesse, séeing the mischiefes and inconueniences which hath incountred their workes, haue euen desisted, and forgotten that euer there was any such practise, and yet for mine owne part I will not so vtterly condemne it, that I will depriue it of all vse, but rather leaue it to the discretion of iudgement, and for my selfe, onely hould this opinion, that though it may very wel be spared from the generall vse of Wheat and Barly in this kingdome, yet for hastie-Pease, French Beanes, and such like pulse, it is of necessary imployment, both in rich and poore mens gardens. And thus much for the setting of Corne. CHAP. V. _Of the choice of seede-Corne, and which is best for which soyle._ Hauing thus showed vnto you the seuerall soyles and temperatures of our English land, together with the order of Manuring, dressing and tillage of the same, I thinke it méete (although I haue in generall writ something already touching the séede belonging to euery seuerall earth) now to procéede to a particular election and choice of séede-Corne, in which there is great care and diligence to be vsed: for as in Men, Beasts, Fowle, & euery mouing thing, there is great care taken for the choice of the bréeders, because the creatures bred doe so much participate of the parents that for the most part they are séene not onely to carry away their outward figures and semblances, but euen their naturall conditions and inclinations, good issuing from good, and euill from euill: so in the choise of séede-Corne, if their be any neglect or carelessenesse, the crop issuing of such corrupt séede must of force bring forth a more corrupt haruest, by as much as it excéedeth in the multiplication. {SN: The choise of seede Wheate.} To procéede therefore to the choise of séede-Corne, I will begin with Wheate, of which there are diuers kindes, as your whole straw Wheate, the great browne Pollard, the white Pollard, the Organe or red Wheate, the flaxen Wheate, and the chilter Wheate. Your whole straw Wheate, and browne Pollard, are knowne, the first, by his straw, which is full of pith, and hath in it no hollownesse (whence it comes that Husbandmen estéeme it so much for their thacking, allowing it to be as good and durable as réede:) the latter is knowne by his eare, which is great, white, and smooth, without anes or beard vpon it: in the hand they are both much like one to another, being of all Wheates the biggest, roundest and fullest: they be somewhat of a high colour, and haue vpon them a very thicke huske, which making the meale somewhat browne causeth the Baker not all together to estéeme them for his purest manchet, yet the yéeld of flower which cometh from them is as great and greater then any other Wheate whatsoeuer. These two sortes of Wheate are to be sowne vpon the fallow field, as crauing the greatest strength and fatnesse of ground, whence it comes that they are most commonly séene to grow vpon the richest and stiffest blacke clayes, being a graine of that strength that they will seldome or neuer mildew or turne blacke, as the other sortes of Wheate will doe, if the strength of the ground be not abated before they be throwne into the earth. Now for the choise of these two Wheates, if you be compelled to buy them in the market, you must regard that you buy that which is the cleanest and fairest, being vtterly without any wéedes, as darnell, cockell, tares or any other foulnesse whatsoeuer: you shall looke that the Wheate, as neare as may be, hould all of one bignesse and all of one colour, for to beholde it contrary, that is to say, to see some great Cornes, some little, some high coloured, some pale, so that in their mixture they resemble changeable taffata, is an apparant signe that the Corne is not of one kinde but mixt or blended, as being partly whole-straw, partly Pollard, partly Organe, and partly Chelter. For the flaxen, it is naturally so white that it cannot be mixt but it may easily be discerned, and these mixt séedes are neuer good, either for the ground or the vse of man. Againe you shall carefully looke that neither this kinde of Wheate, nor any other that you buy for séede be blacke at the ends, for that is a signe that the graine comming from too rich a soyle was mildewed, and then it will neuer be fruitfull or proue good séede, as also you shall take care that it be not too white at the ends, showing the Corne to be as it were of two colours, for that is a signe that the Wheate was washt and dried againe, which vtterly confoundeth the strength of the Corne and takes from it all abilitie of bringing forth any great encrease. Now if it be so that you haue a crop of Wheate of your owne, so that you haue no néed of the market, you shall then picke out of your choisest sheafes, and vpon a cleane floare gently bat them with a flaile, and not thresh them cleane, for that Corne which is greatest, fullest, and ripest, will first flie out of the eare, and when you haue so batted a competent quantitie you shall then winnow it and dresse it cleane, both by the helpe of a strong winde and open siues, and so make it fit for your séede. I haue séene some Husbands (and truely I haue accounted them both good and carefull) that haue before Wheate séede time both themselues, wiues, children, and seruants at times of best leasure, out of a great Wheate mow or bay, to gleane or pull out of the sheafes, eare by eare, the most principall eares, and knitting them vp in small bundells to bat them and make their séede thereof, and questionlesse it is the best séede of all other: for you shall be sure that therein can be nothing but the cleanest and the best of the Corne, without any wéedes or foulnesse, which can hardly be when a man thresheth the whole sheafe, and although some men may thinke that this labour is great and troblesome, especially such as sowe great quantities of Wheate, yet let them thus farre encourage themselues, that if they doe the first yéere but gleane a bushell or two (which is nothing amongst a few persons) and sowe it vp on good Land, the encrease of it will the next yéere goe farre in the sowing the whole crop: for when I doe speake of this picking of Wheate, eare by eare, I doe not intend the picking of many quarters, but of so much as the increase thereof may amount to some quarter. Now there is also another regarde to be had (as auailable as any of the former) in chusing of your séede Wheate, and that is to respect the soyle from whence you take your séede, and the soyle into which you put it, as thus. If the ground whereon you meane to sowe your Wheat be a rich, blacke, clay, stiffe and full of fertillitie, you shall then (as neare as you can) chuse your séede from the barrainest mixt earth you can finde (so the Wheate be whole-straw or Pollard) as from a clay and grauell, or a clay and white sand, that your séede comming from a much more barraine earth then that wherein you put it, the strength may be as it were redoubled, and the encrease consequently amount to a higher quantitie, as we finde it proueth in our daylie experience; but if these barraine soyles doe not afforde you séede to your contentment, it shall not then be amisse (you sowing your Wheate vpon fallow or tilth ground) if you take your séede-Wheate either from an earth of like nature to your owne, or from any mixt earth, so that such séede come from the niams, that is, that it hath béene sowne after Pease, as being the third crop of the Land, and not from the fallow or tilth ground, for it is a maxiome amongst the best Husbands (though somewhat proposterous to common sence) bring to your rich ground séede from the barraine, and to the barraine séede from the rich, their reason (taken from their experience) being this, that the séede (as before I said) which prospereth vpon a leane ground being put into a rich, doth out of that superfluitie of warmth, strength and fatnesse, double his increase; and the séede which commeth from the fat ground being put into the leane, hauing all the vigour, fulnesse and iuyce of fertilnes, doth not onely defend it selfe against the hungrinesse of the ground but brings forth increase contrary to expectation; whence procéedeth this generall custome of good Husbands in this Land, that those which dwell in the barraine woode Lands, heathes and high mountaine countries of this kingdome, euer (as néere as they can) séeke out their séede in the fruitfull low vales, and very gardens of the earth, & so likewise those in the vales take some helpes also from the mountaines. Now for your other sortes of Wheate, that is to say, the white Pollard and the Organe, they are graines nothing so great, full, and large, as the whole straw, or browne Pollard, but small, bright, and very thinly huskt: your Organe is very red, your Pollard somewhat pale: these two sorts of Wheate are best to be sowne vpon the third or fourth field, that is to say, after your Pease, for they can by no meanes endure an ouer rich ground, as being tender and apt to sprout with small moisture, but to mildew and choake with too much fatnesse, the soyles most apt for them are mixt earths, especially the blacke clay and red sand, or white clay and red sand, for as touching other mixtures of grounds, they are for the most part so barraine, that they will but hardly bring forth Wheate vpon their fallow field, and then much worse vpon a fourth field. Now for any other particular choise of these two séedes, they are the same which I shewed in the whole straw, and great Pollard. As for the flaxen Wheate, and chilter Wheate, the first, is a very white Wheate both inward and outward, the other a pale red or déepe yellow: they are the least of all sorts of Wheate, yet of much more hardnes and toughnesse in sprouting, then either the Organe or white Pollard, and therefore desire somewhat a more richer soyle, and to that end they are for the most part sowne vpon fallow fields, in mixt earths, of what natures or barrainenesse soeuer, as is to be séene most generally ouer all the South parts of this Realme: and although vncompounded sands out of their owne natures, doe hardly bring forth any Wheate, yet vpon some of the best sands and vpon the flintie grauels, I haue séene these two Wheates grow in good abundance, but being seldome it is not so much to be respected. {SN: The choise of seede Rye.} After your Wheate you shall make choise of your Rie, of which there is not diuers kindes although it carrie diuers complections, as some blackish, browne, great, full and long as that which for the most part growes vpon the red sand, or red clay, which is thrée parts red sand mixt with blacke clay, and is the best Rie: the other a pale gray Rie, short, small, and hungry, as that which growes vpon the white sand, or white clay and white sand, and is the worst Rie. Now you shall vnderstand that your sand grounds are your onely naturall grounds for Rie, as being indéede not principally apt for any other graine, therefore when you chuse your Rie for séede, you shall chuse that which is brownest, full, bould, and longest, you shall haue great care that it be frée from wéedes or filth, sith your sand grounds, out of their owne naturall heat, doth put forth such store of naughtie wéeds, that except a man be extraordinarily carefull, both in the choise and dressing of his Rie, he may easily be deceiued and poyson his ground with those wéedes, which with great difficultie are after rooted out againe. Now for your séedes to each soyle, it is euer best to sow your best sand-Rie vpon your best clay ground, and your best clay-Rie vpon your best sand ground, obseruing euer this generall principle, not onely in Rie, but euen in Wheat, Barly, Pease and other graine of account, that is, euer once in thrée yéeres, to change all your séede, which you shall finde both to augment your encrease and to returne you double profit. {SN: The choise of seede-Barly.} Now for the choise of your séede-Barly, you shall vnderstand, that for as much as it is a graine of the greatest vse, & most tendernesse, therefore there is the greatest diligence to be vsed in the election thereof. Know then that of Barly there be diuers sorts, as namely, that which wée call our common Barly, being long eares with two rankes of Corne, narrow, close, and vpright: another called spike or batteldore-Barly, being a large eare with two rankes of Corne, broad, flat, and in fashion of a batteldore: and the third called beane-Barly, or Barly big, being a large foure-square eare, like vnto an eare of Wheate. Of these thrée Barlyes the first is most in vse, as being most apt and proper to euery soyle, whether it be fruitfull or barraine, in this our kingdome, but they haue all one shape, colour and forme, except the soyle alter them, onely the spike-Barly is most large and plentifull, the common Barly hardest and aptest to grow, and the beane-Barly least, palest, & tenderest, so that with vs it is more commonly séene in gardens then in fields, although in other Countries, as in Fraunce, Ireland, and such like, they sowe no other Barly at all, but with vs it is of no such generall estimation, and therefore I will neither giue it precedencie nor speake of it, otherwise then to referre it to the discreation of him who takes delight in many practises: but for the common Barly, or spike-Barly, which our experience findes to be excellent and of great vse, I will knit them in one, and write, my full opinion of them, for their choise in our séede. You shall know then that when you goe into the market to chuse Barly for your séede, you shall to your best power elect that which is whitest, fullest, and roundest, being as the ploughman calles it, a full bunting Corne, like the nebbe or beake of a Bunting, you shall obserue that it be all of one Corne, and not mingled, that is, clay Barly, and sand Barly together, which you shall distinguish by these differences: the clay Barly is of a palish, white, yellow colour; smoth, full, large, and round, and the sand Barly is of a déepe yellow, browne at the neather end, long, slender, and as it were, withered, and in generall no sand Barly is principall good for séede: but if the Barly be somewhat of a high colour, and browne at the neather end, yet notwithstanding is very full, bould, and bigge, then it is a signe that such Barly comes not from the sand, but rather from an ouer fat soyle, sith the fatnesse of the earth doth euer alter the complection of the Barly; for the whiter Barly euer the leaner soyle, and better séede: you shall also obserue, that there be not in it any light Corne, which is a kinde of hungry graine without substance, which although it filleth the séeds-mans hand, yet it deceiueth the ground, and this light Corne will commonly be amongst the best Barly: for where the ground is so rich that it bringeth forth the Barly too rankely, there the Corne, wanting power to stand vpon roote, falleth to the ground, and so robde of kindly ripening, bringeth forth much light and insufficient graine. Next this, you shall take care that in your séede-Barly there be not any Oates, for although they be in this case amongst Husbandmen accounted the best of wéede, yet are they such a disgrace, that euery good Husband will most diligently eschew them, and for that cause onely will our most industrious Husbands bestow the tedious labour of gleaning their Barly, eare by eare, by which gleanings, in a yéere, or two, they will compasse their whole séede, which must infallibly be without either Oates or any wéede whatsoeuer: and although some grounds, especially your richest blacke clayes, will out of the abundance of their fruitfulnesse (as not induring to be Idle) bring forth naturally a certaine kinde of wilde Oates, which makes some ignorant Husbands lesse carefull of their séede, as supposing that those wilde ones are a poisoning to their graine, but they are infinetly deceiued: for such wilde Oates, wheresoeuer they be, doe shake and fall away long before the Barly be ready, so that the Husbandman doth carry of them nothing into the Barne, but the straw onely. Next Oates, you must be carefull that there be in your Barly no other foule wéede: for whatsoeuer you sow, you must looke for the increase of the like nature, and therefore as before I said in the Wheate, so in the Barly, I would wish euery good Husband to imploy some time in gleaning out of his Mow the principall eares of Barly, which being batted, drest, and sowne, by it selfe, albeit no great quantitie at the first, yet in time it may extend to make his whole séede perfect, and then hée shall finde his profit both in the market, where hée shall (for euery vse) sell with the déerest, and in his owne house where he shall finde his yeeld redoubled. Now for fitting of seuerall séedes to seuerall soyles, you shall obserue, that the best séede-Barly for your clay field, is ninam Barly, sowne vpon the clay field, that is to say, Barly which is sowne where Barly last grew, or a second crop of Barly: for the ground hauing his pride abated in the first croppe, the second, though it be nothing néere so much in quantitie, yet that Corne which it doth bring forth is most pure, most white, most full, and the best of all séedes whatsoeuer, and as in case of this soyle, so in all other like soyles which doe hould that strength or fruitfulnesse in them that they are either able of themselues, or with some helpe of Manure in the latter end of the yéere, to bring forth two croppes of Barly, one after the other: but if either your soyle deny you this strength, or the distance of place bereaue you of the commoditie thereof, then you shall vnderstand that Barly from a hasell ground is the best séede, for the clay ground, and Barly from the clay ground is the best séede, not onely for the hasell earth, but euen for all mixt earths whatsoeuer, and the Barly which procéedes from the mixt earths is the best séede for all simple and vncompounded sands or grauells, as wée finde, both by their increasings and dayly experience. {SN: The choise of seede-Beanes, Pease, and Pulse.} Now for the choise of séede-Beanes, Pease, or other Pulse, the scruple is nothing néere so great as of other séedes, because euery one that knowes any graine, can distinguish them when hée sées them: besides they are of that massie waight, and so well able to indure the strength of the winde, that they are easie to be seuered from any wéede or filth whatsoeuer: it resteth therefore that I onely giue you instruction how to imploy them. You shall vnderstand therefore, that if your soyle be a stiffe, blacke, rich, clay, that then your best séede is cleane Beanes, or at the least thrée partes Beanes, and but one part Pease: if it be a gray, or white clay, then Beanes and Pease equally mixt together: if the best mixt earths, as a blacke clay and red sand, blacke clay and white sand, or white clay and red sand, then your séede must be cleane Pease onely: if it be white clay and white sand, blacke clay and blacke sand, then your séede must be Pease and Fitches mixt together: but if it be grauell or sand simple, or grauell and sand compounded, then your séede must be either cleane Fitches, cleane Bucke, or cleane Tares, or else Fitches, Bucke and Tares mixt together. {SN: The choise of seede-Oates.} Now to conclude with the choise of your Oates. You shall vnderstand that there be diuers kindes of them, as namely, the great long white Oate, the great long blacke Oate, the cut Oate, and the skegge: the two first of these are knowne by their greatnesse and colours, for they are long, full, bigge, and smooth, and are fittest to be sowne vpon the best of barraine grounds, for sith Oates are the worst of graine, I will giue them no other prioritie of place. The next of these, which is the cut Oate, it is of a pale yealow colour, short, smooth, and thicke, the increase of them is very great, and they are the fittest to be sowne vpon the worst of best grounds, for most commonly where you sée them, you shall also sée both good Wheate, good Barly, and good Beanes and Pease also. Now for the skegge Oate, it is a little, small, hungry, leane Oate, with a beard at the small end like a wilde Oate, and is good for small vse more then Pullen onely: it is a séede méete for the barrainest and worst earth, as fit to grow but there where nothing of better profit will grow. And thus much for those séedes which are apt and in vse in our English soyles: wherein if any man imagine me guiltie of errour, in that I haue omitted particularly to speake of the séede of blend-Corne, or Masline, which is Wheate and Rye mixt together, I answere him, that sith I haue shewed him how to chuse both the best Wheate and the best Rye, it is an easie matter to mixe them according to his owne discretion. CHAP. VI. _Of the time of Haruest and the gathering in of Corne._ {SN: The getting in of Masline.} {SN: The getting in of Wheate.} Next vnto plowing, it is necessary that I place Reaping, sith it is the end, hope, and perfection of the labour, and both the merit and incouragement which maketh the toyle both light and portable: then to procéede vnto the time of Haruest. You shall vnderstand that it is requisite for euery good Husband about the latter end of Iuly, if the soyle wherein he liueth be of any hot temper, or about the beginning of August, if it be of temperate warmth, with all dilligence constantly to beholde his Rye, which of all graines is the first that ripeneth, and if he shall perceiue that the hull of the eare beginneth to open, and that the blacke toppes of the Corne doth appeare, he may then be assured that the Corne is fully ripe, and ready for the Sickle, so that instantly he shall prouide his Reapers, according to the quantitie of his graine: for if hée shall neglect his Rye but one day more then is fit, it is such a hasty graine, that it will shale forth of the huske to the ground, to the great losse of the Husbandman. When hée hath prouided his shearers, which he shall be carefull to haue very good, he shall then looke that neither out of their wantonnesse nor emulation, they striue which shall goe fastest, or ridd most ground, for from thence procéedeth many errors in their worke, as namely, scattering, and leauing the Corne vncut behind them, the cutting the heads of the Corne off so that they are not possible to be gathered, and many such like incommodities, but let them goe soberly and constantly, and sheare the Rye at least fourtéene inches aboue the ground. Then he must looke that the gatherers which follow the Reapers doe also gather cleane, & the binders binde the Sheafes fast from breaking, then if you finde that the bottomes of the Sheafes be full of gréenes, or wéedes, it shall not be amisse to let the Sheafes lye one from another for a day, that those gréenes may wither, but if you feare any Raine or foule weather, which is the onely thing which maketh Rye shale, then you shall set it vp in Shockes, each Shocke containing at least seauen Sheafes, in this manner: first, you shall place foure Sheafes vpright close together, and the eares vpwards, then you shall take other thrée Sheafes and opening them and turning the eares downeward couer the other foure Sheafes that stoode vpwards, and so let them stand, vntill you may with good conueniencie lead them home, which would be done without any protraction. Next after your cleane Rye, you shall in the selfe-same sort reape your blend-Corne, or Masline: and albeit your Wheate will not be fully so ripe as your Rye, yet you shall not stay your labour, being well assured that your Rye is ready, because Wheate will harden of it selfe after it is shorne, with lying onely. After you haue got in your Rye and blend-Corne, you shall then looke vnto your cleane Wheate, and taking heare and there an eare thereof, rubbe them in your hand, and if you finde that the Corne hath all perfection saue a little hardning onely, you shall then forthwith set your Reapers vnto it, who shall sheare it in all things as they did sheare your Rye, onely they shall not put it in Shockes for a day or more, but let the Sheafes lye single, that the winde and Sunne may both wither the gréenes, and harden the Corne: which done, you shall put the Sheafes into great Shockes, that is to say, at least twelue or fouretéene Sheafes in a Shocke, the one halfe standing close together with the eares vpward, the other halfe lying crosse ouerthwart those eares, and their eares downeward, and in this sort you shall let your Wheate stand for at least two dayes before you lead it. Now it is a custome in many Countries of this kingdome, not to sheare their Wheate, but to mow it, but in my conceit and in generall experience, it is not so good: for it both maketh the Wheate foule, and full of wéede, and filleth vp a great place with little commoditie, as for the vse of thacking, which is the onely reason of such disorderly cutting, there is neither the straw that is shorne, nor the stubble which is left behinde, but are both of sufficiencie inough for such an imployment, if it passe through the hands of a workman, as we sée in dayly experience. {SN: The getting in of Barly.} Next to your Wheate, you shall haue regard to your Barly, for it sodainely ripeneth, and must be cut downe assoone as you perceiue the straw is turned white, to the bottome, and the eares bended downe to the groundward. Your Barly you shall not sheare, although it is a fashion in some Country, both because it is painefull and profitlesse, but you shall Mowe it close to the ground, and although in generall it be the custome of our kingdome, after your Barly is mowen and hath lyne a day or two in swathe, then with rackes to racke it together, and make it into great cockes, and so to leade it to the Barne, yet I am of this opinion that if your Barly be good and cleane without thistles or wéedes, that if then to euery sitheman, or Mower you alot two followers, that is to say, a gatherer, who with a little short rake and a small hooke shall gather the Corne together, and a binder, who shall make bands and binde vp the Barly in smale Sheafes, that questionlesse you shall finde much more profit thereby: and although some thinke the labour troublesome and great, yet for mine owne part, I haue séene very great croppes inned in this manner, and haue séene two women, that with great ease, haue followed and bound after a most principall Mower, which made me vnderstand that the toyle was not so great as mine imagination; and the profit ten-fold greater then the labour: but if your Corne be ill Husbanded, and full of thistles, wéedes, and all filthinesse, then this practise is to be spared, and the loose cocking vp of your Corne is much better. Assoone as you haue cleansed any Land of Barly, you shall then immediatly cause one with a great long rake, of at least thirtie téeth, being in a sling bound bauticke-wise crosse his body, to draw it from one end of the Land to the other, all ouer the Land, that he may thereby gather vp all the loose Corne which is scattered, and carry it where your other Corne standeth, obseruing euer, as your cheifest rule, that by no meanes you neither leade Barly, nor any other graine whatsoeuer, when it is wet, no although it be but moistned with the dew onely: for the least dankishnesse, more then the sweate which it naturally taketh, will soone cause it to putrifie. {SN: The getting in of Oates.} Now for the gathering in of your Oates, they be a graine of such incertaintie, ripening euer according to the weather, & not after any setled or naturall course, that you are to looke to no constant season, but to take them vpon the first show of ripenesse, and that with such diligence that you must rather take them before, then after they be ripe, because if they tarry but halfe a day too long, they will shed vpon the ground, & you shal loose your whole profit. The time then fittest to cut your Oates is, assoone as they be somewhat more then halfe changed, but not altogether changed, that is, when they are more then two parts white, and yet the gréene not vtterly extinguished, the best cutting of them is to mow them (albeit I haue séene them shorne in some places) & being mowen to let them dry and ripen in the swathe, as naturally they will doe, and then if you bind them vp in Sheafes, as you should binde your Barly, it is best: for to carry them in the loose cocke, as many doe, is great losse and hindrance of profit. {SN: The getting in of Pulse.} After you haue got in your white Corne, you shall then looke vnto your Pulse, as Beanes, Pease, Fitches, and such like, which you shall know to be ready by the blacknesse of the straw: for it is a rule, whensoeuer the straw turnes, the Pulse is ripe. If then it be cleane Beanes, or Beanes and Pease mixt, you shall mowe them, and being cleane Beanes rake them into heapes, and so make them vp into cockes, but if they be mixt you shall with hookes fould the Beanes into the Pease, and make little round reapes thereof, which after they haue béene turned and dryed, you may put twenty reapes together, and thereof make a cocke, and so lead them, and stacke them: but if they be cleane Pease, or Pease and Fitches, then you shall not mowe them, but with long hookes cut them from the ground, which is called Reaping, and so foulding them together into small reapes, as you did your Pease and Beanes, let them be turned and dryed, and so cocked, and carried either to the Barne, stacke, or houell. Now hauing thus brought in, and finished your Haruest, you shall then immediately mowe vp the stubble, both of your Wheate, Rye, and Masline, and with all expedition there-with thacke, and couer from Raine and weather, all such graine as for want of house-roome, you are compeld to lay abroad, either in stacke, or vpon houell: but if no such necessitie be, and that you haue not other more necessary imployment for your stubble, it shall be no part of ill Husbandry to let the stubble rot vpon the Land, which will be a reasonable Manuring or fatting of the earth. Now hauing brought your Corne into the Barne, it is a lesson néedlesse to giue any certaine rules how to spend or vtter it forth, sith euery man must be ruled according to his affaires, and necessitie, yet sith in mine owne experience I haue taken certaine setled rules from those who haue made themselues great estates by a most formall and strickt course in their Husbandry, I thinke it not amisse to show you what I haue noted from them, touching the vtterance and expence of their graine: first, for your expence in your house, it is méete that you haue euer so much of euery seuerall sort of graine thresht, as shall from time to time maintaine your family: then for that which you intend shall returne to particular profit, you shall from a fortnight before Michaelmas, till a fortnight after, thresh vp all such Wheate, Rye, & Masline, as you intend to sell for séede, which must be winnowed, fand, and drest so cleane as is possible, for at that time it will giue the greatest price; but as soone as séede-time is past, you shall then thresh no more of those graines till it be neare Midsummer, but begin to thresh vp all such Barly as you intend to conuert and make into Malt, and so from Michaelmas till Candlemas, apply nothing but Malting, for in that time graine is euer the cheapest, because euery Barne being full, some must sell for the payment of rents, some must sell to pay seruants wages, and some for their Christmas prouisions: in which time Corne abating and growing scarse, the price of necessitie must afterwards rise: at Candlemas you shall begin to thresh all those Pease which you intend to sell for séede, because the time being then, and euery man, out of necessitie, inforced to make his prouision, it cannot be but they must néedes passe at a good price and reckoning. After Pease séede-time, you shall then thresh vp all that Barly which you meane to sell for séede, which euer is at the dearest reckoning of any graine whatsoeuer, especially if it be principally good and cleane. After your séede-Barly is sould, you may then thresh vp all such Wheate, Rye, and Masline, as you intend to sell: for it euer giueth the greatest price from the latter end of May vntill the beginning of September. In September you shall begin to sell your Malt, which being old and hauing lyne ripening the most part of the yéere, must now at the latter end of the yéere, when all old store is spent, and the new cannot be come to any perfection, be most deare, and of the greatest estimation: and thus being a man of substance in the world, and able to put euery thing to the best vse, you may by these vsuall obseruations, and the helpe of a better iudgement, imploy the fruits of your labours to the best profit, and sell euery thing at the highest price, except you take vpon you to giue day and sell vpon trust, which if you doe, you may then sell at what vnconscionable reckoning you will, which because such vnnaturall exactions neither agrée with charitie, nor humanitie, I will forbeare to giue rules for the same, and referre euery man that is desirous of such knowledge, to the examples of the world, wherein he shall finde presidents inough for such euill customes. And thus much for the first part of this worke, which containeth the manner of Plowing and tillage onely. THE SECOND PART OF THE FIRST BOOKE OF the English Husbandman, Contayning the Art of Planting, Grafting and Gardening, either for pleasure or profit; together with the vse and ordering of Woodes. CHAP. I. _Of the Scyte, Modell, Squares, and Fashion of a perfect Orchard._ Although many authors which I haue read, both in Italian, French, and Dutch, doe make a diuersitie and distinguishment of Orchardes, as namely, one for profit, which they fashion rudely and without forme, the other for delight, which they make comely, decent, and with all good proportion, deuiding the quarters into squares, making the alleyes of a constant breadth, and planting the fruit-trées in arteficiall rowes: yet for as much as the comelinesse and well contriuing of the ground, doth nothing abate, but rather increase the commoditie, I will therefore ioyne them both together, and make them onely but one Orchard. Now for the scyte and placing of this Orchard, I haue in the modell of my Country house, or Husbandmans Farme, shewed you where if it be possible it should stand, and both what Sunne & ayre it should lye open vpon: but if the scyte or ground-plot of your house will not giue you leaue to place your Orchard according to your wish, you shall then be content to make a vertue of necessitie, and plant it in such a place as is most conuenient, and nearest alyed to that forme before prescribed. {Illustration} Now when you haue found out a perfect ground-plot, you shall then cast it into a great large square, which you shall fence in either with a stone or bricke wall, high, strong pale, or great ditch with a quicke-set hedge, but the wall is best and most durable, and that wall would haue vpon the inside within twelue or fourtéene foote on of another, Iames or outshoots of stone or bricke, betweene which you may plant and plash those fruit-trées which are of greatest tendernesse, the South and West Sunne hauing power to shine vpon them. When you haue thus fenc'st in this great square, you shall then cast foure large alleyes, at least fourtéene foote broad, from the wall round about, and so likewise two other alleyes of like breadth, directly crosse ouerthwart the ground-plot, which will deuide the great square into foure lesser squares, according to the figure before set downe. The figure 1. sheweth the alleyes which both compasse about, and also crosse ouer the ground-plot, and the figure 2. sheweth the foure quarters where the fruit-trées are to be planted. Now if either the true nature and largnesse of the ground be sufficient, or your owne abilitie of pursse so great that you may compasse your desires in these earthly pleasures, it shall not be amisse, but a matter of great state, to make your ground-plot full as bigge againe, that is to say, to containe eight large quarters, the first foure being made of an euen leuell, the other foure being raysed at least eight foote higher then the first, with conuenient stayres of state for ascending to the same, to be likewise vpon another euen leuell of like forme, and if in the center of the alleyes, being the mid-point betwéene the squares, might be placed any quaint fountaines or any other antique standard, the platforme would be more excellent and if vpon the ascent from one leuell to another there might be built some curious and arteficiall banquetting house, it would giue luster to the Orchard. Now for the planting and furnishing of these quarters: you shall vnderstand that if your Orchard containe but foure quarters, then the first shalbe planted with Apple-trées of all sorts, the second with Peares and Wardens of all sorts, the third with Quinces & Chesnutes, the fourth with Medlars & seruices. Against the North side of your Orchard wall against which the South sunne reflects, you shall plant the Abricot, Verdochio, Peach, and Damaske-plumbe: against the East side of the wall, the whit Muskadine Grape, the Pescod-plumbe, and the Emperiall-plumbe: against the West side the grafted Cherries, and the Oliue-trée: and against the South side the Almond, & Figge trée. Round about the skirts of euery other outward or inward alley, you shall plant, the Wheate-plumbe, both yealow & redde, the Rye-plumbe, the Damson, the Horse-clog, Bulleys of all kindes, ordinary french Cherryes, Filberts, and Nuts of all sorts, together with the Prune-plumbe, and other such like stone fruits. But if your Orchard be of state and prospect, so that it containe eight quarters or more (according to the limitation of the earth) then you shall in euery seuerall quarter plant a seuerall fruit, as Apple-trées in one quarter, Peares in another, Quinces in another, Wardens in another, and so forth of the rest. Also you shall obserue in planting your Apples, Peares, and Plumbes, that you plant your summer or early fruit by themselues, and the Winter or long lasting fruit by themselues. Of Apples, your Ienitings, Wibourns, Pomederoy, and Quéene-Apples are reckoned the best earely fruits, although their be diuers others, and the Pippin, Peare-maine, Apple-Iohn, and Russetting, your best Winter and long lasting fruit, though there be a world of other: for the tastes of Apples are infinite, according to there composition and mixture in grafting. Of Peares your golden Peare, your Katherine-Peare, your Lording, and such like, are the first, and your stone-Peare, Warden-Peare, and choake-Peare, those which indure longest. And of Plumbes the rye-plumbe is first, your Wheate-plumbe next, and all the other sorts of plumbes ripen all most together in one season, if they haue equall warmth, and be all of like comfortable standing. {Illustration} Now for the orderly placing of your trées, you shall vnderstand that your Plumbe-trées (which are as it were a fence or guard about your great quarters) would be placed in rowes one by one, aboue fiue foote distance one from another, round about each skirt of euery alley: your Apple-trées & other greater fruit which are to be planted in the quarters, would be placed in such arteficiall rowes that which way soeuer a man shall cast his eyes yet hée shall sée the trées euery way stand in rowes, making squares, alleyes, and deuisions, according to a mans imagination, according to the figure before, which I would haue you suppose to be one quarter in an Orchard, and by it you may easily compound the rest: wherein you shall vnderstand that the lesser prickes doe figure your Plumbe-trées, & the greater prickes your Apple trées, and such other large fruit. Now you shall vnderstand that euery one of these great trées which furnish the maine quarter, shall stand in a direct line, iust twelue foote one from another, which is a space altogether sufficient inough for there spreading, without waterdropping or annoying one another; prouided that the Fruiterer, according to his duty, be carefull to preserue the trees vpright and to vnderprope them when by the violence of the winde they shall swarue any way. Vpon the ascent or rising from one leuell to another, you may plant the Barberry-trées, Feberries, and Raspberries, of all sorts, which being spreading, thorny and sharpe trées, take great delight to grow thicke and close together, by which meanes often times they make a kinde of wall, hedge, or fencing, where they stand. Hauing thus shewed you the ground-plot and proportion of your Orchard, with the seuerall deuisions, ascents, and squares, that should be contained therein, and the fruits which are to furnish euery such square and deuision, and their orderly placing, it now rests that you vnderstand that this Orchard-plot, so neare as you can bring it to passe, doe stand most open and plaine, vpon the South and West sunne, and most defended from the East and North windes and bitternesse, which being obserued your plot is then perfect and absolute. Now forasmuch as where nature, fruitfulnesse, and situation doe take from a man more then the halfe part of his industrie, and by a direct and easie way doth lead him to that perfection which others cannot attaine to without infinit labour and trauell: and whereas it is nothing so commendable to maintaine beautie, as to make deformitie beautifull, I will speake something of the framing of Orchard-plots there where both nature, the situation, and barrainnesse, doe vtterly deny the enioying of any such commoditie, as where the ground is vneuen, stonie, sandy, or in his lownesse subiect to the ouerflow of waters, all being apparant enemies to these places of pleasure and delight. First, for the vneuennesse of the ground, if that be his vttermost imperfection, you shall first not onely take a note with your eye, but also place a marke vpon the best ascent of the ground to which the leuell is fittest to be drawne, and then plowing the ground all ouer with a great common plough, by casting the furrowes downward, séeke to fill in and couer the lesser hollownesses of the ground, that their may not any thing appeare but the maine great hollowes, which with other earth which is frée from stones, grauell, or such like euils, you shall fill vp and make leuell with that part where your marke standeth, and being so leuelled, forthwith draw the plot of your Orchard: but if the ground be not onely vneuen but also barraine, you shall then to euery loade of earth you carry to the leuelling adde a loade of Manure, either Oxe Manure, or Horse Manure, the rubbish of houses, or the clensings of olde ditches, or standing pooles, and the earth will soone become fertill and perfect; but if the ground be stonie, that is, full of great stones, as it is in Darbishire about the Peake or East Mores, for small pibbles or small lime-stones are not very much hurtfull, then you shall cause such stones to be digd vp, and fill vp the places where they lay either with marle, or other rich earth, which after it hath béene setled for a yéere or two you shall then plough, and leuell it, and so frame forth the plot of your Orchard. If the ground be onely a barraine sand, so that it wanteth strength either to maintaine or bring forth, you shall then first digge that earth into great trenches, at least foure foote déepe, and filling them vp with Oxe Manure, mixe it with the sand, that it may change some part of the colour thereof and then leuelling it fashion out your Orchard. But lastly, and which is of all situations the worst, if you haue no ground to plant your Orchard vpon, but such as either through the neighbourhood of riuers, descent of Mountaines, or the earths owne naturall quallitie in casting and vomiting out water and moysture, is subiect to some small ouerflowes of water, by which you cannot attaine to the pleasure you séeke, because fruit-trées can neuer indure the corruption of waters, you shall then in the dryest season of the yéere, after you haue marked out that square or quantitie of ground which you intend for your Orchard, you shall then cast therein sundry ditches, at least sixtéene foote broad, and nine foote déepe, and not aboue twelue foote betwixt ditch and ditch, vpon which reserued earth casting the earth that you digged vp, you shall raise the banckes at least seauen foote high of firme earth, and kéepe in the top the full breadth of twelue foote, with in a foote or little more: and in the casting vp of these bankes you shall cause the earth to be beaten with maules and broad béetels that it may lye firme, fast, and leuell, and after these bankes haue rested a yéere or more, and are sufficiently setled, you may then at the neather end of the banke, neare to the verge of the water plant store of Osyers, which will be a good defence to the banke, and vpon the top and highest part of the banke you shall plant your Orchard and fruit-trées, so that when any inundation of water shall happen, the ditches shalbe able inough to receiue it; or else making a passage from your Orchard into some other sewer, the water excéeding his limits may haue a frée current or passage: besides these ditches being neatly kept, and comforted with fresh water, may make both pleasant and commodious fish-ponds. Also you must be carefull in casting these bankes that you doe not place them in such sort that when you are vpon one you cannot come to the other, but rather like a maze, so that you may at pleasure passe from the one to the other round about the ground, making of diuers bankes to the eye but one banke in substance, and of diuers ponds in appearance, but one in true iudgement. And thus much for the plot or situation of an Orchard. CHAP. II. _Of the Nurserie where you shall set all manner of Kernels, and Stones, for the furnishing of the Orchard._ Although great persons, out of their greatnesse and abilitie, doe buy their fruit trées ready grafted, and so in a moment may plant an Orchard of the greatest quantitie, yet sith the Husbandman must raise euery thing from his owne indeauours, and that I onely write for his profit, I therefore hould it most conuenient to beginne with the nursery or store-house of fruits, from whence the Orchard receiueth his beauty and riches. This Nursery must be a piece of principall ground, either through Art or Nature, strongly fenced, warme, and full of good shelter: for in it is onely the first infancy and tendernesse of fruit-trées, because there they are first kernells, or stones, after sprigs, and lastly trées. Now for the manner of chusing, sowing, and planting them in this nursery, I differ some thing from the french practise, who would chuse the kernells from the cider presse, sow them in large bedds of earth, and within a yeere after replant them in a wilde Orchard: now for mine owne part, though this course be not much faulty, yet I rather chuse this kinde of practise, first: to chuse your kernells either of Apples, Peares, or Wardens, from the best and most principallest fruit you can taste, for although the kernell doe bring forth no other trée but the plaine stocke vpon which the fruit was grafted, as thus, if the graft were put into a Crab-stocke the kernell brings forth onely a Crab-trée, yet when you taste a perfect and delicate Apple, be assured both the stocke and graft were of the best choise, and so such kernells of best reckoning. When you haue then a competent quantitie of such kernells, you shall take certaine large pots, in the fashion of milke-boules, all full of hoales in the bottome, through which the raine and superfluous moysture may auoyde, and either in the Months of March or Nouember (for those are the best seasons) fill the pots three parts full of the finest, blackest, and richest mould you can get, then lay your kernells vpon the earth, about foure fingars one from another, so many as the vessell can conueniently containe, and then with a siue sift vpon them other fine moulds almost thrée fingars thicke, and so let them rest, filling so many pots or vessells as shall serue to receiue your quantitie of kernells of all sorts. Now if any man desire to know my reason why I rather desire to set my kernells rather in vessells then in beds of earth, my answere is, that I haue often found it in mine experience, that the kernell of Apples, Peares, Quinces, and such like, are such a tender and dainty séede that it is great oddes but the wormes will deuoure and consume them before they sprout, who naturally delight in such séedes, which these vessels onely doe preuent: but to proceede. After your kernells are sprouted vp and growne to be at least seauen or eight inches high, you shall then within your nursery digge vp a border about two foote and an halfe broad, more then a foote déepe, and of such conuenient length as may receiue all your young plants, and hauing made the mould fine and rich with Manure, you shall then with your whole hand gripe as much of the earth that is about the plant as you can conueniently hould, and so take both the plant and the mould out of the vessell, and replant it in the new drest border: and you shall thus doe plant after plant, till you haue set euery one, and made them firme and fast in the new mould: wherein you are to obserue these two principles, first that you place them at least fiue foote one from another, and secondly, that such kernells as you set in your vessels in March, that you replant them in borders of earth in Nouember following, and such as you set in Nouember to replant in March following, and being so replanted to suffer them to grow till they be able to beare grafts, during which time you shall diligently obserue, that if any of them chance to put forth any superfluous branches or cyons, which may hinder the growth of the body of the plant, that you carefully cut them away, that thereby it may be the sooner inabled to beare a graft: for it is euer to be intended that whatsoeuer procéedeth from kernells are onely to be preserued for stockes to graft on, and for no other purpose. Now for the stones of Plumbes, & other stone fruit, you shall vnderstand that they be of two kindes, one simple and of themselues, as the Rye-plumbe, Wheate-plumbe, Damson, Prune-plumbe, Horse-clogge, Cherry, and such like, so that from the kernells of them issueth trées of like nature and goodnesse: the other compounded or grafted plumbes, as the Abricot, Pescod, Peach, Damaske, Verdochyo, Emperiall, and such like, from whose kernells issueth no other trées but such as the stockes were vpon which they were grafted. Now, for the manner of setting the first, which are simple and vncompounded, you shall digge vp a large bedde of rich and good earth a month or more before March or Nouember, and hauing made the mould as fine as is possible, you shall flat-wise thrust euery stone, a foote one from another, more then thrée fingars into the mould, and then with a little small rake, made for the purpose, rake the bedde ouer and close vp the holes, and so let them rest till they be of a yéeres groath, at which time you shall replant them into seuerall borders, as you did your Apple-trée plants and others. Now for the kernells of your compounded or grafted Plumbes, you shall both set them in beddes and replant them into seuerall borders, in the same manner as you did the other kernells of Plumbes, onely you shall for the space of eight and forty houres before you set them stéepe them in new milke, forasmuch as the stones of them are more hard, and with greater difficulty open and sprout in the earth, then any other stone whatsoeuer: and thus hauing furnished your Nursery of all sorts of fruits and stockes, you shall when they come to full age and bignesse graft them in such order as shalbe hereafter declared. CHAP. III. _Of the setting or planting of the Cyons or Branches of most sorts of Fruit-trees._ As you are to furnish your nursery with all sorts of kernells and stones, for the bréeding of stockes where on to graft the daintiest fruits you can compasse, so shall you also plant therein the cyons and branches of the best fruit trées: which cyons and branches doe bring forthe the same fruit which the trées doe from whence they are taken, and by that meanes your nursery shall euer afford you perfect trées, wherewith either to furnish your owne grounds, or to pleasure your neighbours. And herein by the way you shall vnderstand that some trées are more fit to be set then to be sowne, as namely, the Seruice-trée, the Medler, the Filbert and such like. Now for the Seruice-trée, hée is not at all to be grafted, but set in this wise: take of the bastard cyons such as be somewhat bigger then a mans thumbe, and cutting away the branches thereof, set it in a fine loose moulde, at least a foote déepe, and it will prosper exceedingly, yet the true nature of this trée is not to be remoued, and therefore it is conuenient that it be planted where it should euer continue: in like manner to the Seruice-tree, so you shall plant the bastard cyons of the Medlar-trée either in March or October, and at the waine of the moone. Now for the Filbert, or large Hassell-nut, you shall take the smallest cyons or wands, such as are not aboue two yéeres groath, being full of short heauie twigges, and grow from the roote of the maine trée, and set them in a loose mould, a foote déepe, without pruning or cutting away any of the branches, and they will prosper to your contentment. Now for all sorts of Plumbe-trées, Apple-trées or other fruit-trées which are not grafted, if you take the young cyons which grow from the rootes cleane from the rootes, and plant them either in the spring, or fall, in a fresh and fine mould, they will not onely prosper, but bring forth fruit of like nature and qualitie to the trées from whence they were taken. Now for your grafted fruit, as namely, Apples, Plumbes, Cherryes, Mulberries, Quinces, and such like, the cyons also and branches of them also will take roote and bring forth fruit of the same kinde that the trées did from whence they were taken: but those cyons or branches must euer be chosen from the vpper parts of the trées, betwixt the feast of all-Saints and Christmas, they must be bigger then a mans finger, smooth, straight, and without twigges: you shall with a sharpe chissell cut them from the body or armes of the trée with such care, that by no meanes you raise vp the barke, and then with a little yealow waxe couer the place from whence you cut the cyon: then hauing digged and dunged the earth well where you intend to plant them, and made the mould easie, you shall with an Iron, as bigge as your plant, make a hoale a foote déepe or better, and then put in your cyon and with it a few Oates, long stéept in water, and so fixe it firme in the mould, and if after it beginneth to put forth you perceiue any young cyons to put forth from the root thereof, you shall immediatly cut them off, & either cast them away or plant them in other places, for to suffer them to grow may bréede much hurt to the young trées. Now where as these cyons thus planted are for the most part small and weake, so that the smallest breath of winde doth shake and hurt their rootes, it shalbe good to pricke strong stakes by them, to which, fastning the young plant with a soft hay rope it may the better be defended from stormes and tempests. Next to these fruit-trées, you shall vnderstand that your bush-trées, as Barberryes, Gooseberryes, or Feberryes, Raspberryes, and such like, will also grow vpon cyons, without rootes, being cut from their maine rootes in Nouember, & so planted in a new fresh mould. And here by the way I am to giue you this note or caueat, that if at any time you finde any of these cyons which you haue planted not to grow and flourish according to your desire, but that you finde a certaine mislike or consumption in the plant, you shall then immediatly with a sharpe knife cut the plant off slope-wise vpward, about three fingars from the ground, and so let it rest till the next spring, at which time you shall beholde new cyons issue from the roote, which will be without sicknesse or imperfection; and from the vertue of this experiment I imagine the gardners of antient time found out the meanes to get young cyons from olde Mulberry-trées, which they doe in this manner: first, you must take some of the greatest armes of the Mulberry-trée about the midst of Nouember, and with a sharpe sawe to sawe them into bigge truncheons, about fiuetéene inches long, and then digging a trench in principall good earth, of such depth that you may couer the truncheons, being set vp on end, with Manure and fine mould, each truncheon being a foote one from another, and couerd more then foure fingars aboue the wood, not fayling to water them whensoeuer néede shall require, and to preserue them from wéeds and filthinesse, within lesse then a yéeres space you shall behold those truncheons to put forth young cyons, which as soone as they come to any groath and be twigged, then you may cut them from the stockes, and transplant them where you please, onely the truncheons you shall suffer to remaine still, and cherish them with fresh dunge, and they will put forth many moe cyons, both to furnish your selfe and your friends. And thus much for the planting and setting of cyons or branches. CHAP. IIII. _Of the ordinary and accustomed manner of Grafting all sorts of Fruit-trees._ {SN: The mixing of Stockes and Grafts.} As soone as your nursery is thus amply furnished of all sorts of stockes, procéeding from kernells and of all sorts of trées procéeding from cyons, branches or vndergrowings, and that through strength of yéeres they are growne to sufficient abilitie to receiue grafts, which is to be intended that they must be at the least sixe or eight inches in compasse, for although lesse many times both doth and may receiue grafts, yet they are full of debilitie and danger, and promise no assurance to the worke-mans labour, you shall then beginne to graft your stockes with such fruits as from art and experience are méete to be conioyned together, as thus: you shall graft Apples vpon Apples, as the Pippin vpon the great Costard, the Peare-maine vpon the Ienetting, and the Apple-Iohn or blacke annet vpon the Pomewater or Crab-trée: to conclude, any Apple-stocke, Crab-tree, or wilding, is good to graft Apples vpon, but the best is best worthy. So for Peares, you shall graft them vpon Peare stockes, Quinces vpon Quinces or Crab-trées, and not according to the opinion of the frenchman, vpon white thorne or willow, the Medlar vpon the Seruice-trée, and the Seruice vpon the Medlar, also Cherryes vpon Cherryes, & Plumbes vpon Plumbes, as the greater Abricots vpon the lesser Abricots, the Peach, the Figge, or the Damson-trée, and to speake generally without wasting more paper, or making a long circumstance to slender purpose, the Damson-trée is the onely principall best stocke whereupon to graft any kinde of Plumbe or stone fruit whatsoeuer. {SN: The choise of Grafts.} After you haue both your stockes ready, and know which grafts to ioyne with which stockes, you shall then learne to cut and chuse your grafts in this manner: looke from what trée you desire to take your grafts, you shall goe vnto the very principall branches thereof, and looke vp to the vpper ends, and those which you finde to be fairest, smoothest, and fullest of sappe, hauing the little knots, budds, or eyes, standing close and thicke together, are the best and most perfect, especially if they grow vpon the East side of the trée, whereon the Sunne first looketh; these you shall cut from the trée in such sort that they may haue at least thrée fingars of the olde woode ioyning to the young branch, which you shall know both by the colour of the barke, as also by a little round seame which maketh as it were a distinction betwixt the seuerall growths. Now you shall euer, as néere as you can, chuse your grafts from a young trée, and not from an olde, and from the tops of the principall branches, and not from the midst of the trée, or any other superfluous arme or cyon; now if after you haue got your grafts you haue many dayes Iourneys to carry them, you shall fould them in a few fresh mouldes, and binde them about with hay, and hay ropes, and so carry them all day, and in the night bury them all ouer in the ground and they will containe their goodnesse for a long season. {SN: How to graft in the Cleft.} Hauing thus prepared your grafts, you shall then beginne to graft, which worke you shall vnderstand may be done in euery month of the yéere, except Nouember and October, but the best is to beginne about Christmas for all earely and forward fruit, and for the other, to stay till March: now hauing all your implements and necessaryes about you, fit for the Grafting, you shall first take your grafts, of what sort soeuer they be, and hauing cut the neather ends of them round and smoth without raysing of the barke, you shall then with a sharp knife, made in the proportion of a great pen-knife slice downe each side of the grafts, from the seame or knot which parts the olde woode from the new, euen to the neather end, making it flat and thinne, cheifely in the lowest part, hauing onely a regardfull eye vnto the pith of the graft, which you may by no meanes cut or touch, and when you haue thus trimmed a couple of grafts, for moe I doe by no meanes alow vnto one stocke, although sundry other skilfull workmen in this Art alow to the least stocke two grafts, to the indifferent great thrée, and to the greatest of all foure, yet I affirme two are sufficiently inough for any stocke whatsoeuer, and albeit they are a little the longer in couering the head, yet after they haue couered it the trée prospereth more in one yéere then that which contayneth foure grafts shall doe in two, because they cannot haue sap inough to maintaine them, which is the reason that trées for want of prosperitie grow crooked and deformed: but to my purpose. When you haue made your grafts ready, you shall then take a fine thinne sawe, whose téeth shalbe filed sharpe and euen, and with it (if the stocke be excéeding small) cut the stocke round off within lesse then a foote of the ground, but if the stocke be as bigge as a mans arme, then you may cut it off two or thrée foote from the ground, and so consequently the bigger it is the higher you may cut it, and the lesser the nearer vnto the earth: as soone as you haue sawne off the vpper part of the stocke, you shall then take a fine sharpe chissell, somewhat broader then the stocke, and setting it euen vpon the midst of the head of the stocke somewhat wide of the pith, then with a mallet of woode you shall stricke it in and cleaue the stocke, at least foure inches déepe, then putting in a fine little wedge of Iron, which may kéepe open the cleft, you shall take one of your grafts and looke which side of it you intend to place inward, and that side you shall cut much thinner then the out side, with a most héedfull circumspection that by no meanes you loosen or rayse vp the barke of the graft, cheifly on the out side, then you shall take the graft, and wetting it in your mouth place it in one side of the cleft of the stocke, and regard that the very knot or seame which goes about the graft, parting the olde woode from the new, do rest directly vpon the head of the stocke, and that the out side of the graft doe agrée directly with the out side of the stocke, ioyning barke vnto barke, and sappe vnto sappe, so euen, so smooth, and so close, that no ioyners worke may be discerned to ioyne more arteficially: which done, vpon the other side of the stocke, in the other cleft, you shall place your other graft, with full as much care, diligence, and euery other obseruation: when both your grafts are thus orderly and arteficially placed, you shall then by setting the haft of your chissell against the stocke, with all lenitie and gentlenesse, draw forth your wedge, in such sort that you doe not displace or alter your grafts, and when your wedge is forth you shall then looke vpon your grafts, and if you perceiue that the stocke doe pinch or squize them, which you may discerne both by the straitnesse and bending of the outmost barke, you shall then make a little wedge of some gréene sappy woode, and driuing it into the cleft, ease your grafts, cutting that wedge close to the stocke. When you haue thus made both your grafts perfect, you shall then take the barke of either Apple-trée, Crab-trée or Willow-trée, and with that barke couer the head of the stocke so close that no wet or other annoyance may get betwixt it and the stocke, then you shall take a conuenient quantitie of clay, which indéede would be of a binding mingled earth, and tempering it well, either with mosse or hay, lay it vpon the barke, and daube all the head of the stocke, euen as low as the bottome of the grafts, more then an inch thicke, so firme, close, and smooth as may be, which done, couer all that clay ouer with soft mosse, and that mosse with some ragges of wollen cloath, which being gently bound about with the inward barkes of Willow, or Osyar, let the graft rest to the pleasure of the highest: and this is called grafting in the cleft. {SN: Notes.} Now there be certaine obseruations or caueats to be respected in grafting, which I may not neglect: as first, in trimming and preparing your grafts for the stocke: if the grafts be either of Cherry, or Plumbe, you shall not cut them so thinne as the grafts of Apples, Quinces, or Medlars, because they haue a much larger and rounder pith, which by no meanes must be toucht but fortefied and preserued, onely to the neather end you may cut them as thinne as is possible, the pith onely preserued. Secondly, you shall into your greatest stockes put your greatest grafts, and into your least, the least, that there may be an equall strength and conformitie in their coniunction. Thirdly, if at any time you be inforced to graft vpon an olde trée, that is great and large, then you shall not graft into the body of that trée, because it is impossible to kéepe it from putrifaction and rotting before the grafts can couer the head, but you shall chuse out some of the principall armes or branches, which are much more slender, and graft them, as is before shewed, omitting not dayly to cut away all cyons, armes, branches, or superfluous sprigs which shall grow vnder those branches which you haue newly grafted: but if there be no branch, small or tender inough to graft in, then you shall cut away all the maine branches from the stocke, and couering the head with clay and mosse, let it rest, and within thrée or foure yéeres it will put forth new cyons, which will be fit to graft vpon. Fourthly, if when you either sawe off the top of your stocke, or else cleaue the head, you either raise vp the barke or cleaue the stocke too déepe, you shall then sawe the stocke againe, with a little more carefulnesse, so much lower as your first errour had committed a fault. Fiftly, you shall from time to time looke to the binding of the heads of your stockes, in so much that if either the clay doe shrinke away or the other couerings doe losen, by which defects ayre, or wet, may get into the incission, you shall presently with all spéede amend and repaire it. Lastly, if you graft in any open place where cattell doe graze, you shall not then forget as soone as you haue finisht your worke to bush or hedge in your graft, that it may be defended from any such negligent annoyance. And thus much for this ordinary manner of grafting, which although it be generall and publike to most men that knoweth any thing in this art, yet is it not inferiour, but the principallest and surest of all other. CHAP. V. _Of diuers other wayes of grafting, their vses and purposes._ Although for certainty, vse, and commodity, the manner of grafting already prescribed is of sufficiency inough to satisfie any constant or reasonable vnderstanding, yet for nouelty sake, to which our nation is infinitly addicted, and to satisfie the curious, who thinke their iudgements disparaged if they heare any authorised traueller talke of the things which they haue not practised, I will procéede to some other more quaint manners of grafting, and the rather because they are not altogether vnnecessary, hauing both certainety in the worke, pleasure in the vse, and benefit in the serious imploying of those howers which else might challenge the title of idlenesse, besides they are very well agréeing with the soyles and fruits of this Empyre of great Brittaine and the vnderstandings of the people, for whose seruice or benefit, I onely vndergoe my trauell. You shall vnderstand therefore, that there is another way to graft, which is called grafting betwéene the barke and tree, and it is to be put in vse about the latter end of February, at such time as the sappe beginnes to enter into the trées: and the stockes most fit for this manner of grafting are those which are oldest and greatest, whose graine being rough and vneuen, either through shaking or twinding, it is a thing almost impossible to make it cleaue in any good fashion, so that in such a case it is meete that the grafter exercise this way of grafting betwixt the barke and the trée, the manner whereof is thus. {SN: Grafting betweene the barke.} First, you shall dresse your grafts in such sort as was before discribed when you grafted in the cleft, onely they shall not be so long from the knot or seame downeward by an inch or more, neither so thicke, but as thinne as may be, the pith onely preserued, and at the neather end of all you shall cut away the barke on both sides, making that end smaller and narrower then it is at the ioynt or seame, then sawing off the head of the stocke, you shall with a sharpe knife pare the head round about, smooth and plaine, making the barke so euen as may be, that the barke of your grafts and it may ioyne like one body, then take a fine narrow chissell, not excéeding sharpe, but somewhat rebated, and thrust it hard downe betwixt the barke and the trée, somewhat more then two inches, according to the iust length of your graft, and then gently thrust the graft downe into the same place, euen close vnto the ioynt, hauing great care that the ioynt rest firme and constant vpon the head of the stocke, and thus you shall put into one stocke not aboue thrée grafts at the most, how euer either other mens practise, or your owne reading doe perswade you to the contrary. After your grafts are fixt and placed, you shall then couer the head with barke, clay, and mosse, as hath béene formerly shewed: also you shall fasten about it some bushes of thorne, or sharpe whinnes, which may defend and kéepe it from the annoyance of Pye-annats, and such like great birds. There is another way of grafting, which is called grafting in the scutchion, which howsoeuer it is estéemed, yet is it troublesome, incertaine, and to small purpose: the season for it is in summer, from May till August, at what time trées are fullest of sappe and fullest of leaues, and the manner is thus: take the highest and the principallest branches of the toppe of the trée you would haue grafted, and without cutting it from the olde woode chuse the best eye and budding place of the cyon, then take another such like eye or budde, being great and full, and first cut off the leafe hard by the budde, then hollow it with your knife the length of a quarter of an inch beneath the budde, round about the barke, close to the sappe, both aboue and below, then slit it downe twice so much wide of the budde, and then with a small sharpe chissell raise vp the scutchion, with not onely the budde in the midst but euen all the sappe likewise, wherein you shall first raise that side which is next you, and then taking the scutchion betwéene your fingars, raise it gently vp without breaking or brusing, and in taking it off hould it hard vnto the woode, to the end the sappe of the budde may abide in the scutchion, for if it depart from the barke and cleaue to the woode, your labour is lost, this done you shall take another like cyon, and hauing taken off the barke from it, place it in the others place, and in taking off this barke you must be carfull that you cut not the woode, but the barke onely, and this done you shall couer it all ouer with redde waxe, or some such glutenous matter; as for the binding of it with hempe and such trumpery it is vtterly dissalowed of all good grafters: this manner of grafting may be put in practise vpon all manner of cyons, from the bignesse of a mans little fingar to the bignesse of a slender arme. {SN: Grafting with the Leafe.} Not much vnlike vnto this, is the grafting with the Leafe, and of like worth, the art whereof is thus: any time betwixt midst May, vntill the midst of September, you shall chuse, from the toppe of the sunne-side of the trée, the most principall young cyon you can sée, whose barke is smoothest, whose leaues are greatest, and whose sappe is fullest, then cutting it from the trée note the principall leafe thereof, and cut away from it all the woode more then about an inch of each side of the leafe, then cutting away the vndermost part of the barke with your knife, take péece meale from the barke all the woode and sappe, saue onely that little part of woode and sappe which féedeth the leafe, which in any wise must be left behind, so that the graft will carry this figure. {Illustration} Then goe to the body, arme, or branch of that trée which you intend to graft, which is to be presupposed must euer haue a smooth and tender barke, and with a very sharpe knife slit the barke, two slits at least, two inches long a péece, and about halfe an inch or more distance betwéene the two slits: then make another slit crosse-wise ouerthwart, from long slit to long slit, the figure whereof will be thus: {Illustration} Then with your knife raise the barke gently from the trée, without breaking, cracking, or brusing: then take your graft, and putting it vnder the barke lay it flat vnto the sappe of the trée, so as that little sappe which is left in the leafe, may without impediment cleaue to the sappe of the trée, then lay downe the barke close againe and couer the graft, and with a little vntwound hempe, or a soft wollen list, binde downe the barke close to the graft, and then couer all the incisions you haue made with greene waxe: by this manner of grafting you may haue vpon one trée sundry fruits, as from one Apple-tree, both Pippins, Peare-maines, Russettings and such like, nay, you may haue vpon one tree, ripe fruit all summer long, as Ienettings from one branch, Cislings from another, Wibourns from another, Costards and Quéene-Apples from others, and Pippens and Russettings, from others, which bringeth both delight to the eye, and admiration to the sence, and yet I would not haue you imagine that this kinde of grafting doth onely worke this effect, for as before I shewed you, if you graft in the cleft (which is the fastest way of all grafting) sundry fruits vpon sundry armes or bowes, you shall likewise haue procéeding from them sundry sorts of fruits, as either Apples, Plumbes, Peares or any other kind, according to your composition and industry; as at this day we may dayly sée in many great mens Orchards. {SN: Grafting on the toppes of trees.} There is yet another manner of grafting, and it is of all other especially vsed much in Italy, and yet not any thing disagréeable with our climate, and that is to graft on the small cyons which are on the toppes of fruit trées, surely an experience that carryeth in it both dificulty and wonder, yet being put to approbation is no lesse certaine then any of the other, the manner whereof is thus: you shall first after you haue chosen such and so many grafts as you doe intend to graft, and trimd them in the same manner as you haue béene taught formerly for grafting within the cleft, you shall then mount vp into the toppe of the trée, vpon which you meane to graft, and there make choise of the highest and most principallest cyons (being cleane barkt and round) that you can perceiue to grow from the trée, then laying the graft, and the cyon vpon which you are to graft, together, sée that they be both of one bignesse and roundnesse: then with your grafting knife cut the cyon off betwéene the olde woode and the new, and cleaue it downe an inch and an halfe, or two inches at the most: then put in your graft (which graft must not be cut thinner on one side, then on the other, but all of one thicknesse) and when it is in, sée that the barke of the graft both aboue and below, that is, vpon both sides, doe ioyne close, euen, and firme with the barke of the branch or cyon, and then by foulding a little soft towe about it, kéepe them close together, whilst with clay, mosse, and the in-most barke of Osyars you lappe them about to defend them from ayre, winde, and tempests. And herein you shall obserue to make your graft as short as may be, for the shortest are best, as the graft which hath not aboue two or thrée knots, or buddes, and no more. You may, if you please, with this manner of grafting graft vpon euery seuerall cyon, a seuerall fruit, and so haue from one trée many fruits, as in case of grafting with the leafe, and that with much more spéede, by as much as a well-growne graft is more forward and able then a weake tender leafe. And in these seuerall wayes already declared, consisteth the whole Art and substance of Grafting: from whence albeit many curious braines may, from preuaricating trickes, beget showes of other fashions, yet when true iudgement shall looke vpon their workes, he shall euer finde some one of these experiments the ground and substance of all their labours, without which they are able to doe nothing that shall turne to an assured commoditie. {SN: The effects of Grafting.} Now when you haue made your selfe perfect in the sowing, setting, planting and grafting of trées, you shall then learne to know the effects, wonders, and strange issues which doe procéede from many quaint motions and helpes in grafting, as thus: if you will haue Peaches, Cherryes, Apples, Quinces, Medlars, Damsons, or any Plumbe whatsoeuer, to ripen earely, as at the least two months before the ordinary time, and to continue at least a month longer then the accustomed course, you shall then graft them vpon a Mulberry stocke: and if you will haue the fruit to tast like spice, with a certaine delicate perfume, you shall boyle Honey, the powder of Cloues and Soaxe together, and being cold annoynt the grafts there-with before you put them into the cleft, if you graft Apples, Peares, or any fruit vpon a Figge-tree stocke, they will beare fruit without blooming: if you take an Apple graft, & a Peare graft, of like bignesse, and hauing clouen them, ioyne them as one body in grafting, the fruit they bring forth will be halfe Apple and halfe Peare, and so likewise of all other fruits which are of contrary tastes and natures: if you graft any fruit-tree, or other trée, vpon the Holly or vpon the Cypresse, they will be greene, and kéepe their leaues the whole yéere, albeit the winter be neuer so bitter. If you graft either Peach, Plumbe, or any stone-fruit vpon a Willow stocke, the fruit which commeth of them will be without stones. If you will change the colour of any fruit, you shall boare a hole slope-wise with a large auger into the body of the trée, euen vnto the pith, and then if you will haue the fruit yealow you shal fill the hole with Saferne dissolued in water: if you will haue it redde, then with Saunders, and of any other colour you please, and then stoppe the hole vp close, and couer it with red or yealow waxe: also if you mixe the coulour with any spice or perfume, the fruit will take a rellish or tast of the same: many other such like conceits and experiments are practised amongst men of this Art, but sith they more concerne the curious, then the wise, I am not so carefull to bestow my labour in giuing more substantiall satisfaction, knowing curiosity loues that best which procéedes from their most paine, and am content to referre their knowledge to the searching of those bookes which haue onely strangnesse for their subiect, resolued that this I haue written is fully sufficient for the plaine English husbandman. CHAP. VI. _Of the replanting of Trees, and furnishing the Orchard._ As soone as your séedes, or sets, haue brought forth plants, those plants, through time, made able, and haue receiued grafts, and those grafts haue couered the heads of the stockes and put forth goodly branches, you shall then take them vp, and replant them, (because the sooner it is done the better it is done) in those seuerall places of your Orchard which before is appointed, and is intended to be prepared, both by dungging, digging, and euery orderly labour, to receiue euery seuerall fruit. And herein you shall vnderstand, that as the best times for grafting are euery month (except October and Nouember) and at the change of the moone, so the best times for replanting, are Nouember and March onely, vnlesse the ground be cold and moist and then Ianuary, or February must be the soonest all wayes, excepted that you doe not replant in the time of frost, for that is most vnholsome. {SN: The taking vp of trees.} Now when you will take vp your trées which you intend to replant in your Orchard, you shall first with a spade bare all the maine branches of the roote, and so by degrées digge and loosen the earth from the roote, in such sort that you may with your owne strength raise the young trée from the ground, which done, you shall not, according to the fashion of Fraunce, dismember, or disroabe the trée of his beauties, that is to say, to cut off all his vpper branches and armes, but you shall diligently preserue them: for I haue séene a trée thus replanted after the fall of the leafe to bring forth fruit in the summer following: but if the trée you replant be olde then it is good to cut off the maine branches with in a foote of the stocke, least the sappe running vpward, and so forsaking the roote too sodainely doe kill the whole trée. When you haue taken your trée vp, you shall obserue how, and in what manner, it stoode, that is, which side was vpon the South and receiued most comfort from the sunne, and which side was from it and receiued most shadow and bleaknesse, and in the same sort as it then stoode, so shall you replant it againe: this done you shall with a sharpe cutting-knife, cut off all the maine rootes, within halfe a foote of the trée, onely the small thriddes or twist-rootes you shall not cut at all: then bringing the plant into your Orchard, you shall make a round hole in that place where you intend to set your trée (the rankes, manner, distance and forme whereof hath béene all ready declared, in the first Chapter:) and this hole shalbe at least foure foote ouerthwart euery way, and at least two foote déepe, then shall you fill vp the hole againe, fiftéene inches déepe, with the finest blacke mould, tempered with Oxe dunge that you can get, so that then the hole shalbe but nine inches déepe, then you shall take your trée and place it vpon that earth, hauing care to open euery seuerall branch and thrid of the roote, & so to place them that they may all looke downe into the earth, and not any of them to looke backe and turne vpward: then shall you take of the earth from whence your trée was taken, and tempering it with a fourth part of Oxe dunge and slekt sope-asshes (for the killing of wormes) couer all the roote of your trée firmely and strongly: then with gréene soddes, cut and ioyned arteficially together, so sodde the place that the hole may hardly be discerned. Lastly take a strong stake, and driuing it hard into the ground neare vnto the new planted trée, with either a soft hay rope, the broad barke of Willow, or some such like vnfretting band, tye the trée to the stake, and it will defend it from the rage of winde and tempests, which should they but shake or trouble the roote, being new planted, it were inough to confound and spoyle the trée for euer. Now, although I haue vnder the title and demonstration of replanting one trée giuen you a generall instruction for the replanting of all trées whatsoeuer, yet, for as much as some are not of that strength and hardnesse to indure so much as some others will, therefore you shal take these considerations by the way, to fortefie your knowledge with. First, you shall vnderstand that all your dainty and tender grafted Plumbes, and fruits, as Abricots, Peaches, Damaske-Plumbes, Verdochyos, Pescods, Emperialls, and diuers such like, together with Orrenges, Cytrons, Almonds, Oliues, and others, which indéede are not familiar with our soyles, as being nearer neighbours to the sunne, doe delight in a warme, fat, earth, being somewhat sandy, or such a clay whose coldnesse by Manure is corrected, and therefore here with vs in the replanting of them you cannot bestow too much cost vpon the mould: as for the Damson, and all our naturall english Plumbes, they loue a fat, cold, earth, so that in the replanting of them if you shall lay too much dunge vnto their roote, you shall through the aboundant heate, doe great hurt vnto the trée. The cherry delighteth in any clay, so that vpon such soyle you may vse lesse Manure, but vpon the contrary you cannot lay too much. The Medlar estéemeth all earths alike, and therefore whether it be Manured or no it skilles not, sunne and shadow, wet and drinesse, being all of one force or efficacy. The Peare and Apple-trée delights in a strong mixt soyle, and therfore indureth Manure kindly, so doth also the Quince and Warden: lastly the Filbert, the Hasell, and the Chesnut, loue cold, leane, moist, and sandy earths, in so much that there is no greater enimy vnto them then a rich soyle: so that in replanting of them you must euer séeke rather to correct then increase fertillity. You shall also vnderstand that all such fruit-trées as you doe plant against the walles of your Orchard (of which I haue spoken already & deciphered out their places) you shall not suffer to grow as of themselues, round, and from the wall, but at the times of pruning and dressing of them (which is euer at the beginning of the spring and immediately after the fall) you shall as it were plash them, and spread them against the wall, foulding the armes in loopes of leather, and nayling them vnto the wall: and to that end you shall place them of such a fit distance one from another, that they may at pleasure spread and mount, without interruption: the profit whereof is at this day seene almost in euery great mans Orchard: and although I haue but onely appointed vnto the wall the most quaint fruits of forraine nations; yet there is no fruit of our owne, but if it be so ordered it will prosper and bring forth his fruit better and in greater abundance. And thus much for the replanting of trées and furnishing of a well proportioned Orchard. CHAP. VII. _Of the Dressing, Dungging, Proyning, and Preseruing of Trees._ Sith after all the labour spent of ingendring by séede, of fortefying and inabling by planting, and of multiplying by grafting it is to little or no purpose if the trées be not maintained and preserued by dressing, dungging and proyning, I will therefore in this place shew you what belongs to that office or duty, and first, for the dressing of trees: you shall vnderstand that it containeth all whatsoeuer is méete for the good estate of the trée, as first, after your trée is planted, or replanted, if the season shall fall out hot, dry, and parching, insomuch that the moisture of the earth is sucked out by the atraction of the Sunne, and so the trée wanteth the nutriment of moisture, in this case you shall not omit euery morning before the rising of the sunne, and euery euening after the set of the sunne, with a great watring-pot filled with water, to water & bath the rootes of the trées, if they be young trées, and newly planted, or replanted, but not otherwise: for if the trées be olde, and of long growth, then you shall saue that labour, and onely to such olde trées you shall about the midst of Nouember, with a spade, digge away the earth from the vpper part of the rootes and lay them bare vntill it be midde-March, and then mingling such earth as is most agréeable with the fruit and Oxe-dunge and sope-ashes together, so couer them againe, and tread the earth close about them: as for the vncouering of your trées in summer I doe not hold it good, because the reflection of the sunne is somewhat too violent and dryeth the roote, from whence at that time the sappe naturally is gone: you shall also euery spring and fall of the leafe clense your fruit trées from mosse, which procéeding from a cold and cankerous moisture, bréedeth dislike, and barrainenesse in trées: this mosse you must take off with the backe of an olde knife and leaue the barke smooth, plaine, and vnraced: also if you shall dunge such trées with the dunge of Swine, it is a ready way to destroy the mosse. {SN: Proyning of Trees.} After you haue drest and trimmed your trées, you shall then proyne them, which is to cut away all those superfluous branches, armes, or cyons, which being either barraine, bruised or misplaced, doe like drones, steale-away that nutriment which should maintaine the better deseruing sinewes, and you shall vnderstand that the best time for proyning of trées, is in March and Aprill, at which time the sappe assending vpward, causeth the trées to budde: the branches you shall cut away are all such as shall grow out of the stocke vnderneath the place grafted, or all such as by the shaking of tempests shall grow in a disorderly and ill fashioned crookednesse, or any other, that out of a well tempered iudgement shall séeme superfluous and burdensome to the stocke from whence it springs, also such as haue by disorder béene brooken, or maimed, and all these you shall cut away with a hooke knife, close by the trée, vnlesse you haue occasion by some misfortune to cut away some of the maine and great armes of the trée, and then you shall not vse your knife for feare of tearing the barke, but taking your sawe you shall sawe off those great armes close by the trée, neither shall you sawe them off downeward but vpward, least the waight of the arme breake the barke from the body: And herein you shall also vnderstand that for as much as the mischances which beget these dismembrings doe happen at the latter end of Summer, in the gathering of the fruit, and that it is not fit such maymed and broken boughes hang vpon the trée till the Spring, therefore you shall cut them off in the Winter time, but not close to the trée by almost a foote, and so letting them rest vntill the spring, at that time cut them off close by the trée. Now if you finde the superfluitie of branches which annoy your trées to be onely small cyons, springing from the rootes of the trées, as it often hapneth with all sorts of Plumbe-trées, Cherry-trées, Nut-trées, and such like, then you shall in the winter, bare the rootes of those trées, and cut off those cyons close by the roote: but if your trées be broused or eaten by tame-Deare, Goates, Shéepe, Kine, Oxen, or such like, then there is no help for such a misfortune but onely to cut off the whole head and graft the stocke anew. {SN: Of Barke-bound.} Next to the proyning of trées, is the preseruing, phisicking, and curing of the diseases of trées: to which they are subiect as well as our naturall bodyes: and first of all, there is a disease called Barke-bound, which is when the barke, through a mislike and leperous drynesse, bindeth in the trée with such straitnesse that the sappe being denied passage the body growes into a consumption: it is in nature like vnto that disease which in beasts is called hide-bound, and the cure is thus: at the beginning of March take a sharpe knife, and from the toppe of the body of the trée, to the very roote, draw downe certaine slits, or incissions, cleane through the barke, vnto the very sappe of the trée, round about the trée, & then with the backe of your knife open those slits and annoint them all through with Tarre, and in short space it will giue libertie vnto the trée to encrease & grow: this disease commeth by the rubbing of cattell against the trée, especially Swine, who are very poyson vnto all plants. {SN: Of the Gall.} There is another disease in fruit-trées, called the Gall, and it eateth and consumeth the barke quit away, and so in time kills the trée: the cure is to cut and open the barke which you sée infected, and with a chissell to take away all that is foule and putrefied, and then to clappe Oxe dunge vpon the place, and it will helpe it, and this must be done euer in winter. {SN: Of the Canker.} The Canker in fruit trées is the consumption both of the barke and the body, & it commeth either by the dropping of trées one vpon another, or else when some hollow places of the trée retaineth raine water in them, which fretting through the barke, poysoneth the trée: the cure is to cut away all such boughes as by dropping bréede the euill, and if the hollow places cannot be smooth and made euen, then to stoppe them with clay, waxe, and sope-ashes mixt together. {SN: Of worme-eaten barkes.} If the barkes of your trées be eaten with wormes, which you shall perceiue by the swelling of the barke, you shall then open the barke and lay there-vpon swines dunge, sage, and lime beaten together, and bound with a cloath fast to the trée, and it will cure it: or wash the trée with cowes-pisse and vinegar and it will helpe it. {SN: Of Pismiers and Snailes.} If your young trées be troubled with Pismiers, or Snailes, which are very noysome vnto them, you shall take vnsleckt lime and sope-ashes and mingling them with wine-lées, spread it all about the roote of the trées so infected, and annoint the body of the trée likewise therewith, and it will not onely destroy them but giue comfort to the trée: the soote of a chimney or Oake sawe-dust spread about the roote will doe the same. {SN: Of Caterpillers, and Earewigges.} If Caterpillers doe annoy your young trées, who are great deuourers of the leaues and young buddes, and spoylers of the barke, you shall, if it be in the summer time, make a very strong brine of water and salt, and either with a garden pumpe, placed in a tubbe, or with squirts which haue many hoales you shall euery second day water and wash your trées, and it will destroy them, because the Caterpiller naturally cannot indure moisture, but if neuerthelesse you sée they doe continue still vpon your trees in Winter, then you shall when the leaues are falne away take dankish straw and setting it on fire smeare and burne them from the trée, and you shall hardly euer be troubled with them againe vpon the same trées: roules of hay layd on the trées will gather vp Earewigges and kill them. {SN: Of the barrainenesse of Trees.} If your trées be barraine, and albeit they flourish and spread there leaues brauely, yet bring forth no fruit at all, it is a great sicknesse, and the worst of all other: therefore you shall vnderstand it procéedeth of two causes: first, of two much fertillitie, and fatnesse of the ground, which causeth the leafe to put forth and flourish in such vnnaturall abundance, that all such sappe and nutriment as should knit and bring forth fruit, turnes onely vnto leafe, cyons, and vnprofitable branches, which you shall perceiue both by the abundance of the leaues and by the colour also, which will be of a more blacker and déeper gréene, and of much larger proportion then those which haue but their naturall and proper rights: and the cure thereof is to take away the earth from the roote of such trées and fill vp the place againe with other earth, which is of a much leaner substance: but if your trée haue no such infirmitie of fatnesse, but beareth his leaues and branches in good order and of right colour and yet notwithstanding is barraine and bringeth forth little or no fruit, then that disease springeth from some naturall defect in the trée, and the cure thereof is thus: first, you shall vnbare the roote of the trée, and then noting which is the greatest and principallest branch of all the roote, you shall with a great wimble boare a hole into that roote and then driue a pinne of olde dry Ashe into the same (for Oake is not altogether so good) and then cutting the pinne off close by the roote, couer all the head of the pinne with yealow waxe, and then lay the mould vpon the roote of the trée againe, and treade it hard and firmely downe, and there is no doubte but the trée will beare the yéere following: in Fraunce they vse for this infirmitie to boare a hoale in the body of the trée slope-wise, somewhat past the hart, and to fill vp the hoale with life honey and Rose-water mixt together, and incorporated for at least xxiiij. howers, and then to stoppe the hole with a pinne of the one woode: also if you wash the rootes of your trées in the drane water which runneth from your Barley when you stéepe it for Malt, it will cure this disease of barrainenesse. {SN: Of the bitternesse of Fruit.} If the fruit which is vpon your trées be of a bitter and sootie tast, to make it more pleasant and swéet you shall wash your trée all ouer with Swines dunge and water mixt together, & to the rootes of the trées you shall lay earth and Swines dunge mixt together, which must be done in the month of Ianuary and February onely, and it will make the fruit tast pleasantly. And thus much for the dressing and preseruing of trées. CHAP. VIII. _Of the Vine, and of his ordering._ For as much as the nature, temperature, and clymate, of our soyle is not so truely proper and agréeing with the Vine as that of Fraunce, Italy, Spaine, and such like, and sith wée haue it more for delight, pleasure, and prospect, then for any peculyar profit, I will not vndertake _Monsiuer Lybaults_ painefull labour, in discribing euery curious perfection or defect that belongs thereunto, as if it were the onely iewell and commoditie of our kingdome, but onely write so much as is fitting for our knowledge touching the maintaynance, increase, and preseruation thereof, in our Orchards, Gardens, and other places of recreation. {SN: Of planting or setting the Vine.} First then to speake of the planting or setting of the Vine, your greatest diligence must be to séeke out the best plants, and if that which is most strange, rare, great and pleasant be the best, then is that grape which is called the Muskadine, or Sacke grape, the best, and haue their beginning either from Spaine, the Canary Ilands, or such like places: next to them is the French grape, of which there be many kindes, the best whereof is the grape of Orleance, the next the grape of Gascoynie, the next of Burdeaux, and the worst of Rochell, and not any of these but by industry will prosper in our English gardens: when therefore you chuse your plants, you shall chuse such of the young cyons as springing from the olde woode, you may in the cutting cut at least a ioynt or two of olde woode with the young: for the olde will take soonest, and this olde woode must be at least seauen or eight inches long, and the young cyon almost a yard, and the thicker and closer the ioynts of the young cyon are, so much the better they are: and the fit time for cutting and gathering these sets are in midde-Ianuary, then hauing prepared, digged, and dunged your earth the winter before, you shall at the latter end of Ianuary take two of these sets, or plants, placing them according to this figure: {Illustration} And lay them in the earth slope-wise, at least a foote déepe, leauing out of the earth, vncouered, not aboue foure or fiue ioynts, at the most, and then couer them with good earth firmely, closely, and strongly, hauing regard to raise those cyons which are without the earth directly vpward, obseruing after they be set, once in a month to wéede them, and kéepe them as cleane as is possible: for nothing is more noysome vnto them then the suffocating of wéeds: also you shall not suffer the mould to grow hard or bind about the rootes, but with a small spade once in a fortnight to loosen and breake the earth, because there rootes are so tender that the least straytning doth strangle and confound them. If the season doe grow dry, you may vse to water them, but not in such sort as you water other plants, which is to sprinckle water round about the earth of the rootes, but you shall with a round Iron made for the purpose somewhat bigger then a mans fingar, make certaine holes into the earth, close vpon the roote of the Vine, and powre therein either water, the dregges of strong-Ale, or the lées of Wine, or if you will you may mixe with the lées of Wine either Goats-milke, or Cowes-milke, and power it into the holes and it will nourish the Vine excéedingly, and not the Vine onely, but all sorts of dainty grafted Plumbes, especially Peaches. {SN: Of proyning the Vine.} Now for proyning the Vine, you shall vnderstand that it is euer to be done after the fall of the leafe, when the sappe is desended downeward, for if you shall proyne, or cut him, either in the spring, or when the sappe is aloft, it will bléede so excéedingly, that with great difficulty you shall saue the body of the trée from dying: and, in proyning of the Vine you shall obserue two things, the first, that you cut away all superfluous cyons and branches, both aboue and below, which either grow disorderly aboue, or fruitlessely below, and in cutting them you shall obserue, neither to cut the olde woode with the young cyon, nor to leaue aboue one head or leader vpon one branch: secondly, you shall in proyning, plash and spread the VINE thinnely against the wall, giuing euery seuerall branch and cyon his place, and passage, and not suffer it to grow loosely, rudely, or like a wilde thorne, out of all decency and proportion: for you must vnderstand that your Grapes doe grow euer vpon the youngest cyons, and if of them you shall preserue too many, questionlesse for want of nourishment they will lose their vertue, and you your profit. Now if your Vine be a very olde Vine, and that his fruit doth decay, either in quantitie or proportion; if then you finde he haue any young cyons which spring from his roote, then when you proyne him you shall cut away all the olde stocke, within lesse then an handfull of the young cyons, and make them the leaders, who will prosper and continue in perfection a long time after, especially if you trimme the rootes with fresh earth, and fresh dunge. Againe, if you be carefull to looke vnto your Vine, you shall perceiue close by euery bunch of grapes certaine small thridde-like cyons, which resemble twound wyars, curling and turning in many rings, these also take from the grapes very much nutriment, so that it shall be a labour very well imployd to cut them away as you perceiue them. {SN: Experiments of the Vine.} Now from the Vine there is gathered sundry experiments, as to haue it tast more pleasant then the true nature of the grape, and to smell in the mouth odoriferously, or as if it were perfumed, which may be done in this sort: Take damaske-Rose-water and boyle therein the powder of Cloaues, Cynamon, thrée graines of Amber, and one of Muske, and when it is come to be somewhat thicke, take a round goudge and make a hole in the maine stocke of the Vine, full as déepe as the hart thereof, and then put therein this medicine, then stopping the hole with Cypresse, or Iuniper, lay gréene-waxe thereupon, and binde a linnen cloath about it, and the next grapes which shall spring from that Vine will tast as if they were preserued or perfumed. If you will haue grapes without stones, you shall take your plants and plant the small ends downeward and be assured your desire is attained. The Vine naturally of himselfe doth not bring forth fruit till it haue béene thrée yéeres planted: but if euening and morning for the first month you will bath his roote with Goats-milke or Cowes-milke, it will beare fruit the first yéere of his planting. Lastly, you may if you please graft one Vine vpon another, as the swéet vpon the sower, as the Muskadine grape, or gréeke, vpon the Rochell or Burdeaux, the Spanish, or Iland grape, on the Gascoyne, and the Orleance vpon any at all: and these compositions are the best, and bring forth both the greatest and pleasantest grapes: therefore whensoeuer you will graft one grape vpon another, you shall doe it in the beginning of Ianuary, in this sort: first, after you haue chosen and trimmed your grafts, which in all sorts must be like the grafts of other fruits, then with a sharpe knife, you shall cleaue the head of the Vine, as you doe other stockes and then put in your graft, or cyon, being made as thinne as may be and sée that the barkes and sappes ioyne euen and close together, then clay it, mosse it, and couer it, as hath béene before declared. {SN: The medicining of the Vine.} If your Vine grow too ranke and thicke of leaues, so that the sappe doth wast it selfe in them, and you thereby lose the profit of the fruit, you shall then bare all the rootes of the Vine, and cast away the earth, filling vp the place againe with sand & ashes mingled together: but if the Vine be naturally of it selfe barraine, then with a goudge you shall make a hole halfe way through the maine body of the Vine, and driue into the hole a round pible stone, which although it goe straitly in, yet it may not fill vp the hole, but that the sicke humour of the Vine may passe thorrow thereat: then couer the roote with rich earth, and Oxe dunge mixt together, and once a day for a month water it with olde pisse, or vrine of a man, and it will make the trée fruitfull: if the Vine be troubled with Wormes, Snailes, Ants, Earewigges, or such like, you shall morning and euening sprinckle it ouer with cowes-pisse and vinegar mixt together & it will helpe it: & thus much for ordering the Vine. CHAP. IX. _The office of the Fruiterrer, or the Gatherer, and keeper, of Fruit._ After you haue planted euery seuerall quarter, allye, and border within your Orchard, with euery seuerall fruit proper vnto his place, and that you haue placed them in that orderly and comely equipage which may giue most delight to the eye, profit to the trée, and commendations to the workeman, (according to the forme and order prescribed in the first Chapter) and that now the blessing of the highest, time, and your indeuours hath brought forth the haruest and recompence of your trauell, so that you behould the long-expected fruit hang vpon the trées, as it were in their ripenesse, wooing you to plucke, tast, and to deliuer them from the wombes of their parents, it is necessary then that you learne the true office of the Fruiterer, who is in due season and time to gather those fruits which God hath sent him: for as in the husbanding of our grayne if the Husbandman be neuer so carefull, or skilfull, in ploughing, dungging, sowing, wéeding and preseruing his crop, yet in the time of haruest be negligent, neither regarding the strength or ripnesse thereof, or in the leading and mowing respects not whether it be wet or dry, doth in that moments space loose the wages of his whole yéeres trauell, getting but durt from durt, and losse from his negligence: so in like case houlds it with all other fruits, if a man with neuer so great care and cost procure, yet if he be inrespectiue in the gathering, all his former businesse is vaine and to no purpose; and therefore I hould nothing more necessary then the relation of this office of the Fruiterer, which is the consummation and onely hope of our cost, and diligence, teaching vs to gather wisely what wée haue planted wearily, and to eate with contentment what we haue preserued with care. {SN: Of gathering and preseruing Cherries.} Know then, that of all fruits (for the most part) the Cherry is the soonest ripe, as being one of the oldest children of the summer, and therefore first of all to be spoken of in this place, yet are not all Cherries ripe at one instant, but some sooner then other some, according to the benefit of the Sunne, the warmth of the ayre, and the strength of sappe in the branch on which the Cherry hangeth: they are a fruit tender and pleasant, and therefore much subiect to be deuoured and consumed with Byrds of the smallest kindes, as Sparrowes, Robins, Starlings, and such like, especially the Iay, and the Bull-finch, who deuoure them stones and all, euen so fast as they rypen: for preuention whereof; if you haue great abundance of Cherry trées, as maine holts that be either one or many akers in compasse, you shall then in diuers places of your holts, as well in the midst, as out-corners, cause to be errected vp certaine long poales of Fyrre, or other woode, which may mount somewhat aboue the toppes of the trées, and one the toppes of those poales you shall place certaine clappe-milles made of broken trenchers ioyned together like sayles, which being moued and carryed about with the smallest ayre, may haue vnderneath the sayles a certaine loose little board, against which euery sayle may clap and make a great noyse, which will afright and scare the Byrds from your trées: these milles you shall commonly sée in Husbandmens yards placed on their stackes or houells of Corne, which doth preserue them from fowle and vermine: but for want of these clap-milles you must haue some boy or young fellow that must euery morning from the dawning of the day till the Sunne be more then an houre high, and euery euening from fiue of the clocke till nine, runne vp and downe your ground, whooping, showtying, and making of a great noyse, or now and then shooting of some Harquebush, or other Péece: but by no meanes to vse slings or throwing of stones, least by the miscarriage of his hand hée either beate downe the fruit or bruise the trees. In this sort hauing preserued your Cherries from destruction, you shall then know there ripenesse by their colours, for euer those which are most red, are most ripe, and when you sée any that are ripe, you shall take a light ladder, made either of fyrre or sallow, and setting it carefully against the branches, so as you neither bruise them nor the fruit, you shall gather those you finde ripe, not taking the fruit from the stalke, but nipping the stalke and fruit both together from the trée: also you shall be carefull in gathering to handle or touch the Cherry so little as may be, but the stalke onely, especially if your hands be hot, or sweaty, for that will change the colour of your Cherries, and make them looke blacke: if there be any ripe Cherries which hang out of the reach of your hands, then you shall haue a fine small gathering hooke of woode, whose bout shall be made round, and smooth, for nipping the barke of the branches, and with it you shall gently pull vnto you those branches you cannot reach: you shall also haue a little round basket of almost a foote déepe, made with a siue bottome, hauing a handle thwarte the toppe, to which a small hooke being fastned, you shall with that hooke hang the basket by you on some conuenient cyon, and as you gather the Cherries, gently lay them downe into the same, and when you haue filled your basket you shall descend and empty it into larger great baskets made of the same fashion, with siue bottomes, and hauing vnderneath two broad lathes or splinters, at least thrée fingers broad a péece, within foure inches one of the other, and going both one way crosse ouerthwart the basket, that if either man or woman shall carry them vpon their heads, which is the best manner of cariage, then the splinters may defend the bottome of the basket from the head of the party, and kéepe the Cherries from hurt or bruising, and if you haue occasion to carry your Cherries farre, and that the quantitie grow beyond the support of a man, then you shall packe them in hampers or panniers made with false bottoms like siues, and finely lyned on the out side with white straw, and so being closely trust on each side a Horses-backe, to carry them whether you please. You shall by no meanes suffer your Cherries to lye in any great or thicke heapes one vpon another, but vntill you sell them, or vse them, lay them as thinne as may be, because they are apt of themselues to sweat and catch heate, and that heate doth soone depriue them of the glory of their colour. When you gather any Cherries to preserue, you shall gather those which are the greatest, the ripest, you shall pull them from their stalkes one by one, and vse them at furthest within xxiiij. howers after the time they are gotten. {SN: The gathering of stone Fruit.} {SN: Of gathering hard Plumbes.} {SN: Of keeping of Plumbes.} For the gathering of Plumbes in generall, it is in the same manner as you did gather your Cherries, both with such a like ladder, such a like hooke, and such like vessels, onely some more speciall obseruations are to be obserued in gathering your dainty grafted Plumbes, then of the others, which are of a more hard and induring nature. You shall know then that for gathering of Abricots, Peaches, Date-Plumbes, and such like grafted Plumbes, you shall duely consider when they are perfectly ripe, which you shall not iudge by their dropping from the trée, which is a signe of ouer-much ripnesse, tending to rottennesse, but by the true mixture of their colour, and perfect change from their first complexion: for when you shall perceiue that there is no gréenenesse nor hardnesse in their out-sides, no, not so much as at the setting on of the stalke, you may then iudge that they are ready to be gathered, and for a perfecter tryall thereof you may if you please, take one which you thinke ripest from the trée, and opening it if you sée the stone comes cleane and dry away and not any of the in-part of the fruit cleauing vnto it, then you may assure your selfe that the fruit is ready to be gathered, which you shall with great deligence and care gather, not by any meanes laying one Plumbe vpon another, but each seuerally by another, for these dainty Plumbes are naturally so tender that the least touch, though of themselues, doth bruise them, and occasion rottennesse. Now when you haue gathered them, if either you haue desire to send them any iourney, as in gratulation to your friends, or for other priuate commoditie, you shall take some close, smooth, boxe, answerable to the store of fruit you are to send, and first line it within all ouer with white paper, then lay your Plumbes one by one all ouer the bottome of the boxe, then couering them all ouer with white paper, lay as many moe vpon the toppe of them, and couer them likewise with paper, as before, and so lay row vpon row with papers betwéene them, vntill the boxe be sufficiently filled, and then closing it vp sende it whether you please, and they will take the least hurt, whereas if you should line the boxe either with hay or straw, the very skinnes are so tender that the straw would print into them and bruise them excéedingly, and to lay any other soft thing about them, as either wooll or bumbast, is excéeding euill, because it heateth the Plumbes, and maketh them sweat, through which they both loose their colour and rot spéedily. As touching the gathering of Plumbes when they are hard, and to ripen them afterward by laying them vpon nettles, to which consenteth the most of our London-Fruiterrers, I am vtterly against the opinion, because I both know Nature to be the perfectest worke-Mistris, and where she is abridged of her power there euer to follow disorders and imperfections, as also that when such things are done, as it were through an ouer-hasty constraint, there cannot procéede any thing but abortiuenesse, and a distastfull rellish: from whence I thinke it comes to passe that in London a man shall very seldome tast a delicate or well rellisht Plumbe, vnlesse it be from such as hauing fruit of their owne, make no commoditie thereof more then their owne pleasures: yet thus much I would perswade euery one, that if they haue moe Plumbes ripe at once then they can vse, or spend, that then after they are gathered, to spread them thinnely vpon Nettles or Vine-trée leaues, and it will preserue them sound and well coloured a long time together, but if your store be so superabundant that in no reasonable time you can spend them, then what you doe not preserue, or make Godiniake, or Maruulade of, the rest you shall take and sprinkling them ouer with swéet-worte, or growt, and then laying them one by one (yet so as they may not touch one another) vpon hurdles or fleakes made of wands, or twigges, and put them into an Ouen after bread or Pyes haue béene taine thereout, and so leasurely dry them, and they will not onely last, but tast pleasantly all the yéere after: and in this sort you may vse all kindes of Plumbes, or Peares, whatsoeuer. Now for the gathering of the other ordinary sorts of vngrafted Plumbes, which haue both much stronger rindes, and are lesse subiect to rotting, you shall gather them, carry, or transport them, in the same manner that you did your Cherries, onely in these, as in all other sorts of fruit whatsoeuer, you shall not omit neuer to gather, or pull them from the trée, till the dewe be dryed cleane both from the grasse and from the trées, and that the day be dry, faire, and full of sunne-shine: for the least wet or moisture doth canker and rot the fruit. {SN: Of the gathering of Peares.} As touching the gathering of Peares, though sundry Fruiterrers obserue sundry wayes in gathering them, as some making more hast then good-spéed, as either to haue the first tast, or the first profit, some vsing more negligence, thincking their store so great it will neuer be consumed, and some so curious that they will not gather till the Peares fall into their bosomes, all which are dispraiseable fashions, yet I for my part would euer aduise all diligent husbands to obserue a mediocritie, and take the fittest season for the gathering of his fruit: as thus for example. If because you are vnexperienced or vnacquainted with the fruit you doe not know the due time of his ripening, you shall obserue the colour of the Peare, and if you sée it doe alter, either in part, or in all, you shall be assured the fruit is neare ripening, for Peares doe neuer change their colours, but when they doe desire to be taken from the trée: and of all fruit the Peare may be gathered the hardest, because both his owne naturall heate and peculiar quallittie will ripen him best with lying: yet to be more strongly fortefied in the knowledge of the ripenesse of your fruit, and because it is better to get a day too late, then an hower to earely, you shall before you gather your Peares, whether they be Summer fruit or Winter fruit, or whether you meane to spend them soone or preserue them long, take one of them from the trée, which is neither the ripest nor the gréenest, but betwixt both, and cut it through the midst with your knife, not longwise, but ouerthwart, and then looke into the coare where the kirnells lye, and if it be hollow so as the kirnells lye as it were hollow therein, the neather ends thereof being turned either blacke, or blackish, albeit the complexion of the Peare be little, or not at all altered, yet the Peares haue their full growth, and may very well be gathered: then laying them either vpon a bedde of ferne, or straw, one vpon another, in great thicknesse, their owne naturall heate will in short space ripen them, which you shall perceiue both by the spéedy changing of their colour, & the strength of their smell, which will be excéeding suffocating, which as soone as you perceiue, you shall then spread them thinner and thinner, vntill they be all ripe, and then lay them one by one, in such sort as they may not touch one another, and then they will last much the longer, you shall also after they be ripe, neither suffer them to haue straw nor ferne vnder them, but lay them either vpon some smooth table, boards or fleakes of wands, and they will last the longer. {SN: Of transporting, or carrying of Peares farre.} If you be to carry or transport Peares farre, you shall then gather them so much the sooner, and not suffer any ripe one to be amongst them, and then lyning great wicker baskets (such as will hould at least quarters a péece) finely within with white-straw, fill them vp with Peares, and then couer them with straw, and corde them aboue, and you may either transport them by land or Sea, whether you please, for they will ripen in their cariage: but when you come to your place of residence, then you must néeds vnpacke them and spread them thinner, or else they will rot and consume in a sodaine. {SN: Of gathering diuersly.} There be sundry wayes of gathering Peares, or other fruit, as namely, to climbe into the trée and to haue a basket with a line fastned thereto, and so when it is filled to let it downe, and cause it to be emptied, which labour though some of our southerne Fruiterers doe not much commend, yet for mine owne part I doe not sée much errour therein, but that it is both allowable and conuenient, both because it neither bruiseth the fruit, nor putteth the gatherer to any extraordinary labour, onely the imaginary euill is, that by climbing vp into the trée, hée that gathereth the fruit may indanger the breaking, slipping, and disbranching of many of the young cyons, which bréedeth much hurt and damage to the trée, but iudgement, and care, which ought to be apropriate to men of this quallitie, is a certaine preuenter of all such mischeifes. Now for such as in gathering of their fruit doe euery time that the basket is full bring it downe themselues from the trée, and empty it by powring the fruit rudely, and boystrously forth, or for beating of fruit downe with long poales, loggets, or such like, they are both most vilde and preposterous courses, the first being full of too much foolish and carelesse trouble, the latter of too much disorder, & cruelty, ruyning in a moment what hath béene many yéeres in building: as for the climbing the trée with a ladder, albeit it be a very good way for the gathering of fruit, yet if it be neuer so little indiscréetly handled, it as much hazardeth the breaking and bruising both of the fruit and the small cyons, as either climbing the trée, or any other way whatsoeuer. {SN: The gathering of Apples.} Now for the gathering of your Apples: you shall vnderstand that your summer fruit, as your Ieniting, Wibourne, and such like, are first to be gathered, whose ripenesse, you may partly know by the change of colour, partly by the pecking of Birds, but cheifely by the course formerly discribed for your knowledge of the ripenesse of the Peare, which is the hollownesse of coare, and liberty of the kirnell onely, and when you doe perceiue they are ripe, you shall gather them in such wise as hath béene declared for the gathering of your Peares, without respecting the state of the Moone, or any such like obseruation, but when you come to gather your Winter-fruit, which is the Pippin, Peare-maine, Russetting, Blacke-annat, and such like, you shall in any wise gather them in the wane of the Moone, and, as before I said, in the dryest season that may be, and if it be so that your store be so great that you cannot gather all in that season, yet you shall get so much of your principall fruit, the youngest and fairest, as is possible to be gotten, and preserue it for the last which you intend either to spend, or vtter. Now for the manner of gathering your Apples I doe not thinke you can amend or approue a better way then that which hath béene discribed for the gathering of Peares, yet some of our late practitioners (who thinke themselues not cunning if they be not curious) dislike that way, and will onely haue a gathering apron, into which hauing gathered their fruit, they doe empty it into larger vessells: this gathering apron is a strong péece of Canuas at least an ell euery way, which hauing the vpper end made fast about a mans necke, & the neather end with thrée loopes, that is, one at each corner, & one in the midst, through which you shall put a string, and binde it about your waste, in so much that both the sides of your apron being open you may put your fruit therein with which hand you please: this manner of gathering Apples is not amisse, yet in my conceit the apron is so small a defence for the Apples, that if it doe but knocke against the boughes as you doe moue your selfe, it cannot chuse but bruise the fruit very much, which ought euer to be auoyded: therefore still I am of this opinion, there is no better way, safer, nor more easie, then gathering them into a small basket, with a long line thereat, as hath béene before declared in the gathering of Peares. Now you shall carefully obserue in empting one basket into another, that you doe it so gently as may be, least in powring them out too rudely the stalkes of the fruit doe pricke one another, which although it doe appeare little or nothing at the first, yet it is the first ground, cause, and beginning of rottennesse, and therefore you shall to your vttermost power gather your Apples with as small stalkes as may be, so they haue any at all, which they must néedes haue, because that as too bigge stalkes doth pricke and bruise the fruit, so to haue none at all makes the fruit rot first in the place where the stalke should be: you shall also kéepe your fruit cleane from leaues, for they being gréene and full of moisture, when by reason of their lying close together they beginne to wither they strike such an heate into the Apples, that they mil-dew and rot instantly. {SN: Of Fallings.} {SN: Of carriage and keeping Fruit.} As touching your Fallings, which are those Apples which fall from your trées, either through too much ripenesse, or else through the violence of winde, or tempests, you shall by no meanes match them, or mixe them, with your gathered fruit, for they can by no meanes last or indure so long, for the latter which falleth by force of winde, wanting the true nourishment of the earth and the kindly ripening vpon the trée, must necessarily shrinke wither, and grow riuelled, so that your best course is to spend them presently, with all spéede possible: for the other which hath too much ripenesse from the earth, and the trée, though it be much better then the other, yet it cannot be long lasting, both because it is in the falling bruised, and also hath too much ripenesse, which is the first steppe to rottennesse, so that they must likewise be spent with all expedition. For the carriage of your Apples, if the place be not farre whether you should carry them, you shall then in those large baskets into which you last emptied them, carry them vpon cole-staues, or stangs, betwixt two men, and hauing brought them carefully into your Apple-loft, power them downe gently vpon bedds of ferne or straw, and lay them in reasonable large heapes, euery sort of Apples seuerall by themselues, without mixture, or any confusion: and for such Apples as you would haue to ripen soone, you shall couer them all ouer with ferne also, but for such as you would haue take all possible leasure in ripening, those you shall lay neither vpon ferne, nor straw, but vpon the bare boards, nay, if you lay them vpon a plaster floare (which is of all floares the coldest) till Saint Andrewes tide, it is not amisse, but very profitable, and the thinner you lay them so much the better. Now if you haue any farre iourney to carry your Apples, either by land, or by water, then trimming and lyning the insides of your baskets with ferne, or wheat-straw wouen as it were cleane through the basket, you shall packe, couer, and cord vp your Apples, in such sort as you did your Peares, and there is no danger in the transportation of them, be it by shippe, cart, waggon, or horse-backe. If you be inforced to packe sundry sorts of Apples in one basket, sée that betwixt euery sort you lay a diuision of straw, or ferne, that when they are vnpackt, you may lay them againe seuerally: but if when they are vnpackt, for want of roome you are compeld to lay some sorts together, in any wise obserue to mixe those sorts together which are nearest of taste, likest of colour, and all of one continuance in lasting: as for the packing vp of fruit in hogsheads, or shooting them vnder hatches when you transport them by Sea, I like neither of the courses, for the first is too close, and nothing more then the want of ayre doth rot fruit, the other is subiect to much wet, when the breach of euery Sea indangereth the washing of the Apples, and nothing doth more certainely spoyle them. The times most vnseasonable for the transporting of fruit, is either in the month of March, or generally in any frosty weather, for if the sharpe coldenesse of those ayres doe touch the fruit, it presently makes them looke blacke, and riuelled, so that there is no hope of their continuance. The place where you shall lay your fruit must neither be too open, nor too close, yet rather close then open, it must by no meanes be low vpon the ground, nor in any place of moistnesse: for moisture bréedes fustinesse, and such naughty smells easily enter into the fruit, and taint the rellish thereof, yet if you haue no other place but some low cellar to lay your fruit in, then you shall raise shelues round about, the nearest not within two foote of the ground, and lay your Apples thereupon, hauing them first lyned, either with swéet Rye-straw, Wheate-straw, or dry ferne: as these vndermost roomes are not the best, so are the vppermost, if they be vnséeld, the worst of all other, because both the sunne, winde, and weather, peircing through the tiles, doth annoy and hurt the fruit: the best roome then is a well séeld chamber, whose windowes may be shut and made close at pleasure, euer obseruing with straw to defend the fruit from any moist stone wall, or dusty mudde wall, both which are dangerous annoyances. {SN: The seperating of Fruit.} Now for the seperating of your fruit, you shall lay those nearest hand, which are first to be spent, as those which will last but till Alhallontide, as the Cisling, Wibourne, and such like, by themselues: those which will last till Christmas, as the Costard, Pome-water, Quéene-Apple, and such like: those which will last till Candlemas, as the Pome-de-roy, Goose-Apple, and such like, and those which will last all the yéere, as the Pippin, Duzin, Russetting, Peare-maine, and such like, euery one in his seuerall place, & in such order that you may passe from bed to bed to clense or cast forth those which be rotten or putrefied at your pleasure, which with all diligence you must doe, because those which are tainted will soone poyson the other, and therefore it is necessary as soone as you sée any of them tainted, not onely to cull them out, but also to looke vpon all the rest, and deuide them into thrée parts, laying the soundest by themselues, those which are least tainted by themselues, and those which are most tainted by themselues, and so to vse them all to your best benefit. Now for the turning of your longest lasting fruit, you shall know that about the latter end of December is the best time to beginne, if you haue both got and kept them in such sort as is before sayd, and not mixt fruit of more earely ripening amongst them: the second time you shall turne them, shall be about the end of February, and so consequently once euery month, till Penticost, for as the yéere time increaseth in heate so fruit growes more apt to rot: after Whitsontide you shall turne them once euery fortnight, alwayes in your turning making your heapes thinner and thinner; but if the weather be frosty then stirre not your fruit at all, neither when the thaw is, for then the fruit being moist may by no meanes be touched: also in wet weather fruit will be a little dankish, so that then it must be forborne also, and therefore when any such moistnesse hapneth, it is good to open your windowes and let the ayre dry your fruit before it be turned: you may open your windowe any time of the yéere in open weather, as long as the sunne is vpon the skye, but not after, except in March onely, at what time the ayre and winde is so sharpe that it tainteth and riuelleth all sorts of fruits whatsoeuer. {SN: To keepe Fruit in frost.} If the frost be very extreame, and you feare the indangering your fruit, it is good to couer them somewhat thicke with fine hay, or else to lay them couered all ouer either in Barley-chaffe, or dry Salte: as for the laying them in chests of Iuniper, or Cipresse, it is but a toy, and not worth the practise: if you hang Apples in nettes within the ayre of the fire it will kéepe them long, but they will be dry and withered, and will loose their best rellish. {SN: Of Wardens.} Now for the gathering, kéeping, ordering, and preseruing of Wardens, they are in all sorts and in all respects to be vsed as you doe vse your Peares, onely you are to consider that they are a fruit of a much stronger constitution, haue a much thicker skinne, and will endure much harder season: neither ought you to séeke to ripen them in hast, or before the ordinary time of their owne nature, and therefore to them you shall vse neither straw, ferne, nor hay, but onely dry boards to lay them vpon, and no otherwise. {SN: Of Medlars and Seruices.} For your Medlars, you shall gather them about the midst of October, after such time as the frost hath nipt and bitten them, for before they will not be ready, or loosen from the stalke, and then they will be nothing ripe, but as hard as stones, for they neuer ripen vpon the trée, therefore as soone as you haue gathered them, you shall packe them into some close vessell, and couer them all ouer, and round about, with thicke woollen cloathes, and about the cloathes good store of hay, and some other waight of boards, or such like vpon them, all which must bring them into an extreame heate, without which they will neuer ripen kindely, because their ripenesse is indéed perfect rottennesse: and after they haue layne thus, at least a fornight, you shall then looke vpon them, and turning them ouer, such as you finde ripe you shall take away, the rest you shall let remaine still, for they will not ripen all at once, and those which are halfe ripe you shall also remoue into a third place, least if you should kéepe them together, they should beginne to grow mouldy before the other were ready; and in the selfe same manner as you vse your Medlars, so you shall vse your Seruices, and they will ripen most kindely: or if you please to sticke them betwixt large clouen stickes, and to sprinckle a little olde beare vpon them, and so set them in a close roome, they will ripen as kindely as any other way whatsoeuer. {SN: Of Quinces.} Now for Quinces, they are a fruit which by no meanes you may place neare any other kinde of fruit, because their sent is so strong and peircing, that it will enter into any fruit, and cleane take way his naturall rellish: the time of their gathering is euer in October, and the méetest place to lay them in is where they may haue most ayre, so they may lye dry (for wet they can by no meanes indure,) also they must not lye close, because the smell of them is both strong & vnwholsome: the beds whereon they must lye must be of swéet straw, and you must both turne them and shift them very often, or else they will rot spéedily: for the transporting or carying them any long iourney, you must vse them in all things as you vse your Peares, & the carriage will be safe. {SN: Of Nuts.} For Nuts, of what sort soeuer they be, you shall know they are ripe as soone as you perceiue them a little browne within the huske, or as it were ready to fall out of the same, the skill therefore in preseruing of them long from drynesse, is all that can be desired at the Fruiterers hands: for as touching the gathering of them, there is no scruple to be obserued, more then to gather them cleane from the trée, with the helpe of hookes and such like, for as touching the bruising of them, the shell is defence sufficient. After they be gathered, you shall shale them, and take them cleane out of their huskes, and then for preseruing them from either Wormes or drynesse, it shall be good to lay them in some low cellar, where you may couer them with sand, being first put into great bagges or bladders: some french-men are of opinion that if you put them into vessels made of Wal-nut-trée, and mixe Iuy-berries amongst them, it will preserue them moist a long time: others thinke, but I haue found it vncertaine, that to preserue Nuts in Honey will kéepe them all the yéere as gréene, moist, and pleasant, as when they hung vpon the trée: The Dutch-men vse (and it is an excellent practise) to take the crusht Crabbes (after your verdiuyce is strained out of them) and to mixe it with their Nuts, and so to lay them in heapes, and it will preserue them long: or otherwise if they be to be transported, to put them into barrells and to lay one layre of crusht Crabbes, and another of Nuts, vntill the barrell be filled, and then to close them vp, and set them where they may stand coole. But aboue all these foresayd experiments, the best way for the preseruing of Nuts is to put them into cleane earthen pots, and to mixe with them good store of salt and then closing the pots close, to set them in some coole cellar, and couer them all ouer with sand, and there is no doubt but they will kéepe coole, pleasant, and moist, vntill new come againe, which is a time fully conuenient. {SN: Of Grapes.} Now to conclude, for the kéeping of Grapes, you shall first vnderstand that the best time for their gathering is in the wane of the Moone, and about the midst of October, as for the knowledge of his ripenesse it is euer at such time as his first colour is cleane altered, for all Grapes before they be ripe are of a déepe, thicke, greene, colour, but after they be ripe, they are either of a blewish redde, or of a bright shining pale gréene. Now for the preseruing them for our english vse, which is but onely for a fruit-dish at our Tables, for neither our store, nor our soyle, affords vs any for the wine-presse, some thinke it good, after they are gotten, to lay them in fine dry sand, or to glasse them vp in close glasses, where the ayre cannot peirce, will kéepe them long, both full, plumpe, and swéet, but in my conceit the best course is after they are gotten to hang them vpon strings bunch by bunch, in such places of your house as they may take the ayre of the fire, and they will last longest, and kéepe the swéetest. CHAP. X. _Of the making of Cyder, or Perry._ Cyder is a certaine liquor or drinke made of the iuyce of Apples, and Perrye the like, made of Peares, they are of great vse in France, and very wholsome for mans body, especially at the Sea, and in hot Countries: for they are coole and purgatiue, and doe preuent burning agues: with vs here in England Cyder is most made in the West parts, as about Deuon-shire & Cornwaile, & Perry in Worcester-shire, Glocester-shire, & such like, where indéede the greatest store of those kindes of fruits are to be found: the manner of making them is, after your fruit is gotten, you shall take euery Apple, or Peare, by it selfe, and looking vpon them, picke them cleane from all manner of filthinesse, as bruisings, rottennesse, worme-eating, and such like, neither leaue vpon them any stalkes, or the blacke buddes which are and grow vpon the tops of the fruit, which done you shall put them in to some very cleane vessell, or trough, and with béetells, made for the purpose, bruise or crush the Apples or Peares in péeces, & so remoue them into other cleane vessells, till all the fruit be bruised: then take a bagge of hayre-cloath, made at least a yard, or thrée quarters, square, and filling it full of the crusht fruit, put it in a presse of woode, made for the purpose, and presse out all the iuyce and moisture out of the fruit, turning and tossing the bagge vp and downe, vntill there be no more moisture to runne forth, and so baggefull after baggefull cease not vntill you haue prest all: wherein you are especially to obserue, that your vessells into which you straine your fruit be excéeding neate, swéet, and cleane, and there be no place of ill fauour, or annoyance neare them, for the liquour is most apt, especially Cyder, to take any infection. As soone as your liquor is prest forth and hath stoode to settle, about twelue houres, you shall then turne it vp into swéet hogsheads, as those which haue had in them last, either White-wine or Clarret, as for the Sacke vessell it is tollerable, but not excellent: you may also if you please make a small long bagge of fine linnen cloath, and filling it full of the powder of Cloues, Mace, Cynamon, Ginger, and the dry pils of Lemons, and hang it with a string at the bung-hole into the vessell, and it will make either the Cyder, or Perry, to tast as pleasantly as if it were Renish-wine, and this being done you shall clay vp the bung-hole with clay and salt mixt together, so close as is possible. And thus much for the making of Perry or Cyder. CHAP. XI. _Of the Hoppe-garden, and first of the ground and situation thereof._ {SN: Fit ground for Hoppes.} That the Hoppe is of great vse and commoditie in this kingdome, both the Beare, which is the generall and perfect drinke of our Nation, and our dayly traffique, both with France, the low-Countries, and other nations, for this commoditie, is a continuall testimony, wherefore the first thing to be considered of in this worke, is the goodnesse and aptnesse of the ground for the bringing forth of the fruit thereof, wherein I thus farre consent with Maister _Scot_, that I doe not so much respect the writings, opinions, and demonstrations, of the Gréeke, Latine, or French authors, who neuer were acquainted with our soyles, as I doe the dayly practise and experience which I collect, both from my owne knowledge, and the labours of others my Countrymen, best séene and approued in this Art: therefore to come to my purpose, you shal vnderstand that the light sand, whether it be redde or white, being simple and vnmixed is most vnfit for the planting of Hoppes, because that through the barrainenesse, it neither hath comfort for the roote, nor through his seperate lightnesse, any strong hould to maintaine and kéepe vp the poales: likewise the most fertill rich, blacke clay, which of all soyles is the best and most fruitfull, is not to be allowed for a Hoppe garden, because his fatnesse and iuyce is so strong that the roote being as it were ouer-fedde, doth make the branches bring forth leaues in such infinite abundance that they leaue neither strength nor place for the fruit, either to knit, or put forth his treasure, as I haue séene by experience in many places: as for the earth which is of a morish, blacke, wet nature, and lyeth low, although I haue often times séene good Hoppes to grow thereupon, being well trencht, and the hils cast high to the best aduantage, yet it is not the principall ground of all others, because it is neuer long lasting, but apt to decay and grow past his strength of bearing. The grounds then which I haue generally séene to beare the best Hoppes, and whose natures doe the longest continue with such fruit, are those mixt earthes which are clayes with clayes, as blacke with white, or clayes and sands of any sorts, wherein the soyle is so corrected as neither too much fatnesse doth suffocate, nor too much leannesse doth pine: for I had euer rather haue my Hoppe-garden desire increase, then continually labour in abatement. And although some doe excéedingly condemne the chauke-ground for this vse, yet I haue not at any time séene better Hoppes, or in more plenty, then in such places, as at this day may be séene in many places about Hartford-shire. To conclude, though your best mixt earths bring forth the best Hoppes, yet there is no soyle, or earth, of what nature soeuer it be (if it lye frée from inundation) but will bring forth good Hoppes, if it be put into the hands of an experienced workman. {SN: Of the Situation.} Now, for the situation or site of your Hoppe-garden: you shall so neare as you can place it neare some couer or shelter, as either of hils, houses, high-walles, woodes or trées, so those woodes or trées be not so neare that they may drop vpon your Hoppe hils, for that will kill them: also the nearer it is planted to your dwelling house it is somuch the better, both because the vigilance of your owne eye is a good guarde thereunto, and also the labours of your work-Maister will be more carefull and diligent. A Hop-garden as it delighteth much in the pleasantnesse of the sunne, so it cannot endure by any meanes, the sharpenesse of the windes, frosts, or Winter weather, and therefore your onely care is your defence and shelter. For the bignesse of your ground, it must be ordered according to your abillitie or place of trade for that commoditie, for if you shall haue them but for your owne vse, then a roode or two roodes will be inough, albeit your house kéeping match with Nobillitie: but if you haue them for a more particuler profit, then you may take an Aker, two or thrée, according to your owne discretion; wherein you shall euer kéepe these obseruations: that one mans labour cannot attend aboue two thousand fiue hundred hils, that euery roode will beare two hundred and fiftie hils, euery hill beare at least two pounds and an halfe of Hoppes, (which is the iust quantitie that will serue to brew one quarter of Malt) and that euery hundred waight of Hoppes, is at the least, in a reasonable yéere, worth foure-nobles the hundred: so that euery roode of ground thus imployed, cannot be lesse worth, at the meanest reckoning, then sixe pounds by the yéere: for if the ground be principall good for the purpose, and well ordered, the profit will be much greater, in as much as the bells of the Hoppes will be much greater, full, and more waighty: And thus much for the ground and situation. CHAP. XII. _Of the ordering of the Garden, and placing of the Hils._ As soone as you haue chosen out your platforme of ground, you shal either by ploughing, or digging, or by both, make it as flat & leuell as is possible, vnlesse it be any thing subiect vnto water, and then you shall giue it some small desent, and with little trenches conuaye the water from annoying it: you shall also the yéere before you either make hill or plant it with Hoppe-rootes, sowe it all ouer with hempe, which will not onely kill, and stifle all sorts of wéeds, but also rot the gréene-swarth, and make the mould mellow, and apt to receiue the rootes when they come to be planted. Now, as soone as your ground is thus prepared, you shall then take a line, and with it measure your ground ouerthwart, and to euery hill allow at least thrée foote of ground euery way, and betwixt hill and hill, at the least sixe foote distance: and when you haue marked thus the number of thirty or forty places, where your hils shall be placed, intending euer that the time of yéere for this worke must be about the beginning of Aprill, you shall then in the center, or midde part of these places made for the site of your hils, digge small square holes of a foote square each way, and a full foote déepe, and in these holes you shall set your Hoppe-rootes, that is to say, in euery hole at least thrée rootes, and these thrée rootes you shall ioyne together in such wise that the toppes of them may be of one equall height, and agréeing with the face or vpper part of the earth, you shall set them straight and vpright, and not seperating them, as many doe, and setting at each corner of the hole a roote, neither shall you twist them, and set both ends vpward, nor lay them flat or crosse-wise in the earth, neither shall you make the hils first and set the rootes after, nor immediately vpon the setting cast great hils vpon them, all which are very vilde wayes for the setting of Hoppes, but, as before I sayd, hauing ioyned your rootes together, you shall place them straight and vpright, and so holding them in one hand, with the other put the moulds close, firme, and perfectly about them, especially to each corner of the hole, which done you shall likewise couer the sets themselues all ouer with fine moulds, at least two fingers thicke, and in this sort you shall plant all your garden quite ouer, making the sites for your hill to stand in rowes and rankes, in such order that you may haue euery way betwéene the hils small alleyes and passages, wherein you may goe at pleasure from hill to hill, without any trouble or annoyance, according to that forme which I haue before prescribed touching the placing of your Apple-trées in each seuerall quarter in your Orchard: and herein you are to vnderstand, that in this first yéere of planting your Hoppe-garden you shall by no meanes fashion or make any great hils, but onely raise that part of the earth where your plants are set, some two or thrée fingers higher then the ordinary ground. {SN: The choise of Rootes.} Now, before I procéede any further, I thinke it not amisse to speake some thing touching the choise, gathering and trimming of Hoppe-rootes: wherefore you shall vnderstand that about the latter end of March is the best gathering of Hoppe-rootes, which so neare as you can you shall select out of some garden of good reputation, which is both carefully kept, and by a man of good knowledge, for there euery thing being preserued in his best perfection, the rootes will be the greatest and most apt to take: and in the choise of your rootes you shall euer chuse those which are the greatest, as namely, such as are at the least thrée or foure inches about, & ten inches long, let euery roote containe about thrée ioynts, and no more, and in any case let them be the cyons of the last yéeres growth: if they be perfectly good they haue a great gréene stalke with redde streakes, and a hard, broad, long, gréene, bell; if they be otherwise, as namely, wilde-Hoppes, then they are small and slender, like thriddes, their colour is all redde, euen when it is at least thrée yards high, whereas the best Hoppe carieth his reddish colour not thrée foote from the earth. Now hauing gotten such rootes as are good and fit for your purpose, if the season of the weather, or other necessitie hinder you from presently setting them, you shall then either lay them in some puddle, neare to your garden, or else bury them in the ground, vntill fit time for their planting: and of the two it is better to bury them then lay them in puddle, because if you so let them lye aboue xxiiij. houres, the rootes will be spoyled. Now after you haue in manner aforeshewed, planted your garden with rootes, it shall not be amisse, if the place be apt to such annoyance, to pricke vpon the site of euery hill a few sharpe Thornes to defend them from the scratching of poultry, or such like, which euer are busie to doe mischeife: yet of all house-fowle Géese be the worst, but if your fence be as it ought, high, strong, and close, it will both preuent their harme and this labour. {SN: Of Poales.} Next vnto this worke is the placing of Poales, of which we will first speake of the choise thereof, wherein if I discent from the opinion of other men, yet imagine I set downe no Oracle, but referre you to the experience or the practise, and so make your owne discreation the arbiter betwéene our discentions. It is the opinion of some, that Alder-poales are most proper and fit for the Hoppe-garden, both that the Hoppe taketh, as they say, a certaine naturall loue to that woode, as also that the roughnesse of the rinde is a stay & benefit to the growth of the Hoppe: to all which I doe not disagrée, but that there should be found Alder-poales of that length, as namely, xvj. or xviij. foote long, nine, or ten, inches in compasse, and with all rush-growne, straight, and fit for this vse, séemeth to mée as much as a miracle, because in my life I haue not beheld the like, neither doe I thinke our kingdome can afford it, vnlesse in some such especiall place where they are purposely kept and maintained, more to shew the art of their maintenance, then the excellency of their natures: in this one benefit, and doutlesse where they are so preserued, the cost of their preseruation amounteth to more than the goodnesse of their extraordinary quallitie, which mine author defends to the contrary, giuing them a larger prerogatiue, in that they are cheaper to the purse, more profitable to the plant, and lesse consumption to the common-wealth: but I greatly doubt in the approbation, and therefore mine aduise is not to rely onely vpon the Alder, and for his preheminence imagine all other poales insufficient: but be assured that either, the Oake-poale, the Ashe, the Béeche, the Aspe, or Maple, are euery way as good, as profitable, and by many degrées much longer lasting. {SN: The proportion of the Poale.} {SN: Of cutting and erecting Poales.} Now, if it be so that you happen to liue in the champian Country, as for the most part Northampton shire, Oxford-shire, some parts of Leycester and Rutland are, or in the wet and low Countries, as Holland, and Kesten in Lincolne-shire, or the Ile of Elye in Cambridge-shire, all which places are very barraine of woode, and yet excellent soyles to beare Hoppes, rather then to loose the commoditie of the Hoppe-garden I wish you to plant great store of Willowes, which will afforde you poales as sufficient as any of the other whatsoeuer, onely they are not so long lasting, and yet with carefull and dry keeping, I haue séene them last full out seauen yéeres, a time reasonably sufficient for any young woode, for such a vse. Thus you sée the curiositie is not very great of what woode so euer your poale be, so it be of young and cleane growth, rush-growne, (that is to say, biggest at the neather end) eightéene foote in length, and ten inches in compasse. These poales you shall cut and prepare betwixt the feast of Al-Saints, and Christmas, and so pile them vp in some dry place, where they may take no wet, vntill it be midde-Aprill, at which time (your Hoppes being shot out of the ground at least thrée quarters of a yarde, so that you may discerne the principall cyons which issue from the principall rootes) you shall then bring your poales into the garden, and lay them along in the alleyes, by euery hill so many poales as shall be sufficient for the maine branches, which happely the first yéere will not be aboue two or thrée poales at the most to a hill, but in processe of time more, as foure or fiue, according to the prosperitie of the plants, and the largenesse of the hils. After you haue thus layd your poales, you shall then beginne to set them vp in this sort: first, you shall take a gaue-locke, or crow of iron, and strike it into the earth so neare vnto the roote of the Hoppe as is possible, prouided alwayes that you doe not bruise, or touch the roote, and so stroake after stroake, cease not striking till you haue made a hoale at least two foote déepe, and make them a little slantwise inward towards the hill, that the poales in their standing may shoote outwards and hould their greatest distance in the toppes: this done you shall place the poales in those hoales, thus made with the iron crow, and with another péece of woode, made rammer-wise, that is to say, as bigge at the neather end as the biggest part of the poale, or somewhat more, you shall ramme in the poales, and beate the earth firme and hard about them: alwayes prouided, that you touch not any branch, or as little as you may beate with your rammer within betwéene the poales, onely on the out-side make them so fast that the winde, or weather, may not disorder or blow them downe: then lay to the bottome of euery poale the branch which shall ascend it, and you shall sée in a short space, how out of their owne natures, they will imbrace and climbe about them. Now, if it happen after your Hoppes are growne vp, yet not come to their full perfection, that any of your poales chance to breake, you shall then take a new poale, and with some soft gréene rushes, or the inmost gréene barke of an Alder-trée, tye the toppe of the Hoppe to the toppe of the new poale, then draw the broken poale out of the Hoppe (I meane that part which being broken lyeth vpon the ground) and as you saw it did winde about the olde poale (which is euer the same way that the sunne runnes) so you shall winde it about the new poale: then loosening the earth a little from the neather part of the broken poale, you may with your owne strength pull it cleane out of the earth, and place the new poale in his roome. Now, there be some which are excéeding curious in pulling vp these olde poales, and rather then they will shake the earth, or loosen the mould, they will make a paire of large pincers, or tarriers of iron, at least fiue foote long with sharpe téeth, and a clasping hooke to hould the téeth together, when they haue taken fast hould vpon the poale so neare the earth as is possible, and then laying a peice of woode vnder the tarriers, and poysing downe the other ends to rest the poale out of the earth without any disturbance, the modell or fashion of which instrument is contained in this figure: {Illustration} This instrument is not to be discommended, but to be held of good vse, either in binding grounds where the earth hardneth and houldeth the poale more then fast, or in the strength and heate of summer, when the drynesse of the mould will by no meanes suffer the poale to part from it: but otherwise it is néedlesse and may without danger be omitted. As soone as you haue sufficiently set euery hill with poales, and that there is no disorder in your worke, you shall when the Hoppes beginne to climbe, note if their be any cyons or branches which doe forsake the poales, and rather shoote alongst the ground then looke vp to their supporters, and all such as you shall so finde, you shall as before I sayd, either with soft gréene rushes, or the gréene barke of Elder, tye them gently vnto the poales, and winde them about, in the same course that the sunne goes, as oft as conueniently you can: and this you shall doe euer after the dew is gone from the ground, and not before, and this must be done with all possible speede, for that cyon which is the longest before it take vnto the poale is euer the worst and brings forth his fruit in the worst season. {SN: Of the Hils.} Now, as touching the making of your hils, you shall vnderstand that although generally they are not made the first yéere, yet it is not amisse if you omit that scruple, and beginne to make your hils as soone as you haue placed your poales, for if your industry be answerable to the desert of the labour, you shall reape as good profit the first yéere, as either the second or the third. To beginne therefore to make your hils, you shall make you an instrument like a stubbing Hoe, which is a toole wherewith labourers stubbe rootes out of decayed woode-land grounds, onely this shall be somewhat broader and thinner, somewhat in fashion (though twice so bigge) vnto a Coopers Addes, with a shaft at least foure foote long: some onely for this purpose vse a fine paring spade, which is euery way as good, and as profitable, the fashion of which is in this figure. {Illustration} With this paring spade, or hoe, you shall pare vp the gréene-swarth and vppermost earth, which is in the alleyes betwéene the hils, and lay it vnto the rootes of the Hoppes, raising them vp like small Mole-hils, and so monthly increasing them all the yéere through, make them as large as the site of your ground will suffer, which is at least foure or fiue foote ouerthwart in the bottome, and so high as conueniently that height will carry: you shall not by any meanes this first yéere decay any cyons or branches which spring from the hils, but maintaine them in their growth, and suffer them to climbe vp the poales, but after the first yéere is expired you shall not suffer aboue two or thrée cyons, at the most, to rise vpon one poale. After your hils are made, which as before I sayd would be at least foure or fiue foote square in the bottome, and thrée foote high, you shall then diligently euery day attend your garden, and if you finde any branches that being risen more then halfe way vp the poales, doe then forsake them and spread outward, dangling downe, then you shall either with the helpe of a high stoole, on which standing you may reach the toppe of the poale, or else with a small forckt sticke, put vp the branch, and winde it about the poale: you shall also be carefull that no wéeds or other filthinesse grow about the rootes of your Hoppes to choake them, but vpon the first discouery to destroy them. CHAP. XIII. _Of the gathering of Hoppes, and the preseruing of the Poales._ Touching the gathering of Hoppes you shall vnderstand that after Saint _Margarets_ day they beginne to blossome, if it be in hot and rich soyles, but otherwise not till Lammas: likewise in the best soyles they bell at Lammas, in the worst at Michaelmas, and in the best earth they are full ripe at Michaelmas, in the worst at Martillmas; but to know when they are ripe indeede, you shall perceiue the séede to loose his gréene colour, and looke as browne as a Hares backe, wherefore then you shall with all dilligence gather them, and because they are a fruit that will endure little or no delay, as being ready to fall as soone as they be ripe, and because the exchange of weather may bréede change in your worke, you shall vpon the first aduantage of faire weather, euen so soone as you shall sée the dewe exhaled and drawne from the earth, get all the ayde of Men, Women, and children which haue any vnderstanding, to helpe you, and then hauing some conuenient empty barne, or shedde, made either of boards or canuas, neare to the garden, in which you shall pull your Hoppes, you shall then beginne at the nearest part of the garden, and with a sharpe garden knife cut the stalkes of the Hoppes asunder close by the toppes of the hils; and then with a straite forke of iron, made broad and sharpe, for the purpose, shere vp all the Hoppes, and leaue the poales naked. Then hauing labouring persons for the purpose, let them cary them vnto the place where they are to be puld; and in any case cut no more then presently is caryed away as fast as they are cut, least if a shower of raine should happen to fall, and those being cut and taking wet, are in danger of spoyling. You shall prouide that those which pull your Hoppes be persons of good discretion, who must not pull them one by one, but stripe them roundly through their hands into baskets, mixing the young budds and small leaues with them, which are as good as any part of the Hoppe whatsoeuer. After you haue pulled all your Hoppes and carried them into such conuenient dry roomes as you haue prepared for that purpose, you shall then spread them vpon cleane floares, so thinne as may be, that the ayre may passe thorrow them, least lying in heapes they sweat, and so mould, before you can haue leasure to dry them. After your Hoppes are thus ordered, you shall then cleanse your garden of all such Hoppe-straw, and other trash, as in the gathering was scattered therein: then shall you plucke vp all your Hoppe-poales, in manner before shewed, and hauing either some dry boarded house, or shed, made for the purpose, pile then one vpon another, safe from winde or weather, which howsoeuer some that would haue their experience, like a Collossus, séeme greater then it is, doe disalow, yet it is the best manner of kéeping of poales, and well worthy the charge: but for want of such a house, it shall not be amisse to take first your Hoppe-straw, and lay it a good thicknesse vpon the ground, and with sixe strong stakes, driuen slant-wise into the earth, so as the vppermost ends may be inward one to another, lay then your Hoppe-poales betwéene the stakes, and pile them one vpon another, drawing them narrower and narrower to the top, and then couer them all ouer with more Hoppe-straw, and so let them rest till the next March, at which time you shall haue new occasion to vse them. {SN: Winter businesse.} As soone as you haue piled vp your Hoppe-poales, dry and close, then you shall about mid-Nouember following throw downe your hils, and lay all your rootes bare, that the sharpenesse of the season may nip them, and kéepe them from springing too earely: you shall also then bring into the garden olde Cow-dunge, which is at least two yéeres olde, for no new dunge is good, and this you shall lay in some great heape in some conuenient place of the garden vntill Aprill, at which time, after you haue wound your Hoppes about your poales, you shall then bestow vpon euery hill two or thrée spade-full of the Manure mixt with earth, which will comfort the plant and make it spring pleasantly. After your hils are puld downe, you shall with your garden spade, or your hoe, vndermine all the earth round about the roote of the Hoppe, till you come to the principall rootes thereof, and then taking the youngest rootes in your hand, and shaking away the earth, you shall sée how the new rootes grow from the olde sets, then with a sharpe knife cut away all those rootes as did spring the yéere before, out of your sets, within an inch and an halfe of the same, but euery yéere after the first you shall cut them close by the olde rootes. Now, if you sée any rootes which doe grow straight downward, without ioynts, those you shall not cut at all, for they are great nourishers of the plant, but if they grow outward, or side-wayes, they are of contrary natures, and must necessarily be cut away. If any of your Hoppes turne wilde, as oft it happens, which you shall know by the perfect rednesse of the branch, then you shall cut it quite vp, and plant a new roote in his place. After you haue cut and trimmed all your rootes, then you shall couer them againe, in such sort as you were taught at the first planting them, and so let them abide till their due time for poaling. CHAP. XIIII. _Of drying, and not drying of Hoppes, and of packing them when they are dried._ Although there be much curiositie in the drying of Hoppes as well in the temperature of heate (which hauing any extremitie, as either of heate, or his contrary, bréedeth disorder in the worke) as also in the framing of the Ost or furnace after many new moulds and fashions, as variable as mens wits and experiences, yet because innouations and incertainty doth rather perplexe then profit, I will shunne, as much as in me lyeth, from loading the memory of the studious Husbandman with those stratagems which disable his vnderstanding from the attaining of better perfection, not disalowing any mans approued knowledge, or thinking that because such a man can mend smoking Chimnyes, therefore none but hée shall haue license to make Chimnyes, or that because some men can melt Mettall without winde, therefore it shall be vtterly vnlawfull to vse bellowes: these violent opinions I all together disacknowledge, and wish euery one the liberty of his owne thoughts, and for mine English Husband, I will shew him that way to dry his Hoppes which is most fit for his profit, safe, easie, and without extraordinary expences. First then to speake of the time which is fittest for the drying of your Hoppes, it is immediately as soone as they are gotten, if more vrgent occasions doe not delay the businesse, which if they happen, then you haue a forme before prescribed how to preserue them from mouldinesse and putrifaction till you can compasse fit time to effect the worke in. The manner of drying them is vpon a Kilne, of which there be two sorts, that is to say, an English Kilne, and a French Kilne: the English Kilne being composed of woode, lath, and clay, and therefore subiect to some danger of fire, the French, of bricke, lime, and sand, and therefore safe, close, and without all perill, and to be preferred much before the other: yet because I haue hereafter more occasion to speake of the nature, fashion, and edifice of Kilnes in that part of this Volumne where I intreate of Malting, I will cease further to mention them then to say that vpon a Kilne is the best drying your Hoppes, after this manner, hauing finely bedded your Kilne with Wheate-straw, you shall lay on your hayre cloath, although some disallow it, but giue no reason therefore, yet it cannot be hurtfull in any degrée, for it neither distasteth the Hoppes, nor defendeth them from the fire, making the worke longer then it would, but it preserueth both the Hoppes from filthynesse, and their séede from losse: when your hayre-cloath is spread, you shall cause one to deliuer you vp your Hoppes in baskets, which you shall spread vpon the cloath, all ouer the Kilne, at the least eight inches thicke, and then comming downe, and going to the hole of the Kilne, you shall with a little dry straw kindle the fire, and then maintaining it with more straw, you shall kéepe a fire a little more feruent then for the drying of a kilne-full of Malt, being assured that the same quantitie of fuell, heate, and time, which dryeth a kilne-full of Malt, will also dry a kilne-full of Hoppes, and if your Kilne will dry twenty strikes, or bushels of Malt at one drying, then it will dry forty of Hoppes, because being layd much thicker the quantitie can be no lesse then doubled, which is a spéede all together sufficient, and may very well serue to dry more Hoppes then any one man hath growing in this kingdome. Now, for as much as some men doe not alow to dry Hoppes with straw, but rather preferre woode, and of woode still to chuse the gréenest, yet I am of a contrary opinion, for I know by experience that the smoake which procéedeth from woode, (especially if it be greene woode) being a strong and sharpe vapour, doth so taint and infect the Hoppes that when those Hoppes come to be brewed with, they giue the drinke a smoakie taste, euen as if the Malt it selfe had beene woode-dryed: the vnpleasantnesse whereof I leaue to the iudgement of them that haue trauelled in York-shire, where, for the most part, is nothing but woode-dryed Malt onely. That you may know when your Hoppes are dry inough, you shall take a small long sticke, and stirring the Hoppes too and fro with it, if the Hoppes doe russell and make a light noyse, each as it were seperating one from another, then they are altogether dry inough, but if in any part you finde them heauy or glewing one to another, then they haue not inough of the fire: also when they are sufficiently and moderately dryed they are of a bright-browne colour, little or nothing altered from that they held when they were vpon the stalke, but if they be ouer dryed, then their colour will be redde: and if they were not well ordered before they were dryed, but suffered either to take wet or mould, then they will looke blacke when they are dry. {SN: Of the drying Hoppes.} There be some which are of opinion that if you doe not dry your Hoppes at all, it shall be no losse, but it is an errour most grose, for if they be not dryed, there is neither profit in their vse, nor safty in preseruing them. As soone as your Hoppes are sufficiently dryed, you shall by the plucking vp of the foure corners of your hayre-cloath thrust all your Hoppes together, and then putting them into baskets, carry them into such dry places as you haue prepared of purpose to lay them in, as namely, either in dry-fats, or in garners, made either of plaster, or boards: and herein you shall obserue to packe them close and hard together, which will be a meanes that if any of them be not dry, yet the heate they shall get by such lying will dry them fully and make them fit for seruice. {SN: Of packing Hoppes.} Now to conclude, if your store of Hoppes be so great that you shall trade or make Marchandize of them, then either to conuay them by land or Sea, it is best that you packe them into great bagges of canuas, made in fashion of those bagges which woole-men vse, and call them pockets, but not being altogether so large: these bagges you shall open, and either hang vp betwéene some crosse-beames, or else let downe into some lower floare, and then putting in your Hoppes cause a man to goe into the bagge and tread downe the Hoppes, so hard as is possible, pressing downe basket-full after basket-full, till the bagge be filled, euen vnto the toppe, and then with an extraordinary packe-thriede, sowing the open end of the bagge close together, let euery hollow place be crammed with Hoppes, whilst you can get one hand-full to goe in, and so hauing made euery corner strong and fast, let them lye dry till you haue occasion either to shippe or cart them. And thus much for the ordering of Hoppes, and their vses. CHAP. XV. _The office of the Gardiner, and first of the Earth, Situation, and fencing of a Garden for pleasure._ There is to be required at the hands of euery perfect Gardiner thrée especiall vertues, that is to say, _Diligence_, _Industry_, and _Art_: the two first, as namely, _Diligence_ (vnder which word I comprehend his loue, care, and delight in the vertue hee professeth) and _Industry_ (vnder which word I conclude his labour, paine, and study, which are the onely testimonies of his perfection) hée must reape from Nature: for, if hée be not inclined, euen from the strength of his blood to this loue and labour, it is impossible he should euer proue an absolute gardiner: the latter, which containeth his skill, habit, and vnderstanding in what hée professeth, I doubt not but hée shall gather from the abstracts or rules which shall follow hereafter in this Treatise, so that where nature, and this worke shall concurre in one subiect, there is no doubt to be made, but the professor shall in all points, be able to discharge a sufficient dutie. Now, for as much as all our antient and forraine writers (for wée are very sleightly beholding to our selues for these indeauours) are excéeding curious in the choise of earth, and situation of the plot of ground which is méete for the garden: yet I, that am all English Husbandman, and know our soyles out of the worthinesse of their owne natures doe as it were rebell against forraine imitation, thinking their owne vertues are able to propound their owne rules: and the rather when I call into my remembrance, that in all the forraine places I haue séene, there is none more worthy then our owne, and yet none ordered like our owne, I cannot be induced to follow the rules of Italie, vnlesse I were in Italie, neither those of France, vnlesse I dwelt in France, nor those of Germany except in Germany I had my habitation, knowing that the too much heate of the one, or the too much coldnesse of the other, must rather confound then help in our temperate climate: whence it comes, that our english booke-knowledge in these cases is both disgraced and condemned, euery one fayling in his experiments, because he is guided by no home-bredde, but a stranger; as if to reade the english tongue there were none better then an Italian Pedant. This to auoide, I will neither begge ayde nor authoritie from strangers, but reuerence them as worthies and fathers of their owne Countries. {SN: Of the ground.} To speake therefore first of the ground which is fit for the garden, albeit the best is best worthy, the labour least, and the profit most certaine, yet it is not méete that you refuse any earth whatsoeuer, both because a garden is so profitable, necessary, and such an ornament and grace to euery house and house-kéeper, that the dwelling place is lame and maymed if it want that goodly limbe, and beauty. Besides, if no gardens should be planted but in the best and richest soyles, it were infinite the losse we should sustaine in our priuate profit, and in the due commendations, fit for many worthy workmen, who haue reduced the worst and barrainest earths to as rare perfection and profit as if they had béene the onely soyles of this kingdome: and for mine owne part, I doe not wonder either at the worke of Art or Nature, when I behould in a goodly, rich, and fertill soyle, a garden adorned with all the delights and delicacies which are within mans vnderstanding, because the naturall goodnesse of the earth (which not induring to be idle) will bring forth whatsoeuer is cast into her: but when I behould vpon a barraine, dry, and deiected earth, such as the Peake-hils, where a man may behould Snow all summer, or on the East-mores, whose best hearbage is nothing but mosse, and iron stone, in such a place, I say, to behould a delicate, rich, and fruitfull garden, it shewes great worthinesse in the owner, and infinite Art and industry in the workeman, and makes me both admire and loue the begetters of such excellencies. But to returne to my purpose touching the choise of your earth for a garden, sith no house can conueniently be without one, and that our English Nation is of that great popularitie, that not the worst place thereof but is abundantly inhabited, I thinke it méete that you refuse no earth whatsoeuer to plant your garden vpon, euer obseruing this rule, that the more barraine it is, the more cost must be bestowed vpon it, both in Manuring, digging, and in trenching, as shall be shewed hereafter, and the more rich it is, lesse cost of such labour, and more curiositie in wéeding, proyning, and trimming the earth: for, as the first is too slow, so the latter is too swift, both in her increase and multiplication. Now, for the knowledge of soyles, which is good, and which is badde, I haue spoken sufficiently already in that part which intreateth of Tillage, onely this one caueat I will giue you, as soone as you haue markt out your garden-plot, you shall turne vp a sodde, and taking some part of the fresh mould, champe it betwéene your téeth in your mouth, and if it taste swéetish then is the mould excellent good and fit to receiue either seedes or plants, without much Manuring, but if it taste salt or bitter, then it is a great signe of barrainenesse, and must of necessitie be corrected with Manure: for saltnesse sheweth much windinesse, which choaketh and stifleth the séede, and bitternesse that vnnaturall heate which blasteth it before it sprout. {SN: Of the situation.} Now, for the situation of the garden-plot for pleasure, you shall vnderstand that it must euer be placed so neare vnto the dwelling house as is possible, both because the eye of the owner may be a guard and support from inconueniences, as also that the especiall roomes and prospects of the house may be adorned, perfumed, and inriched, with the delicate proportions, odorifferous smells, and wholsome ayres which shall ascend and vaporate from the same, as may more amply be séene in that former Chapter, where modelling forth the Husbandmans house, I shew you the site and place for his Garden, onely you must diligently obserue, that neare vnto this garden doe not stand any houells, stackes of hay, or Corne, which ouer-pearing the walls, or fence, of the same, may by reason of winde, or other occasion, annoy the same with straw, chaffe, séedes, or such like filthinesse, which doth not onely blemish the beauty thereof, but is also naturally very hurtfull and cankerous to all plants whatsoeuer. Within this garden plot would be also either some Well, Pumpe, Conduit, Pond, or Cesterne for water, sith a garden, at many times of the yéere, requireth much watering: & this place for water you shall order and dispose according to your abillitie, and the nature of the soyle, as thus: if both your reputation, and your wealth be of the lowest account, if then your garden aford you a plaine Well, comely couered, or a plaine Pump, it shall be sufficient, or if for want of such springs you digge a fayre Pond in some conuenient part thereof, or else (which is much better) erect a Cesterne of leade, into which by pippes may discend all the raine-water which falls about any part of the house, it will serue for your purpose: but if God haue bestowed vpon you a greater measure of his blessings, both in wealth & account, if then insteade of either Well, Pumpe, Pond, or Cesterne, you erect Conduits, or continuall running Fountaines, composed of Antique workes, according to the curiositie of mans inuention, it shall be more gallant and worthy: and these Conduits or water-courses, you may bring in pippes of leade from other remote or more necessary places of water springs, standing aboue the leuell of your garden, as euery Artist in the profession of such workes can more amply declare vnto you, onely for mée let it be sufficient to let you vnderstand that euery garden would be accompanied with water. Also you shall haue great care that there adioyne not vnto your garden-plot any common-shewers, stinking or muddy dikes, dung-hils, or such like, the annoyance of whose smells and euill vapors doth not onely corrupt and bréede infection in man, but also cankereth, killeth and consumeth all manner of plants, especially those which are most pleasant, fragrant, and odorifferous, as being of tenderest nature and qualitie: and for this cause diuers will not alow the moating of garden-plots about, imagining that the ouer great moistnesse thereof, and the strong smells which doe arise from the mudde in the Summer season, doe corrupt and putrifie the hearbes and plants within the compasse of the same, but I am not altogether of that opinion, for if the water be swéet, or the channell thereof sandy or grauelly, then there is no such scruple to be taken: but if it be contrary, then it is with all care to be auoyded, because it is euer a Maxime in this case, that your garden-plot must euer be compassed with the pleasantest and swéetest ayre that may be. The windes which you shall generally defend from your garden, are the Easterne windes and the Northerne, because they are sharpest, coldest, and bring with them tempers of most vnseasonablenesse, & albeit in Italie, Spaine, and such like hot Countries, they rather defend away the Westerne and Southerne winde, giuing frée passage to the East and North, yet with England it may not be so, because the naturall coldenes of our Climate is sufficient without any assistance to further bitternesse, our best industry being to be imployed rather to get warmth, which may nourish and bring forth our labours, then any way to diminish or weaken the same. This plot of ground also would lye, as neare as you can, at the foote or bottome of an hill, both that the hill may defend the windes and sharpe weather from the same, as also that you may haue certaine ascents or risings of state, from leuell to leuell, as was in some sort before shewed in the plot for the Orchard, and shall be better declared in the next Chapter. {SN: Of fencing the garden.} Now lastly for the fencing or making priuate the garden-plot, it is to be done according to your abillitie, and the nature of the climate wherein you liue: as thus, if your reuenewes will reach thereunto, and matter be to be got, for that purpose, where you liue, then you shall vnderstand that your best fence is a strong wall, either of Bricke, Ashler, rough-Stone, or Earth, of which you are the best-owner, or can with least dammage compasse: but for want either of earth to make bricke, or quarries out of which to get stone, it shall not then be amisse to fence your garden with a tall strong pale of seasoned Oake, fixt to a double parris raile, being lined on the inside with a thicke quicke-set of white-Thorne, the planting whereof shall be more largely spoken of where I intreate of fencing onely. But if the place where you liue in, be so barraine of timber that you cannot get sufficient for the purpose, then you shall make a studde wall, which shall be splinted and lomed both with earth and lime, and hayre, and copt vpon the toppe (to defend away wet) either with tile, slate, or straw, and this wall is both beautifull, and of long continuance, as may be séene in the most parts of the South of this kingdome: but if either your pouerty or climate doe deny you timber for this purpose, you shall then first make a small trench round about your garden-plot, and set at least foure rowes of quicke-set of white-Thorne, one aboue another, and then round about the outside, to defend the quick-set, make a tall fence of dead woode, being either long, small, brushy poales prickt into the earth, and standing vpright, and so bound together in the wast betwéene two other poales, according to the figure set downe, {Illustration} being so high that not any kinde of Pullen may flie ouer the same, or else an ordinary hedge of common woode, being beyrded vpon the toppe with sharpe Thornes, in such wise that not any thing may dare to aduenture ouer it: and this dead fence you shall repaire and maintaine as occasion shall require from time to time, till your quicke-set be growne vp, and, by continuall plashing and interfouldings, be made able and sufficient to fence and defend your garden, which will be within fiue or seauen yeeres at the most, and so continue with good order for euer. And thus much for the situation of gardens. CHAP. XVI. _Of the fashion of the garden-plot for pleasure, the Alleyes, Quarters, Digging and Dungging of the same._ {SN: The fashion.} After you haue chosen out and fenced your garden-plot, according as is before sayd, you shall then beginne to fashion and proportion out the same, sith in the conuayance remaineth a great part of the gardiners art. And herein you shall vnderstand that there be two formes of proportions belonging to the garden, the first, onely beautifull, as the plaine, and single square, contayning onely foure quarters, with his large Alleyes euery way, as was discribed before in the Orchard: the other both beautifull and stately, as when there is one, two or thrée leuelled squares, each mounting seauen or eight steppes one aboue another, and euery square contayning foure seuerall Quarters with their distinct and seuerall Alleyes of equall breadth and proportion; placing in the center of euery square, that is to say, where the foure corners of the foure Quarters doe as it were neighbour and méete one another, either a Conduit of antique fashion, a Standard of some vnusuall deuise, or else some Dyall, or other Piramed, that may grace and beautifie the garden. And herein I would haue you vnderstand that I would not haue you to cast euery square into one forme or fashion of Quarters or Alleyes, for that would shew little varytie or inuention in Art, but rather to cast one in plaine Squares, another in Tryangulars, another in roundalls, & so a fourth according to the worthinesse of conceite, as in some sort you may behould by these figures, which questionlesse when they are adorned with their ornaments, will breed infinite delight to the beholders. {Illustration: The Plaine Square.} {Illustration: The Square Triangular or circular.} {Illustration: The Square of eight Diamonds.} From the modell of these Squares, Tryangles, and Rounds, any industrious braine may with little difficulty deriue and fashion to himselfe diuers other shapes and proportions, according to the nature and site of the earth, which may appeare more quaint and strange then these which are in our common vse, albeit these are in the truth of workmanship the perfect father and mother of all proportions whatsoeuer. {SN: The ordering of Alleyes.} Now, you shall vnderstand that concerning the Alleyes and walkes in this garden of pleasure, it is very méete that your ground, being spacious and large, (which is the best beauty) that you cut through the midst of euery Alley an ample and large path or walke, the full depth of the roote of the gréene-swarth, and at least the breadth of seauen or eight foote: and in this path you shall strow either some fine redde-sand, of a good binding nature, or else some fine small grauell, or for want of both them you may take the finest of your pit-coale-dust, which will both kéepe your Alleyes dry and smooth, and also not suffer any grasse or gréene thing to grow within them, which is disgracefull, if it be suffered: the French-men doe vse, to couer their Alleyes, either with the powder of marble, or the powder of slate-stone, or else paue them either with Pit-stone, Frée-stone, or Tiles, the first of which is too hard to get, the other great cost to small purpose, the rather sith our owne grauell is in euery respect as beautifull, as dry, as strong, and as long lasting: Onely this héedfulnesse you must diligently obserue, that if the situation of your garden-plot be low and much subiect to moisture, that then these middle-cut paths or walkes must be heightned vp in the midst, and made in a proportionall bent or compasse: wherein you shall obserue that the out most verdges of the walke must be leuell with the gréene-swarth which holded in each side, and the midst so truly raised vp in compasse, that the raine which falles may haue a passage to each side of the gréene-swarth. Now, the lesse this compasse is made (so it auoyde the water, and remaine hard) the better it is, because by that meanes both the eye shall be deceiued (which shewes art in the workman) and the more leuell they are, the more ease vnto them which shall continually walke vpon them. {SN: Obiection.} Now, if any shall obiect, why I doe not rather couet to haue these Alleyes or walkes rather all gréene, then thus cut and deuided, sith it is a most beautifull thing to see a pleasant gréene walke, my answere is this, that first the mixture of colours, is the onely delight of the eye aboue all other: for beauty being the onely obiect in which it ioyeth, that beautie is nothing but an excellent mixture, or consent of colours, as in the composition of a delicate woman the grace of her chéeke is the mixture of redde and white, the wonder of her eye blacke and white, and the beauty of her hand blewe and white, any of which is not sayd to be beautifull if it consist of single or simple colours: and so in these walkes, or Alleyes, the all gréene, nor the all yealow cannot be sayd to be most beautifull, but the gréene and yealow, (that is to say, the vntroade grasse, and the well knit grauell) being equally mixt, giue the eye both luster and delight beyonde all comparison. Againe, to kéepe your walkes all gréene, or grassy, you must of force either forbeare to tread vpon them, (which is the vse for which they were onely fashioned,) or treading vpon them you shall make so many pathes and ilfauored wayes as will be most vglie to the eye: besides the dewe and wet hanging vpon the grasse will so annoy you, that if you doe not select especiall howers to walke in, you must prouide shooes or bootes of extraordinary goodnesse: which is halfe a depriuement of your liberty, whereas these things of recreation were created for a contrary purpose. Now, you shall also vnderstand that as you make this sandy and smooth walke through the midst of your Alleyes, so you shall not omit but leaue as much gréene-swarth, or grasse ground of eache side the plaine path as may fully counteruaile the breadth of the walke, as thus for example: if your sandy walke be sixe foote broad, the grasse ground of each side it, shall be at least sixe foote also, so that the whole Alley shall be at least eightéene foote in breadth, which will be both comely and stately. {SN: Of the Quarters.} Your Alleyes being thus proportioned and set forth, your next worke shall be the ordering of your Quarters, which as I sayd before, you may frame into what proportions you please, as into Squares, Tryangles and Rounds, according to the ground, or your owne inuention: and hauing marked them out with lines, and the garden compasse, you shall then beginne to digge them in this manner: first, with a paring spade, the fashion whereof is formerly shewed, you shall pare away all the gréene-swarth, fully so déepe as the roote of the grasse shall goe, and cast it away, then with other digging spades you shall digge vp the earth, at least two foote and a halfe, or thrée foote déepe, in turning vp of which earth, you shall note that as any rootes of wéedes, or other quickes shall be raised or stirred vp, so presently with your hands to gather them vp, and cast them away, that your mould may (as neare as your dilligence can performe it) be cleane from either wilde rootes, stones, or such like offences: & in this digging of your Quarters you shall not forget but raise vp the ground of your Quarters at least two foote higher then your Alleyes, and where by meanes of such reasure, you shall want mould, there you shall supply that lacke by bringing mould and cleane earth from some other place, where most conueniently you may spare it, that your whole Quarter being digged all ouer, it may rise in all parts alike, and carry an orderly and well proportioned leuell through the whole worke. {SN: Of Dunging.} The best season for this first digging of your garden mould is in September: and after it is so digged and roughly cast vp, you shall let it rest till the latter end of Nouember, at what time you shall digge it vp againe, in manner as afore sayd, onely with these additions, that you shall enter into the fresh mould, halfe a spade-graft déeper then before, and at euery two foote breadth of ground, enlarging the trench both wide and déepe, fill it vp with the oldest and best Oxe or Cow-Manure that you can possibly get, till such time that increasing from two foote to two foote, you haue gone ouer and Manured all your quarters, hauing a principall care that your dunge or Manure lye both déepe and thicke, in so much that euery part of your mould may indifferently pertake and be inriched with the same Manure. {SN: Diuersitie of Manures.} Now, you shall vnderstand that although I doe particularly speake but of Oxe or Cow-Manure, because it is of all the fattest and strongest, especially being olde, yet their are diuers respects to be had in the Manuring of gardens: as first, if your ground be naturally of a good, fat, blacke, and well tempered earth, or if it be of a barraine, sandy, hot, yet firme mould, that in either of these cases your Oxe, Cow, or beast Manure is the best & most sufficient, but if it be of a colde, barraine, or spewing mould then it shall be good to mixe your Oxe-dunge with Horse-dunge, which shall be at least two yéeres olde, if you can get it, otherwise such as you can compasse: if your ground be good and fertill yet out of his drynesse in the summer-time it be giuen to riue and chappe as is séene in many earths; you shall then mixe your Oxe-dunge well with Ashes, orts of Lime, and such like: lastly, if your earth be too much binding and colde therewithall, then mixe your Oxe-dunge with chalke or marle and it is the best Manure. And thus much for the generall vse of earths. Now, for perticular vses you shall vnderstand that for Hearbs or Flowers the Oxe and Horse-dunge is the best, for rootes or Cabbages, mans ordure is the best, for Harty-chockes, or any such like thisly-fruit, Swines-dunge is most sufficient, and thus according to your setled determination you shall seuerally prouide for euery seuerall purpose, and so, God assisting, seldome faile in your profit. And this dunge you shall bring into your garden in little drumblars or whéele-barrowes, made for the purpose, such as being in common vse in euery Husbandmans yarde it shall be néedlesse here either to shew the figure or proportion thereof. And thus much for the fashion, digging, and dunging of gardens. CHAP. XVII. _Of the adornation and beautifying of the Garden for pleasure._ The adornation and beautifying of gardens is not onely diuers but almost infinite, the industry of mens braines hourely begetting and bringing forth such new garments and imbroadery for the earth, that it is impossible to say this shall be singular, neither can any man say that this or that is the best, sith as mens tastes so their fancies are carried away with the varietie of their affections, some being pleased with one forme, some with another: I will not therefore giue preheminence to any one beauty, but discribing the faces and glories of all the best ornaments generaly or particularly vsed in our English gardens, referre euery man to the ellection of that which shall best agrée with his fancy. {SN: Of Knots and Mazes.} To beginne therefore with that which is most antient and at this day of most vse amongst the vulgar though least respected with great ones, who for the most part are wholy giuen ouer to nouelties: you shall vnderstand that Knots and Mazes were the first that were receiued into admiration, which Knots or Mazes were placed vpon the faces of each seuerall quarter, in this sort: first, about the verdge or square of the quarter was set a border of Primpe, Boxe, Lauandar, Rose-mary, or such like, but Primpe or Boxe is the best, and it was set thicke, at least eightéene inches broad at the bottome & being kept with cliping both smooth and leuell on the toppe and on each side, those borders as they were ornaments so were they also very profitable to the huswife for the drying of linnen cloaths, yarne, and such like: for the nature of Boxe and Primpe being to grow like a hedge, strong and thicke, together, the Gardiner, with his sheares may kéepe it as broad & plaine as himselfe listeth. Within this border shall your knot or maze be drawne, it being euer intended that before the setting of your border your quarter shall be the third time digged, made exceeding leuell, and smooth, without clot or stone, and the mould, with your garden rake of iron, so broken that it may lye like the finest ashes, and then with your garden mauls, which are broad-boards of more then two foote square set at the ends of strong staues, the earth shall be beaten so hard and firme together that it may beare the burthen of a man without shrinking. And in the beating of the mould you shall haue all diligent care that you preserue and kéepe your leuell to a hayre, for if you faile in it, you faile in your whole worke. {Illustration} Now for the time of this labour, it is euer best about the beginning of February, and indifferent, about the midst of October, but for the setting of your Primpe, or Boxe-border, let the beginning of Nouember be your latest time, for so shall you be sure that it will haue taken roote, and the leafe will flourish in the spring following: at which time your ground being thus artificially prepared, you shall begin to draw forth your knot in this manner: first, with lines you shall draw the forme of the figure next before set downe, and with a small instrument of iron make it vpon the earth. {Illustration} Which done, from the order and proportion of these lines you shall draw your single knots or plaine knots of the least curiositie, as may appeare by this figure, being one quarter of the whole Knot: euer proportioning your Trayles and windings according to the lines there discribed, which will kéepe your worke in iust proportion. But if you desire to haue knots of much more curiositie being more double and intricate, then you shall draw your first lines after this proportion here figured, pinning downe euery line firme to the earth with a little pinne made of woode. {Illustration} Which done you shall draw your double and curious knots after the manner of the figure following, which is also but one quarter of the whole knot, for looke in what manner you doe one knot in like sort will the other thrée quarters succéede, your lines kéeping you in a continuall euen proportion. {Illustration} And in this manner as you draw these knots, with the like helps and lines also you shall draw out your Mazes, and laborinths, of what sort or kind soeuer you please, whether they be round or square. But for as much, as not onely the _Country-farme_, but also diuers other translated bookes, doe at large describe the manner of casting and proportioning these knots, I will not persist to write more curiously vpon them, but wish euery painefull gardiner which coueteth to be more satisfied therein, to repaire to those authors, where hée shall finde more large amplifications, and greater diuersities of knots, yet all tending to no more purpose then this which I haue all ready written. Now, as soone as you haue drawne forth and figured your knot vpon the face of your quarter, you shall then set it either with Germander, Issoppe, Time or Pinke-gilly-flowers, but of all hearbes Germander is the most principall best for this purpose: diuers doe vse in knots to set Thrift, and in time of néed it may serue, but it is not so good as any of the other, because it is much subiect to be slaine with frost, and will also spread vpon the earth in such sort that, without very painefull cutting, it will put your knot out of fashion. {SN: Yeallow.} {SN: White.} {SN: Blacke.} {SN: Red.} {SN: Blew.} {SN: Greene.} Now there is another beautifying or adorning of Gardens, and it is most generally to be séene in the gardens of Noblemen and Gentlemen, which may beare coate-armor, and that is, instead of the knots and mazes formerly spoken of, to draw vpon the faces of your quarters such Armes, or Ensines, as you may either beare your selfe, or will preserue for the memory of any friend: and these armes being drawne forth in plaine lines, you shall set those plaine shadowing lines either with Germander, Issop, or such like hearbes: and then for the more ample beautie thereof, if you desire to haue them in their proper and liuely colours (without which they haue but one quarter of their luster) you shall vnderstand that your colours in Armory are thus to be made. First, for your mettalls: you shall make your Yeallow, either of a yeallow clay, vsually to be had almost in euery place, or the yeallowest sand, or for want of both, of your Flanders Tile, which is to be bought of euery Iron-monger or Chandelor; and any of these you must beate to dust: for your White you shall make it of the coursest chalke beaten to dust, or of well burnt plaister, or, for necessity, of lime, but that will soone decay: your Blacke is to be made of your best and purest coale-dust, well clensed and sifted: your Red is to be made of broken vselesse brickes beaten to dust, and well clensed from spots: your Blew is to be made of white-chalke, and blacke coale dust mixed together, till the blacke haue brought the white to a perfect blewnes: lastly your Gréene, both for the naturall property belonging to your Garden, as also for better continuance and long lasting, you shall make of Camomill, well planted where any such colour is to be vsed, as for the rest of the colours, you shall sift them, and strow them into their proper places, and then with a flat beating-Béetell you shall beate it, and incorporate it with the earth, and as any of the colours shall decay, you shall diligently repaire them, and the luster will be most beautifull. There is also another beautifying of gardens, which although it last not the whole yéere, yet it is most quaint, rare, and best eye-pleasing, and thus it is: you shall vpon the face of your quarter draw a plaine double knot, in manner of billet-wise: for you shall vnderstand that in this case the plainest knot is the best, and you shall let it be more then a foote betwixt line and line (for in the largenesse consists much beauty) this knot being scored out, you shall take Tiles, or tileshreds and fixe them within the lines of your knot strongly within the earth, yet so as they may stand a good distance aboue the earth and this doe till you haue set out all your knot with Tile: then precisely note the seuerall passages of your knot, and the seuerall thrids of which it consisteth, and then betwixt your tiles, (which are but as the shadowing lines of your knot) plant in euery seuerall third, flowers of one kinde and colour, as thus for example: in one thrid plant your carnation Gilly-flower, in another your great white Geli flower, in another your mingle-coloured Gilly-flower, and in another your blood-red Gilly-flower, and so likewise if you can compasse them you may in this sort plant your seueral coloured Hyacinths, as the red, the blew, and the yealow, or your seuerall coloured _Dulippos_, and many other Italian and french flowers: or you may, if you please, take of euery seuerall plant one, and place them as afforesaid; the grace of all which is, that so soone as these flowers shall put forth their beauties, if you stand a little remote from the knot, and any thing aboue it, you shall sée it appeare like a knot made of diuers coloured ribans, most pleasing and most rare. Many other adornations and beautifyings there are which belong to the setting forth of a curious garden, but for as much as none are more rare or more estéemed then these I haue set downe, being the best ornaments of the best gardens of this kingdome, I thinke them tastes sufficient for euery husbandman, or other of better quality which delighteth in the beauty and well trimming of his ground. CHAP. XVIII. _How for the entertainment of any great Person, in any Parke, or other place of pleasure, where Sommer-bowers are made, to make a compleat Garden in two or three dayes._ If the honest English husbandman, or any other, of what quallity soeuer, shall entertaine any Noble personage, to whom hee would giue the delight of all strange contentment, either in his Parke, or other remote place of pleasure, néere vnto Ponds, Riuer, or other waters of cléerenesse, after hée hath made his arbors and Summer-bowers to feast in, the fashion whereof is so common that euery labourer can make them, hée shall then marke out his garden-plot, bestowing such sleight fence thereon as hée shall thinke fit: then hée shall cast forth his alleys, and deuide them from his quarters, by paring away the gréene-swarth with a paring spade, finely, and euen, by a direct line (for a line must euer be vsed in this worke) then hauing store of labourers (after the vpper-most swarth is taken away) you shall cast vp the quarters, and then breaking the mould and leuelling it, you shall make sad the earth againe, then vpon your quarters you shall draw forth either Knots, Armes, or any other deuise which shall be best pleasing to your fancie, as either knots with single or double trayles, or other emblemicall deuise, as Birds, Beasts, and such like: and in your knots where you should plant hearbes, you shall take gréene-sods of the richest grasse, and cutting it proportionably to the knot, making a fine trench, you shall lay in your sod, and so ioyning sod to sod close and arteficially, you shall set forth your whole knot, or the portrayture of your armes, or other deuise, and then taking a cleane broome that hath not formerly béene swept withall, you shall brush all vncleanenesse from the grasse, and then you shall behold your knot as compleat, and as comely as if it had béene set with hearbes many yéeres before. Now for the portrayture of any liuing thing, you shall cut it forth, ioyning sod vnto sod, and then afterward place it into the earth. Now if within this plot of ground which you make your garden piece there be either naturall or arteficiall mounts or bankes vpon them, you may in this selfe-same manner with gréene sods set forth a flight, either at field or riuer, or the manner of hunting of any chase, or any story, or other deuise that you please, to the infinit admiration of all them which shall behold it: onely in working against mounts or bankes you must obserue to haue many small pinnes, to stay your worke and kéepe your sods from slipping one from another, till such time as you haue made euery thing fast with earth, which you must rame very close and hard: as for Flowers, or such like adorments, you may the morning before, remoue them with their earth from some other garden, and plant them at your best pleasure. And thus much for a garden to be made in the time of hasty necessity. CHAP. XIX. _How to preserue Abricots, or any kinde of curious outlandish-stone-fruit, and make them beare plentifully be the Spring or beginning of Summer neuer so bitter._ I haue knowne diuers Noblemen, Gentlemen & men of vnder quallitie, that haue béene most laborious how to preserue these tender stone-fruits from the violence of stormes, frost and windes, and to that end haue béene at great cost and charges yet many times haue found much losse in their labours, wherefore in the end, through the practise of many experiments, this hath béene found (which I will here set downe) the most approuedst way to make them beare without all kinde of danger. After you haue planted your Abricot, or other delicate fruit, and plasht him vp against a wall in manner as hath béene before declared, you shall ouer the tops of the trées all along the wall, build a large pentisse, of at least sixe or seauen foote in length: which pentisse ouer-shaddowing the trées, will, as experience hath found out, so defend them, that they will euer beare in as plentifull manner as they haue done any particular yéere before. There be many that will scoffe, or at least, giue no credit to this experiment, because it carrieth with it no more curiositie, but I can assure thée that art the honest English Husbandman, that there is nothing more certaine and vnfallible, for I haue séene in one of the greatest Noblemens gardens in the kingdome, where such a pentisse was made, that so farre as the pentisse went, so farre the trées did prosper with all fruitfulnesse, and where the pentisse ended, not one trée bare, the spring-time being most bitter and wonderfull vnseasonable. Now I haue séene some great Personages (whose pursses may buy their pleasures at any rate) which haue in those pentisses fixed diuers strong hookes of Iron, and then made a canuasse of the best Poldauie, with most strong loopes, of small corde, which being hung vpon the Iron hookes, hath reacht from the pentisse to the ground, and so laced with corde and small pulleys, that like the saile of a ship it might be trust vp, and let downe at pleasure: this canuasse thus prepared is all the Spring and latter end of Winter to be let downe at the setting of the Sunne, and to be drawne vp at the rising of the Sunne againe. The practise of this I referre to such as haue abillitie to buy their delight, without losse, assuring them that all reason and experience doth finde it most probable to be most excellent, yet to the plaine English Husbandman I giue certaine assurance that the pentisse onely is sufficient enough and will defend all stormes whatsoeuer. And thus much for the preseruation and increase of all tender Stone-fruit, of what nature, or climbe bred, soeuer. CHAP. XX. _How to make Grapes grow as bigge, full, and as naturally, and to ripen in as due season, and be as long lasting as either in Fraunce or Spaine._ Diuers of our English Gardiners, and those of the best and most approued'st iudgements, haue béene very industrious to bring Grapes, in our kingdome, to their true nature and perfection: and some great persons I know, that with infinit cost, and I hope prosperous successe, hath planted a Vineyard of many Acres, in which the hands of the best experienced french-men hath béene imploied: but for those great workes they are onely for great men, and not for the plaine English Husbandman, neither will such workes by any meanes prosper in many parts of our kingdome, especially in the North parts: and I that write for the generall vse, must treate of vniuersall Maximes: therefore if you desire to haue Grapes in their true and best kinde, most earely and longest lasting, you shall in the most conuenient part of your garden, which is euer the center or middle point thereof, build a round house, in the fashion of a round Doue-coate, but many degrées lower, the ground worke whereof shalbe aboue the ground two or thrée brickes thickenesse, vpon this ground-plot you shall place a groundsell, and thereon, fine, yet strong studs, which may reach to the roofe: these studs shalbe placed better then foure foote one from another, with little square bars of woode, such as you vse in glasse windowes, two betwixt euery two studs, the roofe you may make in what proportion you will, for this house may serue for a delicate banqueting house, and you may either couer it with Leade, Slate or Tile, which you please. Now, from the ground to the top, betwéene the studs, you shall glase it, with very strong glasse, made in an excéeding large square pane, well leaded and cimented. This house thus made, you shall obserue that through the bricke worke there be made, betwéene euery two studs, square holes, cleane through into the house; then on the out-side, opposite against those holes, you shall plant the roote of your Vine, hauing béene very carefull in the election and choise thereof: which done, as your Vine groweth you shall draw it through those holes, and as you vse to plash a Vine against a wall, so you shall plash this against the glasse window, on the in-side, and so soone as it shall beginne to beare Grapes you shall be sure to turne euery bunch, so that it may lye close to the glasse, that the reflection of the Sunne heating the glasse, that heate may hasten on the ripening, & increase the groath of your Grapes: as also the house defending off all manner of euill weather, these Grapes will hang ripe, vnrotted or withered, euen till Christmas. Thus haue I giuen you a tast of some of the first parts of English Husbandry, which if I shall finde thankefully accepted, if it please God to grant mée life, I will in my next Volumne, shew you the choise of all manner of Garden Hearbes and Flowers, both of this and other kingdomes, the seasons of their plantings, their florishings and orderings: I will also shew you the true ordering of Woodes, both high and low, as also the bréeding and féeding of all manner of Cattell, with the cure of all diseases incident vnto them, together with other parts of Husbandry, neuer before published by any Author: this I promise, if God be pleased: to whom be onely ascribed the glory of all our actions, and whose name be praised for euer. Amen. * * * * * FINIS. [Transcriber's notes The following changes have been made and anomalies noted. A Former Part Chap. II. 'adicted to nouelty and curiouity' changed to 'adicted to nouelty and curiousity' Chap. III. 'Plough houlder when hée cometh to' scan is unclear 'two much earth' probable misprint for 'too much earth' Chap. IIII. 'the of point your share' changed to 'the point of your share' Chap. V. 'of that which you soil'd:' changed to 'of that which you foil'd:' Chap. VI. 'the ridge of you land againe.' probable misprint for 'the ridge of your land againe.' 'Tare-Cockle, or such like,' scan is unclear 'After your land is soild,' changed to 'After your land is foild,' Chap. VII. 'and if you ffnde' changed to 'and if you finde' 'Manure of beasts which can be-gotten' probable misprint for 'Manure of beasts which can be gotten' 'your fould of Séepe' changed to 'your fould of Shéepe' 'frost, winde, and weathe,rmakes' changed to 'frost, winde, and weather, makes' 'no wing accoridng' changed to 'no wing according' Chap. IX. 'much barrainnesse, espcially' changed to 'much barrainnesse, especially' 'it shall be needlesse to write' scan is unclear The First Part Chap. I. 'you most turne euery furrow' probable misprint for 'you must turne euery furrow' 'hée must sooner stirer' changed to 'hée must sooner stirre'. Scan is unclear. Chap. II. 'euery thing with is most apt' changed to 'euery thing which is most apt' Chap. III. 'their naturall lighnesse' changed to 'their naturall lightnesse' 'as hath, béene showed before' changed to 'as hath béene showed before' Chap. IIII. 'it is most, certaine' changed to 'it is most certaine' 'Cornes in their gardens thus, set seeing' changed to 'Cornes in their gardens thus set, seeing' Chap. V. 'vpon the or fourth field' changed to 'vpon the third or fourth field' 'is ninam Barly,' probable misprint for 'is niam Barly,' Chap. VI. 'as we sée in dayly experience,' changed to 'as we sée in dayly experience.' The Second Part of the First Booke Chap. I. 'perfect ground-plot, you' scan is unclear 'twelue or fourtéene foote on of another,' probable misprint for 'twelue or fourtéene foote one of another,' 'thorny and sharpe, trées,' changed to 'thorny and sharpe trées,' Chap. IIII. 'you shall tak one of your grafts' changed to 'you shall take one of your grafts' Chap. V. 'Grafting betweene the barke.' scan is unclear in sidenote 'not aboue trée grafts at the most' changed to 'not aboue thrée grafts at the most' 'Grafting on the toppes of trees.' scan is unclear in sidenote 'and to contincu' changed to 'and to continue' Chap. VI. 'Of the replanting of Trees, and furnishing the Orchard,' changed to 'Of the replanting of Trees, and furnishing the Orchard.' Chap. VII. 'it is a ready away' changed to 'it is a ready way' 'two much fertillitie' probable misprint for 'too much fertillitie' 'stéepe it Mfor alt' changed to 'stéepe it for Malt' Chap. VIII. 'for any peculyar pofit' changed to 'for any peculyar profit' Chap. IX. 'and growriuelled' changed to 'and grow riuelled' 'they can by meanes indure,' changed to 'they can by no meanes indure,' Chap. XI. 'then contiunally labour' changed to 'then continually labour' Chap. XII 'Of Poales.' scan is unclear in sidenote Chap. XIIII 'dry more Hoppes then any one man' scan is unclear Chap. XVII. 'then betwxit your tiles' changed to 'then betwixt your tiles' Chap. XVIII. 'CHAP: XVIII.' changed to 'CHAP. XVIII.' 'single or double trayles,' scan unclear Chap. XIX. 'to the pliane English Husbandman' changed to 'to the plaine English Husbandman' ] 
232	----	29 BC THE GEORGICS by Virgil GEORGIC I What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what star Maecenas, it is meet to turn the sod Or marry elm with vine; how tend the steer; What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;- Such are my themes. O universal lights Most glorious! ye that lead the gliding year Along the sky, Liber and Ceres mild, If by your bounty holpen earth once changed Chaonian acorn for the plump wheat-ear, And mingled with the grape, your new-found gift, The draughts of Achelous; and ye Fauns To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Fauns And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing. And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first Sprang from earth's womb at thy great trident's stroke, Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes, The fertile brakes of Ceos; and clothed in power, Thy native forest and Lycean lawns, Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love Of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear And help, O lord of Tegea! And thou, too, Minerva, from whose hand the olive sprung; And boy-discoverer of the curved plough; And, bearing a young cypress root-uptorn, Silvanus, and Gods all and Goddesses, Who make the fields your care, both ye who nurse The tender unsown increase, and from heaven Shed on man's sowing the riches of your rain: And thou, even thou, of whom we know not yet What mansion of the skies shall hold thee soon, Whether to watch o'er cities be thy will, Great Caesar, and to take the earth in charge, That so the mighty world may welcome thee Lord of her increase, master of her times, Binding thy mother's myrtle round thy brow, Or as the boundless ocean's God thou come, Sole dread of seamen, till far Thule bow Before thee, and Tethys win thee to her son With all her waves for dower; or as a star Lend thy fresh beams our lagging months to cheer, Where 'twixt the Maid and those pursuing Claws A space is opening; see! red Scorpio's self His arms draws in, yea, and hath left thee more Than thy full meed of heaven: be what thou wilt- For neither Tartarus hopes to call thee king, Nor may so dire a lust of sovereignty E'er light upon thee, howso Greece admire Elysium's fields, and Proserpine not heed Her mother's voice entreating to return- Vouchsafe a prosperous voyage, and smile on this My bold endeavour, and pitying, even as I, These poor way-wildered swains, at once begin, Grow timely used unto the voice of prayer. In early spring-tide, when the icy drip Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr's breath Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then 'tis time; Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox, And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine. That land the craving farmer's prayer fulfils, Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt; Ay, that's the land whose boundless harvest-crops Burst, see! the barns. But ere our metal cleave An unknown surface, heed we to forelearn The winds and varying temper of the sky, The lineal tilth and habits of the spot, What every region yields, and what denies. Here blithelier springs the corn, and here the grape, There earth is green with tender growth of trees And grass unbidden. See how from Tmolus comes The saffron's fragrance, ivory from Ind, From Saba's weakling sons their frankincense, Iron from the naked Chalybs, castor rank From Pontus, from Epirus the prize-palms O' the mares of Elis. Such the eternal bond And such the laws by Nature's hand imposed On clime and clime, e'er since the primal dawn When old Deucalion on the unpeopled earth Cast stones, whence men, a flinty race, were reared. Up then! if fat the soil, let sturdy bulls Upturn it from the year's first opening months, And let the clods lie bare till baked to dust By the ripe suns of summer; but if the earth Less fruitful just ere Arcturus rise With shallower trench uptilt it- 'twill suffice; There, lest weeds choke the crop's luxuriance, here, Lest the scant moisture fail the barren sand. Then thou shalt suffer in alternate years The new-reaped fields to rest, and on the plain A crust of sloth to harden; or, when stars Are changed in heaven, there sow the golden grain Where erst, luxuriant with its quivering pod, Pulse, or the slender vetch-crop, thou hast cleared, And lupin sour, whose brittle stalks arise, A hurtling forest. For the plain is parched By flax-crop, parched by oats, by poppies parched In Lethe-slumber drenched. Nathless by change The travailing earth is lightened, but stint not With refuse rich to soak the thirsty soil, And shower foul ashes o'er the exhausted fields. Thus by rotation like repose is gained, Nor earth meanwhile uneared and thankless left. Oft, too, 'twill boot to fire the naked fields, And the light stubble burn with crackling flames; Whether that earth therefrom some hidden strength And fattening food derives, or that the fire Bakes every blemish out, and sweats away Each useless humour, or that the heat unlocks New passages and secret pores, whereby Their life-juice to the tender blades may win; Or that it hardens more and helps to bind The gaping veins, lest penetrating showers, Or fierce sun's ravening might, or searching blast Of the keen north should sear them. Well, I wot, He serves the fields who with his harrow breaks The sluggish clods, and hurdles osier-twined Hales o'er them; from the far Olympian height Him golden Ceres not in vain regards; And he, who having ploughed the fallow plain And heaved its furrowy ridges, turns once more Cross-wise his shattering share, with stroke on stroke The earth assails, and makes the field his thrall. Pray for wet summers and for winters fine, Ye husbandmen; in winter's dust the crops Exceedingly rejoice, the field hath joy; No tilth makes Mysia lift her head so high, Nor Gargarus his own harvests so admire. Why tell of him, who, having launched his seed, Sets on for close encounter, and rakes smooth The dry dust hillocks, then on the tender corn Lets in the flood, whose waters follow fain; And when the parched field quivers, and all the blades Are dying, from the brow of its hill-bed, See! see! he lures the runnel; down it falls, Waking hoarse murmurs o'er the polished stones, And with its bubblings slakes the thirsty fields? Or why of him, who lest the heavy ears O'erweigh the stalk, while yet in tender blade Feeds down the crop's luxuriance, when its growth First tops the furrows? Why of him who drains The marsh-land's gathered ooze through soaking sand, Chiefly what time in treacherous moons a stream Goes out in spate, and with its coat of slime Holds all the country, whence the hollow dykes Sweat steaming vapour? But no whit the more For all expedients tried and travail borne By man and beast in turning oft the soil, Do greedy goose and Strymon-haunting cranes And succory's bitter fibres cease to harm, Or shade not injure. The great Sire himself No easy road to husbandry assigned, And first was he by human skill to rouse The slumbering glebe, whetting the minds of men With care on care, nor suffering realm of his In drowsy sloth to stagnate. Before Jove Fields knew no taming hand of husbandmen; To mark the plain or mete with boundary-line- Even this was impious; for the common stock They gathered, and the earth of her own will All things more freely, no man bidding, bore. He to black serpents gave their venom-bane, And bade the wolf go prowl, and ocean toss; Shook from the leaves their honey, put fire away, And curbed the random rivers running wine, That use by gradual dint of thought on thought Might forge the various arts, with furrow's help The corn-blade win, and strike out hidden fire From the flint's heart. Then first the streams were ware Of hollowed alder-hulls: the sailor then Their names and numbers gave to star and star, Pleiads and Hyads, and Lycaon's child Bright Arctos; how with nooses then was found To catch wild beasts, and cozen them with lime, And hem with hounds the mighty forest-glades. Soon one with hand-net scourges the broad stream, Probing its depths, one drags his dripping toils Along the main; then iron's unbending might, And shrieking saw-blade,- for the men of old With wedges wont to cleave the splintering log;- Then divers arts arose; toil conquered all, Remorseless toil, and poverty's shrewd push In times of hardship. Ceres was the first Set mortals on with tools to turn the sod, When now the awful groves 'gan fail to bear Acorns and arbutes, and her wonted food Dodona gave no more. Soon, too, the corn Gat sorrow's increase, that an evil blight Ate up the stalks, and thistle reared his spines An idler in the fields; the crops die down; Upsprings instead a shaggy growth of burrs And caltrops; and amid the corn-fields trim Unfruitful darnel and wild oats have sway. Wherefore, unless thou shalt with ceaseless rake The weeds pursue, with shouting scare the birds, Prune with thy hook the dark field's matted shade, Pray down the showers, all vainly thou shalt eye, Alack! thy neighbour's heaped-up harvest-mow, And in the greenwood from a shaken oak Seek solace for thine hunger. Now to tell The sturdy rustics' weapons, what they are, Without which, neither can be sown nor reared The fruits of harvest; first the bent plough's share And heavy timber, and slow-lumbering wains Of the Eleusinian mother, threshing-sleighs And drags, and harrows with their crushing weight; Then the cheap wicker-ware of Celeus old, Hurdles of arbute, and thy mystic fan, Iacchus; which, full tale, long ere the time Thou must with heed lay by, if thee await Not all unearned the country's crown divine. While yet within the woods, the elm is tamed And bowed with mighty force to form the stock, And take the plough's curved shape, then nigh the root A pole eight feet projecting, earth-boards twain, And share-beam with its double back they fix. For yoke is early hewn a linden light, And a tall beech for handle, from behind To turn the car at lowest: then o'er the hearth The wood they hang till the smoke knows it well. Many the precepts of the men of old I can recount thee, so thou start not back, And such slight cares to learn not weary thee. And this among the first: thy threshing-floor With ponderous roller must be levelled smooth, And wrought by hand, and fixed with binding chalk, Lest weeds arise, or dust a passage win Splitting the surface, then a thousand plagues Make sport of it: oft builds the tiny mouse Her home, and plants her granary, underground, Or burrow for their bed the purblind moles, Or toad is found in hollows, and all the swarm Of earth's unsightly creatures; or a huge Corn-heap the weevil plunders, and the ant, Fearful of coming age and penury. Mark too, what time the walnut in the woods With ample bloom shall clothe her, and bow down Her odorous branches, if the fruit prevail, Like store of grain will follow, and there shall come A mighty winnowing-time with mighty heat; But if the shade with wealth of leaves abound, Vainly your threshing-floor will bruise the stalks Rich but in chaff. Many myself have seen Steep, as they sow, their pulse-seeds, drenching them With nitre and black oil-lees, that the fruit Might swell within the treacherous pods, and they Make speed to boil at howso small a fire. Yet, culled with caution, proved with patient toil, These have I seen degenerate, did not man Put forth his hand with power, and year by year Choose out the largest. So, by fate impelled, Speed all things to the worse, and backward borne Glide from us; even as who with struggling oars Up stream scarce pulls a shallop, if he chance His arms to slacken, lo! with headlong force The current sweeps him down the hurrying tide. Us too behoves Arcturus' sign observe, And the Kids' seasons and the shining Snake, No less than those who o'er the windy main Borne homeward tempt the Pontic, and the jaws Of oyster-rife Abydos. When the Scales Now poising fair the hours of sleep and day Give half the world to sunshine, half to shade, Then urge your bulls, my masters; sow the plain Even to the verge of tameless winter's showers With barley: then, too, time it is to hide Your flax in earth, and poppy, Ceres' joy, Aye, more than time to bend above the plough, While earth, yet dry, forbids not, and the clouds Are buoyant. With the spring comes bean-sowing; Thee, too, Lucerne, the crumbling furrows then Receive, and millet's annual care returns, What time the white bull with his gilded horns Opens the year, before whose threatening front, Routed the dog-star sinks. But if it be For wheaten harvest and the hardy spelt, Thou tax the soil, to corn-ears wholly given, Let Atlas' daughters hide them in the dawn, The Cretan star, a crown of fire, depart, Or e'er the furrow's claim of seed thou quit, Or haste thee to entrust the whole year's hope To earth that would not. Many have begun Ere Maia's star be setting; these, I trow, Their looked-for harvest fools with empty ears. But if the vetch and common kidney-bean Thou'rt fain to sow, nor scorn to make thy care Pelusiac lentil, no uncertain sign Bootes' fall will send thee; then begin, Pursue thy sowing till half the frosts be done. Therefore it is the golden sun, his course Into fixed parts dividing, rules his way Through the twelve constellations of the world. Five zones the heavens contain; whereof is one Aye red with flashing sunlight, fervent aye From fire; on either side to left and right Are traced the utmost twain, stiff with blue ice, And black with scowling storm-clouds, and betwixt These and the midmost, other twain there lie, By the Gods' grace to heart-sick mortals given, And a path cleft between them, where might wheel On sloping plane the system of the Signs. And as toward Scythia and Rhipaean heights The world mounts upward, likewise sinks it down Toward Libya and the south, this pole of ours Still towering high, that other, 'neath their feet, By dark Styx frowned on, and the abysmal shades. Here glides the huge Snake forth with sinuous coils 'Twixt the two Bears and round them river-wise- The Bears that fear 'neath Ocean's brim to dip. There either, say they, reigns the eternal hush Of night that knows no seasons, her black pall Thick-mantling fold on fold; or thitherward From us returning Dawn brings back the day; And when the first breath of his panting steeds On us the Orient flings, that hour with them Red Vesper 'gins to trim his his 'lated fires. Hence under doubtful skies forebode we can The coming tempests, hence both harvest-day And seed-time, when to smite the treacherous main With driving oars, when launch the fair-rigged fleet, Or in ripe hour to fell the forest-pine. Hence, too, not idly do we watch the stars- Their rising and their setting-and the year, Four varying seasons to one law conformed. If chilly showers e'er shut the farmer's door, Much that had soon with sunshine cried for haste, He may forestall; the ploughman batters keen His blunted share's hard tooth, scoops from a tree His troughs, or on the cattle stamps a brand, Or numbers on the corn-heaps; some make sharp The stakes and two-pronged forks, and willow-bands Amerian for the bending vine prepare. Now let the pliant basket plaited be Of bramble-twigs; now set your corn to parch Before the fire; now bruise it with the stone. Nay even on holy days some tasks to ply Is right and lawful: this no ban forbids, To turn the runnel's course, fence corn-fields in, Make springes for the birds, burn up the briars, And plunge in wholesome stream the bleating flock. Oft too with oil or apples plenty-cheap The creeping ass's ribs his driver packs, And home from town returning brings instead A dented mill-stone or black lump of pitch. The moon herself in various rank assigns The days for labour lucky: fly the fifth; Then sprang pale Orcus and the Eumenides; Earth then in awful labour brought to light Coeus, Iapetus, and Typhoeus fell, And those sworn brethren banded to break down The gates of heaven; thrice, sooth to say, they strove Ossa on Pelion's top to heave and heap, Aye, and on Ossa to up-roll amain Leafy Olympus; thrice with thunderbolt Their mountain-stair the Sire asunder smote. Seventh after tenth is lucky both to set The vine in earth, and take and tame the steer, And fix the leashes to the warp; the ninth To runagates is kinder, cross to thieves. Many the tasks that lightlier lend themselves In chilly night, or when the sun is young, And Dawn bedews the world. By night 'tis best To reap light stubble, and parched fields by night; For nights the suppling moisture never fails. And one will sit the long late watches out By winter fire-light, shaping with keen blade The torches to a point; his wife the while, Her tedious labour soothing with a song, Speeds the shrill comb along the warp, or else With Vulcan's aid boils the sweet must-juice down, And skims with leaves the quivering cauldron's wave. But ruddy Ceres in mid heat is mown, And in mid heat the parched ears are bruised Upon the floor; to plough strip, strip to sow; Winter's the lazy time for husbandmen. In the cold season farmers wont to taste The increase of their toil, and yield themselves To mutual interchange of festal cheer. Boon winter bids them, and unbinds their cares, As laden keels, when now the port they touch, And happy sailors crown the sterns with flowers. Nathless then also time it is to strip Acorns from oaks, and berries from the bay, Olives, and bleeding myrtles, then to set Snares for the crane, and meshes for the stag, And hunt the long-eared hares, then pierce the doe With whirl of hempen-thonged Balearic sling, While snow lies deep, and streams are drifting ice. What need to tell of autumn's storms and stars, And wherefore men must watch, when now the day Grows shorter, and more soft the summer's heat? When Spring the rain-bringer comes rushing down, Or when the beards of harvest on the plain Bristle already, and the milky corn On its green stalk is swelling? Many a time, When now the farmer to his yellow fields The reaping-hind came bringing, even in act To lop the brittle barley stems, have I Seen all the windy legions clash in war Together, as to rend up far and wide The heavy corn-crop from its lowest roots, And toss it skyward: so might winter's flaw, Dark-eddying, whirl light stalks and flying straws. Oft too comes looming vast along the sky A march of waters; mustering from above, The clouds roll up the tempest, heaped and grim With angry showers: down falls the height of heaven, And with a great rain floods the smiling crops, The oxen's labour: now the dikes fill fast, And the void river-beds swell thunderously, And all the panting firths of Ocean boil. The Sire himself in midnight of the clouds Wields with red hand the levin; through all her bulk Earth at the hurly quakes; the beasts are fled, And mortal hearts of every kindred sunk In cowering terror; he with flaming brand Athos, or Rhodope, or Ceraunian crags Precipitates: then doubly raves the South With shower on blinding shower, and woods and coasts Wail fitfully beneath the mighty blast. This fearing, mark the months and Signs of heaven, Whither retires him Saturn's icy star, And through what heavenly cycles wandereth The glowing orb Cyllenian. Before all Worship the Gods, and to great Ceres pay Her yearly dues upon the happy sward With sacrifice, anigh the utmost end Of winter, and when Spring begins to smile. Then lambs are fat, and wines are mellowest then; Then sleep is sweet, and dark the shadows fall Upon the mountains. Let your rustic youth To Ceres do obeisance, one and all; And for her pleasure thou mix honeycombs With milk and the ripe wine-god; thrice for luck Around the young corn let the victim go, And all the choir, a joyful company, Attend it, and with shouts bid Ceres come To be their house-mate; and let no man dare Put sickle to the ripened ears until, With woven oak his temples chapleted, He foot the rugged dance and chant the lay. Aye, and that these things we might win to know By certain tokens, heats, and showers, and winds That bring the frost, the Sire of all himself Ordained what warnings in her monthly round The moon should give, what bodes the south wind's fall, What oft-repeated sights the herdsman seeing Should keep his cattle closer to their stalls. No sooner are the winds at point to rise, Than either Ocean's firths begin to toss And swell, and a dry crackling sound is heard Upon the heights, or one loud ferment booms The beach afar, and through the forest goes A murmur multitudinous. By this Scarce can the billow spare the curved keels, When swift the sea-gulls from the middle main Come winging, and their shrieks are shoreward borne, When ocean-loving cormorants on dry land Besport them, and the hern, her marshy haunts Forsaking, mounts above the soaring cloud. Oft, too, when wind is toward, the stars thou'lt see From heaven shoot headlong, and through murky night Long trails of fire white-glistening in their wake, Or light chaff flit in air with fallen leaves, Or feathers on the wave-top float and play. But when from regions of the furious North It lightens, and when thunder fills the halls Of Eurus and of Zephyr, all the fields With brimming dikes are flooded, and at sea No mariner but furls his dripping sails. Never at unawares did shower annoy: Or, as it rises, the high-soaring cranes Flee to the vales before it, with face Upturned to heaven, the heifer snuffs the gale Through gaping nostrils, or about the meres Shrill-twittering flits the swallow, and the frogs Crouch in the mud and chant their dirge of old. Oft, too, the ant from out her inmost cells, Fretting the narrow path, her eggs conveys; Or the huge bow sucks moisture; or a host Of rooks from food returning in long line Clamour with jostling wings. Now mayst thou see The various ocean-fowl and those that pry Round Asian meads within thy fresher-pools, Cayster, as in eager rivalry, About their shoulders dash the plenteous spray, Now duck their head beneath the wave, now run Into the billows, for sheer idle joy Of their mad bathing-revel. Then the crow With full voice, good-for-naught, inviting rain, Stalks on the dry sand mateless and alone. Nor e'en the maids, that card their nightly task, Know not the storm-sign, when in blazing crock They see the lamp-oil sputtering with a growth Of mouldy snuff-clots. So too, after rain, Sunshine and open skies thou mayst forecast, And learn by tokens sure, for then nor dimmed Appear the stars' keen edges, nor the moon As borrowing of her brother's beams to rise, Nor fleecy films to float along the sky. Not to the sun's warmth then upon the shore Do halcyons dear to Thetis ope their wings, Nor filthy swine take thought to toss on high With scattering snout the straw-wisps. But the clouds Seek more the vales, and rest upon the plain, And from the roof-top the night-owl for naught Watching the sunset plies her 'lated song. Distinct in clearest air is Nisus seen Towering, and Scylla for the purple lock Pays dear; for whereso, as she flies, her wings The light air winnow, lo! fierce, implacable, Nisus with mighty whirr through heaven pursues; Where Nisus heavenward soareth, there her wings Clutch as she flies, the light air winnowing still. Soft then the voice of rooks from indrawn throat Thrice, four times, o'er repeated, and full oft On their high cradles, by some hidden joy Gladdened beyond their wont, in bustling throngs Among the leaves they riot; so sweet it is, When showers are spent, their own loved nests again And tender brood to visit. Not, I deem, That heaven some native wit to these assigned, Or fate a larger prescience, but that when The storm and shifting moisture of the air Have changed their courses, and the sky-god now, Wet with the south-wind, thickens what was rare, And what was gross releases, then, too, change Their spirits' fleeting phases, and their breasts Feel other motions now, than when the wind Was driving up the cloud-rack. Hence proceeds That blending of the feathered choirs afield, The cattle's exultation, and the rooks' Deep-throated triumph. But if the headlong sun And moons in order following thou regard, Ne'er will to-morrow's hour deceive thee, ne'er Wilt thou be caught by guile of cloudless night. When first the moon recalls her rallying fires, If dark the air clipped by her crescent dim, For folks afield and on the open sea A mighty rain is brewing; but if her face With maiden blush she mantle, 'twill be wind, For wind turns Phoebe still to ruddier gold. But if at her fourth rising, for 'tis that Gives surest counsel, clear she ride thro' heaven With horns unblunted, then shall that whole day, And to the month's end those that spring from it, Rainless and windless be, while safe ashore Shall sailors pay their vows to Panope, Glaucus, and Melicertes, Ino's child. The sun too, both at rising, and when soon He dives beneath the waves, shall yield thee signs; For signs, none trustier, travel with the sun, Both those which in their course with dawn he brings, And those at star-rise. When his springing orb With spots he pranketh, muffled in a cloud, And shrinks mid-circle, then of showers beware; For then the South comes driving from the deep, To trees and crops and cattle bringing bane. Or when at day-break through dark clouds his rays Burst and are scattered, or when rising pale Aurora quits Tithonus' saffron bed, But sorry shelter then, alack I will yield Vine-leaf to ripening grapes; so thick a hail In spiky showers spins rattling on the roof. And this yet more 'twill boot thee bear in mind, When now, his course upon Olympus run, He draws to his decline: for oft we see Upon the sun's own face strange colours stray; Dark tells of rain, of east winds fiery-red; If spots with ruddy fire begin to mix, Then all the heavens convulsed in wrath thou'lt see- Storm-clouds and wind together. Me that night Let no man bid fare forth upon the deep, Nor rend the rope from shore. But if, when both He brings again and hides the day's return, Clear-orbed he shineth, idly wilt thou dread The storm-clouds, and beneath the lustral North See the woods waving. What late eve in fine Bears in her bosom, whence the wind that brings Fair-weather-clouds, or what the rain South Is meditating, tokens of all these The sun will give thee. Who dare charge the sun With leasing? He it is who warneth oft Of hidden broils at hand and treachery, And secret swelling of the waves of war. He too it was, when Caesar's light was quenched, For Rome had pity, when his bright head he veiled In iron-hued darkness, till a godless age Trembled for night eternal; at that time Howbeit earth also, and the ocean-plains, And dogs obscene, and birds of evil bode Gave tokens. Yea, how often have we seen Etna, her furnace-walls asunder riven, In billowy floods boil o'er the Cyclops' fields, And roll down globes of fire and molten rocks! A clash of arms through all the heaven was heard By Germany; strange heavings shook the Alps. Yea, and by many through the breathless groves A voice was heard with power, and wondrous-pale Phantoms were seen upon the dusk of night, And cattle spake, portentous! streams stand still, And the earth yawns asunder, ivory weeps For sorrow in the shrines, and bronzes sweat. Up-twirling forests with his eddying tide, Madly he bears them down, that lord of floods, Eridanus, till through all the plain are swept Beasts and their stalls together. At that time In gloomy entrails ceased not to appear Dark-threatening fibres, springs to trickle blood, And high-built cities night-long to resound With the wolves' howling. Never more than then From skies all cloudless fell the thunderbolts, Nor blazed so oft the comet's fire of bale. Therefore a second time Philippi saw The Roman hosts with kindred weapons rush To battle, nor did the high gods deem it hard That twice Emathia and the wide champaign Of Haemus should be fattening with our blood. Ay, and the time will come when there anigh, Heaving the earth up with his curved plough, Some swain will light on javelins by foul rust Corroded, or with ponderous harrow strike On empty helmets, while he gapes to see Bones as of giants from the trench untombed. Gods of my country, heroes of the soil, And Romulus, and Mother Vesta, thou Who Tuscan Tiber and Rome's Palatine Preservest, this new champion at the least Our fallen generation to repair Forbid not. To the full and long ago Our blood thy Trojan perjuries hath paid, Laomedon. Long since the courts of heaven Begrudge us thee, our Caesar, and complain That thou regard'st the triumphs of mankind, Here where the wrong is right, the right is wrong, Where wars abound so many, and myriad-faced Is crime; where no meet honour hath the plough; The fields, their husbandmen led far away, Rot in neglect, and curved pruning-hooks Into the sword's stiff blade are fused and forged. Euphrates here, here Germany new strife Is stirring; neighbouring cities are in arms, The laws that bound them snapped; and godless war Rages through all the universe; as when The four-horse chariots from the barriers poured Still quicken o'er the course, and, idly now Grasping the reins, the driver by his team Is onward borne, nor heeds the car his curb. GEORGIC II Thus far the tilth of fields and stars of heaven; Now will I sing thee, Bacchus, and, with thee, The forest's young plantations and the fruit Of slow-maturing olive. Hither haste, O Father of the wine-press; all things here Teem with the bounties of thy hand; for thee With viny autumn laden blooms the field, And foams the vintage high with brimming vats; Hither, O Father of the wine-press, come, And stripped of buskin stain thy bared limbs In the new must with me. First, nature's law For generating trees is manifold; For some of their own force spontaneous spring, No hand of man compelling, and possess The plains and river-windings far and wide, As pliant osier and the bending broom, Poplar, and willows in wan companies With green leaf glimmering gray; and some there be From chance-dropped seed that rear them, as the tall Chestnuts, and, mightiest of the branching wood, Jove's Aesculus, and oaks, oracular Deemed by the Greeks of old. With some sprouts forth A forest of dense suckers from the root, As elms and cherries; so, too, a pigmy plant, Beneath its mother's mighty shade upshoots The bay-tree of Parnassus. Such the modes Nature imparted first; hence all the race Of forest-trees and shrubs and sacred groves Springs into verdure. Other means there are, Which use by method for itself acquired. One, sliving suckers from the tender frame Of the tree-mother, plants them in the trench; One buries the bare stumps within his field, Truncheons cleft four-wise, or sharp-pointed stakes; Some forest-trees the layer's bent arch await, And slips yet quick within the parent-soil; No root need others, nor doth the pruner's hand Shrink to restore the topmost shoot to earth That gave it being. Nay, marvellous to tell, Lopped of its limbs, the olive, a mere stock, Still thrusts its root out from the sapless wood, And oft the branches of one kind we see Change to another's with no loss to rue, Pear-tree transformed the ingrafted apple yield, And stony cornels on the plum-tree blush. Come then, and learn what tilth to each belongs According to their kinds, ye husbandmen, And tame with culture the wild fruits, lest earth Lie idle. O blithe to make all Ismarus One forest of the wine-god, and to clothe With olives huge Tabernus! And be thou At hand, and with me ply the voyage of toil I am bound on, O my glory, O thou that art Justly the chiefest portion of my fame, Maecenas, and on this wide ocean launched Spread sail like wings to waft thee. Not that I With my poor verse would comprehend the whole, Nay, though a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths Were mine, a voice of iron; be thou at hand, Skirt but the nearer coast-line; see the shore Is in our grasp; not now with feigned song Through winding bouts and tedious preludings Shall I detain thee. Those that lift their head Into the realms of light spontaneously, Fruitless indeed, but blithe and strenuous spring, Since Nature lurks within the soil. And yet Even these, should one engraft them, or transplant To well-drilled trenches, will anon put of Their woodland temper, and, by frequent tilth, To whatso craft thou summon them, make speed To follow. So likewise will the barren shaft That from the stock-root issueth, if it be Set out with clear space amid open fields: Now the tree-mother's towering leaves and boughs Darken, despoil of increase as it grows, And blast it in the bearing. Lastly, that Which from shed seed ariseth, upward wins But slowly, yielding promise of its shade To late-born generations; apples wane Forgetful of their former juice, the grape Bears sorry clusters, for the birds a prey. Soothly on all must toil be spent, and all Trained to the trench and at great cost subdued. But reared from truncheons olives answer best, As vines from layers, and from the solid wood The Paphian myrtles; while from suckers spring Both hardy hazels and huge ash, the tree That rims with shade the brows of Hercules, And acorns dear to the Chaonian sire: So springs the towering palm too, and the fir Destined to spy the dangers of the deep. But the rough arbutus with walnut-fruit Is grafted; so have barren planes ere now Stout apples borne, with chestnut-flower the beech, The mountain-ash with pear-bloom whitened o'er, And swine crunched acorns 'neath the boughs of elms. Nor is the method of inserting eyes And grafting one: for where the buds push forth Amidst the bark, and burst the membranes thin, Even on the knot a narrow rift is made, Wherein from some strange tree a germ they pen, And to the moist rind bid it cleave and grow. Or, otherwise, in knotless trunks is hewn A breach, and deep into the solid grain A path with wedges cloven; then fruitful slips Are set herein, and- no long time- behold! To heaven upshot with teeming boughs, the tree Strange leaves admires and fruitage not its own. Nor of one kind alone are sturdy elms, Willow and lotus, nor the cypress-trees Of Ida; nor of self-same fashion spring Fat olives, orchades, and radii And bitter-berried pausians, no, nor yet Apples and the forests of Alcinous; Nor from like cuttings are Crustumian pears And Syrian, and the heavy hand-fillers. Not the same vintage from our trees hangs down, Which Lesbos from Methymna's tendril plucks. Vines Thasian are there, Mareotids white, These apt for richer soils, for lighter those: Psithian for raisin-wine more useful, thin Lageos, that one day will try the feet And tie the tongue: purples and early-ripes, And how, O Rhaetian, shall I hymn thy praise? Yet cope not therefore with Falernian bins. Vines Aminaean too, best-bodied wine, To which the Tmolian bows him, ay, and king Phanaeus too, and, lesser of that name, Argitis, wherewith not a grape can vie For gush of wine-juice or for length of years. Nor thee must I pass over, vine of Rhodes, Welcomed by gods and at the second board, Nor thee, Bumastus, with plump clusters swollen. But lo! how many kinds, and what their names, There is no telling, nor doth it boot to tell; Who lists to know it, he too would list to learn How many sand-grains are by Zephyr tossed On Libya's plain, or wot, when Eurus falls With fury on the ships, how many waves Come rolling shoreward from the Ionian sea. Not that all soils can all things bear alike. Willows by water-courses have their birth, Alders in miry fens; on rocky heights The barren mountain-ashes; on the shore Myrtles throng gayest; Bacchus, lastly, loves The bare hillside, and yews the north wind's chill. Mark too the earth by outland tillers tamed, And Eastern homes of Arabs, and tattooed Geloni; to all trees their native lands Allotted are; no clime but India bears Black ebony; the branch of frankincense Is Saba's sons' alone; why tell to thee Of balsams oozing from the perfumed wood, Or berries of acanthus ever green? Of Aethiop forests hoar with downy wool, Or how the Seres comb from off the leaves Their silky fleece? Of groves which India bears, Ocean's near neighbour, earth's remotest nook, Where not an arrow-shot can cleave the air Above their tree-tops? yet no laggards they, When girded with the quiver! Media yields The bitter juices and slow-lingering taste Of the blest citron-fruit, than which no aid Comes timelier, when fierce step-dames drug the cup With simples mixed and spells of baneful power, To drive the deadly poison from the limbs. Large the tree's self in semblance like a bay, And, showered it not a different scent abroad, A bay it had been; for no wind of heaven Its foliage falls; the flower, none faster, clings; With it the Medes for sweetness lave the lips, And ease the panting breathlessness of age. But no, not Mede-land with its wealth of woods, Nor Ganges fair, and Hermus thick with gold, Can match the praise of Italy; nor Ind, Nor Bactria, nor Panchaia, one wide tract Of incense-teeming sand. Here never bulls With nostrils snorting fire upturned the sod Sown with the monstrous dragon's teeth, nor crop Of warriors bristled thick with lance and helm; But heavy harvests and the Massic juice Of Bacchus fill its borders, overspread With fruitful flocks and olives. Hence arose The war-horse stepping proudly o'er the plain; Hence thy white flocks, Clitumnus, and the bull, Of victims mightiest, which full oft have led, Bathed in thy sacred stream, the triumph-pomp Of Romans to the temples of the gods. Here blooms perpetual spring, and summer here In months that are not summer's; twice teem the flocks; Twice doth the tree yield service of her fruit. But ravening tigers come not nigh, nor breed Of savage lion, nor aconite betrays Its hapless gatherers, nor with sweep so vast Doth the scaled serpent trail his endless coils Along the ground, or wreathe him into spires. Mark too her cities, so many and so proud, Of mighty toil the achievement, town on town Up rugged precipices heaved and reared, And rivers undergliding ancient walls. Or should I celebrate the sea that laves Her upper shores and lower? or those broad lakes? Thee, Larius, greatest and, Benacus, thee With billowy uproar surging like the main? Or sing her harbours, and the barrier cast Athwart the Lucrine, and how ocean chafes With mighty bellowings, where the Julian wave Echoes the thunder of his rout, and through Avernian inlets pours the Tuscan tide? A land no less that in her veins displays Rivers of silver, mines of copper ore, Ay, and with gold hath flowed abundantly. A land that reared a valiant breed of men, The Marsi and Sabellian youth, and, schooled To hardship, the Ligurian, and with these The Volscian javelin-armed, the Decii too, The Marii and Camilli, names of might, The Scipios, stubborn warriors, ay, and thee, Great Caesar, who in Asia's utmost bounds With conquering arm e'en now art fending far The unwarlike Indian from the heights of Rome. Hail! land of Saturn, mighty mother thou Of fruits and heroes; 'tis for thee I dare Unseal the sacred fountains, and essay Themes of old art and glory, as I sing The song of Ascra through the towns of Rome. Now for the native gifts of various soils, What powers hath each, what hue, what natural bent For yielding increase. First your stubborn lands And churlish hill-sides, where are thorny fields Of meagre marl and gravel, these delight In long-lived olive-groves to Pallas dear. Take for a sign the plenteous growth hard by Of oleaster, and the fields strewn wide With woodland berries. But a soil that's rich, In moisture sweet exulting, and the plain That teems with grasses on its fruitful breast, Such as full oft in hollow mountain-dell We view beneath us- from the craggy heights Streams thither flow with fertilizing mud- A plain which southward rising feeds the fern By curved ploughs detested, this one day Shall yield thee store of vines full strong to gush In torrents of the wine-god; this shall be Fruitful of grapes and flowing juice like that We pour to heaven from bowls of gold, what time The sleek Etruscan at the altar blows His ivory pipe, and on the curved dish We lay the reeking entrails. If to rear Cattle delight thee rather, steers, or lambs, Or goats that kill the tender plants, then seek Full-fed Tarentum's glades and distant fields, Or such a plain as luckless Mantua lost Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan: There nor clear springs nor grass the flocks will fail, And all the day-long browsing of thy herds Shall the cool dews of one brief night repair. Land which the burrowing share shows dark and rich, With crumbling soil- for this we counterfeit In ploughing- for corn is goodliest; from no field More wains thou'lt see wend home with plodding steers; Or that from which the husbandman in spleen Has cleared the timber, and o'erthrown the copse That year on year lay idle, and from the roots Uptorn the immemorial haunt of birds; They banished from their nests have sought the skies; But the rude plain beneath the ploughshare's stroke Starts into sudden brightness. For indeed The starved hill-country gravel scarce serves the bees With lowly cassias and with rosemary; Rough tufa and chalk too, by black water-worms Gnawed through and through, proclaim no soils beside So rife with serpent-dainties, or that yield Such winding lairs to lurk in. That again, Which vapoury mist and flitting smoke exhales, Drinks moisture up and casts it forth at will, Which, ever in its own green grass arrayed, Mars not the metal with salt scurf of rust- That shall thine elms with merry vines enwreathe; That teems with olive; that shall thy tilth prove kind To cattle, and patient of the curved share. Such ploughs rich Capua, such the coast that skirts Thy ridge, Vesuvius, and the Clanian flood, Acerrae's desolation and her bane. How each to recognize now hear me tell. Dost ask if loose or passing firm it be- Since one for corn hath liking, one for wine, The firmer sort for Ceres, none too loose For thee, Lyaeus?- with scrutinizing eye First choose thy ground, and bid a pit be sunk Deep in the solid earth, then cast the mould All back again, and stamp the surface smooth. If it suffice not, loose will be the land, More meet for cattle and for kindly vines; But if, rebellious, to its proper bounds The soil returns not, but fills all the trench And overtops it, then the glebe is gross; Look for stiff ridges and reluctant clods, And with strong bullocks cleave the fallow crust. Salt ground again, and bitter, as 'tis called- Barren for fruits, by tilth untamable, Nor grape her kind, nor apples their good name Maintaining- will in this wise yield thee proof: Stout osier-baskets from the rafter-smoke, And strainers of the winepress pluck thee down; Hereinto let that evil land, with fresh Spring-water mixed, be trampled to the full; The moisture, mark you, will ooze all away, In big drops issuing through the osier-withes, But plainly will its taste the secret tell, And with a harsh twang ruefully distort The mouths of them that try it. Rich soil again We learn on this wise: tossed from hand to hand Yet cracks it never, but pitch-like, as we hold, Clings to the fingers. A land with moisture rife Breeds lustier herbage, and is more than meet Prolific. Ah I may never such for me O'er-fertile prove, or make too stout a show At the first earing! Heavy land or light The mute self-witness of its weight betrays. A glance will serve to warn thee which is black, Or what the hue of any. But hard it is To track the signs of that pernicious cold: Pines only, noxious yews, and ivies dark At times reveal its traces. All these rules Regarding, let your land, ay, long before, Scorch to the quick, and into trenches carve The mighty mountains, and their upturned clods Bare to the north wind, ere thou plant therein The vine's prolific kindred. Fields whose soil Is crumbling are the best: winds look to that, And bitter hoar-frosts, and the delver's toil Untiring, as he stirs the loosened glebe. But those, whose vigilance no care escapes, Search for a kindred site, where first to rear A nursery for the trees, and eke whereto Soon to translate them, lest the sudden shock From their new mother the young plants estrange. Nay, even the quarter of the sky they brand Upon the bark, that each may be restored, As erst it stood, here bore the southern heats, Here turned its shoulder to the northern pole; So strong is custom formed in early years. Whether on hill or plain 'tis best to plant Your vineyard first inquire. If on some plain You measure out rich acres, then plant thick; Thick planting makes no niggard of the vine; But if on rising mound or sloping bill, Then let the rows have room, so none the less Each line you draw, when all the trees are set, May tally to perfection. Even as oft In mighty war, whenas the legion's length Deploys its cohorts, and the column stands In open plain, the ranks of battle set, And far and near with rippling sheen of arms The wide earth flickers, nor yet in grisly strife Foe grapples foe, but dubious 'twixt the hosts The war-god wavers; so let all be ranged In equal rows symmetric, not alone To feed an idle fancy with the view, But since not otherwise will earth afford Vigour to all alike, nor yet the boughs Have power to stretch them into open space. Shouldst haply of the furrow's depth inquire, Even to a shallow trench I dare commit The vine; but deeper in the ground is fixed The tree that props it, aesculus in chief, Which howso far its summit soars toward heaven, So deep strikes root into the vaults of hell. It therefore neither storms, nor blasts, nor showers Wrench from its bed; unshaken it abides, Sees many a generation, many an age Of men roll onward, and survives them all, Stretching its titan arms and branches far, Sole central pillar of a world of shade. Nor toward the sunset let thy vineyards slope, Nor midst the vines plant hazel; neither take The topmost shoots for cuttings, nor from the top Of the supporting tree your suckers tear; So deep their love of earth; nor wound the plants With blunted blade; nor truncheons intersperse Of the wild olive: for oft from careless swains A spark hath fallen, that, 'neath the unctuous rind Hid thief-like first, now grips the tough tree-bole, And mounting to the leaves on high, sends forth A roar to heaven, then coursing through the boughs And airy summits reigns victoriously, Wraps all the grove in robes of fire, and gross With pitch-black vapour heaves the murky reek Skyward, but chiefly if a storm has swooped Down on the forest, and a driving wind Rolls up the conflagration. When 'tis so, Their root-force fails them, nor, when lopped away, Can they recover, and from the earth beneath Spring to like verdure; thus alone survives The bare wild olive with its bitter leaves. Let none persuade thee, howso weighty-wise, To stir the soil when stiff with Boreas' breath. Then ice-bound winter locks the fields, nor lets The young plant fix its frozen root to earth. Best sow your vineyards when in blushing Spring Comes the white bird long-bodied snakes abhor, Or on the eve of autumn's earliest frost, Ere the swift sun-steeds touch the wintry Signs, While summer is departing. Spring it is Blesses the fruit-plantation, Spring the groves; In Spring earth swells and claims the fruitful seed. Then Aether, sire omnipotent, leaps down With quickening showers to his glad wife's embrace, And, might with might commingling, rears to life All germs that teem within her; then resound With songs of birds the greenwood-wildernesses, And in due time the herds their loves renew; Then the boon earth yields increase, and the fields Unlock their bosoms to the warm west winds; Soft moisture spreads o'er all things, and the blades Face the new suns, and safely trust them now; The vine-shoot, fearless of the rising south, Or mighty north winds driving rain from heaven, Bursts into bud, and every leaf unfolds. Even so, methinks, when Earth to being sprang, Dawned the first days, and such the course they held; 'Twas Spring-tide then, ay, Spring, the mighty world Was keeping: Eurus spared his wintry blasts, When first the flocks drank sunlight, and a race Of men like iron from the hard glebe arose, And wild beasts thronged the woods, and stars the heaven. Nor could frail creatures bear this heavy strain, Did not so large a respite interpose 'Twixt frost and heat, and heaven's relenting arms Yield earth a welcome. For the rest, whate'er The sets thou plantest in thy fields, thereon Strew refuse rich, and with abundant earth Take heed to hide them, and dig in withal Rough shells or porous stone, for therebetween Will water trickle and fine vapour creep, And so the plants their drooping spirits raise. Aye, and there have been, who with weight of stone Or heavy potsherd press them from above; This serves for shield in pelting showers, and this When the hot dog-star chaps the fields with drought. The slips once planted, yet remains to cleave The earth about their roots persistently, And toss the cumbrous hoes, or task the soil With burrowing plough-share, and ply up and down Your labouring bullocks through the vineyard's midst, Then too smooth reeds and shafts of whittled wand, And ashen poles and sturdy forks to shape, Whereby supported they may learn to mount, Laugh at the gales, and through the elm-tops win From story up to story. Now while yet The leaves are in their first fresh infant growth, Forbear their frailty, and while yet the bough Shoots joyfully toward heaven, with loosened rein Launched on the void, assail it not as yet With keen-edged sickle, but let the leaves alone Be culled with clip of fingers here and there. But when they clasp the elms with sturdy trunks Erect, then strip the leaves off, prune the boughs; Sooner they shrink from steel, but then put forth The arm of power, and stem the branchy tide. Hedges too must be woven and all beasts Barred entrance, chiefly while the leaf is young And witless of disaster; for therewith, Beside harsh winters and o'erpowering sun, Wild buffaloes and pestering goats for ay Besport them, sheep and heifers glut their greed. Nor cold by hoar-frost curdled, nor the prone Dead weight of summer upon the parched crags, So scathe it, as the flocks with venom-bite Of their hard tooth, whose gnawing scars the stem. For no offence but this to Bacchus bleeds The goat at every altar, and old plays Upon the stage find entrance; therefore too The sons of Theseus through the country-side- Hamlet and crossway- set the prize of wit, And on the smooth sward over oiled skins Dance in their tipsy frolic. Furthermore The Ausonian swains, a race from Troy derived, Make merry with rough rhymes and boisterous mirth, Grim masks of hollowed bark assume, invoke Thee with glad hymns, O Bacchus, and to thee Hang puppet-faces on tall pines to swing. Hence every vineyard teems with mellowing fruit, Till hollow vale o'erflows, and gorge profound, Where'er the god hath turned his comely head. Therefore to Bacchus duly will we sing Meet honour with ancestral hymns, and cates And dishes bear him; and the doomed goat Led by the horn shall at the altar stand, Whose entrails rich on hazel-spits we'll roast. This further task again, to dress the vine, Hath needs beyond exhausting; the whole soil Thrice, four times, yearly must be cleft, the sod With hoes reversed be crushed continually, The whole plantation lightened of its leaves. Round on the labourer spins the wheel of toil, As on its own track rolls the circling year. Soon as the vine her lingering leaves hath shed, And the chill north wind from the forests shook Their coronal, even then the careful swain Looks keenly forward to the coming year, With Saturn's curved fang pursues and prunes The vine forlorn, and lops it into shape. Be first to dig the ground up, first to clear And burn the refuse-branches, first to house Again your vine-poles, last to gather fruit. Twice doth the thickening shade beset the vine, Twice weeds with stifling briers o'ergrow the crop; And each a toilsome labour. Do thou praise Broad acres, farm but few. Rough twigs beside Of butcher's broom among the woods are cut, And reeds upon the river-banks, and still The undressed willow claims thy fostering care. So now the vines are fettered, now the trees Let go the sickle, and the last dresser now Sings of his finished rows; but still the ground Must vexed be, the dust be stirred, and heaven Still set thee trembling for the ripened grapes. Not so with olives; small husbandry need they, Nor look for sickle bowed or biting rake, When once they have gripped the soil, and borne the breeze. Earth of herself, with hooked fang laid bare, Yields moisture for the plants, and heavy fruit, The ploughshare aiding; therewithal thou'lt rear The olive's fatness well-beloved of Peace. Apples, moreover, soon as first they feel Their stems wax lusty, and have found their strength, To heaven climb swiftly, self-impelled, nor crave Our succour. All the grove meanwhile no less With fruit is swelling, and the wild haunts of birds Blush with their blood-red berries. Cytisus Is good to browse on, the tall forest yields Pine-torches, and the nightly fires are fed And shoot forth radiance. And shall men be loath To plant, nor lavish of their pains? Why trace Things mightier? Willows even and lowly brooms To cattle their green leaves, to shepherds shade, Fences for crops, and food for honey yield. And blithe it is Cytorus to behold Waving with box, Narycian groves of pitch; Oh! blithe the sight of fields beholden not To rake or man's endeavour! the barren woods That crown the scalp of Caucasus, even these, Which furious blasts for ever rive and rend, Yield various wealth, pine-logs that serve for ships, Cedar and cypress for the homes of men; Hence, too, the farmers shave their wheel-spokes, hence Drums for their wains, and curved boat-keels fit; Willows bear twigs enow, the elm-tree leaves, Myrtle stout spear-shafts, war-tried cornel too; Yews into Ituraean bows are bent: Nor do smooth lindens or lathe-polished box Shrink from man's shaping and keen-furrowing steel; Light alder floats upon the boiling flood Sped down the Padus, and bees house their swarms In rotten holm-oak's hollow bark and bole. What of like praise can Bacchus' gifts afford? Nay, Bacchus even to crime hath prompted, he The wine-infuriate Centaurs quelled with death, Rhoetus and Pholus, and with mighty bowl Hylaeus threatening high the Lapithae. Oh! all too happy tillers of the soil, Could they but know their blessedness, for whom Far from the clash of arms all-equal earth Pours from the ground herself their easy fare! What though no lofty palace portal-proud From all its chambers vomits forth a tide Of morning courtiers, nor agape they gaze On pillars with fair tortoise-shell inwrought, Gold-purfled robes, and bronze from Ephyre; Nor is the whiteness of their wool distained With drugs Assyrian, nor clear olive's use With cassia tainted; yet untroubled calm, A life that knows no falsehood, rich enow With various treasures, yet broad-acred ease, Grottoes and living lakes, yet Tempes cool, Lowing of kine, and sylvan slumbers soft, They lack not; lawns and wild beasts' haunts are there, A youth of labour patient, need-inured, Worship, and reverend sires: with them from earth Departing justice her last footprints left. Me before all things may the Muses sweet, Whose rites I bear with mighty passion pierced, Receive, and show the paths and stars of heaven, The sun's eclipses and the labouring moons, From whence the earthquake, by what power the seas Swell from their depths, and, every barrier burst, Sink back upon themselves, why winter-suns So haste to dip 'neath ocean, or what check The lingering night retards. But if to these High realms of nature the cold curdling blood About my heart bar access, then be fields And stream-washed vales my solace, let me love Rivers and woods, inglorious. Oh for you Plains, and Spercheius, and Taygete, By Spartan maids o'er-revelled! Oh, for one, Would set me in deep dells of Haemus cool, And shield me with his boughs' o'ershadowing might! Happy, who had the skill to understand Nature's hid causes, and beneath his feet All terrors cast, and death's relentless doom, And the loud roar of greedy Acheron. Blest too is he who knows the rural gods, Pan, old Silvanus, and the sister-nymphs! Him nor the rods of public power can bend, Nor kingly purple, nor fierce feud that drives Brother to turn on brother, nor descent Of Dacian from the Danube's leagued flood, Nor Rome's great State, nor kingdoms like to die; Nor hath he grieved through pitying of the poor, Nor envied him that hath. What fruit the boughs, And what the fields, of their own bounteous will Have borne, he gathers; nor iron rule of laws, Nor maddened Forum have his eyes beheld, Nor archives of the people. Others vex The darksome gulfs of Ocean with their oars, Or rush on steel: they press within the courts And doors of princes; one with havoc falls Upon a city and its hapless hearths, From gems to drink, on Tyrian rugs to lie; This hoards his wealth and broods o'er buried gold; One at the rostra stares in blank amaze; One gaping sits transported by the cheers, The answering cheers of plebs and senate rolled Along the benches: bathed in brothers' blood Men revel, and, all delights of hearth and home For exile changing, a new country seek Beneath an alien sun. The husbandman With hooked ploughshare turns the soil; from hence Springs his year's labour; hence, too, he sustains Country and cottage homestead, and from hence His herds of cattle and deserving steers. No respite! still the year o'erflows with fruit, Or young of kine, or Ceres' wheaten sheaf, With crops the furrow loads, and bursts the barns. Winter is come: in olive-mills they bruise The Sicyonian berry; acorn-cheered The swine troop homeward; woods their arbutes yield; So, various fruit sheds Autumn, and high up On sunny rocks the mellowing vintage bakes. Meanwhile about his lips sweet children cling; His chaste house keeps its purity; his kine Drop milky udders, and on the lush green grass Fat kids are striving, horn to butting horn. Himself keeps holy days; stretched o'er the sward, Where round the fire his comrades crown the bowl, He pours libation, and thy name invokes, Lenaeus, and for the herdsmen on an elm Sets up a mark for the swift javelin; they Strip their tough bodies for the rustic sport. Such life of yore the ancient Sabines led, Such Remus and his brother: Etruria thus, Doubt not, to greatness grew, and Rome became The fair world's fairest, and with circling wall Clasped to her single breast the sevenfold hills. Ay, ere the reign of Dicte's king, ere men, Waxed godless, banqueted on slaughtered bulls, Such life on earth did golden Saturn lead. Nor ear of man had heard the war-trump's blast, Nor clang of sword on stubborn anvil set. But lo! a boundless space we have travelled o'er; 'Tis time our steaming horses to unyoke. GEORGIC III Thee too, great Pales, will I hymn, and thee, Amphrysian shepherd, worthy to be sung, You, woods and waves Lycaean. All themes beside, Which else had charmed the vacant mind with song, Are now waxed common. Of harsh Eurystheus who The story knows not, or that praiseless king Busiris, and his altars? or by whom Hath not the tale been told of Hylas young, Latonian Delos and Hippodame, And Pelops for his ivory shoulder famed, Keen charioteer? Needs must a path be tried, By which I too may lift me from the dust, And float triumphant through the mouths of men. Yea, I shall be the first, so life endure, To lead the Muses with me, as I pass To mine own country from the Aonian height; I, Mantua, first will bring thee back the palms Of Idumaea, and raise a marble shrine On thy green plain fast by the water-side, Where Mincius winds more vast in lazy coils, And rims his margent with the tender reed. Amid my shrine shall Caesar's godhead dwell. To him will I, as victor, bravely dight In Tyrian purple, drive along the bank A hundred four-horse cars. All Greece for me, Leaving Alpheus and Molorchus' grove, On foot shall strive, or with the raw-hide glove; Whilst I, my head with stripped green olive crowned, Will offer gifts. Even 'tis present joy To lead the high processions to the fane, And view the victims felled; or how the scene Sunders with shifted face, and Britain's sons Inwoven thereon with those proud curtains rise. Of gold and massive ivory on the doors I'll trace the battle of the Gangarides, And our Quirinus' conquering arms, and there Surging with war, and hugely flowing, the Nile, And columns heaped on high with naval brass. And Asia's vanquished cities I will add, And quelled Niphates, and the Parthian foe, Who trusts in flight and backward-volleying darts, And trophies torn with twice triumphant hand From empires twain on ocean's either shore. And breathing forms of Parian marble there Shall stand, the offspring of Assaracus, And great names of the Jove-descended folk, And father Tros, and Troy's first founder, lord Of Cynthus. And accursed Envy there Shall dread the Furies, and thy ruthless flood, Cocytus, and Ixion's twisted snakes, And that vast wheel and ever-baffling stone. Meanwhile the Dryad-haunted woods and lawns Unsullied seek we; 'tis thy hard behest, Maecenas. Without thee no lofty task My mind essays. Up! break the sluggish bonds Of tarriance; with loud din Cithaeron calls, Steed-taming Epidaurus, and thy hounds, Taygete; and hark! the assenting groves With peal on peal reverberate the roar. Yet must I gird me to rehearse ere long The fiery fights of Caesar, speed his name Through ages, countless as to Caesar's self From the first birth-dawn of Tithonus old. If eager for the prized Olympian palm One breed the horse, or bullock strong to plough, Be his prime care a shapely dam to choose. Of kine grim-faced is goodliest, with coarse head And burly neck, whose hanging dewlaps reach From chin to knee; of boundless length her flank; Large every way she is, large-footed even, With incurved horns and shaggy ears beneath. Nor let mislike me one with spots of white Conspicuous, or that spurns the yoke, whose horn At times hath vice in't: liker bull-faced she, And tall-limbed wholly, and with tip of tail Brushing her footsteps as she walks along. The age for Hymen's rites, Lucina's pangs, Ere ten years ended, after four begins; Their residue of days nor apt to teem, Nor strong for ploughing. Meantime, while youth's delight Survives within them, loose the males: be first To speed thy herds of cattle to their loves, Breed stock with stock, and keep the race supplied. Ah! life's best hours are ever first to fly From hapless mortals; in their place succeed Disease and dolorous eld; till travail sore And death unpitying sweep them from the scene. Still will be some, whose form thou fain wouldst change; Renew them still; with yearly choice of young Preventing losses, lest too late thou rue. Nor steeds crave less selection; but on those Thou think'st to rear, the promise of their line, From earliest youth thy chiefest pains bestow. See from the first yon high-bred colt afield, His lofty step, his limbs' elastic tread: Dauntless he leads the herd, still first to try The threatening flood, or brave the unknown bridge, By no vain noise affrighted; lofty-necked, With clean-cut head, short belly, and stout back; His sprightly breast exuberant with brawn. Chestnut and grey are good; the worst-hued white And sorrel. Then lo! if arms are clashed afar, Bide still he cannot: ears stiffen and limbs quake; His nostrils snort and roll out wreaths of fire. Dense is his mane, that when uplifted falls On his right shoulder; betwixt either loin The spine runs double; his earth-dinting hoof Rings with the ponderous beat of solid horn. Even such a horse was Cyllarus, reined and tamed By Pollux of Amyclae; such the pair In Grecian song renowned, those steeds of Mars, And famed Achilles' team: in such-like form Great Saturn's self with mane flung loose on neck Sped at his wife's approach, and flying filled The heights of Pelion with his piercing neigh. Even him, when sore disease or sluggish eld Now saps his strength, pen fast at home, and spare His not inglorious age. A horse grown old Slow kindling unto love in vain prolongs The fruitless task, and, to the encounter come, As fire in stubble blusters without strength, He rages idly. Therefore mark thou first Their age and mettle, other points anon, As breed and lineage, or what pain was theirs To lose the race, what pride the palm to win. Seest how the chariots in mad rivalry Poured from the barrier grip the course and go, When youthful hope is highest, and every heart Drained with each wild pulsation? How they ply The circling lash, and reaching forward let The reins hang free! Swift spins the glowing wheel; And now they stoop, and now erect in air Seem borne through space and towering to the sky: No stop, no stay; the dun sand whirls aloft; They reek with foam-flakes and pursuing breath; So sweet is fame, so prized the victor's palm. 'Twas Ericthonius first took heart to yoke Four horses to his car, and rode above The whirling wheels to victory: but the ring And bridle-reins, mounted on horses' backs, The Pelethronian Lapithae bequeathed, And taught the knight in arms to spurn the ground, And arch the upgathered footsteps of his pride. Each task alike is arduous, and for each A horse young, fiery, swift of foot, they seek; How oft so-e'er yon rival may have chased The flying foe, or boast his native plain Epirus, or Mycenae's stubborn hold, And trace his lineage back to Neptune's birth. These points regarded, as the time draws nigh, With instant zeal they lavish all their care To plump with solid fat the chosen chief And designated husband of the herd: And flowery herbs they cut, and serve him well With corn and running water, that his strength Not fail him for that labour of delight, Nor puny colts betray the feeble sire. The herd itself of purpose they reduce To leanness, and when love's sweet longing first Provokes them, they forbid the leafy food, And pen them from the springs, and oft beside With running shake, and tire them in the sun, What time the threshing-floor groans heavily With pounding of the corn-ears, and light chaff Is whirled on high to catch the rising west. This do they that the soil's prolific powers May not be dulled by surfeiting, nor choke The sluggish furrows, but eagerly absorb Their fill of love, and deeply entertain. To care of sire the mother's care succeeds. When great with young they wander nigh their time, Let no man suffer them to drag the yoke In heavy wains, nor leap across the way, Nor scour the meads, nor swim the rushing flood. In lonely lawns they feed them, by the course Of brimming streams, where moss is, and the banks With grass are greenest, where are sheltering caves, And far outstretched the rock-flung shadow lies. Round wooded Silarus and the ilex-bowers Of green Alburnus swarms a winged pest- Its Roman name Asilus, by the Greeks Termed Oestros- fierce it is, and harshly hums, Driving whole herds in terror through the groves, Till heaven is madded by their bellowing din, And Tanager's dry bed and forest-banks. With this same scourge did Juno wreak of old The terrors of her wrath, a plague devised Against the heifer sprung from Inachus. From this too thou, since in the noontide heats 'Tis most persistent, fend thy teeming herds, And feed them when the sun is newly risen, Or the first stars are ushering in the night. But, yeaning ended, all their tender care Is to the calves transferred; at once with marks They brand them, both to designate their race, And which to rear for breeding, or devote As altar-victims, or to cleave the ground And into ridges tear and turn the sod. The rest along the greensward graze at will. Those that to rustic uses thou wouldst mould, As calves encourage and take steps to tame, While pliant wills and plastic youth allow. And first of slender withies round the throat Loose collars hang, then when their free-born necks Are used to service, with the self-same bands Yoke them in pairs, and steer by steer compel Keep pace together. And time it is that oft Unfreighted wheels be drawn along the ground Behind them, as to dint the surface-dust; Then let the beechen axle strain and creak 'Neath some stout burden, whilst a brazen pole Drags on the wheels made fast thereto. Meanwhile For their unbroken youth not grass alone, Nor meagre willow-leaves and marish-sedge, But corn-ears with thy hand pluck from the crops. Nor shall the brood-kine, as of yore, for thee Brim high the snowy milking-pail, but spend Their udders' fullness on their own sweet young. But if fierce squadrons and the ranks of war Delight thee rather, or on wheels to glide At Pisa, with Alpheus fleeting by, And in the grove of Jupiter urge on The flying chariot, be your steed's first task To face the warrior's armed rage, and brook The trumpet, and long roar of rumbling wheels, And clink of chiming bridles in the stall; Then more and more to love his master's voice Caressing, or loud hand that claps his neck. Ay, thus far let him learn to dare, when first Weaned from his mother, and his mouth at times Yield to the supple halter, even while yet Weak, tottering-limbed, and ignorant of life. But, three years ended, when the fourth arrives, Now let him tarry not to run the ring With rhythmic hoof-beat echoing, and now learn Alternately to curve each bending leg, And be like one that struggleth; then at last Challenge the winds to race him, and at speed Launched through the open, like a reinless thing, Scarce print his footsteps on the surface-sand. As when with power from Hyperborean climes The north wind stoops, and scatters from his path Dry clouds and storms of Scythia; the tall corn And rippling plains 'gin shiver with light gusts; A sound is heard among the forest-tops; Long waves come racing shoreward: fast he flies, With instant pinion sweeping earth and main. A steed like this or on the mighty course Of Elis at the goal will sweat, and shower Red foam-flakes from his mouth, or, kindlier task, With patient neck support the Belgian car. Then, broken at last, let swell their burly frame With fattening corn-mash, for, unbroke, they will With pride wax wanton, and, when caught, refuse Tough lash to brook or jagged curb obey. But no device so fortifies their power As love's blind stings of passion to forefend, Whether on steed or steer thy choice be set. Ay, therefore 'tis they banish bulls afar To solitary pastures, or behind Some mountain-barrier, or broad streams beyond, Or else in plenteous stalls pen fast at home. For, even through sight of her, the female wastes His strength with smouldering fire, till he forget Both grass and woodland. She indeed full oft With her sweet charms can lovers proud compel To battle for the conquest horn to horn. In Sila's forest feeds the heifer fair, While each on each the furious rivals run; Wound follows wound; the black blood laves their limbs; Horns push and strive against opposing horns, With mighty groaning; all the forest-side And far Olympus bellow back the roar. Nor wont the champions in one stall to couch; But he that's worsted hies him to strange climes Far off, an exile, moaning much the shame, The blows of that proud conqueror, then love's loss Avenged not; with one glance toward the byre, His ancient royalties behind him lie. So with all heed his strength he practiseth, And nightlong makes the hard bare stones his bed, And feeds on prickly leaf and pointed rush, And proves himself, and butting at a tree Learns to fling wrath into his horns, with blows Provokes the air, and scattering clouds of sand Makes prelude of the battle; afterward, With strength repaired and gathered might breaks camp, And hurls him headlong on the unthinking foe: As in mid ocean when a wave far of Begins to whiten, mustering from the main Its rounded breast, and, onward rolled to land Falls with prodigious roar among the rocks, Huge as a very mountain: but the depths Upseethe in swirling eddies, and disgorge The murky sand-lees from their sunken bed. Nay, every race on earth of men, and beasts, And ocean-folk, and flocks, and painted birds, Rush to the raging fire: love sways them all. Never than then more fiercely o'er the plain Prowls heedless of her whelps the lioness: Nor monstrous bears such wide-spread havoc-doom Deal through the forests; then the boar is fierce, Most deadly then the tigress: then, alack! Ill roaming is it on Libya's lonely plains. Mark you what shivering thrills the horse's frame, If but a waft the well-known gust conveys? Nor curb can check them then, nor lash severe, Nor rocks and caverned crags, nor barrier-floods, That rend and whirl and wash the hills away. Then speeds amain the great Sabellian boar, His tushes whets, with forefoot tears the ground, Rubs 'gainst a tree his flanks, and to and fro Hardens each wallowing shoulder to the wound. What of the youth, when love's relentless might Stirs the fierce fire within his veins? Behold! In blindest midnight how he swims the gulf Convulsed with bursting storm-clouds! Over him Heaven's huge gate thunders; the rock-shattered main Utters a warning cry; nor parents' tears Can backward call him, nor the maid he loves, Too soon to die on his untimely pyre. What of the spotted ounce to Bacchus dear, Or warlike wolf-kin or the breed of dogs? Why tell how timorous stags the battle join? O'er all conspicuous is the rage of mares, By Venus' self inspired of old, what time The Potnian four with rending jaws devoured The limbs of Glaucus. Love-constrained they roam Past Gargarus, past the loud Ascanian flood; They climb the mountains, and the torrents swim; And when their eager marrow first conceives The fire, in Spring-tide chiefly, for with Spring Warmth doth their frames revisit, then they stand All facing westward on the rocky heights, And of the gentle breezes take their fill; And oft unmated, marvellous to tell, But of the wind impregnate, far and wide O'er craggy height and lowly vale they scud, Not toward thy rising, Eurus, or the sun's, But westward and north-west, or whence up-springs Black Auster, that glooms heaven with rainy cold. Hence from their groin slow drips a poisonous juice, By shepherds truly named hippomanes, Hippomanes, fell stepdames oft have culled, And mixed with herbs and spells of baneful bode. Fast flies meanwhile the irreparable hour, As point to point our charmed round we trace. Enough of herds. This second task remains, The wool-clad flocks and shaggy goats to treat. Here lies a labour; hence for glory look, Brave husbandmen. Nor doubtfully know How hard it is for words to triumph here, And shed their lustre on a theme so slight: But I am caught by ravishing desire Above the lone Parnassian steep; I love To walk the heights, from whence no earlier track Slopes gently downward to Castalia's spring. Now, awful Pales, strike a louder tone. First, for the sheep soft pencotes I decree To browse in, till green summer's swift return; And that the hard earth under them with straw And handfuls of the fern be littered deep, Lest chill of ice such tender cattle harm With scab and loathly foot-rot. Passing thence I bid the goats with arbute-leaves be stored, And served with fresh spring-water, and their pens Turned southward from the blast, to face the suns Of winter, when Aquarius' icy beam Now sinks in showers upon the parting year. These too no lightlier our protection claim, Nor prove of poorer service, howsoe'er Milesian fleeces dipped in Tyrian reds Repay the barterer; these with offspring teem More numerous; these yield plenteous store of milk: The more each dry-wrung udder froths the pail, More copious soon the teat-pressed torrents flow. Ay, and on Cinyps' bank the he-goats too Their beards and grizzled chins and bristling hair Let clip for camp-use, or as rugs to wrap Seafaring wretches. But they browse the woods And summits of Lycaeus, and rough briers, And brakes that love the highland: of themselves Right heedfully the she-goats homeward troop Before their kids, and with plump udders clogged Scarce cross the threshold. Wherefore rather ye, The less they crave man's vigilance, be fain From ice to fend them and from snowy winds; Bring food and feast them with their branchy fare, Nor lock your hay-loft all the winter long. But when glad summer at the west wind's call Sends either flock to pasture in the glades, Soon as the day-star shineth, hie we then To the cool meadows, while the dawn is young, The grass yet hoary, and to browsing herds The dew tastes sweetest on the tender sward. When heaven's fourth hour draws on the thickening drought, And shrill cicalas pierce the brake with song, Then at the well-springs bid them, or deep pools, From troughs of holm-oak quaff the running wave: But at day's hottest seek a shadowy vale, Where some vast ancient-timbered oak of Jove Spreads his huge branches, or where huddling black Ilex on ilex cowers in awful shade. Then once more give them water sparingly, And feed once more, till sunset, when cool eve Allays the air, and dewy moonbeams slake The forest glades, with halcyon's song the shore, And every thicket with the goldfinch rings. Of Libya's shepherds why the tale pursue? Why sing their pastures and the scattered huts They house in? Oft their cattle day and night Graze the whole month together, and go forth Into far deserts where no shelter is, So flat the plain and boundless. All his goods The Afric swain bears with him, house and home, Arms, Cretan quiver, and Amyclaean dog; As some keen Roman in his country's arms Plies the swift march beneath a cruel load; Soon with tents pitched and at his post he stands, Ere looked for by the foe. Not thus the tribes Of Scythia by the far Maeotic wave, Where turbid Ister whirls his yellow sands, And Rhodope stretched out beneath the pole Comes trending backward. There the herds they keep Close-pent in byres, nor any grass is seen Upon the plain, nor leaves upon the tree: But with snow-ridges and deep frost afar Heaped seven ells high the earth lies featureless: Still winter? still the north wind's icy breath! Nay, never sun disparts the shadows pale, Or as he rides the steep of heaven, or dips In ocean's fiery bath his plunging car. Quick ice-crusts curdle on the running stream, And iron-hooped wheels the water's back now bears, To broad wains opened, as erewhile to ships; Brass vessels oft asunder burst, and clothes Stiffen upon the wearers; juicy wines They cleave with axes; to one frozen mass Whole pools are turned; and on their untrimmed beards Stiff clings the jagged icicle. Meanwhile All heaven no less is filled with falling snow; The cattle perish: oxen's mighty frames Stand island-like amid the frost, and stags In huddling herds, by that strange weight benumbed, Scarce top the surface with their antler-points. These with no hounds they hunt, nor net with toils, Nor scare with terror of the crimson plume; But, as in vain they breast the opposing block, Butcher them, knife in hand, and so dispatch Loud-bellowing, and with glad shouts hale them home. Themselves in deep-dug caverns underground Dwell free and careless; to their hearths they heave Oak-logs and elm-trees whole, and fire them there, There play the night out, and in festive glee With barm and service sour the wine-cup mock. So 'neath the seven-starred Hyperborean wain The folk live tameless, buffeted with blasts Of Eurus from Rhipaean hills, and wrap Their bodies in the tawny fells of beasts. If wool delight thee, first, be far removed All prickly boskage, burrs and caltrops; shun Luxuriant pastures; at the outset choose White flocks with downy fleeces. For the ram, How white soe'er himself, be but the tongue 'Neath his moist palate black, reject him, lest He sully with dark spots his offspring's fleece, And seek some other o'er the teeming plain. Even with such snowy bribe of wool, if ear May trust the tale, Pan, God of Arcady, Snared and beguiled thee, Luna, calling thee To the deep woods; nor thou didst spurn his call. But who for milk hath longing, must himself Carry lucerne and lotus-leaves enow With salt herbs to the cote, whence more they love The streams, more stretch their udders, and give back A subtle taste of saltness in the milk. Many there be who from their mothers keep The new-born kids, and straightway bind their mouths With iron-tipped muzzles. What they milk at dawn, Or in the daylight hours, at night they press; What darkling or at sunset, this ere morn They bear away in baskets- for to town The shepherd hies him- or with dash of salt Just sprinkle, and lay by for winter use. Nor be thy dogs last cared for; but alike Swift Spartan hounds and fierce Molossian feed On fattening whey. Never, with these to watch, Dread nightly thief afold and ravening wolves, Or Spanish desperadoes in the rear. And oft the shy wild asses thou wilt chase, With hounds, too, hunt the hare, with hounds the doe; Oft from his woodland wallowing-den uprouse The boar, and scare him with their baying, and drive, And o'er the mountains urge into the toils Some antlered monster to their chiming cry. Learn also scented cedar-wood to burn Within the stalls, and snakes of noxious smell With fumes of galbanum to drive away. Oft under long-neglected cribs, or lurks A viper ill to handle, that hath fled The light in terror, or some snake, that wont 'Neath shade and sheltering roof to creep, and shower Its bane among the cattle, hugs the ground, Fell scourge of kine. Shepherd, seize stakes, seize stones! And as he rears defiance, and puffs out A hissing throat, down with him! see how low That cowering crest is vailed in flight, the while, His midmost coils and final sweep of tail Relaxing, the last fold drags lingering spires. Then that vile worm that in Calabrian glades Uprears his breast, and wreathes a scaly back, His length of belly pied with mighty spots- While from their founts gush any streams, while yet With showers of Spring and rainy south-winds earth Is moistened, lo! he haunts the pools, and here Housed in the banks, with fish and chattering frogs Crams the black void of his insatiate maw. Soon as the fens are parched, and earth with heat Is gaping, forth he darts into the dry, Rolls eyes of fire and rages through the fields, Furious from thirst and by the drought dismayed. Me list not then beneath the open heaven To snatch soft slumber, nor on forest-ridge Lie stretched along the grass, when, slipped his slough, To glittering youth transformed he winds his spires, And eggs or younglings leaving in his lair, Towers sunward, lightening with three-forked tongue. Of sickness, too, the causes and the signs I'll teach thee. Loathly scab assails the sheep, When chilly showers have probed them to the quick, And winter stark with hoar-frost, or when sweat Unpurged cleaves to them after shearing done, And rough thorns rend their bodies. Hence it is Shepherds their whole flock steep in running streams, While, plunged beneath the flood, with drenched fell, The ram, launched free, goes drifting down the tide. Else, having shorn, they smear their bodies o'er With acrid oil-lees, and mix silver-scum And native sulphur and Idaean pitch, Wax mollified with ointment, and therewith Sea-leek, strong hellebores, bitumen black. Yet ne'er doth kindlier fortune crown his toil, Than if with blade of iron a man dare lance The ulcer's mouth ope: for the taint is fed And quickened by confinement; while the swain His hand of healing from the wound withholds, Or sits for happier signs imploring heaven. Aye, and when inward to the bleater's bones The pain hath sunk and rages, and their limbs By thirsty fever are consumed, 'tis good To draw the enkindled heat therefrom, and pierce Within the hoof-clefts a blood-bounding vein. Of tribes Bisaltic such the wonted use, And keen Gelonian, when to Rhodope He flies, or Getic desert, and quaffs milk With horse-blood curdled. Seest one far afield Oft to the shade's mild covert win, or pull The grass tops listlessly, or hindmost lag, Or, browsing, cast her down amid the plain, At night retire belated and alone; With quick knife check the mischief, ere it creep With dire contagion through the unwary herd. Less thick and fast the whirlwind scours the main With tempest in its wake, than swarm the plagues Of cattle; nor seize they single lives alone, But sudden clear whole feeding grounds, the flock With all its promise, and extirpate the breed. Well would he trow it who, so long after, still High Alps and Noric hill-forts should behold, And Iapydian Timavus' fields, Ay, still behold the shepherds' realms a waste, And far and wide the lawns untenanted. Here from distempered heavens erewhile arose A piteous season, with the full fierce heat Of autumn glowed, and cattle-kindreds all And all wild creatures to destruction gave, Tainted the pools, the fodder charged with bane. Nor simple was the way of death, but when Hot thirst through every vein impelled had drawn Their wretched limbs together, anon o'erflowed A watery flux, and all their bones piecemeal Sapped by corruption to itself absorbed. Oft in mid sacrifice to heaven- the white Wool-woven fillet half wreathed about his brow- Some victim, standing by the altar, there Betwixt the loitering carles a-dying fell: Or, if betimes the slaughtering priest had struck, Nor with its heaped entrails blazed the pile, Nor seer to seeker thence could answer yield; Nay, scarce the up-stabbing knife with blood was stained, Scarce sullied with thin gore the surface-sand. Hence die the calves in many a pasture fair, Or at full cribs their lives' sweet breath resign; Hence on the fawning dog comes madness, hence Racks the sick swine a gasping cough that chokes With swelling at the jaws: the conquering steed, Uncrowned of effort and heedless of the sward, Faints, turns him from the springs, and paws the earth With ceaseless hoof: low droop his ears, wherefrom Bursts fitful sweat, a sweat that waxes cold Upon the dying beast; the skin is dry, And rigidly repels the handler's touch. These earlier signs they give that presage doom. But, if the advancing plague 'gin fiercer grow, Then are their eyes all fire, deep-drawn their breath, At times groan-laboured: with long sobbing heave Their lowest flanks; from either nostril streams Black blood; a rough tongue clogs the obstructed jaws. 'Twas helpful through inverted horn to pour Draughts of the wine-god down; sole way it seemed To save the dying: soon this too proved their bane, And, reinvigorate but with frenzy's fire, Even at death's pinch- the gods some happier fate Deal to the just, such madness to their foes- Each with bared teeth his own limbs mangling tore. See! as he smokes beneath the stubborn share, The bull drops, vomiting foam-dabbled gore, And heaves his latest groans. Sad goes the swain, Unhooks the steer that mourns his fellow's fate, And in mid labour leaves the plough-gear fast. Nor tall wood's shadow, nor soft sward may stir That heart's emotion, nor rock-channelled flood, More pure than amber speeding to the plain: But see! his flanks fail under him, his eyes Are dulled with deadly torpor, and his neck Sinks to the earth with drooping weight. What now Besteads him toil or service? to have turned The heavy sod with ploughshare? And yet these Ne'er knew the Massic wine-god's baneful boon, Nor twice replenished banquets: but on leaves They fare, and virgin grasses, and their cups Are crystal springs and streams with running tired, Their healthful slumbers never broke by care. Then only, say they, through that country side For Juno's rites were cattle far to seek, And ill-matched buffaloes the chariots drew To their high fanes. So, painfully with rakes They grub the soil, aye, with their very nails Dig in the corn-seeds, and with strained neck O'er the high uplands drag the creaking wains. No wolf for ambush pries about the pen, Nor round the flock prowls nightly; pain more sharp Subdues him: the shy deer and fleet-foot stags With hounds now wander by the haunts of men Vast ocean's offspring, and all tribes that swim, On the shore's confine the wave washes up, Like shipwrecked bodies: seals, unwonted there, Flee to the rivers. Now the viper dies, For all his den's close winding, and with scales Erect the astonied water-worms. The air Brooks not the very birds, that headlong fall, And leave their life beneath the soaring cloud. Moreover now nor change of fodder serves, And subtlest cures but injure; then were foiled The masters, Chiron sprung from Phillyron, And Amythaon's son Melampus. See! From Stygian darkness launched into the light Comes raging pale Tisiphone; she drives Disease and fear before her, day by day Still rearing higher that all-devouring head. With bleat of flocks and lowings thick resound Rivers and parched banks and sloping heights. At last in crowds she slaughters them, she chokes The very stalls with carrion-heaps that rot In hideous corruption, till men learn With earth to cover them, in pits to hide. For e'en the fells are useless; nor the flesh With water may they purge, or tame with fire, Nor shear the fleeces even, gnawed through and through With foul disease, nor touch the putrid webs; But, had one dared the loathly weeds to try, Red blisters and an unclean sweat o'erran His noisome limbs, till, no long tarriance made, The fiery curse his tainted frame devoured. GEORGIC IV Of air-born honey, gift of heaven, I now Take up the tale. Upon this theme no less Look thou, Maecenas, with indulgent eye. A marvellous display of puny powers, High-hearted chiefs, a nation's history, Its traits, its bent, its battles and its clans, All, each, shall pass before you, while I sing. Slight though the poet's theme, not slight the praise, So frown not heaven, and Phoebus hear his call. First find your bees a settled sure abode, Where neither winds can enter (winds blow back The foragers with food returning home) Nor sheep and butting kids tread down the flowers, Nor heifer wandering wide upon the plain Dash off the dew, and bruise the springing blades. Let the gay lizard too keep far aloof His scale-clad body from their honied stalls, And the bee-eater, and what birds beside, And Procne smirched with blood upon the breast From her own murderous hands. For these roam wide Wasting all substance, or the bees themselves Strike flying, and in their beaks bear home, to glut Those savage nestlings with the dainty prey. But let clear springs and moss-green pools be near, And through the grass a streamlet hurrying run, Some palm-tree o'er the porch extend its shade, Or huge-grown oleaster, that in Spring, Their own sweet Spring-tide, when the new-made chiefs Lead forth the young swarms, and, escaped their comb, The colony comes forth to sport and play, The neighbouring bank may lure them from the heat, Or bough befriend with hospitable shade. O'er the mid-waters, whether swift or still, Cast willow-branches and big stones enow, Bridge after bridge, where they may footing find And spread their wide wings to the summer sun, If haply Eurus, swooping as they pause, Have dashed with spray or plunged them in the deep. And let green cassias and far-scented thymes, And savory with its heavy-laden breath Bloom round about, and violet-beds hard by Sip sweetness from the fertilizing springs. For the hive's self, or stitched of hollow bark, Or from tough osier woven, let the doors Be strait of entrance; for stiff winter's cold Congeals the honey, and heat resolves and thaws, To bees alike disastrous; not for naught So haste they to cement the tiny pores That pierce their walls, and fill the crevices With pollen from the flowers, and glean and keep To this same end the glue, that binds more fast Than bird-lime or the pitch from Ida's pines. Oft too in burrowed holes, if fame be true, They make their cosy subterranean home, And deeply lodged in hollow rocks are found, Or in the cavern of an age-hewn tree. Thou not the less smear round their crannied cribs With warm smooth mud-coat, and strew leaves above; But near their home let neither yew-tree grow, Nor reddening crabs be roasted, and mistrust Deep marish-ground and mire with noisome smell, Or where the hollow rocks sonorous ring, And the word spoken buffets and rebounds. What more? When now the golden sun has put Winter to headlong flight beneath the world, And oped the doors of heaven with summer ray, Forthwith they roam the glades and forests o'er, Rifle the painted flowers, or sip the streams, Light-hovering on the surface. Hence it is With some sweet rapture, that we know not of, Their little ones they foster, hence with skill Work out new wax or clinging honey mould. So when the cage-escaped hosts you see Float heavenward through the hot clear air, until You marvel at yon dusky cloud that spreads And lengthens on the wind, then mark them well; For then 'tis ever the fresh springs they seek And bowery shelter: hither must you bring The savoury sweets I bid, and sprinkle them, Bruised balsam and the wax-flower's lowly weed, And wake and shake the tinkling cymbals heard By the great Mother: on the anointed spots Themselves will settle, and in wonted wise Seek of themselves the cradle's inmost depth. But if to battle they have hied them forth- For oft 'twixt king and king with uproar dire Fierce feud arises, and at once from far You may discern what passion sways the mob, And how their hearts are throbbing for the strife; Hark! the hoarse brazen note that warriors know Chides on the loiterers, and the ear may catch A sound that mocks the war-trump's broken blasts; Then in hot haste they muster, then flash wings, Sharpen their pointed beaks and knit their thews, And round the king, even to his royal tent, Throng rallying, and with shouts defy the foe. So, when a dry Spring and clear space is given, Forth from the gates they burst, they clash on high; A din arises; they are heaped and rolled Into one mighty mass, and headlong fall, Not denselier hail through heaven, nor pelting so Rains from the shaken oak its acorn-shower. Conspicuous by their wings the chiefs themselves Press through the heart of battle, and display A giant's spirit in each pigmy frame, Steadfast no inch to yield till these or those The victor's ponderous arm has turned to flight. Such fiery passions and such fierce assaults A little sprinkled dust controls and quells. And now, both leaders from the field recalled, Who hath the worser seeming, do to death, Lest royal waste wax burdensome, but let His better lord it on the empty throne. One with gold-burnished flakes will shine like fire, For twofold are their kinds, the nobler he, Of peerless front and lit with flashing scales; That other, from neglect and squalor foul, Drags slow a cumbrous belly. As with kings, So too with people, diverse is their mould, Some rough and loathly, as when the wayfarer Scapes from a whirl of dust, and scorched with heat Spits forth the dry grit from his parched mouth: The others shine forth and flash with lightning-gleam, Their backs all blazoned with bright drops of gold Symmetric: this the likelier breed; from these, When heaven brings round the season, thou shalt strain Sweet honey, nor yet so sweet as passing clear, And mellowing on the tongue the wine-god's fire. But when the swarms fly aimlessly abroad, Disport themselves in heaven and spurn their cells, Leaving the hive unwarmed, from such vain play Must you refrain their volatile desires, Nor hard the task: tear off the monarchs' wings; While these prove loiterers, none beside will dare Mount heaven, or pluck the standards from the camp. Let gardens with the breath of saffron flowers Allure them, and the lord of Hellespont, Priapus, wielder of the willow-scythe, Safe in his keeping hold from birds and thieves. And let the man to whom such cares are dear Himself bring thyme and pine-trees from the heights, And strew them in broad belts about their home; No hand but his the blistering task should ply, Plant the young slips, or shed the genial showers. And I myself, were I not even now Furling my sails, and, nigh the journey's end, Eager to turn my vessel's prow to shore, Perchance would sing what careful husbandry Makes the trim garden smile; of Paestum too, Whose roses bloom and fade and bloom again; How endives glory in the streams they drink, And green banks in their parsley, and how the gourd Twists through the grass and rounds him to paunch; Nor of Narcissus had my lips been dumb, That loiterer of the flowers, nor supple-stemmed Acanthus, with the praise of ivies pale, And myrtles clinging to the shores they love. For 'neath the shade of tall Oebalia's towers, Where dark Galaesus laves the yellowing fields, An old man once I mind me to have seen- From Corycus he came- to whom had fallen Some few poor acres of neglected land, And they nor fruitful' neath the plodding steer, Meet for the grazing herd, nor good for vines. Yet he, the while his meagre garden-herbs Among the thorns he planted, and all round White lilies, vervains, and lean poppy set, In pride of spirit matched the wealth of kings, And home returning not till night was late, With unbought plenty heaped his board on high. He was the first to cull the rose in spring, He the ripe fruits in autumn; and ere yet Winter had ceased in sullen ire to rive The rocks with frost, and with her icy bit Curb in the running waters, there was he Plucking the rathe faint hyacinth, while he chid Summer's slow footsteps and the lagging West. Therefore he too with earliest brooding bees And their full swarms o'erflowed, and first was he To press the bubbling honey from the comb; Lime-trees were his, and many a branching pine; And all the fruits wherewith in early bloom The orchard-tree had clothed her, in full tale Hung there, by mellowing autumn perfected. He too transplanted tall-grown elms a-row, Time-toughened pear, thorns bursting with the plum And plane now yielding serviceable shade For dry lips to drink under: but these things, Shut off by rigorous limits, I pass by, And leave for others to sing after me. Come, then, I will unfold the natural powers Great Jove himself upon the bees bestowed, The boon for which, led by the shrill sweet strains Of the Curetes and their clashing brass, They fed the King of heaven in Dicte's cave. Alone of all things they receive and hold Community of offspring, and they house Together in one city, and beneath The shelter of majestic laws they live; And they alone fixed home and country know, And in the summer, warned of coming cold, Make proof of toil, and for the general store Hoard up their gathered harvesting. For some Watch o'er the victualling of the hive, and these By settled order ply their tasks afield; And some within the confines of their home Plant firm the comb's first layer, Narcissus' tear, And sticky gum oozed from the bark of trees, Then set the clinging wax to hang therefrom. Others the while lead forth the full-grown young, Their country's hope, and others press and pack The thrice repured honey, and stretch their cells To bursting with the clear-strained nectar sweet. Some, too, the wardship of the gates befalls, Who watch in turn for showers and cloudy skies, Or ease returning labourers of their load, Or form a band and from their precincts drive The drones, a lazy herd. How glows the work! How sweet the honey smells of perfumed thyme Like the Cyclopes, when in haste they forge From the slow-yielding ore the thunderbolts, Some from the bull's-hide bellows in and out Let the blasts drive, some dip i' the water-trough The sputtering metal: with the anvil's weight Groans Etna: they alternately in time With giant strength uplift their sinewy arms, Or twist the iron with the forceps' grip- Not otherwise, to measure small with great, The love of getting planted in their breasts Goads on the bees, that haunt old Cecrops' heights, Each in his sphere to labour. The old have charge To keep the town, and build the walled combs, And mould the cunning chambers; but the youth, Their tired legs packed with thyme, come labouring home Belated, for afar they range to feed On arbutes and the grey-green willow-leaves, And cassia and the crocus blushing red, Glue-yielding limes, and hyacinths dusky-eyed. One hour for rest have all, and one for toil: With dawn they hurry from the gates- no room For loiterers there: and once again, when even Now bids them quit their pasturing on the plain, Then homeward make they, then refresh their strength: A hum arises: hark! they buzz and buzz About the doors and threshold; till at length Safe laid to rest they hush them for the night, And welcome slumber laps their weary limbs. But from the homestead not too far they fare, When showers hang like to fall, nor, east winds nigh, Confide in heaven, but 'neath the city walls Safe-circling fetch them water, or essay Brief out-goings, and oft weigh-up tiny stones, As light craft ballast in the tossing tide, Wherewith they poise them through the cloudy vast. This law of life, too, by the bees obeyed, Will move thy wonder, that nor sex with sex Yoke they in marriage, nor yield their limbs to love, Nor know the pangs of labour, but alone From leaves and honied herbs, the mothers, each, Gather their offspring in their mouths, alone Supply new kings and pigmy commonwealth, And their old court and waxen realm repair. Oft, too, while wandering, against jagged stones Their wings they fray, and 'neath the burden yield Their liberal lives: so deep their love of flowers, So glorious deem they honey's proud acquist. Therefore, though each a life of narrow span, Ne'er stretched to summers more than seven, befalls, Yet deathless doth the race endure, and still Perennial stands the fortune of their line, From grandsire unto grandsire backward told. Moreover, not Aegyptus, nor the realm Of boundless Lydia, no, nor Parthia's hordes, Nor Median Hydaspes, to their king Do such obeisance: lives the king unscathed, One will inspires the million: is he dead, Snapt is the bond of fealty; they themselves Ravage their toil-wrought honey, and rend amain Their own comb's waxen trellis. He is the lord Of all their labour; him with awful eye They reverence, and with murmuring throngs surround, In crowds attend, oft shoulder him on high, Or with their bodies shield him in the fight, And seek through showering wounds a glorious death. Led by these tokens, and with such traits to guide, Some say that unto bees a share is given Of the Divine Intelligence, and to drink Pure draughts of ether; for God permeates all- Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault of heaven- From whom flocks, herds, men, beasts of every kind, Draw each at birth the fine essential flame; Yea, and that all things hence to Him return, Brought back by dissolution, nor can death Find place: but, each into his starry rank, Alive they soar, and mount the heights of heaven. If now their narrow home thou wouldst unseal, And broach the treasures of the honey-house, With draught of water first toment thy lips, And spread before thee fumes of trailing smoke. Twice is the teeming produce gathered in, Twofold their time of harvest year by year, Once when Taygete the Pleiad uplifts Her comely forehead for the earth to see, With foot of scorn spurning the ocean-streams, Once when in gloom she flies the watery Fish, And dips from heaven into the wintry wave. Unbounded then their wrath; if hurt, they breathe Venom into their bite, cleave to the veins And let the sting lie buried, and leave their lives Behind them in the wound. But if you dread Too rigorous a winter, and would fain Temper the coming time, and their bruised hearts And broken estate to pity move thy soul, Yet who would fear to fumigate with thyme, Or cut the empty wax away? for oft Into their comb the newt has gnawed unseen, And the light-loathing beetles crammed their bed, And he that sits at others' board to feast, The do-naught drone; or 'gainst the unequal foe Swoops the fierce hornet, or the moth's fell tribe; Or spider, victim of Minerva's spite, Athwart the doorway hangs her swaying net. The more impoverished they, the keenlier all To mend the fallen fortunes of their race Will nerve them, fill the cells up, tier on tier, And weave their granaries from the rifled flowers. Now, seeing that life doth even to bee-folk bring Our human chances, if in dire disease Their bodies' strength should languish- which anon By no uncertain tokens may be told- Forthwith the sick change hue; grim leanness mars Their visage; then from out the cells they bear Forms reft of light, and lead the mournful pomp; Or foot to foot about the porch they hang, Or within closed doors loiter, listless all From famine, and benumbed with shrivelling cold. Then is a deep note heard, a long-drawn hum, As when the chill South through the forests sighs, As when the troubled ocean hoarsely booms With back-swung billow, as ravening tide of fire Surges, shut fast within the furnace-walls. Then do I bid burn scented galbanum, And, honey-streams through reeden troughs instilled, Challenge and cheer their flagging appetite To taste the well-known food; and it shall boot To mix therewith the savour bruised from gall, And rose-leaves dried, or must to thickness boiled By a fierce fire, or juice of raisin-grapes From Psithian vine, and with its bitter smell Centaury, and the famed Cecropian thyme. There is a meadow-flower by country folk Hight star-wort; 'tis a plant not far to seek; For from one sod an ample growth it rears, Itself all golden, but girt with plenteous leaves, Where glory of purple shines through violet gloom. With chaplets woven hereof full oft are decked Heaven's altars: harsh its taste upon the tongue; Shepherds in vales smooth-shorn of nibbling flocks By Mella's winding waters gather it. The roots of this, well seethed in fragrant wine, Set in brimmed baskets at their doors for food. But if one's whole stock fail him at a stroke, Nor hath he whence to breed the race anew, 'Tis time the wondrous secret to disclose Taught by the swain of Arcady, even how The blood of slaughtered bullocks oft has borne Bees from corruption. I will trace me back To its prime source the story's tangled thread, And thence unravel. For where thy happy folk, Canopus, city of Pellaean fame, Dwell by the Nile's lagoon-like overflow, And high o'er furrows they have called their own Skim in their painted wherries; where, hard by, The quivered Persian presses, and that flood Which from the swart-skinned Aethiop bears him down, Swift-parted into sevenfold branching mouths With black mud fattens and makes Aegypt green, That whole domain its welfare's hope secure Rests on this art alone. And first is chosen A strait recess, cramped closer to this end, Which next with narrow roof of tiles atop 'Twixt prisoning walls they pinch, and add hereto From the four winds four slanting window-slits. Then seek they from the herd a steer, whose horns With two years' growth are curling, and stop fast, Plunge madly as he may, the panting mouth And nostrils twain, and done with blows to death, Batter his flesh to pulp i' the hide yet whole, And shut the doors, and leave him there to lie. But 'neath his ribs they scatter broken boughs, With thyme and fresh-pulled cassias: this is done When first the west winds bid the waters flow, Ere flush the meadows with new tints, and ere The twittering swallow buildeth from the beams. Meanwhile the juice within his softened bones Heats and ferments, and things of wondrous birth, Footless at first, anon with feet and wings, Swarm there and buzz, a marvel to behold; And more and more the fleeting breeze they take, Till, like a shower that pours from summer-clouds, Forth burst they, or like shafts from quivering string When Parthia's flying hosts provoke the fray. Say what was he, what God, that fashioned forth This art for us, O Muses? of man's skill Whence came the new adventure? From thy vale, Peneian Tempe, turning, bee-bereft, So runs the tale, by famine and disease, Mournful the shepherd Aristaeus stood Fast by the haunted river-head, and thus With many a plaint to her that bare him cried: "Mother, Cyrene, mother, who hast thy home Beneath this whirling flood, if he thou sayest, Apollo, lord of Thymbra, be my sire, Sprung from the Gods' high line, why barest thou me With fortune's ban for birthright? Where is now Thy love to me-ward banished from thy breast? O! wherefore didst thou bid me hope for heaven? Lo! even the crown of this poor mortal life, Which all my skilful care by field and fold, No art neglected, scarce had fashioned forth, Even this falls from me, yet thou call'st me son. Nay, then, arise! With thine own hands pluck up My fruit-plantations: on the homestead fling Pitiless fire; make havoc of my crops; Burn the young plants, and wield the stubborn axe Against my vines, if there hath taken the Such loathing of my greatness." But that cry, Even from her chamber in the river-deeps, His mother heard: around her spun the nymphs Milesian wool stained through with hyaline dye, Drymo, Xantho, Ligea, Phyllodoce, Their glossy locks o'er snowy shoulders shed, Cydippe and Lycorias yellow-haired, A maiden one, one newly learned even then To bear Lucina's birth-pang. Clio, too, And Beroe, sisters, ocean-children both, Both zoned with gold and girt with dappled fell, Ephyre and Opis, and from Asian meads Deiopea, and, bow at length laid by, Fleet-footed Arethusa. But in their midst Fair Clymene was telling o'er the tale Of Vulcan's idle vigilance and the stealth Of Mars' sweet rapine, and from Chaos old Counted the jostling love-joys of the Gods. Charmed by whose lay, the while their woolly tasks With spindles down they drew, yet once again Smote on his mother's ears the mournful plaint Of Aristaeus; on their glassy thrones Amazement held them all; but Arethuse Before the rest put forth her auburn head, Peering above the wave-top, and from far Exclaimed, "Cyrene, sister, not for naught Scared by a groan so deep, behold! 'tis he, Even Aristaeus, thy heart's fondest care, Here by the brink of the Peneian sire Stands woebegone and weeping, and by name Cries out upon thee for thy cruelty." To whom, strange terror knocking at her heart, "Bring, bring him to our sight," the mother cried; "His feet may tread the threshold even of Gods." So saying, she bids the flood yawn wide and yield A pathway for his footsteps; but the wave Arched mountain-wise closed round him, and within Its mighty bosom welcomed, and let speed To the deep river-bed. And now, with eyes Of wonder gazing on his mother's hall And watery kingdom and cave-prisoned pools And echoing groves, he went, and, stunned by that Stupendous whirl of waters, separate saw All streams beneath the mighty earth that glide, Phasis and Lycus, and that fountain-head Whence first the deep Enipeus leaps to light, Whence father Tiber, and whence Anio's flood, And Hypanis that roars amid his rocks, And Mysian Caicus, and, bull-browed 'Twixt either gilded horn, Eridanus, Than whom none other through the laughing plains More furious pours into the purple sea. Soon as the chamber's hanging roof of stone Was gained, and now Cyrene from her son Had heard his idle weeping, in due course Clear water for his hands the sisters bring, With napkins of shorn pile, while others heap The board with dainties, and set on afresh The brimming goblets; with Panchaian fires Upleap the altars; then the mother spake, "Take beakers of Maconian wine," she said, "Pour we to Ocean." Ocean, sire of all, She worships, and the sister-nymphs who guard The hundred forests and the hundred streams; Thrice Vesta's fire with nectar clear she dashed, Thrice to the roof-top shot the flame and shone: Armed with which omen she essayed to speak: "In Neptune's gulf Carpathian dwells a seer, Caerulean Proteus, he who metes the main With fish-drawn chariot of two-footed steeds; Now visits he his native home once more, Pallene and the Emathian ports; to him We nymphs do reverence, ay, and Nereus old; For all things knows the seer, both those which are And have been, or which time hath yet to bring; So willed it Neptune, whose portentous flocks, And loathly sea-calves 'neath the surge he feeds. Him first, my son, behoves thee seize and bind That he may all the cause of sickness show, And grant a prosperous end. For save by force No rede will he vouchsafe, nor shalt thou bend His soul by praying; whom once made captive, ply With rigorous force and fetters; against these His wiles will break and spend themselves in vain. I, when the sun has lit his noontide fires, When the blades thirst, and cattle love the shade, Myself will guide thee to the old man's haunt, Whither he hies him weary from the waves, That thou mayst safelier steal upon his sleep. But when thou hast gripped him fast with hand and gyve, Then divers forms and bestial semblances Shall mock thy grasp; for sudden he will change To bristly boar, fell tigress, dragon scaled, And tawny-tufted lioness, or send forth A crackling sound of fire, and so shake of The fetters, or in showery drops anon Dissolve and vanish. But the more he shifts His endless transformations, thou, my son, More straitlier clench the clinging bands, until His body's shape return to that thou sawest, When with closed eyelids first he sank to sleep." So saying, an odour of ambrosial dew She sheds around, and all his frame therewith Steeps throughly; forth from his trim-combed locks Breathed effluence sweet, and a lithe vigour leapt Into his limbs. There is a cavern vast Scooped in the mountain-side, where wave on wave By the wind's stress is driven, and breaks far up Its inmost creeks- safe anchorage from of old For tempest-taken mariners: therewithin, Behind a rock's huge barrier, Proteus hides. Here in close covert out of the sun's eye The youth she places, and herself the while Swathed in a shadowy mist stands far aloof. And now the ravening dog-star that burns up The thirsty Indians blazed in heaven; his course The fiery sun had half devoured: the blades Were parched, and the void streams with droughty jaws Baked to their mud-beds by the scorching ray, When Proteus seeking his accustomed cave Strode from the billows: round him frolicking The watery folk that people the waste sea Sprinkled the bitter brine-dew far and wide. Along the shore in scattered groups to feed The sea-calves stretch them: while the seer himself, Like herdsman on the hills when evening bids The steers from pasture to their stall repair, And the lambs' bleating whets the listening wolves, Sits midmost on the rock and tells his tale. But Aristaeus, the foe within his clutch, Scarce suffering him compose his aged limbs, With a great cry leapt on him, and ere he rose Forestalled him with the fetters; he nathless, All unforgetful of his ancient craft, Transforms himself to every wondrous thing, Fire and a fearful beast, and flowing stream. But when no trickery found a path for flight, Baffled at length, to his own shape returned, With human lips he spake, "Who bade thee, then, So reckless in youth's hardihood, affront Our portals? or what wouldst thou hence?"- But he, "Proteus, thou knowest, of thine own heart thou knowest; For thee there is no cheating, but cease thou To practise upon me: at heaven's behest I for my fainting fortunes hither come An oracle to ask thee." There he ceased. Whereat the seer, by stubborn force constrained, Shot forth the grey light of his gleaming eyes Upon him, and with fiercely gnashing teeth Unlocks his lips to spell the fates of heaven: "Doubt not 'tis wrath divine that plagues thee thus, Nor light the debt thou payest; 'tis Orpheus' self, Orpheus unhappy by no fault of his, So fates prevent not, fans thy penal fires, Yet madly raging for his ravished bride. She in her haste to shun thy hot pursuit Along the stream, saw not the coming death, Where at her feet kept ward upon the bank In the tall grass a monstrous water-snake. But with their cries the Dryad-band her peers Filled up the mountains to their proudest peaks: Wailed for her fate the heights of Rhodope, And tall Pangaea, and, beloved of Mars, The land that bowed to Rhesus, Thrace no less With Hebrus' stream; and Orithyia wept, Daughter of Acte old. But Orpheus' self, Soothing his love-pain with the hollow shell, Thee his sweet wife on the lone shore alone, Thee when day dawned and when it died he sang. Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came, Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove Grim with a horror of great darkness- came, Entered, and faced the Manes and the King Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame. Then from the deepest deeps of Erebus, Wrung by his minstrelsy, the hollow shades Came trooping, ghostly semblances of forms Lost to the light, as birds by myriads hie To greenwood boughs for cover, when twilight-hour Or storms of winter chase them from the hills; Matrons and men, and great heroic frames Done with life's service, boys, unwedded girls, Youths placed on pyre before their fathers' eyes. Round them, with black slime choked and hideous weed, Cocytus winds; there lies the unlovely swamp Of dull dead water, and, to pen them fast, Styx with her ninefold barrier poured between. Nay, even the deep Tartarean Halls of death Stood lost in wonderment, and the Eumenides, Their brows with livid locks of serpents twined; Even Cerberus held his triple jaws agape, And, the wind hushed, Ixion's wheel stood still. And now with homeward footstep he had passed All perils scathless, and, at length restored, Eurydice to realms of upper air Had well-nigh won, behind him following- So Proserpine had ruled it- when his heart A sudden mad desire surprised and seized- Meet fault to be forgiven, might Hell forgive. For at the very threshold of the day, Heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve, He stopped, turned, looked upon Eurydice His own once more. But even with the look, Poured out was all his labour, broken the bond Of that fell tyrant, and a crash was heard Three times like thunder in the meres of hell. 'Orpheus! what ruin hath thy frenzy wrought On me, alas! and thee? Lo! once again The unpitying fates recall me, and dark sleep Closes my swimming eyes. And now farewell: Girt with enormous night I am borne away, Outstretching toward thee, thine, alas! no more, These helpless hands.' She spake, and suddenly, Like smoke dissolving into empty air, Passed and was sundered from his sight; nor him Clutching vain shadows, yearning sore to speak, Thenceforth beheld she, nor no second time Hell's boatman brooks he pass the watery bar. What should he do? fly whither, twice bereaved? Move with what tears the Manes, with what voice The Powers of darkness? She indeed even now Death-cold was floating on the Stygian barge! For seven whole months unceasingly, men say, Beneath a skyey crag, by thy lone wave, Strymon, he wept, and in the caverns chill Unrolled his story, melting tigers' hearts, And leading with his lay the oaks along. As in the poplar-shade a nightingale Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain, Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain, Till all the region with her wrongs o'erflows. No love, no new desire, constrained his soul: By snow-bound Tanais and the icy north, Far steppes to frost Rhipaean forever wed, Alone he wandered, lost Eurydice Lamenting, and the gifts of Dis ungiven. Scorned by which tribute the Ciconian dames, Amid their awful Bacchanalian rites And midnight revellings, tore him limb from limb, And strewed his fragments over the wide fields. Then too, even then, what time the Hebrus stream, Oeagrian Hebrus, down mid-current rolled, Rent from the marble neck, his drifting head, The death-chilled tongue found yet a voice to cry 'Eurydice! ah! poor Eurydice!' With parting breath he called her, and the banks From the broad stream caught up 'Eurydice!'" So Proteus ending plunged into the deep, And, where he plunged, beneath the eddying whirl Churned into foam the water, and was gone; But not Cyrene, who unquestioned thus Bespake the trembling listener: "Nay, my son, From that sad bosom thou mayst banish care: Hence came that plague of sickness, hence the nymphs, With whom in the tall woods the dance she wove, Wrought on thy bees, alas! this deadly bane. Bend thou before the Dell-nymphs, gracious powers: Bring gifts, and sue for pardon: they will grant Peace to thine asking, and an end of wrath. But how to approach them will I first unfold- Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk, That browse to-day the green Lycaean heights, Pick from thy herds, as many kine to match, Whose necks the yoke pressed never: then for these Build up four altars by the lofty fanes, And from their throats let gush the victims' blood, And in the greenwood leave their bodies lone. Then, when the ninth dawn hath displayed its beams, To Orpheus shalt thou send his funeral dues, Poppies of Lethe, and let slay a sheep Coal-black, then seek the grove again, and soon For pardon found adore Eurydice With a slain calf for victim." No delay: The self-same hour he hies him forth to do His mother's bidding: to the shrine he came, The appointed altars reared, and thither led Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk, With kine to match, that never yoke had known; Then, when the ninth dawn had led in the day, To Orpheus sent his funeral dues, and sought The grove once more. But sudden, strange to tell A portent they espy: through the oxen's flesh, Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil In endless clouds they spread them, till at last On yon tree-top together fused they cling, And drop their cluster from the bending boughs. So sang I of the tilth of furrowed fields, Of flocks and trees, while Caesar's majesty Launched forth the levin-bolts of war by deep Euphrates, and bare rule o'er willing folk Though vanquished, and essayed the heights of heaven. I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope The nursling, wooed the flowery walks of peace Inglorious, who erst trilled for shepherd-wights The wanton ditty, and sang in saucy youth Thee, Tityrus, 'neath the spreading beech tree's shade. 
25905	----	Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA), Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University (http://chla.library.cornell.edu/) http://chla.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=chla;idno=2923510 Transcriber's note: Text enclosed between tilde characters was in bold face in the original (~bold face~). [oe] represents the oe-ligature. THE $100. PRIZE ESSAY ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE POTATO. Prize offered by W. T. WYLIE and awarded to D. H. COMPTON. HOW TO COOK THE POTATO, _Furnished by Prof. BLOT._ [Illustration] ILLUSTRATED. PRICE, 25 CENTS. New-York: ORANGE JUDD CO., No. 751 BROADWAY. PRIZE ESSAY ON THE POTATO AND ITS CULTIVATION. $100. In the fall of 1868, I offered $100 as a prize for the best Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato, under conditions then published; the prize to be awarded by a committee composed of the following gentlemen, well known in agricultural circles: Colonel MASON C. WELD, Associate Editor of _American Agriculturist_. A. S. FULLER, ESQ., of Ridgewood, N. J., the popular author of several horticultural works, and Associate Editor of the _Hearth and Home_. Dr. F. M. HEXAMER, who has made the cultivation of the potato a special study. In the month of January, 1870, the committee awarded the prize to D. A. Compton; and this Essay is herewith submitted to the public in the hope of stimulating a more intelligent and successful cultivation of the Potato. BELLEFONTE, PA., January, 1870. W. T. WYLIE. OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, NEW-YORK, January, 1870. REV. W. T. WYLIE: DEAR SIR: The essays submitted to us by Mr. Bliss, according to your announcement, numbered about twenty. Several could not be called essays from their brevity, and others were exceedingly incomplete. About twelve, however, required and were worthy of careful consideration. That of Mr. D. A. Compton, of Hawley, Wayne County, Pa., was, in the opinion of your committee, decidedly superior to the others as a practical treatise, sure to be of use to potato-growers in every part of the country, and well worthy the liberal prize offered by yourself. In behalf of the committee, sincerely yours, MASON C. WELD, _Chairman_. POTATO CULTURE. BY D. A. COMPTON, HAWLEY, PENNSYLVANIA. The design of this little treatise is to present, with minuteness of detail, that mode of culture which experience and observation have proved to be best adapted to the production of the Potato crop. It is written by one who himself holds the plow, and who has, since his early youth, been engaged in agriculture in its various branches, to the exclusion of other pursuits. The statements which appear in the following pages are based upon actual personal experience, and are the results of many experiments made to test as many theories. Throughout the Northern States of our country the potato is the third of the three staple articles of food. It is held in such universal esteem as to be regarded as nearly indispensable. This fact is sufficient to render a thorough knowledge of the best varieties for use, the character of soil best adapted to their growth, their cultivation and after-care, matters of the highest importance to the farmers of the United States. The main object of this essay is so to instruct the novice in potato-growing that he may be enabled to go to work understandingly and produce the potato in its highest perfection, and realize from his labors bestowed on the crop the greatest possible profits. SOIL REQUIRED--ITS PREPARATION. The potato is most profitably grown in a warm, dry, sandy, or gravelly loam, well filled with decayed vegetable matters. The famous potato lands of Lake County, Ohio, from which such vast quantities of potatoes are shipped yearly, are yellow sand. This potato district is confined to ridges running parallel with Lake Erie, which, according to geological indications, have each at different periods defined its boundaries. This sand owes much of its potato-growing qualities to the sedimentary deposit of the lake and to manural properties furnished by the decomposition of the shells of water-snails, shell-fish, etc., that inhabited the waters. New lands, or lands recently denuded of the forest, if sufficiently dry, produce tubers of the most excellent quality. Grown on dry, new land, the potato always cooks dry and mealy, and possesses an agreeable flavor and aroma, not to be attained in older soils. In no argillaceous soil can the potato be grown to perfection as regards quality. Large crops on such soil may be obtained in favorable seasons, but the tubers are invariably coarse-fleshed and ill-flavored. To produce roots of the best quality, the ground must be dry, deep, and porous; and it should be remembered that, to obtain very large crops, it is almost impossible to get too much humus in the soil. Humus is usually added to arable land either by plowing under green crops, such as clover, buckwheat, peas, etc., or by drawing and working in muck obtained from swamps and low places. The muck should be drawn to the field in fall or winter, and exposed in small heaps to the action of frost. In the following spring, sufficient lime should be mixed with it to neutralize the acid, (which is found in nearly all muck,) and the whole be spread evenly and worked into the surface with harrow or cultivator. Leaves from the woods, buckwheat straw, bean, pea, and hop vines, etc., plowed under long enough before planting to allow them time to rot, are very beneficial. Sea-weed, when bountifully applied, and turned under early in the fall, has no superior as a manure for the potato. No stable or barn-yard manure should be applied to this crop. If such nitrogenous manure must be used on the soil, it is better to apply it to some other crop, to be followed the succeeding year by potatoes. The use of stable manure predisposes the tubers to rot; detracts very much from the desired flavor; besides, generally not more than one half as many bushels can be grown per acre as can be obtained by using manures of a different nature. Market gardeners, many of whom from necessity plant on the same ground year after year, often use fine old stable manure with profit. Usually they plant only the earlier varieties, crowd them with all possible speed, dig early, and sell large and little before they have time to rot, thus clearing the ground for later-growing vegetables. Thus grown, potatoes are of inferior quality, and the yield is not always satisfactory. Flavor, however, is seldom thought of by the hungry denizens of our cities, in their eagerness to get a taste of something fresh. Market gardeners will find great benefit from the use of wood-ashes, lime, and the phosphates. Sprinkle superphosphate in the hill at the rate of two hundred pounds per acre; mix it slightly in the soil with an iron rake or potato-hook, then plant the seed. Just before the last hoeing, sprinkle on and around the hill a large handful of wood-ashes, or an equal quantity of lime slacked in brine as strong as salt will make it. But for the generality of farmers, those who grow only their own supply, or those who produce largely for market, no other method of preparing the soil is so good, so easy, and so cheap as the following; it requires time, but pays a big interest: Seed down the ground to clover with wheat or oats. As soon as the grain is off, sow one hundred and fifty pounds of plaster (gypsum) per acre, and keep off all stock. The next spring, when the clover has made a growth of two inches, sow the same quantity of plaster again. About the tenth of July, harrow down the clover, driving the same direction and on the same sized lands you wish to plow; then plow the clover neatly under about seven inches deep. Harrow down the same way it was plowed, and immediately sow and harrow in two bushels of buckwheat per acre. When it has grown two inches, sow plaster as before; and when the buckwheat has grown as large as it will, harrow down and plow under about five inches deep. This, when cross-plowed in the spring sufficiently deep to bring up the clover-sod, is potato ground _first-class in all respects_. It is hardly supposable that this mode of preparation of soil would meet with favor among all farmers. There is a parsimonious class of cultivators who would consider it a downright loss of time, seed, and labor; but any one who will take the trouble to investigate, will find that these same parsimonious men never produced four hundred bushels of potatoes per acre; and that the few bushels of small tubers that they do dig from an acre, are produced at considerable loss. "Men do not gather grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles." To make potato-growing profitable in these times of high prices of land and labor, it is absolutely necessary that the soil be in every way fitted to meet any and all demands of the crop. It is said that in the State of Maine, previous to the appearance of the potato disease, and before the soil had become exhausted by continued cropping, potatoes yielded an average of four hundred bushels per acre. Now, every observer is aware that the present average yield of the same vegetable is much less than half what it was formerly. This great deterioration in yield can not be attributed to "running out" of varieties; for varieties are extant which have not yet passed their prime. It can not be wholly due to disease; for disease does not occur in every season and in every place. True, we have more insects than formerly, but they can not be responsible for all the great falling off. It is traceable mainly to poverty of the soil in certain ingredients imperatively needed by the crop for its best development, and to the pernicious effect of enriching with nitrogenous manures. Any one who will plant on suitably dry soil, enriched only with forest-leaves, sea-weeds, or by plowing under green crops until the whole soil to a proper depth is completely filled with vegetable matter, will find to his satisfaction that the potato can yet be grown in all its pristine vigor and productiveness. To realize from potato-growing the greatest possible profits, (and profits are what we are all after,) the following conditions must be strictly adhered to: First, the ground chosen _must be dry_, either naturally or made so by thorough drainage; a gently sloping, deep, sandy or gravelly loam is preferable. Second, the land should be liberally enriched with humus by some of the means mentioned, if it is not already present in the soil in sufficient quantities, and the soil should be deeply and thoroughly plowed, rendering it light, porous, and pulverulent, that the air and moisture may easily penetrate to any desirable depth of it; and a proper quantity of either wood-ashes or lime, or both, mixed with common salt, should be harrowed into the surface before planting, or be applied on top of the hills immediately after planting. And, finally, the cultivation and after-care should be _prompt_, and given as soon as needed. Nothing is more conducive to failure, after the crop is properly planted, than failure in promptness in the cultivation and care required. GENERAL REMARKS ON MANURING WITH GREEN CROPS. Experience proves that no better method can be adopted to bring up lands partially exhausted, which are remote from cities, than plowing under green crops. By this plan the farmer can take lot after lot, and soon bring all up to a high state of fertility. True, he gathers no crop for one year, but the outlay is little; and if in the second year he gathers as much from one acre as he formerly did from three, he is still largely the gainer. It costs no more to cultivate an acre of rich, productive land than an acre of poor, unproductive land; and the pleasure and profit of harvesting a crop that abundantly rewards the husbandman for his care and labor are so overwhelmingly in favor of rich land as to need no comment. Besides, manuring with green crops is not transitory in its effects; the land remembers the generous treatment for many years, and if at times lime or ashes be added to assist decomposition, will continue to yield remunerative crops long after land but once treated with stable manure or guano fails to produce any thing but weeds. The skinning process, the taking off of every thing grown on the soil and returning nothing to it, is ruinous alike to farm and farmer. Thousands of acres can be found in various parts of the country too poor to pay for cultivating without manuring. Of the capabilities of their lands under proper treatment the owners thereof have no idea whatever. Such men say they can not make enough manure on the farm and are too poor to buy. Why not, then, commence plowing under green crops, the only manure within easy reach? If fifty acres can not be turned under the first year, put at least one acre under, which will help feed the rest. Why be contented with thirty bushels of corn per acre, when eighty or one hundred may be had? Why raise eight or twelve bushels of wheat per acre, when forty may as well be had? Why cut but one half-ton of hay per acre, when the laws of nature allow at least three? Why spend precious time digging only one hundred bushels of potatoes per acre, when with proper care and culture three or four hundred may easily be obtained? And, finally, why toil and sweat, and have the poor dumb beasts toil and sweat, cultivating thirty acres for the amount of produce that should grow, may grow, can grow, and has grown on ten acres? The poorest, most forsaken side-hills, cobble-hills, and knolls, if the sand or gravel be of moderate depth, underlaid by a subsoil rather retentive, by turning under green crops grow potatoes of the first quality. If land be so poor that clover will not take, as is sometimes the case, seed to clover with millet very early in the spring, and harrow in with the millet thirty bushels of wood-ashes, or two hundred pounds of guano per acre; then sow the clover-seed one peck per acre; brush it in. If neither ashes nor guano can be obtained at a reasonable price, sow two hundred pounds of gypsum per acre as soon as the bushing is completed. This will not fail in giving the clover a fair foothold on the soil. Before the millet blossoms, cut and cure it for hay. Keep all stock off the clover, plaster it the following spring, plow it under when in full bloom; sow buckwheat immediately; when up, sow plaster; when in full bloom, plow under and sow the ground immediately with rye, to be plowed under the next May. Thus three crops are put under within a year, the ground is left strong, light, porous, free from weeds, ready to grow a large crop of potatoes, or almost any thing else. Much is gained every way by having and keeping land in a high state of fertility. Some crops require so long a season for growth, that high condition of soil is absolutely necessary to carry them through to maturity in time to escape autumnal frosts. In the Western States manure has hitherto been considered of but little value. The soil of these States was originally very rich in humus. For a time wheat was produced at the rate of forty bushels per acre; but according to the statistics given by the Agricultural Department at Washington, for the year 1866, the average yield in some of these States was but four and a half bushels per acre. It is evident from this that Mr. Skinflint has had things pretty much his own way. His land now produces four and a half bushels per acre; what time shall elapse when it shall be four and one half acres per bushel? Who dare predict that manure will not at some day be of value west of the Alleghanies? New-Jersey, with a soil naturally inferior to that of Illinois, contains extensive tracts that yearly yield over one hundred bushels of Indian corn per acre, while the average of the State is over forty-three; and the average yield of the same cereal in Illinois is but little over thirty-one bushels per acre. In the Western States, where potatoes are grown extensively for Southern markets, the average yield is about eighty bushels per acre; while in old Pennsylvania could be shown the last year potatoes yielding at the rate of six hundred and forty bushels per acre. There are those who argue that manure is never necessary--that plant-food is supplied in abundance by the atmosphere; it was also once said a certain man had taught his horse to live without eating; but it so happened that just as he got the animal perfectly schooled, it died. Good, thorough cultivation and aeration of the soil undoubtedly do much toward the production of crops; but mere manipulation is not all that is needed. That growing plants draw much nourishment from the atmosphere, and appropriate largely of its constituents in building up their tissue, is certainly true; it is also certainly true that they require something of the soil besides mere anchorage. All facts go to show that if the constituents needed by the plant from the soil are not present in the soil, the efforts of the plant toward proper development are abortive? What sane farmer expects to move a heavy load over a rugged road with a team so lean and poverty-stricken that they cast but a faint shadow? Yet is he much nearer sanity when he expects farming to be pleasant and profitable, and things to _move aright_, unless his land is strong and fat? Is he perfectly sane when he thinks he can skin his farm year after year, and not finally come to the bone? The farmer on exhausted land must of necessity use manure. Manure of _some_ kind must go under, or he must go under; and to the great mass of cultivators no mode of enriching is so feasible, so cheap, and attended with such satisfactory results, as that of plowing under green crops. The old plan of leaving an exhausted farm, and going West in search of rich "government land," must soon be abandoned. Already the head of the column of land-hunters have "fetched up" against the Pacific, and it is doubtful whether their anxious gaze will discover any desirable unoccupied soil over its waters. The writer would not be understood as saying that all farms are exhausted, or that there is _no_ way of recuperation but by plowing under green crops. What he wishes understood is, that where poor, sandy, or gravelly lands are found, which bring but small returns to the owner, by subjecting them to the process indicated, such lands bring good crops of the kind under consideration. And further, that land in the proper condition to yield a maximum crop of potatoes, is fitted to grow other crops equally well. Neither would the writer be understood as arguing that a crop of clover and one of buckwheat should be turned under for each crop of potatoes; where land is already in high condition, it may not be necessary. A second growth of clover plowed under in the fall for planting early kinds, and a clean clover sod turned in _flat_ furrows in the spring, for the late market varieties, answer very well. To turn flat furrows, take the furrow-slice wide enough to have it fall completely inside the preceding one. Potatoes should not be planted year after year on the same ground; trouble with weeds and rapid deterioration of quality and quantity of tubers soon render the crop unprofitable. Loamy soil planted continuously soon becomes compact, heavy, and lifeless. Where of necessity potatoes must be grown yearly on the same soil, it is advisable to dig rather early, and bury the vines of each hill in the one last dug; then harrow level, and sow rye to be plowed under next planting time. The intelligent farmer, who grows large crops for market, will always so arrange as to have a clover-sod on dry land in high condition each year for potatoes. It is said by many, in regard to swine, that "the breed is in the trough;" though this is certainly untrue to a certain extent, yet it is undeniable that in potato-growing success or failure is in the character of soil chosen for their production. Why clover, or clover and buckwheat lands, are so strongly urged is, such lands have in them just what the tubers need for their best and healthiest development; the soil is rendered so rich, light, and porous, and so free from weeds, that the cultivation of such land is rather a pleasure than otherwise, and at the close of the season the tangible profits in dollars and cents are highly gratifying. VARIETIES. From the fact that the United States produce about 109,000,000 bushels of potatoes annually, it might be supposed a great many varieties would be cultivated. Such, however, is not the fact. Of the varieties extant, comparatively few are grown extensively. Every grower's observation has established the fact that for quality the early varieties are inferior to the late ones. The Early June is very early, but its quality is quite indifferent. The Cherry Blow is early, attains good size, and yields rather well. In quality it is poor. The Early Kidney, as to quality, is good, but will not yield enough to pay for cultivation. The Cowhorn, said to be the Mexican yam, is quite early, of first quality, but yields very poorly. The Michigan White Sprout is early, rather productive, and good. Jackson White is in quality quite good, is early, and a favorite in some places. The Monitor is rather early, yields large crops; but as its quality is below par, it brings a low price in market. Philbrick's Early White is one of the whitest-skinned and whitest-fleshed potatoes known. It is about as early as Early Goodrich, is quite productive, and grows to a large size, with but few small ones to the hill. Its quality is excellent. It has not yet been extensively tested. The Early Rose is said to be very early, of excellent quality, and to yield extremely well. It has, however, not been very widely tested. Perhaps for earliness and satisfactory product, the Early Goodrich has no superior. It is of fair quality, and though some seasons it does not yield as well as others, yet, all things considered, it is a desirable variety. The old Neshannock, or Mercer, is among the latest of the early varieties. As to quality, it is the standard of excellence of the whole potato family. But it yields rather poorly, and its liability to rot, except on soils especially fitted for it, has so discouraged growers that its cultivation in many sections is abandoned. On rather poor, sandy soil, manured in the hill with wood-ashes, common salt, and plaster only, it will produce in ordinary seasons two hundred bushels per acre of sound, merchantable tubers, that will always command the highest market price. Any potato cultivated for a long series of years will gradually become finer in texture and better in quality; but its liability to disease will also be greatly increased. As an instance of this, it will be remembered that when the Merino and California varieties were first introduced, they were so coarse as to be thought fit only to feed hogs, and for this purpose, on account of their great yielding qualities, farmers continued to cultivate them, until finally they became so changed as in many sections to be preferred for the table. Their cultivation, however, is now nearly abandoned. Of the later varieties, the Garnet Chili, a widely-diffused and well-known sort, deserves notice. It is not of so good quality as the Peach Blow; but its freedom from disease, and the large crop it produces, make it a favorite with many growers. The chief fault with it is, the largest specimens are apt to be hollow at the centre. It ripens rather early; and, even when dug long before maturity, it has a dryness and mealiness, when prepared for the table, not found in many other sorts. The Buckeye is extensively grown for market; its yield is not satisfactory, and its quality is only medium. The Dykeman is yet grown to some extent, but will soon be superseded. The Prince Albert is a well-known and highly-esteemed variety, approaching very near the Peach Blow in quality. One peculiarity of this potato is, the largest tubers appear to be of as good quality as the small ones. With proper soil and culture, it yields a fair crop; is quite free from disease; and its smoothness, high flavor, and fine appearance make it much sought after in the market. The Fluke, a very late potato, is a great favorite with many who produce for market. Its yield is very large; and its smoothness and uniformity of size make it altogether a desirable variety. It is generally free from disease. In quality it is rather above medium. The Harrison, if it should do as well in the future as it has done in the past, bids fair to become _the_ potato for general cultivation. It has yielded in this section, on soil of moderate fertility, with ordinary culture, one peck to the hill of uniform-sized, merchantable potatoes. It is a strong, vigorous grower, and very healthy. Its quality, though not the very best, is good. The Willard, lately originated by C. W. Gleason, of Massachusetts, is a half-early variety. It is enormously productive, of a rich rose color, spotted and splashed with white. The flesh is white. In form and size it closely resembles the Early Goodrich, its parent. It has not been extensively tested, but certainly promises well. The Excelsior is said, by those interested in its sale, to be very productive, and of most excellent quality, retaining its superior flavor all the year round. It is claimed that old potatoes of this variety are better than new ones of most early kinds, thus obviating the necessity of having early sorts. The Excelsior is said to cook very white and mealy; form nearly round, eyes prominent. It has not been much tested out of the neighborhood where it originated. But the potato-eater is yet unborn who can justly find fault with a properly-grown Peach Blow. It is pronounced by many equal or superior to the Mercer in quality, which is not the fact. It is emphatically a late potato; and, though it does not yield as well per acre as some other sorts, it is comparatively healthy; and its quality is such that it always brings a high price in the market. In fact, but few other kinds of late sorts could find sale if enough of this kind were offered to supply the demand. Planted ever so early, it keeps green through the heat of summer, and never matures its tubers until after the fall rains, and then no potato does it more rapidly. Grown on rich argillaceous soil, it will be hollow, coarse flesh, and ill-flavored; but planted on such soil as is recommended, it is about all that could be desired. It is a strong, vigorous grower; and one peculiarity of it is, that insects will not attack vines of this variety if other kinds are within reach. Planted on extremely poor ground, it will, perhaps, yield more bushels of tubers, and those of better quality, than any other variety that could be planted on the same soil. Among all the old or new sorts, perhaps, no potato can be found that deteriorates so little in quality from maturity to maturity again. And, in fine, where only high quality with moderate yield are desired, it has few if any superiors. Many other varieties might be mentioned; but the list given includes about all of much merit. New varieties are constantly arising, clamoring for public favor, many of which are wholly unworthy of general cultivation. One or two varieties, such as are adapted to the grower's locality and market, are preferable to a greater number of sorts grown merely for variety's sake. INFLUENCE OF SOIL ON SEEDLINGS. The characteristics of a potato, such as quality, productiveness, healthfulness, uniformity of size, etc., depend much on the nature of the soil on which it originated. These characteristics, some or all, imbibed by the minute potato from the ingredients of the soil, at its first growth from the seed of the potato-ball, adhere with great tenacity to it through all its generations. A seedling may, in size, color, and form resemble its parent; but its constitution and quality are in a great degree dependent on the nature of the soil, climatic influences, and other accidental causes. True crosses are generally more vigorous and healthy than others; and it is probably to accidental crosses we are indebted for many varieties that differ so widely from their parents. A cross is most apparent to the eye when the parents are of different colors, in which case the offspring will be striped or marked with the colors of each parent. HOW TO CROSS VARIETIES. In order to comprehend fully the principles of this subject, and their application to practical operations, it will be necessary to take a general view of the generative organs of the vegetable kingdom, and the manner in which they act in the production of their species. If we examine a perfect flower, we shall find that it consists essentially of two sets of organs, one called the pistils, the other the stamens. The pistils are located in the centre of the flower, and the stamens around them. The summit of the pistil is called the stigma; and on the top of each stamen is situated an anther--a small sack, which contains the pollen, a dust-like substance, that fertilizes the ovules or young seeds of the plant. These organs are supposed to perform offices analogous to those of the animal kingdom--the stamens representing the male, and the pistils the female organs. When the anthers, which contain the pollen, arrive at maturity, they open and emit a multitude of minute grains of pollen; and these, falling on the pistils of the flower, throw out hair-like tubes, which penetrate through the vascular tissue of the pistil, and ultimately reach the ovules, thus fertilizing them, and making them capable, when mature, of reproducing plants of their own kind. The ovules are the rudimentary seeds, situated in a case at the base of the pistils, each consisting of a central portion, called the nucleus, which is surrounded by two coats, the inner called the secundine, the outer the primine. When the hairlike tube of the pollen-grain passes through the orifice in the coatings of the ovule, and reaches the nucleus, or embryo sack, it is supposed to emit a spermatic or plantlet germ, which passes through the wall of the embryo sack and enters the germinal vesicle contained in it. The vesicle corresponds to the vesicle, or germinal spot, in the eggs of birds, and ovum of mammiferous animals. The germ remains in the vesicle, and finally becomes the embryo, fully developed into a plantlet, as may be seen in many seeds. Flowers of plants are called perfect when the stamens and pistils are in the same flower, as the apple; mon[oe]cious, when in different flowers and on the same plant, as the white oak; and di[oe]cious, when in different flowers and on different plants, as in the hemp. In that class of plants in which the stamens, or males, are on one plant, and the pistils, or females, on another, the males of course must always remain barren; and the pistilates, to be fruitful, must have the pollen from the anthers of the staminate brought in contact with its stigma by wind, insects, or other means. In plants with perfect flower, the stamens are generally situated around and above the pistil, so that the pollen falls upon the stigma by mere force of gravity. In the potato, the pollen is conveyed from the anthers to the stigma by actual contact of the two organs. Cross-breeding in plants consists in fertilizing one variety with the pollen of another variety of the same species. The offspring is called a cross-breed, or variety. The process of cross-breeding consists in taking the pollen of one variety and applying it to the stigma of another variety, in such a way as to effect its fertilization. This is done by cutting away (with scissors) the stamens of the flower to be fertilized, a short time before they arrive at maturity, and taking a flower in which the pollen is ripe, dry, and powdery, from the stalk of the variety wished for the male parent; and holding it in the right hand, and then striking it on the finger of the left, held near the flower, thus scattering the pollen on the stigma of the pistil of the flower to be fertilized. The utmost care should be taken to apply the pollen when the flower is in its greatest vigor, and the stigma is covered with the necessary coating of mucus to insure a perfect connection of the pollen with the pistil, and make the fertilization perfect. All flowers not wanted in the experiment should be removed before any pollen is formed. It is necessary to tie a thin piece of gauze over the flower to be fertilized, before and after crossing, to prevent insects from conveying pollen to it, thus frustrating the labors of the operator. If the operation has been successful, the pistil will soon begin to wither; if not perfect, the pistil will continue fresh and full for some days. This _modus operandi_ is substantially the same in crossing fruits, flowers, and vegetables throughout the vegetable kingdom. Hybridizing differs from cross-breeding only in fertilizing one species, or one of its varieties, with the pollen of another species, or one of its varieties, of the same or a different _genus_. The offspring is called a hybrid, or mule. Hybrids, with very few exceptions, are sterile, they fail to propagate themselves from seed, and must, to preserve them, be propagated by grafts, layers, or suckers. No change is perceptible in the fruit produced from blossoms upon which the operation of cross-breeding or hybridizing has been performed; but the seed of fruits so obtained may be planted with the certainty of producing a fruit or tuber commingling the qualities, colors, and main characteristics of both parents. Experience, however, shows that the characteristics of the male predominate somewhat in the offspring. To judicious cross-breeding and hybridizing we owe most of our superior fruits and vegetables. If the operation were more generally known and practiced by farmers, the most gratifying results would be soon obtained, not only in the production of the most valuable varieties of potatoes and other vegetables, but also in fruits, flowers, and grain of every description. SMOOTH VS. ROUGH POTATOES. Other things being equal, smooth potatoes are preferable to those with deeply-sunken eyes. The starch being most abundant near the skin, not so much is lost by the thin paring of the former as by the necessarily deeper paring of the latter. Varieties usually well formed sometimes grow so knobby and ill-shaped as to be scarcely recognized. This is caused by severe drought occurring when the tubers are about two thirds grown, causing them to partially ripen. On the return of moisture, a new growth takes place, which shows itself in knobby protuberances. CUT AND UNCUT SEED. Many growers argue that potatoes should be planted whole. The only plausible theory in support of whole seed is, that the few eyes that do start have a greater supply of starch available from which to obtain nutriment until the plant can draw support from the soil and atmosphere. But experiments also demonstrate that if all the eyes except one or two near the middle be cut out of the seed-potato, such seed will push with the greatest possible vigor. Many eyes of the uncut seed start, but the stronger soon overpower the weaker, and finally starve them out. A plot planted with three small, uncut potatoes to the hill, and another planted with three pieces of two eyes each to the hill, will not show much difference in number of vines during the growing season. The poor results sometimes attending cut seed are almost always traceable to improper seed improperly cut. Only large, mature, sound tubers should be used. Cut them in pieces of two or three eyes each, taking pains to secure around each eye as much flesh as possible, also under the eye to the centre of the tuber. Experiments prove that eyes from the "seed end" produce potatoes that mature earliest; they are also smallest. Those from the large or stem end are largest, latest, and least in numbers. Eyes from the middle produce tubers of very uniform size. If small, ill-shaped potatoes be planted on the same ground for three successive years, the results will give the best variety a bad name. Much is gained by changing seed. No two varieties are made up of the same constituents exactly in the same proportion; hence, a soil may be exhausted for the best development of one, and still be fitted to meet the demands of another. Even when the same variety is desired, experience shows the great benefit of planting seed grown on a different soil. The best and most extensive growers procure new seed every two or three years, and many insist on changing seed every year; and undoubtedly the crop is often doubled by the practice. PLANTING AND MANURING. Early kinds should be planted as soon as the ground has become sufficiently dry and warm. Late market varieties should be planted about two weeks later than the early ones. Unquestionably more bushels can be obtained per acre by planting in drills than in hills, but the labor of cultivating in drills is much the greater. Prepare the ground by thorough plowing, making it decidedly mellow. Mark it out four feet apart each way, if to be planted in hills, by plowing broad, flat-bottomed furrows about three inches deep. At the crossings drop three pieces of potato, cut, as directed, in sections of two or three eyes each. Place the pieces so as to represent the points of a triangle, each piece being about a foot distant from each of the other two. If the cut side is put down, it is better; cover about two inches deep. Where land is free from stone and sod, the covering may be well and rapidly done with a light plow. Immediately after planting, sprinkle over and around each hill a large handful of unleached wood-ashes and salt, (a half-bushel of fine salt mixed with a barrel of ashes is about the right proportion.) If ashes can not be obtained, as is sometimes the case, apply instead about the same quantity of lime slacked in brine as strong as salt will make it. The potato from its peculiar organization has a hungering and thirsting after potash. Wood-ashes exactly meet its wants in this direction. Lime indirectly supplies potash by liberating what was before inert in the soil. Salt in small quantities induces vigorous, healthy growth. To obtain the best results, the ashes or lime should be covered with about half an inch of soil. This plan of manuring in the hill is recommended only in cases where the fertilizers named are in limited supply, and it is desirable to make the most of them. Maximum crops have been obtained by using the fertilizers named in the manner described; but where they can be obtained at low prices, it is certainly advisable, and requires less labor, to apply all three, ashes, lime, and salt, broadcast in bountiful quantities, and harrow it in before the ground is marked out for planting. CULTIVATION. If weeds are expected, pass a light harrow over the rows just before the vines are ready to burst through; this will disturb them and render them less troublesome. As soon as the tops are two inches high, run a corn-plow five inches deep _close_ to the hills, turning the furrows _from_ the rows. Plow both ways twice between the rows, finishing on the rows running east and west, which will give the sun's rays a better chance to warm the ground properly. Standing on the squares of earth, warmed on all sides by the air and sunlight, the potatoes will grow amazingly. Just as soon as the tops have attained a height of six or seven inches, hitch a strong horse to a two-horse plow, and turn furrows fully seven inches deep midway between the rows _to_ the hills. Plow twice between the rows both ways; and if the ground be a side-hill, turn the first furrow between the rows up-hill, which will leave the rows in better shape. Hoeing is often wholly unnecessary; but where, from weeds or poor plowing, it is needed, draw mellow earth to the plants with the hoe, keeping the top of the hills somewhat hollow to catch the rains. Then, so far as stirring the soil is concerned, _let it alone_. After potatoes are fairly up, their cultivation should be crowded through with all possible speed, or at least as rapidly as the growth of the tops will permit. If the last plowing be deferred until the vines are large, a large proportion of small potatoes is sure to be the consequence. After a certain stage of growth, new tubers are formed each time the soil is disturbed; these never fully develop, they rob those first formed, and make the crop much inferior to what it should be. By the mode of culture described, the ground is made warm and mellow close up to the seed-potatoes, the roots soon fill the whole hill, and tubers are formed that have nothing to do but to grow. The writer is aware flat culture has strong advocates; but, after many experiments, he is convinced that hills are much the best. PLASTER. However much lime or other fertilizers may be applied to the soil, still great benefit is derived from the use of plaster, (sulphate of lime.) After all, plaster is the main dependence of the potato-grower, a help on which he may rely with the utmost confidence. Astonishing results are obtained from its use, when applied in a proper manner. The writer has seen a field, all of the same soil, all prepared alike, and all planted with the same variety at the same time, on one half of which, that had no plaster, the yield was but sixty bushels per acre, and many rotten; the other part, to which plaster was applied in the manner hereafter explained, yielded three hundred and sixty bushels per acre, and not an unsound one among them. The action of plaster is often puzzling. From the fact that where land has been strongly limed, a small quantity of plaster applied shows such decided benefit, there would seem plausibility in Liebig's theory that its effects must be traceable not to the lime, but to the sulphuric acid. The ammonia in rain-water in the form of carbonate (a volatile salt) is decomposed by plaster, the sulphuric acid having greater affinity for it, thus forming two new compounds, sulphate of ammonia and carbonate of lime. But as arable soil has the same property of absorbing ammonia from the air and rain-water, and fixing it in the same or even a higher degree than lime, there is only the sulphuric acid left to look to for an explanation of the favorable action of plaster on the growth of plants. It is found that plaster in contact with soil undergoes decomposition, part of the lime separating from the sulphuric acid, and magnesia and potash taking its place, quite contrary to the ordinary affinities. These facts show that the action of plaster is very complex, and that it promotes the distribution of both magnesia and potash in the ground, exercising a chemical action upon the soil which extends to any depth of it; and that, in consequence of the chemical and mechanical modifications of the earth, particles of certain nutritive elements become accessible and available to plants that were not so before. It is said plaster is of most benefit in wet seasons; such is not always the case. It is certainly beneficial to clover, wet or dry; so of potatoes. A few years since, when the drought was so intense in this section as to render the general potato crop almost a total failure, the writer produced a plentiful crop by the use of plaster alone. On examination at the dryest time, the bottoms of the hills were found to be literally dust, yet in this dust the tubers were swelling finely: the leaves and vines were of a deep rich green, and remained so until frost, while other fields in sight, planted with the same variety, but not treated with plaster, were brown, dead, and not worth digging. That gypsum attracts moisture may be proved by plastering a hill of corn and leaving a hill by it unplastered; the dew will be found deposited in greater abundance on the plastered hill. But, according to Liebig, certain products of the chemical action of plaster enter into and are incorporated with the structure of the plant, closing its breathing pores to such an extent that the plant is enabled to withstand a drought which would prove fatal to it unassisted. Certain it is that plaster renders plants less palatable to insects, and, so far as the writer's experiments extend, it is fatal to many of the fungi family. To obtain the best results, the vines of potatoes should be dusted with plaster as soon as they are fairly through the soil, again immediately after the last plowing and hoeing, and, for reasons hereafter given, at intervals throughout the whole growing season. The first application may be light, the second heavier, and thereafter it should be bountifully applied, say two hundred pounds per acre at one sowing. THE POTATO-ROT--ITS CAUSE The year 1845 will ever be memorable by its giving birth to a disease which threatened the entire destruction of the potato crop, and which caused suffering and pecuniary ruin to an incredible extent throughout Europe. The potato, at the time of the appearance of the potato disease, was almost the sole dependence of the common people of Ireland for food. That over-populated country experienced more actual suffering in consequence of the potato disease than has any other from the same cause. Although this disease has never, in this country, prevailed to the same ruinous extent that it has in some others, yet we are yearly reminded of its existence, and in some seasons and localities its destructive effects are seriously apparent. The final or culminating cause of the disease known as the "potato-rot" is _Botrytis (peronospora) infestans_. This may be induced by many and various predisposing causes, such as feebleness of constitution of the variety planted, rendering them an easy prey to the disease; by planting on low, moist land, or on land highly enriched by nitrogenous manures, causing a morbid growth which invites the disease; also by insects or their larvæ puncturing or eating off the leaves or vines. But by far the most wide-spread and most common cause of the disease is sudden changes of atmospheric temperature, particularly when accompanied by rain. Drought, though quite protracted and severe, unless accompanied by strong drying winds, and followed by sudden and great reduction of temperature, seldom affects the potato seriously. It is not uncommon in the Northern States, during the months of August and September, for strong westerly winds to prevail for many days in succession. These winds, coming from the great American desert, are almost wholly devoid of moisture, and their aridity is often such that vegetation withers before them as at the touch of fire. Evaporation is increased in a prodigiously rapid ratio with the velocity of wind. The effects of the excessive exhalation from the leaves of plants exposed to the sweep of such drying winds are at once seriously apparent. When these winds finally cease, the atmosphere has a low relative humidity, not enough moisture remains in the air to prevent radiation; the heat absorbed by the earth through the day is, during the bright, cloudless night, rapidly radiated and lost in space, and a reduction in temperature of twenty to thirty degrees is the consequence. In the first place, the potato-vines suffer by excessive exhalation; in the second, by sudden reduction of temperature, and, though not frozen, their functions are much deranged, and their vitality greatly enfeebled. To use a common expression, the plant "has caught a violent cold that has settled on the lungs." The leaves (which are the lungs of plants) now fail to perform their functions properly. The points of many of the leaves turn brown, curl up, and die. The ascending sap, not being fully elaborated by the diseased leaves, oozes out through the skin of the stalk in a thick, viscous state, and the plant to all appearance is in a state of consumption. At this stage the ever-present minute spores of the _Botrytis infestans_ eagerly pounce on the sickly plant, fastening themselves on its most diseased parts. The _Botrytis infestans_ is a cryptogamous plant, and is included in the Mucidineous family, (moulds.) It is a vegetable parasite preying upon the living potato plant, like lice or other animal parasites upon the animal species. At first this mould forms webby, creeping filaments, known in botanical language as mycelium. These root-like fibres then branch out, sending out straight or decumbent articulated stems. These bead-like joints fill up successively with seeds or spores, which are discharged at the proper time to multiply the species. Under favorable conditions of warmth and moisture, the mycelium spreads very rapidly. Spores are soon formed and matured, to be carried to plants not yet infected. Rains also wash the seminal dust down the plant, causing it to fasten and grow on the vine near the ground. The roots of the parasite penetrate and split up the stalk even to the medullary canal. These roots exude a poisonous substance, which is carried by the elaborated descending sap down to the tubers, and as the largest tubers require the largest amount of elaborated sap for their development, they will, consequently, receive the greatest quantity of the vitiating principle, and will, on digging, be found a mass of rottenness, when the smaller ones are often but slightly affected. The _Botrytis infestans_ can not gain a lodgment on vines that are truly healthy and vigorous, high authority to the contrary notwithstanding. Healthy varieties, growing in a sheltered situation on dry, new soil, to which no nitrogenous manures have been applied, can not be infected, though brushed with other vines covered with the fungus. Different varieties, and sometimes different members of the same variety, are not always alike affected by the disease, though growing in the same hill. As will be noticed, the potato disease is rather an effect than a cause, and appears to have been designed to prevent members enfeebled by accident or otherwise from propagating their species by putting such members out of existence. Ozone, supposed to be a peculiar form of oxygen, is exhaled from every part of the green surface of plants in health, and effectually repels the attacks of mildew; but it is found that when the atmosphere is very dry, or, on the other hand, very humid, plants cease to evolve ozone, and are therefore unprotected. Winds from the ocean are strongly ozonic, and it is ascertained that plants growing on soil to which salt has been applied evolve more ozone than others. Hence the benefit derived from the use of salt on potato lands. The "Black knot," another species of fungus that attacks the branches of the plum and Morello cherry, operates very similarly to the potato mildew. The roots of the parasite penetrate and split up the cellular tissue of the branch on which it fastens, and if the limb be not promptly amputated, the descending sap carries the deleterious principle through the whole system, and the following year the disease appears in a greatly aggravated form in every part of the whole tree. The remedy in this case is prompt amputation of the part diseased on its first appearance, and a judicious application of salt to the soil. Common salt, to a certain extent, is as beneficial to some plants as to animals; and every intelligent farmer knows that if salt be withheld from the bovine _genus_ for any considerable length of time, the general health droops and parasites are sure to abound. The object of nature in bringing into existence the large family of mildews, each member of which is a perfect plant in its way, and as capable of performing its functions as the oak of the forest, was undoubtedly to prevent propagation from sickly stock, and by the decomposition of feeble plants to make room and enrich the soil for the better development of healthier plants. But it by no means follows that, because a plant is attacked by mildew, it must necessarily be left to die, any more than it follows that, because an animal is infested with vermin, it should be let alone to be eaten up by them. REMEDY FOR THE POTATO-ROT. In treating for the potato-rot, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure;" for when leaves or vines are once dead, they ever remain so. All that can be done for potatoes infested is to stop the mildew from spreading, by destroying it where it is, and by strengthening "those things which remain." The writer was led to the adoption of the remedy proposed by experiments made upon fruits. Every one who has an apple or pear-orchard must have observed that mildew of fruit supervenes after some sudden change of temperature, especially when accompanied by rain. Spots of mildew invariably form on the young fruit immediately after a cold night, when the thermometer has indicated a change of twenty to twenty-five degrees. This growth of mildew takes place when the apples are of various sizes, from the earliest formation to the size of large marbles. These fungous growths appear as dark-colored spots, which arrest the growth of the apple immediately beneath, causing it to become distorted, while the expansion and contraction bring on diseased action, which results in the cracking and general scabbiness of the fruit. Knowing that dry-rot (_Merulius Lachrymans_, Schum,) another species of fungus, was remedied by an application of sulphuric acid, I thought it might possibly destroy the fruit mildew. An application of plaster, (gypsum,) which is composed of lime and sulphuric acid, was made with the happiest results. It was found that an apple dusted with ground plaster at its first formation remained free from mildew and came to maturity, while apples growing by it, but not so treated, became scabby and worthless. It was also ascertained that a thorough application of plaster destroyed the mildew after it had formed, and that such fruit came to maturity. On the potato mildew, so far as the writer's experience extends, plaster, if applied early, is a perfect prevention, and if not delayed too long after the disease appears, is a certain remedy. The vines should be watched closely, and on the first appearance of the disease plaster should be applied; not merely sowing it broadcast, but dashing it over and under the vines, bringing it in contact with the stalks, using a handful to three or four hills. Plaster for this purpose should be very dry and powdery, and should be applied when the air is still. One application is seldom sufficient; it should be renewed as often as circumstances require. Examine the vines about three days after a cold night, or about the same length of time after a heavy rain. If the leaves begin to curl and wither, apply plaster at once; and, in short, whenever the vines show any signs of drooping, be the cause bites of insects, excessive aridity, or excessive humidity of the atmosphere, or sudden change of temperature, drooping from any cause whatever indicates the approach of mildew, which should be promptly met with an application of plaster. As before stated, plaster the vines as soon as they are up, again after the last plowing and hoeing; after that, one, two, or three times, as circumstances indicate. By this method the vines are kept of a bright lively green, and the tubers are kept swelling until growth is stopped by frost. Another point gained is, potatoes so grown are so sound and free from disease as to be easily kept for spring market without loss by rot. Whether the surprising effects of plaster on the potato mildew is attributable to the sulphuric acid, to the lime, or to its simply being a dust, has not been determined. It is well known that the fruits of a vineyard or orchard in close proximity to a dusty and much frequented highway are remarkably free from mildew, which can only be due to dust settling on the trees and fruit. But in the case of plaster, the writer is inclined to believe its efficacy is mainly due to the sulphuric acid, probably assisted by the lime in a state of dust. Be this as it may, it matters not. The result is all that can be desired; the remedy is easily applied, costs but a trifle, and a single season's trial is all that is needed to convince the most skeptical grower of its merits. DIGGING AND STORING Is full half the labor of growing and securing a crop of potatoes. Digging is a long, laborious task. Many small fortunes are sunk yearly by inventors in experimenting with and constructing "potato-diggers;" but, so far, no machine has done the work properly except under the most favorable circumstances. Stones, vines, and weeds are obstacles not yet fully overcome. Many tubers are left covered with earth, and so lost; and besides, some machines so bruise the potatoes in digging as to injure their appearance and keeping qualities. Undoubtedly, the day will come when the great bulk of potatoes will be dug well and rapidly by horse-power; but until that day does come, the potato-hook must be used. Much of the back-ache and general unpleasantness incident to digging is avoided, or greatly mitigated, by having the potatoes large and sound, turning out a peck to the hill, especially if the digger is the owner of the crop. Digging should be done only when the ground is dry, that the potatoes may come out clean and bright. A small plow, to turn a light furrow from each side of the rows, is some help. Pull up the vines, and lay them down so that they will be covered by the dirt dug from the hill. Commence on one side of the hill; press the hook or hoe down, so that it will reach a trifle below the potatoes, and draw the implement firmly toward you. Repeat the operation, each time placing the tool a few inches further in or across the hill, until the whole hill is dug. By this method the potatoes will not be bruised; whereas, if the digging be commenced in the centre of the hill, many potatoes will be sacrificed and much injured. Potatoes should be picked up as soon and as fast as dug; and immediately covered with straw or other material, to protect them from the light. A few hours' strong sunshine will ruin the best potato ever grown. Light changes the natural color to green, and renders the potato so bitter and unpalatable as to be wholly unfit to eat. Owing to the inconsiderate way in which potatoes are often dug, and the light to which they are exposed while being transported to and while in market, the denizens of our cities seldom, if ever, taste this vegetable in its greatest excellence. If to be stored in the cellar, the potatoes should be left in the field, in heaps covered with straw, until the sweating is over, and then be removed to the cellar and lightly covered with dry sand, or earth, just sufficient to exclude the light. If to be buried in the field, choose a dry, sideling place; scrape out a slight hollow, by merely removing the surface soil with a hoe; into this, pile ten to twelve bushels; place the potatoes properly, and cover them carefully with clean straw, six inches deep; cover over the straw with four or five inches of earth, except a small opening at the top; over this opening place a board or flat stone, elevated a little on one side, to lead off the rain. Let them remain so until the sweating is completely over, or so long as prudence will permit; and when cold weather fairly sets in, add more earth to keep from freezing, leaving only a wisp of straw protruding through to carry off any foul air that may be generated. Where the winters are intensely cold, it is best to cover but lightly with earth, say five or six inches deep; and when freezing is becoming severe, spread over the heap buckwheat straw, or coarse manure, to the depth of six inches. There is danger in covering very deep at first, especially if the autumn should prove warm. If kept too warm, rot is sure to ensue. Experience shows that any vegetable keeps better buried in pits that contain not more than ten or twelve bushels each. Where large quantities are to be buried, it is advisable to open a long, shallow, broad trench, leading up and down a hill, if possible, to secure good drainage. Commence, at either end, by placing a desirable quantity of potatoes as soon as dug; next to these put a little straw; against the straw place about six inches of earth; then more straw and more potatoes; and so keep on until the trench is full. A few furrows plowed on each side assist in covering; and make a drain to lead off the rains, which is a matter of the first importance. By this method each lot of potatoes is kept separate; and any section can be opened at any time to be taken to market, without endangering the others. Potatoes buried properly are usually of better flavor in the spring than it is possible for potatoes to be which are kept in a common cellar. And here let me add that, if leaves from the woods be used instead of straw, to cover potatoes to be buried, such potatoes will be of better flavor; and further, if nothing but dry earth comes in contact with them, they will be better still. Straw is used for the twofold purpose of securing an air-chamber to keep out frost, and to prevent the earth from mingling with the tubers on opening the pits. INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE POTATO. There are ten distinct species of insects preying upon the potato-plant within the limits of the United States. Many of these ten species are confined within certain geographical limits. Their habits and history differ very widely. Some attack the potato both in the larva state and in the perfect or winged state; others in the perfect or winged state alone; and others again in the larva state alone. In the case of seven of these insects, there is but one single brood every year; while of the remaining three there are every year from two to three broods, each of them generated by females belonging to preceding broods. Eight of the ten feed externally on the leaves and tender stems of the potato; while two of them burrow, like a borer, exclusively in the larger stalks. Each of these ten species has its peculiar insect enemies; and a mode of attack which will prove very successful against some of them will often turn out to be worthless when employed against the remainder. [Illustration] ~The Stalk-Borer~,[A] (_Gortyna nitela_, Guenee.)--This larva (Fig. 2,) commonly burrows in the large stalks of the potato. It occurs also in the stalks of the tomato, in those of the dahlia and aster, and other garden flowers. It is sometimes found boring through the cob of growing Indian corn. It is particularly partial to the stem of the common cocklebur, (_Zanthium sirumarium_;) and if it would only confine itself to such noxious weeds, it might be considered more of a friend than an enemy. It is yearly becoming more numerous and more destructive. It is found over a great extent of country; and is particularly numerous in the valley of the Mississippi north of the Ohio River. The larva of the stalk-borer moth leaves the stalk in which it burrowed about the latter part of July, and descends a little below the surface of the earth, where in about three days it changes into the pupa, or chrysalis state. [Footnote A: Where no hair-lines are given, the insects are represented life-size.] The winged insect (Fig. 1,) which belongs to the same extensive group of moths (_Noctua_ family, or owlet moths) to which all the cut-worm moths appertain, emerges from under ground from the end of August to the middle of September. Hence it is evident that some few, at all events, of the female moths must live through the winter, in obscure places, to lay eggs upon the plants they infest the following spring; for otherwise, as there is no young potato, or other plants, for them to lay eggs upon in the autumn, the whole breed would die out in a single year. This insect, in sections where it is numerous, does more injury to the potato crop than is generally supposed. ~The Potato-Stalk Weevil,~ (_Baridius trinotatus_, Say.)--This insect is more particularly a southern species, occurring abundantly in the Middle States, and in the southern parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. It appears to be totally unknown in New-England. The female of this beetle deposits a single egg in an oblong slit, about one eighth of an inch long, which it has previously formed with its beak in the stalk of the potato. The larva subsequently hatches out, and bores into the heart of the stalk, always proceeding downward toward the root. When full grown, it is a little more than one fourth of an inch in length, and is a soft, whitish, legless grub, with a scaly head. Hence it can always be readily distinguished from the larva of the stalk-borer, which has invariably sixteen legs, no matter how small it may be. Unlike this last insect, it becomes a pupa in the interior of the potato-stalk which it inhabits: and it comes out in the beetle state about the last of August or beginning of September. The stalk inhabited by the larva wilts and dies. The perfect beetle, like many other snout-beetles, must of course live through the winter, to reproduce its species the following spring. In Southern Pennsylvania, some years, nearly every stalk of extensive fields is infested by this insect, causing the premature decay of the vines, and giving them the appearance of having been scalded. In some districts of Illinois, the potato crop has, in some seasons, been utterly ruined by this snout-beetle, many vines having a dozen larvæ in them. This insect attacks no plant but the potato. ~The Potato-Worm~, (_Sphinx 5-maculata_, Haworth.)--This well-known insect, the larva of which (Fig. 3,) is usually called the potato-worm, is more common on the closely allied tomato, the leaves of which it often clears off very completely in particular spots in a single night. When full-fed, which is usually about the last of August, the potato-worm burrows under the ground, and shortly afterward transforms into the pupa state, (Fig. 5.) The pupa is often dug up in the spring from the ground where tomatoes or potatoes were grown in the preceding season, and most persons that meet with it suppose that the singular jug-handled appendage at one end of it is its _tail_. In reality, however, it is the _tongue-case_, and contains the long, pliable tongue which the future moth will employ in lapping the nectar of flowers. The moth itself (Fig. 4) was formerly confounded with the tobacco-worm moth, (_Sphinx Carolina_, Linnæus,) which it very closely resembles, having the same series of orange-colored spots on each side of the abdomen. The gray and black markings, however, of the wings differ perceptibly in the two species; and in the tobacco-worm moth there is always a more or less faint white spat, or a dot, near the centre of the front wing, which is never met with in the other species. The potato-worm often feeds on the leaves of the tobacco plant in the Northern States. In the Southern States, in Mexico and the West-Indies, the true potato-worm is unknown, and it is the tobacco-worm that the tobacco-grower has to fight. The potato-worm, however, is never known to injure the potato crop to any serious extent. ~The Striped Blister-Beetle~, (_Lytta vittata_, Fabr.) This insect (Fig. 6) is almost exclusively a southern species, occurring in some years very abundantly on the potato-vines in Southern Illinois, and also in Missouri, and according to Dr. Harris, it is occasionally found even in New-England. In some specimens the broad outer black stripe on the wing-cases is divided lengthwise by a slender yellow line, so that, instead of _two_, there are _three_ black stripes on each wing-case; and often in the same field may be noticed all the intermediate grades; thus proving that the four-striped individuals do not form a distinct species, as was supposed by the European entomologist Fabricius, but are mere varieties of the same species to which the sixth-striped individual appertains. The striped blister-beetle lives under ground and feeds upon various roots during the larva state, and emerges to attack the foliage of the potato only when it has passed into the perfect or beetle state. This insect, in common with our other blister-beetles, has the same properties as the imported Spanish fly, and any of them will raise just as good a blister as that does, and are equally poisonous when taken internally in large doses. Where the striped blister-beetle is numerous, it is a great pest and very destructive to the potato crop. It eats the leaves so full of holes that the plant finally dies from loss of sap and the want of sufficient leaves to elaborate its juices. In some places they are driven off the plants (with bushes) on a pile of hay or straw, and burned. Some have been successful in ridding their fields of them by placing straw or hay between the rows of potatoes, and then setting it on fire. The insects, it is said, by this means are nearly all destroyed, and the straw burning very quickly, does not injure the vines. ~The Ash-Gray Blister-Beetle~, (_Lytta cinera_, Fabr.)--This species (Fig. 7, male) is the one commonly found in the more northerly parts of the Northern States, where it usually takes the place of the striped blister-beetle before mentioned. It is of a uniform ash-gray color. It attacks not only the potato-vines but also the honey locusts, and especially the Windsor bean. In particular years it has been known, in conjunction with the rose-bug, (_Macrodactylus subspinosus_, Linn.,) to swarm upon every apple-tree in some orchards in Illinois, not only eating the foliage, but gnawing into the young apples. This beetle does considerable damage to the potato crop, especially in the North-Western States. Like the other members of the (_Lytta_) family, it lives under ground while in the larva state, and is troublesome only when in the perfect or winged state. ~The Black-Rat Blister-Beetle~, (_Lytta murina_, Le Conte.)--This species (Fig. 8,) is entirely black. There is a very similar species, the black blister-beetle, (_Lytta atrata_, Fabr.,) from which the black-rat blister-beetle is distinguishable only by having four raised lines placed lengthwise upon each wing-case, and by the two first joints of the antennæ being greatly dilated and lengthened in the males, of the lath species. It is asserted by some authors that the black blister-beetle is injurious to the potato; but I can not see how it could do much damage to that crop, as the perfect insect does not appear until late in August, when the potato crop is nearly out of its reach. Not so, however, with the black-rat blister-beetle, which is on hand ready for business early in the season. This insect does considerable damage to the potato in Iowa, and neighboring States; it is also found, though in not so great numbers, throughout the whole of the Northern States. ~The Margined Blister-Beetle~, (_Lytta marginata_, Fabr.)--This species (Fig. 9) maybe at once recognized by its general black color, and the ash-gray edging to its wing-cases. It usually feeds on certain wild plants, but does not object to a diet of potato-leaves. Though found over a large extent of country, it seldom appears in numbers large enough to damage the potato crop materially. Like other blister-beetles, it goes under ground to pass into the pupa state, and attacks the potato only when it is in the perfect or winged state. ~The Three-Lined Leaf-Beetle~, (_Lema trilineata_, Olivier.) The larva of the three-lined leaf-beetle may be distinguished from all other insects which prey upon the potato by its habit of covering itself with its own excrement. In Figure 10, _a_, this larva is shown in profile, both full and half grown, covered with the soft, greenish excrementitious matter which from time to time it discharges. Figure 10, _c_, gives a somewhat magnified view of the pupa, and Figure 10, _b_, shows the last few joints of the abdomen of the larva, magnified and viewed from above. The vent of the larva, as will be seen from this last figure, is situated on the upper surface of the last joint, so that its excrement naturally falls upon its back, and by successive discharges is crowded forward toward its head, till the whole upper surface is covered with it. There are several other larva, feeding upon other plants, which wear cloaks of this strange material. Many authors suppose that the object of the larva in all these cases is to protect itself from the heat of the sun. In all probability the real aim of nature in the case of all these larvæ is to defend them from the attacks of birds and of cannibal and parasitic insects. There are two broods of this insect every year. The first brood of larvæ may be found on the potato-vine toward the latter end of June, and the second in August. The first brood stays under ground about a fortnight before it emerges in the perfect beetle state, and the second brood stays under ground all winter, and only emerges at the beginning of the following June. The perfect beetle (Fig. 11) is of a pale yellow color, with three black stripes on its back, and bears a strong resemblance to the cucumber-bug, (_Diabrotica vittata_, Fabr. Fig. 12.) From this last species, however, it may be distinguished by its somewhat larger size, and by the remarkable pinching-in of the thorax, so as to make quite a lady-like waist there, or what naturalists call a "constriction." The female, after coupling, lays her yellow eggs (Fig. 10,_d_) on the under surface of the leaves of the potato plant. The larvæ hatching, when full grown descend into the ground, where they transform to pupæ (Fig. 10, _c_) within a small oval chamber, from which in time the perfect beetle emerges. This insect in certain seasons is a great pest in the Eastern and Middle States, but has never yet occurred in the Mississippi Valley in such numbers as to be materially injurious. ~The Cucumber Flea Beetle~, (_Haltica cucumeris_, Harris.) This nimble minute beetle (Fig. 13) belongs to the flea-beetles, (_Haltica_ family,) the same sub-group of the leaf-beetles (_Phytophaga_) to which also appertains the notorious steel-blue flea-beetle (_Haltica chalybea_, Illiger) that is such a pest to the vineyardist. Like all the rest of the flea-beetles, it has its hind thighs greatly enlarged, which enables it to jump with much agility. It is not peculiar to the potato, but infests a great variety of plants, including the cucumber, from which it derives its name. It eats minute round holes in the leaf of the plant it infests, but does not always penetrate entirely through it. The larva feeds internally upon the substance of the leaf, and goes under ground to assume the pupa state. It passes through all its stages in about a month, and there are two or three broods of them in the course of the same season. This is emphatically the greatest insect pest that the potato-grower has to contend with in Pennsylvania. It abounds throughout most of the Northern, Middle, and Western States. Large fields of potatoes can any summer be seen in the Middle States much injured by this minute insect, every leaf apparently completely riddled with minute round holes, and the stalks and leaves appearing yellow and seared. Plaster frequently and bountifully applied is sure to prevent the attacks of this insect, or to disperse it after it has commenced operations. ~The Colorado Potato-Bug~, (_Doryphora_ 10--_lineata_, Say.)--This insect, which, according to Dr. Walsh, has in the North-West alone damaged the potato crop to the amount of one million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, came originally from the Rocky Mountains, where it was found forty-five years ago, feeding on a wild species of potato peculiar to that region, (_Solanum rostratum_, Dunal.) When civilization marched up the Rocky Mountains, and potatoes began to be grown in that region, this highly improved pest acquired the habit of feeding upon the cultivated potato. It went from potato-patch to potato-patch, moving east-ward at the rate of about sixty miles a year, and is now firmly established over all the country extending from Indiana to its old feeding-grounds in the Rocky Mountains. In about twelve years it will have reached the Atlantic coast. There is another very closely allied species, known as the Bogus Colorado potato-bug, (_coryphora juncta_, Germor,) which has existed throughout a great part of the United States from time immemorial. This latter insect, however, feeds almost exclusively on the horse-nettle, (_Solanum carolinense_, Linn.,) and is never known to injure the potato. Both insects are figured, so that one need not be mistaken for the other. Figure 14, _b_, _b_, _b_, gives a view of the larva of the true Colorado potato-bug, in various positions and stages of its existence. Figure 15, _b_, _b_, of that of the bogus Colorado potato-bug. It will be seen at once that the head of the former is black, and the first joint behind the head is pale and edged with black behind only; that there is a double row of black spots along the side of the body; and that the legs are black. In the other larva, (Fig. 15, _b_,) on the contrary, the head is of a pale color, the first joint behind the head is tinged with dusk and edged all round with black; there is but a single row of spots along the side of the body, and the legs are pale. Figure 14, _d_, _d_, exhibits the true Colorado potato-bug; Figure 15, the bogus Colorado potato-bug; each of its natural size. Figure 14, _e_, shows the _left_ wing-case enlarged, and Figure 15, _e_, an enlarged leg of the latter. On a close inspection, it will be perceived that in the former (Fig. 14, _e_) the boundary of each dark stripe on the wing-cases toward the middle is studded with confused and irregular punctures, partly inside and partly outside the edge of the dark stripe; that it is the third and fourth dark stripes, counting from the outside, that are united behind, and that both the knees and feet are black. In Figure 15, _d_, on the contrary, it is the second and third stripes--not the third and fourth--counting from the outside, that are united behind, and the leg is entirely pale, except a black spot on the middle of the front of the thigh. The eggs (Fig. 14, _a_, _a_, and Fig. 15, _d_, _d_) are yellow, and are always laid on the under side of the leaf in patches of from twenty to thirty; those of the bogus are of a lighter color. Each female of the true Colorado potato-bug lays, according to Dr. Schirmer, about seven hundred eggs. In about six days the eggs hatch into larvæ, which feed on the foliage of the potato plant about seventeen days; they then descend to the ground, where they change into pupæ at the surface of the earth. The perfect beetle appears about ten to fourteen days after the pupa is formed, begins to pair in about seven days, and on the fourteenth day begins to deposit her eggs. There are three broods of this insect every year. Neither geese, ducks, turkeys, nor barn-yard fowl will touch the larva of the Colorado potato-bug when it is offered to them, and there are numerous authentic cases on record where persons who have scalded to death quantities of these larvæ, and inhaled the fumes of their bodies, have been taken seriously ill, and even been confined to their beds for many days in consequence. It is also reported to have produced poisonous effects on several persons who handled them incautiously with naked hands. Various plans have been tried to destroy this persistent enemy of the potato plant. Powdered hellebore is said to have been used with effect as a means of destroying the pest. It should be dusted on and under the foliage when the plant is wet with dew. Hellebore, however, is a dangerous remedy on account of its poisonous qualities. A mixture of one part salt, ten parts soap, and twenty parts water, applied to every part of the plants with a syringe, is quite effectual. Several cannibal and one parasitic insect are known to prey upon the larva of the Colorado potato-bug, and the eggs in vast numbers are eaten by several species of lady-birds and their larva. GENERAL REMARKS ON INSECTS. The time is not far distant when the American farmer will be obliged to put forth greater efforts to destroy noxious insects than he has hitherto. It is a well-known fact that noxious insects are increasing in a rapid rate throughout every part of our land. The country is becoming so "buggy" that eternal vigilance is the price of every thing produced from the soil. Close observers calculate that more fruits of various kinds and varieties are annually destroyed or rendered worthless by insects than are gathered and used by man. The cotton-worm, the wheat-midge, the canker-worms, the potato-bugs, are each every year increasing in numbers and destructiveness. The "curculio" alone destroys millions of dollars' worth of fruit annually. It is a safe estimate, all things considered, that, if noxious insects of all descriptions could at once be annihilated throughout our country, and mildews of various classes be effectually held in check, the cost of living to our people would, in-a short time, be reduced to one third of its present amount. It is disheartening to see what a vast amount of grains, fruits, and vegetables is annually eaten up by the larvæ, or appropriated by the perfect insects of various classes, merely for the sake of propagating their abominable species. Yet, in view of all the devastation, but feeble effort is made to abate the evil. Birds, many species of which nature seemingly designed on purpose to keep insects in check, are wantonly shot by lazy boys and indolent men, who range the fields and forests, killing all, from the humming-bird to the crow. Legislative enactments made expressly to protect the insectivorous songsters are every day violated with impunity. One man plants an orchard and does all he can to destroy noxious insects; another man near him also has an orchard, but his orchard serves no purpose but to propagate "curculios," "canker-worms," "bark-lice," "tent caterpillars," "codling moths," etc., for his neighbors, and, as a matter of course, the whole neighborhood swarms with noxious insects. If all cultivators would act in concert and with a will, insects might be reduced in numbers very rapidly. Most moths of night-flying insects are attracted to and destroyed by small bonfires kindled in still evenings during the summer months. Bottles half-filled with sweetened water, hung here and there, will trap countless bugs. Strong soap-suds applied immediately after they hatch is a sure remedy for plant lice. Molasses and water, to which a little arsenic has been added, placed in shallow dishes among the vines, is good medicine for potato-bugs, and all bugs in general. A lighted lamp placed in the centre of a common milk-pan, partly filled with water, the whole elevated a few feet from the ground, will, on a still evening, attract and destroy the wheat-midge and similar insects in great numbers. The calculations of the "curculio" and "codling moth" are brought to naught by turning hogs into the orchard to eat the stung fruit as it falls, and the larva that depastures upon the leaves of the current and gooseberry is destroyed by syringing the plants with a mixture of soap, salt, and water. VALUE OF THE POTATO AS CATTLE FOOD. The constituents of the potato are according to different authorities, as follows: Water 75.2 Casein 1.4 Starch 15.5 Dextrine 0.4 Sugar 3.2 Fat 0.2 Fibre 3.2 Mineral matter 0.9 Or economically: Water 75.2 Flesh-formers 1.4 Fat-formers 18.9 Accessories 3.6 Mineral matter 0.9 Of the high value of potatoes, when used in connection with other food, there is not a shadow of doubt. All experimenters and observers in the economy of food agree in saying that they are of the highest utility; but they must be used with other food whose constituents are different from those of the root. The analysis shows that potatoes surpass in the fat-producing principles the nutritious or flesh-forming in such proportions that they could not alone sustain the composition of the blood; for an animal fed alone on these tubers would be obliged to consume such quantities to provide the blood with the requisite proportion of albumen that, even if the process of digestion were not discontinued, there would be a superabundance of fat accumulated beyond the power of the oxygen to consume, which would successively absorb from the albuminous substance a part of its vital elements, and thus a check would be caused in the endless change of matter in the tissues in the nutritive and regressive transformations. Potatoes, then, to be of most value as food for cattle, should be fed in connection with grain, or with other roots in which the flesh-forming element predominates. There seems to be no doubt that the tubers are of most value when cooked, although some authors affirm to the contrary. It seems possible to prove this on philosophical principles; for it is well known that the starch contained in the potato is incapable of affording nourishment until the containing globules are broken, and one of the most efficient means of doing this seems to be by heat. Boussingault, in speaking of the economy of cooking potatoes, says, "The potato is frequently steamed or boiled first; yet I can say positively that horned cattle do extremely well upon raw potatoes, and at Bechelbrunn our cows never have them otherwise than raw. They are never boiled, save for horses and hogs. The best mode of dealing with them is to steam them; they need never be so thoroughly boiled as when they are to serve for the food of man. The steamed or boiled potatoes are crushed between two rollers, or simply broken with a wooden spade, and mixed with cut hay or straw or chaff, before being served out. It may not be unnecessary to observe that by steaming potatoes lose no weight; hence we conclude that the nutritive equivalent for the boiled is the same as that of the raw tuber. "Nevertheless, it is possible that the amylaceous principle is rendered more easily assimilable by boiling, and that by this means the tubers actually become more nutritious. Some have proposed to roast potatoes in the oven, and there can be little question that heated in this way they answer admirably for fattening hogs, and even oxen. Done in the oven, potatoes may be brought to a state in which they may perfectly supply the place of corn in feeding horses and other cattle." The apparent contradiction in the remarks will be observed; but the evident leaning in favor of cooked potatoes shows that Boussingault, although paying some attention to the theory that cooked food is not generally attended with the same benefit to ruminating as to other animals, was evidently almost convinced that those which contained an abundance of starch in their constituents must be rendered more nutritious when exposed to the action of heat. Potatoes fed in a raw state to stock are laxative in their effects, and are often given to horses as a medicine in cases of "hidebound" with decided benefit. Bots, which have been known to live twenty-four hours immersed in spirits of turpentine, die almost instantly when placed in potato-juice; hence a common practice with horsemen, where bots are suspected, is to first administer milk and molasses to decoy the parasites from the coating of the stomach, and then drench the animal with the expressed juice of potatoes. A decoction made by boiling the parings of potatoes in a small quantity of water is often used as a wash to kill vermin on cattle. Raw potatoes, fed occasionally and in small quantities, are a good tonic for stock of any kind which is kept principally on hay; but all experiments show that when the potato is used for fattening purposes, the tubers should in some way be cooked, that the animal to which they are fed may derive from them the greatest possible amount of nutriment. Repeated experiments demonstrate the fact that horned cattle or hogs lay on as much fat from the consumption of two thirds of a given quantity of potatoes properly cooked as they will by eating the entire quantity in a raw state. In point of nutriment as cattle-food, two pounds of potatoes are considered equivalent to one pound of hay. HOW TO COOK THE POTATO. FURNISHED BY PROF. PIERRE BLOT, OF BROOKLYN. At the suggestion of a number of friends, I addressed the following note to Professor Blot, which, with his reply, is appended: PROFESSOR PIERRE BLOT: NEW-YORK, Feb. 15, 1870. DEAR SIR: In connection with a Prize Essay on the cultivation of the potato, I wish to publish an article on COOKING THE POTATO, to be taken from your _Hand-Book of Practical Cookery_. I write this note to ask whether I can do this with your entire approval. Hoping that such article may aid our American housekeepers to prepare the potato for the table in a more palatable and wholesome manner, I remain yours very truly, W. T. WYLIE. BROOKLYN, CENTRAL KITCHEN, Feb. 15, 1870. REV. W. T. WYLIE: DEAR SIR: ~You are authorized, with the greatest pleasure.~ P. BLOT. In accordance with the above authority, the following selections have been made from the book named: ~To Select.~--As a general rule, the smaller the eye the better the potatoes. By cutting off a piece from the larger end, you ascertain if they are sound; they must be white, reddish, bluish, etc., according to the species. If spotted, they are not sound, and therefore very inferior. There are several kinds, and all of them are good when sound or coming from a proper soil. Use the kind you prefer, or those that are better fit for the way they are intended to be served. ~To Boil.~--Being naturally watery, potatoes should never be cooked by boiling except when wanted very white, as for _croquettes_. When boiled whole, put them of an even size as much as possible, in order to cook them evenly. They are better, more mealy, when steamed or baked; but those who have no steamer must, of course, boil them. Cover them with cold water, set on the fire and boil till done, then pour off all the water, put the pan back on a slow fire for five minutes and well covered; then use the potatoes. ~To Steam.~--Place them above a kettle of boiling water, in a kind of drainer made for that purpose, and adapted to the kettle. The drainer must be covered tight. They cook as fast as by boiling, the degree of heat being the same. When steamed the skin is very easily removed. ~To Prepare.~--If they are to be boiled, or steamed, or baked, it is only necessary to wash them. If wanted peeled, as for frying, etc., then commence by cutting off the germs or eyes; if young and tender, take the skin off with a scrubbing-brush, and drop immediately in cold water to keep them white; if old, scrape the skin off with a knife, for the part immediately under the skin contains more nutriment than the middle, and drop in cold water also. If wanted cut, either in dice, or like carpels of oranges, or any other way, cut them above a bowl of cold water, so that they drop into it; for if kept exposed to the air, they turn reddish and lose their nutritive qualities. ~A l'Allemande.~--Steam, peel, and slice the potatoes. Cut some bread in thin slices, and fry bread and potatoes with a little butter, and turn the whole in a bowl, dust well with sugar, pour a little milk all over, and bake for about fifteen minutes; serve warm. ~A l'Anglaise.~--Steam or boil about a quart of potatoes, and then peel and slice them. Put two ounces of butter in a frying-pan on the fire, and put the potatoes in when melted, toss them for about ten minutes, add salt, pepper, a little grated nutmeg, and serve hot. ~Broiled.~--Steam, peel, and slice the potatoes. Lay the slices on a gridiron, and place it over a rather slow fire; have melted butter, and spread some over the slices of potatoes with a brush; as soon as the under part is broiled, turn each slice over and spread butter over the other side. When done, dish, salt, and serve them hot. A little butter may be added when dished, according to taste. ~Fried.~--To be fried, the potatoes are cut either with a vegetable spoon, in fillets, in slices, with a scalloped knife, or with an ordinary one, or cut in pieces like carpels of oranges, or even in dice. When cut, drain and wipe them dry. This must be done quickly, so as not to allow the potatoes to turn reddish. Have a coarse towel ready, then turn the potatoes into a colander, and immediately turn them in the towel, shake them a little, and quickly drop them in hot fat. When done, turn them into a colander, sprinkle salt on them, and serve hot. Bear in mind that fried potatoes must be eaten as hot as possible. Fry only one size at a time, as it takes three times as long to fry them when cut in pieces as when sliced or cut in fillets. ~To fry them light or swelled.~--When fried, turn into the colander, and have the fat over a brisk fire; leave the potatoes in the colander only about half a minute, then put them back in the very hot fat, stir for about one minute, and put them again in the colander, salt them, and serve hot. If the fat is very hot, when dropped into it for the second time they will certainly swell; there is no other way known to do it. It is as easily done as it is simple. Potatoes cut in fillets and fried are sometimes called _à la Parisienne_; when cut in slices or with a vegetable spoon, they are called _à la française_. Potatoes cut with a vegetable spoon and fried, make a good as well as a sightly decoration for a dish of meat or of fish. They may be fried in oil also, but it is more expensive than in fat. They may be fried in butter also, but it is still more expensive than oil, and is not better than fat; no matter what kind of fat is used, be it lard, beef suet, or skimmings of sauces and gravy, it can not be tasted. ~Lyonnaise.~--Potatoes _Lyonnaise_ are prepared according to taste, that is, as much onion as liked is used, either in slices or chopped. If you have not any cold potatoes, steam or boil some, let them cool, and peel and slice them. For about a quart of potatoes, put two ounces of butter in a frying-pan on the fire, and when melted put as much onion as you please, either sliced or chopped, into the pan, and fry it till about half done, when add the potatoes and again two ounces of butter; salt, pepper, and stir and toss gently till the potatoes are all fried of a fine, light-brown color. It may require more butter, as no vegetable absorbs more than potatoes. ~Mashed.~--Peel and quarter about three pints of potatoes, as directed; put them in a saucepan with more water than is necessary to cover them, and a little salt; set on the fire and boil gently till done, drain, put them back in the saucepan, mash them well and mix them with two ounces of butter, two yolks of eggs, salt, pepper, and milk enough to make them of a proper thickness. Set on the fire for two or three minutes, stirring the while, and serve warm. When on the dish, smooth them with the back of a knife or scallop them, according to fancy. ~Mashed and Baked.~--Put two ounces of butter in a stewpan and set it on the fire; when hot, add a tea-spoonful of parsley chopped fine, and a little salt; five minutes after, put in it a quart of potatoes, prepared, cooked, peeled, and mashed, as directed; then pour on the whole, little by little, stirring continually with a wooden spoon, a pint of good milk; and when the whole is well mixed, and becoming rather thick, take from the fire, place on the dish, then set in a brisk oven for five minutes, and serve. ~Sautees.~--Take a quart of young and tender potatoes, peel them with a brush, and cut in slices. Put two ounces of butter in a frying-pan on a quick fire; when hot, put the potatoes in, and fry them till of a golden color; place them on a dish without any butter, sprinkle chopped parsley and salt on, and serve. They may also be served without parsley, according to taste. ~Soufflees.~--Steam a quart of potatoes, then peel and mash them in a saucepan and mix an ounce of butter with them; set on the fire, pour into it, little by little, stirring the while, about half a pint of milk, stir a little longer after the milk is in and until they are turning rather thick; dish the potatoes, smooth or scallop them with the back of a knife, and put them in a quick oven till of a proper color, and serve. ~In Cakes.~--Prepare and cook by steam a quart and a half of potatoes, peel and mash them; mix with them the yolks of five eggs, half a lemon-rind grated, and four ounces of fine white sugar. Put four ounces of butter in a stewpan and set it on the fire; when melted, put the mixture in, stirring it with a wooden spoon continually; as soon as it is in the stewpan, add the whites of the five eggs, well beaten; leave on the fire only the time necessary to mix the whole well together, and take off; when nearly cold, add, if handy, and while stirring, a few drops of orange-flower water; it gives a very good flavor; then put the whole in a tin mould greased a little with butter; place in a quick oven for about thirty-five minutes, and serve. ~With Butter, or English Fashion.~--Put water on the fire with considerable salt in it; at the first boil, drop a quart of washed potatoes in and boil till done, when take off, peel, and put them whole in a saucepan, with butter, salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg; set on a rather slow fire, stirring gently now and then till they have absorbed all the butter. Serve warm. They absorb a great deal of butter. ~With Bacon or Salt Pork.~--Peel and quarter about a quart of potatoes. Set a saucepan on the fire with about four ounces of fat salt pork cut in dice in it. When fried, put the potatoes in. Season with a bunch of seasonings composed of two sprigs of parsley, one of thyme, and a bay-leaf; salt and pepper to taste, and about half a pint of broth or water. Boil gently till cooked, remove the bunch of seasonings; skim off the fat, if any, and serve warm. It is served at breakfast, as well as _entremets_ for dinner. ~With Cream or Milk.~--Peel and mash a quart of potatoes, when prepared and cooked. Put two ounces of butter in a stewpan and set it on a good fire; when melted, sprinkle in it a tea-spoonful of flour, same of chopped parsley, a pinch of grated nutmeg, and salt; stir with a wooden spoon five minutes; then add the potatoes, and half a pint of milk or cream; keep stirring ten minutes longer, take from the fire, sprinkle in them half a table-spoonful of sugar, and serve as warm as possible. ~With White Sauce.~--Clean, wash, and throw a quart of potatoes in boiling water, with a sprig of thyme, two onions, a bay-leaf, two sprigs of sweet basil, two cloves, salt, and pepper; when cooked, take the potatoes out carefully, peel and cut them in two, place them on a warm dish, pour on them a white sauce, and serve warm. THE POTATO: ILLUSTRATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS. We propose to add a few pages of illustrations of the new varieties, together with descriptions of the same. A number of these were given in the pamphlet issued last year, and are reproduced from that. In case a new edition is called for, it is likely that a number of additional cuts will be added to it. We would call attention to the report of a series of experiments which have been made on the farms connected with the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania. There are very many questions connected with the cultivation of the potato which can be answered satisfactorily only by careful and repeated experiments. [Illustration: Excelsior.] Seedling of Early Goodrich, now six years old, and is claimed to combine more good qualities than any other potato. D. S. Heffron, of Utica, originated it. Is said to be productive, early, and of good keeping qualities. MASSASOIT.--A new variety from Western Massachusetts, resembling the Harrison in appearance, but earlier and of much better quality; flesh white, cooks dry and mealy, and altogether a superior variety; strongly recommended for a general crop. (See next page.) BELLEFONTE, February 12, 1870. REV. W. T. WYLIE: DEAR SIR: I inclose an extract from the report, suitable, I think, for the pamphlet. H. N. MCALLISTER. AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE OF PENNSYLVANIA. From an interesting and instructive report of the Professor of Agriculture to the Board of Trustees of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, for 1869, in relation to the results of experiments made upon the three several experimental farms connected with that institution, we make the following extracts touching the Potato, verifying and illustrating some of the principles set forth in the above essay: _1st.--Varieties._ Of upward of thirty different varieties experimented upon, the Early Goodrich, Early Rose, and Harrison are among the best and most prolific. LIKE WEIGHTS OF SEED UPON EQUAL AREAS OF GROUND. _2d.--Different Modes of Preparing the Seed._ CENTRAL FARM.--One fourth of Plot No. 11--Early Goodrich--_cut tubers_, yields 500 pounds, equal to 286 bushels per acre; _large and whole tubers_, yields 410 pounds, equal to 234 bushels per acre; _medium-sized tubers_, yields 419 pounds, equal to 239 bushels per acre; and _small tubers_, yields 486 pounds, equal to 278 bushels per acre. _3d.--Combined Diversity between Soil and Sub-soil and Common Plowing._ CENTRAL FARM.--The 4 plots, Nos. 11, 16, 116, and 416--_soil and subsoil plowing_--yields 6200 pounds, equal to 221 bushels per acre; the 2 plots, Nos. 216 and 316--_common plowing_--yields 1845 pounds, equal to but 131 bushels per acre. _4th.--Diversity between Letting all Sprouts Grow and Thinning to Three in each Hill._. EASTERN FARM.--Plot No. 208: Monitors; large and whole tubers, 21-1/2 pounds; _not thinned_; Moro Philips's superphosphate; yield 1174 pounds, equal to 168 bushels per acre. Plot No. 209: Monitors; large and whole tubers, 23 pounds; _thinned_; Moro Philips's superphosphate; yield 1042 pounds, equal to 149 bushels per acre. Plot No. 210: Monitors; large and whole tubers, 15 pounds; _not thinned_; stable manure; yield 860 pounds, equal to 124 bushels per acre. Plot No. 211: Monitors; large and whole tubers, 14-1/2 pounds; _thinned_; stable manure; yield 839 pounds, equal to 119 bushels per acre. _5th.--Diversity from Time of Cutting the Seed-Potatoes._. Plot No. 222: Monitors; _cut two weeks before planting_; yield 580 pounds, equal to 83 bushels per acre. Plot 223: Monitors; _cut at time of planting_; yield 819 pounds, equal to 117 bushels per acre. Plot 220: Early Shaw; _cut two weeks before planting_; yield 764 pounds, equal to 100 bushels per acre. Plot 221: Early Shaw; _cut at time of planting_; yield 907 pounds, equal to 129 bushels per acre. [Illustration: Massasoit.] [Illustration] Bresee's Peerless, or No. 6. The latest and best of all Mr. Bresee's seedlings for the main crop. This is also a seedling of the Garnet Chili, and originated from the same seed-ball as the Early Rose; skin dull white, occasionally russeted; eyes shallow, oblong; flesh white, mealy; grows to a large size, often weighing from one and a half to two pounds, and enormously productive. At a trial before a committee of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, in September last, this variety obtained more votes as to quality than any other of Bresee's seedlings. TABLE OF EXPERIMENTS. TRY IT AND REPORT RESULTS. lbs. Two pounds large-sized potatoes, planted whole 00 " " " " cut into quarters 00 " " " " cut to single eyes 00 " " " " cut to single eyes and planted four in a hill 00 " " " " planted in drills, fifteen inches between the sets, 00 Two pounds small potatoes, planted whole 00 " " " cut in two pieces 00 Two pounds cut to single eye, and worked in ridges 00 " " " the surface kept flat 00 To these add such other experiments as may be interesting to you. _Weigh_ the product of each carefully, and report _weight_, _average_, _size_ of each lot, and _quality_. [Illustration] _Brezee's King of the Earlies._ Raised, in 1862, by Albert Brezee, of Hubbardton, Vt., from a ball of the Garnet Chili. Vines of medium height, or a little less, and bearing no balls; leaves large; tubers large and handsome, roundish and slightly flattened; eyes small, and somewhat pinkish; skin flesh-colored, or dull pinkish white; flesh white, cooks well, and is of the best quality for the table. Has proven thus far very hardy. The variety will not be sent out until the spring of 1870. [Illustration] THE EARLY MOHAWK POTATO. Originated in Michigan, in 1866, from a cross of the Peachblow and Brick Eye. It is of oblong, roundish shape, flattened at the ends. Skin light pink, with pink blush near the eye. Eyes slightly sunken, flesh white, cooks dry and mealy, and of superior flavor. Ripens from six to ten days earlier than the Rose, of uniform large size and but few small ones, and perfectly free from Core or Hollow Heart, and a superior Winter and Spring variety. [Illustration] _Brezee's Prolific._ This variety originated with Albert Brezee, Esq., of Hubbardton, Vt., in 1861. Mr. Brezee was the originator of the Early Rose, the seed producing both that and Brezee's Prolific being from the same seed-ball, and both are seedlings of the Garnet Chili. The vines of Brezee's Prolific are of medium height, quite bushy, and somewhat spreading, and with very large leaves; as yet they have produced no seed-balls. Tubers large, regular in shape, and very smooth, slightly oblong, and very much flattened; skin dull white, inclined to be russeted; eyes but little depressed and slightly pinkish; flesh white, rarely if ever hollow; cooks quickly, and is very mealy and of excellent quality. Yield very large, maturing three weeks later than the Early Rose. * * * * * _Rules Worth Observing._--An experienced cultivator says, "My experience leads me to lay down the following as _safe rules_: "I. As early as possible, _lay your plans_ for the next season's planting, and manure and work your ground accordingly, in advance. "II. Secure the _best seed_, even if it cost you two or five times as much as a common and less valuable sort. "III. _Always_ get a new, improved variety, as soon as it has been tested and proved. _Remember_ the profit is mainly made by the early cultivators. When it gets so common that _you_ can buy cheap, you will have to _sell_ cheap, too. "IV. Buy only from reliable dealers, and _be sure_ you get the _genuine_ article. "V. BUY, or at least ORDER, if you possibly can, in the fall or winter; you thus save the spring rise of prices. "VI. Liberal outlay for _seed, manure, tools, and work_ gives ten-fold the largest return in money, as well as satisfaction." [Illustration] THE GLEASON. Also a seedling of 1860, of the Pink Eye Rusty Coat, No. 15, which it closely resembles. When two years old, Mr. Goodrich described it thus: "Longish, rusty, coppery; leaves and vines dark green; flowers white; a very hopeful sort." September 29th, 1863, at digging time, he added: "Very nice; many in the hill; no disease." The two seasons, 1865 and 1866, under Dr. Gray's cultivation, this variety yielded at the rate of four hundred bushels to the acre, being more productive than the parent. This variety gives the best satisfaction. The tubers are not overgrown, but numerous; have fine-grained, solid flesh, that cooks white. For winter use this kind is excellent. It is a good keeper, and has a fine, rich flavor, especially when baked. [Illustration] _Willard._ J. J. H. Gregory says of this potato: "The Willard is a seedling from the Early Goodrich. It proves to be a half early variety, enormously productive, and is a potato of good promise. It is of a rich rose color, spotted and splashed with white. The flesh is white." [Illustration] THE EARLY ROSE. "It is a seedling of the Garnet Chili, that was originated in 1861, by Albert Brezee, Esq., an intelligent farmer of Hortonville, Vt. I have experimented with it for three years, and have been so well pleased with it that I have purchased all Mr. Brezee could spare for the last two years, and have engaged the whole of his small crop for another year. "It has a stout, erect stalk, of medium height; large leaves; flowers freely; bears no fruit. The tuber is quite smooth, nearly cylindrical, varying to flattish at the centre, tapering gradually toward each end. Eyes shallow, but sharp and strongly marked. Skin thin, tough, of a dull bluish color. Flesh white, solid, and brittle; rarely hollow; boils through quickly; is very mealy, and of the best table quality. It is as healthy and productive as the Early Goodrich, matures about ten days earlier, and is its superior for the table. The cut is a good outline of this beautiful and excellent sort. "I consider it the most promising very early potato with which I am acquainted, and I have tried nearly all the early sorts of the country." * * * * * _~How to Double Your Crop, when you have New and Rare Kinds.~_--In an ordinary hot-bed or cold frame, put some six inches of good, loose, rich soil; split your potato, and lay it cut side down about three inches under the surface. When the sprouts are four or five inches high, lift the potato, slip off the sprouts, and plant them. You can then cut the tuber into single eyes, and plant as usual. The crop from the sprouts will ripen two weeks before the others. I made $40 this year by trying this with a _handful_ of potatoes. Every reader is welcome to it, and may make as much or more than I did, if he secures a few pounds of the newer and costly but valuable kinds. W. _Early Goodrich._ A seedling of the Cusco of 1860. In 1862, Mr. Goodrich described it: "Round to longish; sometimes a crease at the insertion of the root; white; flowers bright lilac; (produces) many balls; yield large. Table quality is already very good. This sort is No. 1 every way." He said to me in the spring of 1864: "This early sort gives me more satisfaction than any other I have ever grown." This variety ripens as early as the Ashleaf Kidney; on rich soil yields from 250 to 350 bushels per acre; has never shown any disease; is white-fleshed, and of superior quality. The above description by D. S. Heffron is fully sustained by my experience. I noticed at dinner to-day, (Nov. 17th,) every potato in a large dishful had cracked its skin, and from most of them the skin had peeled itself half off. W. * * * * * _Rev. W. F. Dixon_, of Pine Grove, gives the results of his experience in the following note: "PINE GROVE, MERCER CO., PA., September 20, 1868. "A year ago last spring, a friend gave me three early Goodrich potatoes, which I planted four eyes in a hill, and last fall I raised over one bushel. I had the Buckeye planted in the same lot. The Goodrich produced about four times as much to the hill as the Buckeye." * * * * * Our country may well honor the memory of Rev. C. E. Goodrich, who, by persevering experiments and patient toil, has produced such wonderful results. His success should stimulate every farmer to make a similar line of experiments. _Potato Crop of New York State._--The total potato crop of the State of New York, this year, is about 25,000,000 bushels. The six great potato counties are Washington, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Monroe, St. Lawrence, and Genesee. Only one other county (Oneida) produces 300,000 bushels; three others, 600,000; one, 500,000; six, 400,000. New York county returns a crop of 1700 bushels. The entire crop of the State, 25,000,000 bushels, is raised on 254,403 acres of land. The three counties in the State which produce the most potatoes join each other, viz., Washington, Rensselaer, and Saratoga--their aggregate production reaching within a fraction of 2,500,000 bushels, or more than one-eighth of the total product of the whole State.--_New York Observer_. HARISON. Mr. Heffron gives the following account of this variety: "It is a brother of the Early Goodrich--a seedling of the Cusco of 1860. When two years old, Mr. Goodrich described it thus: 'White, large, not so deep eyes as the parent, nice.'" In 1863, Mr. Goodrich had eleven and a half bushels; and though it was a bad year for disease, and this a young and tender seedling, when he overhauled his seedlings, January 29th, 1864, he made this entry in his book: "All perfect, fine." It has a smooth white skin, white flesh, and is the most solid of large potatoes, having no hollow at the centre. It is enormously productive, yielding as well as the parent Cusco, and exceeds all others; its form is good, table quality excellent; keeps well; ripens ten days earlier than the Garnet Chili, and thus far is as hardy as the Garnet Chili. Among winter sorts this potato must soon hold as high a place as is conceded to the Early Goodrich among the early sorts. [Illustration] _To Keep Potatoes during Winter._--As soon as dry after digging, pick up and handle carefully; store in a dry, well-aired, cool cellar, free from frost, either in bins raised a little from the bottom of the cellar, or in barrels having at least two holes bored through the staves near the bottom, and lay the top head on, over a lath, so as to exclude the light without preventing a free circulation of air. Also sprinkle among the potatoes about half a pint of recently slacked quick-lime to each barrel. If bins are used, cover them over sufficiently to exclude the most of the light. Air the cellar all winter, as often as the temperature outside will admit of it. CLIMAX. [Illustration] It has a stout, erect stalk, of full medium height, internodes of medium length, and very large leaves; the tuber is above medium in size, quite smooth, in form of a short cylinder swelled out at the centre, occasionally slightly flattened, and terminating rather abruptly; eyes shallow, sharp, sometimes swelled out or projecting, and always strongly defined; skin medium thickness, considerably netted or russet, tough, white; flesh entirely white, solid, heavy, brittle, and never hollow, and it boils through quickly, with no hard core at centre or stem, is mealy, of floury whiteness, and of superior table quality. [Illustration] _Early Prince._ The _Early Prince_ is a seedling of the Early York, and was propagated in 1864. It has proved to be from a week to ten days earlier than the Early Rose, as far as size and solidity are concerned, and from two to three weeks earlier in quality. * * * * * ESTABLISHED IN 1842. A Good, Cheap, and very Valuable Paper for Every Man, Woman, and Child IN CITY, VILLAGE, AND COUNTRY. THE AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, FOR THE Farm, Garden, and Household, Including a Special Department of Interesting and Instructive Reading for Children and Youth. * * * * * THE AGRICULTURIST is a large periodical of _forty-four_ quarto pages, beautifully printed, filled with _plain, practical, reliable, original_ matter, and containing hundreds of _beautiful and instructive Engravings_ in every annual volume. It contains each month a Calendar of Operations to be performed on the _Farm_, in the _Orchard_ and _Garden_, in and around the _Dwelling_, etc. The thousands of hints and suggestions given in every volume are prepared by practical, intelligent _workingmen_, who know what they write about. The _Household Department_ is valuable to every housekeeper, affording very many useful hints and directions calculated to lighten and facilitate indoor work. The _Department for Children and Youth_ is prepared with special care, to furnish not only amusement, but also to inculcate knowledge and sound moral principles. TERMS--English Edition. The circulation of THE AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST is so large that it can be furnished (_postage prepaid by the publishers_) at the low price of $1.50 a year; four copies, one year, for $5; six copies, one year, for $7; ten or more copies, one year, $1 each; single copies, 15 cents each. TRY IT A YEAR. ~A German Edition,~ containing all the principal articles and engravings of the English Edition, and other matter of special interest to German-Americans, is furnished at the same rates as above stated for the English Edition, _postage prepaid by the publishers_. ORANGE JUDD COMPANY, Publishers and Proprietors, No. 751 Broadway, New York City. 
26313	----	file was produced from images produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University) [Illustration: Hon. R. W. Dunlap, Kingston, Ohio, graduate of course in agriculture, Ohio State University, 1895, noted football player, state senator, state dairy and food commissioner. Farmer and institute lecturer. Introduced alfalfa fourteen years ago into his farm and community. Introduced commercial fertilizers and raised thereby more wheat from 50 acres than his father did from 150 acres, thus convincing his father and neighbors that when rightly used commercial fertilizers paid. Mr. Dunlap claimed that the agricultural college made him a farmer, because when he left for college he had no intention of returning to the farm.] The Young Farmer Some Things He Should Know _By_ THOMAS F. HUNT Imperial man! Co-worker with the wind And rain and light and heat and cold, and all The agencies of God to feed and clothe And render beautiful and glad the world! --_Stockard_ NEW YORK ORANGE JUDD COMPANY LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., Limited 1913 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ORANGE JUDD COMPANY ---------- Entered at Stationers' Hall _LONDON, ENGLAND_ PRINTED IN U. S. A. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I ESSENTIALS OF SUCCESS 1 II MEANS OF ACQUIRING LAND 14 III FARM ORGANIZATION 31 IV OPPORTUNITIES IN AGRICULTURE 44 V WHERE TO LOCATE 57 VI SIZE OF FARM 64 VII SELECTION OF FARM 71 VIII THE FARM SCHEME 88 IX THE ROTATION OF CROPS 101 X THE EQUIPMENT 109 XI HOW TO ESTIMATE PROFITS 117 XII GRAIN AND HAY FARMING 135 XIII THE COST OF FARMING OPERATIONS 148 XIV THE PLACE OF INTENSIVE FARMING 162 XV REASONS FOR ANIMAL HUSBANDRY 172 XVI RETURNS FROM ANIMALS 185 XVII FARM LABOR 195 XVIII SHIPPING 210 XIX MARKETING 220 XX LAWS AFFECTING LAND AND LABOR 233 XXI RURAL LEGISLATION 248 XXII RURAL FORCES 268 THE YOUNG FARMER: SOME THINGS HE SHOULD KNOW ---------- CHAPTER I ESSENTIALS OF SUCCESS Columella, the much traveled Spanish-Roman writer of the first century A. D., said that for successful farming three things are essential: knowledge, capital and love for the calling. This statement is just as true today as it was when written 1900 years ago by this early writer on European agriculture. Every man who loves the calling and has an ambition to become a successful farmer should understand that no two of these essentials are sufficient, but that all three are necessary. Although this is so simple as to be almost axiomatic, it is indeed surprising how few people believe a knowledge of farming is really essential to success. America is strewn with cases of failure, in farming, by men investing capital acquired in other business. In nine cases out of ten failure has been due to lack of knowledge of farming. There is known to the writer an expert mineralogist and metallurgist. On the subject of coal and gold mining he can give the most valuable information. His advice is constantly sought on all such matters. Instead of investing his money in mining, on which he is a recognized authority, he has invested it in a farm, about which he knows next to nothing. He has not even had the advantage of being raised on a farm, since his father was a railroad man. A mechanical engineer remarked that if he had $25,000 he would invest it in a farm. This man is supposed to be an expert in business methods as applied to manufacturing in general, and he is especially conversant with the manufacture and trade in automobiles. About all he has seen of farming he has observed from the window of a Pullman car or from the steering wheel of an automobile. Instead of investing his earnings in some manufacturing business, about which he has spent years of study and in which he has had some training, he would invest it in farming, of which he has only the most rudimentary knowledge, if only he had sufficient capital. As a matter of fact, he is more in need of knowledge than of capital. Even farmers of experience do not always realize the training required to succeed in farming. A letter was received by the dean of a certain agricultural college saying that a graduate of another agricultural college had taken one of the poorest farms in his neighborhood and was raising better potatoes than anyone else could raise. The letter asked that information be sent by return mail as to how this young man could be beaten in raising potatoes. Of course the answer had to be sent that while information upon raising potatoes could easily be supplied, although not in the limits of an ordinary letter, the training in observation, judgment and reasoning faculties essential to meet the daily problems as they arise could not be supplied. There is no objection to men of other vocations adopting farming as an avocation if they can afford it. It is a rational form of pleasure for wealthy people, and one in which they can often be of great service. This cannot be said of all forms of relaxation. Wealthy men have been of special service to the cause of agriculture by promoting the breeding of improved live stock. Men in other callings should clearly understand, however, that if they have a farm merely as a place to spend a week end, that they may expect to find the financial returns unsatisfactory. To no one is there more significance in the old school aphorism "knowledge is power" than to the young man who is to become a farmer. While it is not necessary to be educated in schools in order to gain knowledge, yet the schoolroom with all its limitations is usually the most economical and most efficient method of acquiring certain forms of knowledge essential to every successful man or woman. A farm-to-farm canvass of a certain region of the state of New York discloses the fact that farmers with college training are obtaining a higher income from their farms than those whose school days ended with high school. Similarly, those who have finished the high school are more prosperous financially than those who never advanced beyond the grades. The investigation showed, for example, that with the farmers under observation the high school education was equivalent to $6,000 worth of 5% bonds. Farming is an occupation requiring keen observation, sound judgment and accurate reasoning, all attributes which are strengthened greatly by proper education. This is so true that many men, perhaps most men, are forty before they have grasped the problems which the truly successful farmer must solve. A considerable part of the knowledge essential to success in any pursuit is acquired by actually working at the occupation, or, as we say, by practical experience. Some features of any occupation can be obtained in no other way. A preliminary education may, however, greatly reduce the time necessary to acquire even this practical experience. For example, a course in shop work as taught in technical high schools and colleges, requiring two hours a day for five months, may shorten the time of apprenticeship by one or more years, in acquiring the trade of carpenter or iron worker. In the same manner a course in butter making, cheese making or floriculture, may shorten the time required to obtain the necessary practical details by ten months or even more. Eventually, also, the man thus trained will be the better man. If the industrial activities of the world be divided into farming, mining, manufacturing, trade and transportation, it will be noted at once that farming is the only one which deals with living things. In fact, the definition of agriculture, in its broadest sense, is the economic production of living things. The farmer is thus brought face to face with some of the most difficult and intricate problems with which the human race has to grapple. It is this fact that makes farming, in some ways, the most uncertain as well as the most fascinating occupation known to man. The fact that the farmer is dealing with living things puts his occupation in a class by itself for a number of reasons, one of which is germane to the subject of this chapter. In most occupations a larger part of the knowledge necessary to success can be acquired by doing than is the case in farming. Locomotive engineers are trained for their responsible duty while firing the engine. The brakeman becomes a conductor by assisting the latter. A bank cashier is usually a promoted bank clerk. Each obtained the knowledge essential to success largely by oft-repeated performance. While, of course, there is much the farmer can learn only by experience, there are many things essential to his success that the mere performance of the necessary farm operations will not teach him. Spreading manure will never teach him that stable manure should be supplemented with phosphoric acid in order to get the best results. The growing of clover will not teach him that mineral fertilizer may keep up the fertility of the soil where clover grows luxuriantly and occurs in the rotation at definite intervals. Feeding cattle will not teach him that a good ration for milch cows is one containing one pound of digestible protein to seven pounds of digestible carbohydrates, provided it is palatable and, at least, two-thirds of the total ration is digestible. Nor will the feeding of such a ration teach the farmer how to calculate the most economical ration from feeding stuffs at current prices. The cause of potato blight and the methods of combating it cannot be learned from the operation of planting and cultivating potatoes. These are only a few illustrations--they might be multiplied indefinitely--to show that farming is peculiar in that performance of the daily duties does not give the knowledge essential to success in the same measure that it does in such occupations as banking, trade and transportation. Yet, curiously enough, while no man would undertake to run a locomotive engine or perform the duties of cashier of a bank without thorough training, there are many who will undertake to farm without education or knowledge of the business. The young man who intends to become a farmer should fully understand that if farming is not a business worthy of a thoroughly educated man, it is not a business worthy of him; because every young man is worthy of a thorough education, provided he is a man of clean habits and good purposes. Do not allow yourself to be persuaded that you lack ability to acquire a good education. All you require is opportunity, determination and honesty of intention. Farming is worthy, moreover, of the most highly educated as well as the most capable. If lack of means prevents a young man from taking a four-years' training in agriculture, he will find a two years' course offered by many of the state agricultural schools. While it is obviously impossible to give in two years as much training as in four years, these two years' courses contain the more technical subjects and are usually very thorough and efficient. No young man, no matter how thorough his previous training, need hesitate to pursue one of them. There are, however, young men who cannot spare the time and expense of even two years' training. For such many state agricultural colleges offer winter terms of eight to twelve weeks. These courses are arranged to allow the student to specialize along some particular line. The better prepared the man is who enters these winter courses the more he will benefit by them. This leads to the caution that such courses should not be substituted for the education offered in the public schools, but should only be sought after all the opportunities for education at home have been exhausted. For the somewhat older young man who is now farming and cannot leave his farm or for the younger man as a preparation for the short courses, one or more correspondence courses will be found useful. Not all colleges conduct correspondence courses, but fortunately those who do will accept students from other states on equal terms. There are many persons who will testify to their helpfulness. Every young farmer should have a carefully selected library of standard books on agriculture, not only for reading but for reference. An instance of the value of a standard book of reference came recently to the attention of the writer. An educated young farmer in Iowa paid $2.50 for a peck of crimson clover seed which he sowed in the spring in his oats. A reference to any standard publication on forage crops costing less than the peck of seed would have disclosed to him the probable hopelessness of success under the conditions named. The books to include as well as to exclude from a select list will depend upon the previous training of the man making the purchase, the character of the farming to be pursued, and, to some extent, to the section of the country where the farm is located. Any bookseller can secure catalogs issued by firms making a specialty of publishing agricultural books. For the average reader these catalogs are sufficient to enable one to make intelligent purchases. Every farmer should take one or more agricultural journals. At present journals are published on every phase of agriculture and many of them are of high character. Publishers are always glad to send sample copies free of charge. By examining these copies intelligent selection may be made. The writer of this book has had rather unusual opportunity during more than a quarter of a century of observing the influence of education upon the success, financial and otherwise, of those who engage in farming. As the result of these observations he wishes to urge every young man to allow no one to persuade him that because he is to be a farmer, he does not need a thorough education. Remember that you have but one life to live, and if you let the golden opportunity pass, the mistake can never be rectified. No man ever regretted that he had too much education--thousands have regretted the lack of it. Every young man, no matter what his occupation is to be, should receive some school training, however little it may be, every year until he reaches the age of majority. Otherwise the age of majority should be changed. In no occupation is this more important than in farming, because the operations involved in farming fail to develop certain attributes necessary to the largest success. A man cannot have a mind too well trained, although it is possible that he may have too much undigested information. The mental condition may not be unlike the physical condition of the man who is burdened with too many clothes. When in action he may need to strip his mind of unnecessary information in order to make the most efficient mental effort. CHAPTER II MEANS OF ACQUIRING LAND Of the three essentials to successful farming--capital, knowledge and love for the calling--only the first can be obtained on credit, and this only in part. Usually when a man desires to buy a farm he must have, at least, one-third of his desired investment in cash. The amount to be invested will include, not only the cost of the land, but the cost of the necessary equipment of the farm. The percentage of the total capital which may be borrowed, however, will depend on many circumstances and is usually a matter of first importance. No man should borrow more than a banker or other reputable business man considers a safe investment. Usually there is no better counselor as to a safe investment than the local banker. The banker should, and generally does, stand in much the same relation to the financial welfare of the community as the physician to its physical, the minister to its moral and spiritual welfare. The inexperienced person, even if he does not need to borrow money, would do well to consult some responsible banker in the neighborhood before making an investment in farm lands. The young man should, as early as possible in life, open an account with the local bank, not merely for the sake of the habit of saving which this will encourage, but in order to come into personal business relations with the banker. Instead of concealing from the bank his business operations, he should seek the advice of his banker on all important financial matters. On an average, every farm changes hands at least three times in a century. Every farm, therefore, must be acquired by purchase, inheritance or gift at more or less irregular intervals. In the neighborhood in which the author was born, there is not a farm but has changed hands since he can remember. In many cases the farm is now in the possession of a son; in some instances in that of a grandson of the owner as known by the writer in his boyhood days. In this particular community the acquirement of a farm by a person not related to the former owner has occurred in relatively few instances. As a rule, when the farm has been acquired by a son, the latter has operated the farm as tenant or partner for a period previous to his ownership and during lifetime of the father. In some instances the son has boarded with the parents or the parents with the son and his wife; or, in the case of a daughter, with the daughter and son-in-law. Where there are several heirs, as is apt to be the case, the son operating the farm is required to purchase or rent the interest of the other heirs, unless the farm is large enough to be divided, which is less seldom the case than is popularly supposed. Thus, if there are 200 acres of land worth $50 an acre, and five heirs, the young farmer may inherit $2,000, and be required to assume the remaining $8,000 as an obligation. He may borrow this money at the bank, placing a mortgage upon the farm, thus settling with the other heirs at once. Or he may pay the other heirs rent on their share of the farm. In any case he will, if successful, gradually cancel his obligation and become owner of the farm. That no heir is willing to assume this responsibility is the most common reason for a farm changing from one family to another, and the disruption of community interests. The customary, or normal, method of acquiring land has been and still is a combination of tenancy, inheritance and mortgage. Without some tenant system and without the farm mortgage, it would be impossible for the average young man to acquire a farm. That men are constantly advancing from farm tenant to landowner is shown by statistics giving the percentage of tenants by ages. The majority of farmers under 30 are renters. Most farmers over 45 are owners of farm land. Thus in Illinois, in 1900, approximately 75% of the farmers under 25 years of age rented their farms, while less than 20% of the farmers over 55 years of age were tenants. The question for the young man to consider is not what effect the tenant system has upon the welfare of the nation or what political ills may be connected with farm mortgages, but how to make use of these necessary and beneficent agencies for the acquirement of a farm. A system of tenancy which leads to absent landlordism and a permanent tenant class is thoroughly vicious, while a practice which enables a man to become, within a reasonable period, a land-owning farmer is a thoroughly approvable and, indeed, necessary method of acquiring land. As already indicated, most young men will need in some form or other to employ more capital than they possess when they start farming. They must, therefore, determine what is the best form of obtaining the necessary capital, viz.: whether to borrow the money on a farm mortgage, or whether to use the capital someone else has invested in a farm by paying him rent for it. The conditions of tenancy in this country are often not the most fortunate, yet the young man of character may well find, for a time, at least, it would be best for him to rent a farm and invest his own capital in the necessary machinery and live stock to conduct it properly. Much will depend on the character of the arrangement which may be made. Usually more favorable terms can be secured from landlords owning large numbers of farms than from the owner of one or two farms. The large landowner is content with a moderate income from each farm, because in the aggregate his income is sufficient for his needs, while the retired farmer who must live off the proceeds of a single farm is apt to drive a hard bargain and may not be over particular concerning the maintenance of said farm. The writer knows a farmer who owns a good farm purchased from the proceeds of a rented farm. He continues to live on the rented farm and rents his own, because, it is said, his landlord is willing to make him more favorable terms than he makes to his tenant. The more capable the tenant the more favorable the terms he may exact. Certain tenants are in demand and can have their choice of farms. A prosperous-looking man was pointed out recently as an example of a tenant capable of buying a farm in one of the most highly developed counties in the United States. It was stated that as a renter he could have his choice of any farm in the county, but that he did not have a dollar invested in farm land. Possibly he invests his surplus earnings in stocks and bonds. It is not the present purpose to determine the relative merits of the different systems of land tenure, but to try to be helpful to the beginners by discussing the usual practices in order that he may know whether the arrangement he is considering is customary and whether it is likely to prove satisfactory. Every third farm in the United States is rented under one of three methods: 1. A definite money rent may be paid, ranging from $2 to $6 an acre for land on which the ordinary, staple crops are raised. Perhaps $3 to $4 is more commonly paid for such land. 2. In the South it is common for the landlord to require a definite number of pounds of cotton per acre or a certain number of bales of cotton for a one or two-mule farm, as the case may be. This is classified by the census authorities as "cash rent," but will here be called "crop rent." Crop rent is less common than either cash or share rent in the northern and western states, although perhaps the most common form in the South. Crop rent, however, is met with in some sections, as in western New York where certain large landowners require a definite number of bushels of wheat, oats or maize and make certain stipulations as to hay and straw. They charge a cash rent for pasture. 3. Much the most common form of tenancy, however, is that where a certain percentage or share of the product is given the landlord for the use of the land. Before entering into a discussion of the customary conditions under which land is rented on shares it may be helpful to point out the fundamental differences between cash rent, crop rent and share rent. In case of cash rent, the landlord takes no risk, either as to the price or the amount of product. In the case of crop rent, he shares the risk as to the variation in price, but not as to the amount of crop raised. The latter may depend upon the clemency of the weather or upon the industry and skill of the tenant. In the case of share rent, both landlord and tenant share equally as to variation in the price and the amount of product. Three forms of share rent may be recognized: (a) Where landlord furnishes only real estate (land and buildings), the tenant supplying everything else, including teams, machinery, labor, seeds and fertilizers. Under these conditions it is customary for the landlord to receive one-third and the tenant two-thirds of the crop raised or the product produced. (b) The second form of share rent is where the landlord furnishes the real estate; the tenant supplies teams, tools and labor, while the landlord and tenant own equally all live stock other than teams, and bear equally all other expenses, as for seeds, fertilizers and cost of threshing. Under this system, it is customary for landlord and tenant each to receive one-half of all sales. As each owns one-half of all the live stock (teams excepted), each shares equally in all increase. The landlord pays for the cost of permanent improvements such as new buildings, fences, repairs and drainage. The tenant, in making these improvements, in some cases, agrees to furnish two days' labor for one day's pay. The theory is that, while the increased value of the real estate is of advantage only to the landlord, the improved facilities are of some benefit to the tenant. Since he can do this work at odd times when not otherwise employed, he can afford to take a generous view of the matter. It is obvious that if he remains on the farm long enough the tenant will come into his share of the benefit, while if he intends to leave the farm soon he may not. There is in the mind of the writer a prosperous tenant who, after eighteen years on a single farm, declared he had no desire to make a change, and doubtless there are thousands of similar instances. Under the plan in which the tenant furnishes everything except the real estate, the tendency of the farm is apt to be downward both as to the improvements and the crop-producing power of the soil. The interests of the landlord and tenant are not mutual. This condition of tenancy leads to growing only those crops which can be readily sold from the farm and to frequent changes of the tenant, with its accompanying auction sales of property. In one region, where this system prevails, it has been facetiously remarked that each tenant has a sale every year to determine how much he is worth. It is less trouble than taking an inventory. In the second form of share rent, the interests of landlord and tenant are more nearly mutual. Under this system, animal husbandry is possible, which, generally, involves pasturing and feeding a considerable part of the crops upon the farm, and even the purchase of nitrogenous by-products. All this leads to permanency of tenant, since the landlord and tenant are both interested in the live stock and other personal property, which cannot be divided, with economy, each year. It is interesting to note that the house is the least likely to be kept in repair. The improvement of the barns and fences or the laying of tile drains increases the landlord's income, but he has no financial interest in the house, so long as the tenant is willing to live in it. There are, of course, many variations in the arrangement of details between the landlord and tenant. On many dairy farms in the northeastern states it is customary for the landlord to own the cows. While the landlord and tenant share equally from the sale of milk, butter or cheese, in such cases the increase in the herd belongs to the owner of the land. Hence, money from the sale of any animal, old or young, goes to him. This is because the landlord must keep up the herd. If a cow is sold, he must furnish another to take her place. (c) The third type of tenant farming is where the tenant furnishes nothing but his labor and managerial ability, and receives a share of the sales, which may be one-third. This is rather an unusual type of tenancy, since, where the landlord furnishes all the capital, it is much more common to employ a farm manager at a monthly wage. The wage varies greatly, but is seldom below forty dollars or above seventy-five dollars per month without board, especially to those who have not hitherto had much managerial experience. Various attempts at profit sharing have been made. A recent instance is of a young married man taking 160 acres of tillable land where the landlord has a fairly well-stocked farm. The young man is to have a house and everything in the way of living the farm can furnish. He is to receive $20 a month and one-half the net proceeds, or, what is called in Chapter XI, the farm income. In considering a contract of this kind it is necessary to make a careful distinction between: (1) Gross sales, (2) net proceeds, viz.: the gross sales less the expenses of running the farm, and (3) profits, which may be defined for the purpose of this discussion as the net proceeds less the interest on the investment.[A] Assuming 160 acres of land, all tillable, devoted to dairy farming in eastern United States, gross sales may be estimated at $20 an acre, or an annual gross income of $3,200, and the net proceeds at $10 an acre, or $1,600. Under these conditions the young man's income would be $240, received as wages, plus $800, as his share of the net proceeds, or a total of $1,040 a year. Generally speaking, probably a more satisfactory method, both for landlord and the farm manager, would be to pay the latter as nearly as may be what his services should be worth and give him in addition one-half the profits; that is, one-half of that which was left after deducting the expenses of running the farm and interest on the capital invested. Merely for illustrating the method of calculation, let us assume this farm with its equipment to be worth $100 an acre, or $16,000. Let the farm manager be paid $840 a year. Assume the same gross income, $3,200, and the same cost of operating, $1,600, to which add $600, the additional salary of the manager. The total expense is then $2,200, and the net proceeds $1,000. If 4%, or $640, was charged on the investment, there would be $360 to be divided between landlord and manager, making the salary of manager $1,020. A simple calculation will show that if 5% were charged, the salary of the manager would be $940 a year, and if 6%, $860 a year. The advantage of the latter method of employment is that the young man runs less risk, while both receive equally any surplus beyond fair wages and fair interest on the investment. In this connection it is important to consider how much may be reasonably paid for managerial ability. A study of the figures on page 133 will show that the labor income from a considerable number of farms of the better class was about 7% of the capital invested in the farms. The inference is, therefore, that if a man has $10,000 wisely invested in a farm he may pay $700 for a working manager; or, to put it in another form, before the owner of a farm can afford to pay $1,200 a year for a farm manager, he should have about $17,000 invested. Moreover, this investment must be in a form calculated to return an income. If part of it consists of investments for pleasure or fancy, such investment will not only not add to the income, but will detract from it by increasing the cost of maintenance. This is scarcely less important to the employee than it is to the employer, since if the owner pays a higher salary than the manager can earn, he quite surely will sooner or later discharge his manager. This may result disastrously for the discharged young man, not merely on account of the loss of employment, but because his failure may militate against his securing satisfactory employment elsewhere. When an employer is seeking a man, he looks for one who has succeeded. There is an old saying, "Nothing succeeds like success," and it is only too true that nothing fails like failure. ----- [A] Profit is sometimes defined as that part of the product which the producer can consume without reducing his means of production. CHAPTER III FARM ORGANIZATION In the last chapter were discussed the most common methods by which a young man acquires an opportunity to engage in farming. This chapter will discuss some less common arrangements by which may be bridged that period between the time the son is ready to go into the business and the time he may assume the complete control of the ancestral or other farm. It will also suggest a method for the continuous business management of a farm enterprise. As stated, the most common reason for a farm changing from one family to another is the fact that no heir is willing to assume the obligation which is involved in paying for the interest of the other heirs. Connected with this problem is the further fact that the father is not usually ready to give up the management of the farm at the time one of his sons reaches the age to go into active business. The reason for this state of affairs is made clear by the results of insurance statistics. The period that a man may be expected to live can be obtained by taking the difference between his present age and 90 and dividing the remainder by two. Thus, a young man who is 20 may reasonably expect to live 35 years, or until he is 55 years old. A man at 50, however, still has an expectation of life of 20 years, and the man of 70 of 10 years. A farmer of 50 will usually have one or more sons ready to go to farming if they ever expect to engage in farming. But, as has been shown, a man of 50 has a reasonable expectation of 20 more years of life and cannot turn over the farm to his son, completely, without destroying his own opportunity for earning a livelihood. As things are usually arranged, therefore, there is no place on the average farm for the son, except as a hired hand, which is not desired permanently by either father or son. Frequently the father fails to appreciate the earning power of his son, and, what is more important, that the boy has grown into a man. One day a teacher called a student of agriculture to his office, when the following conversation occurred: [Illustration: John Armstrong, Austinburg, Ashtabula county, Ohio, was a dairy tenant farmer for twenty years with nothing to show for his labor but a debt of $500. He then bought the farm of 144 acres on which he lives, without cash payment, assuming a debt of $7,000. At the end of ten years he owned his farm and equipment valued at $20,000. He has two sons who have been important factors in his success. A year ago one of them married and went to a farm of his own, the father paying him $3,000 for his former labor.] [Illustration: John M. Hunt, Ackley, Iowa, two years a student at Iowa State College. He returned to the home farm of 120 acres, which, without any capital, he rented from his father. At the age of 25 his gross receipts from this farm were a little over $4,000. After paying rent, living, keeping a family of four, a few trips to fairs and corn shows, he had net $1,500 for his year's work. Picture shows home with father, mother and sister in the foreground.] "The Bureau of Soils at Washington," said the teacher, "has asked me to recommend several of our students to them for positions as field assistants. If you desire to have me do so, I would be glad to recommend you for one of these positions. The compensation is $1,000 a year and field expenses." "I do not believe that I can accept," said Mr. Manning, "my father is in poor health and needs my help on the farm." "Does your father want you to take charge of the farm and manage it so that you can make your training count?" "No; my father expects to continue to manage the farm. He wishes me to work for him." "How much does your father expect to pay you?" "Thirty dollars a month." The teacher found it extremely difficult not to interfere, but he merely said, "This is a case of filial duty which you must settle for yourself. I must have nothing further to say." The young man returned to the ancestral home and is probably still there. It is, of course, impossible to determine the merits of an individual case, but this incident represents a type of cases where the son makes two important sacrifices from the sense of duty. First, he sacrifices present, and, perhaps, future opportunity to earn the wages of which he is capable and to which he is justly entitled. And, second, and more important, he sacrifices the opportunity to develop his own powers and make concrete his own abstract self. There are two things that every young man should do. One is to earn a living. A man that cannot or does not earn a living is of no value to himself or to anyone else. The other is to develop within himself his latent possibilities. He must apply himself to some problem, or problems, and through them develop his own personality. There is no place where more intricate and satisfying problems may be found than in the development of a successful farming enterprise. In the instance cited, the father may have been unable to pay his son the wage he might have obtained elsewhere, but he did not need to dwarf his son's development by treating him merely as a hired hand. His willingness to do so was probably due to his failure to appreciate that his son had become a man. Sometimes a father is astute enough to reorganize his business so as to retain a place for himself while giving to his sons that opportunity which every man must have who develops himself normally. An Ohio farmer once came to the Dean's office. He had a son in college who was just completing the first year of a two years' course in agriculture. "I should like to have you find a place for my son in a cheese factory during the coming summer," said Mr. McKinley. "I own a farm of 130 acres on which I have a herd of Jersey cattle," continued the father. "I have two sons and one daughter. I would like to have my sons about me, but there is no place for them on my farm because I am there and cannot get away. In fact, I do not desire to give up the management of the farm and the development of the herd of cattle." "Not every father sees the situation as clearly as you do," interjected the Dean. "This is my plan. After my son has spent a summer in a cheese factory, I want him to come back to your school for another year. I want him to learn, especially, all you teach about dairying. I will then build a cheese factory on my own farm and my son will make into cheese the milk of my own herd, and also from the herds of our neighbors. By the time he has completed his work with you, my younger son will have finished the high school. He has some liking for trading, and he will sell the cheese at wholesale and deliver it to the surrounding towns where markets are unexcelled. As for the daughter," continued this practical man, "she will get married and that will take care of her." What became of the daughter is not known to the writer, but the rest of the program was carried out successfully and continued for many years. A German came to this country and settled in New Jersey, where he established a large orchard. In course of time his two sons grew into manhood. While, of course, requiring plenty of laborers, the orchardist did not need the sons in the management of his farm. He, therefore, established one of these sons in the commission business in Philadelphia, thus, at least, keeping the profits on the sale of the products of his orchard in the family. He also needed cold storage for his fruit. The other son started a cold storage plant, which plays an important part in the profitable management of the orchard. Thus both sons have independent employment requiring managerial ability and the orchard is much more profitable than it otherwise would be. Our land laws, our traditions and our practices are based upon the idea that a farm is to provide activity and support for but one family. In order, therefore, that the son may marry and begin to develop his life in his own way, it is essential to reorganize in some manner the method of managing the farm or to enlarge or, perhaps, specialize its activities. This may be accomplished on a simple partnership basis, or it may be in some such line as outlined in the illustrations which have been given. In other occupations such co-operative effort is the rule rather than the exception. That it is more difficult to effect satisfactory arrangements in farming must be conceded, else they would be more common. Doubtless it will often tax the ingenuity of father and son to devise the plans best suited to meet their particular problem. There still remains to consider another form of business relation as applied to farming which has become almost universal in trade and transportation. The following incident may illustrate and emphasize the problem better than abstract discussion: One day a man walked into an office and stated that a friend had a half million dollars to invest in farming, provided that he could be convinced that the money would be invested profitably. "Does your friend desire to buy land in any particular locality?" "Yes," replied the promoter, "he wishes to buy land near ----. He has some sentiment about it. He was born in that neighborhood." "Well, that is a rather bad beginning. Farming on sentiment is dangerous, especially when the sentiment is in no way related to the business." The facts were that the region indicated was recognized to be one of the most unpromising sections of the state. "If you undertake to invest a half million dollars in one neighborhood," continued the adviser, "you will pretty certainly fail to earn interest on your investment." "Why?" inquired the promoter. "Before you could possibly buy any considerable part of the land the owners of the farms you desire to buy would have doubled or perhaps trebled the price asked for their holdings. It is one thing to earn interest on an investment of $30 an acre and quite another to earn an equal per cent on $60 or $90 an acre. "In the second place, farmers are content to accept less per cent on their capital than they would if it was loaned at interest, because the farm furnishes a home as well as a business. When you buy up all these farms and convert them into a single enterprise you will destroy their home value. You cannot hope to compete with the man, who, because his farm furnishes him a home, is content with an otherwise small return on his investment." There were other reasons, of course, why such an enterprise would fail, which the speaker did not stop to explain. "You are mistaken," challenged the promoter. "I intend to meet both your objections. My plan is to form a corporation and issue both preferred and common stock. The preferred stock shall bear 5% and that will belong to my friend who furnishes the money. I will retain the common stock. Five per cent is all the owner of the money is entitled to, while if the business returns more than that amount, it will be due to my management. I, and those associated with me, are entitled to all that is made above five per cent. By retaining the common stock the surplus income will come to us. Neither will I destroy the home value, because I shall associate the former owners with me in the conduct of the estate and may give them some of the common stock, so that they will be interested with me in making a profitable return. If they wish to keep their money invested in the farm, they will be given preferred stock in place of cash for their farms." It is needless to say that the promoter never convinced his friend that he could successfully invest for him a half million dollars along the lines indicated. Nevertheless the corporate plan is not without merit. For example, if a father should incorporate his farm, he could provide for the inheritance of the preferred stock, among the heirs, as he desires. He could give to the son who operates the farm all the common stock, together with what preferred stock he is entitled or the father may desire him to have. The common stock would provide the means by which the income from the farm, which was due to the sons skill and management, might go to him. As time went on the son could acquire additional preferred stock from the father or other heirs, or he could invest his earnings elsewhere, as might seem most expedient. On the death of the parents, the preferred stock would be distributed as inheritance or the will provided without in any way interfering with the continuity of the farm enterprise. If at any time the son desired to discontinue the management of the farm, all he would need to do would be to dispose of his interest in the common stock at whatever he might be able to secure from the man who succeeded to its management. He could sell or retain his preferred stock. Farming is the one remaining great industry that has not been organized so that a single enterprise may have a continuous existence. A corporation never dies, but at least three generations of men occupy the farms of the United States each century. CHAPTER IV OPPORTUNITIES IN AGRICULTURE Some years ago, a prominent magazine contained an article entitled "The American Farmer's Balance Sheet," in which a descendant of the second and sixth Presidents of the United States was shown to have made in one year a profit of over $19,000 from a 6,000-acre wheat farm in North Dakota, and over $50,000 from a 6,000-acre corn farm in Iowa. A few months later there appeared in the same magazine another article, the purport of which was that great wealth, whether it be obtained from farming, the mining of coal, the manufacture of steel or the selling of merchandise, is the exception, while the man, in whatever calling, who rears and educates a family and at the same time lays by a small competence is the normal American product. The moral is that a $500-a-year-income farm is a more important factor to the national welfare than a $50,000-a-year-income farm. In the latter article the writer tells of two brothers who had been reared on a Michigan farm. Reuben was tired of the country. He went to the city and apprenticed himself to a harnessmaker. Against the advice of young friends, Lucien bought sixty acres of land and ran in debt for it. In a year Reuben was earning a dollar a day. He wore a white shirt and pointed shoes, not because they were more comfortable, but because other people did. He had no debts. Lucien had fair crops, but they yielded no more than enough to pay interest on the mortgage. He wore a ragged shirt, patched breeches and cowhide boots. People said that Reuben was making a gentleman of himself and learning a trade in the bargain. In two years, Reuben had completed his apprenticeship. He was now earning $10 a week. He lived in a house that had a fancy veranda and green blinds. His clothing improved. Lucien was still ragged, but he paid his interest and $300 each year upon the principal. People said that Reuben, the harnessmaker, was bound to come to the front. In ten years more, Reuben was still foreman of the shop at $50 a month. He lived in the same house, and smoked Havana cigars. Lucien built a new house and a barn. He smoked a pipe. The neighbors saw that every year he made some improvement on the farm. He wore a white shirt when he went to town, and he had a pair of button shoes. People said that Lucien was becoming a prominent man. His word was good at the bank. Reuben began to complain that harnessmaking was too confining. His health was breaking down. The proprietor was selfish. He would not die and leave the business to him. Harnessmaking was not what it used to be. Lucien bought more land. He went fishing when he wanted to. Reuben came out now and then to spend Sunday. The birds seemed to sing more sweetly than ever before and the grass was greener. Lucien endorsed Reuben's note. Lucien has pigs, and cows, and sheep, and chickens, and turkeys, and horses. He raises potatoes and beans, and corn, and wheat, and garden stuff, and fruit. He buys his groceries and clothing and tobacco. Reuben buys everything. At the close of the year Lucien puts from $100 to $300 in the bank or takes a trip to Washington. Reuben does well if he come out even. Lucien does not fret; Reuben grumbles. The picture is true to life. It has been enacted and re-enacted in every one of the older communities of the United States. It has always seemed to the writer, however, that the author of this suggestive story left out two important personages. They were Sarah, the wife of Reuben, and Mary, the wife of Lucien. Sarah liked to make tatting and to go to pink teas. Mary preferred to raise flowers and fluffy little chickens. Nothing is to be said for or against the taste of either. Each has a right to her preference, but their point of view cannot be left out of the problem when a young man is considering his future occupation. It has been said, and probably with considerable truth, that most congressmen would not hang around Washington if it were not for their wives. No one must mistake this story as an attempt to compare harness making with farming, much less to compare living in the city with life in the open country. What it does is to compare the struggle and the development of the man who goes into business for himself with the man who accepts employment at wages. Because of less responsibility and less sacrifices at the beginning, the tendency is for young men to work for wages rather than to engage in business for themselves. This is becoming more and more true as industrial methods make it more and more difficult for the young man to command the requisite capital. The man who works for wages usually has the larger income and appears the most prosperous during the earlier years as compared with his brother who enters business. The business man, however, who, while young, economizes and invests his savings in his business gradually outstrips his wage-earning brother. During later life he is able to enjoy the fruits of his earlier economy and investments, while failing powers and keen competition of younger and better trained men restrict the opportunities of the wage earner, who has generally spent his wages in better living, or at least in more outward show. This is well shown by the fact that it is customary to make provision by means of pensions for wage earners of all sorts, while no such arrangement is made for men who engage in business, be that farming, trade or transportation. For many reasons, however, young men will continue to seek employment at wages, even if only for a few years, or until some capital has been acquired which may be invested in business. The question arises, therefore, what opportunities there may be for the young man who desires to engage, eventually, in the business of farming to work for wages along lines that will not be too far removed from the business in which he is subsequently to engage. It will be assumed that the young man has prepared himself in that same painstaking way that he would if he were preparing to become an engineer, a lawyer or a physician. There is a constant demand for men with proper training as managers of farms. As stated elsewhere, the wages are seldom less than $40 nor more than $75 a month to beginners, although for men of experience $5,000 a year has been paid in exceptional cases for the management of large enterprises. These positions often constitute ideal opportunities for capable young men. They require, however, not only an intimate knowledge of farming, but the ability, also, to manage men. The ability to manage men requires the combination of decision and tact, not possessed by all, and not easily acquired by education or practice. Not only must the farm manager be able to manage workmen, but oftentimes he must manage his employer, who may have little knowledge of farming but still insists upon having his own ideas executed, as he, of course, has a perfect right to do. Another danger is the fact that where the farm is owned by a man engaged in other business, many circumstances may arise to cause the owner to change his plans or sell his property. There is often, therefore, a lack of permanency in these positions. The United States Department of Agriculture employs upward of 5,000 people. There is a constant demand for young men to recruit this service, including experts in soils, plant production, animal husbandry, dairying, chemistry and forestry. Beginners receive from $800 to $1,000 a year. When they are sent out of Washington into field service, as many of them are, they receive their expenses, including subsistence in addition. Young men may rise rather rapidly by promotion to $1,600 a year, then more slowly to $2,000, while an occasional man is promoted to the more responsible position paying $3,000 to $4,000 a year. The positions are all filled through the competitive civil service examinations. Examinations are held at more or less irregular intervals, usually several times a year, in various sections of the country. A letter addressed to the United States Civil Service Commission will secure the necessary information concerning openings and the general requirements for the examinations. Employment in the United States Department of Agriculture often affords opportunity for varied experience and wide observation of farming methods throughout the country. Such employment is generally to be considered desirable if not continued for too long a period. As a matter of fact, men are constantly leaving the service to engage in practical or other work, a fact which makes the demand for young men greater than would otherwise be the case. The various agricultural colleges and experiment stations are constantly seeking men. It would seem that the demand would eventually be satisfied. As a matter of fact, however, it grows greater year by year, both because these institutions continue to grow and because young men are attracted more and more to practical work. It is stated that in one institution there were 46 graduates in the course in animal husbandry and that 44 went into practical work and only two sought employment in college or station. The salaries are about the same as in government positions. Agricultural newspaper work offers an attractive field for young men who are properly trained and have a taste for this kind of work. There is also beginning to be quite a demand for teachers of agriculture in the high schools. As a rule a man is wanted who can teach, in addition, the sciences usually taught in secondary school. The customary salary is from $70 to $100 a month on an eight to ten months' basis. An experience of one or two years as a teacher in a high school, or even the lower grades of the public school, should be invaluable to the young man who expects subsequently to engage in farming. This is particularly true if he has not had the opportunity of a college training. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that the salaries mentioned in this chapter are obtained only by young men who possess certain qualifications. To secure them, they must be men of ability, integrity, virtue and industry. No man who is not willing to make the preparation necessary to master his subject can expect to succeed. He must, also, be a man of absolute honesty, and he must lead a clean life. It was Bismarck who said, of German university students, "One-third die out; one-third rot out; the other third rule Germany." Every man who will may choose whether he will belong to Bismarck's second or third class. The question for the young man of 20 is not merely as to the morrow, but what is likely to be the trend of events during the next 35 to 50 years. "In 1800 the United States nowhere crossed the Mississippi and nowhere touched the Gulf of Mexico." In 1850 the country west of the Mississippi River was agriculturally largely an undiscovered region. Since 1870 we have much more than doubled our population and our agriculture. Since that time we have subdued more of the open country to the uses of man than we had been able to do in 250 years of our previous history. During the past 300 years we have prided ourselves upon being an agricultural people. We have been an agricultural people, but our problems have not been chiefly those of the agriculturist, but those of the engineer. Our problem, in the past, has not been to make two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before. Our problem has been to harvest and transport two bushels of wheat or two bales of cotton with the labor previously required to harvest one. Our crops have been so abundant that the agricultural problems connected with the growing of them has been secondary to the engineering problems of their harvesting and transportation. The self-binder and the steam locomotive have been our achievements. If the writer mistakes not, the future problem will not be so much the harvesting and transporting, as the growth of the crops. In the future, young men will be needed who have studied the science of living things in order that they may make, literally, two blades of grass to grow where but one grew. To men who will be able to do so, will come success and honor. CHAPTER V WHERE TO LOCATE Unless the young farmer expects to return to the ancestral home, the first question he must settle is where he is going to locate. Indeed, one of the most common questions asked is, What do you think of this state or that state or this region or that as a place to farm? There are few questions harder to answer. This is due, among other reasons, to the fact that every place has its advantages and disadvantages. The sum of the advantages may be greater in one place than in another, but if these advantages are known they must generally be paid for. New adaptations, however, may change materially the value of the land in a given locality as, for example, the discovery that a region is especially adapted to raising alfalfa, onions, cabbages, apples or peaches. Changing conditions, as the growth of population or better transportation facilities, may materially affect the attractiveness of a region from the standpoint of the farmer. The competition of other regions which grow similar crops is a potent factor in determining the desirability of a region. For example, the farmers east of the Allegheny mountains during the nineteenth century competed with the farmers of the central West who had free, fertile, easily tilled land on which to grow maize, wheat and oats. Cattle and sheep were pastured on the open range. The twentieth century has found the land of this region settled and capitalized in some instances beyond that of the eastern states; thus one factor at least of competition has been eliminated. While farm values readjust themselves in time, it often happens, especially in the older settled regions, that farm values are slow in reflecting these changes in economic conditions. Changed conditions often call for a change in farm methods which the habits and traditions of even one generation prevent. To the man who is able to apply the proper methods the region may be a desirable one, although under existing conditions the results may be unsatisfactory. The young man, however, is cautioned at this point not to be overconfident of his own ability. Under such circumstances it is well to study the problem with great care, because the methods which seem unwise to the casual observer may, after all, be found to be based upon sound economic principles. A man of 25 who is looking for a location should not only study the present conditions of the locality, but try to predict what is likely to be the future of the region during the next third of a century, since this is the period in which he may reasonably expect to be personally interested, although later in life he will find himself quite as much interested in the more distant future on account of his children. Nothing is more self-evident than that one should choose a region, especially as regards soil and climate, which is adapted to the crop or crops to be raised, yet there are probably more failures due to a lack of crop adaptation than to any other cause that is not personal to the man himself. Not only do apples, for their best success, require certain soil types, but different varieties of apples require for their best development, distinctly different types of soil as, for example, Rhode Island Greening, Baldwin, York Imperial and Grime's Golden. Each reaches its best development on different types of soil and some require different climatic conditions. In like manner apples and peaches require distinctly different types of soil for the best success of each and for this reason peaches are not desirable as fillers in apple orchards. If at the proper season of the year one goes from Pittsburg to Chicago via Columbus and Indianapolis, he will see great fields of winter wheat and a considerable number of permanent pastures. From Chicago to Omaha he will see only occasionally a field of wheat and scarcely any permanent pasture. Oats have taken the place of wheat. In parts of Eastern Kansas and Oklahoma the predominant crop is winter wheat. Throughout the whole region from Pittsburg to Topeka, Kansas, the characteristic crop is maize or Indian corn. Between St. Paul and Fargo, the main crops are spring wheat and oats. One may travel from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Calgary, Alberta, a distance of over one thousand miles without seeing a field of maize. In some portions the main crop is wheat, in others it is oats. These are illustrations of the crop adaptation over large areas, which has come about unconsciously, as has most crop adaptation. In other parts of the United States are to be found even more striking examples of crop adaptation, although the areas are much smaller, as in the case of tobacco, potatoes, celery, onions, apples, peaches and other fruits. Regions containing residual soils are more variable in crop adaptation than drift soils and require more careful watchfulness on the part of those who may wish to buy land. As previously stated, advantages, if known, must usually be paid for. It comes about, therefore, that if a region or a farm is adapted to the raising of a certain crop which is more profitable than the average, such as maize, tobacco, alfalfa, celery, apples or peaches, this land will, other things being equal, command a higher price than land which does not possess this characteristic. There is an underlying economic principle which the man who goes out to choose a farm should clearly understand. The principle has been stated by Fairchild as follows: "The normal value of products capable of indefinite multiplication tends always toward the value of least costly. On the other hand, if any production cannot be largely extended, so that the supply barely meets the requirements of the purchasers, the tendency of normal values is toward the cost of the most costly part of the product required to meet wants." This principle explains why land especially adapted to raising maize is higher priced than land primarily adapted to raising wheat. Maize which enters into commerce is raised almost exclusively in ten states of the United States. Wheat is harvested practically every month of every year in different parts of the world. The young farmer should consider, therefore, whether he is undertaking to raise crops in which there is unlimited competition, or whether soil or other conditions cause the output to be relatively limited. CHAPTER VI SIZE OF FARM The size of the farm is another of those questions on which there is endless debate and to which no general answer can be given. There are, however, certain rather definite principles which may help in settling an individual problem. The size of the farm is related to the income per acre. If one's ideal or purpose is a gross income of $1,000 or $3,000 or $5,000 a year, he must consider how large a farm will be necessary to bring this return. Assume, for the sake of discussion, it is desired to obtain a gross income of $4,000. In the eastern United States 200 acres of tillable land devoted to general farming may bring this amount. If the land is especially adapted to potatoes, and this crop takes a prominent place in the rotation, 100 acres might be sufficient to return the income named. Likewise a 100-acre retail milk dairy farm may produce a similar result. Forty acres devoted to truck farming or market gardening may be sufficient. There is another way that the size of the farm needed may be estimated. There is a general relation between the gross income and the amount invested. In 1900 the gross income of the farms of the United States was 18 per cent of the total investment, which includes land, buildings, tools, and live stock. The average gross income varied for the different types of farming common to the northern United States from 16 to 19 per cent. This represents, of course, a great deal of very poor farming. The income of prosperous farmers must be somewhat better than this. If we assume that by careful methods the gross income is 25% of the total investment, then an investment of $16,000 will be required to bring a gross income of $4,000. While it is true that the gross income has no necessary relation to net income or profit, yet it is well to remember that a gross income is a necessary antecedent of a net income. The net profit from the production of a bushel of wheat, a dozen of eggs, or a pound of butter is of comparatively small consequence unless a sufficient quantity is produced. A recent investigation by the Cornell station appears to show that with the type of farming now existing in Tompkins and Livingston counties, New York, where the investigation chanced to be made, the larger farms yielded the most profitable returns and that while present conditions exist, the size of farms is likely to increase rather than decrease. The fundamental reason seems to be the substitution of horse-drawn machinery for hand labor. The following table shows the labor income on 586 farms operated by the owners, classified according to size: Number Average of size Labor Acres farms (acres) income 30 or less 30 21 $168 31 to 60 108 49 254 61 to 100 214 83 373 101 to 150 143 124 436 151 to 200 57 177 635 over 200 34 261 946 ---- ---- Average 103 $415 While the larger the farm, the more prosperous was the operating owner or tenant, the size of the farm did not seem to affect the profit of the landlord. The amount of land one individual may own is unlimited; the size of the farm unit is limited. After a farm unit has reached a certain size, depending upon the type of farming, the general arrangement of the farm and the skill in management, any further increase will increase the cost of operation, and as the increase continues eventually cause a decrease in profits. Assuming this to be true, it follows as a mathematical necessity that as the farm increases in size the total profits will increase as the farm increases up to a given point and then the profits will decrease. The following table illustrates this law: Size of A B farm Net profit Net profit Net Profit Net Profit acres per acre per farm per acre per farm 160 $5.00 $800 $5.00 $800 200 4.50 900 4.75 950 240 4.00 960 4.50 1,080 280 3.50 980 4.25 1,190 320 3.00 960 4.00 1,280 360 2.50 900 3.75 1,350 400 2.00 800 3.50 1,400 440 1.50 660 3.25 1,430 480 1.00 480 3.00 1,440 520 .50 260 2.75 1,430 560 -- -- 2.50 1,400 In both case A and case B it is assumed that the greatest net profit per acre is to be obtained with 160 acres, and that the net profit per acre when the farm is of that size is $5. In case A it is assumed that the net profit would decrease $1 for each 80 acres added, while in case B the decrease is assumed to be only one-half as rapid. In the first instance the net profit per farm increases until 280 acres are reached, when the net profit per farm decreases, until at 560 acres no profit would be obtained. In case B the net profit per farm increases until 480 acres are reached. Everyone is cautioned not to accept these figures as representing what would actually happen. All that can be said is that as the farm unit increases in size there will come a point at which the net profit per acre will decrease because of the physical difficulty of managing a large area, and, therefore, there is a limit to the size of a single farm. Fifteen thousand acres may lay in one tract and be owned by one individual, firm or corporation, but its economic management requires for purely physical reasons, not to mention others, that it be managed in several units more or less distinct from one another. Just what the size of this unit will be no one knows and it will vary with the type of farming, the type of farmer and many other circumstances. For example, a very common unit for a tenant cotton farm is between 20 and 50 acres, both the product and the farmer being a limiting factor. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from a study of this table is that it is wise for some men to operate a farm of 320 acres, others of 160 acres and still others of 80 acres, because each size of farm presents a task suited to different abilities. It would be as futile for one fitted to operate only an 80-acre farm to attempt to manage 320 acres as it would be unwise for the man capable of conducting 320 acres to confine his attention to 80 acres. Unfortunately while this principle is not difficult to perceive and is easily stated, it is practically impossible to make any application of it to an individual case. Only time and the inexorable laws of competition will adjust men to their several tasks. It will be of interest to note what influence in actual practice the type of farming has upon the size of the farm. The census reports the average size of all farms in the United States as 147 acres, with the different types as follows: Vegetables, 65 acres; fruits, 75 acres; dairy products, 120 acres; hay and grain, 159 acres; and live stock, 227 acres. Speaking in a very general way, only about one-half the land on these farms is in cultivated crops, while only 40% of the income may be from the products which cause the farm to be thus classified. The young farmer will do well to have these figures in mind when he starts out in life, for while they are not to be followed literally, they give him a measuring stick with which to compare his operations. CHAPTER VII SELECTION OF FARM Having some of these preliminary questions settled, or at least well in mind, the young farmer is ready to inspect individual farms with a view to purchasing or renting. He should examine each farm from four general aspects, namely: (1) The character and topography of the soil, (2) the climatic conditions, including healthfulness and water supply, (3) the location, and (4) the improvements. It may be well at the outset to emphasize the advantage which even a small difference in fertility may bring. Suppose one farm is capable of raising fifteen bushels of wheat per acre and another twenty bushels. If wheat is 80 cents a bushel, then the gross income is $12 and $16 respectively. If it is assumed that it costs in either case for seed, labor and interest on investment $8 an acre to raise and harvest the crop, then it will be seen that an increase of five bushels an acre doubles the profit. The comparison is perhaps not quite fair, since it costs slightly more to harvest the larger crop, but it serves to illustrate the point. Neither the crop adaptation nor the crop-producing power of the soil can be determined by taking a sample and submitting it to a chemist for analysis. These factors can best be determined by the character of the vegetation, both domestic and wild, and by a knowledge obtained through observation or reading as to what this particular soil type usually does. Every type of soil has certain characteristics which under like conditions it may be expected to reproduce, much in the same manner as each species of animal reproduces its characteristics. The first essential is to be able to recognize the different soil types. This can only be done by close observation and study. The second essential is to determine what the crop-producing characteristics of these types of soil are. This knowledge may be obtained by personal observation; but as most persons' opportunities are limited in this direction, it should be supplemented wherever possible by a study of the soil surveys of the United States Department of Agriculture wherever these are available. When this is not possible samples of soil may be submitted to the Bureau of Soils of the United States Department of Agriculture or to the soil division of the state experiment station, together with a suitable description and such knowledge of the history of the land as is obtainable. In this way you may obtain information as to the natural adaptation of the particular type of soil. [Illustration: Walter S. Tomlinson, Bryan, Ohio, began thirteen years ago with 225 acres, partly rented, to determine whether a farm could be made a satisfying enterprise. As tenant he has paid to himself as landlord $1,000 each year for rental and $500 each year as salary. The rest of the profits have been invested in 240 acres of additional land and in improvements. Mr. Tomlinson's specialty has been hogs, but he says it does not matter so much about the lines one adopts as the attention that is given them.] [Illustration: Dr. W. I. Chamberlain, Hudson, Ohio, graduate of Western Reserve University, former state secretary of agriculture, later college president. Farmer and institute lecturer and widely known for his editorial work on farm journals; has been able, amid his other activities, to manage his farm of 116 acres. The net cash income above all expenses from the farm for 1890 to 1907 was $113,966 or $1,370 per year. Of this income $8,877 were obtained from a ten-acre apple orchard.] There will still remain the question of the present condition of the land. For example, the Pennsylvania station obtained in a certain season 42 loads of hay from nine acres of land. The same season, from exactly the same soil type, the station obtained eight loads of hay from 20 acres. The condition of the soil was different, which the previous history of the two tracts of land fully explains. It is of the utmost importance, therefore, to distinguish between the natural fertility of the soil and the condition of the soil. A further example will help to illustrate this point. At the Rothamsted Station a certain type of soil has for over 60 years produced annually about 12 bushels of wheat an acre without fertilizer, while with a complete fertilizer the same type has produced 30 or more bushels. The 12 bushels may be said to represent the natural fertility of the soil, while the additional 18 bushels may be said to represent the condition of the soil due to fertilizers or to other conditions. On the other hand, the natural condition of some other soil type might be only eight bushels, or still another type might be 16 bushels. This principle is of considerable practical importance, especially in the eastern third of the United States. Generally speaking, clay and silt soils have a greater natural fertility than sandy soils; limestone soils than those that are deficient in lime. Thus soils that naturally grow chestnut trees, indicating a low lime content, have a tendency to deteriorate under exhaustive cropping much more rapidly than limestone soils. More fertilizers and other methods of soil improvement are necessary in the case of chestnut soils than in the case of limestone valley soils. One of the first questions to ask, therefore, concerning an unknown farm in Pennsylvania is whether or not chestnut trees grow naturally. It does not follow, however, that chestnut soils are undesirable. Much will depend upon the crop or crops it is desired to raise. For example, in some regions they are well adapted to potatoes and peaches. In these cases the cost of the fertilizers necessary to keep the soil in proper condition is small compared with the total return from the crop. The pioneer's best guide as to the value of new land was and is the vegetation growing upon it, and, especially in a wooded country, the native trees. Basswood, crab apple, wild plum, black walnut, ash, hickory and hard maple generally indicate a fertile soil. White oak indicates only a moderate soil; bur oak, a somewhat warmer and better drained soil. Beech indicates a rather poor soil; a heavy clay, lacking in organic matter. Certain species of elms, maples and oaks, as red maple and the Spanish swamp oak, indicate wet soils. The occurrence and vigor of certain herbaceous plants are especially indicative of fertility of the soil, as, for example, ragweed, bindweed, certain plants of the sunflower family, such as goldenrod, asters and wild sunflowers. Soils adapted to red clover and alfalfa are usually well drained and contain plenty of lime. Alsike clover will grow on a soil too wet or containing too little lime for either of the former. Soils that produce sorrel and redtop when red clover and timothy are sown need drainage or liming or both. Sedges usually indicate a wet soil, although certain species grow on dry, sandy soils. The point of this paragraph, however, is not to give comprehensive advice but to cause the young farmer to observe the conditions and make his own applications, which will vary in different regions and under different circumstances. Perhaps the one feature that the young farmer is most likely to overlook in the selection of a farm is the relative proportion of tillable land. One farm of 200 acres, may, on account of stony land, wet land, comparatively unproductive woodland, or because of the arrangement of fences and roadways, contain only eighty acres of tillable land, while another may contain 160 acres. This is one reason why a 160-acre farm in the central West may be more valuable than a farm of the same size in the northeastern United States. Columella says with regard to the selection of land that there are two things chiefly to be considered, the wholesomeness of the air and the fruitfulness of the place, "of which if either the one or the other should be wanting, and notwithstanding anyone should have a mind to dwell there, he must have lost his senses and ought to be conveyed to his kinfolk to take care of him." In selecting a farm do not fail to inquire whether there has been any recent illness, and if so the nature of it, either among the persons living there or the domestic animals kept. Aside from healthfulness, climate is a fundamental and controlling factor, both in productiveness and economic farm management. Temperature and rainfall affect the number of days that work can be performed upon the land and hence affect materially the economy of labor. It is this fact that prevents the systematic organization of labor so common in manufacturing and transportation. The climate also affects the cost of producing live stock by modifying the food and shelter required. The climate of a region is best studied from the reports of the United States Weather Bureau rather than from the statements published by interested parties. So far as the production of crops is concerned the distribution of rainfall is more important than the annual amount, as may be shown by comparing the rainfall in such places as Columbus, Ohio, and Lincoln, Nebraska. The average temperature during the growing season is, of course, of more importance from the standpoint of crop production than the average annual temperature. Maximum and minimum temperatures or the range of temperature must be considered as well as the average temperature. One of the most practical questions to determine is the average date of the last killing frost in the spring and the date of the first killing frost in the autumn; in other words, the length of the growing season. Both altitude and topography enter into this problem. In a given locality killing frosts will occur on a still night in the valley before they do on the elevations, because the air as it cools becomes heavier and flows down into the lowest places just as water would do. On the other hand, as the altitude increases the growing season shortens. Whenever I am asked a question involving the production of farm crops by a Pennsylvania farmer before answering, I ask three questions: (1) Where are you located? (2) Do chestnut trees grow naturally upon your land? (3) What is your altitude? One factor that is often overlooked by the young farmer needs only to be mentioned to be thoroughly appreciated. It is the amount and character of the water supply. Not only is this of the utmost importance from the standpoint of the household, but it is fundamental to the best farm management. Thus, if the water supply is limited the amount of live stock kept will be curtailed, and thus the proper utilization of farm products prevented and maintenance of the fertility of the soil made more difficult. The young farmer should recognize that some kinds of farming are more dependent upon the climatic conditions than others and should, therefore, select the location best suited to the type of farming desired or else modify his type of farming to suit the climatic conditions. If one studies critically the types of farming in various parts of the United States, it will be seen that they have already been adjusted in large degree, either consciously or unconsciously, to the climatic conditions. The young farmer should be careful that he does not undertake to butt his head against a stone wall. Having found a farm that suits our ideal as to the natural conditions, such as the crop adaptation, fertility, topography and climate, what may be called the artificial conditions must be studied. The location may be studied, both as to local and distant markets and the means of reaching each, which includes roadways and shipping facilities. Here again much will depend upon the products which are to be sold. The man who raises tobacco, hogs or beef cattle does not suffer any great economic disadvantage by living ten miles from a shipping station, but a man does who produces milk, peaches, potatoes or hay. In these days there is not much danger that the character of the roadway will be overlooked by the intending purchaser of the farm, although sufficient importance may not be given to the advantage of really good roads, both as to grade and surface. Perhaps the one most important question to consider in connection with the transportation facilities is whether products may be shipped without change from the shipping station to the market it is desired to reach. Although at first glance we may not like the thought, it must be conceded that neighbors are not only important morally and socially, but they also may have economic advantages and disadvantages. While it may sometimes happen that it will be wise to raise in a given neighborhood some product that no one else has undertaken to supply, yet as a rule, if a given neighborhood is raising Jersey, or Guernsey or Holstein cattle or Chester White, Berkshire or Poland China hogs, or Southdown or Shropshire or Cotswold sheep, it will be wise to raise the breed commonly raised instead of the least commonly raised breed, as it is sometimes supposed. The more potato growers or cabbage growers or celery raisers or orchardists in a locality the better for all concerned, for a number of reasons, among which may be mentioned (1) the more and the better the products raised the more buyers will seek the region and hence the higher will be the price obtained for the product; (2) the more of a given product there is to ship the better the shipping facilities for that product are likely to be; (3) all the necessary supplies for the type of farming can be more readily and cheaply obtained; (4) there will be a better knowledge of the business when more men have had experience in raising the particular crop. These principles apply in all classes of business; thus we find woolen factories in Philadelphia, silk factories at Paterson, N. J., cotton factories at Lowell, Mass., plow factories at Moline, Ill., and steel mills at Pittsburg. Many of these centers possessed originally some natural advantages which caused the location of the first factory, but others have been drawn there on account of the principles enunciated. The farmers of a given region have a community of interest as well as railroads. The young farmer should recognize this fact and if necessary should exert himself to develop such interest in his community, both for his own benefit and that of his neighbors. There are two classes of farms for which the purchaser is in danger of paying too much, one on which there are extensive improvements and one on which there are none at all. A farm with just barely enough improvements for the conduct of the type of farming it is proposed to develop can usually be purchased most advantageously. The purchaser should understand clearly that the previous cost of the improvements has no necessary relation to their present value, any more than the value of a second-hand suit of clothes is dependent upon its original cost. All depends on how badly they are worn and how well they are adapted to present conditions. The value of farm improvements is not unlike those in other business enterprises in this respect. Their value depends upon present and prospective earning capacity and not on former cost. No rule can be laid down as to the relation which should exist between the value of land itself and the value of the improvements. In practice it varies greatly. In the United States the farm improvements constitute on an average 21% of the total value of land, being as high as 45% in Massachusetts and as low as 15% in Texas. The young farmer may well consider, therefore, whether he can earn interest on his investment when the improvements cost more than 25% of the total value of the real estate. Certainly when it becomes one-half it is excessive. The man who runs a farm as an avocation usually errs in putting too much money into permanent improvements for the farm to be a paying investment. If it is admitted that the farm unit is limited because of the physical difficulties of managing large areas, then it must at once be seen how important the arrangement of the farmsteading must be to the successful conduct of the farm. In the older farming communities where the present farm holdings are the result of several purchases or sales the shape of the farm, the arrangement of the fields and the place of the farm buildings become an extremely important matter. Sometimes satisfactory rearrangements are easily made, at other times they are quite impossible. No attempt will be made to discuss this subject in detail here, but the young farmer should bring to this question all the experience and study possible. When the young farmer goes to inspect a farm it is to be assumed that he will be conducted over the farm by the owner or his authorized agent. It is proper to give respectful attention to everything that is told him, provided he follows carefully the California adage to "believe nothing you hear and only one-half what you see." If a farm consists of 200 or 300 acres of land, it is possible for the agent to convey the purchaser over the farm in such a way as to prevent the least desirable portions being seen. If the farm has attracted the seeker of land, he should not purchase until he has made another visit, preferably some days or weeks after the first one. He may then very properly visit the farm alone, passing over quite a different course from that pursued hitherto. Sketches and notes will be found very helpful, and if the use of the soil auger is understood it may be well employed to study the character of both soil and subsoil. During the interval between visits some casual inquiries may be made among those who know the history of the farm in question, because the past history of the farm obtained from unprejudiced witnesses is of prime importance in arriving at a conclusion concerning its value. A farm is much more attractive when a crop is growing upon it than when it is without active vegetation. Poor land looks relatively better than good land during or just after a rain. Many matters concerning the selection of a farm can only be learned by some years of practical experience. The young farmer will do well, therefore, to secure the help of some more experienced person. If he has among his acquaintances a successful farmer of mature years he will be fortunate if he can secure his advice. CHAPTER VIII THE FARM SCHEME Farming is no pink tea. It is a serious business. After the young farmer has selected the farm he must develop his farm scheme. He must contemplate well and seriously the philosophy which underlies his plans. Unless he sees clearly what he is striving to attain and unless he understands the effect of his methods, he must fail in great measure to obtain his goal. Satisfactory results in farming cannot be obtained as a general practice if the man is only interested in the results of a single year. For this reason the itinerant tenant system will not be satisfactory unless the landlord has worked out a satisfactory scheme which he requires his tenant to follow. It is not enough that a man shall grow a single large crop, but it is necessary that he should continue to grow a satisfactory crop at least at regular intervals. For example, a piece of land may be adapted to cabbage, celery, potatoes or hay. Assume for the moment it is adapted to cabbage and that by one or more seasons of preparation an enormous crop of cabbages may be secured. This fact is of little value unless sufficient quantity is raised and the process can be repeated annually. Cabbages cannot be grown again on this particular piece of land for from four to six years on account of club root. If the farmer does not have other areas which he can bring into cabbages year after year, for from three to five years, then he becomes a failure as a cabbage raiser. Even a perennial, like alfalfa or asparagus, should form a part of the general scheme of crop production if the most satisfactory results are to be obtained. There are two general questions at the basis of all farm schemes: (1) How to obtain a fairly uniform succession of cash products year after year, and (2) how to keep up or improve the fertility of the soil economically while doing so. In other words, how to keep the investment from decreasing while it is earning a satisfactory and fairly uniform income. It is necessary, therefore, to consider what products are to be sold and what are simply subsidiary to the cash products. The cash products may, of course, be soil products or animal products, but more likely they will be both. When animals form a large part of the enterprise the cropping system must be carefully adjusted to meet the needs of these animals. Many apparently trivial details must be considered, as for example, whether the cropping system furnishes too little or too much bedding for the live stock. In considering profits the enterprise as a whole must be kept in view. For example, if a man is producing milk, it may be cheaper, so far as the production of milk is concerned, to allow the liquid excrement to run to waste rather than to arrange for sufficient bedding. If, however, by using an abundance of bedding and saving all the high-priced nitrogen and the larger part of the potash in the manure, he is able to raise twelve tons of silage in place of eight tons, or three tons of hay in place of two tons, his enterprise as a whole will be more profitable when he uses the extra amount of bedding, although so far as the production of a quart of milk is concerned the cost is increased. It may be that by feeding corn to cattle or sheep one will obtain only 50 cents a bushel for his maize, while his neighbor is selling it to the elevator at 60 cents. If, however, the man who feeds his maize year after year thereby raises 60 bushels instead of 40 bushels, his enterprise, as a whole, may be more profitable than that of his neighbor. As a matter of fact, the Pennsylvania experiment station has substantially these two conditions in certain of its fertilizer plats. When for 25 years the conditions have been similar to those where crops are sold from the farm, the yields have been: Maize, 42 bushels; oats, 32 bushels; wheat, 14 bushels; and hay, 2,783 pounds per acre. But when conditions exist which represent the feeding of corn, oats and hay and the return of manure to the soil, the yields have been: Maize, 58 bushels; oats, 41 bushels; wheat, 23 bushels; and hay 4,190 pounds per acre. In the first instance the value of the products has been $15.75 an acre, while in the other case it has been $22.90 an acre. Having worked out a cropping system that gives the proper yearly production of several crops desired, the next question to decide is how this cropping system and the disposition of the crops is going to affect the fertility of the soil. From a financial or economic point of view the most important soil element is nitrogen. First, because it costs from 18 to 20 cents a pound, while phosphoric acid can be purchased at five cents, potash at four cents; and, second, because of the readiness with which nitrogen may disappear from the soil under improper management, either through nitrification and leaching or by denitrification and passing back into the air. Assuming a given type of management, the question is, How much of the required nitrogen will be obtained from the legumes in the cropping system, how much from the manure, and how much must be purchased in commercial fertilizers? No satisfactory cropping system can be devised at the present prices of farm products and cost of fertilizers for the production of the ordinary cereals and hay that does not include the production of some legume. Assuming a legume in the cropping scheme, the fertility of the soil may be maintained by yard manure alone or by commercial fertilizers alone. Illustrations of both methods are to be found in actual practice. Generally speaking, however, the use of yard manure supplemented with commercial fertilizers will be found more scientific and in the end the most economical. A factor entering into this problem will be the amount of purchased feed. If considerable amounts of purchased feeds are used and the resulting manure carefully preserved and judiciously applied, the commercial fertilizers required will be reduced to the minimum. A concrete illustration may bring out the philosophy underlying farm schemes better than abstract problems. The following outline shows a five-course rotation with the method of fertilization which the results of the Pennsylvania Station indicated would be advisable, at least on limestone soils in eastern United States. 1. Maize yard manure, 8 tons per acre. 2. Oats nothing. 3. Wheat acid phosphate, 350 lbs. muriate of potash, 100 lbs. 4. Clover and timothy nothing. 5. Timothy nitrate of soda, 150 lbs. acid phosphate, 150 lbs. muriate of potash, 50 lbs. This rotation is suggested for the purpose of maintaining a farm that is already in a fairly fertile condition and one on which there is no considerable amount of purchased feed. Where concentrates are purchased liberally, yard manure should be available to use on the timothy and meadow in place of the commercial fertilizers. Where there is plenty of manure and it is desired to increase the amount of maize and hay and reduce the amount of oats and wheat, the following rotation and method of fertilization would be indicated: 1. Maize acid phosphate, 200 lbs. 2. Maize yard manure, 8 tons. 3. Oats nothing. 4. Wheat acid phosphate, 350 lbs. muriate of potash, 100 lbs. 5. Clover and timothy nothing. 6. Timothy nitrate of soda, 150 lbs. acid phosphate, 150 lbs. muriate of potash, 50 lbs. 7. Timothy yard manure, 8 tons. Where there is plenty of yard manure, it would be also applied to maize under No. 1, or the yard manure could be applied to maize under No. 1, and commercial fertilizer applied to timothy under No. 6 could be repeated under No. 7. If the land is more or less depleted, an application of 200 pounds of acid phosphate to the oats would be advisable. However, the purpose is not to prescribe exact methods, but to point out underlying principles and their possible application. As further illustration, it seems probable that the practice of a market gardener in using excessive amounts of stable manure might, in some instances at least, be modified to good advantage by reducing the amount of manure and increasing the amount of commercial fertilizer used. Unfortunately there is no experimental evidence bearing upon this question. Potash required to maintain fertility is largely to be found in the coarse fodder, such as hay, maize stover and silage, and in the straw used for bedding; hence where these substances are used in abundance and returned to the soil the amount of potash required to be supplied in fertilizers is reduced to a minimum. Where, however, the amount of live stock is limited and the products sold contain large quantities of potash, such as hay and straw, the supply furnished in fertilizers must be liberal. Phosphoric acid is always being slowly depleted from the soil either from the sale of farm crops or animal products. There is no way of returning this loss completely, except from the addition of a commercial fertilizer. The above fertilizer suggestions are based on the experiments covering a period of more than 25 years on a limestone soil. Soils may modify materially the amount and application of the fertilizers, but not the principles enunciated. For example, a soil on which common red clover grows luxuriantly and has a prominent place in the farm scheme will require less nitrogen in commercial fertilizers in order to maintain the fertility than where legumes are raised with difficulty or do not form a part of the farm scheme. One of the most important points to be emphasized is the fact that haphazard fertilization is not effective in maintaining soil fertility. If one starts out to establish a five-course rotation and build up his soil through a rational system of fertilization, he will obviously not obtain the full benefit of the rotation until he begins to get crops from the second round, which will be the sixth year from the beginning. It may happen, and unfortunately it has perhaps usually happened in the past, that during the first rotation the increase in crops has not paid for the cost of the fertilizers applied. In many instances a rational system of fertilization has not been introduced because the owner of the land could not afford to wait six years for his return. Profit in farming, therefore, does not consist in raising one big crop or even in obtaining a large balance on the right side of the ledger in a single year. It is both interesting and valuable to know that five tons of timothy hay, 45 bushels of wheat, 100 bushels of maize and 40 tons of cabbage may be raised on an acre, but the real profit in farming only comes through a lifetime of effort. To the man of capacity who prepares for his work the results will surely come, but they will not come all at once and, as in every other business, he must pay the price in hard work and close application to details. In this connection it may be emphasized that one of the difficulties in successful farming is to find one man both interested and capable along the various lines essential to a successful farm enterprise. The danger is that a man will ride his hobby to the detriment of the other activities of the farm. A farmer friend of the writer, who keeps a horse and buggy, cares so little for a horse that for several years he has walked two miles each morning and each evening rather than to take the trouble to hitch up his horse. If one visits a high-grade breeder of dairy cattle, he is very apt to find his pigs of ordinary character. On the other hand, a specialist in hogs is likely to keep scrub cows. A man may be an excellent wheat raiser and a poor potato grower, and the reverse. The breeder of live stock is likely to be lacking in his methods of producing farm crops, while the up-to-date, so-called general farmer is not likely to be a special lover of live stock. In like manner, the man may be a successful farmer, dairyman or horticulturist from the producing side, but be a poor salesman. In fact, those qualities of mind and heart which make for the best success from the standpoint of production, whether soil products or animal products, is not that which makes the best trader. It is not expected that the young farmer will be materially different from his hundreds of thousands of predecessors, but the better a man is trained and the more fully he studies his own adaptabilities and deficiencies, the more likely he is to succeed in the open country. For this reason, the young man should be careful to get as broad a training as possible. It is, therefore, often more important for him to study those things which he dislikes than to study the things for which he has a natural taste. There was a man in our town And he was wondrous wise. He knew that if he wanted crops He'd have to fertilize. "Its nitrogen that makes things green," Said this man of active brain; "And potash makes the good strong straw, And phosphate plumps the grain. But it's clearly wrong to waste plant food On a wet and soggy field; I'll surely have to put in drains If I'd increase the yield. "And after I have drained the land I must plow it deep all over; And even then I'll not succeed Unless it will grow clover. Now, acid soils will not produce A clover sod that's prime; So if I have a sour soil, I'll have to put on lime. "And after doing all these things, To make success more sure, I'll try my very best to keep From wasting the manure. So I'll drain, and lime, and cultivate, With all that that implies; And when I've done that thoroughly I'll manure and fertilize." _Vivian_ CHAPTER IX THE ROTATION OF CROPS The two essential reasons for a rotation of crops are: (1) The possibility of obtaining for the soil a supply of nitrogen from the air by introducing a legume at regular intervals, and (2) the prevention of injury to the crops from fungous diseases, insect enemies, weeds or other causes. Other reasons are often advanced, some of which are entirely erroneous, while others are of quite secondary importance. The rotation should be carefully studied with reference to the farm scheme as previously outlined. Reasons for modifying the rotations are: (1) To change the kind or proportion of crops grown, (2) to change the amount of labor required, or (3) to increase the crop-producing power of the soil. During 25 years the four crops of maize, oats, wheat, timothy and clover hay have been taken in rotation from the four tiers of plats at the Pennsylvania State College, so that the influence of the soil has been entirely eliminated. At the December farm prices for the decade ending December 1, 1906, the value of these four crops per acre have been: Maize, $29.67; oats, $14.49; wheat, $18.49; and hay, $18.05. It will be noted that during 25 years the average income from an acre of maize has been almost exactly twice that from an acre of oats. The region where these results were obtained is relatively unfavorable to a large yield of maize. It is obvious, therefore, that a modification in the rotation may modify the average income from the farm materially, provided such modification does not reduce the fertility of the soil. Thus, while the average income per acre during 25 years for the four-course rotation above mentioned was $20.17, if the rotation were increased to a five-course rotation by the addition of another year of maize, the average income would be $22.45 an acre. It may be desirable to modify the rotation in order to increase or decrease a certain crop usually fed upon the farm. Thus, with a four-course rotation of maize, oats, wheat, clover and timothy, one-fourth the area would produce hay; while with a six-course rotation, composed of maize, oats, wheat, each one year, and hay three years, one-half the area would produce hay. If it is desired to still further reduce the area in oats and wheat, a seven-course rotation could be arranged with maize, two years in succession. This is the rotation that would be desirable for a dairy farm where it is planned to keep as many cows as practicable and to buy the concentrates largely. Either the wheat or the oats could be taken out of this rotation if either the one or the other were thought undesirable and a still greater amount of roughage desired. On the other hand, there are places where the minimum amount of roughage is wanted. There are certain sections of the central West where it is possible to sow oats on corn stubble without plowing and where occasionally a rotation is practiced of maize, oats and mammoth clover. The clover is plowed for maize, the oats are disked in upon the corn stubble and the next year the clover is pastured until about June 1, when it is allowed to go to seed. In this rotation the only roughage obtained is the corn stover and the oat straw. Another result reached by this rotation is that only one-third the land is plowed annually. In the four-course rotation mentioned above three-fourths of the land must be plowed, while in the six-course rotation one-half is plowed each year. In other ways the character of the rotation modifies the labor. For example, the labor and cost of harvesting an acre of hay is much less than that of producing, harvesting and threshing an acre of wheat. Rotations may often be planned with reference to the main or cash crop. Thus in the Aroostook (Maine) potato district the rotation is potatoes, oats and clover. The chief purpose of the oats and clover is to keep down the blight in potatoes and add through the clover nitrogen and organic matter to the soil. A system of cropping that is best when the owner operates the farm may not be desirable when the farmer is a tenant. When a farm is rented, the lease should provide that clover or other legumes occur with sufficient frequency to keep up the supply of nitrogen without the purchase of a considerable quantity in chemical fertilizers. The lease should be so drawn as to make it necessary for the tenant to keep live stock in order to realize the largest profit. The landlord should provide an equitable proportion of the mineral fertilizers when such are required. The provisions of the lease and the character of the rotation will necessarily vary with circumstances, but the following system of tenant farming which has been employed for many years in Maryland will illustrate the principles just stated: The lease provides for a five-course rotation consisting of maize, wheat, clover, wheat, clover. The landlord and the tenant share the maize and wheat equally, but the clover for hay or pasture goes entirely to the tenant, unless hay is sold, when it is divided equally. They each provide one-half the commercial fertilizer and one-half the seed, except clover seed, which the tenant is required to furnish. This lease provides for two clover crops out of every five crops raised, thus supplying nitrogen abundantly, and the terms of the lease are such that it is necessary for the tenant to keep live stock to consume these clover crops in order to secure the most profitable returns. The feeding of the clover makes it necessary to feed some or all the maize and may lead to buying additional concentrates. Stable manure is thereby supplied for the field which is to raise maize, while mineral fertilizers may be applied to the fields sown to wheat. On the limestone soils of the eastern states 50 pounds each of phosphoric acid and potash per acre applied to the wheat, and 10 loads of stable manure per acre to the maize will probably be found sufficient to maintain the crop producing power of the soil. In laying out a farm for a rotation it is desirable to plan the number of fields or tracts that will go in a rotation and try to get these as nearly equal size as possible. Having decided upon the number of years the rotation is to run and having adjusted the fields or tracts accordingly, it is quite possible to modify the proportion of crops by adding one crop and dropping another at the same time. Thus, if there are six 20-acre fields, any one of the following rotations might be used and the change from one to another easily made: 1. Maize Maize Maize Maize Maize 2. Oats Maize Maize Maize Barley 3. Wheat Oats Oats Wheat Alfalfa 4. Clover and Wheat Clover and Clover and Alfalfa timothy timothy timothy 5. Timothy Clover and Timothy Timothy Alfalfa timothy 6. Timothy Timothy Timothy Timothy Alfalfa During the first year the 20-acre field could be divided into four tracts of five acres each, containing potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes and sweet corn, and then followed for four or five years by any succession of crops above outlined. The point is that a definite adjustment of the farm to some general method of rotation and a definite system of fertilization and soil renovation do not prevent a considerable latitude in the crops raised. It will be obvious that the longer the rotation the more flexible it becomes in this particular, which is a point to be considered in laying out the farm and in adjusting fields and fences. In some cases it may be desirable on account of the arrangement of the farm or the character of the crops to be raised to have two distinct rotations of crops. For example, if the farm lends itself to be divided into eight tracts, a five-course rotation of maize, oats, wheat, each one year, and clover and timothy two years, and a three-course rotation of potatoes, oats or wheat and clover may be arranged. CHAPTER X THE EQUIPMENT The workman is known by his tools. The problem of obtaining the most efficient machinery for the conduct of the farm without having an excessive amount is not easy of solution. It is probable that the cost of maintaining machinery and tools is not less than 15%, 10% for upkeep and 5% for interest, even under the most careful management. Doubtless in practice it is as much as 25%. If this is conceded there must be a limit to the amount which may be economically invested in equipment. This is a place where the lead pencil may be used profitably. For example, if $125 is invested in a self-binder, the annual cost of the machine at 15% will be $18.75. If one has but 15 acres of grain to harvest, it may be better to hire a self-binder at $1 an acre. On the other hand, it may be necessary to own a self-binder in order to get the grain harvested at the proper time. Among the machines requiring a considerable investment for the number of days used may be mentioned hay loaders, hay tedders, corn-binding harvesters and lime spreaders. There is a certain class of labor-saving devices, however, for which there is more or less constant need, as, for example, means of pumping water, methods of handling manure, both from the stable to the manure shed, and from the manure shed to the field. This leads to the remark that there is at present great need of modifying our traditional ideas concerning farm barns. Why do persons usually sleep on the second floor, while horses and cattle are placed in the basement? Three things have brought about the need of a radical revision of our practices concerning the planning of barns: (1) Our present knowledge of the difference in the function of food in keeping the animal warm, and that of producing work, flesh or milk; (2) the discovery of the bacillus of tuberculosis; and (3) the invention of the hay carrier. It is not the purpose here to discuss barn buildings, but merely to call attention to the fact that the traditional barn has long since outlived its usefulness, and that the young farmer should plan his farm buildings to serve the purposes required in the light of modern knowledge. Various attempts have been made to manufacture combined machines; that is, a machine which, by an interchange of parts or other modification, may be used for two or more purposes, as, for example, harvesting small grain and cutting grass. Such attempts have usually been unsuccessful. On the other hand, the young farmer should consider the range of usefulness of any given type of machine or tool; thus, a disk harrow is more efficient for some purposes than a spring-tooth harrow. For other purposes the spike-tooth harrow is better than the spring tooth. The spring-tooth harrow, however, will do fairly well wherever the disk harrow or the spike-tooth harrow is needed. When, therefore, only one of these tools can be afforded, the spring tooth may be a better tool to buy than either the disk or the spike-tooth, although it is not for certain purposes as efficient as either of the others. The kind of machine should obviously be adjusted to the conditions, as, for example, the size of the farm, and the character of the farming. Riding plows may be desirable on level land, but where it is necessary to plow up and down hill, walking plows should be used. The extra weight of the wheel plow is not a serious matter on level land, because the sliding friction has been transferred to rolling friction, but no mechanical device has been or can be invented which will decrease the power necessary to raise a given weight a given height. The various machines requiring horse power should be adjusted, as far as possible, to require the same number of horses. If the main unit is three horses, then, as far as possible, all machines should require three horses, such as plows, harrows, manure spreaders, harvesters, etc. If the activities of the farm are sufficient to require six horses then some of the tools may require three horses each, while others require a pair. [Illustration: Mr. R. H. Garrahan, Kingston, Pa., is one of the most successful growers of celery in the United States. After graduating from the Wyoming Seminary he spent one year studying horticulture at the Pennsylvania State College. For several years he was assistant in horticulture at the University of Tennessee. He now has at Kingston 60 acres under intensive cultivation. His principal crops are celery, asparagus, cabbage, tomatoes and onions.] [Illustration: H. H. Richardson, Brooklyn Heights, Ohio, agricultural graduate, Ohio State University, 1892. Fourteen years ago inherited 35 acres of land and an indebtedness of $1,750. He has raised a family of four children, has what is seen in the picture plus the land and $6,000 invested elsewhere. Mr. Richardson has held some local public office continuously during the past ten years, being at present member of school and water boards, member of advisory board of bank, secretary of Cleveland Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association and Ohio vice-president of the National Vegetable Growers' Association.] A farm with six work horses is rather a desirable one from several aspects. Among other things, it enables the farm owner to employ two men who can perform most of the team work with two three-horse teams, while at other times three pairs of horses may be arranged when the owner needs to use a team. This leaves the farmer time to attend to many activities not requiring horses, and time to plan the work and to look with more care after the purchases and sales. The size of such a farm will depend entirely on the nature of the activities. If it is a so-called general farm with a minimum of live stock, it would, perhaps, consist of from 150 to 180 acres of tillable land with some additional pasture and woodland. Ideally, every farm should have sufficient activity to make it something of a center. It should be an organism. It is difficult to organize one man. It will be useful, when we come to discuss how profits may be estimated, to divide the capital into three general groups: (1) The plant, which in addition to the real estate, will include the machines and tools, horses used for labor, and other animals used for breeding purposes or for the production of animal products, such as butter, wool or eggs; (2) materials, which will include animals which are to be fattened for sale, and all seeds, fertilizers and foods intended to be turned into products to be sold; (3) supplies, which may include foods for teams, and money with which to pay labor, be this labor that of the farmer or his employees. The purpose of this classification is to bring sharply into view the fact that the nature of different kinds of equipment varies. All the things named under the plant are in the nature of an annual charge against income. The charge under materials may or may not be an annual charge. If a man invests $2,000 in 50 head of cattle, which he intends to feed and sell for $3,250 at the end of one hundred days, he does not have to calculate interest on $2,000 for a year, but only for 100 days. Cattle paper is held in large quantities by banks in the cattle feeding districts of the United States. The farmer would, in fact, be unwise to keep $2,000 in the bank nine months in the year in order to use it three months. Like any other business man, if he has the money, he invests it and borrows the money to buy his cattle. The same thing applies to food and fertilizers. If the food is fed to cattle, some of the money invested in the food must pay interest during the fattening period. Food fed to dairy cattle and chickens may be paid for out of each day's income. In practice, the amount of money invested in food for dairy cattle and chickens is dependent only upon the most economical unit of purchase. One may apply fertilizers to buckwheat, give a three months' note for the fertilizer, and pay the note out of the proceeds of the crop. If the fertilizer is applied to one-year-old apple trees, this investment may be required to pay interest for fifteen years. The same principle applies to supplies. If one starts into raising horses for sale, he needs to have some money or other income on which his laborers and his own family can live, say for five years, this being the age at which a horse is supposed to become salable. More people would raise apples and horses if they could afford to wait for the return on the investment. While this is a serious handicap, it is an advantage to the man who arranges his farming methods so that he can secure an income from some other source in the interim. The young farmer will do wisely to so arrange his farm methods that a portion, perhaps the major portion of his farm, will give him quick returns while making some long-time investments, which later in life will give him a greater return because so few people are sufficiently forehanded to make them. CHAPTER XI HOW TO ESTIMATE PROFITS No man who engages in manufacturing or merchandising knows how much he is going to make annually during life. Much less does he know how much he will be worth when he dies. Neither does the man who works for a salary or practices some profession for fees know what his annual income will be even during the following decade. Neither one nor the other knows whether he will die a millionaire or a pauper. It is a problem too complex for any human mind to analyze. It is less certain than what the weather will be on this day next year, because it is the resultant of more variable factors. In some respects there is more hazard in farming than in manufacturing or in merchandising, while in other respects there is much less. The profit which may be obtained from farming is neither easier nor more difficult to estimate than is that of other commercial enterprises. However, there is no business in which more foolish estimates are made as to the probable profits, except, perhaps, in mining. The purpose of this chapter is not to give advice as to possible or probable profits, but rather to point out the general character of the data required for any individual problem, where the data may be obtained and how it may be applied. There are two forms or methods of stating the financial gain that has been obtained from farming or other business ventures during a year or other specific period. The first may be called the interest on the investment method, and the second the labor income method. With the interest on the investment method, all expenses may be subtracted from all the sales. From the cash balance thus obtained the increase or decrease in inventory may be added or subtracted. This balance may then be divided by the capital invested, to determine the rate of interest received. The rate of interest method is the usual method in the commercial world. The prosperity of the railroad or industrial concern is judged by the rate of interest it pays its stockholders on the par value of the stock. The stock itself takes on the capitalization in accordance with the present and prospective dividends. The fact that this method is generally used in the commercial world is evidence that it is well suited to its needs. The young farmer who wishes to know whether the operation of a given tract of land in a certain manner offers him a worthy opportunity will not find the interest on the investment method the best suited for his purpose. This is especially true when applied to a single product. For example, it may be shown that 50 hens will, when properly managed, in connection with other farm enterprises, return a remarkable interest on the capital employed. It does not follow, however, that a man can make a living with fifty hens or even 500 hens. If a man has an investment of $5,000, on which he obtains 10 per cent, his income would be $500. If, on the other hand, he has an investment of $25,000 and obtains a return of only 6%, his income is $1,500, or three times the former amount. In neither case, however, does this form of statement tell a man how much of his income is due to his brain and brawn and how much to the capital invested. What the young farmer wishes to know is how much will he receive for his own time, energy and skill, after deducting all expenses and a reasonable interest charge on his investment--such a rate of interest as he could get by placing his money in good securities or what he would be required to pay for his capital if he borrowed it. This is best obtained by the labor income method. With this method all expenses are subtracted from all sales and to the cash balance thus obtained is added or subtracted the increase or decrease in the inventory. This balance may be called the farm income. Thus far the procedure is just the same as the interest on the investment method. From the farm income is now subtracted a reasonable interest on the investment, the balance remaining is called the labor income. This is the return which the farmer has obtained by and for his own efforts. If this balance is zero, then he should change his methods or get into some other business. This statement of his income, whatever it may be, enables him to compare his prosperity with that of the man who is employed upon a salary. Here, again, however, it is difficult to make comparisons because of the differences in expenses of living. The chief difference, however, in the expense of the wage earner in the city and the farmer is in the matter of house rent. For example, if the wage earner pays $300 a year house rent that must be deducted from his income in comparing it with the labor income of the farmer. It is often stated that the farmer also has his living from the farm. This was much more true formerly than it is at present. Under present methods of distributing food products and with modern types of farming, the amount of food supplied the table from the farm is comparatively small. The rancher in Montana eats foods canned in Maine or Delaware, while the New Hampshire farmer buys his vegetables from Boston commission merchants. The Minnesota farmer cannot supply his breakfast table with oranges, grapefruit or oatmeal. Many of them buy, if not their bread, at least their flour, and also their butter. The fact that the city man indulges in high living is no argument in favor of the country man expecting less wages. Some of those things which are necessary to make the country an ideal place to live are expensive. Some of them are more expensive to obtain in the country than in the city, as, for example, educational facilities. In justifying his purchase of an automobile, a young farmer recently stated that his wife had certain cares, responsibilities and even privations which her city friends did not have. He thought that the automobile would help to offset them. To my mind there is no more ideal place to live and rear a family than in the open country when the conditions are what they should be and may be. I believe, however, it is well to insist that it costs something to live in the country as well as in the city if one lives as well as every farmer has a right to expect to live. Let us now consider the steps necessary in order to arrive at a fair estimate of the labor income. To make the matter concrete, we will assume a farm of 200 acres worth $60 an acre located in central Pennsylvania on a limestone clay loam soil over 1,000 feet above sea level. This farm is to contain 20 acres of timber, a 30-acre apple orchard two years old, 40 acres of pasture, 96 acres of cultivated land divided into six 16-acre fields. The rest of the 200 acres consists of small yards, roadways and waste land. One-half of each of the six 16-acre fields is to consist of a rotation of maize, oats and wheat, each one year, and hay three years, the latter clover and timothy followed by timothy. The other half is to consist of maize, barley, followed by alfalfa four years. In the young orchard there will be grown for a few years potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages and garden peas. After the orchard attains a size which forbids these intertilled crops, a portion of the pasture may be broken up so that these market garden crops may be raised. There will be kept six horses, 20 milch cows, 20 ewes of some mutton breed of sheep, five brood sows and 50 hens. First of all, let attention be called to the broad knowledge of farming required to operate this moderate-sized and comparatively simple farm. The crops to be raised are maize, oats, wheat, clover, alfalfa, timothy, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, garden peas and apples. The animal products sold will be chiefly butter fat, wool, mutton, veal, pork and eggs. This is neither a long nor complex list of products. They are all adapted to the farm which the writer has in mind. Yet the man who operates this farm to the highest success will need to have a knowledge of agronomy, or the raising of field crops, of horticulture, animal husbandry, including poultry husbandry and dairying. He needs to have a good understanding of the principles of agricultural chemistry, to have a knowledge of how to prevent and combat fungous diseases and insect enemies. To get the most out of his timber land he should know at least some of the first principles of forestry, and if he has gained some instruction in the study of landscape gardening, his home will be more attractive, and his farm a source of greater pleasure to him. To proceed with the estimate, the first thing to be done is to make a record of the cropping system, giving the areas and the estimated production of each crop. How is the yield per acre to be determined? Clearly, one cannot afford to estimate his profits on the basis of some unusual yields. If one could be assured of 40 bushels of wheat, 60 bushels of oats, five tons of hay, 300 bushels of potatoes, or 200 bushels of apples per acre, or 500 pounds of butter fat per cow, or 150 eggs per hen per year, there would be no difficulty about obtaining a snug labor income. Such results are possible and are appropriate ideals for which to strive, but are not safe as estimates on which to do business. The year books of the United States Department of Agriculture contain the annual estimate of the yields, and the average December farm price of staple crops by states. These figures may serve as a basis for making estimates. If the natural conditions are about the average stated, one may properly assume that he can obtain an increase of 50%. He may even hope to double the yield, although it is not safe to assume such an increase in making an estimate of profits. If the natural conditions are more favorable or less favorable than the average, he must take the fact into consideration in his estimates. In the same way he may consider whether the average December farm price represents fairly his expectation of the price, or whether because of favorable location or superior quality of the article purchased he can expect higher remuneration. It is here assumed that the young farmer is himself going to be more than an average farmer. If he is not he will only get average results, in which case his labor income will be only that of the ordinary day laborer. To repeat the idea in concrete terms. If the young farmer is located in central Pennsylvania and finds that the average yield of wheat for the state is 17 bushels an acre, he may safely estimate that his improved methods will bring him 25 bushels of wheat to the acre. He may even hope for 34 bushels per acre. At the Pennsylvania station several varieties of wheat have, during the past 18 years, averaged over 30 bushels per acre. One year one variety produced 43 bushels. It would not be safe, however, to use such figures in estimating profits. Having outlined the cropping system and made a careful estimate of the total annual production of each crop, the next step is to determine the amount of food and bedding required for the live stock. From this data it may be determined what products will be available for sale, and what foodstuffs must be bought. Thus, it may be found, for example, that the amount of oats raised just meets the requirement, while more maize must be purchased, together with nitrogenous concentrates, and that a portion of the hay is available for sale. In the farm under consideration there will, of course, be wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, garden peas and the animal products previously mentioned for sale, and later there will be apples and some lumber from the wood lot. The data are now at hand by which to estimate the total receipts. Having made the estimates of receipts, the expenses are estimated, and the difference gives the cash balance, if there is any. The most important items of expense will be labor, feed, seeds, fertilizers, harvesting and threshing expenses, spraying material, shipping packages, blacksmithing and repairs. After all expenses that can be thought of are included not less than 10% should be added for incidental expenses. The amount of commercial or natural fertilizers to be purchased is, of course, related to the yard manure which will be produced on the farm; therefore some estimate of the probable amount is desirable. In a roughly empirical way the amount of manure produced may be estimated at twice the amount of dry food and bedding used, provided it is hauled daily to the field. Where stored and drawn to the field at stated periods, the shrinkage in weight, although not necessarily in plant food, may be as much as one-half. The estimate of what the inventory should be at the beginning and end of the year is not so simple a matter as it may at first seem to be. The purpose of taking the inventory is twofold: First, to determine whether the inventory has increased or decreased, and second, to determine on what amount of capital interest is to be calculated. For example, one must carry forward each year seed for the next year's crop. Feed must be carried over to feed live stock until other food becomes available, and there must be money on hand with which to pay for labor unless there is a cash income from the sale of products sufficient to care for the labor bills. In the case of the farm under consideration there is a young orchard of about one thousand trees. This orchard is not bringing in any income, but there is a constant expenditure of money on it, and a constant increase in its value. While, therefore, it decreases the cash income it increases the farm income and the labor income. On the other hand, it increases the interest charges because the plant or farm is increasing in value. How much will it increase in value? In some sections it is customary to consider that an orchard increases in value $1 per tree per year. If this is a correct estimate, this 1,000-tree orchard will increase the value of the farm $1,000 a year until it comes into full bearing. The farm under consideration was purchased two years ago for $9,500. On the assumption just stated, at the end of 15 years from date of purchase this farm should be worth $25,000, at least $15,000 of which will be due to a 30-acre orchard. This is at the rate of $500 an acre for the orchard itself. In order to bring out some of the phases of the inventory more clearly the following classification of items is given below: INVENTORY A. PLANT. The real estate, 200 acres at $60 per acre. The live stock. Work horses and breeding stock. Machinery. B. MATERIALS. Seeds, potatoes, oats, maize, wheat. Feed, hay for cattle and sheep, silage for cows, maize for pigs. Growing wheat, 8 acres at $6 per acre. Live stock, calves, lambs and pigs. C. SUPPLIES. Hay and oats for horses. Money for current expenses. In estimating the inventory at the end of the year, a deduction should be made for the decrease in the value of the live stock under the plant and also for the machinery. Perhaps 5% for the live stock and 10% for the machinery and tools will be a fair deduction. Under materials and supplies those items have been inventoried which are to be carried over each year from the preceding year. In the case of seeds the amount required must be deducted from the amount sold, or they must appear as a charge in the expense account. Ordinarily they are carried over from year to year and thus become a part of the permanent investment. Since on the farm under consideration there is a considerable monthly income from the sale of butter fat and eggs, it may be possible that no allowance will be needed in the inventory for current expenses, although it is always desirable to carry a bank account in order to be able to make favorable purchases when opportunity offers. As a part of the work in a course in farm management, the writer asked each student to secure the financial history of an actual farm covering a period of three years. The financial history of 30 farms during the years 1901 to 1903, inclusive, and 28 farms during the years 1902-1904, inclusive, was thus obtained and is given herewith. SUMMARY OF FINANCIAL HISTORY OF FARMS Average size of farm, acres 143.21 133 Average area in crops (includes pasture), acres 121.1 112 Capital at end of three-year period $14,009 $8,893 Capital at beginning three-year period 12,962 7,704 ------- ------ Difference $ 1,047 $1,189 Interest on capital, $13,485, at 5 per cent[B] $ 674 $ 415 Increase in capital per annum 349 396 Average yearly receipts 3,613 2,208 Average yearly disbursements 1,907 1,221 Average yearly cash balance 1,706 987 Average yearly farm income 2,055 1,383 Average yearly labor income 1,381 968 These figures show the application of principles enunciated in this chapter. A careful reader will have no difficulty in recognizing how the different items have been obtained. For example, the difference between the receipts and disbursements in the first column gives the cash balance of $1,706. The farm income, $2,055, is obtained by adding to the cash balance $349, which is the annual increase in the capital. The labor income is obtained by subtracting from the farm income the interest on the capital at five per cent. The amount of capital is determined by dividing by two the sum of the inventories at the beginning and end of the period.[C] It will be noted that the gross receipts, the expenses, the farm income and the labor income on these actual farms are all more closely related to the capital invested than the size of the farm. Thus, on the 30 farms with a capitalization of about $13,500, the average yearly receipts were about $25 an acre, while on the 28 farms with a capitalization of about $8,300, the average yearly receipts were about $16 an acre. Likewise on the high-priced farms the labor income was approximately $10 an acre, while on the lower priced ones it was about $7. ----- [B] Obtained by dividing by two the sum of capital at beginning and end of three-year period. [C] For further details see Hunt, "How to Choose a Farm," Chaps. X and XI. CHAPTER XII GRAIN AND HAY FARMING An important and primary factor in the production of all wealth is labor. Aside from the professional and domestic classes, the people of the world devote themselves to three forms of work: (1) Changes in substance, or natural products; (2) changes in form, or mechanical products; (3) changes in place, or exchange of products. The second of these forms of work gives rise to manufacturing; the third, to trade and commerce. Under the first sub-division two classes of natural products may be recognized; first, what, for want of a better name, may be called chemical products, such as ores, coal and salt, from which are derived mining and the metallurgical arts; and second, vital products, or, in other words, vegetation and animals. It is work applied to the production of vegetation and animals that gives rise to agriculture. Agriculture is labor applied to the production of living things. KINDS OF AGRICULTURE The industries which deal with the production of living things may be divided, theoretically, largely on the basis of the character of the results, but to some extent upon the nature of the activities involved. { Grain Farming--Cereals and } { grasses. } { } Agriculture { Plantations--Cotton, sugar, } { tobacco, coffee. } Plant Production { (Soil Culture) { Truck Farming, Market } { Gardening--Vegetables. } { } Horticulture { Fruit Growing--Fruits. } { } { Forestry--Trees, shrubs. } { Stock Raising--Work, meat, fats, hides. { Stock Feeding--Meat, fats. { Stock Breeding--Animals. Animal Production { Dairy Farming--Milk, butter and cheese. (An. Husbandry) { Sheep Husbandry--Wool raising. { Poultry Raising--Eggs. { Beekeeping--Honey. Mixed Husbandry The manner in which this theoretical classification has worked out in actual practice will be indicated in some measure by the inquiries of the United States Census Bureau. The twelfth census has classified farms on the basis of their principal income. If 40% or more of the gross income of the farm was from dairy products, it was called a dairy farm; if from live stock, a live stock farm; if from cotton, a cotton farm. If no product constituted 40% of the gross receipts, the farm was classified as a miscellaneous or general farm. In 1900 there were 5,740,000 farms in the United States, which were, according to the rule just stated, classified as follows: FARMS CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO PRINCIPAL SOURCE OF INCOME Gross Average income Total area, size per Kind of farm. acres. Number. acres. farm. Hay and grain 210,243,000 1,320,000 159 $760 Vegetables 10,157,000 156,000 65 665 Fruits 6,150,000 82,000 75 915 Live stock 335,009,000 1,565,000 227 788 Dairy produce 43,284,000 358,000 120 787 Tobacco 9,574,000 106,000 90 615 Cotton 89,587,000 1,072,000 84 430 Rice 1,088,000 6,000 190 1,335 Sugar 2,689,000 7,000 363 5,317 Flowers and plants 43,000 6,000 7 2,991 Nursery products 166,000 2,000 82 4,971 Miscellaneous 113,144,000 1,059,000 107 440 ----------- --------- --- ----- Total 844,000,000 5,740,000 147 $656 Including miscellaneous or general farms, there are just a dozen kinds of farms mentioned. Of this number, nine kinds obtained at least 40% of their products, and probably much more, from vegetable rather than from animal forms. However, live stock and dairy farms constitute about one-third of the total number of farms, and almost one-half the farm acreage. There are four kinds of farms on which the production of grain and hay forms an important part of their activities; namely, the hay and grain farm, the live stock farm, the dairy farm, and general farm. These constitute, in the aggregate, 75% of the farms of the United States, and by virtue of their larger area, they occupy 85% of the total farm area. GRAIN AND HAY STATISTICS At the close of the nineteenth century less than one-half the area of the United States was owned in farms. Only one-half of this farm area was considered to be under cultivation. The total area in cereals was one-tenth the total land area, while 3% was devoted to hay and 2% to all other crops except pasture. Without going into details, it may be stated with reasonable assurance that: (1) During the last half of the last century, the production of cereals has increased much faster than the population. For example, in 1850, there were raised in the United States one ton of cereal grains per capita; by 1900 this amount had increased to one and one-half tons for each inhabitant. (2) Since the number of persons engaged in agriculture has decreased in proportion to population, the quantity of cereals produced in proportion to persons engaged in agriculture has increased in still greater ratio. So far, therefore, as the amount of cereals is concerned, the farmer has been getting an increasingly larger return for his labor. (3) The quantity of cereals has increased in proportion to the arable land. This may be due to one or more of three causes: (a) greater average yield per acre; (b) greater proportion of cereals to other crops; or (c) to a change in the ratio of the different cereal crops. The following table, giving the average yield of grain, reduced to pounds per acre, shows not only how the substitution of one cereal for another might affect the total production of cereal grains, but also suggests to the young farmer how he may modify the total product of his farm: Yield Lb. Lb. in bu. per bu. per acre Maize 24.2 56 1355 Barley 23.7 48 1138 Rye 15.0 56 840 Oats 26.2 32 838 Wheat 13.2 60 792 Rice Paddy 746 Buckwheat 14.0 48 672 Yields will vary relatively in different regions and with different types of soil, and should be studied with reference to one's conditions. (4) The wheat and oat crops have increased about six and one-half times in 50 years, the hay crop five and one-half times, while maize has increased four and one-half times. Cotton, the only other great staple crop, has increased four times in the same period. The oat crop has increased the most rapidly of any since 1880. It is interesting, and may be significant, to note that, while the production of wheat and barley in Great Britain has decreased about one-half in thirty years, the production of oats has increased somewhat. (5) The greatest rate of increase in the production of cereals in the United States during the last half century has taken place since 1870. This increase is coincident with three other facts of the utmost importance: (a) The development of the central West, a treeless plain--prior to this period much of the farm land in the United States had been hewn out of the forest, tree by tree; (b) the consolidation of the steam railways into transcontinental lines; and (c) the introduction of the self-binding harvester. Formerly it took at least five men to do what is done today by one man in the harvesting of cereals. ADVANTAGES OF GRAIN FARMING (1) The cost of land excepted, the production of hay and grain requires a small outlay of money. During the past fifty years, many thousands of persons have been able to obtain farms of 160 acres at almost no cost. With a few hundred dollars invested in horses and tools with which to plow the prairie and sow the seed, these fortunate persons have oftentimes been able to pay the whole of their expenses, capital included, from the first crop. The renter who operates a hay and grain farm usually has but a small capital invested in his business. (2) The cereals bring a quick return. Wheat may be sown in September and sold in July; maize may be planted in May and sold in November; oats may be planted in April and sold in August. The short period between seed time and harvest makes the oat crop a favorite one among renters. On the other hand, it takes from three to seven years to produce a marketable horse. It may take ten to fifteen years to begin to realize on an apple orchard. (3) The products are not easily perishable, and hence can be held almost indefinitely. The development of the magnificent elevator system, based upon the principle that the cereals can be handled like water, greatly simplifies the holding and preservation of these staple products. (4) The products are in constant demand, and hence they always find a market. Agricultural commodities may be divided into three classes, depending upon the area which controls the price of the commodity, as follows: (a) price units world-wide, as wheat, cotton, pork; (b) price units local to large districts--products too bulky to ship long distances--such as hay, potatoes and apples; (c) price units local to relatively small areas, such as strawberries and green vegetables. It is obvious that the larger the area which controls the price, the more constant will be the demand. OBJECTIONS TO GRAIN FARMING (1) It exhausts the soil. About two-thirds of the wheat of the United States is consumed outside the county in which it is raised. (2) It requires a large quantity of land to produce a competence. Land must be low in price, or the interest on the money invested in the land will consume the profits. The relation of crop to income is suggested by comparing the gross returns from an acre of potatoes or tobacco with an acre of maize. The average gross income during a decade was, from an acre of maize, $9.50; an acre of potatoes, $38; and from an acre of tobacco, $61.50. (3) Only such part of the land as is suited to tillage can be used. (4) The marketing of cereals requires the transportation of bulky products. Hay is handicapped much more seriously. The distance a product can be shipped depends somewhat on the price per pound received for it. If it costs one cent a pound to ship maize to a grain market, obviously it cannot be transported without loss when it brings only 50 cents a bushel. On the other hand, two cents a pound may easily be paid for shipping butter which is worth 25 cents a pound. The transportation of $2,000 worth of maize to a railway station ten miles distant is a laborious and expensive operation, but when this same maize is turned into beef or pork, it will transport itself to the station with comparatively little trouble. Notwithstanding the excellent transportation facilities which the farmers of the United States enjoy, 80% of the maize is consumed in the county in which it is raised. Cereal production demands better transportation facilities than cotton farming, tobacco growing or the rearing of domestic animals. (5) Capital must lie idle much of the time. The self-binding harvester or the hay rake is only used a few weeks, or perhaps more often only a few days, each year. A cream separator or a churn may be used every day in the year. In the first instance, there is not only interest on unemployed capital, but the capital is actually deteriorating through nonuse. (6) The production of hay and grain does not give continuous employment. The slightest consideration of the following table must show that unless live stock is kept, there are considerable periods of the year in which very little labor is required, while at other times considerable work is necessary to prevent loss. TABLE SHOWING THE AVERAGE ACREAGE PER FARM OF PRINCIPAL CROPS. New York Ohio Wisconsin Virginia Maize 3 13 9 11 Wheat 2 12 3 6 Oats 5 4 14 1 Barley, rye or buckwheat 2 -- 5 0 Hay and forage 23 11 14 4 Potatoes, beans or other vegetables 3 1 2 1 Fruits 2 2 0 1 Miscellaneous crops 2 1 0 2 Pasture, wood or unimproved land 58 45 70 93 --- -- --- --- Total size of farm 100 89 117 119 (7) Much depends upon natural forces. While there is opportunity for the use of knowledge and judgment in the production of high-grade seeds and even of large yields, there is not the same scope for skill that there is in some other lines of agricultural enterprise. Skill means the capacity to do something difficult, and the more effort required to produce an object the more value it has, provided its utility is unlimited. The farming which requires the most skill pays the best if one has the skill to apply to it. This is because those who do not have the requisite skill are usually unsuccessful. CHAPTER XIII THE COST OF FARMING OPERATIONS Several millions of the inhabitants of the United States, not to mention those of other countries, are engaged each year in the preparation of the soil for the cereal and forage crops and on the work of seeding and harvesting them. The welfare of one-third the population is directly and that of the other two-thirds, although less directly, is quite as surely dependent upon the effectiveness of this effort. If, for example, as sometimes happens, one-third the population receives on account of untoward seasonal conditions but four-fifths of the usual product, everyone must suffer on account of this unrewarded labor. Many, perhaps most, financial panics have their origin in crop failures aided, doubtless, by an improper financial system. Although widely and sometimes bitterly discussed, little is really known concerning the relation between the effort expended and the returns obtained in producing the great staple farm products; yet one of the most important and vital considerations in the organization of a farm enterprise is the income, both gross and net, which may be expected from the different crops contemplated. Obviously the yield and price of the several crops will vary with the locality and with the season. It is, therefore, impossible to predict for any year either what yield may be obtained or what price will be secured. If, however, a sufficient number of years are selected, an average may be found which will form a basis for calculating the probable result for another series of years. The following table gives the yield and the average farm values per acre for five staple crops for five years, 1905-1909 inclusive, for the United States and for four widely separated states, viz., Pennsylvania, Iowa, Texas and Oregon. AVERAGE YIELD PER ACRE, 1905-1909. Pennsylvania Iowa Texas Oregon Maize, bu. 36.6 33.4 21.1 27.3 Wheat, bu. 17.8 15.5 9.6 20.6 Oats, bu. 28.9 28.9 26.6 32.8 Potatoes, bu. 84.4 85.8 67.0 119.0 Hay, tons 1.39 1.56 1.32 2.11 AVERAGE FARM VALUE PER ACRE, 1905-1909 Pennsylvania Iowa Texas Oregon Maize $22.59 $13.80 $12.17 $19.58 Wheat 16.61 12.42 9.11 16.10 Oats 13.33 9.28 12.97 15.20 Potatoes 55.87 44.75 65.15 71.18 Hay 18.74 10.13 13.92 19.60 Such figures as the above may be compiled by anyone at any time for any year or series of years from the yearbooks of the United States Department of Agriculture. They form a fairly sound basis for calculating the gross income which may be expected from the staple farm crops, particularly for the cereals, potatoes, hay, cotton and tobacco. Five questions, however, present themselves, which should, as far as possible, be settled before applying them to an individual problem. (1) How nearly do the conditions, especially those of soil and climate, of the given location correspond to the averages of the state? The question can be settled only by a thorough study of soils and their crop adaptation. It is a matter requiring study, experience and judgment. (2) How much larger yields may be expected on account of better methods employed? It is here that most mistakes are made in estimating possible farm profits. Necessarily, all statistical averages of production are much below those which an enterprising farmer considers an average crop and habitually produces. Not more than 50% increase upon these figures, however, should be anticipated by reason of the improved methods which one is going to employ. While the average yield of maize, even in the so-called corn states, is not far from 30 bushels an acre, and while it is quite common for good farmers to produce 60 to 75 bushels of maize per acre, it would not be safe to assume a yield of more than 45 bushels unless the conditions are more than ordinarily favorable. The application of the averages given on pages 149-150 to an individual farm enterprise may be illustrated by calculating the possible results which might be obtained on 80 acres of arable land in Iowa and Pennsylvania with the four great soil products of northern United States. Iowa Pennsylvania Acres Income Acres Income Maize 40 $552.00 15 $340.85 Oats 20 185.60 15 200.25 Wheat 5 62.10 15 249.25 Hay 15 151.95 35 655.90 Total 80 $951.65 80 $1,446.25 If 50% is added for the increased yields which may be expected on account of the employment of better methods, the total yield from 80 acres of arable land would become for Iowa $1,428 and for Pennsylvania $2,169. This does not mean that farming is necessarily more profitable in Pennsylvania than in Iowa. Not only may the cost of cultivating an acre of arable land be greater in Pennsylvania, but usually a larger territory must be owned in order to obtain 80 acres of arable land. Eighty acres of these four crops is probably as often grown on a farm of 100 acres in Iowa as on one of 160 acres in Pennsylvania. The total farm acreage in Iowa is, in round numbers, 35 millions; in Pennsylvania, 19 millions. In Iowa about one-half the farm area is in the farm crops under consideration, while in Pennsylvania these four crops occupy only one-third the farm area. [Illustration: Mr. R. D. Maurice Wertz, after several years in railroad offices, took charge of his fathers farm at Quincy, Pa., in 1891, and converted it into a fruit farm. He now has about 220 acres in peaches and apples. It is understood that he has sent from the above shipping station and one other about $200,000 worth of fruit in the last six years.] [Illustration: Mr. T. E. Martin, Rush, N. Y., is one of the most successful potato growers in the United States. He has a farm of 57 acres of the Dunkirk series of soil. He has three 18-acre fields in rotation consisting of potatoes, wheat and clover and alfalfa. Mr. Martin has increased the yield of potatoes from 60 bushels per acre in 1892 to 417 bushels in 1906. In 1906 he produced 7,510 bushels on 18 acres. In 1907 he sold $2,807.89 worth of potatoes from 18 acres, or $160 per acre. He attributes his large yields mainly to drainage, thorough preparation of the soil, good tillage, spraying, clover and alfalfa, manure and commercial fertilizers.] (3) Will there be a general increase or decrease in the price of crops during the coming years? The following table gives the average farm price for Missouri by five-year periods. THE AVERAGE DECEMBER FARM PRICE BY PREVIOUS DECADES COMPARED WITH AVERAGE OF FIVE YEARS, 1906-10. 1866 1875 1886 1896 1906 to to to to to 1875 1885 1895 1905 1910 cts. cts. cts. cts. cts. Maize, bu. 40 33 33 35 49 Wheat, bu. 103 87 64 71 87 Oats, bu. 30 27 26 27 39 Potatoes, bu. 57 48 49 53 68 Hay, ton 902 799 704 700 875 An examination of the last column shows that the average price of these staple farm products has been considerably greater during five recent years than during the previous thirty years. Will this increase in price continue, or will there be a series of years of unusually low prices which will bring the average price of the decade down to that of the previous three decades? Few persons will care to venture an answer to this question, which is of the utmost importance to all farmers and especially to the beginner. (4) The figures employed are taken from the yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture and are the estimated farm price on December 1 of each year. Can the commodities be sold for the December farm price? Will potatoes sold at the time of digging bring less than the December price? Will wheat or maize held until May bring a higher price? To what extent, by the judicious holding of products, can advance in price be obtained? (5) Will the products be sold for cash, or may they be turned into animal products at an increased profit? In some sections of the United States animals are reared primarily because of the increased profit due to manufacturing soil products into animal products; in other regions, however, they are kept primarily for the purpose of maintaining the fertility of the soil and only incidentally on account of the increased profits. COST OF PRODUCTION For a number of reasons it is difficult to determine the cost of growing farm crops. One reason deserves to be especially emphasized. In any business enterprise it may be necessary to run at a loss, because to stop would entail a still greater loss. This is particularly true in farming, where men are employed by the month in order that they may be had when needed. Since they are receiving pay, it is better that such men should be employed some days at farm operations which return only a portion of their wages rather than not to have them employed at all. Under such circumstances, therefore, the cost of producing a given crop may be greater than is indicated by the time actually employed in its production. Many other factors also enter, as the average number of hours per day which it is possible to work. This is greatly influenced by weather conditions. The Minnesota station determined that the working day on about thirty farms in that state varied from seven and one-half to eight and one-half hours, with two to three and one-half hours on Sunday. The average length of the working day for horses varied from 3.1 to 3.3 hours. The cost for labor of cultivating a given area of land will depend not only on the crop or crops to be raised, the climate, the topography and character of the soil, the size and shape of the fields and the system of cropping, but also upon the man's ability for organization. It is said that the European farmers, and even the farmers from eastern Canada, are several years in adjusting themselves to farming in western Canada. When the farmers from Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska or surrounding states move into western Canada with their three-horse teams and other suitable equipment, applying their thorough knowledge of prairie farming, they are at once successful. The man is thus an important factor. TIME REQUIRED FOR CULTURAL OPERATIONS The following table will be helpful as showing time required to perform certain operations, since it is a record of labor actually employed on a field of 18 acres of easily tilled land in central Ohio. All labor was employed at prices named, board for man and food for horses being furnished in addition at the prices estimated. The owner of the land furnished the horse for the harvester. Plowing 7.5 days at $2 $15.00 Harrowing 3 days at 2 6.00 Planting 2 days at 2 4.00 Cultivating (4 times) 7 days at 2 14.00 Cultivating with harvester 6 days at 1 6.00 Husking and cribbing by the job 45.54 Estimated cost of board 25-1/2 days 7.95 Estimated team maintenance 25-1/2 days 4.90 ------- $103.39 According to these figures the cost for labor of raising the crop and the cost of harvesting was almost exactly the same, each being a little less than $3 an acre. THE COST OF PRODUCING FARM CROPS The Minnesota station has determined the cost of growing the staple farm crops on 45 farms in different sections of the State. The total expense per acre for an average of six years is shown in the following table, not including land rental or cost of marketing. COST OF PRODUCING FARM CROPS IN MINNESOTA. Spring wheat, land fall plowed $5.54 Oats, land fall plowed 5.80 Barley, land spring plowed 6.89 Maize, husked from standing stalks 9.41 Hay, timothy and clover 3.68 Potatoes, land not fertilized 23.36 Potatoes, land fertilized 34.72 Some years ago the writer made an estimate of the cost of producing maize, oats, wheat and clover hay in a four-course rotation on a tenant farm in central Pennsylvania. The soil was a heavy clay and required plowing for each crop, except, of course, the hay crop, one acre a day being considered a good day's work. Counting the expense of man and team at $2 per day, the labor cost per acre was found to be $7 for maize, $5.10 for both wheat and oats, and $2.30 for hay, or an average of about $4.90 per acre for the four crops. The interest on the capital invested in operating this farm, exclusive of the land, was estimated at $1.45 per acre. INFLUENCE OF YIELD UPON THE COST OF PRODUCTION The Illinois station has prepared a set of estimates upon the cost of producing an acre of maize, showing variations in cost due to differences in yield. In these estimates, instead of making a charge for the actual cost of manure or fertilizer applied, an estimate is made of the value of the plant food removed. COST OF PRODUCING ONE ACRE OF MAIZE IN ILLINOIS AS MODIFIED BY YIELD. Yield Yield Yield Yield 50 bu. 75 bu. 100 bu. 35 bu. Disking $0.40 $0.40 $0.40 $0.40 Plowing 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 Preparation .75 .75 .75 .75 Planting .15 .15 .15 .15 Seed .35 .35 .35 .35 Cultivation 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 Plant food 1.02 1.53 2.04 .71 Husking 1.25 1.87 2.50 .88 Marketing 1.00 1.50 2.00 .70 ----- ----- ------ ----- Cost per acre $6.92 $8.55 $10.19 $5.94 Cost per bushel .14 .11 .10 .17 The average yield per acre in Illinois for 12 years preceding date of this estimate was 35 bushels per acre; the average price per bushel during the same period was 32 cents. LABOR COST OF PRODUCING A BUSHEL OF GRAIN Not counting rent of land or interest on capital invested in equipment, nor depreciation of soil fertility, it has been shown that under favorable conditions, the labor cost of growing and harvesting an acre of wheat or oats may be as low as $4.50, and that of maize as low as $5 per acre. Assuming the average labor cost of producing an acre of wheat or oats at $5.50 and of maize at $6 per acre, and taking the average yields per acre for a series of years to be 13.8 for wheat, 30.9 bushels for oats and 24.9 bushels for maize, the average labor cost per bushel will be: Wheat, 40 cents; oats, 17-1/2 cents; and maize, 28 cents. The data given in this chapter are to be accepted as suggestive rather than as determinative. The chief purpose in presenting them is to place before the young farmer an appreciation of some of the problems involved in the production of the chief and basic agricultural commodities. The young farmer's success will be modified by the role which they occupy in his farming system and by his ability to adjust them to the economic conditions in which he may find himself placed. A thorough understanding of the principle underlying the data submitted will go far toward enabling him to make this adjustment, although none of the illustrations given may have been obtained under conditions identical to his own. CHAPTER XIV THE PLACE OF INTENSIVE FARMING The doctrine of the survival of the most fit applies equally to the field of biology and to the field of economics. The general introduction of vegetables and fruits into the human dietary has, by banishing the loathsome diseases of the Middle Ages, greatly increased human efficiency. It follows that those peoples or nations who employ vegetables and fruits in abundance, other things being equal, will be most fit to survive and must outstrip others less fortunately situated. We may for this reason alone look forward to the increasing importance of vegetable growing and fruit raising; but there is a more obvious and perhaps more direct reason. There is in the production of vegetables, at least, a method of satisfying the dietetic needs of an increasing population. The employment of a part of the area now in cereals and forage crops for the production of potatoes, cabbages, legumes, roots and tomatoes is one of the most ready means of increasing the food supply. Whether such substitution will be advantageous to the human race depends, however, not so much upon the food returns from a given area of land as upon the products from a given amount or unit of labor. KINDS OF HORTICULTURE In that form of intensive agriculture to which is given the designation horticulture, there may be recognized several more or less distinct divisions, as fruit growing, market gardening, truck farming and floriculture. Each has its own special problems, based upon conditions of culture and market. While, as in all classifications, there is more or less overlapping, the tendency is for them to become more and more distinct. The market gardener is the producer of vegetables for a local market, while the truck farmer produces similar products for a larger or wider distribution. The former grows a great variety of products, disposing of them in relatively small quantity, not infrequently directly to the consumer. The latter raises a few highly specialized crops which he sells in gross, usually through a commission merchant. Truck farming has developed since 1860, in consequence of the growth of large cities, which require enormous supplies of vegetables of fairly uniform quality, and on account of the continuous demand for fresh vegetables as nearly as possible throughout the year. Watermelons and sweet potatoes can be raised in the southern states and laid down in New York City or Boston more cheaply than they can be raised in the suburbs of these cities, and, what is equally important, they will be of superior quality. The extension of railway facilities, the introduction of refrigerator cars and the building of cold storage plants has made it possible to grow in one climate products to be consumed in another. Cold storage has enabled the fruit growers of California to supply the eastern markets with peaches and other fresh fruit. Chicago, to give only one example, begins to receive strawberries, cabbages and tomatoes from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico early in the year and continues to receive these products, until finally they are being shipped late in the summer from the shores of Lake Superior. It is estimated that the change of locality from which these products come, travels northward at the rate of from 13 to 15 miles a day. IMPORTANT FACTORS IN INTENSIVE FARMING In the neighborhood of large cities, notably in the environs of Paris, market gardeners often produce their vegetables in made soil. The local character of the soil under such conditions is a matter of comparative indifference, since a board floor would answer every requirement as a resting place for the artificial soil. The large expense in preparing and constantly renewing the seed bed is only economically possible, however, where proximity to a large city out-weighs all other considerations. Ordinarily climatic and soil adaptation are prime factors in successful horticulture--much more than in any other branch of agriculture. Each fruit has a restricted climatic range, and in most cases the number of soil types on which a given fruit can be made a commercial success is likewise limited. Thus, in general, apples and pears require heavier soils than peaches. Success in commercial apple growing requires even greater discrimination, since different varieties of apples demand different soil conditions. Thus Baldwins are grown the most successfully where a northern climate is modified by proximity to the Great Lakes. Rhode Island Greenings will succeed on soils too heavy for many other varieties. The York Imperial has not yet achieved a great commercial success save on one type of soil. Some varieties of apples are much more restricted in their adaptation than others. Thus, while the King is quite restricted, the Ben Davis has a fairly wide cultural adaptation. No one should plant an orchard until he has made a thorough study of his soil and climatic conditions and has received the highest possible expert assistance in choosing the varieties best adapted to his conditions. There is an increasing tendency to specialize in vegetable growing. The production of celery, onions, muskmelons, watermelons, cabbages, cauliflowers, tomatoes and sweet corn, to mention only some of the most striking examples, are becoming more and more localized. Even where vegetables and flowers are grown under glass, not only is each house devoted to a single species, but, notably in the case of roses, growers are restricting themselves more and more to a few varieties. This is due to the fact that it is impossible to give in one house, or even in one establishment, the special set of conditions required for the most economic development of each species or variety of plant, just as in the open air the natural conditions are best adapted to a limited number of horticultural products. So much being admitted, it follows that it is folly to attempt to grow plants under unfavorable climatic and soil conditions when competing in the same market with those possessing favorable ones. It is true, of course, that where one man fails another often succeeds, but this is no reason why a man should apply his talents under unfavorable circumstances. In fact, one of the important attributes of most successful men is their ability to recognize and apply their energies under conditions which will give them the most effective return for a given effort. There is no virtue in unnecessary toil. Progress in any enterprise, as progress in the human race, can be accomplished only in reducing the amount of labor required to produce a desired result. All this is axiomatic. The purpose of emphasizing it here is that it is fundamental to the success of those who attempt to produce horticultural products. The necessity for the emphasis lies in the fact that these factors are so often disregarded. They are of most vital importance to the man who attempts to raise tree fruits. A mistake in the planting of celery, cabbage, or onions may be rectified the following season, but if a mistake is made in planting tree fruits, it may, as in the case of apples, require ten or even 20 years to discover the error. The growth in commercial orcharding is due in part to the need of special knowledge and facilities for combating fungous diseases and insect enemies and to the better markets which a large production of uniform quality makes possible. While these are extremely important considerations, there is a more fundamental reason, which may in the long run exercise an even more potent influence. The location of the ordinary family orchard, so called, has been determined in almost every instance by the location of the farm buildings. There is no necessary relation between a good site for a farm dwelling and a suitable location for an orchard. It happens, therefore, that family orchards, taken as a whole, are not grown under as favorable conditions as are commercial orchards. This is a sufficient reason in itself, even if the other reasons above mentioned did not exist, why the commercial orchard must, in time, supplant these accidental plantings. ADVANTAGES OF HORTICULTURE The advantages of this intensive form of agriculture as compared with the more extensive forms discussed in Chapter XII may be stated as follows: (1) A large gross income per acre may be obtained. An investigation of truck farming made some years ago indicated a gross return per acre about 40 times as great as that obtained on an average from all forms of agriculture. (2) There is a large opportunity for the use of skill in raising and preparing products for market and an equal opportunity for the exercise of judgment in choosing the best markets. DISADVANTAGES OF HORTICULTURE (1) It requires considerable capital, particularly for machinery and labor. In the investigation in truck farming above mentioned the capital per acre invested in land, buildings, implements and teams was eight times that in the more general forms of agriculture. (2) The products are for the most part readily perishable, requiring special facilities if held for any length of time. (3) Growing out of above-mentioned fact, the market is easily overstocked at any given point, and hence prices often fluctuate widely. (4) The yield is also quite variable, this class of products being especially influenced by seasonal conditions and particularly subject to insect attacks and fungous diseases. Since large capital is invested in labor, the horticulturist may be involved in financial ruin through causes which he is unable to control. (5) The labor question, in certain forms of horticulture more than in others, involves difficulties, among which is need of large quantities of cheap labor for short periods of time. CHAPTER XV REASONS FOR ANIMAL HUSBANDRY Animal products in the United States nearly equal in value those of all other farm products. Those soil supplies which constitute the food of domestic animals are not implied. Practically every farm in the United States keeps domestic animals, either for their labor or their products, and nearly every household in both city and country keeps one or more animals for companionship. The domestication of animals has been a prime factor in the civilization of the human race by furnishing man with motive force by which he has been able to increase his productive power; by giving him a larger, better and more regular food supply; and by furnishing the materials for clothing, making it possible for him to inhabit temperate and even arctic climates. Animals have not been less important in advancing the spiritual welfare of the human race, by inculcating habits of regularity and kindliness, which the care of domestic animals imposes. INCREASE IN ANIMAL PRODUCTION During the last half century animals have not increased in numbers as rapidly as have the inhabitants, but the value of animals has increased much more rapidly. While a part of this increase in value is due perhaps to a greater cost of production, a couple of illustrations will suffice to show that part of this increase in value has been due to increase in the individual merit of the animals. In 1850 sheep in this country produced 2.4 pounds of wool per fleece; in 1910 they produced 6.9 pounds per fleece. Thus, while in 50 years sheep have not quite doubled in numbers, the production of wool has increased more than five times. This is a striking example of the value of improvement in breeding, because the improvement in wool production is due to the influence of heredity in far greater degree than to the effect of improved feeding. Wool, like the hair on one's head, is not greatly influenced by the food supply, assuming it to be reasonably ample. Beef cattle offer another illustration of the way in which animal products have been increased without increasing the number of animals. Formerly beef cattle were matured in their fourth and fifth years, or even their sixth year. They are now placed upon the market in their second and third years. If animals can be matured in their third instead of their fifth year, it is obvious that a much smaller number of animals must be kept upon the farm in order to provide an equal annual supply for slaughter. The increase in the size of our horses and the increased production of butter fat per cow which have occurred in the past half century are hardly less important factors in increasing the value of domestic animals and their products. THE FUTURE OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS One of the most striking features of recent progress in domestic animals is the large increase in the number of horses and the still greater increase in their value. There are those who have believed that the invention of many beneficent forms of mechanical power would in time, if not in the very near future, supplant the use of animals as a motive power. The fact seems to be, however, that they merely augment man's resources and increase his opportunities without lessening his need for animal power. It appears reasonable to suppose that there will be witnessed in the United States a gradual shifting of live stock centers. During the past half century, the great central West has been noted for the production of live stock, particularly for beef, mutton and wool, as an incident of its pioneer development. Already the production of large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep has disappeared for the central West, and is now confined largely to Texas and the mountain states. The northeastern states are unrivaled in the production of grass, and have considerable areas less fitted for tillage than the prairie states. In time, therefore, the tendency will be for the regions best fitted to rear animals to increase their numbers of breeding animals. On the other hand, those states which produce grain in relatively large abundance may give more attention to fattening animals and to the production of dairy products which can be shipped long distances. As time advances, the history of other countries will doubtless be repeated. A greater distinction between the breeding and rearing of animals, and their fattening and preparation for market will occur. ADVANTAGES OF KEEPING LIVE STOCK Since animals occupy a place in practically all farm organizations, it is desirable to state briefly the advantages and disadvantages which may accrue to any individual enterprise. The most striking advantages affecting the farmer are: (1) Animals make it possible to use land that would otherwise be wholly or partly unproductive. Hillsides and mountain slopes, soil too stony to cultivate, fields traversed by winding streams, and land partially covered with trees, are familiar examples. As previously mentioned, only about one-half the farm area in this country is improved land, and only two-thirds, even of the improved land, is in cultivated crops. The other third of the improved land and a considerable portion of that half of the farm area known as unimproved land are utilized as pasture for domestic animals. (2) They make use of farm crops which would be entirely or partially wasted. Straw, the stalks of maize, clover and alfalfa hay and other leguminous forage crops would not have sufficient value to pay for raising if animals were not kept to convert them into useful products. In fact, the usefulness of a given animal may be judged by the economy with which he converts these otherwise useless products into food or other materials for the use of man. The most profound studies are being made to determine the conditions under which this takes place. (3) In thus acting as machines in manufacturing raw materials into finished products animals convert these coarse and bulky materials into those which are much more concentrated, thus making their transportation economically possible. A pound of beef has required food containing ten pounds of dry substance, and a pound of butter has required thirty pounds of dry matter to produce it. These refined products may be shipped around the world, while the raw materials may not be profitably transported beyond the county in which they are raised. Moreover, the farmer has the profit which comes from manufacturing the raw materials into refined products. (4) In the production of these finer products much of the essential materials of plant growth are left upon the farm. The experiments of Lawes and Gilbert show conclusively that in fattening animals more than nine pounds out of ten of the essential fertilizing ingredients of the food reappear in the solid and liquid excrements. Prothero says: "Farming in a circle, unlike logic, is a productive process." The fiscal policy of one of the great nations of the globe is based upon this idea. Everything possible is done by Germany to encourage the keeping of live stock, because the more live stock that is kept, the more productive will be the soil. The larger the crops raised the more people will be required to harvest them and the larger will be the population to recruit the army and navy. The Kaiser and the German scientist recognize that the fighting force of the Empire is related to the number of domestic animals reared. The meat supplies of the people are, therefore, taxed to bring about this end. (5) The rearing of live stock makes it possible to arrange a better rotation of crops. A five-year and, even better, a six-year rotation, is more effective than a four-year in maintaining the crop-producing power of the soil and enables the farmer to reduce his cost of production. It is possible to keep a larger proportion of the farm in grass and other forage crops, thus reducing the amount of land plowed annually and at the same time decreasing the exhaustion of the land, provided the forage crops are fed to live stock upon the farm. There is an old Flemish proverb which reads: "No grass, no cattle; No cattle, no manure; No manure, no crops." The point of this proverb is that good grass is the basis of good agriculture. Investigations have shown that one may go farther and say that one of the most ready means of increasing the crop-producing power of the soil is by adding fertilizers to grass land. The large number of plants per acre enables the plants to utilize the fertilizer to the highest degree, and plowing under the resulting dense sod is one of the most effective methods of enriching the soil. (6) Animals require constant care, thus making possible a more constant use of labor and other capital. The wheat farmer of North Dakota sows his wheat in April and May and harvests it in July and August. He usually threshes it immediately, and is practically without employment for himself, his teams or his men from September until April. On live stock farms the labor employed in the summer in the field is needed in the winter in paddocks and stables. (7) The management of live stock, including the rearing of poultry and the manipulation of dairy products, may be made to require a higher skill than the production of farm crops as ordinarily practiced. The communities which have given the most attention to dairying and to the rearing and fattening of animals have generally been the most prosperous. DISADVANTAGES OF KEEPING LIVE STOCK (1) Keeping live stock increases the capital required to operate a given area of land, especially where animals are kept in connection with the production of hay and grain. Not only must there be capital with which to purchase animals, but usually more is invested in buildings. In a self-contained farm--that is, one which raises sufficient food for the requirements of the live stock--ten dollars an acre may be considered a moderate investment for animals. If, however, the plan is to raise only the coarse feed, while the necessary grain as well as other concentrates is largely purchased, a farm may easily carry from $25 to $35 worth of live stock per acre. Lack of capital is one of the most potent influences in preventing a larger production of animals and animal products. Cattle paper, or notes given to secure money for the purchase of fattening animals, is a common bank asset in the feeding districts of the central West. (2) The very perishable nature of animals entails a great risk in the investment of capital in live stock. Not only the products of a single year, but the growth of a number of years, may be suddenly swept away by disease. This may include the crops of several years, thus destroying capital invested in the production of the crops as well as the capital originally invested in the animals. Many a farmer has seen the gradual accumulations of years rapidly melt away in the presence of some contagious disease. Tuberculosis in cattle, cholera in hogs and liver rot in sheep are striking examples of diseases that have caused the farmers of this country untold losses. (3) When an animal has been properly fattened he must be sold. If held for any great length of time, not only is there a constant outlay for food to maintain the animal, but the condition of the animal may actually deteriorate. Hence it is not possible to hold animals for a better market for a long period of time, as is possible in the case of the cereal grains. (4) Serious losses may occur where profit was expected through a rise in the price of foodstuffs. Scarcity in food supplies, due to an unfavorable season, often compels the stockman to sacrifice animals that he has been raising for two or three years. It is sometimes asserted that, although society suffers from short crops, the farmer is benefited, because the increase in price is greater than the decrease in yield. One year, for example, the decrease in the production of maize was 30%, while the increase in price was 50%. If, therefore, the crop had been sold it would have brought more than the crop of the previous year. The farmers, however, require about 80% of the maize crop in the production of their live stock, so that when there was a decrease of 30% in the yield of maize, many had none to sell, while others had to purchase maize at increased prices or use other crops, such as oats, which they might otherwise have sold. Still others would be compelled to sell, at reduced prices, their partially fattened animals. There is a constant fluctuation in the price of animals and animal products, due to variation in yield and hence in price of food supplies. It requires continual vigilance on the part of the stockman to secure food supplies at such cost as will enable him to secure a profitable return from his animals. CHAPTER XVI RETURNS FROM ANIMALS In any well-considered plan of farm operations it is essential to have some basis for estimating the amount of food required to carry live stock through the year in order to know, on the one hand, what portion of the crops raised are available for sale and, on the other hand, what food supplies must be purchased. A requisite of any successful farm enterprise is a proper consideration of these market conditions. While domestic animals consume a variety of foods, and each class of animals has special food requirements, the basis of calculation of the needed supplies is fortunately not complicated. Twenty-five pounds of dry matter are required per day for each thousand pounds of live weight of horses, cattle and sheep, and for swine about 40 pounds for each thousand pounds of live weight. It may be more convenient to calculate the food requirement of swine on the basis of increase in live weight, allowing five pounds of dry matter for each pound of increase. Some further details as to food requirements will be found in the paragraphs which follow. COST OF PRODUCING HOGS Pigs possess two characteristics which make them unique among domestic animals. They consume concentrated and easily digested foods only, and they produce nothing but meat, fat and bristles. Cattle furnish milk and hides; sheep, wool, hides and sometimes milk; fowls furnish eggs and feathers. On account of their limited range of usefulness and because of the high value of much of the food consumed, it would not be possible to rear swine economically were it not for their prolificacy and the fact that they are employed largely as scavengers. Many cattle are fattened without direct profit. The indirect profit comes from the sale of the pigs which have followed the cattle. It is customary to mature one hog with little or no additional food while fattening two steers. In many well-known ways, pigs consume products which would otherwise be wasted. This is especially true in the more densely settled sections of the world. On account of their prolificacy, the returns obtained for the amount of capital invested is greater than in the case of sheep, cattle or horses. Ten sows, worth $100 to $150, are sufficient to produce 100 pigs; 75 to 80 ewes, worth from $300 to $500, are required to produce an equal number of lambs; 110 cows, worth $4,500 to $6,000, to produce 100 calves; and 200 mares, worth from $20,000 to $30,000, to guarantee 100 foals. To put the matter in another way, the capital invested in swine may be reproduced in the offspring ten times in one year; the capital invested in horses not more than once in five years. In general, 500 pounds of maize will produce 100 pounds of pork, which is equivalent to eleven pounds of pork from a bushel. Since hogs are so largely produced from maize, the price of maize and the price of pork are very closely related. For example, if maize is worth fifty cents a bushel, the grain required to produce a pound of increase in live weight will cost about 5 cents; if 40 cents a bushel, 4 cents; if 30 cents a bushel, 3 cents; and so on. COST OF PRODUCING SHEEP In the classic investigations by Lawes and Gilbert, food containing 100 pounds of dry matter produced a live-weight increase of nine pounds in steers and 11 pounds in sheep. At the Wisconsin station, sheep required less food than steers per pound of gain. During rapid fattening of sheep 500 pounds of clover hay and 400 pounds of maize may produce 100 pounds of increase in live weight. While swine require a less weight of food for a pound of increase than sheep, on account of the more digestible character of the food eaten, yet the Wisconsin station found that the expense of producing a pound of increase was less in sheep on account of the less expensive character of the food. MEAT AND MILK PRODUCTION COMPARED A summary of the investigations of American experiment stations shows that 100 pounds of dry matter produced ten pounds of increase in live weight of steers. The same quantity of food when fed to milch cows produced 74 pounds of milk, plus one pound of increase in live weight. This 74 pounds of milk contained 3-1/4 pounds of fat. In general, therefore, the food required to produce a pound of butter fat is about three times that required to produce a pound of increase in steers. COST OF STEER FEEDING The fattening of beef animals is largely conducted by farmers who make a specialty of it. This is particularly true in the so-called corn belt. Into this region are gathered the two and three-year-old and, more rarely, yearling steers, many of which have been reared in Texas or in the mountain states where the supply of maize is not sufficiently ample to fatten them. These are placed in paddocks with open sheds, where they are fed from 90 to 150 days, after which they are sent to market for slaughter. The food consists usually of maize fodder, maize stover, hay, maize (usually in the ear), a little bran, linseed or cottonseed oil meal. The ration per day during rapid fattening is about 20 pounds of dry matter per 1,000 pounds of live weight, containing 16 pounds of digestible substance, of which 1.25 to 1.75 is digestible protein. One hundred pounds of increase may be obtained under average conditions from 150 pounds stover, 325 pounds of hay, 775 pounds of maize and 75 pounds of cottonseed meal. Great variations will occur, however, depending upon the condition of the animals at the beginning of the feeding period and the degree of fatness or finish to which the animals are brought before placing upon the market. In any case, the food consumed will cost more than the value of the increase. The only way that steers can be profitably fattened is by increasing the value per pound of the animal. Thus an 800-pound steer may be purchased at five cents per pound, or $40. After feeding, say 150 days, he may weigh 1,100 pounds, when to bring a profitable return he should sell for 6 cents a pound, or $65. This is a gain of $25, eight of which came from the increase in value of the original 800 pounds. Usually steers cannot be fattened profitably unless there is an increase of at least three-quarters of a cent per pound in the value of the animals and then, as previously explained, only in connection with the hogs which follow them. COST OF PRODUCING MILK AND BUTTER FAT Well-selected and properly fed cows may produce 240 pounds of butter fat annually. The amount of fat obtained will depend upon the richness of the milk. Thus, 8,000 pounds of 3% milk, 6,000 pounds of 4% milk, or a trifle less than 5,000 pounds of 5% milk, will give this quantity of butter fat. These are customary returns from different types of cows. If each cow in the herd is dry for six weeks each year the daily average of the cows actually milked will be three-quarters of a pound of butter fat. There are herds which make an average of nine-tenths of a pound of butter fat per day, but to secure this result requires superior cattle, careful feeding and more than ordinary care. The standard ration for milch cows weighing from 1,000 to 1,200 pounds is 25 pounds of dry matter, two-thirds of which is digestible. The ration should contain not less than two pounds of digestible protein. In ordinary practice, about ten pounds of the dry matter of the ration is obtained from maize silage, nine pounds from hay and about six pounds from grain or other concentrates. In general, this is obtained by feeding 35 pounds of maize silage, ten pounds of hay and seven to eight pounds of concentrates. The silage may be estimated at one-tenth to one-eighth of a cent a pound, hay at from one-fourth to one-half cent and concentrates at from three-quarters to one and one-quarter cents per pound, varying, of course, with the different sections of the country. The amount of food needed will vary somewhat with the size of the animals, but will depend much more largely upon the amount of milk and butter fat given. While maintaining substantially the general average just given for the whole herd, it is the practice of careful feeders to vary the amount of concentrates fed to each individual in accordance with the amount of butter fat or milk given. [Illustration: Mr. Gabriel Hiester, Harrisburg, Pa., graduate of the Pennsylvania State College, for many years trustee of the college and president of the State Horticultural Society, had a beautiful farm home near Harrisburg. During the first twenty years in bearing his orchard, of which one-fourth the trees were unprofitable varieties, returned an average of $80 per acre with apples selling at 60 cents to $1 per bushel. Mr. Hiester believed, with a proper selection of varieties and a favorable location, that any well-managed orchard can be made to do much better.] [Illustration: Dr. J. H. Funk, Boyertown, Pa., graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, 1865, farmers' institute lecturer, former state pomologist, has 50 acres of apples and peaches. Returns from his plantings begun in 1896 are so phenomenal that he is afraid to permit the publication of his profits. It is known, however, that he has sold $5,000 each of peaches and apples in one year.] COST OF MAINTAINING WORK HORSES At the Minnesota station, the total cost of feeding and maintaining a farm work horse for one year was estimated to be from $75 to $90, of which about $20 was charged for interest and depreciation. On the basis of 3.3 hours as the length of the working day, the cost per horse per hour was estimated to be 7-1/2 cents. At the Ohio state university, it was found that four horses weighing about 1,400 pounds were chosen to perform 2,185 hours of labor during one year, while under like conditions four horses, weighing about 200 pounds less, worked on an average but 1,641 hours each. For each secular day, therefore, the former worked about 7-1/2 hours, while the latter were employed but five and one-half hours. The cost of food was estimated at $54; cost of shoeing, repairs of harness and stable supplies at $6.50; and the cost of feeding, grooming and cleaning of stables at $23.50, or a total cost of $84 per year. Nothing was charged for interest or depreciation, but the expense of feeding and caring for three colts was included in the estimates given. The annual expense of maintaining a horse was practically the same in both states, but the cost per hour of labor performed was less because of the possibility of employing the horses at productive labor a larger portion of the time. Too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the need of planning a farm organization which will give continuous employment to horses as well as to men in order to realize the most profitable returns. An industrial system that makes it necessary to maintain work animals three days in order to secure one day's work falls far short of an ideal. CHAPTER XVII FARM LABOR The problem of farm labor demands thoughtful and frank consideration. Since work is an essential element in the production of all wealth, it follows that every industry has its labor problem. The adjustment of labor to the production of the various forms of wealth must ever constitute one of the most important problems in any organized society. It is often remarked that the labor problem is the chief difficulty in farming. In a certain sense this is true, since work is a primary element in the production of agricultural as well as all other wealth. It is not true, however, that the problem of labor is more difficult or more intricate than that of other industries. In fact, that problem is less delicate than in some other occupations, because farming is less industrialized. It is not possible to settle once for all the problem of labor for any occupation, since changing conditions will give rise to new questions or new phases of the old problem. Moreover, the problem of labor on the farm will grow more difficult as farming becomes more specialized and as the methods of production become more complex. However, the labor problem on the farm is different from that in the manufacturing industries or in trade and transportation. This chapter will not concern itself with an attempt to settle the farm labor problem, but will undertake to state the character of some of the differences between it and other forms of labor and to discuss some of the changes in recent years. A large proportion of farm work is done by the farm owner, or renter, and his family. There is not much opportunity to profit by the labor of other persons. In 1900 there were in the United States 1,812 industrial establishments each of which employed between 500 and 1,000 persons, while there were 675 establishments each of which had more than one thousand employees. In the same year there were 5,739,657 farms, which employed in the aggregate 4.4 millions of people, not including the owners of the farms. Moreover, over one-half of the 4.4 million persons thus employed were members of the families of the farmer. In other words, aside from members of the family, there was less than one employee to every two farmers. Since a considerable number of farmers employ more than one person, it follows that the majority of farmers employ no help other than members of the family. In another particular farm labor differs from that of other forms of labor even more widely. There are sociologic as well as economic questions involved. Baldly stated, custom permits, and necessity often requires, the laborer to eat at the same table with the farm owner and in other particulars he mingles intimately with the farmer's family. In all its bearings, this is a very important fact. It constitutes one of the greatest difficulties in the problem of securing suitable farm help. Industrial corporations employ as common laborers largely Italians, Hungarians, Poles and negroes. The English, the Irish, the German, the Swede and the Norwegian have been readily received and assimilated in the American farming communities. The peoples of Eastern and Southern Europe are often criticized because they do not become farm laborers. That they do not is in large part due to the fact that the farm hand is usually a member of the farmer's family. Thus the supply of common labor which is today used by the rest of the industrial world is not open to the farmer. Farming differs from some other occupations in that it does not ordinarily offer the laborer much opportunity for advancement. The fireman on a railway train becomes the engineer; the brakeman becomes a conductor. There are opportunities in many establishments for the advancement of the industrious and clever. A man may enter their service with the hope of being able to marry and support a family. On the other hand, all our land laws are based upon the idea that each farm should be of sufficient size to support only one family. Where it does support two families, the relation is usually that of landlord and tenant. The farm laborer, therefore, must look upon his employment as more or less temporary. The young man who intends to become a farmer will find employment upon the farm a desirable if not essential preparation for his future occupation. The introduction of farm machinery has had the effect of increasing the price of farm labor while at the same time decreasing the amount of labor needed. The reason is that the introduction, not alone of farm machinery, but all forms of machinery, has made man's labor much more efficient than formerly. Farm wages have doubled since the introduction of horse-drawn machinery. The labor income in the different sections of the United States is influenced by the extent and efficiency with which machinery is used. The relation of labor income to the use of horse power is shown by the following table taken from a recent census: INFLUENCE OF FARM MACHINERY AS SHOWN BY THE RELATION OF LABOR INCOME TO HORSES AND MULES. Number of horses and mules to Divisions of the 1,000 persons United States Labor Income in agriculture North Atlantic $299 1,655 South Atlantic 163 808 North Central 402 3,036 South Central 211 1,603 Western 510 5,476 ----------------------------------------------- United States $288 2,105 In one of the states of the South Atlantic division the average price of farm labor, without board, was $12 per month, while in one of the states of the western division the price on the same date was $31. Why? Because in the latter case a man's labor was more productive. In the South Atlantic division, in producing the chief crops cotton and maize, a man uses one mule in preparing and cultivating the soil. In the western division plowing and harrowing with six-horse teams is common and nine-horse teams are not unusual. The cotton picker in one day will be able to gather not to exceed 300 pounds of seed cotton, worth not more than $15. The western wheat will be harvested by a machine drawn by 28 horses. In the same time four men with this outfit will cut and thresh 700 bushels of wheat, worth $500. When the threshing machine was first introduced in Ohio, it was stubbornly opposed by all farm laborers. "They claimed it," says Bateman, "as a right to thresh with a flail, and regarded the introduction of machinery to effect the same object in a few days which would require their individual exertion during the whole winter, not only as an invasion of a time-honored custom, but as absolutely depriving them of the means of obtaining an honest livelihood. At a later date, when a reaper had been introduced into a field of ripe wheat as a matter of experiment only, every one of the harvest hands deliberately marched out of the field and told the proprietor that he might secure his crop as best he could, that the threshing machine had deprived them of their regular winter work twenty years ago and now the reaper would deprive them of the pittance they otherwise could earn during harvest." How short-sighted they were! No class gained so much from the introduction of labor-saving machinery as did those who did the labor. The reason for the increase in well-being, the reason society enjoys luxuries and comforts beyond the fondest dreams of former generations, is due to the fact that the labor of each man has been made so much more effective through these labor-saving devices. The humblest citizen shares in this improvement. Not all share alike and not all share equitably, but each generation sees its members sharing more equitably than those of any generation which preceded it. The proposition is an extremely simple one. If a man produces just enough food for himself and family, he will have nothing for clothing, shelter, or education. If, however, a man produces four times as much food as he and his family consume, he may exchange one-fourth for shelter, one-fourth for clothing and have remaining a fourth for education, and recreation or savings. This is only another way of saying that the greater the amount of any useful commodity produced by a single day's labor the larger will be the laborer's income or wages. Although the increase in intensive agriculture and the diversification in farming tend to increase the need of farm laborers, the introduction of farm machinery has much more than offset this demand. The tendency of farm laborers to become farm tenants; or, to state it in other words, the tendency of landowners to rent their land rather than to continue to operate it themselves, is not without its influence upon the labor problem. The invention and introduction of farm machinery has accentuated the difficulty of keeping the farm laborer continuously employed. The decrease in the demand for farm labor and the increasing lack of uniformity in the amount required have caused a gradual depletion of the smaller villages and hamlets which were a source of labor supply during harvest and other busy seasons. The problem of keeping labor continuously employed has always been a difficult one on the farm, because of the change of seasons and because of the variations in the weather from day to day. There is a wide difference between those industries which are carried on within doors and farming, which is subject to the caprices of the weather. Natural causes produce tremendous variations in the return for labor. For example, in 1901 there were produced in the aggregate 3,006 million bushels of wheat, maize and oats, while in 1902 there were harvested 4,180 million bushels. Here is an increase of over a thousand million bushels. The same farmers tilled the same soil in the same way as far as natural causes would allow, and yet there was a difference in result amounting to 39 per cent. A variation of one hundred million bushels of wheat from year to year, due to climatic conditions solely, is not at all unusual. The manufacturer also has far greater control of his labor. When it rains, he has a roof over his workmen, and hence the work is not interrupted. When it grows dark, he turns on the light and the work continues. If it gets cold, he lights the fire and still the work continues comfortably. It is not so in agriculture. There is a great variation in the working efficiency of men employed in farming. In a certain locality there were twenty-one days of rain in the thirty-one days of May. The next year between June 5 and September 5 in the same locality there was not half an inch of rainfall at any one time. What is true of labor is also true of machinery. The farmer must purchase machinery which he can use only a few days in the year, while the manufacturer, for the most part, employs his machinery continuously, sometimes day and night. While natural causes prevent the farmer from using the same business methods, or from being able to calculate his profits with the same precision as is possible by those following manufacturing and mercantile pursuits, it is nevertheless important that farming should be planned to avoid, as far as possible, the influence of natural causes. Certain kinds of farming are less dependent upon natural causes than others. Wisdom and foresight can do much to avoid, in all farming, untoward influences. The clever farmer seldom complains about the weather. Farm machinery has made unnecessary, and hence unprofitable, some of the labor at which children were formerly employed. In the not distant past many, perhaps most farmers, owed their prosperity in large measure to the labor of their children. A large family, especially of boys, was a valuable asset. Even a generation ago conditions were not far different, and two generations ago were quite the same as those described by Homer: "Another field rose high with waving grain: With bended sickles stand the reaper train: Here, stretch'd in ranks, the level'd swaths are found; Sheaves heaped on sheaves here thicken up the ground. With sweeping stroke the mowers strow the lands; The gath'rers follow, and collect in bands: And last the children, in whose arms are borne (Too short to gripe them) the brown sheaves of corn. The rustic monarch of the field descries, With silent glee, the heaps around him rise. A ready banquet on the turf is laid Beneath an ample oak's expanded shade. The victim ox the sturdy youth prepare: The reapers due repast, the women's care." There is also another reason why the age of the employed has been raised. It is due to the growth of higher education. Where formerly the farmer's children between the ages of twelve and twenty-one did most of the farm work, now many of them at the same age are attending schools and colleges. The sons of a man, who a generation ago found no opportunity to get beyond the district school, graduate from high school and college, and thus spend most of their time in study until they are past twenty-one years of age. Labor unions have doubtless caused a scarcity of farm labor by increasing the proportion of the created wealth which goes to the man who labors without capital. When a man can obtain fifty cents an hour for laying brick, he does not wish to work in the hay field at twenty cents an hour, even though the difference in the cost of living may in great measure offset the difference in wages. There is a growing tendency to perform work by what is called contract labor. Thus a person may agree to weed and hoe sugar beets at a certain rate per acre. He, in turn, employs a force of cheap laborers which he sends from farm to farm to do this work. The harvesting of fruits and garden crops is not infrequently done in some such manner. In one instance a contractor of laborers of foreign birth has been furnishing them for all kinds of farm work. He keeps 20 to 40 of these laborers on a small farm, furnishing them a dwelling and selling them food supplies. Farmers telephone for help when in need. The contractor receives $1.65 for a day's work and pays the laborer $1.50. It appears from the preceding considerations that there are open to every farmer at least three methods of increasing the efficiency of farm labor. He may make every day's labor more efficient by use of labor-saving machinery and the employment of it in the most efficient manner; as, for example, using three 1,500-pound horses to his farm machinery instead of a pair of 1,200-pound horses. He may modify the character of his farming in order that profitable labor will be more continuous. He may modify the method of employing labor; as, for example, by introducing the system of contracting labor for specific purposes where feasible. Increase in the price of farm labor is not an evil. It is an indication that labor applied to agriculture is becoming more productive and hence more profitable. Since more than one-half the labor of the farm is done by the owner and his family, the farmer is benefited through the rise in price of farm wages. The more that labor can be made to earn upon the farm, the better it will be not only for the farm owner but for society in general. CHAPTER XVIII SHIPPING The means of facile transportation and the machinery of trade are the need and the development of a complex civilization. The importance of these useful adjuncts of everyday life is indicated by the fact that about one-fourth of all the people engaged in gainful occupations in civilized communities are employed in them. Nevertheless the expense of transportation and trade constitutes a tax upon the consumer which it is the aim of modern methods to reduce to the lowest limits. Recent investigations indicate that for every thirteen dollars the consumer expends for farm products the producers receive six dollars. In some directions most remarkable results have been accomplished. A recent quotation on wheat per bushel was as follows: Chicago, $0.93; Antwerp, $1.04; London, $1.06; Hamburg, $1.07. Eleven to 14 cents per bushel represents the cost of haul and commissions between Chicago and the European cities named. Methods of handling have been so perfected that from the time the western farmer places the bundle of wheat at the mouth of the threshing machine the grain literally flows through the channels of trade until it reaches the flour sack. On an average the English miller pays about 20 cents a bushel more for wheat than the American farmer receives for it. The cost of distributing many other farm products is greater, although the range of distribution is much less. The cost of haulage and selling potatoes is from 25 to 50% of the retail price, while with hay it is still higher. The cost of distributing all forms of truck and market garden produce is high and often wasteful. Many attempts have been made to eliminate a part of this cost as well as to better the conditions of the supplies when they reach the consumer. While many individuals have been quite successful in dealing directly with the consumer, little has thus far been accomplished that affects general trade conditions. Great improvements have been made in methods of transportation and methods of preservation. Cold storage and canned goods have been the direction in which progress has been notable. WASTEFUL METHODS OF DISTRIBUTION Owing to customs and traditions there is frequently a great waste of effort in some of the methods of trade. The meat trade of France is an excellent illustration. Certain sections of France make a specialty of rearing cattle. At a suitable age these animals are purchased by other farmers who fatten them. Many of the small towns maintain market places at which fairs are held to facilitate these negotiations. Frequently there is a shipment from one region to another, which is conducted by a middleman. When fattened the steers are collected by a stock buyer, who may ship them to La Villette, the live stock market of Paris. Here they are placed on sale through commission men. There are the usual charges for yardage and food. After being sold the animals are driven to the slaughterhouses. The carcasses are then taken by wagon to the great market of Paris located near the center of the city. Here the retail vender of meats comes, makes his purchase, reloads the meat, which may have been unloaded less than an hour before, carries it to his shop, where the consumer seeks it. The number of people concerned and the amount of hand labor have been excessive. Nor is the American system without its faults. The Iowa or Illinois farmer fattens cattle that may have been reared in Montana or Texas. After the stock buyer, the commission man and the stock yard company have each taken his toll, the packer ships the carcasses back to the very region where the animals were fattened, when the stockman may purchase it of the local vender of meats. The facilities and perfection with which these many transactions are accomplished is one of the wonderful sights of our country. Nevertheless the producer of meat products may well consider whether some more economical system of distribution may not be devised. SHIPMENTS: SOURCES OF INFORMATION All railroad rates are now carefully supervised by the federal government and are open to the inspection of the public. Such information as is ordinarily needed may be obtained from the local station agent, who is always glad to be of service to patrons of his road. If information of a special character is required, it may be obtained by addressing the division freight agent of the railroad in the region under consideration. The name of this officer is to be found in the circulars and upon the posters of the railroad. In addition to the freight facilities offered by any individual railroad, there are what are known as fast freight lines. These agencies enable through and prompt shipment from inland points in our own country to inland points in another. An individual railroad may operate in connection with several such agencies. A certain railroad, for example, is combined with nine fast freight lines. Freight agents of local roads in the principal towns usually represent the fast freight lines and are prepared to transact business. In seaport cities there are firms styling themselves foreign freight contractors, outward freight agents, steamship agents, or ship brokers. These firms are prepared to quote prices on shipments to any part of the world on either regular or tramp ships. They will give freely to intending shippers full information concerning methods and conditions of shipment. There is nothing mysterious about the business of shipping farm products. The necessary details may be acquired by inquiry in the channels indicated and by a little study of the data, which will be cheerfully furnished. RAILROAD RATES A great many factors are involved in determining the rate which is charged for transporting different products. In a certain sense it is doubtless true that the rate charged is based upon what the traffic will bear. The purpose here, however, is to state some of the customs which exist rather than to discuss the philosophy or justice of them. The rate may vary with the value of the product, without any regard to the cost of the haul. Suppose the cost of shipping a ten-gallon can of fresh milk between two points to be 32 cents, the cost of shipping a similar can of cream may be 50 cents. The cost of shipping a carload of hay is less than a carload of wheat. In some instances, zones or belts have been recognized, the rate from all towns within each zone being the same for a given product. Certain railroads centering in New York recognize four zones for the shipment of milk and cream, as follows: Zone A--First 40 miles. Zone B--Between 40 and 100 miles. Zone C--Between 100 and 190 miles. Zone D--Beyond 190 miles. It will be noticed that the size of these zones varies and may be the subject of adjustment between railroads and shippers. While less understood by the public, railroads recognize zones or, more properly, groups of towns in making rates to them instead of from them, as in the instance above mentioned. It is possible to change the rate on a product to a given town by classifying it in another group. The rate on bran and other stock foods from central western points to certain towns in New York state has been the same as that charged to Boston, Mass., while other towns in New York not far removed have taken a lower rate. Differential rates are recognized to be legitimate. Railroads are allowed to charge a less rate for wheat intended for export than that intended for local consumption. There has sometimes been a wide difference between the freight rate on wheat between Kansas City and Galveston, Texas, depending upon whether the wheat was to be exported or intended for domestic use. In certain sections and for certain products the railroad rate varies with the season, because of difference in competition. The railroad rate between Chicago and New York on grain is higher while the navigation of the Great Lakes is suspended. As an illustration of the cheapness of transportation by water, it is stated that sometimes it is cheaper to ship wheat from Chicago to Buffalo by boat than to store it in a grain elevator for an equal period of time. Products may sometimes be sent by baggage to greater advantage than by express, special arrangements for which are generally required. FACILITIES FOR FREIGHT TRANSPORTATION American railway facilities are, perhaps, unrivaled among the nations of the world, but the United States is still behind other nations in the matter of means of local transportation, in which good roads is only a part of the problem. In France, the so-called _messagers_ are a common feature of local traffic. Thus in the Department of Touraine there are 246 towns each having from one to four _messagers_, who with their great two-wheel carts, each with single draft horse, make one or two trips to Tours each week. The _messagers_ carry freight both ways precisely in the same capacity as railroads do. While the railroads are fairly abundant these local agencies continue to thrive because delivery can be made directly to the consignee and delivery at the exact time and place is more certain. The enormous loads conveyed in these two-wheel carts by one horse is an element in this system to which the good roads of France now contribute. In 1799, France had constructed 25,000 miles of roadway. Since that time, over 300,000 miles of roadway have been completed and about 30,000 miles of railway have been constructed--ten miles of roadway for each mile of steam railway. The good roads of France are of comparatively recent origin, contributing materially to the improvement in well-being which has taken place during the same period. CHAPTER XIX MARKETING Without stopping to inquire the reasons, it may be recalled that there are two rather distinct forms of trade, wholesale and retail. The wholesale trade is conducted by three classes of persons: dealers or merchants, commission men, and brokers. The dealer is one who buys the goods outright and takes his own risk on making a favorable sale to the retailer. The commission man is one who receives the goods, sells them at such price as he may be able to obtain and remits to the seller the amount obtained less expenses and his commission. The broker is a man who effects a sale without coming in contact in any way with the materials sold. A cheese broker, for example, receives instruction from different factories to sell for them a certain quantity of cheese of a given kind and quality each week or month as the case may be. At the same time he receives from grocery stores which retail cheese orders for various amounts, kinds and quality of cheeses. With this information at hand, he directs the various factories intrusting their business to him to ship the kind, quantity, and quality of cheese required by his several customers. For such service he receives a brokerage, which is less than that charged by a commission man because he is not required to handle or store the material. Since the different farm products are purchased by different classes of retailers, and since their handling and sale require different facilities and special knowledge, there have arisen in the great centers of trade different kinds of markets, each having its particular facilities for the handling, care and sale, and each conducted by commission men or brokers with a special knowledge of the trade. Furthermore, certain cities have become, on account of their favorable position--to mention but one reason--headquarters for certain products or groups of products. Thus Petersburg, Virginia, has the principal wholesale market for peanuts. Elgin, Illinois, has been noted for its butter market. St. Louis is the leading mart for mules. In a general way, the following five more or less distinct and important classes of markets for farm products may be recognized: Grain, Live Stock, Produce, Cotton and Tobacco. METHODS OF TRADE The brokers or commission men doing business in any one of these markets usually form an association called a board of trade, chamber of commerce or similar title for the purpose of assisting "each other in the pursuit of common ends." The result has been uniformity of methods and charges; but above all in importance, perhaps, has been the definition of classes and grades of the products placed on sale. The tendency is for the associations in the different cities to adopt uniform rules for the grading of products, so that No. 2 red winter wheat may mean the same thing in Toledo and New York; that the quotation on prime beef may refer to the same quality of cattle in Pittsburgh as it does in Chicago; and that No. 1 Timothy hay in Baltimore and St. Louis may be alike. While the tendency is towards uniformity, much yet remains to be accomplished. The shipper must be on his guard lest he suffer loss through the variations in the classification or variations in their interpretations on the different markets. There has grown up around these markets some agency which stands as a disinterested party between seller and buyer impartially determining the weight and in some cases the quality of the object under negotiation. The State of Illinois employs agents who inspect all cars of grain consigned to the Chicago market. These inspectors determine the kind, grade and weight of the grain in each car. The car is then delivered under seal to the purchaser. If either seller or buyer is dissatisfied with the inspector's decision he may, by complying with certain regulations, have this decision reviewed by a higher authority. The decision of this higher authority is final and must be accepted by both parties. Brokers selling grain in carload lots ship the cars subject to the weight and grade as determined by the inspector at Chicago. Grain of a specific grade may thus be bought in Chicago or other great grain markets with almost perfect security as to weight and quality by persons living in any part of this or any other country. At Elgin the quality of butter is determined by a committee appointed by the Board of Trade from its own members. In the live stock markets, the stock yards company, in addition to furnishing yards, shelter, food and water, acts as agent between seller and buyer in determining the weight of the animals. The purchaser or his agent must determine for himself the quality of the animals he buys. GRAIN MARKETS The Chicago and St. Paul Boards of Trade and the New York Produce Exchange are the three great agencies for dealing in grain in the United States. Buffalo, Duluth, Baltimore and Philadelphia are also important markets. Adjuncts to these markets are the great terminal elevators capable of holding almost indefinitely enormous quantities of wheat and other grain. On the Pacific Coast all the wheat is handled in the bags, as is the custom in the other markets of the world. Canada and the United States alone have recognized the principle that wheat and other grains will run like water, which has been a prime factor in their competition with other nations. Country elevators charge two cents a bushel for storage during the first 15 days and 1/2 cent for each additional 15 days. The charge for storage at terminal elevators for the first 15 days is 3/4 cent. The farmer may thus store his wheat in an elevator in place of his farm if he chooses so to do, although the wheat he thus puts in storage may have been made into flour and consumed before he sells it. This may be looked upon as a sort of intermediary step between storing wheat in one's own granary and dealing in futures. The country shipper pays 1/2 cent a bushel commission for the sale of wheat. There is also a charge for inspection and insurance, and, in case there is an advance payment, for interest. After five days there are storage charges. This has given rise to the expression, gilt edge, regular and short receipts, depending upon the length of time there remains before storage charges must be paid. Every market has a grade known as contract grade, meaning the quality that must be furnished when wheat or other grain is sold without specifying the grade. In Chicago No. 2 red winter wheat is the contract grade. Where grain is sold or purchased by a broker, the brokerage is usually 1/8 cent per bushel. HAY MARKETS At least twenty cities have adopted the rules of the National hay association as to classes and grades of hay and straw. The southern states constitute an important market for the hay of the north central states, while Boston, New York and the mining towns of Pennsylvania are important markets for the northeastern states. The size of bale varies from 75 to 200 pounds. Small bales of 100 pounds each are preferred in Baltimore, medium bales of 110 to 140 pounds in Philadelphia, while New York and Boston usually deal in the larger bales. The commission charges vary from 50 cents to $1 per car. In New York, $1 pays all charges. At Chicago, $3 per car has been charged for the inspection, divided equally between seller and buyer. PRODUCE MARKETS Every town of any consequence has its produce market. The South Water street district in Chicago and the West Washington street market in New York are noted for their extent and variety. There are also many special markets for certain classes of produce. Thus Elgin, Chicago and New York have butter exchanges. Wisconsin, Utica, Watertown and Cuba (New York) maintain exchanges where cheese is placed on sale each week during the manufacturing season. There is also a board of trade for cheese in New York City. The prices quoted upon these exchanges are made the basis of many transactions between buyer and seller, who never enter these markets. Not only do buyers and sellers agree to abide by the quotations of one or the other of these markets, but the quotations are also used as a basis of settlement for milk furnished the creamery or factory. These agencies are thus impartial arbiters in countless financial transactions. The rate of commission varies in different markets and for different products. Generally, however, produce is handled on a 5% basis, but for individual products which are especially bulky and difficult to handle, such as cabbage, 10% may be charged. In some cases commission is by quantity instead of on a percentage basis. Thus for potatoes the commission is sometimes 10% and in other cases 4 or 5 cents a bushel. LIVE STOCK MARKETS While poultry and game, as well as the carcasses of the smaller animals, may be handled through the produce markets, the large animals require separate facilities. The United States is noted for its large live stock markets and for the perfection and size of the packing houses which have grown up about them. The most famous example of these combined agencies is to be found at Chicago, but important live stock markets are also maintained at St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and more recently Fort Worth, Texas. The commission charges vary from 50 cents to $1 per head for cattle and from 10 to 25 cents per head for calves, sheep and hogs. In some markets, the commission on hogs is 2% of the gross returns. When located within 150 miles of a central market, it is customary to allow 50 cents per hundred pounds for cattle and 40 cents for hogs to cover shrinkage, and cost of freight, yardage, food, bedding and commission. It is possible for an owner to sell his own live stock in these yards, but the commission man, because of his superior knowledge of existing trade conditions, is almost universally employed. Firms which handle cattle, sheep and hogs seldom sell horses. Although handled by different commission firms, important horse markets are maintained at Chicago and Buffalo immediately adjacent to the market for meat animals. In New York the horse markets are in a different section of the city, that for draft and common work horses on one street, while the American Horse Exchange, located at another point, handles high-class light horses. The usual custom is to sell horses at auction, although they may be purchased at private treaty. In whatever manner purchased, it is essential to understand precisely the character of the guarantee. COTTON, WOOL AND TOBACCO MARKETS Because of their higher value per pound and the ease with which they can be stored, cotton, wool and tobacco are dealt in somewhat differently than other farm products. The two great cotton exchanges are located at New Orleans and New York, the quotations on these markets controlling the financial transactions in cotton throughout the world. The principal wool markets are Boston, New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis. The principal tobacco markets are at Richmond and Danville, Va., Durham, N. C., and Louisville, Ky. [Illustration: Mr. C. W. Wald, graduate of the Ohio State University, farmer, formerly assistant horticulturist of the New Hampshire and Ohio Experiment Stations, is shown above in one of the New Carlisle (Ohio) greenhouses, in which three crops of lettuce occur in one bed. One crop is ready to cut, another planted and a third in pots between the other plants, to be planted in another bed when large enough. The net returns from a quarter of an acre under glass has been greater than from 160 acres devoted to general farm crops.] [Illustration: C. W. Zuck & Sons, Erie, Pa. One son was a student in agriculture at the Pennsylvania State College. Father and three sons, beginning six years ago with a run-down farm of 55 acres, have built an acre of glass and a heating plant of 260 horsepower. During the period they have spent $5,000 on the place and at the end of season they will have very nearly cleared their improvements. "Tell the youthful readers of your book to get as much education as possible and then go in partnership with their fathers or brothers. If they do, success will be theirs."] The country shipper or the young farmer wishing to place his products in the ordinary channels of trade must consider and determine among other things the following: What cities have favorable markets for his products; choose some commission man or broker to handle them; calculate the expenses for freight, commission and other customary items; familiarize himself with the rules for grading his products in the market or markets under consideration; and determine what agency there may be for protecting him as to the weight and quality when sales are effected. Whenever practicable, a visit to the market in question and a personal study of the conditions under which selling is done will be wise. Having done so, and perhaps having made a number of sales through these usual channels of trade, he will be in a position to consider whether he may organize to advantage some more direct method of getting his products to the consumer. CHAPTER XX LAWS AFFECTING LAND AND LABOR Thus far property has been treated as invested capital upon which interest must be charged in determining the labor income. Labor, likewise, has been considered principally in its effect upon profits. Society has thrown around the transfer of property and the use of labor certain restraints for the protection of all individuals. Through the ages certain procedures have become fixed by custom. These legal practices are largely the inheritance of old Roman law and are usually known as common law. Various legislative bodies having jurisdiction enact from time to time other laws. This body of enacted law is called statute law and is much more variable than common law. In the briefest possible manner it is the purpose here to state a few of the principles and applications of the law, chiefly the common law, as it affects the farmer in acquiring or disposing of his property and in his dealings with labor. PROPERTY Property may be defined as anything which is a subject of ownership. It possesses the characteristics of being acquired, held, sold, willed or inherited and is of two kinds: (1) Real property, real estate or realty; (2) chattels or personal property. These two kinds of property are subject to quite distinct legal practices. In general, real estate consists of land, things attached to it, such as trees, buildings, fences and certain rights and profits arising out of or annexed to the land. The term land as ordinarily used includes all these things, so that when land is said to be worth so much an acre it includes all fixtures. Ponds and streams are, under this definition, land. The land not only has surface dimensions, but extends upward indefinitely and down to the center of the earth, and hence includes a right to ores, coal, oil, gas or other materials whatsoever. An article may, however, be real property or personal property depending upon circumstances. Thus a tree growing on the land is real property, but when cut into cord wood becomes personal property. New fence posts ready for use are personal property. When set in the ground they become real estate. Just what goes with a farm or what are fixtures is frequently a subject for legal determination. FIXTURES The general rule is that "fixtures are any chattels which have become substantially and permanently annexed to the land or to buildings or other things which are clearly a part of the land."[D] The annexation may, however, be purely theoretical, since the keys to the house or barn, which may be in the owner's pocket, are real estate. One rule concerning fixtures is that they must be so annexed that they cannot be severed without injuring the freehold. The intention of the party making the annexation also often determines, since if the article is annexed with the intention of making it permanent, it then becomes a part of the land. Among the things held to be fixtures, and therefore a part of the land, are: (1) All buildings and everything which is a part of any building, such as doors, blinds, keys, etc.; (2) fence materials which have been once used and are piled up to be used again are a part of the land, but new fence material not yet used is personal property. (3) Growing crops are real property. They go to the purchaser of the land unless specially reserved in the deed. A verbal agreement is not sufficient. (4) Trees, if blown down or cut down and still lying where they fell, are real property; if cut or corded up for sale they become personal property. (5) All manure made on the farm is real estate and passes with the land. (6) All the ordinary portable machines and tools are considered personal property, but certain machines held to be of permanent use upon the land are real estate. Among the things which courts have held to go with the land are cotton gins, copper kettles encased in brick and mortar for cooking food for hogs, cider mills, pumps, water pipes bringing water from distant springs. In general, motive power machinery and the shafting go with the land, but the machinery impelled may or may not, depending upon the way it is annexed. (7) If stones have been quarried for the purpose of using upon the farm, they go with the farm, but if quarried for sale they are personal property. CONTRACTS The difference between personal property and real property may be indicated by considering the essential features of a contract. A contract is an agreement between two or more persons. The foundation rule concerning a contract is that every man must fulfill every agreement he makes. An ethical practice grows out of this legal rule which, if strictly adhered to, will save much embarrassment, viz., make but few promises and always keep your engagements. There are seven requirements generally necessary to a valid contract. (1) Possibility. The thing to be done must be possible. (2) Legality. It must not be forbidden by law. (3) Proper parties. The parties to a contract must be competent. Contracts with idiots or drunken persons are not binding. Some contracts with minors are not binding, although contracts for the necessities of life are. (4) Mutual assent. A proposition not assented to by both parties is not binding on either. (5) Valid consideration. A man is not regarded as injured by the breaking of a promise for which he has paid, or is to pay, nothing. (6) Fraud or deceit. A contract obtained by fraud is void as against the party using the fraud, but may be enforced by the innocent party if he sees fit. (7) Written contracts. Here comes the most important difference between real and personal property. Real property can only be conveyed by a written instrument, properly executed and recorded, while personal property passes by mere possession. Contracts relating to the sale of real estate are not binding unless in writing, while verbal contracts are sufficient for personal property if accompanied by payment of a part of the purchase price or the acceptance of the goods. For amounts under $50 verbal agreement in itself is binding. TRANSFER OF REAL ESTATE The purchaser should require of the seller evidence that the title to the land is straight and clear; if not, exactly what the defects are. This is done through an abstract of title, which should be prepared by a competent lawyer. This is not an official document, and its value depends largely upon the ability and watchfulness of the party making the abstract. Ownership of land is conveyed by means of a deed. A deed is an instrument conveying at least a life interest in the land. Care should be taken that the deed contains the essential parts and that it is properly executed. DEEDS Deeds are of two kinds: Quit claim deeds, which convey all the rights, title and interest which the seller has in the land, but does not warrant the title; and warranty deeds, which, in addition to what a quit claim does, contain covenants which agree that the seller and his heirs, etc., shall warrant and defend the title to the purchaser against the lawful claims of all persons. THE REQUISITES OF A DEED The requisites of a deed are: The parties to the deed, the consideration, the description; and with a warranty deed, the covenants. The seller must be of full age, sound mind and if married his wife should always join in the deed. Her name should appear following his at the beginning of the instrument. She should sign and acknowledge the deed, and the certificate of acknowledgment should state that she is the wife of the seller. If the seller is a married woman, her husband does not need to join in the sale of her own property. It is customary to state the consideration upon which the deed is given, but this is not necessary, nor will a false statement as to the amount paid invalidate the deed. The description of the land conveyed should be as minute and careful as possible, and preferably in the exact language of former deeds. In case former description is in error, it should be referred to and correct description given. Where land is conveyed by metes and bounds, this description governs, although it may not convey the number of acres of land stated. In describing boundaries the location of monuments takes precedence of distances mentioned. EXECUTION OF THE DEED A deed must be signed, witnessed, acknowledged, delivered and recorded. In some states deeds must be sealed, but in other states the law has dispensed with this formality. Witnesses to deeds are not required in all states. Some states require one, but usually two witnesses are required. The parties signing the deed are required to appear before an official designated by statute, usually any magistrate, justice or notary public, and acknowledge the same to be his or her free act and deed. A deed has no effect until delivered, and should be immediately recorded by the purchaser. Generally an unrecorded deed is not good as against a subsequent purchaser in good faith. It is well to note that the laws relating to the transfer of land are those of the place where the land lies and not necessarily those of the place where the deed is made. METHOD OF LAYING OUT PUBLIC LANDS The public lands of the United States are, whenever practicable, laid out into townships each six miles square, "as near as may be," whose sides run due north and south and east and west. The townships are laid off north and south of a base line which is a parallel of latitude, and are numbered north and south from the base line: Thus, T. 3 S., means Township No. 3 south from the base line. Each row of townships running north and south is called a range, and is numbered east or west of the principal meridian: Thus, R. 2 E., means Range 2 east of the given meridian. The townships are then laid off into sections or square miles of 640 acres, "as near as may be," and these are numbered, beginning always at the northeast section, as shown in the accompanying diagram. N +-----------------------------+ | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | |----+----+----+----+----+----| | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | |----+----+----+----+----+----| W | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | E |----+----+----+----+----+----| | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | |----+----+----+----+----+----| | 30 | 29 | 28 | 27 | 26 | 25 | |----+----+----+----+----+----| | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | +-----------------------------+ S Each quarter section is referred to as the northeast or southwest quarter of the section, and each forty acres as the northwest or southeast quarter of a particular quarter. For example, an eighty-acre field may be referred to as the west half of the southwest quarter of Section 3, Township 5 North, Range 3, west of ----. Base line and meridian, or in some cases merely the meridian is mentioned. The curvature of the earth's surface makes it impossible for the sides of townships to be truly north and south and at the same time six miles square. The excesses and the deficiencies due to the convergency of meridians and the curvature of the earth are by law added to or deducted from the western and northern ranges of sections and half sections of the townships. While the above has been the rule in laying out public lands for more than a century, there are many exceptions, due to many causes. In the older settled sections the land was laid out in lots, often in a very irregular manner, although in some cases within a given tract the area was more or less regular. In these cases, the land must be described minutely and carefully by metes and bounds. In some of the southern and western states, also, where there were Spanish grants, much irregularity in the surveys exists. Over much of the north Central states this rectangular system of laying out lands obtains and has worked well in most respects. THE LANDLORD AND TENANT Leases of real estate follow the same procedure as deeds, except that a verbal lease, if for a term of not to exceed one year, is valid in most states. A written lease should be carefully drawn, because, according to common law, there are few things implied in a lease that are not stated. Definite statement concerning repairs and insurance is desirable. A tenant should also acquaint himself with the law of the state concerning the surrender of the farm upon the expiration of his term. It is the duty of the tenant not only to guard the property, but to conduct the farm in a husbandlike manner. Unless otherwise stated in the contract, the tenant must pursue those methods of husbandry which are customary in the vicinity. THE RELATION OF THE FARMER TO HIS WORKMEN The requirements of a valid contract, as previously stated, control most of the relations which the employer has with his employees. Contracts for labor, unless for more than one year, need not be in writing. If, however, the service to be rendered is unusual, the agreement should be reduced to writing, because, in the absence of specific agreement, the law assumes that customary service and wages are implied. Like all other employers of labor the farmer is under obligation to protect his workman from injury. He must not subject them to unusual and unreasonable risks. He must hire workmen suited to the employment. For example, if he employs a young boy to drive a fractious horse, he would be liable for any injury that might occur. In like manner, he must exercise proper care concerning the safety of the machinery placed in the hands of his workmen. He must keep his premises in a safe condition and must not expose his workmen to risks not incident to the employment for which they are hired. The farmer is liable in damages for the acts of his workmen which are within the scope of their employment, although the authority may not have been expressly conferred. "He who acts by another acts himself." In case one is sued for the acts of his employee, the burden is upon him to prove that the act of the workman was without authority, expressed or implied. ----- [D] Haigh's "Manual of Law," p. 69. CHAPTER XXI RURAL LEGISLATION Various laws have been enacted by federal and state legislatures for the better protection of producer and consumer. Much of this legislation affects in a very special way the interests of the farmer. Not infrequently, in fact, generally, the state department of agriculture has more or less direct jurisdiction over their enforcement. State departments of agriculture usually publish a collection of the laws of this character. These laws vary greatly in the different states and only the most general outline, as they affect the interests of the farmer, can be given here. Persons can inform themselves as to the details as enforced in a given state by applying to the state secretary of agriculture. A number of these acts affect interstate commerce, concerning which the United States Constitution says: "No state shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any impost or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws." By a series of judicial decisions it has been determined that a State has a right to enforce laws affecting interstate commerce when traffic in the articles thus modified or prohibited affects the public welfare. When it is necessary to have a police regulation to prevent fraud in the traffic of an article or for the purpose of guarding the public health or morals, police laws, so called, may be enacted and enforced. Around this general question there has waged a bitter controversy which has occupied some of the best legal minds and is one involving some difficulty. FERTILIZER CONTROL One of the first of the "control" measures to be enacted, and the one which has been most universally adopted by the several states, is the law requiring the manufacturer and dealer in commercial fertilizers to guarantee the percentage of the so-called essential fertilizing elements--nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium--contained in each bag of fertilizer offered for sale. Subsequent control laws have been modeled more or less closely after this law. Hence a description of the operation and execution of it will serve for all. The execution of this law is usually under the immediate supervision of the state secretary of agriculture, while the necessary chemical analyses are made by the state experiment station. In some states the enforcement of the law is in charge of the state experiment station, while in others the state department of agriculture has its own laboratories or employs a private chemist. It is, however, becoming a more and more settled policy to place all police regulations in charge of the state department of agriculture, while at the same time the chemical analyses and other scientific and technological inquiries are made at the state experiment station. In order to facilitate the taking of samples and in order to raise funds for the execution of the law, the manufacturer is required to take out a license and to make a statement of the brands of fertilizers which he will place upon the market in the given state during the given season. During the spring and fall season agents traverse the state and sample the bags of fertilizers as found on sale by local merchants. The samples are sent by number under seal to the designated chemist, while at the same time the agent transmits to the state officer in charge of the enforcement of the law the necessary information concerning these samples. Upon the receipt of the analysis made by the chemist, who has had no knowledge of the origin of the sample, the state officer compares them with the guarantee of the manufacturer, and if he finds it necessary enters legal complaint. While these laws have been in force for many years in some states and in many states for some years, prosecution has seldom been found necessary. The honest manufacturer is protected from dishonest competition, and the dishonest manufacturer, if there be such, cannot afford the publicity which noncompliance with the law would entail. It has been customary to publish, with the results of analysis, also an estimate of the commercial value per ton of each brand of fertilizer. This estimated commercial value is obtained by multiplying the pounds of each element or combinations of the element in a ton by a value per pound. To the value of the fertilizer thus obtained is added something for cost of mixing, bagging and freight, and something for profit. The price per pound given to each element or combinations of the elements is based upon the commercial value of the element when purchased in raw materials. The price for each year is usually determined by a conference of those in control of the execution of the law in the several states for certain groups of states. As a matter of fact, the price varies little from year to year. The published figures, therefore, constitute a table of comparative commercial values as determined by the most expert knowledge. While not constituting a statement of absolute commercial value for any given locality, they do enable the purchaser to determine whether the price quoted on a given brand of fertilizer is within reason. Persons who are unacquainted with the principles controlling the use of commercial fertilizers may, however, be led to believe that the price of the fertilizer is an indication of its value for the production of a given crop. As is well known to all students of the subject, there is no necessary relation between the commercial value of a fertilizer and the fitness of its formula for a given soil and crop. For these and other reasons, the publication of tables of commercial value has been strongly opposed by some manufacturers, and in certain states the custom has been discontinued. While granting that tables of commercial value are subject to misinterpretation, it is perhaps fair to say that such tables have been of most benefit, and, moreover, have been of great value to those who were most likely to misinterpret them. It has been customary in most states to make analyses only of mixed fertilizers. Thus such raw materials as nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, dried blood, bone meal, rock phosphate, tankage, muriate of potash, sulphate of potash, have not been brought under the operation of the law. If one wishes to purchase nitrate of soda, muriate of potash and tankage with the intention of mixing them according to a formula of his own, he may not find any protection in his state. However, these products can be obtained through reputable dealers who will willingly guarantee the contents. In case of doubt, the purchaser may secure an analysis by his state experiment station at a moderate cost. The law requires that there shall be affixed to every package of fertilizer offered for sale a statement about as follows: The minimum per centum of each of the following constituents which may be contained therein: (a) Nitrogen. (b) Soluble, available and total phosphoric acid, except in cases of undissolved bone, basic slag phosphate, wood ashes, unheated phosphate rock, garbage tankage and pulverized natural manures, when the minimum per centum of total phosphoric acid may be substituted. This latter applies only in those states where raw materials are subject to inspection. (c) Potash soluble in distilled water. It is possible to comply with the law and yet state the guarantee upon each bag of fertilizer in such a manner as to mislead the uninformed. It is not the purpose of this book to deal with such technical details, but if the purchaser of commercial fertilizers is not already well acquainted with fertilizer terms, he should secure an elementary textbook on the subject or write to his state experiment station for a bulletin discussing them. FEEDING STUFF CONTROL The law controlling the sale of stock foods is of more recent origin than the fertilizer control act and has not been so universally adopted up to the present time. The necessity for such a law arises from the growing use as stock foods of various by-products in the manufacture of liquors, starch, glucose, sugar, cottonseed and linseed oils and breakfast foods. Various mixtures, varying widely in chemical composition, especially in protein and crude fiber, were placed upon the market. In some instances mixtures were grossly adulterated with such things as oat hulls and ground corn cobs. The adoption of this law by certain states has served to make other states the dumping ground for inferior stock foods, thus increasing the necessity for similar protection. The law does not apply to the ordinary grains produced by farmers or to the usual by-products of millers. SEED CONTROL From time immemorial it has been the universal custom of seedsmen to disclaim all responsibility for the purity and germinating power of their seeds. But as the importance of good seed--good in hereditary power, good in germination, good in its freedom from adulteration, good in its absence of noxious weed seed--has become better understood demand for some method of control has arisen. In at least one state there is a seed-control law modeled quite closely after the fertilizer-control law. However, the usual method of protection consists in purchasing by sample or the insistence of a guarantee, with a subsequent "analysis" of a sample of the purchased seed. The germinating power and purity of seed can be determined cheaply by an expert within from five to twenty days, depending upon the species. The federal government has a division of seed control in its Department of Agriculture at Washington, D. C. Any person may send a sample of seed to this division and have its purity and germinating power determined, and in some of the states the experiment station will perform similar services without charge. Clover, alfalfa, grass and other small seeds should always be purchased subject to such inspection, unless the purchaser is prepared to make his own inspection, which a very little training makes possible. NURSERY INSPECTION There is no national law concerning the importation of insect-infested or diseased plant stock. Several of the states have passed both state and interstate regulations concerning the sale of nursery stock. The insects usually legislated against are San Jose scale, gypsy moth and brown-tail moth, while the diseases usually interdicted are yellows, black knot, peach rosette, and pear blight. The enforcement of the law is usually placed in charge of a person having special knowledge of economic insects and fungous diseases. In addition to these police regulations this officer may, by various means, attempt to bring into practice methods calculated to eradicate or, at least, lessen the severity of existing attacks. Commerce in vinegar, dried fruits, insecticides and fungicides is also regulated in some states. DAIRY, FOOD AND DRUG INSPECTION An adequate discussion of the rise and development of the control in the sale of dairy and food products would require a chapter by itself, if not an entire volume. Suffice it to say here that the laws on this general subject have acquired an importance in many ways quite beyond that of any of the other control measures discussed in this chapter. In the extent of funds handled, the number of agents employed and the public interest incited, the office of dairy and food commissioner outranks any other control agency. In some states the office is an elective one, and the questions with which the office has to deal become a part of the state political campaign. The importance of the inspection of dairy and food products grows out of the fact that not only is the consumer, hence all the world, interested, but the execution of these laws touch large commercial interests. Not only are meat packers, distillers and brewers deeply interested, but the wholesale and retail grocers and, more recently, the manufacturing and prescribing druggists, are vitally concerned. Not many years ago the inspection of dairy products, particularly control of the traffic in oleomargarine, was the chief function of this office. To-day the enforcement of laws concerning pure foods, liquor and drugs is of much greater importance. Interstate commerce in oleomargarine is now regulated through the enactment of an internal revenue law requiring a tax of ten cents a pound on colored oleomargarine and one-fourth of a cent a pound on uncolored oleomargarine and, further, by prescribing the character of package and method of marking all oleomargarine entering into interstate commerce. State agencies are charged with the duty of requiring the compliance of local dealers and restaurateurs with the general features of the federal law. Some states, however, prohibit entirely the sale of colored oleomargarine within the state. PURITY IN DAIRY PRODUCTS Attempts to define what is pure milk, cream, butter or cheese have been fraught with much difficulty. Thus, for example, legal definitions of pure milk have resulted in some cows giving illegal milk. In some instances the law has declared simply that whole milk is milk from which no cream has been removed; in others, the minimum amount of butter fat has been prescribed; in still others, the minimum amount of total solids containing a minimum proportion of butter fat has been made the basis of legal milk. In like manner full cream cheese has been defined as cheese made from whole milk or from milk from which only a given amount of cream has been removed, while in other instances the minimum amount of butter fat which full cream cheese may contain is prescribed. The wide variation in the amount of butter fat carried by cream has caused much jocular comment and some serious discussion as to what is cream. While it is not feasible to indicate the laws for the several states, the ruling of the federal government as to what constitutes purity in dairy products under the national food and drug act may be accepted as a general guide. A circular giving the required information may be secured by addressing the Secretary of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. LIVE STOCK SANITATION The control of contagious diseases in domestic animals and the inspection of meat products have been the chief work of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture since its establishment. The bureau inspects all imported live animals and under certain conditions will inspect live animals intended for exportation. It inspects all meat products intended for export. Its inspection of meats intended for interstate commerce is less rigid than that exported. Meats sold within the state in which they are slaughtered cannot be required by the federal government to undergo inspection. It thus happens that the people of the several states enjoy less protection in the consumption of meat than the foreign purchaser of American meats unless there is a state meat inspection law. However, it is becoming more and more the custom for the large packers to have all their products inspected without regard to their destination. The meats slaughtered in the locality in which they are consumed are the ones that receive the least supervision. The federal government has been especially active and efficient in the prevention of interstate commerce in cattle suffering with Texas fever, and sheep attacked with scab and foot rot. Through the agency of the bureau dipping tanks have been provided in all the great live stock markets for the disinfection of cattle and sheep when needed. Several of the states have laws controlling the importation of diseased animals from other states and the transfer of them within the state. The following are the diseases most commonly mentioned in the laws of the several states: Anthrax, black quarter, hog cholera, swine plague, rabies, glanders and tuberculosis. The law is generally enforced by a state veterinarian, whose acts are supervised either by a state live stock commission or the state secretary of agriculture or these two agencies acting conjointly. Perhaps the disease which has required the greatest amount of attention in the several states is tuberculosis in milch cows. It is customary for this office to apply the tuberculin test, free of charge, under certain stipulations, to any herd upon the request of the owner and to supervise the slaughter and disposition of the reacting animals. In some states the owner is indemnified in part or in whole for his loss. The amount of indemnity as well as the general features of the law concerning the control of tuberculosis in domestic animals has been the subject of much controversy and cannot be said to have reached an altogether satisfactory solution in most states. The young farmer should clearly understand that under no circumstances can he afford to have a tuberculous animal in his herd. The contact of a diseased animal with other animals of the herd is certain to entail a greater loss than the destruction of the diseased animal. The farmer must in his own interest rear healthy animals whether or not it is necessary for the protection of the consumer. FISH AND GAME LAWS The motives underlying the enactment of laws concerning fish and game are varied. The controversies over these laws in the legislatures of the several states indicate that there is a belief, whatever may be the fact, that there are opposing interests; viz., those of the hunter or sportsman on the one hand, and those of the farmer or landowner on the other. The law of trespass has been one over which has raged much bitterness, both with regard to the form of the law to be enacted and concerning its subsequent enforcement. Sportsmen have usually held that a distinction existed between wild animals occupying private property and domestic animals. The landowner has urged that others should not trespass upon his property for the purpose of shooting wild animals, although his proprietary right in them was no greater. In like manner, laws concerning the closed season, made to protect animals during the breeding period, are the subject of extended discussion and are being constantly changed; both because there is a difference of opinion concerning the habits of the different species and because the motive varies for maintaining the supply. Some animals are protected on account of their benefit, supposed or real, to agriculture. Other animals are protected because of their gaming qualities, even to the extent of sometimes injuring farm crops. The money spent by sportsmen in the pursuit of game is an element in the varied interests involved. Humane motives and a desire to prevent the further restriction of a not too varied fauna have helped, also, to save certain species from extinction. On the other hand, in some states commercial interests are involved, as where large quantities of birds are taken for their plumage. Some attempts have been made to introduce foreign species, as the Japanese pheasant. It is, however, with fish that the most has been accomplished in replenishment. The federal government and several of the states have been active in regularly restocking, each season, certain streams with "fry" of edible and game fish. Information concerning the open season can be obtained from the proper state officer. The fish and game laws are usually under the control of a commission with a secretary as the executive officer. CHAPTER XXII RURAL FORCES The United States is a vast domain. Its material resources are enormous. Its fertile and easily tilled soil, its magnificent forests, its great stores of ore, coal, oil and gas; its fine water-power sites and its temperate and healthful climate have all contributed to the making of a prosperous and progressive nation. Without these natural resources the United States could not be what it is. The waste of some of these resources is almost beyond belief. In mining, one-half the anthracite and one-third the soft coal is left in the ground in such a manner that it may never be economically recovered. A ton of coal will produce 1,400 pounds of coke, worth $1.50, and 20 pounds of sulphate of ammonia, worth 50 cents. If all the nitrogen in coal which is turned into coke in Pennsylvania were recovered, it would furnish enough of this element to supply the needs of every acre of tillable soil in that state. Only about 44% of the wood in the trees now harvested in the United States is incorporated into buildings, apparatus and furniture. The rest is wasted in the process of cutting, sawing and manufacturing into the finished products. Facts like these have led the nation to realize that the conservation of our natural resources is an immediate and pressing problem. The United States has, however, a greater inheritance than these great and beneficent gifts of nature and a more fundamental problem than the preservation and efficient use of them. In a single sentence, the greatest inheritance of the American people is their Puritan ancestry. The word Puritan is here used to apply not only to the New England Pilgrims, but to all our early forefathers, whose traditions and practices have served to set this country apart from the other countries of the world. Because of the traditions which have been handed down to us, we are healthier-bodied and cleaner-minded men and women. We are more efficient, not merely in making money, but in everything that goes to make a full and well-rounded life. It is well to realize the resources of other nations. The agricultural possibilities of France appear to the casual observer to compare favorably with any equal area in the United States. One may see farm land in Italy which has been cultivated for at least two thousand years which is evidently as fertile as any of the limestone valleys of the Atlantic States, the prairies of the Mississippi valley or the Palouse district of the Northwest. Russia has enormous areas of fertile soil. Careful observers report that in Manchuria there are great stretches of country, which today possess natural opportunities similar to those which the Mississippi valley offered one hundred years ago. The recent stories of the deposits of coal and mineral wealth in China are almost fabulous. Europe has rich mines, great forests and unrivaled water-power. Some years ago a native of Argentina and a native of the United States were dining together. The Argentinian had served his government as consul to Canada. He related that he had recently written an official letter in which he had occasion to refer to the people of Canada and to those of this country. He explained that in alluding to the former he could say the Canadians, but the latter he could not call Americans, since his people were also Americans. After due consideration he referred to us as "the Yankees." "But," turning to his hearer, he said, with great emphasis, "I do not look upon the people of the United States as a nation, but as a new civilization." In other words, our nation is not simply one of fertile farms, enormous mines, great forests, unparalleled railroad systems, palatial stores, or wealthy cities, but he saw that we are a people of different economic, political, educational, social, moral and religious ideals. There are in every rural neighborhood certain forces whose objects are to increase the educational advantages, the social opportunities and the moral aspirations of the people. This subject need not be discussed merely in the abstract. There are in every community concrete evidences of these forces. There is the rural church. There is the rural school. In many localities are to be found, also, buildings, for social and fraternal purposes, as grange halls, structures for holding fairs and picnics. These are tangible evidences that there are rural agencies at work in the community whose chief purpose is to increase the educational advantages, the social opportunities and the moral aspirations of the people. How are these existing rural forces to be made more effective? If co-operation in financial affairs is essential under modern conditions, it is more needed in social matters. Such co-operation does not imply that these separate forces shall be fused into a single one. Each of them has its particular and peculiar work to do, but each should work in harmony and not in the spirit of antagonism with the others. There should be formed in each locality a committee for which the following name is proposed: The Community Committee of Rural Forces. Emphasis should be placed upon the word "community." Like all moral movements, progress must come from within, and not from without. The movement must be adapted to its environment. Like the plants that grow there, it must be indigenous to the soil. [Illustration: Jared Van Wagenen, Jr., has a son Jared, 3d, who is the fifth of the name that has lived upon a farm of 224 acres at Lawyerville, N. Y. Mr. Van Wagenen graduated from Cornell University in 1891, and is a noted farmers' institute lecturer. He has taken great interest in the country church and the betterment of the rural community. The view shows the pond that furnishes the power for the farm's electric light plant. The plant was installed by Mr. Van Wagenen with his own hands and has proved a really satisfying success.] [Illustration: Mr. Lowell B. Gable, Glen Gable Farms, Wybrooke, Pa., a graduate of Cornell University, is developing 812 acres of land in Chester county. He has a herd of 80 Guernsey cows in milk and is breeding Percheron, registered polling horses and Chester White hogs. Mr. Gable has been supervisor of the township for two years, during which time nine and one-half miles of macadam road have been built without materially increasing the taxes. Mr. Gable firmly believes that one of the best opportunities to be of help to a rural community lies in the work to be done for the improvement of social conditions--"to help make what little leisure there is clean and refreshing." Hence on return from college he played baseball and football with local teams and helped out at every opportunity at dances, musicales and other social entertainments.] This committee should be composed of representatives of the churches, the schools, farmers' clubs, granges, fair associations, farmers' institutes; and other organizations which are striving to increase the educational advantages, the social opportunities and the moral aspirations of the people. Oftentimes the object of these rural forces is confused with efforts to increase the financial prosperity of the farmer. It goes without saying that the maintenance of the fertility of the soil is essential to the food supply of the nation. The problems of the economic production of plants and animals are of great importance to the prosperity of the farmer. The idea, however, that the proper solution of these economic problems is to be the means of solving the educational, social and religious problems is simply putting the cart before the horse. Economic questions can only be satisfactorily adjusted through the application of intelligence and right ideas. Let it be supposed that when a young man decides to pay attention to a young woman that instead of meeting her at the church door, or it may be at the railway station, it is considered better form for him to get permission of the mother to call upon the young woman in her own home. This is the most fundamental question in every neighborhood. What has it to do with the price of wheat? This illustration has been used to emphasize two points. First, there are many problems in every community that are in no way related to the material prosperity of the neighborhood. Second, there is, at present, no single force in the community with sufficient influence to cope properly with many of these problems. A young college graduate who is now managing eight hundred acres of land recently wrote: "I firmly believe that one of the best opportunities to be of help to a rural community lies in the work that is to be done for the improvement of social conditions--to help make what little leisure there is clean and refreshing." Hence on return from college this young man has found time to play football and baseball with local teams and to help whenever opportunity offered at dances, musicales and similar entertainments. Games and other forms of recreation may be clean and wholesome, or they may be quite the reverse. It would be the duty of the community committee to see that dances occurred under proper environment--not next an open saloon--and that the young women were properly chaperoned. In many communities the boys and girls are almost wholly dependent upon the neighboring towns for their amusement. This condition may or may not be desirable. If the town and country are virtually one community, there is every reason why the boys and girls from the farms should find recreation and social intercourse with the boys and girls of the village. It is a relationship that should be fostered wherever possible. When, however, the town and the country are separate communities, which prevent the ordinary social relationships, it is usually unfortunate when the young people of the one community are dependent upon the other community for their amusements. A deeply earnest man recently said: "I was born and raised upon the farm. I never knew a dull day in my life. I went fishing. I went hunting and----" "Stop right there," said the listener. "There is not the same opportunity today for a boy to go hunting that there was when you were a boy." "That is true." "Our ideas about such things have changed, also." "Yes," he replied, humbly enough, for he was a man of fine fiber. "I propose a substitute," said the listener. "There is much more pleasure and recreation to be obtained from photographing animals than from killing them. What is needed in every rural community is a camera club." When a boy wishes to go hunting, he merely has to buckle on his ammunition pouch, shoulder his gun and he is ready. A camera club, however, requires a social organization and a social center. The community committee would thus be required to decide whether the facilities for developing and printing pictures may best be located at the church, the schoolhouse, the grange hall or elsewhere. A little reflection will show how many possibilities such a club might have on its social, moral and educational side. The suggestion has been made here, however, only as an illustration of the problems which arise when a rural community is organized for social welfare. The organization of a book club, or a magazine club in a rural community presents precisely the same problems. Some method must be devised for exchanging the books or magazines. Whether they are exchanged at the church, the grange hall or through the school children will depend upon local conditions requiring a community committee to decide. This community committee will do something more than reach immediate results. It may project its influence far into the future. Not all of life is comprised in a porcelain bathtub and nickel adornments. Nevertheless modern methods of heating and plumbing are desirable in the country as well as in the city. In Indiana there is a one-room school building. In the basement there has been placed a furnace and a gasoline engine. The engine is used not only to teach the boys how to run a gasoline engine, but it makes possible a modern system of plumbing. It is well known that many of the states within the past decade have voted to abolish or very materially restrict the sale of alcoholic beverages. No great temperance orators have roused the people as was the case thirty years or more ago. Why, then, has such progress been made in recent years? In large part because twenty-five years ago, the teaching of physiology was introduced into the public schools, which taught the evil effects of alcohol to the human system. During the past decade young men who studied these physiologies have been voting. What has the teaching of physiology to do with the one-room schoolhouse in Indiana with its modern system of plumbing? The girls between the ages of six and fourteen are now becoming accustomed to modern systems of plumbing. When they grow older and marry they will find some way to introduce similar conveniences into their homes without regard to the price of wheat. A wise community committee will find many ways to influence future generations. Such a committee would be a priceless heritage to any community. The natural resources of the United States are necessary to the prosperity of the people. The preservation and economic use of these resources are of vast importance. The natural resources of the world were, however, as great five thousand years ago as they are today. The soil was no less fertile then than now. The difference between the prosperity of the human race at these two periods is caused by a difference in human motive and efficiency. It is the result of ideals and knowledge. Sit at the banquet table with men who are the real powers in shaping the affairs of the world. The chances are that the champagne remains untouched. These men are not in the habit of partaking of midnight suppers. They must keep themselves fit for the next day's work. They have the approval and loyalty of their wives because they deserve it. In other words, the men who do the world's work are not drunkards. They are not gluttons. They are not libertines. They are efficient because they have healthy bodies and clean minds. It is this efficiency which the critic from Argentina saw when he said, "I do not look upon the people of the United States as a nation, but as a new civilization." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- STANDARD BOOKS PUBLISHED BY ORANGE JUDD COMPANY NEW YORK CHICAGO ASHLAND BUILDING People's Gas Building 315-321 Fourth Avenue 150 Michigan Avenue ---------- _Any of these books will be sent by mail, postpaid, to any part of the world, on receipt of catalog price. We are always happy to correspond with our patrons, and cordially invite them to address us on any matter pertaining to rural books. Send for our large illustrated catalog, free on application._ ---------------------------------------- =First Principles of Soil Fertility= By ALFRED VIVIAN. There is no subject of more vital importance to the farmer than that of the best method of maintaining the fertility of the soil. The very evident decrease in the fertility of those soils which have been under cultivation for a number of years, combined with the increased competition and the advanced price of labor, have convinced the intelligent farmer that the agriculture of the future must be based upon more rational practices than those which have been followed in the past. We have felt for some time that there was a place for a brief, and at the same time comprehensive, treatise on this important subject of Soil Fertility. Professor Vivian's experience as a teacher in the short winter courses has admirably fitted him to present this matter in a popular style. In this little book he has given the gist of the subject in plain language, practically devoid of technical and scientific terms. It is pre-eminently a "First Book," and will be found especially valuable to those who desire an introduction to the subject, and who intend to do subsequent reading. Illustrated. 5x7 inches. 265 pages. Cloth. Net, $1.00 =The Study of Corn= By PROF. V. M. SHOESMITH. A most helpful book to all farmers and students interested in the selection and improvement of corn. It is profusely illustrated from photographs, all of which carry their own story and contribute their part in making pictures and text matter a clear, concise and interesting study of corn. Illustrated. 5x7 inches. 100 pages. Cloth. Net, $0.50 =Profitable Stock Raising= By CLARENCE A. SHAMEL. This book covers fully the principles of breeding and feeding for both fat stock and dairying type. It tells of sheep and mutton raising, hot house lambs, the swine industry and the horse market. Finally, he tells of the preparation of stock for the market and how to prepare it so that it will bring a high market price. Live stock is the most important feature of farm life, and statistics show a production far short of the actual requirements. There are many problems to be faced in the profitable production of stock, and these are fully and comprehensively covered in Mr. Shamel's new book. Illustrated. 5x7 inches. 288 pages. Cloth. Net, $1.50 =The Business of Dairying= By C. B. LANE. The author of this practical little book is to be congratulated on the successful manner in which he has treated so important a subject. It has been prepared for the use of dairy students, producers and handlers of milk, and all who make dairying a business. Its purpose is to present in a clear and concise manner various business methods and systems which will help the dairyman to reap greater profits. This book meets the needs of the average dairy farmer, and if carefully followed will lead to successful dairying. It may also be used as an elementary textbook for colleges, and especially in short-course classes. Illustrated. 5x7 inches. 300 pages. Cloth. Net, $1.25 =Questions and Answers on Buttermaking= By CHAS A. PUBLOW. This book is entirely different from the usual type of dairy books, and is undoubtedly in a class by itself. The entire subject of butter-making in all its branches has been most thoroughly treated, and many new and important features have been added. The tests for moisture, salt and acid have received special attention, as have also the questions on cream separation, pasteurization, commercial starters, cream ripening, cream overrun, marketing of butter, and creamery management. Illustrated. 5x7 inches. 100 pages. Cloth. Net, $0.50 =Questions and Answers on Milk and Milk Testing= By CHAS. A. PUBLOW, and HUGH C. TROY. A book that no student in the dairy industry can afford to be without. No other treatise of its kind is available, and no book of its size gives so much practical and useful information in the study of milk and milk products. Illustrated. 5x7 inches. 100 pages. Cloth. Net, $0.50 =Soils= By CHARLES WILLIAM BURKETT, Director Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station. The most complete and popular work of the kind ever published. As a rule, a book of this sort is dry and uninteresting, but in this case it reads like a novel. The author has put into it his individuality. The story of the properties of the soils, their improvement and management, as well as a discussion of the problems of crop growing and crop feeding, make this book equally valuable to the farmer, student and teacher. Illustrated. 303 pages. 5-1/2x8 inches. Cloth. Net, $1.25 =Weeds of the Farm Garden= By L. H. PAMMEL. The enormous losses, amounting to several hundred million dollars annually in the United States, caused by weeds stimulate us to adopt a better system of agriculture. The weed question is, therefore, a most important and vital one for American farmers. This treatise will enable the farmer to treat his field to remove weeds. The book is profusely illustrated by photographs and drawings made expressly for this work, and will prove invaluable to every farmer, land owner, gardener and park superintendent. 5x7 inches. 300 pages. Cloth. Net, $1.50 =Farm Machinery and Farm Motors= By J. B. DAVIDSON and L. W. CHASE. Farm Machinery and Farm Motors is the first American book published on the subject of Farm Machinery since that written by J. J. Thomas in 1867. This was before the development of many of the more important farm machines, and the general application of power to the work of the farm. Modern farm machinery is indispensable in present-day farming operations, and a practical book like Farm Machinery and Farm Motors will fill a much-felt need. The book has been written from lectures used by the authors before their classes for several years, and which were prepared from practical experience and a thorough review of the literature pertaining to the subject. Although written primarily as a textbook, it is equally useful for the practical farmer. Profusely illustrated. 5-1/2x8 inches. 520 pages. Cloth. Net, $2.00 =The Book of Wheat= By P. T. DONDLINGER. This book comprises a complete study of everything pertaining to wheat. It is the work of a student of economic as well as agricultural conditions, well fitted by the broad experience in both practical and theoretical lines to tell the whole story in a condensed form. It is designed for the farmer, the teacher, and the student as well. Illustrated. 5-1/2x8 inches. 370 pages. Cloth. Net, $2.00 =Farmer's Cyclopedia= =of Agriculture= _A Compendium of Agricultural Science and Practice on Farm, Orchard and Garden Crops, and the Feeding and Diseases of Farm Animals._ =_By_ EARLEY VERNON WILCOX, Ph. D.= =_and_ CLARENCE BEAMAN SMITH, M. S.= _Associate Editors in the Office of Experiment Stations, United States Department of Agriculture_ This is a new, practical, and complete presentation of the whole subject of agriculture in its broadest sense. It is designed for the use of agriculturists who desire up-to-date, reliable information on all matters pertaining to crops and stock, but more particularly for the actual farmer. The volume contains =Detailed directions for the culture of every important field, orchard, and garden crop= grown in America, together with descriptions of their chief insect pests and fungous diseases, and remedies for their control. It contains an account of modern methods in feeding and handling all farm stock, including poultry. The diseases which affect different farm animals and poultry are described, and the most recent remedies suggested for controlling them. Every bit of this vast mass of new and useful information is authoritative, practical and easily found, and no effort has been spared to include all desirable details. There are between 6,000 and 7,000 topics covered in these references, and it contains 700 royal 8vo pages and nearly 500 superb half-tone and other original illustrations, making the most perfect Cyclopedia of Agriculture ever attempted. =_Handsomely bound in cloth. $3.50; half morocco (very sumptuous), $4.50. postpaid_= ---------------------------------------- ORANGE JUDD COMPANY, 315-321 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. People's Gas Building, Chicago, Ill. 
26975	----	file was produced from images produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University) CHAPTERS IN RURAL PROGRESS THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Agents THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY NEW YORK THE CUNNINGHAM, CURTISS & WELCH COMPANY LOS ANGELES THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON AND EDINBURGH THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY SHANGHAI KARL W. HIERSEMANN LEIPZIG CHAPTERS IN RURAL PROGRESS BY KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD _President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College_ [Illustration: Publisher's logo] THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS COPYRIGHT 1907 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO All Rights Reserved Published February 1908 Second Impression June 1909 Third Impression May 1911 Fourth Impression February 1913 Fifth Impression October 1916 Composed and Printed By The University of Chicago Press Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. TO MY FATHER IRA HOWARD BUTTERFIELD WHOSE CONSTANT CONCERN FOR RURAL WELFARE AND LIFE-LONG SERVICE TO RURAL INTERESTS HAVE BEEN ONE OF THE CHIEF INCENTIVES TO THE STUDIES LYING BEHIND THIS BOOK PREFACE This book does not offer a complete analysis of the rural problem; but attempts, in general, to present some of the more significant phases of that problem, and, in particular, to describe some of the agencies at work in solving it. Several of the chapters were originally magazine articles, and, though all have been revised and in some cases entirely rewritten, they have the limitations of such articles. Other chapters consist of more formal addresses. Necessarily there will be found some lack of uniformity in style and in method of presentation, and occasional duplication of argument or statement. For permission to use articles, in whole or in part, I have to thank the editors of the _Chautauquan_, _Arena_, _Forum_, _Review of Reviews_, _Popular Science Monthly_, _Michigan Alumnus_, _New England Farmer_, _Cornell Countryman_; also Professor L. R. Taft, superintendent of Farmers' Institutes in Michigan, and the officers of the American Civic Association. Two chapters comprise material heretofore unpublished. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER PAGE I. The Study of Rural Life 3 II. The Problems of Progress 11 THE OUTLOOK III. The Expansion of Farm Life 45 IV. The New Farmer 53 V. Culture from the Corn-Lot 66 AGENCIES OF PROGRESS VI. Education for the Farmer 77 VII. Farmers' Institutes 92 VIII. The Hesperia Movement 104 IX. The Rural School and the Community 121 X. The Grange 136 XI. Opportunities for Farm Women 162 XII. The Country Church and Progress 170 XIII. A Summary of Recent Progress 183 FORWARD STEPS XIV. The Social Side of the Farm Question 199 XV. The Needs of New England Agriculture 204 XVI. An Untilled Field in American Education 216 XVII. Federation for Rural Progress 233 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I THE STUDY OF RURAL LIFE The American farm problem, particularly its sociological aspect, has not as yet had the attention that it deserves from students. Much less have the questions that concern rural social advancement found the popular mind; in truth, the general city public has not been deeply interested in the farmer. But there seem to be recent indications that the sentiment is changing. The heated discussions in New England about Mr. Hartt's interesting clinic over a decadent hill-town, the suggestive fast-day proclamation of Governor Rollins of New Hampshire a few years ago, the marvelous development of agricultural education, the renewed study of the rural school, the widespread and growing delight in country life, have all aroused an interest in and presage a new attention to rural conditions. This is well. The sociologist can hardly afford to omit the rural classes from the scope of his study, especially if he desires to investigate the practical phases of his subject. Moreover, no one with intelligent notions of affairs should be ignorant of the forces that control rural life. In view of this apparent change in the attitude of people toward the farm problem, it may not be idle to suggest some possible errors that should be avoided when we are thinking of rural society. The student will doubtless approach his problem fortified against misconceptions--he probably has thoughtfully established his view-point. But the average person in the city is likely to call up the image of his ancestral home of a generation ago, if he were born in the country, or, if not, to draw upon his observations made on a summer vacation or on casual business trips into the interior. Or he takes his picture from _Shore Acres_ and the _Old Homestead_. In any case it is not improbable that the image may be faulty and as a consequence his appreciation of present conditions wholly inadequate. Let us consider some of these possible sources of misconception. In the first place it is not fair to compare country life as a whole with the best city conditions. This is often done. The observer usually has education, culture, leisure, the experience of travel, more or less wealth; his acquaintance is mostly with people of like attainments. When he fails to find a rural environment that corresponds in some degree to his own and that of his friends, he is quick to conclude that the country has nothing to offer him, that only the city ministers to the higher wants of man. He forgets that he is one of a thousand in the city, and does not represent average city life. He fails to compare the average country conditions with the average city conditions, manifestly the only fair basis for comparison. Or he may err still more grievously. He may set opposite each other the worst country conditions and the better city conditions. He ought in all justice to balance country slum with city slum; and certainly so if he insists on trying to find palaces, great libraries, eloquent preachers, theaters, and rapid transit in each rural community. City life goes to extremes; country life, while varied, is more even. In the country there is little of large wealth, luxury, and ease; little also of extreme poverty, reeking crime, unutterable filth, moral sewage. Farmers are essentially a middle class and no comparison is fair that does not keep this fact ever in mind. We sometimes hear the expression, "Country life is so barren--that to me is its most discouraging aspect." Much country life is truly barren; but much more of it is so only relatively and not essentially. We must admit that civilization is at least partially veneer; polish does wonders for the appearance of folks as well as of furniture. But while the beauty of "heart of oak" is enhanced by its "finish," its utility is not destroyed by a failure to polish it. Now, much of the so-called barrenness of country life is the oak minus the polish. We come to regard polish as essential; it is largely relative. And not only may we apply the wrong standard to the situation, but our eyes may deceive us. To the uninitiated a clod of dry earth is the most unpromising of objects--it is cousin to the stone, and the type of barrenness. But to the elect it is pregnant with the possibilities of seed-time and harvest, of a full fruitage, of abundance and content for man and beast. And there is many a farm home, plain to an extreme, devoid of the veneer, a home that to the man of the town seems lacking in all the things that season life, but a home which virtue, intelligence, thrift, and courage transform into a garden of roses and a type of heaven. I do not justify neglect of the finer material things of life, nor plead for drab and homespun as passports to the courts of excellence; but I insist that the plainness, simple living, absence of luxury, lack of polish that may be met with in the country, do not necessarily accompany a condition barren of the essentials of the higher life. Sometimes rural communities are ridiculed because of the trivial nature of their gossip, interests, and ambitions. There may be some justice in the criticism, though the situation is pathetic rather than humorous. But is the charge wholly just? In comparing country with town we are comparing two environments; necessarily, therefore, objects of gossip, interests, and ambitions differ therein. We expect that. It is no criticism to assert that fact. The test is not that of an existing difference, but of an essential quality. Is not Ben Bolt's new top buggy as legitimate a topic for discussion as is Arthur John Smythe's new automobile? Does not the price of wheat mean as much to the hard-working grower as to the broker who may never see a grain of it? May not the grove at Turtle Lake yield as keen enjoyment as do the continental forests? Is the ambition to own a fine farm more ignoble than the desire to own shares in a copper mine? It really does not matter so much what one gossips about or what one's delights are or what the carving of the rungs on ambition's ladder; the vital question is the effect of these things on character. Do they stunt or encourage the inner life? It must be admitted that country people do not always accept their environing opportunities for enjoying the higher life of mind and heart. But do they differ in this respect from their cousins of the town? We must remember, too, that this is a large country, and that a study of rural conditions in a certain community, township, county, state, or section may not give us the correct basis upon which to determine the agricultural status of the country. Nor must we make the mistake of confusing conservatism and decadence. That the city will in many particulars always progress more rapidly than the country is inevitable. But speed is not the ultimate criterion of a full life. Again must we apply the test whether the gain is relative or essential. Telephones, free mail delivery, electric car lines, operas, great libraries, cathedrals--all come to the city first, some of them solely to the city. The country cannot hope to be other than inherently conservative as regards such institutions. But may there not be found such adaptations of or substitutes for these institutions as shall not only preserve the rural community from decadence, but, indeed, build it up into strength, beauty, and purity? Comparative lack of identical resources need not mean poverty of attainment. Let us agree that relatively the country will lag behind the town. Is the country continually gaining in those things that are fundamentally important and that minister to its best life? is the kernal question. Perhaps the most common error in studying rural conditions is the failure to distinguish the vital difference between the urban problem and the rural problem. _Sociologically the city problem is that of congestion; the rural problem is that of isolation._ The social conditions of country and city are wholly different. Institutions that succeed in alleviating social disorders in the town may or may not succeed in the country--in any event they must be adapted to country needs. This applies to organizations, schools, libraries, social settlements. And the adaptation must be one not only of form but of spirit. In other words, the farm problem is a peculiar problem, demanding special study, a new point of view, and sometimes unique institutions. Those accustomed to large cities make a pretty broad classification of "country." A town of five thousand people is to them "country." But it is not country. The problem of the village and the small town is not the rural problem, take it the nation over. The smaller the town, the more nearly it approaches to rural conditions, but its essential problem is not that of the farm. And, finally, let no one suppose that philanthropy is the chief medicine for the social ill-health of the country. The intelligent student who possesses the true spirit of helpfulness may find in the rural problem ample scope for both his brain and his heart. But he will make a fundamental and irreparable error if he starts out with the notion that pity, charity, and direct gifts will win the day. You may flatter the American farmer; you cannot patronize him. He demands and needs, not philanthropy, but simple justice, equal opportunity, and better facilities for education. He is neither slave nor pauper. To conclude: There is a farm problem, and it is worth solving. But it differs from the city problem. And if, as is to be hoped, the recently renewed interest in this question is to be permanent, we trust that those who desire to make it a special study, as well as those whose interest in it is general and widely human, may from the start avoid the errors that are likely to obscure rural conditions when viewed through city eyes. CHAPTER II THE PROBLEMS OF PROGRESS[1] It is impossible to acquire a keen and permanent interest in the rural problem unless one first of all is cognizant of its significance. And lack of knowledge at this point may in part account for the fact already alluded to that in America the farm problem has not been adequately studied. So stupendous has been the development of our manufacturing industries, so marvelous the growth of our urban population, so pressing the questions raised by modern city life, that the social and economic interests of the American farmer have, as a rule, received minor consideration. We are impressed with the rise of cities like Chicago, forgetting for the moment that half of the American people still live under rural conditions. We are perplexed by the labor wars that are waged about us, for the time unmindful that one-third of the workers of this country make their living immediately from the soil. We are astounded, and perhaps alarmed, at the great centralization of capital, possibly not realizing that the capital invested in agriculture in the United States nearly equals the combined capital invested in the manufacturing and railway industries. But if we pause to consider the scope and nature of the economic and social interests involved, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the farm problem is worthy of serious thought from students of our national welfare. We are aware that agriculture does not hold the same relative rank among our industries that it did in former years, and that our city population has increased far more rapidly than has our rural population. We do not ignore the fact that urban industries are developing more rapidly than is agriculture, nor deny the seriousness of the actual depletion of rural population, and even of community decadence, in some portions of the Union. But these facts merely add to the importance of the farm question. And it should not be forgotten that there has been a large and constant growth both of our agricultural wealth and of our rural population. During the last half-century there was a gain of 500 per cent. in the value of farm property, while the non-urban population increased 250 per cent. Agriculture has been one of the chief elements of America's industrial greatness, it is still our dominant economic interest, and it will long remain at least a leading industry. The people of the farm have furnished a sturdy citizenship and have been the primary source of much of our best leadership in political, business, and professional life. For an indefinite future, a large proportion of the American people will continue to live in a rural environment. WHAT IS THE FARM PROBLEM? Current agricultural discussion would lead us to think that the farm problem is largely one of technique. The possibilities of the agricultural industry, in the light of applied science, emphasize the need of the farmer for more complete knowledge of soil and plant and animal, and for increased proficiency in utilizing this knowledge to secure greater production at less cost. This is a fundamental need. It lies at the basis of success in farming. But it is not the farm problem. Business skill must be added, business methods enforced. The farmer must be not only a more skilful produce-grower, but also a keener produce-seller. But the moment we enter the realm of the market we step outside the individualistic aspect of the problem as embodied in the current doctrine of technical agricultural teaching, and are forced to consider the social aspect as emphasized, first of all, in the economic category of price. Here we find many factors--transportation cost, general market conditions at home and abroad, the status of other industries, and even legislative activities. The farm problem becomes an industrial question, not solely one of technical and business skill. Moreover, the problem is one of a successful industry as a whole, not merely the personal successes of even a respectable number of individual farmers. The farming class must progress as a unit. But have we yet reached the heart of the question? Is the farm problem one of technique plus business skill, plus these broad economic considerations? Is it not perfectly possible that agriculture as an industry may remain in a fairly satisfactory condition, and yet the farming class fail to maintain its status in the general social order? Is it not, for instance, quite within the bounds of probability to imagine a good degree of economic strength in the agricultural industry existing side by side with either a peasant régime or a landlord-and-tenant system? Yet would we expect from either system the same social fruitage that has been harvested from our American yeomanry? We conclude, then, that _the farm problem consists in maintaining upon our farms a class of people who have succeeded in procuring for themselves the highest possible class status, not only in the industrial, but in the political and the social order--a relative status, moreover, that is measured by the demands of American ideals._ The farm problem thus connects itself with the whole question of democratic civilization. This is not mere platitude. For we cannot properly judge the significance and the relation of the different industrial activities of our farmers, and especially the value of the various social agencies for rural betterment, except by the standard of class status. It is here that we seem to find the only satisfactory philosophy of rural progress. We would not for a moment discredit the fundamental importance of movements that have for their purpose the improved technical skill of our farmers, better business management of the farm, and wiser study and control of market conditions. Indeed, we would call attention to the fact that social institutions are absolutely necessary means of securing these essential factors of industrial success. In the solution of the farm problem we must deliberately invoke the influence of quickened means of communication, of co-operation among farmers, of various means of education, and possibly even of religious institutions, to stimulate and direct industrial activity. What needs present emphasis is the fact that there is a definite, real, social end to be held in view as the goal of rural endeavor. The highest possible social status for the farming class is that end. We may now, as briefly as possible, describe some of the difficulties that lie in the path of the farmers in their ambition to attain greater class efficiency and larger class influence, and some of the means at hand for minimizing the difficulties. A complete discussion of the farm problem should, of course, include thorough consideration of the technical, the business, and the economic questions implied by the struggle for industrial success; for industrial success is prerequisite to the achievement of the greatest social power of the farming class. But we shall consider only the social aspects of the problem. RURAL ISOLATION Perhaps the one great underlying social difficulty among American farmers is their comparatively isolated mode of life. The farmer's family is isolated from other families. A small city of perhaps twenty thousand population will contain from four hundred to six hundred families per square mile, whereas a typical agricultural community in a prosperous agricultural state will hardly average more than ten families per square mile. The farming class is isolated from other classes. Farmers, of course, mingle considerably in a business and political way with the men of their trading town and county seat; but, broadly speaking, farmers do not associate freely with people living under urban conditions and possessing other than the rural point of view. It would be venturesome to suggest very definite generalizations with respect to the precise influence of these conditions, because, so far as the writer is aware, the psychology of isolation has not been worked out. But two or three conclusions seem to be admissible, and for that matter rather generally accepted. The well-known conservatism of the farming class is doubtless largely due to class isolation. Habits, ideas, traditions, and ideals have long life in the rural community. Changes come slowly. There is a tendency to tread the well-worn paths. The farmer does not easily keep in touch with rapid modern development, unless the movements or methods directly affect him. Physical agencies which improve social conditions, such as electric lights, telephones, and pavements, come to the city first. The atmosphere of the country speaks peace and quiet. Nature's routine of sunshine and storm, of summer and winter, encourages routine and repetition in the man who works with her. A complement of this rural conservatism, which at first thought seems a paradox, but which probably grows out of these same conditions of isolation, is the intense radicalism of a rural community when once it breaks away from its moorings. Many farmers are unduly suspicious of others' motives; yet the same people often succumb to the wiles of the charlatan, whether medical or political. Farmers are usually conservative in politics and intensely loyal to party; but the Populist movement indicates the tendency to extremes when the old allegiance is left behind. Old methods of farming may be found alongside ill-considered attempts to raise new crops or to utilize untried machines. Other effects of rural isolation are seen in a class provincialism that is hard to eradicate, and in the development of minds less alert to seize business advantages and less far-sighted than are developed by the intense industrial life of the town. There is time to brood over wrongs, real and imaginary. Personal prejudices often grow to be rank and coarse-fibered. Neighborhood feuds are not uncommon and are often virulent. Leadership is made difficult and sometimes impossible. It is easy to fall into personal habits that may mark off the farmer from other classes of similar intelligence, and that bar him from his rightful social place. It would, however, be distinctly unfair to the farm community if we did not emphasize some of the advantages that grow out of the rural mode of life. Farmers have time to think, and the typical American farmer is a man who has thought much and often deeply. A spirit of sturdy independence is generated, and freedom of will and of action is encouraged. Family life is nowhere so educative as in the country. The whole family co-operates for common ends, and in its individual members are bred the qualities of industry, patience, and perseverance. The manual work of the schools is but a makeshift for the old-fashioned training of the country-grown boy. Country life is an admirable preparation for the modern industrial and professional career. Nevertheless, rural isolation is a real evil. Present-day living is so distinctively social, progress is so dependent upon social agencies, social development is so rapid, that if the farmer is to keep his status he must be fully in step with the rest of the army. He must secure the social view-point. The disadvantages of rural isolation are largely in the realm of the social relations, its advantages mostly on the individual and moral side. Farm life makes a strong individual; it is a serious menace to the achievement of class power. A cure for isolation sometimes suggested is the gathering of the farmers into villages. This remedy, however, is of doubtful value. In the first place, the scheme is not immediately practicable. About three and one-half billions of dollars are now invested in farm buildings, and it will require some motive more powerful than that inspired by academic logic to transfer, even gradually, this investment to village groups. Moreover, it is possible to dispute the desirability of the remedy. The farm village at best must be a mere hamlet. It can secure for the farmer very few of the urban advantages he may want, except that of permitting closer daily intercourse between families. And it is questionable if the petty society of such a village can compensate for the freedom and purity of rural family life now existing. It may even be asserted with some degree of positiveness that the small village, on the moral and intellectual sides, is distinctly inferior to the isolated farm home. At the present time rural isolation in America is being overcome by the development of better means of communication among farmers who still live on their farms. So successful are these means of communication proving that we cannot avoid the conclusion that herein lies the remedy. Improved wagon roads, the rural free mail delivery, the farm telephone, trolley lines through country districts, are bringing about a positive revolution in country living. They are curing the evils of isolation, without in the slightest degree robbing the farm of its manifest advantages for family life. The farmers are being welded into a more compact society. They are being nurtured to greater alertness of mind, to greater keenness of observation, and the foundations are being laid for vastly enlarged social activities. The problem now is to extend these advantages to every rural community--in itself a task of huge proportions. If this can be done and isolation can be reduced to a minimum, the solution of all the other rural social problems will become vastly easier. FARMERS' ORGANIZATION Organization is one of the pressing social problems that American farmers have to face. The importance of the question is intrinsic, because of the general social necessity for co-operation which characterizes modern life. Society is becoming consciously self-directive. The immediate phase of this growing self-direction lies in the attempts of various social groups to organize their powers for group advantage. And if, as seems probable, this group activity is to remain a dominant feature of social progress, even in a fairly coherent society, it is manifest that there will result more or less of competition among groups. The farming class, if at all ambitious for group influence, can hardly avoid this tendency to organization. Farmers, indeed more than any other class, need to organize. Their isolation makes thorough organization especially imperative. And the argument for co-operation gains force from the fact that relatively the agricultural population is declining. In the old days farmers ruled because of mere mass. That is no longer possible. The naïve statement that "farmers must organize because other classes are organizing" is really good social philosophy. In the group competition just referred to there is a tendency for class interests to be put above general social welfare. This is a danger to be avoided in organization, not an argument against it. So the farmers' organization should be guarded, at this point, by adherence to the principle that organization must not only develop class power, but must be so directed as to permit the farmers to lend the full strength of their class to general social progress. Organization thus becomes a test of class efficiency, and consequently a prerequisite for solving the farm problem. Can the farming class secure and maintain a fairly complete organization? Can it develop efficient leaders? Can it announce, in sound terms, its proposed group policy? Can it lend the group influence to genuine social progress? If so, the organization of farmers becomes a movement of pre-eminent importance. Organization, moreover, is a powerful educational force. It arouses discussion of fundamental questions, diffuses knowledge, gives practice in public affairs, trains individuals in executive work, and, in fine, stimulates, as nothing else can, a class which is in special need of social incentive. Organization is, however, difficult of accomplishment. While it would take us too far afield to discuss the history of farmers' organizations in America, we may briefly suggest some of the difficulties involved. For forty years the question has been a prominent one among the farmers, and these years have seen the rise and decline of several large associations. There have been apparently two great factors contributing to the downfall of these organizations. The first was a misapprehension, on the part of the farmers, of the feasibility of organizing themselves as a political phalanx; the second, a sentimental belief in the possibilities of business co-operation among farmers, more especially in lines outside their vocation. There is no place for class politics in America. There are some things legislation cannot cure. There are serious limitations to co-operative endeavor. It took many hard experiences for our farmers to learn these truths. But back of all lie some inherent difficulties, as, for instance, the number of people involved, their isolation, sectional interests, ingrained habits of independent action, of individual initiative, of suspicion of others' motives. There is often lack of perspective, and unwillingness to invest in a procedure that does not promise immediate returns. The mere fact of failure has discredited the organization idea. There is lack of leadership; for the farm industry, while it often produces men of strong mind, keen perception, resolute will, does not, as a rule, develop executive capacity for large enterprises. It is frequently asserted that farmers are the only class that has not organized. This is not strictly true. The difficulties enumerated are real difficulties and have seriously retarded farm organization. But if the progress made is not satisfactory, it is at least encouraging. On the purely business side, over five thousand co-operative societies among American farmers have been reported. In co-operative buying of supplies, co-operative selling of products, and co-operative insurance the volume of transactions reaches large figures. A host of societies of a purely educational nature exists among stock-breeders, fruit-growers, dairymen. It is true that no one general organization of farmers, embracing a large proportion of the class, has as yet been perfected. The nearest approach to it is the Grange, which, contrary to a popular notion, is in a prosperous condition, with a really large influence upon the social, financial, educational, and legislative interests of the farming class. It has had a steady growth during the past ten years, and is a quiet but powerful factor in rural progress. The Grange is perhaps too conservative in its administrative policy. It has not at least succeeded in converting to its fold the farmers of the great Mississippi Valley. But it has workable machinery, it disavows partisan politics and selfish class interests, and it subordinates financial benefits, while emphasizing educational and broadly political advantages. It seems fair to interpret the principles of the Grange as wholly in line with the premise of this paper, that the farmers need to preserve their status, politically, industrially, and socially, and that organization is one of the fundamental methods they must use. The Grange, therefore, deserves to succeed, and indeed is succeeding. The field of agricultural organization is an extensive one. But if the farm problem is to be solved satisfactorily, the American farmers must first secure reasonably complete organization. RURAL EDUCATION It is hardly necessary to assert that the education of that portion of the American people who live upon the land involves a question of the greatest significance. The subject naturally divides itself into two phases, one of which may be designated as rural education proper, the other as agricultural education. Rural education has to do with the education of people, more especially of the young, who live under rural conditions; agricultural education aims to prepare men and women for the specific vocation of agriculture. The rural school typifies the first; the agricultural school, the second. Rural education is but a section of the general school question; agricultural education is a branch of technical training. These two phases of the education of the farm population meet at many points, they must work in harmony, and together they form a distinct educational problem. The serious difficulties in the rural school question are perhaps three: first, to secure a modern school, in efficiency somewhat comparable to the town school, without unduly increasing the school tax; second, so to enrich the curriculum and so to expand the functions of the school that the school shall become a vital and coherent part of the community life, on the one hand translating the rural environment into terms of character and mental efficiency, and on the other hand serving perfectly as a stepping-stone to the city schools and to urban careers; third, to provide adequate high-school facilities in the rural community. The centralization of district schools and the transportation of pupils will probably prove to be more nearly a solution of all these difficulties than will any other one scheme. The plan permits the payment of higher wages for teachers and ought to secure better instruction; it permits the employment of special teachers, as for nature-study or agriculture; it increases the efficiency of superintendence; it costs but little, if any, more than the district system; it leaves the school amid rural surroundings, while introducing into the schoolroom itself a larger volume, so to speak, of world-atmosphere; it contains possibilities for community service; it can easily be expanded into a high school of reputable grade. There are two dangers, both somewhat grave, likely to arise from an urgent campaign for centralization. Even if the movement makes as great progress as could reasonably be expected, for a generation to come a large share, if not a major portion, of rural pupils will still be taught in the small, isolated, district school; there is danger that this district school may be neglected. Moreover, increased school machinery always invites undue reliance upon machine-like methods. Centralization permits, but does not guarantee, greater efficiency. A system like this one must be vitalized by constant and close touch with the life and needs and aspirations of the rural community itself. Wherever centralization is not adopted, the consolidation of two or three schools--a modified form of centralization--may prove helpful. Where the district school still persists, there are one or two imperative requirements. Teachers must have considerably higher wages and longer tenure. There must be more efficient supervision. The state must assist in supporting the school, although only in part. The small schools must be correlated with some form of high school. The last point is of great importance because of the comparative absence in country communities of opportunity near at hand for _good_ high-school training. Agricultural education is distinctively technical, not in the restricted sense of mere technique, or even of applied science, but in the sense that it must be frankly vocational. It has to do with the preparation of men and women for the business of farming and for life in the rural community. Agricultural education should begin in the primary school. In this school the point of view, however, should be broadly pedagogical rather than immediately vocational. Fortunately, the wise teaching of nature-study, the training of pupils to know and to love nature, the constant illustrations from the rural environment, the continual appeal to personal observation and experience, absolute loyalty to the farm point of view, are not only sound pedagogy, but form the best possible background for future vocational study. Whether we call this early work "nature-study" or call it "agriculture" matters less than that the fundamental principle be recognized. It must first of all _educate_. The greatest difficulty in introducing such work into the primary school is to secure properly equipped teachers. Perhaps the most stupendous undertaking in agricultural education is the adequate development of secondary education in agriculture. The overwhelming majority of young people who secure any agricultural schooling whatever must get it in institutions that academically are of secondary grade. This is a huge task. If developed to supply existing needs, it will call for an enormous expenditure of money and for the most careful planning. From the teaching view-point it is a difficult problem. Modern agriculture is based upon the sciences; it will not do, therefore, to establish schools in the mere art of farming. But these agricultural high schools must deal with pupils who are comparatively immature, and who almost invariably have had no preparation in science. Nor should the courses at these schools be ultra-technical. They are to prepare men and women for life on the farm--men and women who are to lead in rural development, and who must get some inkling at least of the real farm question and its solution. The agricultural school, therefore, presents a problem of great difficulty. A perennial question in agricultural education is: What is the function of the agricultural college? We have not time to trace the history of these colleges, nor to elaborate the various views relative to their mission. But let us for a moment discuss their proper function in the light of the proposition that the preservation of the farmers' status is the real farm problem; for the college can be justified only as it finds its place among the social agencies helpful in the solution of the farm question. In so far as the agricultural college, through its experiment station or otherwise, is an organ of research, it should carry its investigations into the economic and sociological fields, as well as pursue experiments in soil fertility and animal nutrition. In the teaching of students, the agricultural college will continue the important work of training men for agricultural research, agricultural teaching, and expert supervision of various agricultural enterprises. But the college should put renewed emphasis upon its ability to send well-trained men to the farms, there to live their lives, there to find their careers, and there to lead in the movements for rural progress. A decade ago it was not easy to find colleges which believed that this could be done, and some agricultural educators have even disavowed such a purpose as a proper object of the colleges. But the strongest agricultural colleges today have pride in just such a purpose. And why not? We not only need men thus trained as leaders in every rural community, but, if the farming business cannot be made to offer a career to a reasonable number of college-trained men, it is a sure sign that only by the most herculean efforts can the farmers maintain their status as a class. If agriculture must be turned over wholly to the untrained and to the half-trained, if it cannot satisfy the ambition of strong, well-educated men and women, its future, from the social point of view, is indeed gloomy. The present-day course of study in the agricultural college does not, however, fully meet this demand for rural leadership. The farm problem has been regarded as a technical question, and a technical training has been offered the student. The agricultural college, therefore, needs "socializing." Agricultural economics and rural sociology should occupy a large place in the curriculum. The men who go from the college to the farm should appreciate the significance of the agricultural question, and should be trained to organize their forces for genuine rural progress. The college should, as far as possible, become the leader in the whole movement for solving the farm problem. The farm home has not come in for its share of attention in existing schemes of agricultural education. The kitchen and the dining-room have as much to gain from science as have the dairy and the orchard. The inspiration of vocational knowledge must be the possession of her who is the entrepreneur of the family, the home-maker. The agricultural colleges through their departments of domestic science--better, of "home-making"--should inaugurate a comprehensive movement for carrying to the farm home a larger measure of the advantages which modern science is showering upon humanity. The agricultural college must also lead in a more adequate development of extension teaching. Magnificent work has already been done through farmers' institutes, reading courses, co-operative experiments, demonstrations, and correspondence. But the field is so immense, the number of people involved so enormous, the difficulties of reaching them so many, that it offers a genuine problem, and one of peculiar significance, not only because of the generally recognized need of adult education, but also because of the isolation of the farmers. It should be said that in no line of rural betterment has so much progress been made in America as in agricultural education. Merely to describe the work that is being done through nature-study and agriculture in the public schools, through agricultural schools, through our magnificent agricultural colleges, through farmers' institutes, and especially through the experiment stations and the federal Department of Agriculture in agricultural research and in the distribution of the best agricultural information--merely to inventory these movements properly would take the time available for this discussion. What has been said relative to agricultural education is less in way of criticism of existing methods than in way of suggestion as to fundamental needs. THE ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS PROBLEM Wide generalizations as to the exact moral situation in the rural community are impossible. Conditions have not been adequately studied. It is probably safe to say that the country environment is extremely favorable for pure family life, for temperance, and for bodily and mental health. To picture the country a paradise is, however, mere silliness. There are in the country, as elsewhere, evidences of vulgarity in language, of coarseness in thought, of social impurity, of dishonesty in business. There is room in the country for all the ethical teaching that can be given. Nor is it easy to discuss the country church question. Conditions vary in different parts of the Union, and no careful study has been made of the problem. As a general proposition, it may be said that there are too many churches in the country, and that these are illy supported. Consequently, they have in many cases inferior ministers. Sectarianism is probably more divisive than in the city, not only because of the natural conservatism of the people and a natural disinclination to change their views, but because sectarian quarrels are perhaps more easily fomented and less easily harmonized than anywhere else. Moreover, in the city a person can usually find a denomination to his liking. In the country, even with the present overchurched condition, this is difficult. The ideal solution of the country church problem is to have in each rural community one strong church adequately supported, properly equipped, ministered to by an able man--a church which leads in community service. The path to the realization of such an ideal is rough and thorny. Church federation, however, promises large results in this direction and should be especially encouraged. Whatever outward form the solution of the country church question may take, there seem to be several general principles involved in a satisfactory attempt to meet the issue. In the first place, the country church offers a problem by itself, socially considered. Methods successful in the city may not succeed in the country. The country church question must then be studied thoroughly and on the ground. Again, the same principle of financial aid to be utilized in the case of the schools must be invoked here. The wealth of the whole church must contribute to the support of the church everywhere. The strong must help the weak. The city must help the country. But this aid must be given by co-operation, not by condescension. The demand cannot be met by home missionary effort nor by church-building contributions; the principle goes far deeper than that. Some device must be secured which binds together the whole church, along denominational lines if must be, for a full development of church work in every community in the land. Furthermore, there is supreme necessity for adding dignity to the country parish. Too often at present the rural parish is regarded either as a convenient laboratory for the clerical novice, or as an asylum for the decrepit or inefficient. The country parish must be a parish for our ablest and strongest. The ministry of the most Christlike must be to the hill-towns of Galilee as well as to Jerusalem. There is still another truth that the country church cannot afford to ignore. The rural church question is peculiarly interwoven with the industrial and social problems of the farm. A declining agriculture cannot foster a growing church. An active church can render especially strong service to a farm community, in its influence upon the religious life, the home life, the educational life, the social life, and even upon the industrial life. Nowhere else are these various phases of society's activities so fully members one of another as in the country. The country church should co-operate with other rural social agencies. This means that the country pastor should assume a certain leadership in movements for rural progress. He is splendidly fitted, by the nature of his work and by his position in the community, to co-operate with earnest farmers for the social and economic, as well as the moral and spiritual, upbuilding of the farm community. But he must know the farm problem. Here is an opportunity for theological seminaries: let them make rural sociology a required subject. And, better, here is a magnificent field of labor for the right kind of young men. The country pastorate may thus prove to be, as it ought to be, a place of honor and rare privilege. In any event, the country church, to render its proper service, not alone must minister to the individual soul, but must throw itself into the struggle for rural betterment, must help solve the farm problem. FEDERATION OF FORCES The suggestion that the country church should ally itself with other agencies of rural progress may be carried a step farther. Rural social forces should be federated. The object of such federation is to emphasize the real nature of the farm problem, to interest many people in its solution, and to secure the co-operation of the various rural social agencies, each of which has its sphere, but also its limitations. The method of federation is to bring together, for conference and for active work, farmers--especially representatives of farmers' organizations, agricultural educators, rural school-teachers and supervisors, country clergymen, country editors; in fact, all who have a genuine interest in the farm problem. Thus will come clearer views of the questions at issue, broader plans for reform, greater incentive to action, and more rapid progress. CONCLUSION In this brief analysis of the social problems of American farmers it has been possible merely to outline those aspects of the subject that seem to be fundamental. It is hoped that the importance of each problem has been duly emphasized, that the wisest methods of progress have been indicated, and that the relation of the various social agencies to the main question has been clearly brought out. Let us leave the subject by emphasizing once more the character of the ultimate farm problem. This problem may be stated more concretely, if not more accurately, than was done at the opening of the paper, by saying that the ideal of rural betterment is to preserve upon our farms the typical American farmer. The American farmer has been essentially a middle-class man. It is this type we must maintain. Agriculture must be made to yield returns in wealth, in opportunity, in contentment, in social position, sufficient to attract and to hold to it a class of intelligent, educated American citizens. This is an end vital to the preservation of American democratic ideals. It is a result that will not achieve itself; social agencies must be invoked for its accomplishment. It demands the intelligent and earnest co-operation of all who love the soil and who seek America's permanent welfare. FOOTNOTE: [1] The material for this chapter is taken from an address entitled "Social Problems of American Farmers," which was read before the Congress of Arts and Science, section of The Rural Community, at St. Louis, September, 1904. THE OUTLOOK CHAPTER III THE EXPANSION OF FARM LIFE Narrowness is perhaps the charge most often brought against American farm life. To a certain extent this charge may be just, though the comparisons that usually lead up to the conclusion do not always discriminate. It must be remembered that there are degrees of desirability in farm life, and that at the least there are multitudes of rural communities where bright flowers still bloom, where the shade is refreshing, and the waters are sweet. But, granting for the time that in the main rural life is less pleasant, less rich, less expansive than city life, we shall urge that this era of restriction is rapidly drawing to a close. There are forces at work that are molding rural life by new standards, and the old régime is passing. We shall soon be able to say of the country that "old things have passed away; all things have become new." This statement may seem too optimistic to some who can marshal an array of facts to prove that bigotry, narrowness, and the whole family of ills begotten by isolation still thrive in the country. It is true that our picture is not all of rose tints. But what of that? If it were not true there would be no farm problem; the country would have to convert the town. The fact remains that rural life is undergoing a rapid expansion. Materially, socially, and intellectually, the farmer is broadening. Old prejudices are fading. The plowman is no longer content to keep his eye forever on the furrow. The revival has been in slow progress for some time and has not yet reached its zenith; indeed, the movement is but well under way. For while the new day came long ago to some rural communities and they are basking in a noonday sun, yet in far too many localities the faintest gray of dawn is all that rouses hope. The fundamental change that is taking place is the gradual adoption of the new agriculture. "Book-farmin'" is still decried, and many "perfessers" have a rocky road to travel in their attempts to guide the masses through the labyrinth of scientific knowledge that has been constructed during the last decade or two. This difficulty has not been wholly the farmer's fault--the scientist would often have been more persuasive had his wings been clipped. But there is a decided "getting together" nowadays--the farmer and the man of science have at last found common ground. And while the pendulum of agricultural prosperity shall always swing to and fro, there are, to change the figure, reasons for believing that an increasing number of farmers have rooted the tree of permanent success. To enumerate some of these reasons: (1) Thousands of farmers are farming on a scientific basis. They use the results of soil and fertilizer analysis; they cultivate, not to kill weeds so much as to conserve moisture; horticulturists spray their trees according to formulas laid down by experimenters; dairymen use the "Babcock test" for determining the fat content of milk; stock-feeders utilize the scientists' feeding rations. (2) The number of specialists among farmers is increasing. This is a sign of progress surely. More and more farmers are coming to push a single line of work. (3) New methods are being rapidly adopted. Fifteen years ago hardly a fruit-grower sprayed for insect and fungus pests; today it is rare to find one who does not. The co-operative creamery has not only revolutionized the character of the butter product made by the factory system, but it has set the pace for thousands of private dairymen who are now making first-class dairy butter. (4) In general the whole idea of _intensive_ farming is gaining ground. This specialization, or intensification, of agriculture makes a new demand, upon those who pursue it, in the way of mental and business training. This training is being furnished by a multitude of agencies, and the younger generation of farmers is taking proper advantage of the opportunities thus offered. What are some of these regular agencies? (1) An alert farm press, containing contributions from both successful farmers and scientific workers. (2) Farmers' institutes, which are traveling schools of technical instruction for farmers. (3) The bulletins issued by the government experiment stations located in every state, and by the federal Department of Agriculture. (4) Special winter courses (of from two to twelve weeks), offered at nearly all the agricultural colleges of the country, for instruction in practical agriculture. (5) Regular college courses in agriculture at these same colleges. (6) Extension instruction by lectures and correspondence. (7) A growing book literature of technical agriculture. (8) More encouraging than all else is the spirit of inquiry that prevails among farmers the country over--the recognition that there is a basis of science in agriculture. No stronger pleas for the advancement of agricultural education can be found than those that have recently been formulated by farmers themselves. If this regeneration of farm life were wholly material it would be worth noting; for it promises a prosperity built on foundations sufficiently strong to withstand ordinary storms. Yet this is but a chapter of the story. Not only are our American farmers making a study of their business, bringing to it the resources of advancing knowledge and good mental training, and hence deriving from it the strong, alert mental character that comes to all business men who pursue equally intelligent methods, but the farmers are by no means neglecting their duty to broaden along general intellectual lines. Farmers have always been interested in politics; there is no reason to think that their interest is declining. The Grange and other organizations keep their attention on current problems. Traveling libraries, school libraries, and Grange libraries are giving new opportunities for general reading, and the farmer's family is not slow to accept the chance. Low prices for magazines and family papers bring to these periodicals an increasing list from the rural offices. Rural free mail delivery promises, among many other results of vast importance, to enlarge the circulation of daily papers among farmers not less than tenfold. The really great lesson that farmers are rapidly learning is to work together. They have been the last class to organize, and jealousy, distrust, and isolation have made such organizations as they have had comparatively ineffective. But gradually they are learning to compromise, to work in harmony, to sink merely personal views, to trust their own leaders, to keep troth in financially co-operative projects. There will be no Farmers' Party organized; but the higher politics is gaining among farmers, and more and more independent voting may be expected from the rural precincts. Farmers are learning to pool such of their interests as can be furthered by legislation. It is also true that the whole aspect of social life in the country is undergoing a profound evolutionary movement. Farmers are meeting one another more frequently than they used to. They have more picnics and holidays. They travel more. They go sight-seeing. They take advantage of excursions. Their social life is more mobile than formerly. Farmers have more comforts and luxuries than ever before. They dress better than they did. More of them ride in carriages than formerly. They buy neater and better furniture. The newer houses are prettier and more comfortable than their predecessors. Bicycles and cameras are not uncommon in the rural home. Rural telephone exchanges are relatively a new thing, but the near future will see the telephone a part of the ordinary furniture of the rural household; while electric car lines promise to be the final link in the chain of advantages that is rapidly transforming rural life--robbing it of its isolation, giving it balance and poise, softening its hard outlines, and in general achieving its thorough regeneration. This sketch is no fancy tale. The movement described is genuine and powerful. The busy city world may not note the signs of progress. Well-minded philanthropists may feel that the rural districts are in special need of their services. Even to the watchers on the walls there is much of discouragement in the advancement that _isn't_ being made. Yet it needs no prophet's eye to see that a vast change for the better in rural life and conditions is now in progress. No student of these conditions expects or desires that the evolution shall be Acadian in its results. It is to be hoped indeed that country sweets shall not lose their delights; that the farmer himself may find in his surroundings spiritual and mental ambrosia. But what is wanted, and what is rapidly coming, is the breaking down of those barriers which have so long differentiated country from urban life; the extinction of that social ostracism which has been the farmer's fate; the obliteration of that line which for many a youth has marked the bounds of opportunity: in fact, the creation of a rural society whose advantages, rewards, prerogatives, chances for service, means of culture, and pleasures are representative of the best and sanest life that the accumulated wisdom of the ages can prescribe for mankind. CHAPTER IV THE NEW FARMER All farmers may be divided into three classes. There is the "old" farmer, there is the "new" farmer, and there is the "mossback." The old farmer represents the ancient régime. The new farmer is the modern business agriculturist. The mossback is a mediaeval survival. The old farmer was in his day a new farmer; he was "up with the times," as the times then were. The new farmer is merely the worthy son of a noble sire; he is the modern embodiment of the old farmer's progressiveness. The mossback is the man who tries to use the old methods under the new conditions; he is not "up" with the present times, but "back" with the old times. Though he lives and moves in the present, he really has his being in the past. The old farmer is the man who conquered the American continent. His axe struck the crown from the monarchs of the wood, and the fertile farms of Ohio are the kingdom he created. He broke the sod of the rich prairies, and the tasseling cornfields of Iowa tell the story of his deeds. He hitched his plow to the sun, and his westward lengthening furrows fill the world's granary. The new farmer has his largest conquests yet to make. But he has put his faith in the strong arm of science; he has at his hand the commercial mechanism of a world of business. He believes he will win because he is in league with the ongoing forces of our civilization. The mossback cannot win, because he prefers a flintlock to a Mauser. He has his eyes upon the ground, and uses snails instead of stars for horses. The old farmer was a pioneer, and he had all the courage, enterprise, and resourcefulness of the pioneer. He was virile, above all things else. He owned and controlled everything in sight. He was a state-builder. Half a century ago, in the Middle West, the strong men and the influential families were largely farmers. Even professional men owned and managed farms, frequently living upon them. The smell of the soil sweetened musty law books, deodorized the doctor's den, and floated as incense above the church altars. The new farmer lives in a day when the nation is not purely an agricultural nation, but is also a manufacturing and a trading nation. He belongs no longer to the dominant class, so far as commercial and social and political influence are concerned. But none of these things move him. For he realizes that out of this seeming decline of agriculture grow his best opportunities. He discards pioneer methods because pioneering is not now an effective art. The mossback sees perhaps clearly enough these changes, but he does not understand their meaning, nor does he know how to meet them. He is dazzled by the romantic halo of the good old times, dumfounded by the electric energy of the present, discouraged and distracted by the pressure of forces that crush his hopes and stifle his strength. Economically, the old farmer was not a business man, but a barterer. The rule of barter still survives in the country grocery where butter and eggs are traded for sugar and salt. The old farmer was industrially self-sufficient. He did not farm on a commercial basis. He raised apples for eating and for cider, not for market--there was no apple market. He had very little ready money, he bought and sold few products. He traded. Even his grain, which afterward became the farmer's great cash crop, was raised in small quantities and ground at the nearest mill--not for export, but for a return migration to the family flour-barrel. The new farmer has always existed--because he is the old farmer growing. He has kept pace with our industrial evolution. When the régime of barter passed away, he ceased to barter. When the world's market became a fact, he raised wheat for the world's market. As agriculture became a business, he became a business man. As agricultural science began to contribute to the art of farming, he studied applied science. As industrial education developed, he founded and patronized institutions for agricultural education. As alertness and enterprise began to be indispensable in commercial activity, he grew alert and enterprising. The mossback is the man who has either misread the signs of the times, or who has not possessed the speed demanded in the two-minute class. He is the old farmer gone to seed. He tries to fit the old methods to the new régime. But it is not sufficient to picture the new farmer. You must explain him. What is it that makes the new farmer? Who is he? What are his tools? In the first place, you cannot explain the new farmer unless you know the old farmer. You cannot have the new farmer unless you also have the mossback. The new farmer is a comparative person, as it were. You have to define him in terms of the mossback. The contrast is not between the old farmer and the new, for that is merely a question of relative conditions in different epochs of time. The contrast is between the new farmer and the mossback, for that is a question of men and of their relative efficiency as members of the industrial order. Then, of course, you must observe the individual traits that characterize the new farmer, such as keenness, business instinct, readiness to adopt new methods, and, in fact, all the qualities that make a man a success today in any calling. For the new farmer, in respect to his personal qualities, is not a sport, a phenomenon. He does not stand out as a distinct and peculiar specimen. He is a successful American citizen who grows corn instead of making steel rails. But you have not yet explained the new farmer. These personal traits do not explain him. It may be possible to explain an individual and his success by calling attention to his characteristics, and yet you cannot completely analyze him and his career unless you understand the conditions under which he works--the industrial and social environment. Much less can you explain a class of people by describing their personal characteristics. You must reach out into the great current of life that is about them, and discern the direction and power of that current. Now, the conditions that tend to make the new farmer possible may be grouped in an old-fashioned way under two heads. In the old scientific phrases the two forces that make the new farmer are the "struggle for life" and "environment," or, to use other words, competition and opportunity. Competition has pressed severely upon the farmer, competition at home and competition from other countries. At one time the heart of the wheat-growing industry of this country was near Rochester, N. Y., in the Genesee Valley; but the canal and the railway soon made possible the occupation of the great granary of the west. A multitude of ambitious young men soon took possession of that granary, and the flour-mills were moved from Rochester to Minneapolis. This is an old story, but the same forces are still at work. There has been developed a world-market. The sheep of the Australian bush have become competitors of the flocks that feed upon the green Vermont mountains and the Ohio hills. The plains of Argentina grow wheat for London. Russia, Siberia, and India pour a constant stream of golden grain into the industrial centers of Western Europe, and the price of American wheat is fixed in London. These forces have produced still another kind of competition; namely, specialization among farmers. Localities particularly adapted to special crops are becoming centers where skill and intelligence bring the industry to its height. The truck-farming of the South Atlantic region, the fruit growing of western Michigan, the butter factories of Wisconsin and Minnesota, have crowded almost to suffocation the small market-gardener of the northern town, the man with a dozen peach trees, and the farmer who keeps two cows and trades the surplus butter for calico. These things have absolutely forced progress upon the farmer. It is indeed a "struggle for life." Out of it comes the "survival of the fittest," and the fittest is the new farmer. But along with competition has come opportunity. Indeed, out of these very facts that have made competition so strenuous spring the most marvelous opportunities for the progressive farmer. Specialization brings out the best that there is in the locality and the man. It gives a chance to apply science to farming. Our transportation system permits the peach growers of Grand Rapids to place their crops at a profit in the markets of Buffalo and Pittsburg; the rich orchards and vineyards of Southern California find their chief outlet in the cities of the manufacturing Northeast--three thousand miles away. During the forty years, from 1860, the exports of wheat from this country increased from four million bushels annually to one hundred and forty million bushels; of corn, from three and one-third million bushels to one hundred and seventy-five million bushels; of beef products, from twenty million pounds to three hundred and seventy million pounds; of pork products, from ninety-eight million pounds to seventeen hundred million pounds. And not only do the grain and stock farmers find this outlet for their surplus products, but we are beginning to ship abroad high-grade fruit and first-class dairy products in considerable quantities. Low rates of freight, modern methods of refrigeration, express freight trains, fast freight steamers--the whole machinery of the commercial and financial world are at the service of the new farmer. Science, also, has found a world of work in ministering to the needs of agriculture, and in a hundred different ways the new farmer finds helps that have sprung up from the broadcast sowing of the hand of science. But perhaps even more remarkable opportunities come to the new farmer in those social agencies that tend to remove the isolation of the country; that assist in educating the farmer broadly; that give farmers as a class more influence in legislature and congress, and that, in fine, make rural life more worth the living. The new farmer cannot be explained until one is somewhat familiar with the character of these rural social agencies. They have already been enumerated and classified in a previous chapter; they will be more fully described in subsequent chapters. It must not be supposed that every successful farmer is necessarily a supporter of all of these social agencies. He may be a prosperous farmer just because he is good at the art of farming, or because he is a keen business man. But more and more he is coming to see that these things are opportunities that he cannot afford to disregard. Indeed, some of these institutions are largely the creation of the new farmer himself. He is using them as tools to fashion a better rural social structure. But they also fashion him. They serve to explain him, in great part. Competition inspires the farmer to his best efforts. The opportunity offered by these new and growing advantages gives him the implements wherewith to make his rightful niche in the social and industrial system. It would be erroneous to suppose that the new farmer is a _rara avis_. He is not. The spirit pervading the ranks of farmers is rapidly changing. We have been in a state of transition in agriculture. But the farther shore has been reached and the bridge is possible. The army of rural advancement is being recruited with great rapidity. The advance guard is more than a body of scouts, it is an effective brigade. I want also to make a plea for the mossback. He must not be condemned utterly. Remember that competition among farmers has been intense; that rural environment breeds conservatism. Remember also that the farmer cannot change his methods as rapidly as can some other business men. Remember, too, that there is comparatively small chance for speculation in agriculture; that large aggregates of capital cannot be collected for farming, and consequently, that the approved means for securing immense wealth, great industrial advancement, and huge enterprises are nearly absent in agriculture. Remember that the voices calling from the city deplete the country of many good farmers as well as of many poor ones. Moreover, there are many men on farms who perhaps don't care for farming, but who for some reason cannot get away. On the farm a man need not starve; he can make a livelihood. Doubtless this simple fact is responsible for a multitude of mossbacks. They can live without strenuous endeavor. Possibly a good many of us are strenuous because we are pushed into it. So I have a good deal of sympathy for the mossback, and a mild sort of scorn for some of his critics, who probably could not do any better than he is doing if they essayed the gentle art of agriculture. I also have sympathy for the mossback particularly because he is the man that needs attention. The new farmer takes the initiative. He patronizes these opportunities that we have been talking about. But the mossback, because he is discouraged, or because he is ignorant, or perhaps merely because he is conservative, takes little interest in these things. About one farmer in ten belongs to some sort of farmers' association. Thousands of farmers do not take an agricultural paper, and perhaps millions of them have not read an agricultural book. Right here comes in another fact. Every "new" farmer when full grown competes with every mossback. The educated farmer makes it still harder for the ignorant farmer to progress. The future of the American farmer is one of the most pregnant social problems with which we have to deal. There is indeed an issue involved in the success of the new farmer that is still more fundamental than any yet mentioned. The old farmer had a social standing that made him essentially a middle-class man. He was a landholder, he was independent, he was successful. He was the typical American citizen. The old farmer was father to the best blood of America. His sons and his sons' sons have answered to the roll call of our country's warriors, statesmen, writers, captains of industry. Can the new farmer maintain the same relative social status? And if he can, is he to be an aristocrat, a landlord, a captain of industry, and to bear rule over the mossback? And is the tribe of mossbacks destined to increase and become a caste of permanent tenants or peasants? Is the future American farmer to be the typical new farmer of the present, or are we traveling toward a social condition in which the tillers of the soil will be underlings? Is there coming a time when the "man with the hoe" will be the true picture of the American farmer, with a low standard of living, without ideals, without a chance for progress? We must eliminate the mossback. It is to be done largely by education and by co-operation. There must be a campaign for rural progress. There must be a union of the country school teacher, of the agricultural college professor, of the rural pastor, of the country editor, with the farmers themselves, for the production of an increased crop of new farmers. Anything that makes farm life more worth living, anything that banishes rural isolation, anything that dignifies the business of farming and makes it more prosperous, anything that broadens the farmer's horizon, anything that gives him a greater grasp of the rural movement, anything that makes him a better citizen, a better business man, or a better _man_, means the passing of the mossback. CHAPTER V CULTURE FROM THE CORN LOT[2] The question of questions that the college student asks himself is, What am I going to be? The surface query is, What am I going to _do_? But in his heart of hearts he ponders the deeper questions: What may I become in real intellectual and moral worth? How large a man, measured by the divine standards, will it be possible for me to grow into? These are the great questions because growth is the great end of life. That is what we are here for, to grow. To develop all our talents, all our possibilities, to increase our native powers of body, mind, and soul--this is life. It is important that we have a vocation. We must do something, and do it well. But the real end is not in working at a profession but in developing our abilities. Our symmetrical growth is the measure of our success as human beings. As the student looks out over the ocean of life and scans the horizon for signs of the wise course for him to take, he should decide whether the particular mode of life that now appeals to him will yield the greatest possible measure of growth. He must consult his tastes, his talents, his opportunities, his training. And the test question is, Will this line of work yield me the growth, the culture, I desire? But what are the elements that yield culture to an individual? Using culture in a very broad sense as a synonym for growth, we may say that the things contributing most to the culture of the average person are his work, his leisure, and his service to others. We may now try to answer the question we started with, as it presents itself to many a student in the agricultural colleges of our country. Will agriculture as a business, will the farm life and environment, contribute to the growth which I desire for myself? Can I extract culture from the corn lot? Let us first see if the work or vocation of farming gives culture. My answer would be that there is scarcely an occupation to be named that requires broader knowledge, more accurate observation, or the exercise of better judgment than does modern farming. The farmer deals with the application of many sciences. He must be an alert business man. He requires executive talent of no mean order. The study of his occupation in its wider phases leads him into direct contact with political economy, social movements, and problems of government. The questions confronting him as a farmer relate themselves to the leading realms of human knowledge and experience. I speak of course of the progressive farmer, who makes the best use of his opportunities. He can hardly hope to become immensely wealthy, but he can maintain that modest standard of living that usually is the lot of our most useful and cultured people and that ministers as a rule most fully to the ideal family life. The truly modern farmer cannot help growing. There is much hard work on the farm. Yet on the whole there is fully as much leisure as in most other occupations. There is time to read, and books are today so easily accessible that living in the country is no bar to the bookshelf. Better than time to read is time to think. The farmer has always been a man who pondered things in his heart. He has had a chance to meditate. No culture is sound except it has been bought by much thinking; all else is veneer. Farm life gives in good measure this time to think. But it is in nature that the farmer finds or may find his most fertile field for culture. Here he is at home. Here he may revel if he will. Here he may find the sources of mind-liberation and of soul-emancipation. He may be the envy of everyone who dwells in the city because he lives so near to nature's heart. Bird and flower, sky and tree, rock and running brook speak to him a various language. He may read God's classics, listen to the music of divine harmonies, and roam the picture galleries of the Eternal. So too in his dealings with his kind, he lives close to men and women who are frank, virile, direct, clean, independent. The culture coming from such associations is above price. One learns to pierce all shams, to honor essential manhood, to keep pure the fountains of sympathy, ambition, and love. Thus on the farm one may find full opportunity for that second means of culture, leisure. Another powerful agency for cultivating the human soul is service. Indeed, service is the dynamic of life. To be of use is the ambition that best stimulates real growth. Culture is the end of life, the spirit of service the motive power. So it is of this I would speak perhaps most fully, not only because it is a vital means of culture, but because it is also peculiarly the privilege and duty of the college man and the college woman. For let it be said that if any college student secures a diploma of any degree without having been seized upon by a high ambition to be of some use in the work of helping humanity forward, then have that person's years of study been in vain, and his teaching also vain. The college man comes not to be ministered unto but to minister. He has been poorly taught if he leaves college with no thought but for his material success. He must have had a vision of service, his lips touched with a coal from the altar of social usefulness, and his heart cultivated to respond to the call for any need he can supply, "Here am I, send me." I think it may safely be said that there is no field which offers better chance for leadership to the average college man or woman than does the farm. Take, for instance, politics. The majority of our states are agricultural states. The majority of our counties are agricultural counties. The agricultural vote is the determining factor in a large proportion of our elections. It follows inevitably that honest, strong farmers with the talent for leadership and the ability to handle themselves in competition with other political leaders have a marvelously fine chance for useful service. So is it in educational questions. Nowhere may the citizen come into closer contact with the educational problems of the day than through service on the rural school board. If he brings to this position trained intelligence, some acquaintance with educational questions, and a desire to keep in touch with the advancement of the times, he can do for his community a service that can hardly be imagined. Take another field--that of organization for farmers, constituting a problem of great significance. As yet this class of people is relatively unorganized, but the movement is growing and the need of well-trained leadership is vital. I cannot speak too strongly of the chance here offered for active, intelligent, masterful men and women in being of use as leaders and officials in the Grange and other farmers' organizations. So with the church question. One of the reasons for the slow progress of the country church is the conservatism in the pews as well as in the pulpit. The ardent member of the Young Men's Christian Association in college may feel that, in the country, there will be no outlet for his ambition to be of religious use to his fellow-men. This is a mistake. The work of the Young Men's Christian Association itself in the country districts is just beginning, and promises large growth. Wider service in the church, a community federation or union of different churches, the work of young people's societies and of the Sunday schools--all these afford abundant opportunity for the man or the woman qualified and willing. There are other lines of usefulness. Although I have stated that on the farm the opportunities for personal culture are great, it must be confessed that these opportunities are not fully utilized by the average farmer's family. Here then is a very wide field, especially for the farmer's wife. For if she is a cultivated college woman, she can through the woman's club, the Grange, the school, the nature-study club, the traveling library, and in scores of ways exercise an influence for good on the community that may have far greater results than would come from her efforts if expended in the average city. The farm home too has latent capacities that are yet to be developed. It ought to be the ideal home and, in many cases, it is. But there are not enough of such ideal homes in the country. No college woman with a desire to do her full service in the world ought for an instant to despise the chance for service as it exists on the farm. All of these opportunities so briefly suggested might be enlarged upon almost indefinitely, but the mere mention of them emphasizes the call for this service and this leadership. Nowhere are leaders more needed than in the country. The country has been robbed of many of its strongest and best. The city and perhaps the nation are gainers: but the country has suffered. From one point of view, the future of our farming communities depends upon the quality of leadership that we are to find there during the next generation. So we come back to our question, Can the farm be made to yield to the man or woman, residing upon it and making a living from it, that measure of growth and all-round development that the ambitious person wishes to attain? And our answer is, Yes. In its work, its leisure, its field for service, it may minister to sound culture. If you love the life and work of the farm, do not hesitate to choose that occupation for fear of becoming narrow or stunted. You can live there the full, free life. You can grow to your full stature there. You can get culture from the corn lot. FOOTNOTE: [2] Addressed to students in an agricultural college. THE AGENCIES OF PROGRESS CHAPTER VI EDUCATION FOR THE FARMER The two generations living subsequent to the year 1875 are to be witnesses of an era in American history that will be known as the age of industrial education. These years are to be the boundaries of a period when the general principle that every individual shall be properly trained for his or her occupation in life is to receive its practical application. Future generations will doubtless extend marvelously the limits to which the principle can be pushed in its ministrations to human endeavor, but we are in the time when the principle is first to receive general acceptation and is to be regarded as a fundamentally necessary fact of human progress. We are already "witnesses of the light." Even within the memory of young men has it come to pass that the old wine skins of the old educational institutions have been filled with the new wine of science and of knowledge and training applied to the industries and businesses of life. Agriculture has perhaps been slow to feel the current of the new wine as it flows from the wine press of fast-growing industrial and social need. But the least hopeful of us can, I am sure, already see signs of a vast awakening. The farm, as well as the pulpit, the bar, the schoolroom, the shop, the counting-room, is breathing in the new idea that knowledge and training can be made of use to every man. This awakening is due not merely to the desire of agriculturists to be in fashion, nor to the efforts of agricultural pedagogues, but to a real need. It is common knowledge that in America we have not farmed, but have mined the soil. We have "skimmed the cream" of fertility, and passed on to conquer new areas of virgin soil. This pioneer farming has required hard work, enterprise, courage, and all the noble traits of character that have made our American pioneers famous and that have within a century subdued a wilderness to civilization. But the farmer of today faces a new situation. The fertile lands are fairly well occupied. The old lands are depleted. These old lands must be handled skilfully if they are to produce profitably. They must be used because there is little else to use, and because they are near the best markets. Meantime, scientists have been studying the deep things of nature, and have been learning the laws that govern soil, plant, and animal. Thus we have the farmer's need met by the theorist's discoveries. The farmer, to avail himself of these discoveries must know their meaning and be able to apply the general principle to the specific case. This means agricultural education. Then again, the consumption of high-class products increases at least as rapidly as does our wealth. The demand comes not alone from the rich, but from the middle classes of our cities. Skilled artisans are large consumers of choice meats, fruits, and vegetables. To grow these high-grade products means skill, and skill means training, and training in the large sense means education. The need for agricultural education, is, then, a real and vital one. It is pressed upon us by economic and social conditions. It is in line with the movement of the age. In discussing agricultural education, we must not forget that the farmer is also a citizen and a man. He should be an intelligent citizen, and should therefore study questions of government. As a man, he should be the equal of other men of his same social rank. He therefore needs a good general education. He is more than mere farmer. While as farmer he must connect his business with its environment and out of his surroundings gain sound culture; while he should know nature, not only as its master, but as its friend; he should also be in sympathy with all that makes modern civilization worth while. And even as mere farmer, he finds himself face to face with grave social problems. He must not only produce but he must sell, and his selling powers are governed by conditions of the market, by transportation facilities and practices, and are affected by the laws of the land. Hence he must be a student of these problems and must know the broad phases of agriculture and its relations to other industries. No intelligent man doubts the need of agricultural education. Let us, then, say a word about the kind of education demanded. This question is settled very largely by the discussion we have just had about the need of this education. First of all, this education will give a fair mastery of the principles that govern proper soil management and plant and animal growth. This is fundamental. The farmer is dealing with natural laws, and he must know in them their applications. He cannot be blind to their dominance. They insist on recognition. They are jealous masters and good servants. Nature serves only the man who obeys her. To obey he must know. The truth shall make him free. How to secure larger crops of better products at less cost and still maintain soil fertility, is the first demand of modern agriculture, and its solution depends in large measure upon education. But education does not stop here. The farmer is also a seller as well as a producer. He is a business man. He is manager of an industry. He is an investor of capital. So the question will arise, Can he get any help from education in the handling of the business phases of his farm? He certainly can. You cannot teach a man business in the sense of supplying him with good sense, business judgment, ability to handle men, and so on. But you can study the general conditions that govern the business of agriculture, and you can report the results of your researches to the practical farmer; and he, if he is willing, may learn much that will be helpful to him in deciding the many difficult questions that confront him as a business man. Farm administration in its largest sense will, then, be a most important phase of agricultural education. It is quite possible for the individual farmer to succeed admirably if he is equipped with a sound training in the principles of production and in farm management. But there are still larger questions that farmers as a class must meet if agriculture is to have its full success and if the farmer himself is to occupy the social position he ought to have. Agriculture is an industry among industries. Farmers are a class among classes. As an industry, agriculture has relations to other industries. It is subject to economic laws. It involves something more than growing and selling. The nature of the market, railroad rates, effects of the tariff and of taxation, are questions vital to agriculture. So with the farmers socially considered. Their opportunities for social life, their school facilities, their church privileges, their associations and organizations--all these are important matters. So agricultural education will not fail to call attention to these larger questions. The well-educated farmer will, then, be trained in three lines of thought--first, that which deals with the growth of products; second, that which deals with the selling of products; and third, that which deals with agriculture as an industry and farmers as a class of people. We may next discuss as briefly as possible the methods by which agricultural education may be advanced. We may not consider all of them, but rather attend only to some of those agencies that seem of peculiar interest just at this time. There is one underlying requisite of successful agricultural education that is all-important. It is faith in agriculture. Any man to succeed grandly must have absolute faith in his business. So the farmer must believe in agriculture. Agriculture cannot attain its highest rank unless the men engaged in it believe in it most profoundly. They must believe that a man can make money in farming. They must love the farm life and surroundings. They must believe that the best days of agriculture are ahead of us, not behind us. They must believe that men can find in agriculture a chance to use brains and to develop talents and to utilize education. Agricultural education rests on this faith. Give us a state filled with such farmers and we can guarantee a strong system of agricultural education. But the seeds of education cannot grow in a soil barren of the richness of sentiment for and confidence in the farm. Our agricultural colleges have been criticized because they have graduated so few farmers. But the fault is not all with the colleges. The farmers also are to blame. They have not had faith enough in the farm to advise young men to go to college to prepare for farming. They admit the value of education for the law, for building railroads, but not for farming. This must be changed, is being changed. The last ten years have seen a revolution in this respect, and the result is a mighty increase in agricultural educational interest. One powerful means of agricultural education is the farmers' organization or association. All our dairy, horticultural, poultry, and live-stock associations are great educators. So of an organization like the Grange, its chief work is education. It brings mind in contact with mind; it gives chance for discussion and interchange of ideas; it trains in power of expression; it teaches the virtue of co-operation. Farmers blunder when they fail to encourage organization. Sometimes, out of foolish notions of independence, they neglect to unite their forces. They are utterly blind to their best interests when they do so. They should encourage organization if for no other reason than for the splendid educational advantages that flow from it. However, our chief interest is, perhaps, in those institutions that are formed purposely and especially for agricultural education and which are usually supported out of public funds. There are three great fields of endeavor in which these institutions are working. The first step is to know--to know the truth. So in agriculture we must know. Know what? Know how nature works. So the man of science studies the soil and finds out what plant-food it contains, how the water acts in it, what heat and air do, and the inter-relation of all these elements. He studies the plant and its habits and tries to discover how it grows and how it can be improved for man's use. He studies the animal and endeavors to learn what are the best foods for it and what laws govern its adaptation to human food. He studies climate and tries to find out what plants and animals are most appropriate to different locations. He studies injurious insects and diseases and devises remedies for them. He discovers, experiments. So we have research as the first term in agricultural education. The institutions of research are our experiment stations and United States Department of Agriculture. Their work may be likened to the plowing of the field. They strive to know how nature works, and how man can make use of her laws in the growing of plant and animal. The next thing is to teach. The farmer too must know. Knowledge confined to the scientist has little practical use. It is the farmer who can use it. Moreover, new teachers must be trained, new experimenters equipped, and leaders in every direction prepared. So we have agricultural colleges and schools. If experiment is to be likened to plowing, the work of the schools may be compared to sowing and cultivating. Agricultural colleges have been in existence in America almost fifty years. Their careers have been both inspiring and disappointing. They have had to train their own teachers, create a body of knowledge, break down the bars of educational prejudice. This work has taken time. The results justify the time and effort. For today agricultural education is becoming organized, the subjects of study are well planned, and competent men are teaching and experimenting. The disappointment is twofold. They have not graduated as many farmers as they should have. This is due not wholly to wrong notions in the colleges. It is, as suggested before, partly due to the lack of faith in agriculture on the part of the farmers themselves. But the colleges are in part to blame. Many of them have not been in close touch with the farmers. They have often been out of sympathy with the interests of the farmers. They have too frequently been servile imitators of the traditions of the older colleges, instead of striking out boldly on a line of original and helpful work for agriculture. Today, however, we see a rapid change going on in most of our agricultural colleges. They are seeking to help solve the farmers' difficulties. They are training young men for farm life. The farmers are responding to this new interest and are beginning to have great confidence in the colleges. It is sometimes said that most farmers who get an agricultural education cannot be trained in the colleges. Doubtless this is true. Probably a very small proportion even of educated farmers can or will graduate from a full course in an agricultural college. Many will do so. There is no reason why a large proportion of the graduates of our college courses in agriculture may not go to the farm. I have no sympathy with the idea that those courses are too elaborate for those young men who want to farm. It must be recognized, however, that even if our agricultural colleges shall graduate hundreds and thousands every year who return to the farm, it still leaves the great majority of farmers untouched in an educational way unless other means are devised. But there are other means at hand. We have first the agricultural school. The typical agricultural high school gives a course of two or three years, offering work of high-school grade in mathematics and English, with about half the time devoted to teaching in agriculture. Many young men want to get an insight into the principles of modern agriculture, but cannot afford time or money for college work. This course fits their need. A splendid school of this design has been in successful operation in Minnesota for more than a dozen years, and has nearly five hundred students. In Wisconsin there are two county schools of agriculture for a similar purpose. Other schools could be named. The agricultural colleges also offer shorter courses of college grade, perhaps of two years. These are very practical and useful courses. Not only that, but nearly all the colleges give special winter courses of from ten days to fourteen weeks. These are patronized by thousands of young men. So in many ways are the colleges meeting the need. We all agree that it is desirable for a young man to take a full college course, even in agriculture. But it is better to have a half-loaf than no bread. Yes, better to have a _slice_ than no bread. The colleges furnish the whole loaf, the half-loaf, and the slice. And young men are nourished by all. One reason why agricultural education has not made more rapid progress is because the children of the country schools have been taught in such a manner as to lead them to think that there is no chance for brains in farming. Both their home influence and their school atmosphere have, in most cases perhaps, been working against their choice of agriculture as a vocation. It therefore becomes important that these children shall be so taught that they can see the opportunity in farming. They must, moreover, be so trained that they will be nature students; for the farmer above all men must be a nature student. So we see the need of introducing into our rural schools nature-study for the young pupils and elementary agriculture for the older ones. This is being successfully accomplished in many cases, and is arousing the greatest interest and meeting with gratifying success. We shall within ten years have a new generation of young men and women ready for college who have had their eyes opened as never before to the beauties of nature and to the fascination there is in the farmer's task of using nature for his own advantage. But when we have increased the attendance at our agricultural colleges tenfold; when we have hundreds of agricultural schools teaching thousands of our youth the fundamentals of agriculture; when each rural school in our broad land is instilling into the minds of children the nearness and beauty of nature and is teaching the young eyes to see and the young ears to hear what God hath wrought in his many works of land and sea and sky, in soil, and plant, and living animal--even when that happy day shall dawn will we find multitudes of men and women on our farms still untouched by agricultural education. These people must be reached. The mere fact that their school days are forever behind them is no reason why they shall not receive somewhat of the inspiration and guidance that flow from the schools. So we have an imperative demand for the extension of agricultural teaching out from the schools to the farm community. The school thus not only sheds its light upon those who are within its gates, but sets out on the beautiful errand of carrying this same light into every farm home in the land. This work is being done today by thousands of farmers' institutes, by demonstrations in spraying and in many other similar lines, by home-study courses and correspondence courses, by co-operative experiments, by the distribution of leaflets and bulletins, by lectures at farmers' gatherings, by traveling schools of dairying. These methods and others like them are being invoked for the purpose of bringing to the farmers in their homes and neighborhoods some of the benefits that the colleges and schools bestow upon their pupils. We have seen something of the need of agricultural education, of the kind of education required, and of the means used to secure it. Does not this discussion at least show the supreme importance of the question? Will not the farmers rally themselves to and league themselves with the men who are trying to forward the best interests of the farm? Shall we not all work together for the betterment both of the farm and of the farmer? CHAPTER VII FARMERS' INSTITUTES A decade and a half ago, there was a vigorous campaign for the establishment of university extension throughout the United States. Generally speaking the campaign was a losing one--with but a few successes amid general failure. But many years before this agitation, there was begun a work among farmers, which in form and spirit was university extension, and which has constantly developed until it is today one of the most potent among the forces making for rural progress. This work has been done chiefly by what are now universally known as farmers' institutes. The typical farmers' institute is a meeting usually lasting two days, held for the purpose of discussing subjects that relate to the interests of farmers, more particularly those of a practical character. As a rule, the speakers to whom set topics are assigned are composed of two classes: the first class is made up of experts, either professors or experimenters in agricultural colleges and similar institutions, or practical farmers who have made such a study of, and such a conspicuous success in, some branch of agriculture that they may well be called experts; the second class comprises farmers living in the locality in which the institute is held. The experts are expected to understand general principles or methods, and the local speakers the conditions peculiar to the neighborhood. The meeting usually begins in the forenoon and ends with the afternoon session of the second day--five sessions being held. As a rule, not over two or three separate topics are treated in any one session, and in a well-planned institute topics of a like character are grouped together, so that there may be a fruit session, a dairy session, etc. Each topic is commonly introduced by a talk or paper of twenty to forty minutes' length. This is followed by a general discussion in which those in the audience are invited to ask questions of the speaker relevant to the topic under consideration, or to express opinions and give experiences of their own. This is a rough outline of the average farmers' institute, but of course there are many variations. There are one-day meetings and there are three-day meetings, and in recent years the one-day meetings have grown in favor; in some states local speakers take little part; in some institutes a question-box is a very prominent feature, in others it is omitted altogether; in some cases the evening programme is made up of educational topics, or of home topics, or is even arranged largely for amusement; in other instances the evening session is omitted. In most institutes women are recognized through programme topics of special interest to them. It is not important to trace the early history of the farmers' institute movement, and indeed it is not very easy to say precisely when and where the modern institute originated. Farmers' meetings of various sorts were held early in the century. As far back as 1853 the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture recommended that farmers' institutes be made an established means of agricultural education. By 1871 Illinois and Iowa held meetings called farmers' institutes, itinerant in character, and designed to call together both experts and farmers, but neither state kept up the work systematically. Both Vermont and New Hampshire have held institutes annually since 1871, though they did not bear that name in the early years. Michigan has a unique record, having held regularly, since 1876, annual farmers' institutes, "so known and designated," which always have contained practically the essential features of the present-day institute. The Michigan legislature passed a law in 1861 providing for "lectures to others than students of the Agricultural College," and has made biennial appropriations for institutes since 1877. Ohio, in 1881, extended the institute idea to include every county in the state. More important than the origin of the farmers' institute movement is the present status. Practically every state and territory in the Union carries on institutes under some form or other. In somewhat more than half the states, the authorities of the land-grant colleges have charge of the work. In the other states, the board of agriculture or the department of agriculture has control. In 1905-6 there were held 3,500 institutes, in 45 states and territories, with a total reported attendance of 1,300,000 people, at a cost of nearly $350,000. The work is largely supported by the state treasuries, some of the states showing a most generous spirit. The annual state appropriations for the work in leading institute states are as follows: Pennsylvania, $20,500; New York, $20,000; Minnesota, $18,000; Illinois, $17,150; Ohio, $16,747; Wisconsin, $12,000; Indiana, $10,000. In these states practically every county has annually from one to five institutes. Institutes in no two states are managed in the same way, but the system has fitted itself to local notions and perhaps to local needs. A rough division may be made--those states which have some form of central control and those which do not have. Even among states having a central management are found all degrees of centralization; Wisconsin and Ohio may be taken as the extremes. In Wisconsin the director of institutes, who is an employee of the university, has practically complete charge of the institutes. He assigns the places where the meetings are to be held, basing his decision upon the location of former institutes in the various counties, upon the eagerness which the neighborhoods seem to manifest toward securing the institute, etc. He arranges the programme for each meeting, suiting the topics and speakers to local needs, prepares advertising materials, and sets the dates of the meeting. A local correspondent looks after a proper hall for meeting, distributes the advertising posters, and bears a certain responsibility for the success of the institute. Meetings are arranged in series, and a corps of two or three lecturers is sent by the director upon a week's tour. One of these lecturers is called a conductor. He usually presides over the institute and keeps the discussions in proper channels. Practice makes him an expert. The state lecturers do most of the talking. Local speakers do not bear any large share in the programme. Questions are freely asked, however. Ohio has an institute society in each county, and this society largely controls its own institutes. The secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, who has charge of the system, assigns dates and speakers to each institute. After that everything is in the hands of the local society, which chooses the topics to be presented by the state speakers, advertises the meeting, and the society president acts as presiding officer. Local speakers usually occupy half the time. It does not seem as if either of these plans in its entirety were ideal--the one an extreme of centralized control, the other an extreme of local management. Yet in practice both plans work well. No states in the Union have better institutes nor better results from institute work than Wisconsin and Ohio. Skill, intelligence, and tact count for more than particular institutions. New York may be said to follow the Wisconsin plan. Minnesota goes even a step farther; instead of holding several series of institutes simultaneously in different parts of the state, attended by different "crews," the whole corps of state speakers attends every institute. No set programmes are arranged. Everything depends upon local conditions. This system is expensive, but under present guidance very effective. Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania have adopted systems which are a mean between the plan of centralization and the plan of localization. Illinois has a plan admirably designed to encourage local interest, while providing for central management. Few other states have carried institute work so far as the states already named, and in some cases there seems to be a prejudice against a well-centralized and fully-developed system--a feeling that each locality may be self-sufficing in institute work. But this attitude is wearing away, for experience serves to demonstrate fully the value of system. The danger of centralization is bureaucracy; but in institute work, if the management fails to provide for local needs, and to furnish acceptable speakers, vigorous protests soon correct the aberration. It has been stated that in America we have no educational _system_--that spontaneity is the dominant feature of American education. This is certainly true of farmers' institutes. So it has transpired that numerous special features have come in to use in various states--features of value and interest. It may be worth while to suggest some of the more characteristic of these features, without attempting an exact category. Formerly the only way in which women were recognized at the institutes was by home and social topics on the programme, though women have always attended the meetings freely. Some years ago Minnesota and Wisconsin added women speakers to their list of state speakers, and in the case of Wisconsin, at least, held a separate session for women, simultaneously with one or two sessions of the regular institute, with demonstration lectures in cooking as the chief features. Michigan holds "women's sections" in connection with institutes, but general topics are taken up. In Ontario separate women's institutes have been organized. In Illinois a State Association of Domestic Science has grown out of the institutes. Thus institute work has broadened to the advantage of farm women. At many institutes there are exhibits of farm and domestic products--a sort of midwinter fair. Oftentimes the merchants of the town in which the institute is held offer premiums as an inducement to the farmers. In Wisconsin an educational feature of much value takes the form of stock-judging--usually at the regular autumn fairs. The judges give their reasons for their decisions, thus emphasizing the qualities that go to make up a perfect or desirable animal. In several states there is held an annual state institute called a "round-up," "closing institute," or the like. It is intended to be a largely attended and representative state convention of agriculturists, for the purpose of discussing topics of general interest to men and women from the farms. These meetings are frequently very large and enthusiastic gatherings. The county institute society is a part of the organization in some instances very well developed. It gives permanency to the work and arouses local interest and pride. The development of men and women into suitable state speakers is an interesting phase. As a rule the most acceptable speakers are men who have made a success in some branch of farming, and who also have cultivated the gift of clear and simple expression. Not a few of these men become adepts in public speaking and achieve a reputation outside of their own states. In several states there is held a "normal institute"--an autumn meeting lasting a week or two weeks, and bringing together, usually at the state college of agriculture, the men who are to give the lectures at the institutes of the winter to follow. The object of the gathering is to bring the lecturers into close contact with the latest things in agricultural science, and to train them for more effective work. A few years ago the United States Department of Agriculture employed an experienced institute director to give all his time to the study and promotion of farmers' institutes. This incident is suggestive of the important place which institutes have secured in the work for better farming. The results of a generation of institute work are not easy to summarize. It is safe to make a broad generalization by asserting that this form of agricultural education has contributed in a remarkable degree to better farming. The best methods of farming have been advocated from the institute platform. Agricultural college professors, and agricultural experimenters have talked of the relations of science to practical farming. The farmers have come to depend upon the institute as a means for gaining up-to-date information. And if institutes have informed, they have also done what is still better--they have inspired. They have gone into many a dormant farm community and awakened the whole neighborhood to a quicker life. They have started discussions, set men thinking, brought in a breath of fresh air. They have given to many a farmer an opportunity for self-development as a ready speaker. Other educational agencies, such as the agricultural colleges and experiment stations, have profited by institutes. No one thing has done more than the institutes to popularize agricultural education, to stir up interest in the colleges, to make the farmers feel in touch with the scientists. Farmers' institutes are a phase of university extension, and it is as a part of the extension movement that they are bound to increase in value and importance. Reading-courses and correspondence-courses are growing factors in this extension movement, but the power of the spoken word is guarantee that the farmers' institute cannot be superseded in fact. And it is worth noting again, that while university extension has not been the success in this country which its friends of a decade ago fondly prophesied for it, its humbler cousin--agricultural college extension--has been a conspicuous success, and is acquiring a constantly increasing power among the educational agencies that are trying to deal with the farm problem. CHAPTER VIII THE HESPERIA MOVEMENT The gulf between parent and teacher is too common a phenomenon to need exposition. The existence of the chasm is probably due more to carelessness, to the pressure of time, or to indolence than to any more serious delinquencies; yet all will admit the disastrous effects that flow from the fact that there is not the close intellectual and spiritual sympathy that there should be between the school and the home. It needs no argument to demonstrate the value of any movement that has for its purpose the bridging of the gulf. But it is an omen of encouragement to find that there are forces at work designed to bring teacher and school patron into a closer working harmony. A statement of the history and methods of some of these agencies may therefore well have a place in a discussion of rural progress. For the movements to be described are essentially rural-school movements. Of first interest is an attempt which has been made in the state of Michigan to bridge the gulf--to create a common standing-ground for both teacher and parent--and on that basis to carry on an educational campaign that it is hoped will result in the many desirable conditions which, a priori, might be expected from such a union. At present the movement is confined practically to the rural schools. It consists in the organization of a county Teachers and Patrons' Association, with a membership of teachers and school patrons, properly officered. Its chief method of work is to hold one or more meetings a year, usually in the country or in small villages, and the programme is designed to cover educational questions in such a way as to be of interest and profit to both teachers and farmers. This movement was indigenous to Michigan--its founders worked out the scheme on their own initiative, and to this day its promoters have never drawn upon any resources outside the state for suggestion or plan. But if the friends of rural education elsewhere shall be attracted by this method of solving one of the vexed phases of their problem, I hope that they will describe it as "the Hesperia movement." For the movement originated in Hesperia, was developed there, and its entire success in Hesperia was the reason for its further adoption. Hesperia deserves any renown that may chance to come from the widespread organization of Teachers and Patrons' Associations. And where is Hesperia? It lies about forty miles north and west of Grand Rapids--a mere dot of a town, a small country village at least twelve or fifteen miles from any railroad. It is on the extreme eastern side of Oceana County, surrounded by fertile farming lands, which have been populated by a class of people who may be taken as a type of progressive, successful, intelligent American farmers. Many of them are of Scotch origin. Partly because of their native energy, partly, perhaps, because their isolation made it necessary to develop their own institutions, these people believe in and support good schools, the Grange, and many progressive movements. For several years there had existed in Oceana County the usual county teachers' association. But, because Hesperia was so far from the center of the county, and because it was not easily accessible, the teachers who taught schools in the vicinity could rarely secure a meeting of the association at Hesperia; and in turn they found it difficult to attend the meetings held in the western part of the county. A few years ago it chanced that this group of teachers was composed of especially bright, energetic, and original young men and women. They determined to have an association of their own. It occurred to someone that it would add strength to their organization if the farmers were asked to meet with them. The idea seemed to "take," and the meetings became quite popular. This was during the winter of 1885-86. Special credit for this early venture belongs to Mr. E. L. Brooks, still of Hesperia and an ex-president of the present association, and to Dr. C. N. Sowers, of Benton Harbor, Mich., who was one of the teachers during the winter named, and who was elected secretary of the Board of School Examiners in 1887. Mr. Brooks writes: The programmes were so arranged that the participants in discussions and in the reading of papers were about equally divided between teachers and patrons. An active interest was awakened from the start. For one thing, it furnished a needed social gathering during the winter for the farmers. The meetings were held on Saturdays, and the schoolhouse favored was usually well filled. The meetings were not held at any one schoolhouse, but were made to circulate among the different schools. These gatherings were so successful that similar societies were organized in other portions of the country. In 1892, Mr. D. E. McClure, who has since (1896-1900) been deputy superintendent of public instruction of Michigan, was elected county-school commissioner of Oceana County. Mr. McClure is a man of great enthusiasm and made a most successful commissioner. He conceived the idea that this union of teachers and patrons could be made of the greatest value, in stimulating both teachers and farmers to renewed interest in the real welfare of the children as well as a means of securing needed reforms. His first effort was to prepare a list of books suitable for pupils in all grades of the rural schools. He also prepared a rural lecture-course, as well as a plan for securing libraries for the schools. All these propositions were adopted by a union meeting of teachers and farmers. His next step was to unite the interests of eastern Oceana County and western Newaygo County (Newaygo lying directly east of Oceana), and in 1893 there was organized the "Oceana and Newaygo Counties Joint Grangers and Teachers' Association," the word "Granger" being inserted because of the activity of the Grange in support of the movement. Mr. McClure has pardonable pride in this effort of his, and his own words will best describe the development of the movement: This association meets Thursday night and continues in session until Saturday night. Some of the best speakers in America have addressed the association. Dr. Arnold Tompkins, in speaking before the association, said it was a wonderful association and the only one of its character in the United States. What was my ideal in organizing such associations? 1. To unite the farmers who pay the taxes that support the schools, the home-makers, the teachers, the pupils, into a co-operative work for better rural-school education. 2. To give wholesome entertainment in the rural districts, which from necessity are more or less isolated. 3. To create a taste for good American literature in home and school, and higher ideals of citizenship. 4. Summed up in all, to make the rural schools character-builders, to rid the districts of surroundings which destroy character, such as unkept school yards, foul, nasty outhouses, poor, unfit teachers. These reforms, you understand, come only through a healthy educational sentiment which is aroused by a sympathetic co-operation of farm, home, and school. What results have I been able to discover growing out of this work? Ideals grow so slowly that one cannot measure much progress in a few years. We are slaves to conditions, no matter how hard, and we suffer them to exist rather than arouse ourselves and shake them off. The immediate results are better schools, yards, out-buildings, schoolrooms, teachers, literature for rural people to read. Many a father and mother whose lives have been broken upon the wheel of labor have heard some of America's orators, have read some of the world's best books, because of this movement, and their lives have been made happier, more influential, more hopeful. Thousands of people have been inspired, made better, at the Hesperia meetings. In western Michigan the annual gathering at Hesperia is known far and wide as "the big meeting." The following extract from the Michigan _Moderator-Topics_ indicates in the editor's breezy way the impression the meeting for 1906 made upon an observer: Hesperia scores another success. Riding over the fourteen miles from the railroad to Hesperia with Governor Warner and D. E. McClure, we tried to make the latter believe that the crowd would not be forthcoming on that first night of the fourteenth annual "big meeting." It was zero weather and mighty breezy. For such a movement to succeed two years is creditable, to hold out for five is wonderful, to last ten is marvelous, but to grow bigger and better for fourteen years is a little short of miraculous. McClure is recognized as the father of the movement and his faith didn't waver a hair's breadth. And sure enough there was the crowd--standing room only, to hear the governor and see the great cartoonist J. T. McCutcheon of the _Chicago Tribune_. For three evenings and two days the big hall is crowded with patrons, pupils and teachers from the towns and country round. During the fourteen years that these meetings have been held, the country community has heard some of the world's greatest speakers. The plan has been adopted by other counties in Michigan and other states both east and west. Its possibilities are well-nigh unlimited and its power for good is immeasurable. Everyone connected with it may well feel proud of the success attending the now famous "Hesperia Movement." In 1897, Kent County, Michigan (of which Grand Rapids is the county seat), organized a Teachers and Patrons' Association that is worth a brief description, although in more recent years its work has been performed by other agencies. It nevertheless serves as a good example of a well-organized association designed to unite the school and home interests of rural communities. It was for several years signally successful in arousing interest in all parts of the county. Besides, it made a departure from the Oceana-Newaygo plan which must be considered advantageous for most counties. The Hesperia meeting is an annual affair, with big crowds and abundant enthusiasm. The Kent County association was itinerant. The membership included teachers, school officers, farmers generally, and even pupils. An attempt was made to hold monthly meetings during the school year, but for various reasons only five or six meetings a year were held. The meetings usually occurred in some Grange hall, the Grange furnishing entertainment for the guests. There were usually three sessions--Friday evening and Saturday forenoon and afternoon. The average attendance was nearly five hundred, about one-tenth being teachers; many teachers as well as farmers went considerable distances to attend. The Kent County association did not collect any fees from its members, the Teachers' Institute fund of the county being sufficient to provide for the cost of lectures at the association meetings. Permission for this use of the fund was obtained from the state superintendent of public instruction. Some counties have a membership fee; at Hesperia, the fee is 50 cents, and a membership ticket entitles its holder to a reserved seat at all sessions. The Kent County association also suggested a reading-course for its members. The success of the work in Kent County was due primarily to the fact that the educators and the farmers and their leaders are in especially close sympathy. And right there is the vital element of success in this work. The initiative must be taken by the educators, but the plan must be thoroughly democratic, and teacher and farmer must be equally recognized in all particulars. The results of the work in Kent County were thus summarized by the commissioner of schools of the county: To teachers, the series of meetings is a series of mid-year institutes. Every argument in favor of institutes applies with all its force to these associations. To farmers they afford a near-by lecture course, accessible to all members of the family, and of as high grade as those maintained in the larger villages. To the schools, the value is in the general sentiment and interest awakened. The final vote on any proposed school improvement is taken at the annual school meeting, and the prevailing sentiment in the neighborhood has everything to do with this vote. And not only this, but the general interest of patrons may help and cheer both teacher and pupils throughout the year. On the other hand, indifference and neglect may freeze the life out of the most promising school. There is no estimating the value to the schools in this respect. The Kent County association had a very simple constitution. It is appended here for the benefit of any who may desire to begin this beneficent work of endeavoring to draw more closely together rural schools and country homes. ARTICLE I.--NAME This association shall be known as "The Kent County Teachers and Patrons' Association." ARTICLE II.--MEMBERSHIP Any person may become a member of this association by assenting to this constitution and paying the required membership fee. ARTICLE III.--OBJECTS The object of this association shall be the promotion of better educational facilities in all ways and the encouragement of social and intellectual culture among its members. ARTICLE IV.--MEETINGS At least five meetings of the association shall be held each year, during the months of October, November, January, February, and March, the dates and places of meetings to be determined and announced by the executive committee. Special meetings may be called at the election of the executive committee. ARTICLE V.--OFFICERS SECTION 1. The officers of the association shall be a president, a vice-president, a secretary, a treasurer, and an executive committee composed of five members to be appointed by the president. SEC. 2. The election of officers shall occur at the regular meeting of the association in the month of October. SEC. 3. The duties of each officer shall be such as parliamentary usage assigns, respectively, according to Cushing's Manual. SEC. 4. It shall be the duty of the executive committee to arrange a schedule of meetings and to provide suitable lecturers and instructors for the same on or before the first day of September of each year. It shall be the further duty of this committee to devise means to defray the expenses incurred for lecturers and instructors. All meetings shall be public, and no charge for admission shall be made, except by order of the executive committee. ARTICLE VI.--COURSE OF READING SECTION 1. The executive committee may also recommend a course of reading to be pursued by members, and it shall be their duty to make such other recommendations from time to time as shall have for their object the more effective carrying out of the purposes of the association. Whether the Oceana County plan of a set annual meeting or the Kent County plan of numerous itinerant meetings is the better one depends much on the situation. It is not improbable that itinerant meetings, with an annual "round-up" meeting of the popular type as the great event of the school year, would be very satisfactory. Other counties in the state have taken up the Hesperia idea. In some cases associations similar to the Kent County association have been developed. More recently the work has frequently been carried on by the county commissioner of schools directly. "Institutes on wheels" have become a factor in the campaign for better rural schools. One commissioner writes: My aim has been to bring into very close relationship teachers, patrons, and pupils. This is done, in part, in the following manner: I engage, for a week's work at a time, some educator of state or national reputation to ride with me on my visitation of schools. Through the day, schools are visited, pupils' work inspected, and in the evening, a rally is held in the locality visited in that day. A circuit is made during the week, and Friday evening and the Saturday following a general round-up is held. The results of this work have been far reaching. Teachers, patrons, and pupils are brought into close relationship and a higher standard of education is developed. The form of organization matters little. The essential idea of the "Hesperia movement" was to bring together the teacher and the school patron on a common platform, to a common meeting-place, to discuss subjects of common interest. This idea must be vitalized in the rural community before that progress in rural-school matters which we desire shall become a fact. It is only fair to say that administrators of rural-school systems in several states are attempting in one way or another, and have done so for some years, to bring together teachers and school patrons. In Iowa there are mothers' clubs organized for the express purpose of promoting the best interests of the schools. In many of the communities the county superintendent organizes excursions, and holds school contests which are largely attended by patrons of the schools. Ohio has what is known as the "Ohio School Improvement Federation." Its objects are: (1) to create a wholesome educational sentiment in the citizenship of the state; (2) to remove the school from partisan politics; (3) to make teaching a profession, protected and justly compensated. County associations of the federation are being organized and the effort is being made to reach the patrons of the schools and to create the right public sentiment. In many of the teachers' institutes there is one session devoted entirely to subjects that are of special interest to the school-board members and to the patrons of the schools. Educational rallies are held in many of the townships, at which effort is made to get together all the citizens and have an exhibit of school work. In Minnesota, a law was passed recently to the effect that school officers within a county may attend one educational convention a year upon call of the county superintendent. They receive therefor, three dollars for one day's services and five cents mileage each way for attendance. Already a number of very successful conventions have been held, wherein all school districts in the counties have been represented. The county institutes in Pennsylvania are largely attended by the public and are designed to reach patrons as well as teachers. In Kansas, county superintendents have organized school-patrons' associations and school-board associations, both of which definitely purpose to bring together the school and the home and the officers of the school into one body and to co-operate with individuals for the purpose of bettering the school conditions. Doubtless other states are carrying on similar methods. An interesting movement wholly independent of the Hesperia plan has recently been put into operation under the leadership of Principal Myron T. Scudder of the State Normal School, New Paltz, N. Y. He has organized a series of country-school conferences. They grew out of a recognized need, but were an evolution rather than a definite scheme. The school commissioner, the teachers, and the Grange people of the community have joined in making up the conference. An attempt is also made to interest the pupils. At one conference there was organized an athletic league for the benefit of the boys of the country school. The practical phases of nature-study and manual training are treated on the programme, and at least one session is made a parents' meeting. There is no organization whatever. Dr. A. E. Winship, of the _Journal of Education_, Boston, had the following editorial in the issue of June 21, 1906: It is now fourteen years since D. E. McClure spoke into being the Hesperia movement, which is a great union of educational and farmer forces, in a midwinter Chautauqua, as it were. Twelve miles from the railroad, in the slight village of Hesperia, a one-street village, one side of the street being in one county and the other side in another, for three days and evenings in midwinter each year, in a ramshackle building, eight hundred people from all parts of the two counties sit in reserved seats, for which they pay a good price, and listen to one or two notable speakers and a number of local functionaries. One-half of the time is devoted to education and the other to farm interests. It is a great idea, well worked out, and after fourteen years it maintains its lustiness, but I confess to disappointment that the idea has not spread more extensively. It is so useful there, and the idea is so suggestive, that it should have been well-nigh universal, and yet despite occasional bluffs at it, I know of no serious effort to adopt it elsewhere, unless the midwinter meeting at Shelby, in one of these two counties, can be considered a spread of the idea. This child of the Hesperia movement, in one of the two counties, and only twenty miles away, had this year many more in attendance than have ever been at Hesperia. This work of uniting more closely the interests, sympathies, and intelligence of the teachers and patrons of the rural school has had a test in Michigan of sufficient length to prove that it is a practicable scheme. No one questions the desirability of the ends it is prepared to compass, and experience in Michigan shows not only that where the educators have sufficient enterprise, tact, enthusiasm, and persistence the necessary organizations can be perfected, but that substantial results follow. For the sake of better rural schools, then, it is sincerely to be hoped that the "Hesperia movement" may find expression in numerous teachers and patrons' associations in at least the great agricultural states. CHAPTER IX THE RURAL SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY Among the great phenomena of our time is the growth of the school idea--the realization of the part that the school plays in our civilization and in the training of our youth for life. Our New England fathers started the school in order that their children might learn to read the Scriptures, and thus that they might get right ideas of their religious duty. Even after this aim was outgrown, our schools for generations did little more than to teach the use of the mere tools of knowledge; to read, to write, and to cipher were the great gains of the schoolroom. Even geography and grammar were rather late arrivals. Then came the idea that the school should train children for citizenship, and it was argued that the chief reason why schools should be supported at public expense was in order that good citizens should be trained there. History and civil government were put into the course in obedience to this theory. Another step was taken when physiology was added, because it was an acknowledgment that the schools should do something to train youth in the individual art of living. Still another step was taken when manual training and domestic science were brought into our city schools, because these studies emphasize the fact that the schools must do something to train workers. And finally we have at present the idea gaining a strong foothold that the schools must train the child to fill its place in the world of men; to see all the relations of life; to be fitted to live in human society. This idea really embraces all of the other ideas. It implies that the schools shall not only teach each individual the elements of knowledge, that they shall train for citizenship, that they shall train men in the art of living, that they shall aid in preparing for an occupation, but that they shall do _all_ of these things, and do them not merely for the good of the individual, but for the good of society as a whole. And not only is there a feeling that the pupil in school can be brought into closer touch with the life of the community, but that the school as an institution can be made more useful to the community as a whole. This double thought has been expressed in the phrase, "Make the school a social center," and practically it is being slowly worked out in numerous city schools. How far can this idea be developed in the country school? The purpose of this chapter is not to deal in the theory of the subject, nor to argue particularly for this view of the function of the school, but rather to try to show some methods by which the rural school and the farm community actually can be brought into closer relations. In this way we may perhaps indicate that there is a better chance for co-operation between the rural school and the farm community than we have been accustomed to believe, and that this closer relation is worth striving for. Five methods will be suggested by which the rural school can become a social center. Some of these have already been tried in rural communities, some of them have been tried in cities, and some of them have not been tried at all. 1. The first means of making the rural school a social center is through the course of study. It is here that the introduction of nature-study into our rural schools would be especially helpful. This nature-study when properly followed approves itself both to educators and to farmers. It is a pedagogical principle recognized by every modern teacher that in education it is necessary to consider the environment of the child, so that the school may not be to him "a thing remote and foreign." The value of nature-study is recognized not only in thus making possible an intelligent study of the country child's environment, but in teaching a love of nature, in giving habits of correct observation, and in preparing for the more fruitful study of science in later years. Our best farmers are also coming to see that nature-study in the rural schools is a necessity, because it will tend to give a knowledge of the laws that govern agriculture, because it will teach the children to love the country, because it will show the possibilities of living an intellectual life upon the farm. Nature-study, therefore, will have a very direct influence in bringing the child into close touch with the whole life of the farm community. But it is not so much a matter of introducing new studies--the old studies can be taught in such a way as to make them seem vital and human. Take, for instance, geography. It used to be approached from the standpoint of the solar system. It now begins with the schoolhouse and the pupils' homes, and works outward from the things that the child sees and knows to the things that it must imagine. History, writing, reading, the sciences, and even other subjects can be taught so as to connect them vitally and definitely with the life of the farm community. To quote Colonel Parker, who suggests the valuable results of such a method of teaching: It would make a strong, binding union of the home and the school, the farm methods and the school methods. It would bring the farm into the school and project the school into the farm. It would give parent and teacher one motive in the carrying out of which both could heartily join. The parent would appreciate and judge fairly the work of the school, the teacher would honor, dignify and elevate the work of the farm. The study of the landscape of the near-by country, the study of the streams, the study of the soils, studies that have to do with the location of homes, of villages, the study of the weather, of the common plants, of domestic animals--all of these things will give the child a better start in education, a better comprehension of the life he is to live, a better idea of the business of farming, a better notion about the importance of agriculture, and will tend to fit him better for future life either on the farm or anywhere else, than could any amount of the old-fashioned book knowledge. Is it not a strange fact that so many farmers will decry book knowledge when applied to the business of farming, and at the same time set so much store by the book learning that is given in the common arithmetic, the old-fashioned reader, and the dry grammar of the typical school? Of course anyone pleading for this sort of study in the rural schools must make it clear that the ordinary accomplishments of reading, writing, and ciphering are not to be neglected. As a matter of fact, pupils under this method can be just as well trained in these branches as under the old plan. The point to be emphasized, however, is that a course of study constructed on this theory will tend to bring the school and the community closer together, will make the school of more use to the community, will give the community more interest in the school, while at the same time it will better prepare pupils to do their work in life. 2. A second way of making the rural school a social center is through the social activities of the pupils. This means that the pupils as a body can co-operate for certain purposes, and that this co-operation will not only secure some good results of an immediate character, results that can be seen and appreciated by everyone, but that it will teach the spirit of co-operation--and there is hardly anything more needed today in rural life than this spirit of co-operation. The schools can perform no better service than in training young people to work together for common ends. In this work such things as special day programmes, as for Arbor Day, Washington's Birthday, Pioneer Day; the holding of various school exhibitions; the preparation of exhibits for county fairs, and similar endeavors, are useful and are being carried out in many of our rural schools. But the best example of this work is a plan that is being used in the state of Maine, and is performed through the agency of what is called a School Improvement League. The purposes of the league are: (1) to improve school grounds and buildings; (2) to furnish suitable reading-matter for pupils and people; (3) to provide works of art for schoolrooms. There are three forms of the league, the local leagues organized in each school; the town leagues, whose membership consists of the officers of the local leagues; and a state league, whose members are delegates from the town leagues and members of the local leagues who hold school diplomas. Any pupil, teacher, school officer, or any other citizen may join the league on payment of the dues. The minimum dues are one cent a month for each pupil, for other members not less than ten cents a term. But these dues may be made larger by vote of the league. Each town league sends a delegate to the meeting of the state league. Each league has the usual number of officers elected for one term. These leagues were first organized in 1898 and they have already accomplished much. They have induced school committees to name various rural schools for distinguished American citizens, as Washington, Lincoln, and so forth. They give exhibitions and entertainments for the purpose of raising funds. Sometimes they use these funds to buy books for the schoolroom. The books are then loaned to the members of the league; at the end of the term this set of books is exchanged for another set of books from another school in the same township. In this way, at a slight expense, each school may have the use of a large number of books every year. The same thing is done with pictures and works of art, these being purchased and exchanged in the same way. Through the efforts of the league schoolhouses have been improved, inside and out, and the school grounds improved. It is not so much the doing of new things that has been attempted by this league. The important item is that the school has been _organized_ for these definite purposes, and the work is carried on systematically from year to year. It needs no argument to show the value of this sort of co-operation to the pupil, to the teacher, to the school, to the parents, and ultimately to the community as a whole. 3. A third method is through co-operation between the home and the school, between the teacher and pupils on one side, and parents and taxpayers on the other side. Parents sometimes complain that the average school is a sort of mill, or machine, into which their children are placed and turned out just so fast, and in just such condition. But if this is the case, it is partly the fault of the parents who do not keep in close enough touch with the work of the school. It is not that parents are not interested in their children, but it is rather that they look at the school as something separate from the ordinary affairs of life. Now, nothing can be more necessary than that this notion should be done away with. There must be the closest co-operation between the home and school. How can this co-operation be brought about? Frequently parents are urged to visit the schools. This is all right and proper, but it is not enough. There must be a closer relation than this. The teacher must know more about the home life of her pupils, and the parents must know far more about the whole purpose and spirit, as well as the method, of the school. A great deal of good has been done by the joint meeting of teachers and school officers. It is a very wise device, and should be kept up. But altogether the most promising development along this line is the so-called "Hesperia movement," described in another chapter. These meetings of school patrons and teachers take up the work of the school in a way that will interest both teachers and farmers. They bring the teachers and farmers into closer touch socially and intellectually. They disperse fogs of misunderstanding. They inspire to closer co-operation. They create mutual sympathy. They are sure to result in bringing the teacher into closer touch with community life and with the social problems of the farm. And they are almost equally sure to arouse the interest of the entire community, not only in the school as an institution and in the possibilities of the work it may do, but also in the work of that teacher who is for the time being serving a particular rural school. 4. A fourth method is by making the schoolhouse a meeting-place for the community, more especially for the intellectual and aesthetic activities of the community. A good example of this kind of work is the John Spry School of Chicago. In connection with this school there is a lecture course each winter; there is a musical society that meets every Tuesday evening; there is a men's club that meets every two weeks to discuss municipal problems and the improvement of home conditions; there is a woman's club to study for general improvement and social service; there is a mothers' council meeting every two weeks; there is a literary and dramatic society, meeting every week, composed of members of high-school age, and studying Shakespeare particularly; there is a dressmaking and aid society meeting two evenings a week, to study the cutting of patterns, garment-making, etc.; a food-study and cooking club, also meeting two evenings a week; an inventive and mechanical club, meeting two evenings a week, and tending to develop the inventive and mechanical genius of a group of young men; an art club; and a boy's club, with music, games, reading-lessons, reading of books and magazines, intended for boys of fourteen or fifteen years of age. These things are all under the direction of the school, they are free, they are designed to educate. It will not be feasible for the rural school to carry out such a programme as this, but do we realize how large are the possibilities of this idea of making the rural school a community center? No doubt one of the advantages of the centralized rural school will be to give a central meeting-place for the township, and to encourage work of the character that has been described. Of course, the Grange and farmers' clubs are doing much along these lines, but is it not possible for the district school also to do some useful work of this character? Singing-schools and debating clubs were quite a common thing in the rural schools forty years ago, and there are many rural schools today that are doing work of this very kind. Is there any reason, for example, why the country schoolhouse should not offer an evening school during a portion of the winter, where the older pupils who have left the regular work of the school can carry on studies, especially in agriculture and domestic science? There is need for this sort of thing, and if our agricultural colleges, and the departments of public instruction, and the local school supervisors, and the country teachers, and the farmers themselves, could come a little closer together on these questions the thing could be done! 5. Fifth and last, as a method for making the school a social center, is the suggestion that the teacher herself shall become something of a leader in the farm community. The teacher ought to be not only a teacher of the pupils, but in some sense a teacher of the community. Is there not need that someone should take the lead in inspiring everyone in the community to read better books, to buy better pictures, to take more interest in the things that make for culture and progress? There are special difficulties in a country community. The rural teacher is usually a transient; she secures a city school as soon as she can; she is often poorly paid; she is sometimes inexperienced; frequently the labor of the school absorbs all her time and energy. Unfortunately these things are so, but they ought not to be so. And we shall never have the ideal rural school until we have conditions favorable to the kind of work just described. The country teacher ought to understand the country community, ought to have some knowledge of the problems that the farmers have to face, ought to have some appreciation of the peculiar conditions of farm life. Every teacher should have some knowledge of rural sociology. The normal schools should make this subject a required subject in the course, especially for country teachers. Teachers' institutes and reading-circles should in some way provide this sort of thing. This is one of the most important means of bringing the rural school into closer touch with the farm community. Ten years ago Henry Sabin, of Iowa, one of the keenest students of the rural-school problem, in speaking of the supervision of country schools, said: The supervisor of rural schools should be acquainted with the material resources of his district. He should know not only what constitutes good farming, but the prevailing industry of the region should be so familiar to him that he can converse intelligently with the inhabitants, and convince them that he knows something besides books. The object is not alone to gain influence over them, but to bring the school into touch with the home life of the community about. It is not to invite the farmer to the school, but to take the school to the farm, and to show the pupils that here before their eyes are the foundations upon which have been built the great natural sciences. The programme needed to unite rural school and farm community is then, first, to enrich the course of study by adding nature-study and agriculture, and about these co-ordinating the conventional school subjects; second, to encourage the co-operation of the pupils, especially for the improvement of the school and its surroundings; third, to bring together for discussion and acquaintance the teachers and the patrons of the school; fourth, so far as possible to make the schoolhouse a meeting-place for the community, for young people as well as for older people, where music, art, social culture, literature, study of farming, and in fact, anything that has to do with rural education, may be fostered; and fifth, to expect the teacher to have a knowledge of the industrial and general social conditions of agriculture, especially those of the community in which her lot is cast. CHAPTER X THE GRANGE The difficulty of uniting the farmers of America for any form of co-operative endeavor long ago became proverbial. The business of farming encouraged individualism; comparative isolation bred independence; and restricted means of communication made union physically difficult, even among those who might be disposed to unite. It was not strange, therefore, that the agricultural masses developed a state of mind unfavorable for organization--that they became suspicious of one another, jealous of leadership, unwilling to keep the pledges of union, and unable to sink personal views and prejudices. It must not be supposed, however, that the farmers themselves have failed to realize the situation, or that no genuinely progressive steps have been taken to remedy it. During the last four decades at least, the strongest men that the rural classes have produced have labored with their fellows, both in season and out of season, for union of effort; and their efforts have been by no means in vain. It is true that some of the attempts at co-operation have been ill-judged, even fantastic. It is true that much of the machinery of organization failed to work and can be found on the social junk-pile, in company with other discarded implements not wholly rural in origin. But it is also true that great progress has been made; that the spirit of co-operation is rapidly emerging as a factor in rural social life; and that the weapons of rural organization have a temper all the better, perhaps, because they were fashioned on the anvil of defeat. Among all these efforts to unite the farming classes, by far the most characteristic and the most successful is the Grange. The truth of this statement will immediately be questioned by those whose memory recalls the early rush to the Grange, "Granger legislation," and similar phenomena, as well as by those whose impressions have been gleaned from reading the periodicals of the late seventies, when the Grange tide had begun to ebb. Indeed, it seems to be the popular impression that the Grange is not at present a force of consequence, that long ago it became a cripple, if not a corpse. Only a few years ago, an intelligent magazine writer, in discussing the subject of farmers' organizations, made the statement, "The Grange is dead." But the assertion was not true. The popular impression must be revised. The Grange has accomplished more for agriculture than has any other farm organization. Not only is it at the present time active, but it has more real influence than it has ever had before; and it is more nearly a _national_ farmers' organization than any other in existence today. The Grange is also the oldest of the general organizations for farmers. Though the notion of organizing the farmers was undoubtedly broached early in the history of the country, the germ idea that actually grew into the Grange is about forty years old, and should be credited to Mr. O. H. Kelley, a Boston young man who settled on a Minnesota farm in 1849. He wrote considerably for the agricultural press; and this experience helped to bring him to the conclusion that the great need of agriculture was the education of the agriculturist. He soon came to feel that existing agencies for this purpose--farm papers and fairs--were insufficient. In 1866, as agent for the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Kelley made a tour of the South, with the view of gaining a knowledge of the agricultural and mineral resources of that section. On this tour he became impressed with the fact that politicians would never restore peace to the country; that if it came at all, it would have to come through fraternity. As his thought ripened he broached to friends the idea of a "secret society of agriculturists, as an element to restore kindly feelings among the people." Thus the Grange was born of two needs, one fundamental and the other immediate. The fundamental need of agriculture was that farmers should be better educated for their business; and the immediate need was that of cultivating the spirit of brotherhood between the North and the South. The latter need no longer exists; but the fundamental need still remains and is sufficient excuse for the Grange's existence today. Mr. Kelley interested six other men in the new idea; and in December, 1867, these "seven founders of the order" organized the National Grange of Patrons of Husbandry. Mr. Kelley is the only one of these seven men now living. Thus was begun a movement for organization that had resulted by 1873 in the formation of over 20,000 Granges in 28 states, comprising not less than 750,000 members; and in that year the National Grange, as a representative body, was officially organized. For four or five years this unexampled prosperity continued; then the reports show a feeling of weakness creeping in. In fact, the order as a whole steadily declined in numbers and prestige during the whole of the decade following 1880. The losses were most serious, however, in the South and West; for in New England and the Middle States it retained its vitality, and, indeed, grew steadily. During the last fifteen years there has been a widespread revival of interest in the organization and the outlook is exceedingly promising. During the decade following 1890 the membership increased not less than 75 per cent. During the last few years the rate of gain has been even greater. The following table gives the official records in the five leading Grange states: ========================================================= | 1900 | 1905 | ------------------------------------------ | Granges | Members | Granges | Members -------------|------------------------------------------- New York | 550 | 43,000 | 582 | 66,500 Maine | 275 | 29,000 | 387 | 49,000 Michigan | 420 | 25,000 | 731 | 45,000 Pennsylvania | 526 | 20,000 | 560 | 34,000 New Hampshire| 260 | 24,000 | 263 | 28,000 --------------------------------------------------------- These states lead, but the order is also active and strong in Vermont, Connecticut, Ohio, Massachusetts. Thirty states pay dues to the National Grange treasury, and twenty-six were represented by delegates at the last National Grange. Since 1905 there has been substantial growth in most of these twenty-six states, both in numbers of Granges and in membership. The official title of the Grange is "Patrons of Husbandry," of the members, "Patrons," and of the various divisions, "Granges." The "subordinate Grange," or local lodge, is the Grange unit. Its area of jurisdiction has, nominally, a diameter of about five miles; more roughly, "a Grange to a township" is the working ideal among the organizers. The membership consists of men and women, and of young people over fourteen years of age, who may apply and by vote be accepted. Constitutionally, those whose interests are not immediately with agriculture are ineligible to membership; and care is also exercised that only those who are of good repute shall be recommended. The presiding officer of each Grange is the "master;" while among the twelve other officers the "lecturer" is the most important, and virtually acts as programme committee, with charge of the educational work of the body. Meetings are held weekly or fortnightly. Each regular meeting has first its business session, and then its "lecturer's hour," or literary session, usually with an intervening recess for social greetings, etc. The programmes are prepared by the lecturer, and consist of general discussions, essays, talks, debates, readings, recitations, and music; an attempt being made to suit the tastes and talents of all members, young and old. Many Granges have built and own their halls, which are usually equipped with kitchen and dining-room, in addition to audience rooms; for periodical "feasts" are as regular a feature of the association as are the initiations of new members. The Granges of a county or other given district often organize themselves into a "Pomona Grange." The "State Grange" is a delegate body, meeting annually; delegates being chosen by the subordinate and Pomona Granges. The "National Grange" is composed of the masters of State Granges and their wives, and is also an annual gathering. The National Grange is the legislative body of the order, and has full authority in all matters of doctrine and practice. But to State Granges is left the determination of policy and administration for the states. The State Granges, in turn, legislate for the subordinate Granges, while also passing down to them ample local powers. The machinery is thus strongly centralized, and subordinate Granges are absolutely dependent units of a great whole. Yet the principle of home rule pervades the organization; and local associations are responsible for their own methods and the results of their work, though their officers usually work in harmony with the State and National Granges. Perhaps the clearest conception of what the order originally meant to do can be gained from a few quotations from the Declaration of Purposes of the National Grange, which was promulgated over thirty years ago, and is still in force: We shall endeavor to advance our cause by laboring to accomplish the following objects: To develop a better and higher manhood and womanhood among ourselves. To enhance the comfort and attractions of our homes and to strengthen our attachments to our pursuits. To foster mutual understanding and co-operation. To maintain inviolate our laws, and to emulate each other in labor, to hasten the good time coming. To reduce our expenses, both individual and corporate. To buy less and produce more, in order to make our farms self-sustaining. To diversify our crops and crop no more than we can cultivate. To condense the weight of our exports, selling less in the bushel and more on hoof and in fleece; less in lint and more in warp and woof. To systematize our work, and calculate intelligently on probabilities. To discountenance the credit system, the mortgage system, the fashion system, and every other system tending to prodigality and bankruptcy. We propose meeting together, talking together, working together, buying together, selling together, and, in general, acting together for our mutual protection and advancement, as occasion may require. We shall avoid litigation, as much as possible, by arbitration in the Grange. We shall constantly strive to secure entire harmony, good will, vital brotherhood, among ourselves, and to make our order perpetual. We shall earnestly endeavor to suppress personal, local, sectional, and national prejudices, all unhealthy rivalry, all selfish ambition. Faithful adherence to these principles will insure our mental, moral, social, and material advancement. For our business interests we desire to bring producers and consumers, farmers and manufacturers, into the most direct and friendly relations possible. Hence we must dispense with a surplus of middle-men, not that we are unfriendly to them, but we do not need them. Their surplus and their exactions diminish our profits. We wage no aggressive warfare against any other interests whatever. On the contrary, all our acts and all our efforts, so far as business is concerned, are not only for the benefit of the producer and consumer, but also for all other interests that tend to bring these two parties into speedy and economical contact. Hence we hold that transportation companies of every kind are necessary to our success, that their interests are intimately connected with our interests. We are opposed to such spirit and management of any corporation or enterprise as tends to oppress the people, and rob them of their just profits. We are not enemies to capital, but we oppose the tyranny of monopolies. We long to see the antagonism between capital and labor removed by common consent, and by an enlightened statesmanship worthy of the nineteenth century. We are opposed to excessive salaries, high rates of interest, and exorbitant per-cent. profits in trade. We shall advance the cause of education among ourselves and for our children, by all just means within our power. We especially advocate for our agricultural and industrial colleges that practical agriculture, domestic science, and all the arts which adorn the home be taught in their courses of study. We emphatically and sincerely assert the oft-repeated truth taught in our organic law, that the Grange--national, state, or subordinate--is not a political or party organization. No Grange, if true to its obligations, can discuss political or religious questions, or call political conventions, or nominate candidates, or even discuss their merits at its meetings. We always bear in mind that no one, by becoming a Patron of Husbandry, gives up that inalienable right and duty which belongs to every American citizen, to take a proper interest in the politics of his country. On the contrary, it is his duty to do all he can in his own party to put down bribery, corruption, and trickery; to see that none but competent, faithful, and honest men, who will unflinchingly stand by our industrial interests, are nominated for all positions of trust; and to have carried out the principle which should characterize every Patron, that the office should seek the man, and not the man the office. To enumerate the achievements of the Grange would be to recall the progress of agriculture during the past third of a century. It has been a motor force in many helpful movements, and in many ways has organized and incorporated the best thought of the most intelligent farmers, about means for rural advancement. It has been an integral part of, and a most potent factor in, the expansion of American farm life. The greatest achievement of the order is that it has taught the farmers of America the value of co-operation and the power of organized effort. The lesson has not been fully learned, it is true; but the success of the institution testifies that it is possible for farmers to work in harmony. It is worth observing that this result has been achieved on conservative lines. It is comparatively easy to organize on radical lines; easy to generate enthusiasm by promising some great reform; easy to inflame self-interest by picturing millennial conditions, especially when the pocket is touched. But quite different is it to arouse and sustain interest in a large popular organization whose object is education, whose watchword is self-culture. Of course, it would be but a half-truth to assert that the order places all its emphasis on the sober problems of education. Agitation has had its place; the hope of better things for the farmer, to be achieved through legislation and business co-operation, has been an inspiration to activity; but the noteworthy fact remains that it has secured a fair degree of organization and co-operation among farmers chiefly by appeals to their larger and nobler interests. That the association has vastly improved the social opportunities of farmers is a trite saying among old observers of its work. It forces isolation out of the saddle. The regular meetings of the local bodies rapidly and surely develop the social instinct among the members. Pomona Granges bring together members from all parts of the county and make them acquainted with one another. The State Grange draws its membership from every corner of the state; and as its personnel changes each year, thousands are in the course of a few years given the wider outlook, the more extended acquaintance, and the broader view that participation in such a gathering affords. Special social features add their influence. As an educator on public questions the Grange has done a noble work. At nearly every meeting in this country, some topic of public concern is brought up by essay, talk, general discussion, or formal debate. The views of the "village Hampdens" may not always be economically scientific or scholarly. But it might surprise many people to see how well read the members are and how clearly they can express their ideas. Their discussions are not seldom informative, and that they make public opinion in rural communities is beyond cavil. The persistent advocacy of specific reforms has directed the thought of the members toward the larger issues that so often rise above the haze of partisan politics. The order has prepared the soil for adequate agricultural education. While the agricultural colleges formerly had many enemies among the farmers, and received scornful opprobrium from those whom they were endeavoring to help, almost without exception the Granges have praised the colleges, welcomed their work, and urged farmers to educate their sons at these institutions. Farmers' institutes, the agricultural experiment stations, and the federal Department of Agriculture have been equally welcomed by the Grange sentiment. The Grange has always taught the need of better rural education. It has also tended to develop its members, so that they may not only appreciate education, but that they may be themselves living examples of the value of such education. Farmers' institute lecturers frequently say, "You can always tell when you reach a community where a Grange exists." In that meeting will be found men who have read and thought on farm and public themes, men who are not only ready in discussion, apt in statement, and eager to question, but men acquainted with parliamentary law, who know how such assemblages should be conducted, and who can preside with dignity and grace. The order has undoubtedly aided materially in obliterating sectionalism. That achievement was one of its avowed objects. There is no question but it assisted in cementing North and South; and that it has brought East and West into closer sympathy is equally true. Other farm organizations have found their incentive in the order. These it has never frowned on, though believing and always hoping that it might attract the majority of farmers to its own ranks, and by this unity become a more powerful factor in securing the rights and developing the opportunities of the rural classes of America. It has always discountenanced the credit system; and that cash payments by farmers to merchants are far more common than a quarter-century ago may be fairly credited, in part at least, to its influence. To describe the many specific legislative achievements which the Granges of the nation and of the several states have accomplished would be tedious. Merely to enumerate a few of them must suffice here. A convenient summary is made from an official circular recently issued by the National Grange. The order has had a large influence in securing the following: The separation of certain agricultural colleges from universities which were receiving the land-grant funds, but were not, in the opinion of the farmers, duly contributing to agricultural education; the confining of the appropriations under the second Morrill act of 1890 strictly to instruction in agriculture and mechanical arts; the Hatch Act of 1887, establishing an experiment station in each state and territory; making the head of the Department of Agriculture a cabinet official; the agitation resulting in the famous Iowa court decision, that railroad franchises are subject to the power that created them; the establishment of the Inter-State Commerce Commission; tax reform in many states; laws favoring pure food and dairy products; preventing extension of patents on sewing machines; the establishment of rural free mail delivery. The methods of work are many and varied. In addition to the regular literary and social programmes previously mentioned, socials are held at the homes of members, entertainments of various kinds occur at the Grange hall, and in many ways the association becomes the center of the social and intellectual interest of the community. It is debating society, club, lecture course, parliamentary society, theater, and circulating library. In fact, it lends itself to almost any function that will instruct, entertain, benefit, or assist its members financially, morally, intellectually, or socially. Of course, not every Grange is awake to its opportunities; but as a rule, where a live one exists it is the acknowledged leader in social movements. It is not uncommon for Granges to hold fairs for the exhibition of agricultural and domestic products. The State Fair of New Hampshire has been largely managed by the Grange. In many cases Granges as organizations will exhibit at the ordinary county or district fair. Picnics and field meetings are coming to be very popular in some states. They are held during the summer season, at a time when work is least pressing, and are usually attended by speakers of prominence in the order. Many subordinate Granges give public lecture courses during the winter, securing speakers on general themes. They also arrange for entertainments of a popular character. The order also participates in activities that are not strictly Grange work. For instance, in Michigan, the State Grange for several years carried on a "Fresh-Air Work," by which over 1,000 working-girls, children, and hard-working mothers with babies, from the larger cities, were given a two-weeks' vacation in country homes. The philanthropic agencies of the cities arranged for transportation and secured the beneficiaries, while the Grange obtained the places for them. Granges are always active in the organization of farmers' institutes, agricultural fairs, etc. In Michigan they have assisted in the organization of associations which are designed to bring together both teachers and parents for discussion of rural-school problems. On two important matters the Grange has been misunderstood, not only by the public, but more unfortunately, sometimes by its own members. In his _Division and Reunion_, President Woodrow Wilson speaks of it under the sub-title of "New Parties." Professor Alexander Johnston, in his _American Politics_ was more discriminating, for he said of it: "In its nature it is not political." But he also said: "Its object is co-operation among farmers, in purchasing and in other business interests." The first conception of the character of the order is wholly misleading; the second is inadequate. The Grange is not a party. It never was a party. During the "Granger legislation" period, many members doubtless misconceived the true function of the Grange, and abused the power organization gave them, while the popular mind credited the association with many notions for which it was not responsible. It has never organized itself as a farmers' party. The National Grange has endeavored to keep strictly aloof from partisan politics. It is possible that in some states the influence of the organization was, in the early days, used for partisan purposes; but the penalty was fully paid in the disruption of the order in those states. The Grange today regards partisanship as poisonous to its life, and does not allow it on its shelves. This is not to say that the Grange makes no appeal to legislation. It is possible that in some cases it places too much faith in law as a means of emancipation from economic bondage; but, in the main, its legislative point of view is sane and conservative. It believes that such ills as are due to bad or imperfect legislation can be, at least partly, relieved by good or more perfect legislation. Nor does it limit its interest to measures that concern the farmer alone. It is unalterably opposed to class legislation, and aims to keep its own skirts clear--to avoid even the suspicion of offence in this particular. It may be asked, How does the order manage to advocate public measures without becoming involved in partisan squabbles? Simply by ceasing to discuss a question the moment it becomes a party football. For instance: the monetary policy of the government was warmly discussed until the conventions of 1896 made it clear that it was to be a party issue. Again: the Grange has consistently urged the construction and ownership of the Interoceanic Canal by the United States government; but it was silent on the larger question of "imperialism," not because the question was not of importance, but because it became a subject of party controversy. This neutral policy as to party questions imposes certain limitations on the influence of the organization; but experience has demonstrated that this, more than any other thing, is responsible for the fact that the Grange still lives and thrives. The other misconception lies in the sentence quoted from Professor Johnston, that the Grange has for its object "co-operation among farmers in purchasing and in other business interests;" the implication being that business was the chief function. It is generally admitted that in the early days thousands joined the order "for what there was in it;" believing that the organization furnished a means for abolishing the middlemen, and putting ready money into the pockets of the farmers. When these sordid souls were disillusioned, their enthusiasm went down to the zero of activity. They misunderstood, or interpreted too radically, a well-defined, conservative, legitimate purpose of the Grange to co-operate on business lines. The order did believe that farmers could do without the surplus of middlemen; it did purpose to aid the farmer financially, though this purpose was not its main function. In the earlier period Grange stores were organized. A few of these are in successful operation today, but the policy as a whole has been abandoned. Another plan, discussed over thirty years ago, has during the past decade come to assume practical importance as a method of co-operation on business lines. The plan, in brief, is that various State Granges contract with manufacturing and jobbing houses to furnish members of the order with goods at practically wholesale rates. Goods are ordered by the subordinate Granges, under seal of the order; are purchased on a cash basis; and are shipped to the purchasing agent of the Grange, and by him distributed to the individual buyers. Such materials as binder twine, salt, harness, Paris green, all kinds of farm implements, vehicles, sewing-machines, and fruit trees are purchased advantageously. Even staple groceries, etc., are sometimes bought in this way. Members often save enough in single purchases to pay all their expenses for the Grange. There is no capital invested; there are no debts imposed upon himself by the purchaser; and there has not been extreme difficulty in securing favorable contracts. The plan seems destined to continued enlargement and usefulness as a legitimate phase of business co-operation. Michigan Granges purchased not less than $350,000 worth of goods during 1905, under such a plan. The estimate for Maine is over half a million dollars. In several states the organization successfully conducts mutual fire insurance companies; active membership in the Grange being an essential requisite for membership in the insurance company. Wherever these companies have become well established, it is asserted that they maintain a lower rate of assessment than even the popular "farmers' mutuals." In New York there are twenty-three Grange companies, with policies aggregating $85,000,000, the average cost for the year 1905 being $1.96 per thousand. Single companies claim to have secured even better rates. This insurance not only pays individuals, but it attracts and holds members. In New Hampshire a fairly successful Grange life insurance company exists. In co-operative selling, the order has so far accomplished very little, except locally and among individuals or Granges. There is a supreme difficulty in the way of successful transfers among patrons themselves, as members desiring to buy wish the very lowest prices; those desiring to sell, the very highest prices. Arbitration under such circumstances is not easy. The fundamental obstacle to members selling together on the general market is that, in most cases, all members do not have the same things to sell. A co-operative creamery, for instance, is organized on the basis of a _product_--butter; the Grange is organized on the basis of _manhood_--and each man may have his crop or stock specialty. This difficulty, though grave, is not, perhaps, insuperable, and will tend to disappear as membership enlarges. But it is only fair to state that, so far, the Grange has not been able to devise any successful plan for co-operative selling, applicable on a large scale. There are two or three features that deserve further mention. One is the position of the family in the Grange. It is stated that the Grange was the first secret organization to place woman on a plane of perfect equality with man. In every association each female member has a vote. Woman has four special offices assigned to her sex, and is eligible to any office in the gift of the order. The majority of subordinate lecturers are women; many subordinate and even Pomona masters are women; Michigan's state lecturer is a woman who is revolutionizing the educational work of the order in that state; while Minnesota had for some years a competent and earnest woman as state master. Every delegate to every State Grange is a dual delegate--man and wife. The state master and his wife are delegates to the National Grange. Women serve on all committees in these gatherings, and a woman's voice is frequently heard in debates. And not only the wife, but, as previously stated, the children above fourteen years of age may attain full membership. A large proportion of every healthy Grange consists of young people, who have their share in the active work. Thus it will be seen that the order conserves the family life. It is doubtful if any other social institution in rural communities, not excepting the church, so completely interests the entire family. The organization is also a conservator of morals. While sectarian discussions are as foreign to its purposes as is partisan politics, and while it does not even pretend to take the place of the church, it is built on a truly religious foundation. Its ritual is permeated, in word and in sentiment, by the religious spirit. Every meeting opens and closes with prayer. Moral character is constantly eulogized and glorified in Grange esoteric literature. The membership comes almost exclusively from that large class of farmers who are moral, high-minded, God-fearing men and women. The Grange has been opposed, both by farmers and by others, because secrecy is not a desirable attribute; but the experience of forty years and the uniform testimony of all leaders in the work declare that this was a wise provision. No influential member has, so far as it is known, proposed that the order should be dismantled of its secret features. The ritualistic work is not burdensome. Occasionally the processes of initiation may take time that ought to be allotted to educational work; but, if the initiation is properly conducted, it has of itself a high educational value. The financial status of the Grange itself is worth noting. The fees for joining are merely nominal, while the dues are only ten cents a month per member. These fees and dues support the subordinate Granges, the State Grange, and the National Grange. There are no high-salaried officials in the order, and few salaried positions of any kind. The National Grange today has nearly $100,000 in its treasury, and several State Granges have substantial reserves. This policy is pursued, not for the love of hoarding, but because it is believed that it tends to the permanency and solidarity of the order. The Grange is a live institution; it has within itself the capacity for satisfying a great need in rural society; and it is destined to growth and larger and more permanent usefulness. It is based on correct principles: organization, co-operation, education. It is neither a political party nor a business agency. It is progressively conservative--or conservatively progressive. It is neither ultra-radical nor forever in the rut. Its chief work is on cultural lines. It includes the entire family. It is now growing, and there is every reason for thinking that this growth is of a permanent character. The Grange is ambitious to take its place beside the school and the church, as one of a trinity of forces that shall mold the life of the farmer on the broadest possible basis--material, intellectual, social, and ethical. Is there any good reason why this ambition is not worthy, or why its goal should not be won? CHAPTER XI OPPORTUNITIES FOR FARM WOMEN While rural life is often supposed to be fatally deficient in facilities for growth because of its isolation, the women living on our farms are thought to be the especial victims of this lack of social opportunity. No doubt there is much of truth in the popular opinion. Modern city life unquestionably tends to enliven, to sharpen, to put a razor-edge on capacity. Naturally the women as well as the men of the city are thus stimulated. An instance of the opportunities constantly presented to the city women is the rapid multiplication of women's clubs, which, especially in smaller towns, are absolutely revolutionizing the life of womankind. But have not the women of the country some resources of a similar character? Can they not in some way break the bonds of isolation? Are there not for them some of the blessings that come from a highly organized society? Are there not, in the country also, opportunities for the co-operation of mind and heart for common service? I think all these questions can be answered in the affirmative. It is at least worth while to endeavor to describe several means by which the woman of the farm can keep pace with her urban sister, and under conditions not so discouraging as many may suppose. Probably no movement has had such a profound significance for the farm women of America as has the Grange movement. We have already discussed the general aspects of Grange work. It must be remembered that the farmer's wife is practically equal with her husband in Grange law and practice. She votes, she may hold office, even the higher executive offices. A delegate to the State Grange is always two--a man and his wife if he has one. The wife serves on committees and votes as she pleases. This equality extends throughout the order. The woman bears her share of work; she reads papers; she directs the social phases of the Grange; she talks on farm topics if she wants to; she debates school affairs; she visits neighboring Granges. All this means education, and education of a very valuable sort, the effects of which permeate so thoroughly those communities where the Grange has long been established that one hardly realizes the work that has been accomplished. For it is not at all an exaggeration to assert that a positive revolution often comes about from the planting of a Grange in a neighborhood where no such organization has ever existed. It finds most of the women diffident, many of them with restricted views, few of them with the instinct for social service developed beyond the needs of friendly neighbors. In the Grange these women find new acquaintances, learn the power of concerted action, meet the responsibility of office, get to their feet for a few words--unheard-of courage! Such speech is usually brief and perhaps not ready, but it is likely to be cogent, because it is born of experience and "stops when through." County and perhaps State Granges add their experiences. And so on through the years these shy, reserved, possibly narrow, lives come to flower. And the Grange has furnished the dynamic. Strong leaders among farm women have been developed by the opportunities the Grange has afforded them. And thousands of other women in all parts of the country have by this same means grown out of their narrowness, "discovered themselves," and become comparatively cultured, well read, able to take a woman's place in this day of woman's power as a public factor. It is safe to say that the Grange has been the greatest single influence in America with respect to the development of the women of the farm. Another factor in the life of farm women which has arisen in more recent years is the farmers' institute. The audiences in some cases are largely of men, but as a rule the attendance of women averages one-third to one-half. Until very recent years the women joined with the men in all sessions of the institute, and their presence was recognized by appropriate subjects on the programme, frequently presented by women themselves. Several years ago Minnesota and Wisconsin initiated separate meetings for women, held simultaneously with the main meeting, for purposes of instruction in domestic science. Michigan, a little later, developed the "women's section" of the farmers' institute. This is held one afternoon of the usual two-day session of the institute in a hall separate from the general meeting, and only women attend. Two topics are presented for discussion, one by a woman sent by the state, the other by a woman from the town or a neighboring farm. Topics concerning child-training, making housework easier, home life on the farm, and even themes relating to the problems that center about the sex question, are thoroughly discussed. Women take part much more freely than they do in the general sessions of the institute. Across the border, in Ontario, the women have formed separate institutes, as they have also in Indiana. All this means a new opportunity for the farm woman. The Grange is an organization, and its members gain all the development that comes from engaging in the work required to maintain a semi-literary and social organization. The institute, on the other hand, is an event, and there cluster about it all the inspiration and suggestion that can come from any notable convention for which one will sacrifice not a little in order to attend. Institute work for women is in its beginnings. So far we have found that existing institutions for women in rural districts bring together merely the women of the farm. In the women's section of the institutes half the audience is usually from the town. This meeting occurs, however, but once a year, and the social effect of the commingling of city and farm women can prove only suggestive of the desirability of further opportunity for similar gatherings. At a Michigan institute some years ago this desire fructified, and the product was a "Town and Country Club." This club secured a majority of its membership, of some ninety, from among women residing on farms. Its meetings are bi-weekly. It is to be hoped that this sort of club may be organized in large numbers. It represents another step in the emancipation of the farm woman, because it brings her into contact with her city sister--and contact that is immediate, vital, inspiring, continuous, and mutually helpful. It may be thought unnecessary to form a new set of clubs for the purpose indicated, but the fact seems to be that the ordinary women's club even in small towns has failed to reach the woman who makes her home upon the farm. Another feature of this idea of the Town and Country Club is the "rest room" for farmers' wives. In a number of cases where this has been tried, the women of the village or town provide a room as near the shopping center of the town as possible, where the country women can find a place to rest, to lunch, and to leave their children. These rooms are fitted up in a neat but inexpensive manner with the necessary conveniences, and are entirely free to those for whom they were intended. If these rooms are well managed, they offer not only a very practical form of assistance to the women of the farm, but they may be the means of developing a form of co-operation between the women of the village and the farm, and eventually leading to some permanent scheme of mutual work. Possibilities of this sort of thing are easily recognized. In the realms of higher education the girl who is to stay upon the farm has not been wholly neglected. In Kansas, Iowa, Connecticut, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan, at least, and in connection with the agricultural colleges of those states, courses for women (including domestic science) have been provided. They are well patronized by girls from the farm. Many of these girls do not marry farmers; many of them do. And their college training having thus been secured in an atmosphere more or less agricultural, they must inevitably take rank among their sisters of the farm as leaders in demonstrating what farm life for women may be. Nor should it be forgotten that the tremendous movement of recent years which has so multiplied standard reading-matter, both periodicals and books, has reached the farm. A census of country post-offices will reveal the fact that the standard magazines go regularly to thousands of farm homes. Agricultural papers, religious papers, and even dailies find multitudes of intelligent readers among farmers. With the advent of better highways, electric car lines, rural free delivery, and the rural telephone, each of which is looming on the horizon as an important feature of American farm life; with the Grange or similar organization in every school district; with the development of courses for women at all our colleges of agriculture, and the logical complement of such courses in the form of college extension--farmers' institutes, reading-courses, traveling libraries, lecture and correspondence courses--we shall find farm life taking on a new dress, and perhaps farmers' wives may come to enjoy the envy of those women who are unfortunate enough not to have married farmers. CHAPTER XII THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND PROGRESS The only way to an understanding of the relation of the church to rural progress is through an appreciation of the place which the church as a social institution may have among other social institutions affecting rural life. Moreover, to know the value of these institutions one must first know the rural social needs. May we not then, even at the risk of repetition, take a brief survey of these needs and institutions, in order that we may more clearly attain the proper point of view? At the outset let us be sure that we have sympathy with the countryman as such. It is often argued that the rural question, or any phase of it, as for instance the question of the rural church, is important because the country supplies the best blood to the city--and a roll-call of the famous country-born is read to prove the point. This may be all true. But it is only a partial view, for it places the emphasis upon the leaving of the farm, whereas the emphasis should be placed upon the farm and those who stay there. We may praise the country because it furnishes brain and brawn for the world's work; we may argue for country life because it possesses a good environment in which to rear a family; we may demand a school system that shall give the country child as good a chance as the city child has. In all this we do well. But we do not yet stand face to face with the rural problem. For the rural problem is the problem of those who farm. It is the problem of the man behind the plow. It is he that is the center of interest. His business, his success, his manhood, his family, his environment, his education, his future--these constitute the problem of the farm. Half our people make their living from the brown soil. In virtue, in intelligence, in real worth, this half compare favorably with the other half who saw wood, and shovel sand, and pull throttles, and prepare briefs, and write sermons. The business of agriculture provides directly for the material welfare of nearly forty millions of our people. It supports gigantic railway systems, fills the hulls of immense ships, furnishes raw material for thousands of industries. This rural hemisphere of American economic and social life is surely worthy the thought of the captain of industry, of the statesman, of the economist, of the educator, of the preacher. We may also, without danger of being put to confusion, assume that the tiller of the soil is in essential character very much like other people. Farmer nature is usually a fair specimen of human nature. Nevertheless the environment of the farmer is a peculiar one. Individually as well as socially he is comparatively isolated. He meets but little social friction. The class to which he belongs is largely a segregated class, physically and socially. All these things give to the rural social problem a distinctive character and give rise to the great social needs of the farmer. What are these needs? I name three: (1) _Completer organization._ Farmers do not co-operate easily. They never had to co-operate largely under the old régime, for pioneer farming placed a premium on individualism. The present century however, with its emphasis upon organization and co-operation, calls the farmer to the task with the warning cry that unless he does organize he is in danger of losing his present industrial, political, and social status. (2) _Better education._ The rural schools may not be so deficient as to deserve all the scorn heaped upon them by educational reformers; but it is little enough to say that they can be vastly improved. They are not keeping up with city schools. The country is especially lacking in good high-school privileges. Of technical training too, in spite of forty years of agricultural colleges, the country is sadly in need. Neither in primary grades, in high schools, in special schools, is there an adequate amount of study of the principles of agriculture--principles which an age of science demands must be mastered if the independent farmer is to be a success. (3) _Quicker communication._ Isolation has been the bugbear of farm life. It must be overcome partly by physical means. There must be a closer touch between individuals of the class, and between farmers and the dwellers in the town and city. These social needs are in some degree met by the farmers' organizations, by the rural and agricultural schools, and by the development of new means of communication. There is a host of minor agencies. In other chapters I have tried to show how these various institutions are endeavoring to meet these rural needs. So important are these factors of rural life that we may now raise the question, What should be the relation of the rural church to these needs and to the agencies designed to meet them? In dealing with this phase of the subject, we may best speak of the church most frequently in terms of the pastor, for reasons that may appear as we go on. There are three things the country pastor may do in order to bring his church into vital contact with these great sociological movements. Of course he _may_ ignore them, but that is church suicide. (1) He may recognize them. This means first of all to understand them, to appreciate their influence. There is a law of the division of labor that applies to institutions as well as to individuals. This law helps us to understand how such institutions as the Grange and farmers' institutes are doing a work that the church cannot do. They are doing a work that needs doing. They are serving human need. No pastor can afford to ignore them, much less in sneer at them as unclean; he may well apply the lesson of Peter's vision, and accept them as ministers of the kingdom. (2) He may encourage and stimulate them. The rural pastor may throw himself into the van of those who strive for better farming, for a quicker social life, for more adequate educational facilities. He can well take up the rôle of promoter--a promoter of righteousness and peace through so-called secular means. Thus shall he perform the highest function of the prophet--to spiritualize and glorify the common. But the rural pastor can go even farther. (3) He may co-operate with them. He may thus assist in uniting with the church all of those other agencies that make for rural progress, and thus secure a "federation," if not "of the world," at least of all the forces that are helping to solve the farm problem; and he may thus found a "parliament," if not "of man," at least of all who believe that the rural question is worth solving and that no one movement is sufficient to solve it. We come now to the most practical part of our subject, which is, how the proposed relation between church and other rural social forces may be secured. There are four suggestions along this line. 1. Sociological study by the rural pastor. This is fundamental. In general it means a fairly comprehensive study of sociological principles, some study of sociological problems, and some practice in sociological investigation. As it relates to the rural pastor, it means also a knowledge of rural sociology. It implies a grasp of the principles and significance of modern agricultural science, an understanding of the history, status, and needs of rural and agricultural education, an appreciation of and sympathy for the co-operative movements among farmers. Does one say, this is asking too much of the burdened country pastor with his meager salary and widespread parish? Let me ask if the pastor has any other road to power except _to know_? Moreover, the task is not so formidable as first appears. The pastor is supposed to be a trained student, and since he needs to know these things only in broad lines, the acquiring of them need not compel the midnight oil. I would, however, urge that every pastor have a course in general sociology, either in college or in seminary, and if he has the slightest intimation that his lines will be cast in country places, that he add a course in rural sociology. Inasmuch as the latter course is at present offered in few academic institutions in the United States, it might well be urged that brief courses in rural sociology be offered at the many summer schools. But sociological study by the pastor means more than knowledge of the general principles of sociology and of the problems of rural sociology; it means a minute and comprehensive sociological study of his particular parish. This in its simplest form consists of a religious canvass such as is frequently made both in country and city. But even this is not enough. It should at once be supplemented by a very careful and indeed a continuous sociological canvass, in which details about the whole business and life of the farm shall be collected and at last assimilated into the vital structure of the pastor's knowledge of his problem. 2. The second suggestion looks toward the establishment of a social-service church, or an institutional church, or again, as one has phrased it, a "country church industrial." There seems to be a growing feeling that the country church may become not only the distinctively religious center of the neighborhood, but also the social, the intellectual, and the aesthetic center. No doubt there is untold power in such an idea. No doubt the country church has a peculiarly rich and inviting field for community service. It would be gratifying if every country pastor would study the possibilities of this idea and endeavor to make an experiment with it. I have, however, a supplemental suggestion, at this point. It is not possible to make of every rural church an institutional church. The church is notably a conservative institution. The rural church is in this respect "to the manner born." Rural church members are likely to be ultra-conservative, especially as to means and methods. Even if this were not true, we might well lament any attempt to establish a social-service church that endeavored to make the church the sole motive power in rural regeneration, that failed to recognize, to encourage, and to co-operate with the other social forces which we have mentioned. But if every country pastor cannot have a social-service church, is it not possible that every country church shall have a social-service pastor? There are some things the church cannot _do_; there is nothing it may not through its pastor _inspire_. There are some uses to which the country church cannot be put; there are no uses to which the country pastor may not be put--as country pastors know by experience. The pastor ought to be an authority on social salvation as well as on personal salvation. He ought to be guide, philosopher, and friend in community affairs as well as in personal affairs. Is he not indeed the logical candidate for general social leadership in the rural community? He is educated, he is trained to think, he is supposed to have broad grasp of the meaning of affairs, he usually possesses many of the qualities of leadership. He is _relatively_ a fixture. He is less transient than the teacher. He is the only man in the community whose tastes are sociological and who is at the same time a paid man--all this aside from the question of the munificence of his stipend. Let us then have the social-service rural church if we can; but let us have the social-service rural pastor at all hazards, as the first term in the formula for solving the sociological problem of the country church. 3. Co-operation among rural churches. The manifest lack of co-operation among churches seems to many laymen to result in a tremendous waster of power. Of course it is a very hard problem. But is it insoluble? It would seem not. One would think that the plan of union suggested by Dr. Strong in _The New Era_ is wholly practicable. But the burden of the suggestion at this point is this: Cannot the churches unite sufficiently for a thorough religious and sociological canvass? If they cannot federate on a theological platform, can they not unite on a statistical platform? If they cannot unite for religious work, can they not join hands long enough to secure a more intelligent basis for their separate work? It seems to me that this sort of union is worth while, and that it is something in which there could be full union, in which "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free." 4. The pastor may aid if not lead in the federation of rural social forces. The idea involved is substantially this: Given a farmers' organization that ministers chiefly to industrial and economic ends, though incidentally to moral and educational ones; a school system that feeds chiefly the accepted educational needs, though acting perhaps as a moving force in industrial and social betterment; a church which is chiefly a religious institution, but which touches the life of the community at many other points--given these things and the obvious next step is co-operation among them all, in order that a well-balanced kind of social progress may result. This form of federation means the attempt to solve the farm problem at all points. It suggests that the army of rural progress shall march with the wings abreast the center. It means that the farmer, the editor, the educator, the preacher--all, shall see the work that needs doing, in all its fulness, and, seeing, shall resolve to push ahead side by side. To sum up: The rural problem is a neglected but exceedingly important question. Out of the peculiar environment of the farmer grow his peculiar social needs, namely, better organization, fuller and richer education, quicker communication. To meet these supreme needs we find a growing and already powerful coterie of farmers' organizations, somewhat heterogeneous but rapidly developing plans of agricultural education, and a marvelous evolution of the means of transportation for body, voice, and missive. These needs and these agencies are selected as the conspicuous and vital element in the sociological problem that confronts the rural pastor. What shall be his attitude toward them? He _may_ ignore them; but we assume that he will seek to work with them and to use them for the greater glory of God. He must then recognize them, encourage them, and co-operate with them. To do this successfully he must first be a student of sociology; he can then well afford to meditate upon the possibilities of making his church in some measure a social-service church or at least of making of himself a social-service pastor; he can work for church union at least on sociological lines; and finally he can do his best to secure an active federation of all the forces involved in the rural problem. CHAPTER XIII A SUMMARY OF RECENT PROGRESS In some respects the most notable recent advance in rural matters consists in the improved means of communication in rural districts. The country is relatively isolated, and it is this isolation in its extreme forms that is the bane of country living. Undue conservatism, lack of conformity to progressive views, undue prominence of class feeling, and a tendency to be less alert are things that grow out of this isolation; but better means of communication decrease these difficulties, and the last few years have seen a remarkable advance in this respect. For instance, the rural free mail delivery system is only ten years old, and yet today there are more than twenty-five thousand routes of this character in the United States serving possibly twenty million people with daily mail, a great proportion of whom before had very irregular mail service. Results are patent and marked. Time is saved in going for mail; market reports come daily; farmers are more prompt in their business dealings; roads are kept in better shape; there is an increased circulation of papers and magazines. Thus the farmer is in closer touch with affairs and much more alert to business opportunities, to political activities, and to social movements. The circulation of daily papers in country districts has increased at a marvelous rate. The amount of letter-writing has increased. Rural delivery of mail arouses the spirit of "being in the world." Its results have been almost revolutionary. So, too, the rural telephone. Recent investigation in the states of Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana showed that out of 200,000 subscribers to the independent telephone companies of those states about one-sixth were in farm homes. A few years ago, hardly a telephone could be found in a farmer's family. This business is constantly increasing. The established telephone companies are pushing their work into the country districts, small local exchanges are being formed, and soon the farmers, in the North at least, will be almost as well served by the telephone as are people of the smaller cities. Interurban electric railways are being built very rapidly and their advantage to the farmer is obvious. It is doubtful if their effect has been quite so far-reaching as some have suggested. At present they very largely parallel existing steam railways, and while they give better freight and passenger service and assist materially in diminishing rural isolation in the areas which they traverse, their influence does not extend very far from the line itself, and they reach relatively small areas of the country. However, their value to the farmer is very large, and, as they increase in number and in efficiency of service, they will become a powerful factor in rural progress. The good-roads movement is beginning to take on large proportions. It is, however, a complicated question. To make first-class roads is a costly business, and while a few such roads are of great value in a general social way, they do not quite make general country conditions ideal. To accomplish this, every road in the country should be a good road the year through, and this is an ideal very difficult of realization. However, in general, the roads are improving and as rapidly as the wealth of the country will permit the road system of the United States will be developed. Of course, good roads are a prime requisite for rural betterment. In general, it may be said that during the past decade the improvement of means of communication in rural districts has gone forward at a marvelously rapid pace. Nor is it exaggerating to say that the movements named are re-creating farm life. During this same period, there has been an almost equally wonderful advance in the means of agricultural education. Just twenty years ago the experiment-station system of this country was established. It took ten years for the stations to organize their work and to gain the confidence of the farmers. At present however, they are looked upon with great favor by the farming class and are doing a magnificent work. Their function is that of research chiefly, although they attempt some control service, such as inspection of fertilizers, stock foods, etc. In research they aim both to study the more intricate scientific questions that relate to agriculture and to carry on experiments that are of more obvious and more immediate practical application to existing conditions in the various states. There is one of these stations in each state and territory, besides a number of stations supported by state funds. The Department of Agriculture at Washington has also developed during the last ten years until it is performing very large service for agriculture. Its annual expenditures aggregate eight or ten million dollars, and it has in its employment hundreds of experts carrying on laboratory and field research, scouring the world for plants and seeds that may be of economic value, and assisting to control plant and animal diseases. It is also distributing a vast amount of practical information, put in readable form and adapted to the average farmer. Its work of seeking to extend the markets of our agricultural products is one of its notable successes. Agricultural schools have been talked about for a century, and during the early part of the last century several were started. The first permanent agricultural college was opened in 1857, in Michigan. The Morrill Act of 1862 gave rise to a system of such colleges and today there will be found one in every state and territory, besides several for the colored people of the South. Up to 1890, these colleges had been not wholly satisfactory and the farming class was not patronizing very fully their agricultural courses. The fault belonged both to the college and to the farmers. The farmers were skeptical of the value of agricultural education, and the colleges were often out of sympathy with the real needs of the farmers, and in fact found it difficult to break away from the pedagogical ideals of the old educational régime. Since 1890, however, there has been a complete change of sentiment in this respect, particularly in the Middle West. There the "land-grant" colleges, whether separate colleges or whether organized as colleges of state universities, are securing magnificent buildings for agriculture, are offering fully equipped courses, and are enrolling as students some of the best men in college, whom they are educating not only for agricultural teachers and experimenters but also for practical farmers. Of course, there are many grave problems connected with this subject, many farmers who do not yet respond to the call for educated agriculturists, and some colleges that do not yet appreciate their opportunity. But the change for the better has been so marked that all agricultural educators are extremely optimistic. One of the most difficult and most important phases of agricultural education is that of a secondary grade. The great proportion of educated farmers will probably be trained for their business in secondary schools. This problem is being approached from many standpoints. The University of Minnesota established, some fourteen years ago, a school of agriculture, which now enrols several hundred pupils of both sexes. Wisconsin is trying the experiment of two county schools of agriculture. Occasionally the public high school will be found offering a course in agriculture. Several states are experimenting in one or more of these lines, and during the next few years we shall see a large development of this phase of agricultural education. One of the most interesting movements in agricultural education has been an attempt to introduce nature-study and even the elements of agriculture into the country schools. Cornell University has taken the lead in advocating "nature-study" purely, for the schools; and the University of Missouri has perhaps been the leader in advocating that the work be made even more definite and practical, and that the country pupils shall be taught, during their early years even, "the elements of agriculture." Both plans are being worked out with a fair degree of success, and many other states are carrying out the work in some form or other. Of course the idea is not a new one, but its present practical application is a timely one, and it will not be long before this branch of agricultural education will become a prominent factor in rural betterment. A most suggestive phase of agricultural education is college extension work. University extension has had a rather meteoric career in this country, in so far as it has been connected with educational institutions; although the extension idea is spreading rapidly and is being worked out through home study and correspondence courses of all sorts. But I think there is scarcely any field in which the real college extension idea is today being more successfully applied than in agriculture. The work started with farmers' institutes, which were instituted about twenty-five years ago and which have been adopted in practically all the states of the Union. It has broadened within ten years, until now it is carried on not only by farmers' institutes, but through home-correspondence courses, the introduction of millions of pamphlets into farm homes, demonstrations in spraying, butter-making, soil testing, milk testing, and so on. Ontario presents a good illustration of how a new agriculture can be created, in a dozen years, by co-operating methods of agricultural education. Her provincial department of agriculture, her experiment station, her agricultural college, her various forms of extension work, and her various societies of agriculturists have all worked together with an unusual degree of harmony for the deliberate purpose of inducing Canadian agriculturists to produce the things that will bring the most profit. The results have been most astonishing and most gratifying. The recent progress in the organization of farmers has been less marked than has been the development of rural communication and agricultural education. Organization is a prime requisite for farmers. They feel this truth themselves. For the last forty years, many attempts--some large, some small, some successful, some great failures--have been made to this end. The problem is an extremely difficult one. Business co-operation among farmers is especially difficult and, while co-operation has developed quite largely--so much so that the Department of Agriculture was able to report, a year ago, a list of five thousand co-operative societies of various kinds among farmers--still it cannot be said that the farmers are co-operating industrially in a relatively large way. They have, however, a multitude of associations and societies. They have also the Grange, which is the most successful of all the general organizations of farmers in the country. Contrary to public belief, the Grange is not defunct, but has been growing at a very rapid pace during the last few years and has a large influence especially in the East and Middle West. It has practically no existence in the far West and in the South. It has a national organization, however, representing some twenty-six states. Its influence in Congress is said to be marked. The local Granges are doing a very large work, socially, educationally, and sometimes financially. The Grange seems to understand itself now. Its ideals have been worked out pretty carefully, and its future growth is quite certain. We have suggested that the significant rural social movements of the past few years have been the improvement of rural communication, the wonderful development of agricultural education, and the fairly satisfactory development of organization among farmers. It seems also apparent that there is a fourth line of development that might be mentioned as being significant, and it may be expressed in a somewhat general statement that the interest in agricultural questions has increased in a very marked way. There is undoubtedly a new emphasis upon country life generally. The people of the cities have been going to the country more than ever before. A walk, the length of Beacon Street in Boston, at any time from the middle of June to late autumn, convinces one that the majority of the people are somewhere in the country. All over the North, city people are making country homes for at least a portion of the year. There is also a growing interest in the farm and farm problems among the general public. Just now the country schools are attracting special attention from the educators--so much so that the late President Harper stated, not long ago, that the rural-school question is the coming question in education. Even the country church is being made a subject of discussion in religious circles. It is conceded that agriculture presents "problems." And while the throbbing, busy, intense life of the city brings perplexing questions to our civilization, our people are coming to realize that the agricultural population and the agricultural industry are still tremendous factors in our national life and success, and that both social and industrial conditions in the country are such that there also are grave questions to be settled. In view of the facts which have been given, I think if one were asked to give a direct answer to the question, Is the farmer keeping up? one could reply, Yes. In some sections of the country, the farmers have not responded to these forward movements. The countryman is naturally conservative. Not only that, but there are some serious questions that he has to meet in his business and in his life. He finds it extremely and increasingly difficult to get adequate labor. He has not been able to take sufficient advantage of the power of co-operation. The industrial and social development of the city has lured away his children. And yet one cannot help feeling that these really remarkable advances of the past decade are prophetic of a steady improvement in rural conditions, of a larger development of rural life, of a greater prosperity for agriculture. With regard to the future, it seems to me that, on the social side, the progress of the next few years is to be along the lines, indicated above, which have characterized the past ten or a dozen years. Still further improved means of communication will tend to banish isolation and its drawbacks. Realization of the benefits of organization and ability to co-operate will vastly strengthen class power. The means of agricultural education will be developed very rapidly, with the ideal in mind of being able to furnish some sort of agricultural training for every individual who lives upon the farm. The country question, as a whole, will attract increasing attention. Gradually it will be seen that the rural problem is one of the greatest interest to all our citizens. The spirit of co-operation will grow until not only the farmers themselves unite for their own class interests but the various social agencies--industrial, religious, educational--ministering to rural betterment will find themselves also co-operating. Thus, it seems to me, the outlook for the future is full of hope. A genuine forward movement for rural betterment has had its beginning, is now gathering volume, and will soon attain very large proportions. FORWARD STEPS CHAPTER XIV THE SOCIAL SIDE OF THE FARM QUESTION There is a proverb in Grange circles which expresses also the fundamental aim of all agricultural education--"The farmer is of more consequence than the farm and should be first improved." The first term in all agricultural prosperity is the man behind the plow. Improved agriculture is a matter of fertile brain rather than of fertile field. Mind culture must precede soil culture. But if the improved man is the first term in improved agriculture, if he is the effective cause of rural progress, he is also the last term and the choice product of genuine agricultural advancement. We may paraphrase the sordid, "raise more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land to raise more corn, etc.," into the divine, "train better farmers to make better farming to grow better farmers, etc." We want trained men that we may have an advancing agricultural art, that we may make every agricultural acre render its maximum. The improved acre, however, must yield not only corn but civilization, not only potatoes but culture, not only wheat but effective manhood. But we may carry the point a step farther. The individual farmer is the starting-point and the end of agriculture, it is true. But the lone farmer is an anomaly, either as a cause or as a product, as the lone man is everywhere. As an effective cause we must have co-operating individuals, and as an end we desire an improved community and a higher-grade _class_ of farmers. The farm question then is a social question. Valuable as are the contributions of science to the problems of soil and plant and animal, the ultimate contribution comes from the development of improved men. So the real end is not merely to utilize each acre to its utmost, nor to provide cheap food for the people who do not farm, nor yet to render agriculture industrially strong. The gravest and most far-reaching consideration is the social and patriotic one of endeavoring to develop and maintain an agricultural class which represents the very best type of American manhood and womanhood, to make the farm home the ideal home, to bring agriculture to such a state that the business will always attract the keen and the strong who at the same time care more for home and children and state and freedom than for millions. In other words, the maintenance of the typical American farmer--the man who is essentially middle class, who is intelligent, who keeps a good standard of living, educates his children, serves his country, owns his medium-sized farm, and who at death leaves a modest estate--the maintenance of the typical American farmer is the real agricultural problem. If this analysis is a correct one, it will vitally affect our plans for agricultural training. The student will be taught not only soil physics, but social psychology. He will learn not only the action of bacteria in milk fermentation, but the underlying causes of the social ferment among the farmers of the last thirty years. He will concern himself with the value of farmers' organizations as well as with the co-operating influences of high-bred corn and high-bred steers. The function and organization of the rural school will be as serious a problem to him as the building and management of the co-operative creamery. The country church and its career will interest him fully as much as does the latest successful device for tying milch cows in the stable. He will want to get at the kernel of the political questions that confront agriculture just as fully and thoroughly as he wishes to master the formulae for commercial fertilizers. No man will have acquired an adequate agricultural education who has not been trained in rural social science, and who does not recognize the bearing of this wide field of thought upon the business of farming as well as upon American destiny. Research, too, will be touched with the social idea. The men who study conditions existing in rural communities which have to do with the real life of the people--the effects of their environment, the tendencies of their habits and customs--will need as thorough preparation for their work, and the result of their efforts will be as useful as that of the men who labor in field and laboratory. But the most profound consequence of recognizing the social side of the farm question will be the new atmosphere created at the agricultural colleges. These institutions are fast gaining leadership in all the technical questions of agriculture--leadership gladly granted by progressive farmers whenever the institution is managed with intelligence and in the spirit of genuine sympathy with farming. But these colleges must minister to the _whole farmer_. They must help the farmer solve all his problems, whether these problems are scientific, or economic, or social, or political. And let it be said in all earnestness that in our rapidly shifting industrial order, the farmer's interest in the political, social, and economic problems of his calling is fully as great as it is in those purely scientific and technical. And rightly so. A prime steer is a triumph. But it will not of itself keep the farmer free. The 50-bushels-of-wheat acre is a grand business proposition provided the general industrial conditions favor the grower as well as the consumer. When our agricultural colleges enter into the fullest sympathy with all the rural problems, when the farm home and the rural school and the country church and the farmer's civic rights and duties and all the relations of his business to other industries--when these questions are "in the air" of our agricultural colleges, then and then alone will these colleges fulfil their true mission of being _all things to all farmers_. CHAPTER XV THE NEEDS OF NEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE One might name a score of important activities that should be encouraged in order to better New England agriculture. But the two fundamental needs are (1) adaptation and (2) co-operation. By adaptation is meant such development of agriculture as shall more fully utilize existing physical and commercial conditions. The West has for seventy-five years pressed hard upon New England farming. But along with this western competition has come a new opportunity for the eastern farmer. New England farmers as a whole have not quickly enough responded to this new opportunity. Many of their troubles may be traced to the failure to adapt themselves to the new conditions. The men in New England who have met the new opportunity are succeeding. What does this adaptation consist in? It means, first, the adaptation of the New England farmer to his markets. In most parts of the country the type of farming is perhaps more dependent upon physical conditions of soil and climate than upon the immediate market. In New England the reverse is now true, and the type of New England farming must be adapted, absolutely and completely, to the demands of its market. New England farmers have the most superb markets in the country. Of the six million people in New England, approximately 75 per cent. live in the cities and villages. There are, in New England, thirty cities having a population of twenty-five thousand or more. The great majority of these cities are manufacturing cities peopled by the best class of consumers in the world--the American skilled artisan. They constitute a nearby market that demands fresh products which cannot be transported across a continent. New England is also especially favored in its nearness to the European market. The New England farmer then must adapt his crops, his methods, and his style of farming to his peculiar market. In the second place, this adaptation must be one of soil, just as anywhere else, only the problem here becomes more complicated because of the varied character of the farming lands. How to make the valleys and the hills, the rocky ridges and the sand plains of New England yield their largest possibilities in agriculture is a problem of the greatest scientific and industrial interest, and it is the problem that New England agriculture has to face. In this connection comes also the need of special varieties adapted not only to the market but to the soil and climate. This principle of adaptation is the industrial key to future agricultural development in New England. But to achieve this adaptation, to make the key work, there is needed the force of social organization. The farmer must be reached before the farm can be improved. The man who treads the furrow is a greater factor than nitrogen or potash. How is this man to be reached, inspired, instructed? Largely by some form of organization. The second and greater need therefore is co-operation. Co-operation means faith in agriculture--a faith too seldom found in the Israel of New England's yeomanry. Co-operation means ideals--ideals of rural possibilities too seldom dreamed of in the philosophy of the Yankee farmer. Co-operation means power--power that cannot be acquired by the lone man, not even by the resolute individualism so dominant in New England character. There are three forms of co-operation, all of which are desirable and even essential if the most rapid agricultural progress in New England is to be secured--co-operation among individuals, among organizations, among states. The farmers of New England must work together. The Grange is stronger in New England than in any other portion of the country of similar area--yet not one farmer in ten belongs to the Grange. We need not dwell on this point, for it is a truth constantly preached through the Grange and through other means. Let me suggest two ideas relative to co-operation which have not received so much attention. Each organization has its peculiar work. The school is to train the young, the agricultural college to prepare the youth, the farmers' institute to instruct and inspire the middle-aged and mature. The experiment station seeks to discover the means by which nature and man may better work together. The producers' unions endeavor to secure a fair price for their goods. The Grange enlarges the views of its members and brings the power which comes from working together, buying together, meeting together, talking together, acting together. Boards of agriculture control conditions of health and disease among animals and plants. The country fair educates and interests. The church crowns all in its ministrations of spiritual vision, moral uplift, and insistence upon character as the supreme end of life. But no institution can do the work of the others. They are members one of another. The hand cannot say to the foot, I have no need of thee. All these things make for rural progress. None can be spared. The Grange cannot take the place of the church. The institute cannot supplant the Grange. The college course cannot reach the adult farmer. The experiment station cannot instruct the young. The church cannot secure reforms in taxation. These agencies may however co-operate. Indeed the most rapid and most secure rural progress, the broadest and soundest agricultural growth, can not take place unless there be this form of co-operation. There will come added interest, increased efficiency, larger views, greater ambitions in our agricultural development, if, in each state, all of these forces work together. We may therefore welcome most cordially the proposed plan of federating the various agricultural societies of each state into one grand committee organized for the purpose of forwarding all the agricultural interests of that state. Let there be, moreover, a "League for Rural Progress," in each state or, at least, an annual conference on rural progress, in each state, in which the representatives of the farmers' societies, of the schools, of the churches, and indeed all other people who have the slightest interest in rural advancement may meet to discuss plans and methods which shall better agriculture and the farmer. But this is not enough. There ought to be co-operation among these various social institutions without respect to state lines. The farm problem in New England is one problem, although differing in details, it is true, in different states. Co-operation should not stop with the federating of the organizations of a state. There is no reason, for instance, why the agricultural colleges and experiment stations of New England should not co-operate. It is not practicable to prevent all duplication of work. I do suggest the desirability and the feasibility of genuine co-operation. Why should not those in charge of the rural schools of all New England meet together and discuss the difficulties and achievements as they exist in different states? Why not have a "New England Society for Agricultural Education," in which all organizations and all individuals who are interested in any phase of this subject may meet for discussing New England problems? Could not boards of agriculture co-operate to some extent, especially in farmers' institute work with general plans and ideas? Certainly conferences between these boards ought to yield most valuable results. Is the idea of a genuine New England fair a mere dream? Cannot the Granges of New England profitably co-operate more fully? It is true that there is considerable intervisitation, and yet the rank and file of members in one state know comparatively little of the progress and methods of the Grange in an adjoining state; this knowledge is confined to a few leaders. Would it not be worth while to attempt an occasional New England assemblage of Grange members, a representative gathering for discussing Grange work and for enthusing the Grange people of New England with the possibilities of still further Grange development? The idea of New England as a unit of interest in church matters is already exemplified by the appointment of a New England secretary of the federation of churches. It is not too much to expect that, in the near future, all the means for church federation in New England shall work together, because it is evident that co-operation and unity are demanded by the nature of the field. And finally, is it idle to think that there might be a New England League for Rural Progress or, at least, a New England Conference on Rural Progress, which shall bring from every corner of New England representatives of the agricultural colleges, of the Granges, of the country church, of the rural school, of the country press, and all other individuals who believe in the possibilities of New England agriculture, and in the efficiency of the fullest and freest co-operation? There are several powerful reasons why an attempt to better New England agriculture will be greatly aided by co-operation that includes every inch of New England soil from Boston harbor to the Berkshires, and from Mt. Katahdin to Point Judith. (1) The importance of New England agriculture. In the appended table is attempted a comparison between New England as a unit, the state of Michigan representing an average agricultural state, and the state of Iowa representing the foremost agricultural state. The figures, taken from the Census of 1900, are given in round numbers. Such a table is not conclusive as to agricultural conditions. But it is very suggestive as to the importance of New England agriculture both industrially and socially. It will be seen that, with an area only a little larger than Michigan, New England compares in every respect favorably with that average state and, in some respects, excels it, while it excels both Michigan and Iowa by 65 per cent. in gross value of product per acre of improved land. (2) Agricultural conditions all over New England are quite similar. Speaking broadly, the soil and climate of one state are the soil and climate of another. The people are of the same stock, the same views, the same habits, the same traditions. The demand of the market is fairly uniform for different sections. The New England city is the New Englander's special possession as a market. Farm labor conditions are much the same. In fact, there is hardly a portion of our country, of the same area, which in all these respects yields itself more completely to the idea of unity. (3) The hopefulness of the farm problem. Nearly four millions of city people live in New England. They must be fed. The nearness of the market means high-class products. This means intensive agriculture. Intensive agriculture means education and intelligence. The cities are growing. Their power of consumption is steadily and rapidly increasing. (4) The unusual social equipment. It must be remembered that in an area but little larger than Iowa, which has one agricultural college and one agricultural experiment station and no Granges to speak of, New England has, in comparison, six agricultural colleges, six experiment stations, six boards of agriculture, over a thousand Granges, and numerous agricultural societies. The means of agricultural education in New England are more numerous and may be more efficient than in any other portion of this country of similar area. Moreover, the cities are now in a position to help solve the problem in New England. They have leaders. There are in them men with leisure and talent who are interested in this problem and who are willing to help solve it. (5) The sentimental side. A campaign for rural progress, with New England as the unit, ought to arouse the pride and enthusiasm of all the sons and daughters of New England who still have the privilege of living within her borders, as well as the interest and sympathy of all her grandsons who, though living under western skies, still cherish in their hearts the deepest affection for their Fatherland. Shall not the idea of uniting all the forces of agricultural betterment that exist in New England be a stimulus to every farmer in the six states, and, indeed, attract the sympathy and practical aid of every lover of New England soil? Adaptation, co-operation: these are the primary needs of New England agriculture; an adaptation of the farmer and his farm to existing conditions, a co-operation that unites individual farmers into various associated efforts, that federates the work and influence of the different social agencies within the state, and that ultimately secures the unity of all New England in a great movement for rural advancement. =================================================================== | New England | Michigan | Iowa ------------------------------------------------------------------- Total land area-- | | | square miles | 62,000 | 57,500 | 55,500 Number of farms | 192,000 | 203,000 | 229,000 Acreage in farms | 20,500,000 | 17,500,000 | 34,600,000 Acres of improved | | | land | 8,135,000 | 11,800,000 | 29,900,000 Value of farms | $640,000,000 | $690,000,000 | $1,835,000,000 Value of farm | | | products | $170,000,000 | $147,000,000 | $365,000,000 Persons engaged in | | | agriculture | 290,000 | 312,000 | 372,000 Rural population | 1,500,000 | 1,200,000 | 1,260,000 Value of products per| | | acre of improved | | | land | $20 | $12 | $12 Number of Granges | 1,200 | 725 | Number of Grange | | | members | 120,000 | 45,000 | ------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER XVI AN UNTILLED FIELD IN AMERICAN EDUCATION Agricultural education in this country has thus far been an attempt to apply a knowledge of the laws of the so-called "natural" sciences to the practical operations of the farm. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the application of the principles of the "social" sciences to the life of the farmer. All this is partly explained by the fact that the natural sciences were fairly well developed when the needs of the farmer called the scientist to work with and for the man behind the plow, when a vanishing soil fertility summoned the chemist to the service of the grain grower, when the improvement of breeds of stock and races of plants began to appeal to the biologist. Moreover, these practical applications of the physical and biological sciences are, and always will be, a fundamental necessity in the agricultural question. But in the farm problem we cannot afford to ignore the economic and sociological phases. While it may be true that the practical success of the individual farmer depends largely upon his business sense and his technical education, it is folly to hope that the success of agriculture as an industry and the influence of farmers as a class can be based solely upon the ability of each farmer to raise a big crop and to sell it to advantage. General intelligence, appreciation of the trend of economic and social forces, capacity to co-operate, ability to voice his needs and his rights, are just as vital acquirements for the farmer as knowing how to make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before. It finally comes to this, that the American farmer is obliged to study the questions that confront him as a member of the industrial order and as a factor in the social and political life of the nation, with as much zeal and understanding as he is expected to show in the study of those natural laws governing the soil and the crops and the animals that he owns. In this connection it is significant to note that farmers themselves are already quite as interested in the social problems of their particular calling and in the general economic and political questions of the day, as they are in science applied to their business of tilling the soil. Not necessarily that they minimize the latter, but they seem instinctively to recognize that social forces may work them ill or work them good according to the direction and power of those forces. This statement is illustrated by the fact that the aims, purposes, labors, and discussions of the great farmers' organizations like the Grange are social in character, having to do with questions that are political, economic, sociological. When, however, we turn to those public educational agencies that are intended to assist in the solution of the farm problem, we discover that they are giving slight attention to the social side of the question. An examination of the catalogues of the agricultural colleges, whether separate institutions or colleges of state universities, reveals the fact that, beyond elementary work in economics, in civics, and occasionally in sociology, little opportunity is given students to study the farm question from its social standpoint. With a few exceptions, these institutions offer no courses whatever in rural social problems, and even in these exceptional cases the work offered is hardly commensurate with the importance of the subject. Nearly all our other colleges and universities are subject to the same comment. The average student of problems in economics and sociology and education gains on conception whatever of the importance and character of the rural phases of our industrial and social life. It may be urged in explanation of this state of affairs that the liberal study of the social sciences in our colleges and universities and especially any large attention to the practical problems of economics and sociology, is a comparatively recent thing. This is true and is a good excuse. But it does not offer a reason why the social phases of agriculture should be longer neglected. The purpose of this article is less to criticize than to describe a situation and to urge the timeliness of the large development, in the near future, of rural social science. At the outset the queries may arise, What is meant by rural social science? and, What is there to be investigated and taught under such a head? The answer to the first query has already been intimated. Rural social science is the application of the principles of the social sciences, especially of economics and sociology, to the problems that confront the American farmer. As a reply to the second query there are appended at the end of this chapter outlines of possible courses in agricultural economics and rural sociology, which were prepared by the writer for the exhibit in "rural economy" at the St. Louis exposition. There are also subjects that have a political bearing, such as local government in the country, and primary reform in rural communities, which perhaps ought not to be omitted. So, too, various phases of home life and of art might be touched upon. The subjects suggested and others like them could be conveniently grouped into from two to a dozen courses, as circumstances might require. What classes of people may be expected to welcome and profit by instruction of this character? (1) The farmers themselves. Assuming that our agricultural colleges are designed, among other functions, to train men and women to become influential farmers, no argument is necessary to show how studies in rural social science may help qualify these students for genuine leadership of their class of toilers. On the other hand, it may be remarked that no subjects will better lend themselves to college extension work than those named above. Lectures and lecture courses for granges, farmers' clubs, farmers' institutes, etc., on such themes would arouse the greatest interest. Correspondence and home study courses along these lines would be fully as popular as those treating of soils and crops. (2) Agricultural educators. The soil physicist or the agricultural chemist will not be a less valuable specialist in his own line, and he certainly will be a more useful member of the faculty of an agricultural college, if he has an appreciative knowledge of the farmer's social and economic status. This is even more true of men called to administer agricultural education in any of its phases. (3) Rural school administrators and the more progressive rural teachers. The country school can never become truly a social and intellectual center of the community until the rural educators understand the social environment of the farmer. (4)Country clergymen. The vision of a social-service church in the country will remain but a dream unless, added to the possession of a heart for such work, the clergyman knows the farm problem sufficiently to appreciate the broader phases of the industrial and social life of his people. (5) Editors of farm papers, and of the so-called "country" papers. Probably the editors of the better class of agricultural papers are less in need of instruction such as that suggested than is almost anyone else. Yet the same arguments that now lead many young men aspiring to this class of journalism to regard a course in scientific agriculture as a vestibule to their work may well be used in urging a study of rural social science, especially at a time when social and economic problems are pressing upon the farmer. As for the country papers, the work of purveying local gossip and stirring the party kettle too often obscures the tremendous possibilities for a high-class service to the rural community which such papers may render. No men, in the agricultural states at least, have more real influence in their community than the trained, clean, manly, country editors--and there is a multitude of such men. If as a class they possessed also a wider appreciation of the farmer's industrial difficulties and needs, hardly anyone could give better service to the solution of the farm problem than could they. (6) Everybody else! That is to say, the agricultural question is big enough and important enough to be understood by educated people. The farmers are half our people. Farming is our largest single industrial interest. The capital invested in agriculture is four-fifths the capital invested in manufacturing and railway transportation combined. Whether an individual has a special interest in business, in economics, in education, or in religious institutions, he ought to know the place of the farm and the farmer in that question. No one can have a full appreciation of the social and industrial life of the American people who is ignorant of the agricultural status. The natural place to begin work in rural social science is the agricultural college. Future farmers and teachers of farmers are supposed to be there. The subjects embraced are as important in solving the farm problem as are biology, physics, or chemistry. No skilled farmer or leader of farmers should be without some reasonably correct notions of the principles that determine the position of agriculture in the industrial world. A brief study of the elements of political economy, of sociology, of civics, is not enough; no more than the study of the elements of botany, of chemistry and of zoölogy is enough. The specific problems of the farmer that are economic need elucidation alongside the study of soils and crops, of plant-and stock-breeding. And these economic topics should be thoroughly treated by men trained in social science, and not incidentally by men whose chief interest is technical agriculture. The normal schools may well discuss the propriety of adding one or two courses which bear on the social and economic situation of the rural classes. While these schools do not now send out many teachers into rural schools, they may do so under the system of centralized schools; and in any event they furnish rural school administrators, as well as instructors of rural teachers. There seems to be a growing sentiment which demands of the school and of the teacher a closer touch with life as it is actually lived. How can rural teachers learn to appreciate the social function of the rural school, except they be taught? Nor is there any reason why the theological seminaries, or at least the institutions that prepare the men who become country clergymen, should not cover some of the subjects suggested. If the ambition of some people to see the country church a social and intellectual center is to be realized, the minister must know the rural problem broadly. The same arguments that impel the city pastor to become somewhat familiar with the economic, social, and civic questions of the day hold with equal force when applied to the necessary preparation for the rural ministry. The universities may be called upon to train teachers and investigators in rural social science for service in agricultural colleges, normal schools, and theological seminaries. Moreover, there is no good reason why any college or university graduate should not know more than he does about the farm problem. There can be little doubt that the interest in the farm question is very rapidly growing, and that the universities will be but meeting a demand if they begin very soon to offer courses in rural social science. The arguments for rural social science rest, let us observe, not only upon its direct aid to the farmers themselves, but upon its value as a basis for that intelligent social service which preacher, teacher, and editor may render the farming class. It is an essential underlying condition for the successful federation of rural social forces. Indeed it should in some degree be a part of the equipment of every educated person. It may not be out of place to add, in conclusion, that instruction in rural social problems should be placed in the hands of men who are thoroughly trained in social science as well as accurate, experienced, and sympathetic observers of rural conditions. It would be mischievous indeed if in the desire to be progressive any educational institution should offer courses in rural social science which gave superficial or erroneous ideas about the scientific principles involved, or which encouraged in any degree whatever the notion that the farmer's business and welfare are not vitally and forever bound up with the business and welfare of all other classes. OUTLINE FOR A BRIEF COURSE IN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS I. Characteristics of the Agricultural Industry. Dependence upon nature. Capital and labor as applied to agriculture. The laws of rent and of decreasing returns in agriculture. Relation of agriculture to other industries and to the welfare of mankind. II. History of the Agricultural Industry. In ancient times. Status in Europe prior to the eighteenth century. The struggle to maintain its standing after the advent of commerce and manufacture. In the United States. The pioneer stage. Development of commercial agriculture. The new farming. III. Present Status of the Farming Industry. The world's food supply. Agricultural resources of the United States. Geographical factors. Soils, climate, fertility, natural enemies, etc. Statistics of farms, farm wealth, production, etc. Leading sub-industries, cereals, stock, etc. Distribution of production. IV. The Agricultural Market. Description of the market--local, domestic, foreign. Mechanism of the market. Banks and local exchange facilities. Middlemen. Boards of trade. Prices of agricultural products. Movements of prices. Agricultural competition. Depressions of agriculture. Influence of "options." Transportation of agricultural products. Primary transportation--wagon roads and trolley lines. Railroad and water transportation. Facilities. Rates. Discriminations. Delivery methods. Incidents of the transportation system--elevators, etc. Imperfect distribution of agricultural products. Development of the market. Increase of consumption of products--manufacture of farm products as a factor. The factor of choicer products. The factor of better distribution of products. The local market as a factor. The foreign market as a factor. V. Business Co-operation in Agriculture. Historical sketch. Present status. Production. Marketing. Buying. Miscellaneous business co-operation. Difficulties and tendencies. VI. Agriculture and Legislation. Land laws and land policies of the United States. Agriculture and the tariff. Taxation and agriculture. Food and dairy laws. Government aid to agriculture. VII. General Problems. Agricultural labor. Machinery and agriculture. Interest rates, indebtedness, etc. Tenant farming. Large vs. small farming. Business methods. Immigration and agriculture. OUTLINE FOR A BRIEF COURSE IN RURAL SOCIOLOGY INTRODUCTION 1. Definitions. 2. Relation of the sociological to the economic, the technical, and the scientific phases of agriculture. Part I THE RURAL SOCIAL STATUS CHAPTER I Movements of the Farm Population 1. Statistical survey. 2. The movement to the West. History, causes. 3. The movement to the cities. _a_) Growth of cities. _b_) Depletion of rural population in certain localities. 4. Causes of the movement to the cities. _a_) Industrial, social, and psychological causes. 5. Results of the movements of the farm population. _a_) Results both good and bad. _b_) Résumé of industrial and social results. CHAPTER II Social Condition of the Rural Population Nativity; color; illiteracy; families; health; temperance; crime; morality; pauperism; defectives; insanity; etc. CHAPTER III The Social Psychology of Rural Life 1. Isolation and its results. 2. The farm home and its environment. 3. Traits of family life. 4. Traits of individual life. CHAPTER IV The Social Aspect of Current Agricultural Questions 1. Tenant farming. 2. Large vs. small farms. 3. Farm labor. 4. Irregular incomes. 5. Farm machinery. 6. Specialization in farming. 7. Immigration. Part II SOCIAL FACTORS IN RURAL PROGRESS CHAPTER I Means of Communication in Rural Districts 1. Importance and status of rural communication. 2. The new movements for better rural communication. _a_) Highways. _b_) Rural free mail delivery. _c_) Rural telephone. _d_) Interurban electric railways. CHAPTER II Farmers' Organizations 1. Value of. 2. Difficulties in organizing. 3. Forms that organizations may take. 4. History and work of farmers' organizations in the United States. 5. General deductions from study of farmers' organizations. CHAPTER III Rural Education 1. Distinction between rural and agricultural education. 2. The country school. _a_) Its importance, organization, maintenance, instruction, and supervision. _b_) The rural school as a social center. _c_) The township unit, the consolidated school, the centralized school. 3. High-school privileges for rural pupils. 4. The rural library. 5. Other agencies for rural education. CHAPTER IV Means of Agricultural Education 1. Historical. 2. Research in agriculture. 3. Agricultural instruction to resident students. _a_) Higher education in agriculture. _b_) Secondary education in agriculture. _c_) Primary education in agriculture. 4. Extension teaching in agriculture. 5. Miscellaneous agencies for agricultural education. _a_) Farmers' societies. _b_) The farm press. _c_) The county paper. _d_) Industrial departments of steam railways. CHAPTER V The Rural Church 1. Present status. 2. Difficulties in country church work. 3. The awakening in the rural church. 4. The institutional rural church. 5. The Y. M. C. A. in the country. 6. The rural Sunday school. 7. The rural social settlement. CHAPTER VI The Social Ideal for Agriculture 1. The importance of social agencies. 2. The preservation of the "American farmer" essential. 3. Relation of this ideal to our American civilization. 4. The federation or co-operation of rural social agencies. CHAPTER XVII FEDERATION FOR RURAL PROGRESS It is almost trite to assert the need of the "socialization"--to use a much-worked phrase--of the country. It is possible that this need is not greater than in the cities, but it is different. Among no class of people is individualism so rampant as among farmers. For more than a century the American farmer led the freest possible social life. His independence was his glory. But, when the day of co-operation dawned, he found himself out of tune with the movement, was disinclined to join the ranks of organized effort, and he prefers even yet his personal and local independence to the truer freedom which can be secured only through co-operative endeavor. Moreover, the social aspect of the rural problem is important not merely because the farmer is slow to co-operate. The farm problem is to be met by the activities of social institutions. We may say (assuming the home life, of course) that the church, the school, and the farmers' organization are the great rural social institutions. They are the forces now most efficient, and the ones that promise to abide. This classification may appear to be a mere truism, when we suggest that under the church should be placed all those movements that have a distinctively religious motive, under the school all those agencies that are primarily educational in design, and under farmers' organizations those associations whose chief function is to settle questions which concern the farmer as a business man and a citizen. But the classification answers fairly well. It includes practically every device that has been suggested for rural betterment. There are two interesting facts about these rural institutions: (1) None of them is doing a tithe of what it ought to be doing to help solve the farm problem. The church is apparently just about holding its own, though that is doubted by some observers. Rural schools are not, as a rule, keeping pace with the demands being made upon them; comparatively few students in the whole country are studying scientific agriculture. Not one farmer in twenty belongs to a strong farmers' organization. (2) All these institutions are awakening to the situation. Progress during the last decade has been especially gratifying. Co-operative efforts among farmers are more cautious, but more successful. The Grange has nearly doubled its membership since 1890; and it, as well as other farm organizations, has more real power than ever before. The rural-school question is one of the liveliest topics today among farmers as well as educators. Opportunities for agricultural education have had a marvelous development within a decade. Discussion about rural church federation, the rural institutional church, rural social settlements, and even experiments in these lines are becoming noticeably frequent. The Young Men's Christian Association has, its officers think, found the way to reach the country young man. The institutions which we have just discussed, together with the improvement that comes from such physical agencies as assist quicker communication (good wagon roads, telephones, rural mail delivery, electric roads), constitute the social forces that are to be depended upon in rural betterment. None can be spared or ignored. The function of each must be understood and its importance recognized. To imagine that substantial progress can result from the emphasis of any one agency to the exclusion of any other is a mistake. To assert this is not to quarrel with the statement we frequently hear nowadays that "the _church_ should be the social and intellectual center of the neighborhood;" or that "the _school_ should be the social and intellectual center of the neighborhood;" or that "the _Grange_ should be the social and intellectual center of the neighborhood." It is fortunate that these statements have been made. They show an appreciation of a function of these agencies that has been neglected. The first item in rural social progress is that the country preacher, the rural teacher, the country doctor, the country editor, the agricultural editor, the agricultural college professor, and especially the farmer himself, shall see the social need of the farm community. But to assert, for instance, that the church shall be _the_ social center of that community may lead to a partial and even to a fanatical view of things. I would not restrain in the slightest the enthusiasm of any pastor who wants to make his church occupy a central position in community life, nor of the teacher who wants to bring her school into relation with all the economic and social life of the farm, nor of the leader of the farmers' organization who sees the good that may be done through the social and intellectual training which his organization can give. But if there is danger that the preacher in the pursuit of this ideal, shall ignore the social function of the school and of the farmers' organization, or that the teacher, or the farmer, or anybody else who is interested, shall fail to see that there is a logical division of labor among rural social forces, and that it is only the intelligent and efficient and harmonious co-operation of all these forces that will insure the best progress, then to such I appeal with all the power at my command to recognize not only the breadth of the whole movement, but to appreciate the limitations of their own special interests. There are things that the church cannot do and should not attempt to do. There are things the school cannot do and should not attempt to do. Accepting our conventional division of social agencies, we may say that efficient rural progress stands upon a tripod of forces, and that balance can be maintained only when each is used in its proper measure. We reach now the heart of the topic, which is how these various social forces may be brought into co-operation--a co-operation that is intelligent and real. I would suggest, first of all, the encouragement of all efforts along this line that are already under way. For instance, there are scattered all over this country individual pastors who are seeking to make their churches the social and intellectual beacon-lights of the community. There are other individuals who are endeavoring to apply the social-settlement idea to the needs of the country. There are associations which attempt to bring together the teachers and the school patrons for mutual discussion of educational topics. In numerous instances the farmers' organizations include in their membership the country pastor, the district school teacher and perhaps the country doctor. In these and doubtless in other ways the idea we are dealing with is being promulgated, and up to a certain point this fact of promiscuous initiative is entirely satisfactory and desirable. So long as the work is done it makes little difference who does it. Every attempt to bring any of these agencies into closer touch with the farm community is to be welcomed most heartily. But beyond a certain limit this promiscuous work must be unsatisfactory. The efforts and interests of any one social agency are bound to be partial. Indeed the more effective such an agency is, the more partial it is likely to be. Intensity is gained at the expense of breadth. The need for federation exists in the desirability of securing both the intensity and the breadth. The precise method of securing this federation of effort is not easy to foresee. It can be determined only by trial. It must be worked out in harmony with varying conditions. Some very general plans at once suggest themselves: (1) Let the agricultural college in each state take the lead in the movement, acting not so much as an organization as a clearing-house and a go-between. Let it direct conferences on the subject, and seek to bring all who are interested in rural affairs into touch and sympathy. (2) Have a "League for Rural Progress," made up of representatives from the churches, the agricultural colleges, the departments of public instruction, the farm press, various farmers' organizations, etc. (3) Enlarge the "Hesperia movement," which now seeks to secure co-operation between school and farmers' organization, by including in it the church. It may be of interest to note that this idea of a federation of rural social forces is getting a foothold and has indeed already crystallized into organization. A brief description of what has actually been done will therefore not be out of place. So far as the writer is aware, the first meeting based on the definite idea of co-operation between school, church, and Grange was held at Morris, Connecticut, in the summer of 1901 and was organized by Rev. F. A. Holden, then pastor at Morris. This meeting was a very successful local affair, held in connection with "Old Home Week" celebration. Probably the first attempt to hold a similar meeting on a large scale was the conference at the Agricultural College, Michigan, in February, 1902. It was a joint meeting of the Michigan Political Science Association and the Agricultural College and farmers' institutes. The practical initiative was taken by the Political Science Association under the leadership of its secretary, Professor Henry C. Adams, who had the cordial co-operation of President Snyder of the Agricultural College and Professor C. D. Smith, then superintendent of farmers' institutes. It was a notable gathering, and its promoters were rejoiced to see the splendid attendance of farmers particularly; teachers and clergymen did not attend as freely as might have been expected. The programme was a strong one and included men of national reputation and topics covering a wide range of interests. The addresses were published in the _Michigan Farmers' Institute Bulletin_ for 1901-02, and were also gathered into a publication of the Michigan Political Science Association under the title _Social Problems of the Farmer_. The state of Rhode Island has organized on a permanent basis. In 1904 there was held in Kingston, at the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, a "Conference on Rural Progress." It was a one-day meeting, well attended by representative farmers, clergymen, and educators. A committee was appointed to discuss further procedure, and the next year there was held in the halls of Brown University a two-days' conference. The programme included addresses on: The Grange, The Country Church, School Gardens, and several phases of practical agriculture. Among the speakers were the assistant secretary of agriculture, Hon. N. J. Bachelder, now Master of the National Grange, and Dr. Josiah Strong. In the spring of 1906 there was organized "The Rhode Island League for Rural Progress," which was constituted through representation from the following organizations: State Board of Agriculture; Rhode Island College of Agriculture; State Federation of Churches; State Grange; State Association of School Superintendents; State League of Improvement Societies; Washington County Agricultural Society; Newport Agricultural Society; Rhode Island Horticultural Society; Newport Horticultural Society; Rhode Island Poultry Association; Florists and Gardeners' Club; Kingston Improvement Association. This league held the Third Annual Conference on Rural Progress, April 10 and 11, 1906, the first day's session being at Brown University, Providence, and the second day's at East Greenwich. Its fourth meeting was held in Newport in March, 1907. In Rhode Island the idea lying back of this conference has certainly approved itself to all who are interested in rural matters. The following is the constitution of the league: CONSTITUTION Rhode Island League for Rural Progress I. NAME.--The name of this body shall be the "Rhode Island League for Rural Progress." II. OBJECT.--The object of the League shall be to secure the co-operation of the various individuals, organizations, and agencies which are working for any phase of rural advancement in this state. III. MEMBERSHIP.--Any organization interested in rural advancement, which may desire to co-operate with the work of the League, may be represented in the League. Any individual in the state interested in rural progress may become a member of the League upon the payment of one dollar annual fee. IV. OFFICERS.--The administrative work of the League shall be conducted by a council, to be composed of one delegate from each organization represented in the League, to serve until superseded. The council at the time of each annual conference shall choose from among its members a president, a vice-president, and a secretary-treasurer, and these officers shall act as an executive committee. V. MEETINGS.--The meetings of the League shall be held at the call of the executive committee. There shall, however, be at least one annual Conference on rural progress held under the auspices of the League. VI. FINANCES.--The funds necessary to forward the work of the League may come from three sources: _a_) Contributions made by organizations belonging to the League and represented on the council, such contributions to be voluntary and in such amount as the respective organizations may designate. The council may, however, make up a schedule of desired contributions from the various organizations and present it to the different organizations. _b_) Membership fees from individual members, $1.00 per year from each member. _c_) Private subscriptions. Probably the first successful attempt to organize a permanent league for rural progress was accomplished in 1904 through the efforts of Rev. G. T. Nesmith, of Hebron, Ill. It was called "The McHenry County Federation," and has held three annual meetings and seems to be on a solid basis. Mr. Nesmith has endeavored to keep the purpose of the league on a high plane by endeavoring to state clearly the object of the federation, which is, "that the people of McHenry County might have life, and have it more abundantly, and this life was not to be a narrow life. It was the largest aggregate and highest symmetry of the sixfold ends of individual and community action, viz., health, wealth, knowledge, sociability, beauty, and righteousness." He also endeavored to make it clear that "the federation does not seek to supplant the other forces. It rather seeks to be a clearing-house of the ideas of all the federated organizations; to be a mount of vision from which each may look and get a complete vision of life; to be a fraternal bond which shall link all together in common ties of sympathy, fellowship, and co-operation." The results thus far obtained are perhaps best described by quoting the words of Mr. G. W. Conn, Jr., superintendent of schools of McHenry County: There is one noticeable omission in the constitution--a provision for the proper financing of the federation. This is partially explained by the fact that the federation has largely centered about the county Teachers' Association and the county Farmers' Institute, organizations that are supported in a financial way by the county and the state appropriations. These appropriations, in addition to some voluntary gifts, have been sufficient to meet the necessary expenses of the meetings. I think that I am safe in saying that the interest and also the attendance has probably increased 100 per cent. at each session. Each year has also seen a much larger percentage of our local men and women helping out on the programme. It is a little early in its history to expect much evidence of material results, but I believe that results are already putting in an appearance, especially from the esthetic standpoint. Without doubt more trees have been planted about the country homes and along the country roadsides of this county than in any two preceding years. In a great many places roads have been cleaned. Refuse and weeds have been removed and burned. Landscape gardening on a simple scale is putting in an appearance in places where it was little expected. The naming of farms is another feature that is rapidly growing. Boys' country clubs are being formed and this year, for the first time, three of these clubs met with the federation, had a banquet, and formed a county organization. Of course not all of these movements are rightfully to be attributed to the direct influence of the county federation. The public schools of the county have been largely instrumental in stirring the public conscience to a livelier appreciation of the beautiful. The regular observance of Arbor and Bird Days in our schools has done much toward initiating this movement. However, the federation has been the great factor in uniting otherwise independent organizations into one large machine for stirring the social consciousness and molding public sentiment. It has proved to be an efficient association in at least three ways, in co-ordinating our efforts, harmonizing our methods, and broadening the field of operation. The constitution of this league is given herewith in full: 1. NAME.--The name of this organization shall be, The McHenry County Federation of Rural Forces. 2. OBJECT.--The object of the Federation is to gain a higher symmetry and a larger aggregate of health, wealth, knowledge, sociability, beauty, and righteousness to the citizens of McHenry County. 3. ELEMENTS OF THE FEDERATION.--The Federation shall consist of the following organizations: The Farmers' Institute, Teachers' Association, Domestic Science Association, Pastors' Association, Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the Young Men's Christian Association. 4. MEMBERSHIP.--Any county organization may become a member of the federation by recommendation of the Executive Committee. 5. OFFICERS.--The officers of the Federation shall consist of a president, as many vice-presidents as there are component organizations, a secretary-treasurer, and an Executive Committee. 6. COMMITTEES.--The Executive Committee shall be composed of the president, the secretary-treasurer, and the presidents of the component organizations. There shall be an Auditing Committee and a Committee on Resolutions, each consisting of three members and to be appointed by the president. The Nominating Committee shall consist of two members from each of the component organizations and they shall be appointed by the president. 7. DUTIES.--The Executive Committee shall select the date and fix the place of every meeting. They shall also prepare the programme. The presidents of the component organizations shall be _ex-officio_ vice-presidents of the Federation. 8. AUDITING.--All bills shall be paid by the treasurer after the same have been countersigned by the Auditing Committee. 9. TERM OF OFFICE.--The terms of all officers shall be one year or until their successors are elected. 10. HOW ELECTED.--All officers shall be elected by ballot. The Massachusetts Conference for Town and Village Betterment has dealt with some phases of the federation idea. Its object is "to contribute to the formation of a strong, definite, and united purpose among the forces working for the improvement of civic and social conditions in Massachusetts, by bringing together all town and village improvement societies, citizen's associations, civic clubs, and other organizations interested in this purpose." The Massachusetts Agricultural College, in celebrating the fortieth anniversary of its opening to students, October 2, 1907, held a four days' conference on rural progress. The programme covered nearly the whole field of rural development and was made possible by the co-operation of the State Board of Agriculture, the State Grange, the Massachusetts Civic League, the Connecticut Valley Congregational Club, the State Committee of the Y. M. C. A., the Western Massachusetts Library Club, and the Head-Masters' Club of the Connecticut Valley. No permanent organization was formed, but the general idea of federation of rural social forces was fully emphasized and thoroughly appreciated. An attempt was made in the spring of 1907 to bring together the various elements of rural progress in all the New England states. Under the initiative of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture there was held in March, 1907, a New England Conference on Rural Progress. This meeting was held very largely for the purpose of discovering the sentiment among the leaders of New England agriculture with respect to the desirability and practicability of federating on so large a scale. In addition to the main meeting, the presidents of the agricultural colleges of New England were called together in a special section, and the same was true of the directors of the New England experiment stations, the masters of the various state granges, the secretaries of the various state boards of agriculture, and the leaders in the New England Federation of Churches. The idea of federation was clearly approved by the delegates present, and a temporary organization was effected. It was voted to hold a similar conference in Boston in the spring of 1908. It is probably true that the first and most important step in bringing about a federation of rural social forces is to educate all concerned to the _desirability_ of such a federation--to sow the seeds of the idea. So far as machinery is concerned it may not be necessary to form any new organization. Indeed, what is chiefly necessary is a sort of _clearing-house_ for an exchange of ideas and plans among all who are at work on any phase of the rural social problem. There is need of a central bureau that shall emphasize the necessity of a study of agricultural economics and rural sociology, and press the value of co-operation in the work of social progress in the country. There is need that somewhere "tab" shall be kept on the whole rural social movement. We need a directing force to assure a comprehensive view and study of the whole rural problem. It is important that some investigations should be carried on that are not likely to be taken up by some other agency. It would be desirable to have a certain amount of publication, and in various other ways to carry on a campaign of education. Above all, it would be desirable to initiate local, state, and national conferences pervaded by the spirit and purpose of securing the hearty co-operation of all rural social forces, of all the organizations that have any rural connection whatever, and of all individuals who have the slightest genuine interest in any phase of the farm problem. Such a bureau should keep in constant touch with, secure the confidence of, and supply appropriate literature to, country teachers, preachers, editors, doctors, and business men, and, more than all, to intelligent and progressive farmers. And let me add at this point, that it must be fully understood that the work contemplated cannot possibly achieve large success unless it is done _with_ the farmers, rather than _for_ the farmers. The problem is far from that of doing a missionary work for a down-trodden and ignorant class. It is a much less heroic, a much more commonplace task. It is simply carrying the idea of co-operation of individuals a step farther, and endeavoring to secure the co-operation of interests that have precisely the same goal, although traveling upon different roads. The prime purpose of the movement is to bring the specialist into close touch with the more general phases of the problem, to secure breadth and wholeness, to assure well-balanced effort. [NOTE.--A paper with the title of this chapter was read before the American Civic Association in 1901, at Minneapolis. A portion of the paper is retained here. The history of the development of the idea of federation is brought down to the present time.] 
27257	----	produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University) ELECTRICITY FOR THE FARM THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO [Illustration: Even the tiny trout brook becomes a thing of utility as well as of joy (_Courtesy of the Fitz Water Wheel Company, Hanover, Pa._)] ELECTRICITY FOR THE FARM LIGHT, HEAT AND POWER BY INEXPENSIVE METHODS FROM THE WATER WHEEL OR FARM ENGINE BY FREDERICK IRVING ANDERSON AUTHOR OF "THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW," ETC., ETC. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1915 _All rights reserved_ Copyright, 1915 By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY The Country Gentleman Copyright, 1915 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1915. PREFACE This book is designed primarily to give the farmer a practical working knowledge of electricity for use as light, heat, and power on the farm. The electric generator, the dynamo, is explained in detail; and there are chapters on electric transmission and house-wiring, by which the farm mechanic is enabled to install his own plant without the aid and expense of an expert. With modern appliances, within the means of the average farmer, the generation of electricity, with its unique conveniences, becomes automatic, provided some dependable source of power is to be had--such as a water wheel, gasoline (or other form of internal combustion) engine, or the ordinary windmill. The water wheel is the ideal prime mover for the dynamo in isolated plants. Since water-power is running to waste on tens of thousands of our farms throughout the country, several chapters are devoted to this phase of the subject: these include descriptions and working diagrams of weirs and other simple devices for measuring the flow of streams; there are tables and formulas by which any one, with a knowledge of simple arithmetic, may determine the power to be had from falling water under given conditions; and in addition, there are diagrams showing in general the method of construction of dams, bulkheads, races, flumes, etc., from materials usually to be found on a farm. The tiny unconsidered brook that waters the farm pasture frequently possesses power enough to supply the farmstead with clean, cool, safe light in place of the dangerous, inconvenient oil lamp; a small stream capable of developing from twenty-five to fifty horsepower will supply a farmer (at practically no expense beyond the original cost of installation) not only with light, but with power for even the heavier farm operations, as threshing; and in addition will do the washing, ironing, and cooking, and at the same time keep the house warm in the coldest weather. Less than one horsepower of energy will light the farmstead; less than five horsepower of energy will provide light and small power, and take the drudgery out of the kitchen. For those not fortunate enough to possess water-power which can be developed, there are chapters on the use of the farm gasoline engine and windmill, in connection with the modern storage battery, as sources of electric current. It is desired to make acknowledgment for illustrations and assistance in gathering material for the book, to the editors of _The Country Gentleman_, Philadelphia, Pa.; The Crocker-Wheeler Company, Ampere, N. J.; The General Electric Company, Schenectady, N. Y.; the Weston Electrical Instrument Company, of Newark, N. J.; The Chase Turbine Manufacturing Company, Orange, Mass.; the C. P. Bradway Machine Works, West Stafford, Conn.; The Pelton Water Wheel Company, San Francisco and New York; the Ward Leonard Manufacturing Company, Bronxville, N. Y.; The Fairbanks, Morse Company, Chicago; and the Fitz Water Wheel Company, Hanover, Pa. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION xvii PART I WATER-POWER CHAPTER I A WORKING PLANT The "agriculturist"--An old chair factory--A neighbor's home-coming--The idle wheel in commission again--Light, heat and power for nothing--Advantages of electricity 3 CHAPTER II A LITTLE PROSPECTING Small amount of water required for an electric plant--Exploring, on a dull day--A rough and ready weir--What a little water will do--The water wheel and the dynamo--Electricity consumed the instant it is produced--The price of the average small plant, not counting labor 22 CHAPTER III HOW TO MEASURE WATER-POWER What is a horsepower?--How the Carthaginians manufactured horsepower--All that goes up must come down--How the sun lifts water up for us to use--Water the ideal power for generating electricity--The weir--Table for estimating flow of streams with a weir--Another method of measuring--Figuring water horsepower--The size of the wheel--What head is required--Quantity of water necessary 32 CHAPTER IV THE WATER WHEEL AND HOW TO INSTALL IT Different types of water wheels--The impulse and the reaction wheels--The impulse wheel adapted to high heads and small amount of water--Pipe lines--Table of resistance in pipes--Advantages and disadvantages of the impulse wheel--Other forms of impulse wheels--The reaction turbine, suited to low heads and large quantity of water--Its advantages and limitations--Developing a water-power project: the dam; the race; the flume; the penstock; and the tailrace--Water rights for the farmer 56 PART II ELECTRICITY CHAPTER V THE DYNAMO; WHAT IT DOES, AND HOW Electricity compared to the heat and light of the Sun--The simple dynamo--The amount of electric energy a dynamo will generate--The modern dynamo--Measuring power in terms of electricity--The volt--The ampere--The ohm--The watt and the kilowatt--Ohm's Law of the electric circuit, and some examples of its application--Direct current, and alternating current--Three types of direct-current dynamos: series, shunt, and compound 89 CHAPTER VI WHAT SIZE PLANT TO INSTALL The farmer's wife his partner--Little and big plants--Limiting factors--Fluctuations in water supply--The average plant--The actual plant--Amount of current required for various operations--Standard voltage--A specimen allowance for electric light--Heating and cooking by electricity--Electric power: the electric motor 121 CHAPTER VII TRANSMISSION LINES Copper wire--Setting of poles--Loss of power in transmission--Ohm's Law and examples of how it is used in figuring size of wire--Copper-wire tables--Examples of transmission lines--When to use high voltages--Over-compounding a dynamo to overcome transmission loss 153 CHAPTER VIII WIRING THE HOUSE The insurance code--Different kinds of wiring described--Wooden moulding cheap and effective--The distributing panel--Branch circuits--Protecting the circuits--The use of porcelain tubes and other insulating devices--Putting up chandeliers and wall-brackets--"Multiple" connections--How to connect a wall switch--Special wiring required for heat and power circuits--Knob and cleat wiring, its advantages and disadvantages 172 CHAPTER IX THE ELECTRIC PLANT AT WORK Direct-connected generating sets--Belt drive--The switchboard--Governors and voltage regulators--Methods of achieving constant pressure at all loads: Over-compounding the dynamo; A system of resistances (a home-made electric radiator); Regulating voltage by means of the rheostat--Automatic devices--Putting the plant in operation 192 PART III GASOLINE ENGINES, WINDMILLS, ETC. THE STORAGE BATTERIES CHAPTER X GASOLINE ENGINE PLANTS The standard voltage set--Two-cycle and four-cycle gasoline engines--Horsepower, and fuel consumption--Efficiency of small engines and generators--Cost of operating a one-kilowatt plant 217 CHAPTER XI THE STORAGE BATTERY What a storage battery does--The lead battery and the Edison battery--Economy of tungsten lamps for storage batteries--The low-voltage battery for electric light--How to figure the capacity of a battery--Table of light requirements for a farm house--Watt-hours and lamp-hours--The cost of storage battery current--How to charge a storage battery--Care of storage batteries 229 CHAPTER XII BATTERY CHARGING DEVICES The automatic plant most desirable--How an automobile lighting and starting system works--How the same results can be achieved in house lighting, by means of automatic devices--Plants without automatic regulation--Care necessary--The use of heating devices on storage battery current--Portable batteries--An electricity "route"--Automobile power for lighting a few lamps 250 ILLUSTRATIONS Even the tiny trout brook becomes a thing of utility as well as of joy _Frontispiece_ Farm labor and materials built this crib and stone dam 17 Measuring a small stream with a weir 23 Efficient modern adaptations of the archaic undershot and overshot water wheels 59 A direct-current dynamo or motor, showing details of construction 92 Details of voltmeter or ammeter 128 Instantaneous photograph of high-pressure water jet being quenched by buckets of a tangential wheel 194 A tangential wheel, and a dynamo keyed to the same shaft--the ideal method for generating electricity 194 A rough-and-ready farm electric plant, supplying two farms with light, heat and power; and a Ward Leonard-type circuit breaker for charging storage batteries 244 INTRODUCTION The sight of a dozen or so fat young horses and mares feeding and frolicking on the wild range of the Southwest would probably inspire the average farmer as an awful example of horsepower running to waste. If, by some miracle, he came on such a sight in his own pastures, he would probably consume much time practising the impossible art of "creasing" the wild creatures with a rifle bullet--after the style of Kit Carson and other free rovers of the old prairies when they were in need of a new mount. He would probably spend uncounted hours behind the barn learning to throw a lariat; and one fine day he would sally forth to capture a horsepower or two--and, once captured, he would use strength and strategy breaking the wild beast to harness. A single horsepower--animal--will do the work of lifting 23,000 pounds one foot in one minute, providing the animal is young, and sound, and is fed 12 quarts of oats and 10 or 15 pounds of hay a day, and is given a chance to rest 16 hours out of 24--providing also it has a dentist to take care of its teeth occasionally, and a blacksmith chiropodist to keep it in shoes. On the hoof, this horsepower is worth about $200--unless the farmer is looking for something fancy in the way of drafters, when he will have to go as high as $400 for a big fellow. And after 10 or 15 years, the farmer would look around for another horse, because an animal grows old. This animal horsepower isn't a very efficient horsepower. In fact, it is less than three-fourths of an actual horsepower, as engineers use the term. A real horsepower will do the work of lifting 33,000 pounds one foot in one minute--or 550 pounds one foot in one second. Burn a pint of gasoline, with 14 pounds of air, in a gasoline engine, and the engine will supply one 33,000-pound horsepower for an hour. The gasoline will cost about 2 cents, and the air is supplied free. If it was the air that cost two cents a pound, instead of the gasoline, the automobile industry would undoubtedly stop where it began some fifteen years ago. It is human nature, however, to grumble over this two cents. Yet the average farmer who would get excited if sound young chunks and drafters were running wild across his pastures, is not inspired by any similar desire of possession and mastery by the sight of a brook, or a rivulet that waters his meadows. This brook or river is flowing down hill to the sea. Every 4,000 gallons that falls one foot in one minute; every 400 gallons that falls 10 feet in one minute; or every 40 gallons that falls 100 feet in one minute, means the power of one horse going to waste--not the $200 flesh-and-blood kind that can lift only 23,000 pounds a foot a minute--but the 33,000 foot-pound kind. Thousands of farms have small streams in their very dooryard, capable of developing five, ten, twenty, fifty horsepower twenty-four hours a day, for the greater part of the year. Within a quarter of a mile of the great majority of farms (outside of the dry lands themselves) there are such streams. Only a small fraction of one per cent of them have been put to work, made to pay their passage from the hills to the sea. The United States government geological survey engineers recently made an estimate of the waterfalls capable of developing 1,000 horsepower and over, that are running to waste, unused, in this country. They estimated that there is available, every second of the day and night, some 30,000,000 horsepower, in dry weather--and twice this during the eight wet months of the year. The waterfall capable of giving up 1,000 horsepower in energy is not the subject of these chapters. It is the small streams--the brooks, the creeks, the rivulets--which feed the 1,000 horsepower torrents, make them possible, that are of interest to the farmer. These small streams thread every township, every county, seeking the easiest way to the main valleys where they come together in great rivers. What profitable crop on your farm removes the least plant food? A bee-farmer enters his honey for the prize in this contest. Another farmer maintains that his ice-crop is the winner. But electricity generated from falling water of a brook meandering across one's acres, comes nearer to the correct answer of how to make something out of nothing. It merely utilizes the wasted energy of water rolling down hill--the weight of water, the pulling power of gravity. Water is still water, after it has run through a turbine wheel to turn an electric generator. It is still wet; it is there for watering the stock; and a few rods further down stream, where it drops five or ten feet again, it can be made to do the same work over again--and over and over again as long as it continues to fall, on its journey to the sea. The city of Los Angeles has a municipal water plant, generating 200,000 horsepower of electricity, in which the water is used three times in its fall of 6,000 feet; and in the end, where it runs out of the race in the valley, it is sold for irrigation. One water-horsepower will furnish light for the average farm; five water-horsepower will furnish light and power, and do the ironing and baking. The cost of installing a plant of five water-horsepower should not exceed the cost of one sound young horse, the $200 kind--under conditions which are to be found on thousands of farms and farm communities in the East, the Central West, and the Pacific States. This electrical horsepower will work 24 hours a day, winter and summer, and the farmer would not have to grow oats and hay for it on land that might better be used in growing food for human beings. It would not become "aged" at the end of ten or fifteen years, and the expense of maintenance would be practically nothing after the first cost of installation. It would require only water as food--waste water. Two hundred and fifty cubic feet of water a minute, falling ten feet, will supply the average farm with all the conveniences of electricity. This is a very modest creek--the kind of brook or creek that is ignored by the man who would think time well spent in putting in a week capturing a wild horse, if a miracle should send such a beast within reach. And the task of harnessing and breaking this water-horsepower is much more simple and less dangerous than the task of breaking a colt to harness. PART I WATER-POWER ELECTRICITY FOR THE FARM CHAPTER I A WORKING PLANT The "agriculturist"--An old chair factory--A neighbor's home-coming--The idle wheel in commission again--Light, heat and power for nothing--Advantages of electricity. Let us take an actual instance of one man who did go ahead and find out by experience just how intricate and just how simple a thing electricity from farm water-power is. This man's name was Perkins, or, we will call him that, in relating this story. Perkins was what some people call, not a farmer, but an "agriculturist,"--that is, he was a back-to-the-land man. He had been born and raised on a farm. He knew that you must harness a horse on the left side, milk a cow on the right, that wagon nuts tighten the way the wheel rims, and that a fresh egg will not float. He had a farm that would grow enough clover to fill the average dairy if he fed it lime; he had a boy coming to school age; and both he and his wife wanted to get back to the country. They had their little savings, and they wanted, first of all, to take a vacation, getting acquainted with their farm. They hadn't taken a vacation in fifteen years. He moved in, late in the summer, and started out to get acquainted with his neighbors, as well as his land. This was in the New England hills. Water courses cut through everywhere. In regard to its bountiful water supply, the neighborhood had much in common with all the states east of the Mississippi, along the Atlantic seaboard, in the lake region of the central west, and in the Pacific States. With this difference; the water courses in his neighborhood had once been of economic importance. A mountain river flowed down his valley. Up and down the valley one met ramshackle mills, fallen into decay. Many years ago before railroads came, before it was easy to haul coal from place to place to make steam, these little mills were centers of thriving industries, which depended on the power of falling water to make turned articles, spin cotton, and so forth. Then the railroads came, and it was easy to haul coal to make steam. And the same railroads that hauled the coal to make steam, were there to haul away the articles manufactured by steam power. So in time the little manufacturing plants on the river back in the hills quit business and moved to railroad stations. Then New England, from being a manufacturing community made up of many small isolated water plants, came to be a community made up of huge arteries and laterals of smoke stacks that fringed the railroads. Where the railroad happened to follow a river course--as the Connecticut River--the water-power plants remained; but the little plants back in the hills were wiped off the map--because steam power with railroads at the front door proved cheaper than water-power with railroads ten miles away. One night Perkins came in late from a long drive with his next-door neighbor. He had learned the first rule of courtesy in the country, which is to unhitch his own side of the horse and help back the buggy into the shed. They stumbled around in the barn putting up the horse, and getting down hay and grain for it, by the light of an oil lantern, which was set on the floor in a place convenient to be kicked over. He went inside and took supper by the light of a smoky smelly oil lamp, that filled the room full of dark corners; and when supper was over, the farmwife groped about in the cellar putting things away by the light of a candle. The next day his neighbor was grinding cider at his ramshackle water mill--one of the operations for which a week must be set aside every fall. Perkins sat on a log and listened to the crunch-crunch of the apples in the chute, and the drip of the frothy yellow liquid that fell into waiting buckets. "How much power have you got here?" he asked. "Thirty or forty horsepower, I guess." "What do you do with it, besides grinding cider to pickle your neighbors' digestion with?" "Nothing much. I've got a planer and a moulding machine in there, to work up jags of lumber occasionally. That's all. This mill was a chair-factory in my grandfather's day, back in 1830." "Do you use it thirty days in a year?" "No; not half that." "What are you going to do with it this winter?" "Nothing; I keep the gate open and the wheel turning, so it won't freeze, but nothing else. I am going to take the family to Texas to visit my wife's folks for three months. We've worked hard enough to take a vacation." "Will you rent me the mill while you are gone?" "Go ahead; you can have it for nothing, if you will watch the ice." "All right; let me know when you come back and I'll drive to town and bring you home." * * * * * Three months went by, and one day in February the city man, in response to a letter, hitched up and drove to town to bring his neighbor back home. It was four o'clock in the afternoon when they started out, and it was six--dark--when they turned the bend in the road to the farm house. They helped the wife and children out, with their baggage, and as Perkins opened the door of the house, he reached up on the wall and turned something that clicked sharply. Instantly light sprang from everywhere. In the barn-yard a street lamp with an 18-inch reflector illuminated all under it for a space of 100 feet with bright white rays of light. Another street lamp hung over the watering trough. The barn doors and windows burst forth in light. There was not a dark corner to be found anywhere. In the house it was the same. Perkins led the amazed procession from room to room of the house they had shut up for the winter. On the wall in the hall outside of every room was a button which he pushed, and the room became as light as day before they entered. The cellar door, in opening, automatically lighted a lamp illuminating that cavern as it had never been lighted before since the day a house was built over it. Needless to say, the farmer and his family were reduced to a state of speechlessness. "How the deuce did you do it?" finally articulated the farmer. "I put your idle water wheel to work," said Perkins; and then, satisfied with this exhibition, he put them back in the sleigh and drove to his home, where his wife had supper waiting. While the men were putting up the team in the electric lighted barn, the farmwife went into the kitchen. Her hostess was cooking supper on an electric stove. It looked like a city gas range and it cooked all their meals, and did the baking besides. A hot-water tank stood against the wall, not connected to anything hot, apparently. But it was scalding hot, by virtue of a little electric water heater the size of a quart tin can, connected at the bottom. Twenty-four hours a day the water wheel pumped electricity into that "can," so that hot water was to be had at any hour simply by turning a faucet. In the laundry there was an electric pump that kept the tank in the attic filled automatically. When the level of water in this tank fell to a certain point, a float operated a switch that started the pump; and when the water level reached a certain height, the same float stopped the pump. A small motor, the size of a medium Hubbard squash operated a washing machine and wringer on wash days. This same motor was a man-of-all-work for this house, for, when called on, it turned the separator, ground and polished knives and silverware, spun the sewing machine, and worked the vacuum cleaner. Over the dining room table hung the same hanging shade of old days, but the oil lamp itself was gone. In its place was a 100-watt tungsten lamp whose rays made the white table cloth fairly glisten. The wires carrying electricity to this lamp were threaded through the chains reaching to the ceiling, and one had to look twice to see where the current came from. In the sitting room, a cluster of electric bulbs glowed from a fancy wicker work basket that hung from the ceiling. The housewife had made use of what she had throughout the house. Old-fashioned candle-shades sat like cocked hats astride electric bulbs. There is little heat to an electric bulb for the reason that the white-hot wire that gives the light is made to burn in high vacuum, which transmits heat very slowly. The housewife had taken advantage of this fact and from every corner gleamed lights dressed in fancy designs of tissue paper and silk. "Now we will talk business," said Perkins when supper was over and they had lighted their pipes. The returned native looked dubious. His New England training had warned him long ago that one cannot expect to get something for nothing, and he felt sure there was a joker in this affair. "How much do I owe you?" he asked. "Nothing," said Perkins. "You furnish the water-power with your idle wheel, and I furnish the electric installation. This is only a small plant I have put in, but it gives us enough electricity to go around, with a margin for emergencies. I have taken the liberty of wiring your house and your horse-barn and cow-barn and your barn-yard. Altogether, I suppose you have 30 lights about the place, and during these long winter days you will keep most of them going from 3 to 5 hours a night and 2 or 3 hours in the early morning. If you were in town, those lights would cost you about 12 cents an hour, at the commercial rate of electricity. Say 60 cents a day--eighteen dollars a month. That isn't a very big electric light bill for some people I know in town--and they consider themselves lucky to have the privilege of buying electricity at that rate. Your wheel is running all winter to prevent ice from forming and smashing it. It might just as well be spinning the dynamo. "If you think it worth while," continued Perkins,--"this $18 worth of light you have on tap night and morning, or any hour of the day,--we will say the account is settled. That is, of course, if you will give me the use of half the electricity that your idle wheel is grinding out with my second-hand dynamo. We have about eight electrical horsepower on our wires, without overloading the machine. Next spring I am going to stock up this place; and I think about the first thing I do, when my dairy is running, will be to put in a milking machine and let electricity do the milking for me. It will also fill my silo, grind my mowing-machine knives, saw my wood, and keep water running in my barn. You will probably want to do the same. "But what it does for us men in the barn and barn-yard, isn't to be compared to what it does for the women in the house. When my wife wants a hot oven she presses a button. When she wants to put the 'fire' out, she presses another. That's all there is to it. No heat, no smoke, no ashes. The same with ironing--and washing. No oil lamps to fill, no wicks to trim, no chimneys to wash, no kerosene to kick over and start a fire." "You say the current you have put in my house would cost me about $18 a month, in town." "Yes, about that. Making electricity from coal costs money." "What does it cost here?" "Practically nothing. Your river, that has been running to waste ever since your grandfather gave up making chairs, does the work. There is nothing about a dynamo to wear out, except the bearings, and these can be replaced once every five or ten years for a trifle. The machine needs to be oiled and cared for--fill the oil cups about once in three days. Your water wheel needs the same attention. That's all there is to it. You can figure the cost of your current yourself--just about the cost of the lubricating oil you use--and the cost of the time you give it--about the same time you give to any piece of good machinery, from a sulky plow to a cream separator." This is a true story. This electric plant, where Perkins furnishes the electric end, and his neighbor the water-power, has been running now for two years, grinding out electricity for the two places twenty-four hours a day. Perkins was not an electrical engineer. He was just a plain intelligent American citizen who found sufficient knowledge in books to enable him to install and operate this plant. Frequently he is away for long periods, but his neighbor (who has lost his original terror of electricity) takes care of the plant. In fact, this farmer has given a lot of study to the thing, through curiosity, until he knows fully as much about it now as his city neighbor. He had the usual idea, at the start, that a current strong enough to light a 100 candlepower lamp would kick like a mule if a man happened to get behind it. He watched the city man handle bare wires and finally he plucked up courage to do it himself. It was a 110-volt current, the pressure used in our cities for domestic lighting. The funny part about it was, the farmer could not feel it at all at first. His fingers were calloused and no current could pass through them. Finally he sandpapered his fingers and tried it again. Then he was able to get the "tickle" of 110 volts. It wasn't so deadly after all--about the strength of a weak medical battery, with which every one is familiar. A current of 110 volts cannot do any harm to the human body unless contact is made over a very large surface, which is impossible unless a man goes to a lot of trouble to make such a contact. A current of 220 volts pressure--the pressure used in cities for motors--has a little more "kick" to it, but still is not uncomfortable. When the pressure rises to 500 volts (the pressure used in trolley wires for street cars), it begins to be dangerous. But there is no reason why a farm plant should be over 110 volts, under usual conditions; engineers have decided on this pressure as the best adapted to domestic use, and manufacturers who turn out the numerous electrical devices, such as irons, toasters, massage machines, etc., fit their standard instruments to this voltage. [Illustration: Farm labor and materials built this crib and stone dam] As to the cost of this co-operative plant--it was in the neighborhood of $200. As we have said, it provided eight electrical horsepower on tap at any hour of the day or night--enough for the two farms, and a surplus for neighbors, if they wished to string lines and make use of it. The dynamo, a direct-current machine, 110 volts pressure, and what is known in the trade as "compound,"--that is, a machine that maintains a constant pressure automatically and does not require an attendant--was picked up second-hand, through a newspaper "ad" and cost $90. The switchboard, a make-shift affair, not very handsome, but just as serviceable as if it were made of marble, cost less than $25 all told. The transmission wire cost $19 a hundred pounds; it is of copper, and covered with weatherproofed tape. Perkins bought a 50-cent book on house-wiring, and did the wiring himself, the way the book told him to, a simple operation. For fixtures, as we have said, his wife devised fancy shades out of Mexican baskets, tissue paper, and silk, in which are hidden electric globes that glow like fire-flies at the pressing of a button. The lamps themselves are mostly old-style carbon lamps, which can be bought at 16 cents each retail. In his living room and dining room he used the new-style tungsten lamps instead of old-style carbon. These cost 30 cents each. Incandescent lamps are rated for 1,000 hours useful life. The advantage of tungsten lights is that they give three times as much light for the same expenditure of current as carbon lights. This is a big advantage in the city, where current is costly; but it is not so much of an advantage in the country where a farmer has plenty of water-power--because his current costs him practically nothing, and he can afford to be wasteful of it to save money in lamps. Another advantage he has over his city cousin: In town, an incandescent lamp is thrown away after it has been used 1,000 hours because after that it gives only 80% of the light it did when new--quite an item when one is paying for current. The experience of Perkins and his neighbor in their coöperative plant has been that they have excess light anyway, and if a few bulbs fall off a fifth in efficiency, it is not noticeable. As a matter of fact most of their bulbs have been in use without replacing for the two years the plant has been in operation. The lamps are on the wall or the ceiling, out of the way, not liable to be broken; so the actual expense in replacing lamps is less than for lamp chimneys in the old days. Insurance companies recognize that a large percentage of farm fires comes from the use of kerosene; for this reason, they are willing to make special rates for farm homes lighted by electricity. They prescribe certain rules for wiring a house, and they insist that their agent inspect and pass such wiring before current is turned on. Once the wiring is passed, the advantage is all in favor of the farmer with electricity over the farmer with kerosene. The National Board of Fire Underwriters is sufficiently logical in its demands, and powerful enough, so that manufacturers who turn out the necessary fittings find no sale for devices that do not conform to insurance standards. Therefore it is difficult to go wrong in wiring a house. Finally, as to the added value a water-power electric plant adds to the selling price of a farm. Let the farmer answer this question for himself. If he can advertise his farm for sale, with a paragraph running: "Hydroelectric plant on the premises, furnishing electricity for light, heat, and power"--what do you suppose a wide-awake purchaser would be willing to pay for that? Perkins and his neighbor believe that $1,000 is a very modest estimate added by their electric plant to both places. And they talk of doing still more. They use only a quarter of the power of the water that is running to waste through the wheel. They are figuring on installing a larger dynamo, of say 30 electrical horse-power, which will provide clean, dry, safe heat for their houses even on the coldest days in winter. When they have done this, they will consider that they are really putting their small river to work. CHAPTER II A LITTLE PROSPECTING Small amount of water required for an electric plant--Exploring, on a dull day--A rough and ready weir--What a little water will do--The water wheel and the dynamo--Electricity consumed the instant it is produced--The price of the average small plant, not counting labor. The average farmer makes the mistake of considering that one must have a river of some size to develop power of any practical use. On your next free day do a little prospecting. We have already said that 250 cubic feet of water falling 10 feet a minute will provide light, heat and small motor power for the average farm. A single water horsepower will generate enough electricity to provide light for the house and barn. But let us take five horsepower as a desirable minimum in this instance. [Illustration: Measuring a small stream with a weir] In your neighborhood there is a creek three or four feet wide, toiling along day by day, at its task of watering your fields. Find a wide board a little longer than the width of this creek you have scorned. Set it upright across the stream between the banks, so that no water flows around the ends or under it. It should be high enough to set the water back to a dead level for a few feet upstream, before it overflows. Cut a gate in this board, say three feet wide and ten inches deep, or according to the size of a stream. Cut this gate from the top, so that all the water of the stream will flow through the opening, and still maintain a level for several feet back of the board. This is what engineers call a weir, a handy contrivance for measuring the flow of small streams. Experts have figured out an elaborate system of tables as to weirs. All we need to do now, in this rough survey, is to figure out the number of square inches of water flowing through this opening and falling on the other side. With a rule, measure the depth of the overflowing water, from the bottom of the opening to the top of the dead level of the water behind the board. Multiply this depth by the width of the opening, which will give the square inches of water escaping. For every square inch of this water escaping, engineers tell us that stream is capable of delivering, roughly, one cubic foot of water a minute. Thus, if the water is 8 inches deep in an opening 32 inches wide, then the number of cubic feet this stream is delivering each minute is 8 times 32, or 256 cubic feet a minute. So, a stream 32 inches wide, with a uniform depth of 8 inches running through our weir is capable of supplying the demands of the average farm in terms of electricity. Providing, of course, that the lay of the land is such that this water can be made to fall 10 feet into a water wheel. Go upstream and make a rough survey of the fall. In the majority of instances (unless this is some sluggish stream in a flat prairie) it will be found feasible to divert the stream from its main channel by means of a race--an artificial channel--and to convey it to a not far-distant spot where the necessary fall can be had at an angle of about 30 degrees from horizontal. If you find there is _twice_ as much water as you need for the amount of power you require, a five-foot fall will give the same result. Or, if there is only _one-half_ as much water as the 250 cubic feet specified, you can still obtain your theoretical five horsepower if the means are at hand for providing a fall of twenty feet instead of ten. Do not make the very common mistake of figuring that a stream is delivering a cubic foot a minute to each square inch of weir opening, simply because it _fills_ a certain opening. It is the excess water, falling _over_ the opening, after the stream has set back to a permanent dead level, that is to be measured. This farmer who spends an idle day measuring the flow of his brook with a notched board, may say here: "This is all very well. This is the spring of the year, when my brook is flowing at high-water mark. What am I going to do in the dry months of summer, when there are not 250 cubic feet of water escaping every minute?" There are several answers to this question, which will be taken up in detail in subsequent chapters. Here, let us say, even if this brook does flow in sufficient volume only 8 months in a year--the dark months, by the way,--is not electricity and the many benefits it provides worth having eight months in the year? My garden provides fresh vegetables four months a year. Because it withers and dies and lies covered with snow during the winter, is that any reason why I should not plow and manure and plant my garden when spring comes again? A water wheel, the modern turbine, is a circular fan with curved iron blades, revolving in an iron case. Water, forced through the blades of this fan by its own weight, causes the wheel to revolve on its axis; and the fan, in turn causes a shaft fitted with pulleys to revolve. The water, by giving the iron-bladed fan a turning movement as it rushes through, imparts to it mechanical power. The shaft set in motion by means of this mechanical power is, in turn, belted to the pulley of a dynamo. This dynamo consists, first, of a shaft on which is placed a spool, wound in a curious way, with many turns of insulated copper wire. This spool revolves freely in an air space surrounded by electric magnets. The spool does not touch these magnets. It is so nicely balanced that the weight of a finger will turn it. Yet, when it is revolved by water-power at a predetermined speed--say 1,500 revolutions a minute--it generates electricity, transforms the mechanical power of the water wheel into another form of energy--a form of energy which can be carried for long distances on copper wires, which can, by touching a button, be itself converted into light, or heat, or back into mechanical energy again. If two wires be led from opposite sides of this revolving spool, and an electric lamp be connected from one to the other wire, the lamp will be lighted--will grow white hot,--hence _incandescent light_. The instant this lamp is turned on, the revolving spool feels a stress, the magnets by which it is surrounded begin to pull back on it. The power of the water wheel, however, overcomes this pull. If one hundred lights be turned on, the backward pull of the magnets surrounding the spool will be one hundred times as strong as for one light. For every ounce of electrical energy used in light or heat or power, the dynamo will require a like ounce of mechanical power from the water wheel which drives it. The story is told of a canny Scotch engineer, who, in the first days of dynamos, not so very long ago, scoffed at the suggestion that such a spool, spinning in free air, in well lubricated bearings, could bring his big Corliss steam engine to a stop. Yet he saw it done simply by belting this "spool," a dynamo, to his engine and asking the dynamo for more power in terms of light than his steam could deliver in terms of mechanical power to overcome the pull of the magnets. Electricity must be consumed the instant it is generated (except in rare instances where small amounts are accumulated in storage batteries by a chemical process). The pressure of a button, or the throw of a switch causes the dynamo instantly to respond with just enough energy to do the work asked of it, always in proportion to the amount required. Having this in mind, it is rather curious to think of electricity as being an article of export, an item in international trade. Yet in 1913 hydro-electric companies in Canada "exported" by means of wires, to this country over 772,000,000 kilowatt-hours (over one billion horsepower hours) of electricity for use in factories near the boundary line. This 250 cubic feet of water per minute then, which the farmer has measured by means of his notched board, will transform by means of its falling weight mechanical power into a like amount of electrical power--less friction losses, which may amount to as much as 60% in very small machines, and 15% in larger plants. That is, the brook which has been draining your pastures for uncounted ages contains the potential power of 3 and 4 young horses--with this difference: that it works 24 hours a day, runs on forever, and requires no oats or hay. And the cost of such an electric plant, which is ample for the needs of the average farm, _is in most cases less than the price of a good farm horse_--the $200 kind--not counting labor of installation. It is the purpose of these chapters to awaken the farmer to the possibilities of such small water-power as he or his community may possess; to show that the generating of electricity is a very simple operation, and that the maintenance and care of such a plant is within the mechanical ability of any American farmer or farm boy; and to show that electricity itself is far from being the dangerous death-dealing "fluid" of popular imagination. Electricity must be studied; and then it becomes an obedient, tireless servant. During the past decade or two, mathematical wizards have studied electricity, explored its atoms, reduced it to simple arithmetic--and although they cannot yet tell us _why_ it is generated, they tell us _how_. It is with this simple arithmetic, and the necessary manual operations that we have to do here. CHAPTER III HOW TO MEASURE WATER-POWER What is a horsepower?--How the Carthaginians manufactured horsepower--All that goes up must come down--How the sun lifts water up for us to use--Water the ideal power for generating electricity--The weir--Table for estimating flow of streams, with a weir--Another method of measuring--Figuring water horsepower--The size of the wheel--What head is required--Quantity of water necessary. If a man were off in the woods and needed a horsepower of energy to work for him, he could generate it by lifting 550 pounds of stone or wood, or whatnot, one foot off the ground, and letting it fall back in the space of one second. As a man possesses capacity for work equal to one-fifth horsepower, it would take him five seconds to do the work of lifting the weight up that the weight itself accomplished in falling down. All that goes up must come down; and by a nice balance of physical laws, a falling body hits the ground with precisely the same force as is required to lift it to the height from which it falls. The Carthaginians, and other ancients (who were deep in the woods as regards mechanical knowledge) had their slaves carry huge stones to the top of the city wall; and the stones were placed in convenient positions to be tipped over on the heads of any besieging army that happened along. Thus by concentrating the energy of many slaves in one batch of stones, the warriors of that day were enabled to deliver "horsepower" in one mass where it would do the most good. The farmer who makes use of the energy of falling water to generate electricity for light, heat, and power does the same thing--he makes use of the capacity for work stored in water in being lifted to a certain height. As in the case of the gasoline engine, which burns 14 pounds of air for every pound of gasoline, the engineer of the water-power plant does not have to concern himself with the question of how this natural source of energy happened to be in a handy place for him to make use of it. The sun, shining on the ocean, and turning water into vapor by its heat has already lifted it up for him. This vapor floating in the air and blown about by winds, becomes chilled from one cause or another, gives up its heat, turns back into water, and falls as rain. This rain, falling on land five, ten, a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand feet above the sea level, begins to run back to the sea, picking out the easiest road and cutting a channel that we call a brook, a stream, or a river. Our farm lands are covered to an average depth of about three feet a year with water, every gallon of which has stored in it the energy expended by the heat of the sun in lifting it to the height where it is found. The farmer, prospecting on his land for water-power, locates a spot on a stream which he calls Supply; and another spot a few feet down hill near the same stream, which he calls Power. Every gallon of water that falls between these two points, and is made to escape through the revolving blades of a water wheel is capable of work in terms of foot-pounds--an amount of work that is directly proportional to the _quantity_ of water, and to the _distance_ in feet which it falls to reach the wheel--_pounds_ and _feet_. _The Efficient Water Wheel_ And it is a very efficient form of work, too. In fact it is one of the most efficient forms of mechanical energy known--and one of the easiest controlled. A modern water wheel uses 85 per cent of the total capacity for work imparted to falling water by gravity, and delivers it as rotary motion. Compare this water wheel efficiency with other forms of mechanical power in common use: Whereas a water wheel uses 85 per cent of the energy of its water supply, and wastes only 15 per cent, a gasoline engine reverses the table, and delivers only 15 per cent of the energy in gasoline and wastes 85 per cent--and it is rather a high-class gasoline engine that can deliver even 15 per cent; a steam engine, on the other hand, uses about 17 per cent of the energy in the coal under its boilers and passes the rest up the chimney as waste heat and smoke. There is still another advantage possessed by water-power over its two rivals, steam and gas: It gives the most even flow of power. A gas engine "kicks" a wheel round in a circle, by means of successive explosions in its cylinders. A reciprocating steam engine "kicks" a wheel round in a circle by means of steam expanding first in one direction, then in another. A water wheel, on the other hand, is made to revolve by means of the pressure of water--by the constant force of gravity, itself--weight. Weight is something that does not vary from minute to minute, or from one fraction of a second to another. It is always the same. A square inch of water pressing on the blades of a water wheel weights ten, twenty, a hundred pounds, according to the height of the pipe conveying that water from the source of supply, to the wheel. So long as this column of water is maintained at a fixed height, the power it delivers to the wheel does not vary by so much as the weight of a feather. This property of falling water makes it the ideal power for generating electricity. Electricity generated from mechanical power depends on constant speed for steady pressure--since the electric current, when analyzed, is merely a succession of pulsations through a wire, like waves beating against a sea wall. Water-power delivers these waves at a constant speed, so that electric lights made from water-power do not flicker and jump like the flame of a lantern in a gusty wind. On the other hand, to accomplish the same thing with steam or gasoline requires an especially constructed engine. _The Simple Weir_ Since a steady flow of water, and a constant head, bring about this ideal condition in the water wheel, the first problem that faces the farmer prospector is to determine the amount of water which his stream is capable of delivering. This is always measured, for convenience, in _cubic feet per minute_. (A cubic foot of water weighs 62.5 pounds, and contains 7-1/2 gallons.) This measurement is obtained in several ways, among which probably the use of a weir is the simplest and most accurate, for small streams. A weir is, in effect, merely a temporary dam set across the stream in such a manner as to form a small pond; and to enable one to measure the water escaping from this pond. It may be likened to the overflow pipe of a horse trough which is being fed from a spring. To measure the flow of water from such a spring, all that is necessary is to measure the water escaping through the overflow when the water in the trough has attained a permanent level. [Illustration: Detail of home-made weir] [Illustration: Cross-section of weir] The diagrams show the cross-section and detail of a typical weir, which can be put together in a few minutes with the aid of a saw and hammer. The cross-section shows that the lower edge of the slot through which the water of the temporary pond is made to escape, is cut on a bevel, with its sharp edge upstream. The wing on each side of the opening is for the purpose of preventing the stream from narrowing as it flows through the opening, and thus upsetting the calculations. This weir should be set directly across the flow of the stream, perfectly level, and upright. It should be so imbedded in the banks, and in the bottom of the stream, that no water can escape, except through the opening cut for that purpose. It will require a little experimenting with a rough model to determine just how wide and how deep this opening should be. It should be large enough to prevent water flowing over the top of the board; and it should be small enough to cause a still-water pond to form for several feet behind the weir. Keep in mind the idea of the overflowing water trough when building your weir. The stream, running down from a higher level behind, should be emptying into a still-water pond, which in turn should be emptying itself through the aperture in the board at the same rate as the stream is keeping the pond full. Your weir should be fashioned with the idea of some permanency so that a number of measurements may be taken, extending over a period of time--thus enabling the prospector to make a reliable estimate not only of the amount of water flowing at any one time, but of its fluctuations. Under expert supervision, this simple weir is an exact contrivance--exact enough, in fact, for the finest calculations required in engineering work. To find out how many cubic feet of water the stream is delivering at any moment, all that is necessary is to measure its depth where it flows through the opening. There are instruments, like the hook-gauge, which are designed to measure this depth with accuracy up to one-thousandth of an inch. An ordinary foot rule, or a folding rule, will give results sufficiently accurate for the water prospector in this instance. The depth should be measured not at the opening itself, but a short distance back of the opening, where the water is setting at a dead level and is moving very slowly. With this weir, every square inch of water flowing through the opening indicates roughly one cubic foot of water a minute. Thus if the opening is 10 inches wide and the water flowing through it is 5 inches deep, the number of cubic feet a minute the stream is delivering is 10 × 5 = 50 square inches = 50 cubic feet a minute. This is a very small stream; yet, if it could be made to fall through a water wheel 10 feet below a pond or reservoir, it would exert a continuous pressure of 30,000 pounds per minute on the blades of the wheel--nearly one theoretical horsepower. This estimate of one cubic foot to each square inch is a very rough approximation. Engineers have developed many complicated formulas for determining the flow of water through weirs, taking into account fine variations that the farm prospector need not heed. The so-called Francis formula, developed by a long series of actual experiments at Lowell, Mass., in 1852 by Mr. James B. Francis, with weirs 10 feet long and 5 feet 2 inches high, is standard for these calculations and is expressed (for those who desire to use it for special purposes) as follows: Q = 3.33 L H^(3/2) or, Q = 3.33 L H sqrt(H), in which Q means _quantity_ of water in cubic feet per second, L is length of opening, in feet; and H is height of opening in feet. The following table is figured according to the Francis formula, and gives the discharge in cubic feet per minute, for openings one inch wide: TABLE OF WEIRS Inches 0 1/4 1/2 3/4 1 0.403 0.563 0.740 0.966 2 1.141 1.360 1.593 1.838 3 2.094 2.361 2.639 2.927 4 3.225 3.531 3.848 4.173 5 4.506 4.849 5.200 5.558 6 5.925 6.298 6.681 7.071 7 7.465 7.869 8.280 8.697 8 9.121 9.552 9.990 10.427 9 10.884 11.340 11.804 12.272 10 12.747 13.228 13.716 14.208 11 14.707 15.211 15.721 16.236 12 16.757 17.283 17.816 18.352 13 18.895 19.445 19.996 20.558 14 21.116 21.684 22.258 22.835 15 23.418 24.007 24.600 25.195 16 25.800 26.406 27.019 27.634 17 28.256 28.881 29.512 30.145 18 30.785 31.429 32.075 32.733 Thus, let us say, our weir has an opening 30 inches wide, and the water overflows through the opening at a uniform depth of 6-1/4 inches, when measured a few inches behind the board at a point before the overflow curve begins. Run down the first column on the left to "6", and cross over to the second column to the right, headed "1/4". This gives the number of cubic feet per minute for this depth one inch wide, as 6.298. Since the weir is 30 inches wide, multiply 6.298 × 30 = 188.94--or, say, 189 cubic feet per minute. Once the weir is set, it is the work of but a moment to find out the quantity of water a stream is delivering, simply by referring to the above table. _Another Method of Measuring a Stream_ Weirs are for use in small streams. For larger streams, where the construction of a weir would be difficult, the U. S. Geological Survey engineers recommend the following simple method: Choose a place where the channel is straight for 100 or 200 feet, and has a nearly constant depth and width; lay off on the bank a line 50 or 100 feet in length. Throw small chips into the stream, and measure the time in seconds they take to travel the distance laid off on the bank. This gives the surface velocity of the water. Multiply the average of several such tests by 0.80, which will give very nearly the mean velocity. Then it is necessary to find the cross-section of the flowing water (its average depth multiplied by width), and this number, in square feet, multiplied by the velocity in feet per second, will give the number of cubic feet the stream is delivering each second. Multiplied by 60 gives cubic feet a minute. _Figuring a Stream's Horsepower_ By one of the above simple methods, the problem of _Quantity_ can easily be determined. The next problem is to determine what _Head_ can be obtained. _Head_ is the distance in feet the water may be made to fall, from the Source of Supply, to the water wheel itself. The power of water is directly proportional to _head_, just as it is directly proportional to _quantity_. Thus the typical weir measured above was 30 inches wide and 6-1/4 deep, giving 189 cubic feet of water a minute--_Quantity._ Since such a stream is of common occurrence on thousands of farms, let us analyze briefly its possibilities for power: One hundred and eighty-nine cubic feet of water weighs 189 × 62.5 pounds = 11,812.5 pounds. Drop this weight one foot, and we have 11,812.5 foot-pounds. Drop it 3 feet and we have 11,812 × 3 = 35,437.5 foot-pounds. Since 33,000 foot-pounds exerted in one minute is one horsepower, we have here a little more than one horsepower. For simplicity let us call it a horsepower. [Illustration: Detail of a water-power plant, showing setting of wheel, and dynamo connection] Now, since the work to be had from this water varies directly with _quantity_ and _head_, it is obvious that a stream _one-half_ as big falling _twice_ as far, would still give one horsepower at the wheel; or, a stream of 189 cubic feet a minute falling _ten times_ as far, 30 feet, would give _ten times_ the power, or _ten_ horsepower; a stream falling _one hundred times_ as far would give _one hundred_ horsepower. Thus small quantities of water falling great distances, or large quantities of water falling small distances may accomplish the same results. From this it will be seen, that the simple formula for determining the theoretical horsepower of any stream, in which Quantity and Head are known, is as follows: Cu. Ft. per Feet minute × head × 62.5 (A) Theoretical Horsepower = ---------------------- 33,000 _As an example, let us say that we have a stream whose weir measurement shows it capable of delivering 376 cubic feet a minute, with a head (determined by survey) of 13 feet 6 inches. What is the horsepower of this stream?_ Answer: Cu. ft. p. m. head pounds 376 × 13.5 × 62.5 H.P. = ----------------------------- = 9.614 horsepower 33,000 This is _theoretical horsepower_. To determine the _actual_ horsepower that can be counted on, in practice, it is customary, with small water wheels, to figure 25 per cent loss through friction, etc. In this instance, the actual horsepower would then be 7.2. _The Size of the Wheel_ Water wheels are not rated by horsepower by manufacturers, because the same wheel might develop one horsepower or one hundred horsepower, or even a thousand horsepower, according to the conditions under which it is used. With a given supply of water, the head, in feet, determines the size of wheel necessary. The farther a stream of water falls, the smaller the pipe necessary to carry a given number of gallons past a given point in a given time. A small wheel, under 10 × 13.5 ft. head, would give the same power with the above 376 cubic feet of water a minute, as a large wheel would with 10 × 376 cubic feet, under a 13.5 foot head. This is due to the _acceleration of gravity_ on falling bodies. A rifle bullet shot into the air with a muzzle velocity of 3,000 feet a second begins to diminish its speed instantly on leaving the muzzle, and continues to diminish in speed at the fixed rate of 32.16 feet a second, until it finally comes to a stop, and starts to descend. Then, again, its speed accelerates at the rate of 32.16 feet a second, until on striking the earth it has attained the velocity at which it left the muzzle of the rifle, less loss due to friction. The acceleration of gravity affects falling water in the same manner as it affects a falling bullet. At any one second, during its course of fall, it is traveling at a rate 32.16 feet a second in excess of its speed the previous second. In figuring the size wheel necessary under given conditions or to determine the power of water with a given nozzle opening, it is necessary to take this into account. The table on page 51 gives velocity per second of falling water, ignoring the friction of the pipe, in heads from 5 to 1000 feet. The scientific formula from which the table is computed is expressed as follows, for those of a mathematical turn of mind: Velocity (ft. per sec.) = sqrt(2gh); or, velocity is equal to the square root of the product (g = 32.16,--times head in feet, multiplied by 2). SPOUTING VELOCITY OF WATER, IN FEET PER SECOND, IN HEADS OF FROM 5 TO 1,000 FEET Head Velocity 5 17.9 6 19.7 7 21.2 8 22.7 9 24.1 10 25.4 11 26.6 11.5 27.2 12 27.8 12.5 28.4 13 28.9 13.5 29.5 14 30.0 14.5 30.5 15 31.3 15.5 31.6 16 32.1 16.5 32.6 17 33.1 17.5 33.6 18 34.0 18.5 34.5 19 35.0 19.5 35.4 20 35.9 20.5 36.3 21 36.8 21.5 37.2 22 37.6 22.5 38.1 23 38.5 23.5 38.9 24 39.3 24.5 39.7 25 40.1 26 40.9 27 41.7 28 42.5 29 43.2 30 43.9 31 44.7 32 45.4 33 46.1 34 46.7 35 47.4 36 48.1 37 48.8 38 49.5 39 50.1 40 50.7 41 51.3 42 52.0 43 52.6 44 53.2 45 53.8 46 54.4 47 55.0 48 55.6 49 56.2 50 56.7 55 59.5 60 62.1 65 64.7 70 67.1 75 69.5 80 71.8 85 74.0 90 76.1 95 78.2 100 80.3 200 114.0 300 139.0 400 160.0 500 179.0 1000 254.0 _In the above example, we found that 376 cubic feet of water a minute, under 13.5 feet head, would deliver 7.2 actual horsepower. Question: What size wheel would it be necessary to install under such conditions?_ By referring to the table of velocity above, (or by using the formula), we find that water under a head of 13.5 feet, has a spouting velocity of 29.5 feet a second. This means that a solid stream of water 29.5 feet long would pass through the wheel in one second. _What should be the diameter of such a stream, to make its cubical contents 376 cubic feet a minute or 376/60 = 6.27 cubic feet a second?_ The following formula should be used to determine this: 144 × cu. ft. per second (B) Sq. Inches of wheel = -------------------------- Velocity in ft. per sec. Substituting values, in the above instance, we have: Answer: Sq. Inches of wheel = 144 × 6.27 (Cu. Ft. Sec.) --------------------------- = 30.6 sq. in. 29.5 (Vel. in feet.) That is, a wheel capable of using 30.6 square inches of water would meet these conditions. _What Head is Required_ Let us attack the problem of water-power in another way. _A farmer wishes to install a water wheel that will deliver 10 horsepower on the shaft, and he finds his stream delivers 400 cubic feet of water a minute. How many feet fall is required?_ Formula: 33,000 × horsepower required (C) Head in feet = ------------------------------ Cu. Ft. per minute × 62.5 Since a theoretical horsepower is only 75 per cent efficient, he would require 10 × 4/3 = 13.33 theoretical horsepower of water, in this instance. Substituting the values of the problem in the formula, we have: 33,000 × 13.33 Answer: Head = ---------------- = 17.6 feet fall required. 400 × 62.5 _What capacity of wheel would this prospect (400 cubic feet of water a minute falling 17.6 feet, and developing 13.33 horsepower) require?_ By referring to the table of velocities, we find that the velocity for 17.5 feet head (nearly) is 33.6 feet a second. Four hundred feet of water a minute is 400/60 = 6.67 cu. ft. a second. Substituting these values, in formula (B) then, we have: Answer: Capacity of wheel = 144 × 6.67 ---------- = 28.6 square inches of water. 33.6 _Quantity of Water_ Let us take still another problem which the prospector may be called on to solve: _A man finds that he can conveniently get a fall of 27 feet. He desires 20 actual horsepower. What quantity of water will be necessary, and what capacity wheel?_ Twenty actual horsepower will be 20 × 4/3 = 26.67 theoretical horsepower. Formula: 33,000 × Hp. required (D) Cubic feet per minute = --------------------- (Head in feet × 62.5) Substituting values, then, we have: Cu. ft. per minute = 33,000 × 26.67 -------------- = 521.5 cubic feet a minute. 27 × 62.5 A head of 27 feet would give this stream a velocity of 41.7 feet a second, and, from formula (B) we find that the capacity of the wheel should be 30 square inches. It is well to remember that the square inches of wheel capacity does not refer to the size of pipe conveying water from the head to the wheel, but merely to the actual nozzle capacity provided by the wheel itself. In small installations of low head, such as above a penstock at least six times the nozzle capacity should be used, to avoid losing effective head from friction. Thus, with a nozzle of 30 square inches, the penstock or pipe should be 180 square inches, or nearly 14 inches square inside measurement. A larger penstock would be still better. CHAPTER IV THE WATER WHEEL AND HOW TO INSTALL IT Different types of water wheels--The impulse and reaction wheels--The impulse wheel adapted to high heads and small amount of water--Pipe lines--Table of resistance in pipes--Advantages and disadvantages of the impulse wheel--Other forms of impulse wheels--The reaction turbine, suited to low heads and large quantity of water--Its advantages and limitations--Developing a water-power project: the dam; the race; the flume; the penstock; and the tailrace--Water rights for the farmer. In general, there are two types of water wheels, the _impulse_ wheel and the _reaction_ wheel. Both are called turbines, although the name belongs, more properly, to the reaction wheel alone. Impulse wheels derive their power from the _momentum_ of falling water. Reaction wheels derive their power from the _momentum and pressure_ of falling water. The old-fashioned _undershot_, _overshot_, and _breast_ wheels are familiar to all as examples of impulse wheels. Water wheels of this class revolve in the air, with the energy of the water exerted on one face of their buckets. On the other hand, reaction wheels are enclosed in water-tight cases, either of metal or of wood, and the buckets are entirely surrounded by water. The old-fashioned undershot, overshot, and breast wheels were not very efficient; they wasted about 75 per cent of the power applied to them. A modern impulse wheel, on the other hand, operates at an efficiency of 80 per cent and over. The loss is mainly through friction and leakage, and cannot be eliminated altogether. The modern reaction wheel, called the _turbine_, attains an equal efficiency. Individual conditions govern the type of wheel to be selected. _The Impulse, or Tangential Water Wheel_ The modern impulse, or tangential wheel (so called because the driving stream of water strikes the wheel at a tangent) is best adapted to situations where the amount of water is limited, and the head is large. Thus, a mountain brook supplying only seven cubic feet of water a minute--a stream less than two-and-a-half inches deep flowing over a weir with an opening three inches wide--would develop two actual horsepower, under a head of 200 feet--not an unusual head to be found in the hill country. Under a head of one thousand feet, a stream furnishing 352.6 cubic feet of water a minute would develop 534.01 horsepower at the nozzle. Ordinarily these wheels are not used under heads of less than 20 feet. A wheel of this type, six feet in diameter, would develop six horsepower, with 188 cubic feet of water a minute and 20-foot head. The great majority of impulse wheels are used under heads of 100 feet and over. In this country the greatest head in use is slightly over 2,100 feet, although in Switzerland there is one plant utilizing a head of over 5,000 feet. [Illustration: Runner of Pelton wheel, showing peculiar shape of the buckets] [Illustration: The Fitz overshoot wheel Efficient Modern Adaptations of the Archaic Undershot and Overshot Water Wheels] The old-fashioned impulse wheels were inefficient because of the fact that their buckets were not constructed scientifically, and much of the force of the water was lost at the moment of impact. The impulse wheel of to-day, however, has buckets which so completely absorb the momentum of water issuing from a nozzle, that the water falls into the tailrace with practically no velocity. When it is remembered that the nozzle pressure under a 2,250-foot head is nearly 1,000 pounds to the square inch, and that water issues from this nozzle with a velocity of 23,000 feet a minute, the scientific precision of this type of bucket can be appreciated. A typical bucket for such a wheel is shaped like an open clam shell, the central line which cuts the stream of water into halves being ground to a sharp edge. The curves which absorb the momentum of the water are figured mathematically and in practice become polished like mirrors. So great is the eroding action of water, under great heads--especially when it contains sand or silt--that it is occasionally necessary to replace these buckets. For this reason the larger wheels consist merely of a spider of iron or steel, with each bucket bolted separately to its circumference, so that it can be removed and replaced easily. Usually only one nozzle is provided; but in order to use this wheel under low heads--down to 10 feet--a number of nozzles are used, sometimes five, where the water supply is plentiful. The wheel is keyed to a horizontal shaft running in babbited bearings, and this same shaft is used for driving the generator, either by direct connection, or by means of pulleys and a belt. The wheel may be mounted on a home-made timber base, or on an iron frame. It takes up very little room, especially when it is so set that the nozzle can be mounted under the flooring. The wheel itself is enclosed, above the floor, in a wooden box, or a casing made of cast or sheet iron, which should be water-tight. Since these wheels are usually operated under great heads, the problem of regulating their water supply requires special consideration. A gate is always provided at the upper, or intake end, where the water pipe leaves the flume. Since the pressure reaches 1,000 pounds the square inch and more, there would be danger of bursting the pipe if the water were suddenly shut off at the nozzle itself. For this reason it is necessary to use a needle valve, similar to that in an ordinary garden hose nozzle; and by such a valve the amount of water may be regulated to a nicety. Where the head is so great that even such a valve could not be used safely, provision is made to deflect the nozzle. These wheels have a speed variation amounting to as much as 25 per cent from no-load to full load, in generating electricity, and since the speed of the prime mover--the water wheel--is reflected directly in the voltage or pressure of electricity delivered, the wheel must be provided with some form of automatic governor. This consists usually of two centrifugal balls, similar to those used in governing steam engines; these are connected by means of gears to the needle valve or the deflector. As the demand for farm water-powers in our hill sections becomes more general, the tangential type of water wheel will come into common use for small plants. At present it is most familiar in the great commercial installations of the Far West, working under enormous heads. These wheels are to be had in the market ranging in size from six inches to six feet and over. Wheels ranging in size from six inches to twenty-four inches are called water motors, and are to be had in the market, new, for $30 for the smallest size, and $275 for the largest. Above three feet in diameter, the list prices will run from $200 for a 3-foot wheel to $800 for a 6-foot wheel. Where one has a surplus of water, it is possible to install a multiple nozzle wheel, under heads of from 10 to 100 feet, the cost for 18-inch wheels of this pattern running from $150 to $180 list, and for 24-inch wheels from $200 to $250. A 24-inch wheel, with a 10-foot head would give 1.19 horsepower, enough for lighting the home, and using an electric iron. Under a 100-foot head this same wheel would provide 25.9 horsepower, to meet the requirements of a bigger-than-average farm plant. _The Pipe Line_ The principal items of cost in installing an impulse wheel are in connection with the pipe line, and the governor. In small heads, that is, under 100 feet, the expense of pipe line is low. Frequently, however, the governor will cost more than the water motor itself, although cheaper, yet efficient, makes are now being put on the market to meet this objection. In a later chapter, we will take up in detail the question of governing the water wheel, and voltage regulation, and will attempt to show how this expense may be practically eliminated by the farmer. To secure large heads, it is usually necessary to run a pipe line many hundreds (and in many cases, many thousands) of feet from the flume to the water wheel. Water flowing through pipes is subject to loss of head, by friction, and for this reason the larger the pipe the less the friction loss. Under no circumstances is it recommended to use a pipe of less than two inches in diameter, even for the smallest water motors; and with a two-inch pipe, the run should not exceed 200 feet. Where heavy-pressure mains, such as those of municipal or commercial water systems, are available, the problem of both water supply and head becomes very simple. Merely ascertain the pressure of the water in the mains _when flowing_, determine the amount of power required (as illustrated in a succeeding chapter of this book), and install the proper water motor with a suitably sized pipe. Where one has his own water supply, however, and it is necessary to lay pipe to secure the requisite fall, the problem is more difficult. Friction in pipes acts in the same way as cutting down the head a proportional amount; and by cutting down the head, your water motor loses power in direct proportion to the number of feet head lost. This head, obtained by subtracting friction and other losses from the surveyed head, is called the _effective head_, and determines the amount of power delivered at the nozzle. The tables on pages 66-67 show the friction loss in pipes up to 12 inches in diameter, according to the amount of water, and the length of pipe. In this example it is seen that a 240-foot static head is reduced by friction to 230.1 feet effective head. By referring to the table we find the wheel fitting these conditions has a nozzle so small that it cuts down the rate of flow of water in the big pipe to 4.4 feet a second, and permits the flow of only 207 cubic feet of water a minute. The actual horsepower of this tube and nozzle, then, can be figured by applying formula (A), Chapter III, allowing 80 per cent for the efficiency of the wheel. Thus: Actual horsepower = 207 × 230.1 × 62.5 ------------------ = 90.21 × .80 = 72.168 Hp. 33,000 To calculate what the horsepower of this tube 12 inches in diameter and 900 feet long, would be without a nozzle, under a head of 240 feet, introduces a new element of friction losses, which is too complicated to figure here. Such a condition would not be met with in actual practice, in any event. The largest nozzles used, even in the jumbo plants of the Far West, rarely exceed 10 inches in diameter; and the pipe conveying water to such a nozzle is upwards of eight feet in diameter. PIPE FRICTION TABLES INDICATING THE CALCULATED LOSS OF HEAD DUE TO FRICTION IN RIVETED STEEL PIPE WITH VARIOUS WATER QUANTITIES AND VELOCITIES [Courtesy of the Pelton Water Wheel Company] Heavy-faced figures = Loss of head in feet for each one thousand feet of pipe. Light-faced figures = Water quantity in cubic feet per minute. --------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Pipe | Velocity in Feet per Second | Diameter+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ | 2.0 | 2.2 | 2.4 | 2.6 | 2.8 | 3.0 | 3.2 | 3.4 | 3.6 | 3.8 | 4.0 | 4.2 | 4.4 | --------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ |=17.1=|=20.0=|=25.6=|=28.3=|=32.0=|=37.3=|=40.9=|=45.8=|=50.4=|=56.0=|=62.3=|=68.1=|=74.9= | 3" | 5.9 | 6.5 | 7.1 | 7.7 | 8.3 | 8.9 | 9.4 | 10.0 | 10.6 | 11.2 | 11.8 | 12.4 | 13.0 | |=11.0=|=13.0=|=15.0=|=17.3=|=20.2=|=23.2=|=26.2=|=29.6=|=33.0=|=36.5=|=41.0=|=45.4=|=49.2= | 4" | 10.5 | 11.5 | 12.6 | 13.6 | 14.7 | 15.7 | 16.8 | 17.8 | 18.8 | 19.9 | 21.0 | 22.0 | 23.0 | | =7.7=| =9.4=|=11.0=|=12.9=|=14.9=|=16.9=|=19.5=|=21.6=|=24.0=|=27.0=|=29.8=|=32.9=|=36.0= | 5" | 16.4 | 18.0 | 19.6 | 21.2 | 22.9 | 24.5 | 26.1 | 27.8 | 29.5 | 31.0 | 32.7 | 34.3 | 36.0 | | =6.0=| =7.2=| =8.6=| =9.9=|=11.7=|=13.0=|=14.6=|=16.6=|=19.0=|=21.5=|=23.4=|=25.5=|=27.8= | 6" | 23.5 | 25.9 | 28.2 | 30.6 | 32.9 | 35.3 | 37.7 | 40.0 | 42.4 | 44.7 | 47.1 | 49.5 | 51.8 | | =4.9 | =6.9=| =7.0=| =8.1=| =9.3=|=10.6=|=12.0=|=13.6=|=15.2=|=17.0=|=19.0=|=21.0=|=23.0= | 7" | 32.0 | 35.3 | 38.5 | 41.7 | 44.9 | 48.1 | 51.3 | 54.5 | 57.7 | 60.9 | 64.1 | 67.3 | 70.5 | | =4.0=| =4.9=| =6.0=| =6.9=| =7.8=| =9.1=|=10.0=|=10.2=|=13.0=|=14.4=|=15.9=|=17.2=|=19.2= | 8" | 41.9 | 46.1 | 50.2 | 54.4 | 58.6 | 62.8 | 67.0 | 71.2 | 75.4 | 79.6 | 83.7 | 87.9 | 92.1 | | =3.4=| =4.2=| =5.1=| =5.9=| =6.7=| =7.7=| =8.9=| =9.8=|=11.0=|=12.2=|=13.8=|=15.0=|=16.0= | 9" | 53.0 | 58.3 | 63.6 | 68.9 | 74.2 | 79.5 | 84.8 | 90.1 | 95.4 |101 |106 |111 |116 | | =2.9=| =3.7=| =4.4=| =5.1=| =5.9=| =6.7=| =7.5=| =8.6=| =9.5=|=10.6=|=12.1=|=13.1=|=14.1= | 10" | 65.4 | 72.0 | 78.5 | 85.1 | 91.6 | 98.2 |105 |111 |118 |124 |131 |137 |144 | | =2.6=| =3.2=| =3.8=| =4.4=| =5.1=| =5.9=| =6.6=| =7.5=| =8.4=| =9.5=|=10.3=|=10.1=|=12.5= | 11" | 79 | 87 | 95 |103 |111 |119 |127 |134 |142 |150 |158 |166 |174 | |=2.36=| =2.9=| =3.4=| =3.9=| =4.5=| =5.2=| =5.9=| =6.7=| =7.5=| =8.5=| =9.4=|=10.0=|=11.0= | 12" |94 |103 |113 |122 |132 |141 |151 |160 |169 |179 |188 |198 |207 | --------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+ --------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ | 4.6 | 4.8 | 5.0 | 5.2 | 5.4 | 5.6 | 5.8 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 9.0 | 10.0 | --------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ |=78.1=|=82.0=|=89.5=|=98.9=|=105.0=|=113.2=|=120.8=|=130.0=|=162.8=|=216.0=|=270.= |=323.= | 3" | 13.6 | 14.2 | 14.8 | 15.3 | 15.9 | 16.5 | 17.1 | 17.7 | 20.6 | 23.5 | 26.5 | 29.5 | |=52.3=|=57.0=|=61.5=|=68.0=| =72.5=| =78.2=| =83.1=| =89.5=|=121.= |=155.= |=198.= |=242.= | 4" | 24.1 | 25.1 | 26.2 | 27.2 | 28.3 | 29.3 | 30.4 | 31.5 | 36.6 | 41.9 | 47.2 | 52.4 | |=39.2=|=42.3=|=46.0=|=49.8=| =53.5=| =58.0=| =62.0=| =67.0=| =89.= |=118.= |=148.= |=182.= | 5" | 37.6 | 39.2 | 40.9 | 42.5 | 44.1 | 45.8 | 47.5 | 49.1 | 57.1 | 65.4 | 73.7 | 82.0 | |=30.6=|=33.1=|=35.6=|=39.0=| =41.6=| =44.6=| =48.0=| =51.6=| =69.0=| =89.0=|=114.= |=140.= | 6" | 54.1 | 56.5 | 58.9 | 61.2 | 63.6 | 65.9 | 68.3 | 70.7 | 82.4 | 94.3 | 106 | 118 | |=25.1=|=27.3=|=29.5=|=32.0=| =34.5=| =37.1=| =40.0=| =43.0=| =58.0=| =75.0=| =95.0=|=116.= | 7" | 73.7 | 76.9 | 80.2 | 83.3 | 86.6 | 89.8 | 93.0 | 96.2 | 112 | 128 | 145 | 161 | |=20.0=|=22.5=|=24.9=|=27.0=| =28.8=| =30.6=| =32.8=| =35.5=| =47.5=| =61.2=| =78.6=| =95.1=| 8" | 96.3 |101 |105 |109 | 113 | 117 | 121 | 125 | 146 | 168 | 189 | 210 | |=17.1=|=19.2=|=21.0=|=22.9=| =24.6=| =26.2=| =28.0=| =30.1=| =40.1=| =52.1=| =66.6=| =82.0=| 9" |122 |127 |132 |138 | 143 | 148 | 154 | 159 | 185 | 212 | 238 | 265 | |=14.8=|=16.7=|=17.9=|=19.9=| =21.0=| =22.7=| =24.3=| =25.9=| =34.8=| =45.9=| =58.0=| =70.1=| 10" |150 |157 |163 |170 | 177 | 183 | 190 | 196 | 229 | 261 | 295 | 327 | |=13.0=|=14.7=|=15.9=|=17.1=| =18.2=| =20.1=| =21.3=| =22.6=| =30.7=| =40.0=| =50.8=| =62.0=| 11" |182 |190 |198 |206 | 214 | 222 | 229 | 237 | 277 | 316 | 356 | 396 | |=11.6=|=13.0=|=14.0=|=15.1=| =16.1=| =17.8=| =19.1=| =20.2=| =27.1=| =35.9=| =45.4=| =55.9=| 12" |217 |226 |235 |245 | 254 | 264 | 273 | 283 | 330 | 377 | 425 | 472 | --------+---------+----------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ EXAMPLE Assume the surveyed head as 240 feet, the water quantity as 207 cubic feet per minute and a pipe line 12 inches in diameter 900 feet long. To ascertain the friction loss, refer to column of pipe diameter and follow across the column for 12 inches diameter to the quantity, 207 cubic feet per minute. The heavy-faced figures above 207 indicate that the loss per 1000 feet of pipe length is 11 feet. Therefore, since the pipe in the example is 900 feet long, the loss will be 11.' × 900/1000 or 9.9 feet, and the effective head will be 240' - 9.9' = 230.1' Steel tubing for supply pipes, from 3 to 12 inches in diameter is listed at from 20 cents to $1.50 a foot, according to the diameter and thickness of the material. Discounts on these prices will vary from 25 to 50 per cent. The farmer can cut down the cost of this pipe by conveying his supply water from its natural source to a pond, by means of an open race, or a wooden flume. An ingenious mechanic can even construct his own pipe out of wood, though figuring labor and materials, it is doubtful if anything would be saved over a riveted steel pipe, purchased at the regular price. This pipe, leading from the pond, or forebay, to the water wheel, should be kept as short as possible; at the same time, the fall should not be too sharp. An angle of 30° will be found very satisfactory, although pipe is frequently laid at angles up to 50°. _Other Types of Impulse Wheels_ In recent years more efficient forms of the old-fashioned overshoot, pitch-back breast, and undershoot wheels have been developed, by substituting steel or other metal for wood, and altering the shape of the buckets to make better use of the power of falling water. In some forms of overshoot wheels, an efficiency of over 90 per cent is claimed by manufacturers; and this type offers the additional advantage of utilizing small quantities of water, as well as being efficient under varying quantities of water. They utilize the falling weight of water, although by giving the water momentum at the point of delivery, by means of the proper fall, impulse too is utilized in some measure. The modern steel overshoot wheel receives water in its buckets from a spout set a few degrees back of dead center; and its buckets are so shaped that the water is retained a full half-revolution of the wheel. The old-style overshoot wheel was inefficient principally because the buckets began emptying themselves at the end of a quarter-revolution. Another advantage claimed for these wheels over the old style is that, being made of thin metal, their buckets attain the temperature of the water itself, thus reducing the danger of freezing to a minimum. They are manufactured in sizes from 6 feet in diameter to upwards of fifty feet; and with buckets of from 6 inches to 10 feet in width. In practice it is usual to deliver water to the buckets by means of a trough or pipe, through a suitable spout and gate, at a point two feet above the crown of the wheel. For this reason, the diameter of the wheel corresponds very closely to the head in feet. _The Reaction Turbine_ The reaction turbine is best adapted to low heads, with a large supply of water. It is not advisable, under ordinary circumstances, to use it under heads exceeding 100 feet, as its speed is then excessive. It may be used under falls as low as two feet. Five thousand cubic feet of water a minute would give approximately 14 actual horsepower under such a head. A sluggish creek that flows in large volume could thus be utilized for power with the reaction turbine, whereas it would be useless with an impulse wheel. Falls of from five to fifteen feet are to be found on thousands of farm streams, and the reaction turbine is admirably adapted to them. Reaction turbines consist of an iron "runner" which is in effect a rotary fan, the pressure and momentum of the column of water pressing on the slanted blades giving it motion and power. These wheels are manufactured in a great variety of forms and sizes; and are to be purchased either as the runner (set in bearings) alone, or as a runner enclosed in an iron case. In case the runner alone is purchased, the owner must enclose it, either with iron or wood. They vary in price according to size, and the means by which the flow of water is controlled. A simple 12-inch reaction turbine wheel, such as would be suitable for many power plants can be had for $75. A twelve-inch wheel, using 18 or 20 square inches of water, would generate about 7-1/2 horsepower under a 20-foot head, with 268 cubic feet of water a minute. Under a 30-foot head, and with 330 cubic feet of water such a wheel will give 14 horsepower. A 36-inch wheel, under a 5-foot head, would use 2,000 cubic feet of water, and give 14 horsepower. Under a 30-foot head, this same wheel, using 4,900 cubic feet of water a minute, would develop over 200 horsepower. If the farmer is confronted by the situation of a great deal of water and small head, a large wheel would be necessary. Thus he could secure 35 horsepower with only a 3-foot head, providing his water supply is equal to the draft of 8,300 cubic feet a minute. From these sample figures, it will be seen that the reaction turbine will meet the requirements of widely varying conditions up to, say a head of 100 feet. The farmer prospector should measure first the quantity of water to be depended on, and then the number of feet fall to be had. The higher the fall, with certain limits, the smaller the expense of installation, and the less water required. When he has determined _quantity_ and _head_, the catalogue of a reputable manufacturer will supply him with what information is necessary to decide on the style and size wheel he should install. In the older settled communities, especially in New England, a farmer should be able to pick up a second-hand turbine, at half the price asked for a new one; and since these wheels do not depreciate rapidly, it would serve his purpose as well, in most cases, as a new one. [Illustration: A typical vertical turbine] Reaction turbines may be either horizontal or vertical. If they are vertical, it is necessary to connect them to the main shaft by means of a set of bevel gears. These gears should be substantially large, and if the teeth are of hard wood (set in such a manner that they can be replaced when worn) they will be found more satisfactory than if of cast or cut metal. [Illustration: Two wheels on a horizontal shaft (Courtesy of the C. P. Bradway Company, West Stafford, Conn.)] The horizontal turbine is keyed to its shaft, like the impulse wheel, so that the wheel shaft itself is used for driving, without gears or a quarter-turn belt. (The latter is to be avoided, wherever possible.) There are many forms of horizontal turbines; they are to be had of the duplex type, that is, two wheels on one shaft. These are arranged so that either wheel may be run separately, or both together, thus permitting one to take advantage of the seasonal fluctuation in water supply. A convenient form of these wheels includes draft tubes, by which the wheel may be set several feet above the tailrace, and the advantage of this additional fall still be preserved. In this case the draft tube must be airtight so as to form suction, when filled with escaping water, and should be proportioned to the size of the wheel. Theoretically these draft tubes might be 34 feet long, but in practice it has been found that they should not exceed 10 or 12 feet under ordinary circumstances. They permit the wheel to be installed on the main floor of the power station, with the escape below, instead of being set just above the tailrace level itself, as is the case when draft tubes are not used. Reaction turbines when working under a variable load require water governors (like impulse wheels) although where the supply of water is large, and the proportion of power between water wheel and dynamo is liberal--say two to one, or more--this necessity is greatly reduced. Reaction wheels as a rule govern themselves better than impulse wheels, due both to the fact that they use more water, and that they operate in a small airtight case. The centrifugal ball governor is the type usually used with reaction wheels as well as with impulse wheels. This subject will be discussed more fully later. _Installing a Power Plant_ In developing a power prospect, the dam itself is usually not the site of the power plant. In fact, because of danger from flood water and ice, it is better to locate it in a more protected spot, leading the water to the wheel by means of a race and flume. [Illustration: Bird's-eye view of a developed water-power plant] A typical crib dam, filled with stone, is shown in section in the diagram, and the half-tone illustration shows such a dam in course of construction. The first bed of timbers should be laid on hard-pan or solid rock in the bed of the stream parallel to its flow. The second course, across the stream, is then begun, being spiked home by means of rods cut to length and sharpened by the local blacksmith, from 3/4-inch Norway iron. Hemlock logs are suitable for building the crib; and as the timbers are finally laid, it should be filled in and made solid with boulders. This filling in should proceed section by section, as the planking goes forward, otherwise there will be no escape for the water of the stream, until it rises and spills over the top timbers. The planking should be of two-inch chestnut, spiked home with 60 penny wire spikes. When the last section of the crib is filled with boulders and the water rises, the remaining planks may be spiked home with the aid of an iron pipe in which to drive the spike by means of a plunger of iron long enough to reach above the level of the water. When the planking is completed, the dam should be well gravelled, to within a foot or two of its crest. Such dams are substantial, easily made with the aid of unskilled labor, and the materials are to be had on the average farm with the exception of the hardware. [Illustration: Cross-section of a rock and timber dam] This dam forms a pond from which the race draws its supply of water for the wheel. It also serves as a spillway over which the surplus water escapes. The race should enter the pond at some convenient point, and should be protected at or near its point of entrance by a bulkhead containing a gate, so that the supply of water may be cut off from the race and wheel readily. The lay of the land will determine the length and course of the race. The object of the race is to secure the required head by carrying a portion of the available water to a point where it can escape, by a fall of say 30° to the tailrace. It may be feasible to carry the race in a line almost at right angles to the stream itself, or, again, it may be necessary to parallel the stream. If the lay of the land is favorable, the race may be dug to a distance of a rod or so inshore, and then be permitted to cut its own course along the bank, preventing the water escaping back to the river or brook before the site of the power plant is reached, by building suitable retaining embankments. The race should be of ample size for conveying the water required without too much friction. It should end in a flume constructed stoutly of timbers. It is from this flume that the penstock draws water for the wheel. When the wheel gate is closed the water in the mill pond behind the dam, and in the flume itself should maintain an approximate level. Any surplus flow is permitted to escape over flushboards in the flume; these same flushboards maintain a constant head when the wheel is in operation by carrying off what little surplus water the race delivers from the pond. [Illustration: Detail of bulkhead gate] At some point in the race or flume, the flow should be protected from leaves and other trash by means of a rack. This rack is best made of 1/4 or 1/2-inch battens from 1-1/2 to 3 inches in width, bolted together on their flat faces and separated a distance equal to the thickness of the battens by means of iron washers. This rack will accumulate leaves and trash, varying with the time of year and should be kept clean, so as not to cut down the supply of water needed by the wheel. The penstock, or pipe conveying water from the flume to the wheel, should be constructed of liberal size, and substantially, of two-inch chestnut planking, with joints caulked with oakum, and the whole well bound together to resist the pressure of the water. Means should be provided near the bottom for an opening through which to remove any obstructions that may by accident pass by the rack. Many wheels have plates provided in their cases for this purpose. The tailrace should be provided with enough fall to carry the escaping water back to the main stream, without backing up on the wheel itself and thus cutting down the head. It is impossible to make any estimates of the cost of such a water-power plant. The labor required will in most instances be supplied by the farmer himself, his sons, and his help, during times when farm operations are slack. _Water Rights of the Farmer_ The farmer owns the bed of every stream not navigable, lying within the boundary lines of the farm; and his right to divert and make use of the water of such streams is determined in most states by common law. In the dry-land states where water is scarce and is valuable for irrigation, a special set of statutes has sprung up with the development of irrigation in this country. A stream on the farm is either public or private; its being navigable or "floatable" (suitable for floating logs) determining which. Water rights are termed in law "riparian" rights, and land is riparian only when water flows over it or along its borders. Green (Law for the American Farmer) says: "Water is the common and equal property of every one through whose land it flows, and the right of each land-owner to use and consume it without destroying, or unreasonably impairing the rights of others, is the same. An owner of land bordering on a running stream has the right to have its waters flow naturally, and none can lawfully divert them without his consent. Each riparian proprietor has an equal right with all the others to have the stream flow in its natural way without substantial reduction in volume, or deterioration in quality, subject to a proper and reasonable use of its waters for domestic, agricultural and manufacturing purposes, and he is entitled to use it himself for such purposes, but in doing so must not substantially injure others. In addition to the right of drawing water for the purposes just mentioned, a riparian proprietor, if he duly regards the rights of others, and does not unreasonably deplete the supply, has also the right to take the water for some other proper uses." Thus, the farmer who seeks to develop water-power from a stream flowing across his own land, has the right to divert such a stream from its natural channel--providing it is not a navigable or floatable stream--but in so doing, he must return it to its own channel for lower riparian owners. The generation of water-power does not pollute the water, nor does it diminish the water in quantity, therefore the farmer is infringing on no other owner's rights in using the water for such a purpose. When a stream is a dividing line between two farms, as is frequently the case, each proprietor owns to the middle of the stream and controls its banks. Therefore to erect a dam across such a private stream and divert all or a part of the water for power purposes, requires the consent of the neighboring owner. The owner of the dam is responsible for damage due to flooding, to upstream riparian owners. PART II ELECTRICITY CHAPTER V THE DYNAMO; WHAT IT DOES, AND HOW Electricity compared to the heat and light of the Sun--The simple dynamo--The amount of electric energy a dynamo will generate--The modern dynamo--Measuring power in terms of electricity--The volt--The ampere--The ohm--The watt and the kilowatt--Ohm's Law of the electric circuit, and some examples of its application--Direct current, and alternating current--Three types of direct-current dynamos: series, shunt, and compound. What a farmer really does in generating electricity from water that would otherwise run to waste in his brook, is to install a private Sun of his own--which is on duty not merely in daylight, but twenty-four hours a day; a private Sun which is under such simple control that it shines or provides heat and power, when and where wanted, simply by touching a button. This is not a mere fanciful statement. When you come to look into it you find that electricity actually is the life-giving power of the Sun's rays, so transformed that it can be handily conveyed from place to place by means of wires, and controlled by mechanical devices as simple as the spigot that drains a cask. Nature has the habit of traveling in circles. Sometimes these circles are so big that the part of them we see looks like a straight line, but it is not. Even parallel lines, according to the mathematicians, "meet in infinity." Take the instance of the water wheel which the farmer has installed under the fall of his brook. The power which turns the wheel has the strength of many horses. It is there in a handy place for use, because the Sun brought it there. The Sun, by its heat, lifted the water from sea-level, to the pond where we find it--and we cannot get any more power out of this water by means of a turbine using its pressure and momentum in falling, than the Sun itself expended in raising the water against the force of gravity. Once we have installed the wheel to change the energy of falling water into mechanical power, the task of the dynamo is to turn this mechanical power into another mode of motion--electricity. And the task of electricity is to change this mode of motion back into the original heat and light of the Sun--which started the circle in the beginning. Astronomers refer to the Sun as "he" and "him" and they spell his name with a capital letter, to show that he occupies the center of our small neighborhood of the universe at all times. _Magnets and Magnetism_ The dynamo is a mechanical engine, like the steam engine, the water turbine or the gas engine; and it converts the mechanical motion of the driven wheel into electrical motion, with the aid of a magnet. Many scientists say that the full circle of energy that keeps the world spinning, grows crops, and paints the sky with the Aurora Borealis, begins and ends with magnetism--that the sun's rays are magnetic rays. Magnetism is the force that keeps the compass needle pointing north and south. Take a steel rod and hold it along the north and south line, slightly inclined towards the earth, and strike it a sharp blow with a hammer, and it becomes a magnet--feeble, it is true, but still a magnet. Take a wire connected with a common dry battery and hold a compass needle under it and the needle will immediately turn around and point directly across the wire, showing that the wire possesses magnetism encircling it in invisible lines, stronger than the magnetism of the earth. [Illustration: (_Courtesy of the Crocker-Wheeler Company_) A direct-current dynamo or motor, showing details of construction] Insulate this wire by covering it with cotton thread, and wind it closely on a spool. Connect the two loose ends to a dry battery, and you will find that you have multiplied the magnetic strength of a single loop of wire by the number of turns on the spool--concentrated all the magnetism of the length of that wire into a small space. Put an iron core in the middle of this spool and the magnet seems still more powerful. Lines of force which otherwise would escape in great circles into space, are now concentrated in the iron. The iron core is a magnet. Shut off the current from the battery and the iron is still a magnet--weak, true, but it will always retain a small portion of its magnetism. Soft iron retains very little of its magnetism. Hard steel retains a great deal, and for this reason steel is used for permanent magnets, of the horseshoe type so familiar. _A Simple Dynamo_ A dynamo consists, first, of a number of such magnets, wound with insulated wire. Their iron cores point towards the center of a circle like the spokes of a wheel; and their curved inner faces form a circle in which a spool, wound with wire in another way, may be spun by the water wheel. Now take a piece of copper wire and make a loop of it. Pass one side of this loop in front of an electric magnet. As the wire you hold in your hands passes the iron face of the magnet, a wave of energy that is called electricity flows around this loop at the rate of 186,000 miles a second--the same speed as light comes to us from the sun. As you move the wire away from the magnet, a second wave starts through the wire, flowing in the opposite direction. You can prove this by holding a compass needle under the wire and see it wag first in one direction, then in another. [Illustration: A wire "cutting" the lines of force of an electro-magnet] This is a simple dynamo. A wire "cutting" the invisible lines of force, that a magnet is spraying out into the air, becomes "electrified." Why this is true, no one has ever been able to explain. The amount of electricity--its capacity for work--which you have generated with the magnet and wire, does not depend alone on the pulling power of that simple magnet. Let us say the magnet is very weak--has not enough power to lift one ounce of iron. Nevertheless, if you possessed the strength of Hercules, and could pass that wire through the field of force of the magnet many thousands of times a second, you would generate enough electricity in the wire to cause the wire to melt in your hands from heat. [Illustration: Cross-section of an armature revolving in its field] [Illustration: Forms of annealed steel discs used in armature construction] This experiment gives the theory of the dynamo. Instead of passing only one wire through the field of force of a magnet, we have hundreds bound lengthwise on a revolving drum called an armature. Instead of one magnetic pole in a dynamo we have two, or four, or twenty according to the work the machine is designed for--always in pairs, a North pole next to a South pole, so that the lines of force may flow out of one and into another, instead of escaping in the surrounding air. If you could see these lines of force, they would appear in countless numbers issuing from each pole face of the field magnets, pressing against the revolving drum like hair brush bristles--trying to hold it back. This drum, in practice, is built up of discs of annealed steel, and the wires extending lengthwise on its face are held in place by slots to prevent them from flying off when the drum is whirled at high speed. The drum does not touch the face of the magnets, but revolves in an air space. If we give the electric impulses generated in these wires a chance to flow in a circuit--flow out of one end of the wires, and in at the other, the drum will require more and more power to turn it, in proportion to the amount of electricity we permit to flow. Thus, if one electric light is turned on, the drum will press back with a certain strength on the water wheel; if one hundred lights are turned on it will press back one hundred times as much. Providing there is enough power in the water wheel to continue turning the drum at its predetermined speed, the dynamo will keep on giving more and more electricity if asked to, until it finally destroys itself by fire. You cannot take more power, in terms of electricity, out of a dynamo that you put into it, in terms of mechanical motion. In fact, to insure flexibility and constant speed at all loads, it is customary to provide twice as much water wheel, or engine, power as the electrical rating of the dynamo. [Illustration: An armature partly wound, showing slots and commutator] We have seen that a water wheel is 85 per cent efficient under ideal conditions. A dynamo's efficiency in translating mechanical motion into electricity, varies with the type of machine and its size. The largest machines attain as high as 90 per cent efficiency; the smallest ones run as low as 40 per cent. _Measuring Electric Power_ The amount of electricity any given dynamo can generate depends, generally speaking, on two factors, i. e., (1) the power of the water wheel, or other mechanical engine that turns the armature; and (2) the size (carrying capacity) of the wires on this drum. Strength, of electricity, is measured in _amperes_. An ampere of electricity is the unit of the rate of flow and may be likened to a gallon of water per minute. In surveying for water-power, in Chapter III, we found that the number of gallons or cubic feet of water alone did not determine the amount of power. We found that the number of gallons or cubic feet multiplied by the distance in feet it falls in a given time, was the determining factor--pounds (quantity) multiplied by feet per second--(velocity). [Illustration: Showing the analogy of water to volts and amperes of electricity] The same is true in figuring the power of electricity. We multiply the _amperes_ by the number of electric impulses that are created in the wire in the course of one second. The unit of velocity, or pressure of the electric current is called a _volt_. Voltage is the pressure which causes electricity to flow. A volt may be likened to the velocity in feet per second of water in falling past a certain point. If you think a moment you will see that this has nothing to do with quantity. A pin-hole stream of water under 40 pounds pressure has the same velocity as water coming from a nozzle as big as a barrel, under the same pressure. So with electricity under the pressure of one volt or one hundred volts. One volt is said to consist of a succession of impulses caused by _one wire cutting 100,000,000 lines of magnetic force in one second_. Thus, if the strength of a magnet consisted of one line of force, to create the pressure of one volt we would have to "cut" that line of force 100,000,000 times a second, with one wire; or 100,000 times a second with one thousand wires. Or, if a magnet could be made with 100,000,000 lines of force, a single wire cutting those lines once in a second would create one volt pressure. In actual practice, field magnets of dynamos are worked at densities up to and over 100,000 lines of force to the square inch, and armatures contain several hundred conductors to "cut" these magnetic lines. The voltage then depends on the speed at which the armature is driven. In machines for isolated plants, it will be found that the speed varies from 400 revolutions per minute, to 1,800, according to the design of dynamo used. [Illustration: Pressure determines volume of flow in a given time] Multiplying amperes (strength) by volts (pressure), gives us _watts_ (power). Seven hundred and forty-six watts of electrical energy is equal to one horsepower of mechanical energy--will do the same work. Thus an electric current under a pressure of 100 volts, and a density of 7.46 amperes, is one horsepower; as is 74.6 amperes, at 10 volts pressure; or 746 amperes at one volt pressure. For convenience (as a watt is a small quantity) electricity is measured in _kilowatts_, or 1,000 watts. Since 746 watts is one horsepower, 1,000 watts or one kilowatt is 1.34 horsepower. The work of such a current for one hour is called a _kilowatt-hour_, and in our cities, where electricity is generated from steam, the retail price of a kilowatt-hour varies from 10 to 15 cents. Now as to how electricity may be controlled, so that a dynamo will not burn itself up when it begins to generate. Again we come back to the analogy of water. The amount of water that passes through a pipe in any given time, depends on the size of the pipe, if the pressure is maintained uniform. In other words the _resistance_ of the pipe to the flow of water determines the amount. If the pipe be the size of a pin-hole, a very small amount of water will escape. If the pipe is as big around as a barrel, a large amount will force its way through. So with electricity. Resistance, introduced in the electric circuit, controls the amount of current that flows. A wire as fine as a hair will permit only a small quantity to pass, under a given pressure. A wire as big as one's thumb will permit a correspondingly greater quantity to pass, the pressure remaining the same. The unit of electrical resistance is called the _ohm_--named after a man, as are all electrical units. _Ohm's Law_ The _ohm_ is that amount of _resistance_ that will permit the passage of _one ampere_, under the pressure of _one volt_. It would take two volts to force two amperes through one ohm; or 100 volts to force 100 amperes through the resistance of one ohm. From this we have Ohm's Law, a simple formula which is the beginning and end of all electric computations the farmer will have to make in installing his water-power electric plant. Ohm's Law tells us that the density of current (amperes) that can pass through a given resistance in ohms (a wire, a lamp, or an electric stove) equals _volts_ divided by _ohms_--or _pressure_ divided by _resistance_. This formula may be written in three ways, thus: C = E/R, or R = E/C or, E = C × R. Or to express the same thing in words, _current_ equals _volts_ divided by _ohms_; _ohms_ equals _volts_ divided by _current_; or _volts_ equals _current_ multiplied by _ohms_. So, with any two of these three determining factors known, we can find the third. As we have said, this simple law is the beginning and end of ordinary calculations as to electric current, and it should be thoroughly understood by any farmer who essays to be his own electrical engineer. Once understood and applied, the problem of the control of the electric current becomes simple a b c. _Examples of Ohm's Law_ Let us illustrate its application by an example. The water wheel is started and is spinning the dynamo at its rated speed, say 1,500 r.p.m. Two heavy wires, leading from brushes which collect electricity from the revolving armature, are led, by suitable insulated supports to the switchboard, and fastened there. They do not touch each other. Dynamo mains must not be permitted to touch each other _under any conditions_. They are separated by say four inches of air. Dry air is a very poor conductor of electricity. Let us say, for the example, that dry air has a resistance to the flow of an electric current, of 1,000,000 ohms to the inch--that would be 4,000,000 ohms. How much electricity is being permitted to escape from the armature of this 110-volt dynamo, when the mains are separated by four inches of dry air? Apply Ohm's law, C equals E divided by R. E, in this case is 110; R is 4,000,000; therefore C (amperes) equals 110/4,000,000--an infinitesimal amount--about .0000277 ampere. Let us say that instead of separating these two mains by air we separated them by the human body--that a man took hold of the bare wires, one in each hand. The resistance of the human body varies from 5,000 to 10,000 ohms. In that case C (amperes) equals 110/5,000, or 110/10,000--about 1/50th, or 1/100th of an ampere. This illustrates why an electric current of 110 volts pressure is not fatal to human beings, under ordinary circumstances. The body offers too much resistance. But, if the volts were 1,100 instead of the usual 110 used in commercial and private plants for domestic use, the value of C, by this formula at 5,000 ohms, would be nearly 1/5th ampere. To drive 1/5th ampere of electricity through the human body would be fatal in many instances. The higher the voltage, the more dangerous the current. In large water-power installations in the Far West, where the current must be transmitted over long distances to the spot where it is to be used, it is occasionally generated at a pressure of 150,000 volts. Needless to say, contact with such wires means instant death. Before being used for commercial or domestic purposes, in such cases, the voltage is "stepped down" to safe pressures--to 110, or to 220, or to 550 volts--always depending on the use made of it. Now, if instead of interposing four inches of air, or the human body, between the mains of our 110-volt dynamo, we connected an incandescent lamp across the mains, how much electricity would flow from the generator? An incandescent lamp consists of a vacuum bulb of glass, in which is mounted a slender thread of carbonized fibre, or fine tungsten wire. To complete a circuit, the current must flow through this wire or filament. In flowing through it, the electric current turns the wire or filament white hot--incandescent--and thus turns electricity back into light, with a small loss in heat. In an ordinary 16 candlepower carbon lamp, the resistance of this filament is 220 ohms. Therefore the amount of current that a 110-volt generator can force through that filament is 110/220, or 1/2 ampere. [Illustration: Armature and field coils of a direct current dynamo] One hundred lamps would provide 100 paths of 220 ohms resistance each to carry current, and the amount required to light 100 such lamps would be 100 × 1/2 or 50 amperes. Every electrical device--a lamp, a stove, an iron, a motor, etc.,--must, by regulations of the Fire Underwriters' Board be plainly marked with the voltage of the current for which it is designed and the amount of current it will consume. This is usually done by indicating its capacity in watts, which as we have seen, means volts times amperes, and from this one can figure ohms, by the above formulas. _A Short Circuit_ We said a few paragraphs back that under no conditions must two bare wires leading from electric mains be permitted to touch each other, without some form of resistance being interposed in the form of lamps, or other devices. Let us see what would happen if two such bare wires did touch each other. Our dynamo as we discover by reading its plate, is rated to deliver 50 amperes, let us say, at 110 volts pressure. Modern dynamos are rated liberally, and can stand 100% overload for short periods of time, without dangerous overheating. Let us say that the mains conveying current from the armature to the switchboard are five feet long, and of No. 2 B. & S. gauge copper wire, a size which will carry 50 amperes without heating appreciably. The resistance of this 10 feet of No. 2 copper wire, is, as we find by consulting a wire table, .001560 ohms. If we touch the ends of these two five-foot wires together, we instantly open a clear path for the flow of electric current, limited only by the carrying capacity of the wire and the back pressure of .001560 ohms resistance. Using Ohm's Law, C equals E divided by R, we find that C (amperes) equals 110/.001560 or _70,515 amperes_! [Illustration: A direct current dynamo] Unless this dynamo were properly protected, the effect of such a catastrophe would be immediate and probably irreparable. In effect, it would be suddenly exerting a force of nearly 10,000 horsepower against the little 10 horsepower water wheel that is driving this dynamo. The mildest thing that could happen would be to melt the feed-wire or to snap the driving belt, in which latter case the dynamo would come to a stop. If by any chance the little water wheel was given a chance to maintain itself against the blow for an instant, the dynamo, rated at 50 amperes, would do its best to deliver the 70,515 amperes you called for--and the result would be a puff of smoke, and a ruined dynamo. This is called a "short circuit"--one of the first "don'ts" in handling electricity. As a matter of fact every dynamo is protected against such a calamity by means of safety devices, which will be described in a later chapter--because no matter how careful a person may be, a partial short circuit is apt to occur. Happily, guarding against its disastrous effects is one of the simplest problems in connection with the electric plant. _Direct Current and Alternating Current_ When one has mastered the simple Ohm's Law of the electric circuit, the next step is to determine what type of electrical generator is best suited to the requirements of a farm plant. In the first place, electric current is divided into two classes of interest here--_alternating_, and _direct_. We have seen that when a wire is moved through the field of a magnet, there is induced in it two pulsations--first in one direction, then in another. This is an _alternating_ current, so called because it changes its direction. If, with our armature containing hundreds of wires to "cut" the lines of force of a group of magnets, we connected the beginning of each wire with one copper ring, and the end of each wire with another copper ring, we would have what is called an _alternating-current_ dynamo. Simply by pressing a strap of flexible copper against each revolving copper ring, we would gather the sum of the current of these conductors. Its course would be represented by the curved line in the diagram, one loop on each side of the middle line (which represents time) would be a _cycle_. The number of _cycles_ to the second depends on the speed of the armature; in ordinary practice it is usually twenty-five or sixty. Alternating current has many advantages, which however, do not concern us here. Except under very rare conditions, a farmer installing his own plant should not use this type of machine. [Illustration: Diagram of alternating and direct current] If, however, instead of gathering all the current with brushes bearing on two copper rings, we collected all the current traveling in one direction, on one set of brushes--and all the current traveling in the other direction on another set of brushes,--we would straighten out this current, make it all travel in one direction. Then we would have a _direct current_. A direct current dynamo, the type generally used in private plants, does this. Instead of having two copper rings for collecting the current, it has a single ring, made up of segments of copper bound together, but insulated from each other, one segment for each set of conductors on the armature. This ring of many segments, is called a _commutator_, because it commutates, or changes, the direction of the electric impulses, and delivers them all in one direction. In effect, it is like the connecting rod of a steam engine that straightens out the back-and-forth motion of the piston in the steam cylinder and delivers the motion to a wheel running in one direction. Such a current, flowing through a coil of wire would make a magnet, one end of which would always be the north end, and the other end the south end. An alternating current, on the other hand, flowing through a coil of wire, would make a magnet that changed its poles with each half-cycle. It would no sooner begin to pull another magnet to it, than it would change about and push the other magnet away from it, and so on, as long as it continued to flow. This is one reason why a direct current dynamo is used for small plants. Alternating current will light the same lamps and heat the same irons as a direct current; but for electric power it requires a different type of motor. _Types of Direct Current Dynamos_ Just as electrical generators are divided into two classes, alternating and direct, so direct current machines are divided into three classes, according to the manner in which their output, in amperes and volts, is regulated. They differ as to the manner in which their field magnets (in whose field of force the armature spins) are excited, or made magnetic. They are called _series_, _shunt_, and _compound_ machines. _The Series Dynamo_ By referring to the diagram, it will be seen that the current of a _series_ dynamo issues from the armature mains, and passes through the coils of the field magnets before passing into the external circuit to do its work. The residual magnetism, or the magnetism left in the iron cores of the field magnets from its last charge, provides the initial excitation, when the machine is started. As the resistance of the external circuit is lowered, by turning on more and more lights, more and more current flows from the armature, through the field magnets. Each time the resistance is lowered, therefore, the current passing through the field magnets becomes more dense in amperes, and makes the field magnets correspondingly stronger. We have seen that the voltage depends on the number of lines of magnetic force cut by the armature conductors in a given time. If the speed remains constant then, and the magnets grow stronger and stronger, the voltage will rise in a straight line. When no current is drawn, it is 0; at full load, it may be 100 volts, or 500, or 1,000 according to the machine. This type of machine is used only in street lighting, in cities, with the lights connected in "series," or one after another on the same wire, the last lamp finally returning the wire to the machine to complete the circuit. This type of dynamo has gained the name for itself of "mankiller," as its voltage becomes enormous at full load. It is unsuitable, in every respect, for the farm plant. Its field coils consist of a few turns of very heavy wire, enough to carry all the current of the external circuit, without heating. [Illustration: Connections of a series dynamo] _The Shunt Dynamo_ The shunt dynamo, on the other hand, has field coils connected directly _across_ the circuit, from one wire to another, instead of in "series." These coils consist of a great many turns of very fine wire, thus introducing _resistance_ into the circuit, which limits the amount of current (amperes) that can be forced through them at any given voltage. As a shunt dynamo is brought up to its rated speed, its voltage gradually rises until a condition of balance occurs between the field coils and the armature. There it remains constant. When resistance on the external circuit is lowered, by means of turning on lamps or other devices, the current from the armature increases in working power, by increasing its amperes. Its voltage remains stationary; and, since the resistance of its field coils never changes, the magnets do not vary in strength. [Illustration: Connections of a shunt dynamo] The objection to this type of machine for a farm plant is that, in practice, the armature begins to exercise a de-magnetizing effect on the field magnets after a certain point is reached--weakens them; consequently the voltage begins to fall. The voltage of a shunt dynamo begins to fall after half-load is reached; and at full load, it has fallen possibly 20 per cent. A rheostat, or resistance box on the switchboard, makes it possible to cut out or switch in additional resistance in the field coils, thus varying the strength of the field coils, within a limit of say 15 per cent, to keep the voltage constant. This, however, requires a constant attendance on the machine. If the voltage were set right for 10 lights, the lights would grow dim when 50 lights were turned on; and if it were adjusted for 50 lights, the voltage would be too high for only ten lights--would cause them to "burn out." Shunt dynamos are used for charging storage batteries, and are satisfactory for direct service only when an attendant is constantly at hand to regulate them. _The Compound Dynamo_ The ideal between these two conditions would be a compromise, which included the characteristics of both _series_ and _shunt_ effects. That is exactly what the _compound_ dynamo effects. A compound dynamo is a shunt dynamo with just enough series turns on its field coils, to counteract the de-magnetizing effect of the armature at full load. A machine can be designed to make the voltage rise gradually, or swiftly, by combining the two systems. For country homes, the best combination is a machine that will keep the voltage constant from no load to full load. A so-called _flat-compounded_ machine does this. In actual practice, this voltage rises slightly at the half-load line--only two or three volts, which will not damage the lamps in a 110-volt circuit. The compound dynamo is therefore self-regulating, and requires no attention, except as to lubrication, and the incidental care given to any piece of machinery. Any shunt dynamo can be made into a compound dynamo, by winding a few turns of heavy insulated wire around the shunt coils, and connecting them in "series" with the external circuit. How many turns are necessary depends on conditions. Three or four turns to each coil usually are sufficient for "flat compounding." If the generating plant is a long distance from the farm house where the light, heat, and power are to be used, the voltage drops at full load, due to resistance of the transmission wires. To overcome this, enough turns can be wound on top of the shunt coils to cause the voltage to rise at the switchboard, but remain stationary at the spot where the current is used. The usual so-called flat-compounded dynamo, turned out by manufacturers, provides for constant voltage at the switchboard. Such a dynamo is eminently fitted for the farm electric plant. Any other type of machine is bound to cause constant trouble and annoyance. [Illustration: Connections of a compound dynamo] CHAPTER VI WHAT SIZE PLANT TO INSTALL The farmer's wife his partner--Little and big plants--Limiting factors--Fluctuations in water supply--The average plant--The actual plant--Amount of current required for various operations--Standard voltage--A specimen allowance for electric light--Heating and cooking by electricity--Electric power: the electric motor. The farmer's wife becomes his partner when he has concluded the preliminary measurements and surveys for building his water-power electric plant. Now the question is, how big a plant is necessary, or how small a plant can he get along with. Electricity may be used for a multitude of purposes on the farm, in its sphere of furnishing portable light, heat and power; but when this multitude of uses has been enumerated, it will be found that the wife shares in the benefits no less than the farmer himself. The greatest dividend of all, whether dividends are counted in dollars or happiness, is that electricity takes the drudgery out of housework. Here, the work of the farmer himself ends when he has brought electricity to the house, just as his share in housework ends when he has brought in the kerosene, and filled the woodbox. Of the light and heat, she will use the lion's share; and for the power, she will discover heretofore undreamed-of uses. So she must be a full partner when it comes to deciding how much electricity they need. How much electricity, in terms of light, heat, and power, will the farmer and his wife have use for? How big a plant should be installed to meet the needs of keeping house and running the farm? The answer hangs mainly on how much water-power there is available, through all the seasons of the year, with which to generate electricity. Beyond that, it is merely a question of the farmer's pocketbook. How much money does he care to spend? Electricity is a cumulative "poison." The more one uses it, the more he wants to use it. After a plant has been in operation a year, the family have discovered uses for electricity which they did not think of in the beginning. For this reason, it is well to put in a plant larger than the needs of the moment seem to require. An electrical horsepower or two one way or another will not greatly change the first cost, and you will always find use for any excess. Once for all, to settle the question of water-power, the water wheel should be twice the normal capacity of the dynamo it drives, in terms of power. This allows for overload, which is bound to occur occasionally; and it also insures smooth running, easy governing, and the highest efficiency. Since the electric current, once the plant is installed, will cost practically nothing, the farmer can afford to ignore the power going to waste, and consider only how to get the best service. _The Two Extremes_ The amount of water to be had to be turned into electricity, will vary with location, and with the season. It may be only enough, the greater part of the year, for a "toy" plant--a very practical toy, by the way--one that will keep half a dozen lights burning in the house and barn at one time; under some conditions water may be so scarce that it must be stored for three or four days to get enough power to charge a storage battery for these six or eight lights. A one-quarter, or a one-half kilowatt electrical generator, with a one horsepower (or smaller) wheel, will light a farmstead very satisfactorily--much better than kerosene lamps. On the other hand, the driving power of your wheel may be sufficient to furnish 50 or 100 lights for the house, barn, and out-buildings, and barn-yard and drives; to provide ample current for irons, toasters, vacuum cleaners, electric fans, etc.; to do all the cooking and baking and keep the kitchen boiler hot; and to heat the house in the coldest weather with a dry clean heat that does not vitiate the air, with no ashes, smoke or dust or woodchopping--nothing but an electric switch to turn on and off; and to provide power for motors ranging from tiny ones to run the sewing machine, to one of 15 horsepower to do the threshing. A plant capable of developing from 30 to 50 kilowatts of electricity, and requiring from 50 to 100 horsepower at the water wheel, would do all this, depending on the size of the farmstead. One hundred horsepower is a very small water project, in a commercial way; and there are thousands of farms possessing streams of this capacity. _Fluctuations in Water Supply_ It would be only during the winter months that such a plant would be driven to its full capacity; and since water is normally plentiful during these months, the problem of power would be greatly simplified. The heaviest draft on such a plant in summer would be during harvesting; otherwise it would be confined to light, small power for routine work, and cooking. Thus, a plant capable of meeting all the ordinary requirements of the four dry months of summer, when water is apt to be scarce, doubles or quadruples its capacity during the winter months, to meet the necessities of heat for the house. A dynamo requires only as much power to drive it, at any given time, as is being used in terms of electricity. There is some small loss through friction, of course, but aside from this the power required of the prime mover (the water wheel) is always in proportion to the amount of current flowing. When water is scarce, and the demands for current for heating are low, it is good practice to close a portion of the buckets of the turbine wheel with wooden blocks provided for this purpose. It is necessary to keep the speed of the dynamo uniform under all water conditions; and where there is a great fluctuation between high and low water periods, it is frequently necessary to have a separate set of pulleys for full gate and for half-gate. The head must remain the same, under all conditions. Changing the gate is in effect choking or opening the nozzle supplying the wheel, to cut down or increase its consumption of water. _The Average Plant_ It will be the exceptional plant, however, among the hundreds of thousands to be had on our farms, which will banish not only the oil lamp and kitchen stove, but all coal or wood burning stoves as well--which will heat the house in below-zero weather, and provide power for the heavier operations of the farm. Also, on the other hand, it will be the exceptional plant whose capacity is limited to furnishing a half-dozen lights and no more. A happy medium between these two conditions is the plant large enough to supply between five and ten electrical horsepower, in all seasons. Such a plant will meet the needs of the average farm, outside of winter heating and large power operations, and will provide an excess on which to draw in emergencies, or to pass round to one's neighbors. It is such a plant that we refer to when we say that (not counting labor) its cost, under ordinary conditions should not greatly exceed the price of one sound young horse for farm work. Since the plant we described briefly in the first chapter, meets the requirements of this "average plant" let us inquire a little more fully into its installation, maintenance, and cost. _An Actual Plant_ In this instance, the water-power was already installed, running to waste, in fact. The wheel consists of the so-called thirty-six inch vertical turbine, using 185 square inches of water, under a 14-foot head. Water is supplied to this wheel by a wooden penstock 33 inches square, inside measurements, and sloping at an angle of 30° from the flume to the wheel. [Illustration: Details of voltmeter or ammeter] This wheel, under a 14-foot head, takes 2,312 cubic feet of water a minute; and it develops 46.98 actual horsepower (as may be figured by using the formulas of Chapter III). The water supply is provided by a small mountain river. The dam is 10 feet high, and the race, which feeds the flume from the mill pond is 75 yards long. The race has two spillways, one near the dam, and the second at the flume itself, to maintain an even head of water at all times. _Half-Gate_ Since the water supply varies with the seasons, it has been found practical to run the wheel at half-gate--that is, with the gate only half-open. A set of bevel gears work the main shaft, which runs at approximately 200 revolutions per minute; and the dynamo is worked up to its required speed of 1,500 revolutions per minute through a countershaft. The dynamo is a modern four-pole machine, compound-wound, with a rated output of 46 amperes, at 125 volts--in other words a dynamo of 5.75 kilowatts capacity, or 7.7 electrical horsepower. At full load this dynamo would require a driving power of 10 horsepower, counting it as 75 per cent efficient; and, to conform to our rule of two water horsepower to one electrical horsepower, the wheel should be capable of developing 20 horsepower. As a matter of fact, in this particular instance, shutting down the wheel to half-gate more than halves the rated power of the wheel, and little more than 15 horsepower is available. This allowance has proved ample, under all conditions met with, in this plant. The dynamo is mounted on a firm floor foundation; and it is belted from the countershaft by an endless belt running diagonally. A horizontal belt drive is the best. Vertical drive should be avoided wherever possible. _The Switchboard_ The switchboard originally consisted of a wooden frame on which were screwed ordinary asbestos shingles, and the instruments were mounted on these. Later, a sheet of electric insulating fibre was substituted, for look's sake. The main requisite is something substantial--and fireproof. The switchboard instruments consist of a voltmeter, with a range of from 0 to 150 volts; an ammeter, with a range, 0 to 75 amperes; a field regulating rheostat (which came with the dynamo); a main switch, with cartridge fuses protecting the machine against a draft of current over 60 amperes; and two line switches for the two owners, one fuse at 20 amperes, and the other at 40 amperes. Electric fuses are either cartridges or plugs, enclosing lead wire of a size corresponding to their rating. All the current of the line they protect passes through this lead wire. If the current drawn exceeds the capacity of the lead wire, it melts from the heat, and thus opens the circuit, and cuts off the current. [Illustration: A switchboard and its connections: _G._ Dynamo; _A._ Shunt field coils; _B._ Series coils; _DD._ Fuses; _FF._ Main switch; _F._ Field switch; _C._ Ammeter; _V._ Voltmeter; _E._ Lamp; _R._ Rheostat. Dotted lines show connections on back of board] _Items of Cost_ This water wheel would cost $250 new. There is a duplicate in the neighborhood bought at second-hand, for $125. The dynamo cost $90, and was picked up second-hand in New York City. New it would cost $150. The voltmeter cost $7, and the ammeter $10; and the switches and fuses could be had for $5. A wheel one-half the size, using one-half the amount of water at full gate, would do the work required, and the cost would be correspondingly less. _Capacity_ This plant supplies two farms with electric light. One farm (that of the owner of the wheel) has 30 lamps, of 16 candlepower each, and two barn-yard lamps of 92 candlepower each. His wife has an electric iron and an electric water heater. Needless to say, all these lamps, and the iron and water heater are not in use at one time. [Illustration: Carbon Lamps Gem Type (1/4 scale)] The partner who owns the electric part of the plant has 30 lamps in his house and barn, many of them being 25 watt tungsten, which give more light for less power, but cost more to buy. They are not all in use at one time, though (since the current costs nothing) the inclination is to turn them on at night and let them burn. In his kitchen he has an electric range, and a water heater for the 40 gallon boiler. In addition to this he has all sorts of appliances,--irons, toasters, grills, a vacuum cleaner, a vibrator, etc. Naturally all these appliances are not in use at one time, else the draft on the plant would be such as to "blow" the fuses. For instance, all the baking is done in daylight; and when the oven is used after dark, they are careful to turn off all lights not needed. An ideal plant, of course, would be a plant big enough to take care of the sum of lamps and handy devices used at one time. To make this plant ideal, (for, being an actual affair, it has developed some short-comings, with the extension of the use of electricity) it would require a dynamo whose capacity can be figured, from the following: Watts 15 carbon lamps, 16 candlepower, @60 watts each 900 10 tungsten lamps, 20 candlepower, @25 watts each 250 2 tungsten lamps, 92 candlepower, @100 watts each 200 Water heater, continuous service 800 Toaster, occasional service 600 Iron, occasional service 400 Oven-baking, roasting, etc 2,000 2 stove plates @1,000 watts each 2,000 1 stove plate 400 Vacuum cleaner, occasional service 200 Vibrator, occasional service 100 Small water heater, quart capacity 400 Small motor, 1/4 horsepower, occasional 250 Motor, 1/2 hp, pumping water, etc 500 Electric fan, occasional service 100 ------- Total current, one house 9,100 30 carbon lamps, 16 candlepower, @60 1,800 2 lamps, 100 watt tungsten 200 Electric iron 400 Small water or milk heater 600 ------- Total current, 2nd house 3,000 1st house 9,100 ------- 12,100 Thus, in this plant, if every electrical device were turned on at once, the demand on the dynamo would be for 12.1 kilowatts, or an overload of over 100 per cent. The main-switch fuse, being for 60 amperes, would "blow" or melt, and cut off all current for the moment. To repair the damage would be merely the work of a second--and at a cost of a few cents--simply insert a new fuse, of which there must be a supply on hand at all times. Or, if either owner exceeded his capacity, the line fuses (one for 20 amperes, and the other for 40 amperes) would instantly cut off all current from the greedy one. [Illustration: 25 and 40 watt Mazda tungsten lamps (1/4 scale)] _Lessons From This Plant_ The story of this plant illustrates two things which the farmer and his wife must take into account when they are figuring how much electricity they require. First, it illustrates how one uses more and more current, as he finds it so serviceable and labor-saving, and at the same time free. The electric range and the water boiler, in the above instance, were later acquisitions not counted on in figuring the original installation. Second, it illustrates, that while the normal load of this generator is _5.75_ kilowatts, one does not have to limit the electrical conveniences in the home to this amount. True, he cannot use more electricity than his plant will produce _at any one time_,--but it is only by a stretch of the imagination that one may conceive the necessity of using them all at once. Ironing, baking, and the use of small power are usually limited to daylight hours when no lights are burning. As a matter of fact, this plant has proved satisfactory in every way; and only on one or two occasions have fuses been "blown", and then it was due to carelessness. A modern dynamo is rated liberally. It will stand an overload of as much as 100 per cent for a short time--half an hour or so. The danger from overloading is from heating. When the machine grows too hot for the hand, it is beginning to char its insulation, to continue which, of course would ruin it. The best plant is that which works under one-half or three-quarters load, under normal demands. _Standard Voltage_ We are assuming the farmer's plant to be, in 99 cases out of 100, the standard 110-volt, direct current type. Such a plant allows for at least a 10 per cent regulation, in voltage, up or down the scale; supplies for this voltage are to be had without delay in even the more remote parts of the country, and (being sold in greater volume) they are cheaper than those for other voltages. There are two general exceptions to this rule as to 110-volt plants: (1) If the plant is located at a distance greater than a quarter of a mile from the house, it will be found cheaper (in cost of transmission line, as will be shown later) to adopt the 220-volt plant; (2), If the water supply is so meagre that it must be stored for many hours at a time, and then used for charging storage batteries, it will be found most economical to use a 30-volt plant. A storage battery is made up of cells of approximately 2 volts each; and, since more than 55 such cells would be required for a 110-volt installation, its cost would be prohibitive, with many farmers. So we will assume that this plant is a 110-volt plant, to be run without storage battery. It will be well to make a chart, dividing the farm requirements into three heads--light, heat, and power. _Light_ [Illustration: 60 and 100 watt Mazda tungsten lamp. These lamps may be had in sizes from 10 to 500 watts (1/4 scale)] [Illustration: The lamp of the future. A 1000 watt Mazda nitrogen lamp, giving 2000 candlepower (1/4 scale)] Light is obtained by means of incandescent lamps. There are two styles in common use, the carbon and the tungsten lamp. It requires 3.5 to 4 watts of electricity to produce one candlepower in a carbon lamp. It requires from 1 to 1.25 watt to produce one candlepower in the tungsten lamp. The new nitrogen lamp, not yet in general use, requires only 1/2 watt to the candlepower. Since tungsten lamps give three times the light of the carbon lamp, they are the most economical to use in the city or town where one is paying for commercial current. But, in the country where water-power furnishes current for nothing, it will be found most economical to use the carbon lamp, since its cost at retail is 16 cents, as compared with 30 cents for a corresponding size in tungsten. A 60 watt carbon lamp, of 16 candlepower; or a 25 watt tungsten lamp, of 20 candlepower, are the sizes to use. In hanging lamps, as over the dining room table, a 100 watt tungsten lamp, costing 70 cents, and giving 92 candlepower light is very desirable; and for lighting the barn-yard, these 100 watt tungsten lamps should be used. For reading lamps, the tungsten style, of 40 or 60 watt capacity, will be found best. Otherwise, in all locations use the cheaper carbon lamp. Both styles have a rated life of 1,000 hours, after which they begin to fall off in efficiency. Here again, the farmer need not worry over lack of highest efficiency, as a lamp giving only 80 per cent of its rated candlepower is still serviceable when he is not paying for the current. With care not to use them at voltages beyond their ratings, lamps will last for years. _A Specimen Light Allowance_ Below is a typical table of lights for a large farm house, the barns and barn-yard. It is given merely as a guide, to be varied for each individual case: Watts Kitchen, 2 lights @60 watts 120 Dining room, 1 light, tungsten 100 Living room, table lamp with 3 tungstens @40 120 Living room, 2 wall fixtures, 4 lamps @60 watts 240 Parlor, same as living room 360 Pantry, 1 hanging lamp 60 Cellar, one portable lamp 60 Woodshed, 1 hanging lamp 60 2 bedrooms, 2 lights each @ 60 240 2 bed rooms, 1 light each @60 120 Bathroom, 1 "turn-down" light, @60 60 Hall, downstairs, 2 lights @60 120 Hall, upstairs, 1 light 60 Attic, 1 light 60 Porch, 1 light 60 Barn and barn-yard: Barn-yard entrance, 1 tungsten 100 Watering trough, 1 " 100 Front gate, 1 " 100 Horse barn, 4 lights @60 240 Cow barn, 4 lights @60 240 Pig house, 1 light 60 Hay barn, 2 lights, @60 120 ------- Total for farmstead 2,800 This provides for 44 lights, an extremely liberal allowance. How many of these lights will be burning at any one time? Probably not one-half of them; yet the ideal plant is that which permits all fixtures to be in service at one time on the rare occasions when necessary. Thus, for lighting only, 2,800 watts maximum service would require a 4 kilowatt generator, and 10 water horsepower, on the liberal rating of two to one. A 3 kilowatt generator would take care of these lights, with a 30 per cent overload (which is not excessive) for maximum service. The above liberal allowance of lights may be cut in two, or four--or even eight--and still throw a kerosene lamp in shadow. It all depends on the number of lights one wants burning at one time; and the power of the water wheel. If the 36 carbon lights in the above table were replaced by 25 watt tungsten lights, the saving in power would be 35 watts each, or 1,260 watts, nearly two electrical horsepower; while the added first cost would be 14 cents a light, or $5.04. A generator of 2 kilowatt capacity would take care of all these lights then, with 460 watts to spare. _Heating_ Electric heating and cooking is in its infancy, due to the prohibitive cost of commercial current in our cities. Here the farmer has the advantage again, with his cheap current. For heating the house, it is calculated that 2 watts is required for each cubic foot of air space in a room, during ordinary winter weather. Thus, a room 10 × 12, and 8 feet high, would contain 960 cubic feet, and would require 1,820 watts energy to heat it in cold weather. Five such rooms would require 9.1 kilowatts; and 10 such rooms, or their equivalent, would require 18.2 kilowatts. Electric heating devices are divided into two classes: (1) those which can be used on lamp circuits, _and do not draw more than 660 watts each_; and (2) those which draw more than 660, therefore _require special wiring_. The capacity of these devices is approximately as follows: Lamp circuit devices: Watts Electric iron 400 to 660 Toaster 350 to 660 Vacuum cleaner 200 to 400 Grill 400 to 660 Small water heater 400 to 660 Hot plates 400 to 660 Lamp circuit devices: Coffee percolator 400 to 660 Chafing dish 400 to 660 Electric fan 100 to 250 Special circuit devices: Hot water boiler heater 800 to 1,200 Small ovens 660 to 1,200 Range ovens 1,200 to 3,000 Range, hot plates 400 to 1,300 Radiators (small) 750 to 1,500 Radiators (large) 1,500 to 6,000 The only device in the above list which is connected continuously, is the hot water boiler, and this can be credited with at least one electrical horsepower 24 hours a day. It is a small contrivance, not much bigger than a quart can, attached to the back of the kitchen boiler, and it keeps the water hot throughout the house at all hours. Its cost will vary with the make, ranging from $8 to $15; and since it is one of the real blessings of the farm kitchen and bathroom, it should be included in all installations where power permits. Electric radiators will be used 24 hours a day in winter, and not at all in summer. They are portable, and can be moved from room to room, and only such rooms as are in actual use need be heated. The other devices are for intermittent service, many of them (like the iron) for only a few hours each week. The grill, chafing dish, coffee percolator, etc., which are used on the dining room table while the family is at meals, each draw an equivalent of from 6 to 10 carbon lights. By keeping this in view and turning off spare lights, one can have the use of them, with even a small plant. Thus, a one kilowatt plant permits the use of any one of these lamp circuit devices at a time, with a few lights in addition. _Power_ Electric power is to be had through motors. A direct current dynamo and a direct current motor are identical in construction. That is, a motor becomes a generator if belted to power; and a generator becomes a motor, if connected to electric mains. This is best illustrated by citing the instance of a trans-continental railroad which crosses the Bitter Root Mountains by means of electric power. Running 200 miles up a 2 per cent grade, it is drawn by its motors. Coasting 200 miles down the 2 per cent grade on the other side of the mountains, its motors become generators. They act as brakes, and at the same time they pump the power of the coasting weight of this train back into the wires to help a train coming up the other side of the mountains. [Illustration: Connections of shunt motor and starting rheostat] Just as there are three types of direct current generators, so there are three types of direct current motors: _series_, _shunt_, and _compound_, with features already explained in the case of generators. Motors are rated by horsepower, and generators are rated by kilowatts. Thus a one kilowatt generator has a capacity of 1,000 watts; as a motor, it would be rated as 1000/746 horsepower, or 1.34 horsepower. Their efficiency varies with their size, ranging from 40 to 60 per cent in very small motors, and up to 95 per cent in very large ones. The following table may be taken as a guide in calculating the power required by motors, on 110-volt circuits: 1/4 Horsepower 2-1/2 amperes, or 275 watts 1/2 hp 4-1/2 amperes, or 500 watts 1 hp 9 amperes, or 990 watts 2 hp 17 amperes, or 1.97 kilowatts 3 hp 26 amperes, or 2.86 kilowatts 5 hp 40 amperes, or 4.40 kilowatts 7-1/2 hp 60 amperes, or 6.60 kilowatts 10 hp 76 amperes, or 8.36 kilowatts 15 hp 112 amperes, or 12.32 kilowatts An electric motor, in operation, actually generates electricity, which it pushes back into the line as a counter-electromotive-force. The strength of this counter force, in volts, depends on the motor's speed, the same as if it were running as a dynamo. For this reason, when a motor is started, and before it comes up to speed, there would be a rush of current from the line, with nothing to hold it back, and the motor would be burned out unless some means were provided to protect it for the moment. This is done by means of a starting rheostat, similar to the regulating rheostat on the dynamo switchboard. This resistance box is connected in "series" with the armature, in the case of shunt and compound motors; and with the entire motor circuit in the case of a series machine. A _series_ motor has a powerful starting torque, and adjusts its speed to the load. It is used almost altogether in street cars. It can be used in stump pulling, or derrick work, such as using a hay fork. It must always be operated under load, otherwise, it would increase in speed until it tore itself to pieces through mechanical strain. The ingenious farmer who puts together an electric plow, with the mains following behind on a reel, will use a series motor. A _shunt_ motor should be used in all situations where a fairly uniform speed under load is required, such as separating, in milking machines, running a lathe, an ensilage cutter, vacuum cleaners, grinders, etc. The _compound_ motor has the characteristics of the series and shunt motors, giving an increased starting torque, and a more nearly constant speed under varying loads than the shunt motor, since the latter drops off slightly in speed with increasing load. _Flexible Power_ An electric motor is an extremely satisfactory form of power because it is so flexible. Thus, one may use a five horsepower motor for a one horsepower task, and the motor will use only one electrical horsepower in current--just enough to overcome the task imposed on it. For this reason, a large-sized motor may be used for any operation, from one requiring small power, up to its full capacity. It will take an overload, the same as a dynamo. In other words it is "eager" for any task imposed on it; therefore it must be protected by fuses, or it will consume itself, if too big an overload is imposed on it. A one horsepower shunt or compound motor is very serviceable for routine farm operations, such as operating the separator, the churn, the milking machine, grinder, pump, and other small power jobs. Motors of 1/4 horsepower are handy in the kitchen, for grinding knives, polishing silver, etc., and can be used also for vacuum cleaners, and running the sewing machine. For the larger operations, motors will vary from three horsepower for cutting ensilage, to fifteen horsepower for threshing. They can be mounted on trucks and conveyed from one point to another, being fed current from the mains by means of suitable wires wound on reels. Remember, in estimating the size of your plant for light, heat, and power, that it does not have to be big enough to use all the devices at one time. Also remember, that two water horsepower to one electrical horsepower is a very liberal allowance; and that a generator working under one-half or two-thirds capacity at normal loads will require less attention than a machine constantly being worked above its capacity. Therefore, let your generator be of liberal size, because the difference in cost between a 5 and 10 kilowatt machine is not in proportion to their capacity. In fact (especially among second-hand machines), the difference in cost is very small. The mere fact that the generator is of 110 electrical horsepower capacity does not require a turbine of 20 horsepower. The chances are that (unless you wish to heat your house and do large power jobs) you will not use more than 3 to 5 electrical horsepower normally; therefore an allowance of 10 water horsepower, in this case, would be ample. A plant used simply for lighting the house and barn, for irons, and toasters, and one horsepower motors, need not exceed 2 or 2-1/2 kilowatts for the generator, and 5 or 6 horsepower for the turbine wheel. Normally it would not use one-half this capacity. CHAPTER VII TRANSMISSION LINES Copper wire--Setting of poles--Loss of power in transmission--Ohm's Law and examples of how it is used in figuring size of wire--Copper-wire tables--Examples of transmission lines--When to use high voltages--Over-compounding a dynamo to overcome transmission loss. Having determined on the location of the farm water-power electric plant, and its capacity, in terms of electricity, there remains the wiring, for the transmission line, and the house and barn. For transmission lines, copper wire covered with waterproof braid--the so-called weatherproof wire of the trade--is used. Under no circumstances should a wire smaller than No. 8, B. & S. gauge be used for this purpose, as it would not be strong enough mechanically. The poles should be of chestnut or cedar, 25 feet long, and set four feet in the ground. Where it is necessary to follow highways, they should be set on the fence line; and in crossing public highways, the ordinance of your own town must guide you. Some towns prescribe a height of 19 feet above the road, others 27 feet, some 30. Direct current, such as is advised for farm installations, under ordinary circumstances, does not affect telephone wires, and therefore transmission lines may be strung on telephone poles. Poles are set at an average distance of 8 rods; they are set inclined outward on corners. Sometimes it is necessary to brace them with guy wires or wooden braces. Glass insulators are used to fasten the wires to the cross-arms of the poles, and the tie-wires used for this purpose must be the same size as the main wire and carry the same insulation. _Size of Wire for Transmission_ To determine the size of the transmission wires will require knowledge of the strength of current (in amperes) to be carried, and the distance in feet. In transmission, the electric current is again analogous to water flowing in pipes. It is subject to resistance, which cuts down the amount of current (in watts) delivered. [Illustration: Bringing wires into the house or barn] The loss in transmission is primarily measured in volts; and since the capacity of an electric current for work equals the _volts_ multiplied by _amperes_, which gives _watts_, every volt lost reduces the working capacity of the current by so much. This loss is referred to by electrical engineers as the "C^2R loss," which is another way of saying that the loss is equal to the _square of the current in amperes_, multiplied by _ohms_ resistance. Thus, if the amperes carried is 10, and the ohms resistance of the line is 5, then the loss in watts to convey that current would be (10 × 10) × 5, or 500 watts, nearly a horsepower. The pressure of _one volt_ (as we have seen in another chapter) is sufficient to force _one ampere_, through a resistance of _one ohm_. Such a current would have no capacity for work, since its pressure would be consumed in the mere act of transmission. If, however, the pressure were _110 volts_, and the current _one ampere_, and the resistance _one ohm_, the effective pressure after transmission would be 110-1, or 109 volts. To force a 110-volt current of _50 amperes_ through the resistance of _one ohm_, would require the expenditure of _50 volts_ pressure. Its capacity for work, after transmission, would be 110-50, or _60 volts, × 50 amperes_, or 3,000 watts. As this current consisted of _110 × 50_, or 5,500 watts at the point of starting, the loss would be 2,500 watts, or about 45 per cent. It is bad engineering to allow more than 10 per cent loss in transmission. There are two ways of keeping this loss down. One is by increasing the size of the transmission wires, thus cutting down the resistance in ohms; the other way is by raising the voltage, thus cutting down the per cent loss. For instance, suppose the pressure was 1,100 volts, instead of 110 volts. Five amperes at 1,100 volts pressure, gives the same number of watts, power, as 50 amperes, at 110 volts pressure. Therefore it would be necessary to carry only 5 amperes, at this rate. The loss would be 5 volts, or less than 1/2 of 1 per cent, as compared with 45 per cent with 110 volts. [Illustration: Splicing transmission wire] In large generating stations, where individual dynamos frequently generate as much as 20,000 horsepower, and the current must be transmitted over several hundred miles of territory, the voltage is frequently as high as 150,000, with the amperes reduced in proportion. Then the voltage is lowered to a suitable rate, and the amperage raised in proportion, by special machinery, at the point of use. It is the principle of the C^2R loss, which the farmer must apply in determining the size of wire he is to use in transmitting his current from the generator switchboard to his house or barn. The wire table on page 159, together with the formula to be used in connection with it, reduce the calculations necessary to simple arithmetic. In this table the resistance of the various sizes of wire is computed from the fact that a wire of pure copper 1 foot long, and 1/1000 inch in diameter (equal to one circular mill) offers a resistance of 10.6 ohms to the foot. The principle of the C^2R loss is founded on Ohm's Law, which is explained in Chapter V. The formula by which the size of transmission wire is determined, for any given distance, and a given number of amperes, is as follows: Distance ft. one way × 22 × No. of amperes circular ------------------------------------------ = mills. Number of volts lost In other words, multiply the _distance in feet_ from mill to house by 22, and multiply this product by the _number of amperes_ to be carried. Then divide the product by the _number of volts_ to be lost; and the result will be the diameter of the wire required _in circular mills_. By referring to the table above, the B. & S. gauge of the wire necessary for transmission, can be found from the nearest corresponding number under the second column, entitled "circular mills area." COPPER WIRE TABLE --------+----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ | | _Area in | _(R) Ohms | | _B.& S. | _Feet | circular | per 1,000 | _Feet | _(R) Ohms Gauge_ | per Lb._ | mills_ | feet_ | per Ohm_ | per pound_ --------+----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ 0000 | 1.561 | 211,600 | .04904 | 20,392.90 | .00007653 000 | 1.969 | 167,805 | .06184 | 16,172.10 | .00012169 00 | 2.482 | 133,079 | .07797 | 12,825.40 | .00019438 0 | 3.130 | 105,534 | .09829 | 10,176.40 | .00030734 1 | 3.947 | 83,694 | .12398 | 8,066.00 | .00048920 2 | 4.977 | 66,373 | .15633 | 6,396.70 | .00077784 3 | 6.276 | 52,634 | .19714 | 5,072.50 | .00123700 4 | 7.914 | 41,742 | .24858 | 4,022.90 | .00196660 5 | 9.980 | 33,102 | .31346 | 3,190.20 | .00312730 6 | 12.58 | 26,250 | .39528 | 2,529.90 | .00497280 7 | 15.87 | 20,816 | .49845 | 2,006.20 | .00790780 8 | 20.01 | 16,509 | .62840 | 1,591.10 | .01257190 9 | 25.23 | 13,094 | .79242 | 1,262.00 | .01998530 10 | 31.82 | 10,381 | .99948 | 1,000.50 | .03178460 11 | 40.12 | 8,234.0 | 1.26020 | 793.56 | .05054130 12 | 50.59 | 6,529.9 | 1.58900 | 629.32 | .08036410 13 | 63.79 | 5,178.4 | 2.00370 | 499.06 | .12778800 14 | 80.44 | 4,106.8 | 2.52660 | 395.79 | .20318000 15 | 101.4 | 3,256.7 | 3.18600 | 313.87 | .32307900 16 | 127.9 | 2,582.9 | 4.01760 | 248.90 | .51373700 17 | 161.3 | 2,048.2 | 5.06600 | 197.39 | .81683900 18 | 203.4 | 1,624.3 | 6.38800 | 156.54 | 1.29876400 --------+----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------ CARRYING CAPACITY OF WIRES AND WEIGHT -----------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------- | _Weight 1,000 ft. | _Carrying capacity | _Carrying capacity _B. & S. | Weatherproof | Weatherproof | rubber cov. Gauge No._ | (Pounds)_ | (Amperes)_ | (Amperes)_ -----------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------- 0000 | 800 | 312 | 175 000 | 666 | 262 | 145 00 | 500 | 220 | 120 0 | 363 | 185 | 100 1 | 313 | 156 | 95 2 | 250 | 131 | 70 3 | 200 | 110 | 60 4 | 144 | 92 | 50 5 | 125 | 77 | 45 6 | 105 | 65 | 35 7 | 87 | 55 | 30 8 | 69 | 46 | 25 10 | 50 | 32 | 20 12 | 31 | 23 | 15 14 | 22 | 16 | 10 16 | 14 | 8 | 5 18 | 11 | 5 | 3 -----------+-------------------+--------------------+-------------------- Since two wires are required for electrical transmission, the above formula is made simple by counting the distance only one way, in feet, and doubling the resistance constant, 10.6, which, for convenience is taken as 22, instead of 21.2. _Examples of Transmission Lines_ As an example, let us say that Farmer Jones has installed a water-power electric plant on his brook, _200 yards distant_ from his house. The generator is a 5 kilowatt machine, capable of producing _45 amperes_ at _110 volts pressure_. He has a 3 horsepower motor, drawing 26 amperes at full load; he has 20 lights of varying capacities, requiring 1,200 watts, or 10 amperes when all on; and his wife uses irons, toasters, etc., which amount to another 9 or 10 amperes--say 45 altogether. The chances are that he will never use all of the apparatus at one time; but for flexibility, and his own satisfaction in not having to stop to think if he is overloading his wires, he would like to be able to draw the full _45 amperes_ if he wishes to. He is willing to allow _5 per cent loss_ in transmission. _What size wires will be necessary, and what will they cost?_ Substituting these values in the above formula, the result is: Answer: 600 × 22 × 45 ------------- = 108,000 circular mills. 5.5 [Illustration: Transmission wire on glass insulator] Referring to the table, No. 0 wire is 105,534 circular mills, and is near enough; so this wire would be used. It would require 1,200 feet, which would weigh, by the second table, 435.6 pounds. At 19 cents a pound, it would cost $82.76. Farmer Jones says this is more money than he cares to spend for transmission. As a matter of fact, he says, he never uses his motor except in the daytime, when his lights are not burning; so the maximum load on his line at any one time would be _26 amperes_, not 45. _What size wire would he use in this instance?_ Substituting 26 for 45 in the equation, the result is 61,300 circular mills, which corresponds to No. 2 wire. It would cost $57.00. Now, if Farmer Jones, in an emergency, wished to use his motor at the same time he was using all his lights and his wife was ironing and making toast--in other words, if he wanted to use the _45 amperes_ capacity of his dynamo, _how many volts would he lose?_ To get this answer, we change the formula about, until it reads as follows: Distance in feet × 22 × amperes --------------------------------- = Number of volts lost circular mills Substituting values, we have, in this case, 600 × 22 × 45/66,373 (No. 2) = 9 volts, nearly, less than 10 per cent. This is a very efficient line, under the circumstances. Now if he is willing to lose 10 per cent on _half-load_, instead of full load, he can save still more money in line wire. In that case (as you can find by applying the formula again), he could use No. 5 wire, at a cost of $28.50. He would lose 11 volts pressure drawing 26 amperes; and he would lose 18 volts pressure drawing 45 amperes, if by any chance he wished to use full load. In actual practice, this dynamo would be regulated, by means of the field resistance, to register 110 plus 11 volts, or 121 volts at the switchboard to make up for the loss at half-load. At full load, his voltage at the end of the line would be 121 minus 18, or 103 volts; his motor would run a shade slower, at this voltage, and his lights would be slightly dimmer. He would probably not notice the difference. If he did, he could walk over to his generating station, and raise the voltage a further 7 volts by turning the rheostat handle another notch. [Illustration: A barn-yard light] Thousands of plants can be located within 100 feet of the house. If Farmer Jones could do this, he could use No. 8 wire, costing $2.62. The drop in pressure would be 5.99 volts at full load--so small it could be ignored entirely. In this case the voltmeter should be made to read 116 volts at the switchboard, by means of the rheostat. If, on the other hand, this plant were 1,000 feet away from the house and the loss 10 volts the size wire would be 1,000 × 22 × 45 --------------- = 99,000 circular mills; 10 a No. 0 wire comes nearest to this figure, and its cost, for 2,000 feet, at 19 cents a pound, would be $137.94. A No. 0000 wire, costing $294.00, would give a 5 per cent drop at full load. In this case, the cost of transmission can be reduced to a much lower figure, by allowing a bigger drop at half-load, with regulation at the switchboard. Thus, a No. 2 wire here, costing but $95, would be satisfactory in every way. The loss at half-load would be about 9 volts, and the rheostat would be set permanently for 119 or 120 volts. A modern dynamo can be regulated in voltage by over 25 per cent in either direction, without harm, if care is taken not to overload it. _Benefit of Higher Voltages_ If Farmer Jones' plant is a half of a mile away from the house, he faces a more serious proposition in the way of transmission. Say he wishes to transmit 26 amperes with a loss of 10 volts. What size wire will be necessary? 2640 × 22 × 26 Thus: -------------- = 151,000 circular mills. 10 A No. 000 wire is nearest this size, and 5,280 feet of it would cost over $650.00. This cost would be prohibitive. If, however, he installed a 220-volt dynamo--at no increase in cost--then he would have to transmit only a half of 26 amperes, or 13 amperes, and he could allow 22 volts loss, counting 10 per cent. In this case, the problem would work out as follows: 2640 × 22 × 13 -------------- = 34,320 circular mills, 22 or approximately a No. 5 wire which, at 19 cents a pound, would cost $120.65. Install a 550-volt generator, instead of a 220-volt machine and the amperes necessary would be cut to 5.2, and the volts lost would be raised to 55. In this case a No. 12 wire would carry the current; but since it would not be strong enough for stringing on poles, a No. 8 wire would be used, costing about $63. It will be readily seen from these examples how voltage influences the efficiency of transmission. Current generated at a pressure in excess of 550 volts is not to be recommended for farm plants unless an expert is in charge. A safer rule is not to exceed 220 volts, for while 550 volts is not necessarily deadly, it is dangerous. When one goes into higher voltages, it is necessary to change the type of dynamo to _alternating current_, so that the current can be transformed to safe voltages at the point where it is used. Since only the occasional farm plant requires a high-tension system, the details of such a plant will not be gone into here. In transmitting the electric current over miles of territory, engineers are accustomed to figure 1,000 volts for each mile. Since this is a deadly pressure, it should not be handled by any one not an expert, which, in this case, the farmer is not. _Over-Compounding the Generator_ One can absorb the loss in transmission frequently, by over-compounding the machine. In describing the compound machine, in Chapter Five, it is shown that the usual compound dynamo on the market is the so-called flat-compounded type. In such a dynamo, the voltage remains constant at the switchboard, from no load to full load, allowing for a slight curve which need not be taken into account. Now, by adding a few more turns to the series wires on the field coils of such a dynamo, a machine is to be had which gradually raises its voltage as the load comes on in increasing volume. Thus, one could secure such a machine, which would begin generating at 110 volts, and would gradually rise to 150 at full load. Yet the voltage would remain constant at the point of use, the excess being absorbed in transmission. A machine of this type can be made to respond to any required rise in voltage. As an example of how to take advantage of this very valuable fact, let us take an instance: Say that Farmer Jones has a transmission line 1,000 feet long strung with No. 7 copper wire. This 2,000 feet of wire would introduce a resistance of one ohm in the circuit. That is, every ampere of current drawn at his house would cause the working voltage there to fall one volt. If he drew 26 amperes, the voltage would fall, at the house, 26 volts. If his switchboard voltage was set at say 120, the voltage at his house, at 26 amperes of load, would fall to 94 volts, which would cause his lights to dim considerably. It would be a very unsatisfactory transmission line, with a flat-compounded dynamo. On the other hand, if his dynamo was over-compounded 25 per cent--that is, if it gained 28 volts from no load to full load, the system would be perfect. In this case, the dynamo would be operated at 110 volts pressure at the switchboard with no load. At full load the voltmeter would indicate 110 plus 26, or 136 volts. The one or two lights burned at the power plant would be subject to a severe strain; but the 50 or 100 lights burned at the house and barn would burn at constant voltage, which is very economical for lamps. The task of over-compounding a dynamo can be done by any trained electrician. The farmer himself, if he progresses far enough in his study of electricity, can do it. It is necessary to remove the top or "series" winding from the field coils. Count the number of turns of this wire to each spool. Then procure some identical wire in town and begin experimenting. Say you found four turns of field wire to each spool. Now wind on five, or six, being careful to wind it in the same direction as the coils you removed and connect it in the same way. If this additional number of turns does not raise the voltage enough, in actual practice, when the dynamo is running from no load to full load, add another turn or two. With patience, the task can be done by any careful mechanic. The danger is in not winding the coils the same way as before, and getting the connections wrong. To prevent this mistake, make a chart of the "series" coils as you take them off. To make the task of over-compounding your own dynamo even more simple, write to the manufacturers, giving style and factory number of your machine. Tell them how much voltage rise you wish to secure, and ask them how many turns of "series" wire should be wound on each spool in place of the old "series" coil. They could tell you exactly, since they have mathematical diagrams of each machine they make. Avoid overloading an over-compounded machine. Since its voltage is raised automatically, its output in watts is increased a similar amount at the switchboard, and, for a given resistance, its output in amperes would be increased the same amount, as can be ascertained by applying Ohm's Law. Your ammeter is the best guide. Your machine is built to stand a certain number of amperes, and this should not be exceeded in general practice. CHAPTER VIII WIRING THE HOUSE The insurance code--Different kinds of wiring described--Wooden moulding cheap and effective--The distributing panel--Branch circuits--Protecting the circuits--The use of porcelain tubes and other insulating devices--Putting up chandeliers and wall brackets--"Multiple" connections--How to connect a wall switch--Special wiring required for heat and power circuits--Knob and cleat wiring, its advantages and drawbacks. The task of wiring your house is a simple one, with well-defined rules prescribed by your insurance company. Electricity, properly installed, is much safer than oil lamps--so much so indeed that insurance companies are ready to quote especial rates. But they require that the wiring be done in accordance with rules laid down by their experts, who form a powerful organization known as the National Board of Fire Underwriters. Ask your insurance agent for a copy of the code rules. Danger of fire from an electric current comes from the "short circuit," partial or complete; and it is against this danger that the rules guard one. The amount of electricity flowing through a short circuit is limited only by the fuse protecting that line; and since there is no substance known that can withstand the heat of the electric arc, short circuits must be guarded against. Happily the current is so easily controlled that the fire hazard is eliminated entirely--something which cannot be done with oil lamps. In house-wiring for farm plants, the wire should be rubber-covered, and not smaller than No. 14 B. & S. gauge. This is the wire to use on all lamp circuits. It costs about $0.85 cents per 100 feet. There are four kinds of wiring permitted, under the insurance code: (1) _Flexible armoured cable_: This consists of two-wire cable, protected with a covering of flexible steel. It is installed out of sight between the walls, and provides suitable outlets for lamps, etc., by means of metal boxes set flush with the plaster. It is easily installed in a house being built, but requires much tearing down of plaster for an old house. Since its expense prohibits it in the average farm house, this system will not be described in detail here. (2) _Rigid and flexible conduit_: As the name implies this system consists of iron pipe, in connection with flexible conduit, run between the walls. It differs from the above system, in that the pipes with their fittings and outlet boxes are installed first, and the wires are then "fished" through them. Duplex wires--the two wires of the circuit woven in one braid--are used; and a liberal amount of soapstone, and occasionally kerosene, are used to make the wires slip easily into place. This is the most expensive system, and the best; but it is difficult to install it in an old house without tearing down a good deal of plaster. It has the advantage of being absolutely waterproof and fireproof. (3) _Wooden moulding_: This is simply moulding, providing two raceways for the insulated wires to run in, and covered with a capping. It is nailed or screwed firmly to the wall, on top of the plaster; and when the wires have been installed in their respective slots and the capping tacked on, the moulding is given a coat of paint to make it in harmony with the other moulding in the room. This system is cheap, safe, and easily installed, and will be described in detail here. [Illustration: Detail of wooden moulding] (4) _Open wiring_: In open wiring, the wires are stretched from one support to another (such as beams) and held by means of porcelain cleats, or knobs. It is the simplest to install; but it has the objection of leaving the wires unprotected, and is ugly. It is very satisfactory in barns or out-buildings however. _The Distributing Panel_ The first point to consider in wiring a house with wooden moulding is the distribution board. It should be located centrally, on the wall near the ceiling, so as to be out of ordinary reach. It consists of a panel of wood--though fireproof material is better--firmly screwed to the wall, and containing in a row, the porcelain cut-outs, as shown in the cut, from which the various branch circuits are to be led. Each cut-out provides for two branch circuits; and each branch contains receptacles for two plug fuses. These fuses should be of 6 amperes each. The Insurance Code limits the amount of electricity that may be drawn on any branch lamp circuit to 660 watts; and these fuses protect the circuit from drafts beyond this amount. [Illustration: Porcelain cut-out and plug fuse] The mains, leading from the entrance switch, as shown in the diagram, to the panel board, should be of the same size as the transmission wire itself, and rubber-covered. These mains terminate at the distributing board. They are connected to the terminals of the cut-outs by means of heavy brass screws. _Wire Joints_ [Illustration: Examples of cleat and knob wiring, 1, 2, 3; wire joints, 4; flexible armoured conductor, 5] The branch circuits are, as has been said, of No. 14 rubber-covered wire, running concealed in wooden moulding. All joints or splices in this wire are made, as shown in the illustration, by first scraping the wires bright, and fastening them stoutly together. This joint is then soldered, to make the connection electrically perfect. Soft solder is used, with ordinary soldering salts. There are several compounds on the market, consisting of soft solder in powder form, ready-mixed with flux. Coat the wire joint with this paste and apply the flame of an alcohol lamp. The soldered joint is then covered with rubber tape, and over this ordinary friction tape is wound on. A neat joint should not be larger than the diameter of the wire before insulation is removed. _Branch Circuits_ First, make a diagram of your rooms and indicate where you wish lamps, or outlets for other purposes. Since wooden moulding can be run across ceilings, and up or down walls, lamps may be located in places where they are out of the way. In planning the circuit, remember that you will want many outlets in handy places on the walls, from which portable cords will convey current to table lamps, to electric irons and toasters and other handy devices which can be used on the lamp circuit. These outlets are made of porcelain, in two pieces. One piece is merely a continuation of the moulding itself; and the other is a cap to connect permanently to the end of the lamp or iron cord, which may be snapped into place in a second. Since there are a great many designs of separable current taps on the market, it is well to select one design and stick to it throughout the house, so that any device can be connected to any outlet. The code permits 660 watts on each circuit. This would allow 12 lamps of 55 watts each. It is well to limit any one circuit to 6 lamps; this will give leeway for the use of small stoves, irons, toasters, etc. without overloading the circuit and causing a fuse to blow. Having installed your distributing board, with its cut-outs, figure out the course of your first branch circuit. Let us say it will provide lights and outlets for the dining room and living room. It will be necessary to run the wires through the partitions or floors in several places. For this purpose porcelain tubes should be used, costing one to three cents each. Knock holes in the plaster at the determined point, insert the tubes so they project 3/4 inch on each side, and fill up the ragged edge of the hole neatly with plaster. [Illustration: The distributing panel] When all the tubes have been set in place, begin laying the moulding. Run it in a straight line, on the wall against the ceiling wherever possible, mitering the joints neatly. Whenever it is necessary to change the run from the ceiling to the wall and a miter cannot be made, the wires should be protected in passing from one slot to the other by being enclosed in non-metallic flexible conduit, called circular loom. In running wooden moulding, avoid brick walls liable to sweat or draw dampness; keep away from places where the heat of a stove might destroy the rubber insulation of the wires; do not pass nearer than six inches to water pipes when possible--and when it is necessary to pass nearer than this, the wooden moulding should pass above the pipe, not below it, with at least an inch of air space intervening, thus avoiding dampness from sweating of pipes. [Illustration: Snap switch connections] Places where chandeliers or wall bracket lamps are to be installed permanently are fitted with wooden terminal blocks, which fit over the moulding and flush with the plaster. These, after holes have been bored in them for the wires, and the wires drawn through, should be screwed firmly to the wall or ceiling, always choosing a joist or beam for support. Then a crow's-foot, or tripod of iron, tapped and threaded for iron pipe, is screwed to the terminal block. The iron pipe of the chandelier or wall bracket is then screwed home in this crow's-foot. Do not begin stringing wires until all the moulding of the circuit has been laid. Then thread the wires through the wall or floor tubes and lay them in their respective slots. If trouble be found making them stay in place before the capping is put on, small tacks may be driven into the moulding beside them to hold them. When a terminal block is reached, a loop is made of each wire, through the hole cut in the block, if the circuit is to continue in the same direction. If it is to end there, the two wires are drawn through taut, and cut off at a length of 5 or 6 inches. These end wires, or loops, are then scraped bare and spliced to the two wires coming out of the chandelier or wall bracket. This joint is then soldered and covered with tape, and the shell of the chandelier is screwed into place, covering the joint. [Illustration: Detail of wooden moulding] If the moulding is run along the walls flush with the ceiling, as is usual, a branch is made for a wall light, or wall tap, by means of a porcelain "T," or branch-block, which provides the means for running the circuit at right angles to itself without letting the wires come in contact with each other where they cross. Separable current taps should be installed in handy places on all circuits, so that small heating devices may be used without removing the lamps from their sockets. The two wires are bared for half an inch where they run through these current taps, and are fastened by means of brass screws. _"Multiple" Connections_ All electric devices for this installation--lamps, irons, vacuum cleaners, motors--must be connected _across_ the circuit--that is, bridged, from one wire to the other. This is called _multiple_, or shunt connection. There is only one exception to it, in wiring the house. That one exception is installing a wall switch, the ordinary snap switch. Since this wall switch, is, in effect, merely an instrument, which opens or closes a circuit, it should be connected to only one wire, which is cut to provide two ends for the screw connections in the switch. When a moulding branch is run down from the ceiling to some convenient spot for a snap switch (with which to turn the lights of a room on or off), a porcelain "T" is not used. All that is necessary to do is to loop the bottom wire of the circuit down through the branch moulding, and connect it to the switch at a terminal block, or porcelain base. In wiring lamp fixtures, No. 14 rubber-covered wire will usually prove too large. For this purpose, No. 18 may be used, with one lamp to each loop. Hanging lamps may not be supported by electric lamp cord itself, if there is more than one lamp in the cluster, because the weight is apt to break the electrical connections. In such a case, the lamp should be supported by a chain, and the twisted cord conveying current to the electric bulbs, is woven in the links of the chain. For the pantry, kitchen, woodshed, barn, etc., a single hanging lamp may be suspended from a fielding rosette, as shown in the cut, provided a single knot is tied inside both the rosette and the lamp socket, to make it secure. This makes a very cheap fixture. The rosette of porcelain will cost 15 cents; the lamp socket 20 cents, and the lamp cord suspending the lamp and carrying the current will cost 1-1/2 cents a foot; while a tin shade will cost another 15 cents. [Illustration: Detail of simple hanging lamp supported by rosette] _Official Inspection_ In all communities, your insurance agent must inspect and pass your wiring before you are permitted to throw the main switch and turn on the electricity. Frequently they require that the moulding be left uncapped, until they have inspected it. If you have more than 660 watts in lamps to a circuit; if your joints are not soldered and well taped; if the moulding is used in any concealed or damp place, the agent is liable to condemn your work and refuse permission to turn on the electricity. However the rules are so clearly defined that it is difficult to go wrong; and a farmer who does his own wiring and takes pride in its appearance is more apt to be right than a professional electrician who is careless at his task. After the work has been passed, tack on the moulding capping, with brads, and paint the moulding to match the woodwork. Wooden moulding wiring is perfectly satisfactory if properly installed. It is forbidden in many large cities, because of the liability of careless workmanship. It should never be installed in damp places, or out of sight. If the work is well done, the system leaves nothing to be desired; and it has the additional advantage of being cheap, and easily done by any farmer who can use carpenter tools. Farmers with moulding machinery can make their own moulding. The code prescribes it shall be of straight-grained wood; that the raceways for the wires shall be separated by a tongue of wood one-half inch wide; and that the backing shall be at least 3/8 inch thick. It must be covered, inside and out, with at least two coats of moisture-repellant paint. It can be had ready-made for about 2 cents a foot. _Special Heating Circuits_ If one plans using electricity for heavy-duty stoves, such as ranges and radiators, it is necessary to install a separate heating circuit. This is the best procedure in any event, even when the devices are all small and suited to lamp circuits. The wire used can be determined by referring to the table for carrying capacity, under the column headed "rubber-covered." A stove or range drawing 40 amperes, would require a No. 4 wire, in moulding. A good plan is to run the heating circuit through the basement, attaching it to the rafters by means of porcelain knobs. Branches can then be run up through the floor to places where outlets are desired. Such a branch circuit should carry fuses suitable to the allowed carrying capacity of the wire. _Knob and Cleat Wiring_ Knob and cleat wiring, such as is used extensively for barns and out-buildings, requires little explanation. The wires should not be closer than 2-1/2 inches in open places, and a wider space is better. The wires should be drawn taut, and supported by cleats or knobs at least every four feet. In case of branch circuits, one wire must be protected from the other it passes by means of a porcelain tube. It should never be used in damp places, and should be kept clear of dust and litter, and protected from abrasion. [Illustration: Knob and cleat wiring] Knob and tube wiring is frequently used in houses, being concealed between walls or flooring. In this case, the separate wires are stretched on adjoining beams or rafters, and porcelain tubes are used, in passing through cross beams. For a ceiling or wall outlet, a spliced branch is passed through the plaster by means of porcelain tubes or flexible loom. Wires from the house to the barn should be uniform with transmission wires. At the point of entry to buildings they must be at least six inches apart, and must take the form of the "drop loop" as shown in the illustration. A double-pole entrance switch must be provided, opening downward, with a double-pole fuse. In passing over buildings wires must not come closer than 7 feet to flat roofs, or one foot to a ridge roof. Feed-wires for electric motors should be determined from the table of safe carrying capacities, and should be of liberal size. CHAPTER IX THE ELECTRIC PLANT AT WORK Direct-connected generating sets--Belt drive--The switchboard--Governors and voltage regulators--Methods of achieving constant pressure at all loads: Over-compounding the dynamo; A system of resistances; (A home-made electric radiator); Regulating voltage by means of the rheostat--Automatic devices--Putting the plant in operation. Dynamos may be connected to water wheels either by means of a belt, or the armature may spin on the same shaft as the water wheel itself. The latter is by far the more desirable way, as it eliminates the loss of power through shafting and belting, and does away altogether with the belts themselves as a source of trouble. An installation with the water wheel and armature on the same shaft is called a "direct-connected set" and is of almost universal use in large power plants. To be able to use such a direct-connected set, the dynamo must be designed to develop its full voltage when run at a speed identical with that of the water wheel. That is, if the dynamo is wound to be run at a speed of 800 revolutions per minute, it must be driven by a water wheel which runs at this speed and can be governed within narrow limits. Small impulse wheels running under great heads attain high speed, and for such wheels it is possible to obtain a suitable dynamo at low cost. For instance, a 12-inch impulse wheel, running under a 200-foot head will develop 6-3/4 horsepower when running at a speed of 875 revolutions per minute. A dynamo for direct coupling to such a wheel should have a rated speed within 5 per cent of 875 r.p.m.; and, as generators of this speed are to be had from the stock of almost all manufacturers, there would be no extra charge. When it comes to the larger wheels, however, of the impulse type, or to turbines operating under their usual head the question becomes a little more difficult. In such cases, the speed of the water wheel will vary from 150 revolutions per minute, to 400, which is slow speed for a small dynamo. As a general rule, the higher the speed of a dynamo, the lower the cost; because, to lower the speed for a given voltage, it is necessary either to increase the number of conductors on the armature, or to increase the number of field coils, or both. That means a larger machine, and a corresponding increase in cost. In practice, in large plants, with alternating-current machines it has become usual to mount the field magnets on the shaft, and build the armature as a stationary ring in whose air space the field coils revolve. This simplifies the construction of slow-speed, large-output dynamos. Such a machine, however, is not to be had for the modest isolated plant of the farmer with his small water-power. [Illustration: Instantaneous photograph of high-pressure water jet being quenched by buckets of a tangential wheel] [Illustration: A tangential wheel, and a dynamo keyed to the same shaft--the ideal method for generating electricity. The centrifugal governor is included on the same base] Dynamos can be designed for almost any waterwheel speed, and, among small manufacturers especially, there is a disposition to furnish these special machines at little advance in price over their stock machines. Frequently it is merely a matter of changing the winding on a stock machine. The farmer himself, in many cases, can re-wind an old dynamo to fit the speed requirements of a direct-connected drive if the difference is not too great. All that would be necessary to effect this change would be to get the necessary winding data from the manufacturer himself, and proceed with the winding. This data would give the gauge of wire and the number of turns required for each spool of the field magnets; and the gauge of wire and number of turns required for each slot in the armature. The average boy who has studied electricity (and there is something about electricity that makes it closer to the boy's heart than his pet dog) could do this work. The advantages of direct drive are so many that it should be used wherever possible. When direct drive cannot be had, a belt must be used, either from a main shaft, or a countershaft. The belt must be of liberal size, and must be of the "endless" variety--with a scarfed joint. Leather belt lacing, or even the better grades of wire lacing, unless very carefully used, will prove unsatisfactory. The dynamo feels every variation in speed, and this is reflected in the lights. There is nothing quite so annoying as flickering lights. Usually this can be traced to the belt connections. Leather lacing forms a knot which causes the lights to flicker at each revolution of the belt. The endless belt does away with this trouble. Most dynamos are provided with sliding bases, by which the machine can be moved one way or another a few inches, to take up slack in the belt. To take advantage of this, the belt must be run in a horizontal line, or nearly so. Vertical belting is to be avoided. The dynamo is mounted on a wooden base, in a dry location where it is protected from the weather, or dampness from any source. It must be mounted firmly, to prevent vibration when running up to speed; and the switchboard should occupy a place within easy reach. Wires running from the dynamo to the switchboard should be protected from injury, and must be of ample size to carry the full current of the machine without heating. A neat way is to carry them down through the flooring through porcelain tubes, thence to a point where they can be brought up at the back of the switchboard. If there is any danger of injury to these mains they may be enclosed in iron pipe. Keep the wires out of sight as much as possible, and make all connections on the back of the switchboard. _The Switchboard_ [Illustration: Connecting switchboard instruments] The switchboard is constructed of some fireproof material, preferably slate or marble. When the cost of this material is an item to consider, build a substantial wooden frame for your switchboard. You can then screw asbestos shingles to this to hold the various instruments and with a little care such a switchboard can be made to look business-like, and it is fully as serviceable as the more expensive kind. The switchboard instruments have already been described briefly. They consist of a voltmeter (to measure voltage); an ammeter (to measure the strength of the current drawn, in amperes), a rheostat (to regulate the voltage of the machine to suit the individual requirements); and the usual switches and fuses. The main switch should be so wired that when open it will throw all the current off the line, but still leave the field coils, the voltmeter, and the switchboard lamp in circuit. The main-switch fuses should have a capacity about 50 per cent in excess of the full load of the dynamo. If the machine is rated for 50 amperes, 75-ampere fuses should be installed. This permits throwing on an overload in an emergency; and at the same time guards against a short circuit. If the capacity of the machine is under 30 amperes, plug fuses, costing 3 cents each, can be used. If it is above this capacity, cartridge fuses, costing a little more, are required. A supply of these fuses should be kept handy at all times. _Governors and Voltage Regulators_ [Illustration: A centrifugal governor (Courtesy of the C. P. Bradway Company, West Stafford, Conn.)] The necessity for water wheel governors will vary with conditions. As a general rule, it may be said that reaction turbines working under a low head with a large quantity of water do not require as much governing as the impulse wheel, working under high heads with small quantities of water. When governing is necessary at all, it is because the prime mover varies in speed from no load to full load. Planning one's plant with a liberal allowance of power--two water horsepower to one electrical horsepower is liberal--reduces the necessity of governors to a minimum. As an instance of this, the plant described in some detail in Chapters One and Six of this volume, runs without a governor. However, a surplus of water-power is not usual. Generally plants are designed within narrow limits; and then the need of a governor becomes immediately apparent. There are many designs of governors on the market, the cheapest being of the centrifugal type, in which a pair of whirling balls are connected to the water wheel gate by means of gears, and open or close the gate as the speed lowers or rises. Constant speed is necessary because voltage is directly dependent on speed. If the speed falls 25 per cent, the voltage falls likewise; and a plant with the voltage varying between such limits would be a constant source of annoyance, as well as expense for burned-out lamps. Since constant voltage is the result aimed at by the use of a governor, the same result can be attained in other ways, several of which will be explained here briefly. _Over-Compounding_ (1) Over-compounding the dynamo. This is simple and cheap, if one buys the right dynamo in the first instance; or if he can do the over-compounding himself, by the method described in the concluding paragraphs of Chapter Seven. If it is found that the speed of the water wheel drops 25 per cent between no load and full load, a dynamo with field coils over-compounded to this extent would give a fairly constant regulation. If you are buying a special dynamo for direct drive, your manufacturer can supply you with a machine that will maintain constant voltage under the normal variations in speed of your wheel. _A System of Resistances_ (2) Constant load systems. This system provides that the dynamo shall be delivering a fixed amount of current at all times, under which circumstances the water wheel would not require regulation, as the demands on it would not vary from minute to minute or hour to hour. This system is very simply arranged. It consists of having a set of "resistances" to throw into the circuit, in proportion to the amount of current used. Let us say, as an example, that a 50-ampere generator is used at a pressure of 110 volts; and that it is desirable to work this plant at 80 per cent load, or 40 amperes current draft. When all the lights or appliances were in use, there would be no outside "resistance" in the circuit. When none of the lights or appliances were in use (as would be the case for many hours during the day) it would be necessary to consume this amount of current in some other way--to _waste it_. A resistance permitting 40 amperes of current to flow, would be necessary. Of what size should this resistance be? The answer is had by applying Ohm's Law, explained in Chapter Five. The Law in this case, would be read R = E/C. Therefore, in this case R = 110/40 = 2-3/4 ohms resistance, would be required, switched across the mains, to keep the dynamo delivering its normal load. The cheapest form of this resistance would be iron wire. In place of iron wire, German silver wire could be used. German silver wire is to be had cheaply, and is manufactured in two grades, 18% and 30%, with a resistance respectively 18 and 30 times that of copper for the same gauge. Nichrome wire has a resistance 60 times that of copper; and manganin wire has a resistance 65 times that of copper, of the same gauge. First figure the number of feet of copper wire suitable for the purpose. Allowing 500 circular mills for each ampere, the gauge of the wire should be 40 × 500 = 20,000 circular mills, or approximately No. 7 B. & S. gauge. How many feet of No. 7 copper wire would give a resistance of 2-3/4 ohms? Referring to the copper wire table, we find that it requires 2006.2 of No. 7 wire to make one ohm. Then 2-3/4 ohms would require 5,517 feet. Since 30 per cent German silver wire is approximately 30 times the resistance of copper, a No. 7 German silver wire, for this purpose, would be 1/30 the length of the copper wire, or 186 feet. If nichrome wire were used, it would be 1/60th the length of copper for the same gauge, or 93 feet. This resistance wire can be wound in spirals and made to occupy a very small space. As long as it is connected in circuit, the energy of the dynamo otherwise consumed as light would be wasted as heat. This heat could be utilized in the hot water boiler or stove when the lights were turned off. In actual practice, however, the resistance necessary to keep the dynamo up to full load permanently, would not be furnished by one set of resistance coils. Each lamp circuit would have a set of resistance coils of its own. A double-throw switch would turn off the lamps and turn on the resistance coils, or _vice versa_. Let us say a lamp circuit consisted of 6 carbon lamps, of 16 candlepower each. It would consume 6 × 1/2 ampere, or 3 amperes of current, and interpose a resistance of 36.6 ohms--say 37 ohms. Three amperes would require a wire of at least 1,500 circular mills in area for safety. This corresponds to a No. 18 wire. A No. 18 copper wire interposes a resistance of one ohm, for each 156.5 feet length. For 37 ohms, 5,790 feet would be required, for copper wire, which of course would be impractical. Dividing by 30 gives 193 feet for 30% German silver wire; and dividing by 60 gives 96 feet of nichrome wire of the same gauge. It is simple to figure each circuit in this way and to construct resistance units for each switch. Since the resistance units develop considerable heat, they must be enclosed and protected. _A Home-made Stove or Radiator_ While we are on the subject of resistance coils it might be well here to describe how to make stoves for cooking, and radiators for heating the house, at small expense. These stoves consist merely of resistances which turn hot--a dull red--when the current is turned on. Iron wire, German silver wire, or the various trade brands of resistance wire, of which nichrome, calido, and manganin are samples, can be used. In buying this wire, procure the table of resistance and carrying capacity from the manufacturers. From this table you can make your own radiators to keep the house warm in winter. Iron wire has the disadvantage of oxidizing when heated to redness, so that it goes to pieces after prolonged use. It is cheap, however, and much used for resistance in electrical work. Let us say we wish to heat a bathroom, a room 6 × 8, and 8 feet high--that is a room containing 384 cubic feet of air space. Allowing 2 watts for each cubic foot, we would require 768 watts of current, or practically 7 amperes at 110 volts. What resistance would be required to limit the current to this amount? Apply Ohm's Law, as before, and we have R equals E divided by C, or R equals 110 divided by 7, which is 15.7 ohms. Forty-two feet of No. 20 German silver wire would emit this amount of heat and limit the current output to 7 amperes. In the Far West, it is quite common, in the outlying district, to find electric radiators made out of iron pipe covered with asbestos, on which the requisite amount of iron wire is wound and made secure. This pipe is mounted in a metal frame. Or the frame may consist of two pipes containing heating elements; and a switch, in this case, is so arranged that either one or two heating elements may be used at one time, according to the weather. An ingenious mechanic can construct such a radiator, experimenting with the aid of an ammeter to ascertain the length of wire required for any given stove. _Regulating Voltage at Switchboards_ The voltage of any given machine may be regulated, within wide limits, by means of the field rheostat on the switchboard. A dynamo with a rated speed of 1,500 revolutions per minute, for 110 volts, will actually attain this voltage at as low as 1,200 r.p.m. if all the regulating resistance be cut out. You can test this fact with your own machine by cutting out the resistance from the shunt field entirely, and starting the machine slowly, increasing its speed gradually, until the voltmeter needle registers 110 volts. Then measure the speed. It will be far below the rated speed of your machine. If, on the other hand, the speed of such a machine runs up to 2,500 or over--that is, an excess of 67%--the voltage would rise proportionally, unless extra resistance was cut in. By cutting in such resistance--by the simple expedient of turning the rheostat handle on the switchboard,--the field coils are so weakened that the voltage is kept at the desired point in spite of the excessive speed of the machine. Excessive speeds are to be avoided, as a rule, because of mechanical strain. But within a wide range, the switchboard rheostat can be used for voltage regulation. As it would be a source of continual annoyance to have to run to the switchboard every time the load of the machine was varied greatly this plan would not be practical for the isolated plant, unless the rheostat could be installed,--with a voltmeter--in one's kitchen. This could be done simply by running a small third wire from the switchboard to the house. Then, when the lights became dim from excessive load, a turn of the handle would bring them back to the proper voltage; and when they flared up and burned too bright, a turn of the handle in the opposite direction would remedy matters. By this simple arrangement, any member of the family could attend to voltage regulation with a minimum of bother. _Automatic Devices_ There are several automatic devices for voltage regulation at the switchboard on the market. These consist usually of vibrator magnets or solenoids, in which the strength of the current, varying with different speeds, reacts in such a way as to regulate field resistance. Such voltage regulators can be had for $40 or less, and are thoroughly reliable. * * * * * To sum up the discussion of governors and voltage regulators: If you can allow a liberal proportion of water-power, and avoid crowding your dynamo, the chances are you will not need a governor for the ordinary reaction turbine wheel. Start your plant, and let it run for a few days or a few weeks without a governor, or regulator. Then if you find the operation is unsatisfactory, decide for yourself which of the above systems is best adapted for your conditions. Economy as well as convenience will affect your decision. The plant which is most nearly automatic is the best; but by taking a little trouble and giving extra attention, a great many dollars may be saved in extras. _Starting the Dynamo_ You are now ready to put your plant in operation. Your dynamo has been mounted on a wooden foundation, and belted to the countershaft, by means of an endless belt. See that the oil cups are filled. Then throw off the main switch and the field switch at the switchboard; open the water gate slowly, and occasionally test the speed of the dynamo. When it comes up to rated speed, say 1,500 per minute, let it run for a few minutes, to be sure everything is all right. Having assured yourself that the mechanical details are all right, now look at the voltmeter. It is probably indicating a few volts pressure, from 4 to 8 or 10 perhaps. This pressure is due to the residual magnetism in the field cores, as the field coils are not yet connected. If by any chance, the needle does not register, or is now back of 0, try changing about the connections or the voltmeter on the back of the switchboard. Now snap on the field switch. Instantly the needle will begin to move forward, though slowly; and it will stop. Turn the rheostat handle gradually; as you advance it, the voltmeter needle will advance. Finally you will come to a point where the needle will indicate 110 volts. If you have designed your transmission line for a drop of 5 volts at half-load, advance the rheostat handle still further, until the needle points to 115 volts. Let the machine run this way for some time. When assured all is right, throw on the main switch, and turn on the light at the switchboard. Then go to the house and gradually turn on lights. Come back and inspect the dynamo as the load increases. It should not run hot, nor even very warm, up to full load. Its brushes should not spark, though a little sparking will do no harm. Your plant is now ready to deliver current up to the capacity of its fuses. See that it does not lack good lubricating oil, and do not let its commutator get dirty. The commutator should assume a glossy chocolate brown color. If it becomes dirty, or the brushes spark badly, hold a piece of fine sandpaper against it. Never use emery paper! If, after years of service, it becomes roughened by wear, have it turned down in a lathe. Occasionally, every few weeks, say, take the brushes out and clean them with a cloth. They will wear out in the course of time and can be replaced for a few cents each. The bearings may need replacing after several years' continuous use. Otherwise your electric plant will take care of itself. Keep it up to speed, and keep it clean and well oiled. Never shut it down unless you have to. In practice, dynamos run week after week, year after year, without stopping. This one, so long as you keep it running true to form, will deliver light, heat and power to you for nothing, which your city cousin pays for at the rate of 10 cents a kilowatt-hour. PART III GASOLINE ENGINES, WINDMILLS, ETC. THE STORAGE BATTERIES CHAPTER X GASOLINE ENGINE PLANTS The standard voltage set--Two-cycle and four-cycle gasoline engines--Horsepower, and fuel consumption--Efficiency of small engines and generators--Cost of operating a one-kilowatt plant. Electricity is of so much value in farm operations, as well as in the farm house, that the farmer who is not fortunate enough to possess water-power of his own, or to live in a community where a coöperative hydro-electric plant may be established, should not deny himself its many conveniences. In place of the water wheel to turn the dynamo, there is the gasoline engine (or other forms of internal combustion engine using oil, gas, or alcohol as fuel); in many districts where steam engines are used for logging or other operations, electricity may be generated as a by-product; and almost any windmill capable of pumping water can be made to generate enough electricity for lighting the farm house at small expense. The great advantage of water-power is that the expense of maintenance--once the plant is installed--is practically nothing. This advantage is offset in some measure by the fact that other forms of power, gas, steam, or windmills, are already installed, in many instances and that their judicious use in generating electricity does not impair their usefulness for the other farm operations for which they were originally purchased. In recent years gasoline engines have come into general use on farms as a cheap dependable source of power for all operations; and windmills date from the earliest times. They may be installed and maintained cheaply, solely for generating electricity, if desired. Steam engines, however, require so much care and expert attention that their use for farm electric plants is not to be advised, except under conditions where a small portion of their power can be used to make electricity as a by-product. There are two types of gasoline engine electric plants suitable for the farm, in general use: First: The Standard Voltage Set, in which the engine and dynamo are mounted on one base, and the engine is kept running when current is required for any purpose. These sets are usually of the 110-volt type, and all standard appliances, such as irons, toasters, motors, etc., may be used in connection with them. Since the electricity is drawn directly from the dynamo itself, without a storage battery, it is necessary that these engines be efficient and governed as to speed within a five per cent variation from no load to full load. Second: Storage Battery Sets, in which the dynamo is run only a few hours each week, and the electricity thus generated is "stored" by chemical means, in storage batteries, for use when required. Since, in this case, the current is drawn from the battery, instead of the dynamo, when used for lighting or other purposes, it is not necessary that a special type of engine be used to insure constant speed. _The Standard Voltage Set_ In response to a general demand, the first type (the direct-connected standard voltage set) has been developed to a high state of efficiency recently, and is to be had in a great variety of sizes (ranging from one-quarter kilowatt to 25 kilowatts and over) from many manufacturers. The principle of the gasoline engine as motive power is so familiar to the average farmer that it needs but a brief description here. Gasoline or other fuel (oil, gas, or alcohol) is transformed into vapor, mixed with air in correct proportions, and drawn into the engine cylinder and there exploded by means of a properly-timed electric spark. Internal combustion engines are of two general types--four-cycle and two-cycle. The former is by far the more common. In a four-cycle engine the piston must travel twice up and down in each cylinder, to deliver one power stroke. This results in one power impulse in each cylinder every two revolutions of the crank shaft. On its first down stroke, the piston sucks in gas. On its first up stroke, it compresses the gas. At the height of this stroke, the gas is exploded by means of the electric spark and the piston is driven down, on its power stroke. The fourth stroke is called the scavening stroke, and expels the burned gas. This completes the cycle. A one-cylinder engine of the ordinary four-cycle type has one power stroke for every two revolutions of the fly wheel. A two-cylinder engine has one power stroke for one revolution of the fly wheel; and a four-cylinder engine has two power strokes to each revolution. The greater the number of cylinders, the more even the flow of power. In automobiles six cylinders are common, and in the last year or two, eight-cylinder engines began appearing on the market in large numbers. A twelve-cylinder engine is the prospect for the immediate future. Since the dynamo that is to supply electric current direct to lamps requires a steady flow of power, the single-cylinder gas or gasoline engine of the four-cycle type is not satisfactory as a rule. The lights will flicker with every other revolution of the fly wheel. This would be of no importance if the current was being used to charge a storage battery--and right here lies the reason why a cheaper engine may be used in connection with a storage battery than when the dynamo supplies the current direct for lighting. A two-cylinder engine is more even in its flow of power and a four-cylinder engine still better. For this reason, standard voltage generating sets without battery are usually of two or four cylinders when of the four-cycle type. When a single-cylinder engine is used, it should be of the two-cycle type. In the two-cycle engine, there is one power stroke to each up-and-down journey of the piston. This effect is produced by having inlet and exhaust ports in the crank case, so arranged that, when the piston arrives at the bottom of the power stroke, the waste gases are pushed out, and fresh gas drawn in before the up stroke begins. For direct lighting, the engine must be governed so as not to vary more than five per cent in speed between no load and full load. There are many makes on the market which advertise a speed variation of three per cent under normal loads. Governors are usually of the centrifugal ball type, integral with the fly wheel, regulating the amount of gas and air supplied to the cylinders in accordance with the speed. Thus, if such an engine began to slow down because of increase in load, the centrifugal balls would come closer together, and open the throttle, thus supplying more gas and air and increasing the speed. If the speed became excessive, due to sudden shutting off of lights, the centrifugal balls would fly farther apart, and the throttle would close until the speed was again adjusted to the load. These direct-connected standard voltage sets are as a rule fitted with the 110-volt, direct current, compound type of dynamo, the duplicate in every respect of the machine described in previous chapters for water-power plants. They are practically automatic in operation and will run for hours without attention, except as to oil and gasoline supply. They may be installed in the woodshed or cellar without annoyance due to noise or vibration. It is necessary to start them, of course, when light or power is desired, and to stop them when no current is being drawn. There have appeared several makes on the market in which starting and stopping are automatic. Storage batteries are used in connection with these latter plants for starting the engine. When a light is turned on, or current is drawn for any purpose, an automatic switch turns the dynamo into a motor, and it starts the engine by means of the current stored in the battery. Instantly the engine has come up to speed, the motor becomes a dynamo again and begins to deliver current. When the last light is turned off, the engine stops automatically. Since the installation of a direct-connected standard voltage plant of this type is similar in every respect, except as to motive power, to the hydro-electric plant, its cost, with this single exception, is the same. The same lamps, wire, and devices are used. With gasoline power, the cost of the engine offsets the cost of the water wheel. The engine is more expensive than the ordinary gasoline engine; but even this item of cost is offset by the cost of labor and materials used in installing a water wheel. The expense of maintenance is limited to gasoline and oil. Depreciation enters in both cases; and though it may be more rapid with a gasoline engine than a water wheel, that item will not be considered here. The cost of lubricating oil is inconsiderable. It will require, when operated at from one-half load to full load, approximately one pint of gasoline to each horsepower hour. When operated at less than half-load, its efficiency lowers. Thus, for a quarter-load, an average engine of this type may require three pints of gasoline for each horsepower hour. For this reason it is well, in installing such a plant, to have it of such size that it will be operating on at least three-fourths load under normal draft of current. Norman H. Schneider, in his book "Low Voltage Electric Lighting," gives the following table of proportions between the engine and dynamo: Actual watts Actual Horsepower Nearest engine size 150 .5 1/2 225 .7 3/4 300 .86 1 450 1.12 1-1/4 600 1.5 1-1/2 750 1.7 1-3/4 1000 2.3 2-1/2 2000 4.5 5 4000 9.0 10 This table is figured for an efficiency of only 40 per cent for the smaller generators, and 60 per cent for the larger. In machines from 5 to 25 kilowatts, the efficiency will run considerably higher. To determine the expense of operating a one-kilowatt gasoline generator set of this type, as to gasoline consumption, we can assume at full load that the gasoline engine is delivering 2-1/2 horsepower, and consuming, let us say, 1-1/4 pint of gasoline for each horsepower hour (to make allowance for lower efficiency in small engines). That would be 3.125 pints of gasoline per hour. Allowing a ten per cent loss of current in wiring, we have 900 watts of electricity to use, for this expenditure of gasoline. This would light 900 ÷ 25 = 36 lamps of 25 watts each, a liberal allowance for house and barn, and permitting the use of small cooking devices and other conveniences when part of the lights were not in use. With gasoline selling at 12 cents a gallon, the use of this plant for an hour at full capacity would cost $0.047. Your city cousin pays 9 cents for the same current on a basis of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour; and in smaller towns where the rate is 15 cents, he would pay 13-1/2 cents. Running this plant at only half-load--that is, using only 18 lights, or their equivalent--would reduce the price to about 3 cents an hour--since the efficiency decreases with smaller load. It is customary to figure an average of 3-1/2 hours a day throughout the year, for all lights. On this basis the cost of gasoline for this one-kilowatt plant would be 16-1/2 cents a day for full load, and approximately 10-1/2 cents a day for half-load. This is extremely favorable, as compared with the cost of electric current in our cities and towns, at the commercial rate, especially when one considers that light and power are to be had at any place or at any time on the farm simply by starting the engine. A smaller plant, operating at less cost for fuel, would furnish ample light for most farms; but it is well to remember in this connection plants smaller than one kilowatt are practical for light only, since electric irons, toasters, etc., draw from 400 to 660 watts each. Obviously a plant of 300 watts capacity would not permit the use of these instruments, although it would furnish 10 or 12 lamps of 25 watts each. CHAPTER XI THE STORAGE BATTERY What a storage battery does--The lead battery and the Edison battery--Economy of tungsten lamps for storage batteries--The low-voltage battery for electric light--How to figure the capacity of a battery--Table of light requirements for a farm house--Watt-hours and lamp-hours--The cost of storage battery current--How to charge a storage battery--Care of storage batteries. For the man who has a small supply of water to run a water wheel a few hours at a time, or who wishes to store electricity while he is doing routine jobs with a gasoline engine or other source of power, the storage battery solves the problem. The storage battery may be likened to a tank of water which is drawn on when water is needed, and which must be re-filled when empty. A storage battery, or accumulator is a device in which a chemical action is set up when an electric current is passed through it. This is called _charging_. When such a battery is charged, it has the property of giving off an electric current by means of a reversed chemical action when a circuit is provided, through a lamp or other connection. This reversed action is called _discharging_. Such a battery will discharge nearly as much current as is required originally to bring about the first chemical action. There are two common types of storage battery--the lead accumulator, made up of lead plates (alternately positive and negative); and the two-metal accumulator, of which the Edison battery is a representative, made up of alternate plates of iron and nickel. In the lead accumulator, the "positive" plate may be recognized by its brown color when charging, while the "negative" plate is usually light gray, or leaden in color. The action of the charging current is to form oxides of lead in the plates; the action of the discharging current is to reduce the oxides to metallic lead again. This process can be repeated over and over again during the life of the battery. Because of the cost of the batteries themselves, it is possible (from the viewpoint of the farmer and the size of his pocketbook) to store only a relatively small amount of electric current. For this reason, the storage battery was little used for private plants, where expense is a considerable item, up to a few years ago. Carbon lamps require from 3-1/2 to 4 watts for each candlepower of light they give out; and a lead battery capable of storing enough electricity to supply the average farm house with light by means of carbon lamps for three or four days at a time without recharging, proved too costly for private use. _The Tungsten Lamp_ With the advent of the new tungsten lamp, however, reducing the current requirements for light by two-thirds, the storage battery immediately came into its own, and is now of general use. Since incandescent lamps were first invented scientists have been trying to find some metal of high fusion to use in place of the carbon filament of the ordinary lamp. The higher the fusing point of this filament of wire, the more economical would be the light. Edison sought, thirty years ago, for just the qualities now found in tungsten metal. Tungsten metal was first used for incandescent lamps in the form of a paste, squirted into the shape of a thread. This proved too fragile. Later investigators devised means of drawing tungsten into wire; and it is tungsten wire that is now used so generally in lighting. A tungsten lamp has an average efficiency of 1-1/4 watts per candlepower, compared with 3-1/2 to 4 watts of the old-style carbon lamp. In larger sizes the efficiency is as low as .9 watt per candlepower; and only recently it has been found that if inert nitrogen gas is used in the glass bulb, instead of using a high vacuum as is the general practice, the efficiency of the lamp becomes still higher, approaching .5 watt for each candlepower in large lamps. This new nitrogen lamp is not yet being manufactured in small domestic sizes, though it will undoubtedly be put on the market in those sizes in the near future. [Illustration: The Fairbanks Morse oil engine storage battery set] The tungsten lamp, requiring only one-third as much electric current as the carbon lamp, for the same amount of light, reduces the size (and the cost) of the storage battery in the same degree, thus bringing the storage battery within the means of the farmer. Some idea of the power that may be put into a small storage battery is to be had from the fact that a storage battery of only 6 volts pressure, such as is used in self-starters on automobiles, will turn a motor and crank a heavy six-cylinder engine; or it will run the automobile, without gasoline, for a mile or more with its own accumulated store of electric current. _The Low Voltage Battery_ The 30-volt storage battery has become standard for small lighting plants, since the introduction of the tungsten lamp. Although the voltage of each separate cell of this battery registers 2.5 volts when fully charged, it falls to approximately 2 volts per cell immediately discharging begins. For this reason, it is customary to figure the working pressure of each cell at 2 volts. This means that a 30-volt battery should consist of at least 15 cells. Since, however, the voltage falls below 2 for each cell, as discharging proceeds, it is usual to include one additional cell for regulating purposes. Thus, the ordinary 30-volt storage battery consists of 16 cells, the last cell in the line remaining idle until the lamps begin to dim, when it is switched in by means of a simple arrangement of connections. This maintains a uniform pressure of 30 volts from the beginning to the end of the charge, at the lamp socket. We saw in earlier chapters that the 110-volt current is the most satisfactory, under all conditions, where the current is to be used for heating and small power, as well as light. But a storage battery of 110 volts would require at least 55 cells, which would make it too expensive for ordinary farm use. As a 30-volt current is just as satisfactory for electric light, this type has become established, in connection with the battery, and it is used for electric lighting only, as a general rule. Batteries are rated first, as to voltage; second, as to their capacity in ampere hours--that is, the number of amperes that may be drawn from them in a given number of hours. Thus, a battery rated at 60 ampere hours would give 60 amperes, at 30 volts pressure, for one hour; 30 amperes for 2 hours; 15 amperes for 4 hours; 7-1/2 amperes for 8 hours; 3-3/4 amperes for 16 hours; etc., etc. In practice, a battery should not be discharged faster than its 8-hour rate. Thus, a 60-ampere hour battery should not be drawn on at a greater rate than 7-1/2 amperes per hour. This 8-hour rate also determines the rate at which a battery should be re-charged, once it is exhausted. Thus, this battery should be charged at the rate of 7-1/2 amperes for 8 hours, with another hour added to make up for losses that are bound to occur. A battery of 120-ampere hour capacity should be charged for 8 or 9 hours at the rate of 120 ÷ 8, or 15 amperes, etc. To determine the size of battery necessary for any particular instance, it is necessary first to decide on the number of lamps required, and their capacity. Thirty-volt lamps are to be had in the market in sizes of 10, 15 and 20 watts; they yield respectively 8, 12, and 16 candlepower each. Of these the 20-watt lamp is the most satisfactory for the living rooms; lamps of 10 or 15 watts may be used for the halls, the bathroom and the bedrooms. At 30 volts pressure these lamps would require a current of the following density in amperes: Candle Power 30-volt lamp Amperes 8 10 watts 0.33 12 15 watts 0.50 16 20 watts 0.67 Let us assume, as an example, that Farmer Brown will use 20-watt lamps in his kitchen, dining room, and sitting room; and 10-watt lamps in the halls, bathroom, and bedrooms. His requirements may be figured either in lamp hours or in watt-hours. Since he is using two sizes of lamps, it will be simpler to figure his requirements in watt-hours. Thus: Number Size of Hours Watt- Room of lamps lamps burned hours Kitchen 1 20 4 80 Dining room 2 20 2 80 Sitting room 3 20 4 240 (3) Bedrooms 1 (each) 10 1 30 Bathroom 1 10 2 20 (2) Halls 1 (each) 10 4 80 Pantry 1 10 1 10 Cellar 1 10 1 10 ---- Total 550 Since amperes equal watts divided by volts, the number of ampere hours required in this case each night would be 550 ÷ 30 = 18.3 ampere hours; or approximately 4-1/2 amperes per hour for 4 hours. Say it is convenient to charge this battery every fourth day. This would require a battery of 4 × 18.3 ampere hours, or 73.2 ampere hours. The nearest size on the market is the 80-ampere hour battery, which would be the one to use for this installation. To charge this battery would require a dynamo capable of delivering 10 amperes of current for 9 hours. The generator should be of 45 volts pressure (allowing 2-1/2 volts in the generator for each 2 volts of battery) and the capacity of the generator would therefore be 450 watts. This would require a 1-1/4 horsepower gasoline engine. At 1-1/4 pints of gasoline for each horsepower, nine hours work of this engine would consume 14 pints of gasoline--or say 16 pints, or two gallons. At 12 cents a gallon for gasoline, lighting your house with this battery would cost 24 cents for four days, or 6 cents a day. Your city cousin, using commercial current, would pay 5-1/2 cents a day for the same amount of current at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour; or 8-1/4 cents at a 15-cent rate. If the battery is charged by the farm gasoline engine at the same time it is doing its other work, the cost would be still less, as the extra gasoline required would be small. This figure does not take into account depreciation of battery and engine. The average farmer is too apt to overlook this factor in figuring the cost of machinery of all kinds, and for that reason is unprepared when the time comes to replace worn-out machinery. The dynamo and switchboard should last a lifetime with ordinary care, so there is no depreciation charge against them. The storage battery, a 30-volt, 80-ampere hour installation, should not cost in excess of $100; and, if it is necessary to buy a gasoline engine, a 1-1/4 horsepower engine can be had for $50 or less according to the type. Storage batteries of the lead type are sold under a two-years' guarantee--which does not mean that their life is limited to that length of time. With good care they may last as long as 10 years; with poor care it may be necessary to throw them away at the end of a year. The engine should be serviceable for at least 10 years, with ordinary replacements; and the storage battery may last from 6 to 10 years, with occasional renewal of parts. If it were necessary to duplicate both at the end of ten years, this would make a carrying charge of $1.25 a month for depreciation, which must be added to the cost of light. _Figuring by Lamp Hours_ If all the lamps are to be of the same size--either ten, fifteen, or twenty watts, the light requirements of a farm house can be figured readily by lamp hours. In that event, the foregoing table would read as follows: Lamp hours Kitchen, 1 lamp, 4 hours 4 Sitting room, 3 lamps, 4 hours each 12 Dining room, 2 lamps, 2 hours each 4 Bedrooms, 3 lamps, 1 hour each 3 Halls, 2 lamps, 4 hours each 8 Bathroom, 1 lamp, 2 hours 2 Pantry and cellar, 2 lamps, 1 hour each 2 To determine the ampere hours from this table, multiply the total number of lamp hours by the current in amperes required for each lamp. As 10, 15, and 20-watt tungsten lamps require .33, .50 and .67 amperes, respectively at 30 volts pressure, the above requirements in ampere hours would be 12, 17-1/2, or 24 ampere hours, according to the size of lamp chosen. This gives the average current consumption for one night. If it is desired to charge the battery twice a week on the average, multiply the number of lamp hours by 4, to get the size of battery required. The foregoing illustration is not intended to indicate average light requirements for farms, but is given merely to show how a farmer may figure his own requirements. In some instances, it will be necessary to install a battery of 120 or more ampere hours, whereas a battery of 40 or 60 ampere hours would be quite serviceable in other instances. It all depends on how much light you wish to use and are willing to pay for, because with a storage battery the cost of electric light is directly in proportion to the number of lights used. As a general rule, a larger generator and engine are required for a larger battery--although it is possible to charge a large battery with a small generator and engine by taking more time for the operation. _How to Charge a Storage Battery_ Direct current only can be used for charging storage batteries. In the rare instance of alternating current only being available, it must be converted into direct current by any one of the many mechanical, chemical, or electrical devices on the market--that is, the alternating current must be straightened out, to flow always in one direction. A shunt-wound dynamo must be used; else, when the voltage of the battery rises too high, it may "back up" and turn the dynamo as a motor, causing considerable damage. If a compound dynamo is already installed, or if it is desired to use such a machine for charging storage batteries, it can be done simply by disconnecting the series windings on the field coils, thus turning the machine into a shunt dynamo. The voltage of the dynamo should be approximately 50 per cent above the working pressure of the battery. For this reason 45-volt machines are usually used for 30 or 32-volt batteries. Higher voltages may be used, if convenient. Thus a 110-volt dynamo may be used to charge a single 2-volt cell if necessary, although it is not advisable. _Direction of Current_ Electricity flows from the positive to the negative terminal. A charging current must be so connected that the negative wire of the dynamo is always connected to the negative terminal of the battery, and the positive wire to the positive terminal. As the polarity is always marked on the battery, there is little danger of making a mistake in this particular. When the storage battery is charged, and one begins to use its accumulation of energy, the current comes out in the opposite direction from which it entered in charging. In this respect, a storage battery is like a clock spring, which is wound up in one direction, and unwinds itself in the other. With all storage battery outfits, an ammeter (or current measure) is supplied with zero at the center. When the battery is being charged, the indicating needle points in one direction in proportion to the strength of the current flowing in; and when the battery is being discharged, the needle points in the opposite direction, in proportion to the strength of the current flowing out. Sometimes one is at loss, in setting about to connect a battery and generator, to know which is the positive and which the negative wire of the generator. A very simple test is as follows: Start the generator and bring it up to speed. Connect some form of resistance in "series" with the mains. A lamp in an ordinary lamp socket will do very well for this resistance. Dip the two ends of the wire (one coming from the generator, the other through the lamp) into a cup of water, in which a pinch of salt is dissolved. Bring them almost together and hold them there. Almost instantly, one wire will begin to turn bright, and give off bubbles. The wire which turns bright and gives off bubbles is the _negative_ wire. The other is the positive. [Illustration: A rough-and-ready farm electric plant, supplying two farms with light, heat and power; and a Ward Leonard-type circuit-breaker for charging storage batteries] _Care of Battery_ Since specific directions are furnished with all storage batteries, it is not necessary to go into the details of their care here. Storage battery plants are usually shipped with all connections made, or plainly indicated. All that is necessary is to fill the batteries with the acid solution, according to directions, and start the engine. If the engine is fitted with a governor, and the switchboard is of the automatic type, all the care necessary in charging is to start the engine. In fact, many makes utilize the dynamo as a "self-starter" for the engine, so that all that is necessary to start charging is to throw a switch which starts the engine. When the battery is fully charged, the engine is stopped automatically. The "electrolyte" or solution in which the plates of the lead battery are immersed, is sulphuric acid, diluted with water in the proportion of one part of acid to five of water, by volume. The specific gravity of ordinary commercial sulphuric acid is 1.835. Since its strength is apt to vary, however, it is best to mix the electrolyte with the aid of the hydrometer furnished with the battery. The hydrometer is a sealed glass tube, with a graduated scale somewhat resembling a thermometer. The height at which it floats in any given solution depends on the density of the solution. It should indicate approximately 1.15 for a storage battery electrolyte before charging. It should not be over 1.15--or 1,150 if your hydrometer reads in thousandths. Only pure water should be used. Distilled water is the best, but fresh clean rain water is permissible. Never under any circumstances use hydrant water, as it contains impurities which will injure the battery, probably put it out of commission before its first charge. _Pour the acid into the water._ Never under any circumstances pour the water into the acid, else an explosion may occur from the heat developed. Mix the electrolyte in a stone crock, or glass container, stirring with a glass rod, and testing from time to time with a hydrometer. Let it stand until cool and then pour it into the battery jars, filling them to 1/2 inch above the top of the plates. Then begin charging. The first charge will probably take a longer time than subsequent charges. If the installation is of the automatic type, all that is necessary is to start the engine. If it is not of the automatic type, proceed as follows: First be sure all connections are right. Then start the engine and bring the dynamo up to its rated speed. Adjust the voltage to the pressure specified. Then throw the switch connecting generator to battery. Watch the ammeter. It should register in amperes, one-eighth of the ampere-hour capacity of the battery, as already explained. If it registers too high, reduce the voltage of the generator slightly, by means of the field rheostat connected to the generator. This will also reduce the amperes flowing. If too low, raise the voltage until the amperes register correctly. Continue the charging operation until the cells begin to give off gas freely; or until the specific gravity of the electrolyte, measured by the hydrometer, stands at 1.24. Your battery is now fully charged. Throw the switch over to the service line, and your accumulator is ready to furnish light if you turn on your lamps. Occasionally add distilled water to the cells, to make up for evaporation. It is seldom necessary to add acid, as this does not evaporate. If the battery is kept fully charged, it will not freeze even when the thermometer is well below zero. A storage battery should be installed as near the house as possible--in the house, if possible. Since its current capacity is small, transmission losses must be reduced to a minimum. In wiring the house for storage battery service, the same rules apply as with standard voltage. Not more than 6 amperes should be used on any single branch circuit. With low voltage batteries (from 12 volts to 32 volts) it is well to use No. 10 or No. 12 B. & S. gauge rubber-covered wire, instead of the usual No. 14 used with standard voltage. The extra expense will be only a few cents for each circuit, and precious volts will be saved in distribution of the current. CHAPTER XII BATTERY CHARGING DEVICES The automatic plant most desirable--How an automobile lighting and starting system works--How the same results can be achieved in house lighting, by means of automatic devices--Plants without automatic regulation--Care necessary--The use of heating devices on storage battery current--Portable batteries--An electricity "route"--Automobile power for lighting a few lamps. The water-power electric plants described in preceding chapters are practically automatic in operation. This is very desirable, as such plants require the minimum of care. It is possible to attain this same end with a storage battery plant. Automatic maintenance approaches a high degree of perfection in the electric starting and lighting device on a modern automobile. In this case, a small dynamo geared to the main shaft is running whenever the engine is running. It is always ready to "pump" electricity into the storage battery when needed. An electric magnet, wound in a peculiar manner, automatically cuts off the charging current from the dynamo, when the battery is "full;" and the same magnet, or "regulator," permits the current to flow into the battery when needed. The principle is the same as in the familiar plumbing trap, which constantly maintains a given level of water in a tank, no matter how much water may be drawn from the tank. The result, in the case of the automobile battery, is that the battery is always kept fully charged; for no sooner does the "level" of electricity begin to drop (when used for starting or lighting) than the generator begins to charge. This is very desirable in more ways than one. In the first place, the energy of the battery is always the same; and in the second place, the mere fact that the battery is always kept fully charged gives it a long life. The same result can be achieved in storage battery plants for house lighting, where the source of power is a gasoline or other engine engaged normally in other work. Then your electric current becomes merely a by-product of some other operation. Take a typical instance where such a plant would be feasible: Farmer Brown has a five horsepower gasoline engine--an ordinary farm engine for which he paid probably $75 or $100. Electric light furnished direct from such an engine would be intolerable because of its constant flickering. This five horsepower engine is installed in the milk room of the dairy, and is belted to a countershaft. This countershaft is belted to the vacuum pump for the milking machine, and to the separator, and to a water pump, any one of which may be thrown into service by means of a tight-and-loose pulley. This countershaft is also belted to a small dynamo, which runs whenever the engine is running. The milking machine, the separator, and the water pump require that the gasoline engine be run on the average three hours each day. The dynamo is connected by wires to the house storage battery through a properly designed switchboard. The "brains" of this switchboard is a little automatic device (called a regulator or a circuit breaker), which opens and shuts according to the amount of current stored in the battery and the strength of the current from the generator. When the battery is "full," this regulator is "open" and permits no current to flow. Then the dynamo is running idle, and the amount of power it absorbs from the gasoline engine is negligible. When the "level" of electricity in the battery falls, due to drawing current for light, the regulator is "shut," that is, the dynamo and battery are connected, and current flows into the battery. These automatic instruments go still farther in their brainy work. They do not permit the dynamo to charge the battery when the voltage falls below a fixed point, due to the engine slowing down; neither do they permit the dynamo current to flow when the voltage gets too high due to sudden speeding up of the engine. Necessarily, an instrument which will take care of a battery in this way, is intricate in construction. That is not an argument against it however. A watch is intricate, but so long as we continue to wind it at stated intervals, it keeps time. So with this storage battery plant: so long as Farmer Brown starts his engine to do his farm chores every day, his by-product of electricity is stored automatically. Such installations are not expensive. A storage battery capable of lighting 8 tungsten lamps, of 16 candlepower each, continuously for 8 hours (or fewer lamps for a longer time); a switchboard containing all the required regulating instruments; and a dynamo of suitable size, can be had for from $250 to $300. All that is necessary to put such a plant in operation, is to belt the dynamo to the gasoline engine so that it will run at proper speed; and to connect the wires from dynamo to switchboard, and thence to the house service. The dynamo required for the above plant delivers 10 amperes at 45 volts pressure, or 10 × 45 = 450 watts. A gasoline, gas, or oil engine, or a windmill of 1-1/2 horsepower furnishes all the power needed. If the farmer uses his engine daily, or every other day, for other purposes, the cost of power will be practically negligible. With this system electric lights are available at any time day or night; and when the gasoline engine is in service daily for routine farm chores, the battery will never run low. This system is especially desirable where one uses a windmill for power. The speed of the windmill is constantly fluctuating, so much so in fact that it could not be used for electric light without a storage battery. But when equipped with a regulator on the switchboard which permits the current to flow only when the battery needs it, and then only when the speed of the windmill is correct, the problem of turning wind power into electric light is solved. * * * * * If the farmer does not desire to go to the additional expense of automatic regulation, there are cheaper plants, requiring attention for charging. These plants are identical with those described above, except they have no regulators. With these plants, when the battery runs low (as is indicated by dimming of the lights) it is necessary to start the engine, bring it up to speed, adjust the dynamo voltage to the proper pressure, and throw a switch to charge the battery. For such plants it is customary to run the engine to charge the battery twice a week. It is necessary to run the engine from 8 to 10 hours to fully charge the discharged battery. When the battery approaches full charge, the fact is evidenced by so-called "gassing" or giving off of bubbles. Another way to determine if the battery is fully charged is by means of the voltmeter, as the volts slowly rise to the proper point during the process of charging. A third way, and probably the most reliable is by the use of the hydrometer. The voltage of each cell when fully charged should be 2.5; it should never be discharged below 1.75 volts. Many storage battery electric light plants on the market are provided with a simple and inexpensive circuit breaker, which automatically cuts off the current and stops the engine when the battery is charged. The current is then thrown from the dynamo to the house service by an automatic switch. If such a circuit breaker is not included, it is necessary to throw the switch by hand when charging is begun or ended. Since the principal item of first cost, as well as depreciation, in a storage battery electric light plant is the storage battery itself, the smallest battery commensurate with needs is selected. Since the amount of current stored by these batteries is relatively small, electric irons and heating devices such as may be used freely on a direct-connected plant without a battery, are rather expensive luxuries. For instance, an electric iron drawing 400 watts an hour while in use, requires as much energy as 20 tungsten lamps of 16 candlepower each burning for the same length of time. Its rate of current consumption would be over 13 amperes, at 30 volts; which would require a larger battery than needed for light in the average farm home. The use to which electricity from a storage battery is put, however, is wholly a matter of expense involved; and if one is willing to pay for these rather expensive luxuries, there is no reason why he should not have them. Heating, in any form, by electricity, requires a large amount of current proportionally. As a matter of fact, there is less heat to be had in thermal units from a horsepower-hour of electricity than from three ounces of coal. When one is generating current from water-power, or even direct from gasoline or oil, this is not an argument against electric heating devices. But it becomes a very serious consideration when one is installing a storage battery as the source of current, because of the high initial cost, and depreciation of such a battery. Farmers who limit the use of their storage battery plants to lighting will get the best service. _Portable Batteries_ Abroad it is becoming quite common for power companies to deliver storage batteries fully charged, and call for them when discharged. Without a stretch of the imagination, we can imagine an ingenious farmer possessing a water-power electric plant building up a thriving business among his less fortunate neighbors, with an "electricity" route. It could be made quite as paying as a milk route. [Illustration: Connections for charging storage batteries on 110-volt mains] Many communities have water or steam power at a distance too great to transmit 110-volt current by wire economically; and because of lack of expert supervision, they do not care to risk using current at a pressure of 500 volts or higher, because of its danger to human life. In such a case it would be quite feasible for families to wire their houses, and carry their batteries to the generating plant two or three times a week to be charged. There are a number of portable batteries on the market suitable for such service, at voltages ranging from 6 to 32 volts. The best results would be obtained by having two batteries, leaving one to be charged while the other was in use; and if the generating station was located at the creamery or feed mill, where the farmer calls regularly, the trouble would be reduced to a minimum. Such a battery would necessarily be small, and of the sealed type, similar to those used in automobiles. It could be used merely for reading lamps--or it could be used for general lighting, according to the expense the farmer is willing to incur for batteries. An ordinary storage battery used in automobile ignition and lighting systems is of the 6-volt, 60-ampere type, called in trade a "6-60." Lamps can be had for these batteries ranging in sizes from 2 candlepower to 25 candlepower. A lamp of 15 candlepower, drawing 2-1/2 amperes, is used for automobile headlights, and, as any one knows after an experience of meeting a headlight on a dark road, they give a great deal of light. A "6-60" battery keeps one of these lamps running for 24 hours, or two lamps running 12 hours. A minimum of wiring would be required to install such a battery for the reading lights in the sitting room, and for a hanging light in the dining room. The customary gates for charging these batteries in a large city is 10 cents; but in a country plant it could be made less. To charge such a battery on a 110-volt direct current, it is necessary to install some means of limiting the amount of current, or in other words, the charging rate. This charging rate, for 8 hours should be, as we have seen, one-eighth of the ampere-hour capacity of the battery. Thus a "6-60" battery would require a 7-1/2 ampere current. Connecting two such batteries in "series" (that is, the negative pole of one battery to the positive pole of the second) would make a 12-volt battery. Ten or twelve such batteries could be connected in "series," and a 110-volt direct current generator would charge them in 8 hours at a 7-1/2 ampere rate. The diagram on page 259 shows the connections for charging on a 110-volt circuit. An ordinary 16-candlepower carbon lamp is of 220 ohms resistance, and (by Ohm's Law, C equals E divided by R) permits 1/2 ampere of current to flow. By connecting 15 such lamps across the mains, in parallel, the required 7-1/2 amperes of current would be flowing from the generator through the lamps, and back again. Connect the battery in "series" at any point on either of the two mains, between the lamps and the generator, being careful to connect the positive end to the positive pole of the battery, and _vice versa_. Lamps are the cheapest form of resistance; but in case they are not available, any other form of resistance can be used. Iron wire wound in spirals can be used, or any of the many makes of special resistance wire on the market. First it is necessary to determine the amount of resistance required. We have just seen that the charging rate of a 60-ampere hour battery is 7-1/2 amperes. Applying Ohm's Law here, we find that ohms resistance equals volts divided by amperes, or R = 110/7.5 = 14.67 ohms. With a 220-volt current, the ohms resistance required in series with the storage battery of this size would be 29.33 ohms. _Automobile Power for Lighting_ There are many ingenious ways by which an automobile may be utilized to furnish electric light for the home. The simplest is to run wires direct from the storage battery of the self-starting system, to the house or barn, in such a way that the current may be used for reading lamps in the sitting room. By a judicious use of the current in this way, the normal operation of the automobile in the daytime will keep the battery charged for use of the night lamps, and if care is used, such a plan should not affect the life of the battery. Care should be used also, in this regard, not to discharge the battery too low to prevent its utilizing its function of starting the car when it was desired to use the car. However, if the battery were discharged below its starting capacity, by any peradventure, the car could be started by the old-fashioned cranking method. Using an automobile lighting system for house lighting implies that the car be stored in a garage near the house or barn; as this battery is too low in voltage to permit transmitting the current any distance. One hundred feet, with liberal sized transmission wires is probably the limit. That such a system is feasible is amply proved by an occurrence recently reported in the daily papers. A doctor summoned to a remote farm house found that an immediate operation was necessary to save the patient's life. There was no light available, except a small kerosene lamp which was worse than nothing. The surgeon took a headlight off his car, strung a pair of wires through a window, and instantly had at his command a light of the necessary intensity. Another manner in which an automobile engine may be used for house lighting is to let it serve as the charging power of a separate storage battery. The engine can be belted to the generator, in such a case, by means of the fly wheel. Or a form of friction drive can be devised, by means of which the rear wheels (jacked up off the floor) may supply the necessary motive power. In such a case it would be necessary to make allowance for the differential in the rear axle, so that the power developed by the engine would be delivered to the friction drive. The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the same author or on related subjects. WATER POWER ENGINEERS DESIGNERS AND MANUFACTURERS HUNT SUPERIOR QUALITY Complete equipments for developing water powers including:--Water Wheels, Flumes, Governors, Supply Pipes, Gates, Hoists, Valves, Screens, Gears, Pulleys, Clutches, Bearings, Shafting, etc. Three types of water power developing wheels, ranged to meet every condition. [Illustration] Div. No. 1--Turbine Water Wheels for large powers and large quantities of water. Div. No. 2--Rim Leverage Wheels for small powers and very limited quantities of water. Div. No. 3--Small Water Motors for minimum water supplies under high heads. Send for special catalogues and Water Power Blanks to fill in for estimates on suitable type of Water Wheel for developing your water power to best advantage. RODNEY HUNT MACHINE COMPANY 60 MILL STREET ORANGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A. 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His work shows a grasp of the issues involved and a ripeness of conclusion that comes only from actual contact with the practical side of coöperation."--_American Economic Review._ "The book is decidedly worth while."--_Farm Life and Agriculture._ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York RURAL SCIENCE SERIES Edited by L. H. BAILEY _Each volume illustrated. Cloth, 12mo._ A series of practical books for farmers and gardeners, sold as a set or separately. Each one is the work of a competent specialist, and is suitable for consultation alike by the amateur or professional tiller of the soil, the scientist or the student. Illustrations of marked beauty are freely used, and the books are clearly printed and well bound. ON SELECTION OF LAND, ETC. Isaac P. Roberts' The Farmstead $1 50 T. F. Hunt's How to Choose a Farm 1 75 E. S. Cheyney and J. P. Wentling's The Farm Woodlot 1 50 Glenn W. Herrick's Insects Injurious to the Household 1 75 ON TILLAGE, ETC. F. H. 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Harper's Breaking and Training of Horses 1 75 George C. Watson's Farm Poultry. New edition 1 50 John A. Craig's Sheep Farming 1 50 ON DAIRY WORK, FARM CHEMISTRY, ETC. Henry H. Wing's Milk and Its Products. New edition 1 50 J. G. Lipman's Bacteria and Country Life 1 50 ON ECONOMICS AND ORGANIZATION William A. McKeever's Farm Boys and Girls 1 50 I. P. Roberts' The Farmer's Business Handbook 1 25 George T. Fairchild's Rural Wealth and Welfare 1 25 H. N. Ogden's Rural Hygiene 1 50 J. Green's Law for the American Farmer 1 50 G. H. Powell's Coöperation in Agriculture 1 50 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PUBLISHERS 64-66 Fifth Avenue NEW YORK RURAL TEXT-BOOK SERIES Edited by L. H. BAILEY _Each volume illustrated. Cloth, 12mo._ While the RURAL SCIENCE SERIES is designed primarily for popular reading and for general use, this related new series is designed for classroom work and for special use in consultation and reference. The RURAL TEXT-BOOK SERIES is planned to cover eventually the entire range of public school and college texts. Duggar, B. M. Physiology of Plant Production $1 60 Duggar, John Frederick Southern Field Crops 1 75 Gay, C. Warren Principles and Practice of Judging Live-Stock 1 50 Harper, M. W. Animal Husbandry for Schools 1 40 Hitchcock, A. S. Grasses 1 50 Livingston, George Field Crop Production 1 40 Lyon, T. L. and Fippin, E. O. Principles of Soil Management 1 75 Mann, A. R. Beginnings in Agriculture 75 Montgomery, G. F. Corn Crops 1 60 Piper, Charles V. Forage Plants and Their Culture 1 75 Warren, G. F. Elements of Agriculture 1 10 Warren, G. F. Farm Management 1 75 Wheeler, H. J. Manures and Fertilizers 1 60 Widtsoe, John A. Principles of Irrigation Practice 1 75 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York The Rural Outlook Set By L. H. BAILEY _Four Volumes. Each, cloth, 12mo. Uniform binding, attractively boxed. $5.00 per set; carriage extra. 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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PUBLISHERS 64-66 Fifth Avenue NEW YORK * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: The square root symbol is indicated by sqrt(..) Exponents are indicated by ^ Bold in a table is indicated by =..= 
28506	----	[Illustration: SANTA BARBARA.] OUR ITALY BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER _Author of Their Pilgrimage, Studies in the South and West, A Little Journey in the World ... With Many Illustrations_ [Illustration] _NEW YORK_ _HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE_ Copyright, 1891, by HARPER & BROTHERS. _All rights reserved._ CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. HOW OUR ITALY IS MADE 1 II. OUR CLIMATIC AND COMMERCIAL MEDITERRANEAN 10 III. EARLY VICISSITUDES.--PRODUCTIONS.--SANITARY CLIMATE 24 IV. THE WINTER OF OUR CONTENT 42 V. HEALTH AND LONGEVITY 52 VI. IS RESIDENCE HERE AGREEABLE? 65 VII. THE WINTER ON THE COAST 72 VIII. THE GENERAL OUTLOOK.--LAND AND PRICES 90 IX. THE ADVANTAGES OF IRRIGATION 99 X. THE CHANCE FOR LABORERS AND SMALL FARMERS 107 XI. SOME DETAILS OF THE WONDERFUL DEVELOPMENT 114 XII. HOW THE FRUIT PERILS WERE MET.--FURTHER DETAILS OF LOCALITIES 128 XIII. THE ADVANCE OF CULTIVATION SOUTHWARD 140 XIV. A LAND OF AGREEABLE HOMES 146 XV. SOME WONDERS BY THE WAY.--YOSEMITE.--MARIPOSA TREES.--MONTEREY 148 XVI. FASCINATIONS OF THE DESERT.--THE LAGUNA PUEBLO 163 XVII. THE HEART OF THE DESERT 177 XVIII. ON THE BRINK OF THE GRAND CAÑON.--THE UNIQUE MARVEL OF NATURE 189 APPENDIX 201 INDEX 219 ILLUSTRATIONS. SANTA BARBARA _Frontispiece_ PAGE MOJAVE DESERT 3 MOJAVE INDIAN 4 MOJAVE INDIAN 5 BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF RIVERSIDE 7 SCENE IN SAN BERNARDINO 11 SCENES IN MONTECITO AND LOS ANGELES 13 FAN-PALM, LOS ANGELES 16 YUCCA-PALM, SANTA BARBARA 17 MAGNOLIA AVENUE, RIVERSIDE 21 AVENUE LOS ANGELES 27 IN THE GARDEN AT SANTA BARBARA MISSION 31 SCENE AT PASADENA 35 LIVE-OAK NEAR LOS ANGELES 39 MIDWINTER, PASADENA 53 A TYPICAL GARDEN, NEAR SANTA ANA 57 OLD ADOBE HOUSE, POMONA 61 FAN-PALM, FERNANDO ST. LOS ANGELES 63 SCARLET PASSION-VINE 68 ROSE-BUSH, SANTA BARBARA 73 AT AVALON, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND 77 HOTEL DEL CORONADO 83 OSTRICH YARD, CORONADO BEACH 86 YUCCA-PALM 92 DATE-PALM 93 RAISIN-CURING 101 IRRIGATION BY ARTESIAN-WELL SYSTEM 104 IRRIGATION BY PIPE SYSTEM 105 GARDEN SCENE, SANTA ANA 110 A GRAPE-VINE, MONTECITO VALLEY, SANTA BARBARA 116 IRRIGATING AN ORCHARD 120 ORANGE CULTURE 121 IN A FIELD OF GOLDEN PUMPKINS 126 PACKING CHERRIES, POMONA 131 OLIVE-TREES SIX YEARS OLD 136 SEXTON NURSERIES, NEAR SANTA BARBARA 141 SWEETWATER DAM 144 THE YOSEMITE DOME 151 COAST OF MONTEREY 155 CYPRESS POINT 156 NEAR SEAL ROCK 157 LAGUNA--FROM THE SOUTH-EAST 159 CHURCH AT LAGUNA 164 TERRACED HOUSES, PUEBLO OF LAGUNA 167 GRAND CAÑON ON THE COLORADO--VIEW FROM POINT SUBLIME 171 INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH AT LAGUNA 174 GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO--VIEW OPPOSITE POINT SUBLIME 179 TOURISTS IN THE COLORADO CAÑON 183 GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO--VIEW FROM THE HANSE TRAIL 191 OUR ITALY. CHAPTER I. HOW OUR ITALY IS MADE. The traveller who descends into Italy by an Alpine pass never forgets the surprise and delight of the transition. In an hour he is whirled down the slopes from the region of eternal snow to the verdure of spring or the ripeness of summer. Suddenly--it may be at a turn in the road--winter is left behind; the plains of Lombardy are in view; the Lake of Como or Maggiore gleams below; there is a tree; there is an orchard; there is a garden; there is a villa overrun with vines; the singing of birds is heard; the air is gracious; the slopes are terraced, and covered with vineyards; great sheets of silver sheen in the landscape mark the growth of the olive; the dark green orchards of oranges and lemons are starred with gold; the lusty fig, always a temptation as of old, leans invitingly over the stone wall; everywhere are bloom and color under the blue sky; there are shrines by the way-side, chapels on the hill; one hears the melodious bells, the call of the vine-dressers, the laughter of girls. The contrast is as great from the Indians of the Mojave Desert, two types of which are here given, to the vine-dressers of the Santa Ana Valley. Italy is the land of the imagination, but the sensation on first beholding it from the northern heights, aside from its associations of romance and poetry, can be repeated in our own land by whoever will cross the burning desert of Colorado, or the savage wastes of the Mojave wilderness of stone and sage-brush, and come suddenly, as he must come by train, into the bloom of Southern California. Let us study a little the physical conditions. The bay of San Diego is about three hundred miles east of San Francisco. The coast line runs south-east, but at Point Conception it turns sharply east, and then curves south-easterly about two hundred and fifty miles to the Mexican coast boundary, the extreme south-west limits of the United States, a few miles below San Diego. This coast, defined by these two limits, has a southern exposure on the sunniest of oceans. Off this coast, south of Point Conception, lies a chain of islands, curving in position in conformity with the shore, at a distance of twenty to seventy miles from the main-land. These islands are San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa, Santa Barbara, San Nicolas, Santa Catalina, San Clemente, and Los Coronados, which lie in Mexican waters. Between this chain of islands and the main-land is Santa Barbara Channel, flowing northward. The great ocean current from the north flows past Point Conception like a mill-race, and makes a suction, or a sort of eddy. It approaches nearer the coast in Lower California, where the return current, which is much warmer, flows northward and westward along the curving shore. The Santa Barbara Channel, which may be called an arm of the Pacific, flows by many a bold point and lovely bay, like those of San Pedro, Redondo, and Santa Monica; but it has no secure harbor, except the magnificent and unique bay of San Diego. [Illustration: MOJAVE DESERT.] The southern and western boundary of Southern California is this mild Pacific sea, studded with rocky and picturesque islands. The northern boundary of this region is ranges of lofty mountains, from five thousand to eleven thousand feet in height, some of them always snow-clad, which run eastward from Point Conception nearly to the Colorado Desert. They are parts of the Sierra Nevada range, but they take various names, Santa Ynes, San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and they are spoken of all together as the Sierra Madre. In the San Gabriel group, "Old Baldy" lifts its snow-peak over nine thousand feet, while the San Bernardino "Grayback" rises over eleven thousand feet above the sea. Southward of this, running down into San Diego County, is the San Jacinto range, also snow-clad; and eastward the land falls rapidly away into the Salt Desert of the Colorado, in which is a depression about three hundred feet below the Pacific. [Illustration] The Point Arguilles, which is above Point Conception, by the aid of the outlying islands, deflects the cold current from the north off the coast of Southern California, and the mountain ranges from Point Conception east divide the State of California into two climatic regions, the southern having more warmth, less rain and fog, milder winds, and less variation of daily temperature than the climate of Central California to the north.[A] Other striking climatic conditions are produced by the daily interaction of the Pacific Ocean and the Colorado Desert, infinitely diversified in minor particulars by the exceedingly broken character of the region--a jumble of bare mountains, fruitful foot-hills, and rich valleys. It would be only from a balloon that one could get an adequate idea of this strange land. [Footnote A: For these and other observations upon physical and climatic conditions I am wholly indebted to Dr. P. C. Remondino and Mr. T. S. Van Dyke, of San Diego, both scientific and competent authorities.] The United States has here, then, a unique corner of the earth, without its like in its own vast territory, and unparalleled, so far as I know, in the world. Shut off from sympathy with external conditions by the giant mountain ranges and the desert wastes, it has its own climate unaffected by cosmic changes. Except a tidal wave from Japan, nothing would seem to be able to affect or disturb it. The whole of Italy feels more or less the climatic variations of the rest of Europe. All our Atlantic coast, all our interior basin from Texas to Manitoba, is in climatic sympathy. Here is a region larger than New England which manufactures its own weather and refuses to import any other. [Illustration] With considerable varieties of temperature according to elevation or protection from the ocean breeze, its climate is nearly, on the whole, as agreeable as that of the Hawaiian Islands, though pitched in a lower key, and with greater variations between day and night. The key to its peculiarity, aside from its southern exposure, is the Colorado Desert. That desert, waterless and treeless, is cool at night and intolerably hot in the daytime, sending up a vast column of hot air, which cannot escape eastward, for Arizona manufactures a like column. It flows high above the mountains westward till it strikes the Pacific and parts with its heat, creating an immense vacuum which is filled by the air from the coast flowing up the slope and over the range, and plunging down 6000 feet into the desert. "It is easy to understand," says Mr. Van Dyke, making his observations from the summit of the Cuyamaca, in San Diego County, 6500 feet above the sea-level, "how land thus rising a mile or more in fifty or sixty miles, rising away from the coast, and falling off abruptly a mile deep into the driest and hottest of American deserts, could have a great variety of climates.... Only ten miles away on the east the summers are the hottest, and only sixty miles on the west the coolest known in the United States (except on this coast), and between them is every combination that mountains and valleys can produce. And it is easy to see whence comes the sea-breeze, the glory of the California summer. It is passing us here, a gentle breeze of six or eight miles an hour. It is flowing over this great ridge directly into the basin of the Colorado Desert, 6000 feet deep, where the temperature is probably 120°, and perhaps higher. For many leagues each side of us this current is thus flowing at the same speed, and is probably half a mile or more in depth. About sundown, when the air on the desert cools and descends, the current will change and come the other way, and flood these western slopes with an air as pure as that of the Sahara and nearly as dry. [Illustration: BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF RIVERSIDE.] "The air, heated on the western slopes by the sea, would by rising produce considerable suction, which could be filled only from the sea, but that alone would not make the sea-breeze as dry as it is. The principal suction is caused by the rising of heated air from the great desert.... On the top of old Grayback (in San Bernardino) one can feel it [this breeze] setting westward, while in the cañons, 6000 feet below, it is blowing eastward.... All over Southern California the conditions of this breeze are about the same, the great Mojave Desert and the valley of the San Joaquin above operating in the same way, assisted by interior plains and slopes. Hence these deserts, that at first seem to be a disadvantage to the land, are the great conditions of its climate, and are of far more value than if they were like the prairies of Illinois. Fortunately they will remain deserts forever. Some parts will in time be reclaimed by the waters of the Colorado River, but wet spots of a few hundred thousand acres would be too trifling to affect general results, for millions of acres of burning desert would forever defy all attempts at irrigation or settlement." This desert-born breeze explains a seeming anomaly in regard to the humidity of this coast. I have noticed on the sea-shore that salt does not become damp on the table, that the Portuguese fishermen on Point Loma are drying their fish on the shore, and that while the hydrometer gives a humidity as high as seventy-four, and higher at times, and fog may prevail for three or four days continuously, the fog is rather "dry," and the general impression is that of a dry instead of the damp and chilling atmosphere such as exists in foggy times on the Atlantic coast. "From the study of the origin of this breeze we see," says Mr. Van Dyke, "why it is that a wind coming from the broad Pacific should be drier than the dry land-breezes of the Atlantic States, causing no damp walls, swelling doors, or rusting guns, and even on the coast drying up, without salt or soda, meat cut in strips an inch thick and fish much thicker." At times on the coast the air contains plenty of moisture, but with the rising of this breeze the moisture decreases instead of increases. It should be said also that this constantly returning current of air is always pure, coming in contact nowhere with marshy or malarious influences nor any agency injurious to health. Its character causes the whole coast from Santa Barbara to San Diego to be an agreeable place of residence or resort summer and winter, while its daily inflowing tempers the heat of the far inland valleys to a delightful atmosphere in the shade even in midsummer, while cool nights are everywhere the rule. The greatest surprise of the traveller is that a region which is in perpetual bloom and fruitage, where semi-tropical fruits mature in perfection, and the most delicate flowers dazzle the eye with color the winter through, should have on the whole a low temperature, a climate never enervating, and one requiring a dress of woollen in every month. CHAPTER II. OUR CLIMATIC AND COMMERCIAL MEDITERRANEAN. Winter as we understand it east of the Rockies does not exist. I scarcely know how to divide the seasons. There are at most but three. Spring may be said to begin with December and end in April; summer, with May (whose days, however, are often cooler than those of January), and end with September; while October and November are a mild autumn, when nature takes a partial rest, and the leaves of the deciduous trees are gone. But how shall we classify a climate in which the strawberry (none yet in my experience equal to the Eastern berry) may be eaten in every month of the year, and ripe figs may be picked from July to March? What shall I say of a frost (an affair of only an hour just before sunrise) which is hardly anywhere severe enough to disturb the delicate heliotrope, and even in the deepest valleys where it may chill the orange, will respect the bloom of that fruit on contiguous ground fifty or a hundred feet higher? We boast about many things in the United States, about our blizzards and our cyclones, our inundations and our areas of low pressure, our hottest and our coldest places in the world, but what can we say for this little corner which is practically frostless, and yet never had a sunstroke, knows nothing of thunder-storms and lightning, never experienced a cyclone, which is so warm that the year round one is tempted to live out-of-doors, and so cold that woollen garments are never uncomfortable? Nature here, in this protected and petted area, has the knack of being genial without being enervating, of being stimulating without "bracing" a person into the tomb. I think it conducive to equanimity of spirit and to longevity to sit in an orange grove and eat the fruit and inhale the fragrance of it while gazing upon a snow-mountain. [Illustration: SCENE IN SAN BERNARDINO.] This southward-facing portion of California is irrigated by many streams of pure water rapidly falling from the mountains to the sea. The more important are the Santa Clara, the Los Angeles and San Gabriel, the Santa Ana, the Santa Margarita, the San Luis Rey, the San Bernardo, the San Diego, and, on the Mexican border, the Tia Juana. Many of them go dry or flow underground in the summer months (or, as the Californians say, the bed of the river gets on top), but most of them can be used for artificial irrigation. In the lowlands water is sufficiently near the surface to moisten the soil, which is broken and cultivated; in most regions good wells are reached at a small depth, in others artesian-wells spout up abundance of water, and considerable portions of the regions best known for fruit are watered by irrigating ditches and pipes supplied by ample reservoirs in the mountains. From natural rainfall and the sea moisture the mesas and hills, which look arid before ploughing, produce large crops of grain when cultivated after the annual rains, without artificial watering. Southern California has been slowly understood even by its occupants, who have wearied the world with boasting of its productiveness. Originally it was a vast cattle and sheep ranch. It was supposed that the land was worthless except for grazing. Held in princely ranches of twenty, fifty, one hundred thousand acres, in some cases areas larger than German principalities, tens of thousands of cattle roamed along the watercourses and over the mesas, vast flocks of sheep cropped close the grass and trod the soil into hard-pan. The owners exchanged cattle and sheep for corn, grain, and garden vegetables; they had no faith that they could grow cereals, and it was too much trouble to procure water for a garden or a fruit orchard. It was the firm belief that most of the rolling mesa land was unfit for cultivation, and that neither forest nor fruit trees would grow without irrigation. Between Los Angeles and Redondo Beach is a ranch of 35,000 acres. Seventeen years ago it was owned by a Scotchman, who used the whole of it as a sheep ranch. In selling it to the present owner he warned him not to waste time by attempting to farm it; he himself raised no fruit or vegetables, planted no trees, and bought all his corn, wheat, and barley. The purchaser, however, began to experiment. He planted trees and set out orchards which grew, and in a couple of years he wrote to the former owner that he had 8000 acres in fine wheat. To say it in a word, there is scarcely an acre of the tract which is not highly productive in barley, wheat, corn, potatoes, while considerable parts of it are especially adapted to the English walnut and to the citrus fruits. [Illustration: SCENES IN MONTECITO AND LOS ANGELES.] On this route to the sea the road is lined with gardens. Nothing could be more unpromising in appearance than this soil before it is ploughed and pulverized by the cultivator. It looks like a barren waste. We passed a tract that was offered three years ago for twelve dollars an acre. Some of it now is rented to Chinamen at thirty dollars an acre; and I saw one field of two acres off which a Chinaman has sold in one season $750 worth of cabbages. The truth is that almost all the land is wonderfully productive if intelligently handled. The low ground has water so near the surface that the pulverized soil will draw up sufficient moisture for the crops; the mesa, if sown and cultivated after the annual rains, matures grain and corn, and sustains vines and fruit-trees. It is singular that the first settlers should never have discovered this productiveness. When it became apparent--that is, productiveness without artificial watering--there spread abroad a notion that irrigation generally was not needed. We shall have occasion to speak of this more in detail, and I will now only say, on good authority, that while cultivation, not to keep down the weeds only, but to keep the soil stirred and prevent its baking, is the prime necessity for almost all land in Southern California, there are portions where irrigation is always necessary, and there is no spot where the yield of fruit or grain will not be quadrupled by judicious irrigation. There are places where irrigation is excessive and harmful both to the quality and quantity of oranges and grapes. The history of the extension of cultivation in the last twenty and especially in the past ten years from the foot-hills of the Sierra Madre in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties southward to San Diego is very curious. Experiments were timidly tried. Every acre of sand and sage-bush reclaimed southward was supposed to be the last capable of profitable farming or fruit-growing. It is unsafe now to say of any land that has not been tried that it is not good. In every valley and on every hill-side, on the mesas and in the sunny nooks in the mountains, nearly anything will grow, and the application of water produces marvellous results. From San Bernardino and Redlands, Riverside, Pomona, Ontario, Santa Anita, San Gabriel, Pasadena, all the way to Los Angeles, is almost a continuous fruit garden, the green areas only emphasized by wastes yet unreclaimed; a land of charming cottages, thriving towns, hospitable to the fruit of every clime; a land of perpetual sun and ever-flowing breeze, looked down on by purple mountain ranges tipped here and there with enduring snow. And what is in progress here will be seen before long in almost every part of this wonderful land, for conditions of soil and climate are essentially everywhere the same, and capital is finding out how to store in and bring from the fastnesses of the mountains rivers of clear water taken at such elevations that the whole arable surface can be irrigated. The development of the country has only just begun. [Illustration: FAN-PALM, LOS ANGELES.] [Illustration: YUCCA-PALM, SANTA BARBARA.] If the reader will look upon the map of California he will see that the eight counties that form Southern California--San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Kern, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange, and San Diego--appear very mountainous. He will also notice that the eastern slopes of San Bernardino and San Diego are deserts. But this is an immense area. San Diego County alone is as large as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined, and the amount of arable land in the valleys, on the foot-hills, on the rolling mesas, is enormous, and capable of sustaining a dense population, for its fertility and its yield to the acre under cultivation are incomparable. The reader will also notice another thing. With the railroads now built and certain to be built through all this diversified region, round from the Santa Barbara Mountains to the San Bernardino, the San Jacinto, and down to Cuyamaca, a ride of an hour or two hours brings one to some point on the 250 miles of sea-coast--a sea-coast genial, inviting in winter and summer, never harsh, and rarely tempestuous like the Atlantic shore. Here is our Mediterranean! Here is our Italy! It is a Mediterranean without marshes and without malaria, and it does not at all resemble the Mexican Gulf, which we have sometimes tried to fancy was like the classic sea that laves Africa and Europe. Nor is this region Italian in appearance, though now and then some bay with its purple hills running to the blue sea, its surrounding mesas and cañons blooming in semi-tropical luxuriance, some conjunction of shore and mountain, some golden color, some white light and sharply defined shadows, some refinement of lines, some poetic tints in violet and ashy ranges, some ultramarine in the sea, or delicate blue in the sky, will remind the traveller of more than one place of beauty in Southern Italy and Sicily. It is a Mediterranean with a more equable climate, warmer winters and cooler summers, than the North Mediterranean shore can offer; it is an Italy whose mountains and valleys give almost every variety of elevation and temperature. But it is our commercial Mediterranean. The time is not distant when this corner of the United States will produce in abundance, and year after year without failure, all the fruits and nuts which for a thousand years the civilized world of Europe has looked to the Mediterranean to supply. We shall not need any more to send over the Atlantic for raisins, English walnuts, almonds, figs, olives, prunes, oranges, lemons, limes, and a variety of other things which we know commercially as Mediterranean products. We have all this luxury and wealth at our doors, within our limits. The orange and the lemon we shall still bring from many places; the date and the pineapple and the banana will never grow here except as illustrations of the climate, but it is difficult to name any fruit of the temperate and semi-tropic zones that Southern California cannot be relied on to produce, from the guava to the peach. It will need further experiment to determine what are the more profitable products of this soil, and it will take longer experience to cultivate them and send them to market in perfection. The pomegranate and the apple thrive side by side, but the apple is not good here unless it is grown at an elevation where frost is certain and occasional snow may be expected. There is no longer any doubt about the peach, the nectarine, the pear, the grape, the orange, the lemon, the apricot, and so on; but I believe that the greatest profit will be in the products that cannot be grown elsewhere in the United States--the products to which we have long given the name of Mediterranean--the olive, the fig, the raisin, the hard and soft shell almond, and the walnut. The orange will of course be a staple, and constantly improve its reputation as better varieties are raised, and the right amount of irrigation to produce the finest and sweetest is ascertained. It is still a wonder that a land in which there was no indigenous product of value, or to which cultivation could give value, should be so hospitable to every sort of tree, shrub, root, grain, and flower that can be brought here from any zone and temperature, and that many of these foreigners to the soil grow here with a vigor and productiveness surpassing those in their native land. This bewildering adaptability has misled many into unprofitable experiments, and the very rapidity of growth has been a disadvantage. The land has been advertised by its monstrous vegetable productions, which are not fit to eat, and but testify to the fertility of the soil; and the reputation of its fruits, both deciduous and citrus, has suffered by specimens sent to Eastern markets whose sole recommendation was size. Even in the vineyards and orange orchards quality has been sacrificed to quantity. Nature here responds generously to every encouragement, but it cannot be forced without taking its revenge in the return of inferior quality. It is just as true of Southern California as of any other land, that hard work and sagacity and experience are necessary to successful horticulture and agriculture, but it is undeniably true that the same amount of well-directed industry upon a much smaller area of land will produce more return than in almost any other section of the United States. Sensible people do not any longer pay much attention to those tempting little arithmetical sums by which it is demonstrated that paying so much for ten acres of barren land, and so much for planting it with vines or oranges, the income in three years will be a competence to the investor and his family. People do not spend much time now in gaping over abnormal vegetables, or trying to convince themselves that wines of every known variety and flavor can be produced within the limits of one flat and well-watered field. Few now expect to make a fortune by cutting arid land up into twenty-feet lots, but notwithstanding the extravagance of recent speculation, the value of arable land has steadily appreciated, and is not likely to recede, for the return from it, either in fruits, vegetables, or grain, is demonstrated to be beyond the experience of farming elsewhere. [Illustration: MAGNOLIA AVENUE, RIVERSIDE.] Land cannot be called dear at one hundred or one thousand dollars an acre if the annual return from it is fifty or five hundred dollars. The climate is most agreeable the year through. There are no unpleasant months, and few unpleasant days. The eucalyptus grows so fast that the trimmings from the trees of a small grove or highway avenue will in four or five years furnish a family with its firewood. The strong, fattening alfalfa gives three, four, five, and even six harvests a year. Nature needs little rest, and, with the encouragement of water and fertilizers, apparently none. But all this prodigality and easiness of life detracts a little from ambition. The lesson has been slowly learned, but it is now pretty well conned, that hard work is as necessary here as elsewhere to thrift and independence. The difference between this and many other parts of our land is that nature seems to work with a man, and not against him. CHAPTER III. EARLY VICISSITUDES.--PRODUCTIONS.--SANITARY CLIMATE. Southern California has rapidly passed through varied experiences, and has not yet had a fair chance to show the world what it is. It had its period of romance, of pastoral life, of lawless adventure, of crazy speculation, all within a hundred years, and it is just now entering upon its period of solid, civilized development. A certain light of romance is cast upon this coast by the Spanish voyagers of the sixteenth century, but its history begins with the establishment of the chain of Franciscan missions, the first of which was founded by the great Father Junipero Serra at San Diego in 1769. The fathers brought with them the vine and the olive, reduced the savage Indians to industrial pursuits, and opened the way for that ranchero and adobe civilization which, down to the coming of the American, in about 1840, made in this region the most picturesque life that our continent has ever seen. Following this is a period of desperado adventure and revolution, of pioneer State-building; and then the advent of the restless, the cranky, the invalid, the fanatic, from every other State in the Union. The first experimenters in making homes seem to have fancied that they had come to a ready-made elysium--the idle man's heaven. They seem to have brought with them little knowledge of agriculture or horticulture, were ignorant of the conditions of success in this soil and climate, and left behind the good industrial maxims of the East. The result was a period of chance experiment, one in which extravagant expectation and boasting to some extent took the place of industry. The imagination was heated by the novelty of such varied and rapid productiveness. Men's minds were inflamed by the apparently limitless possibilities. The invalid and the speculator thronged the transcontinental roads leading thither. In this condition the frenzy of 1886-87 was inevitable. I saw something of it in the winter of 1887. The scenes then daily and commonplace now read like the wildest freaks of the imagination. The bubble collapsed as suddenly as it expanded. Many were ruined, and left the country. More were merely ruined in their great expectations. The speculation was in town lots. When it subsided it left the climate as it was, the fertility as it was, and the value of arable land not reduced. Marvellous as the boom was, I think the present recuperation is still more wonderful. In 1890, to be sure, I miss the bustle of the cities, and the creation of towns in a week under the hammer of the auctioneer. But in all the cities, and most of the villages, there has been growth in substantial buildings, and in the necessities of civic life--good sewerage, water supply, and general organization; while the country, as the acreage of vines and oranges, wheat and barley, grain and corn, and the shipments by rail testify, has improved more than at any other period, and commerce is beginning to feel the impulse of a genuine prosperity, based upon the intelligent cultivation of the ground. School-houses have multiplied; libraries have been founded; many "boom" hotels, built in order to sell city lots in the sage-brush, have been turned into schools and colleges. There is immense rivalry between different sections. Every Californian thinks that the spot where his house stands enjoys the best climate and is the most fertile in the world; and while you are with him you think he is justified in his opinion; for this rivalry is generally a wholesome one, backed by industry. I do not mean to say that the habit of tall talk is altogether lost. Whatever one sees he is asked to believe is the largest and best in the world. The gentleman of the whip who showed us some of the finest places in Los Angeles--places that in their wealth of flowers and semi-tropical gardens would rouse the enthusiasm of the most jaded traveller--was asked whether there were any finer in the city. "Finer? Hundreds of them;" and then, meditatively and regretfully, "I should not dare to show you the best." The semi-ecclesiastical custodian of the old adobe mission of San Gabriel explained to us the twenty portraits of apostles on the walls, all done by Murillo. As they had got out of repair, he had them all repainted by the best artist. "That one," he said, simply, "cost ten dollars. It often costs more to repaint a picture than to buy an original." The temporary evils in the train of the "boom" are fast disappearing. I was told that I should find the country stagnant. Trade, it is true, is only slowly coming in, real-estate deals are sleeping, but in all avenues of solid prosperity and productiveness the country is the reverse of stagnant. Another misapprehension this visit is correcting. I was told not to visit Southern California at this season on account of the heat. But I have no experience of a more delightful summer climate than this, especially on or near the coast. [Illustration: AVENUE LOS ANGELES.] In secluded valleys in the interior the thermometer rises in the daytime to 85°, 90°, and occasionally 100°, but I have found no place in them where there was not daily a refreshing breeze from the ocean, where the dryness of the air did not make the heat seem much less than it was, and where the nights were not agreeably cool. My belief is that the summer climate of Southern California is as desirable for pleasure-seekers, for invalids, for workmen, as its winter climate. It seems to me that a coast temperature 60° to 75°, stimulating, without harshness or dampness, is about the perfection of summer weather. It should be said, however, that there are secluded valleys which become very hot in the daytime in midsummer, and intolerably dusty. The dust is the great annoyance everywhere. It gives the whole landscape an ashy tint, like some of our Eastern fields and way-sides in a dry August. The verdure and the wild flowers of the rainy season disappear entirely. There is, however, some picturesque compensation for this dust and lack of green. The mountains and hills and great plains take on wonderful hues of brown, yellow, and red. I write this paragraph in a high chamber in the Hotel del Coronado, on the great and fertile beach in front of San Diego. It is the 2d of June. Looking southward, I see the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean, sparkling in the sun as blue as the waters at Amalfi. A low surf beats along the miles and miles of white sand continually, with the impetus of far-off seas and trade-winds, as it has beaten for thousands of years, with one unending roar and swish, and occasional shocks of sound as if of distant thunder on the shore. Yonder, to the right, Point Loma stretches its sharp and rocky promontory into the ocean, purple in the sun, bearing a light-house on its highest elevation. From this signal, bending in a perfect crescent, with a silver rim, the shore sweeps around twenty-five miles to another promontory running down beyond Tia Juana to the Point of Rocks, in Mexican territory. Directly in front--they say eighteen miles away, I think five sometimes, and sometimes a hundred--lie the islands of Coronado, named, I suppose, from the old Spanish adventurer Vasques de Coronado, huge bulks of beautiful red sandstone, uninhabited and barren, becalmed there in the changing blue of sky and sea, like enormous mastless galleons, like degraded icebergs, like Capri and Ischia. They say that they are stationary. I only know that when I walk along the shore towards Point Loma they seem to follow, until they lie opposite the harbor entrance, which is close by the promontory; and that when I return, they recede and go away towards Mexico, to which they belong. Sometimes, as seen from the beach, owing to the difference in the humidity of the strata of air over the ocean, they seem smaller at the bottom than at the top. Occasionally they come quite near, as do the sea-lions and the gulls, and again they almost fade out of the horizon in a violet light. This morning they stand away, and the fleet of white-sailed fishing-boats from the Portuguese hamlet of La Playa, within the harbor entrance, which is dancing off Point Loma, will have a long sail if they pursue the barracuda to those shadowy rocks. [Illustration: IN THE GARDEN AT SANTA BARBARA MISSION.] We crossed the bay the other day, and drove up a wild road to the height of the promontory, and along its narrow ridge to the light-house. This site commands one of the most remarkable views in the accessible civilized world, one of the three or four really great prospects which the traveller can recall, astonishing in its immensity, interesting in its peculiar details. The general features are the great ocean, blue, flecked with sparkling, breaking wavelets, and the wide, curving coast-line, rising into mesas, foot-hills, ranges on ranges of mountains, the faintly seen snow-peaks of San Bernardino and San Jacinto to the Cuyamaca and the flat top of Table Mountain in Mexico. Directly under us on one side are the fields of kelp, where the whales come to feed in winter; and on the other is a point of sand on Coronado Beach, where a flock of pelicans have assembled after their day's fishing, in which occupation they are the rivals of the Portuguese. The perfect crescent of the ocean beach is seen, the singular formation of North and South Coronado Beach, the entrance to the harbor along Point Loma, and the spacious inner bay, on which lie San Diego and National City, with lowlands and heights outside sprinkled with houses, gardens, orchards, and vineyards. The near hills about this harbor are varied in form and poetic in color, one of them, the conical San Miguel, constantly recalling Vesuvius. Indeed, the near view, in color, vegetation, and forms of hills and extent of arable land, suggests that of Naples, though on analysis it does not resemble it. If San Diego had half a million of people it would be more like it; but the Naples view is limited, while this stretches away to the great mountains that overlook the Colorado Desert. It is certainly one of the loveliest prospects in the world, and worth long travel to see. Standing upon this point of view, I am reminded again of the striking contrasts and contiguous different climates on the coast. In the north, of course not visible from here, is Mount Whitney, on the borders of Inyo County and of the State of Nevada, 15,086 feet above the sea, the highest peak in the United States, excluding Alaska. South of it is Grayback, in the San Bernardino range, 11,000 feet in altitude, the highest point above its base in the United States. While south of that is the depression in the Colorado Desert in San Diego County, about three hundred feet below the level of the Pacific Ocean, the lowest land in the United States. These three exceptional points can be said to be almost in sight of each other. [Illustration: SCENE AT PASADENA.] I have insisted so much upon the Mediterranean character of this region that it is necessary to emphasize the contrasts also. Reserving details and comments on different localities as to the commercial value of products and climatic conditions, I will make some general observations. I am convinced that the fig can not only be grown here in sufficient quantity to supply our markets, but of the best quality. The same may be said of the English walnut. This clean and handsome tree thrives wonderfully in large areas, and has no enemies. The olive culture is in its infancy, but I have never tasted better oil than that produced at Santa Barbara and on San Diego Bay. Specimens of the pickled olive are delicious, and when the best varieties are generally grown, and the best method of curing is adopted, it will be in great demand, not as a mere relish, but as food. The raisin is produced in all the valleys of Southern California, and in great quantities in the hot valley of San Joaquin, beyond the Sierra Madre range. The best Malaga raisins, which have the reputation of being the best in the world, may never come to our market, but I have never eaten a better raisin for size, flavor, and thinness of skin than those raised in the El Cajon Valley, which is watered by the great flume which taps a reservoir in the Cuyamaca Mountains, and supplies San Diego. But the quality of the raisin in California will be improved by experience in cultivation and handling. The contrast with the Mediterranean region--I refer to the western basin--is in climate. There is hardly any point along the French and Italian coast that is not subject to great and sudden changes, caused by the north wind, which has many names, or in the extreme southern peninsula and islands by the sirocco. There are few points that are not reached by malaria, and in many resorts--and some of them most sunny and agreeable to the invalid--the deadliest fevers always lie in wait. There is great contrast between summer and winter, and exceeding variability in the same month. This variability is the parent of many diseases of the lungs, the bowels, and the liver. It is demonstrated now by long-continued observations that dampness and cold are not so inimical to health as variability. The Southern California climate is an anomaly. It has been the subject of a good deal of wonder and a good deal of boasting, but it is worthy of more scientific study than it has yet received. Its distinguishing feature I take to be its equability. The temperature the year through is lower than I had supposed, and the contrast is not great between the summer and the winter months. The same clothing is appropriate, speaking generally, for the whole year. In all seasons, including the rainy days of the winter months, sunshine is the rule. The variation of temperature between day and night is considerable, but if the new-comer exercises a little care, he will not be unpleasantly affected by it. There are coast fogs, but these are not chilling and raw. Why it is that with the hydrometer showing a considerable humidity in the air the general effect of the climate is that of dryness, scientists must explain. The constant exchange of desert airs with the ocean air may account for the anomaly, and the actual dryness of the soil, even on the coast, is put forward as another explanation. Those who come from heated rooms on the Atlantic may find the winters cooler than they expect, and those used to the heated terms of the Mississippi Valley and the East will be surprised at the cool and salubrious summers. A land without high winds or thunder-storms may fairly be said to have a unique climate. [Illustration: LIVE-OAK NEAR LOS ANGELES.] I suppose it is the equability and not conditions of dampness or dryness that renders this region so remarkably exempt from epidemics and endemic diseases. The diseases of children prevalent elsewhere are unknown here; they cut their teeth without risk, and _cholera infantum_ never visits them. Diseases of the bowels are practically unknown. There is no malaria, whatever that may be, and consequently an absence of those various fevers and other disorders which are attributed to malarial conditions. Renal diseases are also wanting; disorders of the liver and kidneys, and Bright's disease, gout, and rheumatism, are not native. The climate in its effect is stimulating, but at the same time soothing to the nerves, so that if "nervous prostration" is wanted, it must be brought here, and cannot be relied on to continue long. These facts are derived from medical practice with the native Indian and Mexican population. Dr. Remondino, to whom I have before referred, has made the subject a study for eighteen years, and later I shall offer some of the results of his observations upon longevity. It is beyond my province to venture any suggestion upon the effect of the climate upon deep-seated diseases, especially of the respiratory organs, of invalids who come here for health. I only know that we meet daily and constantly so many persons in fair health who say that it is impossible for them to live elsewhere that the impression is produced that a considerable proportion of the immigrant population was invalid. There are, however, two suggestions that should be made. Care is needed in acclimation to a climate that differs from any previous experience; and the locality that will suit any invalid can only be determined by personal experience. If the coast does not suit him, he may be benefited in a protected valley, or he may be improved on the foot-hills, or on an elevated mesa, or on a high mountain elevation. One thing may be regarded as settled. Whatever the sensibility or the peculiarity of invalidism, the equable climate is exceedingly favorable to the smooth working of the great organic functions of respiration, digestion, and circulation. It is a pity to give this chapter a medical tone. One need not be an invalid to come here and appreciate the graciousness of the air; the color of the landscape, which is wanting in our Northern clime; the constant procession of flowers the year through; the purple hills stretching into the sea; the hundreds of hamlets, with picturesque homes overgrown with roses and geranium and heliotrope, in the midst of orange orchards and of palms and magnolias, in sight of the snow-peaks of the giant mountain ranges which shut in this land of marvellous beauty. CHAPTER IV. THE WINTER OF OUR CONTENT. California is the land of the Pine and the Palm. The tree of the Sierras, native, vigorous, gigantic, and the tree of the Desert, exotic, supple, poetic, both flourish within the nine degrees of latitude. These two, the widely separated lovers of Heine's song, symbolize the capacities of the State, and although the sugar-pine is indigenous, and the date-palm, which will never be more than an ornament in this hospitable soil, was planted by the Franciscan Fathers, who established a chain of missions from San Diego to Monterey over a century ago, they should both be the distinction of one commonwealth, which, in its seven hundred miles of indented sea-coast, can boast the climates of all countries and the products of all zones. If this State of mountains and valleys were divided by an east and west line, following the general course of the Sierra Madre range, and cutting off the eight lower counties, I suppose there would be conceit enough in either section to maintain that it only is the Paradise of the earth, but both are necessary to make the unique and contradictory California which fascinates and bewilders the traveller. He is told that the inhabitants of San Francisco go away from the draught of the Golden Gate in the summer to get warm, and yet the earliest luscious cherries and apricots which he finds in the far south market of San Diego come from the Northern Santa Clara Valley. The truth would seem to be that in an hour's ride in any part of the State one can change his climate totally at any time of the year, and this not merely by changing his elevation, but by getting in or out of the range of the sea or the desert currents of air which follow the valleys. To recommend to any one a winter climate is far from the writer's thought. No two persons agree on what is desirable for a winter residence, and the inclination of the same person varies with his state of health. I can only attempt to give some idea of what is called the winter months in Southern California, to which my observations mainly apply. The individual who comes here under the mistaken notion that climate ever does anything more than give nature a better chance, may speedily or more tardily need the service of an undertaker; and the invalid whose powers are responsive to kindly influences may live so long, being unable to get away, that life will be a burden to him. The person in ordinary health will find very little that is hostile to the orderly organic processes. In order to appreciate the winter climate of Southern California one should stay here the year through, and select the days that suit his idea of winter from any of the months. From the fact that the greatest humidity is in the summer and the least in the winter months, he may wear an overcoat in July in a temperature, according to the thermometer, which in January would render the overcoat unnecessary. It is dampness that causes both cold and heat to be most felt. The lowest temperatures, in Southern California generally, are caused only by the extreme dryness of the air; in the long nights of December and January there is a more rapid and longer continued radiation of heat. It must be a dry and clear night that will send the temperature down to thirty-four degrees. But the effect of the sun upon this air is instantaneous, and the cold morning is followed at once by a warm forenoon; the difference between the average heat of July and the average cold of January, measured by the thermometer, is not great in the valleys, foot-hills, and on the coast. Five points give this result of average for January and July respectively: Santa Barbara, 52°, 66°; San Bernardino, 51°, 70°; Pomona, 52°, 68°; Los Angeles, 52°, 67°; San Diego, 53°, 66°. The day in the winter months is warmer in the interior and the nights are cooler than on the coast, as shown by the following figures for January: 7 A.M., Los Angeles, 46.5°; San Diego, 47.5°; 3 P.M., Los Angeles, 65.2°; San Diego, 60.9°. In the summer the difference is greater. In June I saw the thermometer reach 103° in Los Angeles when it was only 79° in San Diego. But I have seen the weather unendurable in New York with a temperature of 85°, while this dry heat of 103° was not oppressive. The extraordinary equanimity of the coast climate (certainly the driest marine climate in my experience) will be evident from the average mean for each month, from records of sixteen years, ending in 1877, taken at San Diego, giving each month in order, beginning with January: 53.5°, 54.7°, 56.0°, 58.2°, 60.2°, 64.6°, 67.1°, 69.0°, 66.7°, 62.9°, 58.1°, 56.0°. In the year 1877 the mean temperature at 3 P.M. at San Diego was as follows, beginning with January: 60.9°, 57.7°, 62.4°, 63.3°, 66.3°, 68.5°, 69.6°, 69.6°, 69.5°, 69.6°, 64.4°, 60.5°. For the four months of July, August, September, and October there was hardly a shade of difference at 3 P.M. The striking fact in all the records I have seen is that the difference of temperature in the daytime between summer and winter is very small, the great difference being from midnight to just before sunrise, and this latter difference is greater inland than on the coast. There are, of course, frost and ice in the mountains, but the frost that comes occasionally in the low inland valleys is of very brief duration in the morning hour, and rarely continues long enough to have a serious effect upon vegetation. In considering the matter of temperature, the rule for vegetation and for invalids will not be the same. A spot in which delicate flowers in Southern California bloom the year round may be too cool for many invalids. It must not be forgotten that the general temperature here is lower than that to which most Eastern people are accustomed. They are used to living all winter in overheated houses, and to protracted heated terms rendered worse by humidity in the summer. The dry, low temperature of the California winter, notwithstanding its perpetual sunshine, may seem, therefore, wanting to them in direct warmth. It may take a year or two to acclimate them to this more equable and more refreshing temperature. Neither on the coast nor in the foot-hills will the invalid find the climate of the Riviera or of Tangier--not the tramontane wind of the former, nor the absolutely genial but somewhat enervating climate of the latter. But it must be borne in mind that in this, our Mediterranean, the seeker for health or pleasure can find almost any climate (except the very cold or the very hot), down to the minutest subdivision. He may try the dry marine climate of the coast, or the temperature of the fruit lands and gardens from San Bernardino to Los Angeles, or he may climb to any altitude that suits him in the Sierra Madre or the San Jacinto ranges. The difference may be all-important to him between a valley and a mesa which is not a hundred feet higher; nay, between a valley and the slope of a foot-hill, with a shifting of not more than fifty feet elevation, the change may be as marked for him as it is for the most sensitive young fruit-tree. It is undeniable, notwithstanding these encouraging "averages," that cold snaps, though rare, do come occasionally, just as in summer there will occur one or two or three continued days of intense heat. And in the summer in some localities--it happened in June, 1890, in the Santiago hills in Orange County--the desert sirocco, blowing over the Colorado furnace, makes life just about unendurable for days at a time. Yet with this dry heat sunstroke is never experienced, and the diseases of the bowels usually accompanying hot weather elsewhere are unknown. The experienced traveller who encounters unpleasant weather, heat that he does not expect, cold that he did not provide for, or dust that deprives him of his last atom of good-humor, and is told that it is "exceptional," knows exactly what that word means. He is familiar with the "exceptional" the world over, and he feels a sort of compassion for the inhabitants who have not yet learned the adage, "Good wine needs no bush." Even those who have bought more land than they can pay for can afford to tell the truth. The rainy season in Southern California, which may open with a shower or two in October, but does not set in till late in November, or till December, and is over in April, is not at all a period of cloudy weather or continuous rainfall. On the contrary, bright warm days and brilliant sunshine are the rule. The rain is most likely to fall in the night. There may be a day of rain, or several days that are overcast with distributed rain, but the showers are soon over, and the sky clears. Yet winters vary greatly in this respect, the rainfall being much greater in some than in others. In 1890 there was rain beyond the average, and even on the equable beach of Coronada there were some weeks of weather that from the California point of view were very unpleasant. It was unpleasant by local comparison, but it was not damp and chilly, like a protracted period of falling weather on the Atlantic. The rain comes with a southerly wind, caused by a disturbance far north, and with the resumption of the prevailing westerly winds it suddenly ceases, the air clears, and neither before nor after it is the atmosphere "steamy" or enervating. The average annual rainfall of the Pacific coast diminishes by regular gradation from point to point all the way from Puget Sound to the Mexican boundary. At Neah Bay it is 111 inches, and it steadily lessens down to Santa Cruz, 25.24; Monterey, 11.42; Point Conception, 12.21; San Diego, 11.01. There is fog on the coast in every month, but this diminishes, like the rainfall, from north to south. I have encountered it in both February and June. In the south it is apt to be most persistent in April and May, when for three or four days together there will be a fine mist, which any one but a Scotchman would call rain. Usually, however, the fog-bank will roll in during the night, and disappear by ten o'clock in the morning. There is no wet season properly so called, and consequently few days in the winter months when it is not agreeable to be out-of-doors, perhaps no day when one may not walk or drive during some part of it. Yet as to precipitation or temperature it is impossible to strike any general average for Southern California. In 1883-84 San Diego had 25.77 inches of rain, and Los Angeles (fifteen miles inland) had 38.22. The annual average at Los Angeles is 17.64; but in 1876-77 the total at San Diego was only 3.75, and at Los Angeles only 5.28. Yet elevation and distance from the coast do not always determine the rainfall. The yearly mean rainfall at Julian, in the San Jacinto range, at an elevation of 4500 feet, is 37.74; observations at Riverside, 1050 feet above the sea, give an average of 9.37. It is probably impossible to give an Eastern man a just idea of the winter of Southern California. Accustomed to extremes, he may expect too much. He wants a violent change. If he quits the snow, the slush, the leaden skies, the alternate sleet and cold rain of New England, he would like the tropical heat, the languor, the color of Martinique. He will not find them here. He comes instead into a strictly temperate region; and even when he arrives, his eyes deceive him. He sees the orange ripening in its dark foliage, the long lines of the eucalyptus, the feathery pepper-tree, the magnolia, the English walnut, the black live-oak, the fan-palm, in all the vigor of June; everywhere beds of flowers of every hue and of every country blazing in the bright sunlight--the heliotrope, the geranium, the rare hot-house roses overrunning the hedges of cypress, and the scarlet passion-vine climbing to the roof-tree of the cottages; in the vineyard or the orchard the horticulturist is following the cultivator in his shirt-sleeves; he hears running water, the song of birds, the scent of flowers is in the air, and he cannot understand why he needs winter clothing, why he is always seeking the sun, why he wants a fire at night. It is a fraud, he says, all this visible display of summer, and of an almost tropical summer at that; it is really a cold country. It is incongruous that he should be looking at a date-palm in his overcoat, and he is puzzled that a thermometrical heat that should enervate him elsewhere, stimulates him here. The green, brilliant, vigorous vegetation, the perpetual sunshine, deceive him; he is careless about the difference of shade and sun, he gets into a draught, and takes cold. Accustomed to extremes of temperature and artificial heat, I think for most people the first winter here is a disappointment. I was told by a physician who had eighteen years' experience of the climate that in his first winter he thought he had never seen a people so insensitive to cold as the San Diegans, who seemed not to require warmth. And all this time the trees are growing like asparagus, the most delicate flowers are in perpetual bloom, the annual crops are most lusty. I fancy that the soil is always warm. The temperature is truly moderate. The records for a number of years show that the mid-day temperature of clear days in winter is from 60° to 70° on the coast, from 65° to 80° in the interior, while that of rainy days is about 60° by the sea and inland. Mr. Van Dyke says that the lowest mid-day temperature recorded at the United States signal station at San Diego during eight years is 51°. This occurred but once. In those eight years there were but twenty-one days when the mid-day temperature was not above 55°. In all that time there were but six days when the mercury fell below 36° at any time in the night; and but two when it fell to 32°, the lowest point ever reached there. On one of these two last-named days it went to 51° at noon, and on the other to 56°. This was the great "cold snap" of December, 1879. It goes without saying that this sort of climate would suit any one in ordinary health, inviting and stimulating to constant out-of-door exercise, and that it would be equally favorable to that general breakdown of the system which has the name of nervous prostration. The effect upon diseases of the respiratory organs can only be determined by individual experience. The government has lately been sending soldiers who have consumption from various stations in the United States to San Diego for treatment. This experiment will furnish interesting data. Within a period covering a little over two years, Dr. Huntington, the post surgeon, has had fifteen cases sent to him. Three of these patients had tubercular consumption; twelve had consumption induced by attacks of pneumonia. One of the tubercular patients died within a month after his arrival; the second lived eight months; the third was discharged cured, left the army, and contracted malaria elsewhere, of which he died. The remaining twelve were discharged practically cured of consumption, but two of them subsequently died. It is exceedingly common to meet persons of all ages and both sexes in Southern California who came invalided by disease of the lungs or throat, who have every promise of fair health here, but who dare not leave this climate. The testimony is convincing of the good effect of the climate upon all children, upon women generally, and of its rejuvenating effect upon men and women of advanced years. CHAPTER V. HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. In regard to the effect of climate upon health and longevity, Dr. Remondino quotes old Hufeland that "uniformity in the state of the atmosphere, particularly in regard to heat, cold, gravity, and lightness, contributes in a very considerable degree to the duration of life. Countries, therefore, where great and sudden varieties in the barometer and the thermometer are usual cannot be favorable to longevity. Such countries may be healthy, and many men may become old in them, but they will not attain to a great age, for all rapid variations are so many internal mutations, and these occasion an astonishing consumption both of the forces and the organs." Hufeland thought a marine climate most favorable to longevity. He describes, and perhaps we may say prophesied, a region he had never known, where the conditions and combinations were most favorable to old age, which is epitomized by Dr. Remondino: "where the latitude gives warmth and the sea or ocean tempering winds, where the soil is warm and dry and the sun is also bright and warm, where uninterrupted bright clear weather and a moderate temperature are the rule, where extremes neither of heat nor cold are to be found, where nothing may interfere with the exercise of the aged, and where the actual results and cases of longevity will bear testimony as to the efficacy of all its climatic conditions being favorable to a long and comfortable existence." [Illustration: MIDWINTER, PASADENA.] In an unpublished paper Dr. Remondino comments on the extraordinary endurance of animals and men in the California climate, and cites many cases of uncommon longevity in natives. In reading the accounts of early days in California I am struck with the endurance of hardship, exposure, and wounds by the natives and the adventurers, the rancheros, horsemen, herdsmen, the descendants of soldiers and the Indians, their insensibility to fatigue, and their agility and strength. This is ascribed to the climate; and what is true of man is true of the native horse. His only rival in strength, endurance, speed, and intelligence is the Arabian. It was long supposed that this was racial, and that but for the smallness of the size of the native horse, crossing with it would improve the breed of the Eastern and Kentucky racers. But there was reluctance to cross the finely proportioned Eastern horse with his diminutive Western brother. The importation and breeding of thoroughbreds on this coast has led to the discovery that the desirable qualities of the California horse were not racial but climatic. The Eastern horse has been found to improve in size, compactness of muscle, in strength of limb, in wind, with a marked increase in power of endurance. The traveller here notices the fine horses and their excellent condition, and the power and endurance of those that have considerable age. The records made on Eastern race-courses by horses from California breeding farms have already attracted attention. It is also remarked that the Eastern horse is usually improved greatly by a sojourn of a season or two on this coast, and the plan of bringing Eastern race-horses here for the winter is already adopted. Man, it is asserted by our authority, is as much benefited as the horse by a change to this climate. The new-comer may have certain unpleasant sensations in coming here from different altitudes and conditions, but he will soon be conscious of better being, of increased power in all the functions of life, more natural and recuperative sleep, and an accession of vitality and endurance. Dr. Remondino also testifies that it occasionally happens in this rejuvenation that families which have seemed to have reached their limit at the East are increased after residence here. The early inhabitants of Southern California, according to the statement of Mr. H. H. Bancroft and other reports, were found to be living in Spartan conditions as to temperance and training, and in a highly moral condition, in consequence of which they had uncommon physical endurance and contempt for luxury. This training in abstinence and hardship, with temperance in diet, combined with the climate to produce the astonishing longevity to be found here. Contrary to the customs of most other tribes of Indians, their aged were the care of the community. Dr. W. A. Winder, of San Diego, is quoted as saying that in a visit to El Cajon Valley some thirty years ago he was taken to a house in which the aged persons were cared for. There were half a dozen who had reached an extreme age. Some were unable to move, their bony frame being seemingly anchylosed. They were old, wrinkled, and blear-eyed; their skin was hanging in leathery folds about their withered limbs; some had hair as white as snow, and had seen some seven-score of years; others, still able to crawl, but so aged as to be unable to stand, went slowly about on their hands and knees, their limbs being attenuated and withered. The organs of special sense had in many nearly lost all activity some generations back. Some had lost the use of their limbs for more than a decade or a generation; but the organs of life and the "great sympathetic" still kept up their automatic functions, not recognizing the fact, and surprisingly indifferent to it, that the rest of the body had ceased to be of any use a generation or more in the past. And it is remarked that "these thoracic and abdominal organs and their physiological action being kept alive and active, as it were, against time, and the silent and unconscious functional activity of the great sympathetic and its ganglia, show a tenacity of the animal tissues to hold on to life that is phenomenal." [Illustration: A TYPICAL GARDEN, NEAR SANTA ANA.] I have no space to enter upon the nature of the testimony upon which the age of certain Indians hereafter referred to is based. It is such as to satisfy Dr. Remondino, Dr. Edward Palmer, long connected with the Agricultural Department of the Smithsonian Institution, and Father A. D. Ubach, who has religious charge of the Indians in this region. These Indians were not migratory; they lived within certain limits, and were known to each other. The missions established by the Franciscan friars were built with the assistance of the Indians. The friars have handed down by word of mouth many details in regard to their early missions; others are found in the mission records, such as carefully kept records of family events--births, marriages, and deaths. And there is the testimony of the Indians regarding each other. Father Ubach has known a number who were employed at the building of the mission of San Diego (1769-71), a century before he took charge of this mission. These men had been engaged in carrying timber from the mountains or in making brick, and many of them were living within the last twenty years. There are persons still living at the Indian village of Capitan Grande whose ages he estimates at over one hundred and thirty years. Since the advent of civilization the abstemious habits and Spartan virtues of these Indians have been impaired, and their care for the aged has relaxed. Dr. Palmer has a photograph (which I have seen) of a squaw whom he estimates to be 126 years old. When he visited her he saw her put six watermelons in a blanket, tie it up, and carry it on her back for two miles. He is familiar with Indian customs and history, and a careful cross-examination convinced him that her information of old customs was not obtained by tradition. She was conversant with tribal habits she had seen practised, such as the cremation of the dead, which the mission fathers had compelled the Indians to relinquish. She had seen the Indians punished by the fathers with floggings for persisting in the practice of cremation. At the mission of San Tomas, in Lower California, is still living an Indian (a photograph of whom Dr. Remondino shows), bent and wrinkled, whose age is computed at 140 years. Although blind and naked, he is still active, and daily goes down the beach and along the beds of the creeks in search of drift-wood, making it his daily task to gather and carry to camp a fagot of wood. [Illustration: OLD ADOBE HOUSE, POMONA.] Another instance I give in Dr. Remondino's words: "Philip Crossthwaite, who has lived here since 1843, has an old man on his ranch who mounts his horse and rides about daily, who was a grown man breaking horses for the mission fathers when Don Antonio Serrano was an infant. Don Antonio I know quite well, having attended him through a serious illness some sixteen years ago. Although now at the advanced age of ninety-three, he is as erect as a pine, and he rides his horse with his usual vigor and grace. He is thin and spare and very tall, and those who knew him fifty years or more remember him as the most skilful horseman in the neighborhood of San Diego. And yet, as fabulous as it may seem, the man who danced this Don Antonio on his knee when he was an infant is not only still alive, but is active enough to mount his horse and canter about the country. Some years ago I attended an elderly gentleman, since dead, who knew this man as a full-grown man when he and Don Serrano were play-children together. From a conversation with Father Ubach I learned that the man's age is perfectly authenticated to be beyond one hundred and eighteen years." In the many instances given of extreme old age in this region the habits of these Indians have been those of strict temperance and abstemiousness, and their long life in an equable climate is due to extreme simplicity of diet. In many cases of extreme age the diet has consisted simply of acorns, flour, and water. It is asserted that the climate itself induces temperance in drink and abstemiousness in diet. In his estimate of the climate as a factor of longevity, Dr. Remondino says that it is only necessary to look at the causes of death, and the ages most subject to attack, to understand that the less of these causes that are present the greater are the chances of man to reach great age. "Add to these reflections that you run no gantlet of diseases to undermine or deteriorate the organism; that in this climate childhood finds an escape from those diseases which are the terror of mothers, and against which physicians are helpless, as we have here none of those affections of the first three years of life so prevalent during the summer months in the East and the rest of the United States. Then, again, the chance of gastric or intestinal disease is almost incredibly small. This immunity extends through every age of life. Hepatic and kindred diseases are unknown; of lung affections there is no land that can boast of like exemption. Be it the equability of the temperature or the aseptic condition of the atmosphere, the free sweep of winds or the absence of disease germs, or what else it may be ascribed to, one thing is certain, that there is no pneumonia, bronchitis, or pleurisy lying in wait for either the infant or the aged." [Illustration: FAN-PALM, FERNANDO ST. LOS ANGELES.] The importance of this subject must excuse the space I have given to it. It is evident from this testimony that here are climatic conditions novel and worthy of the most patient scientific investigation. Their effect upon hereditary tendencies and upon persons coming here with hereditary diseases will be studied. Three years ago there was in some localities a visitation of small-pox imported from Mexico. At that time there were cases of pneumonia. Whether these were incident to carelessness in vaccination, or were caused by local unsanitary conditions, I do not know. It is not to be expected that unsanitary conditions will not produce disease here as elsewhere. It cannot be too strongly insisted that this is a climate that the new-comer must get used to, and that he cannot safely neglect the ordinary precautions. The difference between shade and sun is strikingly marked, and he must not be deceived into imprudence by the prevailing sunshine or the general equability. CHAPTER VI. IS RESIDENCE HERE AGREEABLE? After all these averages and statistics, and not considering now the chances of the speculator, the farmer, the fruit-raiser, or the invalid, is Southern California a particularly agreeable winter residence? The question deserves a candid answer, for it is of the last importance to the people of the United States to know the truth--to know whether they have accessible by rail a region free from winter rigor and vicissitudes, and yet with few of the disadvantages of most winter resorts. One would have more pleasure in answering the question if he were not irritated by the perpetual note of brag and exaggeration in every locality that each is the paradise of the earth, and absolutely free from any physical discomfort. I hope that this note of exaggeration is not the effect of the climate, for if it is, the region will never be socially agreeable. There are no sudden changes of season here. Spring comes gradually day by day, a perceptible hourly waking to life and color; and this glides into a summer which never ceases, but only becomes tired and fades into the repose of a short autumn, when the sere and brown and red and yellow hills and the purple mountains are waiting for the rain clouds. This is according to the process of nature; but wherever irrigation brings moisture to the fertile soil, the green and bloom are perpetual the year round, only the green is powdered with dust, and the cultivated flowers have their periods of exhaustion. I should think it well worth while to watch the procession of nature here from late November or December to April. It is a land of delicate and brilliant wild flowers, of blooming shrubs, strange in form and wonderful in color. Before the annual rains the land lies in a sort of swoon in a golden haze; the slopes and plains are bare, the hills yellow with ripe wild-oats or ashy gray with sage, the sea-breeze is weak, the air grows drier, the sun hot, the shade cool. Then one day light clouds stream up from the south-west, and there is a gentle rain. When the sun comes out again its rays are milder, the land is refreshed and brightened, and almost immediately a greenish tinge appears on plain and hill-side. At intervals the rain continues, daily the landscape is greener in infinite variety of shades, which seem to sweep over the hills in waves of color. Upon this carpet of green by February nature begins to weave an embroidery of wild flowers, white, lavender, golden, pink, indigo, scarlet, changing day by day and every day more brilliant, and spreading from patches into great fields until dale and hill and table-land are overspread with a refinement and glory of color that would be the despair of the carpet-weavers of Daghestan. This, with the scent of orange groves and tea-roses, with cool nights, snow in sight on the high mountains, an occasional day of rain, days of bright sunshine, when an overcoat is needed in driving, must suffice the sojourner for winter. He will be humiliated that he is more sensitive to cold than the heliotrope or the violet, but he must bear it. If he is looking for malaria, he must go to some other winter resort. If he wants a "norther" continuing for days, he must move on. If he is accustomed to various insect pests, he will miss them here. If there comes a day warmer than usual, it will not be damp or soggy. So far as nature is concerned there is very little to grumble at, and one resource of the traveller is therefore taken away. But is it interesting? What is there to do? It must be confessed that there is a sort of monotony in the scenery as there is in the climate. There is, to be sure, great variety in a way between coast and mountain, as, for instance, between Santa Barbara and Pasadena, and if the tourist will make a business of exploring the valleys and uplands and cañons little visited, he will not complain of monotony; but the artist and the photographer find the same elements repeated in little varying combinations. There is undeniable repetition in the succession of flower-gardens, fruit orchards, alleys of palms and peppers, vineyards, and the cultivation about the villas is repeated in all directions. The Americans have not the art of making houses or a land picturesque. The traveller is enthusiastic about the exquisite drives through these groves of fruit, with the ashy or the snow-covered hills for background and contrast, and he exclaims at the pretty cottages, vine and rose clad, in their semi-tropical setting, but if by chance he comes upon an old adobe or a Mexican ranch house in the country, he has emotions of a different sort. [Illustration: SCARLET PASSION-VINE.] There is little left of the old Spanish occupation, but the remains of it make the romance of the country, and appeal to our sense of fitness and beauty. It is to be hoped that all such historical associations will be preserved, for they give to the traveller that which our country generally lacks, and which is so largely the attraction of Italy and Spain. Instead of adapting and modifying the houses and homes that the climate suggests, the new American comers have brought here from the East the smartness and prettiness of our modern nondescript architecture. The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or _patio_, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that would suit the climate and the habit of life here. But the present occupiers have taken no hints from the natives. In village and country they have done all they can, in spite of the maguey and the cactus and the palm and the umbrella-tree and the live-oak and the riotous flowers and the thousand novel forms of vegetation, to give everything a prosaic look. But why should the tourist find fault with this? The American likes it, and he would not like the picturesqueness of the Spanish or the Latin races. So far as climate and natural beauty go to make one contented in a winter resort, Southern California has unsurpassed attractions, and both seem to me to fit very well the American temperament; but the associations of art and history are wanting, and the tourist knows how largely his enjoyment of a vacation in Southern Italy or Sicily or Northern Africa depends upon these--upon these and upon the aspects of human nature foreign to his experience. It goes without saying that this is not Europe, either in its human interest or in a certain refinement of landscape that comes only by long cultivation and the occupancy of ages. One advantage of foreign travel to the restless American is that he carries with him no responsibility for the government or the progress of the country he is in, and that he leaves business behind him; whereas in this new country, which is his own, the development of which is so interesting, and in which the opportunities of fortune seem so inviting, he is constantly tempted "to take a hand in." If, however, he is superior to this fever, and is willing simply to rest, to drift along with the equable days, I know of no other place where he can be more truly contented. Year by year the country becomes more agreeable for the traveller, in the first place, through the improvement in the hotels, and in the second, by better roads. In the large villages and cities there are miles of excellent drives, well sprinkled, through delightful avenues, in a park-like country, where the eye is enchanted with color and luxurious vegetation, and captivated by the remarkable beauty of the hills, the wildness and picturesqueness of which enhance the charming cultivation of the orchards and gardens. And no country is more agreeable for riding and driving, for even at mid-day, in the direct sun rays, there is almost everywhere a refreshing breeze, and one rides or drives or walks with little sense of fatigue. The horses are uniformly excellent, either in the carriage or under the saddle. I am sure they are remarkable in speed, endurance, and ease of motion. If the visiting season had no other attraction, the horses would make it distinguished. A great many people like to spend months in a comfortable hotel, lounging on the piazzas, playing lawn-tennis, taking a morning ride or afternoon drive, making an occasional picnic excursion up some mountain cañon, getting up charades, playing at private theatricals, dancing, flirting, floating along with more or less sentiment and only the weariness that comes when there are no duties. There are plenty of places where all these things can be done, and with no sort of anxiety about the weather from week to week, and with the added advantage that the women and children can take care of themselves. But for those who find such a life monotonous there are other resources. There is very good fishing in the clear streams in the foot-hills, hunting in the mountains for large game still worthy of the steadiest nerves, and good bird-shooting everywhere. There are mountains to climb, cañons to explore, lovely valleys in the recesses of the hills to be discovered--in short, one disposed to activity and not afraid of roughing it could occupy himself most agreeably and healthfully in the wild parts of San Bernardino and San Diego counties; he may even still start a grizzly in the Sierra Madre range in Los Angeles County. Hunting and exploring in the mountains, riding over the mesas, which are green from the winter rains and gay with a thousand delicate grasses and flowering plants, is manly occupation to suit the most robust and adventurous. Those who saunter in the trim gardens, or fly from one hotel parlor to the other, do not see the best of Southern California in the winter. CHAPTER VII. THE WINTER ON THE COAST. But the distinction of this coast, and that which will forever make it attractive at the season when the North Atlantic is forbidding, is that the ocean-side is as equable, as delightful, in winter as in summer. Its sea-side places are truly all-the-year-round resorts. In subsequent chapters I shall speak in detail of different places as to climate and development and peculiarities of production. I will now only give a general idea of Southern California as a wintering place. Even as far north as Monterey, in the central part of the State, the famous Hotel del Monte, with its magnificent park of pines and live-oaks, and exquisite flower-gardens underneath the trees, is remarkable for its steadiness of temperature. I could see little difference between the temperature of June and of February. The difference is of course greatest at night. The maximum the year through ranges from about 65° to about 80°, and the minimum from about 35° to about 58°, though there are days when the thermometer goes above 90°, and nights when it falls below 30°. [Illustration: ROSE-BUSH, SANTA BARBARA.] To those who prefer the immediate ocean air to that air as modified by such valleys as the San Gabriel and the Santa Ana, the coast offers a variety of choice in different combinations of sea and mountain climate all along the southern sunny exposure from Santa Barbara to San Diego. In Santa Barbara County the Santa Inez range of mountains runs westward to meet the Pacific at Point Conception. South of this noble range are a number of little valleys opening to the sea, and in one of these, with a harbor and sloping upland and cañon of its own, lies Santa Barbara, looking southward towards the sunny islands of Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz. Above it is the Mission Cañon, at the entrance of which is the best-preserved of the old Franciscan missions. There is a superb drive eastward along the long and curving sea-beach of four miles to the cañon of Monticito, which is rather a series of nooks and terraces, of lovely places and gardens, of plantations of oranges and figs, rising up to the base of the gray mountains. The long line of the Santa Inez suggests the promontory of Sorrento, and a view from the opposite rocky point, which encloses the harbor on the west, by the help of cypresses which look like stone-pines, recalls many an Italian coast scene, and in situation the Bay of Naples. The whole aspect is foreign, enchanting, and the semi-tropical fruits and vines and flowers, with a golden atmosphere poured over all, irresistibly take the mind to scenes of Italian romance. There is still a little Spanish flavor left in the town, in a few old houses, in names and families historic, and in the life without hurry or apprehension. There is a delightful commingling here of sea and mountain air, and in a hundred fertile nooks in the hills one in the most delicate health may be sheltered from every harsh wind. I think no one ever leaves Santa Barbara without a desire to return to it. Farther down the coast, only eighteen miles from Los Angeles, and a sort of Coney Island resort of that thriving city, is Santa Monica. Its hotel stands on a high bluff in a lovely bend of the coast. It is popular in summer as well as winter, as the number of cottages attest, and it was chosen by the directors of the National Soldiers' Home as the site of the Home on the Pacific coast. There the veterans, in a commodious building, dream away their lives most contentedly, and can fancy that they hear the distant thunder of guns in the pounding of the surf. At about the same distance from Los Angeles, southward, above Point Vincent, is Redondo Beach, a new resort, which, from its natural beauty and extensive improvements, promises to be a delightful place of sojourn at any time of the year. The mountainous, embracing arms of the bay are exquisite in contour and color, and the beach is very fine. The hotel is perfectly comfortable--indeed, uncommonly attractive--and the extensive planting of trees, palms, and shrubs, and the cultivation of flowers, will change the place in a year or two into a scene of green and floral loveliness; in this region two years, such is the rapid growth, suffices to transform a desert into a park or garden. On the hills, at a little distance from the beach and pier, are the buildings of the Chautauqua, which holds a local summer session here. The Chautauqua people, the country over, seem to have, in selecting sightly and agreeable sites for their temples of education and amusement, as good judgment as the old monks had in planting their monasteries and missions. [Illustration: AT AVALON, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND.] If one desires a thoroughly insular climate, he may cross to the picturesque island of Santa Catalina. All along the coast flowers bloom in the winter months, and the ornamental semi-tropical plants thrive; and there are many striking headlands and pretty bays and gentle seaward slopes which are already occupied by villages, and attract visitors who would practise economy. The hills frequently come close to the shore, forming those valleys in which the Californians of the pastoral period placed their ranch houses. At San Juan Capristrano the fathers had one of their most flourishing missions, the ruins of which are the most picturesque the traveller will find. It is altogether a genial, attractive coast, and if the tourist does not prefer an inland situation, like the Hotel Raymond (which scarcely has a rival anywhere in its lovely surroundings), he will keep on down the coast to San Diego. The transition from the well-planted counties of Los Angeles and Orange is not altogether agreeable to the eye. One misses the trees. The general aspect of the coast about San Diego is bare in comparison. This simply means that the southern county is behind the others in development. Nestled among the hills there are live-oaks and sycamores; and of course at National City and below, in El Cajon and the valley of the Sweetwater, there are extensive plantations of oranges, lemons, olives, and vines, but the San Diego region generally lies in the sun shadeless. I have a personal theory that much vegetation is inconsistent with the best atmosphere for the human being. The air is nowhere else so agreeable to me as it is in a barren New Mexican or Arizona desert at the proper elevation. I do not know whether the San Diego climate would be injured if the hills were covered with forest and the valleys were all in the highest and most luxuriant vegetation. The theory is that the interaction of the desert and ocean winds will always keep it as it is, whatever man may do. I can only say that, as it is, I doubt if it has its equal the year round for agreeableness and healthfulness in our Union; and it is the testimony of those whose experience of the best Mediterranean climate is more extended and much longer continued than mine, that it is superior to any on that enclosed sea. About this great harbor, whose outer beach has an extent of twenty-five miles, whose inland circuit of mountains must be over fifty miles, there are great varieties of temperature, of shelter and exposure, minute subdivisions of climate, whose personal fitness can only be attested by experience. There is a great difference, for instance, between the quality of the climate at the elevation of the Florence Hotel, San Diego, and the University Heights on the mesa above the town, and that on the long Coronado Beach which protects the inner harbor from the ocean surf. The latter, practically surrounded by water, has a true marine climate, but a peculiar and dry marine climate, as tonic in its effect as that of Capri, and, I believe, with fewer harsh days in the winter season. I wish to speak with entire frankness about this situation, for I am sure that what so much pleases me will suit a great number of people, who will thank me for not being reserved. Doubtless it will not suit hundreds of people as well as some other localities in Southern California, but I found no other place where I had the feeling of absolute content and willingness to stay on indefinitely. There is a geniality about it for which the thermometer does not account, a charm which it is difficult to explain. Much of the agreeability is due to artificial conditions, but the climate man has not made nor marred. The Coronado Beach is about twelve miles long. A narrow sand promontory, running northward from the main-land, rises to the Heights, then broadens into a table-land, which seems to be an island, and measures about a mile and a half each way; this is called South Beach, and is connected by another spit of sand with a like area called North Beach, which forms, with Point Loma, the entrance to the harbor. The North Beach, covered partly with chaparral and broad fields of barley, is alive with quail, and is a favorite coursing-ground for rabbits. The soil, which appears uninviting, is with water uncommonly fertile, being a mixture of loam, disintegrated granite, and decomposed shells, and especially adapted to flowers, rare tropical trees, fruits, and flowering shrubs of all countries. The development is on the South Beach, which was in January, 1887, nothing but a waste of sand and chaparral. I doubt if the world can show a like transformation in so short a time. I saw it in February of that year, when all the beauty, except that of ocean, sky, and atmosphere, was still to be imagined. It is now as if the wand of the magician had touched it. In the first place, abundance of water was brought over by a submarine conduit, and later from the extraordinary Coronado Springs (excellent soft water for drinking and bathing, and with a recognized medicinal value), and with these streams the beach began to bloom like a tropical garden. Tens of thousands of trees have attained a remarkable growth in three years. The nursery is one of the most interesting botanical and flower gardens in the country; palms and hedges of Monterey cypress and marguerites line the avenues. There are parks and gardens of rarest flowers and shrubs, whose brilliant color produces the same excitement in the mind as strains of martial music. A railway traverses the beach for a mile from the ferry to the hotel. There are hundreds of cottages with their gardens scattered over the surface; there is a race-track, a museum, an ostrich farm, a labyrinth, good roads for driving, and a dozen other attractions for the idle or the inquisitive. [Illustration: HOTEL DEL CORONADO.] The hotel stands upon the south front of the beach and near the sea, above which it is sufficiently elevated to give a fine prospect. The sound of the beating surf is perpetual there. At low tide there is a splendid driving beach miles in extent, and though the slope is abrupt, the opportunity for bathing is good, with a little care in regard to the undertow. But there is a safe natatorium on the harbor side close to the hotel. The stranger, when he first comes upon this novel hotel and this marvellous scene of natural and created beauty, is apt to exhaust his superlatives. I hesitate to attempt to describe this hotel--this airy and picturesque and half-bizarre wooden creation of the architect. Taking it and its situation together, I know nothing else in the world with which to compare it, and I have never seen any other which so surprised at first, that so improved on a two weeks' acquaintance, and that has left in the mind an impression so entirely agreeable. It covers about four and a half acres of ground, including an inner court of about an acre, the rich made soil of which is raised to the level of the main floor. The house surrounds this, in the Spanish mode of building, with a series of galleries, so that most of the suites of rooms have a double outlook--one upon this lovely garden, the other upon the ocean or the harbor. The effect of this interior court or _patio_ is to give gayety and an air of friendliness to the place, brilliant as it is with flowers and climbing vines; and when the royal and date palms that are vigorously thriving in it attain their growth it will be magnificent. Big hotels and caravansaries are usually tiresome, unfriendly places; and if I should lay too much stress upon the vast dining-room (which has a floor area of ten thousand feet without post or pillar), or the beautiful breakfast-room, or the circular ballroom (which has an area of eleven thousand feet, with its timber roof open to the lofty observatory), or the music-room, billiard-rooms for ladies, the reading-rooms and parlors, the pretty gallery overlooking the spacious office rotunda, and then say that the whole is illuminated with electric lights, and capable of being heated to any temperature desired--I might convey a false impression as to the actual comfort and home-likeness of this charming place. On the sea side the broad galleries of each story are shut in by glass, which can be opened to admit or shut to exclude the fresh ocean breeze. Whatever the temperature outside, those great galleries are always agreeable for lounging or promenading. For me, I never tire of the sea and its changing color and movement. If this great house were filled with guests, so spacious are its lounging places I should think it would never appear to be crowded; and if it were nearly empty, so admirably are the rooms contrived for family life it will not seem lonesome. I shall add that the management is of the sort that makes the guest feel at home and at ease. Flowers, brought in from the gardens and nurseries, are every where in profusion--on the dining-tables, in the rooms, all about the house. So abundantly are they produced that no amount of culling seems to make an impression upon their mass. [Illustration: OSTRICH YARD, CORONADO BEACH.] But any description would fail to give the secret of the charm of existence here. Restlessness disappears, for one thing, but there is no languor or depression. I cannot tell why, when the thermometer is at 60° or 63°, the air seems genial and has no sense of chilliness, or why it is not oppressive at 80° or 85°. I am sure the place will not suit those whose highest idea of winter enjoyment is tobogganing and an ice palace, nor those who revel in the steam and languor of a tropical island; but for a person whose desires are moderate, whose tastes are temperate, who is willing for once to be good-humored and content in equable conditions, I should commend Coronado Beach and the Hotel del Coronado, if I had not long ago learned that it is unsafe to commend to any human being a climate or a doctor. But you can take your choice. It lies there, our Mediterranean region, on a blue ocean, protected by barriers of granite from the Northern influences, an infinite variety of plain, cañon, hills, valleys, sea-coast; our New Italy without malaria, and with every sort of fruit which we desire (except the tropical), which will be grown in perfection when our knowledge equals our ambition; and if you cannot find a winter home there or pass some contented weeks in the months of Northern inclemency, you are weighing social advantages against those of the least objectionable climate within the Union. It is not yet proved that this equability and the daily out-door life possible there will change character, but they are likely to improve the disposition and soften the asperities of common life. At any rate, there is a land where from November to April one has not to make a continual fight with the elements to keep alive. It has been said that this land of the sun and of the equable climate will have the effect that other lands of a southern aspect have upon temperament and habits. It is feared that Northern-bred people, who are guided by the necessity of making hay while the sun shines, will not make hay at all in a land where the sun always shines. It is thought that unless people are spurred on incessantly by the exigencies of the changing seasons they will lose energy, and fall into an idle floating along with gracious nature. Will not one sink into a comfortable and easy procrastination if he has a whole year in which to perform the labor of three months? Will Southern California be an exception to those lands of equable climate and extraordinary fertility where every effort is postponed till "to-morrow?" I wish there might be something solid in this expectation; that this may be a region where the restless American will lose something of his hurry and petty, feverish ambition. Partially it may be so. He will take, he is already taking, something of the tone of the climate and of the old Spanish occupation. But the race instinct of thrift and of "getting on" will not wear out in many generations. Besides, the condition of living at all in Southern California in comfort, and with the social life indispensable to our people, demands labor, not exhausting and killing, but still incessant--demands industry. A land that will not yield satisfactorily without irrigation, and whose best paying produce requires intelligent as well as careful husbandry, will never be an idle land. Egypt, with all its _dolce far niente_, was never an idle land for the laborer. It may be expected, however, that no more energy will be developed or encouraged than is needed for the daily tasks, and these tasks being lighter than elsewhere, and capable of being postponed, that there will be less stress and strain in the daily life. Although the climate of Southern California is not enervating, in fact is stimulating to the new-comer, it is doubtless true that the monotony of good weather, of the sight of perpetual bloom and color in orchards and gardens, will take away nervousness and produce a certain placidity, which might be taken for laziness by a Northern observer. It may be that engagements will not be kept with desired punctuality, under the impression that the enjoyment of life does not depend upon exact response to the second-hand of a watch; and it is not unpleasant to think that there is a corner of the Union where there will be a little more leisure, a little more of serene waiting on Providence, an abatement of the restless rush and haste of our usual life. The waves of population have been rolling westward for a long time, and now, breaking over the mountains, they flow over Pacific slopes and along the warm and inviting seas. Is it altogether an unpleasing thought that the conditions of life will be somewhat easier there, that there will be some physical repose, the race having reached the sunset of the continent, comparable to the desirable placidity of life called the sunset of old age? This may be altogether fanciful, but I have sometimes felt, in the sunny moderation of nature there, that this land might offer for thousands at least a winter of content. CHAPTER VIII. THE GENERAL OUTLOOK.--LAND AND PRICES. From the northern limit of California to the southern is about the same distance as from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Charleston, South Carolina. Of these two coast lines, covering nearly ten degrees of latitude, or over seven hundred miles, the Atlantic has greater extremes of climate and greater monthly variations, and the Pacific greater variety of productions. The State of California is, however, so mountainous, cut by longitudinal and transverse ranges, that any reasonable person can find in it a temperature to suit him the year through. But it does not need to be explained that it would be difficult to hit upon any general characteristic that would apply to the stretch of the Atlantic coast named, as a guide to a settler looking for a home; the description of Massachusetts would be wholly misleading for South Carolina. It is almost as difficult to make any comprehensive statement about the long line of the California coast. It is possible, however, limiting the inquiry to the southern third of the State--an area of about fifty-eight thousand square miles, as large as Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island--to answer fairly some of the questions oftenest asked about it. These relate to the price of land, its productiveness, the kind of products most profitable, the sort of labor required, and its desirability as a place of residence for the laborer, for the farmer or horticulturist of small means, and for the man with considerable capital. Questions on these subjects cannot be answered categorically, but I hope to be able, by setting down my own observations and using trustworthy reports, to give others the material on which to exercise their judgment. In the first place, I think it demonstrable that a person would profitably exchange 160 acres of farming land east of the one hundredth parallel for ten acres, with a water right, in Southern California. [Illustration: YUCCA-PALM.] In making this estimate I do not consider the question of health or merely the agreeability of the climate, but the conditions of labor, the ease with which one could support a family, and the profits over and above a fair living. It has been customary in reckoning the value of land there to look merely to the profit of it beyond its support of a family, forgetting that agriculture and horticulture the world over, like almost all other kinds of business, usually do little more than procure a good comfortable living, with incidental education, to those who engage in them. That the majority of the inhabitants of Southern California will become rich by the culture of the orange and the vine is an illusion; but it is not an illusion that twenty times its present population can live there in comfort, in what might be called luxury elsewhere, by the cultivation of the soil, all far removed from poverty and much above the condition of the majority of the inhabitants of the foreign wine and fruit-producing countries. This result is assured by the extraordinary productiveness of the land, uninterrupted the year through, and by the amazing extension of the market in the United States for products that can be nowhere else produced with such certainty and profusion as in California. That State is only just learning how to supply a demand which is daily increasing, but it already begins to command the market in certain fruits. This command of the market in the future will depend upon itself, that is, whether it will send East and North only sound wine, instead of crude, ill-cured juice of the grape, only the best and most carefully canned apricots, nectarines, peaches, and plums, only the raisins and prunes perfectly prepared, only such oranges, lemons, and grapes and pears as the Californians are willing to eat themselves. California has yet much to learn about fruit-raising and fruit-curing, but it already knows that to compete with the rest of the world in our markets it must beat the rest of the world in quality. It will take some time yet to remove the unfavorable opinion of California wines produced in the East by the first products of the vineyards sent here. [Illustration: DATE-PALM.] The difficulty for the settler is that he cannot "take up" ten acres with water in California as he can 160 acres elsewhere. There is left little available Government land. There is plenty of government land not taken up and which may never be occupied, that is, inaccessible mountain and irreclaimable desert. There are also little nooks and fertile spots here and there to be discovered which may be pre-empted, and which will some day have value. But practically all the arable land, or that is likely to become so, is owned now in large tracts, under grants or by wholesale purchase. The circumstances of the case compelled associate effort. Such a desert as that now blooming region known as Pasadena, Pomona, Riverside, and so on, could not be subdued by individual exertion. Consequently land and water companies were organized. They bought large tracts of unimproved land, built dams in the mountain cañons, sunk wells, drew water from the rivers, made reservoirs, laid pipes, carried ditches and conduits across the country, and then sold the land with the inseparable water right in small parcels. Thus the region became subdivided among small holders, each independent, but all mutually dependent as to water, which is the _sine qua non_ of existence. It is only a few years since there was a forlorn and struggling colony a few miles east of Los Angeles known as the Indiana settlement. It had scant water, no railway communication, and everything to learn about horticulture. That spot is now the famous Pasadena. What has been done in the Santa Ana and San Gabriel valleys will be done elsewhere in the State. There are places in Kern County, north of the Sierra Madre, where the land produces grain and alfalfa without irrigation, where farms can be bought at from five to ten dollars an acre--land that will undoubtedly increase in value with settlement and also by irrigation. The great county of San Diego is practically undeveloped, and contains an immense area, in scattered mesas and valleys, of land which will produce apples, grain, and grass without irrigation, and which the settler can get at moderate prices. Nay, more, any one with a little ready money, who goes to Southern California expecting to establish himself and willing to work, will be welcomed and aided, and be pretty certain to find some place where he can steadily improve his condition. But the regions about which one hears most, which are already fruit gardens and well sprinkled with rose-clad homes, command prices per acre which seem extravagant. Land, however, like a mine, gets its value from what it will produce; and it is to be noted that while the subsidence of the "boom" knocked the value out of twenty-feet city lots staked out in the wilderness, and out of insanely inflated city property, the land upon which crops are raised has steadily appreciated in value. So many conditions enter into the price of land that it is impossible to name an average price for the arable land of the southern counties, but I have heard good judges place it at $100 an acre. The lands, with water, are very much alike in their producing power, but some, for climatic reasons, are better adapted to citrus fruits, others to the raisin grape, and others to deciduous fruits. The value is also affected by railway facilities, contiguity to the local commercial centre, and also by the character of the settlement--that is, by its morality, public spirit, and facilities for education. Every town and settlement thinks it has special advantages as to improved irrigation, equability of temperature, adaptation to this or that product, attractions for invalids, tempered ocean breezes, protection from "northers," schools, and varied industries. These things are so much matter of personal choice that each settler will do well to examine widely for himself, and not buy until he is suited. Some figures, which may be depended on, of actual sales and of annual yields, may be of service. They are of the district east of Pasadena and Pomona, but fairly represent the whole region down to Los Angeles. The selling price of raisin grape land unimproved, but with water, at Riverside is $250 to $300 per acre; at South Riverside, $150 to $200; in the highland district of San Bernardino, and at Redlands (which is a new settlement east of the city of San Bernardino), $200 to $250 per acre. At Banning and at Hesperia, which lie north of the San Bernardino range, $125 to $150 per acre are the prices asked. Distance from the commercial centre accounts for the difference in price in the towns named. The crop varies with the care and skill of the cultivator, but a fair average from the vines at two years is two tons per acre; three years, three tons; four years, five tons; five years, seven tons. The price varies with the season, and also whether its sale is upon the vines, or after picking, drying, and sweating, or the packed product. On the vines $20 per ton is a fair average price. In exceptional cases vineyards at Riverside have produced four tons per acre in twenty months from the setting of the cuttings, and six-year-old vines have produced thirteen and a half tons per acre. If the grower has a crop of, say, 2000 packed boxes of raisins of twenty pounds each box, it will pay him to pack his own crop and establish a "brand" for it. In 1889 three adjoining vineyards in Riverside, producing about the same average crops, were sold as follows: The first vineyard, at $17 50 per ton on the vines, yielded $150 per acre; the second, at six cents a pound, in the sweat boxes, yielded $276 per acre; the third, at $1 80 per box, packed, yielded $414 per acre. Land adapted to the deciduous fruits, such as apricots and peaches, is worth as much as raisin land, and some years pays better. The pear and the apple need greater elevation, and are of better quality when grown on high ground than in the valleys. I have reason to believe that the mountain regions of San Diego County are specially adapted to the apple. Good orange land unimproved, but with water, is worth from $300 to $500 an acre. If we add to this price the cost of budded trees, the care of them for four years, and interest at eight per cent. per annum for four years, the cost of a good grove will be about $1000 an acre. It must be understood that the profit of an orange grove depends upon care, skill, and business ability. The kind of orange grown with reference to the demand, the judgment about more or less irrigation as affecting the quality, the cultivation of the soil, and the arrangements for marketing, are all elements in the problem. There are young groves at Riverside, five years old, that are paying ten per cent. net upon from $3000 to $5000 an acre; while there are older groves, which, at the prices for fruit in the spring of 1890--$1 60 per box for seedlings and $3 per box for navels delivered at the packing-houses--paid at the rate of ten per cent. net on $7500 per acre. In all these estimates water must be reckoned as a prime factor. What, then, is water worth per inch, generally, in all this fruit region from Redlands to Los Angeles? It is worth just the amount it will add to the commercial value of land irrigated by it, and that may be roughly estimated at from $500 to $1000 an inch of continuous flow. Take an illustration. A piece of land at Riverside below the flow of water was worth $300 an acre. Contiguous to it was another piece not irrigated which would not sell for $50 an acre. By bringing water to it, it would quickly sell for $300, thus adding $250 to its value. As the estimate at Riverside is that one inch of water will irrigate five acres of fruit land, five times $250 would be $1250 per inch, at which price water for irrigation has actually been sold at Riverside. The standard of measurement of water in Southern California is the miner's inch under four inches' pressure, or the amount that will flow through an inch-square opening under a pressure of four inches measured from the surface of the water in the conduit to the centre of the opening through which it flows. This is nine gallons a minute, or, as it is figured, 1728 cubic feet or 12,960 gallons in twenty-four hours, and 1.50 of a cubic foot a second. This flow would cover ten acres about eighteen inches deep in a year; that is, it would give the land the equivalent of eighteen inches of rain, distributed exactly when and where it was needed, none being wasted, and more serviceable than fifty inches of rainfall as it generally comes. This, with the natural rainfall, is sufficient for citrus fruits and for corn and alfalfa, in soil not too sandy, and it is too much for grapes and all deciduous fruits. CHAPTER IX. THE ADVANTAGES OF IRRIGATION. It is necessary to understand this problem of irrigation in order to comprehend Southern California, the exceptional value of its arable land, the certainty and great variety of its products, and the part it is to play in our markets. There are three factors in the expectation of a crop--soil, sunshine, and water. In a region where we can assume the first two to be constant, the only uncertainty is water. Southern California is practically without rain from May to December. Upon this fact rests the immense value of its soil, and the certainty that it can supply the rest of the Union with a great variety of products. This certainty must be purchased by a previous investment of money. Water is everywhere to be had for money, in some localities by surface wells, in others by artesian-wells, in others from such streams as the Los Angeles and the Santa Ana, and from reservoirs secured by dams in the heart of the high mountains. It is possible to compute the cost of any one of the systems of irrigation, to determine whether it will pay by calculating the amount of land it will irrigate. The cost of procuring water varies greatly with the situation, and it is conceivable that money can be lost in such an investment, but I have yet to hear of any irrigation that has not been more or less successful. Farming and fruit-raising are usually games of hazard. Good crops and poor crops depend upon enough rain and not too much at just the right times. A wheat field which has a good start with moderate rain may later wither in a drought, or be ruined by too much water at the time of maturity. And, avoiding all serious reverses from either dryness or wet, every farmer knows that the quality and quantity of the product would be immensely improved if the growing stalks and roots could have water when and only when they need it. The difference would be between, say, twenty and forty bushels of grain or roots to the acre, and that means the difference between profit and loss. There is probably not a crop of any kind grown in the great West that would not be immensely benefited if it could be irrigated once or twice a year; and probably anywhere that water is attainable the cost of irrigation would be abundantly paid in the yield from year to year. Farming in the West with even a little irrigation would not be the game of hazard that it is. And it may further be assumed that there is not a vegetable patch or a fruit orchard East or West that would not yield better quality and more abundantly with irrigation. [Illustration: RAISIN-CURING.] But this is not all. Any farmer who attempts to raise grass and potatoes and strawberries on contiguous fields, subject to the same chance of drought or rainfall, has a vivid sense of his difficulties. The potatoes are spoiled by the water that helps the grass, and the coquettish strawberry will not thrive on the regimen that suits the grosser crops. In California, which by its climate and soil gives a greater variety of products than any other region in the Union, the supply of water is adjusted to the needs of each crop, even on contiguous fields. No two products need the same amount of water, or need it at the same time. The orange needs more than the grape, the alfalfa more than the orange, the peach and apricot less than the orange; the olive, the fig, the almond, the English walnut, demand each a different supply. Depending entirely on irrigation six months of the year, the farmer in Southern California is practically certain of his crop year after year; and if all his plants and trees are in a healthful condition, as they will be if he is not too idle to cultivate as well as irrigate, his yield will be about double what it would be without systematic irrigation. It is this practical control of the water the year round, in a climate where sunshine is the rule, that makes the productiveness of California so large as to be incomprehensible to Eastern people. Even the trees are not dormant more than three or four months in the year. But irrigation, in order to be successful, must be intelligently applied. In unskilful hands it may work more damage than benefit. Mr. Theodore S. Van Dyke, who may always be quoted with confidence, says that the ground should never be flooded; that water must not touch the plant or tree, or come near enough to make the soil bake around it; and that it should be let in in small streams for two or three days, and not in large streams for a few hours. It is of the first importance that the ground shall be stirred as soon as dry enough, the cultivation to be continued, and water never to be substituted for the cultivator to prevent baking. The methods of irrigation in use may be reduced to three. First, the old Mexican way--running a small ditch from tree to tree, without any basin round the tree. Second, the basin system, where a large basin is made round the tree, and filled several times. This should only be used where water is scarce, for it trains the roots like a brush, instead of sending them out laterally into the soil. Third, the Riverside method, which is the best in the world, and produces the largest results with the least water and the least work. It is the closest imitation of the natural process of wetting by gentle rain. "A small flume, eight or ten inches square, of common red-wood is laid along the upper side of a ten-acre tract. At intervals of one to three feet, according to the nature of the ground and the stuff to be irrigated, are bored one-inch holes, with a small wooden button over them to regulate the flow. This flume costs a trifle, is left in position, lasts for years, and is always ready. Into this flume is turned from the ditch an irrigating head of 20, 25, or 30 inches of water, generally about 20 inches. This is divided by the holes and the buttons into streams of from one-sixth to one-tenth of an inch each, making from 120 to 200 small streams. From five to seven furrows are made between two rows of trees, two between rows of grapes, one furrow between rows of corn, potatoes, etc. It may take from fifteen to twenty hours for one of the streams to get across the tract. They are allowed to run from forty-eight to seventy-two hours. The ground is then thoroughly wet in all directions, and three or four feet deep. As soon as the ground is dry enough cultivation is begun, and kept up from six to eight weeks before water is used again." Only when the ground is very sandy is the basin system necessary. Long experiment has taught that this system is by far the best; and, says Mr. Van Dyke, "Those whose ideas are taken from the wasteful systems of flooding or soaking from big ditches have something to learn in Southern California." As to the quantity of water needed in the kind of soil most common in Southern California I will again quote Mr. Van Dyke: "They will tell you at Riverside that they use an inch of water to five acres, and some say an inch to three acres. But this is because they charge to the land all the waste on the main ditch, and because they use thirty per cent. of the water in July and August, when it is the lowest. But this is no test of the duty of water; the amount actually delivered on the land should be taken. What they actually use for ten acres at Riverside, Redlands, etc., is a twenty-inch stream of three days' run five times a year, equal to 300 inches for one day, or one inch steady run for 300 days. As an inch is the equivalent of 365 inches for one day, or one inch for 365 days, 300 inches for one day equals an inch to twelve acres. Many use even less than this, running the water only two or two and a half days at a time. Others use more head; but it rarely exceeds 24 inches for three days and five times a year, which would be 72 multiplied by 5, or 360 inches--a little less than a full inch for a year for ten acres." [Illustration: IRRIGATION BY ARTESIAN-WELL SYSTEM.] [Illustration: IRRIGATION BY PIPE SYSTEM.] I have given room to these details because the Riverside experiment, which results in such large returns of excellent fruit, is worthy of the attention of cultivators everywhere. The constant stirring of the soil, to keep it loose as well as to keep down useless growths, is second in importance only to irrigation. Some years ago, when it was ascertained that tracts of land which had been regarded as only fit for herding cattle and sheep would by good ploughing and constant cultivation produce fair crops without any artificial watering, there spread abroad a notion that irrigation could be dispensed with. There are large areas, dry and cracked on the surface, where the soil is moist three and four feet below the surface in the dry season. By keeping the surface broken and well pulverized the moisture rises sufficiently to insure a crop. Many Western farmers have found out this secret of cultivation, and more will learn in time the good sense of not spreading themselves over too large an area; that forty acres planted and cultivated will give a better return than eighty acres planted and neglected. Crops of various sorts are raised in Southern California by careful cultivation with little or no irrigation, but the idea that cultivation alone will bring sufficiently good production is now practically abandoned, and the almost universal experience is that judicious irrigation always improves the crop in quality and in quantity, and that irrigation and cultivation are both essential to profitable farming or fruit-raising. CHAPTER X. THE CHANCE FOR LABORERS AND SMALL FARMERS. It would seem, then, that capital is necessary for successful agriculture or horticulture in Southern California. But where is it not needed? In New England? In Kansas, where land which was given to actual settlers is covered with mortgages for money absolutely necessary to develop it? But passing this by, what is the chance in Southern California for laborers and for mechanics? Let us understand the situation. In California there is no exception to the rule that continual labor, thrift, and foresight are essential to the getting of a good living or the gaining of a competence. No doubt speculation will spring up again. It is inevitable with the present enormous and yearly increasing yield of fruits, the better intelligence in vine culture, wine-making, and raisin-curing, the growth of marketable oranges, lemons, etc., and the consequent rise in the value of land. Doubtless fortunes will be made by enterprising companies who secure large areas of unimproved land at low prices, bring water on them, and then sell in small lots. But this will come to an end. The tendency is to subdivide the land into small holdings--into farms and gardens of ten and twenty acres. The great ranches are sure to be broken up. With the resulting settlement by industrious people the cities will again experience "booms;" but these are not peculiar to California. In my mind I see the time when this region (because it will pay better proportionally to cultivate a small area) will be one of small farms, of neat cottages, of industrious homes. The owner is pretty certain to prosper--that is, to get a good living (which is independence), and lay aside a little yearly--if the work is done by himself and his family. And the peculiarity of the situation is that the farm or garden, whichever it is called, will give agreeable and most healthful occupation to all the boys and girls in the family all the days in the year that can be spared from the school. Aside from the ploughing, the labor is light. Pruning, grafting, budding, the picking of the grapes, the gathering of the fruit from the trees, the sorting, packing, and canning, are labor for light and deft hands, and labor distributed through the year. The harvest, of one sort and another, is almost continuous, so that young girls and boys can have, in well-settled districts, pretty steady employment--a long season in establishments packing oranges; at another time, in canning fruits; at another, in packing raisins. It goes without saying that in the industries now developed, and in others as important which are in their infancy (for instance, the culture of the olive for oil and as an article of food; the growth and curing of figs; the gathering of almonds, English walnuts, etc.), the labor of the owners of the land and their families will not suffice. There must be as large a proportion of day-laborers as there are in other regions where such products are grown. Chinese labor at certain seasons has been a necessity. Under the present policy of California this must diminish, and its place be taken by some other. The pay for this labor has always been good. It is certain to be more and more in demand. Whether the pay will ever approach near to the European standard is a question, but it is a fair presumption that the exceptional profit of the land, owing to its productiveness, will for a long time keep wages up. During the "boom" period all wages were high, those of skilled mechanics especially, owing to the great amount of building on speculation. The ordinary laborer on a ranch had $30 a month and board and lodging; laborers of a higher grade, $2 to $2 50 a day; skilled masons, $6; carpenters, from $3 50 to $5; plasterers, $4 to $5; house-servants, from $23 to $33 a month. Since the "boom," wages of skilled mechanics have declined at least 25 per cent., and there has been less demand for labor generally, except in connection with fruit raising and harvesting. It would be unwise for laborers to go to California on an uncertainty, but it can be said of that country with more confidence than of any other section that its peculiar industries, now daily increasing, will absorb an increasing amount of day labor, and later on it will remunerate skilled artisan labor. In deciding whether Southern California would be an agreeable place of residence there are other things to be considered besides the productiveness of the soil, the variety of products, the ease of out-door labor distributed through the year, the certainty of returns for intelligent investment with labor, the equability of summer and winter, and the adaptation to personal health. There are always disadvantages attending the development of a new country and the evolution of a new society. It is not a small thing, and may be one of daily discontent, the change from a landscape clad with verdure, the riotous and irrepressible growth of a rainy region, to a land that the greater part of the year is green only where it is artificially watered, where all the hills and unwatered plains are brown and sere, where the foliage is coated with dust, and where driving anywhere outside the sprinkled avenues of a town is to be enveloped in a cloud of powdered earth. This discomfort must be weighed against the commercial advantages of a land of irrigation. [Illustration: GARDEN SCENE, SANTA ANA.] What are the chances for a family of very moderate means to obtain a foothold and thrive by farming in Southern California? I cannot answer this better than by giving substantially the experience of one family, and by saying that this has been paralleled, with change of details, by many others. Of course, in a highly developed settlement, where the land is mostly cultivated, and its actual yearly produce makes its price very high, it is not easy to get a foothold. But there are many regions--say in Orange County, and certainly in San Diego--where land can be had at a moderate price and on easy terms of payment. Indeed, there are few places, as I have said, where an industrious family would not find welcome and cordial help in establishing itself. And it must be remembered that there are many communities where life is very simple, and the great expense of keeping up an appearance attending life elsewhere need not be reckoned. A few years ago a professional man in a New England city, who was in delicate health, with his wife and five boys, all under sixteen, and one too young to be of any service, moved to San Diego. He had in money a small sum, less than a thousand dollars. He had no experience in farming or horticulture, and his health would not have permitted him to do much field work in our climate. Fortunately he found in the fertile El Cajon Valley, fifteen miles from San Diego, a farmer and fruit-grower, who had upon his place a small unoccupied house. Into that house he moved, furnishing it very simply with furniture bought in San Diego, and hired his services to the landlord. The work required was comparatively easy, in the orchard and vineyards, and consisted largely in superintending other laborers. The pay was about enough to support his family without encroaching on his little capital. Very soon, however, he made an arrangement to buy the small house and tract of some twenty acres on which he lived, on time, perhaps making a partial payment. He began at once to put out an orange orchard and plant a vineyard; this he accomplished with the assistance of his boys, who did practically most of the work after the first planting, leaving him a chance to give most of his days to his employer. The orchard and vineyard work is so light that a smart, intelligent boy is almost as valuable a worker in the field as a man. The wife, meantime, kept the house and did its work. House-keeping was comparatively easy; little fuel was required except for cooking; the question of clothes was a minor one. In that climate wants for a fairly comfortable existence are fewer than with us. From the first, almost, vegetables, raised upon the ground while the vines and oranges were growing, contributed largely to the support of the family. The out-door life and freedom from worry insured better health, and the diet of fruit and vegetables, suitable to the climate, reduced the cost of living to a minimum. As soon as the orchard and the vineyard began to produce fruit, the owner was enabled to quit working for his neighbor, and give all his time to the development of his own place. He increased his planting; he added to his house; he bought a piece of land adjoining which had a grove of eucalyptus, which would supply him with fuel. At first the society circle was small, and there was no school; but the incoming of families had increased the number of children, so that an excellent public school was established. When I saw him he was living in conditions of comfortable industry; his land had trebled in value; the pair of horses which he drove he had bought cheap, for they were Eastern horses; but the climate had brought them up, so that the team was a serviceable one in good condition. The story is not one of brilliant success, but to me it is much more hopeful for the country than the other tales I heard of sudden wealth or lucky speculation. It is the founding in an unambitious way of a comfortable home. The boys of the family will branch out, get fields, orchards, vineyards of their own, and add to the solid producing industry of the country. This orderly, contented industry, increasing its gains day by day, little by little, is the life and hope of any State. CHAPTER XI. SOME DETAILS OF THE WONDERFUL DEVELOPMENT. It is not the purpose of this volume to describe Southern California. That has been thoroughly done; and details, with figures and pictures in regard to every town and settlement, will be forthcoming on application, which will be helpful guides to persons who can see for themselves, or make sufficient allowance for local enthusiasm. But before speaking further of certain industries south of the great mountain ranges, the region north of the Sierra Madre, which is allied to Southern California by its productions, should be mentioned. The beautiful antelope plains and the Kern Valley (where land is still cheap and very productive) should not be overlooked. The splendid San Joaquin Valley is already speaking loudly and clearly for itself. The region north of the mountains of Kern County, shut in by the Sierra Nevada range on the east and the Coast Range on the west, substantially one valley, fifty to sixty miles in breadth, watered by the King and the San Joaquin, and gently sloping to the north, say for two hundred miles, is a land of marvellous capacity, capable of sustaining a dense population. It is cooler in winter than Southern California, and the summers average much warmer. Owing to the greater heat, the fruits mature sooner. It is just now becoming celebrated for its raisins, which in quality are unexcelled; and its area, which can be well irrigated from the rivers and from the mountains on either side, seems capable of producing raisins enough to supply the world. It is a wonderfully rich valley in a great variety of products. Fresno County, which occupies the centre of this valley, has 1,200,000 acres of agricultural and 4,400,000 of mountain and pasture land. The city of Fresno, which occupies land that in 1870 was a sheep ranch, is the commercial centre of a beautiful agricultural and fruit region, and has a population estimated at 12,000. From this centre were shipped in the season of 1890, 1500 car-loads of raisins. In 1865 the only exports of Fresno County were a few bales of wool. The report of 1889 gave a shipment of 700,000 boxes of raisins, and the whole export of 1890, of all products, was estimated at $10,000,000. Whether these figures are exact or not, there is no doubt of the extraordinary success of the raisin industry, nor that this is a region of great activity and promise. The traveller has constantly to remind himself that this is a new country, and to be judged as a new country. It is out of his experience that trees can grow so fast, and plantations in so short a time put on an appearance of maturity. When he sees a roomy, pretty cottage overrun with vines and flowering plants, set in the midst of trees and lawns and gardens of tropical appearance and luxuriance, he can hardly believe that three years before this spot was desert land. When he looks over miles of vineyards, of groves of oranges, olives, walnuts, prunes, the trees all in vigorous bearing, he cannot believe that five or ten years before the whole region was a waste. When he enters a handsome village, with substantial buildings of brick, and perhaps of stone, with fine school-houses, banks, hotels, an opera-house, large packing-houses, and warehouses and shops of all sorts, with tasteful dwellings and lovely ornamented lawns, it is hard to understand that all this is the creation of two or three years. Yet these surprises meet the traveller at every turn, and the wonder is that there is not visible more crudeness, eccentric taste, and evidence of hasty beginnings. [Illustration: A GRAPE-VINE, MONTECITO VALLEY, SANTA BARBARA.] San Bernardino is comparatively an old town. It was settled in 1853 by a colony of Mormons from Salt Lake. The remains of this colony, less than a hundred, still live here, and have a church like the other sects, but they call themselves Josephites, and do not practise polygamy. There is probably not a sect or schism in the United States that has not its representative in California. Until 1865 San Bernardino was merely a straggling settlement, and a point of distribution for Arizona. The discovery that a large part of the county was adapted to the orange and the vine, and the advent of the Santa Fé railway, changed all that. Land that then might have been bought for $4 an acre is now sold at from $200 to $300, and the city has become the busy commercial centre of a large number of growing villages, and of one of the most remarkable orange and vine districts in the world. It has many fine buildings, a population of about 6000, and a decided air of vigorous business. The great plain about it is mainly devoted to agricultural products, which are grown without irrigation, while in the near foot-hills the orange and the vine flourish by the aid of irrigation. Artesian-wells abound in the San Bernardino plain, but the mountains are the great and unfailing source of water supply. The Bear Valley Dam is a most daring and gigantic construction. A solid wall of masonry, 300 feet long and 60 feet high, curving towards the reservoir, creates an inland lake in the mountains holding water enough to irrigate 20,000 acres of land. This is conveyed to distributing reservoirs in the east end of the valley. On a terrace in the foot-hills a few miles to the north, 2000 feet above the sea, are the Arrow-head Hot Springs (named from the figure of a gigantic "arrow-head" on the mountain above), already a favorite resort for health and pleasure. The views from the plain of the picturesque foot-hills and the snow-peaks of the San Bernardino range are exceedingly fine. The marvellous beauty of the purple and deep violet of the giant hills at sunset, with spotless snow, lingers in the memory. Perhaps the settlement of Redlands, ten miles by rail east of San Bernardino, is as good an illustration as any of rapid development and great promise. It is devoted to the orange and the grape. As late as 1875 much of it was Government land, considered valueless. It had a few settlers, but the town, which counts now about 2000 people, was only begun in 1887. It has many solid brick edifices and many pretty cottages on its gentle slopes and rounded hills, overlooked by the great mountains. The view from any point of vantage of orchards and vineyards and semi-tropical gardens, with the wide sky-line of noble and snow-clad hills, is exceedingly attractive. The region is watered by the Santa Ana River and Mill Creek, but the main irrigating streams, which make every hill-top to bloom with vegetation, come from the Bear Valley Reservoir. On a hill to the south of the town the Smiley Brothers, of Catskill fame, are building fine residences, and planting their 125 acres with fruit-trees and vines, evergreens, flowers, and semi-tropic shrubbery in a style of landscape-gardening that in three years at the furthest will make this spot one of the few great showplaces of the country. Behind their ridge is the San Mateo Cañon, through which the Southern Pacific Railway runs, while in front are the splendid sloping plains, valleys, and orange groves, and the great sweep of mountains from San Jacinto round to the Sierra Madre range. It is almost a matchless prospect. The climate is most agreeable, the plantations increase month by month, and thus far the orange-trees have not been visited by the scale, nor the vines by any sickness. Although the groves are still young, there were shipped from Redlands in the season of 1889-90 80 car-loads of oranges, of 286 boxes to the car, at a price averaging nearly $1000 a car. That season's planting of oranges was over 1200 acres. It had over 5000 acres in fruits, of which nearly 3000 were in peaches, apricots, grapes, and other sorts called deciduous. Riverside may without prejudice be regarded as the centre of the orange growth and trade. The railway shipments of oranges from Southern California in the season of 1890 aggregated about 2400 car-loads, or about 800,000 boxes, of oranges (in which estimate the lemons are included), valued at about $1,500,000. Of this shipment more than half was from Riverside. This has been, of course, greatly stimulated by the improved railroad facilities, among them the shortening of the time to Chicago by the Santa Fé route, and the running of special fruit trains. Southern California responds like magic to this chance to send her fruits to the East, and the area planted month by month is something enormous. It is estimated that the crop of oranges alone in 1891 will be over 4500 car-loads. We are accustomed to discount all California estimates, but I think that no one yet has comprehended the amount to which the shipments to Eastern markets of vegetables and fresh and canned fruits will reach within five years. I base my prediction upon some observation of the Eastern demand and the reports of fruit-dealers, upon what I saw of the new planting all over the State in 1890, and upon the statistics of increase. Take Riverside as an example. In 1872 it was a poor sheep ranch. In 1880-81 it shipped 15 car-loads, or 4290 boxes, of oranges; the amount yearly increased, until in 1888-89 it was 925 car-loads, or 263,879 boxes. In 1890 it rose to 1253 car-loads, or 358,341 boxes; and an important fact is that the largest shipment was in April (455 car-loads, or 130,226 boxes), at the time when the supply from other orange regions for the markets East had nearly ceased. [Illustration: IRRIGATING AN ORCHARD.] It should be said, also, that the quality of the oranges has vastly improved. This is owing to better cultivation, knowledge of proper irrigation, and the adoption of the best varieties for the soil. As different sorts of oranges mature at different seasons, a variety is needed to give edible fruit in each month from December to May inclusive. In February, 1887, I could not find an orange of the first class compared with the best fruit in other regions. It may have been too early for the varieties I tried; but I believe there has been a marked improvement in quality. In May, 1890, we found delicious oranges almost everywhere. The seedless Washington and Australian navels are favorites, especially for the market, on account of their great size and fine color. When in perfection they are very fine, but the skin is thick and the texture coarser than that of some others. The best orange I happened to taste was a Tahiti seedling at Montecito (Santa Barbara). It is a small orange, with a thin skin and a compact, sweet pulp that leaves little fibre. It resembles the famous orange of Malta. But there are many excellent varieties--the Mediterranean sweet, the paper rind St. Michael, the Maltese blood, etc. The experiments with seedlings are profitable, and will give ever new varieties. I noted that the "grape fruit," which is becoming so much liked in the East, is not appreciated in California. [Illustration: ORANGE CULTURE. Packing Oranges--Navel Orange-tree Six Years Old--Irrigating an Orange Grove.] The city of Riverside occupies an area of some five miles by three, and claims to have 6000 inhabitants; the centre is a substantial town with fine school and other public buildings, but the region is one succession of orange groves and vineyards, of comfortable houses and broad avenues. One avenue through which we drove is 125 feet wide and 12 miles long, planted in three rows with palms, magnolias, the _Grevillea robusta_ (Australian fern), the pepper, and the eucalyptus, and lined all the way by splendid orange groves, in the midst of which are houses and grounds with semi-tropical attractions. Nothing could be lovelier than such a scene of fruits and flowers, with the background of purple hills and snowy peaks. The mountain views are superb. Frost is a rare visitor. Not in fifteen years has there been enough to affect the orange. There is little rain after March, but there are fogs and dew-falls, and the ocean breeze is felt daily. The grape grown for raisins is the muscat, and this has had no "sickness." Vigilance and a quarantine have also kept from the orange the scale which has been so annoying in some other localities. The orange, when cared for, is a generous bearer; some trees produce twenty boxes each, and there are areas of twenty acres in good bearing which have brought to the owner as much as $10,000 a year. The whole region of the Santa Ana and San Gabriel valleys, from the desert on the east to Los Angeles, the city of gardens, is a surprise, and year by year an increasing wonder. In production it exhausts the catalogue of fruits and flowers; its scenery is varied by ever new combinations of the picturesque and the luxuriant; every town boasts some special advantage in climate, soil, water, or society; but these differences, many of them visible to the eye, cannot appear in any written description. The traveller may prefer the scenery of Pasadena, or that of Pomona, or of Riverside, but the same words in regard to color, fertility, combinations of orchards, avenues, hills, must appear in the description of each. Ontario, Pomona, Puente, Alhambra--wherever one goes there is the same wonder of color and production. Pomona is a pleasant city in the midst of fine orange groves, watered abundantly by artesian-wells and irrigating ditches from a mountain reservoir. A specimen of the ancient adobe residence is on the Meserve plantation, a lovely old place, with its gardens of cherries, strawberries, olives, and oranges. From the top of San José hill we had a view of a plain twenty-five miles by fifty in extent, dotted with cultivation, surrounded by mountains--a wonderful prospect. Pomona, like its sister cities in this region, has a regard for the intellectual side of life, exhibited in good school-houses and public libraries. In the library of Pomona is what may be regarded as the tutelary deity of the place--the goddess Pomona, a good copy in marble of the famous statue in the Uffizi Gallery, presented to the city by the Rev. C. F. Loop. This enterprising citizen is making valuable experiments in olive culture, raising a dozen varieties in order to ascertain which is best adapted to this soil, and which will make the best return in oil and in a marketable product of cured fruit for the table. The growth of the olive is to be, it seems to me, one of the leading and most permanent industries of Southern California. It will give us, what it is nearly impossible to buy now, pure olive oil, in place of the cotton-seed and lard mixture in general use. It is a most wholesome and palatable article of food. Those whose chief experience of the olive is the large, coarse, and not agreeable Spanish variety, used only as an appetizer, know little of the value of the best varieties as food, nutritious as meat, and always delicious. Good bread and a dish of pickled olives make an excellent meal. The sort known as the Mission olive, planted by the Franciscans a century ago, is generally grown now, and the best fruit is from the older trees. The most successful attempts in cultivating the olive and putting it on the market have been made by Mr. F. A. Kimball, of National City, and Mr. Ellwood Cooper, of Santa Barbara. The experiments have gone far enough to show that the industry is very remunerative. The best olive oil I have ever tasted anywhere is that produced from the Cooper and the Kimball orchards; but not enough is produced to supply the local demand. Mr. Cooper has written a careful treatise on olive culture, which will be of great service to all growers. The art of pickling is not yet mastered, and perhaps some other variety will be preferred to the old Mission for the table. A mature olive grove in good bearing is a fortune. I feel sure that within twenty-five years this will be one of the most profitable industries of California, and that the demand for pure oil and edible fruit in the United States will drive out the adulterated and inferior present commercial products. But California can easily ruin its reputation by adopting the European systems of adulteration. [Illustration: IN A FIELD OF GOLDEN PUMPKINS.] We drove one day from Arcadia Station through the region occupied by the Baldwin plantations, an area of over fifty thousand acres--a happy illustration of what industry and capital can do in the way of variety of productions, especially in what are called the San Anita vineyards and orchards, extending southward from the foot-hills. About the home place and in many sections where the irrigating streams flow one might fancy he was in the tropics, so abundant and brilliant are the flowers and exotic plants. There are splendid orchards of oranges, almonds, English walnuts, lemons, peaches, apricots, figs, apples, and olives, with grain and corn--in short, everything that grows in garden or field. The ranch is famous for its brandies and wines as well as fruits. We lunched at the East San Gabriel Hotel, a charming place with a peaceful view from the wide veranda of live-oaks, orchards, vineyards, and the noble Sierra Madre range. The Californians may be excused for using the term paradisiacal about such scenes. Flowers, flowers everywhere, color on color, and the song of the mocking-bird! CHAPTER XII. HOW THE FRUIT PERILS WERE MET.--FURTHER DETAILS OF LOCALITIES. In the San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere I saw evidence of the perils that attend the culture of the vine and the fruit-tree in all other countries, and from which California in the early days thought it was exempt. Within the past three or four years there has prevailed a sickness of the vine, the cause of which is unknown, and for which no remedy has been discovered. No blight was apparent, but the vine sickened and failed. The disease was called consumption of the vine. I saw many vineyards subject to it, and hundreds of acres of old vines had been rooted up as useless. I was told by a fruit-buyer in Los Angeles that he thought the raisin industry below Fresno was ended unless new planting recovered the vines, and that the great wine fields were about "played out." The truth I believe to be that the disease is confined to the vineyards of Old Mission grapes. Whether these had attained the limit of their active life, and sickened, I do not know. The trouble for a time was alarming; but new plantings of other varieties of grapes have been successful, the vineyards look healthful, and the growers expect no further difficulty. The planting, which was for a time suspended, has been more vigorously renewed. The insect pests attacking the orange were even more serious, and in 1887-88, though little was published about it, there was something like a panic, in the fear that the orange and lemon culture in Southern California would be a failure. The enemies were the black, the red, and the white scale. The latter, the _icerya purchasi_, or cottony cushion scale, was especially loathsome and destructive; whole orchards were enfeebled, and no way was discovered of staying its progress, which threatened also the olive and every other tree, shrub, and flower. Science was called on to discover its parasite. This was found to be the Australian lady-bug (_vedolia cardinalis_), and in 1888-89 quantities of this insect were imported and spread throughout Los Angeles County, and sent to Santa Barbara and other afflicted districts. The effect was magical. The _vedolia_ attacked the cottony scale with intense vigor, and everywhere killed it. The orchards revived as if they had been recreated, and the danger was over. The enemies of the black and the red scale have not yet been discovered, but they probably will be. Meantime the growers have recovered courage, and are fertilizing and fumigating. In Santa Ana I found that the red scale was fought successfully by fumigating the trees. The operation is performed at night under a movable tent, which covers the tree. The cost is about twenty cents a tree. One lesson of all this is that trees must be fed in order to be kept vigorous to resist such attacks, and that fruit-raising, considering the number of enemies that all fruits have in all climates, is not an idle occupation. The clean, handsome English walnut is about the only tree in the State that thus far has no enemy. One cannot take anywhere else a more exhilarating, delightful drive than about the rolling, highly cultivated, many-villaed Pasadena, and out to the foot-hills and the Sierra Madre Villa. He is constantly exclaiming at the varied loveliness of the scene--oranges, palms, formal gardens, hedges of Monterey cypress. It is very Italy-like. The Sierra Madre furnishes abundant water for all the valley, and the swift irrigating stream from Eaton Cañon waters the Sierra Madre Villa. Among the peaks above it rises Mt. Wilson, a thousand feet above the plain, the site selected for the Harvard Observatory with its 40-inch glass. The clearness of the air at this elevation, and the absence of clouds night and day the greater portion of the year, make this a most advantageous position, it is said, to use the glass in dissolving nebulæ. The Sierra Madre Villa, once the most favorite resort in this region, was closed. In its sheltered situation, its luxuriant and half-neglected gardens, its wide plantations and irrigating streams, it reminds one of some secularized monastery on the promontory of Sorrento. It only needs good management to make the hotel very attractive and especially agreeable in the months of winter. [Illustration: PACKING CHERRIES, POMONA.] Pasadena, which exhibits everywhere evidences of wealth and culture, and claims a permanent population of 12,000, has the air of a winter resort; the great Hotel Raymond is closed in May, the boarding-houses want occupants, the shops and livery-stables customers, and the streets lack movement. This is easily explained. It is not because Pasadena is not an agreeable summer residence, but because the visitors are drawn there in the winter principally to escape the inclement climate of the North and East, and because special efforts have been made for their entertainment in the winter. We found the atmosphere delightful in the middle of May. The mean summer heat is 67°, and the nights are always cool. The hills near by may be resorted to with the certainty of finding as decided a change as one desires in the summer season. I must repeat that the Southern California summer is not at all understood in the East. The statement of the general equability of the temperature the year through must be insisted on. We lunched one day in a typical California house, in the midst of a garden of fruits, flowers, and tropical shrubs; in a house that might be described as half roses and half tent, for added to the wooden structure were rooms of canvas, which are used as sleeping apartments winter and summer. This attractive region, so lovely in its cultivation, with so many charming drives, offering good shooting on the plains and in the hills, and centrally placed for excursions, is only eight miles from the busy city of Los Angeles. An excellent point of view of the country is from the graded hill on which stands the Raymond Hotel, a hill isolated but easy of access, which is in itself a mountain of bloom, color, and fragrance. From all the broad verandas and from every window the prospect is charming, whether the eye rests upon cultivated orchards and gardens and pretty villas, or upon the purple foot-hills and the snowy ranges. It enjoys a daily ocean breeze, and the air is always exhilarating. This noble hill is a study in landscape-gardening. It is a mass of brilliant color, and the hospitality of the region generally to foreign growths may be estimated by the trees acclimated on these slopes. They are the pepper, eucalyptus, pine, cypress, sycamore, red-wood, olive, date and fan palms, banana, pomegranate, guava, Japanese persimmon, umbrella, maple, elm, locust, English walnut, birch, ailantus, poplar, willow, and more ornamental shrubs than one can well name. I can indulge in few locality details except those which are illustrative of the general character of the country. In passing into Orange County, which was recently set off from Los Angeles, we come into a region of less "fashion," but one that for many reasons is attractive to people of moderate means who are content with independent simplicity. The country about the thriving village of Santa Ana is very rich, being abundantly watered by the Santa Ana River and by artesian-wells. The town is nine miles from the ocean. On the ocean side the land is mainly agricultural; on the inland side it is specially adapted to fruit. We drove about it, and in Tustin City, which has many pleasant residences and a vacant "boom" hotel, through endless plantations of oranges. On the road towards Los Angeles we passed large herds of cattle and sheep, and fine groves of the English walnut, which thrives especially well in this soil and the neighborhood of the sea. There is comparatively little waste land in this valley district, as one may see by driving through the country about Santa Ana, Orange, Anaheim, Tustin City, etc. Anaheim is a prosperous German colony. It was here that Madame Modjeska and her husband, Count Bozenta, first settled in California. They own and occupy now a picturesque ranch in the Santiago Cañon of the Santa Ana range, twenty-two miles from Santa Ana. This is one of the richest regions in the State, and with its fair quota of working population, it will be one of the most productive. From Newport, on the coast, or from San Pedro, one may visit the island of Santa Catalina. Want of time prevented our going there. Sportsmen enjoy there the exciting pastime of hunting the wild goat. From the photographs I saw, and from all I heard of it, it must be as picturesque a resort in natural beauty as the British Channel islands. Los Angeles is the metropolitan centre of all this region. A handsome, solid, thriving city, environed by gardens, gay everywhere with flowers, it is too well known to require any description from me. To the traveller from the East it will always be a surprise. Its growth has been phenomenal, and although it may not equal the expectations of the crazy excitement of 1886-87, 50,000 people is a great assemblage for a new city which numbered only about 11,000 in 1880. It of course felt the subsidence of the "boom," but while I missed the feverish crowds of 1887, I was struck with its substantial progress in fine, solid buildings, pavements, sewerage, railways, educational facilities, and ornamental grounds. It has a secure hold on the commerce of the region. The assessment roll of the city increased from $7,627,632 in 1881 to $44,871,073 in 1889. Its bank business, public buildings, school-houses, and street improvements are in accord with this increase, and show solid, vigorous growth. It is altogether an attractive city, whether seen on a drive through its well-planted and bright avenues, or looked down on from the hills which are climbed by the cable roads. A curious social note was the effect of the "boom" excitement upon the birth rate. The report of children under the age of one year was in 1887, 271 boy babies and 264 girl babies; from 1887 to 1888 there were only 176 boy babies and 162 girl babies. The return at the end of 1889 was 465 boy babies, and 500 girl babies. [Illustration: OLIVE-TREES SIX YEARS OLD.] Although Los Angeles County still produces a considerable quantity of wine and brandy, I have an impression that the raising of raisins will supplant wine-making largely in Southern California, and that the principal wine producing will be in the northern portions of the State. It is certain that the best quality is grown in the foot-hills. The reputation of "California wines" has been much injured by placing upon the market crude juice that was in no sense wine. Great improvement has been made in the past three to five years, not only in the vine and knowledge of the soil adapted to it, but in the handling and the curing of the wine. One can now find without much difficulty excellent table wines--sound claret, good white Reisling, and sauterne. None of these wines are exactly like the foreign wines, and it may be some time before the taste accustomed to foreign wines is educated to like them. But in Eastern markets some of the best brands are already much called for, and I think it only a question of time and a little more experience when the best California wines will be popular. I found in the San Francisco market excellent red wines at $3.50 the case, and what was still more remarkable, at some of the best hotels sound, agreeable claret at from fifteen to twenty cents the pint bottle. It is quite unnecessary to emphasize the attractions of Santa Barbara, or the productiveness of the valleys in the counties of Santa Barbara and Ventura. There is no more poetic region on the continent than the bay south of Point Conception, and the pen and the camera have made the world tolerably familiar with it. There is a graciousness, a softness, a color in the sea, the cañons, the mountains there that dwell in the memory. It is capable of inspiring the same love that the Greek colonists felt for the region between the bays of Salerno and Naples. It is as fruitful as the Italian shores, and can support as dense a population. The figures that have been given as to productiveness and variety of productions apply to it. Having more winter rainfall than the counties south of it, agriculture is profitable in most years. Since the railway was made down the valley of the Santa Clara River and along the coast to Santa Barbara, a great impulse has been given to farming. Orange and other fruit orchards have increased. Near Buenaventura I saw hundreds of acres of lima beans. The yield is about one ton to the acre. With good farming the valleys yield crops of corn, barley, and wheat much above the average. Still it is a fruit region, and no variety has yet been tried that does not produce very well there. The rapid growth of all trees has enabled the region to demonstrate in a short time that there is scarcely any that it cannot naturalize. The curious growths of tropical lands, the trees of aromatic and medicinal gums, the trees of exquisite foliage and wealth of fragrant blossoms, the sturdy forest natives, and the bearers of edible nuts are all to be found in the gardens and by the road-side, from New England, from the Southern States, from Europe, from North and South Africa, Southern Asia, China, Japan, from Australia and New Zealand and South America. The region is an arboreal and botanical garden on an immense scale, and full of surprises. The floriculture is even more astonishing. Every land is represented. The profusion and vigor are as wonderful as the variety. At a flower show in Santa Barbara were exhibited 160 varieties of roses all cut from one garden the same morning. The open garden rivals the Eastern conservatory. The country is new and many of the conditions of life may be primitive and rude, but it is impossible that any region shall not be beautiful, clothed with such a profusion of bloom and color. I have spoken of the rapid growth. The practical advantage of this as to fruit-trees is that one begins to have an income from them here sooner than in the East. No one need be under the delusion that he can live in California without work, or thrive without incessant and intelligent industry, but the distinction of the country for the fruit-grower is the rapidity with which trees and vines mature to the extent of being profitable. But nothing thrives without care, and kindly as the climate is to the weak, it cannot be too much insisted on that this is no place for confirmed invalids who have not money enough to live without work. CHAPTER XIII. THE ADVANCE OF CULTIVATION SOUTHWARD. The immense county of San Diego is on the threshold of its development. It has comparatively only spots of cultivation here and there, in an area on the western slope of the county only, that Mr. Van Dyke estimates to contain about one million acres of good arable land for farming and fruit-raising. This mountainous region is full of charming valleys, and hidden among the hills are fruitful nooks capable of sustaining thriving communities. There is no doubt about the salubrity of the climate, and one can literally suit himself as to temperature by choosing his elevation. The traveller by rail down the wild Temecula Cañon will have some idea of the picturesqueness of the country, and, as he descends in the broadening valley, of the beautiful mountain parks of live-oak and clear running water, and of the richness both for grazing and grain of the ranches of the Santa Margarita, Las Flores, and Santa Rosa. Or if he will see what a few years of vigorous cultivation will do, he may visit Escondido, on the river of that name, which is at an elevation of less than a thousand feet, and fourteen miles from the ocean. This is only one of many settlements that have great natural beauty and thrifty industrial life. In that region are numerous attractive villages. I have a report from a little cañon, a few miles north of Escondido, where a woman with an invalid husband settled in 1883. The ground was thickly covered with brush, and its only product was rabbits and quails. In 1888 they had 100 acres cleared and fenced, mostly devoted to orchard fruits and berries. They had in good bearing over 1200 fruit-trees among them 200 oranges and 283 figs, which yielded one and a half tons of figs a week during the bearing season, from August to November. The sprouts of the peach-trees grew twelve feet in 1889. Of course such a little fruit farm as this is the result of self-denial and hard work, but I am sure that the experiment in this region need not be exceptional. [Illustration: SEXTON NURSERIES, NEAR SANTA BARBARA.] San Diego will be to the southern part of the State what San Francisco is to the northern. Nature seems to have arranged for this, by providing a magnificent harbor, when it shut off the southern part by a mountain range. During the town-lot lunacy it was said that San Diego could not grow because it had no back country, and the retort was that it needed no back country, its harbor would command commerce. The fallacy of this assumption lay in the forgetfulness of the fact that the profitable and peculiar exports of Southern California must go East by rail, and reach a market in the shortest possible time, and that the inhabitants look to the Pacific for comparatively little of the imports they need. If the Isthmus route were opened by a ship-canal, San Diego would doubtless have a great share of the Pacific trade, and when the population of that part of the State is large enough to demand great importations from the islands and lands of the Pacific, this harbor will not go begging. But in its present development the entire Pacific trade of Japan, China, and the islands, gives only a small dividend each to the competing ports. For these developments this fine harbor must wait, but meantime the wealth and prosperity of San Diego lie at its doors. A country as large as the three richest New England States, with enormous wealth of mineral and stone in its mountains, with one of the finest climates in the world, with a million acres of arable land, is certainly capable of building up one great seaport town. These million of acres on the western slope of the mountain ranges of the country are geographically tributary to San Diego, and almost every acre by its products is certain to attain a high value. The end of the ridiculous speculation in lots of 1887-88 was not so disastrous in the loss of money invested, or even in the ruin of great expectations by the collapse of fictitious values, as in the stoppage of immigration. The country has been ever since adjusting itself to a normal growth, and the recovery is just in proportion to the arrival of settlers who come to work and not to speculate. I had heard that the "boom" had left San Diego and vicinity the "deadest" region to be found anywhere. A speculator would probably so regard it. But the people have had a great accession of common-sense. The expectation of attracting settlers by a fictitious show has subsided, and attention is directed to the development of the natural riches of the country. Since the boom San Diego has perfected a splendid system of drainage, paved its streets, extended its railways, built up the business part of the town solidly and handsomely, and greatly improved the mesa above the town. In all essentials of permanent growth it is much better in appearance than in 1887. Business is better organized, and, best of all, there is an intelligent appreciation of the agricultural resources of the country. It is discovered that San Diego has a "back country" capable of producing great wealth. The Chamber of Commerce has organized a permanent exhibition of products. It is assisted in this work of stimulation by competition by a "Ladies' Annex," a society numbering some five hundred ladies, who devote themselves not to æsthetic pursuits, but to the quickening of all the industries of the farm and the garden, and all public improvements. [Illustration: SWEETWATER DAM.] To the mere traveller who devotes only a couple of weeks to an examination of this region it is evident that the spirit of industry is in the ascendant, and the result is a most gratifying increase in orchards and vineyards, and the storage and distribution of water for irrigation. The region is unsurpassed for the production of the orange, the lemon, the raisin-grape, the fig, and the olive. The great reservoir of the Cuyamaca, which supplies San Diego, sends its flume around the fertile valley of El Cajon (which has already a great reputation for its raisins), and this has become a garden, the land rising in value every year. The region of National City and Chula Vista is supplied by the reservoir made by the great Sweetwater Dam--a marvel of engineering skill--and is not only most productive in fruit, but is attractive by pretty villas and most sightly and agreeable homes. It is an unanswerable reply to the inquiry if this region was not killed by the boom that all the arable land, except that staked out for fancy city prices, has steadily risen in value. This is true of all the bay region down through Otay (where a promising watch factory is established) to the border at Tia Juana. The rate of settlement in the county outside of the cities and towns has been greater since the boom than before--a most healthful indication for the future. According to the school census of 1889, Mr. Van Dyke estimates a permanent growth of nearly 50,000 people in the county in four years. Half of these are well distributed in small settlements which have the advantages of roads, mails, and school-houses, and which offer to settlers who wish to work adjacent unimproved land at prices which experience shows are still moderate. CHAPTER XIV. A LAND OF AGREEABLE HOMES. In this imperfect conspectus of a vast territory I should be sorry to say anything that can raise false expectations. Our country is very big; and though scarcely any part of it has not some advantages, and notwithstanding the census figures of our population, it will be a long time before our vast territory will fill up. California must wait with the rest; but it seems to me to have a great future. Its position in the Union with regard to its peculiar productions is unique. It can and will supply us with much that we now import, and labor and capital sooner or later will find their profit in meeting the growing demand for California products. There are many people in the United States who could prolong life by moving to Southern California; there are many who would find life easier there by reason of the climate, and because out-door labor is more agreeable there the year through; many who have to fight the weather and a niggardly soil for existence could there have pretty little homes with less expense of money and labor. It is well that people for whom this is true should know it. It need not influence those who are already well placed to try the fortune of a distant country and new associations. I need not emphasize the disadvantage in regard to beauty of a land that can for half the year only keep a vernal appearance by irrigation; but to eyes accustomed to it there is something pleasing in the contrast of the green valleys with the brown and gold and red of the hills. The picture in my mind for the future of the Land of the Sun, of the mountains, of the sea--which is only an enlargement of the picture of the present--is one of great beauty. The rapid growth of fruit and ornamental trees and the profusion of flowers render easy the making of a lovely home, however humble it may be. The nature of the industries--requiring careful attention to a small piece of ground--points to small holdings as a rule. The picture I see is of a land of small farms and gardens, highly cultivated, in all the valleys and on the foot-hills; a land, therefore, of luxuriance and great productiveness and agreeable homes. I see everywhere the gardens, the vineyards, the orchards, with the various greens of the olive, the fig, and the orange. It is always picturesque, because the country is broken and even rugged; it is always interesting, because of the contrast with the mountains and the desert; it has the color that makes Southern Italy so poetic. It is the fairest field for the experiment of a contented community, without any poverty and without excessive wealth. CHAPTER XV. SOME WONDERS BY THE WAY.--YOSEMITE.--MARIPOSA TREES.--MONTEREY. I went to it with reluctance. I shrink from attempting to say anything about it. If you knew that there was one spot on the earth where Nature kept her secret of secrets, the key to the action of her most gigantic and patient forces through the long eras, the marvel of constructive and destructive energy, in features of sublimity made possible to mental endurance by the most exquisite devices of painting and sculpture, the wonder which is without parallel or comparison, would you not hesitate to approach it? Would you not wander and delay with this and that wonder, and this and that beauty and nobility of scenery, putting off the day when the imagination, which is our highest gift, must be extinguished by the reality? The mind has this judicious timidity. Do we not loiter in the avenue of the temple, dallying with the vista of giant plane-trees and statues, and noting the carving and the color, mentally shrinking from the moment when the full glory shall burst upon us? We turn and look when we are near a summit, we pick a flower, we note the shape of the clouds, the passing breeze, before we take the last step that shall reveal to us the vast panorama of mountains and valleys. I cannot bring myself to any description of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado by any other route, mental or physical, than that by which we reached it, by the way of such beauty as Monterey, such a wonder as the Yosemite, and the infinite and picturesque deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. I think the mind needs the training in the desert scenery to enable it to grasp the unique sublimity of the Grand Cañon. The road to the Yosemite, after leaving the branch of the Southern Pacific at Raymond, is an unnecessarily fatiguing one. The journey by stage--sixty-five miles--is accomplished in less than two days--thirty-nine miles the first day, and twenty-six the second. The driving is necessarily slow, because two mountain ridges have to be surmounted, at an elevation each of about 6500 feet. The road is not a "road" at all as the term is understood in Switzerland, Spain, or in any highly civilized region--that is, a graded, smooth, hard, and sufficiently broad track. It is a makeshift highway, generally narrow (often too narrow for two teams to pass), cast up with loose material, or excavated on the slopes with frequent short curves and double curves. Like all mountain roads which skirt precipices, it may seem "pokerish," but it is safe enough if the drivers are skilful and careful (all the drivers on this route are not only excellent, but exceedingly civil as well), and there is no break in wagon or harness. At the season this trip is made the weather is apt to be warm, but this would not matter so much if the road were not intolerably dusty. Over a great part of the way the dust rises in clouds and is stifling. On a well-engineered road, with a good road-bed, the time of passage might not be shortened, but the journey would be made with positive comfort and enjoyment, for though there is a certain monotony in the scenery, there is the wild freshness of nature, now and then an extensive prospect, a sight of the snow-clad Nevadas, and vast stretches of woodland; and a part of the way the forests are magnificent, especially the stupendous growth of the sugar-pine. These noble forests are now protected by their inaccessibility. From 1855 to 1864, nine years, the Yosemite had 653 visitors; in 1864 there were 147. The number increased steadily till 1869, the year the overland railroad was completed, when it jumped to 1122. Between 4000 and 5000 persons visit it now each year. The number would be enormously increased if it could be reached by rail, and doubtless a road will be built to the valley in the near future, perhaps up the Merced River. I believe that the pilgrims who used to go to the Yosemite on foot or on horseback regret the building of the stage road, the enjoyment of the wonderful valley being somehow cheapened by the comparative ease of reaching it. It is feared that a railway would still further cheapen, if it did not vulgarize it, and that passengers by train would miss the mountain scenery, the splendid forests, the surprises of the way (like the first view of the valley from Inspiration Point), and that the Mariposa big trees would be farther off the route than they are now. The traveller sees them now by driving eight miles from Wawona, the end of the first day's staging. But the romance for the few there is in staging will have to give way to the greater comfort of the many by rail. [Illustration: THE YOSEMITE DOME.] The railway will do no more injury to the Yosemite than it has done to Niagara, and, in fact, will be the means of immensely increasing the comfort of the visitor's stay there, besides enabling tens of thousands of people to see it who cannot stand the fatigue of the stage ride over the present road. The Yosemite will remain as it is. The simplicity of its grand features is unassailable so long as the Government protects the forests that surround it and the streams that pour into it. The visitor who goes there by rail will find plenty of adventure for days and weeks in following the mountain trails, ascending to the great points of view, exploring the cañons, or climbing so as to command the vast stretch of the snowy Sierras. Or, if he is not inclined to adventure, the valley itself will satisfy his highest imaginative flights of the sublime in rock masses and perpendicular ledges, and his sense of beauty in the graceful water-falls, rainbow colors, and exquisite lines of domes and pinnacles. It is in the grouping of objects of sublimity and beauty that the Yosemite excels. The narrow valley, with its gigantic walls, which vary in every change of the point of view, lends itself to the most astonishing scenic effects, and these the photograph has reproduced, so that the world is familiar with the striking features of the valley, and has a tolerably correct idea of the sublimity of some of these features. What the photograph cannot do is to give an impression of the unique grouping, of the majesty, and at times crushing weight upon the mind of the forms and masses, of the atmospheric splendor and illusion, and of the total value of such an assemblage of wonders. The level surface of the peaceful, park-like valley has much to do with the impression. The effect of El Capitan, seen across a meadow and rising from a beautiful park, is much greater than if it were encountered in a savage mountain gorge. The traveller may have seen elsewhere greater water-falls, and domes and spires of rock as surprising, but he has nowhere else seen such a combination as this. He may be fortified against surprise by the photographs he has seen and the reports of word painters, but he will not escape (say, at Inspiration Point, or Artist Point, or other lookouts), a quickening of the pulse and an elation which is physical as well as mental, in the sight of such unexpected sublimity and beauty. And familiarity will scarcely take off the edge of his delight, so varied are the effects in the passing hours and changing lights. The Rainbow Fall, when water is abundant, is exceedingly impressive as well as beautiful. Seen from the carriage road, pouring out of the sky overhead, it gives a sense of power, and at the proper hour before sunset, when the vast mass of leaping, foaming water is shot through with the colors of the spectrum, it is one of the most exquisite sights the world can offer; the elemental forces are overwhelming, but the loveliness is engaging. One turns from this to the noble mass of El Capitan with a shock of surprise, however often it may have been seen. This is the hour also, in the time of high-water, to see the reflection of the Yosemite Falls. As a spectacle it is infinitely finer than anything at Mirror Lake, and is unique in its way. To behold this beautiful series of falls, flowing down out of the blue sky above, and flowing up out of an equally blue sky in the depths of the earth, is a sight not to be forgotten. And when the observer passes from these displays to the sight of the aerial domes in the upper end of the valley, new wonders opening at every turn of the forest road, his excitement has little chance of subsiding: he may be even a little oppressed. The valley, so verdant and friendly with grass and trees and flowers, is so narrow compared with the height of its perpendicular guardian walls, and this little secluded spot is so imprisoned in the gigantic mountains, that man has a feeling of helplessness in it. This powerlessness in the presence of elemental forces was heightened by the deluge of water. There had been an immense fall of snow the winter before, the Merced was a raging torrent, overflowing its banks, and from every ledge poured a miniature cataract. [Illustration: COAST OF MONTEREY.] Noble simplicity is the key-note to the scenery of the Yosemite, and this is enhanced by the park-like appearance of the floor of the valley. The stems of the fine trees are in harmony with the perpendicular lines, and their foliage adds the necessary contrast to the gray rock masses. In order to preserve these forest-trees, the underbrush, which is liable to make a conflagration in a dry season, should be removed generally, and the view of the great features be left unimpeded. The minor cañons and the trails are, of course, left as much as possible to the riot of vegetation. The State Commission, which labors under the disadvantages of getting its supplies from a Legislature that does not appreciate the value of the Yosemite to California, has developed the trails judiciously, and established a model trail service. The Yosemite, it need not be said, is a great attraction to tourists from all parts of the world; it is the interest of the State, therefore, to increase their number by improving the facilities for reaching it, and by resolutely preserving all the surrounding region from ravage. [Illustration: CYPRESS POINT.] [Illustration: NEAR SEAL ROCK.] This is as true of the Mariposa big tree region as of the valley. Indeed, more care is needed for the trees than for the great chasm, for man cannot permanently injure the distinctive features of the latter, while the destruction of the sequoias will be an irreparable loss to the State and to the world. The _Sequoia gigantea_ differs in leaf, and size and shape of cone, from the great _Sequoia semper virens_ on the coast near Santa Cruz; neither can be spared. The Mariposa trees, scattered along on a mountain ridge 6500 feet above the sea, do not easily obtain their victory, for they are a part of a magnificent forest of other growths, among which the noble sugar-pine is conspicuous for its enormous size and graceful vigor. The sequoias dominate among splendid rivals only by a magnitude that has no comparison elsewhere in the world. I think no one can anticipate the effect that one of these monarchs will have upon him. He has read that a coach and six can drive through one of the trees that is standing; that another is thirty-three feet in diameter, and that its vast stem, 350 feet high, is crowned with a mass of foliage that seems to brush against the sky. He might be prepared for a tower 100 feet in circumference, and even 400 feet high, standing upon a level plain; but this living growth is quite another affair. Each tree is an individual, and has a personal character. No man can stand in the presence of one of these giants without a new sense of the age of the world and the insignificant span of one human life; but he is also overpowered by a sense of some gigantic personality. It does not relieve him to think of this as the Methuselah of trees, or to call it by the name of some great poet or captain. The awe the tree inspires is of itself. As one lies and looks up at the enormous bulk, it seems not so much the bulk, so lightly is it carried, as the spirit of the tree--the elastic vigor, the patience, the endurance of storm and change, the confident might, and the soaring, almost contemptuous pride, that overwhelm the puny spectator. It is just because man can measure himself, his littleness, his brevity of existence, with this growth out of the earth, that he is more personally impressed by it than he might be by the mere variation in the contour of the globe which is called a mountain. The imagination makes a plausible effort to comprehend it, and is foiled. No; clearly it is not mere size that impresses one; it is the dignity, the character in the tree, the authority and power of antiquity. Side by side of these venerable forms are young sequoias, great trees themselves, that have only just begun their millennial career--trees that will, if spared, perpetuate to remote ages this race of giants, and in two to four thousand years from now take the place of their great-grandfathers, who are sinking under the weight of years, and one by one measuring their length on the earth. [Illustration: LAGUNA, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.] The transition from the sublime to the exquisitely lovely in nature can nowhere else be made with more celerity than from the Sierras to the coast at Monterey; California abounds in such contrasts and surprises. After the great stirring of the emotions by the Yosemite and the Mariposa, the Hotel del Monte Park and vicinity offer repose, and make an appeal to the sense of beauty and refinement. Yet even here something unique is again encountered. I do not refer to the extraordinary beauty of the giant live-oaks and the landscape-gardening about the hotel, which have made Monterey famous the world over, but to the sea-beach drive of sixteen miles, which can scarcely be rivalled elsewhere either for marine loveliness or variety of coast scenery. It has points like the ocean drive at Newport, but is altogether on a grander scale, and shows a more poetic union of shore and sea; besides, it offers the curious and fascinating spectacles of the rocks inhabited by the sea-lions, and the Cypress Point. These huge, uncouth creatures can be seen elsewhere, but probably nowhere else on this coast are they massed in greater numbers. The trees of Cypress Point are unique, this species of cypress having been found nowhere else. The long, never-ceasing swell of the Pacific incessantly flows up the many crescent sand beaches, casting up shells of brilliant hues, sea-weed, and kelp, which seems instinct with animal life, and flotsam from the far-off islands. But the rocks that lie off the shore, and the jagged points that project in fanciful forms, break the even great swell, and send the waters, churned into spray and foam, into the air with a thousand hues in the sun. The shock of these sharp collisions mingles with the heavy ocean boom. Cypress Point is one of the most conspicuous of these projections, and its strange trees creep out upon the ragged ledges almost to the water's edge. These cypresses are quite as instinct with individual life and quite as fantastic as any that Doré drew for his "Inferno." They are as gnarled and twisted as olive-trees two centuries old, but their attitudes seem not only to show struggle with the elements, but agony in that struggle. The agony may be that of torture in the tempest, or of some fabled creatures fleeing and pursued, stretching out their long arms in terror, and fixed in that writhing fear. They are creatures of the sea quite as much as of the land, and they give to this lovely coast a strange charm and fascination. CHAPTER, XVI. FASCINATIONS OF THE DESERT.--THE LAGUNA PUEBLO. The traveller to California by the Santa Fé route comes into the arid regions gradually, and finds each day a variety of objects of interest that upsets his conception of a monotonous desert land. If he chooses to break the continental journey midway, he can turn aside at Las Vegas to the Hot Springs. Here, at the head of a picturesque valley, is the Montezuma Hotel, a luxurious and handsome house, 6767 feet above sea-level, a great surprise in the midst of the broken and somewhat savage New Mexican scenery. The low hills covered with pines and piñons, the romantic glens, and the wide views from the elevations about the hotel, make it an attractive place; and a great deal has been done, in the erection of bath-houses, ornamental gardening, and the grading of roads and walks, to make it a comfortable place. The latitude and the dryness of the atmosphere insure for the traveller from the North in our winter an agreeable reception, and the elevation makes the spot in the summer a desirable resort from Southern heat. It is a sanitarium as well as a pleasure resort. The Hot Springs have much the same character as the Töplitz waters in Bohemia, and the saturated earth--the _Mütterlager_--furnishes the curative "mud baths" which are enjoyed at Marienbad and Carlsbad. The union of the climate, which is so favorable in diseases of the respiratory organs, with the waters, which do so much for rheumatic sufferers, gives a distinction to Las Vegas Hot Springs. This New Mexican air--there is none purer on the globe--is an enemy to hay-fever and malarial diseases. It was a wise enterprise to provide that those who wish to try its efficacy can do so at the Montezuma without giving up any of the comforts of civilized life. [Illustration: CHURCH AT LAGUNA.] It is difficult to explain to one who has not seen it, or will not put himself in the leisurely frame of mind to enjoy it, the charms of the desert of the high plateaus of New Mexico and Arizona. Its arid character is not so impressive as its ancientness; and the part which interests us is not only the procession of the long geologic eras, visible in the extinct volcanoes, the _barrancas_, the painted buttes, the petrified forests, but as well in the evidences of civilizations gone by, or the remains of them surviving in our day--the cliff dwellings, the ruins of cities that were thriving when Coronado sent his lieutenants through the region three centuries ago, and the present residences of the Pueblo Indians, either villages perched upon an almost inaccessible rock like Acamo, or clusters of adobe dwellings like Isleta and Laguna. The Pueblo Indians, of whom the Zuñis are a tribe, have been dwellers in villages and cultivators of the soil and of the arts of peace immemorially, a gentle, amiable race. It is indeed such a race as one would expect to find in the land of the sun and the cactus. Their manners and their arts attest their antiquity and a long refinement in fixed dwellings and occupations. The whole region is a most interesting field for the antiquarian. We stopped one day at Laguna, which is on the Santa Fé line west of Isleta, another Indian pueblo at the Atlantic and Pacific junction, where the road crosses the Rio Grande del Norte west of Albuquerque. Near Laguna a little stream called the Rio Puerco flows southward and joins the Rio Grande. There is verdure along these streams, and gardens and fruit orchards repay the rude irrigation. In spite of these watercourses the aspect of the landscape is wild and desert-like--low barren hills and ragged ledges, wide sweeps of sand and dry gray bushes, with mountains and long lines of horizontal ledges in the distance. Laguna is built upon a rounded elevation of rock. Its appearance is exactly that of a Syrian village, the same cluster of little, square, flat-roofed houses in terraces, the same brown color, and under the same pale blue sky. And the resemblance was completed by the figures of the women on the roofs, or moving down the slope, erect and supple, carrying on the head a water jar, and holding together by one hand the mantle worn like a Spanish _rebozo_. The village is irregularly built, without much regard to streets or alleys, and it has no special side of entrance or approach. Every side presents a blank wall of adobe, and the entrance seems quite by chance. Yet the way we went over, the smooth slope was worn here and there in channels three or four inches deep, as if by the passing feet of many generations. The only semblance of architectural regularity is in the plaza, not perfectly square, upon which some of the houses look, and where the annual dances take place. The houses have the effect of being built in terraces rising one above the other, but it is hard to say exactly what a house is--whether it is anything more than one room. You can reach some of the houses only by aid of a ladder. You enter others from the street. If you will go farther you must climb a ladder which brings you to the roof that is used as the sitting-room or door-yard of the next room. From this room you may still ascend to others, or you may pass through low and small door-ways to other apartments. It is all haphazard, but exceedingly picturesque. You may find some of the family in every room, or they may be gathered, women and babies, on a roof which is protected by a parapet. At the time of our visit the men were all away at work in their fields. Notwithstanding the houses are only sun-dried bricks, and the village is without water or street commissioners, I was struck by the universal cleanliness. There was no refuse in the corners or alleys, no odors, and many of the rooms were patterns of neatness. To be sure, an old woman here and there kept her hens in an adjoining apartment above her own, and there was the litter of children and of rather careless house-keeping. But, taken altogether, the town is an example for some more civilized, whose inhabitants wash oftener and dress better than these Indians. [Illustration: TERRACED HOUSES, PUEBLO OF LAGUNA.] We were put on friendly terms with the whole settlement through three or four young maidens who had been at the Carlisle school, and spoke English very prettily. They were of the ages of fifteen and sixteen, and some of them had been five years away. They came back, so far as I could learn, gladly to their own people and to the old ways. They had resumed the Indian dress, which is much more becoming to them, as I think they know, than that which had been imposed upon them. I saw no books. They do not read any now, and they appear to be perfectly content with the idle drudgery of their semi-savage condition. In time they will marry in their tribe, and the school episode will be a thing of the past. But not altogether. The pretty Josephine, who was our best cicerone about the place, a girl of lovely eyes and modest mien, showed us with pride her own room, or "house," as she called it, neat as could be, simply furnished with an iron bedstead and snow-white cot, a mirror, chair, and table, and a trunk, and some "advertising" prints on the walls. She said that she was needed at home to cook for her aged mother, and her present ambition was to make money enough by the sale of pottery and curios to buy a cooking stove, so that she could cook more as the whites do. The house-work of the family had mainly fallen upon her; but it was not burdensome, I fancied, and she and the other girls of her age had leisure to go to the station on the arrival of every train, in hope of selling something to the passengers, and to sit on the rocks in the sun and dream as maidens do. I fancy it would be better for Josephine and for all the rest if there were no station and no passing trains. The elder women were uniformly ugly, but not repulsive like the Mojaves; the place swarmed with children, and the babies, aged women, and pleasing young girls grouped most effectively on the roofs. The whole community were very complaisant and friendly when we came to know them well, which we did in the course of an hour, and they enjoyed as much as we did the bargaining for pottery. They have for sale a great quantity of small pieces, fantastic in form and brilliantly colored--toys, in fact; but we found in their houses many beautiful jars of large size and excellent shape, decorated most effectively. The ordinary utensils for cooking and for cooling water are generally pretty in design and painted artistically. Like the ancient Peruvians, they make many vessels in the forms of beasts and birds. Some of the designs of the decoration are highly conventionalized, and others are just in the proper artistic line of the natural--a spray with a bird, or a sunflower on its stalk. The ware is all unglazed, exceedingly light and thin, and baked so hard that it has a metallic sound when struck. Some of the large jars are classic in shape, and recall in form and decoration the ancient Cypriote ware, but the colors are commonly brilliant and barbaric. The designs seem to be indigenous, and to betray little Spanish influence. The art displayed in this pottery is indeed wonderful, and, to my eye, much more effective and lastingly pleasing than much of our cultivated decoration. A couple of handsome jars that I bought of an old woman, she assured me she made and decorated herself; but I saw no ovens there, nor any signs of manufacture, and suppose that most of the ware is made at Acoma. It did not seem to be a very religious community, although the town has a Catholic church, and I understand that Protestant services are sometimes held in the place. The church is not much frequented, and the only evidence of devotion I encountered was in a woman who wore a large and handsome silver cross, made by the Navajos. When I asked its price, she clasped it to her bosom, with an upward look full of faith and of refusal to part with her religion at any price. The church, which is adobe, and at least two centuries old, is one of the most interesting I have seen anywhere. It is a simple parallelogram, 104 feet long and 21 feet broad, the gable having an opening in which the bells hang. The interior is exceedingly curious, and its decorations are worth reproduction. The floor is of earth, and many of the tribe who were distinguished and died long ago are said to repose under its smooth surface, with nothing to mark their place of sepulture. It has an open timber roof, the beams supported upon carved corbels. The ceiling is made of wooden sticks, about two inches in diameter and some four feet long, painted in alternated colors--red, blue, orange, and black--and so twisted or woven together as to produce the effect of plaited straw, a most novel and agreeable decoration. Over the entrance is a small gallery, the under roof of which is composed of sticks laid in straw pattern and colored. All around the wall runs a most striking dado, an odd, angular pattern, with conventionalized birds at intervals, painted in strong yet _fade_ colors--red, yellow, black, and white. The north wall is without windows; all the light, when the door is closed, comes from two irregular windows, without glass, high up in the south wall. [Illustration: GRAND CAÑON ON THE COLORADO--VIEW FROM POINT SUBLIME.] The chancel walls are covered with frescos, and there are several quaint paintings, some of them not very bad in color and drawing. The altar, which is supported at the sides by twisted wooden pillars, carved with a knife, is hung with ancient sheepskins brightly painted. Back of the altar are some archaic wooden images, colored; and over the altar, on the ceiling, are the stars of heaven, and the sun and the moon, each with a face in it. The interior was scrupulously clean and sweet and restful to one coming in from the glare of the sun on the desert. It was evidently little used, and the Indians who accompanied us seemed under no strong impression of its sanctity; but we liked to linger in it, it was so _bizarre_, so picturesque, and exhibited in its rude decoration so much taste. Two or three small birds flitting about seemed to enjoy the coolness and the subdued light, and were undisturbed by our presence. These are children of the desert, kin in their condition and the influences that formed them to the sedentary tribes of upper Egypt and Arabia, who pitch their villages upon the rocky eminences, and depend for subsistence upon irrigation and scant pasturage. Their habits are those of the dwellers in an arid land which has little in common with the wilderness--the inhospitable northern wilderness of rain and frost and snow. Rain, to be sure, insures some sort of vegetation in the most forbidding and intractable country, but that does not save the harsh landscape from being unattractive. The high plateaus of New Mexico and Arizona have everything that the rainy wilderness lacks--sunshine, heaven's own air, immense breadth of horizon, color and infinite beauty of outline, and a warm soil with unlimited possibilities when moistened. All that these deserts need is water. A fatal want? No. That is simply saying that science can do for this region what it cannot do for the high wilderness of frost--by the transportation of water transform it into gardens of bloom and fields of fruitfulness. The wilderness shall be made to feed the desert. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH AT LAGUNA.] I confess that these deserts in the warm latitudes fascinate me. Perhaps it is because I perceive in them such a chance for the triumph of the skill of man, seeing how, here and there, his energy has pushed the desert out of his path across the continent. But I fear that I am not so practical. To many the desert in its stony sterility, its desolateness, its unbroken solitude, its fantastic savageness, is either appalling or repulsive. To them it is tiresome and monotonous. The vast plains of Kansas and Nebraska are monotonous even in the agricultural green of summer. Not so to me the desert. It is as changeable in its lights and colors as the ocean. It is even in its general features of sameness never long the same. If you traverse it on foot or on horseback, there is ever some minor novelty. And on the swift train, if you draw down the curtain against the glare, or turn to your book, you are sure to miss something of interest--a deep cañon rift in the plain, a turn that gives a wide view glowing in a hundred hues in the sun, a savage gorge with beetling rocks, a solitary butte or red truncated pyramid thrust up into the blue sky, a horizontal ledge cutting the horizon line as straight as a ruler for miles, a pointed cliff uplifted sheer from the plain and laid in regular courses of Cyclopean masonry, the battlements of a fort, a terraced castle with towers and esplanade, a great trough of a valley, gray and parched, enclosed by far purple mountains. And then the unlimited freedom of it, its infinite expansion, its air like wine to the senses, the floods of sunshine, the waves of color, the translucent atmosphere that aids the imagination to create in the distance all architectural splendors and realms of peace. It is all like a mirage and a dream. We pass swiftly, and make a moving panorama of beauty in hues, of strangeness in forms, of sublimity in extent, of overawing and savage antiquity. I would miss none of it. And when we pass to the accustomed again, to the fields of verdure and the forests and the hills of green, and are limited in view and shut in by that which we love, after all, better than the arid land, I have a great longing to see again the desert, to be a part of its vastness, and to feel once more the freedom and inspiration of its illimitable horizons. CHAPTER XVII. THE HEART OF THE DESERT. There is an arid region lying in Northern Arizona and Southern Utah which has been called the District of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado. The area, roughly estimated, contains from 13,000 to 16,000 square miles--about the size of the State of Maryland. This region, fully described by the explorers and studied by the geologists in the United States service, but little known to even the travelling public, is probably the most interesting territory of its size on the globe. At least it is unique. In attempting to convey an idea of it the writer can be assisted by no comparison, nor can he appeal in the minds of his readers to any experience of scenery that can apply here. The so-called Grand Cañon differs not in degree from all other scenes; it differs in kind. The Colorado River flows southward through Utah, and crosses the Arizona line below the junction with the San Juan. It continues southward, flowing deep in what is called the Marble Cañon, till it is joined by the Little Colorado, coming up from the south-east; it then turns westward in a devious line until it drops straight south, and forms the western boundary of Arizona. The centre of the district mentioned is the westwardly flowing part of the Colorado. South of the river is the Colorado Plateau, at a general elevation of about 7000 feet. North of it the land is higher, and ascends in a series of plateaus, and then terraces, a succession of cliffs like a great stair-way, rising to the high plateaus of Utah. The plateaus, adjoining the river on the north and well marked by north and south dividing lines, or faults, are, naming them from east to west, the Paria, the Kaibab, the Kanab, the Uinkaret, and the Sheavwitz, terminating in a great wall on the west, the Great Wash fault, where the surface of the country drops at once from a general elevation of 6000 feet to from 1300 to 3000 feet above the sea-level--into a desolate and formidable desert. If the Grand Cañon itself did not dwarf everything else, the scenery of these plateaus would be superlative in interest. It is not all desert, nor are the gorges, cañons, cliffs, and terraces, which gradually prepare the mind for the comprehension of the Grand Cañon, the only wonders of this land of enchantment. These are contrasted with the sylvan scenery of the Kaibab Plateau, its giant forests and parks, and broad meadows decked in the summer with wild flowers in dense masses of scarlet, white, purple, and yellow. The Vermilion Cliffs, the Pink Cliffs, the White Cliffs, surpass in fantastic form and brilliant color anything that the imagination conceives possible in nature, and there are dreamy landscapes quite beyond the most exquisite fancies of Claude and of Turner. The region is full of wonders, of beauties, and sublimities that Shelley's imaginings do not match in the "Prometheus Unbound," and when it becomes accessible to the tourist it will offer an endless field for the delight of those whose minds can rise to the heights of the sublime and the beautiful. In all imaginative writing or painting the material used is that of human experience, otherwise it could not be understood; even heaven must be described in the terms of an earthly paradise. Human experience has no prototype of this region, and the imagination has never conceived of its forms and colors. It is impossible to convey an adequate idea of it by pen or pencil or brush. The reader who is familiar with the glowing descriptions in the official reports of Major J. W. Powell, Captain C. E. Dutton, Lieutenant Ives, and others, will not save himself from a shock of surprise when the reality is before him. This paper deals only with a single view in this marvellous region. [Illustration: GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO--VIEW OPPOSITE POINT SUBLIME.] The point where we struck the Grand Cañon, approaching it from the south, is opposite the promontory in the Kaibab Plateau named Point Sublime by Major Powell, just north of the 36th parallel, and 112° 15' west longitude. This is only a few miles west of the junction with the Little Colorado. About three or four miles west of this junction the river enters the east slope of the east Kaibab monocline, and here the Grand Cañon begins. Rapidly the chasm deepens to about 6000 feet, or rather it penetrates a higher country, the slope of the river remaining about the same. Through this lofty plateau--an elevation of 7000 to 9000 feet--the chasm extends for sixty miles, gradually changing its course to the north-west, and entering the Kanab Plateau. The Kaibab division of the Grand Cañon is by far the sublimest of all, being 1000 feet deeper than any other. It is not grander only on account of its greater depth, but it is broader and more diversified with magnificent architectural features. The Kanab division, only less magnificent than the Kaibab, receives the Kanab Cañon from the north and the Cataract Cañon from the south, and ends at the Toroweap Valley. The section of the Grand Cañon seen by those who take the route from Peach Springs is between 113° and 114° west longitude, and, though wonderful, presents few of the great features of either the Kaibab or the Kanab divisions. The Grand Cañon ends, west longitude 114°, at the Great Wash, west of the Hurricane Ledge or Fault. Its whole length from Little Colorado to the Great Wash, measured by the meanderings of the surface of the river, is 220 miles; by a median line between the crests of the summits of the walls with two-mile cords, about 195 miles; the distance in a straight line is 125 miles. In our journey to the Grand Cañon we left the Santa Fé line at Flagstaff, a new town with a lively lumber industry, in the midst of a spruce-pine forest which occupies the broken country through which the road passes for over fifty miles. The forest is open, the trees of moderate size are too thickly set with low-growing limbs to make clean lumber, and the foliage furnishes the minimum of shade; but the change to these woods is a welcome one from the treeless reaches of the desert on either side. The cañon is also reached from Williams, the next station west, the distance being a little shorter, and the point on the cañon visited being usually a little farther west. But the Flagstaff route is for many reasons usually preferred. Flagstaff lies just south-east of the San Francisco Mountain, and on the great Colorado Plateau, which has a pretty uniform elevation of about 7000 feet above the sea. The whole region is full of interest. Some of the most remarkable cliff dwellings are within ten miles of Flagstaff, on the Walnut Creek Cañon. At Holbrook, 100 miles east, the traveller finds a road some forty miles long, that leads to the great petrified forest, or Chalcedony Park. Still farther east are the villages of the Pueblo Indians, near the line, while to the northward is the great reservation of the Navajos, a nomadic tribe celebrated for its fine blankets and pretty work in silver--a tribe that preserves much of its manly independence by shunning the charity of the United States. No Indians have come into intimate or dependent relations with the whites without being deteriorated. [Illustration: TOURISTS IN THE COLORADO CAÑON.] Flagstaff is the best present point of departure, because it has a small hotel, good supply stores, and a large livery-stable, made necessary by the business of the place and the objects of interest in the neighborhood, and because one reaches from there by the easiest road the finest scenery incomparably on the Colorado. The distance is seventy-six miles through a practically uninhabited country, much of it a desert, and with water very infrequent. No work has been done on the road; it is made simply by driving over it. There are a few miles here and there of fair wheeling, but a good deal of it is intolerably dusty or exceedingly stony, and progress is slow. In the daytime (it was the last of June) the heat is apt to be excessive; but this could be borne, the air is so absolutely dry and delicious, and breezes occasionally spring up, if it were not for the dust. It is, notwithstanding the novelty of the adventure and of the scenery by the way, a tiresome journey of two days. A day of rest is absolutely required at the cañon, so that five days must be allowed for the trip. This will cost the traveller, according to the size of the party made up, from forty to fifty dollars. But a much longer sojourn at the cañon is desirable. Our party of seven was stowed in and on an old Concord coach drawn by six horses, and piled with camp equipage, bedding, and provisions. A four-horse team followed, loaded with other supplies and cooking utensils. The road lies on the east side of the San Francisco Mountain. Returning, we passed around its west side, gaining thus a complete view of this shapely peak. The compact range is a group of extinct volcanoes, the craters of which are distinctly visible. The cup-like summit of the highest is 13,000 feet above the sea, and snow always lies on the north escarpment. Rising about 6000 feet above the point of view of the great plateau, it is from all sides a noble object, the dark rock, snow-sprinkled, rising out of the dense growth of pine and cedar. We drove at first through open pine forests, through park-like intervals, over the foot-hills of the mountain, through growths of scrub cedar, and out into the ever-varying rolling country to widely-extended prospects. Two considerable hills on our right attracted us by their unique beauty. Upon the summit and side of each was a red glow exactly like the tint of sunset. We thought surely that it was the effect of reflected light, but the sky was cloudless and the color remained constant. The color came from the soil. The first was called Sunset Mountain. One of our party named the other, and the more beautiful, Peachblow Mountain, a poetic and perfectly descriptive name. We lunched at noon beside a swift, clouded, cold stream of snow-water from the San Francisco, along which grew a few gnarled cedars and some brilliant wild flowers. The scene was more than picturesque; in the clear hot air of the desert the distant landscape made a hundred pictures of beauty. Behind us the dark form of San Francisco rose up 6000 feet to its black crater and fields of spotless snow. Away off to the north-east, beyond the brown and gray pastures, across a far line distinct in dull color, lay the Painted Desert, like a mirage, like a really painted landscape, glowing in red and orange and pink, an immense city rather than a landscape, with towers and terraces and façades, melting into indistinctness as in a rosy mist, spectral but constant, weltering in a tropic glow and heat, walls and columns and shafts, the wreck of an Oriental capital on a wide violet plain, suffused with brilliant color softened into exquisite shades. All over this region nature has such surprises, that laugh at our inadequate conception of her resources. Our camp for the night was at the next place where water could be obtained, a station of the Arizona Cattle Company. Abundant water is piped down to it from mountain springs. The log-house and stable of the cow-boys were unoccupied, and we pitched our tent on a knoll by the corral. The night was absolutely dry, and sparkling with the starlight. A part of the company spread their blankets on the ground under the sky. It is apt to be cold in this region towards morning, but lodging in the open air is no hardship in this delicious climate. The next day the way part of the distance, with only a road marked by wagon wheels, was through extensive and barren-looking cattle ranges, through pretty vales of grass surrounded by stunted cedars, and over stormy ridges and plains of sand and small bowlders. The water having failed at Red Horse, the only place where it is usually found in the day's march, our horses went without, and we had resource to our canteens. The whole country is essentially arid, but snow falls in the winter-time, and its melting, with occasional showers in the summer, create what are called surface wells, made by drainage. Many of them go dry by June. There had been no rain in the region since the last of March, but clouds were gathering daily, and showers are always expected in July. The phenomenon of rain on this baked surface, in this hot air, and with this immense horizon, is very interesting. Showers in this tentative time are local. In our journey we saw showers far off, we experienced a dash for ten minutes, but it was local, covering not more than a mile or two square. We have in sight a vast canopy of blue sky, of forming and dispersing clouds. It is difficult for them to drop their moisture in the rising columns of hot air. The result at times was a very curious spectacle--rain in the sky that did not reach the earth. Perhaps some cold current high above us would condense the moisture, which would begin to fall in long trailing sweeps, blown like fine folds of muslin, or like sheets of dissolving sugar, and then the hot air of the earth would dissipate it, and the showers would be absorbed in the upper regions. The heat was sometimes intense, but at intervals a refreshing wind would blow, the air being as fickle as the rain; and now and then we would see a slender column of dust, a thousand or two feet high, marching across the desert, apparently not more than two feet in diameter, and wavering like the threads of moisture that tried in vain to reach the earth as rain. Of life there was not much to be seen in our desert route. In the first day we encountered no habitation except the ranch-house mentioned, and saw no human being; and the second day none except the solitary occupant of the dried well at Red Horse, and two or three Indians on the hunt. A few squirrels were seen, and a rabbit now and then, and occasionally a bird. The general impression was that of a deserted land. But antelope abound in the timber regions, and we saw several of these graceful creatures quite near us. Excellent antelope steaks, bought of the wandering Indian hunters, added something to our "canned" supplies. One day as we lunched, without water, on the cedar slope of a lovely grass interval, we saw coming towards us over the swells of the prairie a figure of a man on a horse. It rode to us straight as the crow flies. The Indian pony stopped not two feet from where our group sat, and the rider, who was an Oualapai chief, clad in sacking, with the print of the brand of flour or salt on his back, dismounted with his Winchester rifle, and stood silently looking at us without a word of salutation. He stood there, impassive, until we offered him something to eat. Having eaten all we gave him, he opened his mouth and said, "Smoke 'em?" Having procured from the other wagon a pipe of tobacco and a pull at the driver's canteen, he returned to us all smiles. His only baggage was the skull of an antelope, with the horns, hung at his saddle. Into this he put the bread and meat which we gave him, mounted the wretched pony, and without a word rode straight away. At a little distance he halted, dismounted, and motioned towards the edge of the timber, where he had spied an antelope. But the game eluded him, and he mounted again and rode off across the desert--a strange figure. His tribe lives in the cañon some fifty miles west, and was at present encamped, for the purpose of hunting, in the pine woods not far from the point we were aiming at. CHAPTER XVIII. ON THE BRINK OF THE GRAND CAÑON.--THE UNIQUE MARVEL OF NATURE. The way seemed long. With the heat and dust and slow progress, it was exceedingly wearisome. Our modern nerves are not attuned to the slow crawling of a prairie-wagon. There had been growing for some time in the coach a feeling that the journey did not pay; that, in fact, no mere scenery could compensate for the fatigue of the trip. The imagination did not rise to it. "It will have to be a very big cañon," said the duchess. Late in the afternoon we entered an open pine forest, passed through a meadow where the Indians had set their camp by a shallow pond, and drove along a ridge, in the cool shades, for three or four miles. Suddenly, on the edge of a descent, we who were on the box saw through the tree-tops a vision that stopped the pulse for a second, and filled us with excitement. It was only a glimpse, far off and apparently lifted up--red towers, purple cliffs, wide-spread apart, hints of color and splendor; on the right distance, mansions, gold and white and carmine (so the light made them), architectural habitations in the sky it must be, and suggestions of others far off in the middle distance--a substantial aerial city, or the ruins of one, such as the prophet saw in a vision. It was only a glimpse. Our hearts were in our mouths. We had a vague impression of something wonderful, fearful--some incomparable splendor that was not earthly. Were we drawing near the "City?" and should we have yet a more perfect view thereof? Was it Jerusalem or some Hindoo temples there in the sky? "It was builded of pearls and precious stones, also the streets were paved with gold; so that by reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick." It was a momentary vision of a vast amphitheatre of splendor, mostly hidden by the trees and the edge of the plateau. We descended into a hollow. There was the well, a log-cabin, a tent or two under the pine-trees. We dismounted with impatient haste. The sun was low in the horizon, and had long withdrawn from this grassy dell. Tired as we were, we could not wait. It was only to ascend the little steep, stony slope--300 yards--and we should see! Our party were straggling up the hill: two or three had reached the edge. I looked up. The duchess threw up her arms and screamed. We were not fifteen paces behind, but we saw nothing. We took the few steps, and the whole magnificence broke upon us. No one could be prepared for it. The scene is one to strike dumb with awe, or to unstring the nerves; one might stand in silent astonishment, another would burst into tears. There are some experiences that cannot be repeated--one's first view of Rome, one's first view of Jerusalem. But these emotions are produced by association, by the sudden standing face to face with the scenes most wrought into our whole life and education by tradition and religion. This was without association, as it was without parallel. It was a shock so novel that the mind, dazed, quite failed to comprehend it. All that we could grasp was a vast confusion of amphitheatres and strange architectural forms resplendent with color. The vastness of the view amazed us quite as much as its transcendent beauty. [Illustration: GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO--VIEW FROM THE HANSE TRAIL.] We had expected a cañon--two lines of perpendicular walls 6000 feet high, with the ribbon of a river at the bottom; but the reader may dismiss all his notions of a cañon, indeed of any sort of mountain or gorge scenery with which he is familiar. We had come into a new world. What we saw was not a cañon, or a chasm, or a gorge, but a vast area which is a break in the plateau. From where we stood it was twelve miles across to the opposite walls--a level line of mesa on the Utah side. We looked up and down for twenty to thirty miles. This great space is filled with gigantic architectural constructions, with amphitheatres, gorges, precipices, walls of masonry, fortresses terraced up to the level of the eye, temples mountain size, all brilliant with horizontal lines of color--streaks of solid hues a few feet in width, streaks a thousand feet in width--yellows, mingled white and gray, orange, dull red, brown, blue, carmine, green, all blending in the sunlight into one transcendent suffusion of splendor. Afar off we saw the river in two places, a mere thread, as motionless and smooth as a strip of mirror, only we knew it was a turbid, boiling torrent, 6000 feet below us. Directly opposite the overhanging ledge on which we stood was a mountain, the sloping base of which was ashy gray and bluish; it rose in a series of terraces to a thousand-feet wall of dark red sandstone, receding upward, with ranges of columns and many fantastic sculptures, to a finial row of gigantic opera-glasses 6000 feet above the river. The great San Francisco Mountain, with its snowy crater, which we had passed on the way, might have been set down in the place of this one, and it would have been only one in a multitude of such forms that met the eye whichever way we looked. Indeed, all the vast mountains in this region might be hidden in this cañon. Wandering a little away from the group and out of sight, and turning suddenly to the scene from another point of view, I experienced for a moment an indescribable terror of nature, a confusion of mind, a fear to be alone in such a presence. With all this grotesqueness and majesty of form and radiance of color, creation seemed in a whirl. With our education in scenery of a totally different kind, I suppose it would need long acquaintance with this to familiarize one with it to the extent of perfect mental comprehension. The vast abyss has an atmosphere of its own, one always changing and producing new effects, an atmosphere and shadows and tones of its own--golden, rosy, gray, brilliant, and sombre, and playing a thousand fantastic tricks to the vision. The rich and wonderful color effects, says Captain Dutton, "are due to the inherent colors of the rocks, modified by the atmosphere. Like any other great series of strata in the plateau province, the carboniferous has its own range of colors, which might serve to distinguish it, even if we had no other criterion. The summit strata are pale gray, with a faint yellowish cast. Beneath them the cross-bedded sandstone appears, showing a mottled surface of pale pinkish hue. Underneath this member are nearly 1000 feet of the lower Aubrey sandstones, displaying an intensely brilliant red, which is somewhat marked by the talus shot down from the gray cherty limestone at the summit. Beneath the lower Aubrey is the face of the Red Wall limestone, from 2000 to 3000 feet high. It has a strong red tone, but a very peculiar one. Most of the red strata of the West have the brownish or vermilion tones, but these are rather purplish red, as if the pigment had been treated to a dash of blue. It is not quite certain that this may not arise in part from the intervention of the blue haze, and probably it is rendered more conspicuous by this cause; but, on the whole, the purplish cast seems to be inherent. This is the dominant color of the cañon, for the expanse of the rock surface displayed is more than half in the Red Wall group." I was continually likening this to a vast city rather than a landscape, but it was a city of no man's creation nor of any man's conception. In the visions which inspired or crazy painters have had of the New Jerusalem, of Babylon the Great, of a heaven in the atmosphere, with endless perspective of towers and steeps that hang in the twilight sky, the imagination has tried to reach this reality. But here are effects beyond the artist, forms the architect has not hinted at; and yet everything reminds us of man's work. And the explorers have tried by the use of Oriental nomenclature to bring it within our comprehension, the East being the land of the imagination. There is the Hindoo Amphitheatre, the Bright Angel Amphitheatre, the Ottoman Amphitheatre, Shiva's Temple, Vishnu's Temple, Vulcan's Throne. And here, indeed, is the idea of the pagoda architecture, of the terrace architecture, of the bizarre constructions which rise with projecting buttresses, rows of pillars, recesses, battlements, esplanades, and low walls, hanging gardens, and truncated pinnacles. It is a city, but a city of the imagination. In many pages I could tell what I saw in one day's lounging for a mile or so along the edge of the precipice. The view changed at every step, and was never half an hour the same in one place. Nor did it need much fancy to create illusions or pictures of unearthly beauty. There was a castle, terraced up with columns, plain enough, and below it a parade-ground; at any moment the knights in armor and with banners might emerge from the red gates and deploy there, while the ladies looked down from the balconies. But there were many castles and fortresses and barracks and noble mansions. And the rich sculpture in this brilliant color! In time I began to see queer details: a Richardson house, with low portals and round arches, surmounted by a Nuremberg gable; perfect panels, 600 feet high, for the setting of pictures; a train of cars partly derailed at the door of a long, low warehouse, with a garden in front of it. There was no end to such devices. It was long before I could comprehend the vastness of the view, see the enormous chasms and rents and seams, and the many architectural ranges separated by great gulfs, between me and the wall of the mesa twelve miles distant. Away to the north-east was the blue Navajo Mountain, the lone peak in the horizon; but on the southern side of it lay a desert level, which in the afternoon light took on the exact appearance of a blue lake; its edge this side was a wall thousands of feet high, many miles in length, and straightly horizontal; over this seemed to fall water. I could see the foam of it at the foot of the cliff; and below that was a lake of shimmering silver, in which the giant precipice and the fall and their color were mirrored. Of course there was no silver lake, and the reflection that simulated it was only the sun on the lower part of the immense wall. Some one said that all that was needed to perfect this scene was a Niagara Falls. I thought what figure a fall 150 feet high and 3000 long would make in this arena. It would need a spy-glass to discover it. An adequate Niagara here should be at least three miles in breadth, and fall 2000 feet over one of these walls. And the Yosemite--ah! the lovely Yosemite! Dumped down into this wilderness of gorges and mountains, it would take a guide who knew of its existence a long time to find it. The process of creation is here laid bare through the geologic periods. The strata of rock, deposited or upheaved, preserve their horizontal and parallel courses. If we imagine a river flowing on a plain, it would wear for itself a deeper and deeper channel. The walls of this channel would recede irregularly by weathering and by the coming in of other streams. The channel would go on deepening, and the outer walls would again recede. If the rocks were of different material and degrees of hardness, the forms would be carved in the fantastic and architectural manner we find them here. The Colorado flows through the tortuous inner chasm, and where we see it, it is 6000 feet below the surface where we stand, and below the towers of the terraced forms nearer it. The splendid views of the cañon at this point given in Captain Dutton's report are from Point Sublime, on the north side. There seems to have been no way of reaching the river from that point. From the south side the descent, though wearisome, is feasible. It reverses mountaineering to descend 6000 feet for a view, and there is a certain pleasure in standing on a mountain summit without the trouble of climbing it. Hance, the guide, who has charge of the well, has made a path to the bottom. The route is seven miles long. Half-way down he has a house by a spring. At the bottom, somewhere in those depths, is a sort of farm, grass capable of sustaining horses and cattle, and ground where fruit-trees can grow. Horses are actually living there, and parties descend there with tents, and camp for days at a time. It is a world of its own. Some of the photographic views presented here, all inadequate, are taken from points on Hance's trail. But no camera or pen can convey an adequate conception of what Captain Dutton happily calls a great innovation in the modern ideas of scenery. To the eye educated to any other, it may be shocking, grotesque, incomprehensible; but "those who have long and carefully studied the Grand Cañon of the Colorado do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce it by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles." I have space only to refer to the geologic history in Captain Dutton's report of 1882, of which there should be a popular edition. The waters of the Atlantic once overflowed this region, and were separated from the Pacific, if at all, only by a ridge. The story is of long eras of deposits, of removal, of upheaval, and of volcanic action. It is estimated that in one period the thickness of strata removed and transported away was 10,000 feet. Long after the Colorado began its work of corrosion there was a mighty upheaval. The reader will find the story of the making of the Grand Cañon more fascinating than any romance. Without knowing this story the impression that one has in looking on this scene is that of immense antiquity, hardly anywhere else on earth so overwhelming as here. It has been here in all its lonely grandeur and transcendent beauty, exactly as it is, for what to us is an eternity, unknown, unseen by human eye. To the recent Indian, who roved along its brink or descended to its recesses, it was not strange, because he had known no other than the plateau scenery. It is only within a quarter of a century that the Grand Cañon has been known to the civilized world. It is scarcely known now. It is a world largely unexplored. Those who best know it are most sensitive to its awe and splendor. It is never twice the same, for, as I said, it has an atmosphere of its own. I was told by Hance that he once saw a thunder-storm in it. He described the chaos of clouds in the pit, the roar of the tempest, the reverberations of thunder, the inconceivable splendor of the rainbows mingled with the colors of the towers and terraces. It was as if the world were breaking up. He fled away to his hut in terror. The day is near when this scenery must be made accessible. A railway can easily be built from Flagstaff. The projected road from Utah, crossing the Colorado at Lee's Ferry, would come within twenty miles of the Grand Cañon, and a branch to it could be built. The region is arid, and in the "sight-seeing" part of the year the few surface wells and springs are likely to go dry. The greatest difficulty would be in procuring water for railway service or for such houses of entertainment as are necessary. It could, no doubt, be piped from the San Francisco Mountain. At any rate, ingenuity will overcome the difficulties, and travellers from the wide world will flock thither, for there is revealed the long-kept secret, the unique achievement of nature. APPENDIX. A CLIMATE FOR INVALIDS. The following notes on the climate of Southern California, written by Dr. H. A. Johnson, of Chicago, at the solicitation of the writer of this volume and for his information, I print with his permission, because the testimony of a physician who has made a special study of climatology in Europe and America, and is a recognized authority, belongs of right to the public: The choice of a climate for invalids or semi-invalids involves the consideration of: First, the invalid, his physical condition (that is, disease), his peculiarities (mental and emotional), his social habits, and his natural and artificial needs. Second, the elements of climate, such as temperature, moisture, direction and force of winds, the averages of the elements, the extremes of variation, and the rapidity of change. The climates of the western and south-western portions of the United States are well suited to a variety of morbid conditions, especially those pertaining to the pulmonary organs and the nervous system. Very few localities, however, are equally well adapted to diseases of innervation of circulation and respiration. For the first and second, as a rule, high altitudes are not advisable; for the third, altitudes of from two thousand to six thousand feet are not only admissible but by many thought to be desirable. It seems, however, probable that it is to the dryness of the air and the general antagonisms to vegetable growths, rather than to altitude alone, that the benefits derived in these regions by persons suffering from consumption and kindred diseases should be credited. Proximity to large bodies of water, river valleys, and damp plateaus are undesirable as places of residence for invalids with lung troubles. There are exceptions to this rule. Localities near the sea with a climate subject to slight variations in temperature, a dry atmosphere, little rainfall, much sunshine, not so cold in winter as to prevent much out-door life and not so hot in summer as to make out-door exercise exhausting, are well adapted not only to troubles of the nervous and circulatory systems, but also to those of the respiratory organs. Such a climate is found in the extreme southern portions of California. At San Diego the rainfall is much less, the air is drier, and the number of sunshiny days very much larger than on our Atlantic seaboard, or in Central and Northern California. The winters are not cold; flowers bloom in the open air all the year round; the summers are not hot. The mountains and sea combine to give to this region a climate with few sudden changes, and with a comfortable range of all essential elements. A residence during a part of the winter of 1889-90 at Coronado Beach, and a somewhat careful study of the comparative climatology of the south-western portions of the United States, leads me to think that we have few localities where the comforts of life can be secured, and which at the same time are so well adapted to the needs of a variety of invalids, as San Diego and its surroundings. In saying this I do not wish to be understood as preferring it to all others for some one condition or disease, but only that for weak hearts, disabled lungs, and worn-out nerves it seems to me to be unsurpassed. CHICAGO, _July 12, 1890_. THE COMING OF WINTER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. From Mr. Theodore S. Van Dyke's altogether admirable book on _Southern California_ I have permission to quote the following exquisite description of the floral procession from December to March, when the Land of the Sun is awakened by the first winter rain: Sometimes this season commences with a fair rain in November, after a light shower or two in October, but some of the very best seasons begin about the time that all begin to lose hope. November adds its full tribute to the stream of sunshine that for months has poured along the land; and, perhaps, December closes the long file of cloudless days with banners of blue and gold. The plains and slopes lie bare and brown; the low hills that break away from them are yellow with dead foxtail or wild oats, gray with mustard-stalks, or ashy green with chemisal or sage. Even the chaparral, that robes the higher hills in living green, has a tired air, and the long timber-line that marks the cañon winding up the mountain-slopes is decidedly paler. The sea-breeze has fallen off to a faint breath of air; the land lies silent and dreamy with golden haze; the air grows drier, the sun hotter, and the shade cooler; the smoke of brush-fires hangs at times along the sky; the water has risen in the springs and sloughs as if to meet the coming rain, but it has never looked less like rain than it now does. Suddenly a new wind arises from the vast watery plains upon the south-west; long, fleecy streams of cloud reach out along the sky; the distant mountain-tops seem swimming in a film of haze, and the great California weather prophet--a creature upon whom the storms of adverse experience have beaten for years without making even a weather crack in the smooth cheek of his conceit--lavishes his wisdom as confidently as if he had never made a false prediction. After a large amount of fuss, and enough preliminary skirmishing over the sky for a dozen storms in any Eastern State, the clouds at last get ready, and a soft pattering is heard upon the roof--the sweetest music that ever cheers a Californian ear, and one which the author of "The Rain upon the Roof" should have heard before writing his poem. When the sun again appears it is with a softer, milder beam than before. The land looks bright and refreshed, like a tired and dirty boy who has had a good bath and a nap, and already the lately bare plains and hill-sides show a greenish tinge. Fine little leaves of various kinds are springing from the ground, but nearly all are lost in a general profusion of dark green ones, of such shape and delicacy of texture that a careless eye might readily take them for ferns. This is the alfileria, the prevailing flower of the land. The rain may continue at intervals. Daily the land grows greener, while the shades of green, varied by the play of sunlight on the slopes and rolling hills, increase in number and intensity. Here the color is soft, and there bright; yonder it rolls in wavy alternations, and yonder it reaches in an unbroken shade where the plain sweeps broad and free. For many weeks green is the only color, though cold nights may perhaps tinge it with a rusty red. About the first of February a little starlike flower of bluish pink begins to shine along the ground. This is the bloom of the alfileria, and swiftly it spreads from the southern slopes, where it begins, and runs from meadow to hill-top. Soon after a cream-colored bell-flower begins to nod from a tall, slender stalk; another of sky-blue soon opens beside it; beneath these a little five-petaled flower of deep pink tries to outshine the blossoms of the alfileria; and above them soon stands the radiant shooting-star, with reflexed petals of white, yellow, and pink shining behind its purplish ovaries. On every side violets, here of the purest golden hue and overpowering fragrance, appear in numbers beyond all conception. And soon six or seven varieties of clover, all with fine, delicate leaves, unfold flowers of yellow, red, and pink. Delicate little crucifers of white and yellow shine modestly below all these; little cream-colored flowers on slender scapes look skyward on every side; while others of purer white, with every variety of petal, crowd up among them. Standing now upon some hill-side that commands miles of landscape, one is dazzled with a blaze of color, from acres and acres of pink, great fields of violets, vast reaches of blue, endless sweeps of white. Upon this--merely the warp of the carpet about to cover the land--the sun fast weaves a woof of splendor. Along the southern slopes of the lower hills soon beams the orange light of the poppy, which swiftly kindles the adjacent slopes, then flames along the meadow, and blazes upon the northern hill-sides. Spires of green, mounting on every side, soon open upon the top into lilies of deep lavender, and the scarlet bracts of the painted-cup glow side by side with the crimson of the cardinal-flower. And soon comes the iris, with its broad golden eye fringed with rays of lavender blue; and five varieties of phacelia overwhelm some places with waves of purple, blue, indigo, and whitish pink. The evening primrose covers the lower slopes with long sheets of brightest yellow, and from the hills above the rock-rose adds its golden bloom to that of the sorrel and the wild alfalfa, until the hills almost outshine the bright light from the slopes and plains. And through all this nods a tulip of most delicate lavender; vetches, lupins, and all the members of the wild-pea family are pushing and winding their way everywhere in every shade of crimson, purple, and white; along the ground crowfoot weaves a mantle of white, through which, amid a thousand comrades, the orthocarpus rears its tufted head of pink. Among all these are mixed a thousand other flowers, plenty enough as plenty would be accounted in other countries, but here mere pin-points on a great map of colors. As the stranger gazes upon this carpet that now covers hill and dale, undulates over the table-lands, and robes even the mountain with a brilliancy and breadth of color that strikes the eye from miles away, he exhausts his vocabulary of superlatives, and goes away imagining he has seen it all. Yet he has seen only the background of an embroidery more varied, more curious and splendid, than the carpet upon which it is wrought. Asters bright with centre of gold and lavender rays soon shine high above the iris, and a new and larger tulip of deepest yellow nods where its lavender cousin is drooping its lately proud head. New bell-flowers of white and blue and indigo rise above the first, which served merely as ushers to the display, and whole acres ablaze with the orange of the poppy are fast turning with the indigo of the larkspur. Where the ground was lately aglow with the marigold and the four-o'clock the tall penstemon now reaches out a hundred arms full-hung with trumpets of purple and pink. Here the silene rears high its head with fringed corolla of scarlet; and there the wild gooseberry dazzles the eye with a perfect shower of tubular flowers of the same bright color. The mimulus alone is almost enough to color the hills. Half a dozen varieties, some with long, narrow, trumpet-shaped flowers, others with broad flaring mouths; some of them tall herbs, and others large shrubs, with varying shades of dark red, light red, orange, cream-color, and yellow, spangle hill-side, rock-pile, and ravine. Among them the morning-glory twines with flowers of purest white, new lupins climb over the old ones, and the trailing vetch festoons rock and shrub and tree with long garlands of crimson, purple, and pink. Over the scarlet of the gooseberry or the gold of the high-bush mimulus along the hills, the honeysuckle hangs its tubes of richest cream-color, and the wild cucumber pours a shower of white over the green leaves of the sumach or sage. Snap-dragons of blue and white, dandelions that you must look at three or four times to be certain what they are, thistles that are soft and tender with flowers too pretty for the thistle family, orchids that you may try in vain to classify, and sages and mints of which you can barely recognize the genera, with cruciferæ, compositæ, and what-not, add to the glare and confusion. Meanwhile, the chaparral, which during the long dry season has robed the hills in sombre green, begins to brighten with new life; new leaves adorn the ragged red arms of the manzanita, and among them blow thousands of little urn-shaped flowers of rose-color and white. The bright green of one lilac is almost lost in a luxuriance of sky-blue blossoms, and the white lilac looks at a distance as if drifted over with snow. The cercocarpus almost rivals the lilac in its display of white and blue, and the dark, forbidding adenostoma now showers forth dense panicles of little white flowers. Here, too, a new mimulus pours floods of yellow light, and high above them all the yucca rears its great plume of purple and white. Thus marches on for weeks the floral procession, new turns bringing new banners into view, or casting on old ones a brighter light, but ever showing a riotous profusion of splendor until member after member drops gradually out of the ranks, and only a band of stragglers is left marching away into the summer. But myriads of ferns, twenty-one varieties of which are quite common, and of a fineness and delicacy rarely seen elsewhere, still stand green in the shade of the rocks and trees along the hills, and many a flower lingers in the timber or cañons long after its friends on the open hills or plains have faded away. In the cañons and timber are also many flowers that are not found in the open ground, and as late as the middle of September, only twenty miles from the sea, and at an elevation of but fifteen hundred feet, I have gathered bouquets that would attract immediate attention anywhere. The whole land abounds with flowers both curious and lovely; but those only have been mentioned which force themselves upon one's attention. Where the sheep have not ruined all beauty, and the rains have been sufficient, they take as full possession of the land as the daisy and wild carrot do of some Eastern meadows. There are thousands of others, which it would be a hopeless task to enumerate, which are even more numerous than most of the favorite wild flowers are in the East, yet they are not abundant enough to give character to the country. For instance, there is a great larkspur, six feet high, with a score of branching arms, all studded with spurred flowers of such brilliant red that it looks like a fountain of strontium fire; but you will not see it every time you turn around. A tall lily grows in the same way, with a hundred golden flowers shining on its many arms, but it must be sought in certain places. So the tiger-lily and the columbine must be sought in the mountains, the rose and sweetbrier on low ground, the night-shades and the helianthus in the timbered cañons and gulches. Delicacy and brilliancy characterize nearly all the California flowers, and nearly all are so strange, so different from the other members of their families, that they would be an ornament to any greenhouse. The alfileria, for instance, is the richest and strongest fodder in the world. It is the main-stay of the stock-grower, and when raked up after drying makes excellent hay; yet it is a geranium, delicate and pretty, when not too rank. But suddenly the full blaze of color is gone, and the summer is at hand. Brown tints begin to creep over the plains; the wild oats no longer ripple in silvery waves beneath the sun and wind; and the foxtail, that shone so brightly green along the hill-side, takes on a golden hue. The light lavender tint of the chorizanthe now spreads along the hills where the poppy so lately flamed, and over the dead morning-glory the dodder weaves its orange floss. A vast army of cruciferæ and compositæ soon overruns the land with bright yellow, and numerous varieties of mint tinge it with blue or purple; but the greater portion of the annual vegetation is dead or dying. The distant peaks of granite now begin to glow at evening with a soft purple hue; the light poured into the deep ravines towards sundown floods them with a crimson mist; on the shady hill-sides the chaparral looks bluer, and on the sunny hill-sides is a brighter green than before. COMPARATIVE TEMPERATURE AROUND THE WORLD. The following table, published by the Pasadena Board of Trade, shows the comparative temperature of well-known places in various parts of the world, arranged according to the difference between their average winter and average summer: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Place. | Winter.| Spring.| Summer.| Autumn.| Difference | | | | | Summer, | | | | | Winter. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Funchal, Madeira | 62.88 | 64.55 | 70.89 | 70.19 | 8.01 St. Michael, Azores | 57.83 | 61.17 | 68.33 | 62.33 | 10.50 PASADENA | 56.00 | 61.07 | 67.61 | 62.31 | 11.61 Santa Cruz, Canaries | 64.65 | 68.87 | 76.68 | 74.17 | 12.03 Santa Barbara | 54.29 | 59.45 | 67.71 | 63.11 | 13.42 Nassau, Bahama Islands | 70.67 | 77.67 | 86.00 | 80.33 | 15.33 San Diego, California | 54.09 | 60.14 | 69.67 | 64.63 | 15.58 Cadiz, Spain | 52.90 | 59.93 | 70.43 | 65.35 | 17.53 Lisbon, Portugal | 53.00 | 60.00 | 71.00 | 62.00 | 18.00 Malta | 57.46 | 62.76 | 78.20 | 71.03 | 20.74 Algiers | 55.00 | 66.00 | 77.00 | 60.00 | 22.00 St Augustine, Florida | 58.25 | 68.69 | 80.36 | 71.90 | 22.11 Rome, Italy | 48.90 | 57.65 | 72.16 | 63.96 | 23.26 Sacramento, California | 47.92 | 59.17 | 71.19 | 61.72 | 23.27 Mentone | 49.50 | 60.00 | 73.00 | 56.60 | 23.50 Nice, Italy | 47.88 | 56.23 | 72.26 | 61.63 | 24.44 New Orleans, Louisiana | 56.00 | 69.37 | 81.08 | 69.80 | 25.08 Cairo, Egypt | 58.52 | 73.58 | 85.10 | 71.48 | 26.58 Jacksonville, Florida | 55.02 | 68.88 | 81.93 | 62.54 | 96.91 Pau, France | 41.86 | 54.06 | 70.72 | 57.39 | 28.86 Florence, Italy | 44.30 | 56.00 | 74.00 | 60.70 | 29.70 San Antonio, Texas | 52.74 | 70.48 | 83.73 | 71.56 | 30.99 Aiken, South Carolina | 45.82 | 61.32 | 77.36 | 61.96 | 31.54 Fort Yuma, California | 57.96 | 73.40 | 92.07 | 75.66 | 34.11 Visalia, California | 45.38 | 59.40 | 80.78 | 60.34 | 35.40 Santa Fé, New Mexico | 30.28 | 50.06 | 70.50 | 51.34 | 40.22 Boston, Mass | 28.08 | 45.61 | 68.68 | 51.04 | 40.60 New York, N. Y. | 31.93 | 48.26 | 72.62 | 48.50 | 40.69 Albuquerque, New Mexico| 34.78 | 56.36 | 76.27 | 56.33 | 41.40 Denver, Colorado, | 27.66 | 46.33 | 71.66 | 47.16 | 44.00 St. Paul, Minnesota | 15.09 | 41.29 | 68.03 | 44.98 | 52.94 Minneapolis, Minnesota | 12.87 | 40.12 | 68.34 | 45.33 | 55.47 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CALIFORNIA AND ITALY. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, in its pamphlet describing that city and county, gives a letter from the Signal Service Observer at Sacramento, comparing the temperature of places in California and Italy. He writes: To prove to your many and intelligent readers the equability and uniformity Of the climate of Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Los Angeles, as compared with Mentone and San Remo, of the Riviera of Italy and of Corfu, I append the monthly temperature for each place. Please notice a much warmer temperature in winter at the California stations, and also a much cooler summer temperature at the same places than at any of the foreign places, except Corfu. The table speaks with more emphasis and certainty than I can, and is as follows: +-----------+---------+-----------+----------+----------+---------+---------+ | | San | Santa | Los | | San | | | Month. | Diego's | Barbara's | Angeles' | Mentone's| Remo's | Corfu's | | | mean temperature. | +-----------+---------+-----------+----------+----------+---------+---------+ |January | 53.7 | 54.4 | 52.8 | 48.2 | 47.2 | 53.6 | |February | 54.2 | 55.6 | 54.2 | 48.5 | 50.2 | 51.8 | |March | 55.6 | 56.4 | 56.0 | 52.0 | 52.0 | 53.6 | |April | 57.8 | 58.8 | 57.9 | 57.2 | 57.0 | 58.3 | |May | 61.1 | 60.2 | 61.0 | 63.0 | 62.9 | 66.7 | |June | 64.4 | 62.6 | 65.5 | 70.0 | 69.2 | 72.3 | |July | 67.3 | 65.7 | 68.3 | 75.0 | 74.3 | 67.7 | |August | 68.7 | 67.0 | 69.5 | 75.0 | 73.8 | 81.3 | |September | 66.6 | 65.6 | 67.5 | 69.0 | 70.6 | 78.8 | |October | 62.5 | 62.1 | 62.7 | 74.4 | 61.8 | 70.8 | |November | 58.2 | 58.0 | 58.8 | 54.0 | 58.3 | 63.8 | |December | 55.5 | 55.3 | 54.8 | 49.0 | 49.3 | 68.4 | | | | | | | | | | Averages | 60.6 | 60.2 | 60.4 | 60.4 | 60.1 | 65.6 | +-----------+---------+-----------+----------+----------+---------+---------+ The table on pages 210 and 211, "Extremes of Heat and Cold," is published by the San Diego Land and Farm Company, whose pamphlet says: The United States records at San Diego Signal Station show that in ten years there were but 120 days on which the mercury passed 80°. Of these 120 there were but 41 on which it passed 85°, but 22 when it passed 90°, but four over 95°, and only one over 100°; to wit, 101°, the highest ever recorded here. During all this time there was not a day on which the mercury did not fall to at least 70° during the night, and there were but five days on which it did not fall even lower. During the same ten years there were but six days on which the mercury fell below 35°. This low temperature comes only in extremely dry weather in winter, and lasts but a few minutes, happening just before sunrise. On two of these six days it fell to 32° at daylight, the lowest point ever registered here. The lowest mid-day temperature is 52°, occurring only four times in these ten years. From 65° to 70° is the average temperature of noonday throughout the greater part of the year. FIVE YEARS IN SANTA BARBARA. [Transcriber's note: Table has been turned from original to fit, along with using abbreviations for the months and a legend.] The following table, from the self-registering thermometer in the observatory of Mr. Hugh D. Vail, shows the mean temperature of each month in the years 1885 to 1889 at Santa Barbara, and also the mean temperature of the warmest and coldest days in each month: A = Mean Temperature of each Month. B = Mean Temperature of Warmest Day. C = Mean Temperature of Coldest Day. D = Monthly Rainfall, Inches. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ MONTH. Jan.| Feb.| Mar. | Apr.| May | June| July| Aug.| Sep.| Oct.| Nov.| Dec. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1885. A|53.2 | 56.7 |59.1 |60.9 |60.0 |62.0 | 66.1| 68.0| 66.9| 63.0|58.9 | 57.2 B|57.0 | 65.5 |62,5 |70.5 |64.6 |68.0 | 73.0| 78.8| 78.8| 72.0|64.8 | 65.7 C|49.5 | 51,5 |56.0 |54.0 |54.0 |58.5 | 62.2| 62.5| 72.0| 58.5|50.0 | 52.0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1886. A|55.0 | 59.6 |53.1 |55.7 |60.5 |62.0 | 66.3| 68.2| 63.8| 58.3|56.3 | 55.8 B|73.5 | 70.0 |59.5 |61.5 |65.5 |67.5 | 72.0| 72.0| 68.3| 62.5|66.2 | 65.8 C|47.5 | 45.0 |46.2 |50.5 |54.0 |58.5 | 63.3| 63.2| 57.0| 51.7|49.8 | 49.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1887. A|54.67| 50.4 |57.0 |58.43|60.0 |63.7 | 64.6| 64.8| 66.0| 65.0|58.9 | 52.8 B|63.5 | 61.1 |64.8 |66.8 |67.0 |79.0 | 71.3| 69.7| 70.5| 74.0|65.3 | 59.6 C|49.0 | 45.3 |52.0 |51.0 |53.3 |59.0 | 60.9| 62.0| 61.5| 59.3|47.5 | 49.0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1888. A|49.0 | 53.8 |53.0 |59.9 |57.6 |64.4 | 67.0| 66.3| 67.9| 63.5|59 8 |.56.5 B|58.7 | 57.5 |60.5 |75.0 |64.5 |69.0 | 72.0| 72.0| 76.2| 76.9|61.3 | 63.0 C|41.0 | 49.0 |46.0 |53.0 |51.7 |59.5 | 63.0| 63.5| 63.2| 59.0|54.5 | 52.0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1889. A|53.0 | 55.4 |58.0 |59.9 |60.0 |62.5 | 64.2| 67.3| 68.8| 63.9|59.6 | 54.4 B|58.0 | 65.0 |67.0 |72.7 |68.5 |65.7 | 84.0| 77.0| 78.0| 70.3|65.7 | 60.7 C|48.8 | 45.5 |52.5 |52.7 |54.5 |58.5 | 61.0| 63.0| 62.0| 60.0|54.5 | 50.0 D| 0.29| 1.29| 7.31| 0.49| 0.76| 0.13| ...| ... | ... | 8.69| 3.21| 10.64 Observations made at San Diego City, compiled from Report Of the Chief Signal Officer of the U. S. Army. [Transcriber's note: Table has been modified from original to fit, using abbreviations for the months and a legend.] Column headers: a = Average number of cloudy days for each month and year. b = Average number of fair days for each month and year. c = Average number of clear days for each month and year. d = Average cloudiness, scale 0 to 10, for each month and year. e = Average hourly velocity of wind for each month and year. f = Average precipitation for each month and year. g = Minimum temperature for each month and year. h = Maximum temperature for each month and year. i = Mean temperature for each month and year. j = Mean normal barometer of San Diego for each month and year for four years. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | OBSERVATIONS EXTENDING OVER A PERIOD OF TWELVE YEARS. MONTH. | a | b | c | d | e f | g | h | i | j ---------+------------------------------------------------------------+------- January | 8.5 | 11.2 | 11.3 | 4.1 | 5.1 | 1.85 | 32.0 | 78.0 | 53.6 | 30.027 February | 7.9 | 11.3 | 9.0 | 4.4 | 6.0 | 2.07 | 35.0 | 82.6 | 54.3 | 30.058 March | 9.6.| 12.7 | 8.7 | 4.8 | 6.4 | 0.97 | 38.0 | 99.0 | 55.7 | 30.004 April | 7.9 | 11.9 | 10.2 | 4.4 | 6.6 | 0.68 | 39.0 | 87.0 | 57.7 | 29.965 May |10.9 | 12.1 | 8.0 | 5.2 | 6.7 | 0.26 | 45.4 | 94.0 | 61.0 | 29.893 June | 8.1.| 15.2 | 6.7 | 5.0 | 6.3 | 0.05 | 51.0 | 94.0 | 64.4 | 29.864 July | 6.7 | 16.1 | 8.2 | 4.7 | 6.3 | 0.02 | 54.0 | 86.0 | 67.1 | 29.849 August | 4.7 | 16.9 | 9.4 | 4.1 | 6.0 | 0.23 | 54.0 | 86.0 | 68.7 | 29.894 September| 4.4 | 13.9 | 11.7 | 3.7 | 5.9 | 0.05 | 49.5 |101.0 | 66.8 | 29.840 October | 5.6 | 12.6 | 12.8 | 3.9 | 5.4 | 0.49 | 44.0 | 92.0 | 62.9 | 29.905 November | 6.5 | 10.0 | 13.5 | 3.6 | 5.1 | 0.70 | 38.0 | 85.0 | 58.3 | 29.991 December | 6.6 | 11.2 | 13.2 | 3.7 | 5.1 | 2.12 | 32.0 | 82.0 | 55.6 | 30.009 Mean | | | | | | | | | | annual |87.4 |155.1 |122.7 | 4.3 | 5.9.| 9.49 | 42.6 | 88.8 | 60.5 | 29.942 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EXTREMES OF HEAT AND COLD. The following table, taken from the Report of the Chief Signal Officer, shows the highest and lowest temperatures recorded since the opening of stations of the Signal Service at the points named, for the number of years indicated. An asterisk (*) denotes below zero: a = Maximum b = Minimum c = Number of Years of Observation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Jan. | Feb. | March.| April.| May. | June.| ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Locality of Station | c | a | b | a | b | a | b | a | b | a | b | a | b | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charleston, S. C. | 12| 80| 23| 78| 26| 85| 28| 87| 32| 94| 47| 94| 65| Denver, Col. | 12| 67|*29| 72|*22| 81|*10| 83| 4| 92| 27| 89| 50| Jacksonville, Fla. | 12| 80| 24| 83| 32| 88| 31| 91| 37| 99| 48|101| 62| L'S ANG'LES, CAL. | 6| 82| 30| 86| 28| 99| 34| 94| 39|100| 40|104| 47| New Orleans, La. | 13| 78| 20| 80| 33| 84| 37| 86| 38| 92| 56| 97| 65| Newport, R. I. | 2| 48| 2| 50| 4| 60| 4| 62| 26| 75| 33| 91| 41| New York | 13| 64| *6| 69| *4| 72| *3| 81| 20| 94| 34| 95| 47| Pensacola, Fla. | 4| 74| 29| 78| 31| 79| 36| 87| 34| 93| 47| 97| 64| SAN DIEGO, CAL. | 12| 78| 32| 83| 35| 99| 38| 87| 39| 94| 45| 94| 51| San Francisco, Cal. | 12| 69| 36| 71| 35| 77| 39| 81| 40| 86| 45| 95| 48| ------------------------------------------------------------------------- EXTREMES OF HEAT AND COLD.--_Continued._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | July.| Aug. | Sept. | Oct. | Nov. | Dec. | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Locality of Station | c | a | b | a | b | a | b | a | b | a | b | a | b | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charleston, S. C. | 12| 94| 69| 96| 69| 94| 64| 89| 49| 81| 33| 78| 22| Denver, Col. | 12| 91| 59| 93| 60| 93| 51| 84| 38| 73| 23| 69| 1| Jacksonville, Fla. | 12|104| 68|100| 66| 98| 56| 92| 40| 84| 30| 81| 19| L'S ANG'LES, CAL. | 6| 98| 51|100| 50|104| 44| 97| 43| 86| 34| 88| 30| New Orleans, La. | 13| 96| 70| 97| 69| 92| 58| 89| 40| 82| 32| 78| 20| Newport, R. I. | 9| 87| 56| 85| 45| 77| 39| 75| 29| 62| 17| 56| *9| New York | 13| 99| 57| 96| 53|100| 36| 83| 31| 74| 7| 66| *6| Pensacola, Fla. | 4| 97| 64| 93| 69| 93| 57| 89| 45| 81| 28| 76| 17| SAN DIEGO, CAL. | 12| 86| 54| 86| 54|101| 50| 92| 44| 85| 38| 82| 32| San Francisco, Cal. | 12| 83| 49| 89| 50| 92| 50| 84| 45| 78| 41| 68| 34| ------------------------------------------------------------------------- STATEMENTS OF SMALL CROPS. The following statements of crops on small pieces of ground, mostly in Los Angeles County, in 1890, were furnished to the Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles, and are entirely trustworthy. Nearly all of them bear date August 1st. This is a fair sample from all Southern California: PEACHES. Ernest Dewey, Pomona--Golden Cling Peaches, 10 acres, 7 years old, produced 47 tons green; sold dried for $4800; cost of production, $243.70; net profit, $4556.30. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. Amount of rain, 28 inches, winter of 1889-90. H. H. Rose, Santa Anita Township (3/4 of a mile from Lamanda Park)--2-6/7 acres; produced 47,543 pounds; sold for $863.46; cost of production, $104; net profit, $759.46. Soil, light sandy loam; not irrigated. Produced in 1889 12,000 pounds, which sold at $1.70 per 100 pounds. E. R. Thompson, Azusa (2 miles south of depot)--2-1/6 acres, 233 trees, produced 57,655 pounds; sold for $864.82-1/2; cost of production, $140; net profit, $724.82-1/2. Soil, sandy loam; irrigated three times in summer, 1 inch to 7 acres. Trees 7 years old, not more than two-thirds grown. P. O'Connor, Downey--20 trees produced 4000 pounds; sold for $60; cost of production $5; net profit, $55. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. Crop sold on the ground. H. Hood, Downey City (1/4 of a mile from depot)--1/4 of an acre produced 7-1/2 tons; sold for $150; cost of production, $10; net profit, $140. Damp sandy soil; not irrigated. F. D. Smith (between Azusa and Glendora, 1-1/4 miles from depot)--1 acre produced 14,361 pounds; sold for $252.51; cost of production, $20; net profit, $232.51. Dark sandy loam; irrigated once. Trees 5 and 6 years old. P. O. Johnson, Ranchito--17 trees, 10 years old, produced 4-3/4 tons; sold 4-1/4 tons for $120; cost of production, $10; net profit, $110; very little irrigation. Sales were 1/2c. per pound under market rate. PRUNES. E. P. Naylor (3 miles from Pomona)--15 acres produced 149 tons; sold for $7450; cost of production, $527; net profit, $6923. Soil, loam, with some sand; irrigated, 1 inch per 10 acres. W. H. Baker, Downey (1/2 a mile from depot)--1-1/2 acres produced 12,529 pounds; sold for $551.90; cost of production, $50; net profit, $501.90. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. Howe Bros. (2 miles from Lordsburg)--800 trees, which had received no care for 2 years, produced 28 tons; sold for $1400; cost of production, $200; net profit, $1200. Soil, gravelly loam, red; partially irrigated. Messrs. Howe state that they came into possession of this place in March, 1890. The weeds were as high as the trees and the ground was very hard. Only about 500 of the trees had a fair crop on them. W. A. Spalding, Azusa--1/3 of an acre produced 10,404 pounds; sold for $156.06; cost of production, $10; net profit, $146.06. Soil, sandy loam. E. A. Hubbard, Pomona (1-1/2 miles from depot)--4-1/2 acres produced 24 tons; sold green for $1080; cost of production, $280; net profit, $800. Soil, dark sandy loam; irrigated. This entire ranch of 9 acres was bought in 1884 for $1575. F. M. Smith (1-1/4 miles east of Azusa)--3/5 of an acre produced 17,174 pounds; sold for $315.84; cost of production, $25; net profit, $290. Soil, deep, dark sandy loam; irrigated once in the spring. Trees 5 years old. George Rhorer (1/2 of a mile east of North Pomona)--13 acres produced 88 tons; sold for $4400 on the trees; cost of production, $260; net profit, $4140. Soil, gravelly loam; irrigated, 1 inch to 8 acres. Trees planted 5 years ago last spring. J. S. Flory (between the Big and Little Tejunga rivers)--1-1/3 acres or 135 trees 20 feet apart each way; 100 of the trees 4 years old, the balance of the trees 5 years old; produced 5230 pounds dried; sold for $523; cost of production, $18; net profit, $505. Soil, light loam, with some sand; not irrigated. W. Caruthers (2 miles north of Downey)--3/4 of an acre produced 5 tons; sold for $222; cost of production, $7.50; net profit, $215. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. Trees 4 years old. James Loney, Pomona--2 acres; product sold for $1150; cost of production, $50; net profit, $1100. Soil, sandy loam. I. W. Lord, Eswena--5 acres produced 40 tons; sold for $2000; cost of production, $300; net profit, $1700. Soil, sandy loam. M. B. Moulton, Pomona--3 acres; sold for $1873; cost of production, $215; net profit, $1658. Soil, deep sandy loam. Trees 9 years old. Ernest Dewey, Pomona--6 acres produced 38 tons green; dried, at 10 cents a pound, $3147; cost of production, $403; profit, $2734. Soil, sandy loam; irrigated one inch to 10 acres. Sixty per cent. increase over former year. C. S. Ambrose, Pomona--12 acres produced 77 tons; $50 per ton gross, $3850; labor of one hand one year, $150; profit, $3700. Soil, gravelly; very little irrigation. Prunes sold on trees. ORANGES. Joachim F. Jarchow, San Gabriel--2-1/2 acres; 10-year trees; product sold for $1650; cost of production $100, including cultivation of 7-1/2 acres, not bearing; net profit, $1550. F. D. Smith, Azusa--6-1/2 acres produced 600 boxes; sold for $1200; cost of production, $130; net profit, $1070. Soil, dark sandy loam; irrigated three times. Trees 4 years old. George Lightfoot, South Pasadena--5-1/2 acres produced 700 boxes; sold for $1100; cost of production, $50; net profit, $1050. Soil, rich, sandy loam; irrigated once a year. H. Hood, Downey--1/2 of an acre produced 275 boxes; sold for $275; cost of production, $25; net profit, $250. Soil, damp, sandy; not irrigated. W. G. Earle, Azusa--1 acre produced 210 boxes; sold for $262; cost of production, $15; net profit, $247. Soil, sandy loam; irrigated four times. Nathaniel Hayden, Vernon--4 acres; 986 boxes at $1.20 per box; sales, $1182; cost of production, $50; net profit, $1132. Loam; irrigated. Other products on the 4 acres. H. O. Fosdick, Santa Ana--1 acre; 6 years old; 350 boxes; sales, $700; cost of production and packing, $50; net profit, $650. Loam; irrigated. J. H. Isbell, Rivera--1 acre, 82 trees; 16 years old; sales, $600; cost of production, $25; profit, $575. Irrigated. $1.10 per box for early delivery, $1.65 for later. GRAPES. William Bernhard, Monte Vista--10 acres produced 25 tons; sold for $750; cost of production, $70; net profit, $680. Soil, heavy loam; not irrigated. Vines 5 years old. Dillon, Kennealy & McClure, Burbank (1 mile from Roscoe Station)--200 acres produced 90,000 gallons of wine; cost of production, $5000; net profit, about $30,000. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated; vineyard in very healthy condition. P. O'Connor (2-1/2 miles south of Downey)--12 acres produced 100 tons; sold for $1500; cost of production, $360; net profit, $1140. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. Vines planted in 1884, when the land would not sell for $100 per acre. J. K. Banks (1-3/4 miles from Downey)--40 acres produced 250 tons; sold for $3900; cost of production, $1300; net profit, $2600. Soil, sandy loam. BERRIES. W. Y. Earle (2-1/2 miles from Azusa)--Strawberries, 2-1/2 acres produced 15,000 boxes; sold for $750; cost of production, $225; net profit, $525. Soil, sandy loam; irrigated. Shipped 3000 boxes to Ogden, Utah, and 6000 boxes to Albuquerque and El Paso. Benjamin Norris, Pomona--Blackberries, 1/4 of an acre produced 2500 pounds; sold for $100; cost of production, $5; net profit, $95. Soil, light sandy; irrigated. S. H. Eye, Covina--Raspberries, 5/9 of an acre produced 1800 pounds; sold for $195; cost of production, $85; net profit, $110. Soil, sandy loam; irrigated. J. O. Houser, Covina--Blackberries, 1/4 of an acre produced 648 pounds; sold for $71.28; cost of production, $18; net profit, $53.28. Soil, sandy loam; irrigated. First year's crop. APRICOTS. T. D. Leslie (1 mile from Pomona)--1 acre produced 10 tons; sold for $250; cost of production, $60; net profit, $190. Soil, loose, gravelly; irrigated; 1 inch to 10 acres. First crop. George Lightfoot, South Pasadena--2 acres produced 11 tons; sold for $260; cost of production, $20; net profit, $240. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. T. D. Smith, Azusa--1 acre produced 13,555 pounds; sold for $169.44; cost of production, $25; net profit, $144.44. Soil, sandy loam; irrigated once. Trees 5 years old. W. Y. Earle (2-1/2 miles from Azusa)--6 acres produced 6 tons; sold for $350; cost of production, $25; net profit, $325. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. Trees 3 years old. W. A. Spalding, Azusa--335 trees produced 15,478 pounds; sold for $647.43; cost of production, $50; net profit, $597.43. Soil, sandy loam. Mrs. Winkler, Pomona--3/4 of an acre, 90 trees; product sold for $381; cost of production, $28.40; net profit, $352.60. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. Only help, small boys and girls. MISCELLANEOUS FRUITS. E. A. Bonine, Lamanda Park--Apricots, nectarines, prunes, peaches, and lemons, 30 acres produced 160 tons; sold for $8000; cost of production, $1500; net profit, $6500. No irrigation. J. P. Fleming (1-1/2 miles from Rivera)--Walnuts, 40 acres produced 12-1/2 tons; sold for $2120; cost of production, $120; net profit, $2000. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. George Lightfoot, South Pasadena--Lemons, 2 acres produced 500 boxes; sold for $720; cost of production, $20; net profit, $700. Soil, rich sandy loam; not irrigated. Trees 10 years old. W. A. Spalding, Azusa--Nectarines, 96 trees produced 19,378 pounds; sold for $242.22; cost of production, $35; net profit, $207.22. Soil, sandy loam. F. D. Smith, Azusa--Nectarines, 1-2/5 acres produced 36,350 pounds; sold for $363.50; cost of production, $35; net profit, $318.50. Soil, deep dark sandy loam; irrigated once in spring. Trees 5 and 6 years old. C. D. Ambrose (4 miles north of Pomona)--Pears, 3 acres produced 33,422 pounds; sold green for $1092.66; cost of production, $57; net profit, $1035.66. Soil, foot-hill loam; partly irrigated. N. Hayden--Statement of amount of fruit taken from 4 acres for one season at Vernon District: 985 boxes oranges, 15 boxes lemons, 8000 pounds apricots, 2200 pounds peaches, 200 pounds loquats, 2500 pounds nectarines, 4000 pounds apples, 1000 pounds plums, 1000 pounds prunes, 1000 pounds figs, 150 pounds walnuts, 500 pounds pears. Proceeds, $1650. A family of five were supplied with all the fruit they wanted besides the above. POTATOES. O. Bullis, Compton--28-3/4 acres produced 3000 sacks; sold for $3000; cost of production, $500; net profit, $2500. Soil, peat; not irrigated. This land has been in potatoes 3 years, and will be sown to cabbages, thus producing two crops this year. P. F. Cogswell, El Monte--25 acres produced 150 tons; sold for $3400; cost of production, $450; net profit, $2950. Soil, sediment; not irrigated. M. Metcalf, El Monte--8 acres produced 64 tons; sold for $900; cost of production, $50; net profit, $850. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. Jacob Vernon (1-1/2 miles from Covina)--3 acres produced 400 sacks; sold for $405.88; cost of production, $5; net profit, $400.88. Soil, sandy loam; irrigated one acre. Two-thirds of crop was volunteer. H. Hood, Downey--Sweet potatoes, 1 acre produced 300 sacks; sold for $300; cost of production, $30; net profit, $270. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. C. C. Stub, Savannah (1 mile from depot)--10 acres produced 1000 sacks; sold for $2000; cost of production, $100; net profit, $1900. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. A grain crop was raised on the same land this year. ONIONS. F. A. Atwater and C. P. Eldridge, Clearwater--1 acre produced 211 sacks; sold for $211; cost of production, $100; net profit, $111. Soil, sandy loam; no irrigation. At present prices the onions would have brought $633. Charles Lauber, Downey--1 acre produced 113 sacks; sold for $642; cost of production, $50; net profit, $592. No attention was paid to the cultivation of this crop. Soil, sandy loam; not irrigated. At present prices the same onions would have brought $803. MISCELLANEOUS VEGETABLES. Eugene Lassene, University--Pumpkins, 5 acres produced 150 loads; sold for $4 per load; cost of production, $3 per acre; net profit, $585. Soil, sandy loam. A crop of barley was raised from the same land this year. P. K. Wood, Clearwater--Pea-nuts, 3 acres produced 5000 pounds; sold for $250; cost of production, $40; net profit, $210. Soil, light sandy; not irrigated. Planted too deep, and got about one-third crop. Oliver E. Roberts (Terrace Farm, Cahuenga Valley)--3 acres tomatoes; sold product for $461.75. Soil, foot-hill; not irrigated; second crop, watermelons. One-half acre green peppers; sold product for $54.30. 1-1/2 acres of green peas; sold product for $220. 17 fig-trees; first crop sold for $40. Total product of 54 acres, $776.05. Jacob Miller, Cahuenga--Green peas, 10 acres; 43,615 pounds; sales, $3052; cost of production and marketing, $500; profit, $2552. Soil, foot-hill; not irrigated. Second crop, melons. W. W. Bliss, Duarte--Honey, 215 stands; 15,000 pounds; sales, $785. Mountain district. Bees worth $1 to $3 per stand. James Stewart, Downey--Figs, 3 acres; 20 tons, at $50, $1000. Not irrigated; 26 inches rain; 1 acre of trees 16 years old, 2 acres 5 years. Figs sold on trees. The mineral wealth of Southern California is not yet appreciated. Among the rare minerals which promise much is a very large deposit of tin in the Temescal Cañon, below South Riverside. It is in the hands of an English company. It is estimated that there are 23 square miles rich in tin ore, and it is said that the average yield of tin is 20-1/4 per cent. INDEX. Acamo, 165, 170. Adenostoma, 205. Africa, 18. Aiken, South Carolina, Temperature of, 207. Ailantus, 134. Alaska, 34. Albuquerque, New Mexico, 165. ---- temperature of, 207. Alfalfa, 23, 98, 101, 204. Alfileria, 203, 206. Algiers, Temperature of, 207. Alhambra, 124. Almond, 18, 19, 101. Alpine pass, 1. Amalfi, 30. Ambrose, C. D., 215. Ambrose, Ernest, 213. Anacapa, 2. Anaheim, 134. Antelope, 114, 188. Apples, 19, 96, 97, 127. ---- prices and profits, 215. ---- San Diego, 97. Apricots, 18, 19, 43, 92. ---- prices and profits, 214, 215. Arcadian Station, 126. Arizona, 5, 149, 164, 173, 177. ---- Cattle Company, 186. ---- desert, 79. Arrow-head Hot Springs, 117. Artist Point, 154. Atlantic, 5, 18, 47, 165, 198. Atwater, F. A., 216. Aubrey sandstones, 195. Australian lady-bug, 129. ---- navels, 120. Azusa, 211-215. Baker, W. H., 212. Baldwin plantation, 127. Banana, 19, 134. Bancroft, H. H., 56. Banks, J. K., 214. Banning, 96. Barley, 8, 14, 25, 138. ---- prices and profits, 216. Beans, 138. Bear Valley Dam, 117, 118. Bees, 217. Bell-flower, 204. Bernhard, William, 214. Berries, 141. Big Tejunga River, 212. Big Trees (Mariposa), 150, 156-161. Birch, 134. Blackberries--prices and profits, 214. Bliss, W. W., 217. Bohemia Töplitz waters, 163. Bonine, E. A., 215. Boston, Massachusetts, Temperature of, 207. Bozenta (Count), 134. Brandy, 136. Breezes, 70, 123, 184, 203. (See Winds.) Bright Angel Amphitheatre, 195. Buenaventura, 138. Bullis, O., 215 Burbank, 214. Cactus, 69, 165. Cadiz, Spain. Temperature of, 207. Cahuenga Valley, 216. Cairo, Egypt, Temperature of, 207. Capri, 30, 80. Carlisle school, 168. Carlsbad, 163. Carrot (wild), 206. Caruthers, W., 213. Cataract Cañon, 182. Cedars, 185, 186. Cereals, 12. (See Grains.) Chalcedony Park, 183. Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles, 211. ---- ---- San Diego, 143. Chaparral, 81, 202, 205, 206. Charleston, South Carolina, Temperature of, 210, 211. Chautauqua, The, 76. Chemisal, 202. Cherries, 43. Chief Signal Officer, U. S. A., Report of, 210. China trade, 142. Chorizanthe, 206. Chula Vista, 144. Clearwater, 216. Climate, 4-6, 9, 29, 43, 45, 48, 130, 140, 142, 146. ---- adapted to health, 29, 37, 38, 45, 46. ---- adapted to recreation, 70. ---- compared to European, 5; to Italian, 18; to Mediterranean, 18; to Tangierian, 46. ---- discussed and described, 10, 38, 44, 45. ---- affected by ocean and deserts, 4, 8, 29, 45. ---- effect on character, 88. ---- effect on disease, 50. ---- effect on fruits, 10. ---- effect on horses, 55. ---- effect on longevity, 56, 59, 62. ---- effect on seasons, 10, 43, 65, 66. ---- Hufeland on, 52. ---- insular, 76. ---- in various altitudes, 46. ---- Johnson (Dr.) on, 201. ---- of Coronado Beach, 47, 81, 87. ---- of New Mexico, 164. ---- of Pasadena, 130. ---- of San Diego, 49. ---- of winter, 43, 48. ---- Van Dyke on, 6, 78. Climatic regions, 4. Clover, 204. Cogswell, P. F., 216. Colorado desert, 2-5, 6, 33, 34, 46. ---- Grand Cañon, 149. (See Grand Cañon.) ---- Plateau, 182. ---- ---- description of, 177. ---- River, 8, 197, 199. ---- ---- course described, 177. Columbine, 206. Como, 1. Compton, 215. Concord coach, 184. Cooper, Ellwood, 125. Corfu, Temperature of, 208. Corn, 9, 12, 14, 25, 98. Coronado Beach, 29, 33, 47, 87, 202. ---- ---- climate, 47, 81, 87. ---- ---- Description of, 80-87. ---- Islands, 30. ---- Vasques de, 32, 165. Covina, 214, 216. Cremation among Indians, 60. Crossthwaite, Philip, Longevity of, 61. Crowfoot, 204. Crucifers, 204. Cucumbers, 205. Cuyamaca (mountain) 6, 18, 33, 37. ----(reservoir), 144. Cypress (Monterey), 49, 82, 130. ---- Point (tree), 161. ---- ---- description of, 162. Cypriote ware, 169. Cyprus, 82, 134. Daisy, 206. Dandelion, 205. Date (palms), 19, 42, 49, 85, 134. Denver, Colorado, Temperature of, 207, 210, 211. Deserts, 2-7, 84, 79. ---- affecting climate, 4, 8, 29, 45. ---- describing beauty of, 175. Dewey, Ernest, 211, 213. Dew-falls, 123. Dillon, Kennealy & McClure, 214. District of the Grand Cañon--area described, 177. Downey, 211-214, 216, 217. ---- City, 211. Duarte, 217. Dutton, Captain C. E., 181, 194, 198. Earle, W. G., 213. Earle, W. Y., 214, 215. East San Gabriel Hotel, 127. Eaton Cañon, 130. Egypt, 178. El Cajon, 37, 56, 79, 111, 144. El Capitan, 154. Eldridge, C. P., 216. Elm, 134. El Monte, 216. English Walnut, 18, 19, 34, 48, 101, 129, 134. Escondido, 140, 141. Eswena, 213. Eucalyptus, 23, 48, 112, 123, 134. Eye, S. H., 214. Fan-palm, 49, 134. Fern (Australian), 123, 205. Fig, 18, 19, 34, 101, 141, 144, 147. ---- cultivation discussed, 34. ---- prices and profits, 215-217. Flagstaff, 182, 183, 199. Fleming, J. P., 215. Florence Hotel, 80. Florence, Italy, Temperature of, 207. Flory, J. S., 212. Fogs, 4, 8, 38, 47, 123. Fort Yuma, California, Temperature of, 207. Fosdick, H. O., 213. Foxtail, 206. Franciscan Fathers, 42. Franciscan missions, 24. Fresno, 115, 128. Frosts, 10, 19, 123. Fruits, 9, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 37, 43, 46, 47, 96, 141, 144, 198. Fruits compared to European, 18. ---- cultivation and speculation discussed, 20, 93, 107, 140. ---- great region for, 97. ---- grouped, 18, 19, 92, 94-96, 101, 115, 127, 211-217. ---- lands adapted to, 37, 46, 96. ---- orchards, 67, 165. ---- rapid growth of, 115. ---- Riverside method for, 104. ---- winter, 48. Fumigation, Cost of, 124, 129. Funchal, Madeira, Temperature of, 207. Gardens, 46, 67, 147, 165. Geraniums, 49. Glendora, 212. Golden Gate, 42. Gooseberry, 205. Government land, 93. Grain, 12, 14, 15, 19, 23, 25, 140. Grand Cañon, 149, 178, 181. ---- ---- area of district of, 177. ---- ---- description of, 181, 182, 190-200. ---- ---- journey to the, 182-190. Grapes, 15, 18, 19, 92, 93, 98, 101. ---- diseases of, 128. ---- Old Mission, 128. ---- prices and profits of, 96. ---- raisin. (See Raisins.) Grape-vines, 79, 91, 123. ---- ---- on small farms, 107. ---- ---- prices and profits of, 96. ---- ---- Santa Anita, 127. Grayback (mountain), 34, 46. Great Wash fault, 178, 182. _Grevillea robusta_, 123. Guava, 19, 134. Gums, 138. Hance (guide), 198, 199. Harvard Observatory, 130. Hawaii Islands, 5. Hayden, Nathaniel, 213, 215. Helianthus, 206. Heliotrope, 10, 41, 49. Hesperia, 96. Hindoo Amphitheatre, 195. Holbrook, 183. Honey--prices and profits of, 217. Honeysuckle, 205. Hood, H., 211, 213, 216. Horses, 55, 70. Hotel del Coronado, 29, 87. ---- del Monte Park, 161. ---- Raymond, 79, 130, 133. Hot Springs (Las Vegas), 163, 164. Houser, J. O., 214. Houses, Suggestions on, 68. Howe Bros., 212. Hubbard, E. A., 212. Hufeland, on climate and health, 52. Humidity, 38, 43. Huntington, Dr., 50. Hurricane Ledge or Fault, 182. _Icerya purchasi_, 129. Indiana settlement, 94. Indians, 55, 187, 188 ---- affected by climate, 55. ---- converted by missionaries, 24. ---- longevity of, 59. ---- Mojave, 2, 169. ---- Navajos, 170, 183. ---- Oualapai, 188. ---- Pueblo, 165. ---- ---- at Acamo, 165. ---- ---- at Isleta, 165. ---- ---- at Laguna, 165-173. Ingo County, 34. Inspiration Point, 150, 154. Iris, 204. Irrigation, 97, 117, 147, 165. ---- at Pasadena, 130. ---- at Pomona, 15, 94, 124, 211, 215. ---- at Redlands, 102, 104, 118. ---- at San Diego, 144. ---- at Santa Ana, 134. ---- by companies, 94. ---- by natural means, 11, 14, 37. ---- cost of, 98. ---- for apricots, berries, grapes, onions, oranges, peaches, potatoes, prunes, vegetables, 211-217. ---- for orchards, 120. ---- for wheat, 100. ---- in relation to fruits and crops, 19, 99, 100, 101. ---- necessity of, 15, 19, 88. ---- results of, discussed, 12, 14, 15. ---- Riverside method of, 102, 104. ---- three methods of, 102. ---- Van Dyke on, 102, 103. Isbell, J. H., 213. Ischia, 30. Isleta, 165. Isthmus route, 142. Italy, 1, 2, 4, 18, 68, 69, 75, 87. (See Our Italy.) Ives, Lieutenant, 181. Jacksonville, Florida, Temperature of, 207, 210, 211. Japanese persimmon, 134. Japan trade, 142. Jarchom, Joachim F., 213. Johnson, Dr. H. A., on climate, 201. Johnson, P. O., 212. Josephites, 117. Julian (rainfall), 48. Kaibab Plateau, 178, 181, 182. Kanab Cañon, 178, 182. Kanab Plateau, 178, 181, 182. Kelp, 38, 161. Kentucky racers, 55. Kern County, 16, 94, 114. Kimball, F. A., 125. King River, 114. Labor, "boom" prices of, 109. ---- necessity of, 108. Ladies' Annex, 143. Laguna--climate of, 174. ---- description of, 165-168. ---- Indians at, 165-173. Lamanda Park, 215. Land, 12, 14, 23, 147. ---- adapted to apricots, berries, grapes, onions, oranges, peaches, potatoes, prunes, vegetables, 211-217. ---- adapted to fruits, 97, 141. ---- arable, 93, 140, 142, 145. ---- capabilities of, 17, 91-95, 114. ---- converted from deserts, 94. ---- crops adapted to, 108. ---- elements constituting value of, 95. ---- experiments of settlers on, 111. ---- for farms and gardens, 107. ---- Government, 93. ---- of the Sun, 147, 202. ---- profits and prices of, 20, 23, 95-98, 117. ---- raisin, 114. ---- speculations in, 24, 107, 143. La Playa, 33. Larkspur, 205, 206. Las Flores, 140. Lassene, Eugene, 216. Las Vegas Hot Springs, 163, 164. Lauber, Charles, 216. Lee's Ferry, 199. Lemons, 1, 18, 19, 79, 93, 107, 129, 137, 144. Leslie, T. D., 214. Lightfoot, George, 213, 214. Lilac, 205. Lilies, 204, 206. Limes, 18. Lisbon, Portugal, Temperature of, 207. Little Colorado River, 177, 181, 182. Little Tejunga River, 212. Live-oaks, 49, 69, 72, 79, 127, 134, 140, 161. Locust, 134. Lombardy, 1. Loney, James, 213. Longevity at El Cajon, 56. ---- at San Diego, 59, 60. ---- climatic influence on, 56, 59, 62. ---- Dr. Bancroft on, 56. ---- Dr. Palmer on, 59, 60. ---- Dr. Remondino on, 52. ---- Dr. Winder on, 56. ---- Father Ubach on, 59, 62. ---- Hufeland on, 52. Longevity, Philip Crossthwaite, Story of, 61. Loquats, 21. ---- prices and profits of, 215. Lord, I. W., 213. Lordsburg, 212. Los Angeles, 12, 15, 16, 26, 46, 71, 76, 79, 94, 95, 97, 124, 128, 129, 133-135. ---- ---- assessment roll and birth rate of, 136. ---- ---- climate of, 12, 15, 26, 76, 79, 95, 124, 129, 133. ---- ---- County, 211. ---- ---- description of, 135, 136. ---- ---- report of Chamber of Commerce of, 207, 211. ---- ---- River, 11, 99. ---- ---- temperature of, 44, 207, 210, 211. ---- ---- wines, 136. Los Coronados, 2. Lupins, 205. Maggiore, 1. Magnolia, 41, 48, 123. Maguey, 69. Malta, Temperature of, 207. Manitoba, 5. Manzanita, 205. Maple, 134. Marble Cañon, 177. Marguerites, 82. Marienbad, 163. Marigold, 205. Mariposa (big trees), 150, 156-161. Martinique, 48. Mediterranean--climate of the, 37, 46, 80. ---- fruits and products of the, 18. ---- Our, 18, 46. Mentone, 6. ---- temperature of, 207, 208. Merced River, 150, 155. Meserve plantation, 124. Metcalf, M., 216. Methusaleh of trees, 158. Mexican Gulf, 18. ---- ranch house, 67. Mexico, 2, 11, 30, 33, 40, 47. ---- small-pox from, 64. Miller, Jacob, 216. Mimulus, 205. Minerals, 142. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Temperature of, 207. Mint, 205, 206. Mirror Lake, 154. Mission Cañon, 75. ---- of San Diego, 60. ---- of San Tomas, 60. Mississippi Valley, 38. Modjeska, Madame, 134. Moisture in relation to health, 201. Mojave Desert, 2, 7. ---- Indians, 7, 169. Montecito (Santa Barbara), 123. Monterey, 42, 47, 49, 72, 149. ---- cypress, 82, 130. ---- description of, 161, 162. Monte Vista, 214. Montezuma, 164. ---- Hotel, 163. Monticello, 75. Mormons, 117. Morning-glory, 205. Moulton, M. B., 213. Mount Whitney, 34. ---- Wilson, 130. Murillo--pictures by, 26. Mustard stalks, 202. Mütterlager, 163. Naples, 34. Nassau, Bahama Islands, Temperature of, 207. National City, 33, 79, 125, 144. ---- Soldiers' Home, 76. Navajo Indians, 170, 183. ---- Mountains, 196. Naylor, E. P., 212. Neah Bay, 47, 76. Nebraska, 175. Nectarines, 19, 92. ---- prices and profits of, 215. Nevadas, 34, 150. New Mexico, 79, 164, 173. ---- ---- climate of, 164. ---- ---- desert of, 149. ---- ---- scenery of, 163-165. New Orleans, Louisiana, Temperature of, 207, 210, 211. Newport, Rhode Island, Temperature of, 210, 211. New York, N. Y., Temperature of, 207, 210, 211. Niagara Falls, 153, 197. Nice, 207. Nightshade, 206. Norris, Benjamin, 214. Northern Africa, 69. ---- Arizona, 177. ---- Pomona, 212. Nuts, 18, 138. Oats, 206. O'Connor, P., 211, 214. Old Baldy Mountain, 4. Olives, 1, 18, 19, 24, 37, 115, 129, 134, 147, 162. ---- at Pomona, 125. ---- at Santa Barbara, 37. ---- Cooper on, 125. ---- cultivation of, discussed, 19, 37, 125. ---- future of, 125, 126. ---- Mission, 125, 126. ---- prices and profits of, 126. Onions--prices and profits of, 216. Ontario, 15, 124. Orange City, 46. ---- ---- description of, 134. ---- County, 16, 46, 79, 111, 134. Oranges, 10, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, 25, 66, 79, 93, 101, 107, 108, 115, 123, 129, 138, 144. ---- as resource, 91. ---- at Redlands, 119. ---- cost of land for, 97. ---- diseases and care of, 101, 129, 137. ---- groves, 20, 118, 123, 127. ---- irrigation for, 213. ---- prices and profits of, 97, 107, 119, 120, 124, 213, 215. ---- Riverside as centre, 119. ---- varieties of, 120, 123. Orchards, 20, 24, 41, 144, 147. Orchids, 205. Orthocarpus, 204. Otay, 145. Ottoman Amphitheatre, 195. Oualapai Indians, 188. Our Italy, Description of, 18. Pacific, 2-5, 8, 16, 29, 58, 75, 142, 165, 198. ---- trade, 142. Painted Desert, 185, 186. Palmer, Dr. Edward, 59, 60. Palms, 41, 42, 67, 69, 85, 123, 130, 134. ---- date, 42, 49, 69, 85. ---- fan, 49. ---- royal, 55, 85. Paria Plateau, 178. Pasadena, 15, 67, 94, 95, 124, 130. ---- Board of Trade, 207. ---- climate, 130. ---- description of, 130-134. ---- temperature of, 133, 207. ---- trees of, 134. Passion-vine, 49. Pau, France, Temperature of, 207. Peach, 92, 101, 182, 211. ---- prices and profits of, 211, 212, 215. Peachblow Mountain, 185. Pea-nuts--prices and profits of, 216. Pears--prices and profits of, 215. Pensacola, Florida, Temperature of, 210, 211. Penstemon, 205. Pepper, 48, 67, 123, 134. ---- prices and profits of, 216. Peruvians, 169. Pineapple, 19. Pines, 42, 72, 134, 185, 188-190. ---- spruce, 182. ---- sugar, 42, 150, 157. Pink Cliffs, 178. Plums, 92. ---- prices and profits of, 215. Point Arguilles, 1. ---- Conception, 2-4, 47, 72, 137. Point Loma, 8, 30, 33, 81. ---- Sublime, 181, 198. ---- Vincent, 76. Pomegranate, 19, 134. Pomona, 15, 94, 95, 124, 211-215. ---- description of, 124. ---- irrigation at, 15, 94, 95, 124, 211-215. ---- land at, 94. ---- olives at, 125. ---- temperature of, 7, 44. Poplar, 134. Poppy, 204-206. Portuguese hamlet, 33. Potatoes, 14. ---- prices and profits of, 215. Powell, Major J. W., 181. Profitable products discussed, 19. Prometheus Unbound, 178. Prunes, 18, 93, 96, 115. ---- prices and profits of, 212, 213, 215. Pueblo Indians, 165-183. Puenta, 124. Puget Sound, 47. Pumpkins--prices and profits of, 216. Quail, 8, 140. Rabbits, 140. Rain, 12, 38, 47, 48, 49, 123, 138, 202, 203, 206. ---- at Julian, Los Angeles, Monterey, Neah Bay, Point Conception, Riverside, Santa Cruz, San Diego, San Jacinto, 47, 202. ---- in relation to health, 202. ---- on deserts described, 187. ---- season for, 47. Rainbow Fall, 154. Raisin grape, 144. Raisins, 18, 19, 93, 108, 136. ---- at Los Angeles, 136. ---- at Redlands, 119. ---- curing, 107. ---- Malaga, 37. ---- prices and profits of, 96, 114, 115. Ranchito, 212. Raspberries--prices and profits of, 214. Raymond Hotel, 133, 149. Red Horse Well, 186, 187. Redlands, 15, 95-97, 124. ---- centre for oranges, 119. ---- description of, 118, 121-123. ---- history of growth of, 118. ---- irrigation of, 102-104, 118. ---- resources of, 120. ---- return on fruits, 97, 98, 124. Redondo, 3. ---- Beach, 12. ---- description of, 76. Red Wall limestone, 195. Redwood, 134. Remondino, Dr., 40, 52, 56, 59, 60. Remondino, Dr., on health, 62. ---- on horses, 55, 61. ---- on longevity, 40, 61. Rhorer, George, 212. Rio Grande del Norte, 165. Rio Puerco, 165. Rivera, 213, 215. Riverside, 15, 95, 124. ---- centre of orange growth, 119. ---- description of, 123-127. ---- growth in resources, 120. ---- irrigation at, 102-104. ---- price of land, 95-98. ---- return on fruits, 97, 98, 124. Riviera, Italy, Temperature of, 7, 45, 208. Roberts, Oliver E., 216. Rock-rose, 204. Rome, Italy, Temperature of, 207. Roscoe Station, 214. Rose, H. H., 211. Roses, 41, 49, 66, 138, 206. Royal palms, 85. Sacramento, California, Temperature of, 207. Sages, 202, 205. Sahara, 6. San Antonio, Texas, Temperature of, 207. San Bernardino, 4, 15-17, 33, 34, 118. ---- ---- description of, 116, 117. ---- ---- land, prices of, 96, 117. ---- ---- Mountain, 4, 7. ---- ---- River, 11. ---- ---- temperature at, 6, 33, 44, 46, 210, 211. San Diego, 2, 9, 15, 24, 26, 34, 42, 43, 47, 62, 72, 79, 80, 94. ---- ---- as a health resort, 50. ---- ---- Chamber of Commerce, 143. ---- ---- climate of, 49, 50. ---- ---- commercial possibilities of, 142. ---- ---- converted lands, 94. ---- ---- description of, 29-34, 79-81, 142-145. ---- ---- fruits, 37, 97. ---- ---- Land and Farm Company, 208. ---- ---- longevity at, 60. ---- ---- markets, 43. ---- ---- mission, 24, 60. ---- ---- rainfall at, 47, 202. ---- ---- recreations at, 41, 71. ---- ---- temperature of, 30, 44, 49, 50, 207, 210, 211. ---- ---- Bay, 2, 3. ---- ---- County, 4, 6, 16, 34. ---- ---- ---- description of, 140-145. ---- ---- River, 4, 6, 11, 16, 34. San Francisco, 2, 42, 142. ---- ---- Mountain, 182, 185, 194, 200. ---- ---- River, 185. ---- ---- temperature at, 210, 211. San Gabriel, 4, 15, 26, 72, 94, 213. San Gabriel, description of, 124-128. ---- ---- mission, 26. ---- ---- Mountain, 4, 5. ---- ---- River, 11. ---- ---- Valley, 72, 94. San Jacinto Range, 4, 17, 33, 46, 118. ---- ---- rain at, 48. San Joaquin, 7, 37, 114. San Juan, 177. ---- ---- Capristrano, 79. ---- ---- San José, 124. San Luis Obispo, 16. ---- ---- River, 11. San Mateo Cañon, 118. San Miguel, 33. San Nicolas, 2. San Pedro, 3, 135. San Remo, Temperature of, 208. Santa Ana, 2, 13, 72, 94, 99, 118. ---- ---- description of, 124. ---- ---- Mountain, 134. ---- ---- River, 11, 79, 134. ---- ---- Township, 15, 127, 211. ---- ---- Valley, 2, 72, 213. Santa Barbara, 2, 3, 9, 37, 67. ---- ---- at Montecito, 123. ---- ---- Channel, 2, 3. ---- ---- County, 16. ---- ---- description of, 72, 137, 138. ---- ---- fruits, 37, 129. ---- ---- Island, 2, 3. ---- ---- Mountain, 17. ---- ---- olives, 37, 125. ---- ---- temperature of, 29, 44, 207. Santa Catalina, 2, 134. Santa Clara, 43, 138. ---- ---- River, 11. Santa Clemente, 2. Santa Cruz, 2, 47, 157. ---- ---- Canaries, Temperature of, 207. Santa Fé line, 117, 119, 163, 165, 182. ---- ---- New Mexico, Temperature of, 207. Santa Margarita River, 11. Santa Miguel, 2. Santa Monica, 3. ---- ---- description of, 76. ---- ---- irrigation at, 134. Santa Rosa, 2, 140. Santa Ynes, 4, 72. Santiago, 46. ---- ---- Cañon, 134. San Tomas mission, 60. Savannah, 216. Sea-lions, 30, 161. Seasons, 6, 10, 37, 38, 43, 65, 66, 81. ---- description of the, 65, 66. ---- Van Dyke on the, 202-206. _Sequoia semper virens_, 157. _Sequoias gigantea_, 157, 158. Serra, Father Junipero, 24. Serrano, Don Antonio, 61, 62. Sheavwitz Plateau, 178. Sheep, 12, 206. Shiva's Temple, 195. Shooting-star, 203. Sicily, 18, 69. Sierra Madre, 4, 15, 37, 42, 46, 71, 94, 114, 118. ---- ---- Villa, 130. Sierra Nevada, 2, 3. Sierras, 153, 161. Signal Service Observer, 207. Silene, 204. Smith, F. D., 212-215. ---- F. M., 212. ---- T. D., 214. Smithsonian Institution, 59. Snap-dragon, 205. Sorrel, 204. Sorrento, 132. Southern California, 2-4, 16. ---- ---- climate of, 29, 38, 45, 55, 56, 59, 62, 130. ---- ---- commerce of, 18. ---- ---- compared to Italy, 46. ---- ---- counties of, 16. ---- ---- history of, 24, 25. ---- ---- "Our Italy," 18, 46. ---- ---- pride of nations, the, 26. ---- ---- rainy seasons in. (See Rain.) ---- ---- rapid growth of fruits in, 115. ---- ---- recreations of, 69-71. ---- ---- temperature of, 43, 133. (See Temperature.) ---- Italy, 69, 147. ---- Pacific Railroad, 149. ---- Utah, 177. South Pasadena, 213, 214. ---- Riverside, 217. Spain, 149. Spalding, W. A., 212, 215. Spanish adventurers, 24, 30. Spruce-pine, 182. St. Augustine, Florida, Temperature of, 207. St. Michael, Azores, Temperature of, 207. St. Paul, Minnesota, Temperature of, 207. State Commission, 156. Stewart, James, 217. Stone, 142. Strawberries, 10. ---- prices and profits of, 214. Stub, C. C., 216. Sugar-pine, 150, 157. Sumach, 205. Sunset Mountain, 185. Sweetbrier, 206. Sweetwater Dam, 144. Switzerland, 149. Sycamore, 79, 134. Table Mountain, 33. Tangier, 45. Temperature, 4, 5, 29, 37, 38. Temperature compared to European, 45. ---- discussed, 43, 45. ---- of Coronado Beach, 87. ---- of Los Angeles, 44, 207, 210, 211. ---- of Monterey, 72. ---- of Pasadena, 13, 207. ---- of Pomona, 44. ---- of San Bernardino, 6, 33, 44, 46, 210, 211. ---- of San Diego, 30, 44, 49, 50, 210, 211. ---- of Santa Barbara, 29, 44, 207. ---- relation of, to health, 201. ---- statistics, 44, 45, 72. ---- statistics compared, 207, 208, 210, 211. ---- Van Dyke on, 50. Temecula Cañon, 140. Temescal Cañon, 217. The Rockies, 10. Thistle, 205. Thompson, E. R., 211. Tia Juana River, 11, 30, 145. Tiger-lily, 206. Tin, 217. Tomatoes--prices and profits of, 216. Töplitz waters, 163. Toroweap Valley, 182. Trees, 48, 69, 130, 134, 138, 147, 156, 198. ---- description of, 150, 156-161. ---- region of Mariposa big, 156. Tulip, 204. Tustin City, 134. Ubach, Father A. D., 59, 60, 62. Uinkaret Plateau, 178. Umbrella-tree, 69, 184. University Heights, 80, 81. Utah, 177, 178, 199. Vail, Hugh D., 209. Van Dyke, Theodore S., 4, 140, 202. ---- on climate, 6, 78. ---- on floral procession and seasons, 202-206. ---- on growth in population, 145. ---- on irrigation, 102, 103. ---- on temperature, 50. Van Dyke, Theodore S., on winds, 8, 203. Vedolia cardinalis (Australian lady-bug), 129. Vegetables, 112, 216. Ventura, 16, 137. Vermilion Cliffs, 178. Vernon, 213, 215. ---- Jacob, 216. Vesuvius, 33. Vetch, 203. Vines, 20, 23-25, 67, 79, 91, 107, 123, 128, 144, 147. Violets, 203. Visalia, California, Temperature of, 207. Vishnu's Temple, 196. Vulcan's Throne, 196. Wages, "Boom," 109. Walnut Creek Cañon, 183. Walnuts, 14, 19, 115. ---- prices and profits of, 215. Water, 186. ---- how measured, 98. ---- price of, 97, 98. Watermelons--prices and profits of, 216. Wawona, 150. Wells, 186. Wheat, 2, 5, 14, 25, 138. ---- affected by irrigation, 100. White Cliffs, 178. Wild Oats, 202. Williams, 182. Willow, 134. Winder, Dr. W. A., on longevity, 56. Winds, 4, 6, 8, 29, 30, 38, 47, 70, 78, 123, 184, 203. ---- relation of, to health, 201. ---- Van Dyke on, 8, 203. Wine, 20, 92, 93, 107, 136, 137. Winkler, Mrs., 215. Wood, P. K., 216. Yosemite, 150, 153, 154, 161, 197. ---- description of, 149-156. Yucca, 205. Zuñis, 165. THE END. BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. As We Were Saying. With Portrait, and Illustrated by H. W. MACVICKAR and others. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00. Mr. Warner is both wise and witty, and in his charming style he follows a model of his own.--_Boston Traveller._ Mr. Warner has such a fine fancy, such a clever way of looking at the things that interest everybody, such a genial humor, that one never tires of him or the children of his pen.--_Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette._ Our Italy. An Exposition of the Climate and Resources of Southern California. Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $2 50. In this book are a little history, a little prophecy, a few fascinating statistics, many interesting facts, much practical suggestion, and abundant humor and charm.--_Evangelist_, N. Y. It is a book of solid value, such as a clear-headed business man will appreciate, yet it is such a book as only an accomplished man of letters could write. We commend it to all who wish further knowledge of a region too little known by Americans.--_Examiner_, N. Y. A Little Journey in the World. A Novel. Post 8vo, Half Leather, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $1 50. A powerful picture of modern life in which unscrupulously acquired capital is the chief agent.... Mr. Warner has depicted this phase of society with real power, and there are passages in his work which are a nearer approach to Thackeray than we have had from any American author.--_Boston Post._ The vigor and vividness of the tale and its sustained interest are not its only or its chief merits. It is a study of American life of to-day, possessed with shrewd insight and fidelity.--GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. Studies in the South and West. With Comments on Canada. Post 8vo, Half Leather, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $1 75. A witty, instructive book, as brilliant in its pictures as it is warm in its kindness; and we feel sure that it is with a patriotic impulse that we say that we shall be glad to learn that the number of its readers bears some proportion to its merits and its power for good.--_N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._ A book most charming--a book that no American can fail to enjoy, appreciate, and highly prize.--_Boston Traveller._ Their Pilgrimage. Richly Illustrated by C. S. REINHART. Post 8vo, Half Leather, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $2 00. Mr. Warner's pen-pictures of the characters typical of each resort, of the manner of life followed at each, of the humor and absurdities peculiar to Saratoga, or Newport, or Bar Harbor, as the case may be, are as good-natured as they are clever. The satire, when there is any, is of the mildest, and the general tone is that of one glad to look on the brightest side of the cheerful, pleasure-seeking world.--_Christian Union_, N. Y. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. _Any of the above works sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price._ NORDHOFF'S CALIFORNIA. Peninsular California. Some Account of the Climate, Soil, Productions, and Present Condition chiefly of the Northern Half of Lower California. By CHARLES NORDHOFF. Maps and Illustrations. Square 8vo, Cloth, $1 00; Paper, 75 cents. Mr. Nordhoff has known the region he describes for many years, and is a skilful writer as well as careful observer.--_Hartford Courant._ The author frankly writes as an advocate, but, so far as our knowledge goes, with scrupulous fairness.--_N. Y. Evening Post._ Mr. Nordhoff supplies copious appendices, giving tables of temperature, rainfall and other meteorological facts of much interest. His book is interesting, valuable, and timely.--_Epoch_, N. Y. The reading of this volume has been of special personal pleasure to us, and we doubt not that others will enjoy it too.--_Michigan Christian Advocate._ The book is one that those who read merely for information will find interesting and instructive, while there are doubtless many by whom its economical representations will be accepted in the way that Mr. Nordhoff evidently hopes that they will be.--_Philadelphia Telegraph._ This opportune little volume will do much to enlighten us as to its real character, an enlightenment of a most practical kind.--_Geographical News._ Mr. Charles Nordhoff has added considerably to our knowledge of a country singularly neglected.--_N. Y. Sun._ Mr. Nordhoff's book is as good as a trip to the place.--_Philadelphia American._ His book is historical, descriptive, and practical, containing information about land-titles and other matters such as settlers and investors will find most useful.--_Cincinnati Times._ There is hardly a question that one contemplating purchase or residence there would wish to ask that is not answered in this book, while to all it furnishes interesting and no doubt authentic information concerning a remarkable region, of which not much has been generally known heretofore.--_Christian Intelligencer_, N. Y. Mr. Nordhoff has personally explored and studied the region and become an owner of property in it, and he may be regarded as fully qualified to speak of what it is and promises to be. Much interesting and valuable information is contained in Mr. Nordhoff's work.--_Brooklyn Union._ Those who remember what a good prophet Mr. Nordhoff proved himself to be by his book on "California," issued some sixteen years ago, will read this volume with especial attention.--_Louisville Courier-Journal._ Mr. Nordhoff's book is not a traveller's sketch, but an exhaustive study of the country, its rulers, its products, and its inhabitants.--_Boston Commercial Bulletin._ A valuable contribution to the fund of general information concerning the "Golden State."--_Washington Post._ The information which he gives respecting the resources of the country and its progress in late years is not only interesting, but also of practical value to tourists, as well as for those who contemplate settlement.--_Lutheran Observer_, Philadelphia. We commend the work to all persons who would like to have information about this beautiful and fruitful land.--_Christian Observer_, Louisville. 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16594	----	A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE BY W.H.R. CURTLER OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1909 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK TORONTO AND MELBOURNE PREFACE 'A husbandman', said Markham, 'is the master of the earth, turning barrenness into fruitfulness, whereby all commonwealths are maintained and upheld. His labour giveth liberty to all vocations, arts, and trades to follow their several functions with peace and industrie. What can we say in this world is profitable where husbandry is wanting, it being the great nerve and sinew which holdeth together all the joints of a monarchy?' And he is confirmed by Young: 'Agriculture is, beyond all doubt, the foundation of every other art, business, and profession, and it has therefore been the ideal policy of every wise and prudent people to encourage it to the utmost.' Yet of this important industry, still the greatest in England, there is no history covering the whole period. It is to remedy this defect that this book is offered, with much diffidence, and with many thanks to Mr. C.R.L. Fletcher of Magdalen College, Oxford, for his valuable assistance in revising the proof sheets, and to the Rev. A.H. Johnson of All Souls for some very useful information. As the agriculture of the Middle Ages has often been ably described, I have devoted the greater part of this work to the agricultural history of the subsequent period, especially the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. W.H.R. CURTLER. _May 22, 1909._ CONTENTS CHAPTER I Communistic Farming.--Growth of the Manor.--Early Prices.--The Organization and Agriculture of the Manor CHAPTER II The Thirteenth Century.--The Manor at its Zenith, with Seeds of Decay already visible.--Walter of Henley CHAPTER III The Fourteenth Century.--Decline of Agriculture.--The Black Death.-- Statute of Labourers CHAPTER IV How the Classes connected with the Land lived in the Middle Ages CHAPTER V The Break-up of the Manor.--Spread of Leases.--The Peasants' Revolt.--Further Attempts to regulate Wages.--A Harvest Home.--Beginning of the Corn Laws.--Some Surrey Manors CHAPTER VI 1400-1540. The so-called 'Golden Age of the Labourer' in a Period of General Distress CHAPTER VII Enclosure CHAPTER VIII Fitzherbert.--The Regulation of Hours and Wages CHAPTER IX 1540-1600. Progress at last--Hop-growing.--Progress of Enclosure.-- Harrison's _Description_ CHAPTER X 1540-1600. Live Stock.--Flax.--Saffron.--The Potato.--The Assessment of Wages CHAPTER XI 1600-1700. Clover and Turnips.--Great Rise in Prices.--More Enclosure.--A Farming Calendar CHAPTER XII The Great Agricultural Writers of the Seventeenth Century.--Fruit-growing. --A Seventeenth-century Orchard CHAPTER XIII The Evils of Common Fields.--Hops.--Implements.--Manures.--Gregory King.--Corn Laws CHAPTER XIV 1700-65. General Characteristics of the Eighteenth Century.--Crops. --Cattle.--Dairying.--Poultry.--Tull and the New Husbandry.--Bad Times.--Fruit-growing CHAPTER XV 1700-65. Townshend.--Sheep-rot.--Cattle Plague.--Fruit-growing CHAPTER XVI 1765-93. Arthur Young.--Crops and their Cost.--The Labourers' Wages and Diet.--The Prosperity of Farmers.--The Country Squire.--Elkington.--Bakewell.--The Roads.--Coke of Holkham CHAPTER XVII 1793-1815. The Great French War.--The Board of Agriculture.--High Prices, and Heavy Taxation CHAPTER XVIII Enclosure.--The Small Owner CHAPTER XIX 1816-37. Depression CHAPTER XX 1837-75. Revival of Agriculture.--The Royal Agricultural Society.--Corn Law Repeal.--A Temporary Set-back.--The Halcyon Days CHAPTER XXI 1875-1908. Agricultural Distress again.--Foreign Competition.-- Agricultural Holdings Act.--New Implements.--Agricultural Commissions.--The Situation in 1908 CHAPTER XXII Imports and Exports.--Live Stock CHAPTER XXIII Modern Farm Live Stock APPENDICES I. Average Prices from 1259 to 1700 II. Exports and Imports of Wheat and Flour from and into England, unimportant years omitted III. Average Prices per Imperial Quarter of British Corn in England and Wales, in each year from 1771 to 1907 inclusive IV. Miscellaneous Information LANDMARKS IN ENGLISH AGRICULTURE 1086. Domesday inquest, most cultivated land in tillage. Annual value of land about 2d. an acre. 1216-72. Henry III. Assize of Bread and Ale. 1272-1307. Edward I. General progress. Walter of Henley. 1307. Edward II. Decline. 1315. Great famine. 1337. Export of wool prohibited. 1348-9. Black Death. Heavy blow to manorial system. Many demesne lands let, and much land laid down to grass. 1351. Statute of Labourers. 1360. Export of corn forbidden. 1381. Villeins' revolt. 1393. Richard II allows export of corn under certain conditions. 1463. Import of wheat under 6s. 8d. prohibited. End of fifteenth century. Increase of enclosure. 1523. Fitzherbert's _Surveying and Husbandry_. 1540. General rise in prices and rents begins. 1549. Kett's rebellion. The last attempt of the English peasant to obtain redress by force. 1586. Potatoes introduced. 1601. Poor Law Act of Elizabeth. 1645. Turnips and clover introduced as field crops. 1662. Statute of Parochial Settlement. 1664. Importation of cattle, sheep, and swine forbidden. 1688. Bounty of 5s. per quarter on export of wheat, and high duty on import. 1733. Tull publishes his _Horse-hoeing Husbandry_. 1739. Great sheep-rot. 1750. Exports of corn reached their maximum. 1760. Bakewell began experimenting. 1760 (about). Industrial and agrarian revolution, and great increase of enclosure. 1764. Elkington's new drainage system. 1773. Wheat allowed to be imported at a nominal duty of 6d. a quarter when over 48s. 1777. Bath and West of England Society established, the first in England. 1789. England definitely becomes a corn-importing country. 1793. Board of Agriculture established. 1795. Speenhamland Act. About same date swedes first grown. 1815. Duty on wheat reached its maximum. 1815-35. Agricultural distress. 1825. Export of wool allowed. 1835. Smith of Deanston, the father of modern drainage. 1838. Foundation of Royal Agricultural Society. 1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws. 1855-75. Great agricultural prosperity. 1875. English agriculture feels the full effect of unrestricted competition with disastrous results. " First Agricultural Holdings Act. 1879-80. Excessive rainfall, sheep-rot, and general distress. CHAPTER I COMMUNISTIC FARMING.--GROWTH OF THE MANOR.--EARLY PRICES.--THE ORGANIZATION AND AGRICULTURE OF THE MANOR When the early bands of English invaders came over to take Britain from its Celtic owners, it is almost certain that the soil was held by groups and not by individuals, and as this was the practice of the conquerors also they readily fell in with the system they found.[1] These English, unlike their descendants of to day, were a race of countrymen and farmers and detested the towns, preferring the lands of the Britons to the towns of the Romans. Co-operation in agriculture was necessary because to each household were allotted separate strips of land, nearly equal in size, in each field set apart for tillage, and a share in the meadow and waste land. The strips of arable were unfenced and ploughed by common teams, to which each family would contribute. Apparently, as the land was cleared and broken up it was dealt out acre by acre to each cultivator; and supposing each group consisted of ten families, the typical holding of 120 acres was assigned to each family in acre strips, and these strips were not all contiguous but mixed up with those of other families. The reason for this mixture of strips is obvious to any one who knows how land even in the same field varies in quality; it was to give each family its share of both good and bad land, for the householders were all equal and the principle on which the original distribution of the land depended was that of equalizing the shares of the different members of the community.[2] In attributing ownership of lands to communities we must be careful not to confound communities with corporations. Maitland thinks the early land-owning communities blended the character of corporations and of co-owners, and co-ownership is ownership by individuals.[3] The vills or villages founded on their arrival in Britain by our English forefathers resembled those they left at home, and even there the strips into which the arable fields were divided were owned in severalty by the householders of the village. There was co-operation in working the fields but no communistic division of the crops, and the individual's hold upon his strips developed rapidly into an inheritable and partible ownership. 'At the opening of Anglo-Saxon history absolute ownership of land in severalty was established and becoming the rule.'[4] In the management of the meadow land communal features were much more clearly brought out; the arable was not reallotted,[5] but the meadow was, annually; while the woods and pastures, the right of using which belonged to the householders of the village, were owned by the village 'community'. There may have been at the time of the English conquest Roman 'villas' with slaves and _coloni_ cultivating the owners' demesnes, which passed bodily to the new masters; but the former theory seems true of the greater part of the country. At first 'extensive' cultivation was practised; that is, every year a fresh arable field was broken up and the one cultivated last year abandoned, for a time at all events; but gradually 'intensive' culture superseded this, probably not till after the English had conquered the land, and the same field was cultivated year after year.[6] After the various families or households had finished cutting the grass in their allotted portions of meadow, and the corn on their strips of tillage, both grass and stubble became common land and were thrown open for the whole community to turn their stock upon. The size of the strips of land in the arable fields varied, but was generally an acre, in most places a furlong (furrow long) or 220 yards in length, and 22 yards broad; or in other words, 40 rods of 5-1/2 yards in length and 4 in breadth. There was, however, little uniformity in measurement before the Norman Conquest, the rod by which the furlongs and acres were measured varying in length from 12 to 24 feet, so that one acre might be four times as large as another.[7] The acre was, roughly speaking, the amount that a team could plough in a day, and seems to have been from early times the unit of measuring the area of land.[8] Of necessity the real acre and the ideal acre were also different, for the reason that the former had to contend with the inequalities of the earth's surface and varied much when no scientific measurement was possible. As late as 1820 the acre was of many different sizes in England. In Bedfordshire it was 2 roods, in Dorset 134 perches instead of 160, in Lincolnshire 5 roods, in Staffordshire 2-1/4 acres. To-day the Cheshire acre is 10,240 square yards. As, however, an acre was and is a day's ploughing for a team, we may assume that the most usual acre was the same area then as now. There were also half-acre strips, but whatever the size the strips were divided one from another by narrow grass paths generally called 'balks', and at the end of a group of these strips was the 'headland' where the plough turned, the name being common to-day. Many of these common fields remained until well on in the nineteenth century; in 1815 half the county of Huntingdon was in this condition, and a few still exist.[9] Cultivating the same field year after year naturally exhausted the soil, so that the two-field system came in, under which one was cultivated and the other left fallow; and this was followed by the three-field system, by which two were cropped in any one year and one lay fallow, the last-named becoming general as it yielded better results, though the former continued, especially in the North. Under the three-field plan the husbandman early in the autumn would plough the field that had been lying fallow during summer, and sow wheat or rye; in the spring he broke up the stubble of the field on which the last wheat crop had been grown and sowed barley or oats; in June he ploughed up the stubble of the last spring crop and fallowed the field.[10] As soon as the crops began to grow in the arable fields and the grass in the meadows to spring, they were carefully fenced to prevent trespass of man and beast; and, as soon as the crops came off, the fields became common for all the village to turn their stock upon, the arable fields being usually common from Lammas (August 1) to Candlemas (February 2) and the meadows from July 6, old Midsummer Day, to Candlemas[11]; but as in this climate the season both of hay and corn harvest varies considerably, these dates cannot have been fixed. The stock, therefore, besides the common pasture, had after harvest the grazing of the common arable fields and of the meadows. The common pasture was early 'stinted' or limited, the usual custom being that the villager could turn out as many stock as he could keep on his holding. The trouble of pulling up and taking down these fences every year must have been enormous, and we find legislation on this important matter at an early date. About 700 the laws of Ine, King of Wessex, provided that if 'churls have a common meadow or other partible land to fence, and some have fenced their part and some have not, and cattle stray in and eat up their common corn or grass; let those go who own the gap and compensate to the others who have fenced their part the damage which then may be done, and let them demand such justice on the cattle as may be right. But if there be a beast which breaks hedges and goes in everywhere, and he who owns it will not or cannot restrain it, let him who finds it in his field take it and slay it, and let the owner take its skin and flesh and forfeit the rest.' England was not given over to one particular type of settlement, although villages were more common than hamlets in the greater part of the country.[12] The vill or village answers to the modern civil parish, and the term may be applied to both the true or 'nucleated' village of clustered houses and the village of scattered hamlets, each of a few houses, existing chiefly on the Celtic fringe. The population of some of the villages at the time of the Norman Conquest was numerous, 100 households or 500 people; but the average townships contained from 10 to 20 households.[13] There was also the single farm, such as that at Eardisley in Herefordshire, described in Domesday, lying in the middle of a forest, perhaps, as in other similar cases, a pioneer settlement of some one more adventurous than his fellows.[14] * * * * * Such was the early village community in England, a community of free landholders. But a change began early to come over it.[15] The king would grant to a church all the rights he had in the village, reserving only the _trinoda necessitas_, these rights including the feorm or farm, or provender rent which the king derived from the land--of cattle, sheep, swine, ale, honey, &c.--which he collected by visiting his villages, thus literally eating his rents. The churchmen did not continue these visits, they remained in their monasteries, and had the feorm brought them regularly; they had an overseer in the village to see to this, and so they tightened their hold on the village. Then the smaller people, the peasants, make gifts to the Church. They give their land, but they also want to keep it, for it is their livelihood; so they surrender the land and take it back as a lifelong loan. Probably on the death of the donor his heirs are suffered to hold the land. Then labour services are substituted for the old provender rents, and thus the Church acquires a demesne, and thus the foundations of the manorial system, still to be traced all over the country, were laid. Thegns, the predecessors of the Norman barons, become the recipients of grants from the churches and from kings, and householders 'commend' themselves and their land to them also, so that they acquired demesnes. This 'commendation' was furthered by the fact that during the long-drawn out conquest of Britain the old kindred groups of the English lost their corporate sense, and the central power being too weak to protect the ordinary householder, who could not stand alone, he had to seek the protection of an ecclesiastical corporation or of some thegn, first for himself and then for his land. The jurisdictional rights of the king also passed to the lord, whether church or thegn; then came the danegeld, the tax for buying off the Danes that subsequently became a fixed land tax, which was collected from the lord, as the peasants were too poor for the State to deal with them; the lord paid the geld for their land, consequently their land was his. In this way the free ceorl of Anglo-Saxon times gradually becomes the 'villanus' of Domesday. Landlordship was well established in the two centuries before the Conquest, and the land of England more or less 'carved into territorial lordships'.[16] Therefore when the Normans brought their wonderful genius for organization to this country they found the material conditions of manorial life in full growth; it was their task to develop its legal and economic side.[17] As the manorial system thus superimposed upon the village community was the basis of English rural economy for centuries, there need be no apology for describing it at some length. The term 'manor', which came in with the Conquest,[18] has a technical meaning in Domesday, referring to the system of taxation, and did not always coincide with the vill or village, though it commonly did so, except in the eastern portion of England. The village was the agrarian unit, the manor the fiscal unit; so that where the manor comprised more than one village, as was frequently the case, there would be more than one village organization for working the common fields.[19] The manor then was the 'constitutive cell' of English mediaeval society.[20] The structure is always the same; under the headship of the lord we find two layers of population, the villeins and the freeholders; and the territory is divided into demesne land and tributary land of two classes, viz. that of the villeins and that of the freeholders. The cultivation of the demesne (which usually means the land directly occupied and cultivated by the lord, though legally it has a wider meaning and includes the villein tenements), depends to a certain extent on the work supplied by the tenants of the tributary land. Rents are collected, labour superintended, administrative business transacted by a set of manorial officers. We may divide the tillers of the soil at the time of Domesday into five great classes[21] in order of dignity and freedom: 1. Liberi homines, or freemen. 2. Socmen. 3. Villeins. 4. Bordarii, cotarii, buri or coliberti. 5. Slaves. The two first of these classes were to be found in large numbers in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Northamptonshire. It is not easy to draw the line between them, but the chief distinction lay in the latter being more burdened with service and customary dues and more especially subject to the jurisdictional authority of the lord.[22] They were both free, but both rendered services to the lord for their land. Both the freemen and the slaves by 1086 were rapidly decreasing in number. The most numerous class[23] on the manors was the third, that of the villeins or non-free tenants, who held their land by payment of services to the lord. The position of the villein under the feudal system is most complicated. He both was and was not a freeman. He was absolutely at the disposal of the lord, who could sell him with his tenement, and he could not leave his land without his lord's permission. He laboured under many disabilities, such as the merchet or fine for marrying his daughter, and fines for selling horse or ox. On the other hand, he was free against every one but his lord, and even against the lord was protected from the forfeiture of his 'wainage' or instruments of labour and from injury to life and limb.[24] His usual holding was a virgate of 30 acres of arable, though the virgate differed in size even in the same manors; but in addition to this he would have his meadow land and his share in the common pasture and wood, altogether about 100 acres of land. For this he rendered the following services to the lord of the manor: 1. Week work, or labour on the lord's demesne for two or three days a week during most of the year, and four or five days in summer. It was not always the villein himself, however, who rendered these services, he might send his son or even a hired labourer; and it was the holding and not the holder that was considered primarily responsible for the rendering of services.[25] 2. Precarii or boon days: that is, work generally during harvest, at the lord's request, sometimes instead of week work, sometimes in addition. 3. Gafol or tribute: fixed payments in money or kind, and such services as 'fold soke', which forced the tenants' sheep to lie on the lord's land for the sake of the manure; and suit of mill, by which the tenant was bound to grind his corn in the lord's mill. With regard to the 'boon days' in harvest, it should be remembered that harvest time in the Middle Ages was a most important event. Agriculture was the great industry, and when the corn was ripe the whole village turned out to gather it, the only exceptions being the housewives and sometimes the marriageable daughters. Even the larger towns suspended work that the townsmen might assist in the harvest, and our long vacation was probably intended originally to cover the whole work of gathering in the corn and hay. On the occasion of the 'boon-day' work, the lord usually found food for the labourers which, the Inquisition of Ardley[26] tells us, might be of the following description: for two men, porridge of beans and peas and two loaves, one white, the other of 'mixtil' bread; that is, wheat, barley, and rye mixed together, with a piece of meat, and beer for their first meal. Then in the evening they had a small loaf of mixtil bread and two 'lescas' of cheese. While harvest work was going on the better-off tenants, usually the free ones, were sometimes employed to ride about, rod in hand, superintending the others. The services of the villeins were often very comprehensive, and even included such tasks as preparing the lord's bath; but on some manors their services were very light.[27] When the third of the above obligations, the gafol or tribute, was paid in kind it was most commonly made in corn; and next came honey, one of the most important articles of the Middle Ages, as it was used for both lighting and sweetening purposes. Ale was also common, and poultry and eggs, and sometimes the material for implements. These obligations were imposed for the most part on free and unfree tenants alike, though those of the free were much lighter than those of the unfree; the chief difference between the two, as far as tenure of the land went, lay in the fact that the former could exercise proprietary rights over his holding more or less freely, the latter had none.[28] It seems very curious to the modern mind that the villein, a man who farmed about 100 acres of land, should have been in such a servile condition. The amount of work due from each villein came to be fixed by the extent or survey of the manor, but the quality of it was not[29]; that is, each one knew how many days he had to work, but not whether he was to plough, sow, or harrow, &c. It is surprising to find, that on the festival days of the Church, which were very numerous and observed as holy days, the lord lost by no work being done, and the same was the case in wet weather. One of the most important duties of the tenant was the 'averagium', or duty of carrying for the lord, especially necessary when his manors were often a long way apart. He would often have to carry corn to the nearest town for sale, the products of one manor to another, also to haul manure on to the demesne. If he owned neither horse nor ox, he would sometimes have to use his own back.[30] The holding of the villein did not admit of partition by sale or descent, it remained undivided and entire. When the holder died all the land went to one of the sons if there were several, often to the youngest. The others sought work on the manor as craftsmen or labourers, or remained on the family plot. The holding therefore might contain more than one family, but to the lord remained one and undivided.[31] In the fourth class came the bordarii, the cotarii, and the coliberti or buri; or, as we should say, the crofters, the cottagers, and the boors. The bordarii numbered 82,600 in Domesday, and were subject to the same kind of services as the villeins, but the amount of the service was considerably less.[32] Their usual holding was 5 acres, and they are very often found on the demesne of the manor, evidently in this case labourers on the demesne, settled in cottages and provided with a bit of land of their own. The name failed to take root in this country, and the bordarii seem to become villeins or cottiers.[33] The cotarii, cottiers or cottagers, were 6,800 in number, with small pieces of land sometimes reaching 5 acres.[34] Distinctly inferior to the villeins, bordarii, and cottars, but distinctly superior to the slaves, were the buri or coliberti who, with the bordars and cottars, would form a reserve of labour to supplement the ordinary working days at times when work was pressing, as in hay time and harvest. At the bottom of the social ladder in Domesday came the slaves, some 25,000 in number, who in the main had no legal rights, a class which had apparently already diminished and was diminishing in numbers, so that for the cultivation of the demesne the lord was coming to rely more on the labour of his tenants, and consequently the labour services of the villeins were being augmented.[35] The agricultural labourer as we understand him, a landless man working solely for wages in cash, was almost unknown. All the arrangements of the manor aimed at supplying labour for the cultivation of the lord's demesne, and he had three chief officers to superintend it: 1. The seneschal, who answers to our modern steward or land agent, and where there were several manors supervised all of them. He attended to the legal business and held the manor courts. It was his duty to be acquainted with every particular of the manor, its cultivation, extent, number of teams, condition of the stock, &c. He was also the legal adviser of his lord; in fact, very much like his modern successor. 2. The bailiff for each manor, who collected rents, went to market to buy and sell, surveyed the timber, superintended the ploughing, mowing, reaping, &c., that were due as services from the tenants on the lord's demesne; and according to _Fleta_ he was to prevent their 'casting off before the work was done', and to measure it when done.[36] And considering that those he superintended were not paid for their work, but rendering more or less unwelcome services, his task could not have been easy. 3. The praepositus or reeve, an office obligatory on every holder of a certain small quantity of land; a sort of foreman nominated from among the villeins, and to a certain extent representing their interests. His duties were supplementary to those of the bailiff: he looked after all the live and dead stock of the manor, saw to the manuring of the land, kept a tally of the day's work, had charge of the granary, and delivered therefrom corn to be baked and malt to be brewed.[37] Besides these three officers, on a large estate there would be a messor who took charge of the harvest, and many lesser officers, such as those of the akermanni, or leaders of the unwieldy plough teams; oxherds, shepherds, and swineherds to tend cattle, sheep, and pigs when they were turned on the common fields or wandered in the waste; also wardens of the woods and fences, often paid by a share in the profits connected with their charge; for instance, the swineherd of Glastonbury Abbey received a sucking-pig a year, the interior parts of the best pig, and the tails of all the others slaughtered.[38] On the great estates these offices tended to become hereditary, and many families did treat them as hereditary property, and were a great nuisance in consequence to their lords. At Glastonbury we find the chief shepherd so important a person that he was party to an agreement concerning a considerable quantity of land.[39] There were also on some manors 'cadaveratores', whose duty was to look into and report on the losses of cattle and sheep from murrain, a melancholy tale of the unhealthy conditions of agriculture. The supervision of the tenants was often incessant and minute. According to the Court Rolls of the Manor of Manydown in Hampshire, tenants were brought to book for all kinds of transgressions. The fines are so numerous that it almost appears that every person on the estate was amerced from time to time. In 1365 seven tenants were convicted of having pigs in their lord's crops, one let his horse run in the growing corn, two had cattle among the peas, four had cattle on the lord's pasture, three had made default in rent or service, four were convicted of assault, nine broke the assize of beer, two had failed to repair their houses or buildings. In all thirty-four were in trouble out of a population of some sixty families. The account is eloquent of the irritating restrictions of the manor, and of the inconveniences of common farming.[40] It is impossible to compare the receipts of the lord of the manor at this period with modern rents, or the position of the villein with the agricultural labourer; it may be said that the lord received a labour rent for the villein's holding, or that the villein received his holding as wages for the services done for the lord,[41] and part of the return due to the lord was for the use of the oxen with which he had stocked the villein's holding. Though in 1066 there were many free villages, yet by the time of Domesday they were fast disappearing and there were manors everywhere, usually coinciding with the village which we may picture to ourselves as self-sufficing estates, often isolated by stretches of dense woodland and moor from one another, and making each veritably a little world in itself. At the same time it is evident from the extent of arable land described in Domesday that many manors were not greatly isolated, and pasture ground was often common to two or more villages.[42] If we picture to ourselves the typical manor, we shall see a large part of the lord's demesne forming a compact area within which stood his house; this being in addition to the lord's strips in the open fields intermixed with those of his tenants. The mansion house was usually a very simple affair, built of wood and consisting chiefly of a hall; which even as late as the seventeenth century in some cases served as kitchen, dining room, parlour, and sleeping room for the men; and one or two other rooms.[43] It is probable that in early times the thegns possessed in most cases only one manor apiece,[44] so that the manor house was then nearly always inhabited by the lord, but after the Conquest, when manors were bestowed by scores and even hundreds by William on his successful soldiers, many of them can only have acted as the temporary lodging of the lord when he came to collect his rent, or as the house of the bailiff. According to the _Gerefa_, written about 1000--and there was very little alteration for a long time afterwards--the mansion was adjacent to a court or yard which the quadrangular homestead surrounded with its barns, horse and cattle stalls, sheep pens and fowlhouse. Within this court were ovens, kilns, salt-house, and malt-house, and perhaps the hayricks and wood piles. Outside and surrounding the homestead were the enclosed arable and grass fields of the portion of the demesne which may be called the home farm, a kitchen garden, and probably a vineyard, then common in England. The garden of the manor house would not have a large variety of vegetables; some onions, leeks, mustard, peas, perhaps cabbage; and apples, pears, cherries, probably damsons, plums,[45] strawberries, peaches, quinces, and mulberries. Not far off was the village or town of the tenants, the houses all clustering close together, each house standing in a toft or yard with some buildings, and built of wood, turf, clay, or wattles, with only one room which the tenant shared with his live stock, as in parts of Ireland to-day. Indeed, in some parts of Yorkshire at the beginning of the nineteenth century this primitive simplicity still prevailed, live stock were still kept in the house, the floors were of clay, and the family slept in boxes round the solitary room. Examples of farmhouses clustered together at some distance from their respective holdings still survive, though generally built of stone. Next the village, though not always, for they were sometimes at a distance by the banks of a stream, were the meadows, and right round stretched the three open arable fields, beyond which was the common pasture and wood,[46] and, encircling all, heath, forest, and swamp, often cutting off the manor from the rest of the world. The basis of the whole scheme of measurement in Domesday was the hide, usually of 120 acres, the amount of land that could be ploughed by a team of 8 oxen in a year; a quarter of this was the virgate, an eighth the bovate, which would therefore supply one ox to the common team. These teams, however, varied; on the manors of S. Paul's Cathedral in 1222 they were sometimes composed of horses and oxen, or of 6 horses only, sometimes 10 oxen.[47] The farming year began at Michaelmas when, in addition to the sowing of wheat and rye, the cattle were carefully stalled and fed only on hay and straw, for roots were in the distant future, and the corn was threshed with the flail and winnowed by hand. In the spring, after the ploughing of the second arable field, the vineyard, where there was one, was set out, and the open ditches, apparently the only drainage then known, cleansed. In May it was time to set up the temporary fences round the meadows and arable fields, and to begin fallowing the third field. A valuable document, describing the duties of a reeve, gives many interesting details of eleventh-century farming:-- 'In May, June, and July one may harrow, carry out manure, set up sheep hurdles, shear sheep, do repairs, hedge, cut wood, weed, and make folds. In harvest one may reap; in August, September, and in October one may mow, set woad with a dibble, gather home many crops, thatch them and cover them over, cleanse the folds, prepare cattle sheds and shelters ere too severe a winter come to the farm, and also diligently prepare the soil. In winter one should plough and in severe frosts cleave timber, make an orchard, and do many affairs indoors, thresh, cleave wood, put the cattle in stalls and the swine in pigstyes, and provide a hen roost. In spring one should plough and graft, sow beans, set a vineyard, make ditches, hew wood for a wild deer fence; and soon after that, if the weather permit, set madder, sow flax seed and woad seed, plant a garden and do many things which I cannot fully enumerate that a good steward ought to provide.'[48] The methods of cultivation were simple. The plough, if we may judge by contemporary illustrations, had in the eleventh century a large wheel and very short handles.[49] In the twelfth century Neckham describes its parts: a beam, handles, tongue, mouldboard, coulter, and share.[50] Breaking up the clods was done by the mattock or beetle, and harrowing was done by hand with what looks like a large rake; the scythes of the haymakers and the sickles of the reapers were very like those that still linger on in some districts to-day. Here is a list of tools and implements for the homestead: an axe, adze, bill, awl, plane, saw, spokeshave, tie hook, auger, mattock, lever, share, coulter, goad-iron, scythe, sickle, weed-hook, spade, shovel, woad dibble, barrow, besom, beetle, rake, fork, ladder, horse comb, shears, fire tongs, weighing scales, and a long list of spinning implements necessary when farmers made their own clothes. The author wisely remarks that one ought to have coverings for wains, plough gear, harrowing tackle, &c.; and adds another list of instruments and utensils: a caldron, kettle, ladle, pan, crock, firedog, dishes, bowls with handles, tubs, buckets, a churn, cheese vat, baskets, crates, bushels, sieves, seed basket, wire sieve, hair sieve, winnowing fans, troughs, ashwood pails, hives, honey bins, beer barrels, bathing tub, dishes, cups, strainers, candlesticks, salt cellar, spoon case, pepper horn, footstools, chairs, basins, lamp, lantern, leathern bottles, comb, iron bin, fodder rack, meal ark or box, oil flask, oven rake, dung shovel; altogether a very complete list, the compiler of which ends by saying that the reeve ought to neglect nothing that should prove useful, not even a mousetrap, nor even, what is less, a peg for a hasp. Manors in 1086 were of all sizes, from one virgate to enormous organizations like Taunton or Leominster, containing villages by the score and hundreds of dependent holdings.[51] The ordinary size, however, of the Domesday manor was from four to ten hides of 120 acres each, or say from 500 to 1,200 acres,[52] and the Manor of Segenehou in Bedfordshire may be regarded as typical. Held by Walter brother of Seiher it had as much land as ten ploughs could work, four plough lands belonging to the demesne and six to the villeins, of whom there were twenty-four, with four bordarii and three serfs; thus the villeins had 30 acres each, the normal holding. The manorial system was in fact a combination of large farming by the lords, and small farming by the tenants. Nor must we compare it to an ordinary estate; for it was a dominion within which the lord had authority over subjects of various ranks; he was not only a proprietor but a prince with courts of his own, the arbiter of his tenants' rights as well as owner of the land. One of the most striking features of the Domesday survey is the large quantity of arable land and the small quantity of meadow, which usually was the only land whence they obtained their hay, for the common pasture cannot often have been mown.[53] Indeed, it is difficult to understand how they fed their stock in hard winters. According to the returns, in many counties more acres were ploughed in 1086 than to-day; in some twice as much. In Somerset in 1086 there were 577,000 acres of arable; in 1907, 178,967. In Gloucestershire, in 1086, 589,000 acres; in 1907, 238,456.[54] These are extreme instances; but the preponderance of arable is startling, even if we allow for the recent conversion of arable to pasture on account of the low price of corn. Between the eleventh century and the sixteenth, the laying down of land to grass must have proceeded on a gigantic scale, for Harrison tells us that in his day England was mainly a grazing country. No wonder Harrison's contemporaries complained of the decay of tillage. Mediaeval prices and statistics are, it is well known, to be taken with great caution; but we may assume that the normal annual value of land under cultivation in 1086 was about 2d. an acre.[55] Land indeed, apart from the stock upon it, was worth very little: in the tenth and eleventh centuries it appears that the hide, normally of 120 acres, was only worth £5 to buy, apparently with the stock upon it. In the time of Athelstan a horse was worth 120d., an ox 30d., a cow 20d., a sheep 5d., a hog 8d., a slave £1--so that a slave was worth 8 oxen[56]; and these prices do not seem to have advanced by the Domesday period. According to the Pipe Roll of 1156, wheat was 1s. 6d. a quarter; but prices then depended entirely on seasons, and we do not know whether that was good or bad. However, many years later, in 1243 it was only 2s. a quarter at Hawsted.[57] In dear years, nearly always the result of wet seasons, it went up enormously; in 1024 the English Chronicle tells us the acre seed of wheat, that is about 2 bushels, sold for 4s.,[58] 3 bushels of barley for 6s. and 4 bushels of oats for 4s. In 1190 Holinshed says that, owing to a great dearth, the quarter of wheat was 18s. 8d. The average price, however, in the twelfth century was probably about 4s. a quarter. In 1194 Roger of Hoveden[59] says an ox, a cow, and a plough horse were the same price, 4s.; a sheep with fine wool 10d., with coarse wool 6d.; a sow 12d., a boar 12d. Sometimes prices were kept down by imports; 1258 was a bad and dear year, 'most part of the corn rotted on the ground,' and was not all got in till after November 1, so excessive was the wet and rain. And upon the dearth a sore death and mortality followed for want of necessary food to sustain the pining bodies of the poor people, who died so thick that there were great pits made in churchyards to lay the dead bodies in. And corn had been dearer if great store had not come out of Almaine, but there came fifty great ships with wheat and barley, meal and bread out of Dutchland, which greatly relieved the poor.[60] Were the manors as isolated as some writers have asserted? Generally speaking, we may say the means of communication were bad and many an estate cut off almost completely from the outside world, yet the manors must often have been connected by waterways, and sometimes by good roads, with other manors and with the towns. Rivers in the Middle Ages were far more used as means of communication than to-day, and many streams now silted up and shallow were navigable according to Domesday. Water carriage was, as always, much cheaper than land carriage, and corn could be carried from Henley to London for 2d. or 3d. a quarter. The roads left by the Romans, owing to the excellence of their construction, remained in use during the Middle Ages, and must have been a great advantage to those living near them; but the other roads can have been little better than mud tracks, except in the immediate vicinity of the few large towns. The keeping of the roads in repair, one part of the _trinoda necessitas_ was imposed on all lands; but the results often seem to have been very indifferent, and they appear largely to have depended on chance, or the goodwill or devotion of neighbouring landowners.[61] Perhaps they would, except in the case of the Roman roads, have been impassable but for the fact that the great lords and abbots were constantly visiting their scattered estates, and therefore were interested in keeping such roads in order. But in those days people were contented with very little, and though Edward I enforced the general improvement of roads in 1285, in the fourteenth century they were decaying. Parliament adjourned thrice between 1331 and 1380 because the state of the roads kept many of the members away. In 1353 the high road running from Temple Bar, then the western limit of London, to Westminster was 'so full of holes and bogs' that the traffic was dangerous for men and carriages; and a little later all the roads near London were so bad, that carriers 'are oftentimes In peril of losing what they bring.' What must remote country roads have been like when these important highways were in this state? If members of Parliament, rich men riding good horses, could not get to London, how did the clumsy wagons and carts of the day fare? The Church might well pity the traveller, and class him with the sick 'and the captive among the unfortunates whom she recommended to the daily prayers of pious souls.'[62] Rivers were mainly crossed by ford or ferry, though there were some excellent bridges, a few of which still remain, maintained by the _trinoda necessitas_, by gilds, by 'indulgences' promised to benefactors, and by toll, the right to levy which, called pontage, was often spent otherwise than on the repair of the bridge. A few of the old open fields still exist, and the best surviving example of an open-field parish is that of Laxton in Nottinghamshire.[63] Nearly half the area of the parish remains in the form of two great arable fields, and two smaller ones which are treated as two parts of the third field. The different holdings, freehold and leasehold, consist in part of strips of land scattered all over these fields. The three-course system is rigidly adhered to, first year wheat, second year spring corn, third year fallow. In a corner of the parish is Laxton Heath, a common covered with coarse grass where the sheep are grazed according to a 'stint' recently determined upon, for when it was unstinted the common was overstocked. The commonable meadows which the parish once had were enclosed at a date beyond anyone's recollection, though the neighbouring parish of Eakring still has some. There are other enclosures in the remote parts of the parish which apparently represent the old woodland. The inconvenience of the common-field system was extreme. South Luffenham in Rutland, not enclosed till 1879, consisted of 1,074 acres divided among twenty-two owners into 1,238 pieces. In some places furrows served to divide the lands instead of turf balks, which were of course always being altered. Another difficulty arose from there being no check to high winds, which would sometimes sweep the whole of the crops belonging to different farmers in an inextricable heap against the nearest obstruction. FOOTNOTES: [1] Vinogradoff, _Growth of the Manor_, p. 18; Medley, _Constitutional History_, p. 15. [2] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 257. [3] Maitland, _Domesday Book and Beyond_, pp. 341 et seq. [4] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_, §36. [5] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 282, says, 'As a rule it was not subject to redivision.' [6] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 42. [7] Maitland, _op. cit._ p. 368. [8] _Anonymous Treatise on Husbandry_, Royal Historical Society, pp. xli. and 68. About 1230, Smyth, in his _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 113, says, 'At this time lay all lands in common fields, in one acre or ridge, one man's intermixt with another.' [9] See below. [10] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 74. Maitland thinks the two-field system was as common as the three-field, both in early and mediaeval times. _Domesday Book and Beyond_, p. 366. [11] Nasse, _Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages_, p. 5. To-day harvest generally commences about August 1, so that this, like the growth of grapes in mediaeval times, seems to show our climate has grown colder. [12] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 264. [13] Maitland, _op. cit._ p. 17. [14] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 265. [15] Maitland, _op. cit._ pp. 318 et seq. [16] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 345. [17] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 339. [18] Maitland, _Domesday Book_, p. 110 [19] Vinogradoff, _op. cit._ p. 395. [20] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, pp. 225 et seq. [21] Maitland, _op. cit._ p. 23. [22] Vinogradoff, _op. cit._ p. 433. [23] In Domesday they number 108,500. Maitland, _Domesday Book_. [24] Maitland, _op. cit._. [25] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 300. [26] _Domesday of S. Paul_, p. lxviii. [27] Maitland, _Domesday Book_, p. 56. [28] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 166. In some manors free tenants could sell their lands without the lord's licence, in others not. [29] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 279. [30] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 285. [31] Ibid. p. 246; and _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 448. At the end of the eighteenth century, in default of sons, lands in some manors in Shropshire descended to the youngest daughter.--Bishton, _General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire_, p. 178. [32] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 456. [33] Maitland, Domesday Book, p. 40. [34] Ibid. [35] Maitland, _Domesday Book_, p. 35. [36] _Fleta_, c. 73. [37] _Domesday of S. Paul_, xxxv. _Fleta_, 'an anonymous work drawn up in the thirteenth century to assist landowners in managing their estates' says, the reeve 'shall rise early, and have the ploughs yoked, and then walk in the fields to see that all is right and note if the men be idle, or if they knock off work before the day's task is fully done.' [38] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 321. [39] Ibid. p. 324. [40] _Manor of Manydown_, Hampshire Record Society, p. 17. Breaking the assize of beer meant selling it without a licence, or of bad quality. The village pound was the consequence of the perpetual straying of animals, and later on the vicar sometimes kept it. See ibid. p. 104. [41] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 106. [42] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 264. [43] Andrews, _Old English Manor_, p. 111. [44] _Domesday of S. Paul_, p. xxxvii. [45] Thorold Rogers, _Agriculture and Prices_, i. 17: Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 55: Neckham, _De Natura Rerum_, Rolls Series, ch. clxvi. Rogers says there were no plums, but Neckham mentions them. See also Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 64. Matthew Paris says the severe winter in 1257 destroyed cherries, plums and figs. _Chron. Maj._, Rolls Series, v. 660. [46] Woods were used as much for pasture as for cutting timber and underwood. Not only did the pigs feed there on the mast of oak, beech, and chestnut, but goats and horned cattle grazed on the grassy portions. [47] The illustrations of contemporary MSS. usually show teams in the plough of 2 or 4 oxen, and 4 was probably the team generally used, according to Vinogradoff, _op. cit._ p. 253. It must, of course, have varied according to the soil. Birch, in his _Domesday_, p. 219, says he has never found a team of 8 in contemporary illustrations. To-day oxen can be still seen ploughing in teams of two only. However, about a hundred years ago, when oxen were in common use, we find teams of 8, as in Shropshire, for a single-furrow plough, 'so as to work them easily.' Six hours a day was the usual day's work, and when more was required one team was worked in the morning, another in the afternoon.--_Victoria County History: Shropshire, Agriculture_. Walter of Henley says the team stopped work at three. [48] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 570. [49] See the excellent reproductions of the Calendar of the Cott. MSS. in Green's _Short History of the English People_, illustrated edition, i. 155. [50] _De Natura Rerum_, Rolls Series, p, 280. [51] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 307. [52] Ibid. p. 312. Perhaps one of the most interesting features of the smaller manors is that they were constantly being swallowed up by the larger. [53] As some of the common pasture was held in severalty, this may perhaps have been mown in scarce years. Walter of Henley mentions mowing the waste, see below, p. 34. [54] Maitland, _Domesday Book_, 436; _Board of Agriculture Returns_, 1907. [55] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 310; Birch, _Domesday_, p. 183. [56] Maitland, _Domesday Book_. 44; Cunningham, _Growth of Industry and Commerce_, i. 171; _Domesday of S. Paul_, pp. xliii. and xci. [57] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, p. 181. [58] Rolls Series, ii. 220. According to this, the price of a bushel of wheat reckoned in modern money was £3 in that year [59] Ibid. iii. 220. [60] Holinshed, who is supported by William of Malmesbury in the assertion that in time of scarcity England imported corn. Matthew Paris, _Chron. Maj._, v. 673. [61] Jusserand, _English Wayfaring Life_, p. 79. [62] Jusserand, _English Wayfaring Life_, p. 89. [63] Gilbert Slater, _The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields_, p. 8. CHAPTER II THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.--THE MANOR AT ITS ZENITH, WITH SEEDS OF DECAY ALREADY VISIBLE.--WALTER OF HENLEY In the thirteenth century the manorial system may be said to have been in its zenith; the description therefore of Cuxham Manor in Oxfordshire at that date is of special interest. According to Professor Thorold Rogers[64] there were two principal tenants, each holding the fourth part of a military fee. The prior of Holy Trinity, Wallingford, held a messuage, a mill, and 6 acres of land in free alms; i.e. under no obligation or liability other than offering prayers on behalf of the donor. A free tenant had a messuage and 3-3/4 acres, the rent of which was 3s. a year. He also had another messuage and nine acres, for which he paid the annual rent of 1 lb. of pepper, worth about 1s. 3d. The rector of the parish had part of a furrow, i.e. one of the divisions of the common arable field, and paid 2d. a year for it. Another tenant held a cottage in the demesne under the obligation of keeping two lamps lighted in the church. Another person was tenant-at-will of the parish mill, at a rent of 40s. a year. The rest of the tenants were villeins or cottagers, thirteen of the former and eight of the latter. Each of the villeins had a messuage and half a virgate, 12 to 15 acres of arable land at least, for which his rent was chiefly corn and labour, though there were two money payments, a halfpenny on November 12 and a penny whenever he brewed. He had to pay a quarter of seed wheat at Michaelmas, a peck of wheat, 4 bushels of oats, and 3 hens on November 12, and at Christmas a cock, two hens, and two pennyworth of bread. His labour services were to plough, sow, and till half an acre of the lord's land, and give his work as directed by the bailiff except on Sundays and feast days. In harvest time he was to reap three days with one man at his own cost. Some of these tenants held, besides their half virgates, other plots of land for which each had to make hay for one day for the lord, with a comrade, and received a halfpenny; also to mow, with another, three days in harvest time, at their own charges, and another three days when the lord fed them. After harvest six pennyworth of beer was divided among them, each received a loaf of bread, and every evening when work was over each reaper might carry away the largest sheaf of corn he could lift on his sickle. The cottagers paid from 1s. 2d. to 2s. a year for their holdings, and were obliged to work a day or two in the hay-making, receiving therefor a halfpenny. They also had to do from one to four days' harvest work, during which they were fed at the lord's table. For the rest of the year they were free labourers, tending cattle or sheep on the common for wages or working at the various crafts usual in the village. This manor was a small one, and contained in all twenty-four households, numbering from sixty to seventy inhabitants.[65] On most manors, as in Forncett,[66] which contained about 2,700 acres, from the preponderance of arable, the chief source of income to the lord was from the grain crops; other sources may be seen from the following table of the lord's receipts and expenses in 1272-3: RECEIPTS. £ s. d. Fixed rents 18 3 7-3/4 Farm of market 0 2 6 Chevage[67] 0 8 6 Foldage 0 3 9-1/2 Sale of works 5 13 2-3/4 Herbage 1 0 4 Hay 2 12 11 Turf, &c. 1 13 6-1/2 Underwood 5 10 2 Grain 61 12 3-1/4 Cider 1 1 11-1/4 Stock 5 3 0 Dairy 4 3 0-3/4 Pleas 14 0 0 Tallage 16 13 4 ------------------ £128 2 2-3/4 EXPENSES. £ s. d. Rents paid and allowed 0 3 2-1/2 Ploughs and carts 2 17 4 Buildings and walls 4 5 10-1/2 Small necessaries 0 7 10-3/4 Dairy 0 4 3-1/4 Threshing 1 15 5-1/2 Meadow and autumn expenses 0 1 4 Stock 0 16 7 Bailiff 1 19 0 Steward 1 6 9-1/2 Grain 8 2 4-1/2 Expenses of acct. 1 0 8-1/2 ------------------ £23 0 9-3/4 The manor was almost entirely self-sufficing; of necessity, for towns were few and distant, and the roads to them bad. Each would have its smith, millwright, thatcher, &c., paid generally in kind for their services. There was little trade with the outside world, except for salt--an invaluable article when meat had to be salted down every autumn for winter use, since there were no roots to keep the cattle on--and iron for some of the implements. Nearly everything was made in the village. The mediaeval system of tillage was compulsory; even the freeholders could not manage their plots as they wished, because all the soil of the township formed one whole and was managed by the entire village. Even the lord[68] had to conform to the customs of the community. Any other system than this, which must have been galling to the more enterprising, was impossible, for as the various holdings lay in unfenced strips all over the great common fields, individual initiative was out of the question. As may be imagined, the great number of strips all mixed together often led to great confusion, sometimes 2 or 3 acres could not be found at all, and disputes owing to careless measurement were frequent. It is not surprising that the services by which the villeins paid rent for their holdings to the lord very early began to be commuted for money; it was much more convenient to both parties; and with this change from a 'natural economy' to a 'money economy' the destruction of the manorial system commenced, though it was to take centuries to effect it. The first money payments apparently date from as early as 900,[69] but must then have been very few, and services were the rule in the thirteenth and earlier centuries, though at the beginning of the twelfth we find a great number of rent-paying tenants.[70] In the fourteenth century money began to be more generally available, and the process of commutation grew steadily; a process greatly accelerated by the destruction of large numbers of tenants who paid rent in services by the Black Death of 1348-9, which forced lords of manors to let their lands for money or work them themselves with hired labour. Before that visitation, however, it appears that commutation of labour services for fixed annual payments had made very little progress.[71] When these services were commuted for money in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they were put at 1d. a day in winter, and 2d. a day in summer, and rather more in harvest[72]; and we may put the ordinary agricultural labourers' wages from 1250-1350 all the year round at 2d. a day, and from 1350-1400 at 3d., but few were paid in this way. Many were paid by the year, with allowances of food besides and sometimes clothes, and many were in harvest at all events paid by the piece. At Crondal in Hampshire in 1248 a carter by the year received 4s., a herdsman 2s. 3d., a day a or dairymaid, 2s.[73] The change to money payments was beneficial to both parties; it stopped many of the dishonest practices of the lord's bailiff, apart from the fact that farming by officials was an expensive method. It meant, too, that religious festivals and bad weather would no longer diminish the lord's profits; on the other hand, the tenant could devote himself entirely to his holding free from annoying labour services.[74] The state of agriculture at the time of Domesday was apparently very low, judging by the small returns of manors,[75] but by the time of Edward I it had made considerable progress. During the reign of Henry III England had grown in opulence, and continued to do so under his great son, who found time from his manifold tasks to encourage agriculture and horticulture. Fruit and forest trees, shrubs and flowers, were introduced from the continent, and we are told that the hop flourished in the royal gardens.[76] At his death England was prosperous, the people progressing in comfort, the population advancing, the agricultural labourers were increasing in numbers, the value of the land had risen and was rising. Then came a reaction from which England did not recover for two centuries, and Harrison, who wrote his description of England at the end of the sixteenth century, says that many of the improvements began to be neglected in process of time, so that from Henry IV till the latter end of Henry VII there was little or no use for them in England, 'but they remained unknown.' The Hundred Rolls of Edward I, which embody the results of the labours of a commission appointed by that monarch to inquire into encroachments on royal lands and royal jurisdiction, show clearly that there had been since the Domesday Survey a very great growth in the rural population, a sure sign that agriculture was flourishing; and on some estates the number of free tenants had increased largely, but the burdens of the villeins were not less onerous than they had been. It was in the thirteenth century that the practice of keeping strict and minute accounts became general, and the accounts of the bailiff of those days would be a revelation to the bailiff of these. At the same time we must not forget that the earliest improvements in English agriculture were largely due to the monks, who from their constant journeys abroad were able to bring back new plants and seeds; while it is well known that many of the religious houses, the Cistercians especially, who always settled in the remote country, were most energetic farmers, their energy being materially assisted by their wealth. It is said that the great Becket when he visited a monastery did not disdain to labour in the field. Among other benefits that the landed interest gained at this time was the more easy transference of land provided, _inter alia_, by the statute of _Quia Emptores_, which led to many tenants selling their lands, provided the rights of the lord were preserved, and to a great increase consequently of free tenants, many of whom had quite small holdings.[77] The amalgamation of holdings by the more industrious and skilful has, as we should expect, been a well-marked tendency all through the history of English agriculture, and began early. For instance, according to the records of S. Paul's Cathedral, John Durant, whose ancestor in 1222 held only one virgate in 'Cadendon', had in 1279 eight or ten at least. At 'Belchamp', Martin de Suthmere, one of the free tenants, held 245 acres by himself and his tenants, twenty-two in number, who rendered service to him; one of them being de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who held 17 acres under Martin. To such a position had the abler of the small holders of a century or so before already pushed their way, in spite of the heavy hand of feudalism, which did much to hinder individual initiative. At this period and until Tudor times England, as regards the cultivated land, was essentially a corn-growing country; the greater part of the lord's demesne was arable, and the tillage fields of the villeins largely exceeded their meadows. For instance, in 1285 the cultivated lands at Hawsted in Suffolk were nearly all under the plough; in seven holdings there were 968 acres of arable and only 40 of meadow, a proportion of 24 to 1. No doubt there was plenty of common pasture, but we cannot call this cultivated land. The seven holdings were as follows:[78] Acres. Arable. Meadow. Wood. Thomas Fitzeustace, lord of the manor 240 10 10 William Tallemache 280 12 24 Philip Noel 120 4 7 Robert de Ros 56 3 5 Walter de Stanton 80 3 1 William de Camaville 140 6 8 John Beylham 52 2 3 --- -- -- 968 40 58 These were the larger tenants; among the smaller several had no meadow at all. We must not forget that the grazing of the tillage fields after the crops were off was of great assistance to those who kept stock; for there was plenty to eat on the stubbles. The wheat was cut high, the straw often apparently left standing 18 inches or 2 feet high; weeds of all kinds abounded, for the land was badly cleaned; and often only the upper part of the high ridges, into which the land was thrown for purposes of drainage, was cultivated, the lower parts being left to natural grass.[79] The greatest authority for the farming of the thirteenth century is Walter of Henley, who wrote, about the middle of it, a work which held the field as an agricultural textbook until Fitzherbert wrote in the sixteenth century, and much of his advice is valuable to-day. There was from his time until the days of William Marshall, who wrote five centuries afterwards, a controversy as to the respective merits of horses and oxen as draught animals, and it is a curious fact that the later writer agreed with the earlier as to the superiority of oxen. 'A plough of oxen', says Walter, 'will go as far in the year as a plough of horses, because the malice of the ploughman will not allow the plough of horses to go beyond their pace, no more than the plough of oxen. Further, in very hard ground where the plough of horses will stop, the plough of oxen will pass. And the horse costs more than the ox, for he is obliged to have the sixth part of a bushel of oats every night, worth a halfpenny at least, and twelve pennyworth of grass in the summer. Besides, each week he costs more or less a penny a week in shoeing, if he must be shod on all four feet;' which was not the universal custom. 'But the ox has only to have 3-1/2 sheaves of oats per week (ten sheaves yielding a bushel of oats), worth a penny, and the same amount of grass as the horse.[80] And when the horse is old and worn out there is nothing but his skin, but when the ox is old with ten pennyworth of grass he shall be fit for the larder.'[81] The labourer of the Middle Ages could not complain of lack of holidays; Walter of Henley tells us that, besides Sundays, eight weeks were lost in the year from holidays and other hindrances.[82] He advises the sowing of spring seed on clay or on stony land early, because if it is dry in March the ground will harden too much and the stony ground become dry and open; therefore fore sow early that corn may be nourished by winter moisture. Chalky and sandy ground need not be sown early. At sowing, moreover, do not plough large furrows, but little and well laid together, that the seed may fall evenly. Let your land be cleaned and weeded after S. John's Day, June 24, for before that is not a good time; and if thistles are cut before S. John's Day 'for every one will come two or three.' Do not sell your straw; if you take away the least you lose much; words which many a landlord to-day doubtless wishes were fixed in the minds of his tenants. Manure should be mixed with earth, for it lasts only two or three years by itself, but with earth it will last twice as long; for when the manure and the earth are harrowed together the earth shall keep the manure so that it cannot waste by descending in the soil, which it is apt to do. 'Feed your working oxen before some one, and with chaff. Why? I will tell you. Because it often happens that the oxherd steals the provender.' The oxen were also to be bathed, and curried when dry with a wisp of straw, which would cause them to lick themselves. 'Change your seed every year at Michaelmas; for seed grown on other ground will bring more profit than that which is grown on your own.' Apparently the only drainage then practised was that of furrow and open ditch; and we find him saying that to free your lands from too much water, let the marshy ground be well ridged, and the water made to run, and so the ground may be freed from water. Here is his estimate of the cost of wheat growing[83]: 'You know surely that an acre sown with wheat takes three ploughings, except lands which are sown yearly; and that each ploughing is worth 6d. and the harrowing 1d., and on the acre it is necessary to sow at least two bushels. Now two bushels at Michaelmas are worth at least 12d., and weeding 1/2d., and reaping 5d., and carrying in August 1d., and the straw will pay for the threshing.'[83] The return was wretched: 'at three times your sowing you ought to have 6 bushels, worth 3s.' The total cost is thus 3s. 1-1/2d.; and without debiting anything for rent and manure, the loss would be 1-1/2d. an acre. The anonymous _Treatise on Husbandry_ of about the same date says, however, that 'wheat ought to yield to the fifth grain, oats to the fourth, barley to the eighth, beans and peas to the sixth.'[84] In the years 1243-8 the average yield of wheat at Combe, Oxfordshire, was 5 bushels per acre, of barley a little over 5, oats 7. In the Manor of Forncett, in various years from 1290 to 1306, wheat yielded about 10 bushels, oats from 12 to 16, barley 16, and peas from 4 to 12 bushels per acre.[85] As for the dairy, 2 cows, says Walter, should yield a wey, (2 cwt) of cheese annually, and half a gallon of butter a week, 'if sorted out and fed in pasture of salt marsh;' but 'in pasture of wood or in meadows after mowing, or in stubble, it should take 3 cows for the same.' Twenty ewes, which it was then the custom to milk, fed in pasture of salt marsh, ought to yield the same as the 2 cows. A gallon of butter was worth 6d., and weighed 7 lb. And the anonymous treatise says each cow ought to yield from the day after Michaelmas until the first kalends of May, twenty-eight weeks, 10d. more or less; and from the first kalends of May till Michaelmas, twenty-four weeks, the milk of a cow should be worth 3s. 6d.; and she should give also 6 stones (14 lb. per stone) of cheese, and 'as much butter as shall make as much cheese.'[86] It was a common practice all through the Middle Ages, and survives in localities to-day, to let out the cows by the year, at from 3s. to 6s. 8d. a head, often to the daya or dairymaid, the owner supplying the food, and the lessee agreeing to restore them in equal number and condition at the end of the term.[87] The anonymous treatise tells us that 'if you wish to farm out your stock you can take 4s. 6d. clear for each cow and the tithe, and for a sheep 6d. and the tithe, and a sow should bring you 6s. 6d. a year and acquit the tithe, and each hen 9d. and the tithe; and Walter says, 'When I was bailiff the dairymaids had the geese and hens to farm, the geese at 12d. and the hens at 3d.' Among other information conveyed by these two treatises we learn that the poor servants or labourers were accustomed to be fed on the diseased sheep, salted and dried; but Walter adds, 'I do not wish you to do this.' Nor can we point the finger of scorn at this: for in the disastrous season of 1879 numbers of rotten sheep were sold to the butcher and consumed by the unsuspecting public without even being salted and dried. He further tells us that 'you can well have 3 acres weeded for 1d., and an acre of meadow mown for 4d., and an acre of waste meadow for 3-1/2d. And know that 5 men can well reap and bind 2 acres a day of each kind of corn, and where each takes 2d. a day then you must give 5d. an acre.'[88] 'One ought to thresh a quarter of wheat or rye for 2d. and a quarter of oats for 1d. A sow ought to farrow twice a year, having each time at least 7 pigs; and each goose 5 goslings a year and each hen 115 eggs and 7 chicks, 3 of which ought to be made capons; and for 5 geese you must have one gander, and for 5 hens one cock.' The laying qualities of the hen, in spite of the talk of the 200-egg bird, were evidently as good then as to-day. In those days of self-supporting farms it was the custom to put together the farm implements at home, and the farmer is advised that it will be well if he can have carters and ploughmen who should know how to work all their own wood, though it should be necessary to pay them more.[89] The village smith, however, seems, as we should expect, to have done most of the iron work that was needed.[90] These extracts have given the reader some insight into thirteenth-century prices, prices which in the case of grain altered very little for nearly 300 years: for instance, the average price of wheat from 1259 to 1400 was 5s. 10-3/4d. a quarter, and from 1401 to 1540 5s. 11-3/4d.; of barley, 4s. 3-3/4d. from 1259 to 1400, 3s. 8-3/4d. from 1401 to 1540; of oats, 2s. 5-3/4d. and 2s. 2-1/4d. in the same two periods respectively; of rye, 4s. 5d. and 4s. 7-3/4d.; and of beans, 4s. 3-1/2d. and 3s. 9-1/4d.[91] Wheat fluctuated considerably, being as we have seen 2s. a quarter at Hawsted in 1243 and in 1290 14s. 10d., a most exceptional price. Oxen, which were chiefly valued as working animals, were about 13s. apiece[92]; cows, 9s. 5d. Farm horses were of two varieties: the 'affer' or 'stott', a rough small animal, generally worth about 13s. 5d., and the cart-horse, probably the ancestor of our shire horses, whose average price was 19s. 4d. A good saddle-horse fetched as much as £5. Sheep were from 1s. 2d. to 1s. 5d. each. In Hampshire in 1248 shoeing ten farm horses for the plough for a year cost 5s.; making a gate cost 12d. As Walter of Henley said, it cost a penny a week to shoe a horse on all four feet; these horses must have been very roughly shod.[93] It is evident, from what Walter of Henley says, that horses were not always shod on all four feet, and their shoes were generally very light. The roads were mere tracks without any metalling, so that there was little necessity for heavy shoes; and as Professor Thorold Rogers suggests, it is quite possible that the hoofs of our horses have become weaker by reason of the continual paring and protection which modern shoeing involves.[94] They weighed usually less than half a pound, and cost about 4s. a hundred. The most striking fact about agricultural prices at this date is the low price of land compared with that of its products. The annual rent of land was from 4d. to 6d.[95] an acre, and it was worth about ten years' purchase. Consequently, a quarter of wheat was often worth more than an acre of land, a good ox three times as much, a good cart-horse four times, while a good war-horse was worth the fee-simple of a small farm. A greater breadth of wheat was sown than of any other crop; but it seems that none was ever stored except in the castles and monasteries, for in spite of successive abundant harvests a bad season would send the price up at once. Barley was, as now, chiefly used for making beer, which was also made from oats and wheat, of course without hops, which were not used till the fifteenth century; and sometimes it was made of oats, barley, and wheat, a concoction worth 3/4d. a gallon in 1283.[96] Cider was also drunk, and was sold at Exminster in Devonshire in 1286 at 1/2d. a gallon, and apples fetched 2d. a bushel. Thorold Rogers[97] says that wheat was the chief food of the English labourer from the earliest times until perhaps the seventeenth century, when the enormous prices were prohibitive; but this statement must be taken with reserve, as must that of Mr. Prothero[98] that rye was the bread-stuff of the peasantry. Where the labourer's food is mentioned as part of his wages, wheat, barley, and rye all occur, wheat and rye being often mixed together as 'mixtil'; and it is most probable that in one district wheat, in another one of the other cereals, formed his chief bread-stuff, according to the crop best adapted to the soil of the locality. Walter of Henley mentions wheat as if it was the chief crop, for he selects it as best illustrating the cost of corn-growing[99]; and from the enormous number of entries enumerated by Thorold Rogers in his mediaeval statistics it was apparently more grown than other cereals. The chief meat of the lower classes then, as to-day, was bacon from the innumerable herds of swine who roamed in the woods and wastes, but in bad years, when food was scarce, the poor ate nuts, acorns, fern roots, bark, and vetches.[100] As the cattle of the Middle Ages were like the mountain cattle of to-day, so were the sheep like many of the sheep to be seen in the Welsh mountains; yet, unlike the cattle, an attempt seems to have been made, judging by the high price of rams, to improve the breed; but they were probably poor animals worth from 1s. to 1s. 6d. each, with a small fleece weighing about a pound and a half, worth 3d. a lb. or a little more. FOOTNOTES: [64] _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 39. No one can write on English agriculture without acknowledging a deep debt to his monumental industry, though his opinions are often open to question. [65] Compare the account of the manors in Huntingdonshire belonging to Romsey Abbey given in Page _End of Villeinage in England_, pp. 28 et seq. [66] Davenport, _A Norfolk Manor_, p. 36; and see Hall, _Pipe Roll of Bishopric of Winchester_, p. xxv. [67] Chevage, poll money, paid to the lord. [68] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 230. [69] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 117. [70] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 307. On the Berkeley estates in 1189-1220 money was so scarce with the tenants that the rents, apparently even where services had been commuted, were commonly paid in oxen.--Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 101. In the thirteenth century the labour services of the villeins were stricter than in the eleventh. Vinogradoff, _op. cit._ 298. [71] Page, _End of Villeinage_, p. 39. [72] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 82. [73] Hampshire Record Society, i. 64. See Appendix, i. [74] Hasbach, _English Agricultural Labourer_, p. 14. [75] Hallam, _Middle Ages_, iii. 361 [76] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 56. [77] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 273. [78] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, 1784 ed., p. 180. [79] Ballard, _Domesday_, p. 207. [80] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 12. [81] Walter reckons the above food of the horse at 12s. 3d., and of the ox at 3s. 1d.; but both are wrong. [82] Ibid. p. 15. [83] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 19. [84] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 71. [85] Davenport, _A Norfolk Manor_, pp. 29 et seq. See also Hall, _Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester_, p. xxvi, which gives an average yield of wheat over a large area in 1298-9 at 4.3 bushels per acre. [86] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 77. [87] Thorold Rogers, _Agriculture and Prices_, i. 397; _Archaeologia_, xviii. 281. [88] Walter of Henley, pp. 69, 75. In Lancashire, at the end of the thirteenth century, mowing 60-1/2 acres cost 17s. 7-1/2d. _Victoria County History, Lancashire, Agriculture_, and _Two Compoti of the Lancashire and Cheshire Manors of Henry de Lacy_ (Cheetham Society). [89] Walter of Henley, p. 63. [90] _Crondall, Records_, Hampshire Record Society, i. 65. [91] See Thorold Rogers, various tables in vol. i. of _History of Agriculture and Prices_. Compare these with the prices on the Berkeley estates from 1281 to 1307, omitting years of scarcity: wheat, 2s. 4d. to 5s.; oxen, 10s. to 12s.; cows, 9s. to 10s.; bacon hogs, 5s.; fat sheep, 1s. 6d. to 2s.; and in the early part of Edward III's reign, wheat, 5s. 4d. to 10s.; oxen, 14s. to 24s. Other prices about the same.--Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 160. [92] If it is true, as generally stated, that the mediaeval ox was one-third the size of his modern successor, it is apparent that he was a very dear animal. Cattle at this date suffered from the ravages of wolves. [93] _Crondall, Records_, Hampshire Record Society, i. 64. [94] _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 528. [95] Seebohm, _Transactions of Royal Historical Society_, New Series, xvii. 288, says that rent in the fourteenth century was commonly 4d.; the usual average is stated at 6d. an acre. [96] _Domesday of S. Paul_, Camden Society, p. li. [97] _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 26. [98] _Pioneers of Agriculture_, p. 13. [99] Ed. Lamond, Royal Historical Society, p. 19. [100] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 93. CHAPTER III THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.--DECLINE OF AGRICULTURE.--THE BLACK DEATH.-- STATUTE OF LABOURERS After the death of Edward I in 1307 the progress of English agriculture came to a standstill, and little advance was made till after the battle of Bosworth in 1485. The weak government of Edward II, the long French War commenced by Edward III and lasting over a hundred years, and the Wars of the Roses, all combined to impoverish the country. England, too, was repeatedly afflicted during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by pestilences, sometimes caused by famines, sometimes coming with no apparent cause; all probably aggravated, if not caused, by the insanitary habits of the people. The mention of plagues, indeed, at this time is so frequent that we may call them chronic. At this period corn and wool were the two main products of the farmer; corn to feed his household and labourers, and wool to put money in his pocket, a somewhat rare thing. English wool, which came to be called 'the flower and strength and revenue and blood of England', was famous in very early times, and was exported long before the Conquest. In Edgar's reign the price was fixed by law, to prevent it getting into the hands of the foreigner too cheaply; a wey, or weigh, was to be sold for 120d.[101] Patriotic Englishmen asserted it was the best in the world, and Henry II, Edward III, and Edward IV are said to have improved the Spanish breed by presents of English sheep. Spanish wool, however, was considered the best from the earliest times until the Peninsular War, when the Saxon and Silesian wools deposed it from its pride of place. Smith, in his _Memoirs of Wool_,[102] is of the opinion that England 'borrowed some parts of its breed from thence, as it certainly did the whole from one place or another.' Spanish wool, too, was imported into England at an early date, the manufacture of it being carried on at Andover in 1262.[103] Yet until the fourteenth century it was not produced in sufficient quantities to compete seriously with English wool in the markets of the Continent; and it appears to have been the long wools, such as those of the modern Leicester and Lincoln, from which England chiefly derived its fame as a wool-producing country. Our early exports went to Flanders, where weaving had been introduced a century before the Conquest, and, in spite of the growth of the weaving industry in England, to that country the bulk of it continued to go, all through the Middle Ages, though in the thirteenth century a determined effort was made to divert a larger share of English wool to Italy.[104] During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the export of wool was frequently forbidden,[105] sometimes for political objects, but also to gain the manufacture of cloth for England by keeping our wool from the foreigner; but these measures did not stop the export, they only hampered it and encouraged much smuggling. It commanded what seems to us an astonishing price, for 3d. a lb. in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is probably equal to nearly 4s. in our money. Its value, and the ease with which it could be packed and carried, made it an object of great importance to the farmer. In 1337[106] we have a schedule of the price of wool in the various counties of England, for in that year 30,000 sacks of the best wool was ordered to be bought in various districts by merchants for Edward III, to provide the sinews of war against France. The price for the best wool was to be fixed by the king, his council, and the merchants; the 'gross' wool being bought by agreement between buyer and seller. Of the former the highest price fixed was for the wool of Hereford, then and for long afterwards famous for its excellent quality, 12 marks the sack of 364 lb.; and the lowest for that of the northern counties, 5 marks the sack. Somewhat more than a century afterwards we have another similar list of wool prices, when in 1454 the Commons petitioned the king that 'as the wools growing within this realm have hitherto been the great commodity, enriching, and welfare of this land, and how of late the price is greatly decayed so that the Commons were not able to pay their rents to their lords', the king would fix certain prices under which wools should not be bought. The highest price fixed was for the wool of 'Hereford, in Leominster', £13 a sack; the lowest for that of Suffolk, £2 12s.[107]; the average being about £4 10s. The manorial accounts of the Knights' Hospitallers, who then held land all over England, afford valuable information as to agriculture in 1338.[108] From these we gather that the rent of arable land varied from 2d. to 2s. an acre; but the latter sum was very exceptional, and there are only two instances of it given, in Lincolnshire and Kent. Most of the tillage rented for less than 1s. an acre, more than half being at 6d. or under, and the average about 6d. On the other hand, meadow land is seldom of less value than 2s. an acre, and in Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and Norfolk rose to 3s. This is one of the numerous proofs of the great value of meadow land at a time when hay was almost the sole winter food of stock; in some places it was eight or ten times as valuable as the arable.[109] The pasture on the Hospitallers' estates was divided into several and common pasture, the former often reaching 1s. an acre and sometimes 2s., the latter rarely exceeding 4d. The most usual way, however, of stating the value of pasture was by reckoning the annual cost of feeding stock per head, cows being valued at 2s., oxen at 1s., a horse at a little less than an ox, a sheep at 1d. The reign of Edward III was a great era for wool-growers, and the Hospitallers at Hampton in Middlesex had a flock of 2,000 sheep whose annual produce was six sacks of wool of 364 lb. each, worth £4 a sack, which would make the fleeces weigh a little more than 1 lb. each. The profit of cows on one of their manors was reckoned at 2s. per head, on another at 3s.; and the profit of 100 sheep at 20s.[110] The wages paid to the labourers for day work were 2d. a day, and we must remember that when he was paid by the day his wages were rightly higher than when regularly employed, for day labour was irregular and casual. The tenants about the same date obtained the following prices[111] for some of their stock:-- £ s. d. A good ox, alive, fatted on corn 1 4 0 " " " not on corn 16 0 A fatted cow 12 0 A two-year-old hog 3 4 A sheep and its fleece 1 8 A fatted sheep, shorn 1 2 " goose 0 3 Hens, each[112] 0 2 20 eggs 0 1 In the middle of the fourteenth century occurred the famous Black Death, the worst infliction that has ever visited England. Its story is too well known for repetition, and it suffices to say that it was like the bubonic plague in the East of to-day: it raged in 1348-9, and killed from one-third to one-half of the people.[113] It is said to have effected more important economic results than any other event in English history. It is probable that the prices of labour were rising before this terrible calamity; the dreadful famine of 1315-6,[114] followed by pestilence, when wheat went up to 26s. a quarter, and according to the contemporary chroniclers, in some cases much higher, destroyed a large number of the population, and other plagues had done their share to make labour scarce, but after the Black Death the advance was strongly marked. It also accelerated the break-up of the manorial system. A large number of the free labourers were swept away, and their labour lost to the lord of the manor; the services of the villeins were largely diminished from the same cause; many of the tenants, both free and unfree, were dead, and the land thrown on the lord's hands. Flocks and herds were wandering about over the country because there was no one to tend them. In short, most manors were in a state of anarchy, and their lords on the verge of ruin. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that they immediately adopted strong measures to save themselves and their property and, no doubt they thought, the whole country. Englishmen had by this time learnt to turn to Parliament to remedy their ills, but as the plague was still raging a proclamation was issued of which the preamble states that wages had already gone up greatly. 'Many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they get excessive wages', and it is, therefore, hard to till the land. Every one under the age of 60, it was ordered, free or villein, who can work, and has no other means of livelihood, is not to refuse to work for any one who offers the accustomed wages; no labourer is to receive more wages than he did before the plague, and none are to give more wages under severe penalties. But besides regulating wages, the proclamation also insists on reasonable prices for food and the necessaries of life: it was a fair attempt not only to protect the landlords but the labourers also, by keeping both wages and prices at their former rate, so that its object was not tyrannous as has been stated.[115] It was at once disregarded, a fate which met many of the proclamations and statutes of the Middle Ages, which often seem to have been regarded as mere pious aspirations. Accordingly, the Statute of 1351, 25 Edw. III, Stat. 2, c. 1, states that the servants had paid no regard to the ordinance regulating wages, 'but to their ease and singular covetise do withdraw themselves unless they have livery and wages to the double or treble of that they were wont to take'. Accordingly, it was again laid down that they were to take liveries and wages as before the Black Death, and 'where wheat was wont to be given they shall take for the bushel 10d. (6s. 8d. a quarter),[116] or wheat at the will of the giver. And that they be hired to serve by the whole year or by other usual terms, and not by the day, and that none pay in the time of sarcling (weeding) or hay-making but a penny a day, and a mower of meadows for the acre 5d., or by the day 5d., and reapers of corn in the first week of August 2d., and the second 3d., without meat or drink.' And none were to take for the threshing of a quarter of wheat or rye more than 2d., and for the quarter of beans, peas, and oats more than 1d. These prices are certainly difficult to understand. Hay-making has usually been paid for at a rate above the ordinary, because of the longer hours; and here we find the price fixed at half the usual wages, while mowing is five times as much, and double the price paid for reaping, though they were normally about the same price.[117] It is interesting to learn from the statute that there was a considerable migration of labourers at this date for the harvest, from Stafford, Lancaster, Derby, Craven, the Marches of Wales and Scotland, and other places. Such was the first attempt made to control the labourers' wages by the legislature, and like other legislation of the kind it failed in its object, though the attempt was honestly made; and if the rate of wages fixed was somewhat low, its inequity was far surpassed by the exorbitance of the labourers' demands.[118] It was an endeavour to set aside economic laws, and its futility was rendered more certain by the depreciation of the coinage in 1351, which led to an advance in prices, and compelled the labourers to persevere in their demands for higher wages.[119] Both wages and prices, except those of grain, continued to increase, and labour services were now largely commuted for money payments,[120] with the result that the manorial system began to break up rapidly. Owing to the dearth of labourers for hire, and the loss of many of the services of their villeins, the lords found it very hard to farm their demesne lands. It should be remembered, too, that an additional hardship from which they suffered at this time was that the quit rents paid to them in lieu of services by tenants who had already become free were, owing to the rise in prices, very much depreciated. Their chief remedy was to let their demesne lands. The condition of the Manor of Forncett in Norfolk well illustrates the changes that were now going on. There, in the period 1272-1307, there were many free tenants as well as villeins, and the holdings of the latter were small, usually only 5 acres. It is also to be noticed that in no year were all the labour services actually performed, some were always sold for money. Yet in the period named there was not much progress in the general commutation of services for money payments, and the same was the case in the manors, whose records between 1325 and 1350 Mr. Page examined for his _End of Villeinage in England_.[121] The reaping and binding of the entire grain crop of the demesne at Forncett was done by the tenants exclusively, without the aid of any hired labour.[122] However, in the period 1307-1376 the manor underwent a great change. The economic position of the villeins, the administration of the demesne, and the whole organization of the manor were revolutionized. Much of the tenants' land had reverted to the lord, partly by the deaths in the great pestilence, partly because tenants had left the manor; they had run away and left their burdensome holdings in order to get high wages as free labourers. This of course led to a diminution of labour rents, so the landlord let most of the demesne for a term of years,[123] a process which went on all over England; and thus we have the origin of the modern tenant farmer. A fact of much importance in connexion with the Peasants' Revolt, soon to take place, was that the average money rent of land per acre in Forncett in 1378 was 10d., while the labour rents for land, where they were still paid by villeins who had not commuted or run away, were, owing to the rise in the value of labour, worth two or three times this. We cannot wonder that the poor villeins were profoundly discontented. On this manor, as on others, some of the villeins, in spite of the many disadvantages under which they lay, managed to accumulate some little wealth. In 1378 and in 1410 one bond tenant had two messuages and 78 acres of land; in 1441 another died seized of 5 messuages and 52 acres; some had a number of servants in their households, but the majority were very poor. There are several instances of bondmen fleeing from the manor; and the officers of the manor failed to catch them. This was common in other manors, and the 'withdrawal' of villeins played a considerable part in the disappearance of serfdom and the break-up of the system.[124] The following table shows the gradual disappearance of villeins in the Manor of Forncett: In 1400 the servile families who had land numbered 16 1500 " " " 8 1525 " " " 5 1550 " " " 3 1575 " " " 0 There is no event of greater importance in the agrarian history of England, or which has led to more important consequences, than the dissolution of this community in the cultivation of the land, which had been in use so long, and the establishment of the complete independence and separation of one property from another.[125] As soon as the manorial system began to give way, and men to have a free hand, the substitution of large for small holdings set in with fresh vigour, for we have already seen that it had begun. It was one of the chief causes of the stagnation of agriculture in the Middle Ages that it lay under the heavy hand of feudalism, by which individualism was checked and hindered. Every one had his allotted position on the land, and it was hard to get out of it, though some exceptional men did so; as a rule there was no chance of striking out a new line for oneself. The villein was bound to the lord, and no lord would willingly surrender his services. There could be little improvement in farming when the custom of the manor and the collective ownership of the teams bound all to the same system of farming.[126] In fact, agriculture under feudalism suffered from many of the evils of socialism. But, though hard hit, the old system was to endure for many generations, and the modern triumvirate of landlord, tenant, and labourer was not completely established in England until the era of the first Reform Bill. FOOTNOTES: [101] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 130. A weigh in the Middle Ages was 182 lbs., or half a sack. [102] Second edition, i. 50 n. See also Burnley, _History of Wool_, p. 17. [103] Gross, _Gild Merchant_, ii. 4. It is from the Spanish merino, crossed with Leicesters and Southdowns, that the vast Australian flocks of to-day are descended. [104] Cunningham, _op. cit._ i. 628. [105] Ashley, _Early History of English Woollen Industry_, p. 34. [106] _Calendar of Close Rolls_, 1337-9, pp. 148-9. [107] _Rolls of Parliament_, v. 275. [108] _The Hospitallers in England_, Camden Society. [109] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 147. [110] _Hospitallers in England_, p. xxvi. [111] Ibid. pp. 1, li. [112] Poultry-keeping was wellnigh universal, judging by the number of rents paid in fowls and eggs. [113] 1348 seems also to have been an excessively rainy year. The wet season was very disastrous to live stock; according to the accounts of the manors of Christ Church, Canterbury, about this time (_Historical MSS. Commission, 5th Report_, 444) there died of the murrain on their estates 257 oxen, 511 cows, 4,585 sheep. Murrain was the name given to all diseases of stock in the Middle Ages, and is of constant occurrence in old records. [114] The cause of this as usual was incessant rain during the greater part of the summer; the chronicles of the time say that not only were the crops very short but those that did grow were diseased and yielded no nourishment. The 'murrain' was so deadly to oxen and sheep that, according to Walsingham, dogs and ravens eating them dropped down dead. [115] See Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 335. Also in an age when the idea of Competitive price had not yet been evolved, and when regulation by authority was the custom, it was natural and right that the Government in such a crisis should try to check the demands of both labourers and producers, which went far beyond what employers or consumers could pay. Putnam, _Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers_, 220. [116] The average price of wheat in 1351 was 10s. 2-1/2d., which went down to 7s. 2d. next year, and 4s. 2-1/2d. the year after; but judging by the ineffectiveness of the statute to reduce wages, it probably had little effect in causing this fall. [117] See Appendix I. [118] Putnam, _op. cit._, 221. The statute for the first ten years, however, kept wages from ascending as high as might have been the case. [119] McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, i. 543, says that as the plague diminished the number of employers as well as labourers, the demand for labour could not have been much greater than before, and would have had little effect on the rate of if Edward III had not debased the coinage. But if the owners did decrease the lands would only accumulate in fewer hands, and would still require cultivation. [120] Page, _End of Villeinage_, pp. 59 et seq. [121] Ibid. p. 44. [122] _Transactions_, Royal Historical Society, New Series, xiv. 123. [123] This had been done before, but was now much more frequent. Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 17. [124] 'After the Black Death the flight of villeins was extremely common.'--Page, _op. cit._, p. 40. [125] Nasse, _Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages_, p. 1. [126] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 137. CHAPTER IV HOW THE CLASSES CONNECTED WITH THE LAND LIVED IN THE MIDDLE AGES The castles of the great landowners have been so often described that there is no need to do this again. The popular idea of a baron of the Middle Ages is of a man who when he was not fighting was jousting or hunting. Such were, no doubt, his chief recreations; so fond was he of hunting, indeed, that his own broad lands were not enough, and he was a frequent trespasser on those of others; the records of the time are full of cases which show that poaching was quite a fashionable amusement among the upper classes. But among the barons were many men who, like their successors to-day, did their duty as landlords. Of one of the Lords of Berkeley in the fourteenth century, it was said he was 'sometyme in husbandry at home, sometyme at sport in the field, sometyme in the campe, sometyme in the Court and Council of State, with that promptness and celerity that his body might have bene believed to be ubiquitary'. Many of them were farmers on a very large scale, though they might not have so much time to devote to it as those excellent landlords the monks. Thomas Lord Berkeley, who held the Berkeley estates from 1326 to 1361, farmed the demesnes of a quantity of manors, as was the custom, and kept thereon great flocks of sheep, ranging from 300 to 1,500 on each manor.[127] The stock of the Bishop of Winchester, by an inquisition taken at his death in 1367, amounted to 127 draught horses, 1,556 head of black cattle, and 12,104 sheep and lambs. Almost every manor had one or two pigeon houses, and the number of pigeons reared is astonishing; from one manor Lord Berkeley obtained 2,151 pigeons in a single year. No one but the lord was allowed to keep them, and they were one of the chief grievances of the villeins, who saw their seed devoured by these pests without redress. Their dung, too, was one of the most valued manures. Lord Berkeley, like other landlords, went often in progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another, making his stay at each of them for one or two nights, overseeing and directing the husbandry. The castle of the great noble consumed an enormous amount of food in the course of the year; from two manors on the Berkeley estate came to the 'standinghouse' of the lord in twelve months, 17,000 eggs, 1,008 pigeons, 91 capons, 192 hens, 288 ducks, 388 chickens, 194 pigs, 45 calves, 315 quarters of wheat, 304 quarters of oats; and from several other manors came the like or greater store, besides goats, sheep, oxen, butter, cheese, nuts, honey, &c.[128] Even the lavish hospitality of the lords, and the great number of their retainers, must have had some difficulty in disposing of these huge supplies. The examining of their bailiff's accounts must have taken a considerable portion of the landlord's time, for those of each manor were kept most minutely, and set forth, among other items, 'in what sort he husbanded' the demesne farms, 'what sorts of cattle he kept in them, and what kinds of graine he yearly sowed according to the quality and condition of the ground, and how those kinds of graine each second or third yeare were exchanged or brought from one manor to another as the vale corne into an upland soyle, and contrarily'. And we are told incidentally he 'set with hand, not sowed his beanes'. He was also accustomed to move his live stock from one manor to another, as they needed it. The accounts also stated what days' works were due from each tenant according to the season of the year, and at the end of each year there was a careful valuation of live and dead stock.[129] The difference between the smaller gentry and the more important yeomen[130] who farmed their own land must have been very slight. No doubt both of them were very rough and ignorant men, who knew a great deal about the cultivation of their land and very little about anything else. We may be sure that the ordinary house of both was generally of wood; as there is no stone in many parts of England, and bricks were not reintroduced till the fourteenth century and spread slowly. Even in Elizabeth's reign, Harrison[131] tells us that 'the ancient houses of our gentry are yet for the most part of strong timber', and he even thinks that houses made of oak were luxurious, for in times past men had been contented with houses of willow, plum, and elm, but now nothing but oak was good enough; and he quaintly says that the men who lived in the willow houses were as tough as oak, and those who lived in the oak as soft as willow. There are very few mansions left of the time before Edward III, for being of timber they naturally decayed. In a lease, dated 1152, of a manor house belonging to S. Paul's Cathedral,[132] is a description of a manor house which contained a hall 35 feet long, 30 feet broad, and 22 feet high; that is, 11 feet to the tie beam and 11 feet from that to the ridge board; showing that the roof was open and that there were no upper rooms. There was a chamber between the hall and the thalamus or inner room which was 12 feet long, 17 feet broad, and 17 feet high, the roof being open as in the hall; and the thalamus was 22 feet long, 16 feet broad, and 18 feet high. About the same date the Manor house of Thorp was larger, and contained a hall, a chamber, tresantia (apparently part of the hall or chamber separated by a screen to form an antechamber), two private rooms, a kitchen, brew-house, malt-house, dairy, ox shed, and three small hen-houses. The ordinary manor house of the Middle Ages contained three rooms at least, of mean aspect, the floor even of the hall, which was the principal eating and sleeping room, being of dirt; and when there was an upper room or solar added, which began to be done at the end of the twelfth century,[133] access to it was often obtained by an outside staircase. If the manor house belonged to the owner of many manors, it was sometimes inhabited by his bailiff. The barns on the demesnes were often as important buildings as the manor houses; one at Wickham, belonging to the canons of S. Paul's[134] in the twelfth century, was 55 feet long, 13 feet high from the floor to the principal beam, and 10-1/2 feet more to the ridge board; the breadth between the pillars was 19-1/2 feet, and on each side it had a wing or aisle 6-1/2 feet wide and 6-1/2 feet high. The amount of corn in the barn was often scored on the door-posts.[135] In the manor houses chimneys rarely existed, the fire being made in the middle of the hall. Even in the early seventeenth century in Cheshire there were no chimneys in the farmhouses, and there the oxen were kept under the same roof as the farmer and his family.[136] When chimneys did come in they were not much thought of. 'Now we have chimneys our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses (colds);' for the smoke not only hardened the timbers, but was said by Harrison to be an excellent medicine for man. Instead of glass there was much lattice, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak in checkerwise, and horn was also used. Beds, of course, were a luxury, the owner of the manor, his guests, and retainers flung themselves down on the hall floor after supper and all slept together, though sometimes rough mattresses were brought in. Furniture was rude and scanty. In 1150 the farm implements and household furniture on the Manor of 'Waleton' was valued and consisted of 4 carts, 3 baskets, a basket used in winnowing corn, a pair of millstones, 10 tubs, 4 barrels, 2 boilers of lead with stoves, 2 wooden bowls, 3 three-legged tables, 20 dishes or platters, 2 tablecloths worth 6d., 6 metal bowls, half a load of the invaluable salt, 2 axes, a table with trestles (the usual form of table), and 5 beehives made of rushes.[137] These articles were handed down from one generation to another, and in a lease made 150 years afterwards of the same manor most of them reappear. The greater part of the furniture, until the fifteenth century, was most likely made by migratory workmen, who travelled from village to village; for except the rudest pieces it was beyond the village carpenter, and shops there were none. It is not to be expected that when the master lived in this manner the lot of the labourer was a very good one. His home was miserably poor, generally of 'wattle and dab', sometimes wholly of mud and clay; many with only one room for all purposes. A bill is still in existence for a house, if it can be called one, built in 1306 for two labourers by Queen's College, Oxford, which cost 20s. in all, and was a mere hovel without floor, ceiling, or chimney.[138] Their wretched houses appear to have been built on the bare earth, and unfloored. Perhaps as time went on a rude upper storey was added, the floor of which was made of rough poles or hurdles and was reached by a ladder. The furniture was miserably poor; a few pots and pans, cups and dishes, and some tools would exhaust the list.[139] The goods and chattels of a landless labourer in 1431 consisted of a dish, an adze, a brass pot, 2 plates, 2 augers, an axe, a three-legged stool, and a barrel.[140] Englishmen of all classes were hopelessly dirty in their habits; even till the sixteenth century they were noted above other countries for the profuseness of their diet and their unclean ways. Erasmus spoke of the floor of his house as inconceivably filthy. To save fuel, the labourer's family in the cold season all lay huddled in a heap on the floor, 'pleasantly and hot', as Barclay the poet tells us; and if he ever had a bed it was a bundle of fern or straw thrown down, with his cloak as a coverlet, though thus he was just as well off as his social superiors, for with them the loose cloak of the day was a common covering for the night. He was constantly exposed to disease, for sanitary precautions were ignored; at the entrance of his hovel was a huge heap of decaying refuse, poisoning air and water. Even in the sixteenth century a foreigner noticed that 'the peasants dwell in small huts and pile up their refuse out of doors in heaps so high that you cannot see their houses'.[141] Diseased animals were constantly eaten, vegetables were few, and in the winter there was no fresh meat for any one, except game and rabbits and, for the well-to-do, fish, but we may doubt if the peasant got any but salt fish. The consequence was that leprosy and kindred ailments were common; and we do not wonder that plagues were frequent and slew the people like flies. The peasants' food consisted largely of corn. In the bailiff's accounts of the Manor of Woodstock in 1242, six servants at Handborough received 41-1/2 bushels of corn each, 2 ox herds at Combe received the same, and 4 servants at Bladon had 36 bushels each. In 1274 at Bosham, and in 1288 at Stoughton in Sussex, the allowance was the same.[142] The writer of the anonymous _Treatise on Husbandry_ says that in his time, the thirteenth century, the average annual allowance of corn to a labourer was 36 bushels.[143] Fish, too, seem to have formed a large portion of his diet; all classes ate enormous quantities of fish, before the Reformation, in Lent and on fast days, and the labourer was constantly given salt herrings as part of his pay. In 1359, at Hawsted, the villeins when working were allowed 2 herrings a day, some milk, a loaf, and some drink.[144] Eden[145] says his food consisted of a few fish, principally herrings, a loaf of bread, and some beer; but we must certainly add pork, which was his stand-by then as now.[146] In the fourteenth century, at all events, there were three kinds of bread in use--white bread, ration bread, and black bread; and it was no doubt the latter that the peasant ate.[147] Clothing was dear and cloth coarse, the most valuable personal property consisting of clothing and metal vessels. Shirts were the subject of charitable gifts.[148] By 37 Edw. III, c. 14, labourers were not to wear any manner of cloth but 'blanket and russet wool of 12d.' and girdles of linen. If they wore anything more extravagant it was forfeited to the king. To the labourer of modern times the life of his forefathers would have seemed unutterably dull. No books, no newspapers, no change of scene by cheap excursions, no village school, no politics. The very cultivation of the soil by the old three-course system was monotonous. But there were bright spots in his existence: the village church not only afforded him the consolations of religion but also entertainments and society. Religion in the Middle Ages was a part of the people's daily life, and its influence permeated even their amusements. Miracles and mystery plays, played in the churches and churchyards, were a common feature in village life; as were the church ales or parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the parish. Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more sociability than to-day, in the country at least. Labour was lightened by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of the different tenants, 'a common mill ground the corn, a common oven baked the bread, a common smith worked at a common forge.' His existence, moreover, was enlivened by a considerable number of sports. A statute at the end of the fourteenth century (12 Ric. II, c. 6) says he was fond of playing at tennis(!), football, quoits, dice, casting the stone, and other games, which this statute forbad him, and enacted that he should use his bow and arrows on Sundays and holidays instead of such idle sport. This is a foretaste of the modern sentiment that seeks to wean him from watching football matches and take to miniature rifle clubs. He was also, like some of his successors, fond of poaching, though he appears to have been rash enough to indulge in it by day. 13 Ric. II, c. 13, says he was prone on holidays, when good Christian people be in church hearing divine service, to go hunting with greyhounds and other dogs, in the parks and warrens of the lord and of others, and sometimes these hunts were turned into conferences and conspiracies,' for to rise and disobey their allegiance', such as preceded the Peasants' Revolt of 1381; and accordingly no one who did not own lands worth 40s. a year was to keep a dog to hunt, or ferrets other 'engines': the first game law on the English statute book. FOOTNOTES: [127] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 302. No doubt the riches of the Berkeleys were considerably greater than those of many of the barons. [128] _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 166. There is no reason to doubt Smyth, as he wrote with the original accounts before him. [129] _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 156. [130] The yeoman is said to have made his appearance in the fifteenth century, but the small freeholders of the manor before that date were to all intents and purposes yeomen. No doubt, as trade grew in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries successful tradesmen bought small freeholds in the country and swelled the numbers of yeomen. [131] Harrison, _Description of Britain_, F.J. Furnivall edn., p. 337. [132] _Domesday of S. Paul_, Camden Society, p. 129. [133] Turner, _Domestic Architecture_, i. 59. [134] _Domesday of S. Paul_, p. 123. [135] _Historical MSS. Commission Report_, v. 444. [136] Ormerod, _History of Cheshire_, i. 129. [137] _Domesday of S. Paul_, p. xcvii. [138] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_. [139] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 21. [140] See Cullum, _History of Hawsted_. [141] Harrison, _Description of Britain_, Appendix ii, lxxxi. In some manors, however, there were careful regulations for public health. According to the Durham _Halmote Rolls_, published by the Surtees Society, village officials watched over the water supply, prevented the fouling of streams; bye-laws were enacted as to the regulation of the common place for clothes washing, and the times for emptying and cleansing ponds and mill-dams. [142] Ballard, _Domesday_, Antiquary Series, p. 209. [143] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 75. [144] Cullum, _Hawsted_, 1784 ed., p. 182. [145] _State of the Poor_, i. 15. [146] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 32. [147] See _Knights Hospitallers in England_, Camden Society, Introduction. [148] Thorold Rogers, _op. cit._ i. 66. CHAPTER V THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR.--SPREAD OF LEASES.--THE PEASANTS' REVOLT.--FURTHER ATTEMPTS TO REGULATE WAGES.--A HARVEST HOME.-- BEGINNING OF THE CORN LAWS.--SOME SURREY MANORS We have seen that the landlords' profits were seriously diminished by the Black Death, and they cast about them for new ways of increasing their incomes. Arable land had been until now largely in excess of pasture, the cultivation of corn was the chief object of agriculture, bread forming a much larger proportion of men's diet than now. This began to change. Much of the land was laid down to grass, and there was a steady increase in sheep farming; thus commenced that revolution in farming which in the sixteenth century led Harrison to say that England was mainly a stock-raising country. The lords also let a considerable amount of their demesne land on leases for years. 'Then began the times to alter' says Smyth of the Lord Berkeley of the end of the fourteenth century, 'and hee with them, and he began to tack other men's cattle on his pasture by the week, month, and quarter, and to sell his meadow grounds by the acre. And in the time of Henry IV still more and more was let, and in succeeding times. As for the days' works of the copyhold tenants, they also were turned into money.'[149] Such leases had been used long before this, but this is the date of their great increase. In the thirteenth century a lease of 2 acres of arable land in Nowton, Suffolk, let the land at 6d. an acre per annum for a term of six years.[150] It contains no clauses about cultivation; the landlord warrants the said 2 acres to the tenant, and the tenant agrees to give them up at the end of the term freely and peaceably. The deed was indented, sealed, and witnessed by several persons. The impoverished landlords also let much of their land on stock and land leases. The custom of stocking the tenants' land was a very ancient one: the lord had always found the oxen for the plough teams of the villeins. In the leases of the manors of S. Paul's in the twelfth century the tenant for life received stock both live and dead, which when he entered was carefully enumerated in the lease, and at the end of the tenancy he had to leave behind the same quantity.[151] It was a common practice also, before the Black Death, for the lord to let out cows and sheep at so much per head per annum.[152] The stock and land lease therefore was no novelty. In 1410 there is a lease of the demesne lands at Hawsted by which the landlord kept the manor house and its appurtenances in his own hands, the tenant apparently having the farm buildings, which he was to keep in repair. He was to receive at the beginning of the term 20 cows and one bull, worth 9s. each; 4 stotts, worth 10s. each; and 4 oxen, worth 13s. 4d. each; which, or their value in money, were to be delivered up at the end of the term. The tenant was also to leave at the end of the lease as many acres well ploughed, sown, and manured as he found at the beginning. Otherwise the landlord was not to interfere with the cultivation. If the rent or any part thereof was in arrear for a fortnight after the two fixed days for payment, the landlord might distrain; and if for a month, he might re-enter: and both parties bound themselves to forfeit the then huge sum of £100 upon the violation of any clause of the lease.[153] There is a lease[154] of a subsequent date (the twentieth year of Henry VIII), but one which well illustrates the custom now so prevalent, granted by the Prior of the Monastery of Lathe in Somerset to William Pole of Combe, Edith his wife, and Thomas his son, for their lives. With the land went 360 wethers. For the land they paid 16 quarters of best wheat, 'purelye thressyd and wynowed,' 22 quarters of best barley, and were to carry 4 loads of wood and fatten one ox for the prior yearly; the ox to be fattened in stall with the best hay, the only way then known of fattening oxen. For the flock of wethers they paid £6 yearly. The tenants were bound to keep hedges, ditches, and gates in repair. Also they were bound by a 'writing obligatory' in the sum of £100 to deliver up the wether flock whole and sound, 'not rotten, banyd,[155] nor otherwise diseased.' The consequence of the spread of leases was that the portion of the demesne lands which the lords farmed themselves dwindled greatly, or it was turned from arable into grass. Stock and land leases survived in some parts till the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it was still the custom for the landlord to stock the land and receive half the crop for rent.[156] According to the _Domesday of S. Paul_, in the thirteenth century, a survey of eighteen manors containing 24,000 acres showed three-eighths of the land in demesne, the rest in the hands of the tenants. In 1359 the lord of the principal manor at Hawsted held in his own hand 572 acres of arable land, worth 4d. to 6d. an acre rent, and 50 acres of meadow, worth 2s. an acre.[157] He had also pasture for 24 cows, which was considered worth 36s. a year, and for 12 horses and 12 oxen worth 48s. a year, with 40 acres of wood, estimated at 1s. an acre. In 1387, however, the arable land had decreased to 320 acres, but the stock had increased, and now numbered 4 cart horses, 6 stotts or smaller horses, 10 oxen, 1 bull, 26 cows, 6 heifers, 6 calves, 92 wethers, 20 hoggerells or two-year-old sheep, 1 gander, 4 geese, 30 capons, 26 hens, and only one cock. The dairy of 26 cows was let out, according to the custom of the time, for £8 a year; and we are told that the oxen were fed on oats, and shod in the winter only. But if the position of the lords was severely affected by the great pestilence that of the villeins was also. The villein himself was becoming a copyholder; in the thirteenth century the nature of his holding had been written on the court roll, before long he was given a copy of the roll, and by the fifteenth century he was a copyholder.[158] There was, too, a new spirit abroad in this century of disorganization and reform, which stirred even the villeins with a desire for better conditions of life. These men, thus rising to a more assured position and animated by new hopes, saw all round them hired labourers obtaining, in spite of the Statute of Labourers, double the amount of wages they had formerly received, while they were bound down to the same services as before. The advance in prices was further increased by the king's issuing in 1351 an entirely new coinage, of the same fineness but of less weight than the old; so that the demands of the labourers after the Black Death were largely justified by the depreciation in the currency.[159] There had also arisen at this time, owing to the increase in the wealth of the country, a new class of landlords who did not care for the old system[160]; and it is probably these men who are meant by the statute I Ric. II, c. 6, which complains that the villeins daily withdrew their services to their lords at the instigation of various counsellors and abettors, who made it appear by 'colour of certain exemplifications made out of the Book of Domesday' that they were discharged from their services, and moreover gathered themselves in great routs and agreed to aid each other in resisting their lords, so that justices were appointed to check this evil. But there were other 'counsellors and abettors' of the Peasants' Revolt than the new landlords. One of its most interesting features to modern readers is its thorough organization. Travelling agents and agitators like John Ball were all over the country, money was subscribed and collected, and everything was ripe for the great rising of 1381, which was brought to a head by the bad grading of the poll tax of King Richard. It has been said that the chief grievance of the villeins was that the lords of manors were attempting to reimpose commuted services, but judging by the petition to the King when he met them at Mile-end there can be no doubt that the chief grievance was the continuance of existing services. 'We will', said they, 'that ye make us free for ever, and that we be called no more bond, or so reputed.' Also, as Walsingham says,[161] they were careful to destroy the rolls and ancient records whereby their services were fixed, and to put to death persons learned in the law. As every one knows, the revolt was a failure; and whether it ultimately helped much to extinguish serfdom is doubtful. It probably, like the pestilence, accelerated a movement which had been for some time in progress and was inevitable. There is ample evidence to prove that there was a very general continuance of predial services after the revolt, though they went on rapidly decreasing. One of the chief methods adopted by the villeins to gain their freedom was desertion, and so common did this become that apparently the mere threat of desertion enabled the villein to obtain almost any concession from his lord, who was afraid lest his land should be utterly deserted. The result was that by the middle of the fifteenth century the abolition of labour services was approaching completion.[162] It lingered on, and Fitzherbert lamented in Elizabeth's reign the continuance of villeinage as a disgrace to England; but it had then nearly disappeared, and was unheard of after the reign of James I.[163] Seven years after the Peasants' Revolt another attempt was made to regulate agricultural wages by the statute 12 Ric. II, c. 4, which stated that 'the hires of the said servants and labourers have not been put on certainty before this time', though we have seen that the Act of 1351 tried to settle wages. In the preamble it is said that the statute was enacted because labourers 'have refused for a long season to work without outrageous and excessive hire', and owing to the scarcity of labourers 'husbands' could not pay their rents, a sentence which shows the general use of money rents. The wages were as follows, apparently with food:-- s. d. A bailiff annually, and clothing once a year 13 4 A master hind, without clothing 10 0 A carter, " " 10 0 A shepherd, " " 10 0 An ox or cow herd " " 6 8 Swine herd or female labourer, without clothing 6 0 A plough driver, without clothing 7 0 The farm servants' food would be worth considerably more than the actual cash he received; a quarter of wheat, barley, and rye mixed every nine weeks was no unusual allowance, which at 4s. 4d. would be worth about 25s. a year. He would also have his harvest allowance, though the statute above forbids any perquisites, worth about 3s., and sometimes it was accompanied by the gift of a pig, some beer, or some herrings.[164] His wife also, at a time when women did the same work as the men, could earn 1d. a day, and his boy perhaps 1/2d. If his wages were wholly paid in money, we may say that in the last half of the fourteenth century the ordinary labourer earned 3d. a day, so that as corn and pork, his chief food, had not risen at all, he was much better off than in the preceding 100 years. Cullum, in his invaluable _History of Hawsted_, gives us a picture of harvesting on the demesne lands in 1389 which shows an extraordinarily busy scene. There were 200 acres of all kinds of corn to be gathered in, and over 300 people took part; though apparently such a crowd was only collected for the two principal days of the harvest, and it must be remembered that the towns were emptied into the country at this important season. The number of people for one day comprised a carter, ploughman, head reaper, cook, baker, brewer, shepherd, daya (dairymaid); 221 hired reapers; 44 pitchers, stackers, and reapers (not hired, evidently villeins paying their rents by work); 22 other reapers, hired for goodwill (_de amore_); and 20 customary tenants. This small army of men consumed 22 bushels of wheat, 8 pennyworth of beer, and 41 bushels of malt, worth 18s. 9-1/2d.; meat to the value of 9s. 11-1/2d.; fish and herrings, 5s. 1d.; cheese, butter, milk, and eggs, 8s. 3-1/2d.; oatmeal, 5d. salt, 3d.; pepper and saffron, 10d., the latter apparently introduced into England in the time of Edward III, and much used for cooking and medicine, but it gradually went out of fashion, and by the end of the eighteenth century was only cultivated in one or two counties, notably Essex where Saffron Walden recalls its use; candles, 6d.; and 5 pairs of gloves 10d.[165] The presentation of gloves was a common custom in England; and these would be presented as a sign of good husbandry, as in the case of the rural bridegroom in the account of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth who wore gloves to show he was a good farmer. Tusser bids the farmer give gloves to his reapers. The custom was still observed at Hawsted in 1784, and in Eden's time, 1797, the bursars of New College, Oxford, presented each of their tenants with two pairs, which the recipients displayed on the following Sunday at church by conspicuously hanging their hands over the pew to show their neighbours they had paid their rent. In this account of the Hawsted harvest the large number of hired men and the few customary tenants is noteworthy as a sign of the times, for before the Black Death the harvest work on the demesne was the special work of the latter. In the fourteenth century the long series of corn laws was commenced which was to agitate Englishmen for centuries, and after an apparently final settlement in 1846 to reappear in our day.[166] It was the policy of Edward III to make food plentiful and cheap for the whole nation, without special regard to the agricultural interest: and by 34 Edw. III, c. 20, the export of corn to any foreign part except Calais and Gascony, then British possessions, or to certain places which the king might permit, was forbidden. Richard II, however, reversed this policy in answer to the complaints of agriculturists whose rents were falling,[167] and endeavoured to encourage the farmer and especially the corn-grower; for he saw the landlords turning their attention to sheep instead of corn, owing to the high price of labour. Accordingly, to give the corn-growers a wider market, he allowed his subjects by the statute 17 Ric. II, c. 7, to carry corn, on paying the duties due, to what parts they pleased, except to his enemies, subject however to an order of the Council; and owing to the interference of the Council the law probably became a dead letter, at all events we find it confirmed and amended by 4 Hen. VI, c. 5. The prohibition of export must have been a serious blow to those counties near the sea, for it was much easier to send corn by ship to foreign parts than over the bad roads of England to some distant market.[168] Indeed, judging by the great and frequent discrepancy of prices in different places at the same date, the dispatch of corn from one inland locality to another was not very frequent. Richard also attempted to stop the movement, which had even then set in, of the countrymen to the growing towns, forbidding by 12 Ric. II, c. 5, those who had served in agriculture until 12 years of age to be apprenticed in the towns, but to 'abide in husbandry'. One of the most unjust customs of the Middle Ages was that which bade the tenants of manors, except those who held the _jus faldae_, fold their sheep on the land of the lord, thus losing both the manure and the valuable treading.[169] However, sometimes, as in Surrey, the sheepfold was in a fixed place and the manure from it was from time to time taken out and spread on the land.[170] In the same district horses had been hitherto used for farm work, as it was considered worthy of note that oxen were beginning to be added to the horse teams. The milk of two good cows in twenty-four weeks was considered able to make a wey of cheese, and in addition half a gallon of butter a week; and the milk of 20 ewes was equal to that of 3 cows. On the Manor of Flaunchford, near Reigate, the demesne land amounted to 56 acres of arable and two meadows, but there must have been the usual pasture in addition to keep the following head of stock: 13 cows, who in the winter were fed from the racks in the yard; 4 calves, bought at 1s. each; 12 oxen for ploughing, whose food was oats and hay--a very large number for 56 acres of arable, and they were probably used on another manor; 1 stott, used for harrowing; a goat, and a sow. £ s. d. In 1382 the total receipts of this manor were 8 1 9-1/2 The total expenses 7 0 5 -------------- Profit £1 1 4-1/2 ============== Among the receipts were:-- For the lord's plough, let to farmers (perhaps this accounts for the large team of oxen kept) 6 8 14 bushels of apples 1 2 5 loads of charcoal 16 8 A cow 10 0 Among the payments:-- For keeping plough in repair, and the wages of a blacksmith, one year by agreement 6 8 Making a new plough from the lord's timber 6 Mowing 2 acres of meadow 1 0 Making and carrying hay of ditto, with help of lord's servants 4 Threshing wheat, peas, and tares, per quarter 4 " oats, per quarter 1-1/2 Winnowing 3 quarters of corn 1 Cutting and binding wheat and oats, per acre 6 On the Manor of Dorking the harvest lasted five weeks as a rule; the fore feet only of oxen used for ploughing, and of heifers used for harrowing, were shod. For washing and shearing sheep 10d. a hundred was the price; ploughing for winter corn cost 6d. an acre, and harrowing 1/2d. 30-1/2 acres of barley produced 41-1/2 quarters; 28 acres of oats produced 38-1/2 quarters; 13 cows were let for the season at 5s. each. In the same reign, at Merstham, the demesne lands of 166-1/2 acres were let on lease with all the live and dead stock, which was valued at £22 9s. 3d., and the rent was £36 or about 4s. 4d. an acre, an enormous price even including the stock. FOOTNOTES: [149] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, ii. 5. There is no doubt the lease system was growing in the thirteenth century. About 1240 the writ _Quare ejecit infra terminum_ protected the person of a tenant for a term of years, who formerly had been regarded as having no more than a personal right enforceable by an action of covenant. Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 330; but leases for lives and not for years seem the rule at that date. [150] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 175. [151] See _Domesday of S. Paul_, Introduction. [152] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 25. [153] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 195. [154] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 586. [155] Banyd, afflicted with sheep rot. [156] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 55. [157] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 182. Another instance of the difference in value between arable and tillage. At the inquisition of the Manor of Great Tey in Essex, 1326, the jury found that 500 acres of arable land was worth 6d. an acre rent, 20 acres of meadow 3s. an acre, and 10 acres of pasture 1s. an acre. _Archaeologia_, xii. 30. [158] Medley, _Constitutional History_, p. 52. [159] Cunningham, _op. cit._ i. 328, and 335-6. [160] _Domesday of S. Paul_, p. lvii. [161] _Hist. Angl._, Rolls Series, i. 455. The other political and social causes of the revolt do not concern us here. The attempt to minimize its agrarian importance is strange in the light of the words and acts above mentioned. [162] Page, _op. cit._ p. 77. [163] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 402, 534; _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_, New Series, xvii. 235. Fitzherbert probably referred more to villein status, which continued longer than villein tenure. [164] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 278, 288. [165] Harrison, _Description of Britain_, p. 233, says the produce of an acre of saffron was usually worth £20. [166] Exportation of corn is mentioned in 1181, when a fine was paid to the king for licence to ship corn from Norfolk and Suffolk to Norway.--McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, i. 345. As early as the reign of Henry II, Henry of Huntingdon says, German silver came to buy our most precious wool, our milk (no doubt converted into butter and cheese), and our innumerable cattle.--Rolls Series, p. 5. In 1400, the _Chronicle of London_ says the country was saved from dearth by the importation of rye from Prussia. [167] Hasbach, _op. cit._. p. 32. [168] Lord Berkeley, about 1360, had a ship of his own for exporting wool and corn and bringing back foreign wine and wares.--Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 365. [169] Nasse, _Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages_, p. 66. [170] Customs in some Surrey manors in the time of Richard II, _Archaeologia_, xviii. 281. CHAPTER VI 1400-1540 THE SO-CALLED 'GOLDEN AGE OF THE LABOURER' IN A PERIOD OF GENERAL DISTRESS In this period the average prices of grain remained almost unchanged until the last three decades, when they began slowly and steadily to creep up, this advance being helped to some extent by defective harvests. In 1527, according to Holinshed it rained from April 12 to June 3 every day or night; in May thirty hours without ceasing; and the floods did much damage to the corn. In 1528 incessant deluges of rain prevented the corn being sown in the spring, and grain had to be imported from Germany. The price of wheat was a trifle higher than in the period 1259-1400; barley, oats, and beans lower; rye higher.[171] Oxen and cows were dearer, horses about the same, sheep a little higher, pigs the same, poultry and eggs dearer, wool the same, cheese and butter dearer. The price of wheat was sometimes subject to astonishing fluctuations: in 1439 it varied from 8s. to 26s. 8d.; in 1440 from 4s. 2d. to 25s. The rent of land continued the same, arable averaging 6d. an acre,[172] though this was partly due to the fact that rents, although now generally paid in money, were still fixed and customary; for the purchase value of land had now risen to twenty years instead of twelve.[173] The art of farming hardly made any progress, and the produce of the land was consequently about the same or a little better than in the preceding period.[174] At the end of the fourteenth century the ordinary wheat crop at Hawsted was in favourable years about a quarter to the acre, but it was often not more than 6 bushels; and this was on demesne land, usually better tilled than non-demesne land.[175] As for the labourer, it is well known that Thorold Rogers calls the fifteenth century his golden age, and seeing that his days' wages, if he 'found himself', were now 4d. and prices were hardly any higher all round than when he earned half the money in the thirteenth century, there is much to support his view. As to whether he was better off than the modern labourer it is somewhat difficult to determine; as far as wages went he certainly was, for his 4d. a day was equal to about 4s. now; it is true that on the innumerable holidays of the Church he sometimes did not work,[176] but no doubt he then busied himself on his bit of common. But so many factors enter into the question of the general material comfort of the labourer in different ages that it is almost impossible to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Denton paints a very gloomy picture of him at this time[177]; so does Mr. Jessop, who says, the agricultural labourers of the fifteenth century were, compared with those of to-day, 'more wretched in their poverty, incomparably less prosperous in their prosperity; worse clad, worse fed, worse housed, worse taught, worse governed; they were sufferers from loathsome diseases, of which their descendants know nothing; the very beasts of the field were dwarfed and stunted; the disregard of to sell their corn at low prices to the detriment of the whole kingdom: a typical example of the political economy of the time, which considered the prosperity of agriculture indispensable to the welfare of the country, even if the consumer suffered. Accordingly, it was enacted that wheat could be exported without a licence when it was under 6s. 8d. a quarter, except to the king's enemies. On imports of corn there had been no restriction until 1463, when 3 Edw. IV, c. 2 forbade the import of corn when under 6s. 8d: a statute due partly to the fear that the increase of pasture was a danger to tillage land and the national food supply, and partly to the fact that the landed interest had become by now fully awake to the importance of protecting themselves by promoting the gains of the farmer.[178] It may be doubted, however, if much wheat was imported except in emergencies at this time, for many countries forbade export. These two statutes were practically unaltered till 1571,[179] and by that of 1463 was initiated the policy which held the field for nearly 400 years. Thorold Rogers denounces the landlords for legislating with the object of keeping up rents, but, as Mr. Cunningham has pointed out, this ignores the fact that the land was the great fund of national wealth from which taxation was paid; if rents therefore rose it was a gain to the whole country, since the fund from which the revenue was drawn was increased.[180] In spite of the high wages of agricultural labourers, the movement towards the towns noticed by Richard II continued. The statute 7 Hen. IV, c. 17, asserts that there is a great scarcity of labourers in husbandry and that gentlemen are much impoverished by the rate of wages; the cause of the scarcity lying in the fact that many people were becoming weavers,[181] and it therefore re-enacted 12 Ric. II, c. 5, which ordained that no one who had been a servant in husbandry until 12 years old should be bound apprentice, and further enacted that no person with less than 20s. a year in land should be able to apprentice his son. Like many other statutes of the time this seems to have been inoperative, for we find 23 Hen. VI, c. 12 (1444), enacting that if a servant in husbandry purposed leaving his master he was to give him warning, and was obliged either to engage with a new one or continue with the old. It also regulated the wages anew, those fixed showing a substantial increase since the statute of 1388. By the year:-- A bailiff was to have £1 3s. 4d., and 5s. worth of clothes. A chief hind, carter, or shepherd, £1, and 4s. worth of clothes. A common servant in husbandry, 15s., and 3s. 4d. worth of clothes. A woman servant, 10s., and 4s. worth of clothes. All with meat and drink. By the day, in harvest, wages were to be:-- A mower, with meat and drink, 4d.; without, 6d. A reaper or carter, with meat and drink, 3d.; without, 5d. A woman or labourer, with meat and drink, 2d.; without, 4d. In the next reign the labourer's dress was again regulated for him, and he was forbidden to wear any cloth exceeding 2s. a yard in price, nor any 'close hosen', apparently tight long stockings, nor any hosen at all which cost more than 14d.[182] Yeomen and those below them were forbidden to wear any bolsters or stuff of wool, cotton wadding, or other stuff in their doublets, but only lining; and somewhat gratuitously it was ordered that no one under the degree of a gentleman should wear pikes to his shoes. In 1455 England's Thirty Years' War, the War of the Roses, began, and agriculture received another set back. The view that the war was a mere faction fight between nobles and their retainers, while the rest of the country went about their business, is somewhat exaggerated. No doubt, the mass of Englishmen, as in the civil war of the seventeenth century, preferred to 'sit still', as Clarendon said, but the business of many must have been very much upset. The various armies were compelled to obtain their supplies from the country, and with the lawless habits of the times plundered friend and foe alike, as Cavalier and Roundhead did afterwards; and many a farmer must have seen all his stock driven off and his grain seized to feed the combatants. For instance, it was said before the battle called Easter Day Field that all the tenants of Abbot's Ripton in Huntingdonshire were copyholders of the Abbot of Ramsey, and the northern army lay there so long that they impoverished the country and the tenants had to give up their copyholds through poverty.[183] The loss of life, too, must have told heavily on a country already suffering from frequent pestilence. It is calculated that about one-tenth of the whole population of the country were killed in battle or died of wounds and disease during the war; and as these must have been nearly all men in the prime of life, it is difficult to understand how the effect on the labour market was not more marked. The enclosing of land for pasture farms, which we shall next have to consider, was probably in many cases an absolute necessity, for the number of men left to till the soil must have been seriously diminished. FOOTNOTES: [171] See table at end of volume. The shrinkage of prices which occurred in the fifteenth century was due to the scarcity of precious metals. [172] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 128. The rent of arable land on Lord Derby's estate in Wirral in 1522 was a little under 6d. a statute acre; of meadow, about 1s. 6d.--_Cheshire Sheaf_ (Ser. 3), iv. 23. [173] Thorold Rogers, _op. cit._ iv. 3. [174] Thorold Rogers, _op. cit._ iv. 39. [175] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 187. The amount of seed for the various crops was, wheat 2 bushels per acre, barley 4, oats 2-1/2. [176] By 4 Hen. IV, c. 14, labourers were to receive no hire for holy days, or on the eves of feasts for more than half a day; but the statute was largely disregarded. [177] See _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 105: 'The undrained neglected soil, the shallow stagnant waters which lay on the surface of the ground, the unhealthy homes of all classes, insufficient and unwholesome food, the abundance of stale fish eaten, and the scanty supply of vegetables predisposed rural and town population to disease.' [178] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 448. [179] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1852), p. 412. In 1449 Parliament had decided that all foreign merchants importing corn should spend the money so obtained on English goods to prevent it leaving the country.--McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, i. 655. [180] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 191. [181] Much of the weaving, however, was done in rural districts. [182] See 3 Edw. IV, c. 5; _Rot. Parl._ v. 105; 22 Edw. IV, c. 1. [183] Cunningham, _op. cit._ i. 456. CHAPTER VII ENCLOSURE We have now reached a time when the enclosure question was becoming of paramount importance,[184] and began to cause constant anxiety to legislators, while the writers of the day are full of it. Enclosure was of four kinds: 1. Enclosing the common arable fields for grazing, generally in large tracts. 2. Enclosing the same by dividing them into smaller fields, generally of arable. 3. Enclosing the common pasture, for grazing or tillage. 4. Enclosing the common meadows or mowing grounds. It is the first mainly, and to a less degree the third of these, which were so frequent a source of complaint in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; for the first, besides displacing the small holder, threw out of employment a large number of people who had hitherto gained their livelihood by the various work connected with tillage, and the third deprived a large number of their common rights. The first Enclosure Act was the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235, 20 Henry III, c. 4, which permitted lords of manors to add to their demesnes such parts of the waste pasture and woods as were beyond the needs of the tenants. There is evidence, however, that enclosure, probably of waste land, was going on before this statute, as the charter of John, by which all Devonshire except Dartmoor and Exmoor was deforested, expressly forbids the making of hedges, a proof of enclosure, in those two forests.[185] We may be sure that the needs of the tenants were by an arbitrary lord estimated at a very low figure. At the same time many proceeded in due legal form. Thomas, Lord Berkeley, about the period of the Act reduced great quantities of ground into enclosures by procuring many releases of common land from freeholders.[186] His successor, Lord Maurice, was not so observant of legality. He had a wood wherein many of his tenants and freeholders had right of pasture. He wished to make this into a park, and treated with them for that purpose; but things not going smoothly, he made the wood into a park without their leave, and then treated with his tenants, most of whom perforce fell in with his highhanded plan; those who did not 'fell after upon his sonne with suits, in their small comfort and less gaines.'[187] Sometimes the rich made the law aid their covetousness, as did Roger Mortimer the paramour of the 'She Wolf of France'. Some men had common of pasture in King's Norton Wood, Worcestershire, who, when Mortimer enclosed part of their common land with a dike, filled the dike up, for they were deprived of their inheritance. Thereupon Mortimer brought an action of trespass against them 'by means of jurors dwelling far from the said land', who were put on the panel by his steward, who was also sheriff of the county, and the commoners were convicted and cast in damages of £300, not daring to appear at the time for fear of assault, or even death.[188] Neither dared they say a word about the matter till Mortimer was dead, when it is satisfactory to learn that Edward III gave them all their money back save 20 marks. We are told that Lord Maurice Berkeley consolidated much of his demesne lands, throwing together the scattered strips and exchanging those that lay far apart from the manor houses for those that lay near; trying evidently to get the home farms into a ring fence as we should term it.[189] In this policy he was followed by his successor Thomas the Second, who during his ownership of the estate from 1281 to 1320, to the great profit of his tenants and himself, encouraged them to make exchanges, so as to make their lands lie in convenient parcels instead of scattered strips, by which he raised the rent of an acre from 4d. and 6d. to 1s. 6d.[190] There is a deed of enclosure made in the year 1250, preserved, by which the free men of North Dichton 'appropriated and divided between them and so kept for ever in fee all that place called Sywyneland, with the moor,' and they were to have licence to appropriate that place, which was common pasture (the boundaries of which are given), 'save, however, to the grantor William de Ros and his heirs' common of pasture in a portion thereof named by bounds, with entry and exit for beasts after the wheat is carried. The men of North Dichton were also to have all the wood called Rouhowthwicke, and to do what they liked with it.[191] In return they gave the lord 10 marks of silver and a concession as regards a certain wood. It has been noticed that the Black Death, besides causing many of the landlords to let their demesnes, also made them turn much tillage into grass to save labour, which had grown so dear. We have also seen that the statutes regulating wages were of little effect, and they went on rising, so that more land was laid down to grass. The landowners may be said to have given up ordinary farming and turned to sheep raising. English wool could always find a ready sale, although Spanish sheep farming had developed greatly; and the profitable trade of growing wool attracted the new capitalist class who had sprung up, so that they often invested their recently made fortunes in it, buying up many of the great estates that were scattered during the war.[192] The increase of sheep farming was assisted by the fact that the domestic system of the manufacture of wool, which supplanted the guild system, led, owing to its rapid and successful growth, to a constant and increasing demand for wool. At the same time this development of the cloth industry helped to alleviate the evils it had itself caused by giving employment to many whom the agricultural changes wholly or partially deprived of work. 'It is important to remember, that where peasant proprietorship and small farming did maintain their ground it was largely due to the domestic industries which supplemented the profits of agriculture.'[193] Much of the land laid down to grass was demesne land, but many of the common arable fields were enclosed and laid down. John Ross of Warwick about 1460 compares the country as he knew it with the picture presented by the Hundred Rolls in Edward I's time, showing how many villages had been depopulated; and he mentions the inconvenience to travellers in having to get down frequently to open the gates of enclosed fields.[194] Enclosure was really a sure sign of agricultural progress; nearly all the agricultural writers from Fitzherbert onwards are agreed that enclosed land produced much more than uninclosed. Fitzherbert, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, said an acre of land rented for 6d. uninclosed was worth 8d. when enclosed. Gabriel Plattes, in the seventeenth century, said an acre enclosed was worth four in common. In fact, the history of enclosures is part of the history of the great revolution in agriculture by which the manorial system was converted into the modern system as we know it to-day of several ownership and the triumvirate of landlord, tenant farmer, and labourer. No one could have objected to the enclosure of waste; it was that of the common arable fields and of the common pasture that excited the indignation of contemporaries. They saw many of the small holders displaced and the countryside depopulated; many of the labourers were also thrown out of employment, for there was no need in enclosed fields of the swineherd and shepherd and oxherd who had tended the common flocks of the villagers in the old unfenced fields. But much of the opposition was founded on ignorance and hatred of change; England had been for ages mainly a corn-growing land, and, many thought, ought to remain so. As a matter of fact, what much of the arable land wanted was laying down to grass; it was worn out and needed a rest. The common field system was wasteful; the land, for instance, could never be properly ploughed, for the long narrow strips could not be cross-ploughed, and much of it must have suffered grievously from want of manure at a time when hardly any stock was kept in the winter to make manure. The beneficial effect of the rest is shown by the fact that at the end of the sixteenth century, when some of the land came to be broken up, the produce per acre of wheat had gone up largely.[195] Marling and liming the land, too, which had been the salvation of much of it for centuries, had gone out partly because of insecurity of tenure, partly because in the unsettled state of England men knew not if they could reap any benefit therefrom; and partly because, says Fitzherbert, men were lazier than their fathers. There can be no doubt that enclosures were often accompanied with great hardships and injustice. Dugdale, speaking of Stretton in Warwickshire,[196] says that in Henry VII's time Thomas Twyford, having begun the depopulation thereof, decaying four messuages and three cottages whereunto 160 acres of 'errable' land belonged, sold it to Henry Smith; which Henry, following that example, enclosed 640 acres of land more, whereby twelve messuages and four cottages fell to ruins and eighty persons there inhabiting, being employed about tillage and husbandry, were constrained to depart thence and live miserably. By means whereof the church grew to such ruin that it was of no other use than for the shelter of cattle. A sad picture, and true of many districts, but much of the depopulation ascribed to enclosures was due to the devastation of the Civil Wars. In spite of these enclosures, which began to change the England of open fields into the country we know of hedgerows and winding roads, great part of the land was in a wild and uncultivated state of fen, heath, and wood, the latter sometimes growing right up to the walls of the towns.[197] An unbroken series of woods and fens stretched right across England from Lincoln to the Mersey, and northwards from the Mersey to the Solway and the Tweed; Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, and Leicestershire were largely covered by forests, and Sherwood Forest extended over nearly the whole of Notts. Cannock Chase was covered with oaks, and in the forest of Needwood in Camden's time the neighbouring gentry eagerly pursued the cheerful sport of hunting. The great forest of Andredesweald, though much diminished, still covered a large part of Sussex, and the Chiltern district in Bucks and Oxfordshire was thick with woods which hid many a robber. The great fen in the east covered 300,000 acres of land in six counties, in spite of various efforts to reclaim the land, and was to remain in a state of marsh and shallow water till the seventeenth century. North and west of the great fen was Hatfield Chase, 180,000 acres mostly swamp and bog, with here and there a strip of cultivated land, much of which had been tilled and neglected; a great part too of Yorkshire was swamp, heath, and forest, and of Lancashire marshes and mosses, some of which were not drained till recent times. The best corn-growing counties were those lying immediately to the north of London, stretching from Suffolk to Gloucestershire, and including the southern portions of Staffordshire and Leicestershire; Essex was a great cheese county; Hants, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, and Bedfordshire were famous for malt, and Leicestershire for peas and beans. The population of England in 1485 was probably from two to two and a half millions. At the time of Domesday it was under two millions, and from that date increased perhaps to nearly four millions at the time of the Black Death in 1348-9, which swept away from one-third to one-half of the people, and repeated wars and pestilences seem to have kept it from increasing until Tudor times. Of the whole population no fewer than eleven-twelfths were employed in agriculture.[198] It was sought to remedy enclosure and depopulation by legislation, and the statute of 4 Hen. VII, c. 19, was passed, which stated in its preamble that where in some towns (meaning townships or villages) 200 persons used to be occupied and lived by their lawful labours, now there are occupied only two or three herdsmen, so that the residue fall into idleness, and husbandry is greatly decayed, churches destroyed, the bodies there buried not prayed for, the parsons and curates wronged, and the defence of this land enfeebled and impaired; the latter point being wisely deemed one of the most serious defects in the new system of farming. Indeed, the encouragement of tillage was largely prompted by the desire to see the people fed on good home-grown corn and made strong and healthy by rural labour for the defence of England. It therefore enacted that houses which within three years before had been let for farms with 20 acres of tillage land should be kept in that condition, under a penalty of forfeiting half the profits to the king or the lord of the fee. Soon after Henry VIII ascended the throne came another statute, 6 Hen. VIII, c. 5, that all townships, villages, &c., decayed and turned from husbandry and tillage into pasture, shall by the owner be rebuilt and the land made mete for tillage within one year; and this was repeated and made perpetual by a law of the next year.[199] But legislation was in vain; the price of wool was now beginning to advance so that the attraction of sheep farming was irresistible, and laws, which asked landowners and farmers to turn from what was profitable to what was not, were little likely to be observed, especially as the administration of these laws was in the hands of those whose interest it was that they should not be observed. Their ill success, however, did not deter the Parliament from fresh efforts. 25 Hen. VIII, c. 13, sets forth the condition of affairs in its preamble: as many persons have accumulated into few, great multitude of farms and great plenty of cattle, especially sheep, putting such land as they can get into pasture, and enhanced the old rents and raised the prices of corn, cattle, wool, and poultry almost double, 'by reason whereof a mervaylous multitude and nombre of the people of this realme be not able to provide drynke and clothes necessary for themselves, but be so discoraged with myserie and povertie that they fall dayly to thefte and robberye or pitifully dye for hunger and colde.' So greedy and covetous were some of these accumulators that they had as many as 24,000 sheep; and a good sheep, that was used to be sold for 2s. 4d. or 3s. at the most, was now from 4s. to 6s.; and a stone of clothing wool, that in some shires was accustomed to be sold for 18d. or 20d., is now 3s. 4d. to 4s.; and in others, where it was 2s. 4d. to 3s. it is now 4s. 8d. to 5s. It was therefore enacted that no man, with some exceptions, was to keep more than 2,000 sheep at one time in any part of the realm, though lambs under one year were not to count. The frequency of these laws proves their inefficacy, and the conduct of Henry VIII was the chief cause of it; for while Parliament was complaining of the decrease of tillage he gave huge tracts of land taken from the monasteries to greedy courtiers, who evicted the tenants and lived on the profits of sheep farming.[200] For the dissolution of the monasteries was now taking Place,[201] and the best landowners in England, some of whom farmed their own land long after most of the lay landlords had given it up or turned it into grass, and whose lands are said to have fetched a higher rent than any others, were robbed and ruined. Including the dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of the chantry lands in 1549 by Edward VI, about one-fifteenth of the land of England changed hands at this time. The transfer of the abbey lands to Henry's favourites was very prejudicial to farming; it was a source of serious dislocation of agricultural industry, marked by all the inconvenience, injustice, and loss that attends a violent transfer of property. It is probable also that many of the monastic lands were let on stock and land leases; and the stock was confiscated, with inevitable ruin to the tenant as well as the landlord.[202] And not only was a serious injury wrought to agriculture by the spoliation of a large number of landlords generally noted for their generosity and good farming, but with the religious houses disappeared a large number of consumers of country produce, the amount of which may be gathered from the following list of stores of the great Abbey of Fountains at the dissolution: 2,356 horned cattle, 1,326 sheep, 86 horses, 79 swine, and large quantities of wheat, oats, rye, and malt, with 392 loads of hay.[203] It must indeed have seemed to many as if the poor farmer was never to have any rest; no sooner were the long wars over and pestilences in some sense diminished, than the evils of enclosure and the dissolution of the monasteries came upon him. Many ills were popularly ascribed to the fall of the monasteries; in an old ballad in Percy's _Reliques_ one of the characters says, in western dialect:-- 'Chill tell the what, good vellowe, Before the friers went hence, A bushel of the best wheate Was zold vor vorteen pence, And vorty eggs a penny That were both good and newe.' NOTE.--If any further proof were needed of the constant attention given by Parliament to agricultural matters, it would be furnished by the Acts for the destruction of vermin.[204] Our forefathers had no doubt that rooks did more harm than good, yearly destroying a 'wonderfull and marvelous greate quantitie of corne and graine'; and destroying the 'covertures of thatched housery, bernes, rekes, stakkes, and other such like'; so that all persons were to do their best to kill them, 'on pain of a grevous amerciament'. FOOTNOTES: [184] Much the same tendencies were at work in other countries, especially in Germany. [185] Slater, _English Peasantry and Enclosure_, 248. [186] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 113. [187] _Cal. Pat. Rolls_, 1331, p. 127. [188] _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 141. [189] Ibid. i. 141. [190] _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 160. [191] _Historical MSS. Commission, 6th Report_, p. 359. [192] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 379. [193] Ashley, _English Woollen Industry_, pp. 80-1. Broadly speaking, there are four stages in the development of industry--the family system, the guild system, the domestic system, and the factory system. [194] _Hist. Reg. Angl._, p. 120. [195] Gisborne, _Agricultural Essays_, pp. 186-9. [196] _Antiquities of Warwickshire_ 2nd ed., p. 51. [197] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 135. [198] See Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 331; Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 127. [199] 7 Hen. VIII, c. 1. [200] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 489. [201] Dissolution of small monasteries, 1536; of greater, 1539-40. [202] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 129. [203] Dugdale, _Monasticon_, v, 291. [204] 24 Hen. VIII, c. 10; 8 Eliz. c. 15; 14 Eliz. c. 11; 39 Eliz. c. 18. CHAPTER VIII FITZHERBERT.--THE REGULATION OF HOURS AND WAGES The farming of this period is portrayed for us by Fitzherbert, the first agricultural writer of any merit since Walter of Henley in the thirteenth century. He was one of the Justices of Common Pleas, and had been a farmer for forty years before he wrote his books on husbandry, and on surveying in 1523, so that he knew what he was writing about; 'there is nothing touching husbandry contained in this book but I have had experience thereof and proved the same.' In spite of the increase of grazing in his time he says the 'plough is the most necessarie instrument that an husbandman can occupy', and describes those used in various counties; in Kent, for instance, 'they have some go with wheeles as they do in many other places'; but the plough of his time is apparently the same as that of Walter of Henley, and altered little till the seventeenth century. The rudeness of it may be judged from the fact that in some places it only cost 10d. or 1s. though in other parts they were as much as 6s. or even 8s. He says[205] it was too costly for a farmer to buy all his implements, wherefore it is necessary for him to learn to make them, as he had done in the Middle Ages before the era of ready-made implements, when he always bought the materials and put them together at home. On the vexed question of whether to use horses or oxen for ploughing, he says it depends on the locality; for instance, oxen will plough in tough clay and upon hilly ground, whereas horses will stand still; but horses go faster than oxen on even ground and light ground, and are 'quicke for carriages, but they be far more costly to keep in winter.' According to him, oxen had no shoes as horses had.[206] Here is his description of a harrow: it is 'made of six final peeces of timber called harow bulles, made either of ashe or oke; they be two yardes long, and as much as the small of a man's leg; in every bulle are five sharpe peeces of iron called harow tyndes, set somewhat a slope forward.' This harrow, drawn by oxen, was good to break the big clods, and then the horse harrow came after to break the smaller clods. It differed slightly from the former, some having wooden tines. For weeding corn the chief instrument 'is a pair of tongs made of wood, and in dry weather ye must have a weeding hoke with a socket set upon a staffe a yard long.'[207] He recommends that grass be mown early, for the younger and greener the grass is the softer and sweeter it will be when it is hay, and the seeds will be in it instead of fallen out as when left late; advice which many slovenly farmers need to-day. He does not approve of the custom of reaping rye and wheat high up and mowing them after, but advises that they be cut clean; barley and oats, however, should be commonly mown. Both wheat and rye were to be sown at Michaelmas, and were cast upon the fallow and ploughed under, two London bushels of wheat and rye being the necessary amount of seed per acre. In spite of his praise of the plough he allows that the sheep 'is the most profitablest cattel that a man can have', and he gives a list of their diseases, among the things that rot them being a grass called sperewort, another called peny grass, while marshy ground, mildewed grass, and grass growing upon fallow and therefore full of weeds were all conducive to rot. The chief cause, however, is mildew, the sign of whose presence is the honeydew on the oak leaves. In buying cattle to feed the purchaser is to see that the hair stare not, and that the beast lacks no teeth, has a broad rib, a thick hide, and be loose skinned, for if it stick hard to his ribs he will not feed[208]; it should be handled to see if it be soft on the forecrop, behind the shoulder, on the hindermost rib upon the huck bone, and at the nache by the tail. Among other diseases of cattle he mentions the gout, 'commonly in the hinder feet'; but he never knew a man who could find a remedy. He was a great advocate of enclosures; for it was much better to have several closes and pastures to put his cattle in, which should be well quick-setted, ditched, and hedged, so as to divide those of different ages, as this was more profitable than to have his cattle go before the herdsman (in the common field). It will be seen from the above that Fitzherbert made no idle boast in saying he wrote of what he knew, and much of his advice is applicable to-day, though the time is past for the farmer's wife to 'wynowe all manner of cornes, to make malte, to shere corne, and in time of nede to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or dounge carte, dryve the plough, lode heye, corne, and such other'; though she may go or ride to the market 'to sel butter, cheese, milke, eggs, chekyns, hennes, and geese.'[209] It appears that the horses of England at this time had considerably deteriorated, for the statute 27 Hen. VIII, c. 6, mentions the great decay of the breed, the cause it is stated being that 'in most places of this Realme little horsis and naggis of small stature and valeu be suffered to depasture and also to covour marys and felys of very small stature'; therefore owners and farmers of deer parks shall keep in every such park two brood mares of 13 'hand fulles' (hands) at least. Another statute, 32 Hen. VIII, c. 13, strove to remedy this evil by enacting that no entire horse under 15 hands was to feed on any forest, chase, waste, or common land. This statute was a useful one, so also was 21 Hen. VIII, c. 8, which forbade for three years the killing of calves between January 1 and May 1, under a penalty of 6s. 8d., because so many had been killed by 'covetous persons' that the cattle of the country were dwindling in number. Others, however, were merely meddlesome, and directed against that unpopular man the dealer. For instance, owners refusing to sell cattle at assessed prices were to answer first in the Star Chamber (25 Hen. VIII, c. 1); and by 3 and 4 Edw. VI, c. 19, no cattle were to be bought but in open fair or market, and not to be resold then alive, though a man might buy cattle anywhere for his own use. No person, again, was to resell cattle within five weeks after he bought them (5 Edw. VI, c. 14); and a common drover had by the same Act to have a licence from three justices before he could buy and sell cattle. We may be sure that these laws were more honoured in the breach than in the observance, as they deserved to be. Hops were said to have been introduced from the Low Countries about the middle of Henry VIII's reign; but there can be no doubt that this is a mistake. It has been mentioned that they flourished in the gardens of Edward I, and a distinguished authority[210] says the hop may with probability be reckoned a native of Britain; but it was first used as a salad or vegetable for the table, the young sprouts having the flavour of asparagus and coming earlier. Hasted, the historian of Kent, states[211] that a petition was presented to Parliament against the hop plant in 1428 wherein it was called a 'wicked weed'. Harrison says, 'Hops in time past were plentiful in this land, afterwards their maintenance did cease, and now (cir. 1580) being revived where are anie better to be found?'[212] Even then growers had to face foreign competition, as the customs accounts prove that considerable quantities were imported into England. In 1482 a cwt. was sold for 8s. and 1 cwt. 21 lb. for 19s. 6d., an early example of that fluctuation in price which has long characterized them.[213] Their average price about this time seems to have been 14s. 1/2d. a cwt. During the Tudor period the number of day labourers increased, largely owing to the enclosures having deprived the small holder and commoner of their land and rights. But judging by the statutes those paid yearly and boarded in the farm house were still most numerous. In 1495 the hours of labourers were first regulated by law. The statute II Hen. VII, c. 22, says that 23 Hen. VI, c. 12,[214] was insufficiently observed; and besides increasing wages slightly set forth the following hours for work on the farm: the labourer was to be at his work from the middle of March to the middle of September before 5 a.m., and have half an hour for breakfast and an hour and a half for dinner and sleep, when sleep was allowed, that is from the middle of May to the middle of August; when sleep was not allowed, an hour for dinner and half an hour for his nonemete or lunch; and he was to work till between 7 and 8 p.m. During the rest of the year he was to work from daylight to dark. The attempt to regulate hours, which seem fair and reasonable, no doubt met with better success than that to regulate wages, for 6 Hen. VIII, c. 3 (1514), says the previous statutes had been very much disregarded, and sets down the rates once more:-- A bailiff's yearly wages, with diet, were to be not more than £1 6s. 8d., and 5s. for clothes. A chief hind, carter, or chief shepherd, with diet, not more than £1, and 5s. for clothes. A common servant or labourer, with diet, not more than 16s. 8d., and 4s. for clothes. A woman servant, with diet, not more than 10s., and 4s. for clothes. By the day, except in harvest, a common labourer from Easter to Michaelmas was to have 2d. with food and drink, 4d. without; and from Michaelmas to Easter 1-1/2d. with food and drink, and 3d. without. In harvest:-- A mower, with food, 4d. a day; without, 6d. A reaper, with food, 3d. a day; without, 5d. A carter, with food, 3d.; without, 5d. Other labourers, with food, 2-1/2d.; without, 4-1/2d. Women, with food, 2-1/2d.; without, 4-1/2d. FOOTNOTES: [205] _Booke of Husbandry_ (ed. 1568), fol. 5. The surveyor of Fitzherbert's day combined some of the duties of the modern bailiff and land agent: he bought and sold for his employer, valued his property, and supervised the rents. [206] _Booke of Husbandry_ (ed. 1568), fol. vi. [207] Ibid. fol. xv. [208] _Booke of Husbandry_ (ed. 1568), fol. xxix. [209] Fitzherbert adds pigs and all manner of cornes, so altogether the farmer's wife seems to have done as much as the farmer. [210] Sir Jas. E. Smith, _English Flora_, iv. 241. [211] _History of Kent_ (ed. 1778), i. 123. [212] _Description of Britain_ (Furnivall ed.), p. 325. [213] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, iii. 254. [214] See above. CHAPTER IX 1540-1600 PROGRESS AT LAST.--HOP-GROWING.--PROGRESS OF ENCLOSURE.--HARRISON'S 'DESCRIPTION' The period we have now reached was one of steady growth in the value of land and its products. In 1543 Henry VIII, who had given away or squandered, in addition to the great treasure left him by his thrifty father, all the wealth obtained from the dissolution of the monasteries, debased the coinage in order to get more money into his insatiable hands, and prices went up in consequence. But there were other causes: the influx of precious metals from newly discovered America into Europe had commenced to make itself felt, and the population of the country began to grow steadily. Also, it must not be forgotten that the seasons, which in the early part of the century had been normal, were for the next sixty years frequently rainy and bad. It is unnecessary to say that this must have largely helped to raise the price of corn. The average price of wheat from 1540-1583 was 13s. 10-1/2d. a quarter; from 1583-1702, 39s. 0-1/2d. Corn was still subject to extraordinary fluctuations: in 1557, Holinshed says before harvest wheat was 53s. 4d. a quarter, malt 44s. After harvest wheat was 5s., malt 6s. 8d., the former prices being due to a terrible drought in England. Oxen in the period 1583-1703 were worth 75s. instead of under £1 in the period 1400-1540. Wool was from 9d. to 1s. a lb. instead of about 3-1/2d., and all other farm products increased with these.[215] Hops were from 1540-1582 about 26s. 8d. a cwt., and from 1583-1700, 82s. 9-1/2d. In 1574 Reynold Scott published the first English treatise on hops,[216] in which he says, 'one man may well keep 2,000 hils, upon every hil well ordered you shall have 3 lb. of hoppes at the least, one hundred pounds of these hoppes are commonly worth 26s. 8d., one acre of ground and the third part of one man's labour with small cost beside, shall yield unto him that ordereth the same well, fortie marks yearly and that for ever,' an optimistic estimate that many growers to-day would like to see realized. 'In the preparation of a hop garden', says the same writer, 'if your ground be grasse, it should be first sowen with hempe or beanes which maketh the ground melowe, destroyeth weedes, and leaveth the same in good season for this purpose.[217] At the end of Marche, repayre to some good garden to compound with the owner for choice rootes, which in some places will cost 5d. an hundredth. And now you must choose the biggest rootes you can find, such as are three or four inches about, and let every root be nine or ten inches long, and contain three joints.' Holes were then to be dug at least 8 feet apart, one foot square, and one foot deep, and in each two or three roots planted and well hilled up. Tusser, however, recommended them much closer: 'Five foot from another each hillock should stand, As straight as a levelled line with the hand. Let every hillock be four foot wide. Three poles to a hillock, I pas not how long, Shall yield the more profit set deeplie and strong.' Three or four poles were to be set to each hill 15 or 16 feet long, unless the ground was very rich, the poles 9 or 10 inches in circumference at the butt, so as to last longer and stand the wind well. After they were put up, the ground round the poles was to be well rammed. Rushes or grass were used for tieing the hops. During the growth of the hops, not more than two or three bines were to be allowed to each pole; and after the first year the hills were to be gradually raised from the alleys between the rows until, according to the illustrations in Scott's book, they were 3 or 4 feet high, the 'greater you make your hylles the more hoppes you shall have upon your poals'. When the time for picking came, the bines when cut were carried to a 'floore prepared for the purpose', apparently of hardened earth, where they were stripped into baskets, and Scott thought that 'it is not hurtfull greatly though the smaller leaves be mingled with the hoppes'. In wet weather the hops were to be stripped in the house. The fire for drying hops was of wood, and some dried their hops in the sun, both processes to us appearing very risky; as the first would be too quick, and the latter next to impossible in September in England. They were sometimes packed in barrels, as Tusser tells us, 'Some close them up drie in a hogshead or vat, yet canvas or sontage (coarse cloth) is better than that.' By this time England had largely changed from a corn-growing to a stock-raising country; Harrison, writing in the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign, says, 'the soile of Britaine is more inclined to feeding and grazing than profitable for tillage and bearing of corne ... and such store is there of cattle in everie place that the fourth part of the land is scarcely manured for the provision of graine.' But this statement seems exaggerated. We know that by Harrison's time enclosures had affected but a small area, and the greater part of the cultivated land was in open arable fields. The yield of corn was now much greater than in the Middle Ages; rye or wheat well tilled and dressed now produced 15 to 20 bushels to the acre instead of 6 or 8, barley 36 bushels, oats 4 or 5 quarters[218], though in the north, which was still greatly behind the rest of England, crops were smaller. No doubt this was partly due to the much-abused enclosures: the industrious farmer could now do what he liked with his own, without hindrance from his lazy or unskilful neighbour. Tusser's preference for the 'several' field is very decided; comparing it with the 'champion' or common field he says:-- The countrie inclosed I praise the tother delighteth me not, There swineherd that keepeth the hog there neetherd with cur and his horne, There shepherd with whistle and dog be fence to the medowe and corne, There horse being tide on a balke is readie with theefe for to walke, Where all things in common doth reste corne field with the pasture and meade, Tho' common ye do for the best yet what doth it stand ye in steade? More plentie of mutton and beefe corne butter and cheese of the best More wealth any where (to be briefe) more people, more handsome and prest (neat.) Where find ye? (go search any coaste) than there where enclosure is most. More work for the labouring man as well in the towne as the fielde. For commons these commoners crie inclosing they may not abide, Yet some be not able to bie a cow with her calf by her side. Nor laie (intend) not to live by their wurke, But thievishly loiter and lurke. What footpaths are made and how brode Annoiance too much to be borne, With horse and with cattle what rode is made thorowe erie man's come. But the rich graziers boasted that they did not grow corn because they could buy it cheaper in the market; and they are said to have traded on the necessity of the poor farmer to sell at Michaelmas in order to pay his rent, and when they had got the corn into their hands they raised the price. The corn-dealers of the time were looked upon with dislike by every one; many of the dearths then so frequent, and nearly always caused by bad seasons, were ascribed to 'engrossers buying of corn and witholding it for sale'. By a statute of 1552 the freedom of internal corn trade was entirely suppressed, and no one could carry corn from one part of England to another without a licence, and any one who bought corn to sell it again was liable to two months' imprisonment and forfeited his corn. Although we shall see that this policy was reversed in the next century, the feeling against corn-dealers survived for many years and was loudly expressed during the Napoleonic war; indeed, we may doubt if it is extinct to-day. Many of the fruits and garden produce, which had been neglected since the first Edward, had by now come into use again, 'not onlie among the poor commons, I meane of melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers, radishes, skirets (probably a sort of carrot), parsneps, carrots, cabbages, navewes (turnip radishes (?)), turnips,[219] and all kinds of salad herbes, but also at the tables of delicate merchants, gentlemen, and the nobilitie.'[220] 'Also we have most delicate apples, plummes, pears, walnuts, filberts, &c., and those of sundrie sorts, planted within fortie years past, in comparison of which most of the old trees are nothing worth: so have we no less store of strange fruite, as abricotes, almonds, peaches, figges, cornetrees (probably cornels) in noblemen's orchards. I have seen capers, orenges, and lemmons, and heard of wild olives growing here, besides other strange trees.'[221] As a proof of the growth of grass in proportion to tillage between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, Eden gives several examples,[222] of which the following are significant:-- Arable. Grass. acres. acres. 1339. 18 messuages in Norfolk had 160 60 1354. a Norfolk manor 300 59 1395. 2 messuages in Warwickshire 400 60 1560. 2 messuages in Warwickshire 600 660 1567. a Norfolk estate 200 400 1569. " manor 60 60 'Our sheepe are very excellent for sweetness of flesh, and our woolles are preferred before those of Milesia and other places.'[223] So thought Harrison and many English landowners and farmers too, so that legislation was powerless to stop the spread of sheep farming. In 1517 a commission of inquiry instigated by Wolsey held inquisition on enclosures and the decay of tillage, and it seems to have been the only honest effort to stop the evil. It was to inquire what decays, conversions, and park enclosures had been made since 1489, but the result even of this attempt was small. In 1535 a fresh statute, 27 Hen. VIII, c. 22, stated that the Act limiting the number of sheep to be kept had only been observed on lands held of the king, whereon many houses had been rebuilt and much pasture reconverted to tillage; but on lands holden of other lords this was not the case, therefore the king was to have the moiety of the profits of such lands as had been converted from tillage to pasture since 4 Hen. VII until a proper house was built and the land returned to tillage; but the Act only applied to fourteen counties therein enumerated. The enclosing for sheep-runs still went on, however, often with ruthless selfishness; houses and townships were levelled, says Sir Thomas More, and nothing left standing except the church, which was turned into a sheep-house: 'The towns go down, the land decays, Of corn-fields plain lays, Great men maketh nowadays A sheepcot of the church', said a contemporary ballad. Latimer wrote, 'where there were a great many householders and inhabitants there is now but a shepherd and his dog.' 'I am sorie to report it,' says Harrison,[224] 'but most sorrowful of all to understand that men of great port and countenance are so far from suffering their farmers to have anie gaine at all that they themselves become graziers, butchers, tanners, sheepmasters, and woodmen, thereby to enrich themselves.' The Act against pulling down farmhouses was evaded by repairing one room for the use of a shepherd; a single furrow was driven across a field to prove it was still under the plough; to avoid holding illegal numbers of sheep flocks were held in the names of sons and servants.[225] The country swarmed with heaps of miserable paupers, 'sturdy and valiant' beggars, and thieves who, though hanged twenty at a time on a single gallows, still infested all the countryside, their numbers being swollen by the dissolution of the monasteries and the breaking up of the bands of retainers kept by the great nobles. Rents also were rising rapidly. Latimer's account of his father's farm is too well known to be again quoted; his opinions were shared by all the writers of the day. Sir William Forrest, about 1540, says that landlords now demand fourfold rents, so that the farmer has to raise his prices in proportion, and beef and mutton were so dear that a poor man could not 'bye a morsell'. 'Howe joyne they lordshyp to lordshyppe, manner to manner, ferme to ferme. How do the rych men, and especially such as be shepemongers, oppresse the king's people by devourynge their common pastures with the shepe so that the poore are not able to keepe a cowe, but are like to starve. And yet when was beef ever so dere or mutton, wool now 8s. a stone. 'Now', says another, later in the century, 'I can never get a horse shoed under 10d. or 12d., when I have also seen the common pryce was 6d. And cannot your neighbour remember that within these thirty years I could bye the best pigge or goose that I could lay my hand on for four pence which now costeth 12d., a good capon for 3d. or 4d., a hen for 2d., which now costeth me double and triple.'[226] Parliament, of course, tried to regulate the price of food; an Act of 1532, 24 Hen. VIII, c. 3, ordained that beef and pork should be 1/2d. a lb. and mutton and veal 5/8d. a lb. The decrease in the number of cows also received its attention; 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 3, states that forasmuch of late years a great number of persons have fed in their pastures sheep and cattle with no regard to breeding, so that there was great scarcity of stock, therefore for every 60 sheep kept one milk cow shall be kept, and for every 120 sheep one calf shall be bred, and for every 10 head of horned cattle shall be kept one milk cow, and for every two cows so kept one calf shall be bred. The Act was to last seven years, but 13 Eliz. c. 25 made it perpetual. In 1549 came the rising of Robert Kett in Norfolk, the last attempt of the English labourer to obtain redress of his wrongs by force of arms, though Kett himself belonged to the landlord class and took the side of the people probably by accident. The petition of grievances drawn up by his followers aimed at diminishing the power of lords of manors as regards enclosures, the keeping of dove-cots, and other feudal wrongs. 'We pray', said the insurgents, 'that all bondmen may be made free, for God made all free with His precious blood-shedding.' The rebellion came to nothing, and some of the abuses at which it was aimed were dying a natural death, though enclosure often acted hardly on the poor man. The manorial system went on steadily decaying, and by this time the demesne lands had much diminished in area on most manors. Many parcels had been sold to the new landlord class, who had made their fortunes in the towns and, like most Englishmen, desired to become country gentlemen. Much of the demesne had been sold in small lots to well-off tradesmen, and as the villeins had become copyholders a large part of the land was owned or occupied by yeomen or tenant farmers, who cultivated from 20 to 150 acres. Many of the labourers also owned or rented cottages with 4 or 5 acres attached to them. Such was the rural society at the end of the Tudor period. The progress of enclosures helped to destroy this, for the labourers gradually ceased to own or occupy land, farms increased in size, the ownership of land came to be more and more the privilege of the rich, and people flocked in increasing numbers to the towns.[227a] In five Norfolk manors in Elizabeth's time only from one-seventh to one-tenth was in demesne, and little of what was left was farmed by the lord, but let to farmers on leases.[227b] On some manors the demesne land lay in compact blocks near the manor house; on others it was in scattered strips of various size; in others it lay in blocks and strips. The following particulars of a manor in Norfolk give a good picture of an estate in 1586-8, the tenants on it, their rank, and the size of their holdings:-- Horstead with Staninghall, 2,746 acres. The tenants with messuages in the village were:-- Acres. 1. J. Topliffe, gentleman 280 2. F. Woodhouse, Esquire 270 3. R. Ward, gentleman 265 4. H. Shreve 180 5. A. Pightling, widow 120 6. W. Rose's heirs 110 7. G. Berde 60 8. A. Thetford, gentleman 60 9. T. Pightling 60 10. R. Pightling 60 11. J. Rose 40 12. R. Lincoln 40 13. W. Jeckell 20 14. W. Bulwer 20 15. E. Newerby, gentleman 15 16. T. Barnard 12 17. E. Sparke 10 There were also 12 tenants without houses, holding from 1 to 20 acres; the demesne was 230 acres; there were two glebes containing 84 acres, and town lands of 7 acres. The waste amounted to 350 acres, which by 1599 had all disappeared. On this manor the houses were not collected together in a village as usual in most parts of England, but scattered about the estate. In two other manors the amount of waste remaining at this period was very small, but in three others little had been 'approved' and much consequently remained; most of the 'approvements', where made, seem to have been of long standing, and all the enclosures made were for tillage, not for grass as we should expect. The 350 acres of waste that remained at Horstead in 1586-8 was enclosed in 1599 by agreement between the lords of the manor and the tenants on the following terms:-- 1. Lords to take 80 acres in severalty. 2. Lords to reserve all rights to treasure trove, minerals, waifs, &c., with right of entry to take the same. 3. All rights of pasture, shack, and foldage were to be extinguished on all lands in the village. 4. The tenants were to pay an annual quit rent of £7 14s. 5d. for their shares of the common. Before a man enclosed he consolidated his holding by exchange, so as to bring it into a compact parcel instead of scattered strips, a very lengthy process; then he ploughed up the bounds between the strips; after which he changed the direction of the ploughing, ploughing the land crossways, a very necessary change, as it had all been ploughed lengthways for centuries; and lastly he erected his fences: the bounds of the strips, however, were sometimes left to show which were freehold and which copyhold. On the other hand, there were exceptions to the curtailment of the demesne: on an Oxfordshire manor of the sixteenth century the greater part of the 64 yard-lands of which it consisted had by then passed from the possession of the peasants to the private use of the lord of the manor.[228] To each yard-land belonged a house and farmyard, 24 to 28-3/4 acres of arable land, a share in the commonable meadows which for each occupier came to some 8 acres, also the right to turn out 8 oxen or cows, or 6 horses and 40 sheep on to the common pasture. Probably, as in other manors in ancient times, each occupier had a right to as much firewood as was necessary, and timber for building purposes and fences. The arable land lay in numerous small plots of half an acre each and less, mingled together in a state of great confusion, and was farmed on the four-field system--wheat, beans, oats, fallow--though 200 years before the three-field system had been most common in the district. Many of the common arable fields evidently often contained, in those days of poor cultivation and inefficient drainage, patches of boggy and poor land which were left uncultivated.[229] In the rolls of the Manor of Scotter in Lincolnshire, in the early part of the sixteenth century, no one was to allow his horses to depasture in the arable fields unless they were tethered on these bad spots to prevent them wandering into the growing corn.[230] Many of the other regulations of this manor throw a flood of light on the farming of the day. In 1557 it was ordered that no man should drive his cattle unyoked through the corn-field under a penalty of 3s. 4d. Every man shall keep a sufficient fence against his neighbour under the same penalty. No man shall make a footpath over the corn-field, the penalty for so doing being 4d. Every one shall both ring and yoke their swine before S. Ellen's Day (probably May 3), under a penalty of 6s. 8d., the custom of yoking swine to prevent them breaking fences being common until recent times. It was the custom in some manors to sow peas in a plot especially set apart for the poor. Another rule was that no one should bake or brew by night for fear of burning down the flimsy houses and buildings. The penalty for ploughing up the balks which divided the strips, or meere (marc) furrows as they were called in Lincolnshire, was 2d., a very light one for so serious an offence. In 1565 a penalty of 10s. was imposed on Thomas Dawson for breaking his hemp, i.e. separating the fibre from the bark in his large open chimney on winter nights, a habit which the manor courts severely punished owing to the risk of fire, for hemp refuse is very inflammable. It 1578 it was laid down that every one was to sow the outside portion of their arable lands, and not leave it waste for weeds to the damage of his neighbours; and that those who were too poor to keep sheep should not gather wool before 8 o'clock in the morning, in reference to the custom of allowing the poor to pick refuse wool found on bushes and thorns, and this rule was to prevent them tearing wool from the sheep at night under that pretext. No man was to keep any beasts apart from the herdsman, for if the herdsman did not know the animals he could not tell them from strays. Every one was to sweep their chimney four times a year, for fear of sparks falling on the thatch. No man was to suffer the nests of crows or magpies in his ground, but pull them down before May Day. In the meadows, before each man began to mow his grass he was to mark the exact limits of his own land with 'wadsticks' or tall rods, so that there could be no mistake as to boundaries. The health of the community and of the live stock also received attention: in 1583 one Pattynson was fined 1s. for allowing a 'scabbed' horse to go on the common; dead cattle were to be buried the day after death, and all unwholesome meat was to be buried. Harrison praises the farmer of his day highly: 'the soyle is even now in these oure dayes growne to be much more fruitfulle; the cause is that our country men are grown more skilful and careful throwe recompense of gayne.' He was also doing well by means of his skill and care; and in spite of the raising of rents by the much-abused landlords; for in former times 'for all their frugality they were scarcely able to live and pay their rents on rent day without selling a cow or a horse'. Such also used to be their poverty, that if a farmer went to the alehouse, 'a thing greatly used in those days,' and there, 'in a braverie to show what store he had, did caste downe his purse and therein a noble or 6 shillings in silver unto them, it was very likely that all the rest could not lay downe so much against it.' And In Henry's time, though rents of £4 had increased to £40, £50, or £100, yet the farmer generally had at the end of his term saved six or seven years' rent, besides a 'fair garnish of pewter on his cupboard', and odd vessels, also 'three or four feather beds, so manie coverlids and carpets of tapestry, a silver salt, a bowle for wine, and a dozzen of spoones to furnish up the sute'. His food consisted principally of beef, and 'such food as the butcher selleth', mutton, veal, lamb, pork, besides souse, brawn, bacon, fruit, fruit pies, cheese, butter, and eggs.[231] In feasting, the husbandman or farmer exceeded, especially at bridals, purifications of women, and such other meetings, where 'it is incredible to tell what meat is consumed and spent'. But, besides these, there were many poorer farmers who lived at home 'with hard and pinching diet'. Wheaten bread was at this time a luxury confined to the gentility, the farmer's loaf, according to Tusser, was sometimes wheat, sometimes rye, sometimes mastlin, a mixture of wheat and rye, though the poorer farmer on uninclosed land ate bread made of beans. The poor ate bread of rye or barley, and in time of dearth of beans, peas, and oats, and sometimes acorns.[232] According to Tusser, the labourer was allowed roast meat twice a week, 'Good plowmen looke weekly of custom and right, For roast meate on Sundaies, and Thursdaies at night'; and Latimer calls bacon 'the necessary meate' of the labourer, and it seems to have been his great stand-by then as now. The bread and bacon were supplemented largely by milk and porridge.[233] The statute, 24 Hen. VIII, c. 3, says that all food, and especially beef, mutton, pork, and veal, 'which is the common feeding of mean and poor persons.' was too dear for them to buy, and fixed the price of beef and pork at 1/2d. a lb. and of mutton and veal at 5/8d. a lb.; but the statute, like others of the kind, was of little avail, and the price of beef was in the middle of the sixteenth century about 1d. a lb. or 8d. in our money. As the average price of wheat at the same date was 14s. a quarter, or about 112s. in our money, fresh meat was comparatively much cheaper, and it is no wonder that even the farmer could not afford wheaten bread regularly. Moryson, writing in Elizabeth's reign, says 'Englishmen eate barley and rye brown bread, and prefer it to white as abiding longer in the stomeck and not so soon digested'.[234] A tithe dispute at North Luffenham in Rutlandshire throws considerable light on the financial position of the various classes interested in the land about 1576. At the trial several witnesses were examined, who all made statements as to the amount of their worldly wealth, and it is a noteworthy fact that even the humblest had saved something; perhaps because there was no poor law or State pension fund to discourage thrift.[235] Thomas Blackburne, a husbandman, who had served his master as 'chief baylie of his husbandrie', had at the end of a long life saved £40. Another, William Walker, eighty years of age, during forty years of service to Mr. John Wymarke had put by £10. Robert Sculthorp, who had at one time been a farmer, was worth £26 6s. 8d., but the size of his farm is unfortunately not told us. Roland Wymarke, a gentleman farmer, who had farmed for forty years at North Luffenham, was little better off than Thomas Blackburne, the baylie, for he estimated his capital at £50. £50, however, must not be taken as representing the average wealth of a 'gentleman', though a few hundred pounds was then considered a considerable fortune. In 1577 Thomas Corny, a prosperous landlord at Bassingthorpe, Lincolnshire, had a house with a hall, three parlours, seven chambers, a high garret, maid's garret, five chambers for yeomen hinds, shepherd, &c., two kitchens, two larders, milk-house, brew-house, buttery, and cellar; and it was furnished with tables, carpets, cushions, pictures, beds, curtains, chairs, chests, and numerous kitchen and other utensils, besides a quantity of plate, which was then looked upon not only as a useful luxury but as a safe form of investment. The small squire was not nearly so well off as this. In 1527 the house of John Asfordby, who was of that degree, contained a hall, parlour, small parlour, low parlour, a chamber over the parlour, gallery chamber, buttery, and kitchen, and furniture was scanty, but the plate cupboard was well filled.[236] A prosperous yeoman was often comparatively better off than the small squire. Richard Cust, of Pinchbeck in the same county, though his house was small, consisting only of a hall, parlour with chamber over, kitchen with chamber over, brew-house, milne-house (mill-house), and milk-house, was richer in furniture, possessing a folding-table, 4 chairs, 6 cushions, 27 pieces of pewter, 10 candlesticks, 4 basins, 1 laver, 6 beds, and other articles.[237] FOOTNOTES: [215] See table at end, and Thorold Rogers's prices in Vol. V. of his great work. [216] 'A perfite platforme of a Hoppegarden', in _Arte of Gardening_, by R. Scott, 1574. [217] Tusser recommends that the hopyard be dug. Thomas Tusser was born in Essex, about 1525, and died in 1580. He led a roving life, which included a good deal of farming; but the statement that he died poor appears to be inaccurate. Much of his advice is not very valuable. [218] Harrison, _Description of Britain_, p. 110. [219] Usually grown in gardens, until the middle of the seventeenth century. Tusser also mentions them. [220] _Description of Britain_, ii. 324 (Furnivall ed.). [221] Harrison, _Description of Britain_, ii. 329. [222] _State of the Poor_, i. 48-9. Blomefield's _Norfolk_, iv. 569, i. 51, i. 649. Dugdale, _Warwickshire_, p. 557. [223] _Description of Britain_, iii. 5. [224] _Description of Britain_ (ed. Furnivall), ii. 243. [225] Froude, _History of England_, v. III. [226] 'A compendious or brief examination of certain ordinary complaints', quoted by Eden, _State of the Poor_, 1. 119. [227a] _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix. 103. [227b] Ibid. xi. 74 sq. [228] Nasse, _Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages_, p. 9. _Archaeologia_, xxxiii. 270. [229] In the still surviving open fields at Laxton, mentioned above, there are certain unploughed portions called 'sicks', or grassy patches, never cultivated.--Slater, _op. cit._ p. 9. [230] _Archaeologia_, xlvi. 374. [231] _Description of Britain_, ii. 150. [232] In the reign of Mary, 'the plain poor people did make very much of acorns.' Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 181. [233] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 116. [234] _Itinerary_, iii. 140. [235] _Rutland Magazine_, i. 64. [236] _Victoria County History: Lincolnshire_, ii. 331. [237] See _Records of Cust Family_, i. 56. CHAPTER X 1540-1600 LIVE STOCK.--FLAX.--SAFFRON.--THE POTATO. THE ASSESSMENT OF WAGES The cattle and sheep of this period have generally been described as poor animals, and no doubt they would seem small to us. To Jacob Rathgib, a traveller, writing in 1592, they seemed worthy of praise: 'England has beautiful oxen and cows, with very large horns, low and heavy and for the most part black; there is abundance of sheep and wethers, which graze by themselves winter and summer without shepherds.' The heaviest wethers, according to him, weighed 60 lb. and had at the most 6 lb. of wool, a much heavier fleece than is generally ascribed to them; others had 4 or 5 lb. Horses were abundant, and, though low and small, were very fleet; the riding horses being geldings and generally excellent. Immense numbers of swine were in the country, 'larger than in any other.' Six years later another traveller, Hentzner, noticed that the soil abounded with cattle, and the inhabitants were more inclined to feeding than ploughing. He saw, too, a Berkshire harvest-home: 'As we were returning to our inn (at Windsor) we happened to meet some country people celebrating their harvest-home, their last load of corn they crown with flowers, having besides an image richly dressed by which perhaps they would signify Ceres; this they keep moving about, while men and women, men and maid-servants, riding through the streets in the cart, shout as loud as they can till they arrive at the barn.' Harrison[238] tells us, no doubt with patriotic bias, that 'our oxen are such as the like are not to be found in any country of Europe both for greatness of body and sweetness of flesh, their horns a yard between the tips.' Cows had doubled in price in his time, from 26s. 8d. to 53s. 4d. 'Our horses are high, but not of such huge greatness as in other places,' yet remarkable for the easiness of their pace; and 5 or 6 cart-horses will draw 30 cwt. a long journey, and a pack-horse will carry 4 cwt. without any hurt,--a statement which is one more proof of the poorness of the roads. The chief horse fairs were at 'Ripon, Newportpond, Wolfpit, and Harborow,' where horse dealers were as great rogues as ever. Pigeons were still the curse of the farmer, and their cotes were called dens of thieves. By the end of the sixteenth century, certainly by the first quarter of the seventeenth, the villein, who in the Middle Ages had formed the bulk of the population, had disappeared.[239] It is probable that even at the beginning of the Tudor period the great majority of the bondmen had become free, and that the serf then only formed one per cent. of the population, and many of those had left the country and become artizans in the towns, for personal serfdom had outlasted demesne farming; though even there the heavy hand of the lord was upon them and enforced the ancient customs. In the sixteenth century flax was apparently grown upon most farms, the statutes 34 Hen. VIII, c. 4, and 5 Eliz., c. 5, obliging every person occupying 60 acres of tillage to have a quarter of an acre in flax or hemp, and Moryson says the husbandmen wore garments of coarse cloth made at home, so did their wives, and 'in generall' their linen was coarse and made at home.[240] 'Good flax and good hemp to have of her own In Maie a good housewife will see it be sowne', sings Tusser. The statute of Henry VIII enjoined the sowing of flax and hemp because of the great increase of idle people in the realm, to which the numerous imports, especially linen cloth, contributed. Saffron also was much grown, that at Saffron Walden in Essex was said to be the best in the world, the profit from it being reckoned at £13 an acre. Its virtues were innumerable, if we may believe the contemporary writers; it flavoured dishes, helped digestion, was good for short wind, killed moths, helped deafness, dissolved gravel, and, lastly, 'drunk in wine doth haste on drunkenesse.' The most important novelty of this century was the potato, which the colonists, sent out in 1586 by Sir Walter Raleigh, brought from Virginia to Ireland, though it had been introduced into Europe by the Spaniards before this. According to Gerard, the old English botanist, it was, on its first introduction from America, only cultivated in the gardens of the nobility and gentry as a curious exotic; and in 1606 it occurs among the vegetables considered necessary for a nobleman's household.[241] It is curious to find Gerard comparing it to what he calls the 'common potato', in reality the sweet potato brought to England by Drake and Hawkins earlier in the century. In James I's reign the root was considered a great delicacy, and was sold to the queen's household at 2s. a lb., an enormous price. Like most agricultural novelties it spread very slowly, but about the middle of the seventeenth century began to be planted out in the fields in small patches in Lancashire, whence it spread all over the kingdom and to France.[242] At this date it was looked upon as a very second-rate article of food, if we may judge by the _Spectator_ (No. 232), which alludes to it as the diet of beggars. About 1690, Houghton says, 'now they begin to spread all the kingdom over,' and recommends them boiled or roasted and eaten with butter and sugar.[243] Eden notes its increasing popularity during the eighteenth century, and by his time (the end of that century) in many parts it was the staple article of food for the poor; in Somerset the children mainly subsisted on it, and in Devon it was made into bread. Its cultivation on a large scale in the field did not, however, spread all over England till the Napoleonic war, and the ignorance and prejudice against it lasted for long; even Cobbett called it 'the lazy root,' and whole potatoes were used for seed regardless of the number of eyes. In 1563 was passed the famous Act, 5 Eliz., c. 4, which Thorold Rogers has asserted to be the commencement of a conspiracy for cheating the English workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty.[244] The violence of this language is a prima facie reason for doubting the correctness of his assertion, which on examination is found to be grossly exaggerated. Under Richard II the justices were authorized to fix the rate of wages, provided they did not exceed the maximum fixed by Parliament. The Elizabethan statute abolished the maximum and left the justices to fix reasonable rates. So far from being an attempt to keep wages down it seems to have been an honest effort to regulate them according to prices,[245] whereas most previous statutes had merely reduced wages. The preamble of the Act states this clearly enough, saying that the existing laws with regard to the hiring and wages of servants were insufficient; chiefly because the wages 'are in dyvers places to small and not answerable to this time respecting the advancement of prices in all things that belong to the said servants and labourers, the said lawes cannot conveniently without the great greefe and burden of the poore labourer and hired man be put in due execution.' But as several of these Acts were still beneficial it was proposed to consolidate them into one statute in order to banish idleness, advance husbandry, and give the labourer decent wages. It was enacted therefore that all persons between the ages of twelve years and sixty, not being otherwise occupied, 'nor being a gentleman born, nor having lands of the yearly value of 40s., nor goods to the value of £10,' should be compellable to serve in husbandry with 'any person that keepeth husbandry' by the year, and the hours of work were re-enacted. The rates of wages of artificers, husbandmen, &c., were to be ascertained yearly by the justices and the sheriff, 'if he conveniently may,' at quarter sessions, 'calling unto them such discrete and grave persons as they shall thinck meete and conferring together respecting the plentie or scarcitie of the tyme and other circumstances necessary to be considered,' and the wages fixed were to be certified into Chancery. Then proclamations of the wages thus determined were to be made in the cities and market towns. Every person who gave higher wages than those established by the proclamation was to be imprisoned for ten days and fined £5, every receiver to be imprisoned twenty-one days. The importance still attached to the harvest season is shown by the section that all artificers and others were compellable to work in harvest or be put in the stocks two days and a night. For the better advancement of husbandry and tillage every householder farming 60 acres of tillage or more might receive an apprentice in husbandry, but no tradesman or merchant might take an apprentice save his own son, unless his parents had freehold of the annual value of 40s.; and no person was to use 'any art mistery or manual occupation now in use' unless he had served seven years' apprenticeship to it. There can be no doubt that the clauses last quoted confined a large portion of the population to agricultural work, but as we know that the people were deserting the country and flocking to the towns, this must have seemed to the framers of the law very desirable. This method of fixing wages was in force until 1814, and its repeal then was entirely contrary to the opinion of the artizan class; but it may be doubted if the magistrates extensively used the powers given them by the Act, and wages seem to have been settled generally by competition. Several instances remain, however, of wages drawn up under this Act. Almost immediately after it was passed, in June 1564, the Rutland magistrates met under the Act, and stated that the prices of linen, woollen, leather, corn, and other victuals were great, so they drew up the following list of wages[246]:-- A bailiff in husbandry, having charge of two plough lands, at least should have by the year 40s., and 8s. for his livery. A chief servant in husbandry, which can eire (plough), sow, mow, thresh, make a rick, thatch and hedge, and can kill and dress a hog, sheep, and calf, by the year 40s., and 6s. for his livery. A common servant in husbandry, which can mow, sow, thresh, and load a cart, and cannot expertly make a rick, hedge, and thatch, and cannot kill and dress a hog, sheep, or calf, by the year 33s. 4d., and 5s. for his livery. A mean servant in husbandry, which can drive the plough, pitch The cart, and thresh, and cannot expertly sow, mow, thresh, and load a cart, nor make a rick, nor thatch, by the year 24s., and 5s. for his livery. The chief shepherd is only to receive 20s. and 5s. for his livery; but this must be an error, as in the statutes 6 Hen. VIII, c. 3, and 23 Hen. VI, c. 12, he was placed next the bailiff as we should expect. These wages were evidently 'with diet', and show a considerable advance on those fixed by 6 Hen. VIII, c. 3.[247] By the day the ordinary labourer was to have 6d. in winter, 7d. in summer, and 8d. to 10d. in harvest time, 'finding himself.' A mower with meat earned 5d., without meat 10d. a day; a man reaper with meat 4d., without 8d.; a woman reaper 3d., and 6d. As the price of corn and meat was three times what it had been in the fifteenth century, and the labourers' wages, taking into consideration his harvest pay, not quite double, the Rutland magistrates hardly observed the spirit of the Act. Rutland, moreover, judging by the assessments of the time, was a county where agriculture was very flourishing; and thirty years after we find in Yorkshire that the winter wages of the labourer were 4d. and the summer 5d. a day: that is, he had little more wages than in the fifteenth century, with provisions risen threefold. At Chester at the same date his day's wages were to be 4d. all the year round.[248] In 1610 the Rutland magistrates at Oakham[249] decreed that an ordinary labourer was to have 6d. a day in winter and 7d. in summer, the same wages as in 1564, yet wheat in that year averaged 32s. 7d. a quarter. A bailiff by the year was now advanced to 52s., a manservant of the best sort, equal no doubt to the chief servant in husbandry, to 50s., a 'common servant' to 40s., and a 'mean servant' to 29s., but all without livery. At Chelmsford, in 1651, there was a very different rate fixed, the ordinary labourer getting from 1s. to 1s. 2d. a day; but this seems to have been exceptional, as at Warwick in 1684 he was only to have 8d., and as late as 1725 in Lancashire 9d. to 10d. a day.[250] In 1682, by the Bury St. Edmunds assessment, a common labourer got 10d. a day in winter and 1s. in summer, and a reaper in harvest 1s. 8d. By the year a bailiff was paid £6, a carter £5, and a common servant £3 10s., of course with food.[251] These figures clearly prove that the wages fixed by the magistrates were often terribly inadequate, though it must be said in their defence that the great rise in prices probably struck them as abnormal and not likely to last. It should be remembered, too, that besides his wages the labourer and his family had often bye industries such as weaving to fall back upon, and in most parts of England still a piece of common land to help him. FOOTNOTES: [238] _Description of Britain_, iii. 2. [239] _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xvii. 235. [240] Moryson, _Itinerary_ (ed. 1617), iii. 179. [241] _Archaeologia_ xiii. 371. [242] In 1650 it was much cultivated about London. [243] _Collections on Husbandry and Trade_, ii. 468. [244] _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 398. [245] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, ii. 38. The Statute of Labourers of 1351 made the same effort, see p. 43. [246] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, iv. 120; and _Work and Wages_, p. 389. [247] See above. [248] Thorold Rogers, _Work and Wages_, pp. 390-1. [249] _Archaeologia_, xi. 200. [250] Thorold Rogers, _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 396. [251] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 215. It is strange to find food reckoned so highly; if the common labourer at Hawsted received his food, he was only paid 5d. a day in winter, and 6d. in summer; if one man's food was reckoned at half his wages, how far did the other half go in feeding and clothing his family? CHAPTER XI 1600-1700 CLOVER AND TURNIPS.--GREAT RISE IN PRICES. MORE ENCLOSURE.--A FARMING CALENDAR The seventeenth century was one of considerable progress in English agriculture. The decay of common-field farming was enabling individual enterprise to have its way. The population was rapidly growing; by 1688 the returns of the hearth tax prove that the northern counties were nearly as thickly populated as the southern, and prices during the first half were continually rising, though after that they remained almost stationary, since the effect of the influx of precious metals from the New World was exhausted. In the first half of the century John Smyth ascribes the advance of rents to the Castilian voyages opening the New World, whereby such floods of treasure have flowed into Europe that the rates of Christendom are raised near twentyfold'. But the greatest agricultural event of the century was the introduction of clover and the encouragement of turnips as grown in Holland, by Sir Richard Weston, about 1645. No doubt the turnip was already well known in England. Tusser and Fitzherbert both mention it, apparently as a garden root only; but Gerard in his _Herbal_, 1597, says it grew in fields 'and divers vineyards or hoppe gardens in most places of England', which certainly points to an effort having been made generally to use it as a field crop whenever an enclosed space gave it some protection from the depredations of the common herds. However, its cultivation must have declined, as long after this it was regarded as a novelty as a field crop in most parts of England.[252] In Holland it had been used in the field universally, and this use with that of 'great', as it was called, or broad clover, Weston pressed on the English farmer. But their progress was wofully slow. At Hawsted in Suffolk clover and turnips were first sown about 1700, and the eastern portion of England was far ahead of the north and west; as late as 1772 Arthur Young wrote that 'sainfoin, cabbages, potatoes, and carrots are not common crops in England; I do not imagine above half or at most two-thirds of the nation cultivate clover.'[253] Yet their introduction must have been of the greatest benefit to the farmer and the public; his stock of hay was increased, he could utilize his fallows, and keep a much larger head of stock through the winter, who would give him a greater quantity of manure. Every one where turnips were grown could now have fresh meat during the winter. The slow progress of these great blessings is perhaps the strongest testimony in our history of the innate conservatism of the farmer. The green crop was for long considered to be suited only to the garden, and as our forefathers were prejudiced against the spade it was difficult to get such crops cultivated even there; but it should also be remembered that no crop was possible in the common fields which did not come to maturity before Lammas, unless some special agreement was made as to it.[254] Clover, Sir Richard Weston said, thrives best when sown on the worst and barrenest ground, which was to be pared and burnt, and unslaked lime added to the ashes. Then it was to be well ploughed and harrowed, and about 10 lb. of seed sown per acre in the end of March or in April. 'It will stand five years, and then when ploughed up will yield three or four years running rich crops of wheat, and then a crop of oats, after which you may sow clover again.' In the seventeenth century the practice of liming and marling, which had been largely discontinued since the fourteenth century, was revived (Westcote, in his _View of Devon_ in 1630, calls liming, &c., a new invention), and there was also a great improvement in implements. Patents were taken out for draining machines in 1628, for new manures in 1633-6, ploughs 1623-7 and 1634, mechanical sowing 1634-9. Only six were taken out, however, between 1640 and 1760 that concerned agriculture.[255] The Civil War checked the improvement, for though the great mass of the people had nothing to do with either party, the country was of necessity in a very unsettled state, and both sides plundered indiscriminately. Yet in some parts, as in Devonshire, so many of the able men served in the two armies, that few but old men, women, and children were left to manage the farms, and even they were afraid to grow more than enough to supply themselves since both armies seized the crops.[256] These bad effects lasted for some time afterwards; Chapple, a Devonshire land agent of the eighteenth century, says he had talked with people who remembered the state of husbandry in the last ten or twelve years of the reign of Charles II, when in many parts of Devonshire an acre or two of wheat was esteemed a rarity. That the rate of progress in the century was not more rapid is attributed by Blyth to several causes[257]:-- 1. Want of leases, by which tenants were deprived of security. 2. Discouragement to flood (irrigate) land, from the risk of law suits with neighbours. 3. Intermixture of different properties in common fields. 4. Unlimited pasturage on commons, by which they were overstocked. 5. The want of a law compelling all men to kill moles. 6. The excessive number of water-mills, to the great destruction of much gallant land. The average price of wheat during the seventeenth century was 41s. a quarter, of barley 22s., and oats 14s. 8-1/2d. Oxen averaged about £5 apiece, cows much less, about £3, and there was not much change in their value during the century. Sheep were about 10s. 6d., and a cart-horse in the first half of the century from £5 to £10, in the second half from £8 to £15. Beef rose from 2d. a lb. in the early part of the century to 3d. at the close of it. Wool remained stationary at from 9d. to 1s. per lb. [258]A proclamation of 1633 fixed the following prices for London poulterers and victuallers:-- s. d. Best turkey-cock 4 4 Duck 8 Best hen 1 0 3 eggs 1 1 lb. best fresh butter in winter 6 1 lb. best fresh butter in summer 5 1 lb. best salt butter 4-1/2 Best fat goose 2 0 " crammed capon 2 6 " pullet 1 6 " chicken 6 According to the _Manydown Manor Rolls_ the Wootton churchwardens in 1600 paid from 8s. to 11s. for calves, 4s. 4d. for a fat lamb, 8s. for a sheep, 6s. 8d. for a barren ewe, 6d. for a couple of chickens, 1s. 6d. for 500 faggots.[259] After the restoration in 1660 another period of prosperity set in,[260] and altogether the century was a prosperous one for farmers and manufacturers. The newly established Royal Society materially helped agriculture. 'Since his majesty's most happy restoration the whole land hath been fermented and stirred up by the profitable hints it hath received from the Royal Society, by which means parks have been disparked, commons enclosed, woods turned into arable, and pasture lands improved by clover, St. foine, turnips, cole-seed, and many other good husbandries, so that the food of cattle is increased as fast, if not faster, than the consumption, and by these means the rent of the kingdom is far greater than ever it was.'[261] The century was distinguished also for the curious number of cycles of good and bad seasons; 1646-50 were years of prolonged dearth, wheat reaching an enormous price, and 1661-2, were famine years, while the end of the century was long famous for its barren years. With the prices of produce rents rose enormously. Very early in the century[262] rents of arable land had increased ninefold, since the fifteenth century, and by 1688 Davenant and King estimated the average rent of arable land in England at 5s. 6d. per acre and of permanent grass at 8s. 8d. Perhaps this is too high an estimate, as on the Belvoir estate of 17,837 acres in 1692 the rental all round was 3s. 9-1/4d. an acre for land above the average in quality, though it must be remembered that the Earls and Dukes of Rutland were indulgent landlords. The _History of Hawsted_ affords a valuable index of the increase of rents at this period.[263] In 1500 the average rent was 1s. 4d. an acre; in 1572, 39 acres of arable, meadow, and pasture were let for 2s. 3d. an acre, the landlord, it is interesting to notice, reserving the right of hawking, netting rabbits, hunting, and fowling; and about the same date other lands on the estate were let at 1s. 3d. and 1s. 6d. an acre, so that there had not generally been much advance since 1500, which is what we should expect, as the great rise took place at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. In 1589, therefore, it is not surprising to find that 40 acres of meadow and pasture let at 5s. an acre, and in 1611 some buildings and 155 acres of park at 11s. an acre. In 1616, 366 acres of arable and pasture and 39 acres of meadow were valued at 12s. an acre for letting, and the Hall Farm of 175 acres (8-1/2 acres meadow) at 10s.; and Great Pipers Farm of 138 acres (8 meadow) at 7s., while meadow and pasture near the mansion was valued at 21s. an acre. In 1658 the rent of the Hall Farm had advanced from 10s. an acre to about 13s., though in 1682 it went down to 11s. 6d.[264] According to the survey of the Manor of Manydown in Hampshire in 1650, meadow land was worth 20s. an acre, pasture 8s. to 10s., arable from 2s. to 10s., the latter showing a great variation in quality.[265] In 1723 Bryers Wood Farm at Hawsted, which had been let in 1620 for £15, was let at £29 5s. These rents are considerably higher than the estimate of Davenant and King; but it must be remembered that they were for land in the parts of England, where farming was at its best, and they, in accounting for the whole country, had to take into consideration a vast amount of land in the north and west which was worth very little. In the Rawlinson Collection[266] in the Bodleian Library is a rental of Lord Kingston's estate in north Nottinghamshire in 1689, the rents averaging 10s. an acre; but this was an exceptionally good estate, much of the property being meadow and pasture. The farmhouses also were above the average, while in two of the parishes the tenants had rights of common, and in two others the tenancies were tithe free. There was very little arable land on the estate, three small holdings letting for 6s. 8d. an acre; and some of the pasture land was let at 14s., 15s. 6d., and even 18s. an acre. The largest farm, Saundby Hall, of 607 acres, nearly all meadow and pasture, was 9s. 10d. an acre. The cottages were fortunate in having pieces of land attached to them. In Saundby, Richard Ffydall rented a cottage and 2 acres of arable land for £1 13s. 4d.; Widow Johnson a cottage and yard for 13s. 4d.; William Daubney a cottage with 6-1/2 acres of arable and 5-1/2 acres of pasture for £7 18s. 6d. A farm in Scrooby, consisting of a messuage, cottage, and 113 acres of arable, meadow, and pasture, only let at £23. As to the freehold value of land, in 1621, according to D'Ewes, it was worth from sixteen to twenty years' purchase; yet, in 1688, Sir Josiah Child said that lands now sell at twenty years' purchase, which fifty or sixty years before sold at eight or ten; and he also states, 'the same farms or lands to be now sold would yield treble and in some cases six times the money they were sold for fifty years ago'.[267] Davenant puts land at twelve years' purchase in 1600, at eighteen years in 1688.[268] In 1729 the price of land was said to be twenty-seven years' purchased.[269] The legislation against laying down tillage to grass was continued until the end of the sixteenth century. The statute 39 Eliz., c. 1, repealed 4 Hen. VII, c. 19, and all other Acts against pulling down houses, and provided that a house of husbandry should be a house that hath or hath had 20 acres of arable land. All such houses which had been destroyed during the last seven years were to be rebuilt, and if destroyed more than seven years only one-half was to be rebuilt; but to each of them at least 40 acres of land were to be attached. The next statute, 39 Eliz., c. 2, sets forth once more the advantages of tillage, viz. the increase and multiplying of people for service in the wars, and in time of peace the employment of a greater number of people, the keeping of people from poverty, the dispersal of the wealth of the kingdom in many hands, and 'the standing of this realm upon itself without depending upon foreign countries'[270]; and therefore enacts that lands converted from tillage to pasture shall be restored to tillage within three years, and lands then in tillage should be so continued; but this was only to extend to twenty-three counties, and omitted most of those in the south-west. At the beginning of the seventeenth century a reaction set in; the price of corn had risen immensely and continued to do so, the price of wool remained stationary, and tillage was as profitable as grass. In 1620 Coke speaks of the man who only kept a shepherd and a dog as one who never prospered. In 1624 several of the tillage laws were repealed.[271] As an example of the unenclosed fields, at the end of the sixteenth century, we may take the common fields at Daventry, which were three in number, containing respectively 368, 383, and 524 acres, divided into furlongs, a term which had now a very wide signification, each of which was subdivided into lands nearly always half an acre in extent, several of these lands when adjoining being often held now by the same owner. One furlong may be taken as an example. It was 37 acres 1 rood in extent, and contained ninety-six lands, owned by seventeen people. The meadows were divided still more minutely, some of the smaller portions being only a quarter of an acre each. The largest meadow contained 50 acres, divided among fifty-three people. In the manor, besides the arable and meadow, there were 300 acres of common pasture, a park, and a small wood. There were forty-one freeholders and many leasehold tenants, the average freehold being 34 acres, the average leasehold only half an acre, small holdings being the usual feature of the unenclosed township. In the seventeenth century the price of wool ceased to operate as a cause of enclosure, but in many parts the change to pasture continued, owing to the rise in price of cattle and of wages. The same reason, too, for laying down land to grass that had been so powerful in the preceding centuries still existed, the common arable fields needed rest from continual cropping and poor manuring, while good crops of corn could be grown from the virgin soil of the newly enclosed waste. The preamble of the Durham decrees clearly states this: 'the land is wasted and worn with continual ploweing, and thereby made bare, barren, and very unfruitful.'[272] We may, therefore, take Coke's words as inapplicable to many districts. In the seventeenth century there were several methods of enclosing. Sometimes the lord of the manor enclosed and left the land of the tenants still in common; or a tenant enclosed piece by piece; or enclosures were made by Act of Parliament, the earliest of which for common fields was passed in the time of James I, a method at this period very seldom used; or there was an agreement between lord and tenants often authorized by the Courts of Chancery or Exchequer. Besides enclosure, another process was going on, the consolidation of farms by the amalgamation of small holdings into larger ones. Farmhouses, as we see them to-day, began to appear on the holdings thus consolidated, instead of being grouped together in villages. A writer in 1604 says, 'we may see many of their houses built alone like raven's nests, no birds building neere them' so unwonted was the sight of isolated dwellings in most places at the time. However, in 1630 Charles I went back to the policy of his forefathers and issued letters to certain of the Midland counties ordering all enclosures of the last two years to be removed, and Commissions were issued to inquire into the matter in 1632, 1635, and 1636,[273] the chief evil feared from enclosures being depopulation, and enclosers were prosecuted in the Court of Star Chamber. The assertion that enclosures ceased during the seventeenth century has been proved inaccurate by modern research, and there is no doubt that they went on continuously. In 1607, in the Midlands, the enclosing of land produced serious armed resistance, probably because the Midland counties were then the great corn-growing district of England, and the change to pasture and the consolidation of farms displaced a larger population there than elsewhere. Between 1628 and 1630 enclosures in Leicestershire, for instance, were very numerous, no less than 10,000 acres being enclosed in that time, most of which was converted to pasture. The attempt of the Government to check the movement, initiated by Charles I, seems to have had considerable effect, but died away with the Civil War, and though other attempts were made under the Commonwealth they came to nothing, and from this time enclosures went on unchecked by the Government,[274] and were soon to have its active support. Yet there was a vast amount still in common field: the whole of the cultivated land of England in 1685 was stated by King and Davenant to amount to not much more than half the total area, and of this cultivated portion three-fifths was still farmed on the old common-field system. Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshire were comparatively unenclosed.[275] From the books and maps of the day 'it is clear that many routes which now pass through an endless succession of orchards, corn-fields, hay-fields, and bean-fields then ran through nothing but heath, swamp, and warren. In the drawings of an English landscape made in that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo scarce a hedgerow is to be seen.... At Enfield, hardly out of sight of the smoke of the capital, was a region of five-and-twenty miles in circumference which contained only three houses and scarcely any enclosed fields.'[276] The enclosure of these areas was to be mainly the work of the latter half of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth centuries. The amount of enclosure in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth centuries was, according to the latest research, much, and perhaps very naturally, exaggerated by contemporaries. Between 1455-1607 the enclosures in twenty-four counties are said to have amounted to some 500,000 acres, or 2.76 of their total area,[277] but the evidence for this is by no means conclusive. However, there seems no reason to doubt that the enclosure of this period was but a faint beginning of that great outburst of it that marked the agrarian revolution of the middle of the eighteenth century, and that it was mainly confined to the Midland counties, Mr. Johnson, in his recent Ford Lectures, has stated that the enclosure of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not accompanied by very much direct eviction of freeholders or bona fide copyholders of inheritance; yet the small holder suffered in many ways, e.g. by the lord disproving the hereditary character of the copyhold, or by changing copyholds of inheritance into copyholds for lives or leases for lives or years. He and his successors could then refuse to renew at the termination of lives or years except on payment of a practically prohibitory fine. In short, though there was not much violation of legal right there was much injustice, and enclosure, though its effects were exaggerated at this period, certainly tended to displace the small landholder. It does not appear, however, that the moderate-sized proprietors were seriously affected. Many of the larger freeholders and copyholders on manors enclosed on their own account, and perhaps increased at the expense of the very large and the very small. Indeed, the decrease of small landowners was chiefly due to political and social causes. The old self-sufficing, agricultural economy of England, which we have seen beginning to break up in the fourteenth century, was becoming thoroughly disintegrated. The capitalist class was increasing; the successful merchant and lawyer were acquiring land and becoming squires; there was an intense land hunger. Simon Degge, wilting of Staffordshire in 1669, says that in the previous sixty years half the lands had changed owners, not so much as of old they were wont to do, by marriage, but by purchase; and he notices how many lawyers and tradesmen have supplanted the gentry.[278] In fact, there was a much freer disposal of lands from the end of the fifteenth century, when the famous Taltarum's case enabled entailed estates to be barred, until the Restoration, than there has been before or since. For these two hundred years the courts of law and parliament resisted every effort to re-establish the system of entails; the owners of land constantly multiplied, and this tendency must have counteracted the displacement of the small holder by enclosure. Sir Thomas Smith, writing towards the end of the sixteenth century, says that it was the yeomen who bought the lands of 'unthrifty gentlemen;' and Moryson tells us that 'the buyers (excepting lawyers) are for the most part citizens and vulgar men'.[279] It became one of the boasts of England that she had a large number of yeomen farming their own land. During the Civil War, however, it became important to landowners to protect their properties in the interest of children and descendants from forfeiture for treason. The judges lent their aid, and the system of strict family settlements was devised, under which the great bulk of the estates in England are now held. This system favoured the accumulation of lands in a few hands and the aggregation of great estates, and was largely responsible for the disappearance of the small freeholder. In reviewing the progress of agriculture in the seventeenth century, the drainage of the fen country of Lincolnshire and the adjoining counties must not be forgotten. It had been for centuries the scene of drainage operations on a more or less extended scale, few of which, however, met with success; but in the seventeenth century the growing value of land caused a serious revival of these efforts. Attempts made under Elizabeth and James I had only succeeded in rescuing a certain amount of land for pasture,[280] but in the reign of Charles I the scheme of Cornelius Vermuyden was more successful. His system, however, was defective, and in the reign of Charles II the Bedford Level was in a lamentable state and in danger of reverting to its primitive condition. Many of the works too were destroyed by the 'stiltwalkers', and in 1793 Maxwell states that out of 44,000 acres of fen land in Huntingdonshire only 8,000 or 10,000 were productive[281]; and in 1794 Stone tells us that the commons round the Isle of Axholme were chiefly covered with water.[282] Still to Vermuyden and his contemporaries must be assigned the credit of the first comprehensive scheme for rescuing these fertile lands from the waters that covered them. At the commencement of this important century an old calendar of 1606[283] clearly sets forth the farming work of the year:-- January and February are the best months for ploughing for peas, beans, and oats, and to have peas soon in the year following sow them in the wane of the moon at S. Andrewstide before Christmas; which may be compared to Tusser's advice for February, 'Go plow in the stubble, for now is the season For sowing of fitches of beans and of peason.' 'Clean grounds of all such rubbish as briars, brambles, blackthorns, and shrubbs' (then more often choking the ground than now), which are to be fagoted as good fuel for baking and brewing. 'Do not plough in rainy weather, for it impoverisheth the earth.' March and April. Take up colts from grass to be broken. Sow beans, peas, and oats. In these months are all grounds where cattle went in the last winter to be furthed (apparently managed) and cleared and the mole-hills scattered, that the fresh spring of grass may grow better. All hedges and ditches to be made betwixt 'severals', evidently enclosures as distinguished from common fields. From March 25 to May 1 summer pastures are to be spared, that they may have time to get head before summer cattle be put in. In the meantime such cattle are to be bestowed in meadows till May Day, and after that date such meadows are to be cleansed and spared until the crops of hay be taken off. From now till midsummer sell fat cattle and sheep, and with the money buy lean cattle and sheep. Sow barley. May and June. Sort all cattle for their summer pasture on May Day, viz. draught oxen by themselves, milch cows by themselves, weaning calves, yearlings, two-year-olds, three- and four-year-olds, every sort by themselves, which being divided in pasture fitting for them will make larger and fairer cattle. Separate the horses in the same way. Wash sheep and shear four or five days after, which done the wool is to be well wound and weighed, and safely laid up in some place where there is not too much air or it will lose weight, nor where it is damp or it will increase too much in weight. Cleanse winter corn from thistles and weeds. July and August. First of all comes hay-making. In August wean lambs, and put them in good pasture, and in winter put them in fresh pasture until spring, and then put them with the 'holding' sheep. In these months is corn to be 'shornne or mowen downe' (the writer, it is to be noticed, has no preference for either method); and after the corn is carried put draught horses and oxen into the averish (corn stubble), to ease other pastures; and after them put hogs in. Gather crabs in woods and hedgerows for making verjuice. September and October. Have all plows and harrows neat and fit for sowing of wheat, rye, mesling (wheat and rye mixed), and vetches.[284] Pick hops. Buy store cattle, both steers and heifers, of three or four years old, which being well wintered at grass, or on straw at the barn doors, will be the sooner fed the summer following, and they will sooner feed after straw than grass. From October to May are calves to be reared, because then they be more hardly bred and become the stronger cattle. Feed brawns, bacons, lards, and porkets on mast if there is any, if not on corn. 'In these months cleanse poundes or pools, this season being the driest;' an extraordinary assertion, unless the climate has changed, seeing that according to the monthly averages from 1841-1906, taken at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, October is the wettest month in the year.[285] November and December. Sort all kinds of sheep until Lady Day, viz. wethers by themselves, and weaning lambs by themselves; and do not put rams to the ewes before S. Lukestide, October 18, for those lambs fall about March 25, and if they fall before then the scarcity of grass and the cold will so nip and chill them that they will die or be weaklings. It is good at this time to take draught cattle and horses from grass into the house before any great storms begin. Thrash corn now after it hath had a good sweat in the mow, and so dried again, and give the straw to the draught oxen and cattle at the standaxe or at the barn doors for sparing of hay, advice which Tusser also gives: 'Serve rie straw out first, then wheat straw and peas, Then ote straw and barley, then hay if ye please.' FOOTNOTES: [252] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1896, pp. 77 sq., and Gerard, _Herbal_ (ed. 1633), p. 232. [253] About 1684, John Worlidge wrote to Houghton that sheep fatted on clover were not such delicate meat as the heath croppers, and that sheep fatten very well on turnips. Houghton, _Collection for Improvement of Husbandry_, iv. 142. This is said to be the first notice of turnips being given to sheep. [254] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1896, p. 77. One of the proofs of the rarity of vegetables among the poorer classes of England, especially in the Middle Ages, is the fact that rents paid in kind never included them. [255] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1892, p. 19. [256] Chapple, _Review of Risdon's Survey of Devon_ (1785), p. 17 n. _Victoria County History: Devonshire, Agriculture_. [257] Blyth was a great advocate of enclosure. 'Live the commoners do indeed', he says, 'very many in a mean, low condition, with hunger and ease. Better do these in Bridewell. What they get they spend. And can they make even at the year's rent?' [258] Rymer, _Foedera_ (Orig. ed.), xix. 512. [259] _Manydown Manor Rolls_, Hampshire Record Society, p. 172. [260] Thorold Rogers, _Work and Wages_, p. 459. [261] Houghton, _Collections, &c._, ii. 448. [262] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, v. p. vii. Cf. p. 139 infra. [263] Cullum, _Hawsted_, pp. 196 et seq. In the Hawsted leases, at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, it is noteworthy that there were, at a time of repeated complaints against laying down land to pasture, clauses against breaking up pasture land. [264] In 1677 there were complaints of a fall in rents. [265] _Manydown Manor Rolls_, Hampshire Record Society, pp. 178 et seq. [266] Rawl. A. 170, No. 101. [267] McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, ii. 483. [268] Ibid. ii. 630. [269] Ibid. iii. 147. The rental of the lands in England in 1600 was estimated by Davenant at £6,000,000, in 1688 at £14,000,000; and in 1726 by Phillips at £20,000,000. Ibid. iii. 133. In 1850, Caird estimated it at £37,412,000. [270] With what horror would those legislators have contemplated England's position to-day, when a temporary loss of the command of the sea would probably ruin the country. [271] 21 Jac. 1, c. 28. [272] _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix. 116. [273] _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix. 127. [274] Ibid. 130. [275] See article in _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix. [276] Macaulay, _History of England_, ch. iii. [277] _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, xvii. 587. Considering that the legislature of the sixteenth century was against enclosure and depopulation, it is hard to understand 31 Eliz., c. 7, which forbade cottages to be erected unless 4 acres of land were attached thereto, in order to avoid the great inconvenience caused by the 'buyldinge of great nombers and multitude of cottages, which are daylie more and more increased in many partes of this realme'. How was it that cottages had increased so much in rural districts, which are of course alluded to, in spite of enclosure? [278] Harwood, _Erdeswick_. [279] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 44. [280] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 187. [281] _General View of Hunts._, p. 8. [282] _General View of Lincoln_, p. 29. [283] _Farming Calendar_, from an original MS., printed in _Archaeologia_, xiii. 373 et seq. [284] Cf. Tusser: 'October for wheat-sowing calleth as fast'; and 'When wheat upon eddish (stubble), ye mind to bestowe Let that be the first of the wheat ye do sowe'; and 'Who soweth in raine, he shall reap it with tears'. [285] The writer of the diary probably meant this work should be done in September. CHAPTER XII THE GREAT AGRICULTURAL WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--FRUIT GROWING. A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ORCHARD The seventeenth century is distinguished by a number of agricultural writers whose works, as they afford the best account of the farming of the time, we may be pardoned for freely quoting. The best known of them were, Sir John Norden, Gervase Markham, Sir Richard Weston, Blythe, Hartlib, Sir Hugh Plat, John Evelyn, John Worlidge, and Houghton. Sir John Norden printed his _Surveyor's Dialogue_ in 1608, which is in the form of a conversation between a farmer and a surveyor, the former at the outset telling the latter that men of his profession were then very unpopular because 'you pry into men's titles and estates, and oftentimes you are the cause that men lose their land, and customs are altered, broken, and sometimes perverted by your means. And above all, you look into the values of men's lands, wherefore the lords of manors do reckon their tenants to a higher rent, and therefore not only I but many poore tenants have good cause to speak against the profession'.[286] The surveyor attributes the increase in prices to farmers outbidding one another for farms, for the rents of farms and prices grow together; a statement which seems to have been quite true and disposes of the assertion that the landlords raised the rents unfairly, for they were quite entitled to what rent they could get in the open market, the farmers being presumably wise enough not to offer rents which would preclude a profit. He further blames the farmer of his day for being discontented with his lot: in former times 'farmers and their wives were content with mean dyet and base attire and held their children to some austere government, without haunting alehouses, taverns, dice, and cards; now the husbandman will be equal to the yeoman, the yeoman to the gentleman, the gentleman to the squire, and there is at this day thirty times as much vainely spent in a family of like multitude and quality as was in former ages'; a complaint that has been common in all ages. Contrary to what is the practice to-day, and apparently to common sense, the surveyor recommends that open drains be made as narrow above as at the bottom, at the most not more than a foot and a half broad.[287] Hops, he says, were then grown in Suffolk, Essex, and Surrey, 'in your loose and spongie grounds, trenched.' 'Carret' roots were raised in Suffolk and Essex, and beginning to increase in all parts of the realm[288]; but if he alludes to their cultivation in the open field the statement must be taken with considerable qualification, as they were not so grown generally until the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the next. Kent was then, as now, the great fruit county of England; 'above all others I think the Kentishmen be most apt and industrious in planting orchards with pippins and cherries, especially near the Thames about Feversham and Sittingbourne.' But Devon and Hereford were also famous; Westcote about 1630 says the Devonshire men had of late much enlarged their orchards, and 'are very curious in planting and grafting all kinds of fruit'[289]; and John Beale in 1656 tells us Hereford 'is reputed the orchard of England'[290]; while Hartlib says there were many orchards in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.[291] He calls 'Tandeane' near Taunton the Paradise of England, where the husbandry was excellent, the land fruitful by nature and improved by the art and industry of the farmers; 'they take extraordinary pains in soyling, ploughing, and dressing their lands, and after the plow there goeth some three or four with mattocks to break the clods and to draw up the earth out of the furrows that the lands may lye round, and that the water annoy not the seed (the water evidently often lying long in the furrows between the great high ridges), and to that end they most carefully cut gutters and trenches in all places. And for the better enriching of their ploughing lands they cut up, cast, and carry in the unplowed headlands and places of no use. Their hearts, hands, eyes, and all their powers concurre in one to force the earth to yield her utmost fruit; and the crops of wheat that rewarded this industry were sometimes 8 and 10 quarters to an acre. A short pamphlet called the _Fruiterer's Secrets_, published in London in 1604, imparts some interesting and curious information about fruit growing.[292] There were then four sorts of cherries in England, Flemish,[293] English, Gascoyne, and black, and the preserving of them from birds, always a burden on the grower, the author says can be done by a gun or a sling; the worst enemies being jays and bullfinches, who ate stones and all. Stone fruit should be gathered in dry weather, and after the dew is off, for if gathered wet it loses colour and becomes mildewed. If nettles newly gathered are laid at the bottom of the basket and on the top of the fruit, they will hasten the ripening of fruit picked unripe, and make it keep its colour. Those English farmers who still shake their apples from the trees to fall and be bruised on the ground had better listen to the careful directions for placing the ladder on the trees where it will do no damage, as to the use of the gathering hook so that the branches can be brought within easy reach of the picker on his ladder, the wearing of a gathering apron, and the emptying of it gently into the baskets. Green fern has the same effect on pears packed for carriage as nettles on stone fruit; while apples should be packed in wheat, or better still in rye straw. For long journeys the American system of packing in barrels is anticipated, the apples being carefully put in by hand, and the barrels lined at both ends with straw, but not at the sides to avoid heating, while holes should be bored at either end to prevent heat. Pippins, John Apples, Pearmains, and other 'keepers' need not be turned until the week before Christmas, and again at the end of March, when they must be turned oftener; but never touch fruit during a frost or a thaw, or in rainy weather, or it will turn black. Hartlib, a few years after, reckoned no less than 500 sorts of apples in England, though doubtless many of these were identical, since the same apple often has two or three names in one parish. The best for the table were the Jennetings, Harvey Apple, Golden Pippin, Summer and Winter Pearmains, John Apple, &c.; for cider the Red Streak (the great favourite), Jennet Moyle, Eliot, Stocking Apple, &c. He was told that in Herefordshire a tenant bought the farm he rented with the fruit crop of one year; £10 to £15 having been given per acre for cherries and more for apples and pears. Pears for the table were the Windsor, 'Burgamet,' 'Boon Christians'! Greenfield, and others; and for perry, which John Beale, a well-known writer of the day considered 'a weak drink, fit for our hindes and generally refused by our gentry as breeding wind in the stomack', the Horse Pear, Bosbury, Choak, &c.[294] There were many kinds of plums, among them the Mistle Plum, Damazene, Violet, and Premorden. Four kinds of grafting were practised: in the cleft, and in the bark, the two most usual ways; shoulder or whip grafting, and grafting by approach,[295] the last 'where the stock you intend to graft on and the tree from which you take your graft stand so near together that they may be joined, then take the sprig you intend to graft and pare away about three inches in length of the rind and wood near unto the very pith, and cut also the stock on which you intend to graft the same after the same manner that they may evenly join each other, and so bind them and cover them with clay or wax.' Inoculation was also practised, 'when the sap is at the fullest in the summer, the buds you intend to inoculate being not too young but sufficiently grown.' For transplanting the middle of October is recommended, and the wise advice added, 'plant not too deep,' and in clay plant as near the surface as possible, for the roots will seek their way downward but rarely upward; and in transplanting 'you may prune the branches as well as the roots of apples and pears, but not of plums.' The best distance apart in an orchard for apples and pears was considered to be from 20 to 30 feet, the further apart the more they benefit from the sun and air, a piece of advice which many a subsequent planter has neglected. For cherries and plums 15 to 20 feet was thought right. Worlidge's directions for pruning are minute and careful, and should be well hammered into many slovenly farmers to-day. Cider-making was performed much as it is in old-fashioned farms to-day, by mashing the apples in a trough by means of a millstone set edgeways, and then pressing the juice out through hair mats, the juice, says Hartlib, 'having been let stand a day or two and the black scum that ariseth in that time taken off they tunne it, and in the barrels it continueth to work some days longer, just as beer useth to do.[296] Another method was to put the fruit in a clean vessel or trough, and bruise or crush it with beetles, then put the crushed fruit in a bag of hair-cloth and press it.[297] After the cider was in the barrels there was placed in them a linen bag containing cloves, mace, cinnamon, ginger, and lemon peel which was said to make the cider taste as pleasantly as Rhenish wine. Worlidge gives us what is perhaps the first mention of a poultry farm, and strangely enough it seems to have paid. 'I have been credibly informed that a good farm hath been wholly stocked with poultry, spending the whole crop upon them and keeping severall to attend them, and that it hath redounded to a very considerable improvement'.[298] Incubators of a very rude sort were used, three or four dozen eggs being placed in a 'lamp furnace made of a few boards', and hatched by the heat of a lamp or candle. It must strike the reader that the accusation levelled against the English farmer, of having made little progress in his art from the Middle Ages to the commencement of the reign of George III is hardly warranted. Their knowledge and skill in their business were evidently such as to make considerable progress inevitable, and then as now they were in some cases assisted by their landlords, as in Herefordshire, where Lord Scudamore, after the assassination of his friend the Duke of Buckingham, devoted his energies to the culture of fruit, and with other public-spirited gentlemen turned that county into 'one entire orchard', besides improving the pastures and woods[299]; though Hartlib laments that gentlemen try so few experiments for the advancement of agriculture, and that both landowners and farmers instead of communicating their knowledge to each other kept it jealously to themselves.[300] The chief hindrance to landlord and tenant was that the heavy hand of ancient custom lay upon them, with its antiquated communistic system of farming, which still in the greater part of the land of England utterly prevented good husbandry and stifled individual effort. It was one of these Herefordshire gentlemen. Rowland Vaughan, who in 1610 wrote what is probably the first account of irrigation in England, though the art was mentioned by Fitzherbert and must have been known in Devon and Hampshire long before his time; indeed, it is another instance of the then isolation of country districts that he speaks as if he had made a new discovery. He tells us that 'having sojourned two years in his father's house, wearied in doing nothing and fearing his fortunes had been overthrown, he cast about what was best to be done to retrieve his reputation'. And one day he saw from a mole-hill on the side of a brook on his property a little stream of water issuing down the working of the mole, which made the ground 'pleasing green', and from this he was led on to what he calls 'the drowning of his lands'. This was so successful that he improved the value of his estate from £40 to £300 a year, and his neighbours, who of course had first scoffed at him, came to learn from him. Not many years after 'drowning' was said to have become one of the most universal and advantageous improvements in England.[301] Vaughan says that he had counted as many as 300 persons gleaning in one field after harvest, and that in the mountains near eggs were 20 a penny, and a good bullock 26s. 3d., but this was a backward region.[302] Between 1617 and 1621 the price of wheat fell from 43s. 3d. to 21s. a quarter, and immediately affected the payment of rent.[303] Mr. John Chamberlain, in February, 1620, wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton, 'We are here in a strange state to complain of plenty, but so it is that corn beareth so low a price that farmers are very backward to pay their rents and in many places plead disability: for remedy whereof the Council have written letters into every shire to provide a granary with a stock to buy corn and keep it for a dear year.' Sir Symonds D'Ewes notes in his diary that 'at this time (1621) the rates of all sorts of corn were so extremely low as it made the very prices of land fall from twenty years' purchase to sixteen or seventeen. For the best wheat was sold for 2s. 8d. and 2s. 6d. the bushel, the ordinary at 2s. Barley and rye at 1s. 4d. and 1s. 3d. the bushel, and the worser of those grains at a meaner rate, the poorer sort that would have been glad but a few years before of coarse rye bread, did now usually traverse the markets to find out the finer wheats as if nothing else would please their palates'. Instead of being glad that they were for once having a small share of the good things of this world, he rejoices that their unthankfulness and daintiness was soon punished by high prices and dearness of all sorts of grain.[304] The year 1630 was the commencement of a series of dear seasons, when for nine consecutive years the price of wheat did not fall below 40s. a quarter and actually touched 86s. The restraints laid on corn-dealers had, since the principles of commerce were being better understood, been modified in 1624, but the high prices revived the old hatred against them, and we find Sir John Wingfield writing from Rutland that he has 'taken order that ingrossers of corne shall be carefullie seen unto and that there is no Badger (corn-dealer) licensed to carry corne out of this countrye nor any starch made of any kind of graine'. He adds that he had 'refrayned the maulsters from excessive making of mault, and had suppressed 20 alehouses'.[305] However, the senseless policy of preventing trade in corn received a severe blow from the statute 15 Car. II, c. 7, which enacted that when corn was under 48s. persons were to be allowed to buy and store corn and sell the same again without penalty, provided they did not sell it in the same market within three months of buying it, a statute which Adam Smith said contributed more to the progress of agriculture than any previous law in the statute book. Gervase Markham, who was born about 1568 and died in 1637, gives us a description of the day's work of the English farmer. He is to rise at four in the morning, feed his cattle and clean his stable. While they are feeding he is to get his harness ready, which will take him two hours. Then he is to have his breakfast, for which half an hour is allowed. Getting the harness on his horses or cattle, he is to start by seven to his work and keep at it till between two and three in the afternoon. Then he shall bring his team home, clean them and give them their food, dine himself, and at four go back to his cattle and give them more fodder, and getting into his barn make ready their food for next day, not forgetting to see them again before going to his own supper at six. After supper he is to mend shoes by the fireside for himself and his family, or beat and knock hemp and flax, or pitch and stamp apples or crabs for cider or verjuice, or else grind malt, pick candle-rushes, or 'do some husbandry office within doors till it befall eight o'clock'. Then he shall take his lantern, visit his cattle once more, and go with all his household to rest. The farm roller of this time, according to Markham, was made of a round piece of wood 30 inches in circumference, 6 feet long, having at each end a strong pin of iron to which shafts were made fast.[306] He mentions wooden and iron harrows, but this refers only to the tines, the wooden ones being made of ash. From an illustration of a harrow which he gives, it appears it was much like Fitzherbert's and many used to-day: a wooden frame, with the teeth set perhaps more closely than ours; the single harrow 4 feet square drawn by one horse, the double harrow 7 feet square by two oxen at least. Wheat he says, when the land is dug 15 inches deep, and the seed dibbled in, will produce twelve times as much as when ploughed; but he admits the 'intricacy and trouble' of this method.[307] As to the question of mowing or reaping corn, he is of opinion that though 'it is a custom in many countries of this kingdom not to sheare the wheat but to mow it, in my conceit it is not so good, for it both maketh the wheate foule and full of weede'. Barley, however, should be mown close to the ground, though many reap it; oats too were to be mown. His directions for planting an orchard[308] are interesting, both as showing the kinds of fruit then grown, the number of different sorts planted together, and the growth of the olive in England.[309] The orchard, he says, should be a square, divided into four quarters by alleys, and in the first quarter should be apples of all sorts, in the second pears and wardens of all sorts, in the third quinces and chestnuts, in the fourth medlars and services. A wall is the best fence, and on the north wall, 'against which the sunne reflects, you shall plant the abricot, verdochio, peache, and damaske plumbe; against the east side the white muskadine grape, the pescod plumbe, and the Emperiale plumbe; against the west, the grafted cherries and the olive tree; and against the south side the almond and the figge tree.' As if this extraordinary mixture were not enough, 'round about the skirts of the alleys' were to be planted plums, damsons, cherries, filberts and nuts of all sorts, and the 'horse clog' and 'bulleye', the two latter being inferior wild plums. Plums were to be 5 feet apart, apples and other large fruit 12 feet. Young trees should be watered morning and evening in dry summers, and old ones should have the earth dug away from the upper part of the roots from November to March, then the earth, mixed with dung or soap ashes, replaced. Moss was carefully to be scraped off the trees with the back of an old knife, and, to prevent it, the trees manured with swine's dung. Minute distinctions are given as to pruning and washing the trees with strong brine of water and salt, either with a garden pump placed in a tub or with 'squirtes which have many hoales', the forerunner of modern spraying. Cider was then mostly made in the west, as in Devonshire and Cornwall, and perry in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire; but he leaves out Herefordshire, where it was certainly made at this time.[310] A curious help to fattening beasts, says Markham, is a lean horse or two kept with them, for the beasts delight to feed with them. Fattening cattle were to have first bite at the pastures, then draught cattle, and then sheep; after Midsummer, when there is an extraordinary sweetness in the grass, suffer the cattle to eat the grass closer till Lammas (August 1). Though some do not hold with him, he thinks reading and writing not unprofitable to a husbandman, but not much material 'to his bailiff'; for there is more trust in an honest score chalked on a trencher than 'in a commen writen scrowle'. Landowners derived a good income from their woods and coppices. An acre of underwood of twenty-one years' growth, was at this time worth from £20 to £30; of twelve years' growth, £5 to £6; but on many of the best lands it was only cut every thirty years.[311] In 1742-3 oak timber was worth from 15d. to 18d. per cubic foot and ash about 10d. During the Napoleonic war oak sold for 4s. 6d. a foot. In Blyth's _Improver Improved_ we have one of the first accounts of covered drains. The draining trench was to be made deep enough to go the bottom of the 'cold spewing moist water' that feeds the flags and the rushes; as for the width 'use thine own liberty' but be sure make it as straight as possible. The bottom was to be filled in with faggots or stones to a depth of 15 inches, a method in some parts retained till comparatively modern times, with the top turf laid upon them grass downward, and the drain filled in with the earth dug out of it. A country gentleman at this date could keep up a good establishment on an income which to-day would compel him to live economically in a cottage. From the accounts of Mr. Master, a landowner near Chiselhurst, it appears that a man with an income of £300 or £400 a year could live in some luxury, keep a stud of horses, and a considerable number of servants.[312] Some of them had no scruples about adding to their incomes by turning corn-dealers, even selling such small quantities as pecks of peas, bushels of rye, and half pecks of oatmeal. From the accounts of one of them, Henry Best,[313] of Elmswell, we learn many valuable details concerning farming in Yorkshire about 1641. It was the custom to put the ram to the ewes about October 18, but Best did so about Michaelmas, and generally used one ram to 30 or 40 ewes, and he considered it necessary that the ewes should be two-shear. 'Good handsome ewes', he says, could have been bought at Kilham fair for 3s. 6d. each, a price far below the average of the time. As for wages, mowers of grass had 10d. a day, and found their own food and their scythes, which cost them about 2s. 3d. each. Haymakers got 4d. a day, and had to 'meat themselves' and find their own forks and rakes. Shearers or reapers were paid from 8d. to 10d., and found their own sickles; binders and stackers, 8d.; mowers of 'haver', or oats, 10d., a good mower cutting 4 acres a day. In 1641 he sold oats for 14s. a quarter, best barley for 22s., rye 27s. 6d., wheat 30s.[314] The roads were dreadful, and produce nearly all sent to market on pack-horses. 'Wee seldome send fewer than 8 horse loads to the market at a time, and with them two men, for one man cannot guide the poakes (sacks) of above four horses. When wee sende oats to the market wee sack them up in 3 bushel poakes and lay 6 bushels on a horse; when wee sende wheate, rye, or masseldene (rye and wheat) and barley to market wee put it into mette poakes (2 bushel sacks), sometimes into half quarter sacks, and these we lay on horses that are short coupled and well backed.' When the servants got to market they were charged a halfpenny a horse for stabling and hay, but if they dined at the inn they paid nothing for their horses, and their dinners cost them 4d. a head. Butter was sold by the lb., or the 'cake' of 2 lb., and in the beginning of Lent was 5d. a lb., by April 20, 3d., in the middle of May, 2-1/2d. When William Pinder took 50 acres of land 'of my Lord Haye' he paid a fine of £60 and a rent of £40; but this must have been an extremely choice piece of land, for arable land rented apparently at less than 3s. an acre.[315] The rent of a cottage was usually 10s. a year, 'though they have not so much as a yard or any backe side belonging to them.' There is more evidence, if such were needed, of the beneficial effect of enclosure, which was said to treble the value of pasture. Good meadow land fetched a great price: 'The medow Sykes is about 5 acres of grounde, and was letten in the year 1628 at £6 per annum, and in 1635 at £6 13s. 4d. The requirements of a foreman on a farm were that he could sow, mow, stack peas, go well with 4 horses, and be accustomed to marketing; and for this when hired by the year he received 5 marks, and perhaps half a crown as earnest money. The next man got 50s., the next 46s. 6d., the fourth 35s. 'Christopher Pearson had the first year he dwelt here £3 5s. 0d. wages per annum and 5s. to a God's penny (earnest money); next year he had £4 wages, and he was both a good seedsman,' before the invention of drills a very valuable qualification, 'and did sow all our seed both the years. When you are about to hire a servant you are to call them aside and talk privately with them concerning their wage, and if the servants stand in the churchyard they usually call them aside and walk to the back side of the church and there treat of their wage. I heard a servant asked what he could do, who made this answer: "I can sowe, I can mowe, And I can stacke; And I can doe My master too When my master turns his backe".' If we are to judge by the food provided for the thatchers, who were little better than ordinary labourers, the Yorkshire farm-hand fared well on plenty of simple food, his three meals a day consisting of butter, milk, cheese, and either eggs, pies, or bacon, sometimes porridge instead of milk. Probably, however, few country gentlemen were such industrious farmers as Best; many of them passed their days mostly in hunting and fowling and their evenings in drinking, though we know too that there were exceptions who did not care for this rude existence. Deer hunting, and we must add deer poaching, was the great sport of the wealthy, but the smaller gentry had to be content with simpler forms of the chase. For fox hunting each squire had his own little pack, and hunted only over his own estate and those of his friends. He had also the otter, the badger, and the hare to amuse him. Fowling was conducted, as in the Middle Ages, by hawk or net, for the shot gun had not yet come into use, and was forbidden by an old law.[316] The partridge and pheasant, as now, were the chief game birds. After the Restoration the country gentlemen seem to have been infected by the dissipation of the Court, and farming was left to the tenant farmer and yeoman: 'our gentry', says Pepys, 'have grown ignorant of everything in good husbandry.' The middle of the seventeenth century was the Golden Age of the yeoman who owned and farmed his land; even at the end of the Stuart period, when their decline had already begun, Gregory King estimated their numbers at 160,000 families, or about one-seventh of the population. The class included all those between the man who owned freehold land worth 40s. a year and the wealthier yeoman who was hardly distinguishable from the small gentleman. Owning their own land they were a sturdy and independent class, and they 'took a jolly pride in voting as in fighting on the opposite side of the neighbouring squire'. 'The yeomanry', wrote Fuller, 'is an estate of people almost peculiar to England;' he 'wears russet clothes but makes golden payment, having tin in his buttons and silver in his pocket He seldom goes abroad, and his credit stretches farther than his travel.' The tenant farmers were nearly as numerous, King estimating them at 150,000 families; economically they were about on a level with the yeoman, their social standing, however, was considerably inferior. The greatest improvement of the seventeenth century, the introduction from Holland of turnips and clover, was over-estimated by its author, Sir Richard Weston; for he tells his sons that by sowing flax, turnips, and clover they might in five years improve 500 acres of poor land so as to bring in £7,000 a year.[317] To bring about this desirable consummation, he provides his sons with accounts as to the cost, one of which shows the cost of growing an acre of flax and the profit thereon, though this gentleman's estimates are clearly optimistic: DR. £ s. d. Devonshiring, i.e. paring and burning 1 0 0 Lime 0 12 0 Ploughing and harrowing 0 6 0 3 bushels of seed 2 0 0 Weeding 0 1 0 Pulling and binding 0 10 0 Grassing the seed from the flax 0 6 0 Watering, drying, swinging, and beating 4 10 0 ---------- £9 5 0 ========== CR. £ s. d. 900 lb. of flax 40 0 0 9 5 0 ----------- Balance profit £30 15 0 =========== Turnips were to come after flax, and were to be given to the cows as they did in Flanders; that is, wash them clean, put them in a trough where they were to be stamped together with a spitter or small spade; and the turnips were to be followed by clover. All these, says Weston, were already grown in England, but 'there is as much difference between what groweth here and there as is between the same thing which groweth in a garden and that which groweth wild in the fields'. Worlidge soon after recommended that clover be sown on barley or oats about the end of March or in April, and harrowed in, or by itself; and says, with optimism equal to Weston's, one acre of clover will feed you as many cows as 6 acres of ordinary grass and make the milk richer.[318] It has been noticed that the price of wool altered little during the century, and from the private accounts of Sir Abel Barker[319] of Hambleton, in the County of Rutland, we learn that in 1642 he sold his wool to his 'loving friend Mr. William Gladstone' for £1 a tod, though by 1648 it had gone up to 29s., a good price for those days. During the Civil War some of Barker's horses were carried off for the service of the State, and he values them at £8 a piece, a fair price then. Some years later, for mowing 44 acres of grass he sets down in his account £2 7s. 0d., for making the same £2 3s. 0d., and stacking it 3s. Simon Hartlib, a Dutchman by birth and a friend of John Milton, published his _Legacy_ in 1651, containing both rash statements and useful information. We certainly cannot believe him when he states that pasture employs more hands than tillage. His estimate of a good crop of wheat was from 12 to 16 bushels per acre, and he speaks strongly of the great fluctuations in prices, for he had known barley sell at Northampton at 6d. a bushel, and within 12 months at 5s., and wheat in London in one year varied from 3s. 6d. to 15s. a bushel. The enormous number of dovecotes was still a great nuisance, and the pigeons were reckoned to eat 6,000,000 quarters of grain annually. Hartlib recommends his countrymen to sow 'a seed commonly called Saint Foine, which in England is as much as to say Holy Hay,' as they do in France: especially on barren lands, advice which some of them followed, and in Wilts., soon after, sainfoin is said to have so improved poor land that from a noble (6s. 8d.) per acre, the rent had increased to 30s.[320] They were also to use 'another sort of fodder which they call La Lucern at Paris for dry and barren grounds'. So wasteful were they of labour in some parts that in Kent were to be seen 12 horses and oxen drawing one plough.[321] The use of the spade was long looked askance at by English husbandmen; old men in Surrey had told Hartlib that they knew the first gardeners that came into those parts to plant cabbages and 'colleflowers', and to sow turnips, carrots, and parsnips, and that they gave £8 an acre for their land. The latter statement must be an exaggeration, as it is equivalent to a rent of about £40 in our money; but we may give some credence to him when he says that the owner was anxious lest the spade should spoil his ground, 'so ignorant were we of gardening in those days.' Though it was not the case in Elizabeth's time, by now the licorice, saffron, cherries, apples, pears, hops, and cabbages of England were the best in the world; but many things were deficient, for instance, many onions came from Flanders and Spain, madder from Zealand, and roses from France.[322] 'It is a great deficiency in England that we have not more orchards planted. It is true that in Kent, and about London, and in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire[323] there are many gallant orchards, but in other country places they are very rare and thin, I know in Kent some advance their ground from 5s. per acre to £5 by this means', and 30 acres of cherries near Sittingbourne had realized £1,000 in one year. His recipe for making old fruit trees bear well savours of a time when old women were still burnt as witches. 'First split his root, then apply a compost of pigeon's dung, lees of wine, or stale wine, and a little brimstone'. The tithes of wine in Gloucestershire were 'in divers parishes considerably great', and wine was then made in Kent and Surrey, notably by Sir Peter Ricard, who made 6 or 8 hogsheads yearly.[324] There is no doubt that the vine has been grown in the open in England from very early times until comparatively recent ones. The Britons were taught to plant it by the Romans in A.D. 280.[325] In Domesday there are 38 examples of vineyards, chiefly in the south central counties. Neckham, who wrote in the twelfth century, says the vineyard was an important adjunct to the mediaeval mansion.[326] William of Malmesbury praised the vines and wine of Gloucestershire; and says that the vine was either allowed to trail on the ground, or trained to small stakes fixed to each plant. Indeed, the mention of them in mediaeval chronicles is frequent. Two bushels of green grapes in 1332 fetched 7s. 6d.[327] Richard II planted vines in great plenty, according to Stow, within the upper park of Windsor, and sold some part to his people. The wine made in England was sweetened with honey, and probably flavoured and coloured with blackberries.[328] At the dissolution of the monasteries there was a vineyard at Barking Nunnery. 'We might have a reasonable good wine growing in many places of this realme', says Barnaby Googe, about 1577, 'as doubtless we had immediately after the Conquest, tyll, partly by slothfulnesse, partly by civil discord long continued, it was left, and so with time lost.... There is besides Nottingham an ancient house called Chylwel in which remaineth yet as an ancient monument in a great wyndowe of glasse, the whole order of planting, proyning, stamping, and pressing of vines. Upon many cliffes and hills are yet to be seen the rootes and old remaines of vines.' Plot, in his _Natural History of Staffordshire_,[329] says 'the vine has been improved by Sir Henry Lyttelton at Over (Upper) Arley, which is situate low and warm, so that he has made wine there undistinguishable from the best French by the most judicious palates, but this I suppose was done only in some over hot summer, and Dr. Bathurst made very good claret at Oxon in 1685, a very mean year for the purpose.' In 1720 the famous vineyard at Bath of 6 acres, planted with the 'white muscadene' and the 'black Chester grape,' produced 66 hogsheads of wine worth £10 a hogshead, but in unfavourable years grew very little.'[330] Mr. Peter Collinson, writing from Middlesex in 1747, says, 'the vineyards turn to good profit, much wine being made this year in England;' and again in 1748, 'my vineyards are very ripe; a considerable quantity of wine will this year be made in England.'[331] However, the attempt made to grow vines on the undercliff at Ventnor at the end of the eighteenth century by Sir Richard Worsley ended in dismal failure, and it is probable that the English climate in its normal years seldom produced good grapes out of doors whatever it may have done in exceptionally hot ones, unless we assume that it has changed considerably, for which there is little ground. Hartlib was no friend of commons; they made the poor idle and trained them for the gallows or beggary, and there were fewest poor where there were fewest commons,[332] as in Kent--a statement re-echoed by many observant writers; he also recommends enclosures, because they gave warmth and consequent fertility to the soil. He tells us that an effort had been made by James I to encourage the growth of mulberry trees and the breeding of silkworms, the lords-lieutenant of the different counties being urged to see to it, but it had little effect.[333] The number of different sorts of wheat was by this time considerable. Hartlib gives the white, red, bearded ('which is not subject to mildews as others'); some sorts with two rows, others with four and six; some with one ear on a stalk, others with two; the red stalk wheat of Bucks; winter wheat and summer wheat. There were also twenty varieties of peas that he knew, and the white, black, naked. Scotch, and Poland oats. Markham adds the whole straw wheat, the great brown pollard, the white pollard, the organ, the flaxen, and the chilter wheat. There was a sad lack of enterprise in the breeding of stock now and for many generations before; indeed, it may be doubted if this important branch of farming, except perhaps in the case of sheep, was much attended to until the time of Bakewell and the Collings. In Elizabeth's time a Frenchman had twitted England with having only 3,000 or 4,000 horses worth anything, which was one of the reasons that induced the Spaniards to invade us.[334] 'We are negligent, too, in our kine, that we advance not the best species.' The size of cattle at this date, however, seems to have been greater than is often stated. The Report of the Select Committee on the Cultivation of Waste Lands in 1795, states that the average weight, dressed, of cattle at Smithfield in 1710 was only 370 lb.,[335] yet the Household Book of Prince Henry at the commencement of the seventeenth century says that an ox should weigh 600 lb. the four quarters, and cost about £9 10s., a sheep about 45 lb., so that the latter were apparently relatively smaller than the oxen. In 1603 oxen were sold at Tostock in Suffolk weighing 1,000 lb. apiece, dead weight.[336] According to the records of Winchester College, the oxen sold there in the middle of the century averaged, dressed, about 575 lb.; in 1677, 35 oxen sold there averaged 730 lb. 'Some kine,' it was said at the end of the century, 'have grown to be very bulky and a great many are sold for £10 or £12 apiece; there was lately sold near Bury a beast for £30, and 'twas fatted with cabbage leaves. An ox near Ripon weighed, dressed, 13-1/4 cwt.'[337] They were, of course, chiefly valued as beasts of draught, and no doubt the one Evelyn saw in 1649, 'bred in Kent, 17 foot in length, and much higher than I could reach,' was a powerful animal for this purpose. The young ones were taught to draw by yoking two of them, together with two old ones before and two behind, with a man on each side the young ones, 'to keep them in order and speak them fair,' for if much beaten they seldom did well: for the first two or three days they were worked only three or four hours a day, but soon they worked as long as the older ones, that is from 6 to 11, then a bait of hay and rest till 1, with work again till 5, at least in Lancashire. They were kept in the yoke till nine or ten years old, then turned on to the best grass in May, and sold to the butcher.[338] FOOTNOTES: [286] _Surveyor's Dialogue_ (ed. 1608), p. 2. [287] _Surveyor's Dialogue_, p. 188. [288] Ibid. p. 207. [289] _Victoria County History: Devon, Agriculture_. [290] _Herefordshire Orchards a Pattern for All England_ (ed. 1724). [291] See infra, p. 136. [292] These extracts are from the original edition in the Bodleian Library. [293] 'The Flanders cherry excels', says Worlidge, _Syst. Agr._, p. 97. [294] Bradley, in 1726, gives a long list of pears all with French names, hardly any of which are now known in England. [295] Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 107. [296] _Annotation upon the Legacie of Husbandry_, 1651, p. 105. [297] Markham, i. 174 (ed. 1635). [298] _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 152. [299] Evelyn, _Pomona_ (ed. 1664), p. 2. [300] _Compleat Husbandman_ (ed. 1659), p. 75. [301] _Most Approved and Long Experienced Waterworks_. London, 1610. [302] See Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_ (ed. 1669), p. 155. [303] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 23. [304] _Life of Sir S. D'Ewes_, i. 180. [305] _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1629-31, p. 414. [306] _Whole Art of Husbandry_ (ed. 1635), i. 50. [307] Ibid. i. 100. [308] Ibid. i. 121. [309] An astonishing statement; cf. Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 56, Neckham, _De Natura Rerum_, cap. clxvi. and above, p. 93. [310] _Whole Art of Husbandry_ (ed. 1635), i. 173. [311] _Whole Art of Husbandry_ (ed. 1635), ii. 144. and MS. accounts of Mr. Chevallier of Aspall Hall, Suffolk. [312] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, v. 28. [313] _Farming and Account Books of Henry Best of Elmswell_, 1641, Surtees Society, xxxiii. 157. [314] Ibid. p. 99. [315] _Farming and Account Books of Henry Best of Elmswell_, 1641. Surtees Society, xxxiii. 124. Many districts in the north of England were still much behind the rest of the country. [316] Trevelyan, _England under the Stuarts_, 8 sq. Though, as we have seen, p. 157, the writer of the _Fruiterer's Secrets_ recommends the gun for scaring birds in 1604. [317] _The Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders_ (ed. 1652), p. 18. [318] _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 26. [319] MS. accounts of Sir Abel Barker, in the possession of G.W.P. Conant, Esq. [320] Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 28. [321] _Compleat Husbandman_ (1659), p. 5. [322] Ibid. p. 9. [323] Cf. supra, p. 136. [324] _Compleat Husbandman_ (1659), p. 23. [325] _Archaeologia_, i. 324; iii. 53. [326] _De Natura Rerum_, Rolls Ser., lxi. [327] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, 57 n. [328] Ibid. [329] Ed. 1686, p. 380. [330] R. Bradley, _A General Treatise of Husbandry_ (ed. 1726), ii. 52. [331] Tooke, _History of Prices_ i. 44. Brandy was made in the eighteenth century from grapes grown in the Beaulieu vineyards in Hampshire, and a bottle of it long kept at the abbey.--_Hampshire Notes and Queries_, vi. 62. There are two vineyards to-day, of 2-3/4 and 4 acres respectively, on the estates of the Marquis of Bute in Glamorganshire; but a vintage is only obtained once in four or five years from them, and they are not profitable. [332] _Compleat Husbandman_, 1659, p, 42. [333] _Compleat Husbandman_, 1659, p. 57. [334] Ibid. p. 73. [335] In this apparently repeating Davenant's statement. See McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_, 1852, p. 271. [336] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, v. 332. [337] Houghton, _Collections for Improvement of Husbandry_, i. 294. [338] Ibid., _Collections for Husbandry and Trade_ (ed. 1728), iv. 336. CHAPTER XIII THE EVILS OF COMMON FIELDS.--HOPS.--IMPLEMENTS.--MANURES.--GREGORY KING--CORN LAWS From what has been said in the preceding pages, it will be gathered that a vast amount of compassion has been wasted on the enclosure of commons, for it is abundantly evident from contemporary writers that there were a large number of people dragging out a miserable existence on them, by living on the produce of a cow or two, or some sheep and a few poultry, with what game they could sometimes catch, and refusing regular work. Dymock, Hartlib's contemporary, questions 'whether commons do not rather make poore by causing idlenesse than maintaine them;' and he also asks how it is that there are fewest poor where there are fewest commons. In the common fields, too, there was continual strife and contention caused by the infinite number of trespasses that they were subject to.[339] The absence of hedges, too, in these great open fields was bad for the crops, for there was nothing to mitigate drying and scorching winds, while in the open waste and meadows the live stock must have sadly needed shelter and shade, 'losing more flesh in one hot day than they gained in three cool days.' Worlidge, a Hampshire man, joins in the chorus of praise of enclosures, for they brought employment to the poor, and maintained treble 'the number of inhabitants' that the open fields did; and he gives further proof of the enclosure of land in the seventeenth century, when he mentions 'the great quantities of land that have within our memories lain open, and in common of little value, yet when enclosed have proved excellent good land.' Why then was this most obvious improvement not more generally effected? Because there was a great impediment to it in the numerous interests and diversity of titles and claims to almost every common field and piece of waste land in England, whereby one or more envious or ignorant persons could thwart the will of the majority.[340] Another hindrance, he says, was that many roads passed over the commons and wastes, which a statute was needed to stop. In the seventeenth century hop growing was not nearly so common in England as in the preceding, when Harrison had said, in his _Description of Britain_, 'there are few farmers or occupiers in the country which have not gardens and hops growing of their own, and those far better than do come from Flanders.' There seems, indeed, to have been a prejudice against the hop; Worlidge[341] says it was esteemed an unwholesome herb for the use it was usually put to, 'which may also be supplied with several other wholesome and better herbs.' John Evelyn was very much against them, probably because he was such an advocate of cider: 'It is little more than an age,' he says, 'since hopps transmuted our wholesome ale into beer, which doubtless much altered our constitutions. That one ingredient, by some not unworthily suspected, preserving drink indeed, and so by custom made agreeable, yet repaying the pleasure with tormenting diseases, and a shorter life, may deservedly abate our fondness for it, especially if with this be considered likewise the casualties in planting it, as seldom succeeding more than once in three years.'[342] The City of London petitioned against hops as spoiling the taste of drink. Yet its cultivation is said to have advanced the price of land to £40, £50, and sometimes £100 an acre, the latter an almost incredible price if we consider the value of money then. There were not enough planted to serve the kingdom, and Flemish hops had to be imported, though not nearly so good as English. A great deal of dishonesty, moreover, was shown by the foreign importers, so that in 1603 a statute (1 Jac. I, c. 18) was passed against the 'false packinge of forreine hops,' by which it appears that the sacks were filled up with leaves, stalks, powder, sand, straw, wood, and even soil, for increasing the weight, by which English growers it is said lost £20,000 a year. Such hops were to be forfeited, and brewers using them were to forfeit their value. The chief cause of their decrease was that few farmers would take the trouble and care required to grow them, in spite of the often excellent prices, which at Winchester at this date averaged from 50s. to 80s. a cwt., sometimes, however, reaching over 200s., as in 1665 and 1687, though then as now they were subject to great fluctuations, and in 1691 were only 31s. Many, too, were discouraged by the fact 'they are the most of any plant that grows subject to the various mutations of the air, mildews sometimes totally destroying them,' no doubt an allusion to the aphis blight. Hop yards were often protected at this early date by hedges of tall trees, usually ash or poplar, the elm being disapproved of as contracting mildews. Markham[343] says that Hertfordshire then contained as good hops as he had seen anywhere, and there the custom was 250 hills to every rood, 'and every hill will bear 2-1/2 lb., worth on an average 4 nobles a cwt. (a noble = 6s. 8d.);' hills were to be 6 ft. apart at least, poles 16 to 18 ft. long and 9 or 10 inches in circumference at the butt, of ash, oak, beech, alder, maple or willow. Some planted the hills in 'plain squares chequerwise, which is the best way if you intend to plough with horses between the hills. Others plant them in form of a quincunx, which is better for the hop, and will do very well where your ground is but small that you may overcome it with either the breast plough or spade.' The manure recommended by Worlidge was good mould, or dung and earth mixed. The hills were like mole-hills 3 feet high, and sometimes were large enough to have as many as 20 poles, so that some hop yards must have looked very different then from what they do now, even when poles are retained; but from two to five poles per hill was the more usual number. Cultivation was much the same as in Reynold Scott's time, and picking was still done on a 'floor' prepared by levelling the hills, watering, treading, and sweeping the ground, round which the pickers sat and picked into baskets, but the hop crib was also used. It was considered better not to let the hops get too ripe, as the growers were aware of the value of a fresh, green-looking sample; and Worlidge advises the careful exclusion of leaves and stalks, though Markham does not agree with him. Kilns were of two sorts: the English kiln made of wood, lath, and clay; the French of brick, lime, and sand, not so liable to burn as the former and therefore better.[344] One method of drying was finely to bed the kiln with wheat straw laid on the hair-cloth, the hops being spread 8 inches thick over this, 'and then you shall keepe a fire a little more fervent than for the drying of a kiln full of malt,' the fire not to be of wood, for that made the hops smoky and tasted the beer, but of straw! Worlidge, strangely, recommended the bed of the kiln to be covered with tin, as much better than hair-cloth, for then any sort of fuel would do as well as charcoal, since the smoke did not pass through the hops. Besides Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Leicestershire, and Rutlandshire; Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire were recommended by Markham for hop growing, the great hop counties of to-day being passed over by him. The growth of hemp and flax had by this time considerably decayed, owing to the want of encouragement to trade in these commodities, the lack of experience in growing them, and the tithes which in some years amounted to more than the profits.[345] An acre of good flax was worth from £7 to £12; but if 'wrought up fit to sell in the market' from £15 to £20. Woad was considered a 'very rich commodity', but according to Blyth it robbed the land if long continued upon it, although if moderately used it prepared land for corn, drawing a 'different juice from what the corn requires'. It more than doubled the rent of land, and had been sold at from £6 to £20 a ton, the produce of an acre. John Lawrence, who wrote in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, says woad was in his time cultivated by companies of people, men, women, and children, who hired the land, built huts, and grew and prepared the crop for the dyer's use, then moved on to another place.[346] There were proofs that man's inventive genius was at work among farm implements. Worlidge mentions[347] an engine for setting corn, invented by Gabriel Plat, made of two boards bored with wide holes 4 in. apart, set in a frame, with a funnel to each hole. It was fitted with iron pins 5 in. long to 'play up and down', and dibble holes into which the corn was to go from the funnels. This machine was so intricate and clumsy that Worlidge found no use for it. However, he recommends another instrument which certainly seems to anticipate Tull's drill, though Tull is said to have stated when Bradley showed him a cut of it that it was only a proposal and it never got farther than the cut.[348] It consisted of a frame of small square pieces of timber 2 inches thick; the breadth of the frame 2 feet, the height 18 inches, length 4 feet, placed on four good-sized wheels. In the middle of the frame a coulter was fixed to make a furrow for the corn, which fell through a wooden pipe behind, that dropped the corn out of a hopper containing about a bushel, the fall of the corn from the hopper being regulated by a wooden wheel in its neck. The same frame might contain two coulters, pipes, and hoppers, and the instrument could be worked with one horse and one man. It was considered a great advance on sowing broadcast, and by the use of it 'you may also cover your grain with any rich compost you shall prepare for that purpose, either with pigeon dung, dry or granulated, or any other saline or lixirial (alkaline, or of potash) substance, which may drop after the corn from another hopper behind the one that drops the corn, or from a separate drill'. The corn thus sown in rows was found easier to weed and hoe, so that it is clear that this advantage was well understood before Tull's time. There was a great diversity of ploughs at this date, almost every county having some variation.[349] The principal sorts were the double-wheel plough, useful upon hard land, usually drawn with horses or oxen two abreast, the wheels 18 in. to 20 in. high. The one-wheel plough, which could be used on almost any sort of land; it was very 'light and nimble', so that it could be drawn by one horse and held by one man, and thus ploughed an acre a day. Then there was a 'plain plough without either wheel or foot', very easy to work and fit for any lands; a double plough worked by four horses and two men, of two kinds, one ploughing a double furrow, the other a double depth. There were also ploughs with a harrow attached, others constructed to plough, sow, and harrow, but not of much value; and a turfing plough for burning sod. Carts and waggons were of many sorts, according to the locality, the greater wheels of the waggon being usually 18 feet in circumference the lesser 9 feet. A useful implement was the trenching plough used on grass land to cut out the sides of trenches or drains, with a long handle and beam and with a coulter or knife fixed in it and sometimes a wheel or wheels. The following is a list of other implements then considered necessary for a farm. _For the field._ Harrows Mole spear Beetles Forks Mole traps Roller Sickles Weedhooks Cradle scythe Reaphooks Pitchforks Seedlip[350] Sledds Rakes _For the barn and stable._ Flails Pannels (pillions) Pails Winnowing fan Pack-saddles Mane combs Sieves Cart lines Goads Sacks Ladders Yokes Bins Corn measures Wanteyes[351] Curry combs Brooms Suffingles (surcingles?) Whips Skeps (baskets) Screens for corn. Harness _For the meadows and pastures._ Scythes Pitchforks Cutting spade for hayrick Rakes Fetters and clogs Horse-locks. Besides many tools. A considerable variety of manures were in use, chalk, lime, marl, fuller's earth, clay, sand, sea-weed, river-weed, oyster shells, fish, dung, ashes, soot, salt, rags, hair, malt dust, bones, horns, and the bark of trees. Of the oyster shells Worlidge says, 'I am credibly informed that an ingenious gentleman living near the seaside laid on his lands great quantities, which made his neighbours laugh at him (as usually they do at anything besides their own clownish road or custom of ignorance),' and after a year or two's exposure to the weather 'they exceedingly enriched his land for many years after.' The bones then used were marrow-bones and fish bones, or 'whatever hath any oiliness or fatness in it', but the bones of horses and other animals were also used, burnt before being applied to the land, crushing not being thought of till many years after. In 1688 Gregory King,[352] who was much more accurate than most statisticians of his time, gave the following estimate of the land of England and Wales:-- Acres. Per acre. Arable 9,000,000 worth to rent 5s. 6d. Pasture and meadow 12,000,000 " " 8s. 8d. Woods and coppices 3,000,000 " " 5s. Forests and parks 3,000,000 " " 3s. 8d. Barren land 10,000,000 " " 1s. Houses, gardens, churches, &c. 1,000,000 Water and roads 1,000,000 ---------- Total: 39,000,000 He valued the live stock of England and Wales at £18-1/4 millions, and estimated the produce of the arable land in England at: Million Value bushels. per bushel. Wheat 14 3s. 6d. Rye 10 2s. 6d. Barley 27 2s. 0d. Oats 16 1s. 6d. Peas 7 2s. 6d. Beans 4 2s. 6d. Vetches 1 2s. 6d. The same statistician drew up a scheme of the income and expenditure of the 'several families' in England in 1688, the population being 5-1/2 millions[353]:-- No. of families Class. Income. in class. 160 Temporal lords £3,200 0 0 800 Baronets 880 0 0 600 Knights 650 0 0 3,000 Esquires 450 0 0 11,000 Gentlemen 280 0 0 2,000 Eminent merchants 400 0 0 8,000 Lesser merchants 198 0 0 10,000 Lawyers 154 0 0 2,000 Eminent clergy 72 0 0 8,000 Lesser clergy 50 0 0 Yeoman: 40,000 Freeholders of the better sort 91 0 0 120,000 Freeholders of the lesser sort 55 0 0 120,000 (Tenant) farmers 42 10 0 50,000 Shopkeepers and tradesmen 45 0 0 60,000 Artisans 38 0 0 364,000 Labouring people and outservants 15 0 0 400,000 Cottagers and paupers 6 10 0 He calculated that the freeholder of the better sort saved on an average £8 15s. 0d. a year per family of 7; and the lesser sort £2 15s. 0d. a year with a family of 5-1/2. The tenant farmer with a family of 5, only saved 25s. a year, while labouring families who, he said, averaged 3-1/2 (certainly an under estimate), lost annually 7s., and cottagers and paupers with families of 3-1/4 (also an under estimate) lost 16s. 3d. a year. It will thus be seen that the tenant farmers, labourers, and cottagers, the bulk of those who worked on the land, were very badly off; the tenant farmer saved considerably less than the artisan. It will also be noticed that the rural population of England was about three-quarters of the whole.[354] The winter of 1683-4 was marked by one of the severest frosts that have ever visited England. Ice on the Thames is said to have been eleven inches thick; by Jan. 9 there were streets of booths on it; and by the 24th, the frost continuing more and more severe, all sorts of shops and trades flourished on the river, 'even to a printing press, where the people and ladies took a fancy to have their names printed and the day and year set down when printed on the Thames.' Coaches plied, there was bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and interludes, tippling 'and other lewd places'--a regular carnival on the water.[355] Altogether the frost which began at Christmas lasted ninety-one days and did much damage on land, many of the trees were split as if struck by lightning, and men and cattle perished in some parts. Poultry and other birds and many plants and vegetables also perished. Wheat, however, was little affected, as the average price was under 40s. a quarter. In 1692 a series of very bad seasons commenced, lasting, with a break in 1694, until 1698, always known as the 'ill' or 'barren' seasons, and the cause was the usual one in England, excessive cold and wet. In 1693 wheat was over 60s. a quarter, and in Kent turnips were made into bread for the poor.[356] The difference in the price of farm produce in various localities was striking, and an eloquent testimony to the wretched means of communication. At Newark, for instance, in 1692-3 wheat was from 36s. to 40s. a quarter, while at Brentford it touched 76s.; next year in the same two places it was 32s. and 86s. respectively. In 1695-6 hay at Newark was 13s. 4d. a ton, at Northampton it was from 35s. to 40s. In 1662 was passed the famous statute of parochial settlement, 14 Car. II, c. 12, which forged cruel fetters for the poor, and is said to have caused the iron of slavery to enter into the soul of the English labourer.[357] The Act states, that the reason for passing it was the continual increase of the poor throughout the kingdom, which had become exceeding burdensome owing to the defects in the law. Poor people, moreover, wandered from one parish to another in order 'to settle where there is the best Stocke, the largest commons or wastes to build cotages, and the most woods for them to burn and destroy.'[358] It was therefore determined to stop these wanderings, and most effectually was it done. Two justices were empowered to remove any person who settled in any tenement under the yearly value of £10 within forty days to the place where he was last legally settled, unless he gave sufficient security for the discharge of the parish in case he became a pauper. It is true that certain relaxations were subsequently made. The Act of 1691, 3 W. & M., c. 2, allowed derivative settlements on payment of taxes for one year, serving an annual office, hiring for a year, and apprenticeship; while the Act of 1696, 8 & 9 Wm. III, c. 30, allowed the grant of a certificate of settlement, under which safeguard the holder could migrate to a district where his labour was required, the new parish being assured he would not become chargeable to it, and therefore not troubling to remove him till there was actual need: but the statute acted as an effectual check on migration and prevented the labourer carrying his work where it was wanted.[359] It became the object of parishes to have as few cottages and therefore as few poor as possible. In 'close' parishes, i.e. where all the land belonged to one owner, as distinguished from 'open' ones where it belonged to several, all the cottages were often pulled down so that labourers coming to work in it had to travel long distances in all weathers. We shall see further relaxation in the law in 1795, but it was not until modern times that this abominable system was destroyed. The agricultural labourer's difficulty in building a house was aggravated by the statute 31 Eliz., c. 7, before noticed, which in order to restrain the building of cottages enacted that none, except in towns and certain other places, were to be built unless 4 acres of land were attached to them, under a penalty of £10, and 40s. a month for continuing to maintain it. This Act was not repealed until the reign of George III. However, it seems to have been frequently winked at. In Shropshire, for instance, the fine often was only nominal; in the seventeenth century orders authorizing the building of cottages on the waste were freely given by the Court of Quarter Sessions, and orders were also made by the Court for the erection of cottages elsewhere.[360] At the restoration of Charles II the corn laws had practically been unaltered since 1571,[361] when it had been enacted that corn might be exported from certain ports in certain ships at all times when proclamation was not made to the contrary, on a payment of 12d. a quarter on wheat and 8d. a quarter on other grain. Now both export and import were subjected to heavy duties, but these caused such high prices in corn that they were reduced in 1663; yet high duties were again imposed in 1673, which continued until the revolution. Then, owing to good crops and low prices, which brought distress on the landed interest, a new policy was introduced: export duties were abolished and the other extreme resorted to, viz. a bounty on export of 5s. in the quarter as long as the home price did not exceed 48s. At the same time import duties remained high, and this system lasted till 1773. Never had the corn-growers of England been so thoroughly protected, yet, owing to causes over which the legislators had no control, namely bountiful seasons, the prices of wheat for the next seventy years was from 15 to 20 per cent. cheaper than in the previous forty. Modern economists have described this system as one of the worst instances of a class using their legislative power to subsidize themselves at the expense of the community. As a matter of fact it was the firm conviction of the statesmen and economists of the time, that husbandry, being the main industry and prop of England, and the foundation on which the whole political power of the country was based, should receive every encouragement. At all events, in many ways the policy was successful.[362] It encouraged investment in land, and materially assisted the agricultural improvement for which the eighteenth century was noted, the export too employed English shipping, and thus aided industry. Arthur Young said it was the singular felicity of this country to have devised a plan which accomplished the strange paradox of at once lowering the price of corn and encouraging agriculture, for by the system in vogue till 1773 if corn was scarce it was imported, while if there was a glut at home export was assisted so that great fluctuations in price were prevented.[363] It seemed of the utmost importance to men of that time that England should be self-supporting and independent of possible adversaries for the necessaries of life; the wisdom of the policy was never questioned, and was accepted by statesmen of every party.[364] To blame the landowners for adopting what seemed the wisest course to every sensible person is merely an instance of partisan spite. At the Peace of Paris in 1763 the question as to whether England or France was to be the great colonizing country of the world was finally settled, and a great development of English trade ensued. It was accompanied by a great increase of population, exports of corn were largely reduced, and the balance began to incline the other way, so that the next Act of importance was that of 1773 which permitted the import of foreign wheat at a nominal duty of 6d. a quarter when it was over 48s., but prohibited export and the bounty on export when wheat was at or above 44s. This was the nearest approach to free trade before 1846. The time, however, was not yet ripe for this, and the nominal duty on imports was too small for landlords and farmers, so that in 1791 the price when the same nominal duty was to come into force was raised to 54s., while between 50s. and 54s. a duty of 2s. 6d. was imposed, and under 50s. a duty of 24s. 3d.; and export was allowed without bounty when wheat was under 46s. Export of corn, however, by this time had become a matter of little moment, England having definitely ceased to be an exporting country after 1789. Not only were English landowners after the Restoration anxious to protect their corn, but they also took alarm at the imports of Irish cattle which they said lowered English rents, so that in 1665 and 1680 (18 Car. II, c. 2, and 32 Car. II, c. 2) laws were framed absolutely prohibiting the import of Irish cattle, sheep, and swine, as well as of beef, pork, bacon, and mutton, and even butter and cheese. The statute 12 Car. II, c. 4, also virtually excluded Irish wool from England by duties amounting to prohibition. It was not until 1759 that free imports of cattle from Ireland were allowed for five years,[365] a period prolonged by 5 Geo. III, c. 10, and a statute of 1772. In 1699 wool was allowed to be shipped from six specified ports in Ireland to eight specified ports in England,[366] and by 16 Geo. II, c. 11, wool might be sent from Ireland to any port in England under certain restrictions. FOOTNOTES: [339] Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_ (ed. 1669), p. 10. [340] Ibid. p. 124. [341] Ibid. p. 124. [342] _Pomona_ (ed. 1664), p. 1. [343] Ed. 1635, Book i, p. 175. [344] Markham, _op. cit._ i. 188. [345] Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 38. Plot, however, in his _Natural History of Staffordshire_, 1686, says hemp and flax were sown in small quantities all over the county, p. 109. [346] _New System of Agriculture_ (ed. 1726), p. 113. Woad is still grown 'in some districts in England' (Morton, _Cyclopaedia of Agriculture_, ii. 1159), but in the Agricultural Returns of 1907 apparently occupies too small an acreage to entitle it to a separate mention. [347] Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 43. [348] Tull, in his _Horseshoeing Husbandry_ (p. 147), speaks of the drill as if already in use. [349] Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 205. [350] The seedlip was a long-shaped basket suspended from the sower's shoulder and was usually made of wood. [351] Horse-girths for securing pack-saddles. [352] Houghton, about the same time, said England contained 28 to 29 million acres, of which 12 millions lay waste (_Collections_, iv. II). In 1907 the Board of Agriculture returned the total area of England and Wales, excluding water, at 37,130,344 acres. [353] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 228. [354] If we allow that most of the two last classes enumerated were country folk. For the decline of the yeoman class, see chap. xviii. [355] Evelyn's _Diary_. [356] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 23. [357] Fowle, _Poor Law_, p. 63. [358] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 66, says, 'the abuses complained of in the preamble (of the Act) did actually exist.' [359] Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 67, 134, says the statute of 1662 did not entail so much evil by hindering migration as is generally supposed. [360] _Shropshire County Records_: Abstracts of the orders made by the Court of Quarter Sessions, 1638-1782, pp. xxiv, xxv. [361] See above, p. 70. 13 Eliz., c. 13. McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1852), p. 412. [362] Cunningham, _English Industry and Commerce_, ii. 371. [363] _Political Arithmetic_, pp. 27-34, 193, 276. [364] Lecky, _England in the Eighteenth Century_, vi. 192. [365] McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, iii. 311. [366] Ibid. ii. 706; iii. 221, 293. CHAPTER XIV 1700-1765 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.--CROPS.--CATTLE.-- DAIRYING.--POULTRY.--TULL AND THE NEW HUSBANDRY.--BAD TIMES. --FRUIT-GROWING The history of agriculture in the eighteenth century is remarkable for several features of great importance. It first saw the application of capital in large quantities to farming, the improvements of the time being largely initiated by rich landowners whom Young praises rightly as public-spirited men who deserved well of their country, though Thorold Rogers attributes a meaner motive for the improvement of their estates, namely, their desire not to be outshone by the wealthy merchants.[367] They were often ably assisted by tenant farmers, many of whom were now men with considerable capital, for whom the smaller farms were amalgamated into large ones. After the agricultural revolution of the latter half of the century, the tendency to consolidate small holdings into large farms grew apace and was looked on as a decided mark of progress. This agricultural revolution was largely a result of the industrial revolution that then took place in England. Owing to mechanical inventions and the consequent growth of the factory system, the great manufacturing towns arose, whence came a great demand for food, and, to supply this demand, farms, instead of being small self-sufficing holdings just growing enough for the farmer and his family and servants, grew larger, and became manufactories of corn and meat. The century was also remarkable for another great change. England, hitherto an exporting country, became an importing one. The progress of the century was furthered by a band of men whose names are, or ought to be, household words with English farmers: Jethro Tull, Lord Townshend, Arthur Young, Bakewell, Coke of Holkham, and the Collings. Further the century witnessed a great number of enclosures, especially when it was drawing to its close. According to the Report of the Committee on Waste Lands in 1797, the number of Enclosure Acts was: under Anne, 2 Acts, enclosing 1,439 acres; under Geo. I, 16 Acts, enclosing 17,960 acres; under Geo. II, 226 Acts, enclosing 318,778 acres; from 1760 to 1797, 1,532 Acts, enclosing 2,804,197 acres. The period from 1700 to 1765 has been called the golden age of the agricultural classes, as the fifteenth century has been called the golden age of the labourer, but the farmer and landlord were often hard pressed; rates were low, wages were fair, and the demand for the produce of the farm constant owing to the growth of the population, yet prices for wheat, stock, and wool were often unremunerative to the farmer, and we are told in 1734, 'necessity has compelled our farmers to more carefulness and frugality in laying out their money than they were accustomed to in better times.'[368] The labourer's wages varied according to locality. The assessment of wages by the magistrates in Lancashire for 1725 remains, and according to that the ordinary labourer earned 10d. a day in the summer and 9d. in the winter months, with extras in harvest, and this may be taken as the average pay at that date. Threshing and winnowing wheat by piece-work cost 2s. a quarter, oats 1s. a quarter. Making a ditch 4 feet wide at the top, 18 inches wide at the bottom, and 3 feet deep, double set with quicks, cost 1s. a rood (8 yards), 10d. if without the quick.[369] The magistrates remarked in their proclamation on the plenty of the times and were afraid that for the northern part of the county, which was then very backward, the wages were too liberal. Wheat was, unfortunately, that year 46s. 1d. a quarter, but a few years before and after that date it was cheap--20s., 24s., 28s. a quarter--and fresh meat was only 3d. a lb., so that their wages went a long way.[370] A considerable portion of the wages was paid in kind, not only in drink but in food, though this custom became less frequent as the century went on.[371] As for his food, Eden tells us[372] that the diet of Bedford workhouse in 1730 was much better than that of the most industrious labourer in his own home, and this was the diet: bread and cheese or broth for breakfast, boiled beef hot or cold, sometimes with suet pudding for dinner, and bread and cheese or broth for supper. This must have been sufficiently monotonous, and we may be sure the labourer at home very seldom had boiled beef for dinner; but in the north he was much cleverer than his southern brother in cooking cereal foods such as oatmeal porridge, crowdie (also of oatmeal), frumenty or barley milk, barley broth, &c.[373] The village of the first half of the eighteenth century contained a much better graded society than the village of to-day. It had few gaps, so that there was a ladder from the lowest to the highest ranks, owing to the existence of many small holders of various degree, soon to be diminished by enclosure and consolidation.[374] There was a great increase in the number of live stock owing to the spread, gradual though it was, of roots and clover, which increased the winter food; 'of late years,' it was said in 1739, 'there have been improvements made in the breed of sheep by changing of rams, and sowing of turnips, grass seeds, &c.'[375] Crops, too, were improving; and enclosed lands about 1726 were said to produce over 20 bushels of wheat to the acre.[376] Though the number of Enclosure Acts at the beginning of the century was nothing like the number at the end, the process was steadily going on, often by non-parliamentary enclosure, and was approved by nearly every one. Some, however, were opposed to it. John Cowper, who wrote an essay on 'Enclosing Commons' in 1732, said, a common was often the chief support of forty or fifty poor families, and even though their rights were bought out they were under the necessity of leaving their old homes, for their occupation was gone; but he says nothing of the well-known increased demand for labour on the enclosed lands. The force of his arguments may be gauged from his answer to Lawrence's statement that enclosure is the greatest benefit to good husbandry, and a remedy for idleness. On the contrary, says he, who among the country people live lazier lives than the grazier and the dairyman? All the dairyman has to do is to call his cows together to be milked! Worlidge in 1669 had lamented that turnips were so little grown by English farmers in the field, and that it was a plant 'usually nourished in gardens',[377] and in a letter to Houghton in 1684, he is the first to mention the feeding of turnips to sheep.[378] However, in 1726 it was said that nothing of late years had turned to greater profit to the farmer, who now found it one of his chief treasures; and there were then three sorts: the round which was most common, the yellow, and the long.[379] For winter use they were to be sown from the beginning of June to the middle of August, on fallow which had been brought to a good tilth, the seed harrowed in with a bush harrow, and if necessary rolled. When the plants had two or three leaves each they were to be hoed out, leaving them five or six inches apart, though some slovenly farmers did not trouble to do this; but there is no mention of hoeing between the rows. The fly was already recognized as a pest, and soot and common salt were used to fight it. Folding sheep in winter on turnips was then little practised, though Lawrence strongly recommends it. According to Defoe,[380] Suffolk was remarkable for being the first county where the feeding and fattening of sheep and other cattle with turnips was first practised in England, to the great improvement of the land, 'whence', he says, 'the practice is spread over most of the east and south, to the great enriching of farmers and increase of fat cattle.' There were great disputes as to collecting the tithe, always a sore subject, on turnips; and the custom seems to have been that if they were eaten off by store sheep they went tithe free, if sheep were fattened on them the tithe was paid.[381] Clover, the other great novelty of the seventeenth century, was now generally sown with barley, oats, or rye grass, about 15 lb. per acre. This amount, sown on 2 acres of barley, would next year produce 2 loads worth about £5. The next crop stood for seed, which was cut in August, the hay being worth £9, and the seed out of it, 300 lb., was sold much of it for 16d. a lb., the sum realized in that year from the 2 acres being £30, without counting the aftermath. At this time most of the seed was still imported from Flanders.[382] Much of the common and waste land of England, not previously worth 6d. an acre, had been by 1732 vastly improved through sowing artificial grasses on it, so that various people had gained considerable estates.[383] Carrots were also now grown as a field crop in places, especially near London, two sorts being known, the yellow and red, used chiefly by farmers for feeding their hogs.[384] Of wheat the names were many, but there were apparently only seven distinct sorts, the Double-eared, Eggshell, Red or Kentish, Great-bearded, Pollard, Grey, and Flaxen or Lammas.[385] The growth of saffron had declined, though the English variety was the best in the world, according to Lawrence, and except in Cambridgeshire and about Saffron Walden it was little known. Though it was still some time before the days of Bakewell, increased attention was given to cattle-breeding; it was urged that a well-shaped bull be put to cows, one that had 'a broad and curled forehead, long horns, fleshy neck, and a belly long and large.'[386] Such in 1726 was the ideal type of the long-horns of the Midland and the north, but it was noticed that of late years and especially in the north the Dutch breed was much sought after, which had short horns and long necks, the breed with which the Collings were to work such wonders. The then great price of £20 had been given for a cow of this breed. Bradley, Professor of Botany at Cambridge, and a well-known writer on agriculture, divided the cattle of England into three sorts according to their colour: the black, white, and red.[387] The black, commonly the smallest, was the strongest for labour, chiefly found in mountainous countries; also bred chiefly in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire, sixty years before this, and in those days Cheshire cheese came from these cattle, apparently very much like the modern Welsh breed.[388] The white were much larger, and very common in Lincolnshire at the end of the seventeenth century. They gave more milk than the black sort but went dry sooner. They were also found in Suffolk and Surrey. The red cattle were the largest in England, their milk rich and nourishing, so much so that it was given specially to consumptives. They were first bred in Somerset, where in Bradley's time particular attention was paid to their breeding, and were evidently the ancestors of the modern Devons. About London these cows were often fed on turnips, given them tops and all, which made their milk bitter. They were also found in Lincolnshire and some other counties, where 'they were fed on the marshes', and Defoe saw, in the Weald of Kent, 'large Kentish bullocks, generally all red with their horns crooked inward.' Bradley gives the following balance sheet for a dairy of nine cows:[389] DR. £ s. d. 6 months' grass keep at 1s. 6d. per week per head 17 11 0 6 months' winter keep (straw, hay, turnips, and grains) at 2s. per week per head 23 8 0 --------- £40 19 0 ========= CR. 13,140 gallons of milk 136 17 6 40 19 0 --------- Balance (profit) £95 18 6 ========= A correspondent, however, pointed out to Bradley that this yield and profit was far above the average, which was about £5 a cow, on whom Bradley retorted that it could be made, though it was exceptional. In the eighteenth century the great trade of driving Scottish cattle to London began, Walter Scott's grandfather being the pioneer. The route followed diverged from the Great North Road in Yorkshire in order to avoid turnpikes, and the cattle, grazing leisurely on the strips of grass by the roadside, generally arrived at Smithfield in good condition.[390] Defoe tells us that most of the Scottish cattle which came yearly into England were brought to the village of S. Faiths, north of Norwich, 'where the Norfolk graziers go and buy them. These Scots runts, coming out of the cold and barren highlands, feed so eagerly on the rich pasture in these marshes that they grow very fat. There are above 40,000 of these Scots cattle fed in this county every year. The gentlemen of Galloway go to England with their droves of cattle and take the money themselves.'[391] It was no uncommon thing for a Galloway nobleman to send 4,000 black cattle and 4,000 sheep to England in a year, and altogether from 50,000 to 60,000 cattle were said to come to England from Galloway yearly. Gentlemen on the Border before the Union got a very pretty living by tolls from these cattle; and the Earl of Carlisle made a good income in this way. Cattle were sometimes of a great size. In 1697, in the park of Sir John Fagg near Steyning, Defoe saw four bullocks of Sir John's own breeding for which was refused in Defoe's hearing £26 apiece. They were driven to Smithfield and realized £25 each, having probably sunk on the way, but dressed they weighed 80 stone a quarter![392] These weights must have been very exceptional, but go to prove that cattle then could be grown to much greater size than is generally credited. A good price for a bullock in the first half of the eighteenth century was from £7 to £10. The best poultry at the same date (1736) were said to be 'the white-feathered sort', especially those that had short and white legs, which were esteemed for the whiteness of their flesh; but those that had long yellow legs and yellow beaks were considered good for nothing.[393] Care was to be used in the choice of a cock, for those of the game kind were to be avoided as unprofitable. Bradley gives a balance sheet for 12 hens and 2 cocks who had a free run in a farmyard and an orchard:[394] DR. £ s. d. 39 bushels of barley 3 5 0 Balance, profit 16 0 ---------- £4 1 0 ========== CR. £ s. d. Eggs (number unfortunately not given) 1 5 0 20 early chickens at 1s. 1 0 0 72 late chickens at 6d. 1 16 0 ---------- £4 1 0 ========== He also recommends that in stocking a farm of £200 a year the following poultry should be purchased: £ s. d. 24 chickens at 4d. 8 0 20 geese 1 0 0 20 turkeys 1 0 0 24 ducks 12 0 6 pair of pigeons 12 0 The best way to fatten chickens, according to Bradley, was to put them in coops and feed them with barley meal, being careful to put a small quantity of brickdust in their water to give them an appetite.[395] On this farm were 20 acres of cow pasture besides common, and this with some turnips kept 9 cows, which gave about three gallons of milk a day at least, the milk being worth 1d. a quart. His pigs were of the 'Black Bantham' breed, which were better than the large sort common in England, for the flesh was much more delicate. Suffolk was famous for supplying London with turkeys.[396] Three hundred droves of turkeys, each numbering from 300 to 1000, had in one season passed over Stratford Bridge on the road from Ipswich to London. Geese also travelled on foot to London in prodigious numbers from Norfolk, Suffolk, and the Fen country, often 1,000 to 3,000 in a drove, starting in August when harvest was nearly over, so that the geese might feed on the stubble by the way; 'and thus they hold on to the end of October, when the roads begin to be too stiff and deep for their broad feet and short legs to march on.' There was, however, a more rapid method of getting poultry to the great market, by means of carts of four stages or stories, one above another, to carry the birds in, drawn by two horses, which by means of relays travelled night and day, and covered as much as 100 miles in two days and one night, the driver sitting on the topmost stage. Hop growing in 1729, according to Richard Bradley, paid well; he says, 'ground never esteemed before worth a shilling an acre per annum, is rendered worth forty, fifty, or sometimes more pounds a year by planting hops judiciously. An acre of hops shall bring to the owner clear profit about £30 yearly; but I have known hop grounds that have cleared above £50 yearly per acre.' At this date 12,000 acres in England were planted with hops. The great market for hops was Stourbridge Fair, once the greatest mart in England and still preserving much of its former importance: 'there is scarce any price fixed for hops in England till they know how they sell in Stourbridge Fair.'[397] Thither they came from Chelmsford, Canterbury, Maidstone, and Farnham, where the bulk of the hops in England were then grown, though some were to be found at Wilton near Salisbury, in Herefordshire, and Worcestershire. Round Canterbury Defoe says there were 6,000 acres of hops, all planted within living memory[398]; but the Maidstone district was called 'the mother of hop grounds', and with the country round Feversham was famous for apples and cherries. The finest wool still, it seems, came from near Leominster, where the sheep in Markham's time were described as small-boned and black-faced, with a light fleece, and apparently they still had the same appearance at the beginning of the eighteenth century[399]; and large-boned sheep with coarser wool were to be found in the counties of Warwick, Leicester, Buckingham, Northampton, and Nottingham; in the north of England too were big-boned sheep with inferior wool, the largest with coarse wool being found in the marshes of Lincolnshire. About this time wool had fallen much in price: 'Has nobody told you,' writes a west country farmer to his absentee landlord in 1737, 'that wool has fallen to near half its price, and that we cannot find purchasers for a great part of it at any price whatsoever. When most of our estates (farms) were taken wool was generally 7d., 8d., or more by the pound; the same is now 4d. and still falling.'[400] But the latter price was exceptionally low; Smith[401] gives the following average prices per tod of 28 lb.: 1706 17s. 6d. 1717-8 23s. to 27s. 1737-42 11s. to 14s. 1743 20s. 1743-53 24s. After 1753 it fell again, largely owing to the great plague among cattle, which brought about a 'prodigious increase of sheep'[402]; and about 1770 Young[403] favoured corn rather than wool, for there was always a market for the former, but the foreign demand for cloth was diminishing, especially in the case of France, besides prohibition of export kept down the price.[404] Yet although wool was being deserted for corn it had in Young's time 'been so long supposed the staple and foundation of all our wealth, that it is somewhat dangerous to hazard an opinion not consonant to its encouragement'. At the end of the century, however, there was a rapid increase in the price, partly due to increased demand by spinners and weavers who, owing to machinery, were working more economically; and partly to the enclosure of commons, and the ploughing up of land for corn.[405] Cheshire had long been famous for cheese. Barnaby Googe, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, says, 'in England the best cheese is the Cheshyre and the Shropshyre, then the Banbury cheese, next the Suffolk and the Essex, and the very worst the Kentish cheese.' Camden, who died in 1623, tells us that 'the grasse and fodder (in Cheshire) is of that goodness and vertue that cheeses be made here in great number, and of a most pleasing and delicate taste such as all England again affordeth not the like, no though the best dairywomen otherwise and skillfullest in cheese making be had from hence;' and a little later it was said no other county in the realm could compare with Cheshire, not even that wonderful agricultural country Holland from which England learnt so much.[406] In Lawrence's time Cheddar cheese was also famous, and there it had long been a custom for several neighbours to join their milk together to make cheeses, which were of a large size, weighing from 30 lb. to 100 lb. Good cheese came also from Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. The Cheshire men sent great quantities by sea to London, a long and tedious voyage, or else by land to Burton-on-Trent, and down that river to Hull and then by sea to London. The Gloucestershire men took it to Lechlade and sent it down the Thames; from Warwickshire it went by land all the way, or to Oxford and thence down the Thames to London. Stilton, too, had lately become famous, and was considered the best of all, selling for the then great price of 1s. a lb. on the farm, and 2s. 6d. at the Bell Inn, Stilton, where it seems to have first been sold in large quantities, though Leicestershire perhaps claims the honour of first making it.[407] The eastern side of Suffolk was, in Defoe's time, famous for the best butter and perhaps the worst cheese in England, the butter being 'barrelled and sometimes pickled up in small casks'.[408] Rabbits were occasionally kept in large numbers for profit; at Auborne Chase in Wilts, there was a warren of 700 acres surrounded by a wall--a most effective way of preventing escape, but somewhat expensive. In winter time they were fed on hay, and hazel branches from which they ate the bark. They were never allowed to get below 8,000 head, and from these, after deducting losses by poachers, weazles, polecats, foxes, &c., 24,000 were sold annually. These rabbits, owing to the quality of the grass, were famous for the sweetness of their flesh. The proprietor, Mr. Gilbert, began to kill them at Bartholomewtide, Aug. 24, and from then to Michaelmas obtained 9s. a dozen for them delivered free in London; but those from Michaelmas to Christmas realized 10s. 6d. a dozen. The difference in price at the two periods is accounted for by the fact that their skins were much better in the latter, and the rabbits kept longer when killed; they must also have been larger. A skin before Michaelmas was only worth 1d., but soon after nearly 6d.; and in Hertfordshire was a warren where rabbit skins with silvery hair fetched 1s. each.[409] We have now reached the period when the result of Jethro Tull's labours was given to the world, his _Horse-hoeing Husbandry_ appearing in 1733. It is no exaggeration to say that agriculture owes more to Tull than to any other man; the principles formulated in his famous book revolutionized British agriculture, though we shall see that it took a long time to do it. He has indeed been described as 'the greatest individual improver agriculture ever knew'. He first realized that deep and perfect pulverization is the great secret of vegetable nutrition, and was thus led on to perfect the system of drilling seed wide enough apart to admit of tillage in the intervals, and abandoning the wide ridges in vogue, laid the land into narrow ridges 5 feet or 6 feet wide. He was born at Basildon in Berkshire, heir to a good estate, and was called to the bar in 1699, but on his marriage in the same year settled on the paternal farm of Howberry in Oxfordshire. In his preface to his book he throws a flash of light on country life at a time when the roads were nearly as bad as in the Middle Ages, so that they effectually isolated different parts of England, when he speaks of 'a long confinement within the limits of a lonely farm, in a country where I am a stranger, having debarred me from all conversation'.[410] He took to agriculture more by necessity than by choice, for he knew too much 'the inconveniency and slavery attending the exorbitant power of husbandry servants', and he further gives this extraordinary character of the farm labourer of his day: ''Tis the most formidable objection against our agriculture that the defection of labourers is such that few gentlemen can keep their land in their own hands, but let them for a little to tenants who can bear to be insulted, assaulted, kicked, cuffed, and Bridewelled, with more patience than gentlemen are endowed with.'[411] Tull wrote just before it became the fashion for gentlemen to go into farming, and laments that the lands of the country were all, or mostly, in the hands of rack-renters, whose supposed interest it was that they should never be improved for fear of fines and increased rents. Gentlemen then knew so little of farming that they were unable to manage their estates. No doubt his scathing remarks helped to initiate the well-known change in this respect, and soon, over all England, gentlemen of education and position were engaged in removing this reproach from their class. The same complaint as to their ignorance of matters connected with their land crops up again during the great French war, but they then had a good excuse, as they were busy fighting the French. Tull invented his drill about 1701 at Howberry. The first occasion for making it, he says, was that it 'was very difficult to find a man that could sow clover tolerably; they had a habit to throw it once with the hand to two large strides and go twice in each cast; thus, with 9 or 10 lb. of seed to an acre, two-thirds of the ground was unplanted. To remedy this I made a hopper, to be drawn by a boy, that planted an acre sufficiently with 6 lb. of seed; but when I added to this hopper an exceeding light plough that made 6 channels eight inches asunder, into which 2 lb. to an acre being drilled the ground was as well planted. This drill was easily drawn by a man, and sometimes by a boy.' His invention was largely prompted by his desire to do without the insolent farm servant whom he has described above, and the year after it was invented he certainly had his wish, for they struck in a body and were dismissed: 'it were more easy to teach the beasts of the field than to drive the ploughman out of his way.' His ideas were largely derived from the mechanism of the organ which, being fond of music, he had mastered in his youth--a rotary mechanism, which is the foundation of all agricultural sowing implements. His first invention may be described as a drill plough to sow wheat and turnip seed in drills three rows at a time, a harrow to cover the seed being attached. Afterwards he invented a turnip drill, so arranged as regards dropping the seed and its subsequent covering with soil that half the seed should come up earlier than the rest, to enable a portion at least to escape the dreaded fly. He was a great believer in doing everything himself, and worked so hard at his drill that he had to go abroad for his health. He was somewhat carried away by his invention, and asserts that the expense of a drilled crop of wheat was one-ninth of that sown in the old way, giving the following figures to prove his assertion: _The Old Way_ £ s. d. Seed, 2-1/2 bushels, at 3s. 7 6 Three ploughings, harrrowing, and sowing 16 0 Weeding 2 0 Rent of preceding fallow 10 0 Manure 2 10 0 Reaping 4 6 --------- £ 4 10 0[412] ========= _The New Way_ Seed, 3 pecks 2 3 Tillage 4 0 Drilling 6 Weeding 6 Uncovering (removing clods fallen on the wheat) 2 Brine and lime 1 Reaping 2 6 ----- 10 0 ===== It should be noted that he has omitted to charge rent for the year in which the crop was grown in both cases. He considered fallowing and manure unnecessary, and grew without manure 13 successive wheat crops on the same piece of ground, getting better crops than his neighbours who pursued the ordinary course of farming. His three great principles, indeed, were drilling, reduction of seed, and absence of weeds, and he saw that dung was a great carrier of the latter but lacked a due appreciation of its chemical action. Of course, like all _improvers_, he was met with unlimited opposition, and on the publication of his book he was assailed with abuse, which, being a sensitive man, caused him extreme annoyance. His health was bad, his troubles with his labourers unending, his son a spendthrift, and he died at his now famous home, Prosperous Farm, near Hungerford, in 1741, having said not long before his death, 'Some, allowed as good judges, have upon a full view and examination of my practice declared their opinion that it would one day become the general husbandry of England.'[413] Scotland was the first to perceive the merits of the system, and it gradually worked southwards into England, but for many years had to fight against ignorance and prejudice, even so intelligent a man as Arthur Young being opposed to it. Farm leases had by this time assumed their modern form, and cultivation clauses were numerous. In one of 1732, at Hawsted, the tenant was to keep the hedges in repair, being allowed bushes and stakes for so doing. He was also to bestow on some part of the lands one load of good rotten muck over and above what was made on the farm for every load of hay, straw, or stover (fodder) which he should carry off.[414] In another of 1740, he was to leave in the last year of the tenancy one-third of the arable land summer tilled, ploughed, and fallowed, for which he was to be paid according to the custom of the country. In 1753, in the lease of Pinford End Farm, there was a penalty of £10 an acre for breaking up pasture; a great increase in the amount of the penalty. All compost, dung, soil, and ashes arising on the farm were to be bestowed upon it. Only two crops successively were to be taken on any of the arable land, but land sown with clover and rye-grass, if fed off, or with turnips which were fed on some part of the farm, were not to count as crops. The ashes mentioned were those from wood, which were now carefully looked after, as it had become the custom to sell them to the soap-boilers, who came round to every farm collecting them. This is the earliest mention in a Hawsted lease of rye-grass, clover, and turnips, though clover and turnips had been first cultivated there about 1700, and soon spread. The winter of 1708-9 was very severe, a great frost lasting from October until the spring; wheat was 81s. 9d. a quarter, and high prices lasted until 1715.[415] From 1715 to 1765 was an era of good seasons and low prices generally; in that half-century Tooke says there were only five bad seasons. In 1732 prices of corn were very low, wheat being about 24s. a quarter, so that we are not surprised to find that its cultivation often did not pay at all.[416] At Little Gadsden in Hertfordshire, in that year a fair season, and on enclosed land, the following is the balance sheet for an acre: DR. £ s. d. Rent 12 0 Dressing (manuring) 1 0 0 2-1/2 bushels of seed 7 6 Ploughing first time 6 0 " twice more 8 0 Harrowing 6 Reaping and carrying 6 6 Threshing 3 9 -------- 3 4 3 ======== CR. £ s. d. 15 bushels of wheat (a poor crop, as 20 bushels was now about the average) 2 2 0 Straw 11 6 2 13 6 -------- _LOSS_ 10 9 ======== On barley, worth about £1 a quarter, the loss was 3s. 6d. an acre; on oats, worth 13s. a quarter, however, the profit was 21s.; on beans, 26s. 6d., these being that year exceptionally good and worth 20s. a quarter.[417] Ellis objected to the new mode of drilling wheat because, he said, the rows are more exposed to the violence of the winds, rains, &c., by growing apart, than if close together, when the stalks support each other.[418] This estimate may be compared to that of Tull for the 'old way' of sowing wheat,[419] and to the following estimate of fifty years later in Surrey, when wheat was a much better price:-- DR. £ s. d. Rent, tithe, taxes 1 0 0 Team, &c. 1 0 0 2 bushels of seed 10 0 Carting and spreading manure and water furrowing 2 6 Brining 6 Weeding 1 6 Reaping and carrying 9 0 Threshing and cleaning 7 6 Binding straw 1 6 --------- £3 12 6[420] ========= CR. 20 bushels at 5s. 5 0 0 1-1/2 loads of straw 1 2 6 --------- £6 2 6 ========= The profit was thus £2 10s. 0d. an acre, and for barley it was £3 3s. 6d., for oats £1 19s. 10d., for beans £1 13s. 0d.[421] This crop of wheat was not very good, as the average in that district was from 20 to 25 bushels per acre, and Young before this saw crops of 30 bushels per acre growing. The over frequent use of fallows, which had so long marked agriculture, was in the early half of the eighteenth century beginning to be strongly disapproved of. Bradley advocated the continuous cultivation of the ground with different kinds of crops, 'for I find', he said, 'by experience that if such crops are sown as are full of fibrous roots, such roots greatly help to open the parts of grounds inclining to too much stiffness.'[422] FOOTNOTES: [367] _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, p. 472. [368] See Baker, _Record of Seasons and Prices_, p. 185. [369] Eden, _State of the Poor_, iii p. cvii; Thorold Rogers, _Work and Wages_, p. 396. [370] In Herefordshire at this time it was 1-1/2d. per lb. [371] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 86. [372] Eden, _op. cit._ i. 286. [373] Ibid. i. 498. [374] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 71. [375] Smith, _Memoirs of Wool_, ii. 93. [376] John Lawrence, _New System of Agriculture_, p. 45. In 1712, a normal season, 48 acres of wheat at Southwick in Hants produced 16 bushels per acre, 45 acres of barley 12 bushels per acre, 30 acres of oats 24 bushels per acre; at the same place 240 sheep realized 8s. each, cows 65s., calves £1, horses £6, hay 25s. a ton (_Hampshire Notes and Queries_, iii. 120). [377] Worlidge, _Systema Agriculturae_, p. 42. [378] _Collections_, iv. 142. [379] Lawrence, _New System of Agriculture_, p. 109. [380] _Tour_ (ed. 1724), i. 87. [381] Ellis, _Chiltern and Vale Farming_, p. 353. [382] Bradley, _General Treatise_, i. 175. [383] Ellis, _Chiltern and Vale Farming_, p. 260. [384] J. Lawrence, _New System of Agriculture_, p. 112. [385] Ibid. p. 92. About 1757 Lucerne, hitherto little grown in England, took its place in the rotation of crops. [386] Ibid. p. 130. [387] _A General Treatise on Husbandry_ (1726), i. 72; cf. c. [388] The black cattle seem to have been spread very generally over England, according to previous writers and to Defoe, who often mentions them. He saw a 'prodigious quantity' in the meadows by the Waveney in Norfolk.--_Tour_, i. 97. [389] Bradley, _General Treatise_, i. 76. [390] Slater, _English Peasantry_, p. 52. [391] _Tour_ (ed. 1724), i. (1) 97, and iii. (2) 73. [392] Ibid. i. 63. [393] J. Lawrence, _New System of Agriculture_, p. 151. [394] Bradley, _General Treatise_, i. 110. [395] _Country Gentleman and Farmer's Director_ (1726), p. 7. [396] Defoe, _Tour_, i. 87. [397] Defoe, _Tour_ (3rd ed.), i. 81. [398] Defoe, _Tour_ (ed. 1724), ii. 1, 134. [399] Bradley, _General Treatise_, i. 160; see also Smith, _Memoirs of Wool_, ii. 169, where the sheep of Leominster, of Cotteswold, and of the Isle of Wight are said to be the best in 1719. The great market for sheep was Weyhill Fair, and Stourbridge Fair was a great wool market. [400] _The West Country Farmer, a Representation of the Decay of Trade_, 1737. [401] _Memoirs of Wool_, ii. 243. [402] Ibid. ii. 399. [403] _Farmer's Letters_ (3rd ed.), p. 27. [404] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, ii. 384. [405] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, ii. 458. [406] Ormerod, _Cheshire_, i. 129. These words were written about 1656. [407] See _Victoria County History: Rutland, Agriculture_. Stilton was eaten in the same condition as many prefer it now, 'with the mites round it so thick that they bring a spoon for you to eat them.' [408] Defoe, _Tour_, i. (1) 78. Cheshire cheese was 2d. to 2-1/2d. per lb., Cheddar 6d. to 8d. in 1724, an extraordinary difference. [409] Bradley, i. 172. [410] Preface to _Horse-hoeing Husbandry_, (ed. 1733). [411] _Horse-hoeing Husbandry_, p. vi. [412] _The West Country Farmer_, above quoted, says wheat growing (in 1737) paid little. Before a bushel can be sold it costs £4 an acre, and the crop probably fetches half the money. [413] _R.A.S.E. Journ._ (3rd Ser.), ii. 20. [414] Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 216. [415] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 35. [416] Wheat averaged: 1718-22 about 27s. 1730 about 30s. 1750 about 30s. 1724 " 36s. 1732 " 24s. 1755 " 35s. 1725 " 46s. 1736 " 30s. 1760 " 38s. 1726 " 35s. 1740 " 42s. 1765 " 42s. 1728 " 52s. 1744 " 23s. [417] Ellis, _Chiltern and Vale Farming_, p. 209. Nothing is charged for tithe and taxes. [418] Ibid. p. 352. [419] See above, p. 177, also p. 199 for Young's estimate in 1770. [420] Nothing is charged for the manure which was carted and spread. [421] John Trusler, _Practical Husbandry_, p. 28. [422] _Country Gentleman and Farmer's Director_ (1726), p. xiii. CHAPTER XV 1700-1765 TOWNSHEND.--SHEEP-ROT.--CATTLE PLAGUE. FRUIT-GROWING In 1730 Charles, second Viscount Townshend, retired from politics, on his quarrel with his brother-in-law Walpole, who remarked that 'as long as the firm was Townshend and Walpole the utmost harmony prevailed, but it no sooner became Walpole and Townshend than things went wrong'. He devoted himself to the management of his Norfolk estates and set an example to English landlords in wisely and diligently experimenting in farm practice which was soon followed on all sides, the names of Lords Ducie, Peterborough, and Bolingbroke being the best known of his fellow-labourers. A generation afterwards Young wrote, 'half the County of Norfolk within the memory of man yielded nothing but sheep feed, whereas those very tracts of land are now covered with as fine barley and rye as any in the world and great quantities of wheat besides.'[423] There can be no doubt from this statement, made by an eyewitness of exceptional capacity, that he commenced the work so nobly carried on by Coke. The same authority tells us that when Townshend began his improvements near Norwich much of the land was an extensive heath without either tree or shrub, only a sheepwalk to another farm; so many carriages crossed it that they would sometimes be a mile abreast of each other in pursuit of the best track. By 1760 there was an excellent turnpike road, enclosed on each side with a good quickset hedge, and all the land let out in enclosures and cultivated on the Norfolk system in superior style; the whole being let at 15s. an acre, or ten times its original value. Townshend's two special hobbies were the field cultivation of turnips, and improvement in the rotation of crops. Pope says his conversation was largely of turnips, and he was so zealous in advocating them that he was nicknamed 'Turnip Townsend'.[424] He initiated the Norfolk or four-course system of cropping, in which roots, grasses, and cereals were wisely blended, viz. turnips, barley, clover and rye grass, wheat. He also reintroduced marling to the light lands of Norfolk, and followed Tull's system of drilling and horse-hoeing turnips, with the result that the poor land of which his estate was largely composed was converted into good corn and cattle-growing farms. Like all the progressive agriculturists of the day, he was an advocate of enclosures, and he had no small share in the growth of the movement by which, in the reigns of Anne and the first two Georges, 244 enclosure Acts were passed and 338,177 acres enclosed. The progress of enclosure was alleged as a proof that England was never more prosperous than under Walpole; the number of private gentlemen in Britain of ample estates was said to exceed that of any country in the world proportionately, and was far greater than in the reign of Charles II. The value of land at twenty-six or twenty-seven years' purchase was a conclusive proof of the wealth of England.[425] Though, however, the first half of the century was generally prosperous there were bad times for farmer and landlord. We have seen that wheat-growing paid little, although from 1689 to 1773 the farmer was protected against imports and aided by a bounty on exports. In 1738 Lord Lyttelton wrote: 'In most parts of England, gentlemen's rents are so ill paid and the weight of taxes lies so heavy upon them that those who have nothing from the Court can scarce support their families.'[426] Sheep in the damp climate of England have always been subject to rot, and in 1735 there was, according to Ellis, the most general rot in the memory of man owing to a very wet season; and, as in the disastrous year of 1879, which must be fresh in many farmers' memories, other animals, deer, hares, and rabbits, were affected also; and the dead bodies of rotten sheep were so numerous in road and field that the stench was offensive to every one. Another bad outbreak occurred in 1747. It is well known that farmers are always grumblers, probably with an eye to the rent; but even in these much praised times they apparently made small profits. The west country farmer quoted before, who had been fifty years on the same estate, and writes with the stamp of sincerity, admits in 1737 that 'with all the skill and diligence in the world he can hardly keep the cart upon the wheels. Wool had gone down, wheat didn't pay and graziers were doing badly; tho' formerly our cattle and wool was always a sure card'. He says that the profits of grazing were reckoned at one-third of the improvement that ensued from the grazing, but the grazier was not now getting this. He attributed much of the distress, however, to the extravagance of the times. Landlords, including his own, preferred London to the country, and spent their money there. How different was the behaviour of his landlord's grandfather. 'Many a time would his worship send for me to go a-hunting or shooting with him; often would he take me with him on his visits and would introduce me as his friend. The country gentlewoman and the parson's wife, that used to stitch for themselves, are now so hurried with dressings and visits and other attractions that they hire an Abigail to do it.' He thought, too, the labourers were getting too high wages; 'they are so puffed up by our provender as to offer us their heels and threaten on any occasion to leave us to do our work ourselves.' One would like to hear the labourers' opinion on this point, but they were dumb. In spite of higher wages the young men and young women flocked to the cities, and those who remain were lazy and extravagant, even the country wenches contending about 'double caps, huge petticoats, clock stockings, and other trumpery'.[427] The bounty now paid on the export of wheat was naturally resented by the common people, as it raised the price of their bread. In 1737 a load belonging to Farmer Waters of Burford, travelling along the road to Redbridge for exportation, was stopped near White parish by a crowd of people who knocked down the leading horse, broke the wagon in pieces, cut the sacks, and strewed about the corn, with threats that they would do the like to all who sold wheat to export.[428] While England was paying farmers to export wheat she was also importing, though in plentiful years importers had a very bad time. In 1730 there were lying at Liverpool 33,000 windles (a windle--220 lb.) of imported corn, unsaleable owing to the great crop in England.[429] The year 1740 was distinguished by one of the severest winters on record. From January 1 to February 5 the thermometer seldom reached 32°, and the cold was so intense that hens and ducks, even cattle in their stalls died of it, trees were split asunder, crows and other birds fell to the ground frozen in their flight. This extraordinary winter was followed by a cold and late spring; no verdure had appeared by May; in July it was still cold, and thousands of acres of turnips rotted in the ground. Among minor misfortunes may be noticed the swarms of grasshoppers who devastated the pastures near Bristol at the end of August 1742,[430] and the swarms of locusts who came to England in 1748 and consumed the vegetables.[431] The cattle plague of 1745[432] was so severe that owing to the scarcity of stock great quantities of grass land were ploughed up, which helped to account for the fact that in 1750 the export of corn from England reached its maximum; though the main cause of this was the long series of excellent seasons that set in after 1740.[433] The cattle plague also raged in 1754 in spite of an Order in Council that all infected cattle should be shot and buried 4 ft. deep, and pitch, tar, rosin, and gunpowder burnt where infected cattle had died, and cow-houses washed with vinegar and water. Such were the sanitary precautions of the time.[434] In 1756 came another bad year, corn was so scarce that there were many riots; the king expressed to Parliament his concern at the suffering of the poor, and the export of corn was temporarily prohibited. The fluctuations in price are remarkable: in 1756, before the deficiency of the harvest was realized, wheat was 22s. and it went up at the following rate: Jan., 1757, 49s.; Feb., 51s.; March, 54s.; April, 64s.; June, 72s. About the middle of the century, if we may judge from the _Compleat Cyderman_ written in 1754 by experienced hands living in Devon, Cornwall, Herefordshire, and elsewhere, fruit-growing received an amount of attention which diminished greatly in after years. The authors fully realized that an orchard under tillage causes apple trees to grow as fast again as under grass, and this was well understood and practised in Kent, where crops of corn were grown between the trees. A Devonshire 'cyderist' urged that orchards should be well sheltered from the east winds, which 'bring over the narrow sea swarms of imperceptible eggs, or insects in the air, from the vast tracts of Tartarian and other lands, from which proceeded infinite numbers of lice, flies, bugs, caterpillars, cobwebs, &c.' The best protection was a screen of trees, and the best tree for the purpose, a perry pear tree. In the hard frosts of 1709, 1716, and 1740 great numbers of fruit and other trees had been destroyed. In Devon what was called the 'Southams method' was used for top-dressing the roots of old apple trees, which was done in November with soil from the roads and ditches, or lime or chalk, laid on furze sometimes, 6 inches thick, for 4 or 5 ft. all round the trees. Great attention was paid there to keeping the heads of fruit trees in good order, so that branches did not interfere with each other,[435] and the heads were made to spread as much as possible. Many of the trees were grown with the first branches commencing 4 ft. 6 in. from the ground. It was claimed that Devon excelled all other parts of England in the management of fruit trees, a reputation that was not maintained, according to the works of half a century later. The best cider apple In the county then was the White-sour, white in colour, of a middling size, and early ripe; other good ones were the 'Deux-Anns, Jersey, French Longtail, Royal Wilding, Culvering, Russet, Holland Pippin, and Cowley Crab.' In Herefordshire it was the custom to open the earth about the roots of the apple trees and lay them bare and exposed for the 'twelve days of the Christmas holidays', that the wind might loosen them. Then they were covered with a compost of dung, mould, and a little lime. 'The best way' to plant was to take off the turf and lay it by itself, then the next earth or virgin mould, to be laid also by itself. Next put horse litter over the bottom of the hole with some of the virgin mould on that, on which place the tree, scattering some more virgin mould over the roots, then spread some old horse-dung over this and upon that the turf, leaving it in a basin shape. The ground between the trees in Devonshire in young orchards was first planted with cabbage plants, next year with potatoes, next with beans, and so on until the heads of the trees became large enough, when the land was allowed to return to pasture, a proceeding which was quite contrary to their previously quoted assertion that tillage was best for fruit trees. The cider-makers were quite convinced, as many are to-day, that rotten apples were invaluable for cider, and the lady who was famous for the best cider in the county never allowed one to be thrown away. A generation later than this Marshall[436] noted that in Herefordshire the management of orchards and their produce was far from being well understood, though 'it has ever borne the name of the first cider county'. All the old fruits were lost or declining in quality, the famous Red Streak Apple was given up and the Squash Pear no longer made to flourish. As for prices, in 1707 apples were selling at Liverpool for 2s. 6d. a bushel,[437] a very good price if we allow for the difference in the value of money, but prices then were entirely dependent on the English seasons; no foreign apples were imported, and a night's frost would treble prices in a day. In 1742 at Aspall Hall, Suffolk, apples, apparently for cider, were 10d. a bushel, in 1745 1s. a bushel, in 1746 only 4d., and in 1747 cider there was worth 6d. a gallon.[438] At the end of the century, in 'the great hit' of 1784, common apples were less than 6d. a bushel, the best about 2s. in 1786 the price was twice as high, owing to a short crop. Incidentally there is mentioned in the _Compleat Cyderman_ a novel implement, 'a most profitable new invented five-hoe plough, that after the ground has been once ploughed with a common plough will plough four or five acres in one day with only four horses, and by a little alteration is fitted to hoe turnips or rape crops as it is now practised by the ordinary farmers'; much too favourable an estimate of the ordinary farmer, as Young found horse-hoeing rare. An acre of good orchard land at this time was let at £2 an acre; and this is a fair balance sheet for an acre[439]:-- DR. £ s. d. Rent of one acre 2 0 0 Tithe on 10 hogsheads, @ 6d. 5 0 Gathering, making, and carriage to and from the pound, @ 3s. 6d. a hogshead 1 15 0 Racking twice, @ 6d. 5 0 Casks and cooperage 8 0 --------- £4 13 0 ========= CR. £ s. d. 10 hogsheads diminished by racking and waste to 8, @ 12s. 6d. 5 0 0 ======== Leaving a balance of 7s. for spoiling, &c., so there was not much profit in cider-making then. The same authority sets down the cost of planting an acre of apples as:-- £ s. d. 132 trees, @ 2s. 13 4 0 (The custom had been to plant 160 trees to the acre, but this was considered too close.) Carriage per tree, @ 2d.; manure per tree, @ 3d.; planting per tree, @ 3d. 4 8 0 Interest on £17 12s. 0d. for fifteen years before orchard is profitable, @ 5 per cent. 13 2 6 Loss of half the rent of the land for the same period, @ 10s. an acre 7 10 0 Building cellarage for product per acre 5 0 0 --------- £43 4 6 ========= For this outlay the landowner would gain an additional rent of £1 a year, so that, according to this authority, growing cider fruit at that time paid neither landlord nor tenant. FOOTNOTES: [423] _Farmer's Letters_, i. 10. [424] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (3rd Series), iii. 1. [425] See the _Hyp Doctor_, No. 49. [426] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 42. [427] Cf. this and Tull's character of servants with Defoe's accusation of their laziness. [428] Salisbury newspaper, quoted by Baker, _Seasons and Prices_, p. 187. [429] See _Autobiography of Wm. Stout_, ed. by J. Harland. [430] _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1742. [431] Baker, _op. cit._ p. 194. [432] _A Defence of the Farmers of Great Britain_ (1814), p. 30. [433] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 42. [434] See a curious pamphlet called _An Exhortation to all People to Consider the Afflicting Hand of God_ (1754), p. 6. The plague lasted from 1745 to 1756. [435] _The Compleat Cyderman_, p. 46. [436] _Rural Economy of Gloucestershire_ (1788), ii. 206. [437] Blundell's _Diary_, p. 55. [438] MS. accounts of Mr. Chevallier, of Aspall Hall. [439] _The Case with the County of Devon with respect to the New Excise Duty on Cider_ (1763). The duty was 4s. a hogshead, but the opposition was so strong it was taken off. CHAPTER XVI 1765-1793 ARTHUR YOUNG.--CROPS AND THEIR COST.--THE LABOURERS' WAGES AND DIET.--THE PROSPERITY OF FARMERS.--THE COUNTRY SQUIRE.--ELKINGTON.--BAKEWELL.--THE ROADS.--COKE OF HOLKHAM. The history of English agriculture in the latter half of the eighteenth century has been so well described by Arthur Young that any account of it at that time must largely be an epitome of his writings. The greatest of English writers on agriculture was born in 1741, and began farming early; but, as he confesses himself, was a complete failure. When he was twenty-six he took a farm of 300 acres at Samford Hall in Essex, and after five years of it paid a farmer £100 to take it off his hands, who thereupon made a fortune out of it. He had already begun writing on agriculture, and it must be confessed that he began to advise people concerning the art of agriculture on a very limited experience. It paid him, however, much better than farming, for between 1766 and 1775 he realized £3,000 on his works, among which were _The Farmer's Letters_, _The Southern_, _Northern_, and _Eastern Tours_. These are his qualifications for writing on agriculture, from his own pen: 'I have been a farmer these many years' (he was not yet thirty), 'and that not in a single field or two but upon a tract of near 300 acres most part of the time. I have cultivated on various soils most of the vegetables common in England and many never introduced into field husbandry. I have always kept a minute register of my business in every detail of culture, expenses, and produce, and an accurate comparison of the old and new husbandry.'[440] It is said that though he really understood the theory and practice of farming he failed utterly in small economies. He was also far too vivacious and fond of society for the monotonous work of the plain farmer. At the same time his failures gave his observant mind a clear insight into the principles of agriculture. He was indefatigable in inquiries, researches, and experiments; and the best proof of the value of his works is that they were translated into Russian, German, and French. He tells us in the preface to _Rural Economy_ that his constant employment for the previous seven years, 'when out of my fields, has been registering experiments.' His pet aversions were absentee landlords, obsolete methods of cultivation, wastes and commons, and small holdings (though towards the end of his life he changed his opinion as to the last); and the following, according to him, were the especially needed improvements of the time:-- The knowledge of good rotations of crops so as to do away with fallows, which was to be effected by the general use of turnips, beans, peas, tares, clover, &c., as preparation for white corn; covered drains; marling, chalking, and claying; irrigation of meadows; cultivation of carrots, cabbages, potatoes, sainfoin, and lucerne; ploughing, &c., with as few cattle as possible; the use of harness for oxen; cultivation of madden liquorice, hemp, and flax where suitable.[441] Above all, the cultivation of waste lands, which he was to live to see so largely effected. There was little knowledge of the various sorts of grasses at this time, and to Young is due the credit of introducing the cocksfoot, and crested dog's tail. In 1790 he contemplated retiring to France or America, so heavy was taxation in England. 'Men of large fortune and the poor', he said, in words which many to-day will heartily endorse, 'have reason to think the government of this country the first in the world; the middle classes bear the brunt.' Perhaps to-day 'men of large fortune' have altered their opinion and only 'the poor' are satisfied. However, he only visited France, and gave us his vivid picture of that country before the great revolution. In 1793 the Board of Agriculture was formed, and Young was made secretary with a salary of £400 a year. About 1810 he wrote that the preceding half-century had been by far the most interesting in the progress of agriculture, and ascribes the increase of interest in it to the publication of his _Tours_. George III told him he always took with him the _Farmer's Letters_. The improvement, Young said, had been largely due to individual effort, for commerce had been predominant in Parliament and agriculture had begun to be neglected; a statement which, seeing that Parliament was then almost entirely composed of landowners, must be accepted with some reserve. Young died in 1820, having been totally blind for some time, a misfortune which did not prevent him working hard. In his well-known _Tours_ he often had much difficulty in obtaining information, and confesses that he was forced to make more than one farmer drunk before he got anything out of him. The exodus from the country to the towns then, as so often in history, was noted by thinking people, but Young says it was merely a natural consequence of the demand for profitable employment and was not to be regretted; but he wrote in a time when the country population was still numerous, and there was little danger of England becoming, what she is to-day, a country without a solid foundation, with no reservoir of good country blood to supply the waste of the towns. When Young began to write, the example of Townshend and his contemporaries was being followed on all sides, and this good movement was stimulated by Young's writings. Farming was the reigning taste of the day. There was scarce a nobleman without his farm, most of the country gentlemen were farmers, and attended closely to their business instead of leaving it to stewards, 'who governed in matters of wheat and barley as absolutely as in covenants of leases,' and the squire delighted in setting the country a staring at the novelties he introduced. Even the stable and the kennel were ousted by farming from rural talk,[442] and citizens who breathed the smoke of London five days a week were farmers the other two, and many young fellows of small fortune who had been brought up in the country took farms, and the fashion was followed by doctors, lawyers, clergymen, soldiers, sailors, and merchants. The American and French War of 1775-83 and the great conflict with France from 1793 to 1815 were, however, to divert many of the upper classes from agriculture, for they very properly thought their duty was then to fight for their country; so that we again have numerous complaints of agents and stewards managing estates who knew nothing whatever about their business. It was not to be wondered at that all this activity brought about considerable progress. 'There have been,' said Young about 1770, 'more experiments, more discoveries, and more general good sense displayed within these ten years than in a hundred preceding ones,' a statement which perhaps did not attach sufficient importance to the work of Townshend and his contemporaries, and to the 'new husbandry' of Tull, which Young did not appreciate at its full value.[443] The place subsequently taken by the Board of Agriculture, and in our time by the Royal Agricultural Society, was then occupied by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, which offered premiums for such objects as the cultivation of carrots in the field for stock, then little practised; for gathering the different sorts of grass seeds and keeping them clean and free from all mixture with other grasses, a very rare thing at that time; for experiments in the comparative merits of the old and new husbandry; for the growth of madder; £20 for a turnip-slicing machine, then apparently unknown, and for experiments whether rolling or harrowing grass land was better, 'at present one of the most disputed points of husbandry.' In spite of this progress, many crops introduced years before were unknown to many farmers. Sainfoin, cabbages, potatoes, carrots, were not common crops in every part of England, though every one of them was well known in some part or other; not more than half, or at most two-thirds, of the nation cultivated clover. Many, however, of the nobility and gentry in the north had grown cabbages with amazing success, lately, 30 guineas an acre being sometimes the value of the crop. Half the cultivated lands, in spite of the progress of enclosure for centuries, were still farmed on the old common-field system. When anything out of the common was to be done on common farms, all common work came to a standstill. 'To carry out corn stops the ploughs, perhaps at a critical season; the fallows are frequently seen overrun with weeds because it is seed time; in a word, some business is ever neglected.'[444] As for the outcry against enclosing commons and wastes, people forgot that the farmers as well as the poor had a right of common and took special care by their large number of stock to starve every animal the poor put on the common.[445] About the same time that Young wrote these words there appeared a pamphlet written by 'A Country Gentleman' on the advantages and disadvantages of enclosing waste lands and common fields, which puts the arguments against enclosure very forcibly.[446] The writer's opinion was that it was clearly to the landowner's gain to promote enclosures, but that the impropriator of tithes reaped most benefit and the small freeholder least, because his expenses increased inversely to the smallness of his allotment. As to diminution of employment, he reckoned that enclosed arable employed about ten families per 1,000 acres, open field arable twenty families, a statement opposed to the opinion of nearly all the agricultural writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is surely an incontestable fact that enclosed land meant much better tillage, and better tillage meant more labour, the excessive amount of fallow necessary under the common-field system, from the inability to grow roots except by special arrangement, is alone enough to prove this. The same writer admitted that common pastures, wastes, &c., employed only one family per 2,000 acres, but enclosed pasture five families per 1,000 acres, and enclosed wastes sixteen families. A 'Country Farmer', who wrote in 1786, states that many of the small farmers displaced by enclosures sold their few possessions and emigrated to America.[447] The growing manufacturing towns also absorbed a considerable number. That there was a considerable amount of hardship inflicted on small holders and commoners is certain, but industrial progress is frequently attended by the dislocation of industry and consequent distress; the introduction of machinery, for instance, often causing great suffering to hand-workers, but eventually benefiting the whole community. How many men has the self-binding reaping machine thrown for a time out of work? So enclosure caused distress to many individuals, but was for the good of the whole nation. The history of enclosure is really the history of progress in farming; the conversion of land badly tilled in the old common fields, and of waste land little more valuable than the prairies; into well-managed fruitful farms. That much of the common-field land when enclosed was laid down to grass is certainly true, and certainly inevitable if it paid best under grass.[448] No one can expect the holders of land naturally best suited for grass to keep it under tillage for philanthropic purposes. A vast number of the commoners too were idle thriftless beings, whose rights on a few acres enabled them to live a life of pilfering and poaching; and it was a very good thing when such people were induced to lead a more regular and respectable existence. The great blot on the process was that it made the English labourer a landless man. Compensation was given him at the time of enclosure in the shape of allotments or sums of money, but the former he was generally compelled to give up owing to the expense he had been put to at allotment, and the latter he often spent in the public-house. At this date the proprietors of large estates who wished to enclose by Act of Parliament, generally settled all the particulars among themselves before calling any meeting of the rest of the proprietors. The small proprietor had very little say either in regulating the clauses of the Act, or in the choice of commissioners. Any owner of one-fifth of the land, however, could negative the measure and often used his right to impose unreasonable clauses. It is well known that the legal expenses and fencing were very costly. The enclosure commissioners too often divided the land in an arbitrary and ignorant manner, and there was no appeal from them except by filing a bill in Chancery. Accounts were hardly ever shown by the commissioners, and if a proprietor refused to pay the sums levied they were empowered to distrain immediately. All these evils attending enclosure made many who were eager to benefit by it very chary in commencing it.[449] Then, as now, one of the commonest errors of farmers was that of taking too much land for their capital; Young considered £6 an acre necessary on an average, equal to more than £12 to-day; a sum which few farmers at any time have in hand when they take a farm. As for gentlemen farmers, who were then rushing into the business, they were warned that they had no chance of success if they kept any company or amused themselves with anything but their own business, unless perhaps they had a good bailiff. Lime, one of the most ancient of manures, was then the most commonly used in England, 80 to 100 loads an acre being a common dressing, but many farmers were very ignorant of its proper use. Marl, which to-day is seldom used, was considered to last for twenty years, though for the first year no benefit was observable, and very little the second and the third, its value then becoming very apparent. In the last five years, however, its value was nearly worn out. But it was much to be questioned whether marl in its best state anywhere yields an increase of produce equal to that which a good manuring of dung will give.[450] Marl was applied in huge quantities on arable and grass, and often made the latter look like arable land so thickly was it spread. At this date (1770) the average crops on poor, and on good land were[451]: On land worth 5s. an acre: Wheat 12 bushels per acre. Rye 16 " " Barley 16 " " Oats 20 " " Turnips, to the value of £1. Clover " " On land worth 20s. an acre: Wheat 28 bushels per acre. Barley 40 " " Oats 48 " " Beans 40 " " Turnips, to the value of £3. Clover " " The cost of cultivating the latter, which may be given in full, as it affords an excellent example of the price of growing various crops, and the methods of their cultivation at this period, was as follows: First year, turnips: £ s. d. Rent 1 0 0 Tithe and 'town charges' 8 0 Five ploughings, @ 4s. 1 0 0 Three harrowings 1 0 Seed 6 Sowing 3 Twice hand-hoeing 7 0 ----------- £2 16 9 =========== It will be noticed there was no horse-hoeing. Second year, barley: £ s. d. Rent, tithe, &c. 1 8 0 Three ploughings 12 0 Three harrowings 1 0 Seed 8 0 Sowing 3 Mowing and harvesting 3 0 Water furrowing 6 Threshing, @ 1s. a quarter 5 0 ----------- £2 17 9 =========== Third year, clover: £ s. d. Rent, &c. 1 8 0 Seed 5 0 Sowing 3 ---------- £1 13 3 ========== Fourth year,[452] wheat: £ s. d. Rent, &c. 1 8 0 One ploughing 4 0 Three harrowings 1 0 Seed 10 0 Sowing 3 Water furrowing 9 Thistling 1 6 Reaping and harvesting 7 0 Threshing, @ 2s. a quarter 7 0 ---------- £2 19 6 ========== Fifth year, beans: £ s. d. Rent, &c. 1 8 0 Two ploughings 8 0 Seed, 2 bushels 8 0 Sowing 6 Twice hand-hoeing 12 0 Twice horse-hoeing 3 0 Reaping and harvesting 8 0 Threshing 5 0 ---------- £3 12 6 ========== Sixth year, oats: £ s. d. Rent, &c. 1 8 0 Once ploughing 4 0 Two harrowings 8 Four bushels of seed 6 0 Sowing 3 Mowing and harvesting 3 0 Threshing, @ 1s. a quarter 6 0 ---------- £2 7 11 ========== Good land at a high rent is always better than poor land at a low rent; the average profit per acre on 5s. land was then about 8s. 8d., on 20s. land, 29s. Grass was much more profitable than tillage, the profit on 20 acres of arable in nine years amounted to £88, whereas on grass it was £212, or 9s. 9d. an acre per annum for the former and 23s. for the latter.[453] Yet dairying, at all events, was then on the whole badly managed and unprofitable. The average cow ate 2-1/2 acres of grass, and the rent of this with labour and other expenses made the cost £5 a year per cow, and its average produce was not worth more than £5 6s. 3d.[454] This scanty profit was due to the fact that few farmers used roots, cabbages, &c., for their cows, and to their wrong management of pigs, kept on the surplus dairy food. By good management the nett return could be made as much as £4 15s. 0d. per cow. The management of sheep in the north of England was wretched. In Northumberland the profit was reckoned at 1s. a head, partly derived from cheese made from ewes' milk. The fleeces averaged 2 lb., and the wool was so bad as not to be worth more than 3d. or 4d. per lb.[455] Pigs could be made to pay well, as the following account testifies: Food and produce of a sow in one year (1763), which produced seven pigs in April and eleven in October: DR. £ s. d. Grains 10 4 Cutting a litter 1 6 5 quarters peas 5 2 0 10 bushels barley 1 0 0 Expenses in selling[456] 11 6 10 bushels peas 1 6 3 ---------- £8 11 7 ========== CR. £ s. d. A pig 2 3 A fat hog 1 9 0 Another, 110 lb. wt. 1 12 9 Another, 116 lb. wt. 2 0 0 Heads 5 3 3 fat hogs 6 7 0 1 fat hog 2 0 0 10 young pigs 4 16 6 ----------- £18 12 9 8 11 7 ----------- Profit £10 1 2 =========== We have seen that Young thought little of the 'new husbandry'; he does not even give Tull the credit of inventing the drill: 'Mr. Tull perhaps _again_ invented it. He practised it upon an extent of ground far beyond that of any person preceding him: the spirit of drilling died with Mr. Tull and was not revived till within a few years.'[457] It was doubtful if 50 acres of corn were then annually drilled in England. Lately drilling had been revived and there were keen disputes as to the old and new methods of husbandry, the efficacy of the new being far from decided. The cause of the slow adoption of drill husbandry was the inferiority of the drills hitherto invented. They were complex in construction, expensive, and hard to procure. It seemed impossible to make a drill or drill plough as it was called, for such it then was--a combination of drill, plough, and harrow--capable of sowing at various depths and widths, and at the same time light enough for ordinary use. All the drills hitherto made were too light to stand the rough use of farm labourers: 'common ploughs and harrows the fellows tumble about in so violent a manner that if they were not strength itself they would drop to pieces. In drawing such instruments into the field the men generally mount the horses, and drag them after them; in passing gateways twenty to one they draw them against the gate post.' Some of 'these fellows' are still to be seen! Another defect in drilling was that the drill plough filled up all the water furrows, which, at a time when drainage was often neglected, were deemed of especial importance, and they all had to be opened again. Further, said the advocates of the old husbandry, it was a question whether all the horse-hoeings, hand-hoeings, and weedings of the new husbandry, though undoubtedly beneficial, really paid. It was very hard to get enough labourers for these operations. With more reason they objected to the principles of discarding manure and sowing a large number of white straw crops in succession, but admitted the new system was admirably adapted for beans, turnips, cabbages, and lucerne. However, there were many followers of Tull. The Author of _Dissertations on Rural Subjects_[458] thought the drill plough an excellent invention, as it saved seed and facilitated hoeing; but he said Tull's drill was defective in that the distances between the rows could not be altered, a defect which the writer claims to have remedied. Young's desire for a stronger drill seems to have been soon answered, as the same writer says the barrel drill invented by Du-Hamel and improved by Craik was strong, cheap, and easily managed. The tendency of the latter half of the century was decidedly in favour of larger farms; it was a bad thing for the small holders, but it was an economic tendency which could not be resisted. The larger farmers had more capital, were more able and ready to execute improvements; they drained their land, others often did not; having sufficient capital they were able both to buy and sell to the best advantage and not sacrifice their produce at a low price to meet the rent, as the small farmer so often did and does. They could pay better wages and so get better men, kept more stock and better, and more efficient implements. They also had a great advantage in being able by their good teams to haul home plenty of purchased manure, which the small farmer often could not do. The small tenants, who had no by-industry, then, as now, had to work and live harder than the ordinary labourer to pay their way. Young calculated as early as 1768 that the average size of farms over the greater part of England was slightly under 300 acres.[459] In his _Tour in France_ Young, speaking of the smallness of French farms as compared with English ones, and of the consequent great inferiority of French farming, says, 'Where is the little farmer to be found who will cover his whole farm with marl at the rate of 100 to 150 tons per acre; who will drain his land at the expense of £2 to £3 an acre; who will, to improve the breed of his sheep, give 1,000 guineas for the use of a single ram for a single season; who will send across the kingdom to distant provinces for new implements and for men to use them? Deduct from agriculture all the practices that have made it flourishing in this island, and you have precisely the management of small farms.' In 1868 the _Report of the Commission on the Agriculture of France_[460] agreed with Young, noting the grave consequences of the excessive subdivision of land, loss of time, waste of labour, difficulties in rotation of crops, and of liberty of cultivation. For stocking an arable farm of 70 acres Young considered the following expenditure necessary, the items of which give us interesting information as to prices about 1770:-- £ s. d. Rent, tithe, and town charges for first year 70 0 0 Household furniture 30 0 0 Wagon 25 0 0 Cart with ladders 12 0 0 Tumbril 10 0 0 Roller for broad lands (of wood) 2 0 0 " narrow " " 1 15 0 Cart harness for 4 horses 8 17 0 Plough " " 2 16 0 2 ploughs 3 0 0 A pair of harrows 1 15 0 Screen, bushel, fan, sieves, forks, rakes, &c. 8 0 0 Dairy furniture 3 0 0 20 sacks 2 10 0 4 horses 32 0 0 Wear and tear, and shoeing one year 13 0 0 Keep of 4 horses from Michaelmas to May Day, @ 2s. 6d. each a week 14 0 0 5 cows 20 0 0 20 sheep 5 10 0 One sow 15 0 One servant's board and wages for one year 15 0 0 A labourer's wages for one year 20 0 0 Seed for first year, 42 acres, @ 11s. 6d. 24 3 0 Harvest labour 1 10 0 ------------ £326 11 0 ============ Or nearly £5 an acre. About the same date the _Complete English Farmer_ reckoned that the occupier of a farm of 500 acres (300 arable, 200 pasture), ought to have a capital of £1,500, and estimated that, after paying expenses and maintaining his family, he could put by £50 a year; 'but this capital was much beyond what farmers in general can attain to.'[461] The controversy of horses versus oxen for working purposes was still raging, and Young favoured the use of oxen; for the food of horses cost more, so did their harness and their shoeing, they are much more liable to disease, and oxen when done with could be sold for beef. One stout lad, moreover, could attend to 8 or 10 oxen, for all he had to do was to put their fodder in the racks and clean the shed; no rubbing, no currying or dressing being necessary. No beasts fattened better than oxen that had been worked. A yoke of oxen would plough as much as a pair of horses and carry a deeper and truer furrow, while they were just as handy as horses in wagons, carts, rollers, &c. William Marshall, the other great agricultural writer of the end of the eighteenth century, agreed with Young, yet in spite of all these advantages horses were continually supplanting oxen. Among the improvements in agriculture was the introduction of broad-wheeled wagons; narrow-wheeled ones were usual, and these on the turnpikes were only allowed to be drawn by 4 horses so that the load was small, but broad-wheeled wagons might use 8 horses. The cost of the latter was £50 against £25 for the former.[462] Young's opinion of the labouring man, like Tull's, was not a high one. 'I never yet knew', he says, 'one instance of any poor man's working diligently while young and in health to escape coming to the parish when ill or old.' This is doubtless too sweeping. There must have been others like George Barwell, whom Marshall tells of in his _Rural Economy of the Midlands_, who had brought up a family of five or six sons and daughters on a wage of 5s. to 7s. a week, and after they were out in the world saved enough to support him in his old age. The majority, however, long before the crushing times of the French War, seem to have been thoroughly demoralized by indiscriminate parish relief, and habitually looked to the parish to maintain them in sickness and old age. Cullum[463] a few years later, remarks on the poor demanding assistance without the scruple and delicacy they used to have, and says 'the present age seems to aim at abolishing all subordination and dependence and reducing all ranks as near a level as possible.'! Idleness, drunkenness, and what was then often looked on with disgust and contempt, excessive tea-drinking, were rife. Tea then was very expensive, 8s. or 10s. a lb. being an ordinary price, so that the poor had to put up with a very much adulterated article, most pernicious to health. The immoderate use of this was stated to have worse effects than the immoderate use of spirits. The consumption of it was largely caused by the deficiency of the milk supply, owing to the decrease of small farms; the large farmers did not retail such small commodities as milk and butter, but sent them to the towns so that the poor often went without.[464] In 1767 Young found wages differing according to the distance from London[465]:-- s. d. 20 miles from London they were per week 10 9 From 20 to 60 " " " 7 8 " 60 to 110 " " " 6 4 " 110 to 170 " " " 6 3 Giving an average of 7s. 9d. which, however, was often exceeded as there was much piece-work which enabled the men to earn more. Young drew up a dietary for a labourer, his wife, and a family of three children, which he declared to be sufficient:-- £ s. d. Food, 6s. per week[466]; per year 15 12 0 Rent 1 10 0 Clothes 2 10 0 Soap and candles 1 5 0 Loss of time through illness, and medicine 1 0 0 Fuel 2 0 0 ---------- £23 17 0 ========== £ s. d. The man's wages were, @ 1s. 3d. a day, for the year 19 10 0 The woman's, @ 3-3/4d. a day, for the year 4 17 6 The boy of fifteen could earn 9 0 0 The boy of ten could earn 4 7 6 ---------- £37 15 0 ========== Which would give the family a surplus of £13 18s. 0d. a year. What the man's food should consist of is shown by a list of 'seven days' messes for a stout man':-- s. d. 1st day. 2 lb. of bread made of wheat, rye, and potatoes--'no bread exceeds it' 2 Cheese, 2 oz. @ 4d. a lb 1/2 Beer, 2 quarts 1 2nd day. Three messes of soup 2 3rd day. Rice pudding 2-1/2 4th day. 1/4 lb. of fat meat and potatoes baked together 2-3/4 Beer 1 5th day. Rice milk 2 6th day. Same as first day 3-1/2 7th day. Potatoes, fat meat, cheese, and beer 4 --------- 1 9-1/4 ========= As Young was a man of large practical experience we may assume that this, though it seems a very insufficient diet, was not unlike the food of some labourers at that date. However, the bread he recommends was not that eaten by a large number of them. Eden[467] states that in 1764 about half the people of England were estimated to be using wheaten bread, and at the end of the century, although prices had risen greatly, he says that in the Home Counties wheaten bread was universal among the peasant class. Young, indeed, acknowledges that many insisted on wheaten bread.[468] In Suffolk, according to Cullum,[469] pork and bacon were the labourer's delicacies, bread and cheese his ordinary diet. The north of England was more thrifty than the south. At the end of the eighteenth century barley and oaten bread were much used there. Lancashire people fed largely on oat bread, leavened and unleavened; the 33rd Regiment, which went by the name of the 'Havercake lads', was usually recruited from the West Riding where oat bread was in common use, and was famous for having fine men in its ranks.[470] The labourers of the north were also noted for their skill in making soups in which barley was an important ingredient. In many of the southern counties tea was drunk at breakfast, dinner, and supper by the poor, often without milk or sugar; but alcoholic liquors were also consumed in great quantities, the southerner apparently always drinking a considerable amount, the northerner at rare intervals drinking deep. The drinking in cider counties seems always to have been worse as far as quantity goes than elsewhere, and the drink bills on farms were enormous. Marshall says that in Gloucestershire drinking a gallon 'bottle', generally a little wooden barrel, at a draught was no uncommon feat; and in the Vale of Evesham a labourer who wanted to be even with his master for short payment emptied a two-gallon bottle without taking it from his lips. Even this feat was excelled by 'four well-seasoned yeomen, who resolved to have a fresh hogshead tapped, and setting foot to foot emptied it at one sitting.'[471] Yet in the beer-drinking counties great quantities were consumed; a gallon a day per man all the year round being no uncommon allowance.[472] The superior thrift of the north was shown in clothes as well as food, the midland and southern labourer at the end of the century buying all his clothes, the northerner making them almost all at home; there were many respectable families in the north who had never bought a pair of stockings, coat, or waistcoat in their lives, and a purchased coat was considered a mark of extravagance and pride. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Young's dietary is that green vegetables are absolutely ignored. The peasant was supposed to need them as little as in the Middle Ages. However, Young admits that very few labourers lived as cheaply as this, and he found the actual ordinary budget for the same family to be:-- £ s. d. Food, per week, 7s. 6d.; per year 19 10 0 Beer " 1s. 6d. " 3 18 0 Soap and candles 1 5 0 Rent 1 10 0 Clothes 2 10 0 Fuel 2 0 0 Illness, &c. 1 0 0 Infant 2 12 0 ---------- £34 5 0 ========== This, with the same Income as before, left him with a surplus of £3 10s. 0d.; but as it was not likely his wife could work all the year round, or that both his eldest children should be boys, it appears that his expenses must often have exceeded his income. This being so, it is not surprising that he was often drunken and reckless, and ready to come on the parish for relief. To labour incessantly, often with wife and boys, to live very poorly, yet not even make both ends meet, was enough to kill all spirit in any one. A great evil from which the labourer suffered was the restrictions thrown on him of settling in another parish. If he desired to take his labour to a better market he often found it closed to him. His marriage was discouraged,[473] because a single man did not want a cottage and a married one did. To ease the rates there was open war against cottages, and many were pulled down.[474] If a labourer in a parish to which he did not legally belong signified his intention of marrying, he immediately had notice to quit the parish and retire to his own, unless he could procure a certificate that neither he nor his would be chargeable. If he went to his own parish he came off very badly, for they didn't want him, and cottages being scarce he probably had to put up with sharing one with one or more families. Sensible men cried out for the total abolition of the poor laws, the worst effects of which were still to be felt. Yet there was a considerable migration of labour at harvest time when additional hands were needed. Labourers came from neighbouring counties, artisans left their workshops in the towns, Scots came to the Northern counties, Welshmen to the western, and Irishmen appeared in many parts; and they were as a rule supplied by a contractor.[475] London was regarded as a source of great evil to the country by attracting the young and energetic thither. It used, men said, to be no such easy matter to get there when a stage coach was four or five days creeping 100 miles and fares were high; but in 1770 a country fellow 100 miles from London jumped on a coach in the morning and for 8s. or 10s. got to town by night, 'and ten times the boasts are sounded in the ears of country fools by those who have seen London to induce them to quit their healthy clean fields for a region of dirt, stink, and noise.' A prejudice might well have been entertained against the metropolis at this time, for it literally devoured the people of England, the deaths exceeding the births by 8,000 a year. One of the causes that had hitherto kept people from London was the dread of the small-pox, but that was now said to be removed by inoculation. Among the troubles farmers had to contend with were the audacious depredations caused by poachers, generally labourers, who swarmed in many villages. They took the farmer's horses out of his fields after they had done a hard day's work and rode them all night to drive the game into their nets, blundering over the hedges, sometimes staking the horses, riding over standing corn, or anything that was cover for partridges, and when they had sold their ill-gotten game spent the money openly at the nearest alehouse. Then they would go back and work for the farmers they had robbed, drunk, asleep, or idle the whole day. The subscription packs of foxhounds were also a great nuisance, many of the followers being townsmen who bored through hedges and smashed the gates and stiles, conduct not unknown to-day. In spite of these drawbacks the long period of great abundance from 1715 to 1765 and the consequent cheapness of food with an increase of wages was attended with a great improvement in the condition and habits of the people. Adam Smith refers to 'the peculiarly happy circumstances of the country'; Hallam described the reign of George II as 'the most prosperous period that England has ever experienced'[476]; and it was Young's opinion about 1770 that England was in a most rich and flourishing situation, 'her agriculture is upon the whole good and spirited and every day improving, her industrious poor are well fed, clothed, and lodged at reasonable rates, the prices of all necessaries being moderate, our population increasing, the price of labour generally high.'[477] The great degree of luxury to which the country had arrived within a few years 'is not only astonishing but almost dreadful to think of. Time was when those articles of indulgence which now every mechanic aims at the possession of were enjoyed only by the baron or lord.'[478] Great towns became the winter residence of those who could not afford London, and the country was said to be everywhere deserted, an evil largely attributed to the improvement of posting and coaches. The true country gentleman was seldom to be found, the luxuries of the age had softened down the hardy roughness of former times and the 'country, like the capital, is one scene of dissipation.' The private gentleman of £300 or £400 a year must have his horses, dogs, carriages, pictures, and parties, and thus goes to ruin. The articles of living, says the same writer, were 100 per cent. dearer than some time back. This is a very different picture from that in which Young represents every one rushing into farming, but no doubt depicts one phase of national life. An excellent observer[479] noticed in 1792 that the preceding forty or fifty years had witnessed the total destruction in England of the once common type of the small country squire. He was:-- 'An independent gentleman of £300 per annum who commonly appeared in a plain drab or plush coat, large silver buttons, a jockey cap, and rarely without boots. His travels never exceeded the distance of the county town, and that only at assize or session time, or to attend an election. Once a week he commonly dined at the next market town with the attorneys and justices. He went to church regularly, read the weekly journal, settled the parochial disputes, and afterwards adjourned to the neighbouring alehouse, where he generally got drunk for the good of his country. He was commonly followed by a couple of greyhounds and a pointer, and announced his arrival at a neighbour's house by smacking his whip and giving a view halloo. His drink was generally ale, except on Christmas Day, the Fifth of November, or some other gala day, when he would make a bowl of strong brandy. The mansion of one of these squires was of plaster striped with timber, not unaptly called callimanco work, or of red brick with large casemented bow windows; a porch with seats in it and over it a study: the eaves of the house well inhabited by swallows, and the court set round with hollyhocks; near the gate a horse-block for mounting. The hall was furnished with flitches of bacon, and the mantelpiece with guns and fishing-rods of different dimensions, accompanied by the broadsword, partisan, and dagger borne by his ancestor in the Civil Wars. Against the wall was posted King Charles's _Golden Rules_, Vincent Wing's _Almanac_ and a portrait of the Duke of Marlborough; in his window lay Baker's _Chronicle_, Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_, Glanvill _On Apparitions_, Quincey's _Dispensatory_, _The Complete Justice_, and a _Book of Farriery_. In a corner by the fireside stood a large wooden two-armed chair with a cushion, and within the chimney corner were a couple of seats. Here at Christmas he entertained his tenants, assembled round a glowing fire made of the roots of trees; and told and heard the traditionary tales of the village about ghosts and witches while a jorum of ale went round. These men and their houses are no more.' The farmer, in some parts at all events, was becoming a more civilized individual; the late race had lived in the midst of their enlightened neighbours like beings of another order[480]; in their personal labour they were indefatigable, in their fare hard, in their dress homely, in their manners rude. The French and American War of 1775-83 was a very prosperous time, and the farmer's mode of living greatly improved. Farmhouses in England, it was noticed, were in general well furnished with every convenient accommodation. Into many of them a 'barometer had of late years been introduced'. The teapot and the mug of ale jointly possessed the breakfast table, and meat and pudding smoked on the board every noon. Formerly one might see at church what was the cut of a coat half a century ago, now dress was spruce and modern.[481] As a proof of the spirit of improvement among farmers, Marshall instances the custom in the Midlands of placing their sons as pupils on other farms to widen their experience. 'Their entertainments are as expensive as they are elegant, for it is no uncommon thing for one of these new-created farmers to spend £10 or £12, at one entertainment, and to have the most expensive wines; to set off the entertainment in the greatest splendour an elegant sideboard of plate is provided in the newest fashion.'[482] As to dress, no one could tell the farmer's daughter from the duke's. Marshall noticed that in Warwickshire the harness of the farmer's teams was often ridiculously ornamented, and the horses were overfed and underworked to save their looks. Before enclosure the farmer entertained his friends with bacon fed by himself, washed down with ale brewed from his own malt, in a brown jug, or a glass if he was extravagant. He wore a coat of woollen stuff, the growth of his own flock, spun by his wife and daughters, his stockings came from the same quarter, so did the clothes of his family. Some of these farmers were doing their share in helping the progress of agriculture. In 1764 Joseph Elkington, of Princethorpe in Warwickshire, was the first to practise the under drainage of sloping land that was drowned by the bursting of springs. He drained some fields at Princethorpe which were very wet, and dug a trench 4 or 5 feet deep for this purpose; but finding this did not reach the principal body of subjacent water, he drove an iron bar 4 feet below the bottom of his trench and on withdrawing it the water gushed out. He was thus led to combine the system of cutting drains, aided when necessary by auger holes. His main principles were three: (1) Finding the main spring, or cause of the mischief. (2) Taking the level of that spring and ascertaining its subterranean bearings, for if the drain is cut a yard below the line of the spring the water issuing from it cannot be reached, but on ascertaining the line by levelling the spring can be cut effectually. (3) Using the auger to tap the spring when the drain was not deep enough for the purpose.[483] It was owing to the Board of Agriculture at the end of the century that he obtained the vote of £1,000 from Parliament, and a skilful surveyor was appointed to observe his methods and give them to the public, for he was too ignorant himself to give an intelligible account of his system. After the publication of the report his system was followed generally until Smith of Deanston in 1835 gave the method now in use to his country. Robert Bakewell, who did more to improve live stock than any other man, was born at Dishley, Leicestershire, in 1735, and succeeding to the management of his father's farm in 1760 began to make experiments in breeding.[484] He scorned the old idea that the blood must be constantly varied by the mixture of different breeds, and his new system differed from the old in two chief points: (1) small versus large bone, and consequently a greater proportion of flesh and a greater tendency to fatten; (2) permissible in-breeding versus perpetual crossing with strange breeds. He took immense pains in selecting the best animals to breed from, and had at Dishley a museum of skeletons and pickled specimens for the comparison of one generation with another, and he conducted careful post-mortem examinations on his stock. His great production was the new Leicester breed of sheep,[485] which in half a century spread over every part of the United Kingdom, as well as to Europe and America, and gave England 2 lb. of meat where she had one before. Sheep at this time were divided into two main classes: (1) short-woolled or field sheep, fed in the open fields; (2) long-woolled or pasture sheep, fed in enclosures. That they were not at a very high state of perfection may be gathered from this description of the chief variety of the latter, the 'Warwickshire' breed: 'his frame large and loose, his bones heavy, his legs long and thick, his chine as well as his rump as sharp as a hatchet, his skin rattling on his ribs like a skeleton covered with parchments.' The origin of the new Leicester sheep is uncertain, but apparently the old Lincoln breed was the basis of it, though this, like other large breeds of English sheep, was itself an introduction of the last half century. The new sheep was described as having a clean head, straight broad flat back, barrel-like body, fine small eyes, thin feet, mutton fat, fine-grained and of good flavour, wool 8 lb. to the fleece, and wethers at two years old weighed from 20 to 30 lb. a quarter. By 1770 his rams were hired for 25 guineas a season, and soon after he made £3,000 a year by their hire, one named 'Two-pounder' bringing him 1,200 guineas in one year. One of his theories was that the poorer the land the more it demanded well-made sheep, which is no doubt true to a certain extent; but it has been proved conclusively since that the quality of the breed gradually drops to the level of the land unless artificially assisted. At his death he left two distinct breeds of sheep, for he improved on his own new Leicester, so that the improved became the 'New Leicester' and the former the 'Old Leicester.' However, at the time and, afterwards, his sheep were generally called 'New Leicesters', and sometimes the 'Dishley breed'. There was much prejudice among farmers against the new breed; in the Midlands most of the farmers would have nothing to do with them, and 'their grounds were stocked with creatures that would disgrace the meanest lands in the kingdom.' Yet in April, 1786, yearling wethers of the new breed were sold for 28s. while those of the old were 16s. The cattle which he set to work to improve were the famous old longhorn breed, the prevailing breed of the Midlands, which had already been considerably improved by Webster of Canley in Warwickshire, and others, especially in Lancashire and the north. The kind of cattle esteemed hitherto had been 'the large, long-bodied, big-boned, coarse, flat-sided kind, and often lyery or black-fleshed.'[486] He founded his herd upon two heifers of Webster's and a bull from Westmoreland, and from these bred all his cattle. The celebrated bull 'Twopenny' was a son of the Westmoreland bull and one of these heifers, who came to be celebrated in agricultural history as 'Old Comely', for she was slaughtered at the age of twenty-six. He bred his cattle so that they produced an enormous amount of fat, as hitherto there had been a difficulty in producing animals to fatten readily; but this he pushed to too great an extreme, so that there has been a reaction. The following is a description of a six-year-old bull, got by 'Twopenny' out of a Canley cow: 'His head, chest, and neck remarkably fine and clean; his chest extraordinarily deep; his brisket bearing down to his knees; his chine thin, loin narrow at the chine, but remarkably wide at the hips. Quarters long, round bones snug, but thighs rather full and remarkably let down. The carcase throughout, chine excepted, large, roomy, deep, and well spread.'[487] The new longhorn, however good for the grazier, was not a good milker. Bakewell was a great believer in straw as a food, and strongly objected to having it trodden into manure; his beasts were largely fed on it, in such small quantities that they greedily ate what was before them and wasted little. His activity was not confined to the breeding of cattle and sheep, for he also produced a breed of black horses, thick and short in the body, with very short legs and very powerful, two ploughing 4 acres a day, a statement which seems much exaggerated; and was famous for his skill in irrigating meadows, by which he could cut grass four times a year. He was a firm believer in the wisdom of treating stock gently and kindly, and his sheep were kept as clean as racehorses. A visitor to Dishley saw a bull of huge proportions, with enormous horns, led about by a boy of seven. He travelled much, and admired the farms of Norfolk most in England, and those of Holland and Flanders abroad, founding his own system on these. It was his opinion that the Devon breed of cattle were incapable of improvement by a cross of any other breed, and that from the West Highland heifer the best breed of cattle might be produced. He died in 1795, and apparently did not keep what he made, owing largely to his boundless hospitality, which had entertained Russian princes, German royal dukes, English peers, and travellers from all countries. His breed of cattle has completely disappeared, unless traces survive in the lately resuscitated longhorn breed, but his principles are still acted upon, viz. the correlation of form, and the practice of consanguineous breeding under certain conditions. Bakewell's earliest pupil was George Culley, who devoted himself to improving the breed of cattle, and became one of the most famous agriculturists at the end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries. Another farmer to whom English agriculture owes much was John Ellman of Glynde, born in 1753, who by careful selection firmly established the reputation of the Southdown sheep which had previously been hardly recognized. He was one of the founders of the Smithfield Cattle Show in 1793, which helped materially to improve the live stock of the country. The relations between landlord and tenant, judging from the accounts of contemporary writers, were generally good. Leases were less frequent than agreements voidable by six months' notice on either side, and when there was a tenancy-at-will the tenant who entered as a young man was often expected to hand on the holding to his posterity, and therefore executed improvements at his own cost, so complete was the trust between landlord and tenant. Tenants then did much that they would refuse to do to-day, as the following lease, common in the Midlands in 1786, shows[488]: Tenant agrees to take, &c., and to pay the stipulated rent within forty days, without any deduction for taxes, and double rent so long as he continues to hold after notice given. To repair buildings, accidents by fire excepted. To repair gates and fences. When required, to cut and plash the hedges, and make the ditches 3 feet by 2 feet, or pay or cause to be paid to the landlord 1s. per rood for such as shall not be done after three months' notice has been given in writing. Not to break up certain lands specified in the schedule, 'under £20 an acre.' Not to plough more than a specified number of acres of the rest of the land in any one year, under the same penalty. To forfeit the same sum for every acre that shall be ploughed for any longer time than three crops successively, without making a clean summer fallow thereof after the third crop. And the like sum for every acre over and above a specified number (clover excepted) that shall be mown in any one year. At the time of laying down arable lands to grass he shall manure them with 8 quarters of lime per acre, and sow the same with 12 lb. of clover seeds, and one bushel of rye-grass per acre. Shall spend on the premises all hay, straw, and manure, or leave them at the end of the term. Tenant on quitting to be allowed for hay left on the premises, for clover and rye-grass sown in the last year, and for all fallows made within that time.'[489] A striking picture of the conditions prevailing in many parts of England at this period is given by Mr. Loch in his account of the estates of the Marquis of Stafford.[490] When this nobleman inherited his property in Staffordshire and Shropshire, much of the land, as in other parts of England, was held on leases for three lives, a system said to have been ruinous in its effects. Although the farms were held at one-third of their value, nothing could be worse than the course of cultivation pursued, no improvements were carried out, and all that could be hoped for was that the land would not be entirely run out when the lease expired. The closes were extremely small and of the most irregular shape; the straggling fences occupied a large portion of the land; the crookedness of the ditches, by keeping the water stagnant, added to, rather than relieved, the wetness of the soil. Farms were much scattered, and to enable the occupiers to get at their land, lanes wound backwards and forwards from field to field, covering a large quantity of ground. It is to the great credit of the Marquis of Stafford that this miserable state of things was swept away. Lands were laid together, the size of the fields enlarged, hedges and ditches straightened, the drainage conducted according to a uniform plan, new and substantial buildings erected, indeed the whole countryside transformed. Another evil custom on the estate had been to permit huts of miserable construction to be erected to the number of several hundreds by the poorest, and in many instances the most profligate, of the population. They were not regularly entered in the rental account, but had a nominal payment fixed upon them which was paid annually at the court leet. These cottages were built on the sides of the roads and on the lord's waste, which was gradually absorbed by the encroachment, which the occupiers of these huts made from time to time by enclosing the land that lay next them. These wretched holdings gradually fell into the hands of a body of middlemen, who underlet them at an extravagant rent to the occupiers; and these men began to consider that they had an interest independent of the landlord, and had at times actually mortgaged, sold, and devised it. This abuse was also put an end to, the cottagers being made immediate tenants of the landlord, to their great gain, but to this day small aggregations of houses in Shropshire called 'Heaths' mark the encroachments of these squatters on the roadside wastes. This class, indeed, has been well known in England since the Middle Ages. Norden speaks of them in 1602, and so do many subsequent writers. Numbers of small holdings exist to-day obtained in this manner, and the custom must to some extent have counteracted the effect of enclosure.[491] The roads of England up to the end of the eighteenth century were generally in a disgraceful condition. Some improvement was effected in the latter half of the century, but it was not until the days of Telford and Macadam that they assumed the appearance with which we are familiar; and long after that, though the main roads were excellent, the by-roads were often atrocious, as readers of such books as _Handley Cross_, written in the middle of the nineteenth century, will remember. Defoe in his tour in 1724 found the road between S. Albans and Nottingham 'perfectly frightful,' and the great number of horses killed by the 'labour of these heavy ways a great charge to the country'. He notes, however, an improvement from turnpikes. Many of the roads were much worn by the continual passing of droves of heavy cattle on their way to London. Sheep could not travel in the winter to London as the roads were too heavy, so that the price of mutton at that season in town was high. Breeders were often compelled to sell them cheap before they got to London, because the roads became impassable for their flocks when the bad weather set in.[492] In 1734 Lord Cathcart wrote in his diary: 'All went well until I arrived within 3 miles of Doncaster, when suddenly my horse fell with a crash and with me under him. I fancied myself crushed to death. I slept at Doncaster and had a bad night. I was so bad all day, that I could get no further than Wetherby. Next day I was all right again. I had another terrible fall between North Allerton and Darlington, but was not a bit the worse.'[493] It was owing to this defective condition of the roads that the prices of corn still differed greatly in various localities; there would be a glut in one place and a deficiency in another, with no means of equalizing matters. To the same cause must be attributed in great measure the slow progress made in the improvement of agriculture. New discoveries travelled very slowly; the expense of procuring manure beyond that produced on the farm was prohibitive; and the uncertain returns which arose from such confined markets caused the farmer to lack both spirit and ability to exert himself in the cultivation of his land.[494] Therefore farming was limited to procuring the subsistence of particular farms rather than feeding the public. The opposition to better roads was due in great measure to the landowners, who feared that if the markets in their neighbourhood were rendered accessible to distant farmers their estates would suffer. But they were not alone in their opposition; in the reign of Queen Anne the people of Northampton were against any improvement in the navigation of the Nene, because they feared that corn from Huntingdon and Cambridge would come up the river and spoil their market.[495] Horner was very enthusiastic over the improvement recently effected: 'our very carriages travel with almost winged expedition between every town of consequence in the kingdom and the metropolis' and inland navigation was soon likely to be established in every part, in consequence of which the demand for the produce of the land increased and the land itself became more valuable and rents rose. 'There never was a more astonishing revolution accomplished in the internal system of any country'; and the carriage of grain was effected with half the former number of horses. It is clear, however, that he was easily satisfied, and this opinion must be compared with the statements of Young and Marshall, who were continually travelling all over England some time after it was written, and found the roads, in many parts, in a very bad state. Even near London they were often terrible. 'Of all the cursed roads that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King's Head at Tilbury.[496] It is for near 12 miles so narrow that a mouse cannot pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep under his wagon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge. The ruts are of an incredible depth, and everywhere chalk wagons were stuck fast till 20 or 30 horses tacked to each drew them out one by one' Others said that turnpike roads were the enemies of cheapness; as soon as they opened up secluded spots, low prices vanished and all tended to one level. Owing to the work of Telford and Macadam, the high roads by the first quarter of the nineteenth century attained a high pitch of excellence; and were thronged with traffic, coaches, postchaises, private carriages, equestrians, carts and wagons: so animated a sight that our forefathers built small houses called 'gazebos' on the sides of the road, where they met to take tea and watch the ever varying stream. It should not be forgotten, too, that the inns, where numbers of horses put up, were splendid markets for the farmers' oats, hay, and straw. The seasons in the latter part of the eighteenth century were distinguished for being frequently bad. In 1774 Gilbert White wrote, 'Such a run of wet seasons as we have had the last ten or eleven years would have produced a famine a century or two ago.' Owing to the dearness of bread in 1767 riots broke out in many places, many lives were lost, and the gaols were filled with prisoners.[497] 1779 was, however, a year of great fertility and prices were low all round: wheat 33s. 8d., barley 26s., oats 13s. 6d., wool 12s. a tod of 28 lb.: and there were many complaints of ruined farmers and distressed landlords. Though England was now becoming an importing country, the amount of corn imported was insufficient to have any appreciable effect on prices, which were mainly influenced by the seasons, as the following instance of the fluctuations caused by a single bad season (1782) testifies[498]: Prices after harvest of 1781. Prices after harvest of 1782. £ s. d. £ s. d. Wheat, per bushel 5 0 Wheat, per bushel 10 6 Barley " 2 9 Barley " 7 2 Dutch oats for seed 1 8 Dutch oats for seed 3 6 Clover seed, per cwt. 1 11 6 Clover seed, per cwt. 5 10 0 The summer of 1783 was amazing and portentous and full of horrible phenomena, according to White, with a peculiar haze or smoky fog prevailing for many weeks. 'The sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms.' This was succeeded by a very severe winter, the thermometer on December 10 being 1° below zero; the worst since 1739-40. In 1788 occurred a severe drought in the summer, 5,000 horned cattle perishing for lack of water.[499] In 1791 there was a remarkable change of temperature in the middle of June, the thermometer in a few days falling from 75° to 25°, and the hills of Kent and Surrey were covered with snow. We have now to deal with one of those landowners whose great example is one of the glories of English agriculture. Coke of Holkham began his great agricultural work about 1776 on an estate where, as old Lady Townshend said, 'all you will see will be one blade of grass and two rabbits fighting for that;' in fact it was little better than a rabbit warren. It has been said that all the wheat consumed in the county of Norfolk was at this time imported from abroad; but this is in direct contradiction to Young's assertion, already noted, that there were in 1767 great quantities of wheat besides other crops in the county. Coke's estate indeed seems to have been considerably behind many parts of the shire when he began his farming career.[500] When Coke came into his estate, in five leases which were about to expire the farms were held at 3s. 6d. an acre; and in the previous leases they had been 1s. 6d. an acre. We may judge of the quality of this land by comparing it with the average rent of 10s. which Young says prevailed at this time. With a view to remedy this state of things he studied the agriculture of other counties, and his observations thereon reveal a very poor kind of farming in many places: in Cheshire the rich pasture was wasted and the poor impoverished by sheer ignorance, in Yorkshire luxuriant grass was understocked, in Shropshire there were hardly any sheep; in his own part of Norfolk the usual rotation was three white straw crops and then broadcast turnips.[501] This Coke changed to two white crops and two years pasture, and he dug up and brought to the surface the rich marl which lay under the flint and sand, so that clover and grasses began to grow. So successful was he in this that in 1796 he cut nearly 400 tons of sainfoin from 104 acres of land previously valued at 12s. an acre. He increased his flock of sheep from 800 worthless animals with backs as narrow as rabbits, the description of the Norfolk sheep of the day, to 2,500 good Southdowns. Encouraged by the Duke of Bedford, another great agriculturist, he started a herd of North Devons, and, fattening two Devons against one Shorthorn, found the former weighed 140 stone, the latter 110, and the Shorthorn had eaten more food than the two Devons. However, a single experiment of this kind is not very conclusive. The ploughs of Norfolk were, as in many other counties, absurdly over-horsed, from three to five being used when only two were necessary; so Coke set the example of using two whenever possible, and won a bet with Sir John Sebright by ploughing an acre of stiff land in Hertfordshire in a day with a pair of horses. He transformed the bleak bare countryside by planting 50 acres of trees every year until he had 3,000 acres well covered, and in 1832 had probably the unique experience of embarking in a ship which was built of oak grown from the acorns he had himself planted.[502] Between 1776 and 1842 (the date of his death) he is said to have spent £536,992 on improving his estate, without reckoning the large sums spent on his house and demesne, the home farm, and his marsh farm of 459 acres. This expenditure paid in the long run, but when he entered upon it, it must have seemed very doubtful if this would be the case. A good understanding between landlord and tenant was the basis of his policy, and to further this he let his farms on long leases, at moderate rents, with few restrictions. When farmers improved their holdings on his estate the rent was not raised on them, so that the estate benefited greatly, and good tenants were often rewarded by having excellent houses built for them; so good, indeed, that his political opponents the Tories, whom he, as a staunch Whig detested, made it one of their complaints against him that he built palaces for farmhouses. At first he met with that stolid opposition to progress which seems the particular characteristic of the farmer. For sixteen years no one followed him in the use of the drill, though it was no new thing; and when it was adopted he reckoned its use spread at the rate of a mile a year. Yet eventually he had his reward; his estate came to command the pick of English tenant farmers, who never left it except through old age, and would never live under any other landlord. Even the Radical Cobbett, to whom, as to most of his party, landlords were, and are, the objects of inveterate hatred, said that every one who knew him spoke of him with affection. Coke was the first to distinguish between the adaptability of the different kinds of grass seeds to different soils, and thereby made the hitherto barren lands of his estate better pasture land than that of many rich counties. Carelessness about the quality of grasses sown was universal for a long time. The farmer took his seeds from his own foul hayrick, or sent to his neighbour for a supply of rubbish; even Bakewell derived his stock from his hayloft. It was not until the Society for the Encouragement of Arts offered prizes for clean hay seeds that some improvement was noticeable. In Norfolk, as in other parts of England, there was at this time a strong prejudice against potatoes; the villagers of Holkham refused to have anything to do with them, but Coke's invincible persistency overcame this unreasoning dislike and soon they refused to do without them. Coke was a great advocate for sowing wheat early and very thick in the rows, and for cutting it when ear and stem were green and the grain soft, declaring that by so doing he got 2s. a quarter more for it; he also believed in the early cutting of oats and peas. It was his custom to drill 4 bushels of wheat per acre, which he said prevented tillering and mildew. He was the first to grow swedes on a large scale.[503] The famous Holkham Sheep-shearings, known locally as 'Coke's Clippings', which began in 1778 and lasted till 1821, arose from his practice of gathering farmers together for consultation on matters agricultural, and developed into world-famous meetings attended by all nationalities and all ranks, men journeying from America especially to attend them, and Lafayette expressed it as one of his great regrets that he had never attended one. At these gatherings all were equal, the suggestion of the smallest tenant farmer was listened to with respect, and the same courtesy and hospitality were shown to all whether prince or farmer. At the last meeting in 1821 no less than 7,000 people were present. His skill, energy, and perseverance worked a revolution in the crops; his own wheat crops were from 10 to 12 coombs an acre, his barley sometimes nearly 20. The annual income of timber and underwood was £2,700, and from 1776 to 1816 he increased the rent roll of his estate from £2,200 to £20,000, which, even after allowing for the great advance in prices during that period, is a wonderful rise. It is a very significant fact that there was not an alehouse on the estate, and in connexion with this, and with the fact that his improvements made a constant demand for labour, we are not surprised to learn that the workhouse was pulled down as useless, for it was always empty, and this at a time when the working-classes of England were pauperized to an alarming degree. The year 1818 was one of terrible distress all over England in country and town, yet at his sheep-shearing of that year Coke was enabled to say he had trebled the population of his estate and not a single person was out of employment, though everywhere else farmers were turning off hands and cutting down wages. Principally through his agency, between 1804 and 1821, no less than 153 enclosures took place in Norfolk, while between 1790 and 1810, 2,000,000 acres of waste land in England were brought under cultivation largely by his efforts. He is said, indeed, to have transformed agriculture throughout England, and, but for that, the country would not have been able to grow enough food for its support during the war with Napoleon, and must have succumbed. FOOTNOTES: [440] _Northern Tour_, i. 9. For an interesting account of Young, see _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (3rd Series), iv. 1. [441] In 1726 Bradley had urged the use of liquorice, madder, woad, and caraway as improvers of the land in the Preface to the _Country Gentleman_. [442] _Rural Economy_ (1771), pp. 173-5. Trusler, who wrote in 1780, mentions 'the general rage for farming throughout the kingdom.'--_Practical Husbandry_, p. I. [443] In 1780 Sir Thomas Bernard, travelling through Northumberland, saw 'luxuriant plantations, neat hedges, rich crops of corn, comfortable farmhouses' in a county whereof the greater part was barren moor dearly rented at 1s. 6d. an acre thirty years before, and he said the county had increased in annual value fourfold, (Contemporary MS., unpublished.) [444] _Rural Economy_, p. 26. [445] _Farmer's Letters_ (3rd ed.), p. 89. [446] Slater, _English Peasantry and Enclosure_, p. 95. [447] Ibid. p. 101. [448] Young, _Northern Tour_, iv. 340, about 1770 estimates the cultivated land of England to be half pasture and half arable, and, in the absence of reliable statistics, his opinion on this point is certainly the best available. The conversion of a large portion of the richer land from arable to grass in the eighteenth century was compensated for, according to Young, by the conversion, on enclosure, of poor sandy soils and heaths or moors into corn land. Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 370-1. [449] Young, _Northern Tour_, i. 222. [450] _Rural Economy_, p. 252. [451] Ibid. p. 271. [452] Cf. above, p. 180. [453] _Farmer's Letters_ (3rd ed), p. 372. [454] _Northern Tour_, iv. 167. [455] Ibid. iv. 186. [456] This large item is explained by the fact that a bailiff was employed to sell, and no bailiff could find customers 'without feeling the same drought as stage coachmen when they see a sign'.--Young, _Farmer's Letters_, p. 403. [457] _Rural Economy_, p. 314. [458] 1775, pp. x-xiii. [459] _Northern Tour_, iv. 192-202. [460] See _Parliamentary Reports Commission_ (1881), xvi. 260. [461] _Dissertations on Rural Subjects_, p. 278. [462] _Farmer's Letters_, p. 433. [463] _History of Hawsted_, p. 169. [464] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 127; Kent, _Hints to Gentlemen_, p. 152. [465] _Southern Tour_, p. 324. He says nothing of the manufacturing towns, which had not yet began to influence the wages of farm labourers near them as they soon afterwards did. [466] Some prices at this time were: bread per lb., 2d.; butter, 5-1/2d. to 8d.; cheese, 3-1/2d. to 4d.; beef, 3d. to 5d.; mutton, 3-1/2d. to 5d. [467] _State of the Poor_, i. 562. [468] According to Walter Harte, though the yeoman in the middle of the seventeenth century ate bread of rye and barley (maslin), in 1766 even the poor cottagers looked upon it with horror and demanded best wheaten bread. Yet in 1766 the quartern loaf in London was 1s. 6d.--Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 68. [469] _History of Hawsted_, p. 184. [470] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 513. [471] _Rural Economy of Gloucestershire_, i. 53. [472] Eden, _op. cit._ i. 547. [473] _Farmer's Letters_, i. 300 [474] The pulling down of cottages began to be complained of in the seventeenth century; they harboured the poor, who were a charge upon the parish, and repairs were saved.--_Transactions Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix. 120. [475] Hasbach, _op. cit._ 82; Clarke, _General View of Herefordshire_, p. 29; Marshall, _Review of Northern Department_, p. 375. [476] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 50; Hallam, _Constitutional History_, iii. 302. [477] _Northern Tour_, iv. 420. The increase in population in the first half of the eighteenth century was slow; after the Peace of Paris in 1763, when the commerce and manufactures of the country were extended in an unprecedented degree, it was rapid. [478] _The Way to be Rich and Respectable_, London, 1780. [479] Grose, _Olio_, pp. 41-4; Lecky, _History of England in Eighteenth Century_, vi. 169 et. seq. [480] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, p. 219. [481] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, p. 225. [482] _Thoughts on Enclosure, by a Country Farmer_ (1786), p. 21. [483] Johnstone, _Account of Elkington's Draining_ (1797), pp. 8-9. [484] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1894), p. 11, from which this account of Bakewell is mainly taken. [485] According to some, Joseph Allom originated the breed, and Bakewell vastly improved it. We may safely give the chief credit to so careful and gifted a breeder as Bakewell. [486] _Culley on Live Stock_ (1807), p. 56. [487] Marshall, _Rural Economy of the Midland Counties_, i. 273. [488] _Victoria County History: Warwickshire, Agriculture_. [489] In Lancashire at this date it was not uncommon, when a tenant wished for his farm or a particular field to be improved by draining, marling, liming, or laying down to grass, to hand it over to the landlord for the process; who, when completed, returned it to the tenant with an advanced rent of 10 per cent. upon the improvements.--Marshall, _Review of Reports to Board of Agriculture_ (under Lancashire). [490] 1820, p. 173 et seq. [491] See Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 77 sq.; _Annals of Agriculture_, xxxvi. 497; Scrutton, _Commons and Common Fields_, p. 139. [492] Defoe, _Tour_, ii. 178 et seq. [493] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (3rd Ser.), ii. 9. [494] Horner, _Inquiry into the Means of Preserving the Public Roads_ (1767), pp. 4 et seq. [495] _Victoria County History: Northants._, ii. 250. [496] Young, _Southern Tour_ (ed. 2), p. 88. [497] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 68. It is difficult to understand the price of the quartern loaf, 1s. 6d. in 1766, as wheat was only 43s. 1d. a quarter. Prices of wheat in these years were: s. d. 1767 47 4 1768 53 9 1769 40 7 1770 43 6 1771 47 2 1772 50 8 1773 51 0 1774 52 8 1775 48 4 1776 38 2 1777 45 6 1778 42 0 1779 33 8 These returns differ from those of the Board of Agriculture; see Appendix III. [498] _Annals of Agriculture_, iii. 366. [499] Baker, _Seasons and Prices_, pp. 224 et seq. [500] A. Stirling, _Coke of Holkham_, i. 249. [501] But in other parts of it the cultivation of turnips was well understood, for the _Complete Farmer_, s.v. _Turnips_ (ed. 3), says that about 1750 Norfolk farmers boasted that turnips had doubled the value of their holdings, and Norfolk men were famous for understanding hoeing and thinning, which were little practised elsewhere. Further, Young, _Southern Tour_, p. 273, says: 'the extensive use of turnips is known but little of except in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. I found no farmers but in these counties that understood anything of fatting cattle with them; feeding lean sheep being the only use they put them to.' [502] A. Stirling, _op. cit._ i. 264. [503] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1895), p. 12. CHAPTER XVII 1793-1815 THE GREAT FRENCH WAR.--THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE.--HIGH PRICES, AND HEAVY TAXATION. This period, that of the great war with France, was one generally of high prices and prosperity for landowners and farmers. It was a prosperity, however, that was largely fictitious, and when the high prices of the war time were over, it was succeeded by many disastrous years. The prosperity, too, was also largely neutralized by a crushing weight of taxation and rates, while the labourer, although his wages were increased, found prices grow at a much greater rate, and it was, as Thorold Rogers has said, the most miserable period in his history. Its commencement was marked by the foundation of the Board of Agriculture. On May 15, 1793, Sir John Sinclair[504] moved in the House of Commons, 'that His Majesty would take into his consideration the advantages which might be derived from the establishment of such a board, for though in some particular districts improved methods of cultivating the soil were practised, yet in the greatest part of these kingdoms the principles of agriculture are not sufficiently understood, nor are the implements of husbandry or the stock of the farmer brought to that perfection of which they are capable. His Majesty's faithful Commons were persuaded that if it were founded a spirit of improvement might be encouraged, which would result in important national benefits. The motion was carried by 101 to 26. By its charter the board consisted of a president, 16 ex-officio and 30 ordinary members, with honorary and corresponding members. It was not a Government department in the modern sense of the term, but a society for the encouragement of agriculture, as the Royal Society is for the encouragement of science. It was, indeed, supported by parliamentary grants, receiving a sum of £3,000 a year, but the Government had only a limited control over its affairs through the ex-officio members, among whom were the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Lord Chancellor, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Speaker. The first president was Sir John Sinclair, and the first secretary Arthur Young, with a salary of £400 a year, which he thought insufficient.[505] The first task of the new board was that of preparing statistical accounts of English agriculture, and it was intended to take in hand the commutation of tithes, which would have been a great boon to farmers, with whom the prevailing system of collecting tithes was very unpopular; but the Primate's opposition stopped this. The board appointed lecturers, procured a reward for Elkington for his draining system, encouraged Macadam in his plans for improving roads, and Meikle the inventor of the thrashing machine, and obtained the removal of taxes on draining tiles, and other taxes injurious to agriculture. It also recommended the allotment system, and Sinclair desired 3 acres and a cow for every industrious cottager. During the abnormally high prices of provisions from 1794-6, the quartern loaf in London in 1795 being 1s. 6d., though next year it dropped to 7-3/4d.,[506] the board made experiments in making bread with substitutes for wheat, which resulted in a public exhibition of eighty different sorts of bread. Its efforts were generally followed by increased zeal among agriculturists; but Sinclair, an able but impetuous man,[507] appears to have taken things too much into his own hands and pushed them too speedily. Financial difficulties came, chiefly owing to the cost of the surveys, which had been hurried on with undue haste and often with great carelessness, the surveyors sometimes being men who knew nothing of the subject. Sinclair was deposed from the presidency in 1798, and succeeded by Lord Somerville. He again was succeeded by Lord Carrington, under whose presidency the board offered premiums (the first of £200), owing to the high price of wheat and consequent distress, for essays on the best means of converting certain portions of grass land into tillage without exhausting the soil, and of returning the same to grass, after a certain period, in an improved state, or at least without injury. The general report, based on the information derived from these essays, states that no high price of corn or temporary distress would justify the ploughing up of old meadows or rich pastures, and that on certain soils well adapted to grass age improves the quality of the pasture to a degree which no system of management on lands broken up and laid down can equal. In spite of this, the cupidity of landowners and farmers, when wheat was a guinea a bushel or at prices near it, led to the ploughing up of much splendid grass land, which was never laid down again until, perhaps in recent years, owing to the low price of grain; so that some of the land at all events has, owing to bad times, returned to the state best suited to it. The board looked upon the enclosure and cultivation of waste lands, which in England they estimated at 6,000,000 acres,[508] as a panacea for the prevailing distress, and after much opposition they managed to pass through both Houses in 1801 a Bill cheapening and facilitating the process of parliamentary enclosure. This Act, 41 Geo. III, c. 109, 'extracted a number of clauses from various private Acts and enacted that they should hold good in all cases where the special Act did not expressly provide to the contrary.' Another benefit rendered to agriculture was the establishment in 1803 of lectures on agricultural chemistry, the first lecturer engaged being Mr., afterwards Sir Humphry, Davy, who may be regarded as the father of agricultural chemistry. In 1806 Sinclair was re-elected president, and his second term was mainly devoted to completing the agricultural surveys of the different counties, which, before his retirement in 1813, he had with one or two exceptions the satisfaction of seeing finished. Though over-impetuous, he rendered valuable service to agriculture, not only by his own energy but by stirring up energy in others; as William Wilberforce the philanthrophist said, 'I have myself seen collected in that small room several of the noblemen and gentlemen of the greatest properties in the British Isles, all of them catching and cultivating an agricultural spirit, and going forth to spend in the employment of labourers, and I hope in the improvement of land, immense sums which might otherwise have been lavished on hounds and horses, or squandered on theatricals.' Among the numerous subjects into which the board inquired was the divining rod for finding water, which was tested in Hyde Park in 1801, and successfully stood the test. In 1805, Davy the chemist reported on a substance in South America called 'guana', which he had analysed and found to contain one-third of ammoniacal salt with other salts and carbon, but its use was not to come for another generation. From the time of Sinclair's retirement in 1813 the board declined. Arthur Young, its secretary, had become blind and his capacity therefore impaired. One year its lack of energy was shown by the return of £2,000 of the Government grant to the Treasury because it had nothing to spend it on. The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, was against it, the clergy feared the commutation of tithe which the board advocated, the legal profession was against the Enclosure Act, the landed interest thought the surveys were intended for purposes of taxation; and the grant being withdrawn, an effort to maintain the board by voluntary subscription failed, so that it dissolved in 1822, after doing much valuable work for English agriculture. Before its extinction it had held in 1821, at Aldridge's Repository, the first national agricultural show. £685 was given in prizes, and the entries included 10 bulls, 9 cows and heifers, several fat steers and cows, 7 pens of Leicester and Cotswold rams and ewes; 12 pens of Down, and 9 or 10 pens of Merino rams and ewes.[509] Most of the cattle shown were Shorthorn, or Durham, as they were then called, with some Herefords, Devons, Longhorns, and Alderneys. There were also exhibits of grass, turnip-seed, roots, and implements. This first national show had been preceded by many local ones.[510] The end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries saw the establishment all over England of farmers' clubs, cattle shows, and ploughing matches. The period now before us is marked by the great work of the Collings, who next to Bakewell did most to improve the cattle of the United Kingdom. Charles Colling was born in 1751, and the scene of his famous labours was Ketton near Darlington. He had learnt from Bakewell the all-importance of quality in cattle, and determined to improve the local Shorthorn breed near his own home, which had been described in 1744 as 'the most profitable beasts for the dairyman, butcher, and grazier, with their wide bags, short horns, and large bodies.' He was to make these 'profitable beasts' the best all-round cattle in the world, and to succeed where George Culley had failed. The first bull of merit he possessed was 'Hubback',[511] described as a little yellow, red, and white five-year-old, which was mated with cows afterwards to be famous, named Duchess, Daisy, Cherry, and Lady Maynard. At first Colling was against in-breeding, and not until 1793 did he adopt it, more by accident than intention, but the experiment being successful he became an enthusiast. The experiment was the putting of Phoenix to Lord Bolingbroke, who was both her half-brother and her nephew, and the result was the famous Favourite. A young farmer who saw Favourite and his sister at Darlington in 1799, was so struck by them that he paid Colling the first 100 guineas ever given for a Shorthorn cow.[512] One of Hubback's daughters had in 1795, by Favourite, a roan calf which grew to be the celebrated Durham Ox, which at five and a half years weighed 3,024 lb., and was sold for £140. It was sold again for £250, the second purchaser refusing £2,000 for it, and taking it round England on show made a profitable business out of it, in one day in London making £97. A still more famous animal was the bull Comet, born 1804, which at the great sale in 1810 fetched 1,000 guineas. This bull was the crowning triumph of Colling's career and the result of very close breeding, being described as the best bull ever seen, with a fine masculine head, broad and deep chest, shoulders well laid back, loins good, hind-quarters long, straight and well packed, thighs thick, with nice straight hocks and hind legs. Perhaps Colling thought he had pursued in-and-in breeding too far, at all events in 1810 he dispersed his famous herd. The sale was held at a most propitious time, for the Durham Ox had advertised the name of Colling far and wide, and owing to the war prices were very high. Comet fetched 1,000 guineas, and the other forty-seven lots averaged £151 8s. 5d., an unheard-of sale, yet all the auctioneer got was 5 guineas, much of the work of the sale falling on the owner, and the former sold the stock with a sand-glass. After the sale at Ketton, Brampton, the farm of Charles's brother Robert, became the centre of interest to the Shorthorn world. Robert obtained excellent prices for his stock, five daughters of his famous bull George fetching 200 guineas each. Probably he, like his brother, pursued in-and-in breeding too far, and in 1818 there was another great sale; but war-prices had gone and agriculture was depressed, so that the cattle fetched less than at Ketton, but still averaged £128 14s. 9d. for 61 lots, and 22 rams averaged £39 6s. 4d. Robert died in 1820, his brother in 1836. It cannot be said that the Collings were the founders of a new breed of cattle; they were the collectors and preservers of an ancient breed that might otherwise have disappeared.[513] The object of good breeders was now to get their cattle fat at an early age, and they so far succeeded as to sell three-year-old steers for £20 apiece, generally fed thus: in the first winter, hay and turnips; the following summer, coarse pasture; the second winter, straw in the foldyard and a few turnips; next summer, tolerable good pasture; and the third winter, as many turnips as they could eat.[514] Cattle at this time were classified thus: Shorthorns, Devons, Sussex, Herefords (the two latter said by Culley to be varieties of the Devon), Longhorned, Galloway or Polled, Suffolk Duns, Kyloes, and Alderneys. Sheep thus: the Dishley Breed (New Leicesters), Lincolns, Teeswaters, Devonshire Notts, Exmoor, Dorsetshire, Herefordshire, Southdown, Norfolk, Heath, Herdwick, Cheviot, Dunfaced, Shetland, Irish.[515] With the increased demand for corn and meat from the towns the necessity of new and better implements became apparent, and many patents were taken out: by Praed, for drill ploughs, in 1781; by Horn, for sowing machines, in 1784; by Heaton, for harrows, in 1787; for sowing machines, by Sandilands, 1788; for reaping machines, by Boyce, 1799; winnowing machines, by Cooch, 1800; haymakers, by Salmon, 1816; and for scarifiers, chaff-cutters, turnip-slicers, and food-crushers.[516] But the great innovation was the threshing machine of Meikle. Like most inventions, it had forerunners. The first threshing machine is mentioned in the _Select Transactions of the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland_, published in 1743 by Maxwell. It was invented by Michael Menzies, and by it one man could do the work of six. One machine was worked by a great water-wheel and triddles, another by a little wheel of 3 feet diameter, moved by a small quantity of water. The first attempts to substitute horse or other power for manual in threshing were directed to the revolution of jointed flails, which should strike the floor on which the corn was spread, but this proved unsatisfactory, so that rubbing the grain out of the straw by revolving cylinders was tried,[517] Young, in his northern tour, met a Mr. Clarke at Belford in Northumberland, who was famous for mechanics,[518] among his inventions being a threshing machine worked by one horse, which does not seem to have effected much. Eventually Mr. A. Meikle, of Houston Mill near Haddington, in 1798 erected a machine the principles of which, much modified, are those of to-day; and in 1803 Mr. Aitchison, of Drumore in East Lothian, first applied steam to threshing. It was some time, however, before this beneficent invention was generally used, and when the machines were used they were usually driven by horse--or water-power until about 1850. In 1883 Messrs. Howard, of Bedford, adapted a sheaf-binding apparatus to the threshing machine. With new implements came new crops; the Swede turnip was grown on some farms in Notts just before 1800, but it is not known who introduced it.[519] The mangel wurzel was introduced about 1780-5 by Parkyns, and prickly comfrey in 1811. The year 1795 was one of great scarcity owing to the wet and stormy summer, and in August wheat went up to 108s. a quarter.[520] As usual many other causes but the right one were put forth, and the old accusations of monopoly, forestalling, and regrating were heard again. The war with France, with more reason, was considered to have helped in raising prices, but the chief cause was the bad season. The members of both Houses of Parliament bound themselves to reduce the consumption of bread in their homes by one-third, and recommended others to a similar reduction. It was a period of terrible distress for the agricultural labourer. His wages were about 9s. a week, and it was impossible for him to live on them, so that what is known as 'the allowance system' came in. At Speenhamland in Berkshire, in this year, the magistrates agreed that it was not expedient to help the labourer by regulating his wages according to the statute of Elizabeth, but recommended the farmers to increase their pay in proportion to the present price of provisions, and they also granted relief to all poor and industrious men according to the price of bread. They were merely giving effect to Gilbert's Act of 1782, which legalized the supplementing of the wages of able-bodied men from the rates, and the decision was nicknamed the 'Speenhamland Act' because it was so generally followed. However well meant, the effect was most demoralizing and the English labourer, already too prone to look to the State for help, was induced to depend less on his own exertions. The real remedy would have been a substantial increase of his scanty wages. As it was, landowner and farmer were often paying the labourer in rates money that would far better have come to him in wages, and the rates in some districts became so burdensome that land was thrown out of cultivation. In the same year as the Speenhamland Act the statute 36 Geo. III, c. 23, forbade the removal of persons from any parish until they were in actual need of support; but although the law was thus relaxed, the fixed principle which caused the refusal of all permanent relief to labourers who had no settlement in the parish acted as a very efficient check on migration, though, as we have seen, it did not entirely check it. In 1796 the question of regulating the labourers' wages by Parliament was raised; but Pitt, remembering such schemes had always failed, was hostile, and the matter dropped.[521] In the same year Eden made his inquiries concerning the rate of wages and the cost of living. In Bedford, he found the agricultural labourer was getting 1s. 2d. a day and beer, with extras in harvest[522]; but bacon was 10d. a lb. and wheat 12s. a bushel. However, parish allowances were liberal, a man, his wife, and four children sometimes receiving 11s. a week from that source. In Cumberland the labourer was being paid 10d. to 1s. a day with food, or 1s. 6d. to 1s. 8d. without; in Hertfordshire, 1s. 6d. a day; in Suffolk, 1s. 4d. a day and beer. Nearly everywhere his expenditure was much in excess of his earnings, the yearly budgets of fifty-three families in twelve different counties showed generally large annual deficiencies, amounting in one case to £21 18s. 4d. In one case in Lindsey, where the deficiency was small, the family lived on bread alone. The factory system, too, had already deprived the labourer of many of his by-industries, and thus helped the pauperism for which landlord and farmer had to pay in rates. About 1788 Sir William Young proposed to send the unemployed labourers round to the parishioners to get work, their wages being paid by their employers and by the parish. This method of obtaining work was known as the 'roundsman system'.[523] Landlords, however, and farmers were profiting greatly by the high prices, which fortunately received a check by the abundant harvest of 1796, which, with large imports,[524] caused the price of wheat to fall to 57s. 3d., and in 1798 to 47s. 10d. It is difficult to conceive what instability, speculation, and disaster such fluctuations must have led to. In 1797 the Bank Restriction Act was passed, suspending cash payments, and thereby causing a huge growth in credit transactions, a great factor in the inflated prosperity of this period. In January, 1799, wool was 2s. a lb., and prices at Smithfield: s. d. s. d. Beef, per stone of 8 lb. 3 0 to 3 4 Mutton " " 3 0 " 4 2 Pork " " 2 8 " 3 8 The summer of that year was uninterruptedly wet; some corn in the north was uncut in November, so that wheat went up to 94s. 2d., and in June, 1800, was 134s. 5d., the scarcity being aggravated by the Russian Government laying an embargo on British shipping.[525] Yet Pitt denied that the high prices were due to the war.[526] They were due, indeed, to several causes: 1. Frequent years of scarcity. 2. Increase of consumption, owing to the great growth of the manufacturing population, England during the war having almost a monopoly of the trade of Europe. 3. Napoleon's obstructions to importation. 4. The unprecedented fall of foreign exchanges. 5. The rise in the price of labour, scanty as it was. 6. Suspension of cash payments, which produced a medium of circulation of an unlimited nature, and led to speculation.[527] In March, 1801, wheat was 156s.; beef at Smithfield, 5s. to 6s. 6d. a stone; and mutton, 6s. 6d. to 8s. A rise in wages was allowed on all sides to be imperative, but the labourer even now got on an average little more than 9s. a week,[528] a very inadequate pittance, though generally supplemented by the parish. Arthur Young[529] tells of a person living near Bury in 1801, who, before the era of high prices, earned 5s. a week, and with that could purchase: A bushel of wheat. " malt. 1 lb. of butter. 1 lb. of cheese. A pennyworth of tobacco. But in 1801 the same articles cost him: s. d. A bushel of wheat 16 0 " malt 9 0 1 lb. of butter 1 0 1 lb. of cheese 4 Tobacco 1 -------- £1 6 5 ======== His wages were now 9s., and his allowance from the rates 6s., so that there was a deficiency of 11s. 5d. The increase in the cost of living in the last thirty years is further illustrated by the following table: 1773. 1793. 1799. 1800. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. Coomb of malt 12 0 1 3 0 1 3 0 2 0 0 Chaldron of coals 1 11 6 2 0 6 2 6 0 2 11 0 Coomb of oats 5 0 13 0 16 0 1 1 0 Load of hay 2 2 0 4 10 0 5 5 0 7 0 0 Meat, per lb. 4 5 7 9 Butter, " 6 11 11 1 4 Loaf sugar, per lb. 8 1 0 1 3 1 4 Poor rates, in the £ 1 0 2 6 3 0 5 0 It was again proposed by Mr. Whitbread in the House of Commons that wages should be regulated by the price of provisions, and a minimum wage fixed; but there was enough sense in the House to reject this return to obsolete methods. After March, 1801, prices commenced to fall, owing to a favourable season and the reopening of the Baltic ports, which allowed imports to come in more freely, for most of our foreign corn at this time came from Germany and Denmark. At the end of the year wheat averaged 75s. 6d., and with fair seasons it came down in the beginning of 1804 to 49s. 6d. Beef at Smithfield was from 4s. to 5s. 4d. a stone, mutton from 4s. to 4s. 6d.[530] This great drop in prices was accompanied by an increase in wages, the labourer from 1804 to 1810 getting on an average 12s. a week[531]; the cost of implements rose, so did the rate of interest, and the cry of agricultural distress in 1804 was heard everywhere. More protection was demanded by those interested in the land, and accordingly a duty of 24s. 3d. was imposed when the price was 63s. or under; a bounty was paid on export when it was 40s. or under; and wheat might be exported without bounty up to 54s. However, 1804 was a very deficient harvest, owing to blight and mildew, and by the end of the year wheat was 86s. 2d. The harvests till 1808 were not as bad as that of 1804, but not good enough to lower the prices. Also, owing to the Berlin and Milan Decrees of Napoleon and the Non-intercourse Act of the United States of America, imports were restricted so that at the end of 1808 wheat was 92s. In this year the exports of wheat exceeded the imports, but it was due to the requirements of our army in Spain; and 1789 was the last year when exports were greater under normal circumstances.[532] 1809 was a bad harvest, so was 1810; in the former rot being very prevalent among sheep; and by August, 1810, hay was £11 a load and wheat 116s., only large imports (1,567,126 quarters) preventing a famine. Down wool was 2s. 1d. per lb., beef and mutton 8-1/2d., cheese 8d.[533] In 1811 the whole of July and part of August were wet and cold; and in August, 1812, wheat averaged 155s., the finest Dantzic selling at Mark Lane for 180s., and oats reached 84s. As our imports of corn then chiefly came from the north-west of Europe, which has a climate very similar to our own, crops there were often deficient from bad seasons in the same years as our own, and the price consequently high. On the other hand, it is a proof that produce will find the best market regardless of hindrances, that much of our corn at this time came from France. Corn in 1813 was seized on with such avidity that there was no need to show samples. As high prices had now prevailed for some time and were still rising, landlords and farmers jumped to the conclusion that they would be permanent; so that this is the period when rents experienced their greatest increase, in some cases having increased fivefold since 1790, and speculations in land were most general. Land sold for forty years' purchase, many men of spirit and adventure very different from farmers 'were tempted to risk their property in agricultural speculations',[534] and large sums were sunk in lands and improvements in the spirit of mercantile enterprise. The land was considered as a kind of manufacturing establishment, and 'such powers of capital and labour were applied as forced almost sterility itself to become fertile.' Even good pastures were ploughed up to grow wheat at a guinea a bushel, and much worthless land was sown with corn. Manure was procured from the most remote quarters, and we are told a new science rose up, agricultural chemistry, which, 'with much frivolity and many refinements remote from common sense, was not without great operation on the productive powers of land.' Land jobbing and speculation became general, and credit came to the aid of capital. The larger farmers, as we have seen, were before the war inclined to an extravagance that amazed their older contemporaries; now we are told, some insisted on being called esquire, and some kept liveried servants.[535] It is somewhat curious to learn that one of the drawbacks from which farmers suffered at this time was the ravages of pigeons, which seem to have been as numerous as in the Middle Ages, when the lord's dovecote was the scourge of the villein's crops. In 1813 there was said to be 20,000 pigeon houses in England and Wales, each on an average containing 100 pairs of old pigeons.[536] Another pest was the large number of 'vermin', whose destruction had long before been considered important enough to demand the attention of the legislature.[537] Some parishes devoted large portions of their funds to this object; in 1786 East Budleigh in Devonshire, out of a total receipt of £20 1s. 8-1/2d., voted £5 10s. for vermin killing. That now sacred animal the fox was then treated with scant respect, farmers and landlords paying for his destruction as 'vermin'[538]; the parish accounts of Ashburton in Devonshire, for instance, from 1761-1820 include payments for killing 18 foxes and 4 vixens, with no less than 153 badgers. But the edifice of artificial prosperity was already tottering. After 1812 prices fell steadily,[539] the abundant harvest of 1813 and the opening of the continental ports accelerated this, and by December, 1813, wheat was 73s. 3d. Yet agriculture had made solid progress. The Committee of the House of Commons which inquired into the state of the corn trade in 1813 stated that through the extension of, and improvements in, agriculture the agricultural produce of the kingdom had increased one-fourth in the preceding ten years.[540] The high prices had attracted a large amount of capital to the land, so that there was very rapid and extensive progress, the methods of tillage were improved, large tracts of inferior pasture converted into arable, much, however, of which was soon to revert to weeds; there were many enclosures, and many fens, commons, and wastes reclaimed. But there was a reverse side to this picture of prosperity, even in the case of landlord and farmer. The burden of taxation was crushing; a contemporary writer, a farmer of twenty-five years standing,[541] wrote that, with the land tax remaining the same, there was a high property tax, house and window taxes were doubled, poor rates in some places trebled, highway, church, and constable rates doubled and trebled, and there were oppressive taxes on malt and horses, both nags and farm animals. A man renting a farm at £70 and keeping two farm-horses, a nag, and a dog, would pay taxes for them of £5 0s. 6d., a fourteenth of his rent.[542] Indeed, poor rates of 16s. and 20s. in the £ were known,[543] and they were occasionally more than the whole rent received by the landlord forty years before. A Devonshire landowner complained that seven-sixteenths out of the annual value of every estate in the county was taken from owners and occupiers in direct taxes.[544] And the Committee on Agricultural Depression of 1822 asserted that during the war taxes and rates were quadrupled.[545] Blacksmiths, whitesmiths, collar makers, ropers, carpenters, and many other tradesmen with whom the farmer dealt, raised their prices threefold; and it was openly asserted that the high prices of grain and stock were not proportionate to the increase of other prices. Much of the grass land broken up in the earlier years of the war was before the close in a miserable condition, for it was cropped year after year without manure, and was worn out. On the whole it may be doubted if the bulk of the farmers of England made large profits during the war; many no doubt profited by the extraordinary fluctuations in prices, and it was those men who 'kept liveried servants'; but there must have been many who lost heavily by the same means, and the rise of rent, taxes, rates, labour, and tradesmen's prices largely discounted the prices of corn and stock. The landowners at this period have generally been described as flourishing at the expense of the community, but their increased rents were greatly neutralized by the weight of taxation and the general rise in prices. A contemporary writer says that owing to the heavy taxes, even in the war time, he 'often had not a shilling at the end of the year.'[546] The following accounts, drawn up in 1805,[547] do not show that farmers were making much money with wheat at 10s. a bushel: Account of the culture of an acre of wheat on good fallow land: Dr. £ s. d. Two years' rent 2 0 0 Hauling dung from fold 10 0 Four ploughings 2 0 0 Two harrowings 4 0 Lime 1 18 0 Seed, 2-1/2 bushels 1 5 0 Reaping 5 0 Threshing 10 0 Wages 5 0 Tithes and taxes 15 0 -------- £9 12 0 ======== Cr. £ s. d. 20 bushels of wheat at 10s 10 0 0 The straw was set against the value of the dung. The tailend wheat was Eaten by the family! --------- £10 0 0 ========= And on a farm on good land in the same county the following would be the annual balance sheet at the same date: Dr. £ s. d. Rent 200 0 0 Tithes 40 0 0 Wages 58 0 0 Extra harvestmen 7 0 0 Tradesmen's bills 50 0 0 Taxes and rates 58 0 0 Malt, hops, and cider 60 0 0 Lime 20 0 0 Hop poles 10 0 0 Expenses at fairs and markets 8 0 0 Clothing, groceries, &c., for the family 45 0 0 Interest on £1,500 capital, at 5 per cent. 75 0 0 Sundries 15 0 0 ---------- £646 0 0 ========== Cr. £ s. d. 360 bushels of wheat, @ 10 s. 180 0 0 300 bushels of barley, @ 6s. 90 0 0 100 bushels of peas, @ 6s. 30 0 0 20 cwt. hops 60 0 0 Sale of oxen, cows and calves 150 0 0 Profits from sheep 100 0 0 " from pigs, poultry, dairy, and sundries 50 0 0 ---------- £660 0 0 ========== According to this the farmer did little more than pay rent, interest on capital, and get a living. Yet prices of what he had to sell had gone up greatly: wheat in Herefordshire in 1760 was 3s. a bushel, in 1805, 10s.; butcher's meat in 1760 was 1-1/2d. a lb., in 1804, 7d.; fresh butter 4-1/2d. in 1760, 1s. 3d. in 1804; a fat goose in Hereford market in 1740, 10d.; 1760, 1s.; 1804, 4s.; a couple of fowls in 1740, 6d.; 1760, 7d.; 1804, 2s. 4d.[548] The winter of 1813-4 was extraordinarily severe, and the wheat crop was seriously injured, but the increased breadth of cultivation, a large surplus, and great importations kept the price down. Many sheep, however, were killed by the hard winter, which also reduced the quality of the cattle, so that meat was higher in 1814 than at any previous period.[549] At Smithfield beef was 6s. to 7s. a stone, mutton 7s. to 8s. 6d. With the peace of 1814 the fictitious prosperity came to an end, a large amount of paper was withdrawn from circulation, which lowered the price of all commodities, and a large number of country banks failed. The first sufferers were the agricultural classes, who happened at that time to hold larger supplies than usual, the value of which fell at once; the incomes of all were diminished, and the capital of many annihilated.[550] At the same time the demand for our manufactures from abroad fell off; the towns were impoverished, and bought less from the farmer. The short period of war in 1815 had little effect on prices, and in January, 1816, wheat was 52s. 6d., and the prices of live stock had fallen considerably. In 1815 protection reached its highest limit, the Act of that year prohibiting import of wheat when the price was under 80s. a quarter, and other grain in proportion.[551] However, it was of no avail; and in the beginning of 1816 the complaints of agricultural distress were so loud and deep that the Board of Agriculture issued circular letters to every part of the kingdom, asking for information on the state of agriculture. According to the answers given, rent had already fallen on an average 25 per cent. and agriculture was in a 'deplorable state.'[552] Bankruptcies, seizures, executions, imprisonments, were rife, many farmers had become parish paupers. Rent was much in arrear, tithes and poor rates unpaid, improvements generally discontinued, live stock diminished; alarming gangs of poachers and other depredators ranged the country. The loss was greater on arable than on grass land, and 'flock farms' had suffered less than others, though they had begun to feel it heavily. All classes connected with the land suffered severely; the landlords could not get many of their rents; the farmer's stock had depreciated 40 per cent.[553]; many labourers, who during the war had been getting from 15s. to 16s. a week and 18s. in summer,[554] were walking the country searching for employment. Many tenants threw up their farms, and it was often noticed that landlords, 'knowing very little of agriculture and taken by surprise,' could not manage the farms thrown on their hands, and they went uncultivated. Some farmers paid up their rent to date, sold their stock, and went off without any notice; others, less scrupulous, drove off their stock and moved their household furniture in the night without settling.[555] Farmers and landowners were asked to state the remedies required. Some asked for more rent reduction and further prohibition of import, but the most general cry was for the lessening of taxation. A Herefordshire farmer[556] stated that in 1815 the taxes on a farm of 300 acres in that county were: £ s. d. Property tax, landlord and tenant 95 16 10 Great tithes 64 17 6 Lesser tithes 29 15 0 Land tax 14 0 0 Window lights 24 1 6 Poor rates, landlord 10 0 0 " tenant 40 0 0 Cart-horse duty, landlord, 3 horses 2 11 0 Two saddle horses, landlord 9 0 0 Gig 6 6 0 Cart-horse duty,[557] tenant 7 2 0 One saddle horse, tenant 2 13 6 Landlord's malt duty on 60 bushels of barley 21 0 0 Tenant's duty for making 120 bushels of barley into malt 42 0 0 New rate for building shire hall, paid by landlord 9 0 0 " " " tenant 3 0 0 Surcharge 2 8 0 ------------ £383 11 4 ============ The parish of Kentchurch, in Herefordshire, paid in direct taxes a greater sum than the lands of the whole parish could be let for. Another very general complaint was of the collection of tithe in kind, a most awkward and offensive method, causing great expense and waste, which, however, had given way in many places to compounding. Such is the picture of agriculture after twenty years of high prices and protection.[558] One may naturally ask, if much money had been made by farmers during these years, where had it all gone to that they were reduced at the first breath of adversity to such straits? Some allowance must be made for the fact that these accounts come from those interested in the land, who were always ready to make the most of misfortune with a view to further protection, and the farmer is a notorious grumbler. It seems, however, that most landlords and tenants believed that the high prices would last for ever, and lived accordingly, and, as we have seen, many made no profit at all because of their increased burdens. As a matter of fact, both were grumbling because prices had come back to their natural level after an unnatural inflation.[559] Hemp at this date was still grown in Lincolnshire and Somerset, and Marshall tells us that in 1803 there was a considerable quantity of hemp grown in Shropshire.[560] In that county there was a small plot of ground, called 'the hemp-yard,' appendant to almost every farm-house and to many of the best sort of cottages. Whenever a cottager had 10 or 15 perches of land to his cottage, worth from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. a year, with the aid of his wife's industry it enabled him to pay his rent. A peck of hempseed, costing 2s., sowed about 10 perches of land, and this produced from 24 to 36 lb. of tow when dressed and fit for spinning. A dozen pounds of tow made 10 ells of cloth, worth generally about 3s. an ell. Thus a good crop on 10 perches of land brought in £4 10s. 0d., half of which was nett profit. The hemp was pulled a little before harvest, and immediately spread on grass land, where it lay for a month or six weeks. The more rain there was the sooner it was ready to take off the grass. When the rind peeled easily from the woody part, it was, on a dry day, taken into the house, and when harvest was over well dried in fine weather and dressed, being then fit for the tow dresser, who prepared it for spinning. After the crop of hemp the land was sown with turnips, a valuable resource for the winter. Since 1815 little hemp or flax has been grown in England[561]; in 1907 there were, according to the Agricultural Returns, 355 acres of flax grown in England, and hemp was not mentioned. FOOTNOTES: [504] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1896, p. 1, and 1898, p. 1. [505] _Autobiography_, p. 242. [506] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 18. [507] 'Had his industry been under the direction of a better judgement, he would have been an admirable president.'--Young, _Autobiography_, p. 316. [508] _The Report of the Committee on Waste Lands_, 1795, estimated wastes and commons at 7,800,000 acres, p. 221. [509] The Merino was largely imported into England by the efforts of George III, and a Merino Society was formed in 1811; but many circumstances made it of such little profit to cultivate it in preference to native breeds, that it was diverted to Australia.--Burnley, _History of Wool_, p. 17. [510] The first, the Bath and West of England, was established in 1777. [511] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1899, p. 7. [512] Higher prices had been realized for the improved Longhorns; in 1791, at the sale of Mr. Fowler of Little Rollright, Sultan a two-year-old bull fetched 210 guineas, and a cow 260 guineas; and at Mr. Paget's sale in 1793, a bull of the same breed sold for 400 guineas.--_Culley on Live Stock_, p. 59. [513] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1899, p. 28. [514] _Culley on Live Stock_ (1807), pp. 46-7. [515] _Culley on Live Stock_, p. vi. [516] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1892, p. 27. [517] Morton, _Cyclopaedia of Agriculture_, ii. 964. [518] _Northern Tour_, iii. 49. Clarke also experimented on the effect of electricity on vegetables, electrifying turnips in boxes with the result that growth was quickened and weight increased. [519] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1896, p, 93. [520] Tooke, _History of Prices_, p. 182. [521] _Autobiography of A. Young_, p. 256. [522] _State of the Poor_, i. 565 et seq.; Thorold Rogers, _Work and Wages_, p. 487. It is difficult to calculate the exact income of the labourer; besides extras in harvest, and relief from the parish, he might have a small holding, or common rights, also payments in kind and the earnings of his wife and children. [523] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 181; Eden, _op. cit._ li. 27. [524] Imports of wheat and flour in 1796 were 879,200 quarters. [525] Yet imports were comparatively large; 1,264,520 quarters of wheat, against 463,185 quarters in 1799. [526] Tooke, _History of Prices_, p. 219. [527] _Farmer's Magazine_, 1817, p. 60. [528] Thorold Rogers, _Work and Wages_, c. 18. [529] _Annals of Agriculture_, xxxvii. 265. In 1805, in Herefordshire, the labourer was getting about 6s. 6d. a week--See Duncumb, _General View of Agriculture of Herefordshire_. Those who lived in the farm-house often fared best: in 1808 the diet of a Hampshire farm servant was, for breakfast, bacon, bread, and skim milk; for lunch, bread and cheese and small beer; for dinner, between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., pickled pork or bacon with potatoes, cabbages, turnips, or greens, and broths of wheat-flour and garden stuff. Supper consisted of bread and cheese and a pint of ale. His bread was usually made of wheat, which, considering the price, is remarkable. On Sundays he had fresh meat. The farmers lived in many cases little better; a statement which must be compared with others ascribing great extravagance to them.--Vancouver, _General View of the Agriculture of Hants_ (1808), p. 383. [530] Tooke, _History of Prices_, i. 236. [531] Thorold Rogers, _Work and Wages_, c. 18. In many cases he was getting 15s. and 16s. a week all the year round. The Parliamentary Committee of 1822 put his wages during the war at from 15s. to 16s. a week. _Parliamentary Reports Committees_, v. 72; but it is difficult to say how much he received as wages, and how much as parish relief. Recruiting for the war helped to raise wages, as did the increased growth of corn. [532] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1847), p. 438. See Appendix, ii. [533] Tooke, i. 319, and _Pamphleteer_, vi. 200 (A. Young). Since 1770, says the latter, labour by 1810-11 had doubled, but meat had risen 146 per cent., cheese 153 per cent., bread 100 per cent. Wages therefore had not risen in proportion to prices. [534] _Inquiry into Agricultural Distress_ (1822), p. 38. [535] _Thoughts on Present Depressed State of Agricultural Industry_ (1817), p. 6. [536] Vancouver, _General View of the Agriculture of Devon_, p. 357. [537] See 14 Eliz., c. 11, and 39 Eliz., c. 18. [538] _Transactions of the Devon Association_, xxix. 291-349. [539] Average annual prices of wheat were: 1812, 126s. 6d.; 1813, 109s. 9d.; 1814, 74s. 4d.; 1815, 65s. 7d. [540] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 149. [541] _A Defence of the Farmers and Landowners of Great Britain_ (1814), p. 49. [542] Ibid. p. x. [543] Ibid. p. 7. [544] _Agricultural State of the Kingdom_, p. 67. [545] _Parliamentary Reports (Committees)_, v. 72. [546] _Thoughts on the Present Depressed State of the Agricultural Interest_ (1817), p. 4. [547] Duncumb, _General View of the Agriculture of Hereford_, 1805. The writer of _A Defence of the Farmers and Landowners of Great Britain_ (1814) puts the average crop of wheat in the United Kingdom at 15 or 16 bushels an acre, p. 28. A very low estimate. [548] Duncumb, _General View of the Agriculture of Hereford_, p. 140. [549] Tooke, _History of Prices_, ii. 4. [550] _Farmer's Magazine_ (1817), p. 69. [551] The duties were often evaded by smuggling; coasting vessels met the foreign corn ships at sea, received their cargoes, and landed them so as to escape the duty. [552] _Agricultural State of the Kingdom_, p. 5. [553] _Observations for the Use of Landed Gentlemen_ (1817), p. 7. [554] _Defence of the Farmers, &c._ (1814); and _Parliamentary Reports_, v. 72. [555] _Agricultural State of the Kingdom_, p. 64. [556] Ibid. p. 105. [557] The agricultural horse tax was repealed in 1821, the tax on ponies and mules in 1823. [558] There were some exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of replies to the letters were couched in the above spirit. [559] At a time when landlords formed the majority in Parliament, it is curious to find a substantial farmer asserting that 'the landed interest has been, since the corn law of 1773, held in a state of complete vassalage to the commercial and manufacturing, and the farmers of the country in a state very little superior to that of Polish peasants.' [560] _Review of Western Department_, pp. 249, 250. [561] Morton, _Cyclopaedia of Agriculture_, ii. 26. CHAPTER XVIII ENCLOSURE--THE SMALL OWNER The war period was one of great activity in enclosure; from 1798 to 1810 there were 956 Bills; from 1811-20, 771.[562] It must be remembered, however, that the number of Acts is not a conclusive test of the amount of enclosure, as there was a large amount that was non-parliamentary: by the principal landlord, and by freeholders who agreed to amicable changes and transfer, as at Pickering, in Yorkshire.[563] Roughly speaking, about one-third of the Acts were for enclosing commonable waste, the rest for enclosing open and commonable fields and lands.[564] Owing to the expense an Act was only obtained in the last resource. It was also because of the expense[565] that many landlords desirous to enclose were unable to do so, and therefore devoted their attention to the improvement of the common fields. That agriculture benefited by enclosure there is no possible doubt, but it was attended with great hardships. The landowner generally gained, for his rents increased largely. In twenty-three parishes of Lincolnshire, for instance, his rents doubled on enclosure. But the expenses were so heavy that his gain was often very small, and sometimes he was a loser by the process. As for the farmers, the poorer ones suffered, for more capital was needed for enclosed lands, and the process generally was so slow, taking from two to six years before the final award was given, that many farmers were thrown out in the management of their farms, for they did not know where their future lands would be allotted. That the poor suffered greatly is indubitable: 'By nineteen Enclosure Acts out of twenty the poor are injured, in some cases grossly injured,' wrote Young in 1801.[566] In the Acts it was endeavoured to treat them fairly,[567] and allotments were made to them, or money paid on enclosure in lieu of their rights of common, or small plots of land; but the expense of enclosing small allotments was proportionately very great, generally too great, and they had to be sold, while the sums of money were often spent in the alehouse. The results of sixty-eight Acts were investigated in the eastern counties, with the result that in all but fifteen the poor were injured. It was generally found that they had lost their cows. Its effect on the smallholder is well described by Davis in his _Report on Wilts_.[568] There, before enclosure, the tenants usually occupied yard-lands consisting of a homestead, 2 acres of meadow, 18 acres of arable, generally in eighteen or twenty strips, with a right on the common meadows, common fields and downs for 40 sheep, and as many cattle as the tenant could winter with the fodder he grew. The 40 sheep were kept by a common shepherd with the common herd, were taken every day to the downs and brought back every night to be folded on the arable fields, the rule being to fold 1,000 sheep on a 'tenantry' acre (three-quarters of a statute acre) every night.[569] In breeding sheep regard was had to 'folding quality,' i.e. the propensity to drop manure only after being folded at night, as much as to quality and quantity of wool and meat. On enclosure the common flock was broken up. The small farmer had no longer any common to turn his horses on. The down on which he fed his sheep was largely curtailed, the common shepherd was abolished, and the farmer had too few sheep to enable him individually to employ a shepherd. Therefore he had to part with his flock. Having no cow common and very little pasture land he could not keep cows. In such circumstances the small farmer, after a few years, succumbed and became a labourer, or emigrated, or went to the towns. In a pamphlet called _The Case of Labourers in Husbandry_, 1795, the Rev. David Davies said, 'by enclosure an amazing number of people have been reduced from a comfortable state of partial independence to the precarious condition of mere hirelings, who when out of work immediately come on the parish.' It has often been said that the poor were robbed of their share in the land by the landowners; but as a matter of fact it was the expense of securing the compensation allowed them, much greater in proportion on small holdings than on large, which went into the pockets of surveyors and lawyers, that did this. It was also often through the farmer that the labourer was deprived of his land when he had retained an acre or two after enclosure. Wishing to make the labourer dependent on him, he persuaded the agent to let the cottages with the farm, and the agent in order to avoid collecting a number of small rents consented. As soon as the farmer had the cottages he took the land from them and added it to his own. The peasant's losses engaged the serious attention of many landlords; near Tewkesbury, in 1773, the lord of the manor on enclosure, besides reserving 25 acres for the use of the poor, allowed land to each cottage sufficient to keep a horse or a cow, often added a small building, and gave stocks for raising orchards. Even some of the idlest were thereby made industrious, poor rates sank to 4d. in the £, though the population increased, and the labourer always had for sale some poultry, or the produce of his cow, or some fruit.[570] In 1800 the Board of Agriculture, composed almost entirely of landowners, noticing that the poor of Rutland and Lincolnshire, who had land for one or two cows and some potatoes, had not applied for poor relief, offered a gold medal for the most satisfactory account of the best means of supporting cows on poor land, in a method applicable to cottagers.[571] Young recommended that in the case of extensive wastes every cottage on enclosure should be secured sufficient land on which to keep a cow, the land to be inalienable from the cottage and the ownership vested in the parish. Lord Winchelsea[572] urged that a good garden should always go with a cottage, and set the example himself, one which has been generally followed in England by the greater landlords with much success. As may be imagined, these schemes or others similar to them were put into effect by the conscientious and energetic, but not by the apathetic and careless. Further, an Act was passed in the fifty-ninth year of George III, which enabled parishes to lease or buy 20 acres of land for the employment of their poor. In many cases, it must be allowed, the grazing of the commons was often worth very little. Let one man, it was said in 1795, put a cow on a common in spring for nothing, and let another pay a farmer 1s. 6d. a week to keep a cow of equal value on enclosed land. When both are driven to market at Michaelmas the extra weight of the latter will more than repay the cost of the keep, while her flow of milk meanwhile has been much superior. The Committee on Waste Lands of 1795 attributed the great increase in the weight of cattle not only to the improved methods of breeding, but to their being fed on good enclosed lands instead of wastes and commons.[573] Even when commons were stinted they were in general overstocked, while disease was always being spread with enormous loss to the commoners. The larger holders, too, who had common rights, often crowded out the smaller. There were often, as we have seen, a large number of 'squatters' on commons who had seized and occupied land without any legal title. As a rule, if these people had been in possession twenty-one years their title was respected; if not, no regard was very justly paid to them on enclosure, and they were deprived of what they had seized. Eden wrote when enclosure was at its height; he was a competent and accurate observer, and this is his picture of the 'commoner':[574] 'The advantages which cottagers and poor people derive from commons and wastes are rather apparent than real; instead of sticking regularly to labour they waste their time in picking up a few dry sticks or in grubbing on some bleak moor. Their starved pig or two, together with a few wandering goslings, besides involving them in perpetual altercations with their neighbours, are dearly paid for in care, time, and bought food. There are thousands and thousands of acres in the kingdom, now the sorry pastures of geese, hogs, asses, half-grown horses, and half-starved cattle, which want but to be enclosed to be as rich as any land now in tillage.' Enclosure worked an important social revolution. Before it the entirely landless labourer was rare: he nearly always had some holding in the common field or a right on the common pasture. With enclosure his holding or right had generally disappeared, and he deteriorated socially. It was very unfortunate, too, that when enclosure was most active domestic industries, such as weaving, decayed, and deprived the labourer and his family of a badly needed addition to his scanty income. In its physical and moral effects the system of domestic manufactures was immensely preferable to that of the crowded factory, while economically it enabled the tillers of the soil to exist on farms which could not support them by agriculture alone. This uprooting of a great part of the agricultural population from the soil by irresistible economic causes brought with it grave moral evils, and created divisions and antagonisms of interest from which we are suffering to-day.[575] If some such scheme as that of Arthur Young or Lord Winchelsea had been universally adopted, this blot on an inevitable movement might have been removed, and a healthy rural population planted on English soil. Another result followed, the labourer no longer boarded as a rule in his employer's house, where the farmer worked and lived with his men; the tie of mutual interest was loosened, and he worked for this or that master indifferently. One advantage, however, arose, in that, having to find a home of his own, he married early, but this was vitiated by his knowledge that the parish would support his children, on which knowledge he was induced to rely. On the other hand, the farmer often rose in the social scale. With the abandonment of the handicaps and restrictions of the common-field system the efficient came more speedily to the front. It was they who had amassed capital, and capital was now needed more than ever, so they added field to field, and consolidated holdings. The Act of 1845 did away with the necessity for private Enclosure Acts, still further reducing the expense; and since that date there have been 80,000 or 90,000 acres of common arable fields and meadows enclosed without parliamentary sanction, and 139,517 acres of the same have been enclosed with it,[576] besides many acres of commons and waste. In the _Report of the Committee of Enclosures_ of 1844,[577] there is a curious description of the way in which common fields were sometimes allotted. There were in some open fields, lands called 'panes', containing forty or sixty different lands, and on a certain day the best man of the parish appeared to take possession of any lot he thought fit. If his right was called in question there was a fight for it, and the survivor took the first lot, and so they went on through the parish. There was also the old 'lot meadow' in which the owners drew lots for choice of portions. On some of the grazing lands the right of grazing sheep belonged to a man called a 'flockmaster', who during certain months of the year had the exclusive right of turning his sheep on all the lands of the parish. Closely connected with the subject of enclosure is that of the partial disappearance of the small owner, both the yeoman who farmed his own little estate and the peasant proprietor. We have noticed above[578] Gregory King's statement as to the number of small freeholders in England in 1688, no less than 160,000, or with their families about one-seventh of the population of the country. This date, that of the Revolution, marks an epoch in their history, for from that time they began to diminish in proportion to the population. Their number in 1688 is a sufficient answer to the exaggerated statement of contemporaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as to the depopulation caused by enclosures. Chamberlayne, in his _State of Great Britain_, published at about the same time as Gregory King's figures, says there were more freeholders in England than in any country of like extent in Europe: '£40 or £50 a year is very ordinary, £100 or £200 in some counties is not rare, sometimes in Kent and in the Weald of Sussex £500 or £600 per annum, and £3,000 or £4,000 of stock.' In the first quarter of the eighteenth century he was a prominent figure. Defoe[579] describes the number and prosperity of the Greycoats of Kent (as they were called from their homespun garments), 'whose interest is so considerable that whoever they vote for is always sure to carry it.' Why has this sturdy class so dwindled in numbers, and left England infinitely the weaker for their decrease? The causes are several; social, economic, and political. The chief, perhaps, is the peculiar form of Government which came in with the Revolution. The landed gentry by that event became supreme, the national and local administration was entirely in their hands, and land being the foundation of social and political influence was eagerly sought by them where it was not already in their hands.[580] At the same time the successful business men, whose numbers now increased rapidly from the development of trade, bought land to 'make themselves gentlemen'. Both these classes bought out the yeomen, who do not seem to have been very loath to part with their land. The recently devised system of strict family settlements enabled the old and the new gentlemen to keep this land in their families. The complicated title to land made its transfer difficult and costly, so that there was little breaking up of estates to correspond with the constant buying up of small owners. To the smaller freeholder, as has been noticed, the enclosure of waste land did much harm, for it was necessary to his holding. Again, smaller arable farms did not pay as well as large ones, so they tended to disappear. The decay of home industries was also a heavy blow to the smaller yeoman and the peasant proprietor. Under this combination of circumstances many of the yeomen left the land. Yet though Young, less than a century after King and Davenant, said that the small freeholder had practically disappeared, there were at the end of the eighteenth century many left all over England, who however largely disappeared during the war and in the bad times after the war.[581] But a contrary tendency was at work which helped to replenish the class. The desire of the Englishman for land is not confined to the wealthy classes. At the end of the eighteenth century men who had made small fortunes in trade were buying small properties and taking the place of the yeomen.[582] In the great French War of 1793-1815, many yeomen, attracted by the high prices of land, sold their properties, but at the same time many farmers, attracted by the high prices of produce, which had often enriched them, bought land.[583] During the 'good times' of 1853-75 many small holders, like those of Axholme, noticed in the _Report_ of the Agricultural Commission of 1893, bought land. A new class of small owners also has sprung up, who, dwelling in or near towns and railway stations, have bought small freeholds. The return of the owners of land of 1872-6 gave the following numbers of those owning land in England and Wales[584]: Total number of owners of: Number. Acreage. less than one acre 703,289 151,171 1 acre and under 10 121,983 478,679 10 " 50 72,640 1,750,079 50 " 100 25,839 1,791,605 100 " 500 32,317 6,827,346 The great majority of the first class here enumerated, those owning less than one acre, do not concern us, as they were evidently merely houses and gardens not of an agricultural character, but a large number of the second class and most of the other three must have been agricultural, though unfortunately no distinction is made. It will be seen, therefore, that there were a considerable number of small owners in England in 1872, and their numbers have probably increased since. Many of them, however, are of the new class mentioned above, and there appears to be no doubt that the number of the peasant proprietors and of the yeomen of the old sort has much diminished, especially in proportion to the growth of population. FOOTNOTES: [562] Cf. supra, p. 163. [563] R. Marshall, _Rural Economy of Yorkshire_, p. 17 et seq. [564] Slater, _English Peasantry and Enclosure_, p. 7. [565] It was stated in the _Report of the Committee on Enclosures_ (1844), p. 31, that the ordinary expense of obtaining an Enclosure Act was from £1,000 to £1,500. In 1814 the enclosure of three farms, amounting to 570 acres, including subdivision fences and money paid to a tenant for relinquishing his agreement, cost the landlord nearly £4,000.--_Agricultural State of the Kingdom_ (1816), p. 116. [566] _Enquiry into the Propriety of Supplying Wastes to the better Support of the Poor_, p. 42. [567] The usual clause in Enclosure Acts stated that the land should be 'allotted according to the several and respective rights of _all_ who had rights and interests' in the enclosed property, and expenses were to be borne 'in proportion to the respective shares of the people interested'. [568] pp. 8 et seq. Slater, _op. cit._ p. 113. [569] Cf. Marshall's account of the common-field townships in Hampshire at the end of the eighteenth century. Each occupier of land in the common fields contributed to the town flock a number of sheep in proportion to his holding, which were placed under a shepherd who fed them and folded them on all parts of the township. A similar practice was observed with the common herd of cows, which were placed under one cowherd who tended them by day and brought them back at night to be milked, distributing them among their respective owners, and in the morning they were collected by the sound of the horn.--_Rural Economy of Southern Counties_, ii. 351. [570] _Report of Committee on Waste Lands_ (1795), p. 204. Ground was frequently left by the Acts for the erection of cottages for the poor, and special allotments were made to Guardians for the use of the poor, in addition to the land allotted to all according to their respective claims. Can any one doubt that if there had been a systematic robbery of the smaller holders on enclosure they would not have risen 'en masse'? [571] Slater, _op. cit._ p. 133. [572] _Agricultural State of the Kingdom_ (1816), p. 8. [573] _Report_, p. 204. [574] _State of the Poor_, pp. i, xviii. [575] Lecky, _England in the Eighteenth Century_, vi. 191. [576] Slater, _op. cit._ p. 191. [577] _Report_, p. 27. [578] _See_ above. Another estimate puts them at 180,000. [579] _Tour_, i. (2), 37, 38. [580] Toynbee, _Industrial Revolution_, p. 62. [581] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 71. [582] Marshall, _Review of Agriculture, Reports Western Department_, p. 18. [583] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. 32. [584] _Parliamentary Accounts and Papers_, lxxx. 21. The number of those owning over 500 acres does not concern the small owner or the yeoman class, but they were: from 500 acres to 1,000, 4,799; from 1,000 to 2,000, 2,719; from 2,000 to 5,000, 1,815; from 5,000 to 10,000, 581; from 10,000 to 20,000, 223; from 20,000 to 50,000, 66; from 50,000 to 100,000, 3; over 100,000, 1. For the numbers of the 'holdings' of various sizes in 1875 and 1907 see below, p. 334. The term 'holdings', however, includes freeholds and leaseholds. CHAPTER XIX 1816-1837 DEPRESSION The summer of 1816 was wretched; the distress, aggravated by the bad season, caused riots everywhere. At Bideford the mob interfered to prevent the export of a cargo of potatoes; at Bridport they broke into the bakers' shops. Incendiary fires broke out night after night in the eastern counties. At Swanage six people out of seven were paupers, and in one parish in Cambridgeshire every person but one was a pauper or a bankrupt.[585] Corn rose again: by June, 1817, it was 117s., but fell to 77s. in September. In 1818 occurred a drought of four months, lasting from May till September, and great preparations were made to ward off the expected famine; immense quantities of wheat came from the Baltic, of maize from America, and beans and maize from Italy and Egypt, with hay from New York, as it was selling at £10 a ton. However, rain fell in September, brown fields suddenly became green, turnips sprang up where none had appeared, and even spring corn that had lain in the parched ground began to grow, so the fear of scarcity passed. In 1822 came a good season, which produced a great crop of wheat; in the lifetime of the existing generation old men declared that such a harvest had been known only once before; imports also came from Ireland to the amount of nearly a million quarters, so that the price at the end of the year was 38s., and the average price for the year was 44s. 7d. Beef went down to 2s. 5d. a stone and mutton to 2s. 2d. The cry of agricultural distress again rose loudly. Farmers were still, though some of the war taxes had been remitted, heavily taxed; for the taxes on malt, soap, salt, candles, leather, all pressed heavily.[586] The chief cause of the distress was the long-felt reaction after the war, but it was aggravated by the return to cash payments in 1819. Gold had fallen to its real value, and the fall in gold had been followed by a fall in the prices of every other article.[587] The produce of many thousand acres in England did not sell that year for as much money as was expended in growing it, without reckoning rent, taxes, and interest on capital.[588] Estates worth £3,000 a year, says the same writer, some years since, were now worth £1,000. Bacon had gone down from 6s. 6d. to 2s. 4d. a stone; Southdown ewes from 50s. to 15s., and lambs from 42s. to 5s. A Dorset farmer told the Parliamentary committee that since 1815 he knew of fifty farmers, farming 24,000 acres, who had failed entirely.[589] In the _Tyne Mercury_ of October 30, 1821, it was recorded that Mr. Thos. Cooper of Bow purchased 3 milch cows and 40 sheep for £18 16s. 6d. which sum four years previously would only have bought their skins. Prime beef was sold in Salisbury market at 4d. retail, and good joints of mutton at 3-1/2d.[590] Everywhere the farmers were complaining bitterly, but 'hanging on like sailors to the masts or hull of a wreck'. In Sussex labourers were being employed to dig holes and fill them in again, proof enough of distress but also of great folly. Many thousands of acres were now a mass of thistles and weeds, once fair grass land ploughed up during the war for wheat, and abandoned at the fall of prices. There were no less than 475 petitions on agricultural distress presented to the House from 1820 to March 31, 1822. In 1822, it was proposed that the Government should purchase wheat grown in England to the value of one million sterling and store it; also that when the average price of wheat was under 60s. the Government should advance money on such corn grown in the United Kingdom as should be deposited in certain warehouses, to an extent not exceeding two-thirds the value of the corn.[591] There were not wanting men, however, who put the other side of the question. In a tract called _The Refutation of the Arguments used on the Subject of the Agricultural Petition_, written in 1819, it was said that the increase in the farmer's expenditure was the cause of his discontent. 'He now assumes the manners and demands the equipage of a gentleman, keeps a table like his landlord, anticipates seasons in their productions, is as choice in his wines, his horses, and his furniture.' Let him be more thrifty. 'Let him dismiss his steward, a character a few years back only known to the great landowner, and cease from degrading the British farmer into a synonym for prodigality.' Lord Liverpool, in the House of Lords, in a speech which roused great opposition among agriculturists, minimized the distress; distress there was, he admitted, but it was not confined to England, it was world-wide; neither was it produced by excessive taxation, for since 1815 taxation had been reduced 25 per cent., while though rents and prices had fallen they were much higher than before the war. Another writer said at the time, 'Individuals of all classes have of late been as it were inflated above their natural size: let this unnatural growth be reduced; let them resume their proper places and appearances, and the quantum of substantial enjoyment, real comfort and happiness, will not be found lessened.' It was also asserted that the taxes on malt, leather, soap, salt, and candles, were not very pressing. The persistent cries of distress produced a Bill giving still further protection to corn-growers, which was fortunately not carried into effect. There was no doubt, however, about the reality of the crisis through which the landed classes were passing. Many of the landowners were heavily in debt. Mortgages had been multiplied during the war, and while prices were high payment of interest was easy; but when prices fell and the tenant threw up his farm, the landlord could not throw over the mortgage, and the interest hung like a dead weight round his neck.[592] The price to which wheat fell at the end of 1822 was to be the lowest for some years; it soon recovered, and until 1834 the average annual prices ranged from 53s. to 68s. 6d., while in 1825 beef at Smithfield was 5s. and mutton 5s. 4d. a stone. In 1823 there was a marked improvement, and the king's speech congratulated the country on 'the gradual abatement of those difficulties under which agriculture has so long suffered.'[593] In 1824 'agriculture was recovering from the depression under which it laboured.'[594] In 1825 it was said, 'there never was a period in the history of this country when all the great interests of the nation were in so thriving a condition.'[595] In that year over-speculation produced a panic and agricultural distress was again evident. In 1826 Cobbett said, 'the present stock of the farms is not in one-half the cases the property of the farmer, it is borrowed stock.'[596] In 1828 all the farmers in Kent were said to be insolvent.[597] At the meeting of Parliament in 1830 the king lamented the state of affairs, and ascribed it to unfavourable seasons and other causes beyond the reach of legislative remedy. Many had learnt that high protection was no protection for farmers, and it was stated more than once that the large foreign supply of grain, though only then about one-third of the home-grown, depressed our markets. At the same time, it must be admitted that agriculture, like all other industries, was suffering from the crisis of 1825. In 1830, the country was filled with unrest, in which the farm labourer shared. His motives, however, were hardly political. He had a rooted belief that machinery was injuring him, the threshing machine especially; and he avenged himself by burning the ricks of obnoxious farmers. Letters were sent to employers demanding higher wages and the disuse of machines, and notices signed 'Swing' were affixed to gates and buildings. Night after night incendiary fires broke out, and emboldened by impunity the rioters proceeded to pillage by day. In Hampshire they moved in bodies 1,500 strong. A special Commission was appointed, and the disorders put down at last with a firm hand. In 1828 there had been a relaxation in the duties on corn, the object of the Act passed in that year being to secure the farmer a constant price of 8s. a bushel instead of 10s. as in 1815, and by a sliding scale to prevent the disastrous fluctuations in prices. The best proof of its failure is afforded by the appointment of another parliamentary committee in 1833 to inquire into the distressed state of agriculture. At this inquiry many witnesses asserted that the cultivation of inferior soils and heavy clays had diminished from one-fourth to one-fifth.[598] It was also asserted that farmers were paying rent out of capital.[599] Tooke, however, thought there was much exaggeration of the distress, which was proved by the way the farmers weathered the low prices of 1835, when wheat, after a succession of four remarkably good seasons, averaged 39s. 4d. for the year. In these abundant years, too, he asserts that the home supply was equal to the demand,[600] though the committee of 1833 had stated that this had ceased to be the case.[601] Another committee, the last for many years, sat in 1835 to consider the distress; but although prices were low the whole tenor of the evidence established the improvement of farming, the extension of cultivation, and the increase of produce, and it was noticed at this time that towns dependent on agriculture were uniformly prosperous.[602] On the whole, in spite of exaggeration from interested motives, the distress for the twenty years after the battle of Waterloo was real and deep; twenty years of depression succeeded the same period of false exaltation. The progress, too, during that time was real, and made, as was remarked, _because_ of adversity. From this time agriculture slowly revived. On one point both of the two last committees were agreed, that the condition of the labourer was improved, and they said he was better off than at any former period, for his wages remained the same, while prices of necessaries had fallen. That his wages went further is true, but they were still miserably low, and he was often housed worse than the animals on the farm. 'Wattle and dab' (or mud and straw) formed the walls of his cottage, the floors were often of mud, and all ages and both sexes frequently slept in one room. A block of ten cottages were put up in the parish of Holmer[603] at the commencement of the nineteenth century, which were said to have combined 'comfort, convenience, and economy;' they each contained one room 12 feet by 14 feet and 6 feet high with a bedroom over, and cost £32 10s. each. They were evidently considered quite superior dwellings, far better than the ordinary run of labourer's cottages. Cobbett gives us a picture of some in Leicestershire in 1826; 'hovels made of mud and straw, bits of glass, or of old cast-off windows, without frames or hinges frequently, and merely stuck in the mud wall. Enter them and look at the bits of chairs or stools, the wretched boards tacked together to serve for a table, the floor of pebble, broken brick, or of the bare ground; look at the thing called a bed, and survey the rags on the backs of the wretched inhabitants.'[604] The chief exceptions to this state of affairs were the estates of many of the great landlords. On that of the Earl of Winchelsea in Rutland, the cottages he had built contained a kitchen, parlour, dairy, two bedrooms, and a cow-house, and several had small holdings attached of from 5 to 20 acres.[605] Not long before, wages in Hampshire and Wiltshire were 5s. and 6s. a week.[606] In 1822 it was stated that 'beef and mutton are things the taste of which was unknown to the mass of labourers. No one has lived more in cottages than I, and I declare solemnly I never remember once to have seen such a thing.'[607] A group of women labourers, whom Cobbett saw by the roadside in Hampshire, presented 'such an assemblage of rags as I never saw before even amongst the hoppers at Farnham.'[608] The labourer's wages may have gone a little further, but he had lost his by-industries, his bit of land and rights of common, and would have had a very different tale to tell from that of the framers of the reports above quoted. In spite of the complaints made that the improvements of the coaches and of the roads drew the countryman to the towns, many stirred hardly at all from their native parish, and their lives were now infinitely duller than in the Middle Ages. The great event of the year was the harvest home, which was usually a scene of great merry-making. In Devonshire, when a farmer's wheat was ripe he sent round notice to the neighbourhood, and men and women from all sides came to reap the crop. As early as eleven or twelve, so much ale and cider had been drunk that the shouts and ribald jokes of the company were heard to a considerable distance, attracting more helpers, who came from far and near, but none were allowed to come after 12 o'clock. Between 12 and 1 came dinner, with copious libations of ale and cider, which lasted till 2, when reaping was resumed and went on without interruption except from the squabbles of the company till 5, when what were called 'drinkings', or more food and drink, were taken into the field and consumed. After this the corn reaped was bound into sheaves till evening, when after the sport of throwing their reaping hooks at a sheaf which had been set up as a mark for a prize, all proceeded to supper and more ale and cider till the small hours.[609] No wages were paid at these harvestings, but the unlimited amount of eating and drinking was very expensive, and about this date the practice of using hired labour had largely superseded this old custom. The close of this period was marked by two Acts of great benefit to farmers: the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 (4 & 5 Wm. IV, c. 76), which reduced the rates,[610] and marked 'the beginning of a period of slow recovery in the labourer's standard of life, moral and material, though at first it brought him not a little adversity'[611]; and the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 (6 & 7 Wm. IV, c. 71), which substituted for the tithe paid in kind or the fluctuating commuted tithe, a tithe rent charge equivalent to the market value, on a septennial average, of the exact quantities of wheat, barley, and oats, which made up the legal tithes by the estimate in 1836. Thus was removed a perpetual source of dispute and antagonism between tithe-payer and tithe-owner. The system hitherto pursued, moreover, was wasteful. In exceptionally favourable circumstances the clergy did not receive more than two-thirds of the value of the tithe in kind. The delays were a frequent source of loss. In rainy weather, when the farmer desired to get his crops in quickly, he was obliged to shock his crops, give the tithe-owners notice to set out their tithes, and wait for their arrival; in the meantime the crop, perhaps, being badly damaged.[612] FOOTNOTES: [585] Walpole, _History of England_, i. 161. [586] _Inquiry into Agricultural Distress_ (1822), p. 40. [587] Walpole, _op. cit._ ii. 22. [588] _A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool by an Old Tory_, 1822. The Committee on Agricultural Distress found that farmers were paying rent out of capital (_Parliamentary Reports. Committees_, v. 71), and that leases fixed on the basis of the high prices of the war meant ruin to the farmer if held to his engagement. [589] _Parliamentary Reports, Committees_, ix. 138. [590] Cobbett, _Rural Rides_ (ed. 1885), i. 3, 16. [591] _Report of the Committee on Agricultural Depression_ (1822), pp. 3, 4. [592] Walpole, _History of England_, ii. 23. [593] _Hansard_, ix. 1544. [594] Ibid. x. 1, 2. [595] Ibid. xii. 1. [596] _Rural Rides_, ii. 199. [597] Walpole, _History of England_, ii. 526. The distress was aggravated by rot among sheep, which is said to have destroyed one-fourth of those in the kingdom. See _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1836), viii (2), p. 198. [598] Tooke, _History of Prices_, ii. 227. [599] _Report_ of 1833, p. 6. [600] Tooke, _History of Prices_, ii, 238. [601] Imports fell considerably at this date; they were: 1832 1,254,351 quarters. 1833 1,166,457 " 1834 981,486 " 1835 750,808 " 1836 861,156 " 1837 1,109,492 " 1838 1,923,400 " There were also considerable exports: 1832 289,558 quarters. 1833 96,212 " 1834 159,482 " 1835 134,076 " 1836 256,978 " 1837 308,420 " 1838 158,621 " McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1847), p. 438. [602] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 151. [603] See Duncumb, _General View of Herefordshire_, (1805). [604] Rural Rides, ii. 348. [605] London, _Encyclopaedia of Agriculture_ (1831), p. 1156. [606] Cobbett, _Rural Rides_, i. 149. The average, however, now was about 9s.; see _Parliamentary Reports_, v. 72. [607] _A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool by an Old Tory_ (1822), p. 16. [608] _Rural Rides_, i. 18. [609] Moore, _History of Devonshire_, i. 430. [610] By this Act and the various amending Acts the law of settlement, so long a burden on the labourer, is now settled thus: a settlement may be acquired by birth, parentage, marriage, renting a tenement, by being bound apprentice and inhabiting, by estate, payment of taxes, and by residence.--Stephen, _Commentaries on the Laws of England_ (1903), iii. 87. [611] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 217. [612] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1901), p. 9. CHAPTER XX 1837-1875 REVIVAL OF AGRICULTURE.--THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.--CORN LAW REPEAL.--A TEMPORARY SET-BACK.--THE HALCYON DAYS The revival of agriculture roughly coincided with the accession of Queen Victoria. It was proved that Scotch farmers who had farmed highly had weathered the storm. Instead of repeatedly calling on Parliament to help them they had helped themselves, by spending large sums in draining and manuring the land; they had adopted the subsoil plough, and the drainage system of Smith of Deanston, used machinery to economize labour, and improved the breed of stock. This was an object-lesson for the English farmer, and he began to profit by it. It was high time that he did. In spite of the undoubted progress made, farming was still often terribly backward. Little or no machinery was used, implements were often bad, teams too large, drilling little practised, drainage utterly inefficient; in fact, while one farmer used all the improvements made, a hundred had little to do with them. But better times were at hand. About 1835 Elkington's system of drainage, which among the more advanced agriculturists, at any rate, had been used for half a century, was superseded by that of James Smith of Deanston, a system of thorough drainage and deep ploughing, which effected a complete revolution in the art of draining, and holds the field to-day. Hitherto the draining of land had been done by a few drains where they were thought necessary, which was often a failure. Smith initiated a complete system of parallel underground drains, near enough to each, other to catch all the superfluous water, running into a main drain which ran along the lowest part of the ground. His system has also been called 'furrow or frequent draining', as the drains were generally laid in the furrows from two to two-and-a-half feet deep at short intervals. Even then the tributary drains were at first filled in with stones 12 inches deep, as they had been for centuries, and sometimes with thorns, or even turves, as tiles were still expensive; and the main was made of stonework. However, the invention of machines for making tiles cheapened them, and the substitution of cylindrical pipes for horse-shoe tiles laid on flat soles still further lowered the cost and increased the efficiency.[613] In 1848, Peel introduced Government Drainage Loans, repayable by twenty-two instalments of 6 1/2 per cent. This was consequently an era of extensive drainage works all over England, which sorely needed it; but even now the work was often badly done. In some cases it was the custom for the tenant to put in as many tiles as his landlord gave him, and they were often merely buried. At Stratfieldsaye, for instance, where the Iron Duke was a generous and capable landlord, the drains were sometimes a foot deep, while others were 6 feet deep and 60 feet apart,[614] although the soil required nothing of the kind. Vast sums were also spent on farm-buildings, still often old and rickety, with deficient and insanitary accommodation; in Devonshire the farmer was bound by his lease to repair 'old mud and wooden houses', at a cost of 10 per cent. on his rent, and there were many such all over England. Farm-buildings were often at the extreme end of the holding, the cattle were crowded together in draughty sheds, and the farmyard was generally a mass of filth and spoiling manure, spoiling because all the liquid was draining away from it into the pool where the live stock drank; a picture, alas, often true to-day. It was to bring the great mass of landlords and farmers into line with those who had made the most of what progress there had been, that the Royal Society was founded in 1838, in imitation of the Highland Society, but also owing to the realization of the great benefits conferred on farming during the last half-century by the exertions of Agricultural Societies, the Smithfield Club Shows having especially aided the breeding of live stock. Writing on the subject of the Society, Mr. Handley[615] spoke of the wretched modes of farming still to be seen in the country, especially in the case of arable land, though there had been a marked improvement in the breeding of stock. Prejudice, as ever, was rampant. Bone manure, though in the previous twenty years it had worked wonders, was in many parts unused. It was felt that what the English farmer needed was 'practice with science'. The first President of the Society was Earl Spencer, and it at once set vigorously to work, recommending prizes for essays on twenty-four subjects, some of which are in the first volume of the Society's Journal. Prizes were also offered for the best draining-plough, the best implement for crushing gorse, for a ploughing match to be held at the first country meeting of the Society fixed at Oxford in 1839, for the best cultivated farm in Oxfordshire and the adjacent counties, and for the invention of any new agricultural implement. In 1840 the Society was granted a charter under the title of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and its career since then has been one of continued usefulness, and forms a prominent feature in the agricultural history of the times. In 1839[616] the first country meeting of the Society was held at Oxford, and its 247 entries of live stock and 54 of implements were described as constituting a show of unprecedented magnitude. According to _Bell's Weekly Messenger_ for July 22, 1839, the show for some time had been the all-absorbing topic of conversation not only among agriculturists, but among the community at large, and the first day 20,000 people attended the show, many having come great distances by road. Everybody and every exhibit had to get to Oxford by road; some Shorthorn cattle, belonging to the famous Thomas Bates of Kirkleavington, took nearly three weeks on the road, coming from London to Aylesbury by canal. But such a journey was not unusual then, for cattle were often two or three weeks on the road to great fairs, and stood the journey best on hay; it was surprising how fresh and sound they finished.[617] The show ground covered 7 acres, and among the implements tested was a subsoil plough, Biddell's Scarifier, and a drill for depositing manure after turnips. There were only six classes for cattle--Shorthorns, Herefords, Devons, Cattle of any other breed, Dairy Cattle, and Oxen; one class for horses, and three for sheep--Leicesters, Southdown or other Short Wool, and Long Woolled; with one for pigs.[618] The Shorthorns, with the exception of the Kirkleavingtons, were bred in the neighbourhood, and many good judges said long afterwards that a finer lot had not been seen since. The Duchesses especially impressed all who saw them. The rest of the live stock was in no way remarkable. From this small beginning, then thought so much of, the show grew fast, and the Warwick meeting[619] of 1892, after several years of agricultural depression, illustrates the excellent work of the Society and the enormous progress made by English agriculture. The show ground covered 90 acres; horses were now divided into Thoroughbred Stallions, Hunters, Coach Horses, Hackneys, Ponies, Harness Horses and Ponies, Shires, Clydesdales, Suffolks, and Agricultural Horses. Cattle were classified as Shorthorns, Herefords, Devons, Sussex, Longhorns (described as few in number and of no particular quality, 'a breed which has now been many years on the wane', but has recently been revived),[620] Welsh, Red Polled, Jerseys, Guernseys, Kerry and Dexter-Kerry. The increased variety of sheep was also striking; Leicesters, Cotswolds, Lincolns, Oxford Downs, Shropshires, Southdowns, Hampshire Downs, Suffolks, Border Leicesters, Clun Forest, and Welsh Mountain. Pigs were divided into Large, Middle, and Small white Berkshires, any other black breed, and Tamworths. Altogether the total number of stock exhibited was 1,858, and the number of implements was 5,430. In 1840 appeared Liebig's _Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology_, tracing the relations between the nutrition of plants and the composition of the soil, a book which was received with enthusiasm, and completely changed the attitude which agriculturists generally had maintained towards chemistry; one of contempt, founded on ignorance. But, as Mr. Prothero has said,[621] 'if the new agriculture was born in the laboratory of Glissen, it grew into strength at the experimental station of Rothamsted.' There, for more than half a century, Lawes and Gilbert conducted experiments, of vast benefit to agriculture, in the objects, method, and effect of manuring; the scientific bases for the rotation of crops, and the results of various foods on animals in the production of meat, milk, and manure. The use of artificial manures now spread rapidly; bones, used long before uncrushed, are said to have been first crushed in 1772, and their value was realized by Coke of Holkham, but for long they were crushed by hammer or horse mill, and their use was consequently limited. Then iron rollers worked by steam ground them cheaply and effectively, and their use soon spread, though it was not till about 1840 that it can be said to have become general. Its effects were often described as wonderful. In Cheshire, cheese-making had exhausted the soil, and it was said that by boning and draining an additional cow could be kept for every 4 acres, and tenants readily paid 7 per cent. to their landlords for expenditure in bone manure. Its use had indeed raised many struggling farmers to comparative independence.[622] A very large quantity of the bones used came from South America.[623] Porter also noticed that 'since 1840 an extensive trade has been carried on in an article called Guano', the guana of Davy, 'from the islands of the Pacific and off the coast of Africa'. Nitrate of soda was just coming in, but was not much used till some years later. In 1840 Liebig suggested the treatment of bones with sulphuric acid, and in 1843 Lawes patented the process and set up his works at Deptford.[624] Italian rye grass, not to be confounded with the old English ray grass, had been introduced by Thomson of Banchory, in 1834, from Munich;[625] and though the swede was known at the end of the eighteenth century, in many parts it had only just become common. In Notts it was in 1844 described as having recently become 'the sheet-anchor of the farmer'.[626] In Cheshire a writer at the same date said, 'in the year 1814 there were not 5 acres of Swedish turnips grown in the parish where I reside; now there are from 60 to 80, and in many parts of the county the increase has been in a much greater ratio.'[627] About this time a remedy was found in the south for leaving the land idle during the nine months between harvesting the corn crop in August, and sowing the turnip crop in the following June, by sowing rye, which was eaten green by the sheep in May, a good preparation for the succeeding winter crop. Turnip cutters were at last being used, and corn and cake crushers soon followed. The seasons from 1838 to 1841 were bad, and must be characterized as a period of dearth, wheat keeping at a good price.[628] That of 1844-5 was remarkable for the first general appearance of the potato disease, not only in these islands but on the continent of Europe.[629] In August, 1846, the worst apprehensions of the failure of the crop were more than realized, and the terrible results in Ireland are well known. In the early part of 1847 there was a fear of scarcity in corn, and the price of wheat rose to 102s. 5d. in spite of an importation of 4,500,000 quarters, but this was largely owing to the absence of any reliable agricultural statistics, which were not furnished till 1866, and the price soon fell.[630] We have now reached the period of free trade, when the Corn Laws, which had protected agriculture more or less effectually for so long, were definitely abandoned. That they had failed to prevent great fluctuations in the price of corn is abundantly evident, it is also equally evident that they kept up the average price; in the ten years from 1837 to 1846, the average price of wheat was 58s. 7d. a quarter, in the seven years from 1848 to 1853, the average price was 48s. 2d.[631] The average imports of wheat and flour for the same period were 2,161,813 and 4,401,000 quarters respectively. But to obtain the real effect of free trade on prices, the prices for the period between 1815 and 1846 must be compared with those between 1846 and the present day, when the fall is enormous. The Act of 1815, which Tooke said had failed to secure any one of the objects aimed at by its promoters, had received two important alterations. In 1828 (9 Geo. IV, c. 60) a duty of 36s. 8d. was imposed when the price was 50s., decreasing to 1s. when it was 73s. In 1843 (5 Vict. c. 14) a duty of 20s. was imposed when the price was 50s., and the duty became 7s. when the price reached 65s. A contemporary writer denies that these duties benefited the farmer at all: 'if the present shifting scale of duty was intended to protect the farmer, keep the prices of corn steady, insure a supply to the consumer at a moderate price, and benefit the revenue, it has signally failed. During the continuation of the Corn Laws the farmers have suffered the greatest privations. The variations in price have been extreme, and when a supply of foreign corn has been required it has only reached the consumer at a high price, and benefited the revenue little.'[632] Rents of farms were often calculated not on the market price of wheat, but on the price thought to be fixed by the duties, which was occasionally much higher.[633] It was also said that but for the restrictions that had been imposed in the supposed interests of agriculture, the skill and enterprise of farmers would have been better directed than it had been. By means of these restrictions and the consequent enhancement of the cost of living, the cultivation of the land had been injuriously restricted, for the energies of farmers had been limited to producing certain descriptions of food, and they had neglected others which would have been far[634] more profitable. The landlord had profited by higher rents, but, according to Caird, a most competent observer, had generally speaking been induced by a reliance on protection to neglect his duty to his estates, so that buildings were poor, and drainage neglected. The labourer was little if any better off than eighty years before. It was a mystery even to farmers how they lived in many parts of the country; 'our common drink,' said one, 'is burnt crust tea, we never know what it is to get enough to eat.'[635] Against these disadvantages can only be put the fact that protection had kept up the price of corn, a calamity for the mass of the people. The amount of wheat imported into England before the era of Corn Law repeal was inconsiderable. Mr. Porter has shown[636] how very small a proportion of wheat used in this country was imported from 1801-44. From 1801 to 1810 the average annual import of wheat into the kingdom was 600,946 quarters, or a little over a peck annually per head, the average annual consumption per head being about eight bushels. Between 1811 and 1820 the average importation was 458,578 quarters, or for the increased population a gallon-and-a-half per head, and the same share for each person was imported in the next decade 1821-30. From 1831-40 the average imports arose to 607,638 quarters, or two-and-a-quarter gallons per head, and in 1841-4 an average import of 1,901,495 quarters raised the average supply to four-and-a-half gallons per person, still a very small proportion of the amount consumed. In 1836 a small association had been formed in London for advocating the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in 1838 a similar association was formed in Manchester.[637] At one of its earliest meetings appeared Richard Cobden, under whose guidance the association became the Anti-Corn Law League, and at whose invitation John Bright joined the League. Under these two men the Anti-Corn Law League commenced its great agitation, its object being 'to convince the manufacturer that the Corn Laws were interfering with the growth of trade, to persuade the people that they were raising the price of food, to teach the agriculturist that they had not even the solitary merit of securing a fixed price for corn'. The country was deluged with pamphlets, backed up by constant public meetings; and these efforts, aided by unfavourable seasons, convinced many of the errors of protection. In 1840 the League spent £5,700 in distributing 160,000 circulars and 150,000 pamphlets, and in delivering 400 lectures to 800,000 people. Bakers were persuaded to bake taxed and untaxed shilling loaves, and, on the purchaser choosing the larger, to demand the tax from the landlord; in 1843 the League collected £50,000, next year £100,000, and in 1845 £250,000 in support of their agitation. Yet for some years they had little success in Parliament; even in 1842 Peel only amended the laws; and it was not until 1846 that, convinced by the League's arguments, as he himself confessed, and stimulated by the famine in Ireland, he introduced the famous Act, 9 & 10 Vict. c. 22. By this the maximum duty on imported wheat was at once to be reduced to 10s. a quarter when the price was under 48s., to 5s. on barley when the price was under 26s., and to 4s. on oats when the price was under 18s., with lower duties as prices rose above these figures, but the most important part of the Act was that on February 1, 1849, these duties were to cease, and only a nominal duty of 1s. a quarter on foreign corn be retained, which was abolished in 1860. By 9 and 10 Vict. c. 23 the duties on live stock were also abolished entirely. Down to 1842 the importation of horned cattle, sheep, hogs, and other animals used as food was strictly prohibited,[638] but in that year the prohibition was withdrawn and they were allowed to enter the country on a payment of 20s. a head on oxen and bulls, 15s. on cows, 3s. on sheep, 5s. on hogs; which duties continued till 1846. It is interesting to find that so shrewd an observer as McCulloch did not expect any great increase in the imports of live animals from the reduction of the duties, but he anticipated a great increase in salted meat from abroad; cold storage being then undreamt of. The full effect of this momentous change was not to be felt for a generation, but the immediate effect was an agricultural panic apparently justified by falling prices. In 1850 wheat averaged 40s. 3d. and in 1851 38s. 6d. On the other hand, stock farmers were doing well. But on the corn lands the prices of the protection era had to come down; many farms were thrown up, some arable turned into pasture; distress was widespread. Owing to the depressed state of agriculture in 1850, the _Times_ sent James Caird on a tour through England, and one of the most important conclusions arrived at in his account of his tour is, that owing to protection, the majority of landowners had neglected their land; but another cause of neglect was that the great body of English landlords knew nothing of the management of their estates, and committed it to agents who knew little more and merely received the rents. The important business of being a landowner is the only one for which no special training is provided. Many of the landlords, however, then, as now, were unable to improve their estates if they desired to do so, as they were hopelessly encumbered, and the expense of sale was almost prohibitive. The contrast between good and bad farmers was more marked in 1850 than to-day, the efforts of the Royal Agricultural Society to raise the general standard of farming had not yet borne much fruit. In many counties, side by side, were farmers who used every modern improvement, and those who still employed the methods of the eighteenth century: on one farm wheat producing 40 bushels an acre, threshed by steam at a cost of 3s. 6d., on the next 20 bushels to the acre threshed by the flail at a cost of 9s.[639] Drainage in the counties where it was needed had made considerable progress, the removal of useless hedgerows often crowded with timber, that kept the sun from the crops and whose roots absorbed much of the nourishment of the soil, was slowly extending, but farm-buildings almost everywhere were defective. 'The inconvenient ill-arranged hovels, the rickety wood and thatch barns and sheds devoid of every known improvement for economizing labour, food, and manure, which are to be met with in every county in England, are a reproach to the landlords in the eyes of all good farmers.'[640] The farm-buildings of Belgium, Holland, France, and the Rhenish Provinces were much superior. In parts of England indeed no progress seems to have been made for generations at this date. Thousands of acres of peat moss in Lancashire were unreclaimed, and many parts of the Fylde district were difficult even to traverse. Even in Warwickshire, in the heart of England, between Knowle and Tamworth, instead of signs of industry and improvement were narrow winding lanes leading to nothing, traversed by lean pigs and rough cattle, broad copse-like hedges, small and irregular fields of couch, amidst which straggled the stalks of some smothered cereal; these with gipsy encampments and the occasional sound of the poacher's gun from woods and thickets around were the characteristics of the district.[641] Leases were the exception throughout England, though more prevalent in the west.[642] The greater proportion of farms were held on yearly agreements terminable by six months' notice on either side, a system preferred by the landlord as enabling him to retain a greater hold over his land, and acquiesced in by the tenant because of easy rents. In spite of this insecurity of tenure and the absence of Agricultural Holdings Acts, the tenants invested their capital largely with no other security than the landlord's character, 'for in no country of the world does the character of any class of men stand so high for fair and generous dealing as that of the great body of the English landlords.' The custom of tenant-right was unknown except in certain counties, Surrey, Sussex, the Weald of Kent, Lincoln, North Notts, and in part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.[643] Where it existed, the agriculture was on the whole inferior to that of the districts where it did not, and it had frequently led to fraud in a greater or less degree. Many farmers were in the practice of 'working up to a quitting', or making a profit by the difference which their ingenuity and that of their valuer enabled them to demand at leaving as compared with what they paid on entry. The best farmers as well as the landlords were said to be disgusted with the system. The dislike for leases in the days immediately before the repeal of the Corn Laws was partly due to the uncertainty how long protection would last; but chiefly then, as afterwards, to the fact that if a man improved his farm under a lease he had nearly always to pay an increased rent on renewal, but if he held from year to year his improvement, if any, was so gradual and imperceptible that it was hardly noticed and the rent was not raised. It may also be attributable to the modern disinclination to be bound down to a particular spot for a long period. At all events, the general dislike of farmers for leases is a curious commentary on the assertions of those writers who said that leases were his chief necessity. The disparity of the labourer's wages in 1850 was most remarkable, ranging from 15s. a week in parts of Lancashire to 6s. in South Wilts, the average of the northern counties being 11s. 6d., and of the southern 8s. 5d. a difference due wholly to the influence of manufactures, which is still further proved by the fact that in Lancashire in 1770 wages were below the average for England. In fact since Young's time wages in the north had increased 66 per cent., in the south only 14 per cent. In Berkshire and Wiltshire there had been no increase in that period, and in Suffolk an actual decrease. It is not surprising to learn that in some southern counties wages were not sufficient for healthy sustenance, and the consequence was, that there, the average amount of poor relief per head of population was 8s. 8-1/2d., but in the north 4s. 7-3/4d., and the percentage of paupers was twice as great in the former as in the latter. This was mainly due to two causes: (1) the ratepayers of parishes in the south were accustomed to divide among themselves the surplus labour, not according to their requirements but in proportion to the size of their farms, so that a farmer who was a good economist of labour was reduced by this system to the same level as his unskilful neighbours, and the labourer himself had no motive to do his best, as every one, good and bad, was employed at the same rate. (2) To the system of close and open parishes, by which large proprietors could drive the labourer from the parish where he worked to live in some distant village in case he should become chargeable to the rates, so that it was a common thing to see labourers walking three or four miles each day to their work and back, and in one county farmers provided donkeys for them. Between 1840 and 1850 the labourer had, however, already benefited by free trade, for the price of many articles he consumed fell 30%; on the other hand the rent of his cottage in eighty years had increased 100%, and meat 70%, which however did not, unfortunately, affect him much. The great development of railway construction also helped him by absorbing much surplus labour, and the work of his wife and children was more freely exploited at this date to swell the family budget.[644] The great difference between the wages of the north and the south is a clear proof that the wages of the agricultural labourer are not dependent on the prices of agricultural produce, for those were the same in both regions. It was unmistakably due to the greater demand for labour in the north. The housing of the labourer was, especially in the south, often a black blot on English civilization. From many instances collected by an inquirer in 1844 the following may be taken. At Stourpaine in Dorset, one bedroom in a cottage contained three beds occupied by eleven people of all ages and both sexes, with no curtain or partition whatever. At Milton Abbas, on the average of the last census there were thirty-six persons in each house, and so crowded were they that cottagers with a desire for decency would combine and place all the males in one cottage, and all the females in another. But this was rare, and licentiousness and immorality of the worst kind were frequent.[645] As for the farmer, the stock raiser was doing better than the corn grower. The following table shows the rent of cultivated land per acre, the produce of wheat per acre in bushels, the price of provisions, wages of labour, and rent of cottages in England at the date of Young's tours, about 1770, and of Caird's in 1850[647]: Rent of Produce of cultivated land Wheat Price per lb. of per acre. per acre. Bread. Meat. Butter. 1770 13s. 4d. 23 1-1/2d. 3-1/4d. 6d. 1850 26s. 10d. 26-3/4[646] 1-1/4d. 5d. 1s. Price of Wool Cottage Labourer's wages per lb. rents. per week. 1770 5-1/2d. 34s. 8d. 7s. 3d. 1850 1s. 74s. 6d. 9s. 7d. Thus in eighty years the average rent of arable land rose 100%, the average wheat crop 14%, while the price of bread had decreased 16%. But meat had increased 70%, wool over 100%, butter 100%. The chief benefit to the farmer therefore lay in the increased value of live stock and its products, and it was found then, as in the present depression, that the holders of strong wheat land suffered most, which was further illustrated by the fact that the rent of the corn-growing counties of the east coast averaged 23s. 8d. per acre; that of the mixed corn and grass counties in the midlands and west, 31s. 5d. Writing in 1847, Porter said rents had doubled since 1790.[648] In Essex farms could be pointed out which were let in 1790 at less than 10s. an acre, but during the war at from 45s. to 50s. In 1818 the rent went down to 35s., and in 1847 was 20s. In Berks. and Wilts. farms let at 14s. per acre in 1790, rose by 1810 to 70s., or fivefold; sank in 1820 to 50s., and in 1847 to 30s. In Staffordshire farms on one estate let for 8s. an acre in 1790, rose during the war to 35s., and at the peace were lowered to 20s., at which price they remained. Owing to better farming light soils had been applied to uses for which heavy lands alone had formerly been considered fit, with a considerable increase of rent. On the Duke of Rutland's[649] Belvoir estate, of from 18,000 to 20,000 acres of above average quality, rents were in-- 1799 19s. 3-3/4d. an acre. 1812 25s. 8-3/4d. " 1830 25s. 1-3/4d. " 1850 36s. 8d. " But the Dukes of Rutland were indulgent landlords and evidently took no undue advantage of the high prices during the war, a policy whose wisdom was fully justified afterwards. It was the opinion of most competent judges, even after the abolition of the Corn Laws, that English land would continue to rise in value. Porter stated that the United Kingdom could never be habitually dependent on the soil of other countries for the food of its people, there was not enough shipping to transport it if it could.[650] Caird prophesied that in the next eighty years the value of land in England would more than double. The wellnigh universal opinion was that as the land of England could not increase, and the population was constantly increasing, land must become dearer. Men failed to foresee the opening of millions of acres of virgin soil in other parts of the world, and the improvement of transport to such an extent that wheat has occasionally been carried as ballast. About twenty-five or thirty years after these prophecies their fallacy began to be cruelly exposed.[651] About 1853[652] matters began to mend, chiefly owing to the great expansion in trade that followed the great gold discoveries in America and Australia. Then, came the Crimean War, with the closing of the Baltic to the export of Russian corn, wheat in 1855 averaging 74s. 8d., and in the next decade the American War crippled another competitor, the imports of wheat from the United States sinking from 16,140,000 cwt in 1862, to 635,000 cwt. in 1866. From 1853 until 1875 English agriculture prospered exceedingly, assisted largely by good seasons. Between 1854 and 1865 there were ten good harvests, and only two below the average. Prices of produce rose almost continuously, and the price and rent of land with them. The trade of the country was good, and the demand for the farmer's products steadily grew; the capital value of the land, live stock, and crops upon it, increased in this period by £445,000,000.[653] It appeared as if the abolition of the Corn Laws was not to have any great effect after all. Now at last the great body of farmers began to approach the standard set them long before by the more energetic and enterprising. Early maturity in finishing live stock for the market by scientific feeding probably added a fourth to their weight The produce of crops per acre grew, and drainage and improvements were carried out on all sides, the greatest improvement being made in the cultivation and management of strong lands, of which drainage was the foundation, and enabled the occupier to add swedes to his course of cropping.[654] It was in this period that Shorthorns, Herefords, and Devons attained a standard of excellence which has made them sought after by the whole world; and other breeds were perfected, the Sussex and Aberdeen Angus especially; while in sheep the improvement was perhaps even greater.[655] The improved Lincolns, Oxford Downs, Hampshire Downs, and Shropshires took their place as standard breeds at this period. In 1866, after many years of expectation and disappointment, agriculturists were furnished with statistics which are trustworthy for practical purpose, but are somewhat vitiated by the fact that the live stock census was taken on March 5, which obviously omitted a large number of young stock; so that those for 1867, when the census was taken on June 25, are better for purposes of comparison with those of subsequent years, when the census has been taken on June 4 or 5. Between 1867 and 1878 the cattle in England and Wales had increased from 4,013,564 to 4,642,641, though sheep had diminished from 22,025,498 to 21,369,810.[656] The total acreage under cultivation had increased from 25,451,526 acres to 27,164,326 acres in the same period. There was, however, one black shadow in this fair picture: in 1865 England was invaded by the rinderpest, which spread with alarming rapidity, killing 2,000 cows in a month from its first appearance, and within six months infecting thirty-six counties.[657] The alarm was general, and town and country meetings were held in the various districts where the disease appeared to concert measures of defence. The Privy Council issued an order empowering Justices to appoint inspectors authorized to seize and slaughter any animal labouring under such diseases; but, in spite of this, the plague raged with redoubled fury throughout September. There was gross mismanagement in combating it, for the inspectors were often ignorant men, and no compensation was paid for slaughter, so that farmers often sold off most of their diseased stock before hoisting the black flag. The ravages of the disease in the London cow-houses was fearful, as might be expected, and they are said to have been left empty; by no means an unmixed evil, as the keeping of cow-houses in towns was a glaring defiance of the most obvious sanitary laws. In October a Commission was appointed to investigate the origin and nature of the disease, and the first return showed a total of 17,673 animals attacked. By March 9, 1866, 117,664 animals had died from the plague, and 26,135 been killed in the attempt to stay it. By the end of August the disease had been brought within very narrow limits, and was eventually stamped out by the resolute slaughter of all infected animals. By November 24 the number of diseased animals that had died or been killed was 209,332,[658] and the loss to the nation was reckoned at £3,000,000. The disease was brought by animals exported from Russia, who came from Revel, via the Baltic, to Hull. In 1872, cattle brought to the same port infected the cattle of the East Riding of Yorkshire, but this outbreak was checked before much damage had been done, and since 1877 there has been no trace of this dreaded disease in the kingdom. The cattle plague, rinderpest, or steppe murrain, is said[659] to have first appeared in England in 1665, the year of the Great Plague, and reappeared in 1714, when it came from Holland, but did little damage, being chiefly confined to the neighbourhood of London. The next outbreak was in 1745, and lasted for twelve years, undoubtedly coming from Holland; it is said to have caused such destruction among the cattle, that much of the grass land in England was ploughed up and planted with corn, so that the exports of grain increased largely. In 1769 it came again, but only affected a few localities, and disappeared in 1771, not to return till 1865. Foot and mouth disease was first observed in England in 1839,[660] and it was malignant in 1840-1, when cattle, sheep, and pigs were attacked as they were during the serious outbreak of 1871-2. In 1883 no less than 219,289 cattle were attacked, besides 217,492 sheep, and 24,332 pigs, when the disease was worse than it has ever been in England. Since then, though there have been occasional outbreaks, it has much abated. Another dread scourge of cattle, pleuro-pneumonia, was at its worst in 1872, a most calamitous year in this respect, when 7,983 cattle were attacked. In 1890 the Board of Agriculture assumed powers with respect to it under the Diseases of Animals Act of that year, and their consequent action has been attended with great success in getting rid of the disease. At the end of this halcyon period farmers had to contend with a new difficulty, the demand for higher wages by their labourers at the instigation of Joseph Arch.[661] This famous agitator was born at Barford in Warwickshire in 1826, and as a boy worked for neighbouring farmers, educating himself in his spare time. The miserable state of the labourer which he saw all around him entered into his soul, meat was rarely seen on his table, even bacon was a luxury in many cottages. Tea was 6s. to 7s. a lb., sugar 8d., and other prices in proportion; the labourers stole turnips for food, and every other man was a poacher. Arch made himself master of everything he undertook, became famous as a hedger, mower, and ploughman, and being consequently employed all over the Midlands and South Wales, began to gauge the discontent of the labourer who was then voiceless, voteless, and hopeless. His wages by 1872 had increased to 12s. a week, but had not kept pace with the rise in prices. Bread was 7-1/2d. a loaf; the labourer had lost the benefit of his children's labour, for they had now all gone to school; his food was 'usually potatoes, dry bread, greens, herbs, "kettle broth" made by putting bread in the kettle, weak tea, bacon sometimes, fresh meat hardly ever.'[662] It is difficult to realize that at the end of the third quarter of the nineteenth century, when Gladstone said the prosperity of the country was advancing 'by leaps and bounds', that any class of the community _in full work_ could live under such wretched conditions. Arch came to the conclusion that labour could only improve its position when organized, and the Agricultural Labourers' Union was initiated in 1872. Not that the idea of obtaining better conditions by combination was new to the rural labourer. It was attempted in 1832 in Dorset, but speedily crushed, and not till 1865 was a new union founded in Scotland, which was followed by a strike in Buckinghamshire in 1867, and the foundation of a union in Herefordshire in 1871.[663] It was determined to ask for 16s. a week and a 9-1/2 hours' working day, which the farmers refused to grant, and the men struck. The agitation spread all over England, and was often conducted unwisely and with a bitter spirit, but the labourer was embittered by generations of sordid misery. Very reluctantly the farmers gave way, and generally speaking wages went up during the agitation to 14s. or 15s. a week, though Arch himself admits that even during the height of it they were often only 11s. and 12s. With the bad times, about 1879, wages began to fall again, and men were leaving the Agricultural Union; by 1882 Arch says many were again taking what the farmer chose to give. From 1884 the Union steadily declined, and after a temporary revival about 1890, practically collapsed in 1894. Other unions had been started, but were then going down hill, and in 1906 only two remained in a moribund condition. Their main object, to raise the labourer's wages, was largely counteracted by the acute depression in agriculture, and though there has since been considerable recovery, there are districts in England to-day where he only gets 11s. and 12s. a week. The Labourers' Union helped to deal a severe blow to the 'gang system', which had grown up at the beginning of the century (when the high corn prices led to the breaking up of land where there were no labourers, so that 'gangs' were collected to cultivate it[664]), by which overseers, often coarse bullies, employed and sweated gangs sometimes numbering 60 or 70 persons, including small children, and women, the latter frequently very bad specimens of their sex. These gangs went turnip-singling, bean-dropping, weeding &c., while pea-picking gangs ran to 400 or 500. Though some of these gangs were properly managed, the system was a bad one, and the Union and the Education Acts helped its disappearance. FOOTNOTES: [613] Cylindrical pipes came in about 1843, though they had been recommended in 1727 by Switzer. [614] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1st series), xxii. 260. [615] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, pp. 1 sq. [616] Ibid., 1894, pp. 205 sq. [617] McCombie, _Cattle and Cattle Breeders_, p. 33. [618] These classes, however, did not comprise all the then known breeds of live stock. [619] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1892, pp. 479 sq. [620] At the show at Birmingham In 1898 there were 22 entries of Longhorns; in 1899 a Longhorn Cattle Society was established, and the herd-book resuscitated. More than twenty herds of the breed are now well established. [621] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1901, p. 24. [622] Caird, _English Agriculture in 1850-1_, pp. 252 sq. [623] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 142. [624] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1901, p. 25. [625] Ibid. 1896, p. 96. [626] Ibid. (1st ser.), vi. 2. [627] Ibid. (1st ser.), v. 102. [628] 1838, 64s. 7d; 1839, 70s. 8d.; 1840, 66s. 4d.; 1841, 64s. 4d. [629] Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 19. [630] C. Wren Hoskyns, _Agricultural Statistics_, p. 5. [631] The abnormal prices during the Crimean War cannot fairly be taken into account. The home and foreign supplies of wheat and flour from 1839-46 were:-- Home Supplies. Foreign Supplies. qrs. qrs. 1839-40 4,022,000 1,762,482 1840-1 3,870,648 1,925,241 1841-2 3,626,173 2,985,422 1842-3 5,078,989 2,405,217 1843-4 5,213,454 1,606,912 1844-5 6,664,368 476,190 1845-6 5,699,969 2,732,134 (Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 414.) 1844-5 was a very abundant crop, and the threatened repeal of the Corn Laws induced farmers to send all the corn possible to market. [632] Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 32. [633] Cobden's Speech, March 12, 1844. [634] Tooke, _History of Prices_, iv. 142. [635] From evidence collected by Mr. Austin in the southern counties. [636] _Progress of Nation_, pp. 137 sq. For the amount imported before that date, see Appendix 2. [637] Walpole, _History of England_, iv. 63 sq. Cobden apparently never contemplated such low prices for corn as have prevailed since 1883. In his speech of March 12, 1844, he mentioned 50s. a quarter as a probable price under free trade, and he died before the full effect of foreign competition was felt by the English farmer. [638] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_, 1847, p. 274. See below, pp. 325 sq. [639] Caird, _English Agriculture in 1850-1_, p. 498. [640] Ibid. p. 490. [641] _Victoria County History: Warwickshire_, ii. 277. [642] Caird, _op. cit._, p. 481. [643] Caird, _op. cit._ p. 507. [644] Hasbach, _op. cit._ pp. 220, 226. [645] Cobden's Speech, March 12, 1844. [646] Mr. Pusey, one of the best informed agriculturists of the day, estimated the produce of wheat per acre in 1840 at 26 bushels.--_R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, p. 20. [647] Caird, _English Farming in 1850-1_, p. 474. [648] _Progress of the Nation_. [649] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, v. 29. [650] _Progress of the Nation_, pp. 137-9. [651] Yet as the growth of population overtakes the corn and meat supply, these prophets may in the end prove correct. [652] The Great Exhibition of 1851 was said to have widely diffused the use of improved implements.--_R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1856, p. 54. [653] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, p. 34. [654] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1856, p. 60. [655] Ibid. 1901, p. 30. See below, p. 343. [656] _Board of Agriculture Returns_, 1878, and _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1868, p. 239. Young estimated the number of cattle in England in 1770 at 2,852,048, including 684,491 draught cattle.--_Eastern Tour_, iv. 456. [657] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, (2nd ser.), ii. 230. [658] Ibid. iii. 430. [659] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (2nd ser.), ii. 270. [660] See _Autobiography of Joseph Arch_. [661] Ibid. ix. 274. [662] In many districts, however, his food was better than this. [663] Hasbach, _op. cit._, pp. 276-7. [664] Hasbach, _op. cit._, pp. 193, et seq. The Gangs Act (30 & 31 Vict. c. 130) had already brought the system under control. CHAPTER XXI 1875-1908 AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS AGAIN.--FOREIGN COMPETITION.--AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS ACTS.--NEW IMPLEMENTS.--AGRICULTURAL COMMISSIONS.--THE SITUATION IN 1908 About the year 1875 the good times came to an end. The full force of free trade was at last felt. The seasons assisted the decline, and there was now no compensation in the shape of higher prices. In the eight years between 1874 and 1882 there were only two good crops. A new and formidable competitor had entered the field; between 1860 and 1880 the produce of wheat in the United States had trebled. Vast stretches of virgin soil were opened up with the most astonishing rapidity by railroads, and European immigrants poured in. The cost of transport fell greatly, and England was flooded with foreign corn and meat. English land which had to support the landlord, the tithe-owner, the land agent, the farmer, the labourer, and a large army of paupers,[665] had to compete with land where often one man was owner, farmer, and labourer, with no tithe and no poor rates. Yet prices held up fairly well until 1884, when there was a collapse from which they have not yet recovered. In 1877 wheat was 56s. 9d., in 1883 41s. 7d., and in 1884 35s. 8d.; by 1894 the average price for the year was 22s. 10d.[666] Farmers' capital was reduced from 30 to 50 per cent., and rents and the purchase value of land in a similar proportion. Poor clays only fit for wheat and beans went out of cultivation, though much has since been laid down to grass, and much has 'tumbled down'. In fact most of the increased value of the good period between 1853-75 disappeared. The year 1879 will long be remembered as 'the Black Year'. It was the worst of a succession of wet seasons in the midland, western and southern counties of England, the average rainfall being one-fourth above the average, and 1880 was little better. The land, saturated and chilled, produced coarser herbage, the finer grasses languished or were destroyed, fodder and grain were imperfectly matured. Mould and ergot were prevalent among plants, and flukes producing liver-rot among live stock, especially sheep. In 1879 in England and Wales 3,000,000 sheep died or were sacrificed from rot,[667] by 1881 5,000,000 had perished at an estimated loss of £10,000,000, and many, alas! were sent to market full of disease. Cattle also were infected, and hares, rabbits, and deer suffered. In some cases entire flocks of sheep disappeared. The disease was naturally worst on low-lying and ill-drained pastures, but occurred even on the drier uplands hitherto perfectly free from liver-rot, carried thither no doubt by the droppings of infected sheep, hares, and rabbits, and perhaps by the feet of men and animals. Apart from medicine, concentrated dry food given systematically, the regular use of common salt, and of course removal from low-lying and damp lands, were found the best preventives. Besides this great calamity, this year was distinguished by one of the worst harvests of the century, outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, of pleuro-pneumonia, and a disastrous attack of foot-rot. The misfortunes of the landed interest produced a Commission in 1879 under the Duke of Richmond, which conducted a most laborious and comprehensive inquiry. Their report, issued in 1882, stated that they were unanimously convinced of the great intensity and extent of the distress that had fallen upon the agricultural community. Owner and occupier had alike been involved. Yet, though agricultural distress had prevailed over the whole country, the degree had varied in different counties, and in some cases in different parts of the same counties. Cheshire, for instance, had not suffered to anything like the same extent as other counties, nor was the depression so severe in Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumberland, and parts of Yorkshire. The rainfall had been less in the northern counties. In the midlands, the eastern, and most of the southern counties the distress was severe, in Essex the state of agriculture was deplorable, but Kent, Devon, and Cornwall were not hardly hit.[668] The chief causes of the depression were said to be these:-- 1. The succession of unfavourable seasons, causing crops deficient in quantity and quality, and losses of live stock. 2. Low prices, partly due to foreign imports and partly to the inferior quality of the home production. 3. Increased cost of production. 4. Increased pressure of local taxation by the imposition of new rates, viz. the education rate and the sanitary rate; and the increase of old rates, especially the highway rate, in consequence of the abolition of turnpikes. Some exceptionally bad instances of this were given. In the parish of Didmarton, Gloucestershire, the average amount of rates paid for the five years ending March 31, 1858, was £26 6s. 3d., for the five years ending March 31, 1878, £118 11s. 7d. In the Northleach Union the rates had increased thus in decennial periods from 1850:-- 1850-1 £5,471 1860-1 5,534 1870-1 8,525 1878-9 10,089 On one small property in Staffordshire the increase of rates, other than poor rates, amounted to 3s. 6d. in the £ on the rateable value. 5. Excessive rates charged by railway companies for the conveyance of produce, and preferential rates given to foreign agricultural produce; the railway companies alleging, in defence of this, that foreign produce was consigned in much greater bulk, by few consignors, than home grown, and could be conveyed much more economically than if picked up at different stations in small quantities. As to the effect of restrictive covenants on the depression, the balance of evidence did not incline either way.[669] The Agricultural Holdings Act of 1875 was stated to have done much good in the matter of compensation to tenants for improvements, notwithstanding its merely permissive character, as it had reversed the presumption of law in relation to improvements effected by the tenant, prescribed the amount of compensation, and the mode in which it should be given. As to the important subject of freedom of cropping and sale of produce, there were diverse opinions, some advocating it wholly, others not believing in it at all, others saying each landlord and each tenant should make their own bargains since each farm stands on its own footing, others again favouring modified restrictions. The preponderance of opinion was in favour of a modification of the law of distress. The Commission further said that the pressure of foreign competition was greatly in excess of the anticipations of the supporters and of the apprehensions of the opponents of Corn Law Repeal; if it had not been for this, English farmers would have been partly compensated for the deficient yield by higher prices. On the other hand, the farmer had had the advantage of an increased and cheapened supply of feeding stuffs, such as maize, linseed and cotton cakes, and of artificial manures imported from abroad. At the same time the benefit to the community from cheap food was immense. It seemed just, however, that as agriculture was suffering from low prices, by which the country gained as a whole, that the proportion of taxation imposed on the land should be lessened; it was especially unjust that personal property was exempted from local rates, contrary to the Act of 43 Eliz. c. 2, and the whole burden thrown on real property. The difficulties of farmers were aggravated by the high price of labour, which had increased 25 per cent. in twenty years, largely owing to the competition of other industries, and at the same time become less efficient. As provisions were cheap, and employment abundant, the labourer had been scarcely affected by the distress. His cottage, however, especially if in the hands of a small owner, with neither the means nor the will to expend money on improvements, was often still very defective. Farmers were already complaining of the results of the new system of education, for which they had to pay, while it deprived them of the labour of boys, and drained from the land the sources of future labour by making the young discontented with farm work. The Commission denied that rents had been unduly raised previous to 1875[670]; and in the exceptional cases where they had been, it was due to the imprudent competition of tenant farmers encouraged by advances made by country bankers, the sudden withdrawal of which had greatly contributed to the present distress. Districts where dairying was carried on had suffered least, yet the yield of milk was much diminished, and the quality deteriorated, owing to the inferiority of grass from a continuance of wet seasons. The production and sale of milk was increasing largely, so that the attention of farmers and landlords was being drawn to this important branch of farming, milk-sellers necessarily suffering less from foreign competition than any other farmers. Let us turn once more to the hop yards: in 1878 the acreage of hops in England reached its maximum. We have seen that in the first half of the eighteenth century hop yards covered 12,000 acres; which between 1750 and 1780 increased to 25,000, and by 1800 to 32,000. In 1878, 71,789 acres were grown. The great increase prior to that year was due to the abolition of the excise duty in 1862, which on an average was equal to an annual charge of nearly £7 an acre.[671] This encouraged hop-growing more than the taking off of the import duty in the same year discouraged it. In 1882 there was a very small crop in England, which raised the average price to £18 10s. a cwt.; some choice samples fetching £30 a cwt.; growers who had good crops realizing much more than the freehold value of the hop yards. This, however, was most unfortunate for them, as it led to a great increase in the use of hop substitutes, such as quassia, chiretta, colombo, gentian, &c., which, with the decreasing consumption of beer and the demand for lighter beer, has done more than foreign competition to lower the price and thereby cause so large an area to be grubbed up as unprofitable, that in 1907 it was reduced to 44,938 acres. Yet the quality of the hops has in the last generation greatly improved in condition, quality, and appearance. Growers also have in the same period often incurred great expense in substituting various methods of wire-work for poles; and washing, generally with quassia chips and soft soap and water, has become wellnigh universal, so that the expense of growing the crop has increased, while the price has been falling.[672] The crop has always been an expensive one to grow; Marshall in 1798 put it at £20 an acre, exclusive of picking, drying, and marketing[673]; and Young estimated the total cost at the same date at £31 10s. an acre[674]; to-day £40 an acre is by no means an outside price. It may be some encouragement to growers to remember that hops have always been subject to great fluctuations in price; between 1693 and 1700, for instance, they varied from 40s. to 240s. a cwt., so that they may yet see them at a remunerative figure. 'Upon the whole', says an eighteenth-century writer, 'though many have acquired large estates by hops, their real advantage is perhaps questionable. By engrossing the attention of the farmer they withdraw him from slower and more certain sources of wealth, and encourage him to rely too much upon chance for his rent, rather than the honest labour of the plough. To the landlord the cultivation of hops is an evil, defrauding the arable land of its proper quantity of manure and thereby impoverishing his estate.' It was by this time the general opinion of men with a thorough experience of farming, that in many parts of Great Britain no sufficient compensation was secured to the tenant for his unexhausted improvements. In some counties and districts this compensation was given by established customs, in others customs existed which were insufficient, in many they did not exist at all. It must be confessed that often when a tenant leaves his farm there is more compensation due to the landlord than to the tenant. Human nature being what it is, the temptation to get as much out of the land just before leaving it is wellnigh irresistible to many farmers. In these days, when the landlord is often called upon by the tenant to do what the tenant used to do himself, the question of compensation to the tenant must on many estates appear to the landlord extremely ironical. It is, in the greater number of cases, the landlord who should receive compensation, and not the tenant; and though he has power to demand it, such power is over and over again not put in force. At the same time there are bad men in the landlord class as in any other, and from them the tenant required protection. By the Agricultural Holdings (England) Act of 1875, 38 & 39 Vict. c. 92, improvements for which compensation could be claimed by the tenant were divided into three classes. First class improvements, such as drainage of land, erection or enlargement of buildings, laying down of permanent pasture, &c., required the previous consent in writing of the landlord to entitle the tenant to compensation. Second class improvements, such as boning of land with undissolved bones, chalking, claying, liming, and marling the land, the latter now hardly ever practised, required notice in writing by the tenant to the landlord of his intention, and if notice to quit had been given or received, the consent in writing of the landlord was necessary. For third class improvements, such as the application to the land of purchased manure, and consumption on the holding by cattle, sheep, or pigs, of cake or other feeding stuff not produced on the holding, no consent or notice was required. Improvements in the first class were deemed to be exhausted in twenty years, in the second in seven, and in the third in two. It was the opinion of the Richmond Commission of 1879 that, notwithstanding the beneficial effects of this Act, no sufficient compensation for his unexhausted improvements was secured to the tenant. The landlord and tenant also might agree in writing that the Act should not apply to their contract of tenancy, so in 1883 when the Agricultural Holdings Act of that year (46 & 47 Vict. c. 61)[675] was passed, it was made compulsory as far as regarded compensation, and the time limit as regards the tenant's claims for improvements was abolished, the basis for compensation for all improvements recognized by the Act being laid down as 'the value of the improvement to an incoming tenant'. Improvements for which compensation could be claimed were again divided into three classes as before, but the drainage of land was placed in the second class instead of the first, and so only required notice to the landlord. This was the only improvement in the second class; the other improvements which had been in the second class in the Act of 1875 were now placed in the third, where no consent or notice was required. The Act also effected three other important alterations in the law; first, as to 'Notices to Quit', a year's notice being necessary where half a year's notice had been sufficient, though this section might be excluded by agreement; secondly, after January 1, 1885, the landlord could only distrain for one year's rent instead of six years as formerly; and thirdly, as to fixtures. These formerly became the property of the landlord on the determination of the tenancy, but by 14 & 15 Vict. c. 25 an agricultural tenant was enabled to remove fixtures put up by him with the consent of his landlord for agricultural purposes. Now all fixtures erected after the commencement of the Act were the property of and removable by the tenant, but the landlord might elect to purchase them. This Act was amended by the Act of 1900 (63 & 64 Vict. 50), and has been much altered by the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1906 (6 Edw. VII, c. 56), which has treated the landlord with a degree of severity, which considering the excellent relations that have for the most part existed between English landlords and tenants for generations, is utterly unwarranted. In several respects indeed he has been treated by the Act as if the land did not belong to him, while freedom of contract, until recent years one of the most cherished principles of our law, is arbitrarily interfered with. The chief alterations made by the Act of 1906 were:-- 1. _Improvements._--By the Act of 1883, in the valuation for improvements under the first schedule, such part of the improvement as is justly due to the inherent capabilities of the soil was not credited to the tenant This provision is repealed by the Act of 1906, in reference to which it must be said that the latent fertility of the soil, sometimes very considerable, may be developed by a small outlay on the part of the tenant for which outlay he is certainly entitled to compensation. But the greater part of the improvement may be due to the soil which belongs to the landlord, yet the Act credits the tenant with the whole of this improvement. An addition is made to the list of improvements which a tenant may make without his landlord's consent and for which he is entitled on quitting to compensation, viz. repairs to buildings, being buildings necessary for the proper working of the holding, other than repairs which the tenant is obliged to execute. 2. _Damage by Game._ A tenant may now claim compensation for damage to crops by deer, pheasants, partridges, grouse, and black game. 3. _Freedom of Cropping and Disposal of Produce._ Prior to this Act it had been the custom for generations to insert covenants in agreements providing for the proper cultivation of the farm; as, for instance, forbidding the removal from the holding of hay, straw, roots, green crops, and manure made on the farm. These and other covenants were merely in the interests of good farming, and to prevent the soil deteriorating. In recent times vexatious covenants formerly inserted had practically disappeared, and where still existing were seldom enforced. By this Act, notwithstanding any custom of the country or any contract or agreement, the tenant may follow any system of cropping, and dispose of any of his produce as he pleases, but after so doing he must make suitable and adequate provision to protect the farm from injury thereby: a proviso vague and difficult to enforce, and not sufficient to prevent an unscrupulous tenant greatly injuring his farm. 4. _Compensation for unreasonable disturbance._ If a landlord without good cause, and for reasons inconsistent with good estate management, terminates a tenancy by notice to quit; or refuses to grant a renewal of the tenancy if so requested at least one year before the expiration thereof; or if a tenant quits his holding in consequence of a demand by the landlord for an increased rent, such demand being due to an increased value in the holding owing to improvements done by the tenant; in either of such events the tenant is entitled to compensation. This compensation for disturbance is in direct opposition to the recommendation of the Commission of 1894,[676] and seems to be an unwarrantable interference with the owner's management of his own land. Another benefit, and one long needed, was conferred on farmers by the Ground Game Act of 1880, 43 & 44 Vict., c. 47. Before the Act the tenant had by common law the exclusive right to the game, including hares and rabbits, unless it was reserved to the landlord, which was usually the case. By this Act the right to kill ground game, which often worked terrible havoc in the tenant's crops, was rendered inseparable from the occupation of the land, though the owner may reserve to himself a concurrent right. One consequence of this Act has been that the hare has disappeared from many parts of England. The greatest improvement in implements during this period was in the direction of reaping and mowing machines, which have now attained a high degree of perfection. As early as 1780 the Society of Arts offered a gold medal for a reaping machine, but it was not till 1812 that John Common of Denwick, Northumberland, invented a machine which embodied all the essential principles of the modern reaper. Popular hostility to the machine was so great that Common made his early trials by moonlight, and he ceased from working on them.[677] His machine was improved by the Browns of Alnwick, who sold some numbers in 1822, and shortly afterwards emigrated to Canada taking with them models of Common's reapers. McCormick, the reputed inventor of the reaping machine, knew the Browns, and obtained from them a model of Common's machine which was almost certainly the father of the famous machine exhibited by him at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Various other inventors have assisted in improving this implement, and in 1873 the first wire binder was exhibited in Europe by the American, W.A. Wood, wire soon giving place to string owing to the outcry of farmers and millers. The self-binding reaper is the most ingenious of agricultural machines, and has been of enormous benefit to farmers in saving labour. Though the hay-tedding machine was invented in 1814 it is only during the last thirty years that its use has become common, the spread of the mowing machine making it a necessity, cutting the grass so fast that only a very large number of men with the old forks could keep up with it. The tedder also rendered raking by hand too slow, and the horse-rake, patented first in 1841, has immensely improved in the last thirty years. Another enormous labour saver is the hay and straw elevator, having endless chains furnished with carrying forks at intervals of a few feet, driven by horse gear. The steam cultivator invented by John Fowler is much used, but cannot be said to have superseded the ordinary working stock of the farm, though for deep ploughing on large farms of heavy land it is invaluable. Improvements in dairying appliances have also been great, but the English farmer has generally fought shy of factories or creameries, so that his butter still lacks the uniform quality of his foreign rivals. In manures the most important innovation in the last generation has been the constantly growing use of basic slag, formerly left neglected at the pit mouth and now generally recognized as a wonderful producer of clover. Most of the suggestions of the Commission of 1879 were carried into effect. Rents were largely reduced, so that between 1880 and 1884 the annual value of agricultural land in England sank £5,750,000.[678] Grants were made by the Government in aid of local burdens, cottages were improved although the landowners' capital was constantly dwindling, Settled Land Acts assisted the transfer of limited estates, a Minister of Agriculture was appointed in 1889, and in 1891 the payment of the tithe was transferred from the tenant to the landlord, which generally meant that the whole burden was now borne by the latter. Still foreign imports continued to pour in and prices to fall. Wheat land, which was subject to the fiercest competition, began to be converted to other uses, and between 1878 and 1907 had fallen in England from 3,041,214 acres to 1,537,208, most of it being converted to pasture or 'tumbling down' to grass, while a large quantity was used for oats. The price of live stock was now falling greatly before increasing imports of live animals and dead meat, while cheese, butter, wool, and fruit were also pouring in. Farming, too, was now suffering from a new enemy, gambling in farm produce, which began to show itself about 1880 and has since materially contributed to lowering prices.[679] The enormous gold premium in the Argentine Republic, with the steady fall in silver, was another factor. As Mr. Prothero says, 'Enterprise gradually weakened, landlords lost their ability to help, and farmers their recuperative power. The capital both of landlords and tenants was so reduced that neither could afford to spend an unnecessary penny. Land deteriorated in condition, drainage was practically discontinued ... less cake and less manure were bought, labour bills were reduced, and the number of males employed in farming dwindled as the wheat area contracted.'[680] The year 1893 was remarkable for a prolonged drought in the spring; from March 2 to May 14 hardly any rain fell, and live stock were much reduced in quality from the parching of the herbage, while in many parts the difficulty of supplying them with water was immense. In the same year another Commission on Agriculture was appointed, whose description of the condition of agriculture was a lamentable one. The Commission in their final report[681] stated that the seasons since 1882 had on the whole been satisfactory from an agricultural point of view, and the evidence brought forward showed that the existing depression was to be mainly attributed to the fall in prices of farm produce. This fall had been most marked in the case of grain, particularly wheat, and wool also had fallen heavily. It was not surprising therefore to find that the arable counties[682] had suffered most; in counties where dairying, market gardening, poultry farming, and other special industries prevailed the distress was less acute, but no part of the country could be said to have escaped. In north Devon, noted for stock rearing, rents had only fallen 10 to 15 per cent. since 1881, and in many cases there had been no reduction at all. In Herefordshire and Worcestershire good grass lands, hop lands, and dairy farms had maintained their rents in many instances, and the reductions had apparently seldom exceeded 15 per cent.; on the heavy arable lands, however, the reduction was from 20 to 40 per cent. In Cheshire, devoted mainly to dairying, there had been no general reduction of rent, though there had been remissions, and in some cases reductions, of 10 per cent. In fact, grazing and dairy lands, which comprise so large an area of the northern and western counties, were not badly affected, though the depreciation in the value of live stock and the fall in wool had considerably diminished farm profits and rents. But of the eastern counties, those in which there are still large quantities of arable land, a different tale was told. In Essex much of the clay land was going out of cultivation; many farms, after lying derelict for a few years, were let as grass runs for stock at a nominal rent The rent of an estate near Chelmsford of 1,418 acres had fallen from £1,314 in 1879 to £415 in 1892, or from 18s. 6d. an acre to 5s. 10d.[683] The net rental of another had fallen from £7,682 in 1881 to £2,224 in 1892, and the landlord's income from his estate of 13,009 acres in 1892-3 was 1s. an acre. The balance sheet of the estate for the same year is an eloquent example of the landowner's profits in these depressed times[684]: 11:12 AM 7/25/2005RECEIPTS. £ s. d. Tithe received 798 5 9 Cottage rents 495 8 6 Garden " 213 5 10 Estate " 7,452 14 8 Tithes refunded by tenants 530 15 2 -------------- £9,490 9 11 ============== PAYMENTS. £ s. d. Tithe, rates and taxes 2,964 1 9 Rent-charge and fee farm rents 179 0 4 Gates and fencing 8 7 8 Estate repairs and buildings 4,350 12 8 Draining 170 6 1 Brickyard 170 1 8 Management 936 14 7 Insurances 58 11 5 Balance profit 652 13 9 --------------- £9,490 9 11 =============== In the great agricultural county of Lincoln rents had fallen from 30 to 75 per cent.[685] The average amount realized on an acre of wheat had fallen from £10 6s. 3d. in 1873-7 to £2 18s. 11d. in 1892[686]; and the fall in the price of cattle between 1882 and 1893 was a little over 30 per cent. Many of the large farmers in Lincolnshire before 1875 had lived in considerable comfort and even luxury, as became men who had invested large sums, sometimes £20,000, in their business. They had carriages, hunters, and servants, and gave their children an excellent start in life. But all this was changed; a day's hunting occasionally was the utmost they could afford, and wives and daughters took the work from the servants. The small farmers had suffered more than the large ones, and the condition of the small freeholders was said to be deplorable; a fact to be noted by those who think small holdings a panacea for distress.[687] Even near Boston, where the soil is favourable for market gardening, the evidence of the small holder was 'singularly unanimous' as to their unfortunate condition. The small occupiers were better off than the freeholders, because their rents had been reduced and they could leave their farms if they did not pay; but their position was very unsatisfactory. From the evidence given to the assistant commissioner it is clear that the small occupier and freeholder could only get on by working harder and living harder than the labourer. 'We all live hard and never see fresh meat,' said one. 'We can't afford butcher's meat,' said another. Another said, 'In the summer I work from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m., and often do not take more than an hour off for meals. That is penal servitude, except you have your liberty. A foreman who earns £1 a week is better off than I am. He has no anxiety, and not half the work.' These instances could be multiplied many times, so that it is not surprising that the children of these men have flocked to the towns. In Norfolk, 'twenty or thirty years ago, no class connected with the land held their heads higher' than the farmers. Many of them owned the whole or a part of the land they farmed, and lived in good style. All this was now largely changed. 'The typical Norfolk farmer of to-day is a harassed and hardworking man,' engaged in the struggle to make both ends meet. Many were ruined. However, there were farmers who, by skill, enterprise, and careful management, made their business pay even in these times, such as the tenant of the farm at Papplewick in Nottinghamshire who gained the first prize in the Royal Agricultural Society's farm competition in 1888.[688]. This farm consisted of 522 acres, of which only 61 were grass, but chiefly owing to the trouble taken in growing fine root crops, a large number of live stock were annually purchased and sold off, the following balance sheet showing a profit of £3 1s. 0d. per acre: DR. £ Rent, tithes, rates, taxes, &c. 278 Wages 387 Purchase of cake, corn, seeds, manure, &c. 688 Purchase of live stock 2,654 ----- £4,007 Profit 1,589 ------ £5,596 ====== CR. £ Corn, hay, potatoes, and like product sold 655 Live stock, poultry, dairy produce, and wool sold 4,941 ------ £5,596 ====== The reductions of rents in various counties were estimated thus[689]: Per cent. Per cent. Northumberland 20 to 25 Hereford 20 to 30 Cumberland 20 to 40 Somerset 20 to 40 York 10 to 50 Oxford 25 to 50 Lancaster 5 to 30 Suffolk up to 70 Stafford 10 to 25 Essex 25 to 100 Leicester 40 Kent 15 to 100 Nottingham 14 to 50 Hants 25 to 100 Warwick 25 to 60 Wilts 10 to 75 Huntington 40 to 50 Devon 10 to 25 Derby 14 to 25 Cornwall 10 to 100 This large reduction in the rent rolls of landowners has materially affected their position and weakened their power. Many, indeed, have been driven from their estates, while others can only live on them by letting the mansion house and the shooting, and occupying some small house on the lands they are reluctant to leave. The agricultural depression, which set in about 1875, may in short be said to have effected a minor social revolution, and to have completed the ruin of the old landed aristocracy as a class. The depreciation of their rents may be judged from the following figures[690]: Gross annual value of lands, including tithes, under Schedule A in England. Decrease. 1879-80 1893-4 Amount. Per cent. £ £ £ 48,533,340 36,999,846 11,533,494 23.7 These figures, however, are far from indicating the full extent of the decline in the rental value of purely agricultural land, as they include ornamental grounds, gardens, and other properties, and do not take into account temporary remissions of rent. Sir James Caird, as early as 1886, estimated the average reduction on agricultural rents at 30 per cent. The loss in the capital value of land has inevitably been great from this reduction in rents, and has been aggravated by the fact that the confidence of the public in agricultural land as an investment has been much shaken. In 1875 thirty years' purchase on the gross annual value of land was the capital value, in 1894 only eighteen years' purchase; and whereas the capital value of land in the United Kingdom was in 1875 £2,007,330,000, in 1894 it was £1,001,829,212, a decrease of 49.6 per cent. Moreover, landlords have incurred increased expenditure on repairs, drainage, and buildings, and taxation has grown enormously. On the occupiers of land the effect of the depression was no less serious, their profits having fallen on an average 40 per cent.[691] Occupying owners had suffered as much as any other class, both yeomen who farmed considerable farms and small freeholders. Many of the former had bought land in the good times when land was dear and left a large portion of the purchase money on mortgage, with the result that the interest on the mortgage was now more than the rent of the land.[692] They were thus worse off than the tenant farmer, for they paid a higher rent in the shape of interest; moreover, they could not leave their land, for it could only be sold at a ruinous loss. The 'statesmen' of Cumberland were weighed down by the same burdens and their disappearance furthered; for instance, in the parish of Abbey Quarter, between 1780 and 1812 their number decreased from 51 to 38. By 1837 it was 30; by 1864, 21; and in 1894 only 9 remained. The small freeholders were also largely burdened with mortgages, and even in the Isle of Axholme were said to have suffered more than any other class; largely because of their passion for acquiring land at high prices, leaving most of the purchase money on mortgage, and starting with insufficient capital. As regards the agricultural labourer, the chief effect of the depression had been a reduction of the number employed and a consequent decrease in the regularity of employment. [693] Their material condition had everywhere improved, though there were still striking differences in the wages paid in different parts; and the improvement, though partly due to increased earnings, was mainly attributable to the cheapening of the necessaries of life.[694] The great majority of ordinary labourers were hired by the week, except those boarded in the farm-house, who were generally hired by the year. Men, also, who looked after the live stock were hired by the year. Weekly wages ranged from 10s. in Wilts, and Dorset to 18s. in Lancashire, and averaged 13s. 6d. for the whole country. The fall in the prices of agricultural produce is best represented in tabular form: TRIENNIAL AVERAGE OF BRITISH WHEAT, BARLEY, AND OATS PER QUARTER. Wheat. Barley. Oats. s. d. s. d. s. d. 1876-8 49 9 38 4 25 6 1893-5 24 1 24 0 16 9 Thus wheat had fallen 53 per cent., barley 37, and oats 34. TRIENNIAL AVERAGE PRICES OF BRITISH CATTLE, PER STONE OF 8 LB. Inferior quality. Second quality. First quality. s. d. s. d. s. d. 1876-8 4 5 5 6 6 0 1893-5 2 8 4 0 4 7 Or a fall of 24 per cent. in the best quality, and 40 per cent. in inferior grades. The decline in the prices of all classes of sheep amounted on the average to from so to 30 per cent., and in the price of wool of from 40 to 50 per cent.; that is, from an average of 1s. 6d. a lb. in 1874-6, to a little over 9d. in 1893-5. Milk, butter, and cheese were stated to have fallen from 25 to 33 per cent. between 1874 and 1891, and there had been a further fall since. In districts, however, near large towns there had been much less reduction in the price of milk. This general fall in prices seems to have been directly connected with the increase of foreign competition.[695] Wheat has been most affected by this development, and at the date of the Commission the home production had sunk to 25 per cent. of the total quantity needed for consumption. Other home-grown cereals had not been similarly displaced, but the large consumption of maize had affected the price of feeding barley and oats. As regards meat, while foreign beef and mutton had seriously affected the price of inferior British grades, the influence on superior qualities had been much less marked. Foreign competition had been, on the whole, perhaps more severe in pork than in other classes of meat, but had been confined mainly to bacon and hams. The successful competition of the foreigner in our butter and cheese markets was attributed mainly to the fact that the dairy industry is better organized abroad than in Great Britain. The Commission found that another cause of the depression was the increased cost of production, not so much from the increase of wages, as from the smaller amount of work done for a given sum. Where wages in the previous twenty years had remained stationary, the cost of work had increased because the labourer did not work so hard or so well as his forefathers. The following table[696] is a striking proof of the increased ratio of the cost of labour to gross profits: Ratio of Average cost of Acreage Period Average annual Average labour of of gross cost of cost per to gross County. farm. acct. profit. labour. acre. profits. £ s. d. £ s. d. s. d. Per cent. Suffolk 590 1839-43 1,577 13 3 773 11 0 26 2 49.03 1863-67 1,545 0 9 836 9 0 28 4 54.07 1871-75 1,725 0 1 1,026 14 8 35 2 59.48 1890-94 728 10 5 973 1 5 33 0 133.50 On a farm in Wilts., between 1858 and 1893, the ratio of the cost of labour to gross profits had increased from 47.0 per cent. to 88.3 per cent.; on one in Hampshire, between 1873 and 1890, from 44.4 per cent. to 184.3 per cent.; and many similar instances are given, illustrating very forcibly the economic revolution which has led to the transfer of a larger share of the produce of the land to the labourer. On the other hand, this Commission found, like the last, that the farmer had derived considerable benefit from the decrease in cost of cake and artificial manure, while the low price of corn had led to its being largely used in place of linseed and cotton cakes. Before leaving the subject of this famous Commission it is well to state the answer of Sir John Lawes, than whom there was no higher authority, to the oft-repeated assertion that high farming would counteract low prices. 'The result of all our experiments,' he said, 'is that the reverse is the case. As you increase your crops so each bushel after a certain amount costs you more and more ... the last bushel always costs you more than all the others.' As prices went lower 'we must contract our farming to what I should call the average of the seasons'; and in the corn districts, the higher the farmer had farmed his land by adding manure the worse had been the financial results.[697] In 1896 the injustice of the incidence of rates on agricultural land was partly remedied, the occupier being relieved of half the rates on the land apart from the buildings, which Act was continued in 1901.[698] But the system is still inequitable, for a farmer who pays a rent of £240 a year even now probably pays more rates than the occupier of a house rated at £120 a year. Yet the farmer's income would very likely not be more than £200 a year, whereas the occupier of the house rated at £120 might have an income of £2,000 a year. In 1901 and 1902 Mr. Rider Haggard, following in the footsteps of Young, Marshall, and Caird, made an agricultural tour through England. He considered that, after foreign competition, the great danger to English farming was the lack of labour,[699] for young men and women were everywhere leaving the country for the towns, attracted by the nominally high wages, often delusive, and by the glamour of the pavement. Yet the labourer has come better out of the depression of the last generation than either landowner or farmer: he is better housed, better fed, better clothed, better paid, but filled with discontent. Since Mr. Haggard wrote, however, there seems to be a reaction, small indeed but still marked, against the townward movement, and in most places the supply of labour is sufficient. The quality, however, is almost universally described as inferior; the labourer takes no pride in his work, and good hedgers, thatchers, milkers, and men who understand live stock are hard to obtain[700]; and the reason for this is in large measure due to the modern system of education which keeps a boy from farm work until he is too old to take to it. His wages to-day in most parts are good; near manufacturing towns the ordinary farm hand is paid from 18s. to 20s. a week with extras in harvest, and in purely agricultural districts from 13s. to 15s. a week, often with a cottage rent free at the lower figure. His cottage has improved vastly, especially on large estates, though often leaving much to be desired, and the rent usually paid is £4 or £5 a year, rising to £7 and £8 near large towns. The wise custom of giving him a garden has spread, and is nearly always found to be much more helpful than an allotment. The superior or more skilled workmen,[701] such as the wagoner, stockman, or shepherd, earns in agricultural counties like Herefordshire from 14s. to 18s. a week, and in manufacturing counties like Lancashire from 20s. to 22s. a week, with extras such as 3d. a lamb in lambing time. At the lower wages he often has a cottage and garden rent free. The improved methods of cutting and harvesting crops have so enabled the farmer to economize labour that the once familiar figure of the Irish labourer with his knee-breeches and tall hat, who came over for the harvest, has almost disappeared. Women, who formerly shared with the men most of the farm work, now are little seen in most parts of England at work in the fields, and are better occupied in attending to their homes. The divorce of the labourer from the land by enclosure had early exercised men's minds, and many efforts were made to remedy this. About 1836 especially, several landowners in various parts of England introduced allotments, and the movement spread rapidly, so that in 1893 the Royal Commission on Labour stated that in most places the supply was equal to or in excess of the demand.[702] However, previous Allotments and Small Holdings Acts not being considered so successful as was desired, in 1907 an effort was made to give more effect to the cry of 'back to the land' by a Small Holdings and Allotments Act[703] which enables County Councils to purchase land by agreement or take it on lease, and, if unable to acquire it by agreement, to do so compulsorily, in order to provide small holdings for persons desiring to lease them. The County Council may also arrange with any Borough Council or Urban District Council to act as its agent in providing and managing small holdings. The duty of supplying allotments rests in the first instance with the Rural Parish Councils, though if they do not take proper steps to provide allotments, the County Council may itself provide them. It is a praiseworthy effort, though marked by arbitrary methods and that contempt for the rights of property, provided it belongs to some one else, that is a characteristic of to-day. That it will succeed where the small holder has some other trade, and in exceptionally favoured situations, is very probable; most of the small holders who were successful before the Act had something to fall back upon: they were dealers, hawkers, butchers, small tradesmen, &c. There is no doubt, too, that an allotment helps both the town artisan and the country labourer to tide over slack times. Whether it will succeed in planting a rural population on English soil is another matter. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, for a country without a sound reserve of healthy country-people is bound to deteriorate. The small holder, pure and simple, without any by-industry, has hitherto only been able to keep his head above water by a life which without exaggeration may be called one of incessant toil and frequent privation, such a life as the great mass of our 'febrile factory element' could not endure. And if there is one tendency more marked than another in the history of English agriculture, it is the disappearance of the small holding. In the Middle Ages it is probable that the average size of a man's farm was 30 acres, with its attendant waste and wood; since then amalgamation has been almost constant. It is true that the occupier of a few acres often brings to bear on it an amount of industry which is greater in proportion than that bestowed on a large farm; but the large farmer has, as Young pointed out long ago, very great advantages. He is nearly always a man of superior intelligence and training. He has more capital, and can buy and sell in the best markets; he can purchase better stock, and save labour and the cost of production by using the best machinery. By buying in large quantities he gets manures, cakes, seeds, &c., better and cheaper than the small holder. Besides the small holders who have outside industries to fall back upon, those who are aided by some exceptionally favourable element in the soil or climate, or proximity to good markets, should do well. Yet in the Isle of Axholme, the paradise of small holders, we have seen that the Commission of 1894 reported that distress was severe. This, however, seems to have been largely due to the exaggerated land-hunger in the good times, which induced the tenants to buy lands at too high a price; and under normal conditions, such as they are now returning to, the tenants seem to thrive. In this district the preference for ownership as opposed to tenancy is, in spite of recent experiences, unqualified, though it is admitted that the best way is to begin by renting and save enough to buy.[704] The soil is peculiarly favourable to the production of celery and early potatoes; and large tracts of land are divided into unfenced strips locally known as 'selions' of from a quarter of an acre to 3 acres each, cultivated by men who live in the villages, each having one or more strips, some as much as 20 acres, and it is considered that 10 acres is the smallest area on which a man can support a family without any other industry to help him. Yet in the fen districts and on the marsh lands between Boston and the east coast of Lincolnshire, where the land is naturally very productive, many people are making livings out of 5 or 6 acres, mainly by celery and early potatoes.[705] Other districts adapted naturally to small holdings are those of Rock and Far Forest, the famous Vale of Evesham, the Sandy and Biggleswade district of Bedfordshire; Upwey, Dorset; Calstock and St. Dominick, Cornwall; Wisbech, Cambridgeshire; and Tiptree, Essex. Apart, however, from by-industries, and exceptional climate, soil, and situation, the small holding for the purpose of raising corn and meat, as distinguished from that which is devoted to dairying, fruit-growing, and market gardening, does not seem to-day to have much chance of success. If farms were still self-sufficing, and simply provided food and clothing for the farmer, the small producer even of corn and meat might do as well as the larger farmer on a lower scale, but such conditions have gone; all holdings now are chiefly manufactories of food, and the smaller manufactory has little chance in competition with the greater. The example of foreign countries is usually held up to Englishmen in this connexion, and the argument naturally used is that 'if small holdings answer in France and Belgium, why can they not do so in England?' On this point the testimony of Sir John Lawes is worth quoting.[706] 'In most, if not in all continental countries' he says, 'the success of small holdings depends very materially on whether or not the soil and the climate are suitable for what may be called industrial crops: such as tobacco, hops, sugar beet, colza, flax, hemp, grapes, and other fruit and vegetables; where these conditions do not exist the condition of the cultivators is such _as would not be tolerated in this country_.' That is the reason probably why small holdings, apart from exceptional conditions, do not answer in England; the Englishman of to-day is not anxious to face the hard and grinding conditions under which the continental small holder lives. Since Mr. Haggard's tour the black clouds which have so long lowered over agriculture have shown signs of lifting. Rents have been adjusted to a figure at which the farmer has some chance of competing with the foreigner,[707] though the price of grain keeps wretchedly low; stock has improved, and there is undoubtedly to-day (1908) a brisker demand for farms, and in some localities rents have even advanced slightly. The yeoman--that is, the man who owns and farms his own land, perhaps the most sound and independent class in the community--has, unfortunately for England, largely disappeared. Even of those who remain, some prefer to let their property and rent holdings from others! It has been noticed that the labourer's lot has improved in this generation of adversity; and well it might, for his previous condition was miserable in the extreme. The farmers have suffered severely, many losing all their capital and becoming farm labourers. The landlords have suffered most; they have not been able to throw up their land like the farmer, and until quite recently have watched it becoming poorer and poorer. The depression, in short, has driven from their estates many who had owned them for generations. Those who have survived have usually been men with incomes from other sources than land, and they have generally deserved well of their country by keeping their estates in good condition in spite of falling rents and increasing taxation. No class of men, indeed, have been more virulently and consistently abused than the landlords of England, and none with less justice. There have been many who have forgotten that property has its duties as well as its rights; they have erred like other men, but as a rule they play their part well. Even the worst are to some extent obliged by their very position to be public spirited, for the mere possession of an estate involves the employment of a number of people in healthy outdoor occupations which Englishmen to-day so especially need to counteract the degenerating influences of town life. Many of the great estates[708] are carried on at a positive loss to their owners, and it may be doubted whether agricultural property pays the possessor a return of 2 per cent. per annum; which is as much as to say that the landlord furnishes the tenant with capital in the form of land at that rate for the purpose of his business. What other class is content with such a scanty return? They are often charged with not managing their estates on business principles, and no charge is worse founded. It would be a sad day for the tenants on many an estate if they were managed on commercial lines. One of the first results would be that many properties would be given up as a dead loss. They could only be made to pay by raising the rents or cutting down the ever-recurring expenditure on repairs and buildings which are necessary for the welfare of the tenants. The Duke of Bedford, in his _Story of a Great Estate_, has said that the rent has completely disappeared from three of his estates. On the Thorney and Woburn estates over £750,000 was spent on new works and permanent improvements alone between 1816 and 1895, and the result, owing to agricultural depression and increased burdens on the land, was a net loss of £7,000 a year; and every one with any knowledge of the management of land knows that this is no isolated case, though it may be on an exceptionally large scale. Where would many tenants be if commercial principles ruled on rent audit days? The larger English landlords of to-day are as a rule not dependent on their rent rolls. To their great advantage, and to the advantage of their tenants, they generally own other property, so that they need not regard the land as a commercial investment. They can therefore support the necessary outlay on a large estate, the capital expenditure on improvements of all kinds, and thus relieve the tenant of any expense of this kind. The farms are let at moderate, not rack rents, such as the tenants can easily pay. Also the landlord can make large reductions of rent in years of exceptional distress.[709] Rents are generally collected three months after they are due, a considerable concession; and even then arrears are numerous, for any reasonable excuse for being behind with the rent is generously listened to. It is owing to forbearance in this and other matters that the relations between landlord and tenant are generally excellent. Where are the best farm buildings, where the best cottages, where does the owner carry on a home farm often for the assistance of the tenant by letting him have the use of entire horses, well-bred bulls, and rams, if not on the larger estates? The restrictions in leases, so much decried of late years, were nearly always in the interest of good farming, and their abolition will lead to the deterioration of many a holding. Bacon said, 'Where men of great wealth do stoop to husbandry, it multiplieth riches exceedingly' and wiser words were never uttered. Yet these are the men who are singled out for attack by agitators, who are only listened to because the greater number of modern Englishmen are ignorant of the land and everything connected with it. At a time when rents have dwindled, in some cases almost to vanishing point, taxation has increased, and confiscatory schemes and meddlesome restrictions have frightened away capital from the land. Many of the landlords of England would clearly gain by casting off the burden of their heavily weighted property, but they nearly all stick nobly to their duty, and hope for that restoration of confidence in the sanctity of property and of respect for freedom of contract which would do so much towards the rehabilitation of what is still the greatest and most important industry in the country. FOOTNOTES: [665] And an ever increasing burden of taxation. [666] See Appendix III. [667] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1881, pp. 142, 199. [668] _Parliamentary Reports of Commissioners_, 1882, xiv. pp. 9 sq. [669] _Parliamentary Reports of Commissioners_, 1882, xiv. 14. [670] The rise between 1857 and 1878 has been estimated at 20 per cent., and between 1867 and 1877 at 11-1/2 per cent. Hasbach, _op. cit._, p. 291. [671] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1890, p. 324. [672] See infra, p. 330. [673] _Rural Economy of Southern Counties_, i. 285-6. [674] _Victoria County History: Hereford, Agriculture_. [675] In one respect the Act of 1883 restricted the rights of tenants to compensation, for while the Act of 1875 had expressly reserved the rights of the parties under 'custom of the country', the Act of 1883 provided that a tenant 'shall not claim compensation by custom or otherwise than in manner authorized by this Act for any improvement for which he is entitled to compensation under this Act' (§ 57). [676] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. 96. [677] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1892), p. 63. [678] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1901), p. 33. Cf. infra, p. 310. [679] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1893), p. 286; (1894), p. 677. Sometimes to artificially raising them. [680] Ibid. (1901), p. 34. [681] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. [682] Broadly speaking, the arable section, or eastern group, included the counties of Bedford, Berks., Bucks, Cambridge, Essex, Hants, Hertford, Huntingdon, Kent, Leicester, Lincoln, Middlesex, Norfolk, Northampton, Notts, Oxford, Rutland, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwick, and the East Riding of York; the grass section, or western group, included the remaining counties. [683] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1894), xvi. (1), App. B. ii. [684] Ibid. App. B. iii. [685] Ibid. (1895), xvi. 169. [686] Ibid. p. 164. [687] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1895), xvi. 187-8. [688] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (2nd ser.), xxiv. 538 [689] Ibid. (1894), p. 681. [690] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. 22. Cf. p. 319 n. [691] Ibid. pp. 30-1. [692] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. 31. [693] Ibid. p. 37: NUMBER OF AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS IN ENGLAND AND WALES. 1871. 1881. 1891. 1901. 996,642 890,174 798,912 595,702 The figures for 1901 are from Summary Tables, _Parliamentary Blue Book_ (C, d. 1, 523), p. 202, Table xxxvi. [694] According to the Report of the Royal Commission on Labour, 1893-4, the labourer was 'better fed, better dressed, his education and language improved, his amusements less gross, his cottage generally improved, though generally on small estates there were many bad ones still'.--_Parliamentary Reports_, 1893, xxxv. Index 5 et seq. [695] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. 53, 85. Sir Robert Giffen suggested that the decline in the price of wheat pay be partly attributed to the great increase in the supply and consumption of meat. [696] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. App. iii. Table viii. From an examination of the accounts of seventy-seven farms, the average expenditure on labour was found to be 31.4 per cent. of the total outlay. [697] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. 106. But see above, p. 271. [698] 59 & 60 Vict., c. 16; I Edw. VII, c. 13. [699] _Rural England_, ii. 539. Yet the census returns of 1871, 1881, and 1891 gave no support to the idea that _young_ men were leaving agriculture for the towns. See _Parl. Reports_ (1893), xxxviii. (2) 33. [700] The author speaks from information derived from answers to questions addressed to landowners, farmers, and agents in many parts of England, to whom he is greatly indebted. [701] It is, however, a fallacy to assume, as is nearly always done, that the ordinary farm labourer, at all events of the old type, is unskilled. A good man, who can plough well, thatch, hedge, ditch, and do the innumerable tasks required on a farm efficiently, is a much more skilled worker than many who are so called in the towns. [702] _Parl. Reports_ (1893), xxxv. Index. [703] 7 Edw. VII, c. 54, amending the Allotments Acts of 1887 and 1890 and the Small Holdings Act of 1892. The Allotments Act of 1887 defined an 'allotment' as any parcel of land of not more than 2 acres held by a tenant under a landlord; but for the purposes of the Acts of 1892 and 1907 a 'small holding' means an agricultural holding which exceeds one acre and either does not exceed 50 acres or, if exceeding 50 acres, is of an annual value not exceeding £50. At the same time the Act defines an allotment as a holding of any size up to 5 acres, so that up to that size a parcel of land may be treated as a small holding or an allotment. [704] Jebb, _Small Holdings_, p. 25. [705] Jebb, _op. cit._, p. 28. [706] _Allotments and Small Holdings_ (1892), p. 19 et seq. [707] The gross income derived from the ownership of lands in Great Britain, as returned under Schedule A of the Income Tax, decreased from £51,811,234 in 1876-7 to £36,609,884 in 1905-6. In 1850 Caird estimated the rental of English land, exclusive of Middlesex, at £37,412,000. Cf. above, p. 310. [708] According to the Commission of 1894, the amount expended on improvements and repairs alone on some great estates was: On Lord Derby's, in Lancashire, of 43,217 acres, £200,000 in twelve years, or £16,500, or 7s. 8d. an acre, each year. On Lord Sefton's, of 18,000 acres, £286,000 in twenty-two years, or about £13,000, or 14s. an acre, each year. On the Earl of Ancaster's estates in Lincolnshire, of 53,993 acres, £689,000 was spent in twelve years, or 11s. 7d. an acre each year; and many similar instances are given.--_Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1897), xv. 287-9. [709] Shaw Lefevre, _Agrarian Tenures_, p. 19. CHAPTER XXII IMPORTS AND EXPORTS.--LIVE STOCK It is a curious fact that the barriers which protected the British farmer were thrown down shortly before he became by unforeseen causes exposed to the competition of the whole world. Down to 1846 Germany supplied more than half the wheat that was imported into England, Denmark sent more than Russia, and the United States hardly any. Other competitors who have since arisen were then unknown. By the end of the next decade Russia and the United States sent large quantities, as may be gathered from the following table [710]: ANNUAL AVERAGE IMPORTS OF WHEAT AND FLOUR FOR THE SEVEN YEARS 1859-1865. Cwt. Russia 5,350,861 Denmark and the Duchies 969,890 Germany 6,358,229 France 3,828,691 Spain 331,463 Wallachia and Moldavia 295,475 Turkish dominions, not otherwise specified 528,568 Egypt 1,423,193 Canada 2,223,809 United States 10,080,911 Other countries 1,036,968 In the years 1871-5 the United States held the first place, Russia came next, and Germany third with only about one-sixth of the American imports, and Canada was running Germany close. Other formidable competitors were now arising, and by 1901 the chief importing countries[711] were: Cwt. Argentina 8,309,706 Russia[712] 2,580,805 United States of America 66,855,025 Australia 6,197,019 Canada 8,577,960 India 3,341,500 Since then the imports of wheat and flour from the United States have decreased, and in 1904 India took the first place, Russia the second, Argentina the third, and the United States the fourth. However, in 1907 the United States sent more than any other country, followed by Argentina, India, Canada, Russia, and Australia, in the order named. It is probable in the near future that the imports from the United States will decline considerably, for in the last quarter of a century its population has increased 68 per cent. and its wheat area only 25 per cent. On the other hand, the population of Canada increased 33 per cent. and her wheat area 158 per cent. in the same time; while in Argentina an addition of 70 per cent. to the population has been accompanied by an increase of the wheat area from half a million to fourteen million acres. It is probable also that India and Australia will continue to send large supplies, and there are said to be vast wheat-growing tracts opened up by the Siberian Railway, so that there seems little chance of wheat rising very much in price for many years to come, apart from exceptional causes such as bad seasons and 'corners'. McCulloch, writing in 1843,[713] says that, except Denmark and Ireland, no country of Western Europe 'has been in the habit of exporting cattle'. Danish cattle, however, could rarely be sold in London at a profit, and Irish cattle alone disturbed the equanimity of the English farmer. For a few years after the repeal of the corn laws and of the prohibition of imports of live stock, the imports of live stock, meat, and dairy produce were, except from Ireland, almost nil[714]; since then they have increased enormously, and in 1907 the value of live cattle, sheep, and pigs imported was £8,273,640, not so great, however, as some years before, owing to restrictions imposed; but this decrease has been made up by the increase in the imports of meat, which in 1907 touched their highest figure of 18.751,555 cwt, valued at the large sum of £41,697,905.[715] Forty years ago hardly any foreign butter or cheese was imported; to-day it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that not one hundredth part of the butter eaten in London is British; in 1907 the amount of butter imported was 4,310,156 cwt., and of cheese, 2,372,233 cwt. The increase in the imports was largely assisted by the fact that in the last half of the nineteenth century English farmers had directed their attention chiefly to meat-producing animals and neglected the milch cow. However, of late years great efforts have been made to recover lost ground, and in England the number of cows and heifers in milk or in calf has increased from 1,567,789 in 1878 to 2,020,340 in 1906. The regulation of the imports and exports of live stock did not concern the legislature so early as those of corn. One of the earliest statutes on the subject is II Hen. VII, c. 13, which forbade the export of horses and of mares worth more than 6s. 8d., because many had been conveyed out of the land, so that there were few left for its defence and the price of horses had been thereby increased. A subsequent statute, 22 Hen. VIII, c. 7, says this law was disobeyed by many who secretly exported horses, so it was enacted that no one should export a horse without a licence; and 1 Edw. VI, c. 5, continued this. But after this date the export of horses does not seem to have occupied the attention of Parliament. 22 Hen. VIII, c. 7, also forbade the export of cattle and sheep without a licence because so many had been carried out of the realm that victual was scarce and cattle dear. By 22 Car. II, c. 13, oxen might be exported on payment of a duty of 1s. each, the last statute on the subject. As for sheep, their export without the king's licence had been forbidden by 3 Hen. VI, c. 2, because men had been in the habit of taking them to Flanders and other countries, where they sheared them and sold the wool and the mutton. 8 Eliz., c. 3, forbade their export, and 13 and 14 Car. II, c. 18, declared the export of sheep and wool a felony. The importation of cattle was forbidden by 15 Car. II, c. 7, which stated that the 'comeing in of late of vast numbers of cattle already fatted' had caused 'a very great part of the land of this kingdom to be much fallen and like dayly to fall more in their rents and values'; therefore every head of great cattle imported was to pay 20s. to the king, 10s. to the informer, and 10s. to the poor after July 1, 1664. By 18 Car. II, c. 2, the importation of cattle was declared a common nuisance, and if any cattle, sheep, or swine were imported they were to be seized and forfeited. By 32 Car. II, c. 2, this was made perpetual and continued in force till 1842, though it was repealed as to Ireland, as we have seen.[716] It appears from the laws dealing with the matter that in the time of the Plantagenets England exported butter and cheese. In the reign of Edward III they were merchandise of the staple, and therefore when exported had to go to Calais when the staple was fixed there. This caused great damage, it is said, to divers persons in England, for the butter and cheese would not keep until buyers came; therefore 3 Hen. VI, c 4, enacted that the chancellor might grant licence to export butter and cheese to other places than to the staple. The regulation of the export of wool frequently occupied the attention of Parliament It has been noticed[717] that the laws of Edgar fixed its price for export, and Henry of Huntingdon mentions its export in the twelfth century, while during the reign of Edward I it was for some time forbidden except by licence, which led to its being smuggled out in wine casks.[718] The _Hundred Rolls_ give the names of several Italian merchants who were engaged in buying wool for export, the ecclesiastical houses, especially the Cistercians, furnishing a great quantity, and the chief port then for the wool trade was Boston, The export was again prohibited in 1337, the great object being to make the foreigner pay dearly for our staple product: an object which was certainly effected, for when Queen Philippa redeemed her crown from pawn at Cologne in 1342 by a quantity of English wool, 1s. 3-1/2d. a lb. was the price, and it was even said to sell in Flanders at 3s. a lb., a price which, expressed in modern money, seems fabulous.[719] However, in the next reign English wool began to decline in price, owing probably to changes in fashion, but the long wools maintained their superiority and their export was forbidden by Henry VI and Elizabeth.[720] In the reign of James I it was confessed 'that the cloth of this kingdom hath wanted both estimation and vent in foreign parts, and that the wools are fallen from their stated values', so that export was prohibited entirely; and 13 and 14 Car. II, c. 18, declared the export of wool a felony, though 7 and 8 Will. III, c. 28, says this did not deter people from exporting it, so that the law was made more stringent on the subject, and export continued to be forbidden until 1825.[721] In a letter written in 1677 the fall of rents in England, which had caused the value of estates to sink from twenty-one to sixteen or seventeen years' purchase, is ascribed mainly to the low price of wool,[722] owing to the prohibition of export and increased imports from Ireland and Spain. It was now, said the writer, worth 7d. instead of 12d., and a great quantity of Spanish wool was being sold in England at low rates. These 'low rates' were 2s. and 2s. 2d. a lb. for the best wool, whereas in 1660 the best Spanish wool was 4s. and 4s. 2d. a lb. We have seen[723] that Spanish wool was imported into England in the Middle Ages. In 1677, according to Smith,[724] England imported 2,000 bags of 200 lb. each from Spain[725]; in the three years 1709-11, 14,000 bags; in the three years 1713-14, 20,000 bags; and about 1730 some came from Jamaica, Maryland, and Virginia, and down to 1802 imports were free.[726] In that year a duty of 5s. 3d. a cwt. was imposed, which in 1819 was raised to 56s. a cwt., which, however, was reduced to 1d. a lb. on 1s. wool and 1/2d. a lb. on wool under 1s. in 1824. In 1825 colonial wool was admitted free, and in 1844 the duty taken off altogether, and imports from our colonies and foreign countries soon assumed enormous proportions. Down to 1814 nearly all our imports of wool came from Spain; after that the greater part came from Germany and the East Indies; but Russia and India soon began to send large quantities, and in recent times Australasia has been our chief importer, in 1907 sending 321,470,554 lb., while New Zealand sent 158,406,255 lb. out of a total import of 764,286,625 lb. About 1800 our imports of wool were 8,609,368 lb.![727] Of our enormous imports of wool, however, a very large quantity is re-exported. In 1828 it was stated before the House of Lords that English wool had deteriorated considerably during the previous thirty years, owing chiefly to the farmer increasing the weight of the carcase and the quantity of wool, so that fineness of fleece was injured. The great extension of turnips and the introduction of a large breed of sheep also appeared to have lessened the value of the fleece, yet English wool to-day still commands a high price in comparison with that of other countries, though the price in recent years has declined greatly; in 1871 it was 1s. 5-1/2d. a lb., in 1872 1s. 9-1/2d., in 1873 1s. 7d. In 1907 Leicester wool was 12-1/2d., Southdown 14d. to 15d., and Lincoln 12d. a lb.; Australian at the same date being 11d., and New Zealand 11-1/2d. The fruit-grower has also had to contend with an enormous foreign supply, which nearly always has a better appearance than that grown in these islands, though the quality is often inferior. In 1860 apples were included with other raw fruits in the returns, so that the exact figures are not given, but apparently about 500,000 cwt. came in; by 1903 this had increased to 4,569,546 bushels, and in 1907 3,526,232 bushels arrived. Enormous foreign supplies of grapes, pears, plums, cherries, and even strawberries have also combined to keep the home price down. The decrease in the acreage of hops, from its maximum of 71,789 acres in 1878 to 44,938 in 1907, was ascribed by the recent Commission to the lessening demand for beer in England, the demand for lighter kinds of beer, and the use of hop substitutes, and not to increase in foreign competition; which the following figures seem to bear out: IMPORTS OF HOPS. Cwt. 1861 149,176 1867 296,117 1869 322,515 1870 127,853 1875 256,444 1877 (the year before the record acreage planted) 250,039 1879 262,765 1903 113,998 1904 313,667 1905 108,953 1906 232,619 1907 202,324 In recent years they have been a loss to the grower; as the average crop is a little under 9 cwt. per acre, and the total cost of growing and marketing from £35 to £45 an acre, it is obvious that prices of about £3 per cwt., which have ruled lately, are unremunerative. However disastrous to the farmer and landowner, the increased quantities and low prices of food thus obtained have been of inestimable benefit to the crowded population of England. In 1851 the whole corn supply, both English and foreign, afforded 317 lb. per annum per head of the population of 27 millions. In 1889 the total supply gave 400 lb. per head to a population of 37-1/2 millions at a greatly reduced cost.[728] The supply of animal food presents similar contrasts; in 1851 each person obtained 90 lb., in 1889 115 lb. The average value of the imports of food per head in the period 1859-65 was about 25s.; in the period 1901-7, 65s.[729] The products which have stood best against foreign competition are fresh milk, hay and straw, the softer kinds of fruit that will not bear carriage well, and stock of the finest quality. These islands still maintain their great reputation for the excellent quality of their live stock, and exports, chiefly of pedigree animals, touched their highest figure in 1906: Average per No. Total Value. head. £ £ Cattle 5,616 327,335 58 Sheep 12,716 204,061 16 Pigs 2,221 20,292 9 1877.[730] Acreage under crops and grass in England 24,312,033 _Corn crops._ Wheat 2,987,129 Barley or bere 2,000,531 Oats 1,489,999 Rye 48,604 Beans 470,153 Peas 306,356 --------- Total 7,302,772 _Green crops._ Potatoes 303,964 Turnips and swedes 1,495,885 Mangels 348,289 Carrots 14,445 Cabbage, kohl rabi, and rape 176,218 Vetches and other green crops 420,373 --------- Total 2,759,174 Flax 7,210 Hops 71,239 Barefallow or uncropped arable 576,235 Clover, sainfoin, and grasses under rotation 2,737,387 ---------- Total arable 13,454,017 Permanent grass, exclusive of mountain or heath land 10,858,016 ---------- 24,312,033 1907. Total acreage under crops and grass 24,585,455 _Corn crops._ Wheat 1,537,208 Barley 1,411,163 Oats 1,967,682 Rye 53,837 Beans 296,186 Peas 164,326 ----------- Total 5,430,402 Potatoes 381,891 Turnips and swedes 1,058,292 Mangels 436,193 Cabbage 65,262 Kohl rabi 20,572 Rape 79,913 Vetches or tares 145,067 Lucerne 63,379 Hops 44,938 Small fruit 73,372 Clover, sainfoin, and grasses under rotation 2,611,722 Other crops 117,914 Bare fallow 248,678 ---------- Total arable 10,777,595 Permanent grass 13,807,860 ---------- 24,585,455 The small fruit was divided into: Strawberries 23,623 Raspberries 6,479-1/2 Currants and gooseberries 24,178-3/4 Others 19,090 --------------- 73,371-1/4 As arable land has suffered much more than grass from foreign imports, it was inevitable that this country should become more pastoral; in 1877 the arable land of England amounted to 13,454,017 acres, and permanent grass to 10,858,016. By 1907 this was practically reversed, the permanent grass amounting to 13,807,860 acres and the arable to 10,777,595. In corn crops the great decrease has been in the acreage of wheat, but barley, beans, and peas have also diminished, while oats have increased. In green crops there has been a great decrease in turnips and swedes, compensated to some extent by an increase in mangels, and a sad decrease in hops. The changes in thirty years can be gathered from the tables of the Board of Agriculture given on p. 331. In 1877 no separate return of small fruit was made, but in 1878 the orchards of England, including fruit trees of any kind, covered 161,228 acres, which by 1907 had grown to a total area under fruit of 294,910 acres, among which were 168,576 acres of apples, 8,365 of pears, 11,952 of cherries, and 14,571 of plums. Much of the small fruit is included in the orchards. 'Other crops' were further divided into: Acres. Carrots 11,897 Onions 3,416 Buckwheat 5,226 Flax 355 Others 97,020 ------- 117,914 The average yield per acre of various crops in England for the ten years 1897-1906 was: Bushels. Wheat 31.1[731] Barley 32.88 Oats 41.38 Beans 29.28 Peas 27.15 Tons. Potatoes 5.74 Turnips and swedes 12.19 Mangels 19.24 Cwt. Hay from clover, and grasses under rotation 29.40 Hay from permanent grass 24.33 Hops 8.81 The live stock in 1877 consisted of: Horses used solely for purposes of agriculture 761,089 Unbroken horses and mares kept solely for breeding 309,119 --------- 1,070,208 --------- Cattle. Cows and heifers in milk or in calf 1,557,574 Two years old and over 1,072,407 Under two years of age 1,349,669 --------- 3,979,650 --------- Sheep 18,330,377 Pigs 2,114,751 In 1907: Horses used solely for agriculture 863,817 Unbroken 325,330 --------- 1,189,147 --------- Cattle. Cows and heifers in milk or in calf 2,032,284 Two years old and over 1,043,034 Under two years of age 1,912,413 --------- 4,987,731 --------- Sheep[732] 15,098,928 Pigs 2,257,136 The decrease in sheep and the increase in cattle and horses (though of late years the latter have shown a tendency to decrease) are to be noted. The number of live stock per 1,000 acres of cultivated land in the United Kingdom and other countries is: Country. Cattle. Sheep. Pigs. Total. United Kingdom 247 619 76 942 Belgium 411 54 240 705 Denmark 264 126 209 599 France 167 207 88 462 Germany 221 90 216 527 Holland 322 116 164 602 It will be observed that in cattle the United Kingdom comes out badly, but is pre-eminent in sheep and has the largest total; though, as cattle require more acreage, Belgium nearly equals its aggregate produce for 1,000 acres. As regards prices at the two periods 1871-5 and 1906-7, if we take 100 as the price at the former the following are the prices at the latter: Beef 71 Mutton 93 Bacon 121 Wheat 56 Butter 97 Cheese 100 Turning once more to the occupation of land, the percentage of land occupied by owners in 1907 in England was 12.4, the rest being occupied by tenants, and the following is a statement of the number of agricultural holdings of various sizes in 1875 and 1907: 1875.[733] 50 acres 50 to 100 to 300 to 500 to Above and 100 300 500 1,000 1,000 under. acres. acres. acres. acres. acres. 293,469 44,842 58,450 11,245 3,871 463 1907. Above 1 and Above 5 and Above 50 and Above not exceeding not exceeding not exceeding 300 5 acres. 50 acres. 300 acres. acres. 80,921 165,975 109,927 14,652 FOOTNOTES: [710] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1882), p. 449. [711] See _Returns of the Board of Agriculture_. [712] The imports from Russia were that year exceptionally small. [713] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1852), p. 274. [714] In 1860 the number of live cattle imported was 104,569; in 1897, 618,321; in 1907, 472,015. [715] In 1860 the quantity of beef imported was 283,332 cwt.; in 1907, 6,033,736 cwt. [716] See above. [717] Supra, p. 38. [718] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 176, 192; _Hundred Rolls_, i. 405, 414. [719] Burnley, _History of Wool_, p. 65. [720] Ibid. p. 70. [721] Cf. supra, p. 172. [722] Smith, _Memoirs of Wool_, i. 222. [723] See above. [724] Smith, _Memoirs of Wool_, ii. 252. [725] McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, iii. 156. [726] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_, p. 1431. For imports see Appendix, p. 354. [727] Of which 6,000,000 lb. came from Spain. The first Spanish Merino sheep were introduced into Australia in 1797. See Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, ii. 538, and cf. below. [728] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1890), p. 29. [729] _Board of Agriculture Returns_ (1907), p. 187. [730] Cf. Appendix IV. [731] In 1907 the average wheat crop was 33.96 bushels per acre in England and 39.18 in Scotland. The average yield per acre of wheat in Holland is 34.1 bushels; Belgium, 34; Germany, 30.3; Denmark, 28.2 France, 197. [732] The total number of sheep in Great Britain in 1877 was 28,161,164; in 1907, 26,115,455. In 1688 Youatt estimates it at 12,000,000; In 1741, 17,000,000; in 1800 26,000,000; in 1830 32,000,000. [733] Unfortunately the class 50 acres and under at this time included holdings _under_ one acre, so that it is useless for the comparison of the number of small holdings at the two dates, for in 1907 none appear under one acre. CHAPTER XXIII MODERN FARM LIVE STOCK CART HORSES Arthur Young at the end of the eighteenth century found only two kinds of cart horses worthy of mention, the Shire and the Suffolk Punch; to-day, besides these two, we have the Clydesdale. The Shire horse, according to Sir Walter Gilbey, is the purest survival of the Great Horse of mediaeval times, known also as the War Horse, and the Old English Black Horse. It is the largest of draught horses, attaining a height of 17 to 17.3 hands and a weight of 2,200 lb., its general characteristics being immense strength, symmetrical proportions, bold free action, and docile disposition. In 1878 the Shire Horse Society was established to improve the breed, and distribute sound and healthy sires through the country. The Clydesdale, whose native home is the valley of the Clyde, is not so large as the Shire, but strong, active, and a fine worker. They are either derived from a cross between Flemish stallions and Lanarkshire mares, or are an improvement of the old Lanark breed.[734] The Suffolk Punch looks what he is-a thorough farm horse. He stands lower than the two former breeds, but weighs heavily, often 2,000 lb. They are generally chestnut or light dun in colour, and their legs are without the feather of the Clydesdale and Shire. They have been long associated with Suffolk, and were mentioned by Camden in 1586. According to the Suffolk _Stud Book_ of 1880, the Suffolk horses of to-day are with few exceptions the descendants in the direct male line of the original breed described by Arthur Young. CATTLE What was the original breed of cattle in this island is uncertain. The Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1887 favours the view that the herds of wild cattle, such as still exist at Chillingham, represent the original breed of Great Britain. It states that the 'urus' was the only indigenous wild ox in this country, and the source of all our domesticated breeds as well as of the few wild ones that remain, such as the Chillingham breed, which is small, white, with the inside of the ear red, and a brownish muzzle. Some, however, assert they are merely the descendants of a domesticated breed run wild, which have reverted somewhat to the ancient type.[735] According to Thorold Rogers, the cattle of the Middle Ages were small rough animals like the mountain breeds of to-day, and at the end of the sixteenth century we have seen they had large horns, were low and heavy, and for the most part black.[736] The great variety of cattle in Great Britain may be due to their being the descendants of several species, or to difference of climate and soil, or to spontaneous variation, but the chief cause is the diligent selection of breeders. Marshall is quite positive[737] that the Hereford, Devon, Sussex, and the black mountain breeds of Scotland and Wales are all descended from the original native breed of this island, that the Shorthorns came from the Continent, and the Longhorns probably from Ireland. Bradley's division of cattle into black, white, and red tells us little.[738] There was very little attempt at improvement until the middle of the eighteenth century, for peace was necessary for long continued effort, and 1746, the date of Culloden, the last battle fought on British soil, may be taken practically as the commencement of the era of progress. The Shorthorn is the most famous and widely-spread breed of this country, if not in the world; it exceeds in number any other breed in the United Kingdom, and most cross-breds have Shorthorn blood in them. It adapts itself to any climate, and is equally noted for beef-making and milk-yielding. The origin of the Shorthorns is uncertain; they originated from the Teeswater and Holderness varieties, but where these came from is a matter of dispute. Young, in his _Northern Tour_,[739] says, 'In Yorkshire the common breed was the short-horned kind of cattle called Holderness, but really the Dutch sort'; and many have said the Holderness and the Teeswater breeds both came from Holland, and were practically the same, while others assert the original home of the Teeswaters was the West Highlands.[740] John Lawrence speaks of the Dutch breed with short horns in 1726;[741] but, unless they were smuggled over, it certainly seems strange that any Dutch cattle should have been imported in the eighteenth century, for the importation of cattle was strictly forbidden during the whole century. It was George Culley's opinion that they came from Holland, because few were found except along the eastern coast; he also knew farmers who went over to Holland to buy bulls.[742] Be this as it may, it was the cattle of the Teeswater district in Durham that the Collings improved, and they are still called Durhams in many parts. The work of the Collings[743] was carried on by Thomas Booth, who farmed his own estate of Killerby in Yorkshire, where he turned his attention to Shorthorns about 1790, and by 1814 he was as well known as the Collings. He improved the Shorthorns by reducing the bone, especially the length and coarseness of the legs, the too prominent hips, and the heavy shoulder bones. In 1819 he removed to Warlaby, and died there in 1835, having given up the Killerby estate to his son John, who with his brother Richard ably sustained their father's reputation. 'Booth strains' equally with 'Bates strains', the results of the work of Bates of Kirkleavington, whose cattle we have seen at the Oxford Show in 1839, and whose herd was dispersed in 1850, have been the foundation of many famous herds, and can be traced in many a pedigree animal of to-day. The palmy days of the Shorthorns were the 'seventies' of the last century, when they made fabulous prices. At the great sale at New York Mills, in 1873, eleven females of the Duchess tribe averaged £4,522 14s. 2d., and one cow sold for £8,458 6s. 8d. In 1877 Mr. Loder bought Third Duchess of Hillhurst for 4,100 guineas; in 1876 Lord Bective gave 4,300 guineas for Fifth Duchess of Hillhurst, then 16 months old; and in 1875 the bull Duke of Connaught sold for 4,500 guineas. It was not likely that with the advent of bad times these prices would continue, and nothing like them in the Shorthorn world has occurred since. _Herefords._[744] Herefordshire cattle have long been famous as one of the finest breeds in the world. Marshall, writing in 1788, does not hesitate to say, 'The Herefordshire breed of cattle, taking it all in all, may without risque be deemed the first breed of cattle in the land.' Their origin has been accounted for in various ways. Some say they were originally brown or reddish-brown from Normandy or Devon, others that they came from Wales, while it is recorded that Lord Scudamore in the latter half of the seventeenth century introduced red cows with white faces from Flanders. However, they do not emerge from obscurity until about the middle of the eighteenth century, when Messrs. Tomkins, Weyman, Yeomans, Hewer, and Tully devoted their energies to establishing a county breed. There were four varieties of Herefords, which have now practically merged into the red with white face, mane, and throat: the mottle face, with red marks intermixed with the parts usually white; the dark greys; light greys; and the red with the white face. The rivalry between the breeders of the white and the mottle faces almost caused the failure of the Herd-Book commenced in 1845 by Mr. Eyton. The mottle-faced party seems to have been then the most influential, but the dark and light grey varieties also had strong adherents. In 1857 Mr. Duckham took over the management of the Herd-Book, and to his exertions the breed owes a deep debt of gratitude. One of the greatest supporters of the Herefordshire breed was Mr. Westcar of Creslow, who, starting in 1779, attended Hereford October Fair for forty years, and when the Smithfield Show commenced in 1799 won innumerable first prizes there with Herefordshire cattle. Between 1799 and 1811 twenty of his Herefordshire prize oxen averaged £106 6s. each, and at the sale of Mr. Ben Tomkins's herd after his death in 1819 twenty-eight breeding animals averaged £152, one cow fetching £262 15s. Herefords are famous for their feeding qualities at grass, and good stores are scarce, the best being fattened on their native pastures. They are not only almost the only breed in their own county, but few English counties south of Shropshire are without them; they have done well in Ireland, and in Canada, the United States, South America, and Australia have attained great success. They are not so well qualified for crossing as Shorthorns, but have blended well with that breed, and produced good crosses with Ayrshires and Jerseys, but not with Devons. It has been said that they are not a favourite sort with London butchers, as they require time to ripen, which does not suit a hurrying age. Hence they probably flourished best under the old school of graziers, who sometimes kept them to six or seven years old. At all events they are a very fine breed for beef purposes, their meat being particularly tender, juicy, and fine-grained. They are seldom kept for dairy purposes, being poor milkers; consequently the calf is nearly always allowed to run with the dam, which accounts for the fact that one seldom sees pure-bred Herefords that are not well grown. The highest price paid for a Hereford was 4,000 guineas for Lord Wilton in 1884. _Devons._ The cattle of North Devon can be traced as the peculiar breed of the county from which they take their name from the earliest records. Bradley mentioned the red cattle of Somerset in 1726, and no doubt there were many in Devonshire.[745] William Marshall states (1805), and he is supported by subsequent writers, that 'they are of the middle horn class', and in his time so nearly resembled the Herefordshire breed in frame, colour, and horn, as not to be distinguishable from them, except in the greater cleanness of the head and fore-quarters, and their smaller size. Yet they could not have had the white faces and throats of the Herefords, as they have always been famous for their uniformity in colour--a fine dark red.[746] He also compares them to the cattle of Sussex and the native cattle of Norfolk.[747] The Devons then differed very much in different parts of the county; those of North Devon taking the lead, being 'nearly what cattle ought to be'. They were, considered as draught animals, the best workers anywhere beyond all comparison, though rather small, for which deficiency they made up in exertion and agility. As dairy cattle they were not very good, since rearing for the east country graziers had long been the main object of Devon cattle farmers, but as grazing cattle they were excellent. Vancouver, a few years after this, praised their activity in work and their unrivalled aptitude to fatten, but says they were then declining in their general standard of excellence, and in numbers, owing to the great demand for them from other parts of England, where the buyers (Mr. Coke, who had established a valuable herd of them, and others) spared neither pains nor price to obtain those of the highest excellence. This danger was clearly perceived by Francis Quartly of Molland, who set to work to remedy it by systematically buying the choicest cows he could procure. As the reputation and perhaps continuance of the Devon breed is due to him more than to any other man, his account of his own efforts on behalf of it is specially valuable.[748] At the end of the eighteenth century the principal North Devon yeomen were all breeders, and every week you might see in the Molton Market, their natural locality, animals that would now be called choice. There were few cattle shows in those days, and therefore the relative value of animals was not so easily tested. The war prices tempted many farmers to sell their best bulls and cows out of the district, so that good animals were becoming scarce, and the breed generally going back. Mr. Quartly therefore for years bought all the best animals he could find with rare skill and judgement, and continued to improve his stock till he brought it to perfection. About the year 1834 cattle shows began at Exeter, and for the first year or two Mr. Quartly did not compete; then he allowed his nephews to enter in all the classes, and they brought home all the prizes. This lead they kept, and at the Royal Show at Exeter in 1850 their stock obtained nine out of the ten prizes for Devons. The _Devon Herd-Book_ was first published in 1851 by Captain T.T. Davy, and a writer in 1858 says that of twenty-nine prize bulls in the first three volumes twenty-seven were descended from the Quartly bull Forester, and of thirty-four prize cows twenty-nine from the cow Curly, also of their stock. Among other famous breeders of Devons contemporary with Quartly were Messrs. Merson, Davy, Michael Thorne, Yapp, Buckingham, the Halses, and George Turner. In 1829 Moore says, 'The young heifers of North Devon, with their taper legs, the exact symmetry of their form, and their clear coats of dark red, are pictures of elegance.' Their superiority for grazing and draught was proved by the high prices demanded for them, but they were not equally esteemed as dairy animals,[749] though of late years this reproach has been removed. The ploughing of two acres of fallow land was the common work of four oxen, which, when fattened at five years old, would reach eleven score a quarter. Since the publication of the Herd-Book, Devons have spread all over the world, to Mexico, Jamaica, Canada, Australia, France, and United States, and the fact that in their original home they have been largely kept by tenant farmers proves them a good rent-paying breed. Yet it cannot be pretended that away from their native country they are as much valued as the Shorthorn and Hereford. The South Hams breed of South Devon is a distinct variety, though it is believed to be descended from the 'Rubies'[750] and apparently has at some time been crossed with the Guernsey; they are good milkers and attain a great size, but the quality of the meat is decidedly inferior to that of North Devon. From the earliest times the real Devon colour has been red, varying from a dark to a lighter or almost chestnut shade; half a century ago the lighter ones were more numerous than at present, and they are often of richer quality though less hardy than the dark ones. The Sussex is larger and coarser than the Devon, of a deep brown chestnut colour, very hardy, a beef-producing but not a milk-yielding sort. Longhorns,[751] a generation ago nearly extinct, once the favourite cattle of the midlands and portions of the north, are descended from a breed long established in the Craven district of Yorkshire. 'The true Lancashire,' said Young in 1770, 'were Longhorns, and in Derbyshire were a bastard sort of Lancashires.'[752] It was this breed that Bakewell improved, and of late years great efforts, chiefly in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, have been made to revive it. The Red Polled, or Norfolk Polled, is the only hornless breed of English cattle, and they are good milkers and fatteners. The Lincoln Red is a small red variety of the Shorthorn. Many of the Welsh breeds have spread into the adjacent parts of England, and may be classified as North and South Welsh, or Angleseys and Castle Martins; black in colour, and generally with long horns. The Scottish cattle--the Aberdeen Angus, the Galloways, the Highland breed, and the Ayrshires--are also seen in England, but not so often as the Jerseys and Guernseys from the Channel Islands, while the small Dexters and Kerrys from Ireland are favourites with some English farmers. SHEEP The sheep of the British Isles may be divided into three main classes:-- 1. Longwools, containing Leicesters, Border Leicester's, Cotswolds, Lincolns, Kentish, Devon Longwool, South Devon, Wensleydale, and Roscommon. 2. Shortwools: the Oxford Downs, Southdowns, Shropshires, Hampshire Downs, Suffolks, Ryelands, Somerset and Dorset Horned, and Clun Forest. 3. Mountain breeds: Cheviots, Blackfaced Mountain, Herdwick, Lonk, Dartmoor, Exmoor, Welsh Mountain, and Limestone. These are all English except the Border Leicester, Cheviot, and Blackfaced Mountain, which are Scotch; the Welsh Mountain is of course Welsh, and the Roscommon Irish. 1. The Leicesters, the largest and in many respects the most important of British longwool sheep, are the sheep which Bakewell improved so greatly. They are capable of being brought to a great weight, and their long fine wool averages 7 lb. to the fleece. The Border Leicesters are an offshoot of the last named, bred on the Scottish Border, and originating from the flock which George and Matthew Culley in 1767 took from the Tees to the Tweed. The Cotswolds have been on the Gloucestershire hills for ages, and have long been famous for the length of their fleece, hardiness, and breeding qualities. The Lincoln is the result of the old native breed of the county improved by Leicester blood. They have larger heads and denser and heavier wool than the Leicesters, averaging 8 to 9 lb. to the fleece, but have been known to yield 14 lb. The Kentish or Romney Marsh have long existed in the district whence they obtain their name, but are not much known away from that locality. The Devon Longwool is a result of the infusion of Leicester blood among the old Bampton stock of Devonshire called Bampton Notts or polled sheep. The South Devons or South Hams are another local breed, and are a result of the improvement of the South Hams Notts by the Leicester. The Wensleydales are descendants of the old Teeswater breed, itself a variety of the old Leicester and improved by the new Leicesters of Culley. 2. Oxford Downs, a modern black-faced breed, now widely spread all over the midland counties, are a mixture of Cotswolds with Hampshire Downs and Southdowns, and originated at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign, but were not definitely so called till 1857. This cross of two distinct varieties, the long and the short wool, has approximated to the shortwool type. The Southdown, formerly Sussex Down, an old breed bred for ages on the chalky soils of the South Downs, is 'perhaps', says Youatt, 'the most valuable breed in the kingdom.' It was to John Ellman of Glynde, at the end of the eighteenth century, that they owe their present perfection, and they have exercised as much influence among the shortwools as the Leicesters among the longwools. The Shropshire sheep is a descendant of the original Longmynd or old Shropshire sheep, which began to be crossed by the Southdown at the commencement of the nineteenth century.[753] They were recognized as a distinct breed in 1853, and since then have become one of the most valued breeds, combining the symmetry and quality of the Southdown with the weight of the Cotswold and the fattening tendency of the Leicester, with a hardier constitution. The Hampshire Down is another instance of the widespread influence of the Southdown, being the result of crossing that breed with the old Wiltshire sheep, which had long curling horns, and the Berkshire Knott. They are heavier than the Shropshire, and are perhaps more distinguished for early maturity than any other breed. The Suffolk is derived from the old horned Norfolk ewe mated with the Southdown, and was first granted its name in 1859. The Ryeland is a small, hornless, white-faced breed which has been in Herefordshire for centuries, but of late years has dwindled in numbers before the advent of the Shropshire. The Somerset and Dorset Horned is another old breed, preserved in a pure state, much improved in modern times, and very hardy. The Clun Forest breed of West Shropshire and the adjacent parts of Wales is a mixture of the Ryeland, Shropshire, and Welsh breeds. 3. The Cheviot is found on both sides of the hills of that name, though Northumberland is said to be its original home, and it was improved in the eighteenth century by crossing with the Lincoln. The Blackfaced Mountain breed is found chiefly in Scotland, but thrives on the bleak grazing lands of the north of England. The Herdwicks' home is the hills of Cumberland and Westmoreland, where they are hardy enough to fatten on the poor, thin pasture. The Lonk is the largest mountain breed, belonging to the fells of Yorkshire and Lancashire. The Dartmoors and Exmoors almost certainly came from one stock, though the former are now the larger, and are the few real survivors of the old forest or mountain breeds of England. The Exmoor is horned, the Dartmoor hornless. The Welsh Mountain is a small, hardy, soft-woolled breed, their mutton having the best flavour of any sheep, and their wool making the famous Welsh flannel. The Limestone is little known outside the fells of Westmoreland. PIGS Our pigs may be roughly divided into white, black, and red; the first comprising the Large, Middle, and Small Whites, formerly called Yorkshires; the second the Small Black (Suffolk or Essex), the Large Black only recently recognized, but apparently very ancient, and the Berkshire, which often has white marks on face, legs, or tail. The red is the Tamworth, one of the oldest breeds, its skin being red with dark spots. FOOTNOTES: [734] Youatt, _Complete Grazier_ (1900), p. 388; cf. pp. 104-5. [735] Youatt, _Complete Grazier_ (1900), p. 6. [736] See above. [737] _Rural Economy of West of England_, i. 235 cf. above, p. 235. [738] See above. [739] ii. 126; about 1770. [740] Youatt, _Complete Grazier_, p. 18, and see 'Druid', _Saddle and Sirloin_. [741] Cf. supra, p. 167. [742] _Culley on Live Stock_ (1807), p. 42. [743] See p. 233. [744] Much of these accounts of Herefords and Devons is from the author's articles in the _Victoria County History_. [745] See above. [746] Risdon, _Survey_ (1810), Introd. p. viii. [747] _Rural Economy of West of England_, i. 235. Risdon says of Devonshire: 'As to cattle, no part of the Kingdom is better supplied with beasts of all sorts, whether for profit or pleasure,' those for pleasure being apparently wild ones kept in parks.--Chapple's _Review of Risdon's Survey_, p. 23. [748] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1st ser.), xi. 680. See also ibid. xix. 368, and (2nd ser.) v. 107; xiv. 663; xx. 691. [749] _History of Devon_, i. 456. [750] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (3rd ser.), i. 527. [751] See above. [752] _Northern Tour_, ii. 126. [753] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1858), p. 42. APPENDIX I AVERAGE PRICES FROM 1259 TO 1700[754] CORN PER QUARTER. WHEAT. BARLEY. OATS. 1259-1400 5s. 10-3/4d. 4s. 3-3/4d. 2s. 5-3/4d. 1401-1540 5s. 11-3/4d. 3s. 8-3/4d. 2s. 2-1/4d. 1541-82 13s. 10-1/2d. 8s. 5-3/4d. 5s. 5-1/2d. 1583-1700 39s. 0-1/2d. 21s. 4d. 13s. 10d. RYE. BEANS. 1259-1400 4s. 4-7/8d. 4s. 3-1/2d. 1401-1540 4s. 7-3/4d. 3s. 9-1/4d. 1541-82 -- 9s. 1-1/2d. 1583-1700 -- 22s. 3-1/4d. LIVE STOCK. OXEN. COWS. CART HORSES.[755] 1259-1400 13s. 1-1/4d. 9s. 5d. 16s. 4d. 1401-1540 moderate increase 14s. unaltered 1541-82 55s. 32s. great increase 1583-1700 100s. 60s. 1580-1640 £5 to £10 1640-1700 £8 to £15 PIGS SHEEP. LAMBS. (GROWN). BOARS. 1259-1400 1s. 2d. to 1s. 5d. 8d. 3s. 4s. 7d. 1401-1540 moderate increase 9d. unaltered 6s. 1541-82 3s. to 4s. 6d. 2s. to 3s. 6s. 8d. to 8s. -- 1583-1700 10s. 7d. -- great increase POULTRY AND EGGS. HENS. DUCKS. GEESE. EGGS. 1259-1400 1-6/8d. 2d. 3-5/8d. 4-1/2d. per 120 1401-1540 2-1/4d. 2-1/4d. 4-3/4d. 6-1/2d " 1541-82 4-3/4d. 4-3/4d. 10d. 7-1/2d. " 1583-1700 8d.-1s. 9-1/4d. 2s. 3s. 3d. " WOOL. CHEESE. BUTTER. Per lb. 1259-1400 3-5/7d. 4-1/2d. per 7 lb. 4-3/4d. per 7 lb. 1401-1540 3-5/7d. 1/2d. per lb. 1d. per lb. 1541-82 7-1/2d. 1d. " 3d. " 1583-1702 9d.-1s. 3-1/2d. " 4-1/2d. " HAY. HOPS. Per load. Per cwt. 1259-1400 3s. 8d. -- 1401-1540 unaltered 14s. 0-1/2d. 1541-82 9s. 6d. 26s. 8d. 1583-1702 26s. 4d. 82s. 9d. LABOUR. Reaping Reaping Labourer per wheat oats Mowing day without per acre. per acre. per acre. food. 1261-1350 5-5/8d. 4-7/8d. 5-1/4d. 2d. 1351-1400 8-1/2d. 8-1/4d. 7d. 3d. 1401-1540 9-3/4d. 8-1/4d. 8-1/8d. 4d. 1541-82 --[756] -- -- 6-1/2d. 1583-1640 -- -- 1s. 7d. 8-1/2d. 1640-1700 -- -- 1s. 8d. 10d. PRICE OF LAND PER ACRE. To Rent. To Buy. Arable. Grass. 1261-1350 4d.-6d. 1s.-2s. 12 years' purchase 1351-1400 6d. 2s. " 1401-1540 6d. 2s. 15-20 years 1541-82 slight increase unaltered 1583-1640 great increase 20 years 1641-1700 5s. 8s. " 1770 10s. 30 years FOOTNOTES: [754] Summarized from Thorold Rogers' prices in his _History of Agriculture and Prices_, with some alterations. [755] Affri, 13s. 5d. cart horses, 19s. 4d. A good saddle horse about 1300 was worth £5. By 1580 it was worth £10 to £15, by 1700 £20 to £25. [756] A decided increase, but prices fluctuate so much that it is hard to strike an average. APPENDIX II TABLE SHOWING EXPORTS AND IMPORTS OF WHEAT AND FLOUR FROM AND INTO ENGLAND, UNIMPORTANT YEARS OMITTED Exports. Imports. Quarters. Quarters. England. 1697 14,699 400 1703 166,615 50 1717 22,954 none 1728 3,817 74,574 1733 427,199 7 1750 947,602 279 Great Britain. 1757 11,545 141,562 1758 9,234 20,353 1761 441,956 none 1767 5,071 497,905 1770 75,449 34 1775 91,037 560,988 1776 210,664 20,578 1780 224,059 3,915 1786 205,466 51,463 1787 120,536 59,339 1789 140,014 112,656 1791 70,626 469,056 1796 24,679 879,200 1801 28,406 1,424,765 1808 98,005 84,889 1810 75,785 1,567,126 1815 227,947 384,475 1825 38,796 787,606 1837 308,420 1,109,492 1839 42,512 3,110,729 1842 68,047 3,111,290 The above figures are taken from McCulloch's _Commercial Dictionary_, 1847, p. 438, and agree roughly with those given by McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, iii. 674, and iv. 216 and 532. After 1842, exports played a very small part, and imports continued to increase; in 1847, 4,612,110 _quarters_ of wheat and flour came in; and the following figures show their growth in recent times:-- AVERAGE OF ANNUAL IMPORTS OF WHEAT AND FLOUR IN CWTS. 1861-5 34,651,549 1866-70 37,273,678 1871-5 50,495,127 1876-80 63,309,874 1881-5 77,285,881 1886-90 77,794,380 1891-5 96,582,863 1896-1900 95,956,376 1901-5 111,638,817 With regard to the exports and imports of all kinds of corn, large quantities were exported in the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1733, 800,000 quarters were sent to France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy,[757] and exports reached their maximum in 1750 with 1,667,778 quarters, but by 1760 had decreased to 600,000, and after that fell considerably; in 1771, for instance, the first year of the corn register, they only amounted to 81,665 quarters, whereas imports were 203,122. The figures of the imports were swollen by the large quantities of oats which came into England at this time. The following years are typical of the fluctuations in the trade:-- Exports. Imports. 1774 47,961 803,844 1776 376,249 444,121 1780 400,408 219,093 1782 278,955 133,663 1783 104,274 852,389 1784-8 large excess of imports, mainly oats 1789 652,764 478,426 the last year when exports of all kinds of corn exceeded imports.[758] To sum up, according to these figures, England's exports of wheat regularly exceeded her imports from 1697 until 1757, with the exception of the years 1728-9; then they fluctuated till 1789, the last year in which exports of wheat exceeded imports, and as the same year is the last time when our exports of all kinds of corn exceeded our imports, England at that date ceased to be an exporting country.[759] FOOTNOTES: [757] McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, iii. 198. [758] Ibid. iii. 674; iv. 216, 532. [759] The excess of exports of wheat in 1808 was accidentally due to the requirements of the army in Spain. APPENDIX III AVERAGE PRICES PER IMPERIAL QUARTER OF BRITISH CORN IN ENGLAND AND WALES, IN EACH YEAR FROM 1771 TO 1907 INCLUSIVE, ACCORDING TO THE RETURNS OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE YEARS. WHEAT. BARLEY. OATS. s. d. s. d. s. d. 1771 48 7 26 5 17 2 1772 52 3 26 1 16 8 1773 52 7 29 2 17 8 1774 54 3 29 4 18 4 1775 49 10 26 9 17 0 1776 39 4 20 9 15 5 1777 46 11 21 1 16 1 1778 43 3 23 4 15 7 1779 34 8 20 1 14 5 1780 36 9 17 6 13 2 1781 46 0 17 8 14 1 1782 49 3 23 2 15 7 1783 54 3 31 3 20 5 1784 50 4 28 8 18 10 1785 43 1 24 9 17 8 1786 40 0 25 1 18 6 1787 42 5 23 4 17 2 1788 46 4 22 8 16 1 1789 52 9 23 6 16 6 1790 54 9 26 3 19 5 1791 48 7 26 10 18 1 1792 43 0 27 7 16 9 1793 49 3 31 1 20 6 1794 52 3 31 9 21 3 1795 75 2 37 5 24 5 1796 78 7 35 4 21 10 1797 53 9 27 2 16 3 1798 51 10 29 0 19 5 1799 69 0 36 2 27 6 1800 113 10 59 10 39 4 1801 119 6 68 6 37 0 1802 69 10 33 4 20 4 1803 58 10 25 4 21 6 1804 62 3 31 0 24 3 1805 89 9 44 6 28 4 1806 79 1 38 8 27 7 1807 75 4 39 4 28 4 1808 81 4 43 5 33 4 1809 97 4 47 0 31 5 1810 106 5 48 1 28 7 1811 95 3 42 3 27 7 1812 126 6 66 9 44 6 1813 109 9 58 6 38 6 1814 74 4 37 4 25 8 1815 65 7 30 3 23 7 1816 78 6 33 11 27 2 1817 96 11 49 4 32 5 1818 86 3 53 10 32 5 1819 74 6 45 9 28 2 1820 67 10 33 10 24 2 1821 56 1 26 0 19 6 1822 44 7 21 10 18 1 1823 53 4 31 6 22 11 1824 63 11 36 4 24 10 1825 68 6 40 0 25 8 1826 58 8 34 4 26 8 1827 58 6 37 7 28 2 1828 60 5 32 10 22 6 1829 66 3 32 6 22 9 1830 64 3 32 7 24 5 1831 66 4 38 0 25 4 1832 58 8 33 1 20 5 1833 52 11 27 6 18 5 1834 46 2 29 0 20 11 1835 39 4 29 11 22 0 1836 48 6 32 10 23 1 1837 55 10 30 4 23 1 1838 64 7 31 5 22 5 1839 70 8 39 6 25 11 1840 66 4 36 5 25 8 1841 64 4 32 10 22 5 1842 57 3 27 6 19 3 1843 50 1 29 6 18 4 1844 51 3 33 8 20 7 1845 50 10 31 8 22 6 1846 54 8 32 8 23 8 1847 69 9 44 2 28 8 1848 50 6 31 6 20 6 1849 44 3 27 9 17 6 1850 40 3 23 5 16 5 1851 38 6 24 9 18 7 1852 40 9 28 6 19 1 1853 53 3 33 2 21 0 1854 72 5 36 0 27 11 1855 74 8 34 9 27 5 1856 69 2 41 1 25 2 1857 56 4 42 1 25 0 1858 44 2 34 8 24 6 1859 43 9 33 6 23 2 1860 53 3 36 7 24 5 1861 55 4 36 1 23 9 1862 55 5 35 1 22 7 1863 44 9 33 11 21 2 1864 40 2 29 11 20 1 1865 41 10 29 9 21 10 1866 49 11 37 5 24 7 1867 64 5 40 0 26 0 1868 63 9 43 0 28 1 1869 48 2 39 5 26 0 1870 46 11 34 7 22 10 1871 56 8 36 2 25 2 1872 57 0 37 4 23 2 1873 58 8 40 5 25 5 1874 55 9 44 11 28 10 1875 45 2 38 5 28 8 1876 46 2 35 2 26 3 1877 56 9 39 8 25 11 1878 46 5 40 2 24 4 1879 43 10 34 0 21 9 1880 44 4 33 1 23 1 1881 45 4 31 11 21 9 1882 45 1 31 2 21 10 1883 41 7 31 10 21 5 1884 35 8 30 8 20 3 1885 32 10 30 1 20 7 1886 31 0 26 7 19 0 1887 32 6 25 4 16 3 1888 31 10 27 10 16 9 1889 29 9 25 10 17 9 1890 31 11 28 8 18 7 1891 37 0 28 2 20 0 1892 30 3 26 2 19 10 1893 26 4 25 7 18 9 1894 22 10 24 6 17 1 1895 23 1 21 11 14 6 1896 26 2 22 11 14 9 1897 30 2 23 6 16 11 1898 34 0 27 2 18 5 1899 25 8 25 7 17 0 1900 26 11 24 11 17 7 1901 26 9 25 2 18 5 1902 28 1 25 8 20 2 1903 26 9 22 8 17 2 1904 28 4 22 4 16 4 1905 29 8 24 4 17 4 1906 28 3 24 2 18 4 1907 30 7 25 1 18 10 APPENDIX IV MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION Gregory King, at the end of the seventeenth century, estimated the acreage of England and Wales at 39,000,000--not at all a bad estimate, the area, excluding water, according to the Board of Agriculture Returns of 1907, being 37,130,344. The different estimates by Grew, Templeman, Petty, Young, Halley, Middleton, and others varied between 31,648,000 and 46,916,000 acres. The last, that of Arthur Young, was actually adopted by Pitt for his estimate of the income-tax.[760] * * * * * Caird in 1850[761] estimated the cultivated lands of England at 27,000,000 acres (in 1907 they were 24,585,455 acres), cultivated thus:-- Permanent grass 13,333,000 Arable 13,667,000 the latter being divided as follows:-- Acres. Bushels Produce, per acre. quarters. Wheat 3,416,750 27 11,531,531 Barley 1,416,750 38 6,729,562 Oats and rye 2,000,000 44 11,000,000 Clover and seeds 2,277,750 Beans and peas 1,139,000 30 4,271,250 Turnips, marigolds, & potatoes 2,116,750 Rape and fallow 1,300,000 Davenant, at the end of the seventeenth century, made the following estimate showing the importance of wool in English trade[762]:-- Annual income of England £43,000,000 Yearly rent of land 10,000,000 Value of wool shorn yearly 2,000,000 " woollen manufactures 10,000,000 Thus the rents of land formed nearly one-fourth the total income of the country, and wool paid one-fifth of the rents.[763] In the eighteenth century a great quantity of wool was smuggled out of England in defiance of the law; in the space of four months in 1754, 4,000 tods was 'run' into Boulogne.[764] FOREIGN AND COLONIAL WOOL IMPORTED INTO ENGLAND.[765] lb. 1766 1,926,000 1771 1,829,000 1780 323,000 1790 2,582,000 1800 8,609,000 1810 10,914,000 1820 9,775,000 1830 32,305,000 1840 49,436,000 1850 74,326,000 1855 99,300,000 1857 127,390,000 PRICES OF LABOUR IN SURREY IN 1780.[766] s. d. Day labourer, per day, in winter 1 4 " " in summer 1 6 Reaping wheat, per acre 7 0 " " and according to the crop up to 12 0 Mowing barley, per acre 2 6 " oats, " 1s. 6d. to 2 0 " grass " 2 6 Hand-hoeing turnips, per acre, first time 6 0 " " second time 4 0 Thatching hayricks, per square of 100 ft. 1 0 Washing and shearing sheep, per score 3 0 Ploughing light land, per acre 5 0 " stiff " " 7s. to 10 0 Common hurdles, each 5 OCCUPIERS OF LAND. In 1816 there were said to be 589,374 occupiers of land in Great Britain[767]-- With incomes under £50 114,778 Between £50 and £150 432,534 Over £150 42,062 ------- 589,374 ======= In 1907 there were 510,954 occupiers of one acre and more. MULHALL'S CALCULATION OF AVERAGE ANNUAL WAGES IN ENGLAND. Bailiff. Shepherd. Labourer. Woman. Boy. 1800 £20 £16 £12 £8 £6 1850 40 25 20 10 8 1880 52 36 30 15 10 The average annual cost of living of an agricultural family of five was in 1823 £31, in 1883, £37. COMPARATIVE STATEMENT BY A. YOUNG OF PRICES AND WAGES IN ENGLAND FROM 1200 TO 1810 ON THE PRINCIPLE OF REPRESENTING FACTS IN 1810 BY THE NUMBER 20, AND THE FACTS OF THE PRECEDING PERIODS BY THE PROPORTION BORNE BY THEM TO THAT NUMBER. Labourer's Periods. Wheat. Meat. Wool. Wages. Horses. 1200-99 5-1/2 ... 3-1/2 ... 1300-99 6-1/4 ... 4-3/4 ... 1400-99 3 ... 5-1/2 ... 1500-99 6 ... 5-1/2 ... 1600-99 9-1/4 ... 8 ... 1700-66 7-3/4 7-1/2 12 10 15-3/4 1767-89 11 11-1/2 15-1/3 12-1/2 17-1/4 1790-1803 13 16-1/2 16-1/6 16-3/4 19-1/2 1804-10 20 20 20 20 20 Thus wheat in 1804-10 had risen 233 per cent. since the sixteenth century. THE LABOURER'S WAGES. The following table, published by Mr. Barton in 1817,[768] shows the depreciation of the labourer's wages in purchasing power between 1742 and 1808:-- Weekly Price of Wages in Period. pay. wheat. pints of s. d. s. d. bread. 1742-52 6 0 30 0 102 1761-70 7 6 42 6 90 1780-90 8 0 51 2 80 1795-9 9 0 70 8 65 1800-8 11 0 86 8 60 In answer to inquiries sent by the Poor Law Commissioners in 1834 to 900 parishes in England the average weekly wages of labourers were-- in summer, s. d. in 254 parishes, with beer or cider 10 4-3/4 522 " without beer or cider 10 5-1/2 in winter, in 200 " with beer or cider 9 2-1/4 544 " without beer or cider 9 11-3/4 The annual average inclusive earnings of the labourer £ s. d. himself were stated at 27 17 10 and of his wife and children 13 19 10 ------------ 41 17 8 ============ It will thus be seen that the wife and children provided a third of the income. The majority of the parishes said the labourer could maintain his family on these wages. Here is the weekly budget of a labourer with an average family in 1800:--[769] Cr. s. d. Wages 15 0 Garden 1 6 Extras 1 0 ----- 17 6 ===== Dr. s. d. Rent 1 7-1/2 Bread 6 0 Bacon 2 6 Tea and sugar 1 3 Cheese 1 6 Butter 1 6 Fuel 1 3 Candles and soap 0 6 Clothes 1 6 Schooling 0 3 Sundries 0 6 --------- 18 4-1/2 ========= There is no fresh meat, and it is hard to say where any economy could be practised. CONTRACT PRICES OF BUTCHER'S MEAT PER CWT. AT GREENWICH HOSPITAL, 1730-1842.[770] £ s. d. 1730 1 5 8 1740 1 8 0 1750 1 6 6 1760 1 11 6 1770 1 8 6 1780 1 12 6 1790 1 16 10 1800 4 4 1810 3 12 0 1815 3 8 0 1820 3 10 4 1825 2 19 6 1830 2 3 6 1835 2 0 7 1840 2 14 0 1842 2 12 8 FOOTNOTES: [760] C. Wren Hoskyns, _Pamphlet on Agricultural Statistics_, p. 19. [761] _English Agriculture in 1850-1_, p. 521. Cf. above, p. 331. [762] Smith, _Memoirs of Wool_, i. 157. [763] In 1908 the rental of agricultural land was 3-1/2 per cent. of the total income of the country. See _The Times_ May 13, 1909. [764] Ibid. ii. 264. [765] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, ii. 693. Cf. above, p. 328. [766] Trusler, _Practical Husbandry_, p. 153. [767] Farmer's Magazine (1817), p. 6. Statistics at this date, however, must be taken with caution. They were usually estimates. Cf. above, p. 334, for holdings in England. [768] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1881), xvi, 305. [769] _Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners_ (1881), xvi. 310. [770] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1852), p. 271. INDEX A Abbot's Ripton, 72. Aberdeen Angus cattle, 288, 343. Accounts, keeping, 29, 49. Accumulation of estates, 123. Acre, 2; tenantry, 253. Advantages of large farms, 202. Affer, the, 35. Agricultural Holdings Acts, 283, 296, 299-303. Agricultural revolution, the, of eighteenth century, 162. Agriculture, state of, 28, 38, 111, 113, 115, 123, 132, 160, 162, 192, 204, 211, 221, 229, 244, 245, 250, 265, 267, 274, 287, 305; seventeenth-century writers on, 127; state of, in eighteenth century, 162, 192, 221, 229; nineteenth, 244, 245, 262-70, 271, 287. Aitchison, 237. Akermanni, 13. Alderney cattle, 233. Ale, 10. Allotments, 196, 230, 253, 255n., 315-7. Allowance system, 237. Allowances, parish, 238, 241, 257, 284. Almaine, corn from, 20. Almonds, 93, 136. Amalgamation of farms, 29, 46, 47, 95, 119, 120, 162, 202, 258, 317. America, gold discoveries in, 287; imports from, 262, 293, 323-4. Ancaster, Earl of, estate of, 321. Andover, 39. Anti-Corn Law League, 280. Apples, 15, 65, 93, 129, 130, 131, 135-6, 143, 171, 186-9, 329, 332. (_See_ Prices.) Apprentices, 108. Apricots, 93, 136. Arable district of England (1893), 306n. Arable fields, 1, 2, 4, 16, 73. Arable land, 56, 99, 100, 195; amount of, in 1688, 155; decrease of, 59; extent of, in Domesday, 19; in 1770, 199; in 1850, 353; in 1877 and 1907, 332; preponderance of, 25, 30; produce of, in 1688, 155; suffers more than grass, 248, 266, 281, 285, 286, 306; value of, 19, 40, 58, 115-7, 139. Arch, Joseph, 290-2. Ardley, Inquisition of, 9. Argentina, imports from, 324. Arley, Upper, wine made at, 145. Artificial grasses, _see_ Clover, improve commons, 166. Ash timber, value of, 137. Assize of beer, 13, 14n. Association, British, 336. Average crops of corn (1770), 197. (_See under_ Wheat, Oats, Barley, &c.) Average size of farms in 1768, 202. Averagium, 10. Australia, gold discoveries in, 287; imports from, 324; sheep introduced into, 328; wool from, 328. Axholme, 123, 260, 311, 318. Ayrshires, 339, 343. B Bacon, Lord, 322, Bacon, 'the necessary meate' of the labourer, 102, 140; price of, _see_ Prices. Badger, a corn dealer, 134. Bailiff, 12, 29, 49, 51, 61, 71, 103, 109, 110, 137, 139, 355. Bakewell, 146, 163-7, 214-7, 226, 233, 343, 344. Balance sheet, estate, 307; farm, in 1805, 247; in 1888, 309. Balks, 3. Ball, John, 60. Banbury cheese, 173. Bank Restriction Act, 239, 240, 263. Barking Nunnery, vineyard at, 144. Barley, 20, 33, 36, 65, 91, 124, 135, 142, 155, 182, 227, 331-2, 353; cost of, per acre, 198; produce, per acre, 165n., 197-8; profit on, 179, 180. (_See_ Prices.) Barns, size of, 51. Barren years at end of seventeenth century, 115, 157. Basic slag, 304. Bassingthorpe, 103. Bates, Thomas, 274, 338. Bath, wine made at, 145. Beale, John, 128, 130. Beans, 17, 33, 49, 124, 155, 187, 201, 262, 331-2, 353; cost of growing, 199; profit on, 180. (_See_ Prices.) Bedford, Duke of, 225, 318, 321. Bedfordshire, 3, 18, 79, 120, 123, 238, 306. Beef, price of, _see_ Prices. Beer, 36, 329. Belgium, live stock in, 334; wheat crops in, 332n. Belvoir estate, 115, 286. Berkeley estates, 3, 27n., 35n., 48, 56, 64, 74, 75. Berkshire, 104, 175, 237, 284, 286, 306n. Berkshire Knotts, 345; pigs, 346. Berlin decrees, 242. Best, Henry, accounts of, 138-40. Bideford, 262. Biggleswade, 318. Birds eating fruit, 129. Black Death, 27, 41-3, 59, 75. Black Year, the, 294. Blight, Hop, 150. Blyth, 113, 127, 137, 152. Board of Agriculture, 192, 193, 214, 229-33, 255; (Government), 290. Bones for manure, 154-5, 273, 275-6, 299. Booth, Thomas, 337-8. Bordarii, 8, 11. Boston, 308, 318, 327. Boys' wages, 206. Bradley, 152, 167, 168-9, 170, 171, 181, 336. Brampton, 235. Bread, different kinds of, 54, 102, 206-7, 230; rye, 101, 134, 206; wheaten, a luxury, 101; common, 207, 240; made of turnips, 157; price of (_see_ Prices). Breeding of stock, 37, 146, 167, 215-7, 256, 273. Brentford, 157. Bridport, 262. Bright, John, 280. Buckinghamshire, 78, 146, 172, 291, 306n. Buckwheat, 332. Budget, labourer's weekly, 206, 208, 356. Buildings, farm, and repairs, 51, 272, 279, 282, 299, 302, 307, 310. Bull, description of a (1726), 167. Burford, riot at, 185. Buri, 8, 11. Bury St. Edmunds, 110, 147. Butter, 33, 63n., 66, 114, 138, 140, 161, 174, 205, 206n., 241, 247 (_see_ Prices), 304, 305, 313, 325; exports of, 326-7. By-industries of peasant, 110, 239, 250, 257, 260, 269, 317. C Cabbages, 112, 143, 187, 191, 194, 200, 201, 331. Cadaveratores, 13. Caird, Sir James, 279, 281, 285, 287, 310, 314, 319n. Cake, 296, 300, 305, 314. Calstock, 318. Calves, killing of, forbidden, 86; rearing, 125. Cambridgeshire, 79, 151, 167, 222, 262, 306n., 318. Camden, 173, 335. Canada, imports from, 323-4. Canterbury, hops from, 171. Capital of farmers, 197, 203-4. Carrington, Lord, 231. Carrots, 112, 128, 143, 167, 191, 194, 331. 332. Carter, wages of, 110. Cart-horses, price of, 35, 114. Carts, 153. Cattle, Chillingham, 336; diseases, 85; export of, 326, 330; improvement in, 336, 337, 338 (_see_ Cattle, size of); number of, in 1867 and 1878, 288; in 1907, 333-4; original breed of, 336; price of, _see_ Prices; size of, 37, 104, 146, 169, 288, 336, 342; separation of, for summer pasture, 124; sorts of (1726), 167 (_see under_ Various breeds); about 1800, 235; in 1839, 274; in 1892, 274, 336; time to buy, 125. (_See_ Bakewell, Collings, Exports, _and_ Imports.) Cattle plagues, of eighteenth century, 172, 185-6, 290; of nineteenth century, 289-90, 294. Cauliflowers, 143. Causes of high prices at end of eighteenth century, 240. Celery, 318. Chamberlayne, 259. Cheddar cheese, 173. Cheese, 33, 63n., 66, 161, 173, 174, 200, 206n., 276, 305, 313, 325. (_See_ Prices, Exports, _and_ Imports.) Chelmsford, 110, 171, 307. Chemistry, agricultural, 232, 243, 275. Cherries, 15, 129, 130, 131, 136, 143, 171, 329, 332. Cheshire, 3, 110, 167, 173, 224, 276, 295, 306. Chestnuts, 136. Cheviots, 344, 346, Child, Josiah, 117. Christ Church, Canterbury, 42. Cider, 37, 130, 131, 135-6, 149, 187-9, 207, 269. Cistercians, good farmers, 29, 327. Civil War, checks improvement, 113; family settlements after, 123. Claret made in Oxfordshire, 145. Clarke, 236. Close parishes, 158, 284. Cloth made in England, 69, 70. Clothes, part of wages, 28, 109; of labourer, 54, 71, 109, 185, 206-8, 211, 311; of farmer, 105, 213. Clover, cost of growing, 198; extent of, 331, 333, 353; introduced, 111, 112; spread of, 115, 141-2, 164, 166, 178, 179, 191, 194; seed, price of, 223; sown with corn, 166. Clun Forest sheep, 344, 346. Clydesdale horse, 335. Cobbett, 107, 226, 265, 268. Cobden, Richard, 279n., 280, 285n. Coinage, depreciation of, 44, 59, 89. Coke of Holkham, 163, 182, 224-8, 275, 341. 'Coke's Clippings', 227. Coleseed, 115. Coliberti, 8. Collings, the, 146, 163, 167, 233-5, 337. Combe, 53. 'Comet,' 234, 235. Commissions, Royal, on Agriculture, &c., 260, 266, 289, 294-6, 300, 303, 304, 305, 311-14, 316, 318, 320, 329. Committees, Parliamentary, 256, 258, 263n., 266, 267. Common, John, 303. Common fields, 22, 26, 78, 112, 113, 118-9, 120, 194, 253, 258. Common land, 3, 145, 148; evils of, 148, 194, 256, 257; improvement of, 166. Common pasture, _see_ Pasture _and_ Meadows. Commons, advantages of, 165; extent of, in 1795, 231; rights of, lost, 253. Communities and corporations contrasted, 2. Commutation of labour services for money, 27, 45. Compensation for improvements, 296, 299-302. Competition, foreign, 296, 297, 312, 315, 319, 323-30. Consolidation of farms, _see_ Amalgamation. Contractors for labour, 209. Co-operation in agriculture, 1. Copyholders, 59, 121-2. Corn laws, 63, 64, 69, 70, 159, 160, 242, 248, 250, 265-6, 277-80. Cornwall, 136, 186, 295, 309, 318. Cost of living (1773-1800), 241. Cotarii, 8, 11, 25. Cotswold sheep, 233, 275, 343, 344; wool, famous, 172. Cottages, 52, 117, 121n., 139, 158, 159, 206, 209, 250, 254, 255, 267-8, 285, 297, 304, 311n., 315-6. Court Rolls, of Manydown, 13. Cowper, John, 165. Cows, decrease in number of, 96; increase, 325; let out by the year, 34, 57, 65; yield of, 33, 64. (_See_ Prices of Cattle.) Craik improves drill, 202. Craven, migration from, 44. Crimean War, effect of, 277n., 287. Crondall, 28. Crows' and magpies' nests to be destroyed, 100. Culley, George, 217, 234, 337, 344. Cultivated land, amount of, in 1685, 120; in 1867, 288. Cultivation, Walter of Henley on, 32; of England, in 1688, 155; the old and new ways of, 177, 180, 194, 200-2. Cultivation, clauses, 57, 178, 218, 296, 302, 322. Cumberland, 238, 295, 309, 311, 346. Currants, 331. Custom of the country, 299, 300n., 302 (_see_ Tenant right). Cuxham, manor of, 24. Cylindrical drain pipes, 272. D Dairy, the, and dairying, 33, 59, 168, 170, 173, 199-200, 297, 307, 306, 313, 319, 325, 340-1. (_See_ Butter, Cheese, _and_ Milk.) Damsons, 15, 136. Danegeld, 6. Dartmoor sheep, 344, 346. Davenant, 115, 117, 120, 260, 354. Daventry, common fields at, 115, 117, 120, 260, 354. Davy, Sir H., 232, 276; T.T., 342. Dealers, legislation against, 86, 93, 134; complaints against, 237. Defoe, Daniel, 166, 168, 169, 171, 174, 220, 259. Degge, Simon, 122. Demesne, 7, 15, 30, 45, 56, 58, 65, 74, 97, 99. Denmark, imports from, 241, 262, 323-4; livestock in, 334; wheat crops in, 332n. Depression, agricultural, 163, 183, 184, 223, 228, 242, 248, 262-70, 281, 292, 293-6, 305-14. Derby, Lord, estate of, 320n. Derbyshire, 44, 167, 309, 343. Devon cattle, 168, 217, 225, 233, 274, 288, 336, 339, 340-3. (_See_ Southams.) Devon sheep, 343, 344. Devonshire, 37, 73, 107, 113, 128, 132, 136, 186, 187, 244, 245, 269, 272, 295, 306, 309, 338. Devonshiring, 141. D'Ewes, Sir S., quoted, 117, 133. Dexters, 343. Dibbling wheat, 135. Digging for wheat, 135. Diseases of Animals Act (1890), 290. Dishley, 214-6. Distress, law of, 296, 301; periods of, 42, 68 (_see_ Depression, agricultural), 237, 242. Divining rod, 232. Domesday, 5, 14, 16, 19, 60, 79, 144. Doncaster, roads near, 221. Dorking, manor of, 65. Dorset, 3, 263, 285, 291, 312, 318; sheep, 344, 346. Dovecotes, _see_ Pigeons. Drainage, 16, 32, 113, 128, 129, 137, 154, 163, 201, 202, 213-4, 219, 230, 271, 273, 279, 282, 288, 299, 300, 305, 307, 310. Drills, 113, 152, 175-7, 180, 183, 200-2, 226, 227, 271, 274. Drinking habits, 207-8, 269. Drying hops, 151. Duchesses, the, 234, 274, 338. Duckham, Mr., 339. Ducks, 170 (_see_ Poultry). Dugdale, 77. Du-Hamel, 202. Durham, 119, 337. Durham ox, 234, 235. Dutch breed of cattle, _see_ Shorthorns. E Eakring, common meadows at, 22. Eardisley, 5. East Indies, wool from, 328. Eden, account of potatoes, 106, 207, 238, 256. Education Acts, 292, 297. Egypt, imports from, 323. Eighteenth century, general characteristics of, 162. Electricity applied to vegetables, 236. Elevator, hay and straw, 304. Elkington of Princethorpe, 213-4, 230, 271. Ellis, Chiltern and Vale Farming, 180. Ellman, John, 217, 345. Enclosers prosecuted in Star Chamber, 120. Enclosure, 74-82, 85, 92, 96, 97, 119, 173, 182, 194, 228, 252-261; agreement as to, 98; acts of, 119, 163, 196, 231, 233, 252, 253, 258; amount of, exaggerated, 121; different kinds of, 73, 119, 165, 196; eighteenth century, 163, 165, 173, 182, 183, 194, 196, 253; evils of, 194, 195, 252-3, 254-61, 316; expense of, 196, 252; non-parliamentary,165, 253; a deed of, 75; a sign of progress, 76, 114, 139, 145-8, 253; legislation against, 79, 80, 120; checked, 120. England, appearance of, in fifteenth century, 78; in the seventeenth, 120-1. English invaders, 1. Entails, barred, 122. Essex, 62, 78, 106, 128, 173, 190, 225, 286, 295, 306, 309, 319. Estates, great, accumulation of, 123; advantages of, 322; often a loss, 321. Evelyn, John, 127, 149. Evesham, Vale of, 318. Ewes, milking of, 33, 64, 200. Exhibition, Great, 287, 304. Exmoor sheep, 344, 346. Exporting country, England ceases to be an, 161, 163. Exports of butter and cheese, 326-7. Exports of corn, 63n., 64, 70, 159-161, 183, 185, 242, 267, 348-9; reaches its maximum, 186; of livestock, 325-6; of wool, 39, 69, 172, 327. Extensive cultivation, 2. Extent of the Manor, 10. Eyton, Mr., 339. F Faggots, price of, 114. Fairs for hops, 171; horses, 105; sheep, 172n.; wool, 172n. Fallows, utilized, 112, 177, 181, 191, 195; in 1877, 1907, 331; in 1850, 353. Families employed on common and on enclosed land, 195. Farm or feorm, 5. Farmer, day's work of, in seventeenth century, 134; discontent of, 127-8, 184; financial position of, 101, 103, 156, 162, 184, 195, 204, 212-3, 243, 247, 257-8, 264-5, 293, 307, 308, 310, 320; growing more skilful, 101, 132. _Farmer's Letters_, Young's, 192. Farmhouses, 51, 101, 116, 119, 213, 226. Farming, bad, 273, 281; improvement in, 28, 111, 113, 115, 132, 160, 162, 192, 204, 211, 221, 229, 244, 265, 267, 271, 274, 275, 281, 288. Farming calendar, 17, 124. Farms, in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 116-7; size of (1768), 202. Farnham, hops, 171. Fashion, farming becomes the, 192, 193. Fattening oxen, 31, 58, 125, 136-7, 166, 214, 216, 225n., 235, 288; sheep, 112, 166, 225n.; chickens, 170. 'Favourite', 234. Feeding pigs, 16, 125. Fences, legislation as to, 4. Fens, the, 78, 123, 170, 318. Feversham, fruit growing near, 128, 171. Fifteenth century, character of, 68. Figs, 15, 93, 136. Filberts, 93, 136. Fitzherbert, 31, 61, 76, 77, 83-5, 111, 132, 135. Fixtures, 301. Flanders, cattle, 338; clover from, 111, 166; hops from, 86, 150; wool exported to, 39, 327; sheep exported to, 326. Flax, 17, 105, 135, 141, 151-2, 191, 251, 331, 332. Fleece, weight of, 37, 41, 104, 200, 215. Fleta, quoted, 12, 13. Floor, for hop-picking, 91, 151. Flour, exports and imports of, 348-9. Fluctuations in price of corn, 35, 66, 89, 133, 142, 157, 186, 221, 223, 277. Fold soke, 9. Folding quality, of sheep, 253. Food, labourer's, 9, 25, 34, 37, 53, 54, 61, 62, 102, 110, 134, 139-40, 164, 200-8, 211, 240n., 268, 290-1, 297, 308, 311; farmer's, 101, 128, 213, 240n., 246, 308. Foot-and-mouth disease, _see_ Cattle Plagues. Foot-rot, 294. Foreman, requirements of, 139. Forncett, manor of, 25, 45, 46. Fountains Abbey, 81. Four-course rotation, 183. Four-field system, 99. Fourteenth century, characteristics of, 38. Fowler, John, 304. Fox, the, 140, 244. France, exports to, 349; imports from, 243, 323; livestock in, 334; small holders of, 202-3; wheat crops in, 332. Freeholders, _see also_ Yeoman, 119, 121-2. Freemen, 7. Free tenants, 24, 29, 45. Free trade, 161, 277-81, 323; effect of, 281, 284, 288, 293, 296. French War, great, _see_ Wars. Fruit, 15, 93, 128, 143; imports of 305. Fruit-growing in seventeenth century, 129-131, 132, 136; in eighteenth century, 171, 186-9; in nineteenth century, 319, 329, 330. Furlongs, 3, 118. Furniture of manor house, 52; labourer's home, 52. G Gafol, 9, 10. Galloway cattle, 169, 343. Game, damage by, 302. Game law, the first, 55. Gang system, 292. Geese, 34, 170. (_See_ Poultry.) Gentry, at the Revolution, 156; estates of under Walpole, 183; status of 50, 97; supplanted, 122, 128, 137, 140, 156, 184, 211, 312, 310. (_See_ Landlords _and_ Squire). Gerard, 106, 111. 'Gerefa, the', 15. Germany, exports to, 63; imports from, 20, 66, 69, 241, 243, 262, 323-4, 328; livestock in, 334; wheat crops in, 332n. Gilbert, 275. Gilbert's Act, 237. Gilbey, Sir W.,335. Glamorganshire, vineyards in, 145. Glastonbury Abbey, 13. Gleaning, 133. Gloucestershire, 19, 78, 128, 136, 143, 144, 173, 207, 295, 344. Gloves, gifts of, 62. Gold premium, 305. Googe, Barnaby, 144, 173. Gooseberries, 331. Grafting in seventeenth century, 130. Grain crops, chief source of lord's income, 25. Grapes, 136, 329 (_see_ Vineyards). Grass, acreage under, in 1877 and 1907, 331-2; in 1850, 353; arable land laid down to, 56, 58, 75, 79, 91, 93-4, 117-9, 120, 196, 219, 231, 305; converting, to tillage, 231, 263; more profitable than arable, 199; seeds, 165, 191, 194, 226-7. Grass land, price of, _see_ Pasture and meadow, price of; ploughed up, 186, 218, 245. Grass section of England in 1893, 306n. Grasshoppers, plague of, 185. Graziers, profits of, 184, Greycoats of Kent, 259. Ground Game Act, 303. Guano, 232, 276. Guernsey cattle, 342, 343. Gun, the, in seventeenth century, 140. H Haggard, Rider, Mr., 314-5. Hallam, 210. Hambleton, Sir A. Barker of, 142. Hamlets, 5. Hampshire, 28, 36, 79, 116, 132, 145, 165n., 240, 253, 266, 268, 306n., 309, 314; sheep, 275, 288, 344, 345. Handborough, 53. Harrison, 'Description of England,' 19, 28, 50, 56, 86, 91, 95, 101, 104, 149. Harrow, the, and harrowing, 17, 65, 84, 125, 135, 141, 153-4, 166, 176, 176, 179, 194, 201, 203, 246. Hartlib, Simon, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 142-3. Harvest, importance of, 9, 108. Harvest homes, 104, 269. Harvest work, 25, 62, 125, 138, 209. Hatfield Chase, 78. Hawsted, 20, 30, 35, 54, 57, 58, 62, 63, 67, 112, 115, 116, 178, 179, 205, 207. Hay, 112; price of, _see_ Prices; carrying off, 178, 219, 302; imports of, 262. Hay tedder, 304. Haymaking, 4, 44, 124, 125, 138, 142. Headlands, 3. 'Heaths', Shropshire, 220. Hedges, 124, 148, 150, 163, 178, 282. Hemp, 100, 105, 135, 151. Henley, Walter of, 19n., 31, 36, 83. Henry of Huntingdon, 327. Hens, number of eggs from, 35. Herdwick sheep, 344, 346. Hereford cattle, 233, 235, 274, 288, 336, 338-40, 342. Herefordshire, 5, 40, 128, 130, 132, 136, 143, 171, 186-7, 188, 240, 247, 249, 250, 267, 291, 306, 309, 316. Hertfordshire, 150, 174, 179, 225, 238, 306n. Hentzner's description of English fanning, 104. Hide, 16. Highland, West, cattle, 217, 343. Hoeing, 153, 166, 188, 201-2, 354; horse, 198, 201. Holder, the small, 73, 76, 119, 121-2, 164, 191, 195, 202, 205, 220, 253-61, 268, 308, 310, 311, 316-9; decrease of, causes of, 122, 259; new class of, 260. Holderness cattle, 337. Holdings, various sizes of, 334. Holland, Shorthorns from, 337; live stock in, 334; wheat crops in, 332n. Honey, 10, 144. Hops, 28, 86-7, 89-91, 111, 125, 128, 143, 149, 150, 171, 297-9, 329-30, 331; acreage of, in 1729, 171, 297-8, 329; average crop, 333; duty on, 297-8; imports of, 329-30; profit on, 90, 150, 171, 298-9, 330; substitutes, 298, 329. Horse fairs, 105. Horse shoes, 36. Horses, deterioration of; 85, 146; export of, 325-6; kinds of, 274, 335; number of, 333; size of, 104, 105, 217; tax on, 249; working powers of, 31, 153, 204. (_See_ Prices.) Houghton, account of potatoes, 106, 127, 165. Houses, wooden, 50 (_see_ Farmhouses); of the squire and yeoman, 103, 212. Housing cattle and horses, 126. Howberry, 175-6. 'Hubback', 234. Hundred Rolls, 28, 76, 327. Hunting, 140, 210. Huntingdonshire, 3, 25n., 72, 120, 123, 222, 306n., 309. Hurdles, 354. Husbandry, old and new, _see_ Cultivation. I Implements, cost of, rises, 242; in seventeenth century, 135, 152-3, 154; in eighteenth century, 188, 194, 203, 229, 236; in nineteenth century, 271, 273-5, 276, 287n., 303-4, 316; improvement in, 113; list of, in eleventh century, 17-52; prices of, 83, 138. Importing country, England becomes an, 163. Imports cause low prices, 295. Imports of clover seed, 166; of corn, 20, 63n., 66, 69, 70, 159-61, 183, 184, 223, 224, 230, 240, 241-4, 247, 248, 249, 262, 266, 267, 277-80, 287, 293, 305, 323-4, 330, 348-9; of dairy produce, 325; of fruit, 188, 329; of hops, 150; of linen, 105; of livestock, 161, 280-1, 305, 324-6, 337; of meat, 161, 305, 325, 330; of wool, 39, 161, 305, 328, 354. Improvements, amount expended in, 320-1; needed in eighteenth century, 191; in farming in eighteenth century, 192 (_see_ Agriculture, state of), 193, 204 (_see_ Farming). Inbreeding, Bakewell and, 214; the Collings and, 234-5. Income and expenditure of landed classes (1688), 156. Incubators, early, 132. India, imports from, 324; wool from, 328. Ine, laws of, as to fencing, 5. Inherent capabilities of the soil, 301. Inns, markets for produce, 323. Inoculation of fruit trees, 131. Intensive cultivation, 2. Irish imports, 161, 262, 324-5, 328; labourers, 209, 306. Irrigation, 113, 132, 217. Isle of Wight, 172n. Italy, exports to, 349; wool exported to, 39, 327. J Jamaica, wool from, 328. Jersey cattle, 275, 339, (_See_ Alderney.) Jus faldae, 64. Justices regulate wages, 107. K Kent, 40, 128, 143-7, 157, 171, 173, 186, 259, 265, 283, 295, 306n., 309. Kentish cattle, 168; sheep, 343, 344. Kerry cattle, 343. Kett, rising of, 96. Ketton, 233, 235. Kilns, hop, 151. King's, Gregory, statistics, 120, 140, 141, 155, 258-9, 260, 353. Kingston, Lord, estate rents of, 116. Knights Hospitallers' estates, 40. L Labour, cost of, per acre, 313; services, 6, 12, 25, 27, 42, 45, 56, 61. Labourer, character of, in eighteenth century, 175, 184, 201, 204, 205, 210; condition of, at end of eighteenth century, 237-9; condition of, in nineteenth century, 257, 266-8, 269, 270, 279, 283-4, 285, 290-2, 297, 311-2, 313-4, 315, 320, 355; decrease of, 305, 311n., 315; life of, in Middle Ages,53, 54, 67, 71, 103; made a land-less man by enclosure, 196, 257; number of (1688), 156; savings of, 102-3, 156; sports of, 55; the home of the, 52, 158; wages of, _see_ Wages. Lambs, to fall March 25, 126. Lammas, 4, 112, 137. Lancashire, 44, 78, 106, 110, 147, 163, 167, 207, 216, 219, 282, 283, 284, 309, 312, 316, 320, 343, 346. Land, value of, 19, 36, 40, 66, 117, 133, 149, 183, 243, 286-7, 293, 304, 310, 328, 348. Landlords, absentee, 184, 191; of the fourteenth century, 48; new class of, 59; houses of the 103 (_see_ Cottages); improve estates, 132, 162, 224, 232, 255, 268, 320; protectionists, 160-1; ignorant of estate management, 175, 193, 249, 281; in nineteenth century, 265, 281, 304, 307, 309, 320-2; position, weakened, 309; relations of, and tenant, 218, 226, 282-3, 299, 301, 322; suffered most from present depression, 320; reserve sporting rights, 115; take to farming, 182. Landlordship, 6. Lawes, Sir John, 275, 276, 314, 319. Lawrence, John, 152, 165, 166, 167, 173, 337. Laxton, Notts, 22. Leases,45, 56, 57, 65, 81, 97, 113, 115-6, 121-2, 178, 218, 219, 263n., 272, 282, 283. Leicester sheep, 215-6, 235, 274, 275, 343, 344. Leicestershire, 8, 78, 79, 120, 151, 172, 174, 214-6, 268, 306n., 309, 343. 'Lemmons', 93. Leominster, manor of, 18; wool, 40, 171, 172n. Liberi homines, 7. Liebig, 275, 276. Lime, 112, 141, 177, 187, 197. Limestone sheep, 344, 346. Liming the land, 77, 113, 218, 219, 246, 300. Lincoln red cattle, 343; sheep, 215, 235, 275, 288, 343, 344, 346. Lincolnshire, 3, 8, 40, 99, 100, 103, 123, 151, 168, 172, 250, 252, 255, 283, 306n., 307, 318, 321. Liquorice, 143, 191. Liverpool, apples at, 188; wheat at, 185. Liverpool, Lord, 232, 264. Live stock, depreciation of, 306, 330; exports of, 325-6, 330; number of (1877 and 1907), 333-4; in England (1688), 155, 164; duty on, repealed, 280. Locusts in England, 185. London, affects wages, 205; attracts country folk, 209, 210; potato grown near, 106; carrots grown near, 167, 168; roads near, 222; sheep and cattle driven to, 221. Longhorn cattle, 167, 216-7, 233, 234, 274, 275n., 336, 343. Longmynd, 345. Lonk sheep, 344, 346. Lord of the manor, 6, 14, 19, 25, 42, 121, 127, 255; small holder suffers at his hand, 121. 'Lord Wilton', 340. Lucerne, 143, 167n., 191, 201. Luffenham, South, 22; North, 103. Luxury, spread of, an, 243, 264. Lyttelton, Sir H., 145; Lord, 183. M Macadam, 220, 223, 230. Machinery, use of, 271. Madder, 17, 143, 191, 194. Maidstone hops, 171. Maize, imports of, 262, 296, 313. Mangolds, 237, 331-2, 333, 353. Manor, regulations of the, 13, 99. Manor, the typical, 14. Manorial balance sheets, 26, 65. Manorial system, 6, 7, 18, 24, 45, 76, 97. Manors, 6, 7, 14, 18, 25, 42, 45, 65, 97, 99, 118. Mansion house, 14, 50. Manufactures, influence of, on wages, 284, 297, 315. Manures, 113, 119, 136, 144, 150-4, 177, 178, 179, 187, 191, 197, 201, 219, 221, 254, 275-6, 296, 299, 300, 304, 305, 314. Manydown, Hants, 13. Market gardening, 306, 308, 319. Markham, Gervase, 127, 134-7, 146, 151, 171. Marling, 77, 113, 183, 191, 197, 202, 219, 300. Marshall, William, 188, 204, 207, 213, 222, 298, 314, 336, 338, 340. Maryland, wool from, 328. Mattocks for breaking clods, 129. McCormick, 303. McCulloch, 281, 324, 349. Meadowland, 2, 19, 22, 40, 58, 155. Meadows, 16, 30, 73, 99, 100, 118, 124, 148, 253, 258; value of, 40, 58, 115-6, 139, 231. Meat, imports of, 161, 305, 325. Medlars, 136. Meikle, 230, 236. Menzies, 236. Merino sheep, 233, 328n. Messor, the, 13. Middlesex, 41, 145, 306n. Midland counties, enclosure in, 120; sheep in, 216, 218. Migration of labourers, 44, 158n., 209, 238. Milk, 63n., 168 (_see_ Dairy), 170, 205, 275, 297, 330. Mill, suit of, 9. Mills, excessive number of, 114. Minimum wage proposed, 241. Minister of Agriculture, 305. Mixtil, or mastlin, or mesling, 9, 102, 125, 138, 207n. Moles, 114, 124. Molton Market, 341. Monasteries, 68, 81. Money payments, 24, 27, 45, 56. Mortimer abuses the law, 74. Moryson, 102, 105, 122. Mountain sheep, 344, 346. Mowing corn, Fitzherbert's advice, 84, 125, 135, 138, 199, 354; machines for, 303-4. Mowing grass, cost of, 34, 44, 65, 71, 109, 138, 142, 348, 354; Fitzherbert's advice, 84. Mulberries, 15, 146. Murrain, 13, 42n., 68. Mutton, price of, _see_ Prices. N New world, influx of precious metals from, 89, 111. New Zealand, wool from, 328. Newark, 157. Nitrate of soda, 276. Non-intercourse Act of United States, 242. Norden, Sir John, 127-8, 220. Norfolk, 8, 40, 45, 63n., 94, 96, 97, 167n., 169, 170, 182, 217, 224-8, 306n., 308, 340. Norfolk, or four-course rotation, 183. Normandy, 338. North, difference of wages between, and South, 283-5; superior thrift in, 207-8. Northamptonshire, 8, 78, 79, 120, 151, 157, 172, 222, 306n. Northleach, rates at, 295. Northumberland, 193n., 256, 295, 303, 309, 346. Norwich, 169, 182. Nottinghamshire, 8, 22, 78, 116, 144, 172, 237, 276, 283, 306n., 308, 309. Nowton, Suffolk, 57. Nucleated villages, 5. Nuts, 136. O Oak timber, value of, 137; Coke's, 225-6. Oakham, 110. Oats, 20, 33, 65, 91, 124, 135-8, 142, 155, 227, 305, 331-2, 353; cost of growing, in 1770, 199; produce, per acre, in 1712, 105n.; in 1770, 197-9; profit on, 180. (_See_ Prices.) Occupiers of land, 355. 'Old Comely', 216. Olives, 93, 136. Onions, 143, 332. Open parishes, 158, 284. Oranges, 93. Orchards, 17, 128, 131, 143, 186, 188, 255, 332; seventeenth century, 135-6. Owners and occupiers, percentage of, 334. Owners of Land, return, 260-1. Owners, small, _see_ Holders, small. Ox teams, 16, 31, 64, 84, 143, 147, 153, 191, 204, 340. Oxen, description of, in 1592, 104; value of, 19, 20, 35, 57, 66, 114. (_See_ Cattle, price of.) Oxford, 63, 273, 338. Oxford Down sheep, 275, 288, 344, 345. Oxfordshire, 24, 40, 78, 99, 145, 151. P Pack-horses, use of, 138. Packing fruit in seventeenth century, 129, 130. Paring and burning, 141, 153. Parsnips, 143. Pasture, breaking up, 218. Pasture, common, 2, 4, 16, 19, 73, 99, 113, 195; often worth little, 256; permanent, in Holdings Act, 299; extent of, in 1688, 155; in 1770, 196; ploughed up during French War, 243; sparing, 124. Pasture land, price of, 41, 59, 115-7, 139. Patents, 113, 236. Peaches, 15, 93, 136. Pears, 15, 93, 130, 131, 136, 143, 329, 333. Peas, 33, 69, 124, 155, 200, 227, 331-2, 353. Peasants' revolt, 60. Peel's drainage loans, 272. Penalty for breaking up pasture, 178. Perry, 130. Pestilences, 38, 42, 68, 79. Piecework, 28, 163, 206. Pigeons, number of, 49, 96, 105, 143, 244, 274, 275. Pigs, export of, 330; feeding, 16, 125; foot-and-mouth disease attacks, 290; import of, 326; number of, 333-4; profit on, in 1763, 200; size of, in 1592, 104; value of, 20, 35n., 96, 200-3; varieties of, 170, 346. (_See_ Prices.) Pinchbeck, 103. Pitt, William, 238, 239. Plat, Sir Hugh, 127, 152. Plattes, Gabriel, 76, 127. Pleuro-pneumonia, _see_ Cattle plagues. Plot, 145. Plough, eleventh- and twelfth-century, 17. Ploughing, cost of, 33, 65, 135, 141, 177, 179, 246; months for, 17, 124. Ploughland, the, 16, 18. Ploughs and ploughing, 65, 83, 113, 125, 129, 135, 143, 150, 153, 177, 191, 203, 217, 218, 225, 273, 342, 354. Plums, 15, 93, 130, 131, 136, 329, 332. Poaching, 48; by labourers, 55, 210, 248, 282, 291. Population of England, 79, 89, 111, 120, 140, 156, 160, 163, 211, 240, 287. Pork, price of, _see_ Prices. Porter, 'Progress of Nation,' 276, 279, 286, 287. Portugal, exports to, 349. Potatoes, 106, 107, 112, 187, 191, 194, 227, 318, 331-3, 353; disease, 277. Poultry, 41n., 66, 80, 132, 169, 170 (_see_ Prices); carrying, to London,171. Praepositus, 12. Precarii, or boon days, 9. Precious metals, influx of, 89, 111; scarcity of, 66n. Prices: Apples, 15, 65, 188, 189. Bacon and pork, 96, 102, 238, 239, 263, 313, 334. Barley, 20, 35, 69, 114, 133, 138, 142, 155, 179, 223, 247, 312, 347, 350-3. Beans, 35, 155, 180, 347. Beef, 96, 102, 114, 164, 206n., 239, 240, 241, 242, 247, 262, 263, 265. Bread, 206n., 207n., 223, 230, 242n., 280, 285, 286, 291. Butter, 33, 66, 114, 206n., 241, 247, 285-6, 312, 334, 347. Carts, 203. Cattle, 19, 20, 35, 41, 65, 89, 105, 114, 119, 133, 146, 163, 165n., 167, 169, 203, 235, 263, 307, 312, 347. Cheese, 173-4, 206n., 241, 242, 312, 334, 347. Clover, 166. Eighteenth century, 145, 160, 163, 164, 165n., 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173-4, 179, 180, 186, 188, 189, 200, 203, 206n., 222, 223, 227, 229, 230, 231, 237, 238, 239, 240, 285, 341, 355. Fifteenth century, 40, 66, 69, 355. Fourteenth century, 39, 40, 41, 59, 65, 327, 355. Flax,152. Grapes, 144. Harness, 203. Hay, 157, 165n., 166, 241-2, 262, 347. Hops, 87, 89, 150, 247, 298, 330, 347. Horses, 19, 20, 35, 36, 114, 142, 165n., 203, 347, 355. Horse-shoes,96. Implements, 83, 138. Malt, 89, 240, 241. Milk, 168, 170, 312. Mutton, 96, 10-2, 206n., 239, 240, 241, 247, 262, 263, 265, 313, 334. Nineteenth century, 227, 235, 240, 242-4, 245, 247-8, 262, 263, 264-6, 267, 277-81, 285, 287, 293, 295, 296, 305, 306, 307, 312, 324, 329, 330, 334. Oats, 20, 35, 69, 114, 138, 155, 180, 223, 241, 312, 347, 350-3. Peas, 69, 155, 200, 247. Pedigree cattle, 234, 235. Pigs, 20, 41, 96, 200, 203, 347. Potatoes, 106. Poultry and eggs, 41, 96, 114, 133, 170, 247, 347. Rabbits,174. Rams, 202, 215, 235. Rollers, 203. Rye, 4, 16, 91, 125, 133, 138, 155, 347. Saffron, 106. Seventeenth century, 89, 110, 111, 114, 118, 119, 127, 133-4, 138, 142, 144, 146, 150, 152, 157, 159, 160, 328, 355. Sheep, 20, 3511., 36, 41, 80, 114, 138, 165n., 203, 206n., 263, 312, 347. Sixteenth century, 80, 87, 89, 95, 96, 102-6, 109, 355. Straw, 179, 180. Tenth century, 19. Thirteenth century, 33, 35, 39, 355. Twelfth century, 20. Vetches, 155. Waggons, 203-4. Wheat, 20, 35, 66, 69, 89, 110, 114, 133, 134, 138, 142, 155, 157, 160, 163, 164, 179, 186, 223, 231, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242-4, 247-8, 262, 265, 277-8, 281, 293, 306, 312, 334, 347, 350-3, 355. Wine, 145. Wool, 39, 40, 80, 89, 96, 114, 118, 119, 142, 163, 172, 173, 223, 239, 242, 285-6, 306, 312, 327, 328, 329, 347. Prickly comfrey, 237. Proclamation as to wages and prices, 42. Production, increased cost of, 295, 313. Prosperity, agricultural, 28, 101, 114, 103, 183, 210-1, 229, 243-4, 246, 264, 287; during French War, 243-6, 247, 264. Protecting fruit from blight, Sec., 187. Protection, effect of, 250, 278-9, 281; highest limit of, 248; 265, 266, 277-9. Provender rents, 6. Pruning fruit trees, 131, 136. Pulverization of soil, 175. Q Quarter Sessions, assessment of wages by, 108. Quartly, Francis, 341. Quiet Emptores, statute of, 29. Quinces, 15, 136. Quit, notice to, 300, 301, 302. R Rabbits, rearing, 174; reserved to landlord, 115. Railway rates, 295-6. Rake, horse, 304. Raleigh introduces potatoes, 106. Rams, ewes to, 126, 138; price of, 202, 215, 235. Ramsey, 72. Raspberries, 331. Rates, 229, 238, 241, 245, 247, 248, 249, 255, 269, 284, 295, 296, 307, 314. Rathgib, Jacob, 104., Reaping, cost of, 34, 44, 65, 71, 109, 110, 138, 177, 179, 180, 246, 348, 354; machines, 303-4; time for, 124; versus mowing corn, 135. Red Polled cattle, 343. Reeve, 12; duties of a, 17. Reigate, Flaunchford near, 64. Rents: Twelfth century, 27. Thirteenth century, 36, 57, 75, 348. Fourteenth century, 40, 41, 46, 65, 75, 348. Fifteenth century, 57, 58, 66, 348. Sixteenth century, 66, 76, 95, 115, 116, 348. Seventeenth century, 115, 116, 117, 127, 133, 139, 143, 155, 161, 348, 354. Eighteenth century, 116, 177, 179, 183, 189, 193n., 224, 227, 328, 348. Nineteenth century, 243, 246, 248, 264, 266, 278, 285-6, 287, 297, 304, 306-9, 310, 319n., 321-2. Repairs, _see_ Buildings, farm. Restrictive covenants, _see_ Cultivation clauses. Revival, recent, in agriculture, 320. Revolt, Peasants', 60. Revolution, agricultural and industrial, 162. Ridges, high, 129, 175. Rinderpest, _see_ Cattle plagues. Riots, 185, 223, 262, 366, Ripon, 147. Roads, 21, 68, 105, 138, 171, 175, 182, 204, 210, 219, 220-3, 269, 274, 295. Rock and Far Forest district, 318, Rogers, Thorold, 107, 229. Roller, farm, in seventeenth century, 135. Rolling, 166, 194. Romney Marsh sheep, 344. Romsey Abbey, 15n. Roots, few, used for cows, 200 (_see_ Turnips). Roscommon sheep, 343. Roses, 143. Ross, John, of Warwick, 76. Rot, _see_ Sheep rot. Rotation of crops (_see_ Four-course and Three-field system) 225, 275. Rothamsted, 275. Roundsman system, 239. Royal Agrlctttonal Society, 273-4, 281, 308. Royal Society, helps agriculture, 114. Russia, imports rom, 323-4; wool from, 328. Rutland, 22, 102, 109, 110, 120, 134, 143, 151, 255, 268, 306n.; Dukes of, 115, 286. Rye, 4, 16, 91, 125, 133, 138, 155; in Norfolk, 182, 276; produce, per acre, in 1770, 197. Rye-grass, 178-9, 218, 276. Ryeland sheep, 344, 345, 346. S Saffron, 62, 106, 143, 167; Walden, 106, 167. Sainfoin, 112, 115, 143, 191, 194, 225, 331. Saint Paul's, manors of, 16, 29, 50, 57, 58. Sales, famous, 234n., 235, 338, 339. Salt, value of, 26. Samford Hall, 190. Scotland, cattle of, 336, 343; wheat crop in, 332n. Scott, Reynold, 89, 151. Scottish cattle, 168-9. Scudamore, Lord, 132, 3^8. Seasons, bad, 20, 42n., 66, 69, 89, 115, 157, 179, 184, 185, 186, 210, 223, 224, 237, 239, 242, 243, 247, 262, 265, 277, 292, 293, 294, 295, 297, 305; good, 239, 244, 262, 266, 287. Seed, amount of, for wheat, 33, 67n.,84, 177, 179, 180, 227, 246; for clover, 112, 166, 176, 218; clover, price of, 166. Sefton, Lord, estate of, 320n. Selions, 318. Self-binding reaper, 304. Seneschal, 12. Settled Land Acts, 305. Settlement, law of parochial, 157-8, 209, 238, 269n., 284. Settlements, family, 123, 259-60. Seventeenth century, characteristics of, 111. Sheaf-binding apparatus, 237. Shearing sheep, 125. Sheep, 94, 104, 126, 137, 146, 161, 200, 225, 233, 236, 263, 274, 275, 288, 290; diseases of, 84; export of, 326, 330 (_see_ Live stock); improvement of, 37, 164, 202; number of, in 1867, 288; in 1877 and 1907, 333-4; price of, _see_ Prices; varieties of, 171, 172, 215-7, 233, 235, 275, 288, 343-6; washing, cost of, 65, 125, 354. Sheep-rot, 184, 242, 265n., 294. Shepherd, wages of, 61, 71, 87, 109. Shire horse, 35, 335; Society, 335. Shoeing, 36, 65, 84, 203. Shorthorn cattle, 167, 225, 233-5, 274, 288, 336-8, 339, 342. Shows, Agricultural, 233, 273-5, 341. Shropshire, 11n., 16n., 159, 173, 219, 220, 225, 250, 339; sheep, 275, 288, 344, 345, 346. Siberian Railway, 324. Sicks, uncultivated patches, 99n. Sinclair, Sir J., 229, 230, 232. Sittingboume, 128, 143. Sixteenth century, character of, 89. Slaves, 8, 11, 20. Smith, Adam, 134, 210. Smith of Deanston, 214, 271-2. Smithfield, 168, 169; cattle show, 218, 273, 339; prices at, 239, 240, 241, 247, 265. Smyth, John, 111. Society, Royal Agricultural, 193. Society for Encouragement of Arts, &c., 194> 227, 303. Socmen, 7. Somerset, 19, 58, 107, 168, 250, 309, 340; sheep, 344. Somerville, Loid, 231. Southams cattle, 342. Southdown sheep, 217, 225, 233, 236, 263, 274, 275, 344, 345. Spade, prejudice against, 112, 143; for hops, 150. Spain, exports to, 349; imports from, 323. Spanish wool, 38-9, 328. Speculation, in land, 243; in produce, 305. Speenhamland Act, 237-8. Spencer, Earl, 273. Sporting rights reserved, 115. Spraying fruit, 136. Squatters, 220, 256. Squire, the, 103, 128, 137, 140, 193, 211-2. Stafford, Marquis of, 219. Staffordshire, 3, 44, 78, 122, 219, 286, 295, 309. Statesmen, 311. Statistics, agricultural, 230, 231, 232, 277, 288 (_see_ King, Gregory), 331-2, 353. Statute of labourers, 43. Statutes _quoted_: 20 Hen. III. c. 4, 73. 25 Edw. III. 2. c. 1, 43. 34 Edw. III. c. 20, 63. 12 Ric. II. c. 4, 61. 12 Ric. II. c. 5, 64. 12 Ric. II. c. 6, 55. 13 Ric. II. c. 13, 55. 15 Ric. II. c. 5, 71. 17 Ric. II. c. 7, 63. 4 Hen. IV. c. 14, 67n. 7 Hen. IV. c. 17, 70. 9 Hen. V. c. 5, 68n. 3 Hen. VI. c. 2, 326. 3 Hen. VI. c. 4, 327. 4 Hen. VI. c. 5, 64. 15 Hen. VI. c. 2, 69. 23 Hen. VI. c. 12, 71, 87. 3 Edw. IV. c. 2, 70. 3 Edw. IV. c. 5, 7in. 22 Edw. IV. c. 1, 7in. 4 Hen. VII. c. 19, 79, 94, 117. 11 Hen. VII. c. 13, 325. 11 Hen. VII. c. 22, 87. 6 Hen. VIII. c. 3, 87. 6 Hen. VIII. c. 5, 79. 21 Hen. VIII. c. 8, 86. 22 Hen. VIII. c. 7, 326. 24 Hen. VIII c. 3, 102. 24 Hen. VIII. c. 4, 105. 24 Hen. VIII. c. 10, 82n. 25 Hen, VIII. c. 1, 86. 25 Hen. VIII. c. 13, 80. 27 Hen. VIII. c. 6, 85. 27 Hen. VIII. c. 22, 94. 32 Hen. VIII. c. 13, 85. I Edw. VI. c. 5, 326. 3 and 4 Edw. VI. c. 19, 86. 5 Edw. VI. c. 14, 86. 2 and 3 Phil. and Mary, c. 3, 96. 5 Eliz. c. 4, 107. 5 Eliz. c. 5, 105. 8 Eliz. c. 3, 326. 8 Eliz. c. 15, 82n. 13 Eliz. c. 25, 96. 14 Eliz. c. 11, 82n. 31 Eliz. c. 7, 121n., 159. 39 Eliz. c. 1, 117. 39 Eliz, c. 2, 118. 39 Eliz. c. 18, 82n. 43 Eliz. c. 2, 296. 1 Jac. I. c. 18, 150. 21 Jac. I. c. 28, 118n. 12 Car. II. c. 4, 161. 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 18, 326, 327. 14 Car. II. c. 12, 157. 15 Car. II. c. 7, 134, 326. 18 Car. II. c. 2, 161, 326. 22 Car. II. c. 13, 326. 32 Car. II. c. 2, 161, 326. 3 W. and M. c. 2, 158. 8 and 9 W. and M. c. 30, 158. 7 and 8 Wm. III. c. 28, 327. 36 Geo. III. c. 23, 238. 41 Geo. III. c. 109, 231-2. 9 Geo. IV. c. 60, 278. 4 and 5 Wm. IV. c. 76, 269. 6 and 7 Wm. IV. c. 71, 270. 5 Vict. c. 14, 278. 9 and 10 Vict. c. 22, 280. 9 and 10 Vict. c. 23, 280. 14 and 15 Vict. c. 25, 301. 30 and 31 Vict. c. 130, 292. 38 and 39 Vict. c. 92, 299. 43 and 44 Vict. c. 47, 303. 46 and 47 Vict. c. 61, 300. 59 and 60 Vict. c. 16, 314n. 63 and 64 Vict. c. 50, 301. 1 Edw. VII. c. 13, 314n. 6 Edw. VII. c. 56, 301. 7 Edw. VII. c. 54, 316. Steam, applied to threshing, 237; cultivator, 304. Stilton cheese, 173-4. Stinting the common pasture, 4. Stock and land leases, 57. Stocking a farm, 170, 203. Stores, public grain, 133, 264. Stott, the, or affer, 35, 57, 65. Stourbridge Fair, 171, 172n. Stratfieldsaye, 272. Straw, as winter food for cattle, 126, 217; carrying off, 178, 219, 302; price of, 179, 180, 330. Strawberries, 15, 329, 331. Stubble, grazing of, 4, 125. Suffolk, 8, 30, 40, 57, 63n., 78, 112, 128, 147, 166, 168, 170, 173, 174, 188, 207, 225, 238, 284, 306n., 309, 313; Punch, 335; sheep, 275, 344, 345. Supplies of com per head, 330 (_see_ Wheat, home supplies). Surrey, 64, 128, 143, 144, 168, 180, 283, 306n. Surveyor, the seventeeiith-century, 127. Sussex, 54, 78, 259, 263, 283, 306n.; cattle, 274, 288, 336, 340, 343. Swanage, 262. Swedes, 227, 237, 276, 288, 331-2, 333. 'Swing' riots, 266. T Taltarum's case, effect of, 122. Tamworth pigs, 346. Taunton, manor of, 18; good fanning near, 128. Taxes, 247, 263-4, 307, 310; weight of, 183, 191, 229, 245, 246, 249, 250, 263, 320, 321. Tea, drinking, 205, 207, 213, 291; price of, 205. Teams, composition of, 16. Telford, 220, 222. Tenant farmers, assist in agricultural progress, 162; number of, 141, 156; origin of, 46, 119. Tenant-right, 283. Teeswater cattle, 337. Tewkesbury, 255. Thatchers, 139, 354. Thomson of Banchory, 276. Thorney and Woburn estates, 321. Three-field system, 4, 99. Threshing, cost of, 34, 44, 65, 163, 179, 180, 198-9, 246; machine, 230, 236-7, 282; time for, 17, 126. Tillage, decrease of, 79, 80, 94; encouragement of, 79, 108, 117-8; reaction against, 118. (_See_ Arable, _and_ Grass.) Timber (_see_ Oak timber), 227; spoils crops, 282. Tiptree, 319. Tithe, dispute, 102; on turnips, 166; rent charge, 270. Tithes, 116, 144, 151, 189, 195, 230, 332, 247, 248, 249, 250, 270, 305, 307. Tooke, 179, 266. _Tours_, Young's, 190, 192. Towns, movement of rural population towards, 64, 70, 108, 185, 192, 195, 209, 315, 316-7. Townshend, Lord, 163, 182-3, 192, 193. _Treatise on Husbandry_, 33, 54. Tull, Jethro, 152, 163, 174-7, 178, 180, 183, 193, 200-1, 204. Turkeys, 170. Turkish dominions, imports from, 323. Turnip cutters, 276. Turnip fly, remedies for, 166. Turnips, 93, 111, 112, 115, 141, 143, 157, 164, 166, 168, 178, 183, 251, 331-2, 333; cost of growing, in 1770, 198; injure wool, 329; sheep first fattened on, 112; spread of, in eighteenth century, 165, 166, 179, 191, 194, 200, 201, 225; varieties of, in 1720, 165. Tusser, 63, 90, 91, 92, 101, 102, 105, 111, 124, 126. Two-field system, 3. 'Twopenny', 216. U Underwood, value of, in seventeenth century, 137. Unions, Agricultural Labourers', 291-2. United States, _see_ America. Unreasonable disturbance, 302. Upwey, 318. V Vanghan, Rowland, 132-3. Vegetables, 15, 93, 106, 112n., 143, 236n. Ventnor, vineyard at, 145. Vermin, destruction of, 82, 100, 244. Vermuyden, Cornelius, 123. Vetches, 125, 155, 331. Village, the, of the eighteenth century, 164. Village smith, the, 35. Villeins, 6, 7, 8, 18, 24, 29, 42, 45; disappearance of, 46, 59, 60, 105. Vills or villages, 2, 5, 7, 15, 98, 119. Vineyards, 15, 16, 111, 144-5. Virgate, 8. Virginia, potatoes from, 106; wool from, 328. W Wages: Twelfth century, 27. Thirteenth century, 27, 28, 34, 348, 355. Fourteenth century, 27, 28, 41, 43, 59, 61, 62, 348, 355. Fifteenth century, 67, 71, 348, 355. Sixteenth century, 67, 87, 348, 355. Seventeenth century, 119, 138, 139, 348, 355. Eighteenth century, 163, 164, 184, 203, 205-6, 210, 237, 238, 240, 285, 348, 354-5. Nineteenth century, 241, 242, 249, 267, 268, 283-4, 285, 290-2, 297, 309, 311, 312, 313, 315, 355, 356. Wages, on a farm in 1805, 247; regulated by statute, 43, 61, 71, 87; by Justices, 107, 109, 110. Waggons, 153, 204. Wainage, 8. Wales, cattle of, 167, 336, 338, 343. Wallachia and Moldavia, imports from, 323. Walsingham states demands of villeins, 60. Wars, effect of, 38, 68, 71, 193, 205, 212, 229, 237, 260, 286, 287, 341. Warwickshire, 40, 77, 78, 94, 110, 172, 173, 213, 215, 216, 272, 282, 290, 306n., 309, 343. Waste land, 231; committee on, 255n., 256; good crops from the, 119; Young and, 191. Water carriage, cheapness of, 21, 173. Weaning lambs, time for, 125. Weaving, 70, 76, 110, 257. Webster of Canley, 216. Weeding hook and tongs, 84, 152. Weeds, 125, 180, 201. Week work, 8. Welsh mountain sheep, 344, 346. Wensleydale sheep, 343, 345. Westcar of Creslow, 339. Westcote, 128. Westmoreland, 216, 295, 346. Weston, Sir R., introduces clover, 111, 127, 141. Weyhill Fair, 172. Wheat, acreage tinder, in 1907, 331-2; consumption of, per head, 279; cost of growing, 177, 180, 198, 199, 246, 307; crops, 33, 67, 77, 91, 129, 142, 155, 165, 179, 180, 197-9, 227, 246, 282, 285, 286, 332; cultivation of, 4, 16, 32, 36, 113, 125, 135, 177-9, 180, 184, 353; different kinds of, 146, 107; home supplies of, 277, 279, 313, 330; price of, _see_ Prices. White, Gilbert, 223. Wilton, hops near, 171. Wiltshire, 143, 174, 253, 268, 283, 286, 309, 312, 313; sheep, 345. Winchelsea, Lord, 255, 257, 268. Winchester, 147, 150. Wine, 144-5. Wire binder, 304. Wirral, 66. Wisbech, 318. Woad, 17, 152. Women, work of, on the farm, 62, 85, 206, 316. Wood, W. A., 304. Woods, 2, 16, 59, 74, 78, 115, 125, 136, 155. Woodstock, 53. Wool, 37, 38-41, 69, 75, 80, 94, 104, 114, 118, 119, 142, 161, 163, 171-3, 184, 223, 285, 329, 354, 355; export of, _see_ Exports; import of, _see_ Imports; price of, _see_ Prices. Wool, custom of picking refuse, 100; storing, 125. Worcestershire, 74, 128, 136, 143, 171, 306. Work, hours of, 87, 147, 291. Worlidge, John, 127, 131, 132, 142-8, 150-4, 165. Worsley, Sir R., 145. Y Yeoman, the, 50, 71, 123, 128, 140, 156, 207, 258-61, 310, 320; house of, 103. Yeomen purchase lands of gentry, 122. Yorkshire, 15, 78, 110, 138-9, 167, 168, 207, 225, 253, 283, 295, 306n., 309, 337, 343, 346. Young, Arthur, 160, 162, 163, 172, 180, 182, 188, 190-3, 194, 197, 200-6, 210, 211, 222, 224, 230, 232, 236, 240, 253, 255, 257, 260, 284, 285, 288n., 298, 314, 317, 335, 336, 337, 343, 353, 355; opposed to drilling, 178; pet aversions of, 191; statements of, as to growth of clover, 112. 
28730	----	[Transcriber's Note: This eText was produced from _Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699_ as published in 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 By LYMAN CARRIER Professor of Agriculture, Ferrum Junior College VIRGINIA 350TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CORPORATION WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA 1957 COPYRIGHT©, 1957 BY VIRGINIA 350TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CORPORATION, WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 14 Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 Various events in the latter years of the sixteenth century did much to shape the future destiny of the English nation. With the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588, England rose from a minor position in world affairs to one of major importance. One of the first changes was reflected in her attitude towards trade and commerce. England was no longer penned up on her "tight little isle," and her ships could sail the high seas in comparative safety. Expansion of her foreign trade seemed the only answer to her ambitions, but foreign trade required a two way transfer of products. In order to sell goods, it was necessary to buy in exchange. World commerce had already become well stabilized among friendly nations making it difficult for outside businessmen to share in these established commitments. So England was soon to direct her attentions toward America. It was with eyes focused on future trade that the businessmen who composed the London Company contributed the huge sums that were required to finance the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. Agriculture was not of prime importance. At that time England was self-sufficient so far as the production of grains and livestock was concerned. Ordinary farm products would not pay the cost of transportation across the ocean. Of course, it was expected that the colonists would eventually produce their own food stuffs; however, until that stage of development occurred it was expected that the London Company would supply the needs of the colony direct from England. The men of the first expedition were not farmers and took little interest in farming. A good many came, hoping to share in riches, that their imagination had created. Fantastic tales about the Americas had been circulated in Europe during the century following their discovery. The most authentic of these foreign travel journals had been translated into English and published around the turn of the sixteenth century. Reports also of rich prizes, laden with gold, captured on the Spanish Main by English privateers, had inflamed the English mind. If the Spaniards could find such vast treasures in America, why should not the English do the same? Then too, as the first colony of Virginia lay between 34 and 41 degrees north-latitude, the same approximately as Italy and Spain, it was expected that the much desired warm weather products enjoyed by the Mediterranean people, such as oranges, lemons, sugar, and spices could be produced equally as well in America. Jamestown eventually contributed great financial benefits to the Mother Country from agricultural accomplishments. These benefits could not in 1607 be visualized. To understand the vicissitudes which beset the colonists in the early years of the settlement, one should be familiar with the agricultural practices of both the Old World and the New, for it was by combining the farming wisdom of both sides of the Atlantic into a new agriculture, that the colony became firmly established. OLD WORLD AGRICULTURE European agriculture reached a high degree of efficiency two thousand years ago in the scrub-forest region around the Mediterranean Sea. To the Greeks that part of the world alone was considered fit for habitation by human beings. Farming by the Romans was regarded as a highly respectable and honorable occupation. Some of their most learned scholars wrote books on husbandry. The Romans have given us by far the most complete and satisfactory accounts of their agriculture of any ancient people. During the "Revival of Learning," these old masterpieces were rediscovered, constituting the principal agricultural literature of Europe, prior to the eighteenth century. Most of the early English books on husbandry were mere translations of the Roman books on that subject, with a few original observations added. AGRICULTURE IN ENGLAND The northern or colder parts of Europe were many centuries behind the Mediterranean nations in agricultural achievement. At the time of the discovery of America, England and most of the nations of Europe were controlled by the feudal system. The arable land was owned in large estates or manors by feudal barons, the actual labor on the farms being performed by serfs. These farm laborers belonged to the land and were exchanged with it when there was a change in ownership of the real estate. Farming was looked upon as necessary to existence, but not as a business enterprise. Since trade and transportation in farm products were extremely limited, consumption took place near the fields of production. It was more economical for a baron to move his family and retinue of servants to different parts of his domain than it was to transport the food stuffs to one central habitation. The possibility of serfs becoming land owners was too remote for consideration. CONTINENTAL INFLUENCES Farming practices in England before the eighteenth century were largely adaptations from other European countries. The Romans, about the beginning of the Christian era, took their husbandry to the British Isles. The Anglo-Saxons in the fifth century, brought in from the mainland their farm practices. Likewise the Normans in the eleventh century brought over their methods of tillage. Owing to the close proximity to France, Flanders and Holland, agricultural innovations in those countries were not long in gaining attention and trial by the British farmers. The long hours of sunlight during short summers, with the opposite conditions prevailing in the winters, have influenced the development of plant species in all northern latitudes. Such seasonal conditions have also made necessary a distinct type of farming. Many crops of the Mediterranean region do not survive in north European countries. People in the colder regions also require a different diet than do those living in the warmer climates. By the seventeenth century an agriculture adapted to northern Europe had come into general practice. The implements used in farm work were, by modern standards, very crude and were customarily made by the local smith. A few hoes and mattocks, scythes, reaping hooks, spades and wooden plows with iron points and shares complete the list. The entire supply of tools for an average sized farm could have been hauled in one load on one of their two-wheeled carts. CROPS GROWN The chief grains of northern Europe were wheat, rye, oats, barley, and buckwheat. The common grasses, clover and turnips, were raised for forage. It should be noted that all of these crops were broad-cast seeded, none required row planting or intertillage. A few American products had been brought to England prior to the settlement at Jamestown. They apparently came by the way of Asia. Maize was first called Turkey wheat. The great American bird was named Turkey. Thomas Tusser in 1573 in his "Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie" enumerates the meats suitable for a Christmas dinner with the following verse: "Beef, mutton and pork. Shred pies of the best Pig, veal, goose and capon And Turkey well drest." No earlier mention of anything strictly American in English literature has come to light. INDIAN AGRICULTURE Let us turn now and take a look at the farming accomplishments of the American Indians. The oft repeated statement that the Indians lived mainly by hunting and fishing so far as it pertains to the Virginia tribes is far from the truth. The bitter struggles between the white men and the Indians during the colonial period created animosities and prejudices which have overshadowed the beneficial contributions the red men have made to civilization. As plant breeders, the American Indians rank with the most skillful of the world. Take for instance, maize or Indian corn. There is nothing closely comparable to it known to botanists. It has been domesticated so long that its wild prototype is unknown. Maize, now, could not exist anywhere in the world without the aid of man. The Indians had all the varieties that are now known, such as dent, flint, sweet, early, late, pop, and other special sorts which are no longer grown. They had developed varieties that matured all the way from the tropics to the St. Lawrence River in Canada. The Indians also practiced a mixed culture such as corn, beans, and squashes all in the same hill; they had created a large number of varieties of beans (_Phaseolus genus_): the white, red, black, and spotted sorts now so commonly grown, and many others. INDIAN TILLAGE The Indians were able to clear fields, of several hundred acres in extent, without the aid of metal tools, using fire as their chief agent. Trees, too large to be cut with their stone hatchets, were killed either by building a fire at the base or by girdling the bark. The trees in dying furnished fire wood for domestic use. Planting began among the dead trees wherever enough loose dirt could be scraped together to make a hill for seeding. In the course of time the fields became entirely free from forest growth. These fields were cropped in most cases until their fertility was exhausted and then abandoned. If there was no more available fertile land in the vicinity, the tribe moved to a new location. The early white settlers on the Atlantic Coast found many of these abandoned clearings. Because of their unproductiveness they were called "poisoned fields." The Indians had only the crudest sorts of farming tools. Near the coast, sea shells were the most efficient implements they possessed. The fresh-water clam-shells came next in usefulness. Where these natural scrapers were not available, pointed sticks, and pieces of flat rock served the purpose. One writer describing the Illinois Indians' method of farming says: This tillage consists in breaking up just the surface of the earth with a sort of wooden instrument, like a little pickaxe, which they make by splitting the end of a thick piece of wood, that serves for a handle, and putting another piece of wood, sharp pointed at one end into the slit. This instrument serves them instead of a hoe or spade, for they have no iron tools. INDIAN VS. OLD WORLD CULTURE Attention has been called to the fact that all of the field crops of Great Britain, at the time of the English settlements in America, were broad-cast seeded. The Indians had developed a far different cultural treatment for their crops. In their most common method, that of hill planting, the soil in the intervening spaces was not broken. The hills, two to four feet apart, were from 12 to 20 or more inches in diameter. The soil in these hills was all that was stirred or loosened. All weeds, both in the hills and the intervals between them, were kept cut or pulled out. Four to six grains of maize and two or three beans were seeded in each hill, separately spaced. Squashes and pumpkins were sometimes seeded with the corn and beans. This mixed seeding is a unique feature of American agriculture. The Indians were fortunate in not having to contend with many of the weeds, insects and plant-diseases which now plague farmers and gardeners. Practically all of these pests, some of quite recent date, are of Old World origin and have been introduced by white men, into America. Birds and small animals gave the Indians more concern than all their other pests combined. It was customary to build in their gardens small watch-houses in which the young folks took turns in staying to scare away crows and other troublesome birds. The same hills were used year after year and became in time quite sizable mounds, remains of which have persisted, in some localities, until modern times. In the southwestern parts of Michigan, the early settlers found large tracts of ridged land, evidently relics of Indian agriculture. It is now thought that these areas were corn fields in which the seeding was made in continuous rows instead of hills. A French artist in Florida in 1564 pictured the Indians seeding their crops in rows. After a few years of failure in their attempts to grow American crops, the English colonists adopted the Indian method of seeding, but usually neglected the weeding, and were subjected to ridicule for their shiftlessness by the painstaking squaws. In using work-animals for cultivating corn, it was found advantageous to destroy the weeds by stirring the ground in the intervening spaces. THE SETTLEMENT OF JAMESTOWN On the 26th day of April, 1607, three small ships carrying 105 colonists passed between Cape Charles and Cape Henry into Chesapeake Bay for the purpose of founding a colony in the land called Virginia. The voyagers took seventeen days to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of that region for such an undertaking. First consideration for selecting the site was its possibilities for defense against a foreign foe, especially the Spaniards, in Florida and the West Indies. This was no idle fear. Spain and England had for many years been in conflict. Moreover, Spain claimed all of the Americas by the right of discovery. The second most important thing for consideration was adequate harbor facilities. In both of these particulars, the site selected about thirty miles up the James River left little to be desired. The Jamestown peninsula jutted out into the river far enough to give an unobstructed view for several miles. The character of the land on either side of the river would have made difficult any attempt at an overland attack. The James was sufficiently deep to take care of any ocean going vessels of that time. The heavily forested surroundings furnished protection from violent storms. The channel ran near the shore. Ships could be moored by cables to trees on the land. From the standpoint of raising food stuffs, the colonists could hardly have picked a more unfavorable situation. The peninsula was connected with the shore to the north by a narrow neck of land "thirty yards over." As this narrow strip of land was usually flooded during times of high water, the peninsula was for most purposes an island by which designation it is generally known. There were about eight hundred and fifty acres of heavily timbered forest lands on the island and about eight hundred acres of marsh covered with coarse reedy grasses but there was no cleared land ready for seeding. Clearing forest lands even with modern tools and equipment is a slow laborious process. Cutting down the trees is only a beginning. The stumps with their interlocking root systems have to be removed. It takes many years for hardwood stumps to rot to a condition that they may be easily destroyed. Although the trees on Jamestown Island were large, they could be cut, and those with straight grained boles rived into clapboards, or the logs rolled into piles and burned for their ashes, a product that was in demand in England for use in the manufacture of soap. The soil on the Island may not have been very fertile. The fact that the Indians had never cleared any of the land indicates they did not consider it of the best quality. FIRST ATTEMPTS AT FARMING Captain Newport assigned a third of the settlers, or about thirty-five men, to husbandry. Nothing came from their labors. At one of their first attempts to plant corn, probably English grain, they were assaulted by a few venturesome Indians which so discouraged the settlers, that they made no further efforts to provide crops for food that season. One of the colonists complained about the difficulties of preparing land for corn. Another mentions that some made gardens. The growing season was too far spent when they finally settled at Jamestown to allow for clearing land for spring-seeded grains. By mid-summer their food supply was becoming seriously depleted. Fortunately the Indians remained friendly. Captain John Smith informs us that in July: It pleased God to move the Indians to bring us corn ere it was halfe ripe to refresh us and in September they "brought us great store both of corne and bread ready made." They had four acres of ground prepared the following year which they seeded to "corn" (wheat, barley or peas). No details are given except that nothing came from their efforts. Two growing seasons had passed and not a bushel of grain had been produced for their sustenance. LIVESTOCK Greater success came from their attempts to raise animals than attended their efforts to grow crops. A few animals were brought in. Reverend W. Simmonds states that: "three sowes in eighteene moneths, increased sixty and odd piggs. And neere 500 chickens brought up themselves without having any meat given them." More livestock was evidently brought in the two supplies which arrived in 1608 as it was reported, at the time Smith left the colony in the fall of 1609, that they had "six mares and a horse; five or sixe hundred swine; as many hennes and chickens; some goats some sheepe." Captain John Smith during his two years with the colony was remarkably successful in obtaining from the Indians several hundred bushels of corn and beans in exchange for English manufactured goods. The fertile bottom lands of the rivers north of the James yielded bountiful harvests for the Indians as they have since for Virginians. Glass beads and tinkling bells intrigued the natives. The white man's clothing was also a source of wonderment. It was Smith's contention that the white laborers should devote their time to getting out clapboards, pitch and soap-ashes to ship to England and depend on the Indians to keep the colony supplied with food. Smith was not a farmer. He little realized that the Indians' desire for trinkets would soon be satisfied. Then, too, public opinion in England, aroused by the Las Casas exposures of Spanish cruelties in the West Indies would not sanction forced enslavement of the natives. With the departure of Smith, in October, 1609, the lucrative Indian trade came to an end. No other member of the colony had the courage, for sometime, to visit the tribes along the York and Rappahannock rivers for the exchange of products. FIRST WHITE FARMER IN VIRGINIA The first experienced English farmer to come to the colony was William Spence, who arrived on the _Phoenix_, April 20, 1608. He was variously described as a laborer, gentleman, and ensign. Ralph Hamor certified to his character as "an honest, valiant, and industrious man." Spence survived the ordeals of the early years and was a member of the first House of Burgesses, in 1619. He probably lost his life in the Indian massacre of 1622. Five persons, names not given, were killed at that time on the Spence farm. Alexander Brown states that Ensign Spence is reported lost in 1623 but he may have been living in captivity. It appears from this meager evidence that William Spence lived on his farm outside of the fortified area. If such were the case, he may have set a precedent that has had a pronounced influence on the development of this country. It was the belief of the authorities in the London Company that the colonists would all live in small communities for mutual protection and perform their tillage operations, if any, outside the settlement. These communities, sometimes under the name of "particular plantations" and sometimes "hundreds" were necessary in the early days. But from the beginning there were a few independent plantations, or farms, like that of William Spence. Mention has been made of the impossibility of a farm laborer in the Old Country ever attaining land ownership. But, here in America with its boundless acres, that great boon seemed within their reach. When allotments of land were finally made to individuals it was found advantageous for the owner to live on his farm, rather than to operate it from a remote village. Freedom, independence, and the importance of the individual, which are characteristics of the American farmers, came into existence. The common storehouse for provisions, tried at first in Jamestown, created friction and illwill and in a few years was abandoned. The members of the Council were accused of favoritism and self indulgence in using the food and other products in the storehouse. To have and to hold a parcel of land and to enjoy the fruits of one's own labors has been a compelling force in changing a wilderness into a mighty nation. That force had its inception in the infant colony at Jamestown. A CHANGE IN POLICY The two years of failure to produce crops was convincing evidence that English methods of farming were not suited to Virginia conditions. The colonists were ready to try something else. They turned to the Indians to learn the secret of their successful farming operations. A fortunate event occurred in the early spring of 1609. Two young Indians, by the names of Kemps and Tussore were taken prisoners in retaliation for the depredations of other Indians. At the time of their arrest they were described as "the two most exact villaines in the countrie, that would have betrayed both their king and kindred for a piece of copper." That this statement was not deserved was proven later. These two young Indians liked the Englishmen and the English way of living. It is also stated that while they were fettered prisoners they "did double taske and taught us how to order and plant our fields." Food scarcity became in 1609 a serious problem. The eagerly looked for supply ships from England did not come. To relieve the tension "Many were billetted among the salvages, whereby we knewe all their passages, fields and habitations; how to gather and use their fruits as well as themselves." Kemps and Tussore were given their liberty soon after corn planting time. "But so well they liked our companies they did not desire to goe from us." Nothing further is recorded as to the fate of Tussore, sometimes called Kinsock. Strachey, Secretary of the Colony who was in Virginia 1610-1611, mentions having obtained certain information from One Kemps, an Indian, who died the last year of the scurvye at Jamestown, after he had dwelt with us almost one whole year, much made of by our lord generall and who could speake a pretty deale of English, and came orderly to church every day to prayers, and observed with us the keeping of the Sabaoth both by ceassing from labour and repairing to church. STARVING TIME Dire disaster finally struck the colony. Food supplies were exhausted. Starvation became a reality. A general drought blanketed eastern Virginia. The Indians too were on short rations. Smith, the provider, who had been injured by an explosion of gunpowder, had returned to England. It was one of the most cruel experiences ever endured by a group of men. The climax came during the winter of 1609-10. A few quotations from the records of that period paint the picture in its most terrible colors. Lord De La Warr who arrived in 1610 just in time to save the colony from abandonment reported to the London Company: Our people, together with the Indians (not to friend), had the last winter destroyed and kild up all our hoggs, insomuch as of five or six hundred (as it is supposed), there was not above one sow, that we can heare of, left alive; not a henn nor a chick in the forte (and our horses and mares they had eaten with the first). [Illustration: A NEW INSTRVCTION OF PLOWING AND SETTING OF CORNE, HANDLED IN MANNER, OF A DIALOGVE betweene a Ploughman and a _Scholler_. _Wherein is proved plainely that Plowing and_ Setting, is much more profitable and lesse chargeable, than Plowing and Sowing. By EDVVARD MAXEY. Gent. _He that withdraweth the Corne, the people will curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth Corne._ Prou.11.26. Imprinted at London by _Felix Kyngston_, dwelling in Pater noster Rowe, over against the signe of the Checker, 1601. Photo by Thomas L. Williams] [Illustration: Indians boiling maple sap below and planting corn above. Picture by Lafitau, 1724.] [Illustration: The earliest picture of Maize. Copied from Leonhard Fuchs 1542.] And Reverend William Simmonds states in regard to this same starving time of the winter of 1609-10: as for our hogs, hens, goats, sheepe, horse, or what lived; our commanders and officers did daily consume them: some small proportions (sometimes) we tasted, till all was devoured. Thus after three years they had nothing of a material nature to show for their efforts. Their most valuable achievement had been their acquired knowledge of the Indians' methods of farming. To make a bad situation worse the Indians began to make trouble. Lord De La Warr speaks of their "late injuries and murthering of our men." It was not until 1611 that real farming got under way at Jamestown. Then corn planting and fence building began in earnest. GOVERNOR DALE TAKES CHARGE Sir Thomas Dale with "three ships, men, and cattell (100 kine, 200 swine)" arrived in Virginia May 10, 1611. Dale had seen military service in the Old World and was a severe and strict disciplinarian. The surviving colonists received a jolt in their manner of living. From habits of indolence into which they had fallen, owing to the hot climate and lack of food, after the departure of Captain John Smith, they were with little ceremony put to work. "His first care therefore was to imploy all hands in the setting of corne at the two forts at Kecoughtan, Henry and Charles," wrote Ralph Hamor "and about the end of May wee had an indifferent crop of good corne." This corn was planted near what is now Hampton where Strachey says, "so much ground is there cleared and open; enough with little labour alreddy prepared to receive corne or make viniards of two or three thowsand acres." With corn planting completed, two palisaded forts were built for the protection of a few men left to care for the crops. They made another planting across Chesapeake Bay on the Virginia Cape. They had learned the hard way that clearing the heavily timbered land at Jamestown was hopeless for immediate results. Dale then returned to Jamestown "where the most companie were, and their daily and usual works, bowling in the streets." This game was interrupted and the men put to work felling timber, repairing their houses and providing pointed pickets for fencing a new town, which Dale proposed to build, eighty miles above Jamestown. HENRICO SETTLED In August, 1611, Sir Thomas Gates arrived with "six tall ships with three hundred men, and one hundred kine and other cattel." Gates thoroughly approved of Dale's plans and policies and let him select about three hundred of the best workers in the colony to build at Henrico, now Farrar's Island, at Dutch Gap. Within ten or twelve daies he had invironed it with a pale, and in honour of our noble Prince _Henry_, called it _Henrico_. The next worke he did, was building at each corner of the towne a high commanding watch-house, a church, and store-houses: which finished, hee began to thinke upon convenient houses for himselfe and men, which, with all possible speed hee could, he effected to the great content of his companie, and all the colonie. This towne is situated upon a necke of a plaine rising land, three parts invironed with the maine river, the necke of land well impaled, makes it like an ile; it hath three streets of well framed houses, a handsome church, and the foundation of a better laid (to bee built of bricke), besides store-houses, watch-houses, and such like. Upon the verge of the river there are five houses, within live the honester sort of people, as farmers in England, and they keepe continuall centinell for the townes securitie. About two miles from the towne, into the maine, is another pale, neere two miles in length, from river to river, guarded with severall commanders, with a good quantitie, of corne-ground impailed, sufficiently secured to maintaine more than I suppose will come this three yeeres. APPOMATTOX LANDS SEIZED The Appomattox Indians, at the time of the Jamestown settlement, were located on a neck of land lying between the James and Appomattox Rivers. Dale wanted this land. It was cleared, fertile, and easy to fence, so we are told: About Christmas following in this same year 1611 in regard of the injury done us ... without the losse of any except some few salvages tooke it and their corne. This newly acquired land he named New Bermudas and he divided it into several tracts known as "hundreds." The term hundred was a relic of the feudal system. It meant a political subdivision smaller than a county. It appears to have been Dale's intention that these hundreds or group plantations, often referred to as "particular plantations," should include the land that could be worked conveniently by the farmers from their homes in a village or a town. This plan was not popular. As has been previously stated the colonial pioneers much preferred to live on the land they tilled. The term "hundred" lost its significance. Ralph Hamor described the operations at New Bermudas in the following: In the nether hundred he [Dale] first began to plant, for there is the most corne-ground and with a pale of two miles cut over from river to river, whereby we have secured eight English miles in compasse.... Rochdale, by a crosse pale wel nigh foure miles long, is also planted with houses along the pale, in which hundred our hogs and cattell have twentie miles circuit to graze in securely. Outstanding were the accomplishments of this taskmaster, Governor Dale, in one year, with men many of whom were unaccustomed to manual labor. While some were engaged in fence building and the construction of houses, others were employed in getting out clapboards. Still others were gathering pitch and tar from the pine trees and burning logs to make soap-ashes. The London Company had incurred heavy expense in the settlement and was asking for something in return. Products from the forests were all that were available. It is no wonder that the colonists complained bitterly about their hardships in their letters to the folks back home. It was not Gov. Dale's purpose to develop an agricultural colony. Surplus from food products would not pay the cost of shipment across the ocean. His plantings of corn were purely for local consumption. He limited the number engaged in farming, and to each of those so engaged, he allotted three acres of corn land. These farmers were not allowed to devote their entire time to crop-raising. The livestock as we have seen was allowed to run at large in the fenced ranges. In a letter dated June 14, 1614, Gov. Dale reported that he had set the colonists to the task of "husbanding our corne securely, whereof wee have above five-hundred acres set, and God be praised in more forwardness than any of the Indians that I have seen or heard of this yeare." When Capt. Argall, as deputy governor superseded Dale in May, 1617, George Yeardley having been acting governor from April 11, 1616, he reported that the colony had about four hundred people but not over 200 fit for husbandry and tillage. As for livestock, they had 128 cattle, 88 goats, and a large number of hogs. As to cattle there were about "fortie bulls and oxen but they wanted men to bring them to labour and irons for the ploughs and harnesse for the cattell." They had tried again to grow some small grains. Thirtie or fortie acres wee had sowne with one plough, but it stood so long on the ground before it was reaped it was most shaken. This was a pitiful showing for the ten years that had elapsed since Capt. Newport established the colony. It had been a decade of frustration and heart-breaking disappointments, a decade of gruelling toil and misery. No blame should be attached to the colonists. They were thrust into a situation for which they were woefully unprepared. Virginia was destined to develop agriculturally. Attempts to suppress that industry only served to prolong the colony's troubles. There were no natural resources except the forests in the tidewater region; no Indian trade of any great value; no gems to be picked up at will; no minerals to be exploited. When the situation seemed most hopeless, the culture of a crop new to English farming completely changed their mental and pecuniary outlook. Despair changed to violent optimism. John Rolfe is generally credited with having been, in 1612, the first Virginia planter to engage in the growing of tobacco. Governor Dale at the time frowned on its culture and ruled that two of each man's allotment of three acres of land should be seeded to corn. Hence the change in governorship was a momentous event. CHANGE IN POLICY When Sir Thomas Dale left, in 1616, George Yeardley took over the management of the colony as Acting Governor. He lost no time in putting an end to the restrictions on tobacco culture. The next year, 1617, saw a remarkable transformation in the colonists' way of life. Inertia gave way to frantic activity. "The market-place and streets and all other spare places were set with the crop and the colonie dispersed all about planting tobacco." Nor is this surprising. Tobacco alone promised them surcease from poverty and want. Hope for a bountiful harvest spurred them on as it has spurred farmers in all generations. TOBACCO IN ENGLAND Many fantastic tales have been written about the introduction of the use of tobacco in England. Some of the most authentic historical items follow: The Spaniards found the natives in the West Indies using the plant both for chewing and smoking. They took seed to Europe where its use soon spread to other countries around the Mediterranean Sea. The first Englishman to report on the addiction of the American Indians to the use of tobacco appears to have been John Sparke who wrote the account of the voyage of Sir John Hawkins who, in the course of his travels, spent some months, in 1565, with an ill-fated French colony in Florida. Sparke reported "The Floridians when they travell, have a kinde of herbe dried, who with a cane and an earthen cup in the end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together, doe sucke thorow the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live foure or five dayes without meat or drinke, and this the Frenchmen used for this purpose." It is quite likely that the sailors under Hawkins command acquired the habit and took some of the "dried herbs" back to England. Sir Walter Raleigh is often credited with the introduction of the use of tobacco in England. While he may not have been responsible for its introduction, he apparently played an important role in the spread of the tobacco habit among the English aristocracy. Raleigh's interest in tobacco was no doubt aroused by the report of his protégé, the famous sixteenth century mathematician, Thomas Hariot. Hariot spent a year, June, 1585-June, 1586, with the Raleigh Colony on Roanoke Island. On his return to England he reported on the Indians' farming operations in Eastern North Carolina. For tobacco he wrote in part "We ourselves, during the time we were there, used to sucke it after their manner, as also since our returne, and have found many rare and wonderful experiments of the virtues thereof, of which the relation would require a volume by itselfe: the use of it by so many, of late, men and women of great calling, as els, and some physicians also, is sufficient witnesse." Raleigh later made a voyage to the Island of Trinidad and the Orinoco River in South America from whence had come the most desirable sorts. Spain and Portugal monopolized the European tobacco trade with these mild varieties since the tobacco grown by the Virginia Indians had a sharp, biting taste. Plantings of these better sorts were made in England. A violent controversy was soon raging. King James I who detested Raleigh and all his activities, issued a _Counter Blaste_ against tobacco. This was a most bitter tirade as the following quotation shows: A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless. Since the days of King James, millions of words have been written condemning the use of the "tawny weed." The opposition of King James to tobacco led to the imposition of taxes on its import into England: that from Spain and Portugal was 2d a pound; that from Virginia 6s. 10d. In spite of all this array of evidence as to the detrimental effects of tobacco on the human body its consumption has steadily increased and spread over the entire world. Colossal fortunes have been made in its processing and trade. No product of the soil with the exception of grains used in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages has ever returned such bounteous revenues to the United States government. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 1954 there was paid into the treasury of the United States, the gigantic sum of $1,580,299,000 from taxes on various tobacco products. Of this vast total, Virginia tobacco manufacturers that year contributed 356,867,000 dollars. Municipal and other local taxes are not included in these figures. Tobacco culture in America was a highly profitable enterprise for England. The colonists produced and sold the raw product. Very little tobacco is used in the raw state. Before tobacco is ready for the market it must be processed into the various forms demanded by the trade. It was estimated that one man engaged in tobacco growing in Virginia kept three Englishmen employed, that is, sailors engaged in transportation, processors and tradesmen. The English government also derived considerable revenue on the surplus tobacco products resold on the European market. TOBACCO BECAME MONEY One of the needs of the colony was a medium of exchange: something that could be used for money. As the balance of trade was heavily in favor of the Mother Country, there was no opportunity for an accumulation of English money in America. So tobacco became acceptable for goods, services, and the payment of debts. Salaries were fixed in pounds of tobacco. FLUCTUATING PRICES The value placed on tobacco in England varied with the supply and demand. With the introduction of Negroes in 1619, and the greatly increased immigration from England, the acreage devoted to the culture of tobacco expanded rapidly. The first serious effects of over-production occurred in 1630, when the price fell from three shillings, six pence to one penny a pound. This calamity proved to be a blessing in disguise. The next year, a boat of "18 tons burden," loaded with corn and tobacco disposed of its cargo at Salem, Massachusetts, then but recently settled. The corn brought six shillings a bushel. This started a brisk trade and a Dutch ship, in 1632, took 2,000 bushels of corn from Virginia to New England. In 1633, it was estimated that 10,000 bushels of corn from Virginia were sold in Massachusetts besides a number of beef cattle, goats, and hogs. In spite of the ruinously low prices which sometimes prevailed, the amount of tobacco shipped overseas continued to increase. In 1639, 1,500,000 pounds were exported from Virginia alone. GROWTH OF THE COLONY Captain John Smith summarized the condition of the colony in 1629 in these words: Master Hutchins saith, they have 2,000 cattle, and about 5,000 people; but Master Floud, John Davis, William Emerson, and divers others, say about five thousand people, and five thousand kine, calves, oxen, and bulls; for goats, hogs, and poultry; corne, fish, deere, and many sorts of other wild beasts; and fowle in their season, they have so much more than they spend, they are able to feed three or foure hundred men more than they have. Starving times as a rule were over. Periods of short rations occurred infrequently and then only in times of disaster such as the aftermath of the Indian massacre of 1622 or when the planters became so engrossed in growing tobacco that they neglected to plant maize or other grains. Each succeeding crop was new wealth, something that had not existed before. Gradually, harvest after harvest, the colonists were able to add to their possessions additional tools and equipment. He was a shiftless man indeed who could not provide ample food for his own needs. The history of Virginia during colonial times was intimately connected with the tobacco crop. The general welfare of the people rose and fell with the value placed on the leaf in England. EFFORTS TO SUSTAIN HIGHER PRICES With the over supply of tobacco the English market became extremely discriminating in regard to the quality of the leaf it would purchase. The colonial government from time to time resorted to legislative expedients to prevent the shipment of inferior grades. Governor Wyatt, in 1621 ordered that "for every head they should plant but 1,000 plants of tobacco and upon each plant nine leaves." John Rolfe also stated, in 1619, that, "An industrious man not otherwaies imploied may well tend foure akers of corne, and 1,000 plants of tobacco." A thousand plants would give each worker about 112 pounds of tobacco a year. In 1628, an inspection law was enacted and in 1640, it was ordered that all bad tobacco and half the good should be destroyed. Governor Berkeley, in 1664, made several ineffectual attempts to form agreements, with the planters of Maryland and North Carolina, to restrict the production of tobacco. The planters of each colony were willing for those of the other to stop planting, or to destroy as much tobacco as they pleased; but looking to their own selfish interests they would increase rather than decrease their crop. The Virginia General Assembly, in 1666, prohibited all culture of tobacco but the Maryland authorities complained that the law was ignored by the Virginia planters. The Virginia colonists developed a keen rivalry among themselves in efforts to improve the quality of the leaf grown. Reverend John Clayton, in 1688, says: "For there is not only two distinct sorts of sweet-scented and Aranoko tobacco but of these be several sorts, much different, the seeds whereof are known by distinct names, of those gentlemen most famed for such sort of tobacco, as of prior seed etc." The Aranoko, probably from the Orinoco river region in South America, was grown on the heavy clay soils. The product was a strong tobacco that was most in demand in Germany and other North European countries. The sweet-scented was grown on the lighter sandy soils and although the yield was less it brought a better price on the market. Hugh Jones, in his _Present State of Virginia_, in 1724, mentions one of the many localities in Virginia which became noted for a particular variety of tobacco grown there. To quote: "For on York River in a small tract of land called Digges Neck, which is poorer than a great deal of other land in the same latitude, by a particular seed and management, is made the famous crop known by the name of E Dees, remarkable for its mild taste and fine smell." Topping the growing tobacco plants was a practice originated by the colonists. The main purpose was to limit the production to the large lower leaves and to do away with the small immature leaves at the top of the stem. The General Assembly often specified the number of leaves which could be left; the number, varying with the value placed on the leaf in England, ranged usually from six to nine. Tobacco is a soil exhausting crop. The Jamestown planters soon learned that continuous crops of tobacco, on the same land, soon reduced both the quantity and quality of the leaf. The only resource left to the tobacco farmers was to clear new fields. The more well-to-do planters began to seek favorable locations of uncleared land. The depleted fields were abandoned and the task of restoring their productivity was usually left to nature. Much of the best tobacco soils of Virginia have been cropped and then allowed to go back to brush and tress and again cleared several times. Finding the remains of old tobacco rows out in dense woods is not an uncommon experience. This exhaustion of tobacco lands had a beneficial influence on the agricultural development of Virginia. By the time the fields were abandoned, most of the stumps had decayed and the soil could be prepared for seeding to other crops with plow and harrows. It was found that these depleted fields were still capable of producing satisfactory crops of grain. Many of the colonists who were not financially able to clear new grounds could often buy or rent these abandoned fields for a nominal price. CROPS OTHER THAN TOBACCO While tobacco played a very important part in building a prosperous colony at Jamestown, there were several other staples that also contributed to this result. Of prime importance should be rated maize or Indian Corn. Maize saved the colony from starvation on several occasions. Maize became an export commodity to the New England and West Indian colonies when the price for tobacco fell below the cost of transportation to Europe. Maize aided the colonists in the production of valuable livestock products. This crop has done more to promote the wealth and welfare of this country than all the natural resources, water-power, and forests put together. In order to increase the production of grain in 1623, the General Assembly ordered: "For the encouragement of men to plant store of corne, the prise shall not be stinted but it shall be free for every man to sell it as deere as he can." This law had a wholesome effect. It so increased the production of maize that seven years later as has already been noted, the colonists had a surplus of this product to export to New England. This is perhaps the first law passed in America for the direct benefit of the producers. It stands out in strong contrast to some legislative enactments. There were many other grain laws put on the statute books but the majority of them either fixed the maximum price for which the grain could be sold or else prohibited its exportation. The authorities in England were continually clamoring for products to supplement the tobacco exports. Until 1685, each succeeding Governor as he sailed to Virginia was instructed to "use every means in his power to encourage the production of silk, wine, hemp, flax, pitch and potashes." The reason for finally omitting this clause is interesting. The King was concerned about the revenue the government was deriving from tobacco and did not wish for the colonists to engage in any enterprise that might diminish the volume of leaf that was coming to England. The omission of this clause marked a new era in the relation of the colony to the Mother Country. During the sixty years the clause was in force, several Governors, notably Wyatt, Harvey and Berkeley, had tried to comply with the wishes of the authorities in England, with extremely meager results to show for their efforts. SILK CULTURE There is very little justification for including silk culture as an enterprise in the agricultural history of the Jamestown Colony. It was one product that was usually placed first in recommendations of the authorities who sponsored the settlement of Virginia. In keeping with the improved status of the social and economic life of England, in the latter years of the sixteenth century, came a desire for finer and more lustrous fabrics in their articles of dress. Serges and tweeds, woven from the fleeces of their coarse-wooled sheep, no longer satisfied the fastidious tastes of the ruling aristocracy. Even calicos from far-away Calcutta were esteemed fit for royal inaugural gowns. Silk was the last word in luxurious garb. Silkworms had been reared in the Orient from ancient times. These moths had been domesticated for so many years they had become fully dependent on human aid for existence. They could crawl but could not fly. While silk brought fabulous prices on the world's market there were numerous reasons why its culture never succeeded in America. The handling of the creeping, crawling, ill-smelling worms was objectionable to anyone not accustomed from childhood to the task. Old people and young girls who were the ones employed in rearing silkworms in the Orient received the equivalent of a few cents a day for their labor. Such cheap help was not available in Virginia. Perhaps, the most serious objection of all was the lack of a suitable food supply for the worms. A silkworm from the time it hatches from the egg till it spins its cocoon devours a mass of green forage. Leaves of the mulberry tree are its favorite diet. In fact, without a supply of mulberry trees, successful silk culture is out of the question. Growing a crop of trees had to precede the rearing of worms. This took several years. Nevertheless, the directions of the London Company urged in season and out that the colonists should produce silk. Governor Wyatt, in 1621, was instructed: "Not to permit any, but the council and heads of hundreds, to wear gold in the clothes, or to wear silk till they make it themselves." Nothing came from this order. In 1656, the agitation for silk became so intense, the General Assembly was forced to take action. First, an experienced silk grower, an Armenian by the name of George, was sent to the colony, and the General Assembly was ordered to give him four thousand pounds of tobacco to keep him in the country. Another law, passed that year, ordered that each planter set out ten mulberry trees for each one hundred acres of land he owned. These trees were to be fenced, to protect them from horses and cattle, and to be kept weeded. This law was repealed, two years later, as it "seems rather troublesome and burthensome than any waies advantageous to the country." The law was re-enacted in 1661 but given a three years delay as it was impossible to get mulberry trees. The General Assembly, in 1657, voted a bounty of 5000 pounds of tobacco to any planter producing 100 pounds of wound silk. There were no claimants. Two years later, the bounty was increased to 10,000 pounds of tobacco and the amount of silk required was reduced to 50 pounds. Again the results were negative. Then a bounty of fifty pounds of tobacco for each pound of silk was ordered. The effects from all these orders are summed up in an act of the General Assembly in 1663 which reads: George, the Armenian, having proved the making of ten pounds of wound silk, it is ordered there be paid him for his encouragement in the levy according to act. It is assumed that George received 500 pounds of tobacco. What became of the silk is not recorded. A few years later the price per pound of wound silk was fixed by the General Assembly at 20 shillings or two hundred pounds of tobacco. HEMP AND FLAX Two plants, the culture of which was strongly urged by the English authorities, were hemp and flax. In this case, greater success was realized than occurred with most of the demands that came from across the ocean. It had been ordered in 1658, by the General Assembly: "That what person or persons, soever, shall at any time hereafter make, in this colonie, so much silke, flax, hopps or any other staple commodities (except tobacco) as is worth two hundred pounds sterling, or English wheate to the value of five hundred pounds stirling in one yeare, and exporte the same or cause the same to be exported, or shall first make two tunne of wine raized out of a vineyard made in this collonie, shall have given him by this country, for an encouragement, ten thousand pounds of Virginia tobacco." Apparently no one qualified for the bounty on flax for, in 1661, provision was made for importing some flax seed from England. No price was fixed, in 1666, on "flax by reason of the uncertainty of the quality." In 1682, bounties were offered: "For every peck of flax seeds, four and twentie pounds of tobacco, and for every peck of hemp seed twenty pounds of tobacco." Bounties were also offered for hemp and flax woven into cloth. It was also ordered that every tithable person should produce one pound of dressed hemp and one pound of dressed flax or two pounds of either annually. From that time on considerable hemp and flax were raised in Virginia, but most of the crop was used at home. Linen cloth was highly prized. There was also a demand for cordage made of hemp fibers for ships. ENGLISH GRAIN As already noted, the initial attempts of the colonists to grow the grains with which they had been accustomed in England came to naught. They were familiar with wheat, rye, barley and oats. To make satisfactory yields, these grains had to be broadcasted on well prepared seed beds. Newly cleared forests left the soil full of stumps and roots. The wooden plows of those days were useless on these newly cleared lands. Preparation of the soil, for tobacco or maize, could be accomplished with a hand hoe or shovel. These plants required space in which to develop their full growth. A tobacco plant could be set or a hill of corn planted wherever a little loose dirt could be found. Some English grains were seeded in the cleared land near Hampton and Newport News but these old fields, abandoned by the Indians, were also near to exhaustion. An "indifferent crop" was reported. In 1627, Abraham Piersey had 200 acres each in wheat and barley. From these crops he was able to furnish food daily to sixty persons. How much of this seeding was on land that had been abandoned for tobacco, or was old Indian fields, is not stated. When DeVries visited Virginia in 1643, he found the planters putting down, in English grain, lands which had been exhausted by successive crops of tobacco. The General Assembly had ruled in 1639, that corn (probably wheat and maize) could be exported whenever the price fell below twelve shillings a bushel. Large exports of this valuable cereal were then being made to the near-by colonies of Maryland, Manhattan, Carolina and the West Indies. It was estimated by Edward Williams, in 1650, that two able-bodied laborers could seed sixty acres in wheat in the course of one season and reap the grain when it was ripe. The yield from such an area had a market value of four hundred and eighty pounds sterling. It was reported that these fields which no longer produced the best grades of tobacco were better for wheat than newly cleared land. As these exhausted fields could be rented or purchased at moderate cost compared with prime tobacco new ground, many poorly financed colonists were able to get a start towards prosperity without resorting to the almost universal practice of growing tobacco. LIVESTOCK As already shown, the domestic animals brought to the Colony, in the first few years of its settlement, were turned out in the woods to fend for themselves. The original breeding stocks were of ordinary quality and the lack of care given them contributed to their inferiority. Predatory animals such as wolves, bears, panthers and wild cats exacted a heavy annual toll of young animals. Until Governor Dale constructed his miles of picket fences there was nothing to keep the animals from wandering up into the highlands where the colonists did not dare to venture. In spite of the handicaps all classes of domestic animals increased in numbers when not slaughtered for food. This was especially true of swine. [Illustration: 1 _Hoscyamin Perimianus._ Tabaco or Henbane of Peru. 2 _Sana Sancta Indorum._ Tabaco of Trinidada. Two varieties of tobacco as pictured by Gerard in 1597. The seeds of these two varieties were taken to Virginia by the Jamestown Settlers.] [Illustration: Photo by Thomas L. Williams Trenching Implements, Seventeenth Century] [Illustration: Thomas L. Williams, Photo Seventeenth Century Plows] SWINE Hogs contributed more to the material welfare of the Jamestown Colony than historians have generally recognized. Hogs have many advantages over other breeds of livestock. They multiply much faster than any other domestic animal except poultry. They make faster gains and double the weight for the food consumed than do cattle, sheep or goats. When slaughtered, hogs dress out about 75 percent edible meat, as compared with 55 to 60 percent for cattle. When given wide open range in humid climates such as prevailed in the Tidewater, they do fairly well without other feed than what they can find for themselves. In summer, at Jamestown, they obtained most of their living in the numerous fresh-water swamps. Tuckahoe, a flag-like swamp plant, with an enormous root system, was their favorite hot weather forage. The roots of tuckahoe, often as large as a man's arm, contain a crystalline acid that burns the mouth of a human being like fire. After a few trials, hogs seem to relish it. While tuckahoe is not a fattening feed, hogs eating it make satisfactory gains in weight. In the fall when the acorns and nuts ripened, the hogs put on weight at a rapid pace. The woods were stocked with oak, hickory, chestnut, beech, chinquapin, and persimmon trees and shrubs, the fruits of which were all grouped under the general term _mast_. There is one difference between pork produced from grain-fed hogs and those fattened on mast. The lard of the latter group melts at a temperature of about ten degrees below that of those fed corn. To the connoisseur of well cured hams and bacon this low melting point is not a detriment but a distinct improvement. The colonists adapted the Indian practice of using smoke to aid in the curing of meat. The natives built platforms of poles supported by posts about six feet from the ground. The meat to be cured was salted and spread on these poles. A small fire was built underneath to furnish the smoke. This arrangement was called by the Taino Indians, a _barbacoa_ from which we get the English equivalent, _barbecue_. By 1636, hogs, sheep and goats had increased in such numbers that ships coming to Jamestown could supply their needs for meat from the colony's surplus. This was advantageous to shipmasters and furnished a market for a product of a growing industry in the colony. Prior to that time ships coming to America from Europe had to take on food stuffs for the round trip. Another benefit accrued to the colony. The combined curing process of salt and smoke imparts a delicious flavor to hams and bacon that has never been excelled by any other method. This applies especially to meat from hogs fattened on mast or peanuts. Virginia hams and bacon soon became noted for their excellence all over the world. The fame of these products has never waned. Unfortunately, most hotels and restaurants in the United State now use the term "Virginia ham" on their menus to designate this sort of meat regardless of its origin or cure. New England ships, plying a coastwise traffic with the Caribbean countries, frequently stopped in Jamestown for cargoes of salted meats. This trade was especially desirable during times when the price of tobacco fell to ruinous levels. Most of the hogs ran wild. Some planters marked their animals by ear-cuts, and then could claim an entire drove, if they had a number of their branded hogs in it. CATTLE Neat animals were kept near Jamestown in the early years, but they, like the swine, had to gather their own living. A few were trained for draft purposes. In new grounds where stumps and roots prevail, oxen are more useful than horses. They do not get in a panic when obstacles interfere. Then too, they can be slaughtered for beef when they become too old for work. During the period under study, cattle, in Virginia, often brought good prices. Many were purchased by the New England colonists as it was cheaper to buy animals, in America, than to go to the expense and loss of animals by shipping them across the ocean. There was a market for oxen in the Caribbean region, where they were used for power, in the sugar mills. In the first thirty years, some of the cattle went wild in the back country, but many of the cows were kept in the vicinity of the Jamestown headquarters. While not notable as dairy cows, they produced enough milk so that Virginia gained a reputation among ship crews for its excellent butter and cheese. In 1649 it was estimated that there were twenty thousand cattle in the Colony. GOATS AND SHEEP Flocks of goats and sheep became noticeable to visitors about the middle of the century. Many were brought to Virginia. In the early years the numbers killed by wolves made them unprofitable. Heavy bounties paid for wolf heads eventually reduced the depredations of this predator until sheep and goats were fairly safe. As producers of meat and wool for clothing sheep contributed to the general welfare of the colony. By 1649, the number of sheep was estimated at three thousand; and of goats at five thousand. HORSES Of all the domestic animals brought from England to Jamestown in the early days of the settlement, the most expensive to transport and the most useless after they arrived in Virginia were horses. The estimate of the number in the Colony in 1649 is 200. There was no purpose for them to serve. The fragile wooden plows of the seventeenth century were of no use among the stumps and roots in newly cleared forest lands. Horses were of no value for transportation as there were no roads through the forests or bridges over the rivers. They were of little use as beasts of burden as there were few burdens to carry. A horse was no match for an able-bodied man on Indian trails through timbered country. As late as 1671, the Batts and Fallam expedition, consisting of five white men and seven Indians, who were the discoverers of New River, had horses for the white men when they left Petersburg. All of these animals were dead before they reached the mountains. The colonists did all they could afford to do with the horses brought to them and that was to turn them loose to shift for themselves. In a very few years there was a band of wild horses roaming the woods in the back country. Eventually these wild horses provided a great deal of recreation for the younger planters. Capturing and breaking to the saddle wild horses became a popular sport. As soon as a horse was caught and accustomed to a rider the most natural thing was to try it for speed. Horse-racing began with local contests but developed into a major sport. King Charles II is credited with having imported Turk and Arabian horses to England. Some of this blooded stock may have been shipped to Jamestown. At any rate Virginia saddle-horses at an early date began to attract attention because of their speed. Two other colonies, Rhode Island and New York were famous for their fast horses. Racing became an inter-colonial sport. The first regular race course was the New Market on Hempstead Plains, Long Island. There the fleetest horses of Long Island were brought together to settle all arguments by actual trial. This famous race course was described in 1670 by a contemporary, Daniel Denton: "Toward the middle of Long Island lyeth a plain sixteen miles long and four broad, upon which plain grows very fine grass, that makes exceeding good hay, and is very good pasture for sheep or other cattel; where you shall find neither stick nor stone to hinder the horse heels or endanger them in their races, and once a year the best horses in the island are brought hither to try their swiftness, and the swiftest rewarded with a silver cup, two being annually procured for that purpose." Horse-racing became of economic importance to these colonies. The sugar planters, in the Caribbean region, also became interested in this "sport of kings" and sent agents to buy the fastest horses they could find. High prices were sometimes paid for prize winning animals. Governor Francis Nicholson in 1690, "gave prizes to those that should excell in riding, running, wrestling and cudgeling." Of these sports, riding became by far the most popular. Interest in horse-racing, fox-chasing, steeple-chasing, and riding tournaments has never entirely died out in Virginia. CONCLUSION A great deal has been written about the events that occurred during the ninety-two years that elapsed, from the settlement of the colony on Jamestown Island, and the change of capital site to Williamsburg. Judging from the recorded observations of visitors during that period, no great difference in the general appearance of the landscape had taken place. It still looked very much like a wilderness. Much forest land had been cleared, farmed for a few years, and then turned back to nature. The mammoth trees with scanty undergrowth, that the firstcomers found, had been replaced with a luxuriant second or third growth. If the top-soil is not eroded away a new forest can be produced in Virginia in thirty or forty years. One of the most noticeable improvements was in the dwelling houses. Substantial brick and frame buildings had replaced the hurriedly constructed shacks of the early days. The accumulated wealth from the surplus products resulting from their farming activities was reflected in their flocks and herds of horses, cattle, sheep, goats, swine, and poultry. Dire famine no longer stared them in face. Through insistence that only the best quality products should be shipped abroad, favorable trade relations had been established in the commerce of the world. Perhaps the greatest achievement of all was the creation of the farm home where a family could own, in fee simple, the land they tilled, live in peace, and enjoy the fruits of their own labor. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Beverley, Robert. _History of Virginia_ ... Reprinted from the author's 2nd. rev. ed., London, 1722. Richmond, Virginia, 1855. 2. Brown, Alexander. _The Genesis of the United States._ Boston and New York, 1890. 2 Vols. 3. Bruce, P. A. _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century._ New York, 1895. 2 Vols. 4. Bullock, William. _Virginia Impartially Examined_ ... London, 1649. 5. Campbell, Charles. _History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia_ ... Philadelphia, 1860. 6. Clayton, Rev. John. _A letter_ ... May 12, 1688. _Giving an Account of Several Observables in Virginia_ ... Reprint in Force, Peter. Tracts ... Washington, 1836-46. Vol. 3. 7. Devries, David Peterson. _Voyages from Holland to America._ New York, 1853. 8. Force, Peter. _Tracts and Other Papers_, Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies of North America. Washington. 4 Vols. Gray, Lewis C. History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860. Washington, D. C. 2 Vols. 9. Hakluyt, Richard. _Collection of Early Voyages, Travels and Discoveries of the English Nation._ London, 1809-12. 5 Vols. Also Edinburgh, 1885-90. 16 Vols. 10. Hamor, Ralph. _A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia_ ... London, 1615. Albany, J. Munsell, 1860. 11. Hariot, Thomas. _Narrative of the First English Plantation of Virginia._ London, 1588. Reproduced after DeBry's illustrated edition printed in Frankfort in 1590, the illustrations having been designed in Virginia in 1585 by John White. London, B. Quaritch, 1893. 12. Hening, W. W. _Virginia Statutes at Large_, 1619-1792. 13 Vols. 13. Jefferson, Thomas. _Notes on the State of Virginia._.Richmond, J. W. Randolph, 1853. 14. Purchas, Samuel. _Purchas his Pilgrims._ London, 1626. 5 Vols. 15. Smith, Captain John. _Works._ Edited by Arber, 1884. Also Edinburgh 1910. 2 Vols. 16. Spotswood, Alexander. _Official Letters_, 1710-1722. Ed. by R. A. Brock. Virginia Historical Society Collections. Richmond, 1882-85. 2 Vols. 17. Strachey, William. _The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia_ ... London. Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1849. 18. Swem, E. G. _Virginia Historical Index._ Roanoke, Virginia. 1934-36. 2 Vols. 19. _Virginia Company of London. Abstract of the Proceedings of the Company_ ... 1619-1624. By Conway Robinson. Edited by R. A. Brock. Virginia Historical Society, 1888-89. 20. _Virginia Truly Valued._ In Force's Tracts, Vol. 3. APPENDIX I A PLOWMAN'S DAY This is an extract from Markham's _Farewell to Husbandry, or the Enriching of all Sorts of barren and Steril grounds in our Kingdome_, a well-known book on farming as carried on in England in the early years of the 17th century; it is presented here in order to show what the daily tasks of a farmer were at that time, and what might be expected, according to this standard, of a settler coming to Virginia. The author, Gervase Markham, issued several editions of the work. This extract is from the fourth edition, printed in 1638, of which a title-page is reproduced in this booklet, from the copy in the William and Mary College Library. Markham's book has an additional interest, for the reason that in the supplies sent by ship _Supply_ in 1620 to Berkeley Hundred, a copy of the current edition was included. Having thus generally runne over (in a short computation) the labours of the husbandman, I will now briefly as I can, goe over the particular daies labours of a farmer or plowman, shewing the particular expence of every houre of the day, from his first rising, till his going to bed, as thus for example: We will suppose it to be after Christmas, and about plow-day (which is the first letting out of the plough) and at what time men either begin to fallow, or to break up pease earth, which is to lie to bait, according to the custome of the country; at this time the plough-man shall rise before foure of the clocke in the morning, and after thankes given to God for his rest, and the successe of his labours he shall go into his stable, or beaste-house, and first he shall fodder his cattell, then cleanse the house, and make the booths cleane, rub downe the cattell, and cleanse their skins of all filth, then he shall curry his horses, rub them with clothes and wisps, and make both them and the stable as cleane as may be, then he shall water both his oxen and horses, and housing them againe, give them more fodder, and to his horse by all meanes provender, as chaffe and dry pease or beanes, or oat-hulls, pease or beanes or cleane oates, or clean garbage (which is the hinder ends of any kinde of graine but rye) with the straw chop'd small amongst it, according as the ability of the husbandman is. And whilst they are eating their meat, he shall make ready his collars, hames, treats, halters, mullens, and plough-geares, seeing everything fit, and in his due place, and to these labours I will also allow full two houres, that is, from foure of the clocke till sixe, then hee shall come in to breakfast, and to that I allow him halfe an houre; and then another halfe houre to the gearing and yoaking of his cattell, so that at seven of the clocke hee may set forward to his labour, and then he shall plow from seven of the clock in the morning, till betwixt two and three in the afternoone, then he shall unyoke, and bring home his cattell, and having rubb'd them, drest them, and cleansed away all durt and filth, he shall fodder them, and give them meate, then shall the servants goe in to their dinner, which allowed halfe an houre; it will then be towards foure of the clocke, at what time hee shall goe to his cattell againe, and rubbing them downe, and cleansing their stalls, give them more fodder, which done, he shall go into the barnes, and provide and make ready fodder of all kinds for the next day, whether it be hay, straw, or blend fodder, according to the ability of the husbandman: this being done, and carried into the stable, oxe-house, or other convenient place, he shall then goe water his cattell, and give them more meate, and to his horse provender, as before shewed; and by this time it will draw past sixe of the clocke, at which time he shall come in to supper, and after supper, he shall either by the fire side, mend shooes both for himselfe and their family, or beat and knock hemp, or flaxe, or picke and stampe apples, or crabs for cider or verdjuce, or else grind malt on the quernes, picke candle rushes, or do some husbandly office within dores, till it be full eight a clocke: then shall he take his lanthorne and candle, and goe to his cattell, and having cleansed the stalls and plankes, litter them downe, looke that they be safely tied, and then fodder and give them meate for all night, then giving God thankes for benefits received that day, let him and the whole household goe to their rest till the next morning. [Illustration: MARKHAMS Farewell to HVSBANDRY; OR, The Enriching of all sorts of Barren and Steril grounds in our Kingdome, to be as fruitfull in all manner of Graine, Pulse, and Grasse, as the best grounds whatsoever. Together with the annoyances, and preservation of all Graine and Seed, from one yeare to many yeares. As also a Husbandly computation of men and Cattels daily labours, their expeences, charges, and utmost profits. The fourth time, revised, corrected, and amended, together with many new Additions, and cheape experiments: For the bettering of arable Pasture, and wooddy Grounds. Of making good all grounds againe, spoiled with overflowing of salt water by Sea-breaches: as also, the Enriching of the Hop-garden; and many other things never published before. _LONDON_, Printed by EDVVARD GRIFFIN for IOHN HARISON, at the signe of the golden Vnicorne in Pater-noster-row. 1638. Photo by Thomas L. Williams] Now it may be intended, that there may be in the houshold more servants than one; and so you will demand of mee, what the rest of the servants shall be imployed in before and after the time of plowing: to this I answer, that they may either goe into the barne and thrash, fill or empty the maltfat, load and unload the kilne, or any other good and necessary work that is about the yard, and after they come from plowing, some may goe into the barne and thrash, some hedge, ditch, stop gaps in broken fences, dig in the orchard or garden, or any other out-worke which is needfull to be done, and which about the husbandman is never wanting, especially one must have a care every night to looke to the mending or sharpening of the plough-irons, and the repairing of the plough and plough-geares, if any be out of order, for to deferre them till the morrow, were the losse of a daies worke, and an ill point of husbandry. APPENDIX II THE TRANSPORT OF GRAIN In the early years at Jamestown, much grain was shipped from England for the use of the colonists. The extract, which follows, is from Markham's _Farewell to Husbandry_, 4th edition, 1638. The term "corn" as used by Markham does not mean maize (Indian corn), but wheat, barley, rye, or oats. And first for transportation of graine by sea, it is two waies to be done, as either in great quantities for trade and the victuallyng of other nations, or in smaller quantity for victualling the men in the ship, prepared for a long and tedious voyage. For the transporting of graine for trade in great quantities, it is to be intended the voyage is seldom long, but from neighbor to neighbor, and therefore commonly they make close decks in the ships to receive the graine, faire and even boorded, yet if such decks be matted and lined both under and on each side, it is much the better, and this matting would be strong and thinne; there bee some which make the decks only of mats, and sure it is sweet, but not so strong as the boord, therefore the best way of transportation is to have strong boorded deckes well matted, and then spreading the corne of a reasonable thicknesse, to cover it with matting againe, and then to lay corne on it againe, and then mats againe, that betweene every reasonable thicknesse of graine a mat may lie, the profit whereof is, that when the corne with his owne heate and the working of the sea shall beginne to sweate, which sweat for want of aire to drie it up, would turne to putrifaction, then the mats thus lying betweene, will not only exhale and sucke up the sweate, but also keep the corne so coole and dry, that no imperfection shall come unto it: and here is to be noted, that these mats should rather be made of dry white bents, than of flagges and bulrush, for the bent is a firme, dry, crispe thing, and will not relent or sweat of it selfe, but the flag or bulrush is a spungy and soft substance which is never empty of his own and other moystures. Now for transporting of graine, for victualls for the ship, which is in much smaller quantity, because it is best for the private use of a few within the ship; the only best and safest way, is, to take salt-fish barrells, or any caske in which any salt-fish hath beene piled, as cod, herrings, salmon, sprats, or any other powdred [_i.e._, _salted_] fish; and whilest the vessels are sweet, you shall calke them both, within and without, plaster [and] daubing them all over; then into them put your graine of what kinde soever it be, and head them up close, and then stow them in such convenient dry place of the ship, as you shall thinke fit; and questionlesse, if beliefe may be given to the worthiest authors, which hath writ in this kinde, you may thus keepe your graine sweet, sound and in full perfection from one yeere to an hundred and twenty yeers; but certainly daily experience shows us, that all kind of graine thus put up and kept, will remaine sound and sweet, three, foure, and as some say, seven yeeres, for so far hath lately been try'd; and what here I speake of [on] ship-boord, the like may be done in any town of war or garrison, whether besieged, or not besieged, or in any other place, where any necessity shall compell; the proofe of this manner of piling or putting up of graine, serveth as well for land as sea. 
29057	----	file was produced from scans of public domain works at the University of Michigan\\\'s Making of America collection.) Transcriber's note Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. ADDRESS DELIVERED BY HON. HENRY H. CRAPO, Governor of Michigan, BEFORE THE CENTRAL MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, AT THEIR SHEEP-SHEARING EXHIBITION, HELD AT THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FARM, On Thursday, May 24th, 1866. LANSING: JOHN A. KERR & CO., STEAM BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS. 1866. ADDRESS. _Mr. President, and Members of the "Central Mich. Ag'l Society:"_ LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: Remote from the theatre of action in the late rebellion, Michigan has experienced comparatively few of the evils that followed immediately in its path. The usual pursuits of peaceful life, were here scarcely disturbed, and by the permission of a Gracious Providence, the industry of the inhabitants of our State was but little diverted from its legitimate channels. Nevertheless, while so many of her patriot sons were engaged in the deadly strife of Southern battle-fields, and the result of the struggle was in the uncertain future, a sombre cloud could not fail to brood over our daily life, interfering with the full enjoyment of the blessings we retained. Now, however, the roar of cannon and the noise and tumult of war is no longer heard in our land; the scenes of carnage and blood which our once peaceful and happy country has recently witnessed are at an end; the turmoil and strife of armed hosts in deadly conflict have ceased; the public mind is no longer excited, and the hearts of the people are no longer pained, by the fearful news of battles fought, and of the terrible slaughter of kindred and friends. Social order again invites us to renewed efforts in our respective labor and callings; and we are permitted "to beat our swords into plow-shares and our spears into pruning-hooks." Like the calm and quiet repose of peace when it follows the clamor and din of war, so is the delightful, cheering and invigorating approach of spring, as it succeeds the chilling blasts and pelting storms of dreary winter. The truth of this is verified to us on the present occasion. We have come together at this delightful spot, and on this beautiful spring day, not only for the enjoyment of a festive season, but also for the improvement of our minds and the increase of our present stock of knowledge on subjects with which our several interests and our respective tastes are more or less identified. At your request and upon your kind invitation, I am here to contribute my share--small though it be--to the general fund. I should, however, have much preferred the position of a quiet learner to that of an incompetent teacher--to have _listened_ rather than to have _spoken_. But being here, it will be my purpose--by your indulgence--to speak, in general terms, upon such topics as seem to me appropriate to the occasion. I shall not presume to theorize, or to speculate; neither shall I travel through unexplored fields with no other guide than imagination; nor shall I attempt to entertain you with any rhetorical flourishes, or figures of speech; but in a simple manner endeavor to give briefly my own views on the several subjects discussed. The occasion is undoubtedly one affording a wide field for profitable discussion; yet the space which your greatest indulgence can be expected to allow me will render it necessary that I confine myself to a very few topics, and will barely permit a hasty glance at some of those only which may be considered appropriate in this address. You will therefore, I trust, remember that in case I do not refer to subjects which you may deem of importance, it will be from this reason, and not because I may have considered them unimportant. * * * * * In the first place, then, permit me a brief reference to this Association, under whose auspices, and by whose directions--acting in connection with the officers of the Agricultural College--this festival is held. Your Society, I understand, extends over the counties of Ingham, Eaton, Clinton, Livingston and Shiawassee, and has been formed for the purpose of combining and concentrating a wider scope of individual action than could otherwise be attained, with a view to an increased interest in the subject of Agriculture and of Agricultural Fairs; thereby recognizing the principle that "in union there is strength." The effort is not only laudable, but will, I have no doubt, be productive of the most beneficial results. In fact we have in this very effort to bring into notice and give an increased interest to one of our most important branches of husbandry in our State--the growth and production of wool--abundant evidence that such will be the result. By coming together, as on the present occasion, in the spirit of a free, frank and social interchange of ideas, an increased interest cannot fail of being awakened, as well as an extensive inquiry instituted, among farmers generally, not only as to the most desirable breed of sheep, but also as to the best modes of tending and keeping and feeding the different kinds, with a view to the greatest profits. The influence of such a gathering as this is of much value--not only in encouraging a desire for excellence and creating a spirit of competition and of laudable emulation, but as furnishing the means for an active exchange of the more desirable specimens. Those who assemble are enabled to enjoy a season not merely of relaxation from toil, but also for mutual consultation and discussion; and a healthy and growing interest in everything pertaining to Agriculture, in all its varied forms and branches, is thereby induced. In this connection I may be permitted to make a few remarks in relation to the salutary influence which our Agricultural Societies cannot fail to exert upon the farmers of Michigan, and of the _benefits_ which are certain to flow from them. There is no employment which keeps man so isolated as that of Agriculture; and these societies serve, in a very great degree, to counteract the bad effects of this by bringing mind into intercourse with mind. They should receive the united and cordial support of every farmer. Whilst professional men are brought into frequent contact with each other--and the trader is in constant intercourse with his customers--and the mechanic is associated with those employed with him in the shops--the farmer spends most of his time with his family, and with his flocks and herds, and sees comparatively little of others. The Agricultural Fair brings--or should bring--all the farmers together, with their wives and daughters, where a healthy, social intercourse is enjoyed. There a higher standard of excellence in everything is formed. He there learns that what of his own he had been led to believe was the best--whether in flocks or herds, or farm products--may be greatly improved, and his ambition and pride, as well as his interest, are at once excited to make an advance. At the same time the industrious housewife, and the blushing Miss, by an examination of the cloths and flannels--the carpets and quilts--the embroidered skirts and capes--the collars and slippers, discover that these articles are worthy not only of their admiration but of their emulation, and they, too, resolve to copy from a standard of merit higher than their own. Thus is excited among those so brought together a spirit of competition, and a desire in their turn to excel. Another important benefit resulting from Agricultural Fairs, is a more rapid and general diffusion of knowledge among the farmers in regard to the advantages and practical utility of new inventions, for the saving of time and labor in agricultural operations. This is illustrated very clearly by the exhibition of Mr. Parish's "Stump and Grub Extractor," on exhibition here. This machine, I understand, was patented on the first day of the present month, and _now_ all in attendance at this Fair have had an opportunity of witnessing its operations and judging for themselves of its merits. An effective machine of this kind is of incalculable value to the farmer in removing _at once_ from his fields the unsightly stumps that disfigure them, and which adds so much to the labor of cultivating those fields. Of the machine itself, I may be permitted to say, by way of digression, that it surpasses in the effectiveness of its operations anything of the kind which I have yet had an opportunity of witness. But this is not all. The mutual consultation and discussion consequent upon Agricultural Fairs, begets a spirit of inquiry and a desire for information in relation to every subject connected with the farmer's calling, and to gratify which he has recourse to periodicals and other works in which its various branches are discussed and explained. He will there learn what agricultural chemistry has done for him, and the importance and value of the analysis of the different kinds of soil. He will also find the result of the various systems of husbandry practiced by others as well as the effects of experiments made, and thereby secure to himself their benefits without incurring their cost. And although no amount of reading alone can make a man a farmer, yet the knowledge derived from a perusal of agricultural papers devoted to the interests of the tillers of the soil will be of incalculable value to him. SHEEP-HUSBANDRY. It will undoubtedly be expected that "Sheep-Husbandry," not only from the importance of the subject itself, but because of its being the principal feature in this exhibition, should receive at my hands a due share of consideration. I am free to confess, however, that the subject will be approached with no small degree of hesitancy and distrust on my part, not only because of my want of practical knowledge in regard to it, but also because it may be fairly regarded, I think, in many respects at least, as a sort of debatable ground. Different views are undoubtedly entertained by equally intelligent and experienced men, upon this as well as upon other equally important subjects; and the fact I believe is well established that "Doctors" not only _may_ but _do_ very often "disagree," and that, too, sometimes very tenaciously. Should I advance opinions at variance with those entertained by well-informed and practical men who may listen to me, I will simply remark that I am not here to lay down rules and establish principles for the guidance of any one, but to discuss principles and rules of action, as well as practical questions, with a view to lead others the more carefully to inquire into and investigate the same. The subject of Sheep-Husbandry with us is certainly an important one--wool being a great, leading staple product of our State; and very much attention is now being paid to it, which is fully justified by the advantages of our soil and climate for the keeping of sheep. The farmers of Michigan are fully aroused to the importance of this interest, and have labored zealously, and at much expense and cost, to improve their breeds of sheep, and to foster and develop this great interest. They have certainly done much in this direction; but more--very much more, I apprehend--remains yet to be done. It must, however, be remembered that a blind zeal, without that knowledge which is the result of experience, observation and study, will do very little in the right direction. Sheep, like cattle, should be selected for specific purposes, and in reference to affording the greatest profit under existing, and probable future circumstances. The exclusive cultivation of this or that breed--of the fine or coarse, or of the long or short wools--whether kept exclusively for their wool, or both for their wool and the shambles, should never be practiced, unless under special and unusual circumstances. The farmer in this, as in every other agricultural department, must endeavor to see his relation to the merchant, and adopt a practice having in view the chances of ultimately reaching the most certain as well as the most profitable market; for, after all, the connection between the producer and the manufacturer and merchant, is but a partnership for loss and gain. The merchant will call upon the manufacturer for such woolen goods as his market demands, irrespective of the mere opinion which any one may entertain in favor of this or that kind of wool; and the manufacturer, in his turn, will call upon the farmer for just what is wanted. The farmer should therefore, in the selection of his flocks, have in view the market upon which he is to rely for the sale of his wool; the texture and weight of fleece; the health and vigor of body and constitution, as well as the habits and economy of the animal. He should sedulously seek to bring his sheep to a high degree of perfection in every respect. In seeking to obtain quality of fleece it is a self-evident fact that he should not overlook quantity; and that quantity should also be considered in connection with quality. It is a patent fact, of which if we needed evidence it may be found in this exhibition as well as in the numerous county exhibitions of similar character, which have recently been held, where very rarely any other class of sheep are seen, that a strong preference for fine-wooled Merinos is very generally, if not almost exclusively, entertained at the present time among the farmers of this State, and money in the purchase of that class is of but little account. It is well known that very high prices are being paid not only for single specimens but for whole flocks of this breed. This is probably all right, so far as it is necessary for the purpose of attaining excellence in flocks, upon points already spoken of. To such a preference there should be no objection, if it be not carried so far as to superinduce an unprofitable reaction--and provided that the demand for the grade of wool produced by these sheep is to have no limit, and that all which can be grown is sure always to command a remunerative price. But will this probably be so? Let us consider. As I have already intimated, the demand for any particular quality or kind of wool will not depend upon the fact that farmer A or farmer B has such wool to sell, taken from sheep for which he paid very large prices, and of which he has now a very large flock; but rather because that particular kind and quality of wool is called for by the manufacturer simply to fill the orders of the merchant, who in his turn is only desirous to supply the demands of the consumer. From an examination of our imports, it appears that in 1863, of _sixty millions_ of woolen goods, about _forty millions_ were manufactured of the longer worsted wool. This wool is required to make a fabric of lustrous appearance for imitations of Alapaca, and for a supply of which our manufacturers now depend mostly on foreign countries The price of combing wool has been for some time increasing rapidly, in comparison with other wool, in consequence of its consumption gaining upon its growth. And I saw recently that the British farmer had been urged to increase the production of this article to its fullest extent, both from a consideration of duty as well as of interest. The manufacturer of Alapaca cloths--a most beautiful fabric of recent introduction--and their extensive use, has not only led to this increased demand, but has enhanced the price of this kind of wool, which will undoubtedly be maintained, as new fabrics requiring to be made from long wools, especially for the garments of ladies, are now being introduced in great variety, and are becoming daily more popular and of more general use. Another cause for the continued and increasing demand for these wools is the facility with which they can be used for the purpose of making imitations of Lama fabrics and Alapacas; and I have no doubt that factories for the manufacture of these goods will rapidly multiply in New England and elsewhere, and will soon, to a very great extent take the place of those now consuming the fine wools. In support of these views, permit me to give the following extracts from the work of Mr. Randall, the well known and enthusiastic champion of the Merinos. He says: "In the American market there is a much larger demand for medium than fine wools, and the former commands much the best price in proportion to its cost of production." Again he says: "American producers of very fine wool have ever fed an expectation, but never obtained the fruition of their hopes." These are significant admissions, coming as they do from such a quarter. * * * * * The South Downs are a variety of sheep of decided merit; but have never, I think, been fully appreciated by the farmers of Michigan. They are of large size and symmetrically formed, with hardy and robust constitutions, and their wool is fine, short and curled, and destitute of fibrous spires that give to it the felting properties. It is neither a short nor a long staple, but ranks in this country as "middle wool." The shorter staples are made into flannels and light woolen goods; and the longer are extensively used for combing. Their mutton is unsurpassed; its flavor is delicate, and the flesh juicy and well intermixed with fat. They are the most prolific breeders--the proportion of ewes bringing twins being at least fifty per cent. I recently saw a fine flock of South Down ewes in the State of New York of which more than three-fourths of the whole flock had twins. Among the more desirable varieties or families, for the production of long wool, in this climate, are, perhaps, the Cotswolds, noble specimens of which you have had an opportunity of inspecting on this occasion; and have, I trust, with me, been highly gratified at their weight of carcass, combined with their fine forms and apparent hardiness of constitution, as well as the superior fleeces they have now yielded. My purpose, however, is not to advocate the claims of this or that class of sheep at the expense of any other, but to present such views for your consideration as may lead to a more thorough and candid investigation of the whole matter. Let me say in continuation of this subject, that in a comparison between the Cotswold and other long wool varieties, with the fine wool Merinos the _advantage as to weight of fleece_ is decidedly with the former; and especially so when their respective fleeces are thoroughly cleansed and scoured; for whilst the loss of the long wools very rarely reaches _twenty per cent._, that of the Merinos generally much exceed _fifty per cent._, and the fleeces of prize rams often more than _seventy per cent._ Manufacturers are already beginning to make a discrimination between wool that is clean and that which is not so. Suppose they buy the South Down, Cotswold and Leicester wools, and their grades, from which is lost by scouring twenty per cent. only, whilst upon the finest Michigan wool there is lost _fifty_ per cent. and more--making the cost of the latter, at ordinary prices, one-third more per pound than the former, how long will it be before they will study to increase their consumption of long wool when they can make from _thirty_ to _forty_ per cent. more cloth with the same money? They will certainly seek to avoid, in some way, the necessity of buying with their wool so very large a per centage of grease and dirt, as they claim they are now doing in the purchase of fine wools. The South Downs, as I have already stated, as well as the long wool sheep, have a decided advantage in the quantity and value of meat which they yield for the shambles; for no one, I apprehend, will deny the fact they not only yield more wool but very much more flesh to the live weight than do the Merinos. And this is a fact worthy the serious consideration of farmers, and certainly a strong argument in favor of the more general breeding of long wool sheep. The war, and perhaps other causes, have very seriously reduced our supply of meats, the waste of which cannot soon be repaired. Many of our soldiers will not again return to rural life, which will be quite too tame for them after the long, protracted excitement of war. They will seek other occupations, and be consumers rather than producers of meats. In addition to this a tide of foreign immigration is setting in upon our shores, where they will continue to swarm for years to come as never before, hungry for meat; and it has been conclusively demonstrated that the ratio of our ordinary increase of population far exceeds the production of cattle and sheep, which deficiency in beef and mutton must hereafter be supplied in some way. I will again quote from Mr. Randall's work. He says: "I am strongly impressed with the opinion that the production of mutton has been too much disregarded as a concomitant of the production of wool. Near large meat markets mutton is the _prime consideration_, and wool but the accessory." Here, then, is a potent combination of circumstances, which were never before brought together, guaranteeing an abundant remuneration, as I believe, to those who may engage in this particular branch of husbandry; and the field, although now new, will nevertheless, I have little doubt, be very soon successfully occupied. I cannot but hope that our ambitious and enterprising stock breeders will secure to themselves their full share. Perhaps I have already exhausted your patience by dwelling so long upon this subject; but regarding it--as I most certainly do--as a very important one, and this being an appropriate occasion for its discussion, you will, I trust, bear with me a moment longer, whilst I venture to make a few practical suggestions, before taking leave of it. Let me then say, in this matter of Sheep Husbandry, in addition to what has already been said, that you should guard against extreme views of any kind. Merinos are undoubtedly a valuable and a very desirable breed of sheep, as witness the noble specimens exhibited on this occasion; but you do not want them and nothing else, unless they will pay a better profit than any other sheep; nor should you pay an extravagantly high price for them merely to enrich the sheep-breeders of another State; nor because it is fashionable to do so. You should remember that the South Downs, the Leicesters, the Cotswolds, as well as some others perhaps, also have their respective claims to favor and are worthy of your consideration. My own opinion is that a grade of sheep may be produced by a cross between the Cotswolds and some other varieties, which will furnish a staple of fine, long, combing wool of lustrous appearance, that will prove--all things considered--quite as remunerative as fleeces from the choicest Merinos and their grades. You should, also, avoid the too common error of overstocking with sheep when the price of wool is high. Sheep Husbandry has been a very profitable branch of business for the farmers of this State; but like every other business it may be overdone, and is liable to fluctuations and changes. Sheep must be well fed and cared for in order to produce heavy fleeces; and there is certainly a limit to the number which may profitably be kept upon any farm; and it not unfrequently happens that a flock of fifty sheep on a small farm, will yield a larger net profit than would a flock of five hundred if kept upon the same farm. When the price of wool is high, the farmers are too reluctant to sell off their sheep, and thus become liable to an overstock. In fact, this is now the great danger of the wool-growers of Michigan. The best economy, and the most judicious management, will be to keep down the number of your flocks to your means of pasturage and feed; and constantly aim to improve the grade and quality of those you retain by disposing of the less desirable specimens for mutton. Your motto should be to elevate the standard of your flocks, rather than to increase their number beyond your means of feeding. Another evil is also to be guarded against,--that of giving your attention to sheep to the exclusion of cattle. I am aware that in the past there have been--in this State--few advocates for the raising of cattle, and that the sound judgment of any man would at once be brought into question who should attempt to do so. But I think there has been more of prejudice than reason in this. The farmer, as a mere matter of policy, should not confine himself to any one thing, as thereby the fluctuations and changes incident to any branch of business, may very possibly--nay very probably--disappoint his hopes and expectations. If he has only sheep on which to rely, a sudden fall in the price of sheep and wool, or a general prevalence of any of the diseases to which sheep are always liable, would be a serious disaster to him; whereas, if his attention is directed to both sheep and cattle, as well as to horses, swine, &c., his chances of certain and continued success are very greatly multiplied. In fact, cattle are already commanding enormous prices in consequence of a general scarcity everywhere, not only for the shambles, but for the dairy, and this deficiency will not, I apprehend, be very soon supplied. I have recently visited some of the more highly cultivated portions of the State of New York, where I found good fair cows were worth _one hundred dollars_ each and not easily to be had at that. Good sized, first quality working oxen, are now worth here $250 per pair; and a large lot of cattle has recently been sold for beef in Flint, at seven cents per pound, live weight. Horses, too, are scarce, and must continue to be so for a long time, as their destruction by the late war was very great, and years will be required to replace those so destroyed, especially in the rebel and border States, which must be supplied from the North. Swine, also, are now deficient, and principally because, a few years since, for a time the price of pork was very low, and their growth was in consequence, at once almost abandoned. The farmer should take a broader view of things, and pursue a steady, onward course, avoiding all extremes, as well as sudden changes. As a large portion of his farm products are more adapted to the feed of cattle, horses and swine than to sheep, he should, if for no other reason, keep a due proportion of these animals, any excitement in favor of sheep notwithstanding. My own opinion most decidedly is, that the time has come when the best interests of the farmers of Michigan require that a portion of the attention now being devoted to sheep husbandry should be directed to that of other kinds of stock. But, to return again from this digression to the subject of sheep and wool. One of the most serious difficulties with which the farmers have to contend, is the combinations that are too often sought to be made by purchasers to secure their wool at the lowest possible figures. The manufacturers and wool buyers, undoubtedly act in concert,--at least to some considerable extent,--to depress the price, and especially so, before and about the time the new clip is coming in. They are well drilled in this, and many of their operations are systematic and efficient. At such time they pretend not to be in want of wool,--that the demand will be light, &c. Purchases are made very sparingly, and temporary supplies are procured from other sources, even at a higher cost than the farmers ask. This is done upon the ground that an occasional sacrifice of this kind pays well in the end, if thereby they are able to keep down the price of the great bulk of domestic wool. Sometimes fictitious sales are reported, and various other means are employed to this end, with the view that a few holders, at least,--either from necessity or timidity,--may be induced to sell, and thus aid their efforts to establish low prices. It thus becomes the duty of the farmers to act with much consideration, study and wisdom; and purely as a matter of self-defense, to adopt some concert of action among themselves for the protection of their own interests. When the price is low and the market dull at the time of shearing, there should not be too much haste in making sales. In 1861, I think it was, the farmers were over anxious to sell, for no other reason than because at that time the price of wool was very low and the market dull. They then overlooked the well established commercial fact that depressed markets generally advance, rather than retrograde, and that Government disbursements then certain to be made would create funds and a higher market, and that the demand for the staple would increase. They consequently sold for _twenty-five cents_ per pound, fleeces, that in less than three months commanded _forty-five_ to _fifty_ cents. They also, in many instances, offered to sell their fleeces for less than half the sum they would bring in a very few weeks. On the other hand, as is too common, when wool at the time of shearing commands a high price and the market is brisk, the farmers are inclined to hold on for still higher prices. But this is another mistake in the opposite direction. The rule should be,--"_sell_" when the market is quick, and prices are good;--and "_hold on_" when the market is dull and prices are low. Before leaving this subject, permit me to call your attention to another important matter in connection with sheep husbandry in this State. Sufficient care has not heretofore been taken to clean and otherwise properly prepare this great and important staple for market, and the consequence has been that the character and representation of "Michigan wool," I am sorry to discover, has been very seriously lowered in the market, and a great loss to the producers has thereby been sustained. It is a fact, perhaps not generally known, that from this cause alone, "Ohio wool" sells for about _five_ to _ten cents_ per pound more than "Michigan wool." In an interview which I recently had with an extensive eastern manufacturer, who was induced last season for the first time to purchase a lot of "Michigan wool," he expressed his surprise that the Michigan wool growers should be so heedless of their own interests as to overlook this important fact. From his statements I learned that the prejudice of the manufacturers against "Michigan wool" was so great that many of them would not buy it at hardly any price when they could get "Ohio wool." He said a large proportion of our wool was poorly washed, and that this was true of a great proportion of our finest and best lots; and that it was not only sent to market in this condition, but was badly and slovenly put up, with much larger twine than they use in Ohio,--the fleeces, also having a torn and jagged appearance; and many of them, when opened, were found to contain the _unwashed_ tags. He, however, expressed himself highly pleased with the quality of the wool he had purchased, and said it compared favorably in that respect with any he had ever received from Ohio; and he believed if our wool could be sent to market as clean and in as good condition otherwise as the Ohio wool,--and the prejudice which has been created against it, in consequence of this not having been the case heretofore, could once be removed, he doubted not that "Michigan wool" would command in the market the highest prices and the most ready sales. This is certainly a serious matter, and prompt and efficient measures, of some kind, should at once be taken to remedy the evil; and every wool-grower should feel, as he really is, personally interested in the work. I commend this subject, gentlemen, to your serious consideration, and trust some concert of action will be had to prevent a continuance of this great evil, and to place "Michigan wool" where it should most certainly stand, at the head of the list. If this can be done in no other way, I would suggest the formation of a "Wool-Growers Board of Trade," or some other efficient organization for the purpose--if for no other--of tracing out and holding up to scorn every individual who shall aid in inflicting so serious an injury to this great interest, and of doing so great a wrong to his neighbors and fellow-citizens, and that, too, from the base and fraudulent motive of selling dirt and tags as fine wool--for be assured that any imposition of this sort, practiced upon manufacturers, will recoil upon our own heads; and where _one_ cent will thus be saved, thousands, yes, tens of thousands of dollars, will, as a necessary consequence, be indirectly lost to the farmers of Michigan. And the loss they have sustained from this cause during the last three or four years will undoubtedly exceed the enormous sum of two millions of dollars. But I must take leave of this subject. THE STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. Permit me now to occupy your attention for a brief space whilst I speak of this Institution--the State Agricultural College--upon whose grounds we are now assembled, and where by the kindness and courtesy of its officers, we have been so cordially welcomed and so pleasantly entertained. It is not, I think, inappropriate to the occasion that I should do so. Let me remind you then, in the outset of my remarks on this subject, that this Institution is in its early infancy; and that notwithstanding the beautiful landscape which is spread out before us; with its verdant fields just springing into luxuriance, dotted with the finest specimens of the choicest breeds of sheep and cattle, with the College grounds skillfully laid out and now in process of being tastefully adorned by Art, a few years only have been numbered with the past since not only this spot, but all the surrounding country, as well as almost the entire territory of our young, but noble and now highly prosperous State, was an unbroken wilderness, covered with the primeval forest, the entangled woods giving shelter and concealment to wild and ferocious beasts, as well as to the wandering and savage red man. What a change has thus been wrought in a few short years! the result of the toil and privation of the adventurous pioneers, of whom many have already become intelligent, enterprising and forehanded farmers. And more than this: Michigan, although but recently settled, and one of the youngest in the great sisterhood of States, has been the first to establish a professional school for the agricultural education of her sons, in which is not only taught the sciences and their application to agriculture, but also agriculture as an art, with such experiments as are calculated to impart a more thorough and practical knowledge of the same; and connected with the study of these a department of manual labor; the legitimate effect of all which is to increase the student's desire for knowledge as well as his love of study, and to remove the barrier too often existing between the educated and laboring classes--which can only be done by giving a better education to those who labor, and by removing the prejudices of the educated against labor. But I propose to speak more definitely of the aims and objects of this Institution, as well as its claims to the favor and support of the farmers of Michigan. They need not be told, I think, that its design is to promote their benefit. But have the farmers of this State, as a class, heretofore recognized this fact? And have they in return for the advantages which it proposes to them, given it that countenance and encouragement which it claims at their hands? I fear not. There are, it is true, noble exceptions to this; yet it is also true that a large proportion of their number have looked upon it with suspicion and distrust, as though its purpose was to do them a wrong--to inflict upon them an evil. They have not merely withheld from it their aid and support, but their active influence has too often been exerted to its disadvantage and prejudice. This is certainly wrong--very wrong! Let us look a little into this matter. Is knowledge--a knowledge of those sciences which are intimately connected with agriculture as an art--of no value to the farmer? Is it necessary that he should be a dolt in order to be fitted for his vocation? Will ignorance and bad husbandry increase his crops or enable him to find a better market for his products? Or, will his enjoyment, in his daily round of toil, be any greater because unconscious that he is groping his way along in the dark? No! For however that may have been in the past it is certainly not the case now. And although "ignorance," as it is said, may be "bliss," yet in these days, at least, it must be a sort of negative bliss. Ignorance is certainly not power; nor does it lead to wealth as a means of comfortable support and enjoyment--which is the legitimate end of all labor. Will _ignorance_ give respectability, or sweeten the toil of the husbandman? Will it elevate his thoughts and desires to higher and nobler aims, or inspire him to "look from nature up to nature's God?" Will it lead him instead of a fixed stolid gaze upon the earth over which he walks, to engage in the study of those great and omnipotent laws which regulate all matter, and which so wonderfully, yet certainly control both the animal and vegetable kingdoms? No! It will accomplish none of these desirable ends, but the very reverse of them all. This proposition is so self-evident to intelligent men, that to advance it to such an audience as the one before me--except as the basis of an argument--must be entirely superfluous. But what was the social position of the farmers, let me ask--even in this highly favored country--fifty or sixty years ago? Were they not then regarded as men without knowledge--devoid almost of sensibilities--unfitted for anything except the mere routine of daily labor and toil--and capable only of delving in the soil day by day? And were they not then considered, even by themselves as well as by others, as occupying the very lowest position in the scale of society? Such were the facts. Every person who was regarded as too ignorant and uncultivated for other pursuits, was, by common consent, considered as having a prescriptive right to farming as a vocation. In fact ignorance was regarded as the proper and sufficient diploma for the farmer. And as a consequence he was not only poor and without influence, but too often considered by others as without respectability merely because he was a farmer; and all that was conceded to him--in fact all that he claimed for himself--was a simple subsistence upon the hardest fare, without any of the luxuries, and very often with a scarcity of the necessaries of life. Remember, I am speaking of the farmers, as a class, _fifty_ or _sixty_ years ago--before there were any county fairs, or agricultural colleges, newspapers or magazines, and when agriculture was the result of labor without knowledge, system or calculation. But although the farmers have emerged from this condition very slowly, yet what is their position now? Are they not regarded as being on a level at least with those of other callings in social importance? Do they not occupy positions of confidence and trust in society? Are they not found in our Legislative Halls in fair proportion with men of different pursuits? This is certainly true: and the advance alone is the result of a higher mental culture--of a wider range of thought--and of an increased fund of knowledge, and consequently of an improved system of farming. And if the advance of agriculture and the condition of the farmer have been tardy, as compared with the improvement in other departments of labor--in other avocations of life--it is solely because science and study have not as soon been applied to agriculture--and because also the farmer has not been permitted the advantages resulting from so early a development of facts connected with his calling as have other classes of men. But the great work is now fairly in progress of elevating the farmer to his true position in the social order of society--of teaching him that his vocation, instead of being the dull, unintellectual lot of the ignorant, is the most noble and dignified, as well as the most conducive to men's happiness in which he can be engaged; and nothing is now wanting to secure the steady advancement of this work, but for the farmers to do justice to themselves and to their calling, by laying hold of the means for that end which are placed within their reach. Assuming all this to be undeniably true, where can be found more potent agencies in the work of elevation than Agricultural Colleges? And why, then, should any farmer in this State hold back from giving this Institution his cordial and hearty support? And stranger still--why should he put himself in antagonism to its success? Such an attitude, to my mind, is not merely unwise, but preposterous--yes, suicidal. If the College is not what it should be, the more his self-interest should prompt him to bestow upon it his aid. It is the _Farmers' Institution_--founded for _his_ benefit, at much cost; and if _he_ does not feel an interest in it and labor to make it a success, who will? Who should? But why have a portion of the farmers of Michigan seemed to look with distrust upon this Institution, and in some cases, I regret to say, seemed to regard it as a sort of wrong to themselves; and if they have not actually opposed, have, at least, withheld from it their support? I must confess, that should I give what seemed to me to be the true answer to these questions, it might be regarded by some who have not very carefully looked into the subject, as an assumption on my part unwarranted by facts. Would that it were so; that I were mistaken. But having given the subject some little thought and investigation, you will, I trust, permit me the honest expression of my own views upon this important matter. It is for that purpose and none other, that I am here. But you, Mr. President, as well as all those now present, can certainly take no personal exception to these views, as the very fact of such presence shows that you are not of the class to which I may allude; and I am gratified in being able to say that I believe there are very many others, not present, who are the warm and devoted friends of this Institution; and who, with you, I most certainly hope, constitute the rule and not the exception. But the answer: And in giving which, I will avail myself of the privilege conceded to a certain class of men,--that of answering one question by asking another. Why then do men ever oppose or neglect their own interests? To my mind, only from want of knowledge, from prejudice or self-will--or some other of the same brood of enemies to man's success in laudable undertakings; and of which _ignorance_ is the chief, and may be regarded as the prolific source of all the others. In this case, undoubtedly, as in others, some are opposed from a mere notion of opposition, or from a mere whim; others again, simply to agree with, or differ from, some, who are either in favor or opposed; whilst some must oppose whatever they themselves do not originate;--and, others again, have no doubt been led honestly to entertain a distrust which has finally grown into an opposition, through the influence of misrepresentations, or from a perversion of facts by those whose interests, from some cause, are at variance with its success. But I am quite certain that the whole opposition and indifference to this Institution, so far as it may come from the farmers themselves, is unnatural and fictitious, and will soon pass away as does everything else which is built upon such foundation. It is said by some that "the Institution has been a mistake from the beginning;" that it "was located wrong;" that it "was not started right;" that it "has been badly managed;" and that it "is an expensive concern, and will never pay;" and a great deal more. But it is very easy to say all this, and yet there may be very little reality in it, and still less reason. Let me here say to the objectors and fault-finders,--suppose all this be true? who _then_ is to blame? Is the Institution itself responsible for all these mistakes? Or, are they not rather the consequences of unavoidable and untoward circumstances, magnified and aggravated by _your_ opposition, and over which its friends and managers could have no possible control. I admit the probability that the early success of the College would have been more certainly secured, had an old and highly cultivated farm been purchased for the purpose; but for this the means were wanting. You say, perhaps, that College students should not be required to _clear land and dig stumps_. True; but when the officers and managers of such an Institution are _compelled_ to do this, and to reach the end desired as best they may through such means, they are certainly entitled to all praise, and richly deserve the meed of commendation for even partial success, and which should be all the dearer to us because of being reached under such adverse circumstances. That the facilities which the College now possesses are inadequate to the proper accommodation of those who wish to avail themselves of its advantages, and even to the extent of the limited number of students now belonging to it, is certainly to be regretted. But this is an evil to be overcome by the patient and persistent efforts of its friends, and not by the antagonism and opposition of its enemies; by making the most out of the limited means at command, and not by abandoning the whole because the means are not now all we could desire. That its management may have been a matter of criticism with those who have known but little about it, or who have taken little or no pains to investigate the facts, is not strange; yet, for one, I am clearly of the opinion that--when all the difficulties with which it has had to contend, are duly considered--its management, thus far, has been all that any person could reasonably hope for or expect; and more--that its officers and professors are entitled to great credit and much praise, for securing under so much discouragement, that degree of success which is apparent here even to the casual observer; and claim of us, and are entitled to receive at our hands, a proper and just recognition of their valuable services, and the fidelity with which they have been rendered. * * * * * Farmers of Michigan! Be not led astray by such objections as I have stated, or by any others of a similar import. You have here a noble Institution, in faithful and competent hands--one that will soon be of incalculable value to you--and one, too, that will reflect much credit not only upon you, but upon the whole State. And although it may not now be all you could wish or desire, yet when we consider what it now is in view of the difficulties with which it has had to contend, we have a sure guarantee, that it will yet be a success and will realize all your reasonable expectations. Let me ask of you, in all earnestness and candor, to give it now your warm, your hearty support, so that you may not only assist in securing for yourselves and the public the great end of its establishment, but that you may, by and by, safely, and without the fear of successful contradiction, lay claim to the honor of being among its early friends and upholders. There is something noble and magnanimous in rendering substantial aid and support to a cause in the hour of its weakness and in the time of its need; whilst there is something not only selfish but mean, in stepping forward with proffers of assistance, and with spurious claims of imaginary or intended favor, when such assistance is no longer needed, and when the heat and burden of the day has been borne by others; for, be assured, that the time is coming when no farmer will covet the distinction of having been among the number of the enemies of this Institution. The advantages of our Agricultural College, in connection with an experimental farm, are too obvious to every intelligent mind to require that I should occupy your time in dwelling upon them. And, when I speak of an experimental farm, I do not mean a mere model farm, by which a specimen of good farming only is exhibited; but, like this, a farm embracing a variety of soils--adapted to an extensive range of experiments--and where the value of the different kinds of grain may be tested, as well as the relative advantages of different modes of tillage; the relative effect and value, by actual trial, as well as by analysis, of various manures as fertilizers; and the economy of labor; as well as the comparative value of the different breeds of cattle, sheep, horses, swine, &c., &c., with a view to the introduction and dissemination among the farmers of the State, of such as should prove the most profitable; or of such as could be most successfully used for obtaining the most desirable grades. Such a farm as this, under the efficient and skillful management of its present able and persevering Superintendent, cannot fail to be of very great benefit to the farmers of this State, and should, both as a matter of duty to others and of interest to themselves, receive their united and generous support. And I am firmly of the opinion that when they shall afford this Institution such aid, it will soon become one of the first among our noble institutions of learning, and will be a just cause of pride, not merely to the farmers themselves, but to every intelligent person throughout the whole extent of our noble State. And now let me invoke, for the future prosperity and success of this College, not merely the liberality of the farmers--or what they may regard as such--in the payment of a trifling tax for its maintenance, but what is of equal importance, and which it has a right to demand in justice to itself--their earnest advocacy of its claims. AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE STUDENTS. But I have already, I fear, trespassed quite too far upon your patience, and should, perhaps, before this, have relieved you from further infliction. Yet seeing before me, many--if not all--of the students of this College, I must beg your indulgence for a moment longer, whilst I address to them a very few remarks. Let me say, then, to you, young gentlemen, that you are now in the enjoyment of privileges for the acquisition of that knowledge so essential to success in after life, which were denied to me--and the absence of which I have felt as a great and serious loss through the whole period of my existence. See to it that you place a just value upon these privileges, and that you do not abuse them. Whilst most of you, I trust, are fitting yourselves for the employment of farming as an avocation, some, perhaps, may be looking forward to other professions and pursuits. I, however, on this occasion, must confine my remarks to those of the former class. And to such I would briefly remark, that the value and importance of an agricultural education to the youth whose lives are to be devoted to the highly reputable occupation of farming, begin now to be admitted, and happy will it be for our common country, when such education shall be regarded as a necessity. Labor is no longer degrading, but is creditable and dignified; and agricultural pursuits are no longer regarded as disgraceful or ignoble by any except the fop and the coxcomb, but are of all employments the most honorable in which men can be engaged. Nor is it, as has been too often supposed, a cheerless life of toil and fatigue, but has many substantial and endearing charms. It is also the fountain-head for the supply of all our wants; and when contrasted with other employments, its advantages cannot fail to be appreciated. Whilst those who seek a profession must be content to spend many weary years of wasting study--of constant struggle--before they can begin to live, the farmer has at once before him, health and quiet, ease and contentment, as well as the enjoyment of sober pleasures which do not cloy, and whilst the chances of those who engage in commercial pursuits are, that about _ninety-five_ out of every _one hundred_ are destined to failure, the farmer is exempt from such a hazard, for the chances of failure with him are found to be only about _four_ in every _one hundred_. I do not, of course, in this comparison, include those who, having no land of their own, are obliged to toil for others as laborers, and who cannot therefore be ranked as farmers. To the farmer, if each day does bring its labors, it also brings its pleasures; and even as he toils in his dusty fields, he can derive unalloyed pleasures, not only from the study and care of his bleating flocks and lowing herds, but from the prospect of an abundant harvest as he looks over his fields of waving grain or contemplates his orchards of rich and luscious fruits. And each day renews to him these pure and substantial pleasures, which afford not only gratification, but health. With the farmer there are no all-absorbing cares, no corroding anxieties, no vitiating excitement. He is measurably freed from the seductions of enervating pleasures. From the green fields and fresh air he drinks constant draughts of inspiration. His great study is, or should be, Nature and Nature's God. To him each season has its profits and its pleasures; for he knows that while he rests or sleeps his fields are working for him. He is also freed, in a great measure, from the baleful influences which attend that false ambition so often excited by other pursuits. My young friends, when you leave your "Alma Mater" and fix upon your route for life's journey, let your choice of a profession be carefully and wisely made; and then, with undeviating course, pursue it steadily and persistently to the end, for in this only will be found your reasonable chances of ultimate success. * * * * * Mr. President, I have already detained you and this audience quite too long; and with many thanks for your kind and patient attention, I will now bring my remarks to a close. * * * * * Transcriber's note The following changes have been made to the text: Page 11: "recently visted" changed to "recently visited". Page 12: "not generally kown" changed to "not generally known". Page 19: "knowlege so essential" changed to "knowledge so essential". 
29258	----	2 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Volume LXXX] [Number 2 Whole Number 186 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND AN ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION BY HARRIETT BRADLEY, Ph.D. _Assistant Professor of Economics, Vassar College Sometime University Fellow in Economics_ New York COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., AGENTS LONDON: P.S. KING & SON, LTD. 1918 "It fareth with the earth as with other creatures that through continual labour grow faint and feeble-hearted." _From speech made in the House of Commons, 1597_ To EMILIE LOUISE WELLS CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 11 The subject of inquiry--No attempt hitherto made to verify the different hypothetical explanations of the enclosures--Nature of the evidence. CHAPTER I THE PRICE OF WOOL 18 Accepted theory of enclosure movement based on price of wool--Enclosures began independently of Black Death and before expansion of woollen industry--Price of wool low as compared with that of wheat in enclosure period--Seventeenth-century conversions of pasture to arable--Of arable to pasture--Conversion not explained by change in prices or wages--Double conversion movement due to condition of soil--Summary. CHAPTER II THE FERTILITY OF THE COMMON FIELDS 51 Dr. Russell on soil fertility--Insufficient manure--Statistical indications of yield--Compulsory land-holding--Desertion of villains--Commutation of services on terms advantageous to serf--Low rent obtained when bond land was leased--Remission of services--Changes due to economic need, not desired for improved social status--Poverty of villains--Cultivation of demesne unprofitable. CHAPTER III THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OPEN FIELDS 73 Growing irregularity of holdings--Consolidation of holdings--Turf boundaries plowed under--Lea land--Restoration of fertility--Enclosure by tenants--Land used alternately as pasture and arable--Summary of changes. CHAPTER IV ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE 86 Enclosure by small tenants difficult--Open-field tenants unprofitable--Low rents--Neglect of land--High cost of living--Enclosure even of demesne a hardship to small holders--Intermixture of holdings a reason for dispossessing tenants--Higher rents from enclosed land another reason--Poverty of tenants where no enclosures were made--Exhaustion of open fields recognised by Parliament--Restoration of fertility and reconversion to tillage--New forage crops in eighteenth century--Recapitulation and conclusion. INDEX 109 INTRODUCTION The enclosure movement--the process by which the common-field system was broken down and replaced by a system of unrestricted private use--involved economic and social changes which make it one of the important subjects in English economic history. When it began, the arable fields of a community lay divided in a multitude of strips separated from each other only by borders of unplowed turf. Each landholder was in possession of a number of these strips, widely separated from each other, and scattered all over the open fields, so that he had a share in each of the various grades of land.[1] But his private use of the land was restricted to the period when it was being prepared for crop or was under crop. After harvest the land was grazed in common by the village flocks; and each year a half or a third of the land was not plowed at all, but lay fallow and formed part of the common pasture. Under this system there was no opportunity for individual initiative in varying the rotation of crops or the dates of plowing and seed time; the use of the land in common for a part of the time restricted its use even during the time when it was not in common. The process by which this system was replaced by modern private ownership with unrestricted individual use is called the enclosure movement, because it involved the rearrangement of holdings into separate, compact plots, divided from each other by enclosing hedges and ditches. The most notable feature of this process is the conversion of the open fields into sheep pasture. This involved the eviction of the tenants who had been engaged in cultivating these fields and the amalgamation of many holdings of arable to form a few large enclosures for sheep. The enclosure movement was not merely the displacement of one system of tillage by another system of tillage; it involved the temporary displacement of tillage itself in favor of grazing. In this monograph two things are undertaken: first, an analysis of the usually accepted version of the enclosure movement in the light of contemporary evidence; and, secondly, the presentation of another account of the nature and causes of the movement, consistent with itself and with the available evidence. The popular account of the enclosure movement turns upon a supposed advance in the price of wool, due to the expansion of the woollen industry in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Landlords at this period (we are told) were increasingly eager for pecuniary gain and, because of the greater profit to be made from grazing, were willing to evict the tenants on their land and convert the arable fields to sheep pasture. About the end of the sixteenth century, it is said, this first enclosure movement came to an end, for there are evidences of the reconversion of pastures formerly laid to grass. An inquiry into the evidence shows that the price of wool fell during the fifteenth century and failed to rise as rapidly as that of wheat during the sixteenth century. Moreover, the conversion of arable land to pasture did not cease when the contrary process set in, but continued throughout the seventeenth century with apparently unabated vigor. These facts make it impossible to accept the current theory of the enclosure movement. There is, on the other hand, abundant evidence that the fertility of much of the common-field land had been exhausted by centuries of cultivation. Some of it was allowed to run to waste; some was laid to grass, enclosed, and used as pasture. Productivity was gradually restored after some years of rest, and it became possible to resume cultivation. The enclosure movement is explained not by a change in the price of wool, but by the gradual loss of productivity of common-field land. This explanation is not made here for the first time. It is advanced in Denton's _England in the Fifteenth Century_[2] and Gardiner, in his _Student's History of England_,[3] accepts it. Prothero[4] and Gonner[5] give it some place in their works. Dr. Simkhovitch, at whose suggestion this inquiry was undertaken, has for some time been of the opinion that deterioration of the soil was the fundamental cause of the displacement of arable farming by grazing.[6] This explanation, however, stands at the present time as an unverified hypothesis, which has been specifically rejected by Gibbins, in his widely used text-book,[7] and by Hasbach,[8] who objects that Denton does not prove his case. In this respect the theory is no more to be criticised than the theory which these authorities accept, for that does not rest upon proof, but upon the prestige gained through frequent repetition. But the matter need not rest here. It is unnecessary to accept any hypothetical account of events which are, after all, comparatively recent, and for which the evidence is available. Of the various sources accessible for the study of the English enclosure movement, one type only has been extensively used by historians. The whole story of this movement as it is usually told is based upon tracts, sermons, verses, proclamations, etc. of the sixteenth century--upon the literature of protest called forth by the social distress caused by enclosure. Until very recently the similar literature of the seventeenth century has been neglected, although it destroys the basis of assumptions which are fundamental to the orthodox account of the movement. Much of significance even in the literature of the sixteenth century has been passed over--notably certain striking passages in statutes of the latter half of the century, and in books on husbandry of the first half. Details of manorial history derived from the account rolls of the manors themselves, and contemporary manorial maps and surveys, as well as the records of the actual market prices of grain and wool, have been ignored in the construction of an hypothetical account of the movement which breaks down whenever verification by contemporary evidence is attempted. The evidence is in many respects imperfect. It would be of great value, for instance, to have access to records of grain production over an area extensive enough, and for a long enough period, to furnish reliable statistical indications of the trend of productivity. It would be helpful to have exact information about the amount of land converted from arable to pasture in each decade of the period under consideration, and to know to what extent and at what dates land was reconverted to tillage after having been laid to grass. There are no records to supply most of this information. It is possible that the materials for a statistical study of soil productivity are in existence, but up to the present time they have not been published, and it is doubtful if this deficiency will be supplied. It is even more doubtful whether more can be learned about the rate of conversion of arable land to pasture than is now known, and this is little. Professor Gay has made a careful study of the evidence on this question, and has analysed the reports of the government commissions for enforcing the husbandry statutes before 1600,[9] and Miss Leonard has made the returns of the commission of 1630 for Leicestershire available.[10] The conditions under which these commissions worked make the returns somewhat unreliable even for the years covered by their reports, and much interpolation is necessary, as there are serious gaps in the series of years for which returns are made. For dates outside of the period 1485-1630 we must rely entirely on literary references. Unsatisfactory as our statistical information is on this important question, it is far more complete than the evidence on the subject of the reconversion to tillage of arable land which had been turned into pasture. It is to the unfortunate social consequences of enclosure that we owe the abundance of historical material on this subject. Undoubtedly much land was converted to pasture in a piece-meal fashion, as small holders saw the possibility of making the change quietly, and without disturbing the rest of the community. If enclosure had taken no other form than this, no storm of public protest would have risen, to express itself in pamphlets, sermons, statutes and government reports. Enclosure on a large scale involved dispossession of the inhabitants, and a complete break with traditional usage. For this reason the literature of the subject is abundant. When, however, the process was reversed, and the land again brought under cultivation, there was involved no interference with the rights of common holders. It was to the interest of no one to oppose this change, and no protest was made to call the attention of the historian to what was being done. References to the process are numerous enough only to prove that reconversion of land formerly laid to grass took place during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries--to an extent of which not even an approximate estimate can be made. Imperfect as the evidence is from some points of view, it is nevertheless complete for the purposes of this monograph. It would be impossible, with the material at hand, to reconstruct the progress of the enclosure movement, decade by decade, and county by county, throughout England. My intention, however, is not so much to describe the movement in detail as it is to give a consistent account of its nature and causes. Even a few sixteenth-century instances of the plowing up of pasture land should be enough to arrest the attention of historians who believe that the conversion of arable land to pasture during this period is sufficiently explained by an assertion that the price of wool was high. What especial circumstances made it advantageous to cultivate land which had been under grass, while other land was being withdrawn from cultivation? Contemporary writers speak of the need of worn land for rest for a long period of years, and remark that it will bear well again at the end of the period. Evidence such as this is significant without the further information which would enable us to estimate the amount of land affected. For our purposes, also, the notice of enclosure of arable land for pasture on one group of manors in the early thirteenth century is important as an indication that the fundamental cause of the enclosure movement was at work long before the Black Death, which is usually taken as the event in which the movement had its beginning. Low rents, pauperism, and abandonment of land are facts which indicate declining productivity of the soil, and statistical records of the harvests reaped are not needed when statutes, proclamations, and books of husbandry describe the exhausted condition of the common fields. The fact that the enclosure movement continued vigorously in the seventeenth century is conclusively established, and when this fact is known the impossibility of estimating the comparative rate of progress of the movement in the preceding century is of no importance. Upon one point at least, the evidence is almost all that could be desired. The material for a comparison of the prices of wheat and wool throughout the most critical portion of the period has been made accessible by Thorold Rogers.[11] It is to this material that the defenders of the theory that enclosures are explained by the price of wool should turn, for they will find a fall of price where they assume that a rise took place. Instead of an increase in the supply of wool due to a rise in its price, there is indicated a fall in the price of wool due to an increase in the supply. The cause of the increase of the supply of wool must be sought outside of the price conditions. Acknowledgment should here be made of my indebtedness to Dr. V. G. Simkhovitch of Columbia University, without whose generous help this study would not have been planned, and whose criticism and advice have been invaluable in bringing it to completion. Professor Seager also has given helpful criticism. Professor Seligman has allowed me the use of books from his library which I should otherwise have been unable to obtain. For material which could not be found in American libraries I am indebted to my mother and father, who obtained it for me in England. Footnotes: [1] V. G. Simkovitch, _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxvii, p. 398. [2] (London, 1888), pp. 153-154. Denton refers here to Gisborne's _Ag. Essays_, as does Curtler, in his _Short Hist. of Eng. Ag._ (Oxford, 1909), p. 77. [3] Vol. i, p. 321. [4] _English Farming Past and Present_ (London, 1912), p. 64. [5] _Common Land and Enclosure_, p. 121. [6] See _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxxi, p. 214. [7] _Industry in England_ (New York, 1897), p. 181. [8] _Hist. of the Eng. Ag. Laborer_ (London, 1908), p. 31. [9] _Pub. Am. Ec. Assoc._, Third Series (1905), vol vi, no. 2, pp. 146-160: "Inclosure Movement in England." [10] _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, New Series (1905), vol. xix, pp. 101-146: "Inclosure of Common Fields." [11] _Cf. infra_, p. 26. CHAPTER I THE PRICE OF WOOL The generally accepted version of the enclosure movement turns upon supposed changes in the relative prices of wool and grain. The conversion of arable land to pasture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is accounted for by the hypothesis that the price of wool was rising more rapidly than that of grain. The beginning of the enclosure movement, according to this theory, dates from the time when a rise in the price of wool became marked, and the movement ended when there was a relative rise in the price of agricultural products. Before the price of wool began to rise, it is supposed that tillage was profitable enough, and that nothing but the higher profits to be made from grazing induced landholders to abandon agriculture. The agrarian readjustments of the fourteenth century are regarded as due simply to the temporary shortage of labor caused by the Black Death. High wages at this time caused the conversion of some land to pasture, according to the orthodox theory, and from time to time during the next two centuries high wages were a contributing factor influencing the withdrawal of land from tillage; but the great and effective cause of the enclosure movement, the one fundamental fact which is insisted upon, is that constant advances in the price of wool made grazing relatively profitable. It is usually accepted without debate that the withdrawal of arable land from tillage did not begin until after the Black Death, that the enclosures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were caused by a rise in the price of wool, and that the conversion of arable land to pasture ceased when this cause ceased to operate. Against this general explanation of the enclosure movement, it is urged, first, that the withdrawal of land from cultivation began long before the date at which the enclosure movement, caused by an alleged rise in the price of wool, is ordinarily said to have begun. The fourteenth century was marked by agrarian readjustments which have a direct relation to the enclosure movement, and which cannot be explained by the Black Death or the price of wool. Even in the thirteenth century the causes leading to the enclosure movement were well marked. Secondly, the cause of the substitution of sheep-farming for agriculture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot have been a rise in the price of wool relatively to that of grain, because statistics show that the price of wool fell during the fifteenth century, and failed to rise as rapidly as that of wheat in the sixteenth century. Thirdly, a mere comparison of the relative prices of grazing and agricultural products cannot explain the fact that conversion of open-field land to pasture continued throughout the seventeenth century in spite of prices which made it profitable for landowners at the same time to convert a large amount of grass-land to tillage, including enclosures which had formerly been taken from the common fields. If these facts are accepted the explanation of the enclosure movement which is based upon a comparison of the prices of wheat and wool must be rejected, and the story must be told from a different point of view. Taking up these points in order, we shall inquire first into the causes of the agrarian readjustments of the fourteenth century. A generation after the Black Death, the commutation of villain services and the introduction of the leasehold system had made notable progress. The leasing of the demesne has been attributed to the direct influence of the pestilence, which by reducing the serf population made it impossible to secure enough villain labor to cultivate the lord's land. The substitution of money rents in place of the labor services owed by the villains has been explained on the supposition that the serfs who had survived the pestilence took advantage of the opportunity afforded by their reduction in numbers to free themselves from servile labor and thus improve their social status. The connection between the Black Death and the changes in manorial management which are usually attributed to it could be more convincingly established had not several decades elapsed after the Black Death before these changes became marked. A recent intensive study of the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester during this period confirms the view of those who have protested against assigning to the Black Death the revolutionary importance which is given it by many historians. On these estates the Black Death "produced severe evanescent effects and temporary changes, with a rapid return to the _status quo_ of 1348."[12] The great changes which are usually attributed to the plague of 1348-1350 were under way before 1348, and were not greatly accelerated until 1360, possibly not before 1370, and cannot, therefore, have been due to the Black Death. Levett and Ballard devote especial attention to the effect of the Black Death upon the substitution of money payments for labor services and rents in kind, but their study also brings out the fact that the difficulty in persuading tenants to take up land on the old terms (usually ascribed to the Black Death) began before the pestilence, and continued long after its effects had ceased to exert any influence. Before the Black Death landowners were unable to secure holders for bond land without the use of force. A generation after the Black Death they were still contending with this problem, and it had become more serious than at any previous time. Whatever the significance of the Black Death, it must not be advanced as the explanation of a condition which arose before its occurrence, nor of events which took place long after its effects were forgotten. One result of the pestilence was, indeed, to place villains in a stronger position than before, but the changes which took place on this account must not be allowed to obscure the fact that landowners were already facing serious difficulties before 1348. Holders of land were already deserting, and the tenements of those who died or deserted could frequently be filled only by compulsion. Villains were refusing to perform their services _on account of poverty_, and they were already securing reductions in their rents and services. The temporary reduction of the population by the Black Death has been advanced as the reason for the ability of the villains of the decade 1350-1360 to enforce their demands; but without the help of any such cause, villains of an earlier period were obtaining concessions from their lords, and after the natural growth of the population had had ample time to replace those who had died of the pestilence, the villains were in a stronger position than ever before, if we are to estimate their strength by their success in lightening their economic burdens. The Black Death at the most did no more than accelerate changes in the tenure of land which were already under way. Villain services were being reduced, and the size of villain holdings increased. The strength of the position of the serfs lay not so much in the absence of competition due to a temporary reduction in their numbers as in their poverty. Tenants could not be held at the accustomed rents and services because it was impossible to make a living from their holdings. The absence of competition for holdings was no temporary thing, due to the high mortality of the years 1348-1350, but was chronic, and was based upon the worthlessness of the land. The vacant tenements of the fourteenth century, the reduction in the area of demesne land planted, the complaints that no profit could be made from tillage, the reduction of rents on account of the poverty of whole villages, all point in the same direction. These matters will be taken up more fully in a later chapter. Here it need only be pointed out that the withdrawal of land from cultivation was under way because tillage was unprofitable. If tillage was unprofitable in the fourteenth century, so unprofitable that heirs were anxious to buy themselves free of the obligation to enter upon their inheritance, while established landholders deserted their tenements, the enclosure of arable land for pasture in the fifteenth century is seen in a new light. When there was no question of desiring the land for sheep pasture, it was voluntarily abandoned by cultivators. Displacement of tillage due to an internal cause precedes displacement of tillage for sheep pasture. The process of withdrawing land from cultivation began independently of the scarcity of labor caused by the Black Death and independently of any change in the price of wool; the continuation of this process in the fifteenth century is not likely to depend entirely upon a rise in the price of wool. That the enclosures of the fifteenth century were in reality merely a further step in the readjustments under way in the fourteenth century cannot be doubted. And that the whole process was independent of the especial external influence upon agriculture exerted in the fourteenth century by the Black Death and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the growth of the woollen industry is shown in the case of a group of manors where the essential features of the enclosure movement appeared in the thirteenth century. More than a hundred years before the Black Death the Lord of Berkeley found it impossible to obtain tenants for bond land at the accustomed rents. Villains were giving up their holdings because they could not pay the rent and perform the services. The land which had in earlier times been sufficient for the maintenance of a villain and his family and had produced a surplus for rent had lost its fertility, and the holdings fell vacant. The land which reverted to the lord on this account was split up and leased at nominal rents, when leaseholders could be found, just as so much land was leased at reduced rents by landowners generally in the fourteenth century. Moreover, some of the land was unfit for cultivation at all and was converted to pasture under the direction of the lord.[13] If the disintegration of manorial organization observed in the fourteenth century and earlier was not due to the Black Death; if this disintegration was under way before the pestilence reduced the population, and was not checked when the ravages of the plague had been made good; if tillage was already unprofitable before the fifteenth century with its growth of the woollen industry; and if land was being converted to pasture at a time when neither the price of wool nor the Black Death can be offered as the explanation of this conversion; then there is suggested the possibility that the whole enclosure movement can be sufficiently accounted for without especial reference to the prices of wool and grain. If the enclosure movement began before the fifteenth century and originated in causes other than the Black Death, the discovery of these original causes may also furnish the explanation of the continuance of the movement in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The amount of land under cultivation was being reduced before the date at which the price of wool is supposed to have risen sufficiently to displace agriculture for the sake of wool growing, and this early reduction in the arable cannot, clearly, be accounted for by reference to the prices of wool and grain. But it also happens that, in the very period when an increase in the demand for wool is usually alleged as the cause of the enclosures, the price of wool fell relatively to that of grain. The increase in sheep-farming in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, together with the fact that the domestic cloth manufacture was being improved at this time, has been the basis of the assumption that the price of wool was rising. The causal sequence has been supposed to be: (1) an increase in the manufacture of woollens; (2) an increase in the demand for wool; (3) an increase in the price of wool; (4) an increase in wool-growing at the expense of tillage, and the enclosure of common lands. If, as a matter of fact, the price of wool fell during this period, the causal sequence is reversed. If the price of wool fell, the increase in the manufacture of woollens has no relation to the enclosure movement, unless it is its result, and we are forced to look elsewhere for the cause of the increase of sheep-farming. The accompanying tables and chart, showing the changes in the price of wool and of wheat from the middle of the thirteenth century through the first quarter of the sixteenth century, have been prepared from the materials given by Thorold Rogers in his _History of Agriculture and Prices in England_.[14] The averages given in his tables are based upon records of actual sales. They furnish, therefore, the exact information needed in connection with the theory that a rise in the price of wool relatively to that of wheat was the cause of the enclosure movement in England. In the century and a half before 1400, there were wide fluctuations in the prices of both commodities, but the price of wool rose and fell with that of wheat. The first quarter of the fourteenth century was a period of falling prices. The fall continued in the case of wool until about the middle of the century, when a recovery began, culminating about 1380. A rise in the price of wheat occurred sooner than that of wool and reached its climax about 1375. In the last quarter of the century the prices of both wool and wheat fell, with a slight recovery in the last decade of the century. TABLE I PRICES OF WHEAT AND WOOL, 1261-1582. DECENNIAL AVERAGES Wheat, per Wool, per quarter tod (28 lbs.) s. d. s. d. 1261-1270 4 8-5/8 9 - 1271-1280 5 7-3/4 9 2 1281-1290 5 0-7/8 8 10 1291-1300 6 1-1/8 7 10 1301-1310 5 7-1/4 9 - 1311-1320 7 10-1/4 9 11 1321-1330 6 11-5/8 9 7 1331-1340 4 8-3/4 7 3 1341-1350 5 3-1/8 6 10 1351-1360 6 10-5/8 6 7 1361-1370 7 3-1/4 9 3 1371-1380 6 1-1/4 10 11 1381-1390 5 2 8 - 1391-1400 5 3 8 4 1401-1410 5 8-1/4 9 2-1/2 1411-1420 5 6-3/4 7 8-1/4 1421-1430 5 4-3/4 7 5-1/2 1431-1440 6 11 5 9 1441-1450 5 5-3/4 4 10-1/2 1451-1460 5 6-1/2 4 3-3/4 1461-1470 5 4-1/2 4 11-1/2 1471-1480 5 4-1/4 5 4 1481-1490 6 3-1/2 4 8-1/2 1491-1500 5 0-3/4 6 0-1/2 1501-1510 5 5-1/2 4 5-3/4 1511-1520 6 8-3/4 6 7-1/4 1521-1530 7 6 5 4-1/4 1531-1540 7 8-1/2 6 8-3/4 1541-1550 10 8 20 8 1551-1560 15 3-3/4 15 8 1561-1570 12 10-1/4 16 - 1571-1582 16 8 17 - TABLE II PRICES OF WHEAT AND WOOL. LONG PERIOD AVERAGES Wheat, per Wool, per Date quarter tod s. d. s. d. 1261-1400 5 11 8 7 1351-1400 6 1-3/4 8 7 1401-1460 5 9 6 2-1/2 1461-1500 5 6-1/2 5 3 1501-1540 6 10-1/4 5 9-1/2 [Illustration: Graph] After 1400 the price of wheat held at about the average price of the previous period, but for sixty years the price of wool fell, without a check in its downward movement. It is in this period that the woollen industry entered upon the period of expansion which is supposed to have been the cause of the enclosure movement, but there was no rise in the price of wool. Instead, there was a decided fall.[15] The average price for the decade 1451-1460 was just about one-half of the average price for the period 1261-1400. (The average price of wool in the last fifty years of the fourteenth century happens to be the same as the average for the period 1261-1400. Either the longer or the shorter period may be used indifferently as the basis for comparison). The average price for the period 1401-1460 was 25 per cent lower than the average for the preceding half-century. A comparatively slight depression in the price of wheat in the same period is shown in the tables. The average for 1401-1461 is only three per cent lower than that for 1265-1400 (seven per cent lower than the average for 1351-1400). Before 1460, then, there was nothing in market conditions to favor the extension of sheep farming, but there is reason to believe that the withdrawal of land from tillage had already begun. Leaving aside the enclosure and conversion of common-field land by the Berkeleys in the thirteenth century, we may yet note that "An early complaint of illegal enclosure occurs in 1414 where the inhabitants of Parleton and Ragenell in Notts petition against Richard Stanhope, who had inclosed the lands there by force of arms." Miss Leonard, who is authority for this statement, also refers to the statute of 1402 in which "depopulatores agrorum" are mentioned.[16] In a grant of Edward V the complaint is made that "this body falleth daily to decay by closures and emparking, by driving away of tenants and letting down of tenantries."[17] It is strange, if these enclosures are to be explained by increasing demand for wool, that this heightened demand was not already reflected in rising prices. But, it may be urged, the true enclosure movement did not begin until after 1460. If a marked rise in the price of wool occurred after 1460, it might be argued that enclosures spread and the price of wool rose together, and that the latter was the cause of the former. Turning again to the record of prices, we see that although the low level of the decade 1451-1460 marks the end of the period of falling prices, no rise took place for several decades after 1460. Rous gives a list of 54 places "which, within a circuit of thirteen miles about Warwick had been wholly or partially depopulated before about 1486."[18] Two or three years later acts were passed against depopulation in whose preambles the agrarian situation is described: The Isle of Wight "is late decayed of people, by reason that many townes and vilages been lete downe and the feldes dyked and made pastures for bestis and cattalles." In other parts of England there is "desolacion and pulling downe and wylfull wast of houses and towns ... and leying to pasture londes whiche custumably haue ben used in tylthe, wherby ydlenesse is growde and begynnyng of all myschevous dayly doth encrease. For where in some townes ii hundred persones were occupied and lived by their lawfull labours, now ben there occupied ii or iii herdemen, and the residue falle in ydlenes."[19] It may be remarked that while the price records show conclusively that no rise in the profits of wool-growing caused these enclosures, the language of the statutes shows also that scarcity of labor was not their cause, since one of the chief objections to the increase of pasture is the unemployment caused. It would seem hardly necessary to push the comparison of the prices of wool and wheat beyond 1490. In order to establish the contention that the enclosure movement was caused by an advance in the price of wool, it would be necessary to show that this advance took place before the date at which the enclosure problem had become so serious as to be the subject of legislation. By 1490 statesmen were already alarmed at the progress made by enclosure. The movement was well under way. Yet it has been shown that the price of wool had been falling for over a century, instead of rising, and that the price of wheat held its own. Even if it could be established that the price of wheat fell as compared with that of wool after this date, the usually accepted version of the enclosure movement would still be inadequate. But as a matter of fact the price of wheat rose steadily after 1490, reaching a higher average in each succeeding decade, while the price of wool wavered about an average which rose very slowly until 1535. The entries on which these wool averages are based are few, and greater uncertainty therefore attaches to their representativeness than in the case of the prices of earlier decades, but the evidence, such as it is, points to a more rapid rise in the price of wheat than in the price of wool. Between 1500 and 1540 the average price of wheat was nearly 24 per cent above that of the previous forty years, but the average price of wool rose only ten per cent. There are only nine entries of wool prices for the forty-six years after 1536, but these are enough to show that the price of wool, like that of wheat and all other commodities, was rising rapidly at this time. The lack of material upon which to base a comparison of the actual rate of increase of price for the two commodities makes further statistical analysis impossible, but a knowledge of prices after the date at which the material ceases would add nothing to the evidence on the subject under consideration. Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_ was written in 1516, with its well-known passage describing contemporary enclosures in terms similar to those used in the statutes of thirty years before, and complaining that the sheep that were wont to be so meke and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I heare saye, be become so great devowerers and so wylde, that they eate up, and swallow downe the very men them selfes. They consume, destroye, and devoure whole fields, howses, and cities. For looke in what partes of the realme doth growe the fynest, and therfore dearest woll, there noblemen, and gentlemen: yea and certeyn Abbottes ... leave no grounde for tillage, thei inclose al into pastures: thei throw doune houses: they plucke downe townes, and leave nothing standynge, but only the churche to be made a shepe-howse.[20] These enclosures were not caused by an advance in the price of wool relatively to that of wheat, as the rise in the price of wool in the decade 1510-1520 was no greater than that of corn. Nor does sheep farming seem to have been especially profitable at this time, as More himself attributes the high price of wool in part to a "pestiferous morrein." Again, the complaint is also made that unemployment was caused, showing that scarcity of labor was not the reason for the conversion of arable to pasture: The husbandmen be thrust owte of their owne, ... whom no man wyl set a worke, though thei never so willyngly profre themselves therto. For one Shephearde or Heardman is ynoughe to eate up that grounde with cattel, to the occupiyng wherof aboute husbandrye manye handes were requisite.[21] In 1514 a new husbandry statute was passed, penalising the conversion of tillage to pasture, and requiring the restoration of the land to tillage. It was repeated and made perpetual in the following year. In 1517 a commission was ordered to enquire into the destruction of houses since 1488 and the conversion of arable to pasture. In 1518 a fresh commission was issued and the prosecution of offenders was begun. These facts are cited as a further reminder of the fact that the period for which the prices of wool and wheat are both known is the critical period in the enclosure movement. It is the enclosures covered by these acts and those referred to by Sir Thomas More which historians have explained by alleging that the price of wool was high. As a matter of record, the course of prices was such as to encourage the extension of tillage rather than of pasture. After an examination of these price statistics it hardly seems necessary to advance further objections to the accepted account of the enclosure movement, based as it is upon the assumption that price movements in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were exactly opposite to those which have been shown to take place. There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of Rogers' figures within the limits required for our purpose, and the evidence based on these figures is in itself conclusive. Even without this evidence, however, there is sufficient reason for rejecting the theory that changes in the prices of grain and wool account for the facts of the enclosure movement. For one thing, if the price of wool actually did rise (in spite of the statistical evidence to the contrary) and if this is actually the cause of the enclosure movement, the movement should have come to an end when sufficient time had elapsed for an adjustment of the wool supply to the increasing demand. If the movement did not come to an end within a reasonable period, there would be reason for suspecting the adequacy of the explanation advanced. As a matter of fact, it is usually thought that the enclosure movement did end about 1600. Much land which had not been affected by the changes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (it is usually asserted) escaped enclosure altogether until the need for better agriculture in the eighteenth century ushered in the so-called second enclosure movement, which did not involve the conversion of tilled land to pasture. This alleged check in the progress of the enclosure movement is inferred from the fact that new land, and even some of the land formerly withdrawn from the common-fields to be converted to pasture, was being tilled. This is interpreted by economic historians as evidence that arable land was no longer being converted to pasture. We are told by Meredith, for instance, that "Moneyed men at the end of Elizabeth's reign were beginning to find it profitable to sink money in arable farming, a fact which points to the conclusion that there was no longer any differential advantage in sheep-raising."[22] Cunningham is also of the opinion that "So far as such a movement can be definitely dated, it may be said that enclosure for the sake of increasing sheep-farming almost entirely ceased with the reign of Elizabeth."[23] Innes gives as the cause of this supposed check in the reduction of arable land to pasture that "The expansion of pasturage appears to have reached the limit beyond which it would have ceased to be profitable."[24] It is indeed reasonable that the high prices which are supposed to have been the cause of the sudden increase in wool production should be gradually lowered as the supply increased, and that thus the inducement to the conversion of arable to pasture would in time disappear. The theory that the enclosure movement was due to an increase in the price of wool would be seriously weakened if the movement continued for a time longer than that required to bring about an adjustment of the supply to the increased demand. For the sake of consistency, then, this point in the account of the enclosure movement is necessary. It would follow naturally from the original explanation of the movement as the response to an increased demand for wool, as reflected in high prices. With the decrease in prices to be expected as the supply increased, the incentive for converting arable to pasture would be removed. Historians sometimes speak of other considerations which might have contributed to the cessation of the enclosure movement. Ashley, for instance, suggests that landowners found that to "devote their lands continuously to sheep-breeding did not turn out quite so profitable as was at first expected."[25] Others refer to the contemporary complaints of the bad effect of enclosure upon the quality of wool. The breed of sheep which could be kept in enclosed pastures was said to produce coarser wool than those grazing on the hilly pastures, and this deterioration in the quality of wool so cut down the profits from enclosures that men now preferred to plow them up again, and resume tillage. The extent to which the plowing up of pasture can be attributed to this cause must be very slight, however, as even contemporaries disagreed as to the existence of any deterioration in the quality of the wool. Some authorities even state that the quality was improved by the use of enclosed pasture: when Cornwall, through want of good manurance lay waste and open, the sheep had generally little bodies and coarse fleeces, so as their wool bare no better name than Cornish hair ... but since the grounds began to receive enclosure and dressing for tillage, the nature of the soil hath altered to a better grain and yieldeth nourishment in greater abundance to the beasts that pasture thereupon; so as, by this means ... Cornish sheep come but little behind the eastern flocks for bigness of mould, _fineness of wool, etc._[26] The plowing up of pasture land for tillage cannot, then, be explained by the effect of enclosure upon the quality of wool. It has been ordinarily taken as an indication that the price of grain was now rising more rapidly than that of wool, partly because a relaxation of the corn-laws permitted greater freedom of export, and partly because the home demand was increasing on account of the growth of the population. Graziers were as willing to convert pastures to corn-fields for the sake of greater profits as their predecessors had been to carry out the contrary process. The deciding factor in the situation, according to the orthodox account, was the relative price of wool and grain. When the price of wool rose more rapidly than that of grain, arable land was enclosed and used for grazing. When the price of grain rose more rapidly than that of wool, pastures were plowed up and cultivated. Up to this point, the account is consistent. If the price of wool was rising more rapidly than that of grain during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (in spite of the statistical evidence to the contrary) it is reasonable that the differential advantage in grazing should finally come to an end when a new balance between tillage and grazing was established. It is not even surprising that the conversion of arable to pasture should have continued beyond the proper point, and that a contrary movement should set in. Bacon, in 1592, remarked that men had of late been enticed by the good yield of corn and the increased freedom of export to "break up more ground and convert it to tillage than all the penal laws for that purpose made and enacted could ever by compulsion effect."[27] In 1650 Lord Monson plowed up 100 acres of Grafton Park, which had formerly been pasture, and there are many other records showing a tendency to convert pasture to arable in the seventeenth century.[28] It is true that men were able to make a profit from agriculture by the end of the sixteenth century. But there is one difficulty which has been overlooked: the withdrawal from agriculture of common-field land did _not_ cease. The protests against depopulating enclosure continue, and government reports and surveys show that enclosure for pasture was proceeding at as rapid a rate as in the sixteenth century. Miss Leonard's article on "Inclosure of Common Fields in the Seventeenth Century"[29] contains a mass of evidence which is conclusive. A few quotations will indicate its character: "In Leicestershire the enclosures of Cottesbach in 1602, of Enderby about 1605, of Thornby about 1616, were all accomplished by a lessening of the land under the plough. Moore, writing in 1656, says: 'Surely they may make men as soon believe there is no sun in the firmament as that usually depopulation and decay of tillage will not follow inclosure in our inland countyes.'" (p. 117). Letters from the Council were written in 1630 complaining of "'enclosures and convercons tending as they generallie doe unto depopulation.... There appeares many great inclosures ... all wch are or are lyke to turne to the conversion of much ground from errable to pasture and be very hurtfull to the commonwealth.... We well know wth all what ye consequence will be, and in conclusion all turne to depopulation!'" (p. 128). Forster, writing in 1664, says, "there hath been of late years divers whole lordships and towns enclosed and their earable land converted into pasture!" (p. 142). Frequently the same proprietor in the same year plowed up pasture land for corn and laid arable to pasture. Tawney cites a case in which ninety-five acres of ancient pasture were brought under cultivation while thirty-five acres of arable were laid to grass.[30] In 1630 the Countess of Westmoreland enclosed and converted arable, but tilled other land instead.[31] The enclosure movement, then, did not end at the time when it is usually thought to have ended. Since it is difficult to suppose that the price of wool could have been advancing constantly throughout two centuries, without causing such a readjustment in the use of land that no further withdrawal of land from tillage for pasture would be necessary, the continuance of the conversion of arable to pasture in the seventeenth century throws suspicion upon the whole explanation of the enclosure movement as due to the increased demand for wool. Miss Leonard, indeed, advances the hypothesis that the price of wool ceased to be the cause of enclosure during the seventeenth century, but that other price changes had the same effect: The increase in pasture in the sixteenth century was rendered profitable by the rapid increase in the price of wool, but, in the seventeenth century, this cause ceases to operate. The change to pasture, however, continued, partly owing to a great rise in the price of cattle, and partly because the increase in wages made it less profitable to employ the greater number of men necessary for tilling the fields.[32] The assumption that wages and the price of cattle advanced sufficiently in the seventeenth century to account for the change to pasture are no better justified than the assumption of the rapid rise in the price of wool in the sixteenth century. If the price of meat and dairy products rose in the seventeenth century, so did the price of grain and other foods. The relative rate of increase is the only point significant for the present discussion. No statistics are available to show whether the price of cattle rose more rapidly than that of grain, and the evidence afforded by the reduction of arable land to pasture is counterbalanced by the equally well-established fact that much pasture land was plowed and planted in this period. It is equally probable on the basis of this evidence that the prices of wheat and barley advanced more rapidly than those of meat and butter and cheese. The same difficulty is met in the suggestion that the increase in pasturage was due partly to higher wages for farm labor. The extension of tillage over much land formerly laid to pasture as well as that which had never been plowed at all is sufficient cause for doubting a prohibitive increase in wages. Moreover, in modern times, wages lag in general rise of prices. Unless conclusive evidence is presented to show that this was not the case in the seventeenth century, it must be assumed to be inherently probable that the increased wages of the time were more than offset by the rapidly advancing prices. During the seventeenth century, then, when it is admitted that the high price of wool was not the cause which induced landowners to convert arable to pasture, it cannot be shown that the high price of cattle or exorbitant wages will account for the withdrawal of land from cultivation. This is an important point, for historians frequently support their main contention with regard to the enclosure movement (_i. e._, that it was caused by an increase in the price of wool), by the statement that increasing wages made landlords abandon tillage for sheep-farming, with its smaller labor charges. It has been shown that the conversion of arable to pasture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot be explained by the price of wool, but it may still be urged that agriculture was rendered unprofitable by high wages. Indeed, it is usually stated that the withdrawal of land from cultivation which took place in the fourteenth century was due to the scarcity of labor caused by the Black Death. In the fifteenth century population was reduced by the Wars of the Roses; and throughout the period under consideration, agriculture had to meet the competition of the growing town industries for labor. Is it not possible that these influences caused an exorbitant rise in wages which would alone account for the substitution of sheep-farming for tillage? The obvious character of the enclosure movement makes it impossible to accept this hypothesis. The conversion of arable land to pasture was caused by no demand for higher wages, which made tillage unprofitable. The unemployment and pauperism caused by the enclosure of the open fields are notorious, and it is to these features of the enclosure movement that we owe the mass of literature on the subject. Enclosures called forth a storm of protest, because they took away the living of poor husbandry families. The acute distress undergone by those who were evicted from their holdings is sufficient indication of the difficulty of finding employment, and it is impossible that wages could remain at an exorbitant level when the enclosure of the lands of one open-field township made enough men homeless to supply any existing dearth of labor in all of the surrounding villages. If agriculture was unprofitable, it was not because laborers demanded excessive wages, but because of the low productivity of the land. The significance of contemporary complaints of high wages is missed if they are interpreted as an indication of an exorbitant increase in wages. The facts are, rather, that land was so unproductive that farmers could not afford to pay even a low wage. If it were necessary to argue the point further, it could be pointed out that wages even in industry were not subject to that steady rise which would have to be assumed, if high wages are to furnish the explanation of the substitution of pasture for tillage from the thirteenth century to the eighteenth. The statistical data on this subject are fragmentary, but Thorold Rogers' calculations for the period 1540-1582 are significant. In this period wages rose 60 per cent above the average of the previous century and a half; but the market prices of farm produce rose 170 per cent.[33] The rise in wages was far from keeping pace with the rise in selling prices, and the displacement of agriculture for grazing at this time must be due to some cause other than the greater number of laborers needed in agriculture. If, during certain periods within the four centuries under consideration wages advanced more rapidly than the prices of produce (statistical information on this subject is lacking) the continuous withdrawal of land from tillage during periods when wages fell remains to be explained by some cause other than high wages. Nor can high wages account for the conversion of tilled land to pasture simultaneously with the conversion of pasture land to tillage in the seventeenth century. If wages were exorbitantly high in the seventeenth century, and if this is the reason for the laying to pasture of so much arable, how could farmers afford to cultivate the large amount of fresh land which they were bringing under the plow? Is this accounted for not by any expectation of profit from this land but by the statutory requirement that no arable should be laid to pasture unless an equal amount of grass land were plowed in its stead? Pasture in excess of the legal requirements was plowed up, and persons who did not wish to convert any arable to pasture are found increasing their tilled land by bringing grass land under cultivation. The movement cannot be explained, therefore, merely on the basis of the husbandry statutes. Nor is the law itself to be dismissed without further examination, for in it we find the explicit statement that fresh land could be substituted for that then under cultivation, because common-field land was in many cases exhausted; it was therefore better to allow this to be laid to grass while better land was cultivated in its place.[34] Here then, is the simple explanation of the whole problem. The land which was converted from arable to pasture was worn out; but there was fresh land available for tillage, and some of this was brought under cultivation. No alternative explanation can be worked out on the basis of hypothetical wage or price movements. The historian is indeed at liberty to form his own theories as to the trend of prices in the seventeenth century, for he is unhampered by the existence of known records such as those for the sixteenth century; but it is impossible to construct any theory of prices which will explain why the conversion of arable land to pasture continued at a time when much pasture land was being plowed up. It is necessary to choose a theory of prices which will explain either the extension of tillage or the extension of pasture; both cannot be explained by the same prices. If, as some historians assume, the increase of population or some such factor was causing a comparatively rapid increase in the price of grain in this period, the continued conversion of arable to pasture requires explanation. If, as Miss Leonard supposes, the contrary assumption is true, and the products of arable land could be sold to less advantage than those of pasture, then the cause of the conversion of pasture to arable must be sought. It is not only in the seventeenth century that this double conversion movement took place. In the second half of the fourteenth century pastures were being plowed up. At Holway, 1376-1377, three plots of land which had been pasture were converted to arable.[35] In this period much land was withdrawn from cultivation. The explanation usually advanced by historians for the conversion of arable to pasture at this time is that the scarcity of labor since the Black Death (a quarter of a century before) made it impossible to cultivate the land as extensively as when wages were low, or when serf labor was available. If this is the whole case, it is difficult to account for the conversion to arable of land already pasture. Other factors than the supposed scarcity of labor were involved; land in good condition, such as the plots of pasture at Holway, repaid cultivation, but the yield was too low on land exhausted by centuries of cultivation to make tillage profitable. In the sixteenth century, also, the restoration of cultivation on land which had formerly been converted from arable to pasture was going on. Fitzherbert devotes several chapters of his treatise on surveying to a discussion of the methods of amending "ley grounde, the whiche hath ben errable lande of late," (ch. 27) and "bushy ground and mossy that hath ben errable lande of olde time" (ch. 28). This land should be plowed and sown, and it will produce much grain, "with littell dongynge, and sow it no lengar tha it will beare plentye of corne, withoute donge", and then lay it down to grass again. Tusser also describes this use of land alternately as pasture and arable.[36] A farmer on one of the manors of William, First Earl of Pembroke, had an enclosed field in 1567, which afforded pasture for 900 sheep as well as an unspecified number of cattle, "_qui aliquando seminatur, aliquando iacet ad pasturam_."[37] The motives of this alternating use of the land would be clear enough, even though they were not explicitly stated by contemporaries; arable land which would produce only scant crops unless heavily manured made good pasture, and after a longer or shorter period under grass, was so improved by the manure of the sheep pasturing on it and by the heavy sod which formed that it could be tilled profitably, and was therefore restored to tillage. The fact of two opposite but simultaneous conversion movements is unaccountable under the accepted hypothesis of the causes of the enclosure movement, which turns upon assumptions as to the relative prices of grain and wool or cattle or wages. The authorities for this theory have necessarily neglected the evidence that pasture land was converted to arable in the sixteenth century and that arable land was converted to pasture in the seventeenth, and have separated in time two tendencies which were simultaneous. They have described the increase in pasturage at the expense of arable in the early period, and the increase of arable at the expense of pasture in the later period, and have explained a difference between the two periods which did not exist by a change in the ratio between the prices of wool and grain for which no proof is given. It has been shown in this chapter that the conversion of arable to pasture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot have been caused by increased demand for wool, since the price of wool relatively to that of grain fell, and the extension of tillage rather than of pasture would have taken place had price movements been the chief factor influencing the conversion of land from one use to the other. It has also been shown that the conversion of arable to pasture did not cease at the beginning of the seventeenth century. If the principal cause of the enclosure movement had been the increasing demand for wool, this cause would have ceased to operate when time had elapsed for the shifting of enough land from tillage to pasture to increase the supply of wool. That the conversion of arable to pasture did not cease after a reasonable time had passed is an indication that its cause was not the demand for wool. When it is found that pasture was being converted to arable at the same time that other land was withdrawn from cultivation and laid to grass, the insufficiency of the accepted explanation of the enclosure movement is made even more apparent. A change in the price of wool could at best explain the conversion in one direction only. The theory that the cause of the enclosure movement was the high price of wool must be rejected, and a more critical study must be made of the readjustments in the use of land which became conspicuous in the fourteenth century, but which are overlooked in the orthodox account of the enclosure movement. Footnotes: [12] Levett and Ballard, _The Black Death on the Estates of the See of Winchester_ (Oxford, 1916), p. 142. [13] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_ (Gloucester, 1883), vol. i, pp. 113-160. [14] (Oxford, 1866-1902), vols. i, iv. [15] Increase in manufacture of woollen cloth constituted no increase in the demand for wool in so far as exports of raw wool were reduced. [16] _Royal Historical Soc. Trans._, N. S. (1905), vol. ix, p. 101, note 2. [17] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 159. [18] Gay, _Quarterly Journal of Economics_ (1902-1903), vol. xvii, p. 587. [19] Pollard, _Reign of Henry VII_ (London, 1913), vol. ii, pp. 235-237. [20] More, _Utopia_ (Everyman edition), p. 23. [21] _Ibid._, p. 24. [22] _Outlines of the Economic History of England_ (London, 1908), p. 118. [23] _Growth of Eng. Ind. and Commerce_ (Cambridge, 1892), p. 180. [24] _England's Industrial Development_ (London, 1912), p. 247. [25] _English Economic History_ (New York, 1893), part ii, p. 262. [26] Carew, _Survey of Cornwall_ (London, 1814), p. 77. [27] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times_, 1903, part i, p. 101. [28] Lennard, _Rural Northamptonshire_ (Oxford, 1916), p. 87. For other examples, _cf. infra_, pp. 84, 99-101. [29] Leonard, _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, 1905. Gonner in _Common Land and Inclosure_ covers much the same ground, but does not bring out as clearly the extent to which the seventeenth century enclosures were accompanied by conversion of tilled land to pasture. [30] Tawney, _Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Cen._ (London, 1912), p. 391. [31] _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._ (1905), vol xix, note 1, p. 113. [32] _Ibid._, pp. 116-117. [33] Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, vol. iv, p. 757. [34] _Cf. infra_, p. 98. [35] Levett and Ballard, _The Black Death_, p. 129. [36] _Cf. infra_, p. 82. [37] Tawney, _op. cit._, p. 220, note 1. [38] _Infra_, p. 78, 81, 98-9. CHAPTER II THE FERTILITY OF THE COMMON FIELDS Up to this point attention has been given chiefly to the theory that the enclosure movement waxed and waned in response to supposed fluctuations in the relative prices of wool and grain, and it has been found that this theory is untenable. It is now necessary to consider more closely the true cause of the conversion of arable land to pasture--the declining productivity of the soil--and the cause of the restoration of this land to cultivation--the restoration of its fertility. The connection between soil fertility and the system of husbandry has been explained by Dr. Russell, of the Rothamsted Experiment Station: Virgin land covered with its native vegetation appears to alter very little and very slowly in composition. Plants spring up, assimilate the soil nitrates, phosphates, potassium salts, etc., and make considerable quantities of nitrogenous and other organic compounds: then they die and all this material is added to the soil. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria also add to the stores of nitrogen compounds. But, on the other hand, there are losses: some of the added substances are dissipated as gas by the decomposition bacteria, others are washed away in the drainage water. These losses are small in poor soils, but they become greater in rich soils, and they set a limit beyond which accumulation of material cannot go. Thus a virgin soil does not become indefinitely rich in nitrogenous and other organic compounds, but reaches an equilibrium level where the annual gains are offset by the annual losses so that no net change results. This equilibrium level depends on the composition of the soil, its position, the climate, etc, and it undergoes a change if any of these factors alter. But for practical purposes it may be regarded as fairly stationary. When, however, the virgin soil is broken up by the plough and brought into cultivation the native vegetation and the crop are alike removed, and therefore the sources of gain are considerably reduced. The losses, on the other hand, are much intensified. Rain water more readily penetrates, carrying dissolved substances with it: biochemical decompositions also proceed. In consequence the soil becomes poorer, and finally it is reduced to the same level as the rate of gain of nitrogenous matter. A new and lower equilibrium level is now reached about which the composition of the soil remains fairly constant; this is determined by the same factors as the first, _i. e._ the composition of the soil, climate, etc. Thus each soil may vary in composition and therefore in fertility between two limits: a higher limit if it is kept permanently covered with vegetation such as grass, and a lower limit if it is kept permanently under the plough. These limits are set by the nature of the soil and the climate, but the cultivator can attain any level he likes between them simply by changing his mode of husbandry. The lower equilibrium level is spoken of as the inherent fertility of the soil because it represents the part of the fertility due to the soil and its surroundings, whilst the level actually reached in any particular case is called its condition or "heart", the land being in "good heart "or "bad heart", according as the cultivator has pushed the actual level up or not; this part of the fertility is due to the cultivator's efforts. The difference between the higher and lower fertility level is not wholly a question of percentage of nitrogen, carbon, etc. At its highest level the soil possesses a good physical texture owing to the flocculation of the clay and the arrangement of the particles: it can readily be got into the fine tilth needed for a seed bed. But when it has run down the texture becomes very unsatisfactory. Much calcium carbonate is also lost during the process: and when this constituent falls too low, the soil becomes "sour" and unsuited for crops. The simplest system of husbandry is that of continuous wheat cultivation, practiced under modern conditions in new countries. When the virgin land is first broken up its fertility is high; so long as it remains under cultivation this level can no longer be maintained, but rapidly runs down. During this degradation process considerable quantities of plant food become available and a succession of crops can be raised without any substitution of manure ... After a time the unstable period is over and the new equilibrium level is reached at which the soil will stop if the old husbandry continues. In this final state the soil is often not fertile enough to allow of the profitable raising of crops; it is now starving for want of those very nutrients that were so prodigally dissipated in the first days of its cultivation, and the cultivator starves with it or moves on. Fortunately recovery is by no means impossible, though it may be prolonged. It is only necessary to leave the land covered with vegetation for a period of years when it will once again regain much of the nitrogenous organic matter it has lost.[39] Dr. Russell adds that soil-exhaustion is essentially a modern phenomenon, however, and gives the following reasons for supposing that the medieval system conserved the fertility of the soil. First, the cattle grazed over a wide area and the arable land all received some dung. Thus elements of fertility were transferred from the pasture land to the smaller area of tilled land. This process, he admits, involved the impoverishment of the pasture land, but only very slowly, and the fertility of the arable was in the meanwhile maintained. Secondly, the processes of liming and marling the soil were known, and by these means the necessary calcium carbonate was supplied. Thirdly, although there was insufficient replacement of the phosphates taken from the soil, the yield of wheat was so low that the amount of phosphoric acid removed was small, and the system was permanent for all practical purposes. One of the facts given in substantiation of this view is that the yield after enclosure increased considerably.[40] In discussing these points, it will be well to begin with the evidence as to exhaustion afforded by the increased yield under enclosure. The improvement in yield took place because of the long period of fallow obtained when the land was used as pasture; or, in the eighteenth century, with the increase in nitrogenous organic matter made possible when hay and turnips were introduced as field forage crops. That is, the increase in yield depended either upon that prolonged period of recuperation which will _restore fertility_, or upon an actual increase in the amount of manure used. Apparently, then, open-field land had become exhausted, since an increase in yield could be obtained by giving it a rest, without improving the methods of cultivation, etc., or by adding more manure. There was not, as Dr. Russell supposes, enough manure under the medieval system of husbandry to maintain the fertility of the soil. It is true that the husbandman understood the value of manure, and took care that the land should receive as much as possible, and that he knew also of the value of lime and marl. But, as Dr. Simkhovitch says: It is not within our province to go into agrotechnical details and describe what the medieval farmer knew, but seldom practiced for lack of time and poor means of communication, in the way of liming sour clay ground, etc. Plant production is determined by the one of the necessary elements that is available in the least quantity. It is a matter of record that the medieval farmer had not enough and could not have quite enough manure, to maintain the productivity of the soil.[41] The knowledge of the means of maintaining and increasing the productivity of the soil is one thing, but the ability to use this knowledge is another. The very origin and persistence of the cumbersome common-field system in so many parts of the world is sufficient testimony as to the impossibility of improving the quality of the soil in the Middle Ages. The only way in which these men could divide the land into portions of equal value was to divide it first into plots of different qualities and then to give a share in each of these plots to each member of the community. They never dreamed of being able to bring the poor plots up to a high level of productivity by the use of plentiful manuring, etc., but had to accept the differences in quality as they found them. The inconvenience and confusion of the common-field system were endured because, under the circumstances, it was the only possible system. Very few cattle were kept. No more were kept because there was no way of keeping them. In the fields wheat, rye, oats, barley and beans were raised, but no hay and no turnips. Field grasses and clover which could be introduced in the course of field crops were unknown. What hay they had came entirely from the permanent meadows, the low-lying land bordering the banks of streams. "Meadow grass," writes Dr. Simkhovitch, "could grow only in very definite places on low and moist land that followed as a rule the course of a stream. This gave the meadow a monopolistic value, which it lost after the introduction of grass and clover in the rotation of crops."[42] The number of cattle and sheep kept by the community was limited by the amount of forage available for winter feeding. Often no limitation upon the number pastured in summer in the common pastures was necessary other than that no man should exceed the number which he was able to keep during the winter. The meadow hay was supplemented by such poor fodder as straw and the loppings of trees, and the cattle were got through the winter with the smallest amount of forage which would keep them alive, but even with this economy it was impossible to keep a sufficient number. The amount of stall manure produced in the winter was of course small, on account of the scant feed, and even the more plentiful manure of the summer months was the property of the lord, so that the villain holdings received practically no dung. The villains were required to send their cattle and sheep at night to a fold which was moved at frequent intervals over the demesne land, and their own land received ordinarily no dressing of manure excepting the scant amount produced when the village flocks pastured on the fallow fields. The supply of manure, insufficient in any case to maintain the fertility of the arable land, was diminishing rather than increasing. As Dr. Russell suggested in the passage referred to above, the continuous use of pastures and meadows causes a deterioration in their quality. The quantity of fodder was decreasing for this reason, almost imperceptibly, but none the less seriously. Fewer cattle could be kept as the grass land deteriorated, and the small quantity of manure which was available for restoring the productivity of the open fields was gradually decreasing for this reason. Soil exhaustion went on during the Middle Ages not because the cultivators were careless or ignorant of the fact that manure is needed to maintain fertility, but because this means of improving the soil was not within their reach. They used what manure they had and marled the soil when they had the time and could afford it, but, as the centuries passed, the virgin richness of the soil was exhausted and crops diminished. The only crops which are a matter of statistical record are those raised on the demesne land of those manors managed for their owners by bailiffs who made reports of the number of acres sown and the size of the harvest. These crops were probably greater than those reaped from average land, as it is reasonable to suppose that the demesne land was superior to that held by villains in the first place, and as it received better care, having the benefit of the sheep fold and of such stall manure as could be collected. Even if it were possible to form an accurate estimate of the average yield of demesne land, then, we should have an over-estimate for the average yield of ordinary common-field land. No accurate estimate of the average yield even of demesne land can be made, however, on the basis of the few entries regarding the yield of land which have been printed. Variations in yield from season to season and from manor to manor in the same season are so great that nothing can be inferred as to the general average in any one season, nor as to the comparative productivity in different periods, from the materials at hand. For instance, at Downton, one of the Winchester manors, the average yield of wheat between 1346 and 1353 was 6.5 bushels per acre, but this average includes a yield of 3.5 bushels in 1347 and one of 14 bushels in 1352,[43] showing that no single year gives a fair indication of the average yield of the period. For the most part the data available apply to areas too small and to periods too brief to give more than the general impression that the yield of land was very low. In the thirteenth century Walter of Henley and the writer of the anonymous _Husbandry_ are authorities for the opinion that the average yield of wheat land should be about ten bushels per acre.[44] At Combe, Oxfordshire, about the middle of the century, the average yield during several seasons was only 5 bushels.[45] About 1300, the fifty acres of demesne planted with wheat at Forncett yielded about five-fold or 10 bushels an acre (five seasons).[46] Between 1330 and 1340, the average yield (500 acres for three seasons), at ten manors of the Merton College estates was also 10 bushels.[47] At Hawsted, where about 60 acres annually were sown with wheat, the average yield for three seasons at the end of the fourteenth century was a little more than 7-1/2 bushels an acre.[48] Statistical data so scattered as this cannot be used as the basis of an inquiry into the rate of soil exhaustion. Where the normal variation from place to place and from season to season is as great as it is in agriculture, the material from which averages are constructed must be unusually extensive. So far as I know, no material in this field entirely satisfactory for statistical purposes is accessible at the present time. There is, however, one manor, Witney, for which important data for as many as eighteen seasons between 1200 and 1400 have been printed. A second suggestive source of information is Gras's table of harvest statistics for the whole Winchester group of manors, covering three different seasons, separated from each other by intervals of about a century. The acreage reported for the Winchester manors is so extensive that the average yield of the group can be fairly taken to be the average for all of that part of England. Moreover, Witney seems to be representative of the Winchester group, if the fact that the yield at Witney is close to the group average in the years when this is known can be relied upon as an indication of its representativeness in the years when the group average is not known. The average yield for all the manors in 1208-1209 was 4-1/3 bushels per acre; for Witney alone, 3-2/3. In 1396-1397 the yield of the group and the yield at Witney are, respectively, 6 and 6-1/4 bushels per acre.[49] Table III shows the yield of wheat on the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester in the years 1209, 1300 and 1397. If it could be shown that these were representative years, we should have a means of measuring the increase or decrease in productivity in these two centuries. Some indication of the representativeness of the years 1300 and 1397 is given by a comparison of prices for these years with the average prices of the period in which they lie. The price in 1300 was about 17 per cent below the average for the period 1291-1310,[50] an indication that the crop of nine bushels per acre reaped in 1299-1300 was above the normal. The price of wheat in 1397 was very slightly above the average for the period;[51] six bushels an acre or more, then, was probably a normal crop at the end of the fourteenth century. This conclusion is supported also by the fact that the yield in that year at Witney was approximately the same as the average of the eleven seasons between 1340 and 1354 noted in Table V. The price of wheat in the year 1209-1210 is not ascertainable. Walter of Henley's statement that the price of corn must be higher than the average to prevent loss when the return for seed sown was only three-fold[52] is an indication that the normal yield must have been at this time at least three-fold, or six bushels, so that the extremely low yield of the year 1208-1209 can hardly be considered typical. This examination of the yield in the three seasons shown in the table gives these results: at the beginning of the thirteenth century the average yield was probably about six bushels and certainly not more than ten; at the beginning of the fourteenth century the average was less than nine bushels--how much less, whether more or less than six bushels, is not known--at the end of the fourteenth century the yield was about six bushels. TABLE III YIELD OF WHEAT ON THE MANORS OF THE BISHIPRIC OF WINCHESTER[53] _Area sown_ _Produce_ _Ratio produce_ _Date_ _Acres_ _Bushels per acre_ _to seed_ 1208-1209 6838 4-1/3 2-1/3 1299-1300 3353 9[54] 4 1396-1397 2366-1/2 6 3 TABLE IV ACERAGE PLANTED WITH GRAINS ON THE MANOR OF THE BISHOPRIC OF WINCHESTER[55] _Wheat_ _Mancorn and Rye_ _Barley_ 1208-1209 5108 492 1500 1299-1300 2410 175 800 TABLE V YIELD OF WHEAT AT WITNEY[56] _Date_ _Bushels per acre_ _Acres sown_ 1209 3-2/3 417 1277 8-1/2 180 1278 ... 191 1283 8-1/2 ... 1284 10-1/2 ... 1285 7-1/4 ... 1300 (7-10) ... 1340 5-1/2 126 1341 7-1/2 138 1342 6 132 1344 ... 129 1346 5-1/2 127 1347 6-1/2 128 1348 6-3/4 138 1349 4-3/4 128 1350 5-1/4 ... 1351 6-1/2 ... 1352 8-1/2 ... 1353 5 ... 1397 6-1/4 51-1/2 The yield of the soil in single seasons at widely separated intervals is a piece of information of little value for our purpose. These tables reveal other facts of greater significance. The yield for the year gives almost no information about the normal yield over a series of years, but the area planted depends very largely upon that yield. The farmer knows that it will pay, on the average, to sow a certain number of acres, and the area under cultivation is not subject to violent fluctuations, as is the crop reaped. The area sown in any season is representative of the period; the crop reaped may or may not be representative. Land which, over a series of years, fails to produce enough to pay for cultivation is no longer planted. If the fertility of the soil is declining, this is shown by the gradual withdrawal from cultivation of the less productive land, as it is realized that it produces so little that it no longer pays to till it. Table IV shows that in fact this withdrawal of worn out land from cultivation was actually taking place. The area sown with wheat on the twenty-five manors for which the statistics for both periods are available was reduced by more than fifty per cent between the beginning and the end of the thirteenth century. A similar reduction in the area planted with all of the other crops, mancorn, rye, barley and oats, took place. A process of selection was going on which eliminated the less fertile land from cultivation. If six bushels an acre was necessary to pay the costs of tillage, land which returned less than six bushels could not be kept under the plow. The six bushel crop which seems to be normal in the fourteenth century is not the average yield of all of that land which had been under cultivation at an earlier time, but only of the better grades of land. Plots which had formerly yielded their five or six bushels an acre had become too barren to produce the bare minimum which made tillage profitable, and their produce no longer appeared in the average. Even with the elimination of the worst grades of land the average yield fell, because the better land, too, was becoming less fertile. At Witney (Table V) the area planted with wheat fell from about 180 acres in 1277 to less than 140 acres in 1340; but, in spite of this reduction in the amount of land cultivated, the average annual yield after 1340 was less than 6-1/2 bushels, while it had been about 8-1/2 bushels per acre in the period 1277-1285. This withdrawal of land from cultivation took place without the occurrence of any such calamity as the Black Death, which is ordinarily mentioned as the cause of the reduction of arable land to pasture in so far as this took place before 1400. It affords an indirect proof of the fact that much land was becoming barren. These statistical indications of declining productivity of the soil are supported by the overwhelming evidence of the poverty of the fourteenth century peasantry--poverty which can be explained only by the barrenness of their land. Many of the features of the agrarian changes of this period are familiar--the substitution of money payments for villain services, the frequency of desertion, the amalgamation and leasing of bond-holdings, the subdividing and leasing of the demesne. A point which has not been dwelt upon is the favorable pecuniary terms upon which the villains commuted their services. Where customary relations were replaced by a new bargain, the bargain was always in favor of the tenant. What was the source of this strategic advantage of the villain? The great number of holdings made vacant by the Black Death and the scarcity of eligible holders placed the landowner at a disadvantage, but this situation was temporary. How can the difficulty of filling vacant tenements before the Black Death be accounted for, and why were villains still able to secure reductions in their rents a generation after its effects had ceased to be felt? Even before the Black Death, it was frequently the case that villain holdings could be filled only by compulsion. The difficulty in finding tenants did not originate in the decrease in the population caused by the pestilence. There is little evidence that there was a lack of men qualified to hold land even after the Black Death, but it is certain that they sought in every way possible to avoid land-holding. The villains who were eligible in many cases fled, so that it became exceedingly difficult to fill a tenement when once it became vacant. Land whose holders died of the pestilence was still without tenants twenty-five and thirty years later, although persistent attempts had been made to force men to take it up. When compulsion succeeded only in driving men away from the manor, numerous concessions were made in the attempt to make land-holding more attractive. It is important to notice that these concessions were economic, not social. The force which was driving men away was not the desire to escape the incidents of serfdom, but the impossibility of making a living from holdings burdened with heavy rents. These burdens were eased, grudgingly, little by little, by landlords who had exhausted other methods of keeping their land from being deserted. It was necessary to reduce the rent in some way in order to permit the villains to live. The produce of a customary holding was no longer sufficient to maintain life and to allow the holder to render the services and pay the rent which had been fixed in an earlier century when the soil was more fertile. Notices of vacated holdings date from before 1220 on the estates of the Berkeleys. Thomas the First was lord of Berkeley between 1220 and 1243, and Such were the tymes for the most part whilest this Lord Thomas sate Lord, That many of his Tenants in divers of his manors ... surrendred up and least their lands into his hands because they were not able to pay the rent and doe the services, which also often happened in the tyme of his elder brother the Lord Robert.[57] This entry in the chronicle is significant, for it is typical of conditions on many other manors at a later date. The tenants were not able to pay the rent and do the services, and therefore gave up the land. It was leased, when men could be found to take it at all, at a rent lower than that which its former holders had found so oppressive. It is interesting to note that much of this land was soon after enclosed and converted to pasture, more than a century before the event which is supposed to mark the beginning of the enclosure movement. The productivity of the land had declined; its holders were no longer able to pay the customary rent, and the lord had to content himself with lower rents; the productivity was so low in some cases that the land was fit only for sheep pasture. Land holding was regarded as a misfortune in the fourteenth century. The decline in fertility had made it impossible for a villain to support himself and his family and perform the accustomed services and pay the rent for his land. Sometimes heirs were excused on account of their poverty. Page has made note of the prevailing custom of fining these heirs for the privilege of refusing the land: In 1340 J. F., who held a messuage and half a virgate, had to pay two shillings for permission to give up the land, because he was unable to render the services due from it. Three other men at the same time paid six pence each not to be compelled to take up customary land ... at Woolston, 1340, R. G. gave up his messuage and half virgate because he could not render the necessary services; whereupon T. S. had to pay three shillings three pence that he might not be forced to take the holding, and another villain paid six shillings eight pence for the same thing.[58] Miss Levett mentions the fact that cases were fairly frequent at the Winchester manors in the fourteenth century where a widow or next of kin refused to take up land on account of poverty or impotence;[59] and three villains of Forncett gave up their holdings before 1350 on account of their poverty.[60] In case no one could be found who would willingly take up the land, the method of compulsion was tried. The responsibility for providing a tenant in these cases seems to have been shifted to the whole community. A villain chosen by the whole homage had to take up the land. At Crawley in 1315 there were two such cases. A fine was paid by one villain for a cottage and ten acres "_que devenerunt in manus domini tanquam escheata pro defectu tenentium & ad que eligebatur per totam decenuam_." At Twyford in 13433-1344, J. paid a fine for a messuage and a half virgate of land, "_ad que idem Johannes electus est per totum homagium_."[61] In other entries cited by Page, the element of compulsion is unmistakable: the new holder of land is described as "_electus per totum homagium ad hoc compulsus_," a phrase which is frequently found also in the entries of fines paid on some of the Winchester manors after the Black Death.[62] This method of compulsion was useful to some extent, but there were limits beyond which it could not be pushed. Five men of Therfield in 1351 were ordered to take up customary land, and several of them left the manor rather than obey. "_Vendiderunt quod habuerunt et recesserunt nocitante._"[63] At Nailesbourne, in the same year, "_Robertus le Semenour compulsus finivit et clam recessit et ea tenere recusavit_."[64] The problem which confronted landowners during the Black Death was not so much an absolute lack of men on the manors, as a stubborn unwillingness on the part of these men to hold land. There were enough men left by the pestilence, but they were determined to avoid taking up the tenements whose holders had died. The pressure which was brought upon the villains to induce them to take up land and to prevent them from leaving the manor could not prevent the desertions, which had begun before the pestilence, and which took away the men who would naturally have supplied the places of those who died. The whole village must have been anxious to prevent the desertion of these men, for the community was held responsible for the services from vacant tenements, when they failed to provide a tenant. At Meon, for instance, each of twenty-six tenants paid 1 _d._ in place of works due from a vacant holding, according to an arrangement which had been made before the Black Death,[65] and at Burwell, in 1350, when three villains left the manor, their land was "_tradita toto homagio ad faciendum servicia et consuetudines_."[66] In spite of the deterring force which must have been exerted by public opinion under these conditions, and in spite of the aggressive measures taken by bailiffs to prevent desertion and to recapture those who had fled, the records are full of the names of those who had been successful in making their escape. Throughout the latter half of the fourteenth century and the first part of the fifteenth there was a gradual leakage from the Winchester manors. "Villeins were apt 'to go away secretly' and to be no more found."[67] Page describes a similar tendency on the part of villains of the manors whose records he has examined. At Weston, three villains deserted in 1354. At Woolston in 1357 a serf "_recessit a dominio et dereliquit terram suam_." At Chilton, between 1356 and 1359, eleven men and two women fled, some of whom were recaptured. At Therfield in 1369 a man who held twenty-three acres of land fled with his whole family. In the same year at Abbot's Ripton a man escaped with his horses, and three years later another villain left Weston by night.[68] At Forncett, "Before 1378 from 60 to 70 tenements had fallen into the lord's hands. It was the serfs especially who were relinquishing their land; for a larger proportion of the tenements charged with week-work were abandoned than of the more lightly burdened tenements."[69] This, of course, is what we should expect, as the lighter burdens of these holdings caused their tenants to feel less severely than the ordinary serfs the declining productivity of the land. The method of compulsion failed to keep the tenants on the land. They ran off, and the holdings remained vacant. It was necessary to make concessions of a material nature in order to persuade men to take up land or to keep what they had. They were excused of a part of their services in some cases, and in others all of the services were definitely commuted for small sums of money. When no tenants for vacant land could be secured who would perform the customary services due from it, the bailiff was forced to commute them. "'So and so holds such land for rent, because no one would hold it for works,' is a fairly frequent entry both before and after 1349," on the records of the Bishopric of Winchester. The important point to be noticed here is that the money rent paid in these cases was always less than the value of the services which had formerly been exacted from the land; not only that, it was less than the money equivalent for which those services had sometimes been commuted, an amount far less than the market value of the services in the fourteenth century at the prevailing rates of wages. For instance, when Roger Haywood took up three virgates and a cotland at a money rent instead of for the traditional services, "_quia nullus tenere voluit_," he contracted to pay rents whose total sum amounted to less than twenty-five shillings and included the church scot for one virgate and the cotland. On this manor, Sutton, the total services of _one_ virgate valued at the rate at which they were ordinarily "sold" must have amounted to at least eighteen or twenty shillings. At Wargrave the services of thirty-two virgates were all commuted at three shillings each, and the same sum was paid by each of twenty-three virgates at Waltham.[70] At Forncett and on the manors of the Berkeley estates commutation had little part in the disappearance of labor dues. The vacated land was leased in larger or smaller parcels at the best rents which could be obtained. This rent bore no relation to the value of the services formerly due from the land. The customary tenements which had been the units upon which labor dues were assessed were broken up, and the acres leased separately, or in new combinations, to other men.[71] At Forncett, as in the case of the Winchester manors where the services were commuted, the terms of the new arrangement can be compared with those of the old, and it is seen that the money rent obtained was less than the value of the services formerly due. The customary services were here valued at over two shillings per acre; the average rent obtained was less than one shilling an acre. The net pecuniary result of the change, then, was the same as though the services had been commuted for money at less than their value. Another method of reducing rents in this period was the remission of a part of the services due. Miss Levett notes the extent to which this took place on the Winchester manors, and suggests that the Bishop wished to avoid the wastefulness and inefficiency of serf labor.[72] She overlooks the fact that he failed to exact the money payment in place of the services for which manorial custom provided. It was a well established custom that in case work owed by the tenants was not used they should pay money instead. The amount of work needed each year on the demesne varied according to the size of the harvest, etc., but the number of days' works for which the tenants was liable was fixed. The surplus of works owed above those needed were "sold" each year to the villains. Frequently the number of works sold exceeded the number performed, although formal commutation of dues had not taken place. At Nailesbourne (1348-1349), 4755 works were due from the villains, but nearly 4000 of these were sold.[73] If the Bishop had merely wished to avoid waste, then, in ceasing to require the performance of villain services on his manors, he would have required the payment of the money equivalent of these services. When the services were excused, and the customary alternative of a money payment also, the change was clearly an intentional reduction in the burden of villain tenure. This fact makes emphasis upon the payment of money as the distinguishing feature of the changed relations between landlord and tenant in this period misleading. There was every precedent for requiring a money payment in the place of services not wanted. When, therefore, a great many services were simply allowed to lapse, it is an indication that it was impossible to exact the payment. It makes little difference whether the services were commuted at a lower rate than that at which they had formerly been "sold" or whether the villain was simply held accountable for a smaller number of services at the old rate; in either case the rent was reduced, and the burden of the tenant was less. The reduction of rent is thus the characteristic and fundamental feature of all of the changes of land tenure during this period. This fact is ignored by historians who suppose the chief factor in the commutation movement to have been the desire of prosperous villains to rid themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom. Vinogradoff, for instance, in his preface to the monograph from which most of the foregoing illustrations have been drawn, has nothing at all to say of the reduction of rent and the poverty of the tenants when he is speaking of the various circumstances attending the introduction of money payments. In the particular case under discussion the cultural policy of William of Wykeham may have suggested arrangements in commutation of labour services and rents in kind. In other cases similar results were connected with war expenditures and town life. In so far the initiative in selling services came from the class of landowners. But there were powerful tendencies at work in the life of the peasants which made for the same result. The most comprehensive of these tendencies was connected, it seems to me, with the accumulation of capital in the hands of the villains under a system of customary dues. When rents and services became settled and lost their elasticity, roughly speaking, in the course of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the surplus of profits from agriculture was bound to collect in the hands of those who received them directly from the soil, and it was natural for these first receivers to turn the proceeds primarily towards an improvement of their social condition; the redemption of irksome services was a conspicuous manifestation of this policy.[74] This paragraph contains several suggestions which are shown to be misleading by a study of the extracts from the original sources embodied in the essay of whose preface it forms a part. It is true that the cultural policy of William of Wykeham was an extravagant one, and that he was in need of money when the system of tenure was being revolutionized on his estates; but it is misleading to interpret the changes which took place as measures for the prompt conversion into cash of the episcopal revenues. No radical changes in the system of payment were necessary in order to secure cash, for the system of selling surplus services to the villains had become established decades before the time of this bishop, and no formal commutation of services was necessary in order to convert the labor dues of the villains into payments in money. The bulk of the services were not performed, even before commutation, and the lord received money for the services not used on the demesne. The essential feature of the changes which took place was a reduction in the amount paid--a reduction which the bishop must have resisted so far as he dared, just as other landowners must have resisted the reductions which their tenants forced them to make at a time when they were in need of money. The commutation of services was incidental, and was only a slight modification of the system formerly in use, but, whether services were commuted or were in part excused, the result was a lessening of the burden borne by the tenant, and the reduction of the rent received by the lord. It is true, as Professor Vinogradoff states, that there were powerful tendencies in the life of the peasants which made for this result. In fact no initiative in selling services--at these rates--could have come from the side of the landowners. The change was forced upon them. Unless they compromised with their tenants and reduced their rents they soon found vacant tenements on their hands which no one could be compelled to take. The amount of land which was finally leased at low rents because the former holders had died or run away and no one could be forced to take it at the old rents is evidence of the reluctance with which landowners accepted the situation and of their inability to resist the change in the end. But it is not true that the most comprehensive of these tendencies was the accumulation of capital in the hands of the villains, and their desire to improve their social condition. The immediate affect of the commutation of services and similar changes at this time was to leave their social condition untouched, whatever the final result may have been. These villains did not buy themselves free of the marks of servitude. Their gradual emancipation came for other reasons. At Witney, for example, where the works of all the native tenants had been commuted by 1376, they were still required to perform duties of a servile character: they were all to join in haymaking and in washing and shearing the lord's sheep, to pay pannage for their pigs, to take their turn of service as reeve and tithingman, and to carry the lord's victuals and baggage on his departure from Witney as the natives were formerly wont to do.[75] This example, taken at random, is typical of the continuance of conditions which should make the historian hesitate before adopting the view that the social condition of the peasants was improved by the new arrangements made as to the bulk of their services and rents. But more than that, the terms of the new arrangements are not those which would be offered by well-to-do cultivators in whose hands the profits from the soil had accumulated. In all of these cases the new terms were advantageous to the tenants, not to the lord, and advantageous in a strictly pecuniary way. The lord had to grant these terms because the tenants were in the most miserable poverty, and could no longer pay their accustomed rent. Neither the Black Death, whose effects were evanescent, nor the desire of prosperous villains to free themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom was an important cause in the sequence of agrarian changes which took place in the fourteenth century. Serfdom as a status was hardly affected, but a thousand entries record the poverty and destitution which made it necessary to lighten the economic burdens of the serfs. At Brightwell, for example, the works of three half-virgaters were relaxed, the record reads, because of their poverty (1349-1350).[76] Some villains had no oxen, and were excused their plowing on this account, or were allowed to substitute manual labor for carting services.[77] At Weston, in 1370, a tenant "_non arat terram domini causa paupertate_."[78] At Downton, in 13766-1377, no money could be collected from the villains in place of the services they owed in haymaking.[79] Frequently when services were commuted for money, the record of the fact is accompanied by the statement that the change was made on account of the poverty of the tenants. At Witney, for instance, the works and services of all the native tenants were commuted at fixed payments (_ad certos denarios_) by favour of the lord as long as the lord pleases, on account of the poverty of the homage.[80] The reduction in rent in this case was at least a third of the total. The value of the customary services commuted was at least ten shillings six pence per acre, and they were commuted at six shillings eight pence. Other explicit references to the poverty of the tenants as the cause of commutation are quoted by Page: At Hinton, Berks, the Bailiff reports in 1377, that the former lord before his death had commuted the services of the villains for money, "eo quod customarii impotentes ad facienda dicta opera et pro eorum paupertate" ... At Stevenage, 1354, S. G. "tenuit unam vergatam reddendo inde per annum in serviciis et consuetudinibus xxii solidos. Et dictus S. G. pauper et impotens dictam virgatam tenere. Ideo concessum est per dominum quod S. G. habeat et teneat predictam terram reddendo inde xiii solidos iv denarios pro omnibus serviciis et consuetudinibus."[81] In connection with the matter of heriots, also, evidences of extreme poverty are frequent. Frequently when a tenant died there was no beast for the lord to seize. The heriot of a virgate was generally an ox, or money payment of its value. But the amount as often reduced "propter paupertatem," and sometimes when a succeeding tenant could not pay, a half acre was deducted from the virgate and held by the lord instead of the heriot.[82] The rate at which the value of these holdings declined when their tenants possessed too few cattle was rapid. Land without stock is worthless. The temptation to sell an ox in order to meet the rent was great, but when the deficiency was due to declining productivity of the soil, there was no probability that it would be made up the following year even with all the stock, and with fewer cattle the situation was hopeless. After this process had gone on for a few years nothing was left, not even a yoke of oxen for plowing. Whatever means had been taken to keep up the fertility of the land, attend to the drainage, _etc._, were of necessity neglected, and finally the hope of keeping up the struggle was abandoned. The spirit which prompted the reply of the Chatteris tenant when he was ordered by the manorial court to put his holding in repair can be understood: "_Non reparavit tenementum, et dicit quod non vult reparare sed potius dimittere et abire._"[83] If he left the manor and joined the other men who under the same circumstances were giving up their land and becoming fugitives, it was not with the hope of greatly improving his condition. Some of the fugitives found employment in the towns, but this was by no means certain, and the records frequently state that the absent villains had become beggars.[84] The declining productivity of the soil not only affected the villains, but reduced the profits of demesne cultivation. It has already been seen that the acreage under crop was steadily decreasing, as more and more land reached a stage of barrenness in which it no longer repaid cultivation. This process is seen from another angle in the frequent complaints that the customary meals supplied by the lord to serfs working on the demesne cost more than the labor was worth. According to Miss Levett: This complaint was made on many manors belonging to the Bishop of Winchester in spite of the fact that if one may judge from the cost of the "Autumn Works" the meals were not very lavish, the average cost being 1 _d._ or 1-1/4 _d._ per head for each _Precaria_.... The complaint that the system was working at a loss comes also from Brightwaltham (Berkshire), Hutton (Essex), and from Banstead (Surrey), as early as 1325, and is reflected in contemporary literature. "The work is not worth the breakfast" (or the _reprisa_) occurs several times in the Winchester Pipe Rolls.... By 1376 the entry is considerably more frequent, and applies to ploughing as well as to harvest-work.[85] At Meon 64 acres of ploughing were excused _quia non fecerunt huiusmodi arrura causa reprisae_. A similar note occurs at Hambledon (_Ecclesia_) and at Fareham with the further information that the ploughing was there performed _ad cibum domini_. At Overton four virgates were excused their ploughing _quia reprisa excedit valorem_.[86] Miss Levett quotes these entries as an explanation for the tendency to excuse services, forgetting that the lord could usually demand a money equivalent for services not required for any reason. We have here the reason why so few services are demanded, but no explanation of the failure to require money instead. The fundamental cause of the worthlessness of the labor on the demesne is the fact which accounts for the absence of a money payment for the work not performed. The demesne land was worn out, and did not repay costs of cultivation; the bond land was worn out, and the villains were too poor to "buy" their labor. The profits of cultivating this unproductive land were so small that a deficit arose when it was necessary to meet the cost of maintaining for a few days the men employed on it. It is not surprising that men who had families to support and were trying to make a living from the soil abandoned their worthless holdings and left the manor. The lord had only to meet the expense of food for the laborers during the few days when they were actually at work plowing the demesne or harvesting the crop. How could the villain support his whole family during the entire year on the produce of worse land more scantily manured? In this low productivity of the land is to be found the reason for the conversion of much of the demesne into pasture land, as soon as the supply of servile labor failed. It was, of course, impossible to pay the wages of free men from the produce of soil too exhausted to repay even the slight cost incidental to cultivating it with serf labor. The bailiffs complained of the exorbitant wages demanded by servants in husbandry; these wages were exorbitant only because the produce of the land was so small that it was not worth the pains of tillage. The most important of the many causes which were at work to undermine the manorial system in the fourteenth century is, therefore, plain. The productivity of the soil had declined to a point where villain holdings would no longer support the families which cultivated them and where demesne land was sometimes not worth cultivation even by serf labor. Under these conditions, the very basis of the manor was destroyed. The poverty of the peasants, the difficulty with which tenants could be found for vacant holdings, even though the greatest pressure was brought to bear upon eligible villains, and even though the servile burdens were considerably reduced, and the frequency with which these serfs preferred the uncertainty and risk of deserting to the certain destitution and misery of land-holding, are facts which are intimately connected, and which are all due to the same cause. It had been impossible to maintain the productive capacity of the land at a level high enough to provide a living for the tillers of the soil. Footnotes: [39] E. J. Russell, _The Fertility of the Soil_, Cambridge, 1913, pp. 43-46. [40] _Ibid._, pp. 48-52. [41] _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxviii, p. 394. [42] _Ibid._, p. 393. [43] Levett and Ballard, _The Black Death_, p. 216. [44] _Walter of Henley's Husbandry, together with an Anonymous Husbandry, etc._, ed. by Elizabeth Lamond (London, 1890), pp. 19, 71. [45] Curtler, _Short History of English Agriculture_, p. 33. [46] Davenport, _Econ. Dev. of a Norfolk Manor_ (Cambridge, 1906), p. 30. [47] Rogers, _History of Agriculture, etc._, vol. i, pp. 38-44. [48] Cullum, _Hawsted_, pp. 215-218. [49] Unfortunately, the figures for the year 1299-1300 reveal an error which makes it impossible to use the test of the representativeness of Witney in a third season with accuracy. The acreage planted is obviously understated, and it is possible to make only a rough estimate of the correct acreage. The acceptance of the area given by Gras (82 acres) results in the conclusion that 22 bushels per acre was reaped. The suspicion that this result must be incorrect is confirmed when it is found, also, that 68-1/4 quarters of seed were sown--an amount sufficient for 270 acres at the average rate of 2 bushels per acre, or for 220 acres at the rate of 2-1/2 bushels per acre, which Ballard gives as the rate usual at Witney. (Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 192.) In 1277 the acreage sown with wheat at Witney was 180 acres, and in 1278, 191. (_Ibid._, p. 190.) If 3 bushels per acre were sown in 1299, the area in this year also was 180 acres. If these estimates are used instead of the figure 82, as indicating the correct acreage, the yield for the year is found to be between 7 and 10 bushels per acre, in a season in which the average yield for the whole group of manors was 9 bushels per acre. The figures at Witney in the three seasons where a comparison with the general average for the group is possible deviate from it within limits narrow enough to indicate that conditions at Witney were roughly typical. [50] Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, vol. i, p. 228. [51] _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 234; vol. iv, p. 282. [52] _Op. cit._, p. 19. [53] Gras, _Evol. of the Eng. Corn Market_ (Cambridge, 1915), appendix A. [54] Gras gives 1.35 quarters as the acre produce, or nearly 11 bushels. This figure is incorrect, as it is derived by dividing the total produce of 42 manors by the total acreage planted on only 38 manors. The produce of the four manors on which the acreage planted is unknown amounts to nearly 750 quarters, a large item in a total of only 4527 quarters for the whole group of manors. The ratio of produce to seed, however, is independent of the number of acres planted, and these four manors are included in the computation of this figure. [55] Gras, _op. cit._, appendix A. These figures are given only for the manors for which the acreage planted in both periods is known--25 in the case of wheat, 4 in the case of the other grains. [56] Gras, _op. cit._, appendix A; Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, pp. 190, 203. [57] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, vol. i, p. 113. [58] Page, _End of Villainage_ (Publications of the American Economic Association, Third Series, 1900, vol. i, pp. 289-387), at p. 324, note 2. [59] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 83. [60] Davenport, _op. cit._, p. 71. [61] Page, _op. cit._, p. 345. [62] _Ibid._, p. 340, note 1, and Levett, p. 85. [63] _Ibid._, p. 340, note 1. [64] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 85. [65] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 85. [66] Page, _op. cit._, p. 340. [67] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 135. [68] Page, _op. cit._, p. 344, note 2. [69] Davenport, _Decay of Villainage_, p. 127. For further evidence of the voluntary relinquishment of land in this period, see Seebohm, _Eng. Village Community_ (London, 1890), p. 30, note 4, and Davenport, _Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor_, pp. 91, 71, 72. [70] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, pp. 42-43. [71] Davenport, _Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor_, p. 78, and Smyth, _op. cit._, vol. i, p. 113. [72] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 157. "On many manors the majority of the services owed were simply dropped, neither sold nor commuted. They were evidently in many cases inefficient, expensive, and inelastic." [73] _Ibid._, p. 89. [74] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. v. [75] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 199. [76] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 108. [77] _Ibid._, pp. 38, 115. [78] Page, _op. cit._, p. 342, note 2. [79] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 115. [80] _Ibid._, p. 200. [81] Page, _op. cit._, p. 342, note 2. [82] Seebohm, _op. cit._, p. 30, note 2. [83] Page, _End of Villainage_, p. 365. [84] _Ibid._, p. 384. [85] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 157. [86] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 121. CHAPTER III THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OPEN-FIELDS For the reasons given in the last chapter, bailiff-farming rapidly gave way to the various forms of the leasehold system in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The economic basis of serfdom was destroyed; a servile tenement could no longer be depended upon to supply an able-bodied man to do work on the demesne for several days a week throughout the year, with extra helpers from his family at harvest time. The money received in commutation of customary labor, or as rent from land which had formerly been held for services was far less than the value of the services, and would not pay the wages of free men hired in place of the serfs who had formerly performed the labor. Moreover, the demesne land itself was for the most part so unproductive that it had hardly paid to cultivate it even at the slight expense incurred in furnishing food for the serfs employed; it was all the more a waste of money to hire men to plow it and sow it. The text books on economic history usually give a careful account of the various forms of leases which were used as bailiff-farming was abandoned. We are told how the demesne was leased either as a whole or in larger or smaller pieces to different tenants and sets of tenants, for lives, for longer or shorter periods of years, with or without the stock which was on it, and, in some cases, with the servile labor of some of the villains, when this had not all been excused or commuted into money payments. Arrangements necessarily differed on the different manors, and the exact terms of these first experimental leases do not concern us here. The fact which does interest us is that with the cessation of bailiff farming the last attempt at keeping the land distributed in fairly equal shares among a large number of tenants was abandoned. Bond land had been divided into portions which were each supposed to be sufficient for the maintenance of a laborer and his family. As long as the demesne was cultivated for the lord, it was to his interest to prevent the concentration of holdings in a few hands, unless some certain provision could be made to insure the performance of the labor due from all of them. But even when the demesne was still being managed for the lord, it had already become necessary in some cases to allow one man to hold two or more of these portions, for the productivity had so declined that one was no longer enough. Now, with the leasing of the demesne, the lord no longer had an interest in maintaining the working population of the manor at a certain level, but was concerned with the problem of getting as much rent as possible. When the demesne and the vacant bond tenements began to be leased, the land was given to the highest bidder, and the competitive system was introduced at the start. This led to the gradual accumulation of large holdings by some tenants, while other men were still working very small portions, and others occupied holdings of every intermediate size. The uniformity of size characteristic of the early virgates disappeared. In this chapter these points will be considered briefly, and a study will also be made of the way in which these new holders managed their lands. In the first place, as the more destitute villains were giving up their holdings and leaving the manor, and as no one could be found to take their places on the old terms, the landlords gave up the policy of holding the land until someone should be willing to pay the accustomed services and let the vacant lands at the best rents obtainable. Freeholders, and villains whose land was but lightly burdened, and those who by superior management had been able to make both ends meet, were now able to increase their holdings by adding a few acres of land which had been a part of the demesne or of a vacated holding. The case of the man at Sutton, who took up three virgates and a cotland, has already been mentioned. Another case of "engrossing," as it was called, dated from 1347-1348 at Meon, where John Blackman paid fines for one messuage with ten acres of land, two other messuages with a virgate of land each, one parcel of four acres, and another holding whose nature is not specified.[87] Legislators who observed this tendency issued edicts against it. No attempt was made to discover the underlying cause of which it was merely a symptom. The first agrarian statutes were of a characteristically restrictive nature, and no constructive policy was attempted by the government until after a century of futile attempts to deal with the separate evils of engrossing, enclosure, conversion to pasture, destruction of houses and rural depopulation. The first remedy these evils suggested was limitation of the amount of land which one man should be allowed to hold.[88] In 1489 the statutes begin to prohibit the occupation of more than one farm by the same man, or to regulate the use of the land so occupied. The statute of 1489 refers to the Isle of Wight, where "Many dwelling places, fermes, and fermeholdes have of late tyme ben used to be taken in to oon manys hold and handes, that of old tyme were wont to be in severall persons holdes and handes."[89] The proclamation of 1514 regulated the use of land held by all persons who were tenants of more than _one_ farm.[90] A law of 1533 provides that no person should occupy more than _two_ farms.[91] The old villain holdings did not necessarily pass intact into the hands of one holder, but were sometimes divided up and taken by different men, a few acres at a time. One Richard Grene in 1582 held lands of which ten and a half acres had been gradually acquired through as many as ten grants. This land had formed part of six other holdings, and much of the rest of the land belonging to these holdings had also been alienated.[92] The Inquisition of 1517 reported numerous cases of engrossing, and Professor Gay notes some of the entries in the returns of the Inquisition of 1607 which are also interesting in this connection: W. S. separated six yardlands from a manor house and put a widow in the house, a laborer in the kitchen and a weaver in the barn. The land was divided between two tenants who already had houses, and presumably, other land, and were taking this opportunity to enlarge their holdings of land. G. K. took from a farmhouse the land which formed part of the same tenement and leased the house to a laborer who had "but one acre of land in every field."[93] The growing irregularity of holdings, combined with the decrease in the number of holders whose interests had to be consulted, made it easier than it had formerly been to modify the traditional routine of husbandry. Even though the new land acquired by tenants from the demesne or from old bond-holdings did not happen to be adjacent to strips already in their possession, exchange could accomplish the desired result. At Gorleston, Suffolk, a tenant sublet about half of his holding to eight persons, and at the same time acquired plots of land for himself from another eight holdings.[94] Before 1350 exchanges, sales and subletting of land by tenants had become general on the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester. It is unusual to find more than two cases of exchanges in any one year, even on a large manor; but Miss Levett adds: "On the other hand, one can hardly look through the fines on any one of the episcopal manors for a period of ten years without finding one or two. From the close correspondence of the areas exchanged, together with exact details as to position, it is fairly clear that the object of the exchange was to obtain more compact holdings."[95] Fitzherbert writes that "By the assente of the Lordes and tenauntes, euery neyghbour may exchange lands with other."[96] This practice was especially sanctioned by law in 1597 "for the more comodious occupyinge or husbandrie of anye Land, Meadows, or Pastures,"[97] but it was common in the open-field villages before the legal permission was given. Tawney reproduces several maps belonging to All Souls' Muniment Room, which show the ownership of certain open-field holdings of about 1590. Here consolidation of plots had proceeded noticeably. There are several plots of considerable size held by a single tenant. The advantage of consolidated holdings are considerable. In the first place, the turf boundaries between the strips could be plowed up, or the direction of the plowing itself could be changed, if enough strips were thrown together. Fitzherbert advises the farmer who has a number of strips lying side by side and who hath no dung nor shepe to compost nor dung his land withall. Then let the husband take his ploughe, and cast al such landes three or four tymes togider, and make theyr rigge theyr as ye raine was before.... And so shel he finde new moulde, that was not sene in an hundred yeres before, the which must nedes gyue more corne than the other dydde before.[98] In two Elizabethan surveys examined by Corbett, we have evidence that the theoretical advantages urged by Fitzherbert were not unknown in practice. It is now and then stated that the _metae_ between strips have been plowed up. But sometimes, even though all of the strips in a furlong had been acquired by the same owner, and enclosed, the land was left in strips. Some of the pieces were freehold, others copyhold, and the lord may have objected to having the boundaries obliterated.[99] Cross plowing is also occasionally referred to in these surveys, but it was apparently rare.[99] The possibility of improvement in this direction, although not to be ignored, was, however, comparatively slight. The important changes which resulted from the increased size of the holdings were not so much in the direction of superior management of the land, as in that of making a selection between the different qualities of land, and cultivating only the land in comparatively good condition. Tenants taking up additional land cultivated only a part of their enlarged holdings. The least productive strips were allowed to become overgrown with grass. The better strips were kept under crop. If we are to accept the testimony of Fitzherbert and Tusser, strips of grass in the common fields, or lea land, as it was called, were a feature of every open-field township, by the sixteenth century. According to Fitzherbert, "in euery towneshyppe that standeth in tillage in the playne countrye, there be ... leyse to tye or tedder theyr horses and mares vpon."[100] According to Tusser, the process of laying to grass unproductive land was still going on. Land arable driuen or worne to the proofe, and craveth some rest for thy profits behoof, With otes ye may sowe it the sooner to grasse more sooner to pasture to bring it to passe.[101] The later surveys give additional evidence of the extent to which the new tenantry had restricted the area of cultivation in the old fields which had once been entirely arable land. The most noteworthy feature of the survey of East Brandon, Durham (1606), was, according to Gray, the appearance in certain fields of meadow along-side the arable. Lowe field was almost transformed by such procedure, for seldom did the tenants retain any arable there. Instead they had large parcels of meadow, sometimes as many as twenty acres; nor does anything indicate that these parcels were enclosed. They seem, rather to have remained open and to point to a gradual abandonment of arable tillage. Such an abandonment is more clearly indicated by another survey of this series, that of Eggleston.... Presumably the fields had once been largely arable. When, however, the survey was made, change had begun, though not in the direction of enclosure, of which there was still little. Conversion to meadow had proceeded without it: nearly all the parcels of the various tenants in East field and West field are said to have been meadow; arable still predominated only in Middle field, and even there it had begun to yield.[102] At Westwick, Whorlton, Bolam and Willington in Durham, and at Welford, Northamptonshire, a similar transformation had taken place.[103] This land was obviously withdrawn from cultivation not because the tenants preferred grass land, or because grass land was more valuable than arable, but because it could be plowed only at a loss. Where, as at Greens Norton, arable and leas are valued separately in the survey, the grass land is shown to be of less value than the land still under cultivation.[104] The land craved rest, (to use Tusser's phrase), and the grass which grew on it was of but little value. Here we have no capitalist systematically buying up land for grazing, but a withdrawal of land from cultivation by the tenants themselves, even though they were in no position to prepare it properly for grazing purposes. The importance of this fact cannot be over-emphasized. It is true that pasture, properly enclosed and stocked, was profitable, and that men who were able to carry out this process became notorious among their contemporaries on account of their gains. But it is also true that the land which was converted to pasture by these enclosers was fit for nothing else. Husbandmen had had to withdraw much of their open-field ground from tillage simply because it was so unproductive that they could not count on a bare return of seed if they planted it. The pasturage for an additional horse or cow which these plots furnished was pure gain, and was not the object of the conversion to grass. The unproductive strips would have been left untilled even though no alternative use had been possible. They were unfit for cultivation. The advantage of holding this lea land did not end, however, with the fact that a few additional horses or cows could be kept on the grass which sprang up. This was undoubtedly of some value, but the greatest advantage lay in the fact that this land gradually recovered its strength. When the strips which were kept under cultivation finally produced in their turn so little that they had to be abandoned, the tenant who had access to land which had been laid to grass years before could plow this instead, for it had regained its fertility and had improved in physical quality. Fitzherbert recommends a regular interchange between "Reyst" ground and arable land which had become exhausted. When the grass strips become mossy and make poor pasture, plow them up and plant them; when arable strips fail to produce good crops, lay them to grass. Lea ground, "the whiche hath ben errable land of late" should be plowed up. And if a man haue plentie of suche pasture, that wil be mossie euery thyrd yere, lette hym breake vp a newe piece of gronde, and plowe it and sowe it (as I haue seyde before), and he shal haue plentye of corne, with littell dongynge, and sow it no lengar thu it will beare plentye of corne, without donge, and it will beare much better grasse, x or xii yere after.... Reyst grounde if it be dry, will bringe much corne, for the mosse will rotte, and the moll hillockes will amende the ground wel.[105] Tusser's references to the practice of plowing up lea ground and laying other land to grass are so incidental as to be good evidence of the fact that this was not merely the recommendation of a theorist, but a common practice, the details of which were familiar to those for whom he intended his book. A passage in which he refers to the laying to grass of land in need of rest has already been quoted.[106] In discussing the date at which plowing should take place he mentions the plowing up of lea land as well as of fallow.[107] The superior value of enclosed pasture to open-field leas, and of enclosed arable to open-field arable, is not only asserted by Fitzherbert and others who are urging husbandmen to enclose their land, but appears also when manorial surveys are examined. It would seem, therefore, that the tenants would have been anxious to carry the process to an end and enclose their land. Undoubtedly the larger holders were desirous of making the change, but as long as the rights of the lesser men were respected, it was almost impossible to carry it out. The adjustment of conflicting and obscure claims was generally held to be an insuperable obstacle, even by those who urged the change most strongly, while those who on principle opposed anything in the way of enclosure took comfort in the fact that holdings were so intermixed that there was little prospect of accomplishing the change: Wheare (men) are intercominers in comon feildes and also haue theare portions so intermingled with an other that, thoughe they would, they could not inclose anie parte of the saide feldes so long as it is so.[108] Just as the services of a promoter are needed in the formation of a modern industrial combination, pressure from above was usually necessary in order to overcome the difficulties of the situation. The Lord of Berkeley (1281-1321) drewe much profitt to his Tenants and increase of fines to himselfe ... by makeing and procuringe to bee made exchanges of land mutually one with an other, thereby casting convenient Parcells togeather, fitting it for an inclosure and conversion. And by freeinge such inclosures from all comonage of others.[109] A landlord of this sort would do much to override the opposition of those who, through conservatism, fear of personal loss, or insistence upon more than their share of the benefits of the readjustment, made it impossible for tenants to carry out these changes unassisted. Where tenants with or without the assistance of the lord had managed to enclose some of their land and free it from right of common, they were in a position to devote it to sheep-farming if they chose to do so. Ordinarily they did not do this. If, as has been claimed, the large-scale enclosures which shall be considered later were made because of an increasing demand for wool, it is surprising that these husbandmen were willing to keep enclosed land under cultivation, and even to plow up enclosed pasture. The land had to be kept under grass for a part of the time, whether it was open or enclosed, because if kept continuously under the plow it became unproductive; and it was better to have this land enclosed so that it could be used advantageously as pasture during the period when it was recovering its strength. But the profits of pasturage were not high enough to prevent men from plowing up the land when it was again in fit condition. At Forncett, the tenants had begun sheep-farming by the end of the fourteenth century, and had also begun to enclose land in the open-fields; the situation was one, therefore, in which agriculture was likely to be permanently displaced by grazing, according to the commonly accepted theory of the enclosure movement. This change failed to take place; not because enclosures ceased to be made--nearly half of the acreage of the fields was in enclosures by 1565--but because the tenants preferred to cultivate this enclosed land.[110] If the enclosures had been pasture when they were first made, they did not remain permanently under grass. Like the land still in the open fields, and like the small enclosures in Cheshire reported by the commission of 1517, they were sometimes plowed and sometimes laid to grass, according to the condition of the soil. In a Cheshire village, two tenants had small enclosures in the same field, which were treated in this way. At the time the commission visited the place, one of these closes was being used as pasture, and the other was in cultivation. John Monkesfield's close, which had been made six years before, _continet in se duas acras & diversis temporibus fuit in cultura & aliis temporibus in pastura & nunc occupata est in pastura._[111] John Molynes' close of one acre had been made the year before and _fuit antea in pastura & nunc occupata est in cultura._ It had evidently been a strip of lea land which had been so improved by being kept under grass that it was in fit condition for cultivation, while John Monkesfield's close had been plowed long enough and was just at this time in need of rest. These men were apparently unaffected by any increasing demand for wool, but were managing their land according to its needs. By the sixteenth century, then, some enclosures had appeared in the open fields, and the old common-field system was disintegrating. The old customary holdings had been so altered that they were hardly recognizable. Some tenants held a great number of acres, and had managed by purchase or exchange to get possession of a number of adjacent strips, which they might, under certain conditions, be able to enclose. Much of the land, however, was withdrawn from cultivation, and for years was allowed to remain almost in the condition of waste. For the most part, however, there had been no revolutionary change in the system of husbandry. The framework remained. The whole community still possessed claims extending over most of the land. The village flocks pastured on the stubble and the fallows of the open fields. The advantages which could in theory be derived from the control of several adjacent strips of land were reduced to a minimum by the necessity of maintaining old boundaries to mark off from each other lands of differing status. Even where the consolidation of holdings had proceeded to some extent, the tenants who had acquired the most compact holdings in comparison with the majority still possessed scattered plots of land separated from each other by the holdings of other men, and some of the smaller holders had no two strips which touched each other. When the tenants had been left to themselves, all of the changes which took place before the eighteenth century, numerous as they were, usually left the fields in a state resembling more their condition in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than that of the nineteenth century. FOOTNOTES: [87] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 49, note. [88] A speech on enclosures commending bills proposed in 1597 contrasts the constructive character of that legislation with the earlier laws: "Where the gentleman that framed this bill hath dealt like a most skilful chirugien, not clapping on a plaster to cover the sore that it spread no further, but searching into the very depths of the wound that the life and strength which hath so long been in decay by the wasting of towns and countries may at length again be quickened and repaired." Bland, Brown & Tawney, _Eng. Econ. History--Select Documents_, pp. 271-272. [89] 4 H. 7, c. 16, as quoted by Pollard, _Reign of Henry VII_, p. 237. [90] Leadam, _Domesday of Inclosures_ (London, 1897), p. 7 [91] 25 H. 8, c. 13. [92] Gray, _English Field Systems_ (Cambridge, 1915), pp. 95-96. [93] "Midland Revolt," _R. H. S. Trans._, New Series, vol. xviii, p. 230. [94] Tawney, _Agrarian Problem_, pp. 164-165. [95] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, pp. 52-53. [96] _Husbandry_ (ed. English Dialect Society, 1882), p. 77. [97] 39 El., c. i, vi. [98] _Surveying_ (2nd ed., 1567), ch. 24. [99] Corbett, "Elizabethan Village Surveys," _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, New Series, vol. ii, pp. 67-87. [100] _Surveyinge_, ch. 41. [101] _Five Hundred Points_ (London, 1812). [102] Gray, _op. cit._, pp. 106-107. [103] Gray, _op. cit._, pp. 35, 106-107. [104] Lennard, _Rural Northamptonshire_, pp. 100-101. [105] Fitzherbert, _Surveyinge_, chs. 27 and 28. [106] See p. 79. Another reference to this process is made in October's _Husbandry_, vol. 22, ch. 17. [107] Tusser, January's _Husbandry_, vol. 47, ch. 32. [108] _A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England_, ed. by Elizabeth Lamond, Cambridge, 1893. [109] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, vol. ii, pp. 159-160. [110] Davenport, _Norfolk Manor_, pp. 80-81. [111] Leadam, _op. cit._, pp. 641-644. CHAPTER IV ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE Enclosure made by the tenants themselves by common agreement aroused no opposition or apprehension. No diminution of the area under tillage beyond that which had already of necessity taken place occurred, and the grass land already present in the fields was made available for more profitable use. The Doctor in Hales' dialogue carefully excepts this sort of enclosure from condemnation: I meane not all Inclosures, nor yet all commons, but only of such Inclosures as turneth commonly arable feildes into pastures; and violent Inclosures, without Recompense of them that haue the right to comen therein: for if the land weare seuerallie inclosed to the intent to continue husbandrie theron, and euerie man, that had Right to commen, had for his portion a pece of the same to him selfe Inclosed, I thincke no harm but rather good should come therof, yf euerie man did agre theirto.[112] In this passage Hales recognizes the theoretical possibility of a beneficial sort of enclosure, but the conditional form in which his remarks are thrown indicates that, so far as he knew, there was little systematic division of the land among the tenants by common consent. Orderly rearrangement of holdings into compact plots suitable for enclosure was difficult unless the small holders had all disappeared, leaving in the community only men of some means, who were able to undertake the expenses of the readjustment. In most villages, however, holdings of all sizes were the rule. Some tenants had almost no land under cultivation, but picked up a living by working for others, and by keeping a few sheep on the commons and on the fallow lands of the town. There was thus always a fringe of peasant families on the verge of destitution. They were being gradually eliminated, but the process was extremely slow. A few of them in each generation, feeling as a realized fact the increasing misery which has been predicted for the modern industrial laborer, were forced to give up the struggle. Their land passed into the hands of the more prosperous men, who were thus gradually accumulating most of the land. In some cases, no doubt, all of the poorer tenantry were drained off in this fashion, making it possible for those who remained to consolidate their holdings and enclose them in the fashion advocated by Fitzherbert, keeping a part under tillage until it needed a rest, and pasturing sheep and cattle in the closes which were under grass. It is impossible to estimate the number of these cases. What we do know is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries no such stage had been reached in hundreds of English townships. The enclosures which had been made by the tenants were of a few acres here and there. The fields for the most part were still open and subject to common, and consisted in part of poor pasture land. We do know also that many landlords took matters into their own hands, dispossessed the tenants, and enclosed a part or all of the land for sheep pastures. The date at which this step was made, and the thoroughness with which it was carried out, depended very much upon the character and needs of the landlord, as well as upon local circumstances affecting the condition of the soil and the degree of poverty suffered by the tenants. The tendency for landlords to lose patience with the process which was gradually eliminating the poorer men and concentrating their land in the hands of the more prosperous is not characteristic of any one century. It began as early as the middle of the fourteenth century, and it extended well into the seventeenth. By 1402 clergy were being indicted as _depopulatores agrorum_.[113] In the fifteenth century statutes against enclosure and depopulation were beginning to be passed, and Rous gives a list of fifty-four places near Warwick which had been wholly or partially depopulated before about 1486.[114] For the sixteenth century, we have the evidence of numerous statutes, the returns of the commissions, doggerel verse, popular insurrections, sermons, _etc._ Miss Leonard's study of the seventeenth-century enclosures is confirmed by additional evidence presented by Gonner that the movement was unchecked in this period. In 1692, for instance, Houghton was attacking the "common notion that enclosure always leads to grass," by pointing out a few exceptions.[115] In 1695 Gibson spoke of the change from tillage to pasture, which had been largely within living memory.[116] There is no reason to believe that the landowners who carried out this process were unusually mercenary and heartless. The need for putting their land to some remunerative use was imperative, and it is surprising that the enclosure movement was of such a piece-meal character and extended over so many years, rather than that it took place at all. There was little rent to be had from land which lay for the most part in open fields, tilled by men who had no capital at their command for improving the condition of the soil, or for utilizing profitably the portion of the land which was so impoverished that it could not be cultivated. Poor tenants are unprofitable tenants; it is difficult to collect rent from them and impossible to raise their rent, and they attempt to save by exploiting the land, leaving it in worse condition than when they received it. Contemporary references to the poverty of these open-field tenants all confirm the impression given by Hales: They that be husbandmen now haue but a scant lyvinge therby.[117] I that haue enclosed litle or nothinge of my grond could (never be able) to make vp my lordes rent weare it not for a little brede of neate, shepe, swine, gese and hens that I doe rere vpon my ground: whereof, because the price is sumwhat round, I make more cleare proffitt than I doe of all my corne and yet I haue but a bare liuinge.[118] Harrison, at the end of the century, writes of the open-field tenants: They were scarce able to liue and paie their rents at their daies without selling of a cow or an horsse, or more, although they paid but foure poundes at the vttermost by the yeare.[119] The tenant who could not pay this rent without selling stock was, of course, one of those who would soon have to give up his land altogether, if the landlord continued to demand rent. If he sold his horses and oxen to raise the rent one year, he was less able to work his land properly the next year, and the crop, too small in the first place to enable him to cover expenses, diminished still more. When the current income was ordinarily too small to cover current expenses, no relief was to be found by reducing the capital. A time came when these men must be either turned away, and their land leased to others, or else allowed to stay and make what poor living they could from the soil, without paying even the nominal rent which was to be expected of them. Lord North's comment on the enclosure movement as he saw it in the seventeenth century is suggestive of the state of affairs which led to the eviction of these husbandmen: Gentlemen of late years have taken up an humor of destroying their tenements and cottages, whereby they make it impossible that mankind should inhabit their estates. This is done sometimes barefaced because they harbour poor that are a charge to the parish, and sometimes because the charge of repairing is great, and if an house be ruinous they will not be at the cost of rebuilding and repairing it, and cast their lands into very great farms which are managed with less housing: and oftimes for improvement as it is called which is done by buying in all freeholds, copyholds, and tenements that have common and which harboured very many husbandry and labouring families and then enclosing the commons and fields, turning the managry from tillage to grasing.[120] Not only were these men able to pay little rent for the land they held, but, as has been suggested, they were unable to maintain the land in proper condition by the use of manure and marl. These expenses were beyond the means of the farmer who was falling behind; they neglected the soil because they were poor, and they were poor because the yield of the land was so low; but their neglect caused it to decline even more. Fitzherbert, who deplores the fact that marl is no longer used in his time, points out that not only the leaseholder, who is averse to making improvements on account of the insecurity of his tenure, but the freeholder, also, is neglecting his land; although He knoweth well, he shall take the profits while he liueth, & his heyres after him, a corrage to improw his owne, the which is as good as and he purchased as much as the improwment cometh to.[121] But if he spent money on marling the soil, he would have nothing to live on while waiting for the crop. The very poverty of the small holders made it necessary for them to sink in still greater poverty, until the lord deprived them of the land, or until they became so discouraged that they gave it up of their own volition. They might easily understand the force of Fitzherbert's arguments without being able to follow his advice. "Marle mendeth all manor of grounde, but it is costly."[122] The same thing is true of manure. According to Denton, the expense of composting land was almost equivalent to the value of the fee simple of the ground. He refers to a record of the early fourteenth century of the payment of more than twice the ordinary rent for composted land.[123] With manure at high prices, the man in difficulty might be tempted to sell what he had; it was certainly out of the question for him to buy more. Or, what amounted to the same thing, he might sell hay or straw, and so reduce the forage for his cattle, and return less to the soil by means of their dung. Dr. Simkhovitch points out the difference between the farmer who is unable to meet expenses in a particular year because of an exceptionally bad season, and one who is suffering because of progressive deterioration of his farm. The first may borrow and make good the difference the following year; the latter will be unable to extricate himself. He neither has means to increase his holding by renting or buying more land, nor to improve the land which he has already. His distress is cumulative: Only one with sufficient resources can improve his land. By improving land we add to our capital, while by robbing land we immediately add to our income; in doing so, however, we diminish out of all proportion our capital as farmers, the productive value of our farm land. The individual farmer can therefore improve his land only when in an economically strong position. A farmer who is failing to make a living on his farm is more likely to exploit his farm to the utmost; and when there is no room for further exploitation he is likely to meet the deficit by borrowing, and thus pledging the future productivity of his farm.[124] While small holders in the open fields were in no position to pay higher rents, the land owners were suffering. Prices were rising, and while the higher price of farm produce in the market was of little help to the tenant whose own family used nearly everything he could raise, the landlords felt the pressure of an increasing cost of living. Many of us [says the Gentleman, in Hales' dialogue] haue bene driuen to giue over oure houshold, and to kepe either a chambere in london, or to waight on the courte Vncalled, with a man and a lacky after him, wheare he was wonte to kepe halfe a score cleane men in his house, and xxtie or xxxtie other persons besides, everie day in the weke.... We are forced either to minyshe the thirde parte of our houshold, or to raise the thirde parte of our Revenues.[125] It was difficult for the landowners to make economic use of even those portions of the land which were not in the hands of customary tenants. If they were willing to invest capital in enclosing demesne land and stocking it with sheep, without disturbing their small tenants, they found it impossible to do so. Not only did the poorer tenants have to cultivate land which was barely productive of more than the seed used, because they could not afford to allow it to lie idle as long as it would produce anything; not only did they allow the land which was under grass to remain practically waste, because they could not afford to enclose it and stock it with sheep; not only did they neglect manuring and marling the land because these improvements were beyond their means, so that the land was constantly growing poorer in their hands, and so that they could pay very little rent; but they were also tenacious of their rights of common over the rest of the land, and resisted all attempts at enclosure of the holdings of the more prosperous tenants, because they had to depend for their living largely upon the "little brede of neate, shepe, swine, gese and hens" which were maintained partly by the gleanings from other men's land when it lay common. They undoubtedly suffered when the lord himself or one of the large leaseholders insisted on enclosing some of the land. If the commonable area was reduced, or if the land enclosed was converted from arable to pasture (as it usually was), the means by which they made their living was diminished. The occasional day's wages for labor spent on the land converted was now withdrawn, and the pasturage for the little flock was cut down. The practical effect of even the most innocent-looking enclosures, then, must have been to deprive the poorer families of the means of livelihood, even though they were not evicted from their worthless holdings. Enclosures and depopulation were inseparably linked in the minds of contemporaries, even when the greatest care was taken by the enclosing authorities to safeguard the rights of the tenants. These rights, however, seriously interfered with the most advantageous use of land, and often were disregarded. Not only did the small holders have rights of common over the rest of the land, but their own strips were intermingled with those of the lord and the large holders. The typical problem confronting the enclosing landlord is shown below: HOLDINGS IN OPEN FIELD, WEST LEXHAM, NORFOLK, 1575[126] _Strips in Furlong A_ _Strips in Furlong B_ 1. Will Yelverton, freeholder. 1. Robert Clemente, freeholder. 2. Demesne. 2. Demesne. 3. Demesne. 3. Demesne. 4. Will Yelverton. 4. Demesne. 5. Demesne. 5. Demesne. 6. Demesne. 6. Demesne. 7. Demesne. 7. Demesne. 8. Demesne. 8. Demesne. 9. Demesne. 9. Will Lee, freeholder. 10. Glebe. 10. Will Gell, copyholder. 11. Demesne. 11. Demesne. 12. Demesne. 12. Demesne. 13. Glebe. 13. Demesne. If, as was probably the case, the product from these demesne strips was so small that the land was fit only for conversion to pasture, the pecuniary interest of the lord was to be served best by enclosing it and converting it. But should he make three enclosures in furlong A, and two in furlong B, besides taking pains to leave a way clear for Will Yelverton and Lee and Gell to reach their land? Or should he be content merely with enclosing the larger plots of land, because of the expense of hedging and ditching the smaller plots separately from the rest? If he did this, the unenclosed portions would be of little value, as the grass which grew on them could not be properly utilized for pasture. The final alternative was to get possession of the strips which did not form part of the demesne, so that the whole could be made into one compact enclosure. In order to do this it might be necessary to dispossess Will Lee, Will Gell, _etc._ The intermingling of holdings, in such a way that small holders (whose own land was in such bad condition that they could not pay their rents) blocked the way for improvements on the rest of the land, was probably responsible for many evictions which would not otherwise have taken place. But not all evictions were due to this cause alone. The income to the owner from land which was left in the hands of customary tenants was much lower than if it was managed by large holders with sufficient capital to carry out necessary changes. Where it is possible to compare the rents paid by large and small holders on the same manor, this fact is apparent: AVERAGE RENT PER ACRE OF LAND ON FIVE MANORS IN WILTSHIRE, 1568[127] I II III s. d. s. d. s. d. Lands held by farmers 1 6 7 3/4 1 5 3/4 Lands held by customary tenants 7 1/2 5 1 0 3/4 IV V s. d. s. d. Lands held by farmers 1 1 3/4 1 5 1/2 Lands held by customary tenants 5 3/4 5 3/4 The differences in these rents are sufficient to be tempting to the lord who was seeking his own interest. The large holders were able to expend the capital necessary for enclosing and converting the part of the land which could not be profitably cultivated because of its bad condition. The capital necessary for this process itself was considerable, and besides, it was necessary to wait several years before there was a return on the investment, while the sod was forming, to say nothing of the large expenditure necessary for the purchase of the sheep. The land when so treated, however, enabled the investor to pay higher rents than the open-field husbandmen who "rubbed forth their estate in the poorest plight."[128] A lord who was willing to consider only pecuniary advantage had everything to gain by clearing the land entirely of small holders, and putting it in the hands of men with capital. It is, therefore, to the credit of these landowners that there are so few authentic cases of the depopulation of entire villages and the conversion of all of the arable land into sheep runs. These cases made the lords who were responsible notorious and were, no doubt, exceptional. Nearly fifteen hundred places were covered by the reports of the commissions of 1517 and 1607, and Professor Gay has found among these "but a round dozen villages or hamlets which were all enclosed and emptied of their inhabitants, the full half of them in Northamptonshire."[129] For the most part, the enclosures reported under the inquisitions as well as those indicated on the maps and surveys of the period involved only small areas, and point to a process of piece-meal enclosure. The landowners seem to have been reluctant to cause hardship and to have left the open-field tenants undisturbed as far as possible, contenting themselves with the enclosure and conversion of small plots of land. The social consequences of so-called depopulating enclosure were serious, but they are not seen in their proper perspective when one imagines the condition of the evicted tenants to have been fairly good before they were dispossessed. The cause lying back of the enclosure movement was bringing about the gradual sinking of family after family, even when no evictions were made. To attribute the poverty and misery of the rural population to the enclosure movement is to overlook the unhappy condition of the peasants, even where no enclosures had been made. Enclosures had been forbidden in the fields of royal manors in Northamptonshire, but this did not protect the peasantry from destitution. The manor of Grafton, for instance, was surveyed in 1526 and a note was made at the end of the survey that the revenue drawn from the lordship had lately been increased, but "there can no ferther enprovemente there be made and to kepe the tenantries standyng. Item the tenauntriez there be in sore decaye." The surveyor of Hartwell also notes that the "tenements there be in decay."[130] The economic basis of the unfortunate social changes which were associated with the process of enclosure came gradually to be recognized. It was evidently futile to enact laws requiring the cultivation of land "wasted and worn with continual plowing and thereby made bare, barren and very unfruitfull."[131] Merely restrictive and prohibitory legislation was followed by the suggestion of constructive measures. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, laws were made in the attempt to put a stop to the conversion of arable land to pasture under any conditions, and required that land which had been under cultivation should be plowed in the future. In the act of 1552, however, an attitude somewhat more reasonable is to be seen. It was provided that land which had been under cultivation within a certain number of years preceding the act should be tilled, "_or so much in quantity_."[132] Public men were also urging that less time be devoted to the futile attempt to force men to cultivate land unfit for tillage, and that encouragement be given instead to measures for improving the waste, and bringing fresh land under the plow.[133] After a time, moreover, another fact became apparent: there was a marked tendency to break up and again cultivate the land which in former generations had been converted to pasture. The statute of 1597 not only contained a proviso permitting the conversion of arable fields to pasture on condition that other land be tilled instead,[134] thus tacitly admitting that the reason for withdrawing land from cultivation was not the low price of grain, but the barrenness of the land, but also explicitly referred to this fact in another proviso permitting the conversion of arable land to pasture temporarily, _for the purpose of recovering its strength_: Provided, nevertheless, That if anie _P_son or Body Pollitique or Corporate hath ... laide or hereafter shall lay anie grownde to graze, or hathe used or shall use the same grownde with shepe or anie other cattell, which Grownde hath bene or shall be dryven or worne owte with Tillage, onely upon good Husbandrie, and with intente bona fide withowt Fraude or Covyne the same Grownde shall recover Harte and Strengthe, an not with intent to continue the same otherwise in shepe Pasture or for fattinge or grazinge of Cattell, that no such _P_son or Body Politike or Corporate shall be intended for that Grownde a Converter within the meaning of this Lawe.[135] A speaker in the House of Commons commends these provisions: For it fareth with the earth as with other creatures that through continual labour grow faint and feeble-hearted, and therefore, if it be so far driven as to be out of breath, we may now by this law resort to a more lusty and proud piece of ground while the first gathers strength, which will be a means that the earth yearly shall be surcharged with burden of her own excess. And this did the former lawmakers overslip, tyeing the land once tilled to a perpetual bondage and servitude of being ever tilled.[136] Several years before the passage of this statute, Bacon had remarked that men were breaking up pasture land and planting it voluntarily.[137] In 1619, a commission was appointed to consider the granting of licenses "for arable lands converted from tillage to pasture." The proclamation creating this commission, after referring to the laws formerly made against such conversions, continues: As there is much arable land of that nature become pasture, so is there by reason thereof, much more other lands of old pasture and waste, and wood lands where the plough neuer entred, as well as of the same pasture lands so heretofore conuerted, become errable, and by husbandrie made fruitfull with corne ... the quantitie and qualitie of errable and Corne lands at this day doth much exceed the quantitie that was at the making of the saide Lawe.... As the want thereof [of corn] shall appeare, or the price thereof increase, all or a great part of those lands which were heretofore converted from errable to pasture and have sithence gotten heart, strength and fruitfulness, will be reduced to Corne lands againe, to the great increase of graine to the Commonwealth and profite to each man in his private.[138] John Hales had protested against depopulating enclosures, in 1549, by appealing to the public spirit of landowners. They increased their profits by converting arable land to pasture, but, he argued, It may not be liefull for euery man to vse his owne as hym lysteth, but eueyre man must vse that he hath to the most benefyte of his countrie. Ther must be somethynge deuysed to quenche this insatiable thirst of greedynes of men.[139] But now it was no longer necessary to persuade the owners of this same land to forgo their own interests for the sake of the public good. Those whose land had been used as pasture for a great number of years were finding it valuable arable, because of its long period of rest and regeneration. Land which had been converted to pasture was being put under the plow because of the greater profit of tillage. So great was the profit of cultivating these pastures that landlords who were opposed to having pastures broken up by leaseholders had difficulty in preventing it. Towards the end of the sixteenth century at Hawsted, and in the beginning of the seventeenth, a number of leases contained the express provision that no pastures were to be broken up. In 1620 and the years following, some of the leases permitted cultivation of pasture, on the condition that the land was to be laid to grass again five years before the expiration of the lease.[140] There is no doubt of the fact that much land was being converted from pasture to arable in this period. Evidence of this tendency multiplies as the century advances. In 1656 Joseph Lee gave a list of fifteen towns where arable land hitherto converted to pasture had been plowed up again within thirty years.[141] Barren and insufficiently manured land did not produce good crops merely because other land had been given an opportunity to recover its strength. The conversion of open-field arable to pasture went on unchecked in the seventeenth century because it had not yet had the benefit of the prolonged rest which made agriculture profitable, and without which it had become impossible to make a living from the soil. The lands which have been "heretofore converted from errable to pasture.... have sithence gotten heart, strength and fruitfulnesse," and are therefore being plowed again; but the land which has escaped conversion, and has been tied to the "perpetual bondage and servitude of being ever tilled," is "faint and feeble-hearted," and is being laid to grass, for pasture is the only use for which it is suited. The cause of the conversion of arable fields to pasture is the same as that which caused the same change on other lands at an earlier date--so low a level of productivity that the land was not worth cultivating. Lands whose fertility had been restored were put under cultivation and plowed until they were again in need of rest. Thus the final result was about the same whether an enclosing landlord cut across the gradual process of readjustment of land-holding among the tenants, and converted the whole into pasture, or whether the process was allowed to go on until none but large holders remained in the village. In both cases the tendency was towards a system of husbandry in which the fertility of the soil was maintained by periodically withdrawing portions of it from cultivation and laying it to grass. In the one case, cultivation was completely suspended for a number of years, but was gradually reintroduced as it became evident that the land had recovered its strength while used as pasture. In the other, the grazing of sheep and cattle was introduced as a by-industry, for the sake of utilizing the land which had been set aside to recover its strength, while the better land was kept under the plow. Whether enclosures were made for better agriculture, then, as Mr. Leadam contends, or for pasture, as is argued by Professor Gay,[142] the arable enclosures were used as pasture for a part of the time and the enclosed pastures came later to be used for tillage part of the time, and the two things amount to the same thing in the end. This end, however, had still not been reached in a great number of open-field villages by the beginning of the eighteenth century, and we should expect to find that the history of the land in this century was but a repetition of what had gone before, in so far as the fields which had not hitherto been enclosed are concerned. But, during the seventeenth century, an agricultural revolution was taking place. Experiments were being made with new forage crops. For one thing, it was found that turnips could be grown in the fields and that they made excellent winter forage; and grass seeding was introduced. The grasses and clovers which were brought from Holland not only made excellent hay, but improved the soil rapidly. The possibility of increasing the amount of hay at will put an end to the absolute scarcity of manure--the limiting factor in English agriculture from the beginning. And the comparative ease with which the artificial grasses could be made to grow did away with the need of waiting ten or fifteen years, or perhaps half a century, for natural grass to cover the fields and restore their productiveness. Only with the introduction of grass seeding did it become possible to keep a sufficient amount of stock, not only to maintain the fertility of the soil, but to improve it steadily. The soil instead of being taxed year after year under the heavy strain of grain crops was being renovated by the legumes that gathered nitrogen from the air and stored it on tubercles attached to their roots. The deep roots of the clover penetrated the soil, that no plow ever touched. Legumes like alfalfa, producing pound by pound more nutritious fodder than meadow grass, produced acre by acre two and three times the amount, and when such a field was turned under to make place for a grain crop, the deep and heavy sod, the mass of decaying roots, offered the farmer "virgin" soil, where previously even five bushels of wheat could not be gathered.[143] As the value of these new crops became generally recognized, some effort was made to introduce them into the regular rotation of crops in the fields which were still held in common, but, for the most part, these efforts were unsuccessful, and new vigor was given to the enclosure movement. Frequently persons having no arable land of their own had right of common over the stubble and fallow which could not be exercised when turnips and clover were planted; for reasons of this sort, it was difficult to change the ancient course of crops in the open fields. For example, late in the eighteenth century (1793) at Stiffkey and Morston, the improvements due to enclosure are said to have been great, for: being half-year land before, they could raise no turnips except by agreement, nor cultivate their land to the best advantage.[144] At Heacham the common fields were enclosed by act in 1780, and Young notes: Before the enclosure they were in no regular shifts and the field badly managed; now in regular five-shift Norfolk management.[145] At Northwald, about 3,000 acres of open-field land were enclosed in 1796 and clover was introduced. The comment made is that "the crops bear quite a new face." The common field of Brancaster before enclosure in 1755 "was in an open, rude bad state; now in five or six regular shifts."[146] Hitherto there had been only one way of restoring fertility to land; converting it to pasture and leaving it under grass for a prolonged period. Now it could be speedily improved and used intensively. Arthur Young describes the modern method of improvement in his account of the changes made in Norfolk husbandry before 1771: From forty to fifty years ago, all the northern and western and a great part of the eastern tracts of the county were sheep walks, let so low as from 6 _d._ to 1_s._ 6 _d._ and 2 _s._ an acre. Much of it was in this condition only thirty years ago. The improvements have been made by the following circumstances. First. By enclosing without the assistance of Parliament. Second. By a spirited use of marl and clay. Third. By the introduction of an excellent course of crops. Fourth. By the introduction of turnips well hand-hoed. Fifth. By the culture of clover and ray-grass. Sixth. By the lords granting long leases. Seventh. By the country being divided chiefly into large farms.[147] The evidence which has been examined in this monograph reveals the far-reaching influence of soil exhaustion in English agrarian history in the centuries before the introduction of these new crops. As the yield of the soil declined, the ancient arable holdings proved incapable of supporting their cultivators, and a readjustment had to be made. The pressure upon subsistence was felt while villainage was still in force, and the terms upon which serfdom dissolved were influenced by this fact to an extent which has hitherto not been recognized. The economic crisis involved in the spread of the money economy threw into relief the destitution of the villains; and the easy terms of the cash payments which were substituted for services formerly due, the difficulty with which holders for land could be obtained on any terms, the explicit references to the poverty of whole communities at the time of the commutation of their customary services, necessitate the abandonment of the commonly accepted view that growing prosperity and the desire for better social status explain the substitution of money payments for labor services in the fourteenth century. The spread of the money economy was due to the gradual integration of the economic system, the establishment of local markets where small land holders could sell their produce for money. Until this condition was present, it was impossible to offer money instead of labor in payment of the customary dues; as soon as this condition was present, the greater convenience of the use of money made the commutation of services inevitable. In practise money payments came gradually to replace the performance of services through the system of "selling" works long before any formal commutation of the services took place. But, whatever the explanation of the spread of the money economy in England during this period, it is not the prosperity of the villains, for, at the moment when the formal change from payments in labor to money payments was made, the poverty and destitution of the landholders were conspicuous. That this poverty was due to declining fertility of the soil cannot be doubted. Land in demesne as well as virgate land was showing the effects of centuries of cultivation with insufficient manure, and returned so scant a crop that much of it was withdrawn from cultivation, even when serf labor with which to cultivate it was available. Exhaustion of the soil was the cause of the pauperism of the fourteenth century, as it was also of the enclosure and conversion to pasture of arable land in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Systematic enclosure for the purpose of sheep-farming on a large scale was but the final step in a process of progressively less intense cultivation which had been going on for centuries. The attention of some historians has been devoted too exclusively to the covetous sheep-master, against whom contemporary invective was directed, and the process which was going on in fields where no encloser was at work has escaped their notice. The three-field system was breaking down as it became necessary to withdraw this or that exhausted plot from cultivation entirely for a number of years. The periodic fallow had proved incapable of keeping the land in proper condition for bearing crops even two years out of three, and everywhere strips of uncultivated land began to appear in the common fields. This lea land--waste land in the midst of the arable--was a common feature of sixteenth and seventeenth century husbandry. The strips kept under cultivation gave a bare return for seed, and the profit of sheep-raising need not have been extraordinarily high to induce landowners to abandon cultivation entirely under these conditions. A great part of the arable fields lay waste, and could be put to no profitable use unless the whole was enclosed and stocked with sheep. The high profit made from sheep-raising cannot be explained by fluctuations in the price of wool. The price of wool fell in the fifteenth century. Sheep-farming was comparatively profitable because the soil of the ancient fields was too barren to repay the costs of tillage. Land which was in part already abandoned, was turned into pasture. The barrenness and low productivity of the common fields is explicitly recognised by contemporaries, and is given as the reason for the conversion of arable to pasture. Its use as pasture for a long period of years gave it the needed rest and restored its fertility, and pasture land which could bear crops was being brought again under cultivation during the centuries in which the enclosure movement was most marked. Footnotes: [112] Lamond, _op. cit._, p. 49. [113] 4 H. 4, c. 2. Miss Leonard calls attention to this statute. "Inclosure of Common Land in the Seventeenth Century." _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, New Series, vol. xix, p. 101, note 2. [114] _Cf. supra_, p. 27. [115] Gonner, _Common Land and Inclosure_, p. 162. [116] Leonard, _op. cit._, p. 140, note 2. [117] Lamond, _op. cit._, p. 90. [118] _Ibid._, pp. 56-57. [119] _Description of Britain_ (_Holinshed Chronicles_, London, 1586), p. 189. [120] Leonard, _op. cit._, vol. xix, p. 120. [121] _Surveyinge_, ch. 28. [122] _Ibid._, ch. 32. [123] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 150. [124] "Rome's Fall Reconsidered," _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxxi, pp. 217, 220. [125] Lamond, _Common Weal of this Realm of England_, pp. 19-20. [126] Tawney, _Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century_, pp. 254-255. [127] Tawney, _op. cit._, p. 256. [128] Carew, as quoted by Leonard, _op. cit._, vol. xix, p. 137. [129] "Enclosures in England," _Quarterly Journal of Ec._, vol. xvii, p. 595. [130] Lennard, _Rural Northamptonshire_, pp. 73-4. [131] The reason stated in the preamble of many of the Durham decrees granting enclosure permits (Leonard, _op. cit._, p. 117). [132] 5 & 6 Ed. 6, c. 5. Re-enacted by 5 El., c. 2. [133] Memorandum addressed by Alderman Box to Lord Burleigh in 1576, Gonner, _op. cit._, p. 157. [134] 39 El., ch. 2, proviso iii. [135] _Ibid._, proviso iv. [136] Bland, Brown & Tawney: _Select Documents_, p. 272. [137] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times_, part ii, p. 99. [138] _Ibid._, p. 99. [139] Lamond, _op. cit._, p. lxiii. [140] Cullum, _Hawsted_, pp. 235-243. [141] Leonard, "Inclosure of Common Fields in the Seventeenth Century," _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, N. S., vol. xix, p. 141, note. [142] For this controversy see, "The Inquisitions of Depopulation in 1517 and the 'Domesday of Inclosures,'" by Edwin F. Gay and I. S. Leadam, _Royal Hist. Soc. Trans._, 1900, vol. xiv, pp. 231-303. [143] Simkhovitch, _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxviii, pp. 400, 401. [144] _Board of Agriculture Report, Norfolk_, ch. vi. [145] _Ibid._, ch. vi. [146] _Ibid._ [147] Bland, Brown and Tawney, _op. cit._, pp. 530-531. INDEX Abbot's Ripton, 61 Arable, 11; area reduced, 22, 24, 27, 54-56, 70, 80; barren, 12, 16-17, 23, 47, 49, 55-56, 58, 62, 70, 72, 79, 81, 97-99, 101, 106; fertility restored, 13, 41-42, 46-47, 81-82, 98-99, 101, 103; converted to pasture, 11-12, 14, 18-19, 23, 27-28, 30, 32, 35-36, 58, 71, 84, 88, 90, 99; cultivation resumed, 12, 15-16, 31, 33, 84, 99-101; lea strips, 41, 79-84, 87, 106; enclosed, 83-84, 102 Ashley, 33 Bacon, 99 Bailiff-farming, 50, 70, 73-74 Ballard, 20, 50, 59-60, 63, 70, 77 Barley, 37, 56 Beggars, 70 Berkeley estates, 23, 27, 58, 63, 83 Black Death, 16, 18-23, 38, 41, 56-57, 60, 67 Bolam, 80 Bond land deserted, 16, 21, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 70, 72; refused, 59; no competition for, 21; vacant, 22-23, 57-58, 62, 66, 72; compulsory holding of, 21, 57, 59-60, 62, 72; leased, 23, 57, 62, 75-76; rents of, 16, 20-21, 57-58, 63, 66-68 Brightwell, 68 Burwell, 61 Cattle, 48-49, 69, 91, 102 Carew, _Survey of Cornwell_, 33 Chatteris, 70 Clover, 102, 104 Combe, 51 Commissions on enclosure, engrossing, etc., 15, 30, 84 Common-field system, 11, 48, 85; stability of, 82, 85, 87, 103; disintegration of, chapter III Commutation of villain services, 19, 56-57, 64-69, 73, 105 Concessions to villains, 57, 59, 62-64, 66, 69; see villain services, rents Conversion, arable to pasture, 11-12, 14, 18-19, 23, 27-28, 30, 32, 35-36, 39-43, 58, 71, 84, 88, 90, 99; pasture to arable, 19, 31, 34-36, 39-43, 84; both, 19, 35-36, 39-43, 84; reconversion of open-field land formerly laid to grass, 13, 15-16, 31, 33, 84, 99-101 Convertible husbandry, 41-42, 81-82, 84, 102 Corbett, 78 Corn-laws, 33-34 Cornwall, 33 Cost of living, 92 Crawley, 59 Crops, 48, 102-104 Cross-plowing, 78 Cunningham, 32 Curtler, 13 Demesne, leased, 19-20, 57, 73; intermixed with tenant land, 94-95 Denton, 13, 27, 91 Depopulation, 27-30, 94, 96 Desertion, 16, 21, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 70, 72 Downton, 50, 68 East Brandon, 79 Emparking, 27 Enclosed land, pasture, 33, 87; tilled, 83-84, 102; convertible husbandry, 41-42, 81, 84, 101-102 Enclosure, defined, 11-12; progress of, 27-43, 87-88; early, 16, 18-19, 22-23, 27, 58; seventeenth century, 12, 17, 31, 35-37, 39, 88; eighteenth century, 31, 103-104; causes, see productivity, soil-exhaustion, prices; social consequences, 15, 29-30, 97, see depopulation, unemployment, eviction; literature of, 14-15; opposition to, 82, 93; effect on quality of wool, 33; for sheep-farming, 12, 19, 22, 24, 28, 37, 42-44, 83-84, 87-88, 90, 96, 98; enclosed land cultivated, 83-84, 102 Engrossing, 75; see holdings, amalgamation of Eviction of tenants, 12, 15, 27, 30, 38, 90, 94, 96 Fallow, 11, 47, 85, 87, 106; see pasture, lea land Fertility, see productivity, soil-exhaustion; fertility restored, 13, 41-42, 46-47, 81-82, 98-99, 101, 103 Fines, 59 Fitzherbert, 41, 77-79, 81-82, 91 Forage, 49, 91, 102 Forncett, 51, 61, 63, 84 Gay, Professor E. F., 15, 96, 102 Gonner, E. C. K., 13, 88 Gorleston, 77 Grafton Park, 34 Gras, Norman, 51 Gray, H. L., 79 Grazing, 11, 18, 46; profits from, 80; see sheep-farming, pasture Hales, John, 86, 89, 92, 100 Harrison, Description of Britain, 89 Hasbach, 13 Hawsted, 100 Hay, 48-49, 91, 102 Heriots, 69 Holdings, deserted, 16, 21, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 70, 72; refused by heir, 59; vacant, 22-23, 57-58, 62, 66, 72; intermixed, 11, 77-78, 85, 94-95; amalgamated, 12, 56, 74-75; divided, 76 Holway, 41 Houses, destruction of, 90 _Husbandry_, Anonymous, 51 Innes, 32 Isle of Wight, 28, 76 Labor, supply of, 18, 22-23, 38, 41; see wages, unemployment Landlords, enclosure by, 12, 96, 100, 106 Leadam, 102 Lea-land, 41, 79, 80-84, 87, 106 Lee, Joseph, 101 Leicestershire, 15 Leonard, E. M., 15, 27, 35-36, 40, 88 Levett, A. E., 20, 50, 59-60, 63, 70, 77 Manorial system, readjustments in fourteenth century, 19 _et seq._ Manure, 41-42, 46-50, 78, 90, 102; see sheep-fold, marl Markets, local, 105 Marl, 46, 50, 90-91, 104 Meadow, 48-49 Meredith, 32 Merton College, 51 Money-economy, 105; see commutation of services Monson, Lord, 34 More, Sir Thomas, 29-30 Nailesbourne, 60, 64 North, Lord, 90 Northwald, 104 Open-field land, see common-field system, enclosures, lea-land Page, 60-61, 68 Pasture, waste, 46, 49, 93; fallow pasture, 11, 49, 82, 85, 93; lea strips, 41, 79-84, 87, 106; enclosed, 33, 82, 87; converted to arable, 19, 31, 34, 36, 39-43, 84; profits of, 12, 18, 30, 32-33, 107; leased, 100 Pauperism, see poverty Pembroke, 41 Population, 34 Poverty, villains, 16, 21, 56, 59, 67-69, 72, 106; small tenants, 87, 90-91, 97 Prices, sixteenth century, 92; wool and wheat, 12, 17-19, 24-33, 36-37, 40, 53; seventeenth century, 36-37 Productivity, 14, 38, 41, 44-48, 50-56, 90; see soil-exhaustion Profits, tillage, 22, 34, 39, 41, 58, 70, 72, 89-92; pasture, 12, 18, 30, 32-33, 96, 107 Protests against enclosures, 14-15, 38 Prothero, 13 Reconversion, pasture to arable, 12, 15-16, 31, 33, 84, 90, 101 Rents, 16, 20-21, 57-58, 63, 66-68, 73, 89-90, 95 Rogers, J. T., 17, 26, 31, 39 Rotation of crops, 11, 103-104 Rothamsted Experiment Station, 44 Rous, 27, 88 Russell, 44, 46-47, 49 Seager, 17 Seligman, 17 Sheep, 12, 29 Sheep-farming, 12, 19, 22, 24, 28, 37, 42-44, 83-84, 87-88, 90, 96, 98 Sheep-fold, 49-50 Simkhovitch, 13, 17, 47-48, 91 Smyth, John, 23, 58 Soil-exhaustion, 12, 16-17, 23, 47, 49, 55-56, 58, 62, 70, 72, 79-81, 97-99, 101, 106 Statutes of husbandry, 28, 30, 39-40, 75-76, 88, 97-99 Stiffkey, 103 Stock and land lease, 73 Strips, 11, 85, 94-95; exchanged, 77 Tawney, 77 Tenants, elimination of, 87; evicted, 12, 15, 27, 30, 38, 90, 94, 96; poverty, 87, 90-91, 97; enclosure by, 15, 82-87; opposition to enclosure, 82, 93; rents of, 89-90, 95 Therfield, 60, 61 Turf-borders, 11; plowed under, 78 Turnips, 102-104 Tusser, 41, 79, 82 Twyford, 59 Unemployment, 28, 30, 38 Utopia, 29-30 Villains, poverty, 16, 21, 56, 59, 67-69, 72, 106; compelled to take land, 21, 57, 59-60, 62, 72; desertion of, 16, 21, 56-57, 60-61, 66, 70, 72; social status with relation to commutation, 20, 57, 65, 67-68 Villain-services, 58-59; reduced, 21, 62-64, 72; commuted, 19-20, 56-57, 62, 64-69, 73, 105; sold, 64, 66, 105; excused, 70-71; leased, 73; retained, 67 Vinogradoff, 65-66 Virgate, 74; value of services, 62-63 Wages, 18, 36-39, 72-73 Walter of Henley, 51, 53 Waste, 12, 46, 49, 93, 98 Westmoreland, Countess of, 36 Weston, 61, 68 Westwick, 80 Wheat, yield, 47, 50-56, 90; prices, 12, 17-19, 24-31, 32-33, 36-37, 40, 53 Whorlton, 80 Winchester, Bishopric of, 20, 50, 51-54, 60-61, 63, 70, 77 Witney, 51-53, 55-56, 67-68 Wool, demand for, 12, 22, 24-25, 29, 32, 42, 43; price of, 12, 17-19, 22, 24-33; quality, 33 Woollen industry, expansion of, 12, 22, 24-25 Woolston, 59 Young, Arthur, 104 Columbia University in the City of New York The University includes the following: Columbia College, founded in 1754, and Barnard College, founded in 1889, offering to men and women, respectively, programs of study which may be begun either in September or February and which lead normally in from three to four years to the degrees of Bachelor of Arts. 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Address editorial communications to the Political Science Quarterly; business communications to the Academy of Political Science, Columbia University, New York. PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE The Proceedings, now in their seventh volume, give detailed treatment to special subjects of importance. The issues of the present year are The Foreign Relations of the United States, 454 pages, $1.50, and Economic Conditions of Winning the War, $1.50. A full list of the numbers thus far issued will be sent on request. Address Academy of Political Science, Columbia University, New York. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics indicated by underscore _italics_. The following printing errors were corrected: "it" corrected to "is" (page 16/172) ' corrected to " (page 27/183) "villians" corrected to "villains" (page 67/223) missing closing quotation mark added (page 69/225) "sieze" corrected to "seize" (page 69/225) "demense" corrected to "demesne" (page 73/229, 3 times) missing "to added (page 78/234) (although not [to] be ignored) "and and" corrected to "and" (page 80/236) Footnote [38] has no corresponding marker in the text. Page 78 contains three footnote markers (two of which are marked with the same number - [99]) but only two footnotes. Additional spacing after some of the block quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as is in the original text. 
29665	----	THE PRAIRIE FARMER A Weekly Journal for THE FARM, ORCHARD, AND FIRESIDE. ESTABLISHED IN 1841. ENTIRE SERIES: VOL. 56--NO. 4. CHICAGO, SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1884. PRICE, $2.00 PER YEAR, IN ADVANCE. [Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was originally located on page 56 of the periodical. It has been moved here for ease of use.] THE CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. AGRICULTURE--Raising Onions, Page 49; Royalist 3d, 4500, 49; Illinois Tile-Makers' Convention, 50-51; Better Management Needed, 51; Seed Corn from South, 51; Field and Furrow Items, 51. LIVE STOCK--Items, Page 52; Herd Books and Records, 52; Competing for Sweepstake Prizes, 52; Raising Young Mules, 52. THE DAIRY--Wisconsin Dairymen, Page 53. VETERINARY--Impaction of the Paunch, Page 53; HORTICULTURE--Lessons of 1883, Page 54; Illinois Hort. Society, 54; Diogenes in His Tub, 54-55; Possibilities of Cherry Growing, 55; Prunings, 55. FLORICULTURE--Gleanings by an Old Florist, Page 55. EDITORIAL--Items, Page 56; The Cost of Cold Winds, 56; Good Work at Washington, 56-57; Wisconsin Meetings, 57; Answers to Correspondents, 57; Wayside Notes, 57; Letter from Champaign, 57. POULTRY NOTES--Chicken Chat, Page 58; Chicken Houses, 58; Items, 58. FORESTRY--Items, Page 59. SCIENTIFIC--Official Weather Wisdom, Page 59; A Remarkable Electrical Discovery, 59; Items, 59. HOUSEHOLD--Christian Charity (Poetry), Page 60; Items, 60; The Night Cap, 60; How to Treat a Boy, 60; Pamphlets, Etc., Received, 60; Compiled Correspondence, 60. YOUNG FOLKS--Jule Fisher's Rescue, Page 61. LITERATURE--Between the Two Lights, Poem, Page 62; The Two Overcoats, 62. HUMOROUS--Bait of the Average Fisherman, Page 63; Whose Cold Feet, 63; Changed Relations, 63; It Makes a Difference, 63; Items, 63. Question Answered, 53. NEWS OF THE WEEK--Page 64. MARKETS--Page 64. RAISING ONIONS. There are two causes of failure to make this crop uncertain. One is because the soil is not kept clear of weeds, and the other is that it is not properly enriched. To raise a good crop of onions requires a light, loamy soil, worked into as fine a condition as possible, to render cultivation easy. The greater part of the preparation should be done in the fall, and especially the application of the manure. Well rotted manure is the best, and that which is free from grass, oats, or weed seeds, should always be selected. Of course, if the manure is properly rotted the vitality of the larger portion of the seed in it will be killed, but unless this is done it will render the cultivation much more difficult. Stiff, clayey, or hard, poor land can be made a great deal better for the onion crop by a heavy application of ashes or well rotted bagasse. I prefer to apply ashes as a top dressing in the spring, working it in the surface, as I find by experience that they are not only valuable as a fertilizer when used in this way, but are also of great benefit in keeping down the weeds. A plot of ground that is seeded with crab-grass should not be selected, as the pulling up of the grass injures the growth of the onions. Onions feed near the surface; in fact, the larger portion of the bulb grows on top of the soil, and as a natural consequence the plant food should be well worked in the surface. Of course it is too late now to talk about fall preparation. If we want a crop of onions from seed this spring, whatever preparation there is must be done between now and seeding. I should plow or spade up the soil as soon as possible, if there is a thaw out either the last of this or any part of next month. If you can save up and rot a supply of poultry manure and leaves, you can have the very best manure for a good onion crop. Another important point in raising a good crop of onions is to have good seed and sow it early. The first favorable time in the spring must be taken advantage of, if you would have the best success with your crop. As good seed is necessary in any crop, so it is with onions. Test your seed before risking your entire crop, as by the time you plant once and fail, and procure seed and plant again, it will be too late to make a good crop. I always take advantage of the first chance in March to sow my onion seed. We usually have a few warm days sometime about the middle of the month when this work can be done. Of course I do not say that this is the case every year. The first favorable opportunity should be taken advantage of, is what I want to impress upon those who expect to make a crop; let this time come when it will, any time early in the spring. If the ground has been plowed or spaded well during the winter, a good harrowing or raking should be given. If you have the poultry manure, now is the best time to apply it, working it on top of the soil with a rake. If you have not the poultry manure and have ashes, give a good strong dressing of ashes, raking evenly over the surface. Mark off in drills twelve inches apart, and not more than one inch deep; lay off the drills as narrow and as straight as possible, and then drill the seed evenly. Try to keep them in a straight row, as it will aid much in the cultivation. Cover lightly, but press the soil firmly upon the seed. They will withstand considerable cold, damp weather before rotting. Last year I sowed my onion seed on the 23d of March; the next ten days were cold, rainy, dark, dismal days, with two or three freezes. Yet my onions came up all right and made a good crop. As soon as the shoots make their appearance above the ground a good raking with a fine steel rake can be given. This will give them a good start and destroy the young weeds that will begin to make their appearance at the same time. After the onions start to grow, cultivation is the making of the crop, and the cleaner they are kept and the oftener the surface is stirred the better will be the crop. As to varieties, the old Red Wethersfield and the Danvers Yellow are my favorites. The Yellow Strasburg is a good yellow variety, and there are quite a number of others that are good. In cultivating I keep the surface level, as they do better if kept in this way than if they are hilled up. Thin out so that the plants do not crowd each other--they should stand two or three inches apart--if you want large onions at maturity. N. J. SHEPHERD MILLER CO., MO. ROYALIST 3D, 4500. [Illustration: Royalist 3^{rd} 4500 Elmwood Stock Farm PROPERTY OF COL. C. F. MILLS, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.] The bull Royalist 3d, 4500, here portrayed, stands at the head of the superb Jersey herd owned by Col. Charles F. Mills, Springfield, Illinois. He was bred by Mr. Samuel Stratton; dropped December 13, 1878; got by imp. Royalist 2906; dam imp. Nelly 6456. Royalist 2906 received the first prize over all Jersey in 1877; first prize and silver cup at St. Saviour's Show in 1877; first prize at the great St. Louis Fair as a three-year-old, and grand sweepstakes at St. Louis Fair in 1879 as the best Jersey bull of any age. Her sire, Duke (76), won first prize over the Island, Herd Book Parochial prize, and first Herd Book prize at Royal Jersey Show in 1875. Merry Boy (61), I. H. B., grandsire of Royalist 2906, won first prize at St. Mary's Show in 1874. Stockwell II (24), I. H. B., great-great-grandsire of Royalist 2906, won third prize over the Island and second Herd Book prize at the Royal Jersey Show, 1871; the bronze medal at the Channel Island Exhibition in 1871, and third prize at the Royal Jersey Show in 1872. Nelly, the dam of Royalist 3d, 4500, has produced 21 pounds of butter in seven days since importation, and Mr. Stratton is authority for the statement that she received the special prize at the Farmers' Club, Island of Jersey, for the best butter cow, having made 16 pounds Jersey weight of 18 ounces to the pound, or 18 avoirdupois pounds, in seven days. Her sire, Lemon (170), is the grandsire of Mr. C. Easthope's celebrated Nancy Lee 7618 (test 95 lbs. 3-1/2 oz. unsalted butter in 31 days), and Daisy of St. Peters 18175 (test 20 lbs. 5-1/2 oz. unsalted butter in seven days). Taking all things into consideration, we doubt if there is a better Jersey bull in the world than Royalist 3d. Certainly he has no superior in this country. Mr. Mills' Jersey herd is a model in all respects, and the popular chief clerk in the State Agricultural rooms may well be proud of it. * * * * * The Northwestern Importers' and Breeders' Association, Minneapolis, Minn., have bought $20,000 worth of Fresian stock of the Unadilla Company, West Edmeston, N. Y. * * * * * [Illustration] AGRICULTURAL Farmers, Write for Your Paper. Illinois Tile-Makers' Convention. BUSINESS OF THE YEAR. (_Continued from last week._) An interesting feature of the proceedings of the Tile-Makers' Convention was the brief reports of members regarding their business last year. About forty manufacturers reported. In the majority of cases the demand has been fair; in a few very brisk; in quite a number it was said that sales could be made only at a reduction in prices. It was easy to see that in some sections of the State the work of tile-making was overdone, that is, the supply is in excess of the demand. It was the general expression that prices could not be greatly reduced and leave a reasonable profit to the manufacturer. HOW TO INCREASE THE DEMAND was the question this year. Last year at this convention the talk was upon "How shall we supply the demand?" The answers to the question of how to increase the demand were various. Some advocated a rigid adherence to fair living prices, and thus teach farmers that it is useless to wait for cheaper tile; make a first-class article and the cheap tile that is hurting the trade will be forced out of the market. There was a general advocacy of a wider dissemination of a knowledge of the benefits of drainage. Show farmers and fruit-growers that they can add new acres to their farms, and take from tiled land a sufficiently increased yield the first year to pay for tiling, and that their land is worth more dollars per acre after tiling than the expense amounts to, and the demand will multiply many fold. Teach the farmers how to lay their drains properly, so that no disappointment will result, and every acre drained will advertise the profits from drainage. Circulate facts in regard to drainage as contributed to the agricultural papers, and even the newspapers. Subscribe for these papers and distribute them. Circulate the essays read at tile-makers' conventions. Talk drainage everywhere and at all times. These were among the means sensibly advocated for increasing the demand for tile. WINTER TILE-MAKING. It is but recently that the manufacture of tile has been carried on in winter, but now many establishments are running the year round. It was not claimed that the business can be prosecuted as advantageously in winter as in summer. But it gives employment to men, and the manufactories are thus enabled to keep skilled labor always on hand. It was thought that though the profits are small it is really better to run in winter where there is a demand for tile. In most cases it is better to make brick a portion of the year. There is always a demand for good brick at paying prices. If it will not pay to produce all tile, or so much tile as may be turned out, this will afford relief and keep the machine in motion. TILE MACHINERY. Mr. Billingsby, whose position allows him an excellent opportunity of judging, said there has been rapid improvement in the machinery for tile-making. Great advance has been made in machines for preparing clay, especially in the rapidity of handling it. The buildings for drying tile were a great deal better than five years ago. The means of ventilation are becoming excellent. The kilns are better and can be more satisfactorily managed. There is yet need for a cheaper tile factory--one where the investment of only a few hundred dollars will answer. PROTECTING DRAINS. It was generally conceded that it is best to have some device at the end of the drains to keep out rabbits, water animals, etc. Wires stretched across did pretty well but must be carefully looked after to clear away the roots and refuse that come through the drains. Two or three devices to take the place of wire were exhibited and were generally thought to be greatly superior. OPEN DITCHES. An interesting feature of this convention was the introduction, for the first time, of the discussion of tile ditching by machinery in a paper prepared by Hon. F. Plumb, of Streator, Ill. Mr. Plumb has been experimenting for several years with tile ditches, using both animal and steam power. He gave it as his conclusion that the machine of the future would be a machine that would perfect the ditch by one passage over the ground. He has perfected and is now manufacturing a steam power machine, at Streator, Ill., which is spoken of very highly by all who have seen it at work in the field. Mr. Plumb claims that the machine will cut twenty rods of three-foot ditch in an hour, and give a grade and finish to the bottom of the ditch equal to the very best hand work. The capacity of the machine is varied to any depth up to four feet, and for any sized tile up to nine-inch. Two men can operate the machine. The cost of cutting ditches, laying and covering tile is reduced to about ten cents per rod. He has already sold several of his machines, and is to be congratulated on the success he has attained in securing a good tile ditcher. We can conceive of no one thing that will conduce to the sale and use of tile so much as such a machine as the Plumb Steam Tile Ditcher. The machine is indorsed by C. G. Elliott, of Tonica, Drainage Engineer; by Mr. Pike, President of the convention, and others who have seen it at work in the field. LAYING TILE BY MACHINERY. There was nothing among the devices exhibited at this convention that attracted more attention or received more favorable private comment than a model of Chamberlin Brothers' Patent Apparatus for Tiling. The model only was shown, but working machines are in operation in Iowa, and they are giving excellent satisfaction, as attested by such men as Thos. B. Wales, Jr., of Iowa City, and Daniel H. Wheeler, Secretary of the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture. The apparatus is upon the old principle of the mole ditcher requiring the same capstan power. One team is sufficient to run it. The apparatus is composed of a beam or sill, horizontal in position, and a coulter seven feet long at the rear end of the beam, and perpendicular to it a spirit level attached to the beam, aids in regulating. The coulter can be run anywhere from one to five feet deep. The front end of the beam is provided with a mud or stone boat to prevent sinking in the mud, and with a jack screw for regulating on uneven ground. Attached to it, and following the mole, is a carrier 200 feet long, made concave in form. On this the tile are laid and carried into the ground. A start is made at an open ditch or hole of required depth; when the carrier is drawn in full length a hole is dug just back of the coulter, two by three feet, down to the tile, a stop placed in front of the tile, the machine is started which draws the carrier from under the tile, when it is again located as before, and so on. Different sized moles are used according to the size of the tile to be laid. Any one can easily count up the advantages of this mode of laying tile, provided the machine can do the work it is claimed to do, and of this there seems to be no question, if we may believe the testimony of those who have seen it in operation. DRAINAGE LAWS. The following by Senator Whiting, of Bureau county, was read by the Secretary: Illinois is a good State as nature made her, and drainage is destined to add wealth almost inestimable. Drainage enterprises are everywhere seen--in extent from the small work beginning and ending in the same field, to the levees of Sny Carte, and the canal-like channels through the Winnebago swamps. Drainage is naturally divided into two classes: 1. Individual drainage, where the land-owner has his own outlet independent of others. 2. Combined drainage where one can not drain without joining with others. The smallest of these combined works is where two only are concerned. The Hickory Creek ditch now in progress in Bureau and Henry counties is thirteen miles long, has a district of about 15,000 acres, owned by over seventy-five persons. This combined drainage partakes of the nature of public works. For this class the constitution has been twice amended, and many elaborate laws have been enacted. These laws have had their vicissitudes, and are not yet free from complications. The first drainage legislation commenced forty years ago, by a special act, to drain some wet lands near Chicago. In 1859 two special acts were passed for lands on the American bottoms. In 1865 a general act was passed. All these enactments were under the constitution of 1848 which was silent on drainage, and the courts annulled most of these as unconstitutional. In 1870 the new constitution was framed containing a brief provision on drainage. The late Mr. Browning, a leading member of that convention, drafted a drainage bill which was enacted into a law without change. Large enterprises were organized and got well started; but again some complaining person appealed to the courts, and this law too, was declared too big for the constitution. The constitution was then enlarged to meet if possible, the views of the court. Two elaborate laws on the main question were passed in 1879, and these with several amendments since made rest undisturbed on the statutes. One of these is generally known as the "levee law," and the other as the "farm drainage act." They cover nearly the same subject matter, and were passed to compromise conflicting views. These laws relate to "combined drainage." "Individual drainage" was not discussed. As the law does not undertake to define how deep you may plow or what crop you shall raise, so it was thought unnecessary to make any provisions about the drainage of your own land. COURT DECISION.--To the public surprise the Appellate court at Ottawa in two decisions pronounced individual drainage unlawful. As this decision is notable, and the subject of controversy, its history should be known. In 1876, Mr. C. Pilgrim, of Bureau county, laid about sixty rods of two-inch tile up a slight depression in his corn-field, discharging the same under a box culvert in the public road. This depression continued into a pasture field of Mr. J. H. Mellor, of Stark county, about eighteen rods to a running stream. Mr. Mellor sued Mr. Pilgrim for trespass, and the case was twice tried successively in the circuit courts of Stark and Bureau counties. The juries each time decided for Mr. Pilgrim, but the Appellate court each time reversed the decision; and finally worried Mr. Pilgrim into yielding to a judgment of one cent damages. The material part of that decision is as follows: MELLOR VS. PILGRIM.--"The appellant had the right to own and possess his land free from the increased burden arising from receiving the surface water from the land of appellee through artificial channels made by appellee, for the purpose of carrying the surface water therefrom more rapidly than the same would naturally flow; and the appellant having such right for any invasion thereof the law gives him an action. * * * If, as we have seen, the appellee by making the drain in question collected the surface water upon his own land and discharged the same upon the lands of the appellant in increased quantity and in a different manner than the same would naturally run, the act was unlawful because of its consequences, and the subjecting of appellant's lands to such increased and different burden than would otherwise attach to it, was an invasion of appellant's rights from which the law implies damages, and in such case proof of the wrongful act entitles the plaintiff to recover nominal damages at least." Under this decision it is not easy to see how a man can lawfully cut a rod of ditch or lay tile on his own land, unless he can contrive some way to stop the flow of water. 1. The lower man may recover without proving that he is damaged because to drain is "wrongful." 2. Such drainage being a continuing trespass, subjects the perpetrator to never ending law suits and foredoomed defeats. 3. The lower man may forbid you to drain, or exact such tribute as he may dictate. 4. As the first man below must be consulted, why not the second, and how far this side of the Gulf is the limit of this trespass? Here, as I have elsewhere, I challenge this as bad law. It reverses the order of nature, as well as custom, and can not be endured as the public policy of Illinois. Let us contemplate the exact opposite principle. "A land owner may drain his land for agricultural purposes by tile or open ditch, in the line of natural drainage, into any natural outlet on his own land or into any drainage depression leading to some natural outlet." This proposition is generally regarded as self evident, but out of respect to the court, let us give some of the considerations on which it rests: 1. Improved agriculture is an element in civilization. 2. Drainage belongs to good agriculture, is extensively practiced and must often precede the plow. 3. The surplus water can not be stored or annihilated, and the course of drainage is indicated, in most places determined by nature, in the drainage depressions which are nature's outlets. 4. The law of gravity, with or without man's work, is constant and active in moving the waters to the lower level. The ditcher's art is to remove the obstacles to a freer flow. 5. Excessive water is a foe to agriculture; and for the general good it should be collected into channels, and as speedily as possible passed along on its inevitable journey. OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.--It is said to be a universal law maxim, "that you may use your own as you will, but not to the detriment of your neighbor," and that this principle forbids this kind of drainage. This maxim may be general, but it is not universal. My neighbor may have built his house and other domestic arrangements in the lee of a natural grove of timber on my land. The removal of this grove may be a real grievance by giving the wind too free a sweep; yet my right to change this waste into a grain field will not be questioned. My warranty deed is my right thus to improve my land, though it be "to the detriment of my neighbor." He should have foreseen the contingency of a removal of these woods. On like principles a land owner may remove an excess of water so as to raise corn and not rushes. In the removal of woods my neighbor may not have an immediate remedy for his ills, but the effect of my ditches may be turned to good account by continuing them, and thus improving his land as I have mine. My warranty deed is my right to cultivate my own land, and this right carries the right to cultivate it in the best manner. The lower man should have taken judicial notice that water runs down hill, and that in this progressive age ditches may be cut and tiles laid. But it is said that this court decision follows the English Common law; and now being settled by a decision, it is not open for further consideration. In this progressive age nothing is settled until it is settled right. Judge Taney once judicially settled the status of the African race. The common law was held to forbid the bridging of navigable streams. Harbors could only be made where the water was salt and affected by the tides. The Dartmouth college decision was held to so cover railroad corporations as to shield them from legislative control. These have all been overturned by the march of events, and this Appellate court decision is not necessarily immortal. For fifty years the farmers of Illinois knew no such rule. The public roads have been improved by side ditches which dropped the water into the first depression. In 1873 there was placed in the road law a provision that a land owner may drain on the public road by giving timely notice, and this stands through all revisions. Blackstone in his commentaries does not class this kind of drainage as a nuisance or trespass to lower lands, but he does its opposite, where the lower man neglects to "scour" a ditch, and thus sets back the water to the harm of the upper man. If this court rule is common law, as claimed, then it may be further said that a rule for the dark ages when drainage was exceptional, is not necessarily the true rule, since drainage has become so large a part of good agriculture. ACTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.--Early in the last session, bills were introduced into each House to overturn this court decision. These were defeated, but late in the session there passed with much unanimity a bill of the following title, which became a law: "An act to permit owners of land to construct drains for agricultural purposes." Sec. 1 of this act reads as follows: "That the owner or owners of land in this State shall be permitted to construct drains for agricultural purposes, only, into any natural water-course or any natural depression whereby the water will be carried into any natural water-course, or any drain on the public highway, if the road commissioners consent thereto, for the purpose of securing proper drainage to such land, without being liable in damages therefor to any other person or persons or corporation." This was intended to establish the right of "individual drainage." But we are told that the courts will not respect this law, for the reason that it seeks to legalize trespass. Here we join issue with our objectors and stand by this declaratory law. It embodies the general opinion and practice of the people; it is plainly conformable to the physical laws of nature and the requirements of civilization. Lands are held subject to laws thus grounded, and these considerations will not tolerate laws or decisions the very opposite. These declarations are not much more radical than a declaration that we stand by the law of gravity as constitutional. The public are busy in overturning this court decision by everywhere disregarding it. The few who stopped draining in deference to the court, have resumed under shelter of the statute. If all violators should be prosecuted with vigor, tile-making might decline, but courting would be lively. Courts and judges must be multiplied, and every lawyer in the State would have fat business for the next ten years. Some judge will soon give us a precedent in accordance with reason, and this will settle the matter as effectually as did one taste of the tree of knowledge reveal good and evil. It will soon be seen that individual interest is best promoted by general and free drainage--that presumption should be in its favor, and that one man should not be clothed with power to stop others from making improvements. NEW LAWS.--The next legislative work on drainage should be to revise and consolidate the law. On some points the law is duplicate, and on one triplicate. It is generally demanded that the law shall be less cumbrous and more summary. This can be done to some extent when it shall be found that the courts favor drainage. So far they have had a very tender feeling for complaints. When drainage shall be acknowledged to be lawful, laudable, and necessary, like plowing, laws may be greatly simplified and made more effectual. RIVER DISTRICTS.--Illinois being generally level, many of our inland streams waste a large amount of land by overflow and drift. Roads, crops, and bridges are insecure. To a large extent this may be remedied by straightening the channels, and hereafter keeping them in repair and clear of drift wood. If the lands along these rivers, which would receive benefits from this work, were made into a district and classified according to benefits, the burden on them for proper improvement would not be great, and it is believed that dollars would be realized for cents expended. This waste is growing worse year by year. Enough land could be reclaimed along the Kaskaskia, Little Wabash, Big Muddy, Saline, and Henderson to more than make a New England State. The State may well afford to do the engineering and give an enabling act, that the people interested may organize as they decide to improve their respective rivers. When so improved, it will become practicable to more effectually drain the district by lateral works. Illinois being so generally level, and much of our black soil resting on clay, here is to be the favorite field for the ditcher and tile-maker. Invention has an inviting field, and already foreshadows rich results. Your association, though a private one, touches the public interest very broadly. You reveal and make possible new sources of wealth, which promises to agriculture a new era of development. You may do much to settle true principles and proper public policy, so that this great drainage enterprise may move along harmoniously. The law-maker and the tile-maker are necessary factors in this grand march of improvement. Other valuable papers were read which we shall take occasion to publish at some future time. BETTER MANAGEMENT NEEDED. A little forethought on a farm is a good thing. It saves time, money, and much of the vexation that is liable to come without it. Like the watchman on a ship a good farmer must always be looking ahead. He must be quick in his judgment of what should be done at the present time, and he should have a good perception to show him the best thing to do for the future. It is a mistaken idea that many possess who think there is no brain work needed on a farm. Farmers are usually looked upon as an ignorant class of people, especially by many of the city friends who often do not see the large, sympathizing feelings that lie hidden beneath the rough exterior of country people. They are in many cases better educated than they look to be, and they have a chance to use all the education they have at their command in the performance of the many and different kinds of duties that are to be done in the occupation of agriculture. There is much work to be done and it requires to be done at the right time to give a profitable return for the labor. To have things done properly a farm requires a good manager to eke out the labor force in the way it will do the greatest amount of work. Most farmers are willing to work, and take pleasure in doing so. All perform the harder parts of farming with an energy that is surpassed by no other laboring class in the world. Farmers deserve praise for this, I think, for it requires a great deal of pluck to work as hard as many of them do. It is not, however, the actual hard manual labor that pays the best. The hardest part of the work may be done and there still remain enough to render the job far from complete. The minute parts of an occupation are the ones that distinguish it from others. These parts constitute trades. They require a special training to perform them, and the more perfectly they can be performed by any one, the more successful will that person be considered as a tradesman. A fine workman receives more pay for less work than one who does rougher work, simply because it is the minute parts that bring in the profit. This is so in the mechanical trades; it is so also in farming and yet many seem to be unaware of the fact. How numerous are those who leave out the minutia; mechanics learn a trade in a short time at least well enough to make a living by it. Many farmers have spent their whole lives upon farms and are still scarcely able to make a decent living; and the reason of it is because they have left undone those parts which would, if performed, bring in profit. It is not the lack of an education that causes so much poor success. It is a lack of care in action and a want of observation in seeing. A man's experience is what makes him wise. He gains this experience by coming in contact with and observing those things which he meets. In schools children are taught from the works of men. These works are arts, and since art is but the imitation of nature, all education is but imitation of that which the farmer boy has the chance of seeing before it becomes second hand. There is no place that has greater facilities to give observation its full scope than a farm. All farmers can, with the aid of the right kind of books and papers, be reasonably well educated, and most of them have a better comparative knowledge than they think they have. Many of the city cousins are superficially educated. City people can talk, but the greater part of the talk of many of them might be more properly called chattering. No farmer need feel below them because he is more retired and has a greater amount of modesty. It is true, perhaps, that one can not seem more insignificant than he really is. Great men are constantly dying, but the living move on just the same. Each person's position seems valuable to few, and yet there is almost an entire dependence of man to man. Every one can not fill the highest positions, but they should make the best possible use of the faculties that are given them. If this is done there will be no regrets in the future in regard to what might have been done in the past. Life will then be thought worth living and much more happiness will cluster around it than now does. There is no greater lack of education, perhaps, in agriculture than in the other vocations of man, and most farmers have a good share of well developed muscle to aid them in their work. The requisites are supplied. How many use them, at least in the way they should be used. All of the work could be done, but there is too small a number of good managers to oversee and carry out the performance of the little jobs that require to be performed at the right time. There are some people in every business who, in the race for success, far outrun their competitors. This may be noticed on a farm. It takes but a short time to tell by the work a man does whether he is a good farmer or not. If a person is a good farmer and unites that quality to that of business management he will be successful in his attainments. Through success he will be honored by the members of his profession. He will be praised by all other people, and above all he will in the silent thoughts of his own mind have the satisfaction and pleasure of knowing that he is not a cipher in the vast human family. He will be pointed out as an example to those who are perhaps bowed down by discouragement. He will in all probability be called lucky when his success is really due to decisions that are arrived at by the experience and close observation of the past. If more farmers would be content to give their thoughts, as well as time, to farming, there would be more success and happiness in the occupation that depends above all others on good management. S. LAWRENCE. QUINCY, ILL. SEED CORN FROM SOUTH. I am an interested reader of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, and knowing that thousands of farmers take the advice they get from its pages and act upon it, I wish to say that the suggestions of B. F. J., Champaign, Ill., regarding seed corn from portions of the country South of us will not do. Last spring hundreds of farmers in Western Iowa planted seed corn that came from Kansas and Nebraska, and the result was that none of that from Kansas ripened, while but little of the Nebraska seed did any better. It all grew nicely, but was still green and growing when the frost came. It may be claimed that much of that grown from native seed was no better, but it was better and considerable of it ripened, and from this native seed we have the only promise of seed for next year's planting. If farmers expect a good crop of corn they should not get seed from a southern latitude. No Iowa farmer would buy seed corn now that grew in Kentucky, Kansas, or Missouri. The only seed corn on which our farmers rely implicitly is that which they have gathered before frost came and hung up near the fire to be thoroughly dried before it froze. That corn will grow. S. L. W. MANNING, IOWA. FIELD AND FURROW. All manures deposited by nature are left on or near the surface. The whole tendency of manure is to go down into the soil rather than to rise from it. There is probably very little if any loss of nitrogen from evaporation of manure, unless it is put in piles so as to foment. Rains and dews return to the soil as much ammonia in a year as is carried off in the atmosphere. Rice contains more starch than either wheat, rye, barley, oats or corn. Of these grains oats carry the least starch, but by far the largest proportion of cellulose. In nitrogenous substances wheat leads, followed by barley, oats, rye and corn, while rice is most deficient. Corn leads in fat, and oats in relative proportion of water. Wheat leads in gum and rice in salt. Convenience of farm buildings is an important aid to good farming, especially where much stock is kept and there are many chores. Water should always be provided in the barn-yard, the feeding boxes should be near where the feed is kept, and the buildings should not be very far removed from the house. If this results in more neatness about barns and barnyards than has been thought necessary, it will be another important advantage gained. The President of the Elmira Farmers' Club tells the Husbandman that his crop of sorghum got caught by the frost, and too much injured to be of value as a sirup-producing substance. But he fed it to his cows which ate it greedily, and soon began to gain in milk. He thinks he got about as much profit from the crop as if it had been devoted to the original intent. Governor Glick, in a short address before the State Board of Agriculture, last week, stated that Kansas history is the most remarkable on record; that in 1883 her people had more money to the head than any other people under heaven; that the State had received 60,000 immigrant population in 1883; that it will receive 160,000 in 1884; that in ten years it will have 2,000,000 people, and that thereafter Kansas will not care anything about bureaus of immigration--it will have people enough to work with, and the rest will come as fast as they are needed. Farmers' Call: The experiments conducted during the last season at the Missouri State Agricultural College fully demonstrate the advisability of mulching potatoes. We believe every experiment so far reported gave a similar result. The cost of the materials for mulching is usually very small, leaves or straw being plentiful and cheap upon the farm. The materials manure the ground; and mulching saves hoeing. The potato requires a cooler climate and moister soil than our latitude affords. Mulching tends to secure both. The result in every case has been largely increased yields of superior quality. The old saying, no grass no cattle, no cattle no manure, no manure no crops, is as true to-day as when first spoken. Grass takes care of him who sows it. The meadow is the master mine of wealth. Strong meadows fill big barns. Fat pastures make fat pockets. The acre that will carry a steer carries wealth. Flush pastures make fat stock. Heavy meadows make happy farmers. Up to my ears in soft grass laughs the fat ox. Sweet pastures make sound butter. Soft hay makes strong wool. These are some of the maxims of the meadow. The grass seed to sow depends upon the soil and here every man must be his own judge. Not every farmer, however, knows the grass adapted to his soil. If he does and seeds by the bushel, or other measures, he is apt to be misled. Including millet and Hungarian there were in Kansas this year 3,730,150 acres of land devoted to the raising of hay. The yield per acre was 1.61 tons, or a total product of 6,002,576 tons. None of the tame grasses have as yet attained a large area in this State, the most extensively grown being timothy which has an area of 95,844 acres. The great bulk of the grass lands mentioned above is the prairie, protected by fence. The eastern third of the State probably contains four fifths of the tame grass area. The question of the growing of tame grasses in Kansas is receiving much attention from farmers, it becoming of vast importance as people increase the number of their farm animals. The question no doubt will be satisfactorily solved within a few years, and the tame grass area will increase to its just proportion. The agricultural changes in Great Britain continue to be of a marked character. The area devoted to grain crops the past year was 8,618,675 acres, which is 214,705 acres less than in 1882. Potatoes were planted on 543,000 acres, and turnips and Swedes on 2,029,000 acres--all showing a slight increase; but mangolds, vetches and other green crops have declined by 21,000 acres on the figures for the previous year. Clover and the grasses show an increase of 58,500 acres. The change from tilth to permanent pasturage is again conspicuous, there being 15,065,300 acres as compared with 14,821,600 last year. Ten years ago grass covered 13,000,000 acres, while arable land has fallen during that period from 18,186,000 to 17,319,000 acres. Orchards are on the increase, and also market gardening. In the matter of live stock there is an improvement which leads to the hope that the heavy losses of recent years will be made up. * * * * * Illinois Central Railroad. The elegant equipment of coaches and sleepers being added to its various through routes is gaining it many friends. Its patrons fear no accidents. Its perfect track of steel, and solid road-bed, are a guarantee against them. * * * * * FARM MACHINERY, Etc. NICHOLS & MURPHY'S CENTENNIAL WIND MILL. [Illustration] Contains all the valuable features of his old "Nichols' Mills" with none of their defects. This is the only balanced mill without a vane. It is the only mill balanced on its center. It is the only mill built on correct scientific principles so as to govern perfectly. ALL VANES Are mechanical devices used to overcome the mechanical defect of forcing the wheel to run out of its natural position. A wind wheel becomes its own vane if no vane if used, hence, vanes--save only to balance the wheel--are useless for good, and are only useful to help blow the mill down. This mill will stand a heavier wind, run steadier, last longer, and crow louder than any other mill built. Our confidence in the mill warrants us in offering the first mill in each county where we have no agent, at agents' prices and on 30 days' trial. Our power mills have 25 per cent more power than any mill with a vane. We have also a superior feed mill adapted to wind or other power. It is cheap, durable, efficient. For circulars, mills, and agencies, address NICHOLS & MURPHY, ELGIN, ILL. (Successors to the Batavia Manf. Co., of Batavia, Ill.) * * * * * Sawing Made Easy Monarch Lightning Sawing Machine! Sent on 30 Days test Trial. A Great Saving of Labor & Money. [Illustration] A boy 16 years old can saw logs FAST and EASY. MILES MURRAY, Portage, Mich. writes, "Am much pleased with the MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE. I sawed off a 30-inch log in 2 minutes." For sawing logs into suitable lengths for family stove-wood, and all sorts of log-cutting, it is peerless and unrivaled. Illustrated Catalogue, FREE. AGENTS WANTED. Mention this paper. Address MONARCH MANUFACTURING CO., 163 N. Randolph St., Chicago, Ill. * * * * * CHICAGO SCALE CO. [Illustration] 2 TON WAGON SCALE, $40. 3 TON, $50. 4 Ton $60, Beam Box Included. 240 lb. FARMER'S SCALE, $5. The "Little Detective," 1/4 oz. to 25 lb. $3. 300 OTHER SIZES. Reduced PRICE LIST FREE. FORGES, TOOLS, &c. BEST FORGE MADE FOR LIGHT WORK, $10, 40 lb. Anvil and Kit of Tools. $10. Farmers save time and money doing odd jobs. Blowers, Anvils, Vices & Other Articles AT LOWEST PRICES, WHOLESALE & RETAIL. * * * * * THE PROFIT FARM BOILER [Illustration] is simple, perfect, and cheap; the BEST FEED COOKER; the only dumping boiler; empties its kettle in a minute. OVER 5,000 IN USE; Cook your corn and potatoes, and save one-half the cost of pork. Send for circular. D. R. SPERRY & CO., Batavia, Illinois. * * * * * HOOSIER AUGER TILE MILL. [Illustration: Mills on hand. Prompt delivery.] FOR PRICES AND CIRCULARS, ADDRESS NOLAN, MADDEN & CO., RUSHVILLE, IND. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. EVAPORATING FRUIT [Illustration] FULL TREATISE on improved methods, yields, profits, prices and general statistics, free. AMERICAN M'FG CO. WAYNESBORO FRANKLIN COUNTY, PA. * * * * * SELF CURE FREE Nervous Lost Weakness Debility Manhood and Decay A favorite prescription of a noted specialist (now retired.) Druggists can fill it. Address DR. WARD & CO., LOUISIANA, MO. * * * * * 40 (1884) Chromo Cards, no 2 alike, with name, 10c., 13 pks, $1. GEORGE I. REED & CO., Nassau, N.Y. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * [Illustration] LIVESTOCK DEPARTMENT. Stockmen. Write for Your Paper. American breeders imported from Scotland 850 head of polled cattle last year. * * * * * W. C. Vandercook, Secretary of the Northern Illinois Merino Sheep Breeders' Association, recently took 900 Merino sheep to his recently purchased ranch in Norton county, Kansas. * * * * * Mr. Estill, of Estill, Mo., passed through Chicago, a few days ago, with forty head of Angus-Aberdeen and Hereford cattle. Estill & Elliott now own one of the best polled herds in the West. * * * * * The second regular annual meeting of the Kansas State Short-horn Breeders' Association will be held in the Senate Chamber of the Capitol, Topeka, Kan., during February 12 and 13, beginning at 7 P. M. of the 12th. * * * * * The seventh annual meeting of the Dutch-Fresian Association of America will be held at the Butterfield House, Utica, N. Y., February 6, 1884. Essays and addresses are expected from a number of distinguished stock breeders. * * * * * The Lafayette County Thoroughbred Live Stock Breeders' Association was recently organized at Higginsville, Mo. They will hold annual public sales and otherwise advance the improved stock interest. Their first sale will be held at Higginsville, October 15 and 16, 1884. * * * * * The following is a list of Jerseys exported from the island during the past year: Mr. Francis Le Brocq exported 848 cows, bulls, 28--total, 876. Mr. Eugene J. Arnold sent out 656 cows, 47 bulls--total, 703. Sundry shippers sold 158 cows and 7 bulls--total, 165. Grand total, 1,744 head. * * * * * Our readers will not fail to notice the public sale ad. of Mr. Wm. Yule, of Somers, Wis., who will, on the 19th day of March, disperse his entire herd of thoroughbred Short-horn cattle. The herd numbers forty head, and is the opening sale of the season, and will be one of the most attractive ones of the year. They are all of his own breeding. Send for catalogue, which will be ready about February 15. * * * * * Horse-stealing seems to be as prevalent in England as in this country. A late London live-stock journal says there is as much of it going on as there was half a century ago. A gang has recently been operating in Kent, Essex, and Surrey quite extensively. The thieves are no respecters of breeds, taking hunters, cart horses and carriage horses with equal boldness. Arrests are becoming frequent, and it seems likely the gang will soon be broken up. HERD BOOKS AND RECORDS. The following addresses may be of use to many readers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER who may wish to record stock or purchase books: American Short-horn Herd Book--W. T. Bailey, Secretary, 27 Montauk block, Chicago, Ill. National Register of Norman Horses--T. Butterworth, Secretary, Quincy, Ill. American Clydesdale Stud Book--Charles F. Mills, Secretary, Springfield, Ill. American Hereford Record--Breeders' Live Stock Association, Beecher, Ill. Holstein Herd Book--Thos. B. Wales, Secretary, Iowa City, Iowa. Herd Register--American Jersey Cattle Club, Geo. E. Waring, Secretary, Newport, R. I. American Poland-China Record--John Gilmore, Secretary, Vinton, Iowa. Central Poland-China Record, Mr. Morris, Secretary, Indianapolis, Ind. COMPETING FOR SWEEPSTAKE PRIZES. Our readers will remember that we last week made mention of a change in the sweepstakes rings at the next Illinois State Fair. This was a slight error. The change was made with reference to the Fat Stock Show. In this connection we present the argument of Hon. John P. Reynolds, on the subject before the board and which governed the board in its action. THE ARGUMENT. _To the State Board of Agriculture._ GENTLEMEN.--The undersigned, Superintendent of class A., respectfully submits the following report for the past year, including the fair in September, and the Fat Stock Show in November. THE FAIR. It was perfectly apparent to any one familiar with the displays of previous years in this department, that the breeding of fine cattle in this country is, at the present time, attracting the attention and commanding the best and most intelligent care of not alone the farmers who have been bred to their avocation, but of capitalists, who comprehend the great money values involved, and who either of themselves or through their sons have set out to identify themselves with this great interest. As the result of the fact the display of cattle was more varied as to breeds and greater as to number, if not superior as to quality, than at any fair, while the visitors in attendance seeking to purchase and studying the question of breeds with a view to purchase for breeding purposes, were never so numerous nor so much in earnest. Under such circumstances, it may easily be imagined that the awards of prizes, not for the money value of the prizes themselves, but for the bearing of such honors upon the interests of exhibitors in regard to sales, assumed an unusual importance and involved a corresponding responsibility on the part of this board. Impressed, as I think, with a proper sense of that responsibility, and of the embarrassment which always surround that position, as your representative I discharged the duty to the best of my ability. The most serious and perhaps, the only embarrassment which I should refer to in this report, was the absence of so large a proportion of the members of awarding committees originally selected, rendering it necessary to fill the places of the absentees by selections from the by-standers after the cattle had been called to the rings. Some of you "have been there" and have a realizing sense of the difficulties involved in the effort to make these substitutions intelligently and with conscientious care, on the spur of the moment. To do so in all cases with satisfaction to one's self is simply impossible, and to do it in all cases with satisfaction to unlucky competing exhibitors is not to be expected. If I could do the first and feel sure that the talisman had been wisely selected, it would be easy to disregard complaints, if any, which are known to be unjust. The question of so modifying our committee system as to avoid the embarrassment I have referred to and thus to secure a better deserved confidence in the justice of the awards is one I hope to hear discussed at this meeting as it has been probably at every meeting of our predecessors for the past thirty years. Possibly we are in the light of our own experience, with a different system at the Fat Stock Shows prepared to try something else at the fairs; but of this I do not feel certain. THE FAT STOCK SHOW. The remarks I have made in regard to the display at the fair and the great interest it excited apply with, if possible, still greater force to the Fat Stock Show. Your record shows all material facts in respect to numbers and quality of the stock on exhibition, and I need not enlarge. The importance of this enterprise, in its relation to the meat supply of the world, can hardly be over-stated, and its direct results to the producers of the meat producing breeds of stock as well as to the consumers, are too apparent to require discussion. The rules and methods adopted by the board for conducting this show seems to need but little change--some slight modifications of the requirements of the premium list will be proposed when that subject shall come up for consideration, but beyond these there is but one subject which I regard as of sufficient importance to demand a suggestion from me at this time. I refer to the number of and division of duties among the awarding committees. The method of selecting judges seems to me all right and there was much less difficulty in securing their attendance than at the fair. A few did not respond, but their places were filled satisfactorily in most cases. The wisdom of the appointment of your committee to decide upon the age of all animals on exhibition, prior to the commencement of the work of the judges and entirely independent of any suggestion or wish on the part of exhibitors, was practically demonstrated so that there is probably now no desire to discontinue it. In this case their discussions corroborated and established the statements and good faith of the exhibitors themselves in every instance except one, in which one the result was unimportant. The special feature to which I desire to call your attention may perhaps be best understood if I express my own views in regard to it. At present it is the practice for one committee of judges to make the awards on the animals of each breed in their several rings of yearlings, two-year-olds, and three-year-olds. After that has been done it is the practice for another committee to select the sweepstakes animals from among all the entries of all ages of that breed without regard to the prizes which the former committee may have awarded. Now it not infrequently happens, and is always liable to occur, that the latter committee selects as the best animal of any age one which the former committee did not deem worthy of any prize at all or at least not a first prize, when judged by them in competition with these of its own age only. Evidently there is a mistake somewhere. Both decisions can not be correct. Both committees, we are bound to assume are equally honest, disinterested, and competent, because the members of both committees considered in making up a decision such discrepancy of judgment and the system which renders it possible may be almost excusable, perhaps, but in the Fat Stock Show, where we deal so fully in details and exact figures, and where we pretend to use our best efforts in every practical manner to get at and publish for the benefit of a confiding world the reliable, bottom facts obtained by the labors of paid experts, reach a conflicting record is not, in any judgement, one to be greatly proud of. There is one plain, just and proper remedy for this, to wit: Restrict the award of sweepstakes prizes in the several breed rings to such animals as have taken first premiums in the rings for ages, and restrict competition for _grand sweepstakes_ to such animals as have taken _sweepstake_ prizes in the breed rings as have not otherwise competed at all. The awards of all special prizes should follow the decisions in the regular rings when not offered for animals not included in the regular rings. Under this rule every animal competing for a sweepstakes prize, with possible exceptions in the grand sweepstakes, would have received the highest indorsement of the committees, and hence there could be no pretense of prejudice on the part of the judges and hence, too, it would matter very little whether a new competent committee were called for the grand sweepstakes or that committee was composed of judges who served in the rings, the latter, in my opinion, being preferable, because of their larger opportunity in becoming familiar with the points of difference between the competing animals. I am persuaded that no objection to the remedy as I have stated it, would or could properly be made except by those whose animals were not included in the first prize or sweepstakes winners, and the only objection I have ever heard to the adoption of the rule, even at the fairs, is based on the idea that those animals (or the owners) failing to take prizes in the rings for ages, should have a "new trial" before an entirely new jury in sweepstakes. But how about those who won the verdict in the first trial! Is there any justice in requiring them to submit to another trial between themselves and those they have once vanquished? and if there is any propriety in that, why not in still another new trial and more new trials before new juries until every animal in the show has received a first prize, or the treasury has been exhausted or the community fails to furnish any more jurymen? If it were simply the "consolation stakes" to non-prize winners, some loose practice might seem justifiable, but it is not the best policy in conducting the competitions of the Fat Stock Show to be influenced by any considerations except those which relate to fair, impartial and intelligent decisions, and no decisions can be fair, impartial and intelligent which conflict with each other and which, as a whole, fail to form a consistent record. JOHN P. REYNOLDS, Supt. Class A. * * * * * James F. Scott purchased 200 mares and 500 one and two year old colts to be delivered on the 15th of March at the San Antonio Viego ranch. * * * * * RAISING YOUNG MULES. Where land is not too high, and pasturage good as well as cheap, keeping good mares from which young mules can be raised is certainly a profitable business; especially so where corn and hay are grown on the farm, and the mares can be profitably worked at least part of the year. With a liberal supply of corn fodder for winter feeding, and a good pasture, with hay and corn during the coldest weather, and when at work, this branch of farming is not only easy, but certain and profitable. A mare in good condition, not counting pasturage, can be kept for eight dollars a year. Service of jack here is generally six dollars, making keeping of mare and service cost fourteen. There has been no time since I came to this part of the State when a mule colt would not bring all the way from twenty-five to fifty dollars, depending, of course, upon the size, form, and general condition at weaning time. Allowing nothing for the work the mare would be able to do, which certainly ought to be sufficient to pay for her keep, there is left a good margin for profit. Or if we count the interest on the money invested in the mare, still we have a good profit left. The difference paid for young mules shows two facts: first, the importance of a good sire, or jack, and the other of a well-formed mare. It certainly costs no more money to keep a well-formed animal than it does to keep a poor one. Of course, at the start, one may require a somewhat larger outlay of money, and in this way, if we count the interest on the money invested, cause young mules to cost a trifle more than if cheaper animals were used. But this is more than compensated for by the larger price the colt will bring. The difference between a mare that will bring a mule that only sells for the lowest price here at weaning time, twenty-five dollars, and one that brings a mule that will sell for fifty, the highest generally obtained, would make quite an item in the amount of profit to be derived from her keep, and especially where the same animals are kept quite a number of years for this purpose, as is often the case. And this is not all; the mule will himself pay handsomely for keeping. Mules a year old, that are broken to the halter, so that they can be led, bring from eighty to one hundred dollars. When two years old, and broken to to the wagon as well as saddle, one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five dollars is the general price. Of course a pair of well matched mules, well broken to harness, at three or four years, will sell all the way from three to five hundred dollars, depending upon their color, form, size, etc. And this difference is, in nearly all cases the result of the difference between good and poor jacks, as well as good and poor mares. One other point must always be taken into account in this work, and that is in having mares that are sure breeders. I find that those who have made most money out of this line of farming or stock-raising are those who, when they have secured a valuable brood mare that is sure of bringing a first-class mule colt, they not only keep her, but they take good care of her; and in this way they secure the very best results and realize the largest profits. Where proper care is taken not to overwork or strain them, mares can always be profitably worked in planting and cultivating the corn crop, as well as cribbing it in the fall; fully enough work can be done to pay for what they eat and the pasturage. So that the cost of service and interest on the money invested is what the mule costs at weaning time. After that time, of course, they cost something more, as weaning time generally comes in the fall at about the time that pastures fail, and corn fodder, wheat straw, and hay, with a small amount of grain during the winter must be fed to keep the colt growing in good condition. Many farmers who do not care to go to the trouble of breaking young mules, dispose of them at weaning time; while others find it profitable to buy these up at whatever prices they are obtainable, and keep until they are two or three years old; during this time they are broken to lead, to ride, and to work. To be sure, there is some risk connected with this, but, on the whole, it is considered very remunerative--so much so that many young men who manage to get enough cash ahead will buy one or two mule colts in the fall at weaning time and keep them until well broken in, and they sell at a profit, and in this way make a good start for themselves. As compared with other branches of stock-raising, there is less risk in this than in almost any other branch of farm stock. N. J. SHEPHERD. MILLER CO., MO. [Illustration] THE DAIRY Dairymen, Write for Your Paper. WISCONSIN DAIRYMEN. The convention of Wisconsin dairymen, at Lake Mills, last week, was an excellent one. It was largely attended by the most prominent and experienced dairymen of this wonderful dairy State. The people of Lake Mills did their utmost to make the visit of delegates pleasant, and they succeeded admirably. The crowning feature of their hospitality was the banquet on Thursday night. The feast was prepared by the ladies of the M. E. church. The supper, the toasts and responses, the music and all were enjoyable in the highest degree. Wisconsin dairymen believe in banquets. A leading member of the convention declared that the prosperous history of the association began with its first banquet. Governor Rusk was in attendance at this convention, and his address was one calculated to encourage and help on the association. He assured the members that if they thought the association needed legislative aid, all they have to do is to ask for it. If they ask for $5,000, he will do his best to have the appropriation bill passed, and he will sign the enactment promptly when it reaches him for signature. He believes Wisconsin one of the foremost of dairy States, and he wants it to retain its position. Among other prominent gentlemen present who participated in the discussions were Prof. Henry, of the Agricultural Department of the State University; Hon. Clinton Babbitt, Secretary of the State Agricultural Society; Hon. Hiram Smith, Chester Hazen, S. Favile, J. M. Smith, J. H. Smith, J. B. Harris, Inspector of Dairy Factories, Canada, and T. D. Curtis, Syracuse, N. Y. The election of officers resulted in retaining the incumbents of last year for another year's service. These gentlemen are: W. H. Morrison, Elkhorn, President; D. W. Curtis, Fort Atkinson, Secretary; H. K. Loomis, Treasurer. One of the prominent papers read was on Co-operative Dairying, by J. B. Harris, Esq., of Antwerp, N. Y., who is employed by the Canadian government as inspector of cheese and butter factories. We will give it in full, and follow next week with some account of the discussions. CO-OPERATIVE CHEESE-MAKING. In all human efforts, grand results have been attained chiefly by concert of action. In our own time, everything is done by co-operation. Railways across continents, canals uniting oceans and seas, bridges almost of fabulous proportions, enterprises in engineering and commerce, never before known, evince the extent to which modern genius is availing itself of concert of effort in testing human capacity. There is a visible tendency in all branches of business toward co-operation and centralization. In looking down upon a large city, the unity visible even in the diversity of human affairs manifests itself in a manner truly wonderful. The air is literally filled with a vast net-work of wire, crossing and re-crossing in every conceivable direction, and over these, backward and forward, the thoughts of men are made to vibrate with the speed of lightning, in the elaboration and consummation of thousands of business schemes, and the air, as well as the buildings and streets, is full of human activity and enterprise. The lawyer, sitting comfortably at his desk in his office, talks with his banker, physician, grocer, a hundred clients, and his family, all seated like him himself at home, or at their various places of business. Thus is the telephone made the instrument of human co-operation and concert of action. It is now less than thirty years since dairymen stumbled into the practice of co-operation in the business of making-cheese. Previous to that time cheese-making in this country was, to say the least, a crude affair. Every farmer ran his own factory, according to his own peculiar notion, and disposed of his products as he could "light on" chaps. In that day, cheese-making was guess work and hap-hazard. To-day it is a science. Then there were as many rules and methods as there were men. To-day the laws which nature has enacted, to govern the process of converting milk into cheese, are codified, and cheese-making has become a profession. In that day the accumulated results of the cheese industry of a neighborhood or township was a sight to behold--all manner of circular blocks, of concentrated error, large and small, thick and thin, when heaped together presented a spectacle that would now bring a smile upon the countenance of the most sober and dignified cheese-maker in the State. The condition of the market at that time was quite as crude and irregular as the system, or rather the want of system, in manufacturing. There was no cable, no regular reports from the great business centers of the land, no regularly organized boards of trade, railroads not as numerous, less daily papers were in circulation, and many other circumstances which left the seller comparatively at the mercy of the buyer, and the purchase and sale of a dairy was conducted upon principles similar to those usually practiced in a horse trade. The great changes which since that day have taken place in the dairying world are due chiefly to a division of labor, the introduction of system and co-operation. Our machinery, we are sorry to say, is not yet quite perfect in all its parts, and does not move with the precision and harmony of the orchestra, to which we have already alluded. Yet, although still in its infancy, it has already produced and does annually produce results grand indeed. If we take a glance at the various industries at which men are to-day engaged, intellectual, commercial, and mechanical, the painstaking exactitude everywhere practiced will be found to be a growing subject of wonder and admiration. The secret of this lies in the fact that perfection in any department of business not only enlarges that business but also enriches those engaged in it. For example: there are perhaps ten times as many watches manufactured in the world to-day as at any other period in its history. It is a profitable business, or men would not engage in it, and the superhuman effort that is being continually put forth to increase the value, by making as perfect an article as human power can produce, establishes conclusively the assertion that there is always a profit in doing well. I am glad to observe that in the cheese industry of the United States and Canada, the light of this truth has to some extent aroused the slumbering dairymen. To quote from the Utica Herald of Sept. 11, 1883: "It is estimated that about 700,000 men are employed in this business, in one capacity or another, and that about 15,000,000 cows are used to furnish the one product of milk. The returns from this product are over $800,000,000. The total amount of capital invested in dairying in the United States is estimated to reach the enormous sum of $2,000,000,000." In consulting these figures we hope there is no person so dense of understanding as to entertain for a moment the idea that had the old system of every man his own cheese-maker prevailed that anything approaching this grand result would ever have been attained. Never. The concert or effort attained in the factory system is the key note to this grand, soul-inspiring chorus. But an experience of twenty-five years in the dairy industry leads me to the conclusion that in the music of our business there is yet much discord. The dairymen and factorymen fail to understand the spirit of the piece we are attempting to perform, and fail to catch the idea that individual profit and prosperity depend upon the success of the business as a whole. No chain is stronger than its weakest link, and so long as there remains a slovenly dairyman in the business just so long our system will be incomplete and the working of co-operation remain imperfect. Perfect concert of effort, unbroken unity of hand with hand, in all the various details of the business, reaching down to the most unimportant items in the production of milk and the making of cheese, will produce in the long run the most profitable and permanent results to the individual as well as to the community. "But," say some, "there is too much of the millennium, too much of theory, too much of the unattainable, in all this." To such I answer that there is much of the millennium, much of theory, and much of the unattainable in the Sermon on the Mount, and yet our Divine Master preached it, nevertheless. It may perhaps be considered chimerical and theorizing to talk of a time when there will be no such persons among dairymen as what are known to the cheese-maker as a skimmer or stripper, but we hope such a time will come, nevertheless. To what purpose do A., B., and C., and a score of other industrious, honest, painstaking fellows, exert themselves to collect a model dairy, sparing neither time nor expense in providing themselves with perfect sets of improved appurtenances for those dairies, from rich, well-watered pastures down to good, substantial three-legged milking stools, and labor incessantly from sunrise until sundown, that their barns may be in perfect order and everything connected with the business neat and clean, in order that their material may come into the hands of the manufacturer in a perfect condition--if heedless, lazy, shiftless, dishonest, ignorant, good-for-nothing D. keeps about him a herd of sick, disconsolated racks-of-bones, to wander over his arid and desolate fields in search of food and drink in summer, or with backs humped up, hover together for shelter under the lea of a wheat-straw stack, their only food in winter, and using a kit of dairying tools, the very best article of which is an old, water-soaked, dirty wooden pail, drawing his whey from the factory in the old, rusty, time-embattled milk cans, in which it is allowed to stand until the next milking, and which, after an imperfect washing, and refilled and returned to the factory, freighted with a compound sufficiently poisoned to nullify and undo the best efforts of a hundred A., B., and C's. It may be theorizing and visionary to talk of a time when the spirit of co-operation shall have driven such fellows out of the dairying business, to betake themselves with a pick-ax and spade to the ditch, but that such a time may come ought to be the earnest prayer of every thorough-going friend of co-operation in the land. It may seem like castle building and an unprofitable waste of time to indulge in theories and construct plans by which the rivalry among factorymen may be kept within a limit sufficiently circumscribed to prevent the fear of loss of patronage from interfering with, and lowering the standard of, our cheese. It is too often the case, nowadays, that factorymen are deterred from a full and complete discharge of their duty to themselves, their patrons, and the world in general, by a fear, by no means groundless, that a bold and upright course with regard to the material brought to them will result in a damaging, if not entire loss, of their occupation. The unwise extent to which men have gone in the erection of cheese factories, has increased competition to an extent decidedly prejudicial to the interest of the cheese-consuming world. A., having invested his entire capital in the construction and equipment of a factory, will be quite likely, when B., C., and D. erect factories in his immediate neighborhood, to hold his peace when sundry varieties of swill milk are offered at his door, instead of speaking out an equivocal protest against the insult thus offered to his professional pride and sense of decency. To the dairyman naturally given to slovenly and careless habits, the restraint to which he might otherwise be subjected is practically removed when nearly equi-distant from his place of abode there are three or four factories, instead of one, and he knows that if rejected at one place, he can without inconvenience go to another, and thus it transpires that at five factories in every ten there will be found a conspicuous absence of thorough and inexorable discriminations which ought always to prevail in the receipt of milk for factory purposes. For this abuse there is, in our estimation, a remedy however theoretical and visionary it may appear, and that is concert of action and co-operation among factorymen. Men in all branches of business, nowadays, associate with each other, and form themselves into bodies for the purpose of closer union and mutual protection, and when this is done for the general good, as well as individual advancement, the purpose is laudable and universally successful. We know of no business in which the necessity of combination is so great as that of cheese-making, and, what, let me ask, could be more desirable and praiseworthy than an association of cheese-makers, for the purpose of sending the swill milk of the country to the hogs, where it belongs, instead of making it up, as at present, for human consumption. We have an idea that such an association might be successfully formed, and that, when once in effectual operation, it might ask the legislative body of its country to enact a law, entitled "An Act for the suppression of swill milk, and for the general good of mankind," in which it should be provided, among other things, that in every case where a dairyman has left a factory on account of having had his milk rejected for cause traceable to his negligence, that in all such cases, the factory or factory company knowingly receiving the milk of such rejected party, shall be liable to some appropriate penalty. The extreme sensitiveness of milk in the absorption of taint from the atmosphere, or any substance with which it comes in contact, ought to be thoroughly understood by all persons engaged in handling it, but, we believe, that but few comparatively are alive to the true facts of the case. I herewith present several paragraphs clipped from journals of recent date: "There are seventy-five cases of typhoid fever in the town of Port Jarvis. Dr. McDonald attributes the spread of the disease to the use of milk from the farm of Mrs. Thomas Cuddebach, in whose family there have been several typhoid cases, holding that the milk conveyed the disease germs. Nearly all of the parties now sick had used milk from the farm." "A dairyman from Dundee has been apprehended and fined for allowing his wife and daughter to milk cows and assist in the sale of milk, after they had been engaged in nursing a child suffering from scarlet fever. No less than nineteen cases of fever, four of which resulted fatally, were traced to this act of carelessness." With these facts in view, how can it be expected that any amount of diligence on the part of a cheese-maker can atone for the unpardonable sin committed, day after day, by the heedless and unobserving patrons, of leaving a can of freshly drawn milk standing all night in an unwholesome barn or yard, until it has absorbed a whole family of pestilential odors, and then to carry it to the factory to corrupt and poison everything with which it comes in contact. Some may suppose it a mere theory to speak of a condition of things in which abuses of this character can not be found, but during an experience of five years as cheese instructor, in the Province of Ontario, during which I superintended the making of cheese in about 400 different factories, and during the last year inspected the milk from about 65,000 cows, the property of about 7,000 dairymen, I occasionally made up vats in which there was no discoverable taint and which, I was pretty certain, came from the farms of well drilled, well posted dairymen, and, from a circumstance of this character, I am led to the conclusion that what has been done once can be done again, and I make such facts a text upon which I found my plea for more thorough co-operation and diligent painstaking in the work of producing milk for factory purposes. * * * * * There may be times when peculiar atmospheric conditions will exert unfavorable influences, and seasons when drought and wet weather will produce changes, over which human efforts have no control, and for these sufficient allowance must be made. We quarrel with the stupidity, shiftlessness, and ignorance of men, and not with the providence of God. In this day and age of the world there is no excuse for ignorance upon the points to which we have alluded. Wisdom uttereth her voice in the streets, and he who will not hear her ought to be drummed out of the camp of dairymen. As a rule, a common carpenter puts more thought into his business in a month than many dairymen do in a year. Indeed, it would be difficult to point out a single branch of human industry, of one-half the magnitude which the manufacture and sale of cheese has reached, carried on in a manner so slipshod and slovenly as dairying. The banker, the columns of whose ledger fail by one cent of balancing, spares neither time nor money in searching out and correcting the error; the merchant brings to bear upon his business a care and insight so unceasing and laborious that his locks are soon sprinkled with premature silver; the machinist works to plans from which the variation of a thousandth part of an inch can not be allowed to pass uncorrected; but the dairyman too often stumbles along through his work without thought, or employs the little intellect he has in putting in and harvesting his crops, leaving the dairy in the meantime to take care of itself. There are too many men engaged in dairying who can see nothing in the business beyond the factory dividend; men to whom filling the milk pail and the can are the Alpha and Omega of life. To such men such a thing as an ambition that their county, town, or neighborhood shall attain and hold a reputation for being the banner cheese district of the State or nation, is as thoroughly unknown as the configuration of the bottom of the Dead sea. In saying what we have about the patrons of cheese factories, and the closer and more thorough co-operation among them, we have been actuated by no feelings of unkindness or ill will, nor have we arraigned them upon trivial or imaginary charges. The indictments we have found against them are all true bills, against which too many of them will be unable to sustain the plea of not guilty. We have been constrained to our present course by an overmastering sense of the importance of greater care, deeper thought, and closer union in pushing forward one of the greatest industries of the day. I am confident that before another step can be taken in advance it must be preluded by a correction of the errors which we have feebly attempted to portray, all of which lie outside and prior to the factory. As a body, cheese-makers can do little better than they are now doing, until there is some improvement in the material upon which they are called upon to exercise their skill, and the practice of crimination and recrimination, the factorymen tossing the blame upon the dairymen and the dairymen upon the factorymen, which is made use of to conceal the real source of our mistakes, will continue to shield him from the eyes of a discriminating public until the care and diligence of dairymen strip him of this shelter and drive him forward on the march to improvement. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * [Illustration] VETERINARY Impaction of the Paunch. Impaction of the paunch (the first stomach or rumen) in cattle, sometimes also called grainsick or mawbound, differs from bloating or hoove, mainly thereby that the distention is more solid than gaseous, it being either with food alone, or with food and gas. Symptomatically it differs also from hoove by the absence of eructation, and by the hardness of the flanks and the smaller volume of the swelling. It arises from gorging with almost any kind of food, even with grain or with chaff, at a sudden change of diet; but it is particularly liable to arise from a surfeit of turnips, fresh grass, or any other succulent food at the commencement of the season. The instrument called a probang ought to be introduced, either to decide whether the case be one of hoove or one of mawbound, or to ascertain the degree in which the latter disease exists. If the probang bring on a sudden rush of gas, the disease is wholly or chiefly hoove; and if it encounter a solid resistance, the disease mawbound, and exists in a degree of aggravation proportioned to the nearness of the point at which the resistance is felt. In mild cases of impaction of the paunch, when the animal does not seem to suffer much pain, and is not materially fevered, but merely ceases rumination or chewing of the cud, refuses to eat, and lies long and indolently in one posture, a dose of oil, or a little forced walking, are frequently sufficient to effect a cure. In cases which, though on the whole mild, are accompanied with a kind of inertia, or with an insuperable reluctance to rise or to move about, stimulants, such as ether diluted with alcohol and water, may be required to rouse the paunch into renewed action; but whenever such remedies are necessary, they must be given in cautious doses, and always accompanied with some gentle purgatives. In very bad cases, when the animal seems sinking through inertness into death, or in which moans, swells at the sides, becomes almost as a board in the flanks, appears to suffer great and increasing pain, and seems eventually to be overwhelmed with anguish and to be passing into unconsciousness, it must be promptly decided whether we have sufficient time and encouragement to try the effect of stimulants, purgatives, the stomach pump, and other comparatively gentle measures; and if not, we should, without much delay, cut through the left flank into the paunch, and with the hands withdraw the contents. The cutting operation itself is attended or followed with little danger; but in the extracting of the food, no matter how carefully performed, some small portion is liable to drop into the abdominal cavity; and this, in consequence of its indigested condition, resists absorption or expulsion, undergoes an irritating decomposition, and may very probably originate some serious inflammatory disorder. Any animal which has suffered a very bad case of impaction of the paunch, ought, immediately after complete restoration to health, to be sent to the shambles; for, independently of the lurking danger consequent on the artificial extraction of the food, or even upon the relaxation which follows the administration of a stimulant, the paunch is so much overstretched and injured by the mechanical effects of the distension as to be temporarily incapacitated for the proper discharge of its functions. Queries Answered. PROBABLY RINGBONE.--W. B. S., Sciola, Iowa. In the absence of any information to the contrary, the lameness may be regarded as due to the development of ringbone. There is no certain cure for this disease. All that may be expected from treatment is to retard or stay its progress or development; but in all cases more or less stiffness or lameness will remain, depending upon the extent of its development. Then, subsequent hard work, or any cause of renewed irritation, will be apt to further aggravate the case, and cause additional enlargement and increasing lameness. The usual course of treatment in such cases consists in blistering or firing, or both combined, with subsequent long rest or a season's liberty on pasture. * * * * * Uneasiness is a species of sagacity; a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * [Illustration] HORTICULTURAL Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper. Lessons of 1883. BY O. B. GALUSHA. Progress in all arts and sciences is the one grand aim of all associations and of all agricultural and horticultural societies and journals; and to study the results of each year's experiences and observations, comparing them with those of previous years, and also with the ideal of perfection which each laborer in these several departments of industry has pictured in his own mind, is the best preparation for achieving desired results in the future. In the present paper we will take a brief retrospect of the fruit crops of 1883, and inquire into the causes of successes and failures. STRAWBERRIES. We begin with the strawberry, which, though small and unpretentious, has been from year to year rising in importance until it has become second only to the apple in the estimation of a majority of consumers. The past year's experience has taught, as does that of each year, that great care should be taken in selecting varieties adapted to each particular soil and situation. This may be said to be the important thing in strawberry growing. It is a difficult thing to find such varieties by the ordinary means of selecting; namely, recourse to the catalogues of growers. Man has a wonderful amount of selfishness in his composition. I say wonderful, for it is a wonder when we consider how much better he would enjoy life were all selfishness eliminated from it, and benevolence, coupled with true self love, were substituted. "Each crow thinks its own young the blackest," and each (almost) originator or "exclusive owner" of a new variety of plant or tree, labors hard to convince himself and others that he has the best of his kind; but, owing to the weakness of human nature, even the sincere among these are liable to be biased, and thus mislead others. The only safety, therefore, lies in planting such varieties as you know to succeed well near you in similar soil, while new varieties, commended as superior by persons of known integrity and experience, for similar soil and climatic condition, should be tried only on a small scale as an experiment. If they succeed, you can soon have plenty of plants of your own growing--if you prefer to grow them. This advice, though often before given will bear frequent repetition--for the desire for "something new" is as prevalent with us now as it was with the Athenians in St. Paul's time. We have seen Big Bobs, Great Americans, and other monstrosities dwindle to pigmies in the hands of ordinary cultivators, and the demand for Sharpless become less sharp through its sensitiveness to the influence of Jack Frost; and hosts of other sorts, really good and valuable somewhere, and under peculiarly favorable conditions to be comparatively valueless for general cultivation. Therefore every person designing to plant should repeat to himself this injunction--"Go slow on new varieties." It is not desirable for persons who plant for their own use solely to select the pistillate varieties; for these, although the most profusely productive when well fertilized, are liable to overrun their staminate neighbors, and soon render the "strawberry patch" unproductive, or productive only of small or imperfect fruit. The leading pistillates offered in the catalogues now are Crescent, Col. Cheney, Windsor Chief, Jersey Queen, Big Bob, Manchester, Green Prolific, Golden Defiance, Champion, Park Beauty, Gipsey, and some others. There are a few sorts, having perfect blossoms, which give profitable returns on a variety of soils, and which may be considered safe to plant. These are Charles Downing, Miner, Bidwell (kept in single rows or single plants), Piper, Cumberland Triumph, Phelps ("Old Iron Clad"), Sucker State, Finch, Capt. Jack (acid), Longfellow (with good, rich culture), Mt. Vernon (late), and for sandy soil, Kentucky (late). This list may be said to constitute the cream of the thousand and one varieties offered which have been well tested. Of course those who grow strawberries for market will plant largely of some of the pistillate sorts, owing to their great productiveness. The past year has taught the folly of too great haste in removing the covering from strawberry plants; as those which bloomed early were badly damaged by the frost. Plantations, also, which were partially screened by rows and belts of evergreens produced twice to three times the quantity of fruit that was obtained from the same varieties fully exposed. Plants in orchards also escaped to a great degree, for the trees were in leaf when the destructive frost occurred, and thus gave partial protection. Strawberries are at home in a young orchard; the cultivation given the plants is good for the trees, and the slight shade of the young trees is no perceptible detriment to the plants or fruit. The general crop was about one-third an average--the chief damage being done by the frost--though the tarnished plant-bug was very destructive in Southern Illinois, and did some damage in other localities. Prices were from fifty to a hundred per cent higher than usual--supply and demand being the factors, in the fruit trade, as well as in all others, which regulate prices. Spring is better than summer or autumn for planting strawberries. In thirty years' experience in strawberry culture I have never, except in two instances, found any advantage in summer or fall planting, and in these pot-plants were used, which are too expensive for general planting and not always preferable. Three or four of the varieties named, 100 of each, planted as early in spring as the ground is in good condition, in rows three to three and a half feet apart, and confined, as they run, to narrow strips, will give an abundance of fruit for two or three years for a large family. Certainly such planting and care is as good an investment as can be made upon any farm or in any garden. RASPBERRIES AND BLACKBERRIES were more nearly a failure, generally, as a crop, in 1883, than strawberries, but owing to a different cause, namely, the severe cold of the previous winter. None of the cultivated varieties escaped unharmed wherever the mercury sank lower than 30 degrees below zero, and 32 degrees below was marked nearly everywhere north of the latitude of Peoria and Bloomington, in Illinois, and in many places 36 degrees below was recorded. Blackberries also suffered; even the hardy Snyder not escaping; and a similar disaster threatens the crops of these species in 1884, for as I write, on a clear, sunny day, the mercury has not risen higher than 16 degrees below zero, and this morning (January 5,) was 33 degrees below here in Peoria, and 35 degrees below in Bloomington. The canes went into the winter in good order, however, and, if no intense cold prevails hereafter, the damage may be less than last winter when they were not as well hardened. Since we can not prevent the recurrence of these polar region down-pours, we can prepare our canes of raspberries and blackberries for enduring such extreme cold, by commencing cultivation early in the spring and discontinuing by the middle of June, also by stopping the growth of young canes, by pinching or chopping off, when not more than two and a half feet high, and again, as soon as another foot in length is made, stopping both uprights and laterals. If all weak canes are kept cut out, and those shortened for fruiting the next year not allowed to stand nearer than eight or ten inches of each other, they will become "ripe" and firm in texture before cold weather overtakes them. The hardiest of the red varieties are Turner, Thwack, and Cuthbert; and of the black-caps, the Soughegan (earliest), Tyler, and Gregg (latest). The black-caps named endured the winter fully as well as the hardy red varieties. Of blackberries the Snyder still heads the list for hardiness and general value north of the latitude named, though Early Harvest bids fair to be of value. Taylor was damaged a little more than Snyder, while Barnard, Ancient Briton, and Stone's Hardy rank with Snyder for hardiness. Raspberries and blackberries should be planted early in the spring, if not done in late autumn, in rows six to eight feet apart. Red raspberries may be set two feet apart in the rows, and black-caps and blackberries wider--two and one-half to four feet, according to stock of plants or desire for quick returns; for all will bear the next year after planting. Give good cultivation the first year and mulch in the fall, along the rows of both raspberries and blackberries, with manure free from grass seeds, and cover the entire surface between the rows of blackberries with old prairie hay, corncobs, or straw; or, if cultivation the next year is intended, the inter-row of mulch may be omitted. The intense cold of these two consecutive winters should not deter land owners from planting these fruits. These extremes come in cycles; and, though old Jupiter is now, and was last winter, exerting an unusual disturbing influence upon our planet, he will this year calm his temper and give us nine or ten years of respite from his powerful magnetic sway. CURRANTS, GOOSEBERRIES, AND GRAPES were less affected by the severity of the winter of '83-'84 than by the late frosts of spring, which destroyed the young shoots of grapes and the blossoms and young fruit of the berries. Currants are yearly growing in favor and the price of the fruit advancing; and now currant culture is profitable and likely to continue so for a series of years. Ground can not well be made too rich for currants and gooseberries. Plant in rows four feet apart and plants three feet apart in the rows; give thorough culture or deep mulch over the entire surface, cut out all wood of three years' growth (or after first crop is often considered better), and a good crop is almost certain. Red Dutch, White Grape, Victoria, and Versailles are still the favorites; and American Seedling (or Cluster) and Houghton are usually the most profitable gooseberries. Every one who can raise corn and potatoes can as easily raise, with little trouble and expense, grapes enough for a family's use. Plant such hardy sorts as Moore's Early, Worden, Concord, and Martha, in rows seven or eight feet apart, and same distance in the row, give good cultivation the first year, cut back to two or three feet in autumn, lay the short canes on the ground and hold down with a spadeful of earth. Plant posts four feet high and stretch two No. 15 wires along them--the upper one on top--and in the spring, as the vines grow, tie to the wires, keeping one cane only for fruit this year and two new ones for next year's fruiting; and a crop is as certain as a crop of corn. Cut out weak canes every year, and encourage those starting nearest the ground, cutting back each autumn one-half or two-thirds the growth; cut out old canes. It is not necessary to lay the canes down and hold them to the ground or cover in this latitude, though this work will pay well. In two weeks orchards will be discussed. ILLINOIS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. The annual meeting of the Executive Board of the State Horticultural Society was held in the agricultural rooms at Springfield, January 9th. Present: John M. Pearson, Godfrey, President; A. C. Hammond, Warsaw, Secretary; S. M. Slade, Elgin, Arthur Bryant, Princeton, Dr. A. G. Humphrey, Galesburg, H. M. Dunlap, Champaign, and E. A. Reihl, Alton. A large amount of routine business was transacted, not of public interest, after which the board proceeded to arrange for a grand fruit exhibition, to be made by the society at the next State Fair. This collection will not be entered for a premium, but only to show the diversified horticultural products of the State. The public-spirited citizens of Illinois, and particularly of Chicago, have decreed that the State Fair of 1884 shall eclipse anything of the kind ever held in the Northwest, and the State Horticultural Society, desiring to keep abreast of the times, will make a display of fruit that the State may well be proud of. It was also decided to offer liberal premiums for horticultural products to be exhibited at the next winter meeting, which will be held in the Industrial University, at Champaign, the first or second week in December. After some discussion as to the best method of interesting the students in our work, it was decided to offer premiums, first and second, for the best essays on horticultural subjects. The board and members of the society hope that this offer will be the means of bringing out a number of papers from the young gentlemen and ladies of the institution. There seems to be a determination evinced by the members of the board and society to make an aggressive, vigorous campaign the present year, and to bring our work more prominently before the people than ever before. The following are the standing committees for the year: Orchard Culture--B. F. Johnson, Champaign; Henry Mortimore, Manteno. Forestry--Thomas Gregg, Hamilton; L. C. Francis, Springfield. Vegetable Gardening--A. L. Hays, Jacksonville. Grapes and Grape Culture--Ayres, Villa Ridge; M. A. Baldwin, Jacksonville; D. J. Piper, Foreston. Strawberries--J. G. Bubach, Princeton; Henry Wallace, Villa Ridge; O. B. Galusha, Peoria. Raspberries, Blackberries, Currants, and Gooseberries--H. G. Vickroy, Normal; Wm. Jackson, Godfrey; D. Wilmot Scott, Galena. Pears--C. N. Dennis, Hamilton; Parker Earle, Cobden; W. T. Nelson, Wilmington. Peaches--J. B. Spaulding, Riverton; H. C. Freeman, Alto Pass. Plums and Cherries--Dr. A. H. Sanborn, Anna; L. C. Francis, Springfield. New Fruits, Trees, and Plants--J. T. Johnson, Warsaw; E. Hollister, Alton. Gathering and Marketing Fruits and Vegetables--R. W. Hunt, Galesburg; Ed. Rogers, Upper Alton. Utilizing Fruits--G. H. Clayson, Crystal Lake; ---- Roberts, Godfrey. Floriculture--Thomas Franks, Champaign; Joseph Heinl, Jacksonville. Landscape Gardening--J. P. Bryant, Princeton; Prof. Standish, Galesburg. Vegetable Physiology--Prof. Burrill, Champaign; G. H. French, Carbondale. Entomology and Ornithology--Prof. S. A. Forbes, Normal; Miss Alice Walton, Muscatine, Iowa; Miss Emily A. Smith, Peoria. Geology and Soils, as Affecting Plant Life--Wm. McAdams, Alton; Henry M. Bannister, Kankakee; Henry M. Shaw, Mt. Carrol. Horticultural Adornment of Home--Mrs. Lavina S. Humphrey. Galesburg; Mrs. H. N. Roberts, Alton; Mrs. P. V. Hathaway, Damascus. The appointment of ad-interim committees was referred to the members of the board from each horticultural district. A portion of them asked time for consultation, which was granted. When the entire committee in appointed, the names will be reported to THE PRAIRIE FARMER. A. C. HAMMOND, Sec'y. DIOGENES IN HIS TUB. And first, Diogenes would discourse of that remarkable polar wave that struck us on Saturday the 5th of the year, and its probable effect on the fruit product. Great fear is manifested on all sides, and not without grounds: yet the conditions, it seems to me, have been so favorable that there is cause for hope. Remember that there was no very sudden change, the temperature having been low for two or three weeks before, and no sudden rise since. The sudden changes seem to be the ones--coming in the midst of winter--that are the most destructive to our fruits. So I conclude there is ground yet for hope; and unless some future disaster should occur, Dio., if living, will expect to eat of several sorts of fruit this year grown on his own grounds. Keep in good heart, brethren; Providence will send us all we deserve. But hasn't that man at Cape Girardeau a level head? Dio. himself could not have given as many sensible suggestions concerning farmers' libraries, as he did in No. 1. All farmers and horticulturists can not go as deeply into periodicals as he, but they can profitably go much deeper than they do. Take a farmer's home provided on his plan, and then imagine, if you can, sensible sons running off to breaking on freight trains, or selling soap and candies behind counters! Improbable. And then, again, in No. 2, his thoughts on naming country houses. How suggestive! The Editor in No. 1, favors interdiction of French liquors, etc., as retaliation for their interdiction of American pork. Dio. says interdict them as a matter of protection to ourselves, without regard to hog or hominy. "Man of the Prairie" was looking out for a little colder weather. Did he find it--and is he satisfied? An extremely suggestive paper that, of Prof. Budd's on the "Cherry Possibilities." Further investigation in the wide field of European horticulture is demanded, not only in regard to this but to most other fruits. Even unpromising sorts, not prized there, transplanted here, may turn out to be the most valuable of any. I fear the agricultural colleges are not taking as much interest in this matter as they ought. Our State Society ought, and doubtless does, feel thankful to Prof. B., for his presence and wise counsel at its late Bloomington meeting. His remarks will be found valuable reading in the forth-coming volume of Transactions. Seedsmen's catalogues will soon be floating around thick as autumn leaves, and planters will be puzzled what to buy. My experience may be worth something: Of tomatoes, I know nothing better than Acme and Trophy, and I think favorably of the Golden Trophy--though with some the color is objectionable. The Short-horn carrot can't be beat for table use, nor the Egyptian beet. Of the former, planted pretty thick in good soil, in rows two feet apart, 400 bushels per acre can easily be grown; and besides being good for stock, they are mighty good for men and women. In squashes the Hubbard and Boston Marrow are standbys, and that little Perfect Gem is likely to prove A No. 1. And give me the Stowell Evergreen sweet corn and the Winningstadt cabbage yet all the time. But Dio. will not be fooled with so many new sorts in 1884 as he has been in former years. Yes--increase the tax on dogs, and collect it; so say the Iowa stock-breeders, and so echoes every sensible friend of the farmer and his interests. Next time Dio. proposes to call up a subject of much importance to everybody, and one that badly needs ventilating. DIO. POSSIBILITIES OF CHERRY GROWING. The insertion of one little word gives too unfavorable an idea of the best varieties of the Griotte cherries, grown all over the interminable steppes north and east of the Carpathian mountains in Europe. As printed the paragraph reads: "Some of the thin-twigged Griottes, with dark skins and colored juice, are as large as the Morello and nearly or quite as sweet." The copy reads--or should read--"as large as the English Morello and nearly or quid sweet." As you say my object in talking the matter up is the hope of interesting some of the large nurserymen, like those at Bloomington, in the desirable work of importing and propagating the Griottes, Amarells, and the Asiatic sweet cherries known as "Spanish," of the East plain, on a large scale. Why should our Western propagators permit our importing of fruits, ornamental trees and shrubs, to be done by the nurserymen of the Eastern States. If we turn to a good map of Europe we will see at a glance that the importing of fruits so far has been from the west coast of France, Belgium, and Holland, or from the south of England. As with our west coast, this whole region has been made a land of verdure by the soft, humid air of the Gulf stream. Tracing on the map the line of the Carpathian and Caucasus mountains, we find three-fourths of all Europe, north and east of these ranges, without a mountain or hill traced on the great expanse except the Valdai hills, and these are only bluffs not as high or extensive as those of our rivers and dividing ridges. It is the greatest plain section of the world, and is the ancient home of the best fruits of the temperate zones. Common sense should lead us to give trial to the horticultural products of this plain. To find apples, pears, cherries, and plums as hardy, and as well adapted to the hot summers and cold winters of Illinois and Iowa as the Fameuse apple, we need not enter the empire of Russia. Northeastern Austria has a variable summer and winter climate, which will not permit the growing of apples of the grade of hardiness of the Ben Davis, Stark, Jonathan, and Dominie; of pears of the grade of Flemish Beauty, or of cherries of the grade of Early Richmond as to foliage and ability to endure low temperature. The commercial nursery-man who will visit the "King's Pomological Institute," at Proskau, in North Silesia, will see at a glance, as he wanders over the ground, that the fruits, forest trees, ornamental trees and shrubs of the nurseries of England, France, Belgium, etc., suddenly disappear with the Carpathians on the edge of the great steppes. J. L. BUDD, AG. COLLEGE, AMES, IOWA. Prunings. The soil for window boxes is the same as for plant culture in pots; the best is that formed by rotted sods with a little well decomposed stable manure mixed with it. Rhubarb requires deep, rich soil. A good dressing of well-rotted manure, put on the ground this winter when it is not frozen, will start off the plants briskly in the spring. The same is true for asparagus. Mr. Russel Heath, Carpenteria, Cal., has an "English walnut orchard" of two hundred acres of rich, level land, near the sea-shore. The trees are from ten to twenty-five years planted. His crop in 1882 was 630 sacks of 70 pounds each; this season he expects the harvest will aggregate about one-third more. Gardener's Monthly: The writer found among the gardeners in Canada, when in that country recently, that the English plan of preserving grapes in bottles of water was in not uncommon use. The bunches are cut with pieces of stems, and then so arranged that the ends are in bottles of water. By this plan the grapes can be preserved far into the spring season. The American Cultivator: "Can you tell we what kind of weather we may expect next month?" wrote a farmer to the editor of his paper, and the editor replied: "It is my belief that the weather next month will be like your subscription bill." The farmer wondered for an hour what the editor was driving at, when he happened to think of the word "unsettled," and he sent a postal note forthwith. The Farmer and Fruit Grower: Mr. Willis, Lamer, a prominent fruit grower of the Cobden region, says he very distinctly remembers that the freeze of 1864 killed young fruit trees to the snow line, and that he cut his peach trees to that line, and saved that much. In 1864 the temperature was about the same as it was on January 5, 1884--in the neighborhood of 21 degrees below zero. Mr. Lamer thought no damage was done to strawberry plants. A pomologist gives the following excellent advice in regard to maintaining the fertility of fruit lands: "Encourage the utmost variety of vegetable growth near and upon your orchard lands, and never rob the soil of its honest dues. Give judicious and thorough cultivation and pruning; and with our generous soils and climate, I do not believe the child is yet born that will live to see our orchards languish on account of poverty of soil, or any necessity arise for the importation of fertilizers." The Country Gentleman says two things are necessary for the growing of good asparagus, namely, plenty of room for the plant to grow, and copious manuring. The latter is best applied to thick beds by covering the whole surface with manure two or three inches thick, late in autumn, and forking it in very early in spring, before the new shoots start. Thick beds, however, should not be planted, but the plants allowed three or four feet each way to each. Three by five is a common and suitable distance, and large stalks may be obtained in this way. Charles Merritt, of Battle Creek, has been very successful with strawberries. His plan is to plant rows about two and one-half feet apart and plants nine inches in the row; he prefers the spring time. He manures highly, cultivates thoroughly and mulches with clean straw late in the autumn. The next season he gets a large crop, and, while he is taking it off, another patch is being treated in a similar manner for the next year's crop. The second year with any bed he simply pulls out the weeds, and after picking turns it under. This plan proves to be satisfactory. T. F. Leeper, of Warsaw Horticultural Society, says: I have been greatly interested in the condition of orchards this season, and have examined quite a number. One orchard in my neighborhood died during the summer--I supposed it was winter-killed, but an investigation showed that the roots had been destroyed by mice. Last spring I reported a number of trees in my orchard, winter-killed. These trees have been dug up and it appears that they too, were killed by mice. In my orchard the greatest injury by winter-killing has occurred in the draws or low places and I would not plant another orchard without tile drawing such places. [Illustration] FLORICULTURE Gleanings by an Old Florist. THE PANSY. Gray, in his Manual, says: "Viola tricolor (pansy or heart's-ease) is common in dry or sandy soil. From New York to Kentucky and southward, doubtless only a small portion of the garden pansy runs wild. Naturalized from Europe." Seen in this condition the flowers are very small, not more than one-half an inch across and oblong in shape. Cultivated at its best it has a flower two inches in diameter, almost an exact circle in outline. All this has been brought about by lovers of flowers during a long period of years, by saving the seed of only the best, a sort of survival of the fittest, and only to be kept up by rich soil and constant cultivation, for if left to itself the pansy dwindles back into its original nature. It has another peculiarity also: the young plants always bring the largest flowers, so that if the extra large flowers are wanted they can be obtained only by seed annually, or a division of the old roots by cuttings. The latter is too much trouble for most cultivators in the country, and named kinds are never thought of, while in the old they used to be; perhaps it is still common for the pansy grower to name his pets, and reproduce them each year by cuttings or division of the roots. The seed that brings the largest and best flowers generally come from Germany, although some of our own florists save them themselves for several consecutive years. I was a long time before any fixed character was maintained in color in this flower, but now seed from certain kinds will mainly reproduce its like, hence are often so used for massing kinds of a color. The plant being a native of the cooler and moister parts of Europe is better adapted to their climate than ours, and hence as our spring weather is more nearly like their original climate than our other seasons, they luxuriate in it; it is the only season in which the florist finds much of a market for his goods, and even then he receives some round abuse for selling very large noble flowers that quickly deteriorate after leaving his hands. This, however, is not his fault, the hot weather being one cause, the other that the plant refuses to produce large flowers except in its young state. There are two methods adopted by a florist in the preparation of his stock; one, by sowing the seed in the fall and wintering the young plants in cold frames, or even by means of a slight protection of brush. The other by sowing the seed on a bench in the green-house in January. If sown in the fall early enough to get well into rough leaf, if they do not flower in the fall, which they usually will do, they are ready to do so at the first peep of spring, as they flower at a comparatively low temperature. If sown in January, they are transplanted once on other benches, from which they are lifted and transferred either to the outside borders or to other cold frames as the case may be. It is not best to keep them in a green-house longer than necessary, say the first of March, as the conditions of a green-house will bring about the small flowers similar to the hot weather of the summer. [Illustration: THE PANSY.] By the different systems the market florist can have his goods always at their best during the selling season, which ranges from the first of March up to the first of June. They are so easily grown he can afford to sell cheap, even if his goods are of the very best, and will usually bring about seventy-five cents by the single dozen, down to as low as three dollars by the hundred. Enough sod should hang to the roots to keep them fresh, and they will, after planting, go on flowering just as though they had never been disturbed. Nothing can be done with this plant, at least worthy of the name, in the window, hence it should not be attempted. To enjoy the large flowers as long as possible during summer, if there is any choice of position, give them the coolest and moistest place in the garden, not forgetting plenty of watering in dry spells. A rich, loamy soil, inclined to be porous, will give the best satisfaction, but almost any garden soil will grow them. EDGAR SANDERS. * * * * * DRAINAGE. PRACTICAL FARM DRAINAGE. WHY, WHEN, and HOW TO TILE-DRAIN --AND THE-- MANUFACTURE OF DRAIN-TILE. By C.G. ELLIOTT and J.J.W. BILLINGSLEY PRICE, ONE DOLLAR. For sale by THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., 150 Monroe St., Chicago, Ill. * * * * * THE SHEPHERD'S MANUAL A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE SHEEP. Designed Especially for American Shepherds BY HENRY STEWART. Finely Illustrated PRICE, $1.50, by mail, postpaid. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago. * * * * * $2.00. FOR THIS AMOUNT WE WILL send a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER for one year, also a handsome Colored Map of the United States and Canada--size, 4�2-1/2 feet. * * * * * OUR NEW CLUBBING LIST FOR 1884. THE PRAIRIE FARMER IN CONNECTION WITH OTHER JOURNALS. We offer more liberal terms than ever before to those who desire to take, in connection with THE PRAIRIE FARMER, either of the following weekly or monthly periodicals. 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Any subscriber can at once tell when his subscription expires by referring to volume and number as given on first page of the paper. * * * * * [Transcriber's Note: Original location of Table of Contents.] * * * * * 1841. 1884. THE PRAIRIE FARMER PROSPECTUS FOR 1884. SEE INDUCEMENTS OFFERED SUBSCRIBE NOW. For forty-three years THE PRAIRIE FARMER has stood at the front in agricultural journalism. It has kept pace with the progress and development of the country, holding its steady course through all these forty-three years, encouraging, counseling, and educating its thousands of readers. It has labored earnestly in the interest of all who are engaged in the rural industries of the country, and that it has labored successfully is abundantly shown by the prominence and prestige it has achieved, and the hold it has upon the agricultural classes. Its managers are conscious from comparison with other journals of its class, and from the uniform testimony of its readers, that it is foremost among the farm and home papers of the country. It will not be permitted to lose this proud position; we shall spare no efforts to maintain its usefulness and make it indispensable to farmers, stock-raisers, feeders, dairymen, horticulturalists, gardeners, and all others engaged in rural pursuits. It will enter upon its forty-fourth year under auspices, in every point of view, more encouraging than ever before in its history. Its mission has always been, and will continue to be-- To discuss the most approved practices in all agricultural and horticultural pursuits. To set forth the merits of the best breeds of domestic animals, and to elucidate the principles of correct breeding and management. To further the work of agricultural and horticultural organization. To advocate industrial education in the correct sense of the term. To lead the van in the great contest of the people against monopolies and the unjust encroachments of capital. To discuss the events and questions of the day without fear or favor. To provide information concerning the public domain, Western soil, climate, water, railroads, schools, churches, and society. To answer inquiries on all manner of subjects coming within its sphere. To furnish the latest and most important industrial news at home and abroad. To give full and reliable crop, weather, and market reports. To present the family with pure, choice, and interesting literature. To amuse and instruct the young folks. To gather and condense the general news of the day. To be, in brief, an indispensable and unexceptionable farm and home companion for the people of the whole country. The style and form of the paper are now exactly what they should be. The paper used is of superior quality. The type is bold and clear. The illustrations are superb. The departments are varied and carefully arranged. The editorial force is large and capable. The list of contributors is greatly increased, and embraces a stronger array of talent than is employed on any similar paper in this country. We challenge comparison with any agricultural journal in the land. THE PRAIRIE FARMER is designed for all sections of the country. In entering upon the campaign of 1884, we urge all patrons and friends to continue their good works in extending the circulation of our paper. On our part we promise to leave nothing undone that it is possible for faithful, earnest work--aided by money and every needed mechanical facility--to do to make the paper in every respect still better than it has ever been before. * * * * * SPECIAL NOTICE To each Subscriber who will remit us $2.00 between now and February 1st, 1884, we will mail a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER FOR ONE YEAR, AND ONE OF OUR NEW STANDARD TIME COMMERCIAL MAPS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA--showing all the Counties, Railroads, and Principal Towns up to date. This comprehensive map embraces all the country from the Pacific Coast to Eastern New Brunswick, and as far north as the parallel of 52 deg., crossing Hudson's Bay. British Columbia; Manitoba, with its many new settlements; and the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, completed and under construction, are accurately and distinctly delineated. It extends so far south as to Include Key West and more than half of the Republic of Mexico. It is eminently adapted for home, school, and office purposes. The retail price of the Map alone is $2.00. Size, 58 � 41 inches. Scale, about sixty miles to one inch. * * * * * READ THIS. ANOTHER SPECIAL OFFER. [Illustration] "THE LITTLE DETECTIVE." WEIGHS 1/4 OZ. TO 25 LBS. Every housekeeper ought to have this very useful scale. The weight of article bought or sold may readily be known. Required proportions in culinary operations are accurately ascertained. We have furnished hundreds of them to subscribers, and they give entire satisfaction. During January, 1884, to any person sending us THREE SUBSCRIBERS, at $2.00 each, we will give one of these scales, and to each of the three subscribers Ropp's Calculator, No. 1. * * * * * OUR PREMIUM LIST. Revised, extended, and properly illustrated will this week be sent to every subscriber. There must be something offered in it that every one needs or would like to have. The terms are the most liberal ever offered. All readers are hereby constituted agents to solicit subscriptions to THE PRAIRIE FARMER. If those who can not enlist in the work will hand the PREMIUM LIST to some person who will do so, they will confer a great favor upon the publishers and editors. What we all want is to double our present list before the first day of April. * * * * * RENEW! RENEW!! Remember that every yearly subscriber, either new or renewing, sending us $2, receives a splendid new map of the United States and Canada--58 � 41 inches--FREE. Or, if preferred, one of the books offered in another column. It is not necessary to wait until a subscription expires before renewing. * * * * * WE WANT AGENTS in every locality. We offer very liberal terms and good pay. Send for sample copies and terms to agents. * * * * * The Adams County (Ill.) Fair at Camp Point will be held the first week in September. The premium list is out. * * * * * The seventh annual fair at Jerseyville, Ill., will be held commencing Tuesday, October 14, 1884, and continue four days, with $5,000 premiums. * * * * * At the Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society's trials, November 11, 1883, the Johnston Harvester Company were 1st in the trial field, and also for the machine best adapted for the colony. * * * * * The growth of the Western live stock business has stimulated parties to organize a Union Stock Yards Company at Sioux City, Iowa. The company has a capital of $100,000. The shipping of dressed beef may become a branch of its business. * * * * * One of the most popular and instructive essays at the late Wisconsin Dairymen's Convention was entitled "THE FARMER'S GARDEN," contributed by J. M. Smith, Esq., of Green Bay. This essay will appear, in full, in the next issue of the PRAIRIE FARMER. * * * * * French papers declare that the Government crop reports for 1883 are exaggerations. If land has risen in value and stock doubled in price, the extra cost of running a farm more than makes up for it. The impost duty on all agricultural products has also alarmingly increased. * * * * * Mr. Merritt, United States Consul General at London, directs attention to the falling off in the value of exports from Great Britain to the United States during the fiscal year ended September 30, 1883. The total value of declared exports from the various United States consular districts in Great Britain and Ireland during the year was $165,207,987, a reduction from the figures for the preceding year of $14,231,858. * * * * * Mr. Calkins, member of Congress from Indiana, succeeded on Monday in getting a suspension of the rules and the passage of a bill providing that in any suit against an innocent purchaser of an article manufactured in violation of the patent law, if the plaintiff shall not recover twenty dollars or over, he shall recover no costs. This bill is a blow aimed at the drive-well patent agents, and others of that ilk who are perambulating the country to the annoyance of farmers. If the bill passes the Senate, and there appears no valid reason why it shall not, it will put an end to this species of robbery now so prevalent. * * * * * The only general advices we have regarding winter wheat come through the extensive grain commission house of W. T. Baker & Co., Chicago. They have private reports which indicate that the crop maintains a very high average, and, with the exception of a few points in Southern Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, is doing as well as could be expected at this season of the year. In Kentucky and Tennessee the ground is quite bare of snow, but north of the Ohio river, from Kansas to Ohio, the wheat, as a general thing, is well covered. The crop, however, was generally sown late, and in many quarters fears are entertained of the final outcome. * * * * * The Nebraska State Farmers' Alliance held a meeting at Kearney on Wednesday of last week. A platform was adopted declaring in favor of national legislation to regulate railway traffic, demanding the abolition of national banks and the substitution of Government currency, demanding a tariff for revenue only, expressing sympathy with labor, asking protection to labor organizations, recommending the abolition of convict labor, asking Congress to reclaim all unclaimed land grants and reserve the public domain for actual settlers, and opposing the acquisition of public land by foreigners. * * * * * Do not forget that the Annual Farmers' Institute, or Agricultural Lecture Course, at the Illinois Industrial University will be held from Tuesday, January 29th, to Friday, February 1, 1884. Four lectures will be given each day, at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., by Dr. Peabody, Regent of the University, Professors Burrill, Jillson, McMurtrie, Morrow and others. The topics discussed will be: _Soils_--Their Origin, Physical Characteristics, Chemical Composition, Drainage, Cultivation, Fertilization; _Plants_--Their Structure, Growth, Nutrition, Seeds, Movement of Sap, Development and Distribution, Economic Products. Addresses will be given in the evenings by Dr. Peabody, Governor Hamilton and others. These lectures and addresses are given as a part of the work of the College of Agriculture of the University. No fees or examinations are required. All interested are cordially invited to attend. THE COST OF COLD WINDS. Prof. Shelton, of the Kansas Agricultural College, puts the question of sheltering stock in an exceedingly pointed manner. He has lately been feeding ten steers in an experimental way. He found that for the period of ten days ending December 29, the average gain per head was thirty-one and one-tenth pounds. The weather was warm and sunny. The steers were fed in an unbattened board shed. During the succeeding ten days, when the cold was intense almost the entire time, the same steers, fed on the same rations, and in the same shed, gained but six and six-tenths pounds per head. About a year ago the Professor fed a lot of pigs for three weeks of the coldest weather, in open yards, and found them to consume more than three times the amount of food to pound of increase than the same number of pigs in the warm basement of the barn. He has a cow kept in a bleak "Kansas barn" which shrinks in her milk from one-fourth to one-half after twenty-four hours of very severe weather. From all this the conclusion is what we have so often taught in these columns, though not as forcibly as the Professor teaches by his careful experiments, that you can not burn feed as fuel to support the body of an animal and at the same time have the animal stow it away in the form of muscle and fat. The fact is that our farmers throw away one-half their feed in furnishing animal heat that they might just as well save by paying a small lumber bill and expending a moderate amount of labor. GOOD WORK AT WASHINGTON. Surely the House of Representatives is getting down to solid work since the holiday vacation. Mr. Holman, for instance, found no great difficulty in getting a resolution passed declaring that in the judgment of the House all public lands heretofore granted to States and corporations in aid of the construction of railroads, so far as the same is subject to forfeiture by reason of the nonfulfillment of the conditions on which the grants were made, ought to be declared forfeited by the United States, and restored to the public domain. This was good work, but Mr. Holman's second resolution, also passed, was fully as much in accordance with public feeling and desire. It is to the effect that our laws relating to public lands should be so framed and administered as to ultimately secure freeholds to the greatest number of _citizens_, and to this end all laws facilitating speculation in public lands authorizing or permitting entry or purchase in large bodies ought to be repealed, and all public lands adapted to agriculture, subject to bounty grants, and those in aid of education ought to be reserved for the benefit of actual and bona fide settlers, and disposed of only under the provisions of the homestead law. There was some opposition to this resolution. Mr. Kasson feared such a law might work injury to the cattle industry. Mr. Bedford, however, neutralized Mr. Kasson's influence by declaring that he did not propose that four or five cattle kings should own the West as four or five railway kings own the East. It may be that our readers would like to take down the names of members who voted against the resolutions. Here they are: Barksdale, Bingham, Bisbee, George, Horr, Kean, Libbey, Lyman, Morse, Muldrow, Poland, Ranney, Reed, Rice, Russell, Stone, Van Eaton, Whiting. Now that the representatives have resolved that these things ought to be done let us see if they will stand up to the rack and attend to their part of the doing. WISCONSIN MEETINGS. Feb. 5 and 6--The State Horticultural Society in Senate Chamber, Madison. Feb. 5--The Wisconsin Cane-Growers Association, Madison. Prof. Wiley of the Department of Agriculture will be present. Feb. 6, 7, and 8--Farmers' State Convention, under the auspices of the State Society, at capitol. Feb. 13 and 14--16th annual meeting of the Southern Wisconsin Cane-Growers' and Manufacturers' Association at Whitewater. Feb. 6--The Wisconsin Swine Breeders will hold a meeting at the capitol, for the transaction of such business as may come before them and the discussion of subjects appertaining to successful breeding and feeding of swine. All interested in this subject are invited to attend. Answers to Correspondents. J. C. MCCONAUGHY, ROCHELLE, ILL.--1. How can I secure a blue-grass pasture? 2. How much seed to acre? 3. Can blue-grass be grown successfully mixed with other grasses? 4. What season and what soil is best adapted to secure a good catch? 5. Can it be grown on low, wet land? ANSWER.--1. There are almost as many ways to obtain a blue-grass pasture as there are men who undertake the job, though essentially the practices are alike. The usual method is to sow the seed in the spring or fall, either alone or with clover or timothy. 2. The seed is very light and chaffy, and weighs only fourteen pounds to the bushel, and the amount sown varies from five to seven pounds to the acre. 3. Yes, though after a few years blue-grass, on a true blue-grass soil, roots every other grass out and reigns with a divided empire with white clover. 4. Any good corn or wheat soil will produce good blue-grass--the usual method of obtaining a blue-grass pasture is as follows: To one bushel of good timothy seed one quart of red clover is added, and this quantity is made to cover from five to six acres. The seeding may be done in the fall with fall grain, in the spring with oats, or on stubble or wheat land on the snow in February. After, in the month of August from a peck to a half bushel of blue-grass is sown upon the young timothy and clover. But little or nothing can be seen of the blue-grass for the first year and it does not show vigorously until the third year. Thereafter if the soil is a true blue-grass one and the land is pastured, blue-grass and white clover dominate to the exclusion of everything else. Perhaps the surest way to obtain a stand of timothy and thereafter a set of blue-grass, is to prepare the land carefully and sow rye in October. On this sow timothy and red clover as above on the snow in February or March; pasture the rye, but not too closely, to 15th of May. Harvest the rye at the usual time, and the yield will be all the better for the pasturing, and sow the blue-grass seed on the stubble in August. 5. No, but red top will in spite of your best efforts to the contrary unless you till and thoroughly break up the land. JOHN ZIMMERMAN, CAMERON, MO.--1. Has setting trees on a fence line as posts for barb-wire been a success? 2. If so what kind of tree is the best? 3. Will the hardy catalpa do, if so what distance apart? ANSWER.--1. Barb-wire has not been introduced and used long enough for trees set for the purpose of posts to grow to a sufficient size. But in many cases aged Osage orange hedges, which have been suffered to grow up, have been thinned out so as to leave a tree every ten, twelve, or fifteen feet, and on these barbed-wires have been strung and made a fence, which so far has proved satisfactory. The same success was obtained where fruit and shade trees standing in a line have had barbed-wire attached to them. But the precaution must be taken to nail a strip--a common fence picket will answer--to the tree and then the barb-wire to that. If this is not done, and the wire is fastened by a staple to the tree, the wood soon overgrows, cracks and increases the strain on the wire, damages the tree and spoils the fence. 2. Almost any fast growing tree will do, but hard wood varieties are preferable. 3. The hardy catalpa may do, but for low land we would just as soon have the common willow. Eight feet apart is a good distance. The wires may be fastened to these when they have acquired a diameter of four or five inches, and later every other post may be removed. For high and dry land in your latitude one Osage orange is worth a half-dozen catalpas, because it is just as easily grown--and when grown it furnishes the strongest and most lasting timber known. We may add here, that where a fence is wanted across sloughs, or through permanently wet or moist land, posts large enough for barbed-wire may be grown in a couple of years or so--this by cutting stakes six or seven feet long and from three to five inches in diameter from the common willow, and setting them in March. The stakes require attention the first summer, in case of dry weather or drouth, but nothing more than that the moist earth shall be pressed up against them to prevent the young roots from drying out. M. D. VINCENT, SPRINGFIELD, MO.--1. Can you tell me how badly oranges were frosted during the late cold spell in Florida? 2. Is there a record of colder weather at Charleston, S. C., Savannah, Ga., if so when was it? ANSWER.--1. It is hard getting at the facts. One report is that neither oranges nor the trees were injured at Palatka, fifty miles south of Jacksonville, while another just as credible says the fruit was badly frozen on the trees as far south as Enterprise, 100 miles south of Jacksonville. The probabilities are, that there was a good deal of damage done to fruit on the trees, but no permanent or serious injury to the orchards. 2. The mercury may not have been lower for 100 years at Charleston or Savannah than the late cold spell, but during the winter of 1834-35 the weather was so severe the orange trees were killed to the ground 100 miles south of Jacksonville. Snow to a foot in depth fell at Millidgeville, Ga., Lat. 33, and several inches over all northern Florida. Some apprehensions are felt that these southern sections are not safe from severe frosts for this winter and the next, since it is pretty well known that these extreme cold periods return about every half-century--the winters of near fifty and one hundred years ago having been made remarkable by terribly severe and protracted cold. J. H. J. WATERTOWN, WIS.--Give us the best remedy for chillblains? ANSWER.--Tincture of iodine painted over the parts; or 10 grains of salicylic acid extended in an ounce of half water and half alcohol. Both to be applied with great caution, and largely diluted where the skin is broken and ulcers have formed. CHARLES C. PETERS, OLNEY, ILL.--If you were about to plant an orchard on levelish, but at the same time naturally well drained land, would you advise throwing up ridges as the common custom is in some sections? ANSWER.--It might be advantageous to throw up ridges so as to secure permanent moisture; but the trees should be set in the depression between them instead of on the ridges. THOROUGHBRED, LEXINGTON, KY.--There is a belief or an opinion current among a class of breeders, always ready to accept and experiment with new fangled notions, that the draft breeds imported from abroad, especially the high priced French horses, are fed from birth on a more or less regular ration of bone or flesh meal. This they claim is for the purpose of developing bone and muscle. What do you know of the facts? ANSWER.--Not much. Some of the foreign journals contain accounts of experiments in feeding soluble phosphates of lime, but no two agree on results, except that when the salt is judicially fed, no harm is done. The subject is worthy of investigation and especially by Kentucky breeders, since it would establish the claim that their soil, being especially rich in the phosphates and nitrogen, produces grain, hay, and forage of superior strength for feeding purposes, which appear again, in their high bred stock of horses, sheep, and cattle. * * * * * The fourth National Agricultural Convention, under the auspices of the American Agricultural Association, will be held at the Grand Central Hotel, New York City, Wednesday and Thursday, February 6th and 7th, 1884. Addresses will be delivered and papers read by leading thinkers and writers on topics of general interest, and all identified with agriculture and kindred pursuits are cordially invited to be present and participate in the proceedings. Delegates will be present from all sections of the country, and arrangements for reduced rates of fare are being made with the railroads leading into New York. The annual meeting for the election of officers and the transaction of other business, including the matter of a national agricultural fair, will be held at 12 m. of the first day of the Convention. Wayside Notes. BY A MAN OF THE PRAIRIE. I notice that Mr. Sanders, of the Treasury Cattle Commission, thinks it beneath the dignity of Congress to adopt retaliatory measures against France and Germany for prohibiting American pork products from entering those countries. He thinks it a far better scheme to appoint a small army of inspectors to examine all the pork before it is shipped from this country. This might be more dignified, and after a time effectual, but how shall we make France and Germany stop shipping their poisoned goods to this country? Will they be equally "dignified" and appoint inspectors on their side that will be satisfactory to our people. Probably they would after a few months of prohibition; never before. Dignity is a good thing, but protection to the health and wealth of the people is better. Besides, Government inspectors are expensive luxuries, and by no means always efficient. A fat Government appointment is a nice thing--for the appointee, as Mr. Sanders is aware, but it is not profitable to the tax-payers of the country to multiply them too extensively. In my opinion the easiest way out of the muddle is to strike back and to hit where it will hurt worst. * * * * * Clinton Babbitt, Secretary of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, is reported to have said at the late meeting of the State Dairymen's Association that he had a very poor opinion of editors. In fact, that he held them in about the same esteem as Ben Butler does. Now I don't suppose it makes an iota of difference to any editor under the sun what Butler or Babbitt think of him; what Ben and Clint need to look out for is what the editors think of them. Big Ben got an inkling of this a few weeks ago; Little Clint's turn may come next. * * * * * For some time I have been noticing the advanced style of writing in the two or three "Down East" agricultural papers that come under my notice. They bear evidences of "culcha" that are truly encouraging, but here is a case that is actually exhilarating, or would be were it not somewhat bewildering. It is from an article about the Jersey Lily, Mrs. Langtry: "Who ever vocalized such a word with a more complex intonation, or with a more marvellously intimate union with a more inextricably intertwined relationship to the most exquisite sensibilities that accompany and mark the infinite flights and reachings of the soul, as within its human casement it burns with fire divine?" Now, I call that decidedly fine, and were I the owner of a whole herd of Jerseys I should endeavor to engage this genius to write them up for me. At any rate I think he should be brought West to help on the Jersey boom. * * * * * I sent the editors of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, the other day, from Springfield, where I was paying a flying visit to the agricultural rooms, a copy of the Reynolds argument for a change in the awarding of sweepstakes prizes on cattle. Mr. R. applied it to the Fat Stock Show alone, and I believe the State Board adopted the suggestions. But for the life of me I can not see why the principle is not equally applicable to the State Fair premiums, and indeed to similar exhibits at all our fairs. Next year I hope the State Board will extend the innovation to the State Fair, and from this it may be it will extend to similar organizations of lesser magnitude. * * * * * I notice that the National Academy of Sciences have decided that glucose is not injurious to health. Well, this is good news, at any rate, but it does not follow that manufacturers and merchants have the right to mix it with cane sugar or sell it to us for genuine cane sirups, or real honey, or pure sugar candy, or in any of the other ways in which we are made to pay two or three times what it is really worth. It does not do away with the great need of a rigorous food adulteration act, though there is great satisfaction in knowing that when we eat it we are not taking in a mild death-dealing potion. But, come to think of it, there are other great scientists in the country besides those composing the National Academy. Some of them have decided in a contrary manner. Is it not best to have the question decided by a majority vote of reputable chemists, and then stick to the good old things, whichever way the decision may be? On principle I don't object to suine, oleo, or any of the objectionable articles. All I want is to know when I am buying, and paying for them in real genuine dollars. Bogus dollars are every whit as respectable as bogus butter or bogus honey, though the law makes it a little unhealthy to use them with any degree of liberality. Letter from Champaign. A light rain yesterday (the 18th) was the first for five weeks, and the first sign of a January thaw we have had. But it began to snow at dark, continued lightly all night, and has been snowing, blowing, and drifting to-day up to this hour, 2 P. M. Coming soft at first, that part of it will lay where it fell, and the uncovered portion of the wheat has got a new blanket, which we hope will out-last January. We have had but one so long uninterrupted spell of sleighing for these many years, and that was in the winter of '78-'79. With the exception of the few very cold days before and after the 5th, the month has been quite favorable for stock and all the labors of the farm. * * * * * The damage done by the cold wave of January 4th to 7th is believed to be greater than first reported. Growers tell me that Snyder blackberries are killed down to the frost line, which proves it is not iron-clad, as some believe. Accounts from the Cobden fruit region are of the gloomiest character, everything being given up for lost but the strawberries. The Fruit-Grower says they will have to rely on them and their truck patches this year, and advises an extension of early potatoes, tomatoes, and Japan melons. According to local records at Anna, there has been nothing like it since the first week in January, 1864; and the estimate of the damage done in '84 is computed from what followed in '64, rather than from what is absolutely known. Let us hope that they are mistaken, and that the Cobden fruit region will sustain its well-earned character as the source of a perennial fruit supply. * * * * * It appears the cold wave did not reach its minimum in Central Florida, lat. 27, till the night of the 9th, ice having been found on the morning of the 10th, near Enterprise, three-fourths of an inch thick. Oranges on the trees were frozen through, and the leaves killed so they will drop. But though here and there a branch may be frosted and will die and have to be removed, little permanent damage to the groves has probably resulted. Central Florida is distant, as the crow flies, from Central Illinois, about one thousand miles. Suppose the cold wave moved steadily southwest, it follows, then, its rate of speed was not far from 200 miles every twenty-four hours. It is easy to comprehend how a complete signal service might warn of the approach of cold waves in time to take every necessary precaution to meet and disarm them. * * * * * But as much of a stinger as the late cold turn was, it was a mere cool breeze compared with that which fell on Florida and the entire Southwest in the winter of 1834-35. Then snow covered all Northern Florida, and in Central Georgia it lay on the ground some days, a foot deep. The young orange trees were all killed to the ground, and few of the aged trees escaped without the loss of most of their branches. But they soon recovered--sprouting from the roots and stumps with great vigor, as they will again do after the late freeze. And this is one of the strong points of the orange. It will sprout from the stump or root when the trunk is removed, as surely as the young hickory or chestnut, and when transplanted young and trees of considerable size, will bear mutilation with about as much indifference as the Osage orange or soft maple. * * * * * Those who expect Congress to do anything that will hurt German and French importers, by way of retaliation for prohibiting pork and pork products, will be pretty sure to be disappointed. Senator Williams is responsible for the statement that the reason why agriculture is treated with so much contempt, is it sustains no lobby. But you may be sure the importers will not fail in that respect, as millions will be spent to prevent legislation which will seriously interfere with the enormous profits of the foreign importing houses in New York. Perhaps Senator Williams will inform us what it will cost to keep up a well appointed lobby in Washington, and how much the average one-horse lawyers in Congress expect, in money down, in the way of a retainer. Huntington could tell, and so could Jay Gould; but both are silenced for the present, and Villard too. * * * * * "Put your thumb down there." That the trees on low lands which bore big crops in 1874-75, are just the trees which bore crops equally in '83, and the very trees also which have made the most vigorous growth both previously and last year. The whole matter is a question of nutrition. B. F. J. * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * [Illustration] POULTRY NOTES. Poultry-Raisers, Write for Your Paper. Chicken Chat. Somebody says that "Plymouth Rock pullets are not always early layers, for they often grow for ten or twelve months before laying, though some lay as early as six months after hatching." Well that's news to us, and we have kept Plymouth Rocks quite a while, too. We have had Rock pullets commence laying at six months, and once we had a few that didn't do a thing toward earning their own living till they were almost eight months old; but seven months is nearer the average, and that is what we count on when selecting the pullets that are to be kept for winter layers. The pullets that are hatched from the first of March up to the first of May, commence laying all along from the middle of September to the first of December. Pullets that we want to commence laying in February, are selected from those hatched in July. It would really be very gratifying to me if the people who know no more about the Plymouth Rocks than they do about the fate of Charlie Ross, would keep their twaddle out of print. * * * * * One of my correspondents is very anxious to know if the Langshans are the "coming fowls." Hardly. Fanciers who have tried them pronounce them the "best birds that were ever imported from China," which is pretty high praise, but all the same they are not popular with farmers. They will never hold the place that the Plymouth Rocks hold. Since you wish to buy fowls of the breeds for which there will be the greatest demand next season, I should advise you get Plymouth Rocks and Wyandottes. These, in addition to the Light Brahmas and Brown Leghorns that you already have, will give you the four breeds that are the most popular, and if you have good stock, and let people know that you have eggs to sell for hatching, you will probably have orders for all the eggs that you will care to sell. * * * * * Another correspondent wants to know the meaning of the word "strain," as applied to fowls, and I don't wonder that he asks the question, for the word is used "promiscuous like" by every tyro in poultry breeding. When any poultry-raiser has bred fowls of any breed long enough to fix his notion of what constitutes a standard fowl of that breed upon them permanently, he may claim a "strain." For instance: Smith believes that the Light Brahmas should have very short legs, and he breeds for short legs until they are permanently fixed, and everybody who knows anything about Light Brahmas knows one of Smith's short-legged Brahmas at sight; then, but not before, Smith may claim a strain of his own, and it is proper for others to speak of "Smith's strain" of Light Brahmas. But Johnson, who buys of Smith, or of some one who has Light Brahmas of Smith's strain, this year, should not next year talk about "my own strain" of Light Brahmas. It takes years of steady, judicious breeding after a certain type to establish what may truthfully be called a strain, and it can only be done by breeders of rare skill and long experience in mating fowls for breeding. FANNY FIELD. Chicken Houses. I often read inquiries about the best plan for building hen houses. My plan is, for 100 fowls, to build a house for them to roost in, eight or even ten feet wide and sixteen feet long, one story high with tight floor of yellow pine flooring. I prefer a tight floor because it is easily cleaned out, and every time it is cleaned out and swept the floor should be well covered with slaked lime; one cleaning a week is often enough. A building of the same size should be built with a dirt floor, or close one, as preferred, about ten or fifteen feet from the roosting house for the hens to lay and sit in. A petition may be made of laths dividing the house into two compartments, the front arranged for the laying hens and the back compartments for sitting hens; then the laying hens will not disturb the sitting hens. A closed passway should be made, say one and one half or two feet square leading from the roosting house to the laying house with a sliding door at each end to be used at pleasure. As it often happens in cold, snowy weather in winter it is not desirable to let the fowls out, then the slides at each end of the passway can be opened and feed and water placed in the laying house (because the floor in that house will always be cleanest), and all the fowls will soon learn to go in there to eat and drink, and lay if they want to. It is, I think, bad policy to force fowls to roost, lay, and sit all in the same room. The boxes that contain the nests should be made so that they can be at any time taken out and the nests turned out in a pile, set on fire and the boxes held over the fire to kill any lice that may be sticking to them. B. F. C. HIKE'S POINT, KY. * * * * * A person signing himself a "Nobleman's Gardener," says in an English paper that it is a mistake to use poultry manure as a top-dressing for garden crops; for farm crops also, if the poultry and pigeon dung were in any considerable bulk. This, however, is not usually the case, and a hundred weight or two would not make much of an impression on a farm. The manure in question is a powerful fertilizer, containing ammonia, phosphates, and carbonate of lime in considerable quantity, also uric acid, all of which are valuable ingredients for the support of crops. The simplest method of preparing the manure for use is to partially dry it, then mix it with perfectly dry sifted soil or ashes in sufficient quantity that will enable the entire mixture to be rubbed through a half-inch sieve. A man can do this comfortably with the hand inclosed in a thick leather glove. In this finely powdered state it can be stored in a dry shed till wanted for use. It is an excellent top-dressing for onions, strawberries, and, in fact, for all vegetable crops that need assistance, also for fruit trees and lawns. It is best applied in showery weather in the spring--for lawns at the rate of two ounces, vegetable crops and strawberries three ounces, and fruit trees four ounces per square yard. If in very large bulk and needed for use in fields it would scarcely be necessary to pulverize it, as mixing it with dry soil, etc., and turning the heap over a few times would suffice for its ready application. * * * * * The strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. Cheapest Farms for Sale in Illinois. BEST FRUIT REGION IN THE STATE. Send for my List of Farms and timbered Lands for sale. DEWITT C. SMITH, Land Agent. Stone Fort, Saline Co., Illinois. When you write mention THE PRAIRIE FARMER. * * * * * MARKET GARDENERS, AND ALL OTHERS who want the BEST Cabbage, Onion, Beet, Carrot, Parsnip, Cucumber, Tomato, and other Seeds, DIRECT FROM THE FARM, at the LOWEST PRICES, can now get them at wholesale rates. Catalogue, with directions for cultivation, FREE. Address JOSEPH HARRIS, Moreton Farm, Rochester, N. Y. Seeds for the Children, 25 per cent discount. If you do not want the Catalogue, let the Children send for it, and send at once, as this advertisement will not be repeated. When you write mention THE PRAIRIE FARMER. * * * * * BLUE STEM SPRING WHEAT!!! The best variety of Prairie Wheat known. Yields largely and is less liable to blight than any other variety. Also celebrated Judson Oats for sale in small lots. Samples, statement of yield, and prices sent free upon application to SAMPSON & FRENCH. Woodstock, Pipestone Co., Minn., or Storm Lake, Ia. When you write mention THE PRAIRIE FARMER. * * * * * EUROPE EDUCATIONAL EXCURSIONS 1884 COMBINING UNEQUALLED ADVANTAGES. Send for Descriptive Circular, Free. _Register early._ E. TOURJEE, FRANKLIN SQ., BOSTON. When you write mention THE PRAIRIE FARMER. * * * * * FOR SALE--One-half interest in a thoroughly equipped CREAMERY located in one of the best dairy districts of Wis. J. G. SNYDER & SON., Mt. Hope, Wis. When you write mention THE PRAIRIE FARMER. * * * * * CUT THIS OUT & Return to us with TEN CTS. & you'll get by mail A GOLDEN BOX OF GOODS that will bring you in MORE MONEY, in One Month, than anything else in America. Absolute Certainty. Need no capital. M. Young, 173 Greenwich St. N. York. * * * * * FARM IMPLEMENTS. Etc. THE "NEW" BIRDSELL CLOVER HULLER. [Illustration: MONITOR JUNIOR] SAVES all the Seed, CLEANS Ready for Market as Threshed. [Illustration: THE BIRDSELL COMBINATION SPRING WAGON.] Besides manufacturing the "NEW" BIRDSELL Clover Huller, for which we have the sole right, we make a specialty of HALF PLATFORM and THREE-SPRING WAGONS. Send for illustrated Catalogue and prices. Address BIRDSELL MANF'G CO. SOUTH BEND INDIANA. --> When you write, please mention this paper. <-- * * * * * SEED CORN FOR SALE. A large quantity of first-class, selected Iowa seed corn, in large or small quantities. Address _MITCHELL, VINCENT._ Onawa, Iowa. Please state you saw ad in this paper. * * * * * [Illustration] THE STANDARD REMINGTON TYPE-WRITER is acknowledged to be the only rapid and reliable writing machine. It has no rival. These machines are used for transcribing and general correspondence in every part of the globe, doing their work in almost every language. Any young man or woman of ordinary ability, having a practical knowledge of the use of this machine may find constant and remunerative employment. All machines and supplies, furnished by us, warranted. Satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded. Send for circulars. WYCKOFF, SEAMANS & BENEDICT, 38 East Madison St., Chicago, Ill. * * * * * SEEDS ALBERT DICKINSON, Dealer in Timothy, Clover, Flax, Hungarian, Millet, Red Top, Blue Grass, Lawn Grass, Orchard Grass, Bird Seeds, &c. POP CORN. Warehouses {115, 117 & 119 Kinzie St. {104, 106, 108 & 110 Michigan St. OFFICE. 115 Kinzie St. CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * FAY GRAPES CURRANT HEADQUARTERS ALL BEST NEW AND OLD. SMALL FRUITS AND TREES. LOW TO DEALERS AND PLANTERS. STOCK First-Class. Free Catalogues. GEO. S. JOSSELYN, Fredonia, N.Y. * * * * * --> A CHANCE OF A LIFETIME! This Offer Holds GOOD UNTIL MARCH 10th ONLY. $40,000 IN PRESENTS, GIVEN AWAY. NO BLANKS! every Subscriber gets a Present. The proprietors of the well-known and popular weekly paper, THE GOLDEN ARGOSY, being desirous of introducing their paper into every home where it is not now taken, have organized a stock company with an AUTHORIZED CAPITAL OF $200,000 for the purpose of pushing the Argosy extensively, and have decided to give away to all who subscribe before March 10, 1884, $40,000 in presents. READ OUR GREAT OFFER. FOR ONLY FIFTY CENTS We will enter your name on our subscription books and mail THE GOLDEN ARGOSY regularly for three months, (thirteen numbers), and immediately send a printed numbered receipt, which will entitle the holder to one of the following magnificent presents. PARTIAL LIST OF PRESENTS TO BE GIVEN AWAY: 5 Cash Presents of $1,000 each $5,000 5 Cash Presents of $500 each 2,500 10 Cash Presents of $200 each 2,000 10 Cash Presents of $100 each 1,000 10 Cash Presents of $50 each 500 3 Elegant Upright Pianos, $300 each 900 5 Elegant Cabinet Organs, $100 each 500 25 Sewing Machines, $30 each 750 20 Gents' Solid Gold Watches, $40 ea. 800 30 Ladies' Solid Gold Watches, $25 ea. 750 20 Beautiful Diamond Rings, $30 ea.. 600 20 Gents' Solid Silver Watches, $15 ea. 300 25 Ladies' Chatelaine Watches, $10 ea. 250 30 Boys' Silver Watches, $10 each 300 100 Waterbury Watches, $3.50 each 350 20 Gents' Solid Gold Chains, $20 each 400 20 Ladies' Gold Neck Chains, $15 each 300 20 Solid Gold Bracelets, $15 each 300 10 Elegant Bicycles, $85 each 850 5 Silver Tea Sets, $100 each 500 5 Sets Parlor Furniture, $100 each 500 10 Elegant Boys' Suits, to order, $20 200 10 Girls' Outside Garments, $15 each 150 50 Gold Pens and Holders, $2 each 100 500 Extension Gold Pencils, $1 each 500 500 Pair Nickel-Plated Skates, $2 each. 1,000 500 Large Photograph Albums, $2 each 1,000 500 Pair Roller Skates, $2 each 1,000 500 Two-Dollar Greenbacks 1,000 500 One-Dollar Greenbacks 500 500 Magic Lanterns, $1 each 500 500 Boys' Pocket Knives, $1 each 500 500 Ladies' Pocket Knives, $1 each 500 1000 Oil Pictures, $1 each 1,000 500 Solid Gold Rings, $2 each 1,000 1000 Autograph Albums, $1 each 1,000 AND 92,532 OTHER USEFUL AND VALUABLE PRESENTS RANGING IN VALUE FROM TWENTY-FIVE CENTS TO ONE DOLLAR, making a grand total of 100,000 presents to be given to the first one hundred thousand subscribers received. EVERY ONE GETS A PRESENT. All of the above presents will be awarded in a FAIR AND IMPARTIAL MANNER by a committee chosen by the subscribers. Among the last 92,532 presents are 50,000 of one article, which we manufacture and own the patent, and that retails at One Dollar the world over and never sold for less; it is something needed in every home, AND IS WELL WORTH FIVE DOLLARS IN ANY FAMILY; millions have been sold at One Dollar each. Being owners and manufacturers we can afford to give 50,000 to our subscribers, believing that you will be so well pleased that you will always be patrons of the ARGOSY;--besides all this you have a chance to get one of the most valuable presents offered in our list. THE AWARD OF PRESENTS WILL POSITIVELY TAKE PLACE MARCH 10, '84. THE GOLDEN ARGOSY IS A WEEKLY PAPER for the FATHER, the MOTHER, the BOYS, and the GIRLS. It is the most BEAUTIFUL, USEFUL, ENTERTAINING, INSTRUCTIVE, AND POPULAR WEEKLY published. It has the best corps of FIRST-CLASS AUTHORS in the United States, including such as HORATIO ALGER JR., EDWARD S. ELLIS, OLIVER OPTIC, HARRY CASTLEMON, FRANK H. CONVERSE, REV. EDWARD EVERETT HALE, and a host of others too numerous to mention. It is BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED, and its reading matter is all original from the pens of noted authors. Its regular subscription price is 50 CENTS FOR THREE MONTHS; $1.00 FOR SIX MONTHS; $1.75 FOR TWELVE MONTHS; without present or premium; but in order to secure 100,000 subscribers at once we make the FOLLOWING LIBERAL OFFER. FOR 50 CENTS we will send you THE GOLDEN ARGOSY, weekly, for three months and one numbered receipt, good for one present. FOR $1 we will send THE GOLDEN ARGOSY, weekly, SIX MONTHS, and TWO numbered receipts good for TWO PRESENTS. FOR $1.75 we will send THE GOLDEN ARGOSY, weekly, for ONE YEAR and FOUR numbered receipts, good for FOUR PRESENTS. A FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO YOU. If you will CUT THIS ADVERTISEMENT OUT and show it to your FRIENDS, ACQUAINTANCES AND NEIGHBORS, and get five to subscribe for three months, and send us $2.50, we will send you your subscription free, and one numbered receipt; get ten to subscribe and we will send you TWO numbered receipts and THE ARGOSY for six months; get twenty to subscribe for three months and we will send you the ARGOSY ONE YEAR, and FOUR numbered receipts, good for FOUR PRESENTS. A few hours' work will give you A SUBSCRIPTION FREE and a CHANCE TO WIN ONE OF THE MOST VALUABLE PRESENTS. SAMPLE COPIES FREE. THE GOLDEN ARGOSY is a well ESTABLISHED weekly paper and is backed by HALF A MILLION DOLLARS CAPITAL, so that every subscriber may be sure of GETTING JUST WHAT WE PROMISE. LIST OF THE AWARDS will be forwarded to all subscribers immediately after Mar. 10th. HOW TO SEND MONEY. Send small sums, from 50 cents to one or two dollars by POSTAL NOTE, cash or stamps; larger sums should be sent by REGISTERED MAIL OR POST OFFICE ORDER. Address all orders to THE ARGOSY PUBLISHING CO., 81 WARREN STREET, NEW YORK. REMEMBER, THE ABOVE PRESENTS ARE GIVEN ABSOLUTELY FREE TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS. CUT THIS OUT AND SHOW IT TO YOUR FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS AND ACQUAINTANCES. --> IT WILL NOT APPEAR AGAIN. <-- AGENTS WANTED EVERYWHERE. WHAT SUBSCRIBERS SAY. I cannot SPEAK TOO HIGHLY of the ARGOSY, my boys think they could never do without it. Mrs. M. E. AXTELL, West Richfield, Ohio. THE ARGOSY has been SO GOOD this year I MUST HAVE it another; enclosed is $1.75. DAN. W. HUNTINGTON, Boston. I LIKE THE ARGOSY VERY MUCH, and think it GREATLY IN ADVANCE of the usual style of papers for the young--THE BOYS LIKE IT. Mrs. AGNES S. ARMSTRONG. Ephraim, Utah Ter. I have taken a number of papers, but I NEVER HAD ONE I LIKE AS WELL as THE ARGOSY. To sit before the fire these cold evenings and read it IS THE BEST ENJOYMENT I KNOW OF. To-night I am reading my old papers over again. W. S. KNOWLTON, Portland, Me. I should take the ARGOSY another year IF I HAD TO SIT UP NIGHTS TO EARN THE MONEY TO PAY FOR IT: enclosed is $1.75. ED. L. PEMBERTON, Ansonia, Conn. I am SO DEEPLY INTERESTED in the ARGOSY I SHOULD BE LOST WITHOUT IT; please extend my subscription another year. WINNIE S. MOORE, Audubon, Ia. I have been a reader of the ARGOSY the last year, and CANNOT NOW DO WITHOUT IT, LET IT COST WHAT IT WILL. D. E. BROTHWELL, Wakefield, Kan. THE ARGOSY is the VERY BEST PAPER of the kind published. I WOULD NOT DO WITHOUT IT FOR TWICE $1.75. FRANK G. JOHNSON, Painesville, O. I prize the ARGOSY ABOVE ALL YOUTH'S PAPERS. Its high moral tone and instructive reading is sure to leave a LASTING IMPRESSION WITH ITS READERS. Mrs. IDA AUSTIN, Fort Halleck, Wy. The character of the ARGOSY COMMENDS ITSELF TO ALL. WM S. CLARK, Washington, D. C. I have read the _Golden Days_, _Youth's Companion_, and _Wide-Awake_, for boys and girls, BUT GIVE ME THE ARGOSY; I WOULD NOT GIVE IT FOR ANY OTHER PAPER I EVER SAW. A. B. WILLIS, Brooklyn, Ill. NOTICES FROM THE PRESS. THE GOLDEN ARGOSY is handsomely printed on tinted paper, and is freighted with reading matter that can be safely placed in the hands of our youth.--_Herald_, Norristown, Pa. It is SPARKLING and PURE, interesting and HIGH-TONED. The best authors in America contribute to its columns.--_Journal_, Lewistown, Me. Parents and guardians who would place fascinating as well as instructive, reading before their children, WOULD DO WELL TO SUBSCRIBE TO IT.--_Church Union_, N. Y. THE GOLDEN ARGOSY has ECLIPSED, in EVERY respect, its older but less enterprising contemporaries.--_Daily Transcript_, Peoria, Ill. Full of LIFE and VIM, it commends itself to those desiring to be entertained and instructed. The illustrations are SUPERB. We commend it to the reading public.--_Vanity Fair_, San Francisco, Cal. It has taken a LEADING PLACE among the best papers of its class. The publisher EVIDENTLY UNDERSTANDS boys' tastes.--_Times_, Indianapolis, Ind. THE GOLDEN ARGOSY is a BRIGHT, SPARKLING paper for boys and girls; NEITHER SENSATIONAL ON THE ONE HAND NOR DULL ON THE OTHER.--_Press_, Philadelphia, Pa. THE GOLDEN ARGOSY is a youths' paper, and CONTAINS MORE INTERESTING READING MATTER than any other similar publication in the country.--_Telegraph_, Dubuque, Iowa. IT IS A FIRST-CLASS PAPER, FULLY EQUALLING THE _Youth's Companion_, and, being once introduced into the home, will be sure to remain.--_Herald_, Camden, Me. THE GOLDEN ARGOSY is AS FAR REMOVED FROM THE PROSY INANITY OF SUNDAY-SCHOOL LITERATURE AS IT IS FROM THE DEMORALIZING SENSATIONALISM OF THE HALF-DIME DREADFULS.--_N. Y. World._ THE GOLDEN ARGOSY is not only BEAUTIFUL IN APPEARANCE, but every way COMMENDABLE IN the CHARACTER OF ITS CONTENTS. IT IS ONE OF THE FEW PAPERS for young people that JUDICIOUS FATHERS AND MOTHERS care to put in the hands of their children.--_Detroit Free Press._ * * * * * REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ * * * * * FORESTRY. Henry Stuart writes the New York Times: A wise and careful system of agriculture might have left our fields still fertile and productive, so an economical use of the forests might have made them a perennial source of wealth. Fortunately the injury is not beyond a remedy, for it is easier to restore a growth of timber than it is to bring back fertility to a barren soil. It is easy to care for what is left and to replant and renew the growth, and even to do this better and more quickly and with more and quicker profit than nature has done it. It is easy, too, by a wise and practical use of the forests that are left, to so husband them as to take regular harvests from them as the farmer regularly harvests his fields or selects the fatlings from his flocks. He does not gather in all these at one fell swoop, taking the fat and the lean and the young and the old, as the fisherman gathers all into his nets, and as the lumberman has felled the woods, but he selects those that are ripe and carefully rears the rest until they are ready. Had the timber been culled in this way from the forests year by year there would have been a periodical harvest, and as the mature trees were cut out a new growth would spring up. But, on the contrary, as in the old fable, the goose has been killed for its golden eggs, and the source of a lasting profit has been recklessly sacrificed. Fortunately the land is left, and can be put to its proper use as soon as it can be controlled. And still fortunately, by a wise administration, the forests may be made a profitable source of public income, instead of, as heretofore, the prey of the spoilers. It is useless to complain of past mistakes. They have been, as we have pointed out, mere incidents of our system, and possibly unavoidable. But the time has come when the system must be changed, and the necessity for a change has become so apparent that it can not be long delayed. It is not only the commerce of the country that must suffer by a continuance of the system, but agriculture suffers still more; and it is not only the public who will gain by a change, but the example will be followed by the farmers, who will doubtless soon learn to take care of their own timber lands and plant more, and so the benefit will be general. Besides, the farmers will not be long in discovering the profit in growing timber, and would plant groves as one of the most profitable crops that could be grown upon their rougher lands, or as a resting and restorative crop for their worn soil. * * * * * Before the New York Academy of Science a few days ago, Professor Albert R. Leeds gave some "facts gathered from eight years of personal inspection as to the alleged destruction of the Adirondack forests." He said that a rapid course of spoilation was going on in the outskirts of the forest, and the effect of it would soon be felt in the flow of the Hudson. The impression that the Adirondacks were pine-producing was a false one. Pine trees were seldom seen and the mountains were covered with spruce and hemlock. But the spruces, owing to a disease which attacked them a few years ago, are rapidly dying off. On the Ausable river and along the shores of Lake Champlain the destruction of the forest is especially great. Persons living about the forest start fires in the woodland which spread rapidly and are more destructive to the trees than the lumbermen. Professor Leeds thought that the railways which are making their way through the forests would be an important element in their destruction, for the sparks of the locomotives would originate forest fires. He said that the purchase of the forests by the State might not require so great an expenditure of money as was anticipated. * * * * * In closing an article on "Forestry and Farming," the Germantown Telegraph maintains that the idea that farmers and land-owners generally entertain that they may not live to enjoy the advantages of the tree-planting, should be utterly banished from their minds. It will require only about twenty years to realize the most liberal hopes of success; at least it will add to the value of the farm by the fact that the amount of timber is to be increased instead of diminished. We all know how anxious every purchaser of a tract of land is to know whether there is any and how much timber upon a farm offered for sale. In fact, there is no greater mistake made than to cut down the wood upon a farm when purchased, with a view to meet the second payment; and this mistake is invariably brought home to everyone in a few years. It is like taking the life-blood out of the land. SCIENTIFIC. Official Weather Wisdom. Almost from its invention the barometer has been vaunted an indicator of impending weather, and now we are in possession of numberless rules for interpreting its indications, mostly of a vague and indefinite purport, few, if any, pretending to accuracy and certainty. As mankind are always desirous of attaining weather wisdom, these rules have tended to give the barometer its widely recognized reputation, rather than any really infallible principles, clearly formulated. With no other philosophical instrument have people so deluded themselves as with the barometer. Meteorology having become almost an official monopoly, the officials seem to have made the readiest and largest amount of reputation out of the barometer as a weather glass; for all that they have had to do is to compile rules from a number of authors, without any necessity of acknowledgment, print as much as they please at the Government expense, give it away freely, and the notoriety of authorship is secured easily and expeditiously. Thus the British nation has been officially supplied with about eighteen different editions of the Barometer Manual, widely differing from each other according to the views of the authors; for although the book remains the self-styled authors change, much the same as with the Cambridge books on mathematics. A study of the edition, "Coast or Fishery Barometer Manual," teaches that the barometer foretells coming weather; that it does not always foretell coming weather; that only few are able to understand much about what it does tell us; that it may be used by ordinary persons without difficulty; that its indications are sometimes erroneous: that any one observing it once a day may be always weatherwise; that its warnings do not apply always to the locality of the instrument; that storms frequently occur without its giving any warning; that barometer depressions happen with and without gales; and similar ambiguous or contradictory assertions ad nauseam. It is perfectly astounding to contemplate that official authority sanctions such inconsistent teaching, and moreover disseminates it far and wide, forcing its circulation by giving it away gratuitously on humane and eleemosynary grounds. Where only such confusing advice and direction can be given is it becoming to stamp it as official? it is lamentable inconsiderateness to expect fishermen to be able to dodge the weather by such guidance; and it is time to stop this easily concocted nostrum for notoriety; for it is vague and inconclusive in every precept, and has scarcely an assertion which is not contradicted by some other.--_Engineering._ A Remarkable Electrical Discovery. The London Times of recent date states that a new electrical contrivance has been perfected by Mr. A. St. George, the inventor of the telephone which bears his name. This invention, which is really supplemental to the telephone, will enable every description of conversation carried on through the instrument to be not only recorded but reproduced at any future time. Briefly stated, Mr. St. George's invention may be thus described: A circular plate of glass is coated with collodion and made sensitive as a photographic plate. This is placed in a dark box, in which is a slit to admit a ray of light. In front of the glass is a telephone diaphragm, which, by its vibrations, opens and closes a small shutter through which a beam of light is constantly passing and imprinting a dark line on the glass. Vibrations of the shutter cause the dark line to vary in thickness according to the tones of the voice. The glass plate is revolved by clock work, and the conversation as it leaves the telephone is recorded on the sensitive plate, the imprinted words spoken being fixed as is done in photography. The plate can be brought forward afterwards, and when replaced in the machine and connected with a distant telephone, will, when set in motion, give back the original conversation. * * * * * On October 15, 1881, a gentleman in Newburgh, N. Y., inclosed a spider in a small paper box. He carefully guarded and watched it, and affirms that for 204 days it partook of no food or water. It showed no emaciation, and appeared as active and strong as at first until within a very few days of its death on May 7, 1882. Tamerlane learned patience from a spider; perhaps Tanner was taught by them how to fast. The Hour, from which we take this item, also has the following: Another spider story is sent from California by the Rev. Dr. McCook, of honey-ant fame. He found a small cocoon of eggs and young spiders, which had no less than five other kinds of insects living in and about it. These intruders consisted of small red ants, a diminutive beetle, and a series formed by a minute chalcid, parasitic on a larger chalcid, which was parasitic on an ichneumon, which was parasitic on the spider. All were seeking to devour the eggs and spiderlings, yet the whole cocoonful, victims included, seemed to be living on most amicable terms. * * * * * Various methods for hastening the conversion of cider into vinegar have been recommended. A French method is as follows: Scald three barrels or casks with hot water, rinse thoroughly and empty. Then scald with boiling vinegar, rolling the barrels and allowing them to stand on their sides two or three days until they become thoroughly saturated with the vinegar. The barrels are then filled about one-third full with strong pure cider vinegar and two gallons of cider added. Every eighth day thereafter two gallons of cider are added until the barrels are two-thirds full. The whole is allowed to stand fourteen days longer, when it will be found to be good vinegar, and one-half of it may be drawn and the process of filling with cider be begun again. In summer the barrels are allowed to stand exposed to the sun and in cold weather kept where the temperature is 80 degrees. * * * * * A Party of the United States Geological Survey have found it practicable to ride to the highest peak of Mount Shasta, and suggest the establishment there of a third elevated station for weather observations, similar to those on Pike's Peak and Mount Washington. * * * * * A herring produces from 30,000 to 50,000 eggs, and the eggs are so small in size that 20,000 can be put one layer thick on a square foot of glass. * * * * * COUGHS AND HOARSENESS.--The irritation which induces coughing immediately relieved by use of "_Brown's Bronchial Troches_." Sold only in boxes. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. To Our Readers. THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the OLDEST, MOST RELIABLE, and the LEADING AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST, devoted exclusively to the interests of the Farmer, Gardener, Florist, Stock Breeder, Dairyman, Etc., and every species of Industry connected with that great portion of the People of the World, the PRODUCERS. Now in the Forty-Fourth Year of its existence, and never, during more than two score years, having missed the regular visit to its patrons, it will continue to maintain supremacy as A STANDARD AUTHORITY ON MATTERS PERTAINING TO AGRICULTURE AND KINDRED PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRIES, and as a FRESH AND READABLE FAMILY AND FIRESIDE JOURNAL. It will from time to time add new features of interest, securing for each department the ablest writers of practical experience. THE PRAIRIE FARMER will discuss, without fear or favor, all topics of interest properly belonging to a Farm and Fireside Paper, treat of the most approved practices in AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, BREEDING, ETC.; the varied Machinery, Implements, and improvements in same, for use both in Field and House; and, in fact, everything of interest to the Agricultural community, whether in FIELD, MARKET, OR HOME CIRCLE. IT WILL GIVE INFORMATION UPON THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, WESTERN SOILS, CLIMATE, ETC.; ANSWER INQUIRIES on all manner of subjects which come within its sphere; GIVE each week, full and RELIABLE MARKET, CROP, AND WEATHER REPORTS; PRESENT the family with choice and INTERESTING LITERATURE; amuse and INSTRUCT THE YOUNG FOLKS; AND, in a word, aim to BE, in every respect, AN INDISPENSABLE AND UNEXCEPTIONABLE farm and fireside COMPANION. Terms of Subscription and 'Club Rates': ONE COPY, 1 YEAR, postage paid $ 2.00 TWO COPIES, " " " 3.75 FIVE " " sent at one time 8.75 TEN " " sent at one time, and one to Club getter 16.00 TWENTY " " sent at one time, and one to Club getter 30.00 Address The Prairie Farmer Publishing Co., Chicago. Ill. * * * * * STANDARD BOOKS. ROPP'S CALCULATOR AND DIARY. Practical Arithmetic made EASY, SIMPLE, and CONVENIENT for all, by this unique and wonderful work. Is worth its weight in gold to everyone not quick in figures. Contains nearly 100,000 BUSINESS Calculations, SIMPLE and PRACTICABLE Rules and ORIGINAL Methods--the CREAM of this great and useful science--which makes it possible and EASY for ANY ONE, even a child, to make CORRECT and INSTANTANEOUS computations in GRAIN, Stock, Hay, Coal, Cotton, Merchandise. INTEREST, Percentage, Profit and Loss, Wages, Measurement of Lumber, Logs, Cisterns, Tanks, Granaries, Wagon-beds, Corn-cribs, Cordwood, Hay-stacks, Lands, Carpenters', Plasterers', and Masons' work, besides THOUSANDS of other practical problems which come up every day in the year. Will prove of GREAT BENEFIT, almost A NECESSITY, in the hands of every FARMER, Mechanic, and Tradesman. It is neatly printed, elegantly bound, accompanied by a RENEWABLE Diary, SILICATE Slate, PERPETUAL Calendar, and VALUABLE POCKET-BOOK, all combined, for the price of a COMMON diary. Fine English Cloth $ .50 Fine English Cloth, with flap .75 Fine Roan Leather, with flap 1.00 Sent postpaid to any address on receipt of price. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUB. CO., CHICAGO ILL. * * * * * How to Paint A new work by A PRACTICAL PAINTER, designed for the use of TRADESMEN, MECHANICS, MERCHANTS, FARMERS, and as a guide to PROFESSIONAL PAINTERS. Containing a Plain, Common-Sense Statement of the methods employed by Painters to produce satisfactory results in PLAIN and FANCY PAINTING of every description, including FORMULAS for MIXING PAINT in OIL or WATER, Tools required, etc. This is just the book needed by any person having anything to paint and makes "EVERY MAN HIS OWN PAINTER." Full directions for using WHITE LEAD LAMP BLACK--IVORY BLACK-- PRUSSIAN BLUE--ULTRAMARINE--GREEN--YELLOW--BROWN--VERMILLION-- LAKE--CARMINE--WHITING--GLUE--ASPHALTUM--PUMICE STONE, and SPIRITS OF TURPENTINE--OILS--VARNISHES--FURNITURE VARNISH--MILK PAINT--PREPARING CALCIMINE. Paint for Outbuildings --WHITEWASH--Paste for PAPER HANGING--HANGING PAPER--GRAINING IN OAK, MAPLE, MAHOGANY, ROSEWOOD, BLACK WALNUT--STAINING--GILDING-- BRONZING--TRANSFERRING--DECALCOMANIA--MAKING RUSTIC PICTURES-- PAINTING FLOWER-STAND--MAHOGANY POLISH--ROSEWOOD POLISH-- VARNISHING FURNITURE--WAXING FURNITURE--CLEANING PAINT-- Paint for Farming Tools for MACHINERY, and for HOUSEHOLD FIXTURES To Paint a Farm Wagon --to RE-VARNISH A CARRIAGE--to make PLASTER CASTS. The work is neatly printed, with illustrations wherever they can serve to make the subject plainer, and it will save MANY TIMES its cost yearly. Every family should possess a copy. Price, by mail, postpaid, $1. Forwarded free to any sender of two subscribers to this paper at $2 each. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO. Chicago. * * * * * STANDARD WORKS. By PETER HENDERSON Gardening for Profit, A WELL-KNOWN WORK ON Market and Family Gardening Gardening FOR Pleasure A guide to the amateur in the Fruit, Vegetable, and Flower Garden, with full directions for the Green-House, Conservatory, and Window Garden. PRACTICAL FLORICULTURE, A guide to successful Propagation and Cultivation of Florists' Plants. PRICE, $1.50 EACH, BY MAIL, POSTPAID. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago. * * * * * TALKS ON MANURES By JOSEPH HARRIS, M. S. Author of "_Walks and Talks on the Farm_," "_Farm Crops_," "_Harris on the Pig_," _etc._ While we have no lack of treatises upon artificial fertilizers, there is no work in which the main stay of the farm--the manure made upon the farm is treated so satisfactorily or thoroughly as in this volume. Starting with the question, "WHAT IS MANURE?" the author, well known on both sides of the water by his writings, runs through in sufficient detail every source of manure on the farm, discussing the methods of making rich manure; the proper keeping and applying it, and especially the USES OF MANURE, and the effects of different artificial fertilizers, as compared with farm-yard manure, upon different crops. In this he makes free use of the striking series of experiments instituted years ago, and still continued, by Lawes and Gilbert, of Rothamsted, England. The REMARKABLE TABLES in which the results of these experiments are given, are here for the first time made accessible to the American farmer. In fact, there is scarcely any point relating to fertilizing the soil, including suitable manures for special crops, that is not treated, and while the teachings are founded upon the most elaborate scientific researches, they are so far divested of the technical language of science as to commend themselves to farmers as eminently "practical." It is not often that the results of scientific investigations are presented in a manner so thoroughly popular. 12mo. Price, postpaid, $1.50. PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO. Chicago. * * * * * HOUSE PLANS FOR EVERYBODY. By S. B. REED, Architect. One of the most popular Architectural books ever issued, giving a wide range of design from a dwelling costing $250 up to $8,000, and adapted to farm, village, and town residences. It gives an Estimate of the Quantity of Every Article Used in the construction, and probable cost of constructing any one of the buildings presented. Profusely illustrated. Price, postpaid, $1.50. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., Chicago * * * * * NOW is the time to Subscribe for THE PRAIRIE FARMER. Price only $2.00 per year is worth double the money. * * * * * [Illustration] HOUSEHOLD. For nothing lovelier can be found In woman than to study _household_ good.--_Milton._ CHRISTIAN CHARITY. O stay not thine hand when the winter's wind rude Blows cold through the dwellings of want and despair, To ask if misfortune has come to the good, Or if folly has wrought the sad wreck that is there. When the Savior of men raised His finger to heal, Did He ask if the sufferer was Gentile or Jew? When thousands were fed with a bountiful meal, Was it given alone to the faithful and true? If the heart-stricken wanderer asks thee for bread, In suffering he bows to necessity's laws; When the wife moans in sickness, the children unfed, The cup must be bitter, O ask not the cause. Then scan not too closely the frailties of those Whose bosoms may bless on a cold winter's day: And give to the wretched who tells thee his woes, And from him that would borrow, O turn not away! --_Dr. Reynell Coates._ * * * * * A correspondent writes: Will give the readers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER the favor of telling us all about making sandwiches. How thick should they be when complete? Best made of bread or biscuit? and if chicken or ham, how prepared? Please don't say shred the meat and sprinkle in salt, pepper, and mustard, but tell us how to shred the meat. Do you chop it, and how fine? and how much seasoning to a given quantity? or do cooks always guess at it? MRS. C. H. --Will not some of our lady readers tell us how they make sandwiches. The question is an important one for city as well as country, where so many thousands of "lunches" have to be prepared daily.--[ED. * * * * * A correspondent writes the lady readers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER concerning a new line of work, which we hope many of them may find profitable: Much has been written regarding proper and remunerative employment for women. Silk culture, poultry raising, and various other themes have been thoroughly ventilated, and the result has no doubt been very beneficial; but there are many ladies who have no opportunity to raise silk worms, or follow any business of that kind. To that class I wish to open what to me was an entirely new field. Some three months ago an uncle of mine from Albany, N. Y., was visiting at our house, and we were talking of plated ware, which he is engaged in manufacturing, and to gratify my curiosity he made a plating machine and replated our knives, forks, spoons and caster. It only cost $4, and it did the work perfectly. Some of our neighbors saw what we had plated, and wanted me to do some plating for them. Since then I have worked twenty-two days, clearing in that time $94.34. At almost every house I got from $2 to $3 worth of plating to do, and such work is most all profit. This business is as nice for ladies as it is for gentlemen, being all indoor work, and any one can do it. My brother, although he worked two days longer than I did, only made $91.50. I am getting up a collection of curiosities, and to any of your readers that will send me a specimen I will send them full directions for making and using a plating machine like mine that will plate gold, silver and nickel. Send small pieces of stones, ores, shells, wood, leaves of trees, plants, etc. Anything small will do. What I want to get is as many different specimens from as many different places all over the country as I can. Address MISS M. F. CASSEY. OBERLIN, OHIO. The Night Cap. In a late letter to the August Constitution Jas. R. Randall discourses thus pleasantly of the efficiency of the night cap in producing sleep: About 9 o'clock at night we boarded the sleeping coach for Washington. Just before retiring for the night my mind, somehow or other, reverted to an editorial article recently published in the New York Times, half serious, half earnest, concerning the latest theory of an English physician as to the prepotent cause of insomnia and nervous disorders generally. It may be remembered that to the abandonment of the night cap of our grandfathers (the cotton or flannel article, not the alcoholic) was attributed the modern tendency of sleeplessness that make even a philosopher like Herbert Spencer more or less of a crank. What I wanted, and wanted as the fellow did his pistol in Texas, was first-class slumber, just such unmitigated repose as occasionally comes to a highly organized baby, unvexed by colic or pure cussedness. I began to think that perhaps that British doctor was right, and that, if it were possible, I would return to the neglected custom of my ancestors. Just at that moment I plunged my hand into my coat pocket and pulled out a silk smoking-cap--a pretty thing, wrought for me long ago by the dainty, delicate, deft fingers of one who now rests in the graveyard at Augusta. This cap was the very thing. I placed it reverently upon my head, with an act of faith, and lay down. The result was magical. Never since I was a boy can I remember to have experienced so perfect and delicious a repose. Not a dream rippled the surface of my calm brain, and I awakened hours afterward with a sense of satisfaction that must be a foretaste of heaven itself. An incipient headache had vanished. Powers of mind that had been dulled were restored to animation and keenness. Not a trace of irascibility remained; but in its place came trooping the sweet angels that Father Faber says continually hover over the good-humored man. I declare that the metamorphosis was so complete that I almost needed an introduction to my new self. And this prodigy was created by one grand, complete and unusual slumber, when wearing a nightcap! Subsequent experiments have been relatively successful; so I am getting to be an enthusiast on the subject. Some folks say that it is a delusion, a mere freak of the imagination. Be it so. If a nightcap can extinguish my imagination at bed-time, thank God for the discovery! My good old mother tells me that when I was a little fellow she used to tie a nightcap under my chin, and that I was a famous sleeper in those times. She is a firm believer in the efficacy. Likely enough if a man eats pickled pig's feet at midnight or drinks unlimited whisky, even a silk or cotton nightcap may not consign him to the arms of Morpheus; but it may work wonders for a sober person who is cursed with the pestilent habit of conjuring up all manner or odd fancies when his head touches the pillow, instead of dismissing the workmen who hammer on the forges of the brain. The majority of the men will rather suffer nocturnal horrors than be laughed at for wearing nightcaps; just as the majority of women will prefer to wear shoes that are instruments of disease and torture rather than have their feet shod comfortably and sensibly. I have a clear idea as to which is the course of wisdom and which the alternative of folly. But this is a diversion which you, readers, may smile at or not as the whim seizes you. How to Treat a Boy. Get hold of the boy's heart. Yonder locomotive comes like a whirlwind down the track, and a regiment of armed men might seek to arrest it in vain. It would crush them, and plunge unheeding on. But there is a little lever in the mechanism that at the pressure of a man's hand will slacken its speed, and in a moment bring it panting and still, like a whipped spaniel, at your feet. By the same little lever the vast steamer is guided hither and yonder upon the sea, in spite of the adverse winds or current. That sensitive and responsive spot by which a boy's life is controlled is his heart. With your grasp gently and firmly on that helm, you may pilot him whither you will. Never doubt that he has a heart. Bad and willful boys very often have the tenderest hearts hidden somewhere beneath incrustations of sin or behind barricades of pride. And it is your business to get at that heart, keep hold of it by sympathy, confiding in him, manifestly working only for his good by little indirect kindnesses to his mother or sister, or even his pet dog. See him at his home, or invite him into yours. Provide him some little pleasures, set him at some little service of trust for you; love him; love him practically. Anyway and every way rule him through his heart. * * * * * "Etiquette now admits of a second plate of soup." That is all right, but if a man's appetite will not admit of a second plate of soup, etiquette is nothing to him. And if he has the appetite, he will have the soup, etiquette or no etiquette. * * * * * Rand, Avery, & Co., Boston, announce a new story--a thrilling and powerful tale--involving the pregnant question of Mormonism. The book will be amply illustrated and sold by subscription. The publishers say that in their opinion this book will serve a purpose not unlike Uncle Tom's Cabin (of which, by the way, four hundred thousand copies--eight hundred thousand volumes--were issued in this country, every one of which bore their imprint). It will hasten the day for the uprising of an indignant nation, and their verdict will be as in the case of slavery--this disgrace must cease--the Mormon must go! Pamphlets, Etc., Received. Honey, as Food and Medicine. Presented by J. L. Harris, 697 W. Lake St., Chicago. This little work contains many valuable recipes showing how honey can be made useful medicinally and as an appetizer. For housekeepers in the country who have bees it will be found especially useful. Spring catalogue and price list of the Eclectic Small Fruit Nursery. O. B. Galusha, Morris, Ill. New State Fair Grounds: Statement by the executive committee, together with the rejoinder of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture to the Franklin County Society's reply. This pamphlet will be interesting to the farmers of that State. Landreth's Companion for the Garden and Farm, Philadelphia, Pa. Price 10 cents. This book is, as usual, handsomely gotten up, and is truly a "companion." The prettily colored cover is but an index to the many colored pages within. It also contains many interesting plates showing the manner and extent of work carried on by this enterprising firm. The book is replete with valuable information. Supplemental Report of the Department of Agriculture of Georgia, for the year 1883, Circular No. 49, new series. Shows the yield of the leading crops of the State as compared with 1882; the average yield per acre, and other matters of interest to the farmers of Georgia. Descriptive Catalogue of C. A. Hiles & Co.'s saws and ice tools, 234 South Water street, Chicago. Descriptive catalogue and price list of H. F. Dernell & Co.'s ice tools, Athens, N. Y. A. E. Spaulding's annual descriptive catalogue and price list of flower seeds, plants, and tools, Ainsworth, Iowa. Report No. 3 of the Department of Agriculture, Division and Statistics, December, 1883, Washington. This report is full of very useful statistical information. Foreign Press Opinions of Madame Marcella Sembrich in Mr. Henry E. Abbey's Grand Italian Opera Company. These opinions are very flattering, and if true, the Madame deserves to be well patronized. Chicago Medical Times, edited by W. H. Davis, M.D. $2.00 per annum, 25 cents a single copy. Special Report No. 3 of the Department of Agriculture, miscellaneous, Washington. This report is given up to the discussion of Mississippi, its climate, soil, productions, and agricultural capabilities. By A. B. Hurt, Special Agent. The American Naturalist for January contains the usual number of well-written articles, and is finely illustrated. This magazine is devoted to the natural sciences in the broadest sense of that term. The Silver Dollar: The original standard of payment of the United States of America, and its enemies. By Henry Carey Baird, Philadelphia, Pa., 810 Walnut Street. The twenty-first and twenty-second quarterly report of the Pennsylvania Board of Agriculture, 1883. Harrisburg, Pa. The Storrs & Harrison Co.'s Catalogue (No. 2) for 1884. Painesville, Ohio. This catalogue is fully illustrated with cuts of flowers and vegetables of almost every known description, so that the purchaser can see just what he is buying before sending order. Ohio Crop Report, December, 1883. With analyses and valuations of fertilizers, meteorological reports, etc. Compiled Correspondence. Kane Co., Ill., Jan. 21.--Cold weather continues. On eight days of this month the thermometer has been below zero. It has been above the freezing point only on one morning, the 13th. Sleighing is good, except on some of the graveled roads. Cattle are in good condition. The horse distemper prevails in some localities among colts. Hay is plenty. A few fat hogs were sold last week. One farmer, in Kaneville, sold 80 hogs, averaging 443 pounds each, at $6.10 per cwt. There are but very few fat hogs left. The cold, dry weather has improved the condition of corn in the cribs. Coarse feed is scarce. Considerable corn has been shipped here from Kansas. Bran and middlings are coming in from Minneapolis, and sell at $15 and and $17 per ton. Cheese factory dividends for November from $1.50 to $1.60 per cwt. Large quantities of milk are daily shipped into Chicago from this county. J. P. B. * * * * * I see that you request items in regard to the cold wave that swept over our country during the first week in this month. There is no doubt the cold was as intense over the country generally as it has been known for many years, or perhaps ever before, but so far as I can learn the damage to fruit trees, etc., is very slight. On the morning of the 16th of December we had our first snow, but the weather was quite pleasant to the end of the year, with occasionally slight freezing, but thermometer never down to zero. The result of this favorable weather was the thorough ripening up of the wood of all fruit and ornamental trees, so that when on the 5th of the present month the mercury ran down to 26 degrees below zero, and in some parts of the country far below that even, the damage was very slight. The writer has been extensively engaged in cutting scions, and knows whereof he speaks. I have also examined some peach trees and find the wood slightly discolored but not dead. I did not thoroughly examine the fruit buds of the peach, but suppose, of course, they are all killed. Had this intense cold weather occurred early in December, there is no doubt but the damage would have been immense. There has been a great loss of potatoes in cellars and pits, as most people had worked themselves into the belief that we were to have a mild winter, and had not prepared their cellars to resist cold at the rate of 30 degrees below zero. The result is that thousands of bushels of potatoes are frozen and ruined, and although the largest crop of potatoes was raised last year that ever was raised in the United States, yet potatoes will be high priced before planting time. H. A. TERRY. CRESCENT CITY, IA., Jan. 19. Seed Corn Famine. Probably nineteen farmers in twenty must buy seed corn for next spring's planting, on account of the failure of the '83 crop to ripen. We must look sharp to the seeds we buy, that they are better than our own, as many unreliable parties will offer inferior stocks, to take advantage of the demand. We suggest that every corn grower should send to Hiram Sibley & Co., the reliable seedsmen at Rochester, N. Y., and Chicago, Ill., for their catalogue and seed-corn circulars. This house makes a specialty of seed-corn and we believe that they will do what they say they will. * * * * * MAPS. RAND, McNALLY & CO.'S NEW RAILROAD --AND-- COUNTY MAP --OF THE-- UNITED STATES --AND-- DOMINION OF CANADA. Size, 4 � 2-1/2 feet, mounted on rollers to hang on the wall. This is an ENTIRELY NEW MAP, Constructed from the most recent and authentic sources. --IT SHOWS-- _ALL THE RAILROADS,_ --AND-- EVERY COUNTY AND PRINCIPAL TOWN --IN THE-- UNITED STATES AND CANADA. A useful Map in every one's home, and place of business. PRICE, $2.00. Agents wanted, to whom liberal inducements will be given. Address RAND, McNALLY & CO., Chicago, Ill. By arrangements with the publishers of this Map we are enabled to make the following liberal offer: To each person who will remit us $2.25 we will send copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER One Year and THIS MAP POSTPAID. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., CHICAGO, ILL. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. TO PRESERVE THE HEALTH Use the Magneton Appliance Co.'s MAGNETIC LUNG PROTECTOR! PRICE ONLY $5. They are priceless to LADIES, GENTLEMEN, and CHILDREN with WEAK LUNGS; no case of PNEUMONIA OR CROUP is ever known where these garments are worn. They also prevent and cure HEART DIFFICULTIES, COLDS, RHEUMATISM, NEURALGIA, THROAT TROUBLES, DIPHTHERIA, CATARRH, AND ALL KINDRED DISEASES. Will WEAR any service for THREE YEARS. Are worn over the under-clothing. CATARRH, It is needless to describe the symptoms of this nauseous disease that is sapping the life and strength of only too many of the fairest and best of both sexes. Labor, study, and research in America, Europe, and Eastern lands, have resulted in the Magnetic Lung Protector, affording cure for Catarrh, a remedy which contains No Drugging of the System, and with the continuous stream of Magnetism permeating through the afflicted organs; MUST RESTORE THEM TO A HEALTHY ACTION. WE PLACE OUR PRICE for this Appliance at less than one-twentieth of the price asked by others for remedies upon which you take all the chances, and WE ESPECIALLY INVITE the patronage of the MANY PERSONS who have tried DRUGGING THE STOMACHS WITHOUT EFFECT. HOW TO OBTAIN This Appliance. Go to your druggist and ask for them. If they have not got them, write to the proprietors, enclosing the price, in letter at our risk, and they will be sent to you at once by mail, post paid. Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical Treatment WITHOUT MEDICINE," with thousands of testimonials, THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 State Street, Chicago, Ill. NOTE.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our Magnetic Appliances. Positively _no cold feet where they are worn, or money refunded._ [Illustration] OUR YOUNG FOLKS Jule Fisher's Rescue. It had been an unusually severe winter, even for Northern Aroostook. Snow-fall had succeeded snow-fall, with no interval that could really be called "thaw," till the "loggers" had finished their work; and as they come plodding home on snow shoes, they all agreed that the snow lay from ten to twelve feet deep on a level in the woods. No wonder, then, that the warm March sun came to shine upon it day after day, and the copious spring showers fell, there should have been a very unusual "flood," or freshet. Every one predicted that when the ice should break in the river, there would be a grand spectacle, and danger, too, as well; and all waited with some anxiety for the "break" to come. One morning, we at the village were awakened by a deep, roaring, booming, crashing noise, and sprang from our beds, crying: "The ice has broken up! The ice is running out!" In hardly more time than it takes to tell it, we were dressed and at the back windows, which looked down upon the river! It was indeed a grand sight! Huge cakes of ice of every shape and size were driving, tumbling, crashing past, as if in a mad race with each other. The river, filled to overflowing, seemed in angry haste to hurl its icy burden down the falls below. But after a few days the river ran clear, save for the occasional breaking of some "jam" above. Along the margin of the broad stream, however, there were here and there slight indentures, or notches, in the banks, where the ice had escaped the mad rush of waters and still clung in considerable patches. It was upon one of these still undisturbed patches that "Jule" Fisher, a rough boy of fourteen, with several of his equally rough comrades, was playing on the lovely morning upon which my story opens. These lads were not the sons of the steady, intelligent, church-going inhabitants of this quiet Northern hamlet, but were from the families of "lumbermen," "river-drivers" and "shingle-shavers." For some time they had been having boisterous sport, venturing out upon the extreme edges of the ice and with long poles pushing about the stray cakes which occasionally came within their reach. At length they grew tired of this, and began to jump upon ticklish points of ice; and as these began to crack and show signs of breaking away, the boys would run, with wild whoops, back to shore, the very danger seeming to add to their enjoyment. Then, with poles and "prys," they would work upon the cracking mass until it floated clear and went whirling down the rapid current. "Ahoy, boys!" called Jule, who was seemingly their leader. "Up yender's a big cake that only wants a shove! Come on! Let's set 'er a-going!" No sooner said than done. Away went the noisy fellows to the projecting point of ice. A few smart jumps sent it creaking and groaning, as though still unwilling to quit its snug winter bed. One more jump, and the boys all ran with a shout beyond the place where the ice was cracking off--all save Jule. It had not broken clear, and he was determined to set it going, when he would spring on the firm ice beyond, as he had done once or twice before. But this time he was over-bold and not sufficiently watchful. A large cake of ice had come floating down the river unnoticed either by him or his friends, and striking the edge of the nearly loosened mass, shoved it out into the swift, black water. Poor Jule! He ran quickly to the freshly-broken edge--but, alas! too late for the intended spring. The swiftly-rushing current had borne him many yards from the shore and from his companions. There he stood--for an instant in dumb amaze--balancing himself upon his rocking raft with the pole he had been using. To attempt to swim ashore would have been useless. He was a clumsy swimmer at best; and the cold, rushing waters and floating ice cakes made swimming almost impossible. He could not get off. To stay seemed sure death. Dumb with fright, for a moment he stood in speechless terror. Then there rang across the wild, black river and through the quiet streets of the village, such a yell of abject fear as only a lusty lad of that age can give. It was a cry that chilled the heart of every one who heard it. A "four-days' meeting" was in session. The village church-goers were just issuing from their houses in answer to the church bell, when that pitiful cry and the shouts of "Help! Help! A boy in the stream!" reached them, and drew them all quickly to the river bank. In a few minutes the shore was lined with excited men and women. Yet all stood helplessly staring, while poor Jule on his ice-raft was floating steadily down toward the falls. Never shall I forget how he looked as he stood there in the middle of his floating white throne! There was something almost heroic in his calm helplessness. For after the first wild cry, he had not once opened his lips. Downward he floated, drawn swiftly and surely on by the deep, mighty rush of waters setting into the throat of the cataract. The heavy roar from far below sounded like the luckless lad's knell. He stood but a single chance--and that was hardly a chance--of his ice-raft lodging against a tilted-up "jam" of cakes and logs which had piled against a jagged ledge that rose in mid-stream, just above the brink of the precipice. This "jam" had hung there, wavering in the flood, for thirty-six hours. Every moment it seemed about to go off--yet still it clung, in tremor, as it seemed, at the fatal plunge which would dash it to pieces in the thundering maelstrom below. Good fortune--Providence, perhaps--so guided Jule's ice-raft that it struck and lodged against the "jam," just as the horrified watchers on shore expected to lose sight of the lad forever in the falls. "If it will only hang there!" muttered scores, scarcely daring as yet to speak a loud word. They could see the cake, with Jule on it, heaving up and down with the mighty rhythmic motion of the surging torrent; and all ran along down the banks, to come nearer. The boy stood in the very jaws of death. Beneath, the cataract roared and hurled up white gusts of spray. Just at this moment, a short, thick-set man, with a round, good-natured face, joined the crowd. For a moment he stood looking out at the lad, then slapping another young man on the shoulder, said, hurriedly, "Isn't there an old bateau stowed away in your shed, Lanse?" "Yes," was the reply. "Quick, then!" exclaimed the first speaker. "There isn't a moment to lose." "But, Mac," answered Lanse, as he hurried after him. "I'm afraid she's no good; she's old and she's been stowed away all winter. Ten to one the old thing leaks like a riddlin' sieve. "But we mustn't lose a chance!" exclaimed Mac. "That jam will go out within half an hour, if it doesn't within ten minutes!" By this time the two had reached the shed. They quickly drew the bateau from its wintering place, and taking the long, light boat upon their shoulders, ran rapidly through the village and down to the river. Meantime, two or three other men had run to fetch "dog warps" and "towing-lines," a large number of which are always kept in these backwoods lumbering hamlets, for use on the rivers and lakes, when logs are rafted out in the spring. Acting under Mac's prompt orders, a six-hundred foot warp was at once made fast to a ring in the stern of a bateau, and another line laid ready to bend to the first. Jumping into the bateau, paddle in hand, and a boat-hook laid ready for instant use, the bold young fellow now ordered the men to shove off the skiff into the river and then pay out the line, as he should direct--thus lowering him, yard by yard, down toward the "jam" where Jule stood. Rod by rod, they let him down toward the roaring abyss of furious waters, till the bateau--guided by the paddle, and held back now by the main strength of twenty men--touched the ice-cake. But even as it touched, the cake began to slide off the jam; and Jule was thrown on his hands and knees. Quick as thought, however, his courageous rescuer struck his boat-hook into the ice and held fast while Jule, stiff with fright, tumbled in at the bow of the bateau. He was hardly in the boat when the whole mass of ice and logs went over the falls. A shout arose, and when a few minutes later the bateau was drawn safely back up the stream, and Mac stepped ashore with a rather bashful smile on his round, fresh face, every one joined in long and prolonged cheers. As for Jule, he had to be helped out of the boat and led home; for he was, as they said, "limp as a rag;" and it was noticed that after this perilous adventure he was a much more sober and thoughtful boy. Pray do not imagine, reader, that I have been telling you a "made-up" story, for what I have related is true, the writer herself being an eye-witness to the incident while a teacher in a backwoods school-district on the banks of the Aroostook. * * * * * LIVE STOCK, Etc. PUBLIC SALE OF Short-Horn Cattle AT _Somers, Kenosha Co., Wis._ ON Wednesday, March 19, 1884. I will sell at public sale, at my farm near Somers, Wis., at above time and place, my entire herd of Thoroughbred Short-horn cattle, numbering forty head. Among them are many of the choicest families. Included in the sale will be the grand young bull Orpheus 13th, bred at Bow Park, a beautiful red, and one of the finest bulls in the West. The cows are all Breeders, and will have calves by their sides, or be safe in calf. I offer this grand herd of cattle with reluctance, solely on account of my advanced age and failing health. Catalogues ready about Feb. 15. Lunch at 12. Sale to begin at 1. Free conveyances will meet the trains on morning of sale at Somers, on C. M. & St. Paul, and at Kenosha for C. & N. W. R. R. WM. YULE, Somers, Kenosha Co., Wis. J. W. JUDY, Auctioneer. * * * * * 10 JERSEY BULLS FOR SALE, All of fine quality, solid color and bk. points. Ages, from six to eighteen months. Sons of Mahkeenae, 3290; brother of Eurotus, 2454, who made 778 lbs. butter in a year, and out of cows of the best butter blood, some having records of fourteen and fifteen lbs. per week. No fancy prices. A. H. COOLEY, Little Britain, Orange Co., N. Y. N. B.--If I make sales as formerly will send a car with man in charge to Cleveland, getting lowest rates. * * * * * SCOTCH COLLIE SHEPHERD PUPS, --FROM-- IMPORTED AND TRAINED STOCK --ALSO-- NEWFOUNDLAND PUPS AND RAT TERRIER PUPS. Concise and practical printed instruction in Training young Shepherd Dogs, is given to buyers of Shepherd Puppies; or will be sent on receipt of 25 cents in postage stamps. For Printed Circular, giving full particulars about Shepherd Dogs, enclose a 3-cent stamp, and address N.H. PAAREN, P.O. Box 326, CHICAGO. ILL. * * * * * _SEEDS_ Our new catalogue, best published, FREE _to all_. 1,500 _varieties_, 300 _illustrations_. You ought to have it. BENSON, MAULE & CO., Philadelphia, Pa. BREEDERS DIRECTORY. The following list embraces the names of responsible and reliable Breeders in their line, and parties wishing to purchase or obtain information can feel assured that they will be honorably dealt with: SWINE. Chester Whites. W. A. Gilbert Wauwatosa Wis. SCHEIDT & DAVIS, DYER, LAKE CO., IND., breeders of Victoria swine. Originators of this famous breed. Stock for Sale. Write for circular A. * * * * * RAILROADS. [Illustration] A MAN WHO IS UNACQUAINTED WITH THE GEOGRAPHY OF THIS COUNTRY WILL SEE BY EXAMINING THIS MAP THAT THE CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND & PACIFIC R'Y By the central position of its line, connects the East and the West by the shortest route, and carries passengers, without change of cars, between Chicago and Kansas City, Council Bluffs, Leavenworth, Atchison, Minneapolis and St. Paul. It connects in Union Depots with all the principal lines of road between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Its equipment is unrivaled and magnificent, being composed of Most Comfortable and Beautiful Day Coaches, Magnificent Horton Reclining Chair Cars, Pullman's Prettiest Palace Sleeping Cars, and the Best Line of Dining Cars in the World. Three Trains between Chicago and Missouri River Points. Two Trains between Chicago and Minneapolis and St. Paul, via the Famous "ALBERT LEA ROUTE." A New and Direct Line, via Seneca and Kankakee, has recently been opened between Richmond Norfolk, Newport News, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Augusta, Nashville, Louisville, Lexington, Cincinnati Indianapolis and Lafayette, and Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Paul and intermediate points. All Through Passengers Travel on Fast Express Trains. Tickets for sale at all principal Ticket Offices in the United States and Canada. Baggage checked through and rates of fare always as low as competitors that offer less advantages. For detailed information, get the Maps and Folders of the GREAT ROCK ISLAND ROUTE, At your nearest Ticket Office, or address R.R. CABLE, Vice-Pres. & Gen'l M'g'r, E. ST. JOHN, Gen'l Tkt. & Pass. Agt. CHICAGO. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. Don't be Humbugged With Poor, Cheap Coulters. [Illustration] All farmers have had trouble with their Coulters. In a few days they get to wabbling, are condemned and thrown aside. In our "BOSS" Coulter we furnish a tool which can scarcely be worn out; and when worn, the wearable parts, a prepared wood journal, and movable thimble in the hub (held in place by a key) can be easily and cheaply renewed. WE GUARANTEE OUR "BOSS" to plow more acres than any other three Coulters now used. OUR "O. K." CLAMP Attaches the Coulter to any size or kind of beam, either right or left hand plow. We know that after using it you will say it is THE BEST TOOL ON THE MARKET. Ask your dealer for it. Manufactured by the BOSS COULTER CO., Bunker Hill, Ills. * * * * * [Illustration: NEW Vegetables A Specialty GREGORY'S SEED CATALOGUE. 1854-1884] My Vegetable and Flower Seed Catalogue for 1884, the result of thirty years experience as a Seed Grower, will be sent free to all who apply. All my Seed is warranted to be fresh and true to name, so far that should it prove otherwise, I agree to refill orders gratis. My collection of vegetable Seed, one of the most extensive to be found in any American Catalogue, is a large part of it of my own growing. As the original introducer of Eclipse Beet, Burbank Potatoes, Marblehead Early Corn, the Hubbard Squash, and scores of other new Vegetables, I invite the patronage of the public. In the gardens and on the farms of those who plant my seed will be found my best advertisement. JAMES J. H. GREGORY, Seed Grower, Marblehead, Mass. * * * * * Send for Catalogue and Prices. ATLAS ENGINE WORKS [Illustration] INDIANAPOLIS, IND., U.S.A. MANUFACTURERS OF STEAM ENGINES AND BOILERS. CARRY ENGINES and BOILERS IN STOCK for IMMEDIATE DELIVERY * * * * * SIBLEY'S TESTED SEEDS, For all Climates, For all Soils, All Plants. EVERY SACK TESTED FOR VITALITY. ALL TESTED IN GARDENS FOR PURITY AND VALUE. CATALOGUE AND PRICE LIST OF ALL TESTED VARIETIES, FREE. Mail order promptly filled, making a Seed Store at home. Send for Catalogue. HIRAM SIBLEY & CO., Rochester, N Y. and Chicago, Ill. * * * * * [Illustration] LITERATURE. BETWEEN THE TWO LIGHTS. No use talking, missy--no use talking 'Bout de daylight and dat kind ob ting 'Tween the two lights--sunset and sunrising-- Dis ole nigger happier dan a king. Dis ole nigger don got all he want to, All he want, and more 'an he can say; Gib him night, de darker and de better, White folks more 'an welcome to de day. In de day him ole and pore and wretched, Got to tote de load and swing de hoe, Got to do jest what de white folks tole him, Got to trabel when dey tole him go. Don't own nothing but an empty cabin; Got no wife, no chillen at him knee; Got no nothing but a little pallet, And a pot to bile him hominy. In de day him gits no 'spectful notice, Him is only "dat ole nigger Brown;" In de night him tells you, little missy, Things git mightily turned upside down. Den somehow him's young and rich and happy, Den him own more acres dan him see: Den him got a powerful lot ob hosses, Den de white folks stop an speak to he. Den him hab a big house like ole massa's, Dan Melinda is him lubly wife; Den de little chillen call him pappy, Den him see de bery best ob life. Den sometimes him talking in de meeting. An' him feel de biggest in de town, For at night him neber "dat ole nigger," Him the Reberend Mister Isaac Brown. "Dreaming," is him? Dreaming, do you call it? Then him s'pose it's living in de day. Well, him likes de night-time and de dreaming, For him griefs wid sunshine go away. No use talking, missy, no use talking 'Bout de sunshine and dat kind ob ting; 'Tween de two lights--sunset and sunrising-- Dis ole nigger happier dan a king. THE TWO OVERCOATS. When Amos Derby came out of Levi Rosenbaum's pawnshop, the richer by five dollars, but leaving his overcoat in the hands of the Jew, he made his way directly to Sillbrook's saloon, where, he felt sure, he should meet half a dozen at least of his boon companions. He was not mistaken. The bar-room was crowded, and a general shout of welcome greeted him as he entered, for Amos was a generous fellow, and was always willing to treat. The five dollar bill was quickly broken by the jovial bar-keeper, and two hours later when Amos waked rather unsteadily out of the saloon, he had not a cent in his pocket. But this did not trouble him in the least. He had spent too much money in Sillbrook's during the last two years to think anything of squandering in one evening such a paltry sum as five dollars. As he left the saloon by the main entrance, he saw a man emerge from a side door of the building, and cross the street with rapid strides; a tall man, well dressed, and bearing about him a look of prosperity. He wore a very handsome overcoat with sealskin cuffs and collar, a sealskin cap, and well fitting gloves. Drunk as Amos was he recognized him at once; it was Sillbrook himself. "Been in the back room countin' up his gains, most likely," he muttered thickly. "He's above standin' behind the bar nowadays." Amos could well remember when Sillbrook had been only a mill-hand like himself, earning twelve dollars a week. But he had been a prudent, saving man always, and had early made up his mind to be rich, no matter at what cost of conscience and principle. With this end in view he had purchased a saloon, and cordially invited his former fellow workers at the mill to patronize him. This they were very willing to do, for Sillbrook knew how to make his saloon attractive; and he soon had as much custom as he could well attend to. At length he hired a bar-keeper, and after a couple of years was never seen behind the bar himself. He had grown rich very rapidly, and now owned one of the finest houses in the town, and was able to gratify every taste and whim, while those who had helped him to his wealth by drinking his liquors were as poor as ever--many of them poorer. Amos Derby had been one of Sillbrook's best customers ever since the saloon had been opened, and as a natural consequence had had little to spend in comforts for his wife and children. He still lived in the small cottage he had bought on first moving to the town, and had seen it grow more and more dilapidated every year without making any attempt to repair it. But though the outside was far from attractive, the inside was always neat and clean, for, whatever her faults of temper, Jane Derby was a woman who believed thoroughly in abiding by heaven's first law, and who labored early and late to make both ends meet, something she would not have been able to accomplish had she not possessed skill as a dressmaker, for Amos seldom gave her any of his earnings. She was sitting in the kitchen sewing when her husband came in, and a bitter expression crossed her face as she saw his condition. "Drunk, as usual," she said, harshly, "when were you anything else?" "When you was kinder spoken, perhaps," answered Amos, with spirit. "This is the sort of welcome I get every night in the week. 'Tain't much wonder I go to Sillbrook's." He dropped into a chair as he spoke, and began to pull off his boots. "If you didn't have one excuse you'd make another," said Jane, flushing, and bending closer over her sewing. "Perhaps you think I ought to feel pleasant when you come home in this state. Well! it ain't human nature, that it ain't! I mind the time you brought home your wages reg'lar, every Sat'day night, and I was willin' enough then to speak kind to you. Now the children would starve if it wasn't for me. Where's your overcoat?" a sudden pallor creeping into her face as she asked the question. "Yes! where is that overcoat?--what have you done with it that you haven't it on--where is it?" "Where d'ye s'pose?" said Amos, roughly. "Down at the pawn-shop, of course," cried his wife, angrily, "where every decent coat you ever had has gone. But you promised me you'd never part with this one, Amos Derby, and you've broke your word. I might have known you would! And to think how I worked for it, and let the children do without shoes! It's too bad! I declare it is! I gave twelve dollars for it only a month ago, and I'll wager you let Levi have it for half o' that. It's a shame, a dreadful shame." "Stop that. I won't have it," said Amos in a threatening tone. "There's no use whining over it now. If you say another word about it I'll go out again, right off." "Go!" said Jane, fiercely, "and I wish it was forever! I wish I was never to look on your face again! You're naught but a trouble and a disgrace to us all!" "All right," said Amos, as he pulled on his boots again, "I'm goin'. I'll take you at your word. You won't see me again in a hurry; now you just mark that. A trouble and a disgrace, am I?" "Yes, you are!" said Jane, her anger increasing as her mind dwelt upon the loss of the coat she had worked so hard to earn. "I mean all I've said, and more, too! Go! go to Sillbrook's! Ask him to show you the overcoat he's wearin'. I saw it yesterday, and yours wasn't a circumstance to it! Go! Give him every penny you've got! He needs it!" with a bitter little laugh. "His children's feet are all out on the ground, and his wife hasn't a decent dress to her name," with a glance at her faded calico gown. "Help him all you can, Amos Derby, he's in need o' charity." Amos made no answer. He was considerably more sober than when he had left the saloon, for the walk home through the fresh winter air had done him good, and he felt the force of his wife's words. They rung in his ears as he slammed the kitchen door behind him, and, taking the road which led by the mill, walked rapidly away. He was soon in the heart of the town, but he did not think or care where he was going. His only idea was to get away from the sound of Jane's sharp voice, and he turned down first one street and then another, without pausing, until he came to Elm Avenue, on which were situated the handsomest houses in the town. There was a large, square brick house on the corner, with stables in the rear, a conservatory on one side, and a beautiful lawn in front, and this place seemed to possess some strange fascination for Amos, for he stopped suddenly at the gate and stood there for fully five minutes, admiring, perhaps, the mansion's air of solid comfort and wealth. The iron gate was open, and presently, as if impelled by some impulse he could not resist, he entered, and walking softly up the graveled path, looked in at one of the long windows. The room upon which he gazed was very handsomely furnished. The chairs were luxuriously cushioned, a large mirror hung over the mantel, the carpet was of velvet, a crystal chandelier depended from the ceiling, and a bright fire burned in the open grate, before which sat a lady richly dressed, reading aloud to three children, sitting on ottomans at her feet. For a long, long time Amos Derby stood by the window, his eyes wandering from one article of luxury to another, a dark frown on his face, and his teeth set hard together. "My money," he muttered, when at last he turned away. "I've given it to him, cent by cent, and dollar by dollar, and I've naught to show for it, while he! he's got his fine house, and his rich carpets, and his handsome clothes. It's the same money, only I've spent it in one way, and he in another." As the last words left his lips a hand fell heavily upon his shoulder, and a voice--the voice of Sillbrook--asked him harshly what he wanted. "A look into your fine parlor," answered Amos roughly. "Strange I wanted to see it, wasn't it? It ought not to matter to me, of course, what use you make o' my money." "Your money!" said Sillbrook, with a loud laugh. "That's a crazy joke! Come, my man, you're drunk. Get out of here, or I'll have you put where you can make your jokes to yourself." "You think you're rich enough now to speak to me as you choose," said Amos hotly. "Time was when you wouldn't have dared. But I tell you, Jason Sillbrook, I've come to my senses to-night. It's a poor bargain where the gain's all on one side. We started even, and you've got all and I nothin'. But I tell you now, that, heaven helpin' me, you'll never have another dollar o' mine to spend. You'll never buy another coat like this out o' my money," and he struck in sudden passion the seal-trimmed garment which covered Sillbrook's ample proportions. "Be off with you," said the saloon-keeper. "You're too drunk to know what you're talking about." "And who made me drunk? answer that question, Jason Sillbrook," screamed Amos. "I'll answer nothing," said Sillbrook, and, tearing his coat from the grasp Amos had laid upon it, he strode up the path and disappeared within the house. The next morning, when the superintendent made his round of the mill, he missed one of the machine hands. "Where's Derby?" he asked, angrily. No one could answer his question. No one had seen Derby that day. And no one at the mill saw him for many a day to come. "I might have been kinder to him," thought Jane, when at last she became convinced that her husband had in truth left her. "Perhaps I did say more'n I should at times. Poor Amos! he was no more to blame than I was, after all. Perhaps he would have kept out o' that saloon if I'd only coaxed 'stead o' railing at him. He wasn't bad-hearted, an' he never meant more'n half he said." And as the days went by, and she forgot her past sorrows, she had only kind thoughts of her absent husband, and blamed only herself for their mutual misery. She wished with all her heart that she could "begin all over again," and try the effect of kindness and forbearance on Amos. But no such opportunity was given her, and she had little time for bitter thoughts or unavailing regret. The superintendent of the mill gave her eldest child, a lad of fourteen, a situation where he could earn $4 a week, and a girl a year younger found work in a millinery store. Thus Jane was relieved of much anxiety, and she was so skilful with her needle that she soon found herself able to "lay by something for a rainy day," as she expressed it. Gradually the children were provided with comfortable clothes and were sent to church and to Sunday-school, from which they had been debarred for several years, owing to a lack of decent apparel; the house was repaired, new furniture bought, a flower garden laid out in front of the cottage, and a new fence erected. People began to speak of Jane as a surprisingly smart woman, and to say that her husband's desertion had been a blessing in disguise. But in spite of her prosperity there was an ache ever at Jane's heart, and a regret which no good fortune could stifle. "If I'd only been kinder!" she would say to herself, as she lay awake at night and thought of her absent husband. "It was my fault he drank; I see that now. He was always telling me that my temper'd ruin him in the end, and now his word's come true." She felt as if she ought to make some atonement for her past sin, even though she was never to see her husband again, and with this end in view she determined to cure herself of the habit of scolding and fault-finding about which poor Amos had complained so bitterly. After a few struggles at first, she found her new path very pleasant to her feet, and was encouraged to persevere by the artless comments made by her children on the improvement in her temper. "You're so good, now, mother," they would say, when, instead of the sharp rebuke they had expected on the commission of some childish folly, came very kind words of regret and gentle reproof. "You are so different from what you used to be. If father could only come home and live with us now how happy we would all be." But Amos did not come. Year after year passed, and he sent no word or sign; and at length both wife and children grew to think of him as dead. Seven years! Seven years to a day had passed since Amos Derby had left his home, and up the street and past the mill came a tall man, with a cap of sealskin pulled low over his eyes, and handsome overcoat trimmed with the same costly fur over his arm. He whistled as he walked, and seemed in great good humor, for occasionally he would break out into a loud laugh. But as he came near the cottage where Jane Derby lived, he became more quiet, and an anxious expression stole into his face. "I wonder if she'll know me," he muttered. Going up to the window of the kitchen, he shaded his eyes with one hand and looked in. Jane was setting at supper, her five children about her. The room looked warm and comfortable. A bright fire burned in the stove, the kettle sang merrily, and a big maltese cat dozed among some plants on the broad window seat. Fred, the eldest son, a muscular young man of twenty-one now, was speaking, and his words came distinctly to the ears of the watcher outside. "Brooks goes to-morrow," he said, "and we are to have a new superintendent from ----. I hope he'll have a better temper than Brooks, and I wish----Who's that?" as a sudden knock came upon the door. "The new superintendent," said the tall man, as he walked into the room and threw his overcoat on a chair. "Jane, don't you know me?" With a glad cry that was almost a sob, Jane sprang forward, and was folded in the stranger's arms. "Children," she said, when she could speak, "this is your father, come back to us at last." "And to stay, please God," said Amos Derby, fervently, as in turn he embraced his children affectionately. "Jane, you shall have no room to complain of me in the future. I mean to make up to you for all I made you suffer before I found out what a fool I was to think more of my appetite than of my wife and children. Do you know what taught me my lesson?--Sillbrook's overcoat; and I've got one just like it. It will be a reminder, you know. And I've something better still--the place of superintendent at the mills here. I've worked hard, Jane, but my reward has come at last. When I left here I resolved never to come back until I could make myself worthy of you and the children. I found a place in the mills at ----, and worked my way up to be superintendent. Where there's a will, there's always a way, you know. I learned that you didn't need my help, so I waited on year after year, and now----" "We are together, never to part again this side the grave," finished Jane, "Amos, God rules us all for the best. Let us thank Him for the blessings He has bestowed upon us; and then--suppose you let us see how you look in the overcoat you've come by so justly." The news that Amos Derby was the new superintendent soon flew about the town, and great was the surprise thereat. No one was more astonished, perhaps, at the turn affairs had taken than Jason Sillbrook, and he wondered greatly at the good fortune of the man he had once so despised; but he never knew that it was largely due to the lesson Amos had learned from the saloon-keeper's overcoat.--_The Christian at Work._ * * * * * CONSUMPTION CURED. An old physician, retired from practice, having had placed in his hands by an East India missionary the formula of a simple vegetable remedy for the speedy and permanent cure of Consumption, Bronchitis, Catarrh, Asthma and all throat and Lung Affections, also a positive and radical cure for Nervous Debility and all Nervous Complaints, after having tested its wonderful curative powers in thousands of cases, has felt it his duty to make it known to his suffering fellows. Actuated by this motive and a desire to relieve human suffering, I will send free of charge, to all who desire it, this recipe, in German, French, or English, with full directions for preparing and using. Sent by mail by addressing with stamp, naming this paper. W. A. NOYES, _149 Power's Block, Rochester, N. Y._ * * * * * Honesty of purpose must not be held as evidence of ability. * * * * * [Illustration] HUMOROUS BAIT OF THE AVERAGE FISHERMAN. H. C. DODGE. This is the bait the fishermen take, the fishermen take, the fishermen take, when they start out the fish to wake so early in the morning. They take a nip before they go--a good one, ah! and long and slow, for fear the chills will lay them low so early in the morning. Another when they're on the street, which they repeat each time they meet for "luck"--for that's the way to greet a fisher in the morning. And when they are on the river's brink again they drink without a wink--to fight ma- laria they think it proper in the morn- ing. They tip a flask with true delight when there's a bite; if fishing's light they "smile" the more till jolly tight, all fishing they are scorning. An- other nip as they depart: one at the mart and one to part, but none when in the house they dart, ex- pecting there'll be mourning. This is the bait the fisher- men try who fishes buy at prices high and tell each one a bigger lie of fish- ing in the morning. Whose Cold Feet? "Are you troubled with cold feet on retiring?" asked Yeast of Crimsonbeak, Saturday night, as they were returning from market freighted with provender. "I should say I was!" replied Crimsonbeak emphatically, while a regular chills-and-fever shudder was seen to distribute itself over his frame at the recollection which the question recalled. "I suppose you would like to learn how to avoid them?" replied the philanthropist, smiling at the thought of an opportunity to fire off one of his pet theories. "I would give almost anything to be fortunate enough to escape them," said the despairing Crimsonbeak, in all truthfulness. "Well it is easy enough done," went on his companion; "soak your feet in cold water the first thing when you get up in the morning; towards night run about three-quarters of a mile, and then soak your feet again in cold water on retiring." "Well, I can't see how that is going to keep her feet from troubling me." "Her cold feet from troubling you!" repeated Yeast, a little confused. "What do you mean?" "Mean? Why, I mean that my wife's cold feet are the ones that chill me with an Arctic region touch. Whose feet did you suppose I meant, my mother-in-law's?" shouted the excited Crimsonbeak, darting into his gate and leaving his neighbor to his own reflections. Changed Relations. "Now that we are engaged," said Miss Pottleworth, "come and let me introduce you to papa." "I believe that I have met him," replied young Spickle. "But in another capacity than that of son-in-law." "Yes--er, but I'd rather not meet him to-night." "Oh, you must," and despite the almost violent struggles of the young fellow, he was drawn into the library, where a large, red-faced man, with a squint in one eye, and an enlargement of the nose, sat looking over a lot of papers. "Father," said the girl. "Hum," he replied, without looking up. "I wish to present to you--" "What?" he exclaimed, looking up and catching sight of young Spickle. "Have you the impudence to follow me here? Didn't I tell you that I would see you to-morrow?" "Why, father, you don't know Mr. Spickle, do you?" "I don't know his name, but I know that he has been to my office three times a day for the past week with a bill. I know him well enough. I can't pay that bill to-night, young man. Come to my office to-morrow." "I hope," said Spickle, "that you do not think so ill of me. I have not come to collect the bill you have referred to, but--" "What? Got another one?" "You persist in misunderstanding me. I did not come to collect a bill, I can come to-morrow and see you about that. To-night I proposed to your daughter, and have been accepted. Our mission is to acquaint you with the fact and gain your consent to our marriage." "Well," said the old fellow, "is that all? Blamed if I didn't think you had a bill. Take the girl, if that's what you want, but say, didn't I tell you to bring the bill to-morrow?" "Yes, sir." "Well, you needn't. Our relations are different now. Wish I had a daughter for every bill collector in town." It Makes a Difference. "So you have been fighting again on your way home from school!" "Y-yes, sir." "Didn't I tell you this sort of business had got to stop?" "Yes, pa, but--" "No excuses, sir! You probably provoked the quarrel!" "Oh, no! no! He called me names!" "Names? What of it? When a boy calls you names walk along about your business. Take off that coat!" "But he didn't call me names!" "Oh, he didn't? Take off that vest!" "When he called me names I never looked at him, but when he pitched into you, I--I had to fight!" "What! Did he call me names?" "Lots of 'em, father! He said you lied to your constituents, and went back on the caucus and had!"-- "William, put on your coat and vest, and here's a nickel to buy peanuts! I don't want you to come up a slugger, and I wish you to stand well with your teacher, but if you can lick the boy who says I ever bolted a regular nomination or went back on my end of the ward, don't be afraid to sail in!"--_Free Press._ * * * * * One of the Harvard students has fitted up his room at a cost of $4,000. We suspect that the young man's room is better than his company. * * * * * "Don't be afraid," said a snob to a German laborer: "sit down and make yourself my equal." "I would haff to blow my brains out," was the reply of the Teuton. * * * * * "Yes," said Mrs. Egomoi, "I used to think a great deal of Mrs. Goode, she was always so kind to me; but then, I've found out that she treats everybody just the same." * * * * * Jerrold said to an ardent young gentleman, who burned with a desire to see himself in print: "Be advised by me, young man: don't take down the shutters before there is something in the window." * * * * * Arthur--"I say, what do you mean by fighting my hog all the time?" Bismarck--"I means nodding in de vorld; I vash not fighting dot pig. We vash choost playing mit one anudder." * * * * * "Yes," said a fashionable lady, "I think Mary has made a very good match. I heard her husband is one of the shrewdest and most unprincipled lawyers in the profession, and of course he can afford to gratify her every wish." PRINTER'S INK. Little drops of printer's ink, A little type "displayed," Make our merchant bosses And all their big parade. Little bits of stinginess, Discarding printer's ink, Busts the man of business, And sees his credit sink. * * * * * "Jump on the scale," the butcher said Unto a miss one day, "I'm used to weighing, and," said he, "I'll tell you what you weigh." "Ah, yes," came quick the sweet reply From lips seemed made to kiss, "I'm sure, sir, that it would not be First time you've weighed amiss." The butcher blushed; he hung his head And knew not what to say; He merely wished to weigh the girl-- Himself was given away. * * * * * "What did that lady say?" asked Mr. Buyem of his confidential clerk. "I'd rather not repeat her words, sir," replied the clerk. "But I must know, Mr. Blume--must know, sir." "Oh! if you insist upon it, sir, I suppose I must tell you. She said you were all business, but you lacked culture." "So?" exclaimed Mr. Buyem, in astonishment. "Lack culture, eh? Look here, Mr. Blume, d'ye know you' oughter told me that long ago? Let's have some right away before Scribe & Blowhard can get ahead of us." OUT OF THE DEPTHS. Our Correspondent's Researches and a Remarkable Occurrence He Describes. ST. ALBANS, Vt., Jan. 10, 1884. MESSRS. EDITORS: The upper portion of Vermont is one of the pleasantest regions in America during the summer, and one of the bleakest during the winter. It affords ample opportunity for the tourist, providing he chooses the proper season, but the present time is not that season. Still there are men and women here who not only endure the climate, but praise it unstintingly, and that, too, in the face of physical hardships the most intense. The writer heard of a striking illustration of this a few days since which is given herewith: Mr. Joseph Jacques is connected with the Vermont Central Railroad in the capacity of master mason. He is well advanced in years, with a ruddy complexion and hale appearance, while his general bearing is such as to instantly impress one with his strict honor and integrity. Several years ago he became afflicted with most distressing troubles, which prevented the prosecution of his duties. He was languid, and yet restless, while at times a dizziness would come over him which seemed almost blinding. His will power was strong, and he determined not to give way to the mysterious influence which seemed undermining his life. But the pain and annoying symptoms were stronger than his will, and he kept growing gradually worse. About that time he began to notice a difficulty in drawing on his boots, and it was by the greatest effort that he was able to force his feet into them. In this manner several weeks passed by, until finally one night, while in great agony, he discovered that his feet had in a short while, swollen to enormous proportions. The balance of the narrative can best be described in his own words. He said: "When my wife discovered the fact that I was so bloated, she sent for the doctor immediately. He made a most careful examination and pronounced me in a very serious condition. Notwithstanding his care, I grew worse, and the swelling of my feet gradually extended upward in my body. The top of my head pained me terribly; indeed, so badly that at times it seemed almost as if it would burst. My feet were painfully cold, and even when surrounded with hot flannels and irons felt as if a strong wind were blowing on them. Next my right leg became paralyzed. This gave me no pain, but it was exceedingly annoying. About this time I began to spit blood most freely, although my lungs were in perfect condition, and I knew it did not come from them. My physicians were careful and untiring in their attentions, but unable to relieve my sufferings. My neighbors and friends thought I was dying and many called to see me, fully twenty-five on a single Sunday that I now recall. At last my agony seemed to culminate in the most intense, sharp pains I have ever known or heard of. If red hot knives sharpened to the highest degree had been run through my body constantly they could not have hurt me worse. I would spring up in bed, sometimes as much as three feet, cry out in my agony and long for death. One night the misery was so intense that I arose and attempted to go into the next room, but was unable to lift my swollen feet above the little threshold that obstructed them. I fell back upon the bed and gasped in my agony, but felt unable even to breathe. It seemed like death. "Several years ago Rev. Dr. J. E. Rankin, now of Washington, was stationed here as pastor of the Congregational church. We all admired and respected him, and my wife remembered seeing somewhere that he had spoken in the highest terms of a preparation which had cured some of his intimate friends. We determined to try this remedy, accordingly sent for it, and, to make a long story short, it completely restored my health, brought me back from the grave, and I owe all I have in the way of health and strength to Warner's Safe Cure, better known as Warner's Safe Kidney and Liver Cure. I am positive that if I had taken this medicine when I felt the first symptoms above described, I might have avoided all the agony I afterward endured, to say nothing of the narrow escape I had from death." In order that all possible facts bearing upon the subject might be known, I called on Dr. Oscar F. Fassett, who was for nineteen years United States Examining Surgeon, and who attended Mr. Jacques during his sickness. He stated that Mr. Jacques had a most pronounced case of Albuminuria or Bright's disease of the kidneys. That an analysis showed the presence of albumen and casts in great abundance and that he was in a condition where few if any ever recover. His recovery was due to Warner's Safe Cure. Mr. John W. Hobart, General Manager of the Vermont Central railroad, stated that Mr. Jacques was one of the best and most faithful of his employes, that his sickness had been an exceedingly severe one and the company were not only glad to again have his services, but grateful to the remedy that had cured so valuable a man. Mr. James M. Foss, assistant superintendent and master mechanic of the Vermont Central railroad, is also able to confirm this. I do not claim to be a great discoverer, but I do think I have found in the above a most remarkable case and knowing the unusual increase of Bright's disease feel that the public should have the benefit of it. It seems to me a remedy that can accomplish so much in the last stages ought do even more for the first approach of this deceptive yet terrible trouble. F. B. * * * * * To be ruined your own way is some comfort. When so many people would ruin us, it is a triumph over the villany of the world to be ruined after one's own pattern. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. ONE CENT invested in a postal card and addressed as below WILL give to the writer full information as to the best lands in the United States now for sale; how he can BUY them on the lowest and best terms, also the full text of the U.S. land laws and how to secure 320 ACRES of Government Lands in Northwestern Minnesota and Northeastern Dakota. ADDRESS: JAMES B. POWER, Land and Emigration Commissioner, ST. PAUL, MINN. * * * * * MEDICAL. DISEASE CURED Without Medicine. _A Valuable Discovery for supplying Magnetism to the Human System. Electricity and Magnetism utilized as never before for Healing the Sick._ THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO.'s MAGNETIC KIDNEY BELT! FOR MEN IS WARRANTED TO CURE _Or Money refunded_, the following diseases without medicine:--_Pain in the Back, Hips, Head, or Limbs, Nervous Debility, Lumbago, General Debility, Rheumatism, Paralysis, Neuralgia, Sciatica, Diseases of the Kidneys, Spinal Diseases, Torpid Liver_, GOUT SEMINAL EMISSIONS, IMPOTENCY, ASTHMA, HEART DISEASE, DYSPEPSIA, CONSTIPATION, ERYSIPELAS, INDIGESTION, HERNIA OR RUPTURE, CATARRH, PILES, EPILEPSY, DUMB AGUE, ETC. When any debility of the GENERATIVE ORGANS occurs, LOST VITALITY, LACK OF NERVE FORCE AND VIGOR, WASTING WEAKNESS, and all those Diseases of a personal nature, from whatever cause, the continuous stream of Magnetism permeating through the parts, must restore them to a healthy action. There is no mistake about this appliance. TO THE LADIES:--If you are afflicted with LAME BACK, WEAKNESS OF THE SPINE, FALLING OF THE WOMB, LEUCORRHOEA, CHRONIC INFLAMMATION AND ULCERATION OF THE WOMB, INCIDENTAL HEMORRHAGE OR FLOODING, PAINFUL, SUPPRESSED, AND IRREGULAR MENSTRUATION, BARRENNESS, AND CHANGE OF LIFE, THIS IS THE BEST APPLIANCE AND CURATIVE AGENT KNOWN. For all forms of FEMALE DIFFICULTIES it is unsurpassed by anything before invented, both as a curative agent and as a source of power and vitalization. Price of either Belt with Magnetic Insoles, $10, sent by express C.O.D., and examination allowed, or by mail on receipt of price. In ordering send measure of waist, and size of shoe. Remittance can be made in currency, sent in letter at our risk. The Magneton Garments are adapted to all ages, are worn over the under-clothing (NOT NEXT TO THE BODY LIKE THE MANY GALVANIC AND ELECTRIC HUMBUGS ADVERTISED SO EXTENSIVELY), and should be taken off at night. They hold their POWER FOREVER, and are worn at all seasons of the year. Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical treatment WITHOUT MEDICINE," with thousands of testimonials. THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 STATE STREET. CHICAGO, ILL. NOTE.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our other Magnetic Appliances. Positively no cold feet when they are worn, or money refunded. * * * * * PUBLICATIONS. MARSHALL M. KIRKMAN'S BOOKS ON RAILROAD TOPICS. DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A RAILROAD MAN IF YOU DO, THE BOOKS DESCRIBED BELOW POINT THE WAY. The most promising field for men of talent and ambition at the present day is the railroad service. The pay is large in many instances, while the service is continuous and honorable. Most of our railroad men began life on the farm. Of this class is the author of the accompanying books descriptive of railway operations, who has been connected continuously with railroads as a subordinate and officer for 27 years. He was brought up on a farm, and began railroading as a lad at $7 per month. He has written a number of standard books on various topics connected with the organization, construction, management and policy of railroads. These books are of interest not only to railroad men but to the general reader as well. They are indispensable to the student. They present every phase of railroad life, and are written in an easy and simple style that both interests and instructs. The books are as follows: "RAILWAY EXPENDITURES--THEIR EXTENT, OBJECT AND ECONOMY."--A Practical Treatise on Construction and Operation. In Two Volumes, 850 pages. $4.00 "HAND BOOK OF RAILWAY EXPENDITURES."--Practical Directions for Keeping the Expenditure Accounts. 2.00 "RAILWAY REVENUE AND ITS COLLECTION."--And Explaining the Organization of Railroads. 2.50 "THE BAGGAGE PARCEL AND MAIL TRAFFIC OF RAILROADS."--An interesting work on this important service; 425 pages. 2.00 "TRAIN AND STATION SERVICE"--Giving The Principal Rules and Regulations governing Trains; 280 pages. 2.00 "THE TRACK ACCOUNTS OF RAILROADS."--And how they should be kept. Pamphlet. 1.00 "THE FREIGHT TRAFFIC WAY-BILL."--Its Uses Illustrated and Described. Pamphlet. .50 "MUTUAL GUARANTEE."--A Treatise on Mutual Suretyship. Pamphlet. .50 Any of the above books will be sent post paid on receipt of price, by PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., 150 Monroe St. CHICAGO, ILL. Money should be remitted by express, or by draft check or post office order. * * * * * MAP Of the United States and Canada, Printed in Colors, size 4�2-1/2 feet, also a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER for one year. Sent to any address for $2.00. * * * * * GENERAL NEWS. Florida farmers are now planting Irish potatoes. The St. Charles Hotel, Paducah, Ky., was burned Sunday night. Another relief party for the Greeley arctic expedition is to be sent out. Wm. H. Guion, of the Steamship firm of Williams has failed for $2,000,000. Music Hall, in Whitechapel, London, burned on Monday; loss $200,000. Ice has prevented the ferry boats from crossing the St. Clair river at Port Huron. The prohibitionists declare that they will place a presidential ticket in the field next fall. Lowell manufacturers have given employes notice that there will be a reduction of ten per cent in wages beginning Feb. 1. An elevated road, adapted both to passengers and freight, is to be constructed along the levee at New Orleans within two years. There was a railway wreck, caused by a broken rail, on the Wabash road near Macon, Mo., on Monday; several persons were injured. It is estimated that the United States Senate is the wealthiest deliberative body in the world, the seventy-six members of that body representing $180,000,000. A rumor is in circulation at Ottawa, Canada, that the Canadian Pacific road has asked the government for additional assistance to the amount of $14,000,000. A colored base-ball club of professionals has been formed at Chicago, and will be ready to take the road May 1. They are backed by a stock company. It is claimed that there is at the present time between 100 and 150 foreign vessels engaged in the oyster traffic on the Virginia coast without right or authority. The people of Ouray, Col., lynched Mike Cuddigan and wife Saturday, on suspicion of having murdered a child whom they took from a Catholic asylum at Denver. It is said that the buffaloes have come north of the Missouri river, in Montana, and the Indians killed eleven hundred in one day not far from the mouth of the Musselshell. The horror of the week was the wrecking of the steamer City of Columbus off Martha's Vineyard, January 19th. There were 129 persons on board of whom ninety-seven were lost. A seal was discovered in the track of the steamer Armstrong, at Morristown, N. Y., on the St. Lawrence river. This was the third or fourth seal seen in that vicinity in the last half-dozen years. The candle factory of E. L. Schneider & Co., located on the corner of Wallace and McGregor streets, Chicago, was Sunday swept away by fire. The loss is $150,000, and the insurance $57,000. The friends of Mr. Hintz, the unsuccessful candidate for postmaster at Elgin, Illinois, threaten to defeat the re-election of Representative Ellwood in the next campaign, who is held responsible for his defeat. Two Irish members of the British Parliament, Matthew Arnold and P. J. Sheridan,--the latter supposed to be the mysterious No. 1 of the Phoenix Park assassination scheme--are in Chicago the present week. Mrs. Dukes, a sister of the murdered Zura Burns, has left her home in Dakota, in company with her father, to give what she claims is damaging evidence against O. A. Carpenter, before the grand jury at Lincoln, Ill. The matter of the final disposition of the assets of the estate of B. F. Allen is being heard by a register at Des Moines. A firm which has purchased a large share of the claims at 5 per cent offers $330,000 for the property remaining, but other creditors hold out for $400,000. Judge Shepard, in the Superior Court of Chicago, Saturday, dismissed three bills for divorce, holding that when a wife separated from her husband her residence as well as her domicile follows his, and that the Illinois statutes excludes from its courts all suits for divorce in behalf of persons not legal residents. The Onondaga (New York) Indians have held another council, at which it was shown that a majority of the nation is opposed to dividing the lands in severally, but is willing to agree to a division of such timber lands as can not be protected against depredations. The Christian party is to be represented at the next conference with the State commissioners. Nearly one-fourth of the business portion of Leipsic, O., was burned Friday night, and flames swept away 1,145 bales of cotton at Murrell's Point, La., and twenty-one buildings at Lowell, Mich. A boiler explosion at Cincinnati, in the Corrugating company's manufactory, Saturday, led to the destruction of $50,000 in property. [Illustration] MARKETS. FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL. OFFICE OF THE PRAIRIE FARMER.} CHICAGO. Jan 22, 1884. } Papers devoted to finance and trade inform us that the number of business failures in 1883 was 9,184 against 8,782 in the hard times of 1877. The fear is, that the worst is not yet come, but this feeling happily is not by any means universal among most far seeing business men. The transactions at the Chicago banks were a trifle slower than last week. The regular loan market was quotable on Monday at 6@7 per cent. Eastern exchange was firm at 60c per $1,000. The stock markets at the East were a little feverish and here the same feeling was noticeable. There are rumors of financial embarrassment in high places, and Mr. Gould himself is said to be a little nervous over the weakness in many of his stocks. Government securities are as follows: 4's coupon, 1907 |Q. Apr. | 123-1/4 4's reg., 1907 |Q. Apr. | 123-1/4 4-1/2's coupon, 1891 |Q. Mar. | 114-1/8 4-1/2's registered, 1891 |Q. Mar. | 114-1/8 3's registered |Q. Mar. | 100 GRAIN AND PROVISIONS. The receipts of flour at this point for the forty-eight hours ending Monday morning were greatly in excess of those for the corresponding week last year. In wheat last year the receipts were 28,007 bushels; this year 50,532. Corn last year 189,661; this year 226,990. Flour was unchanged, the article not yet feeling the uncertain condition of the wheat market. Choice to favorite white winters $5 25@5 50 Fair to good brands of white winters 4 75@5 00 Good to choice red winters 5 25@5 50 Prime to choice springs 4 75@5 00 Good to choice export stock, in sacks, extras 4 25@4 50 Good to choice export stock, double extras 4 50@4 65 Fair to good Minnesota springs 4 50@4 75 Choice to fancy Minnesota springs 5 25@5 75 Patent springs 6 00@6 50 Low grades 2 25@3 50 WHEAT.--Red winter, No. 3, 92; car lots of spring, No. 2, sold at 88-3/4c; No. 3, do. 81@84. CORN.--Moderately active. Car lots No 2, 51@52c; rejected, 43@44; new mixed, 48@50-1/2c. OATS.--No. 2 in store, closed 32-1/2@32-3/4. RYE.--May, in store 57@57-1/2. BARLEY.--No. 2, 49 in store; No. 3, f. o. b. 52-1/2c. FLAX.--Closed at $1 52 on track. TIMOTHY.--$1 31-1/2@1 35 per bushel. Little doing. CLOVER.--Quiet at $6 05@6 10 for prime. PROVISIONS.--Mess pork, February, $14 75@14 78 per bbl; Green hams, 10-1/2c per lb. Short ribs, $7 65 per cwt. LARD.--February, $8 65. LUMBER. Lumber unchanged. Quotations for green are as follows: Short dimension, per M $ 9 50@10 00 Long dimension, per M 10 00@11 50 Boards and strips, No. 2 11 00@13 00 Boards and strips, medium 13 00@16 00 Boards and strips, No. 1 choice 16 00@20 00 Shingles, standard 2 10@ 2 20 Shingles, choice 2 25@ 2 30 Shingles, extra 2 40@ 2 60 Lath 1 65@ 1 70 COUNTRY PRODUCE. NOTE.--The quotations for the articles named in the following list are generally for commission lots of goods and from first hands. While our prices are based as near as may be on the landing or wholesale rates, allowance must be made for selections and the sorting up for store distribution. BRAN.--Quoted at $15@12 25 per ton; BEANS.--Hand picked mediums $2 00@2 10. Hand picked navies, $2 15@2 20. BUTTER.--Dull and without change. Choice to extra creamery, 33@36c per lb.; fair to good do 25@32c; fair to choice dairy, 23@28c; common to choice packing stock fresh and sweet, 18@22c; ladle packed 10@13c; fresh made, streaked butter, 9@11c. BROOM-CORN.--Good to choice hurl 6-1/2@7-1/2c per lb; green self-working 5@6c; red-tipped and pale do 4@5c; inside and covers 3@4c; common short corn 2-1/2@3-1/2c; crooked, and damaged, 2@4c, according to quality. CHEESE.--Choice full-cream cheddars 13@13-1/2c per lb; medium quality do 9@10c; good to prime full cream flats 13@13-3/4c; skimmed cheddars 9@10c; good skimmed flats 7@9c; hard-skimmed and common stock 3@4c. EGGS.--In a small way the best brands are quotable at 27@28c per dozen; 20@23c for good ice house stock; 15@18c per pickled. HAY.--No 1 timothy $9@9 50 per ton; No 2 do $8 00@8 50; mixed do $7@8; upland prairie $8 00@10 75; No 1 prairie $6@7; No 2 do $4 50@5 50. Small bales sell at 25@50c per ton more than large bales. HIDES AND PELTS.--Green-cured light hides 8-1/4c per lb; do heavy cows 8c; No 2 damaged green-salted hides 6c; green-salted calf 12@12-1/2 cents; green-salted bull 6c; dry-salted hides 11 cents; No. 2 two-thirds price; No. 1 dry flint 14@14-1/2c. Sheep pelts salable at 28@32c for the estimated amount of wash wool on each pelt. All branded and scratched hides are discounted 15 per cent from the price of No. 1. HOPS.--Prime to choice New York State hops 25@26c per lb; Pacific coast of 23@26c: fair to good Wisconsin 15@20c. POULTRY.--Prices for good to choice dry picked and unfrozen lots are: Turkeys 13@14c per lb; chickens 9@10c; ducks 12@13c; geese 9@11c. Thin, undesirable, and frozen stock 2@3c per lb less than these figures; live offerings nominal. POTATOES.--Good to choice 30@33c per bu. on track; common to fair 30@35c. Illinois sweet potatoes range at $3 50@4 per bbl for yellow. TALLOW AND GREASE.--No 1 country tallow 7@7-1/4c per lb; No 2 do 6-1/4@6-1/2c. Prime white grease 6@6-1/2c; yellow 5-1/4@5-3/4c; brown 4-1/2@5. VEGETABLES.--Cabbage, $8@12 per 100; celery, 25@35c per doz bunches; onions, $1 00@1 25 per bbl for yellow, and $1 for red; turnips, $1 35@1 50 per bbl for rutabagas, and $1 00 for white flat. WOOL.--from store range as follows for bright wools from Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Eastern Iowa--dark Western lots generally ranging at 1@2c per lb. less. Coarse and dingy tub 25@30 Good medium tub 31@34 Unwashed bucks' fleeces 14@15 Fine unwashed heavy fleeces 18@22 Fine light unwashed heavy fleeces 22@23 Coarse unwashed fleeces 21@22 Low medium unwashed fleeces 24@25 Fine medium unwashed fleeces 26@27 Fine washed fleeces 32@33 Coarse washed fleeces 26@28 Low medium washed fleeces 30@32 Fine medium washed fleeces 34@35 Colorado and Territory wools range as follows: Lowest grades 14@16 Low medium 18@22 Medium 22@26 Fine 16@24 Wools from New Mexico: Lowest grades 14@16 Part improved 16@17 Best Improved 19@23 Burry from 2c to 10c off; black 2c to 5c off. LIVE STOCK MARKETS. The total receipts and shipments for last week were as follows: Received. Shipped. Cattle 42,110 18,986 Calves 527 346 Hogs 140,814 34,161 Sheep 24,600 11,815 CATTLE.--Very few choice lots are coming in. Receipts have fallen off some 3,000 head. Of those that arrive the "unripe" predominate. Some of our feeders are undoubtedly inclined to market too young. Some cattle by experienced breeders and feeders may be "ripened" at two years, but in the majority of cases, especially with anything else than high grade short-horns, this can not be done. There is more money in holding common stock a few months longer. The feeling on Monday was very firm, and prices advanced considerably. Good heavy cattle brought as high as $6 65, though the majority sold at less. Six steers averaging 1,523 lbs brought $7. Cattle for shippers and canners went at $4 65@5; bulls $2 50@4; cows $2 25@4 75; stockers and feeders scarce at $3 40@4 45 with some of the latter at $4 50@5. HOGS.--The hogs now arriving are light and the number is not large. Since November 1st, Chicago packers have put up 325,000 less hogs than for the corresponding period last year, and the total packing of the country has fallen off 285,000 head. Our packing houses are now running to about one half their capacity. Prices are firm. Common to fair stock $5 25@5 75; good to choice heavy $5 80@6 30; skips and culls $4 25@5 15. Note.--All sales of hogs are made subject to a shrinkage of 40 lbs for piggy sows and 80 lbs for stags. Dead hogs sell for 1-1/2c per lb for weights of 200 and over and [Transcriber's Note: blank in original] for weights of less than 100 lbs. SHEEP.--Arrivals are large. Several carloads from Texas came in on Monday. Common to good $3 30@4 87-1/2; fancy head $5 75. * * * * * COMMISSION MERCHANTS. J.H. WHITE & CO., PRODUCE COMMISSION 106 S. Water St., Chicago. Refers to this paper. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS. [Illustration] YOUR NAME printed on 50 Cards ALL NEW designs of _Gold Floral. Remembrances, Sentiment, Hand Floral_, etc., with _Love, Friendship_, and _Holiday Mottoes_, 10c. 7 pks. and this elegant Ring, 50c., 15 pks. & Ring, $1. [Illustration] 12 NEW "CONCEALED NAME" Cards (name concealed with hand holding flowers with mottoes) 20c. 7 pks. and this Ring for $1. Agents' sample book and full outfit, 25c. Over 200 new Cards added this season. Blank Cards at wholesale prices. NORTHFORD CARD CO. Northford, Conn. * * * * * First-Class Plants OF BEST VARIETIES OF SMALL FRUITS. Catalogues free. Address O. B. GALUSHA, Peoria, Ill. * * * * * [Illustration] Print Your Own Cards Labels, Envelopes, etc. with our $3 PRINTING PRESS. Larger sizes for circulars, etc., $8 to $75. For pleasure, money making, young or old. Everything easy, printed instructions. Send 2 stamps for Catalogue of Presses, Type, Cards, etc., to the factory. KELSEY & CO., MERIDEN, CONN. * * * * * FOR SALE. Pure bred Bronze Turkeys and Pekin Ducks. Also eggs in Season. MRS. J. F. FULTON, Petersburg. 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CLINTON BROS. & Co., Clintonville, Ct. * * * * * PIG EXTRICATOR To aid animals in giving birth. Send for free circular to WM. DULIN, Avoca, Pottawattamie Co., Ia. * * * * * EDUCATIONAL. MT. CARROLL SEMINARY And Musical Conservatory, Carroll Co., Ill., _Never had an agent_ to beg funds or pupils. The PECUNIARY AID SYSTEM _is original_, and helps many worthy girls, without means, to an education. _"Oreads" free._ * * * * * SPECIAL OFFER. $67 FOR $18! [Illustration] A Superb New Family Sewing Machine! Combining all the most recent improvements, and now selling for $65, is offered by THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY to subscribers to THE PRAIRIE FARMER FOR $18, including one year's subscription to the paper. This exceptional offer will remain open for a few days only. * * * * * SEWING SILK. CORTICELLI SEWING SILK, [Illustration] LADIES, TRY IT! THE BEST SEWING SILK MADE. EVERY SPOOL WARRANTED. FULL LENGTH, SMOOTH AND STRONG. 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29714	----	file was produced from images produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University.) THE NEGRO FARMER By CARL KELSEY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF PH. D. Printed and on sale by JENNINGS & PYE CHICAGO 1903 PRICE FIFTY CENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Introduction 5 II. Geographic Location 9 III. Economic Heritage 22 IV. Present Situation 29 Virginia 32 Sea Coast 38 Central District 43 Alluvial Region 52 V. Social Environment 61 VI. The Outlook 67 VII. Agricultural Training 71 Population Maps 80 =OLD-TIME NEGROES.= CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. In the last three hundred years there have been many questions of general interest before the American people. It is doubtful, however, if there is another problem, which is as warmly debated to-day as ever and whose solution is yet so uncertain, as that of the Negro. In the second decade of the seventeenth century protests were being filed against black slavery, but the system was continued for nearly 250 years. The discussion grew more and more bitter, and to participation in it ignorance, then as now, was no bar. The North had less and less direct contact with the Negro. The religious hostility to human bondage was strengthened by the steadily increasing difference in economic development which resulted in the creation of sectional prejudices and jealousies. The North held the negro to be greatly wronged, and accounts of his pitiable condition and of the many individual cases of ill treatment fanned the flames of wrath. The reports of travelers, however, had little influence compared with the religious sentiments which felt outraged by the existence of bond servitude in the land. Through all the years there was little attempt to scientifically study the character of the problem or the nature of the subject. A mistaken economic sentiment in the South and a strong moral sentiment at the North rendered such studies unnecessary, if not impossible. The South, perceiving the benefits of slavery, was blind to its fundamental weaknesses, and the North, unacquainted with Negro character, held to the natural equality of all men. Thus slavery itself became a barrier to the getting of an adequate knowledge of the needs of the slave. The feeling grew that if the shackles of slavery were broken, the Negro would at once be as other men. The economic differences finally led to the war. It is not to be forgotten that slavery itself was not the cause of the war, nor was there any thought on the part of the Union leaders to make the blacks citizens. That this was done later was a glowing tribute to their ignorance of the real demands of the situation. The Republican party of to-day shows no indication of repeating this mistake in the newly acquired islands. I would not be understood as opposing suffrage of the blacks, but any thoughtful observer must agree that as a race they were not prepared for popular government at the time of their liberation. The folly of the measures adopted none can fail to see who will read the history of South Carolina or Mississippi during what is called "Reconstruction." Immediately after the war, new sources of information regarding the Negro were afforded the North. The leaders of the carpet-bag regime, playing political games, circulated glowing reports of the progress of the ex-slaves. A second class of persons, the teachers, went South, and back came rose-colored accounts. It might seem that the teacher could best judge of the capacity of a people. The trouble is that in the schools they saw the best specimens of the race, at the impressionable period of their lives, and under abnormal conditions. There is in the school an atmosphere about the child which stimulates his desire to advance, but a relapse often comes when ordinary home conditions are renewed. Moreover, it is well known that the children of all primitive races are very quick and apt up to a certain period in their lives, excelling often children of civilized peoples, but that this disappears when maturity is reached. Hence, the average teacher, not coming in close contact with the mass of the people under normal surroundings, gives, although sincerely, a very misleading picture of actual conditions. A third class of informants were the tourists, and their ability to get at the heart of the situation is obvious. There remain to be mentioned the Negro teachers and school entrepreneurs. Naturally these have presented such facts as they thought would serve to open the purses of their hearers. Some have been honest, many more unintentionally dishonest, and others deliberately deceitful. The relative size of these classes it is unnecessary to attempt to ascertain. They have talked and sung their way into the hearts of the hearers as does the pitiful beggar on the street. The donor sees that evidently something is needed, and gives with little, if any, careful investigation as to the real needs of the case. The result of it all has been that the testimony of those who knew far more than was possible for any outsider, the southern whites, has gone unheeded, not to say that it has been spurned as hostile and valueless. The blame, of course, is not always on one side, and as will be shown later, there are many southern whites who have as little to do with the Negro, and consequently know as little about him, as the average New Yorker. This situation has been most unfortunate for all concerned. It should not be forgotten that the question of the progress of the Negro has far more direct meaning for the southerner, and that he is far more deeply interested in it than is his northern brother, the popular impression to the contrary notwithstanding. It is unnecessary to seek explanations, but it is a pleasure to recognize that there are many indications that a better day is coming, and indications now point to a hearty co-operation in educational efforts. There are many reasons for the change, and perhaps the greatest of these is summed up in "Industrial Training." The North is slowly learning that the Negro is not a dark-skinned Yankee, and that thousands of generations in Africa have produced a being very different from him whose ancestors lived an equal time in Europe. In a word, we now see that slavery does not account for all the differences between the blacks and whites, and that their origins lie farther back. Our acquaintance with the ancestors of the Negro is meager. We do not even know how many of the numerous African tribes are represented in our midst. A good deal of Semitic blood had already been infused into the more northern tribes. What influence did this have and how many descendants of these tribes are there in America? Tribal distinctions have been hopelessly lost in this country, and the blending has gone on so continuously that perhaps there would be little practical benefit if the stocks could be determined to-day. It is, however, a curious commentary on the turn discussions of the question have taken, that not until 1902 did any one find it advisable to publish a comprehensive study of the African environment and to trace its influence on subsequent development. Yet this is one of the fundamental preliminaries to any real knowledge of the subject. In close connection with the preceding is the question of the mulatto. Besides the blending of African stocks there has been a good deal of intermixture of white blood. We do not even know how many full blooded Africans there are in America, nor does the last census seek to ascertain. Mulattoes have almost entirely been the offspring of white fathers and black mothers, and probably most of the fathers have been boys and young men. Without attempting a discussion of this subject, whose results ethnologists cannot yet tell, it is certain that a half breed is not a full blood, a mulatto is not a Negro, in spite of the social classification to the contrary. The general belief is that the mulatto is superior, either for good or bad, to the pure Negro. The visitor to the South cannot fail to be struck with the fact that with rare exceptions the colored men in places of responsibility, in education or in business, are evidently not pure negroes. Even in slavery times, the mulattoes were preferred for certain positions, such as overseers, the blacks as field hands. Attention is called to this merely to show our ignorance of an important point. Some may claim that it is a matter of no consequence. This I cannot admit. To me it seems of some significance to know whether mulattoes (and other crosses) form more than their relative percentage of the graduates of the higher schools; whether they are succeeding in business better than the blacks; whether town life is proving particularly attractive to them; whether they have greater or less moral and physical stamina, than the blacks. The lack of definite knowledge should at least stop the prevalent practice of taking the progress of a band of mulattoes and attempting to estimate that of the Negroes thereby. It may be that some day the mulatto will entirely supplant the black, but there is no immediate probability of this. Until we know the facts, our prophecies are but wild guesses. It should be remembered that a crossing of white and black may show itself in the yellow negro or the changed head and features, either, or both, as the case may be. A dark skin is, therefore, no sure indication of purity and blood.[1] It is often taken for granted that the Negro has practically equal opportunities in the various parts of the South, and that a fairly uniform rate of progress may be expected. This assumption rests on an ignorance of the geographical location of the mass of blacks. It will be shown that they are living in several distinct agricultural zones in which success must be sought according to local possibilities. Development always depends upon the environment, and we should expect, therefore, unequal progress for the Negroes. Even the highest fruits of civilization fail if the bases of life are suddenly changed. The Congregational Church has not flourished among the Negroes as have some other denominations, in spite of its great activity in educational work. The American mode of government is being greatly modified to make it fit conditions in Porto Rico. The manufacturers of Pennsylvania and the farmers of Iowa do not agree as to the articles on which duties should be levied, and it is a question if the two have the same interpretation of the principle of protection. Different environments produce different types. So it will be in the case of the Negro. If we are to understand the conditions on which his progress depends, we must pay some attention to economic geography. That this will result in a recognition of the need for shaping plans and methods according to local needs is obvious. The present thesis does not pretend to be a completed study, much less an attempt to solve the Negro problem. It is written in the hope of calling attention to some of the results of this geographic location as illustrated in the situation of the Negro farmer in various parts of the South. The attempt is made to describe the situation of the average man. It is fully recognized that there are numbers of exceptions among the Negroes as well as among the white school teachers, referred to above. That there is much in the present situation, both of encouragement and discouragement, is patent. Unfortunately, most of us shut our eyes to one or the other set of facts and are wildly optimistic or pessimistic, accordingly. That there may be no misunderstanding of my position, let me say that I agree with the late Dr. J. L. M. Curry in stating that: "I have very little respect for the intelligence or the patriotism of the man who doubts the capacity of the negro for improvement or usefulness." CHAPTER II. GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION. The great Appalachian system, running parallel to the Atlantic coast, and ending in northern Alabama, forms the geological axis of the southern states. Bordering the mountains proper is a broad belt of hills known as the Piedmont or Metamorphic region, marked by granite and other crystalline rocks, and having an elevation decreasing from 1,000 to 500 feet. The soil varies according to the underlying rocks, but is thin and washes badly, if carelessly tilled. The oaks, hickories and other hardwoods, form the forests. In Virginia this section meets the lower and flatter country known as Tide-Water Virginia. In the southern part of this state we come to the Pine Hills, which follow the Piedmont and stretch, interrupted only by the alluvial lands of the Mississippi, to central Texas. The Pine Hills seldom touch the Piedmont directly, but are separated by a narrow belt of Sand Hills, which run from North Carolina to Alabama, then swing northward around the coal measures and spread out in Tennessee and Kentucky. This region, in general of poor soils, marks the falls of the rivers and the head of navigation. How important this is may easily be seen by noticing the location of the cities in Georgia, for instance, and remembering that the country was settled before the day of railroads. In Alabama the Black Prairie is interposed between the Pine Hills and the Sand Hills, and this prairie swings northward into Mississippi. The Pine Hills give way to the more level Pine Flats, which slope with a gradient of a few feet a mile to the ocean or the gulf, which usually has a narrow alluvial border. Going west from Alabama we cross the oak and hickory lands of Central Mississippi, which are separated from the alluvial district by the cane hills and yellow loam table lands. Beyond the bottom lands of the Mississippi (and Red river) we come to the oak lands of Missouri, Arkansas and Texas which stretch to the black prairies of Texas, which, bordering the red lands of Arkansas, run southwest finally, merging in the coast prairies near Austin. In the northern part of Arkansas we come to the foothills of the Ozarks. These different regions are shown by the dotted lines on the population maps. The soils of these various regions having never been subjected to a glacial epoch, are very diverse, and it would be a thankless task to attempt any detailed classification on the basis of fertility. The soils of the Atlantic side being largely from the crystalline rocks and containing therefore much silica, are reputed less fertile than the gulf soils. The alluvial lands of the Mississippi and other rivers are beyond question the richest of all. Shaler says: "The delta districts of the Mississippi and its tributaries and similar alluvial lands which occupy broad fields near the lower portion of other streams flowing into the gulf have proved the most enduringly fertile areas of the country." Next to these probably stand the black prairies. In all states there is more or less alluvial land along the streams, and this soil is always the best. It is the first land brought into cultivation when the country is settled, and remains most constantly in use. Each district has its own advantages and its own difficulties. In the metamorphic regions, the trouble comes in the attempt to keep the soil on the hills, while in the flat lands the problem is to get proper drainage. In the present situation of the Negro farmer the adaptability of the soil to cotton is the chief consideration. The first slaves were landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The importation was continued in spite of many protests, and the practice soon came into favor. Almost without interruption, in spite of various prohibitions, the slave traffic lasted right up to the very outbreak of the war, most of the later cargoes being landed along the gulf coast. Slavery proved profitable at the South; not so at the North, where it was soon abandoned. It was by no means, however, equally profitable in all parts of the South, and as time went on this fact became more noticeable. Thus at the outbreak of the war, Kentucky and Virginia were largely employed in selling slaves to the large plantations further south. Few new slaves had been imported into Virginia in the last one hundred years. The center of slavery thus moved southwest because of changing economic conditions, not because of any inherent opposition to the system. This gradual weeding out of the slaves in Virginia may very possibly account for the general esteem in which Virginia negroes have been held. To indicate the character of those sold South, Bracket[2] gives a quotation from a Baltimore paper of 1851 which advertised some good Negroes to be "exchanged for servants suitable for the South with bad characters." To trace the development of the slave-holding districts is not germain to the present study, interesting as it is in itself. It may be worth while to trace the progress in one state. In Georgia, in 1800, the blacks outnumbered the whites in the seacoast counties, excepting Camden, and were also in the majority in Richmond. In 1830 they also outnumbered the whites along the Savannah river and were reaching westward as far as Jones county. In 1850, besides the coast and the river, they were in a majority in a narrow belt crossing the state from Lincoln to Harris counties. By 1860 they had swung southward in the western part of the state and were in possession of most of the counties south of Troup, while the map of 1900 shows that they have added to this territory. In other parts of the state they have never been greatly in evidence. The influence of the rivers is again evident when we notice that they moved up to the head of navigation, then swung westward. As slavery developed, it was accompanied by a great extension of cotton growing, or, perhaps, it were truer to say that the gradual rise of cotton planting made possible the increased use of slaves. The center of the cotton industry had reached the middle of Alabama by 1850, was near Jackson, Mississippi, in 1860, and has since moved slowly westward. The most prosperous district of the South in 1860 was probably the alluvial lands of the Mississippi. This gives us the key to the westward trend of slavery. Let it be remembered, too, that the system of slavery demands an abundance of new lands to take the place of those worn out by the short-sighted cultivation adopted. Thus in the South little attention was paid to rotation of crops or to fertilizers. As long as the new land was abundant, it was not considered, and probably was not profitable to keep up the old. The result was that "the wild and reckless system of extensive cultivation practiced prior to the war had impoverished the land of every cotton-producing state east of the Mississippi river." As cotton became less and less profitable in the east the opening up of the newer and richer lands in the west put the eastern planter in a more and more precarious situation. Had cotton fallen to anything like its present price in the years immediately preceding the war, his lot would have been far worse. Another influence should be noted. Slavery tended to drive out of a community those who opposed the system, and also the poor whites, non-slave holders. The planters sought to buy out or expel this latter class, because of the temptation they were under to incite the slaves to steal corn and cotton and sell it to them at a low price. There was also trouble in many other ways. There was thus a tendency to separate the mass of the blacks from the majority of the whites. That this segregation actually arose a map of the proportionate populations for Alabama in 1860 shows. It may be claimed that there were other reasons for this separation, such as climatic conditions, etc. This may be partially true, but it evidently cannot be the principal reason, for we find the whites in the majority in many of the lowest and theoretically most unhealthful regions, as in the pine flats. This is the situation to-day also. The influence of the rivers in determining the settlement of the country has been mentioned. Nowhere was this more the case than in the alluvial lands of the Mississippi, the so-called "Delta." This country was low and flat, subject to overflows of the river. The early settlements were directly on the banks of the navigable streams, because this only was accessible, and because the land immediately bordering the streams is higher than the back land. Levees were at once started to control the rivers, but not until the railroads penetrated the country in 1884 was there any development of the back land. Even to-day most of this is still wild. The war brought numerous changes, but it is only in place here to consider those affecting the location of the people. The mobility of labor is one of the great changes. Instead of a fixed labor force we now have to deal with a body relatively free to go and come. The immediate result is that a stream of emigration sets in from the border states to the cities of the North, where there was great opportunity for servants and all sorts of casual labor. The following table shows the number of negroes in various northern cities in 1860 and also in 1900: 1860. 1900. Washington 10,983 86,702 Baltimore 27,898 79,258 Philadelphia 22,185 62,613 New York 16,785 60,666 St. Louis 3,297 35,516 Chicago 955 30,150 Coincident with the movement to the more distant towns came a development of southern cities. City life has been very attractive to Negroes here also, as the following table indicates: 1860. 1900. New Orleans 24,074 77,714 Atlanta 1,939 35,727 Richmond 14,275 32,230 Charleston 17,146 31,522 Savannah 8,417 28,090 Montgomery 4,502 17,229 Birmingham ... 16,575 Other cities show the same gains. As a rule, the negro has been the common laborer in the cities and in the trades does not seem to hold the same relative position he had in 1860. In recent years there has been quite a development of small tradesmen among them. A comparison of the two tables shows that Washington and Baltimore have more Negroes than New Orleans; that St. Louis has more than Atlanta and Richmond, while New York and Philadelphia contain double the number of Savannah and Charleston. This emigration to the North has had great effect upon many districts of the South. It seems also to be certain that the Negroes have not maintained themselves in the northern cities, and that the population has been kept up by constant immigration. What this has meant we may see when we find that in 1860 the Negroes were in the majority in five counties in Maryland, in two in 1900; in 43 in Virginia in 1860, in 35 in 1900; in North Carolina in 19 in 1860, in 15 in 1900. The map on page 13 shows the movement of the Negro population in Virginia between 1890 and 1900. The shaded counties, 60 in number, have lost in actual population (Negro). The total actual decrease in these counties was over 27,000. Even in the towns there has been a loss, for in 1890 the twelve towns of over 2,500 population contained 32,692 Negroes. In 1900 only 29,575. The only section in which there has been a heavy increase is the seacoast from Norfolk and Newport News to the north and including Richmond. A city like Roanoke also makes its presence felt. When we remember that the Negroes in Virginia number over 600,000, and that the total increase in the decade was only 25,000, a heavy emigration becomes clear. =VIRGINIA, 1890-1900. MOVEMENT OF NEGRO POPULATION. Shaded Counties show decrease. White Counties indicate increase. Figures show extent of change.= As a common laborer also the negro has borne his part in the development of the economical resources of the South. He has built the railroads and levees; has hewn lumber in the forests; has dug phosphate rock on the coast and coal in the interior. Wherever there has been a development of labor industry calling for unskilled labor he has found a place. All these have combined to turn him from the farm, his original American home. The changing agricultural conditions which have had a similar influence will be discussed later. Having thus briefly reviewed the influences which have had part in determining his general habitat we are ready to examine more closely his present location. The maps of the Negro population will show this for the different states. A word regarding these maps. They are drawn on the same scale, and the shading represents the same things for the different states. The density map should always be compared with the proportionate map to get a correct view of the actual situation. If this is not done, confused ideas will result. On the density maps if a county has a much heavier shading than surrounding ones, a city is probably the explanation. The reverse may be true on the proportionate maps where the lighter shading may indicate the presence of numbers of whites in some city, as in Montgomery County, Alabama, or Charleston County, South Carolina. Beginning with Virginia, we find almost no Negroes in the western mountain districts, but their numbers increase as we approach the coast and their center is in the southeast. The heavy district in North Carolina adjoins that in Virginia, diminishing in the southern part of the state. Entering South Carolina we discover a much heavier population, both actually and relatively. Geographical foundations unfortunately (for our purpose) do not follow county lines. It is very likely, however, that could we get at the actual location of the people, we should find that they had their influence. Evidently the Sand 'Hills have some significance, for the density map shows a lighter negro population. So does the Pine Flats district, although in this state the Negroes are in the majority in the region, having been long settled in the race districts. In no other state do the blacks outnumber the whites in the Pine Flats. In Georgia the northern part is in possession of the whites, as are the Pine Flats. The Negroes hold the center and the coast. In Florida the Negroes are in the Pine Hills. In Alabama they center in the Pine Hills and Black Prairie. In Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana they are in the alluvial regions, and in Texas they find their heaviest seat near Houston. Outside of the city counties we do not find a population of over 30 negroes to the square mile until South Carolina is reached, and the heaviest settlement is in the black prairie of Alabama and the alluvial region of Mississippi, and part of Louisiana. In Tennessee they are found along the river and in the red lands of the center, while in Kentucky they are chiefly located in the Limestone district. Summarizing their location, we may say that they start in the east-central portion of Virginia and follow the line of the Pine Hills to Alabama, only slightly encroaching upon the Metamorphic district, and except in South Carolina, on the pine flats. They occupy the black prairie of Alabama and Mississippi, and the lands of the river states with a smaller population in the Oak Hills of Texas, the red lands of Tennessee and some of the limestone district of Kentucky. It is worth while to examine one state more in detail and Alabama has been selected as being typical. The Negro proportion in the state in 1860 was 45.4 per cent, and in 1900 was 45.2 per cent. An examination of a proportionate map for 1860 would show that the slave owners found two parts of the state favorable to them. The first is along the Tennessee river in the North, and the second, the black prairie of the center. Of these the latter was by far the seat of the heavier population. It has already been suggested that this was probably the best land in the slave states, save the alluvial bottoms. Both districts were accessible by water. The Tombigbee and Alabama rivers reached all parts of the prairie, the Tennessee forming the natural outlet of the North. By referring now to the map of 1900, it is evident that some changes have taken place. The prairie country, the "Black Belt," is still in the possession of the Negroes, and their percentage is larger, having increased from 71 to 80. The population per square mile is also heavier. Dallas, Sumter and Lowndes counties had a Negro population of 23.6 per square mile in 1860, and 39.2 in 1900. In the northern district an opposite condition exists. In 1860 the region embracing the counties of Lauderdale, Limestone, Franklin, Colbert, Lawrence and Morgan had a colored population forming 44.5 per cent of the total. In 1900 the Negroes were but 33 per cent of the total. The district contains some 4,609 square miles, and had in 1860 a Negro population of 11 to the square mile; in 1900, 13.5. Of this increase of 2.5 per mile, about one-half is found to be in the four towns of the district whose population is over 2,500 each. The smaller villages would probably account for most of the balance, so it seems safe to say that the farming population has scarcely increased in the last forty years. Meantime the whites in the district have increased from 12 per square mile to 25.4. The census shows that between 1890 and 1900 six counties of North Alabama lost in the actual Negro population, and two others were stationary, while in the black belt the whites decreased in four counties and were stationary in two. It will be seen that the Negroes have gained in Jefferson (Birmingham) and Talladega counties. The opportunities for unskilled labor account largely for this, and Talladega is also a good cotton county. In Winston and Cullman counties there are practically no Negroes, the census showing but 28 in the two. In 1860 they formed 3 per cent of the total in Winston and 6 percent in Blount, which at that time included Cullman. The explanation of their disappearance is found in the fact that since the war these counties have been settled by Germans from about Cincinnati, and the Negroes have found it convenient to move. Roughly speaking, the poor land of the Sand Hills separates the white farmers from the colored. From 1890 to 1900 the Negroes lost relatively in the Metamorphic and Sand Hills, were about stationary in the Prairie, from which they have overflowed and gained in the Oak Hills, and more heavily in the Pine Hills. This statement is based on an examination of five or six counties, lying almost wholly within each of the districts, and which, so far as known, were not affected by the development of any special industry. The period is too short to do more than indicate that the separation of the two races seems to be still going on. A similar separation exists in Mississippi, where the Negroes hold the Black Prairie and the Delta, the whites the hill country of the center. It is evident that there is a segregation of the whites and blacks, and that there are forces which tend to perpetuate and increase this. It is interesting to note that whereas in slavery the cabins were grouped in the "quarters," in close proximity to the "big house" of the master, they are now scattered about the plantation so that even here there is less contact. In the cities this separation is evident the blacks occupy definite districts, while the social separation is complete. It seems that in all matters outside of business relations the whites have less and less to do with the blacks. If this division is to continue, we may well ask what is its significance for the future. This geographical segregation evidently had causes which were largely economic. Probably the most potent factor to-day in perpetuating it is social, i. e., race antagonism. The whites do not like to settle in a region where they are to compete with the Negro on the farms as ordinary field hands. Moreover, the Negroes retain their old-time scorn of such whites and despise them. The result is friction. Mr. A. H. Stone cites a case in point. He is speaking of a Negro serving a sentence for attempted rape: "I was anxious to know how, if at all, he accounted for his crime, but he was reluctant to discuss it. Finally he said to me: 'You don't understand--things over here are so different. I hired to an old man over there by the year. He had only about forty acres of land, and he and his old folks did all their own work--cooking, washing and everything. I was the only outside hand he had. His daughter worked right alongside of me in the field every day for three or four months. Finally, one day, when no one else was round, hell got into me, and I tried to rape her. But you folks over there can't understand--things are so different. Over here a nigger is a nigger, and a white man is a white man, and it's the same with the women.' ... Her only crime was a poverty which compelled her to do work which, in the estimation of the Negro, was reserved as the natural portion of his own race, and the doing of which destroyed the relation which otherwise constituted a barrier to his brutality."[3] Mr. Stone has touched upon one of the most delicate questions in the relationship of the races. It would be out of place to discuss it here, but attention must be called to the fact that there is the least of such trouble in the districts where the Negro forms the largest percentage of the population. I would not be so foolish as to say that assaults upon white women _may_ not take place anywhere, but as a matter of fact they seem to occur chiefly in those regions where white and black meet as competitors for ordinary labor. Beaufort County, South Carolina, has a black population forming about 90 per cent of the total, yet I was told last summer that but one case of rape had been known in the county, and that took place on the back edge of the county where there are fewest Negroes, and was committed by a non-resident black upon a non-resident white. Certain it is that in this county, which includes many islands, almost wholly inhabited by blacks, the white women have no fear of such assaults. This is also the case in the Mississippi Delta. Mr. Stone says: "Yet here we hear nothing about an ignorant mass of Negroes dragging the white man down; we hear of no black incubus; we have few midnight assassinations and fewer lynchings. The violation by a Negro of the person of a white woman is with us an unknown crime; nowhere is the line marking the social separation of the races more rigidly drawn, nowhere are the relations between the races more kindly. With us race riots are unknown, and we have but one Negro problem--though that constantly confronts us--how to secure more Negroes." Evidently when we hear reports of states of siege and rumors of race war, we are not to understand that this is the normal, typical condition of the entire South. If this is the real situation, it seems clear that the geographical segregation plays no mean part in determining the relation of the two races. It is safe to say that there is a different feeling between the races in the districts where the white is known only as the leader and those in which he comes into competition with the black. What is the significance of this for the future? The same condition exists in the cities, and of this Professor Dubois has taken note: "Savannah is an old city where the class of masters among the whites and of trained and confidential slaves among the Negroes formed an exceptionally large part of the population. The result has been unusual good feeling between the races, and the entrance of Negroes into all walks of industrial life, with little or no opposition." "Atlanta, on the other hand, is quite opposite in character. Here the poor whites from North Georgia who neither owned slaves nor had any acquaintance with Negro character, have come into contact and severe competition with the blacks. The result has been intense race feeling."[4] In one of the large towns of the Delta last summer, a prosperous Negro merchant said to me, in discussing the comparative opportunities of different sections: "I would not be allowed to have a store on the main street in such a good location in many places." Yet, his store is patronized by whites; and this would be true in many towns in the black belt. Other evidences of the difference in feeling towards the Negroes is afforded by the epithets of "hill-billies" and "red-necks" applied to the whites of the hill country by the lowland planters, and the retaliatory compliments "yellow-bellies" and "nigger-lovers." Does this geographical segregation help to explain the strikingly diverse reports coming from various parts of the South regarding the Negro? Why does Dr. Paul Barringer, of Virginia, find that race antagonism is rapidly growing, while Mr. Stone of Mississippi, says that their problem is to get more Negroes? The influence that this segregation has upon school facilities for both races should not be overlooked. The separation of the two races in the schools is to be viewed as the settled policy of the South. Here, then, is a farming community in which there are only a few Negroes. What sort of a separate school will be maintained for their children? Probably they are unable to support a good school, even should they so desire. The opportunities of their children must necessarily be limited. Will they make greater progress than children in the districts where the blacks are in large numbers and command good schools? If the situation be reversed and there are a few whites in a black community, the whites will be able to command excellent private schools for their children, if necessary. At present among the males over 21, the greatest illiteracy is found in the black counties. This may be accounted for by the presence of the older generation, which had little chance in the schools, and by the fact that perhaps those moving away have been the more progressive. It is a matter of regret that the census does not permit us to ascertain the illiteracy among the children from 10 to 21 years of age, to see if any difference was manifest. It would seem, however, that this segregation, coupled with race antagonism, is bound to affect the educational opportunities for the blacks. A problem which becomes more serious as the states waken to the needs of the case and attempt to educate their children. Yet again, this fact of habitat should lead us to be very chary of making local facts extend over the entire South and of making deductions for the entire country based on observations in a few places. Neglect of this precaution often leads to very erroneous and misleading conceptions of actual conditions. For instance, on page 419, Vol. VI, Census of 1900, in discussing the fact that Negro receives nearly as much per acre for his cotton as does the white, it is stated: "Considering the fact that he emerged from slavery only one-third of a century ago, and considering also his comparative lack of means for procuring the best land or for getting the best results from what he has, this near approach to the standard attained by the white man's experience for more than a century denotes remarkable progress." This may or may not be true, but the reason and proof are open to question. It assumes that the land cultivated by the Negroes is of the same quality as that farmed by the whites. This certainly is not true of Arkansas, of which it is stated that "Arkansas shows a greater production per acre by colored farmers for all three tenures." The three tenures are owners, cash-tenants, share-tenants. Mississippi agrees with Arkansas in showing higher production for both classes of tenants. Are we to infer that the Negroes in Arkansas and Mississippi are better farmers than the whites, and that, therefore, their progress has infinitely surpassed his? By no means. The explanation is that in the two states mentioned the Negroes cultivate the rich bottom land while the white farmers are found in the hills. The alluvial land easily raises twice the cotton, and that of a better quality, commanding about a cent a pound more in the market. There may possibly be similar conditions in other states; certainly in Alabama the black prairie tilled by the Negroes is esteemed better than the other land. Since this was first written I have chanced upon the report of the Geological Survey of Alabama for 1881 and 1882, in which Mr. E. A. Smith sums up this same problem as follows: "(1) That where the blacks are in excess of the whites, there are the originally most fertile lands of the state. The natural advantages of the soils are, however, more than counterbalanced by the bad system prevailing in such sections, viz.; large farms rented out in patches to laborers who are too poor and too much in debt to merchants to have any interest in keeping up the fertility of the soil, or rather the ability to keep it up, with the natural consequence of its rapid exhaustion, and a product per acre on these, the best lands of the state, lower than that which is realized from the very poorest. "(2) Where the two races are in nearly equal proportions, or where the whites are in only a slight excess over the blacks, as is the case in all sections where the soils are of average fertility, there is found the system of small farms, worked generally by the owners, a consequently better cultivation, a more general use of commercial fertilizers, a correspondingly high product per acre and a partial maintenance of the fertility of the soils. "(3) Where the whites are greatly in excess of the blacks (three to one and above) the soils are almost certain to be far below the average in fertility, and the product per acre is low from this cause, notwithstanding the redeeming influences of a comparatively rational system of cultivation. "(4) The exceptions to these general rules are nearly always due to local causes which are not far to seek and which afford generally a satisfactory explanation of the discrepancies." If we are to base our reasoning on the table cited we might argue that land ownership is a bad thing for Negroes, for tenants of both classes among them produced more than did the owners. The white cash tenants also produced more than white owners. In explaining this it is said: "The fact that cash tenants pay a fixed money rental per acre causes them to rent only such area as they can cultivate thoroughly, while many owners who are unable to rent their excess acreage to tenants attempt to cultivate it themselves, thus decreasing the efficiency of cultivation for the entire farm." This may be true of the whites, but it is a lame explanation for the blacks. Negro farmers who own more land than they can cultivate appear to be better known at Washington than they are locally. The trouble with the entire argument is that it assumes that the Negro is an independent cultivator of cotton. This is not quite the case. In all parts of the South the Negro, tenant or owner, usually receives advances from white factors, and these spend a good part of their time riding about to see that the land is cultivated in order to insure repayment of their loans. If their advice and suggestions are not followed, or if the crop is not cultivated, the supplies are shut off. On many plantations even the portion of the land to be put in cotton is stipulated. The great bulk of the cotton crop is thus raised under the immediate oversight of the white man. There is little call for any great skill on the part of the laborer. No wonder the crop of the Negro approximates that of the white man. It is to be further remembered that cotton raising has been the chief occupation of the Negro in America. The Census gives another illustration of the unhappy effects of attempting to cover very diverse conditions in one statement in the map Vol. VI, plate 3. From this one would be justified in believing that the average farm under one management in the alluvial lands of Mississippi and Louisiana was small. As a matter of fact they are among the largest in the country. The map gives a very misleading conception and it results wholly from attempting to combine divergent conditions. The quotation from Mr. Smith touched upon another result of this segregation. Where the whites are the farmers the farms are smaller and better cared for, more fertilizers are used, and better results are obtained. The big plantation system has caused the deterioration of naturally fertile soils. Of course, there must come a day of reckoning wherever careless husbandry prevails. City conditions are more or less uniform in all sections. The geographical location of the farmer, however, is a matter of considerable importance not only as determining in large measure the crop he must raise, but as limiting the advance he may be able to make under given conditions. It is estimated that about 85 per cent of the men (Negroes) and 44 per cent of the women in productive pursuits are farmers. Their general location has been shown. For convenience we may divide the territory into five districts: (1) Virginia and Kentucky, above the limit of profitable cotton culture. (2) The Atlantic Sea Coast. (3) The Central belt running from Virginia to Central Mississippi. This includes several different soils, but general conditions are fairly uniform. (4) The Alluvial Lands, which may be subdivided into the cotton and cane districts. (5) Texas. These different districts will be treated separately, except Texas, which is not included. In summing up this chapter it may be said that the location of the mass of the Negro farmers has been indicated, and also the fact that there is a separation between the whites and the blacks which promises to have important bearing on future progress, while the various agricultural districts offer opportunities by no means uniform. CHAPTER III. ECONOMIC HERITAGE. =IN PLOWING TIME.= Previous to the appearance of the European, West Central Africa for untold hundreds of years had been almost completely separated from the outside world. The climate is hot, humid, enervating. The Negro tribes living in the great forests found little need for exertion to obtain the necessities of savage life. The woods abounded in game, the rivers in fish. By cutting down a few trees and loosening the ground with sharpened sticks the plantains, a species of coarse banana, could be made to yield many hundred fold. The greater part of the little agricultural work done fell on the women, for it was considered degrading by the men. Handicrafts were almost unknown among many tribes and where they existed were of the simplest. Clothing was of little service. Food preparations were naturally crude. Sanitary restrictions, seemingly so necessary in hot climates, were unheard of. The dead were often buried in the floors of the huts. Miss Kingsley says: "All travelers in West Africa find it necessary very soon to accustom themselves to most noisome odors of many kinds and to all sorts of revolting uncleanliness." Morality, as we use the term, did not exist. Chastity was esteemed in the women only as a marketable commodity. Marriage was easily consummated and with even greater ease dissolved. Slavery, inter-tribal, was widespread, and the ravages of the slave hunter were known long before the arrival of the whites. Religion was a mass of grossest superstitions, with belief in the magical power of witches and sorcerers who had power of life and death over their fellows. Might was right and the chiefs enforced obedience. It is not necessary to go more into detail. In the words of a recent writer: "It is clear that any civilization which is based on the fertility of the soil, and not on the energy of man, contains within itself the seed of its own destruction. Where food is easily obtained, where there is little need for clothing or houses, where, in brief, unaided nature furnishes all man's necessities, those elements which produce strength of character and vigor of mind are wanting, and man becomes the slave of his surroundings. He acquires no energy of disposition, he yields himself to superstition and fatalism; the very conditions of life which produced his civilization set the limit of its existence." It is evident from the foregoing that there had been almost nothing in the conditions of Africa to further habits of thrift and industry. The warm climate made great provision for the future unnecessary, not to say impossible, while social conditions did not favor accumulation of property. It is necessary to emphasize these African conditions, for they have an important influence on future development. Under these conditions Negro character was formed, and that character was not like that of the long-headed blonds of the North. The transfer to America marked a sharp break with the past. One needs but to stop to enumerate the changes to realize how great this break was. A simple dialect is exchanged for a complex language. A religion whose basic principle is love gradually supplants the fears and superstitions of heathenhood. The black passes from an enervating, humid climate to one in which activity is pleasurable. From the isolation and self-satisfaction of savagery he emerges into close contact with one of the most ambitious and progressive of peoples. Life at once becomes far more secure and wrongs are revenged by the self-interest of the whites as well as by the feeble means of self-defense in possession of the blacks. That there were cruelties and mistreatment under slavery goes without saying, but the woes and sufferings under it were as nothing compared to those of the life in the African forests. This fact is sometimes overlooked. With greater security of life came an emphasis, from without, to be sure, on better marital relations. In this respect slavery left much to be desired, but conditions on the whole were probably in advance of those in Africa. Marriage began to be something more than a purchase. Sanitation, not the word, but the underlying idea, was taught by precept and example. There came also a dim notion of a new sphere for women. Faint perceptions ofttimes, but ideas never dreamed of in Africa. I would not defend slavery, but in this country its evil results are the inheritance of the whites, not of the blacks, and the burden today of American slavery is upon white shoulders. Many of the changes have been mentioned, but the greatest is reserved for the last. This is embraced in one word--WORK. For the first time the Negro was made to work, not casual work, but steady, constant labor. From the Negro's standpoint this is the redeeming feature of his slavery as perhaps it was for the Israelites in Egypt of old. Booker Washington has written:[5] "American slavery was a great curse to both races, and I would be the last to apologize for it, but, in the providence of God, I believe that slavery laid the foundation for the solution of the problem that is now before us in the South. During slavery the Negro was taught every trade, every industry, that constitutes the foundation for making a living." Dr. H. B. Frissell has borne the same testimony: "The southern plantation was really a great trade school where thousands received instruction in mechanic arts, in agriculture, in cooking, sewing and other domestic occupations. Although it may be said that all this instruction was given from selfish motives, yet the fact remains that the slaves on many plantations had good industrial training, and all honor is due to the conscientious men and still more to the noble women of the South who in slavery times helped to prepare the way for the better days that were to come." Work is the essential condition of human progress. Contrast the training of the Negro under enforced slavery with that of the Indian, although it should not be thought that the characters were the same, for the life in America had made the Indian one who would not submit to the yoke, and all attempts to enslave him came to naught. Dr. Frissell out of a long experience says: "When the children of these two races are placed side by side, as they are in the school rooms and workshops and on the farms at Hampton, it is not difficult to perceive that the training which the blacks had under slavery was far more valuable as a preparation for civilized life than the freedom from training and service enjoyed by the Indian on the Western reservations. For while slavery taught the colored man to work, the reservation pauperized the Indian with free rations; while slavery brought the black into the closest relations with the white race and its ways of life, the reservation shut the Indian away from his white brothers and gave him little knowledge of their civilization, language or religion." The coddled Indian, with all the vices of the white man open to him, has made little, if any, progress, while the Negro, made to work, has held his own in large measure at least. Under slavery three general fields of service were open to the blacks. The first comprised the domestic and body servants, with the seamstresses, etc., whose labors were in the house or in close personal contact with masters and mistresses. This class was made up of the brightest and quickest, mulattoes being preferred because of their greater aptitude. These servants had almost as much to do with the whites as did the other blacks and absorbed no small amount of learning. Yet the results were not always satisfactory. A southern lady after visiting for a time in New York said on leaving:[6] "I cannot tell you how much, after being in your house so long, I dread to go home, and have to take care of our servants again. We have a much smaller family of whites than you, but we have twelve servants, and your two accomplish a great deal more and do their work a great deal better than our twelve. You think your girls are very stupid and that they give much trouble, but it is as nothing. There is hardly one of our servants that can be trusted to do the simplest work without being stood over. If I order a room to be cleaned, or a fire to be made in a distant chamber, I can never be sure I am obeyed unless I go there and see for myself.... And when I reprimand them they only say that they don't mean to do anything wrong, or they won't do it again, all the time laughing as though it were a joke. They don't mind it at all. They are just as playful and careless as any wilful child; and they never will do any work if you don't compel them." The second class comprised the mechanics, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons and the like. These were also a picked lot. They were well trained ofttimes and had a practical monopoly of their trades in many localities. In technical knowledge they naturally soon outstripped their masters and became conscious of their superiority, as the following instance related by President G. T. Winston shows: "I remember one day my father, who was a lawyer, offered some suggestions to one of his slaves, a fairly good carpenter, who was building us a barn. The old Negro heard him with ill-concealed disgust, and replied: 'Look here, master, you'se a first-rate lawyer, no doubt, but you don't know nothin' 'tall 'bout carpentering. You better go back to your law books.'" The training received by these artisans stood them in good stead after the war, when, left to themselves, they were able to hold their ground by virtue of their ability to work alone. The third class was made up of all that were left, and their work was in the fields. The dullest, as well as those not needed elsewhere, were included. Some few became overseers, but the majority worked on the farms. As a rule little work was required of children under 12, and when they began their tasks were about of the adult's. Thence they passed to "half," "three-quarter" and "full" hands. Olmsted said:[7] "Until the Negro is big enough for his labor to be plainly profitable to his master he has no training to application or method, but only to idleness and carelessness. Before children arrive at a working age they hardly come under the notice of their owner.... The only whipping of slaves I have seen in Virginia has been of these wild, lazy children, as they are being broke in to work. They cannot be depended upon a minute out of sight. You will see how difficult it would be if it were attempted to eradicate the indolent, careless, incogitant habits so formed in youth. But it is not systematically attempted, and the influences that continue to act upon a slave in the same direction, cultivating every quality at variance with industry, precision, forethought and providence, are innumerable." In many places the field hands were given set tasks to do each day, and they were then allowed to take their own time and stop when the task was completed. In Georgia and South Carolina the following is cited by Olmsted as tasks for a day:[7] "In making drains in light clean meadow land each man or woman of the full hands is required to dig one thousand cubic feet; in swamp land that is being prepared for rice culture, where there are not many stumps, the task for a ditcher is five hundred feet; while in a very strong cypress swamp, only two hundred feet is required; in hoeing rice, a certain number of rows equal to one-half or two-thirds of an acre, according to the condition of the land; in sowing rice (strewing in drills), two acres; in reaping rice (if it stands well), three-quarters of an acre, or, sometimes a gang will be required to reap, tie in sheaves, and carry to the stack yard the produce of a certain area commonly equal to one-fourth the number of acres that there are hands working together; hoeing cotton, corn or potatoes, one-half to one acre; threshing, five to six hundred sheaves. In plowing rice land (light, clean, mellow soil), with a yoke of oxen, one acre a day, including the ground lost in and near the drains, the oxen being changed at noon. A cooper also, for instance, is required to make barrels at the rate of eighteen a week; drawing staves, 500 a day; hoop-poles, 120; squaring timber, 100 feet; laying worm fence, 50 panels per day; post and rail fence, posts set two and a half to three feet deep, nine feet apart, nine or ten panels per hand. In getting fuel from the woods (pine to be cut and split), one cord is the task for a day. In 'mauling rails,' the taskman selecting the trees (pine) that he judges will split easiest, 100 a day, ends not sharpened. "In allotting the tasks the drivers are expected to put the weaker hands where, if there is any choice in the appearance of the ground, as where certain rows in hoeing corn would be less weedy than others, they will be favored. "These tasks would certainly not be considered excessively hard by a northern laborer, and, in point of fact, the more industrious and active hands finish them often by two o'clock. I saw one or two leaving the field soon after one o'clock, several about two, and between three and four I met a dozen women and several men coming to their cabins, having finished their day's work.... If, after a hard day's labor he (the driver) sees that the gang has been overtasked, owing to a miscalculation of the difficulty of the work, he may excuse the completion of the tasks, but he is not allowed to extend them." In other places the work was not laid out in tasks, but it is safe to say that, judging from all reports and all probabilities, the amount of work done did not equal that of the free labor of the North, then or now. If it had the commercial supremacy of the South would have been longer maintained. Some things regarding the agricultural work at once become prominent. All work was done under the immediate eye of the task master. Thus there was little occasion for the development of any sense of individual responsibility for the work. As a rule the methods adopted were crude. Little machinery was used, and that of the simplest. Hoes, heavy and clumsy, were the common tools. Within a year I have seen grass being mowed with hoes preparatory to putting the ground in cultivation. Even today the Negro has to be trained to use the light, sharp hoe of the North. Corn, cotton and, in a few districts, rice or tobacco were the staple crops, although each plantation raised its own fruit and vegetables, and about the cabins in the quarters were little plots for gardens. The land was cultivated for a time, then abandoned for new, while in most places little attention was paid to rotation of crops or to fertilizers. The result was that large sections of the South had been seriously injured before the war. As some one has said: "The destruction of the soils by the methods of cultivation prior to the war was worse than the ravages of the war. The _post bellum_ farmer received as an inheritance large areas of wornout and generally unproductive soils." Yet all things were the master's. A failure of the crop meant little hunger to the black. Refusal to work could but bring bodily punishment, for the master was seldom of the kind who would take life--a live Negro was worth a good deal more than a dead one. Clothing and shelter were provided, and care in sickness. The master must always furnish tools, land and seed, and see to it that the ground was cultivated. There was thus little necessity for the Negro to care for the morrow, and his African training had not taught him to borrow trouble. Thus neither Africa nor America had trained the Negro to independent, continuous labor apart from the eye of the overseer. The requirements as to skill were low. The average man learned little of the mysteries of fruit growing, truck farming and all the economies which make diversified agriculture profitable. Freedom came, a second sharp break with the past. There is now no one who is responsible for food and clothing. For a time all is in confusion. The war had wiped out the capital of the country. The whites were land poor, the Negroes landless. It so happened that at this time the price of cotton was high. The Negro knew more about cotton than any other crop. _Raise cotton_ became the order of the day. The money lenders would lend money on cotton, even in advance, for it had a certain and sure ready sale. Thus developed the crop-lien system which in essence consists in taking a mortgage on crops yet to be raised. The system existed among the white planters for many years before the war. A certain amount of food and clothing was advanced to the Negro family until the crop could be harvested, when the money value of the goods received was returned with interest. Perhaps nothing which concerns the Negro has been the subject of more hostile criticism than this crop-lien system. That it is easily abused when the man on one side is a shrewd and cunning sharpster and the borrower an illiterate and trusting Negro is beyond doubt. That in thousands of cases advantage has been taken of this fact to wrest from the Negro at the end of the year all that he had is not to be questioned. Certainly a system which makes it possible is open to criticism. It should not be forgotten, however, that the system grew out of the needs of the time and served a useful purpose when honestly administered, even as it does today. No money could be gotten with land as security, and even today the land owner often sees his merchant with far less capital get money from the bank which has refused his security. The system has enabled a poor man without tools and work animals without food to get a start and be provided with a modicum of necessities until the crops were harvested. Thousands have become more or less independent who started in this way. The evil influences of the system, for none would consider it ideal, have probably been that it has made unnecessary any saving on the part of the Negro, who feels sure that he can receive his advances and who cares little for the fact that some day he must pay a big interest on what he receives. Secondly, this system has hindered the development of diversified farming, which today is one of the greatest needs of the South. The advances have been conditioned upon the planting and cultivating a given amount of cotton. During recent years no other staple has so fallen in price, and the result has been hard on the farmers. All else has faded into insignificance before the necessity of raising cotton. The result on the fertility of the soil is also evident. Luckily cotton makes light demands on the land, but the thin soil of many districts has been unable to stand even the light demands. Guano came just in time and the later commercial fertilizers have postponed the evil day. The development of the cotton mills has also served to give a local market, which has stimulated the production of cotton. It seems rather evident, however, that the increasing development of western lands will put a heavier burden upon the Atlantic slope. This, of course, will not affect the culture of sea-island cotton, which is grown in only a limited area. To meet this handicap a more diversified agriculture must gradually supplant in some way the present over-attention to cotton. In early days Virginia raised much cotton, now it stands towards the bottom of the cotton states. Perhaps it is safe to say that Virginia land has been as much injured by the more exhaustive crop, tobacco, as the other states by cotton. Large areas have been allowed to go back to the woods and local conditions have greatly changed. How this diversification is to be brought about for the Negro is one of the most important questions. Recent years have witnessed an enormous development of truck farming, but in this the Negro has borne little part. This intensive farming requires a knowledge of soil and of plant life, coupled with much ability in marketing wares, which the average Negro does not possess. Nor has he taken any great part in the fruit industry, which is steadily growing. The question to which all this leads may be stated as follows. To what extent is the Negro taking advantage of the opportunities he now has on the farm? What is his present situation? CHAPTER IV. THE PRESENT SITUATION. The southern states are not densely populated. Alabama has an average of 35 per square mile; Georgia, 37; South Carolina, 44. These may be compared with Iowa, 40; Indiana, 70, taking two of the typical northern farming states, while Connecticut has 187. In the prairie section of Alabama the Negro population ranges from 30 to 50 per square mile, and this is about the densest outside of the city counties. There is thus an abundance of land. As a matter of fact there is not the least difficulty for the Negro farmer to get plenty of land, and he has but to show himself a good tenant to have the whites offering him inducements. =A CABIN INTERIOR.= Negroes on the farms may be divided into four classes: Owners, cash tenants, share tenants, laborers. Share tenants differ from the same class in the North in that work animals and tools are usually provided by the landlord. Among the laborers must also be included the families living on the rice and cane plantations, who work for cash wages but receive houses and such perquisites as do other tenants and whose permanence is more assured than an ordinary day hand. They are paid in cash, usually through a plantation store, that debts for provisions, etc., may be deducted. Both owners and tenants find it generally necessary to arrange for advances of food and clothing until harvest. The advances begin in the early Spring and continue until August or sometimes until the cotton is picked. In the regions east of the alluvial lands advances usually stop by the first of August, and in the interim until the cotton is sold odd jobs or some extra labor, picking blackberries and the like, must furnish the support for the family. The landlord may do the advancing or some merchant. Money is seldom furnished directly, although in recent years banks are beginning to loan on crop-liens. The food supplied is often based on the number of working hands, irrespective of the number of children in the family. This is occasionally a hardship. The customary ration is a peck of corn meal and three pounds of pork per week. Usually a crop-lien together with a bill of sale of any personal property is given as security, but in some states landlords have a first lien upon all crops for rent and advances. In all districts the tenant is allowed to cut wood for his fire, and frequently has free pasture for his stock. There is much complaint that when there are fences about the house they are sometimes burned, being more accessible than the timber, which may be at a distance and which has to be cut. The landlords and the advancers have found it necessary to spend a large part of their time personally, or through agents called "riders," going about the plantations to see that the crops are cultivated. The Negro knows how to raise cotton, but he may forget to plow, chop, or some other such trifle, unless reminded of the necessity. Thus a considerable part of the excessive interest charged the Negro should really be charged as wages of superintendence. If the instructions of the riders are not followed, rations are cut off, and thus the recalcitrant brought to terms. For a long time rations have been dealt out on Saturday. So Saturday has come to be considered a holiday, or half-holiday at least. Early in the morning the roads are covered with blacks on foot, horse back, mule back and in various vehicles, on their way to the store or village, there to spend the day loafing about in friendly discussion with neighbors. The condition of the crops has little preventive influence, and the handicap to successful husbandry formed by the habit is easily perceived. Many efforts are being made to break up the custom, but it is up-hill work. Another habit of the Negro which militates against his progress is his prowling about in all sorts of revels by night, thereby unfitting himself for labor the next day. This trait also shows forth the general thoughtlessness of the Negro. His mule works by day, but is expected to carry his owner any number of miles at night. Sunday is seldom a day of rest for the work animals. It is a curious fact that wherever the Negroes are most numerous there mules usually outnumber horses. There are several reasons for this. It has often been supposed that mules endure the heat better than horses. This is questionable. The mule, however, will do a certain amount and then quit, all inducements to the contrary notwithstanding. The horse will go till he drops; moreover, will not stand the abuse which the mule endures. The Negro does not bear a good reputation for care of his animals. He neglects to feed and provide for them. Their looks justify the criticism. The mule, valuable as he is for many purposes, is necessarily more expensive in the long run than a self-perpetuating animal. In all parts it is the custom for the Negroes to save a little garden patch about the house, which, if properly tended, would supply the family with vegetables throughout the year. This is seldom the case. A recent Tuskegee catalog commenting on this says: "If they have any garden at all, it is apt to be choked with weeds and other noxious growths. With every advantage of soil and climate, and with a steady market if they live near any city or large town, few of the colored farmers get any benefit from this, one of the most profitable of all industries." As a matter of fact they care little for vegetables and seldom know how to prepare them for the table. The garden is regularly started in the Spring, but seldom amounts to much. I have ridden for a day with but a glimpse of a couple of attempts. As a result there will be a few collards, turnips, gourds, sweet potatoes and beans, but the mass of the people buy the little they need from the stores. A dealer in a little country store told me last summer that he would make about $75 an acre on three acres of watermelons, although almost every purchaser could raise them if he would. In many regions wild fruits are abundant, and blackberries during the season are quite a staple, but they are seldom canned. Some cattle are kept, but little butter is made, and milk is seldom on the bill of fare, the stock being sold when fat (?). Many families keep chickens, usually of the variety known as "dunghill fowls," which forage for themselves. But the market supplied with chickens by the small farmers, as it might easily be. Whenever opportunity offers, hunting and fishing become more than diversions, and the fondness for coon and 'possum is proverbial. In a study of dietaries of Negroes made under Tuskegee Institute and reported in Bulletin No. 38, Office of Experimental Stations, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, it is stated: "Comparing these negro dietaries with other dietaries and dietary standards, it will be seen that-- "(1) The quantities of protein are small. Roughly speaking, the food of these negroes furnished one-third to three-fourths as much protein as are called for in the current physiological standards and as are actually found in the dietaries of well fed whites in the United States and well fed people in Europe. They were, indeed, no larger than have been found in the dietaries of the very poor factory operatives and laborers in Germany and the laborers and beggars in Italy. "(2) In fuel value the Negro dietaries compare quite favorably with those of well-to-do people of the laboring classes in Europe and the United States." This indicates the ignorance of the Negro regarding the food he needs, so that in a region of plenty he is underfed as regards the muscle and bone forming elements and overfed so far as fuel value is concerned. One cannot help asking what effect a normal diet would have upon the sexual passions. It is worthy of notice that in the schools maintained by the whites there is relatively little trouble on this account. Possibly the changed life and food are in no small measure responsible for the difference. Under diversified farming there would be steady employment most of the year, with a corresponding increase of production. As it is there are two busy seasons. In the Spring, planting and cultivating cotton, say from March to July, and in the Fall, cotton picking, September to December. The balance of the time the average farmer does little work. The present system entails a great loss of time. The absence of good pastures and of meadows is noticeable. This is also too true of white farmers. Yet the grasses grow luxuriantly and nothing but custom or something else accounts for their absence; the something else is cotton. The adaptability of cotton to the Negro is almost providential. It has a long tap root and is able to stand neglect and yet produce a reasonable crop. The grains, corn and cane, with their surface roots, will not thrive under careless handling. The average farmer knows, or at least utilizes few of the little economies which make agriculture so profitable elsewhere. The Negro is thus under a heavy handicap and does not get the most that he might from present opportunities. I am fully conscious that there are many farmers who take advantage of these things and are correspondingly successful, but they are not the average man of whom I am speaking. With this general statement I pass to a consideration of the situation in the various districts before mentioned. TIDE WATER VIRGINIA. The Virginia sea shore consists of a number of peninsulas separated by narrow rivers (salt water). The country along the shore and the rivers is flat, with low hills in the interior. North of Old Point Comfort the district is scarcely touched by railroads and is accessible only by steamers. Gloucester County, lying between York River and Mob Jack Bay, is an interesting region. The hilly soil of the central part sells at from $5 to $10 per acre, while the flat coast land, which is richer although harder to drain, is worth from $25 to $50. The immediate water front has risen in price in recent years and brings fancy prices for residence purposes. Curiously enough some of the best land of the county is that beneath the waters of the rivers--the oyster beds. Land for this use may be worth from nothing to many hundreds of dollars an acre, according to its nature. The county contains 250 square miles, 6,224 whites and 6,608 blacks, the latter forming 51 per cent of the population. This sea coast region offers peculiar facilities for gaining an easy livelihood. There are few negro families of which some member does not spend part of the year fishing or oystering. There has been a great development of the oyster industry. The season lasts from September 1 to May 1, and good workmen not infrequently make $2 a day or more when they can work on the public beds. This last clause is significant. It is stated that the men expect to work most of September, October and November; one-half of December and January; one-third of February; any time in March is clear gain and all of April. According to a careful study[8] of the oyster industry it was found that the oystermen, _i. e._, those who dig the oysters from the rocks, make about $8 a month, while families occupied in shucking oysters earn up to $400 a year, three-fourths of them gaining less than $250. The public beds yield less than formerly and the business is gradually going into the hands of firms maintaining their own beds, with a corresponding reduction in possible earnings for the oystermen. The effect of this industry is twofold; a considerable sum of money is brought into the county and much of this has been invested in homes and small farms. This is the bright side; but there is a dark side. The boys are drawn out of the schools by the age of 12 to work at shucking oysters, and during the winter months near the rivers the boys will attend only on stormy days. The men are also taken away from the farms too early in the fall to gather crops, and return too late in the spring to get the best results from the farm work. The irregular character of the employment reacts on the men and they tend to drift to the cities during the summer, although many find employment in berry picking about Norfolk. Another result has been to make farm labor very scarce. This naturally causes some complaint. I do not say that the bad results outweigh the good, but believe they must be considered. The population is scattered over the county, there being no towns of any size, and is denser along the rivers than inland. The relations between the two races are most friendly, although less satisfactory between the younger generation. The Negroes make no complaints of ill treatment. In the last ten years there have been only four Negroes sentenced to the state prison, while in the twelve months prior to May 1, 1903, I was told that there was but one trial for misdemeanor. It may be that the absence of many of the young men for several months a year accounts in part for the small amount of crime. The jail stands empty most of the time. The chief offenses are against the fish and oyster laws of the state. Whites and blacks both claim that illegitimate children are much rarer than formerly. I was told of a case in which a young white man was fined for attempting to seduce a colored girl. The races have kept in touch. White ministers still preach in negro churches, address Sunday-schools, etc. In all save a few of the poorer districts the old one-roomed cabin has given place to a comfortable house of several rooms. The houses are often white-washed, although their completion may take a good many years. Stoves have supplanted fireplaces. The fences about the yards are often neat and in good repair. So far as housing conditions are concerned, I have seen no rural district of the South to compare with this. The old cabin is decidedly out of fashion. Turning to the farm proper, there are other evidences of change. There are no women working in the fields, their time being spent about the house and the garden. The system of crop liens is unknown. Each farmer raises his own supplies, smokes his own meat or buys at the store for cash or on credit. Wheat and corn are ground in local mills. The heavy interest charges of other districts are thus avoided. It is stated that a great number of the Negroes are buying little places, and this bears out the census figures, which show that of the Negro farmers 90.9 per cent in this county are owners or managers; the average for the negroes as a whole is 27.1 per cent. Although so many earn money in the oyster business, there are others who have gotten ahead by sticking to the farm. T---- now owns part of the place on which he was a slave, and his slave-time cabin is now used as a shed. He began buying land in 1873, paying from $10 to $11.50 per acre, and by hard work and economy now owns sixty acres which are worth much more than their first cost. With the help of his boys, whom he has managed to keep at home, he derives a comfortable income from his land. His daughter, now his housekeeper, teaches school near by during the winter. What he has done others can do, he says. Y---- is another who has succeeded. His first payments were made from the sale of wood cut in clearing the land. In 1903 his acres were planted as follows: Orchard 2 acres. Woodland 8 acres. Pasture 10 acres. Corn 8 acres. Rye 3/4 acres. Potato patch Garden and yard. His children are being trained at Hampton, and he laughingly says that one boy is already telling him how to get more produce from his land. B---- is an oysterman during the winter. He has purchased a small place of four acres, for which he paid $18 per acre. This ground he cultivates and has a few apple, plum and peach trees in his yard. His case is typical. Wages in the county are not high. House servants get from $3 to $8 per month. Day laborers are paid from 50 to 75 cents a day. Farm hands get about $10 a month and two meals daily (breakfast and dinner). I have already mentioned that farm laborers were getting fewer, and those left are naturally the less reliable. Many white farmers are having considerable difficulty in carrying on their places. The result is that many are only partially cultivating the farms, and many of the younger men are abandoning agriculture. What the final result will be is hard to tell. In summarizing it may be said that agriculture is being somewhat neglected and that the opportunity to earn money in the oyster industry acts as a constant deterrent to agricultural progress, if it is not directly injurious. Here, as elsewhere, there is room for improvement in methods of tilling the soil and in rotation of crops, use of animal manures, etc. The general social and moral improvement has been noted. It is a pleasure to find that one of the strongest factors in this improvement is due to the presence in the county of a number of graduates of Hampton who, in their homes, their schools and daily life, have stood for better things. CENTRAL VIRGINIA. The difficulty of making general statements true in all districts has elsewhere been mentioned. The reader will not be surprised, therefore, to find many things said in the immediately preceding pages inapplicable to conditions in the tobacco districts. The little town of Farmville, Va., is the market for some 12,000,000 pounds of tobacco yearly. The county Prince Edward contained in 1890 9,924 Negroes and in 1900 but 9,769, a decrease of 155. The county does not give one the impression of agricultural prosperity. The surface is very rolling, the soil sandy and thin in many places. Along the bottoms there is good land, of less value than formerly because of freshets. Practically all of the land has been under cultivation at some time, and in heavily wooded fields the corn rows may often be traced. On every side are worn-out fields on which sassafras soon gets a hold, followed by pine and other trees. Labor conditions have been growing worse, according to common report. It is harder to get farm hands than formerly, and this difficulty is most felt by those who exact the most. The day laborer gets from 40 to 50 cents and his meals, while for special work, such as cutting wheat, the wage may rise to $1.50. Women no longer work in the fields, and about the house get 35 cents per day. Formerly women worked in the fields, and wages for both sexes were lower. Hands by the month get $7 to $8 and board. In this county are many small white farmers who work in the fields with the men, and the white housewife not infrequently cooks the food for the Negroes--quite a contrast to typical southern practice. The movement from the farm is not an unmixed evil in that it is compelling the introduction of improved machinery, such as mowing machines, binders. On many a farm only scythes and cradles are known. Another element in the problem is the fact that many negroes have been getting little places of their own and therefore do less work for others. There are many whites who think this development a step forward and believe that the land owners are better citizens. There are others who claim that the net result is a loss, in that they are satisfied merely to eke out some sort of an existence and are not spurred on to increased production. It is quite commonly reported that there were some organizations among the Negroes whose members agreed not to work for the whites, but I cannot vouch for their existence. Although agriculture here is much more diversified than in the cotton belt, the Negro finds it necessary to get advances. These are usually supplied by commission merchants, who furnish the fertilizers and necessary food, taking crop liens as security. Advances begin in the spring and last until the following December, when the tobacco is marketed. The interest charged is 6 per cent, but the goods sold on this plan are much enhanced in price; interest is usually charged for a year, and the merchant receives a commission of 2-1/2 per cent for selling the tobacco, so the business appears fairly profitable. It is difficult to estimate the average value of an acre of tobacco, as it varies so much in quality as well as quantity. It is probably safe to say that the Negroes do not average over $20 per acre, ranging from $15 to $25, and have perhaps three or four acres in tobacco. It is generally expected that the tobacco will about pay for the advances. This would indicate, and the commission men confirm it, that the average advance is between $50 and $75 per year. The rations given out are no longer merely pork and meal, with which it is stated that the Negroes are not now content, but include a more varied diet. The customary rent is one-fourth of all that is produced, the landlord paying one-fourth of the fertilizer (universally called guano in this district). Tobacco makes heavy demands on the soil and at least 400 pounds, a value of about $4.50 per acre, should be used. When the landlord furnishes the horse or mule he pays also one-half of the fertilizer and gets one-half of the produce. The rent on tobacco land is thus large, but the average cash rental is between $2 and $3. The standard rotation of crops is tobacco, wheat, clover, tobacco. The clover is not infrequently skipped, the field lying fallow or uncultivated until exhausted. The average farmer thus has about as many acres in wheat as in tobacco and raises perhaps twelve bushels of wheat per acre. Some corn is also raised, and I have seen fields so exhausted that the stalk at the ground was scarcely larger than my middle finger. The corn crop may possibly average 10 to 15 bushels per acre, or, in Virginia terminology, 2 to 3 barrels. The average farmer under present conditions just about meets his advances with the tobacco raised. He has about enough wheat to supply him with flour; perhaps enough corn and hay for his ox or horse; possibly enough meat for the family. The individual family may fall short on any of these. The hay crop is unsatisfactory, largely through neglect. In May, 1903, on a Saturday, I saw wagon after wagon leaving Farmville carrying bales of western hay. This is scarcely an indication of thrift. The impression one gets from traveling about is that the extensive cultivation of tobacco, in spite of the fact that it is the cash crop and perhaps also the most profitable, is really a drawback in that other possibilities are obscured. It may be that the line of progress will not be to abandon tobacco, but to introduce more intensive cultivation, for the average man, white or black, does not get a proper return from an acre. To-day there is always a likelihood that more tobacco will be planted than can be properly cultivated, for it is a plant which demands constant and careful attention until it is marketed. B---- has a big family of children and lives in a large cabin, one room with a loft. He owns a pair of oxen and manages to raise enough to feed them. He also raises about enough meat for his family. During the season of 1902 he raised $175 worth of tobacco; corn valued at $37.50 and 16 bushels of wheat, a total of about $221. Deducting one-fourth for rent and estimating his expenses for fertilizer at $25, he had about $140 out of which to pay all other expenses. B---- is considered a very good man, who tends carefully and faithfully to his work. It is evident, however, that his margin is small. The farmer has opportunities to supplement his earnings. Cordwood finds ready sale in the towns at $2 per cord, and I have seen many loads of not over one-fourth of a cord hauled to market by a small steer. Butter, eggs and chickens yield some returns and the country produces blackberries in profusion. There are some Negroes who are making a comfortable living on the farms and whose houses and yards are well kept. As has been said, this is not the general impression made by the district. Considerable sums of money are sent in by children working in the northern cities. This is offset, however, by those who come back in the winter to live off their parents, having squandered all their own earnings elsewhere. The situation in a word is: A generation or more of reliance on one crop, neglect of other crops and of stock, resulting in deteriorated land. The labor force attracted to the towns and the North by higher wages. Natural result: Decadence of agricultural conditions, affording at the same time a chance for many Negroes to become land owners. When the process will stop or the way out I know not. Perhaps the German immigrants who are beginning to buy up some of the farms may lead the way to a better husbandry. For an interesting account of conditions in the town of Farmville see "The Negroes of Farmville," by W. E. B. DuBois, Bulletin Department of Labor, January, 1898. THE SEA COAST. =A SEA-ISLAND CABIN.= The low-lying coast of South Carolina and Georgia, with its fringe of islands, has long been the seat of a heavy Negro population. Of the counties perhaps none is more interesting than Beaufort, the southernmost of South Carolina. The eastern half of the county is cut up by many salt rivers into numerous islands. Broad River separates these from the mainland. The Plant System has a line on the western edge of the county, while the Georgia Railroad runs east to Port Royal. According to the census, the county contains 943 square miles of land and a population of 32,137 blacks and 3,349 whites, the Negroes thus forming 90 per cent of the total. There are 37 persons to the square mile. With the exception of Beaufort and Port Royal, the whites are found on the western side of the county. The islands are almost solid black. Just after the war many of the plantations were sold for taxes and fell into the hands of the Negroes, the funds realized being set apart for the education of the blacks, the interest now amounting to some $2,000 a year. In the seventies there was a great development of the phosphate industry, which at its height employed hundreds of Negroes, taken from the farms. Enormous fertilizer plants were erected. Most of this is now a thing of the past and the dredges lie rotting at the wharves. It is the general opinion that the influence of this industry was not entirely beneficial, although it set much money in circulation. It drew the men from the farms, and now they tend to drift to the cities rather than return. A livelihood is easily gained. The creeks abound with fish, crabs and oysters. There is plenty of work on the farms for those who prefer more steady labor. Land valued at about $10 per acre may be rented for $1. More than ten acres to the tenant is not usual, and I was told that it is very common for a family to rent all the land it wants for $10 per year, the presumption being that not over ten acres would be utilized. The staple crop for the small farmer is the sea island cotton. Under the present culture land devoted to this lies fallow every other year. The islands are low and flat, subject to severe storms, that of 1893 having destroyed many lives and much property. The county was originally heavily wooded and there is still an abundance for local purposes, though the supply is low in places. On the islands the blacks have been almost alone for a generation and by many it is claimed that there has been a decided retrogression. By common consent St. Helena Island, which lies near Beaufort, is considered the most prosperous of the Negro districts. On this island are over 8,000 blacks and some 200 whites. The cabins usually have two rooms, many having been partitioned to make the second. They are of rough lumber, sometimes whitewashed, but seldom painted. There are few fences and some damage is done by stock. Outbuildings are few; privies are almost unknown--even at the schools there are no closets of any kind. The wells are shallow, six feet or so in depth with a few driven to 12 or 17 feet. A few have pumps, the rest are open. At present there is no dispensary on the island but there are a number of "blind tigers." The nearest physician is at Beaufort and the cost of a single visit is from five to ten dollars. The distance from the doctors is said not to be an unmixed evil as it saves much foolish expenditure of money in fancied ills. In slavery times there were 61 plantations on the island and their names, as Fripps Corner, Oaks, still survive to designate localities. There was in olden times little contact with the whites as Negro drivers were common. Each plantation still has its "prayer house" at which religious services are held. Meetings occur on different nights on the various plantations to enable the people to get all the religion they need. These meetings are often what are known as "shouts," when with much shouting and wild rhythmic dancing the participants keep on till exhausted. The suggestion of Africa is not vague. The Virginia Negro views these gatherings with as much astonishment as does any white. Many of the blacks speak a strange dialect hard to understand. "Shum," for instance, being the equivalent for "see them." The land is sandy and should have skillful handling to get the best results. Yet the farming is very unscientific. The first plowing is shallow and subsequent cultivation is done almost entirely with hoes. When a Hampton graduate began some new methods last year the people came for miles to see his big plow. It is said that there was more plowing than usual as a result. The daily life of the farmer is about as follows: Rising between four and five he goes directly to the field, eating nothing until eight or nine, when he has some "grits," a sort of fine hominy cooked like oat meal. Many eat nothing until they leave the field at eleven for dinner, which also consists of grits with some crabs in summer and fish in winter. Some have only these two meals a day. Corn bread and molasses are almost unknown and when they have molasses it is eaten with a spoon. Knives and forks are seldom used. One girl of eighteen did not know how to handle a knife. There are numbers of cows on the island, but milk is seldom served, the cattle being sold for beef. The draft animals are usually small oxen or ponies, called "salt marsh tackies," as they are left to pick their living from the marshes. Some chickens and turkeys are raised, but no great dependence is placed on them. There are no geese and few ducks. Little commercial fertilizer is used, the marsh grass, which grows in great abundance, being an excellent substitute of which the more progressive take advantage. The following statement will illustrate the situation of three typical families, an unusual, a good, and an average farmer. The figures are for 1902: No. 1. No. 2. No. 3. Number in family 8 13 4 Number rooms 6 5 2 Number outbuildings 5 3 0 Number horses 4 1 0 Number cows 9 5 1 Number hogs 10 3 0 Number other animals 1 dog 2 goats 1 dog 1 dog Number fowls 90 30 10 Acres of land owned 55 21 0 Acres of land rented 0 0 10-5/8 Acres in cotton 10 3.5 5 Acres in corn 8 5 5 Acres in sweet potatoes 3 3.5 3/8 Acres in white potatoes 1/4 0 0 Acres in peas (cow) 5.5 1.5 1/4 Acres in rice 1.5 0 0 Garden Very small Poor None The rice is grown without flooding and known as "Providence Rice." With the great ease of getting a livelihood the advances necessarily are small. From January 1, 1902, to July 15 (which is near the close of the advancing season) several average families had gotten advances averaging $15.00. The firm which does most of the advancing on the island writes: "We have some that get more. A few get $50.00 or about that amount, but we make it a point not to let the colored people or our customers get too much in debt. We have to determine about what they need and we have always given them what was necessary to help them make a crop according to their conditions and circumstances as they present themselves to us." The firm reports that they collect each year about 90 per cent of their outstanding accounts. Below are given the customary forms of the Bill of Sale and the Crop Lien given to secure advances: THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, COUNTY OF BEAUFORT. Know all men by these presents, that ............ of the said County, in consideration of the sum of ............ dollars, to be advanced in merchandise by ............, of Beaufort County and State, have bargained and sold unto the said ............ the following personal property, ............, now in my possession, and which I promise to deliver on demand of the said ............ (Signed) ..................... $............ On the .... day of 19.., I promise to pay to the order of ............ ..........., at Beaufort, South Carolina, ............ dollars for money and supplies to be advanced and furnished me by the said ............, merchants, Beaufort, South Carolina, for use in the cultivation of crops on the plantation or farm cultivated by me in Beaufort County, South Carolina, known as the ............ plantation, and containing about ............ acres, during the year 190... And in consideration of the said advance made me I hereby give, make and grant to the said ............ a lien to the extent of said advance on all the crops which may be grown on the said plantation or farm during the year 190.., wherever said crops or parts of them are found. This lien hereby given is executed and to be enforced in accordance with the laws of the State of South Carolina. I, the said ............, in consideration of the foregoing, do hereby agree to advance to the said ........... ..... dollars, as above stated. Witness the hands and seals of both parties. In the presence of ............, L. S. ............ ............, L. S. This is then recorded in the County Court as is an ordinary mortgage. On this island considerable money has been saved and is now deposited with a firm of merchants in whom the people have confidence. In July, 1902, there were about 100 individual depositors having some $4,000 to their credit. The money can be withdrawn at any time, all debts to the firm being first settled. Interest at five per cent. is allowed. Some of this money comes from pensions. There are round about Beaufort a considerable number of U. S. pensioners, as the city was headquarters for Union soldiers for a long time. The effect of the pensions is claimed both by whites and blacks to be bad. A great deal of the credit for the good conditions, relatively speaking, which prevail on St. Helena is given to the Penn School which for years has come into close touch with the lives of the people. The Negroes have also been in touch with a good class of whites, who have encouraged all efforts at improvement. Wherever the credit lies, the visitor is struck by the difference between conditions here and on some other islands, for instance, Lady's Island, which lies between St. Helena and Beaufort. Even here it is claimed that the older generation is more industrious. In the trucking industry, which is very profitable along the coast, the Negroes have only been engaged as ordinary laborers. On the main land, wherever fresh water can be obtained, is the seat of a considerable rice industry. In recent years, owing to the cutting of the forests in the hills, the planters are troubled by freshets in the spring and droughts in the summer. The work is done by Negroes under direction of white foremen. The men work harder on contract jobs, but work by the day is better done. Women are in better repute as laborers than the men and it is stated that more women support their husbands than formerly was the case. Wages range from $.35 to $.50 per day, varying somewhat according to the work done. They are paid in cash and the planters have given up the plantation store in many cases. All work must be constantly supervised and it is said to be harder and harder to get work done. A planter found it almost impossible in the winter of 1901 to get fifty cords of wood cut, the work being considered too heavy. When I left the train at Beaufort and found twelve hacks waiting for about three passengers it was evident where some of the labor force had gone. In this county there is a great development of burial and sick benefit societies. The "Morning Star", "Star of Hope", "Star of Bethlehem" are typical names. The dues are from five to ten cents a week. Many of the societies have good sized halls, rivaling ofttimes the churches, on the various islands, which are used for lodge and social purposes. Beaufort and the other towns offer the country people an opportunity to dispose of fish and any garden produce they may raise, while it is not uncommon to see a little ox dragging a two-wheeled cart and perhaps a quarter of a cord of wood to be hawked about town. During part of the summer a good many gather a species of plant which is used in adulterating cigarettes and cigars. This little account indicates that, so far as the farmers are concerned, there are few evidences of any decided progress save in the district which has been under the influence of one school. The ease of getting a livelihood acts as a deterrent to ambition. Yet the old families say that they have the "best niggers of the South" and certain it is that race troubles are unknown. CENTRAL DISTRICT. =THE OLD CABIN.= In the central district life is a little more strenuous than on the sea coast. The cabins are about the same. The average tenant has a "one mule farm," some thirty or thirty-five acres. Occasionally the tenant has more land, but only about this amount is cultivated and no rent is paid for the balance. The area of the land is usually estimated and only rarely is it surveyed. This land ranges in value from $5.00 to $15.00 per acre on the average. The customary rental for a "one mule farm" is about two bales of cotton, whose value in recent years would be in the neighborhood of $75.00, thus making the rental about $3.00 per acre. On this farm from four to six bales of cotton are raised. The soil has been injured by improper tillage and requires an expenditure of $1.75 to $2.00 per acre for fertilizers if the best results are to be obtained. As yet the Negroes do not fully appreciate this. The farmer secures advances based on 1 peck of meal and 3 pounds of "side meat," fat salt pork, per week for each working hand. About six dollars a month is the limit for advances and as these are continued for only seven months or so the average advance received is probably not far from $50.00 per year. An advance of $10.00 per month is allowed for a two horse farm. The advancer obligates himself to furnish only necessities and any incidentals must be supplied from sale of poultry, berries and the like. Clothing may often be reckoned as an incidental. The luxuries are bought with cash or on the installment plan and are seldom indicated by the books of the merchant. The cost of the average weekly advances for a family in 1902 was: 10 pounds meat (salt port sides) @ 13-1/2c $1.35 1 bushel corn meal .90 1 plug tobacco (reckoned a necessity) .10 ------ $2.35 =THE NEW HOUSE.= Conditions throughout this district are believed to be fairly uniform, but the following information was gathered in Lowndes County, Alabama, so has closest connection with the prairie region of that state: Lowndes County lies just southwest of Montgomery and there are 47 persons to the square mile. The Negroes form 86 per cent. of the population. East and West throughout the county runs the Chennenugga Ridge, a narrow belt of hills which separate the prairie from the pine hills to the South. The ridge is quite broken and in places can not be tilled profitably. The county is of average fertility, however. There are not an unusual number of one-room cabins. Out of 74 families, comprising 416 people, the average was 7 to the room, the greatest number living in one room was 11. The families were housed as follows: No. No. Largest No. Average No. Families. Rooms. Persons. Persons. 17 1 11 6 31 2 12 (3 fam.) 6 16 3 9 5 7 4 14 6 3 5 9 5 The cabins are built of both boards and logs as indicated by cuts on pages 43 and 44 while the interior economy is well shown by the photograph on page 29. Field work is from sun to sun with two hours or so rest at noon. The man usually eats breakfast in the field, the wife staying behind to prepare it. It consists of pork and corn bread. The family come from the field about noon and have dinner consisting of pork and corn bread, with collards, turnip greens, roasting ears, etc. At sundown work stops and supper is eaten, the menu being as at breakfast. The pork eaten by the Negroes, it may be said, is almost solid fat, two or three inches thick, lean meat not being liked. The housewife has few dishes, the food being cooked in pots or in small ovens set among the ashes. Stoves are a rarity. Lamps are occasionally used, but if the chimney be broken it is rarely replaced, the remainder being quite good enough for ordinary purposes. The cabins seldom have glass windows, but instead wooden shutters, which swing outward on hinges. These are shut at night and even during the hottest summer weather there is practically no ventilation. How it is endured I know not, but the custom prevails even in Porto Rico I am told. In winter the cabins are cold. To meet this the thrifty housewife makes bed quilts and as many as 25 or 30 of these are not infrequently found in a small cabin. The floors are rough and not always of matched lumber, while the cabins are poorly built. The usual means of heating, and cooking, is the big fireplace. Sometimes the chimney is built of sticks daubed over with mud, the top of the chimney often failing to reach the ridge of the roof. Fires sometimes result. Tables and chairs are rough and rude. Sheets are few, the mattresses are of cotton, corn shucks or pine straw, and the pillows of home grown feathers. The following regarding the cooking of the Alabama Negro is taken from a letter published in Bulletin No. 38, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Office of the Experiment Stations: "The daily fare is prepared in very simple ways. Corn meal is mixed with water and baked on the flat surface of a hoe or griddle. The salt pork is sliced thin and fried until very brown and much of the grease tried out. Molasses from cane or sorghum is added to the fat, making what is known as 'sap,' which is eaten with the corn bread. Hot water sweetened with molasses is used as a beverage. This is the hill of fare of most of the cabins on the plantations of the 'black belt' three times a day during the year. It is, however, varied at times; thus collards and turnips are boiled with the bacon, the latter being used with the vegetables to supply fat 'to make it rich.' The corn meal bread is sometimes made into so-called 'cracklin bread,' and is prepared as follows: A piece of fat bacon is fried until it is brittle; it is then crushed and mixed with corn meal, water, soda and salt, and baked in an oven over the fireplace.... One characteristic of the cooking is that all meats are fried or otherwise cooked until they are crisp. Observation among these people reveals the fact that very many of them suffer from indigestion in some form." As elsewhere the advances are supplied by the planter or some merchant. The legal rate of interest is 8 per cent, but no Negro ever borrows money at this rate. Ten per cent. per year is considered cheap, while on short terms the rate is often 10 per cent. per week. The average tenant pays from 12.5 per cent. to 15 per cent. for his advances, which are sold at an average of 25 per cent. higher than cash prices on the average. To avoid any possible trouble it is quite customary to reckon the interest and then figure this into the face of the note so that none can tell either the principal or the rate. Below is an actual copy of such a note, the names being changed: $22.00. Calhoun, Alabama, June 2, 1900. On the first day of October, 1900, I promise to pay to the order of A. B. See Twenty Two Dollars at ............ Value received. And so far as this debt is concerned, and as part of the consideration thereof, I do hereby waive all right which I or either of us have under the Constitution and Laws of this or any other State to claim or hold any personal property exempt to me from levy and sale under execution. And should it become necessary to employ an attorney in the collection of this debt I promise to pay all reasonable attorney's fees charged therefor. ATTEST: C. W. JAMES. his A. T. JONES. JOHN X. SMITH. mark. The possibility of extortion which this method makes possible is evident. It is worth while also to reproduce a copy, actual with the exception of the names, of one of the blanket mortgages often given. The italics are mine. THE STATE OF ALABAMA, LOWNDES COUNTY. On or before the first day of October next I promise to pay Jones and Co., or order, the sum of $77.00 at their office in Fort Deposit, Alabama. And I hereby waive all right of exemption secured to me under and by the Laws and Constitution of the State of Alabama as to the collection of this debt. And I agree to pay all the costs of making, recording, probating or acknowledging this instrument, together with a reasonable attorney's fee, and all other expenses incident to the collection of this debt, whether by suit or otherwise. And to secure the payment of the above note, as well as all other indebtedness I may now owe the said Jones and Co., and all future advances I may purchase from the said Jones and Co. during the year 1900, whether due and payable during the year 1900 or not, and for the further consideration of one Dollar to me in hand paid by Jones and Co., the receipt whereof I do hereby acknowledge, I do hereby grant, bargain, sell and convey unto said Jones and Co. the _entire crops_ of corn, cotton, cotton seed, fodder, potatoes, sugar cane and its products and _all other crops of every kind and description_ which may be made and grown during the year 1900 on lands owned, leased, rented or farmed on shares for or by the undersigned in Lowndes County, Alabama, or elsewhere. Also any crops to or in which the undersigned has or may have any interest, right, claim or title in Lowndes County or elsewhere _during and for each succeeding year until the indebtedness secured by this instrument is fully paid_. Also all the corn, cotton, cotton seed, fodder, peas, and all other farm produce now in the possession of the undersigned. Also all the live stock, vehicles and farming implements now owned by or furnished to the undersigned by Jones and Co. during the year 1900. Also one red horse "Lee," one red neck cow "Priest," and her calf, one red bull yearling. Said property is situated in Lowndes County, Alabama. If, after maturity, any part of the unpaid indebtedness remains unpaid, Jones and Co., or their agents or assigns, are authorized and empowered to seize and sell all or any of the above described property, at private sale or public auction, as they may elect, for cash. If at public auction, before their store door or elsewhere, in Fort Deposit, Alabama, after posting for five days written notice of said sale on post office door in said town, and to apply the proceeds of said sale to the payment, first of all costs and expenses provided for in the above note and expense of seizing and selling said property; second, to payment in full of debt or debts secured by said mortgage, and the surplus, if any, pay to the undersigned. And the said mortgagee or assigns is hereby authorized to purchase at his own sale under this mortgage. I agree that no member of my family, nor anyone living with me, nor any person under my control, shall have an extra patch on the above described lands, unless covered by this mortgage; and I also agree that this mortgage shall cover all such patches. It is further agreed and understood that any securities held by Jones and Co. as owner or assignee on any of the above described property executed by me prior to executing this mortgage shall be retained by them, and shall remain in full force and effect until the above note and future advances are paid in full, and shall be additional security for this debt. There is no lien or encumbrance upon any property conveyed by this instrument except that held by Jones and Co. and the above specified rents. If, before the demands hereby secured are payable, any of the property conveyed herein shall be in _danger of (or from) waste, destruction or removal, said demands shall be then payable and all the terms, rights and powers of this instrument operative and enforceable, as if and under a past due mortgage_. Witness my hand and seal this 10th day of January, 1900. ATTEST: B. C. COOK. SAM SMALL. L. S. R. J. BENNETT. It may be granted that experience has shown all this verbiage to be necessary. In the hands of an honest landlord it is as meaningless as that in the ordinary contract we sign in renting a house. In the hands of a dishonest landlord or merchant it practically enables him to make a serf of the Negro. The mortgage is supposed to be filed at once, but it is sometimes held to see if there is any other security which might be included. The rascally creditor watches the crop and if the Negro may have a surplus he easily tempts him to buy more, or more simply still, he charges to his account imaginary purchases, so that at the end of the year the Negro is still in debt. The Negro has no redress. He can not prove that he has not purchased the goods and his word will not stand against the merchant's. Practically he is tied down to the land, for no one else will advance him under these conditions. Sometimes he escapes by getting another merchant to settle his account and by becoming the tenant of the new man. When it is remembered that land is abundant and good labor rare, the temptation to hold a man on the land by fair means or foul is apparent. Moreover, the merchant by specious reasoning often justifies his own conduct. He says that the Negro will spend his money at the first opportunity and that he might just as well have it as some other merchant. I would not be understood as saying that this action is anything but the great exception but there are dishonest men everywhere who are ready to take advantage of their weaker fellows and the Negro suffers as a result, just as the ignorant foreigner does in the cities of the North. The interest may also be reckoned into the face of the mortgage. In any case it begins the day the paper is signed, although the money or its equivalent is only received at intervals and a full year's interest is paid, often on the face of the mortgage, even if only two-thirds of it has actually been advanced to the Negro, no matter when the account is settled. The helplessness of the Negro who finds himself in the hands of a sharper is obvious when that sharper has practical control of the situation. In many and curious ways the landlord seeks to hold his tenants. He is expected to stand by them in time of trouble, to protect them against the aggressions of other blacks and of whites as well. This paternalism is often carried to surprising lengths. The size of a man's family is known and the riders see to it that he keeps all the working hands in the field. If the riders have any trouble with a Negro they are apt to take it out in physical punishment, to "wear him out," as the phrase goes. Thus resentment is seldom harbored against a Negro and there are many who claim that this physical discipline is far better than any prison regime in its effects upon the Negro. In spite of all that is done it is claimed that the Negroes are getting less reliable and that the chief dependence is now in the older men, the women and the children. One remark, made by a planter's wife, which impressed me as having a good deal of significance, was, "the Negroes do not sing as much now as formerly." To get at anything like an accurate statement of the income and expenses of a Negro family is a difficult matter. The following account of three families will give a fair idea of their budget for part of the year at least. Family No. 1 consists of five adults (over 14) and one child. They live in a two-roomed cabin and own one mule, two horses two cows. Their account with the landlord for the years 1900 and 1901 was: 1900. To balance 1899 $ 32.60 Cash ($25.00) for mule 36.00 Clothing 19.68 Feed 15.20 Provisions 23.00 Tools 2.03 Interest and Recording Fee 16.87 ------- $145.38 1901. To balance 1900 $ 15.21 Cash 26.57 Clothing 9.55 Feed and seed 44.19 Provisions 26.29 Tools .55 Interest and Recording Fee 16.34 ------- $138.70 Their credit for 1901 was $10392, thus leaving a deficit for the beginning of the next year. As the advances stop in August or September, and the balance of the purchases are for cash and may be at other stores, there is no way of getting at them. In 1900 the family paid $201 toward the 85 acres they are purchasing, part of this sum probably coming from the crop of 1899, and in 1901 they made a further payment of $34. This family is doing much better than the average. It may be interesting to see a copy of his account for the year 1901 taken from the ledger of the planter. Jan. 1. Balance 1900 $ 15.21 Jan. 12. 10 bu. corn, $5.00; fodder, $1.20; cash, $8.00 14.20 Jan. 19. Cash for tax, $1.43; recording fee, $1.00; cash, $13.25 15.68 Feb. 2. Plowshoes, $1.40; gents' hose, 10c; 20 yds. check, $1.00; 2 straw hats, $1.20 3.70 Feb. 2. 23.5 bu. corn, $14.94; cash, 79c; shoes, $1.50; plow lines, 20c 17.43 Mar. 15. 15 yds. drilling, $1.20; 15 yds. check, 75c; 4.5 lbs. bacon, 48c 2.43 Apr. 6. 10 bu. corn, $7.00; 5 bu. cotton seed, $1.75; 4.5 lbs. bacon, 53c 9.28 Apr. 12. Bu. meal, 65c; spool cotton, 5c; tobacco, 10c; 7 lbs. bacon, 81c; 5 bu. corn. $3.50 5.11 May 1. Cash, $1.00; 30 lbs. bacon, $3.45; work shoes, $1.10; gents' shoes, $1.25; half bu. meal, 35c 7.15 May 1. 30 lbs. bacon, $3.45; (25) 30 lbs. bacon, $3.30; sack meal, $1.35 8.10 June 8. 2-3 bu. oats, 35c; 1-3 bu. corn, 25c; bu. meal, 70c; sack feed, $2.50 3.80 June 14. Sack meal, $1.35; 12 lbs. bacon, $1.32; cash, $1.00; (22) 12 lbs. bacon, $1.38 5.05 June 22. Sack meal, $1.35; sack feed, $2.50; plow sweep, 35c 4.20 July 1. 6 lbs. bacon, 69c; (5) sack feed, $2.60; half bu. meal, 35c; (9) bu. meal, 75c; 10 lbs. bacon, $1.15 5.54 July 18. 8 lbs. bacon, 92c; (19) sack feed, $2.60; (25) bu. meal, 90c 4.42 Aug. 6. Half bu. meal, 50c; 4 lbs. bacon, 46c; cash, 35c 1.31 Aug. 6. Interest 15.34 Oct. 6. Cash, 75c .75 ------- $138.70 The second family consists of three adults and three children. They have three one-roomed cabins, own one mule and two cows, and are leasing fifty acres of land, the effort to buy it having proven too much. Their account for 1900 and 1901 was as follows: 1900. Balance Jan. 1 $ .50 Cash 9.00 Clothing 9.79 Feed 11.50 Provisions 13.48 Tobacco .80 Tools, etc. .40 Interest and recording fee 5.77 ------ $52.24 1901. Balance Jan. 1 $ 4.15 Cash 2.82 Clothing 7.55 Feed 21.22 Provisions 17.69 Tobacco .55 Tools, etc. .70 Interest and fee 7.90 ------ $62.48 The debit for 1900 was all paid by November first and by November first, 1901, $58.40 of the charge for that year had been paid. In 1900 the man paid $94.61 towards his land but has since been leasing. The third family consists of two adults and three children. They live in a board cabin of two rooms, have one mule, one cow and one horse. They are purchasing 50 acres of land. Their accounts for 1900 and 1901 stand between the two already given. 1900. Balance 1899 $17.24 Cash 23.20 Clothing 4.73 Provisions 19.80 Tools 4.40 Interest and fee 8.04 ------ $77.41 1901. Balance 1900 $13.93 Cash 21.28 Clothing 6.30 Feed 26.50 Provisions 21.36 Tools 3.50 Interest and fee 12.40 ------- $109.28 By November 30, 1901, they had paid $79.13 of their account. In 1900 they paid $180 towards their land and $29.60 in 1901. All of these families are a little above the average. The income is supplemented by the sale of chickens, eggs and occasionally butter. In hard years when the crops are poor the men and older boys seek service in the mines of North Alabama or on the railroads during the summer before cotton picking begins, and again during the winter. The outfit of the average farmer is very inexpensive and is somewhat as follows: Harness, $1.50; pony plow, $3.00; extra point, 25c $4.75 Sweepstock (a), 75c; 3 sweeps, 90c; scooter (b), 10c 1.75 2 hoes, 80c; blacksmith (yearly average), 50c 1.30 ----- Total $7.80 (a) A sweep is a form of cultivator used in cleaning grass and weeds from the rows of cotton. (b) A scooter or "bull-tongue" is a strip of iron used in opening the furrow for the cotton seed. A cow costs $25, pigs $2 to $2.50, wagon (seldom owned) $45. A mule now costs from $100 to $150, but may be rented by the year for $20 or $25. Owners claim there is no profit in letting them at this price and the Negroes assert that if one dies the owner often claims that it had been sold and proceeds to collect the value thereof. From either point of view the plan seems to meet with but little favor. The following table will give some idea of the condition and personal property of a number of families in Lowndes County: ----------+----+----+----+----+----+---+-----+---+---+----+---+----+ | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | ----------+----+----+----+----+----+---+-----+---+---+----+---+----+ Family 1 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |[9]0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | " 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | " 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | " 4 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | " 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | " 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | " 7 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | " 8 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | " 9 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | " 10 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | ----------+----+----+----+----+----+---+-----+---+---+----+---+----+ 10 | 35 | 16 | 11 | 8 | 25 | 1 | 8 | 6 | 1 | 14 | 2 | 10 | ----------+----+----+----+----+----+---+-----+---+---+----+---+----+ Key to columns: A Adults B Children under 14 C Log Cabins D B'd Cabins E No. Rooms F Sewing Machines G Mules H Horses I Oxen J Cows K Pigs L Dogs It will be seen that the number of oxen is small. I should not be surprised if some of the hogs escaped observation. An account of this district would not be complete without reference to the herb doctors who do a thriving business, charging from twenty-five cents per visit up. They make all sorts of noxious compounds which are retailed as good for various ailments. The medicines are perhaps no more harmful than the patent compounds of other places. There are also witch doctors, of whom the Negroes stand in great awe and many a poor sufferer has died because it was believed that he or she was bewitched by some evil person, hence physicians could have no power. The budgets given indicate, and this is my own belief, that the farmers in this district are just about holding their own. They are not trained to take advantage of their environment to the full so they do not prosper as they might, while occasional designing persons take great advantage of them, thereby rendering them discouraged. The introduction of a more diversified farming, the greater utilization of local resources in fruits and vegetables, thereby giving variety in the diet, the development of pastures and stock raising would enable them to break away from the mortgage system, which retards them in many ways. This view that the farmers here are about able to make a living is supported by the investigations of Professor Du Bois.[10] He gives the following report of 271 families in Georgia: Year, 1898. Price of cotton low. Bankrupt and sold out 3 $100 or over in debt 61 $25 to $100 in debt 54 $1 to $25 in debt 47 Cleared nothing 53 Cleared $1 to $25 27 Cleared $25 to $100 21 Cleared $100 and over 5 ---- 271 Regarding the general situation he says: "A good season with good prices regularly sent a number out of debt and made them peasant proprietors; a bad season, either in weather or prices, still means the ruin of a thousand black homes." Under existing conditions the outlook does not seem to me especially hopeful. ALLUVIAL DISTRICT. =A DOUBLE CABIN IN THE DELTA.= The Mississippi river, deflected westward by the hills of Tennessee, at Memphis sweeps in a long arc to the hills at Natchez. The oval between the river and the hills to the East is known as the "Delta." The land is very flat, being higher on the border of the river so that when the river overflows the entire bottom land is flooded. The waters are not restrained by a good system of levees and the danger of floods is reduced. There are similar areas in Arkansas and Louisiana and along the lower courses of the Red and other rivers, but what is said here will have special reference to Mississippi conditions. The land is extremely fertile, probably there is none better in the world, and is covered with a dense growth of fine woods, oak, ash, gum and cypress. The early settlements, as already stated, were along the navigable streams, but the great development of railroads is opening up the entire district. The country may still be called new and thousands of acres may be purchased at a cost of less than $10 per acre, wild land, of course. Cultivated land brings from $25 up. Considering its possibilities the region is not yet densely populated, but a line of immigration is setting in and the indications are that the Delta will soon be the seat of the heaviest Negro population in the country. Already it rivals the black prairie of Alabama. There have been many influences to retard immigration, the fear of fevers, malaria and typhoid, commonly associated with low countries, and the dread of overflows. Because of the lack of the labor force to develop the country planters have been led to offer higher wages, better houses, etc. There is about the farming district an air of prosperity which is not noticeable to the East. The country is particularly adapted to cotton, the yield is heavier, about a bale to the acre if well cultivated, though the average is a little less, the staple is longer, and the price is about a cent a pound higher, than in the hills. Fertilizers are seldom used and are not carried in the stores. Some of the lands which have been longest in use have been harmed by improper tillage, but the injury may easily be repaired by intelligent management. In the Delta the average size of the plantations is large, but the amount of land under the care of the tenant is smaller than in other sections. About 20 acres is probably the average to one work animal. The soil is heavier, requiring longer and more constant cultivation. For this land a rental of from $6 to $8 per acre is paid, while plantations will rent for a term of years at an acre. A good deal of new land is brought in cultivation by offering it rent free to a Negro for three years, the tenant agreeing to clear off the timber and bring the soil under cultivation. On some plantations no interest is charged on goods advanced by the Negro usually pays 25 per cent. for all money he borrows. The white planter has to pay at least 8 per cent and agree to sell his cotton through the factor of whom the money is obtained and pay him a commission of 2.5 per cent. for handling the cotton. The plantation accounts of three families follow for the year 1901. They live in Washington County, Mississippi, in which the Negroes form 89 per cent. of the total population. The first family consists of three adults and one child under 14. They own two mules, two cows, ten pigs and some chickens. They also have a wagon and the necessary farm implements. Their expenses were enlarged, as were those of the other families, by an epidemic of smallpox. Debit. Credit. Doctor $39.50 Cotton $826.80 Blacksmith 1.85 Cotton seed 147.00 Implements 15.05 ------- Clothes 102.55 $973.80 Provisions 42.10 856.95 Rent 175.07 ------- Extra labor 53.50 Balance $116.85 Seed 31.30 Ginning Cotton 61.30 Cash drawn 334.73 ------- $856.95 Their account at the close of the year showed thus a balance of $116.85. The family raised 2 bales of cotton and had besides 180 bushels of corn from six acres. The second family came to the plantation in 1900 with nothing, not even with decent clothing. Now they have two mules, keep some pigs, own a wagon and farming tools. There are five adults in the family and two children. They live in a three-roomed cabin and till 30 acres of land, four acres being wood land taken for clearing, for which there is no rent. Debit. Credit. Doctor $ 35.35 Cotton $1,091.28 Feed 5.00 Cotton seed 196.00 Mule (balance) 77.00 --------- Rations and clothes 284.10 $1,287.28 Rent 175.50 1,035.82 Extra labor 67.60 --------- Ginning 101.25 Balance $ 251.46 Cash drawn 290.02 --------- $1,035.82 The third family is of different type. They are always behind, although the wife is a good worker and the man is willing and seems to try. They are considered one of the poorest families on the plantation. There are two adults and one child. They own farming implements, one mule and some pigs. They have a two-roomed cabin and farm 18 acres for which they pay a crop rent of 1,800 pounds of cotton. Debit. Credit. Doctor $ 24.45 Cotton $498.57 Mule 33.00 Cotton seed 91.00 Clothing 53.40 ------- Rations 60.00 $589.57 Feed 11.25 576.55 Rent 130.50 ------- Extra labor 179.45 Balance $ 13.02 Seed 11.90 Ginning 43.50 Cash down 53.50 ------- $576.55 An examination of the accounts reveals that there is a charge for extra labor, which for the third family was very heavy. This results from the fact that the average family _could_, but _does not_ pick all the cotton it makes, so when it is seen that enough is on hand to pay all the bills and leave a balance it is very careless about the remainder. Planters have great difficulty in getting all the cotton picked and a considerable portion is often lost. Extra labor must be imported. This is hard to get and forms, when obtained, a serious burden on the income of the tenant. On the plantation from whose books the above records were taken the system of bookkeeping is more than usually careful and the gin account thus forms a separate item so that although all planters charge for the ginning the charge does not always appear on the books. These three families are believed to be average and indicate what it is possible for the typical family to do under ordinary conditions. It is but fair to state that the owners of this plantation make many efforts to get their tenants to improve their condition and will not long keep those whose accounts do not show a credit balance at the end of the year. A copy of the lease in use will be of interest and its stipulations form quite a contrast to the one quoted from Alabama. The cash and share leases are identical save for necessary changes in form. The names are fictitious. "This Contract, made this date and terminating December 31, 1902, between Smith and Brown, and John Doe, hereinafter called tenant, Witnesses: That Smith and Brown have this day rented and set apart to John Doe for the year 1902 certain twenty acres of land on James Plantation, Washington County, Mississippi, at a rental price per acre of seven dollars and fifty cents. Smith and Brown hereby agree to furnish, with said land, a comfortable house and good pump, and to grant to the said tenant the free use of such wood as may be necessary for his domestic purposes and to advance such supplies, in such quantity and manner as may be mutually agreed upon as being necessary to maintain him in the cultivation of said land; it being now mutually understood that by the term "supplies" is meant meat, meal, molasses, tobacco, snuff, medicine and medical attention, good working shoes and clothes, farming implements and corn. It is also hereby mutually agreed and understood that anything other than the articles herein enumerated is to be advanced to the said tenant only as the condition of his crops and account and the manner of his work shall, in the judgment of Smith and Brown, be deemed to entitle him. They also agree to keep said house and pump in good repair and to keep said land well ditched and drained. Being desirous of having said tenant raise sufficient corn to supply his needs during the ensuing year, in consideration of his planting such land in corn as they may designate, they hereby agree to purchase from said tenant all corn over and above such as may be necessary for his needs, and to pay therefor the market price; and to purchase all corn raised by him in the event be wishes to remove from James plantation at the termination of this contract. In consideration of the above undertaking on Smith and Brown's part, the said tenant hereby agrees to sell to them all surplus corn raised by him and in the event of his leaving James' plantation at the termination of this contract to sell to them all corn he may have on hand: in each case at the market price. The said Smith and Brown hereby reserve to themselves all liens for rent and supplies on all cotton, cotton seed, corn and other agricultural products, grown upon said land during the year 1902, granted under Sections 2495 and 2496 of the Code of 1892. They hereby agree to handle and sell for the said tenant all cotton and other crops raised by him for sale, to the best of their ability, and to account to him for the proceeds of the same when sold. They also reserve to themselves the right to at all times exercise such supervision as they may deem necessary over the planting and cultivating of all crops to be raised by him during the year 1902. The said John Doe hereby rents from Smith and Brown the above mentioned land for the year 1902 and promises to pay therefor seven dollars and a half per acre on or before November the first, 1902, and hereby agrees to all the terms and stipulations herein mentioned. He furthermore represents to Smith and Brown that he has sufficient force to properly plant and cultivate same, and agrees that if at any time in their judgment his crops may be in need of cultivation, they may have the necessary work done and charge same to his account. He furthermore agrees to at all times properly control his family and hands, both as to work and conduct, and obligates himself to prevent any one of them from causing any trouble whatsoever, either to his neighbors or to Smith and Brown. He also agrees to plant and cultivate all land allotted to him, including the edges of the roads, turn rows, and ditch banks, and to keep the latter at all times clean and to plant no garden or truck patches in his field. He also agrees to gather and deliver all agricultural products which he may raise for sale to said Smith and Brown, as they may designate to be handled and sold by them, for his account. He also agrees not to abandon, neglect, turn back or leave his crops or any part of them, nor to allow his family or hands to do so, until entirely gathered and delivered. In order that Smith and Brown may be advised of the number of tenants which they may have to secure for the ensuing year, in ample time to enable them to provide for the same, the said tenant hereby agrees to notify them positively by December 10, 1902, whether or not he desires to remain on James' Plantation for the ensuing year. Should he not desire to remain, then he agrees to deliver to Smith and Brown possession of the house now allotted to him by January 1st, 1903. In order that said tenant may have ample time in which to provide for himself a place for the ensuing year, Smith and Brown hereby agree to notify him by December 10, 1902, should they not want him as a tenant during the ensuing year. Witness our signatures, this the 15th day of December, 1901. SMITH AND BROWN. JOHN DOE. Witness: J. W. JAMES. The owners have been unable to carry out their efforts in full, but the result has been very creditable. The lease is much preferable to the one given on page 46. If, as I believe, the families above reported are average and are living under ordinary conditions, it seems evident that a considerable surplus results from their labors each year. I wish I could add that the money were being either wisely spent or saved and invested. This does not seem to be the case and it is generally stated that the amount of money wasted in the fall of the year by the blacks of the Delta is enormous. In the cabins the great catalogs of the mail order houses of Montgomery Ward & Co., and Sears, Roebuck & Co., of Chicago are often found, and the express agents say that large shipments of goods are made to the Negroes. Patent medicines form no inconsiderable proportion of these purchases, while "Stutson" hats, as the Negro says, are required by the young bloods. The general improvidence of the people is well illustrated by the following story related by a friend of the writer. At the close of one season an old Negro woman came to his wife for advice as to the use to be made of her savings, some $125. She was advised to buy some household necessities and to put the remainder in a bank, above all she was cautioned to beware of any who sought to get her to squander the money. The woman left but in about two weeks' time returned to borrow some money. It developed that as she went down the street a Jewess invited her to come in and have a cup of coffee. The invitation was accepted and during the conversation she was advised to spend the money. This she did, and when the transactions were over the woman had one barrel of flour, one hundred pounds of meat, ten dollars or so worth of cheap jewelry, some candy and other incidentals and no money. Foolish expenditures alone, according to the belief of the planters, prevent the Negroes from owning the entire land in a generation. I would not give the impression that there are no Negro land owners in this region. Thousands of acres have been purchased and are held by them, but we are speaking of average families. Some curious customs prevail. The planters generally pay the Negroes in cash for their cotton seed and this money the blacks consider as something peculiarly theirs, not to be used for any debts they may have. Although the prices for goods advanced are higher than cash prices, the Negroes will often, when spring comes, insist that they be advanced, so have the goods charged even at the higher prices, even though they have the cash on hand. This great over-appreciation of present goods is a drawback to their progress. In this district I found little dissatisfaction among the Negro farmers. They felt that their opportunities were good. Those who come from the hills can scarce believe their eyes at the crops produced and constantly ask when the cotton plants are going to turn yellow and droop. That there is little migration back to the hills is good evidence of the relative standing of the two districts in their eyes. Wages for day labor range from 60 to 75 cents, but the extra labor imported for cotton picking makes over double this. THE SUGAR REGION. South of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the alluvial district is largely given over to the growing of sugar cane with occasional fields of rice. The district under cultivation stretches back from the river a couple of miles or so to the edge of the woods beyond which at present there is no tillable ground, though drainage will gradually push back the line of the forest. These sugar lands are valued highly, $100 or so an acre, and the capital invested in the great sugar houses is enormous. Probably nowhere in agricultural pursuits is there a more thorough system of bookkeeping than on these plantations. This land is cultivated by hired hands, who work immediately under the eye of overseers. Nowhere is the land let out in small lots to tenants. Conditions are radically different from those prevailing in the cotton regions. The work season, it is claimed, begins on the first day of January and ends on the 31st of December, and every day between when the weather permits work in the fields there is work to be done. =CABINS ON SUGAR PLANTATION.= These plantations present an attractive appearance. The cabins are not scattered as in the cotton country, but are usually ranged on either side of a broad street, with rows of trees in front. The cabins are often for two families and each has a plot of ground for a garden. The planters say the Negroes will not live in the houses unless the garden plots are provided, even if they make no use of them. To each family is allotted a house so long as they are employed on the place. Wood is free and teams are provided for hauling it from the forest. Free pasture for stock is often provided. From the fact that the men would seldom work more than five and a half days a week arose the custom of paying off every eleven days. Each workman has a time book and as soon as he has completed his eleven days his pay is due. This avoids a general pay day and the demoralization that would likely follow. Work is credited by quarters of a day: Sunrise to breakfast, breakfast to dinner, dinner to about 3:00 p. m., 3:00 p. m. to sunset. Wages vary according to the season, being much larger during autumn when the cane is being ground. For field work men get 70 cents per day, women 55 to 60 cents. During the grinding season the men earn from $1 to $1.25, the women about 85 cents, children from 25 cents up. Wages are usually paid through a store which may or may not be under the direct ownership of the plantation. All accounts against the store are deducted, but the balance must be paid in cash if it is so desired. Nominally the men are free to trade where they will, but it is easy to see that pressure might be brought to bear to make it advantageous to trade at the local store. During the year 1901 two families were able to earn the following amounts. The first family consists of three adults and two children, but the wife did not work in the field. $10.50 7.00 13.80 12.60 10.85 12.60 11.55 10.85 6.65 13.80 12.95 15.40 14.50 11.20 2.62 1.25 2.25 4.35 ------------------------------------------ $23.97 14.90 27.60 25.55 26.25 29.35 27.10 11.55 8.40 9.80 20.60 25.75 28.75 Man 11.20 7.35 9.80 7.95 16.00 10.15 Son 4.35 3.05 1.20 6.40 18.15 15.75 Boy 1.85 10.12 6.75 Boy -------------------------------------------- 27.10 18.80 20.80 36.80 70.02 61.40--$382.54 During the grinding season the men's wages were increased to $1 a day and the boys' to 40 cents and the father had chances to make extra time as nightwatchman, etc. This family own a horse and buggy, keep poultry and have a fair garden. They are rather thrifty and have money stowed away somewhere. The second family consists of the parents and eight children. Their income is fair, but they are always "hard up." They spend their money extravagantly. The man is head teamster on the plantation and makes 80 cents per day, which is increased to $1.30 during the grinding season. The wife in this family also did no work save in the fall. $16.00 14.40 17.60 15.40 18.40 16.80 17.80 7.87 6.85 10.10 9.25 9.65 10.10 11.00 12.60 8.75 12.60 13.30 15.55 14.50 11.90 2.90 1.50 4.50 1.25 1.80 .65 ------------------------------------------ $40.62 33.30 45.45 37.95 43.60 41.40 40.70 17.80 18.00 16.60 23.30 44.95 43.05 Man 11.00 10.25 4.00 6.00 19.30 18.00 Boy 11.90 12.40 11.70 19.25 25.75 23.00 Son 6.75 17.25 14.75 Girl 1.60 Boy 2.10 8.00 5.25 Boy 3.00 15.15 13.50 Woman ---------------------------------------------- 40.70 40.65 32.30 60.40 130.30 119.15--665.82 These families are typical so far as known. In comparing their incomes with those in other districts it must be borne in mind that they have no rent to pay and their only necessary expenses are for food and clothes and incidentals. Certainly both of the families should have money to their credit at the end of the year. The total wages depends not only on the willingness to work, but also on weather conditions. One gets the impression that in some places conditions are pretty bad and even by some white residents of the state it is claimed that a state of servitude almost prevails on many plantations. In any case the Negroes do not seem satisfied. The labor is rather heavy. For this or other reasons there has been quite an exodus to the cotton country in recent years, which has caused the cane planters much trouble and they will make many concessions to keep their tenants. To meet this emigration for some time efforts have been made to import Italian labor but the results have not been wholly satisfactory. The Italians are more reliable and this is a great argument in their favor, but with this exception they are not considered much better workers than the blacks. The storekeepers much prefer the Negroes, who spend their money more freely. The planters claim that the labor is unreliable and say they never know on Saturday how many workers they will have on Monday. They also say it is hard to get extra labor done. In 1900 on one plantation the women were offered ten cents a day extra for some hoeing, but only four held out. Higher wages were offered if some cane were cut by the ton instead of by the day, but after a week the hands asked to return to the gang at the lower wage. In the rice fields along the river about the same wages prevail as for the field hands in the cane plantations. The rice crop, however, is but a six months crop, so other employment must be found for part of the year if nothing but rice is raised. It is usual in this region to raise rice as a side crop. CHAPTER V. SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT. =COUNTRY CHURCH AND SCHOOL.= Hitherto we have had to do chiefly with the economic situation of the Negro farmer. There is, however, another set of forces which may not be ignored if we are to understand the situation which confronts us. These are, of course, the social forces. In discussing these it is more than ever essential to remember that a differentiation has been taking place among the Negroes and that there are large numbers who are not to be grouped with the average men and women whom we seek to describe. It may even be true that there are communities which have gained a higher level. Any statement of the social environment of 8,000,000 people must necessarily be false if applied strictly to each individual. The existence of the higher class must not, however, be allowed to blind us to the condition of the rest. The average Negro boy or girl is allowed to grow. It is difficult to say much more for the training received at home. We must remember that there is an almost total absence of home life as we understand it. The family seldom sits down together at the table or do anything else in common. The domestic duties are easily mastered by the girls and chores do not weigh heavily on the boys. At certain periods of the year the children are compelled to assist in the farm operations, such as picking cotton, but most of the time they are care free. Thus they run almost wild while the parents are at work in the fields, and the stranger who suddenly approaches a cabin and beholds the youngsters scattering for shelter will not soon forget the sight. Obedience, neatness, punctuality do not thrive in such an atmosphere. The introduction to the country school a little later does not greatly improve conditions. The teachers are often incompetent and their election often depends upon other things than fitness to teach; upon things, indeed, which are at times far from complimentary to the school trustees. The school year seldom exceeds four months and this may be divided into two terms, two months in the fall and two in the spring. School opens at an indefinite time in the morning, if scheduled for nine it is just as likely as not that it begins at ten thirty, while the closing hour is equally uncertain. The individual attention received by the average child is necessarily small. The schools are poorly equipped with books or maps. The interior view given on page 61 is by no means exceptional. It may not be out of place to mention the fact that recognition of these evils is leading in many places in the South to the incorporation of private schools, which then offer their facilities to the public in return for partial support at the public expense. Public moneys are being turned over to these schools in considerable amounts. In some counties the public does not own a school building. Without questioning the fact that these schools are an improvement over existing conditions, history will belie itself if this subsidizing of private organizations does not some day prove a great drawback to the proper development of the public school system, unless it may be, that the courts will declare the practice illegal and unconstitutional. The home and the school being from our point of view unsatisfactory, the next social institution to which we turn is the church. Since the war this has come to be the most influential in the opinion of the Negro and it deserves more careful study than has yet been given to it. Only some of the more obvious features can here be considered. The first thing to impress the observer is the fact that time is again no object to the Negro. The service advertised for eleven may get fairly under way by twelve and there is no predicting when it will stop. The people drift in and out, one or two at a time, throughout the service. Families do not enter nor sit together. Outside is always a group talking over matters of general interest. The music, lined out, consists of the regulation church hymns, which are usually screeched all out of time in a high key. The contrast between this music and the singing of the plantation songs at Hampton or some other schools which impresses one as does little music he hears elsewhere is striking. The people have the idea that plantation songs are out of place in the church. The collection is taken with a view to letting others know what each one does. At the proper time a couple of the men take their places at a table before the pulpit and invite the people to come forward with their offerings. The people straggle up the aisle with their gifts, being constantly urged to hasten so as not to delay the service. After half an hour or so the results obtained are remarkable and the social emulation redounds to the benefit of the preacher. It is difficult for the white visitor to get anything but hints of the real possibilities of the preacher, for he is at once introduced to the audience and induced to address them if it is possible. Even when this is not done there is usually an air of restraint which is noticeable. Only occasionally does the speaker forget himself and break loose, as it were. The study then presented is interesting in the extreme. While the minister shouts, the audience are swaying backward and forward in sympathetic rhythm, encouraging the speaker with cries of "Amen", "That's right", "That's the Gospel", "Give it to 'em bud", "Give 'em a little long sweetening". There is no question that they are profoundly moved, but the identity of the spirit which troubles the waters is to me sometimes a question. The forms of the white man's religion have been adopted, but the content of these forms seems strangely different. Seemingly the church, or rather, religion, is not closely identified with morality. I am sorry to say that in the opinion of the best of both races the average country (and city) pastor does not bear a good reputation, the estimates of the immoral running from 50 to 98 per cent. of the total number. It is far from me to discount any class of people, but if the situation is anything as represented by the estimate, the seriousness of it is evident. This idea is supported by the fact that indulgence in immorality is seldom a bar to active church membership, and if a member be dismissed from one communion there are others anxious to receive him or her. There are churches and communities of which these statements are not true. It is interesting to note that the churches are securing their chief support from the women. As an organization the church does not seem to have taken any great interest in the matters which most vitally affect the life of the people, except to be a social center. If these things be considered it is easy to see why the best informed are seeking for the country districts men who can be leaders of the people during the week on the farms as well as good speakers on Sunday. It is a pleasure to note that here and there some busy pastor is also spending a good deal of his time cultivating a garden, or running a small farm, with the distinct purpose of setting a good example. The precise way in which the church may be led to exert a wider and more helpful influence on the people is a matter of great importance, but it must be solved from within. Turning from religious work we find the church bearing an important place in the social life and amusements. Besides its many gatherings and protracted meetings which are social functions, numbers of picnics and excursions are given. These may be on the railroads to rather distant points, and because of the lack of discrimination as to participants, many earnest protests have been filed by the better class of Negroes. The amusements of the blacks are simple. Nearly all drink, but drunkenness is not a great vice. Dances are in high esteem, and are often accompanied by much drinking and not infrequently by cutting scrapes, for the Negro's passions lie on the surface and are easily aroused. In South Carolina the general belief seems to be that the dispensary law has been beneficial. There is also a universal fondness for tobacco in all its forms. Gambling prevails wherever there is ready money and not infrequently leads to serious assaults. Music has great charms while a circus needs not the excuse of children to justify it in the Negro's eyes. Some of the holidays are celebrated, and when on the coast the blacks dubbed the 30th of May "Desecration Day," there were those who thought it well named. Active sports, with the occasional exception of a ball game, are not preferred to the more quiet pleasure of sitting about in the sunshine conversing with friends. America can not show a happier, more contented lot of people than these same blacks. If we turn our attention to other characteristics of the Negro we must notice his different moral standard. To introduce the little I shall say on this point let me quote from a well known anthropologist. "There is nothing more difficult for us to realize, civilized as we are, than the mental state of the man far behind us in cultivation, as regards what we call par excellence 'morality.' It is not indecency; it is simply an animal absence of modesty. Acts which are undeniably quite natural, since they are the expression of a primordial need, essential to the duration of the species, but which a long ancestral and individual education has trained us to subject to a rigorous restraint, and to the accomplishment of which, consequently, we can not help attaching a certain shame, do not in the least shock the still imperfect conscience of the primitive man." From somewhat this standpoint we must judge of the Negro. Two or three illustrations will suffice. Talking last summer to a porter in a small hotel, I asked him if he had ever lived on a farm. He replied that he had and that he often thought of returning. Asking him why he did not he said that it would be necessary for him to get a wife and a lot of other things. I suggested the possibility of boarding in another family. He shook his head and said: "Niggers is queer folks, boss. 'Pears to me they don' know what they gwine do. Ef I go out and live in a man's house like as not I run away wid dat man's wife." The second illustration is taken from an unpublished manuscript by Rev. J. L. Tucker of Baton Rouge. There is a negro of good character here in Baton Rouge whose name is ---- ----. He is a whitewasher by trade and does mainly odd jobs for the white people who are his patrons, and earns a good living. He is widely known through the city as a good and reliable man. Some time ago he had trouble with his wife's preacher, who came to his house too often. The trouble culminated in his wife leaving him. Soon thereafter he sent or went into the country and brought home a negro woman whom he installed in his house to cook and otherwise serve him. Explaining the circumstances to Mr. ----, he said: "I a'in' got no use for nigga preachers. Dey is de debbil wid de wimmen. I tol' dat ar fellah to keep away fr'm my house or I'd hunt him wid a shotgun, an' I meant it. But he got her'n spite a me. She went off to 'im. Now I's got me a wife from way back in de country, who don' know the ways of nigga preachers. I kin keep her, I reckon, a while, anyway. I pays her wages reg'lar, an' she does her duty by me. I tell yeh, Mr. ----, a hired wife's a heap better's a married wife any time, yeh mark dat. Ef yeh don' line er yer can sen' her off an' get anudder, an' she's nutten to complain 'bout a' longs yeh pay her wages. Yes siree, yeh put dat down; de hired wife's nuff sight better'n de married one. I don' fus no mo' wid marryin' wives, I hires 'em. An I sent word to dat preacher dat if he comes roun' my house now I lays for 'im shore wid buck shot." Commenting, Mr. Tucker says that the man had no idea of moral wrong, the real wife has lost no caste, the preacher stands just as well with his flock and the "new wife" is well received. The third instance occurred on a plantation. A married woman, not satisfied with the shoes she received from the store, wanted a pair of yellow turned shoes. The planter would not supply them. The woman was angry and finally left her husband, went to a neighboring place and "took up" with another man. These cases sufficiently illustrate prevailing conceptions of the sacredness of the marriage tie. Certainly this involves a theory of home life which differs from ours. Many matings are consummated without any regular marriage ceremony and with little reference to legal requirements, and divorces are equally informal. Moral lapses seldom bring the Negro before the courts. All these things but indicate the handicap which has to be overcome. Within the family there is often great abuse on the part of the men. The result of it all is that many Negroes do not know their own fathers and so little are the ties of kinship' regarded that near relatives are often unknown, and if possible less cared for. This may be substantiated by the records of any charity society in the North which has sought to trace friends of its Negro applicants. To attempt a quantitative estimate of the extent of sexual immorality is useless. It is sufficient to realize that a different standard prevails and one result today is a frightful prevalence of venereal diseases to which any practising physician in the South can bear witness. I am glad to say there are sections which have risen above these conditions. The transition from slavery to freedom set in operation the forces of natural selection, which are sure and steadily working among the people and are weeding out those who for any reason can not adapt themselves to the new environment. Insanity, almost unknown in slavery times, has appeared and has been increasing among the Negroes of the South at a rate of about 100 per cent. a decade since 1860. Of course, the number affected is still small, but the end is perhaps not reached. We have witnessed also the development of the pauper and criminal classes. This was to be expected. There is also some evidence of an increase in the use of drugs, cocaine and the like. The point to be noted is that there is taking place a steady division of the Negroes into various social strata and in spite of race traits it is no longer to be considered as on a level. I have sought to represent the situation as it appears to me, neither seeking to overemphasize the virtues or the vices of the race. It is clear to me that in spite of the obvious progress the road ahead is long and hard. While I do not anticipate any such acceleration of speed as will immediately bring about an economic or social millenium I believe that proper measures may be found, indeed, are already in use, which if widely adopted will lead to better things. How many of the race will fall by the way is, in one sense, a matter of indifference. In the long run, for the whites as well as the blacks, they will survive who adapt their social theories and, consequently, their modes of life to their environments. CHAPTER VI. THE OUTLOOK. "One of the things which militates most against the Negro here is his unreliability. * * * His mental processes are past finding out and he can not be counted on to do or not to do a given thing under given circumstances. There is scarcely a planter in all this territory who would not make substantial concessions for an assured tenantry." A Northern man, now resident in the South and employing Negro labor, says: "I am convinced of one thing and that is that there is no dependence to be placed in 90 per cent. of the Negro laborers if left to themselves and out of the overseer's sight." These quotations from men who are seeking to promote the success of the Negroes with whom they come in contact might be multiplied indefinitely from every part of the South. The statements are scarce open to discussion, so well recognized is the fact. If I have rightly apprehended the nature of the training afforded by Africa and slavery there was little in them to develop the habits of forethought, thrift and industry, upon which this reliability must be based. I am not arguing the question as to whether this unreliability marks a decadence of Negro standards or whether it is due to the present higher standards of the white. For argument, at least, I am willing to admit that in quality of workmanship, in steadfastness and self-control there has really been great progress. My interest is in the present and future rather than the past. I have tried to show that, judged by present standards, the Negro is still decidedly lacking. Personally I am not surprised at this. I should be astonished if it were otherwise. The trouble is that we at the North are unable to disabuse ourselves of the idea that the Negro is a dark skinned Yankee and we think, therefore, that if all is not as it should be that something is wrong, that somebody or some social condition is holding him back. We accuse slavery, attribute it to the hostility of the Southern white. Something _is holding him back_, but it is his inheritance of thousands of years in Africa, not slavery nor the Southern whites. It is my observation that the white of the black belt deal with the Negro more patiently and endure far more of shiftless methods than the average Northerner would tolerate for a day. It is interesting to note that Northern white women who go South filled with the idea that the Negro is abused can scarce keep a servant the first year or so of their stay. Of course there are exceptions, few in number, who say as did a lumberman in Alabama last summer: "I never have any trouble with the Negro. Have worked them for twenty years. Why, I haven't had to kill one yet, though I did shoot one once, but I used fine shot and it didn't hurt him much." We have attempted to have the Negro do in a few years what it has taken us thousands to accomplish, and are surprised that he has disappointed us. There is no room for discouragement. Contrast the Negro in Africa and America to see what has been done. Unless this unreliability is overcome it will form even a greater handicap for the future. Southern methods of agriculture have been more wasteful of small economies than have Northern. That a change is imperative, in many districts at least, has been shown. Is the Negro in a position to take advantage of these changes? At present it must be admitted that he does not possess the knowledge to enable him to utilize his environment and make the most out of it. It has been shown that he is bearing little part in the development of the trucking industry, nay more, that he does not even raise enough garden truck for his own support. In a bulletin of the Farmer's Improvement Society of Texas I find the following: Very many, in the first place, do not try to make their supplies at home. Very often much is lost by bad fences. Lots of them don't know where their hoes, plows, single-trees, etc., are at this minute. Lots of them buy butter, peas, beans, lard, meat and hay. * * * Well, really, to sum up, if there's anything like scientific methods among the vast majority of our people I don't know it. * * * I venture to say that not one negro farmer in a hundred ever saw the back of one of these bulletins (agricultural), much less the inside. If some of these primary lessons have not been mastered what chance is there that the Negro will overcome, unaided, the crop lien system and his other handicaps and introduce diversified agriculture, stock raising, etc.? Slavery taught him something about work and he is willing to work, and work hard, under leadership. Herein lies the possibility of his economic salvation. He is not yet ready as a race to stand alone and advance at the pace demanded by America of the twentieth century. He must be taught and the teaching must be by practice as well as by precept. Viewed from this standpoint, though it is equally true from another, one of the great needs of the South is that its white farmers should pay more attention to other things than cotton. So long as land is considered too valuable to use for pasture, for hay, for the various crops on which stock live and fatten, or so long as it is considered profitable to sell cotton seed for $5 a ton and throw away four or five times this amount in the food and manure which the same seed contains, the Negro will not see the advantage of a different system. Nor does the sight of thousands of tons of rice straw dumped into the Mississippi each year, just as a generation ago the oat straw in Iowa was burned, lead him to suspect unused sources of wealth. The possibilities of Southern agriculture are great, but the lead must be taken by the whites. The Negro has a great advantage over the Italian or other European peasant in that the white man prefers him as a helper. He is patient, docile and proud of his work. He is wanted by the native whites, and if the reader doubts this let him go to any Southern community and attempt to bring about any great exodus of the Negroes and he will be surprised to find how soon he is requested to move on. This interest on the part of the whites is a factor which must be considered. It would be a happy day for the Negro if the white woman of the South took her old personal interest in his welfare. This friendly sentiment will not increase with time and each succeeding generation will emphasize, more and more, industrial efficiency, and the Negro will not be preferred. Corresponding to this is the fact that the Negro respects and willingly follows the white man, more willingly and more trustingly than he does another Negro. He is personally loyal, as the care received by the soldiers during war time illustrated. But slavery is gone and the feudalism which followed it is slowly yielding to commercialism, which gives the palm to the more efficient. Hitherto the Negro has tilled much of the best land of the South. Meantime the great prairies have been settled and about all the good cheap land of the northwest taken. A tide of immigration is setting in towards the Southern states. Already the rice industry of Louisiana has been revolutionized by white immigrants. What may this mean for the Negro if these incoming whites defy race prejudice and seek the rich bottom lands of the Mississippi or elsewhere? Will the Negro be in a position of independence or will he only assist the white? Will he till in the future the best lands or will he be forced to the less fertile? With the knowledge of the present regarding yellow fever, malaria and typhoid the dread of the lowlands is disappearing. If the indications point, as many believe, towards the South as the seat of the next great agricultural development these questions become of vital importance to the Negro. Can he become economically secure before he is made to meet a competition which he has never yet faced? Or does the warmer climate give him an advantage, which the whites can not overcome? I must confess that I doubt it. In "The Cotton Plant" (page 242), Mr. Harry Hammond states that in 39 counties of the Black Prairie Region of Texas, in which the whites predominate, the average value of the land is $12.19 per acre, as against $6.40 for similar soil in twelve counties of the Black Prairie of Alabama, in which the Negroes are in the majority. He says further: "The number and variety of implements recently introduced in cotton culture here, especially in the prairies of Texas, is very much greater than elsewhere in the cotton belt." This would indicate that heat alone is no insurmountable obstacle. If these things be true, then as the late Mr. J. L. M. Curry said: "It may be assumed that the industrial problem lies at the heart of the whole situation which confronts us. Into our public and other schools should be incorporated industrial training. If to regularity, punctuality, silence, obedience to authority, there be systematically added instruction in mechanical arts, the results would be astounding." The question of classical education does not now concern us. The absolutely essential thing is that the Negro shall learn to work regularly and intelligently. The lesson begun in slavery must be mastered. As Dr. E. G. Murphy puts it: The industrial training supplied by that school (slavery) is now denied to him. The capacity, the equipment, and the necessity for work which slavery provided are the direct cause of the superiority of the old time darkey. Is freedom to have no substitute for the ancient school? * * * The demand of the situation is not less education, but more education of the right sort. I would not say that I thought all Negroes should be farmers, but I do feel that the farm offers the mass of the race the most favorable opportunity for the development of solid and enduring character. It seems to me that the following words from one of our broadest minded men apply with special force to the Negro: If I had some magic gift to bestow it would be to make our country youth see one truth, namely, that science as applied to the farm, the garden and the forest has as splendid a dignity as astronomy; that it may work just as many marvels and claim just as high an order of talent." CHAPTER VII. AGRICULTURAL TRAINING. There remain to be considered some of the agencies at work to better the lot of the farmer. In this I shall not attempt to give a list of institutions and outline of courses but to indicate various lines of work which seem promising. In discussing the training of the Negro farmer credit must first be given to the white planters under whom he has learned so much of what he knows. Under the changing conditions of agriculture this training, or the training received on the average farm is not sufficient and must be supplemented by special training if the desired results are to be obtained. It probably lay in the situation that the Negro should get the idea that education meant freedom from labor. It is none the less unfortunate for him. To counteract this idea has been a difficult matter and the influence of the average school has not been of any special help. The country school taught by a teacher, usually incompetent from any standpoint, whose interest has been chiefly in the larger salary made possible by his "higher education" has not been an unmixed blessing. The children have learned to read and write and have preserved their notion that if only they could get enough education they might be absolved from manual labor. Even today Hampton and Tuskegee and similar schools have to contend with the opposition of parents who think their children should not be compelled to work, for they are sent to school to enable them to avoid labor. Quite likely it could not be expected that the country school should hold up a higher ideal, for here we have to do with the beginnings of a system of instruction which had to make use of such material as it could find for teachers. The same excuse does not suffice to explain the attitude taken by the bulk of schools maintained by the northern whites for the Negroes. Their inability to comprehend the needs of the case can only be ascribed to the conception of a Negro as a white man with a black skin and a total failure to recognize the essential conditions of race progress. When the Roman monks penetrated the German woods the chief benefits they carried were not embalmed in Latin grammars and the orations of Cicero, but were embodied in the knowledge of agriculture and the arts which, adopted by the people, made possible later the German civilization. The old rescue mission sought to yank the sinner out of the slough of despond, the social settlement seeks to help him who has fallen in the contest of life or him to whom the opportunity has not been offered, to climb, recognizing that morality and religion attend, not recede progress. The old charity gave alms and the country was overrun with hordes of beggars; the new seeks to help a man to help himself. A similar change must come in the efforts for the Negro. It has been sought to give him the fruits of civilization without its bases. It will immediately be argued that this is wrong, that the chief educational work has been but primary and that little so-called "higher education" has been given. This is true, even to the extent that it is possible to find a town of 5,000 inhabitants one-half Negroes, in which the city provides but one teacher for the black children and the balance are trained in a school supported by the gifts of northern people. But, and this is the important thing, the spirit of the education has been clear and definite and that the plan has not been carried out has not been due to lack of faith in it. General Armstrong, thanks to his observations in Hawaii, perceived that a different course was necessary. His mantle fell on H. F. Frissell and Booker T. Washington, so Hampton and Tuskegee have been the chief factors in producing the change which has been noted as coming. Now that industrial training is winning support it is amusing to note the anxiety of other schools to show that they have always believed in it. I can but feel that had the plans of General Armstrong been widely adopted, had the teachers been trained to take the people where they were and lead them to gradual improvement, that the situation today would be radically different. It is, however, not too late to do this yet and the widespread founding of schools modeled after Hampton and Tuskegee indicates a general recognition of the needs of the situation. Yet, even these schools have not turned out as many farmers as is often supposed. On examination of the catalog of Tuskegee for 1901 I find only sixteen graduates who are farming and thirteen of these have other occupations (principally teaching). The combination, I think, desirable rather than otherwise. Three others are introducing cotton raising in Africa under the German Government. From the industrial department nine have received certificates in agriculture and six in dairying, but their present occupations are not given. Asking a prominent man at Tuskegee for the reason, he exclaimed, rather disgustedly, that they disliked work and preferred to teach. This merely indicates the handicap Tuskegee has to overcome, and perhaps the average agricultural college of the North cannot show a higher percentage of farmers. An official of the Department of Agriculture tells me that only 5 per cent of the graduates of the agricultural colleges become farmers. To show how much agricultural training is given at Tuskegee the following statement for the year 1902-3 is of interest: No pupil is counted twice. One hundred and eighty-one students are engaged in the actual operations of the farm, truck garden, orchard, etc. Seventy-nine are taking the dairying, etc., and 207 are taking agriculture as part of their academic work. Yet, more of the graduates become professional men (lawyers, preachers, etc.) than farmers, the proportion being about three to one. In citing Tuskegee I am, of course, not forgetting that other schools, such as Tougaloo and Talladega, have excellent farms and are seeking (though their chief emphasis is elsewhere) to give agricultural training. Reverting to the different lines of work which seem hopeful, the subject may be subdivided into several sections. We have first to do with the efforts to make the young child appreciate Nature and become interested in her processes. Perhaps Hampton has developed this side most extensively, both in the little garden plots cultivated by the children and the nature study leaflets prepared for use in other schools. Personally I can but feel that there is a possibility of vastly extending such instruction by means of the country schools. If they may be consolidated, and this is being done in many sections, I think a way can be found to make the school house the social center of the district in such a way as will greatly help conditions. Actual instruction in practical farming, dairying, horticulture, etc., is given in an increasing number of schools, but the opportunities are still very inadequate to the needs. If it be possible the way must be found to enable the Negro to use more and better machinery. The average planter does not care to introduce expensive machinery lest it be ruined by careless and ignorant tenants. These industrial schools can never hope to reach more than a certain percentage of the people. There must be measures adopted to widen the influence of the school. Tuskegee may be mentioned for its attempts to reach out. For many years an annual Farmers' Conference has been held which bids fair to become the Mecca of the Negro farmer. The influence exerted cannot be measured, but it is believed to be great. One weak spot in many of the schools is that they have little if any direct influence upon the life of the community in which they are situated. There are, however, some exceptions. The Calhoun Colored School has a farmer's association meeting monthly. This is made up chiefly of men who are purchasing land through a company formed by the school. Topics of local interest, methods of farming, etc., are the subjects for discussion. There is also a mother's meeting with subjects of more domestic interest, with a savings department for co-operative buying. Curiously enough the formation of the mother's meeting was at first opposed by the men (and by some whites), as it took the women out of the fields occasionally. Now it is more favored. As Tuskegee and many other places there are similar farmers' associations, of which no special mention need be made. Tuskegee has an outpost some miles from the school which is doing a general neighborhood work. The following papers circulated by the school will give a general idea of their conceptions of the needs as well as of their efforts to influence conditions for the better: MY DAILY WORK. I may take in washing, but every day I promise myself that I will do certain work for my family. I will set the table for every meal. I will wash the dishes after every meal. Monday, I will do my family washing. I will put my bedclothes out to air. I will clean the safe with hot water and soap. Tuesday, I will do my ironing and family patching. Wednesday, I will scrub my kitchen and clean my yard thoroughly. Thursday, I will clean and air the meal and pork boxes. I will scour my pots and pans with soap and ashes. Friday, I will wash my dish cloth, dish towels and hand towels. I will sweep and dust my whole house and clean everything thoroughly. Sunday, I will go to church and Sunday school. I will take my children with me. I will stay at home during the remainder of the day. I will try to read something aloud helpful to all. QUESTIONS THAT I WILL PLEDGE MYSELF TO ANSWER AT THE END OF THE YEAR. 1. How many bushels of potatoes, corn, beans, peas and peanuts have we raised this year? 2. How many hogs and poultry do we keep? 3. How much poultry have we raised? 4. How many bales of cotton have we raised? 5. How much have we saved to buy a home? 6. How much have we done towards planting flowers and making our yard look pretty? 7. How many kinds of vegetables did we raise in our home garden? 8. How many times did we stay away from miscellaneous excursions when we wished to go? What were our reasons for staying at home? 9. How have we helped our boys and girls to stay out of bad company? 10. What paper have we taken, and why have we taken our children to church and had them sit with us? HOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. Keep clean, body and soul. Remember that weak minds, diseased bodies, bad acts are often the result of bad food. Remember that you can set a good table by raising fruit, vegetables, grains and your meat. Remember that you intend to train your children to stay at home out of bad company. Remember that if you would have their minds and yours clean, you will be obliged to help them learn something outside the school room. Remember, that you can do this in no better way than by taking a good paper--the New York Weekly Witness or The Sabbath Reading, published in New York, cost very little. Have your children read to you from the Bible and from the papers. YOUR NEEDS. You need chairs in your house. Get boxes. Cover with bright calico, and use them for seats until you can buy chairs. You need plates, knives and forks, spoons and table cloths. Buy them with the tobacco and snuff money. You need more respect for self. Get it by staying away from street corners, depots and, above all, excursions. You need to stay away from these excursions to keep out of bad company, out of court, out of jail, and out of the disgust of every self-respecting person. You need more race pride. Cultivate this as you would your crops. It will mean a step forward. You need a good home. Save all you can. Get your home, and that will bring you nearer citizenship. You can supply all these needs. When will you begin? Every moment of delay is a loss. HOW TO BECOME PROSPEROUS. 1. Keep no more than one dog. 2. Stay away from court. 3. Buy no snuff, tobacco and whisky. 4. Raise your own pork. 5. Raise your vegetables. 6. Put away thirty cents for every dollar you spend. 7. Keep a good supply of poultry. Set your hens. Keep your chickens until they will bring a good price. 8. Go to town on Thursday instead of Saturday. Buy no more than you need. Stay in town no longer than necessary. 9. Starve rather than sell your crops before you raise them. Let your mind be fixed on that the first day of January, and stick to that every day in the year. 10. Buy land and build you a home. The various states are beginning to establish institutions in which agriculture and industrial training may be given. Among these may be mentioned that of Alabama at Normal, and of Mississippi at Westside. Alabama has also established an experiment station in connection with the Tuskegee Institute. In Texas there is an interesting movement among the Negro farmers known as the "Farmers' Improvement Society." The objects are: 1. Abolition of the credit system. 2. Stimulate improvements in farming. 3. Co-operative buying. 4. Sickness and life insurance. 5. Encouragement of purchase of land and home. The Association holds a fair each year which is largely attended. According to the Galveston _News_ of October 12, 1902, the society has about 3,000 members, who own some 50,000 acres of land, more than 8,000 cattle and 7,000 horses and mules. This organization, founded and maintained entirely by Negroes, promises much in many ways. In October, 1902, a fair was held in connection with the school at Calhoun, Ala., with 83 exhibitors and 416 entries, including 48 from the school and a very creditable showing of farm products and live stock. Besides these general lines which seem to be of promise it is in place to mention a couple of attempts to get the Negroes to purchase land. There have been not a few persons who have sold land to them on the installment plan with the expectation that later payments would be forfeited and the land revert. There are some enterprises which are above suspicion. I am not referring now to private persons or railroad companies who have sold large tracts to the Negroes, but to organizations whose objects are to aid the blacks in becoming landholders. The Land Company at Calhoun. Ala., started in 1896, buying 1,040 acres of land, which was accurately surveyed and divided into plots of fifty acres, so arranged that each farm should include different sorts of land. This was sold to the Negroes at cost price, $8 per acre, the purchasers to pay 8 per cent on deferred payments. The sums paid by the purchasers each year have been as follows: 1896--$ 741.03. Found later to be borrowed money in the main. 1897--$1,485.15. Largely borrowed money. 1898--$ 367.34. Men paying back borrowed money. Advances large. 1899--$ 374.77. 1900--$1,649.25. Money not borrowed. Advances small. 1901--$ 871.49. Bad year. Poor crops. Money not borrowed. 1902--$2,280.42. Advances very small. Outlook encouraging. There have been some failures on part of tenants, and it has been necessary to gradually select the better men and allow the others to drop out. The company has paid all expenses and interest on its capital. A second plantation has been purchased and is being sold. There is a manager who is a trained farmer, and by means of the farmers' association already mentioned much pressure is brought to bear on the Negroes to improve their condition. The results are encouraging. In Macon County the Southern Land Company has purchased several thousand acres which it is selling in much the same way, but it is too early to speak of results. Even at Calhoun but few of the men have yet gotten deeds for their land. A word regarding the methods of the Southern Land Company will be of interest. The land was carefully surveyed in forty-acre plots. These are sold at $8 per acre, the payments covering a period of seven years. The interest is figured in advance, and to each plot is charged a yearly fee of $5 for management. In this total is also included the cost of house and well (a three-roomed cabin is furnished for about $100, a well for $10). This sum is then divided into seven equal parts so that the purchaser knows in advance just what he must pay each year. The object of the company is to encourage home ownership. Until the place is paid for control of the planting, etc., remains with the manager of the company. Advances are in cash (except fertilizers), as no store is conducted by the company and interest is charged at 8 per cent for the money advanced and for the time said money is used. On this place in 1902, H. W., a man aged 68, with wife and three children, owning a horse, a mule and two cows, did as follows. He and his son-in-law are buying eighty acres. They made a good showing for the first year under considerable difficulties and on land by no means rich: Debits. Credits. Fertilizer $ 34.88 Cotton $390.32 Whitewashing 3.00 Liming 19.76 Lease contract 180.00 Cash 130.36 Interest 3.12 ------- $371.12 ------- Balance Jan. 1, 1903 $ 19.20 This leads me to mention the question of land ownership on the part of the Negroes. This has not been mentioned hitherto for several reasons. In the first place the data for any detailed knowledge of the subject are not to be had. Few states make separate record of land owned by the blacks as distinct from general ownership. The census has to depend upon the statements of the men themselves, and I have heard tenants solemnly argue that they owned the land. Again a very considerable proportion of the land owned is also heavily mortgaged, and these mortgages are not always for improvements. Nor is it by any means self evident that land ownership necessarily means a more advanced condition than where land is rented. Moreover, a considerable proportion of the _farms_ owned are so small that they do not suffice to support the owners. Conditions vary in different districts. In Virginia it has been possible to buy a few acres at a very low price. In parts of Alabama, or wherever the land has been held in large estates in recent years, it has often been impossible for the Negro to purchase land in small lots. Thus, though I believe heartily in land ownership for the blacks and believe that well conducted land associations will be beneficial, I cannot think that this alone will solve the questions confronting us. Retrogression is possible even with land ownership. Other things are necessary. On the basis of existing data the best article with which I am acquainted on this subject appeared in the _Southern Workman_ for January, 1903, written by Dr. G. S. Dickerman, in which he showed that among the Negro farmers the owners and managers formed 59.8 per cent of the total in Virginia, 57.6 per cent in Maryland, 48.6 per cent in Kentucky, falling as we go South to 15.1 per cent in Alabama, 16.4 per cent in Mississippi, and 16.2 per cent in Louisiana, rising to 30.9 per cent in Texas. Evidently the forces at work are various. Within a few months, at the suggestion of Mr. Horace Plunkett, of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, a new work has been taken up, whose course will be watched with great interest. I quote from a letter of Mr. Plunkett to Dr. Wallace Buttrick, of the General Education Board: From what I have seen of the negro character, my own impression is that the race has those leader-following propensities which characterize the Irish people. It has, too, I suspect, in its mental composition the same vein of idealism which my own countrymen possess, and which makes them susceptible to organization, and especially to those forms of organization which require the display of the social qualities to which I have alluded and which you will have to develop. These characteristics which express themselves largely, the old plantation songs, in the form of religions exercises, and in the maintenance of a staff of preachers out of all proportion I should think, to the spiritual requirements, should, in my opinion, lend themselves to associative action for practical ends if the organizing machinery necessary to initiate such action were provided. What, then, is my practical suggestion? It is that your board, if it generally approves of the idea, should take one, two, or, at the most, three communities, such as that we inquired about, and organize them on the Irish plan. The farmers should at first he advised to confine their efforts to some simple object, such as the joint purchase of their immediate agricultural requirements. * * * I would at first deal solely with the colored people, beginning in a very small way, leaving larger developments for the future to decide. Hampton Institute has taken up the suggestion and is planning to organize a community. Everything will, of course, depend on the management as well as on the people. If the results are as satisfactory as they have been in Ireland the efforts will be well expended. With this brief and incomplete account we must take leave of the Negro farmer. Throughout the thesis I have attempted to keep two or three fundamental propositions constantly in sight. Briefly summarized these are that we have to do with a race whose inherited characteristics are largely of African origin; that these have been somewhat modified under American influences, but are still potent; that the economic environment in America is not a unit and must finally result in the creation of different types among the blacks; that the needs of the different habitats are various; that the segregation from the mass of the whites is fraught with serious consequences; that measures of wider application must be adopted if the Negro is to bear his proper part in the progress of the country; that owing to the great race differences the whites must take an active interest in the blacks; that in spite of the many handicaps under which the Negro struggles the outlook is not hopeless if his willingness to work can so be directed that a surplus will result. To my mind the Negro must work out his salvation, economic and social. It cannot be given without destroying the very thing we seek to strengthen--character. This is the justification for the emphasis now laid upon industrial training. This training and the resulting character are the pre-requisites of all race progress. Industrial education is thus not a fad nor a mere expedient to satisfy the selfish demands of southern whites. It is the foundation without which the superstructure is in vain. If I have fairly stated the difficulties in the way and have shown the possibility of ultimate success, I am content. For the future I am hopeful. MAPS SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE NEGROES IN THE SOUTHERN STATES These maps are particularly referred to in Chapter II. The chief geological districts are indicated. The figures are based upon the census of 1900. The maps are here included in the hope that they may prove of value to students of the problems herein discussed. =VIRGINIA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Negroes 660,722 Total Whites 1,192,855 Negroes form 35.6% of total= =VIRGINIA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 40,125 Average Negroes per Mile 16.4 Average Whites per Mile 29.7= =NORTH CAROLINA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Negroes 624,469 Total Whites 1,263,603 Negroes form 33% of total= =NORTH CAROLINA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 48,580 Average Negroes per Mile 12.8 Average Whites per Mile 26= =SOUTH CAROLINA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Total Whites in State 557,807 Total Negroes in State 782,321 --------- 1,340,128 Negroes form 58.4% of total= =SOUTH CAROLINA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 30,170 Average Negroes to Square Mile 25.1 Average Whites to Square Mile 17.9= =GEORGIA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Total Whites in State 1,181,294 Total Negroes in State 1,034,813 --------- 2,216,107 Negroes form 46.7% of total= =GEORGIA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 58,980 Average Negroes per Square Mile 17.6 Average Whites per Square Mile 19.9= =FLORIDA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Whites 297,333 Total Negroes 230,730 ------- 528,063 Negroes form 43.7% of total= =FLORIDA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square miles in State 54,240 Average Negroes per Mile 4.2 Average Whites per Mile 5.4 =ALABAMA Total Whites in State 1,001,152 Total Negroes in State 827,307 --------- 1,828,459 Negroes form 45.2% of total= =ALABAMA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 51,540 Average Negroes per Mile 16 Average Whites per Mile 19.4= =MISSISSIPPI NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Negro Percentage in State 58.5 Total Whites 641,200 Total Negroes 907,630 --------- 1,548,830= =MISSISSIPPI NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Average Negroes per Square Mile 19.58 Average Whites per Square Mile 13.82 Square Miles in State 46,340 =TENNESSEE NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Negroes 480,243 Total Whites 1,540,186 Negroes form 23.8% of total= =TENNESSEE NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 41,750 Average Negroes per Mile 11.2 Average Whites per Mile 36.8= =KENTUCKY NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION, 1900 Total Negroes 284,706 Total Whites 1,862,309 Negroes form 13.3% of total= =KENTUCKY NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 40,000 Average Negroes per Mile 7.1 Average Whites per Mile 46.5= =ARKANSAS NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Negro Percentage in State 28 Total Whites in State 944,850 Total Negroes in State 366,856 --------- 1,301,706= =ARKANSAS NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 53,045 Average Negroes per Sq. Mile 6.9 Average Whites per Sq. Mile 17.8= =LOUISIANA NEGRO PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION, 1900 Total Whites in State 729,612 Total Negroes in State 650,804 --------- 1,380,416 Negroes form 47.1% of total= =LOUISIANA NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles in State 45,420 Average Negroes per Mile 14.3 Average Whites per Mile 16.1= =EASTERN TEXAS Whites in District 1,747,052 Negroes in District 608,301 Negro Percentage in State 20.4 In District Covered 25= =EASTERN TEXAS NEGROES PER SQUARE MILE, 1900 Square Miles included 60,453 Average Negro .10 Average White 28.8 Includes all Counties with one Negro per Square Mile= Footnotes: [1] See article by A. H. Stone. Atlantic Monthly, May, 1903. [2] "The Negro in Maryland." [3] The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. [4] Bulletin, Department of Labor, No. 35. [5] The Future of the American Negro. [6] Olmsted, F. L.--The Cotton Kingdom. [7] Olmsted, F. T. The Cotton Kingdom. [8] Negroes of Litwalton, Va.--Bulletin Department of Labor, No. 37. [9] Rents a mule. [10] Bulletin, Department of Labor, No. 35. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text. Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been retained from the original. Misprints corrected: "entrepeneurs" corrected to "entrepreneurs" (page 6) "optomistic" corrected to "optimistic" (page 8) "from" corrected to "form" (page 9) "Atantic" corrected to "Atlantic" (page 9) "stdy" corrected to "study" (page 10) "Talledega" corrected to "Talladega" (page 16) "inhabitated" corrected to "inhabited" (page 17) "sevaral" corrected to "several" (page 31) "carefuly" corrected to "carefully" (page 37) "Tusgekee" corrected to "Tuskegee" (page 73) "Talledega" corrected to "Talladega" (page 73) "charactertistics" corrected to "characteristics" (page 77) Two footnotes are marked [7]; both refer to the same footnote. The key to the table on page 51 was extracted from the column headings of the original table that were printed vertically. Wide tables have been split in half with one column repeated. 
30808	----	HISTORY OF FARMING IN ONTARIO BY C. C. JAMES [Illustration: Publisher's Device] REPRINTED FROM CANADA AND ITS PROVINCES A HISTORY OF THE CANADIAN PEOPLE AND THEIR INSTITUTIONS BY ONE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES EDITED BY ADAM SHORTT AND A. G. DOUGHTY HISTORY OF FARMING IN ONTARIO BY C. C. JAMES C.M.G. [Illustration: Publisher's Device] TORONTO GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY 1914 This Volume consists of a Reprint, for private circulation only, of the One Hundred and Sixteenth Signed Contribution contained in CANADA AND ITS PROVINCES, a History of the Canadian People and their Institutions by One Hundred Associates. Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty, General Editors HISTORY OF FARMING THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE From the most southern point of Ontario on Lake Erie, near the 42nd parallel of latitude, to Moose Factory on James Bay, the distance is about 750 miles. From the eastern boundary on the Ottawa and St Lawrence Rivers to Kenora at the Manitoba boundary, the distance is about 1000 miles. The area lying within these extremes is about 220,000 square miles. In 1912 a northern addition of over 100,000 square miles was made to the surface area of the province, but it is doubtful whether the agricultural lands will thereby be increased. Of this large area about 25,000,000 acres are occupied and assessed, including farm lands and town and city sites. It will be seen, therefore, that only a small fraction of the province has, as yet, been occupied. Practically all the occupied area lies south of a line drawn through Montreal, Ottawa, and Sault Ste Marie, and it forms part of the great productive zone of the continent. The next point to be noted is the irregularity of the boundary-line, the greater portion of which is water--Lakes Superior, Huron, Erie, Ontario, the St Lawrence River, the Ottawa River, James Bay, and Hudson Bay. The modifying effect of great bodies of water must be considered in studying the agricultural possibilities of Ontario. Across this great area of irregular outline there passes a branch of the Archæan rocks running in a north-western direction and forming a watershed, which turns some of the streams to Hudson Bay and the others to the St Lawrence system. An undulating surface has resulted, more or less filled with lakes, and almost lavishly supplied with streams, which are of prime importance for agricultural life and of incalculable value for commercial purposes. To these old rocks which form the backbone of the province may be traced the origin of the large stretches of rich soil with which the province abounds. An examination of the map, and even a limited knowledge of the geological history of the province, will lead to the conclusion that in Ontario there must be a wide range in the nature and composition of the soils and a great variety in the climatic conditions. These conditions exist, and they result in a varied natural production. In the extreme south-western section plants of a semi-tropical nature were to be found in the early days in luxurious growth; while in the extreme north, spruce, somewhat stunted in size and toughened in fibre, are still to be found in vast forests. It is with the southern section, that lying south of the Laurentian rocks, that our story is mainly concerned, for the occupation and exploitation of the northland is a matter only of recent date. Nature provided conditions for a diversified agriculture. It is to such a land that for over a hundred years people of different nationalities, with their varied trainings and inclinations, have been coming to make their homes. We may expect, therefore, to find a great diversity in the agricultural growth of various sections, due partly to the variety of natural conditions and partly to the varied agricultural training of the settlers in their homelands. EARLY SETTLEMENT, 1783-1816 Originally this province was covered with forest, varied and extensive, and was valued only for its game. The hunter and trapper was the pioneer. To protect and assist him, fortified posts were constructed at commanding points along the great waterways. In the immediate vicinity of these posts agriculture, crude in its nature and restricted in its area, had its beginning. It was into this wooded wilderness that the United Empire Loyalists, numbering in all approximately ten thousand people, came in the latter part of the eighteenth century.[1] They were a people of varied origins--Highland Scottish, German, Dutch, Irish Palatine, French Huguenot, English. Most of them had lived on farms in New York State, and therefore brought with them some knowledge and experience that stood them in good stead in their arduous work of making new homes in a land that was heavily wooded. In the year 1783 prospectors were sent into Western Quebec, the region lying west of the Ottawa River, and selections were made for them in four districts--along the St Lawrence, opposite Fort Oswegatchie; around the Bay of Quinte, above Fort Cataraqui; in the Niagara peninsula, opposite Fort Niagara; and in the south-western section, within reach of Fort Detroit. Two reasons determined these locations; first, the necessity of being located on the water-front, as lake and river were the only highways available; and, secondly, the advisability of being within the protection of a fortified post. The dependence of the settlers upon the military will be realized when we remember that they had neither implements nor seed grain. In fact, they were dependent at first upon the government stores for their food. It is difficult at the present time to realize the hardships and appreciate the conditions under which these United Empire Loyalist settlers began life in the forest of 1784. Having been assigned their lots and supplied with a few implements, they began their work of making small clearings and the erection of rude log-houses and barns. Among the stumps they sowed the small quantities of wheat, oats, and potatoes that were furnished from the government stores. Cattle were for many years few in number, and the settler, to supply his family with food and clothing, was compelled to add hunting and trapping to his occupation of felling the trees. Gradually the clearings became larger and the area sown increased in size. The trails were improved and took on the semblance of roads, but the waterways continued to be the principal avenues of communication. In each of the four districts the government erected mills to grind the grain for the settlers. These were known as the King's Mills. Water-power mills were located near Kingston, at Gananoque, at Napanee, and on the Niagara River. The mill on the Detroit was run by wind power. An important event in the early years was when the head of the family set out for the mill with his bag of wheat on his back or in his canoe, and returned in two or three days, perhaps in a week, with a small supply of flour. In the early days there was no wheat for export. The question then may be asked, was there anything to market? Yes; as the development went on, the settlers found a market for two surplus products, timber and potash. The larger pine trees were hewn into timber and floated down the streams to some convenient point where they were collected into rafts, which were taken down the St Lawrence to Montreal and Quebec. Black salt or crude potash was obtained by concentrating the ashes that resulted from burning the brush and trees that were not suitable for timber. For the first thirty years of the new settlements the chief concern of the people was the clearing of their land, the increasing of their field crops, and the improving of their homes and furnishings. It was slow going, and had it not been for government assistance, progress, and even maintenance of life, would have been impossible. That was the heroic age of Upper Canada, the period of foundation-laying in the province. Farming was the main occupation, and men, women, and children shared the burdens in the forest, in the field, and in the home. Roads were few and poorly built, except the three great military roads planned by Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe running east, west, and north from the town of York. Social intercourse was of a limited nature. Here and there a school was formed when a competent teacher could be secured. Church services were held once a month, on which occasions the missionary preacher rode into the district on horseback. Perhaps once or twice in the summer the weary postman, with his pack on his back, arrived at the isolated farmhouse to leave a letter, on which heavy toll had to be collected. Progress was slow in those days, but after thirty years fair hope of an agricultural country was beginning to dawn upon the people when the War of 1812 broke out. By this time the population of the province had increased to about eighty thousand. During this first thirty years very little had been done in the way of stimulating public interest in agricultural work. Conditions were not favourable to organization. The 'town meeting' was concerned mainly with the question of the height of fences and regulations as to stock running at large. One attempt, however, was made which should be noted. Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe took charge of affairs early in 1792, and, immediately after the close of the first session of the legislature at Newark (Niagara) in the autumn of that year, organized an agricultural society at the headquarters which met occasionally to discuss agricultural questions. There are no records to show whether social intercourse or practical agricultural matters formed the main business. The struggle for existence was too exacting and the conditions were not yet favourable for organization to advance general agricultural matters. When the War of 1812 broke out the clearings of the original settlers had been extended, and some of the loyalists still lived, grown grey with time and hardened by the rough life of the backwoods. Their sons, many of whom had faint recollection of their early homes across the line, had grown up in an atmosphere of strictest loyalty to the British crown, and had put in long years in clearing the farms on which they lived and adding such comforts to their houses, that to them, perhaps as to no other generation, their homes meant everything in life. The summons came to help to defend those homes and their province. For three years the agricultural growth received a severe check. Fathers and sons took their turn in going to the front. The cultivation of the fields, the sowing and the harvesting of the crops, fell largely to the lot of the mothers and the daughters left at home. But they were equal to it. In those days the women were trained to help in the work of the fields. They did men's work willingly and well. In many cases they had to continue their heroic work after the close of the war, until their surviving boys were grown to years of manhood, for many husbands and sons went to the front never to return. FOOTNOTES: [1] See 'Pioneer Settlements' in this section. A PERIOD OF EXPANSION, 1816-46 The close of the war saw a province that had been checked at a time of vigorous growth now more or less impoverished, and, in some sections, devastated. This was, however, but the gloomy outlook before a period of rapid expansion. In 1816, on the close of the Napoleonic wars in Europe, large numbers of troops were disbanded, and for these new homes and new occupations had to be found. Then began the first emigration from Britain overseas to Upper Canada. All over the British Isles little groups were forming of old soldiers reunited to their families. A few household furnishings were packed, a supply of provisions laid in, a sailing vessel chartered, and the trek began across the Atlantic. The emigrants sailed from many ports of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Sometimes the trip was made in three or four weeks; but often, through contrary winds or rough weather, three or four months passed before the vessel sailed up the St Lawrence and landed the newcomers at Montreal. Hardly half of their difficulties were then overcome or half of their dangers passed. If they were to find their new locations by land, they must walk or travel by slow ox-cart; if they journeyed by water, they must make their way up the St Lawrence by open boat, surmounting the many rapids in succession, poling the boats, pulling against the stream, at times helping to carry heavy loads over the portages. Their new homes in the backwoods were in townships in the rear of those settled by the loyalists, or in unoccupied areas lying on the lake-fronts between the four districts referred to as having been taken up by the loyalists. Then began the settlements along the north shore of Lake Ontario and of Lake Erie, and the population moved forward steadily. In 1816 the total population of the province was approximately 100,000; by 1826, according to returns made to the government, it had increased to 166,000; in 1836 it was 374,000, and in 1841 it was 456,000. The great majority of these people, of course, lived upon the land, the towns being comparatively small, and the villages were composed largely of people engaged in agricultural work. This peaceful British invasion contributed a new element to the province and added still further to the variety of the people. In one township could be found a group of English settlers, most of whom came from a southern county of England, near by a township peopled by Scottish Lowlanders, and not far away a colony of north of Ireland farmers, or perhaps a settlement composed entirely of people from the vicinity of Cork or Limerick. These British settlers brought new lines of life, new plans for houses and barns, new methods of cultivation, new varieties of seed, and, what was perhaps of most influence upon the agricultural life of the province, new kinds of live stock. Even to this day can be seen traces of the differences in construction of buildings introduced by the different nationalities that came as pioneers into the various sections of the province--the French Canadian constructed his buildings with long, steep roofs; the Englishman followed his home plan of many small, low outbuildings with doors somewhat rounded at the top; the German and Dutch settler built big barns with their capacious mows. These latter have become the type now generally followed, the main improvement in later years being the raising of the frames upon stone foundations so as to provide accommodation for live stock in the basement. It would be interesting and profitable to study carefully the different localities to determine what elements have contributed to the peculiar agricultural characteristics of the present day. In this connection the language also might be investigated. For instance, to the early Dutch farmers of Upper Canada we owe such common words as 'stoop,' 'bush,' 'boss,' 'span.' To the early British settler these were foreign words. When the oversea settlers came up the St Lawrence they were transported from Montreal either by 'bateau' or by 'Durham boat.'[2] Special reference must be made to the live stock introduced by the British settlers. This was one of the most important elements in the expansion and permanent development of the agriculture of the province. The British Isles have long been noted for their pure-bred stock. In no other part of the world have so many varieties been originated and improved. In horses, there are the Clydesdale, the Shire, the Thoroughbred, and the Hackney; in cattle, Shorthorns, Herefords, Ayrshires, Devon, and the dairy breeds of Jersey and Guernsey; in sheep, Southdowns, Shropshires, Leicesters; in swine, Berkshires and Yorkshires. Many other breeds might be added to these. Poultry and dogs also might be referred to. The Britisher has been noted for his love of live stock. He has been trained to their care, his agricultural methods have been ordered to provide food suitable for their wants, and he has been careful to observe the lines of breeding so as to improve their quality. In the earliest period of the settlement of the province live stock was not numerous and the quality was not of the best. Whatever was to be found on the farms came mainly from the United States and was of inferior type. The means of bringing in horses, cattle, and sheep were limited. The result was that field work at that time was largely done by hand labour. Hunting and fishing helped to supply the table with the food that to-day we obtain from the butcher. When the Britisher came across the Atlantic he brought to Upper Canada his love for live stock and his knowledge how to breed and care for the same. The result was seen in the rapid increase in the number of horses, cattle, sheep, and swine, and the placing of the agriculture of the province on a firm basis for future growth. By 1830 the population had grown to about 213,000, practically all located on the land. In that year there were only five towns of 1000 or over: namely, Kingston, 3587; York (Toronto), 2860; London, (including the township), 2415; Hamilton (including the township), 2013; and Brockville, 1130. The returns to the government show that of the 4,018,385 acres occupied 773,727 were under cultivation. On the farms were to be found 30,776 horses, 33,517 oxen, 80,892 milch cows, and 32,537 young cattle. It is interesting to note that oxen, so useful in clearing land and in doing heavy work, were more numerous than horses. Oxen were hardier than horses; they could forage for themselves and live on rough food, and when disabled could be converted into food. They thus played a very important part in the pioneer life. There were no improved farm implements in those days: the plough, the spade, the hoe, the fork, the sickle, the hook, the cradle, and the rake--implements that had been the husbandman's equipment for centuries--completed the list. With these the farmer cultivated his lands and gathered his crops. With two stout hickory poles, joined together at the end with tough leather thongs, a flail was made with which he threshed out his grain on the floor of his barn. The earliest pioneers raised some flax, and from the fibre made coarse linen fabrics, supplementing these by skins of wild animals and the hides of cattle. With the introduction of sheep by the British settlers wool became an important product, and homespun garments provided additional clothing for all the members of the family. Seeds of various fruit trees were planted, and by 1830 the products of these seedlings supplemented the wild plums and cherries of the woods and the wild raspberries that sprang up in abundance in the clearings and slashes. By this time every farm had one or more milch cows and the farmer's table was supplied with fresh milk, butter, and home-made cheese. As the first half-century of the province was drawing to its close, some of the comforts of home life began to be realized by the farming community. The isolation of the former period disappeared as roads of communication were opened up and extended. Here and there societies were formed for the exhibition of the products of the farm and for friendly competitions. So important were these societies becoming in the life of the whole community that in 1830 the government gave them recognition and provided an annual grant to assist them in their work. This is an important event in agricultural history, for it marks the beginning of government assistance to the agricultural industry. Between 1820 and 1830 probably not more than half a dozen agricultural societies were organized. Some records of such were preserved at York, Kingston, and in the Newcastle district. From the record of the County of Northumberland Agricultural Society it is learned that its first show was held in the public square of the village of Colborne on October 19, 1828, when premiums were awarded amounting in all to seventy-seven dollars. There were fourteen prizes for live stock, two prizes for cheese, two for field rollers, and two for essays on the culture of wheat. The first prize essay, for which the winner received five dollars, was printed for distribution. The prize list was limited in range, but it shows how this new settlement, formed largely by British settlers since 1816, was giving particular attention to the encouragement of live stock. A short quotation from the prize essay as to the best method of clearing the land for wheat should be found of interest. As a great part of our County is yet in a wilderness state and quite a share of the wheat brought to our markets is reared on new land, I deem it important that our enterprising young men who are clearing away the forest should know how to profit by their hard labor. Let the underwood be cut in the autumn before the leaves fall, and the large timber in the winter or early in the spring. This will insure a good burn, which is the first thing requisite for a good crop. Do your logging in the month of June, and if you wish to make money, do it before you burn your brush and save the ashes; these will more than half pay you for clearing the land: and by burning at this season you will attract a drove of cattle about you that will destroy all sprouts which may be growing; do not leave more than four trees on an acre and girdle these in the full moon of March and they will never leaf again; thus you may have your land prepared for the seed before harvest. The act of 1830 provided a grant of £100 for a society in each district, upon condition that the members subscribed and paid in at least £50, and in the case of a society being organized in each county the amount was to be equally divided among the societies. The condition of making the grant was set forth in the act as follows: 'When any Agricultural Society, for the purpose of importing valuable live stock, grain, grass seeds, useful implements or whatever else might conduce to the improvement of agriculture in this Province,' etc. As a result of this substantial assistance by the government, agricultural societies increased in number, and their influence, in assisting in the improvement of the live stock and the bringing of new implements to the attention of farmers, was most marked. Horses, sheep and milch cows increased rapidly. Purebred cattle now began to receive some attention. The first record of importation is the bringing of a Shorthorn bull and a cow from New York State in 1831 by Robert Arnold of St Catharines. In 1833 Rowland Wingfield, an Englishman farming near Guelph, brought a small herd of choice animals across the ocean, landed them at Montreal, took them to Hamilton by way of the Ottawa River, the Rideau Canal, and Lake Ontario, and then drove them on foot to Wellington County. The Hon. Adam Fergusson of Woodhill followed two or three years later with a similar importation. The first Ayrshire cattle can be traced back to the Scottish settlers who arrived during this period. These emigrants had provided their own food for the voyage to Canada, and in some cases brought a good milch cow to provide fresh milk on the voyage. She would be disposed of on landing, at Montreal or in the eastern part of Upper Canada. This accounts for the early predominance of Ayrshires in Eastern Ontario. Thus to the period 1830-45 belongs the first foundation of the pure-bred stock industry. It was in this period also that the first signs appear of improved farm implements and labour-saving machinery. Ploughs of improved pattern, lighter and more effective, were being made. Land rollers and harrows made in the factory began to take the place of the home-made articles. Crude threshing machines, clover-seed cleaners, root-cutters, and a simple but heavy form of hay-rake came into use. The mowing machine and the reaper were making their appearance in Great Britain and the United States, but they had not yet reached Upper Canada. The organization of agricultural societies in the various districts, and the great impetus given to the keeping of good stock, led in 1843 to the suggestion that a provincial organization would be of benefit to the farming industry. In the neighbouring State of New York a similar organization had been in existence since 1832 and successful State fairs had been held, which some of the more prominent farmers of Upper Canada had visited. An agricultural paper called the _British American Cultivator_ had been established in York, and through this paper, in letters and editorials, the idea of a provincial association was advocated. For three years the discussion proceeded, until finally, in 1846, there was organized the Provincial Agricultural Association and Board of Agriculture for Canada West, composed of delegates from the various district societies. The result was that the first provincial exhibition was held in Toronto on October 21 and 22 of that year. The old Government House at the south-western corner of King Street and Simcoe Street, then empty, was used for the exhibits, and the stock and implements were displayed in the adjoining grounds. The Canada Company gave a contribution of $200, eight local societies made donations, about $280 was secured as gate money, and 297 members paid subscriptions. Premiums were paid to the amount of $880, the bulk of which went to live stock; books, which cost about $270, were given as prizes; and there was left a cash balance on hand of $400. A ploughing match was held, and on the evening of the first day a grand banquet was given, attended by the officers and directors and by some of the leading citizens of Toronto. Among the speakers at this banquet were Chief Justice Robinson and Egerton Ryerson, superintendent of education. FOOTNOTES: [2] See 'Shipping and Canals' in section v. pp. 489-90. ORGANIZED AGRICULTURE, 1846-67 The organization of this provincial association fittingly introduces another era in agricultural growth. It is to be noted that this provincial organization was a self-created body; it drew at first no government funds direct. It commended itself to the people, for on July 28, 1847, the provincial parliament in session at Montreal passed an act incorporating it under the name of the Agricultural Association of Upper Canada, and in the charter named as members a number of the leading citizens of the province. It was governed by a board of directors, two of whom were chosen annually by each district agricultural society. The objects set forth were the improvement of farm stock and produce, the improvement of agricultural implements, and the encouragement of domestic manufactures, of useful inventions applicable to agricultural or domestic purposes, and of every branch of rural and domestic economy. Out of this provincial association came all the further agricultural organizations of a provincial nature, and ultimately, some forty years later, the Ontario department of Agriculture. The second provincial exhibition was held at Hamilton in 1847, and Lord Elgin, the governor-general, was in attendance. He was also a generous patron, for his name appears as a donor of $100. The address which he delivered at the banquet has been preserved in the published records and is copiously marked with cheers and loud applause. The third exhibition was held at Cobourg in 1848. The official report of the exhibits indicates that pure-bred stock was rapidly increasing and improving in quality; but the most significant paragraph is that dealing with implements, and this is well worth quoting in full. Of implements of Canada make, the Show was deficient; and we were much indebted to our American neighbours for their valuable aid on this occasion. A large number of ploughs, straw-cutters, drills, cornshellers, churns, etc., etc., were brought over by Messrs Briggs & Co. of Rochester, Mr Emery of Albany, and a large manufacturing firm near Boston. Mr Bell of Toronto exhibited his excellent plough, straw-cutter, and reaping machine. The first prize for the latter article was awarded to Mr Helm of Cobourg for the recent improvements which he has effected. Mr Clark of Paris exhibited his one-horse thrashing-mill, which attracted much attention. At the fourth exhibition, held at Kingston in 1849, the show of implements was much more extensive, and comment was made on the improvement of articles of home manufacture. At this meeting Professor J. F. W. Johnson, of Edinburgh, who was making a tour of North America, was present. The address of the president, Henry Ruttan of Cobourg, is a most valuable reference article descriptive of the agricultural progress of the province from the first settlements in 1783 to the time of the exhibition. Ruttan was a loyalist's son, and, from his own personal knowledge, he described the old plough that was given by the government to each of the first settlers. It consisted of a small iron socket, whose point entered by means of a dove-tailed aperture into the heel of the coulter, which formed the principal part of the plough, and was in shape similar to the letter L, the shank of which went through the wooden beam, and the foot formed the point which was sharpened for operation. One handle and a plank split from the side of a winding block of timber, which did duty for the mould-board, completed the implement. Besides provisions for a year, I think each family had issued to them a plough-share and coulter, a set of dragg-teeth, a log chain, an axe, a saw, a hammer, a bill hook and a grubbing hoe, a pair of hand-irons and a cross-cut saw amongst several families, and a few other articles. He then refers to the large number of implements then being pressed upon the farmers, until 'they have almost become a nuisance to the farmer who desires to purchase a really useful article.' All of which indicates that a distinctive feature of the period beginning with 1846 was the introduction and rapid extension of improved farm machinery. A few words as to the reaping machine, which contributed more than any other modern implement to the development of agriculture in the past century, may not be out of place. Various attempts had been made at producing a machine to supersede the sickle, the scythe, and the cradle before the Rev. Patrick Bell, in 1826, presented his machine to the Highland Agricultural Society of Scotland for its examination. Bell's machine was fairly successful, and one was then in operation on the farm of his brother, Inch-Michael, in the Carse of Gowrie. One set of knives was fixed, another set worked above and across these like the blades of a pair of scissors. The grain fell on an endless cloth which carried and deposited the heads at the side of the machine. A horse pushed it forward and kept all parts in motion. It was simple, and, we are told, harvested twelve acres in a day. This was in 1826. In the _New York Farmer and American Gardener's Magazine_ for 1834 may be found the descriptions and illustrations of Obed Hussey's grain-cutter and Cyrus H. McCormick's 'improved reaping-machine.' The question has been raised as to whether either of these United States inventions owed anything to the earlier production of Patrick Bell. It was, of course, the improved United States reaping machines that found their way into Upper Canada shortly after the organization of the Provincial Agricultural Association. Our interest in this matter is quickened by the fact that the Rev. Patrick Bell, when a young man, was for some time a tutor in the family of a well-to-do farmer in the county of Wellington, and there is a tradition that while there he carried on some experiments in the origination of his machine. The suggestion of a 'mysterious visitor' from the United States to the place where he was experimenting is probably mere conjecture. This period, 1846 to 1867, was one of rapid growth in population. The free-grant land policy of the government was a great attraction for tens of thousands of people in the British Isles, who were impelled by social unrest, failure of crops, and general stagnation in the manufacturing industries to seek new homes across the sea. In the twenty years referred to the population more than doubled, and the improved lands of the province increased fourfold. The numbers of cattle and sheep about doubled, and the wheat production increased about threefold. Towards the latter part of the period a new agricultural industry came into existence--the manufacture of cheese in factories. It was in New York State that the idea of co-operation in the manufacture of cheese was first attempted. There, as in Canada West, it had been the practice to make at home from time to time a quantity of soft cheese, which, of course, would be of variable quality. To save labour, a proposition was made to collect the milk from several farms and have the cheese made at one central farm. The success of this method soon became known and small factories were established. In 1863 Harvey Farrington came from New York State to Canada West and established a factory in the county of Oxford, about the same time that a similar factory was established in the county of Missisquoi, Quebec. Shortly afterwards factories were built in Hastings County, and near Brockville, in Leeds County. Thus began an industry that had a slow advance for some fifteen years, but from 1880 spread rapidly, until the manufacture of cheese in factories became one of the leading provincial industries. The system followed is a slight modification of the Cheddar system, which takes its name from one of the most beautiful vales in the west of England. Its rapid progress has been due to the following circumstances: Ontario, with her rich grasses, clear skies, and clean springs and streams, is well adapted to dairying; large numbers of her farmers came from dairy districts in the mother country; the co-operative method of manufacture tends to produce a marketable article that can be shipped and that improves with proper storage; Great Britain has proved a fine market for such an article; and the industry has for over thirty years received the special help and careful supervision and direction of the provincial and Dominion governments. During this period we note the voluntary organization of the Ontario Fruit-Growers' Association, a fact which alone would suggest that the production of fruit must have been making progress. The early French settlers along the Detroit River had planted pear trees or grown them from seed, and a few of these sturdy, stalwart trees, over a century old, still stand and bear some fruit. Mrs Simcoe, in her _Journal_, July 2, 1793, states: 'We have thirty large May Duke cherry trees behind the house and three standard peach trees which supplied us last Autumn for tarts and desserts during six weeks, besides the numbers the young men eat.' This was at Niagara. The records of the agricultural exhibitions indicate that there was a gradual extension of fruit-growing. Importations of new varieties were made, Rochester, in New York State, apparently being the chief place from which nursery stock was obtained. Here and there through the province gentlemen having some leisure and the skill to experiment were beginning to take an interest in their gardens and to produce new varieties. On January 19, 1859, a few persons met in the board-room of the Mechanics' Hall at Hamilton and organized a fruit-growers' association for Upper Canada. Judge Campbell was elected president; Dr Hurlbert, first vice-president; George Leslie, second vice-president; Arthur Harvey, secretary. The members of this association introduced new varieties and reported on their success. They were particularly active in producing such new varieties as were peculiarly suitable to the climate. For nine years they maintained their organization and carried on their work unaided and unrecognized officially. To this period belongs also the first attempts at special instruction in agriculture and the beginning of an agricultural press. Both are intimately connected with the association, already referred to, that had been organized in 1846 by some of the most progressive citizens. For four years the Provincial Association carried on its work and established itself as a part of the agricultural life of Canada West. In 1850 the government stepped in and established a board of agriculture as the executive of the association. Its objects were set out by statute and funds were to be provided for its maintenance. The new lines of work allotted to it were to collect agricultural statistics, prepare crop reports, gather information of general value and to present the same to the legislature for publication, and to co-operate with the provincial university in the teaching of agriculture and the carrying on of an experimental or illustrative farm. Professor George Buckland was appointed to the chair of agriculture in the university in January 1851 and an experimental farm on a small scale was laid out on the university grounds. Professor Buckland acted also as secretary to the board until 1858, when he resigned and was succeeded by Hugh C. Thomson. He continued his work for some years at the university, and was an active participant in all agricultural matters up to the time of his death in 1885. Provision having been made for agricultural instruction at the university, the board in 1859 decided to establish a course in veterinary science, and at once got into communication with Professor Dick of the Veterinary College at Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1862 a school was opened in Toronto under the direction of Professor Andrew Smith, recently arrived from Edinburgh. The _British American Cultivator_ was established in 1841 by Eastwood and Co. and W. G. Edmundson, with the latter as editor. It gave place in 1849 to the _Canadian Agriculturist_, a monthly journal edited and owned by George Buckland and William McDougall. This was the official organ of the board till the year 1864, when George Brown began the publication of the _Canada Farmer_ with the Rev. W. F. Clark as editor-in-chief and D. W. Beadle as horticultural editor. The board at once recognized it, accepted it as their representative, and the _Canadian Agriculturist_ ceased publication in December 1863. The half-century of British immigration, 1816 to 1867, had wrought a wonderful change. From a little over a hundred thousand the population had grown to a million and a half; towns and cities had sprung into existence; commercial enterprises had taken shape; the construction of railways had been undertaken; trade had developed along new lines; the standards of living had materially changed; and great questions, national and international, had stirred the people and aroused at times the bitterest political strife. The changed standards of living can best be illustrated by an extract from an address delivered in 1849 by Sheriff Ruttan. Referring to the earlier period, he said: Our food was coarse but wholesome. With the exception of three or four pounds of green tea a year for a family, which cost us three bushels of wheat per pound, we raised everything we ate. We manufactured our own clothes and purchased nothing except now and then a black silk handkerchief or some trifling article of foreign manufacture of the kind. We lived simply, yet comfortably--envied no one, for no one was better off than his neighbour. Until within the last thirty years, one hundred bushels of wheat, at 2s. 6d. per bushel, was quite sufficient to give in exchange for all the articles of foreign manufacture consumed by a large family.... The old-fashioned home-made cloth has given way to the fine broadcloth coat; the linsey-woolsey dresses of females have disappeared and English and French silks been substituted; the nice clean-scoured floors of the farmers' houses have been covered by Brussels carpets; the spinning wheel and loom have been superseded by the piano; and in short, a complete revolution in all our domestic habits and manners has taken place--the consequences of which are the accumulation of an enormous debt upon our shoulders and its natural concomitant, political strife. Students of Canadian history will at once recall the story of the Rebellion of 1837, the struggle for constitutional government, the investigation by Lord Durham, the repeal of the preferential wheat duties in England, the agitation for Canadian independence, and other great questions that so seriously disturbed the peace of the Canadian people. They were the 'growing pains' of a progressive people. The Crimean War, in 1854-56, gave an important though temporary boom to Canadian farm products. Reciprocity with the United States from 1855 to 1866 offered a profitable market that had been closed for many years. Then came the close of the great civil war in the United States and the opening up of the cheap, fertile prairie lands of the Middle West to the hundreds of thousands of farmers set free from military service. This westward movement was joined by many farmers from Ontario; there was a disastrous competition in products, and an era of agricultural depression set in just before Confederation. It was because of these difficulties that Confederation became a possibility and a necessity. The new political era introduced a new agricultural period, which began under conditions that were perhaps as unfavourable and as unpromising as had been experienced for over half a century. THE GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC FARMING, 1867-88 The period that we shall now deal with begins with Confederation in 1867 and extends to 1888, when a provincial minister of Agriculture was appointed for the first time and an independent department organized. From 1792 to 1841 what is now Ontario was known as Upper Canada; from 1841 to 1867 it was part of the United Province of Canada, being known as Canada West to distinguish it from Quebec or Canada East. In 1867, however, it resumed its former status as a separate province, but with the new name of Ontario. In the formation of the government of the province agriculture was placed under the care of a commissioner, who, however, held another portfolio in the cabinet. John Carling was appointed commissioner of Public Works and also commissioner of Agriculture. On taking office Carling found the following agricultural organizations of the province ready to co-operate with the government: sixty-three district agricultural societies, each having one or more branch township societies under its care, and all receiving annual government grants of slightly over $50,000; a provincial board of agriculture, with its educational and exhibition work; and a fruit-growers' association, now for the first time taken under government direction and given financial assistance. One extract from the commissioner's first report will serve to show the condition of agriculture in Ontario when the Dominion was born. 'It is an encouraging fact that during the last year in particular mowers and reapers and labour-saving implements have not only increased in the older districts, but have found their way into new ones, and into places where they were before practically unknown. This beneficial result has, no doubt, mainly arisen from the difficulty, or rather in some cases impossibility, of getting labour at any price.' It would appear, therefore, that the question of shortage of farm labour, so much complained of in recent years, has been a live one for forty years and more. In the second report of the commissioner (1869) special attention was directed to the question of agricultural education, and the suggestion was made that the agricultural department of the university and the veterinary college might give some instruction to the teachers at the normal school. In the following year, however, an advanced step was taken. It was noted that Dr Ryerson was in sympathy with special agricultural teaching and had himself prepared and published a text-book on agriculture. The suggestion was made that the time had arrived for a school of practical science. At the same time Ryerson had appointed the Rev. W. F. Clark, the editor of the _Canada Farmer_, to visit the Agricultural department at Washington and a few of the agricultural colleges of the United States, and to collect such practical information as would aid in commencing something of an analogous character in Ontario. It will thus be seen that the two branches of technical training--the School of Practical Science and the Agricultural College--were really twin institutions, originating, in the year 1870, in the dual department of Public Works and Agriculture. These institutions were the outcome of the correlation of city and country industries, which were under the fostering care of the Agriculture and Arts Association, as the old provincial organization was now known. The School of Practical Science, it may be noted, is now incorporated with the provincial university, and the Agricultural College is affiliated with it. There were at that time two outstanding agricultural colleges in the United States, that of Massachusetts and that of Michigan. These were visited, and, based upon the work done at these institutions, a comprehensive and suggestive report was compiled. Immediate action was taken upon the recommendations of this report, and a tract of land, six hundred acres in extent, was purchased at Mimico, seven miles west of Toronto. Before work could be commenced, however, the life of the legislature closed and a new government came into office in 1871 with Archibald McKellar as commissioner of Agriculture and Arts. New governments feel called upon to promote new measures. There were rumours and suggestions that the soil of the Mimico farm was productive of thistles and better adapted to brick-making than to the raising of crops. Also the location was so close to Toronto that it was feared that the attractions of the city would tend to make the students discontented with country life. For various reasons a change of location was deemed desirable, and a committee of farmer members of the legislature was appointed. Professor Miles, of the Michigan Agricultural College, was engaged to give expert advice; other locations were examined, and finally Moreton Lodge Farm, near Guelph, was purchased. After some preliminary difficulties, involving the assistance of a sheriff or bailiff, possession was obtained, and the first class for instruction in agricultural science and practice, consisting of thirty-one pupils in all, was opened on June 1, 1874, with William Johnston as rector or principal. Thus was established the Ontario School of Agriculture, now known as the Ontario Agricultural College. Its annual enrolment has grown to over fifteen hundred, and it is now recognized as the best-equipped and most successful institution of its kind in the British Empire. Its development along practical lines and its recognition as a potent factor in provincial growth were largely due to Dr James Mills, who was appointed president of the college in 1879, and filled that position until January 1904, when he was appointed to the Dominion Board of Railway Commissioners. Under his direction farmers' institutes were established in Ontario in 1884. Dr Mills was succeeded by Dr G. C. Creelman as president. The next important step in agricultural advancement was the appointment in 1880 of the Ontario Agricultural Commission 'to inquire into the agricultural resources of the Province of Ontario, the progress and condition of agriculture therein and matters connected therewith.' The commission consisted of S. C. Wood, then commissioner of Agriculture (chairman), Alfred H. Dymond (secretary), and sixteen other persons representative of the various agricultural interests, including the president and ex-president of the Agricultural and Arts Association, Professor William Brown of the Agricultural College, the master of the Dominion Grange, the president of the Entomological Society, and two members of the legislature, Thomas Ballantyne and John Dryden. In 1913 there were but two survivors of this important commission, J. B. Aylesworth of Newburgh, Ont., and Dr William Saunders, who, after over twenty years' service as director of the Dominion Experimental Farms, had resigned office in 1911. All parts of the province were visited and information was gathered from the leading farmers along the lines laid down in the royal commission. In 1881 the report was issued in five volumes. It was without doubt the most valuable commission report ever issued in Ontario, if not in all Canada. Part of it was reissued a second and a third time, and for years it formed the Ontario farmer's library. Even to this day it is a valuable work of reference, containing as it does a vast amount of practical information and forming an invaluable source of agricultural history. The first outcome of this report was the establishment, in 1882, by the government of the Ontario bureau of Industries, an organization for the collection and publication of statistics in connection with agriculture and allied industries. Archibald Blue, who now occupies the position of chief officer of the census and statistics branch of the Dominion service, was appointed the first secretary of the bureau. Agriculture continued to expand, and associations for the protection and encouragement of special lines increased in number and in importance. Thus there were no fewer than three vigorous associations interested in dairying: the Dairymen's Association of Eastern Ontario, and the Dairymen's Association of Western Ontario, which were particularly interested in the cheese industry, and the Ontario Creameries Association, which was interested in butter manufacture. There were poultry associations, a beekeepers' association, and several live stock associations. From time to time the suggestion was made that the work of these associations, and that of the Agriculture and Arts Association and of the bureau of Industries, should be co-ordinated, and a strong department of Agriculture organized under a minister of Agriculture holding a distinct portfolio in the Ontario cabinet. Provision for this was made by the legislature in 1888, and in that year Charles Drury was appointed the first minister of Agriculture. The bureau of Industries was taken as the nucleus of the department, and Archibald Blue, the secretary, was appointed deputy minister. We have referred to the reaction that took place in Ontario agriculture after the close of the American Civil War and the abrogation of the reciprocity treaty. The high prices of the Crimean War period had long since disappeared, the market to the south had been narrowed, and the Western States were pouring into the East the cheap grain products of a rich virgin soil. Agricultural depression hung over the province for years. Gradually, however, through the early eighties the farmers began to recover their former prosperous condition, sending increasing shipments of barley, sheep, horses, eggs, and other commodities to the cities of the Eastern States, so that at the close of the period to which we are referring agricultural conditions were of a favourable and prosperous nature. THE MODERN PERIOD, 1888-1912 In 1888 a new period in Ontario's agricultural history begins. The working forces of agriculture were being linked together in the new department of Agriculture. Charles Drury, the first minister of Agriculture, held office until 1890, being succeeded by John Dryden, who continued in charge of the department until 1905, when a conservative government took the place of the liberal government that had been in power since 1871. Two factors immediately began to play a most important part in the agricultural situation: the opening up of the north-western lands by the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886, and the enactment, on October 6, 1890, of the McKinley high tariff by the United States. The former attracted Ontario's surplus population, and made it no longer profitable or desirable to grow wheat in the province for export; the latter closed the doors to the export of barley, live stock, butter, and eggs. The situation was desperate; agriculture was passing through a period of most trying experience. Any other industry than that of agriculture would have been bankrupted. The only hope of the Ontario farmer now was in the British market. The sales of one Ontario product, factory cheese, had been steadily increasing in the great consuming districts of England and Scotland, and there was reason to believe that other products might be sold to equal advantage. Dairying was the one line of agricultural work that helped to tide over the situation in the early nineties. The methods that had succeeded in building up the cheese industry must be applied to other lines, and all the organized forces must be co-ordinated in carrying this out. This was work for a department of Agriculture, and the minister of Agriculture, John Dryden, who guided and directed this co-operation of forces and made plans for the future growth and expansion of agricultural work, was an imperialist indeed who, in days of depression and difficulty, directed forces and devised plans that not only helped the agricultural classes to recover their prosperity, but also made for the strengthening of imperial ties and the working out of national greatness. The British market presented new conditions, new demands. The North-West could send her raw products in the shape of wheat; Ontario must send finished products--beef, bacon, cheese, butter, fruit, eggs, and poultry--these and similar products could be marketed in large quantities if only they could be supplied of right quality. Transportation of the right kind was a prime necessity. Lumber, wheat, and other rough products could be handled without difficulty, but perishable goods demanded special accommodation. This was a matter belonging to the government of Canada, and to it the Dominion department of Agriculture at once began to give attention. The production of the goods for shipment was a matter for provincial direction. Gradually the farmers of the province adapted themselves to the new conditions and after a time recovered their lost ground. General prosperity came in sight again about 1895. For several years after this the output of beef, bacon, and cheese increased steadily, and the gains made in the British market more than offset the loss of the United States market. It was during the five years after 1890 that the farmers suffered so severely while adjusting their work to the new conditions. With these expanding lines of British trade products, the values of stock, implements, and buildings made steady advance, and in 1901 the total value of all farm property in the province crossed the billion dollar mark. Since that year the annual increase in total farm values has been approximately forty million dollars. The following statement of total farm values in Ontario, as compiled by the Ontario bureau of Industries, the statistical branch of the department of Agriculture, is very suggestive: _Total Farm Values_ 1885 $958,159,740 1886 989,497,911 1887 975,292,214 1888 981,368,094 1889 982,210,664 1890 970,927,035 1891 971,886,068 1892 979,977,244 1893 970,361,070 1894 954,395,507 1895 931,989,574 1896 910,291,623 1897 905,093,613 1898 923,022,420 1899 947,513,360 1900 974,814,931 1901 1,001,323,296 1902 1,044,894,332 1906 1,189,119,120 1909 1,241,019,109 From the above table it will be seen that the closing of the United States markets in 1890 was followed by a depreciation in general farm values which lasted until 1898, when the upward movement that has continued ever since set in. And now let us see how the population was changing, as to its distribution between rural and urban, during these years. First, we shall give the assessed population. Rural Urban 1884 1,117,880 636,187 1885 1,126,554 658,406 1890 1,117,533 800,041 1895 1,109,013 848,377 1900 1,094,246 919,614 1905 1,059,379 1,042,881 1909 1,049,240 1,240,198 The Canadian Pacific Railway opened up the wheat lands of the West in 1886. At that time the rural population was nearly double the urban; in 1905 they were about equal; and six years later the urban population of Ontario exceeded the rural. The Dominion census figures are as follows: Rural Urban 1911 1,194,785 1,328,489 1901 1,246,969 935,978 --------- --------- Increase .... 392,511 Decrease 52,184 .... It will thus be seen that during the past twenty-five years there has been a steady increase in the consumers of food products in Ontario and a slight decrease in the producers of the same. The surplus population of the farms has gone to the towns and cities of Ontario and to the western provinces. Now for a moment let us follow these people to the West. Many of them have gone on the land to produce wheat. Wheat for the European market has been their principal product, therefore they in turn have become consumers of large quantities of food that they do not themselves produce but must obtain from farmers elsewhere. But not all who have gone West have become farmers. The Dominion census of 1911 gives the following statement of population for the provinces and districts west of Lake Superior: Rural Urban 1911 1,059,681 681,216 1901 446,050 199,467 --------- ------- Increase 613,631 481,749 The western provinces are generally considered to be almost purely agricultural, and yet the percentage increase of urban population has been nearly double the percentage increase of rural population. And this rapidly growing urban population also has demanded food products. Their own farmers grow wheat and oats and barley. British Columbia produces fruit for her own people and some surplus for the prairie provinces. There is some stock-raising, but the rapid extension of wheat areas has interfered with the great stock ranches. From out of the Great West, therefore, there has come an increasing demand for many food products. Add to this the growing home market in Ontario, and, keeping in mind that the West can grow wheat more cheaply than Ontario, it will be understood why of recent years the Ontario farmer has been compelled to give up the production of wheat for export. His line of successful and profitable work has been in producing to supply the demands of his own growing home market, and the demands of the rapidly increasing people of the West, both rural and urban, and also to share in the insatiable market of Great Britain. Another element of more recent origin has been the small but very profitable market of Northern Ontario, where lumbering, mining, and railroad construction have been so active in the past five or six years. The result of all this has been a great increase in fruit production. Old orchards have been revived and new orchards have been set out. The extension of the canning industry also is most noticeable, and has occasioned the production of fruits and vegetables in enormous quantities. Special crops such as tobacco, beans, and sugar beets are being grown in counties where soil and climatic conditions are favourable. The production of poultry and eggs is also receiving more attention each succeeding year. The growth of cities is creating an increasing demand for milk, and the production of factory-made butter and cheese is also increasing, as the following figures for Ontario from the Dominion census prove: Butter Cheese 1900 7,559,542 lb. 131,967,612 lb. 1910 13,699,153 " 157,631,883 " For the past ten or twelve years the farmers of Ontario have been slowly adjusting their work to the new situation, and the transition is continuing. While in some sections farms are being enlarged so as to permit the more extensive use of labour-saving machinery and the more economical handling of live stock, in other sections, particularly in counties adjacent to the Great Lakes, large farms are being cut up into smaller holdings and intensive production of fruits and vegetables is now the practice. This, of course, results in a steady increase in land values and is followed by an increase in rural population. The farmers of Ontario are putting forth every effort to meet the demands for food products. The one great difficulty that they have encountered has been the scarcity of farm labour. Men have come from Europe by the tens of thousands, but they have been drawn largely to the growing towns and cities by the high wages offered in industrial lines; and the West, the 'Golden West' as it is sometimes called, has proved an even stronger attraction. It seems rarely to occur to the new arrival that the average farm in Ontario could produce more than a quarter section of prairie land. Signs, however, point to an increase in rural population, through the spread of intensive agriculture. Before referring to the methods of instruction and assistance provided for the developing of this new agriculture in Ontario, reference should be made to one thing that is generally overlooked by those who periodically discover this rapid urban increase, and who moralize most gloomily upon a movement that is to be found in nearly every progressive country of the civilized world. In the days of early settlement the farmer and his family supplied nearly all their own wants. The farmer produced all his own food; he killed his own stock, salted his pork, and smoked his hams. His wife was expert in spinning and weaving, and plaited the straw hats for the family. The journeyman shoemaker dropped in and fitted out the family with boots. The great city industries were then unknown. The farmer's wife in those days was perhaps the most expert master of trades ever known. She could spin and weave, make a carpet or a rug, dye yarns and clothes, and make a straw hat or a birch broom. Butter, cheese, and maple sugar were products of her skill, as well as bread, soap, canned fruits, and home-made wine. In those days the farm was a miniature factory or combination of factories. Many, in fact most, of these industries have gradually moved out of the farm home and have been concentrated in great factories; and the pedlar with his pack has disappeared under a shower of catalogues from the departmental city store. In other words, a large portion of work once done upon the farm and at the country cross-roads has been transferred to the town and city, and this, in some part, explains the modern movement citywards-- there has been a transference from country to city not only of people but also of industries. Whether this has been in the interests of the people is another question, but the process is still going on, and what further changes may take place it is difficult to determine and unwise to forecast. And now let us see what agencies and organizations have been used in the development of the special lines of agriculture since the creation of the department in 1888. We have stated that the Agriculture and Arts Association had been for many years the directing force in provincial agricultural organization. It held an annual provincial exhibition; it issued the diplomas to the graduates of the Ontario Veterinary College; and it controlled the various live stock associations that were interested in the registration of stock. Shortly after 1888 legislation was enacted transferring the work to the department of Agriculture. The place for holding the provincial exhibition was changed from year to year. In 1879 a charter was obtained by special act for the Toronto Industrial Exhibition, the basis of which was the Toronto Electoral Agricultural Society. Out of this came the annual Toronto Exhibition, now known as the Canadian National Exhibition, and the governmental exhibition was discontinued. The Ontario Veterinary College was a privately owned institution, though the diplomas were issued by the Agriculture and Arts Association. The royal commission appointed in 1905 to investigate the University of Toronto recommended the taking over of this association by the government, and as a result it passed under the control of the department of Agriculture in 1908, and was affiliated with the University of Toronto. Since that time the diploma of Veterinary Surgeon (V.S.) has been issued by the minister of Agriculture, and a supplementary degree of Bachelor of Veterinary Science (B.V.Sc.) has been granted by the university. The taking over of this institution by the government, the resuming by the province of its original prerogative, was accompanied by an enlargement of the course, an extension from two years to three years in the period of instruction, and a strengthening of the faculty. The herd-books or pedigree record books were, in most cases, Canadian, and it was felt that they should be located at the capital of the Dominion. These have therefore been transferred to Ottawa and are now conducted under Dominion regulations. The Ontario bureau of Industries was the basis of organization of the department. As other work was added the department grew in size and importance, and the various branches were instituted until there developed a well-organized department having the following subdivisions: The Agricultural College, The Veterinary College, The Agricultural and Horticultural Societies Branch, The Live Stock Branch, The Farmers' and Women's Institutes Branch, The Dairy Branch, The Fruit Branch, The Statistical Branch, The Immigration and Colonization Branch. Each branch is in charge of a special officer. In addition to the above there is a lot of miscellaneous work, which as it develops will probably be organized into separate branches, such as farm forestry, district representatives, etc. John Dryden was in 1905 succeeded as minister of Agriculture by Nelson Monteith, who in 1908 was succeeded by J. S. Duff. Under their care the department has grown and expanded, and through their recommendations, year by year, increasing amounts of money have been obtained for the extension of agricultural instruction and the more thorough working out of plans inaugurated in the earlier years of departmental organization. The history of agricultural work in Ontario in recent years may be put under two heads--expansion of the various organizations and extension of their operations, and the development of what may be called 'field work.' Farmers' institutes and women's institutes have multiplied; agricultural societies now cover the entire province; local horse associations, poultry associations, and beekeepers' associations have been encouraged; winter fairs for live stock have been established at Guelph and Ottawa; dairy instructors have been increased in number and efficiency; short courses in live stock, seed improvement, fruit work, and dairying have been held; and farm drainage has received practical encouragement. Perhaps the most important advance of late years has resulted through the appointment of what are known as district representatives. In co-operation with the department of Education, graduates of the Agricultural College have been permanently located in the various counties to study the agricultural conditions and to initiate and direct any movement that would assist in developing the agricultural work. These graduates organize short courses at various centres, conduct classes in high schools, assist the farmers in procuring the best seed, advise as to new lines of work, assist in drainage, supervise the care of orchards--in short, they carry the work of the Agricultural College and of the various branches of the department right to the farmer, and give that impetus to better farming which can come only from personal contact. The growth of the district representative system has been remarkable: it was begun in seven counties in 1907, by 1910 fifteen counties had representatives, and in 1914 no fewer than thirty-eight counties were so equipped. At first the farmers distrusted and even somewhat opposed the movement, but the district representative soon proved himself so helpful that the government has found it difficult to comply with the numerous requests for these apostles of scientific farming. Approximately $125,000 is spent each year on the work by the provincial government, in addition to the $500 granted annually by the county to each district office. The result of all this is that new and more profitable lines of farming are being undertaken, specializing in production is being encouraged, and Ontario agriculture is advancing rapidly along the lines to which the soils, the climate, and the people are adapted. A study of the history of Ontario agriculture shows many changes in the past hundred years, but at no time has there been so important and so interesting a development as that which took place in the opening decade of the twentieth century. [Signature: C C James] [Transcriber's Note: The following correction was made: p. 572: Newburg to Newburgh Spelling in quoted passages has not been changed. Page numbering matches the original.] 
31105	----	file was produced from images produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University) TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES Most pages of the book include at the bottom a number of questions for the student to consider. These have been retained in this version and enclosed in square brackets. Some corrections to typographical errors have been made. These are recorded at the end of the text. * * * * * G. E. WARING, JR. Consulting Agriculturist. ACCURATE ANALYSES OF SOILS, MANURES, AND CROPS PROCURED. FARMS VISITED, TREATMENT RECOMMENDED, ETC. Letters of advice on analyses will be written for those who require them, for $25 each. Letters on other branches of the subject, inclosing a suitable fee, will receive prompt attention. OFFICE, 143 FULTON-STREET, NEW YORK, (UP STAIRS. POST-OFFICE ADDRESS, RYE, N. Y. DR. CHARLES ENDERLIN, ANALYTICAL AND CONSULTING Chemist, 84 WALKER-STREET, NEW YORK. ANALYSIS OF MINERALS, SOILS,--ORGANIC ANALYSIS, ETC. D. APPLETON & COMPANY HAVE IN COURSE OF PREPARATION, THE EARTHWORKER; OR, Book of Husbandry. BY G. E. WARING, JR. AUTHOR OF THE "ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURE." This book is intended as a sequel to the Elements of Agriculture, being a larger and more complete work, containing fuller directions for the treatment of the different kinds of soils, for the _preparation of manures_, and especially for the drainage of lands, whether level, rolling, hilly, or springy. Particular attention will be paid to the use of analysis. The feeding of different animals, and the cultivation of the various crops, will be described with care. The size of the work will be about 400 pp. 8vo., and it will probably be published January 1st, 1856. Price $1. Orders sent to the publishers, or to the author, at Rye, N. Y., will be supplied in the order in which they are received. ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURE Extract from a letter to the author from Prof. Mapes, editor of the _Working Farmer_: * * * "After a perusal of your manuscript, I feel authorized in assuring you that, for the use of young farmers, and schools, your book is superior to any other elementary work extant. JAMES J. MAPES." * * * * * Letter from the Editor of the N. Y. Tribune: MY FRIEND WARING, If all who need the information given in your _Elements of Agriculture_ will confess their ignorance as frankly as I do, and seek to dispel it as promptly and heartily, you will have done a vast amount of good by writing it. * * * * * I have found in every chapter important truths, which I, as a would-be-farmer, needed to know, yet which I _did not_ know, or had but a confused and glimmering consciousness of, before I read your lucid and straightforward exposition of the bases of Agriculture as a science. I would not have my son grow up as ignorant of these truths as I did for many times the price of your book; and, I believe, a copy of that book in every family in the Union, would speedily add at least ten per cent. per acre to the aggregate product of our soil, beside doing much to stem and reverse the current which now sets so strongly away from the plow and the scythe toward the counter and the office. Trusting that your labors will be widely regarded and appreciated, I remain yours truly, HORACE GREELEY. New York, June 23, 1854. THE ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURE: A Book for Young Farmers, WITH QUESTIONS PREPARED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS. BY GEO. E. WARING, JR., CONSULTING AGRICULTURIST. The effort to extend the dominion of man over nature is the most healthy and most noble of all ambitions.--BACON. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 346 & 348 BROADWAY. M DCCC LIV. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by GEO. E. WARING, JR., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. TO MY FRIEND AND TUTOR, PROF. JAMES J. MAPES, THE PIONEER OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE IN AMERICA, This Book IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY HIS PUPIL, THE AUTHOR. TO THE STUDENT. This book is presented to you, not as a work of science, nor as a dry, chemical treatise, but as a plain statement of the more simple operations by which nature produces many results, so common to our observation, that we are thoughtless of their origin. On these results depend the existence of man and the lower animals. No man should be ignorant of their production. In the early prosecution of the study, you will find, perhaps, nothing to relieve its tediousness; but, when the foundation of agricultural knowledge is laid in your mind so thoroughly that you know the character and use of every stone, then may your thoughts build on it fabrics of such varied construction, and so varied in their uses, that there will be opened to you a new world, even more wonderful and more beautiful than the outward world, which exhibits itself to the senses. Thus may you live two lives, each assisting in the enjoyment of the other. But you may ask the _practical_ use of this. "The world is made up of little things," saith the proverb. So with the productive arts. The steam engine consists of many parts, each part being itself composed of atoms too minute to be detected by our observation. The earth itself, in all its solidity and life, consists entirely of atoms too small to be perceived by the naked eye, each visible particle being an aggregation of thousands of constituent elements. The crop of wheat, which the farmer raises by his labor, and sells for money, is produced by a combination of particles equally small. They are not mysteriously combined, nor irregularly, but each atom is taken from its place of deposit, and carried to its required location in the living plant, by laws as certain as those which regulate the motion of the engine, or the revolutions of the earth. It is the business of the practical farmer to put together these materials, with the assistance of nature. He may learn her ways, assist her action, and succeed; or he may remain ignorant of her operations, often counteract her beneficial influences, and often fail. A knowledge of the _inner_ world of material things about us will produce pleasure to the thoughtful, and profit to the practical. CONTENTS. SECTION FIRST. THE PLANT. PAGE. CHAPTER I.--Introduction, 11 " II.--Atmosphere, 15 " III.--Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, 23 " IV.--Inorganic Matter, 29 " V.--Growth, 40 " VI.--Proximate division of Plants, 43 " VII.--Location of the Proximates, and variations in the Ashes of Plants, 52 " VIII.--Recapitulation, 56 SECTION SECOND. THE SOIL. CHAPTER I.--Formation and Character of the Soil, 65 " II.--Uses of Organic Matter, 77 " III.--Uses of Inorganic Matter, 84 SECTION THIRD. MANURES. CHAPTER I.--Character and varieties of Manure, 93 " II.--Excrements of Animals, 96 " III.--Waste of Manure, 101 " IV.--Absorbents, 109 " V.--Composting Stable Manure, 118 " VI.--Different kinds of Animal Excrement, 126 " VII.--Other Organic Manures, 136 " VIII.--Mineral Manures, 149 " IX.--Deficiencies of Soils, means of Restoration, etc., 155 " X.--Atmospheric Fertilizers, 197 " XI.--Recapitulation, 203 SECTION FOURTH. MECHANICAL CULTIVATION. CHAPTER I.--Mechanical Character of the Soil, 209 " II.--Under-draining, 211 " III.--Advantages of Under-draining, 217 " IV.--Sub-soil Plowing, 232 " V.--Plowing and other modes of Pulverizing the Soil, 239 " VI.--Rolling, Mulching, Weeding, etc., 245 SECTION FIFTH. ANALYSIS. CHAPTER I.--Nature of Analysis, 259 " II.--Tables of Analysis, 264 THE PRACTICAL FARMER, 279 EXPLANATION OF TERMS, 287 SECTION FIRST. THE PLANT. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. [What is the object of cultivating the soil? What is necessary in order to cultivate with economy? Are plants created from nothing?] The object of cultivating the soil is to raise from it a crop of _plants_. In order to cultivate with economy, we must _raise the largest possible quantity with the least expense, and without permanent injury to the soil_. Before this can be done we must study the character of plants, and learn their exact composition. They are not _created_ by a mysterious power, they are merely made up of matters already in existence. They take up water containing food and other matters, and discharge from their roots those substances that are not required for their growth. It is necessary for us to know what kind of matter is required as food for the plant, and where this is to be obtained, which we can learn only through such means as shall separate the elements of which plants are composed; in other words, we must _take them apart_, and examine the different pieces of which they are formed. [What must we do to learn the composition of plants? What takes place when vegetable matter is burned? What do we call the two divisions produced by burning? Where does organic matter originate? Inorganic? How much of chemistry should farmers know?] If we burn any vegetable substance it disappears, except a small quantity of earthy matter, which we call _ashes_. In this way we make an important division in the constituents of plants. One portion dissipates into the atmosphere, and the other remains as ashes. That part which burns away during combustion is called _organic matter_; the ashes are called _inorganic matter_. The organic matter has become air, and hence we conclude that it was originally obtained from air. The inorganic matter has become earth, and was obtained from the soil. This knowledge can do us no good except by the assistance of chemistry, which explains the properties of each part, and teaches us where it is to be found. It is not necessary for farmers to become chemists. All that is required is, that they should know enough of chemistry to understand the nature of the materials of which their crops are composed, and how those materials are to be used to the best advantage. This amount of knowledge may be easily acquired, and should be possessed by every person, old or young, whether actually engaged in the cultivation of the soil or not. All are dependent on vegetable productions, not only for food, but for every comfort and convenience of life. It is the object of this book to teach children the first principles of agriculture: and it contains all that is absolutely necessary to an understanding of the practical operations of cultivation, etc. [Is organic matter lost after combustion? Of what does it consist? How large a part of plants is carbon?] We will first examine the _organic_ part of plants, or that which is driven away during combustion or burning. This matter, though apparently lost, is only changed in form. It consists of one solid substance, _carbon_ (or charcoal), and three gases, _oxygen_, _hydrogen_ and _nitrogen_. These four kinds of matter constitute nearly the whole of most plants, the ashes forming often less than one part in one hundred of their dry weight. [What do we mean by gas? Does oxygen unite with other substances? Give some instances of its combinations] When wood is burned in a close vessel, or otherwise protected from the air, its carbon becomes charcoal. All plants contain this substance, it forming usually about one half of their dry weight. The remainder of their organic part consists of the three gases named above. By the word gas, we mean _air_. Oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, when pure, are always in the form of air. Oxygen has the power of uniting with many substances, forming compounds which are different from either of their constituents alone. Thus: oxygen unites with _iron_ and forms oxide of iron or _iron-rust_, which does not resemble the gray metallic iron nor the gas oxygen; oxygen unites with carbon and forms carbonic acid, which is an invisible gas, but not at all like pure oxygen; oxygen combines with hydrogen and forms water. All of the water, ice, steam, etc., are composed of these two gases. We know this because we can artificially decompose, or separate, all water, and obtain as a result simply oxygen and hydrogen, or we can combine these two gases and thus form pure water; oxygen combines with nitrogen and forms nitric acid. These chemical changes and combinations take place only under certain circumstances, which, so far as they affect agriculture, will be considered in the following pages. As the organic elements of plants are obtained from matters existing in the atmosphere which surrounds our globe, we will examine its constitution. CHAPTER II. ATMOSPHERE. [What is atmospheric air composed of? In what proportions? What is the use of nitrogen in air? Does the atmosphere contain other matters useful to vegetation? What are they?] Atmospheric air is composed of oxygen and nitrogen. Their proportions are, one part of oxygen to four parts of nitrogen. Oxygen is the active agent in the combustion, decay, and decomposition of organized bodies (those which have possessed animal or vegetable life, that is, organic matter), and others also, in the breathing of animals. Experiments have proved that if the atmosphere consisted of pure oxygen every thing would be speedily destroyed, as the processes of combustion and decay would be greatly accelerated, and animals would be so stimulated that death would soon ensue. The use of the nitrogen in the air is to _dilute_ the oxygen, and thus reduce the intensity of its effect. Besides these two great elements, the atmosphere contains certain impurities which are of great importance to vegetable growth; these are, _carbonic acid, water, ammonia, etc._ CARBONIC ACID. [What is the source of the carbon of plants? What is carbonic acid? What is its proportion in the atmosphere? Where else is it found? How does it enter the plant? What are the offices of leaves?] Carbonic acid is in all probability the only source of the carbon of plants, and consequently is of more importance to vegetation than any other single sort of food. It is a gas, and is not, under natural circumstances, perceptible to our senses. It constitutes about 1/2500 of the atmosphere, and is found in combination with many substances in nature. Marble, limestone and chalk, are carbonate of lime, or carbonic acid and lime in combination; and carbonate of magnesia is a compound of carbonic acid and magnesia. This gas exists in combination with many other mineral substances, and is contained in all water not recently boiled. Its supply, though small, is sufficient for the purposes of vegetation. It enters the plant in two ways--through the roots in the water which goes to form the sap, and at the leaves, which absorb it from the air in the form of gas. The leaf of the plant seems to have three offices: that of absorbing carbonic acid from the atmosphere--that of assisting in the chemical preparation of the sap--and that of evaporating its water. If we examine leaves with a microscope we shall find that some have as many as 170,000 openings, or mouths, in a square inch; others have a much less number. Usually, the pores on the under side of the leaf absorb the carbonic acid. This absorptive power is illustrated when we apply the lower side of a cabbage leaf to a wound, as it draws strongly--the other side of the leaf has no such action. Young sprouts may have the power of absorbing and decomposing carbonic acid. [What parts of roots absorb food? How much of their carbon may plants receive through their roots? What change does carbonic acid undergo after entering the plant? In what parts of the plant, and under what influence, is carbonic acid decomposed?] The roots of plants terminate at their ends in minute spongioles, or mouths for the absorption of fluids containing nutriment. In these fluids there exist greater or less quantities of carbonic acid, and a considerable amount of this gas enters into the circulation of the plants and is carried to those parts where it is required for decomposition. Plants, under favorable circumstances, may thus obtain about one-third of their carbon. Carbonic acid, it will be recollected, consists of _carbon and oxygen_, while it supplies only _carbon_ to the plant. It is therefore necessary that it be divided, or decomposed, and that the carbon be retained while the oxygen is sent off again into the atmosphere, to reperform its office of uniting with carbon. This decomposition takes place in the _green_ parts of plants and only under the influence of daylight. It is not necessary that the sun shine directly on the leaf or green shoot, but this causes a _more rapid_ decomposition of carbonic acid, and consequently we find that plants which are well exposed to the sun's rays make the most rapid growth. [Explain the condition of different latitudes. Does the proportion of carbonic acid in the atmosphere remain about the same?] The fact that light is essential to vegetation explains the conditions of different latitudes, which, so far as the assimilation of carbon is concerned, are much the same. At the Equator the days are but about twelve hours long. Still, as the growth of plants is extended over eight or nine months of the year, the duration of daylight is sufficient for the requirements of a luxuriant vegetation. At the Poles, on the contrary, the summer is but two or three months long; here, however, it is daylight all summer, and plants from continual growth develop themselves in that short time. It will be recollected that carbonic acid constitutes but about 1/2500 of the air, yet, although about one half of all the vegetable matter in the world is derived from this source, as well as all of the carbon required by the growth of plants, its proportion in the atmosphere is constantly about the same. In order that we may understated this, it becomes necessary for us to consider the means by which it is formed. Carbon, by the aid of fire, is made to unite with oxygen, and always when bodies containing carbon are burnt _with the presence of atmospheric air_, the oxygen of that air unites with the carbon, and forms carbonic acid. The same occurs when bodies containing carbon _decay_, as this is simply a slower _burning_ and produces the same results. The respiration (or breathing) of animals is simply the union of the carbon of the blood with the oxygen of the air drawn into the lungs, and their breath, when thrown out, always contains carbonic acid. From this we see that the reproduction of this gas is the direct effect of the destruction of all organized bodies, whether by fire, decay, or consumption by animals. [Explain some of the operations in which this reproduction takes place. How is it reproduced?] Furnaces are its wholesale manufactories. Every cottage fire is continually producing a new supply, and the blue smoke issuing from the cottage-chimney, as described by so many poets, possesses a new beauty, when we reflect that besides indicating a cheerful fire on the hearth, it contains materials for making food for the cottager's tables and new faggots for his fire. The wick of every burning lamp draws up the carbon of the oil to be made into carbonic acid at the flame. All matters in process of combustion, decay, fermentation, or putrefaction, are returning to the atmosphere those constituents, which they obtained from it. Every living animal, even to the smallest insect, by respiration, spends its life in the production of this material necessary to the growth of plants, and at death gives up its body in part for such formation by decay. Thus we see that there is a continual change from the carbon of plants to air, and from air back to plants, or through them to animals. As each dollar in gold that is received into a country permanently increases its amount of circulating medium, and each dollar sent out permanently decreases it until returned, so the carbonic acid sent into the atmosphere by burning, decay, or respiration, becomes a permanent stock of constantly changeable material, until it shall be locked up for a time, as in a house which may last for centuries, or in an oak tree which may stand for thousands of years. Still, at the decay of either of these, the carbon which they contain must be again resolved into carbonic acid. [What are the coal-beds of Pennsylvania? What are often found in them?] The coal-beds of Pennsylvania are mines of carbon once abstracted from the atmosphere by plants. In these coal-beds are often found fern leaves, toads, whole trees, and in short all forms of organized matter. These all existed as living things before the great floods, and at the breaking away of the barriers of the immense lakes, of which our present lakes were merely the deep holes in their beds, they were washed away and deposited in masses so great as to take fire from their chemical changes. It is by many supposed that this fire acting throughout the entire mass (without the presence of air _to supply oxygen_ except on the surface) caused it to become melted carbon, and to flow around those bodies which still retained their shapes, changing them to coal without destroying their structures. This coal, so long as it retains its present form, is lost to the vegetable kingdom, and each ton that is burned, by being changed into carbonic acid, adds to the ability of the atmosphere to support an increased amount of vegetation. [Explain the manner in which they become coal. How does the burning of coal benefit vegetation? Is carbon ever permanent in any of its forms? What enables it to change its condition?] Thus we see that, in the provisions of nature, carbon, the grand basis, on which all organized matter is founded, is never permanent in any of its forms. Oxygen is the carrier which enables it to change its condition. For instance, let us suppose that we have a certain quantity of charcoal; this is nearly pure carbon. We ignite it, and it unites with the oxygen of the air, becomes carbonic acid, and floats away into the atmosphere. The wind carries it through a forest, and the leaves of the trees with their millions of mouths drink it in. By the assistance of light it is decomposed, the oxygen is sent off to make more carbonic acid, and the carbon is retained to form a part of the tree. So long as that tree exists in the form of wood, the carbon will remain unaltered, but when the wood decays, or is burned, it immediately takes the form of carbonic acid, and mingles with the atmosphere ready to be again taken up by plants, and have its carbon deposited in the form of vegetable matter. [Give an instance of such change. How do plants and animals benefit each other? Describe the experiment with the glass tube.] The blood of animals contains carbon derived from their food. This unites with the oxygen of the air drawn into the lungs and forms carbonic acid. Without this process, animals could not live. Thus, while by the natural operation of breathing, they make carbonic acid for the uses of the vegetable world, plants, in taking up carbon, throw off oxygen to keep up the life of animals. There is perhaps no way in which we can better illustrate the changes of form in carbon than by describing a simple experiment. Take a glass tube filled with oxygen gas, and put in it a lump of charcoal, cork the ends of the tube tightly, and pass through the corks the wires of an electrical battery. By passing a stream of electrical fluid over the charcoal it may be ignited, when it will burn with great brilliancy. In burning it is dissolved in the oxygen forming carbonic acid, and disappears. It is no more lost, however, than is the carbon of wood which is burned in a stove; although invisible, it is still in the tube, and may be detected by careful weighing. A more satisfactory proof of its presence may be obtained by _decomposing_ the carbonic acid by drawing the wires a short distance apart, and giving a _spark_ of electricity. This immediately separates the oxygen from the carbon which forms a dense black smoke in the tube. By pushing the corks together we may obtain a wafer of charcoal of the same weight as the piece introduced. In this experiment we have changed carbon from its solid form to an invisible gas and back again to a solid, thus fully representing the continual changes of this substance in the destruction of organic matter and the growth of plants. CHAPTER III. HYDROGEN, OXYGEN AND NITROGEN. HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN. [What is water composed of? If analyzed, what does it yield? How do plants obtain their hydrogen and oxygen?] Let us now consider the three gases, _hydrogen_, _oxygen_ and _nitrogen_, which constitute the remainder of the organic part of plants. Hydrogen and oxygen compose _water_, which, if analyzed, yields simply these two gases. Plants perform such analysis, and in this way are able to obtain a sufficient supply of these materials, as their sap is composed chiefly of water. Whenever vegetable matter is destroyed by burning, decay, or otherwise, its hydrogen and oxygen unite and form water, which is parted with usually in the form of an invisible vapor. The atmosphere of course contains greater or less quantities of watery vapor arising from this cause and from the evaporation of liquid water. This vapor condenses, forming rains, etc. Hydrogen and oxygen are never taken into consideration in manuring lands, as they are so readily obtained from the water constituting the sap of the plant, and consequently should not occupy our attention in this book. NITROGEN. [If vegetable matter be destroyed, what becomes of these constituents? What is the remaining organic constituent? Why is it worthy of close attention? Do plants appropriate the nitrogen of the atmosphere?] _Nitrogen_, the only remaining _organic_ constituent of vegetable matter, is for many reasons worthy of close attention. 1. It is necessary to the growth and perfection of all cultivated plants. 2. It is necessary to the formation of animal muscle. 3. It is often deficient in the soil. 4. It is liable to be easily lost from manures. Although about four fifths of atmospheric air are pure nitrogen, it is almost certain that plants get no nutriment at all from this source. It is all obtained from some of its compounds, chiefly from the one called ammonia. Nitric acid is also a source from which plants may obtain nitrogen, though to the farmer of less importance than ammonia. AMMONIA. [What is the principal source from which they obtain nitrogen? What is ammonia? How is it formed? Where does it always exist? How do plants take up ammonia?] _Ammonia_ is composed of nitrogen and hydrogen. It has a pungent smell and is familiarly known as _hartshorn_. The same odor is perceptible around stables and other places where animal matter is decomposing. All animal muscle, certain parts of plants, and other organized substances, consist of compounds containing nitrogen. When these compounds undergo combustion, or are in any manner decomposed, the nitrogen which they contain usually unites with hydrogen, and forms ammonia. In consequence of this the atmosphere always contains more or less of this gas, arising from the decay, etc., which is continually going on all over the world. This ammonia in the atmosphere is the capital stock to which all plants, not artificially manured, must look for their supply of nitrogen. As they can take up ammonia only through their roots, we must discover some means by which it may be conveyed from the atmosphere to the soil. [Does water absorb it? What is _spirits of hartshorn_? Why is this power of water important in agriculture? What instance may be cited to prove this?] Water may be made to absorb many times its bulk of this gas, and water with which it comes in contact will immediately take it up. Spirits of hartshorn is merely water through which ammonia has been passed until it is saturated.[A] This power of water has a direct application to agriculture, because the water constituting rains, dews, &c., absorbs the ammonia which the decomposition of nitrogenous matter had sent into the atmosphere, and we find that all rain, snow and dew, contain ammonia. This fact may be chemically proved in various ways, and is perceptible in the common operations of nature. Every person must have noticed that when a summer's shower falls on the plants in a flower garden, they commence their growth with fresh vigor while the blossoms become larger and more richly colored. This effect cannot be produced by watering with spring water, unless it be previously mixed with ammonia, in which case the result will be the same. Although ammonia is a gas and pervades the atmosphere, few, if any, plants can take it up, as they do carbonic acid, through their leaves. It must all enter through the roots in solution in the water which goes to form the sap. Although the amount received from the atmosphere is of great importance, there are few cases where artificial applications are not beneficial. The value of farm-yard and other animal manures, depends chiefly on the ammonia which they yield on decomposition. This subject, also the means for retaining in the soil the ammoniacal parts of fertilizing matters, will be fully considered in the section on manures. [Can plants use more ammonia than is received from the atmosphere? On what does the value of animal manure chiefly depend? What changes take place after ammonia enters the plant? May the same atom of nitrogen perform many different offices?] After ammonia has entered the plant it may be decomposed, its hydrogen sent off, and its nitrogen retained to answer the purposes of growth. The changes which nitrogen undergoes, from plants to animals, or, by decomposition, to the form of ammonia in the atmosphere, are as varied as those of carbon and the constituents of water. The same little atom of nitrogen may one year form a part of a plant, and the next become a constituent of an animal, or, with the decomposed dead animal, may form a part of the soil. If the animal should fall into the sea he may become food for fishes, and our atom of nitrogen may form a part of a fish. That fish may be eaten by a larger one, or at death may become food for the whale, through the marine insect, on which it feeds. After the abstraction of the oil from the whale, the nitrogen may, by the putrefaction of his remains, be united to hydrogen, form ammonia, and escape into the atmosphere. From here it may be brought to the soil by rains, and enter into the composition of a plant, from which, could its parts speak as it lies on our table, it could tell us a wonderful tale of travels, and assure us that, after wandering about in all sorts of places, it had returned to us the same little atom of nitrogen which we had owned twenty years before, and which for thousands of years had been continually going through its changes. [Is the same true of the other constituents of plants? Is any atom of matter ever lost?] The same is true of any of the organic or inorganic constituents of plants. They are performing their natural offices, or are lying in the earth, or floating in the atmosphere, ready to be lent to _any_ of their legitimate uses, sure again to be returned to their starting point. Thus no atom of matter is ever lost. It may change its place, but it remains for ever as a part of the capital of nature. FOOTNOTES: [A] By _saturated_, we mean that it contains all that it is capable of holding. CHAPTER IV. INORGANIC MATTER. [What are ashes called? How many kinds of matter are there in the ashes of plants? Into what three classes may they be divided? What takes place when alkalies and acids are brought together?] We will now examine the ashes left after burning vegetable substances. This we have called inorganic matter, and it is obtained from the soil. Organic matter, although forming so large a part of the plant, we have seen to consist of four different substances. The inorganic portion, on the contrary, although forming so small a part, consists of no less than _nine_ or _ten_ different kinds of matter.[B] These we will consider in order. In their relations to agriculture they may be divided into _three_ classes--_alkalies_, _acids_, and _neutrals_.[C] [Is the character of a compound the same as that of its constituents? Give an instance of this. Do neutrals combine with other substances? Name the four alkalies found in the ashes of plants.] Alkalies and acids are of opposite properties, and when brought together they unite and neutralize each other, forming compounds which are neither alkaline nor acid in their character. Thus, carbonic acid (a gas,) unites with lime--a burning, caustic substance--and forms marble, which is a hard tasteless stone. Alkalies and acids are characterized by their desire to unite with each other, and the compounds thus formed have many and various properties, so that the characters of the constituents give no indication of the character of the compound. For instance, lime causes the gases of animal manure to escape, while sulphate of lime (a compound of sulphuric acid and lime) produces an opposite effect, and prevents their escape. The substances coming under the signification of neutrals, are less affected by the laws of combination, still they often combine feebly with other substances, and some of the resultant compounds are of great importance to agriculture. ALKALIES. The alkalies which are found in the ashes of plants are four in number; they are _potash_, _soda_, _lime_ and _magnesia_. POTASH. [How may we obtain potash from ashes? What are some of its agricultural uses?] When we pour water over wood ashes it dissolves the _potash_ which they contain, and carries it through in solution. This solution is called _ley_, and if it be boiled to dryness it leaves a solid substance from which pure potash may be made. Potash left exposed to the air absorbs carbonic acid and becomes carbonate of potash, or _pearlash_; if another atom of carbonic acid be added, it becomes super-carbonate of potash, or _salæratus_. Potash has many uses in agriculture. 1. It forms a constituent of nearly all plants. 2. It unites with silica (a neutral), and forms a compound which water can dissolve and carry into the roots of plants; thus supplying them with an ingredient which gives them much of their strength.[D] 3. It is a strong agent in the decomposition of vegetable matter, and is thus of much importance in preparing manures. 4. It roughens the smooth round particles of sandy soils, and prevents their compacting, as they are often liable to do. 5. It is also of use in killing certain kinds of insects, and, when artificially applied, in smoothing the bark of fruit trees. The source from which this and the other inorganic matters required are to be obtained, will be fully considered in the section on manures. SODA. [Where is soda found most largely? What is Glauber's salts? What is washing soda? What are some of the uses of lime?] _Soda_, one of the alkalies contained in the ashes of plants, is very much the same as potash in its agricultural character. Its uses are the same as those of potash--before enumerated. Soda exists very largely in nature, as it forms an important part of common salt, whether in the ocean or in those inland deposits known as rock salt. When combined with sulphuric acid it forms sulphate of soda or _Glauber's salts_. In combination with carbonic acid, as carbonate of soda, it forms the common washing soda of the shops. It is often necessary to render soils fertile. LIME. _Lime_ is in many ways important in agriculture: 1. It is a constituent of plants and animals. 2. It assists in the decomposition of vegetable matter in the soil. 3. It corrects the acidity[E] of sour soils. 4. As chloride or sulphate of lime it is a good absorbent of fertilizing gases. [How is caustic lime made? How much carbonic acid is thus liberated? How does man resemble Sinbad the sailor?] In nature it usually exists in the form of carbonate of lime: that is, as marble, limestone, and chalk--these all being of the same composition. In manufacturing caustic (or quick) lime, it is customary to burn the carbonate of lime in a kiln; by this means the carbonic acid is thrown off into the atmosphere and the lime remains in a pure or caustic state. A French chemist states that every cubic yard of limestone that is burned, throws off _ten thousand_ cubic yards of carbonic acid, which may be used by plants. This reminds us of the story of Sinbad the sailor, where we read of the immense _genie_ who came out of a very small box by the sea-shore, much to the surprise of Sinbad, who could not believe his eyes, until the _genie_ changed himself into a cloud of smoke and went into the box again. Sinbad fastened the lid, and the _genie_ must have remained there until the box was destroyed. Now man is very much like Sinbad, he lets the carbonic acid out from the limestone (when it expands and becomes a gas); and then he raises a crop, the leaves of which drink it in and pack the carbon away in a very small compass as vegetable matter. Here it must remain until the plant is destroyed, when it becomes carbonic acid again, and occupies just as much space as ever. The burning of limestone is a very prolific source of carbonic acid. MAGNESIA. [What do you know about magnesia? What is phosphoric acid composed of? With what substance does it form its most important compound?] _Magnesia_ is the remaining alkali of vegetable ashes. It is well known as a medicine, both in the form of calcined magnesia, and, when mixed with sulphuric acid, as epsom salts. Magnesia is necessary to nearly all plants, but too much of it is poisonous, and it should be used with much care, as many soils already contain a sufficient quantity. It is often found in limestone rocks (that class called _dolomites_), and the injurious effects of some kinds of lime, as well as the barrenness of soils made from dolomites, may be attributed entirely to the fact that they contain too much magnesia. ACIDS. PHOSPHORIC ACID. _Phosphoric acid._--This subject is one of the greatest interest to the farmer. Phosphoric acid is composed of phosphorus and oxygen. The end of a loco-foco match contains phosphorus, and when it is lighted it unites with the oxygen of the atmosphere and forms phosphoric acid; this constitutes the white smoke which is seen for a moment before the sulphur commences burning. Being an acid, this substance has the power of combining with any of the alkalies. Its most important compound is with lime. [Will soils, deficient in phosphate of lime, produce good crops? From what source do plants obtain their phosphorus?] _Phosphate of lime_ forms about 65 per cent. of the dry weight of the bones of all animals, and it is all derived from the soil through the medium of plants. As plants are intended as food for animals, nature has provided that they shall not attain their perfection without taking up a supply of phosphate of lime as well as of the other earthy matters; consequently, there are many soils which will not produce good crops, simply because they are deficient in phosphate of lime. It is one of the most important ingredients of manures, and its value is dependent on certain conditions which will be hereafter explained. Another use of phosphoric acid in the plant is to supply it with a small amount of _phosphorus_, which seems to be required in the formation of the seed. SULPHURIC ACID. [What is sulphuric acid composed of? What is plaster? What is silica? Why is it necessary to the growth of plants? What compounds does it form with alkalies?] _Sulphuric acid_ is important to vegetation and is often needed to render soils fertile. It is composed of sulphur and oxygen, and is made for manufacturing purposes, by burning sulphur. With lime it forms _sulphate of lime_, which is gypsum or 'plaster.' In this form it is often found in nature, and is generally used in agriculture. Other important methods for supplying sulphuric acid will be described hereafter. It gives _to_ the plant a small portion of _sulphur_, which is necessary to the formation of some of its parts. NEUTRALS. SILICA. [How can you prove its existence in corn stalks? What instance does Liebig give to show its existence in grass? How do we supply silicates? Why does grain lodge? What is the most important compound of chlorine?] This is sand, the base of flint. It is necessary for the growth of all plants, as it gives them much of their strength. In connection with an alkali it constitutes the hard shining surface of corn stalks, straw, etc. Silica unites with the alkalies and forms compounds, such as _silicate of potash_, _silicate of soda, etc._, which are soluble in water, and therefore available to plants. If we roughen a corn stalk with sand-paper we may sharpen a knife upon it. This is owing to the hard particles of silica which it contains. Window glass is silicate of potash, rendered insoluble by additions of arsenic and litharge. Liebig tells us that some persons discovered, between Manheim and Heidelberg in Germany, a mass of melted glass where a hay-stack had been struck by lightning. They supposed it to be a meteor, but chemical analysis showed that it was only the compound of silica and potash which served to strengthen the grass. There is always _enough_ silica in the soil, but it is often necessary to add an alkali to render it available. When grain, etc., lodge or fall down from their own weight, it is altogether probable that they are unable to obtain from the soil a sufficient supply of the soluble silicates, and some form of alkali should be added to the soil to unite with the sand and render it soluble. CHLORINE. [Of what use is chloride of lime? What is oxide of iron? What is the difference between the _per_oxide and the _prot_oxide of iron?] _Chlorine_ is an important ingredient of vegetable ashes, and is often required to restore the balance to the soil. It is not found alone in nature, but is always in combination with other substances. Its most important compound is with sodium, forming _chloride of sodium_ (or common salt). Sodium is the base of soda, and common salt is usually the best source from which to obtain both soda and chlorine. Chlorine unites with lime and forms _chloride of lime_, which is much used to absorb the unpleasant odors of decaying matters, and in this character it is of use in the treatment of manures. OXIDE OF IRON. _Oxide of iron_, one of the constituents of ashes, is common iron rust. _Iron_ itself is naturally of a grayish color, but when exposed to the atmosphere, it readily absorbs oxygen and forms a reddish compound. It is in this form that it usually exists in nature, and many soils as well as the red sandstones are colored by it. It is seldom, if ever, necessary to apply this as a manure, there being usually enough of it in the soil. This red oxide of iron, of which we have been speaking, is called by chemists the _peroxide_. There is another compound which contains less oxygen than this, and is called the _protoxide of iron_, which is poisonous to plants. When it exists in the soil it is necessary to use such means of cultivation as shall expose it to the atmosphere and allow it to take up more oxygen and become the peroxide. The black scales which fly from hot iron when struck by the blacksmith's hammer are protoxide of iron. The _peroxide of iron_ is a very good absorbent of ammonia, and consequently, as will be hereafter described, adds to the fertility of the soil. [What can you say of the oxide of manganese? How do you classify the inorganic constituents?] OXIDE OF MANGANESE, though often found in small quantities in the ashes of cultivated plants, cannot be considered indispensable. Having now examined all of the materials from which the ashes of plants are formed,[F] we are enabled to classify them in a simple manner, so that they may be recollected. They are as follows:-- ALKALIES. ACIDS. NEUTRALS. Potash. Sulphuric acid. Silica. Soda. Phosphoric " Chlorine. Lime. Oxide of Iron. Magnesia. " Manganese. FOOTNOTES: [B] Bromine, iodine, etc., are sometimes detected in particular plants, but need not occupy the attention of the farmer. [C] This classification is not strictly scientific, but it is one which the learner will find it well to adopt. These bodies are called neutrals because they have no decided alkaline or acid character. [D] In some soils the _fluorides_ undoubtedly supply plants with soluble silicates, as _fluoric acid_ has the power of dissolving silica. Thus, in Derbyshire (England), where the soil is supplied with fluoric acid, grain is said never to lodge. [E] Sourness. [F] There is reason to suppose that _alumina_ is an essential constituent of many plants. CHAPTER V. GROWTH. [Of what does a perfect young plant consist? How must the food of plants be supplied? Can carbon and earthy matter be taken up at separate stages of growth, or must they both be supplied at once?] Having examined the materials of which plants are made, it becomes necessary to discover how they are put together in the process of growth. Let us therefore suppose a young wheat-plant for instance to be in condition to commence independent growth. It consists of roots which are located in the soil; leaves which are spread in the air, and a stem which connects the roots and leaves. This stem contains sap vessels (or tubes) which extend from the ends of the roots to the surfaces of the leaves, thus affording a passage for the sap, and consequently allowing the matters taken up to be distributed throughout the plant. [What seems to be nature's law with regard to this? What is the similarity between making a cart and raising a crop? In the growth of a young plant, what operations take place about the same time?] It is necessary that the materials of which plants are made should be supplied in certain proportions, and at the same time. For instance, carbon could not be taken up in large quantities by the leaves, unless the roots, at the same time, were receiving from the soil those mineral matters which are necessary to growth. On the other hand, no considerable amount of earthy matter could be appropriated by the roots unless the leaves were obtaining carbon from the air. This same rule holds true with regard to all of the constituents required; Nature seeming to have made it a law that if one of the important ingredients of the plant is absent, the others, though they may be present in sufficient quantities, cannot be used. Thus, if the soil is deficient in potash, and still has sufficient quantities of all of the other ingredients, the plant cannot take up these ingredients, because potash is necessary to its life. If a farmer wishes to make a cart he prepares his wood and iron, gets them all in the proper condition, and then can very readily put them together. But if he has all of the _wood_ necessary and no _iron_, he cannot make his cart, because bolts, nails and screws are required, and their place cannot be supplied by boards. This serves to illustrate the fact that in raising plants we must give them every thing that they require, or they will not grow at all. In the case of our young plant the following operations are going on at about the same time. The leaves are absorbing carbonic acid from the atmosphere, and the roots are drinking in water from the soil. [What becomes of the carbonic acid? How is the sap disposed of? What does it contain? How does the plant obtain its carbon? Its oxygen and hydrogen? Its nitrogen? Its inorganic matter?] Under the influence of daylight, the carbonic acid is decomposed; its oxygen returned to the atmosphere, and its carbon retained in the plant. The water taken in by the roots circulates through the sap vessels of the plant, and, from various causes, is drawn up towards the leaves where it is evaporated. This water contains the _nitrogen_ and the _inorganic matter_ required by the plant and some carbonic acid, while the water itself consists of _hydrogen_ and _oxygen_. Thus we see that the plant obtains its food in the following manner:-- CARBON.--In the form of _carbonic acid_ from the atmosphere, and from that contained in the sap, the oxygen being returned to the air. OXYGEN } From the elements of the water constituting the sap. & } HYDROGEN.} NITROGEN.--From the soil (chiefly in form of ammonia). It is carried into the plant through the roots in solution in water. INORGANIC} From the soil, and only _in solution_ in water. MATTER. } [What changes does the food taken up by the plant undergo?] Many of the chemical changes which take place in the interior of the plant are well understood, but they require too much knowledge of chemistry to be easily comprehended by the young learner, and it is not absolutely essential that they should be understood by the scholar who is merely learning the _elements_ of the science. It is sufficient to say that the food taken up by the plant undergoes such changes as are required for its growth; as in animals, where the food taken into the stomach, is digested, and formed into bone, muscle, fat, hair, etc., so in the plant the nutritive portions of the sap are resolved into wood, bark, grain, or some other necessary part. The results of these changes are of the greatest importance in agriculture, and no person can call himself a _practical farmer_ who does not thoroughly understand them. CHAPTER VI. PROXIMATE DIVISION OF PLANTS, ETC. We have hitherto examined what is called the _ultimate_ division of plants. That is, we have looked at each one of the elements separately, and considered its use in vegetable growth. [Of what do wood, starch and the other vegetable compounds chiefly consist? Are their small ashy parts important? What are these compounds called? Into how many classes may proximate principles be divided? Of what do the first class consist? The second? What vegetable compounds do the first class comprise?] We will now examine another division of plants, called their _proximate division_. We know that plants consist of various substances, such as wood, gum, starch, oil, etc., and on examination we shall discover that these substances are composed of the various _organic_ and _inorganic_ ingredients described in the preceding chapters. They are made up almost entirely of _organic_ matter, but their ashy parts, though very small, are (as we shall soon see) sometimes of great importance. These compounds are called _proximate principles_,[G] or _vegetable proximates_. They may be divided into two classes. The first class are composed of _carbon_, _hydrogen_, and _oxygen_. The second class contain the same substances and _nitrogen_. [Are these substances of about the same composition? Can they be artificially changed from one to another? Give an instance of this. Is the ease with which these changes take place important? From what may the first class of proximates be formed?] The first class (those compounds not containing nitrogen) comprise the wood, starch, gum, sugar, and fatty matter which constitute the greater part of all plants, also the acids which are found in sour fruits, etc. Various as are all of these things in their characters, they are entirely composed of the same ingredients (carbon, hydrogen and oxygen), and usually combined in about the _same proportion_. There may be a slight difference in the composition of their _ashes_, but the organic part is much the same in every case, so much so, that they can often be artificially changed from one to the other. As an instance of this, it may be recollected by those who attended the Fair of the American Institute, in 1834, that Prof. Mapes exhibited samples of excellent sugar made from the juice of the cornstalk, starch, linen, and woody fibre. The ease with which these proximates may be changed from one to the other is their most important agricultural feature, and should be clearly understood before proceeding farther. It is one of the fundamental principles on which the growth of both vegetables depends. The proximates of the first class constitute usually the greater part of all plants, and they are readily formed from the carbonic acid and water which in nature are so plentifully supplied. [Why are those of the second class particularly important to farmers? What is the general name under which they are known? What is the protein of wheat called? Why is flour containing much gluten preferred by bakers? Can protein be formed without nitrogen? If plants were allowed to complete their growth without a supply of this ingredient, what would be the result?] The _second class_ of proximates, though forming only a small part of the plant, are of the greatest importance to the farmer, being the ones from which _animal muscle_[H] is made. They consist, as will be recollected, of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and _nitrogen_, or of _all_ of the organic elements of plants. They are all of much the same character, though each kind of plant has its peculiar form of this substance, which is known under the general name of _protein_. The protein of wheat is called _gluten_--that of Indian corn is _zein_--that of beans and peas is _legumin_. In other plants the protein substances are _vegetable albumen_, _casein_, etc. Gluten absorbs large quantities of water, which causes it to swell to a great size, and become full of holes. Flour which contains much gluten, makes light, porous bread, and is preferred by bakers, because it absorbs so large an amount of water. [What is the result if a field be deficient in nitrogen?] The protein substances are necessary to animal and vegetable life, and none of our cultivated plants will attain maturity (complete their growth), unless allowed the materials required for forming this constituent. To furnish this condition is the object of nitrogen given to plants as manure. If no _nitrogen_ is supplied the protein substances cannot be formed, and the plant must cease to grow. When on the contrary _ammonia_ is given to the soil (by rains or otherwise), it furnishes nitrogen, while the carbonic acid and water yield the other constituents of protein, and a healthy growth continues, provided that the soil contains the _mineral_ matters required in the formation of the ash, in a condition to be useful. The wisdom of this provision is evident when we recollect that the protein substances are necessary to the formation of muscle in animals, for if plants were allowed to complete their growth without a supply of this ingredient, our grain and hay might not be sufficiently well supplied with it to keep our oxen and horses in working condition, while under the existing law plants must be of nearly a uniform quality (in this respect), and if a field is short of nitrogen, its crop will not be large, and of a very poor quality, but the soil will produce good plants as long as the nitrogen lasts, and then the growth must cease.[I] ANIMALS. That this principle may be clearly understood, it may be well to explain more fully the application of the proximate constituents of plants in feeding animals. [Of what are the bodies of animals composed? What is the office of vegetation? What part of the animal is formed from the first class of proximates? From the second? Which contains the largest portions of inorganic matter, plants or animals? Must animals have a variety of food, and why?] Animals are composed (like plants) of organic and inorganic matter, and every thing necessary to build them up exists in plants. It seems to be the office of the vegetable world to prepare the gases in the atmosphere, and the minerals in the earth for the uses of animal life, and to effect this plants put these gases and minerals together in the form of the various _proximates_ (or compound substances) which we have just described. In animals the compounds containing _no nitrogen_ comprise the fatty substances, parts of the blood, etc., while the protein compound, or those which _do contain nitrogen_, form the muscle, a part of the bones, the hair, and other portions of the animal. Animals contain a larger proportion of inorganic matter than plants do. Bones contain a large quantity of phosphate of lime, and we find other inorganic materials performing important offices in the system. In order that animals may be perfectly developed, they must of course receive as food all of the materials required to form their bodies. They cannot live if fed entirely on one ingredient. Thus, if _starch_ alone be eaten by the animal, he might become _fat_, but his strength would soon fail, because his food contains nothing to keep up the vigor of his _muscles_. If on the contrary the food of an animal consisted entirely of _gluten_, he might be very strong from a superior development of muscle, but would not be fat. Hence we see that in order to keep up the proper proportion of both fat and muscle in our animals (or in ourselves), the food must be such as contains a proper proportion of the two kinds of proximates. [Why is grain good for food? On what does the value of flour depend? Is there any relation between the ashy part of plants and those of animals? How may we account for unhealthy bones and teeth?] It is for this reason that grain, such as wheat for instance, is so good for food. It contains both classes of proximates, and furnishes material for the formation of both fat and muscle. The value of _flour_ depends very much on the manner in which it is manufactured. This will be soon explained. [What is a probable cause of consumption? What is an important use of the first class of proximates? What may lungs be called? Explain the production of heat during decomposition. Why is the heat produced by decay not perceptible?] Apart from the relations between the _proximate principles_ of plants, and those of animals, there exists an important relation between their _ashy_ or _inorganic_ parts; and, food in order to satisfy the demands of animal life, must contain the mineral matter required for the purposes of that life. Take bones for instance. If phosphate of lime is not always supplied in sufficient quantities by food, animals are prevented from the formation of healthy bones. This is particularly to be noticed in teeth. Where food is deficient of phosphate of lime, we see poor teeth as a result. Some physicians have supposed that one of the causes of consumption is the deficiency of phosphate of lime in food. [Why is the heat produced by combustion apparent? Explain the production of heat in the lungs of animals? Why does exercise augment the animal heat? Under what circumstances is the animal's own fat used in the production of heat?] The first class of proximates (starch, sugar, gum, etc.), perform an important office in the animal economy aside from their use in making fat. They constitute the _fuel_ which supplies the animal's fire, and gives him his _heat_. The lungs of men and other animals may be called delicate _stoves_, which supply the whole body with heat. But let us explain this matter more fully. If wood, starch, gum, or sugar, be burned in a stove, they produce heat. These substances consist, as will be recollected, of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and when they are destroyed in any way (provided they be exposed to the atmosphere), the hydrogen and oxygen unite and form water, and the carbon unites with the oxygen of the air and forms carbonic acid, as was explained in a preceding chapter. This process is always accompanied by the liberation of _heat_, and the _intensity_ of this heat depends on the _time_ occupied in its _production_. In the case of decay, the chemical changes take place so slowly that the heat, being conducted away as soon as formed, is not perceptible to our senses. In combustion (or burning) the same changes take place with much greater rapidity, and the same _amount_ of heat being concentrated, or brought out in a far shorter time, it becomes intense, and therefore apparent. In the lungs of animals the same law holds true. The blood contains matters belonging to this carbonaceous class, and they undergo in the lungs the changes which have been described under the head of combustion and decay. Their hydrogen and oxygen unite, and form the moisture of the breath, while their carbon is combined with the oxygen of the air drawn into the lungs, and is thrown out as carbonic acid. The same consequence--heat--results in this, as in the other cases, and this heat is produced with sufficient rapidity for the animal necessities. When an animal exercises violently, his blood circulates with increased rapidity, thus carrying carbon more rapidly to the lungs. The breath also becomes quicker, thus supplying increased quantities of oxygen. In this way the decomposition becomes more rapid, and the animal is heated in proportion. Thus we see that food has another function besides that of forming animal matter, namely to supply heat. When the food does not contain a sufficient quantity of starch, sugar, etc., to answer the demands of the system the _animal's own fat_ is carried to the lungs, and there used in the production of heat. This important fact will be referred to again. FOOTNOTES: [G] By _proximate principle_, we mean that combination of vegetable elements which is known as a vegetable product, such as _wood_, etc. [H] _Muscle_ is _lean meat_, it gives to animals their strength and ability to perform labor. [I] This, of course, supposes that the soil is fertile in other respects. CHAPTER VII. LOCATION OF THE PROXIMATES AND VARIATIONS IN THE ASHES OF PLANTS. [Of what proximate are plants chiefly composed? What is the principal constituent of the potato root? Of the carrot and turnip? What part of the plant contains usually the most nutriment?] Let us now examine plants with a view to learning the _location_ of the various plants. The stem or trunk of the plant or tree consists almost entirely of _woody fibre_; this also forms a large portion of the other parts except the seeds, and, in some instances, the roots. The roots of the potato contain large quantities of _starch_. Other roots such as the _carrot_ and _turnip_ contain _pectic acid_,[J] a nutritious substance resembling starch. It is in the _seed_ however that the more nutritive portions of most plants exist, and here they maintain certain relative positions which it is well to understand, and which can be best explained by reference to the following figures, as described by Prof. Johnston:-- [Illustration: Fig. 1.] "Thus _a_ shows the position of the oil in the outer part of the seed--it exists in minute drops, inclosed in six-sided cells, which consists chiefly of gluten; _b_, the position and comparative quantity of the starch, which in the heart of the seed is mixed with only a small proportion of gluten; _c_, the germ or chit which contains much gluten."[K] [Is the composition of the inorganic matter of different parts of the plant the same, or different? What is the difference between the ash of the straw and that of the grain of wheat?] The location of the _inorganic_ part of plants is one of much interest, and shows the adaptation of each part to its particular use. Take a wheat plant, for instance--the stalk, the leaf, and the grain, show in their ashes, important difference of composition. The stalk or straw contains three or four times as large a proportion of ash as the grain, and a no less remarkable difference of composition may be noticed in the ashes of the two parts. In that of the straw, we find a large proportion of silica and scarcely any phosphoric acid, while in that of the grain there is scarcely a trace of silica, although phosphoric acid constitutes more than one half of the entire weight. The leaves contain a considerable quantity of lime. [What is the reason for this difference? In what part of the grain does phosphoric acid exist most largely?] This may at first seem an unimportant matter, but on examination we shall see the use of it. The straw is intended to support the grain and leaves, and to convey the sap from the roots to the upper portions of the plant. To perform these offices, _strength_ is required, and this is given by the _silica_, and the woody fibre which forms so large a proportion of the stalk. The silica is combined with an alkali, and constitutes the glassy coating of the straw. While the plant is young, this coating is hardly apparent, but as it grows older, as the grain becomes heavier, (verging towards ripeness), the silicious coating of the stalk assumes a more prominent character, and gives to the straw sufficient strength to support the golden head. The straw is not the most important part of the plant as _food_, and therefore requires but little phosphoric acid. [Why is Graham flour more wholesome than fine flour? Are the ashes of all plants the same in their composition?] The grain, on the contrary, is especially intended as food, and therefore must contain a large proportion of phosphoric acid--this being, as we have already learned, necessary to the formation of bone--while, as it has no necessity for strength, and as silica is not needed by animals, this ingredient exists in the grain only in a very small proportion. It may be well to observe that the phosphoric acid of grain exists most largely in the hard portions near the shell, or bran. This is one of the reasons why Graham flour is more wholesome than fine flour. It contains all of the nutritive materials which render the grain valuable as food, while flour which is very finely bolted[L] contains only a small part of the outer portions of the grain (where the phosphoric acid, protein and fatty matters exist most largely). The starchy matter in the interior of the grain, which is the least capable of giving strength to the animal, is carefully separated, and used as food for man, while the better portions, not being ground so finely, are rejected. This one thing alone may be sufficient to account for the fact, that the lives of men have become shorter and less blessed with health and strength, than they were in the good old days when a stone mortar and a coarse sieve made a respectable flour mill. Another important fact concerning the ashes of plants is the difference of their composition in different plants. Thus, the most prominent ingredient in the ash of the potato is _potash_; of wheat and other grains, _phosphoric acid_; of meadow hay, _silica_; of clover, _lime_; of beans, _potash_, etc. In grain, _potash_ (or _soda_), etc., are among the important ingredients. [Of what advantage are these differences to the farmer? Of what are plants composed?] These differences are of great importance to the practical farmer, as by understanding what kind of plants use the most of one ingredient, and what kind requires another in large proportion, he can regulate his crops so as to prevent his soil from being exhausted more in one ingredient than in the others, and can also manure his land with reference to the crop which he intends to grow. The tables of analyses in the fifth section will point out these differences accurately. FOOTNOTES: [J] This pectic acid gelatinizes food in the stomach, and thus renders it more digestible. [K] See Johnston's Elements, page 41. [L] Sifted through a fine cloth called a bolting cloth. CHAPTER VIII. RECAPITULATION. We have now learned as much about the plant as is required for our immediate uses, and we will carefully reconsider the various points with a view to fixing them permanently in the mind. Plants are composed of _organic_ and _inorganic_ matter. [What is organic matter? Inorganic? Of what does organic matter consist? Inorganic? How do plants obtain their organic food? How their inorganic? How is ammonia supplied? Carbonic acid?] Organic matter is that which burns away in the fire. Inorganic matter is the ash left after burning. The organic matter of plants consists of three gases, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, and one solid substance carbon (or charcoal). The inorganic matter of plants consists of potash, soda, lime, magnesia, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, chlorine, silica, oxide of iron, and oxide of manganese. Plants obtain their organic food as follows:--Oxygen and hydrogen from water, nitrogen from some compound containing nitrogen (chiefly from ammonia), and carbon from the atmosphere where it exists as carbonic acid--a gas. They obtain their inorganic food from the soil. The water which supplies oxygen and hydrogen to plants is readily obtained without the assistance of manures. Ammonia is obtained from the atmosphere, by being absorbed by rain and carried into the soil, and it enters plants through their roots. It may be artificially supplied in the form of animal manure with profit. Carbonic acid is absorbed from the atmosphere by leaves, and decomposed in the green parts of plants under the influence of daylight; the carbon is retained, and the oxygen is returned to the atmosphere. [When plants are destroyed by combustion or decay, what becomes of their constituents? How does the inorganic matter enter the plant? Are the alkalies soluble in their pure forms? Which one of them is injurious when too largely present? How may sulphuric acid be supplied? Is phosphoric acid important? How must silica be treated? From what source may we obtain chlorine?] When plants are destroyed by decay, or burning, their organic constituents pass away as water, ammonia, carbonic acid, etc., ready again to be taken up by other plants. The inorganic matters in the soil can enter the plant only when dissolved in water. _Potash_, _soda_, _lime_, and _magnesia_, are soluble in their pure forms. Magnesia is injurious when present in too large quantities. _Sulphuric_ acid is often necessary as a manure, and is usually most available in the form of sulphate of lime or plaster. It is also valuable in its pure form to prevent the escape of ammonia from composts. _Phosphoric_ acid is highly important, from its frequent deficiency in worn-out soils. It is available only under certain conditions which will be described in the section on manures. _Silica_ is the base of common sand, and must be united to an alkali before it can be used by the plant, because it is insoluble except when so united. _Chlorine_ is a constituent of common salt (chloride of sodium), and from this source may be obtained in sufficient quantities for manurial purposes. [What is the difference between _per_oxide and _prot_oxide of iron? How must the food of plants be supplied? What takes place after it enters the plant? What name is given to the compounds thus formed? How are proximates divided? Which class constitutes the largest part of the plant? Of what are animals composed, and how do they obtain the materials from which to form their growth?] _Oxide of iron_ is iron rust. There are two oxides of iron, the _peroxide_ (red) and the _protoxide_ (black). The former is a fertilizer, and the latter poisons plants. _Oxide of manganese_ is often absent from the ashes of our cultivated plants. The food of plants, both organic and inorganic, must be supplied in certain proportions, and at the time when it is required. In the plant, this food undergoes such chemical changes as are necessary to growth. The compounds formed by these chemical combinations are called _proximates_. Proximates are of two classes, those not containing nitrogen, and those which do contain it. The first class constitute nearly the whole plant. The second class, although small in quantity, are of the greatest importance to the farmer, as from them all animal muscle is made. Animals, like plants, are composed of both organic and inorganic matter, and their bodies are obtained directly or indirectly from plants. [What parts of the animal belong to the first class of proximates? What to the second? What is necessary to the perfect development of animals? Why are seeds valuable for working animals? What other important use, in animal economy, have proximates of the first class? Under what circumstances is animal fat decomposed?] The first class of proximates in animals comprise the fat, and like tissues. The second class form the muscle, hair, gelatine of the bones, etc. In order that they may be perfectly developed, animals must eat both classes of proximates, and in the proportions required by their natures. They require the phosphate of lime and other inorganic food which exist in plants. Seeds are the best adapted to the uses of working animals, because they are rich in all kinds of food required. Aside from their use in the formation of _fat_, proximates of the first class are employed in the lungs, as fuel to keep up animal heat, which is produced (as in fire and decay) by the decomposition of these substances. When the food is insufficient for the purposes of heat, the animal's own fat is decomposed, and carried to the lungs as fuel. The stems, roots, branches, etc., of most plants consist principally of _woody fibre_. Their seeds, and sometimes their roots, contain considerable quantities of _starch_. [Name the parts of the plant in which the different proximates exist. State what you know about flour. Do we know that different plants have ashes of different composition?] The _protein_ and the _oils_ of most plants exist most largely in the _seeds_. The location of the proximates, as well as of the inorganic parts of the plant, show a remarkable reference to the purposes of growth, and to the wants of the animal world, as is noticed in the difference between the construction of the straw and that of the kernel of wheat. The reason why the fine flour now made is not so healthfully nutritious as that which contained more of the coarse portions, is that it is robbed of a large proportion of protein and phosphate of lime, while it contains an undue amount of starch, which is available only to form fat, and to supply fuel to the lungs. Different plants have ashes of different composition. Thus--one may take from the soil large quantities of potash, another of phosphoric acid, and another of lime. By understanding these differences, we shall be able so to regulate our rotations, that the soil may not be called on to supply more of one ingredient than of another, and thus it may be kept in balance. [How are farmers to be benefited by such knowledge?] The facts contained in this chapter are the _alphabet of agriculture_, and the learner should not only become perfectly familiar with them, but should also clearly understand the _reasons_ why they are true, before proceeding further. SECTION SECOND. THE SOIL. CHAPTER I. FORMATION AND CHARACTER OF THE SOIL. [What is a necessary condition of growth?] In the foregoing section, we have studied the character of plants and the laws which govern their growth. We learned that one necessary condition for growth is a fertile soil, and therefore we will examine the nature of different soils, in order that we may understand the relations between them and plants. [What is a fixed character of soils? How is the chemical character of the soil to be ascertained? What do we first learn in analyzing a soil? How do the proportions of organic or inorganic parts of soils compare with those of plants? Of what does the organic part of soils consist?] The soil is not to be regarded as a mysterious mass of dirt, whereon crops are produced by a mysterious process. Well ascertained scientific knowledge has proved beyond question that all soils, whether in America or Asia, whether in Maine or California, have certain fixed properties, which render them fertile or barren, and the science of agriculture is able to point out these characteristics in all cases, so that we can ascertain from a scientific investigation what would be the chances for success in cultivating any soil which we examine. The soil is a great chemical compound, and its chemical character is ascertained (as in the case of plants) by analyzing it, or taking it apart. We first learn that fertile soils contain both organic and inorganic matter; but, unlike the plant, they usually possess much more of the latter than of the former. In the plant, the organic matter constitutes the most considerable portion of the whole. In the soil, on the contrary, it usually exists in very small quantities, while the inorganic portions constitute nearly the whole bulk. [Can the required proportion be definitely indicated? From what source is the inorganic part of soils derived? Do all soils decompose with equal facility? How does frost affect rocks? Does it affect soils in the same way?] The organic part of soils consists of the same materials that constitute the organic part of the plants, and it is in reality decayed vegetable and animal matter. It is not necessary that this organic part of the soil should form any particular proportion of the whole, and indeed we find it varying from one and a half to fifty, and sometimes, in peaty soils, to over seventy per cent. All fertile soils contain some organic matter, although it seems to make but little difference in fertility, whether it be ten or fifty per cent. The inorganic part of soils is derived from the crumbling of rocks. Some rocks (such as the slates in Central New York) decompose, and crumble rapidly on being exposed to the weather; while granite, marble, and other rocks will last for a long time without perceptible change. The _causes_ of this crumbling are various, and are not unimportant to the agriculturist; as by the same processes by which his soil was formed, he can increase its depth, or otherwise improve it. This being the case, we will in a few words explain some of the principal pulverizing agents. 1. The action of frost. When water lodges in the crevices of rocks, and _freezes_, it expands, and bursts the rock, on the same principle as causes it to break a pitcher in winter. This power is very great, and by its assistance, large cannon may be burst. Of course the action of frost is the same on a small scale as when applied to large masses of matter, and, therefore, we find that when water freezes in the _pores_[M] of rocks or stones, it separates their particles and causes them to crumble. The same rule holds true with regard to stiff clay soils. If they are _ridged_ in autumn, and left with a rough surface exposed to the frosts of winter, they will become much lighter, and can afterwards be worked with less difficulty. [What is the effect of water on certain rocks? How are some rocks affected by exposure to the atmosphere? Give an instance of this.] 2. The action of water. Many kinds of rock become so soft on being soaked with water, that they readily crumble. 3. The chemical changes of the constituents of the rock. Many kinds of rock are affected by exposure to the atmosphere, in such a manner, that changes take place in their chemical character, and cause them to fall to pieces. The red kellis of New Jersey (a species of sandstone), is, when first quarried, a very hard stone, but on exposure to the influences of the atmosphere, it becomes so soft that it may be easily crushed between the thumb and finger. [What is the similarity between the composition of soils and the rocks from which they were formed? What does feldspar rock yield? Talcose slate? Marls? Does a soil formed entirely from rock contain organic matter? How is it affected by the growth of plants?] Other actions, of a less simple kind, exert an influence on the stubbornness of rocks, and cause them to be resolved into soils.[N] Of course, the composition of the soil must be similar to that of the rock from which it was formed; and, consequently, if we know the chemical character of the rock, we can tell whether the soil formed from it can be brought under profitable cultivation. Thus feldspar, on being pulverized, yields potash; talcose slate yields magnesia; marls yield lime, etc. The soil formed entirely from rock, contains, of course, no organic matter.[O] Still it is capable of bearing plants of a certain class, and when these die, they are deposited in the soil, and thus form its organic portions, rendering it capable of supporting those plants which furnish food for animals. Thousands of years must have been occupied in preparing the earth for habitation by man. As the inorganic or mineral part of the soil is usually the largest, we will consider it first. As we have stated that this portion is formed from rocks, we will examine their character, with a view to showing the different qualities of soils. [What is the general rule concerning the composition of rocks? Do these distinctions affect the fertility of soils formed from them? What do we mean by the mechanical character of the soil? Is its fertility indicated by its mechanical character?] As a general rule, it may be stated that _all rocks are either sandstones, limestones, or clays; or a mixture of two or more of these ingredients_. Hence we find that all mineral soils are either _sandy_, _calcareous_, (limey), or _clayey_; or consist of a mixture of these, in which one or another usually predominates. Thus, we speak of a sandy soil, a clay soil, etc. These distinctions (sandy, clayey, loamy, etc.) are important in considering the _mechanical_ character of the soil, but have little reference to its fertility. By _mechanical_ character, we mean those qualities which affect the ease of cultivation--excess or deficiency of water, ability to withstand drought, etc. For instance, a heavy clay soil is difficult to plow--retains water after rains, and bakes quite hard during drought; while a light sandy soil is plowed with ease, often allows water to pass through immediately after rains, and becomes dry and powdery during drought. Notwithstanding those differences in their mechanical character, both soils may be very fertile, or one more so than the other, without reference to the clay and sand which they contain, and which, to _our observation_, form their leading characteristics. The same facts exist with regard to a loam, a calcareous (or limey) soil, or a vegetable mould. Their mechanical texture is not essentially an index to their fertility, nor to the manures required to enable them to furnish food to plants. It is true, that each kind of soil appears to have some general quality of fertility or barrenness which is well known to practical men, yet this is not founded on the fact that the clay or the sand, or the vegetable matter, enter more largely into the constitution of plants than they do when they are not present in so great quantities, but on certain other facts which will be hereafter explained. [What is a sandy soil? A clay soil? A loamy soil? A marl? A calcareous soil? A peaty soil?] As the following names are used to denote the character of soils, in ordinary agricultural description, we will briefly explain their application: A _Sandy soil_ is, of course, one in which sand largely predominates. _Clay soil_, one where _clay_ forms a large proportion of the soil. _Loamy soil_, where sand and clay are about equally mixed. _Marl_ contains from five to twenty per cent. of carbonate of lime. _Calcareous soil_ more than twenty per cent. _Peaty soils_, of course, contain large quantities of organic matter.[P] [How large a part of the soil may be used as food by plants? What do we learn from the analyses of barren and fertile soils?] We will now take under consideration that part of the soil on which depends its ability to supply food to the plant. This portion rarely constitutes more than five or ten per cent. of the entire soil, sometimes less--and it has no reference to the sand, clay, and vegetable matters which they contain. From analyses of many fertile soils, and of others which are barren or of poorer quality, it has been ascertained that the presence of certain ingredients is necessary to fertility. This may be better explained by the assistance of the following table: ---------------------------+--------------+-------------+---------- In one hundred pounds. | Soil fertile | Good | Barren. | without | wheat soil. | | manure. | | ---------------------------+--------------+-------------+---------- Organic matter, | 9.7 | 7.0 | 4.0 Silica (sand), | 64.8 | 74.3 | 77.8 Alumina (clay), | 5.7 | 5.5 | 9.1 Lime, | 5.9 | 1.4 | .4 Magnesia, | .9 | .7 | .1 Oxide of iron, | 6.1 | 4.7 | 8.1 Oxide of manganese, | .1 | | .1 Potash, | .2 | 1.7 | Soda, | .4 | .7 | Chlorine, | .2 | .1 | Sulphuric acid, | .2 | .1 | Phosphoric acid, | .4 | .1½ | Carbonic acid, | 4.0 | | Loss during the analysis | 1.4 | 3.6½ | .4 +--------------+-------------+---------- |100.0 |100.0 |100.0 ---------------------------+--------------+-------------+---------- [What can you say of the soils represented in the table of analyses? What proportion of the fertilizing ingredients is required? If the soil represented in the third column contained all the ingredients required except potash and soda, would it be fertile? What would be necessary to make it so? What is the reason for this? What are the offices performed by the inorganic part of soils?] The soil represented in the first column might still be fertile with less organic matter, or with a larger proportion of clay (alumina), and less sand (silica). These affect its _mechanical_ character; but, if we look down the column, we notice that there are small quantities of lime, magnesia, and the other constituents of the ashes of plants (except ox. of manganese). It is not necessary that they should be present in the soil in the exact quantity named above, but _not one must be entirely absent, or greatly reduced in proportion_. By referring to the third column, we see that these ingredients are not all present, and the soil is barren. Even if it were supplied with all but one or two, potash and soda for instance, it could not support a crop without the assistance of manures containing these alkalies. The reason for this must be readily seen, as we have learned that no plant can arrive at maturity without the necessary supply of materials required in the formation of the ash, and these materials can be obtained only from the soil; consequently, when they do not exist there, it must be barren. The inorganic part of soils has two distinct offices to perform. The clay and sand form a mass of material into which roots can penetrate, and thus plants are supported in their position. These parts also absorb heat, air and moisture to serve the purposes of growth, as we shall see in a future chapter. The minute portions of soil, which comprise the acids, alkalies, and neutrals, furnish plants with their ashes, and are the most necessary to the fertility of the soil. GEOLOGY. [What is geology? Is the same kind of rock always of the same composition? How do rocks differ?] The relation between the inorganic part of soils and the rocks from which it was formed, is the foundation of Agricultural Geology. Geology may be briefly named the _science of rocks_. It would not be proper in an elementary work to introduce much of this study, and we will therefore simply state that the same kind of rock is of the same composition all over the world; consequently, if we find a soil in New England formed from any particular rock, and a soil from the same rock in Asia, their natural fertility will be the same in both localities. Some rocks consist of a mixture of different kinds of minerals; and some, consisting chiefly of one ingredient, are of different degrees of _hardness_. Both of these changes must affect the character of the soil, but it may be laid down as rule that, _when the rocks of two locations are exactly alike, the soils formed from them will be of the same natural fertility, and in proportion as the character of rocks changes, in the same proportion will the soils differ_. [What rule may be given in relation to soils formed from the same or different rocks? Are all soils formed from the rocks on which they lie? What instances can you give of this?] In most districts the soil is formed from the rock on which it lies; but this is not always the case. Soils are often formed by deposits of matter brought by water from other localities. Thus the alluvial banks of rivers consist of matters brought from the country through which the rivers have passed. The river Nile, in Egypt, yearly overflows its banks, and deposits large quantities of mud brought from the uninhabited upper countries. The prairies of the West owe a portion of their soil to deposits by water. Swamps often receive the washings of adjacent hills; and, in these cases, their soil is derived from a foreign source. We might continue to enumerate instances of the relations between soils and the sources whence they originated, thus demonstrating more fully the importance of geology to the farmer; but it would be beyond the scope of this work, and should be investigated by scholars more advanced than those who are studying merely the _elements_ of agricultural science. The mind, in its early application to any branch of study, should not be charged with intricate subjects. It should master well the _rudiments_, before investigating those matters which should _follow_ such understanding. [In what light will plants and soils be regarded by those who understand them?] By pursuing the proper course, it is easy to learn all that is necessary to form a good foundation for a thorough acquaintance with the subject. If this foundation is laid thoroughly, the learner will regard plants and soils as old acquaintances, with whose formation and properties he is as familiar as with the construction of a building or simple machine. A simple spear of grass will become an object of interest, forming itself into a perfect plant, with full development of roots, stem, leaves, and seeds, by processes with which he feels acquainted. The soil will cease to be mere dirt; it will be viewed as a compound substance, whose composition is a matter of interest, and whose care is productive of intellectual pleasure. The commencement of study in any science must necessarily be wearisome to the young mind, but its more advanced stages amply repay the trouble of early exertions. FOOTNOTES: [M] The spaces between the particles. [N] In very many instances the crevices and seams of rocks are permeated by roots, which, by decaying and thus inducing the growth of other roots, cause these crevices to become filled with organic matter. This, by the absorption of moisture, may expand with sufficient power to burst the rock. [O] Some rocks contain sulphur, phosphorus, etc., and these may, perhaps, be considered as organic matter. [P] These distinctions are not essential to be learned, but are often convenient. CHAPTER II. USES OF ORGANIC MATTER. [What proportion of organic matter is required for fertility? How does the soil obtain its organic matter? How does the growth of clover, etc., affect the soil?] It will be recollected that, in addition to its mineral portions, the soil contains organic matter in varied quantities. It may be fertile with but one and a half per cent. of organic matter, and some peaty soils contain more than fifty per cent. or more than one half of the whole. The precise amount necessary cannot be fixed at any particular sum; perhaps five parts in a hundred would be as good a quantity as could be recommended. The soil obtains its organic matter in two ways. First, by the decay of roots and dead plants, also of leaves, which have been brought to it by wind, etc. Second, by the application of organic manures. [When organic matter decays in the soil, what becomes of it? Is charcoal taken up by plants? Are humus and humic acid of great practical importance?] When a crop of clover is raised, it obtains its carbon from the atmosphere; and, if it be plowed under, and allowed to decay, a portion of this carbon is deposited in the soil. Carbon constitutes nearly the whole of the dry weight of the clover, aside from the constituents of water; and, when we calculate the immense quantity of hay, and roots grown on an acre of soil in a single season, we shall find that the amount of carbon thus deposited is immense. If the clover had been removed, and the roots only left to decay, the amount of carbon deposited would still have been very great. The same is true in all cases where the crop is removed, and the roots remain to form the organic or vegetable part of the soil. While undergoing decomposition, a portion of this matter escapes in the form of gas, and the remainder chiefly assumes the form of carbon (or charcoal), in which form it will always remain, without loss, unless driven out by fire. If a bushel of charcoal be mixed with the soil now, it will be the same bushel of charcoal, neither more nor less, a thousand years hence, unless some influence is brought to bear on it aside from the growth of plants. It is true that, in the case of the decomposition of organic matter in the soil, certain compounds are formed, known under the general names of _humus_ and _humic acid_, which may, in a slight degree, affect the growth of plants, but their practical importance is of too doubtful a character to justify us in considering them. The application of manures, containing organic matter, such as peat, muck, animal manure, etc., supplies the soil with carbon on the same principle, and the decomposing matters also generate[Q] carbonic acid gas while being decomposed. The agricultural value of carbon in the soil depends (as we have stated), not on the fact that it enters into the composition of plants, but on certain other important offices which it performs, as follows:-- [On what does the agricultural value of the carbon in the soil depend? Why does it make the soil more retentive of manure? What is the experiment with the barrels of sand?] 1. It makes the soil more retentive of manures. 2. It causes it to appropriate larger quantities of the fertilizing gases of the atmosphere. 3. It gives it greater power to absorb moisture. 4. It renders it warmer. 1. Carbon (or charcoal) makes the soil retentive of manures, because it has in itself a strong power to absorb, and retain[R] fertilizing matters. There is a simple experiment by which this power can be shown. Ex.--Take two barrels of pure beach sand, and mix with the sand in one barrel a few handfuls of charcoal dust, leaving that in the other pure. Pour the brown liquor of the barn-yard through the pure sand, and it will pass out at the bottom unaltered. Pour the same liquor through the barrel, containing the charcoal, and pure water will be obtained as a result. The reason for this is that the charcoal retains all of the impurities of the liquor, and allows only the water to pass through. Charcoal is often employed to purify water for drinking, or for manufacturing purposes. [Will charcoal purify water? If a piece of tainted meat, or a fishy duck be buried in a rich garden soil, what takes place? What is the reason of this? How does charcoal overcome offensive odors? How can you prove that charcoal absorbs the _mineral_ impurities of water?] A rich garden-soil contains large quantities of carbonaceous matter; and, if we bury in such a soil a piece of tainted meat or a fishy duck, it will, in a short time, be deprived of its odor, because the charcoal in the soil will entirely absorb it. Carbon absorbs gases as well as the impurities of water; and, if a little charcoal be sprinkled over manure, or any other substance, emitting offensive odors, the gases escaping will be taken up by the charcoal, and the odor will cease. It has also the power of absorbing _mineral_ matters, which are contained in water. If a quantity of salt water be filtered through charcoal, the salt will be retained, and the water will pass through pure. We are now able to see how carbon renders the soil retentive of manures. 1st. Manures, which resemble the brown liquor of barn-yards, have their fertilizing matters taken out, and retained by it. [How does charcoal in the soil affect the manures applied? Why does charcoal in the soil cause it to appropriate the gases of the atmosphere? What fertilizing gases exist in the atmosphere? How are they carried to the soil? Does the carbon retain them after they reach the soil? What can you say of the air circulating through the soil? How does carbon give the soil power to absorb moisture?] 2d. The gases arising from the decomposition (_rotting_) of manure are absorbed by it. 3d. The soluble mineral portions of manure, which might in some soils leach down with water, are arrested and retained at a point at which they can be made use of by the roots of plants. 2. Charcoal in the soil causes it to appropriate larger quantities of the fertilizing gases of the atmosphere, on account of its power, as just named, to absorb gases. The atmosphere contains results, which have been produced by the breathing of animals and by the decomposition of various kinds of organic matter, which are exposed to atmospheric influences. These gases are chiefly ammonia and carbonic acid, both of which are largely absorbed by water, and consequently are contained in rain, snow, etc., which, as they enter the soil, give up these gases to the charcoal, and they there remain until required by plants. Even the air itself, in circulating through the soil, gives up fertilizing gases to the carbon, which it may contain. 3. Charcoal gives to the soil power to absorb moisture, because it is itself one of the best absorbents in nature; and it has been proved by accurate experiment that peaty soils absorb moisture with greater rapidity, and part with it more slowly than any other kind. [How does it render it warmer? Is the heat produced by the decomposition of organic matter perceptible to our senses? Is it so to the growing plant? What is another important part of the organic matter in the soil?] 4. Carbon in the soil renders it warmer, because it darkens its color. Black surfaces absorb more heat than light ones, and a black coat, when worn in the sun, is warmer than one of a lighter color. By mixing carbon with the soil, we darken its color, and render it capable of absorbing a greater amount of heat from the sun's rays. It will be recollected that, when vegetable matter decomposes in the soil, it produces certain gases (carbonic acid, etc.), which either escape into the atmosphere, or are retained in the soil for the use of plants. The production of these gases is always accompanied by _heat_, which, though scarcely perceptible to our senses, is perfectly so to the growing plant, and is of much practical importance. This will be examined more fully in speaking of manures. [How is it obtained by the soil? What offices does the organic matter in the soil perform?] Another important part of the organic matter in the soil is that which contains _nitrogen_. This forms but a very small portion of the soil, but it is of the greatest importance to vegetables. As the nitrogen in food is of absolute necessity to the growth of animals, so the nitrogen in the soil is indispensable to the growth of cultivated plants. It is obtained by the soil in the form of ammonia (or nitric acid), from the atmosphere, or by the application of animal matter. In some cases, manures called _nitrates_[S] are used; and, in this manner, nitrogen is given to the soil. We have now learned that the organic matter in the soil performs the following offices:-- Organic matter thoroughly decomposed is _carbon_, and has the various effects ascribed to this substance on p. 79. Organic matter in process of decay produces carbonic acid, and sometimes ammonia in the soil; also its decay causes heat. Organic matter containing _nitrogen_, such as animal substances, etc., furnish ammonia, and other nitrogenous substances to the roots of plants. FOOTNOTES: [Q] Produce. [R] By absorbing and retaining, we mean taking up and holding. [S] Nitrates are compounds of nitric acid (which consists of nitrogen and oxygen), and alkaline substances. Thus nitrate of potash (saltpetre), is composed of nitric acid and potash: nitrate of soda (cubical nitre), of nitric acid and soda. CHAPTER III. USES OF INORGANIC MATTER. [What effect has clay besides the one already named? How does it compare with charcoal for this purpose?] The offices performed by the inorganic constituents of the soil are many and important. These, as well as the different conditions in which the bodies exist, are necessary to be thoroughly studied. Those parts which constitute the larger proportion of the soil, namely the clay, sand, and limy portions, are useful for purposes which have been named in the first part of this section, while the _clay_ has an additional effect in the absorption of ammonia. For this purpose, it is as effectual as charcoal, the gases escaping from manures, as well as those existing in the atmosphere, and in rain-water, being arrested by clay as well as charcoal.[T] [What particular condition of inorganic matter is requisite for fertility? What is the fixed rule with regard to this? What is the condition of the alkalies in most of their combinations? Of the acids? What is said of phosphate of lime?] The more minute ingredients of the soil--those which enter into the construction of plants--exist in conditions which are more or less favorable or injurious to vegetable growth. The principal condition necessary to fertility is _capacity to be dissolved_, it being (so far as we have been able to ascertain) a fixed rule, as was stated in the first section, that _no mineral substance can enter into the roots of a plant except it be dissolved in water_. The _alkalies_ potash, soda, lime, and magnesia, are in nearly all of their combinations in the soil sufficiently soluble for the purposes of growth. The _acids_ are, as will be recollected, sulphuric and phosphoric. These exist in the soil in combination with the alkalies, as sulphates and phosphates, which are more or less soluble under natural circumstances. Phosphoric acid in combination with lime as phosphate of lime is but slightly soluble; but, when it exists in the compound known as _super_-phosphate of lime, it is much more soluble, and consequently enters into the composition of plants with much greater facility. This matter will be more fully explained in the section on manures. [How may silica be rendered soluble? What is the condition of chlorine in the soil? Do peroxide and protoxide of iron affect plants in the same way? How would you treat a soil containing protoxide of iron? On what does the usefulness of all these matters in the soil depend?] The _neutrals_, silica, chlorine, oxide of iron, and oxide of manganese, deserve a careful examination. Silica exists in the soil usually in the form of _sand,_ in which it is, as is well known, perfectly insoluble; and, before it can be used by plants, which often require it in large quantities, it must be made soluble, which is done by combining it with an alkali. For instance, if the silica in the soil is insoluble, we must make an application of an alkali, such as potash, which will unite with the silica, and form the silicate of potash, which is in the exact condition to be dissolved and carried into the roots of plants. Chlorine in the soil is probably always in an available condition. Oxide of iron exists, as has been previously stated, usually in the form of the _per_oxide (or red oxide). Sometimes, however, it exists in the form of the _prot_oxide (or black oxide), which is poisonous to plants, and renders the soil unfertile. By loosening the soil in such a manner as to admit air and water, this compound takes up more oxygen, which renders it a peroxide, and makes it available for plants. The oxide of manganese is probably of little consequence. The usefulness of all of these matters in the soil depends on their _exposure_; if they are in the _interior_ of particles, they cannot be made use of; while, if the particles are so pulverized that their constituents are exposed, they become available, because water can immediately attack to dissolve, and carry them into roots. [What is one of the chief offices of plowing and hoeing? Is the subsoil usually different from the surface soil? What circumstances have occasioned the difference? In what way?] This is one of the great offices of plowing and hoeing; the _lumps_ of soil being thereby more broken up and exposed to the action of atmospheric influences, which are often necessary to produce a fertile condition of soil, while the trituration of particles reduces them in size. SUBSOIL. [May the subsoil be made to resemble the surface soil? May all soils be brought to the highest state of fertility? On what examination must improvement be based? What is the difference between the soil of some parts of Massachusetts and that of the Miami valley?] The subsoil is usually of a different character from the surface soil, but this difference is more often the result of circumstances than of formation. The surface soil from having been long cultivated has been more opened to the influences of the air than is the case with the subsoil, which has never been disturbed so as to allow the same action. Again the growth of plants has supplied the surface soil with roots, which by decaying have given it organic matter, thus darkening its color, rendering it warmer, and giving greater ability to absorb heat and moisture, and to retain manures. All of these effects render the surface soil of a more fertile character than it was before vegetable growth commenced; and, where frequent cultivation and manures have been applied, a still greater benefit has resulted. In most instances the subsoil may by the same means be gradually improved in condition until it equals the surface soil in fertility. The means of producing this result, also farther accounts of its advantages, will be given under the head of _Cultivation_ (Sect. IV.) IMPROVEMENT. From what has now been said of the character of the soil, it must be evident that, as we know the _causes_ of fertility and barrenness, we may by the proper means improve the character of all soils which are not now in the highest state of fertility. Chemical analysis will tell us the _composition_ of a soil, and an examination, such as any farmer may make, will inform us of its deficiencies in _mechanical_ character, and we may at once resort to the proper means to secure fertility. In some instances the soil may contain every thing that is required, but not in the necessary condition. For instance, in some parts of Massachusetts, there are nearly _barren_ soils which show by analysis precisely the same chemical composition as the soil of the Miami valley of Ohio, one of the most _fertile_ in the world. The cause of this great difference in their agricultural capabilities, is that the Miami soil has its particles finely pulverized; while in the Massachusetts soil the ingredients are combined within particles (such as pebbles, etc.), where they are out of the reach of roots. [Why do soils of the same degree of fineness sometimes differ in fertility? Can soils always be rendered fertile with profit? Can we determine the cost before commencing the work? What must be done before a soil can be cultivated understandingly? What must be done to keep up the quality of the soil?] In other cases, we find two soils, which are equally well pulverized, and which appear to be of the same character, having very different power to support crops. Chemical analysis will show in these instances a difference of composition. All of these differences may be overcome by the use of the proper means. Sometimes it could be done at an expense which would be justified by the result; and, at others, it might require too large an outlay to be profitable. It becomes a question of economy, not of ability, and science is able to estimate the cost. Soil cannot be cultivated understandingly until it has been subjected to such an examination as will tell us exactly what is necessary to render it fertile. Even after fertility is perfectly restored it requires thought and care to maintain it. The ingredients of the soil must be returned in the form of manures as largely as they are removed by the crop, or the supply will eventually become too small for the purposes of vegetation. FOOTNOTES: [T] It is due to our country, as well as to Prof. Mapes and others, who long ago explained this absorptive power of clay and carbon, to say that the subject was perfectly understood and practically applied in America a number of years before Prof. Way published the discovery in England as original. SECTION THIRD. MANURES. CHAPTER I. CHARACTER AND VARIETIES OF MANURES. [What must a farmer know in order to avoid failures? Can this be learned entirely from observation? What kind of action have manures? Give examples of each of these. May mechanical effects be produced by chemical action? How does potash affect the soil?] To understand the science of _manures_ is the most important branch of practical farming. No baker would be called a good practical baker who kept his flour exposed to the sun and rain. No shoemaker would be called a good practical shoemaker, who used morocco for the soles of his shoes, and heavy leather for the uppers. No carpenter would be called a good practical carpenter, who tried to build a house without nails, or other fastenings. So with the farmer. He cannot be called a good practical farmer if he keeps the materials, from which he is to make plants, in such a condition, that they will have their value destroyed, uses them in the wrong places, or tries to put them together without having every thing present that is necessary. Before he can avoid failures _with certainty_, he must know what manures are composed of, how they are to be preserved, where they are needed, and what kinds are required. True, he may from observation and experience, _guess_ at results, but he cannot _know_ that he is right until he has learned the facts above named. In this section of our work, we mean to convey some of the information necessary to this branch of _practical farming_. We shall adopt a classification of the subject somewhat different from that found in most works on manures, but the _facts_ are the same. The action of manures is either _mechanical_ or _chemical_, or a combination of both. For instance: some kinds of manure improve the mechanical character of the soil, such as those which loosen stiff clay soils, or others which render light sandy soils compact--these are called _mechanical_ manures. Some again furnish food for plants--these are called _chemical_ manures. Many mechanical manures produce their effects by means of chemical action. Thus _potash_ combines chemically with sand in the soil. In so doing, it roughens the surfaces of the particles of sand, and renders the soil less liable to be compacted by rains. In this manner, it acts as a _mechanical_ manure. The compound of sand and potash,[U] as well as the potash alone, may enter into the composition of plants, and hence it is a _chemical_ manure. In other words, potash belongs to both classes described above. It is important that this distinction should be well understood by the learner, as the words "mechanical" and "chemical" in connection with manures will be made use of throughout the following pages. [What are absorbents? What kind of manure is charcoal?] There is another class of manures which we shall call _absorbents_. These comprise those substances which have the power of taking up fertilizing matters, and retaining them for the use of plants. For instance, _charcoal_ is an absorbent. As was stated in the section on soils, this substance is a retainer of all fertilizing gases and many minerals. Other matters made use of in agriculture have the same effect. These absorbents will be spoken of more fully in their proper places. TABLE. MECHANICAL MANURES are those which improve the mechanical condition of soils. CHEMICAL " are those which serve as food for plants. ABSORBENTS are those substances which absorb and retain fertilizing matters. [Into what classes may manures be divided? What are organic manures? Inorganic? Atmospheric?] Manures may be divided into three classes, viz.: _organic_, _inorganic_, and _atmospheric_. ORGANIC manures comprise all _animal_ and _vegetable_ matters which are used to fertilize the soil, such as dung, muck, etc. INORGANIC manures are those which are of a purely _mineral_ character, such as lime, ashes, etc. ATMOSPHERIC manures consist of those organic manures which are in the form of gases in the atmosphere, and which are absorbed by rains and carried to the soil. These are of immense importance. The ammonia and carbonic acid in the air are atmospheric manures. FOOTNOTES: [U] Silicate of potash. CHAPTER II. EXCREMENTS OF ANIMALS. [Of what is animal excrement composed? Explain the composition of the food of animals. What does hay contain? To what does Liebig compare the consumption of food by animals, and why?] The first organic manure which we shall examine, is animal _excrement_. This is composed of those matters which have been eaten by the animal as food, and have been thrown off as solid or liquid manure. In order that we may know of what they consist, we must refer to the composition of food and examine the process of digestion. The food of animals, we have seen to consist of both organic and inorganic matter. The organic part may be divided into two classes, _i. e._, that portion which contains nitrogen--such as gluten, albumen, etc., and that which does not contain nitrogen--such as starch, sugar, oil, etc. The inorganic part of food may also be divided into _soluble_ matter and _insoluble_ matter. DIGESTION AND ITS PRODUCTS. [Of what does that part of dung consist which resembles soot? What else does the dung contain? In what manner does the digested part of food escape from the body?] Let us now suppose that we have a full-grown ox, which is not increasing in any of his parts, but only consumes food to keep up his respiration, and to supply the natural wastes of his body. To this ox we will feed a ton of hay which contains organic matter, with and without nitrogen, and soluble and insoluble inorganic substances. Now let us try to follow it through its changes in the animal, and observe its destination. Liebig compares the consumption of food by animals to the imperfect burning of wood in a stove, where a portion of the fuel is resolved into gases and ashes (that is, it is completely burned), and another portion, which is not thoroughly burned, passes off as _soot_. In the animal action in question, the food undergoes changes which are similar to this burning of wood. A part of the food is _digested_ and taken up by the blood, while another portion remains undigested, and passes the bowels as solid dung--corresponding to soot. This part of the dung then, we see is merely so much of the food as passes through the system without being materially changed. Its nature is easily understood. It contains organic and inorganic matter in nearly the same condition as they existed in the hay. They have been rendered finer and softer, but their chemical character is not materially altered. The dung also contains small quantities of nitrogenous matter, which _leaked out_, as it were, from the stomach and intestines. The digested food, however, undergoes further changes which affect its character, and it escapes from the body in three ways--_i. e._, through the lungs, through the bladder, and through the bowels. It will be recollected from the first section of this book, p. 22, that the carbon in the blood of animals, unites with the oxygen of the air drawn into the lungs, and is thrown off in the breath as carbonic acid. The hydrogen and oxygen unite to form a part of the water which constitutes the moisture of the breath. [Explain the escape of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. What becomes of the nitrogenous parts? How is the _soluble_ ash of the digested food parted with? The insoluble? If any portions of the food are not returned in the dung, how are they disposed of?] That portion of the organic part of the hay which has been taken up by the blood of the ox, and which does not contain nitrogen (corresponding to the _first_ class of proximates, as described in Sect. I), is emitted through the lungs. It consists, as will be recollected, of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and these assume, in respiration, the form of carbonic acid and water. The organic matter of the digested hay, in the blood, which contains nitrogen (corresponding to the _second_ class of proximates, described in Sect. I), goes to the _bladder_, where it assumes the form of urea--a constituent of urine or liquid manure. We have now disposed of the imperfectly digested food (dung), and of the _organic_ matter which was taken up by the blood. All that remains to be examined is the inorganic or mineral matter in the blood, which would have become _ashes_, if the hay had been burned. The _soluble_ part of this inorganic matter passes into the bladder, and forms the _inorganic part of urine_. The _insoluble_ part passes the bowels, in connection with the dung. [How is their place supplied? Is food put out of existence when it is fed to animals? What does the solid dung contain? Liquid manure? The breath?] If any of the food taken up by the blood is not returned as above stated, it goes to form fat, muscle, hair, bones, or some other part of the animal, and as he is not growing (not increasing in weight) an equivalent amount of the body of the animal goes to the manure to take the place of the part retained.[V] We now have our subject in a form to be readily understood. We learn that when food is given to animals it is not _put out of existence_, but is merely _changed in form_; and that in the impurities of the breath, we have a large portion of those parts of the food which plants obtain from air and from water; while the solid and liquid excrements contain all that was taken by the plants from the soil and manures. The SOLID DUNG contains the undigested parts of the food, the _insoluble_ parts of the ash, and the nitrogenous matters which have _escaped_ from the digestive organs. "LIQUID MANURE" the nitrogenous or _second class_ of proximates of the digested food, and the _soluble_ parts of the ash. THE BREATH contains the _first class_ of proximates, those which contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, but _no nitrogen_.[W] FOOTNOTES: [V] This account of digestion is not, perhaps, strictly accurate in a physiological point of view, but it is sufficiently so to give an elementary understanding of the character of excrements as manures. [W] The excrements of animals contain more or less of sulphur, and sometimes small quantities of phosphorus. CHAPTER III. WASTE OF MANURE. [What are the first causes of loss of manure? What is _evaporation_?] The loss of manure is a subject which demands most serious attention. Until within a few years, little was known about the true character of manures, and consequently, of the importance of protecting them against loss. The first causes of waste are _evaporation_ and _leaching_. EVAPORATION. [Name a solid body which evaporates. What takes place when a dead animal is exposed to the atmosphere for a sufficient time? What often assist the evaporation of solids?] Evaporation is the changing of a solid or liquid body to a vapory form. Thus common smelling salts, a solid, if left exposed, passes into the atmosphere in the form of a gas or vapor. Water, a liquid, evaporates, and becomes a vapor in the atmosphere. This is the case with very many substances, and in organic nature, both solid and liquid, they are liable to assume a gaseous form, and become mixed with the atmosphere. They are not destroyed, but are merely changed in form. As an instance of this action, suppose an animal to die and to decay on the surface of the earth. After a time, the flesh will entirely disappear, but is not lost. It no longer exists as the flesh of an animal, but its carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, still exist in the air. They have been liberated from the attractions which held them together, and have passed away; but (as we already know from what has been said in a former section) they are ready to be again taken up by plants, and pressed into the service of life. The evaporation of liquids may take place without the aid of any thing but heat; still, in the case of solids, it is often assisted by decay and combustion, which break up the bonds that hold the constituents of bodies together, and thus enable them to return to the atmosphere, from which they were originally derived. [What is the cause of odor? When we perceive an odor, what is taking place? Why do manures give off offensive odors? How may we detect ammonia escaping from manure?] It must be recollected that every thing, which has an _odor_ (or can be smelled), is evaporating. The odor is caused by parts of the body floating in the air, and acting on the nerves of the nose. This is an invariable rule; and, when we perceive an odor, we may be sure that parts of the material, from which it emanates, are escaping. If we perceive the odor of an apple, it is because parts of the volatile oils of the apple enter the nose. The same is true when we smell hartshorn, cologne, etc. Manures made by animals have an offensive odor, simply because volatile parts of the manure escape into the air, and are therefore made perceptible. All organic parts in turn become volatile, assuming a gaseous form as they decompose. We do not see the gases rising, but there are many ways by which we can detect them. If we wave a feather over a manure heap, from which ammonia is escaping, the feather having been recently dipped in manure, white fumes will appear around the feather, being the muriate of ammonia formed by the union of the escaping gas with the muriatic acid. Not only ammonia, but also carbonic acid, and other gases which are useful to vegetation escape, and are given to the winds. Indeed it may be stated in few words that all of the organic part of _plants_ (all that was obtained from the air, water, and ammonia), constituting more than nine tenths of their dry weight, may be evaporated by the assistance of decay or combustion. The organic part of _manures_ may be lost in the same manner; and, if the process of decomposition be continued long enough, nothing but a mass of mineral matter will remain, except perhaps a small quantity of carbon which has not been resolved into carbonic acid. [What remains after manure has been long exposed to decomposition? What gaseous compounds are formed by the decomposition of manures?] The proportion of solid manure lost by evaporation (made by the assistance of decay), is a very large part of the whole. Manure cannot be kept a single day in its natural state without losing something. It commences to give out an offensive odor immediately, and this odor is occasioned, as was before stated, by the loss of some of its fertilizing parts. Animal manure contains, as will be seen by reference to p. 100, all of the substances contained in plants, though not always in the correct relative proportions to each other. When decomposition commences, the carbon unites with the oxygen of the air, and passes off as carbonic acid; the hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water (which evaporates), and the _nitrogen is mostly resolved into ammonia, which escapes into the atmosphere_. [Describe fire-fanging. What takes place when animal manure is exposed in an open barn-yard? What does liquid manure lose by evaporation?] If manure is thrown into heaps, it often ferments so rapidly as to produce sufficient heat to set fire to some parts of the manure, and cause it to be thrown off with greater rapidity. This may be observed in nearly all heaps of animal excrement. When they have lain for some time in mild weather, gray streaks of _ashes_ are often to be seen in the centre of the pile. The organic part of the manure having been _burned_ away, nothing but the ash remains,--this is called _fire-fanging_. Manures kept in cellars without being mixed with refuse matter are subject to the same losses. When kept in the yard, they are still liable to be lost by evaporation. They are here often saturated with water, and this water in its evaporation carries away the ammonia, and carbonic acid which it has obtained from the rotting mass. The evaporation of the water is rapidly carried on, on account of the great extent of surface. The whole mass is spongy, and soaks the liquids up from below (through hollow straws, etc.), to be evaporated at the surface on the same principle as causes the wick of a lamp to draw up the oil to supply fuel for the flame. LIQUID MANURE containing large quantities of nitrogen, and forming much ammonia, is also liable to lose all of its organic part from evaporation (and fermentation), so that it is rendered as much less valuable as is the solid dung.[X] [When does the waste of exposed manure commence? What does economy of manure require? What is the effect of leaching? Give an illustration of leaching.] From these remarks, it may be justly inferred that a very large portion of the _value_ of solid and liquid manure as ordinarily kept is lost by evaporation in a sufficient length of time, depending on circumstances, whether it be three months or several years. The wasting commences as soon as the manure is dropped, and continues, except in very cold weather, until the destruction is complete. Hence we see that true economy requires that the manures of the stable, stye, and poultry-house, should be protected from evaporation (as will be hereafter described), as soon as possible after they are made. LEACHING. The subject of _leaching_ is as important in considering the _inorganic_ parts of manures as evaporation is to the organic, while leaching also affects the organic gases, they being absorbed by water in a great degree. A good illustration of leaching is found in the manufacture of potash. When water is poured over wood-ashes, it dissolves their potash which it carries through in solution, making ley. If ley is boiled to dryness, it leaves the potash in a solid form, proving that this substance had been dissolved by the water and removed from the insoluble parts of the ashes. [How does water affect decomposing manures? Does continued decomposition continue to prepare material to be leached away? How far from the surface of the soil may organic constituents be carried by water?] In the same way water in passing through manures takes up the soluble portions of the ash as fast as liberated by decomposition, and carries them into the soil below; or, if the water runs off from the surface, they accompany it. In either case they are lost to the manure. There is but a small quantity of ash exposed for leaching in recent manures; but, as the decomposition of the organic part proceeds, it continues to develope it more and more (in the same manner as burning would do, only slower), thus preparing fresh supplies to be carried off with each shower. In this way, while manures are largely injured by evaporation, the soluble inorganic parts are removed by water until but a small remnant of its original fertilizing properties remains. [What arrests their farther progress? What would be the effect of allowing these matters to filter downwards? What does evaporation remove from manure? Leaching?] It is a singular fact concerning leaching, that water is able to carry no part of the organic constituents of vegetables more than about thirty-four inches below the surface in a fertile soil. They would probably be carried to an unlimited distance in pure sand, as it contains nothing which is capable of arresting them; but, in most soils, the clay and carbon which they contain retain all of the ammonia; also nearly all of the matters which go to form the inorganic constituents of plants within about the above named distance from the surface of the soil. If such were not the case, the fertility of the earth must soon be destroyed, as all of those elements which the soil must supply to growing plants would be carried down out of the reach of roots, and leave the world a barren waste, its surface having lost its elements of fertility, while the downward filtration of these would render the water of wells unfit for our use. Now, however, they are all retained near the surface of the soil, and the water issues from springs comparatively pure. EVAPORATION removes from manure-- Carbon, in the form of carbonic acid. Hydrogen and oxygen, in the form of water. Nitrogen, in the form of ammonia. LEACHING removes from manure-- The soluble and most valuable parts of the ash in solution in water, besides carrying away some of the named above forms of organic matter. FOOTNOTES: [X] It should be recollected that every bent straw may act as a syphon, and occasion much loss of liquid manure. CHAPTER IV. ABSORBENTS. [What substances are called absorbents? What is the most important of these? What substances are called charcoal in agriculture? How is vegetable matter rendered useful as charcoal?] Before considering farther the subject of animal excrement, it is necessary to examine a class of manures known as _absorbents_. These comprise all matters which have the power of absorbing, or soaking up, as it were, the gases which arise from the evaporation of solid and liquid manures, and retaining them until required by plants. The most important of these is undoubtedly _carbon_ or charcoal. CHARCOAL. _Charcoal_, in an agricultural sense, means all forms of carbon, whether as peat, muck, charcoal dust from the spark-catchers of locomotives, charcoal hearths, river and swamp deposits, leaf mould, decomposed spent tanbark or sawdust, etc. In short, if any vegetable matter is decomposed with the partial exclusion of air (so that there shall not be oxygen enough supplied to unite with all of the carbon), a portion of its carbon remains in the exact condition to serve the purposes of charcoal. [What is the first-named effect of charcoal? The second? Third? Fourth? Explain the first action.] The offices performed in the soil by carbonaceous matter were fully explained in a former section (p. 79, Sect. 2), and we will now examine merely its action with regard to manures. When properly applied to manures, in compost, it has the following effects: 1. It absorbs and retains the fertilizing gases evaporating from decomposing matters. 2. It acts as a _divisor_, thereby reducing the strength (or intensity) of powerful manures--thus rendering them less likely to injure the roots of plants; and also increases their bulk, so as to prevent _fire fanging_ in composts. 3. It in part prevents the leaching out of the soluble parts of the ash. 4. It keeps the compost moist. The first-named office of charcoal, _i. e._, absorbing and retaining gases, is one of the utmost importance. It is this quality that gives to it so high a position in the opinion of all who have used it. As was stated in the section on soils, carbonaceous matter seems to be capable of absorbing every thing which may be of use to vegetation. It is a grand purifier, and while it prevents offensive odors from escaping, it is at the same time storing its pores with food for the nourishment of plants. [Explain its action as a divisor. How does charcoal protect composts against injurious action of rains? How does it keep them moist?] 2d. In its capacity as a _divisor_ for manures, charcoal should be considered as excellent in all cases, especially to use with strongly concentrated (or heating) animal manures. These, when applied in their natural state to the soil, are very apt to injure young roots by the violence of their action. When mixed with a divisor, such manures are _diluted_, made less active, and consequently less injurious. In composts, manures are liable, as has been before stated, to become burned by the resultant heat of decomposition; this is called _fire fanging_, and is prevented by the liberal use of divisors, because, by increasing the bulk, the heat being diffused through a larger mass, becomes less intense. The same principle is exhibited in the fact that it takes more fire to boil a cauldron of water than a tea-kettle full. 3d. Charcoal has much power to arrest the passage of mineral matters in solution; so much so, that compost heaps, well supplied with muck, are less affected by rains than those not so supplied. All composts, however, should be kept under cover. 4th. Charcoal keeps the compost moist from the ease with which it absorbs water, and its ability to withstand drought. [What source of carbon is within the reach of most farmers? What do we mean by muck? Of what does it consist? How does it differ in quality?] With these advantages before us, we must see the importance of an understanding of the modes for obtaining charcoal. Many farmers are so situated that they can obtain sufficient quantities of charcoal dust. Others have not equal facilities. Nearly all, however, can obtain _muck_, and to this we will now turn our attention. MUCK, AND THE LIME AND SALT MIXTURE. [What is the first step in preparing muck for decomposition? With what proportion of the lime and salt mixture should it be composted? Why should this compost be made under cover? What is this called after decomposition? Why should we not use muck immediately after taking it from the swamp?] By _muck_, we mean the vegetable deposits of swamps and rivers. It consists of decayed organic substances, mixed with more or less earth. Its principal constituent is _carbon_, in different degrees of development, which has remained after the decomposition of vegetable matter. Muck varies largely in its quality, according to the amount of carbon which it contains, and the perfection of its decomposition. The best muck is usually found in comparatively dry locations, where the water which once caused the deposit has been removed. Muck which has been long in this condition, is usually better decomposed than that which is saturated with water. The muck from swamps, however, may soon be brought to the best condition. It should be thrown out, if possible, at least one year before it is required for use (a less time may suffice, except in very cold climates) and left, in small heaps or ridges, to the action of the weather, which will assist in pulverizing it, while, from having its water removed, its decomposition goes on more rapidly. After the muck has remained in this condition a sufficient length of time, it may be removed to the barn-yard and composted with the lime and salt mixture (described on page 115) in the proportion of one cord of muck to four bushels of the mixture. This compost ought to be made under cover, lest the rain leach out the constituents of the mixture, and thus occasion loss; at the end of a month or more, the muck in the compost will have been reduced to a fine pulverulent mass, nearly equal to charcoal dust for application to animal excrement. When in this condition it is called _prepared_ muck, by which name it will be designated in the following pages. Muck should not be used immediately after being taken from the swamp, as it is then almost always _sour_, and is liable to produce sorrel. Its _sourness_ is due to _acids_ which it contains, and these must be rectified by the application of an alkali, or by long exposure to the weather, before the muck is suitable for use. LIME AND SALT MIXTURE. [What proportions of lime and salt are required for the decomposing mixture? Explain the process of making it. Why should it be made under cover?] The lime and salt mixture, used in the decomposition of muck, is made in the following manner: RECIPE.--Take _three_ bushels of shell lime, _hot from the kiln_, or as fresh as possible, and slake it with water in which _one_ bushel of salt has been dissolved. Care must be taken to use only so much water as is necessary to dissolve the salt, as it is difficult to induce the lime to absorb a larger quantity. In dissolving the salt, it is well to hang it in a basket in the upper part of the water, as the salt water will immediately settle towards the bottom (being heavier), and allow the freshest water to be nearest to the salt. In this way, the salt may be all dissolved, and thus make the brine used to slake the lime. It may be necessary to apply the brine at intervals of a day or two, and to stir the mass often, as the amount of water is too great to be readily absorbed. This mixture should be made under cover, as, if exposed, it would obtain moisture from rain or dew, which would prevent the use of all the brine. Another objection to its exposure to the weather is its great liability to be washed away by rains. It should be at least ten days old before being used, and would probably be improved by an age of three or four months, as the chemical changes it undergoes will require some time to be completed. [Explain the character of this mixture as represented in the diagram. (Black board.)] The character of this mixture may be best described by the following diagram:-- We have originally-- +----------------------------------+ | | Lime-+ Salt | consisting of | +---Chlorine } Chloride | | and } of | | +-Sodium. } Sodium. | | | --Carbonic acid | | | and | | | --Oxygen in the air. +-Chloride of lime.-+ | +-Carbonate of Soda. [Y] The lime unites with the chlorine of the salt and forms _chloride of lime_. The sodium, after being freed from the chlorine, unites with the oxygen of the air and forms soda, which, combining with the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, forms carbonate of soda. Chloride of lime and carbonate of soda are better agents in the decomposition of muck than pure salt and lime; and, as these compounds are the result of the mixture, much benefit ensues from the operation. When _shell_ lime cannot be obtained, Thomaston, or any other very pure lime, will answer, though care must be taken that it do not contain much magnesia. LIME. [What effect has lime on muck? On what does the energy of this effect depend? Why should a compost of muck and lime be protected from rain?] Muck may be decomposed by the aid of other materials. _Lime_ is very efficient, though not as much so as when combined with salt. The action of lime, when applied to the muck, depends very much on its condition. Air-slaked lime (carbonate of lime), and hydrate of lime, slaked with water, have but a limited effect compared with lime freshly burned and applied in a caustic (or pure) form. When so used, however, the compost should not be exposed to rains, as this would have a tendency to make _mortar_ which would harden it. POTASH. [Is potash valuable for this use? From what sources may potash be obtained? In what proportion should ashes be applied to muck? Sparlings?] _Potash_ is a very active agent in decomposing vegetable matter, and may be used with great advantage, especially where an analysis of the soil which is to be manured shows a deficiency of potash. _Unleached_ wood ashes are generally the best source from which to obtain this, and from five to twenty-five bushels of these mixed with one cord of muck will produce the desired result.[Z] The sparlings (or refuse) of potash warehouses may often be purchased at sufficiently low rates to be used for this purpose, and answer an excellent end. They may be applied at the rate of from twenty to one hundred pounds to each cord of muck. * * * * * By any of the foregoing methods, muck may be _prepared_ for use in composting. FOOTNOTES: [Y] There is, undoubtedly, some of this lime which does not unite with the chlorine; this, however, is still as valuable as any lime. [Z] _Leached_ ashes will not supply the place of these, as the leaching has deprived them of their potash. CHAPTER V. COMPOSTING STABLE MANURE. [What principles should regulate us in composting? In what condition is solid dung of value as a fertilizer? What do we aim to do in composting?] In composting stable manure in the most economical manner, the evaporation of the organic parts and the leaching of the ashy (and other) portions must be avoided, while the condition of the mass is such as to admit of the perfect decomposition of the manure. Solid manures in their fresh state are of but very little use to plants. It is only as they are decomposed, and have their nitrogen turned into ammonia, and their other ingredients resolved into the condition required by plants, that they are of much value as fertilizers. We have seen that, if this decomposition takes place without proper precautions being made, the most valuable parts of the manure would be lost. Nor would it be prudent to keep manures from decomposing until they are applied to the soil, for then they are not immediately ready for use, and time is lost. By composting, we aim to save every thing while we prepare the manures for immediate use. SHELTER. [What is the first consideration for composts? Describe the arrangement of floor.] The first consideration in preparing for composting, is to provide proper shelter. This may be done either by means of a shed or by arranging a cellar under the stables, or in any other manner that may be dictated by circumstances. It is no doubt better to have the manure shed enclosed so as to make it an effectual protection; this however is not absolutely necessary if the roof project far enough over the compost to shelter it from the sun's rays and from driving rains. The importance of some protection of this kind, is evident from what has already been said, and indeed it is impossible to make an economical use of manures without it. The trifling cost of building a shed, or preparing a cellar, is amply repaid in the benefit resulting from their uses. THE FLOOR. The _floor_ or foundation on which to build the compost deserves some consideration. It may be of plank tightly fitted, a hard bed of clay, or better, a cemented surface. Whatever material is used in its construction (and stiff clay mixed with water and beaten compactly down answers an excellent purpose), the floor must have such an inclination as will cause it to discharge water only at one point. That is, one part of the edge must be lower than the rest of the floor, which must be so shaped that water will run towards this point from every part of it; then--the floor being water-tight--all of the liquids of the compost may be collected in a TANK. [How should the tank be attached?] This _tank_ used to collect the liquids of the manure may be made by sinking a barrel or hogshead (according to the size of the heap) in the ground at the point where it is required, or in any other convenient manner. In the tank a pump of cheap construction may be placed, to raise the liquid to a sufficient height to be conveyed by a trough to the centre of the heap, and there distributed by means of a perforated board with raised edges, and long enough to reach across the heap in any direction. By altering the position of this board, the liquid may be carried evenly over the whole mass. The appearance of the apparatus required for composting, and the compost laid up, may be better shown by the following figure. [Illustration: Fig. 2. _a_, tank; _b_, pump; _c_ & _g_, perforated board; _d_, muck; _e_, manure; _f_, floor.] [How is the compost made?] The compost is made by laying on the floor ten or twelve inches of muck, and on that a few inches of manure, then another heavy layer of muck, and another of manure, continuing in this manner until the heap is raised to the required height, always having a thick layer of muck at the top. [What liquids are best for moistening the compost? How should they be applied? What are the advantages of this moistening? How does it compare with forking over?] After laying up the heap, the tank should be filled with liquid manure from the stables, slops from the house, soap-suds, or other water containing fertilizing matter, to be pumped over the mass. There should be enough of the liquid to saturate the heap and filter through to fill the tank twice a week, at which intervals it should be again pumped up, thus continually being passed through the manure. This liquid should not be changed, as it contains much soluble manure. Should the liquid manures named above not be sufficient, the quantity may be increased by the use of rain-water. That falling during the first ten minutes of a shower is the best, as it contains much ammonia. The effects produced by frequently watering the compost is one of the greatest advantages of this system. The soluble portions of the manure are equally diffused through every part of the heap. Should the heat of fermentation be too great, the watering will reduce it. When the compost is saturated with water, the air is driven out; and, as the water subsides, _fresh_ air enters and takes its place. This fresh air contains oxygen, which assists in the decomposition of the manure. In short, the watering does all the work of forking over by hand much better and much more cheaply. [Why will the ammonia of manure thus made, not escape if it be used as a top dressing? What are the advantages of preparing manures in this manner? What is the profit attending it?] At the end of a month or more, this compost will be ready for use. The layers in the manure will have disappeared, the whole mass having become of a uniform character, highly fertilizing, and ready to be immediately used by plants. It may be applied to the soil, either as a top-dressing, or otherwise, without fear of loss, as the muck will retain all of the gases which would otherwise evaporate. The cost and trouble of the foregoing system of composting are trifling compared with its advantages. The quantity of the manure is much increased, and its quality improved. The health of the animals is secured by the retention of those gases, which, when allowed to escape, render impure the air which they have to breathe. The cleanliness of the stable and yard is much advanced as the effete matters, which would otherwise litter them, are carefully removed to the compost. As an instance of the profit of composting, it may be stated that Prof. Mapes has decomposed ninety-two cords of swamp muck, with four hundred bushels of the lime and salt mixture, and then composted it with eight cords of _fresh_ horse dung, making one hundred cords of manure fully equal to the same amount of stable-manure alone, which has lain one year exposed to the weather. Indeed one cord of muck well decomposed, and containing the chlorine lime and soda of four bushels of the mixture, is of itself equal in value to the same amount of manure which has lain in an open barn-yard during the heat and rain of one season, and is then applied to the land in a _raw_ or undecomposed state. [In what other manners may muck be used in the preservation of manures? How may liquid manure be made most useful?] The foregoing system of composting is the best that has yet been suggested for making use of solid manures. Many other methods may be adopted when circumstances will not admit of so much attention. It is a common and excellent practice to throw prepared muck into the cellar under the stables, to be mixed and turned over with the manure by swine. In other cases the manures are kept in the yard, and are covered with a thin layer of muck every morning. The principle which renders these systems beneficial is the absorbent power of charcoal. LIQUID MANURE. _Liquid manure_ from animals may, also, be made useful by the assistance of prepared muck. Where a tank is used in composting, the liquids from the stable may all be employed to supply moisture to the heap; but where any system is adopted, not requiring liquids, the urine may be applied to muck heaps, and then allowed to ferment. Fermentation is necessary in urine as well as in solid dung, before it is very active as a manure. Urine, as will be recollected, contains nitrogen and forms ammonia on fermentation. [Describe the manner of digging out the bottoms of stalls.] It is a very good plan to dig out the bottoms of the stalls in a circular or gutter-like form, three or four feet deep in the middle, cement the ground, or make it nearly water-tight, by a plastering of stiff clay, and fill them up with prepared muck. The appearance of a cross section of the floor thus arranged would be as follows: [Illustration: Fig. 3.] The prepared muck in the bottom of the stalls would absorb the urine as soon as voided, while yet warm with the animal heat, and receive heat from the animal's body while lying down at night. This heat will hasten the decomposition of the urea,[AA] and if the muck be renewed twice a month, and that which is removed composted under cover, it will be found a most prolific source of good manure. In Flanders, the liquid manure of a cow is considered worth $10 per year, and it is not less valuable here. As was stated in the early part of this section, the inorganic (or mineral) matter contained in urine, is soluble, and consequently is immediately useful as food for plants. By referring to the analysis of liquid and solid manure, in section V., their relative value may be seen. CHAPTER VI. DIFFERENT KINDS OF ANIMAL EXCREMENT. The manures of different animals are, of course, of different value, as fertilizers, varying according to the food, the age of the animals, etc. STABLE MANURE. By stable manure we mean, usually, that of the horse, and that of horned cattle. The case described in chap. 2 (of this section), was one where the animal was not increasing in any of its parts, but returned, in the form of manure, and otherwise, the equivalent of every thing eaten. This case is one of the most simple kind, and is subject to many modifications. [Is the manure of full-grown animals of the same quality as that of other animals? Why does that of the growing animal differ? Why does not the formation of _fat_ reduce the quality of manure? What does _milk_ remove from the food?] The _growing_ animal is increasing in size, and as he derives his increase from his food, he does not return in the form of manure as much as he eats. If his bones are growing, he is taking from his food phosphate of lime and nitrogenous matter; consequently, the manure will be poorer in these ingredients. The same may be said of the formation of the muscles, in relation to nitrogen. The _fatting_ animal, if full grown, makes manure which is as good as that from animals that are not increasing in size, because the fat is taken from those parts of the food which is obtained by plants from the atmosphere, and from nature, (_i. e._ from the 1st class of proximates). Fat contains no nitrogen, and, consequently, does not lessen the amount of this ingredient in the manure. _Milch Cows_ turn a part of their food to the formation of milk, and consequently, they produce manure of reduced value. [How do the solid and liquid manure of the horse and ox compare? What occasions these differences?] The solid manure of the horse is better than that of the ox, while the liquid manure of the ox is comparatively better than that of the horse. The cause of this is that the horse has poorer digestive organs than the ox, and consequently passes more of the valuable parts of his food, in an undigested form, as dung, while the ox, from chewing the cud and having more perfect organs, turns more of his food into urine than the horse. RECAPITULATION. FULL GROWN animals not } producing milk, and full } make the best manure. grown animals fattening } GROWING ANIMALS reduce the value of their manure, taking portions of their food to form their bodies. MILCH COWS reduce the value of their manure by changing a part of their food into milk. THE OX makes poor dung and rich urine. THE HORSE makes rich dung and poor urine.[AB] NIGHT SOIL. [What is the most valuable manure accessible to the farmer? What is the probable value of the night soil yearly lost in the United States? Of what does the manure of man consist?] The _best_ manure within the reach of the farmer is _night soil_, or human excrement. There has always been a false delicacy about mentioning this fertilizer, which has caused much waste, and great loss of health, from the impure and offensive odors which it is allowed to send forth to taint the air. The value of the night soil yearly lost in the United States is, probably, about _fifty millions of dollars_ (50,000,000); an amount nearly equal to the entire expenses of our National Government. Much of the ill health of our people is undoubtedly occasioned by neglecting the proper treatment of night soil. [Describe this manure as compared with the excrements of other animals. Does the use of night soil produce disagreeable properties in plants?] That which directly affects agriculture, as treated of in this book, is the value of this substance as a fertilizer. The manure of man consists (as is the case with that of other animals) of those parts of his food which are not retained in the increase of his body. If he be _growing_, his manure is poorer, as in the case of the ox, and it is subject to all the other modifications named in the early part of this chapter. His food is usually of a varied character, and is rich in nitrogen, the phosphates, and other inorganic constituents; consequently, his manure is made valuable by containing large quantities of these matters. As is the case with the ox, the _dung_ contains the undigested food, the secretions (or leakings) of the digestive organs, and the insoluble parts of the ash of the digested food. The _urine_, in like manner, contains a large proportion of the nitrogen and the soluble inorganic parts of the digested food. When we consider how much richer the _food_ of man is than that of horned cattle, we shall see the superior value of his _excrement_. Night soil has been used as a manure, for ages, in China, which is, undoubtedly, one great secret of their success in supporting a dense population, for so long a time, without impoverishing the soil. It has been found, in many instances, to increase the productive power of the natural soil three-fold. That is, if a soil would produce ten bushels of wheat per acre, without manure, it would produce thirty bushels if manured with night soil. Some have supposed that manuring with night soil would give disagreeable properties to plants: such is not the case; their quality is invariably improved. The color and odor of the rose become richer and more delicate by the use of the most offensive night soil as manure. [What is the direct object of plants? What would result if this were not the case? How may night soil be easily prepared for use, and its offensive odor prevented?] It is evident that this is the case from the fact that plants have it for their direct object to make over and put together the refuse organic matter, and the gases and the minerals found in nature, for the use of animals. If there were no natural means of rendering the excrement of animals available to plants, the earth must soon be shorn of its fertility, as the elements of growth when once consumed would be essentially destroyed, and no soil could survive the exhaustion. There is no reason why the manure of man should be rejected by vegetation more than that of any other animal; and indeed it is not, for ample experience has proved that for most soils there is no better manure in existence. A single experiment will suffice to show that night soil may be so kept that there shall be no loss of its valuable gases, and consequently no offensive odor arising from it, while it may be removed and applied to crops without unpleasantness. All that is necessary to effect this wonderful change in night soil, and to turn it from its disagreeable character to one entirely inoffensive, is to mix with it a little charcoal dust, prepared muck, or any other good absorbent--thus making what is called poudrette. The mode of doing this must depend on circumstances. In many cases, it would be expedient to keep a barrel of the absorbent in the privy and throw down a small quantity every day. The effect on the odor of the house would amply repay the trouble. [Should pure night soil be used as a manure? What precaution is necessary in preparing hog manure for use?] The manure thus made is of the most valuable character, and may be used under any circumstances with a certainty of obtaining a good crop. It should not be used unmixed with some absorbent, as it is of such strength as to kill plants. For an analysis of human manure, see Section V. HOG MANURE. _Hog Manure_ is very valuable, but it must be used with care. It is so violent in its action that, when applied in a pure form to crops, it often produces injurious results. It is liable to make cabbages _clump-footed_, and to induce a disease in turnips called _ambury_ (or fingers and toes). The only precaution necessary is to supply the stye with prepared muck, charcoal-dust, leaf-mould, or any absorbent in plentiful quantities, often adding fresh supplies. The hogs will work this over with the manure; and, when required for use, it will be found an excellent fertilizer. The absorbent will have overcome its injurious tendency, and it may be safely applied to any crop. From the variety and rich character of the food of this animal, his manure is of a superior quality. [Why is the manure from butchers' hog-pens very valuable? How does the value of poultry manure compare with that of guano? How may it be protected against loss?] _Butchers' hog-pen manure_ is one of the best fertilizers known. It is made by animals that live almost entirely on blood and other animal refuse, and is very rich in nitrogen and the phosphates. It should be mixed with prepared muck, or its substitute, to prevent the loss of its ammonia, and as a protection against its injurious effect on plants. POULTRY HOUSE MANURE. Next in value to night soil, among domestic manures, are the excrements of poultry, pigeons, etc. Birds live on the nice bits of creation, seeds, insects, etc., and they discharge their solid and liquid excrements together. Poultry-dung is nearly equal in value to guano (except that it contains more water), and it deserves to be carefully preserved and judiciously used. It is as well worth twenty-five cents per bushel as guano is worth fifty dollars a ton (at which price it is now sold). Poultry-manure is liable to as much injury from evaporation and leaching as is any other manure, and equal care should be taken (by the same means) to prevent such loss. Good shelter over the roosts, and daily sprinkling with prepared muck or charcoal-dust will be amply repaid by the increased value of the manure, and its better action and greater durability in the soil. The value of this manure should be taken into consideration in calculating the profit of keeping poultry (as indeed with all other stock). It has been observed by a gentleman of much experience, in poultry raising, that the yearly manure of a hundred fowls applied to previously unmanured land would produce _extra_ corn enough to keep them for a year. This is probably a large estimate, but it serves to show that this fertilizer is very valuable, and also that poultry may be kept with great profit, if their excrements are properly secured. The manure of pigeons has been a favorite fertilizer in some countries for more than 2000 years. Market gardeners attach much value to rabbit-manure. SHEEP MANURE. [What can you say of the manure of sheep?] The manure of sheep is less valuable than it would be, if so large a quantity of the nitrogen and mineral parts of the food were not employed in the formation of wool. This has a great effect on the richness of the excrements, but they are still a very good fertilizer, and should be protected from loss in the same way as stable manure. GUANO. [Should the use of guano induce us to disregard other manures? Where and in what manner is the best guano deposited?] _Guano_ as a manure has become world renowned. The worn-out tobacco lands of Virginia, and other fields in many parts of the country, which seemed to have yielded to the effect of an ignorant course of cultivation, and to have sunk to their final repose, have in many cases been revived to the production of excellent crops, and have had their value multiplied many fold by the use of guano. Although an excellent manure, it should not cause us to lose sight of those valuable materials which exist on almost every farm. Every ton of guano imported into the United States is an addition to our national wealth, but every ton of stable-manure, or poultry-dung, or night soil evaporated or carried away in rivers, is equally a _deduction_ from our riches. If the imported manure is to really benefit us, we must not allow it to occasion the neglect and consequent loss of our domestic fertilizers. The Peruvian guano (which is considered the best) is brought from islands near the coast of Peru. The birds which frequent these islands live almost entirely on fish, and drop their excrements here in a climate where rain is almost unknown, and where, from the dryness of the air, there is but little loss sustained by the manure. It is brought to this country in large quantities, and is an excellent fertilizer, superior even to night soil. [How should it be prepared for use?] It should be mixed with an absorbent before being used, unless it is plowed deeply under the soil, as it contains much ammonia which would be lost from evaporation. It would probably also injure plants. The best way to use guano, is in connection with sulphuric acid and bones, as will be described hereafter. The composition of the various kinds of guano may be found in the section on analysis. FOOTNOTES: [AA] The nitrogenous compound in the urine. [AB] Comparatively. CHAPTER VII. OTHER ORGANIC MANURES. The number of organic manures is almost countless. The most common of these have been described in the previous chapters on the excrements of animals. The more prominent of the remaining ones will now be considered. As a universal rule, it may be stated that all organic matter (every thing which has had vegetable or animal life) is capable of fertilizing plants. DEAD ANIMALS. [What are the chief fertilizing constituents of dead animals? What becomes of these when exposed to the atmosphere? How may this be prevented?] The bodies of animals contain much _nitrogen_, as well as valuable quantities, the phosphates and other inorganic materials required in the growth of plants. On their decay, the nitrogen is resolved into _ammonia_,[AC] and the mineral matters become valuable as food for the inorganic parts of plants. If the decomposition of animal bodies takes place in exposed situations, and without proper precautions, the ammonia escapes into the atmosphere, and much of the mineral portion is leached out by rains. The use of absorbents, such as charcoal-dust, prepared muck, etc., will entirely prevent evaporation, and will in a great measure serve as a protection against leaching. If a dead horse be cut in pieces and mixed with ten loads of muck, the whole mass will, in a single season, become a most valuable compost. Small animals, such as dogs, cats, etc., may be with advantage buried by the roots of grape-vines or trees. BONES. [Of what do the bones of animals consist? What is gelatine? Describe the fertilizing qualities of fish.] The _bones_ of animals contain phosphate of lime and gelatine. The gelatine is a nitrogenous substance, and produces ammonia on its decomposition. This subject will be spoken of more fully under the head of 'phosphate of lime' in the chapter on mineral manures, as the treatment of bones is more directly with reference to the fertilizing value of their inorganic matter. FISH. In many localities near the sea-shore large quantities of fish are caught and applied to the soil. These make excellent manure. They contain much nitrogen, which renders them strongly ammoniacal on decomposition. Their bones consist of phosphate and carbonate of lime; and, being naturally soft, they decompose in the soil with great facility, and become available to plants. The scales of fish contain valuable quantities of nitrogen, phosphate of lime, etc., all of which are highly useful. Refuse fishy matters from markets and from the house are well worth saving. These and fish caught for manure may be made into compost with prepared muck, etc.; and, as they putrefy rapidly, they soon become ready for use. They may be added to the compost of stable manure with great advantage. [Should these be applied as a top dressing to the soil? What are the fertilizing properties of woollen rags? What is the best way to use them?] Fish (like all other nitrogenous manures) should never be applied as a top dressing, unless previously mixed with a good absorbent of ammonia, but should when used alone be immediately plowed under to considerable depth, to prevent the evaporation--and consequent loss--of their fertilizing gases. WOOLLEN RAGS, ETC. _Woollen rags, hair, waste of woollen factories_, etc., contain both nitrogen and phosphate of lime; and, like all other matters containing these ingredients, are excellent manures, but must be used in such a way as to prevent the escape of their fertilizing gases. They decompose slowly, and are therefore considered a _lasting_ manure. Like all _lasting_ manures, however, they are _slow_ in their effects, and the most advantageous way to use them is to compost them with stable manure, or with some other rapidly fermenting substance, which will hasten their decomposition and render them sooner available. Rags, hair, etc., thus treated, will in a short time be reduced to such a condition that they may be immediately used by plants instead of lying in the soil to be slowly taken up. It is better in all cases to have manures act _quickly_ and give an immediate return for their cost, than to lie for a long time in the soil before their influence is felt. [What is their value compared with that of farm-yard manure? How should old leather be treated? Describe the manurial properties of tanners' refuse. How should they be treated? Are horn piths, etc. valuable?] A pound of woollen rags is worth, as a manure, twice as much as is paid for good linen shreds for paper making; still, while the latter are always preserved, the former are thrown away, although considered by good judges to be worth forty times as much as barn-yard manure. Old leather should not be thrown away. It decomposes very slowly, and consequently is of but a little value; but, if put at the roots of young trees, it will in time produce appreciable effects. _Tanners' and curriers' refuse_, and all other animal offal, including that of the slaughter-house, is well worth attention, as it contains more or less of those two most important ingredients of manures, nitrogen and phosphate of lime. It is unnecessary to add that, in common with all other animal manures, these substances must be either composted, or immediately plowed under the soil. Horn piths, and horn shavings, if decomposed in compost, with substances which ferment rapidly, make very good manure, and are worth fully the price charged for them. ORGANIC MANURES OF VEGETABLE ORIGIN. _Muck_, the most important of the purely vegetable manures, has been already sufficiently described. It should be particularly borne in mind that, when first taken from the swamp it is often _sour_, or _cold_, but that if exposed for a long time to the air, or if well treated with lime, unleached ashes, the lime and salt mixture, or any other alkali, its acids will be _neutralized_ (or overcome), and it becomes a good application to any soil, except peat or other soils already containing large quantities of organic matter. In applying muck to the soil (as has been before stated), it should be made a vehicle for carrying ammoniacal manures. SPENT TAN BARK. [Why is decomposed bark more fertilizing than that of decayed wood?] _Spent tan bark_, if previously decomposed by the use of the lime and salt mixture, or potash, answers all the purposes of prepared muck, but is more difficult of decomposition. [How may bark be decomposed? Why should tan bark be composted with an alkali? Why is it good for mulching? Is sawdust of any value?] The bark of trees contains a larger proportion of inorganic matter than the wood, and much of this, on the decomposition of the bark, becomes available as manure. The chemical effect on the bark, of using it in the tanning of leather, is such as to render it difficult to be rotted by the ordinary means, but, by the use of the lime and salt mixture it may be reduced to the finest condition, and becomes a most excellent manure. It probably contains small quantities of nitrogen (obtained from the leather), which adds to its value. Unless tan bark be composted with lime, or some other alkali, it may produce injurious effects from the _tannic acid_ which it is liable to contain. Alkaline substances will neutralize this acid, and prevent it from being injurious. One great benefit resulting from the use of spent tan bark, is due to its power of absorbing moisture from the atmosphere. For this reason it is very valuable for _mulching_[AD] young trees and plants when first set out. SAWDUST. [Why is sawdust a good addition to the pig-stye? What is the peculiarity of sawdust from the beech, etc.? What is a peculiarity of soot? Why may soot be used as a top dressing without losing its ammonia?] _Sawdust_ in its natural state is of very little value to the land, but when decomposed, as may be done by the same method as was described for tan bark, it is of some importance, as it contains a large quantity of carbon. Its ash, too, which becomes available, contains soluble inorganic matter, and in this way it acts as a direct manure. So far as concerns the value of the ash, however, the bark is superior to sawdust. Sawdust may be partially rotted by mixing it with strong manure (as hog manure), while it acts as a _divisor_, and prevents the too rapid action of this when applied to the soil. Some kinds of sawdust, such as that from beech wood, form acetic acid on their decomposition, and these should be treated with, at least, a sufficient quantity of lime to correct the acid. _Soot_ is a good manure. It contains much carbon, and has, thus far, all of the beneficial effects of charcoal dust. The sulphur, which is one of its constituents, not only serves as food for plants, but, from its odor, is a good protection against some insects. By throwing a handful of soot on a melon vine, or young cabbage plant, it will keep away many insects. Soot contains some ammonia, and as this is in the form of a _sulphate_, it is not volatile, and consequently does not evaporate when the soot is applied as a top dressing, which is the almost universal custom. GREEN CROPS. [What plants are most used as green crops? What office is performed by the roots of green crops? How do such manures increase the organic matter of soils?] _Green crops_, to plow under, are in many places largely raised, and are always beneficial. The plants most used for this purpose, in our country, are clover, buckwheat, and peas. These plants have very long roots, which they send deep in the soil, to draw up mineral matter for their support. This mineral matter is deposited in the plant. The leaves and roots receive carbonic acid and ammonia from the air, and from water. In this manner they obtain their carbon. When the crop is turned under the soil, it decomposes, and the carbon, as well as the mineral ingredients obtained from the subsoil, are deposited in the surface soil, and become of use to succeeding crops. The hollow stalks of the buckwheat and pea, serve as tubes, in the soil, for the passage of air, and thus, in heavy soils, give a much needed circulation of atmospheric fertilizers. [What office is performed by the straw of the buckwheat and pea? What treatment may be substituted for the use of green crops? Which course should be adopted in high farming? Why is the use of green crops preferable in ordinary cultivation? Name some other valuable manures.] Although green crops are of great benefit, and are managed with little labor, there is no doubt but the same results may be more economically produced. A few loads of prepared muck will do more towards increasing the organic matter in the soil, than a very heavy crop of clover, while it would be ready for immediate cultivation, instead of having to lie idle during the year required in the production and decomposition of the green crop. The effect of the roots penetrating the subsoil is, as we have seen, to draw up inorganic matter, to be deposited within reach of the roots of future crops. In the next section we shall show that this end may be much more efficiently attained by the use of the sub-soil plow, which makes a passage for the roots into the subsoil, where they can obtain for themselves what would, in the other case, be brought up for them by the roots of the green crop. The offices of the hollow straws may be performed by a system of ridging and back furrowing, having previously covered the soil with leaves, or other refuse organic material. In _high farming_, where the object of the cultivator is to make a profitable investment of labor, these last named methods will be found most expedient; but, if the farmer have a large quantity of land, and can afford but a limited amount of labor, the raising of green crops, to be plowed under in the fall, will probably be adopted. Before closing this chapter, it may be well to remark that there are various other fertilizers, such as the _ammoniacal liquor of gas-houses_, _soapers' wastes_, _bleachers' lye_, _lees of old oil casks, etc._, which we have not space to consider at length, but which are all valuable as additions to the compost heap, or as applications, in a liquid form, to the soil. [What are the advantages arising from burying manure in its green state? Which is generally preferable, this course, or composting? Why?] In many cases (when heavy manuring is practised), it may be well to apply organic manures to the soil in a green state, turn them under, and allow them to undergo decomposition in the ground. The advantages of this system are, that the _heat_, resulting from the chemical changes, will hasten the growth of plants, by making the soil warmer; the carbonic acid formed will be presented to the roots instead of escaping into the atmosphere; and if the soil be heavy, the rising of the gases will tend to loosen it, and the leaving vacant of the spaces occupied by the solid matters will, on their being resolved into gases, render the soil of a more porous character. As a general rule, however, in ordinary farming, where the amount of manure applied is only sufficient for the supply of food to the crop, it is undoubtedly better to have it previously decomposed--_cooked_ as it were, for the uses of the plants--as they can then obtain the required amount of nutriment as fast as needed. ABSORPTION OF MOISTURE. It is often convenient to know the relative power of different manures to absorb moisture from the atmosphere, especially when we wish to manure lands that suffer from drought. The following results are given by C. W. Johnson, in his essay on salt, (pp. 8 and 19). In these experiments the animal manures were employed without any admixture of straw. PARTS 1000 parts of horse dung, dried in a temperature of 100°, absorbed by exposure for three hours, to air saturated with moisture, of the temperature of 62° 145 1000 parts of cow dung, under the same circumstances, absorbed 130 1000 parts pig dung 120 1000 " sheep " 81 1000 " pigeon " 50 1000 " rich alluvial soil 14 1000 " fresh tanner's bark 115 1000 " putrified " 145 1000 " refuse marine salt sold as manure 49½ 1000 " soot 36 1000 " burnt clay 29 1000 " coal ashes 14 1000 " lime 11 1000 " sediment from salt pans 10 1000 " crushed rock salt 10 1000 " gypsum 9 1000 " salt 4[AE] Muck is a most excellent absorbent of moisture, when thoroughly decomposed. DISTRIBUTION OF MANURES. The following table from Johnson, on manures, will be found convenient in the distribution of manures. By its assistance the farmer will know how many loads of manure he requires, dividing each load into a stated number of heaps, and placing them at certain distances. In this manner manure may be applied evenly, and calculation may be made as to the amount, per acre, which a certain quantity will supply.[AF] ----------+----------------------------------------------------------- DISTANCE | OF | THE HEAPS.| NUMBER OF HEAPS IN A LOAD. ----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 ----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- 3 yards. | 538 | 269 | 179 | 134 | 108 | 89½| 77 | 67 | 60 | 54 3½ do. | 395 | 168 | 132 | 99 | 79 | 66 | 56½| 49½| 44 | 39½ 4 do. | 303 | 151 | 101 | 75½| 60½| 50½| 43¼| 37¾| 33½| 30¼ 4½ do. | 239 | 120 | 79½| 60 | 47¾| 39¾| 34¼| 30 | 26½| 24 5 do. | 194 | 97 | 64½| 48½| 38¾| 32¼| 27¾| 24¼| 21½| 19¼ 5½ do. | 160 | 80 | 53½| 40 | 32 | 26¾| 22¾| 20 | 17¾| 16 6 do. | 131 | 67 | 44¾| 33½| 27 | 22½| 19¼| 16¾| 15 | 13½ 6½ do. | 115 | 57½| 38¼| 28¾| 23 | 19 | 16¼| 14¼| 12¾| 11½ 7 do. | 99 | 49½| 33 | 24¾| 19¾| 16½| 14 | 12¼| 11 | 10 7½ do. | 86 | 43 | 28¾| 21½| 17¼| 14¼| 12¼| 10¾| 9½| 8½ 8 do. | 75½| 37¾| 25¼| 19 | 15¾| 12½| 10¾| 9½| 8½| 7½ 8½ do. | 67 | 33½| 22¼| 16¾| 13½| 11¼| 9½| 8½| 7½| 6¾ 9 do. | 60 | 30 | 20 | 15 | 12 | 10 | 8½| 7¾| 6¾| 6 9½ do. | 53½| 26¾| 18 | 13½| 10¾| 9 | 7¾| 6¾| 6 | 5¼ 10 do. | 48½| 24¼| 16¼| 12 | 9¾| 8 | 7 | 6 | 5½| 4¾ ----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- _Example 1._--Required, the number of loads necessary to manure an acre of ground, dividing each load into six heaps, and placing them at a distance of 4½ yards from each other? The answer by the table is 39¾. _Example 2._--A farmer has a field containing 5½ acres, over which he wishes to spread 82 loads of dung. Now 82 divided by 5½, gives 15 loads per acre; and by referring to the table, it will be seen that the desired object may be accomplished, by making 4 heaps of a load, and placing them 9 yards apart, or by 9 heaps at 6 yards, as may be thought advisable. FOOTNOTES: [AC] Under some circumstances, _nitric acid_ is formed, which is equally beneficial to vegetable growth. [AD] See the glossary at the end of the book. [AE] Working Farmer, vol. 1, p. 55. [AF] It is not necessary that this and the foregoing table should be learned by the scholar, but they will be found valuable for reference by the farmer. CHAPTER VIII. MINERAL MANURES. [How many kinds of action have inorganic manures? What is the first of these? The second? Third? Fourth? Do all mineral manures possess all of these qualities?] The second class of manures named in the general division of the subject, in the early part of this chapter, comprises those of a mineral character, or _inorganic_ manures. These manures have four kinds of action when applied to the soil. 1st. They furnish food for the inorganic part of plants. 2d. They prepare matters already in the soil, for assimilation by roots. 3d. They improve the mechanical condition of the soil. 4th. They absorb ammonia. Some of the mineral manures produce in the soil only one of these effects, and others are efficient in two or all of them. The principles to be considered in the use of mineral manures are essentially given in the first two sections of this book. It may be well, however, to repeat them briefly in this connection, and to give the _reasons_ why any of these manures are needed, from which we may learn what rules are to be observed in their application. [Relate what you know of the properties of vegetable ashes? How does this relate to the fertility of the soil? According to what two rules may we apply mineral manures? What course would you pursue to raise potatoes on a soil containing a very little phosphoric acid and no potash?] 1st. Those which are used as food by plants. It will be recollected that the _ash_ left after burning plants, and which formed a part of their structures, has a certain chemical composition; that is, it consists of alkalies, acids, and neutrals. It was also stated that the ashes of plants of the same kind are always of about the same composition, while the ashes of different kinds of plants may vary materially. Different parts of the same plant too, as we learned, are supplied with different kinds of ash. For instance, _clover_, on being burned, leaves an ash containing _lime_, as one of its principal ingredients, while the ash of _potatoes_ contains more of _potash_ than of any thing else. In the second section (on soils), we learned that some soils contain every thing necessary to make the ashes of all plants, and in sufficient quantity to supply what is required, while other soils are either entirely deficient in one or more ingredients, or contain so little of them that they are unfertile for certain plants. [Would you manure it in the same way for wheat? Why?] From this, we see that we may pursue either one of two courses. After we know the exact composition of the soil--which we can learn only from correct analysis--we may manure it with a view either to making it fertile for all kinds of plants or only for one particular plant. For instance, we may find that a soil contains a very little phosphoric acid, and no potash. If we wish to raise potatoes on such a soil, we have only to apply potash (if the soil is good in other particulars), which is largely required by this plant, though it needs but little phosphoric acid; while, if we wish to make it fertile for wheat, and all other plants, we must apply more phosphoric acid as well as potash. As a universal rule, it may be stated that to render a soil fertile for any particular plant, we must supply it (unless it already contains them) with those matters which are necessary to _make_ the ash of that plant; and, if we would render it capable of producing _all_ kinds of plants, it must be furnished with the materials required in the formation of _all kinds of vegetable ashes_. It is not absolutely necessary to have the soil analyzed before it can be cultivated with success, but it is the _cheapest_ way. [How is the fertility of the soil to be maintained, if the crops are _sold_? What rule is given for general treatment? Give an instance of matters in the soil that are to be rendered available by mineral manures?] We might proceed from an analysis of the plant required (which will be found in Section V.), and apply to the soil in the form of manure every thing that is necessary for the formation of the ash of that plant. This would give a good crop on _any_ soil that was in the proper _mechanical_ condition, and contained enough organic matter; but a moment's reflection will show that, if the soil contained a large amount of potash, or of phosphate of lime, it would not be necessary to make an application of more of these ingredients--at an expense of perhaps three times the cost of an analysis. It is true that, if the crop is _sold_, and it is desired to maintain the fertility of the soil, the full amount of the ash must be applied, either before or after the crop is grown; but, in the ordinary use of crops for feeding purposes, a large part of the ash will exist in the excrements of the animals; so that the judicious farmer will be able to manure his land with more economy than if he had to apply to each crop the whole amount and variety required for its ash. The best rule for practical manuring is probably to _strengthen the soil in its weaker points, and prevent the stronger ones from becoming weaker_. In this way, the soil may be raised to the highest state of fertility, and be fully maintained in its productive powers. 2d. Those manures which render available matter already contained in the soil. [How may silica be developed? How does lime affect soils containing coarse particles? How do mineral manures sometimes improve the mechanical texture of the soil?] Silica (or sand), it will be recollected, exists in all soils; but, in its pure state, is not capable of being dissolved, and therefore cannot be used by plants. The alkalies (as has been stated), have the power of combining with this silica, making compounds, which are called _silicates_. These are readily dissolved by water, and are available in vegetable growth. Now, if a soil is deficient in these soluble silicates, it is well known that grain, etc., grown on it, not being able to obtain the material which gives them strength, will fall down or _lodge_; but, if such measures be taken, as will render the sand soluble, the straw will be strong and healthy. Alkalies used for this purpose, come under the head of those manures which develope the natural resources of the soil. Again, much of the mineral matter in the soil is combined within particles, and is therefore out of the reach of roots. Lime, among other thing, has the effect of causing these particles to crumble and expose their constituents to the demand of roots. Therefore, lime has for one of its offices the development of the fertilizing ingredients of the soil. 3d. Those manures which improve the mechanical condition of the soil. The alkalies, in combining with sand, commence their action on the surfaces of the particles, and roughen them--_rust_ them as it were. This roughening of particles of the soil prevents them from moving among each other as easily as they do when they are smooth, and thus keeps the soil from being compacted by heavy rains, as it is liable to be in its natural condition. In this way, the mechanical texture of the soil is improved. It has just been said that _lime_ causes the pulverization of the particles of the soil; and thus, by making it finer, improves its mechanical condition. Some mineral manures, as plaster and salt, have the power of absorbing moisture from the atmosphere; and this is a mechanical improvement to dry soils. [Name some mineral manures which absorb ammonia?] 4th. Those mineral manures which have the power of absorbing ammonia. _Plaster_, _chloride of lime_, _alumina_ (_clay_), etc., are large absorbents of ammonia, whether arising from the fermentation of animal manures or washed down from the atmosphere by rains. The ammonia thus absorbed is of course very important in the vegetation of crops. Having now explained the reasons why mineral manures are necessary, and the manner in which they produce their effects, we will proceed to examine the various deficiencies of soils and the character of many kinds of this class of fertilizers. CHAPTER IX. DEFICIENCIES OF SOILS, MEANS OF RESTORATION, ETC. As will be seen by referring to the analyses of soils on p. 72, they may be deficient in certain ingredients, which it is the object of mineral manures to supply. These we will take up in order, and endeavor to show in a simple manner the best means of managing them in practical farming. ALKALIES. POTASH. [Do all soils contain a sufficient amount of potash? How may its deficiency have been caused? How may its absence be detected? Does barn-yard manure contain sufficient potash to supply its deficiency in worn-out soils?] _Potash_ is often deficient in the soil. Its deficiency may have been caused in two ways. Either it may not have existed largely in the rock from which the soil was formed, and consequently is equally absent from the soil itself, or it may have once been present in sufficient quantities, and been carried away in crops, without being returned to the soil in the form of manure until too little remains for the requirements of fertility. In either case, its absence may be accurately detected by a skilful chemist, and it may be supplied by the farmer in various ways. Potash, as well as all of the other mineral manures, is contained in the excrements of animals, but not (as is also the case with the others) in sufficient quantities to restore the proper balance to soils where it is largely deficient, nor even to make up for what is yearly removed with each crop, except that crop (or its equivalent) has been fed to such animals as return _all_ of the fertilizing constituents of their food in the form of manure, and this be all carefully preserved and applied to the soil. In all other cases, it is necessary to apply more potash than is contained in the excrements of animals. [What is generally the most available source from which to obtain this alkali? Will leached ashes answer the same purpose? How may ashes be used?] _Unleached wood ashes_ is generally the most available source from which to obtain this alkali. The ashes of all kinds of wood contain potash (more or less according to the kind--see analysis section V.) If the ashes are _leached_, the potash is removed; and, hence for the purpose of supplying it, they are worthless; but _unleached_ ashes are an excellent source from which to obtain it. They may be made into compost with muck, as directed in a previous chapter, or applied directly to the soil. In either case the potash is available directly to the plant, or is capable of uniting with the silica in the soil to form silicate of potash. Neither potash nor any other alkali should ever be applied to animal manures unless in compost with an absorbent, as they cause the ammonia to be thrown off and lost. [From what other sources may potash be obtained? How may we obtain soda? In what quantities should pure salt be applied to the soil?] _Potash sparlings_, or the refuse of potash warehouses, is an excellent manure for lands deficient in this constituent. _Potash marl_, such as is found in New Jersey, contains a large proportion of potash, and is an excellent application to soils requiring it. _Feldspar_, _kaolin_, and other minerals containing potash, are, in some localities, to be obtained in sufficient quantities to be used for manurial purposes. _Granite_ contains potash, and if it can be crushed (as is the case with some of the softer kinds,) it serves a very good purpose. SODA. [If applied in large quantities will it produce permanent injury? In what quantities should salt be applied to composts? To asparagus?] _Soda_, the requirement of which is occasioned by the same causes as create a deficiency of potash, and all of the other ingredients of vegetable ashes, may be very readily supplied by the use of _common salt_ (chloride of sodium), which consists of about one half sodium (the base of soda). The best way to use salt is in the lime and salt mixture, previously described, or as a direct application to the soil. If too much salt be given to the soil it will kill any plant. In small quantities, however, it is highly beneficial, and if _six bushels per acre_ be sown broadcast over the land, to be carried in by rains and dews, it will not only destroy many insects (grubs, worms, etc.), but will, after decomposing and becoming chlorine and soda, prove an excellent manure. Salt, even in quantities large enough to denude the soil of all vegetation, is never _permanently_ injurious. After the first year, it becomes resolved into its constituents, and furnishes chlorine and soda to plants, without injuring them. One bushel of salt in each cord of compost will not only hasten the decomposition of the manures, but will kill all seeds and grubs--a very desirable effect. While small quantities of salt in a compost heap are beneficial, too much (as when applied to the soil) is positively injurious, as it arrests decomposition; fairly _pickles_ the manures, and prevents them from rotting. [What is generally the best way to use salt? What is nitrate of soda? What plants contain lime?] For _asparagus_, which is a marine plant, salt is an excellent manure, and may be applied in almost unlimited quantities, _while the plants are growing_, if used after they have gone to top, it is injurious. Salt has been applied to asparagus beds in such quantities as to completely cover them, and with apparent benefit to the plants. Of course large doses of salt kill all weeds, and thus save labor and the injury to the asparagus roots, which would result from their removal by hoeing. Salt may be used advantageously in any of the foregoing manners, but should always be applied with care. For ordinary farm purposes, it is undoubtedly most profitable to use the salt with lime, and make it perform the double duty of assisting in the decomposition of vegetable matter, and fertilizing the soil. Soda unites with the silica in the soil, and forms the valuable _silicate of soda_. _Nitrate of soda_, or cubical nitre, which is found in South America, consists of soda and nitric acid. It furnishes both soda and nitrogen to plants, and is an excellent manure. LIME. The subject of _lime_ is one of most vital importance to the farmer; indeed, so varied are its modes of action and its effects, that some writers have given it credit for every thing good in the way of farming, and have gone so far as to say that _all_ permanent improvement of agriculture must depend on the use of lime. Although this is far in excess of the truth (as lime cannot plow, nor drain, nor supply any thing but _lime_ to the soil), its many beneficial effects demand for it the closest attention. [Do all soils contain enough lime for the use of plants? What amount is needed for this purpose? What is its first-named effect on the soil? Its second? Third? Fourth? Fifth? How are acids produced in the soil?] As food for plants, lime is of considerable importance. All plants contain lime--some of them in large quantities. It is an important constituent of straw, meadow hay, leaves of fruit trees, peas, beans, and turnips. It constitutes more than one third of the ash of red clover. Many soils contain lime enough for the use of plants, in others it is deficient, and must be supplied artificially before they can produce good crops of those plants of which lime is an important ingredient. The only way in which the exact quantity of lime in the soil can be ascertained is by chemical analysis. However, the amount required for the mere feeding plants is not large, (much less than one per cent.), but lime is often necessary for other purposes; and setting aside, for the present, its feeding action, we will examine its various effects on the mechanical and chemical condition of the soil. 1. It corrects acidity (sourness). 2. It hastens the decomposition of the organic matter in the soil. 3. It causes the mineral particles of the soil to crumble. 4. By producing the above effects, it prepares the constituents of the soil for assimilation by plants. 5. It is _said_ to exhaust the soil, but it does so in a very desirable manner, the injurious effects of which may be easily avoided. [How does lime correct them? How does it affect animal manures in the soil?] 1. The decomposition of organic matter in the soil, often produces acids which makes the land _sour_, and cause it to produce sorrel and other weeds, which interfere with the healthy growth of crops. Lime is an _alkali_, and if applied to soils suffering from sourness, it will unite with the acids, and neutralize them, so that they will no longer be injurious. 2. We have before stated that lime is a decomposing agent, and hastens the rotting of muck and other organic matter. It has the same effect on the organic parts of the soil, and causes them to be resolved into the gases and minerals of which they are formed. It has this effect, especially, on organic matters containing _nitrogen_, causing them to throw off ammonia; consequently, it liberates this gas from the animal manures in the soil. 3. Various inorganic compounds in the soil are so affected by lime, that they lose their power of holding together, and crumble, or are reduced to finer particles, while some of their constituents are rendered soluble. One way in which this is accomplished is by the action of the lime on the silica contained in these compounds, forming the silicate of lime. This crumbling effect improves the mechanical as well as the chemical condition of the soil. 4. We are now enabled to see how lime prepares the constituents of the soil for the use of plants. [Inorganic compounds? How does lime prepare the constituents of the soil for use? What can you say of the remark that lime exhausts the organic matter in the soil?] By its action on the roots, buried stubble, and other organic matter in the soil, it causes them to be decomposed, and to give up many of their gaseous and inorganic constituents for the use of roots. In this manner the organic matter is prepared for use more rapidly than would be the case, if there were no lime present to hasten its decomposition. By the decomposing action of lime on the mineral parts of the soil (3), they also are placed more rapidly in a useful condition than would be the case, if their preparation depended on the slow action of atmospheric influences. Thus, we see that lime, aside from its use directly as food for plants, exerts a beneficial influence on both the organic and inorganic parts of the soil. 5. Many contend that lime _exhausts_ the soil. If we examine the manner in which it does so, we shall see that this is no argument against its use. [How can lime exhaust the mineral parts of the soil? Must the matter taken away be returned to the soil?] It exhausts the organic parts of the soil, by decomposing them, and resolving them into the gases and minerals of which they are composed. If the soil do not contain a sufficient quantity of absorbent matter, such as clay or charcoal, the gases arising from the organic matter are liable to escape; but when there is a sufficient amount of these substances present (as there always should be), these gases are all retained until required by the roots of plants. Hence, although the organic matter of manure and vegetable substances may be _altered in form_, by the use of lime, it can escape (except in very poor soils) only as it is taken up by roots to feed the crop, and such exhaustion is certainly profitable; still, in order that the fertility of the soil may be _maintained_, enough of organic manure should be applied, to make up for the amount taken from the soil by the crop, after liberation for its use by the action of the lime. This will be but a small proportion of the organic matter contained in the crop, as it obtains the larger part from the atmosphere. The only way in which lime can exhaust the inorganic part of the soil is, by altering its condition, so that plants can use it more readily. That is, it exposes it for solution in water. We have seen that fertilizing matter cannot be leached out of a good soil, in any material quantity, but can only be carried down to a depth of about thirty-four inches. Hence, we see that there can be no loss in this direction; and, as inorganic matter cannot evaporate from the soil, the only way in which it can escape is through the structure of plants. [If this course be pursued, will the soil suffer from the use of lime? Is it the lime, or its crop, that exhausts the soil? Is lime containing magnesia better than pure lime? What is the best kind of lime?] If lime is applied to the soil, and increases the amount of crops grown by furnishing a larger supply of inorganic matter, of course, the removal of inorganic substances from the soil will be more rapid than when only a small amount of crop is grown, and the soil will be sooner exhausted--not by the lime, but by the plants. In order to make up for this exhaustion, it is necessary that a sufficient amount of inorganic matter be supplied to compensate for the increased quantity taken away by plants. Thus we see, that it is hardly fair to accuse the _lime_ of exhausting the soil, when it only improves its character, and increases the amount of its yield. It is the _crop_ that takes away the fertility of the soil (the same as would be the case if no lime were used, only faster as the crop is larger), and in all judicious cultivation, this loss will be fully compensated by the application of manures, thereby preventing the exhaustion of the soil. [Is the purchase of marl to be recommended? How is lime prepared for use? (Note.) Describe the burning and slaking of lime.] _Kind of lime to be used._ The first consideration in procuring lime for manuring land, is to select that which contains but little, if any _magnesia_. Nearly all stone lime contains more or less of this, but some kinds contain more than others. When magnesia is applied to the soil, in too large quantities, it is positively injurious to plants, and great care is necessary in making selection. As a general rule, it may be stated, that the best plastering lime makes the best manure. Such kinds only should be used as are known from experiment not to be injurious. _Shell lime_ is undoubtedly the best of all, for it contains no magnesia, and it does contain a small quantity of _phosphate of lime_. In the vicinity of the sea-coast, and near the lines of railroads, oyster shells, clam shells, etc., can be cheaply procured. These may be prepared for use in the same manner as stone lime.[AG] _The preparation of the lime_ is done by first burning and then slaking, or by putting it directly on the land, in an unslaked condition, after its having been burned. Shells are sometimes _ground_, and used without burning; this is hardly advisable, as they cannot be made so fine as by burning and slaking. As was stated in the first section of this book, lime usually exists in nature, in the form of carbonate of lime, as limestone, chalk, or marble (being lime and carbonic acid combined), and when this is burned, the carbonic acid is thrown off, leaving the lime in a pure or caustic form. This is called burned lime, quick-lime, lime shells, hot lime, etc. If the proper quantity of water be poured on it, it is immediately taken up by the lime, which falls into a dry powder, called _slaked lime_. If _quick-lime_ were left exposed to the weather, it would absorb moisture from the atmosphere, and become what is termed _air slaked_. [What is air slaking? If slaked lime be exposed to the air, what change does it undergo? What is the object of slaking lime? How much carbonic acid is contained in a ton of carbonate of lime? How much lime does a ton of slaked lime contain? What is the most economical form for transportation?] When _slaked lime_ (consisting of lime and water) is exposed to the atmosphere, it absorbs carbonic acid, and becomes carbonate of lime again; but it is now in the form of a very fine powder, and is much more useful than when in the stone. If quick-lime is applied directly to the soil, it absorbs first moisture, and then carbonic acid, becoming finally a powdered carbonate of lime. One ton of _carbonate of lime_ contains 11¼ cwt. of lime; the remainder is carbonic acid. One ton of _slaked lime_ contains about 15 cwt. of lime; the remainder is water. Hence we see that lime should be burned, and not slaked, before being transported, as it would be unprofitable to transport the large quantity of carbonic acid and water contained in carbonate of lime and slaked lime. The quick-lime may be slaked, and carbonated after reaching its destination, either before or after being applied to the land. [What is the best form for immediate action on the inorganic matter in the soil? For most other purposes?] As has been before stated, much is gained by slaking lime with _salt water_, thus imitating the lime and salt mixture. Indeed in many cases, it will be found profitable to use all lime in this way. Where a direct action on the inorganic matters contained in the soil is desired, it may be well to apply the lime directly in the form of quick-lime; but, where the decomposition of the vegetable and animal constituents of the soil is desired, the correction of _sourness_, or the supplying of lime to the crop, the mixture with salt would be advisable. _The amount of lime_ required _by plants_ is, as was before observed, usually small compared with the whole amount contained in the soil; still it is not unimportant. OF LIME. 25 bus. of wheat contain about 13 lbs. 25 " barley " 10½ " 25 " oats " 11 " 2 tons of turnips " 12 " 2 " potatoes " 5 " 2 " red clover " 77 " 2 " rye grass " 30 "[AH] [What is the best guide concerning the quantity of lime to be applied? What is said of the sinking of lime in the soil? What is plaster of Paris composed of? Why is it called plaster of Paris?] The amount of lime required at each application, and the frequency of those applications, must depend on the chemical and mechanical condition of the soil. No exact rule can be given, but probably the custom of each district--regulated by long experience--is the best guide. _Lime sinks in the soil_; and therefore, when used alone, should always be applied as a top dressing to be carried into the soil by rains. The tendency of lime to settle is so great that, when cutting drains, it may often be observed in a whitish streak on the top of the subsoil. After heavy doses of lime have been given to the soil, and have settled so as to have apparently ceased from their action, they may be brought up and mixed with the soil by deeper plowing. _Lime should never be mixed with animal manures_, unless in compost with muck, or some other good absorbent, as it is liable to cause the escape of their ammonia. PLASTER OF PARIS. _Plaster of Paris or Gypsum_ (sulphate of lime) is composed of sulphuric acid and lime in combination. It is called 'plaster of Paris,' because it constitutes the rock underlying the city of Paris. [Is it a constituent of plants? What else does it furnish them? How does it affect manure? How does it produce sorrel in the soil? How may the acidity be overcome?] It is a constituent of many plants. It also furnishes them with sulphur--a constituent of the sulphuric acid which it contains. It is an excellent absorbent of ammonia, and is very useful to sprinkle around stables, poultry houses, pig-styes, and privies, where it absorbs the escaping gases, saving them for the use of plants, and purifying the air, thus rendering stables, etc., more healthy than when not so supplied. It has been observed that the extravagant use of plaster sometimes induces the growth of _sorrel_. This is probably the case only where the soil is deficient in lime. In such instances, the lime required by plants is obtained by the decomposition of the plaster. The lime enters into the construction of the plant, and the sulphuric acid remains _free_, rendering the soil _sour_, and therefore in condition to produce sorrel. In such a case, an application of _lime_ will correct the acid by uniting with it and converting it into _plaster_. CHLORIDE OF LIME. [What does chloride of lime supply to plants? How does it affect manures? How may it be used? How may magnesia be supplied, when wanting? What care is necessary concerning the use of magnesia?] _Chloride of lime_ is a compound of _lime and chlorine_. It furnishes both of these constituents to plants, and it is an excellent absorbent of ammonia and other gases arising from decomposition--hence its usefulness in destroying bad odors, and in preserving fertilizing matters for the use of crops. It may be used like plaster, or in the decomposition of organic matters, where it not only hastens decay, but absorbs and retains the escaping gases. It will be recollected that _chloride of lime_ is one of the products of the _lime and salt mixture_. _Lime_ in combination with _phosphoric acid_ forms the valuable _phosphate of lime_, of which so large a portion of the ash of grain, and the bones of animals, is formed. This will be spoken of more at length under the head of 'phosphoric acid.' MAGNESIA. Magnesia is a constituent of vegetable ashes, and is almost always present in the soil in sufficient quantities. When analysis indicates that it is needed, it may be applied in the form of _magnesian lime_, or _refuse epsom salts_, which are composed of sulphuric acid and magnesia (sulphate of magnesia). The great care necessary concerning the use of magnesia is, not to apply too much of it, it being, when in excess, as has been previously remarked, injurious to the fertility of the soil. Some soils are hopelessly barren from the fact that they contain too much magnesia. ACIDS. SULPHURIC ACID. [What is sulphuric acid commonly called? How may it be used? How does it prevent the escape of ammonia?] _Sulphuric acid_ is a very important constituent of vegetable ashes, especially of oats and the root-crops. It is often deficient in the soil, particularly where potatoes have been long cultivated. One of the reasons why _plaster_ (sulphate of lime) is so beneficial to the potato crop is undoubtedly that it supplies it with sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid is commonly known by the name of _oil vitriol_, and may be purchased for agricultural purposes at a low price. It may be used in a very dilute form (weakened by mixing it with a large quantity of water) to the compost heap, where it will change the ammonia to a sulphate as soon as formed, and thus prevent its loss, as the sulphate of ammonia is not volatile; and, being soluble in water, is useful to plants. Some idea of the value of this compound may be formed from the fact that manufacturers of manures are willing to pay seven cents per lb., or even more, for sulphate of ammonia, to insure the success of their fertilizers. Notwithstanding this, many farmers persist in throwing away hundreds of pounds of _ammonia_ every year, as a tax for their ignorance (or indolence), while a small tax in _money_--not more valuable, nor more necessary to their success--for the support of common schools, and the better education of the young, is too often unwillingly paid. [What is the effect of using too much sulphuric acid?] If a tumbler full of sulphuric acid (costing a few cents), be thrown into the tank of the compost heap once a month, the benefit to the manure would be very great. Where a deficiency of sulphuric acid in the soil is indicated by analysis, it may be supplied in this way, or by the use of plaster or refuse epsom salts. Care is necessary that _too much_ sulphuric acid be not used, as it would prevent the proper decomposition of manures, and would induce a growth of sorrel in the soil by making it _sour_. In many instances, it will be found profitable to use sulphuric acid in the manufacture of super-phosphate of lime (as directed under the head of 'phosphoric acid,') thus making it perform the double purpose of preparing an available form of phosphate, and of supplying sulphur and sulphuric acid to the plant. PHOSPHORIC ACID. [How large a part of the ashes of grain consists of phosphoric acid? Of what other substances does it form a leading ingredient? How many pounds of sulphuric acid are contained in one hundred bushels of wheat?] We come now to the consideration of one of the most important of all subjects connected with agriculture, that is, _phosphoric acid_. _Phosphoric acid_, forming about one half of the ashes of wheat, rye, corn, buckwheat, and oats; nearly the same proportion of those of barley, peas, beans and linseed; an important ingredient of the ashes of potatoes and turnips; one quarter of the ash of milk and a large proportion of the bones of animals, often exists in the soil in the proportion of only about one or two pounds in a thousand. The cultivation of our whole country has been such, as to take away the phosphoric acid from the soil without returning it, except in very minute quantities. Every hundred bushels of wheat sold contains (and removes permanently from the soil) about _sixty pounds_ of phosphoric acid. Other grains, as well as the root crops and grasses, remove likewise a large quantity of it. It has been said by a contemporary writer, that for each cow kept on a pasture through the summer, there is carried off in veal, butter and cheese, not less than _fifty_ lbs. of phosphate of lime (bone-earth) on an average. This would be _one thousand lbs._ for twenty cows; and it shows clearly why old dairy pastures become so exhausted of this substance, that they will no longer produce those nutritious grasses, which are favorable to butter and cheese-making. [How much phosphate of lime will twenty cows remove from a pasture during a summer? What has this removal of phosphate of lime occasioned? How have the Genesee and Mohawk valleys been affected by this removal of phosphoric acid?] That this removal of the most valuable constituent of the soil, has been the cause of more exhaustion of farms, and more emigration, in search of fertile districts, than any other single effect of injudicious farming, is a fact which multiplied instances most clearly prove. It is stated that the Genesee and Mohawk valleys, which once produced an average of _thirty-five_ or _forty bushels_ of wheat, per acre, have since been reduced in their average production to _twelve and a half_ bushels. Hundreds of similar cases might be stated; and in a large majority of these, could the cause of the impoverishment be ascertained, it would be found to be the removal of the phosphoric acid from the soil. [How may this devastation be arrested? Is any soil inexhaustible? What is usually the best source from which to obtain phosphoric acid?] The evident tendency of cultivation being to continue this murderous system, and to prey upon the vital strength of the country, it is necessary to take such measures as will arrest the outflow of this valuable material. This can never be fully accomplished until laws shall be made preventing the wastes of cities and towns. Such laws have existed for a long time in China, and have doubtlessly been the secret of the long subsistence and present prosperity of the millions of people inhabiting that country. We have, nevertheless, a means of restoring to fertility many of our worn-out lands, and preserving our fertile fields from so rapid impoverishment as they are now suffering. Many suppose that soils which produce good crops, year after year, are inexhaustible, but time will prove to the contrary. They may possess a sufficiently large stock of phosphoric acid, and other constituents of plants, to last a long time, but when that stock becomes so reduced, that there is not enough left for the uses of full crops, the productive power of the soil will yearly decrease, until it becomes worthless. It may last a long time, a century, or even more, but as long as the system is--to _remove every thing, and return nothing_,--the fate of the most fertile soil is evident. The source mentioned, from which to obtain phosphoric acid, is the bones of animals. These contain large quantities of _phosphate of lime_. They are the receptacles which collect nearly all of the phosphates in crops, which are fed to animals, and are not returned in their excrements. For the grain, etc., sent out of the country, there is no way to be repaid except by the importation of this material; but, all that is fed to animals, or to human beings, may, if a proper use be made of their excrement, and of their bones after death, be returned to the soil. With the treatment of animal excrements we are already familiar, and we will now turn our attention to the subject of BONES. [Of what do dried bones consist? What is the organic matter of bones? The inorganic? What can you say of the use of whole bones?] _Bones_ consist, when dried, of about one third organic matter, and two thirds inorganic matter. The organic matter consists chiefly of _gelatine_--a compound containing _nitrogen_. The inorganic part is chiefly _phosphate of lime_. Hence, we see that bones are excellent, as both organic and mineral manure. The organic part, containing nitrogen, forms _ammonia_, and the inorganic part supplies the much needed _phosphoric acid_ to the soil. Liebig says that, as a producer of ammonia, 100 lbs. of dry bones are equivalent to 250 lbs. of human urine. [How does the value of bone dust compare with that of broken bones? What is the reason of the superiority of bone dust? How is bone-black made? Of what does it consist?] Bones are applied to the soil in almost every conceivable form. _Whole bones_ are often used in very large quantities; their action, however, is extremely slow, and it is never advisable to use bones in this form. Ten bushels of bones, finely ground, will produce larger results, during the current ten years after application, than would ensue from the use of one hundred bushels merely broken, not because the dust contains more fertilizing matter than the whole bones, but because that which it does contain is in a much more available condition. It ferments readily, and produces ammonia, while the ashy parts are exposed to the action of roots. [Should farmers burn bones before using them? How would you compost bones with ashes? In what way would you prevent the escape of ammonia?] _Bone-black._ If bones are burned in retorts, or otherwise protected from the atmosphere, their organic matter will all be driven off, except the carbon, which not being supplied with oxygen cannot escape. In this form bones are called _ivory black_, or _bone-black_. It consists of the inorganic matter, and the carbon of the bones. The nitrogen having been expelled it can make no ammonia, and thus far the original value of bones is reduced by burning; that is, one ton of bones contains more fertilizing matter before, than after burning; but one ton of bone black is more valuable than one ton of raw bones, as the carbon is retained in a good form to act as an absorbent in the soil, while the whole may be crushed or ground much more easily than before being burned. This means of pulverizing bones is adopted by manufacturers, who replace the ammonia in the form of guano, or otherwise; but it is not to be recommended for the use of farmers, who should not lose the ammonia, forming a part of bones, more than that of other manure. _Composting bones with ashes_ is a good means of securing their decomposition. They should be placed in a water-tight vessel (such as a cask); first, three or four inches of bones, then the same quantity of strong unleached wood ashes, continuing these alternate layers until the cask is full, and keeping them _always wet_. If they become too dry they will throw off an offensive odor, accompanied by the escape of ammonia, and consequent loss of value. In about one year, the whole mass of bones (except, perhaps, those at the top) will be softened, so that they may be easily crushed, and they are in a good condition for manuring. The ashes are, in themselves, valuable, and this compost is excellent for many crops, particularly for Indian corn. A little dilute sulphuric acid, occasionally sprinkled on the upper part of the matter in the cask, will prevent the escape of the ammonia. [What is the effect of boiling bones under pressure? How is super-phosphate of lime made? Describe the composition of phosphate of lime, and the chemical changes which take place in altering it to super-phosphate of lime.] _Boiling bones under pressure_, whereby their gelatine is dissolved away, and the inorganic matter left in an available condition, from its softness, is a very good way of rendering them useful; but, as it requires, among other things, a steam boiler, it is hardly probable that it will be largely adopted by farmers of limited means. Any or all of these methods are good, but bones cannot be used with true economy, except by changing their inorganic matter into SUPER-PHOSPHATE OF LIME. _Super-phosphate of lime_ is made by treating phosphate of lime, or the ashes of bones, with _sulphuric acid_. Phosphate of lime, as it exists in bones, consists of one atom of phosphoric acid and three atoms of lime. It may be represented as { Lime Phosphoric acid { Lime { Lime By adding a proper quantity of sulphuric acid with this, it becomes _super_-phosphate of lime; that is, the same amount of phosphoric acid, with a smaller proportion of lime (or a _super_-abundance of phosphoric acid), the sulphuric acid, taking two atoms of lime away from the compound, combined with it making sulphate of lime (plaster). The changes may be thus represented. {Phosphoric acid} Super-phosphate Phosphate of lime {Lime } of lime. {Lime} {Lime} Sulphate of lime. Sulphuric acid} Super-phosphate of lime may be made from whole bones, bone dust, bone-black, or from the pure ashes of bones. [How should sulphuric acid be applied to whole bones? What is the necessity for so large an amount of water?] The process of making it from whole bones is slow and troublesome, as it requires a long time for the effect to diffuse itself through the whole mass of a large bone. When it is made in this way, the bones should be _dry_, and the acid should be diluted in many times its bulk of water, and should be applied to the bones (which may be placed in a suitable cask, with a spiggot at the bottom), in quantities sufficient to cover them, about once in ten days; and at the end of that time, one half of the liquid should be drawn off by the spiggot. This liquid is a solution of super-phosphate of lime, containing sulphate of lime, and may be applied to the soil in a liquid form, or through the medium of a compost heap. The object of using so much water is to prevent an incrustation of sulphate of lime on the surfaces of the bones, this must be removed by stirring the mass, which allows the next application of acid to act directly on the phosphate remaining. The amount of acid required is about 50 or 60 lbs. to each 100 lbs. of bones. The gelatine will remain after the phosphate is all dissolved, and may be composted with muck, or plowed under the soil, where it will form ammonia. [May less water be employed in making super-phosphate from bone dust or crushed bones?] _Bone dust_, or _crushed bones_, may be much more easily changed to the desired condition, as the surface exposed is much greater, and the acid can act more generally throughout the whole mass. The amount of acid required is the same as in the other case, but it may be used _stronger_, two or three times its bulk of water being sufficient, if the bones are finely ground or crushed--more or less water should be used according to the fineness of the bones. The time occupied will also be much less, and the result of the operation will be in better condition for manure. Bones may be made fine enough for this operation, either by grinding, etc., or by boiling under pressure, as previously described; indeed, by whatever method bones are pulverized, they should always be treated with sulphuric acid before being applied to the soil, as this will more than double their value for immediate use. Bone-black is chiefly used by manufacturers of super-phosphate of lime, who treat it with acid the same as has been directed above, only that they grind the black very finely before applying the acid. [What other forms of bones may be used in making super-phosphate of lime? Why is super-phosphate of lime a better fertilizer than phosphate of lime? What can you say of the _lasting manures_?] _Bone ashes_, or bones burned to whiteness, may be similarly treated. Indeed, in all of the forms of bones here described, the phosphate of lime remains unaltered, as it is indestructible by heat; the differences of composition are only in the admixture of organic constituents. _The reason why super-phosphate of lime is so much better than phosphate_, may be easily explained. The _phosphate_ is very _slowly_ soluble in water, and consequently furnishes food to plants slowly. A piece of bone as large as a pea may lie in the soil for years without being all consumed; consequently, it will be years before its value is returned, and it pays no interest on its cost while lying there. The _super-phosphate_ dissolves very _rapidly_ and furnishes food for plants with equal facility; hence its much greater value as a manure. It is true that the _phosphate_ is the most _lasting_ manure; but, once for all, let us caution farmers against considering this a virtue in mineral manures, or in organic manures either, when used on soils containing the proper absorbents of ammonia. They are _lasting_, only in proportion as they are _lazy_. Manures are worthless unless they are in condition to be immediately used. The farmer who wishes his manures to _last_ in the soil, and to lose their use, may be justly compared with the _miser_, who buries his gold and silver in the ground for the satisfaction of knowing that he owns it. It is an old and a true saying that "a nimble sixpence is better than a slow shilling." IMPROVED SUPER-PHOSPHATE OF LIME. [What are the ingredients of the _improved_ super-phosphate of lime?] To show the manner in which super-phosphate of lime is perfected, and rendered the best manure for general uses, which has yet been made, containing large quantities of phosphoric acid and a good supply of ammonia,--hereby covering the two leading deficiencies in a majority of soils, it may be well to explain the composition of the _improved super-phosphate of lime_ invented by Prof. Mapes. This manure consists of the following ingredients in the proportions named:-- 100 lbs. bone-black (phosphate of lime and carbon). 56 " sulphuric acid. 36 " guano. 20 " sulphate of ammonia. [Explain the uses of these different constituents. What is nitrogenized phosphate?] The sulphuric acid has the before-mentioned effect on the bone-black, and _fixes_ the ammonia of the guano by changing it to a sulphate. The twenty pounds of sulphate of ammonia added increase the amount, so as to furnish nitrogen to plants in sufficient quantities to give them energy, and induce them to take up the super-phosphate of lime in the manure more readily than would be done, were there not a sufficient supply of ammonia in the soil. The addition of the guano, which contains all of the elements of fertility, and many of them in considerable quantities, renders the manure of a more general character, and enables it to produce very large crops of almost any kind, while it assists in fortifying the soil in what is usually its weakest point--phosphoric acid. Prof. Mapes has more recently invented a new fertilizer called nitrogenized super-phosphate of lime, composed of the improved super-phosphate of lime and blood, dried and ground before mixture, in equal proportions. This manure, from its highly nitrogenous character, theoretically surpasses all others, and probably will be found in practice to have great value; its cost will be rather greater than guano. We understand its manufacture will shortly be commenced by a company now forming for that purpose. [What should be learned before purchasing amendments for the soil? What do you know of silica?] Many farmers will find it expedient to purchase bones, or bone dust, and manufacture their own super-phosphate of lime; others will prefer to purchase the prepared manure. In doing so, it should be obtained of men of known respectability, as manures are easily adulterated with worthless matters; and, as their price is so high, that such deception may occasion great loss. We would not recommend the application of any artificial manure, without first obtaining an analysis of the soil, and knowing _to a certainty_ that the manure is needed; still, when no analysis has been procured, it may be profitable to apply such manures as most generally produce good results--such as stable manure, night soil, the improved super-phosphate of lime; or, if this cannot be procured, guano. NEUTRALS. SILICA. _Silica_ (or sand) always exists in the soil in sufficient quantities for the supply of food for plants; but, as has been often stated in the preceding pages, not always in the proper condition. This subject has been so often explained to the student of this book, that it is only necessary to repeat here, that when the weakness of the straw or stalk of plants grown on any soil indicates an inability in that soil to supply the silicates required for strength, not more sand should be added, but _alkalies_, to combine with the sand already contained in it, and make _soluble silicates_ which are available to roots. Sand is often necessary to stiff clays, as a _mechanical_ manure, to loosen their texture and render them easier of cultivation, and more favorable to the distribution of roots, and to the circulation of air and water. CHLORINE. [How may chlorine be applied?] _Chlorine_, a necessary constituent of plants, and often deficient in the soil (as indicated by analysis), may be applied in the form of salt (chloride of sodium), or chloride of lime. The former may be dissolved in the water used to slake lime, and the latter may, with much advantage, be sprinkled around stables and other places where fertilizing gases are escaping, and, after being saturated with ammonia, applied to the soil, thus serving a double purpose. OXIDE OF IRON. [How may the protoxide of iron be changed to peroxide?] Nearly all soils contain sufficient quantities of _oxide of iron_, or iron rust, so that this substance can hardly be required as a manure. Some soils, however, contain the _prot_oxide of iron in such quantities as to be injurious to plants,--see page 86. When this is the case, it is necessary to plow the soil thoroughly, and use such other mechanical means as shall render it open to the admission of air. The _prot_oxide of iron will then take up more oxygen, and become the _per_oxide--which is not only inoffensive, but is absolutely necessary to fertility. OXIDE OF MANGANESE. This can hardly be called an essential constituent of plants, and is never taken into consideration in manuring lands. VARIOUS OTHER MINERAL MANURES. LEACHED ASHES. [Why are leached ashes inferior to those that have not been leached? On what do the benefits of leached ashes depend? Can these ingredients be more cheaply obtained in another form? Why do unleached ashes, applied in the spring, sometimes cause grain to lodge?] Among the mineral manures which have not yet been mentioned--not coming strictly under any of the preceding heads, is the one known as _leached ashes_. These are not without their benefits, though worth much less than unleached ashes, which, besides the constituents of those which have been leached, contain much potash, soda, etc. Farmers have generally overrated the value of leached ashes, because they contain small quantities of available phosphate of lime, and soluble silicates, in which most old soils are deficient. While we witness the good results ensuing from their application, we should not forget that the fertilizing ingredients of _thirty bushels_ of these ashes may be bought in a more convenient form for _ten_ or _fifteen cents_, or for less than the cost of spreading the ashes on the soil. In many parts of Long Island farmers pay as much as eight or ten cents per bushel for this manure, and thousands of loads of leached ashes are taken to this locality from the river counties of New York, and even from the State of Maine, and are sold for many times their value, producing an effect which could be as well and much more cheaply obtained by the use of small quantities of super-phosphate of lime and potash. These ashes often contain a little charcoal (resulting from the imperfect combustion of the wood), which acts as an absorbent of ammonia. It is sometimes observed that _unleached_ ashes, when applied in the spring, cause grain to lodge. When this is the case, as it seldom is, it may be inferred that the potash which they contain causes so rapid a growth, that the soil is not able to supply silicates as fast as they are required by the plants, but after the first year, the potash will have united with the silica in the soil, and overcome the difficulty. OLD MORTAR. [What are the most fertilizing ingredients of old mortar?] _Old mortar_ is a valuable manure, because it contains nitrate of potash and other compounds of nitric acid with alkalies. These are slowly formed in the mortar by the changing of the nitrogen of the hair (in the mortar) into nitric acid, and the union of this with the small quantities of _potash_, or with the _lime_ of the plaster. Nitrogen, presented in other forms, as ammonia, for instance, may be transformed into nitric acid, by uniting with the oxygen of the air, and this nitric acid combines immediately with the alkalies of the mortar.[AI] The lime contained in the mortar may be useful in the soil for the many purposes accomplished by other lime. GAS HOUSE LIME. [How may gas-house lime be prepared for use? Why should it not be used fresh, from the gas house? On what do its fertilizing properties depend? What use may be made of its offensive odor?] _The refuse lime of gas works_, where it can be cheaply obtained, may be advantageously used as a manure. It consists, chiefly, of various compounds of sulphur and lime. It should be composted with earth or refuse matter, so as to expose it to the action of air. It should never be used fresh from the gas house. In a few months the sulphur will have united with the oxygen of the air, and become sulphuric acid, which unites with the lime and makes sulphate of lime (plaster), which form it must assume, before it is of much value. Having been used to purify gas made from coal, it contains a small quantity of ammonia, which adds to its value. It is considered a profitable manure in England, at the price there paid for it (forty cents a cartload), and, if of good quality, it may be worth double that sum, especially for soils deficient in plaster, or for such crops as are much benefited by plaster. Its price must, of course, be regulated somewhat by the price of lime, which constitutes a large proportion of its fertilizing parts. The offensive odor of this compound renders it a good protection against many insects. The refuse _liquor of gas works_ contains enough ammonia to make it a valuable manure. SOAPERS' LEY AND BLEACHERS' LEY. [What use may be made of the refuse ley of soap-makers and bleachers? What peculiar qualities does soapers' ley possess?] The refuse ley of soap factories and bleaching establishments contains greater or less quantities of soluble silicates and alkalies (especially soda and potash), and is a good addition to the tank of the compost heap, or it may be used directly as a liquid application to the soil. The soapers' ley, especially, will be found a good manure for lands on which grain lodges. Much of the benefit of this manure arises from the soluble silicates it contains, while its nitrogenous matter,[AJ] obtained from those parts of the fatty matters which cannot be converted into soap, and consequently remains in this solution, forms a valuable addition. Heaps of soil saturated with this liquid in autumn, and subjected to the freezings of winter, form an admirable manure for spring use. Mr. Crane, near Newark (N. J.), has long used a mixture of spent ley and stable manure, applied in the fall to trenches plowed in the soil, and has been most successful in obtaining large crops. IRRIGATION. [On what does the benefit arising from irrigation chiefly depend? What kind of water is best for irrigation? How do under-drains increase the benefits of irrigation?] _Irrigation_ does not come strictly under the head of inorganic manures, as it often supplies ammonia to the soil. Its chief value, however, in most cases, must depend on the amount of mineral matter which it furnishes. The word "irrigation" means simply _watering_. In many districts water is in various ways made to overflow the land, and is removed when necessary for the purposes of cultivation. All river and spring water contains some impurities, many of which are beneficial to vegetation. These are derived from the earth over, or through which, the water has passed, and ammonia absorbed from the atmosphere. When water is made to cover the earth, especially if its rapid motion be arrested, much of this fertilizing matter settles, and is deposited on the soil. The water which sinks into the soil carries its impurities to be retained for the uses of plants. When, by the aid of under-drains, or in open soils, the water passes _through_ the soil, its impurities are arrested, and become available in vegetable growth. It is, of course, impossible to say exactly what kind of mineral matter is supplied by water, as that depends on the kind of rock or soil from which the impurities are derived; but, whatever it may be, it is generally soluble and ready for immediate use by plants. [What is the difference between water which only runs over the surface of the earth, and that which runs out of the earth? Why should strong currents of water not be allowed to traverse the soil?] Water which has run over the surface of the earth contains both ammonia and mineral matter, while that which has arisen out of the earth, contains usually only mineral matter. The direct use of the water of irrigation as a solvent for the mineral ingredients of the soil, is one of its main benefits. To describe the many modes of irrigation would be too long a task for our limited space. It may be applied in any way in which it is possible to cover the land with water, at stated times. Care is necessary, however, that it do not wash more fertilizing matter from the soil than it deposits on it, as would often be the case, if a strong current of water were run over it. Brooks may be dammed up, and thus made to cover a large quantity of land. In such a case the rapid current would be destroyed, and the fertilizing matter would settle; but, if the course of the brook were turned, so that it would run in a current over any part of the soil, it might carry away more than it deposited, and thus prove injurious. Small streams turned on to land, from the washing of roads, or from elevated springs, are good means of irrigation, and produce increased fertility, except where the soil is of such a character as to prevent the water from passing away, in which case it should be under-drained. Irrigation was one of the oldest means of fertility ever used by man, and still continues in great favor wherever its effects have been witnessed. MIXING SOILS. [How are soils improved by mixing?] The _mixing of soils_ is often all that is necessary to render them fertile, and to improve their _mechanical_ condition. For instance, soils deficient in potash, or any other constituent, may have that deficiency supplied, by mixing with them soil containing this constituent in excess. It is very frequently the case, that such means of improvement are easily availed of. While these chemical effects are being produced, there may be an equal improvement in the mechanical character of the soil. Thus stiff clay soils are rendered lighter, and more easily workable, by an admixture of sand, while light blowy sands are compacted, and made more retentive of manure, by a dressing of clay or of muck. [Why may the same effect sometimes be produced by deep plowing? What is absolutely necessary to economical manuring?] Of course, this cannot be depended on as a sure means of chemical improvement, unless the soils are previously analyzed, so as to know their requirements; but, in a majority of cases, the soil will be benefited, by mixing with it soil of a different character. It is not always necessary to go to other locations to procure the soil to be applied, as the subsoil is often very different from the surface soil, and simple deep plowing will suffice, in such cases, to produce the required admixture, by bringing up the earth from below to mingle it with that of a different character at the surface. * * * * * In the foregoing remarks on the subject of mineral manures, the writer has endeavored to point out such a course as would produce the "greatest good to the greatest number," and, consequently, has neglected much which might discourage the farmer with the idea, that the whole system of scientific agriculture is too expensive for his adoption. Still, while he has confined his remarks to the more simple improvements on the present system of management, he would say, briefly, that _no manuring can be strictly economical that is not based on an analysis of the soil, and a knowledge of the best means of overcoming the deficiencies indicated, together with the most scrupulous care of every ounce of evaporating or soluble manure_. FOOTNOTES: [AG] Marl is earth containing lime, but its use is not to be recommended in this country, except where it can be obtained at little cost, as the expenses of carting the _earth_ would often be more than the value of the _lime_. [AH] The straw producing the grain and the turnip and potato tops contain more lime than the grain and roots. [AI] See Working Farmer, vol. 2, p. 278. [AJ] Glycerine, etc. CHAPTER X. ATMOSPHERIC FERTILIZERS. [Are the gases in the atmosphere manures? What would be the result if they were not so?] It is not common to look on the gases in the atmosphere in the light of manures, but they are decidedly so. Indeed, they are almost the only organic manure ever received by the uncultivated parts of the earth, as well as a large portion of that which is occupied in the production of food for man. If these gases were not manures; if there were no means by which they could be used by plants, the fertility of the soil would long since have ceased, and the earth would now be in an unfertile condition. That this must be true, will be proved by a few moments' reflection on the facts stated in the first part of this book. The fertilizing gases in the atmosphere being composed of the constituents of decayed plants and animals, it is as necessary that they should be again returned to the form of organized matter, as it is that constituents taken from the _soil_ should not be put out of existence. AMMONIA. [How is ammonia used by plants? How may it be carried to the soil? How may the value of organic manures be estimated? What effects has ammonia beside supplying food to plants?] The _ammonia_ in the atmosphere probably cannot be appropriated by the leaves of plants, and must, therefore, enter the soil to be assimilated by roots. It reaches the soil in two ways. It is either arrested from the air circulating through the soil, or it is absorbed by rains in the atmosphere, and thus carried to the earth, where it is retained by clay and carbon, for the uses of plants. In the soil, ammonia is the most important of all organic manures. In fact, the value of organic manure may be estimated, either by the amount of ammonia which it will yield, or by its power of absorbing ammonia from other sources. The most important action of ammonia in the soil is the supply of _nitrogen_ to plants; but it has other offices which are of consequence. It assists in some of the chemical changes necessary to prepare the matters in the soil for assimilation. Some argue that ammonia _stimulates_ the roots of plants, and causes them to take up increased quantities of inorganic matter. The discussion of this question would be out of place here, and we will simply say, that it gives them such vigor that they require increased amounts of ashy matter, and enables them to take this from the soil. [To how great a degree can the farmer control atmospheric fertilizers? What should be the condition of the soil? What substances are good absorbents in the soil? How may sandy soils be made retentive of ammonia?] Although, in the course of nature, the atmospheric fertilizers are plentifully supplied to the soil, without the immediate attention of the farmer, it is not beyond his power to manage them in such a manner as to arrest a greater quantity. The precautions necessary have been repeatedly given in the preceding pages, but it may be well to name them again in this chapter. The condition of the soil is the main point to be considered. It must be such as to absorb and retain ammonia--to allow water to pass _through_ it, and be discharged _below_ the point to which the roots of crops are searching for food--and to admit of a free circulation of air. The power of absorbing and retaining ammonia is not possessed by sand, but it is a prominent property of clay, charcoal, and some other matters named as absorbents. Hence, if the soil consists of nearly pure sand, it will not make use of the ammonia brought to it from the atmosphere, but will allow it to evaporate immediately after a shower. Soils in this condition require additions of absorbent matters, to enable them to use the ammonia received from the atmosphere. Soils already containing a sufficient amount of clay or charcoal, are thus far prepared to receive benefit from this source. [Why does under-draining increase the absorptive power of the soil? How do plants obtain their carbonic acid? How does carbonic acid affect caustic lime in the soil?] The next point is to cause the water of rains to pass _through_ the soil. If it lies on the surface, or runs off without entering the soil, or even if it only enters to a slight depth, and comes in contact with but a small quantity of the absorbents, it is not probable that the fertilizing matters which it contains will all be abstracted. Some of them will undoubtedly return to the atmosphere on the evaporation of the water; but, if the soil contains a sufficient supply of absorbents, and will allow all rain water to pass through it, the fertilizing gases will all be retained. They will be filtered (or raked) out of the water. This subject will be more fully treated in Section IV. in connection with under-draining. Besides the properties just described, the soil must possess the power of admitting a free circulation of air. To effect this, it is necessary that the soil should be well pulverized to a great depth. If, in addition to this, the soil be such as to admit water to pass through, it will allow that circulation of air necessary to the greatest supply of ammonia. CARBONIC ACID. [What power does it give to water? What condition of the soil is necessary for the reception of the largest quantity of carbonic acid? May oxygen be considered a manure? What is the effect of the oxidation of the constituents of the soil?] Carbonic acid is received from the atmosphere, both by the leaves and roots of plants. If there is caustic lime in the soil, it unites with it, and makes it milder and finer. It is absorbed by the water in the soil, and gives it the power of dissolving many more substances than it would do without the carbonic acid. This use is one of very great importance, as it is equivalent to making the minerals themselves more soluble. Water dissolves carbonate of lime, etc., exactly in proportion to the amount of carbonic acid which it contains. We should, therefore, strive to have as much carbonic acid as possible in the water in the soil; and one way, in which to effect this, is to admit to the soil the largest possible quantity of atmospheric air which contains this gas. The condition of soil necessary for this, is the same as is required for the deposit of ammonia by the same circulation of air. OXYGEN. [How does it affect the protoxide of iron? How does it neutralize the acids in the soil? How does it affect its organic parts? How does it form nitric acid? How may it affect excrementitious matter of plants? What effect has it on the mechanical condition of the soil?] _Oxygen_, though not taken up by plants in its pure form, may justly be classed among manures, if we consider its effects both chemical and mechanical in the soil. 1. By oxidizing or _rusting_ some of the constituents of the soil, it prepares them for the uses of plants. 2. It unites with the _prot_oxide of iron, and changes it to the _per_oxide. 3. If there are _acids_ in the soil, which make it sour and unfertile, it may be opened to the circulation of the air, and the oxygen will prepare some of the mineral matters contained in the soil to unite with the acids and neutralize them. 4. Oxygen combines with the carbon of organic matters in the soil, and causes them to decay. The combination produces carbonic acid. 5. It combines with the nitrogen of decaying substances and forms _nitric acid_, which is serviceable as food for plants. 6. It undoubtedly affects in some way the matter which is thrown out from the roots of plants. This, if allowed to accumulate, and remain unchanged, is often very injurious to plants; but, probably, the oxygen and carbonic acid of the air in the soil change it to a form to be inoffensive, or even make it again useful to the plant. 7. It may also improve the _mechanical_ condition of the soil, as it causes its particles to crumble, thus making it finer; and it roughens the surfaces of particles, making them less easy to move among each other. These properties of oxygen claim for it a high place among the atmospheric fertilizers. WATER. [Why may water be considered an atmospheric manure? What classes of action have manures? What are chemical manures? Mechanical?] _Water_ may be considered an atmospheric manure, as its chief supply to vegetation is received from the air in the form of rain or dew. Its many effects are already too well known to need farther comment. The means of supplying water to the soil by the deposit of _dew_ will be fully explained in Section IV. CHAPTER XI. RECAPITULATION. Manures have two distinct classes of action in the soil, namely, _chemical_ and _mechanical_. _Chemical_ manures are those which enter into the construction of plants, or produce such chemical effects on matters in the soil as shall prepare them for use. _Mechanical_ manures are those which improve the mechanical condition of the soil, such as loosening stiff clays, compacting light sands, pulverizing large particles, etc. [What are the three kinds of manures? What are organic manures, and what are their uses? Mineral? Atmospheric?] Manures are of three distinct kinds, namely, _Organic_, _mineral_, and _atmospheric_. _Organic_ manures comprise all vegetable and animal matters (except ashes) which are used to fertilize the soil. Vegetable manures supply carbonic acid, and inorganic matter to plants. Animal manures supply the same substances and ammonia. _Mineral_ manures comprise ashes, salt, phosphate of lime, plaster, etc. They supply plants with inorganic matter. Their usefulness depends on their solubility. Many of the organic and mineral manures have the power of absorbing ammonia arising from the decomposition of animal manures, as well as that which is brought to the soil by rains--these are called absorbents. _Atmospheric_ manures consist of ammonia, carbonic acid, oxygen and water. Their greatest usefulness requires the soil to allow the water of rains to pass _through_ it, to admit of a free circulation of air among its particles, and to contain a sufficient amount of absorbent matter to arrest and retain all ammonia and carbonic acid presented to it. [What rule should regulate the application of manures? How must organic manures be managed? Atmospheric?] Manures should never be applied to the soil without regard to its requirements. Ammonia and carbon are almost always useful, but mineral manures become mere _dirt_ when applied to soils not deficient of them. The only true guide to the exact requirements of the soil is _chemical analysis_; and this must always be obtained before farming can be carried on with true economy. Organic manures must be protected against the escape of their ammonia and the leaching out of their soluble parts. One cord of stable manure properly preserved, is worth ten cords which have lost all of their ammonia by evaporation, and their soluble parts by leaching--as is the case with much of the manure kept exposed in open barn-yards. Atmospheric manures cost nothing, and are of great value when properly employed. In consequence of this, the soil which is enabled to make the largest appropriation of the atmospheric fertilizers, is worth many times as much as that which allows them to escape. SECTION FOURTH. MECHANICAL CULTIVATION. CHAPTER I. THE MECHANICAL CHARACTER OF SOILS. [What is the first office of the soil? How does it hold water for the uses of the plant? How does it obtain a part of its moisture?] The mechanical character of the soil is well understood from preceding remarks, and the learner knows that there are many offices to be performed by the soil aside from the feeding of plants. 1. It admits the roots of plants, and holds them in their position. 2. By a sponge-like action, it holds water for the uses of the plant. 3. It absorbs moisture from the atmosphere to supply the demands of plants. [How may it obtain heat? What is the use of the air circulating among its particles? Could most soils be brought to the highest state of fertility? What is the first thing to be done? Should its color be darkened?] 4. It absorbs heat from the sun's rays to assist in the process of growth. 5. It admits air to circulate among roots, and supply them with a part of their food, while the oxygen of that air renders available the minerals of the soil; and its carbonic acid, being absorbed by the water in the soil, gives it the power of dissolving, and carrying into roots more inorganic matter than would be contained in purer water. 6. It allows the excrementitious matter thrown out by roots to be carried out of their reach. All of these actions the soil must be capable of performing, before it can be in its highest state of fertility. There are comparatively few soils now in this condition, but there are also few which could not be profitably rendered so, by a judicious application of the modes of cultivation to be described in the following chapters. The three great objects to be accomplished are:-- 1. To adopt such a system of drainage as will cause all of the water of rains to pass _through_ the soil, instead of evaporating from the surface. 2. To pulverize the soil to a considerable depth. 3. To darken its color, and render it capable of absorbing atmospheric fertilizers. [Name some of the means used to secure these effects. Why are under-drains superior to open drains?] The means used to secure these effects are _under-draining, sub-soil and surface-plowing, digging, applying muck, etc._ CHAPTER II. UNDER-DRAINING. The advantages of _under_-drains over _open_ drains are very great. When open drains are used, much water passes into them immediately from the surface, and carries with it fertilizing parts of the soil, while their beds are often compacted by the running water and the heat of the sun, so that they become water-tight, and do not admit water from the lower parts of the soil. The sides of these drains are often covered with weeds, which spread their seeds throughout the whole field. Open drains are not only a great obstruction to the proper cultivation of the land, but they cause much waste of room, as we can rarely plow nearer than within six or eight feet of them. There are none of these objections to the use of under-drains, as these are completely covered, and do not at all interfere with the cultivation of the surface. [With what materials may under-drains be constructed? Describe the tile.] Under drains may be made with brush, stones, or tiles. Brush is a very poor material, and its use is hardly to be recommended. Small stones are better, and if these be placed in the bottoms of the trenches, to a depth of eight or ten inches, and covered with sods turned upside down, having the earth packed well down on to them, they make very good drains. TILE DRAINING. The best under-drains are those made with tiles, or burnt clay pipes. The first form of these used was that called the _horse-shoe tile_, which was in two distinct pieces; this was superseded by a round pipe, and we have now what is called the _sole tile_, which is much better than either of the others. [Illustration: Fig. 4--Sole Tile.] [Why is the sole tile superior to those of previous construction? How are these tiles laid? How may the trenches be dug?] This tile is made (like the horse-shoe and pipe tile) of common brick clay, and is burned the same as bricks. It is about one half or three quarters of an inch thick, and is so porous that water passes directly through it. It has a flat bottom on which to stand, and this enables it to retain its position, while making the drain, better than would be done by the round pipe. The orifice through which the water passes is egg-shaped, having its smallest curve at the bottom. This shape is the one most easily kept clear, as any particles of dirt which get into the drain must fall immediately to the point where even the smallest stream of water runs, and are thus removed. An orifice of about two inches is sufficient for the smaller drains, while the main drains require larger tiles. These tiles are laid, so that their ends will touch each other, on the bottoms of the trenches, and are kept in position by having the earth tightly packed around them. Care must be taken that no space is left between the ends of the tiles, as dirt would be liable to get in and choke the drain. It is advisable to place a sod--grass side down--over each joint, before filling the trench, as this more effectually protects them against the entrance of dirt. There is no danger of keeping the water out by this operation, as it will readily pass through any part of the tiles. In _digging the trenches_ it is not necessary (except in very stony ground) to dig out a place wide enough for a man to stand in, as there are tools made expressly for the purpose, by which a trench may be dug six or seven inches wide, and to any required depth. One set of these implements consists of a long narrow spade and a hoe to correspond, such as are represented in the accompanying figure. [Illustration: Fig. 5. Upton tool. Spade and hoe.] With these tools, and a long light crowbar, for hard soils, trenches may be dug much more cheaply than with the common spade and pickaxe. Where there are large boulders in the soil, these draining tools may dig under them so that they will not have to be removed. When the trenches are dug to a sufficient depth, the bottoms must be made perfectly smooth, with the required descent (from six inches to a few feet in one hundred feet). Then the tiles may be laid in, so that their ends will correspond, be packed down, and the trenches filled up. Such a drain, if properly constructed, may last for ages. Unlike the stone drain, it is not liable to be frequented by rats, nor choked up by the soil working into it. The position of the tile may be best represented by a figure, also the mode of constructing stone drains. [Why are small stones better than large stones in the construction of drains? On what must the depth of under-drains depend?] It will be seen that the tile drain is made with much less labor than the stone drain, as it requires less digging, while the breaking up of the stone for the stone drain will be nearly, or quite as expensive as the tiles. Drains made with large stones are not nearly so good as with small ones, because they are more liable to be choked up by animals working in them.[AK] [Illustration: Fig. 6. _a_--Tile drain trench. _b_--Stone drain trench. _c_--Sod laid on the stone.] [Describe the principle which regulates these relative depths and distances. (Blackboard.) Which is usually the cheaper plan of constructing drains?] The _depth_ of the drains must depend on the distances at which they are placed. If but _twenty_ feet apart, they need be but _three_ feet deep; while, if they are _eighty_ feet apart, they must be _five_ feet deep, to produce the same effect. The reason for this is, that the water in the drained soil is not level, but is higher midway between the drains, than at any other point. It is necessary that this highest point should be sufficiently far from the surface not to interfere with the roots of plants, consequently, as the water line between two drains is _curved_, the most distant drains must be the deepest. This will be understood by referring to the following diagram. [Illustration: Fig. 7. _aa_--5 feet drains, 80 ft. apart. _bb_--3 feet drains, 20 ft. apart.] The curved line represents the position of the water. In most soils it will be easier to dig one trench five feet deep, than four trenches three feet deep, and the deep trenches will be equally beneficial; but where the soil is very hard below a depth of three feet, the shallow trenches will be the cheapest, and in such soils they will often be better, as the hard mass might not allow the water to pass down to enter the deeper drains. By following out these instructions, land may be cheaply, thoroughly, and permanently drained. FOOTNOTES: [AK] It is probable that a composition of hydraulic cement and some soluble material will be invented, by which a continuous pipe may be laid in the bottoms of trenches, becoming porous as the soluble material is removed by water. CHAPTER III. ADVANTAGES OF UNDER-DRAINING. The advantages of under-draining are many and important. 1. It entirely prevents drought. 2. It furnishes an increased supply of atmospheric fertilizers. 3. It warms the lower portions of the soil. 4. It hastens the decomposition of roots and other organic matter. 5. It accelerates the disintegration of the mineral matters in the soil. 6. It causes a more even distribution of nutritious matters among those parts of soil traversed by roots. 7. It improves the mechanical texture of the soil. 8. It causes the poisonous excrementitious matter of plants to be carried out of the reach of their roots. 9. It prevents grasses from running out. 10. It enables us to deepen the surface soil. By removing excess of water-- 11. It renders soils earlier in the spring. 12. It prevents the throwing out of grain in winter. 13. It allows us to work sooner after rains. 14. It keeps off the effects of cold weather longer in the fall. 15. It prevents the formation of _acetic_ and other organic acids, which induce the growth of sorrel and similar weeds. 16. It hastens the decay of vegetable matter, and the finer comminution of the earthy parts of the soil. 17. It prevents, in a great measure, the evaporation of water, and the consequent abstraction of heat from the soil. 18. It admits fresh quantities of water from rains, etc., which are always more or less imbued with the fertilizing gases of the atmosphere, to be deposited among the absorbent parts of soil, and given up to the necessities of plants. 19. It prevents the formation of so hard a crust on the surface of the soil as is customary on heavy lands. * * * * * [How does under-draining prevent drought?] 1. Under-draining _prevents drought_, because it gives a better circulation of air in the soil; (it does so by making it more open). There is always the same amount of water _in_ and _about_ the surface of the earth. In winter, there is more in the soil than in summer, while in summer, that which has been dried out of the soil exists in the atmosphere in the form of a _vapor_. It is held in the vapory form by _heat_, which acts as _braces_ to keep it distended. When vapor comes in contact with substances sufficiently colder than itself, it gives up its heat--thus losing its braces--contracts, and becomes liquid water. This may be observed in hundreds of common operations. [Why is there less water in the soil in summer than in winter, and where does it exist? What holds it in its vapory form? How is it affected by cold substances? Describe the deposit of moisture on the outside of a pitcher in summer. What other instances of the same action can be named?] It is well known that a cold pitcher in summer robs the vapor in the atmosphere of its heat, and causes it to be deposited on its own surface. It looks as though the pitcher were _sweating_, but the water all comes from the atmosphere, not, of course, through the sides of the pitcher. If we breathe on a knife-blade, it condenses in the same manner the moisture of the breath, and becomes covered with a film of water. Stone houses are damp in summer, because the inner surfaces of the walls, being cooler than the atmosphere, cause its moisture to be deposited in the manner described. By leaving a space, however, between the walls and the plaster, this moisture is prevented from being troublesome. [How does this principle affect the soil? Explain the experiment with the two boxes of soil.] Nearly every night in the summer season, the cold earth receives moisture from the atmosphere in the form of dew. A cabbage, which at night is very cold, condenses water to the amount of a gill or more. The same operation takes place in the soil. When the air is allowed to circulate among its lower and _cooler_ particles, they receive moisture from the same process of condensation. Therefore, when, by the aid of under-drains, the lower soil becomes sufficiently open to admit of a circulation of air, the deposit of atmospheric moisture will keep the soil supplied with water at a point easily accessible to the roots of plants. If we wish to satisfy ourselves that this is _practically_ correct, we have only to prepare two boxes of finely pulverized soil, one, five or six inches deep, and the other fifteen or twenty inches deep, and place them in the sun at mid-day in summer. The thinner soil will be completely dried, while the deeper one, though it may have been perfectly dry at first, will soon accumulate a large amount of water on those particles which, being lower and more sheltered from the sun's heat than the particles of the thin soil, are made cooler. With an open condition of subsoil, then, such as may be secured by under-draining, we entirely overcome drought. [How does under-draining supply to the soil an increased amount of atmospheric fertilizers? How does it warm the lower parts of the soil?] 2. Under-draining _furnishes an increased supply of atmospheric fertilizers_, because it secures a change of air in the soil. This change is produced whenever the soil becomes filled with water, and then dried; when the air above the earth is in rapid motion, and when the comparative temperature of the upper and lower soils changes. It causes new quantities of the ammonia and carbonic acid which it contains to be presented to the absorbent parts of the soil. 3. Under-draining _warms the lower parts of the soil_, because the deposit of moisture (1) is necessarily accompanied by an abstraction of heat from the atmospheric vapor, and because heat is withdrawn from the whole amount of air circulating through the cooler soil. When rain falls on the parched surface soil, it robs it of a portion of its heat, which is carried down to equalize the temperature for the whole depth. The heat of the rain-water itself is given up to the soil, leaving the water from one to ten degrees cooler, when it passes out of the drains, than when received by the earth. There is always a current of air passing from the lower to the upper end of a well constructed drain; and this air is always cooler in warm weather, when it issues from, than when it enters the drain. Its lost heat is imparted to the soil. [How does it hasten the decomposition of roots and other organic matter in the soil? How does it accelerate the disintegration of its mineral parts? Why is this disintegration necessary to fertility?] This heating of the lower soil renders it more favorable to vegetation, partially by expanding the spongioles at the end of the roots, thus enabling them to absorb larger quantities of nutritious matters. 4. Under-draining _hastens the decomposition of roots and other organic matters in the soil_, by admitting increased quantities of air, thus supplying _oxygen_, which is as essential in decay as it is in combustion. It also allows the resultant gases of decomposition to pass away, leaving the air around the decaying substances in a condition to continue the process. This organic decay, besides its other benefits, produces an amount of heat perfectly perceptible to the smaller roots of plants, though not so to us. 5. Draining _accelerates the disintegration of the mineral matters in the soil_, by admitting water and oxygen to keep up the process. This disintegration is necessary to fertility, because the roots of plants can feed only on matters dissolved from _surfaces_; and the more finely we pulverize the soil, the more surface we expose. For instance, the interior of a stone can furnish no food for plants; while, if it were finely crushed, it might make a fertile soil. Any thing, tending to open the soil to exposure, facilitates the disintegration of its particles, and thereby increases its fertility. [How does under-draining equalize the distribution of the fertilizing parts of the soil? Why does this distribution lessen the impoverishment of the soil? How does under-draining improve the mechanical texture of the soil? How do drains affect the excrementitious matter of plants?] 6. Draining _causes a more even distribution of nutritious matters among those parts of soil traversed by roots_, because it increases the ease with which water travels around, descending by its own weight, moving sideways by a desire to find its level, or carried upward by attraction to supply the evaporation at the surface. By this continued motion of the water, soluble matter of one part of the soil may be carried to some other part; and another constituent from this latter position may be carried back to the former. Thus the food of vegetables is continually circulating around among their roots, ready for absorption at any point where it is needed, while the more open character of the soil enables roots to occupy larger portions, making a more even drain on the whole, and preventing the undue impoverishment of any part. 7. Under-drains _improve the mechanical texture of the soil_; because, by the decomposition of its parts, as previously described (4 and 5), it is rendered of a character to be more easily worked; while smooth round particles, which have a tendency to pack, are roughened by the oxidation of their surfaces, and move less easily among each other. 8. Drains _cause the excrementitious matter of plants to be carried out of the reach of their roots_. Nearly all plants return to the soil those parts of their food, which are not adapted to their necessities, and usually in a form that is poisonous to plants of the same kind. In an open soil, this matter may be carried by rains to a point where roots cannot reach it, and where it may undergo such changes as will fit it to be again taken up. [Why do they prevent grasses from running out?] 9. By under-draining, _grasses are prevented from running out_, partly by preventing the accumulation of the poisonous excrementitious matter, and partly because these grasses usually consist of _tillering_ plants. These plants continually reproduce themselves in sprouts from the upper parts of their roots. These sprouts become independent plants, and continue to tiller (thus keeping the land supplied with a full growth), until the roots of the _stools_ (or clumps of tillers), come in contact with an uncongenial part of the soil, when the tillering ceases; the stools become extinct on the death of their plants, and the grasses run out. The open and healthy condition of soil produced by draining prevents the tillering from being stopped, and thus keeps up a full growth of grass until the nutriment of the soil is exhausted. 10. Draining _enables us to deepen the surface-soil_, because the admission of air and the decay of roots render the condition of the subsoil such that it may be brought up and mixed with the surface-soil, without injuring _its quality_. The second class of advantages of under-draining, arising in the removal of the excess of water in the soil, are quite as important as those just described. [How does the removal of water render soils earlier in spring? Why does it prevent the throwing out of grain in winter? Why does it enable us to work sooner after rains? Why does it keep off the effects of cold weather longer in the fall?] 11. _Soils are, thereby, rendered earlier in spring_, because the water, which rendered them cold, heavy, and untillable, is earlier removed, leaving them earlier in a growing condition. 12. _The throwing out of grain in winter_ is prevented, because the water falling on the earth is immediately removed instead of remaining to throw up the soil by freezing, as it always does from the upright position taken by the particles of ice. 13. _We are enabled to work sooner after rains_, because the water descends, and is immediately removed instead of lying to be taken off by the slow process of evaporation, and sinking through a heavy soil. 14. _The effects of cold weather are kept off longer in the fall_, because the excess of water is removed, which would produce an unfertile condition on the first appearance of cold weather. The drains also, from causes already named (3), keep the soil warmer than before being drained, thus actually lengthening the season, by making the soil warm enough for vegetable growth earlier in spring, and later in autumn. [How does it prevent lands from becoming sour? Why does it hasten the decay of roots, and the comminution of mineral matters? How does it prevent the abstraction of heat from the soil?] 15. _Lands are prevented from becoming sour by the formation of acetic acid_, etc., because these acids are produced in the soil only when the decomposition of organic matter is arrested by the _antiseptic_ (preserving) powers of water. If the water is removed, the decomposition of the organic matter assumes a healthy form, while the acids already produced are neutralized by atmospheric influences, and the soil is restored from sorrel to a condition in which it is fitted for the growth of more valuable plants. 16. _The decay of roots_, etc., is allowed to proceed, because the preservative influence of too much water is removed. Wood, leaves, or other vegetable matter kept continually under water, will last for ages; while, if exposed to the action of the weather, as in under-drained soils, they soon decay. The presence of too much water, by excluding the oxygen of the air, prevents the _comminution of matters_ necessary to fertility. [How much heat does water take up in becoming vapor? Why does water sprinkled on a floor render it cooler? Why is not a cubic inch of vapor warmer than a cubic inch of water? Why does a wet cloth on the head make it cooler when fanned? How does this principle apply to the soil?] 17. _The evaporation of water, and the consequent abstraction of heat from the soil, is in a great measure prevented_ by draining the water out at the _bottom_ of the soil, instead of leaving it to be dried off from the surface. When water assumes the gaseous (or vapory) form, it takes up 1723 times as much _heat_ as it contained while a liquid. A large part of this heat is derived from surrounding substances. When water is sprinkled on the floor, it cools the room; because, as it becomes a vapor, it takes heat from the room. The reason why vapor does not feel hotter than liquid water is, that, while it contains 1723 times as much heat, it is 1723 as large. Hence, a cubic inch of vapor, into which we place the bulb of a thermometer, contains no more heat than a cubic inch of water. The principle is the same in some other cases. A sponge containing a table-spoonful of water is just as _wet_ as one twice as large and containing two spoonsful. If a wet cloth be placed on the head, and the evaporation of its water assisted by fanning, the head becomes cooler--a portion of its heat being taken to sustain the vapory condition of the water. The same principle holds true with the soil. When the evaporation of water is rapidly going on, by the assistance of the sun, wind, etc., a large quantity of heat is abstracted, and the soil becomes cold. When there is no evaporation taking place, except of water which has been deposited on the lower portions of soil, and carried to the surface by capillary attraction (as is nearly true on under-drained soils), the loss of heat is compensated by that taken from the moisture in the atmosphere by the soil, in the above-named manner. This cooling of the soil by the evaporation of water, is of very great injury to its powers of producing crops, and the fact that under-drains avoid it, is one of the best arguments in favor of their use. Some idea may, perhaps, be formed of the amount of heat taken from the soil in this way, from the fact that, in midsummer, 25 hogsheads of water may be evaporated from a single acre in twelve hours. [When rains are allowed to _enter_ the soil, how do they benefit it? How do under-drains prevent the formation of a crust on the surface of a soil?] 18. When not saturated with water the soil admits the water of rains, etc., which bring with them _fertilizing gases from the atmosphere_, to be deposited among the absorbent parts of soil, and given up to the necessities of the plant. When this rain falls on lands already saturated, it cannot enter the soil, but must run off from the surface, or be removed by evaporation, either of which is injurious. The first, because fertilizing matter is washed away. The second, because the soil is deprived of necessary heat. 19. _The formation of crust on the surface of the soil_ is due to the evaporation of water, which is drawn up from below by capillary attraction. It arises from the fact that the water in the soil is saturated with mineral substances, which it leaves at its point of evaporation at the surface. This soluble matter from below, often forms a very hard crust, which is a complete shield to prevent the admission of air with its ameliorating effects, and should, as far as possible, be avoided. Under-draining is the best means of doing this, as it is the best means of lessening the evaporation. The foregoing are some of the more important reasons why under-draining is always beneficial. Thorough experiments have amply proved the truth of the theory. [What kinds of soil are benefited by under-draining?] The _kinds of soil benefited by under-draining_ are nearly as unlimited as the kinds of soil in existence. It is a common opinion, among farmers, that the only soils which require draining are those which are at times covered with water, such as swamps and other low lands; but the facts stated in the early part of this chapter, show us that every kind of soil--wet, dry, compact, or light--receives benefit from the treatment. The fact that land is _too dry_, is as much a reason why it should be drained, as that it is _too wet_, as it overcomes drought as effectually as it removes the injurious effects of too much water. All soils in which the water of heavy rains does not immediately pass down to a depth of at least _thirty inches_, should be under-drained, and the operation, if carried on with judgment, would invariably result in profit. [What do English farmers name as the profits of under-draining? What stand has been taken by the English government with regard to under-draining?] Of the precise _profits_ of under-draining this is not the place to speak: many of the agricultural papers contain numerous accounts of its success. It may be well to remark here, that many English farmers give it, as their experience, that under-drains pay for themselves every three years, or that they produce a perpetual profit of 33-1/3 per cent., or their original cost. This is not the opinion of _theorists_ and _book farmers_. It is the conviction of practical men, who know, _from experience_, that under-drains are beneficial. The best evidence of the utility of under-draining is the position, with regard to it, which has been taken by the English national government, which affords much protection to the agricultural interests of her people--a protection which in this country is unwisely and unjustly withheld. In England a very large sum from the public treasury has been appropriated as a fund for loans, on under-drains, which is lent to farmers for the purpose of under-draining their estates, the only security given being the increased value of the soil. The time allowed for payments is twenty years, and only five per cent. interest is charged. By the influence of this patronage, the actual wealth of the kingdom is being rapidly increased, while the farmers themselves, can raise their farms to any desired state of fertility, without immediate investment. [How does under-draining affect the healthfulness of marshy countries? Describe the sub-soil plow.] The best proof that the government has not acted injudiciously in this matter is, that private capitalists are fast employing their money in the same manner, and loans on under-drains are considered a very safe investment. There is no doubt that we may soon have similar facilities for improving our farms, and when we do, we shall find that it is unnecessary to move West to find good soil. The districts nearer market, where the expense of transportation is much less, may, by the aid of under-drains, and a judicious system of cultivation, be made equally fertile. One very important, though not strictly agricultural, effect of thorough drainage is its removal of certain local diseases, peculiar to the vicinity of marshy or low moist soils. The health-reports in several places in England, show that where _fever and ague_ was once common, it has almost entirely disappeared since the general use of under-drains in those localities. CHAPTER IV. SUB-SOIL PLOWING. [Describe the Mapes plow. Why is the motion in the soil of one and a half inches sufficient? How does the oxidation of the particles of the soil resemble the rusting of cannon balls in a pile?] The _sub-soil plow_ is an implement differing in figure from the surface plow. It does not turn a furrow, but merely runs through the subsoil like a mole--loosening and making it finer by lifting, but allowing it to fall back and occupy its former place. It usually follows the surface plow, entering the soil to the depth of from twelve to eighteen inches below the bottom of the surface furrow. The best pattern now made (the Mapes plow) is represented in the following figure. [Illustration: Fig. 8. The Mapes plow and its mode of action. _a_--Shape of the foot of the plow, _b_--Its effect on the soil.] The sub-soil plows first made raised the whole soil about eight inches, and required very great power in their use often six, eight, or even ten oxen. The Mapes plow, raising the soil but slightly, may be worked with much less power, and produces equally good results. It may be run to its full depth in most soils by a single yoke of oxen. Of course a motion in the soil of but one and a half inches is very slight, but it is sufficient to move each particle from the one next to it which, in dry soils, is all that is necessary. Whoever has examined a pile of cannon-balls must have observed that at the points where they touch each other, there is a little rust. In the soil, the same is often the case. Where the particles touch each other, there is such a chemical change produced as renders them fit for the use of plants. While these particles remain in their first position, the changed portions are out of the reach of roots; but, if, by the aid of the sub-soil plow, their position is altered, these parts are exposed for the uses of plants. If we hold in the hand a ball of dry clay, and press it hard enough to produce the least motion among its particles, the whole mass becomes pulverized. On the same principle, the sub-soil plow renders the compact lower soil sufficiently fine for the requirements of fertility. [Why are the benefits of sub-soiling not permanent on wet lands? Does sub-soiling overcome drought? How does it deepen the surface soil?] Notwithstanding its great benefits on land, which is sufficiently dry, sub-soiling cannot be recommended for wet lands; for, in such case, the rains of a single season would often be sufficient to entirely overcome its effects by packing the subsoil down to its former hardness. On lands not overcharged with water, it is productive of the best results, it being often sufficient to turn the balance between a gaining and a losing business in farming. It increases nearly every effect of under-draining; especially does it overcome drought, by loosening the soil, and admitting air to circulate among the particles of the subsoil and deposit its moisture on the principle described in the chapter on under-draining. It deepens the surface-soil, because it admits roots into the subsoil where they decay and leave carbon, while the circulation of air so affects the mineral parts, that they become of a fertilizing character. The deposit of carbon gives to the subsoil the power of absorbing, and retaining the atmospheric fertilizers, which are more freely presented, owing to the fact that the air is allowed to circulate with greater freedom. As a majority of roots decay in the surface-soil, they there deposit much mineral matter obtained from the subsoil. [Why is the retention of atmospheric manures ensured by sub-soiling? Why are organic manures plowed deeply under the soil, less liable to evaporation than when deposited near the surface? How does sub-soiling resemble under-draining in relation to the tillering of grasses? When the subsoil consists of a thin layer of clay on a sandy bed, what use may be made of the sub-soil plow?] The retention of atmospheric manures is more fully ensured by the better exposure of the clayey portions of the soil. Those manures which are artificially applied, by being plowed under to greater depths, are less liable to evaporation, as, from the greater amount of soil above them, their escape will more probably be arrested; and, from the greater prevalence of roots, they are more liable to be taken up by plants. The subsoil often contains matters which are deficient in the surface-soil. By the use of the sub-soil plow, they are rendered available. Sub-soiling is similar to under-draining in continuing the tillering of grasses, and in getting rid of the poisonous excrementitious matter of plants. When the subsoil is a thin layer of clay on a sandy bed (as in some plants of Cumberland Co. Maine), the sub-soil plow, by passing through it, opens a passage for water, and often affords a sufficient drainage. [To how great a depth will the roots of plants usually occupy the soil? What is the object of loosening the soil? How are these various effects better produced in deep than in shallow soils?] If plants will grow better on a soil six inches deep than on one of three inches, there is no reason why they should not be benefited in proportion, by disturbing the soil to the whole depth to which roots will travel--which is usually more than two feet. The minute rootlets of corn and most other plants, will, if allowed by cultivation, occupy the soil to the depth or thirty-four inches, having a fibre in nearly every cubic inch of the soil for the whole distance. There are very few cultivated plants whose roots would not travel to a depth of thirty inches or more. Even the onion sends its roots to the depth of eighteen inches when the soil is well cultivated. The object of loosening the soil is to admit roots to a sufficient depth to hold the plant in its position--to obtain the nutriment necessary to its growth--to receive moisture from the lower portions of the soil--and, if it be a bulb, tuber, or tap, to assume the form requisite for its largest development. It must be evident that roots, penetrating the soil to a depth of two feet, anchor the plant with greater stability than those which are spread more thinly near the surface. The roots of plants traversing the soil to such great distances, and being located in nearly every part, absorb mineral and other food, in solution in water, only through the _spongioles at their ends_. Consequently, by having these ends in _every part_ of the soil, it is _all_ brought under contribution, and the amount supplied is greater, while the demand on any particular part may be less than when the whole requirements of plants have to be supplied from a depth of a few inches. [May garden soils be profitably imitated in field culture?] The ability of roots, to assume a natural shape in the soil, and grow to their largest sizes, must depend on the condition of the soil. If it is finely pulverized to the whole depth to which they ought to go, they will be fully developed; while, if the soil be too hard for penetration, they will be deformed or small. Thus a carrot may grow to the length of two and a half feet, and be of perfect shape, while, if it meet in its course at a depth of eight or ten inches a _cold, hard_ subsoil, its growth must be arrested, or its form injured. Roots are turned aside by a hard sub-soil, as they would be if received by the surface of a plate of glass. Add to this the fact that cold, impenetrable subsoils are _chemically_ uncongenial to vegetation, and we have sufficient evidence of the importance, and in many cases the absolute necessity of sub-soiling and under-draining. It is unnecessary to urge the fact that a garden soil of two feet is more productive than a field soil of six inches; and it is certain that proper attention to these two modes of cultivation will in a majority of cases make a garden of the field--more than doubling its value in ease of working, increased produce, certain security against drought, and more even distribution of the demands on the soil--while the outlay will be immediately repaid by an increase of crops. [Is the use of the sub-soil plow increasing? Will its use ever injure crops?] The subsoil will be much improved in its character the first year, and a continual advancement renders it in time equal to the original surface-soil, and extending to a depth of two feet or more. The sub-soil plow is coming rapidly into use. There are now in New Jersey more foundries casting sub-soil plows than there were sub-soil plows in the State six years ago. The implement has there, as well as in many other places, ceased to be a curiosity; and the man who now objects to its use, is classed with him who shells his corn on a shovel over a half-bushel, instead of employing an improved machine, which will enable him to do more in a day than he can do in the "good old way" in a week. Had we space, we might give many instances of the success of sub-soiling, but the agricultural papers of the present day (at least one of which every farmer should take) have so repeatedly published its advantages, that we will not do so. In no case will its use be found any thing but satisfactory, except in occasional instances where there is some chemical difficulty in the subsoil, which an analysis will tell us how to overcome. As was before stated, its use on wet lands is not advisable until they have been under-drained, as excess of water prevents its effects from being permanent. CHAPTER V. PLOWING AND OTHER MODES OF PULVERIZING THE SOIL. [May the satisfaction attending labor be increased by an understanding of the natural laws which regulate our operations? On what depends the kind of plow to be used?] The advantages of pulverizing the soil, and the _reasons_ why it is necessary, are now too well known to need remark. Few farmers, when they plow, dig, or harrow, are enabled to give substantial reasons for so doing. If they will reflect on what has been said in the previous chapters, concerning the supply of mineral food to the plant by the soil, and the effect of air and moisture about roots, they will find more satisfaction in their labor than it can afford when applied without thought. PLOWING. [What is a general rule with regard to this? Should deep plowing be immediately adopted? Why? Why is this course of treatment advisable for garden culture?] The kind of plow used in cultivating the surface-soil must be decided by the kind of soil. This question the practical, _observing_ farmer will be able to solve. As a general rule, it may be stated that the plow which runs the _deepest_, with the same amount of force, is the best. We might enter more fully into this matter but for want of space. The advantages of _deep plowing_ cannot be too strongly urged. The statement that the _deeper_ and the _finer_ the soil is rendered, the more productive it will become, is in every respect true, and which no single instance will contradict. It must not be inferred from this, that we would advise a farmer, who has always plowed his soil to the depth of only six inches, to double the depth at once. Such a practice in some soils would be highly injurious, as it would completely bury the more fertile and better cultivated soil, and bring to the top one which contains no organic matter, and has never been subject to atmospheric influences. This would, perhaps, be so little fitted for vegetation that it would scarcely sustain plants until their roots could reach the more fertile parts below. Such treatment of the soil (turning it upside down) is excellent in _garden_ culture, where the great amount of manures applied is sufficient to overcome the temporary barrenness of the soil, but it is not to be recommended for all _field_ cultivation, where much less manure is employed. [How should field plowing be conducted? How does such treatment affect soils previously limed? How may it sometimes improve sandy or clay soils?] The course to be pursued in such cases is to _plow one inch deeper each year_. By this means the soil maybe gradually deepened to any desired extent. The amount of uncongenial soil which will thus be brought up, is slight, and will not interfere at all with the fertility of the soil, while the elevated portion will become, in one year, so altered by exposure, that it will equal the rest of the soil in fertility. Often where lime has been used in excess, it has sunk to the subsoil, where it remains inactive. The slight deepening of the surface plowing would mix this lime with the surface-soil, and render it again useful. When the soil is light and sandy, resting on a heavy clay subsoil, or clay on sand, the bringing up of the mass from below will improve the texture of the soil. As an instance of the success of deep plowing, we call to mind the case of a farmer in New Jersey, who had a field which had yielded about twenty-five bushels of corn per acre. It had been cultivated at ordinary depths. After laying it out in eight step lands (24 feet), he plowed it at all depths from five to ten inches, on the different lands, and sowed oats evenly over the whole field. The crop on the five inch soil was very poor, on the six inch rather better, on the seven inch better still, and on the ten inch soil it was as fine as ever grew in New Jersey; it had stiff straw and broad leaves, while the grain was also much better than on the remainder of the field. [What kind of soils are benefited by fall plowing?] There is an old anecdote of a man who died, leaving his sons with the information that he had buried a pot of gold for them, somewhere on the farm. They commenced digging for the gold, and dug over the whole farm to a great depth without finding the gold. The digging, however, so enriched the soil that they were fully compensated for their disappointment, and became wealthy from the increased produce of their farm. Farmers will find, on experiment, that they have gold buried in their soil, if they will but dig deep enough to obtain it. The law gives a man the ownership of the soil for an indefinite distance from the surface, but few seem to realize that there is _another farm_ below the one they are cultivating, which is quite as valuable as the one on the surface, if it were but properly worked. _Fall plowing_, especially for heavy lands, is a very good means of securing the action of the frosts of winter to pulverize the soil. If it be a stiff clay, it may be well to throw the soil up into ridges (by ridging and back furrowing), so as to expose the largest possible amount of surface to the freezing and thawing of winter. Sandy soils should not be plowed in the fall, as it renders them too light. DIGGING MACHINES. [What is the digging machine?] A recent invention has been made in England, known as the digging machine or rotary spade, which--although from having too much gearing between the power and the part performing the labor, it is not adapted to general use--has given such promise of future success, that Mr. Mechi (an agricultural writer of the highest standing) has said that "the plow is doomed." This can hardly be true, for the varied uses to which it may be applied, will guarantee its continuance in the favor of the farmer. Already, in this country, Messrs. Gibbs & Mapes, have invented a digging machine of very simple construction, which seems calculated to serve an excellent purpose, even in the hands of the farmer of limited means. Its friends assert that, with one pair of oxen, it will dig perfectly three feet wide, and for a depth of fifteen inches. An experiment with an unperfected machine, in the presence of the writer, seemed to justify their hopes. This machine thoroughly pulverizes the soil to a considerable depth, and for smooth land must prove far superior to the plow. THE HARROW AND CULTIVATOR. [Why is the harrow a defective implement? Why is the cultivator superior to the harrow?] The _harrow_, an implement largely used in all parts of the world, to pulverize the soil, and break clods, has become so firmly rooted in the affections of farmers, that it must be a very long time before they can be convinced that it is not the best implement for the use to which it is devoted. It is true that it pulverizes the soil for a depth of two or three inches, and thus much improves its appearance, benefiting it, without doubt, for the earliest stages of the growth of plants. Its action, however, is very defective, because, from the _wedge_ shape of its teeth, it continually acts to _pack_ the soil; thus--although favorable for the germination of the seed--it is not calculated to benefit the plant during the later stages of its growth, when the roots require the soil to be pulverized to a considerable depth. The _cultivator_ may be considered an _improved harrow_. The principal difference between them being, that while the teeth of the harrow are pointed at the lower end, those of the cultivator are shaped like a small double plow, being large at the bottom and growing smaller towards the top. They lift the earth up, instead of pressing it downwards, thus loosening instead of compacting the soil. Many styles of cultivators are now sold at agricultural warehouses. A very good one, for field use, may be made by substituting the cultivator teeth for the spikes in an old harrow frame. CHAPTER VI. ROLLING, MULCHING, WEEDING, ETC. ROLLING. [Name some of the benefits of rolling?] _Rolling_ the soil with a large roller, arranged to be drawn by a team, is in many instances a good accessory to cultivation. By its means, the following results are obtained:-- 1. The soil at the surface is pulverized without the compacting of the lower parts, the area of contact being large. 2. The stones on the land are pressed down so as to be out of the way of the scythe in mowing. 3. The soil is compacted around seeds after sowing in such a manner as to exclude light and to _touch_ them in every part, both of which are essential to their germination and to the healthfulness of the plants. [Under what circumstances should the roller be used?] 4. The soil is so compacted at the surface, that it is less frequented by _grubs_, etc., than when it is more loose. 5. When the soil is smoothed in this manner, there is less surface exposed for the evaporation of water with its cooling effect. 6. Light sandy lands, by being rolled in the fall, are rendered more compact, and the loosening effects of frequent freezing and thawing are avoided. Although productive of these various effects, rolling should be adopted only with much care, and should never be applied to very heavy lands, except in dry weather when lumpy after plowing, as its tendency in such cases would be to render them still more difficult of cultivation. Soils in which air does not circulate freely, are not improved by rolling, as it presses the surface-particles still more closely together, and prevents the free admission of the atmosphere. If well _under-drained_, a large majority of soils would doubtless be benefited by a judicious use of the roller.[AL] MULCHING. [What is mulching? What are some of its benefits?] _Mulching_ (called Gurneyism in England) consists in covering the soil with salt hay, litter, seaweed, leaves, spent tanbark, chips, or other refuse matter. Every farmer must have noticed that, if a board or rail, or an old brush-heap be removed in spring from soil where grass is growing, the grass afterwards grows in those places much larger and better than in other parts of the field. This improvement arises from various causes. 1. The evaporation of water from the soil is prevented during drought by the shade afforded by the mulch; and it is therefore kept in better condition, as to moisture and temperature, than when evaporation goes on more freely. This condition is well calculated to advance the chemical changes necessary to prepare the matters--both organic and mineral--in the soil for the use of plants. 2. By preventing evaporation, we partially protect the soil from losing ammonia resultant from decaying organic matter. 3. A heavy mulch breaks the force of rains, and prevents them from compacting the soil, as would be the result, were no such precaution taken. 4. Mulching protects the surface-soil from freezing as readily as when exposed, and thus keeps it longer open for the admission of air and moisture. When unprotected, the soil early becomes frozen; and all water falling, instead of entering as it should do, passes off on the surface. [Why does mulching take the place of artificial watering? Why is the late sowing of oats beneficial? From what arises the chief benefit of top dressing the soil with manure in autumn?] 5. The throwing out of winter grain is often prevented, because this is due to the freezing of the surface-soil. 6. Mulching prevents the growth of some weeds, because it removes from them the fostering heat of the sun. Many of the best nursery-men keep the soil about the roots of young trees mulched continually. One of the chief arguments for this treatment is, that it prevents the removal of the moisture from the soil and the consequent loss of heat. Also that it keeps up a full supply of water for the uses of the roots, because it keeps the soil cool, and causes a deposit of dew. 7. It also prevents the "baking" of the soil, or the formation of a crust. It is to be recommended in nearly all cases to sow oats very thinly over land intended for winter fallow after the removal of crops, as they will grow a little before being killed by the frost, when they will fall down, thus affording a very beneficial mulch to the soil. When farmers spread manure on their fields in the fall to be plowed under in the spring, they benefit the land by the mulching more than by the addition of fertilizing matter, because they give it the protecting influence of the straw, etc., while they lose much of the ammonia of their manure by evaporation. The same mulching might be more cheaply done with leaves, or other refuse matter, and the ammonia of the manure made available by composting with absorbents. [Why is snow particularly beneficial?] It is an old and true saying that "snow is the poor man's manure." The reason why it is so beneficial is, chiefly, that it acts as a most excellent mulch. It contains no more ammonia than rain-water does; and, were it not for the fact that it protects the soil against loss of heat, and produces other benefits of mulching, it would have no more advantageous effect. The severity of winters at the North is partially compensated by the long duration of snow. It is a well known fact that when there is but little snow in cold countries, wheat is very liable to be _winter killed_. The same protection is afforded by artificial mulching. This treatment is peculiarly applicable to the cultivation of flowers, both in pots and in beds out of doors. It is almost indispensable to the profitable production of strawberries, and many other garden crops, such as asparagus, rhubarb, etc. Many say that the best treatment for trees is to put stones about their roots. This is simply _mulching_ them, and might be done more cheaply by the use of leaves, copying the action of nature in forests;[AM] for, unless these stones be removed in spring, they will sink and compact the soil in part during open weather. WEEDING. [What are some of the uses of weeds? Their disadvantages?] If a farmer were asked--what is the use of _weeds_? he might make out quite a list of their benefits, among which might be some of the following:-- 1. They shade tender plants, and in a measure serve as a mulch to the ground. 2. Some weeds, by their offensive odor, drive away many insects. 3. They may serve as a green crop to be plowed into the soil, and increase its organic matter. 4. _They make us stir the soil_, and thus increase its fertility. Still, while thinking out these excuses for weeds, he would see other and more urgent reasons why they should not be allowed to grow. 1. They occupy the soil to the disadvantage of crops. 2. They exclude light and heat from cultivated plants, and thus interfere with their growth. 3. They take up mineral and other matters from the soil, and hold them during the growing season, thus depriving crops of their use. It is not necessary to argue the injury done by weeds. Every farmer is well convinced that they should be destroyed, and the best means of accomplishing this are of the greatest importance. [How may we protect ourselves against their increase? Why is it especially important for this purpose to maintain the balance of the soil?] In the first place, we should protect ourselves against their increase. This may be done:-- By decomposing all manures in compost, whereby the seeds contained will be killed by the heat of fermentation; or, if one bushel of salt be mixed through each cord of compost (as before recommended), it will kill seeds as well as grubs,-- By hoeing, or, otherwise, destroying growing weeds before they mature their seeds, and By keeping the soil in the best chemical condition. This last point is one of much importance. It is well known that soils deficient in potash, will naturally produce one kind of plants, while soils deficient in phosphoric acid will produce plants of another species, etc. Many soils produce certain weeds which would not grow on them if they were made chemically perfect, as indicated by analysis. It is also believed that those weeds, which naturally grow on the most fertile soils, are the ones most easily destroyed. There are exceptions (of which the Thistle is one), but this is given as a general rule. [How much salt may be used with advantage? Why is the scuffle-hoe superior to the common hoe?] By careful attention to the foregoing points, weeds may be kept from increasing while those already in the soil may be eradicated in various ways, chiefly by mechanical means, such as hoeing, plowing, etc.[AN] Prof. Mapes says that six bushels of salt annually sown broadcast over each acre of land, will destroy very many weeds as well as grubs and worms. The _common hoe_ is a very imperfect tool for the purpose of removing weeds, as it prepares a better soil for, and replants in a position to grow, nearly as many weeds as it destroys. The _scuffle-hoe_ (or push-hoe) is much more effective, as, when worked by a man walking backwards, and retiring as he works, it leaves nearly all of the weeds on the surface of the soil to be killed by the sun. When used in this way, the earth is not trodden on after being hoed--as is the case when the common hoe is employed. This treading, besides compacting the soil, covers the roots of many weeds, and causes them to grow again. [How may much labor be saved in removing weeds? What is the Langdon horse-hoe? Describe the _universal_ cultivator?] Much of the labor of weeding usually performed by men, might be more cheaply done by horses. There are various implements for this purpose, some of which are coming, in many parts of the country, into very general use. One of the best of these is the _Langdon Horse Hoe_, which is a shovel-shaped plow, to be run one or two inches deep. It has a wing on each side to prevent the earth from falling on to the plants in the rows. At the rear, or upper edge, is a kind of rake or comb, which allows the earth to pass through, while the weeds pass over the comb and fall on the surface of the soil, to be killed by the heat of the sun. It is a simple and cheap tool, and will perform the work of twenty men with hoes. The hand hoe will be necessary only in the rows. CULTIVATOR. The _cultivator_, which was described in the preceding chapter, and of which there are various patterns in use, is excellent for weeding, and for loosening the soil between the rows of corn, etc. The one called the _universal_ cultivator, having its side bars made of iron, curved so that at whatever distance it is placed the teeth will point _straight forward_, is a much better tool than those of the older patterns, which had the teeth so arranged that when set for wide rows, they pointed towards the clevis. It is difficult to keep such a cultivator in its place, while the "_universal_" is as difficult to move out of a straight line. IMPROVED HORSE-HOE. [What is the improved horse-hoe?] The _improved horse-hoe_ is a combination of the "Langdon" horse hoe and the cultivator, and is the best implement, for many purposes, that has yet been made.[AO] [Illustration: Fig. 9] HARVESTING MACHINES. Until within a comparatively short period, but little attention has been paid to the production of machines for harvesting the various crops. During the past few years, however, many valuable inventions have appeared. Among these we notice Ketchum's mower, Hussey's mower and reaper, and Wagener's grain and grass seed harvester. The latter machine gathers only the grain and seeds of the crop, leaving the straw to be plowed under the soil, thus maintaining its supply of soluble silicates, and increasing its amount of organic matter. After taking the seed heads from the standing straw and grasses, it thrashes them, blows out the chaff, separates the different kinds of seeds, and discharges them into bags ready for market. It consists of a car containing the machinery; to this may be attached any required number of horses. The inventor affirms that it has harvested the grain of two acres in one hour, performing the work with accuracy.[AP] * * * * * There is much truth in the following proverbs: "A garden that is well kept, is kept easily." "You must conquer weeds, or weeds will conquer you." [What are the two great rules in mechanical cultivation?] It is almost impossible to give a _recapitulation_ of the matters treated in this section, as it is, itself, but an outline of subjects which might occupy our whole book. The scholar and the farmer should understand every principle which it contains, as well as they understand the multiplication table; and their application will be found, in every instance, to produce the best results. The two great rules of mechanical cultivation are-- THOROUGH UNDER-DRAINING. DEEP AND FREQUENT DISTURBANCE OF THE SOIL. FOOTNOTES: [AL] Field rollers should be made in sections, for ease of turning. [AM] The beneficial effects of mulching is so great as to lead us to the conclusion that it has other means of action than those mentioned in this book. Future experiments may lead to more knowledge on this subject. [AN] It is possible that the excrementitious matter thrown out by some plants may be sufficiently destructive to other kinds to exterminate them from the soil--thus, farmers in Maine say that a single crop of turnips will entirely rid the soil of _witch grass_. This is, undoubtedly, the effect of the excrementitious matter of the turnips. This subject is one of practical importance, and demands close investigation by farmers, which may lead to its being reduced to a system. [AO] The improved horse-hoe is made and sold by Ruggles, Nourse & Mason, of Worcester, Mass., and Quincy Hall, Boston. [AP] This machine is more fully noticed in the advertising pages. SECTION FIFTH. ANALYSIS. CHAPTER I. [Why does true practical economy require that the soil should be analyzed?] At the present time, when such marked improvements have been, and are still being made, in the practice of agriculture, the farmer cannot be too strongly advised to procure an analysis of his soil, and for obvious reasons. It has been sufficiently proved that the plant draws from the soil certain kinds of mineral matter, in certain proportions; also, that if the soil do not contain the constituents required, the plants cannot obtain them, and consequently cannot grow. Furthermore, in proportion to the ability of the soil to supply these materials, in exactly the same proportion will it, when under good treatment, produce good and abundant crops. [Can each farmer make his own analyses? Why will not travelling chemists answer the purpose? How must an analysis be used?] All admit the value and the necessity of manures; they are required to make up deficiencies in the soil, and consequently, they must supply to it the matters which are wanting. In order to know what is wanting, we must know the composition of the soil. This can be learned only by accurate chemical analysis. Such an analysis every farmer must possess before he can conduct his operations with _true practical economy_. An important question now arises as to whether each farmer can make his own analyses. He cannot do so without long study and practice. The late Prof. Norton said that, at least _two years'_ time would be necessary to enable a man to become competent to make a reliable analysis. When we reflect that a farmer may never need more than five or six analyses, we shall see that the time necessary to learn the art would be much more valuable than the cost of the analyses (at $5 or $10 each), setting aside the cost of apparatus, and the fact that while practising in the laboratory, he must not use his hands for any labor that would unfit them for the most delicate manipulations. Neither will _travelling_ chemists be able to make analyses as accurately and as cheaply as those who work in their own laboratories, where their apparatus is not liable to the many injuries consequent on frequent removal. The cost of sending one hundred samples of soil to a distant chemist, would be much less than the expense of having his apparatus brought to the town where his services are required. [How may a farmer obtain the requisite knowledge? When are the services of a consulting agriculturist required?] _The way in which an analysis should be used_ is a matter of much importance. To a man who knows nothing of chemistry (be he ever so successful a farmer), an analysis, as received from a chemist, would be as useless and unintelligible as though it were written in Chinese; while, if a chemist who knew nothing of farming, were to give him advice concerning the application of manures, he would be led equally astray, and his course would be any thing but _practical_. It is necessary that chemical and practical knowledge should be combined, and then the value of analysis will be fully demonstrated. The _amount_ of knowledge required is not great, but it must be _thorough_. The information contained in this little book is sufficient, but it would be folly for a man to attempt to use an analysis from reading it once hurriedly over. It must be studied and thought on with great care, before it can be of material assistance. The evenings of one winter, devoted to this subject, will enable a farmer to understand the application of analysis to practical farming, especially if other and more compendious works are also read. A less time could hardly be recommended. [Is there any doubt as to the practical value of analysis? How should samples of soil for analysis be selected?] Where this attention cannot be given to the subject, the services of a Consulting Agriculturist should be employed to advise the treatment necessary to render fertile the soil analyzed. Every farmer, however, should learn enough of the principles of agriculture to be able to use an analysis, when procured, without such assistance.[AQ] Nearly all scientific men (all of the highest merit) are unanimous in their conviction of the _practical_ value of an analysis of soils; and a volume of instances of their success, with hardly a single failure, might be published. Prof. Mapes says, in the _Working Farmer_, that he has given advice on hundreds of different soils, and _not a single instance_ can be found where he has failed to produce a profit greater than the cost of analysis and advice. Dr. T. C. Jackson, of Boston, the late Prof. Norton, of Yale College, and others, have had universal success in this matter. Analysis must be considered the only sure road to economical farming. _To select samples of soil for analysis_, take a spadeful from various parts of the field--going to exactly the depth to which it has been plowed--until, say a wheel-barrow full, has been obtained. Mix this well together, and send about a quart or a pint of it (free from stones) to the chemist. This will represent all of that part of the farm which has been subject to the same cultivation, and is of the same mechanical character. If there are marked differences in the kinds of soil, separate analyses will be necessary. [Give an instance of the success of treatment according to analysis?] When an analysis is obtained, a regular debtor and creditor account may be kept with the soil; and the farmer may know by the composition of the ashes of his crops, and the manures supplied, whether he is maintaining the fertility of his soil. Prof. Mapes once purchased some land which could not produce corn at all, and by applying only such manures as analysis indicated to be necessary, at a cost of less than $2 per acre, he obtained the first year over _fifty bushels of shelled corn per acre_. The land has since continued to improve, and is as fertile as any in the State. It has produced in one season a sufficient crop of cabbages to pay the expense of cultivation, and over $250 per acre besides, though it was apparently _worthless_ when he purchased it. These are strong facts, and should arouse the farmers of the whole country to their true interests. Let them not call the teachings of science "book-farming," but "prove all things--hold fast that which is good." FOOTNOTES: [AQ] See Author's card in the front of the book. CHAPTER II. TABLES OF ANALYSIS. ANALYSES OF THE ASHES OF CROPS. No. I. ------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+-------- | Wheat. | Wheat | Rye. | Rye | | Straw. | | Straw. ------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+-------- Ashes in 1000 dry parts | 20 | 60 | 24 | 40 ------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+-------- Silica (_sand_) | 16 | 654 | 5 | 645 Lime | 28 | 67 | 50 | 91 Magnesia | 120 | 33 | 104 | 24 Peroxide of Iron | 7 | 13 | 14 | 14 Potash | 237 | 124 | 221 | 174 Soda | 91 | 2 | 116 | 3 Chlorine | | 11 | | 5 Sulphuric Acid | 3 | 58 | 10 | 8 Phosphoric Acid | 498 | 31 | 496 | 38 ------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+-------- No. II. ------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+--------- | Corn. | Corn | Barley. | Barley | | Stalks. | | Straw. ------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+--------- Ashes in 1000 dry parts. | 15 | 44 | 28 | 61 ------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+--------- Silica (_sand_) | 15 | 270 | 271 | 706 Lime | 15 | 86 | 26 | 95 Magnesia | 162 | 66 | 75 | 32 Peroxide of Iron | 3 | 8 | 15 | 7 Oxide of Manganese | | | | 1 Potash | 261 | 96 | 136 | 62 Soda | 63 | 277 | 81 | 6 Chlorine | 2 | 20 | 1 | 10 Sulphuric Acid | 23 | 5 | 1 | 16 Phosphoric Acid | 449 | 171 | 389 | 31 ------------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+--------- No. III. ------------------------+-----------+--------+--------+---------- | Oats. | Oat | Buck | Potatoes. | | Straw. | Wheat. | ------------------------+-----------+--------+--------+---------- Ashes in 1000 dry parts | 20 | 51 | 21 | 90 ------------------------+-----------+--------+--------+---------- Silica (_sand_) | 7 | 484 | 7 | 42 Lime | 60 | 81 | 67 | 21 Magnesia | 99 | 38 | 104 | 53 Peroxide of Iron | 4 | 18 | 11 | 5 Potash | {262} | 191 | 87 | 557 Soda | { } | 97 | 201 | 19 Chlorine | 3 | 32 | | 43 Sulphuric Acid | 104 | 33 | 22 | 137 Phosphoric Acid | 438 | 27 | 500 | 126 Organic Matter | | | | 750 | | | | Water. ------------------------+-----------+--------+--------+--------- No. IV. ------------------------+---------+--------+----------+-------- | Peas. | Beans. | Turnips. | Turnip | | | | Tops. ------------------------+---------+--------+----------+-------- Ashes in 1000 dry parts | 25 | 27 | 76 | 170 ------------------------+---------+--------+----------+-------- Silica (_sand_) | 5 | 12 | 71 | 8 Lime | 53 | 58 | 128 | 233 Magnesia | 85 | 80 | 48 | 31 Peroxide of Iron | 10 | 6 | 9 | 8 Potash | 361 | 336 | 398 | 286 Soda | 91 | 106 | 108 | 54 Chlorine | 23 | 7 | 37 | 160 Sulphuric Acid | 44 | 10 | 131 | 125 Phosphoric Acid | 333 | 378 | 67 | 93 Organic Matter | | |870 Water.| ------------------------+---------+--------+----------+-------- No. V. --------------------------+--------+----------+--------+---------- | Flax. | Linseed. | Meadow | Red | | | Hay. | Clover. --------------------------+--------+----------+--------+---------- Ashes in 1000 dry parts | 50 | 46 | 60 | 75 --------------------------+--------+----------+--------+---------- Silica (_sand_) | 257 | 75 | 344 | 48 Alumina (_clay_) | 37? | | | Lime | 148 | 83 | 196 | 371 Magnesia | 44 | 146 | 78 | 46 Peroxide of Iron | 36? | 9 | 7 | 2 Potash | 117 | 240 | 236 | 267 Soda | 118 | 45 | 19 | 71 Chlorine | 29 | 2 | 28 | 48 Sulphuric Acid | 32 | 23 | 29 | 60 Phosphoric Acid | 130 | 365 | 58 | 88 --------------------------+--------+----------+--------+---------- No. VI. Amount of Inorganic Matter removed from the soil by ten bushels of grains, etc., and by the straw, etc., required in their production--estimated in pounds: -------------------+--------+-----------+----------+---------- | | 1200 lbs. | | 1620 lbs. | Wheat. | Wheat | Rye. | Rye | | Straw. | | Straw. -------------------+--------+-----------+----------+---------- Potash | 2.86 | 8.97 | 2.51 | 11.34 Soda | 1.04 | .12 | 1.33 | .20 Lime | .34 | 4.84 | .56 | 5.91 Magnesia | 1.46 | 2.76 | 1.18 | 1.58 Oxide of Iron | .08 | .94 | .15 | .88 Sulphuric Acid | .03 | 4.20 | .11 | .05 Phosphoric Acid | 6.01 | 2.22 | 5.64 | 2.49 Chlorine | | .79 | | .30 Silica | .14 | 47.16 | .05 | 42.25 -------------------+--------+-----------+----------+---------- Pounds carried off | 12 | 72 | 11½ | 66 -------------------+--------+-----------+----------+---------- No. VII. -------------------+-------+----------+-------+---------- | | 1620 lbs.| | 700 lbs. | Corn. | Corn | Oats. | Oat | | Stalks. | | Straw. -------------------+-------+----------+-------+---------- Potash | 2.78 | 6.84 | 1.69 | 12.08 Soda | | 19.83 | | Lime | .12 | 6.02 | .39 | 3.39 Magnesia | 1.52 | 4.74 | .64 | 1.59 Oxide of Iron | | .57 | .02 | .78 Sulphuric Acid | | .36 | .66 | 1.41 Phosphoric Acid | 4.52 | 12.15 | 2.80 | 1.07 Chlorine | | 1.33 | .02 | 1.36 Silica | .06 | 19.16 | .18 | 20.32 -------------------+-------+----------+-------+---------- Pounds carried off | 9 | 71 | 6½ | 42 -------------------+-------+----------+-------+---------- No. VIII. -------------------+--------+---------+----------+---------- | Buck | | 660 lbs. | 2000 lbs. | Wheat. | Barley. | Barley | Flax. | | | Straw. | -------------------+--------+---------+----------+---------- Potash | 1.01 | 1.90 | 2.57 | 11.78 Soda | 2.13 | 1.18 | .23 | 11.82 Lime | .78 | .96 | 3.88 | 11.85 Magnesia | 1.20 | 1.00 | 1.31 | 9.38 Oxide of Iron | .14 | .20 | .90 | 7.32 Sulphuric Acid | .25 | .01 | .66 | 3.19 Phosphoric Acid | 5.40 | 5.35 | 1.25 | 13.05 Chlorine | | .01 | .40 | 2.90 Silica | .09 | 3.90 | 28.80 | 25.71 -------------------+--------+---------+----------+---------- Pounds carried off | 11 | 14 | 40 | 100 -------------------+--------+---------+----------+---------- No. IX. --------------------+----------+----------+----------+--------- | | 1120 lbs.| |1366 lbs. | Beans. | Bean | Field | Pea | | Straw. | Peas. | Straw. --------------------+----------+----------+----------+--------- Potash | 5.54 | 36.28 | 5.90 | 3.78 Soda | 1.83 | 1.09 | 1.40 | Lime | 98.98 | 13.60 | .81 | 43.93 Magnesia | .28 | 4.55 | 1.30 | 5.50 Oxide of Iron | .10 | .20 | .15 | 1.40 Sulphuric Acid | .16 | .64 | .64 | 5.43 Phosphoric Acid | 7.80 | 5.00 | 5.50 | 3.86 Chlorine | .13 | 1.74 | .23 | .08 Silica | .18 | 4.90 | .7 | 16.02 --------------------+----------+----------+----------+--------- Pounds carried off | 17 | 68 | 16 | 80 --------------------+----------+----------+----------+--------- No. X. --------------------+------------+----------+-------------+----------- | | 635 lbs. | | 2000 lbs. | 1 Ton | Turnip | 1 Ton | Red | Turnips. | Tops. | Potatoes. | Clover. --------------------+------------+----------+-------------+----------- Potash | 7.14 | 4.34 | 27.82 | 31.41 Soda | .86 | .84 | .93 | 8.34 Lime | 2.31 | 3.61 | 1.03 | 43.77 Magnesia | .91 | .48 | 2.63 | 5.25 Oxide of Iron | .23 | .13 | .26 | .23 Sulphuric Acid | 2.30 | 1.81 | 6.81 | 7.05 Phosphoric Acid | 1.29 | 1.31 | 6.25 | 10.28 Chlorine | .61 | 2.35 | 2.13 | 5.86 Silica | 1.36 | .13 | 2.14 | 5.81 --------------------+------------+----------+-------------+----------- Pounds carried off | 17 | 15 | 50 | 118 --------------------+------------+----------+-------------+----------- No. XI. ----------------------------------+----------+----------- | 2000 lbs.| 2000 lbs. | Meadow | Cabbage | Hay. | Water 9-10 ----------------------------------+----------+----------- Potash | 18.11 | 5.25 Soda | 1.35 | 9.20 Lime | 22.95 | 9.45 Magnesia | 6.75 | 2.70 Oxide of Iron | 1.69 | .25 Sulphuric Acid | 2.70 | 9.60 Phosphoric Acid | 5.97 | 5.60 Chlorine | 2.59 | 2.60 Silica | 37.89 | .35 ----------------------------------+----------+----------- Pounds carried off | 100 | 45 ----------------------------------+----------+----------- No. XII. Composition of Ashes, leached and unleached, showing their manurial value: -------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------- | Oak | Oak | Beech | Beech |unleached. | leached. |unleached. | leached. -------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------- Potash | 84 | -- | 158 | -- Soda | 56 | -- | 29 | -- Lime | 750 | 548 | 634 | 426 Magnesia | 45 | 6 | 113 | 70 Oxide of Iron | 6 | -- | 8 | 15 Sulphuric Acid | 12 | -- | 14 | -- Phosphoric Acid | 35 | 8 | 31 | 57 Chlorine | | | 2 | -------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+---------- No. XIII. ------------------+-----------+------------+------------ | Birch | Seaweed | Bituminous | leached. | unleached. | Coal | | | unleached. ------------------+-----------+------------+------------ Potash | -- | 180 | 2 Soda | -- | 210 | 2 Lime | 522 | 94 | 21 Magnesia | 30 | 99 | 2 Oxide of Iron | 5 | 3 | 40 Sulphuric Acid | -- | 248 | 9 Phosphoric Acid | 43 | 52 | 2 Chlorine | -- | 98 | 1 ------------------+-----------+------------+------------ No. XIV. TOBACCO. Analysis of the ash of the PLANT [Will & Fresedius]-- Potash 19.55 Soda 0.27 Magnesia 11.07 Lime 48.68 Phosphoric Acid 3.66 Sulphuric Acid 3.29 Oxide of Iron 2.99 Chloride of Sodium 3.54 Loss 6.95 ------ 100.00 Analysis of the ash of the ROOT [Berthier]-- Soluble Matter 12.3 Insoluble 87.7 The Soluble parts consist of nearly-- Carbonic Acid 10.0 Sulphuric Acid 10.3 Muriatic Acid (Chlorine, &c.) 18.26 Potash and Soda 61.44 ------ 100.00 No. XV. Composition of some of the more common Compounds of Acids and Alkalies. --------------------------------------+----------------+------------------ 100 Parts of | Contain of the | Contain of the | Alkalies | Acids --------------------------------------+----------------+------------------ Carbonate of Potash (Pearlash) | Potash 68.09 | Carbonic 31.91 Bi-Carbonate of Potash (Saleratus) | do. 51.62 | Carbonic 48.38 Nitrate of Potash (Saltpetre) | do. 46.56 | Nitric 53.44 Silicate of Potash | do. 50.54 | Silicic 49.46 Carbonate of Soda | Soda 58.58 | Carbonic 41.42 Bi-Carbonate of Soda (Common Soda)[AR]| do. 41.42 | Carbonic 58.58 Nitrate of Soda | do. 36.60 | Nitric 63.40 Sulphate of Soda (Glauber Salts)[AR] | do. 19.38 | Sulphuric 24.85 Silicate of Soda | do. 40.37 | Silicic 59.63 Carbonate of Lime (Limestone) | Lime 56.29 | Carbonic 43.71 Sulphate of Lime (Plaster Paris)[AR] | do. 32.90 | Sulphuric 46.31 Sulphate of Lime (Burned) | do. 41.53 | Sulphuric 58.47 Phosphate of Lime | do. 54.48 | Phosphoric 45.52 Super-Phosphate of Lime | do. 28.52 | Phosphoric 71.48 Silicate of Lime | do. 38.15 | Silicic 61.85 Carbonate of Magnesia | Magnesia 48.31 | Carbonic 51.69 Sulphate of Magnesia (Epsom Salts)[AR]| do. 16.70 | Sulphuric 32.40 Silicate of Alumina | Alumina 17.05 | Silicic 72.95 Sulphate of Iron (Green Vitriol)[AR] | Oxide of | Sulphuric 31.03 | Iron 27.19 | --------------------------------------+----------------+------------------ No. XVI. Proximate Analyses of Crops, showing the amount of the different Organic Compounds contained in Grain, Roots, Hay, etc.--estimated in pounds: --------------------------+--------+---------+---------+----------+-------- | Water. | Husk or | Starch, | Gluten, | Fatty | | Woody | Gum and | Albumen, | Matter. | | Fibre. | Sugar. | Legumin. | +--------+---------+---------+----------+-------- 10 Bushels. | | | | | Wheat 600 lbs. | 90 | 90 | 330 | 87 | 18 Barley 515 lbs. | 77 | 77 | 309 | 70 | 13 Oats 425 lbs. | 68 | 85 | 255 | 70 | 25 Rye 520 lbs. | 62 | 78 | 312 | 65 | 18 Indian Corn 600 lbs. | 84 | 36 | 420 | 72 | 42 Buck Wheat 425 lbs. | 64 | 106 | 212 | 34 | 2? Beans 640 lbs. | 90 | 61 | 256 | 166 | 16 Peas 640 lbs. | 90 | 58 | 320 | 154 | 14 | | | | | 2000 lbs. | | | | | Potatoes | 1500 | 80 | 360 | 40 | 6 Turnips | 1760 | 40 | 180[AS]| 30 | 6 Carrots | 1700 | 60 | 200[AS]| 30 | 8 Mangold Wurtzel | 1700 | 40 | 220[AS]| 40 | ? Meadow Hay | 280 | 600 | 800 | 140 | 70 Clover Hay | 280 | 500 | 800 | 186 | 80 Pea Straw | 250 | 500 | 900 | 246 | 30 Rye Straw | 270 | 900 | 760 | 26 | ? Corn Stalks | 240 | 500 | 1040 | 60 | 34 100 lbs. Fine Wheat Flour | 10 | | 79 | 11 | 100 lbs. Wheat Bran | 13 | | 55 | 19 | 5 --------------------------+--------+---------+---------+----------+-------- No. XVII. Amount of Ash left after burning 1000 lbs. of various plants, ordinarily dry-- Wheat 20 its straw 50 Barley 30 " 50 Oats 40 " 60 Rye 20 " 40 Indian Corn 15 " 50 Pea 30 " 50 Bean 30 Meadow Hay 50 to 100 Clover " 90 Rye Grass " 95 Potato 8 to 15 Turnip 5 to 8 Carrot 15 to 20 -------------------------------------------------------------- No. XVIII. MANURES. HORSE MANURE. Solid Dung-- Combustible Matter 19.68 Ash 3.07 Water 77.25 ------ 100.00 Composition of the Ash-- Silica 62.40 Potash 11.30 Soda 1.98 Oxide of Iron 1.17 Lime 4.63 Magnesia 3.84 Oxide of Manganese 2.13 Phosphoric Acid 10.49 Sulphuric Acid 1.89 Chlorine 0.03 Loss 0.14 ------ 100.00 No. XIX. NIGHT SOIL. Solid (Ash)-- Earthy Phosphates and a trace of Sulphate of Lime 100 Sulphate of Soda and Potash, and Phosphate of Soda 8 Carbonate of Soda 8 Silica 16 Charcoal and Loss 18 --- 150 Urine Urea[AT] 30.10 Uric Acid 1.00 Sal Ammoniac[AT] 1.50 Lactic Acid, etc. 17.14 Mucus .32 Sulphate of Potash 3.71 Sulphate of Soda 3.16 Phosphate of Ammonia[AT] 1.65 Earthy Phosphates 3.94 Salt (Chloride of Sodium) 4.45 Silica 0.03 ------ 67.00 Water 933.00 ------ 1000.00 No. XX. COW MANURE. Solid (Ash)-- Phosphates 20.9 Peroxide of Iron 8.8 Lime 1.5 Sulphate of Lime (Plaster) 3.1 Chloride of Potassium trace Silica 63.7 Loss 2.0 ----- 100.0 No. XXI. COMPARATIVE VALUE OF THE URINE OF DIFFERENT ANIMALS. Solid Matter. Organic. Inorganic. Total. Man 23.4 7.6 31 Horse 27. 33. 60 Cow 50. 20. 70 Pig 56. 18. 74 Sheep 28. 12. 40 No. XXII. GUANO. Water 6.40 Ammonia 2.71 Uric Acid 34.70 Oxalic Acid, etc. 26.79 Fixed Alkaline Salts. Sulphate of Soda 2.94 Phosphate of Soda .48 Chloride of Sodium (salt) .86 Earthy Salts. Carbonate of Lime 1.36 Phosphates 19.24 Foreign Matter. Silicious grit and sand 4.52 ------ 100.00 For the analysis of fertile and barren soils, see page 72. FOOTNOTES: [AR] Contain a large amount of Water. [AS] Pectic Acid. [AT] Supply Ammonia. THE PRACTICAL FARMER. Who is the _practical farmer_? Let us look at two pictures and decide. Here is a farm of 100 acres in ordinary condition. It is owned and tilled by a hard-working man, who, in the busy season, employs one or two assistants. The farm is free from debt, but it does not produce an abundant income; therefore, its owner cannot afford to purchase the best implements, or make other needed improvements; besides, he don't _believe_ in such things. His father was a good solid farmer; so was his grandfather; and so is he, or thinks he is. He is satisfied that 'the good old way' is best, and he sticks to it. He works from morning till night; from spring till fall. In the winter, he _rests_, as much as his lessened duties will allow. During this time, he reads little, or nothing. Least of all does he read about farming. He don't want to learn how to dig potatoes out of a book. Book farming is nonsense. Many other similar ideas keep him from agricultural reading. His house is comfortable, and his barns are quite as good as his neighbors', while his farm gives him a living. It is true that his soil does not produce as much as it did ten years ago; but prices are better, and he is satisfied. Let us look at his premises, and see how his affairs are managed. First, examine the land. Well, it is good fair land. Some of it is a little springy, but is not to be called _wet_. It will produce a ton and a half of hay to the acre--it used to produce two tons. There are some stones on the land, but not enough in his estimation to do harm. The plowed fields are pretty good; they will produce 35 bushels of corn, 13 bushels of wheat, or 30 bushels of oats per acre, when the season is not dry. His father used to get more; but, somehow, the _weather_ is not so favorable as it was in old times. He has thought of raising root crops, but they take more labor than he can afford to hire. Over, in the back part of the land there is a muck-hole, which is the only piece of _worthless_ land on the whole farm. Now, let us look at the barns and barn-yards. The stables are pretty good. There are some wide cracks in the siding, but they help to ventilate, and make it healthier for the cattle. The manure is thrown out of the back windows, and is left in piles under the eaves on the sunny side of the barn. The rain and sun make it nicer to handle. The cattle have to go some distance for water; and this gives them exercise. All of the cattle are not kept in the stable; the fattening stock are kept in the various fields, where hay is fed out to them from the stack. The barn-yard is often occupied by cattle, and is covered with their manure, which lies there until it is carted on to the land. In the shed are the tools of the farm, consisting of carts, plows--not deep plows, this farmer thinks it best to have roots near the surface of the soil where they can have the benefit of the sun's heat,--a harrow, hoes, rakes, etc. These tools are all in good order; and, unlike those of his less prudent neighbor, they are protected from the weather. The crops are cultivated with the plow, and hoe, as they have been since the land was cleared, and as they always will be until this man dies. Here is the 'practical farmer' of the present day. Hard working, out of debt, and economical--of dollars and cents, if not of soil and manures. He is a better farmer than two thirds of the three millions of farmers in the country. He is one of the best farmers in his town--there are but few better in the county, not many in the State. He represents the better class of his profession. With all this, he is, in matters relating to his business, an unreading, unthinking man. He knows nothing of the first principles of farming, and is successful by the _indulgence_ of nature, not because he understands her, and is able to make the most of her assistance. This is an unpleasant fact, but it is one which cannot be denied. We do not say this to disparage the farmer, but to arouse him to a realization of his position and of his power to improve it. But let us see where he is wrong. He is wrong in thinking that his land does not need draining. He is wrong in being satisfied with one and a half tons of hay to the acre when he might easily get two and a half. He is wrong in not removing as far as possible every stone that can interfere with the deep and thorough cultivation of his soil. He is wrong in reaping less than his father did, when he should get more. He is wrong in ascribing to the weather, and similar causes, what is due to the actual impoverishment of his soil. He is wrong in not raising turnips, carrots, and other roots, which his winter stock so much need, when they might be raised at a cost of less than one third of their value as food. He is wrong in considering worthless a deposit of muck, which is a mine of wealth if properly employed. He is wrong in _ventilating_ his stables at the cost of _heat_. He is wrong in his treatment of his manures, for he loses more than one half of their value from evaporation, fermentation, and leaching. He is wrong in not having water at hand for his cattle--their exercise detracts from their accumulation of fat and their production of heat, and it exposes them to cold. He is wrong in not protecting his fattening stock from the cold of winter; for, under exposure to cold, the food, which would otherwise be used in the formation of _fat_, goes to the production of the animal heat necessary to counteract the chilling influence of the weather, p. 50. He is wrong in allowing his manure to lie unprotected in the barn-yard. He is wrong in not adding to his tools the deep surface plow, the subsoil plow, the cultivator, and many others of improved construction. He is wrong in cultivating with the plow and hoe, those crops which could be better or more cheaply managed with the cultivator or horse-hoe. He is wrong in many things more, as we shall see if we examine all of his yearly routine of work. He is right in a few things; and but a few, as he himself would admit, had he that knowledge of his business which he could obtain in the leisure hours of a single winter. Still, he thinks himself a _practical_ farmer. In twenty years, we shall have fewer such, for our young men have the mental capacity and mental energy necessary to raise them to the highest point of practical education, and to that point they are gradually but surely rising. Let us now place this same farm in the hands of an educated and understanding cultivator; and, at the end of five years, look at it again. He has sold one half of it, and cultivates but fifty acres. The money for which the other fifty were sold has been used in the improvement of the farm. The land has all been under-drained, and shows the many improvements consequent on such treatment. The stones and small rocks have been removed, leaving the surface of the soil smooth, and allowing the use of the sub-soil plow, which with the under-drains have more than doubled the productive power of the farm. Sufficient labor is employed to cultivate with improved tools, extensive root crops, and they invariably give a large yield. The grass land produces a yearly average of 2½ tons of hay per acre. From 80 to 100 bushels of corn, 30 bushels of wheat, and 45 bushels of oats are the average of the crops reaped. The soil has been analyzed, and put in the best possible condition, while it is yearly supplied with manures containing every thing taken away in the abundant crops. The analysis is never lost sight of in the regulation of crops and the application of manures. The _worthless_ muck bed was retained, and is made worth one dollar a load to the compost heap, especially as the land requires an increase of organic matter. A new barn has been built large enough to store all of the hay produced on the farm. It has stables, which are tight and warm, and are well ventilated _above_ the cattle. The stock being thus protected from the loss of their heat, give more milk, and make more fat on a less amount of food than they did under the old system. Water is near at hand, and the animals are not obliged to over exercise. The manure is carefully composted, either under a shed constructed for the purpose with a tank and pump, or is thrown into the cellar below, where the hogs mix it with a large amount of muck, which has been carted in after being thoroughly decomposed by the lime and salt mixture. They are thus protected against all loss, and are prepared for the immediate use of crops. No manures are allowed to lie in the barn-yard, but they are all early removed to the compost heap, where they are preserved by being mixed with carbonaceous matter. In the tool shed, we find deep surface-plows, sub-soil plows, cultivators, horse-hoes, seed-drills, and many other valuable improvements. This farmer takes one or more agricultural papers, from which he learns many new methods of cultivation, while his knowledge of the _reasons_ of various agricultural effects enables him to discard the injudicious suggestions of mere _book farmers_ and uneducated dreamers. Here are two specimens of farmers. Neither description is over-drawn. The first is much more careful in his operations than the majority of our rural population. The second is no better than many who may be found in America. We appeal to the common sense of the reader of this work to know which of the two is the _practical farmer_--let him imitate either as his judgment shall dictate. FINIS. EXPLANATION OF TERMS. ABSORB--to soak in a liquid or a gas. ABSTRACT--to take from. ACID--sour; a sour substance. AGRICULTURE--the art of cultivating the soil. ALKALI--the direct opposite of an _acid_, with which it has a tendency to unite. ALUMINA--the base of clay. ANALYSIS--separating into its primary parts any compound substance. CARBONATE--a compound, consisting of carbonic acid and an alkali. CAUSTIC--burning. CHLORIDE--a compound containing chlorine. CLEVIS--that part of a plow by which the drawing power is attached. DECOMPOSE--to separate the constituents of a body from their combinations, forming new kinds of compounds. DIGESTION--the decomposition of food in the stomach and intestines of animals (agricultural). DEW--deposit of the insensible vapor of the atmosphere on cold bodies. EXCREMENT--the matter given out by the organs of plants and animals, being those parts of their food which they are unable to assimilate. FERMENTATION--a kind of decomposition. GAS--air--aeriform matter. GURNEYISM--see _Mulching_. INGREDIENT--component part. INORGANIC--mineral, or earthy. MOULDBOARD--that part of a surface plow which turns the sod. MULCHING--covering the soil with litter, leaves, or other refuse matter. See p. 247. NEUTRALIZE--To overcome the characteristic properties of. ORGANIC MATTER--that kind of matter which at times possesses an organized (or living) form, and at others exists as a gas in the atmosphere. OXIDE--a compound of oxygen with a metal. PHOSPHATE--a compound of phosphoric acid with an alkali. PROXIMATE--an organic compound, such as wood, starch, gum, etc.; a product of life. PUNGENT--pricking. PUTREFACTION--rotting. SATURATE--to _fill_ the pores of any substance, as a sponge with water, or charcoal with ammonia. SILICATE--a compound of silica with an alkali. SOLUBLE--capable of being dissolved. SOLUTION--a liquid containing another substance dissolved in it. SATURATED SOLUTION--one which contains as much of the foreign substance as it is capable of holding. SPONGIOLES--the mouths at the ends of roots. SULPHATE--a compound of sulphuric acid with an alkali. VAPOR--gas. KETCHUM'S PATENT MOWING MACHINES [Illustration] =The greatest Improvement ever made for Simplicity, Durability, and Ease of Action.= It is now beyond a question, from the complete triumph over all other machines this season, that this is the _only_ successful Grass Cutter known. It is in fact the _only_ machine that has ever cut _all kinds of grass_ without _clogging_ or _interruption_. More than 1000 have been sold the present season under the following warranty, and not in a single instance have we been called on to take one back. (Warranty:) That said machines are capable of Cutting and Spreading, with one span of horses and driver, from ten to fifteen acres per day, _of any kind of grass, heavy or light, wet or dry, lodged or standing_, and do it as well as is done with a scythe by the best mowers. The price of our machine, with two sets of knives and extras, is $110, cash, delivered on board of cars or boat, free of charge. HOWARD & CO., Manufacturers and Proprietors, Buffalo, N. Y. _Buffalo_, Aug. 1, 1853. RUGGLES, NOURSE, MASON & Co., Manufacture Ketchum's Mower for New England. WARDER & BROKAW, Springfield, Ohio; for Southern Ohio and Kentucky. SEYMOUR & MORGAN, Brockport, N. Y.; for Michigan and Illinois. NEW AND USEFUL WORKS. JUST PUBLISHED BY _D. APPLETON & COMPANY_ A new and much, enlarged edition of =DR. URE'S= DICTIONARY OF ARTS, MANUFACTURES AND MINES. Containing a clear Exposition of their principles and practice. Illustrated with nearly 1,600 engravings. Complete in two large 8vo. volumes; counts over 2,000 pages. Price $5.00. This new edition is nearly a quarter of a century in advance of any previous one. It contains one third more matter than the latest previous one. The statistics, inventions, and improvements, are all brought down to the present time. The results of the London Exhibition on the respective subjects of which the Dictionary treats, are presented with great fulness and accuracy. The numerous errors in the typography of the London edition have been corrected in this. =SIR CHARLES LYELL'S= PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY; Or, the Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants, considered as illustrative of Geology. A new and much enlarged edition. Illustrated with maps, plates, and wood-cuts. 1 vol. 8vo., of 850 pages. Price $2.25. =SIR CHARLES LYELL'S= MANUAL OF ELEMENTARY GEOLOGY; Or, the Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants, as illustrated by Geological Monuments. A new and greatly enlarged edition. Illustrated with 500 wood-cuts. 1 vol. 8vo. Price $1.75. [***] The author of these works, stands in the very front rank of scientific men, and his works upon the science to which he has devoted his great powers and his indefatigable study, are the standard books upon these subjects. =APPLETON'S= MODERN ATLAS OF THE EARTH. With an Alphabetical Index of the Latitudes and Longitudes of 18,000 places. 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Most of us pass through this life without seeing or being sensible of them, though every day our existence and our comforts ought to recall them to our minds. One main cause of this is, that our schools tell us nothing about them--do not teach those parts of modern learning which would fit us for seeing them. What most concerns the things that daily occupy our attention and cares, are in early life almost sedulously kept from our knowledge. Those who would learn any thing regarding them, must subsequently teach themselves through the help of the press: hence the necessity for a Popular Chemical Literature. It is with a view to meet this want of the Public, and at the same time to supply a Manual for the Schools, that the present work has been projected. It treats, in what appears to be their natural order, of THE AIR WE BREATHE and THE WATER WE DRINK, in their relations to human life and health--THE SOIL WE CULTIVATE AND THE PLANT WE REAR, as the sources from which the chief sustenance of all life is obtained--THE BREAD WE EAT AND THE BEEF WE COOK, as the representatives of the two grand divisions of human food--THE BEVERAGES WE INFUSE, from which so much of the comfort of modern life, both savage and civilized, is derived--THE SWEETS WE EXTRACT, the history of which presents so striking an illustration of the economical value of chemical science--THE LIQUORS WE FERMENT, so different from the sweets in their action on the system, and yet so closely connected with them in chemical history--THE NARCOTICS WE INDULGE IN, as presenting us with an aspect of the human constitution which, both chemically and physiologically, is more mysterious and wonderful than any other we are acquainted with--THE ODOURS WE ENJOY AND THE SMELLS WE DISLIKE; the former because of the beautiful illustration it presents of the recent progress of organic chemistry in its relations to comforts of common life, and the latter because of its intimate connection with our most important sanitary arrangements--WHAT WE BREATHE FOR and WHY WE DIGEST, as functions of the body at once the most important to life, and the most purely chemical in their nature--THE BODY WE CHERISH, as presenting many striking phenomena, and performing many interesting chemical functions not touched upon in the discussion of the preceding topics--and lastly, THE CIRCULATION OF MATTER, as exhibiting in one view the end, purpose, and method of all the changes in the natural body, in organic nature, and in the mineral kingdom, which are connected with and determine the existence of life. It has been the object of the Author in this Work to exhibit the present condition of chemical knowledge and of matured scientific opinion upon the subjects to which it is devoted. The reader will not be surprised, therefore, should he find in it some things which differ from what is to be found in other popular works already in his hands or on the shelves of his library. The Work is being published in 5 or 6 NUMBERS, price 25 cents each, in the following order, forming 1 vol. 12mo. of about 400 pages. 1. The AIR we Breathe and 2. The WATER we Drink. 3. The SOIL we Cultivate and 4. The PLANT we Rear. 5. The BREAD we Eat and 6. The BEEF we Cook. 7. The BEVERAGES we Infuse. 8. The SWEETS we Extract. 9. The LIQUORS we Ferment. 10. The NARCOTICS we Indulge in. 11. The ODOURS we Enjoy and 12. The SMELLS we Dislike. 13. What we BREATHE and BREATHE FOR, and 14. What, How, and Why we DIGEST 15. The BODY we Cherish, and 16. The CIRCULATION of MATTER, a Recapitulation. WORKS ON AGRICULTURE, THE HORSE, & DOG. _Published by D. Appleton, & Co._ THE FARMER'S HAND-BOOK Being a Full and Complete Guide for the Farmer and Emigrant. Comprising--The Clearing of Forest and Prairie Lands; Gardening; Farming Generally; Farriery; The Management and Treatment of Cattle; Cookery; The Construction of Dwellings; Prevention and Cure of Disease; with copious Tables, Recipes, Hints, &c., &c. By JOSIAH T. MARSHALL. One volume, 12mo., illustrated with numerous wood engravings. Neatly bound. Price $1; paper cover, 62½ cents. "One of the most useful books we ever saw."--_Boston Post._ RURAL ECONOMY, In its relations with Chemistry, Physics, and Meteorology; or, Chemistry applied to Agriculture. By J. B. BOUISSANGAULT. Translated, with Notes, etc., by George Law, Agriculturist. 12mo, over 500 pages, $1 50. 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Also, Agricultural and Horticultural Publications, and Agents for Principal Nurseries, AT THE QUINCY HALL =AGRICULTURAL WAREHOUSE AND SEED STORE=, OVER QUINCY MARKET, SOUTH MARKET ST., =BOSTON, MASS.= WAGENER'S AMERICAN SEED =HARVESTER.= HIGHEST PREMIUMS AWARDED =At the World's Fair Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations, 1853.= ALSO BY THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE, NEW YORK. VARIOUS OTHER APPROBATIONS HAVE BEEN RECEIVED. This Machine consists of a simple frame and box mounted on wheels, in front of which is a cylinder, set with spiral knives, acting in concert with curved spring teeth, in combination with a straight knife, which forms a perfect shear, and severs the head from the stalk; the heads are at the same time discharged into the box. The teeth being made to spring and vibrate, not a particle of clover, however stalky or thick, can possibly escape being cut, or allow the teeth to become clogged. The Cylinder and Knives are protected by an adjustible guard plate, thus allowing only the heads to pass to the Knives, retaining the head, and the head only--thus leaving the stalk to enrich the soil. The machine is so constructed that it can be made adjustible to the height of the Clover and Timothy. To be seen at the Crystal Palace. Price of the machines moderate. The Farmer will find that by this process, he may save two crops of Timothy per year. When the seed is ripe the tops can be clipped, and the straw left until fall to mature. You now have your seed and hay in two crops of equal value; in case of clover, you mow the first crop for hay, the second for seed; you in both cases get better seed and hay with less labor and expense than grain crops, at the same time leaving the soil clothed with a coat of straw, for the coming season, which will increase the value of the soil for crops, make fine pastures and fine stock, while it fits the land for fine grain. In this way lands in our states have been raised in production from five to twenty-five or thirty bushels of wheat per acre, in the course of a few years. This is within the reach of every farmer, without money or labor, as organic matter accumulates from the atmosphere and is deposited in the soil. Manufactured and for sale by the Patentee and Proprietor, JEPTHA A. WAGENER. _Office 348 West Twenty-Fourth Street, New York._ All orders for Machines this season should be sent in immediately, in order to have them in readiness for harvest time. =Price of Machines, $100 and $110, two sizes, at the Manufactory.= --> Rights of States and Counties on favorable terms. "Wagener's Clover and Timothy Seed Harvester has been in successful operation two seasons, and has received the premium at the World's Fair and at the Fair of the American Institute, and various other testimonials of superior value. They are manufactured and for sale by the inventor, Jeptha A. Wagener, at 348 West 24th street, New York."--_U. S. Journal._ The Grain Harvester is in course of preparation, and will soon be offered for sale. THE WORKING FARMER, PUBLISHED ON THE FIRST OF EACH MONTH, At 143 Fulton St., (upper side,) a few doors east of Broadway, New York. TERMS. One year, _payable in advance_, $1 00 Clubs of six subscribers, 5 00 Clubs of twelve subscribers, 10 00 Clubs of twenty-five subscribers, 20 00 Single copies, 10 Volume one, in paper cover, 50 Volumes two, three, four and five, in paper cover, each 1 00 Postage on the WORKING FARMER, _if paid at the Subscriber's Post Office_, is, for Any distance within the United States, 3000 miles and under, _one cent_ for each paper. If paid at a Subscriber's Post Office, _in advance_, 1¾ cents per quarter, or 7 cents per year. Postage on bound volumes in _paper covers, if pre-paid at the New York Post Office_, Vol. I. | Vols. II., III., IV & V. Any distance within United cts. | cts. States, 3000 miles and under 22 | 26 each volume. If not pre-paid at the New York Post Office, double the above rates will be charged. Subscriptions must commence with the year, namely, March; or the even half year, September; and for not less than one year. Remittances can be made, from such States as have no small paper circulation, in gold dollars, Post Office stamps, or the bills of other States. =ADVERTISEMENTS.= Five lines, one dollar each insertion, and in the same ratio for more lengthy advertisements. Post-paid Letters, addressed to the Publisher, will meet with prompt attention. FRED'K McCREADY, 143 Fulton street, upper side, a few doors east of Broadway. MAPES' IMPROVED SUPER PHOSPHATE OF LIME 160 lbs. FREDK. McCREADY WHOLESALE AGT. 143 FULTON STREET, KEEP DRY. N.Y. SEVERAL IMITATIONS of this celebrated fertilizer having been introduced among the dealers since the introduction of the _Improved Super-Phosphate of Lime_, I beg to state that all manufactured under the recipe of Prof. J. J. Mapes, is MARKED ON THE BAGS AS ABOVE, and each bag contains his certificate of having been made under his superintendence. --> Orders for the above fertilizer by mail, from strangers, should be accompanied with the money, a draft, or proper references. The bags contain exactly 160 lbs., which at two and a half cents per pound, amounts to four dollars. FRED'K McCREADY, 143 Fulton street, New York. [Illustration] THE UNIVERSAL CULTIVATOR, Described on page 254, Is represented in the above cut. It is manufactured by us, and is sold by all implement dealers. OUR IMPROVED HORSE HOE, Of which a cut may be seen on p. 254, Is now manufactured at our establishment, and is sold throughout the Union. It is the best implement for weeding, etc. ever made. THE SOD AND SUB-SOIL PLOW, (Sometimes called the MICHIGAN PLOW,) Consists of two plows on the same beam. The first inverts the sod to the depth of a few inches, and the hindmost plow brings up the lower soil, depositing it on the inverted sod. FOR DEEP TILLAGE, especially on prairie land, this is superior to any of its competitors. RUGGLES, NOURSE, MASON & CO. Worcester, Mass., and Quincy Hall, Boston. TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES Page 8 Page number added for tables of analysis Page 22 Period added after "great brilliancy" Page 33 seashore standardised to sea-shore; genii standardised to genie Page 39 No footnote anchor was in place. Anchor added after "are formed," as this seemed most reasonable in context. Page 52 quanties corrected to quantities; nutricious corrected to nutritious Page 53 Footnote marker added for "See Johnston's Elements, page 41." Page 55 ? added after "in their composition" in footer Page 74 Removed second "the" in "is the the foundation of Agricultural Geology." Page 142 pigstye standardised to pig-stye Page 144 plough standardised to plow Pages 145, 211 subsoil plow standardised to sub-soil plow [Note that in line with the more common usage in this work, the phrases sub-soil plow and sub-soiling have retained their hyphens] Page 148 Removed second n in mannures Page 152 postash corrected to potash Page 157 suplying corrected to supplying Page 167 carbonia corrected to carbonic Page 174 buck-wheat standardised to buckwheat Pages 196, 232, 234, 235, 237, 238, 241 sub-soil standardised to subsoil Page 204 ? Added after Mineral in the question section Page 211 water tight standardised to water-tight Page 223 Second 6. changed to 7. Page 232 oxydation standardised to oxidation Page 266 Period added after lbs in 1620 lbs rye straw Page 272 Title No. XVI. added to table Page 273 10,000 corrected to 100.00 Page 290 accurracy corrected to accuracy Page 292 Number of pages unclear. 464 Guessed. 
32392	----	http://www.archive.org/details/notesonagricultu00bevarich NOTES ON AGRICULTURE IN CYPRUS AND ITS PRODUCTS by W. BEVAN Director of Agriculture, Cyprus 1919 All Rights Reserved CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 I. GENERAL 3 Geographical Features, 3; Climate and Rainfall, 4; Administration, 5; Weights, Measures and Currency, 5 II. AGRICULTURAL CONDITIONS 6 General, 6; Land Tenure and Labour, 6; Tithes and Taxation, 7; Credit and Agricultural Societies, 8; Irrigation, 8; Agricultural Implements, 10; The Agricultural Department, 12; Fungoid Diseases and Insect Pests, 14 III. LIVE STOCK 16 Cattle, 16; Sheep, 17; Goats, 18; Pigs, 19; Camels, 20; Horses, 20; Donkeys, 20; Jennets and Mules, 21; Poultry, 22; Preserved Meats, etc., 23 IV. DAIRY PRODUCE 23 Milk, 23; Cheese, 24; Butter, 27; Xynogala or Yaourti, 27; Trachanas, 28; Kaimaki or Tsippa, 28 V. CROPS AND OTHER PRODUCE OF THE LAND 28 CEREALS 28 Wheat, 31; Barley, 32; Oats, 34; Rye, 35; Maize (Indian Corn), 35; Dari or Millet (Sorghum vulgare), 35 FRUITS 35 Vines and Wines, 36; Citrus fruits, 43; Fig (_Ficus Carica_), 44; Cherries, 45; Banana, 46; Azarol Hawthorn, 46; Melons, 47; Date Palm, 47 NUTS 48 Hazelnuts and Cobnuts or Filberts, 48; Walnuts, 49; Almonds, 49; Spanish Chestnut, 50; Pistacia spp., 50 VEGETABLES 52 Beans and Peas, 53; Potatoes, 55; Kolakas (_Colocasia antiquorum_), 56; Onions, 56 FODDERS AND FEEDING STUFFS 57 Carob Tree, 57; Lucerne (_Medicago sativa_), 61; Vetch (_Vicia Ervilia_), 62; Chickling Vetch (_Lathyrus sativus_), 62; Vetch (_Vicia sativa_), 62; Tares (_Vicia tenuifolia var. stenophylla_), 63; Milk Vetch (_Astragalus_), 63; Moha, Sulla (_Hedysarum_), 63; Teosinte (_Reana luxurians_), 64; Sudan-grass, 64; Teff-grass (_Eragrostis abyssinica_), 64; Mangold Wurzel, 64; Prickly Pear (_Opuntia_), 65 SPICES 65 Coriander Seed, 65; Aniseed, 66; White Cumin Seed, 66; Black Cumin Seed, 67 ESSENTIAL OILS AND PERFUMES 67 Origanum Oil, 67; Marjoram Oil, 69; Laurel Oil, 69; Otto of Roses, 69; _Acacia Farnesiana_, 70 OILS AND OIL SEEDS 71 Olives, 71; Sesame Seed, 74; Ground Nut, Peanut or Monkey Nut (_Arachis hypogæa_), 75,; Castor-oil Seed, 76 FIBRES 77 Cotton, 77; Flax and Linseed, 82; Wool, 83; Hemp, 84; Silk, 85; Mulberry, 91; Agaves and Aloes, 91; Broom Corn, 92 TOBACCO 92 TANNING MATERIALS AND DYE-STUFFS 96 Sumach, 97; Valonea, 98; Acacia Barks, 98; Madder, 99 DRUGS AND OTHER PRODUCTS 99 Liquorice Root, 99; Pyrethrum, 100; Squill, 101; Colocynth, 101; Asphodel, 102 VI. MINOR AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES 102 Bee-keeping, 102; Basket-making, 104; Fruit and Vegetable Preserving, 104 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE SKETCH MAP OF CYPRUS, SHOWING DISTRIBUTION OF CROPS AND FORESTS 2 PLATE I. FIG. 1. PLOUGHING ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE WITH NATIVE PLOUGH 10 I. FIG. 2. NEWLY-PREPARED BEDS IN EXPERIMENTAL GARDENS 10 II. AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS 12 III. FIG. 1. NATIVE BULL 16 III. " 2. NATIVE RAM 16 IV. " 1. CYPRUS PONY 20 IV. " 2. CYPRUS DONKEYS 20 V. " 1. CARTING CORN 29 V. " 2. THRESHING CORN WITH NATIVE THRESHING BOARD 29 VI. PRUNED OLIVE-TREES AT METOCHI OF KYKOS 72 VII. FIG. 1. CYPRIOT EARTHENWARE BEEHIVES 103 VII. " 2. SHIPPING FRUIT AT LARNACA 103 NOTES ON AGRICULTURE IN CYPRUS AND ITS PRODUCTS[1] BY W. BEVAN _Director of Agriculture, Cyprus_ The intention of these notes is to make available to those interested in the agriculture of Cyprus some of the information scattered in various reports, leaflets and correspondence not readily accessible to the general public. It has long been a matter of regret to the writer that the valuable stores of information collected with so much care and ability by the late Mr. Panayiotis Gennadius, formerly Director of Agriculture in Cyprus, through having been published in Greek only, have remained beyond the reach of many who might otherwise have derived benefit from a study of his works. His writings on the general agriculture of the "Near East" are voluminous and comprehensive, and show an intimate knowledge of the subject as well as of the practices and customs of agriculturists in these regions. The results of his labours are mainly embodied in his _Helleniki Georgia_ and his _Phytologikon Lexicon_, both of which are works of recognised authority. During his eight years (1896-1903) spent in Cyprus Mr. Gennadius devoted himself specially to a study of the agricultural conditions and needs of the Island, and the notes and reports made by him have been, to a large extent, taken as the basis of the present Notes. During the sixteen years since he left the Island many changes have taken place, and the more receptive and enlightened attitude of the rising generation of farmers has helped to bring about various improvements, and a greater readiness has been shown to adopt modern methods. In compiling the present Notes I have drawn freely from the articles which have appeared for many years in the _Cyprus Agricultural Journal_ (formerly _Cyprus Journal_), the official publication of the Agricultural Department, and which I have edited; I have also taken advantage of the very admirable and reliable information contained in the _Handbook of Cyprus_, edited by Messrs. Lukach and Jardine. [Illustration: SKETCH MAP Of CYPRUS SHOWING DISTRIBUTION OF CROPS & FORESTS] I am greatly indebted to the willing assistance of Mr. Procopios Symeonides, Inspector of Agriculture, whose thorough acquaintance with local conditions and usages has enabled him to contribute much useful and informative material. I have also to offer my acknowledgments to Messrs. M. G. Dervishian, C. Pelaghias, Z. Solomides, G. Frangos, A. Klokaris, A. Panaretos and others who have kindly supplied me with data of various kinds. It will scarcely be necessary to add that little more than a summary of the agricultural practice and resources of the Island has here been attempted, and in no sense does it pretend to be anything more. The aim has been to give the reader a general idea of what Cypriot agriculture is and, to some extent, what it is capable of doing. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Reprinted from the BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, 1919.] I. GENERAL _Geographical Features_ The Island of Cyprus is situated in the innermost basin of the Mediterranean Sea; about 40 miles distant from the Asia Minor coast on the north, and about 60 miles from Syria on the east, and 238 miles from Port Said to the south. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean, ranking next to Sicily and Sardinia. The larger part of the Island is in the form of an irregular parallelogram, 100 miles long and from 30 to 60 miles broad; while on the north the eastern extremity runs out beyond this into a peninsula 40 miles long by 5 to 6 miles broad. The total area is 3,584 sq. miles. The main topographical features are the northern and southern mountain ranges running east and west and enclosing the great plain of the Messaoria. The mountains of the northern range are of an altitude ranging from 2,000 ft. to over 3,000 ft., the highest point being Buffavento, 3,135 ft.; those of the southern range are more lofty and culminate in Mt. Olympus, 6,406 ft. above sea-level. The rivers are nearly all mountain torrents, and are dry from about July to November or December. The area of cultivated land is approximately 1,200,000 acres, and that of the uncultivated land 1,093,760 acres, of which about 450,000 are forest land and 320,000 are susceptible of cultivation. The Messaoria plain is the great corn-growing area. _Climate and Rainfall_ There are considerable extremes of temperature in the plains. In summer it is very hot and dry with temperature ranging during June to September from 80° to 110° Fahr., while in winter slight frosts not infrequently occur. The climate is more equable, but also more humid, along the coasts. In the plains there is, during the greater part of the year, a marked variation between the day and night temperatures. Official records show that for a period of thirty-two years up to 1915 the average rainfall for hill and plain for the whole Island approximated to 20 inches. Up to 1902 records were kept only in the six district towns, but since then there have been some fifty recording stations. The mean rainfall during the winter months for the twelve years ended 1914 was 18.55 inches. That for the whole year during the latter period was 21.18 inches. The incidence of rainfall, apart from its volume, is of importance. It is on the rainfall of the six winter months, October to March, that the prosperity of the Island depends, and any shortage during this period cannot be balanced by heavier summer rains, which are more liable to cause harm than good, by damaging the corn lying on the threshing-floors and by causing sudden floods. Much importance attaches to the rains in March, without which the grain crop, however ample the earlier rains may have been, will not be satisfactory, as described in a maxim which I have attempted to render in English. If twice in March it chance to rain, In April once, a shower in May, In weight in gold of man and wain, The farmer's crops are sure to pay. If roads are dry at Christmas time, But Epiphany finds both mud and slime, And at Carnival they still hold many a pool, The farmer finds his barns quite full. _Administration_ The Island is administered by a High Commissioner. There is an Executive Council and a Legislative Council consisting of six official members and twelve elected members, of whom three are elected by the Moslem and nine by the non-Moslem inhabitants. The Island is divided into six districts, in each of which the Executive Government is represented by a Commissioner. _Weights, Measures and Currency_ Nearly everything except corn, wine, oil, carobs, cotton and wool is sold by the oke. An oke, dry measure, equals 400 drams, or 2-4/5 lb. The liquid oke is reckoned as equivalent to a quart. Grain is measured by the kilé, regarded as equal to a bushel. Wool, cotton and oil are sold by the litre of 2-4/5 okes, but commonly reckoned as 2-1/2 okes. Carobs are sold by the Aleppo cantar of 180 okes. This cantar is further divided into 100 litres of 1 oke and 320 drams each. Wine is sold by the kartos = 4 okes, the kouza = 8 okes, and the gomari = 128 okes. 1 kilé of wheat weighs 20 to 22 okes. 1 kilé of barley weighs 14 to 18 okes. 1 kilé of oats weighs 13 to 14 okes. 1 kilé of vetches weighs 23 to 24 okes. 1 sack of straw weighs about 40 okes. 1 camel-load of straw weighs about 200 okes, consisting of 2 sacks, each weighing about 100 okes. _Measures of Length_ Metron or metre. Yarda or yard. Pic = 2 ft. or two-thirds of a yard. Inch = English measure. The land measure is the donum (called by the villagers "scala"), but it is very uncertain, and varies in different parts of the Island. As recognised by law, 1 donum, called "tappoo donum," equals 60 pics = 40 yards square = 1,600 square yards, or 14,400 sq. ft.; 3.025 of these donums go to the acre. There is also a farmer's, or "reshper" donum, which is commonly used by agriculturists and is equal to about 1-1/2 Government donums. For general purposes a legal donum is about one-third and a Cypriot farmer's donum about one-half of an acre. "Stremma" is also a synonym for the farmer's donum, or scala, although its actual measure is very much less. _Currency_ £1 = 20 shillings or 180 copper piastres. 1 shilling = 9 copper piastres. 1 cp. (copper piastre) = 40 paras. II. AGRICULTURAL CONDITIONS _General_ Agriculture is the main industry of the Island, which is favourably situated for the markets of Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor, although the former is practically the only buyer of its perishable produce. During recent years the Cypriot agriculturist has come to realise more and more the value of the Egyptian market and a considerable trade with that country has grown up. _Land Tenure and Labour_ The small farmer mostly cultivates his own land, whereas the large landowner rarely does. The metayer, or metairie, system is fairly common, and has much to recommend it when honourably carried out by both parties, but it is open to very serious abuse. Under this system the one party, or contractor, gives the seed and often lends the cattle. A valuation of the latter is made at the time of entering into the agreement, and a re-valuation is made on termination, any depreciation being made good by the other party, or metayer. The latter finds the necessary labour and feeds the animals and pays an agreed rate for their hire. The crops, after deduction of Government tithe, are usually divided equally between both parties, but the conditions vary according to circumstances and the nature of the crops grown. If cultivated land be given to the partner, such land must be returned to the contractor in the same state of cultivation as received, or the contractor, at his option, may claim the return of the seed his partner received with it. There are also a considerable number of leaseholders paying a fixed rent. The monasteries are the largest landowners, and both cultivate their own land and let out portions to the monks or to private farmers. Much land is also held by the Church, and this is frequently let out on a yearly lease, with the result that it is badly farmed and speedily worked out. The country is rather sparsely populated by about 275,000 inhabitants, and although the cultivators are laborious when working for themselves and when free from the hands of the usurers, they are still very backward in their methods and appliances. A less conservative attitude has of late been observed, and a greater readiness has been manifested in seeking and following the advice of the Agricultural Department. There is a great amount of indebtedness among the peasantry and usurious practices abound. This undoubtedly checks progress, as few of the smaller farmers are free agents. The matter has lately been the subject of a special Commission appointed by Government. Laws have this year (1919) been passed by the Legislative Council dealing with usury and indebtedness. _Tithes and Taxation_ The tithe, which forms the principal source of Government revenue, is one-tenth of the produce of the land on wheat, barley, oats, vetches, rye and favetta, measured on the threshing-floors and delivered in kind at the Government Grain Stores. Certain allowances are made to the tithe-payers for transport. In the case of carobs, which are also subject to this tax, the tithe is taken in money from exporters at the Custom House at the rate of 9 cp. (1s.) per cantar from the districts of Nicosia, Larnaca and Limassol, and 8 cp. per cantar from the other three districts. There are certain export dues, in lieu of tithe, payable on the following commodities: Aniseed 33 cp., cotton 55 cp., linseed 18 cp., mavrokokko (black cummin) 7 cp., and raisins 10 cp. per 100 okes; silk cocoons 6-3/4 cp., wound silk 18 cp., silk manufactured by other than hand looms 18 cp. per oke. An annual tax is levied of 3-3/4 cp. per head on every sheep and of 5 cp. per head on every goat one year old and upwards, and of 4-1/2 cp. per head on every pig over three months old. _Credit and Agricultural Societies_ The spirit of co-operation has hitherto been singularly lacking, but there are signs that a change is in progress and that, with proper guidance, the cultivators will ere long come to realise the advantages of combined effort in the production and distribution of their crops. The establishment of village co-operative Credit Societies has long been advocated, but although a law was passed in 1913 for this purpose, there has so far been little practical outcome. Co-operation in its full modern significance is not yet understood; but one or two little village co-operative banks have nevertheless been started and show encouraging results. There are also a few small village agricultural societies springing up, which, if properly conducted, may prove the pioneers of a general movement in this direction. The existence of such societies would greatly facilitate the work of the Agricultural Department, which would be able to influence and assist farmers through their societies, whereas now it is often not possible to reach them individually. _Irrigation_ The most common method of raising water is by means of primitive water-wheels or "alakatia," often described as "Persian wheels" and resembling the "sakia" of Egypt. By these the water is carried in earthenware cups attached to the rim of a large vertical wooden wheel fixed in the mouth of a well and made to revolve by a mule or donkey by means of a horizontal wheel and beam, or by modern air-motor. Myrtle branches are mostly employed for attaching the cups to the wheels, as these are pliable and resist the action of water. These "alakatia" were formerly made entirely of wood, but in the nineties, iron ones ("noria") were introduced from Greece, and these have become fairly general, and are gradually supplanting the older types. They have the advantage of being more durable and lighter to work. Good iron wheel wells are now locally made. Water-wheels of this description cannot be used for raising water from a depth of more than ten fathoms below the surface of the ground. Of late years a large number of air-motors of Canadian pattern have been introduced and are found satisfactory. There is abundant evidence in the remains of old disused Venetian wells and cisterns that in pre-Turkish times, when the country was far more densely populated than at present, a larger quantity of underground water was utilised than now. Abundant subterranean water for agricultural and gardening purposes is to be found in almost all the coast lands as well as in many parts of the interior. Such waters are either brought to the surface along subterranean channels or by means of wells, and, for the most part, have their origin in the mountain ranges, specially in the southern range, which is the rainy region of the Island. Artesian well-boring experiments have been made in recent years in different parts of the Island, but without substantial results. In the Famagusta district large reservoirs were constructed several years ago for impounding the surplus water of the rivers of Pedias and Ialias, but these have only been very partially successful as the water is mostly lost before it reaches them. A satisfactory solution of the water problem is of supreme importance to the Island. There are large fertile areas which every year remain fallow, but which, if capable of irrigation, would grow excellent cotton and other summer crops, thus providing a better system of rotation. Vegetable growing and fruit culture could then also be very greatly extended. _Agricultural Implements_ _Ploughs._--The old wooden plough of the East is still the common plough of the country (see Plate I, fig. 1). Efforts were made from 10 to 15 years ago to introduce iron ploughs by selling them through the Agricultural Department at half the cost price and even less. High-water mark was reached in 1908 when 102 of these ploughs were so sold. These were much approved of, and the further sale was then left in the hands of merchants. The demand at once fell off and since then only a few have been introduced. For a year or two a certain number of iron ploughs of Russian make were imported and sold through the Jewish settlement at Margo. There is now a considerable demand which it may be possible to satisfy when normal conditions are resumed. There is some prejudice against English-made ploughs on the score of weight, as they are mostly heavier than those of French, Russian, Greek and American make. _Harrow._--The native harrow, "saraclo," is a wooden beam about 10 ft. long by 12 to 18 in. broad and 3 in. thick, on which the labourer stands as it is drawn over the newly sown land. It is ineffective inasmuch as it does not break the clods, but merely presses them into the ground. Iron-toothed harrows and spring-toothed harrows have been lent by the Department for demonstration purposes to different persons, and these, particularly the second kind, have found favour and are likely to be in demand for covering the sown seed. The usual method is to cover the seed with the native plough, but the European harrow is seen to do the work more effectively and with a great economy of time. Among the more common agricultural tools of native pattern are the following (see Plate II): _Tsappa_ (hoe).--The wider tool, 5 in. to 6 in., is mostly for garden use; the narrow tsappa, about 3 in. wide, is for field work. _Skalistiri._--A kind of small tsappa, 2 in. wide, having two prongs 4 in. to 5 in. long at the opposite end. It is mostly used for hoeing vegetables. [Illustration: PLATE I. Fig. 1.--Ploughing on a Mountain-side with Native Plough. Fig. 2.--Newly-prepared Beds in Experimental Gardens.] _Xinari_ (axe or hatchet).--One end of the implement is a sort of hoe, and the other end is shaped like a mattock. Used for cleaning off weeds, shrubs, etc., from the fields; also for cutting or splitting wood. _Kouspos._--These are of two kinds. The larger is used like a tsappa, but in stony or rocky places; the smaller is the tool used by well-sinkers. It can be conveniently handled in a confined space. _Karetta_ or _Cart_.--This has almost entirely superseded the old Cypriot type of cart, but the latter may yet be seen very occasionally in the Karpas and possibly in the Paphos district. It is still in use in some parts of Anatolia. In its construction no iron nails are needed. _Doukani._--The common threshing-board (see under "Cereals," p. 29). This is the primitive implement handed down from classic times and generally seen throughout the East (see Plate V, fig. 2). _Thernatchin._--A wooden shovel used for winnowing grain. It is deeply serrated, or divided, into 5 or 6 triangular-shaped teeth. _Arvalin._--A corn sieve. A goat's or sheep's skin, perforated with holes, is stretched across a round wooden frame, 12 in. to 18 in. in diameter. Instead of a skin, leather thongs or gut are stretched, crosswise on the frame. Perforated tin is now sometimes employed. These sieves are used for cleaning grain after winnowing. _Arkon._--Another kind of sieve, similar to the above, but with smaller holes for sifting fine seeds, dust, etc. Mostly made of skin, but now tin is being used. _Patourin._--A similar sieve, used for still finer work. _Skala._--An iron dibber, fitted with two wooden handles, used for planting vine cuttings. Some advance has been made of late in cleaning the land, but foul land is pretty general. Squills, thistles, thorny bushes, and so forth abound; these are mostly deeply rooted, drought-resistant plants, and the labour required for uprooting them is not forthcoming. There are a fair number of reaping machines now in use, but little care is bestowed on them, and when slightly out of order they are often put aside as useless. More enlightened ideas are now prevailing, and the abundant crops of the last few years have created a strong desire for more reapers and also for threshing machines, of which there are at present barely half a dozen in the Island. _The Agricultural Department_ The Agricultural Department was established on a small scale in 1896, under the direction of Mr. P. Gennadius. It continued much on its original lines until 1912, when its establishment was enlarged, and the Government Farm and the Veterinary Branch were attached to the Department, and again in 1914 it underwent a further slight extension which was necessarily checked by the war. There is now a staff of inspectors, district overseers and agricultural demonstrators who are occupied in continually travelling in the country, advising and giving practical assistance to cultivators, lecturing on village wine-making, poultry-keeping, bee-keeping, on the action to be taken against various pests and so forth. There are some eight Government Nursery Gardens in the districts from which large numbers of trees, plants and seeds are issued. A system of Model Orchards and Vineyards, newly started, is giving satisfactory results. These are intended to assist those engaged in the production of fruit and vegetables, for which an unlimited market is close at hand in Egypt. Seventy School Gardens are in existence throughout the Island under the guidance and control of the Department. By their means many young fruit trees and other plants and seeds are annually distributed at low rates, better methods of cultivation and new kinds of vegetable and fodder plants are being made known, and the village boys are being taught something about the work on which they will later depend for their livelihood. [Illustration: PLATE II. _Agricultural Implements._ 1, Arvalin for barley and oats. 2, Arvalin for wheat and vetches. 3, Shovel for winnowing. 4, Thernatchin. 5, Arkon. 6, Patourin. 7, Tsappa, narrow, for field use. 8, Tsappa, wide, for garden use. 9, Xinari. 10, Kouspos. 11, Skalistiri.] An Agricultural School for the sons of farmers was opened at Nicosia in 1913 under the direction of the Agricultural Department. Some twenty to twenty-five lads between sixteen and twenty years of age, both Greeks and Moslems, receive a two-year course of instruction with a view to fitting them to cultivate their own properties later. A few of the more promising students have been retained as student-labourers in the Department, after the termination of their school course, and of these again a few have been given minor appointments in the Department. A scheme for training young Cypriots abroad, which was in abeyance during the war, makes it possible to give the more capable of these some further training in Europe in the higher branches of agriculture. It is hoped, by this means, to form a group of native experts from among whom the technical staff of the Department can be recruited. The Government Farm, Athalassa, though somewhat ill-placed for purposes of education and demonstration, has done good work in improving the live stock of the country, as evidenced at the Animal Shows held every year. Periodical auction sales of Athalassa stock take place in the different districts. During the three years 1915-18, there were reared at the Farm and distributed 41 cattle, 264 sheep, 8 donkeys, 332 pigs and 2 mules, besides a considerable head of poultry. The total value of the live and dead stock was estimated on March 31, 1918, at £3,128. For breeding purposes there were 6 stallion horses, 8 jack donkeys, 8 bulls and 7 boars in 1917-18 stationed either at Athalassa or at the stud stables which have been established in the districts. Some 30 cast army mares have been obtained free of cost from the Remount Department, Egypt, and have been lent out on contract to farmers for mule breeding. During 1917-18 the Farm produced 169 cheeses and 1,036-1/2 lb. of butter. In the winter of 1917-18 some 314 donums of land were under cultivation, the chief crops being barley, oats, wheat and gavetta (_Lathyrus sativus_). The Veterinary Establishment provides for 1 Veterinary Surgeon, 2 Stock Inspectors and 1 Veterinary Compounder. There is a good deal of endemic contagious disease among the flocks and herds of the Island, mainly anthrax and goat- and sheep-pox, and the Veterinary staff is kept busy. Cattle plague is unknown in the Island. Cattle breeding should become a paying industry when once the lesson of proper feeding and management has been learnt (hitherto sadly neglected by the Cypriot farmer), since Egypt provides a ready and remunerative market. Perhaps no work is of more importance than that of combating the numerous insect and other pests which every year cause heavy loss to the agricultural community. The addition of an Entomological Laboratory and the appointment of an Entomologist have enabled the Department to afford relief to many cultivators, and a small but active entomological staff are constantly engaged on various pest campaigns. The Department possesses a small but well-equipped Chemical Laboratory under the charge of an Agricultural Chemist. In the absence of any law, the Department has, in the interests of importers and agriculturists alike, offered its services for analysing and reporting upon samples, sealing bags and giving advice as to the use of the different types, and this action has been readily availed of. This in itself, however, is not enough to check malpractices or safeguard the cultivators. For the last four years the Department has had trial plots in which new varieties of cereals and fodder plants have been experimentally grown (see Plate I, fig. 2). The seed has been obtained from England, South Africa, India and Australia, but so far none of the varieties have been found in any marked degree superior to the native kinds. One or two varieties introduced two years ago are promising, and when fully acclimatised may be worth the attention of farmers. Experimental sowings are often made in the villages when it is desired to bring any particular crop to the notice of the agricultural classes. The _Cyprus Agricultural Journal_, published quarterly in English, Greek and Turkish, is the official organ of the Agricultural Department. _Fungoid Diseases and Insect Pests_ The Cypriot agriculturist has to contend against the attacks of many species of insects and a number of fungoid pests. Little could be done to bring these under control until, in 1914, an Entomological Branch of the Agricultural Department was established. Much valuable research and descriptive work had been carried out by Mr. Gennadius, but no organised field work could be undertaken until the last three or four years. A detailed description of the numerous pests cannot here be given, but the more important ones are enumerated below. Happily Cyprus is one of the few Mediterranean countries which has not been invaded by Phylloxera. _Cereals._--_Æcophora temperatella_ (Limassol district only), smut and rust, hessian fly (occasionally), grain weevils (_Calandra granaria_), grain moth (_Sitotroga cerealella_). _Carobs._--_Cecidomyia ceratoniæ_, scale (_Aspidiotus ceratoniæ_) _Myelois ceratoniæ,_ borer (_Cossus liniperda_), _Oidium ceratoniæ_. _Olives._--_Capnodium_, scale (_Lecanium oleæ_ and _Aspidiotus oleæ_), aphis (_Psylla oleæ_), olive fly (_Dacus_ sp.), _Tinea oleela_ and various borers. _Citrus and other Fruit Trees._--Gummosis (Citrus and all stone fruits); scale (all); ermin moth (apples, pears and plums); downy plant louse, _Schizoneura lanigera_ (apples); aphides (almond, peach, plum and apricot); _Tingis pyri_ (pears and apples); codlin moth, _Carpocapsa pomonella_ (apples, pears, quinces and walnuts); peach leaf curl, _Exoascus deformans_ (peaches); black aphis (peaches); Mediterranean fruit fly, _Ceratitis capitata_ (all); mites, _Acarus_ sp. (all); various borers, thrips, and barkbeetle (_Scolytids_). _Vines._--_Oidium Tuckeri_, _Peronospora_, anthracnose, _Cladosporium,_ root rot, _Zygæna ampelophaga_, thrips, _Cochylis_, _Lita solanella_. _Vegetables.--Peronospora infestans_ (potatoes), _Cladosporium_, _Altica_, aphides, mole crickets. Much damage is done to carobs by the large rat, _Mus Alexandrinus_. The large fruit-eating bat is a great pest. Hornets attack all kinds of fruits and cause much loss. The chief cotton enemies are the cotton boll worm (_Earias insulana_), aphides and _Capnodium_. Locusts are no longer the formidable plague they were in the eighties. They are limited almost to the Famagusta district, where they annually breed and do a certain amount of damage to early cotton and to vegetable crops. If not vigilantly kept under control they would quickly multiply and become a serious danger. III. LIVE STOCK _Cattle_ The cattle of the country have been bred, until the last two or three years, exclusively for draught purposes. Cattle breeding as a business is unknown. Farmers, as a rule, aim only at raising a calf or two every year in order to maintain one or more yokes of oxen. Some of the draught animals are very fine (see Plate III, fig. 1, and Plate V, fig. 1). These belong mostly to the monasteries; one animal exhibited at a recent show measured over 17 hands. The race is presumably the result of many crossings with imported breeds, but has acquired a definite type. The cows are in colour and conformation not unlike Jerseys, but larger and without the udder development of that breed. The oxen have mostly a more or less pronounced hump, possibly acquired through many generations of progenitors used exclusively for draught purposes. In some of the best bulls this hump is particularly marked. In 1912 some Devon bulls and cows were imported and a herd of this breed was started at the Government Farm, Athalassa. An impetus was thus given to breeding dairy cows, and a number of half- and three-quarter-bred cows are now to be found, which command high prices for milking purposes. The Devon bulls, however, have never come into favour among farmers for raising draught cattle. There was a fair export of cattle to Egypt before the war, a good proportion of the animals being consigned to the Serum Institute, Cairo, as Cyprus cattle, alone among the cattle in this part of the Levant, have so far been free from plague. The number of horned cattle in 1917 is officially given as 48,761. The exports for the five years preceding the war were: Year. Number. Value. £ 1909 2,357 11,314 1910 4,240 20,218 1911 9,664 44,871 1912 5,751 34,303 1913 3,017 20,110 [Illustration: PLATE III. Fig. 1.--Native Bull. Fig. 2.--Native Ram.] There can be no question that if more attention were paid to growing fodder crops, cattle breeding could be greatly increased, and a good trade with Egypt might be done. The establishment of the Athalassa Stock Farm has had a most useful influence on the improvement of the live stock of the Island. Beef has only lately become an article of food for the country people, and is still so only on a small scale. The townspeople, having become Europeanised to a greater degree than formerly, are now becoming beef consumers, and the high price of beef has had a stimulating effect upon breeding for the butchers. Before the British occupation the killing of an ox for eating purposes was considered by many villagers an act of sacrilege. _Sheep_ Sheep rearing is an important industry in Cyprus. The sheep are of the fat-tailed species and are allied, though superior to, the Afrikander sheep. The total number of sheep in the Island in 1917 was 255,150. They feed almost entirely by grazing, and wander, under the charge of shepherds, over considerable areas in search of food, frequently in company with goats. They are valued chiefly for their milk and meat; their wool, though of moderate quality, is small in quantity. (See also under "Dairy Produce," p. 23.) Large numbers of sheep are killed annually for local consumption, and there is a regular export to Egypt, as shown by the following pre-war figures: Year. Number. Value. £ 1904 13,923 10,544 1905 8,816 7,572 1906 5,427 5,470 1907 2,859 2,699 1908 849 835 1909 976 716 1910 3,905 3,064 1911 18,143 12,311 1912 17,611 13,731 1913 7,920 6,724 Sheep-folding is practically unknown, and no crops are specially grown as food for sheep. Occasionally they may get a little rovi (vetch), rovi straw, lentil straw, favetta, pea-haulm or (in the hills) mavrachero (tares). They suffer in years of drought, but on the whole thrive wonderfully well on very scanty pasturage. Good work has been done of late years in the improvement of Cyprus sheep at the Government Athalassa Farm, and ewes and rams from the farm flock are much sought after by sheep-owners, many of whom are making efforts to ameliorate the breed. The question of providing suitable forage also is not being lost sight of. _Goats_ The goat has been a cause of much controversy for many years and a source of discord between farmer and shepherd. Owing to the absence of farm boundaries the herds of goats (and sheep) continually trespass on the cultivated areas, and the shepherds are at little pains to restrain them when there is a chance of the animals getting a good meal. Large sums in the aggregate are paid by way of fines and damages, but the shepherds evidently find that even so it is profitable to continue such practices. In consequence of the serious harm done every year in the State forests by these animals, a law "For the gradual exclusion of goats from the Island" was passed in 1913 and came into operation on August 1 that year. As the subjoined table shows, the number of goats has decreased, but it is doubtful how far this is due to the law, and how far to the losses from goat-pox, which is very prevalent, and to the shipments for military purposes during the war: Year. Head. 1880 210,736 1890 237,475 1900 243,397 1910 276,794 1913 (when the law was passed) 242,524 1918 191,017 The goat is in many respects well suited to the Island, and provides the villager with milk, cheese, meat, boots and manure. The animals cost very little to keep--even apart from their depredations--and thrive, especially in the hills, under conditions unsuited to sheep and cattle. They are, however, great enemies to agriculture and forestry, and if they are to be preserved in the Island, it is essential that both they and the shepherds be brought under strict control. In Cyprus most of the goats have very short hair, which cannot be shorn. From this fact, and from the external shape of the animal, one may infer that it is either a variety of the Anatolian breed modified by local influences, or a hybrid of the Numidic and Anatolian breeds (see Plate III, fig. 2). The Anatolian goat has long and more or less thick hair, especially on the shoulders, sides and thighs, which, clipped in the spring, yields a not insignificant income for the goat-breeder (Gennadius). The Cyprus goat gives on an average 150 drams of milk per day during a period of say 150 days, or say, 50 to 60 okes per annum. A good proportion have kids twice a year, and many give birth to twins. The price of a goat varies considerably in different districts, and before the war was from about 8_s._ to 20_s._ or 25_s._ _Pigs_ The Paphos district and the Karpas end of the Famagusta district are specially given to pig raising; but this animal is to be found fairly well distributed all over the Island. The native pig is of inferior quality, but a noticeable improvement, not only in pig breeding but in pig rearing, has resulted from the introduction by Government of the Large Black breed from England in 1907. This breed has become well established at the Government Farm, Athalassa, and the progeny is now well spread over the Island. The improvement resulting from crossing with Government stock has been so unmistakable that there is now great competition for them at all auction sales and high prices are given. This increase in outlay on the part of farmers has led to greater care in the feeding and management. They find that well-bred pigs come more quickly to maturity, and that it pays to feed them well and not leave them to forage for themselves as formerly. Excellent pork and bacon are now procurable during the winter, and it may be hoped that pig breeding in Cyprus has a good future before it. The number of pigs counted in the spring of 1914 was 38,850, the third highest number on record. Since then, owing to the prohibition of export, breeding has been checked and the number declined, but now it appears to be again on the upward grade. Before the war there was an average annual export of about 2,000 animals; but there is now a better local market than formerly. _Camels_ Camels are still used to a fair extent, and the breed is good, but owing to the improvement in the roads and increased facilities for more rapid transport, these animals are less in demand than formerly. _Horses_ The native breed of horse is best seen in the Paphos pony, which though small, about 13 hands, is remarkably strong and hardy (see Plate IV, fig. 1). It is said that some eighty years or so ago the breed was improved by the introduction of two Arab stallions from Turkey. A useful stamp of pony mare is also to be found in the Karpas. A marked improvement in the quality of the local horses took place from the importation, some years ago, of English pony stallions; and more recently a further advance has resulted from the addition to the Government stud of the two famous English thoroughbred stallions "Téméraire," by Greyleg out of Tereska by Isonomy out of Violetta by Hermit, and "Huckle-my-buff," by Isinglass out of Snip by Donovan out of Isabel (dam of St. Frusquin). _Donkeys_ The Cyprian donkey at its best is a fine animal (see Plate IV, fig. 2). It is the common beast of burden of the villager, and is capable of carrying a load of from 160 to 224 lb. A large number of donkey stallions have been exported to India, Uganda, South Africa, Syria and Egypt from time to time, and the local breed has no doubt suffered owing to the best jacks having left the country. Although the villagers depend so much upon these animals, very little care is taken by them, either in the matter of breeding, feeding or proper management. The animals are mostly worked far too early, and underfed, and the majority are consequently undersized and of poor quality. Where good jacks are used, the progeny is generally satisfactory, and at shows and fairs some fine specimens are usually brought in. Owing to the increasing demand for jennets, the village breeder is inclined to put his she-donkey to a pony stallion rather than to a jack-donkey. The donkey mares range from 13 to 13.2 hands, with girth measurement of 58 in. to 60 in. and shank 6-1/2 in. They have great room, and are well shaped with a straight back and good quarters. [Illustration: PLATE IV. Fig. 1.--Cyprus Pony. Fig. 2.--Cyprus Donkeys.] It has been recommended that every encouragement should be given to the production of good donkeys, from which the best mares could be selected for mating with suitable pony stallions, such as the Exmoor and Welsh cob, for the breeding of jennets; and at the same time an improvement in the jacks would naturally follow. _Jennets and Mules_ "Owing to the excellence of the Cyprus donkeys and the poor class of Cyprus horses, the superiority of the 'jennet' (the result of mating the pony stallion with the donkey mare) is very patent over the 'mule' (the product of the donkey jack and the pony mare). The jennet of from 13.1 hands to 14.1 is doubtless the most paying animal that the Cyprus villager or landowner can produce, and its excellence for army or general pack purposes cannot be surpassed in any country in the world. Therefore, in my opinion, it is to this class of animal that the most encouragement in breeding should be given. To maintain the excellence of the Cyprus jennet every help should be given to the breeding of big donkeys, so that the plentiful supply of donkey mares of from 12.3 to 13.3 hands is available for mating with suitable imported pony stallions, which should be placed by the Government at the breeders' disposal."[2] Both jennets and mules, indiscriminately called "mularia," are largely used for transport purposes throughout the Island, and perform practically all the carting work of the country, but, as explained, the jennet is regarded as greatly the superior animal. _Poultry_ The ordinary barn-door fowl is met with in Cyprus, as everywhere else. The local breed is a mixture of all the various races which have been imported by private persons for many years past. The most general types met with resemble the Leghorn and Ancona breeds. The Island, owing to its climate and its corn production, is admirably suited to the poultry industry, and a sure and profitable market in Egypt can always be relied on. Something has been done of late years by the introduction of Wyandottes, Langshans and Orpingtons which have been bred by the Agricultural Department. Proper poultry management among the villagers is practically unknown, and until regulations can be made enforceable by law for the control of poultry diseases and for the disposal of diseased carcases, poultry keepers will continue to suffer heavy losses and the industry will not prosper.[3] Lectures on poultry-keeping have been instituted in the districts by the Agricultural Department, and it is hoped that these may arouse some interest and lead to improvement. Given the necessary guidance and control, the industry should have a good future before it. Turkeys are very plentiful and, except in the hills, are seen in nearly every village. There are three varieties--the bronze, by far the most general, the white, and a dark brown kind which is not common. Ducks and geese do well at Kythrea, but elsewhere are little seen. At this village, however, they are largely bred. Pigeons also are fairly abundant, and as they mostly feed on a neighbour's corn, they are considered profitable birds to keep. _Preserved Meats, etc._ A good deal of meat and fat is pickled, dried and smoked for consumption by the native population. Hams and sausages are much eaten, the latter especially in the Karpas. Among the various kinds of preserved meats may be specially mentioned that known as "apokti." This is the salted and dried flesh of the he-goat, which, when cooked, is much appreciated by the villagers. The meat is sometimes minced, and after the addition of ground origanum leaves and spearmint, is placed in jars and slowly cooked. It is said that from 3,000 to 5,000 he-goats are annually slaughtered for making "apokti." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: Report by Captain Goodchild, Remount Department, E.E.F., when visiting Cyprus in 1916 and 1917 to purchase mules and donkeys for army purposes.] [Footnote 3: Legislation in this direction has been effected during the session of the Legislative Council just ended. (Law No. VII of 1919.)] IV. DAIRY PRODUCE _Milk_ Sheep and goats' milk is principally used for cheese and butter making. Fresh milk of any kind is not much consumed by the native population, although within the last few years the more well-to-do townspeople have taken to drinking cows' milk, when obtainable, and it is in growing demand in some country parts for invalids when prescribed by the local doctor. The flavour of sheep and goats' milk is a good deal affected by the herbage or shrubs on which they feed, and thus varies according to locality. A characteristic odour is imparted, for instance, by the alnifolia oak (_Quercus alnifolia_) and the cistus, which are common in many parts of the Island, and the cheese and butter produced from such milk are in better demand in the local markets. The places in which this quality of milk is chiefly produced are the Paphos District, the neighbourhood of Kykko and Troöditissa in the Troödos mountains, and Akanthou to the north-east of the Island. A considerable impetus has been given to the production and consumption of fresh cows' milk by the establishment of a herd of Devon dairy cows at the Government Farm, Athalassa. Cows of Athalassa strain fetch high prices, as much as £80 having been given recently for a cow and several others have changed hands at £50 to £60. _Cheese_ The Cypriot is a great cheese eater. The most popular and commonly made cheese in Cyprus is that known as Halloumi; the next in order being the Paphos and Akanthou cheeses, and then, in imitation of the Greek cheeses, the Agrafa, Kefalotyri and Kaskaval, all of which are of a hard kind, while there is a small production of the Greek soft cheeses Fetta and Telemés. There are no statistics as to production; the export figures in recent years as given in the official trade returns are as follows: Year. Quantity. Value. _Cwts._ £ 1904 5,606 8,040 1905 4,705 7,245 1906 2,511 4,238 1907 2,200 4,559 1908 2,786 5,824 1909 2,367 4,927 1910 3,345 6,564 1911 3,647 6,624 1912 3,335 7,203 1913 3,699 9,268 1914 4,582 10,132 _Halloumi._--This cheese, though rather insipid, is very popular, and forms a large part of the dietary of every household. It is easy to make, needs no special appliances, and is almost entirely made by the shepherds themselves. It is made either from sheep's milk only, or, in the hills where goats are numerous, from sheep and goats' milk mixed, or in some places from goats' milk only; especially is this so in the mountains where sheep are not found. The two kinds of cheese, _i.e._ that made from sheep's milk and that from goats' milk, are easily distinguished, as the former is rather soft and crumbly, while the other is hard and separates out into flakes. This cheese as it comes from the mould is in the form of a slab called "kefali." This is then divided into four or more pieces. There are two kinds of halloumi: one called "mona" (single), the other "dipla" (double). The latter is most in demand. It differs from the first in being finished off by being well hand-pressed, and then doubled or folded over, salt and spearmint being sprinkled between the fold. "Myzithra," or, as it is more commonly called, "anari," is a soft cheese produced by boiling the whey, whereby all albuminoid substances not previously coagulated are now coagulated and rise to the surface together with any pieces of curd still remaining in the whey. A good quantity of fat is also enclosed in the coagulated mass, which is placed in rush moulds or in cloths and pressed so as to squeeze out the whey. "Anari" thus made is specially known as "bastard," and is an excellent soft cheese, very popular among the European residents as well as among the native inhabitants. A rather finer "anari" with slightly different flavour is made by adding 5 to 10 per cent. of pure milk. This added milk is known as "prosgalo." Both kinds are dried in the sun. From "anari" is made a kind of fat used as cooking butter, by crushing and rubbing it between the hands in warm water. A thin paste is thus formed from which a fat separates, which rises to the surface, and is then collected. _Paphos and Akanthou Cheeses._--These are prepared in much the same way as "halloumi," but are made in smaller, barrel-shaped moulds, and are steeped longer in the whey, which produces a rind and renders them tougher and less liable to crack. They are well rubbed with salt. Their characteristic flavour is doubtless due to some extent to the milk of those districts, as explained above. Owing to their small size they become very hard. _Kefalotyri._--The best cheeses of this type are made with sheep's milk, which is coagulated at its natural temperature immediately after milking. Rennet is added so as to produce coagulation within an hour. The cheeses are placed in moulds, pressed and salted. They are turned and salted every day for a week; and this continues for two or three weeks, until the cheeses cannot absorb more salt. _Fetta._--The process for making this cheese is much the same as for Paphos cheeses, but differs in regard to temperature. It is placed in bags and hung up, or left in cheese cloths on the table to drain. It is made up in 100 or 200 dram pieces, and turned and lightly salted for three days; then placed in barrels filled with brine. This cheese ripens in a few days. It is soft, and has a sharp, pungent flavour. It is the first to come on the market. It is not consumed in Cyprus, but made entirely for the Egyptian market, where it is much liked. Being soft, it does not keep well, and should always be kept covered in brine. For these reasons it is exported in small barrels of a gross weight of 40 to 50 okes. If care is taken in this respect, if all leaky barrels are kept refilled and cool storage provided, it may be preserved for a year; but these conditions are rarely fulfilled in Cyprus. _Telemés._--This is another soft cheese, prepared in a similar manner to "fetta," but it is cut into square blocks and placed not in barrels or vats, but in tins which, when completely filled with cheese and brine, are soldered down. This cheese is also made entirely for the Egyptian market. _Kaskaval or Kaskavalli._--This is mostly made by cheese-makers who come over from Greece or Turkey during the cheese-making season. The curd, after the whey is drained off, is called "phlongos," and it is almost always bought from the shepherds, each shepherd preparing it in his own way. It is transported in baskets, sometimes a good distance, to the cheese factory, or "kassaria," and these drawbacks, added to lack of cleanliness, are the cause of much cheese of inferior quality being produced which has no keeping properties and must be quickly consumed. Having reached a pasty condition, the cheese is placed in reed or willow baskets and immersed in either boiling whey or clean water and stirred until the whole mass is transformed into "kossimari"; it is then cut into pieces weighing one or two okes, and moulded by hand into a globular form, leaving one slight depression called the "omphalos" or navel. If not properly stored, this cheese soon dries and becomes rancid or tasteless. _Agrafa Cheese._--This is made entirely from sheep's milk. Coagulation should be completed in 25 to 30 minutes. The cheese remains 20 hours in the press. Salting lasts from 40 to 60 days, and the cheeses ripen in four months. If well stored, the cheese may keep for two years. _Butter_ Butter making is carried on to only a limited extent in Cyprus, and with two or three exceptions is in the hands of shepherds, who use a primitive conical-shaped churn, something after the Danish pattern. Churning consists in beating up the contents of the churn with a stick, to the end of which is fixed a round wooden disc 6 to 10 in. in diameter, not unlike a piston in its action. Sheep's milk is mostly used and, with a modern churn, this will yield 9 to 12 per cent. of fresh butter. Goats' milk gives about 5 to 6 per cent. About half the above quantities may be obtained with the older, native churn. In the Near East (Greece, Turkey, etc.) fresh butter is not used in cooking, as almost all cooked food is fried and butter containing the least water and casein cannot serve the purpose. The pure fat must therefore be extracted. Two methods are applied. The best is that of plunging the tins containing the fresh butter into hot water which heats the butter and sends the fat to the surface. It is then collected and slightly salted. This has a good flavour and keeps well. The second method is to place the fresh butter, or the residue from the former process, into tin pans and boil until the water is evaporated, when the albuminoids solidify at the bottom of the pans. The fat which is then on the surface is ladled out. This is inferior in quality, and has a disagreeable smell imparted by the albuminoids which come in contact with the hot pan. _Xynogala or Yaourti_ The former is the Greek, the latter the Turkish name for this preparation of sour milk. Unlike fresh butter, it forms, in season, part of the diet of almost every Cypriot household. It is now made in England and sold as "Bulgarian milk" or "yaourti." It is in the form of clotted cream, but if placed in a bag of fine cloth and if the whey is left to drain off, it forms a thick paste, and has an excellent creamy flavour, and is eaten in both cases either alone or, like Devonshire cream, with stewed fruits, etc. _Trachanas_ This is another favourite milk preparation, being a mixture of "yaourti" and ground wheat made into a thick paste. This is sun-dried and makes an excellent soup. _Kaimaki or Tsippa_ This much resembles Devonshire clotted cream. It is the natural cream formed after boiling the milk overnight and setting it in shallow pans to cool. If the boiled milk is poured into the pans from a height, so as to make a foam, a better result is obtained. V. CROPS AND OTHER PRODUCE OF THE LAND CEREALS The Messaoria plain is the principal corn-producing area of the island. Wheat, barley and oats are the chief cereals grown, and they are sown more or less throughout the whole of Cyprus, nearly up to the summit of Troödos, to an altitude of about 4,500 ft. Indian corn has been cultivated for ten years or so, and is becoming more general both for green food and for seed, and rye has begun to make its appearance during the last few years. Dari is becoming more known. The preparation of the land for cereals is as follows: About the middle of January, when the land is soaked with rain, the fallow field ([Greek: neasma] or [Greek: neatos]) is broken up, and in some cases sown with a green fallow, and in March or April it is cross ploughed ([Greek: dibolo]). If the autumn rains are early, the field is ploughed for a third time ([Greek: anakomma]), after which the crop is sown; but if the rains are late, the sowing is done on fields which have been cross ploughed only. As a rule sowing begins after the autumn rains, and may go on until January. But if rain does not come before the end of October, many sow before the rain; and in many places farmers sow regularly before, _i.e._ without waiting for the autumn rains. This sowing is called [Greek: xerobola]. Lands flooded by a river or other running water are called [Greek: potima] (_Handbook of Cyprus_, p. 154). The sowing is done broadcast; the drill is not used. [Illustration: PLATE V. Fig. 1.--Carting Corn. Fig. 2.--Threshing Corn with Native Threshing Board.] Often, owing to want of sufficient hands and shortness of time or other reasons, land which has been fallowed is sown without being first ploughed up. This is called [Greek: eis to prosôpon], _i.e._ on the surface, or face of the field. Again, a field which has had a corn crop is sown the next autumn without ploughing; and this is locally called "on the stubble." It is not uncommon for the same land to be sown year after year with a corn crop, with no rotation. This is especially the case with the deep soils in the plains, known as "kambos," as contrasted with the shallow, rocky soils called "trachonas." At the time of harvest numbers of labourers, men and women, usually arrive from Anatolia and Syria and find employment in the fields. The threshing-floors are practically identical with those of Biblical times. They are frequently paved with flag-stones, but as often as not are merely levelled pieces of ground. On these the sheaves are opened and spread out for the threshing. The threshing-board ([Greek: doukani] or [Greek: doukanais]) is that referred to by Virgil as _tribulum_ (Georg. Bk. 1) and is merely a stout board, studded on the underside with sharp flint stones (see Plate V, fig. 2). This is drawn round and round over the spread-out sheaves by mules, donkeys or oxen, and affords a pastime to old and young during the summer months. During the process the grain is separated from the straw, and the latter is bruised and partly shredded, and it is the rooted belief of the Cypriot farmer that only in that condition will it be relished by and benefit the animals which feed on it. The straw is then gradually cleared away and the grain is winnowed by being thrown up in the wind with wooden shovels. The grain is then heaped up and left until measured by the tithe official. With the grain is also collected the sweepings of the threshing-floor, and the percentage of the foreign substances mixed with the grain varies from 5 to 15 per cent. There are a few winnowing machines and it is hoped that they will come into more general use as soon as they can be imported. At Athalassa all cereal crops are reaped and threshed by machinery. A good many reaping machines were imported by the Agricultural Department some years ago for resale to the farmers, and there is a very fair demand. This procedure has not been permitted for some years, and the work fell into the hands of an English merchant who has succeeded in placing a few machines every year. The country is ready to employ these and other agricultural machines, but the farmers need guidance in the choice of a machine and are reluctant to place orders through native merchants, who may not know the best types to supply and whose profits they fear to be exorbitant. If they could procure these through the medium of the Agricultural Department they would be encouraged to make considerable purchases. The loss of grain on the "aloni" alone may be gauged by the current opinion that each pair of oxen consumes, while threshing, one kilé of grain per day. Much damage is often caused by hot westerly winds at the time when the grain is just forming. In the absence of any law to prevent the adulteration of cereals, dishonest practices are very frequent. A common method of adulteration is to mix with the grain the joints of the straw which are cut during the process of threshing and separated when winnowing. These are often sprayed with water in order to increase both bulk and weight. The moisture is absorbed by the grain, which thereby swells and is made to look bigger. Under the Seed Corn Law of 1898 the Government make advances of seed wheat, barley, oats and vetches to cultivators under an agreement to repay in kind after harvest a quantity of grain equivalent to the amount of seed so advanced, together with an addition of one-fourth of the quantity so advanced, by way of interest. This benefit is very generally availed of by smaller cultivators. It has not, however, been found possible for Government to keep separately the various kinds and qualities of tithe corn, from which these advances are made, and farmers frequently complain that the seed, so issued promiscuously, is unsuitable to the land, aspect, or special conditions on individual farms. Weevilled grain also is a source of trouble, and farmers obtaining such seed advances must be prepared to run risk of failure from this cause. It is a well-known fact that cultivators often sell their seed corn so advanced them, in order to buy some other corn known to them as more suited to their land, and they are often justified, perhaps, in so doing. The issues are made by District Commissioners to selected applicants who are believed to be unable to buy seed for cash. The average annual issues, for the last five years, have been: wheat, 38,013 kilés; barley, 31,479 kilés. _Wheat_ In ancient times, when the population numbered about 1,100,000, the Island was said to be self-supporting in the matter of wheat. Taking the annual consumption of wheat per head of population at 8 bushels (Gennadius's _Report on the Agriculture of Cyprus_, Part I, p. 8) and after making an allowance for seed, the annual production would then have been about 10,000,000 bushels. From British Consular Reports it appears that in 1863 the average produce was reckoned at 640,000 bushels. The average annual production of wheat for the ten years ended 1913, as shown in Blue Book Returns, was 2,292,827 kilés. For later years the figures are: Year. Kilés. 1914 1,924,336 1915 1,761,501 1916 1,524,484 1917 1,782,800 1918 2,424,570 Wheat is sown at the rate of 1 kilé per donum. The average yield per donum is 6 to 10 kilés, and varies between 3 to 4 kilés on dry land in a poor year, to 16 to 20 on the best lands in a good year. When rains are very late and spring weather is unfavourable, a farmer often fails to recover even the seed. Much might be done to increase the yield by better methods of husbandry, by the use of improved implements for cultivating and reaping, and by the use of threshing machines. An immense quantity of grain is consumed by birds (larks, sparrows, doves, etc.), which at times literally strip the fields and continue their depredations on the threshing-floors. Wheat is sown from October to December; a field which has had a winter crop is pastured after the harvest until January; in January and February it is broken up and cross ploughed and sown immediately after with a spring or summer crop. The crop is cut about May-June. It is cut with a sickle ([Greek: drepani]), tied into sheaves, and carried on donkeys or small carts to the threshing-floors. The sickle is larger than the European one, and is often provided with bells ("koudounia" or "sousounaria") to frighten the snakes, and the handles are ornamented with leather tassels. Several varieties of wheat are grown in the Island, mostly of the hard kinds, these being preferred by millers. The following English varieties have been imported and tried during the last four years: Improved Treasure, White Stand Up, and Improved Red Fife. The two former failed, being too late in maturing; the latter is still under trial, but it is not very attractive, being a late variety, and it gives a smaller yield than the native kinds. The same remarks apply to several wheats obtained from India and South Africa and which are still under trial. _Barley_ This crop is sown about the same time as wheat, if anything slightly earlier; and it is ready for the sickle three or four weeks before wheat. When the straw is short the plant is uprooted, not cut. It is sown at the rate of 1 to 1-1/2 kilés to the donum, and may be expected to yield from 10 to 15 kilés; but 30 kilés is not uncommon in the plains, and even much larger yields have been recorded from time to time. There are three native varieties, viz. the common 4-row, the ordinary 6-row and the Paphos 6-row barley, also grown around Davlos in the north-east of the Island. The last-named is heavier than the two former kinds. Little success has attended the introduction by the Agricultural Department of "Prize Prolific," "Gold Thorpe" and "Chevalier," which have been experimentally grown for the last three years. They mature late and have not resisted severe drought. Their yield is small compared with native barleys, although this may improve when they are fully acclimatised. Barley is the staple food for all kinds of animals, pigs and poultry in Cyprus, and it is often used for bread-making in years of wheat shortage. The tithe is mainly exported to England, where it has a good name for malting purposes, especially that produced in the Paphos district. It has failed to attain the place it deserves on the English market owing to the high percentage of dirt, etc., it mostly contains. A sample of Cyprus barley examined at the Imperial Institute in 1914 proved to be of good malting quality, and similar material if marketed in commercial quantities would be readily saleable in the United Kingdom (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xii. 1914, p. 552). A sample of naked or skinless barley from Cyprus has also been reported on by the Imperial Institute. This type of barley cannot be employed for malting for ordinary brewing purposes, but it was considered that the Cyprus material might be used by distillers (who only require a partially malted barley), and in any case the sample would rank as a good class feeding barley (_ibid._ vol. xiv, 1916, p. 159). The average annual production of barley, as shown by the Blue Book returns, for the ten years ended 1913 was 2,449,285 kilés. For later years the figures are: Year. Kilés. 1914 1,957,944 1915 1,912,316 1916 1,953,628 1917 2,508,880 1918 3,080,710 These figures should be contrasted with British consular estimated average in the sixties of 960,000 bushels. _Oats_ In Cyprus, oats are used on a far smaller scale than barley as food for cattle, and they are unknown, except to a few townsfolk, as a food for human beings. The cultivation of this crop is restricted, partly because it ripens late and needs late rains, and partly because it sheds its ripe grain too quickly for the ordinary easy-going farmer, who frequently finds his next year's crop smothered with self-sown oats. It is also commonly held that the crop exhausts the soil. There are two native varieties, both white. The one is grown much more than the other, called "anoyira," which, although incomparably superior, is little cultivated outside the Limassol district. The seed is sown at the rate of 2 to 2-1/2 kilés to the donum, and a yield of from 20 to 30 kilés is obtained. The average annual production for the ten years ended 1913, as shown by Blue Book returns, was 394,695 kilés. For later years the figures are: Year. Kilés. 1914 404,917 1915 378,724 1916 446,469 1917 306,010 1918 313,260 Besides "Black Tartar," which has been regularly grown at Athalassa for several years, the Agricultural Department has introduced of late years "Black Cluster," "White Cluster" and "Supreme." All these ripen late and need late rains, and they have not given any promise of success. A black variety imported from Greece some years ago has proved much superior to the two native varieties, but its cultivation is still limited. Reports on oats from Cyprus and on oat, straw and kyko oat plant (_Avena sativa_ var. _obtusata_) are given in the BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE (vol. xv. 1917, pp. 308-10). _Rye_ Rye has only lately been introduced by the Agricultural Department, but already its cultivation, though very small, is extending. The dark colour of the rye loaf creates some prejudice against it, but its value in cases of diabetes, a common complaint in Cyprus, is greatly in its favour. The seed is sown and cultivated here in the same manner as wheat, but at the same time or even earlier than barley. It is harvested by being cut and is threshed on the threshing-floor. The straw is fed to animals, but when threshing machines become more general the long straw will become available for other purposes than cattle food, _e.g._ in the manufacture of the native saddles ("stratura"), native straw trays and native straw hats. Rye is also grown for green food, in the same way as barley grass. _Maize_ (_Indian Corn_) This crop was first introduced by the Agricultural Department in 1902. Its cultivation is governed by the water-supply. It is grown mostly for green food, and is met with very generally throughout the Island, being sown among the growing crops, _e.g._ louvi, sesame, cotton, etc., as a wind-break or to afford shade. There was a good demand for the grain for grinding during the war and the meal is found to be a useful ingredient in the ordinary loaf. The stems and leaves provide a welcome change of food for cattle when exhausted from threshing and during the dry season of the year. At the Government Farm at Athalassa the stems and leaves are made into ensilage. _Dari or Millet_ (_Sorghum vulgare_) This crop is little grown, and is mostly found in the Messaria and also at Paleochori, almost exclusively in places irrigated by river floods. The grain is used for making flour and the fresh stalks are fed to cattle. FRUITS Cyprus produces a considerable variety of fruits, the chief ones exported being raisins, pomegranates, oranges and lemons, and grapes. There is a considerable and expanding export trade in the fruits enumerated, as shown by Blue Book returns as under: Year. £. 1904 29,706 1905 29,265 1906 41,716 1907 36,009 1908 35,027 1909 29,890 1910 52,267 1911 57,393 1912 59,887 1913 69,097 The pomegranate of Famagusta is famous, and the annual export of this fruit alone during the five years ended 1913 averaged £14,682. Among the mountain villages apples, pears, and plums are extensively grown; the latter specially being in good demand in Egypt. Apricots and kaisha trees are grown generally throughout the Island, and their fruits are particularly good and plentiful. The last-named is a delicious variety with a delicate flavour and externally somewhat resembles the nectarine. Peaches are mostly grafted on almond stocks, as these are hardy and good drought-resisters, but there are a fair number of European varieties. Almond trees abound in all parts and do extremely well if properly cultivated. Other fairly common fruit trees are the quince and loquat, or Japanese medlar. For several years choice kinds of fruit trees have been imported from England, and many thousands of trees of different kinds throughout the Island have been grafted and are now beginning to produce fruit of excellent quality. Good work has been done by the Perapedhi Wine Association, whose garden has been a centre for the dissemination of choice grafts. Unhappily the village growers have been very reluctant to apply proper cultivation or to carry out advice in treating their trees, which have become the hosts of all kinds of diseases and insect pests. A better spirit is now being shown in this direction. _Vines and Wines_ Writing in 1896, Gennadius described the industry and perseverance of the peasants, who with most imperfect implements, by breaking up the hard rock and building up the scanty soil, formed vineyards on the steep mountain sides, and often up to their very summits. These vineyards, he says, having been mostly planted in haste in the happy days of the demand for wines (when French vineyards were destroyed by phylloxera), were formed by the personal labour of the peasant eked out by the help of loans. Since then the wine trade has passed through critical times and prices have often been greatly depreciated. The small vine-growers, who are also for the most part wine-producers, fell on evil times and became heavily indebted. They have remained so until the last year or two, when, owing to the large demand and the high prices of wines in Egypt, they have been able to free themselves. Gennadius regarded the cultivation of the vine in Cyprus as indisputably unprofitable, and was in favour of checking its extension, and even advocated the imposition of a special tax on new plantations. At the time he wrote there was an overproduction, and the value of wine had greatly fallen, and the revenue which Cypriot wine-makers could gain therefrom would hardly suffice to cover the expenses of its transport to the market, the annual interest on their debts, and the taxes they had to meet. The village-made wine is usually clarified by means of gypsum. It is carried down from the mountain villages in goat-skins (askos or ashia) on pack animals, and then sold to the Limassol merchants, who ship the greater part to Egypt. The production of wine as carried out in Cyprus leaves much to be desired. M. Mouillefert, who visited Cyprus in 1892 to report on the wine industry, says: "The vintage is often gathered too late. Insufficient care is given to the picking of the grapes and diseased, rotten, mildewy or unripe grapes are often used which detract from the quality of the wine. "The grapes are trodden and the fermentation takes place in jars and chatties of porous earth, of a capacity of 2 or 3 hectolitres, which are tarred inside to counteract their porosity. The houses in which the fermentation takes place are of almost the same temperature as the surrounding air, with the result that in the warmer parts of the Island fermentation at first is generally rapid or disturbed, and the temperature of the must becomes excessive. In the colder parts, on the contrary, the opposite takes place and the resulting wine is rough and sharp. The use of gypsum as a preservative is unfortunately very common. The tarring of the goat-skins and jars imparts a flavour which is very unsuited to the European taste." M. Mouillefert made the following recommendations: "Tarred jars for fermentation should be replaced by wooden vats, or, in the warmer parts of the Island, by tuns similar to those used throughout the South of France and in Algeria. Presses less primitive than those in use should be employed since these leave in the lees a very large quantity of wine. The wine when drawn off from the lees should be kept in tuns or in small wooden casks." "In short," he says, "to speak quite plainly, no good wine destined for ordinary consumption can be obtained with jars." Some twenty years ago an English Wine Company was established at Perapedhi and, until the war, carried on a successful trade and produced some good wines manufactured on modern lines. The factory was well equipped with up-to-date plant, and its wine of port type was especially popular. It was throughout the greater part of this time owned by the firm of W. H. Chaplin & Co., London, but since the war it has been closed down. The excellent brandy of Messrs. Hadji Pavlo & Co. has found for some time a steady market in England, and there are other well-equipped wine and spirit factories at Limassol, notably those of the Limassol Wine & Spirit Co., Ltd., of Mr. M. Michaelides and of Mr. N. Joannides. The firm of Messrs. Hadji Pavlo & Co. has carried out since 1872 the manufacture of spirits, and for twenty-five years they have been engaged in producing their "Zanatzin" brand of wines. Their V.O. cognac and three-star brandy are both excellent. Various liqueurs, made from local products, aniseed, kernels of apricots and other stone fruit, etc., are made by this and other firms, and sold under the name "Zucki." The principal wines, spirits, liqueurs and other alcoholic liquors produced are: The ordinary black wine of the country, or "krasi." The ordinary white wine of the country, or "asprokrasi." Commandaria. Brandy. First and second quality sold in barrels; one-star, two-star, three-star and V.O. sold in bottles. Mastic, sold in four qualities; Zucki, sold in two qualities. Rum and Amer Pigon. Alcohol. 95 C. and 36 C. Various spirits, liqueurs and syrups: whisky, vermuth, amathus, banana, mentha, mandarini, triantaphyllo, kitro, pergamotto, vanilla, violetta, anana, benedictine. Eau de Cologne. Commandaria is one of the oldest and most famous sweet dessert wines. It is held indeed to have been the "nectar of the gods." In the time of the Knights Templar it acquired great fame. Existing stocks are annually added to, the original vintage having in some cases a great age, so much so that, through evaporation, the wine becomes a syrup or pulp, which imparts a bouquet to the fresh commandaria which is added to it. In making commandaria the grapes are left on the vines until overripe and, after picking, are spread out in the sun for further evaporation, when they undergo the usual process of wine-making. In this way a sweet wine, rich in sugar and alcohol, and having a characteristic flavour, is produced. A limited quantity only is made every year, and of this a certain quantity is exported and fetches a high price, as a speciality, in England and on the Continent. A red mastic is made at the Kykko Monastery which has acquired local fame. The situation at the present time is generally improved, and although Cyprus wines can never form more than an insignificant proportion of the world's supply, and could not create any special market without considerable change of system and large expenditure in advertising, they may yet, by simple improved methods, by means of co-operative storage and the application of sound elementary principles, be able to secure a more recognised position and a remunerative, though perhaps limited, demand, at any rate for some of the special brands. For the benefit of village producers practical lectures, with the help of special apparatus, are now being given in the wine villages during the vintage season, by officials of the Agricultural Department. The export of wines (including commandaria) and spirits during the ten years ended 1913 were of a total value of £313,920 and £55,364 respectively. The lowest and highest figures were £20,274 in 1909 and £52,351 in 1911 for wines and £3,991 in 1906 and £8,187 in 1913 for spirits. For the last four years the exports have been: Year. Wines (including Spirits. Commandaria). £ £ 1914 29,405 4,396 1915 38,158 5,431 1916 80,165 6,865 1917 78,451 22,173 There is an export duty on wine at the rate of 8 paras per gallon, on all spirit of 20 paras per gallon and on all vinegar of 5 paras per gallon. Some seventeen varieties of _Vitis vinifera_ have for a long time been grown in Cyprus; the most largely cultivated being the following: Mavro (black). The commonest variety, medium-sized bunch, with dark, large, oval-shaped grapes. Xinisteri (white). Common variety, with medium-sized bunch, white roundish grapes, thin skin. These are suited to a rich moist soil. Voophthalmo (ox-eye). Equally common variety. Rather small bunch, with black, round and rather small grapes. Suited to a dry, calcareous soil. The Muscat comes next, being mostly grown at Omodhos. It is the common early muscatel of the East. The remaining kinds are locally known as Bastardico (bastard), Maratheftico or Kraseti, Morokanali or Spourta (flabby-berried), Promari or Glycopromo (early or early-sweet), Xantho, Axanthi or Phinikoto, Kouphorrhovo or Katin-parmak, Verico, Sultana, Razaki, Corinthiaki (currant), Malaga (Alexandria Muscatel), Rhodities. Of these, several are only to be found here and there in private gardens. Five years ago several thousand Sultana vines were imported by the Agricultural Department from Crete, and these have now become fairly well distributed over the Island and the produce is beginning to appear in the market. These dried sultanas in 1918 sold for as much as 4_s._ per oke. Three years ago the following varieties of table vines were imported from England by the Agricultural Department: Black Hamburg Alicante or Black Tokay Canon Hall Muscat Lady Hastings Royal Muscadine Muscat of Alexandria These are now being acclimatised, and it is hoped gradually to distribute a large number of grafts. Vine cultivation covers an area of about 140,000 donums and is in the hands of some 15,700 vine growers. Owing to defects of planting the vines of Cyprus do not in most cases begin to bear fruit before the third or fourth year, while, if modern methods were adopted, they would bear fruit in their second year and attain their full growth in their fourth year. What is known as the "willow-head" system of pruning has been very general, with consequently poor results. Better methods have long been inculcated and are now being more and more adopted. Manuring is but rarely practised and ploughing is confined to lightly turning the surface soil with a wooden plough, and this not every year. On the higher slopes of the mountains terracing is common and necessary. Grape mildew (_Oidium Tuckeri_) is prevalent in nearly all the vine areas. Other diseases and pests of the vine met with are anthracnose, pourridié, _Septosporium Fuckelii_, cuscute, _Cochylis_, _Zygæna ampelophaga_ and _Pyralis_. Happily the stringent regulations which for many years have been in force prohibiting the importation of any kind of living plant have resulted in keeping the Cypriot vineyards free from the scourge of phylloxera. Sulphuring has become more general of late years. The Government has done much to bring this about, and for fifteen years or more has imported sufficient sulphur from Sicily, which has been placed in the hands of village store-keepers and sold at a fixed price by the Agricultural Department. This has never more than exceeded the bare cost and more often has been issued at half cost and in times of distress even gratis. The vine-owners have been stimulated by the recent high prices for wines to expend more time and money on this operation. The ignorant prejudice against the effectiveness of sulphur as a cure for grape mildew has to a great extent died out. False ideas of economy alone prevent its general use. Fresh grapes are largely consumed locally, and considerable quantities are exported to Egypt, as shown by the following table: Year. Quantity. Value. _Cwts._ £ 1904 12,025 1,854 1905 8,607 1,208 1906 9,563 1,487 1907 7,399 1,161 1908 6,807 1,331 1909 7,078 1,094 1910 7,588 1,216 1911 11,597 1,865 1912 12,565 2,028 1913 10,303 1,487 The average annual export of raisins for the ten years ended 1913 was 54,007 cwts. valued at £24,190. The lowest price was 5_s._ 4_cp._ per cwt. in 1909 and the highest 11_s._ 4-1/2_cp._ in 1911. During the war the exports have been: 1914, 16,395 cwts., £7,419; 1915, 54,189 cwts., £34,467; 1916, 34,361 cwts., £38,188; and 1917, 70,624 cwts., £90,040. The annual prices in these years were respectively 9_s._, 12_s._ 6-1/2_cp._, 22_s._ 2_cp._ and 25_s._ 4-1/2_cp._ per cwt. Up to 1905, inclusive, by far the greatest quantity of raisins had been shipped every year to Austria; Rumania, Turkey and Egypt coming next in order. Since that date Rumania has easily taken the first place, being followed at a distance by Austria, Turkey and Egypt. Since the war the bulk has been shipped for military requirements and to France, Egypt, Malta and England for eating and for use in confectionery, and the industry has grown. A marked improvement has taken place in the preparation of the raisins; and specially qualified officials of the Agricultural Department every year give practical instruction on this subject in the vine villages. _Citrus Fruits_ Oranges and lemons are very extensively grown in Cyprus, whilst mandarines, citrons ("kitria") and sweet limes ("glykolemonia") are also found in every part of the Island. In addition, the shaddock ("phrappa") and the bergamot orange are cultivated in the Island. The best and most common variety of the sweet orange is the oval (sometimes round) Jaffa, grown everywhere, but specially at Famagusta, where there are numerous orange groves. Another variety of good quality is grown at Lefka. The trees of both varieties produce large, firm, thick-fleshed fruit. Bitter oranges are largely grown from seed for stock on which the better kinds are grafted. Many thousands of these, and also of the grafted plants, are annually issued from the Government Nurseries. Much loss has been sustained from time to time through disease, and in 1899 whole orange groves at Famagusta, Lefka and Kythrea were uprooted or cut right back. With the expansion of the Agricultural Department and a small qualified staff it has become possible to bring these diseases somewhat under control, and the orange and lemon production has much increased, though gummosis and scale disease still play much havoc. In the Varosha orange groves the trees are grown in light, sandy soil, which is banked up round the trunk. They are irrigated by means of the native alakati, or noria, or more often by air-motors, which in this locality are much in vogue. The two most common causes of failure are the persistent planting of trees too close together and over-watering. Growers turn a deaf ear to all advice aimed at changing these two bad habits. The native agriculturist is convinced, beyond the reach of argument, that the greater the number of trees on a given area the greater will be the profit. In a land where water is so precious the deep-rooted opinion is held that the more water a plant receives the better it will thrive, and too frequent irrigation accounts to a large extent for the widespread damage caused by gummosis. Until lately pruning was scarcely practised at all. Thanks to a system of model orchards lately instituted by the Agricultural Department, better methods are at last being introduced, and fruit-growers are able to model their practice upon the work carried out on the specimen trees, alongside their own, reserved by the Department for such demonstrations. Lemons are largely consumed by natives with their food. The produce is of large size, thick-skinned and juicy. Until some twelve years or so ago the fruit was largely sold on the trees for shipment to Russia and Rumania, but those markets failed, owing to the prevalence in Cyprus of scale disease and partly to loss through rotting in transport. The export of oranges and lemons has of late years been confined almost entirely to Egypt. _Fig_ (_Ficus Carica_) This tree thrives everywhere, and is particularly cultivated at Livadhia and Lefkara (Larnaca district), in Paphos and at the Tylliria, where the small, sweet, white variety, locally called "antelounika," is grown. There are but few true Smyrna figs, but this variety is being multiplied by cuttings and also by grafting. Other good kinds are the "sarilop" and "bardajik," of which there are a few private specimens only, and the "vardika" which is more or less common, particularly at Morphou. The Lefkara figs somewhat resemble those of Tylliria and, like the latter, mature naturally; they are considered very good and are divided into two varieties, the "malantzana" and the "kourtziatika." The figs of Ktema in Paphos are the common violet-coloured variety, but are larger, and are mostly ripened artificially. Cyprus figs are only of moderate quality, though doubtless susceptible of improvement. They resist drought and generally yield good crops every year. The native dried fig is much eaten, and is also used as an adulterant of, if not a substitute for, coffee, and makes a good beverage, like the well-known Austrian "feigen café." Dried figs are also made into a paste and mixed with flour to make fig pies ("sykopitæ"). The method of oiling, that is, smearing with oil the orifice on the top of the fig while still unripe, is applied to those varieties which ripen slowly. It is these varieties which are especially grown in Cyprus. The fruit so treated is rather tasteless and insipid, but as it comes early to market it fetches a good price. The reason for hastening the ripening process by oiling is that the fruit may become ready for picking before sparrows and hornets get it, as they would otherwise do at that season. The later crop is more or less immune from their attacks, as ripe corn is then abundant in the field or on the threshing-floor. Figs first appear on the market in May. This early fruit is called "magiles" (possibly from Maios-gilia = May production). The fruit is produced on the wood of the preceding year, from a bud which has remained dormant. The next crop appears about mid-July, and then the fruit is called by its proper name "syka." _Cherries_ The principal and almost the only cherry-growing village in the Island is Pedoulas, in the Marathassa valley. This village is about 3,600 ft. above the sea-level. The trees at that village do remarkably well, and they bring in a good revenue. They are mostly wild trees which have been grafted; but there are also a small number which have been raised from imported Malaheb seed. From time to time good kinds of young grafted cherry trees have been imported from England by the Agricultural Department and grafts from these have been freely supplied to the village. There are two native varieties, one ("kerasi") which is almost exclusively grown at Pedoulas, the other ("vysino") which is found fairly well distributed over the Island. The former is pale yellow and pink, the latter is slightly smaller and less sweet and of a darkish-red colour, and is used mostly in making jam and preserves, while the "kerasi" is more for table purposes. More grafted trees are now coming into bearing and "White-hearts" are now sold in the bazaar at about 12 cps. per oke. "Black-hearts" are also beginning to make an appearance. Efforts are being made to introduce the cherry tree to other hill villages, and there seems no reason why its cultivation should not become general in the higher parts of the Island. This fruit travels well and a fine market awaits it in Egypt. Owing to the prohibition of fruit exports during the war, a small industry has grown up for drying the "kerasi." _Banana_ The local name of the banana is Sykiton Adam (Adam's fig), from the belief that Adam made an apron of the leaves. There is some hope that the cultivation of this delicious fruit may become more taken up in Cyprus than has hitherto been thought possible. Paphos has for several years had the reputation of possessing fruit-yielding trees of good quality. Offshoots from some of these have been transplanted to Larnaca, and there are now several gardens in which a fair quantity of fruit ripens each year. At Kyrenia and Lapithos there are also a good number of trees. The fruit is of a different variety from that of Paphos and Larnaca, the shape being longitudinally angular, whereas the latter kind is longitudinally round and larger. Five years ago the Agricultural Department obtained some special varieties from Zanzibar. These are now beginning to yield fruit, and offshoots are being distributed in the Island. _Azarol Hawthorn_ This hawthorn (_Cratægus Azarolus_), known locally as "mosphilia," grows wild scattered about over the country. The fruit makes an excellent jelly. The tree is an excellent stock on which to graft the pear tree. In the higher regions another species, _C. monogyna_, is found. _Melons_ The western end of the Messaoria plain is noted for its water-melons and sweet-melons. These are grown in "postania," a corruption of the Persian word "bustan," a garden. They are cultivated only on irrigable land. At Asha, where, perhaps, the best fruits are grown, the land is flooded by the river and no later watering, as a rule, takes place. Through a well-grounded fear of theft, the grower and his family live in their "postania" during the season of marketing. Reed shelters are erected, and the rolled-up beds and bedding with their white coverlets present a strange appearance. There is always a big local demand and a good yield is generally obtained from these "postania." High prices are paid for suitable melonland. The local names for the water-melons are "karpousia" or "paticha," and for the sweet-melons "piponia" or "tamboures." The cultivation of this fruit is general throughout the Island. _Date Palm_ This tree grows promiscuously throughout the plains, produced mostly by accidental seeding. Very little actual sowing takes place. The best groves are round about Nicosia. The trunk-wood, being very hard and fibrous, is used in the construction of the old type of waterwheel ("alakati") and for beams in houses. It is also utilised as fuel in Turkish baths as it burns slowly and gives out great heat. Palm leaves are in demand for making various native baskets, specially the "zimpilia" for holding seed when sowing broadcast. Hats are made from them in a few villages. The native varieties of date palm are not of high quality. They are: "Baltchik," the fruit of which ripens on the tree; "Phountouk" (hazelnut); "Kourmouzou" (red); and "Saraih" (yellow). The last three are artificially ripened when picked, by spraying them with a mixture of syrup and vinegar. The "Baltchik" produces fruits suitable for fresh consumption. The "Phountouk" is somewhat inferior. The other two have large fruits which are specially suited for preserving. Two years ago the Agricultural Department imported from Sudan the following varieties: "Condeila," "Bertamouta" and "Barakawi." They suffered much on the journey and it is doubtful if more than two or three specimens will survive. As a rule dates ripen well in Cyprus; gathering takes place from October to December. The clusters must generally be covered with sacking to protect them from birds. NUTS _Hazelnuts and Cobnuts or Filberts_ These nuts are collectively known in commerce as "small nuts." They are all, however, the produce of a species of _Corylus_, the different kinds being distinguished by trade names according to their country of origin (see an article on "Sources of Supply of Hazelnuts" in BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xiv. 1916, pp. 261-7). In Cyprus these are grown almost exclusively around a well-defined group of villages of the Pitsillia, notably Alona, Palæchori, Askas, Platanistassa, Phterikoudi, Livadhia, Agros, Alithinou, Saranti, Polystipos. In this locality the plantations are thickly grown and good yields are obtained. It is doubtful whether there are other parts of the Island equally well suited to this tree. Hazelnuts, besides their use for dessert purposes and in the preparation of various nut foods, are employed largely as a cheap substitute for almonds, and in years when the latter are scarce, hazelnuts are in especially good demand. The Cyprus nuts are outwardly of good size and appearance and are very attractive in the English market, but unfortunately they are usually picked before reaching full maturity, and consequently the kernels are frequently small and soon become rancid. Being gathered when unripe they lose greatly in weight, which means loss of money to the exporters. The flavour is also impaired by premature picking and on this account Cyprus nuts compare unfavourably in this respect with those from Spain, and Trebizond and other parts on the Black Sea, with which they have to compete. If growers would pay more attention to this point, Cyprus hazelnuts would, owing to their size, hold a much better place than they do in the English market. The export of hazelnuts is not separately recorded, but the annual average production is stated to be approximately 120,000 okes. _Walnuts_ Some fine specimens of walnut trees are to be seen in the Marathassa valley and in the neighbourhood of Palæochori, and near mountain streams in several places among the slopes of the hills. These yield excellent fruit and are profitable to their owners, but unfortunately many trees have succumbed to the attacks of the Codlin moth. Special action has been taken during the last two years to deal with this pest. There has been a marked increase of late in the planting of young walnut trees. _Almonds_ The cultivation of this tree has greatly extended of late. Its drought-resisting properties enable it to withstand the climate of the plains and on the level slopes of both ranges it grows well. There are several large plantations, notably at Psevdhas, Larnaca district, where the famous Jordan variety is found, and as the tree seems indifferent to soil, and thrives particularly well on the limestone which is so general throughout the Island, it may be hoped that it will be greatly multiplied. Both the soft- and the hard-shelled varieties are grown. Much good work has lately been done in School Gardens, under expert advice, in germinating the seed in damp sand. The villagers, finding the seedlings already to hand for planting, have been induced to plant them out. Almonds are used as stocks on which to graft peaches, kaishas, apricots and plums ("mirabelles"). _Spanish Chestnut_ Some years ago good numbers of the edible chestnut were raised at Pedoulas by the Agricultural Department and distributed to villagers for growing in the hills. It is feared that the greater part of these trees, through want of attention, unsuitability of soil or climate, lack of moisture, and especially damage by goats, have been lost, but some remain and well-grown young trees may be found in certain localities and in moderate numbers among the mountains. As soon as adequate protection from goats can be given, this tree might be well worth more extensive cultivation. It prospers well when properly cared for, but will not thrive in soils containing more than about 3 per cent. of lime or at an elevation below about 1,000 ft. The tree has been propagated almost entirely from seed, which must be as fresh as possible. No doubt one reason for the lack of interest hitherto shown in this tree by villagers is that it does not begin to fruit, as a rule, until about its twentieth year. _Pistacia_ Several species of _Pistacia_ occur in Cyprus, and although they yield products of different kinds, it will be convenient to deal with them together in the present section. The pistachio nut (_Pistacia vera_), locally called "Aleppo pistachio," is a native of Persia and Arabia and it was thought, until a few years ago, that it would not thrive in Cyprus. That is, however, a fallacy, which is rather confirmed by the fact that the _P. Terebinthus_ and the _P. Lentiscus_ are indigenous to the Island. It is considered that the best method of cultivation is to bud _P. vera_ on _P. Terebinthus_. Though they grow more slowly, these budded trees are more robust and better resist drought, cold and moisture. The trees should yield fruit in five years from the time of grafting. A fair number of these trees have now been distributed from the Government Nursery Gardens. This tree provides the pistachio nuts which are now imported from Syria and Chios. Male trees do not usually flower at the same time as female; consequently there has been difficulty in getting fruit with seeds, and recourse must in that case be had to artificial fertilisation. * * * * * The Palestine or turpentine tree (_P. palæstina_), local name "trémithos," grows in certain parts of the Island, but is seen at its best in the Paphos district, especially in and around the town of Ktima. The fruit is eaten fresh or salted and dried. It yields 10 to 15 per cent. of edible oil which has a certain local demand. A medium-sized tree may produce up to 60 to 80 okes of fruit. After crushing and expression, the residue together with the seed is found to be a good food for pigs. A small consignment of both the dried and salted fruit and of the residue was sold in Egypt in 1916 and realised 5 to 6 cp. per oke for the former, and 3_s._ to 4_s._ per kilé for the latter. By making incisions in the trunks of both the male and the female trees a gum or turpentine known as "Paphos tar" is obtained, which fetches as much as 8_s._ to 10_s._ per oke. It is used locally for chewing. This is one of the largest trees in the Island and is of handsome shape. It is deciduous and some fine specimens are met with. * * * * * _Pistacia Lentiscus_, locally known as shinia, or shinia bush, abounds all along the coasts of the Island. From the seeds of this shrub an oil is expressed which is used for culinary purposes, particularly for frying fish. The oil is also in good local demand for soap making, and a very fair soap is produced, especially at Akanthou, in which the oil is the chief ingredient. The leaves of this shrub are largely used for tanning purposes and were at one time regularly exported to England, though in small quantities. The principal market for shinia leaves is Palermo. They are employed to no small extent for the adulteration of sumach, for which Palermo is also the leading market. Shinia leaves were also in demand at Lyons as a dyeing material for silk stuffs. There are also a few specimens of a variety of _P. Lentiscus_ (mastic tree) from which in the Island of Chios the famous Chios mastic is obtained by incisions made in the trunks of the male stocks. * * * * * The terebinth tree (_P. Terebinthus_), locally called "tremithia," is a bush very widely grown throughout the higher regions. It is used as a stock on which to graft _P. vera_. The berries are used for extraction of oil which has a value for culinary purposes. They are also made into a cake called "tremithopites." The berries are much smaller than those of the _P. palæstina_. VEGETABLES The cultivation of vegetables has considerably extended of late. Good market gardens have existed in and around the principal towns for many years, but more attention is now being paid to this industry in the villages, wherever water is available, and a considerable amount of skill is shown in production. Among the best and most generally grown vegetables are spinach, cauliflowers, cabbages, egg-plants, lady's fingers, leeks, artichokes, broad beans (also grown as a field crop), radishes, celery, beet-root, pumpkins, marrows, cucumbers, lettuces, tomatoes, lentils, kohl-rabi ("kouloumbra"), kidney beans ("phasoulia"), peas, kolokas, onions and potatoes. There is a considerable demand in Egypt for fresh vegetables, and to meet this the land around the "ports" of Famagusta, Larnaca and Limassol has been for some years specially devoted to their cultivation. In the mountain valleys a continuous series of small vegetable gardens may be seen flanking the sides of the river-banks. The exports of vegetables to Egypt in recent years are given in the following table: Beans and Other Year. Onions. Peas. Vegetables. _Cwts._ _Cwts._ _Cwts._ 1909 6,664 1,729 49 1910 3,807 858 60 1911 5,512 2,346 122 1912 3,659 2,583 135 1913 2,854 1,670 32 _Beans and Peas_ Beans are grown for market mainly at Marathassa and Pitsillia and generally in the higher regions, but only to a small extent in the plains. Before the war there was a comparatively large importation of beans from Anatolia. This having stopped, local prices rose and stimulated production in the Island. The Cypriot is a lover of dried vegetables, and there might well be an extension in the cultivation of beans, similar to that which has lately taken place in the case of green peas. Except in one or two places, these were not sown by the villagers until about four years ago, but so valuable have they been found, especially in recent years of scarcity and high cost of other foodstuffs, that now whole districts are being devoted to their cultivation. The French or kidney bean (_Phaseolus vulgaris_) is locally known under the general term "louvia." This name is applied both to _Phaseolus vulgaris_ and to _Dolichos melanophthalmus_ (_Vigna Catjang_ var. _sinensis_). To distinguish the two kinds the Cypriot describes the _P. vulgaris_ as "louvia gliastra" (_i.e._ lustrous, owing to its shiny appearance), or "louvia peratica" (_i.e._ foreign), as _D. melanophthalmus_ was introduced and had become acclimatised some time before. Gennadius, however, describes the "louvia peratica" as _Dolichos Lablab_ or lablab bean. Both the dwarf ("koutsoulia") and the climbing ("makrya" or "anarichomena") varieties of _P. vulgaris_ are grown. There are two white kinds, the large ("adra") and the small ("psintra"). Beans of various colours are grown here and there, and one spotted variety ("patsaloudhia") merits greater attention than it receives at present, both on account of its greater productiveness and for its excellent flavour. Two of these are stringless, but a drawback to them is that they discolour the water in which they are boiled. There are several newly imported kinds which are privately grown, and these are gradually coming into the local markets. The lubia or cow-pea (_Dolichos melanophthalmus_ = _Vigna Catjang_ var. _sinensis_), being a good drought-resister, is grown more or less throughout the Island. It is frequently sown in mixed crop with cotton, sesame, Indian corn, etc. Two kinds are cultivated--the larger, "lubia melissomatia" (having the eye like a bee), and the smaller, "lubia mavromatoudhia" (dark-eyed). The dried pods of _Phaseolus_ and _Dolichos_ are fed to animals and are also used for stuffing mattresses. The broad bean (_Vicia Faba_) has been grown for some years on irrigated land in the plains, where it takes a recognised place in the rotation. Its cultivation is now spreading to the higher parts. The soy bean was introduced a few years ago by the Agricultural Department, but has failed hitherto to attract attention. Villagers find it requires different cooking from what they are accustomed to, and local dealers are not yet prepared to deal in it. It has been found resistant to disease, and further efforts are being made to bring it into popular favour. The Ochrus vetch (_Lathyrus Ochrus_), locally known as "louvana," is a fairly common spring crop, being grown for the sake of the seed which provides a favourite Cypriot dish. The leaves are also used as a salad. This crop is sown in the plains in January, but in the Karpas and some other parts it is sown in the autumn. Chick-peas (_Cicer arietinum_), locally called "revithia," grow well and are cultivated to a moderate extent. Samples examined at the Imperial Institute proved to be of normal composition. Two firms of produce brokers in London stated that if quantities of about 5 tons at a time could be delivered in England in as good a condition as the sample they could be sold for human consumption and would be worth (1917) £20 to £24 per ton c.i.f., United Kingdom ports. If of inferior quality to the sample they would be fit only for cattle food and fetch considerably less (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xv. 1917, p. 307). Chick-peas when roasted are locally called "koudames" and are eaten in the same way as ground-nuts, which they much resemble in flavour. They are little, if at all, used in Cyprus as a cattle food. _Potatoes_ The potato-growing industry in Cyprus has developed considerably in recent years, as will be seen from the subjoined table of exports: Year. Quantity. Value. _Cwts._ £ 1909 12,586 3,105 1910 14,983 3,839 1911 36,271 8,472 1912 45,336 10,348 1913 31,310 7,003 1914 54,203 11,741 1915 82,304 28,513 1916 136,027 74,632 1917 224,453 101,120 These figures, however, are a very inadequate indication of the actual increase of production, inasmuch as the local consumption of this vegetable before the war was confined almost entirely to the well-to-do residents in the towns, whereas now it is rapidly becoming a staple food of the people. This unascertainable but large local consumption must be added to the latest export returns in order to arrive at an estimate of present production. The most favoured variety was at first, and with many growers still is, what is known as the French potato, the original seed having been brought from France. Irish potatoes (locally called "pittakoura") have now largely displaced these, partly, no doubt, on account of the greater facility of obtaining the latter seed during the war. A native variety of potato, believed to have been imported by Syrian Arabs in the sixteenth century, is still grown on a small scale in the Marathassa valley. This potato has deep-set eyes and a luxuriant growth above ground and possesses a characteristic sweet taste. Great progress has been made within the last few years in the matter of cultivation, and the old practice of planting broadcast on the flat has given way to ridge planting at proper distances apart. The practice formerly was to drop the potatoes into the plough furrow. These were covered over by the return plough; every third furrow was sown. The Egyptian demand and the purchases made for military purposes have greatly stimulated production. The good prices obtained have led, particularly in the Famagusta district and in what are called the "red earth" villages, to much activity and no small outlay in the matter of water-supply and distribution, and in the use of chemical manures. The custom has grown up for importers to send their seed potatoes for planting in the higher parts of the Island. The produce therefrom is exchanged with growers in the plains, who send up their plain-grown tubers as seed to the cultivators in the hills. Merchants often stipulate with the hill-growers that they shall have their crop at an agreed, and generally a fairly high, figure. In this manner degeneration of the seed has been retarded; but owing to the difficulty of obtaining seed from outside during the war a certain amount of degeneration has taken place. Only one crop can be grown in the hills during the year, but in the plains two crops are obtained. The one is planted in January and is dug in May-June; the other is planted in July and dug in November. It is found that the tubers lifted in the summer suffer greatly from the heat, and heavy losses occur from rot, whether the tubers remain in the ground or if they are dug and stored; and it is a question whether, when these losses are taken into account, the summer crop is really profitable. The average yield is sometimes put at 2,000 okes per donum, but 1,600 okes, or 2 tons, is probably a more accurate figure. _Kolokas_ (_Colocasia antiquorum_) This is a favourite food of the villager, but can only be grown where there is an ample water-supply and on heavy land that holds the water. It is an exhausting crop. The root only is eaten. It is sown in March-April and dug about October-November. _Onions_ These are generally grown, especially in the Paphos district; Famagusta and Limassol following in the order named. The Paphos onions are supposed to have particularly good keeping qualities. Both round ("strongyla") and long varieties ("tolmalikia") are grown; the latter have less fleshy scales than the former. Onions are grown either in irrigated gardens or in "livadhia," or low-lying lands which retain their moisture, no irrigation being needed. They are propagated by means of "konari" or bulblets. Lapithos in the Kyrenia district makes a speciality of producing these from seed and supplying them to the whole Island, although onions are grown for market only on a limited scale in that area. The method is to plant out the full-grown onions (locally called "mammes") and leave them to ripen their seed. The seed is sown in February-March, at the rate of 20-25 okes per donum, from which some 3,000 okes of "konari" are raised. These are then sold for planting out in October-November-December at the rate of 40-50 okes per donum. Onions are grown either in rows or broadcast. The native variety has the outer scales of a reddish colour, but these have largely given way to superior imported kinds. FODDERS AND FEEDING STUFFS _Carob Tree_ The carob (_Ceratonia siliqua_) is indigenous in Syria, and probably also in the northern countries of Africa, whence it presumably spread to certain parts of Asia Minor, to Greece, the Greek Islands and Southern Italy. At the time of Christ, and for some centuries later, this tree was known to the Greeks by the name of keronia or keratea, being the Greek for horns, and is given to the locust or carob bean from its supposed resemblance to goats' horns. It is also known in different parts of Cyprus under the following names; teratsia (a corruption of keratea), xylokeratea, kountouroudia, koutsoupia and charoupia. The last named is of Arabic origin (kharroub) and the same root of the word is common all over Europe. Moreover, the fruit varies slightly according to locality, and develops local characteristics which have acquired for it distinctive local names; thus in Kyrenia District we have templiotiké and kyrionitiké, in the Karpas there is the sarakine (introduced by Saracens?) and elsewhere the vaklitiké and komboté. This bean or pod, which when ripe is of a chocolate colour, contains from 6 to 10 hard seeds, embedded in a sweet, pithy, honey-like substance which imparts the flavour so much appreciated by animals. The carob tree belongs to the natural order Leguminosæ, sub-order Caesalpinæ, and is the only species of the genus _Ceratonia_. It is an evergreen, long-lived tree, growing to a height of 30 ft. and sometimes even to 50 and 60 ft. It thrives in most kinds of soil, especially in porous, marly and even volcanic soils, but not in marshy lands. Owing to its long tap root it resists drought well, and is to be found growing well in rocky land such as is common in many of the carob areas of Cyprus. It is very generally found intermixed with the olive tree and up to about the same altitude. A succession of flowers is produced from July to September or October, and in favourable years up to December and even later, and in July-August the tree bears both flowers and ripe fruit. The collection of the latter commences about mid-August, the exact date being annually fixed separately in each district by the Commissioner. This is done in order to prevent the fruit from being stolen. Recent investigations made by the Agricultural Department go to prove that the fruit-producing carob tree of Cyprus is really hermaphrodite, though there yet remains much room for investigation and the point is not finally settled. The others are true male trees. The hermaphrodite carob trees which form practically the whole of the fruit-producing trees of the Island are cleistogamous (_i.e._ self-fertilised before the calyx opens) and short-stamened. There are also certain trees self-produced from seed which are superior to the ordinary so-called wild tree. These bear fruit which is straight and short but more or less marketable, and these are known as "kountoura" (short) or "apostoliki," as though sent by chance or by Providence. The word "apostoliki" is applied in Cyprus to other kinds of trees or fruit showing similar phenomena. There are several millions of these trees in the State forests, and yet more privately owned. It frequently happens that, owing to the wide powers of testamentary disposition, a single tree passes by inheritance to several heirs. Many thousands of carob plants are annually raised in the Government gardens and issued at a trifling charge. The common method of propagation has been to sow the seeds in pots, and when the plant is from 18 in. to 2 ft. high it is ready for transplanting. The seed, which is very hard, is softened by placing it in a cauldron or saucepan of cold water. The water is then brought to the boil. On arriving at boiling-point the water is cooled and should then be changed and the seed left to steep for twenty-four hours. Owing to the long tap root, sowing in ordinary nursery beds has not been satisfactory, as the plants, which certainly make better growth than in pots, do not transplant well. The foregoing methods have to a great extent been superseded by that of germinating the seed in damp sand and sowing direct in the field in properly prepared holes. Little watering is needed if the holes are deep and the soil kept friable. A top mulch is useful to conserve the moisture. Transplanting from pots or beds is best done when the plants are twelve months old and about 12 in. high, after that it is precarious. Grafting may be done as soon as the stem is thick enough to take a graft, either before or after transplanting. The tree is liable to attack by insects and other pests. Scale (_Aspidiotus ceratoniæ_) is very common; but the greatest damage of late years has been caused by the fly _Cecidomyia ceratoniæ_, which lays its eggs on the flowers or newly-set fruit, and the grub feeds on the bean, causing it to become stunted and of no commercial value. This stunted condition is locally known as "brachycarpia" and has been the subject of careful scientific study and practical treatment by the Agricultural Department during the last few years. Very satisfactory results have been recorded from the campaigns, which have so far been limited to the Kyrenia District, and these have justified the extension of compulsory treatment to other infected areas. This and other pests, such as _Myelois ceratoniæ_, _Cossus liniperda_ (a lepidopterous boring insect), a species of _Mycetiasis_, and a small hymenopterous fly which has lately appeared and is now under investigation, have, no doubt, checked production. The attacks of _Cecidomyia_, when serious, reduce the yield by 80 per cent. or over, and normally may lessen it by 40 to 50 per cent. Much damage is also caused by rats (_Mus alexandrinus_), which gnaw the bark of the branches, causing them to dry up. Their destruction is encouraged by Government by the payment of 1 cp. per tail. Carob gathering commences about mid-August and lasts for about a month. The beans are knocked down with long sticks, put into sacks and brought into store, or heaped up in the open air, where they often remain for several weeks. This is a safe procedure, as there is little rainfall at that season, and what might fall would not harm the beans, which would quickly dry again. It is not easy to estimate the yield per donum of carob trees, but assuming that the trees were planted 30 ft. apart, and there were 16 medium-sized trees to the donum, the yield would average somewhere about 1,260 okes to the donum. The yield varies from year to year, a good year generally being followed by a moderate year. The fruit may be destroyed by frost in January and February, knocked off by hail-stones in March and April or scorched by hot winds in May or June. A full-sized, well-cultivated tree can give up to 720 okes. Taking good and bad years, the value of the annual produce of a medium-sized tree is 5_s_. Carobs are sold by the Aleppo cantar of 180 okes, and the normal price may be put at from 13_s._ to 17_s._ per cantar delivered into store. Carobs are weighed on export and the tithe is taken in money from exporters at the Customs House. The following table shows the export of carobs during the ten years ending 1913-14: Year. Quantity. Value. _Tons._ £ 1904-05 31,887 104,301 1905-06 26,187 85,105 1906-07 44,965 157,452 1907-08 42,381 151,610 1908-09 57,010 188,841 1909-10 44,059 157,972 1910-11 37,485 145,590 1911-12 51,359 182,883 1912-13 63,658 251,750 1913-14 44,989 179,027 The falling-off in 1913-14 was mainly due to the losses caused by the fly _Cecidomyia ceratoniæ_. The fruit of the carob is exported mostly to England, but also to France and Egypt, and more recently, before the war, to Germany. Gaudry mentions that about the middle of last century it was exported to Russia, Sardinia and Austria. Some is used, in Egypt and the Levant especially, as food for the poorer classes and for making sweets and sherbets. Its chief use in Western Europe is as food for animals, bovine and equine, for which purpose it is ground up and made into either meal or cattle cakes. It is also said to be employed in the manufacture of chocolate and spirit, and there is a demand for the seed for use in the manufacture of certain gums. The juice of the bean, "carob honey," locally called "mavromelos," "teratsomelo" or "betmezi," is consumed as a substitute for bee-honey or jam and also as a flavouring for culinary purposes. From the carob honey is also made the sweetmeat "pastelli." At one time carobs were used in Cyprus for fattening mules and other animals, but, unfortunately, this practice died out. Efforts are now being made to revive it, and the advantages of this local product are again becoming recognised. The carob contains some 50 per cent. of saccharine matter and the interesting question has been raised in recent years as to whether the bean might not become a new source of sugar production. _Lucerne_ (_Medicago sativa_) This plant was introduced about eighteen years ago, but in spite of its undoubted success when properly grown on suitable soil, the Cypriot farmer was for many years very slow to make use of it. Every effort has been made of late years to encourage its cultivation and during the last three or four years there has been a steadily increased demand for seed. Irrigation is necessary in order to obtain a satisfactory yield, but there are many farms where it might be grown with great advantage. Its value for cattle food is generally recognised, and now that greater attention is being given to dairy cattle, lucerne would seem to have an assured future. _Vetch_ (_Vicia Ervilia_) This plant, known locally as "rovi," is undoubtedly the most widely grown of the fodder crops. Being a leguminous plant, it has a restorative action on the soil, although the average Cypriot farmer still considers it to be exhaustive. In the plains sowing begins in January, whereas in the Pitsillia, and even in the Morphou, Solea and Tylliria districts which are only at the foothills, it is sown in October-November, _i.e._ before the cereals. Rovi is almost the only food in the form of seed given to ploughing oxen throughout the East. It is regarded as heat-giving and strengthening, and is therefore fed specially in winter. It is sometimes given unthreshed with the straw. It is harvested in May, when it is uprooted, made into little bundles, which are stacked together in small heaps in the field, until they turn yellow, when they are removed to the native threshing-floor and threshed in the customary manner. The dry stems, etc., are eagerly eaten by cattle and sheep. The average yield is very little, from 2 to 4 or 5 kilés per donum. It is subject to tithe. _Chickling Vetch_ (_Lathyrus sativus_) The chickling vetch, known locally as "favetta" or "chavetta," has come rather more into prominence of late years, displacing the vetch (_Vicia Ervilia_) to some extent, as it gives a heavier yield. It is subject to tithe. _Vetch_ (_Vicia sativa_) This crop, called locally "vicos," was introduced from Crete in 1913 and has been found excellently suited to this country. It is most useful in any rotation, and has to some extent supplanted rovi (_Vicia Ervilia_) as it gives a larger yield. It is a most nutritious cattle food, for which purpose it is grown. When crushed and mixed with chopped straw it is readily eaten by cattle and sheep. The plant seeds itself very freely. It is sown about November-December and is ready for harvesting in about April. Seed is sown at the rate of 5 to 6 okes per donum and the yield is normally from 8 to 12 kilés per donum. It is a good drought-resister and needs no irrigation, and being a leguminous plant should be cut and not pulled up, as the roots left in the soil serve to increase the amount of nitrogenous salts. Being a vetch it is subject to tithe. _Tares_ (_Vicia tenuifolia_ var. _stenophylla_) This plant, locally called "mavracheron" or "phakacheron," grows wild in the Pitsillia district among the vineyards and other cultivated as well as uncultivated lands. It is of value in those remote localities where grain and straw are little grown and difficult to procure, as it provides a wholesome fodder for cattle. The villagers have now taken to cultivating the plant. It is cut before the seeds are fully matured to prevent loss of seed through shedding. The seeds and chaff are mixed together when fed to cattle. _Milk Vetch_ (_Astragalus_) This plant, locally called "arkokoutsia," grows wild in some abundance among the hills. When it appears above ground it is readily eaten by animals, especially sheep; but at this stage it is apt to cause hoven. As the plant hardens the animals do not touch it, except when fully ripe, and then it is greedily eaten. As soon as it blossoms, but before the fruit is set, the plant is gathered and tied into bundles or small sheaves and stored in a heap. When, after a few months, it is quite dry, and at a time when other foods are scarce, it forms an important part of an animal's ration. The plants are sometimes allowed to mature their seeds, and these, after being steeped in water for two or three days to remove acidity, are given to pigs, and are considered a nourishing and palatable food. _Moha, Sulla_ (_Hedysarum_) These have been tried for some years with success and are gradually becoming known and experimentally grown by farmers. _Teosinte_ (_Reana luxurians_) This grass is one of the most valuable fodder plants with which the New World has enriched the Old. It is a native of Guatemala and is also largely grown in Australia. Seed was first imported into Cyprus by the Agricultural Department in 1897, and since then the plant has been continuously grown in the Government gardens with marked success. It is sown in March-April in the same manner as Indian corn, to which it is allied. If irrigated, three or four cuttings may be obtained during the summer, yielding 25 to 30 tons of green food per scala. It is greedily eaten by cattle. Some plants grown by the Department attained a height of 11 ft. 3 in. and of others which were left to ripen their seed, one had 93 stems and weighed 26 okes, though the leaves had begun to shrivel and had lost weight. This plant is gradually becoming known and may be found growing on some of the more progressive farms. _Sudan-grass_ Seed of this fodder grass was imported in 1915 and very satisfactory crops have been obtained each year since then from the experimental plots. The grass seems well suited to Cyprus and gives a useful yield even when unirrigated. Occasional irrigation produces a valuable crop. Trial sowings are now being made on a few private farms. _Teff-grass_ (_Eragrostis abyssinica_) This has also been tried experimentally with good results and it is hoped that its cultivation will extend as it becomes more known. _Mangold Wurzel_ This crop has been grown for several years at the Government Farm, Athalassa, where it has done well and forms an important part of the cows' rations. It has been grown successfully on a small scale in some of the Nursery Gardens. As irrigation, deep ploughing, thorough cultivation of the soil and special cultural operations are needed, this crop cannot be generally recommended to farmers, but it is being grown by a few progressive stock owners under Departmental advice. The wild beet (_Beta vulgaris_) is a native of the seacoasts of South-eastern Europe, and the garden beet-root is much grown in Cyprus in certain localities, so, if carefully cultivated, mangold wurzel, which is a variety of _B. vulgaris_, might also do well in many parts and be of great advantage to stock owners. _Prickly Pear_ (_Opuntia_) The prickly pear grows wild as a hedge plant in Cyprus. The fruit is eaten to some extent by villagers, but no attempt has yet been made to use the stems as food for animals. In Sicily very large quantities are so utilised, and now that milch cows are coming more into demand in Cyprus the value of the plant for fodder may become recognised. Successful experiments have been made by the Agricultural Department in mixing the juice of the stems with lime for giving brilliance and permanence to ordinary whitewash. There has been an occasional export of the fruit to Egypt for consumption by Arabs. SPICES _Coriander Seed_ Coriander seed is the product of _Coriandrum sativum_, Linn., an annual herb belonging to the natural order Umbelliferæ. The "seed," or more strictly fruit, of the plant is employed in confectionery in making bonbons, in the preparation of certain liqueurs and as an ingredient for disguising the taste of medicines. In Cyprus it is commonly used as a flavouring in cooking. A sample sent to the Imperial Institute in 1917 was examined as a source of volatile oil, and the residue remaining after distillation was analysed as a feeding-stuff. On steam distillation the ground seed yielded 0.48 per cent. of an almost colourless volatile oil with the characteristic and pleasant odour of coriander. This yield is below that furnished by Russian and German coriander, but is about equal to that obtained from Morocco seed. The results of the examination indicate that the residue has a fairly high feeding-value, and it would be quite suitable for the ordinary use of coriander residue, _i.e._ as a cattle food. A sample of the seeds was submitted to brokers in London, who reported that they were very stalky, but that their value would be from 50_s._ to 60_s._ per cwt. (January 1917) as compared with 10_s._ to 15_s._ per cwt. before the war. (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xv. 1917, p. 301). _Aniseed_ Aniseed, the fruit of an umbelliferous herb (_Pimpinella Anisum_, Linn.), is grown on a comparatively small scale in Cyprus, the exports in recent years varying from 1,000 to 2,000 cwts. per annum. In 1917, 1,015 cwts., valued at £3,164, were exported, all of which went to Egypt. Seed sent for examination to the Imperial Institute was reported to consist of aniseed in good condition and practically free from extraneous matter. A sample of the seed was submitted to brokers in London, who stated that at that time (January 1917) stocks of aniseed were quite exhausted, and the prices therefore much inflated, small stocks of Spanish aniseed having changed hands in London at 110_s._ per cwt. Such price could not be secured if any quantity of aniseed were placed on the market. The value of the Cyprus sample before the war would have been about 27_s._ 6_d._ per cwt. (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xv. 1917, p. 300). White Cumin Seed White cumin is also an umbelliferous herb (_Cuminum Cyminum_, Linn.); an account of the cultivation and uses of this and other spices is given in the BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xi. 1913, pp. 131-136. A sample of the seed sent to the Imperial Institute was submitted to brokers in London, who stated that it was rather small and stalky, but that it would probably be worth between 70_s._ and 80_s._ per cwt. (January 1917), although they were of opinion that its pre-war value would not have been much over 20_s._ per cwt. (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xv. 1917, p. 302). _Black Cumin Seed_ These seeds, sometimes known as fennel-flower seeds, are the product of _Nigella sativa_, Linn. (Nat. Ord. Ranunculaceæ). The plant is an annual, native to the Mediterranean region, and the seeds, which are used in the East for flavouring curries, etc., and in Egypt as comfits on cakes, have an aromatic fennel-like odour when fresh and a slightly acrid taste. There is a small export of black cumin seed from Cyprus. There is, however, but little demand for this seed (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xv. 1917, p. 304). ESSENTIAL OILS AND PERFUMES _Origanum Oil_ Different opinions have been held as to the botanical identification of the plant from which the Cyprus origanum oil is produced. An interesting series of articles on this subject by E. M. Holmes appears in the _Perfumery and Essential Oil Record_, 1913, from which it would seem that this oil is derived from _Origanum majoranoides_, Wild.; while Dr. Stapf, of Kew, regards the plant as _O. dubium_, Boiss. (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xi. 1913, p. 50). Other varieties growing wild in Cyprus are _O. Onites_, _O. hirtum_, both of which are locally called "rigani," _O. Bevani_ (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xv. 1917, p. 305) and _O. majorana_. In its wild state the plant from which origanum oil is distilled is a small perennial shrub, but, if cultivated, its size may be doubled or even trebled. The first crop, consisting of shoots and flowers, may give from 300 to 500 okes per donum; in subsequent years up to 1,000-1,500 okes per donum. The latter quantity would produce 40 to 60 okes of origanum oil, which is largely used in England for perfuming soap and other purposes. For twenty years the distillation of origanum oil has been made under Government control. The industry was started in 1899 and, though not large, has steadily grown. It has been found that the Cyprus origanum oil is exceptionally rich in carvacrol (over 80 per cent.), a powerful antiseptic, and to this substance the oil owes mainly its characteristic thyme-like odour. Frequent analyses have shown that the Cyprus origanum oil is remarkably constant in character. This oil has the slight disadvantage of darkening considerably on exposure to light and air, which renders it unsuitable for use in light-coloured soaps, but a method has been worked out at the Imperial Institute of refining the oil so as to yield a product which will remain practically colourless for long periods. A report furnished by the Imperial Institute (BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. iv. 1906, p. 299), after giving a detailed description of the oil, states: "The foregoing results show that this oil sells readily in this country at prices which should be fairly remunerative to producers in Cyprus. It should, however, be borne in mind that the demand for this oil is somewhat limited, and that it competes with the thyme oil produced in France and Spain, and with the 'origanum oil' produced in Smyrna, and that consequently a sudden increase in production in Cyprus might lead to a considerable fall in price. The Cyprus oil has, however, the advantage that it is very rich in the odorous and antiseptic constituent carvacrol, and it is probably due to its richness in this constituent, as revealed by the analyses made at the Imperial Institute, that the comparatively high prices realised for these consignments were obtained at a time when 'red thyme oils' were selling at lower rates. It would be advantageous if a refined white oil could be prepared by some simple method from this material, as this probably would fetch an enhanced price, and be applicable to other purposes for which the 'red oil' is unsuitable." Until 1910 the distillation was made by the Department, but since then it has been undertaken by private contract, permission being given to collect the wild plant from the forest. The annual production is now about 2,750 lb., and the price has steadily risen from about 3_s._ per lb. to 8_s._ 6_d._ per lb. at the present time. But whereas the cost of transport to London before the war was £8 per ton, it has risen to the prohibitive rate of £200 per ton, and the 1917 oil still remains in store at Alexandria. The supply of the wild plant is limited and its cultivation is under consideration. The following table shows the exports of origanum _oil_ in recent years: Year. Quantity. _lb._ 1902 2,092 1903 No distillation 1904 2,410 1905 1,463 1906 2,200 1907 1,745 1908 2,051 1909 1,530[4] 1910 2,842 1911 2,276 1912 2,230 1913 2,455 1914 3,776 1915 3,709 1916 2,756 1917 2,696 1918 2,066 _Marjoram Oil_ This is not yet a regular product, but samples of locally produced oil have been examined at the Imperial Institute and pronounced to be superior to European marjoram oil and about equal in value to sweet fennel oil (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xi. 1913, p. 50). It is distilled from a plant which is abundant in the forests of Kyrenia and Paphos, and which has been referred by Dr. Stapf to _O. majoranoides_, Wild., and by Mr. Holmes to _O. Maru_, Linn. The market is, however, restricted. _Laurel Oil_ Samples of oil distilled from the leaves of _Laurus nobilis_ which were examined at the Imperial Institute were found to have an aroma inferior to that of the oils usually met with in commerce (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xi. 1913, p. 430). The demand for the oil is said to be small. _Otto of Roses_ This has been prepared since 1897 in a very small way with native stills at the village of Milikouri, where the Damask rose is abundant. The cultivation of this rose has now spread to other hill villages. The closing of the market for Bulgarian otto of roses owing to the war has given an impetus to the industry in Cyprus. The Agricultural Department has for two years sent qualified officers to superintend the work at Milikouri and to carry out an experimental distillation. A report from the Director, Imperial Institute, upon samples of the 1917 distillation states that "the constants of the Cyprus oil agree closely with those recorded for Bulgarian otto of roses." It was found that the odour of the Cyprus oil was fairly good, but rather weak. The otto sold at 70_s._ per ounce, less 2-1/2 per cent., which "in view of the very small quantity must be considered satisfactory." At the time of sale French otto was quoted at 78_s._ to 85_s._ per ounce. _Acacia Farnesiana_ This tree is but sparsely represented in Cyprus, but wherever found it is vigorous and healthy. It belongs to the Mimosa tribe of the order Leguminosæ and, as other species are common in the Island and thrive remarkably well, there would seem no reason why this species also should not become more general. It is known elsewhere under different names; that of "sweet briar" (in Barbados) on account of its numerous thorns and the exquisite scent of its flowers, and "stinking cossie" (in Antigua) owing to the highly disagreeable smell of its wood. The word "cossie" may be a corruption of acacia. Its flowers are largely used in perfumery, and the annual crop of the flowers of this plant in France is stated to be worth thousands of francs, and a particularly delicate fragrant perfume is extracted from them. The pods are said to yield a fair amount of tannin, while from the cracks in the bark of the trunk and branches there exudes a gum very like the true gum arabic and is utilised for the same purpose. The wood makes good charcoal. It is locally known as "skouroupathos" or "skouroupathia," and is closely allied to the extremely common weed of that name which is found abundantly in nearly every field in the plains during summer, but which, owing to its deep-rooted system, the natives do not trouble to eradicate. It is also allied to _Prosopis juliflora_ or algaroba tree, of which there are a few specimens in the Island. OILS AND OIL SEEDS _Olives_ The olive tree grows wild in Cyprus, but the wild fruit is small and bitter and yields an inferior oil. The cultivated trees are those which have been grafted. Owing to the stringent regulations which have prohibited the introduction of living plants from abroad, it has not been possible to obtain from elsewhere good grafts of new varieties. These regulations have lately been modified to allow of importations by the Agricultural Department under special restrictions, and now that the war has ended it is hoped to obtain these much-needed olive grafts. This tree thrives well, almost all over the Island, up to an altitude of about 2,300 ft., and numbers of vigorous wild olive trees are to be met with, which only need cleaning and grafting in order to bear fruit. Cyprus olives are divided into two classes, locally known as (_a_) "adrouppes" or "drouppes," which are eaten in the green or black stage, and (_b_) "ladoelies," which are suitable both for eating and for oil extraction. Of the former, or "adrouppes," one kind is rather large, with rough skin, having a rough, big stone, the other is longer but of less diameter, and has a very thin, smooth skin and the stone is smooth, curved and smaller. The latter has a better taste and resembles the well-known Greek olive of Calamata. Both these "adrouppes" are prepared for the table while still green, and are known as "kolymbates," or sometimes they are called "tsakkistes," owing to the stone being slightly crushed in the process of preparation. The "ladoelies" are of two distinct varieties, the larger of which is mostly regarded as an edible olive, and contains a less percentage of oil, while the other, or smaller kind, is richer in oil contents, and is mainly used for oil production, though it is sometimes eaten. A few imported varieties, including one or two specimens of Spanish and Greek olive trees, are to be found here and there in private gardens. If the land were manured and ploughed the trees would, especially on the chalky soils, yield abundant fruit and oil of excellent quality. Unfortunately this is not done, and it has been found very difficult to induce the peasants to adopt any kind of cultivation. They plough the land only when they intend to sow corn or other crops between the trees, a procedure which tends to lessen the productiveness of the trees. The system of irrigation applied is also very defective. Irrigation, while improving the quality and quantity of edible olives, is not desirable in the case of press olives. As to pruning, Cypriots would have none of it until within the last five years. By dint of patient and constant persuasion, some few of the larger owners were induced to let their trees be pruned by a staff of pruners under the direction of the Agricultural Department (see Plate VI). Much ridicule--and at times threats--was hurled at both the pruners and the tree owners, who were assured by the villagers that for their folly they would undoubtedly lose their trees. The results belied all these fears, and now within the space of some four to five years the practice of pruning has become fairly general, and a good number of villagers have qualified themselves as expert pruners and are kept regularly employed by private persons. As a consequence of this a great amelioration is noticeable in the olive trees in many parts and the yield and quality of olives have been improved. The method of gathering olives by beating, however, continues. The fruit so knocked to the ground becomes dirty and bruised, and quickly ferments, when stored, to the detriment of the oil. This mode of gathering by beating damages the young twigs and branches, whose bearing capacity the following year is thus impaired. Little care is taken in selecting the olives for oil. Not only are they dirty and bruised, but unripe or diseased fruit, as well as overripe fruit that has fallen from the tree, is collected together indiscriminately. [Illustration: PLATE VI. Pruned Olive-trees at Metochi of Kykos.] The usual practice is to spread out the olives as received, and unsalted, on the mud roofs of houses in order to give off a part of their water before grinding. The procedure is then as follows: They are first of all taken to the crusher or grinding mill. This consists not of two stones, as in Greece, but of one stone, drawn by pony, mule or donkey. For the first quality of oil the olive stones should not be broken, but generally speaking, insufficient care is paid to this and the stones are, for the most part, crushed. The crushed olives (zimari, paste) are then removed to the press, which is worked by hand, with one exception of an hydraulic press at Akanthou. At this village, where the best olive oil is produced, the olives are brought direct from the trees to the mill, whereas elsewhere the practice is to leave them in a heap to ferment and they often become foul and covered with dust and dirt. In pressing with wooden presses, the zimari or crushed olives are placed in round bags made of plaited rushes. Seven to ten of these are placed one on top of another in the press and the oil obtained is virgin oil (huile vierge). The bags are then removed and squeezed so as to change the position of the contents. They are then replaced in the press and hot water is poured into each bag. The oil obtained is of second quality. A third pressing is sometimes given. The yield is calculated at the rate of 1 oke of oil to 4 okes of olives. In the Paphos district is produced a black oil with a very distinct flavour. This is due to the custom of boiling the olives before grinding. The demand for this inferior oil is confined to that district. In former days it was usual for the mills and presses to be worked in the open. This is now rarely the case, but may still be occasionally seen in parts of the Paphos district and elsewhere. Whether outdoors or indoors these mills and presses are soon allowed to become very unclean, and the rancid flavour which clings to the wood is quickly imparted to the oil, which possesses, for any but Cypriots, a strong and unpleasant smell and flavour. There is a considerable residue or waste, which, if it could be utilised, would go far to meet the deficiency in the requirements for local consumption. There are a few good iron presses now in use. Their superiority is generally recognised and, no doubt, now that the war is over, they will be imported in greater numbers. Small inexpensive, cottage filters have been designed by the Agricultural Department and these are being adopted, though very gradually. The oil so filtered is greatly superior, but having acquired a more delicate flavour, it is not so much appreciated by the native consumers. Large numbers of young wild olive trees are issued on permit from the State forests for private cultivation and many thousands of two- and three-year-old plants raised in the Government Nurseries are also distributed every year. With the gradual improvement in cultivation and in the preparation of the oil, the production should increase enormously. The local production of olive oil is insufficient for the requirements of the Island, but there is no reason why, in the course of time, when the large number of trees newly planted and annually on the increase, come into bearing, a valuable export trade should not result. The figures of production, given in the table below, are strikingly fluctuating, and indicate the irregularity of the annual yield and the marked variation in price: Year. Quantity. Value. _Cwts._ £ 1904 4,294 6,467 1905 5,291 8,504 1906 7,845 12,602 1907 8,981 16,922 1908 788 1,459 1909 3,851 8,864 1910 7,550 17,232 1911 608 1,415 1912 48 88 1913 911 2,052 1914 2,197 4,837 1915 6,003 15,146 1916 4,966 16,035 1917 290 1,225 _Sesame Seed_ The annual production in Cyprus of sesame seed (_Sesamum indicum_) is said to be about 195,000 okes. It is one of the recognised summer crops in the plains, and is frequently sown together in the same field with cotton, maize, etc., and in the vine villages it is sown in the newly planted vineyards, where it does well. In such cases the preparation of the soil is done on the same lines as for cotton, maize, vines, etc. The seed is used mainly for the extraction of the oil, which is largely employed in cooking, and it is also used in the preparation of sweetmeats; it is added sometimes as a condiment in bread-making. There is a small export, principally through Egypt. The percentage of oil extracted varies according to the locality where the seed has been produced. Of the local product, that from Paphos gives the highest yield, viz. 30 to 35 per cent.; but this is inferior to the Egyptian product, which is to some extent imported and yields 40 to 45 per cent. of oil, this being probably due to the thinner skin. The crop is uncertain. The plant is readily affected by the hot west wind ([Greek: libas]) which not infrequently blows during its period of growth. The development of the seed is thereby checked and it remains thin and small ([Greek: psalios]), and naturally the oil yield is diminished. _Ground Nut, Peanut or Monkey Nut_ (_Arachis hypogæa_) This nut is fairly popular among all classes and is imported through Egypt in moderate quantities. There is no reason why in certain localities this plant should not be grown successfully, more especially in the light sandy soils around Varosha and at Syrianochori. Efforts have been made to induce cultivators to grow this crop, but so far it has not commended itself. It calls for something a little out of the ordinary in the way of cultivation, as the plants mature their fruits under the soil; the profit to be derived from the crop is uncertain, and is thought, though without sufficient proof, to compare unfavourably with rival crops. Growers have been somewhat deterred by the ease with which the fruit can be stolen. As this is hidden under the soil, a theft is not at once detected. These drawbacks probably explain its restricted cultivation. Should oil-extracting machinery be introduced, these nuts might well be grown for their oil, both for culinary purposes and for use in soap-making. The residuum, after extraction of the oil, and the haulm are nutritious cattle foods. The importation of these nuts was recently prohibited except in a roasted condition, owing to the risk of their introducing plant pests when in the raw, earth-encrusted condition. This has tended to check importation, and may perhaps give an impetus to local production. Ground nuts can be grown, of course, only where irrigation is possible. The quantity of ground nuts imported in 1917 was 1,532 cwts., valued at _£_2,448. Previous to that year they were not separately enumerated. _Castor-oil Seed_ The castor-oil plant (_Ricinus communis_) is only grown to a small extent, but the tree usually thrives well and its cultivation might be extended with advantage. According to Gennadius, Dioscorides claimed that it used to be called Seseli of Cyprus, from which the inference may be drawn that the plant has long been among the flora of the Island, where it is now known as a perennial. It grows very freely from seed and rapidly attains a height of 15 or 16 ft.; but it quickly dies back after a slight frost, though it recovers again the following year. It appears to do well in most soils, but thrives best in light loam with moderate moisture. Owing to the demand for the oil, one or two plantations have lately been made by the Agricultural Department. The varieties locally grown include plants producing large, medium and small-sized seed. Trial cultivations are being made to ascertain their relative values. It is found that a heavier yield of better quality is usually obtained where the plant is treated as an annual and not as a perennial. Four samples of castor seed examined at the Imperial Institute were found to contain normal amounts of oil, and similar seed would be readily saleable in the United Kingdom if offered in commercial quantities (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xvii. 1919, p. 492). FIBRES _Cotton_ During the time of the Venetian occupation (1489-1570) Cyprus exported annually from seven to fifteen million pounds of raw cotton. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the English Levant Company sent large quantities from Cyprus to England. When the scarcity of cotton occasioned by the American Civil War gave a stimulus to its growth Cyprus took part in meeting the demand, and in 1866 over 2,000,000 lb. were exported. Since then the production has declined. In former times, then, the production of Cyprus cotton must have been very large, as cotton manufactures in the Island were, as in most cotton-producing countries in the East at that period, both considerable and of choice quality. Cyprus was always distinguished for its cotton spinning. Gennadius suggests that the Karpas, which is one of the centres of the Cyprus cotton manufacture, derived its name from the ancient "karpasos," a fine cotton cloth which came from India. There is an old Hebrew word "karpas" found in the Old Testament, and derived from the Sanscrit "karpasa," cotton, or "karpasum," cotton cloth. During the Turkish Administration cotton cultivation declined, owing to the destruction of aqueducts, Venetian wells, etc., and to the practice of taxing the cotton crop in the field before it was picked--a cause of considerable delay and detriment to the crop. Careless cultivation and consequent deterioration of the fibre as well as the general fall in value contributed to the decay of the industry. Taxing the crop in the field was abandoned in 1890, and a tithe was levied on exported cotton only (_Handbook of Cyprus_). The species of cotton principally cultivated in the Island is _Gossypium herbaceum_. American "New Orleans" seed was introduced some twenty years or so ago, and this has now largely displaced the original native kind; in fact the native kind has almost entirely disappeared, and what little is grown is mostly used for stuffing the native bed-quilt or "paploma." Cotton grown without irrigation is known as "dry" cotton. It is grown chiefly in the Messaorian plain and in the Karpas; it is harsh to the touch and short in staple, but of satisfactory colour. "Wet" cotton is grown on irrigated land; it is usually of larger staple and of finer quality than the "dry" cotton and commands a higher price. This is grown mainly round about Kythrea, Nisou, Dali, Lapithos and in the Solea valley. Native cotton is always grown "dry"; the ordinary American variety is grown both "wet" and "dry." The Karpas cotton, which is "dry" grown, is inferior not only on account of its shorter staple, but on account of the method of picking. In some places of Messaoria, at Dali, Nisou, etc., the "dry" and sometimes the "wet" cotton is picked in the morning before the dew has quite evaporated, and it is picked direct from the growing plant. But the most general practice is for the villagers to cut the bolls early in the morning before the dew is evaporated ([Greek: pornê]), transport them to the houses and then remove the lint at their leisure. In this way the bolls are more or less crushed and the lint when removed contains a mixture of husk, leaves, etc. In the case of native and other varieties the lint of which adheres to the boll, the husks, leaves, etc., are removed from the bolls in the following way: The bolls are spread out on mats to dry in the sun; when sufficiently dry the bolls are put in a rotary sieve made of reeds and sticks, similar in make to the ordinary reed baskets of the country. Each end of the sieve is closed, but it has an opening in the middle, about 1 by 1-1/2 to 2 ft., which is closed by a small reed mat. The sieve is about 5 to 6 ft. long and 2 to 2-1/2 ft. in diameter. The bolls are dropped into the sieve through the opening and it is then revolved by hand by means of an axle which passes through it longitudinally. By this means most of the crushed husks and leaves fall through the interstices of the sieve. The native seed is usually grown on dry lands as it withstands drought. The "wet" cotton is mostly of the American variety. Professor Wyndham Dunstan, F.R.S., in his _Report on the Agricultural Resources of Cyprus_ (1905), referred to the successful trials made with "Sea Island," "Peterkin," "Truitt's Big Boll," "Culpepper Big Boll," and "Allen's Long Staple." Since then other varieties have been tried by the Agricultural Department, and while "Allen's" and "Truitt's" have continued to do well, good results have been obtained from "Triumph" and "Durango," both of which are early kinds and are therefore very suitable to the Island. A report by the Imperial Institute on samples of "Allen's Improved," "Mebane's Early Triumph" and "Sakellaridis" cottons grown experimentally in Cyprus in 1915 will be found in the BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE (vol. xv. 1917, p. 298). Owing to fear of locusts, late sowing (about May-June) became rather general. This is a dangerous practice as the bolls ripen late and much cotton is spoilt by the early autumn rains. It is mostly sown broadcast or in trenches; on irrigated land it is mostly sown in the ridges, but the older practice of sowing broadcast still, unfortunately, continues. "Dry" cotton is usually sown either on land which can be irrigated by a river when in flood, or in "livadhia" or low-lying lands which retain their moisture a long time. In the former case the seed is sown about March-April, while the soil is still damp from rain water or from river overflow. It is generally expected that when the young plants are fairly established a second irrigation from flood-water may occur. In the "livadhia" the seed is sown later. "Wet" cotton is watered about every fortnight. The crop begins to be collected in mid-September and continues up till the end of October. "Dry" cotton is rarely manured; "wet" cotton occasionally. The use of chemical manures is coming into practice. There are several ginning machines in the Island, but baling by hydraulic presses is done almost exclusively at Larnaca. In the Island the cotton seed is used for sowing and for feeding cattle. The exports of cotton seed have been: Year. Quantity. Value. _Cwts._ £ 1909 2,708 769 1910 3,066 970 1911 3,245 830 1912 15,874 4,535 1913 13,933 3,750 The exports represent about three-fourths of the total production. There should be a good opening for machinery for extracting the oil. The cotton is locally graded into (1) best, (2) medium, and (3) poor, all being American varieties. The first quality is the "wet" or irrigated cotton. The second quality is grown mostly in the Messaoria plain and at Dali, Nisou, Potamia, Kythrea, where it is partly irrigated by river floods. The third quality is "dry" and comes principally from the Karpas. On the Marseilles market the second quality has a value 3 to 4 per cent., and the third quality 8 to 10 per cent. less than the first quality. The first quality ranks in price at Marseilles on about a level with American cotton. For some ten years Greece has taken the leading place as an importer. Before the war, Cyprus cotton went chiefly to Marseilles and Greece, some also to Trieste. Only a very insignificant quantity goes to England. The freight to Marseilles was about 25_s._ per ton, to Trieste about 15_s._ per ton, while to England it averaged 50_s._ per ton. The market prices at Marseilles and Trieste were approximately the same, but at Marseilles they were subject to a discount of 1-1/2 per cent., whereas at Trieste a discount of 3 to 4 per cent. was made. The Trieste market, being small, was subject to sudden fluctuations and was therefore risky and less favoured by Cypriot exporters. For several reasons the Liverpool market has not been so attractive as that of Marseilles. At Liverpool and Manchester quantities of not less than, say, 100 bales are preferred, whereas Marseilles would take smaller consignments of 20 or 40 bales. Uniformity of type is required by Manchester spinners, whereas the French factories are more ready to handle different types, including the shorter staples. Cyprus merchants make no distinction as regards the varieties of cotton, whether "Orleans," "Sea Island" or other kinds, and indeed they are scarcely competent to do so, as this requires special knowledge and experience. They buy in small quantities from many peasant growers and mix the produce in order to make up a fair consignment. In normal times there was always the further difficulty of obtaining direct transport to England, whereas to Marseilles, Trieste and also to Greece the opportunities were more frequent. Since the war Greece has become much the largest buyer. Owing to shortage of cotton on the Greek market this commodity was purchased from Cyprus rather than from Liverpool, as the freight was lower and war risks much less; apart from the almost impossibility of obtaining tonnage. It was the practice before the war for Cypriot merchants to sell c.i.f. Piræus, but they could not continue this under recent conditions and now sell f.o.b. Cyprus, and this practice is likely to continue. This f.o.b. Cyprus price has lately been about the same as would ordinarily be obtained for c.i.f. Liverpool. Greece has many small filatures willing to take consignments of even 10 bales, and the shipment direct or via Alexandria is easier. A Cyprus bale weighs about 150 okes. The following figures, showing average annual exports of raw cotton at various pre-war periods, indicate the course of the cultivation: Period. Average Quantity. Average Value. _Cwts._ £ 1880-89 . . . 68,410 147,683 1890-99 . . . 57,291 91,812 1900-09 . . . 41,121 92,939 1910-17 . . . 68,384 213,275 Prices have varied, as is shown by the values of the following record years: Quantity. Value. Average price. _Cwts._ £ £ 1885 (highest export on record) 14,276 29,567 2 1 5 1886 (2nd ditto) . . . 13,887 26,535 1 16 11 1912 (3rd ditto) . . . 13,808 40,085 2 18 0 1913 (4th ditto) . . . 13,444 40,693 3 0 6 1884 (5th ditto) . . . 12,227 26,874 2 3 1 In 1917 there were 13,685 donums under cotton cultivation. It is usual in some parts of the Island, especially in the Kyrenia district, to leave the crop in the ground for two or three years. This method of cropping is locally known as "palia" or old. It is found profitable to leave the cotton plants two or three years on irrigated land. The second-year crop usually gives the heaviest yield. The average yield of unginned cotton on irrigated land is about 120 okes (3 cwts.) per scala; but as much as 250 okes can be obtained. "Wet" cotton, best quality, yields 1 oke of lint from 3 okes of unginned cotton, and "dry" cotton yields about 1 oke of lint from 3-1/3 okes of unginned cotton. There is much land well suited to cotton which for lack of water cannot be utilised. If artesian water could be found, there would be a very considerable extension of this cultivation. There is a well-equipped little cotton factory at Famagusta, and excellent cotton fabrics are made, especially in Nicosia neighbourhood, Lapithos and Karavas, Lefkonico and Gypsos and in the Karpas. These are known under the names of "alaja" and "dimita." They are mostly of good patterns, the material is strong and wears well, and is being largely used, not only by the peasantry, but also for making men's suits and ladies' skirts and cloths. An interesting article on the Cyprus Cotton Industry is to be found in the BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. iii. 1905, pp. 327-334. _Flax and Linseed_ The cultivation of flax (_Linum usitatissimum_), which began to develop some twenty years ago, has declined during the last ten years or so. The reasons for this are that it is considered to exhaust the soil, the later handling of the crop for fibre is troublesome and the market is liable to rather violent fluctuations. It grows well in the Messaoria plain, and when chemical manures are more generally used it may come more into favour. Attempts have been made to improve the quality by the introduction of Riga flax seed, but so far without success. There is a small export of linseed, but owing to the primitive methods of winnowing and cleaning it does not fetch the best price. The quality of the cleaned seed is excellent. Knowledge and care are needed in picking the crop at exactly the right time. The imperfect methods of general cultivation prevent the uniform ripening of the seed, and this means an uneven and unsatisfactory sample. Defective screening accounts for the presence in excess of foreign substances, weed seeds, etc. These difficulties are capable of remedy, and it may reasonably be hoped that when once overcome the cultivation will be extended. In Cyprus the cultivation is the same whether intended for seed or fibre, and consequently the latter is of an inferior quality, as is indicated in a report on Cyprus flax published in the BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE (vol. vi. 1908, p. 4). Seed is sown in November-December at the rate of 17 to 22 okes per donum. Retting is done by steeping in the large stone irrigation tanks which are a feature on most farms. In the Messaoria, about Ano and Kato Zodia, where flax is commonly grown, the plant is retted in the river Ovgos, which retains sufficient water usually until August. The yield per donum varies from 100 to 300 okes of seed, 80 to 100 okes of fibre and 50 to 70 okes of tow. _Wool_ The exports of wool for the three last pre-war years were as follows: Year. Quantity. Value. _Cwts._ £ 1911 . . . . 5,535 13,452 1912 . . . . 4,627 11,362 1913 . . . . 4,707 12,181 This went chiefly to France, and next, though in much smaller quantities, to Italy. The wool is of moderate quality; this is partly due to the breed of sheep and partly to the conditions under which they are kept. Attempts have been made by the Agricultural Department to impress on the native breeders the necessity of keeping the sheep well fed, and experiments have been carried out at the Athalassa Experimental Farm for the purpose of demonstrating the advantages of careful rearing. Two fleeces from the Athalassa Farm were sent to the Imperial Institute in May 1912, for examination and commercial valuation. One was the fleece of a yearling ram. This was clean, fairly soft and almost white. The other was the fleece of a yearling ewe. This was clean, slightly harsh and almost white, but was slightly coarser than that of the ram. These fleeces were considered by a firm of London brokers as an excellent class of carpet wool and likely to meet always with a ready sale in the London market (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. x. 1912, p. 537). A similar opinion was expressed immediately before the war (July 1914) by a London firm to whom two bales of Cyprus wool had been sent, of which a part had been purchased in the bazaar and washed and trimmed by the Department and part came from the Athalassa (Government) flock. It was considered as "an ideal wool for carpet making or for blankets, but deficient in lustre for braids." The actual yield per sheep, viz. 3 to 3-1/2 lb., compares unfavourably with that of Lincolns, which they most closely resemble. This is due partly to breed, but largely also to the conditions under which the sheep are kept (see p. 17). _Hemp_ The cultivation of hemp (_Cannabis sativa_) is practically confined to the southern part of the Paphos district, and there only in places where the water-supply is ample. The plant is grown only for fibre, which is exclusively used for rope-making, which is carried out by hand by the villagers round about Ktima. It would be of advantage to have a rope-making machine at work at a spot centrally situated in the area of production. A simple hand-worked machine is now being experimentally used and will, it is believed, turn out a better class of rope. The plant grows well on fertile and irrigated lands. Farmyard manure, and specially sheep manure, are generally applied, and chemical fertilisers are now also coming into use. Harvesting takes place when the plants begin to turn pale. The plants are uprooted, not cut, and are made up into sheaves tied together at the butt end only. The bundles are not more than 2-1/2 spans round, and of equal size. When first uprooted the sheaves are placed flat on the field in rows to dry and in such zig-zag fashion that the top end of one sheaf is always made to rest on the butt end of another, and thus does not come into contact with the ground: this ensures the circulation of air and hastens the drying process. The sheaves are taken later to the threshing-floors, where they are stood upright until they are dry. The seed is separated by beating. The sheaves are exposed to the sun until the leaves are shed, and when the stems are entirely dry the bundles are tied up at both ends and are taken to the retting-place, which is usually the common stone tank or cistern of the country. There they are steeped in water for six to nine days. The bundles are generally covered by about one foot of water. On the sixth day the fibre is tested. If it separates easily the bundles are removed, if not they remain for another two or three days. This requires much care and experience, as the quality depends largely upon effective retting. Then they are taken out of the water and sun-dried, being piled up into pointed shooks, left hollow in the centre. The fibre is separated by means of a wooden implement locally called "melidjia." This consists of a wooden trough placed on two legs which are fixed in the ground. A wedge-shaped piece of wood which is hinged to the trough at one end is used as the beater. The hemp stalks, after the butts are cut off, are placed in the trough and the beater worked up and down so as to split the stalks and lay bare the fibre. The average production of fibre per scala is 60 to 80 okes, but where conditions are all favourable it may reach 160 to 200 okes and the seed yield may be anything from 80 to 200 okes per scala. _Silk_ The silkworm (_Bombyx mori_) finds in Cyprus a climate exceptionally favourable to its development, and Cyprus silks have been famous for their quality throughout the middle ages and as far back as the sixth century A.D., when Greek monks first introduced silkworms from China. In the fateful year 1845, when the disease pebrine nearly destroyed the silk industry of Europe, the anxious search for healthy silkworm eggs that then ensued led Arabs from Syria to visit Cyprus and buy large quantities of silk cocoons from which they raised and exported the eggs. At that time, therefore, it is evident that Cypriot moths were well thought of. Pebrine soon reached Cyprus and almost brought the Island breed to an end. Thanks, however, to the Pasteur system, whereby pebrine and other silkworm diseases have been brought under complete control, the industry both here and elsewhere was not only saved but has been considerably developed. Writing in 1896 Mr. P. Gennadius, late Director of Agriculture, Cyprus, stated that the local production of silkworm eggs was so small that it could not be taken into consideration, and from the figures then given the total average annual production at that time is estimated to have been 35,000 okes of dry cocoons. This represented an average yield of only 3-1/2 okes of dry cocoons, equal to 15-1/2 kilograms of fresh cocoons, per ounce of silkworm eggs. This compared very unfavourably with the average annual production of fresh cocoons in France and Italy at that time, which was 35 kilograms and 30 kilograms respectively per ounce of silkworm eggs. Moreover, this ratio had been, up to that period, on a descending scale. In a report published in 1897 Mr. Gennadius attributed this unsatisfactory state of things to the following causes: 1. The importation of cheap silkworm eggs of inferior quality; the average price paid by merchants was 2 to 2-1/2 francs per ounce, while the price in France ranged from 9 to 12 francs. 2. The action of merchants who imported larger quantities of eggs than they could properly dispose of. 3. The ignorance and folly of rearers who undertook to rear far more worms than they could properly "educate," having regard to space, leaves and labour. In 1908 the Department of Agriculture set to work, with some success, to improve the methods of rearing up to that time in vogue, and during the six years ending 1913 (inclusive) the average annual quantity of eggs hatched out was 12,319 oz., the average annual export of "dry" cocoons was 45,551 okes, and the average annual estimated local consumption 4,449 okes, making a total annual production of 50,000 okes, as against 35,000 okes in 1896. The former total represents an average yield of about 4 okes of "dry" cocoons, equal to about 18 kilograms of fresh cocoons per ounce of seed, and marks a slight improvement upon the ratio of eighteen years previously. Since 1914 this branch of work has received a larger share of attention from the Department. Five sericultural stations have been established, regulations have been issued, inspections by qualified persons have been systematically made, practical advice has been given to rearers in the matter of cleanliness, disinfection and so forth, the granting of licences to egg-raisers has been put on a better footing and the whole industry has been brought more under observation and control. Numerous suggestions have been made from time to time for insuring that only a good quality of egg shall be imported. As an effective--perhaps the most effective--means to this end, the Department of Agriculture has set itself to improve the production of local eggs and thus indirectly discourage their importation: holders of licences to raise eggs are required to pass periodical examinations; several have in consequence had their licences cancelled, new licensees have been added, and many unlicensed persons have been prosecuted and convicted for illegally raising eggs. The common method of hatching practised by villagers, by placing the eggs tied in cloth with a little cotton-wool in their beds or by carrying them on their persons, still prevails, but it is gradually yielding to a better system of incubation. The Department has designed a simple, inexpensive hatching-box, and these are now being used with good results. Until about three years ago probably 25 per cent. of the local rearers were producing their own seed without any microscopical examination at all. Bad feeding, bad ventilation, ill-adapted premises were general. As a consequence pebrine and flacherie played such havoc that many people were beginning to abandon silkworm rearing and uproot their mulberry trees. The expansion and increased resources of the Agricultural Department happily came just in time to check this backward move. Silk reeling is unfortunately done in the most primitive manner with wooden appliances and hot water by village hand labour. The locally reeled silk is used only for Island consumption and the great bulk of cocoons is exported in the raw state, mostly to Lyons and Milan. The burden of freight on this bulky cargo is naturally a heavy handicap and the local silkworm rearers have consequently to be content with very low and inadequate prices for their cocoons. During the reeling process 20 to 25 per cent. of the silk is lost, and a further loss is incurred during weaving owing to the numerous knots having to be cut away and the silk threads rejoined. A considerable loss is said to take place in selling cocoons in the European markets. The cocoons on arrival at Marseilles are subjected to official tests and sold according to the reports made by the official testers. It is of advantage to the buyers that the report should be made as unfavourable as possible as the price is lowered proportionately, and it is felt that the cocoons exported are thus placed too much at the mercy of the testing officials. These Cyprus cocoons are reeled in France and Italy and the silk is largely sold to England. It would be to the mutual benefit of England and Cyprus if a direct demand for Cyprus reeled silk could be created and modern reeling plant introduced into the Island. A large sum of money, now annually paid for freight, would thus be saved to the Cypriot producers, which would stimulate the local industry and tend to increase greatly the annual production and improve the local weaving of silk stuffs, an industry which has already gained considerable fame and at which the Cypriot women are adepts. As the following table shows, the amount of raw silk exported is a negligible quantity, but a fairly large quantity is locally reeled and is used in making the silk stuffs which are so much sought after in the local bazaars: ___________________________________________________________________ Export of cocoons. | Export of | Export of raw silk | cocoons waste. | ------------------------------------------------------------------- _Year._|_Okes._|_Country._|_Okes._|_Country._|_Okes._|_Country._ ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1909 |41,013 |France | 2,120 |France | 6 |Turkey 1910 |44,550 | " | 1,105 | " | 259 | " | | | | | 157 |Egypt 1911 |57,422 | " | 2,704 | " | 246 |Turkey | | | | | 70 |Egypt 1912 |43,196 | " | 2,571 | " | 90 |Turkey | | | 70 |Turkey | 3 |Greece 1913 |48,884 | " | 2,502 |France | 118 |Turkey ___________________________________________________________________ Efforts have been made by the Agricultural Department to improve the Cypriot race of silkworms. Two races of white colour, the Japanese and the Baghdad, have been separately crossed with the yellow race of Baghdad. These crossings began in 1912-13 and have been continued up to the present. The objects aimed at are to establish a new Cypriot race (_a_) giving good cocoons of a fine structure and larger in size than the French variety and yielding a maximum quantity of silk; (_b_) producing cocoons of a uniform colour and in demand in the European market and (_c_) with these characteristics constant. The results obtained so far are promising, but uniformity of colour has not yet been attained, though it is hoped that, by careful selection, this will become more fixed every year. It may here be mentioned that the famous French cream-coloured race took seventy-five years to become fully established owing to the widespread damage caused by pebrine and, to a lesser extent, by flacherie. It has been observed that silkworm eggs locally produced by qualified licensees are decidedly more immune to disease and less affected by adverse atmospheric conditions than imported seed. The local conditions of sericulture in Cyprus have undergone a change of late years. Formerly Nicosia and Famagusta were the districts where this industry was chiefly carried on; but latterly whole mulberry groves have been uprooted and replaced by fruit trees which are considered to be more profitable. This was the inevitable result of the ignorant methods under which the silkworm-rearing industry was conducted and the use of bad seed permitted, whereby disease was spread and annual loss incurred. It is hoped that the industry is now again on the upward grade. One indication of this is that whereas a few years ago 1,000 to 1,800 cocoons went to an oke, now the figure may be put at 500 to 1,000. Again, the waste due to excess of floss is much less than formerly, and if only reeling by machinery can be introduced a very much better return will result to the cocoon producer. In the Karpas and in and around Nicosia a bi-voltine race is reared. The results are poor, but the two rearings are made because in these localities there is an ample supply of leaves. From this race are produced small cocoons locally called "Confetti." They are only used for local silk manufacture. An inferior silk called "Koukoularika" is made from the cocoons of the ordinary or univoltine race, both those which have been stoved and those which have been badly stained when the moths emerged. These cocoons, which, during the process of boiling in lye, have been bleached, are turned inside-out and the excrement of the larva removed. The silk is then spun by hand with the "atrachtos." These cocoons are mostly from laggard worms and of inferior quality. The silk industry has suffered greatly from unscrupulous dealing on the part of the dealers in eggs. It is a common custom for these persons to sell imported seed at 2_s._ and even less per ounce, although the law requires all such seed to be accompanied by a Consular certificate and affidavit showing that the price paid was not less than 4_s._ per ounce, exclusive of freight, carriage or insurance. Secret discounts, presumably, render this practice possible. The dealer does not ask for payment in cash, but requires it in kind at the rate of 1 oke in every 4 okes of cocoons raised. If 28 okes of cocoons are obtained from 1 ounce of seed the dealer would get 7 okes, valued at say 2_s._ 6_d._ per oke = 17_s._ 6_d._ for each ounce of seed. The dealer mostly gives a cash advance of 10_s._ or £1 with the seed, stipulating that the crop is to be sold exclusively to him, the price being left open. The unfortunate producer is therefore in his toils. The establishment of small Sericultural Societies would do much, both to encourage and cheapen the cost of growing mulberry trees and assist the industry. A few such societies have lately been formed. _Mulberry_ This tree (_Morus alba_) is grown extensively for silkworm feeding and is mostly found in those parts of the Island in which the silk industry is centred, viz. in the Marathassa valley and in the Karpas, fairly generally in and around Nicosia, Kyrenia and in the southern parts of the Paphos district. Little care is given to its cultivation. For the most part, in all the older plantations, the trees are set too close together. This is less noticeable in the newer plantations. Pruning, where given, is defective and so is the method of gathering the leaves. The usual method is to cut off, every year, the shoots with the leaves on them, from about one foot above the main branches. Two reasons are given for this by villagers. (1) It is quicker and easier to cut off these shoots than to pick off the leaves while still on the tree. The shoots are brought into the "magnanerie" and there placed upright in water and the leaves can then be removed more conveniently and at leisure. In this way the leaves remain fresh two days. (2) By cutting these shoots in the spring, _i.e._ during the silkworm-rearing season, which begins in early April, fresh shoots are formed which bear leaves in late summer and autumn. The latter afford very welcome green food for cattle and sheep. These leaves are stripped direct from the growing tree. The effect of this second gathering is prejudicial to the tree, which is thereby exhausted. The leaves produced the following spring are fleshy and watery and in the uncertain weather of spring are apt to induce flacherie. _Agaves and Aloes_ _Agave americana_, _A. rigida_ var. _sisalana_, _Furcræa gigantea_, _Aloe ciliata_ and _A. frutescens_ all grow well and, if properly cultivated and handled, might be worth more attention than they at present receive. In 1913 a Cypriot from German East Africa who had been engaged in the production of Sisal hemp there was struck by the few excellent plants he found growing in Cyprus, and, had sufficient suitable land been then obtainable, with transport facilities, was desirous of undertaking cultivation on a commercial basis. Samples of fibre prepared from the leaves of the abovementioned plants were reported on by the Imperial Institute in 1912, but as the leaves had been retted, and not scraped or scutched, their value was depreciated, and this was estimated at from £14 to £18 per ton with best Mexican Sisal hemp at £25 per ton. The outlay for fencing against wandering flocks of goats and for decorticating machinery and other expenses would deter the ordinary cultivator from planting, and this could only be profitably undertaken if ample capital were forthcoming. _Broom Corn_ Until the end of last century all brooms of European type were imported. Seed of broom corn (_Sorghum vulgare_), known locally as "tchihri" or "skoupa," was then introduced, and gradually the cultivation has extended and a good number of brooms of very fair quality are now locally made. The process of broom-making is very simple and the high price of the imported article during the war has led to a marked extension of the industry. The plant grows well, especially on irrigated land. The seed provides a good food for chickens and the stalks and leaves can be used as fodder. It is a profitable crop, especially when the cultivator makes and sells the brooms himself, and is principally grown in the Karpas and at Athienou. TOBACCO In Turkish times tobacco was grown in several parts of the Island, though not to any large extent. "For centuries it was produced in many districts of the Island, and particularly in the Karpas, near Kilani, Omodhos and Paphos, but from the time it became an article of monopoly its production was subjected to rigorous restrictions, and its cultivation has been entirely abandoned." (Reports, pt. ii. (1896), P. Gennadius). The quantity grown before the occupation appears to have been very fluctuating and to have averaged about 56,000 lb. annually, and the Government revenue, according to British Consular reports, would not have been more than £300 to £400 per annum. The Régie was introduced in 1874, but owing to the hampering restrictions the industry had been pretty well crushed out by the time of British occupation in 1878. Meanwhile the revenue from tobacco, imported mainly from Volo and Salonica, increased greatly. The monopoly ceased at the British occupation, but the regulations and imposts remained. Those responsible for controlling the industry, collecting dues, and checking illicit consumption had a troublesome task, while on the other hand the cultivator became averse to engaging in a cultivation which was hedged round with so many restrictions and formalities. These exist at the present time and may here be quoted: The grower has to notify the Customs authorities of his intention to sow, giving the locality and area. Before picking he must again notify the Customs, so that a Customs officer may be present at the picking and weigh the freshly picked leaves. After storing, but before delivering the tobacco to the factory, the Customs officer must again weigh the now dry leaves. The excise duties leviable are: Tobacco leaf, 4-1/2_cp._ per oke, payable on transfer of leaf from grower to wholesale dealer. Tobacco manufactured in Cyprus, whether made into cigarettes or otherwise, in addition to the import duty or transport duty, pays a banderolle duty of 3_s._ 6-1/2_cp._ per oke. These regulations are a relic of the Turkish times, as in those days the State received a definite due called "City Toll" by charging the tobacco cutters and tobacco sellers with a trade tax. They appear to have been administered with more laxity in Turkish than in post-occupation times, and it is said that the abandonment of tobacco cultivation was mainly due to the severity with which these rather vexatious and irritating regulations were enforced. For many years the tobacco imported by local cigarette manufacturers came almost entirely from Macedonia. This tobacco was of very superior quality and cheap, and locally grown tobacco could not compete with it. Of late years the price of Macedonian tobacco has risen considerably and the manufacturers have therefore been induced to import Thessalian tobacco instead, which is not of so fine a flavour and approximates more closely to Cyprus produce. Cypriot smokers have thus had their palates prepared for the flavour of the locally grown tobacco. About the year 1912, when Houry's Cyprus Tobacco Association, Ltd., was formed, a revival in the industry set in. This has since received considerable impetus from the war, which, temporarily, has thrust Macedonian tobacco out of the market. The primary object of the Association was to manufacture tobacco and cigarettes from Cyprus-grown tobacco, although foreign tobacco could also be used. Tobacco then began to be regularly grown by the Association at a Chiftlik near Limassol and elsewhere, and cigarettes made therefrom have had a fair local sale. The arrival of well-to-do refugees from Latakia and other parts of Syria, skilled in tobacco cultivation, led to great extension of this crop. A large part of the produce was at first converted into Latakia tobacco. Owing possibly to the lack of care and skill on the part of native labour, partly perhaps to the unsuitability of the herbs and brushwood used in the fuming, the market was not found sufficiently encouraging and the Latakia, for which at best there is a very restricted market, has almost ceased to be produced. Tobacco for cigarettes, however, continues to be grown on a fairly large scale, but in order that land suitable for corn and other foodstuffs should not be sacrificed to tobacco, the cultivation of the latter is permitted only by special licence. In 1916 and 1917 the industry fell almost entirely into the hands of the richer refugees, who were expert growers, and they contracted with the small farmers and peasants. A number of speculative growers, professional men, merchants, etc., were tempted by the prevailing high prices to embark in the industry, but the licensing system has tended to throw it more into the hands of the _bona-fide_ farmers, who are allowed only to cultivate small areas which can be looked after mainly by their own families. In 1916 the total production was 89,065 okes, and the estimated yield for 1917 is 487,674 okes. The Agricultural Department has for some five years carried out experimental growings in various districts, and samples of tobacco so grown have been submitted to the Imperial Institute (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xiii. 1915, pp. 547-550). The two best samples reported on were grown in the Nicosia plain. They were said to conform with the Turkish tobacco as regards size of leaf, but contained too much moisture for the English market. The tobacco was found to smoke rather hot and was only mildly aromatic, but it was believed that these defects would probably disappear with more experience in the curing. The samples referred to were incompletely cured, having been submitted quickly in order to roughly ascertain their quality. The report on the whole was moderately encouraging, and it is hoped that later samples which have been better cured will be found superior. The tobacco grown in Cyprus is mostly of the Samsoun, Trebizond, Kavalla and Hassan Keff varieties. The normal importation of tobacco into Cyprus is about 180,000 okes, which produces an import duty of £4,500 a year, at the rate of 4-1/2_cp._ per oke. The average amount paid for banderolles on tobacco when issued from factories for consumption is about £30,000 a year, which at the rate of 3_s._ 6-1/2_cp._ per oke equals a banderolle duty on 161,000 okes; the difference of about 20,000 okes would be cigarettes exported on which no banderolle duty is paid. If, then, no tobacco were grown and none imported the Government would lose £35,000 revenue annually. It would appear to be immaterial from a revenue point of view whether tobacco were imported or grown in the Island, since the imposts are the same, viz. on imports 4-1/2_cp._ per oke import duty and 3_s._ 6-1/2_cp._ per oke banderolle duty; on locally grown tobacco 4-1/2_cp._ per oke transport duty and 3_s._ 6-1/2_cp._ per oke banderolle duty. There is, however, this difference, that the money leaves the Island when the tobacco is imported and remains and fructifies when it is locally grown. Tobacco cultivation is in many ways well suited to this Island, as a great part of its cultivation as well as the gathering may be done by women and children. It need not therefore make any serious demand upon man labour, which is already insufficient, and much of the work can be performed by those who are unfit for heavy field work. It is a summer crop, which is greatly in its favour, the quality when grown "dry" being much finer than when irrigated. Its introduction broadens the basis of cultivation, provides a revenue from land that would otherwise lie fallow and is a useful element in any system of rotation. As it calls for careful preparation and thorough cultivation of the soil it has a great educative influence on a people prone to slovenly, primitive husbandry, and corn crops following tobacco have frequently given a larger, more uniform yield. At the same time it is an open question whether the crop can be grown and the leaf cured by the Cypriot farmer to produce a tobacco which, under normal conditions, will successfully compete in quality and price with the Macedonian tobacco. TANNING MATERIALS AND DYE-STUFFS Tanneries are fairly numerous and large quantities of skins are tanned and sold to native boot-makers. Before the war, goat- and sheep-skins and ox-hides were practically the only kinds handled, the two former being mainly used for the uppers of boots. The top-boots worn by villagers are nearly all made from goat-skin, locally called "totmaria." Since the war pig-skins and dog-skins have been also used. Camel-skins are often employed for making soles. Pine bark and sumach are the native tanning substances chiefly used in the local tanneries. The pine is one of the commonest forest trees of the Island. Shinia leaves (_Pistacia Lentiscus_) are also used (see p. 51). _Sumach_ The Sicilian, elm-leaved or tanner's sumach (_Rhus Coriaria_) is a shrub which grows wild throughout a large part of the Island, being principally found among the vineyards on the slopes of the southern range of hills. The leaves are largely used in the leather tanning industry, and a considerable export might have been established to the United Kingdom had it not been for dissatisfaction caused by the excessive presence of impurities, such as lentisc leaves and dust, which were usually found in the consignments sent. One sample was sent by the Agricultural Department to the Imperial Institute in 1909. This was found to consist wholly of sumach and no lentisc or other leaves, and gave on examination the following results: Moisture, 10.1; ash, 9.8; tannin (by hide-power method), 26.9; extractive matter (non-tannin), 16.7 per cent. The report showed that the leaves produced a good leather, similar in texture and colour to that obtained with Sicilian sumach, and was considered likely to fetch about the same price as a medium quality of Sicilian sumach, which contains from 25 to 30 per cent. of tannin (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. x. 1912, p. 45). Two further samples were sent in 1916. The first sample "consisted of a finely-ground yellowish-green powder, containing a quantity of sand, small stones and iron dust." The second sample consisted of a "coarsely-ground, yellowish-green powder, containing a quantity of pinkish unground twigs, sand and small stones, together with some iron dust." The results of examination were as follows: NO. 1. NO. 2. _Per cent._ _Per cent._ Moisture 9.3 9.2 Insoluble matters 53.6 57.8 Extractive matters (non-tannin) 14.6 13.0 Tannin 22.5 20.0 Ash 8.5 12.3 --------------------------------------------------------- Tintometer readings--Red 0.7 1.2 Yellow 2.1 2.5 Both samples were low in tannin, compared with the Sicilian percentage of 25 to 30. Sample No. 1 was valued at £13, and No. 2 at £12, per ton, with Sicilian sumach at £15 per ton; the lower value being due to the lower tannin contents, owing to the presence of sand, dirt, etc. It may be assumed that if more care in preparing clean samples were taken, Cyprus sumach would greatly improve its market value. _Valonea_ There are a few well-grown specimens of valonea oak (_Quercus Ægilops_) to be seen, but being a slow grower and as it takes many years to reach the stage when it yields a profit, it does not commend itself to the Cypriot tree planter. It prefers deep soil and requires artificial irrigation or a greater rainfall than we have in Cyprus. It has been tried at Salamis and failed, and also at Machaera with the same result. It has been grown also on Troödos, but after six years' growth attained a height of only 1 foot. Only an insignificant quantity of Valonea cups are locally produced. These come from the Paphos district and are said to be rather poor in tannin. The bulk comes from Anatolia. The pre-war price for the latter was 5_s._ per cantar of 44 okes, that for the locally grown was 20 paras per oke on the spot, transport charges bringing up the price to about 1 copper piastre per oke delivered. _Acacia Barks_ _Acacia pycnantha_ has been grown in Cyprus, but does not acclimatise well, and neither the soil nor climate seems favourable. _A. mollissima_ also has not shown any very successful growth. _A. cyanophylla_ and _A. longifolia_, on the other hand, thrive excellently. They are great drought-resisters and grow on almost any soil. They have been very extensively grown by the Forest Department in every district for fuel and along the coast upon sand dunes. They have not been utilised so far for the extraction of tanning, except experimentally. Samples of the barks of the two last-named species were found on examination at the Imperial Institute to be too poor in tannin to be worth exporting, but they should be quite suitable for use in Cyprus (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xi. 1913, pp. 412-414). _Madder_ In former years, and within the period of the British occupation, the cultivation of madder (_Rubia tinctorum_) was fairly flourishing in Cyprus. The old madder grounds can still be distinguished, and are mostly to be seen near Morphou, Ayia Irini, Sotira, Ayios Serghios, Famagusta and Larnaca. These madder grounds were excavations made in order to expose the soil lying beneath 10 to 30 ft. of drift-sand; and they form, as it were, a series of tanks along the shore. The red dye obtained from the dried and ground madder roots constituted at one time one of the most valued of dye-stuffs, and was in special demand for military uniforms; but this has been entirely superseded by artificial coal-tar derivatives and, as Gennadius says: "The happy days of the cultivation of this plant are past, never to return." It is propagated mostly by root cuttings. The leaf begins to dry at about the sixth month. There is no further growth above ground, but the roots continue to increase and shoot downwards till moisture affects them. "When they get too wet, they become black or rot. In Cyprus this rotting would often begin after about eighteen months, while in superior soils the roots would continue to improve during thirty-six months, and they would be known in the trade as eighteen months and thirty-six months roots. In Famagusta district they remain mostly eighteen months, while at Morphou they would continue fully thirty-six months, during the whole of which time the surface ground should be kept free of weeds." After the root is lifted it is generally dried; if packed before quite dry, it ferments and deteriorates. Two and a half tons of dried roots would be produced from an acre of good ground, and the madder grounds used to fetch a very high price. DRUGS AND OTHER PRODUCTS _Liquorice Root_ The liquorice plant (_Glycyrrhiza glabra_, Linn.) grows mainly in the Famagusta and Kyrenia districts, and the roots are collected and exported from time to time. Two samples were reported upon in 1917 by the Imperial Institute (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xv. 1917, p. 312) and the following opinions of two London firms of brokers were elicited. (_a_) One firm described the Lapithos (Kyrenia district) roots as medium to bold unpeeled roots of good flavour, fairly well cleaned and very well dried; and valued them at from 50_s._ to 55_s._ per cwt. ex wharf, London (February 1917). The firm described the Famagusta roots as thinner than the Lapithos sample and not so well freed from smooth valueless pieces, but mentioned that they had apparently been washed. They valued these roots at 50_s._ per cwt. ex wharf, London (February 1917). The firm added that both samples were exceptionally dry, and that it seemed doubtful if the material in the bulk would be as dry. (_b_) A second firm considered the roots to be rather mixed, inferior quality, and worth at that time about 45_s._ per cwt. in London (February 1917). _Pyrethrum_ _Pyrethrum (Chrysanthemum) cinerariæfolium_ grows well from seed and is an attractive garden plant with pretty, marguerite-like flowers. These yield the pyrethrum of commerce so largely used as an insecticide, and which is said to form the chief ingredients in various flea powders. These flowers, when dried and ground to dust, are employed for this purpose by the natives. The original pyrethrum powder came from plants growing in Dalmatia. The plant was introduced into the Cyprus Government Gardens some twenty years ago and has since spread more or less throughout the Island. It is perennial and drought-resistant, and will also stand several degrees of frost and seems indifferent to soil, provided it is not too damp. The seed is sown in September and the seedlings are transplanted in April or May, but it multiplies itself readily by suckers. The flowers, which are about three times the size of the Chamomile (_Matricaria Chamomilla_), which they closely resemble, are gathered as soon as they are fully open, and are then dried in a well-ventilated room. They are usually sold in bales of 50 to 100 kilogrammes. One donum may produce about 100 okes of flowers annually. _Squill_ Bulbs of the local squill were submitted in 1917 to Kew and provisionally identified as _Urginea Scilla._ Like the asphodel, this root is found everywhere. If sliced and placed about the house they are said to drive away mice. It was intended by the Agricultural Department to make an attempt to find a market for these roots, in the hope that if they could obtain a small payment for them farmers might be induced to collect them off their lands, but the project had to be abandoned for the time owing to the war. There is a small demand for these roots, if sliced and dried, in Europe for medicinal purposes. Squill bulbs from Cyprus were examined at the Imperial Institute in 1916 (see BULLETIN OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE, vol. xv. 1917, p. 311). The samples, which were submitted to a firm of drug manufacturers, were objected to on account of their dark colour, and were valued at about 6_d._ per lb. as against a pre-war value of 3_d._ per lb. According to the report by the Imperial Institute there are two varieties of _Urginea Scilla,_ white and red, the scales of the former being yellowish-white and those of the latter having a reddish tint, and there are also many intermediate forms. Though the red and the white varieties have been stated to possess equal medicinal value, the white variety is preferred in England. In making stone irrigation channels which are lined with a coating of lime and sand or earth, local masons sometimes rub over this lining with a sliced squill which has been dipped in oil. It is found that this tends to harden and glaze the lining and prevent it from cracking. _Colocynth or Bitter Apple_ The colocynth (_Citrullus Colocynthis_), locally called "pikrankoura" or "petrankoura," grows wild in some parts of the plains. The round yellowish-green fruit, about the size of an orange or small melon, ripens in July to September and, after being gathered, is skinned and dried in the sun. It is used by druggists as a purgative. Until about ten years ago it was cultivated on a small scale and an annual export of about £400 in value took place, chiefly to England and Austria. It was then in demand, it is said, as an adulterant of quinine. The fruit is locally thought to be a remedy for rheumatism. For this purpose the fruits are picked and put in a saucepan and covered with olive oil. After cooking for six hours the pulp or ointment is rubbed into the affected part. The European demand having ceased, the plant is now only found in a wild state. _Asphodel_ The asphodel (_Asphodelus ramosus_), locally known as "spourdellos" or "spourtoulla," is a troublesome and abundant weed in many parts of the Island, up to an altitude of about 4,000 ft. The peasant farmer rarely attempts to remove it, though it occupies a large proportion of his land to the detriment of the crops. In the hills the villagers dry the bulbs and feed them to their sheep, cattle and donkeys. A paste is also made from the roots which is used by boot-makers to stick the leathers together. To make this paste the roots are dried in the oven and ground, and then mixed with ground vetches or maize and made into the gum or paste locally known as "tsirichi." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 4: _A quantity of stored plant was destroyed by fire, reducing the output._] VI. MINOR AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES _Bee-keeping_ Although Cyprus bees are world-famed, bee-keeping in the Island is still in its infancy. The native hive is generally an earthenware cylinder or pipe about 2 ft. 6 in. long and 9 in. in diameter (see Plate VII, fig. 1). Hives are also made of a mixture of earth and chopped straw, similar to native mud-bricks. These hives are also cylindrical, about 18 in. long and 10 to 12 in. in diameter with a 3-in. thickness of wall. These are cooler in summer and warmer in winter, and produce stronger colonies than the earthenware ones. [Illustration: PLATE VII. Fig. 1.--Cypriot Earthenware Beehives. Fig. 2.--Shipping Fruit at Larnaca.] Of late years the Agricultural Department has introduced modern hives with movable frames, and had it not been for the high cost of timber since the war, the number of these would have increased rapidly. The difficulty is to get the local carpenters to construct them properly and with finish. Practical hive construction is taught at the Agricultural School. Cyprian bees are, par excellence, the yellow race of the world. They are of uniform colour, size and character, slightly smaller than the Italians and the blacks. They have great power of flight, are very prolific and vigorous and good honey-gatherers. They are by many considered vicious and ill-tempered. This is possibly due to the constant war they have to wage against hornets, which in this country are a real plague and frequently exterminate whole colonies and sometimes whole apiaries. Various devices are employed for the protection of bees in or near the hives. A good number of Cyprian queen bees have been imported into Europe and America, and are very highly regarded wherever they have been established. In the eighties Cyprian queens were sold in the United States of America at £2 each. This high price checked the importation and the crossing of Cyprians with Italians and blacks took place, the hybrid offspring being sold by dealers as Cyprians. These, however, did not possess the best characteristics of Cyprians, and for a time they brought about a reaction in favour of other breeds. Cyprus possesses excellent honey-producing plants in the eucalyptus trees, orange groves, "throumbia" or wild thyme, and other aromatic plants. In the neighbourhood of orange groves a competent bee-keeper can obtain an average of 50 lb. of honey per colony; although unfortunately the ordinary village bee-keeper gets little more than 6 to 10 lb. Locally produced beeswax is of fine quality with delicious aroma and of a bright yellow colour, said to be superior to that imported from Asia Minor and Egypt. The industry is susceptible of considerable development and, when brought under more complete control, should be capable of establishing a good export trade of honey and possibly of beeswax. _Basket-making_ Basket-making is a considerable industry, as all fruit and much other produce is transported in baskets mostly designed for the backs of donkeys or mules. The export trade of fruit and vegetables creates a constant demand (see Plate VII, fig. 2). The bulk of these baskets are made of reeds (_Arundo_) which grow luxuriantly by the side of water channels or wherever moist soil is found. This material is not an ideal one for the purpose, as the baskets are easily crushed and lose shape, to the detriment of the contents. The reeds are therefore often stiffened by the introduction of an occasional breadth of some other material, _e.g._ shinia (_Pistacia Lentiscus_), tremithia or myrtle. All these are much used in basket-making, though the latter is heavy. There is a native willow (_Salix alba_) and also the weeping willow (_S. babylonica_). These have not been used until recently when, by the efforts of the Agricultural Department, a number of these trees have been pollarded and the new shoots have been found quite satisfactory for the purpose. Six years ago a number of osier cuttings were imported from England, but unfortunately they have not succeeded so far owing to a succession of dry years. The surviving plants were this autumn removed to a more suitable site, but after suffering from drought they have now been almost destroyed by heavy floods. In order to encourage the manufacture of better baskets for the fruit trade between Cyprus and Egypt the Agricultural Department provides practical instruction in basket-making, and a qualified teacher pays occasional visits to basket-making villages and demonstrates the work and teaches improved patterns to the villagers and school boys. _Fruit and Vegetable Preserving_ There is little doubt that the establishment of small factories for canning or bottling fruits and vegetables would be a profitable undertaking. Owing to the suddenness with which, in the heat of summer, the fruits ripen in Cyprus, and the consequent glut that often ensues, market prices fall to a point at which it does not pay to pick and handle. Transport difficulties also make it precarious, in the case of soft fruits, to attempt a sale outside the immediate place of production. Increased cultivation is thus discouraged. In growing fruits or vegetables for canning or bottling a man is independent of market fluctuations, whereas at present both producers and consumers are in the hands of the local shopkeepers, who have the former entirely at their mercy. The Egyptian fruit and vegetable trade is very well worth cultivating, but until better measures can be enforced in the matter of transport by sea as well as land, shippers run the risk of heavy losses, which, no doubt, recoil upon the unlucky producers. * * * * * Specimens of most of the products referred to in these notes may be seen in the Cyprus Court in the Public Exhibition Galleries of the Imperial Institute. _Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, England._ * * * * * Transcriber's note: In the original, illustrations were marked as 'facing page.' That has not been reproduced in this e-book. 
33060	----	A LIVING FROM THE LAND [Illustration: (_Frontispiece_) Country homes backed by intensive types of agriculture serve modern human needs.] A LIVING FROM THE LAND BY WILLIAM B. DURYEE, M.Sc. _Secretary of Agriculture, State of New Jersey_ WHITTLESEY HOUSE McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK AND LONDON 1934 _Copyright, 1934, by the_ MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publishers. THIRD PRINTING PUBLISHED BY WHITTLESEY HOUSE A division of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. _Printed in the United States of America by The Maple Press Co., York, Pa._ _To my friend_ HENRY W. JEFFERS PREFACE Homesteading days are here again. The present movement of people back to the land is of a different type and has different objectives from those which prevailed when a continent was to be conquered and exploited. Today we know that many urban industries will operate on a seasonal basis and we know too that periods of unemployment and shorter working days will provide more leisure and probably lower incomes for hundreds of thousands of families. The utilization of this leisure time to supplement incomes, to raise the standards of living and of health, and to attain some measure of economic security will tend more and more to settlement on the land. In these days of rapid transportation and all the attributes and conveniences of modern country life, the hardships of the earlier period of land development are non-existent. Although urban industrial development has reached a point which will not be exceeded for many years to come, the individual who needs additional income may adjust himself to such circumstances by establishing a country homestead. Industrial activity is tending to decentralize, largely as the result of widespread power distribution, and a home in the country accessible to some form of manufacturing or business employment offers undeniable attractions. This book is prepared primarily for the family that is inexperienced in country living and in soil culture. Such a family should know about the nature of the soil on which it lives, how to make it serve the family's needs and purposes, what to do, and what to avoid in order that success may be attained and failure averted. Students of agriculture as a vocation and practical farmers may find, beyond the elementary facts presented, information of value and help to them. To know and to understand the science and practice of agriculture is to have power to cope with and to enjoy soil culture and animal husbandry. If this little volume helps to answer clearly and definitely the many inquiries that are in the minds of prospective and active homesteaders, it will have served its purpose. The knowledge of many practical people and the resources of agricultural institutions and agencies have been drawn upon for this book. Grateful acknowledgment is made to those who have contributed constructive criticism and have helped in the preparation of material. Especial credit is due to the personnel of the New Jersey and New York colleges of agriculture and to my associates in the New Jersey Department of Agriculture. WILLIAM B. DURYEE. TRENTON, N. J., _December, 1933_. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE ix CHAPTER I. TURNING FROM THE CITY TO THE COUNTRY 3 II. GETTING ESTABLISHED IN THE COUNTRY 12 III. FINANCING AND PROTECTING THE INVESTMENT 26 IV. ATTRIBUTES OF A HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY 40 V. SERVICING THE HOME 54 VI. MAKING THE SOIL PRODUCE CROPS 73 VII. FOOD FROM THE GARDEN 95 VIII. HOME FRUITS AND BEES 110 IX. POULTRY AS A SOURCE OF INCOME 123 X. SUCCESSFUL MANAGEMENT OF POULTRY 138 XI. THE FAMILY MILK SUPPLY 159 XII. MARKETING FARM PRODUCTS 170 A LIVING FROM THE LAND _Chapter_ I TURNING FROM THE CITY TO THE COUNTRY America was founded on the rock base of agriculture. The early settlers tilled the soil and derived from it the simple things that they needed. Necessity compelled them to be self-reliant, courageous and resourceful. The establishment of a home in early days meant the clearing of land, the erection of a house for human habitation and the building of shelters for a few farm animals. Each farm home became practically self-sufficient so far as the family needs were concerned. Clothing was made there for each member of the family. After clearing and subduing the land, the settlers were able to produce their cereal foods. Animals were slaughtered and the meat processed to provide sustenance throughout the year. Through the exchange of commodities and ideas with neighbors, advances in living conditions were made. The family that was not resourceful in those days failed to survive. Neighbors were too busy working out their own existence problems to succor the incompetent. Resourcefulness was called upon in meeting onslaughts of beasts or human marauders. Thus there was built up a tradition of seeking and utilizing resources that has gone on to make our country great and the wonder of the rest of the world. Since pioneer days we have built a great industrial, commercial and financial machine. American inventive genius, coupled with the best brains of the civilized world, attracted by resources and opportunities on every hand, has invaded every field and created a great industrial superstructure. With the genesis and development of a great industrial era in the United States there started a movement of population from farms to established centers of population. The application of the sciences to the problems of filling human wants gave this movement greater impetus. Mining and the refining of metal ores, the exploiting of coal deposits, the building of railroads, the construction of buildings for business and residential purposes, as well as dozens of other great enterprises, served to draw from the country the best of its human resources. Inventive genius began to concentrate on the solution of engineering and construction problems created by congestion of population and successive steps in industrialization. This same technical genius was applied also to farm operations which required laborious effort by men and work animals. That this development itself progressed rapidly is demonstrated by the fact that while in 1810 the effort of nearly every person was required to produce enough food to sustain the population, in 1910 the efforts of one-third of the people were sufficient to provide food for the nation and export vast quantities to other countries. While the nation continued to grow rapidly in population and sought to apply to ordinary practices the newer labor-saving devices, all was well. It was inevitable, however, that the great industrial machine should become over-developed, at least temporarily. Instead of machinery being a servant of mankind it became an octopus that could not be checked. Individual initiative, the wellspring of earlier developments in the process, became atrophied. There came about such a high degree of specialization in human effort as to make men dependent upon others for work to do. Consequently, even a slight throwing out of gear of the machine created unemployment, which reduced buying power for the machine-made products and started a vicious downward spiral accompanied by every form of economic distress. When such partial or complete breakdown of the superstructure occurs, thoughtful people are brought "down to earth," both collectively and very intimately in thousands of individual cases. They begin to get back to fundamentals and to seek means of becoming so reestablished as to avoid future cataclysms. The family attracted to the city by the lure of high industrial wages and by crowded avenues finds in such a breakdown that it has lost its moorings. In seeking means of reestablishment free of the terrifying complications of industrial life, the mind turns to the country, to the soil, to growing things that are not visibly affected by economic cycles. The open country seems ready to welcome back her errant children graciously and to enfold them within her protecting bosom. We cannot go back, however, to pioneer days. Free land is not available and we have not the arts or the patience to practice the means of livelihood of those days. To make the new or renewed relationship with the soil a success, it is necessary to understand that country life, too, has changed during industrial revolutions. Mother Earth is now, as ever, a generous but exacting parent. To try to reestablish relationships in a blind and haphazard manner is likely to lead to further disaster. Such a debacle is quite needless, provided some fundamental principles and practices are understood and followed. Unquestionably, the open country is now making the greatest appeal as a place of residence that it has made at any time in the history of the nation. To list the conveniences which now exist in the country is to duplicate those which many people have considered as available only in cities. In most areas of the country, for example, there are daily mail delivery, telephone service, some measure of fire protection, and transportation by automobile, bus or train. It is quite possible, for example, to step into a bus at one's dooryard and be carried to any part of the United States by the same method of transportation. The development of the radio has brought to the country home all the surging activities of national life and varied educational and entertainment programs. The spread of electric light and power lines through the country constitutes a boon that makes possible the use of all kinds of electrical appliances known in the city, including refrigerators, cooking ranges, washing machines, water pumps, water heaters and hundreds of other machines and appliances, some of which are in their infancy. No great difficulty is experienced in locating in the open country where such electrical facilities are available. [Illustration: (_Courtesy U. S. Department of Agriculture_) An attractive farmstead offering requisites of a home in the open country.] [Illustration: (_Courtesy U. S. Department of Agriculture_) Floor plan of house shown on opposite page.] On the main highways in the northern sections of the country a heavy fall of snow used to mean isolation for weeks. Today the snow is removed as rapidly as it falls, and these highways are kept open. The problems and perils of isolation are thus removed. Tradesmen of all kinds are directing their sales toward country homes, and supplies of ice and all kinds of food can be obtained almost daily at the farm doorstep. There is also a tendency to develop factories in the country away from the high-rent areas of cities and to utilize the services of persons living in the vicinity of the factory for full or partial time in the plants. The cost of living can be reduced by living in the country, and opportunities for purchasing foods and other products at wholesale prices and storing them against the time of need make further economies possible. The greatest asset that the country has to offer relates to the health and character of those who live close to nature. It has long been recognized by many European countries that the ownership of even a small tract of land, no larger than a city lot, perhaps, is a definite asset in building a nation and in building individual character. In Germany, in Denmark and in many other nations, the government lends its aid toward the establishment of people in the country and makes it possible for them to acquire and retain small holdings of land which they may call "home." It is on these small tracts that one sees veritable bowers of pastoral industry and beauty. Residence in the open country, in contact with the soil, contributes to physical strength and to mental health. When a man lives in the country, his house, his way of living and his contribution to the community stand out where all may see them. These latter assets have always been inherent in country life. When to these are added the conveniences and the opportunities for community enjoyment that are now a part of rural life, its appeal is not difficult to understand. Anyone who intends to live in the country has his individual problems to meet and to solve. In the solution of these problems there are many resources and avenues to which he may turn in the present day for help and for guidance. The tragic mistakes that have been made in the past can and should be largely eliminated in the future. A clearer understanding should be gained as to what one may obtain in the country in the form of a better way of living, serving as an anchor to the windward even under favorable economic conditions. _Chapter_ II GETTING ESTABLISHED IN THE COUNTRY In the selection of a residence in the country, the settler must decide whether he wishes to locate on a farm of considerable acreage or whether he wants to have a relatively small tract ranging from 2 to 15 acres. In the latter case, he is thinking primarily of a place of residence with sufficient acreage to make it possible to secure a partial living from the land immediately surrounding the home. The trend in such purchases is toward the smaller place for a number of reasons. A large farm acquired by a relatively inexperienced person means a very considerable burden in the development and maintenance of the land itself on a producing basis. Capital is required for the purchase of equipment and power. Parts of the land may need to be drained, and taxes must be paid whether the land is productive or not. A person acquiring a farm of 50 or more acres will find that the major portion of his time, thought and capital will be called upon to make it a success. If he has definitely cut off his city connections and the idea of having a job there, and has had experience in farming, then he may be in a position to take over a large acreage so that his full time and possibly that of other members of his family can be spent on various projects on the land he acquires. We are here primarily concerned, not with those who desire to enter upon farming on a large scale, but with the family which would like to live in the country, secure a partial living from the land surrounding the home and still have the opportunity of gaining a livelihood from some industrial or commercial activity located in a near-by city or town. It is quite likely that we shall have a shorter working week and probably periods of unemployment for hundreds of thousands of ambitious people. Therefore, a place in the country that is well located with respect to hard-surfaced highways and accessible to urban centers offers opportunities for combining the advantages and economic assets of country life with urban employment. _Getting Started Right._--Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon getting the right start, particularly with respect to location. This is not only essential for the satisfaction of the present occupant of the premises, but also gives definite sales value in case circumstances make a change of location desirable or necessary. It will often appear that the best location is on the outskirts of a city or town and from some angles this is good reasoning. There are some factors, however, that make such a location undesirable. For one thing, the tax rate is likely to be higher in such areas than in the open country, thus adding to overhead without compensating advantages. In the second place, urban centers develop without regard to soil type and this is an essential factor to the family that expects to engage in some agricultural pursuit. Again, the type of inhabitants that live on the fringe of towns and cities may not make good neighbors or associates for children, especially. None of these disadvantages may be present in locations close to centers of population, but the prospective settler should give all these factors full consideration. The sales argument frequently advanced that such locations will grow in value due to growth of population may be fallacious. Many have found that the higher costs of living in these areas often prevent the owner from holding on until the slow growth of population outward makes a worth-while profit possible from his real estate. Furthermore, the growth of cities and towns is definitely slowing down. The expansion of city areas is greatly curtailed and is not likely to be resumed soon. The most important time to get expert opinion as to location is at the beginning and not after purchasing. There are available in every locality persons whose advice is useful in such matters. The county agricultural agent located in nearly every county seat knows the countryside and his advice on the subject of definite location should be sought once one has decided upon the general area which seems attractive. In determining on specific location the bank which has a clientele in the country will often be found a helpful guide through suggestions or through ability to refer the questioner to reputable and informed persons with more definite knowledge. Another source of information is the local dealer in farm supplies. He will be found to know general soil types in the vicinity, especially those types which bring business to him because they are productive. Owners of such land are able to buy and use to advantage the supplies he has to offer to the grower. _Size of Tract._--There is the possibility that a person who goes back to the land may acquire too little land as well as too much. Inadequate land resources may seriously hinder possibilities of revenue from the place and cramp facilities for his enterprises. In this connection it may be helpful to point out that an acre of land comprises 43,560 square feet. A city lot measuring 50 by 100 feet contains 5,000 square feet. An acre therefore would comprise about eight and one-half such city lots. A 5-acre tract is usually a minimum area for a small agricultural enterprise and many have found it entirely adequate. The size of the tract to be acquired and the enterprises that can be engaged in will depend in considerable measure upon the size of the occupant's family--whether they can assist in its operation and whether the owner himself intends to put in all or only a part of his time. The possibility of securing extra labor should also be looked into before larger operations are attempted. No definite formula can be set down for desirable area and enterprises in relation to time available for operating. However, the owner will realize that one pair of hands can do only so much work. To try to operate beyond the capacity of his own time and that of others available is to become involved in striving to keep up with exigencies that may make country life a struggle instead of a pleasurable existence. It may result, too, in losses due to inability to get things done on time, and nature deals harshly with those who neglect the seasonable operations that come in any agricultural enterprise. "Bulling through" or skimping or cutting corners simply will not work when one is dealing with plant and animal life and only failure will come to him who undertakes to bluff nature. The successful operator of a farming endeavor must always be on top of his work, that is, able to plan and direct his energies in the most productive way at the right time. This is really managing and is likely to lead to success and satisfaction. To have so much to do that one emergency after another must be met brings the operator down under his farming projects. He ceases to manage under these conditions and becomes driven by his own creations. To avoid this unhappy state, which is entirely unnecessary, planning must be effectively done and operations undertaken in a gradual way up to one's capacity. _Cost of Land._--The price one should pay for land in a relatively small tract cannot be arbitrarily fixed. Those who own large farms or tracts expect to receive a bonus for the acres located along a highway as compared with an average price for the entire place. It should be possible to buy a 5- or 10-acre tract of land in the open country with highway frontage for from $150 to $250 an acre, depending on location. If the land is located near town or city where speculative operations have enhanced values, the cost will be considerably more. Where an entire farm is desired, the buildings are frequently given no value, the cost being the price of the land only. As has been stated, it is quite possible to acquire too much land as well as too little. A few acres selected from a tract of good, productive soil will usually be found a better investment than a large farm that has been abandoned because of lack of fertility. _Accessibility to Cities._--In deciding upon the location of a farm, methods of transportation that are available are as important as nearness to cities. A location near a railroad station offers the possibility of low commutation rates to a point of industrial or commercial employment. A location abutting upon an improved highway means that transportation by bus or by personally owned automobile can be utilized at the least expense and trouble the year round. The recent development of bus lines covering almost every main artery of travel offers facilities for quick and economical transportation unknown to country residents even a few years ago. Furthermore, the selection of a place of residence accessible to transportation to and from it is a factor to be borne in mind in connection with the possible resale of the property, should that at any time be desirable or necessary. _The Soil._--The type of soil is a highly important factor in determining upon location; also important is its crop-producing capacity. For all general purposes, a soil which is loamy in texture is desirable. Types to be avoided are the extremes of clay and sand. A heavy clay soil, particularly where the land is in a depression, not only inhibits plant growth of all kinds but is often undesirable as a place of residence from the standpoint of healthfulness. A condition of extreme muddiness in wet weather creates an unpleasant reaction on those forced to live near it. On the other hand, areas which are so sandy in character as to furnish no fertility for the growth of plants will be found undesirable in making the surroundings of the home attractive and in growing the vegetables and fruits which should constitute a part of the living. One method of judging the soil consists of examining the vegetation that is already growing upon it and determining on that basis whether it is likely to be favorable for the growth of desirable plants. For this reason, the selection of a site during the growing season is recommended, rather than during a dormant season when it is difficult to form an estimate of the vegetation that the soil will support. _Availability of Electricity._--While it is possible to secure individual electrical generating plants, it is far preferable to establish a home where electric lines may be tapped. The obtaining of electrical energy from a commercial line is desirable because of its greater dependability, generally lower cost and the fact that unlimited use of electricity may be obtained without the overloading that frequently occurs where individual plants are set up. Probably the availability of public utility lines is the greatest asset of comfortable country life and one of the most important factors in creating genuine resale value. These lines bring to the country dweller most of the advantages that are enjoyed by city residents. This is true not only because of the advantages of electric lights, but also because electricity makes possible the use of such modern appurtenances to the home as electric refrigerators, washers, radios, water pumps and various devices and machines for use in connection with poultry keeping and vegetable growing. _Type of Buildings._--Especial attention should be given to the adaptability to the buyer's needs of the residence and the other buildings that may already be in existence. If the plot being considered is on a main highway, it is highly desirable to have the residence located back from the highway a hundred feet or more as a means of eliminating noise and promoting safety especially if children are in the family. The location of a home directly on one of the main arteries of traffic destroys many of the advantages of country life, owing to the distracting noises that accompany intensive truck and passenger traffic. The age of buildings and their previous care have a direct relation to their value, particularly if they are of frame construction. If the buildings have been standing for a number of years, full allowance must be made for depreciation and repairs incident to weathering and long usage. The actual investment represented in a building erected under war or post-war conditions may not be in line with present values. In measuring the value of the principal buildings that are already on a tract, careful consideration should be given to the cost of replacement. Consideration should be given also to the outbuildings that may be on such a place. Instead of being an asset to the property, they may be a distinct liability if they are not directly useful to the intending purchaser. From the standpoint of economy of maintenance and generally good appearance, it is much better to have one building serve a number of purposes than to have a number on different parts of the property, adding to the cost of maintenance and multiplying steps. _Educational Facilities._--Where there are children in the family, the location of schools and the facilities which they offer should be investigated by the prospective buyer. It is desirable to locate as near to schools as possible. In recent years there has been a strong tendency throughout the country to do away with local schools and to consolidate educational facilities in one building. Coupled with this trend is the free transportation of pupils to consolidated schools. Therefore, it is highly important to locate either near a school which will be kept in operation or where transportation facilities are available to and from the home and the school. It should be said that the trend toward consolidation of schools has carried with it great benefits to children who live in the open country by affording them educational facilities that are not exceeded by most city schools. _Community Advantages._--The community, in addition to educational facilities that are available, should include those opportunities that appeal especially to the family. The accessibility of the church of one's preference should not be overlooked, and the general type of community life is highly important too. Some communities are known for the law-abiding proclivities of their residents while others do not have a savory reputation from the standpoint of the peace and security of their more respectable inhabitants. One should establish a residence in the community with the thought that he is to become a factor in the life of that community. He should be sure that there is a genuine spirit of healthy and cooperative activity which constantly tends to upbuild the neighborhood, by keeping out or suppressing undesirable elements and by developing a concerted feeling of responsibility for the welfare of all who live within its boundaries. A resident of a city moving to the country frequently finds a difference in his neighbors' viewpoint that surprises him. There is, and must be, in the rural community a closer relationship between the people in that community than ever exists in an apartment dwelling in the city. In the country, one's neighbors are apt to show a surprising amount of friendly interest in one's doings, since the whole trend of the community is based upon the actions and attitude of the relatively few people who live within it. It should be repeated, therefore, that the type of community and the facilities which the people of that community have developed should be given careful attention by the prospective resident and he should determine for himself whether the particular community that he has in mind is in accord with his ideas and ideals. To be out of step with the community in which one lives is apt to create dissatisfactions and a critical attitude on both sides that is not conducive to happiness. A home in the country has more of the attributes of genuine ownership than has a home anywhere else. The country home must be established with an idea of permanence and of becoming really rooted in the soil where one locates, if the true benefits of rural home ownership are to be secured. _Do's_ Decide either on large farm or on house and small acreage. Determine accessibility at all times of the year. Purchase soil of loam texture, mixture of sand and clay. Determine whether electricity is available. Locate back from highway. If present buildings are to be used, be sure of their condition and need of repair. Find out type and accessibility of schools and other community buildings. Prepare to be _of_ the community as well as _in_ it. Remember there are advantages of small tract over large farm where available time is an important element. Use local sources of information as to desirability of tract before purchasing. Work out a plan of management that fits into the time available for the farm duties. _Don'ts_ Don't overlook intrinsic values of the location, such as soil, low tax rate and good neighbors. Avoid excessive capital outlay. Avoid extra heavy or extra sandy soils or evidently unproductive ones. Don't overlook advantages of electric light and power. Don't buy a place just because it has buildings. They may not be adapted to your needs. Don't buy too much land. It can be a burden. Don't let the farm become your master. Don't pay too much for land. There is plenty of it. _Chapter_ III FINANCING AND PROTECTING THE INVESTMENT Acquiring land for residence and for subsistence calls for the exercise of good business judgment. Not only must the site and general location be acceptable to the family, but the investment involved should be within the capacity of the owner to finance without undue strain on his resources. It should be recognized that there will be ordinary living expenses to be met in the country and perhaps some extraordinary demands resulting from emergencies. Consequently, adequate thought and preparation must be made for financing the investment and making sure, as far as that is possible, that the investment in a country home will not be lost through inability to meet possible contingencies. It goes without saying that the capital investment should be kept as low as possible. Wherever feasible, the cash available should take care of the full investment without the necessity for additional financing. This reduces the drain upon resources through obviating the necessity of meeting interest payments on mortgages and makes possible the use of any surplus funds for improvement, for education and for giving the family the advantages which country life offers. If it is necessary to borrow funds for financing the purchase, special attention should be given to the type of mortgage which is obtained. _Mortgage Financing._--One of the most desirable types of financing is through a financially sound building and loan association whereby the interest and the amortization of the mortgage are taken care of through monthly payments. Such building and loan mortgages are available in most localities throughout the country. A series of monthly payments can be made which will take care of the interest payments and the mortgage itself so that within a period of from ten to twelve years, in most cases, the mortgage is amortized and the owner has the advantages of a home that is free of encumbrance. For example, if the mortgage amounts to $3,000, subscription to fifteen shares of a building and loan association at $1 a share per month would make it possible to clear off the mortgage in about eleven years. This would call for the payment to the association of $15 per month and interest. Through the compounding of interest, the mortgage can be lifted at less expense than any other procedure. Another satisfactory plan is to place the mortgage with a bank or financing company or insurance company that will not call the mortgage so long as the payments are met, and at the same time start saving through a building and loan association so as to complete the payments over a series of years. There is a far greater sense of security in having no mortgage or in setting up a definite and practical procedure for eliminating it than in always having a mortgage encumbrance with its interest payments and the possibility of having it called at an inopportune moment. A home that is free from mortgage can be carried at small cost, especially where the owner is willing to make most of the repairs and attend to the upkeep himself. The demand for outlay of cash for mortgage interest may be financially embarrassing, especially where income is not guaranteed or may be jeopardized through a drastic reduction at critical periods or as the result of emergency expenses in the family, such as are entailed by serious illness. _Taxes._--One of the factors that is frequently overlooked in the purchase of a residence in the country is the cost of meeting taxes. Since taxes must be met if the property is to be held, it is highly important that the location be one in which tax rates are not excessive. On the other hand, an exceedingly low tax rate may indicate lack of progressiveness in the community and lack of facilities which from many angles would lessen the value of the tract as a place of residence. In most localities, the tax rate is based principally upon the costs of building and maintaining highways and schools. Good facilities in both of these respects are highly desirable, and yet excessive expenditures in either direction may so advance the tax rate as to make them expensive luxuries. In many rural communities, taxing districts are burdened with the costs of building monumental schools or a very elaborate system of roads, undertaken at some time through the flotation of bond issues. The establishment of a sinking fund for payment of interest and amortization of these bonds frequently constitutes a very heavy drain upon the residents of the district. It is, therefore, necessary to determine not only the tax rate in the locality under consideration, but also to know definitely what are the current charges for maintenance of government. Taxing methods vary so widely, even in adjoining districts, that the only method of determining the annual charges for taxes is to secure from the present owner or from the local tax assessor the definite payments that must be made. As a means of saving trouble later, an investigation should be made of the property under consideration to make sure that taxes have been paid to the date of purchase. This is distinctly the obligation of the owner. Unpaid taxes constitute a lien on the property, and an investigation of the status of the tax payments is essential in protecting the proposed investment. _The Title and Survey._--A great deal of possible trouble can be eliminated by making sure that the title is clear. An investigation should be made along this line by an attorney or agency equipped to secure information from appropriate county offices. Very often the owner has had a recent search made and is willing to pass this on to the purchaser, thus saving expense and delay in tracing back the records over a long period of years. Such study will show whether there are encumbrances or liens of any kind on the property, and these, of course, must be cleared up before any transaction is entered into. The potential buyer should also have a survey made by a competent engineer to definitely fix the boundaries of the property. Stakes can then be placed, indicating the corners and any irregularities in the outline of the area under consideration, showing the new owner exactly where his property extends. In many sections of the country the buyer is in a position to demand of the owner that such a survey be made at the owner's expense. This survey is particularly important where an area of considerable size has been cut up into parcels for sale to individuals. The steps that have been outlined to protect the investment are only those which a prudent purchaser will insist upon before transfer of ownership takes place. Frequently a buyer becomes so enamored with a property that he hopes nothing will interfere with his acquisition of it, and he is apt to mentally minimize the possibilities of a cloud on the title or the exactness of the property lines. So many people have suffered serious losses from failure to look thoroughly before leaping that emphasis is given to these points as a means of securing ample protection for the buyer. _An Income from the Investment._--It is presumed that in most cases the owner of even a small tract expects to secure some financial returns from the land as a means of adding to his income. The plan that is proposed as a means of securing an income from the land should not be too complicated and should be of a type that can be carried on when the owner is necessarily engaged in other work. This, of course, may run the gamut from a small home garden to supply the vegetable needs of the household to the operation of a larger tract on a commercial basis. Furthermore, as we get into the commercial type of production, that may be planned as a means of materially supplementing an income or eventually supplying the entire family income. Especial attention has been given in recent years to the use of poultry as a means of supplying an income to the family which is willing to use its own resources for taking care of the flock. Another means of securing an income is the growing of vegetables and the sale of these vegetables at a stand erected near the house for the convenience of the traveling public. Many who engage in vegetable growing or egg production on a relatively small scale will find an outlet for their products through associates in some other line of work, who will be glad to buy from their country friends on the basis of quality and freshness that may not be obtainable through their community stores. It should be pointed out that where the area under cultivation is small, the production must be intensive. In other words, it would be uneconomic for the owner of a small tract to try to supplement his income through the growth of staple crops. He must specialize in some particular phase of agriculture, horticulture or animal industry that will bring the largest possible net returns per acre even though that implies a considerably larger labor cost per unit of operation than would be the case in the growing of the staple crops, such as the cereals. The successful production of vegetable crops or poultry products, for example, and their successful merchandizing, rest primarily on the interest and the adaptability of the individual. _Avoiding Causes of Failure._--To know what procedures to avoid is to be fortified against failure and to be prepared to take advantage of those constructive measures which are conducive to success. A recent survey has been made in an eastern state on the causes of failure in farming, frequently followed by necessitous abandonment of the farm and home. This survey shows that one of the principal causes of failure is the effort to manage a farm that is too large for the operator's capacity; his inexperience and lack of knowledge constitute too great a handicap on a large acreage. Best results can be secured in farming only by seeding, cultivating and harvesting at the proper time in each case. To a greater extent than is usually realized, success depends upon good management, which means doing the things that need to be done at the right time. If the farm is large there is a necessity for employing hired labor, and the costs of this labor, especially under inexperienced management, are likely to be out of line with the value of the products raised. In many instances the lack of technical experience can be corrected by dependence upon governmental agencies, such as experiment stations, county agricultural agents and departments of agriculture. These services are available to every farmer, in most cases without cost, and all that he needs is the will to avail himself of such expert help. In the cases of farms that have been abandoned, we find that the operators did not make contacts with dependable sources of information, an indication of the necessity of cooperating with the agricultural agencies or with experienced and successful neighboring farmers. Still another cause of failure lies in the purchase of a farm at a price which requires the assumption of a mortgage which is too high in relation to the income from the farm. In short, an attempt to operate on an overcapitalized basis will, sooner or later, lead to disaster. Failure to locate on a productive type of soil may easily lead to loss of the investment. If the local conditions, including good roads, school advantages and a healthy community spirit, are lacking, there will develop a feeling of discouragement and mental dissatisfaction which destroys morale and creates the desire to get out from under at any cost. _The Stocked Farm._--The question is frequently raised as to whether a farm should be bought already stocked with work and domestic animals and with farm equipment or whether it should be stocked by the operator himself. This will depend, of course, upon the type of equipment which may be available in the individual case. Sometimes fairly good equipment will be sold with the farm as a means of facilitating a sale, but the value of each item should be determined by someone experienced in prices of such livestock or commodities as may be sold with the farm. In many cases the buyer has loaded himself with animals or equipment that are ill adapted to the farm or that are of no particular value, and in struggling to get along with them he may seriously handicap the efficiency of his labors. In most cases it will be found a better practice to add stock and equipment as the need becomes definite and the finances of the operator make it possible for him to add them to the farm. In this way he will be fairly sure of acquiring only those items which will be of direct use and benefit to him and will avoid an accumulation of worn-out or antiquated articles which will not meet the requirements he must observe in selecting tools for his work. _Avoiding Fire Loss._--Possibility of loss by fire is an ever-present reality to the owner of a country place. There are two methods of preventing loss, and the observance of both will contribute to the peace of mind of the owner. In the first place, he should make sure that adequate insurance is carried on his buildings and equipment so that in case of loss through fire there will be sufficient indemnity to permit the rebuilding of the destroyed or damaged structures. Lightning heads the list of the causes of farm fires and is frequently not reckoned with by urban residents who have seen little evidence of its destructiveness. In cities, points of electrical concentration are avoided by diffusion through piping, metal poles and a number of other conductors of electricity. The owner of a country home can secure quite complete protection from damage through lightning by the use of electrical conductors, usually called lightning rods, properly installed. Such equipment does away with 90 per cent of the risk caused by lightning. In installing a system of lightning rods, it is well to observe a few simple precautions. The most exposed parts of a building should be provided with rods and the rod points should extend 3 to 4 feet above the structure. Conductors from the rod point should go in the most direct line possible to the ground and sharp bends in the conductors should be avoided. One of the most essential precautions is to thoroughly ground the conductors. Water pipes on the buildings furnish excellent grounding. The grounds for the conductors must be deep enough in the soil to reach permanent moisture. Lightning rods that are not properly constructed or properly grounded may be a worse menace than if no such protection is attempted. Specific methods of protecting farm buildings from lightning damage can be secured from state agricultural agencies or from reliable commercial firms which make a practice of erecting them. Another cause of fires lies in unsound chimney construction. By using care and the proper materials in the building of chimneys, fire may be avoided. Chimney bricks should be laid flat rather than on edge, thereby practically eliminating the development of chimney cracks through which sparks can escape into floor spaces, attics and roofs. Fire risks to residences and other buildings can be reduced by building the roof of fireproof or fire-resistant materials. Wooden shingles, while attractive and inexpensive, may become so dry at certain seasons of the year as to furnish tinder for sparks that may rise from a brush fire or from burning buildings in the vicinity. The use of slate or asbestos shingles is recommended for roofs and there are other materials now on the market which have fire-resistant qualities and can be safely utilized. Flying sparks carried along on high winds constitute little menace to those who have equipped their roofs with non-inflammable materials. It is important to see that electrical wiring has been properly installed, and for this purpose it is safest to secure expert help. If the menace of fire is properly evaluated by the owner, he will naturally take suitable precautions to cope with it, both through utilizing adequate preventive measures and through having available equipment to make possible the smothering of accidental fires which may develop. The application of these available common-sense methods of fire prevention will practically eliminate the fire risk. An ounce of such prevention effort is to be stressed rather than placing dependence on means of fire suppression after the combustion occurs. _Do's_ Keep capital investment as low as possible. If part of capital must be borrowed, select type of mortgage that can be paid off most conveniently. Determine tax rate before buying. Make sure that title is clear and the property lines definitely fixed. If some income is expected, check on possibilities of location with that in mind. Plan to secure income from intensive crop and animal projects, _e.g._, vegetables and poultry. Use governmental aids to the fullest extent. Carry adequate insurance on buildings, equipment and furniture as protection against fire loss. Install protection against lightning. Be sure electrical wiring is properly installed. _Don'ts_ Don't become heavily involved with fixed financial obligations at outset. Avoid localities with heavy bonded indebtedness, resulting in excessive taxes. Don't expect to get an income from growing staple crops such as grains. Don't become dependent on hired labor if it can be avoided. Avoid unproductive soil and top-heavy investment of capital. Don't buy a stocked farm unless the stock is adapted to needs and properly valued. Don't neglect to take every precaution against fire. Don't forget chimney flues are potential risks. Avoid roofs of inflammable materials. _Chapter_ IV ATTRIBUTES OF A HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY The problem of selecting a home is always a serious one. Success in choosing a satisfactory location and home in the country calls for careful study and good judgment throughout the procedure. In urban centers many services are taken for granted, such as water supply, sewerage, public utility connections and delivery systems. The establishment of a home in the country calls for the consideration of all these services. Some may not be available and preparations must be made to do without them or to set up such procedures as will take care of the family's needs on the basis of the individual home. _The Rural Home._--To give the elements of satisfactory living under modest circumstances, the country home should be so located and serviced as to give the maximum of comfort and convenience for the money invested. The location, type of construction and interior arrangement of the home are important factors in attaining these objectives. Unless the location selected already has buildings on it which meet the needs of the purchaser and his family, there will be the immediate problem of building the home or remodeling the structure already in existence. In recent years a great deal of attention has been given to rural homes, stimulated no doubt by the very evident trend of population from the city to the country. These homes should have attributes distinctly their own and should harmonize with the purpose and the location in mind. A house with lines that look well in town or city may be only a blot on the landscape when set in the open country. Many excellent recommendations have been made for country houses by the United States Department of Agriculture, the President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership (December, 1931) and by architects who have given this problem the specific attention it deserves. In general, we may say that the exterior of the house should have simple lines and should not be ostentatious or covered with inappropriate decorative effects. This is especially the case where the house is comparatively small and is located in the open country where there is a simple and pleasing natural background. The country house should be low and broad, rather than tall and narrow. The windows and doors should be of a size and shape that will meet utilitarian requirements and be so situated as to give a pleasing and attractive appearance to the whole structure. The materials used should be selected to meet the needs of economy in the original construction and should be of long-lasting type, assuring economy in maintenance. _Essential Requirements._--In planning the house there are certain minimum requirements which should be kept in mind. For example, the sleeping facilities should include at least one bedroom for every two persons and should contain not less than 100 square feet per room. All sleeping rooms should be provided with cross ventilation, that is, with a window on each of two sides, and sufficient closet or wardrobe space should be provided, equipped with shelves and hangers for taking care of clothing. Ordinary lighting facilities for each room include at least one window, with the kitchen, living room and sleeping areas preferably having two. Windows should be so placed as to permit direct sunlight to enter at least three-fourths of the rooms. There should be daylight and artificial lights on all work surfaces such as the stove, the sink, work tables and in the family reading center. Especial attention given in advance to the kitchen will be more than repaid by the convenience and efficiencies secured. There should be ample built-in kitchen equipment for small and large utensils, kitchen tools and linens. Ample lighting devices should be employed and step-saving arrangements provided so as to eliminate as much effort as possible in carrying out the daily duties that are conducted in this important part of the country home. Where the funds available for construction or remodeling are limited, it is important to know what the cost will be before the job is started. This procedure calls for a plan which will show the exterior appearance, the interior arrangement, and the cost of the completed job. Plans can be secured from many sources in addition to those already mentioned. Persons with architectural experience and ability may often be employed directly to plan the house and to supervise its construction. If the prospective builder wishes to select his own plans and to know in advance the complete cost, he can secure from processors of lumber a catalog of plans which are accompanied by costs of every item needed. Such processors cut the material to fit at the factory and identify each piece so that the mechanically minded man can do much of the work himself with help he may employ. These companies will also quote prices on the cost of erection by their own employees in addition to the cost of materials. The outlay needed for lighting, plumbing and heating facilities can also be obtained from the same source. [Illustration: (_Courtesy U. S. Department of Agriculture_) A modest country home.] [Illustration: (_Courtesy U. S. Department of Agriculture_) Floor plans of house shown on opposite page.] Another method of procedure is to draw a plan of the house that contains the rooms considered necessary, submit such plans to a lumber merchant and get quotations on costs of various types of material necessary to construct it. Such construction will usually require the services of a skilled carpenter and mason but permits of more latitude in most cases than is available under a set building arrangement. _Types of Country Houses._--Illustrations of small houses suitable for the country are shown on pages 8 and 44. The floor plans of these houses are shown on the facing pages. There are many other types of small houses adapted to use in the country and the selection of any one is largely a matter of individual preference and ability to finance. Because of the variation in prices of material in different locations, the kind and quality of material that the owner may desire and also the amount of labor that may be furnished by the owner, it is difficult to give in definite terms the cost of various types of buildings. Estimates of costs of materials and construction may easily be obtained from contractors in the vicinity. Simply with the idea of giving approximate costs, the Conference on Home Building gives the following cost bases for building frame dwellings, obtained roughly by multiplying the volume by the cost per cubic foot. Naturally the cost will vary in different sections of the country, and the level of artistry that is set up by the builder himself will be a factor. APPROXIMATE COSTS PER CUBIC FOOT FOR FRAME DWELLINGS ----------------------------------------------+-----------+----------- | Southern | Northern ----------------------------------------------+-----------+----------- First recommended level--2, 3 or 4 rooms with | | masonry base, fire-resistive flue, both sides| | of studs covered, painted exterior, interior | | finish. | *10-15¢ | *12-18¢ Second level--Bathroom space, better finish | 12-18 | 15-21 Medium level--5-6 rooms, with plumbing | 16-23 | 20-26 Fourth level--Adequate standard plumbing and | | hardwood floors | 19-27 | 23-30 Fifth level--Comparable to better type of | | middle-class city home | 25-35 | 28-35 ----------------------------------------------+-----------+----------- * The cheapest type of shelter (shack) may be built for perhaps half this cost. _Pre-fabricated Houses._--The field of house construction has been occupied almost exclusively by the individual architect or builder who has wrought according to the general ideas of the intending occupant or the real estate developer. When the plans are completed and approved, the contractor assembles the necessary materials from local sources, builds and equips the house and turns it over to the buyer in completed condition. Under such a procedure there is little application of mass production measures which have reduced costs and raised quality standards in many industries, notably in automobile construction, for example. Thousands of houses built to sell in the recent construction era of the 1920's have proved unsatisfactory and costly to the occupants as the result of shoddy building methods. Such methods seem to be typically American as distinguished from the far more solid and permanent Old World procedure. It now seems likely that the problem of economical and substantial housing will be met in the method that is also American--namely, by the pre-fabricated house to which various natural resources of the country contribute. The parts of such houses are made under mass production methods and easily assembled on the owner's lot. The same idea can be applied with ease to apartment house construction in any location. The first step in this direction has already been mentioned in the case of mail-order companies which cut the lumber to fit and supply every needed accessory to the last detail. The next step, and the one that bids fair to inaugurate an entirely new house-building procedure, is now in the making, although as yet it is in the experimental and testing stage. Examples of such construction made their first public appearance at the Century of Progress Exposition at Chicago in 1933. Materials that enter into the construction of these new-type houses include steel, asbestos, aluminum and cement. As a rule, the buildings have a steel frame erected on cement foundations and without a cellar; the walls and partitions are of asbestos composition and the roof constructed of steel sheets with aluminum insulation. Such a building is fireproof and proof also against vermin, lightning, wind and earthquake. The house is also adapted to and equipped with heating, lighting, plumbing and air conditioning facilities. The whole building is pre-planned and pre-fabricated as a unit with its component parts constructed under economical and interchangeable mass production methods. Modifications of the construction above mentioned include the use of sound-proofed steel panels or insulation board for partitions and walls with an exterior of painted steel. Many other modifications are being developed to insure individuality, stability, insulation and economy in first cost and maintenance. The lines of most of these houses are severe and modernistic in design, although decorative and unique effects are easily obtainable. The costs of the complete house unit range from $600 for a one-room type to $3,500 to $6,000 for a complete home of modest size. The principal fabricators of these houses and their addresses are: General Houses, Inc., Chicago, Illinois; American Houses, Inc., New York City; American Rolling Mill Company, Cleveland, Ohio; American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Company, New York City; Columbian Steel Tank Company, Kansas City, Missouri, and National Steel Homes, Inc., Los Angeles, California. Information on types and costs can be obtained by addressing these companies. _Rural Home Life._--To have a successful experience in country life, one must become identified with one's surroundings and become a part of the community. Those who seek to establish a country residence simply as a place from which to commute to city attractions will not only miss the greatest asset in country living but will probably find this existence unsatisfactory. To become interested in the growing plants and animals at home, to do with one's own hands the things that make the home more attractive and to develop a contact with the community that helps to increase its normal activities mean the attainment of pleasure and satisfaction so far beyond that obtainable in congested urban quarters that there is no comparison. In many cases this direct affinity with one's surroundings will come gradually and not always easily. It can be cultivated and should be a part of the plan of every family expecting to reside in the country. _Trees as Assets._--One of the greatest assets that can be secured in the country is well-developed shade. If the house under consideration is already built and has around it trees that serve as a softening and beautifying factor, as well as for shade purposes, the value is decidedly enhanced. If the home is to be newly built and a site is available where trees are already well grown, the house can often be placed in the midst of such trees, thereby gaining a number of years in the benefits that trees give and for which there is no substitute. Few persons can resist the charm of trees. That they also have a definite economic value is shown by the added desirability we all attach to an attractively landscaped home where trees of various kinds and sizes furnish the motif. In acquiring a place in the country the newcomer will at once wish to plant trees, shrubs and ornamentals to beautify his holdings. If this is carefully planned at the beginning, succeeding years and a little care will add to the attractiveness and intrinsic value of the home. The saying, "a house is not a home until it is planted," has a great deal of truth behind it. Most nurserymen will be glad to render assistance in properly planning and setting the ornamental landscaping of the home, helping the owner avoid mistakes and costly movings and replacements later. _Commercial Horticulture._--In addition to the plantings around his home, the owner of a few acres can at slight expense start small trees for later ornamental use or for sale at a roadside stand, for example. Such small trees and ornamental plants can often be purchased at wholesale prices from nursery companies which have "laying out" stock, as it is called, for sale. The standard large-growing evergreens and deciduous shade trees can be thus transplanted to one's own acres, as can the popular dwarf types of evergreens and flowering shrubs. These may be planted in one area where they can be cared for as a growing crop, or they may be planted in groups for beautifying the premises while they are growing. Again, single plants may be set by themselves and given special attention, later becoming "specimens" which are much in demand by admirers of the species. An appreciation of tree habits can be thus developed by all the members of the family, and considerable income may be obtained in later years, as the trees become "of age," through their sale. We are entering upon an era of making homes attractive as places in which to live and not as houses to go away from. All forms of plant life that contribute to this end will be admired and sought after in the years to come. _Do's_ Give special consideration to location, type of construction and interior arrangement. If building a home, select a type that fits surroundings. Strive for simplicity of lines and full utilization of every cubic foot of space. Remember pre-fabricated houses are practical and likely to supplant some other types of construction. In buying a pre-fabricated house, be sure plans and construction fit needs of family and materials used are adapted to the climatic conditions. Give special attention to convenience and cheerfulness of kitchen. Develop a plan of planting ornamental plants and trees to be carried out in due course. _Don'ts_ Don't try to build a city house in the country. Don't neglect windows in number or size. Don't overlook costs of completed job before commencing building or improvements. Don't neglect the asset value of trees. _Chapter_ V SERVICING THE HOME Many types of services are available to the country home owner, including rural mail delivery, the telephone and electricity. Rural mail delivery in particular is so common that, on practically every highway, mail service is secured by the placing of a mail box along the highway at the entrance to the residence. Telephone service is available along practically all the main-traveled highways and on a majority of the other types of roads. Where the lines are not already installed, extensions may be obtained to new locations, and this is facilitated when more than one residence is to be served by the same line. The majority of families accustomed to city conveniences will want to have electricity available so as to use electric lights and the labor-saving devices that are operated by electric power. With the expansion that has taken place in the development of rural electric lines in recent years, there is not a great deal of difficulty in getting a location which will give the housewife the advantages that electricity offers. Telephone service and electrical facilities may fall into the class of luxuries for those with limited resources. It may be pointed out in this connection that millions of farm homes are still using petroleum products for lighting purposes and are finding it no hardship. Practically all would, of course, use electricity if it were available and financially possible. The new home owner in the country will find it advantageous to locate where electric service is obtainable. Other services for the country residents are pretty largely up to the owner as to their utilization and type. It is necessary, of course, to have an ample water supply, to maintain sanitary conditions through sewerage of some description, to provide a method of heating the home during cold weather and to provide storage facilities for food during the dormant season. _The Water Supply._--Perhaps the most important attribute of the country home is an adequate supply of water. This is particularly true where families have been accustomed to utilizing municipal water supplies which are safe and pure as to quality and unlimited in amount. In most country homes it is necessary to construct a water-supply system, which means reaching a supply of underground water, pumping it to the surface and piping it to locations where it is wanted. Higher standards of living create new and increased demands for water. Water for domestic use should be clear, colorless, odorless, soft, neither strongly acid nor alkaline, with a temperature averaging 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Such water supplies can be obtained in nearly every section of the country. Hot water is necessary in every home and there must be a heater of some type, using coal, petroleum products, natural or artificial gas or electricity for fuel. For this purpose a hot-water storage boiler or tank must be installed. _The Dug Well._--A dug well is one of the older types of wells. It should be large enough in diameter to permit ingress and egress to all parts of it for repairs or for cleaning. Most dug wells require cleaning occasionally, due to the entrance of dirt at the top and to the washing in of clay and silt with the ground water. Many of these wells contain harmful gases which have proved fatal to those entering them. Before an attempt is made to clean such a well or to make any repairs, a lighted candle should be lowered into it. If the candle is extinguished, it will be dangerous to enter until the well has been thoroughly ventilated. A dug well will vary in depth from 20 to 60 feet, depending upon the distance it is necessary to dig for an adequate supply of water. Types of pumping apparatus are on the market to cope with any depth in digging such a well. If dug wells are shallow, the water supply depends very largely upon current rainfall and in times of prolonged drouth there may be a serious shortage. Fairly deep wells of this type are usually very satisfactory and will supply surprisingly large amounts of water when the demand is made upon them. [Illustration: Well drilling--an early step in locating in the country. In the foreground may be seen part of the excavation for the house.] _Artesian Water Supply._--Artesian wells have distinct advantages over dug wells although they are more expensive to construct. The water from such wells is absolutely pure and it never fails. This is because subterranean streams have been tapped which are not subject to possible surface contamination, nor are they dependent upon showers for replenishment. Special power apparatus is necessary for constructing an artesian or drilled well. The drilling costs from $3 per foot up, depending upon the nature of the subsoil and whether rock is encountered. Unless such a well has been drilled in the immediate vicinity it is not possible to hazard even a guess as to when water will be struck. The consolation that such an undertaking has for the owner is in knowing there will be no doubt as to quantity or purity when the strike occurs. _Water Pumps._--Pumps are now available which operate automatically by electricity and constantly supply the home with fresh water drawn from the earth as needed. The requirements for the pump and the motor will vary with the depth of the well and the water requirements of the family. In all such cases, therefore, it is desirable to call in for consultation engineers or competent representatives of pump manufacturers or distributors. It should be borne in mind that adequacy of supply is most important and that economy in first cost, achieved at the sacrifice of an adequate supply, may be a definite handicap to necessary home services. _Heating Facilities._--The type of heating apparatus that is used will depend upon the size of the house and its arrangement as well as upon the funds available. The simplest type of heaters are those which do not have a complete system of extending radiation through the home but depend upon circulation of the air within the house to equalize the temperature. In deciding upon the type of apparatus, it is necessary to make sure that the system is as low in original cost as possible; that it will probably have a long life, thereby spreading the first cost over a period of years; that it be economical in operation through efficient consumption of fuel, and that the system be easily controlled. The health of the family and the ability to live in a satisfactory manner will depend to a considerable extent upon the method of heating the home, especially in cold climates. Particular care should be taken to make sure that whatever type of heating is employed is adequate in size. It is more economical to operate a heater that is somewhat oversized than to "rush" one which cannot easily maintain a comfortable temperature in cold weather. Heating engineers and contractors are available to furnish information on heating costs in every locality. The generally used types of heating include stoves, circulator heaters, warm air, hot water and steam systems, and fireplaces. Specialists of the United States Department of Agriculture have developed a great deal of information to enable the home owner to cope with the heating problems in a practical manner. It is estimated by the department that if a two-pipe hot-water system for a six-room house costs $500, the other systems for the same house ordinarily would cost about as follows: Two-pipe vapor system $600 One-pipe steam system $400 A piped warm air furnace $260 Pipeless furnace $140 Circulator heater or stove $ 60 Of course, these systems vary in efficiency and in providing comfort as much as they vary in cost, but these estimates will provide the home owner with an idea of the outlay for taking care of the heating problem. The ability to maintain a satisfactory temperature depends as much upon the construction of the house as upon the heating apparatus itself. Heat is readily lost through walls, roofs and windows. Most houses can be made more comfortable at small cost by applying insulation or by correcting defects in construction. The use of storm doors or storm vestibules where doors are frequently opened to the out-of-doors will prevent drafts and conserve heat. Metal weather stripping is the most effective means of preventing air leaks around windows and doors and making the entire house weather-tight. The fuel that is used will depend upon the type of furnace and the relative prices prevailing for different kinds. Recent developments in oil heating bring this fuel in close competition from the standpoint of economy with coal or coke. Oil is particularly adaptable as a source of fuel in homes in the country since tank trucks can readily deliver oil to the home owner. Improvements in securing the maximum efficiency from all types of fuel are being developed continually; and there are now on the market furnaces, using anthracite or bituminous coal as fuel, which offer many advantages that were unknown to older types. _Fireplace Construction._--An open fireplace where wood can be used as fuel is a great source of satisfaction and pleasure, as well as a comfort, in country homes. Wood of proper length for fireplace burning can be readily secured in the country and there is ample room for storing it. Where the house is small in size, such wood fires can be used for heating the house satisfactorily in spring and fall and can be used to supplement other types of heating when desired. No country home can be considered complete without a fireplace. The comfort and homelike atmosphere that it gives make it a general asset for the enjoyment of the family circle. Fireplaces should be constructed so as to insure a good draft with a maximum of heat radiation. It is desirable to build in the fireplace flue a damper which can be open when the fire is burning and can be shut when it is desired to keep heat from escaping from the room via the chimney. It is also a convenience to have a trap opening placed in the back of the fireplace on the floor so that ashes may be removed in this manner, eliminating the labor of carrying them from the fireplace. _Sewerage of Farm Homes._--All wastes from the farm home coming under the term of sewage should go direct to a septic tank. Here the sewage is held in a quiet state for a period of time, and through bacterial processes, the organic matter is destroyed. A septic-tank installation consists of four parts: first, the house sewer from house to tank; second, the sewage tank, consisting of one or more chambers; third, the sewer from tank to distribution field; fourth, the distribution field where the sewage is distributed, sometimes called the absorption field. Plans for sewerage construction may be obtained from state and local boards of health and from federal health and agricultural agencies. [Illustration: (_Courtesy New Jersey Agricultural Extension Service_) An adequate sewage disposal plant is essential and inexpensive. A practical one is shown here.] The Rural Engineering Department of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station recommends that the septic tank have a capacity adequate to hold all the water used by the family for two entire days. For a family of six persons the inside dimensions of the tank should be 4 feet in width with a length of 4 feet in the first chamber and 3 feet in the second chamber. The depth of water should be 4 feet, giving the tank a capacity of over 600 gallons, thus allowing 100 gallons for each person during the forty-eight-hour period. The entire tank will be 4 feet wide, 8-1/2 feet long and 6-1/2 feet deep. Septic tanks are usually built of solid concrete, concrete blocks or brick, waterproofed on the inside to prevent escape of the contents except through the outlets described. These outlets should be 100 to 150 feet away from any source of water supply to prevent contamination of potable water. Leading from the outlet of the second chamber, several lines of tile 10 to 14 inches in depth should be laid at a gentle slope away from the tank, permitting escape of the effluent at each joint. For a family of six persons a total length of 150 feet of tile pipe will be sufficient in most types of soil. _Food Storage._--Every country home should have a basement in which a room can be set apart for cold storage. Such a place is suitable for keeping supplies of potatoes and other root crops, as well as commodities that deteriorate under conditions of warmth. Surplus supplies of food from the garden can be placed in such storages and be readily available for use during the winter. With the surplus of perishable food products in cans and with a good supply of non-perishable products in such a type of storage room, economies in food purchase can be effected and the healthfulness of the family maintained through their use when fresh products are difficult to secure or are unseasonable and expensive. If a basement is not available for food storage, root crops can be stored outside the house and kept during the winter. These products should be piled in a heap, covered with straw or other clean, loose material and the mound then covered with earth. In this manner, potatoes and similar crops can be kept throughout the winter and until late in the spring without serious deterioration. It is important to select a site for such outdoor storage that is well drained so that water will not collect and freeze in the storage area. _Services Available to the Country Resident._--Public agencies are available for help in solving the problems of country residents, varying from agricultural and horticultural practices to building construction, water supply and sewage disposal. As a rule, these services are of advice and suggestion, are free of cost and may be utilized freely by those living in the country. Most of the counties in the United States have a county agricultural agent, who is located at the county seat and whose territory covers only the county in which he resides. The costs of such service are paid by federal and state appropriations, frequently supplemented by county appropriations, and also frequently through annual individual subscriptions. The county agricultural agent is really a field representative of the United States Department of Agriculture and of the state agricultural college in the state where he works. There is hardly a problem of the country resident for which he cannot obtain aid from the county agricultural agent. In many of the more thickly populated areas the problems of the family getting a location on the land for a home are already well known to the agricultural agent and he is therefore in a position to guide the newcomer and help him to prevent mistakes. In many counties there is also a home economics service connected with the office of the county agricultural agent and supported in the same general manner. This service, along the lines which the name implies, is available to the country home maker. Groups of women are organized and meet at intervals for discussions on food preparation, canning and storage and the making of clothing for the family. In nearly every state there is a state department of agriculture with regulatory and promotional activities and dealing especially with law enforcement provisions passed by the respective legislatures. These agencies are also concerned with development of marketing facilities in many states. They are supported by state and federal funds and carry on such projects as the testing of cattle for tuberculosis, treatment in prevention of communicable animal diseases and the control of insect and fungous pests through quarantine and inspection activities. These departments are located at the state capitols and information on the services available can be secured by addressing the department in the state where one resides. Because there is a lack of understanding among newcomers to the country of the services that are available through these agencies without cost, this particular mention of them is made. It is recommended that each family get in touch with the county agricultural agent, the college of agriculture and the department of agriculture and learn definitely of the help that can be secured without cost in meeting the problems of country life. _Electric Wiring Principles._--Public utilities are organized to furnish electric service and it will be found that they are ready to assist customers in securing the most satisfactory use of electricity. Such knowledge, based on experience, will be valuable in helping owners to avoid costly mistakes and to provide for a wiring system that will be economical and yet complete. When the plans and specifications of the wiring system have been worked out, it is important to secure bids from reliable contractors. Only those contractors who can do the work in a capable manner should be employed and it should be determined in advance that the installation will be in strict compliance with the National Electrical Code. For wiring work it is necessary to know the number of amperes the wire is to carry. This may be determined by dividing the load in watts by the voltage which is to be used. The service lateral is a system of wires which form a path over which electricity is carried from the main line to the house. This is generally built by the utility company and its cost will depend upon the distance of the residence from the main line and whether the owner furnishes poles, labor, etc. Wires should be of such size as to give sufficient mechanical strength to stand up under sleet conditions. Usually three entrance wires are used to carry the electric energy from the utility connection to the house. The lateral is the electrical doorway to the farm and is the most essential part of the wiring system. The wires should be of adequate size so as to provide proper voltage and give complete electrical service for all ordinary requirements of current. It is important to see that the electrical equipment is properly "grounded," that is, the connecting to earth of certain metallic objects which are near power conductors. The purpose is to carry to the earth any heavy electrical charge which might exist on such objects and cause electrical shocks when they are touched. Grounding may be secured by connecting with water pipes that reach some depth under ground, or driven pipe may be used as a means of securing intimate contact with moist earth. Recommendations for outlets from the electrical wires in the house call for centering ceiling lighting outlets, and placing wall brackets about 5-1/2 feet above the floor. Convenient outlets in the kitchen and bathroom should be about 33 inches above the floor. In other locations they are usually best placed in the baseboard. Wall switches are usually located 4 feet above the floor. A switch should be located at each door to a room or entrance to a hall and in many cases three-way switches can be used to advantage, since these afford control over the same lighting from two separate locations. With these general observations on a rather complicated subject, most of which are based on the excellent recommendations of the National Committee on the Relation of Electricity to Agriculture, the home owner should be in a position to take care of his needs properly, bearing in mind that the system of wiring should be adequate in every respect and the number of outlets sufficiently numerous to provide easy and convenient service throughout the house. An official check-up should be made of all installations after completion. The method of securing such inspection can be obtained through a local electrical contractor. [Illustration: (_Courtesy New Jersey Agricultural Extension Service_) Ground floor plan of a house, showing the number, the type, and the location of electrical current outlets.] _Tank Gas Supply._--A service of supplying compressed gas in portable tanks has recently been developed for country homes located away from public gas lines. This gas can be used either with a specially adapted range which is supplied as part of the service or in some cases with an ordinary gas range. Companies offering this service are located in most cities and are understood to be willing to supply residences anywhere with gas. The cost of first installation of the system is about $40. Renewals cost approximately $12 per cylinder of gas. Each cylinder will supply a family of four with gas for three to four months, making a monthly bill of from $3 to $4, which compares favorably with artificial gas supply through a meter from pipe lines. This gas may be used for any purpose for which any other gas is adapted. The gas and the servicing of it constitute a boon to country residents from the standpoint of utility and economy. It is especially desirable for those previously accustomed to city gas supplies and to whom the use of any other type of fuel is strange and somewhat of a problem. _Do's_ Remember that important service factors include mail delivery, telephone, electricity, water supply and sewage disposal. Be sure of adequate water supply of good quality. Obtain artesian water supply wherever possible. Provide for such heating facilities as the budget can stand. Select the heating system in relation to fuel costs. Make sure that the sewerage system is adequate for waste disposal. Use fully such governmental agencies as county agents, home demonstration agents, experiment stations and agricultural colleges, state and federal departments of agriculture. Provide storage space for surplus food products. Remember electric wiring requires skilled workmanship. Investigate advantages and costs of tank gas as a cooking fuel. _Don'ts_ Don't forget that services automatically available to urban residents must be planned for in the country. Don't neglect construction defects that prevent full benefits from heating system. Don't overlook the advantages of a well-built fireplace. Don't install electrical service without full attention to principles of convenience, safety and economy involved. _Chapter_ VI MAKING THE SOIL PRODUCE CROPS There are many treatises available that deal with the soil, its composition and its treatment. No attempt will be made here to go exhaustively into that subject. There are a few fundamental factors, however, which the potential owner should know regarding soil treatment, for that is the base upon which he will build his income-producing operations. The particles of soil have had their genesis in rock. The rock has become disintegrated and decomposed through natural processes. The action of the weather is the most important factor in creating soil. Water falling on rock not only wears it away mechanically, but through certain mild acid elements which it acquires, disintegrates the binding materials that hold rock segments together. In addition, there is the action of frost and freezing, too, making the moisture in rock expand and contract and thereby causing the breaking down of the segments. With this action is coupled that of hot suns which cause expansion and breaking up of the rock as it becomes heated and cooled under atmospheric influence. A great deal of the soil surface in many sections of the country is the result of glacial action. These glaciers not only eroded the surface, thereby creating millions of rock particles, but they also carried large deposits of the rock particles to more distant areas and deposited them over a subsoil that may be totally different in character from the surface soil thus deposited. _How Tillable Soil Is Made._--The action of plants themselves has a great effect in adding to our supply of tillable soil. Seeds of plants or seeds of trees become established in some slightly weathered rock areas and begin to grow. The roots penetrate wherever there is any loose soil, and partly by their pressure and partly through the acidity accompanying decomposing plant tissue, complete a further breaking down of the rock. There is a continuous process of destruction of rocks and leveling off of mountains and hills to fill the valleys below. Many groups of deep-rooted plants tend to increase the depth of the surface soil by growth of the roots in the subsoil and by creating therein a condition approaching that which already exists on the surface. The action of earth worms and similar forms of life in bringing subsoil to the top and in opening channels through which water and surface air can penetrate constitutes another continually operating force in the creation of a productive soil. A deeper layer of productive soil can also be created through a plan of consistently deeper plowing, bringing up with each annual plowing operation a small portion of subsoil which, when mixed with the surface soil, tends to become like it. [Illustration: (_Courtesy New Jersey Department of Conservation and Development_) Soil is created from rock by nature's weathering processes and by plant growth. At the bottom may be seen solid rock; just above are disintegrating rock fragments, and at the top, the soil.] Every type of real soil contains all the elements of plant growth. This plant food results from a breaking down of soil particles and the setting free of chemical elements which, either singly or in combination, serve as food for plants. Whatever the type of soil may be, it will be found that certain crops will make better growth in it than others. As a general rule, it may be said that the only way to determine which plants will grow best on a given soil is by the trial-and-error method. However, by observation of the growth on similar types of soil we can learn something of a soil's crop adaptability. There are some crops that will grow in almost any soil and there are others that need an exactness of texture, moisture and plant food which makes them highly specialized products. The operator must learn how to work in harmony with the peculiarities of his own soil before he can hope to get the best results. In acquiring a tract for the growing of plants of any kind it is desirable to get a soil type that will meet the requirements of most plants. As a general rule, this type contains enough clay to be retentive of moisture, enough sand to be easily worked and is generally suitable for bacterial growth. In other words, what is commonly called a loam is the ideal type for general agricultural and horticultural purposes. This may be a heavy loam, in which clay predominates, or a so-called light loam, in which sand particles predominate. An examination of a handful of soil by a person experienced in farming will indicate its nature and its adaptability to ordinary crop production. _Essential Elements of Plant Food._--Countless scientific experiments in plant growth show that potassium, lime, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, sulphur, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen and hydrogen are essential to normal development. The carbon, hydrogen and oxygen elements make up nearly 99 per cent of the entire composition of the plant and are derived from the atmosphere. All of the other elements are derived from the soil except in the case of peas, beans, clovers and other legumes which secure most of their nitrogen from the air. The mineral elements are not needed in large amounts but well-balanced plant growth is strictly dependent upon their presence in available form. Of these elements, those most likely to be deficient either in total amount or in availability are nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and calcium. It is entirely feasible and economical to apply concentrated chemical fertilizers containing the first three elements so that their lack will not constitute a limit to size of crops harvested. In many cases it is necessary to apply chemical fertilizers to get satisfactory yields, even where natural manures are available and can be applied as well. In addition to supplying essential plant food, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium perform specific functions in plant growth. The application of nitrogen in one of its readily available forms (e.g., nitrate of soda and sulphate of ammonia) will stimulate vegetative growth. If too much of this one element is applied, leaf and branch development may occur at the expense of the crop. Good results follow the use of nitrogen on grass sods and on leafy vegetables like spinach. On the other hand, corn, peas, beans and other seed-forming crops need to have the nitrogen balanced with phosphorus. Potatoes, in common with other tuber and root crops, will utilize plenty of potassium in the development of starch. _Sources of Plant Food._--Chemical fertilizers can be purchased at supply stores in ready mixed condition and of analyses that will meet general crop needs. A good formula for such a general purpose fertilizer is 4 to 5 per cent nitrogen, 7 to 9 per cent phosphoric acid and 7 to 10 per cent potash to the ton. It is known that such a mixture will supply the food needs of a large variety of plants in balanced amounts. Highly concentrated mixtures are now on the market providing double the amount of plant food in the example quoted, costing nearly twice as much but effecting a saving by cutting in half the material handled to get the same result. Care should be taken, in using these highly concentrated fertilizers, to avoid contact with tender roots. A mixture for general farm and garden purposes may contain the following ingredients: 100 pounds nitrate of soda 230 pounds sulphate of ammonia 250 pounds animal tankage (7 per cent nitrogen) 1,140 pounds superphosphate (16 per cent phosphoric acid) 280 pounds muriate of potash (50 per cent potash) ----- 2,000 pounds. This mixture will have a formula of 4-9-7 (4 per cent nitrogen, 9 per cent phosphoric acid and 7 per cent potassium). The individual who wishes to mix his own fertilizer may do so by purchasing the finely ground ingredients separately, and by means of a shovel, integrate them all into a mixture. Home mixing will not be found profitable where small amounts of fertilizer are used. Those who practice home mixing for the first time should realize that most combinations of ingredients will "set" or harden if not used immediately, necessitating the breaking up and pulverizing of the mass. When it is broken up after curing, no further difficulty should be experienced with "setting" if the mixture is kept in a dry place. The advantages of home mixing for the large user lie in lower cost per ton of plant food as a rule; confidence in the quality of the ingredients which he should purchase on the basis of guaranteed analysis; and the setting up of a mixture which study of his soil and the plant requirements has convinced him is best suited for his individual case. _Chemical Soil Analysis Not Helpful._--There is a mistaken notion that it is necessary to analyze soils chemically in order to fertilize them intelligently. Such an analysis of a reasonably fertile soil will show the presence of the essential elements of plant food, though perhaps not all in sufficient amounts, to produce ordinary crops for centuries to come. Only a small amount of the elements become available for root absorption each year and a chemical analysis will not bring out this most important factor--availability. The use of a few simple tests, mainly of a physical nature by a competent soils specialist, will prove of some assistance in the treatment of the soil. Such tests will show the presence of adequate amounts of humus, and indicate the acidity content. The soil texture will give some index of its crop adaptability and thereby serve as a basis for fertilizing treatment that will meet the needs of both soil and crop. The practical man will not expect any considerable aid from a highly technical and costly chemical analysis of his soil. Another factor that militates against worth-while benefits of chemical soil analysis is the great variation in soil types frequently occurring in the same field. To attempt to draw a representative sample by mixing soil from several areas might result in a specimen that would not be really typical of any area. For the purpose of ordinary physical examination and testing for acidity, representative soil samples should be taken from several parts of the same soil type, mixed together and a composite sample for testing drawn from the mixture, weighing not less than a pound in each case. If the soil is quite apparently variable it may be necessary to draw two or more composite samples from the same area. Very helpful service in intelligent soil treatment may be secured from the county agricultural agent and the state college of agriculture in the county or state of residence. _Legumes as Soil Improvers._--A means of soil improvement that is well understood by progressive farmers is the use of legumes to improve the soil. The legumes include a large family of plants of which the bean, the pea and the clovers are outstanding examples. Such plants have on their roots nodules which house nitrogen-gathering bacteria. These bacteria absorb nitrogen from the air in the soil and, in the ordinary process of growth, death and decay, make this nitrogen available to the host plants, leaving a residue in the soil for the roots of plants that are to follow. Thus this group of plants, known as legumes, have been used for generations as a method of increasing the nitrogen content of soils. Nitrogen, incidentally, is the most costly element to buy in commercial fertilizers. The soil-improving benefits of legumes may be secured by growing them either for harvest as a source of animal food or for plowing under as a means of utilizing them entirely for the development of soil fertility. In reading of the studies of soil fertility that were made by George Washington at Mount Vernon, we learn of the improvement that he made in the relatively poor soils of that area by growing plants of the legume family. The actual reason why such improvement was brought about was not known in Washington's time, but the results were apparent. Today, the value of legumes as soil builders is well recognized and we understand much more definitely than Washington did the reasons for their being so helpful in increasing crop production. Many soil areas do not contain the particular type of bacteria necessary to the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen by legumes. This is frequently the cause of failure in growing alfalfa, soybeans, cowpeas and less well known members of the legume family. Each legume has its own type of nodule-forming bacteria. In order to assure the presence of the proper bacterial family, means often must be employed to add them to the soil where the specific crop is to be grown. This may be accomplished by adding soil from an area where the legume does well to the new area, or the seed may be inoculated with commercial cultures before seeding. Either method is effective. If soil is used it should be drilled in or spread on a cloudy day to prevent the destructive action of the sun's rays on the exposed minute forms of plant life we call bacteria. If it is not known that the legume to be planted has been grown successfully in a given field within the previous several years, the precaution of adding the proper bacteria should be taken. In some sections, such legumes as red, alsike, crimson and white clovers have been grown for many years and the bacteria for these plants are well distributed. There, inoculation is not necessary for these crops, but it probably should be practiced if other legumes such as alfalfa, cowpeas or soybeans are to be grown on land for the first time. _The Value of Humus._--In addition to the chemical elements of plant food, all productive soils contain decaying vegetable matter, generally classified under the term "humus." Humus serves as a source of acid-generating material which further breaks down soil particles and, most important of all, serves as a food for millions of microscopic plants which develop and die quite beyond the scope of human vision. These constitute a type of bacteria which are distinctly beneficial and essential to human life since they make possible the growth of larger plants that serve as human food. Green plants, straw or leaves, when plowed under or spaded in the soil, are attacked by bacterial agencies which gradually turn these products into humus. The same process occurs when a "compost" is set up. This is made of leaves, manure, soil, straw and other materials thrown into a heap and allowed to decay. Such compost is excellent for placing around plants when setting them out, since it holds moisture, supplies fertility and creates optimum conditions for young root growth. Under practical field conditions, humus may be added to soils by spreading animal manures, followed by plowing them down, or by the growing of heavy green crops such as wheat, rye, cowpeas or vetch and turning the entire mass under with the plow when they are at their height. _Lime and Its Application._--Reference has been made to the fact that calcium is an essential plant food and is frequently deficient in soils. As a matter of fact, the great majority of soils are deficient in calcium and their productiveness is inhibited thereby. Lime supplies calcium and also magnesium as food for plants. Its application accomplishes many other desirable things such as correcting soil acidity. The growth of beneficial bacteria is greatly stimulated in a soil that has had its acidity neutralized by the application of lime. This product, therefore, creates a more congenial condition for the growth of bacteria, which, in turn, make for better crop production. Lime is also beneficial through furnishing the element calcium with which other plant foods combine chemically and thereby become soluble in the soil water. Unless plant foods are in a state of solution, they cannot be absorbed by plant roots. Lime is a potent force in creating chemical reactions in the soil, resulting in the stimulation of growth through increased absorption of essential elements in solution. Lime also benefits soils of a clayey nature through its ability to cement together the fine clay particles and in that way create air spaces so greatly needed in tight clay soils. Lime is beneficial, too, in the case of soils which have a large proportion of sand or large particles, and serves as an agent in creating a better condition of tilth and of moisture retention. It makes little difference in what form lime is applied. It may be purchased and applied in the form of ground limestone, a rock rich in calcium which has been mechanically ground to a very great degree of fineness. It can also be applied in the form of hydrated lime. This is obtained by heating ground limestone and slaking it by adding water. A common example of this is the slaking of lime for whitewashing purposes. Another good source of lime is finely ground shells of oysters or other forms of sea life which collect the calcium from sea water and deposit it in their shells. _Adjusting the Water Content of Soils._--Aside from the supplying of water by irrigation, a rather costly process under most conditions, the water resources of most soils can be greatly increased by adding to their humus content. Humus, which, it has been pointed out, is decaying vegetable matter, serves as a sponge for the absorption of soil water and for underground water supplies. Therefore, the more humus that can be plowed into the soil, other conditions being equal, the greater is the ability of the plants growing in that soil to withstand drouth. As soils are cultivated, the tendency is for the humus to become "burned out" and to have a reduced moisture-holding capacity. To overcome this tendency, it is necessary to add vegetable matter to the soil whenever it is possible. Incidentally, the incorporation of large quantities of humus in the soil creates a condition of acidity which may call for the application of lime as a corrective. There are many acres of land which contain too much water in the area that roots should penetrate to permit of optimum plant growth. Roots of most plants will not penetrate where there is an excess of water, and air cannot circulate where moisture is superabundant. Usually these conditions exist where the soil is of a clayey nature. The abundance of water may be caused by the inability of surface water to percolate through the soil. It may take so long, due to the nature of the soil, for this water to pass through the lower depths of subsoil that the roots of plants are destroyed by lack of oxygen. In such cases the application of lime, increasing the humus content, and deeper plowing will be found helpful. Occasionally, the discharge of dynamite or blasting powder in the area, if it appears to be in the form of a pocket, will break up the hard pan subsoil and permit the water to escape. Less dependence is now being placed on this means of correcting a wet condition of the soil than was the case some years ago. A similar condition of overabundant water in soil may be due to the presence of springs or to a high water table. Little can be done to correct a condition where the water table itself is so close to the surface as to inhibit plant growth and this is assuredly one of the factors to be looked into before a tract is purchased. Where the surplus water is evidently being supplied by a spring, an underdrain made of tile pipe, 3 or 4 inches in diameter, can be laid as a means of conducting the water into a ditch or adjoining drain. In laying such a drain, it should be placed above the area where the wet soil surface is most evident. If such a drain is laid 18 inches to 3 feet deep above the wet area, it will cut off the water seeping down underground and carry it away. Good results cannot be secured if the drain is laid directly in the area of extreme wetness or if it does not cut off the flow of water before it reaches the area that is consistently too wet for plant growth. From what has been said in this brief description of soil treatment and soil improvement, it is evident that one must live with his soil for some time in order to understand it and to be able intelligently to correct its deficiencies, overcome its weaknesses and make it capable of supporting plants which are desirable from the owner's point of view. In the great majority of cases, the improvement process, while a slow one, is far from hopeless and almost any soil that is not extremely sandy or clayey can be so intelligently treated as to make it productive. _Cultivation._--Any discussion of soil treatment is not complete without mention of cultivation. Intelligent cultivation is an essential factor in securing adequate crops. It is interesting to recall that the word "manure," which has come to mean fertilization or fertilizer, is derived from the Latin word "_manus_" meaning "hand" and implying "manipulation" of the soil, which we now call cultivation. Cultivation has been most frequently practiced as a method of destroying weeds, thereby making all of the available plant food subject to absorption by the roots of the desired plants and not by the intruders we call weeds. Cultivation does more than destroy weeds, however. It opens up the soil so that air containing atmospheric nitrogen can penetrate it and so that the bacteria requiring air for their best growth may have it available. Furthermore, cultivation conserves moisture and is more essential during dry periods in the growing season than at any other time. We know that in entering the soil the rain water follows certain channels in and around the soil particles on its way to the subsoil. When the rain has ceased and the top layer of soil becomes dry, the tendency is for the water to work up through these same channels to the surface, where it evaporates. Cultivation, by breaking up these channels, or capillary tubes, checks the escape of moisture into the air. It creates a blanket of dry surface soil which insulates the soil moisture from the air above. The tendency of soil moisture to reestablish capillary methods of escape makes recultivation necessary from time to time in dry weather. Care must, of course, be taken that the cultivation is not harmful to roots of growing plants. If these roots are disturbed or destroyed through cultivation, more harm than good may result because of the damage to the root systems. _Farm Power and Equipment._--Where the land area to be cultivated is larger than the family garden some type of equipment for working the land, propelled by horse or motor, will be found desirable and in larger areas essential. One or more horses may be used where there are stabling facilities and where arrangements can be made for the daily care and feeding that these animals require. A horse suitable for work purposes may be obtained for less than $200. The price will, of course, depend upon the age and physical soundness of the animal, but should not exceed $150 for a physically sound animal under ten years old. A person unskilled in the assessing of animal values should obtain the services of a veterinarian or an experienced horseman in making a selection. A horse for this purpose should be of quiet, tractable disposition, bred and broken for work purposes. The cost of caring for a horse for one year will approximate $125, including feed and bedding, but without labor charge. Leather harness costing $25 to $50 will be required and in addition tools, including a plow, a harrow, and a cultivator costing about $15 each. Other special equipment such as a mower will cost considerably more, depending upon the type used. If the members of the family are fond of animals and willing to assume the responsibility for their daily care, the horse will be found an efficient and useful source of power for tilling the land. In this connection it should be pointed out that flies breed with great rapidity in the strawy manure of the stable, and such wastes should be spread upon the land almost daily or treated to prevent fly-breeding. _Tractor Power._--Just as large tractors have supplanted horses and horse-drawn equipment on thousands of farms in the United States, the so-called garden tractor has become increasingly popular for the tilling of small acreages. The tractor requires "feed" only when it is working, is not subject to the ills that beset animals, and may be used for twenty-four hours a day if necessary. It makes an appeal to the mechanically minded members of the household and, if properly cared for, will give economical and lasting service. The usual type of garden tractor consists of two large wheels with lugs on them to give traction and is driven by a one- or two-cylinder motor. A plow, a cultivator, or mower may be attached to the drawbar, the operator walking behind and regulating the speed and guiding the outfit by handles provided for the purpose. Earlier types of these machines were not always satisfactory owing to construction weaknesses and occasionally balky motors. Those now on the market, however, are greatly improved, require less attention, and rival their big brothers, the powerful farm tractors, in dependability. There are a number of types and makes of garden tractors now on the market, ranging in price from $175 or less to $400, the cost depending largely upon the size and capacity of the motor. In selecting a satisfactory garden tractor attention should be directed to the simplicity and power of the motor, the type of bearings, the method of lubrication of all moving parts, the working speed and the economy of fuel. Bearings ought to be of standard, long-wearing type since these are subject to hard service. Two speeds are desirable, a slow one for heavy duty and a faster one for lighter work. The tractor should operate all day on about 2 gallons of gasoline and a quart of oil. In addition to power applied at the drawbar where special tools are attached, a pulley will be found a desirable accessory for operating belt machinery such as small feed mills, pumps, and cream separators. The rating of the motor should be not less than 3 horsepower at the drawbar for the ordinary tasks it will be called upon to perform. All types of attachments are available for the garden tractor. These include plows, disks, harrows, cultivators, mowers, fertilizer distributors, planters, sowers and seeding accessories. The prices of these vary according to make and quality. Levers are provided for adjusting the depth of plowing, cultivating and seeding. Some of the large type garden tractors are equipped with a seat on a sulky attached to the machine so that the operator can ride and have complete control over speed and the type of work he wishes to do. A modern garden tractor will be found very useful in taking care of a lawn or garden. In the case of larger areas under cultivation, but not of field size, this type of machine is rapidly gaining popularity for performing efficiently and economically the numerous jobs that are to be done on every small farm. _Do's_ Select a soil type that is inherently productive, fertile, retentive of moisture and easily cultivated. Supplement soil fertility by adding chemical fertilizers either singly or in combination. Buy mixed fertilizers on the basis of guaranteed analyses. Use legumes (peas, beans, etc.) to add nitrogen to soils and increase humus content. Add specific bacteria for the production of various legumes. Use manure and green crops to supply humus. Apply lime when soil test shows need for it as plant food and general soil improver. Practice methods that make soils absorptive of moisture and permit escape of excess water. Cultivate the soil to check escape of moisture and to kill weeds. Use a horse or garden tractor for cultivation of areas larger than the family garden. _Don'ts_ Don't buy land that is continually wet and swampy. Don't expect to produce satisfactory crops on soils that are extremely heavy or clayey or so sandy as to quickly lose moisture and fertility. Don't try to produce crops without maintaining the humus supply in the soil. Don't neglect cultivation as a means of conserving moisture, destroying weeds and stimulating root growth. _Chapter_ VII FOOD FROM THE GARDEN The home vegetable garden should supply an important part of the food for every family living in the country. Vegetables that are of the right varieties and that are fresh and properly prepared are nutritious, wholesome and economical. Not only does the well-organized home garden reduce the cost of feeding the family, but it constitutes an effective method of maintaining better health among all members of the household. Even common vegetables that are grown from the best varieties and served fresh will be a revelation to those accustomed to buying them in stores. Deterioration in quality and palatability begins immediately in vegetables when they are harvested. The more perishable the commodity, the greater is the rate of deterioration. The commercial vegetable grower usually inclines toward varieties that are capable of producing a heavy yield per acre or that stand shipment and temporary storage with the least apparent loss from deterioration. In order to have his products reach the consumer in an attractive condition, the commercial grower usually must harvest them before they are at their best. The channels through which vegetables and fruits pass on their way to the city consumer are devious, slow and costly. Such a consumer therefore usually receives so-called fresh products that have been removed from the plant or the soil before maturity is attained and after such already poor quality has deteriorated through aging processes. All these disadvantages of vegetables purchased in the city are eliminated by the possessor of a garden where he may produce his family's needs (and they are genuine needs) in the way of fresh vegetables. These products are essential in supplying such necessary elements as minerals, vitamins, acids, and cellulose. Dietary authorities advise that leafy vegetables, sometimes called "greens," contain food elements not found in root vegetables. For the maintenance of health, the diet should include a variety of vegetables besides potatoes. _Assets of a Garden._--A garden is a source of recreation, pleasure and satisfaction to every member of the family. Real enjoyment can be had by working in it a little time each day. To those whose work may be sedentary and of a routine nature, the garden furnishes a source of inspiration and adventure. Daily evidences of plant growth and the novelty of having vegetables of one's own growing stimulate interest in it. The garden is an aid in maintaining health through physical exercise and the liberal consumption of the fruits of labor. There is no other avenue of activity that can afford so much in the way of health, economical recreation and pleasure as a well-planned garden. [Illustration: (_Courtesy New Jersey Agricultural Extension Service_) The well-planned garden furnishes food throughout the year for the entire family.] Having decided on a garden, the question immediately arises as to the procedure to be followed to get the most out of it. Special attention has been given to this problem by experts throughout the country and specific recommendations are now available on the subject at state agricultural colleges. These cover varieties, planting dates, adequate area, fertilization, rotation of crops and storage. Typical recommendations along these lines are given here for the north-central and eastern states. Readers living elsewhere may wish to check them with the practices recommended by authorities in their home states. _Vegetable Growing by Rule._--The most effective method of presenting the story of recommended vegetables, desirable varieties, seed required, average yields and other pertinent data is in tabular form, such as that used in Table I, which has been prepared for the aid of home vegetable gardeners by the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, and which is based on years of study of the subject. Table II, prepared by the Michigan State College of Agriculture, shows the amount of seed that should be purchased to supply an adequate quantity and variety of important vegetables for a family of six persons. Examination of the planting table will show that the setting of plants or roots is occasionally recommended instead of the use of seed. This is desirable in some cases to get quicker results and in other cases is essential if a crop is to be secured during a normal growing season. While it is possible for the grower to raise these plants, or sets, himself, usually more satisfactory results can be obtained through buying them from a capable plant grower. The growing of sets is a specialized business requiring conditions of heat, moisture, fertility and skill, frequently beyond the patience and capacity of the amateur. There are plant growers in nearly every neighborhood who will grow the needed plants at small cost. Arrangements should be made in advance for growing the varieties or strains that are wanted, and usually the grower can furnish his own seed for the plants if that seems desirable to him. One desiring to grow one's own plants from seed can secure full information from a practical grower or from state and county agricultural agencies. TABLE I PLANTING TABLE FOR VEGETABLES[1] -----------------+----------------------+-------+-------+------------+ | | | | Distance | | | | | between | | | Seed | Depth | rows for | Name of | Variety | for |to sow |cultivation,| vegetable | | 100- | seed, | inches | | | row |inches | | | | | +------+-----+ | | | |Horse | Hand| -----------------+----------------------+-------+-------+------+-----+ Asparagus |Washington, Palmetto |1-yr.- |8-10 | 5 ft.|4 ft.| | |old |roots | | | | |roots | | | | Beans | | | | | | Green bush |Stringless Green Pod, |1/2 pt.|1-1-1/2| 30 | 18 | |Bountiful | | | | | | | | | | | Yellow bush |Currie's Rust Proof, |1/2 pt.|1-1-1/2| 30 | 18 | |Davis' White Wax | | | | | | | | | | | Pole green |Kentucky Wonder, |1/2 pt.|1-1-1/2| 36 | 30 | |Old Homestead | | | | | Bush lima |Fordhook |1/2 pt.|1-1-1/2| 30 | 30 | | | | | | | Pole lima |King of the Garden |1/2 pt.|1-1-1/2| 48 | 36 | Beets--early |Crosby's Egyptian |1 oz. | 1 | 28 | 15 | Late |Detroit Dark Red | | | | | Cabbage--early |Jersey Wakefield, |1 pkt. | 1/2| 30 | 30 | |Copenhagen Market | | | | | Cabbage--late |Danish Ball Head, |1 pkt. | 1/2| 36 | 30 | |Succession, | | | | | Cantaloupe |Early Knight, |1/2 oz.| 1 |54-60 | 40 | |Fordhook | | | | | Carrots |Chantenay, |1 oz. | 1/2| 30 | 15 | |Oxheart | | | | | Celery |Golden Self-blanching,|1 pkt. | 1/4| 36 | 30 | |Easy Blanching | | | | | Corn--early |Golden Bantam, |1/4 lb.| 1 | 36| 30| |Howling Mob | | | | | Corn--late |Golden Bantam, |1/4 lb.| 1 | 36| 30| |Evergreen | | | | | Cucumber |White Spine, |1/2 oz.|1/2-1 | 48-60| 48| |Davis Perfect | | | | | | | | | | | Eggplant |New York Improved, |1 pkt. | 1/2| 48| 48| |Black Beauty | | | | | Endive |Green Curled, Broad |1 pkt. | 1/2| 30| 18| |Leaved Batavian | | | | | Kale |Scotch Curled, |1 pkt. | 1/2| 30| 18| |Siberian (over winter)| | | | | Kohlrabi |White Vienna |1 pkt. | 1/2| 30| 15| Lettuce | | | | | | Spring and fall|Green-leaved Big Bos. |1 pkt. | 1/2| 18-20| 15| Summer | N. Y. Salamander |1 pkt. | 1/2| 18-20| 15| Romaine | G. R. Exp., Trianon |1 pkt. | 1/2| 18-20| 15| Okra |Perkins Long Pod |1 oz. | 1 | 36| 30| Onion sets |Yellow Strasburg, |1 qt. | 1 | 18| 14| |Japanese (Eberheser) | | | | | Onion seed |Yellow Globe Danvers, |1 oz. | 1/2| 18| 14| |Southport Globe | | | | | Parsnips |Hollow Crown |1/2 oz.| 1/2| 18| 15| | | | | | | Peas |Little Marvel, |1 pt. |1-1-1/2| 30| 30| |Laxtonian, Telephone | | | | | Peppers |Ruby King, Pimento |1 pkt. | 1/2| 36 | 30 | | | | | | | Potatoes |Irish Cob., Green Mts.|1/2 pk.|3-4 | 36 | 36 | Pumpkins |Cheese, Small Sugar |1 oz. | 1/2| 60 | 60 | | | | | | | Radish |Scarlet Globe, Icicle |1/2 oz.| 12 | 15 | 5 | | | | | | | Rhubarb |Victoria |Roots |5-6 | 48 | 48 | | | | | | | Spinach--spring |Bloomsdale, Savoy |1/2 oz.| 1/2| 20 | 15 | Spinach--summer |New Zealand |1 oz. | 1 | 48 | 36 | | | | | | | Spinach--fall |Va. Dis., Resist. |1/2 oz.| 1/2| 20 | 15 | |Savoy | | | | | Squash--summer |Gold. Sum. Crookneck, |1 oz. |1-1-1/2| 48 | 48 | |White Bush Scallop | | | | | Squash--winter |Boston Marrow, |1 oz. |1-1-1/2| 72 | 72 | |Warted Hubbard | | | | | Sweet potatoes |Yel. Jersey |Plants | -- | 36 | 36 | Swiss chard |Lucullus |1 oz. | 1/2| 30 | 30 | | | | | | | Tomatoes--early |Chalk's Early |Plants | 1/2| 48 | 36 | |Jewel, Bonny Best | | | | | Tomatoes--late |Matchless, Stone |Plants | 1/2| 48 | 36 | Turnips |Purple Top Strap. Leaf|1 pkt. | 1/2| 24 | 15 | Rutabagas |Golden Ball, |1 pkt. | 1/2| 24 | 15 | |Lg. Island Improved |1 pkt. | 1/2| 24 | 15 | -----------------+----------------------+-------+-------+------+-----+ --------+--------+------------+-------------+------- | | | | | | | |Average Distance|Time of | | Average | days between |planting| Time of | yield | from plants |seed | harvest | 100-foot | seed in row, |outdoors| | row | to inches | | | |harvest | | | | --------+--------+------------+-------------+------- 16 | -- |Spring- |15 2-lb. |2 yr. | |July 1 |bunches | | | | | | | | | 3 |Apr 15 |June 20 |2 bu. | 40-65 |July 15 |Sept. 15- | | | | Frost | | 3 |Apr. 15 |June 20 |2 bu. | 50-70 |July 15 |Sept. 15- |2-2-1/2 bu. | 95-100 | | Frost | | 10-30 |May 1-20|Aug. 15 |2-2-1/2 bu. | 95-100 | | | | 10 |May 1- |Aug. 1-Frost|2 bu. |110-120 |July | | | 36 |May 15 |Aug. 1-Frost|2 bu. |110-120 2-3 |Apr. 1 |July 15 |2-2/1/2 bu. | 45-60 |July 20 |Nov. 15 | | 18 |Apr. 15 |July-Sept. |45-55 heads |100-120 | | | | 18 |July 1 |Oct.-Nov. |45-55 heads |120-150 | | | | 48 hill |May 15 |Aug. 10 |6-8 fruits | 90-1l0 | | |per hill | 1-1-1/2 |Apr. 1 |Aug. 1 |2 bu. | 65-90 |July 1 |Nov. | | 6 |June 1 |Sept. 15 |200 stalks |120-150 | | | | 15 or 30|May 1 |July 12 |4 doz. ears | 60-75 hill | | | | 18 or 30|June 15 |Aug. 20- |4 doz. ears | 75-90 hill |July 1 | Frost | | 48 hill |May 15 |July 10 |200 cucumbers| 60-75 | |Aug. 20 |1-1/2 bu. | | | | pickles | 48|June 1 | Aug. 20- |125 fruits |140-160 | | Frost | | 56|Apr. 15 |June 15 |65 plants | 60-90 |July 15 |Oct.-Nov. | | 18|Apr. 1 |June 1 |60 bu. | 55-65 |Sept. 1 |Apr. | | 3-4|Apr. 15 |June 15 |2 bu. | 50-70 |Apr. 15-|Aug. 15-Oct.| | 14-18|June 1 |Oct. |70 head | 70-90 14-18|May 15 |June 1 |70 head | 70-90 14-18|Aug. 1 |July-Aug. |70 head | 70-90 10-15|May 15 |Aug. 10 |900-1000 pod | 90-140 1|Apr 1 |May 15 |140 bunches | 45-75 | | | | 1|Apr. 1 |Aug. 20 |1-1/2-2 bu. |110-130 | | | | 3-4|Apr. 1- |Sept.-Nov. |2 bu. |140-160 | May 15 | | | 2|Apr. 1- |June 10-July|2 bu. | 45-70 | 15 | | (in pods) | 18-20 |May 15 |Aug. 15- |5 bu. |125-150 | | Frost |(6 per plant)| 14 |Apr. 15 |July 1 |3 bu. | 90-120 48 |May 15 |Sept. 1- |75 pumpkins | 70- 90 | | Frost | | 1 |Apr. 15 |June 1 |100 bunches | 30-65 |Sept. 1 |Oct. 25 | | 48 |Mar.-Apr|May-Nov. |8-10 stalks | 1 yr. | | |plant | 2 |Mar. |May |3 bu. | 45 36 |Apr. 15 |June 15 |Cut all | 65-120 | | |summer | 2 |Aug. 15-|Oct.-Nov. |3 bu. | 50-60 |Sept. 15| | | 48 |May 1 |July 10 |136 squash | 60-70 | | | | 48 |June 1 |Oct. |75 squash |120-130 | | | | 18 |May 15 |Oct. 1-10 |3 bu. |140-150 6 |Apr. 15 |June 5- |Pull until | 50 | | Frost | frost | 36 |May 15 |July 10-Aug.|4 bu. |120-150 | | | | 36 |June 1 |Aug. l-Frost|4 bu. |150-170 2 |Apr. 1 |June 1 |2 bu. | 45-70 2 |Aug. 1 |Oct.-Nov. |2 bu. | 45-70 2 |Aug. 1 |Oct.-Nov. |2 bu. | 45-70 --------+--------+------------+-------------+------- TABLE II AMOUNT OF SEED TO PURCHASE FOR FAMILY OF SIX[2] -------------------------+------------------------ Vegetable | Amount to purchase -------------------------+------------------------ | Asparagus | 66 plants Beans, snap (in variety) | 2 to 3 pounds Beans, bush lima | 1 pound Beet | 4 ounces Cabbage: | Early | 1 packet Late | 1/2 ounce Carrot | 1 ounce Cauliflower | 1 packet Celery | 1 packet Corn, sweet | 2 pounds Cucumber | 1 ounce Eggplant | 1 packet Kale | 1 ounce Lettuce | 1/2 ounce Muskmelon | 1 ounce Onion sets | 4 quarts Onion seed | 1 ounce Peas | 2 to 4 pounds Parsley | 1 packet Parsnip | 1 ounce Radish (in variety) | 2 ounces Rhubarb | 20 plants Salsify | 1 ounce Spinach | 1 pound New Zealand spinach | 1 ounce Summer pumpkin | 1 ounce Winter pumpkin | 2 ounces Squash | 2 ounces Tomatoes | 1 packet or 50 plants Turnip | 4 ounces Rutabaga | 1 ounce Watermelon | 2 ounces -------------------------+------------------------ _Planning and Operating a Home Garden._--In planning the home vegetable garden there are a few essential points to be kept in mind. The time to plan the garden is in winter when adequate consideration can be given to the selection of those vegetables that the family likes best and can use in large amounts. Seeds required should be ordered early for the entire garden. By drawing the plan of the garden on paper and following it, the procedure is simplified and the most efficient results attained. Vegetables should be planted in rows rather than in beds, and those maturing at about the same time should be grouped together to facilitate succession planting. After the early-maturing crops have been harvested, other crops can be sown on the same area, thus fully utilizing the land throughout the growing season. Perennial crops, including asparagus and rhubarb, should be kept by themselves. A practical farmer wanting to express perfection in soil preparation is apt to say, "It is just like a garden." This implies good fertility, optimum moisture conditions and proper tilth. To attain these conditions in garden soil it is desirable to cover it with strawy manure some time previous to plowing, in order that rains may carry the soluble fertility elements into the surface inches of the soil. In the early spring a thorough job of plowing or spading should be done to reasonable depth, completely covering the surface straw or dead plants. Every two or three years lime should be applied after plowing and worked into the top soil at the rate of 1 pound of hydrated lime to every 25 square feet of soil. _Fertilizing and Culture._--The fertility supplied through application of manure should be supplemented by the use of commercial fertilizer. This can be purchased in burlap bags from local supply agencies and should contain about 5 per cent nitrogen, 8 per cent phosphoric acid and 7 per cent potash. Moderate variations in analysis from 5-8-7, as above, are not important so long as the amounts of each element are well balanced. The fertilizer should be broadcast over the garden after plowing, at the rate of 1 pound to every 25 square feet and worked into the soil before planting. Poultry or sheep manure may be used as top dressing to alternate with commercial fertilizer. It should be borne in mind that such animal manures are richer in nitrogen than in other elements and if used to excess may stimulate leaf growth at the expense of yield and quality. Frequent shallow cultivations are desirable. The ordinary wheel hoe will be found helpful in the cultivating procedure. It should be well understood that cultivation is essential to prevent weed growth and conserve moisture. If watering or irrigating is necessary in dry weather, it should be thoroughly done. One soaking of the soil to a depth of 4 to 6 inches is far more effective than frequent light sprinklings. The latter may be more harmful than beneficial through reestablishing capillary movement, permitting the escape of subsoil moisture. Water should be applied under the same conditions that apply when rain falls--on cloudy days or after sunset to prevent "baking" or encrusting of the surface soil as well as to conserve the amount of water needed. _Meeting the Insect Problem._--The sponsor of a garden in which diversified vegetables are grown must be prepared to meet the onslaught of equally diversified insect species. While it is true that insects are multiplying as to species and voraciousness, it is equally true that methods of control are becoming available to cope adequately with most of them. One unfamiliar with our insect infestations will be amazed to find that certain species apparently have had advance notice of his intentions and are sitting about the planted rows awaiting the appearance of the tender shoots. One of the best methods of combating insects is to create ideal conditions for plant growth. Plants that are underfed through inadequate soil fertility or are weakened by other causes suffer severely from insect attack, while vigorous plants will come through with much less damage. It is advisable to insure rapid germination of seed through careful soil preparation, to seed at the proper time for a quick and vigorous start and to have sufficient available fertility to stimulate growth once the plants have started. There are two distinct classes of insects, the division being based upon their feeding habits. The larger group, both in the size of the insects themselves and in the number of species, is the leaf-chewing group. These can be destroyed by the application of stomach poisons to the plants under attack. The other group consists of the sucking insects, which penetrate the veins carrying nourishment to the leaves and appropriate it for themselves. Such insects multiply with extreme rapidity, generally feed on the underside of the leaves and may cause complete wilting of the plant before their presence is suspected. In such cases a "contact" spray or dust must be used. This is based on the principle of causing the insect to "inhale" the material through breathing pores along its body. The insecticide must be composed of extremely fine particles or must be of such an oily nature that it will readily penetrate such pores. In addition to these, certain repellent materials are being developed which cause the insect to seek food where the disagreeable conditions do not prevail. TABLE III PRINCIPAL INSECTS AND REMEDIES[3] -----------------+--------------+---------------+--------------------- Plants attacked | Chewing | Character | Treatment | insects | of damage | -----------------+--------------+---------------+--------------------- Tomato, pepper, |Flea Beetles |They gnaw or |Dust or spray with eggplant, turnip,| |eat small holes|a prepared nicotine cabbage, etc. | |in the leaves. |or pyrethrum mixture. | | |Bordeaux mixture | | |sprayed, or dusting | | |for disease is also | | |effective as | | |a repellent. | | | | | | Asparagus |Asparagus |Feeds on the |Dust with either |Beetle |shoots and |arsenate of lead or | |brush. |calcium arsenate, | | |mixed with 1 part of | | |wheat flour. Spray | | |with arsenate of lead | | |or calcium arsenate, | | |1 tablespoonful if a | | |paste or 1/2 | | |tablespoonful if a | | |powder, and 1 | | |tablespoonful of lime | | |to 1 gallon of water. | | | | | | All kinds of |Mexican Bean |Eats the under |Dust with 1 part of beans |Beetle |side of leaves |magnesium arsenate | | |mixed with 3 parts of | | |lime, or dust the | | |yellow larva under | | |the leaves with a | | |pyrethrum dust. | | | | | | {|Cabbage Maggot| |Keep the ground {| | |thoroughly cultivated {| | |around the base of Early cabbage {| | |the plant or use tar and cauliflower {| | |paper discs for {| | |larger plantings. {| | | {|Common Cabbage|Feed on the |Same as for asparagus {|Worm |shoots and |beetle. Pyrethrum {|and Cabbage |brush. |dust is also very {|Looper | |effective. | | | | | | Cucumber, squash,|Striped |Eats the leaves|Protect with a and melons. |Cucumber |and the stem of|cheesecloth or do the |Beetle |the very young |same as for the | |plants. |asparagus beetle. | | | | | | Pumpkins and |Squash Vine |Kills the vines|Take a sharp squashes |Borer |by eating in |thin-bladed penknife | |the stem. |and slit the stem | | |lengthwise, opening | | |it and killing the | | |borer. Then bank the | | |ground around the | | |stem of the plant. | | | | | | Tomato, eggplant,|Potato Beetle |Eats the |Same as for Cabbage potato | |leaves. |Worm. | | | | | | Tomato |Tomato Horn |Eats the |Same as for Common |Worm |leaves. |Cabbage Worm. | | | | | | Tomato fruits |Tomato Fruit |Eats the tomato|Same as for Cabbage |Worm |fruits. |Worm. | | | Tomato, eggplant,|Cutworms |Cut the plants |Protect with paper pepper, cabbage, | |off near |collars placed and other crops. | |the surface |around the stem of | |of the ground. |the plant, extending | | |2 or 3 inches above | | |the ground, or | | |distribute poisoned | | |bran mash, placing | | |it near the plant. | | |Thoroughly mix | | |2 level | | |tablespoonfuls of | | |paris green in | | |5 pounds of dry bran, | | |then add from 4 to 6 | | |quarts of water in | | |which 1/2 pint of | | |cheap molasses has | | |been mixed. Cutworms | | |work at night, | | |therefore apply the | | |mash in the late | | |afternoon or | | |evening. -----------------+--------------+---------------+--------------------- Plants attacked | Sucking | Character | Treatment | insects | of damage | -----------------+--------------+---------------+--------------------- Tomato, potato, |Leaf Hopper |Feeds under the|Dust or spray with strawberries, | |leaf, causing |a prepared nicotine and beans. | |a whitening and|or pyrethrum mixture. | |curve of the |Bordeaux mixture is | |leaves with |also effective as | |a dying of the |a repellent. | |edges. | | | | | | | Practically all |Aphis |Sucks the |Either dust or spray garden vegetable |(plant lice) |juices on the |with a nicotine or plants. | |under side of |pyrethrum mixture as | |the leaves and |recommended on the | |on the stems. |package. Be sure to | | |hit the insects on | | |the under side of the | | |leaves. | | | | | | Cabbage group, |Red Spider |Sucks the |Apply a dusting strawberries, | |juices from the|sulfur. and beans. | |under side of | | |the leaves, | | |producing | | |a whitish cast | | |on the cabbage | | |group and | | |a brownish cast| | |on the other | | |groups. | | |Especially | | |prevalent | | |during | | |prolonged dry | | |hot spells. | -----------------+--------------+---------------+--------------------- Table III (pages 107-108) describes the character of damage done by both groups of insects, the plants attacked and the most effective methods of control. _Do's_ Grow vegetables for health, recreation and economy. Organize the vegetable garden for a maximum of output, variety of foods and to facilitate its care. Use lime and chemical fertilizer or manure liberally for intensive culture. Combat insects by stimulating plant growth and by using appropriate lethal products. _Don'ts_ Don't plant a garden in hit-or-miss fashion, if maximum food return is expected. Don't neglect first appearances of insect damage. Find out the cause of injury and use recommended measures for control. _Chapter_ VIII HOME FRUITS AND BEES A wide variety of fruits may be grown satisfactorily for home use. Where no fruit trees are growing the best plan is to set out individual trees or bush fruits of the standard types and varieties, adding to the collection later as the needs of the family develop and the adaptability of the area for varieties manifests itself through crop production. All fruits thrive best on a deep, well-drained soil. It is difficult to secure good results where the area is depressed and air drainage is poor. Elevation of the area planted is desirable therefore from the standpoint of both water and air drainage. A number of questions confront the prospective grower of fruits. He needs to know, among other things, the kind of fruit to plant, the necessary distance between the trees or plants and the probable yield. The following planting guide will be found helpful in answering these questions. HOME FRUITS AND BEES PLANTING GUIDE[4] -------+----------------+--------+--------+------------------------- Average| | | | number | | | | Estimated yield of | |Distance|Distance| at maturity plants | Kind of fruit |between |between +------------+------------ to | | rows, | plants,| Average | Average the | | feet | feet | per acre | per plant acre | | | | | -------+----------------+--------+--------+------------+------------ 27 |Apples | 40 | 40 |135 bushels | 5 bushels 90 |Pears | 22 | 22 |90 bushels | 1 bushel 200 |Quinces | 16 | 16 |100 bushels |1/2 bushel 90 |Peaches | 22 | 22 |90 bushels | 1 bushel 90 |Nectarines | 22 | 22 |90 bushels | 1 bushel 90 |Plums | 22 | 22 |90 bushels | 1 bushel 90 |Cherries (sour) | 22 | 22 |90 bushels | 1 bushel 48 |Cherries (sweet)| 30 | 30 |50 bushels | 1 bushel 6,000 |Strawberries | 3-1/2 | 2 |2,250 quarts| 3/4 pint | (matted row) | | | | per stool 1,800 |Raspberries | 8 | 3 |2,000 quarts| 1 quart 1,800 |Blackberries | 8 | 3 |2,400 quarts|1-1/4 quarts 1,200 |Dewberries | 6 | 6 |1,800 quarts| 1 quart | (hill system) | | | | 1,800 |Gooseberries | 8 | 3 |5,400 quarts| 3 quarts 1,800 |Currants | 8 | 3 |3,600 quarts| 2 quarts 680 |Grapes | 8 | 8 |4,000 pounds| 6 pounds -------+----------------+--------+--------+------------+------------ The selection of varieties of tree fruits is highly important. Some sorts are preeminently adapted to home use because of their high quality of edibility while others are preferred for commercial production on account of their good shipping qualities and high yields per acre. It is advisable for the grower to inquire of his state agricultural college regarding varieties to plant. Responsible nursery firms will also advise on varieties that will best meet the needs of the purchaser from the standpoint of family use and adaptability to soil and climatic conditions. The following varieties are recommended for general home use in north-central areas of the United States, subject to check by local authorities. The apple and peach varieties are given in the order of ripening. Apples: William Wealthy McIntosh Rome Stayman Peaches (all freestone): Golden Jubilee Georgia Belle Elberta J. H. Hale Pears: Bartlett Seckel Cherries: Montmorency or Early Richmond (sour) Black Tartarian (sweet) Plums: Damson (blue) Burbank (red) About fifty strawberry plants will be needed for a row 100 feet long. Because of weed infestations in old beds, it will be more satisfactory to set a new row each year and destroy the old one. The plants during the season of setting should be trained to form a matted row about 2 feet wide. Mulching the plants after a freeze in the fall with straw or other similar material will prevent injury caused by "heaving" of the soil. Currants and gooseberries should be pruned annually and only the one- or two-year-old wood retained for production. Thinning out in this manner will give better size and quality. Where the currant worm is troublesome the foliage should be dusted with arsenate of lead or Paris green as soon as it is well developed and before the fruit is started. About thirty currant or gooseberry plants will be needed for a 100-foot row, and they can be planted along a fence or other boundary line. Blackberries and raspberries should be set 3 feet apart in the row, 100 feet requiring thirty to thirty-five plants. Old canes should be pruned out after fruiting and the weaker new canes should be removed when dormant, leaving 6 or 8 inches between the standing canes. Lateral branches should be cut back in early spring to about 1 foot in length and the upright canes cut back to uninjured wood, thus removing about two-thirds of the growth. Grapes need severe pruning to produce satisfactory yields of good quality. This is best done in late winter. It is a good plan to prune so that from 15 to 30 or possibly 40 buds are left on each mature vine, depending upon the vitality of the plant. Two or three clusters of fruit will develop on the shoot that grows from each bud. A 100-foot row of grapes will require twelve plants. There are many fine varieties of grapes and several can be used in a single row. In ordering stock for planting, care should be exercised in making sure of the reliability of the nursery. As a general rule it is better to order from a nursery in the vicinity, thus eliminating losses due to shipping great distances and also making sure that the varieties or strains were grown for use in the area in question. Upon the arrival of the stock from the nursery, it should be "heeled in" at once. That is, the roots should be covered in a trench so that they will not dry out before they can be planted in the desired location. In the case of a few trees that can be set immediately, this is not necessary. Nearly all country places have sufficient area for planting small fruits and, as is the case with vegetables, freshness and fine-flavored varieties will compensate for the labor involved in growing them. Strawberries, currants, gooseberries, blackberries, red and black raspberries and grapes are especially desirable for home plantings. Some high-quality varieties are given for the choice of the home owner, subject to confirmation by authorities acquainted with specific conditions and intended primarily for home use. Strawberries (in order of ripening): Howard 17 Fairfax Aberdeen Joe Chesapeake Mastodon is recommended for the everbearing type. Currants: Fay Wilder Gooseberries: Chautauqua Poorman Blackberries: Russell Ward Eldorado for bush types Black Diamond for the trailing type requiring a trellis and ripening late in the season. Red Raspberries (in order of ripening): Ranere Viking Latham Black Raspberries: Cumberland Quillen Grapes (general list, in order of ripening): Ontario (white) Fredonia (black) Delaware (red) Brighton (red) Golden Muscat (white) Concord (blue) Sheridan (black) For those desiring a succession of blue-black varieties, Fredonia, Concord and Sheridan are recommended. _Controlling Insect and Fungous Pests._--Plant pests of various kinds infest tree fruits and small fruits. In general, the best method of controlling leaf-chewing insects is by applying arsenate of lead on the foliage. Care must be taken to avoid staining the fruit with poisonous spray or thorough washing will be necessary before it is safe to consume. The control of other insect pests and fungous plant diseases has been well worked out by agricultural experiment stations throughout the country, and these methods should be sought before attempting any campaign of suppression. A barrel spray pump, mounted on a hand truck or on a vehicle, equipped with plenty of hose will be found satisfactory for spraying plantings of modest size. _Rejuvenating an Old Orchard._--The purchaser of an old-established farm will usually find he has acquired some apple trees of uncertain age and health. In many instances these trees can be renovated and rejuvenated so that they will again bear fruit. If the trees have several sound limbs and are making some growth each year, they may be considered worth saving. On the other hand, broken tops and limbs accompanied by large rotted cavities will create too great an expense if an attempt is made to restore them to usefulness. The varieties should be determined before serious efforts at renovation are undertaken, so that the strenuous work necessary for restoration may not be wasted on undesirable fruit. _Steps in Renovation._--The first operation in renovation is pruning. Most of this should be done in early spring during the dormant season and supplemented in June or July when the trees are in leaf. Large broken limbs and dead wood should be removed, together with interfering branches, and those reaching too high should be headed back. At about the same time that pruning is started the loose bark should be thoroughly scraped off and burned, thus destroying insects and fungi that attack the fruit. Harboring places for further infestations are also thus removed. If the trees are badly in need of pruning, it is best to do the job over a period of two or three years rather than all at one time, due to the tendency of trees to "sucker" and develop a multiplicity of small non-bearing branches. Spraying, fertilizing and cultivation, where that is possible, should follow the pruning and scraping jobs. Spray schedules and cultural practices best adapted to the region can be obtained without cost by applying to state or county agricultural agencies. Ordinarily two or three years are required to rejuvenate these trees and begin to secure a crop. Production will then increase in quantity and quality during succeeding years. _Bees as Pollinators._--The production of fruits of all kinds is dependent upon pollination of their blossoms by bees and other winged insects. Bees of many species are useful in pollen distribution, but the most important is the honey bee, which is available in larger numbers just at flowering time, seeking nectar from the flowers. In large commercial orchards colonies of honey bees are set at regular intervals to insure adequate pollination, usually one hive per acre. A practical method of adding to county life enjoyment and adding to income as well is the keeping of bees for honey production. _Securing a Honey Crop._--Bee husbandry can be carried on successfully as a specialized side line where only small areas of land are available. Colonies can be located at one side of the garden or placed under trees where they will not be disturbed either through accident or by cultivation of the plot immediately surrounding them. The activity of the bees during the nectar-gathering season, accompanied by the well-known hum as they dart in and out of the hive, makes a genuine appeal to the country dweller. This appeal is heightened by the fact that they are working for him, in part at least, and without his having to pay for their raiding the nectar from the flowers around. He knows that his efforts in providing favorable working conditions for the bees will be repaid by a harvest of salable honey. A colony at full strength just at the right time will invariably gather a surplus. _First Principles in Beekeeping._--The beginner in bee husbandry should purchase established colonies from a reputable business concern or from beekeepers in the neighborhood of his home. He should begin in a small way with a few colonies, learn the business with a small investment and then increase as his liking for the work develops and the market for the product expands. Being able to read the signs at the entrance to the hive is the surest way to success. Too much manipulation is just as harmful as neglect. The novice in beekeeping who is really interested and follows carefully a few details gained from a reliable bee book should harvest at least 30 pounds of honey a year from each colony. Experts get much larger yields and have been known to secure 200 pounds per colony and 200 sections of comb honey from one hive. The deciding factor in producing honey is the skill of the watchful beekeeper, assuming of course that there is a sufficient supply of nectar-secreting blossoms in the area. The cost of engaging in bee husbandry is nominal. An established colony of the preferred Italian bees should cost about $8. The equipment should include two fitted supers for each colony in which the bees may store the honey, costing about $3 each; a veil to protect the head and face, linseed-oil-soaked canvas gloves, a bee smoker, a hive tool and a bee escape (needed for removing the bees from filled supers), each item costing less than a dollar. An additional piece of apparatus, a queen "excluder," is needed for each hive, to keep the queen in the lower chamber and prevent the mixing of stored honey surplus and developing bees. The principal nectar-secreting plants are the clovers, sumac, buckwheat, cranberry and blueberry blossoms, goldenrod, asters and mallows. Since these plants bloom at varying periods during the growing season, the beekeeper will find it necessary to adjust his operations in accordance with the nectar-producing capacity of his own region. The experience of successful beekeepers will be found helpful as a guide in taking the successive and orderly steps necessary to secure maximum honey crops. In many states there are associations of beekeepers formed for mutual advantage and the promotion of the industry. The novice can hardly expect to learn unless he affiliates himself with such groups and attends their meetings. Subscription to a good bee journal is also desirable. [Illustration: Colonies of honey bees located near the source of nectar supply.] _Selling the Product._--Honey can be marketed in the comb or in glass jars in the extracted or crystal form. Many suburban beekeepers dispose of their crop in their own neighborhood or at roadside stands. Many food products are being promoted which contain honey as one ingredient, and this opens an attractive field to the resourceful beekeeper. The healthful qualities of honey for human consumption are being given greater recognition and it appears that the market for locally produced honey of high quality is steadily expanding. _Do's_ Fruit trees should be included in every country homeowner's plan. Be sure varieties are such as will yield, plentifully, good quality fruit. Use bush fruits as ornamentals and sources of food to be put in cans. Seek advice on fruit problems from the state agricultural college. Old orchards may be rejuvenated under proper systems of management. Use colonies of bees to pollinate fruit blossoms and to produce honey. Begin bee husbandry in a small way at first and get advice from experienced bee culturists. Sell surplus honey in home markets. _Don'ts_ Don't plant varieties of fruits that are ill adapted to climatic conditions. Don't overlook the necessity of preparing for insect attacks in advance of appearance. Don't establish bee colonies without making sure that proper care of them can be taken. Don't try to practice horticulture or bee husbandry without frequently obtaining expert advice. _Chapter_ IX POULTRY AS A SOURCE OF INCOME The majority of the owners of small farm properties are interested in the possibilities of poultry keeping as a means of adding to the family income. Efforts in this direction are logical from a number of angles. For example, the keeping of poultry appeals to them as an interesting line of work for the sake of the activity itself. Furthermore, the cost of housing a comparatively large number of laying hens is not expensive, as compared with the investment required in other agricultural enterprises. Again, there is a ready market for the eggs and for the poultry in the neighborhood where the enterprise is carried on. No doubt, too, the more or less fabulous stories of easy profits have stimulated a desire to get into this business and to make it a rather important source of income. Again, there is the thought that the work involved in feeding and caring for the flock can be carried on by another member of the family when the owner or principal bread-winner is engaged in some other activity temporarily. All these factors have tended to develop in the mind of the settler in the country a pretty definite idea that he can supplement the family income with poultry. Sometimes this idea is erroneous and there is apt to be little definite knowledge on the part of the new owner as to costs, problems and profits that are likely to accrue. It is the thought of the writer to outline some definite recommendations for the prospective poultryman which will enable him to safeguard his investment and prevent the very serious losses that have occurred to many who have not taken into consideration all of the factors involved. _Soil Type._--The prospective poultryman will, if he is wise, make sure that the soil is adapted to the project. The ideal soil for poultry raising is sufficiently porous to furnish good water drainage and yet not so open or sandy as to be incapable of crop production. A porous soil is warmer than a clay soil and is more conducive to good sanitation through permitting moisture and debris to be carried quickly to the subsoil. If the subsoil is of a gravelly nature the natural condition will be improved. Presumably the same type of soil that will bear the poultry plant should be capable of producing garden crops, growing shade or fruit trees satisfactorily and producing grass and short-rooted crops that can be used in conjunction with the poultry plant or the beautification of the home surroundings. Consequently, the soil type must be productive and capable of improvement while being well drained and conducive to good sanitation. Heavy clay soils or those with rock strata close to the surface are to be avoided. Successful poultry farms are operated on both level and rolling lands. Extremely flat topography should be avoided and also precipitous slopes. If the site is on rolling land the poultry plant should be located on a slope with southern exposure to secure warmth, quicker drying conditions and protection from cold north winds. _Breeds of Poultry._--Fowls have been domesticated and bred for ages all over the world. As the result of various crossings a large number of types or breeds of poultry are available for present-day use and propagation. Some of these breeds are maintained for show or novelty purposes only and furnish an interesting field for the fancier. For the person who is engaging in the commercial poultry business the choice of breed narrows to a very few utility types. For purely egg-producing purposes or for broilers weighing slightly over a pound at killing time, the light Mediterranean breeds are the most efficient. Less feed is needed for maintaining the egg machine itself and less room per bird required. Of these so-called egg breeds, the White Leghorn is in a class by itself. This breed is noted for its large white-shelled eggs which top the markets where this color egg is in demand. In the most intensive egg-producing areas of the country the White Leghorn predominates. On the other hand, this breed is not a good meat producer, the mature birds being light in weight. For the dual purpose of egg and meat production the American breeds are the most popular. The principal commercial types of this general purpose group are Plymouth Rocks, Wyandottes and Rhode Island Reds. In some instances crosses of these breeds are proving good layers and highly efficient meat producers. The Rocks, Wyandottes and Reds have bright yellow skin, shanks and beak which are desired in market poultry. They are good winter layers, particularly, and some strains have been developed that rival the Leghorn in the number of eggs per bird. Both the White and the Barred Plymouth Rocks are popular among those seeking a dual purpose breed, and being slightly heavier than White Wyandottes and Rhode Island Reds they are preferred by many poultrymen. The latter two breeds are rapidly increasing in popularity and their best qualities are being brought out more uniformly by careful selection of breeding stock in each case. All of these American breeds lay brown eggs. In addition to the egg and the dual purpose types of poultry epitomized by the Leghorn and the Plymouth Rock, respectively, there are breeds which are primarily meat producers. Less attention is paid to the egg-producing ability of these than is the case with the others mentioned. The Brahmas, Cochins and Langshans stand in high regard as economical meat producers. The Jersey Black Giant is a more recent addition to the popular heavy breeds, especially for the capon trade. These Asiatic types grow slowly and are phlegmatic in movement so that they utilize feed for the economical development of high quality meat and attain great weight. For broilers of more than 1-1/2 pounds each, for roasting chickens and for capons, the dual purpose breeds are becoming more popular than the extremely heavy breeds due to their more rapid growth and more popular weight average at marketing time. _Buying Stock._--The advantages of buying and maintaining definite breeds of poultry are now so well understood that the mixed or mongrel flock is fast disappearing. Having decided which type of fowl is best adapted to one's market and ideas, there is no difficulty in finding a breed that will fit the need. As has been pointed out, the attributes of high egg production or fine quality of meat are inherent in certain breeds. A single breed means uniformity in color, size and shape of the eggs which increases their marketability. More attractive appearance of the flock and greater efficiency from feeding without additional cost are other advantages pertaining to standardizing the flock as to breed. Stock may be acquired as day-old chicks, as ten- to twelve-week-old pullets or as adult birds ready to lay. Hatching eggs may also be bought if desired, but it will be found more satisfactory and just as economical for the inexperienced person to buy the hatched chick or the more mature birds. The hatching and brooding processes are fraught with difficulties which may be especially acute for the amateur. The greatest demand at the present time, and properly so, is for day-old chicks. A highly specialized industry has been developed for the purpose of supplying this demand and a reputation for reliability has been established by many concerns catering to this trade. _Poultry House Construction._--Where flocks of poultry are to be kept for egg production, special laying houses must be provided in addition to brooder houses that will be needed in any case. One of the best types of brooder house is the two-room type developed by Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Such a house should be about 8 by 14 feet, and mounted on skids for convenience in moving. A movable partition divides the house into two rooms. Thus a cold room is provided for exercising and a warm room for sleeping. The marked difference in temperature between the two rooms helps to harden the chicks, while the reduced space about the hover conserves the heat. A great deal of study has been given to the construction of laying houses for poultry. The purposes in mind have been to obtain maximum sunlight throughout the day, protection from storms and from dampness, and adequate ventilation. In the construction of a modern laying house, 1 square foot of glass should be provided for every 20 square feet of floor space. The windows should be hinged so that they may be opened in warm weather. One of the commercial glass substitutes that are now on the market may be used instead of ordinary glass to allow violet light rays to reach the birds. The other openings permit free circulation of air through the house. They should be equipped with muslin curtains to be used during storms and in extremely cold weather. Such a house can be used the year round. [Illustration: (_Courtesy of Poultry Tribune_) This sketch shows an end view of a practical and inexpensive shed-roof laying house. Detailed blue prints for use in constructing such a house can usually be obtained from county agricultural agents or state agricultural colleges.] [Illustration: A fine flock of layers. The hoppers furnish laying mash and the fountains supply drinking water. Scratch grain is thrown in the litter.] The floor of the laying house must be dry at all times if vigor and health are to be maintained. During the winter there should be about 10 inches of dry litter in the form of straw, peat moss or shavings mixed with the straw. Small windows in the rear wall will make for better distribution of the litter, since the birds scratch away from the light. _Equipment and Appliances._--A great deal of hand labor and daily drudgery can be eliminated by equipping the house with properly constructed appliances. These will not only save labor but will also supply the birds with their needs at the time the need for certain materials is felt and thus contribute to health and flock efficiency. The best method of feeding dry mash is from a hopper. This should be so constructed as to hold a reserve supply at all times that will run into the feed trough as it is consumed. Care should be taken in construction to prevent the birds from throwing out the mash with their beaks and thus wasting it. Water fountains of a standard type that will furnish the birds with a constant amount of fresh water are available at poultry supply houses. Receptacles should also be provided for grit, ground oyster shell and charcoal which can be easily filled. A sloping board should be placed over these receptacles to prevent the birds from roosting on them and soiling the contents. Bins so constructed as to be vermin-proof and moisture-proof should be available for storing the scratch grain and other concentrated feeds. Provision for storing litter where it can be kept clean and dry will be necessary. If long straw is to be used, a cutter operated by hand or by a motor will prove useful in fining the straw. The scratch grain will be spread through the litter on the floor, compelling the birds to scratch for it and thus obtain needed exercise. _Artificial Lighting._--Modern laying houses are equipped with electric lights that are turned on and off automatically. Artificial lighting prolongs the hen's working day when the days are short, resulting in greater food consumption and more exercise which will increase egg production and give better health and stamina at seasons when more eggs augment profits. A 40-watt bulb should be placed in one receptacle with reflector for each 200 square feet of floor space, located midway between the front wall and the front line of perches. _Investment Needed for the Start._--The prospective poultryman should be familiar with the principal items of cost before engaging in the business. To be thus forewarned is to be forearmed. The scale upon which one takes up commercial poultry production should depend upon experience in coping with the industry's peculiar problems and upon the amount of capital available. Success depends, of course, both upon skill in handling the poultry and upon the capitalization of the plant. It should be recognized that costs can be only approximate and are usable as guides only. They will vary according to geographical location, general economic conditions, labor costs and the bargaining power of the individual. The figures here given are for a plant comprised of 1,500 laying hens--the minimum number from which a living can be obtained and probably the maximum number that can be cared for by one person. The houses for the flock will necessarily include a laying house of the multiple unit or other similar type, which should cost about $1,000. In addition, eight brooder houses will be needed to care for the chicks and growing stock, costing about $100 each, or a total of $800. The growing stock when on range will need shelters for protection against hot sun and rain, and these should be built for about $25 each, or a total of $200, making a total cost for buildings and the necessary interior equipment about $2,000. In addition to this item, there will be needed about $1,500 for the purchase of pullets at $1.00 each, making a grand total of $3,500. If baby chicks are purchased, it will be necessary to buy not less than 4,000 of these if the operator is to obtain 1,500 desirable laying birds. The cost of these chicks will depend upon the breeding that is behind them, upon whether they are blood-tested to eliminate bacillary white diarrhea (a scourge of young chicks) and the general care that has been taken in the hatchery to produce good, livable chicks. This care, incidentally, must extend to flocks from which the hatching eggs are secured, as well as to the final incubating process. Chicks sold at extremely low prices are rarely bargains. Quality is far more important than low first cost. Assuming a cost of 14 cents per chick as an average for chicks that will produce virile, productive layers, the initial investment for this item will be between $500 and $600. Therefore, if chicks are purchased, it will reduce the item for stock from the amount of $1,500 given above, which would represent the cost of partly grown pullets. Assuming that the complete poultry plant already stocked will cost $3,500, we must add to the budget of the prospective poultryman a sum for the purchase of a farm of from 5 acres upward, including a residence. In most localities a small tract with a modest house can be purchased for about $4,000. If only the land is purchased, that should be available at $200 an acre as a subdivision of a larger tract. Assuming that a house costing $3,000 will be suitable for the operator and his family, the total outlay will be in the neighborhood of $7,500. Experienced poultrymen estimate that a modest poultry farm of the type above described can be put into operation for an investment of $5 per bird. If it is planned to begin with a smaller flock than 1,500 individual layers, the same figures can be applied in proportion to the number of birds to be kept. In short, the poultry house and equipment should be estimated on the basis of not less than $1.50 per bird and the cost of the farm, residence and stock will be in addition to such a charge. The allowance of $1.50 per bird provides only for simple housing facilities for the flock. Using these figures, it will be easy to understand the reason for the general recommendation that a total investment of $10,000 is a requisite for a poultry establishment from which a modest living can be obtained. While the investment in housing, land, residence and stock may not exceed $7,500, there will need to be sufficient capital for paying the living expenses of the family until the flock begins laying and to enable the operator to purchase feed and other necessary adjuncts to his establishment before an income is obtained. For a flock of smaller size than the so-called maximum one-man type above described, the costs per bird for the various items will apply in most cases. It is, in fact, advisable to begin with a smaller flock if the owner is inexperienced. _Do's_ Poultry keeping must be efficiently carried on to yield returns to the country home owner. Select well-drained soil that is free of infection. For egg production, use the Leghorn; for both meat and egg purposes, the American breeds are best. Standardize on one breed if possible. Buy the best chicks or mature stock available. Use a brooder house for the young birds. The laying house must be well ventilated, fully lighted and easily cleaned. Use latest mechanical feeding and watering devices to save labor. Employ artificial lighting to lengthen the hen's working day. Work toward the "one-man plant"--a total of 1,500 laying hens--for most efficient results. _Don'ts_ Don't try to raise poultry in buildings that may still carry infection. Don't economize by buying cheap chicks or breeding stock. Don't overlook importance of health factors and productive qualities in determining value of stock purchased. Don't try to operate a poultry plant with ill-adapted buildings and equipment. _Chapter_ X SUCCESSFUL MANAGEMENT OF POULTRY The successful poultryman will have set up his establishment with due attention to adequate housing, good stock, facilities for maintaining sanitation and for creating generally favorable conditions for egg production. His next problem will be that of adopting successful methods of management so that he may obtain a satisfactory net income from the investment. _Feeds and Feeding._--There are two groups of materials that are essential in food rations for all ages of poultry. The organic feeds include grains and grain by-products, hays, grasses and vegetables. The inorganic feeds include salt to increase palatability and digestibility of the ration; lime, to aid in building bone and body tissue as well as to furnish the shell material; bone ash, especially for growing chicks, and water in liberal amounts supplied by a fountain as well as from succulent green foods. The fact that a dozen eggs contain approximately one pint of water demonstrates the necessity of having drinking water before the flock at all times. The feeding of baby chicks, young stock and laying hens has been scientifically worked out by research and practical experience over a period of many years. The poultryman, especially if he is a novice, will do well if he carefully observes the recommendations of competent authorities. The ration for each of the three ages will consist of a grain feed and a dry mash composed of grain by-products reinforced with materials that supply the birds' daily nutrition requirements. The following rations and recommendations for management have been prepared by the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, New Brunswick, New Jersey: CHICK RATION Baby Chick Grain 200 pounds finely cracked yellow corn 100 pounds cracked wheat Fed morning and evening, beginning when chicks are 36 hours old. Baby Chick Mash 20 pounds ground yellow corn 20 pounds wheat bran 20 pounds flour middlings 20 pounds pinhead oats 10 pounds meat scrap (50 per cent protein) 5 pounds dried buttermilk or skim-milk 2 pounds oyster shell meal or limestone flour or bone meal 2 pounds cod liver oil (mixed with the pinhead oats) 1 pound table salt This mash is fed to the chicks as soon as they are placed under the brooder stove. It may be placed in hoppers. Let the chicks have all they want to eat; some of the mash should be before them at all times. Teach the chicks where to find the warmth by enclosing them for a few days with a 1/2 inch mesh wire one foot high and set from 10 to 12 inches from the edge of the hover. Put some clean grit on bits of cardboard in several places around the hover when the chicks are first brought from the incubator. A little sour skim-milk or semi-solid buttermilk, diluted 1 to 7 in founts should be available from the beginning. After the chicks are 60 hours old or when you are sure they are hungry, begin to feed, using cardboard in the same manner as before. Follow the feeding chart. Feed little and often. Keep the chicks slightly hungry. Watch for dead chicks and remove them as soon as they are noticed. Attend to heaters early and late; be sure at all times that they are in good working order. Clean out litter, particularly beneath the hover as often as it becomes soiled. Induce exercise and keep the youngsters occupied. Get them out-of-doors as early as possible, even if only for a few minutes in the warmer part of the day. Feed green feed. Feed early and late. Keep the chicks growing. _Growing Stock Ration._--The baby chick mash can be used for feeding the growing birds, omitting the cod liver oil if they are on range. The baby chick grain ration can be used also during this period but it need not be so finely cracked. Plenty of grain should be available at all times. _Laying Ration._--When the birds are getting ready to lay, the ration should be changed so that during the winter laying season the mash will include equal amounts of yellow corn meal, wheat bran, wheat middlings, ground heavy oats and meat scrap. Twenty-five per cent of dried buttermilk or skim-milk may be substituted for an equal amount of meat scrap. The grain ration should consist of equal amounts of cracked or whole yellow corn and wheat. This should be fed in the late afternoon, giving sufficient to satisfy the appetites of the birds between the time of going to roost and a light morning meal. It should be fully consumed by eight o'clock in the morning. Adequate consumption of mash is a prime requisite in egg production. The feeding of semi-solid buttermilk at the rate of 3 to 5 pounds to 100 hens daily is recommended. Ten pounds of mangel beets per 100 hens or 1 square inch of well-sprouted oats per bird will supply needed green food during the winter. In many cases it will be found more satisfactory to purchase ready mixed rations from a local dealer who handles reliable and scientifically compounded feeds for poultry. This is particularly applicable where the number of birds is of ordinary proportions. Little, if any, economy will be found in purchasing small quantities of each ingredient and attempting to thoroughly mix them at home. If the flock is very large there may be worth-while economy in home-mixing of the ration. The efficient poultryman will compare the cost of branded feeds with ingredient costs to guard against being overcharged. In addition to the standard rations the growing stock and laying birds should have access at all times to grit, shell and charcoal, kept in suitable containers. These may be obtained of the local dealer. _Sanitation._--When growing stock and laying hens are kept under modern intensive conditions the observance of the rules of sanitation is essential. Failure to observe them is likely to result in loss of production, serious sickness of the flock and the nullifying of all other constructive factors. Dropping boards beneath the roosts must be cleaned frequently and regularly to prevent accumulation of filth. If the dropping boards are constructed of matched lumber with the boards running in the direction in which they are to be scraped it will facilitate the cleaning process. Before the birds are placed in winter quarters the laying house should be thoroughly cleaned of all litter and debris. The interior may then be thoroughly sprayed with a disinfectant composed of some good coal tar preparation, and this repeated in the spring. The surface will need to be painted with a good disinfectant, of which there are a number of commercial preparations on the market. A close watch should be made for vermin in the house and on the birds, and if lice or similar parasites are discovered, immediate action should be taken to destroy both the adults and the eggs, since these parasites will debilitate the flock and prevent their development and may seriously check their ability to lay. _Management of Artificial Lights._--The electric lights mentioned in the previous chapter should be turned on about four-thirty in the morning and kept on until daylight or used for an hour in the late evening. When lights are used there should be plenty of food and water available to enable the birds to take advantage of the additional feeding period. The scratch grain should be increased by 2 pounds daily for each hundred birds when lights are used. Many poultrymen find it advantageous to have a low wattage light burning all night so that hungry individuals may get a meal and return to the perches at all times. Three to five kilowatt hours per month for each hundred birds represents the average current consumption where lights are used. _Practical Suggestions for Efficient Management._--A number of successful poultrymen were recently asked to state the requisites for success in the poultry industry, with particular reference to what is known as the one-man poultry flock. Such a flock is of adequate size to take practically the full time of one person in its operation. As the result of the development of standardized feeding practices, improved equipment and better methods of management, the maximum number of birds that can be successfully managed by one person has greatly increased in recent years. Likewise, the problems of proper feeding, adequate disease control and successful selling have increased as the size of the unit has grown and as greater intensiveness is practiced. All of the successful men questioned advised that the keeping of poultry should be begun in a small way in order that experience can be gained without the risk of losing the initial investment, or that the intending operator should gain practical knowledge of the business by working on a poultry farm for a year. Valuable knowledge can also be gained by attending short courses in poultry husbandry that are being offered at most agricultural colleges with a very moderate expenditure of funds. One of these successful men writes as follows: "We are working with a man now who was let out of a position recently but who has some savings and who desires to go into the poultry business. He has purchased six acres of ground, has built a bungalow on it and has the foundations in for three laying houses of 500 birds' capacity each. He will have ample range for a two-yards system for each laying house, and, in addition, will have two ranges to alternate yearly for growing his young stock. His program calls for putting out about 2,400 chicks yearly from which he should have at least 1,000 pullets, which he will house in two of the laying houses. The following year he will carry over about 500 of these birds and can fill up with 1,000 pullets. This is to be a one-man plant with possibly some assistance in the spring. "I feel that 1,500 birds is the minimum required from which one man can make a living, and five acres devoted to poultry, properly laid out, is sufficient area for this purpose. If more land is available, so much the better. These are minimum requirements, as I see it, and with regular feed deliveries directly to the poultry house, running water and other labor-saving devices, there is no reason why one man cannot successfully take care of this number of birds, particularly where a man is starting on new ground where there have never been any chickens and therefore less chance of disease. We advise buying baby chicks rather than partly grown or mature stock. If he follows a definite economic and sanitary program right from the start, there is no reason why his plant should not carry on profitably, indefinitely." This practical man says further: "It is our experience that the majority of the people going into the poultry business go in 'blind.' Their chicken houses are put up irrespective of range facilities and then after two or three years when they begin to run into trouble they find their mistakes. I would suggest that you point out to prospective poultrymen the advisability of first, buying land and developing their own poultry plant rather than trying to make over someone else's plant; second, buying in a location where buying and selling facilities have been developed; third, getting in touch with a reliable local poultryman for guidance in laying out his plant and following only one advisor. By hooking up with only one poultryman he is presented with one way of doing things which this poultryman has found successful in his own business." Another successful man states that the most economical time to start the business is in the spring when day-old chicks can be secured and purchased at a lower cost than is possible in the buying of laying stock at other seasons of the year. He further advises that the greatest mistake made by many starting in the poultry business is the lack of adequate capital. Too many invest all of their money before any income can be secured, according to this man. Should there be a set-back during the first year or two, there is no way of continuing and the whole investment may be lost. Still another practical man states that "Site is, in my opinion, the most important factor to be considered after the decision is made that a person wishes to go into the poultry business. Successful poultry keeping probably requires more careful selection of a farm than any other agricultural industry. There should be light soil with good air and water drainage and an area of sufficient size to permit shifting the poultry on different areas as a means of preventing disease infection and as a means of securing vigor in the birds." He, too, points out that old poultry farms should not be considered by prospective poultrymen unless they have been approved by an expert in these lines, for the reason that these farms are frequently offered for sale because of persistent disease infection which it is very difficult to eliminate, or because of some fundamental difficulty, such as poor soil drainage. "In the construction of buildings," continues this experienced poultryman, "sufficient housing should be provided to prevent overcrowding and the difficulties that come in the train of that condition. About three square feet of floor space per bird is required for the lighter breeds such as Leghorns, and four to five square feet per bird for the heavier breeds. For the one-man plant, the recommendation is for a maximum of about 1,500 birds. This would require from 4,500 to 5,250 square feet of floor space suitably arranged for the lighter breeds of the Leghorn type. For the young stock to be used as replacements, seven to ten brooder houses, 10 by 12 feet in size, would be required and about the same number of range shelters, usually 6 by 8 feet, for the purpose of sheltering growing young stock from hot sun and heavy rains when they are out on range." _Probable Net Income._--Many persons who have started in the poultry business have been misled as to the amount of net income they will be likely to receive from a one-man plant. It is pretty well established that in normal times a net income of from $1,500 to $2,500 annually can be secured from a plant housing 1,500 birds. A great deal depends, of course, upon the skill of the operator, and a plant of this size requires the full time of one competent person. It should be borne in mind that this net income is in addition to the residence and such food as would be taken in the form of poultry products and from the garden. _Sales Management._--Every prospective poultry keeper should determine the marketing possibilities for the product in the area under consideration before he makes a choice of location. There are at least four methods of marketing eggs and poultry meat, any one of which can be used exclusively or two or more used in combination as a means of disposing of the product to the best advantage. The system that he will adopt will depend largely upon his location, as well as upon his individual preference, and upon the facilities that are available in the area where he operates. In many sections of the country there are cooperative egg marketing associations where the eggs are received in bulk from the producers, are graded and marketed in large quantities, the producer receiving the full selling value less, of course, the costs of operating the distributing agency. In the northeastern states, egg auctions have been very successfully developed. Under this system the individual producer brings his eggs to the auction market where they are graded and sold on the basis of weight, size and other factors pertaining to quality. In this method of selling the producer receives a definite price for his eggs less a small charge per case made by the selling agency. A successful type of direct marketing is through roadside stands. This is especially successful in or near large centers of population where eggs can be purchased, together with other farm commodities, at the same stand. Another method is the operation of a retail route in which the producer sells the eggs by the door-to-door method in a near-by city. This method is followed successfully by many poultrymen who deliver eggs as regularly as the milk distributor or the baker deliver their products. Still another method is the use of mail or express as a means of transporting the eggs to consumers in urban centers. This method, while largely in use some years ago, has not proved so generally successful as have some of the other methods previously given. A well-organized program of work is essential in successful poultry keeping. The following schedule is followed by many successful poultrymen as a means of distributing their time to the best advantage during the day. A POULTRYMAN'S DAILY TIME TABLE Based on a One-man 1,500-bird Farm Producing Market Eggs 7:00-8:00 A.M.--Feed and water all stock. 8:00-9:00 A.M.--Fill mash hoppers and clean dropping boards. 9:00-11:00 A.M.--Two hours for cleaning houses, cultivating yards, repairing of buildings, preparation of egg cases, packing eggs and miscellaneous jobs. 11:00-12:00 M.--Feed green feed and collect eggs. 12:00-1:00 P.M.--Lunch hour. 1:00-2:00 P.M.--Water all stock. 2:00-4:00 P.M.--Same work as from 9:00 to 11:00 A.M. 4:00-5:00 P.M.--Feed and collect eggs. _Ducks, Geese, Turkeys and Other Fowl._--While the raising and keeping of chickens occupy the largest and most important part of the general operation of poultry keeping, there is a growing interest in the production of other types of fowl, including ducks, geese, turkeys, and in some instances, guinea fowl and pheasants. Each of these really constitutes a separate and distinct poultry industry, requiring specific feeding, breeding and management practices. Some of the fundamental factors in the care of these types of poultry are given for the beginner. In the case of these fowl, as in chickens, it is essential to start in a small way and develop as experience dictates. _Ducks._--From a rather obscure and unknown source of poultry meat, the duck and the duckling have become common to restaurants and the home table. This has been accomplished through the operations of large commercial duck farms which sell hundreds of thousands of birds annually. The selection of breed types, proper feeding and management and skillful marketing have made it possible to attract a wide public interest and an appetite for these fowls on a permanent basis. The best known varieties of ducks are the Indian Runner, a small type and primarily an egg producer; the Muscovy and the Pekin, both of which are used for meat purposes, the former being best adapted to general farm use and the latter to intensive breeding on large establishments devoted solely to the purpose of duck raising. The old simile, "Like a duck takes to water," implies the fondness of ducks for the aquatic element. However, ducks will do well without swimming facilities. Incubation of duck eggs can be carried on in the same manner as chicken eggs, except that more moisture is essential to good hatches. The period of incubation is 28 days for all types, except for the Muscovy, for which it is 33 to 35 days. The growing birds, like mature ducks, are hardy and ordinarily show a much lower mortality percentage than chickens. If only a few ducks are kept, they will follow the habits of a flock of chickens and need be given no special attention. When they are raised without other poultry an open shed is all that is necessary for winter quarters and some shade arrangement for protection against hot summer sun. The feed rations that have been given for baby chicks and growing stock can be used for ducks, or any standard commercial feed for the respective ages. It is recommended that the chick and growing mashes be mixed with fine, chopped greens such as cabbage or lawn clippings, and sufficient water added to the mixture to make it moist. One pound of sand or grit may be added to furnish the duck with grinding material. Fresh water in shallow dishes should be available during the feeding periods which ought to be three times a day. For the mature birds, the laying mash, previously given, and moistened, will be found satisfactory with fresh greens added, unless grass is available on range. Hoppers containing sand or grit should be available if a number of ducks are kept. _Geese._--Geese can be raised successfully wherever other types of poultry will grow. That they are not so popular as ducks is shown by the fact that only about one-third as many geese as ducks are raised in this country. The most popular breeds, in order of popularity, are Toulouse, Embden, African and Chinese. The Toulouse is the largest and most favored, the mature gander weighing 26 pounds and the adult goose about 20 pounds. Geese are usually kept in small numbers in areas where there is an abundance of grass and a supply of water for swimming. They, like ducks, are hardy and are rarely affected with diseases or parasites. A plentiful supply of grass is sufficient feed for the growing goslings. The demand and prices for geese are lower than for most other types of poultry. For housing, only a shed in winter and a sun-shade in summer are required. The period of incubation varies from 30 to 35 days, depending upon the size of the breed. The young goslings are easily killed by excessive moisture or may become lost and therefore they require considerable attention during the early stages. A good food for the goslings is stale bread soaked in milk or water, fed after they are 48 hours old. Scalded cracked corn may also be given or a mash made of four parts corn meal and one part grain middlings. Plenty of drinking water is essential. Whole grain may be fed after the goslings are well feathered. When the geese near the marketing period they should be kept in confinement and fed a moist mash made of one part grain shorts and two parts corn meal. A bedding of short straw will keep the fattening pens clean and provide roughage. Best prices are obtainable during the late fall and early winter months. _Turkeys._--Because the turkey is such a popular form of meat during the holidays and so much attention is directed to it as an indigenous native bird, it rivals the American eagle as a national emblem. Turkey raising on a commercial scale has had its ups and downs for a great many years. One of the principal scourges has been the so-called black-head disease and this has destroyed the industry in many areas. It is now known that this disease is carried by a small parasitic worm common to chickens, which, however, it apparently does not seriously injure. The black-head germ, carried by this worm, clogs the blood in the head of the turkey and causes quick death. For this reason, it has been found impracticable to raise turkeys where chickens are present, unless they are kept entirely separate by confinement. The principal varieties of domesticated turkeys are the Bronze, White Holland, Bourbon Red, Black, Narragansett and Slate. All are large, handsome birds, each breed having a following of admirers. The Bronze is the largest and heaviest and most popular, the mature adult male weighing 36 pounds and the mature hen 20 pounds. Under ordinary conditions turkeys do not require much in the way of housing, except in cold weather when covered roosting sheds should be available. The period of incubation is 28 days and they may be hatched under the same conditions as chickens. The day-old young birds, or poults as they are called, can be shipped in the same manner as day-old chicks. For feeding the poults, the United States Department of Agriculture recommends fine-chopped hard-boiled eggs, including the shell, mixed with green feed for the first ten days. This may be followed by feeding the chick ration previously mentioned. Milk, especially buttermilk, is excellent for the poults, and grit must be provided if it is not available on range. Cod liver oil will be found helpful if added to the ration. Turkeys are great rangers and travelers if they have the opportunity and will pick up enough insects to keep them going through the day. A grain ration should be fed just before they go to roost. Where they are raised in confinement, or semi-confinement, more food must be given and under these conditions the strictest sanitation must be practiced. Both old and young turkeys should be protected from dampness, and the growing birds, especially, kept free from lice. The turkey grower who practices the best systems of management and feeding will be successful and will find a ready market for his product at Thanksgiving and during the Christmas holidays. A few birds may be successfully kept in confinement and used as a home-raised source of high quality meat during a considerable portion of the year. _Guinea Fowl._--The guinea is known for its watch-dog proclivities, making a characteristic raucous noise when strangers appear; for the rich quality of the eggs which are produced in good quantity; and for the delectability of the breast meat when properly prepared. The young guinea may be fed as has been recommended for young chicks. The older birds are excellent foragers and require little attention. The country home owner, if he does not object to their noise, will find a few of these unusual birds an interesting and valuable asset. _Pheasants._--Many persons with a flair for the new and unusual are successfully raising pheasants, the Ring Neck variety being the most popular. While they are not so hardy as chickens and must be given some added care for that reason, they may be fed in the same manner and kept successfully in confinement. Pheasants may be used as an additional source of income since they are nearly always in demand for meat. The eggs may be hatched in incubators or by hens and the young pheasants brooded like chicks. The period of incubation is 21 days. Shelter is not necessary except in extremely cold weather and not then if trees or shrubs are available. Detailed information on game bird production can be obtained from More Game Birds in America, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York City. _Do's_ Net income depends upon efficient management and each phase of the latter must be mastered. Feed a well-balanced chick ration to the very young and growing stock. Be sure the ration fed to laying stock is adapted to their needs in egg production. Sanitation measures are fundamental in good management and their neglect may be fatal. Follow the management recommendations of practical and successful poultrymen. Use the marketing system best adapted to the locality and the personal factor of sales ability. Determine possibilities of selling ducks, geese, turkeys and other fowl as a means of supplementing income from chickens. Remember each type of poultry requires specific management. _Don'ts_ Don't neglect scientific feeding of the poultry flock. Don't go into poultry production on a large scale without experience. Don't neglect local markets as outlets for the sale of eggs and poultry and don't make shipment of eggs and stock to commission houses of unknown rating. Don't over-extend in poultry investment to the point where temporary reversal would be disastrous. _Chapter_ XI THE FAMILY MILK SUPPLY Living in the country should make possible an adequate and safe milk supply for the family. The transportation of milk from the farm and its distribution in the city constitute a costly process under present methods, and this limits consumption. Furthermore, the ordering in advance of a definite quantity each day means as a rule that only the milk delivered will be consumed. A maximum amount of milk is thereby set, based upon factors that may be alien to real needs of the family for this food beverage. Using milk and dairy products freely from a near-by supply will contribute much to the health of the entire family and especially of the children. The term "family" is used in this case to denote two or three adults and the same number of children. Nutritional experts declare that milk is the most important of the "protective" foods. Scientists agree that milk protects by providing in the best form those necessities which are often lacking in other foods. Milk supplies calcium so necessary for sound bones and teeth, phosphorus, easily digested protein, butter fat and milk sugar. Most important of all are the vitamins found in milk. Milk acquires these properties from the cow, a living factory manufacturing milk from raw products, which are the foods the cow eats--the pasture grasses and the cured hay, supplemented with carefully blended grain rations. Nutrition authorities recommend at least a quart of milk daily for every child and ample amounts for adults as well. _Sources of Milk Supply._--The country resident will have little difficulty in securing an adequate supply of wholesome milk at low cost. He may obtain it from a neighbor who is in the dairy business or he may maintain a cow or two where the area is large enough to provide some pasturage and where a building for stabling is available. If the milk is bought from some near-by farm it is important that the purchaser assure himself of the health of the cows producing the milk and of the sanitary conditions surrounding production and handling. Quality in milk is much more than cream content. Cleanliness in production and handling is far more important, and this the country resident can personally determine by occasional visits to the source of supply, an advantage difficult for the urban resident to attain. Quality in milk is not necessarily measured by the investment in the milking barn or the showy external features of the producing and handling plant. The essential factors in the production of clean, wholesome milk are healthy, clean cows; healthy milkers; clean, sterile utensils; and sanitary stables and premises. These conditions can be attained by any careful dairyman and can be checked by any layman interested in securing a dependable supply of safe milk. The purchaser should insist that the cows be tested regularly under government supervision for tuberculosis and the reactors to the test removed from the herd. This is important in all circumstances and particularly so where the milk is consumed in the unprocessed state by children. _Producing Milk at Home._--It is entirely feasible for the rural family to produce at home an ample supply of milk at low cost. To do this it is only necessary to have stabling facilities for one or two cows and to have a member of the family sufficiently interested to feed, care for and milk the cow or cows. If this plan is to be followed the owner, if he is inexperienced, should enlist the aid of a neighbor or friend in making the purchase. The animal should be fresh, that is, just starting the period of lactation, and preferably not more than four or five years of age. A cow that is fresh can be judged as to ability to produce good milk from all four quarters of the udder in adequate amount. _Selecting the Family Cow._--The breed to be selected is not important, except that for family use a cow of the so-called Channel breeds (Guernsey or Jersey) is considered better adapted because of the higher butter fat content of the milk as compared with the Holstein-Friesian, for example, which usually produces a larger total quantity of milk with less butter fat. It is not necessary to purchase a pure-bred animal of any of the breeds, so far as milk production is concerned. On the other hand, a pure-bred registered cow may often be purchased at moderate cost. The owner will undoubtedly take greater pride in such an animal and her offspring will have higher selling value. In making a purchase the new owner should insist upon having a tuberculin test chart delivered with the animal, and certification as to freedom from contagious abortion (B. abortus) should also be obtained if possible. If production records have been kept during the animal's previous lactation periods, these should be secured, as they will definitely indicate milk-producing ability over a considerable period of time. For family use a cow that produces milk steadily in uniform amounts over eight or ten months is far more desirable than one which produces a large volume following freshening and then slumps off rapidly. [Illustration: Desirable types of utensils for a small dairy. _A._ Crock for temporary milk storage or for gravity separation of cream. _B._ Milking stool. _C._ Twenty-quart milk can and cover. _D._ Strainer. _E._ Stirrer. _F._ Circulating water cooler for freshly drawn milk (not essential for a one- or two-cow dairy if other cooling practices are followed). _G._ Sanitary covered-top milk pail. _H._ Measuring rod. _I._ Small churn for family butter making.] _Importance of Pasture._--Pasturage plays so important a part in economical milk production and in contributing to the health of the animal that it is unwise to consider keeping one's own cow unless 3 or 4 acres of pasture land per animal are available. When the cow is on pasture from May until November no other roughage is required, provided of course the grasses and clovers are plentiful. Plenty of water is essential, and if this is not made available by a stream in the pasture, it will be necessary to furnish drinking water three times daily. _Stabling and Feeding._--From early November until May it will be necessary to provide stabling facilities, roughage in the form of hay, ensilage or beet pulp, and concentrated feed to keep the animal producing. About 3 tons of good timothy-and-clover hay or alfalfa will be needed per animal during these six months. Storage room will be needed in the building for the hay and for the concentrated feed. A good practice is to keep the cow in a box stall 12 by 14 feet in size. Ample bedding should be provided, consisting of straw, wood shavings, shredded corn stalks, peat moss or dried leaves. These will absorb the liquid manure and after such use should be applied to the garden or other land areas for fertilizing purposes. The daily ration of the cow when stabled will consist of from 15 to 25 pounds of hay daily and 1 pound of concentrated feed for each 3-1/2 pounds of milk being produced. (A quart of milk weighs about 2.2 pounds.) Milk flow can be stimulated and the health of the cow conserved by feeding moistened beet pulp, where silage is not available. This may be purchased locally at the feed store, where the grain concentrate may also be obtained. The latter can be bought in bags and a mixture analyzing about 20 per cent protein is recommended. When the cow is on pasture the grain ration may be reduced by one-third or one-half, depending upon the quality of the pasture available. _Cost of Milk Production._--Where all of the feed mentioned above is purchased, the cost per quart of the milk will approximate 3 cents, excluding labor and overhead costs of buildings, etc. This cost can be reduced if pasture does not have to be rented and if some of the other food requirements are raised at home. _Management._--Feeding the cow twice daily and milking at the same interval will give the best results. Morning and evening are usually the most convenient times for milking and the same hourly routine should be observed daily. Feeding the grain ration after milking is desirable. A good practice is to furnish hay and beet pulp between milkings. To insure cleanliness of the milk, the udder and teats may be wiped with a damp cloth before milking. Flanks and the udder should be clipped of hair, thus facilitating a clean condition of the animal at all times. Soiled bedding should be removed and clean material substituted as required. The normal cow should produce an average of 10 quarts of milk daily over a period of ten months. In the remaining two months the cow will not be producing milk but will be resting and building up body reserves for the coming period of lactation. The cow should be bred about nine months before it is desired to have her bear a calf. The time of year when such freshening should occur is not important, although either spring or fall months are considered best, to avoid weather and temperature extremes at the critical calving period. Under this plan it will be noted that the family will not have milk from home sources for two months during the year. The alternative is to have two cows, one freshening in April and the other in October, ensuring a continuous supply, or to purchase milk during the "dry" period. _Utilizing a Large Supply of Milk._--The urban consumer of milk accustomed to 1 or 2 quarts daily may wonder how an average of 10 quarts or more per day can be utilized. Plenty of uses will be found for the product. Milk will be used more often as a beverage; cream will be found delightful in many ways, in the form of butter and home-made ice cream, for example; and cheeses will provide an outlet for surplus whole or skimmed milk. Milk of good quality can be disposed of readily to neighbors. If two families own one cow each, a plan may be worked out for furnishing each other with milk when one cow or the other is not producing. Wherever facilities are available and there is a willingness to care for a family cow or two, the availability of large amounts of milk will compensate for the trouble and bring health and vigor to the rural family. _The Goat as a Source of Milk Supply._--The milk goat is especially useful to those who desire a smaller quantity of milk than that produced by a cow and where the space is inadequate for keeping a larger milk-producing animal. In composition, goat's milk closely resembles that of the cow, the butter fat ranging from 3.2 per cent to 4.4 per cent with total solids of nearly 12 per cent. The average production of a good milk goat is about 2 quarts of milk daily, sufficient for many a family. The milk is pure white in color and the cream rises very slowly. If goat's milk is properly produced and handled, the bad odor, associated with the animal in the public mind, should not be present. Keeping dirt or hair out of the milk when it is being drawn, and clean quarters, are essential in eliminating odor in the milk. It has been proved that goat's milk is especially valuable for children and invalids and exceeds cow's milk in ease of digestibility. Goats are in their prime at about five years of age, but will continue to produce milk for several years after that. They should be bred twice a year. The usual number of kids is two, although occasionally four are born at one time. The period between breeding and giving birth is about five months. Goats may be successfully fed with the same rations as the dairy cow. Although they consume only about one-seventh as much feed as the cow, the common impression that the goat can produce milk on practically no feed is erroneous. A ration for winter feeding, suggested by the United States Department of Agriculture, consists of 2 pounds of alfalfa or clover hay, 1-1/2 pounds of silage or roots and from 1 to 2 pounds of a concentrated grain ration, composed of 100 pounds of corn, 100 pounds of oats, 50 pounds of bran and 25 pounds of linseed meal. In the summer when pasture is available they should be fed 1 to 1-1/2 pounds of the grain mixture. Data from experiment stations indicate that the annual feed cost of a milk goat is about $11 and the feed cost per quart of milk produced, about 1-1/2 cents. Good milk goats bring good prices and in most instances will cost almost as much as a cow. They are much more prolific, however, permitting more rapid additions and offering greater revenue from the sales of young animals, wherever there is a market for them. The two principal breeds are the Toggenburg and the Saanen, both originating in Switzerland, and the Spanish Maltese whose original home was in the island of Malta. Goats are thoroughly domesticated, are contented with a small grazing area and may be easily handled. They are subject to stomach worms, indicated by loss of flesh and weakness, and to Malta fever, which can be transmitted to man, in whom it is evidenced by recurring high temperatures. The former can be controlled by using, as a drench, a copper sulfate solution of 1 ounce to 3 quarts of water. Where the latter trouble is present the milk should be pasteurized or scalded before it is consumed. As an economical source of easily digested milk, the goat is recommended, especially to those families with rather small acreage. They can make the most of poorer pasturage, are clean in habits and docile. _Do's_ Use milk freely for its food value to every member of the family. Make sure of the quality of the milk purchased. Acquiring a family cow is the best and cheapest source of an adequate milk supply. Management of the right kind will make the family cow an invaluable asset. Learn to use surplus milk in nutritious and palatable ways. Determine the possibilities of securing from the goat an adequate milk supply for a small family. _Don'ts_ Don't use canned milk except as supplement to liberal, fresh supply. Don't overlook the need of pasturage for economical milk production. Don't supply family with milk of doubtful sanitary quality. Don't neglect to have a veterinarian make health tests of the cow or goat. _Chapter_ XII MARKETING FARM PRODUCTS The distribution of farm products on an efficient basis is one of the most difficult problems in agriculture. Because of the demand of the consumer for small quantities of products at each purchase, the breaking up of wholesale packages, involving additional labor and containers and the elimination of unfit specimens, increases handling costs and delays the arrival of the product from the farm to the consumer. In recent years the producer has sought various means of eliminating some of these costs of distribution so that he could get a larger share of the consumer's dollar, and the consumer has welcomed the opportunity of buying products direct from the producer. Unquestionably, one of the best means of selling farm commodities is through the medium of roadside markets that have now become so common along the principal highways of the country. These range in type from the display of a few baskets of farm commodities on the ground or on a table, with sales of $100 a year or less, to those of a more pretentious nature in which buildings and equipment are erected suitable to the purpose. That there are great possibilities of developing a successful business in selling products in this manner is evidenced by some of the more elaborate markets, transacting an annual business of $30,000 or more. In most cases these have been developed from small beginnings and the facilities have increased as the good reputation of the market has spread. _Advantages of Roadside Marketing._--From the standpoint of the producer or the operator of the roadside stand, there are certain advantages that have contributed to the growth of the movement. For example, there is no expense or time involved in delivering the products to a distant market, since the produce is sold by a member of the household, or by the operator's employees in the larger types of markets. It is possible through such a market to build up a clientele of buyers who will return for further purchases. They will tell their friends about the good quality, dependable produce which they have been able to purchase at some particular stand. Furthermore, a wide variety of products can be sold in this way at one stand, which might have to be segregated and shipped to different markets if some other method of marketing were being followed. This would add considerably to the expense of selling, especially where the volume of each commodity is small. Furthermore, in such a method of selling, the producer comes in direct contact with the consumer. Ideas are exchanged, mutual confidence is developed and both should share financially in the advantages accruing from eliminating ordinary means of distribution. _Problems in Roadside Marketing._--On the other hand, there are certain disadvantages of roadside selling which operate against successful merchandising in such a manner. These should be fully considered in deciding how the surplus farm products are to be disposed of. Due to the difficulty experienced by many potential buyers in getting satisfactory produce, they have become discouraged and will often drive by all roadside markets rather than take a chance on buying commodities that may be misrepresented. Naturally, this works against the development of adequate business and makes it necessary for the individual to spend considerable time and effort in selling himself and his market to the public and in creating confidence and good will. There is necessarily some loss due to depreciation in the quality of perishable commodities. In many cases it is necessary to expose these commodities to the sun and weather, and if they are not sold promptly they will not long maintain the standard of quality which the operator must have identified with his market. The operator has no knowledge of the number of customers he will have when he displays his products, nor does he know the whims of the individuals who may patronize his market that day. To avoid the losses resulting from unsold products it is desirable to have some other outlet which will absorb unused quantities, even though the price is not so good as would be secured from ordinary sales at the market. Many of the commodities can be delivered to some wholesale market to be sold for what they will bring. Another outlet that is available is through canning or preserving the commodities and selling them later in the season under the label carried by the roadside stand. It should be borne in mind that the business of operating a roadside market has its own peculiar problems and success in it depends upon following good merchandising principles, to which are added those finer points which pertain to direct selling. The attitude of the public must be studied and plans for promoting sales must be adopted which will result in attracting and holding customers. Beyond doubt, the two most important factors in the operation of a successful roadside market are attractiveness of the stand itself and the quality of the products that are offered for sale. _Plans for a Roadside Market._--A roadside market need not be expensive to be attractive. The thought motivating the whole project should be to create in the buyer's mind a farm scene, laying emphasis upon such factors as are easily associated in the public mind with farming. These include neatness of the establishment, cleanliness and honesty in every phase of the operation. One should not undertake to run a roadside market in competition, so far as appearance goes, with the corner grocery store in the city. It should have an individuality of its own and be _of_ the country as well as _in_ the country. The location of the market has a great deal to do with its attractiveness. It is well to locate it a short distance from the house, so that it stands out as a market, and it should be placed back from the highway to permit motorists to drive off the highway in making stops for purchases. In some states, highway regulations require that such stands be located far enough from the highway to permit all four wheels of a standing vehicle to be off the road surface. If the stand can be located under some good shade trees, that in itself constitutes an invitation to the sun-blinded traveler to stop and partake of the commodities offered for sale. [Illustration: A wayside market that meets every need and attracts buyers.] So far as the design of the market itself is concerned, there are endless opportunities for one's genius to be brought into operation. It should be borne in mind that, while there are certain standard requirements in the way of display shelves and facilities for keeping reserve stocks immediately available, as well as a safe container for funds, originality in design attracts attention. Here again, the design should not be obtrusive, but one that blends with the atmosphere of the place where the stand is set up. It must convey the impression that the owner of the property is himself the operator of the stand and has transferred to the stand the same interest which is manifested in his home and its immediate surroundings. Most purchasers at roadside stands want to see the whole display without having to stumble over baskets and other articles to find out what is offered, and they expect prompt attention. As a general rule, the more nearly the stand can supply the complete needs of the purchaser in that field, the more likely are buyers to stop and become regular patrons. In addition to the display of seasonable fruits and vegetables, it is desirable to have eggs and dairy products, including butter, cottage cheese, canned fruits or jellies that have the home-made farm atmosphere about them. In most cases, ice is available or electric refrigeration can be utilized for keeping cold milk, buttermilk, cider and other products available for immediate consumption for the hot and thirsty traveler in the summertime. Hot coffee or hot chocolate can be made available for service in colder weather. Very often the road-stand operator destroys the genuine sales appeal that such stands have by specializing in manufactured concoctions that have no relation whatever to the location where they are sold. Too often the stands are covered with advertisements of such commodities, and this immediately creates sales resistance so far as the promotion of fresh farm products is concerned. _Origin of Products Offered._--The ordinary purchaser at a roadside market likes to think that he is buying products raised or processed on the place where they are sold, and believes that he is thereby securing fresher and better commodities in which the seller has had an interest from planting time to harvest. Certainly some of the commodities sold should come directly from the tract where the market is located, and visual evidence should be given of that fact. On the other hand, there is no objection to the addition of other commodities so long as they are in accord with what a producer might be expected to have for sale at that season of the year. Many operators have found that the sale of gasoline and lubricating oil and tobacco in various forms can be offered for sale to good advantage simply as a part of the service being offered by the market to the public. _Quality the Keystone._--The fundamental basis for success in the operation of any roadside market lies in the quality of the products that are offered for sale. This is a rather difficult condition for the operator to maintain consistently, but it is fundamental in securing customers and in keeping them. Products that have become stale, unattractive or unpalatable for any reason should never be offered for sale and should be discarded, made into some by-product or sold through some channel which will not identify the article with the stand itself. A satisfied customer who develops confidence in the integrity and good faith of the stand operator is a decided asset, and no effort spent in cultivating such confidence is wasted. Every successful roadside stand operator has built his business on honest dealing and a personal interest in seeing that the buyer is satisfied. This contact between the owner of a small business and a buyer is one that can be capitalized to a very great extent. It is one of the handicaps which a chain-store organization has to face and one that must be developed by the person who wishes to establish a permanent and satisfactory business in this merchandising field. Very often the sale of farm products can be supplemented to the advantage of the stand by offering small ornamental plants or by the display of pet animals, particularly for the younger members of the traveling public. _Success Factors._--A definite program of advertising can be developed with many original features that apply directly to the type of business. If the operator has pride in his products he will be glad to have his name on every package of commodities that he sells. This is good sales propaganda even if it only indicates the confidence of the seller in his products and his willingness to stand behind them. Besides that, however, it creates a knowledge of his name or the designation of his farm or stand among purchasers who will then have a means of identifying it to their friends. A small leaflet, describing the products that are offered for sale and the intention of the operator to give the customer service, can be put in each package at very small cost with good results. It is also possible to prepare leaflets dealing with methods of cooking or of preparation of the commodities sold that will build good will on the part of customers. The most successful operators, again, are those who do not depend upon casual visitors for their trade but who make of the casual visitor a regular customer and one who will speak a good word to others. In other words, genuine effort must be made to identify the location as a place to which buyers will wish to return as they do to any other place of business that gives satisfactory service. In this way the operator distinguishes himself from his fly-by-night competitors who exist during a week or two when surpluses of commodities are available at low prices and who have no thought beyond that of the immediate sale. Wherever possible, the attention of the passing consumer should be directed to the stand before he reaches it so that he will be prepared to stop when he comes upon it. Signs of this type on either side of the stand, but some distance each way from it, are more important than is generally recognized. They constitute invitation cards and should be so worded as to excite curiosity and create a feeling in the intending purchaser's mind that he will make no mistake in stopping to fill his wants at the stand. It goes without saying that both the advertising and the stand itself must be so planned as to attract the purchaser, and every effort should be concentrated on the psychology of such an appeal, avoiding any appearance of slouchiness, which would be more repellent than attractive. The purchaser forms a quick opinion of the stand from the way in which it is conducted and from the appearance of the one who is there to make sales. An attitude of cordial cooperation on the part of the attendant, who is, of course, appropriately dressed and in the right mental attitude, is a factor that must not be overlooked in the effort to create a favorable impression. _Meal Service Amid Farm Surroundings._--Many operators, located at strategic points near main highways, have found that maximum profits are obtained by serving meals prepared from the vegetables supplemented by poultry or other products of the little farm. These meals may be served in a booth or building adjoining the roadside stand or in a room of the house turned into a seasonal dining room. Persons who are city residents quickly learn to appreciate the virtues of fresh vegetables and freshly killed poultry that may be thus served. A schedule of reasonable prices must be maintained if trade is to be built up. Usually special dinners or lunches can be prepared from available products in season, thereby giving the customer more for his money at the least cost and trouble to the operator. This small home restaurant business can be handled frequently by members of the operator's household and countless examples can be given of real financial success following such ventures. Expansion can take place as consumer demand develops. Cleanliness, good home cooking, generous portions and prompt and courteous service will work wonders in such a project. _Tourist Guest Houses._--A large number of country homes are now open to the public as tourist guest houses, their owners finding that they can obtain a modest but worth while supplement to other forms of income from them. These tourist guest houses are largely a development of the past several years. Their popularity with automobile travelers appears to be increasing, and there is genuine opportunity for the housewife on a small farm to operate one of these establishments. It should be kept in mind by the housewife who thinks of opening her home to tourists that the proposition has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. Only a modest fee, often $1.00 for a room and 30 or 35 cents for breakfast, is obtained from each tourist guest. However, a great number of American women have found that the work and trouble occasioned by taking in tourists are worth while and actually enjoy their contacts with the traveling public. The tourist guest house, obviously, should be located on a road that is well traveled by tourists. A simple and attractive "Tourists Accommodated" sign and a neat and pleasing front yard are needed to interest passers-by in the place. The porch should be neat and attractive and the interior of the house should give the appearance of restfulness, simplicity and comfort. Tourists usually inquire about prices and look over a place before deciding to stop there; if there are women in the party, one of them usually makes the inquiry. The family should be courteous in answering questions and showing the prospective customers about. They should not be indifferent, and yet must not seem to be too anxious for business. When the travelers decide to stay, the family should endeavor at once to make them feel at home. The guests will frequently ask questions about roads, local resorts and near-by recreational facilities, and the family will find it useful to be informed on these matters. _Dog Breeding as a Source of Income._--Many persons who have located in the country, and who have a liking for domestic animals, have found dog breeding an interesting and frequently profitable enterprise. By placing a wire cage along the highway the attention of the traveling public is attracted to the puppies. Some of the more popular breeds of dogs include the Airedale; the Boston, Fox and Irish Terriers; the Chow Chow; the Collie, and the English and Irish Setters. The breeding of dogs is a highly specialized activity, particularly where it is carried on under intensive conditions and with little range. Dogs are subject to external and internal parasites requiring preventive and curative measures. As in the case of all other animals, sanitation is an essential factor to success and feeding methods must be adjusted to the age and the breed. The beginner in dog raising should consult a recognized veterinarian who specializes in small animal practice, and observe his recommendations. Such professional men are located in most communities and their advice will be found most helpful. The prices obtainable for male and female young animals vary with the locality. There is usually an established scale of prices which may easily be obtained and which it will pay to observe. Dog shows are growing in popularity and exhibitions at these expositions will serve to advertise the breeder's stock. Advertising in local papers is effective in bringing to the public the availability of stock of distinctive breeds. Fashions in dog breeds change with the times and the public must be catered to along the lines of current interest. _Do's_ Use the roadside market or near-by outlets for disposing of excess farm products. Fully utilize the possibilities of roadside stands in building a permanent business. Road stands, as well as the products on display, must have sales appeal. Produce at home all farm products offered for sale, if possible, and make the growing area the background of the market. Stress quality of products and the responsibility of the operator. Advertising of the right type will multiply sales. Offer meal service with farm surroundings wherever possible. If considerable traffic passes the premises, try out possibilities of accommodating tourists. _Don'ts_ Don't try to dispose of miscellaneous surplus of farm commodities by shipment to market if a roadside market can be set up. Don't ruin standing of roadside market by selling inferior or stale products. Don't try to run a city fruit stand with a farm background. Don't destroy country home life by over-commercialization. SUGGESTED REFERENCE LIST Timely and valuable publications of the United States Department of Agriculture, state departments of agriculture and state agricultural colleges and experiment stations are available to country residents. Copies of them may be obtained by writing to the agencies mentioned. To supplement them and also to supplement advice received from county agricultural agents, a number of useful books are listed below. Those interested in them may, in many cases, obtain them from local libraries, or may find it useful to own certain of them themselves. Author Title Year Publisher Agee, Alva "First Steps in Farming" 1923 Harper Arnold, Schuyler "Wayside Marketing" 1929 De La Mare Auchter, E. C., "Orchard and Small 1929 Wiley and Knapp, H. B. Fruit Culture" Ayres, Q. C., and "Land Drainage and Reclamation" 1928 McGraw-Hill Scoates, D. Bailey, L. H. "Manual of Gardening," 1925 Macmillan Rev. ed. Bear, E. "Soil Management" 1927 Wiley "Theory and Practice in 1929 Wiley the Use of Fertilizers" Bottomley, M. E. "Design of Small Properties; 1926 Macmillan a Book for the Home-Owner in City and Country." Bush-Brown, Mrs. "Flowers for Every Garden" 1927 Little Louise (Carter) Chenoweth, W. W. "Food Preservation; a 1930 Wiley Textbook for Student, Teacher, Homemaker and Home Factory Operator" Chupp, C. "Manual of Vegetable 1925 Macmillan Garden Diseases" "Manual of Vegetable 1925 Macmillan Garden Insects" Cline, L. E. "Turkey Production" 1933 Orange Judd Cox, J. F. "Crop Production and 1930 Wiley Management" Crosby, C. R., and "Manual of Vegetable 1918 Macmillan Leonard, M. D. Garden Insects" Davenport, Eugene "The Farm" 1927 Macmillan Foster, W. H., and "Farm Buildings" 1928 Wiley Carter, D. G. Fraser, Samuel "American Fruits; Their 1927 Judd Propagation, Cultivation, Harvesting and Distribution" Fraser, W. J. "Dairy Farming" 1930 Wiley Galpin, C. J. "Rural Social Problems" 1924 Century Gustafson, A. F. "Handbook of Fertilizers" 1932 Orange Judd Hottes, A. C. "1001 Garden Questions 1930 De La Mare Answered" Hurd, L. M. "Practical Poultry Farming" 1931 Macmillan Jull, M. A. "Poultry Husbandry" 1930 McGraw-Hill Knott, J. E. "Vegetable Growing" 1930 Lea Langstroth, L. L., "Honey Bee," Rev. by 1927 American Bee and Dadant, C. P. Dadant, Ed. 23 Journal Charles Larson, C. W., and "Dairy Cattle Feeding 1928 Wiley Putney, F. S. and Management" Lewis, H. R. "Productive Poultry 1928 Lippincott Husbandry" Lippincott, W. A. "Poultry Production" 1927 Lea & Febiger Millar, C. E. "Soils and Soil Management" 1929 Webb Pub. Co. Murray, P. "Planning and Planting 1932 Orange Judd the Home Garden" Pellett, F. C. "Productive Bee-Keeping" 1923 Lippincott Phillips, E. F. "Bee Keeping; a Discussion 1928 Macmillan of the Honey Bee and of the Production of Honey," Rev. ed. Powers, W. L., and "Land Drainage 1922 Wiley Teeter, T. A. H. for Farmers" Rice, J. E. "Practical Poultry Management" 1930 Wiley Rice, J. E., and "Practical Poultry Management" 1925 Wiley Botsford, H. E. Root, A. I., and "ABC and XYZ of Bee 1923 Root Root, E. R. Culture" Rose, M. S. "Feeding the Family" 1928 Macmillan Rowe, H. G. "Starting Right With Bees" 1922 A. I. Root Co. Sanderson, E. D. "Insects Pests of Farm, 1921 Wiley Garden and Orchard," Ed. 2, rev. and enl. by L. M. Peairs Sears, F. C. "Productive Orcharding; 1927 Lippincott Modern Methods of Growing and Marketing Fruit" "Productive Small Fruit 1925 Lippincott Culture" Sharp, M. A. "Principles of Farm Mechanics" 1930 Wiley Smith, R. H. "Agricultural Mechanics" 1925 Lippincott Thompson, H. C. "Vegetable Crops" 1931 McGraw-Hill Thorne, C. E. "Maintenance of Soil 1930 Orange Judd Fertility" Watts, R. L. "Vegetable Gardening" 1921 Orange Judd Worthen, E. L. "Farm Soils, Their Management 1927 Wiley and Fertilization" SOME FARM AND GARDEN MAGAZINES _General_ American Agriculturist New York, N. Y. Country Gentleman Philadelphia, Pa. Farm Journal Philadelphia, Pa. New England Homestead Springfield, Mass. New Jersey Farm and Garden Sea Isle City, N. J. Pennsylvania Farmer Pittsburgh, Pa. Rural New Yorker New York, N. Y. _Beekeeping_ American Bee Journal Hamilton, Ill. American Honey Producer Producers' League, Fargo, N. D. Bee-Cause Watertown, Wis. Gleanings in Bee Culture Medina, Ohio _Dairying_ Ayrshire Digest Spencer, Mass. Dairy Farmer Des Moines, Iowa Guernsey Breeders' Journal Peterboro, N. H. Hoard's Dairyman Fort Atkinson, Wis. Holstein-Friesian World Laconia, N. Y. Jersey Bulletin Indianapolis, Ind. _Flower Gardening_ American Home Garden City, N. Y. Better Homes and Gardens Des Moines, Iowa Flower Grower Calcium, N. Y. Gardener's Chronicle of America New York, N. Y. Horticulture Boston, Mass. _Fruit Growing_ American Fruit Grower Chicago, Ill. Better Fruit Portland, Ore. _Livestock_ Breeders' Gazette Chicago, Ill. _Market Gardening_ Market Growers' Journal Louisville, Ky. _Poultry_ American Poultry Journal Chicago, Ill. Everybody's Poultry Magazine Hanover, Pa. New England Poultryman Boston, Mass. Poultry Garden and Home Dayton, Ohio Poultry Item Sellersville, Pa. Poultry Success Springfield, Ohio Poultry Tribune Mt. Morris, Ill. Footnotes: [1] Prepared by New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. [2] Prepared by Michigan State College of Agriculture. [3] Prepared by New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. [4] New York State College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. 
33243	----	FRYING PAN FARM By Elizabeth Brown Pryor Office of Comprehensive Planning Fairfax County, Virginia September, 1979 FAIRFAX COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS John F. Herrity, Chairman Martha V. Pennino, Vice Chairman Joseph Alexander Warren I. Cikins Alan H. Magazine Audrey Moore James M. Scott John P. Shacochis Marie B. Travesky FAIRFAX COUNTY HISTORY COMMISSION Donie Rieger, Chairman John P. Liberty, Vice Chairman Denzil O. Evans Bernard N. Boston C. J. S. Durham Mary M. Fahringer Ceres Gaskins Dana K. Greene William A. Klene Virginia B. Peters Edith M. Sprouse Mayo S. Stuntz Gloria M. Matthews, Layout Carolynn J. Castellucci, Copy Preparation Library of Congress Catalog Number 79-90519 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations iv Acknowledgments v Introduction 1 Part I, Continuity 5 Part II, Change 36 Part III, Professionalization and an Increased Standard of Living 59 Part IV, The New Deal 87 Part V, Community 115 Part VI, Frying Pan Park 126 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Holden Harrison, 1935 6 Harrison dairy barn, 1936 6 McNair Guernsey bull, 1918 7 Interior Harrison dairy barn 7 Spring plowing on McNair farm 12 Shock of wheat, Ellmore farm, 1925 15 Mechanical hay loader, 1935 15 Small orchard apiary, 1925 17 Inventory of 1920 farmer 20 Plan of Smith farm, 1929 21 Rebecca Rice canning fruit 25 Elizabeth Harrison, Herndon 25 Homemade manure sled 27 Broadcast harvester, 1921 37 Wheat being mechanically harvested, 1925 37 Tractor-drawn drill, 1922 40 McNair aboard a Row Crop 70 tractor 40 Soybeans on a demonstration farm, 1925 43 A wild cherry tree destroyed by web worms 45 "Hard Work Made Easy and Quick" 54 The Fairfax County Grange meeting, 1940 60 The Floris Home Demonstration Club, 1930 63 A 4-H Club, "Achievement Day" displays, 1930 63 A community fair, 1922 64 A suggested model farm for Fairfax County, 1924 64 The 4-H Girls Camp at Woodlawn, 1925 66 A Piedmont Dairy Festival parade float, 1930 66 Map of improved and unimproved roads, 1930 70 Stuck in the mud on one of county's roads 71 Aerial of Kidwell farm and Floris vicinity 75 1930 map of Floris community 88 G. Ray Harrison, 1925 90 Early threshing machine 118 Laura Parham and Kim Stanton work in vegetable garden 118 The farmyard at Frying Pan Farm in the early fall 118 Farmer's house--Frying Pan Farm 120 Two young girls meet two young goats 120 John Hopkins in the Moffett Blacksmith Shop 120 Pat Middleton at 4-H Club Fair 121 Cattle judging, Floris School, 1950 121 Dressage competition at Frying Pan Park, 1978 123 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Cooperation and goodwill were the essential characteristics of the agricultural communities examined in this study, and it has been my pleasure to discover that those qualities are still very evident today among the county's rural folk. Many residents of the Herndon area shared their personal memories and offered really old-fashioned Virginia hospitality to those doing research. Without the help of Neal Bailey, Elizabeth Ellmore, Emma Ellmore, Virginia Greear, Holden Harrison, Mr. and Mrs. Ray Harrison, Margaret Mary Lee, Edna Middleton, John Middleton, Rebecca Middleton, Richard Peck, Elizabeth Rice, Louise Ryder, and Mary Scott, this monograph could not have been completed. Special mention must be made of retired County Agricultural Extension Agent Joseph Beard, who shared his detailed knowledge of county agricultural practices on numerous occasions. He willingly arranged interviews with county farmers, and often helped to break the ice by accompanying the interviewer. This was always done with abundant good humor and his enthusiasm was infectious. I am also particularly grateful to Dr. John T. Schlebecker of the Extractive Industries Division of the Smithsonian Institution. His expertise in the field of agricultural technology and special interest in living historical farms added significantly to the quality of the monograph. Additional thanks go to Anthony Pryor of the Rockefeller Foundation who read this paper and helped to put its conclusions in perspective with trends of agricultural economics. Nan Netherton originally conceived the project and did much of the initial groundwork. The majority of interviews with Floris area farmers were conducted by her. Mrs. Netherton's reputation in the county made it possible for us both to acquire private papers and photographs which might otherwise have been overlooked or withheld. What is more, she sympathetically "initiated" me into the project, offering suggestions and constructive aid without discouraging my own ideas about the direction the study should take. Elizabeth Brown Pryor Fairfax, Virginia June 21, 1979 INTRODUCTION In 1925 Fairfax County was still predominantly rural in character. Farmers occupied over half of the county's land, living on individual holdings which averaged 62.5 acres. Nearly 85% of these farmers were white and of this group only 15% did not own their own farm. They shared their domain with 3,605 horses, 11,636 head of cattle, 5,408 swine, 171,526 chickens and 178 mules. One-tenth of the farms enjoyed the use of a tractor and 25% had a radio. The average capital holding on land and buildings was $8,229, and the Fairfax County farmer netted something less than $1,000 income annually.[1] These figures give a skeleton picture of Fairfax County's most prominent citizen in the period between the two World Wars; when the statistics are translated in prose, his shadowy form gains weight. The farmer at this time was a small landowner, possessing a farm only as large as his own family and a few hired laborers could manage. Although his capital holdings were not huge, they were well above the state average. He had the prestige of being a homeowner, and the pride of working his own soil, perhaps the same soil his grandparents had tilled. The rural family raised livestock for their own use, but principally for the market, and favored draft horses over tractors, mules or oxen to power farm equipment. This farmer's time was spent on a myriad of duties and details--his function was not yet totally specialized--ranging from butchering hogs to building chicken coops to thinning corn. He worked for himself, planning the day's activities, relying on his own judgment and initiative to cope with the varying responsibilities he shouldered. His numerical prominence gave him political and social leverage. It was the rural way of life that shaped the county and his demands which needed to be met. At first glance this farmer's life seems tempered by nature and largely self-contained. The daily routine was established by seasons and sunlight; fortunes were made or lost at the mercy of the wind and rain. A farm was not only the farmer's livelihood and workshop but his home. Thus, unlike the city worker whose occupation was entirely separate from home concerns, country life had a total integration.[2] Moreover, the family farmer possessed a sense of continuity with the long tradition of the small landowner in America. In many respects his life was little changed from that of the thrifty, energetic and shrewd subsistence farmer whom Thomas Jefferson had praised in the eighteenth century as the ideal citizen of a democracy.[3] In both startling and subtle ways, however, the traditional role of the family farmer was changing in the 1920s and 1930s. In Ellen Glasgow's novel _Barren Ground_, which examines the uncertainties of life on a northern Virginia dairy farm, the heroine, Dorinda Oakley, describes her emotional and economic reaction to the post World War I period: With the return of peace she hoped that the daily life on the farm would slip back into orderly grooves; but before the end of the first year she discovered that the demoralization of peace was more difficult to combat than the madness of war. There was no longer an ecstatic patriotism to inspire one to fabulous exploits. The world that had been organized for destruction appeared to her to become as completely disorganized for folly.... The excessive wages paid for unskilled labour were ruinous to the farmer, for the field hands who had earned six dollars a day from the Government were not satisfied to drive a plough for the small sum that had enabled her to reclaim the abandoned meadows of five oaks.... She was using two tractor-ploughs on the farm; but the roads were almost impassable again because none of the negroes could be persuaded to work on them. Even when she employed men to repair the strip of "corduroy" road between the bridge and the fork, it was impossible to keep the bad places firm enough for any car heavier than a Ford to travel over them....[4] Thus, social and technical advances that had long been desired in rural areas bolstered the farmer's optimism. Yet curiously enough this same progress often jarred his expectations and financial security. Improved roads meant improved markets, and increased contact with outside communities but, along with the advent of the radio, they resulted in a homogenizing of city and country ways, and lured many away from the farm. Concern for rural welfare prompted all levels of government to design programs to aid the farmer--programs which indeed furthered agriculture, but at the price of well-meaning interference in a previously highly individual sphere. Amid regulations and forms the farmer felt a nagging loss of independence. Perhaps most strikingly, widespread use of gasoline-powered equipment changed the pace of work, made him reliant on outside sources for fuel and parts, and involved investments which often prohibited purchase or encouraged specialization. Hence, the family farm retained its size and shape but it could no longer revel in complete self-reliance. The model farm at Frying Pan Park is a representation of this changing way of life. It recognizes especially the role of the family subsistence farmer and his contributions to the economy and solidarity of Fairfax County's rural communities. Although this study focuses on the institutions and personalities of the Floris-Herndon area, it is meant to be generic in scope. Dairying, which forms one emphasis of this monograph, was widespread in the area, and though each district had its distinctive elements, the underlying social values and farming methods were consistent throughout the county. In essence, Frying Pan Farm works much as a snapshot would to recall an important phase in Fairfax County's history. It gives a brief glance at a world we have lost, but which lingers significantly in the region's memory. NOTES _Introduction_ [1] _United States Census of Agriculture, 1925, Statistics for Virginia_ (Washington. D.C., 1928). [2] See, E. P. Thompson, _The Making of the English Working Class_ (London, 1966), 76-78. [3] For an overview of Jefferson's political beliefs, including his admiration for the small farmer, see John C. Miller, _The Federalist Era_ (New York, 1968), 70-83. [4] Ellen Glasgow, _Barren Ground_ (Richmond, 1925), 448-49. PART I _Continuity_ Tradition and personal experience colored the 20th century farmer's reactions. He was accustomed to a world in which his occupation and social status were assured, and childhood experience probably led him to assume the farmer's role naturally. The rhythms of farm life were based on the immutable round of the seasons. Each day's sun and wind pulled the tiller in its direction as did the unceasing need to tame the growth and habits of beasts and land. Nature was the farmer's clock, and though he bid the land to produce what he desired, it was the earth which fixed his hours and chores. From this close association with nature came a continuity and special bond between farmers, which defied both time and place. Although the early years of the 20th century heralded a new era of specialization in agriculture, the farmers of Fairfax County persisted in executing the varied functions of general farming. Dairying might be the emphasis on many farms, but it was rarely pursued at the expense of production of grain or food for home consumption. Variety continued to be an important quality of farm work. Families on large and specialized farms still did chores similar to those done by subsistence farmers, though the amount of time allotted for each task might differ. The relentlessness of certain activities, such as feeding the stock, was the same whether the farm boasted one cow or fifty. Thus distinctions between general and specialized farmers were not so clear-cut in this period. The following pages detail the work done on a small dairy farm, yet the kinds and methods of activities also pertain to the farmer whose acreage was devoted solely to general farming. Perpetuity--a continual need to perform certain tasks and watch over specific events on a daily basis--was the most fundamental aspect of farming. The farmer's day began with such an interminable chore: milking the cows. This twice-daily task was, of course, particularly important on dairy farms and its relentlessness is often the first aspect to be mentioned in any farming recollection. "When you have dairy cows," Joseph Beard, who grew up in the Floris area, acknowledged, "that's a 365-day proposition regardless of whether you're sick or anything like that." Another resident, Margaret Mary Lee, explained it more tersely: "Cows and hens and milk trucks did not take holidays."[5] The first milking was early in the morning and most farmers rose around four a.m.[6] The men and any hired hands usually began milking around 4:30 a.m., while the women prepared breakfast. What might initially appear to the outsider as a pleasing novelty was hard and demanding work. This was especially true in the morning when both the new and often the previous night's milk needed to be hauled to Herndon for the early train into Washington. Ray Harrison, with his brother the owner of one of the area's biggest herds, could milk a cow in six minutes--"quicker than a lot people could do it"[7]--but even at this rate, milking his 80-odd cows was a formidable undertaking. John Middleton, who lived down the road from the Harrisons, estimated it took about 1-1/2 hours for seven people to milk his herd of 40 cows; they barely finished in time for the hired man, who took the milk to Herndon, to grab a sandwich and cup of coffee to eat en route.[8] [Illustration: Portrait of a confident and successful farmer. Holden Harrison, c. 1935. Photo courtesy of Ray Harrison.] [Illustration: The well-equipped dairy barn owned by the Harrison Brothers, c. 1936. The Harrisons owned one of the county's largest herds. Photo courtesy Holden and Ray Harrison.] [Illustration: A Guernsey bull owned by Wilson D. McNair. Acquired in 1918, it was among the earliest pure-bred stock in the area. Photo courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder.] [Illustration: The interior of a large and well-maintained dairy barn on the farm of Holden and Ray Harrison. The barn could house over 50 cows. Photo courtesy of Holden and Ray Harrison.] The milk which traveled to Herndon was strained to remove any extraneous matter and cooked to about 35° F to retard spoilage and reduce the risk of spreading bacterial infections. This was a real problem until mechanized refrigerators became available, and the farmers had to use considerable ingenuity to keep their milk chilled. Some, like the Middletons, kept the milk in the well overnight, and Wilson McNair wrote that his family stored the milk in tall cans set in cold water. Occasionally more drastic action was needed. "Can you imagine going out to Herndon and getting great big chunks of ice and putting it in a washing tub and setting a can of milk in and keeping it cool all night long?" queried Joseph Beard.[9] Milk earmarked for home use underwent the further process of separating the thick cream from the rest of the milk. In the days before mechanical separators the milk had to stand several hours for the cream to rise, and it was then skimmed by hand or the milk drawn off from the bottom of a can with a spigot. Mechanical separators streamlined this task by allowing the milk to be separated while still warm, using centrifugal action to bring the heavier cream particles to the bottom of the machine. While the farmers sat down to breakfast the roads started filling with wagons and trucks bringing the day's milk from the entire area. Like Alexandria and Falls Church, the county's other major shipping centers, Herndon served what was known as a "milkshed" area, that is a community whose milk could be transported to that locality without spoiling. Here too the freshness of the milk was of crucial concern. Herndon, with its electric cars on the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad, served most of the county's Dranesville district; however, Floris' close proximity to Herndon gave it an added advantage, for even packed in ice water, milk could easily spoil during the sultry summer months.[10] A farmer with a good-sized herd such as John Middleton would haul eight or more ten-gallon cans of milk to the depot depending on the time of year. The milk was transported in a light wagon with two horses, which generally held only one farm's milk, though sometimes two or more families shared this duty. Rebecca Middleton recalled her brother collecting cans in an early model truck with a canvas top; he traded hauling with the neighboring Bradleys.[11] For a short time a community co-op, based in Floris, was also established to collect milk for shipment to Washington, D.C.[12] As this milk-laden caravan approached Herndon, the small station there bustled suddenly with activity. For at least one local resident, the sight and sounds were memorable. The "banging of the milk cans at the depot," recalled Lottie Schneider, who grew up in Herndon, "... resounded far and wide." "I liked to hear [it] ... for busy men were working and it was a friendly sound."[13] Milking was, of course, just one of many chores involved on the family farm. After a 6:30 breakfast (still early in the eyes of many city dwellers) there were stalls to clean, equipment to sterilize, other farm animals to be cared for. Most Fairfax farms retained a few animals for home use even when concentrating on milk production. Before mechanization completely revolutionized farm work, draft horses provided the farm's muscle and a fifty-acre farm would need two to four for plowing, raking hay, and cutting wheat with a binder. The feeding and grooming of these animals formed a vital task. Though Lang and Hurst's commercial meat wagon came through Floris and other communities each Saturday, many families kept hogs and chickens for their own consumption.[14] Elizabeth Rice from the Oakton area stated that, despite her husband's reluctance to spend energy on any facet of farming outside dairying, they raised hogs, "kept on the back end of the farm in the woods."[15] In Floris nearly every family also raised hogs and chickens and Holden Harrison remembered that they "used to get about a hundred chicks each spring--we'd eat them all up by fall."[16] Few Floris area farms kept sheep, though census figures show about 1,200 in the county during this period.[17] In addition, dogs, cats, mules and an occasional goat made up the farm population, all demanding the farmer's attention and time. With the stock watered, fed, given fresh bedding, and possibly turned out to pasture, the farmer could turn his attention to crops and other matters. Census records show hay and corn to be Fairfax County's most important crops. Little of these were sold commercially, however, rather they were used as support crops for the dairy industry.[18] Hay and feed stores abounded in neighboring towns but most dairymen attempted to supply their own straw, ensilage and grain, thus cutting costs by making the most efficient use of their land. This involved raising several crops and a year-round effort of cultivation. Work began in early spring when a team of horses--later a tractor--pulled a steel plow across each field, turning up the earth into a rough and lumpy mass. Little was known of contour plowing or planting at this time, and the team was driven back and forth in straight rows. C. T. Rice and County Agricultural Extension Agent H. B. Derr both noted that erosion was a major problem in the area at the time.[19] The newly broken ground was then worked with a "drag," generally made of heavy logs chained together and topped with a platform on which the driver stood. The purpose of this implement was to use the weight of the "drag" to break up the soil clods. After this was finished, a field still needed to be worked once more before planting, this time with a harrow. The harrow resembled a large, spike-toothed rake, with two sections, each containing four rows of teeth. Passed over the field, it stirred up the ground and continued the pulverization of the soil to make a mellow, friable seed bed.[20] These chores were exacting and time-consuming. Neal Bailey, who has spent many of his 66 years in working fields around Floris, estimated that a man and strong team could harrow or drag but a ten-acre field in about 6-1/2 hours. Plowing took even longer. "Most of the land was hard to plow and we had to start as soon as possible in the spring in order to get through before it got too hard and sometimes we didn't make it," wrote Wilson McNair. The majority of farmers could plow only an acre or acre and a half in a day's time.[21] Fairfax County's soil (principally Chester loam, a clay soil with a slightly acidic base) was deep, fertile and, as Joseph Beard put it, "adapted to growing the kinds of things cows like to eat at a reasonable price."[22] Because it was somewhat acidic, the soil benefitted from the addition of lime and, of course, needed other fertilizers. Fertilization techniques had been known for hundreds of years (George Washington burned oyster shells to obtain lime for his fields), however, their benefits were not always fully understood. Most farmers spread manure and some guano on their cropland, but correct chemical balances for specific crops were achieved only infrequently. Often the small landowner did not have spare fields to lie fallow for a year--the ideal situation for soil enrichment. "We spread some lime a time or two, but not nearly enough," admitted Wilson McNair. "We got burned lump lime and dumped it on the ground in piles of one bushel and when it had slaked we spread it with a shovel." The spreading itself could be a problem, especially when the earliest trucks began to be used in the mid-1920s. A truck hauling seven or eight tons of lime would bog down in a wet field: "The only way you could get out was to dump the lime, and if you dumped the lime you were in the hole you got stuck in." Thus, a lack of understanding of soil building techniques was coupled with the physical difficulty of fertilization, to inhibit the optimum efficiency of the land in the early 20th century.[23] With the soil prepared, the crops could be sown. In the fall, generally between mid-October and Thanksgiving, winter wheat was planted. A "drill" or mechanical planter drawn by horses was used, which could be adapted for use with oats, barley or rye. The area had once been a principal wheat-growing region, but in the early 20th century dairymen cultivated wheat chiefly for the straw which was used for bedding. In the mid-1930s, however, the availability of certified seed (seed which was grown to be of a uniform and established varietal type, much as genetically pure livestock was bred) raised the quality of Fairfax wheat and slightly increased the grain's marketability.[24] Edith Rogers, a long-time Floris resident and for many years a member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, grew wheat on her family's farm to use in chicken feed, and to have milled into flour for home use. It was ground at the Herndon Milling Company.[25] Like the use of certified seed, increased understanding of fertilization and crop rotation practices boosted production of wheat per acre, yet it never gained prominence as even a secondary crop. In large part this was due to the fact that wheat was a less desirable ingredient in cattle feed than was corn or even soybeans.[26] Corn was planted in the spring, generally in late April. Again a drill was employed, which, planting two rows at a time, enabled the farmer to plant about ten acres in one day. The wide variety of uses for corn made it Fairfax County's most important grain crop and a 1926 report on the area's agriculture observed that "nearly every farm has more or less corn."[27] Not only was the grain a chief ingredient in the dairy cattle's "concentrate" or feed mixture, but it was used to feed horses, chickens and to fatten pigs near butchering time. The leaves and stalks were ground for ensilage or stored in the shock for dry fodder. During the 1920s, County Agent Derr promoted a continual campaign to improve the area's corn production and even introduced a new variety, dubbed "Fairfax County White Corn," because of its local success. He also worked to increase yields of other popular strains, notably Reid's Yellow Dent. In a report on his work in this field in 1925, Derr shows his methods to be not far removed from the early genetic experimentation of Gregor Mendel. For the past four years the writer has assisted one of his best demonstrators in improving his crop of Reid's Yellow Dent Corn. The first year the best 50 ears were planted in 50 separate rows and at harvest time the best yielding 10 rows were selected for the next year's work. This work was continued, each year the number of rows being reduced. This year the results show a very uniform type of corn....[28] Soybeans began to be introduced into the area during this period and Fairfax County farmers also sowed various grasses for summer pasturage and to make hay for winter feeding. Timothy and clover predominated among pasture crops. Some farmers persisted in raising alfalfa, despite H. B. Derr's repeated protests that it was unprofitable on the county's lime-poor soil.[29] A few ambitious farmers even experimented with grasses attempting to find those which produced the highest milk yields and one went so far as to have a special ladino clover seed brought from Oregon because he felt it increased the richness of his milk.[30] As with wheat and corn, improved varietal types and stricter control over the uniformity of the seed greatly aided the cultivator. [Illustration: Spring plowing on the McNair farm near Floris. The serene aspect of the pre-mechanization farm is evident in this photograph taken in the first decade of the twentieth century. Photo courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder.] Naturally, the farmer's work only began with the sowing of the seed, for activity continued throughout the year. The work of calving, of pruning orchard trees, digging garden beds, and trimming cattle hooves occurred in the spring. In early summer the corn was thinned from four to two stalks per hill, by using a sharp stick to dig the stalks out. Then, toward the end of June the winter wheat was harvested. Cut with a binder and tied in bundles, it was shocked (put in stacks of ten to twelve bundles, wigwam fashion, with a bundle on top to shed water, or stacked on poles in a mound with the outside sloping a bit to let the rain run off) and left to dry in the field. If threshed by hand after about a month it had to be gathered and taken to the barn for further drying. In the 1920s, however, only a few farmers still wielded the flail; most threshing was done by steam and later gas-powered threshing machines which travelled from farm to farm. Wilson McNair described these cumbersome and sometimes dangerous machines this way: The thresher was run and pulled by a traction engine. They moved slowly only about 2 mi. an hour. The engine had a water tank mounted on each side in the rear to carry water while it was moving from one place to another.... The engines all had whistles and they would blow them every once in a while when they were on the road so we would know they were coming. We had to haul up some wood to fire the engine before we threshed.... In later years we had self-packing and weighing threshers with blowers that moved the straw further from the thresher. One time Mr. Hornbaker threshed for us. We had a small engine and thresher that was pulled by a team. While we were washing up for dinner some one looked up and saw smoke, [on] the other side of the barn where the thresher was. All hands ran up there and pulled the thresher out of the way and saved the wheat that was threshed, but the straw burned up. A spark from the engine had fallen into the straw.[31] During the summer months of the cultivation process, insect control was also a major consideration. By the late 1930s a few large farms, such as the Harrisons, could hire an airplane to dust their crops, but modest farms of necessity relied on hand labor for this, as most other chores. "As ... new varieties of clover, alfalfa, and other plants came to be used, seems like the insects came along with them," lamented one farmer.[32] The Japanese beetle, introduced into America in the 1920s, wrecked particular havoc with the crucial corn crop. "The Japanese beetle was just awful," recalled Ray Harrison, "it would eat the tassel up which pollinated the corn ... then would get right into the ear of the corn and go right down into the shuckings."[33] Against these pests, and the inevitable destruction of wildlife, weather, and weeds, the farmer had to maintain an eternal vigilance. Much of the growing season was spent in monitoring these destructive forces. The benefits of this watchfulness became apparent with the harvest. As mentioned above, wheat was the earliest crop reaped but the major harvesting was done early in September. Corn was cut and shocked at this time, and the large task of filling the silo was undertaken. To do this stalks and leaves of the corn were chopped by an ensilage cutter. Like the thresher, this machine was generally owned by an outside agent; it travelled from farm to farm to process each farmer's fodder. The early cutters were powered by steam, but like numerous other farm instruments, gasoline-driven equipment was developed during World War I. On a large farm up to twenty men were needed to keep a threshing machine or ensilage cutter going. Bundles of corn were chopped by the machine and then conveyed to a fan which blew the ensilage through a pipe into the silo. There one to four men tamped it down and guided the nozzle on the blower pipe to insure even distribution. It was dirty work, the corn stalks oozing juice and sticking as tenaciously as burrs to the clothes, hands and hair of those working in the silo. A small landowner might complete the silo filling process in a day, but for large farms it often took the better part of a week.[34] Just as the spring brought forth a burgeoning activity, so did things happen with a rush in the fall. Haying was done just before the corn harvest, in the hot, late summer days which would cure the new-mown grass in the field. To cut the hay the county's farmers often used a one- or two-horse rake with a single attachment to raise or lower the rake's teeth when passing over a meadow. The dried hay, with its almost overpoweringly sweet smell, was lifted by forks into a wagon, tramped down, then transported to fill bursting barns. The least mechanized farms forked the hay into the lofts by hand but later barns were equipped with a mechanical fork for lifting the hay. Haying had to be done at precisely the right time or the grass would not cure properly and the hay would spoil. The combination of heat, hard, backbreaking work, and the necessity for hurry made haying a particularly fatiguing time.[35] Most of the harvest was used right on the farm. Like manure, which was recycled to enrich fields and gardens, the grain and hay crops went to nourish the farm's dairy animals. Little was marketed and little was wasted. "That proved to be the best thing you could do," noted Holden Harrison, "grow as much of your own feed for your cattle as you could. You sold your ... crop production through your milk can."[36] [Illustration: A shock of wheat on the Ellmore farm near Floris. On this particularly successful farm the wheat was sold for seed to help improve the stock on other area farms. Photo in Annual Report of County Agent H. B. Derr, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: This mechanical hay loader on the Harrison Brothers' farm near Floris dates from 1935. Photo courtesy of Holden Harrison.] The fruits of the year's labor came not only from the hay fields but from garden and orchard, whose abundance had to be gathered, preserved and stored in the late summer season. Fairfax County had once been a major truck farming section but the onslaught of insects and competition from large commercial orchards (such as those in the Shenandoah Valley) had relegated this produce to the realm of home use. The A. S. Harrison farm included plum, apple, peach and cherry trees and Margaret Mary Lee recalled that cherries, pears and apples grew in her family's orchard. Sometimes pears and apples were made into cider but most of the fruit was dried or canned for winter use. Many farmers made the extra effort to keep bees under their fruit trees because they aided pollination and produced honey from the blossoms. The Lees were among those who enjoyed the soft hum of the bees among the orchard trees. Margaret Lee especially liked to recall them darting busily between the fragrant white sheets, when the washing was hung in the yard.[37] The vegetable garden, too, had a prominent place in the farm scheme. Elizabeth Rice noted that "everyone had a good garden, growing such things as sweet corn, limas, string beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and asparagus."[38] Others mentioned lettuce, herbs and popcorn in the family vegetable patch and many farms had grape arbors.[39] Like other areas of cultivation, the garden plot required care and attention for three seasons of the year. The round of soil preparation, planting, nourishing and harvesting added additional responsibilities to the multitude of duties which already crowded the sunlight hours. Still, the rewards were great: self-sufficiency, economy, and the enjoyment of the earth's fresh bounty. With the harvest over the farmer would fill the less hectic winter hours with the unending minutia of the farm. Fence and equipment mendings, cutting ice from ponds and rivers, chopping wood, and grubbing up trees all had a part in his busy life. Another burst of activity occurred in early winter when animals were butchered for the year's meat. Most farm families bought their beef in Herndon, but nearly everyone kept hogs for home consumption.[40] Neal Bailey, a veteran of many local butcherings, described them in this particularly detailed manner: Two to three meat hogs per year were raised and slaughtered, all about Thanksgiving. Farmers used to do everything by the almanac. Two men would grab a hog and throw it on its back and cut the jugular vein with a butcher knife. The pig was thrown then into a scalding trough--a metal trough with water placed over a wood fire burning in a trench.... In the old days, the local farmers heated rocks red hot and threw them in a big barrel of water. It was a day's work to haul rocks for this. The hair was scalded and scraped off. Then the hog was gutted. Old folks used to take the insides and make chitlins out of them. I never ate them myself. The hogs were hung up overnight in a shed or in a tree where dogs couldn't get it, to let the carcasses cure. The skin was left on the carcass, and next day, it was cut up and salted down in a box. It was kept tight so flies and mice couldn't get in.... Anything that was left in spring was smoked to preserve it through the summer.[41] [Illustration: A small orchard apiary kept to provide honey and aid pollination of the fruit trees. Photo in Annual Report of County Agent H. B. Derr, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] Each family preserved its own meat and as Emma Ellmore related, "everybody had his own pet recipe ... for mixing the salt and the brown sugar--and some smoked the meat and some didn't." Lard had to be rendered for storage in the cellar, sausage hand-ground and canned or frozen, the heads boiled until the meat left the bones, then chopped and pressed into a pan with the pot liquor to make headcheese. Butchering time seems to have been an especially unforgettable occasion, for its details stand out sharply in the minds of many. "After butchering each year, Mother made ... buckwheat cakes to eat with fresh sausage," reminisced Margaret Peck. "Baked on a long black griddle, over a wood stove, spread with homemade butter and topped with corn syrup, they were the right beginning for a winter day."[42] For Floris residents, the smells and tastes of a time seem to whirl the memory backward with particular acuity. Even in the hectic activity of harvest, a farmer was obliged to move through the evening routine of milking, feeding and bedding his animals. With these tasks completed, and a final check on the barns to see that all was snug, the farmer's day was nearly complete by about 6:00. He ate a hearty supper, then read _The Southern Planter_, and possibly mended farm machinery or did a little work in the barn.[43] For those who arose at 4:00 a.m. "in all kinds of weather," sleep came early and the house was usually dark by 9:00 p.m.[44] * * * * * In all of this activity of cultivation, the rush of harvest, and regularity of day-to-day chores, the farmer worked, not alone, but in conjunction with his family. Unlike the industrial worker, whose employment was discrete and separate from his home life, the farmer's home was his workshop, and his labor directly connected to his sustenance. His family was an integral part of this scheme; far from being removed from the household's form of support, they were intimately bound up in it. Wife, husband, children and grandparents all contributed in their distinct sphere. The term "family farm" was no idle denomination, but a recognition of the importance the entire family played in the smooth operation of the farm. The relationship of a farm husband and wife was in many ways a truer partnership than that of the urban marriage. "A farmer needs a wife like he needs the rain," is an old farm saying, expounded for decades in the farmer's almanacs. It has now been collaborated by rural sociologists to show that farm efficiency was based largely on the partners' shared duties.[45] The farmers themselves seemed to realize this. In a 1932 nationwide survey of factors which farmers regarded as most important to their success, "co-operation of wives" was ranked second.[46] The activities of rural men and women were co-equal, not identical. Women rarely worked in the fields except in the press of harvesting when they might drive a horse to pull up the hay fork--"what we've all done, I guess," agreed one group of Floris women.[47] They only occasionally aided the men in the barn. Edith Rogers remembered working with the stock as did Margaret Mary Lee, who helped with milking and also recalled washing the milk storage tank and other equipment. This pleased the local milk inspector who told her, "When women are in the barn, I know the equipment is clean."[48] Except for such intermittent work, the outside duties were left to the men. Instead, most women's activity was to be found in the farmhouse and garden. Her responsibilities encompassed the expected areas of housekeeping, decorating and sewing, and often the less obvious work of bookkeeping or lawnmowing. The farm woman's most demanding task probably centered around the preparation and preservation of food, a vitally important function, for to waste or misuse food was to negate the hard labor of a year. In the current era of convenience foods, the time-consuming nature of cooking is easily forgotten. Just operating a wood-burning stove was a complicated task, attested to by the directions for laying a fire in a contemporary cookbook. To build a fire, first let down the grate, and take up the ashes and cinders carefully to avoid raising a dust, sifting the cinders to use in building the fire; brush the soot and dust out of the upper part of the stove, and from the flues which can be reached; be sure that all parts of the ovens and hot-boxes are clean; if there is a water-back attached to the stove, see that it is filled with water; if it is connected with water-pipes, be sure in winter that they are not frozen; brush up the hearth-stone. Lay the fire as follows: Put a few handfuls of dry shavings or paper in the bottom of the grate; upon them, some small sticks of pine wood laid across each other; then a few larger sticks, and some cinders free from ashes; a few small lumps of coke or coal may be mixed with the cinders. Open all the draughts of the stove, close all the covers, and light the fire; when the cinders are lighted, add fresh coke and coal gradually and repeatedly until a clear, bright fire is started; then partly close the draughts. To keep up a fire, add fuel often, a little at once, in order not to check the heat: letting the fire burn low, and then replenishing it abundantly, is a wasteful method, because the stove grows so cold that most of the fresh heat is lost in raising the temperature again to the degree necessary for cooking.[49] INVENTORY OF THE ESTATE OF GEORGE W. KIDWELL December 9, 1925 ARTICLE VALUE. 8 Grade Guernsey Cows, $40.00 each $ 320.00 12 Holstein Cows 480.00 1 Bull 50.00 1 Holstein Calf 10.00 2 Black Heiffers, $40.00 each 80.00 2 Small Black Heiffers 30.00 2 Black Horses 100.00 2 Double Sets Harness 25.00 15 milk Cans 15.00 2 Milk Buckets 1.00 1 Strainer .25 133 Shocks Fodder 39.90 120 Barrels Corn 360.00 6 2/3 Tons Hay Bailed, $20.00 Ton 133.33 6600 Lbs. Loose Hay @.75 49.50 20 Tons Ensilage 40.00 160 Bu. Wheat @ $1.40 per Bu 224.00 1 High Wheel Wagon 25.00 1 Truck Wagon 20.00 1 Top Wagon 10.00 1 Manure Spreader 100.00 1 Hay Ladder 10.00 1 Blizzard Ensilage Cutter 15.00 1 Gasoline Engine 20.00 1 Milk Wagon 10.00 1 Platform Scale 10.00 1 Set Single Harness 1.00 1 Buggy 2.00 1/2 Ton $16.00 Rock 9.00 1 Oil Drum .50 1 One Horse Wagon 2.00 1 Basket Sleigh 3.00 1 Top Wagon 3.00 1 Smoothing Harrow 5.00 2 Single Shovel Plows 1.00 1 Single Cultivator .50 1 Oliver 2 Horse Plow 2.00 1 Spring Tooth Harrow 5.00 1 Set Blacksmith Tools 25.00 1 Lot of Lumber at Mill House 40.00 1 Lot of Tools and Repairs in Mill House 5.00 1 Cut off Saw 1.00 Contents of Well House 15.00 1 Dort Automobile 100.00 Contents of Garage 25.00 1 Lot of Ladders and Contents of Wood House 25.00 Contents of Tool House 25.00 1 Grindstone 2.00 1 Iron Boiler 5.00 1 Wheelbarrow 3.00 1 Hay Rake 20.00 2 Mowing Machines, $5.00 each 10.00 1 Riding Cultivator 5.00 1 Corn Planter 20.00 1 Lath Mill and Bench 1.00 1 Grain Drill 80.00 1 Hay Tedder 25.00 1 Dish Harrow 1.00 1 Three Horse Plow 5.00 1 Binder 5.00 1 Note dated Aug. 30th, 1921 payable 3 yrs. after date 500.00 Interest on above note from Aug. 30th, 1924, to the present time @ 6% 38.33 Cash in Herndon National Bank 901.88 Cash on Savings Account Farmers & Mechanics National 685.60 Cash on Savings Account The Potomac Savings Bank 549.80 Liberty Bonds 200.00 ------ 5630.59 This inventory, attached to the will of a small farmer, shows the diverse equipment found on the 1920's farm. [Illustration: Plan of the family farm of Mason F. Smith, drawn by Mason Smith, Jr., for a 4-H Club project. The farm was bought in 1932 by Floyd Kidwell and now constitutes the nucleus of Frying Pan Farm Park. From Mason Smith, Jr. Livestock Record Books in Annual Report of County Agent H. B. Derr, 1929, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] Though the wood-burning stoves often imparted a special flavor to the food prepared on them (for example, one farm cooking devotee opined that no waffles could taste like those from a wood-burning stove[50]), the stoves were fearfully hot in the summer and needed constant refueling and expert attention to heat evenly. Few Fairfax County farm women had the luxury of electricity in their kitchens until well after 1935. Statistics show that only 65% of farm women cooked with electricity even in 1940.[51] In addition to the large regular meals required by a hard-working family, the farm woman prepared the gargantuan harvest meals shared by all who worked in the fields. Cooking these meals in the late summer heat was a chore which took several days. "An ordeal" one veteran called it and enumerated some parts of the expected menu: corn bread, hot biscuits, pork shoulder, pressed chicken, fried chicken, vegetables and pie. "We'd put food enough together for them--and did they eat!"[52] Even at other times of the year, a farm wife needed to count on unexpected visitors and accommodate her activities to an unforeseen need to entertain. Her adaptability is attested to by Joseph Beard who described the open farm hospitality of the era: When anybody came around to your farm in those days, when dinnertime came, you'd say, 'Well, it's time for dinner. Let's go eat.' It didn't seem to matter if you had somebody drop in on you on short notice. Women, ladies, mothers, wives, were accustomed to this kind of thing. It never seemed to upset them. They just took it in stride. They put on another plate and said, 'We haven't got much, but you're welcome to what we have.' They'd go on like this. They would bring out the best they could find. That was the kind of condition that prevailed.[53] The lady of the house in this period did not merely cook her family's food; she was instrumental in its production and processing. The family garden was generally her responsibility. It was she who planted the early radishes, herbs, flowers and all the multitude of summer vegetables in the cool, moist spring soil, weeded and nurtured them through the summer months, and finally gathered them in the lingering Indian summer days. If there were daughters in the family, they aided her in this as in her other activities. When the produce was finally all picked, peeled and cut, she combined them with vinegar, sugar, and spices to preserve the vegetables as pickles, jelly or canned goods. It was warm and tiring, but highly rewarding work. "Never will I forget the pungent fragrances that pervaded the air when it was catsup or pickle-making season," wrote Lottie Schneider. When our mothers made apple butter in great kettles each child took a turn at stirring the delicious mixture. The wonderful fragrance made the task easier even though the thickening ingredients sometimes sputtered and caused burns as they popped out on the hands who used the stirring paddle.[54] The pantry shelves filled with glass jars displaying their highly colored contents produced feelings of pride and plenty in the farm woman. Poultry keeping also fell to the farmer's wife. There were a sizable number of commercial poultry farms in the county--it was in fact the area's second most important farm industry--but most dairy and general farms kept just enough for their own use.[55] Egg collecting, feeding and cleaning of the chicken house and yard, even killing, dressing and plucking the poultry were done by female members of the farm family. Thrifty women saved the feathers for pillows and coverlets and nearly all sold their excess eggs to the "hucksters" who travelled from farm to farm buying surplus goods. These peddlars also bought rabbits, turkeys, and other poultry, as well as home-churned butter from the farms. This was yet another area in which women utilized and processed the raw materials of the land. Twice a week the cream that had been skimmed and saved was churned (generally in round barrel churns with wooden paddles), salted, and packed in stone jars to be picked up and transported to the Alexandria and Washington markets. One of the early hucksters was Earl Robey who collected eggs and chickens once a week. "He travelled with 2 horses hitched to a covered wagon," wrote one farmer. "In later years he had a model T truck." The money made by the women was theirs to keep, for running the house and personal expenses, and the austerity or comparative comfort of a farmstead was often the direct result of the energy and efficiency of the farm woman.[56] The rural woman's place was respected and secure on the farms of fifty years ago. The farmer might consider himself the overall manager but he recognized his spouse's vital contributions. "Mutually they both decided to make things go and they did go," wrote one 1930s farm boy of his parents. "Mother did not feel inferior to father and she never felt that he expected her to feel so."[57] If the woman's role and duties were firmly set in this rural society, then so was her status. An additional responsibility was that of caring for children, but in the farm family this was more clearly a joint obligation of the father and mother than in families in which the male parent left home to work. Too, children were more closely tied to the family as a working unit; they felt both the necessity of aiding their parents with the running of the farm and the pride of contributing in a real sense to the family's well-being. Of course, farm children attended school, but they also shared the pattern of their parents' life. With father and mother they awoke in the early hours of the morning to help with barn or household chores: "It didn't make any difference how small they were, they got up at six o'clock."[58] Many learned to milk before the age of ten. On weekends, summer holidays and after school, they were also expected to help on the farm. Both boys and girls performed the unending job of gathering firewood for the kitchen stove. Carrying water was another constant chore which often fell to the family's children, for as late as 1940 nearly 40% of the county's homes still lacked running water.[59] Farm youngsters learned to drive a team and ride horseback at an early age, and this enabled them to take a horse to be shod, fetch a mower section from the general store, or run other unexpected errands. Margaret Lee stated that as a girl she used to hitch up a mule and buggy each Monday to take the family's laundry to be washed by a local Negro laundress, and pick it up again on Thursday.[60] Girls also helped with the dishes, fed chickens, and cooked while boys tackled plowing, threshing and animal husbandry. One woman recalled the special satisfaction she felt when, at the age of thirteen, she shocked an entire field of wheat.[61] By doing these chores and errands, farm children were not merely assisting in the farm operation. In the emulation of their parents' activity, they benefitted from a kind of on-the-job training which both sharpened their skills for a later farm career and furthered their identity with the family group and farm life in general. The farm child's close connection to his parents' life and the necessity for performing a variety of chores also acted in some measure as a force for social control: the child who worked with his parents was expected to act in a manner acceptable to them. Furthermore, the close-knit nature of the community reinforced the parents' values when their offspring were away from home. "A farmer was always busy, and his kids didn't run the streets," noted Joseph Beard.[62] Another native of northern Virginia explained the prevalent philosophy in more detail: Papa was a firm believer that work was a therapy that kept young people out of mischief. It was unthought of for youngsters to get into serious trouble in those days other than smoking corn silk or grapevine, and that was a punishment in itself. All were assigned specific chores and the youngest started out picking up chips and other small pieces of wood from the 'woodpile' for kindling to start the fire in the kitchen range at daylight in the morning.... As we grew a little older bringing in the firewood was added to the list of chores and when you grew big enough to chop and split cordwood, usually around the age of 10-12 years, one found the chores around the home were endless.[63] [Illustration: Rebecca Rice, daughter of C. T. Rice, canning fruit in her home near Oakton, Virginia. Note the ice box and wood burning stove, standard features of the early 20th century kitchen. Photo in H. B. Derr Reports, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: Elizabeth Harrison in her room on a farm near Herndon, Virginia. She refurbished the room herself as part of a 4-H project. Photo in H. B. Derr Reports, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] The round of chores might seem endless, but farm kids had their fun, too. Joseph Beard and Richard Peck both recall swimming in Horse Pen Run and Peck also reminisced about fishing in the local streams.[64] Margaret Lee was sometimes treated to a baked sweet potato after school; she rode the family mule for recreation.[65] At Halloween, much secret giggling went on as plans were afoot to take an outhouse and sit it on the school porch, or sneak all of the milk cans out of the dairy and set them outside.[66] Skating on the baptismal pond of Frying Pan Baptist Church, and neighborhood events such as picnics, watermelon feasts and oyster suppers also lent excitement to the child's life. Perhaps the most pervasive enjoyment came from the ever-changing delights of the countryside itself. Wrote one resident of the Herndon area: "We could ramble through the woods, finding huckleberries, wild flowers, sassafras roots and stems, chestnuts and lovely mosses."[67] * * * * * Although children provided a great deal of supplemental labor on the county's small farms, the "hired hand" was also an important part of the community's work force. One local resident estimated that approximately half of the farms in the Herndon area used hired labor, and this figure is collaborated by the agricultural census of 1940. Other evidence shows that the largest single expense (about 38% of total farm expenditures) for the owner of thirty or more acres was hired help.[68] In Fairfax County, as in most of the South, this hired labor was composed almost entirely of the community's black residents, though occasionally a family would employ a white man. The Ellmore family, who often had a white man as their hired help, was such an exception.[69] [Illustration: A homemade sled used for hauling manure to the fields. Note the two young boys who, by driving the sled, shared the family's responsibility for the farm. Photo in Annual Report of County Agent H. B. Derr, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] Extra help was engaged in several ways. Larger farms frequently kept one or two men throughout the year, sometimes supplying them with a house and their noon meal as well as a salary.[70] On most farms, however, extra help would be hired at particularly busy seasons by the day or the week. "In the summertime you'd get seasonal help, gather them up here and there, wherever you could," stated Holden Harrison. "If you could carry those men, at least the best ones, over the winter, then you'd have a good force that you could depend on for your summer work, your planting and harvesting."[71] In some cases the hired man would come with his team of horses for which he received additional wages. In another variation groups of workers would organize into crews to perform a specific function (for example, to fill a silo) and travelled from farm to farm accomplishing this special task.[72] Many of the laborers in the Floris area came from Willard, a community of both whites and blacks, just over the Loudoun County line. About 85% of Fairfax County's black population owned no land in 1934 and supported themselves solely by agricultural labor.[73] Unlike this large landless majority, many of Willard's families owned three to fifteen acres of land. Most of these families grew vegetables on their land and nearly all kept a cow.[74] A few black families tried to support themselves by truck gardening, a difficult task when competing with larger more economical farms. One such farmer, Ernest E. Webb, struggled to maintain his children by selling vegetables in the city market. Biweekly he took his goods by wagon across the low, unstable Chain Bridge and along Canal Road to the markets in Washington, but for this long, exhausting trip his profits were slim: "We made enough to come back home, feed the horses, and feed ourselves a little for another trip."[75] To eke out an existence, most blacks had to supplement any farming income they might have by working as agricultural laborers. Those laborers who did not have steady employment had to wait for work until they were needed for a specific job. When a farmer wanted extra help, he went to the black community, or sent word by someone else, and detailed the number of men needed and the job to be done. "In the spring my father would go up there [to Willard] or send me up there to see if I could get three or four fellows to help get the spring work going," remarked Holden Harrison. "Maybe you could get them and maybe you couldn't."[76] Sometimes there was a labor shortage, but frequently more men wanted work than there were jobs to go around. Several area residents remembered that if word got out that ten men were needed for a job, often fifteen or more would show up.[77] This was especially true during the agricultural depression of the 1920s and 1930s, which hit blacks far worse than the county's white population. The blacks' landholdings were of inferior quality and generally too small for efficient operation, and this, combined with their meagre operating capital and inadequate reserves, made the black agriculturalist more dependent than ever on work from the large landowner.[78] The hired man was expected to arrive in time for the early morning milking and work the lengthy fifteen-hour day alongside the farmer. His chores ranged from making hay to cutting wood and building fences. Neal Bailey recalled that he spent his entire first day as a laborer driving fence posts with a 16-pound hammer. The standard salary was $1.00 to $1.50 per day plus all he could eat for lunch. Some farmers paid by the job rather than by the day though they found the latter system preferable. When the help was not so concerned with completing a task rapidly, farmers believed it produced a better quality work. Occasionally the white farmers shared or traded work with their black counterparts. More frequently, hired hands worked for a share of the fruits of their labor. At butchering time, the hired help might go home with sausage, side meat (bacon) or a pork shoulder for his pay. At berry season they picked a farmer's blackberries or wild cherries for half of the take.[79] The women and children of the black communities in Fairfax County also worked. Black women took in laundry, picked fruit and sometimes came to the white farmer's houses to help with canning or meat preservation at butchering time. One woman worked as a midwife; according to Margaret Lee, the only one in the area. She delivered Miss Lee's younger sister around 1913.[80] Children as young as nine would thin corn or pluck potato bugs off the dark, leafy plants for 50¢ a day. Girls used to pick berries and pull field cress when it was going to seed, and some children worked in the farmhouses running errands.[81] The Ellmore family often had a young boy to help do odds and ends, and another Floris resident noted that "there was some twins of about twelve years old and we needed a little help so I took one of them in the house and my brother had the other out to help him with things."[82] Neal Bailey recalled going out to help his father cut corn at a very young age and being told to "keep working--you have no back," even when it felt as if it were breaking.[83] Within these labor relationships the white employer retained the most control since he set wages and hours, and because he worked with the knowledge that the black families were dependent on him for employment. Yet the blacks had their influence too, for the larger landowners needed their labor to keep the farms operating smoothly. The farmer's dependence was apparent in instances such as that related by Ray Harrison, who remembered one Christmas night when no help at all showed up. That night he milked fifty-two cows by hand, something he could not afford to do every day.[84] In numerous ways the hired hands exercised some control over their working conditions. For example, seasoned workmen reserved the right to "break in" a field hand new to the neighborhood, thus both initiating him into local work patterns and assuring that his expectations and treatment corresponded to that of the veteran help.[85] In times of intense activity, the labor supply would be short and the workers raised their prices accordingly. One farmer recalled that during an exceptionally busy silo-filling season the help were "jacking up the price ... ten cents an hour about four times in one day.... They were putting pressure on because they thought they had the leverage there." In this case the farmer called their bluff and sent the workers home, but in many instances, the laborers held sway and received higher wages during peak work periods.[86] The white attitude toward their black workers seems to have been paternalistic, as was the pattern of most racial relations in the post-bellum South. Though area farmers maintain that their hired laborers were liked and respected--"as much a part of the neighborhood as anyone else"--in conversation capable workers were referred to as "boy" or by the old plantation epithets of "Aunt" and "Uncle." A hearty noon meal was part of the hired man's pay, but the help ate outside by themselves, rather than with the family.[87] Moreover, rather than admit his need for the laborers, the white employer sometimes viewed his hiring in an altruistic light. "I remember my brother went over to these colored people that had been working for him at different times, in the middle of the winter, and told them to come over and cut some wood, and he paid them for it so that they would have something, because they were pretty bad off. So he just made work for them," stated one county woman.[88] Undoubtedly, charitable motives were truly meant, but the outcome was a paternalistic attitude which failed to recognize the mutual dependence of land and labor. This reliable supply of labor eliminated the county's need for migratory workers, and also reduced the amount of tenancy since most farmers found labor enough to manage all of their acreage. Nevertheless, during the period between 1918-1940, about 10-12% of the white farm population and 2% of the black were tenants.[89] Statistical evidence shows over half of the tenants to be cash croppers in 1925 and 40% in 1940. Many historians believe this to be the least beneficial system for the tenant as his obligation was to pay the landlord a fixed rent on the land regardless of the success of his crop.[90] However, Joseph Beard stated that most of the tenants with whom he had contact when he was county agent in the late 1930s were sharecroppers. By this system, the renting farmer supplied his tools and labor, the landlord furnished the land, and the crop was split. Fairfax County never harbored the kind of perpetual tenancy described by James Agee's _Let Us Now Praise Famous Men_, in which families lived in squalor and humiliation with little hope of pulling their way out of debt. This occurred more frequently in the one-crop areas of the deep South where exhausted soil and crop dependency made for a high debt risk each year. Beard maintained that the sharecroppers of the late 1930s were respectable people, merely renting land until they could afford to purchase their own. In several instances, they were young local couples who went on to buy their tenured land and to become established members of the community.[91] Still, at best, any tenure system was a demoralizing one for the renter because his profits were consistently skimmed off to the landlord. PART I--NOTES _Continuity_ [5] Interview with Joseph Beard by Elizabeth Pryor, Fairfax, Virginia, January 23, 1979; notes from interview with Margaret Mary Lee by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, March 28, 1978. All transcripts and notes from interviews used in this paper are deposited in the Fairfax County Library Virginiana Collection (hereafter cited "Virginiana"). [6] Notes on interview with Elizabeth and Emma Ellmore by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, March 2, 1978. [7] Interview with Holden Harrison, Ray Harrison and Virginia Presgraves Harrison by Elizabeth Pryor, Chantilly, Virginia, February 5, 1979. [8] Notes on interview with John and Edna Middleton by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, February 24, 1978. [9] Interview with Joseph Beard and Holden Harrison by Elizabeth Pryor, Floris, Virginia, March 6, 1979; Wilson Day McNair, "What I Remember," unpublished manuscript, n.d., copy courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder; author's conversation with Rebecca Middleton, Floris, Virginia, April 4, 1979. [10] John Middleton/Netherton, February 24, 1978; and interview with Joseph Beard by Nan Netherton and Patrick Reed, Fairfax, Virginia, November, 1974. [11] Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [12] "Floris Producers Active," _Herndon News-Observer_, January 22, 1925. [13] Lottie Dyer Schneider, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_ (Marion, Virginia, 1962), 10 and 30. [14] Notes on interview with Richard Peck by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, February 23, 1978; notes on interview with Virginia McFarland Greear by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, March 2, 1978; and Schneider, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_, 10. [15] Elizabeth Rice to author, Wilmington, Delaware, January 30, 1979. [16] Beard/Netherton/Reed, November, 1974; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978; Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978; and Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [17] _Agricultural Census, 1925_; and Federal Crop Reporting Service, _Virginia Farm Statistics, 1935-1936_ (Richmond, 1936). [18] _Ibid._; and Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [19] Lehman Nickell and Cary J. Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_ (Charlottesville, 1924), 29-40; notes on interview with Neal Bailey by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, December 12, 1978; "Fairfax Farmer Threw Away His Plow in 1928 and Amazing Results Have Been Revolutionary," _Richmond Times-Dispatch_, September 17, 1951; and Annual Reports of County Agricultural Extension Agent H. B. Derr, 1928, 1929 and 1932, in Virginiana. [20] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978. [21] _Ibid._; and McNair, "What I Remember." [22] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [23] Derr Reports, 1928, 1932; McNair, "What I Remember"; and Joseph Beard quoted in Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [24] _Ibid._ [25] Notes on interview with Edith Rogers by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, n.d. (c. spring, 1978). [26] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [27] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; Rogers/Netherton; Derr Report, 1926, 9. [28] Derr Report, 1925, 2. [29] _Agricultural Census, 1925_; and Derr Reports, 1921 and 1924. [30] "Fairfax Farmer Threw Away Plow." [31] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; and McNair, "What I Remember." [32] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [33] _Ibid._ [34] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; notes on interview with Joseph Beard by Elizabeth Pryor, Fairfax, Virginia, February 27, 1979; and Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [35] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; McNair, "What I Remember." [36] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [37] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979; Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978; Elizabeth Rice to Mary Scott, n.d. (c. fall, 1978), copy courtesy of Mary Scott. [38] Elizabeth Rice to author, January 30, 1979. [39] 4-H Record Books, copy in Annual Report of County Agricultural Extension Agent; Derr Report, 1927; Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979; and McNair, "What I Remember." [40] Rogers/Netherton; Greear/Netherton, March 23, 1978. [41] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978. [42] Margaret Peck quoted in _Out of the Frying Pan_ (Herndon, Virginia, 1964), 4. [43] J. Middleton/Netherton, February 24, 1978. [44] Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978; and Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [45] See _Hills Southern Almanac_, (Virginia Fire and Marine Insurance Company, 1929); J. H. Kolb and Edmund S. de Brunner, _A Study of Rural Society_ (Boston, 1935), 36-37. [46] _Ibid._, 37. [47] Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [48] Rogers/Netherton; Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978. [49] Juliet Corson, _Miss Corson's Practical American Cookery_ (New York, 1886), 4; and Adeline Goessling, _The Farm and Home Cook Book_ (Chicago, 1919). [50] Frances Darlington Simpson, _Virginia Country Life and Cooking_ (Washington, D.C., 1963). [51] Virginia Polytechnical Institute, _The Housing of Virginia's Rural Folk_ (Blacksburg, 1940), 26. [52] Rebecca Middleton quoted in Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [53] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [54] Schneider, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_, 30. [55] Derr Reports, 1926, 1927; nearly all interviews collaborated this information, see especially Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [56] Greear/Netherton, March 23, 1978; McNair, "What I Remember." [57] Unidentified 1930s farmer quoted in Kolb and Brunner, _A Study of Rural Society_, 33. [58] _Ibid._; Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [59] VPI, _Housing_, 26. [60] Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978. [61] _Ibid._; Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [62] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [63] Edwin W. Beitzell, _Life on the Potomac River_ (Abell, Maryland, 1968), 130. [64] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [65] Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978. [66] _Ibid._ [67] Schneider, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_, 31. [68] Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978; and W. C. Funk, "An Economic Study of Small Farms Near Washington, D.C.," _United States Department of Agriculture Bulletin 848_, June 22, 1920. This study concludes that the farmer with thirty or more acres spent 38% of his revenue for labor, as compared with 10% for feed, 11% for marketing and 3% for insurance and taxes. See Table IV of this study for a complete breakdown. [69] Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978. [70] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [71] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [72] _Ibid._ [73] _Ibid._; and William Edward Garnett and John W. Ellison, "Negro Life in Rural Virginia, 1865-1934," _Virginia Polytechnical Institute Bulletin 295_, June, 1934. [74] Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979; and Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978. [75] Dana Gumb, "Pioneer Recalls McLean," _Echoes of History_, (March and May, 1972), 28. [76] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [77] Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979; and Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [78] Garnett and Ellison, "Negro Life in Rural Virginia," 13. [79] Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979; Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [80] Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978. [81] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978. [82] Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978; interview with Edith Rogers by Patty Corbat, Craig Smith and Phyllis Hirshman, June 12, 1970. [83] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978. [84] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [85] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [86] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979; Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979. [87] Greear/Netherton, March 23, 1978; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [88] Rogers/Corbat, et al., June 12, 1970. [89] Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_, 75-76; and _Agricultural Census, 1925_. Nickell gives a 13% tenancy and lists 175 out of 304 tenants to be working on a cash-tenant basis. The Agricultural Census for 1940 also shows a 10% tenancy figure. [90] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. For a grim but revealing view of what tenancy could mean during this period, see James Agee and Walker Evans, _Let Us Now Praise Famous Men_, (New York, 1960). [91] Harold Barger and Hans M. Lansburg, _American Agriculture 1899-1939_ (New York, 1975), 212; and Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. PART II _Change_ In its seasonal cycle of activity, the close and interdependent family relationships, and the singular self-motivation of the farmer, the early 20th century farm carried on many of the traditions of the past. Except for the change from slave to free labor and the marginal use of mechanical equipment, these elements made up a world in which the farmer of 1890, 1870, or even 1850 would have felt comfortable. But running concurrently with these expected qualities of rural life were major changes which jarred and fractured the constant trends of farming. Change in attitude, technology or society occurs during all periods, but the 1920s and 1930s were a particularly dynamic time in the field of agriculture. Advances in the understanding of plant biology, animal husbandry and soil conservation, together with higher living standards through rural electrification and improved communications, were a cause for optimism about the future of the family farm. Yet these advances irrevocably altered the familiar rural life patterns. To maintain his own station within this changing world, the farmer's outlook and methods would also have to change. * * * * * Perhaps the most obvious modification of the traditional methods of farming was the increased mechanization of many farm functions during the early part of the 20th century. Not only were plows improved (by the addition of a vertical disk which made for deeper cutting and more thorough turning of the soil) and heavier harrows developed, but gasoline-powered machinery began to be widely used.[92] The diesel tractor had actually been available as early as 1905, but was not generally adopted until World War I at which time military experimentation improved the engine's construction and worker shortages made the labor-efficient machinery especially valuable. The introduction in 1924 of an all-purpose tractor, which could cultivate as well as prepare the soil, increased the machinery's usefulness and gave an additional thrust to its popularity.[93] The tractor was meant to replace the work of draft horses, the large, gentle creatures who, along with oxen and mules, had supplied the farm's power for centuries. The saving the new machinery incurred was chiefly in time, an intangible element of economics which farmers were just beginning to consider in their appraisal of income and farm value. Often the use of a tractor cut work time by half or more. Ray Harrison recalled that it took five horses and three men several days work to clean out the trees and brush for a potential field; his brother could do it with only one helper in a single day.[94] [Illustration: A broadcast harvester capable of picking four rows at a time. This mechanical picker was developed by a county farmer, H. C. Clapp. Photo in H. B. Derr Report, 1921, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: Wheat being mechanically harvested, c. 1925. Few farms could afford the luxury of such equipment at this time. Photo in H. B. Derr Report, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] The early tractors were not without their problems. Initially their wheels were of steel, which packed down the wet earth making plowing difficult, or lost traction and became mired in the ever-present red mud; the addition of spiked wheels or heavy chains helped only a little before pneumatic tires were introduced in 1932.[95] The machinery was also expensive and complicated to repair. Few farms were as fortunate as the Harrisons' on which one brother had taken numerous mechanical courses and had even worked in a tractor repair shop.[96] For farmers who could not always correlate time savings with financial advantage, the large capital outlay seemed unnecessary or even unwise. As the machinery was best adapted to large farms and intensive cultivation, this was especially true in situations where the farmer did not feel overworked, or held few ambitions to expand production. Thus, Fairfax County farmers were slow to embrace the newfangled technology. A 1924 survey of the county showed that only 10% of the farmers owned a tractor despite County Agent Derr's assertion that the "cutting of wheat with the tractor had been found the most economical way for many reasons. The principle being rapidity and saving of labor."[97] As late as 1936 Derr wrote that the majority of the small farmers could not afford to purchase mechanized equipment and were compelled to continue with their horses. The cost was partially offset by machinery loaned by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), for example, a seed corn grader and wheat smut treater which travelled "like a missionary ... from farm to farm in their crop improvement work."[98] Nevertheless even men such as A. S. Harrison, one of the area's most progressive farmers, were hesitant about the new machines, as Holden Harrison relates: He knew I was sort of a tractor bug, and one day he called me in and he said, 'Now son, now we don't use tractors out here, we grow the feed for the horses ... we do our farm work with horses.' But that very spring it got so hot that an old broken down tractor that I rounded up did more work than the twelve horses we had.[99] Economics, custom and suspicion of objects so divorced from nature's cadence reduced the farmers' enthusiasm for new machinery. Mechanized milking equipment was also held in suspicion initially. Milking machines were developed around 1900, but a prejudice against them lasted well into the 1920s. Older cows, accustomed to hand milking, did not like the sound and feel of the machines and many farmers contended that they impaired the milk-producing capabilities of some animals.[100] Separators were likewise mistrusted by some who felt that they skimmed the cream inadequately. Moreover, most of the dairy equipment required electricity for its operation and for many years this was not readily available in the area. These factors kept milking machines from being swiftly adopted in Fairfax County. Conversations with farmers of the inter-war period indicate that such equipment was not generally acquired until the mid 1930s.[101] Farmers learned of the new labor-saving devices by word of mouth, through agricultural organizations, catalogs and manufacturer's salesmen. The latter could be a nuisance to the already preoccupied farmer, but he also acted as an invaluable informational source. One dairyman explained: That was a very useful service that salesmen performed. Salesmen sort of get a black eye from some quarters but they kept the farmers up to date on the new machines.... We had a very good tractor with steel wheels, and a salesman came in and said, 'I'm representing Goodrich Rubber Company. We're making tractor tires now and if you'll let us put a set of tires on your tractor we'll let you try them out, and if you don't like them, we'll take them off and go back home with them.' So we did, we tried them and they worked.[102] The new equipment, attachments and improvements could be bought on credit, or by deferred payment (that is, extended credit) until a crop was harvested. This was frequently necessary as the machinery was costly. Joseph Beard indicated that a tractor cost about $600 to $800 in 1930. The Sears and Roebuck catalog for 1928 offered an electric milker for $145 (including a 3/4 horsepower engine) and a harrow attachment to be used with a tractor for $60. Cream separators ranged from $42.95 to $100 without a motor, which could cost as much as $30.00. "Don't make a horse out of yourself," the catalog cajoled. But with the additional cost of parts, maintenance and fuel, a farmer earning only $1,000 annually could at best hope to equip his farm only gradually.[103] To offset costs, farmers retained their old tools while gradually acquiring up-to-date equipment. An inventory of the equipment on a fifty-acre farm shows the mix of old and new owned by the typical farmer of this transition period. In 1928 the farm of George W. Kidwell near Hunter was equipped with harnesses, a two-horse plow, and blacksmithing tools, but also a gasoline engine, an oil drum and automobile.[104] Ultimately, of course, the machines were of tremendous advantage to the large and specialized dairyman. They speeded and streamlined the twice-daily milkings, efficiently strained and separated the milk while warm. Later, the machines cooled the milk to the optimum temperature required to retard spoilage. This latter development was an especially noteworthy improvement over the old well or ice-water coolings. Similar advances were made with electric incubators and chicken feeders for poultry specialists and improved spraying equipment for orchardists. Warren McNair was a pioneer in the Floris neighborhood in the use of mechanized hatcheries, establishing one which was powered by coal before World War I. Like the dairy equipment, poultry technology offered efficiency and improved production.[105] [Illustration: A tractor-drawn drill which could plant four rows at a time. This snapshot shows a black agricultural laborer planting soybeans, which were used as high protein livestock feed. Photo in Annual Report of County Agent H. B. Derr, 1922, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: Wilson D. McNair aboard a Row Crop 70 tractor, featuring rubber tires, c. 1940. In the background is the farm's chicken house. Growing poultry and eggs was the specialty of this farmer. Photo courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder.] Along with a slow-growing recognition of the advantages of automated farm equipment came a quantum leap in knowledge of the agricultural sciences. Some experimentation in plant and animal breeding was attempted around the turn of the century, but the real impetus for extended research was the passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914. In Virginia the work was undertaken at the Virginia Polytechnical Institute (VPI) in Blacksburg. The early efforts of the United States Department of Agriculture were enlarged at this time and, most significantly, were made accessible to individual farmers through the county agricultural extension program. Interconnected with the state agricultural colleges, the program used representatives known as county agents to advise and educate the farmers. Working on a personal level, they were able to, in the words of one Fairfax agent, "bring the college to the people." As a result of the improved access to information, new ideas on breeding, animal care, soil improvements, and planting almost inundated the farmer.[106] Of special importance was an increased understanding of livestock breeding and a change in the desired criteria for a prime animal. As more and more emphasis was placed on pragmatic qualities, the old show points of stature, color or markings lost prestige next to reproductive capacity or productivity. One Maryland farmer who marketed his products in the same areas as Fairfax dairymen, stated the case emphatically. "What does a man want a cow for? _Milk!_ And to get milk you've got to have a ... female animal with some size to her, strong bone, a good bag and a big barrel--a real machine ... producing quality milk."[107] A Fairfax County poultry raiser concurred. Complaining to the editor of the _Fairfax Herald_ in 1926, he wrote: As is now being done, fowls are being judged by the show standard rather than from a utility standpoint. As one member [of the Poultrymen's organization] present stated ... one of his birds won the blue ribbon as the best marked bird in her class but shortly after the fair he sold her in the market owing to [her] being such a poor layer.[108] Actually some disagreement occurred over exactly which qualities should be stressed in breeding. Experts in animal husbandry found that cross-breeding often produced the highest yield of milk, a conclusion which was at odds with those who wanted to emphasize pure-bred stock. In Fairfax County, H. B. Derr followed the latter persuasion. In the end both parties hoped to achieve the same result: a controlled breeding program which would allow the farmer to predetermine the type and characteristics of the stock on his farm. To improve the county's stock, farmers were urged to breed their livestock with purebred animals whenever possible, and keep accurate records of milk and egg production. An especially successful tool was the establishment of Dairy Herd Improvement Associations which tested the yield and butter fat content of each cow's milk. The aim of these organizations was to identify the high and low producers in a herd so that poor producers could be sold and breeding done to best advantage. Agricultural Agent H. B. Derr moved quickly to establish these groups in the county. By 1920 two of the fourteen Dairy Herd Improvement Associations in Virginia were in Fairfax County, and the result was a continual improvement in the stock owned by Fairfax farmers. Derr reported with pleasure that within the first year of the program 15% of the cows were eliminated and replaced by better stock and that "one dairyman said the first month's test paid for the year's work."[109] Similar improvements were taking place in the grading and standardization of seed. When Derr first arrived in Fairfax County in 1917, he complained that it was "the dumping ground of about as bad a lot of seed as he had ever seen."[110] Old or genetically mixed seed yielded poor crops and Derr organized volunteer farmers to help test new strains as well as established varieties in the area's soil. The experimentation for crop return and quality and controlled breeding done at the Virginia Polytechnical Institute and similar institutions increased the variety of seed available and made for highly predictable returns. An additional help was the increased dependability of seed distributors. Holden Harrison recalled that Southern States Cooperative was particularly conscientious in this regard. "Other seed companies had begun to improve their seed stocks, but Southern States put the emphasis on it. The seed wheat we got from Southern States outproduced any other that we could find."[111] Whereas traditionally many had merely been saving the most likely ears of corn or a random bushel of wheat for seed, the farmer now demanded certified seed of a variety most responsive to his area's soil type and weather. Agriculturalists were also making huge strides in understanding the physical needs of animals and disease prevention. The discoveries about bacterial and viral infections made by medical researchers during the 1920s and 1930s were beginning to be understood in veterinary circles and applied to animal care. Mastitis and chicken cholera were among the common diseases brought under control by new drugs. County agents carried medicine and veterinary equipment with them using it both in emergency cases and to instruct farmers in sanitation and preventative care.[112] Health standards, especially for dairy products sold in Washington, D.C., had been stiffened during the first World War, and it was important for the farmer to understand disease prevention not only to save his animals but to keep his produce marketable. [Illustration: Soybeans on a demonstration field showing the improvements made by the addition of lime to the soil. Photo in H. B. Derr Report, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] Veterinarians abounded in the area, but were called in generally for required tests (such as tuberculin) or when the situation was really grave; most farmers relied on their own experience for delivering calves or treating common ailments.[113] Among the prominent vets in the county were Dr. Harry Drake, Dr. Bernard Poole and C. L. Kronfeld. All of these men made house calls, bringing medical kits and medicine with them. Their fee was $2.50 per visit which included the price of follow-up medicine. Perhaps because this fee was prohibitive to some, or through a desire for self-reliance, farmers often neglected to call the veterinarian until an animal was critically ill. "The farmer in what I suspect was fifty percent of the cases lost the animal anyway after the vet got there," acknowledged Joseph Beard, because so many times instead of having preventative medicine ... they never called him until things were in very bad shape. I suspect that the vet would have been able to save so many of the animals that he didn't by virtue of the fact that he didn't get there on time.... They weren't interested in prevention; they were interested in the cure.[114] The farmers were not entirely to blame since preventative medicine was a new concept, the benefits of which were not always immediately obvious. County agents Derr and Beard both waged exhaustive battles to convince local agriculturalists of the advantage of vaccination and show them the proper methods of inoculating their own animals. Derr found the farmers unwilling to do their own vaccinating, preferring to rely on specialists; yet with classic inconsistency they were also reluctant to call in a veterinarian for such a purpose.[115] In the end, the agents found that, like many other progressive techniques which seemed new and unsubstantiated to the farmer, demonstration worked better than rhetoric. An example of this occurred in 1926 when a farmer let some cattle onto a pasture, believed to be infested with a calf disease known as blackleg. When one of his best calves died, he panicked and turned to the county agent. The farmer's animals were all inoculated, as were those on several neighboring farms, and there were no further losses. "This incident has done more to place confidence in vaccinations than several years' talking could do," wrote a pleased H. B. Derr. "There are no more doubting Thomases in that community at least."[116] Similar work was undertaken to convince orchardists and crop producers of the advantages of preventative spraying to eliminate bacterial diseases and aid in insect control. The county's production of fruits, vegetables and grains had suffered less from direct neglect than from ignorance of proper care.[117] The value of chemical pesticides was just beginning to be understood (their use would not reach major proportions until the years after World War II) and Joseph Beard noted that the agents were frequently "bombarded with all these new advertisements coming from the supplier or chemical company...."[118] The agents refrained from recommending products that had not been tested for at least three years at the State Agricultural Experiment Station, insuring some safety in the pesticides, though Beard admitted that the principles of chemical buildup were not yet recognized.[119] Slowly word travelled through the county of the advantages of protecting crops from disease. By 1930 the program was progressing nicely, as Derr reported to the state agency. Driving through the county one day, he met a successful orchardist whom he had previously urged to use fungicides. "Derr," the farmer remarked to him, "you sure keep me busy; every time my wife sees your spray notices she makes me get the machine out and go to work, but it surely does pay to spray."[120] Here too the farmer relied on his own verification and judged personal experience stronger than the words of experts. [Illustration: A wild cherry tree destroyed by web worms. Insect pests such as these were a chief reason for the decline of orchards in the area. Photo in H. B. Derr Report, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] * * * * * In this period of exciting and crucial advances in agricultural knowledge, the individual landowner was sometimes at a loss to, in his parlance, separate the wheat from the chaff. Radio programs, bulletins from the USDA and VPI, local newspaper columns and talks by visiting experts all vied for the farmer's time, as did the news in _The Southern Planter_, _Country Gentleman_ and _Farm Journal_, favorite periodicals in the area. "These programs came so rapidly the farmers just about got familiar with one until another appeared," Derr reported in 1936. "As one farmer put it, 'just one durned thing after another."[121] Furthermore, the information was often confusing, at odds with the handed-down teachings of generations, or juxtaposed with other advice with which it was dramatically opposed. The _Herndon News-Observer_, for example, carried several articles on "scientific feeding" in its early 1925 issues and advocated crop rotation and strict attention to cleanliness. Only a year later, however, it printed a column advising farmers to feed kerosene and lard to hens to rid them of vermin.[122] In an even more blatant example, this paper contained an article written by Virginia state dairy specialist John A. Avery, which counseled area farmers to increase their dairy herds; the same edition ran a piece by H. B. Derr which bemoaned the surplus of milk then glutting the Washington market.[123] It is not surprising that the farmer, caught in the midst of a bewildering amount of concrete advice and misinformation, sometimes preferred to stick to his ancestors' ways. Thus, the old adages--that corn should be planted when the leaves were as large as squirrel's ears, or that when a hen's comb isn't bright red, it isn't laying--were relinquished with reluctance.[124] The only consistently accepted source on scientific farming seems to have been Virginia Polytechnical Institute's _Handbook of Agronomy_, which more than one farmer stated he held in one hand while directing the plow with the other.[125] A particularly difficult question for the farmer to consider was the problem of specialization. General farming had been the rule for so long, and one-crop systems had such a reputation for running farms into debt, that many were doubtful of the advantages of specialization. Here, too, they received mixed signals. On one hand farmers were advised to sink their all into poultry or dairying, only to hear that to concentrate too completely on one area would limit their self-sufficiency and mitigate the integrated quality of the farm. In an increasingly technical world, however, specialization had many attractions. Expensive machinery needed to be purchased for only one kind of production, the farmer could cut down the vast influx of information to only those subjects which directly interested him, and the methods of mass production, first pioneered in factories, could be applied to his concentrated effort. Moreover, specialization in market commodities produced the cash which had become ever more important to buy equipment, pay taxes and purchase manufactured goods which were no longer made on the farm. In the end, Fairfax County farmers generally effected a compromise: while focusing on one aspect of farming, they retained many of the advantages of the general farmer. Vegetable gardens, poultry houses, orchards, and sometimes sheep all kept their place on the family farm. Even C. T. Rice, who liked to refer to his farm as a milk producing plant, with "little time or space for anything else" kept a few chickens and hogs.[126] An early specialization in the county was truck gardening. The long growing season and potential markets in Alexandria and Washington in theory seemed to point to success in this field. The list of vegetables and fruits grown for the commercial market was impressive and included potatoes, corn, tomatoes, spinach, black-eyed peas, parsnips and rhubarb, apples and several varieties of berries.[127] One man even grew artichokes, making quite a substantial profit, but decided to move his operation to more productive soils in New Jersey.[128] Yet those who attempted raising large quantities of these crops found it difficult to show clear profits. Fruit growers had to compete with the world-famous produce of the Shenandoah Valley, whose strong cooperative organization gave an added advantage to the area's natural abundance. Hay and forage grains were of decreasing importance in a country rapidly becoming enamored of the automobile. In addition, a slump in farm prices had begun in 1920-21, the after-effect of the inflated agricultural revenues of the World War I years. A study of small truck farms in the Washington, D.C. area showed that despite intensive labor and a double cropping system, a farmer was often clearing only $500 annually by raising produce for the city markets. The study concluded that it took "the best management and a considerable knowledge of farm practice and markets" to till such a farm to advantage. On the smallest farms it was only the exceptional farmer who could make more than a living without any outside source of income.[129] Marketing the produce was a special problem of truck farming. The vegetables had to be delivered and sold at the peak of their ripeness and their highly perishable nature made this somewhat difficult in the days before refrigeration. It was generally undesirable to sell through a middleman, and therefore the farmer was responsible for personally marketing as well as raising his produce. Moreover, the trip to Washington was tedious and time consuming, especially in the early 1920s when the condition of the area's roads was at a notoriously low point. One market farmer's trip was described in this way: He planted all sorts of garden produce and he had what you'd call a market wagon; it was a covered wagon.... During the day he would fill that wagon with his produce and in the evening he would hook his ... two horses to the wagon to get to Washington. He'd aim to get there by six o'clock in the morning when the markets opened. He would sell his produce as much as he could [directly from the wagon] ... to individuals at the old Center Market.... They paid a higher price. If he had any left over he had to sell it at whatever he could get to the people who owned the stalls.... It took him three or four hours ... to sell his load of produce. Then it was the next night before he came home.[130] Conditions at the city markets were also less than perfect as large companies tried to dump cheap produce from outside areas on the Washington consumer. Not only did they compete with the local farmer for the lowest prices, but they misused the stall space itself. Even when a new market was built in 1933, this remained a problem. One irate farmer angrily stated to the editor of the _Herndon News-Observer_ that the large retail trucks held all the available spaces while the area farmers "stand out doors (sic) all day and part of the night, trying to eke out money for taxes, interest and other arbitrary costs." The streets were filthy, he continued, and the market protection itself inadequate. "The only pretense of shelter barely covers the sidewalk, leaving the farmer's truck or car outdoors where produce is in danger from heat, cold, or rain."[131] Partially because of these problems, the specialty which gained in distinction and profitability at this time was dairy farming. There were several additional reasons for this. The land itself was well adapted to the raising of milk cows; its gently undulating terrain--which formed numerous natural water depressions--coupled with the abundance of small streams or "runs," made water easily available. To the dairy farmer who must water his stock regardless of seasonal conditions, this was essential. As previously mentioned, Fairfax County also possessed soil types which worked up well and produced high yields of the pasturage and ensilage crops required to support large dairy herds. And, one observer noted, the weather was favorable for the dairy industry: "The winters are relatively short in Fairfax, thus allowing cattle to stay out often until the latter part of November, returning to pasture by April or May."[132] These natural assets tell only part of the story for, as stated above, Fairfax County continually produced well above the state per acre average in both corn and orchard fruits and its market crops were considerably varied as late as 1920. Although dairying required more capital initially and more land than did market gardening, it held an advantage in that the plummeting farm prices did not affect milk products as disasterously as crops. The really great asset that the Fairfax County dairy industry possessed, however, was its proximity to the large milk-consuming markets in Alexandria and Washington, D.C., and the speedy access afforded by rail lines connecting the two areas. Where truck farmers needed to sell their produce personally in order to make the best profit, milk producers sold to distributors, who collected at the depot, making rail transportation a feasible marketing device. In the earliest days of the century milk was shipped by boat to the city markets, but the lack of river access for many farms and the ease of spoilage on this slow mode of transportation retarded the growth of the commercial milk market. It was not until the old and unreliable steam railway lines, such as the Washington and Old Dominion Railway, were converted to electricity around 1912 and refrigerated cars were widely used, that the shipment of milk became really profitable.[133] Communities such as Floris, situated only a few miles from the Herndon depot, began to flourish as dairy centers when only a few years earlier poor transportation would have made marketing of such a highly perishable product unthinkable. So successful and rapid was the dairy boom that by 1924 over 1,800 gallons of milk were shipped daily from the county to Washington, and its production was the highest in Virginia.[134] Other factors served to enhance the burgeoning dairy industry. Around 1910 milk pasteurization and bottling plants were established in Washington. This created a large market for whole milk, which had formerly been held in suspicion by many people who believed milk to be a carrier of disease. Another important aspect was the well-directed efforts of the two county agricultural extension agents who, in addition to introducing the previously mentioned Dairy Herd Improvement Associations, encouraged the use of pure-bred bulls for breeding, often acquiring the free loan of USDA animals for the purpose. The use of these bulls was an added incentive for farmers to pay the nominal fee and join the Dairy Herd Improvement Associations, since membership was required in order to borrow a government animal. By these methods and repeated admonitions to "get out of the scrub class and join the pure-bred bunch," the county agents helped Fairfax farmers develop so fine a reputation for quality dairy cows that buyers came from many states to procure these high-testing animals for their farms.[135] Another factor affecting the rise of dairying in Fairfax County was the early formation of the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association. The organization had been informally started in 1907 as a clearinghouse for grievances among some producers in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., but for many years it "amounted to little more than an occasional general meeting for the purpose of some united effort toward raising the price of milk."[136] In 1920 it was incorporated and a full-time manager employed. Each member paid a fee of one cent per gallon of milk sold (a fund which was accumulated and refunded when a farmer left the organization) and the Association handled the business of selling to the distributors in Washington. By such collective action the dairymen were able to control milk prices more effectively, and their unity assured a measure of security against unscrupulous action by distributors. In the early years of Fairfax County dairying this was a very real threat as former Association member Holden Harrison attests: There were four or five principal distributors in Washington. I don't know whether they got together on this or not, but to start out with they had a two price program. They paid you more in the winter than they did in the summer.... The dairy farmer was at the mercy of the milk distributor then. They set prices just as low as they thought the best dairyman could continue to produce.... The distributors were about to starve the farmers out, that's what brought it around. We weren't getting a fair deal. So when we formed this Association the management of the Association could say, 'We've got these farmers lined up. They pretty well depend on us and we can pretty well tell them what to do.' Through that leverage they could pretty well tell the distributors what to do, too.[137] The Association furthered its prestige--and its bargaining power--by waging a battle against "bootleg," or uninspected, milk being brought into the area from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It had the additional advantage of stabilizing prices so that the farmer with only a small amount of milk for the market could compete with the larger producer whose more economical methods had previously allowed him to undersell his smaller neighbor. Better methods of testing and pasteurizing the milk were also concerns and the cooperative used its muscle to negotiate loans for its members.[138] Furthermore, in the late 1920s, the Association became concerned about the drop in prices due to an overabundance of milk in the area and developed a system of handling the surplus. "It eventually built itself into a position where the Association itself either rented or purchased a plant that could take care of surplus milk...," stated Holden Harrison. "This surplus milk was processed into cheese or butter or ice cream or maybe even powdered milk.... They had a plant in Frederick, Maryland, and they would divert whatever amount of producers' milk to Frederick to the processing plant and keep it out of the hands of the distributors."[139] This action had the double advantage of avoiding waste and preventing a profit-lowering glut of milk. By 1927 the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association was the largest farmer's cooperative in Virginia. It included 85% of the Washington area producers in its membership, despite the effort of distributors to dissuade some of the better producers from joining. They exercised bargaining control of over $2,500,000 annually. Though they never actually went on strike, their large membership fund gave them a strong bargaining position. "The distributors knew when that fund accumulated to a good-sized sum that we weren't just a fly-by-night outfit that could be pushed around, that we had resources we could rely on."[140] Furthermore, the organization wisely kept its clout by avoiding political issues and exercising minimum control over individual methods of production. Its purpose was to streamline the commercialization of a farm product, and in this effort it was highly successful. Northern Virginia's reputation for dairy excellence grew both in local circles and throughout the state as a result of published census reports and statewide comparisons of milk volume and butterfat content. The 1925 agricultural census shows Fairfax County to be the largest producer in the state, with average yield per cow 70% above the statewide figure; in 1940 this margin was even greater.[141] Dairy Herd Improvement Association #1, based in the Herndon area, had especially impressive results. In 1935, for example, it had the second highest overall average in Virginia and included four of the state's five most productive herds. In 1937 the county's high-testing cow, a Holstein owned by Dr. F. W. Huddleston, gave 2,031 pounds of milk (8.6 pounds to a gallon) per month to a statewide average of 620.[142] As a result of these impressive showings, many local farmers shied away from general farming and began to put their energies into milk production; new farmers were drawn to the area specifically for the possibilities in dairy farming. Of ten families interviewed in the Floris area, all save one connected their family's removal to Fairfax County to the combination of transportation ease and excellent prices afforded by the Washington milk market. "In this period there was an immigration of farmers from other parts of the country, particularly in the Valley of Virginia, who did not have an opportunity to market their farm products and their livestock very readily up there in the Valley," related Joseph Beard, "... the Southern Railway, the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac [Railways were] quite an asset to people who wanted to market their farm products so a lot of them moved up here."[143] Many of the newcomers became outstanding in the field of dairy husbandry, for example, C. T. Rice, a celebrated dairy owner of the Oakton area, whose animals consistently scored highly on milk production. He came to the county in 1915 but "threw away his plow" during the 1920s to concentrate solely on dairying, citing erosion problems and the more constant income of dairying as his reasons.[144] So widespread was this tendency to embrace dairy farming that a traveller riding through the county in 1930 sensed that "it is not farming country at all, because there is very little planting done. We saw few fields in which a crop had been recently harvested ... it is apparently a grazing country."[145] Despite its spectacular achievements, the Fairfax County dairy industry did not rise with an unchecked ascent but suffered a certain share of problems and setbacks. In one sense its very success was its worst enemy. Although many farmers continued to focus on dairying, by 1926 there was a surplus of milk on the Washington market and the county agent noted that "it appears as if we had sufficient dairies."[146] Still, while prices dropped steadily between 1926 and 1935,[147] farmers continued to increase their yields in hopes of increasing profits by shear quantities of milk sold. One county farmer commenting on the futility of this, remarked: We were getting about 25¢ a gallon for our base milk. Seventy-five gallons a day at 25¢ a gallon wasn't paying the interest and the mortgage on [his farm loan]. So we decided in 1928 that we would put in some more cows and get a little extra money to help pay off this mortgage and this loan. So we started shipping, instead of 75 gallons of milk a day, 90 to 95 gallons of milk a day. Then milk went down from 25¢ a gallon to 22¢ a gallon. Well, we couldn't do that, so we put some more stalls on the barn and built a new silo and put in enough cows to ship 125 gallons of milk a day ... it was only netting us 18 to 19¢ a gallon ... the more we worked, the more we produced, and the harder we worked, it seemed like the less net income we had.[148] Against this turn of events the state agricultural service advocated poultry and truck farming for those entering the county and urged a more uniform distribution of the county's cattle. Some farmers had too few cows for even their own use. Others had too many and no feed. "A few good cows well kept, rather than a large number poorly fed, will bring in a steady income, that will do much for our farmers in their present conditions," advised County Agent Derr.[149] He also hoped to see farmers concentrate on the butterfat content of their milk and to increase their production of cream for which there was a continual market; the skim milk left after the removal of cream could be fed to calves, pigs or children. Most often Derr cautioned against the dangers of complete specialization at the expense of an integrated farm in which each facet of the farm was both aided and benefitted by every other part. "The old slogan, 'the cow, the sow and the hen,' is a very true one," he wrote, "especially in the South."[150] Derr did well to emphasize the quality of milk products. A 1932 ruling in the District of Columbia requiring a 4% butterfat content in milk sold there occurred just as Derr was complaining that "with many the quality of the milk is not such a vital question as the quantity." Holstein cattle, which gave higher yields but less rich milk than did Jerseys or Guernseys, predominated in the county, making the new demand a difficult one to meet. In desperation some farmers tried cross-breeding the two strains with mixed results; the inevitable outcome was to compromise the county's movement towards establishing herds of pure-bred animals.[151] The mixing of breeds to increase butterfat content was not the only element which undercut the breeding program. One problem, the selling of highly profitable animals, was yet another hazard of success. "Owing to the excellent reports being made by our cow testing associations, numerous buyers from other states have come into the county and by paying almost fabulous prices have taken away quite a number of our best animals," Derr wrote in 1926. "In some cases this has proved a costly undertaking for our dairymen, as by bringing new animals into their herds ... either T B or abortion has been introduced."[152] Another factor working against pure-bred stock was the depression, which for farmers encompassed not only the 1930s, but the entire period following the deflation of World War I prices. With less cash available, many farmers bought poor quality bulls rather than invest the money for a pure-bred animal.[153] Notwithstanding these setbacks, dairy farming continued to be Fairfax County's predominant (and most prestigious) industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, it flourished well into the 1950s and was eclipsed only by the overwhelming spread of urban workers into the area in the second half of the century. Until this development occurred, it was the dairy farmer's life which set the style and pace of life in the county. * * * * * Mechanization and specialization of the family farm did not necessarily lighten the farmer's workload. An electric machine could cut several hours per week off milking time, but this time gain was offset by the hours spent on sterilization and maintenance. Threshers eliminated the time-consuming chore of hand-flailing the grain, but the farmer still had to cut and stack his harvest, and it took several men a number of days to run the machine. The grower was at the mercy of the machine's owner as to the day and time he was able to thresh; here again, he lost a measure of independence.[154] The excellent efforts of the Dairy Herd Improvement Associations also produced work for the farmers, especially those unaccustomed to bookkeeping. The landowner who had kept his records in an old shoe box was now expected to record the precise weight and butterfat content of the milk given by each cow, as well as the market value, number of days tested and amount and cost of grain fed the animal. The data shown in the Herd Record Books belonging to C. T. Rice reveal them to be complex documents which required in addition to the above information, hereditary records, descriptions of physical features, and yearly and monthly production averages.[155] The efforts were rewarding, of course, but, added to the farmer's already overloaded day, the recordkeeping could be burdensome. Both Agents Derr and Beard complained constantly of the farmer's reluctance to keep records and in their attempts to increase the area's professional methods and pride, they stressed the need to keep accurate accounts of the farm's transactions.[156] * * * * * The advent of technological application in the farming sector was a cause of both optimism and disquiet. It eliminated some drudgery, it streamlined and modernized, but it also uprooted traditions and added financial and emotional burdens to the already pressured farmer. To cope with the new agricultural methods and outlook, farmers increasingly chose to relinquish some of their independence and band together to solve their problems. [Illustration: "Hard Work Made Easy and Quick" wrote a local farmer on the back of this photograph. The mechanical hay loader eliminated the taxing work of pitching hay into a barn loft, c. 1935. Photo courtesy of Holden Harrison.] PART II--NOTES _Change_ [92] Barger and Lansberg, _American Agriculture, 1899-1939_, 212. [93] _Ibid._, 201-202. [94] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [95] _Ibid._; Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; Barger and Lansberg, _American Agriculture, 1899-1939_, 212. [96] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [97] Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_, 75-76; and Derr Report, 1925, photo section. [98] Derr Report, 1936. In 1940 there were still only 298 tractors in the county. See _Agricultural Census, 1940_. [99] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [100] Barger and Lansberg, _American Agriculture, 1899-1939_, 221; Richard Peck was among those in the Floris vicinity who believed that the early machines "ruined" a good cow; see Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [101] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. The Harrisons bought their equipment quite early--around 1924; McNair, "What I Remember"; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978; J. Middleton/Netherton, February 24, 1978; Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978. [102] Advertisements in _Herndon News-Observer_; and Holden Harrison quoted in Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [103] Author's conversation with Joseph Beard, April 25, 1979; and Sears and Roebuck catalog, 1927-1928. [104] Inventory of property of George W. Kidwell, April 6, 1928, Fairfax County Will Book Liber 11, 343-344. [105] McNair, "What I Remember"; and notes on conversation with Joseph Beard, April 16, 1979. [106] Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979; Congressional Record. [107] Russell Lord, _Men of Earth_ (New York, 1931), 80. [108] "Poultry Men Confer," _Fairfax Herald_, February 26, 1926. [109] Virginia Agricultural Advisory Council, _A Five Year Program for the Development of Virginia's Agriculture_ (Richmond, 1923), 29; and Derr Report, 1920. [110] Derr Report, 1926. [111] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [112] Derr Reports, nearly every year. See, for example, 1932, 11. [113] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979; and Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [114] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [115] Derr Report, 1932, 11. [116] _Ibid._, 1926, 8. [117] _Ibid._, 1925, 6. [118] Beard/Netherton/Reid, November, 1974. [119] _Ibid._ [120] Derr Report, 1930, 29. [121] _Ibid._, 1936, 16; and notes following interview, Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [122] "Farm Notes" and "Scientific Feeding," January 22, 1925; and "Rid Houses and Hens of Vermin," October 21, 1926; all in _Herndon News-Observer_. [123] _Ibid._, April 14, 1932. [124] Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; and _The Southern Planter_, April, 1930. [125] Statements of Holden Harrison and Joseph Beard in Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979; and Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [126] "The Way Out for the Farmer," _Washington Star_, June 19, 1932; _Agricultural Census, 1925_; Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_, 71; "A Unique Fairfax County Farm," undated newspaper clipping (c. 1945) belonging to Mrs. Mary Scott; Elizabeth Rice to author, Wilmington, Delaware, January 30, 1979. [127] Funk, "An Economic History of Small Farms Near Washington, D.C.," 4. [128] Derr Report, 1935, 10. Mr. D. H. McAslan made about $500 the first year from a $143 investment. [129] Funk, "An Economic History of Small Farms Near Washington, D.C.," 6-7; Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_; and Derr Report, 1927, 13. [130] Description of A. S. Harrison by Holden Harrison, Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [131] "Fairfax Farmer States Facts," _Herndon News-Observer_, March 1, 1934. [132] Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_, 29-30. [133] Nan Netherton, Donald Sweig, Janice Artemel, Patricia Hickin, and Patrick Reed, _Fairfax County, Virginia: A History_ (Fairfax Virginia, 1978), 480-483. [134] Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_, 26-27. [135] "Pure Bred Bulls," _Herndon News-Observer_, May 17, 1928, 1; and Derr Report, 1926, 6. [136] "History of the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association," _Herndon News-Observer_, May 4, 1933. [137] _Ibid._; and Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [138] William Edward Garnett, "Rural Organization in Relation to Rural Life in Virginia," _Virginia Agricultural Extension Station Bulletin 256_ (Blacksburg, May 1927), 11; and Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_, 83. [139] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [140] Garnett, "Rural Organization in Relation to Rural Life in Virginia," and _Ibid._ [141] _Agricultural Censes, 1925, 1940._ The 1940 figures show milk production per farm in Fairfax County to be 400% above the average in the state. [142] Derr Report, 1937; and "State Dairy Herd Improvement Association," _Herndon News-Observer_, August 8, 1935. [143] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [144] "Fairfax Farmer Threw Away His Plow in 1928 and Amazing Results Have Been Revolutionary," _Richmond Times-Dispatch_, September 17, 1951. [145] Oliver Martin, _On and Off the Concrete in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia_ (Washington, 1930), 26. [146] Derr Reports, 1926, 6, and 1927, 13. [147] Milk prices dropped from $4.05 per 100 gallons in 1920 to a low of $2.10 in 1932. By 1935 they were still low, but had risen some to $2.25. The prices given are July figures; January listings were generally a bit higher. See _Virginia Farm Statistics_ (Richmond, 1936), 59. [148] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [149] H. B. Derr, "Helping Farmers," _Herndon News-Observer_, April 14, 1932; and Derr Report, 1927, 13. [150] Derr, "Helping Farmers." [151] Derr Report, 1932, 5. [152] Derr Report, 1926, 6. [153] Derr Report, 1932, 6. [154] McNair, "What I Remember"; and _16th Census of the United States, 1940, Agriculture--Volume I, Statistics for Counties_ (Washington, 1942). [155] C. T. Rice Herd Record Books, 1923-1937, in possession of Mrs. Mary Scott. [156] Derr and Beard Reports, nearly every year, see especially 1926, 1932. PART III _Professionalization and an Increased Standard of Living_ Specialization, whether in truck farming, dairying or poultry raising, streamlined the farmer's work and gave him an in-depth body of knowledge in a particular field. This expertise made for occupational prestige and increased status in non-farm communities; acknowledgment of the farmer as a professional developed markedly during the 1920s and 1930s. Detailed knowledge had been essential to the general farmer but it was not widely recognized as a specialized skill. The professionalization taking place was also due to the farmer's own recognition of his unique role and his attempts to enhance it through farmer's clubs, educational opportunities and community projects. It also reflected a larger concern in the nation with upgrading standards and promoting solidarity among discrete occupational groups, a remnant from the movement towards efficiency and proficiency of the Progressive Era.[157] An important advance for the farmer was the increased opportunities in agricultural education. The Hatch Act had provided for agricultural programs to be established in the Land Grant Colleges, and ensuing legislation in 1917 called for farm courses to be added to the high school curriculum.[158] This significant step was resisted for a short time in Fairfax County, where the school board preferred to teach Latin rather than agriculture in the schools, a policy held in disdain by local farmers: "Latin was of no use unless you want to go around the barn and swear at some creature in an old language."[159] When vocational training was finally adopted in 1919, the chances for farm children to keep up with the burgeoning technology and sharpen their acquired skills were immeasurably increased. In Virginia practical skills were taught but so were a program of social studies dealing with the quality of life in rural areas, focusing on problems of transportation, recreation, resource protection and consumption patterns.[160] Such official sanction for agricultural education was a recognition that farming was not merely a plodding or unskilled activity, but an exacting science which required intelligence and application to master. Extensive study of agriculture in high school or college was the ideal, of course, but a number of programs were developed to further the established farmer's basic skills. Ray Harrison went to Baltimore to take a farmer's course in veterinary medicine and Wilson D. McNair travelled all the way to New Brunswick, New Jersey, to learn the most advanced methods of poultry farming. McNair later enrolled in a two-year course at VPI. Another farmer, Fred Curtice, from the Navy area, had degrees from Cornell University and took veterinary courses from George Washington University.[161] The county agent also designed extension schools for interested farmers. In February, 1933, for example, a two-day poultry school was attended by 75 farmers who heard reports by local farmers, talks by experts from USDA and VPI and workshops on topics such as "Egg Grading," "Growing the Pullets," and "The Poultry Outlook for Virginia."[162] Less intensive programs were also offered, such as the free showing of a dairy-oriented film, "Safeguarding the Foster Mothers of the World." "A profitable evening is promised," announced the film's advertisement, "especially to those interested in the economical production of milk by up-to-date methods."[163] [Illustration: The Fairfax County Grange meeting at a schoolhouse near Fairfax, c. 1940. Photo, Library of Congress.] Perhaps of even greater benefit to the farmer's image and expertise was the growth of local farmer's organizations and cooperatives. The largest and most prominent nationally was the Grange, a farmer's association initially started in Washington, D.C., in 1867. Fairfax County boasted four chapters of this organization, formed in the late years of the 1920s. The Grange interested itself in agricultural activities and civic matters and it was upon its recommendation that the county agent was appointed.[164] Of more immediate concern, however, were the local farmer's clubs, and the unofficial associations of orchardists or dairymen who met to discuss surpluses, crop problems or the need to advertise. The farmer's clubs were the outgrowth of community groups which sprang up spontaneously in the county from the mid-nineteenth century on, but which were expanded and formalized by H. B. Derr in the mid-1920s. As he described them they were unique in their plans in that they are composed of twelve families and they meet once a year at each home.... They meet in time for dinner and after dinner ... the men go over the farm and discuss current farm problems. Then they return to the house and listen to some speaker who has been invited for an informal talk.[165] Broadening and sociable, the clubs became an outstanding feature of Fairfax County farm organization. The minutes from the meetings of Farmer's Club #1, which was based in Herndon and was made up predominantly of members from the Floris area, show the variety of subjects discussed. A meeting in March, 1921, included a lecture on contagious abortion (a disease chiefly affecting dairy cows). Road conditions were discussed in April, 1924. Problems of milk cooling and the effectiveness of the agricultural high school were topics in March, 1928, and the following month state legislator H. E. Hanes addressed the club on farm issues and voting procedures in the upcoming elections. The club members also joined together to buy seed in quantity in order to reduce cost and effort. Informative as the meetings were, of equal importance was the bond of friendship and professional affiliation which the farmer's clubs fostered. By working closely with men of similar interests, a network was built up which increased the agriculturalists' pride and effectiveness; not only could the farmer identify with the attitudes and problems of his associates, but could work with them to fulfill mutual needs. The sincere respect felt among members of this group is shown in the following tribute, written after the death of one associated farmer, S. L. Chapin: Be it resolved: That we pause to drop a tear of sympathy and love, to express in our humble way the deep feeling of our loss. Bold and fearless in the expression of his opinion, kind and considerate at all times, and under all conditions. His life and association with his fellow men were full of love and tenderness.... To his bereaved family we tender our deepest sympathy and may the recolections (sic) of his cheerful disposition ever remain fresh in our memories, as we recall many pleasant incidents of his associations.[166] As farmers organized, they reinforced their own values and occupational identity, and what is more, they combined their efforts to work for the change they sought most. The Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association is an obvious example of this. Smaller cooperatives, many of them outgrowths of the farmer's clubs, sprang up throughout the county, though none of them had the longevity or impact of the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association. A Floris Milk Producers Association was founded in 1925 to operate and repair milk collecting trucks and the Dairy Marketing Company and Fairfax County Farmer's Service Company (which featured cooperative buying of seed) started a few years later. None of these bodies remained permanent features of the area's organizations, but all helped the farmer to see the advantage of collective effort. The professional attitude adopted by the farmers' groups is evident in the stringent standards required in their service contracts. No longer was an informal gentleman's agreement sufficient. Farmers expected seed to be of a certain weight and quality, milk to be delivered "at a coolness satisfactory to the dealer," and sanitary measures to be strictly followed.[167] In effect the cooperative movement enlarged the farmer's working partners to include not only his family and hired labor, but the community as a whole. * * * * * [Illustration: The Floris Home Demonstration Club, 1930 winners of the County Championship for most effective club. Photo in H. B. Derr Reports, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration] [Illustration: A 4-H Club display at the county "Achievement Day," showing the stress on nutrition of the Oakton and Pope's Head Clubs. Photos in H. B. Derr Report, 1930, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: A community fair, c. 1922, similar to those held in the Floris area. Photo in H. B. Derr Report, 1922, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: A suggested model farm for Fairfax County developed in 1924 by County Agent H. B. Derr. The model includes crop rotation, annual budget and a schedule of livestock feeding and purchase. Photo in H. B. Derr Report, 1924, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] Women and children were also encouraged to professionalize. Working jointly with the agricultural agent was a "home demonstration agent" who gave advice, lectures and demonstrations geared toward increased economy and convenience for the homemaker. Home Demonstration Clubs were organized in each community to acquaint farm women with the newest research on food preservation, household efficiency and organizational skills. Courses in fancy needlework and cake-baking were sometimes featured but the home demonstration agents' work more frequently took a pragmatic bent. The seriousness with which the homemaker was regarded, and the new image of professionalism which she hoped to evoke is evidenced in the schedule of classes led by agent Lucy Blake in early 1938: January Home Lighting and Wiring February The Homemaker as Planner--Her Job and the Planning Center March Schedules and Deadlines April Citizenship May The Homemaker as Handyman June The Homemaker as Buyer[168] In addition, the clubs raised money for neighborhood beautification and worked on community projects. The Floris Club annually canned fruits, vegetables and meats for a hot school lunch program and also donated their time to serve it. As in the more male-oriented Farmer's Clubs, the organizations fostered pride and identity among the farm women, as well as concretely improving conditions on the farm.[169] The home demonstration agent also ran the county's 4-H clubs, branches of a nationwide organization founded in 1903. Four-H members dedicated their "heads, hearts, hands and health" to improving rural conditions; the club's goal was to give practical training to children whose life was likely to be spent on the farm. Boys were schooled in agronomy, mechanics and animal husbandry and pursued individual projects in these fields. Girls also worked both with groups and individually in such areas as "food for health," clothes remodeling and room improvement. Summer camps, rallies and fairs were also sponsored by 4-H Clubs. At one camp, held near Woodlawn, the week-long program included workshops in canning, basketry and utilization of dairy products, a sidetrip to see fireworks, and those perennial camp favorites of swimming, "weenie roasts" and stunt nights.[170] [Illustration: The 4-H Girls Camp at Woodlawn. Fewer boys were able to attend such camps since their labor was needed on the farm. Photo in H. B. Derr Report, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: The cream of the crop of Fairfax County girlhood on a float meant for the Piedmont Dairy Festival parade. Photo in H. B. Derr Report, 1930, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] The 4-H Clubs never caught on in Fairfax County to the satisfaction of the home demonstration and agricultural agents. "The past year has not been a banner year for club work," wrote Derr in 1926. "Four clubs were organized ... but the agent is inclined to think that with a number of [members] this was done to be excused from a study period. The small amount of work done on their projects seems to substantiate this belief."[171] The clubs grew slowly partly because they overlapped the work of the Floris Vocational High School and the Future Farmers of America Club, founded in 1927.[172] There is also some evidence that parents were reluctant to release their children from farm work to attend meetings.[173] For those who did join, the meetings seem to have been fun and profitable. "Not only do you learn from 4-H how to make a home and a living," an enthusiastic member commented in 1933, "but you also learn how to make life worthwhile. We now realize more than ever our duties, as the child of today will be the adult of tomorrow."[174] As is evident in the above quotation, groups such as the 4-H or Future Farmers of America encouraged a child to identify with and improve on rural life. These organizations not only stressed occupational pride, but benefitted the community by training leaders who had early experience with professional farming techniques. * * * * * Aside from the need to influence milk and produce prices, two chief concerns of the farmer's organizations were the establishment of electricity throughout the county and the improvement of the area's roads. The move towards rural electrification was a popular one across the nation, cited continually as the one item most useful to the farmer for advancing mechanization and of greatest importance in raising the farm family's standard of living. With electricity the family could use a radio, rid themselves of smoky kerosene lighting and enjoy the use of more efficient and cleaner stoves and refrigeration. The pragmatic desire for electrical equipment to operate milking machines and water pumps was intensified by advertisements such as one which appeared in the _Herndon News-Observer_ claiming that electricity would make life "convenient and happy" as well as add fifteen to twenty years to the farm woman's life.[175] Unfortunately, the route to establishing electrical facilities in the county was not an easy one. Some farmers used small gasoline engines to produce power, but these, the "contrariest little machines," were unreliable and frequently too weak to run milking equipment. Derr reported that 98% of the farmers desired this convenience but the expense seemed prohibitive. Commercial electric companies were reluctant to build lines through sparsely settled areas, and the farmers were forced to finance their own power plants. In 1933 the federal government began a program to subsidize local electrification programs and make them financially viable the only drawback being the undue amount of red tape to go through involved in qualifying. "The cost of building new lines was found to range from one thousand to two thousand dollars a mile," stated a discouraged Derr. "We were hardly prepared to be told that the farmers ... must organize a farm cooperative ... borrow the money from the Government and build their own lines to be self-liquidating in twenty years at 3% interest."[176] Difficult as the process seemed, the farmers had little choice if they hoped to electrify their neighborhoods. In this instance, an organization was not only an advantage for success in furthering the community's amenities, but a necessity. That the Floris community was one of the earlier areas to enjoy the benefits of electrification was a result of great effort on the part of its citizens. A franchise for an electric power plant was granted to Herndon in 1915 but never materialized, and prior to 1924 the nearest generating operation was in Alexandria.[177] A group of farmers from Loudoun and Fairfax Counties, headed by A. S. Harrison, hired an engineer and travelled throughout the Dranesville District to encourage farmers to contribute time and money towards an electrical plant. Eventually they raised enough cash to form a stock company and a power line was built between Alexandria and Herndon, and subsequently on to Leesburg.[178] The initiative shown by the Floris farmers was rewarded by a distinct advantage over non-electrified communities. As late as 1940 over 35% of the county's farms were without electric power. A survey conducted in that year showed these non-electrified areas to be the least productive, and most depressed in morale and way of life.[179] Water and sanitation systems were also difficult to establish despite concerted efforts by the home demonstration agents. Slightly over 10% of the county's farm homes contained "complete water systems" in 1932, though a larger percentage had partial plumbing facilities. Even in 1940, only 19% of the homes in the Dranesville area (and 40% in the county as a whole) boasted running water. Low as these figures seem, however, they were the highest in the state. Because good water was abundant in the area, farmers saw less need to campaign for extended water mains or sewer lines, in spite of their advantages for health and convenience. It was not until the population boom of World War II that really modern utilities were established in the county on a large scale.[180] Of greater significance was the effort to better the county's road system. Southern roads in general--and Virginia's in particular--had been notorious since their inception for ruts, abrupt endings and, especially, mud. In 1918 there were only a few miles of surfaced road in Fairfax County, and any roadbuilding or repairs were made at the discretion of individual landowners.[181] The inconveniences caused by the poor roads became legendary. One woman remembered the roads being so rough that eggs would break on the way to market, and another, Emma Millard, stated that conditions were bad enough that "you would lose your boots when you went through so much mud and had to go back and retrieve the boots."[182] When automobiles became more common on the county's thoroughfares, they increased the problem of dust, deeply worn grooves and splashing muddy water. At the same time they pointed up the necessity for improvement. The early solid tire vehicles could barely operate in the thick red Virginia mud, thus greatly retarding transportation of produce and milk. "If you had three drops of rain on the road, [the tires] started spinning and you couldn't go anywhere much without chains," recollected one early farmer. "Every truck carried a set of tire chains in the event it rained. In the summertime if it rained, you stuck right on the first little grade you hit." Not until 1922 did farmers attempt to haul their goods in trucks, and even then they "broke more axles than anything else."[183] Farmers were acutely aware of the situation and some of their earliest united efforts were focused on road improvement. Records of Farmer's Club #1 show the topic to be the subject of discussion at several meetings a year, beginning in 1909. Initially they tried only to interest the county in undertaking repairs but as conditions worsened, the landowners began to appeal to county judges and the Board of Supervisors for bond issues to surface Little River Turnpike and other main roads. Resolutions, such as the following from a Herndon-based club, were regularly sent to government officials: Resolved: That we, Farmer's Club #4 ... favor petitioning the circuit judge of the county to order an election for the purpose of determining whether bonds shall be issued for the sum of $50,000 for the construction of a macadam road from Little River Turnpike at Chantilly to the Leesburg Pike at Dranesville, and as much more as possible.[184] In some cases the clubs even worked together to build their own roads.[185] After ten years of pressure by farm groups, a bond issue was presented to the voters to pave the Leesburg Pike, the road from Chantilly to Herndon which ran through Floris, and a thoroughfare extending beyond Herndon to Mock Corner. The weight with which area residents viewed this issue is shown in a statement made by the Herndon Chamber of Commerce: "If this bond issue fails, it will be the greatest calamity that has befallen this community in many years." Happily the bond issue did pass and this, plus the statewide road program sponsored under the leadership of Governor Harry F. Byrd from 1926 to 1930, eliminated the bulk of the road problems. Only a few years later, in 1928, Fairfax was one of the foremost counties in Virginia in the area of transportation, with over 160 miles of surfaced roads.[186] [Illustration: Improved and unimproved roads in the Herndon area, c. 1930. Note that the only surfaced roads ran between Herndon and Centreville. Map surveyed by the Office of the County Engineer, Fairfax County. Copy courtesy of Library of Congress Map Division.] [Illustration: Stuck in the mud on one of the county's roads, c. 1911. Photo, Virginia Department of Highways and Transportation.] Surfaced roads were an obvious boon to marketing but they also had a number of unexpected positive effects. Conscientious and efficient as the farmers had tried to be, the county had worn a rather untidy appearance for several years. A traveler observed that "the fences are not as trigly mended or the buildings as trimly painted as in the [Shenandoah] Valley. A haystack is merely a pile of hay and not a neatly fashioned cock...."[187] County agent Derr also admitted that "in at least 75 percent of the farm homes there is little or no attention to the improvement of the home surroundings." The extension service worked valiantly to mitigate this problem by offering courses in landscaping and home maintenance, but to their surprise they found that the chief stimulus to home improvement was the repair of roads. Those areas which appeared most untidy were found on unimproved thoroughfares, which Derr maintained had a depressing effect on the farm family. "There is a direct correllation (sic)," he noted, "between the improvement of the roads and the painting and fixing up of things around the house."[188] Another beneficial side effect of the surfaced highway network was the birth of the roadside stand for selling surplus produce, dairy and poultry products. There were some distinct advantages to the stands, as farmers could sell directly to the customer without the costly use of a middleman, and did not have to transport his goods to city consumers. A count made in 1937 found 210 roadside stands in the county.[189] Earlier, the _Herndon News-Observer_ had reported the success of the new markets which lent themselves "to the disposal of second-grade products or fruits and vegetables too ripe for distant shipping [and had] grown to an unusual business ... for the farmers fortunate enough to live along popular highways." Business indeed seems to have been brisk; by 1926 the farmers were pocketing over $2,000 per month from the roadside markets.[190] * * * * * New discoveries in technology, educational opportunities and a refurbished transportation network were naturally considered advances in their time; they could be loosely headed under the term "progress." But progress does not run along a perfectly straight path, rather it dips and weaves ignoring some people and places in its circuitous route. Consequently, many of the changes so eagerly embraced by the farmer of modest means were the very factors which eventually crowded out the family farm. The farmers of Fairfax County were for the most part unaware of their impending doom, being instead optimistic and relatively prosperous during the 1920s and 1930s. But the small, varied and preindustrial farm could not compete for long against the lure of city wages, highly mechanized and specialized farms, and the inroads of the city into rural areas. Mechanization most drastically altered life on the family farm. Work rhythms and patterns, previously geared to hand labor, were disrupted, and even the sounds on the farm changed. Older cows, for example, disliked the noise of the electric milking machines, and Wilson McNair wrote that horses were generally scared of traction engines with their hissing steam, etc. When the engine met a team it would stop and one man would lead the horses by the bridle past the engine.... At the railroad crossing in Herndon there was a bell that rung when a train was coming. Our pony, if the bell was ringing when we crossed the track coming home would break into a dead run. You couldn't hold her.[191] To the interim farmer, caught between completely automated equipment and the tradition of hand labor, the change in work habits, knowledge and goals could be more than vaguely disquieting. As mechanization increased, many began to speak of agriculture in industrial terms, believing that "factorizing" the farm would solve its problems. This meant dispensing with any unnecessary tasks, such as raising sheep or making soap, and as much as possible replacing manpower with machinery. Technical terminology started to creep into farm talk. C. T. Rice referred to his dairy as "a milk producing plant,"[192] ancient terms such as "culling" became "selective breeding," and even the animals were referred to as machines, which if "poorly constructed must be ... discarded by the good breeder."[193] To independent-minded farmers, who, as Sinclair Lewis had observed, jealously guarded the ability to escape the mill and turmoil of the city, this industrialization seemed the ultimate compromise. The findings of the Commission to study the Condition of the Farmers of Virginia (1930) show the rural values of a most fundamental character to be those most prized by the agriculturalist: Among these are: a) The advantages of the country for bringing up a family ... a greater sharing of responsibilities, a closer knit, more stable family life.... b) The satisfactions ... of contacts with forces of nature, of caring for plants and animals, and of seeing them grow.... c) Greater freedom from various types of restraints, including somewhat greater control over time and freedom of personal action; also less intense struggle to keep up with or ahead of others.... d) somewhat greater freedom from illness, together with a better prospect of attaining old age. e) Greater security against unemployment as well as less prospect of falling into absolute want.[194] Yet in the post-World War I period the farmer had increasingly to commercialize and mechanize his business to remain solvent and to "citify" his life, destroying in numerous instances the standards he held dear. "I used to 'farm' some and made money at it; now I'm 'engaged in the pursuit of agriculture' and can't make ends meet," commented one U. S. Secretary of Agriculture, echoing the sentiments of many small landowners.[195] The new farm mechanization was, in many cases, not particularly well adapted to the family farm in this period. Gasoline-powered tractors, harvesters and other equipment worked most economically on the large, level acres of midwestern farms, and the east coast farmer with modest landholdings could not hope to compete on the market with the streamlined efficiency of western farms. Mechanized farming was also capital intensive. Besides the initial cost of equipment there were expenses for maintenance and fuel. Whereas the farmer had been able to raise feed for horses or mules inexpensively, he could not grow gasoline. Farmers usually had to borrow money to purchase equipment and sometimes they over-indulged. "I know one or two that did," said Joseph Beard. When you have several thousand dollars invested in machinery, and you only use it three, five, ten, fifteen days a year, the rest of the time it's sitting idle ... it would have been ... better if they had hired their work done from someone else rather than put that much into it.[196] More cash was needed to buy manufactured goods as the farm became less self-supporting, but prices for raw materials remained low during the agricultural slump of the 1920s and 1930s. "Agriculture was much less distressed when the farm was a self-supporting home," reflected the _Washington Star_: But when factories began producing commodities in quantity the farmer could buy them easier than he could make them at home. At first glance this looks like an admirable situation. But the hitch arose when the farmer found himself unable to maintain a fair basis of exchange.[197] The result was that many farms of long-standing ownership had to be mortgaged. In the space of one year (between 1924 and 1925) county mortgages rose a dramatic 30% and by 1940 they had risen another 20%.[198] Worse yet, a small but significant number of farmers and farm laborers were beginning to leave the countryside altogether to work in the city. [Illustration: The Kidwell farm and Floris vicinity shown in an aerial photograph taken in 1937. Photo, National Archives and Records Service.] The county's improved transportation system was partially responsible for this. Access to markets had been facilitated by surfaced roads but an easy avenue to city jobs was also opened. Short and regular hours, higher pay and city amenities were strong attractions to the farmer who had had to work "from daybreak to backbreak" for a scanty living.[199] In recognition of this problem, Derr wrote plaintively in his annual report of 1925: The worst feature is the fact that our small farmers in the main have such a hard time to get along that many of them are actually training their children along more lucrative lines, and occupations other than farming. Many of these farmers have sold their farms or abandoned their leases and moved into the cities and are earning more money per day than they made per week in the country. Another important factor in this exodus from the farm is the fact that so many of our farm boys with good health and strength, and not afraid of hard work are making good in the city.[200] Continuing on, Derr quoted one discouraged farmer: "One of my daughters is making 22 dollars a week, and my wife is talking of getting a job too. My wife can earn more in the city than I am getting so I guess I will take care of the house and let them go to work."[201] Ironically, additions such as electrification, intended to improve the rural standard of living, seem to have done little to check the migration. USDA and United Nations studies show that the very amenities which should have made life in the country more attractive often resulted in a large flow of the population towards urban areas, a trend which continues today in developing countries. Even increased education, which had as its goal professional quality in agricultural training, sometimes simply broadened the farmer to possibilities outside his own realm. Sociologists and agriculturalists have found these repercussions puzzling and have not discovered clear-cut reasons for them. Perhaps with country and city life being ever homogenized by the use of radios, automobiles, consumer goods and the interflow of people, the step of leaving the farm to try city life seemed less foreign and formidable. In Fairfax County the proximity of Washington and Alexandria made it especially tempting.[202] It was not only farm owners who left home for city jobs, but the farm laborers. The effect of this exodus was devastating to the county's small farmer. Initially the scarcity of help meant cutting back additional farm activities, the products of which were not earmarked for the market. Rebecca Middleton remembered, for instance, that farmers stopped raising their own hogs chiefly because of the difficulty of hiring laborers to help with butchering.[203] As labor shortages grew, the available help raised their prices significantly, eventually outpricing themselves for most farmers. As Joseph Beard observed, this trend did not affect Fairfax County in a really dramatic way until after World War II, "by virtue of the fact that most farmers raised anywhere from two to five children. Most every farmer's hired hand raised from two to five children. Now there just wasn't room on this farm to employ ten to twelve children." With such large families the drain to Washington did not so clearly affect the farms at the outset.[204] Nevertheless, the trend retains its significance, for the high cost of labor, which contributed greatly to the demise of the self-supporting farm, had its roots in the optimistic improvement of transportation systems in the second and third decades of the century.[205] The improved roads carried yet another liability: an increase in land value and the consequent rise in taxation. In 1923 the average acre in the county was worth $5 to $10; it had more than doubled in value by the end of that decade.[206] Taxes rose accordingly. The editors of the _Fairfax Herald_ complained in 1926 that in addition to the cost of living which had risen 78% from 1913, they paid federal taxes which were 200% over the pre-World War I figure.[207] The farmer also carried the burden of cost for his much-desired roads. In addition to bond issues, there was a Virginia state gasoline tax which fell heavily on the farmer with his gas-driven machinery and need to haul produce to market.[208] Taxation, like labor, machinery and manufactured goods, called for additional cash, which was more and more difficult for the family farmer to raise. "There's only one thing that has driven the dairy industry out of Fairfax County, and that's taxes," concluded Holden Harrison. "The land was suitable, the location was suitable, but who's going to run a dairy on $10,000 an acre land?"[209] * * * * * An editorial in the _Fairfax Herald_ for September 6, 1935, reflects well the changes seen on farms of the depression era. Housewives throughout the county are becoming more and more incensed over the steadily rising prices of foodstuffs, particularly meats.... In many places housewives are actually boycotting merchants who attempt to sell meat at the present price level. The blame for the present rise in prices lies directly at the door of the Raw Dealers and Brain Trusters. These smart young gentlemen had a theory and in pursuance of that theory they slaughtered a great number of hogs, in order to keep prices at an unnaturally high level. They succeeded only too well.[210] That the farm family was no longer raising its own meat, that they had lost a good deal of control over the quality and availability of their daily necessities, that housewives viewed themselves as important and cohesive enough to organize a boycott, that farm commodities were no longer strictly under the regulation of the farmer, and that the government's interference was beginning to be questioned and resented were signs of radical change in rural economic and social structure. The farmer was no longer so isolated, nor so overtaxed with sheer physical labor. The price he paid for these advantages was diminishing control over a way of life which had begun to slip away. PART III--NOTES _Professionalization and an Increased Standard of Living_ [157] Thomas A. Bailey, _The American Pageant_ (Boston, D. C. Heath, 1966), 416. [158] _United States Congressional Record_, 1914, 1916, 1917. [159] Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979. [160] Kolb and Brunner, _A Study of Rural Society_, 424. [161] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979; McNair, "What I Remember" and "Fred Curtice, Fairfax Dairy Farmer," _Washington Post_, October 24, 1978. [162] "Poultry School at Fairfax," February 16, 1933; and "Two Day Poultry School a Success," March 2, 1933, both in _Herndon News-Observer_. [163] Advertisement in _Herndon News-Observer_, June 4, 1925. [164] Beard/Netherton/Reed, November, 1974. [165] Derr Report, 1925, 14; and 1937 Report. [166] Minutes of Meetings, Farmer's Club #1, Herndon, Virginia, October 1, 1909 to January 13, 1935, copy courtesy of Rebecca Middleton. [167] "Dairymen to Meet," _Fairfax Herald_, August 30, 1935; "Floris Producers Active," _Herndon News-Observer_, January 22, 1925; Derr Report, 1927; for an outstanding example of a contract such as the one described, see contract between Burden S. Athey and Windsor Lodge Farm, Huntley, Virginia, May 31, 1933, in possession of Mrs. Mary Scott. [168] Lucy Blake Report, 1938, 7. [169] See all of the annual reports of home demonstration agents, especially Sarah E. Thomas Reports, 1933 and 1934; and Lucy Steptoe Report, 1936. [170] For 4-H Club activity, see annual reports of home demonstration agents; and "The Short Course," _Fairfax Herald_, July 16, 1926. [171] Derr Report, 1926. [172] "Floris 'Aggies' Organize," _Herndon News-Observer_, January 13, 1926 (sic, 1927); and Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [173] "Influence of Club Members," _Herndon News-Observer_. [174] Muriel Wheeler, 4-H Record Book, Herndon Club, 1933, in 4-H Record File, in Virginiana. [175] _15th Census of the United States, Agricultural Summary, 1930_; Kolb and Brunner, _A Study of Rural Society_, 387; and advertisement in _Herndon News-Observer_, March 26, 1925. [176] Derr Report, 1935, 13; and Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [177] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979; and Rita Shug, "The Town of Herndon," unpublished monograph, George Mason University, May, 1973, 8. [178] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [179] VPI, _Housing_, 26. [180] _Ibid._, 14 and 26; "Farm Home Water Supply for Fairfax County," _Herndon News-Observer_, June 23, 1932; and Netherton, et al., _Fairfax County_, 519. [181] Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, _Historic Progressive Fairfax County in Old Virginia_ (Alexandria, 1928), 35; Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [182] Greear/Netherton, March 23, 1978; and interview with Emma Millard, by Dana Gumb, November 15, 1972. [183] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [184] Minutes of Farmer's Club #1; and Resolution of Farmer's Club #14, n.d., copy found in Minutes of Farmer's Club #1. [185] Derr Report, 1925, 14. [186] Publicity Committee of Herndon Chamber of Commerce, "Facts Regarding Bond Issue Every Voter Should Know," 1924, copy courtesy of Holden Harrison; Robert T. Hawkes, Jr., "The Emergence of a Leader: Harry Flood Byrd, Governor of Virginia, 1926-1930," _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, LXXXII, July 1, 1974, 281; _Historic Progressive Fairfax County_, 35. [187] Agnes Rothery, _Virginia: The New Dominion_ (New York, 1940), 124-25. [188] Derr Report, 1925. [189] Lucy Blake Report, 1937, 7. [190] "Improved Highways are Big Aid to the Farmer," _Herndon News-Observer_, December 30, 1926. [191] McNair, "What I Remember." [192] "A Unique Fairfax County Farm." [193] "Cows Like Machines," _Herndon News-Observer_, April 28, 1932. [194] _Report of the Commission to Study the Condition of the Farmers of Virginia to the General Assembly of Virginia_ (Richmond, 1930), 35; and Lord, _Men of Earth_, 147. [195] Jere Rusk quoted in Joseph Schafer, _The Social History of American Agriculture_ (New York, 1936), 159. This book also contains an excellent summary of the problems mechanization produced for the small farmer. [196] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [197] "The Way Out for the Farmer," _Washington Star_, June 19, 1932, section 7, 3. [198] Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_, 53; and _Agricultural Censes, 1925_ and _1940_. The figures are 21.9% mortgaged in 1924, 28.4% in 1925 and 30.25% in 1940. [199] J. Middleton/Netherton, February 24, 1978. [200] Derr Report, 1925, 8. [201] Derr Report, 1921, 1. [202] National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, _Proceedings of Long Range Study Committee I-III_, November 1967-March 1968, (Washington, D.C., 1969); and _Rural Electric Fact Book_ (Washington, D.C., 1960). [203] Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [204] Beard/Netherton/Reed, November, 1974. [205] See _Ibid._, Derr Reports, 1926 and 1928; and Schaefer, _The Social History of American Agriculture_, 162. [206] Virginia Agricultural Advisory Council, _A Five Year Program for Development of Virginia Agriculture_ (Richmond, 1923), 17; and Fairfax County Land Record Books, 1930-1931, in Virginiana. [207] "Tax Rate," editorial in _Fairfax Herald_, April 23, 1926. [208] Hawkes, "Harry Flood Byrd," 281. [209] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [210] Editorial in _Fairfax Herald_, September 6, 1935. PART IV _The New Deal_ One of the most important changes to influence farming in the years between the two world wars was the new interest the government took in agriculture and its problems. For many years the nation had considered agriculture to be not just the fundamental, but the ideal way of life. It was with a start, therefore, that people began to realize, soon after the turn of the century, that rural population was in fact decreasing, and that farm life fell short of the rosy dream of pastoral independence so cherished by Americans. A survey of farm conditions undertaken during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt revealed that many rural areas lacked the most basic amenities offered in cities and that low farm prices retarded the agriculturist's efforts to better his condition. Farm conditions improved during the World War I years when the cries of "Feed the World" expanded markets and expectations. Inevitably, though, this increased agricultural production became a liability, for when the European and domestic markets shrunk at the close of the war farm prices fell drastically. Many farmers, hoping to offset the low prices with higher yields, took advantage of the new technology to produce bumper crops; the result was an additional surplus and even lower prices. Throughout the 1920s, the farm situation remained critical.[211] The stock market crash of 1929 marked an extension and exacerbation of the grim farm conditions rather than a sudden decline. It rocked the farmer's market, of course, by further decreasing the amount of raw products being sold; unemployed workers bought less of everything, and often kept gardens themselves. More crucial than the crash of 1929 to the farmer's well-being in northern Virginia were two severe droughts, one in the late 1920s and the other in 1931. The latter was particularly harsh. Wheat planted in October did not come up until April, and one woman recalled that the cherry trees failed to blossom until the late fall.[212] Thousands of tons of hay and grain feeds had to be brought in from other parts of the country to feed the livestock, at enormous cost to the farmers. The combination of these unfortunate elements meant more mortgaged farms and tighter belts for the county's farmers.[213] Relief came in the form of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) which went into effect in the spring of 1933. One of the earliest of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies, it offered a radically new approach to farm recovery. Whereas earlier governmental policies had relied on tariffs or half-hearted attempts to buy up surpluses to protect farm profits, the AAA promoted a scheme of "artificial scarcity." This was accomplished by price supports and through elimination of price-depressing surpluses by paying the growers to cut down their crop acreage. Payments were financed by taxing food processors, such as millers, who in turn shifted the burden to the consumer.[214] Many of the AAA provisions were aimed at the large producers of the lower south and midwest, but they also had their effect in areas of smaller farms such as Fairfax County. Few county citizens were in absolute want during the Depression, in part because the effective work of the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Association insured steady milk prices. Yet these and later policies were embraced as being the only available hope for turning around the farm situation. "They were distressed enough so that they were willing to cooperate in a considerable degree with anything that would help them out."[215] Implementing the programs created some initial problems. A system of acreage allotment had to be devised for each farmer, and this involved setting up an intricate bureaucracy which included a county committee (made up of three local farmers), new responsibilities for the county agent, and close association with representatives of the new federal programs. Confusion existed about the allowances made in the act for home consumption and the process by which allotments were decided. To arrive at the allowances for wheat, for example, the farmer had to complete two forms, on which it was necessary to compute his average yield for a three-year period (1930-1932) then adjust it to relate to a five-year nationwide average; this figure, reduced by 15 to 20 percent was his allowed production. The ultimate decision was made by the members of the county committee who had been elected by the taxpayers. "I've often wondered whether our judgment was accurate enough to really be used, but it was used," commented Holden Harrison who sat on the board.[216] The AAA county committee sought to be equitable in its determinations, but as in any process which tries to fit a series of requirements to individual cases, the decisions sometimes seemed arbitrary or unfair. Derr cited a case resulting from the Potato Act (which required a farmer to pay a penalty for yields exceeding his allotment) in which an older couple had "had poor luck with their potatoes for the base years; [they] almost wept when they learned that their future lease would be only forty bushels and they would have to pay a tax on what they sold over that amount."[217] Snags also occurred in the administration of the farm loan program, designed by the government to aid farmers in the purchase of seed and fertilizer. Not only were elaborate accounts of mortgage, store and personal debts, unpaid taxes and notes required (sometimes for a loan of $25.00), but repayment of the loan was set for dates such as July 1, when the crops were not yet harvested and ready cash was scarce. As a result, much of the money designated for aid to Fairfax County was never applied for.[218] To the farmer, accustomed to deciding for himself what and when he would plant, and unfamiliar with the niceties of bureaucratic finagling, the government sometimes seemed more geared to interference than assistance. In reality, the programs affected Fairfax County less than other parts of northern Virginia. Statistics from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and the USDA show that only 71 wheat adjustment contracts were taken out in Fairfax County in 1935, compared to 233 for Fauquier County and 351 for Loudoun County. As each of these neighboring counties contained over 2,000 farms, these are small figures indeed.[219] The federal government set few limits on milk or poultry production, the county's two main economic sources, so the benefits of the AAA programs were often indirect. The principal effect was to force farmers to set aside about 15% of their land from wheat or corn production. Because Fairfax County farmers marketed little of their grain production, the outcome was that they received a bounty for planting another crop on this acreage, or allowing it to lie fallow and be fertilized. The policy resulted in a strong soil improvement program in the county, which was additionally aided by the cooperative buying power of the county committee. This meant, for instance, that purchases of lime needed to improve Fairfax County's acidic soil could be had for $3.50 a ton, the cost at the quarry, plus handling charges.[220] Of even greater benefit to Fairfax County farmers was the moratorium on mortgage and even interest payments during the Depression's most severe period. Individual banks, such as the National Bank of Leesburg, which held many farm mortgages, also voluntarily followed the government's policy of leniency on collection of farm debts. This relieved much of the stress on the area's producers, allowing them to retain their land and, in some cases, even improve their holdings.[221] The Depression years saw the advent of a radical new policy of government influence in farm affairs. Where laissez-faire had been the federal rule (and the farmers' desire), a control was now exercised over production, marketing and farm improvement. Though the farmer might believe this mitigated his independence and tied his judgment to that of an impersonal bureaucracy, he was forced to accept Uncle Sam's interference. The role of the government in designing agricultural policy proved to be a lasting one, still felt by the farmer of the 1970s. PART IV--NOTES _The New Deal_ [211] Barger and Lansburg, _American Agriculture, 1899-1949_, 72-112. [212] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979; Rogers/Corbat, et al., June 12, 1970. [213] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [214] Bailey, _The American Pageant_, 842-43. [215] Rogers, Corbat, et al., June 12, 1970; Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979; Joseph Beard quoted in Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [216] "Wheat Production Control Plan," _Herndon News-Observer_, July 27, 1933; "Wheat Allotment Based on Averages," _Ibid._, August 17, 1933; Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [217] Derr Report, 1936, 4. The Potato Act, which would in fact have been disasterous for small farmers, was actually before any crop was harvested. However, its effect was still to create some hostility to government programs among farmers. [218] Derr Reports, 1930, 1931, 1934. [219] _Virginia Farm Statistics_ (Richmond, 1926, 1930, 1936). [220] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979. [221] _Ibid._ PART V _Community_ Beyond the family, with its special working relationship, the neighborhood community was the chief social unit for the farmer. It made available services the family could not provide for itself and added sociability and security to the farmer's life. It also had some influence on the tenor of his work because a dynamic community spirit prompts individual enterprise. The Floris neighborhood on which this study is focused was such a vigorous community. Fairfax County was filled with similar crossroads which gave an identity to each farming area and, with post office, blacksmith and general store, fulfilled the farmer's simple requirements. Floris seems to have shown an outstandingly progressive impulse, however, and a social interaction which made it an area of particular cohesiveness and community longevity.[222] The root of community interaction is neighborliness--an interest in and concern for other people. Villages contain the same variety of human relations and personality as large cities, with the advantage that the smaller number of people are more easily known and understood. There could be irritating aspects to this (privacy was not always available in abundance) but also a warm familiarity. The people of Floris were so well acquainted that each man's favorite kind of pie was community knowledge.[223] Lottie Schneider, who grew up near Herndon, gave a charming description of village life in her book, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_: Everyone was interested in his neighbor. We shared our joys and sorrows, were sympathetic to each other. When we went down the street we knew everybody and would stop to greet each other. There was a village atmosphere of friendliness and kindness. How often I pause over every memory and savor again the charm of the friendly neighbors, the school and church relationships, the simple everyday happenings which like a weaver's shuttle steadily wove the lights and shadows into the tapestry of life.[224] Neighborliness went beyond social interaction; it was also the basis for mutual aid and cooperation. Work on hauling projects, barn raisings and emergency assistance was readily available. "If somebody got sick and couldn't milk his cows, why the neighbors would go over and help him," related Joseph Beard. I remember the neighbor next door to me had the flu, and everybody thought he was going to die and the snow was about twenty inches deep.... There was a wife left there with three ... small children, not of school age. My father not only did our work, but he went over and did their work too.[225] Mutual assistance, concern and hospitality were the bedrock of community relations. [Illustration: A map of the Floris community, c. 1930, drawn from memory by Joseph Beard.] Rapid communications made information on everyone's activities neighborhood knowledge. County agent Derr noted that it was "remarkable how rapidly news travels, whether good or bad," and that this was in fact an asset to his work.[226] The postal agent and telephone operator were two other information catalysts. The postmaster, Thomas Walker, was notorious for reading the postcards which passed his way, and often called the recipients to inform them of impending visits by relatives, or tidings of birth or death.[227] Telephone lines were put up in 1916, "strung on trees, just old poles up and down the road"[228] and this greatly speeded channels of gossip and necessary information. The telephone operator worked from her own bedroom and was the source for all the latest news. "If you didn't know what was going on in the neighborhood, all you had to do was ask the telephone operator," one Floris resident observed. "She knew everything."[229] In a more pragmatic sense the operator was depended upon for help during emergencies. The fear of isolation, a chief liability of rural areas, was much reduced by the improved roads and telecommunications of the first decade of the 20th century. The telephone operator was particularly helpful in locating rural doctors when they were needed in an emergency. Like the veterinarians, doctors were not relied on for minor illnesses but were called on in extreme cases. Jack Day and William Robey were among the doctors who travelled by horse and buggy (and later in early model Fords) to make housecalls. They were loved and accepted by the community: "We thought of a family doctor about like we did our minister."[230] Fees were usually $1.00 for a housecall though farmers would sometimes offer a bushel of corn or a chicken in payment for their treatment.[231] The doctors contributed a great deal to the well-being of the community. Rural families, however, were resourceful in finding home remedies for many ailments. Some of these were long-respected herbal preparations, but others were used more because of tradition than effectiveness. Frances Simpson described the special folk medicines of her family near Herndon: When an epidemic was reported in the village during the winter, she prepared the dreadful smelling _asafetida_ bags which she tied about our necks under our dresses. They were supposed to ward off diseases. When my sisters and I had colds, mutton _tallow plasters_ were put on our chests and fastened to our underwear. These sticky, clammy plasters were worn until all signs of cold had disappeared. _Sulpher and molasses_ by the spoonful were given in the spring 'to help clear out our systems....' Calomel was an often used remedy for the liver until the doctor forbade its use. My mother had a bad case of erysipelas and her leg was in a fearful state. Nothing seemed to help it. One night she dreamed my sister Dora, who had recently died, came to her, told her to make _poultices of cabbage leaves_ wrung in hot water and apply them to her leg. She followed instructions and in due season her leg was healed.[232] [Illustration: G. Ray Harrison, c. 1925. Photo courtesy of Ray Harrison.] [Illustration: The Harrison family's mule team on a shopping trip to Herndon about 1914. A young Ray Harrison is riding in the wagon. The stores in Herndon provided basic supplies and services for the Floris community. Photo courtesy of Ray Harrison.] The Floris community was an early outgrowth of a mining settlement near Frying Pan Run. Robert Carter, of Nomini Hall in Westmoreland County, owned the land which he believed contained rich copper ore. Though roads were built and several mining attempts made, the mineral proved to be of poor quality. The access offered by roads built by the miners (for example, West Ox Road on which Frying Pan Farm is located) opened the area to agriculture. The first permanent community was formed by a group of Baptists, who successfully petitioned Carter for permission to build a church on his property. One of their early churches, a simple, frame structure built in 1791, still stands near the center of the community.[233] The origins of the area's unusual name are obscure--some believe either Indians or early miners who camped in the vicinity mislaid a frying pan and named the creek after their loss. Others feel that the circular shape of a round pool into which the run flows influenced its appellation. Until 1879 the community at the crossroads of the West Ox and Centreville Roads was also called Frying Pan, at which time it was thought too undignified a name. It was rechristened Floris, according to one source, after the prettiest girl in the neighborhood. Another story relates that summer boarders near Frying Pan Post Office thought such a lowly name would cause ridicule among their city friends. They called the town Floris, which means "flower" in Latin, to tone up the image of their warm weather "resort." By the time of the name change, the village had expanded somewhat from an 1801 description of "four log huts and a Meeting House,"[234] but it retained its small personal character. In the 1920s and 1930s it consisted of a blacksmith shop, general store and post office, a boarding house, three churches and two schools, as well as the surrounding farms. * * * * * The focal point of the Floris community during this period, and the factor which gave it a countywide importance, was the Floris Vocational High School. The school was the result of the Smith-Hughes Act, passed in 1917 to organize agriculture and home economics courses on the secondary level of education. H. B. Derr tried unsuccessfully for two years to establish such a course in Fairfax County but met with little support from the members of the school board, who favored traditional academics. It was finally through the farmer's clubs and community leagues (forerunners of the PTA), especially those in the Floris area, that Derr was able to convince the county of the program's potential. By 1919 farmers and merchants had donated some $17,000 to start construction of a building, and in honor of the special efforts of agriculturalists in Floris, it was decided to locate the school there.[235] [Illustration: A sketch of the plot of land originally deeded to the school board in 1876 by George Kenfield for a Floris school. Fairfax County Deedbook H-5, p. 617.] [Illustration: Mr. Jack Walker, the engineer in charge of the construction of the Floris School 1920. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: Floris Vocational High School under construction, c. 1920. Note the tennis game being played in the front of the old building. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] The Floris Vocational High School was the third to be built in Virginia.[236] It was extended from an existing, two-year high school, founded in 1911, but the property on which it was built had actually been deeded to the school board over forty years earlier. In 1876 George Kenfield deeded about six acres of land to the Frying Pan School Association and the property remained in school use through several owner changes.[237] One- and two-room schools stood on the land until 1911 when a larger building was completed.[238] The citizens of Floris had worked together to raise money for the vocational school; they also contributed their skills and time to its construction. Under the direction of two (often dissenting) contractors, a Mr. Sheffield and Jack Walker, pupils and parents helped to raise the three-story brick structure, and later to build a smaller agricultural shop a short distance from the main schoolhouse. The school was open to the entire county but the immediate community continued to feel a special interest in it. The Floris Home Demonstration Club served hot lunches in the school for many years and around 1924 they sponsored the hiring of a music teacher at their own expense until the county and state finally gave support to the teacher.[239] Floris Vocational High School was an immediate success. In 1924 it had 150 pupils, evenly divided between primary and secondary grades, and hailing chiefly from the Herndon area. Students walked or rode horseback to reach their classes; some, such as Virginia Presgraves Harrison from Loudoun County, boarded with local families.[240] The high school offered the standard curriculum courses of English, American and European history, algebra, geography, physics and chemistry. Courses in higher mathematics (plane geometry and trigonometry) were optional as were English history and foreign languages. The school differed from the county's other secondary institutions in the varied agriculturally oriented courses it taught. Boys learned the principles of agronomy, animal husbandry, soil control and veterinary science, and were expected to put the theoretical knowledge into practice with test animals and acreage on their home farms. They also sharpened their skills in agricultural shop courses. Under the guidance of Ford Lucas and, later, Harvey D. Seale, they were taught carpentry, motor repair, blacksmithing, indeed, everything from building chicken coops to "how to put a roof on a barn and keep it from leaking."[241] Classes for the girls also stressed the relationship between theory and practice. The rudiments of nutrition, food preparation, fabric and clothing construction, were carried over into "Hominy Hall," a house owned by William Ellmore, which housed the kitchen and serving areas for domestic science courses. The girls spent several hours a week in this building, gaining proficiency in the work which would probably occupy most of their lives. Like the majority of the students' homes, Hominy Hall had no running water, and baking was done on a large, wood-burning stove.[242] The classes were taught by, among others, May Calhoun and Louisa Glassal. Elizabeth Ellmore, principal of Floris Vocational High School in 1929-1930, noted that because of the school's personal nature the teachers had a fair amount of leeway in the character and depth of the courses they taught--as much, in fact, as their students would allow them.[243] One early teacher found the pupils very apt indeed, with abilities equal to those of the town children she had previously taught. Stated Lulah Ferguson: So far as the interest was concerned you'd find that maybe those children in Falls Church were a little more interested in affairs in general, a little better informed generally, than these were, but so far as their attitude towards studying or wanting to know, you wouldn't find any difference. These country children were really just as eager or maybe more so than some of the small town....[244] [Illustration: The championship girl's basketball team of Floris Vocational High School, 1924-1925.] [Illustration: The "Floris Follies," a minstrel presented at the Floris school in March, 1939. Such activities were usually staged to benefit a community activity. Photo courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder.] [Illustration: The students of Floris Vocational High School, 1924. Identified in July, 1970, as follows: Top row left to right: Jay Leith, Warren Rosenburger, Jessie Torreyson, George T. McWhorter, III, Marie Poland Bonde, Stella Sibley Jones, Eunice Milam Middleton (teacher), Audrey Barton, Kelsie Hornbaker; Second row: Irving McNair, Louise Melcher Ritter, Kate Patton Kincheloe, Sarah Patton Middleton, Rebecca Middleton, Bradley Shear, Gilbert Presgrave; Third row: Amy Rogers Nixon, Elsie Andrews Brown, Georgeanna Brogden Harrison, Camilla Carson Harnsburger, Kneeland Leith, Irene Rogers Deuterman, Welby Nalls, Wade Bennett; Fourth row: Frances Leith Greenwade, Lena Andrews, Gladys Robey Embrey, Emma Ellmore, Gem Thompson, Alan Allison Fleming, Howard Armfield, George Harrison, Allan Shear, Edgar Reeves; Fifth row: Sue Creel, Grafton Utterback, Richard Lee, John Keyes; Sixth row: William McWhorter, Martha Smith, Harriet Moulthrop Cheek, Erline Bready, Oliver Keyes, Withers Murphy, Charles Austin, John Hessick, Joseph Beard; Seventh row: Ruth Higdon, Rosalie Smith, Eleanor Bowers Matthews, Mary Smith Douglas, Daniel Nalls, Ralph Armfield, Turner Hornbaker, Frank Kidwell, Carroll Murphy; Eighth row: Bessie Beard Garrett, Ruby Hyatt, Gladys Utterback, Elma Middleton Nalls, Ned Sutphin; Ninth row: Katherine Hummer, Bernice West, Lillian Adrian Munday, Ruby Ambler Bocato, Elizabeth Powell Austin, Mae Blevins, Virginia Presgrave Harrison, Dora Cox Robey, Kathlene Adrian Presgrave. Photo courtesy of Emma Ellmore.] Studious or not, the Floris pupils also had their share of fun at school. Richard Peck recalled playing several pranks during school hours, such as catching copperhead snakes and letting them loose in the classroom, or mixing together soil samples painstakingly collected for County agent Derr. Much to the mischievous students' hilarity, a puzzled Derr remarked, "I had no idea the soil was so uniform out here."[245] Though afternoon farmwork occupied most of the pupils' spare time, some extra-curricular activities were also offered. Plays were given annually by the senior class, an example being the 1925 production of "Home Times" billed as "very attractive" by the _Herndon News-Observer_.[246] The Floris Vocational High School also boasted highly competitive athletic teams, especially in basketball and track. For a school of its size, it showed unusual competence and enthusiasm, winning both boys' and girls' county basketball championships several years running. In 1928 their track team competed with 800 high schools in the state, finishing fifth overall and claiming two of the seven records which were broken.[247] In this, as in the academic standing of the vocational school, the community's dynamism and interest influenced its high degree of excellence. Graduation exercises were also community events. The students worked for weeks planning a memorable evening for proud parents, friends and relations. The 1927 graduation from Floris Vocational High School featured an invocation by Reverend Glenn Cooper of the Floris Methodist Church, valedictory and salutatory addresses given by Virginia Presgraves and Joseph Beard, respectively, and a talk on the promising future for farmers by Professor Walter Newman of VPI which the local paper described as "worthy of the attention of any farming community in our state." These formalities were followed by musical selections, including a duet by Gilbert Presgraves and Joseph Beard, who sang the school song, "Our Old High." Next came the presentation of diplomas "in a most pleasing fashion." Wrote the _Herndon News-Observer_: "Each student was complimented on his success while his classmates were roused to great hilarity by some well-directed humor."[248] [Illustration: A maypole dance held at the Floris Elementary School in 1923. Celebrations of this sort were held each May 1. Miss Katie Grok is the teacher on the right. Photo courtesy of Margaret Mary Lee.] [Illustration: A 1910 photograph of the Floris Elementary School, built in 1900. The building was replaced by a two-year high school the next year. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] Floris Vocational High School graduated its last class in 1930. The previous year the school board had voted to consolidate the county's schools. The school consolidation movement was aimed principally at small one and two-room schoolhouses; by combining these local institutions, better facilities could be afforded and, consequently, teachers of high caliber attracted. The county's farm families had clamoured for just such a reorganization for many years, but the measure was contingent on the availability of good roads because rural children would have to travel some distance to the new district schools. The purpose of the judgment as passed did not really pertain to the Floris School, yet it came under the school-board's jurisdiction and consequently the Floris High School pupils were moved with those of Forestville to join Herndon High School.[249] Agriculture courses were also offered at Herndon High School, for example, in 1933, 43 boys were enrolled in farm-oriented programs. Yet, the closing of the Vocational High School was a decisive loss for Floris. The school had been built and maintained by local money and labor and was thus a strong focal point in the neighborhood. It had encouraged community self-esteem and the area's pride had been reflected in the strong academic programs the school produced. The district high schools were less personal in nature and broader in scope; they did not so accurately fulfill an individual locale's needs. An illustration of this was the rigid adherence to school attendance regulations at Herndon High School. Whereas a neighborhood school would often allow a farm boy or girl to be excused from classes during peak work periods of harvesting or butchering, the new consolidated schools were less flexible. In one case a student who persisted in helping his family was continually kept behind and never did graduate. Like other "progressive" movements, consolidation of rural schools advanced the quality of life in only some areas. It made available more modern equipment and a wider range of teachers and curriculum, but in social relations and community benefit, the advantages were not so clearcut.[250] * * * * * [Illustration: The Home Economics and Future Farmer's Club of Floris Vocational High School in the mid-1920s. Photo courtesy of Emma Ellmore.] The other main institutions which gave character and definition to the Floris community were the churches. There were three places of worship there in the 1920s and 1930s, all of them protestant. The old Frying Pan Baptist Church had been a continuous congregation since the mid-eighteenth century. They were the least social and most dogmatic in their religious practice; members of the other churches used adjectives such as "old school" or "hard-shell" to describe the Baptists. After the turn of the century and during the Depression, the Baptist Church was less regenerative than the others in Floris and most of the members were older people.[251] Less doctrinaire, the Floris Methodist Church and Floris Presbyterian Church, were a more active part of the community. The church buildings, with their large seating capacity, made natural auditoriums for farmers' meetings, lectures and entertainments. The two churches cooperated in sponsorship of an Epworth Youth League, which, though it held its Sunday night meetings in the more centrally located Methodist Church, was non-denominational in character. The Reverend Glenn Cooper reported in 1927 that "the Floris League, being an independent and a community organization does not take up any denominational work, but is interested in local charities and its own entertainment."[252] The Presbyterian and Methodist churches also worked together in planning holiday programs and avoided conflicts by considerately scheduling their important festivals on different dates. At Christmastime, they were especially careful to plan their carol programs so that the entire community could attend both services. As there was a great deal of intermarriage between the two churches, this also reduced family strife.[253] Both groups welcomed members of other faiths. One Presbyterian recalled an occasion when his father greeted a new family just moving into the neighborhood and invited them to attend the local services. "This man said, 'Well, you know I'm a Roman Catholic.' My Dad said, 'It doesn't make any difference what you are, we'd sure like to have you come if you can.' This was the general attitude."[254] Indeed, so ecumenical had the organizations become that the General Conference of the Methodist Church became somewhat alarmed. As early as 1905 this body noted that although its members were leading quiet, orderly lives and attended church services frequently, still the congregation was "not satisfactory in some very essential respects." "Our people have been in the past and are now very negligent and indifferent as to the duty of informing themselves about our doctrines and church policy," stated the minutes of the church's quarterly conference. "There must be a more general study of the church discipline and a larger circulation and a close and careful reading of our church papers."[255] The churches were rarely used for political purposes. Instead, the farmers relied on their farmer's clubs to exert this kind of pressure and seemed to feel that the religious bodies should concentrate on paving the spiritual road to heaven rather than the connecting road to the market. In addition to the regular activities of Sunday school, Bible classes and regular worship services, however, these institutions fulfilled a strong need for fellowship and social interaction. Sunday school picnics and ice cream socials were perennial favorites sponsored each summer by the churches. The picnics were frequently held on attractive parts of neighboring farms, or sometimes as far away as Seneca or Great Falls. Each family would bring a large hamper of food, but the fried chicken, watermelon and pies were spread out on the tables to be shared by everyone. While the parents gossiped or talked politics, the children played and sometimes went swimming. These picnics, like other community events, were held jointly by the Methodists and Presbyterians.[256] The ice cream socials, however, were another story. Here a mild rivalry set in as ladies vied with one another to produce the most admirable cake, and even a slight competition arose over the ice cream. An area resident confided that there was some speculation about which denomination's members owned cows giving the creamiest milk, thus producing the "most sinfully rich" ice cream.[257] No doubt this comparison diminished in importance when one was faced with the wide variety of homemade flavors, using fresh fruits and extracts. Sometimes in early summer the socials would feature strawberries along with the ice cream. On a quiet summer evening, with the fireflies flickering like beacon lights and a whispering breeze lapping at tableclothes and skirts, these must have been particularly pleasant events.[258] Significant holidays also brought about special church programs. At Easter the churches were banked with flowers and a singular rejoicing occurred, and on Mother's Day an appropriate program was offered. The 1926 service included a suitable sermon and original Mother's Prayer by the minister and several selections by the choir, among them "When Mother Sang to Me," "Don't Forget the Old Folks," and "Our Mother."[259] The year's main celebration was, of course, at Christmas. Each church had a Christmas tree, cut by an adult, but decorated with "feet and almost miles" of popcorn strings by the neighborhood's young people, including those just returning home for the holidays. The warm ambiance of these services is evident in the following description, recounted by Joseph Beard: They always had the little people from what you consider the primary grades on up to sixth or seventh grade recite some little poem or some story or something of this kind. You nearly always had a chorus or choir, small, of people in the neighborhood that would sing Christmas carols. You always had a minister who read or recited the Christmas story from the Bible.... The churches were lighted with oil lamps, and they would put candles on the Christmas tree, wax candles and they would light those wax candles and then blow out the lights. It's a wonder we never set the church on fire.... But there would be this beautiful tree with all these lights on it, and hidden down under the tree somewhere would be a great big crate of oranges. Santa Claus usually came in and ... he would ring sleigh bells and walk down through the aisle and make some kind of remark. He would have a sack on his back. This always held tiny little sacks of candy. They started with the smallest children and gave each one of them one orange and one sack of hard candy. They went on up the line as far as the oranges and the candy lasted. If you didn't have a crowd even the adults would get a sack of candy and an orange, but if you had a large crowd, why it stopped at whatever age it ran out along the line. This was an affair at which the program would probably take an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes. But it was cold in there you know ... they'd have a great big, old pot bellied stove, but it was in one place in the church. Everybody couldn't sit around that stove, so you sat there in your overcoats sometimes.[260] [Illustration: Miss Gladys Thompson and the Floris Community Orchestra, 1929. The members at this time included: Front row: Haley Smith, Louise Cockerill, Louise McNair; Second row: Richard Peck, unidentified, Miss Gladys Thompson (director), Jack Patton, Mary Peck, Franklin Ellmore; Back row: Helen Presgraves, Ethel Andrews, Mary Win Nickell, Elizabeth Ellmore, Helen Peck. The old car in the background is the one in which Miss Thompson first traveled. Note the old four-room schoolhouse also in the background. Photo courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder.] Other groups offered activities to fill the farm family's leisure hours. An elementary school teacher who taught music as a sideline, Gladys Thompson, organized an orchestra about 1928. It consisted of her violin pupils and other musically inclined citizens and was called the Floris Community Orchestra. Twelve violins, and mandolins, saxophones, piano, drums and banjo made up the group which played for school plays and community events. They also put on an annual recital and one year even gave a vaudeville show. "I remember she used to fill up her small one-seated roadster with music students going to practices and performances," fondly wrote a member of the orchestra, Louise McNair Ryder. "One of my greatest pleasures was clambering into the rumble seat with my violin."[261] Musical groups also sprang up spontaneously. One, which Joseph Beard referred to as a "little old hillybilly band," included besides himself on fiddle, Virginia Presgraves (piano) and her uncle Austin Wagstaff on ukulele. Richard Peck played banjo and saxophone for the group. They played together over a period of several years, using no sheet music, but becoming so comfortable with each other's playing that they could anticipate the variations and style of their fellow musicians. They practiced in the schoolhouse, playing country tunes such as "Camp Town Races," "Old Black Joe," and "Shortnin' Bread" for their own amusement. They rarely entertained an audience.[262] Sometimes too the school or an unofficial group sponsored musical events, a notable one being the concert by "Al Hopkins and his Buckle-Busters," a celebrated country band from North Carolina.[263] In addition, serious organizations like the Farmer's Clubs, Community League or church-affiliated women's clubs, mixed work and play by sponsoring picnics, quilting bees, and oyster suppers. The record made of a pleasant outing by Farmer's Clubs #1 and #4 to the Great Falls in 1913 was typical of many excursions in later years: It goes without saying that all present had a very enjoyable day. The children spent much time on the swings and Merry-Go-Rounds while the older members spent the day in viewing the falls.... While still others enjoyed fishing.[264] Home Demonstration Clubs also put on their share of entertainments, with buffet suppers and skits, rounding off one year with a "husband-calling contest."[265] Even the business meetings themselves were social occasions at which dinner and friendly conversation were mixed with more critical concerns. Oyster suppers were a regional specialty held all over the county, of which Floris sponsored its share. They were often money-making events (as were the ice cream socials) at which dinner cost from twenty-five to fifty cents and featured stewed and fried oysters. Lottie Schneider recalled the bustle of preparation for an oyster supper given in Herndon, involving the setting up of tables and benches and flower arrangements, and the difficult choice to be made between fried or stewed oysters and the many different relishes brought by each lady.[266] The suppers in fact generally held an overabundance of food. Again, Joseph Beard described the scene: There were always a few who didn't like oysters and they always had ham for those.... Anything that you would have in a farming neighborhood like that, when you sat down to eat it was just like having a Thanksgiving dinner. Everything from sweet potatoes to scalloped potatoes to macaroni and cheese to string beans to corn-on-the-cob to tomatoes [would be served]. Most anything that could be raised or produced in a vegetable garden or in a truck patch they'd bring. Then we had custard pies and lemon pies and apple pies....[267] The money made at the oyster dinners was used for school projects, to buy church furnishings or aid in mission work. * * * * * Professional interest and pleasure were likewise combined at the various fairs held in the area during the late summer. The county sponsored a fair at Fairfax Courthouse until 1933 which featured new farm machinery, exemplary produce and livestock, and a gay carnival atmosphere. The _Herndon News-Observer_ gave a colorful account of the county festivities in its September 23, 1926 edition: The first day was largely devoted to judging, the second day saw a large picnic by Dranesville farmers, the County Chamber of Commerce and the 4-H Clubs frolicked on the third day while the visible and invisible empire [of the Ku Klux Klan] held sway on the last day. Good racing cards filled much of the afternoon. The prizes were more substantial and the performances proportionally good. Every exhibit building was loaded with all varieties and grades of exhibits, while the livestock was as equally interesting in its magnitude and diversification. The flower department was carried partly out of the building where loving hands [had] specially devoted time and energy toward perfection. The woman's department, with nearly a thousand entries, was a wonder of culinary art. The poultry building with every squeek and squawk imaginable, fairly dazzled the farmers and their friends, who came to see what Fairfaxians and their friends are doing. Certainly no other fair in Virginia presented an arena of keener competition and the prize winners deserve to be most highly congratulated....[268] The midway was a swirl of ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds and every variety of game by which you might separate yourself from surplus funds. The region boasted a similar fair held generally in Prince William County and having the dual purpose of promoting and celebrating the dairy industry. The Piedmont Dairy Festival, as it was called, was modeled after the famous Shenandoah Apple Blossom festival and was jocularly known locally as the "Cow Blossom festival."[269] Floris itself held a substantial fair in the years following the decision to stop running a county exhibition. It grew out of the yearly "Flower and Vegetable Show" which had been sponsored by the 4-H and Home Demonstration Clubs and took place on the school grounds. The community divided itself into committees which met year-round to plan the produce and homemaking judgings, livestock shows and entertainment and the result was an event of countywide interest. A program from the 1939 fair lists among the categories "three summer squash," "best adult clothing," "best buttonhole," and "best Holstein heifer." Prizes consisted of cash (usually one to two dollars) or practical items such as five gallons of fly spray. Ironically the award for the best team of draft horses was three gallons of oil.[270] A good deal of pride in everyday achievements resulted from the contests. Elizabeth Rice, writing of the excitement caused by the fairs, recalled the year she entered a devil's food cake in the county exhibition and "received the blue ribbon and a prize from Swann's Down Company of a cake mold, measuring cups, spoons and a box of Swann's Down cake flour." "I still feel 'up' over it," she concluded.[271] Others took their entries a little less seriously. Emma Ellmore remembered the year her mother simply cut a tangled mass of clematis from the back trellis, stuck it in a white vase and entered it in the flower-arranging contest, to win a blue ribbon from judges who admired its exceptional artistry.[272] The day was concluded with a "tournament," in which the neighborhood's young manhood vied with one another for the honor of crowning their lady queen. Lance in hand, "Sir Lancelot" or "Sir Frying Pan" rode at a gallop on a "steed" (often a draft horse) attempting to spear a ring suspended above the track. The winner reigned at the square dance that evening which capped the day's entertainment.[273] Blue ribbons and fair championships were respected and admired by the neighbors and gave the recipient a certain amount of status. In a community in which no one had much ready money, this evidence of leadership or skill counted for a great deal. One person suggested that a large family gave a farmer a certain standing among his peers, and that homemaking was equally respected with the outdoor work. A clever manager was perhaps most admired of all. As Joseph Beard remarked: "There are some people who have very little money, but have the ability to use it in the right place at the right time and get a great deal more out of it than others. I suspect that the person that had the highest standard of living with what they had to do with was respected more than any one thing."[274] Farmers from the Floris area also held private entertainments, such as the Peck family reunion of 1927, or the bridge parties which became so fashionable in the late 1920s and 1930s.[275] On rare occasions they travelled to Washington to see a show or to shop. More often they went to Herndon which had long catered to the farmer's needs. Stores, grain companies and mills, blacksmith and livery stables built their business on fulfilling the farmer's everyday requirements, while ice cream parlors and movie theaters provided pleasant distractions. The latter was an especially popular form of entertainment for young couples on dates. Frances Simpson recalled the excitement of going to the movies and the unique personality of the Herndon theater: What a fascination was that theater or 'movie hall' as it was called.... It was a real treat to go with our friends to the movies at the movie hall, not that we always saw one when we got there. Sometimes the reel would break, other times a tremendous storm would come up and the electric power would be shut off, leaving the player piano to carry on alone in the darkness while we crept home with flashlights, and more than once an angry skunk sought refuge under the movie hall causing the audience to disperse in three minutes flat. Still, it was great fun.[276] All of these community events--ice cream socials, fairs, Community League meetings, and school events--were attended by the whole family. Social activities were less strictly drawn along age lines than they are today; young and old enjoyed the same amusements. The ladies chatted while preparing the dinners at Farmer's Club meetings, and the children came along and played together. Funerals and weddings were also family events for children were expected to learn of life's joys and sorrows through participation. This too encouraged community cohesiveness, as all parts of the society were included in its rituals, and children learned at an early age that they played an active role in the neighborhood's well-being; there was a place for them within the community which would last the length of their life. Strong evidence of this community identity is seen in the large numbers of Floris young people who, even in the face of urban opportunities, elected to stay on the family farm, or chose careers in the agriculture-related fields of veterinary medicine, extension work or fish and wildlife protection.[277] * * * * * Floris and the other closely knit agricultural villages of Fairfax County were exceptionally unified and supportive. Yet even these communities had fringe groups, which were not entirely fulfilled within the neighborhood or accepted by the majority of farmers. In some cases, this was caused by under-stimulation and exasperation at the slow patterns of rural movement. "We were bored to tears," wrote one Floris resident of the long Sunday afternoons spent discussing nothing but politics.[278] More frequently an individual was ignored or shunned by the society because of personal problems which had become a community nuisance: drinking, drugs or sexual indiscretions. The families of such social deviants were pitied and aided, but the offending individuals were avoided--"To whatever extent we could we would ostracize them." In one extreme case the neighborhood took the law into its own hands and lynched a man suspected of rape. "This man may have been innocent as you look back on it now but they thought he did it and they got rid of him right then," related one local citizen. "They just wouldn't put up with that. It just wasn't tolerated, that's all."[279] The largest group outside the community's mainstream was the black agricultural workers. Except in the realm of employer/employee relations they had little social intercourse with their neighbors. Floris Vocational High School was not open to Negro students and the schools that were available to blacks were much inferior to those which taught white children. No high school existed at all for the blacks and the one-to three-room schools that existed were "in the most dilapidated condition," with no water, heat or adequate toilet facilities.[280] Edith Rogers made a revealing comment about the quality of the teachers when she stated that she knew of one that had a degree.[281] In extension activities blacks were also often overlooked. The first black 4-H club was organized in 1934 without the help of the county agent's office, and it was only after two years of exceptional work that he belatedly recognized its existence. "The colored club at the Vienna School was organized, but we did not expect much from it," Derr reported in 1936. A few days ago we were considerably surprised to have the Principal of the School send in her report ... Nearly every colored boy and girl nine years up to eighteen did some work ... Taking it in we feel it is a credible showing for a colored school that has not received its full share of assistance in club work.[282] Black activities in churches and farmer's clubs were similarly ignored. Some black families appear to have been respected for their industry or farming ability. The George Coates family near Floris was one. White neighbors exchanged work and admired the Coates progressive techniques, but still "never went so far as to sit down to dinner with them."[283] Blacks were excluded from the area's fairs, socials and concerts, except in rare cases when a rope kept the audience segregated.[284] Among themselves they, of course, had their own entertainments, but in general the broader opportunities and amusements of the county were closed to the blacks. In the inter-war period another group was increasingly on the fringe of the established community. These were the urban migrants who came along the new roads and railroad lines, seeking an escape from city stresses. The earliest to arrive were summer residents, then came the part-time farmers who wanted country air but city pay. Finally the unabashed suburbanite who looked only for a quiet place to rest between bouts of urban employment moved in. Nearly all came seeking how they could benefit by living in the country, not what they could contribute to it. At first county residents welcomed this influx with open arms; they saw the expansion as a boon to employment and markets. Only later did they begin to realize that, in small ways and large, the forces of economic expansion would alter the shape of their community.[285] Those who migrated chiefly in order to farm were welcomed by the county farm families, but those who were unaccustomed to country ways caused some problems for the rural folk. An editorial in the _Fairfax Herald_ for April 23, 1926, bemoaned the loss of many of the county's lovely wildflowers, for the suburban residents frequently ignored trespass rules to pick the flowers.[286] Also alarming were the differing habits and manners of the city migrants and threat of an infiltration of "unusual and often undesirable" people. Hearing rumors that a nudist colony was to be established in the county's Dranesville District, the _Herndon News-Observer_ declared stoutly We have a lot of objectionable people in the county, who have spilled over from Washington, but we will at least require that they bring their 'duds' along before they can hope to experience a cordial reception.[287] A more critical matter was the importation and propagation of insects from the city, such as the oriental fruit moth, which thrived in the carelessly kept backyard plantings of suburbanites and then wreaked havoc in commercial orchards. County agents Derr and Beard spent considerable time advising these newcomers and helping them plant their gardens.[288] Aside from these minor alarms, the urban influx had really serious consequences for the farmers of Fairfax County. As the numbers of non-farm residents grew, political interest lines began to be drawn and in some cases the farmers began losing control over local governing policies. This did not happen in all areas; for example, the County Board of Supervisors consisted solely of farmers well into the 1940s. However, in some vicinities there were definite political repercussions from the suburban population, such as in Herndon, which although commercially oriented, had always been sympathetic to the farmer's views. In the years after the arrival of the electric trolley, city workers and farmers battled at the polls over mayoral candidates and council representatives; by the 1920s the town council was dominated by businessmen and professionals.[289] This growing tendency towards political alienation for the farmer was foreshadowed in a letter of complaint written by the Farmer's Club #1 to the Governor of Virginia in October, 1909: The attention of the Fairfax Farmer's Club No. 1 has been called to the fact that the delegates from this county to the Farmer's National Congress are not farmers, one being Sheriff of the County, the other a merchant--both reputable citizens but neither interested directly in agriculture.[290] Like the other changes shaking the farmers' world, the loss of government influence created a disturbing sense of impermanence and estrangement. This, coupled with the previously mentioned tax rise (which was exacerbated by the influx of people, all purchasing land and creating a rise in prices due to demand) indicated to the farmer that he was losing control over a world which had for generations remained secure and settled. Ultimately, these forces crowded him out altogether, and simultaneously destroyed most of the pastoral communities to which the suburbanites had hoped to escape. PART V--NOTES _Community_ [222] For an extensive study of community relations, see Kolb and Brunner, _A Study of Rural Society_, 75-139. [223] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [224] Schneider, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_, 35. [225] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [226] Derr Report, 1930, 16. [227] Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978. [228] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [229] _Ibid._ [230] _Ibid._ [231] Andrew M. D. Wolf, "Country Medicine in Fairfax County, Virginia, at the Turn of the Twentieth Century," unpublished monograph, January 23, 1976, copy in Virginiana, 5-6. [232] Frances Darlington Simpson quoted in _Out of Frying Pan_, 26. [233] Louise Ryder, "Some Thoughts about Frying Pan Baptist Church," unpublished monograph, June, 1972; and "How Frying Pan Park Got Its Name," _Fairfax Herald_, n.d. (clipping), and miscellaneous notes on Frying Pan by Louise Ryder, June, 1977, courtesy of Louise Ryder. [234] John Davis quoted in Ryder, "Some Thoughts about Frying Pan Baptist Church," 4; Schneider, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_; and Ryder notes. [235] Derr Reports, 1919 and 1925; and Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979. [236] _14th Census of the United States_, 1920, National Archives and Records Service. [237] Fairfax County Deed Books, Liber E-6, 48-51; and Liber H-5, 616-617. [238] Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_, 70-71. [239] _Ibid._; Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979; "Floris Home Demonstration Club," _Herndon News-Observer_, March 10, 1932; Howard Simmons, "History of Floris Vocational High School," unpublished monograph, n.d., copy courtesy of Elizabeth and Emma Ellmore; Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979; and Gladys T. Spencer to Mrs. Ernest Ryder, February 15, 1979, copy courtesy of Louise Ryder. [240] Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979; Nickell and Randolph, _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County_, 71; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978; Greear/Netherton, March 23, 1978. [241] Simmons; Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979; Beard/Pryor, February 28, 1979; and Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [242] Simmons; Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [243] Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [244] Interview with Lulah Ferguson by Steve Matthews, Falls Church, Virginia, August 16, 1971. [245] Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [246] _Herndon News-Observer_, March 12, 1925. [247] Simmons, "Floris Retains High Rating at Blacksburg," _Herndon News-Observer_, April 20, 1928. [248] "Commencement Exercises in Our County High Schools," _Herndon News-Observer_, June 16, 1927. [249] Simmons; Minutes of Farmer's Club #1, June 6, 1910; and Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [250] Rogers/Corbat, et al., June 12, 1970. [251] Ryder, "Some Thoughts About Frying Pan Baptist Church"; Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979; Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979; and Schneider, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_, 8. [252] _Floris United Methodist Church: An Historical Account, 1891-1974_, (Herndon, Virginia, 1975), 40. [253] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [254] _Ibid._ [255] _Floris Methodist Church_, 23. [256] Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979; Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979; Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979; Peck/Netherton, January 23, 1978. [257] Telephone conversation with Louise Ryder, January 25, 1979. [258] _Ibid._; R. Middleton/Netherton, February 24, 1978; Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979; Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [259] Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978; and _Herndon News-Observer_, May 13, 1926. [260] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [261] Gladys Spencer to Louise Ryder, February 15, 1979; and note to author by Louise McNair Ryder, n.d., (spring, 1979). [262] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979 (notes taken after interview); and Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979. [263] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979; and Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [264] Farmer's Club #1, Minutes, August 21, 1913. [265] Lucy Steptoe Report, 1924. [266] Schneider, _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia_, 27-28. [267] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [268] "Fairfax County Fair," _Herndon News-Observer_, September 23, 1926. [269] Derr Report, 1931; and Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [270] Program, Fifth Annual Floris Community Fair, Thursday, August 24, 1939, copy in Beard Report, 1939. [271] Rice to author, January 30, 1979. [272] Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [273] Nearly everyone spoke enthusiastically of the Floris fair. See especially Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979; Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979; Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [274] Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979; and Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [275] "Family Reunion at Floris," _Herndon News-Observer_, May 5, 1927; "Events in Floris," _Herndon News-Observer_, March 21, 1935. [276] Simpson, _Virginia Country Life and Cooking_, 52. [277] Among those who chose such careers were Joseph Beard and John Beard (county extension agents); Franklin Ellmore, on the staff of Virginia Polytechnic Institute; Chester McLaren, head of agricultural education at Virginia Polytechnic Institute; and Jack Patton, of the Fish and Wildlife Commission in North Carolina; see Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979. [278] Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [279] Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [280] E. B. Henderson and Edith Hussey, _History of the Fairfax County Branch of the NAACP_, October, 1965, 7-8. [281] Rogers/Corbat, et al., June 12, 1970. [282] Derr Report, 1936. [283] Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979; and Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979. [284] Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978. [285] See, for example, "The Future of Fairfax County," _Herndon News-Observer_, October 20, 1927. [286] Editorial, _Fairfax Herald_, April 23, 1926; and Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. [287] "The Nudist Camp," _Herndon News-Observer_, October 8, 1933. [288] Derr Report, 1937; and Louis A. Stearns, "The Present State of the Oriental Fruit Moth in Northern Virginia," _Virginia Agricultural Extension Bulletin 234_. [289] Netherton, et al., _Fairfax County_, 483. [290] Farmer's Club #1, Minutes, October 21, 1909. PART VI _Frying Pan Park_ The population boom of the post-World War II period (with the consequent demand for land), the huge jump in land taxes, and competition from larger, more efficient farms, spelled doom for the family farm in Fairfax County. The county's farmers had spent much of the inter-war period adjusting to the new agricultural modes, but they could not adapt to the burgeoning metropolitan area's desire for expansion. The construction of Dulles International Airport in the late 1950s further depleted the county's agricultural areas, wiping out both the Willard community and much of the farmland around Floris. Even those farmers who had noticed the trends of twenty years felt a nagging sense of loss and resentment at the passing of their traditional way of life.[291] Frying Pan Park is an attempt to give citizens a glimpse of their heritage by recreating the familiar patterns of family farming. Its location (near the corner of West Ox and Centreville Roads) in the still-quiet Floris center makes it ideal for interpretation of the more tranquil past. The park's purpose is primarily educational and historical, however it also offers recreational activities. These include equestrian facilities, bridle paths and nature walks, as well as the model farm. The idea for such a park began in 1957 when Joseph Beard, then the county agent, began proposing uses for the old Floris School property which was no longer needed by the county schoolboard. He advised the Fairfax County government that the land and school buildings be established as a youth center. As such, it would be available to the Future Farmers of America, the 4-H Club, scouting groups, and similar organizations to stage fairs, hold meetings and provide recreation.[292] This proposal was accepted and in 1960 the land was deeded to the Fairfax County Park Authority whose powers of police protection and maintenance were superior to those of the individual young people's organizations. An independent citizen board was also established at this time and the Park has been continually administered by the Park Authority and Frying Pan Park Supervisory Board.[293] The latter consists of representatives of agricultural, homemaking and youth organizations such as the Agricultural Extension Advisory Board, the Fairfax County Granges and the Future Homemakers of America. Under their direction, the 4-H not only began to clean the grounds, but staged a few tentative activities. The early success of the events, coupled with a growing interest in the park by equestrian groups, led the Fairfax County Park Authority to acquire bits and pieces of adjoining property throughout the 1960s and 1970s, enlarging the original holding of 4.39 acres to 87.6 acres. They also constructed several buildings for use in livestock exhibitions and horse shows.[294] A model farm, strongly advocated by the county agent, Grange and other farm-oriented groups was also proposed in this first decade. A dearth of development money and popular pressure to expand the equestrian facilities combined to delay its inception.[295] [Illustration: Master plan of Frying Pan Park showing ideal arrangement of the model farm, exhibition halls, and equestrian facilities. Fairfax County Park Authority, 1974.] In 1965 the Park Authority bought the Floyd Kidwell farm next to the original school tract which consisted of some 40 acres with several farm buildings. The Kidwells had owned the property since 1934; their farm being the very sort of family operation that proponents of the model farm project hoped to show.[296] Money was still scarce for the farm's development, however; therefore, most of the land was earmarked for equestrian use--only a third was set aside for the model farm. Additional acreage, purchased in 1974 (and again in 1977) and the acquisition of the Kidwell farm buildings made more extensive and authentic cultivation possible; the farm was finally established in 1974.[297] Because the land was pieced together from numerous sources, the farm is presented as a representation of small-scale farming in the county, not an exact recreation of the Kidwell farm. In its patchwork composition, it echoes the trends of the county for few farms stayed intact during the fluctuations of the 1920s and 1930s, but were added to or diminished depending on the cash flow. Model farms originated in Scandinavia, where entire villages were preserved during the late 19th century in order to save the folkways which were rapidly eroding in the wake of industrial development. In this country the earliest efforts at such preservation took place in the 1940s. They had only scanty growth until a thoughtful article by Marion Clawson was published in _Agricultural History_ in April, 1965. This piece alerted preservationists and historians to the possibility of such projects and influenced the establishment of nearly one hundred such "open-air museums," among them the National Park Service's Turkey Run Farm near McLean, Virginia.[298] Frying Pan Farm differs from most of these restorations in its portrayal of 20th century farming, a time and way of working that many older people can still recall. Rather than show the slow and hand-operated life of a pre-mechanization farmer, Frying Pan Farm shows the farm in a dynamic transition. In the words of the supervisory board, it recreates a time that "had not given up the idea of home-cured meats, home vegetable gardens, home orchards, apple butter, sorghum molasses ... but it was considering the use of farm tractors, milking machines, and tractor-drawn equipment...."[299] The farm thus portrays crop and pasturage rotation, and some mechanized activity with a 1940 tractor, yet the farmer harvests his grain with a horse-drawn binder. Most of the equipment is from the pre-World War II period and animals have been chosen or bred to conform to those available in the 1930s. A volunteer program, established in 1976, aids the farmer in tending the large vegetable garden, and the livestock which consists of poultry, hogs, rabbits, goats, sheep, dairy cows and draft horses. Frying Pan Farm cultivates corn, wheat and hay crops and includes a late-19th century farmstead, a frame barn, shed, henhouse, and rabbit hutch and a machine and separator shed. An orchard and additional crop acreage and fencing are planned. Far from being a zoo or a site of isolated craft or mechanical demonstrations, the farm is operated daily as if agriculture were its only aim. Crops are grown not merely for show but to feed the animal stock and manure is used to fertilize garden and grain fields. The visitor who stops by the farm does not see a prearranged interpretive display, but chances on the farmer performing that day's necessary work: milking, haying, repairing fences, or plowing.[300] [Illustration: Laura Parham and Kim Stanton work in the vegetable garden at Frying Pan Farm. Volunteers do much of the garden work at the site. Photo, Fairfax County Park Authority.] [Illustration: This early threshing machine is one of the pieces of period equipment owned by Frying Pan Farm. Photo, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: The farmyard at Frying Pan Farm in early fall. The barn houses livestock such as horses, pigs, sheep, goats, and dairy cows. Photo, Fairfax County Park Authority.] The farm boasts one structure not properly belonging to it, but nonetheless most relevant to the interpretation of early 20th century farm life: the Moffett Blacksmith Shop. The shop was owned by Henry Moffett and stood in Herndon for 70 years, from 1904 until the Frying Pan Park Supervisory Board bought it in 1974. At this time the shop was torn down and reassembled near the model farm as a memorial to their former chairman (and donor of the funds to save the Moffett Shop), Hatcher Ankers. Henry Moffett, realizing that the advent of the tractor and automobile would eliminate the need for his business, displayed considerable foresight by collecting blacksmithing tools all over the Washington area. His shop now houses some of this equipment and another portion is in the Smithsonian Institution, though Moffett no longer does any smithing. The park offers courses in ornamental iron working at the shop.[301] The presence of the Moffett Blacksmith Shop at Frying Pan Park emphasizes the interdependence of farmer and smith. The machinist of his day, the blacksmith repaired wagon tongues, and mended heavy plows and other farm equipment. As late as the 20th century, the smith produced tools, and ornamental items in addition to his steady business of shoeing horses. His work required a sensitive understanding of farming and the quirks and habits of the farmer and his animals. Henry Moffett himself owned a farm, giving him special insight into the agriculturalist's needs, a factor which may have been partially responsible for the comparative success and longevity of his business. "I had more trade than any man around here," Moffett admitted. "During the Depression we showed more profit per man than any other business." Blacksmithing was a trade which required skill, but also courage, to wield heavy instruments, work with molten metals and face stiff competition and the sometimes ugly customers. Henry Moffett seems to have combined these qualities with a rare integrity. When competition became keen among the many Herndon forges, Moffett refused to resort to the accepted practice of defaming the other smiths to build up his own business. Stated Moffett, "I figured if I can't make it without bringing somebody else down I shouldn't bother."[302] [Illustration: The farmer's house at Frying Pan Farm. Photo, Fairfax County Park Authority.] [Illustration: Two young girls meet two young goats at an exhibition at Frying Pan Park. Photo, Fairfax County Park Authority.] [Illustration: John Hopkins, a park employee, demonstrates the use of period blacksmithing tools in the Moffett Blacksmith Shop. Photo, Fairfax County Park Authority.] [Illustration: Pat Middleton, a contestant in a 4-H Club fair, held at Frying Pan Park. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] [Illustration: A cattle judging on the grounds of the Floris school, 1950. The shed, built in 1918, was used continually in the early twentieth century to house exhibits and fairs. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.] The continuance of farming and limited blacksmithing in the Floris area provides a continuity with earlier eras that is also reflected in the equestrian and youth activities of the park. The site of the old Floris School was used during the 1930s for the Floris Community Fair and has for several decades been the site of the 4-H fair, which features many of the same activities as earlier exhibitions. A description of the 4-H fair of 1976 reads much as the accounts of 40 years previous: Highlight of the opening ceremonies on Thursday evening, August 5, will be a goat-milking contest.... The program will open 7:30 p.m. with the posting of the colors by twenty 4-H members on horseback.... Projects on exhibit will include everything from animals to a rocketry display.... Six performances of local dance and instrumental groups have been scheduled and square dancing will take place at 2 p.m. Saturday. Horse shows will run continuously in the park's two rings during both days.... In addition the Extension Homemakers Club will present more than 20 working crafts exhibits on how to make everything from cottage cheese to doll-house furniture....[303] In addition, several minor judgings are held each year. During 1970 for example, events at the park included a poultry judging, four dog shows, four sewing club events and one rabbit show.[304] Agriculturally oriented youth groups are also encouraged to meet at the park, and the master plan for development of Frying Pan Park calls for space for home economics and mechanical shops, areas for crafts instruction, an agriculture library, and dormitory rooms. In all of these pursuits, Frying Pan Park carries on the traditions of professional training in the field of agriculture established by the Floris Vocational High School.[305] The use of park space for equestrian activities likewise mirrors the county citizens' continued interest in rural pleasures. The horse shows and facilities are the park's most popular feature, drawing over a thousand people per day for some events. Fifty-five equestrian events were staged in 1976, and the schedule now includes three Class "A" weekend shows sponsored by the American Quarterhorse Association, and judging for points in dressage, jumping, and other standard events. The construction of an indoor show ring was begun in the summer of 1979, and is expected to further expand the park's activities, especially providing space for winter shows. The park also expects to continue its program of week-long camps for pony clubs, and its extensive network of bridle paths.[306] Frying Pan Park is unique both in its attempt to interpret a style of living which has not yet completely vanished, and in its combination of educational and recreational facilities. Its aim is not merely to display old-fashioned implements or provide for the enjoyment of a special interest group. Rather it seeks to maintain a tradition of interest in rural life and culture by continuing to pursue it actively. The trials, hopes, and quiet pleasures of the countryside can be best appreciated where the farm is a living entity. The richness of the farmer's achievement is evident to the park's visitors through fairs, horse shows, and simply in gazing at a lushly billowing field of corn. [Illustration: Dressage competition at Frying Pan Park, 1978. Equestrian activities have proved to be among the most popular events at the park. Photo, Fairfax County Public Library.] PART VI--NOTES _Frying Pan Park_ [291] Netherton, et al., _Fairfax County_, 544-568; and Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979. [292] Joseph Beard to W. T. Woodson, Fairfax, Virginia, March 26, 1957, copy in Frying Pan Farm files, Fairfax County Park Authority (hereafter cited as FCPA). [293] Copy of deed, December 6, 1960, in Land Acquisitions files, Frying Pan Farm, FCPA; and telephone conversation with Joseph Beard, April 26, 1979. [294] Additional land was acquired as follows: .9726 acre on condemnation award from Floyd Lee, July 5, 1962 (cost $1,250); 38 acres bought from Floyd Kidwell, June 26, 1965 (cost $1,500 per acre); 5.2771 acres on condemnation award from Emma Neal Lee, January 29, 1965 (cost $3,958); 3.5684 acres (including house and outbuildings) bought from Floyd Kidwell, March 26, 1970 (cost $34,275); 19.0766 acres bought from Annie May Poole Whittier, September, 1974 (cost $80,121.72); and 21.63898 acres on condemnation award from Robert E. Clark, May 31, 1977 (cost $173,000). It is interesting to note the rise in land prices during these years. See Land Acquisitions records, FCPA. [295] Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979. [296] See deed between Asa E. Bradshaw and Floyd Kidwell, in Fairfax County Deed Books, Liber L-11, 297. [297] Memorandum from Frying Pan Park Supervisory Board, April, 1972; notes from Farm Committee, June, 1972; and "Proposed Plan for Kidwell Farm," Frying Pan Park, January, 1974, all in Frying Pan Park files, FCPA. [298] John Schlebecker, _Living Historical Farms: A Walk into the Past_ (Washington, D.C., 1968), 5-16. [299] Memorandum, April, 1972. [300] Interview with John Hopkins, farm manager, March 6, 1979. [301] "Henry Moffett: 'A Mighty Man,'" _Washington Star_, April 18, 1976; notes on interview with Henry Moffett by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, n.d., (1978). [302] _Ibid._ [303] "4-H Bicentennial Fair at Frying Pan Farm," _Fairfax Journal_, August 6, 1976. [304] 1970 Annual Report, Frying Pan Farm files, FCPA. [305] Master Plan, Frying Pan Farm, 1977, copy in files, FCPA. [306] Annual Report, 1976, Frying Pan Park; untitled memorandum, May 3, 1974, both in files, FCPA; and Hopkins, March 6, 1979. BIBLIOGRAPHY Manuscripts and Interviews All transcripts and notes from interviews are in the Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library. Bailey, Neal. Interview by Nan Netherton. Herndon, Virginia, December 12, 1978. Beard, Joseph. Interview by Nan Netherton and Patrick Reed. Fairfax, Virginia, November, 1974. Beard, Joseph. Interview by Elizabeth Pryor. Fairfax, Virginia, January 23, 1979, and February 2, 1979. Beard, Joseph and Holden Harrison. Interview by Elizabeth Pryor. Floris, Virginia. March 6, 1979. Carey, Patricia M. _A Selected Bibliography of Resources on the History of Fairfax County, Virginia._ Unpublished monograph, Catholic University, 1960. Deed Books, Fairfax County, Libers E-6, H-5 and L-11. Fairfax, Virginia, Fairfax County Courthouse. Derr, H. B. and Joseph Beard. Annual Reports of County Extension Agents, 1918-1940, in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library. Ellmore, Elizabeth and Emma. Interview by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, March 2, 1978. Ellmore, Elizabeth and Emma and Rebecca Middleton. Interview by Elizabeth Pryor. Herndon, Virginia. March 6, 1979. Ferguson, Lulah. Interview by Steve Mathews. August 16, 1971. Greear, Virginia. Interview by Nan Netherton. Herndon, Virginia, March 23, 1978. Harrison, Holden and Ray, and Virginia Presgraves Harrison. Interview by Elizabeth Pryor. Chantilly, Virginia, February 5, 1979. Land Books, Fairfax County 1930-1931 in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library. Lee, Margaret Mary. Interview by Nan Netherton. Oakton, Virginia, March 28, 1978. McNair, Wilson D. "What I Remember." Unpublished manuscript in possession of Mrs. Louise Ryder. Middleton, John and Edna. Interview by Nan Netherton. Herndon, Virginia, February 24, 1978. Millard, Emma. Interview by Dana Gumb. November 15, 1972. Minutes of Meetings, Farmer's Club #1. Herndon, Virginia, October 1, 1909 to January 13, 1935, in possession of Rebecca Middleton, Herndon, Virginia. Peck, Richard. Interview by Nan Netherton. Herndon, Virginia, February 23, 1978. Publicity Committee of Herndon Chamber of Commerce. "Facts Regarding Bond Issue Every Voter Should Know." Fairfax, Virginia, 1924. Copy in possession of Holden Harrison. Rice, Elizabeth. Letters to author, January and February, 1979. Rogers, Edith. Interview by Patty Corbat, Craig Smith and Phyllis Hirshman. Herndon, Virginia, June 12, 1970. Rogers, Edith. Interview by Nan Netherton. Herndon, Virginia, n.d. (c., spring, 1978). Ryder, Louise. "Some Thoughts About Frying Pan Baptist Church." Unpublished monograph, June, 1972. Scott Collection. Letters, Herd Record Books and Memorabilia of C. T. Rice. Oakton, Virginia. Shug, Rita. "The Town of Herndon." Unpublished monograph, George Mason University, May, 1973. Simmons, Howard. "History of Floris Vocational High School." Unpublished monograph, n.d. Copy in possession of Elizabeth and Emma Ellmore. Spencer, Gladys T. to Mrs. Ernest Ryder. February 15, 1979. Copy in possession of Louise Ryder. Will Books, Fairfax County, 1928. Fairfax Virginia, Fairfax County Courthouse. Published Works Agee, James and Walker Evans. _Let Us Now Praise Famous Men._ New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1960. Bailey, Thomas A. _The American Pageant._ Boston: D.C. Heath, 1966. Barger, Harold and Hans M. Lansburg. _American Agriculture, 1899-1939._ New York: The Arno Press, 1975. Beitzeel, Edwin W. _Life on the Potomac River._ Washington, D.C.: privately published, 1968. Corson, Juliet. _Miss Corson's Practical American Cookery._ New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1886. _Country Gentleman._ February and March, 1935. Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. _Historic Progressive Fairfax County in Old Virginia._ Alexandria, Virginia: Newell-Cole Company, 1928. "Fairfax Farmer Threw Away His Plow in 1928 and Amazing Results Have Been Revolutionary." _Richmond Times-Dispatch._ September 17, 1951. _Fairfax Herald._ Fairfax, Virginia, 1925-1935. Federal Crop Reporting Service. _Virginia Farm Statistics, 1935-1936._ Richmond, Virginia, 1936. _Fifteenth Census of the United States: Agricultural Summary, 1929-1930._ Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1930. _Floris United Methodist Church: An Historical Account, 1891-1974._ Herndon, Virginia, privately published, 1975. Funk, W. C. "An Economic Study of Small Farms Near Washington, D.C." _United States Department of Agriculture Bulletin 848._ June 22, 1920. Garnett, William Edward. "Rural Organization in Relation to Rural Life in Virginia." _Virginia Agricultural Extension Station Bulletin 256._ Blacksburg, Virginia, May, 1927. Garnett, William Edward and John W. Ellison "Negro Life in Rural Virginia, 1865-1934." _Virginia Polytechnical Institute Bulletin 295._ June, 1934. Gilliam, Sara K. _Virginia People, A Study of the Growth and Distribution of the Population of Virginia from 1607-1943._ Richmond: Virginia State Planning Board, 1944. Glasgow, Ellen. _Barren Ground._ Richmond: Hill and Wang, 1933. Goessling, Adeline. _The Farm and Home Cookbook._ Chicago: Phelps, 1919. Gumb, Dana. "Pioneer Recalls McLean." _Echoes of History._ March and May 1972. Hawkes, Robert T., Jr. "The Emergence of a Leader: Harry Flood Byrd, Governor of Virginia, 1926-1930." _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography._ Volume 82, Number 3, July, 1974. Henderson, E. B. and Edith Hussey. _History of Fairfax County Branch of the NAACP._ Privately published, 1965. _Herndon News-Observer._ Herndon, Virginia, 1925-1940. _Hill's Southern Almanac._ Richmond: Virginia Fire and Marine Insurance Company, 1929. Kolb, J. H. and Edmund S. de Brunner. _A Study of Rural Society._ Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1935. Lord, Russell. _Men of Earth._ New York: Longman's Green and Company, 1931. Martin, Oliver. _On and Off the Concrete in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia._ Washington, D.C.: privately published, 1930. Miller, John C. _The Federalist Era._ New York: Harper and Row, 1968. Murphy, Arthur Morton. _The Agricultural Depression: A Proposed Measure for Its Relief._ Washington, D.C.: Catholic University, 1926. National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. _Proceedings of the Long Range Study Committee I-III._ Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, November 1967-March 1968. Netherton, Nan, and Donald Sweig, Janice Artemel, Patricia Hickin, Patrick Reed. _Fairfax County, Virginia: A History._ Fairfax, Virginia: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, 1978. Nickell, Lehman and Cary J. Randolph. _An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County._ Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia, 1924. _Out of Frying Pan._ Herndon, Virginia: privately published, 1964. Rasmussen, Wayne D. and Gladys L. Baker. _Price-Support and Adjustment Programs from 1933-1978: A Short History._ Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, 1979. _Report of the Commission to Study the Condition of the Farmers of Virginia to the General Assembly of Virginia._ Richmond: State Department of Agriculture, 1930. Richmond and Danville Railroad. _Country Homes Near the Nation's Capital._ Washington, D.C.: 1888. Rothery, Agnes. _Virginia: The New Dominion._ New York: D. Appleton--Century Company, 1940. _Rural Electric Fact Book._ Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960. Schaefer, Joseph. _The Social History of American Agriculture._ New York: McMillan Company, 1936. Schlebecker, John. _Living Historical Farms: A Walk into the Past._ Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1968. Schneider, Lottie Dyer. _Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia._ Marion, Virginia: privately published, 1962. Sears, Roebuck and Company. _Catalogue._ Chicago, 1927-28. Simpson, Frances Darlington. _Virginia Country Life and Cooking._ Washington, D.C.: privately published, 1963. _Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940 Agriculture. Statistics for Counties._ Volume I. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1942. Stearns, Louis A. "The Present State of the Oriental Fruit Moth in Northern Virginia." _Virginia Agricultural Extension Bulletin 234._ Thompson, E. P. _The Making of the English Working Class._ London: Penguin Books, 1966. _United States Census of Agriculture, 1925: Statistics for Virginia._ Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1928. _United States Congressional Records_, 1914, 1916, 1917. United States Department of Agriculture. _Abandoned or Idle Farms: Statistics for Counties and Summary for the United States._ Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943. _Virginia Agriculture, 1900-1958. Handbook of Information._ Blacksburg: Virginia Polytechnical Institute, 1960. Virginia Agriculture Advisory Council. _A Five Year Program for the Development of Virginia's Agriculture._ Richmond: State Department of Agriculture, 1923. _Virginia Farm Statistics._ Richmond: Virginia Department of Agriculture and United States Department of Agriculture, 1936. Virginia Polytechnical Institute. _The Housing of Virginia's Rural Folk._ Blacksburg, Virginia, 1930. _Washington Evening Star._ Washington, D.C., 1929, 1932, 1935. Wilkinson, Charles Kirk. "Reminiscences of Sherwood Farm and the Surrounding Area." _Yearbook of Historical Society of Fairfax County, Virginia, Inc._ Volume 9, 1964-1965. Work Progress Administration of Virginia. _Part Time Farming in Virginia._ Richmond: Division of Rural Research, 1938. Transcriber's Notes: Underlined passages are indicated by _underline_. Punctuation has been corrected without note. The following misprints have been corrected: "buildings" corrected to "building" (page 1) "acomplishing" corrected to "accomplishing" (page 28) missing "¢" added (page 29) "for" corrected to "from" (page 58) "commuity" corrected to "community" (page 69) "Febrary" corrected to "February" (page 80) "mongraph" corrected to "monograph" (page 80) "innnocent" corrected to "innocent" (page 108) "familes" corrected to "families" (page 109) "politlcal" corrected to "political" (page 110) "alientation" corrected to "alienation" (page 110) 
34245	----	The Khedive's Country, by George Manville Fenn. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ THE KHEDIVE'S COUNTRY, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN. CHAPTER ONE. Man's oldest pursuit was undoubtedly the tilling of the soil. He may in his earliest beginnings have combined therewith a certain amount of hunting while he was waiting for his crops to grow, and was forced into seeking wild fruits and turning up and experimenting on the various forms of root, learning, too, doubtless with plenty of bitter punishment, to distinguish between the good and nutritious and the poisonous and bad. As a matter of course, a certain amount of fighting would ensue. Wild animals would be encountered, or fellow savages would resent his intrusion upon lands where the acorns were most plentiful, or some tasty form of fungus grew. But whether from natural bent or necessity, as well as from his beginnings recorded in the ancient Book, he was a gardener, and the natural outcome of gardening was, as ideas expanded, his becoming a farmer. The world has gone rolling on, and many changes have taken place, but these pursuits remain unaltered. The love of a garden seems to be inborn; and though probably there are children who have never longed to have one of their own, they are rarities, for of whichever sex they be, the love of this form of nature still remains. There are those who garden or farm for pleasure, and there are those, of course, who, either on a large or small scale, cultivate the soil for profit, while the grades between are innumerable. But here in England, towards the end of such a season as we have had--one that may be surely termed a record--one is tempted to say, Where does the pleasure or the profit come in? Certainly during the present period, or cycle, or whatever it may be termed, the English climate is deteriorating. Joined to that assertion is the patent fact that the produce of the garden and farm has largely gone down in price through the cheapness of the foreign imports thrown upon the market, and the man with small or large capital who looks forward to making a modest living out of the land, without any dreams of fortune, may well pause before proceeding to invest his bawbees, and ask himself, Where shall I go? Thousands have debated this question for generations, with the result that the Antipodes have been turned into Anglo-Saxon farms; Van Diemen's Land has become another England, with its meadows, hedgerows, and orchards; New Zealand, the habitat of tree-fern and pine, has been transformed. Even the very surface has changed, and the land that in the past hardly boasted a four-footed animal is now rich in its cattle; while Australia, the dry and shadowless, the country of downs, has been made alive with flocks, its produce mainly tallow and wool till modern enterprise and chemistry rendered it possible for the frozen mutton to reach England untainted after its long voyage across the tropics to our homes. To keep to the temperate or cold regions, the name of Canada or the great North-West springs up as does the corn which fills our granaries; while the more enterprising cultivators of the soil, who have had souls above the ordinary plodding of the farmer's life--the fancy tillers, so to speak--with the tendency towards gardening, produced our sugar from the West Indies and British Guiana, and tobacco and cotton from the Southern States, long ere the Stars and Stripes waved overhead; while, to journey eastward, the gardens have flourished in India and Ceylon with indigo, spices, and coffee; and later on, wherever suitable slopes and terraces were found, the Briton has planted the attractive glossy-leaved tea shrub, until the trade with China for its fragrant popular produce has waned. There are plenty of lands of promise for the cultivator, unfortunately too often speculative and burdened by doubt. They are frequently handicapped by distance, extremes of climate, and unsuitability to the British constitution. As in the past, too, imagination often plays its part, and the would-be emigrant hankers after something new, in spite of the cloud of possible failure that may hover on his horizon. There is, of course, a great attraction in the unknown, and untried novelty is always tempting. But, on the other side, there is the old and safe, the cultivation of a land which in the past has been world-famed for its never-failing produce, its mighty granaries, and its vast fertility, that can be traced back for thousands of years, whose soil, far from becoming exhausted, is ever being renewed, and which at the present time is undergoing a transformation that will make its produce manifold. Of course, the country which contains these qualities is the familiar old land of Egypt, the dominion of the Khedive, which, in spite of its wondrous fertility, has had little attraction for the earnest cultivator of the earth. It has been the granary of the world for ages; but its cultivation has been left to its own people, who have gone on with their old-time barbaric tillage, leaving Nature, in her lavish bounteousness, to do the rest. In every way wonderful changes are coming over Egypt, where for countless ages the policy of the people seemed to be devoted entirely, as far as the vegetable world was concerned, to the growth of food, or such fibrous plants as proved their suitability for the manufacture of the light clothing they required. Any attempt to permanently beautify the country by taking advantage of its fertility, and commencing the planting to any great extent of that which was so lacking in the shape of trees, was left in abeyance till the coming into power of the great ancestor of the present Khedive, Mehemet Ali. This thinker, of broad intellect, made some beginnings in this direction, and later on Ismail Pacha gave a great impetus thereto by enlisting the services of a clever French gardener, who, fully awakened at once to the possibilities of climate and land, and with ideas running very much in favour of landscape gardening, began to introduce and encourage the growth of shade trees, a complete novelty in a country where the ideas of the people seem to tend towards placing their dwellings in the full glare of the sun. Gardens began to spring up, trees were planted in suitable places, and the start having been once fairly made, the love of imitation led to the establishment of a taste or fashion, and planting has now gone on to such an extent that there are those who are ready to assert that while the face of Egypt is becoming changed, the presence of the rapidly-growing and increasing trees is having its effect, through the attraction and formation of clouds, upon the meteorology of the country. If this continues, as it may, to a vast extent, the fertility of Egypt will no longer be confined to the narrow strips on either side of the Nile, but its deserts may become physical features of the past. The idea of those in olden times was to pile up huge erections and to let what came spontaneously grow as was its wont. Now the enlightenment of the new rulers and the leavening of Western civilisation are working wonders. That to which Ismail Pacha gave such a fillip is being fostered and advanced by the present Khedive, and, the ball being well set rolling, his people are finding out that nearly everything that loves moisture and sunshine will grow prodigiously. It takes time, of course, but many of the beautiful shade trees that have been planted have in forty years reached a height of eighty feet, and become rich in their heavy foliage. The varieties of the eucalyptus, not always the most beautiful of trees from their greyish leafage and want of shadow, are still a wonderful addition to a dry and thirsty land. Considering their original habitat in Australia, it was a foregone conclusion that they would do well here, and they have proved to be most rapid of growth. Then there is the magnificent Flamboyer des Indes, and scores of other beautiful children of Nature, which only required care and fostering in their tender years to prove their liking for their new home. Endless are the trees that, once given a start, leave behind their scrubby, starved appearance, and become in maturity well able to care for themselves and beautify the prospect on every hand. Acacias, with their perfumed blossoms; the deep green shady sycamore, that good old favourite like the plane of the Levant; the feathery tamarisk, and scores of ornamental trees, flourish well; while, combining the ornamental with the useful, there is the fine, slow-growing old mulberry, with its rich juicy fruit, and its suggestions of the soft straw-coloured or golden yellow rustling silk; for if ever there was a country favoured by Nature, in its dryness and absence of rain, for the prosperity of the caterpillar of the silkworm moth, it should be Egypt, where enterprise and a sensible use of capital ought to leave Asia and Turkey in Europe behind. Leaving trees and turning to flowers, gardens in Egypt can be made, and are made, perfect paradises in the meaning of old Gerard and Parkinson; for the country is a very rosery, where the modern decorative sorts bloom well in company with the more highly scented old-fashioned kinds largely cultivated for the distillation of that wonderfully persistent essential oil, the otto or attar of roses. Here the lover of a garden and of exotics can dispense with conservatory or the protection of glass, and, giving attention to moisture and shade, make his garden flush ruddily with the poinsettia, and may also find endless pleasure in the cultivation of some of the more beautiful varieties of the orchid family, which here in England demand the assistance of a stove. Perhaps the most attractive time for the visitor from England, who has thoughts of settling in this country, to see it at its best is when the Nile is rising to its height, bringing down from Equatorial regions its full flow of riches and the means of supplying the cultivator with that which will reward him for his labours beneath the torrid sun. At this time the crops are approaching maturity; the vast fields of maize have been passing through the various stages of green, waving, flag-like leaf, and hidden immature cob, with its beautiful, delicate tassel, prelude of the golden amber or black treasure that is to come and gladden the eye of the spectator in every direction. The grassy millet, or _dourra_, is equally beautiful in its wavy-wind-swept tracts; the cotton crops are gathering strength prior to the swelling and bursting of the silky boll; and the majestic sugar-cane towers up in its rapid progress, till the whole country is smiling in preparation for the gladsome laughter of the harvest that is to come, for it has been a busy time. The fellaheen, in their thousands, have been occupied in that wonderful irrigation which has been the careful distribution through meandering canal, straight-cut dyke, and endless little rill, of the lurid thick water of the Nile, laden with its rich plant-sustaining fertility, to the roots of the thirsty plants, and stimulating them beneath the ardent sunshine into a growth that is almost startling. In other parts the same waters are being ingeniously led to the cultivated lands that are being made ready for the more ordinary grain crops--the wheat, the homely barley, and the Egyptian bean, the food of man and beast alike; while in a country where grassy down and ordinary meadow, such as form the pasture of sheep, oxen and kine at home, are unknown, tract upon tract is annually sown with Egyptian clover, lentils, and similar crops--ready for immediate use as cattle food in which the animals can graze bit by bit as far as their tethering lines will permit--for cutting and stacking up green in the form of ensilage, and consumption when the crops are past--or for hay. The granary of the world, the vast store-house for nations: people have gone there to buy, but not to till; and yet it presents so many qualities that the wonder is that it should have been so long neglected; while now, in its state of transformation through the opening of the great dam and the cutting and forming of miles more irrigating canal, there is no bound to what may be done in the future. The time seems to be approaching when Egypt will no longer be spoken of as a narrow strip of fertile soil running from north to south and bordering the Nile, for its future seems to be that the barren sand far back from its banks will be turned into fertile land, adding its produce of corn and cotton to the store-house of the world. As is well-known, vast tracts of Egypt are by nature sterile; but upon these barren primaeval sands there has been superimposed for uncountable ages the alluvium of the Nile, so that, as an old writer says, Egypt itself may be looked upon as the gift of one of the mightiest rivers of the world. He speaks of the Nile as being the father of this country, bounteous in its gift, a strange, mysterious, solitary stream which bears down in its bosom the riches of the interior of Africa, carrying onward from far away south the fertility of the luxuriant tropics, and turning the sterile sand into the richest soil of the world. It is this richness of the south that has changed the Delta from an arid waste into a scene of matchless beauty. One gazes upon it from the summit of one of the pyramids or some high citadel, over cities and ruins of cities, palm grove, green savannah, palace and garden, luxuriant cornfield, and olive grove. Far distant, shimmering in a silvery haze and stretching away into the dimness of the horizon, lies the boundless desert, now being rapidly reclaimed, consequent upon the great barrage experiments for the supplying of the many winding canals with the fertile waters of the parent river. And of these still growing distributors of life, these bearers of commerce, the numbers are almost beyond belief. They are the veins and arteries of the country, depositing as they do the rich soil which furnishes abundance, and then acting as the waterways upon which, in due time, the harvests are borne throughout the length and breadth of the land. There is a great discrepancy in the reports as to the number of these canals, and statements made and chronicled a few years back are not of much use as statistics at the present day; while the completion of the great dam will give such an impulse to their formation that the mileage, even if properly estimated now, will be useless as a basis ten years hence. One traveller, in his ignorance of the country, estimated the number of these irrigating water distributors as only ninety, while another of about the same date gives Upper Egypt alone six thousand. Probably, though, in this instance he included every branch and branchlet that led the water amongst the cultivated lands. The water of these canals, renewed as it is by the annual risings of the Nile, goes on steadily changing, wherever it is led, the primaeval sand of the desert into rich deep soil, after the fashion, but on a grander scale, of the ingenious way in which portions of fen and bog land in north Lincolnshire and south Yorkshire have been transformed into fertile farms. As compared to what is going on in Egypt, this process is trivial in the extreme; but by man's forethought and ingenuity many a peat bog and waste that aforetime grew nothing but reed and rush has been made, by draining and leading upon it the muddy waters of the Ouse, Trent, and their tidal tributaries, into rich and prosperous farms, producers of the necessities of life. These warp farms, as they are termed, stand high in favour with the cultivators of the soil. They have taken years to produce, perhaps, and the process has consisted of but one treatment. In Egypt, on the contrary, this depositing of the rich mud goes on year by year, adding fresh soil and additional fertility each season; and the possibilities of increase are almost without limit; while the drainage produced by the falling of the Nile, the sandy subsoil, and the wonderful evaporation of this sunny, almost rainless land, entirely preclude the newly fertilised tracts becoming sour and stale. Those interested should know somewhat of the constituents of this Nile mud, which is brought down from the south to be deposited, it must be borne in mind, upon sand which in the course of cultivation will naturally, as it is mingled with the mud, render it open, porous, and highly suitable for vegetable growth. A rough analysis proves that quite half of the deposit is argillaceous, or clayey earth, one fourth carbonate of lime. These constituents alone should be sufficient to gladden the heart of any farmer or gardener, without counting the iron, carbonate of magnesia, and silica. So many of our agricultural outposts are only to be reached by long and tedious journeys across ocean and then inland. Egypt is, of course, in Africa, but only a few days' journey from our own shores. The sea transit is short and frequent; and the country, the ancient mysterious land of the Dark Ages, is rapidly being opened out by rail. The climate, in spite of the heat, is one of the finest in the world, and its healthiness is proverbial; while, best of all for the would-be adventurer, it is under an enlightened rule, beneath which progress and civilisation are flourishing more and more. CHAPTER TWO. Reports from the highest quarters supply abundant statistics of the great advantage already manifested by the completion of the Nile Barrage. The increase of land available for culture through the conservation of the water that has always run to waste, and the augmented powers supplied for irrigation by holding up such vast bodies of water, have resulted in returns that are striking in the extreme, and this after so short a time has elapsed since the sluices were completed and the great dams put to the test. The value of land and rentals have gone up, water has been utilised at earlier dates than were customary of old, and everything points not only to stability but to a future for Egypt such as could not have been dreamed of a score of years ago. In connection, therefore, with its future prospects from an agricultural point of view, and the encouragement given by the Government to those who are disposed to enter upon a business career in this favoured country, so as to bring to bear experience, the knowledge of culture, and the use of improved implements to add vastly to Egypt's produce, a short sketch of what has been done by one whose faith in the delta as a vast agricultural centre has always been strong, will not here be out of place. We allude to the efforts made by his Highness the Khedive in acquiring and reclaiming tracts of land in the neighbourhood of Cairo and turning them into fertile farms. A trip to one of these nearest to Cairo struck a visitor directly as being hall-marked by the stamp "Progress," for it was reached by a little model railway which skirts his Highness's estates. After leaving the station, a short drive brings the visitor almost at once to a series of scenes indicating careful management and model farming, though there is much in it that is novel to an English eye, consequent on its being contrived to suit the exigencies of an Eastern country where but little rain is known to fall. One of the first objects reached upon entering the cultivated land was the great granary or store, composed of spacious erections of but one storey high, low-roofed, and enclosing a large central square. In some of these buildings were stored up sacks of corn, while in others lay large heaps of the newly picked cotton, of whose cultivation more will be said elsewhere. The land around this highly cultivated domain is very fertile, and the air exhilarating; and at present it is letting at the rate of 10 pounds per feddan, which represents the Egyptian acre, something larger than our own. This is the present price, for enterprise so far has done little upon this side of Cairo in the shape of market gardening, although the district is only twelve minutes by rail from the centre of this important city, and one hour's distance for a walking horse and cart. Attached to the building above referred to were well-erected ranges of cattle-sheds, not occupied for fattening purposes, but for the culture of the farm, this culture being carried on not by horses, but by oxen-- buffaloes and ordinary bullocks--which are regularly used, as at one time in Old England, yoked to the plough, harrow, or roller, and on some of the high grounds which are let by his Highness, for turning the water-wheels, though on the model farms steam power only is used for the purposes of irrigation. These sheds are built in the same fashion as the granary, a noteworthy point in connection with the big, sleek, well-fed occupants being that instead of, as in English fashion, standing in one long row with their backs to the visitor, they are ranged in ranks, fifty-six in all, sideways to the spectator, facing so many feeding troughs, and each provided with its tethering halter and a sliding iron ring attached to an iron bar, giving freedom to each animal to stand or lie down at its pleasure without any risk of self-inflicted injury. As a specimen of the model-farm-like erection of these buildings, it may be stated that the feeding troughs are of solid masonry, made impervious and clean by an inner lining of zinc. No partitions are used to separate these draught cattle, but by the arrangement of the haltering they can be kept at such a distance that no two could come into contact. Everything was beautifully clean, the great animals being amply supplied with dry earth for litter, its disinfecting qualities being admirable from a cleanly point of view, and valuable for the purposes of the farm. One of the principal foods for cattle upon the farm is _Tibn_, as it is called by the Egyptians--chopped or bruised straw, made more nutritious, according to the needs of the animal in feeding, by the addition of beans or barley; and in the progress across the place a huge stack of this chaff-like provender was passed, some ten feet high, but totally unprotected from the weather by thatch. The reply to questions by the manager was simple in the extreme, yet in itself a chapter on the beautiful nature of the climate. The reason why the stack had no protecting thatch was that there was no need, the rain was so trifling, and when the wind and its habit of scattering stacks was mentioned, the inquirer was told that it did no harm. In passing one enclosure sheep were encountered--a class of farming, as stated elsewhere, little affected on account of the absence of grass downs and ordinary grazing fields; but these were in a ealthy, flourishing state, well fleeced, with a fine white semi-transparent-looking wool, indicating relationship to the Angora breed, specimens of the latter being seen later on in fold. Some of the fields had been devoted to the growth of cotton. This had lately been picked and transferred to the great store, the wood of the beautiful plant so stored being yet upon the ground waiting for transfer to the stacks for fuel purposes, it being utilised for the steam engines used upon the farm, especially for working the water-raising machinery so extensively needed in this occasionally thirsty land. Farther on an implement was being used in preparing fields for irrigation; and as in its simplicity of construction it was dragged over the great enclosure, it drew up the well-tilled, friable soil into ridges or slightly raised portions whose object was to regulate the flow of irrigating water equally all over the field, so that when it was flooded no portion should get more than its due share, one part being swamped while another would be comparatively dry. Simple in the extreme in its construction, as the illustration shows, the implement was thoroughly efficient in the way in which it did its work, with but slight exertion on the part of the sluggish oxen by which it was drawn. All this was novel, yet paradoxically old-world and strange, but in the next field there was a combination of the old and new--a pair of oxen used as in Saxon times, and down to not so many years back even near London, patiently plodding along beneath their yoke and drawing an emanation from our Eastern counties in the shape of a Ransome and Sims' harrow, light and effective, apparently as much at home and progressing as easily as if on a Suffolk farm. There was a familiarity about these fields which took off the dead monotony of the level, for they were surrounded by good-sized, well-grown trees, whose aspect betokened health and a suitability of climate, while on a nearer approach they showed their foreignness to the soil, proving to be a variety of the well-known Siberian crab, or cherry apple, beloved of boys, but here grown in such bulk as to suggest being used for crushing and utilising in some special way. One thing that strikes the European in Egypt, when passing beyond the more carefully cultivated portions near the city, is the absence of trees other than the indigenous palms; but here, in these newly-reclaimed portions, much has been done, as already mentioned, in the way of planting. For instance, the approaches to a range of buildings in connection with this farm were studded with acacias, ornamenting what proved to be the pigeon houses which are such a regular adjunct to an Egyptian cultivator's home. Their occupants bear a strong resemblance to our own blue rocks, or wood pigeons. Another building was the dairy farmhouse, well-built, simple, and most suitable; while in the neighbouring fields the cows were pasturing after the economical plan carried out in our Channel Islands--where each milk-producer is not allowed to wander through and waste the precious herbage at her own sweet will, but is tethered to a stake--while the calves had an enclosure to themselves. Here were many examples of experiments being tried to improve the breed, the favourite animal being a cross between the Swiss--Fribourg--and native; and in this cross-breeding only those proved to be advantageous are retained. Such as do not show some marked advance upon the native stock, either for breeding or the production of milk, are sold. One very fine sire was close at hand--a Swiss bull with a noble head and short curved horns, fine and long of coat, which about brow and neck formed itself into short, crisp curls like those that cluster upon the brow of the classic Hercules. This grand animal greatly resembled, save that it was much larger, one of the choice and jealously guarded patriarchs of a Jersey cattle-shed; while his home-like aspect was added to greatly by the familiar ring in the nose, which is not considered necessary for the native animals. A little farther on were those rather uncouth-looking, heavily-horned animals, the buffaloes, which run side by side in Egyptian estimation with the ordinary cattle for all practical purposes. The improvement in their breed is also studied by the addition of fresh blood and the choice of sires remarkable for special qualities. One particularly good specimen was pointed out, distinguished by the heavy hump forward, a fine beast lately brought from the Soudan. There are two distinct breeds of buffalo utilised in this country--the productions of Upper and Lower Egypt, those from the latter district being reckoned the better. In this portion of the farm and around the buildings fruit trees were plentiful, diversifying the scene and adding greatly to its attractiveness, and looking novel to a visitor from Europe, who saw an abundant growth of the Seville or bitter orange, and the cool, greeny-grey picturesque olive of Southern Europe and the East. Among other fruit trees seen here were some bearing long pods, called _chiar shambar_ by the natives. The fruit of these trees, which is long and green, but which turns black soon after picking, seemed at a distance like a huge bean, suggesting that the fruit was akin to the carob or locust bean, this idea being emphasised by the sweet glutinous pulp in which the seeds were buried. This pulp is pleasant to the taste, but slightly bitter, and is largely used by the natives boiled up with water, as a drink on account of its medicinal qualities. Taken all in all, the visit to the Khedive's farm was most attractive, and pregnant with proofs of the fertility of the well-tended land, for on every side were examples of the successful culture of many of the agricultural products treated of in detail from the notes of the student-like superintendent, who has all in his charge. The place, as before said, may be regarded as a model and example of what can be done with land that has been looked upon for ages as so much desert, when all that was required was industry, application, and the ingenuity necessary for extending the action of the Nile flood. Nature has always been ready to do the rest. The Khedive has another tract of farm land, which he purchased some time back, about two kilometres from the estate just described, at Koubbeh. This is Mostorod, where he has a simple-looking villa. On the way here one of the first things that attract the attention of an Englishman is that home-like contrivance so often missing in foreign countries--a hedge dividing the fields from the roadway and separating them from each other. These were unknown before the time of Abbas Helmi the Second, and what may be done in time to come in the surroundings of farms by means of the simple, well cut back hawthorn remains to be proved. Here the shrubby growth, chosen for its neat form and comparatively rapid development, is the bitter orange. At Mostorod many of the surroundings are marked by the energetic proceedings of the practical farmer. Here steam is at work, like the patient slave it is, forming the motive power in one case for raising water for all farming purposes, in another setting in action the mills, which rapidly turn out and clean the meal ground from wheat and Indian corn. Buildings are here containing the various grains and seeds; others are the storehouses for one or other of the three pickings produced in the cultivation of cotton; and at the entrance of every building, just inside the door, there is a pitch pine wood frame, with its glass covering, and a paper on which is a record of the amount and nature of whatever is brought in or taken out of the building in the shape of corn, cotton, seed, or whatever may be stored. Here, in opposition to much that is modern, there is a large, old-fashioned Egyptian stable, very thick of wall. The building is divided into two chambers, connected and lit from overhead, the light coming through the roof of wood and rafters thickly thatched with reeds. These rafters are supported by thick round columns formed of the ancient, sun-dried brick for which Egypt has long been famed. Near by something of the old-world fashion of the place was visible in a typical grinding mill such as may be seen in common use in pretty well every village. It had a chamber to itself, and differed little from those which might have been seen in England fifty or a hundred years ago, set in action by an often blindfolded horse, but here worked by a bullock. Ornamentation is not wanting at Mostorod, for the villa has its garden brightened by fruit trees, and the pillar-stemmed palms, with their leafy crowns, are frequent objects in the transparent, sunny air. Close at hand is the village on the Khedivial estate. In it the streets are narrow and the houses of one height, thoroughly waterproof, and of the familiar construction, of sun-dried bricks covered with white plaster, and, being of an earlier date in the improvement the Khedive is striving for in the poorer class dwellings, not to be compared with the spick and span new houses he has lately had erected at Mariout, not far from Alexandria. Hard by this village is a very large barn or stack yard with more native pigeon houses, the whole of the surroundings being extremely quaint and picturesque. Again, a short distance onward stands the native village of Mostorod, with its attractive little mosque and a tomb erected to the memory of a saint. The Ismailia Canal supplies water to the Koubbeh and Mostorod estates, and in this neighbourhood is a good deal of very valuable agricultural land, some portions of which are let to the fellaheen for three months in a year, so as to enable them to grow a crop of maize. Hereabouts, tethered in the clover fields, a herd of the Khedive's camels are pastured, many of these being bred for carrying purposes, others (the slighter of build) for riding and speed. The scene is attractive from its verdure, but comparatively treeless, though it is worthy of mention that two solitary weeping willows do their best to adorn the landscape--a plain with the suggestions of home in the shape of lapwings, or birds bearing a very strong resemblance, which fly up here and there. This estate is close to Heliopolis--the ancient On--where almost the only suggestions of the City of the Sun are the sunshine and a great square piece of white stone, bearing hieroglyphs, and in perfect preservation, while in the distance stands up in solitary state the far-famed Obelisk. CHAPTER THREE. "Words, words, words!" quoth Hamlet, and the reader of this sketch of the possibilities in the way of cultivation offered by the Khedive's dominions may be disposed to contemptuously say the same. But in the following pages it is proposed to give proof of what may be done in an ordinary way by one who is gardener for pleasure and health, supplier of ordinary produce to the market, or farmer upon a larger scale, without looking for a moment upon the vast increase that is bound to follow the wider and wider distribution of that life of such a land--abundant water, not merely for irrigation, but in this case charged year by year with the rich fertilising mud of the vast equatorial regions regularly borne down by the Nile in flood. Among the first questions an intending settler might ask respecting the country that he intends to make his temporary or future home would naturally be, "What is the place like? What sort of seasons are they?" Egypt is a country which may be said to be blessed with four seasons. There is that which begins in July with the inundation of the Nile, when for about two months the whole country of the Delta may be likened to a vast lake dotted with islands represented by the towns and villages. Naturally, then, the air is moist, and mornings and evenings have their mists. In the second season, answering to our winter and early spring, we have cold nights; but the days are hot, and the vegetation is rapid and luxuriant. The third, corresponding to our spring, is the least attractive; while the fourth, which continues until the rising of the Nile, is in the highest degree delightful. Everyone has praised the Egyptian nights--cloudless skies, an intensely bright moon, so bright that at harvest time, for reasons in connection with the shedding of the grain, it is the custom amongst the farmers and cultivators of the soil to take advantage of the coolness and light to commence garnering their crops at midnight. So bright is the moon in this extraordinarily clear atmosphere that the peasantry who sleep in the open air are careful to shade their eyes from the rays, which are often said to produce a more painful effect than those of the sun. These pages contain the experience of long years of patient study of the cultivation of Egypt, of that carried on by the native, who for ages past has looked to the soil for his sustenance. And of his practical knowledge, that which is valuable has been adopted; while experiment, experience, and the effects of modern cultivation have run with it side by side. Every gardener and farmer knows, however enlightened he may be and fond of the modern ways of doing things, that it is not wise to look slightingly upon old-fashioned customs. _Experientia docet_ is a well-known maxim, and the experience taught often by generations of disappointments is worthy of all respect. Men go on cultivating and growing certain things which excite the contempt of a stranger, but too often he lives to learn that there was good reason for the practice, hence, animated by the spirit of respect for the old, while striving to introduce the new and improved, the notes and descriptions herein contained may be depended upon as being thoroughly practical and well worthy the attention of every cultivator who has at heart the future of the Delta and the higher irrigated lands of Egypt. Further, it may be presumed that every reader is fully acquainted with the fact that lower Egypt possesses a climate without extreme variations of temperature; that winter is hardly known but as a name; and that, though changes have taken place of late years, probably from increased cultivation and planting, the rainfall is extremely small. And yet the fertility of Egypt is proverbial, and due to this annual flooding of the lands by the Nile, which--after the fashion, already referred to, of the northern midlands of England, where so many acres have been flooded and drained after a lengthened deposit of mud, or "warp," as it is termed-- become rich in the extreme. The warping in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire is an artificial and protracted process, carried out once only; the warping of the land of Egypt is natural, and repeated year by year; while as soon as the water has run off, the coating of mud, rich in all the qualities of fertility, is ready to bear, after the merest scratching of the soil, its abundant one, two, or even three crops in a year. Here are possibilities, then, for the cultivator who is ready to bring to bear all the appliances of modern science, the discoveries of practical agricultural chemistry, and, above all, the mechanical and ingenious inventions so admirable in a flat, open country, unbroken by hedge or tree. Among the minor objects familiar to the tourist in his journey up the Nile are the various means of raising water for the irrigation of the crops. These have been, and still continue to be in many places extremely primitive, for, as before stated, the fellaheen in their conservative fashion are prone to cling to the inventions of their forefathers. Hence they may still be seen laboriously at work with their shadoofs, sakiehs, and other water-wheels worked by hand or mule power, raising the fertilising fluid to a sufficient height to be discharged and flow of itself, spreading over the patches of land requiring irrigation. But these clumsy contrivances are giving place in the newly-reclaimed and cultivated parts of the Delta to modern machinery, urged by motive power, notably by steam, though to a great extent advantage is taken of the wind; for it is a common thing to see in the landscape the circular disc-like object, as noted at a distance, formed by a windmill with its many fans, or "vans," standing at the edge of some canal or by one of the many wells that have been dug upon the higher grounds. For though tract after tract may be desert, presenting nothing but coarse growth and sand ready to drift before the wind, there is not much difficulty in finding water, notably in the wide plateau known as Mariout, spreading out in the direction of the Libyan Desert from Alexandria. Here the sinking of wells results in the finding of water at depths varying from twenty to forty feet, and boring to a greater depth would doubtless produce a fuller supply, for in so flat and porous a land, within easy measurable distance of the great inland sea, there is every probability that an inexhaustible supply is within touch. And nowadays the various ingenious contrivances of the mechanical engineer are always ready, and at small cost, to supplement during the dry times the abundant supply offered by the great river. Of course, this deals solely with the higher grounds that are not reached without mechanical help by the dam-supplied network of canals that already veins the country, and projects for the increase of which are, since the opening of the great works at Assiout and Assouan, either under consideration, or already planned. The slow, clumsy hand labour of the shadoof and the awkward cattle-worked sakieh, or earthen pot surrounded water-wheel, is now being superseded in the larger tracts of cultivation by such ingenious pieces of mechanism as the centrifugal pump, worked by steam, and so contrived that it can be utilised on the bank of river or canal, and with a suction tube turned down at any angle, so that it can be lowered into any of the common wells that are sunk in all directions. The portable steam engine used in connection therewith is one of the grandest slaves of civilisation, playing its part on the large farms for traction, threshing, straw chopping, or other of the many necessities of cultivation. By means of these centrifugal pumps after the middle of November on large estates the water has to be forced into the service (estate) canals. A ten-horse power engine, driving a ten-inch pump, will irrigate the same number of acres in twelve hours, lifting the water five feet, the cost of raising water being two shillings per acre. The small occupiers of land sometimes raise their supply from wells and canals by means of Persian wheels or Archimedean screws. CHAPTER FOUR. At Cairo when the Nile commences its annual rise, for the first few days its tint seems to be green; but the general tone during the inundation is of a dirty red, of course due to its being thickened with the mud brought down from the south. During this rising, irrigation can be sent freely flowing over all cultivated lands, as the river continues about the level of the banks till the middle of November. In simple language, irrigation means the turning of desert into richly fertile producing land. A great deal has been said and done, but everything points to the fact that, however great and productive a garden Egypt has been for countless years, it is still almost, as it were, in its infancy. The erection of that stupendous piece of engineering, the Assouan Dam, has already had effects that have surpassed the expectations of its projectors; and writing upon this subject, Sir William Willcocks, a gentleman whose knowledge of the position is of the highest value, points out a series of facts that are almost startling in their suggestions. He draws attention to the fact that there are still two million acres of excellent land waiting to be reclaimed after the simple fashion herein described, and then requiring to be irrigated to the full extent needed--that is to say, perennially. These are large figures to deal with, but Egypt is a vast country, and its powers of production almost beyond belief; but everything is bound up in the one need--water supply; and it is this furnishing of life to plants, and enabling them to find it latent, as it were, in the far-spreading plains that are as yet but sand and dust, that is taking the attention of our great engineers. Here they find room to exert their powers. It is only a year ago that we had the inauguration of the first great stride; and now we are told that the thirsty country asks for more. To fully carry out the perennial irrigation that shall fertilise the two million acres still waiting, "the country requires one milliard of cubic metres of water per five hundred thousand acres"--that is to say, four times that quantity. At the present time, with the height to which it has been already erected, the Assouan Dam holds up and supplies one milliard of these cubic metres of water in all, a sufficiency for five hundred thousand acres of agricultural and garden land. It is proposed to raise it twenty-one feet higher, with the result that its holding powers will be so vastly increased that the supply will be doubled, and hence be sufficient for another five hundred thousand acres. But even then there will be a milliard acres still waiting for a supply of water to the extent of two milliards of cubic metres of water for themselves. Whence is this supply to come? The engineers are ready with their answer, and only ask for the capital, not to float some mad scheme, but to spread bounteously the rich water which turns, as above said, the desert into fertile land. The plan, or project, is to form a huge reservoir in the Wady Rayan, which will with ease supply the water needed at a cost of about two million pounds--a large sum of money, but ridiculously small in comparison with the results. There is, however, a drawback in connection with this reservoir--a weakness, so to speak, which alone would render its value questionable, for while in April and May, during the flood time, its supply would be enormous, it would fall off very much in June, and furnish but very little in July. But now in connection therewith we find the truth of the old proverbial saying, "Co-operation is strength." Alone it would be weak, but if made now and worked in connection with the Assouan Reservoir it becomes strong, and the two being tapped in turn as the need arose, the combination would have tremendous results, one reservoir so helping the other that sufficient water could be depended upon to keep up a perennial supply. To give Sir William Willcocks' words: Let us now imagine that both reservoirs are full of water, and it is April 1st. The Wady Rayan Reservoir will be opened on to the Nile and give all the water needed in that month, while the Assouan Reservoir will be maintained at its full level. In May the Wady Rayan Reservoir will give nearly the whole supply, and the Assouan Reservoir will give a little. In June the Wady Rayan Reservoir will give a small part of the supply, and the Assouan Reservoir will give the greater part. In July the Wady Rayan Reservoir will give nothing, and the Assouan Reservoir will give the whole supply required. Working together in this harmonious and beautiful manner, these reservoirs, which are the true complements of each other will easily provide the whole of the water needed for Egypt. Now, this raising of the Assouan Dam to the height proposed means an expenditure of five hundred thousand pounds, and the time for the completion of this addition and raising of the works two years, at the end of which period, as we have seen, its power for irrigation will be doubled; while to make the additional reservoir, and enable it to discharge its vast extra supply at the cost named, will take three years; four years will then be required to bring the water to its proper height--seven years in all; so that in that time full arrangements can be made for the perennial irrigation of the whole of Egypt. Huge sums of money these to spend or put into the soil, two millions and a half sterling; but let us see what there is to be said on the credit side. Take one point alone. The increase in the cotton crop of Egypt would be most extensive, and its value enormous. Then there is the land itself. Here we have so many extra acres, only partially irrigated, but which by this raising of the supply of water will be changed from partial supply land into constant--that is, each acre will be enabled to tap the reservoirs at all times of the year, according to the cultivator's need, with the consequent rise in value of the land of thirty pounds per feddan, or acre; and that means, according to Sir William Willcocks, an increase in the wealth of Egypt to the extent of sixty million pounds. From one bold stroke! Sixty million pounds for the expenditure of five. Not bad, this, for the engineers. But still, it is but the beginning of what may be done in the Khedive's country, for it is full of suggestions to be carried out by an enterprising people for the making of the native and those of our own country who are prepared to look far ahead. The amount of land to be reclaimed is enormous; and what land! For countless ages the Nile has flowed down, bringing with it its fertile mud, depositing some by the way, carrying other some out to sea, to be lost in the depths of the Mediterranean; but still, as time rolled on, adding to, and raising higher, the huge Delta through which the various mouths made their way; so that in these lowest portions of Egypt the depth of rich soil must be enormous. Here lie the lakes and canals of olden formation, shallowed and choked with mud, and rendered almost impassable for transit, but only waiting for the engineers to contrive modern works, the result of survey and level, feeding canals and the forming of reservoirs to supply irrigation water for freeing the land of its salt, making easy the navigation of the district, and simplifying the conveyance of its grain and other crops. All this development is awaiting enterprise and capital low down in the Delta. But the engineers have not stopped near home and the Khedive's capital; they have cast their eyes afar across that vast extent of barbarism, the re-conquered Soudan, where, bordering upon the Nile, it is often "water, water everywhere, and not a drop" for the crops to drink. Sir William Garstin has been busy here, surveying and examining what can be done towards and beyond Khartoum. Here rich tracts of fertile land are lying on both sides of the Blue Nile, to the extent, roughly speaking, of some three millions of acres. This land of Upper Egypt is as rich in its capabilities as that of the Delta; but it has qualities which the latter does not possess, and is more suitable for the production of excellent cotton, which can be sown as a flood crop and reaped in winter, an advantage which the seasons will not permit in Egypt. Here, again, then, is an opening for enterprise and capital in the future, for it must not be forgotten that the Suakin-Berber Railway, well in progress, opens up this part of the country, one which some of these days will be brought well in touch with Liverpool and the northern manufacturing towns, as the cotton-growing capabilities of Upper Egypt extend. CHAPTER FIVE. In a country which depends upon floods and their deposit for its fertility, one of the first questions likely to be asked by a practical man is, What about the drains? He knows perfectly well, from reading and report, that the evaporation of the waters that have for the time being turned vast tracts of land literally into swamps must be enormous, but at the same time some plan for carrying off the superabundant moisture must be in force. Let him learn at once that in Egyptian agriculture there are no underground tiled drains in use; but open ones are formed upon land that requires improving, such as the rice fields and those which, when cultivation has commenced, are found to be impregnated with salts, while a great deal is done by the Government, under whose direction large main cuts are dug to drain off the water on low-lying lands. On the rich soils water may be lying to a depth of four inches after a flood, but it is so readily absorbed that in six hours none will be left on the Surface; but infiltration from irrigation canals sometimes damages the crops alongside, and in such a case as that a small catch drain will prevent further mischief. With regard to irrigation, two systems are carried out, the one peculiar to Lower Egypt, the other being utilised in Upper. In Lower Egypt the canal is used for the supply of water to the crops. In Upper Egypt the manner adopted is technically termed the "basin system." In this latter method embankments are formed to enclose tracts of land well within reach of the Nile flood, which may contain from two thousand to forty thousand acres, according to the means of, or facilities offered to, the agriculturist. Afterwards the proceedings are exceedingly simple. When the inundation is at its greatest height, openings are made and the water is allowed to flow from the river till the sandy surface is covered to a depth of six feet. Then the matter, suspended in the muddy waters, is slowly deposited and goes on sinking till November, when openings are made into canals, and the water is allowed to slowly drain off and make its way back into the river, when the surface of glistening mud that is left is considered ripe for cultivation, and according to the season may measure perhaps four inches in depth. As soon as the water is gone, the farming operations begin, and in the simplest and probably the oldest form. There is nothing more to be done in these cases, no ploughing or harrowing; but wheat, barley, beans, clover, linseed, and lentils are sown broadcast by the patient labourers, the sowers often sinking knee deep in the mud as they slowly plod or almost wade to and fro. The next proceeding is the burying of the seed, which is generally effected by drawing a large beam of timber over the muddy surface, though at times, when the consistency is greater, the seed is covered in by hand-hoeing. That is all, and the agriculturist leaves the rest for the time being to the efforts of the sun. Germination soon begins, and rapid growth succeeds in the moist mud; while these crops do not need or receive any further irrigation except from rain, which may fall two or three times in the course of growth. But there are times when no rain at all will come to help the crops, which, however, seem to suffer very little, from the simple fact that the thorough saturation of the subsoil by the flood, and the constant gentle evaporation going on, make up to a certain extent for the want of genial showers, and the failure seems to be confined to the straw alone, which is shorter than if its growth had been influenced by the dropping clouds. The floods of European lands are, of course, only occasional, accidents due to a prevalence of storm waters, which the regular rivers and the artificial drainage of the country have not power to carry off; while generally they last but a short time, and instead of being beneficial are destructive. The Nile flow is in every respect the reverse. Instead of being occasional and of short duration, it is a part of Nature's routine, and perfectly wondrous in its regularity; while in place of being temporary, as in the floods of our own islands, we have here a lasting overflow. Again, a flood in the British Islands, where the rivers burst their banks and spread over meadow-land and arable fields, leaves the soil soured, sodden, and obnoxious to the plants which are still alive, whole crops and plantations being often swept away, while those that remain are on the high road to perishing from rottenness. In Egypt the subsoil of sand is ready to absorb, and the ardent sun to rapidly dry, the surface of the mud as soon as the flood sinks, after its stay of months; while the rapidity of growth soon makes up for the, so to speak, dormant state of the cultivated ground that has been flooded, and, as aforesaid, the water departs, leaving its fertilising riches behind. Then, as stated, follows without further tilling the sowing of the crops, which result in abundant growth. This annual regularity is only marred by the extent of the inundation, which is calculated and divided by the Egyptians into high flood, mean flood, and poor flood, according to how far the waters extend when they leave their natural bed. It is calculated that in the first case, when the Nile has reached its highest point, it has risen to thirty-three feet; in the second case, the mean flood, thirty feet; and in the third, or poor flood, twenty-three feet above its bed. As a matter of course, the higher the flood the wider spread is the inundation, and the deeper the deposit of fertile mud left upon the land when the river has returned to its ordinary limits. Stay-at-home people are accustomed to look upon Holland as the land of canals, and the face of this carefully cultivated country is monumental as a specimen of a nation's industry in cutting waterways for the double purpose of draining and traffic, while its drains are as admirable as they are great. Wide tracts of land have been turned from sandy wastes and swamps into fertile meadows and carefully cultivated fields by the Dutch engineers, who have also left traces of their handiwork upon the east coast of England in the drainage of the fens. But, leaving the supposed canals of the planet Mars to the imaginations of astronomers, it is safe to say that Egypt bears off the palm for works of this description. The ancients knew of their value, and enormous cuts were made by the help of slave labour, and were left to survive the rolling away of centuries, and where not duly cared for, and filled up by the drifting sand, have lain ready to be cleared out, deepened and brought into use again. These have been added to, till at the present time it can be said that the system of canals connected with the main river for the purposes of portage and for perennial irrigation cannot be equalled anywhere in the world. The barrage of the Delta is of incalculable value, since by closing the sluices the head of water is raised and irrigation made more easy, while the works of this description lately carried out upon the Nile at Assiout and Assouan conserve immense bodies of water, which have formerly flowed regularly down to the sea, carrying with them millions of tons of fertilising mud or warp, with the equatorial washings of the rich, untrodden land. This solution of plant-making soil has gone on downward towards the sea from untold ages, forming by degrees the vast Delta, beside that which was lost to the service of man, merely choking up and making shallow the many watercourses into which the Nile waters have been broken up, and altering the positions of ancient ports and maritime cities now distant from the sea. CHAPTER SIX. A good old English gardener once said, "You can't grow things well without plenty of manure," and this the Egyptians found out years ago. They have the great advantage of the fertile mud deposited by the river, but to bring it to its highest state of production land seems to ask for the crude form of animal plant food as well as the vegetable and mineral. It is to be presumed that there must be a great deal of vegetable fertilisation swept down by the Nile in a decayed state from the forests and swamps of Central Africa, but Egypt itself is no land of forests and that wondrous help to vegetation, leaf mould, may be said to be entirely absent, while the ordinary animal excreta so carefully collected in most civilised countries for application to the land is sadly wanted and neglected here for farm and garden purposes. It is carefully collected, it is true, and dried; but here, in a country where wood is exceedingly scarce, it is used for fuel. As a rule, the resulting ashes are regarded as of little worth, whereas they contain, in a mineral form, so many of the constituents of vegetable life that, if preserved, they would be most valuable. In fact, the fellaheen look upon the ashes in the same light as they are regarded here in England, if they are thought of at all, as a coarse ingredient to mix with a clayey soil to lighten it in the place of sand. But in these islands there is the excuse that for the most part they are coal ashes and wanting in fertilising powers. Where they are wood or vegetable ashes the English cultivator has long known their value from the extent to which they are impregnated with potash. Still, there can be no doubt that the ash of the Egyptian fuel, though not returned to the earth in a well-thought-out and business-like way, does play its part to some extent in restoring exhausted soil. The term "farmyard manure" is common of application, but an English farmer would look at it in amazement and not know his good old friend again, for the Egyptian farmyard manure seems to have been invented by the sanitarians of our dry earth system, being composed of desiccated Nile mud which has been carefully spread over the floors of the cattle-sheds as litter wherever bullocks, cows, horses, sheep, etc., are kept. In this fine, dry state, the once mud, now earth, is remarkably absorbent and sweetening; most healthy, too, for the animals, who are not seen here trampling nearly knee deep in the soon-made foetid swamp of a country crew-yard. Moreover the earth is frequently removed--to be kept lying in the manure heap for about a year to mature, when it is considered ready for use, and the cattle enclosures and sheds of a farm are remarkably wholesome and clean. This dry mud is one great source of plant food for the farm, but it is largely supplemented by what the Egyptians term _coufri_, or _sabbakh_. This is not always available, and depends upon the position of the farm; but there are parts of the Delta where, to all appearance, the tract being reclaimed or taken up for bringing into cultivation is so much level, or nearly level, land, with a mound or slight elevation here and there where the winds have drifted the sand apparently to a considerable depth. Except to the eye of the experienced there is nothing to show that flourishing cities and villages have existed there in the past; but many of these slight elevations are the sites where teeming populations once existed, and all has gone back, with some few exceptions--dust to dust. The exceptions are where the spade of the fellah comes upon the remains of a tomb or priestly edifice, these, as is well-known, being the lasting part of man's work, which are being discovered constantly even now, with their builders', sculptors', and painters' handiwork looking, when the sand has been removed, almost as fresh and uninjured as if they were the traces of two or three generations back instead of having been buried many centuries ago. These solid remains, or ruins, may be comparatively few; but in all probability have been surrounded by an enormous population, whose houses, originally built of the sun-dried Egyptian brick, have in the course of time gone back, like everything animal that surrounded them, to a rough earth ready for the worker's spade, which digs up from an almost inexhaustible mine--with nothing to tell of the past but a few broken shards--a splendid fertiliser for the farm. But this _coufri_ manure requires discrimination in its use, too strong an application being likely to prove hurtful to a crop, seeing that analysis shows that its plant-feeding qualities are due to the salts it contains--sometimes as much as 12 per cent, of salt, soda, ammonia, saltpetre, phosphates, and the like. The value to an English farmer of such a mine of artificial chemical manure as this may be conceived, and it would make the eyes brighten of one here who strengthens his land by applications of marl, or else has to content himself with a top dressing of chalk from some pit sunk in a corner of his holding. Fairly plentiful still in Egypt, there must, of course, be a limit to this supply. The taking up of land is going steadily on, and consequently the remains of city after city have been and are being rapidly used up, thus necessitating the establishment of plans upon a practical basis for the restoration of land which should not be exhausted by heavy crops without the cultivator making a proper return. One of our students of agriculture, in a public address, deals largely with the necessity for the dissemination of a practical knowledge of the needs of the land. He speaks of the great waste of fertilising matter in the way in which the refuse stalks of two of the greatest crops of the Delta--cotton and sugar-cane--are burned in the furnaces of engines, for which purpose they are most valuable when it is taken into consideration that fuel wood is a rarity and coal a luxury of exorbitant price. But after burning, so ignorant have the people been, that the tons upon tons in the aggregate of this rich ash from the engine fires which consume the refuse of the enormous crops of sugar-cane annually grown, have been looked upon as comparatively valueless, in spite of the fact that the ash contains almost all that is required for the growth of so exhaustive a crop, and it has been either cast away or sold for a trifle, to be used up in the manufacture of bricks. He adds, in words full of pregnant meaning, that even the fertile alluvium of the Nile Valley cannot long sustain this treatment without exhaustion, in spite of the much that is done by the feeding off and ploughing in of the leguminous crops, which play a great part in giving back what has been taken away. Farms here, too, are often found with a large dovecote, as alluded to in the description of the Khedive's estates; for the Egyptian cultivator has a fine substitute for the guano of the Peruvian Chincha Islands in that of the pigeons which are kept in flocks for the sake of this strong fertiliser. Undoubtedly they must take severe toll from the crops, whether green or fit for harvesting, though perhaps this is counterbalanced by the fact that the birds must gain a good subsistence upon the grain that would be wasted or go back to the soil, so much being shed at ingathering time in consequence of the heat. This carefully-saved fertiliser is used by the Egyptian for applying to vegetables and such productions as water melons and other plants of the gourd family, which depend much for their size on stimulation. The application of special commercial manures to Egyptian crops may be said to be still in the experimental stage. On the richest and most fertile soils they are not required, but on the poorer soils their effect is very apparent. For the cotton crop, superphosphate and nitrate of soda, in the proportion of 3 to 4 hundredweights superphosphate to 1.25 hundredweight nitrate of soda, mixed and applied to an acre, give a profitable return in an increased yield of cotton. Other manures, such as potash, have been tried, but did not prove satisfactory. Sulphate of ammonia and nitrate of soda give good results on poor land if applied to the wheat crop. As not more than half enough farmyard manure can be produced on large estates for fertilising the various crops, attention will be turned to chemicals should they prove to be profitable after exhaustive experiments. CHAPTER SEVEN. After what has been written about the water navigation of this country, a few words may be said respecting the means of conducting the land traffic. In the past the great river and its Delta mouths, supplemented by the canals, formed the main roads for the conveyance of produce. Now the iron track has begun to make its way, and the long creeping trains of trucks and carriages may be seen gliding over the plain, drawn by the mighty power of old George Stephenson's invention, though in this hot country the familiar trail of soft whitish grey vapour is often wanting, dying out at once as it does in the rays of the ardent sun. In addition, Egypt is being treated as Britain was some two thousand years ago by the Romans, who well grasped the value of a good trunk road, and while those were formed for military purposes and the holding in check of the subject race, these in connection with the Khedive's peaceful rule and for the advance of agriculture are devoted to the carrying of produce from market to market, or to some railway station, and this, too, at much less cost than in the olden days, when most of the grain was borne from the place of its growth upon camel back, or slung in bags on either side of the patient, vigorous, and handsome donkeys which are raised in this country. A correspondent of the _Morning Post_ writes: While Upper Egypt is nowhere more than a fertile strip, bordered by two deserts, the comparatively large area of the Delta, its intersection by a multitude of canals, and the absence of a large system of metalled roads, have long rendered necessary an improvement of communications in the interest both of the fellaheen and of the European or Levantine landowners. Agricultural roads offer but a partial solution of the difficulties caused by these conditions; donkeys, mules, and camels are still highly useful, and will long be extensively used for the transport of commodities over a short distance, or in cases where time is no object to the transporter; but it is unnecessary to dilate on the defects of animal compared with mechanical transport. Branches of the Nile and the canals which in the maps cover the Delta with such a network of blue lines are also of great value, but the number of canals which are perennially navigable is limited, and the canal barge is nowhere renowned for speed, while sailing boats cannot use certain canals at all in the dry season, and their use of others is often attended by the risk of grounding. _En passant_, Mr Wallace mentions a singular fact in connection with the making of the trunk roads. In Europe we are accustomed to see them kept as level as is consistent with the cost of making, and raised above the level while provided with proper drains to carry off the too abundant water. Here it has been found that to give the road much rise above the surrounding levels is a mistake, in consequence of the large amount of salt the unredeemed districts contain. The salt rises to the surface, forming an efflorescence as in the American plains, and especially in the stiff lands it has a tendency to interfere with the ways of nature, where the particles adhere together, causing them to fall apart in the shape of dust, which is one of the objectionable features of an Egyptian road. Anyone who has read about Egypt will recall matters full of suggestion of likely difficulties regarding the keeping open of a road, while those who have travelled through the country have much to say about the prevalence of dust. How many discoveries in the past have been made of wondrous relics that have lain buried for ages covered in deeply--and preserved--by the drifting dust or sand! And, with regard to this drifting, attention has been drawn by Mr Wallace, in his agricultural address, to a singular physical fact in connection with the shifting of the sand. This might be expected to follow, on the whole, the course of the prevailing winds, and be carried mainly in their direction; but there are singular variations, probably due to local waves or currents of air near the surface of the earth. In one considerable portion of the land of Goshen the sand is swept from south to north, while in another part, along the west bank of the Nile, at the north of Cairo, its direction is from east to west. But a great deal of the raising and drifting of the finer portions of the earth is dependent upon whether the wind be moisture-laden or the reverse. If the air be moist, a breeze blowing at the rate of, say, four miles an hour from the north will have no effect upon the deep dust, while one from the arid south, possessed of about half the other's force, will raise the almost impalpable soil in clouds. But, as elsewhere, now that Egypt is awakening from her long slumber, the sand is giving way to the soil. The correspondent of the _Morning Post_ gives some very terse and exhaustive accounts of the railway system now extending through the Delta, and dwells upon the fact that the agricultural light railways-- similar to the one mentioned earlier in these pages, made by the Khedive to his estates near Cairo--have been a distinct success, and he goes on to say that: The broad-gauge State railways of the Egyptian Delta may be roughly compared with the sticks of a fan. Converging at Cairo, the headquarters of the railway administration, and the goal of the provincial lines, the railways diverge to Alexandria, to Dessouk in the north of the Delta, on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, to Damietta, to Salahieh in the north-east, and to Ismailia. Several lines link the important towns on these branches; for example, Mansourah is connected with the Salahieh line, and a railway along the coast connects Alexandria and Rosetta; but large areas, notably in the crowded Menoufieh Province, in Beherah, and in the north-east of the Delta, lacked facilities for rapid transmission of goods and passengers to the larger towns served by the State lines until the advent of the agricultural railways. It would be unnecessary and unprofitable to enumerate all the agricultural lines which have been constructed in the last few years. Their distribution may be understood if, returning to the fan metaphor, they are regarded as threads running between and generally connecting the diverging sticks of the fan of State lines. So successful have these lines been that applications have been made for permission regarding the construction of fresh railways to extend in various directions for over another three hundred miles, most of these being in the Menoufieh Province, where desert land is being reclaimed. Mr Gunn's report gives the mileage covered since 1896, when the concessions were granted: In 1897 there were fifty-four miles of railway open, in 1899 430 miles, and in 1902 673. Within a year or two there will be at least one thousand miles open for traffic. And, by the way, one of the principal uses made of these lines of rails is for the conveyance of the ancient deposits of _sabbakh_ or _coufri_ from district to district--the rich fertiliser to the comparatively barren lands--the old-world traces of civilisation to the new, to parts of Egypt which have been written down for ages as desert, but which are now found to become great suppliers of produce that can be easily consigned to the many markets opening up at home and abroad. CHAPTER EIGHT. Without doubt the Delta is a splendid region for settlement for any young agriculturist who possesses health, energy, and a natural tendency towards those industrious habits peculiar to the successful men of our country, who have always been willing to metaphorically and really take off their coats and do whatever is necessary by way of example. To succeed in Egypt we must take it for granted that he possesses moderate means, or, say, very moderate means, just sufficient to make a small commencement by hiring; or, far better, by the purchase of land, which can now safely be done with good legal security and at a price that before long will in all probability bound upwards to double or even quadruple its present figure. But the thoroughly good sterling advice of the authority already quoted--advice similar in nature has often been before given to intending settlers in Australia--is that a year at least should first be spent in gaining a knowledge of the country, while learning a sufficiency of the common language to enable a man to direct the labourers who will be under him in their field work. And, what is of equal importance, the intending settler, however great may have been his experience, should be ready to cast aside prejudice in favour of his own preconceived opinions, and studiously take note of why this or that course is followed out by old cultivators; he must learn that amidst a great deal of chaff that he may cast aside there are many grains of good sound wheat--otherwise, excellent dearly bought bits of experience. _Festina lente_ is a grand old Roman proverb, and the newcomer to Egypt will gain in the end by not being in too great a hurry to start. Unlike the British farmer, the agriculturist in Egypt has at hand an abundant supply of labour. Housed in the mud huts or sun-dried brick houses adjoining the estates, the labourer is at all hours ready to respond to the demand. He receives one or two acres of land let at a reduced rental; he is a day labourer only, and can absent himself at pleasure to attend to his craft. His wage varies from sixpence to tenpence per day of ten hours in summer and eight hours in winter. He provides his own food. In disposition this peasant is contented, good-natured, not resentful, and of good physique. He is also very untruthful, unreliable at his work, lazy, cunning, and unconscionable as to the quality and quantity of the task he is put to--in short, a thorough eye-servant. He requires constant supervision, when he will do good work under a trying sun. He promises fair, but performs badly. If he commits a fault and is questioned as to how it happened, one can invariably depend upon his telling an untruth. When working on his own plot he is most diligent, but his methods are not always the best, and he does not get the full benefit from the soil, owing to want of intelligence as to the rules of good husbandry. On a large estate, should extra hands be wanted for a special occasion, a hundred to two hundred men can be had on one night's notice being given--a delightful state of affairs in cases of emergency, though here the farmer does not often suffer from his hay or corn crops being unharvested through the redundance of rain. A large percentage of the fellaheen are perfectly illiterate, which accounts for their want of readiness to take up the initiative. They have no thirst for knowledge and love in agricultural matters to keep running in the old rut. Exactness, tidiness, and pride in his work are qualities very rarely found in a fellah. Slovenliness in the performance of duties is characteristic of the paid day labourer, and to a lesser degree when working on his own account. In Britain, for instance, where do we find the breeder of stock who excels his neighbours except in the shrewd farmer who, at great trouble and study, and by patient experimenting, attains to success? Not only so, but he is like the leaven which leaveneth the whole lump by raising the standard of a district. The apathy of the fellah is shown in the lack of breeding in horses, cattle, and sheep in Egypt, which is due to want of selecting suitable sires, care in rearing, and the like. The soil responds to thorough tillage in a marked degree, but too little care is bestowed upon this question of cultivation, as the fellah is prone to scamp his work and leave part of his land solid--that is, not thoroughly stirred. When exposed to the sun the soil cracks and opens into fissures, sometimes as wide as five inches. The fellah is often, too, careless in providing a good bed for the seed, and irregular germination is the result. If the land is judiciously watered and timeously ploughed in a friable condition, it can be brought to a fine tilth without much extra trouble. As it is all soil--nothing in the shape of a bad subsoil exists, as in some parts of Great Britain--deep cultivation is thoroughly beneficial, bringing, as it does, unexhausted soil to the top. Generally in the preparation of the land for the cotton crop, with its deep-searching roots, a depth of twelve inches is attained. Doubtless much of the apathy of the labouring man amongst the fellaheen is due, as in the case of the rice-feeding Hindoo, to his being to so great an extent a vegetarian. With him the staff of life consists principally of an exceedingly hard kind of bread, baked almost to biscuit, and composed of maize, or dourra, the small-grained millet; and the result of the fellaheen housewife's efforts in this kind of food preparation necessitates dipping or soaking in water before the bread can be partaken of at a meal. But in such a splendid garden land as Egypt, where cultivated produce attains maturity at so rapid a rate, and where with careful management and such a spring and summer-like climate two or even three crops of vegetables can be obtained in a year, it may easily be supposed that the peasant can provide himself with a constant supply of green food; and he certainly takes advantage of his position, indulging freely in the ordinary vegetables common in the gardens of the West, and supplementing them with the delicious green maize so popular with the American people. This latter grain is one of the staple foods, when it has come to maturity, of the inhabitants of the Delta. It is ground into a coarse flour, and mingled with a small proportion of barley; while in addition, to give flavour and a slight stimulus to the digestive organs which are brought to bear upon one of the hardest grains in assimilation, a small portion of the peculiar clover-like, many-seeded plant, fenugreek, is added. Maize gives place to a great extent in Upper Egypt to millet or dourra amongst the poorer orders; but the better-class work-people, who earn much higher wages than the agricultural labourer, are now taking to the general use of wheaten bread. Although the ordinary fellah partakes of so simple a diet, and may be wanting in energy, loving as he does to glide through life in the same old groove that was formed by his forefathers, he is a well-built, healthy, muscular individual, and is not to be beaten by any coolie as a worker under a torrid sun. Much of his work consists of raising water for irrigation, and if statistics could be produced as to the number of gallons that he sends trickling amongst the roots of the crop, or moistening the land previously in their preparation, ordinary figures would almost fail. Suffice it to say that it is immense. Even now he clings often of necessity to the old, old shadoof--that which is represented in the engraving--which, in spite of its Egyptian name, is only our old friend of the suburban brickfield, a long pole balanced upon a post in scale beam fashion, with a bucket at one end of the pole, a weight at the other, equal to that of the water which is raised from somewhere below for pouring into a receptacle, ready to be dipped again, perhaps, and sent higher by means of another shadoof farther up. The worker of this primitive water distributer, in his cotton robe, is one of the commonest objects seen upon the banks. The photograph well depicts the sturdy fellah at his task. In addition, there is the old-world sakieh, a much more complicated affair; for here, in the past, primitive ingenuity turned its hand to mechanical construction, and produced after much toil the manual labour-saving and ox- or buffalo-enlisting water-wheel, working after the fashion of one of our river dredges, but clumsy of the clumsy, and having, in place of the metal scoops, so many earthenware pots, held in their places to the periphery of the water-wheel by as many cords, as will be seen in the engraving. Still, it is effective in its way, and the yoked oxen which supply the motive power that turns the heavy wheels raise vast quantities of water year after year. The sakieh is quaint, old-world, and picturesque, and it has served its purpose so well, for who can say how far back in the past, that it never seems to have occurred to the lower order of Egyptian mind that any improvement could be made. That has been left to the West, and now that under the present progressive forward movement of Egyptian agriculture European, and especially British, water-raising and distributing machines are being utilised, the fate of the sakieh seems to be that sooner or later it will merely live to be spoken of as a curiosity, only seen in some artist's representation of the past. The fellah's habitation has not varied with the years; as in antiquity, so now. The primitive clay hut is simplicity itself. As it is figured in the quaint tomb pictures, so it is to-day in the suburbs and villages--its furniture a wooden chest or two, its cooking utensils a few earthen pots. But his hut is principally his sleeping place, for his life is pretty well passed beneath the broad canopy of heaven. He rises with the dawn to begin his day's work at the plough, or to handle his heavy hoe. At another time the demands of the crops for water or for the mud-laden fertilising contents of the great stream, take him to the shadoof or to guide the bullock or buffalo turning the water-wheel. As elsewhere, the fellah's wife is the soul of his humble home. She toils busily and patiently through the duties of her little domestic centre, cares for her elders, cooks, and finds time to feed the cattle and collect the sun-dried fuel from off the parched soil, to come back marching homeward, strong and statuesque, bearing the piled-up basket upon her head; while it is she who, while her lord is busily lowering and raising the shadoof, descends knee deep into the river or canal to fill the great, heavy, amphora-like earthen pot and then bear it back to her home, classically picturesque in her drapery as she balances the clumsy vessel upon shoulder or head, and bears the life-giving fluid onward with a steady, easy swing. It is she who makes the dourra, or maize bread, and shapes and stitches the cotton clothing, which is the only wear of all her circle. Unlike her sister of the city, she does not shrink so much from the gaze of the other sex, but still to some extent keeps up the tradition; though wearing no veil she will hold up a portion of her drapery at the coming of the passer-by, or perhaps only place her hand before her mouth. Woman-like, in spite of her menial toil, she believes in personal care, and her long black hair is carefully dressed and glistens with Palma Christi oil. She paints, too, as of old, the marks appearing upon her chin and forehead, while a string of attractive glass beads decorates and hangs suspended from her neck. The olden Egyptian costume is that principally affected by the fellah. It consists of a closely-fitting cap of felt or cotton and a long robe of the latter material, deeply dyed of an indigo blue. Shirt and drawers are of the same material, while in some cases a young buck amongst his people will adorn himself, like Joseph of old, in a vest of many colours, borrowed from the Arab, the Persian, or the Turk. As above intimated, the fellah believes in a life of leisure, and finds it rather difficult to make the first start at his daily toil. In the olden days the lot of the fellah was not quite so happy as it might have been. He suffered from enforced labour, and does not seem to have had much chance of appeal. But he had one notable thing in his favour, for a river when in flood is subject to having huge portions of its banks undermined and swept away in a state of muddy solution; and, as was frequently the case, the peasant cultivator, who for the sake of the irrigation had his holding as near the bank as he could contrive to get, was often a great sufferer, being in the possession before the flood of a considerable strip of cultivated land, while after the inundation it was a minus quantity, leaving him to begin life again. Here, however, the law of the land was very equitable upon his behalf, giving him liberty to go either up or down stream to select an equal quantity of the land he had lost that was new and unappropriated, and no one said him nay. And now, thanks to the just and easy state of the Government, the native working Egyptian is far better off with regard to his condition than he appears to have been at any time in the past. Prosperity surrounds him, and the lesser holders of land, say of from four to ten feddans or acres, rapidly grow well-to-do and distance the larger proprietors. The extent now of the land under cultivation is vastly in excess of what it was. The people are growing more energetic--those of the better class-- and are learning fast, while the spirit of emulation is increasing amongst them as they waken up to what modern civilisation will achieve. Their Government, too, is working hard on their behalf, a college having been established at Ghizeh for the purpose of instructing the sons of native landowners and of the working fellaheen class in more advanced agriculture, fitting them in the knowledge necessary for the prosecution of agriculture according to the best forms, the proper rotations of crops, selections of fertilisers, natural and chemical, and, above all, stockbreeding and all that has been learned of late in connection with the dairy. In brief, much as has been said of the Egypt of the past being the garden of the world, it bids fair to become in the future so great a contrast that old Egypt will pale into insignificance in the bright light of the new. CHAPTER NINE. *Horses*.--There are no heavy horses used here, such as the Shire or Clydesdale, as the ploughing is done by oxen. The Arab horses--or they might be classed as ponies--measure from fourteen to fourteen and a half hands high. They are not of great substance, but light in the bone, leggy, narrow-chested, though sure-footed and hardy. Horse breeding is not attended with much success, as regards the production of high-class stock, and re-mounts for the Army and Police have to be purchased in Syria. The stories one reads while at school about the Arab and his steed receive a rude shock when one witnesses the unmerciful way in which the Arab overloads and whips his horses. They are not true horsemen, a fact which is apparent in their methods of training horses to harness. The Government has supplied stud horses to various districts to try and improve the breed. On the farm horses are used for carting, etc. They are fed on barley and broken straw (_tibn_), the former a bad form of provender for the horse, unless its harshness be ameliorated by crushing. *Cattle*.--The work-bullocks are strong, docile animals, and do the ploughing, threshing, raising water, etc. One pair is yoked to a plough. Four pairs are sufficient to work a farm of one hundred acres. Their daily feed is nine pounds of beans and twenty-five pounds of straw. The beans are split, and are eaten uncooked. Most estates have to purchase their oxen, as very few cows are kept for breeding purposes. The fellaheen keep one or two, and rear the young bulls. Where the soil is richest the cattle are best. In summer the fellah allows his young stock to get into poor condition, and this has an effect on their growth. He has--amongst many other things--still to learn about early maturity. Within recent years work-bullocks have risen enormously in price, owing to more butcher's meat being consumed by the fellaheen and the European visitors. The price of a pair of good bullocks is 45 pounds at the age of four years. These cattle resemble those of the Channel Islands, but are larger. They are very often deficient in depth of rib and chest measurement, hollow-backed, and narrow across the loins, as well as leggy, and they show want of strength of forearm. These are some of the defects which may be eradicated by care in selecting, mating, etc. Cows are kept and bred from by the fellaheen, who rear the young bulls, while, as we have seen, the cows are used for ploughing. They are not a breed of deep milkers, but the milk is rich in butter fat, 5 per cent, being common; and sixteen pounds of milk will give two pounds of cream, or one pound of butter, which is in demand at from 1 shilling 6 pence to 2 shillings per pound. Crossing with European bulls has been tried lately, with a measure of success. Some idea of the characters of these animals may be gathered by comparing the illustrations representing both buffalo and ordinary bull with the experimental cross-bred animals reared upon the Khedivial farms. It has been found that crosses between Fribourg bulls (Swiss) and native cows improve the milking qualities and also produce an animal with better points of breeding, without diminishing the usefulness for draught purposes. Fine specimens are to be seen at the present time upon the Khedive's farms. A practice common to the country is that when the cow is milked her calf is tied up beside her and allowed afterwards to partake of its share. If this rule be not observed, the cow will not give up her milk. *Buffaloes*.--Large specimens of these peculiar and useful animals have been bred upon the Khedive's stock farm, great enterprise having been exercised for the purposes of improvement both as draught animals and for dairy purposes. One of the sires is a magnificent bull lately brought by his Highness's orders from the Soudan. Both bulls and cows are yoked for farm labour in the fields, while the latter, as dairy stock, are in great favour, their milk being richer in butter-producing qualities than that of the ordinary dairy cow of Europe. Eleven pounds of buffalo milk will churn one pound of butter, but the quality is not so good, being pale in colour, and oily. The yield of milk per twenty-four hours is about thirty pounds. *Donkeys*.--Unlike the despised donkey of England, the ass of Egypt is one of the most useful of animals. It is a hardy, patient burden-bearer, but very often ill-treated, notwithstanding its good services. It is employed on the farm for carrying manure in bags slung across the back, and is largely used for the saddle. A well-bred, generously treated donkey is often of a goodly size. *Mules*.--These are employed for carting, raising water, and other farm work. They are very strong and useful. *Sheep*.--Egypt is not a pastoral country, and but scant attention is paid to these animals. They are considered a sort of by-product. When attention is paid to them, however, they yield excellent profit. The ram lambs at five months sell at from sixteen to twenty shillings. No care is bestowed on selection, and breeding from "weedy" rams renders the stock deficient in quality. The duties of the shepherd are light, as the flock is always under his eye at pastures. A very good idea of the Egyptian sheep can be gathered from the illustration. But the time is rapidly approaching when all this may be changed; for sheep-farming may be looked upon from its double advantage of their increasing popularity for food purposes and their value for the extension of a system of animal manuring, and thus supplying, by feeding off crops, one of the great wants of the country. To a great extent the poor class Egyptian has been a vegetarian, but, with the increase of riches and prosperity in the country, Mr Wallace in his address speaks of the growing demand for animal food, especially mutton; while he reminds his listeners that one of the ways in which an Arab honours his guest is by furnishing his feast with a whole roast lamb. The Prophet Mohammed, in his sanitary laws to his followers, teaches them to partake of mutton, in his wisdom and knowledge of its superiority to the flesh of the ox, which is considered unclean, pointing to the fact that even in his day cattle were known to be affected with some form of tuberculosis, which might possibly be eaten and thus imparted to the unfortunate partaker of the unwholesome food. A special choice of site for sheep-farming is necessary, as a matter of course; but portions of the country may easily be selected where they can be kept with advantage--in the Nubarea, for instance. For not only is the land itself undergoing change in its nature, but politically as well. Under the present form of government and the protection to the cultivator which has been the natural result, the farmer is becoming freed from the risks of the past; for, unfortunately, in consequence of a certain inborn notion that has existed among the native Egyptian that everything he covets may be annexed, it has been found absolutely necessary by the grower of sheep to keep an exceedingly sharp eye over his tempting flocks, which have had to be dealt with as if they were in an enemy's land. Driven into folds at night, this has not been sufficient; for as there is a want here of that breed of savage dogs fostered for their protection by the Albanian shepherds, the Egyptian shepherd has to be supplemented by watchmen ready to stand sentry over the flocks by night. Sheep feeding progresses well during the time of the growing crops; but as these pass away, that form of farming and feeding which may be looked upon as quite modern in its application has proved most advantageous to the keeper of sheep: we mean the plan which agitated the public mind to so great an extent a decade or two back--ensilage--when our country rang with reports of experimental building of costly silos, or the sinking in suitable places of cement-lined tanks in which the newly-cut crops of green cattle food were piled or stacked, rammed down for preservation, and made into what one facetious writer stigmatised as "cattle jam." The idea of the inexperienced was that this treatment of the green grass or clover would result either in rotting or fermentation, with spontaneous combustion to follow, as in the case of a too hurriedly made hay or corn rick in a moist harvest time. But the operations of Nature are as wondrous as they are puzzling, and it was found in our own country that the crop preserved in its silo could be kept for a reasonable length of time, and then cut out in an appetising state, ready for the cattle in a season of scarcity. Answering so well in Europe, with its frequent rains and superabundant moisture, it is bound to be successful in comparatively rainless Egypt, where the clover can be cut at the exact necessary period and kept ready for use as required--a fact which is likely to give a great impetus to sheep-raising in such a pastureless country as the Delta. CHAPTER TEN. There is every probability of a small capitalist, one who might begin with almost nothing besides so much land and a sufficiency to tide himself over the first few months, making a fair success by the establishing of a poultry farm. In England we are favoured every year with reports of the trials that have been made in this branch of farming; and as a rule it seems that bad weather, the cold, and the cost of keeping, run away with most of the profits. Indeed, the writer's experience points to the fact that few as yet have made a satisfactory living by keeping fowls in this rainy island, while up to the present day our supplies are kept up by the chickens and eggs taken into market from ordinary farms, or collected by hucksters from the cottages over wide districts. This applies as much to France as to England, for we are indebted to the former country for millions of the eggs with which the metropolis is supplied. In Egypt, where there is plenty of room and abundant sunshine, fowls might be much improved by the choice of suitable kinds, while some management would be required as to the means of feeding, though one suggestion may be made that, if adopted, ought to prove of great assistance to the fowl and egg farmer. There is one peculiarity in the growing of grain in Egypt, and this is noticeable in the harvesting, the heat of the sun being so great that the corn of various kinds ripens with such rapidity that if much of it be not cut down and carried in the comparative coolness of the night much of it is shed in the fields and is wasted. Here is a great opportunity for the poultry farmer, or the farmer who merely keeps a few fowls in connection with his general cultivation; for at such times, in a country where double crops prolong the harvest, great numbers of poultry in kinds would be self-feeding, and far superior in quality to many that are brought into the Cairene and Alexandrian markets. Still, at the present time the occupation has been much improved, for not only are the native markets supplied, but exportation of eggs is on the increase. Far off as Egypt may be, the metropolis is to some extent supplied with its produce, but to nothing like the extent that should be the case, for the London egg merchants will not buy "mummies," which is the cant term for Egyptian eggs, save for about two months in the year, when the European supplies are scarce. This fact--one which is well worthy the attention of poultry farming aspirants--is entirely the fault of the Egyptian grower, for the London merchants' complaint is perfectly justifiable. It is this--that the Egyptian eggs are exceedingly small, and so badly packed for transit by those who seem thoroughly ignorant of the proverbial fact that "eggs are eggs," that the breakage is enormous, while the entire loss falls on the agents. Similar complaints used to be made regarding the eggs imported into Europe from Morocco and Algiers, but here those connected with the trade have woke up to their shortcomings and introduced better fowls--the layers of larger eggs--and have also given greater attention to the packing of this exceedingly brittle merchandise. Hence the result has been most satisfactory, and the trade has rapidly increased. Egypt being, then, in much the same latitude as Morocco and Algiers, there is no reason whatever why the former country should not improve its production of poultry so as to vastly increase the demand by raising the quality of its supplies. Physiologists seem very much behindhand in accounting for the terrible destruction which comes upon countries from time to time. Africa, the ancient home of plagues, is only now recovering from that frightful devastation which affected grazing animals, the wild as severely as the domesticated. From south to north this great portion of the globe was swept by the Teutonically-named Rinderpest. Cattle of all kinds, and the droves of antelope-like creatures which roamed the wilds, perished almost like vegetation before the hot, sweeping blast of a volcano or forest fire. And, though little known outside, Northern Africa has had a trouble that seems to have been special to domesticated birds, a fact which shows that poultry farming in Egypt is not all _couleur de rose_, and that he who would venture upon such a pursuit enjoys no immunity from risks, but must take his chance with the vegetable and fruit growers who, like those in other countries, have their difficulties to face. One visitation was productive recently of terrible devastation amongst fowls. This was not the familiar "gapes" of the British poultry-yard, but is described as a kind of cholera, so bad that villages have been losing their entire stock, with the natural consequence that the market prices of poultry and eggs have greatly increased--charges, in fact, having doubled and even trebled. Experiments have been tried in the investigation of the disease and the manner of treating it, but so far the only successful way of dealing with the trouble seems to have been by isolation. But there appears to be every probability of the disease proving only of a temporary nature, and that the production of poultry will be as easy, simple, and remunerative as of old; for, as may easily be understood, poultry farming is bound to be of vast importance in a hot country. Every traveller recalls what a staple food a so-called chicken is in the West Indies; while in the vast plains of India almost every native cottage has its fowls to meet the demand of an enormous consumption. Of the quality the less said the better. The aim of the possessor of a poultry-yard in Western Europe is to produce a plump, square, so-to-speak, solid fowl, broad and full of breast. The Indian bird seems to have been gifted by Nature--in merciful consideration of its being, like most gallinaceous birds, short and hollow of wing and a bad flier, and also of its having to run for its life to escape immolation and consumption--with an abundance of skinny leg, and it never seems to have occurred to the ryot that he might improve the breed. Even in civilised Egypt there is much to be done in this direction, and an ample field is open to the poultry farmer to improve the quality of the fowl, with success attending him if he will be content to go watchfully to work and make his experiments upon a sound basis, without being too ready to look with contempt upon the experience-taught native ways. One thing is worthy of remark for the benefit of the would-be poultry farmer, and that is in connection with the marketing, for it is almost a rule that no one in Egypt buys a dead fowl. In Western Europe, of course, the common practice is to send the fatted chickens for sale plucked and neatly trussed. In Egypt it is different, from the fear lest it should have died from natural causes. The result of this style of vendition is the repellent way in which poultry are hawked about the streets of the town, raising feelings for the need of more prevention-of-cruelty-to-animals establishments, though it would be hard work to interfere with a custom which has a good deal of reason on its side, for, waiving the possibilities of purchasing a bird that may have been killed by accident, or possibly have died from disease, climatic reasons must be taken into consideration. Egypt is at times intensely hot, and, whatever may be the fancies of epicures in connection with game, the gourmet has yet to be found with a preference for having his chickens "high." Still, as aforesaid, there is something repellent in the way in which the doomed birds are treated. In England a Prevention officer soon summons the huckster who overcrowds his poultry in a crate and does not supply them with food or water; but in Egypt it is one of the common objects of the streets to see a bunch of fowls tied together by the legs and swinging from the vendor's hand, wearily curving up their necks so as to get their heads in the normal position, while every now and then a case may be found where the seller finds that he requires refreshment and callously throws his load upon the ground, while in Eastern fashion he takes his seat at a _cafe_ to sip his cup and smoke a cigarette. CHAPTER ELEVEN. In such a climate as has been described Egypt offers every inducement for the planting of fruit trees that are likely to flourish under its ardent sun. Attempts have been made, and with fair success, but the raising of fruit has not reached that state of excellence warranted by fertility and the conditions of the climate. Examination very soon shows the reasons for this lack of prosperity, which is clearly the fault of the Egyptian gardener in his want of system, his easy, careless indifference, and his clinging to the old-fashioned way of planting a fruit tree, namely, placing it in a hole in the ground and leaving it to itself. The first things that strike observers in visiting Egyptian gardens are the overcrowding of the trees, the neglect of precautions to keep them free from weeds, and in many cases the marked absence of pruning dealt out judiciously by one who knows a fruit tree and its needs--plenty of light and air, the removal of cross growth, and the fostering of bearing wood, here frequently injured by rank growth. Then, again, the Egyptian gardener is as obstinate and conservative as his prototype in the western counties of England, who leaves his ancient apple-trees of the orchard to grow one into the other and become covered with grey lichen, while he religiously avoids the replacing of old and unprofitable trees by young ones. The result of experience is--and the knowledge of what the land will do makes it certain--that in the following out of this defective system may be traced the want of quality, flavour, and quantity of some Egyptian fruits. Of these it must be remembered that the settler and commencer of their cultivation would have to deal with several that are new to him in the way of growing, as well as those of the cooler parts of Europe. Egypt suggests to the reader the ancient civilisation, with its pyramids, temples, and other monuments of its old-time grandeur, the great river, and, above all, the desert; but to come back from these to the simple and ordinary pursuit of gardening, the settler would be able to surround himself, as in California and Florida, but without the bitter disappointments produced by frosts, with several varieties of the golden apples of the Hesperides--oranges, to wit--the sweet, the bitter, the deeply tinted blood orange, and the mandarin. All of them grow well in Lower Egypt, and produce beautiful and profitable crops of fruit, as may be judged by the following. The sweet and mandarin trees will bear, upon a good average tree, from three hundred to four hundred oranges each--that is to say, good, sweet, juicy fruit, and these will sell readily wholesale at about two shillings per hundred; while, in the way of drawbacks for one who expects to make an income from his sales, it will be found here that, just as at home, the tree that in one season bears an exceptionally heavy crop is rather shy in its production in the next. The words that follow deserve to be written in italics for the benefit of those who know the ravages and foulness that come upon an orange tree in company with the varieties of scale. There are no insect pests, neither, as has been intimated, are there frosts to destroy the bloom. _· propos_ of this bloom, there is a practice pursued in Egypt which may seem strange to an English gardener, but which adds largely to the profits of the orange grower, and is doubtless beneficial to the tree, relieving it as it may from the strain of overbearing. When the bitter orange is in full flower the trees are shaken, and more than half of the blossoms are sold for the purpose of distillation. The essence produced is used for mixing with drinking water, or for flavouring beverages, while the price received for the petals is about two-pence-halfpenny per pound. In addition to the oranges, which are in season from November until March, and keep fruiting in beautiful repetition, lemons of several varieties are grown, and are marketable at the same time of year. These are a most popular fruit among the Egyptians, largely utilised as a kind of seasoning in the preparation of cooked dishes, and also much prized for the making of summer beverages in this hot and thirsty land. These are even better friends to the gardener growing for the market than oranges, for they are sure croppers, and command a good price. Abundance may be written with regard to summer fruits, the list numbering apricots, pears, plums, peaches, apples, grapes, figs, the custard apple, pomegranate, melon, and banana. Of these, bananas, apricots, pomegranates, and figs may be classed as the most profitable fruits of the summer season. But people accustomed to the English Moorpark and _Gros Peche_ apricot, which, when well-grown upon a south wall or in an orchard-house, is one rich bag of reddish amber, deliciously flavoured honey-like juice, would be much disappointed in the abundant apricots which are produced upon standard trees for the Egyptian market. They are finely flavoured, but small, hard, and fibrous; and an experienced cultivator of fruit trees states that it is very probable that the deficiency in quality and the reason that so far it has not thrived to perfection is, paradoxical as it may sound, that it matures too quickly, which is another way of saying that the climate is too fine for it. Still, there is every reason to believe that skilful management and choice acclimatisation, or the raising of new sorts, may result in the production of finer apricots than those now grown in England, where in some parts a manifest deterioration has been in progress, so great that growers are destroying their apricots and replacing them with fruit trees more suited to our sunless climate. Some years back a novelty made its appearance in the Alexandria district. This was a veritable plague of Egypt, though undoubtedly a visitant from abroad. It was a banana disease, which in its inroads played great havoc amongst the plantations. Scientific examination was brought to bear, and the cause was found to be a parasitic nematode which attacked the roots of the plant. Fortunately the trouble was local, and the infection limited in its area, while at the present time many of the plantations are free from the pest. With regard to peaches, the way is open to the enterprising and clever cultivator, for with such a constant supply of sunshine much ought to be done in the way of growing this queen of fruits. Many of us here in England, who have to trust to trees laboriously trained against a wall, or spread out and tied in to wires at the cost of many a back and neck ache, beneath the sloping glass of an orchard-house, have read with watering mouths of the standard trees of the United States, where the fallen peaches are gathered up in barrowfuls and considered of no account. Abundance rules there, and possibly it may be that this is due to the intensely hot summers of the States and their frigidly cold winters; for this seems to be the nature of the climate in the country from which the peach sprang and took its Latin name, _Persica_; for there, following upon the summer heats, winter comes down from the mountains intensely cold. This balance is wanting in Egypt, where, so far, peaches have not proved to be a success. The trees grow well and bear fruit that is fairly large in size, but does not possess the fine aromatic, juicy flavour of a well-matured English peach grown upon a wall and only protected during the time of frost, those raised under glass, save in size and appearance, never approaching the open-air fruit. The Egyptian peaches are hard and fibrous, as well as wanting in the piquant bitter almond flavour so much esteemed. Possibly the selection of better kinds may make a great change in the hands of careful cultivators, but in common fairness it is right to say that the successful production of this favourite fruit in Egypt is open to doubt. So far, too, another stone fruit, the plum, is not extensively grown, while the plums produced in the Egyptian garden cannot compare with those imported from Europe. But this fruit is not such an aristocrat among the luscious beauties of the garden as the exacting peach, and there is nothing to prevent, either in soil or climate, a finer quality being grown in the Delta. What is needed is the selection of new and suitable varieties, accompanied by careful watching of results; in fact, the intelligent management of a good experimental gardener, not one akin to that of Egypt, who selects with extreme conservatism the easiest way to his desired ends. He consequently devotes his time to those fruits which flourish easily and well. His attention has been given principally to the growing of the _citrus_ family, to the exclusion of such fruits as pears and plums, which are imported from Syria and Turkey. In fact, in spite of the possibilities of the Delta, how great is the want of enterprise may readily be seen when it is stated that the value of the imports of fruit may amount to many thousand pounds per annum. Unfortunately, our two most home-like and familiar fruits--apples and pears--do not succeed here, the climate being far too hot. Pears have a very small share of the land, and the fruit is not of the best quality. But while it is doubtful about the apple, this doubt ought not to extend to the pear, which is a lover of heat, and, as regards the better sorts, delicate and tender in its constitution. There can be no doubt that if a careful selection of some of the best French and Belgian varieties were introduced, a fair meed of success would be the result, for it seems almost contrary to reason that such kinds as the fragrant _Doyenne de Comice_ and _Glou Morceau_, which fail as standards in the inclemency of an English season, and crack and speck if they are not protected by a wall, should not succeed in Egypt if they are given a fair trial. Not that there is much need for experiment in a country which can grow its grapes gloriously in the open air, the vines not asking for the help of glass. Some half dozen varieties are produced in Egypt, and flourish well under treatment of the simplest kind. The cultivation of the vine extends over the whole of the province of Fayoum. In this latter district a white grape, called after its habitat the "Fayoumi," is the favourite in the market, and it is the earliest that ripens. The berries are medium sized, but the flavour is excellent and the fruit very juicy. There is little question of training or trellis work, for, somewhat after the fashion of the vineyards in France, the vines are grown as bushes of about two feet high; and the result, though not the production of the bunches of the Vale of Eshcol, is still abundance. Two varieties are grown in the Delta and Cairo districts, namely "Roumy"--a kind derived from Greece--and "Shawishi." Here, as opposed to the cultivation in the province of Fayoum, the vines are mostly trained on lattice work so as to form what the old gardeners called a pergola, or covered way. Both these varieties are heavy croppers, bearing bunches whose berries are of a greenish red, while the flavour is very good. Egypt is a land of vines and vineyards, much space being given to the cultivation of the grape, though not for the purposes of carting to the winepress, the Moslem religion being antagonistic to the grape's fermented juice. Each district has its favoured kind, and in that of Alexandria and along the shore of the Mediterranean the vine is abundantly grown close to the ground, the soil being pure sand. There is a peculiarity in the cultivation here, for V-shaped trenches are cut to a depth of from six to nine feet. Then vine shoots are planted in the bottom of the trench, where the young rootlets they put forth are within reach of water. Vegetation is rapid, and the canes gradually cover the slopes on either side, while in two years the vines begin to bear. The bushes receive no irrigation from above, only depending upon the so-called winter rains, which are fairly frequent near the sea, and, as has been shown, gaining their support from beneath the sand at the bottom of the trench. But though no irrigation is brought to bear, these ground vineries require annually an application of manure if the best results are to be obtained. As the land of the Delta is practically level, it affords scarcely any opportunities for the growth of the grape vine upon sunny slopes, this being the only instance in Egypt where grapes are grown with this exposure, while these slopes are all artificially made. As regards insect pests, they may be almost classed as _nil_, and the grower will not hear of thrip and scale, mealie bug, or red spider, so that the cultivation is conducted under the most favourable conditions; but the ubiquitous sparrow is even there, and, unless means are taken to scare away or destroy him, his ravages amongst the sweet berries are great. Here, too, as may be supposed where grapes are produced to so great an extent, the thinning of the berries is not resorted to, and consequently they are not so large as might be expected from the heat of the climate and the favourable conditions under which they are grown, nor is the flavour so fine as that of the beautiful bunches so carefully tended and watched under glass in an English vinery; but they command a ready sale at about twopence per pound when the fruit is ripe, from the beginning of June. CHAPTER TWELVE. That delicious European fruit, the strawberry, by nature a dweller in cool and Alpine regions, was not known in Egypt till within forty years ago. Planted as an experiment by someone familiar with its qualities, it seems to have passed rather an unfavourable time in popular estimation; but it is now gradually gaining in favour, and the area under cultivation is steadily extending. The fruit is ripe in November, and finds a ready sale at tenpence per pound; while, if the cultivation is good and well-managed, the return to the planter may be reckoned at forty pounds for the produce of an acre. To an Englishman familiar with the strawberry and its growth, one knowing the botanical character of the plant and the love of its roots for a rich clay land, it seems surprising that it should flourish so well in the sandy soil of Egypt. But, of course, this is explained by the yearly deposit of rich silt, or warp, the result of the annual floods. Fortunately for the grower, he is not troubled as in England by woodland birds, the Eastern crops suffering very little from their ravages, while the plant enjoys almost an immunity from the attacks of insect plagues. In the goodly list of luscious fruits we now come to figs--not the overgrown, sickly fruit that only ripens under very favourable circumstances in England, but the rich saccharine bag of embedded seed that we know best in its dried and pressed form as the common fig. Its cultivation is spread over the whole Delta and the Fayoum, where its milky, succulent stems and dark green leaves flourish thoroughly well. The trees, as a rule, grow to a height of nine or ten feet, are well branched, and find great favour with the native gardener, for they possess the admirable qualities of requiring not much attention, very little manure, and no pruning. Joined to this, the trees are very prolific, and the luscious fruit finds great favour with the people. Another popular fruit which grows without much attention save irrigating, and that to a very moderate degree, is the prickly pear. Here in England the melon is looked upon as a delicacy. Gardeners vie one with the other in its production, and seedsmen push forward this fashionable fruit by advertising their own special specimens of prize kinds, and these may be almost classed as legion. In Egypt the varieties are roughly divided into two, the sweet and the water melon, and they both flourish wonderfully. They are sown in February and March, and thrive best in light loam, while their period of growth extends to about four months. In their rapid development they attain to a goodly size. For instance, a water melon may reach the weight of thirty pounds, while from a marketing point of view, taking large and small together, so as to strike an average, the wholesale price may be placed at fivepence per melon, and the cultivator of an acre of land devoted to this produce may reckon on receiving from forty to sixty pounds--pretty satisfactory for the four months of growth and the land ready for planting with some other crop suitable to the season, for the grower has no dreary months of winter to intervene. The cultivation of the sweet melon is similar to that of its relative, but the fruit is finer in flavour and the plants not so prolific. Consequently the grower's receipts are much smaller, a fair computation of the returns from an acre being from about thirty to forty pounds. There is another disadvantage, too, in the growth of this fruit. It must be consumed within some ten days after being fully ripe, whereas the sturdy water melon will keep good for over a month. In spite of the good qualities of the melon, its ease of growth, and the market requirements, nothing like sufficient are grown, the demand being supplied by the importation of large quantities from neighbouring countries. This popular fruit is always looked upon as deliciously refreshing and fine in flavour, but it may be mentioned here how much climate has to do with the quality of the fruit. Some years ago a friend, after a prolonged stay in Egypt, presented the writer with a few seeds of the Egyptian melon. These were planted here in England and nursed up under glass with all the care that good gardening and watching could bestow. Everything was done to the exotic plants that a certain amount of experience in growing melons could supply, and a couple of them flourished exceedingly--under glass, be it remembered, in a heated house--blossomed, and bore several fine large green fruit, whose increase was watched and maturing waited for, but in vain. Presumably there was a certain amount of fragrance and ripening, for the fruit changed colour and gave forth the familiar odour; but the anticipations of enjoying a delicious Egyptian melon were not fulfilled. A good ripe vegetable marrow would have put either of them to the blush. Pumpkins, big and gourd-like in growth--_pastiches_, as they are commonly called--are most abundant in the early winter months, and are largely brought down the river from Upper Egypt in barges or feluccas with graceful lateen sails. They form a pleasant addition to the food of the poor, while in their growth, favoured as they are by a hot sun, rich soil, and a sufficiency of moisture, their increase is almost fabulous, and anyone of curious taste and plenty of patience, aided by a powerful magnifying glass, might in all probability be gratified by seeing the creeping growth of the watery vine and the steady swelling out of its heavy earth-supported fruit. Another fruit upon our list is the pomegranate, of late years made familiar upon the barrows in the London streets, and looking when cut open something like an unwholesome blood orange that has aborted and taken to growing an enormous excess of pips embedded in jelly within a hardened peel. In spite of the enterprise which has brought the fruit here, it seems hardly likely to bring the shippers much reward; but it is extensively grown in Egypt, is in great demand, and very profitable. To continue with unfamiliar fruits, we may next name the great date palm, which may be looked upon as the most common tree to be found in Egypt, growing as it does all over both the upper and lower regions, as well as on the sandy shores of the Mediterranean Sea. No wonder that it is so largely planted, for its fruit is everywhere consumed by the people as a portion of their food. The tree begins to bear five years after planting, and should take the record as a profitable friend of man, for under favourable conditions it will go on bearing for a hundred years or more, while a good tree will bear, on an average, over a hundredweight of fruit, which is disposed of amongst the people at the popular price of one penny per pound. The fruit ripens in September, and where the trees are selected, are of the best variety and well attended to, the profits are very good, especially if they are planted in a garden, where their tuft of leaves, raised high upon their tall, smooth stems, throws so little shade that the ground beneath can be profitably planted with other crops, such as the ordinary domestic vegetables of our own country, haricot beans, peas, spinach, etc. "The large, dark, red-skinned, hard date," a friend writes from Cairo, "has long been plentiful, and forms one of the staple foods of the populace. But to-day--_i.e._, mid-October--the soft, small luscious date was served at table. This is a most delicious fruit. It tastes for all the world like caramel toffee, though of course much softer. These dates are wonderfully cheap. They do not, however, keep more than twelve hours after picking, and then begin to ferment and taste like beer. They are most plentiful, and there is, no doubt, much waste. I should think that a strong spirituous liquor could be distilled from them." Other fruits may be mentioned, such as the quince, loquat, lotus, and that favourite of farther east, the delicious mango; but these are not extensively cultivated, and may very well be excluded from a list of fruits that might be profitably grown for market purposes. The wonder is that the mango has been neglected, comparatively, up to now. Still, the Egyptians are waking up to its value, for during 1903 there has been in Cairo a very plentiful supply of this luscious fruit, which bears some semblance in the eating to a very rich and juicy apricot, resembling it also in colour. The old saying of the Anglo-Indian who makes it a favourite, in spite of a slight suspicion of turpentine in its flavour, is doubtless well-known to the reader--that which suggests that the best way of combating the superabundant juice and its gushing ways is to sit in one's bath when partaking of the fruit. In summing up the prospects of fruit growing in Egypt, Mr Wright states that he has no hesitation in saying that the conditions for gardening in Egypt are certainly far more favourable than in such an uncertain climate as that of England, where in one night so much blossom may be destroyed by frost; while in Egypt one never hears of such a thing as a total failure of crop. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. To take a stride now from the delicious and attractive to the homely and useful, but at the same time more general and profitable growing crops of Egypt, let us turn to the gardener's mainstay--his vegetables. Here the first thing that strikes a visitor to this semi-tropical land is the familiarity of many of the garden crops--some, to use an old-fashioned term, grown out of knowledge; others perhaps wanting in the qualities of the home country. Most familiar of all--certainly the most homely and extensively grown, with great profit, is the cabbage, in three varieties--the White Drumhead, the Red Drumhead, and the Savoy. Here a little unfamiliarity steps in, and that is in the usage, for the cabbage in Egypt is utilised by the people as a salad as well as for cooking. From a gardener's point of view the head is not so large and hard, the vegetable not forming a solid heart as it does in England. But this may be accounted for by want of sufficient manure and attention--good gardening, in short--and perhaps the climate is not wholly to blame. The cauliflower flourishes fairly well under similar cultivation to the cabbage, but being more delicate requires greater attention; differing from the latter, the heads are well formed, but it is necessary to shade them when coming to perfection, the clean, white growth being liable to be damaged by the too ardent sun. Good cauliflowers command a ready sale at better prices than are to be had in London as a rule, the average cost being from twopence-halfpenny to fivepence per head. Another very familiar crop is seen largely in Egypt--the leek. This is a profitable vegetable, which grows to a good size, is easily cultivated, and realises a total per acre of about fifteen pounds. The carrot, too, is largely grown--in two varieties, the native and the Greek. The native kind is sown in September, and is ready for lifting in January; while the Greek variety, sown in the same month, is also used for the production of a summer crop in February. A deep soil is necessary, while its sandy nature in Egypt is most suitable for this root, and when carefully cultivated a fair return may be expected. One of the most extensively grown vegetables, a very general favourite almost everywhere except in England, is the garlic. It does well in Egypt, often in plots of as much as two acres, and has the advantages of not requiring great care in cultivation, nor much water; while an average crop will yield of the silvery bulbs enough to be valued at about fifteen pounds per acre. The onion, again, proves itself to be a most thriving inhabitant of this Eastern country, growing hard, firm, clean-skinned, and healthy. In this sunny clime it is extensively grown, and not merely for home use. The kind most popular is the red Spanish onion, and it is cultivated both in Upper Egypt and Lower, there being this peculiarity of difference, namely, that the Spanish onion grows to a larger size in the south, while the flavour of those grown in the Delta is superior. A few words will not be out of place respecting the cultivation of this vegetable in Upper Egypt, where it is grown most extensively as a farm crop for export. The seed is sown in the month of October, transplantation takes place in March, and, all going well, the crop is ready for lifting in June or July. After the transplanting no irrigation is required. The yield is approximately four to five tons per acre, and the market price two pounds per ton. The next vegetable on our list when grown in quantity looks wonderfully familiar and home-like. It is the artichoke--not that of tuberous and sunflower-like growth, but the deeply cut, acanthus-like leaved ornamental plant of English gardens, with its majestic thistle-like purple head. This is one of the best-paying garden crops, these heads being greatly in demand by Europeans, though not much sought after by the natives. In the culture it will be found that the growth is excellent for four years, when transplanting becomes necessary and should be resorted to. Asparagus is decidedly one of the best-paying crops in Egypt, and naturally always in great demand by the Europeans who visit or pass through the country in ever-increasing numbers. The cultivation is the same good old-fashioned style practised in England, the beds being well prepared and generously treated with stimulants. All that is required to secure a fine crop is proper attention under skilled direction, for there are no drawbacks from frost, the grower never finding the sturdy greenish purple shoots of yesterday drooping over and destroyed by the morning's frost. Well treated, the beds will remain good for from ten to fifteen years, a very modest computation this, for if well-managed and not cut too hard, a good asparagus plantation ought to remain prosperous for twenty or thirty years. As the result of his generous treatment in the way of stimulants, the grower may expect to receive wholesale from two shillings to five shillings per hundred shoots, according to their size. That easily-cultivated wholesome vegetable, spinach, is largely grown from September till January; while now may be added, most extensively raised, a vegetable new to Occidental eyes, in company with three more which have long periods of growth, well fitting one to succeed the other. The first is a small-flowered mallow, whose period is from September to October--it is much relished by the poorer Egyptians as a cooked vegetable resembling spinach; purslane is another very easily-grown plant, whose period is from March to September; Jews' mallow, too, is a vegetable greatly esteemed by the natives. This is cultivated, and also found growing wild in the fields. It is much in demand as a summer vegetable. Okra is another dish held in high estimation; it is not difficult to grow, and forms a good paying crop. To return to the familiar vegetables of Western gardens, we have a great favourite in the shape of the haricot bean. This grows exceedingly well in Egypt, on condition of its being well supplied with water, while the rapidity of its maturing is marvellous, showing, as it does, the beauty of the Egyptian climate and the power of the sun, for it is fit to pick thirty days after sowing, and the land ready for another crop, a fact which seems almost incredible. The next on the list of profitable vegetables is the ordinary broad bean, but this is not extensively grown, as it is only consumed by the upper class natives, the poorer people preferring the ordinary horse bean, which is grown as a winter crop. These beans are a very common article of food, and are bought by the peasantry, ready boiled, in most public places. They are also largely employed as provender for the working cattle. The roots of an arum and of the lotus, too, are largely consumed, and no wonder in the case of the latter in such a dreamy land; but the effects are not quite the same as the former Laureate described. The turnip, so popular in England, finds little favour, though it is easily raised as a medium-paying crop, and, odd as it may sound, it is principally used pickled. Colocass is generally grown upon the farm. The tubers are large, about the size of an English turnip. This is a splendid paying crop, which is largely consumed as a vegetable and forms one of the staple foods of the fellaheen. The sweet potato is also a common vegetable here, but the name sounds foreign to an English cultivator. It is a plant with tuberous roots of a white colour, mostly eaten roasted, and, like the colocass, it is a favourite food of the farm labourer. The value of the produce of an acre may be estimated at ten pounds, and the duration of the crop is about four months. The cucumber thrives very well in Egypt, and, of course, there is no necessity for the protection of glass. It is as popular as in England, but perhaps more utilised, lasting well through summer into autumn, and proves to be a very paying crop, provided it has a plentiful supply of water. This may also be said of the two varieties of vegetable marrow, the green and white, which are largely raised. The fruits are most popular when very young, and are much relished when treated as the cucumber is in England--that is to say, served as a salad, though it is cooked as well. This, like the cucumber, is a medium-paying crop. As for the latter, it has been a favourite object of culture, dating right back to the days of the Israelites. The allusion to the cucumber will be recalled, and all species of this family are cultivated with assiduity. Not that there is anything wonderful in this, for in a hot country fruits and vegetables of rapid growth, and which cause little trouble, are sure to be affected. We say rapid growth advisedly, for in favourable seasons the shoot of a cucumber may be almost seen to grow, achieving as it does, at times, a length of twenty-four inches in a day and night. The ordinary salads and herbs of the English garden are easily raised, and form profitable crops, available summer and winter, and are highly esteemed. Among other plants we have poppies, madder, indigo, flax and hemp; while in the province of Fayoum one very charming form of gardening is practised, namely the growth of the rose tree, from which is prepared the rose water so popular all through the East. As for flowers of all descriptions, where they are scarce it is the fault of the people, for many of our most brilliant kinds, especially the more tender, which are raised in our islands only with care, brighten the land and flourish everywhere like weeds. Our ornamental hothouse growth, the eggplant, here forms a most important vegetable, which is extensively cultivated. It is similar to the aubergine, which is used in France and seen occasionally in Covent Garden Market; but the years glide by, and its bids for popular favour have met with but little success. It is the reverse in Egypt, where its use is general, whether as a cooked vegetable, pickled, or in its raw state. It demands a rich, deep soil, and is raised in both varieties, white and black, for use in summer and autumn, and proves to be very profitable to the grower. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Perhaps the most successful vegetable that has been introduced into England is the tomato. Forty or fifty years ago a punnet or two of the attractive vivid scarlet fruit might be seen in season at Covent Garden Market. They were known as "love-apples," and probably were bought and consumed; but their growth into favour was very slow before becoming a fashion, and, with most people, an acquired taste. The tomato forms a summer production of the English market gardener, who is rivalled by the growers of the Channel Islands; and it is sent into market daily by the ton; while, when the inclemency of our climate renders firing absolutely necessary, the enterprising growers of the Canaries keep up the supply. Flourishing so well just off the west coast of Africa, it is only natural that the tomato should find a congenial home in the fertile East of the great Continent, and it is extensively grown with increasing success in Egypt. As an example of the tomato being treated as a profitable crop, here is an instance of what has been done in the way of market gardening in the district of Alexandria, and may be done again by those persevering cultivators who are struggling to make a moderate living. A father and two grown-up sons may rent a plot of land of, say, four acres in extent, the rent of which perhaps reaches ten pounds per annum, the gardener having to raise water for irrigation purposes. The occupation of the land would commence on the first of August. The soil may be classed as pure sand, which naturally requires a liberal application of farmyard manure. The ordinary tillage having been carried out, the cultivator begins by transplanting seedling tomatoes about the beginning of September. Not being prepared to plant the whole of his four acres with tomatoes, he sows on another part vegetable marrows, which in this hot climate are ready for plucking in six weeks, the plants continuing to bear for a month; while directly this supply is finished another crop of marrows may be sown on the same land. Meanwhile, the tomatoes are pushing forward to be ready by the first of January at a time when the price is generally good, though probably in no other vegetable is there so great a variance in the amount it will fetch, dependent, of course, on the scarcity or plentifulness of the crop. It will be news, probably, for the British grower when he reads that the wholesale price of tomatoes in Egypt varies from one farthing to fivepence per pound. Perhaps he may open his eyes a little wider when he reads that a fair estimate of the gross return from growing tomatoes for the market supply of Alexandria will vary from ten pounds to fifty pounds or more per acre; and, of course, this is in the open ground, forming an almost immediate return, and with no preliminary outlay for glass houses. But there are always drawbacks in gardening; and one of these, which may occasionally mar success, is caused on this land so near the sea by the fogs. These, if they attack this delicate plant, so famous here at home for developing aphides and fungoid diseases, like their unfortunate relatives the potatoes, destroy the leaves, blacken them, hinder the setting of the blossom, and generally reduce the crop. Several men have been known to engage in this cultivation in the neighbourhood of Alexandria during the last five years, and apparently they have financially improved their position. Leaving the aristocratic tomato and turning to its poor relative the potato, it might have been hoped that in such a hot, sandy land as Egypt, where thousands of acres offer the same facilities, and are made as rich and fertile as the famous warp-land potato tracts of north Lincolnshire and south Yorkshire, a home would have been found where it would flourish free from disease. Unfortunately, the information to be given to the horticultural or agricultural grower upon this point is not good; in fact, quite sufficient to make the writer suggest that it should be a crop to be left alone. Certainly potato growing is tempting; the cultivation is simple, the crops heavy and very profitable _if_--this is a very large "if," and means so much, especially connected with weather and disease. Experience of long years employed in gardening and farming in Egypt suggests that if the cultivation of the potato is entered upon it is best to be grown on the farm or by large market gardeners. Good quality potatoes, such as are marketed in England, are rarely found in Egypt. The crop is generally grown from "seed" imported from France and Italy, and a sandy soil is chosen. Two crops, however, can be taken from the land per annum. The first is planted in October, and should be ready for lifting in the beginning of February, a period of five months; the second, planted in February, is ready for harvesting in June--the duration of time for the crop to be on the land, one hundred and ten days. It sounds novel to a British grower to speak of a winter and a summer crop of potatoes, two crops in the year; but this is so, and the winter may yield three tons per acre, while the summer produces five to six; while the current price per ton returned to the grower is about seven pounds. As this is the most popular of vegetables, and the demand always so great for good, well-grown new potatoes, experiments have been tried for raising these in the neighbourhood of Cairo and sending them packed in boxes to arrive in England, when they would be eagerly bought up in the market as luxuries, at the beginning of March. Here are the returns of the experiment. From fifteen to eighteen pounds per ton were realised; carriage, freight, and other expenses amounted to three pounds per ton, leaving a margin of profit over the price in Egypt of from five pounds to eight pounds sterling. Enough this to make the Delta worthy the name of a land of promise, and especially more so when it can be, and is, announced that it is a country where there is no potato disease. In exceptional cases, however, there is the drawback of cold weather, which retards the growth of the winter crop. Another objection is that all the seed potatoes--and these are heavy of freight--have to be imported, as storing throughout the summer is impracticable. It is only fair to say, however, on behalf of our good old mealy friend, the familiar object of every man's table, that in his guise of a foreigner--an African--he will be much better if he is let alone and not subjected to the tricks of trade, which recoil upon and tend to spoil his character. For in the harvesting of the crop a bad practice has arisen with the Egyptian market gardener, who generally carries on his operations in the neighbourhood of some irrigation canal connected with the Nile, where he has, so to speak, abundance of conserved water always on tap ready to give his fields a heavy watering. This he bestows upon his potatoes just before turning them out of the ground, as he finds that it greatly increases the weight of the tubers; but it spoils their quality, and makes them what a Londoner calls "waxy," and a north countryman "sad." One ought not to close one's list of garden or farm productions without adding the names of a few so-called spices, or flavour-producing plants, which are always in steady demand and flourish well in the valley of the Nile. Among these are the capsicum, the green and the red, which are most easy of culture, and come to maturity rapidly with the same treatment as is accorded to the tomato. There is also the lesser kind, or chilli; the caraway famous for its seeds, the coriander, and dill; while as to the familiar mustard, it hardly asks for cultivation at all, but grows rapidly and ripens well, while the seed, when ground into the familiar condiment, is pungent and aromatic in the extreme. As is well-known, a fine class of tobacco is grown pretty largely in the Delta. It is wanting in the strength of the kinds raised in the West Indies and the United States. It is excelled, too, in potency by the products of the East Indies; but it is of a very delicate flavour and much liked, though not so popular as that of Turkey in Europe and Asia. But this is partially due to want of usage on the part of smokers, who are not accustomed to the pungency and fine aroma which appertain to the Egyptian tobacco as compared with the Turkish. But the North African is remarkably good all the same, and flourishes splendidly, there always being abundance of sunshine at the picking time and excellent opportunity for _haying_ the crop. For, after all said and done, a great deal of the aroma of tobacco depends upon the fermenting process it goes through in being dried and pressed, just as a well-made crop of grass, hay, or clover, is dependent upon the skill of the farmer and his choice of weather. CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Supposing an enterprising personage to have taken up a tract of the desert of, say, one hundred acres in Egypt, where divisions must not be looked for in the way of fence or hedge, but dependence placed upon the irrigating drain, it will be as well to give a list of the farm implements he would require, and their cost--always presuming that he is prepared to be content, certainly at first, with the ordinary contrivances of the country, which are rough, but very cheap. Necessaries are given here, and nothing more; while the accompanying illustrations spread through the text afford a very good idea of the objects that will become familiar upon his pioneer land. Four native ploughs, exceedingly rough in construction, for tickling the soil that is to laugh with a harvest, their cost about ten shillings each; a baulk wood, to be drawn by oxen, mules, or donkeys, over the yielding surface and act the part of a roller, six shillings; a ridging box, for preparing the land for potatoes or sugar-cane, two shillings; two scrapers, eight shillings; chains, six shillings; one lorry, five pounds; two box carts at four pounds each; two threshing norags at eight pounds each; total, thirty-two pounds ten shillings. Of course, it is open to the man of enterprise to invest in the different ingenious contrivances of the British agricultural implement maker, such as the admirable invention the Patent Turn-Wrest Plough, invented by Mr Thomas Wright, whose experience in the cultivation of the Khedive's land resulted in his bringing to perfection an implement exactly suited to Egyptian needs. The list given above names all that is absolutely necessary in a country where the tiller of the soil is so munificently aided by the almost incessant sunshine and abundant water. But the farm implement _par excellence_ of the fellaheen, the tool which is to him what the shovel is to the British navvy, an instrument with which nearly everything in the way of moving the soil can be done, is the fas, the broad-headed hoe seen carried by the two fellaheen labourers in the engraving accompanying this chapter. It is one of the first inventions of the cultivator, and not so very far removed from its pierced flint representative occasionally turned up amongst the weapons and tools of primitive man; but when bronze, and later on iron, began to yield to the inventor, and the action of fire was utilised by the Tubal Cains of their day, the broad-headed hoe began to develop; and we have it spread, in a very similar form to that still used in Egypt, all round the world where men commenced to till the soil. For we see it to this day very similar in shape in those two vast agricultural countries, India and China, while in Egypt it is handled by the fellaheen labourer in a way which is beyond praise. The native plough, as seen by the photographic reproduction, is a very primitive implement, the date of whose invention must be sought for by an examination of some of the characteristic gravings in marble to be found in the Egyptian tombs, where the pursuits of the old-time inhabitants are recorded in a style that is absolutely wondrous. It consists of a pole of wood measuring about ten feet in length, which is strongly bolted to the sole or body of the plough. This soie, which measures three feet, is shod with a share resembling a pointed shovel. The end of the pole is attached by a rope to the yoke, which lies across the necks of the bullocks, buffaloes, or even camels--as seen in the case of the Norag, drawn round and round over the threshing-floor--which are utilised by the Egyptian cultivator according to his means, while the labourer guides the plough by the aid of an upright handle. This implement does not turn over the soil, and may be properly classed as a one-tined cultivator. There is a quaintness and old-world look, as shown in the photographs, in the mixture of forces, a huge buffalo bull being mated with a small native ox, a bullock with some fine-grown ass, while cows are frequently yoked together to help and drag the light plough. Whether horses of the type of our heavy, slow-going farm breed will finally work their way to the front remains to be seen; but at present they have hardly begun to oust the old-world yokes of strangely assorted beasts from the turning up of the soil. It is more probable, unless the fuel difficulty stands in the way, that the larger tracts will be further brought into cultivation by means of steam and the deep subsoil ploughs which do such an immensity of work in a single day. As will be noted in the description, the modern native plough is single stilted, and it might be supposed in a country like this that such an implement had been in use ever since the plough's invention; but as in many other records that have been unearthed, engraven in stone in the wonderful pictorial writings found in temple and tomb, we have proof that this was not always the case; for in the days of the agricultural King Ti, who is supposed to date back to the Fifth Dynasty, that is some five thousand years in the dim past, there is a representation of a plough in use with two handles, very much the same in shape as those brought out quite lately and known as the "American chilled," these being guided in our own old familiar way. The Baulk wood used as a harrow or roller is drawn by two bullocks, and answers its purpose in smoothing the very sandy soil fairly well. The Ridging Box, or Baitana, is used for raising low ridges on the flat to retain the water for irrigation purposes. The Scraper is a box with two handles for levelling high land and earning the sand to lower portions. The Norag is a massive frame fitted with three or four axles, upon which are fixed steel discs twenty inches in diameter and with four or five discs alternately on each axle. This is drawn by a pair of bullocks over the cut grain till it is threshed out. This implement is, by long proof, most effectual in its action, for when drawn over the grain sheaves it acts in a two-fold way, loosening the ear, or, in the cases of some leguminous crops, the pods--and, of course, vastly helped by the treading of the oxen's hoofs--so that the grain falls through right to the bottom and is covered by fresh quantities, sheaves, or the like, of the crop that is being threshed. Its second action is that the edges of the discs are constantly bruising and half cutting the straw or stalks, which in a dry season or from want of effective irrigation are often hard and woody. It must be understood that the straw is not used; as in England, for litter, but as the most important food for cattle, and this action of the Norag, with its sharp discs, so bruises and chops up the straw that it becomes softened in its harshness, and far better for the animals to which it is supplied for food. In fact, during the time when it is most supplied to the cattle, which is during the summer or least abundant season, it is a work of necessity to make it more attractive to the animals, this bruising and cutting bringing forth the flavour of such juices as still remain in the plant, making it slightly aromatic and certainly more palatable as food. We in England have not been ignorant of the value in cattle feeding of endeavouring to give some zest to the coarser kinds of fodder which economy necessitates in the case of the British farmer. Poor hay, musty grain, consequent upon a bad harvest, and unsatisfying chaff, are eaten by unfortunate cattle, which, suffering as it were from Hobson's choice of having that or none, eat the provender supplied without protest; but Nature resents it for them, and they show it in their poor condition. Of course, in the case of a well-bred horse the matter is different; he snuffs at and blows upon the untempting contents of his manger, and then turns away in disgust from that which his cloven-hoofed companions patiently chew. But in many a case this damaged grain, hay, or straw has been made attractive by a sprinkle of one of the savoury cattle foods that were invented and imitated some forty or fifty years ago, a portion of the ingredients in one kind consisting of the broken up and stickily sweet locust bean and the contents of its pod, with a dash of the bitter and aromatic fenugreek. But in Egypt, where the rain does so little towards injuring the straw or stalk, such musty fare seldom falls to the lot of the native cattle, while this chopped or bruised straw, the _tibn_ already mentioned, is constantly prepared at the time of threshing by the action of the ingeniously constructed Norag. No one can see the spot laid down for the reception of the harvest produce in Egypt--so much hard-beaten earth upon which the peas, beans, or grain of various sorts are thrown, ready for the oxen to drag over it this peculiar revolving wheeled or disked implement--without being reminded of the place where the plague was stayed--the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite; nor can he help comparing the native plough, that simple scarifier, with antique agricultural tillers of the soil depicted on the most ancient sculpture or penned in olden manuscripts, as in use by ancient nations as well as by our Saxon ancestors. The ploughs of the West many, many centuries back are almost precisely the same as those we see in the Egypt of to-day, save in the cases where he who drives the plough has to deal with a hard and heavy earth crust far different to the light and sandy soil of Egypt, whose labourer guides a plough with one hand; for in one antique representation of ploughing the labourer steers the agricultural implement with his left and wields in his right a heavy axe, whose purpose is to break the clods prior to the passing of the implement he steers. Ingeniously constructed, but that is all that can be said of the native threshing machine, for amongst the poorer class cultivators its manufacture is almost inconceivably rough, and clumsy in the extreme. No verbal description could compete with that afforded by the photo-engraving that accompanies these pages, depicting, as it does, the rough, effective implement, its attendants with their quaint forks and rakes, and, above all, the driver, who adds his weight to the farming implement and shoulders his very merciful speed-inducing wand for the benefit of his mixed yoke. This is, of course, an awkward team, but not infrequent; and the Egyptian farmer who first attempted this application of force must have been as eccentric as he was ingenious when he coupled on either side of such a rough pole a patient camel and a native bull. But somehow, and by a careful division of labour and adjustment of the yoke, the two patient beasts may be seen plodding on round and round the smooth, level, modern representative of the old Biblical threshing-floor. The more regular yoke attached to the Norag, which from its cutting and bruising qualities has been translated by the French "Hache paille," or chop-straw--this bears astounding similarity to the "whop-straw" shared by the old-fashioned British bucolic with his flail--is seen in the other photograph of the pair of native cows, though very frequently it is drawn by a yoke of oxen, by the big, clumsy buffaloes, or even by a yoke consisting of one of each, the oxen taking the palm for their sturdiness and staying power. This mode of threshing and bruising and chopping the straw is carried out in a similar mode in parts of India. Here though these old ways are giving place to the use of modern machinery, which is readily adopted by the Egyptian, who naturally does not find in the threshing machine the old failing complained of by the British farmer, to wit, that it bruised and broke up the straw, rendering it unfit to use as thatching or to make into the neat, pale golden trusses once so familiar in the market. There is, however, an unpleasant feature in the native threshing in connection with the samples of corn. As may be supposed, when the threshing is at an end and the _tibn_ stacked, or rather piled in a heap, leaving the grain to be shovelled up, no amount of winnowing and sifting can remove from it a certain amount of sullying brought about by the constant trampling of the oxen. This has, in the past, acted inimically to the success of the fine, hard, dry, shot-like grain of Egypt in foreign markets; but in these days of advance not only has the bullock-worked European threshing machine made its way into the Egyptian fields, but it is no uncommon thing for the pleasant hum of the steam thresher to be heard where the ingenious machinery of England is carrying on its untiring labour of threshing out, winnowing, and filling its sacks of grain, as much at home as if it were upon some Yorkshire or Lincolnshire farm. It will not be out of place, after dealing with the Egyptian _tibn_, to state here that experienced cultivators have found the advantage of carefully feeding their working bullocks so as to obtain for them the good, sound stamina which will be naturally followed by the best amount of work. This they find by sprinkling amongst the chopped straw or _tibn_ supplied about one-third in weight of beans, not crushed or ground, but either whole or split; for it has been noticed that the draught animals flourish better upon this food than upon bean meal; while the process of splitting, Mr Wallace states, saves the bean from the attack of one of the Egyptian farmer's minor plagues--the weevil; for, as if governed by some wondrous instinct in their preparations for the continuation of their species, and a desire to ensure for them good wholesome food upon which to feed, these creatures do not lay their eggs in damaged grain. Of late years many of the European implements have been introduced-- Ransomes' threshers and straw--bruisers, one-way or balance ploughs, harrows, clod-crushers, horse-hoes, Norwegian harrows, spring-tooth cultivators, steam ploughs and cultivators, mowers, reapers, and binders, maize-shellers, seed graders, broadcast-sowing machines, and seed drills. European ploughs, as they invert the earth, are naturally the most beneficial to the growth of the crop, as by bringing the under-soil to the surface to receive benefit from the sun and air, they greatly improve the root range of the plants. Steam ploughing is gradually gaining in favour, owing to the scarcity of work-bullocks. A few of the large proprietors have recently purchased plants or entire gear. The scythe for cutting clover has been found, too, a great improvement upon the antique native fashion of pulling by hand, the saving of expense being seventy per cent. But a great drawback to the adoption of European implements is the aversion of the Egyptian farm labourer to any innovation, his want of intelligence in handling what to him appears complicated machinery, and his unwillingness to learn. Here, though, in common justice it must be said that he does not stand alone, for the experiences of the British farmer in most of our counties, and his battles with the pig-headed conservatism of his men, would form an amusing chronicle. The clumsy implement of his forefathers, invented, historians say, some five thousand years ago, is in the native's eyes perfectly right, and could not be better; and he prefers to go on blistering or hardening his hands in what he looks upon as the good old ways, until he is forced to handle modern machines, and then by very, very slow degrees he begins to see, but not before he has broken many, or put them out of gear. But unfortunately the farm labourer is not the sole offender, as the history of the introduction of mechanism of any kind will tell. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. Much has been written about Egypt and its soil; but in giving here an account of its possibilities and prospects for cultivation in the ways of modern farming, some repetition is necessary. It is fair to say that the soil of Egypt is one of the richest in the world. It is alluvial, ranging from the heavy argillaceous to light loam. It varies, too, in its fertility, and in low-lying lands is frequently impregnated with salt. This is generally owing to want of drainage. When properly treated and flooded with water it soon becomes what is technically known as "sweet," and available for the growth of crops. Very rich soils are to be found in the provinces of Menoufieh and Charkieh, while those of Beherah are flat and generally low-lying; but the depth may range up to forty feet! The preparation of the land for the various crops is not what may be termed difficult, although in the heavy black lands powerful draught oxen are required for the ploughs and other implements. But with irrigation at command, and abundance of moisture becoming more and more common in connection with the modern dams and canals, if the land be hard and baked it can be flooded with water as required, when it quickly becomes in a friable condition, and hence comparatively easy to break up. In the Delta such conditions are never experienced as frequently are encountered upon the heavy clays in England, where the land becomes so hard that it cannot be tilled. Possessing the qualities of richness, vast depth of soil, and a glorious climate, it is not surprising that with the steady developments of the Khedive's country and the safety and security enjoyed under his enlightened rule, accompanied by the example he is setting in his experiments for the advancement of Egyptian agriculture, the price of land has risen enormously. Within the last few years one hundred pounds per acre is quite a common figure; but that which is unreclaimed can still be purchased for from fifteen to thirty pounds. This, of course, necessitates an additional outlay, which is, after all, quite a moderate sum, upon improvements, when it will yield a good return of profit. The Egyptian agriculturist divides _his_ year into _three_ portions: Summer, from April 1st to August 1st. Nileh, from August 1st to December 1st. Winter, from December 1st to April 1st. But it must be remembered that the Egyptian winter would be better named balmy spring. As this little work is written primarily for those who take an interest in the progress of a favoured country, and who may possibly be looking towards the East with the eyes of investment, or for a future home where they may lead a Virgilian or bucolic life, it is proposed to give here a simple, business-like account of the various processes and preparations made for the growth and harvesting of the different crops sown in the above seasons:-- Winter Crops: Clover, barley, beans, and wheat. Summer Crops: Cotton and sugar-cane, and also maize. Nileh Crop: Maize alone. Rotation.--A three years' rotation is the one generally practised, although there is a tendency to limit it to two years. It would be as well to consider the crops as they succeed each other, beginning with the cotton. A great deal of interest attaches to the growth of cotton in Egypt. It was largely cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, and its products utilised, but after a time--it is impossible to say how long, possibly during the great changes that took place during incursions, conquests, or change of rulers--its growth died out to such an extent that a few generations back, as an article of utility, its cultivation had pretty well ceased, and cotton was scarcely known, save as a decorative shrub in the gardens of Cairo. But during the reign of the Khedive's ancestor, Mehemet Ali, a man of great foresight, full of determination for the advance of his people, he completely grasped the idea that Egypt was one of the most suitable of countries for the cultivation of the cotton tree, and that it ought to be produced in his dominions instead of dependence being placed upon importation from other lands. In pursuance of this idea, he began to make experiments, testing it, so to speak, by forming plantations. These turned out so well that he proceeded to take further steps, and with great enterprise commenced the cultivation upon a large scale. Many thousands of the Egyptian acres were planted in the lower provinces, and to a far greater extent planting was carried on in the rich lands of Upper Egypt bordering on the Nile. The little trees responded freely to the Egyptian cultivation; the rich, irrigated soil, yearly replenished by the sediment left by the floods, proved that the ancients were right, and wherever the land was deep the results were most favourable; while where a bad selection had been made, and the soil was shallow and inferior, the return of the pods, or technically _bolls_, was poor. The method of its cultivation will be given _in extenso_ farther on, but it will be as well to note here, in regard to the enterprise which turned Egypt into its present state as one of the great cotton-growing countries of the world, that the seed was originally imported from Brazil, though it is undoubtedly a native of Northern Africa; and at the present time the returns are very great. The preparation of the land for the growth of cotton commences in January. The seed is sown from the middle of February till the middle of March, and the cropping harvested, or picked, about the end of November; while previous to the last picking of the soft woolly pods, clover seed is sown amongst the standing cotton trees. This, so to speak, stolen crop provides a supply for horses, cattle, and sheep till the end of June; for it must be borne in mind that Egypt is not a land of fields and meadows enclosed by hedgerows; hence grazing for cattle is the result of foresight, and has to be provided as required. On the land not sown with clover, and at the end of the cotton harvest, after the little trees have been uprooted, a crop of beans is sown, which becomes ready for harvesting in April; and now there is a period in which the agriculturist may take his choice of sowing what may be termed catch crops, or fallowing his land for five months. In this he is guided by position and the facility offered for the disposal of such easy crops as water melons or maize, which can be taken after beans. It is at the end of October that he begins to think of his main crops, when wheat and barley are sown, to be harvested from the beginning of May to the end of June. Then follows the main crop of maize, which occupies the land from July 15th to November 15th. Previous to the harvesting of this main crop of maize, clover is again sown, and from this one or two pasturings are obtained before the land is broken up once more for the succeeding important crop of cotton, this completing the rotation. The sugar-cane has not been given a place in this rotation, as it is principally grown in Upper Egypt for the manufacture of sugar, while we are dealing with the rich lands of the Delta and the farming there. But we may here remark that the Egyptians are as fond of the green sugar-cane as an article of diet as the blacks of the West Indies, who may be seen munching its luscious saccharine at all times and seasons. There is something more in this among the Egyptians than the gratification of a sweet palate, for it is eaten largely from the great faith of rich and poor alike in its tonic qualities. "Gasab," or as they pronounce it in Cairo "'asab," is considered to be one of the greatest restorers for those who from weak health or excess are what we call in modern phraseology "run down"--perhaps as pleasant, plentiful, and economical a medicament as could be used. It is a common sight for the European to see the poor, patient, overladen, and underfed donkeys coming into Cairo every morning heavily laden with the juicy caries that have been grown in the neighbouring fields. It will be observed in the above rotation that a crop of clover precedes and succeeds the cotton. We now proceed to a technical statement of the treatment of an Egyptian farm; not merely a description of farming in Egypt, but of the management of a farm based upon the careful observations of one who has passed many years in the Delta and has made the cultivation and cropping of its peculiar soil a thorough life study. In fact, the tracts of land under his superintendence offer themselves as specimens worthy of copying by all who seek to make the land of Egypt profitable and well paying in return for the capital, large or small, that may be invested there. This being said, we at once plunge again _in medias res_, and, at the risk of being too formal and technical, recapitulate the crops in their order. Cotton. Followed by Clover, or Beans, or both. Followed by Fallow, or catch crops of Maize or Water Melons. Wheat and Barley. Followed by three months' fallow, or Maize, main crop, and catch crop of Sesame. Clover--"Fachl" on land after Maize and Clover "Miscowy" after Fallow. Then Cotton. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. We will take an estate of three hundred acres, and on inspection, say in the month of March, the crops occupying the land under the following rotation will be as under:-- Three Years' Rotation. March. 100 Acres Cotton 50 acres Clover 50 acres Beans 80 acres Wheat 20 acres Barley Two Years' Rotation. March. 150 Acres Cotton 30 acres Clover 40 acres Beans 60 acres Wheat 20 acres Barley Within the last few years there has been a tendency to increase the cotton crop and adopt the two years' rotation; but it is not a good practice, as it tends to exhaustion of the soil, especially where there is a want of farmyard manure. The cereal crops also suffer from the consequent lateness of sowing. Two crops off the same land per annum: Wheat, sown November 15th, harvested May 30th; maize, sown July 15th and harvested November 15th. Or clover, sown November 1st, first crop January 1st, 3 pounds; second crop March 15th, 3 pounds. Sow cotton in end of March. Ground clear, November. Probable gross return per acre, 24 pounds. We might multiply instances where two separate crops can be grown on the same land in twelve months, such as maize followed by potatoes, etc.; but it may be safely stated that a very small area of a well-appointed farm is allowed to lie fallow, the land being continually under some crop or another. A few remarks on the before-mentioned crops as to cultivation:-- Cotton is the principal crop in the rotation, and gives far the best monetary return, while at the present time reports from the Egyptian Soudan are beginning to speak very highly of the alluvial tracts between the White and Blue Niles as being more favourable to the growth of cotton than the lower portions of the Nile Valley, while affording ten times the area for the planting of this important staple that can be had in the lower portions of the Delta. In fact, matters seem to prove that Upper Egypt is going to develop into the finest cotton-growing country in the world. The preparation commences in January, and generally three ploughings are required to bring the land into a proper tilth. The more thorough the cultivation the better for the crop. The land is then thrown into ridges measuring from crest to crest three feet. Then a pair of ridges is drawn across the longitudinal ridges, the distance between each pair of ridges (which form a waterway) being twenty-two yards. Between these pairs--_i.e._ eleven yards distance from each--a single ridge is made. This acts as a partition to stop the water. Six ridges are irrigated by allowing the water to flow from these cross-waterways, and the reason for confining the length of the ridges to eleven yards is to ensure the evenness of the irrigation as to height of water level, as the ground may have slight fall, and if the whole length of the ridges were to be watered at once the water would rise too high at the lower parts before the higher levels were properly soaked. The sowing commences February 15th. Boys and girls drop the seed in clusters of, say, twelve seeds in set-holes made by a pointed stick on one side of the ridge, two-thirds from the bottom of the furrow, and at a distance of sixteen inches between each set-hole. After "planting," the ridges are watered, care being taken not to allow the water to rise to the level of the seed. Sufficient moisture for germination is derived from capillarity. The seeds shoot and the plants appear above ground in from ten to twelve days. Twenty-five days elapse, and then a light hand-hoeing is given, while after fifteen days more the plants are thinned, two or three being allowed to remain in each set-hole. Immediately after thinning the young plants receive their first watering. After, say, twelve days a second hand-hoeing is given, and again after twelve days a third. Then comes the second watering, by means of trench and canal. After an interval of ten days another hand-hoeing is given, and this finishes the task, as the cotton trees have attained a height which precludes the possibility of using the implement. At intervals of from ten to fifteen days six waterings are given. This brings the grower to the time--about September 10th--when the crop is ready for the first picking. Women, boys, and girls pluck the cotton from the trees. Eight to twelve of the workers may pick an acre per day, and they receive as payment one shilling per 100 pounds. At the conclusion of the picking the field is irrigated again, and after twenty-five days the second crop is dealt with. Another irrigation follows, time is given for development, and then comes the third and last picking. The cotton trees are next cut close to the ground or pulled up by the roots, and are utilised as fuel. An average crop on good land may produce 1,890 pounds of raw cotton, which on being ginned will yield 600 pounds of fibre. The raw cotton--_i.e._ in seed--is sold per 375 pounds at, say, 3 pounds. This will gin out, say, 105 pounds fibre and 205 pounds seed; so that the total worth of the crop may be estimated at 18 pounds, exclusive of the value of the wood, which may be placed at 4 shillings per acre. These figures are often exceeded where the cultivation is well attended to. Cost of raising one acre of cotton in Egypt. +===============================+=============+ � �pounds s. d. � +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Three Ploughings � 0 12 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �One Ridging � 0 4 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Dressing Ridges � 0 2 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Planting � 0 0 10� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Seed � 0 5 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Wages for Nine Irrigations � 0 5 6� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Six Irrigations by Pump � 0 15 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Three Irrigations by Free Flow � 0 0 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Three Cultivations by Hoe � 0 7 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Three Pickings � 1 0 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Pulling Trees � 0 3 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ � �3 pounds 14 4� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Farmyard Manure and Application� 0 10 0� +-------------------------------+-------------+ �Total � 4 4 4� +===============================+=============+ The varieties of cotton grown in Lower Egypt are Mit-Afifi, Abbassi, Yannovitch; in Upper Egypt, Ashmouni. Generally speaking, the quality of Egyptian cotton is of a high grade. Its fibre is long, fine, and at the same time strong. Unfortunately this country has pests, not like the old Biblical plagues, but which give much trouble and do a certain amount of damage to the cotton crop. Among these are the cotton caterpillar and the boll-worm, the former being propagated from eggs deposited by a moth, which do great damage if allowed to hatch, by the larva feeding upon the plant. If the leaves upon which the eggs are deposited are pulled and burned, this mitigates the destruction so far as it is successfully carried out. The boll-worm bores into and feeds upon the heart of the young bolls, and thereby totally destroys them for the production of fibre. Up to the present no remedy has been found to prevent the ravages of these pests. The damage may amount to 20 per cent. Fogs and dews in the month of October also cause injury to the bolls. *Beans after Cotton*.--This crop may be sown at any time during the month of November, the earlier the better. The beans may be either sown broadcast or dropped into the furrow, behind the native plough. The quantity of seed required is two and a half bushels. The land must be very moist, or an irregular germination of the seed will be the result. The crop receives the first watering thirty days after sowing, or immediately before flowering, and again when the beans have formed in the pod. Harvest will commence about the middle of April. Men, women, and boys pull the crop by hand, breaking the stalks close to the ground, sometimes uprooting them, but a small serrated hook is also used to cut the stalks. Six hands will reap one acre per day, and the payment is in kind, at the rate of one sheaf per thirty. The crop is then carted to the threshing-floor, spread out to dry, and threshed by the Norag; or, as modern implements are creeping into use, by a steam threshing machine made by one of the famous English firms. This crop does not receive any manure, but requires a rich, heavy soil, when under favourable conditions a yield may be expected of from twenty-five to thirty-five bushels per acre--price per five bushels, 1 pound. Occasionally this crop is damaged by hot blasts--"Khamsin winds"--which shrivel the bean, especially if they occur when it is soft. We have also the pest of broomrape; and if badly infested by this weed, great destruction follows to the crop. Beans are the main feed of working bullocks, milch cows, and donkeys. Catch crops, on land after beans. *Maize (summer)*.--Sown end of April, ready to be pulled after sixty days. This crop is consumed by the natives, who roast the cobs. Cost of raising one acre, 2 pounds 10 shillings, exclusive of rent. Gross value of crop may be approximately 10 pounds. *Water Melons*.--Sown at the same date, ripe after eighty days. Cost of raising, 3 pounds 10 shillings. Probable value of the produce of an acre, 12 pounds. After these crops have been harvested the land is fallowed for three months. During the fallow it receives two or three ploughings, and is flooded with water to prepare it for sowing the cereal crops. *Egyptian Clover (_Trifolium Alexandrinum_)*.--After Cotton.--This crop may be termed the preserver of Egyptian agriculture, since, as previously alluded to, it provides pasturage for horses, cattle, sheep, camels, mules, and donkeys, for a period of seven months, and also taking into account its beneficial effects on the soil, restoring fertility by root residue containing nitrogen. Sown in the end of October amongst the standing cotton trees, the seed falls upon the newly irrigated soil and takes root, no covering being required. Sixty pounds of seed is sufficient for an acre. The first crop should be ready for pasturing at the beginning of January; second crop, seventy-five days; third crop, forty days; fourth crop, thirty-five days' interval. This variety is named "Miscowy," and stands copious watering. The first and second crops contain about eighty per cent, of moisture. The third crop may be made into hay, and the fourth crop--part only--may be threshed to furnish seed. The gross weight of the four crops, cut green, may be estimated at thirty tons, or five tons of hay. The work-bullocks, cows, buffaloes, horses, etc., are tethered by a rope attached to their fore-legs and fixed to a peg driven into the ground, the cattlemen moving the animals forward as required. The cattle lie out at night while pasturing on the clover. If the crop of clover is near a large town where dairymen require green pasture, the price per feddan, to be consumed on the land, may be put at 4 pounds, 3 pounds, 3 pounds 10 shillings, 3 pounds 10 shillings for the four crops, or a total of 14 pounds. Growers are sometimes troubled by attacks of cut-worms, which ravage the young shoots of clover; but flooding with water often destroys the pest. There is also the parasitic weed Dodder (_Cuscuta Trifolii_), which occasionally does damage to the crop. The cost of five bushels of clover seed varies from one pound 10 shillings to 3 pounds 10 shillings, according to supply and demand. The variety "Fachl" clover occupies a separate place in the rotation, and will be treated later. *Wheat*.--Varieties: Common wheat, Bocchi, and Indian. The Bocchi, a white wheat, is extensively grown. The third, a reddish wheat, has recently been introduced from India, and gives good crops. Egyptian wheats are hard, but are deficient in albuminoids. Unfortunately, care is not taken in selecting the seed, and many samples are badly mixed with red and white varieties. The crop is sown on fallow land after clover and beans. The land, previous to sowing the seed, has received a watering. Fifteen to twenty days after, the seed--two and a half bushels--is sown broadcast, and is ploughed in by the native plough. The sowing is very often imperfectly performed, the distribution of the seed being very irregular. The next process is rolling by drawing a baulk of wood (see illustration), three yards long, over the land; then ridges are made seven yards apart to regulate the even distribution of water. Somewhere about twelve days after the sowing the shoots appear above ground, when the "braird" is about four inches high. Occasionally there is an attack of "grub," or cut-worm; but the damage is never serious, a watering destroying the pest, and some seed sown on the blanks caused by the worm soon make good the damage. Rolling with a press roller has been found to materially stop the destruction. Eighty days after sowing, or when the crop has attained a height of two feet, it receives its first watering; forty days afterwards its second and last. Sixty days after the final irrigation the crop will be ripe for harvest. The method of harvesting--reaping--is by small hand hooks, men, women, and boys turning out to work at midnight, reaping till seven a.m., subsequently gathering the unbound sheaves into rows, and afterwards gleaning, finishing up about nine a.m. The foremen then distribute to the reapers one sheaf for thirty-five, as payment in kind. The reason for reaping the crop by night is that, if performed in the daytime, while the heat is great, the grain would shed, the dews at night preventing this loss. Reaping by self-binders has been tried, but the shedding of grain was excessive, as they could only be worked in the daytime; while the farm labourer was not qualified to work such a complicated machine. Labour is so cheap that it is not necessary to resort to labour-saving machinery. The sheaves (unbound) are transported from the fields to the threshing-floor by camels, carts drawn by oxen, or mules. The sheaves are then placed in a circle measuring twenty yards in diameter. Four, five, or more pairs of oxen, each pair attached to a Norag, circle round on the top of the grain, and when it has been threshed out and the straw cut and bruised by the revolving discs and the feet of the oxen, it is thrown into a heap in the centre. Fresh sheaves are added to the circle as they arrive. When all the grain has been threshed the next process is the winnowing by throwing the cut straw and grain into the air vertically by means of a five-pronged wooden fork. The cut straw, _Tibn_, is carried by the wind to a distance, while the grain falls near to the operator. The payment to the winnower is at the rate of fourpence per five bushels. Threshing and finishing machines, made in England, similar to the one illustrated, are used on all the large estates, and perform the work quicker and cheaper than the Norag, and of course they are much cleaner, the straw not being trampled and defiled. They are complicated, owing to the fact that the straw must be chopped and rendered soft to the touch, as the oxen will not eat it when it is not bruised--a serious matter, this, in a country where cattle are almost entirely fed upon straw. It might be argued that, as in England, the wheat and other stalks might be cut up by machinery into chaff; but the explanation is simple. The haulm or stalk of cereals in a hot country like Egypt grows harder and more woody than that of colder climates, and when simply cut up into chaff the product is so harsh that the unfortunate animals find that it soon produces soreness of the mouth, and reject it in consequence as being unfit for food. The sample of grain after being threshed by the Norag is often, however, mixed with particles of earth, as some of the crop has been pulled up by the roots. But as most of the wheat is consumed in the country the people do not object to a dirty sample. The total value of one of these crops may be taken at nine pounds 10 shillings per acre. The cost of raising one acre of wheat, ploughing, labour, watering, up till harvesting, may be estimated at one pound 10 shillings, and the yield may be thirty-five bushels grain and one and a half tons straw. The weight of grain per imperial bushel is sixty-four pounds, and the price per five bushels one pound. Algerian and Italian wheats have been tried, and the results have been fairly encouraging. English varieties have also been experimented with, but invariably have resulted in failure through bad germination. *Barley*.--The native variety, Baladi, is mainly grown. The head is four-rowed, and about two and a half inches long. It is sown in November and December. Seeding, the same as for wheat. Seed, two bushels per acre. First watering, sixty days after sowing; second and last watering, fifty days after the first. Harvest commences April 15th. Reaping the same as for wheat. Cost of raising one acre, one pound 5 shillings. Yield of a good average crop, sixty bushels grain and one and a quarter tons straw. The weight of grain per bushel is fifty-seven pounds, and the price ten shillings per five bushels. Total value per acre, 7 pounds 10 shillings. The barley is fed to horses mules, donkeys, and camels, while the natives make it into bread after mixing it with wheat in equal proportions. Egyptian barley grown in the Delta is not good for malting purposes, the grain not being "plump." In 1893, by way of experiment, a few foreign varieties were grown in Egypt, principally with a view to providing a good malting sample. Scotch Chevalier barley gave the best results. A sample from the crop of 1895, grown from seed raised in the country, was awarded the first prize for barley grown out of England at the Brewers' Exhibition, London. The yield was not so heavy as with native barley, being as eight is to twelve; but it furnished more straw. The money value in England was Chevalier, 1 pound 9 shillings, as compared to 17 shillings for native barley; but the European barleys are more difficult to grow, and if not reaped before becoming dead ripe the heads break off and fall to the ground. Barley is grown on the Libyan Desert (Mariout), west from Alexandria, and is entirely dependent on the rains in winter. It is sown by the Bedouins in October--to await the rains which may fall in November or December--and also after a rainfall. As the Bedouin is not an agriculturist, he scatters one and a quarter bushels per acre, and scratches the ground by the aid of a small plough, to which is yoked a camel or donkey. This soil is of a rich yellow colour, sandy loam, fine level tracts of it extending to a thousand acres or more. To obtain a good supply of water, wells are dug to a depth of forty feet or so, and the supply is fairly good. Perennial irrigation can be resorted to by means of these wells. If the rains are propitious, the Bedouin may reap crops of barley, with extremely varied returns, running, as they do, from two and a half to twenty bushels per acre, the price received on the spot being 15 shillings per five bushels. Ninety per cent, of the barley goes to England for malting. Next come, in the rotation, *Maize (Nileh)*.--Main crop on land after cereal crops. Sown end of July. Seed, about one bushel per acre, dropped in the furrow by a boy immediately behind the plough. First watering, twenty-five days after sowing; second fifteen days after; third twelve days, fourth twelve days, fifth ten days, sixth eight days, and seventh eight days, seven irrigations being necessary in this dry and thirsty land for the production of the crop. One cultivation is given by hand hoe after the first watering. The maize grows quickly, attaining to a height of seven feet, and occupies the ground one hundred days. Cost of raising, two pounds 6 shillings. Yield per acre, fifty bushels; value, 8 pounds 10 shillings. Maize is a most important crop in Egypt, as upon this grain the natives depend for the bulk of their food. Ground into flour and mixed with Fenugreek seed, it is baked into bread. Five varieties of this grain are grown, but the best kinds are known by the natives as "Baladi," "Biltani," and "Nab-el-Gamal." As Indian corn is a surface feeder a liberal application of farmyard manure is necessary to secure a full crop. Harvest begins in the middle of November. The stalks are cut and carted to the threshing-floor. Then the cobs are pulled from the stalks and spread out to dry for thirty days, when they are put into the granaries. To separate the grain from the cobs, hand shellers are employed, or it is beaten out by sticks. For a catch crop on land after wheat and barley, Sesame may be sown in the beginning of June. There are two varieties, the Red and the White. Six pounds of seed will sow one acre, broadcasted and ploughed in by the native implement. The duration of the growth is five months. The crop receives one hand-hoeing and five waterings. It is harvested in October before it becomes dead ripe, to prevent the shedding of seed. Sesame is grown for the sake of the oil, which it yields to the extent of over fifty per cent. This oil is used for domestic purposes, especially by the upper class Egyptians. The production of seed per acre is about twenty-five bushels, valued at 13 pounds. In some parts of Upper Egypt a great deal of land is sown with the Dourra (_Holcus douta_), which is largely consumed by the peasantry, forming, as it does, one of their staple foods. It is a very useful and suitable plant. It is sometimes eaten like maize or Indian corn in a green state, being previously roasted on the fire, or green like sugar-cane. Its pith, when dried, is used as starch; while the leaves make excellent provender for cattle. We now have to consider the last crop in the rotation, namely clover preceding cotton. As part of the land after wheat and barley has remained fallow, and advantage has been taken to level, clean, and flood with Nile water rich in deposits, "Miscowy" clover is sown broadcast, when the surface of the land is covered with three inches of water. As the water sinks into the soil the seed germinates upon the surface, which is now composed of fine silt. Sown in the middle of September, the first crop should be ready for cutting or pasturing about November 5th. During the period of growth the crop has received three waterings. Immediately after the clearing a watering is given, and the second cutting should be ready in seventy days. After eating off, the land is ploughed for the cotton crop. "Fachl" clover is stronger in the stem than that known as "Miscowy," and grows as a tall, luxuriant crop. It is sown amongst the stalks of the maize in the end of October, the land having previously been watered, and by the time the maize is ready for cutting, the clover has attained a height of five inches. The crop should be ready for cutting about the middle of January. Generally it is disposed of by the acre--to be cut and removed from the land, and sold in bunches to be fed to carriage horses, precisely as the green tares and clover are brought into London in bunches during the spring time of the year. The value of one cutting is 5 pounds per acre. Unlike the "Miscowy" variety, the "Fachl" only yields one crop, as the roots fail. The land is then broken up for the crop of cotton. This finishes the three years' rotation. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. It will be interesting to add a few remarks on a system of cultivation which is practised on tracts adjoining the Desert. The land has been purchased at a price of, say, 17 pounds per acre, and the next proceeding has been to level it--by the free use of the Cassabia, or scraper, which, in roughest preparation, is drawn over and over the sand and guided something after the fashion of a plough--and then bringing it into communication by canalising with the nearest distributor of the Nile water, while in this country of exceedingly cheap labour the cost of these preparations for cultivation may be set down at about 10 pounds per acre. This done, the purchaser has the option of carrying on the cultivation himself, or letting it to the fellaheen, who will take it readily and pay a rent of 4 pounds per acre or feddan. The fellah now crops his land as follows, and the reader will notice the variation in the products the native causes his fields to bring forth. He begins with: *Earth Nuts (_Arachidis_)*.--Sown from April 1st till July 1st. Duration of crops, six months. Water every five days till high Nile, when no water is required. Yield per acre, sixty bushels, value 10 pounds. *Sesame*.--Yield, fifteen bushels; value, 7 pounds. *Chick Peas*.--Sown from April 1st to July 1st. Duration of crop, six months. Yield per acre, thirty bushels; value, 6 pounds. *Maize (Oswego)*.--Sown March 15th till April 15th. Duration of crop, seven months; value of crop, 9 pounds. *Potatoes*.--First crop planted October. Duration, three and a half months. Yield, three and a half tons; 17 pounds 10 shillings. *Potatoes*.--Second crop planted February 15th. Duration, three months. Yield, three and a half tons; 17 pounds 10 shillings. *Lupins*.--Sown November 1st. Duration of crop, seven months. Average yield, fifteen bushels; 2 pounds 8 shillings. Clover, barley, beans, Syrian maize, and henna, a dye plant. To begin with, the land is here generally pure sand, but after flooding with Nile water, which is often available without pumping--_i.e._ free flow--the sand gets mixed with the Nile mud and a good soil is rapidly formed. *Sugar-Cane*.--This, one of the most interesting products of the Eastern soil, beautiful in form, and attractive in every stage, from its early green growth through the tasselling, or flowering, up to the time when the swelling cobs are changing from their attractive green to golden yellow, amber, and brownish or purple black, is cultivated both in Upper and Lower Egypt. It is grown in two varieties, the native and the Greek, and the colour of the ripened canes forms a gradation, passing from light yellow through striped red and yellow, and red. The cultivation is, as stated, principally carried on in Upper Egypt-- for the manufacture of sugar. If it is planted in the Delta it is for sale to the natives, by whom it is consumed raw, and by sucking the juice. The farmer who plants his land with sugar-cane begins by thoroughly well preparing the soil, and ridges it as if he were about to plant potatoes, these ridges measuring about thirty inches from crest to crest. The canes are cut into lengths of one yard, placed in the furrow, and covered with the soil. Planting commences in February, the ridges being watered immediately after, and the young shoots appear after twenty days. The crop is watered every fifteen days, and at longer intervals after the Nile has risen. The land is hand-hoed three times, and the cane should be ready for cutting in December and January. The value of an average crop sold standing--in Lower Egypt--may range from 20 to 25 pounds per acre. Then the trashings covering the ridges are burned, a watering given about the beginning of March, and the old roots sprout again, when there is a second crop, and again the following year by repeating, a third crop from the one planting. The third crop is not so profitable, as the roots become exhausted. The sugar-cane requires a liberal dressing of manure each year. The yield of trashed canes may run from six tons the first year, five tons the second year, and four tons the third year, and the percentage of sugar may be estimated from fourteen to fifteen per cent. CHAPTER NINETEEN. Rice is extensively cultivated in the districts of Rosetta, Damietta, Fouah, and Facous; but it is the opinion of a very excellent authority that rice cultivation and the growth of this grain, which is seen at its best in the swamps of Asia, will gradually die out of Egypt and become a thing of the past. For, given ample water and a level of mud in which the planter may thrust in the plant in its early green state of blades, an abundant crop is pretty sure; but now that Egypt is becoming more and more in a state of transition, with good drainage extending, and modern applications at work for the proper washing and purifying of a soil that is impregnated with salt and soda, this country will no longer be the paddy field of yore, and the culture of rice may well be relegated to the mud swamps of the countries farther east. There is no cause for regret here, for, in comparison with those easier of production, rice is far from being one of the best crops that can be sown. Among farmers and gardeners there is a term known as sickness of the land, marked by a want of vigour in its productions; and in Egypt this may be produced by the want of that great sustainer of plant life, decaying vegetable matter, or the impregnation of the soil with some form of salt, soda in the main. With the improved farming now going on, the natural soil, which was once ready enough in its production of rice, is rapidly changing its character, constant tillage, the flooding and washing which carry out the efflorescing salts, and the constant addition of vegetable manures, aided by one or two crops of clover, being the agents which are working this alteration. There are five varieties of rice grown in Egypt, namely Sultani, Fino, Sabeini, Indian, and Japan. In regard to quality, the Fino occupies the first place. The sowing commences in the middle of April, and continues till June. The crop occupies the land from three to six months, according to the variety grown. The rice for seeding is put into water for twelve days, then taken out and drained for two more. It is subsequently emptied out of the sacks on to a floor and covered with hay, to remain four days till heating and germination take place. Then the seed is sown on the land, which is covered with four inches of water, this being drained off after three days, leaving the seed for twelve hours exposed to the sun. Then water is allowed to flow on to the plot once more, and a portion to drain off, the surface at this later stage always having a covering of from four to five inches in depth, so that the irrigation is always fresh. This is continued during the growth of the crop. The harvesting is in October and November, and the yield of an acre may average fifty bushels of Paddy, which, when shelled, or husked, will give twenty bushels of clean rice, valued at 6 pounds 10 shillings per twenty bushels. The straw may be estimated at a ton per acre, and be valued at one pound per ton. Rice is one of the chief foods of the Egyptian, and it is an excellent crop to grow on newly redeemed land, provided that water is abundant; for the soil is impregnated with salt, and after a few crops have been taken off the land becomes "sweet," in consequence of the perpetual flooding. It can then be cropped with clover and cotton, but requires much labour in the way of weeding, transplanting to fill up blanks, and attention to irrigation. After paying rent and working expenses the margin of profit is not great. The size of the plots ranges from half to one and a half acres. The patches are encircled by drains or ditches, which discharge into the main irrigating system. CHAPTER TWENTY. If armed with the little enterprise and capital necessary for making a commencement in farming or growing fruit and vegetables in Egypt for the market, a cultivator would find that land could be obtained within easy reach of the great towns of the Delta--Cairo and Alexandria--at a very moderate price; but it is only right to add that this price, consequent upon the great irrigation schemes in progress, is still rising by leaps and bounds. For the soil, where reachable by the flood waters of the Nile, now conserved and carried in every direction by irrigation canals, is practically inexhaustible, and, as previously stated, is often of great depth. The land is to be purchased with proper titles and registration, giving the necessary security to an alien who is desirous of making his home in the Delta, or rented, if preferred, at a moderate consideration, including water for irrigation. The country is well policed, there is freedom from contact with the inhabitants of the surrounding desert, and a cultivator would have to deal with a quiet, docile people, fairly industrious--that is to say, lovers of work after the fashion of the calm, placid Moslem, who takes life as it is, and seems to make it one of his tenets that there is no need to hurry. He possesses none of the hurry and rush of Western civilisation; but, on the other hand, he is patient, ignorant, fairly teachable, and willing to work for exceedingly moderate daily payment. The supply of this labour under a kindly, solvent, and honestly paying master is abundant and never fails. The illustrations of the fellaheen farm labourers and their wives are typical of the class of people with whom he would have to deal, and if the new adventurer objected to the class of hut they occupy, and had lofty ideas about model dwellings and the introduction of lighter implements in place of the clumsy, adze-like hoes with which they are armed rather than furnished, the advice given to him would be to follow that of the old Latin proverb, "Festina lente," and go by degrees in that, as in most of the other matters of culture, for it takes time to alter custom and change old-fashioned routine. It may be here added that all great advance and reversals of custom should be cautiously attempted with the land. Still Nature is easier to deal with than man, and less likely to resent alteration when attempted by a practised hand. As a whole, for the encouragement of those who wish to try the experiment in a foreign land, let them understand that farming in Egypt is child's play compared to that in Great Britain. There are no wet hay and cereal harvests, there is neither snow nor frost to damage the crops, no high winds, no floods, no ground game to do mischief: In the season of hay-making, with no possibility of a drop of rain falling, the fellah makes the worst of all hay by allowing it to be burnt to an indigestible fibre--would that he had a training in the uncertain climate of Great Britain! The wheat is harvested when dead ripe. Part may be cut, and part may be allowed to remain for six weeks without deterioration. A contrast this to the harvests in bonnie Scotland, where the corn has lain sodden until it has rotted away in the deplorable weather of the year 1903. There is a good old proverb that is applicable to most things--certainly to farming in Egypt. It is that "the less there is to do, the worse it is done." Verily it is so here. Nature is most kindly, and with ample moisture, abundant fertilisation, and plenteous sunshine, she does pretty well half of the fellahs' work thoroughly well, while their half to complete the operations is carried out with a careless indifference to success that is deplorable. The people's wants are few, and now that under a generous rule they have liberty and payment for the work they perform, they seem quite content to plod on in easy slothfulness. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, so why wear themselves out by toil and the struggle for things better than those which surround them? All this in connection with the possibilities of this country raises the question, Can the practice of Egyptian agriculture be improved? The answer of one who has toiled amongst the people for years, whose work has been that of reclaiming tracts of desert land, making endless experiments as to the best suited crops for Egypt and the best ways of producing them, is: Emphatically, yes! THE END. 
35439	----	CANADA WEST 160 ACRE FARMS in WESTERN CANADA FREE ISSUED BY DIRECTION OF HON. W. J. ROCHE MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR, OTTAWA, CANADA. 1914 [Illustration] LAND REGULATIONS IN CANADA All public lands in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta are controlled and administered by the Dominion Government through the Department of the Interior. The lands disposed of as free homesteads (Government grants) under certain conditions involving residence and improvements, are surveyed into square blocks, six miles long by six miles wide, called townships. When these improvements are completed and duties performed, a patent or crown deed is issued. THE FOLLOWING IS A PLAN OF A TOWNSHIP N SIX MILES SQUARE +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ W | | | | | | | | | | | | | E +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------------------+ S [Illustration: Showing how the land is divided into square sections and square quarter-sections. Also showing how the sections in a township are numbered.] Each township is subdivided into 36 square blocks or sections one mile square and containing 640 acres and numbered from one to thirty-six. Each section is divided into four quarter-sections of 160 acres each. The four quarters of the section are described, as the northeast, the northwest, the southeast and the southwest quarter. =Who Is Eligible.= The sole head of a family or any male eighteen years of age or over, who is a British subject or who declares his intention to become a British subject; a widow having minor children of her own dependent upon her for support. =Acquiring Homestead.= To acquire a homestead applicant must make entry in person, either at the Dominion Lands Office for the district in which the land applied for is situate, or at a sub-agency authorized to transact business in such district. At the time of entry a fee of $10 must be paid. The certificate of entry which is then granted the applicant gives him authority to enter upon the land and maintain full possession of it as long as he complies with the homestead requirements. =Cattle Provision to Secure Homestead.= With certain restriction, stock may be substituted in lieu of cultivation. =Residence.= To earn patent for homestead, a person must reside in a habitable house upon the land for six months during each of three years. Such residence however, need not be commenced before six months after the date on which entry for the land was secured. =Improvement Duties.= Before being eligible to apply for patent, a homesteader must break (plough up) thirty acres of the homestead, of which twenty acres must be cropped. It is also required that a reasonable proportion of this cultivation must be done during each homestead year. =Application for Patent.= When a homesteader has completed his residence and cultivation duties he makes application for patent before the Agent of Dominion Lands for the district in which the homestead is situate, or before a sub-agent authorized to deal with lands in such district. If the duties have been satisfactorily performed patent issues to the homesteader shortly after without any further action on his part, and the land thus becomes his absolute property. =Timber and Fuel.= An occupant of a homestead quarter-section, having no suitable timber of his own, may obtain on payment of a 25-cent fee a permit to cut 3,000 lineal feet of building timber, 400 roof poles, 500 fence posts, 2,000 fence rails. Homesteaders and all bona fide settlers, without timber on their own farms, may also obtain permits to cut dry timber for their own use on their farms for fuel and fencing. CUSTOMS REGULATIONS A settler may bring into Canada, free of duty, live stock for the farm on the following basis, if he has actually owned such live stock abroad for at least six months before his removal to Canada, and has brought them into Canada within one year after his first arrival viz: If horses only are brought in, 16 allowed. If cattle are brought in, 16 allowed; if sheep are brought in 160 allowed; if swine are brought in, 160 allowed. If horses, cattle, sheep and swine are brought in together, or part of each, the same proportions as above are to be observed. Duty is to be paid on live stock in excess of the number above provided for. For customs entry purposes a mare with a colt under six months old is to be reckoned as one animal; a cow with a calf under six months old is also to be reckoned as one animal. Cattle and other live stock imported into Canada are subject to Quarantine Regulations. The following articles have free entry: Settler' effects, free viz: Wearing apparel, household furniture, books, implements and tools of trade, occupation, or employment: guns, musical instruments, domestic sewing machines, typewriters, live stock, bicycles, carts, and other vehicles, and agricultural implements in use by the settler for at least six months before his removal to Canada, not to include machinery or articles imported for use in any manufacturing establishment or for sale; also books, pictures, family plate or furniture, personal effects, and heirlooms left by bequest; provided, that any dutiable articles entered as settlers' effects may not be so entered unless brought with the settler on his first arrival, and shall not be sold or otherwise disposed of without payment of duty until after twelve months' actual use in Canada. The settler will be required to take oath that all of the articles have been owned by himself or herself for at least six months before removal to Canada; and that none have been imported as merchandise, for use in a manufacturing establishment or as a contractor's outfit, or for sale, and that he or she intend becoming a permanent settler within the Dominion of Canada, and that the "Live Stock" enumerated is intended for his or her own use on the farm which he or she is about to occupy (or cultivate), and not for sale or speculative purposes, nor for the use of any other person or persons. FREIGHT REGULATIONS 1. Carloads of Settlers' Effects, the property of the settler, may be made up of the following described property for the benefit of actual settlers, viz: Live stock, any number up to but not exceeding ten (10) head, all told, viz: Cattle, calves, sheep, hogs, mules, or horses (the customs will admit free of duty in numbers referred to in Customs paragraph above, but railway regulations only permit ten head in each car); Household Goods and personal property (second-hand); Wagons or other vehicles for personal use (second-hand); Farm Machinery, Implements, and Tools (all second-hand); Soft-wood Lumber (Pine, Hemlock, or Spruce--only) and Shingles, which must not exceed 2,000 feet in all, or the equivalent thereof; or in lieu of, not in addition to the lumber and shingles, a Portable House may be shipped; Seed Grain, small quantity of trees or shrubbery; small lot live poultry or pet animals; and sufficient feed for the live stock while on the journey. Settlers' Effects rates, however, will not apply on shipments of second-hand Wagons, Buggies, Farm Machinery, Implements, or Tools, unless accompanied by Household Goods. 2. Should the allotted number of live stock be exceeded, the additional animals will be charged for at proportionate rates over and above the carload rate for the Settlers' Effects, but the total charge for any one such car will not exceed the regular rate for a straight carload of Live Stock. 3. Passes--One man will be passed free in charge of live stock when forming part of carloads, to feed, water, and care for them in transit. Agents will use the usual form of Live Stock Contract. 4. Less than carloads will be understood to mean only Household Goods (second-hand), Wagons or other vehicles for personal use (second-hand), and (second-hand) Farm Machinery, Implements, and Tools. Less than carload lots must be plainly addressed. Minimum charge on any shipment will be 100 pounds at regular first-class rate. 5. Merchandise, such as groceries, provisions, hardware, etc., also implements, machinery, vehicles, etc., if new, will not be regarded as Settlers' Effects, and, if shipped, will be charged at the regular classified tariff rates. Agents, both at loading and delivering stations, therefore, give attention to the prevention of the loading of the contraband articles and see that the actual weights are way-billed when carloads exceed 24,000 lbs. on lines north of St. Paul. 6. Top Loads.--Agents do not permit, under any circumstances, any article to be loaded on the top of box or stock cars; such manner of loading is dangerous and absolutely forbidden. 7. Settlers' Effects, to be entitled to the carload rates, cannot be stopped at any point short of destination for the purpose of unloading part. The entire carload must go through to the station to which originally consigned. 8. The carload rates on Settlers' Effects apply on any shipment occupying a car weighing 24,000 pounds or less. If the carload weighs over 24,000 lbs. the additional weight will be charged for. North of St. Paul, Minn., 24,000 lbs. constitutes a carload, between Chicago and St. Paul and Kansas City or Omaha and St. Paul a carload is 20,000 lbs. From Chicago and Kansas City north to St. Paul any amount over this will be charged extra. From points South and East of Chicago, only five horses or heads of live stock are allowed in carloads, any over this will be charged extra; carload 12,000 lbs. minimum. 9. Minimum charge on any shipment will be 100 lbs. at first-class rate. QUARANTINE OF SETTLERS' CATTLE Settlers' cattle must be inspected at the boundary. Inspectors may subject any cattle showing symptoms of tuberculosis to the tuberculin test before allowing them to enter. Any cattle found tuberculous to be returned to the United States or killed without indemnity. Settlers' horses are admitted on inspection if accompanied by certificate of mallein test signed by a United States Inspector of Bureau of Animal Industries, without which they will be inspected at the boundary free of charge by a Canadian Officer. Settler should apply to Canadian Government Office for name of Inspector nearest him. Certificate of any other Veterinarian will not be accepted. Horses found to be affected with glanders within six months of entry are slaughtered without compensation. Sheep may be admitted subject to inspection at port of entry. If disease is discovered to exist in them, they may be returned or slaughtered. Swine may be admitted, when forming part of Settlers' Effects, but only after a quarantine of thirty days, and when accompanied by a certificate that swine plague or hog cholera has not existed in the district whence they came for six months preceding the date of shipment; when not accompanied by such certificate, they must be subject to inspection at port of entry. If diseased to be slaughtered, without compensation. UNITED STATES AGENTS. =M. V. MacINNES=, 176 Jefferson Ave., Detroit, Mich. =C. A. LAURIER=, Marquette, Mich. =J. S. CRAWFORD=, 301 E. Genesee St., Syracuse, N. Y. =W. S. NETHERY=, Room 82, Interurban Station Bldg., Columbus, Ohio. =G. W. AIRD=, 215 Traction-Terminal Bldg., Indianapolis, Ind. =C. J. BROUGHTON=, Room 412, 112 W. Adams St., Chicago, Ill. =GEORGE A. HALL=, 123 Second St., Milwaukee, Wis. =R. A. GARRETT=, 311 Jackson St., St. Paul, Minn. =FRANK H. HEWITT=, 5th St., Des Moines, Iowa. =W. E. BLACK=, Clifford Block, Grand Forks, N. D. =J. M. MacLACHLAN=, Drawer 197, Watertown, S. D. =W. V. BENNETT=, 220 17th St., Room 4, Bee Bldg., Omaha, Neb. =GEO. A. COOK=, 125 W. 9th St., Kansas City, Mo. =BENJ. DAVIES=, Boom 6, Dunn Block, Great Falls, Mont. =J. N. GRIEVE=, Cor. 1st and Post Sts., Spokane, Wash. =J. E. La FORCE=, 29 Weybrosset Street, Providence, R. I. =J. B. CARBONNEAU=, Jr., Biddeford, Me. =MAX A. BOWLBY=, 73 Tremont St., Boston, Mass. =J. A. LAFERRIERE=, 1139 Elm St., Manchester, N. H. =F. A. HARRISON=, 210 North 3d St., Harrisburg, Pa. [Illustration: THE LAST BEST WEST THE CANADA OF OPPORTUNITY] The present demand for food stuffs and the expense of their production on high-priced lands make it seem that Western Canada, with its opportunity for meeting this demand, came into notice at the crucial period. Its millions of acres of land, easily cultivable, highly productive, accessible to railways, and with unexcelled climatic conditions, offer something too great to be overlooked. The provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta have the largest area of desirable lands in North America, with but 8 per cent under the plough. Their cultivation has practically just begun. A few years ago the wheat crop amounted to only 71 million bushels. To-day, with only 4 per cent of the available area in wheat, the crop is over 209 million bushels. What, then, will 44 per cent produce? Then look at immigration. In 1901 it was 49,149, of which 17,000 were from the United States; in 1906 it was 189,064, of which 57,000 were Americans; in 1913 it was about 400,000, about 125,000 being Americans. Why did these Americans go to Canada? Because the American farmer, like his Canadian cousin, is a shrewd business man. When an American can sell his farm at from $100 to $200 per acre and homestead in Canada for himself and for each of his sons who are of age, 160 acres of fertile land, capable of producing several bushels more to the acre than he has ever known, he will be certain to make the change. And then, following the capital of brawn, muscle, and sinew, comes American capital, keeping in touch with the industrious farmer with whom it has had dealings for many years. These two, with farming experience, are no small factors in a country's upbuilding. Nothing is said of the great mineral and forest wealth, little of which has been touched. In so short a time, no country in the world's history has attracted to its borders so large a number of settlers prepared to go on the land, or so much wealth, as have the Canadian prairies. Never before has pioneering been accomplished under conditions so favourable as those in Western Canada to-day. It is not only into the prairie provinces that these people go, but many continue westward to the great trees and mountains, and fertile valleys, the glory of British Columbia, where can be grown agricultural products of almost every kind, and where fruit is of great importance. The vast expanse of the plains attracts hundreds of thousands who at once set to work to cultivate their large holdings. But man's work, even in the cities with their record-breaking building rush, is the smallest part of the great panorama that unfolds on a journey through the country. Nature is still supreme, and man is still the divine pigmy audaciously seeking to impose his will and stamp his mark upon an unconquered half continent. =THE HOMEMAKING SPIRIT.=--The most commendable feature in Western development to-day is the "homemaking spirit." The people are finding happiness in planting trees, making gardens, building schools, colleges, and universities, and producing an environment so homelike that the country cannot be regarded as a temporary abode in which to make a "pile" preparatory to returning East. [Illustration: Confiding to his better half what they will do with the proceeds of their crop of wheat, which yielded 41-1/2 bushels per acre.] =THOUSANDS OF AVAILABLE HOMESTEADS.=--The desire of the American people to procure land is strong. Agricultural lands of proved value have so advanced in price that for the man with moderate means, who wishes to farm, finding a suitable location has become a serious question. Fortunately, in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, there are yet thousands of free homesteads of 160 acres each, which may be had by the simple means of filing, paying a ten-dollar entrance fee, and living on the land for six months each year for three years. No long, preliminary journey, tedious, expensive, and hazardous, is necessary. This homesteading has been going on in Canada for several years, and hundreds of thousands of claims have been taken up, but much good land still is unoccupied. Many consider the remaining claims among the best. They comprise lands in the park districts of each of the three provinces, where natural groves give a beauty to the landscape. Here wheat, oats, barley, and flax can be grown successfully, and the districts are admirably adapted to mixed farming. Cattle fatten on the nutritious grasses; dairying can be carried on successfully; timber for building is within reach, and water easy to procure. In addition to the free grant lands, there are lands which may be purchased from railways and private companies and individuals. These lands have not increased in price as their productivity and location might warrant, and may still be had for reasonably low sums and on easy terms. Nowhere else in the world are there such splendid opportunities for indulgence in the land-passion as in Western Canada. Millions of rich acres beckon for occupation and cultivation. Varying soil and climate are suited to contrary requirements--grazing lands for the stock breeder; deep-tilling soils for the market gardener; rolling, partly wooded districts for the mixed-farming advocate; level prairie for the grain farmer; bench lands and hillsides for the cultivator of fruits. ANOTHER GOOD YEAR IN WESTERN CANADA Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta Have Splendid Crops. The grain crop of 1913 was harvested and threshed in perfect condition. Excepting flax, the average yield was excellent; wheat almost universally graded near the top. Wheat from many fields averaged forty bushels per acre, weighing sixty-five pounds to the measured bushel. Oats ran from fifty to one hundred and fifteen bushels to the acre, and barley kept up the reputation of Western Canada as a producer of that cereal. In many sections the yield of flax exceeded earlier expectations, although in places, winds which blew off the boll caused some loss. Hundreds of farmers of small means who have been in the country only three or four years, paid up all their indebtedness out of the crop of 1913 and put aside something for farm and home improvements. Not only for the farmer with limited means and small acreage has the year been prosperous; the man able to conduct farming on a large scale has been equally successful--and for such, Western Canada offers many opportunities. A farmer in southern Alberta raised 350,000 bushels of grain last year, and made a fortune out of it. In Saskatchewan and in Manitoba is heard the same story of the successful working of large areas. As was to be expected with its unprecedented development, the financial stress during 1913 was felt as keenly throughout Western Canada as anywhere in the country. The fact is that money could not keep pace with the natural demands of 400,000 new people a year. Towns and cities had to be built, farming operations were extensive, and capitalists had not made sufficient preparation. But last year's crop has restored conditions to a normal state, and natural and reasonable development will continue. Owing to a wet fall in 1912 and a heavy snowfall the succeeding winter, seeding in some districts was later than usual. But with the favourable weather of May, June, and July, wheat sown in May ripened early in August. Rains came at the right time, and throughout the season the best of weather prevailed. [Illustration: These cattle winter out in Western Canada and do well. Shelter and water are abundant.] =The Cities Reflect the Growth of the Country.=--Passing through Western Canada from Winnipeg, and observing the cities and towns along the network of railways in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, one feels there must be "something of a country" behind them all. Gaze in any direction and the same view is presented: field after field of waving grain; labourers at work converting the virgin prairie into more fields; wide pasture lands where cattle are fattening on grasses rich in both milk- and beef-producing properties. Here is the wealth that builds the cities. In thirty years Winnipeg has increased in population from 2,000 to 200,000; and become an important gateway of commerce. The wheat alone grown in the three prairie provinces in 1913 is sufficient to keep a steady stream of 1,000 bushels per minute continuously night and day going to the head of the lakes for three and a half months, and in addition to that, the oats and barley would supply this stream for another four months. The value of the grain crop alone would be sufficient to build any of our great transcontinental railroads and all their equipment, everything connected with them, from ocean to ocean. With only 10 per cent of the arable land under cultivation, what will the possibilities be when 288 million acres of the best land that the sun shines on is brought under the plough? Do you not see the portent of a great, vigorous, populous nation living under those sunny skies north of the 49th parallel? =New Railway Mileage Grows at Rapid Rate.=--Every year long stretches of new rails are extended into some hitherto untravelled domain, bringing into subjugation mountain, plain, and forest. Mighty rivers are being bridged, massive mountains are being tunnelled, and real zest is being given this work in the exciting race between the rival companies as they strive to outstrip each other in surmounting Nature's obstacles. During 1913, more than 4,000 miles of new road have been built in Canada, the bulk of this in Western Canada. The latest reports give the total railway mileage in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta as 12,760 miles, the Canadian Pacific Railway having 5,534; the Canadian Northern, 4,187; the Grand Trunk Pacific, 1,476; the Great Northern Railway, 162. Manitoba has a total mileage of 4,014; Saskatchewan, 5,679; Alberta, 3,073. The gain over 1912 is about 3,400 miles. =Western Canada's Wheat.=--The quality of Western Canada wheat is recognized everywhere. Recently a U. S. senator said of the Canadian grain fields: "The wheat that Canada raises is the Northwestern hard spring wheat. The cost of raising is less in Canada than in the States, because the new lands there will produce larger crops than the older land on this side of the line, and the land is cheaper than in the United States." According to official figures the total estimated wheat production of Western Canada in 1913 was 209,262,000 bushels, an increase of more than 5 million bushels in 1912. Oats show a total yield of more than 242,413,000 bushels, barley more than 30 million bushels, rye more than 2,500,000 bushels, flax more than 14 million bushels, and mixed grains more than 17 million bushels. Wheat, oats, barley, and rye are above the average quality of the last two years, and potatoes and root crops show a good percentage of standard condition during growth. The value of the harvest is approximately 209 million dollars as compared with about 200 million in 1912. Winnipeg, the grain centre of Western Canada, has received and handled more wheat per day than Chicago, Minneapolis, and Duluth combined. Approximately 191 million bushels of grain were shipped from the elevators at Fort William and Port Arthur during the season of navigation; from the first of September, 1913, until December 20, 127 million bushels of grain were shipped to the east--52,000,000 bushels more than for the same period last year. =What Farmers Receive.=--The amount of grain marketed, and the estimated receipts, based on an average price for September, October, and November, are as follows: Bushels Price per bushel Wheat 97,000,000 .73 $70,000,000 Oats 30,000,000 .30 9,000,000 Barley 9,500,000 .40 3,800,000 Flax 6,500,000 $1.10 7,150,000 Total $89,950,000 =A Splendid Fall.=--The fall of 1913 was exceedingly favourable to the farmer of Western Canada. The weather made it possible to harvest and thresh in the minimum of time, and in some cases permitted a start on fall ploughing early in September, in many parts continuing until December 1st. Owners of traction engines took advantage of clear nights to plough, the powerful headlights throwing a brilliant light across the fields. The men worked in relays, and it was frequently midnight before the big outfits quit. [Illustration: Beginning a home in the prairie--house and table "lands" are built on cement foundation.] [Illustration: Sizing up quantity of hay per acre he would get from his hayfield.] [Illustration: Starting from town with loads of posts for pasture fence.] =Mixed Farming.=--Mixed farming is yielding large profits to those who work intelligently along the lines of intensive farming. In addition to wheat, oats, barley, and flax--alfalfa and other fodder crops are grown, and in some places corn. Every variety of vegetable grows abundantly and sugar beets are a moneymaker. Stock-raising is an important branch of mixed farming, and hogs and sheep are commanding high prices, the demand greatly exceeding the supply. =Sheep.=--The sheep industry in Western Canada pays exceedingly well. In the early days--but a few short years ago--a district south of the Canadian Pacific Railway from Swift Current to Maple Creek was stocked with sheep, and several large ranches made money, but with the onrush of settlement these ranches have been vacated and are now given up to successful grain growing. However, the farmers who now cross the boundary to purchase the best Montana breeds and take them to their farms, in every case report a success as great as that in grain growing. Although no country could be better fitted for sheep raising, and numerous successes have been made, Western Canada imports much of its mutton. =Profits in Horse Raising.=--The raising of horses is receiving increasing attention. Here also a rare opportunity for profit exists, for the market is woefully unsupplied. =Dairying= offers splendid opportunities for profit. In the rapidly growing cities and towns there is a demand for milk, cream, and butter. Creameries and cheese factories are established at accessible points. The feeding of cattle is nominal. =Poultry Products= can be readily marketed, and poultry raisers have done remarkably well. No one knows better than the farmer's wife the saving effected by having a flock of hens, some turkeys, geese and ducks, and the cost of feed is not noticed. =Hog Raising.=--Hog-raising has equal advantages with grain growing. A large quantity of pork that should be supplied at home is now shipped in. Barley, the best staple for hog raising, is easily grown and yields heavily. Alfalfa can be grown with little trouble, and with two crops in a season, and three tons to the acre to a crop, it will play an important part in the hog industry of the future. The Canadian field pea and the rape, also are good feed and produce the very best of pork. Chas. Reid, of Swift Current, who sold a thousand dollars' worth of pork last summer, and then had considerable on hand, has demonstrated that hogs pay better than straight grain raising. He has an income from his farm the whole year round. A farmer near Moose Jaw sold some hogs for $130.00. To the question, "What did they cost?" he answered: "Really nothing. I bought one sow; I have kept two, and I have three to kill for my own use. Of course we had skim milk and buttermilk, and I fed some chop, but what is left is worth all I paid out. I call the $130.00 clear profit." It is the same story in all parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. A little attention, plenty of such grain as would go to waste, some shelter, and that's all. Last year many farmers went into hog-raising extensively, and it saved many of them from financial embarrassment; for when money was not obtainable at the banks, farmers having marketable hogs sold them with handsome profit. Several made from $1.00 to $1.20 per bushel for wheat by feeding it to hogs. =Butter and Eggs.=--Large sums are spent regularly in United States markets for butter and eggs to supply the cities and towns of Western Canada, and large quantities of butter are imported from New Zealand. Not only is the demand in the towns, but many wheat-raisers purchase these commodities when they might produce them on their own farms at trifling cost. William Elliott, near Moose Jaw, has eight cows and eighty hens. In less than eight months, his butter and eggs sold for more than $500. All the groceries and the children's clothing and boots, are paid for with butter and egg money. W. H. Johnston, five miles south of Moose Jaw, has thirty cows and milks an average of twenty-five. His gross receipts last summer were from $600 to $700 per month, of which $300 was profit. He grows his own feed, principally oats and hay, and has no worries over harvesting or grain prices. =Truck Gardening.=--Long days of abundant sunshine from May to September, and adequate moisture in the spring and early summer permit of a wide variety of products. The soil is rich and warm, and easily worked. Close attention to cultivation has resulted in record yields of vegetables and small fruits, which bring good prices in the cities. A farmer within five miles of Moose Jaw, who sold vegetables at the city market last year realized more than $300 between August 1, and October 30. He had half an acre in carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, radishes, beans, lettuce and onions, and half an acre in potatoes and turnips. His own table was supplied all summer and enough vegetables were put in the cellar to supply him during the winter and seed potatoes in the spring. [Illustration: R. P. O. Uwell's old home, Clover Bar, Alberta. This old home is now replaced by one of more modern structure.] [Illustration: A comfortable modern home in Western Canada, the old home now used as a granary. William Hamilton--Pioneer.] [Illustration: Segar Wheeler's residence "Rosthern," Sask. is a fair type of many homes in the Canadians.] =Corn Can Be Grown on Canadian Prairies.=--Manitoba is producing corn, chiefly for feed. On September 28, corn nine feet high had developed to the dough stage, and the crop would easily exceed twenty tons to the acre. There are also scattered fields of corn in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Corn is successfully grown in the northern part of Minnesota in similar soil and under the same climatic condition, and there is no apparent reason why like results should not be secured in Western Canada. Many American farmers of experience believe the corn belt is extending northward. =Alfalfa= is an assured crop in many parts of Western Canada and is destined to be the leading forage crop. In a recent competition forty-three entries were made, and every field was one of which farmers of the older alfalfa countries might be proud. In southern Alberta alfalfa is a success; at Edmonton it grows abundantly. Battleford, Prince Albert, Regina, Indian Head, Lacombe, Brandon, and in many other districts alfalfa is grown. =Post Offices.=--Throughout the settled portions of Western Canada are found post offices at which mails are delivered regularly, thus bringing Eastern friends within a few days' reach of those who have gone forward to make homes under new but favourable conditions on the fertile lands of the West. Last year hundreds of new post offices were established, many of them at points remote from the railway, but all demanded by new settlements made during the year. =Roads and Bridges.=--It is said to be the policy of the Canadian Government to do everything possible for the welfare of the settler, whether in accessible new town or remote hamlet. This solicitude is shown in every branch dealing with the organizing of new districts. Bridges have been built, roads constructed, the district policed, and a dozen other conveniences provided. Is it any wonder that with the splendid, high-yielding land, free to the homesteader or open to purchase at reasonable prices from railway and land companies, the Canadian immigration records for 1913 were so high? =Land Laws=.--Canada's land laws were formed after the United States had applied its methods to the free lands of the West, and embody the best United States provisions. They are so framed as not to bear heavily on the settler, whose interests are carefully watched, and are liberally administered. After several years' trial they have proved satisfactory. Titles, or patents, come from the Crown, and on being registered in a Land Titles Office these patents secure a transfer. Taxes outside of cities, towns, and the larger municipalities, are merely nominal and are devoted entirely to the improvement of roads, to educational purposes, to the payment of salaries, and to the erection of public buildings. At least 50 per cent of these costs, and in small struggling communities, 60 per cent or more, is paid by the Government out of the fund produced by the sale of school lands, one-eighth of the country having been reserved for that purpose. =The Banks of Canada.=--The close of 1913 has brought the usual bank statements accompanied by the addresses of the presidents and general managers of these institutions. They deal with economic matters first hand, and show in striking manner the prosperity of the country. Those who know anything of Canadian banking methods know the stability of these institutions, and the high character of the men in charge of them. Mr. Coulson, of the Canadian Bank of Commerce says: "We have had a good harvest. The yield has been generally good, and the quality on the average has never been surpassed. This has been especially so in the Western Provinces, and the unusually favourable weather and abundant transportation facilities afforded by the railroads enabled the movement of grain to be made rapidly." =Canada's New Bank Act.=--During 1913 the decennial revision of the Bank Act took place. Among important changes were: The establishment of the Central Gold Reserves. Authority to lend to farmers on their threshed grain. The provision which enables a bank to lend to a farmer on the security of his threshed grain is extensively utilized. This class of loan is regarded as a moral risk, and banks still depend more upon the character of the borrower than upon the security. =What Bank Managers Have to Say.=--Mr. Balfour, manager of the Union Bank of Canada: "The railway companies have carried out the grain from the Western Provinces this year in a very satisfactory manner." Mr. John Galt, president of the Union Bank of Canada: "Speaking generally, the crop results have been satisfactory. In the three great wheat growing provinces this has been a banner year. Not only has the yield been large, but the average quality has never been equalled, and the cost of harvesting has been unusually low, owing to the magnificent weather. This has, to some extent, offset the low prices which prevailed. The railways have done splendid work in handling the crop. "There is a marked increase in the number of livestock. Farmers are becoming more fully alive to the advantages they derive from this source and are realizing that their borrowing credit is greatly enhanced if they can show a good proportion of cattle in their assets, and banks should look with favour on loans for the purchase and handling of livestock." Robert Campbell, general manager of the Northern Crown Bank, gives strong testimony of the wealth of Western Canada: "It is important at a time like the present for every business concern, financial or otherwise, to show by its statement that collections have been good. We may congratulate ourselves upon the showing we have made in this. Notwithstanding that we have made new loans amounting to millions of dollars since the crop was harvested, our old loans have been paid off so rapidly that our liquid assets were not reduced. "This state of affairs is attributable to the fine weather we have experienced in the West, which enabled the farmers to harvest their grain early and quickly and to the unusual rapidity with which the crop was moved by the railway companies." [Illustration: Corn is not generally grown in Western Canada, but this 320 acres shows a splendid yield, and considerable is now grown for fodder.] PROVINCIAL PREMIERS ARE OPTIMISTIC =Manitoba is Stronger.=--Sir Rodmond Roblin has no pessimism regarding the outlook in Manitoba. He says: "The improvements upon farm and field excite the admiration of those interested in agriculture, while our population has been very considerably increased by a healthy, intelligent, and industrious class of new-comers. Manitoba, is much stronger financially, numerically, commercially, industrially and educationally than she was in the year 1912. Her progress and development are rapid, healthy, and permanent." =Hope and Cheer in Saskatchewan.=--Hon. Walter Scott: "The sheet anchor of Saskatchewan is its soil, which (excluding, of course, the far north) comprises a larger proportion of land capable of sustaining a farming population than any area of similar vastness on the globe. Nothing but inconceivable recklessness and waste can prevent its remaining for all time a great agricultural province, and nothing can seriously check its steady forward movement." =Alberta on Sound Footing.=--Hon. A. L. Sifton: "Alberta was never on a sounder footing than it is to-day. It has reaped the best crop in her history, and stands in line for her share of the millions earned by the farmers of Western Canada for their wheat and other grains. Coarse grains for feeding purposes are beginning to predominate with the advent of mixed farming. A gratifying increase in the number of dairy cows and hogs is reported from every district, indicating a new source of wealth, a more constant revenue for the farmer and a new basis of credit for farming operations." =Splendid Outlook in British Columbia.=--Sir Richard McBride says: "That British Columbia, judged by the healthy growth in population and in general industries during the past year, and the splendid outlook, may confidently be expected to have increased prosperity in 1914. Mining will show a larger output for the current year and the same may be said of agriculture and other occupations. Generous and wise expenditure for adding to the already extensive road system, the building of necessary public works, as well as the enormous amount of railway construction all conduce to the opening up and settlement of immense areas, hitherto almost dormant." PANAMA CANAL AND CANADA =The London Times=, speaking of the Panama Canal, says: "Although there is considerable speculation in trade and political circles as to the effect of the opening of the Panama Canal, enthusiasts in the West predict that Western Canada generally will increase in population and wealth to an extent beyond conception. The Canal will have the effect of bringing the outposts of Empire inside the commercial arena. The new water route, combined with improved railway facilities, will certainly improve the position of Western Canada in the battle for the world's markets." WHAT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT WESTERN CANADA =Mr. James J. Hill.=--"Within a few years the United States will not be exporting any wheat, but it will become a market for the wheat of Canada." =Dr. Wm. Saunders=, Director of the Canadian Government Experimental Farm at Ottawa, Canada: "The Canadian Northwest can supply not only sufficient wheat for a local population of thirty millions, but have left over for export three times as much as the total import of the British Isles. One-fourth of its arable land is devoted to wheat." =Professor Shaw.=--"The first foot of soil in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta is worth more than all the mines from Alaska to Mexico, and more than all the forests from the boundary to the Arctic ocean. One acre of the average soil in Western Canada is worth more than ten acres of average land in the United States." =Professor Tanner.=--"The black earth of Central Russia, the richest soil in the world, has to yield its distinguished position to rich, deep, fertile soil of Western Canada. Here the most fertile soil of the world is to be found. These soils are rich vegetable humus or clay loam with good clay subsoil. To the high percentage of nitrogen is due the high percentage of gluten which gives the 'Canadian No. 1 Hard' the flouring qualities which have spread its fame abroad to the ends of the earth." =St. Paul Farmer.=--During a recent trip through Western Canada, the editor of the _St. Paul Farmer_, in referring to Government forces in agriculture, spoke of the interest that the Dominion and the Provincial Governments took in farming and farm education, as "complete and effective." =The General Manager= of a Canadian bank is reported to have said that, "owing to the speedy manner in which grain came forward in the fall of 1913, our farmer customers in the prairie provinces paid off about three million dollars of liabilities between September 20, and October 10." =Hon. W. T. White=, speaking at a New York meeting, said: "We used to give you good Canadians but now we are getting back good Americans. Ours came from the east, yours are going into our west. Some of the most practical citizens, the best Canada has to-day, are the Americans. We received last year no less than 140,000. Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, three provinces, have each a larger territory than modern Germany, less than ten per cent under cultivation. This year they had a crop of over 200 million bushels of wheat. You cannot get any country where contracts are more faithfully regarded or obligations more carefully safeguarded by law than in Canada." =Sir Thomas Shaughnessy.=--"Immigration into Canada cannot cease, for it is due to economic conditions which show no signs of changing." =David R. Forgan.=--"Nothing can check a country which can raise the amount of wheat which has been raised in Western Canada this year. Any checks which the country may have had as a result of the world-wide money conditions are entirely beneficial to the country. Numbers of young men, the sons of farmers in the States, are now coming to Canada, and are taking up land much cheaper and equally as good as they could get in the States." =Lord William Percy= of England: "The possibilities and opportunities offered by the West are infinitely greater than those which exist in England." =Colonel Donald Walter Cameron= of Lochiel, Scotland, Chief of the Cameron Clan: "We cannot blame our people for coming out here, where there are so many opportunities as compared with those afforded in Scotland. I thought possibly a trip through Canada would give us some plan as to how to stop the wholesale emigration from Scotland, but, after seeing this wonderful country and the opportunities on every side, where one man has as good chances as his neighbor, I have come to the conclusion that nothing more can be done." =Speaker Clark=.--In commenting on Speaker Clark's remarks expressing regret at the number of Americans who had gone to Canada in one week, the _Chicago News_ says: "The appropriate sentiment for the occasion would seem to be a God-speed to the emigrants. They are acting as the American pioneers did before them, and are taking what appears to them to be the most promising step for improving their fortunes. The bait is wild land, and it is not affected by national boundaries." =Mayor Deacon,= Winnipeg: "No man who sets foot in Canada is more entirely and heartily welcome than the agriculturist from the South." An eminent American writer after a recent visit to the Canadian West in speaking of the American immigration to Canada, says: "Any country that can draw our citizens to it on such a scale must have about it something above the ordinary, and that Canada has in many ways." [Illustration: Figuring out the result of the year's crop. The yield of which he estimates at over forty bushels per acre of wheat.] =Dean Curtiss= of Ames Agricultural College, Iowa, says: "We of the United States think we know how to get behind agriculture and push, but the Canadians dare to do even more than we do in some respects. They have wonderful faith in the future: they hesitate at no undertaking that offers prospects of results. More significant still is the wide co-operation for agricultural promotion, including the government, private individuals, and corporations and the railroads. "Manitoba has in the last two years provided about as much money for the building of an agricultural plant as Iowa has appropriated in half a century. It has given in two years $2,500,000 for buildings and grounds for its agricultural institutions. Saskatchewan is building a plant for its university and agricultural college on a broader and more substantial plan than has been applied to any similar institution in this country. Yet neither province has more than half a million population. "For public schools equally generous provision is made. They are being built up to give vocational and technical training as well as cultural. They fit the needs of the country excellently and should turn out fine types of boys and girls. They do this with a remarkable faith in the value of right education." Dean Curtiss was much interested in the many ways the Canadian Government aids agriculture, aside from appropriations for education. It is helping to solve marketing problems; encouraging better breeding of livestock by buying sires and reselling them at cost, and doing many other things of like character. He says: "I found that the Government is advancing from 50 to 85 per cent of the money necessary to build coöperative creameries and elevators. Where cattle need breeding up, the Government buys bulls of dairy, Shorthorn, or special dairy breeds, and sends them in at cost and long time payments." The words "Canadian wheat" are familiar to all, but many have not yet participated in the benefits derived by those who, within the past few years, have placed their capital in Canadian wheat lands. They, who, through foresight, so invested, they who broke the first furrow, have reaped bountifully. The development of the fertile plains and valleys of Western Canada is still in its infancy. The accomplishments of the past few years, while truly wonderful, have but proven the great resources and future capabilities of this vast country. The growth of to-day will be insignificant compared with the achievements of the next few years. The homestead shack is now giving place to the comfortable residence, large barns are being erected where the improvised log and mud stable sheltered a few head of cattle, fields are fenced, roads built, and great fields of grain and luxuriant pastures are always in evidence. =The Climate.=--Owing to the altitude, Western Canada is one of the finest and most healthful sections in the world. Speaking generally it is at least a thousand feet higher above sea level than the Middle Western States, thus giving a dry, bracing air, much like portions of Colorado. During a large part of the summer the days are hot and sunny, with more than twenty hours of daylight and consequently growing weather, in each day. The nights, however, are always cool and restful and are largely responsible for the splendid vitality of Western men. The winters are truly splendid. Usually farming operations on the land are stopped by frost from the 12th to the 15th of November although some years they have been continued into December. Usually late in November snow falls, and with the exception of those districts where Chinook winds are frequent, will remain until the following spring, disappearing early in March. During this time there is clear, bright, dry, sunny weather and an intensely invigorating atmosphere. The average winter temperature ranges from zero to twenty-two above zero, according to the district. Occasionally severe cold weather will occur, lasting for two or three days, but this is not unknown in the Middle Western States. One of the greatest advantages is the hard frost, during the winter. This freezes the ground to a depth of several feet. In the spring, thawing naturally commences at the top. As soon as the top soil is sufficiently thawed the land is sown, the cultivation forming a mulch which conserves the moisture in the frozen ground underneath. With the increasing warmth of early summer, the lower frost gradually thaws out and this moisture aids largely in the growth of the young crop. The heaviest rainfall occurs in June, when it is most needed and does the most good to the growing crops. The rainfall of western Canada varies from 16 to 28 inches. The farmers are usually working upon the land during the first week in April. This gives a long growing season and plenty of time to dispose of the crop and get the land prepared, ready for the next season's operation. METEOROLOGICAL RECORD FOR JANUARY, 1913 Precipi- Experimental Degrees of Temperature tation Hours of Farm or Highest Lowest Mean in Sunshine Station at Inches Possible Actual Brandon, Man 36.9 -37.6 24.60 .11 268 73.6 Indian Head, Sask 40.0 -45.0 -6.51 .80 266 57.9 Rosthern, Sask 38.6 -49.5 13.30 .55 252 73.9 Scott, Sask 38.8 -48.8 -9.47 .59 255 83.9 Lacombe, Alta 45.3 -35.6 .67 .93 257 63.3 Lethbridge, Alta 47.0 -30.0 7.49 .80 269 91.9 DECEMBER, 1912 Brandon, Man 39.9 27.2 9.30 1.00 254 61.1 Indian Head, Sask 39.0 19.0 13.19 1.23 248 53.2 Rosthern, Sask 38.8 23.2 8.15 .50 233 62.4 Scott, Sask 44.1 19.8 16.86 .27 238 91.3 Lacombe, Alta 58.6 10.6 21.98 .03 238 7.42 Lethbridge, Alta 50.1 0.9 27.16 .23 254 102.3 [Illustration: A scene showing farming on a large scale in the park districts of Western Canada. Water is good and plentiful in this district.] SWEEPSTAKE UPON SWEEPSTAKE A Manitoba Steer Carries Off Honors Similar to Those Won by a Half-brother in 1912. Saskatchewan wins and now owns the Colorado Silver Trophy for best oats in the world. When Glencarnock I, the Aberdeen-Angus steer, owned by Mr. McGregor of Brandon, Manitoba, carried off the Sweepstakes at the Chicago Live Stock Show in 1912, it was considered a great victory for barley, oats and grass, versus corn. That there might be no doubt as to the superiority of barley feeding, Manitoba climate, and judgment in selecting the animal, in 1913 Mr. McGregor entered another Aberdeen-Angus, a half-brother to the winner of 1912, and secured a second victory. In other classes also Mr. McGregor had excellent winnings. Glencarnock's victory proves not only the superiority of the new feeding, but that the climate of the prairie provinces of Western Canada, in combination with the rich foods possessed by that country, tends to make cattle raising a success at little cost. Other winnings at the Live Stock Show which placed Western Canada in the class of big victories were: three firsts, seven seconds, and five other prizes in Clydesdales. Among recent victories won by Western Canada within the past three years: In February, 1911, Hill & Sons, of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, showed a peck of oats at the National Corn Exposition in Columbus, Ohio, and carried off the Colorado Silver Trophy, valued at $1,500.00. In February, 1913, they had a similar victory at Columbia, N. C., the third and final winning was at Dallas, Texas, on February 17, 1914, when Hill & Son's oats defeated all other entries. In 1911, Seager Wheeler, of Rosthern, won $1,000 in gold at the New York Land Show for best hundred pounds of wheat. In 1912, at the Dry Farming Congress, Lethbridge, Mr. Holmes of Cardston won an engine for best wheat in the world. In 1913, at Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mr. P. Gerlack, of Allan, Saskatchewan, carried off the honors and a threshing machine for the best bushel of wheat shown in a world competition. It was the Marquis variety and weighed 71 lbs. to the bushel. At this congress, Canada won a majority of the world's honours in individual classes, and seven out of the sixteen sweepstakes. Other first prizes taken at the same place were: Barley, Nicholas Tétinger, Claresholm, Alberta. Oats, E. J. Lanigan, Elfross, Saskatchewan. Flax, John Plews, Carnduff, Saskatchewan. Sheaf of barley, A. H. Crossman, Kindersley, Saskatchewan. Sheaf of flax, R. C. West, Kindersley, Saskatchewan. Sheaf of oats, Arthur Perry, Cardston, Alberta. In district exhibits, Swift Current, Saskatchewan, won the Board of Trade Award, with Maple Creek second. Red Fife Spring Wheat, E. A. Fredrick, Maple Creek. Other variety of Hard Spring Wheat, S. Englehart, Abernethy, Saskatchewan. Black Oats, Alex Wooley, Norton, Alberta. Oats, any other variety, Wm. S. Simpson, Pambrun, Saskatchewan. Western Rye Grass, W. S. Creighton, Stalwart, Saskatchewan. Sheaf of Red Fife Wheat, R. H. Carter, Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan. Sheaf of Marquis Wheat, G. H. Carney, Dysart, Saskatchewan. Two-Rowed Barley, R. H. Carter, Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan. Six-Rowed Barley, R. H. Carter, Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan. Western Rye Grass, Arthur Perry, Cardston, Alberta. Alsike Clover, Seager Wheeler, Rosthern, Saskatchewan. =Agricultural Education in Western Canada.=--Scientific farming probably can be pursued with more profit and advantage in Western Canada than in any other portion of the continent. What can be achieved may be judged by what has been accomplished by the thousands who with not even a theoretical knowledge have made it a success. The various governments have provided for the development of a class of farmers who, in the possession of the rich soil of the country, with its abundant humus, its phosphates, and large endowment of other properties will make of it the greatest farming region of the known world. AREAS OF LAND AND WATER According to the latest measurements the land and water areas of the three provinces, as at the Census of 1911, are as follows: -------------+-------------+------------+------------ Provinces | Land | Water | Total -------------+-------------+------------+------------ | acres | acres | acres Manitoba | 41,169,098 | 6,019,200 | 47,188,298 Saskatchewan | 155,764,480 | 5,323,520 | 161,088,000 Alberta | 161,872,000 | 1,510,400 | 163,382,400 Total | 358,805,578 | 12,853,120 | 371,658,698 -------------+-------------+------------+------------ Note--By the Extension of Boundaries Act, 1912, the area of Manitoba was increased by 113,984,000 acres, bringing the total to 161,172,298 acres, of which 12,739,600 acres are water. The areas of Manitoba in this article relate solely however to the province as constituted before the Act of 1912. Comparative Areas of wheat, oats, and barley in the three Western Provinces: [Transcriber's Note: This table was split into three parts for the text version] ==============+======================+===========+==========+ Provinces | 1900 | 1910 | | | | --------------+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+ | Bushels | Acres | Bushels | Acres | +-----------+----------+-----------+----------+ Manitoba-- | | | | | Wheat | 18,352,929| 1,965,193| 34,125,949| 2,760,371| Oats | 10,952,365| 573,848| 30,378,379| 1,209,173| Barley | 2,666,567| 139,660| 6,506,634| 416,016| Saskatchewan--| | | | | Wheat | 4,306,091| 487,170| 66,978,996| 4,228,222| Oats | 2,270,057| 141,517| 58,922,791| 1,888,359| Barley | 187,211| 11,798| 3,061,007| 129,621| Alberta-- | | | | | Wheat | 797,839| 43,103| 9,060,210| 879,301| Oats | 3,791,259| 118,025| 16,099,223| 783,072| Barley | 287,343| 11,099| 2,480,165| 121,435| ==============+===========+==========+===========+==========+ ==============+======================+======================+ Provinces | 1911 | 1912 | | | | --------------+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+ | Bushels | Acres | Bushels | Acres | +-----------+----------|-----------+----------+ Manitoba-- | | | | | Wheat | 62,689,000| 3,094,833| 63,017,000| 2,839,000| Oats | 60,037,000| 1,307,434| 57,154,000| 1,348,000| Barley | 14,949,000| 448,105| 15,826,000| 481,000| Saskatchewan--| | | | | Wheat |109,075,000| 5,256,474|106,960,000| 5,582,000| Oats |107,594,000| 2,332,912|117,537,000| 2,556,000| Barley | 8,661,000| 273,988| 9,595,000| 292,000| Alberta-- | | | | | Wheat | 36,602,000| 1,639,974| 34,303,000| 1,590,000| Oats | 59,034,000| 1,221,217| 67,630,000| 1,461,000| Barley | 4,356,000| 164,132| 6,179,000| 187,000| ==============+===========+==========+===========+==========+ ==============+=======================+=============== Provinces | 1913 |Average for 5 | |years 1908-1912 --------------+------------+----------+------+-------- | Bushels | Acres | Bush.| Price +------------+----------+------+-------- Manitoba-- | | | | Wheat | 53,331,000| 2,804,000| 18.17| $0.75 Oats | 56,759,000| 1,398,000| 37.40| 0.30 Barley | 14,305,000| 496,000| 27.54| 0.40 Saskatchewan--| | | | Wheat | 121,559,000| 5,720,000| 19.06| 0.65 Oats | 114,112,000| 2,755,000| 40.88| 0.27 Barley | 10,421,000| 332,000| 29.09| 0.38 Alberta-- | | | | Wheat | 34,372,000| 1,512,000| 20.22| 0.61 Oats | 71,542,000| 1,639,000| 41.18| 0.27 Barley | 6,334,000| 197,000| 28.98| 0.35 ==============+============+==========+======+======== [Illustration: Cattle on the uplands as well as the open plain do well in all parts of Western Canada.] [Illustration: Horses range most of the year in many parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta.] MANITOBA The most easterly of the three Central Provinces--lies in the centre of the North American continent--midway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, its southern boundary running down to the 49th parallel, which separates it from the United States, its northeasterly boundary being Hudson Bay. It may well be termed one of the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Manitoba is one-fourth larger than Germany, its area covering 252,000 square miles or about 161 million acres. If a family were placed on every half section of the surveyed land in Manitoba, more than 600,000 persons would be actually living in the Province. =Available Homesteads.=--One and a half million acres of land are open for free homesteading in Manitoba--east of the Red River, and between lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, also west of Lake Manitoba and in the newly opened districts along the railway lines. The wooded areas of these districts will make a strong appeal to those who appreciate the picturesque. Where the timber is light scrub, it is easily removed, while the heavy forest richly repays the cost of clearing. Lakes, rivers, and creeks are numerous, and wells of moderate depth furnish water for domestic purposes. Homestead lands are easily reached and the value of land is steadily advancing. Two hundred and thirty-two homesteads were filed in Winnipeg in December, 1913--almost twice the number filed during December, 1912. =Available Farm Lands=, apart from homesteads, can be secured at $12 to $15 per acre for raw prairie, while improved farms command $35 to $40. =Improved Farms= may be secured in all parts of Manitoba from owners who have grown wealthy and are in a position to retire. =Soil and Surface.=--The surface of Manitoba is not a flat, bare stretch, a "bald-headed prairie." A large part of the land, especially in the south, is, indeed, the flat bed of a wide, prehistoric lake; but even in the southwest the land rises into wooded hills, and in the southeast, close to the Lake-of-the-Woods country, there is a genuine forest. In Western Manitoba are forested areas, and timbered districts exist on the Turtle Mountains and the Brandon Hills. The true forest persists in Central Manitoba as far as the Duck Mountains. From all these points quantities of lumber, fence posts, and firewood are sent to the prairie settlers. The rivers and lakes are skirted by a plentiful tree growth. Down through the heart of the Province stretch two great lake chains. Lake Winnipeg and lakes Winnipegosis and Manitoba, which receive the waters of the Saskatchewan and Assiniboine from the west, and discharge through the Nelson River to Hudson Bay. Sloping to the west from the Lake Manitoba plain is a range of gentle hills known as the Duck Mountains, Riding Mountains, and the Porcupine Hills. These hills in no way alter the fact that almost the whole land surface of Central and Southern Manitoba west of its great lakes is ready for cultivation. The northern portion of the Province, though not surveyed, is known to contain a large area of good agricultural land. Manitoba's soil is a deep rich loam, inexhaustible in its productiveness. There are 25-1/2 million acres of land surveyed, about one-fourth of which was under crop in 1913. =Grain Growing.=--Manitoba is noted for its wheat crops and has already an established prestige in yields of oats, rye, and flax; in some parts corn is being grown. In certain districts good yields of winter wheat are reported. The grain statistics for the Province reveal an interesting condition. In 1901 there were 1,965,200 acres of land under wheat, and in 1910 the area had grown to 3,094,833 acres. In 1913, this had increased to 3,141,218 acres. The land under oats, in 1913, amounted to 1,939,723 acres; barley, 1,153,834 acres, and flax, 115,054 acres. The average yield of wheat in 1913 was 20 bushels; oats, 42 bushels. The total grain crop in the Province for 1913 was 178,775,946 bushels, grown on 6,364,880 acres, compared with 182,357,494 for 1912, the decrease being due to a falling off in oats of nearly 7 million bushels and in flax of more than 1 million bushels. Of the 1913 grain crop spring and fall wheat together occupied an area of 3,141,218 acres and yielded 62,755,455 bushels. Oats occupied an area of 1,939,723 acres and yielded 81,410,174 bushels. Barley occupied an area of 1,153,834 acres and yielded 33,014,693 bushels. Flax, rye, and peas occupied an area of 130,105 acres and yielded 1,595,624 bushels. The above are Provincial Government returns. =Potatoes and Field Roots.=--The yield of potatoes for 1913 was 9,977,263 bushels from an area of 55,743 acres, and that of field roots 4,196,612 bushels from an area of 16,275 acres. The average yield of potatoes was about 180 bushels per acre; field roots 257 bushels. Total value, about $2,100,000. =Fodder Crops.=--Brome grass contributed 43,432 tons from an area of 24,912 acres. Rye grass 33,907 tons from an area of 21,197 acres. Timothy 181,407 from an area of 118,812 acres. Clover and alfalfa together contributed 20,454 tons from an area of 10,037 acres, and fodder corn 119,764 tons from an area of 20,223 acres. Total value about 2 million dollars. Alfalfa is largely grown at Gilbert Plains, Roblin, Swan River and Grand View. The figures given are from Provincial Government returns. =The Season.=--Although spring opened a few days earlier than usual, seeding was quite general on well drained land by April 15th. From that date until the end of the month the weather was exceptionally favourable, and by May 10th, on well prepared land, nearly all the seeding was over. During the first three weeks of May the weather was quite cool, and growth was slow; but with warmer weather the last week's growth was more rapid. There was an abundance of moisture from the previous fall, and despite the low temperature during May, wheat was well advanced by the end of the month. [Illustration: Putting up wild hay in Manitoba, which frequently yields from 1-1/2 to 2 tons per acre.] [Illustration: Central and Southern MANITOBA For Map of Northern Manitoba see pages 14 and 15] The early part of June was dry with high temperature; but in the latter part of this month rain was more plentiful, especially in the western part of the Province. The rainfall in July was below the average, and the temperature lower than usual. Harvesting was general by the middle of August. The excellent condition of the land at seeding time, the favourable weather during germination and growth, and the ideal harvesting and threshing weather, exercised the greatest influence in determining the high grade of all grains as well as materially reducing the cost of harvesting. =Mixed Farming= has become quite general in Manitoba, practically every farmer now having his herd of cattle or flock of sheep. His fattened hogs find a steadily increasing market at good prices, while poultry is a source of revenue. The vegetable crop is always a success; wonderful yields of potatoes and roots are regularly recorded. Many portions of the country, partially wooded and somewhat broken, which were formerly overlooked, are now proving desirable for mixed farming. These park districts have sufficient area for growing grain, hay, and grasses. The poplar groves scattered here afford excellent shelter for cattle and, in many cases, furnish valuable building material. The district lying east and southeast of Winnipeg is rapidly being settled. It is well served by the Canadian Pacific, Canadian Northern, and Grand Trunk Pacific Railways. Rainfall here as elsewhere throughout the Province is adequate, and well water easily secured. Much of this land is available for homesteads, while other portions may be purchased at a low price from the railway and land companies. This applies to Swan River and Dauphin districts. Hon. George Lawrence, Minister of Agriculture, says: "Conditions in Manitoba are excellent for livestock of all kinds, and the money-making possibilities in producing all manner of food are beyond question. "The output of the creameries last year was close to 4,000,000 pounds. They cannot, however, begin to meet the demand. It is the same with eggs, poultry, beef, pork, mutton, vegetables, and all foodstuffs. The opportunity for the man who will go in for mixed farming in this Province is consequently obvious." =Dairying= yielded about 3-1/2 million dollars in 1913 for butter, and then failed to supply local demand, a quantity of milk, cream, and butter being imported. Winnipeg alone used over three-quarters of a million dollars' worth of milk and cream in 1913. The demand is increasing with the growth of the cities throughout the west, and splendid opportunities exist in this field. Cheese sold in 1913 at 12-1/2 cents per pound, dairy butter at 23.4 cents, and creamery butter at 27.5 cents. Dairy schools, under control of the Agricultural College are well equipped and under the guidance of professors of high standing. =Businesslike Farming.=--Nowhere on the continent more than in Manitoba has farming advanced to the dignity of a thoroughly businesslike occupation. Here the farmer works, not merely for a living, but for a handsome profit. Instances are frequent where large areas under wheat have given a clear profit of over $12 an acre. All the labour of ploughing, seeding, harvesting, and marketing is included at $7.50 per acre with hired help. Even allowing $8, it is a poor year that will not yield a handsome margin. The greatest monopoly of the future will be land. Wheat is the greatest food cereal. Lands suitable to the growth of No. 1 hard wheat are extremely limited. While the demand for wheat is increasing, the wheat belt of the United States is decreasing yearly in acreage and yield, with the result that within a few years the United States will have to import and scramble for a lion's share of the wheat crops of the world. The following tables give the acreage, average and total yield of wheat oats, barley, and flax for the last seven years. Provincial government returns, WHEAT OATS Year Acreage Average Total Acreage Average Total Yield Yield Yield Yield 1907 2,789,553 14.22 39,688,266.6 1,213,596 34.8 42,140,744 1908 2,850,640 17.23 49,252,539 1,216,632 36.8 44,686,043 1909 2,642,111 17.33 45,774,707.7 1,373,683 37.1 50,983,056 1910 2,962,187 13.475 39,916,391.7 1,486,436 28.7 42,647,766 1911 3,350,000 18.29 61,058,786 1,625,000 45.3 73,786,683 1912 2,823,362 20.07 58,433,579 1,939,982 46.0 87,190,677 1913 3,141,218 19.30 62,755,455 1,939,723 42.0 81,410,174 BARLEY FLAX Year Acreage Average Total Acreage Average Total Yield Yield Yield Yield 1907 649,570 25.7 16,752,724.3 25,915 12.25 317,347 1908 658,441 27.54 18,135,757 50,187 11.18 502,206 1909 601,008 27.31 16,416,634 20,635 12.26 253,636 1910 624,644 20.75 12,960,038.7 41,002 9.97 410,928 1911 760,000 31.5 21,000,000 86,000 14.00 1,205,727 1912 962,928 35.0 33,795,191 191,315 13.06 2,671,729 1913 1,153,834 28.0 33,014,693 -- -- -- =Education.=--Manitobans expend a greater percentage of public funds for schools than for any other purpose. Private schools, business colleges and public libraries, as numerous and as well equipped as those in similar communities anywhere, are established in all important cities and towns and these with the excellent public schools afford educational facilities equal to those of any country. There are also a number of Catholic parochial schools. The Dominion Experimental Farm at Brandon is doing much to educate the farming population of the Province. Accurate records of all practical experiments are kept and the information is given to settlers free. Dairy schools, farmers' institutes, livestock, fruit growers, agricultural, and horticultural associations also furnish free instruction as to the most successful methods practised in their callings. =Railways= have anticipated the future, so that few farmers are more than eight or ten miles from a railway. Manitoba now has 3,895 miles of railway as compared with 1,470 miles in 1893. The Canadian Pacific has 1,620 miles, Canadian Northern 1,809, and the Grand Trunk 366, and extensions will be made by all lines this year. Railway lines being built to Hudson Bay will make large mineral deposits available. When this territory is surveyed there will be opened up a wonderfully rich area, capable of maintaining an immense population. This added territory gives a port on Hudson Bay, from which vessels can carry the farm produce of the West to old country markets. =Climate.=--Unlike some other provinces, Manitoba's climatic conditions are uniform throughout. There is much sunshine the year round. The summer is pleasant, warm, and conducive to rapid and successful growth. The long autumns are usually agreeable, ploughing weather sometimes extending to the end of November. The winters rarely last more than three or four months, and because of the dry atmosphere, the low temperature is not as much felt as in countries with more moisture. The snow is never deep, and travel in winter by team or rail is rarely impeded by drifts. The annual precipitation is 21.4 inches. The crop season in Manitoba extends from April to October, inclusive. Seeding frequently starts early in April, and threshing usually lasts through October. The mean temperature for the period, April 1 to September 30, in 1913 was 55 degrees Fahrenheit. The mean temperature in October was only 34.40 Fahrenheit, but threshing can be done in cold weather as readily as in warm, with no injurious effects. The total precipitation in the Province was smaller than usual--for the growing season 9.67 inches, but rain was well distributed: May 1.04 inches; June 2.34 inches; July 1.70 inches; August 3.56 inches, and September .68 inches. The average sunshine was 7.3 hours daily. The mean temperature of the country is 32.7; January 5.2; July 66.1. [Illustration: Here is a usual scene in Western Canada during the harvesting season.] [Illustration: The raising of hogs is a highly profitable industry in Western Canada. They are easily fattened on barley, oats and alfalfa.] =Picnicing on December 11, 1913.=--The mild weather of the past few months has been general throughout the Province of Manitoba. At Melita, on December 11th, the citizens suspended business and had a picnic at River Park on the outskirts of the town, and there was no discomfort from heat or cold. =Fruit.=--Small fruits did well in 1913. Apples are not grown extensively, but several orchards in the Province were well laden. The orchard of Mr. Stephenson, near Morden, was the most notable, and produced a crop of several hundred barrels of apples, as well as an abundance of crabs, cherries, and other fruits. At the recent Land and Apple Show in Winnipeg, native apples compared very favourably with those from Provinces which pride themselves on their horticultural possibilities. =Sugar Beets.=--In growing sugar beet, Manitoba has had success. Syrup produced from sugar beets grown at Morden was of good consistency and the colour indicated that good sugar could be manufactured from it. =Game and Fish.=--Manitoba's fishery output represents an annual value of over one million dollars. There is plenty of good fishing. Wild ducks, geese, and swans haunt the lakes and rivers, while on the prairies are flocks of prairie chicken. =Manitoba Farm Lands Year.=--In addition to circumstances which point to next year as an important one to farming interests, there is one great factor which will undoubtedly have much to do with the sale and development of farms. This is the fact that the people of Manitoba realize the necessity for mixed farming. This means the breaking up of large tracts of land into smaller farms and therefore a largely increased population. Even while the present year has been one of some financial stringency the demand for farm lands has steadily increased. WHAT SOME MANITOBA FARMERS HAVE DONE =Gladstone, Man.=, reports that the wheat crop of 1913 exceeded all expectations; 30 bushels per acre was the general yield. The grade was never better. One farmer had 400 acres in wheat, which weighed 66 pounds to the bushel. =Portage Plains, Man.=, showed some remarkable yields. Noah Elgert had 61 bushels of wheat per acre; the government farm, 61 bushels; Geo. E. Stacey, 54; T. J. Hall, John Ross and D. W. McCuaig, 50; W. Richardson, 51; M. Owens, 61-1/2; Anderson and Turnbull, 60; J. Lloyd, 48-1/2; Jas. Bell and Robt. Brown, 48; R. S. Tully, 52; J. Wishart, 49-1/4; Philip Page, 47; J. Stewart, 45; J. W. Brown, 30; Chester Johnson, 44; E. H. Muir, 42; L. A. Bradley, 43; W. Boddy, 40; Albert Davis, 43; E. McLenaghen, 37. After farming the same land for forty years, J. Wishart secured a crop of 49-1/2 bushels to the acre, the best he ever had. Mr. Bradley's yield was on land plowed this spring. =Marquette, Man.=, September 21. Splendid weather has enabled the farmers of this section to make good progress with the cutting and harvesting of this season's crop. Wheat is averaging 20 bushels to the acre, with barley 45 and oats going 70. There has been no damage of any description. =Binscarth, Man.=, says good reports are coming from the machines of high yields and good sample. The elevators are busy shipping cars every day. =Dauphin, Man.=, September 13. Threshing is general. The grain is in good shape and the weather is ideal. The samples are best ever grown here, grading No. 1 Northern. The returns are larger than expected in nearly every case. E. B. Armstrong's wheat went 34 bushels to the acre; others, 25 to 27. =Balmoral.=--John Simpson says: "Very prosperous has been our first year's farming in Canada. Shipped two carloads of wheat that graded No. 1 Northern and sold for eighty-five cents. Weather for the last two weeks was perfect--no snow and just enough frost to keep the roads from getting muddy." =Brandon.=--Hard wheats have long been the choice product of Manitoba soil, but nothing more significant is required to announce a new industry in the Province than that Glencarnock Victor, a Manitoba-finished steer, owned by Mr. J. D. McGregor, was last year grand champion of America, and his half-brother from the same stables, won like honours this year. Neither had ever been fed any corn, but fattened on prairie hay, alfalfa, and barley. CITIES AND TOWNS =Winnipeg=, with a population of about 200,000, is a natural distributing point for Western Canada, as well as the shipping point for the wonderful crops from the tributary prairie lands. The prosperity of Western Canada is here reflected in substantial buildings, wide boulevards, quarries, water works, street lighting systems, asphalt plants, and a park system of 29 parks, covering 500 acres. There are 40 modern school buildings with 378 teachers and 21,210 pupils. Winnipeg has four live daily papers and forty weekly and monthly publications. Twenty-four railway tracks radiate from the city, making Winnipeg the leading grain centre of the world. A photograph taken at any point in the financial centre of the city shows magnificent new buildings under construction, representing immense investment and indicating the confidence felt in the city's future. Municipal improvements are constantly being made. The city now has 466 miles of sidewalk, 112 miles of boulevard and 162 miles of street pavement. There are 115 churches. St. Boniface, the seat of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of St. Boniface, adjoins and is partly surrounded by the business district: 17,000 population. =Brandon=--With 18,000 population is the second city in the Province and is located on the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, with its seven branch railway lines. The Canadian Northern runs through the town and has erected a fine new modern hotel. The Great Northern entering from the south and the Grand Trunk Pacific completed, there is afforded excellent shipping facilities, necessary to the factories, flour mills, machine shops, and wholesale houses established here. There are fourteen branch banks here with clearings totalling $33,000,000. As an educational centre Brandon might be ranked with cities several times larger. The high school would be a credit to any city of first rank. A Dominion Experimental Farm is located here. =Portage la Prairie=--Enjoys splendid railway facilities at the junction of four lines of railway. This fortunate situation has brought a number of industries. The city owns its park and has a fine educational system, including a Collegiate Institute. Many churches and fraternal organizations are supported by this city of 7,000 population. Municipal improvements are constantly being made. =Selkirk= is a distributing point of supplies for points on Lake Winnipeg. =Carberry and Morden= are flourishing railway towns in the heart of fine wheat-growing sections, as are Minnedosa, Neepawa, Dauphin, Carman, Virden, and Souris. Scores of towns now developing afford openings for those desiring business opportunities; each has its mills and warehouses for wheat. Among these centres may be named Manitou, Birtle, Emerson, Gretna, Wawanesa, Rivers, Somerset, Baldur, Deloraine, Melita, Rapid City, Hamiota, Gladstone, Killarney, Hartney, Stonewall, Boissevain, Elkhorn, Gilbert Plains, Pilot Mound, Winkler and Plum Coulee. Provincial Government returns. POPULATION AND LIVESTOCK 1891 1908 1909 1911 1912 1913 Population 152,506 455,614 Horses 86,735 230,926 237,161 232,725 273,395 304,100 Milch cows 82,710 173,546 167,442 146,841 154,400 Other horned cattle 147,984 357,988 333,752 397,261 428,274 460,200 Sheep 35,838 29,265 29,074 32,223 42,087 112,500 Hogs 54,177 192,489 172,374 176,212 216,640 176,000 Cultivated farms 45,380 49,755 50,000 Increase in population in ten years was 78.52 per cent. The exhibit of grains, grasses, clover, fodder crops, vegetables, and natural products shown at the 1913 United States Land Show spoke well for the soil and climate of Manitoba. [Illustration: An ordinary threshing scene in Manitoba, where fields of wheat, oats and barley pay the farmer well.] [Illustration: NORTHERN MANITOBA] SASKATCHEWAN Saskatchewan, the central Prairie Province, is a huge rectangle extending from the 49th to the 60th parallel, with an area as large as France and twice the size of the British Isles. It comprises 155,092,480 acres, and extends 760 miles north and south and 390 miles east and west at the southern boundary bordering on the United States. The average altitude is about 1,500 feet above sea level. Saskatchewan claims to be without a rival in North America as a producer of wheat and small grains. Only physical and geographical conditions retard even a more phenomenal agricultural development. Its growth and acquisition of wealth has been phenomenal. There are four distinct zones extending north and south: (a) rolling prairie, (b) prairie and woodland, (c) forest, (d) sparsely timbered belt. All the land is suitable for cultivation and will yield the highest quality of cereals, though less than 13 million acres are now under the plough. The population of approximately 550,000 thriving, vigorous people will eventually be a million. The increase in ten years was 440 per cent. The Government forces in Saskatchewan are complete and effective. Every branch of agricultural work conducted by the Provincial Government is a part of the Department of Agriculture. =Soil and Surface.=--The soil in all of Saskatchewan is a rich loam, running from eight to twenty inches deep over a chocolate clay subsoil. Moisture is evaporated from this subsoil so gradually that the fertility is almost inexhaustible. With few exceptions the southern portion of the Province from a line east and west through Saskatoon is almost flat. In certain portions the surface is undulating, but in no case so hilly as to preclude ploughing every acre; near some of the rivers in the more hilly sections the soil becomes lighter with some stone and gravel. Five reasons may be given for the exceptionally favourable conditions awaiting the grower of wheat in Saskatchewan: 1. The soil is of almost inexhaustible fertility. 2. The climate brings the plant to fruition very quickly. 3. The northern latitude gives the wheat more sunshine during the growing period than is had in districts farther south. 4. Rust is of infrequent occurrence. 5. Insect foes are unknown. =Fuel and Water.=--The coal areas to the south, and the partially wooded areas in the north, provide an ample supply of fuel, while water can be secured anywhere at a reasonable depth. CENTRAL SASKATCHEWAN =The Available Homesteads= are principally in the northern portion of Central Saskatchewan which is watered east and west by the main Saskatchewan River and by its chief branch, the North Saskatchewan, a great part of whose navigable length lies within this section. The surface generally is rolling prairie interspersed with wooded bluffs of poplar, spruce, and pine, alternating with intruding portions of the great plain from the south. In soil and climate Central Saskatchewan is well adapted to the raising of cattle, also wheat and other grains. North of township Thirty there is unlimited grazing land, horses, cattle and sheep feeding in the open most of the year. There is the necessary shelter when extreme cold weather sets in and water is plentiful. Sheep do well. Many farmers have from 50 to 100 sheep and lambs. The district also possesses everything required for the growing of crops and there are satisfactory yields of all the smaller grains. The homesteader may add to his holdings by purchasing adjoining land from the Canadian Northern, Canadian Pacific Railway and other corporations. These unimproved lands range from $15 an acre upwards. Districts recently opened for settlement are Shellbrook, Beaver River, and Green Lake, into which the Canadian Northern Railway is projected. Other new districts are Jack Fish Lake and Turtle Lake, north of Battleford, into which the same road is built. These districts are favourable for grain and cattle raising. North of North Battleford are several townships which will not long be without transportation, and to the east of these there are available homesteads which can be reached through the Prince Albert gateway. SOUTHERN SASKATCHEWAN =Available Farm Land.=--There are but few homesteads available in Southeastern Saskatchewan. The land is occupied by an excellent class of farmers, and values range from $15 per acre to $25 for unimproved prairie, and from $40 to $50 per acre for improved farms. In the neighbourhood of Moose Jaw mixed farming and grain raising are carried on with success. North and northwest, towards the Saskatchewan, are large settlements; but to the south and southwest is a tract of land available for homesteading, and a land office at Moose Jaw makes it easy to inspect the land and secure speedy entry. These lands are easily reached from Moose Jaw, Mortlach, Herbert, Gull Lake, and Swift Current. Maple Creek district is an important stock centre. Some of the best sheep, cattle, and horses in Canada are raised on the succulent grass here but the wheat grower and mixed farmer are treading on the heels of the ranchman. West of Swift Current to the Alberta boundary herds of cattle roam and largely find for themselves. Snowfall is light and winters so mild that hardy animals graze through the whole year. The Chinook winds are felt as far east as Swift Current. Grain growing is successful. [Illustration: In many parts of Western Canada, large farms are operated by steam or gasoline power. This shows its use, and also discing, seeding and harrowing.] Farm land can be purchased from railway and other land companies in Southeastern Saskatchewan, which includes that section between Manitoba on the east and the third meridian on the west, extending some distance north of the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It has more rainfall than portions farther west and less wood than the portion lying north. In character and productiveness of soil, Southeastern Saskatchewan is a continuation of Manitoba, but contains more prairie area. NORTHERN SASKATCHEWAN =Available Homesteads.=--Northern Saskatchewan has not yet been opened to any extent for settlement. There are approximately 80 million acres beyond the railway at Prince Albert which time, zeal, and railway enterprise will eventually make accessible. Furs, forest wealth, and fisheries are recognized as a national asset, but thousands of acres of fertile land lie beyond the existing lines of railway awaiting development. Northern Saskatchewan has natural resources sufficient to maintain a population equal to that of any European country in corresponding latitude. =Saskatchewan Crops.=--Saskatchewan leads all other provinces in wheat production, though only a comparatively small portion of its tillable area is under cultivation. In 1898 the area under wheat was 276,253 acres; 910,359 acres in 1905; 2,703,563 acres in 1908, and in 1913, five years' time, it had more than doubled, the area being 5,720,000 acres. On this there were grown approximately 121-1/2 million bushels of wheat, an average of about 21-1/4 bushels to the acre. The farmers realized about 124 million dollars for products apart from field and fodder crops, valued at 5 million dollars. The following figures are from Provincial Government returns. Saskatchewan has easily 50,000,000 acres of unbroken prairie to grow just such good crops, and another 25,000,000 acres on which to graze live stock. Acreage Yield Total Price per Total per Production Bushel Value Acre Wheat 5,760,249 19.5 112,369,405 At 63c $ 70,792,725.15 Oats 2,638,562 41.7 110,210,436 At 23c 25,348,400.28 Barley 307,177 30.2 9,279,263 At 26c 2,412,608.38 Flax 967,137 12.0 11,654,280 At $1.00 11,654,280.00 Province 9,673,125 243,513,384 110,208,013.81 While the average yield of wheat is shown to be 19.5 bushels per acre, thousands of farmers raised 35 bushels and some more than 40. Considerable was sown on stubble, and there were many low yields occasioned by indifferent farming, and anxiety to secure a crop from late seeding, without which the general average would have exceeded 30 bushels per acre. The same is true of other grains. On the Experimental Farm at Indian Head, Marquis wheat produced 48 bushels to the acre, and Red Fife on the stubble 28 bushels. Almost the entire wheat crop was within the contract grades, (none less than 3 Northern, the great bulk graded No. 1) and by the end of October 75 per cent of the crop was threshed. In many instances wheat weighed 64 and as high as 66 pounds to the bushel. Mr. Paul Gerlach of Allan, Saskatchewan, had 71 pounds per bushel, and carried off the honours at the International Dry Farming Congress at Tulsa last November. =Mixed Farming= is so successful in Saskatchewan that only passing comment is necessary. The Province is famous for its high-class horses, well-bred cattle, sheep, and hogs. At the Live Stock Show in Chicago in 1913, the Province carried off high premiums. The Department of Agriculture secures good breeding stock for the farmers and encourages the preservation of females. =Poultry Raising= is so profitable that many Saskatchewan farmers have gone into it extensively. Of 10,000 turkeys marketed at Moose Jaw there was not a single "cull." They brought an average of $2.80 each. Chickens provide a certain profit and constant income. =Dairying= is successful. An established market and excellent natural facilities favour this branch of mixed farming. 997,000 pounds of creamery butter yielded $271,185 in 1912 and private dairies realized $189,000 from 700,000 pounds, making a total increase of $177,376.69 over 1911. With the exception of cream delivery, a government superintendent supervises all business transactions of most creameries. =Fodder Corn.=--At Prince Albert fodder corn has reached a height of eight feet with not a poor sample in the lot and there are strong indications that before many years corn will be grown here for ensilage with general success. At the Experimental Farm, fodder corn yielded about 18 tons of green fodder per acre, which went into the silo in good condition. =Railways.=--About five hundred miles of new road opened in 1912 gives Saskatchewan a total mileage of about 5,000 miles as compared with 1,000 in 1905, of which 1,230 is main line and 3,700 branches. The Province is so well served by the Canadian Pacific, Canadian Northern, and Grand Trunk Pacific that few of the established settlements are more than 10 to 20 miles from transportation; new settlements do not have to wait long for railway advantages. The Hudson Bay Railway will afford a short haul to ocean shipping from Saskatchewan grain fields. One and a half million dollars have been appropriated by the local government for improvements and building highways. From 1905-13 the population has doubled, and whole districts which were practically uninhabited but a short time ago are now filled with farmers. =Rivers.=--The chief rivers are the North Saskatchewan, South Saskatchewan, Qu'Appelle, and Carrot. The North and South Saskatchewan rise in the Rockies and have a general easterly trend. The Red Deer flows into the South Saskatchewan, about 150 miles north of the United States boundary. The South Saskatchewan runs east nearly half way across the Province, then turns north and enters the North Saskatchewan a little east of Prince Albert. The South Saskatchewan, with the Qu'Appelle, intersects the Province from east to west. The Carrot rises south of Prince Albert and runs parallel to the North Saskatchewan, into which it flows near "The Pas," and the junction point of the Hudson Bay Railway, now under construction. =Lumbering.=--North and east of Prince Albert, the present centre of the lumber industry, lumbering is extensive. In the northern forest the timber is black and white spruce, larch or tamarack, jack pine, aspen or white poplar, balsam or black poplar, and white birch. =Game and Fish.=--In the north, furs are secured for the world's markets and fishing is carried on extensively. =Education.=--Schools are sustained by provincial aid and local rates. Except in special cases where qualified teachers cannot be obtained, the teacher must hold a certificate from the Department of Education. The university is supported and controlled by the Province, a department of which is a college of agriculture with some of Canada's best educators and agricultural specialists on the faculty. Nowhere do agricultural authorities give greater attention to the welfare and education of the farmer than in the newer districts of this Province. CITIES AND TOWNS =Regina.=--Capital of Saskatchewan, lies in the heart of a splendid agricultural section, and is distributing centre for a large district. With a population of about 45,000 it supports a dozen banks which had clearings of 116 million dollars in 1912. It has good hotels, is noted for its substantial public buildings, wide, well-paved streets, and metropolitan spirit. The Canadian Pacific, Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific unite to make it an important railway centre. The collegiate institute and provincial normal school add to its educational importance. The Northwest Mounted Police headquarters are located here, also the judiciary of Saskatchewan. [Illustration: The sheep industry in Western Canada is one of certain profit. There are many large flocks in all parts of the three Provinces.] [Illustration: SOUTHERN SASKATCHEWAN Surveyed lands shown in colour. For Map of Central Saskatchewan see pages 22 and 23.] =Saskatoon.=--The seat of the University of Saskatchewan, is a growing city beautifully situated on the South Saskatchewan River. It is well served by the Canadian Northern's Regina-Prince Albert line which passes through an extensive and productive farming district to the southwest and joins the main line at Warman, and is also on the route of the Canadian Pacific from Winnipeg to Edmonton. Population about 28,000; in 1903 it was about 100. There are four bridges crossing the South Saskatchewan River, with another in contemplation. =Moose Jaw= is a divisional point on the Canadian Pacific, is a terminus of the Soo Line and is also served by the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific. Population approximately 23,000. It is noted for its schools and churches. Splendid street car facilities exist here. This district is well settled by progressive farmers. They have brought raw prairie land, which cost from $8 to $10 per acre, to a state of cultivation, that makes their farms worth from $25 to $40 per acre. =Prince Albert= is the northern terminus of the Canadian Northern and is delightfully situated on the North Saskatchewan River. It is served by a line of the Grand Trunk Pacific built from the main line at Young. The Canadian Northern Battleford-Prince Albert line will be completed this fall. It has four big sawmills, and several banks, churches, schools, and hotels. Population, 12,000. The three flour mills grind about 400 barrels a day. One mill ships its product largely to Scotland. =Swift Current= is a divisional point of the Canadian Pacific Railway and a busy railway centre. It is said to be the largest initial wheat market in America. Population about 2,500. A few years ago the district from a point twelve miles west of Moose Jaw to the western boundary of the Province, and south to the United States boundary was considered fit only for horse ranching, cattle and sheep grazing, but now the land is practically all homesteaded in every direction from Swift Current. Branch lines extended to the northwest and southeast enter fairly well settled districts; other lines are contemplated. It was incorporated as a city. =North Battleford= is wonderfully well situated agriculturally and picturesquely. It has a population of over 7,000, and is incorporated as a city. Several important industries and large wholesale places are established. The Canadian Northern Railway passes through the town, having its divisional headquarters here, and during the year will complete its line to Prince Albert. There is excellent passenger and freight service on the same company's line northwest, which is under construction to Athabaska Landing, Alberta. A traffic bridge connects North Battleford with Battleford. =Weyburn= is a prosperous city on the "Soo" Line between Moose Jaw and North Portal. Its railway connection with Stoughton furnishes a direct route to the east. The Lethbridge line of the Canadian Pacific starts here and will be completed this year. Building permits, 1912, $760,000. =Yorkton= within the last five years has more than doubled its population and ships annually over 2 million bushels of grain. It is an up-to-date town of about 2,500 inhabitants with creditable municipal buildings, eight grain elevators, water works, sewerage system, flour mill, saw mill, cement sidewalks, telephone, and a municipal gas plant. =Battleford.=--Population about 3,000. Has one of the most picturesque situations in the west, and was the first capital of the Old Territories. During the past year it has made remarkable growth owing to the agricultural possibilities of the surrounding country. The Grand Trunk Pacific reaches the town from Biggar on the south and is building a line west from Saskatoon. The Canadian Northern has a branch entering the town. The Canadian Pacific is expected to build from Asquith. A number of industries have embraced the encouraging opportunities offered by the town, and large wholesale houses have erected distributing depots. =Rosetown=, on the Canadian Northern Saskatoon-Calgary line, is progressive. It is of importance to-day, and marked for a good future. A splendid agricultural district peopled with excellent settlers surrounds it. =Zealandia=, on the same line of railway, has wonderful physical advantages. Although of only a few short years' existence, as the centre of a farming country where lands have increased from $8 to $30 per acre, its fame has spread and its citizens are warranted in anticipating a bright future. =Kindersley= has been on the map only four or five years. The surrounding fertile land that made the Goose Lake district famous in agriculture so soon after its discovery, gave to Kindersley a large portion of its glory and substance. It is growing rapidly, and confidence in what it will do is well bestowed. =Maple Creek=, for many years the centre of a ranching section, has a population of 1,000, and the large surrounding area of free homestead land is rapidly being settled. Excellent crops are reported. =Estevan= is noted for its coal mines and has rail connection with Winnipeg. =Rosthern=, on the Regina-Prince Albert branch of the Canadian Northern, is in the centre of a good agricultural district. =Wolsely=, three hundred miles west of Winnipeg, is the western terminus of the Wolsely-Reston branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway. =Indian Head=, the largest incorporated town in Saskatchewan, has more elevators than any other town in the province. For some time it was the largest initial wheat-shipping point in the world. The Dominion Government Experimental Farm is here. =Moosomin=, two hundred and twenty miles west of Winnipeg on the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is a flourishing town surrounded by rolling prairie particularly adapted to mixed farming. Population 1,200. It has good churches, schools, banks, grain elevators and waterworks. =Qu'Appelle and Arcola= are enterprising towns. Among the largest incorporated villages are Broadview, a divisional point on the Canadian Pacific Railway main line, Grenfell, Duck Lake, Alameda, Balgonie, Lemberg, Lloydminster, Melfort, Rouleau, and Sintaluta. Portal is the point where the "Soo" Line enters Saskatchewan. Yellow Grass, Milestone and Drinkwater are newer towns--settled within the past few years by progressive farmers from the States. Important and growing towns on the Grand Trunk Pacific, are Melville, Watrous, Scott, Nokomis and Young. WHAT SASKATCHEWAN FARMERS ARE DOING =Regina.=--During the week ending Sept. 21, 5119 cars of No. 1 Northern Hard were shipped out of the Province, as compared with 1,497 cars of No. 2 Northern and 290 cars of No. 3 Northern in 1912. There were, in addition, 111 cars of No. 1 Manitoba Hard shipped during the week. =Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Nov. 30.=--Since Sept. 1, 19,850,000 bushels of grain have been shipped from the Moose Jaw district, against 32,000,000 for the previous entire crop year. Rouleau heads the list with 1,040,000 bushels, and Milestone comes second with 910,000 bushels. Vanguard, which led last year, is third, with 835,000 bushels. =Rutan.=--Arthur Brondson, inexperienced in farming, having lived in London until eight years ago, last year raised 36 acres of Red Fife wheat, of 49 bushels per acre, and 48 acres Marquis wheat, 52 bushels per acre. =Regina.=--James Cranston threshed 1,050 bushels oats from ten acres; James Hars's 60 acres yielded 106 bushels; W. J. Crawford's 60 acres produced 43 bushels Preston wheat; other yields of Marquis wheat show 40, 48, 50, and 63 bushels to the acre. =Esterhazy.=--Esterhazy shared in the abundant harvest of 1913. A conservative estimate for the yield is from 25 to 30 bushels per acre for wheat, and 40 to 45 for oats. Some fields yielded 40 to 45 bushels per acre in wheat. =Tisdale.=--D. McKibbon threshed 38 bushels wheat to the acre off 40 acres. =Wynyard.=--Eggert Bjornson threshed 176 acres, averaging 36 bushels No. 1 Northern wheat. =Moose Jaw.=--Chas. White's 80 acres wheat yielded 38 bushels to the acre. W. H. Johnston's 90 acres produced 35-1/2 bushels wheat per acre. [Illustration: A landscape view of Central Saskatchewan.] [Illustration: This man is sufficiently modest to start with oxen; in a year or two they will be replaced by horses. He now farms 320 acres.] =Pasqua.=--E. S. Patterson, on 230 acres summer-fallow, threshed 31 acres Marquis, with a yield of 40-2/3 bushels per acre; 199 acres Red Fyfe with a yield of 35-1/2 bushels per acre. =Caron.=--Archie Dalrymple, 100 acres, 40-1/2 bushels wheat per acre. Geo. Clemenshaw, 80 acres, 42-1/2 bushels wheat per acre. =Boharm.=--Geo. Campbell had 55 acres wheat that yielded 38 bushels per acre, and 100 acres that yielded 36 bushels. =Assiniboia.=--E. Lennard threshed 1200 bushels oats, from a ten-acre field. His summer-fallow yielded 40 bushels No. 1 Northern wheat per acre. =Canora.=--Mike Gabora had a yield of 120-1/2 bushels oats per acre. C. R. Graham, who has a 3,000 acre farm in this district, for a number of years has grown oats that averaged 60 bushels to the acre, and sometimes yielded 100 bushels: one year the average was 117 bushels. =Arcola.=--R. F. Harman, formerly of the County of Cork, Ireland, homesteaded in the North Battleford district in 1903, with $50.00 capital. He now owns 480 acres, clear of encumbrance, raises wheat, oats, barley, hay, and is a firm believer in mixed farming. In ten years his capital has increased from $50.00 to $25,000. =Swift Current.=--Ed. K. Leep, of Chicago, homesteaded north of Swift Current. He had 30 acres of land in potatoes in June and lifted new potatoes on August 15. In the Fall little more than half an acre yielded over one hundred bushels. Some had been used in the meantime. Fuel was plentiful 8 miles away and good water was reached at twenty-five feet. The climate was agreeable, and good crops assured. =Nokomis.=--J. Keys had oats in 1913 that went 110 bushels to the acre, and wheat, 40 bushels. He has paid off the mortgage on his farm, and now contemplates a trip to his old home in Denmark, to induce more of his people to settle in his neighbourhood. =W. E. Lewis= of Dayton, Ohio, went to Saskatchewan seven years ago with $1,800 in money, a carload of household effects and farm implements, four horses and three cows. The first year he got only feed from the crops, but the second year threshed over 2,800 bushels of wheat from 100 acres. He has not had a crop failure and now has 22 horses, 15 cattle, 35 hogs, and owns 1,120 acres of land, all under cultivation. He has been offered $35.00 an acre for his land. Should he care to sell, he could pay all his debts, and have $30,000 to the good, but, he says, "Where could I go to invest my money and get as good returns?" =A. T. Smith= of Southern Saskatchewan will grow alfalfa on 3,000 acres of land in 1914. =Mr. S. G. Cowan says=: "I usually thresh from 60 to 65 bushels of oats, 30 of wheat, and 60 of barley. Vegetables grow well, and it is no trouble at all to grow potatoes. My farm has been under crop nine years, and has never been frozen, snowed under, or hailed. I have kept 100 cattle and 100 hogs. I usually give them their growth on green feed, wheat, oats, and barley, and fatten them on grain. With a little to start on we have cleared $10,000 in a little over four years." =Chaplin.=--J. R. Lowe has matured two crops of fodder corn, and he says there is little difference between it and what he grew in Minnesota. =Industries.=--The remarkable growth of the several cities and towns is but one of many evidences of increasing agricultural prosperity. With the coal resources of the southeastern part of the Province utilized, and the opportunities in northern parts for getting cheap water, Saskatchewan's industrial opportunities are many. There is a great demand for help of all kinds. With seven cities, thirty or more towns, and five hundred villages, many men are constantly required for building trades and municipal work. The 90,000 farmers want help to put in and farm their crops. Boards of Trade in every city and town are ready to give information about openings for investment and assistance in locating men. The experimental stage is passed and people are developing beautiful homes surrounded by fertile fields. Cost of Farm Implements: Disc Drill (single to twenty double) $ 96.00 Mowers 53.50 Twelve in. Gang Plows 82.00 Binders, six-foot cut 145.00 Binders, seven-foot cut 158.00 Binders, eight-foot cut 165.00 Rakes 35.00 Gasoline Tractors (Case) 2,480.00 Gasoline Tractors (Nicols) 3,665.00 Gasoline Tractors (International) 1,800.00 Steam Tractors (Case) 2,272.00 Steam Tractors (Nicols) 2,895.00 Case Separator 1,202.00 Nicols Separator 1,150.00 International Separator 1,280.00 =Agricultural Cooperation.=--The Provincial Government has established co-operation in creameries, elevators, telephone, hail insurance, agricultural societies and live stock. Five million dollars have been set aside for road improvements. The new agricultural college, with its 1,300 acre farm, costing one million dollars, is an evidence of public activity. The college has 100 students. =Temperatures= and hours' sunshine in Saskatchewan ranged lower, and rainfall during the growing season higher, than the average for several years. The average temperatures and precipitation for each of the first nine months of 1913: Month Mean Maximum Minimum Precipitation January -7.85 37.5 -45.3 .70 February 2.64 37.7 -34.3 .64 March 8.9 44.9 -31.9 .65 April 41.7 78.5 13.4 .31 May 47.2 84.7 20.7 1.00 June 59.2 87.7 30.7 3.00 July 61.1 86.6 37.4 3.18 August 60.8 85.9 38.9 2.80 September 52.1 85.5 32.9 .88 January-September, 1913 36.2 69.8 5.9 Total 13.16 April-September, 1913 53.6 84.8 27.5 " 11.17 April-September, 1912 50.9 79.9 27.5 " 13.92 =Interior Storage Elevators.=--A great advantage and an immense relief for the hundreds of elevators of from thirty to forty thousand bushels' capacity, will be the two interior storage elevators now under construction at Saskatoon and Moose Jaw, each with a capacity of 3 million bushels. =Farm Help in 1913.=--Labourers work by the month, for $32 to $41. Servant girls were paid from $14 to $22 this year as compared with from $10 to $15 in 1907. =Population and Live Stock.=--(Dominion Census Bureau): 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 Population 492,432 [1]540,000 Horses 279,063 332,922 507,400 551,645 580,386 Milch cows 124,186 138,455 181,146 184,896 194,843 Other cattle 391,789 431,164 452,466 461,244 468,255 Sheep 129,630 135,360 114,216 114,810 115,568 Swine 131,757 125,788 286,295 344,298 387,684 [1] Estimated. [Illustration: A healthy family from Nebraska, now living in Western Canada. Observe the height of the oats. The crop yielded 70 bushels per acre.] [Illustration: Mr. J. C. Hill & Sons, of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, who recently became winners for the third time of the Colorado Silver Trophy, valued at $1500 for best peck of oats in the world. They now own the trophy.] [Illustration: CENTRAL SASKATCHEWAN Surveyed land shown in colour. For Map of Southern Saskatchewan see pages 18 and 19.] ALBERTA Alberta, the most westerly of the three Prairie Provinces, is twice the size of Great Britain and Ireland, much larger than either France or Germany, and has a greater area than the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania combined. The area of arable land alone in Alberta is estimated at 100 million acres, of which less than 3 million acres is under cultivation. This provincial empire, with its great wealth in agricultural lands, mines, forests, and fisheries, has less than 500,000 people. Alberta is a vast plateau from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above sea-level, hung by its western edge on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It slopes gently toward the east and north. Absolutely level plains form no great proportion of the surface. While open, treeless country characterizes the southern part of the Province, the greater part is undulating, diversified by forest, stream, hill and open country, not unlike Ontario or New York State. Beautiful lakes, fringed with forest and abounding in whitefish are scattered over its central and northern area. Luxuriant grasses cover the open country, which once formed the chief feeding grounds of herds of bison. The Province naturally falls into three divisions, exhibiting marked distinctions in climate and topography--Southern, Central and Northern Alberta. =Available Homesteads= are to be found west and north of Edmonton--territory made accessible by the Grand Trunk Pacific and the Canadian Northern Railways--in an immense stretch of splendid country. Wheat and oats are reliable crops. Rainfall is certain. Mixed farming is highly successful. The wild grasses and pea vine supply ample feed for stock; water is plentiful and easily secured. On into the foothills and the mountains are stretches of prairie land, through which the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern Railways are now constructed. The northern and western portions of Central Alberta have some "brush" land with soil equal to that of the open prairie. The cost of clearing is slight, and there is the advantage of shelter for cattle, and an absolute assurance of splendid water. There is a good market for the fuel and timber obtained in clearing. Practically all of the land between Edmonton and Athabaska Landing--and between Edmonton and Lac la Biche to the northeast has been subdivided for homesteading. NORTHERN ALBERTA North of the end of steel extends 75 per cent of this rich Province, yet unexploited. When the railways push into the Athabaska and the Peace, it will be realized that Alberta owns an empire north of the Saskatchewan, a country set apart by nature to provide homes for millions of agrarian people. SOUTHERN ALBERTA =Southern Alberta= is open and rolling, and devoid of timber except along the streams and the Rocky Mountains' foothills. The soil is a fertile loam. The climate is ideal, with pleasing summers and mild winters. Stock pasture in the open air during winter, grazing on the nutritive sun-dried grasses. The absence of timber in Southern Alberta is compensated for by the supply of coal. [Illustration: Typical school in rural district in Western Canada, which will soon be replaced by consolidated school, picture of which appears elsewhere.] Ranching which once was predominant is fast being abandoned and settlers are dividing the limitless acres into small, productive holdings. As a grazing country, Southern Alberta has had few equals, for the hills and valleys, well watered, afford excellent pasturage. Winter wheat sown on new breaking, or summer-fallowed land, from the middle of July to the end of September is ready for harvest from the 1st to the 15th of August in the following year. Climate and soil make this an ideal wheat-growing district. Considerable spring wheat is grown, as well as oats, barley and flax. The production of sugar-beets compares favourably with that of Germany and the world. The average of winter wheat for the Province in 1913, was 21 bushels an acre. The greater portion was grown around Lethbridge, Taber, Grassy Lake, Cardston, Spring Coulee, Pincher Creek, Macleod, Stavely, Leavitt, Claresholm, Nanton, High River, Okotoks, Carmangay and Calgary. =Water Supply and Irrigation.=--Water for domestic and farm purposes is easily obtained at reasonable depth. In certain sections of the Canadian West, as in the American West, the soil is unexcelled for growing cereals, but the geographical location and relative position to the rain avenues is not advantageous, not only the requisite amount of rain but its conservation is essential to the growing of crops, and that is the meaning of "dry farming." This is being successfully followed in the southern portion of Southern Alberta. Some of the district can also be easily and successfully farmed by means of irrigation. Irrigation ditches have been constructed by the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Southern Alberta Land Company. [Illustration: Typical school, such as many towns are building in Western Canada, where the education of the children is carefully looked after.] A most valuable asset to Southern Alberta is the Lethbridge Experimental Station, operated by the Dominion Department of Agriculture. Reports from the farm show that on land broken and backset in 1912, spring wheat sown April 3, 1913, ripened between July 31 and August 17, and yielded from 22 to 41 bushels per acre; oats sown April 13, 1913, ripened from July 31 to August 4, and yielded from 54 to 84 bushels per acre; barley sown April 15, 1913, ripened from July 28 to Aug. 5, and yielded from 28 to 40 bushels per acre. On irrigated land the yield of spring wheat was from 30 to 54 bushels, and the period of ripening about the same; oats yielded from 102 to 132 bushels per acre, same period for ripening; barley yield on irrigated land was from 65 to 100 bushels per acre, harvested from July 28 to August 11. CENTRAL ALBERTA =Central Alberta= extends from the Red Deer River northward to the height of land between the Saskatchewan and the Athabaska. Its great wealth is its deep black humus varying in depth from ten inches to three feet, overlying a warm subsoil. =Mixed Farming.=--None of the three central provinces afford greater advantages for mixed farming than Alberta. In the south the great ranges of vacant area affords excellent pasturage. The central portion furnishes pasturage of equal quality, and the groves and park lands provide shelter, making it possible to raise cereals, as well as feed for cattle and hogs. Dairying and poultry raising meet with undoubted success. =Dairy Products= have an unlimited market; cattle can be pastured most of the year; every variety of grass including clover and alfalfa thrive; the climate is healthful and water abundant. More than a million head of cattle could have been fed on the wild hay that went to waste last year. Hundreds of thousands of acres are literally overrun with rich wild grasses and pea vine. The dairy yield approximated $1,250,000 in 1913, and 50,000 cows could be added without affecting the price of dairy products. The government operates a travelling dairy to instruct new settlers, and manages permanent creameries which produced over three million pounds of butter last year. Fattening hogs on milk adds to the revenue. =Poultry Raising.=--The winter price of fresh eggs ranges from 50 to 60 cents a dozen, the summer prices rarely falling below 25 cents. Extensive developments along this profitable line cannot be long delayed. =Crops of 1913.=--With an average rainfall of 10.92 inches during the growing season in that part of the Province including Edmonton and southward, an average daily sunshine record of 10 hours, and a mean temperature of 53 degrees Fahrenheit for the months April to September inclusive, good crops were certain. Spring seeding began early in April. The season was highly favourable and a big crop was harvested in excellent condition. Marquis wheat at one point went as high as 62.5 bushels per acre as a field crop, and oats and barley relatively as high. Yields of all kinds of grain and forage crops have been most excellent. The census bureau of the Dominion Government give the following returns: Area Area Average Total Total 1912 1913 1912 1913 1912 1913 Fall wheat 212,000 202,000 21.83 21.00 4,628,000 4,242,000 Spring wheat 1,378,000 1,310,000 21.54 23.00 29,675,000 30,130,000 Oats 1,461,000 1,639,000 46.30 43.65 67,630,000 71,542,000 Barley 187,000 197,000 33.05 32.15 6,179,000 6,334,000 Rye 15,000 16,000 25.56 24.89 377,000 398,000 Flax 132,000 105,000 12.83 11.00 1,693,000 1,155,000 The Provincial Department of Agriculture for Alberta placed the total yield of all grains at 81,500,000 bushels, but as the acreage is less, the average yields are about the same. The average yield per acre of potatoes from 25,000 acres was about 170 bushels; turnips and other roots about 250 bushels. Alfalfa yielded about 2.77 tons per acre and sugar beets about 9 tons per acre; hay and clover 1.56 tons, with a total value of all these products of $3,700,000. =Government and Other Telephones.=--The Government operates the telephone system, including about 7,000 miles of long distance wires, pursues an active policy of stimulating the organization of rural companies by giving as a bonus all poles required. These rural companies are connected with local exchanges and toll offices wherever possible. =Railways.=--During 1913 considerable was added to the railway mileage. Besides its main line the Canadian Pacific has two branches from Calgary--one north to Strathcona, the other south to Macleod. Two running eastward diverge at Lacombe and Wetaskiwin, the latter a through line via Saskatoon to Winnipeg. Another leaves the Canadian Pacific near Medicine Hat, passes through Lethbridge and Macleod and crosses the mountains by the Crow's Nest Pass, a branch connecting with the Great Northern at Coutts and extending to Cardston and west. Another branch will connect Lethbridge with Weyburn, on the "Soo" line. Provincial mileage 1,523. Other branches connecting the system are being built; as shown on the maps. The Canadian Northern enters Alberta from the east at Lloydminster on its way to Edmonton. From Edmonton lines are projected and partially constructed north and west. One starting at Vegreville connects the main line with Calgary, and then extends southeasterly toward Lethbridge and Macleod. From this line a branch is being built into the coal fields west of Lacombe and will form part of the transcontinental line of that system. Its extension from Saskatoon to Calgary is about completed. Mileage 593. The Grand Trunk Pacific serves the territory lying between the Canadian Northern and the Canadian Pacific, operating trains through productive territory and for some distance into British Columbia. This Company has completed its line south from Tofield to Calgary, a part of the transcontinental line of that system. Through trains now run from Edmonton to Toronto, Provincial mileage, 545. Another road is now under construction northward from the international boundary through Pincher Creek, with Calgary as a northern terminus. The Provincial government has outlined a policy of railway development throughout the Province, particularly in the north, opening vast agricultural lands which will attract settlers desirous of taking up free homestead. =Lakes and Rivers.=--The Saskatchewan and the Mackenzie rivers rise in the Province. The former is divided into two great arteries, one of which with its tributaries, the Bow, Belly, St. Mary's, Old Man and Red Deer, waters the south, while the north branch, with the Brazeau, Clearwater, Sturgeon, Battle, Blindman and Vermilion as tributaries, waters the great central plains. The Peace and the Athabaska drain the north. Lake Athabaska, 120 miles long, Lesser Slave, 60 miles long, and many smaller bodies of water are chiefly in the northern part. =Mineral Resources.=--Alberta has enormous coal and lignite areas. The production of coal in 1913 was over 3-1/2 million tons, valued at over 7-1/2 million dollars. The coal supply is practically inexhaustible, and underlies much of the whole Province in seams from four to twelve feet thick. It is found in all grades, lignite, bituminous and anthracite, on the banks of every stream, and in the shafts from 20 to 150 feet deep. The total formation contains 12,800 square miles; contents 71 billion tons. Natural gas has been found at Medicine Hat, Tofield, Dunmore Junction, and Bow Island on the South Saskatchewan, and at Pelican Rapids on the Athabaska. Recently considerable interest has been taken in the oil fields south of Calgary and north of Edmonton. Important commercial oil fields will soon be located. There is also petroleum, gypsum, salt and tar sands. Excellent brick and fireclay. =Fish and Furs.=--The Great Lakes of the North furnish yearly half a million pounds of incomparable whitefish, while the fur wealth of the north is important. [Illustration: This shows that it is not all work in Western Canada. There are many spots as beautiful as this, the resort of the sportsman and pleasure seeker.] [Illustration: Coal mining at Tofield, Alberta, where an excellent quality is obtained, and where natural gas is abundant.] [Illustration: SOUTHERN ALBERTA Lands within irregular line along railway in British Columbia are administered by the Dominion Government. Surveyed lands shown in colour. For Map of Central Alberta see pages 30 and 31.] =Education.=--The organization of free district schools is optional with settlers, the Government liberally supporting them. An expenditure of about $700,000 a year brings educational advantages within the reach of the most scattered community. One new school a day has been opened in Alberta during the last three or four years, an indication of the settlement that is going on. School population at end of 1912, over 70,000; number of schools 2,029. Two hundred and forty-five school buildings were erected in 1912. The dissemination of exact scientific knowledge is carried on by farmers' institutes, stock-judging schools, seed fairs and travelling dairies. The raising of pure-bred stock is assisted by Government grants. Experimental and demonstration farms have been established throughout the Province. Agricultural high schools will soon be started, and agriculture form part of the public school curriculum. =A Healthy Product.=--The air of Alberta insures the best of health. The whole of Alberta lies above mountain altitude, and the air is extraordinarily clear and bracing. Consequently there is comparatively little cloudy weather on normal days, either in summer or winter. Bright sunshine prevails. Striking testimony as to freedom from consumption is provided by Dr. T. H. Whitelaw of Edmonton, according to whose official report not one case of this disease has originated in Edmonton since the beginning of 1911. =Stock.=--Alberta's dry and invigorating atmosphere, short, mild winters, nutritious grasses, and abundant water supply, make it pre-eminently adapted to horse breeding. The Alberta animal is noted for its endurance, lung power, and freedom from hereditary and other diseases. It winters out at a nominal expense and without even hay or grain feeding. Four-year old steers, which have never been under a roof nor fed a pound of grain and have been given less than a ton of hay, weigh about 1,500 pounds by August 1 and will then gain until October from 2 to 3 pounds a day. Experiments made at the Demonstration Farm at Olds show that 100 steers weighed in November 1, at 127,540 pounds, weighed out May 20, less than 7 months later at 143,412 pounds, showing a net gain of $10.12 per head. At the Lacombe Experimental Station the gain per day in feeding cattle ranged from 1.8 to 1.72 lbs., showing a net profit when sold of $14.35 to $28.90. =Good Roads in the Province.=--One of the most important considerations in a new country is that of roads. The Alberta government has taken up this problem in an intelligent manner, that will eventually greatly enlarge the resources of the Province. The money expended on ferry service, maintenance of bridges, road construction, construction of bridges, and the construction of trunk roads, was essential to the opening up of vast tracts of fertile land. As a result, $100,000,000, or more than $200 per capita of the total population of the Province, is the estimated farm value of the 1913 crop in Alberta. =Sugar Beets and Alfalfa.=--Operations are now extending north as well as south of Lethbridge, where a large factory has been conducted for some years. An expert from Colorado has taken up irrigated land in the Bassano district to carry on the industry on a large scale. He says: "This is going to be a great beet-raising country. My crop averaged between 16 and 18 per cent sugar, which is a very high grade." He says his new farm produces as much alfalfa per acre as his former more expensive land in Colorado. =Fruit.=--It has not yet been demonstrated that the larger fruits, such as apples, can be made commercially attractive in Alberta. All the smaller fruits can be grown with little trouble, at a cost that makes their culture profitable. WHAT SOME ALBERTA FARMERS ARE DOING =Macleod.=--Weather conditions were excellent throughout the season. Ninety per cent of the wheat up to October 1 graded No. 1, the only No. 2 being fall wheat. The yield ranged from 20 to 40 bushels per acre, with an average of 28. Oats yielded well, and barley about 60 bushels. =Inverary= is a new district. Wheat graded No. 2 and some of it went 50 bushels to the acre, oats going about 75 bushels. =Monarch.=--The yield of wheat on summer-fallow averaged 35 bushels, a large percentage No. 1 Northern. =Milk River.=--All spring grains yielded better than expected. A 300-acre field of Marquis wheat gave 41-1/2 bushels. Experimental farm results on grain sown on irrigated land place "Red Fife" wheat in the banner position, with a yield of 59.40 bushels per acre. Oats yielded 13 bushels to the acre. =Calgary.=--The yield of grain was everywhere abnormal, with an increased acreage of about 23 per cent. =Bassano.=--September 25. Individual record crops grown in Alberta include a 1,300-acre field of spring wheat, near here, which went 35 bushels to the acre and weighed 66 pounds to the bushel. =Noble.=--Mr. C. S. Noble had 350,000 bushels of grain. The cost of production per acre was $9.10 on summer-fallow and the returns were $24.93 per acre. Oats averaged 90 bushels on 2,880 acres, wheat 38 on 300 acres, and barley 61 on 450 acres, all grading top. Mr. Harris Oium, came from South Dakota twelve years ago and homesteaded the first 160 acres in his township, dividing his land between grain and pasture. He earned sufficient money to buy a quarter section of railway land at $11 an acre. The half section netted proportionate profits and he gradually increased his holdings to 1,920 acres, which are devoted to mixed farming this year. He values his land at $50 an acre. He has 200 hogs, mostly pure bred Poland China, 25 head draft horses and 35 head of pure bred Hereford cattle. Feeding barley to hogs nets him 80 cents a bushel, twice the average market price when delivered to the warehouse. His barley averages 40 bushels to the acre; oats average 80 bushels. =Red Deer.=--John Lamont says that a man on a quarter-section, with a few cows, brood sows, and 100 hens, can be as sure of a good living for his family as if he were pensioned by the government. His 20 acres of Alberta red winter wheat yielded 985 bushels. Last year his wheat went a little over 40 bushels per acre, machine measure. He grows alfalfa. S. D. McConnell has carried on mixed farming for twelve years keeping a few cattle and some hogs; makes a dollar a bushel out of his barley by feeding it. His fall wheat has gone from 30 to 65 bushels to the acre; oats from 40 to 100 bushels, never weighing less than 42 lbs. to the bushel. H. S. Corrigan has averaged at least 30 bushels of spring wheat per acre, 40 bushels of barley, and 60 bushels of oats. Twenty-one acres of oats ran 90 bushels per acre, and weighed 48 pounds per bushel. Last winter he bought nine head of cattle for $420, fed them six weeks on hay, green feed, and chop and sold them for $579.60. Two steers, 26 months old weighed 2,440 lbs. One sow raised 58 pigs in 2-1/2 years, and when sold, weighed 550 pounds. Two of her pigs, now a year old, are raising 23 pigs. Timothy has yielded a ton and a half on an average, at $15 a ton. =Red Deer.=--J. Northrup has not missed a crop in nine years, and says: "This is the best country in the world for small grain, better than Iowa and that is good--I love old Iowa. Winter wheat yields as high as 45 bushels per acre. Potatoes yield 400 bushels per acre at times. Alfalfa is a good crop when the soil is inoculated." C. A. Sharman has the world's champion Jersey cow. He says: "A quarter section of land and 100 head of stock mean the maximum of growth from every square yard. Any man, woman, or child that uses Alberta rightly will be used rightly by Alberta. Farming in Alberta is no gold brick proposition, but an industry, which is the basis of all wealth." [Illustration: One of the comfortable homes in Western Canada, showing splendid surrounding of trees.] [Illustration: Alfalfa has become a recognized fodder crop in Western Canada. Large areas are already planted, and it produces abundant yields.] A. P. Olsen formerly of Minnesota has raised cattle, horses, hogs and also milked a few cows. His oats yield 45 bushels to the acre, spring wheat, 36 bushels, winter wheat and barley 40 bushels. He won first prize at the Calgary Exhibition for a collection of 32 varieties of grasses found on his own land. =Macleod.=--R. McNab has returns which show a yield of 45 bushels of No. 1 Northern wheat to the acre. =Gleichen.=--Forty-five bushels of No. 1 Northern wheat per acre was the yield on the Blackfoot Indian reserve in 1913. =Pincher Creek.=--Alfred Pelletier had 130 bushels oats per acre. =Cities and Towns.=--On the banks of the Saskatchewan and forming the portal alike to the Last West and the New North, the capital city of =Edmonton= has attractions for the capitalist, the tourist, the manufacturer, and the health seeker. At the centre of two great transcontinental highways, Edmonton will soon be rated among the world's great cities. Traffic from the Pacific to Hudson Bay will go through her portals, the south, north and west will contribute. Possessed of municipally-owned waterworks, electric-lighting and power systems, street railways and telephones, the city is modern, attractive and alive. The number of banks is evidence of prosperity. The coal output of the district is about 3,000 tons daily. Population, about 60,000. In 1901, it was 2,626. In 1911, the assessment was a trifle under 47 million dollars; in 1912, 123-1/2 million dollars. School attendance, 5,114. =Calgary= tells its own story in public buildings and in over one hundred wholesale establishments, 300 retail stores, 15 chartered banks, half a hundred manufacturing establishments, and a $150,000 normal school building. The principal streets are paved. There is municipal ownership of sewer system, waterworks and electric light and street railway. Directly bearing upon the future of Calgary is the irrigation project of the Bow River Valley, where 3 million acres are being colonized. One thousand two hundred miles of canals and laterals are completed. Population in 1911 was 43,736; now claimed 75,000. There are 36 schools, 146 teachers, and 7,000 pupils. The Canadian Pacific car shops here employ 3,000 men. It has the Canadian Pacific, Canadian Northern, and Grand Trunk Pacific. =Lethbridge=, with a population of about 13,000, the centre of a splendid agricultural district, is also a prosperous coal-mining and commercial city. The output of the mines, which in 1912 was about 4,300 tons daily and necessitated a monthly pay roll of $145,000, finds a ready market in British Columbia, in Montana, and as far east as Winnipeg. A Government Experimental Farm is nearby. The several branches of railway diverging here make it an important railway centre. It will shortly have the Grand Trunk Pacific, and direct Canadian Pacific and Canadian Northern lines eastward. The municipally-owned street car system affords excellent service. =Medicine Hat=, in the valley of the South Saskatchewan and the centre of a magnificent ranching and mixed-farming district, is a division point of the Canadian Pacific Railway, with extensive railway shops operated with natural gas for fuel. The light, heat, and power, derived from this gas are sold to manufacturers at 5 cents per thousand cubic feet, and for domestic purposes at 1 cent. The factories and industries now using natural gas pay out about 2-1/2 million dollars annually, which will be considerably augmented by factories in course of construction, and to be erected. When the new flouring mills are completed, Medicine Hat will be the largest milling centre on the continent. Population over 6,000. =Macleod= is one of the oldest towns in the Province. With the rapid settlement of the surrounding agricultural land, this town is showing wonderful progress; during 1913 a large amount was spent in new buildings. =Wetaskiwin= is a railway division point from which farms stretch in all directions. The city is beautifully located, and owns its electric light plant, waterworks, and sewerage system. =Red Deer= is situated on the Canadian Pacific, half way between Calgary and Edmonton. It has a large sawmill, two brick-yards, concrete works, creameries, wheat elevators, and a sash-and-door factory. Coal and wood are plentiful and cheap. The district has never had a crop failure. It showed considerable business activity in 1913. Lines of railway extend westward. =Lacombe=, on the direct line between Calgary and Edmonton, has a flour mill, foundry, planing mill, brick-yard, grain elevators, electric lights, and telephones. The surrounding country is noted for its pure-bred cattle and horses, and a Government Experimental Farm adjoins the town. =Raymond= enjoys a rapid growth, and has one of the largest sugar factories in the west. Sugar beets are a great success here. Mr. Henry Holmes, who won the big wheat prize at the Dry Farming Congress held at Lethbridge in 1912 resides here. Other prosperous towns are Claresholm, Didsbury, Fort Saskatchewan, High River, Innisfail, Olds, Okotoks, Pincher Creek, Ponoka, St. Albert, Vermilion, Vegreville, Carmangay, Stettler, Taber, Tofield, Camrose, Castor, Cardston, Bassano, Edson, Coronation, Empress, Magrath, Nanton, Strathmore, Gleichen, Leduc, Hardisty, Walsh, Daysland, Sedgewick, Grassy Lake and Wainwright. Much interest is being taken in Athabaska Landing, owing to its increasing agricultural settlement and the completion of the Canadian Northern. CONDITIONS IN ALBERTA, 1913 =Agricultural Conditions.=--From the agricultural standpoint the season of 1913 was perfectly normal. Spring opened favourably for seeding operations and at no time from seeding to threshing did unfavourable conditions threaten a successful harvest. Copious rains in the growing period, and bright dry weather in the cutting and threshing period kept the farmer confident from the beginning. It was a season made, as it were, to the farmers' order. The quality of grain was extra good. Wheat weighed from 61-1/2 to 68 pounds to the bushel, oats 40 to 46, and barley 52 to 58. Conditions were equally favourable to pasture and hay crops and live stock. The first and second cuttings of alfalfa were especially heavy and timothy made a good average yield. Abundant pasture continued throughout the season making both beef and dairy cattle profitable investments. Live stock, dairy products, poultry and eggs are worth four times the value of grain crops. The value of the former is nearly 120 millions, while the total value of the grain crop is about 30 millions. The income from the former reached 40 million dollars last year, that from the latter about 25 million dollars. =Public Works and Railways.=--About 600 miles of steel were laid last year, bringing the railway mileage of the province up to nearly 3,600 miles. Equal activity is assured for 1914. This year the Government made a step to provide transportation facilities for districts sidetracked by the railway companies. The means adopted is guaranteeing the interest on the securities of light railways up to one-half the estimated cost. =Financial.=--The income of the farming community exceeds that of all former years. It is estimated that the product of this year that will be converted into cash for the liquidation of debts, is nearly 65 million dollars. The farmer is therefore in a position to pay his machinery debts, store debts, and other obligations. Consequently the farmers are optimistic and are planning extended operations for the coming season. Measured by every economical standard, Alberta shows sound prosperity and justifies a continuance of the confidence of outside capitalists in her established business, and increased investments in the development of her vast resources of farms, mines and forests. =Population and Live Stock.=--(Dominion Census Bureau): 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 Population ...... ...... 374,663 ...... [2]500,000 Horses 263,713 294,225 407,153 451,573 484,809 Milch cows 116,371 124,470 147,687 157,922 168,376 Other cattle 910,547 926,937 592,163 587,307 610,917 Sheep 171,422 179,067 133,592 135,075 178,015 Swine 139,270 143,560 237,510 278,747 350,692 [2] Estimated. [Illustration: One type of house built of logs in the park districts of Central Alberta.] [Illustration: Marketing the grain at one of the elevators that are essential at every station in Western Canada.] [Illustration: CENTRAL ALBERTA Surveyed lands shown in colour. For Map of Southern Alberta see pages 26 and 27.] BRITISH COLUMBIA Stretching from the Rockies to the sea and from the United States to the 60th parallel, British Columbia is the largest Province in the Dominion. It is big enough to enable one to place in it, side by side at the same time, two Englands, three Irelands, and four Scotlands. Looking across the water to the millions of British subjects in India, in Hong-Kong, in Australia, and the isles of the sea, one catches brief pathetic glimpses of the commercial greatness which the Pacific has begun to waft to these shores. Nature intended British Columbia to develop a great seaward commerce, and substantial trade relations are now established northward to the Yukon and southward to Mexico. Population, June, 1911, 392,480. British Columbia has natural wealth in her forests and her fish, in her whales and seals and fruit farms. But it is from her mines, more than from aught else, that she will derive her future wealth. The parallel chains of the Rockies, the Selkirks, and the Coast Ranges are a rich dower. They furnish scenery unrivalled in its majesty; they are nurseries of great rivers which pour tribute into three oceans; and in their rocky embrace they hold a mineral wealth second to none. British Columbia contains an aggregate of from 16 million to 20 million unoccupied arable acres. Sir William Dawson has estimated that in the British Columbia section of the Peace River Valley alone, the wheat-growing area will amount to 10 million acres. It is a country of big things. =How to get the Land.=--Crown lands in British Columbia are laid off and surveyed into townships, containing thirty-six sections of one square mile in each. The head of a family, a widow, or single man over the age of eighteen years, and a British subject (or any alien upon making a declaration of his intention to become a British subject) may for agricultural purposes record any tract of unoccupied and unreserved crown land (not being an Indian settlement), not exceeding 160 acres in extent. Free homesteads are not granted. The pre-emptor of land must pay $1 an acre for it, live upon it for two years, and improve it to the extent of $2.50 per acre. Particulars regarding crown lands of this Province, their location, and method of pre-emption can be obtained by communicating with the sub-joined government agencies for the respective districts, or from the Secretary, Bureau of Agriculture, Victoria, B. C.: Alberni, Nanaimo, New Westminster, Golden, Cranbrook, Kaslo, Nelson, Revelstoke, Bakersville, Telegraph Creek, Atlin, Prince Rupert, Hazleton, Kamloops, Nicola, Vernon, Fairview, Clinton, Ashcroft. =Agriculture.=--It is not so long ago that agriculture was regarded as a quite secondary consideration in British Columbia. The construction of railroads, and the settlement of the valleys in the wake of the miner and the lumberman, have entirely dissipated that idea. The agricultural possibilities of British Columbia are now fully appreciated locally, and the outside world is also beginning to realize that the Pacific Province has rich assets in its arable and pastoral lands. Professor Macoun says: "As far north as the fifty-fourth degree it has been practically demonstrated that apples will flourish, while in the southern belt the more delicate fruits, peaches, grapes, and apricots, are an assured crop." On a trip through the valley one sees apple orchards with the trees fairly groaning under their loads of fruit, and pear, plum, and prune trees in like manner. In many places between the trees there are rows of potatoes, cabbages, and other vegetables, showing that the land is really producing a double crop. Grapes, water melons, and musk melons also thrive in the valley, and large quantities of each are grown. Tomatoes, cherries, and berries of all kinds are grown extensively. Wheat, oats, and corn give excellent yields. As an instance, one man's wheat crop this season averages 48-1/2 bushels to the acre. Of prunes, one orchardist grew a crop of 7,000 boxes. The apples shipped find a ready market in Calgary, Regina, and in the other cities in the prairie provinces. Prices this year are considerably better than they were a year ago. Last year this valley produced 350 carloads of fruit and vegetables, and some of the farmers have made net profits of as high as $250 an acre. Those who have turned their attention to mixed farming are exceptionally well pleased with the result. A local company is being organized to build a cannery and this will be in operation next year. And besides this one, another cannery is being talked of. In the valleys, of which there are many, there are tracts of wonderfully rich and, largely of alluvial deposits, that give paying returns. The Columbia and Kootenay Valleys, comprising the districts of Cranbrook, Nelson, Windermere, Slocan, Golden and Revelstoke are very rich. The eastern portion requires irrigation; they are well suited to fruit farming and all kinds of roots and vegetables. Timber lands are said to be the best, when cleared. In the western portion of these valleys there are considerable areas of fertile land, suitable for fruit growing. The available land is largely held by private individuals. [Illustration: The fruit industry of British Columbia is making rapid development. Peaches, plums, pears, grapes, apples grow to the greatest perfection.] The valleys of the Okanagan, Nicola, Similkameen, Kettle, North and South Thompson, and the Boundary are immensely rich in possibilities. The advent of the small farmer and fruit grower has driven the cattle industry northward into the Central district of the Province. The ranges are now divided into small parcels, occupied by fruit growers and small farmers. Irrigation is necessary in most places, but water is easy to acquire. The Land Recording District of New Westminster is one of the richest agricultural districts of the Province and includes all the fertile valley of the Lower Fraser. The climate is mild, with much rain in winter. The timber is very heavy and the underbrush thick. Heavy crops of hay, grain, and roots are raised, and fruit growing is here brought to perfection. The natural precipitation is sufficient for all purposes. For about seventy miles along the Fraser River there are farms which yield their owners revenues from $4,000 to $7,000 a year; this land is now worth from $100 to $1,000 an acre. As much as 5 tons of hay, 120 bushels of oats, 20 tons of potatoes, and 50 tons of roots have been raised per acre. Vancouver Island, with its great wealth of natural resources and its commanding position, is fast becoming one of the richest and most prosperous portions of the Province. Its large area of agricultural land is heavily timbered and costly to clear by individual effort, but the railroad companies are clearing, to encourage agricultural development. Most farmers raise live stock, do some dairying and grow fruit. Grains, grasses, roots, and vegetables grow to perfection and yield heavily. Apples, pears, plums, prunes, and cherries grow luxuriantly, while the more tender fruits--peaches, apricots, nectarines, and grapes attain perfection in the southern districts when carefully cultivated. F. A. Starkey, Pres. of the Boards of Trade says that a clear profit of 66-2/3 per cent can be made in fruit growing. =Lillooet= is well adapted to dairying, cattle raising, and fruit growing. =Central British Columbia=, through which the Grand Trunk Pacific is now being constructed, comprises the valleys of the Bulkley, Endako, Nechaco, Fraser, and Stuart, where there is considerable land inviting to the settler. The soil and climate of the valleys extending westward to the Bulkley are adapted to grain growing and cattle raising, while further westward and to within fifty miles of the west coast belt apple culture as well is successful. Down the Fraser from Fort George there is active development in settlement, and wheat, oats, barley and hay are highly productive; the climate is good. The soil is a brown silt covered by a layer of vegetable mould, and the timber is light and easy to clear. Along the Nechaco, between Fort George and Fraser Lake, is same character of soil and a similar country, there being large tracts well fitted for general farming. Native grasses yield abundant food; there is ample rainfall, and the winter climate moderates as the coast is approached. North of Fort Fraser there is good grazing and farming land, somewhat timbered and covered with rich grasses. The prevailing price is $25 an acre; owners are not particularly anxious to sell. The Bulkley and Endako valleys have a lightly-timbered rich soil, and a well-watered country with mixed farming possibilities. There is no necessity for irrigation. It would be rash for the inexperienced to penetrate this district in search of land before the railway. The difficulties and cost are too great. To the hardy pioneer, who has knowledge of how to select good land in a timbered country, the future is at his feet. Most of the available land within a reasonable distance of the railroad is taken up, and the days of the pre-emptor, except in remoter parts, are past. Land can be secured at a reasonable figure from those who have purchased in large blocks from the Government. Central British Columbia is lightly timbered from end to end; natural open patches are not frequent, and occur mostly on river banks and at the ends of lakes. While railroad construction is under way and settlement in progress good prices will be obtained for all agricultural products. This portion of the Province can now be reached by way of Prince Rupert, by rail from Edmonton, or by trail from Ashcroft, B. C. =Highways.=--One-half million dollars was spent last year in opening up first-class wagon and motor roads throughout the Province. =Education.=--The school system is free and non-sectarian; equally as efficient as in any other Province of the Dominion. The Government builds a school-house, makes a grant for incidental expenses, and pays a teacher in every district where twenty children between the ages of six and sixteen can be gathered. High schools are also established in cities, where classics and higher mathematics are taught. =Chief Cities.=--Victoria, the capital, about 60,000; Vancouver, the commercial capital, 123,902; New Westminster, 13,199; Nelson, 4,476; Nanaimo, 8,168; Rossland, 2,826; Kamloops, 3,772; Grand Forks, 1,577, Revelstoke, 3,017; Fernie, 3,146; Cranbrook, 3,090; Ladysmith, 3,295; Prince Rupert, 4,184; Fort George and Fort Fraser on the Fraser and Nechaco rivers and Grand Trunk Pacific will be important towns in the near future. Hon. W. R. Ross, Provincial Minister of Lands, says that there is a total of 93,000,000 acres of land reserved for pre-emption within the confines of the Province at the present time. Of the 250,000,000 acres of ground estimated to be within the Province only 5,000,000 acres, or about 2 per cent, had been sold to date he said, even excluding reserve land, available for settlement. As a matter of fact, during the past few years between 9,000 and 11,000 pre-emptions had been issued by the Government to settlers, and during the last year 3,600 had been issued outside of the railway belt and about 1,200 within the area. The cities afford a splendid reflex of the trade of the country, and show the development in mining, fishing, lumbering, shipping, manufacturing and agriculture. =Climate.=--Near the coast the average number of days in the year below freezing is fifteen; rainfall varies from 40 to 100 inches. Farther inland the average number of days in the year below freezing is sixty-five. The northern districts of Hazleton, Pearl River, Cassiar, and Atlin are somewhat colder. Ocean currents and moisture laden winds from the Pacific exercise a moderating influence upon the climate of the coast. The westerly winds, arrested in their passage east by the Coast Range, create what is known as the "dry belt" east of the mountains; the higher air currents carry the moisture to the lofty peaks of the Selkirks, and the precipitation in the eastern portion of the Province is greater than in the central district, thus a series of alternate moist and dry belts is formed. The Province offers a choice of a dry or moist climate, an almost total absence of extremes of heat and cold, freedom from malaria, and conditions most favourable. =Mineral Resources.=--The precious and useful metals abound in British Columbia, and it was the discovery of placer gold in the Cariboo District that first attracted attention to the Province. Occurrences of copper, gold, silver, and lead ores are widespread, and mining is being carried on in those districts convenient to transportation facilities. Coal is extensively mined in Vancouver Island, in the Crow's Nest Pass district and more recently, in the Nicola Valley region. Miners' wages are high, and there is usually a constant demand for workmen. The value of the mineral production last year was 32 million dollars, of which coal contributed 9 million and copper 8 million dollars. Much successful prospecting is in progress in the region traversed by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, the completion of which will undoubtedly be followed by important mining development. Already many valuable finds of coal and metal ores have been made. The mineral resources are not confined to any one section, although the principal metalliferous operations have so far been confined to the southern portion of the Province. The various mining camps, employing large numbers of men, who are paid high wages, afford a fine home market for the products of the farms and orchards. [Illustration: There is no more profitable industry in British Columbia than that of raising cattle. Dairying is carried on extensively.] [Illustration: BRITISH COLUMBIA Dominion Electoral Divisions shown in Colour. Lands in Peace River Block, as well as those along the Canadian Pacific Railway within shaded line, are administered by the Dominion Government.] =Timber.=--Next in importance, at the present time, are the timber resources. It is admitted that the largest remaining areas of first-class building timbers in the world are in British Columbia. The lumber industry has increased enormously of recent years owing to the demand from the rapidly growing Prairie Provinces. For many years to come it will have to undergo constant expansion to keep pace with the ever-growing needs of the untimbered prairie regions. The principal woods are Douglas fir, cedar, spruce, tamarac, pine and hemlock. =Fisheries.=--This Province has risen to the rank of the greatest fish-producing Province in the Dominion. Besides its extensive salmon fisheries, it has, lying within easy distance of the northern part of its coast line, extremely rich halibut grounds, while herring are in great abundance all along its shores. These various branches of the fishing industry are being rapidly developed, but there is yet room for great expansion. The value of the fisheries of the Provinces for 1913 amounted to about 11 million dollars. =What Premier McBride says=: "Millions of British money is finding investment in British Columbia, and there is scope for millions more. One of the advantages of British Columbia is that all of its industrial and other enterprises are of a permanent character. There is room for millions of people. We have the resources, the geographical situation, and the climate that will appeal. "Our elementary school system is free and compulsory, and one of the most efficient in the world, making ample provision, as it does, for ambitious students to pass on to the universities of Canada, the United States, and England. But we are also to have our own University." Much attention has been attracted to the result of the opening of the Panama Canal on the shipping future of the ports at the coast. =Lakes and Rivers.=--The most important are the Columbia, which has a course of 600 miles in British Columbia; the Fraser, 750 miles long; the Skeena, 300 miles long; the Thompson, the Kootenay, the Stikine, the Liard, and the Peace. These with their tributaries drain an area of one-tenth of the whole of the North American continent. The lake area aggregates 1-1/2 million acres. On the lakes and rivers first-class steamers give accommodation to the settlements along the banks and in the valleys, and afford excellent transportation for tourists. There are lines of steamers in service between Vancouver, Japan, and China; between Vancouver and Australia; between Vancouver and Mexico, and between Vancouver and England via the Suez Canal. These ocean communications of British Columbia are highly important. Vancouver is the terminus of the shortest route from Liverpool to Yokohama and all important points of the Far East. The Province has a considerable coasting fleet, having direct connection with Yukon and Alaska. There is not as yet a large Pacific marine of Canadian registry. Although in the service of Canadian interests the tonnage is largely British. =A Rich Province.=--British Columbia coal measures are sufficient to supply the world for centuries. It possesses the greatest compact area of merchantable timber in the world. The mines are in the early stages of their development, and have already produced about 400 million dollars, of which coal contributed 122 million. The value of the mineral production in 1911 was 30 million dollars. The fisheries return an average annual yield of nearly 10 million dollars. British Columbia's trade, per head of population, is the largest in the world. The chief exports are salmon, coal, gold, silver, copper, lead, timber, masts and spars, furs and skins, whale-oil, sealskins, hops, and fruit. =Railways.=--The Canadian Pacific Railway has two main lines and several branches making connection with United States railway systems, as well as operating on Vancouver Island. With the exception of one or two small gaps the Grand Trunk Pacific will have its line completed through Central British Columbia this year. This will open up a very large area for settlement. At the Pacific terminus in Prince Rupert, splendid steamers connect with other portions of the Mainland and with Vancouver Island. The Canadian Northern has secured low grades across the Rockies and, making its way down the Fraser and North Thompson, finds an easy outlet at Port Mann near Vancouver. The Great Northern enters the Province at points in the boundary. The provincial railway mileage is 1,854 miles with 1,000 miles under construction. =Stock.=--Dairying pays handsomely in British Columbia. The local demand for butter is constantly increasing and the prices secured are higher than in Eastern Canada. The Province possesses many elements necessary to constitute it a great dairying country. There are extensive areas of pastoral land in the interior, while increased cultivation in the lower country will form the necessary feeding ground. With a plentiful supply of good water, and luxuriant and nutritious grasses, there is every required facility added. Cattle raising on a large scale was formerly one of the chief industries of the Province, and many of the large ranches are still making money, but the tendency of late has been for smaller herds and the improvement of the stock. Sheep raising is another branch of agriculture capable of great expansion. Hogs, in small farming, are probably the most profitable of live stock, owing to the general demand for pork, bacon, ham, and lard, and much attention is now being given to raising them. Over 1 million dollars of hog products are imported annually, and prices are always high. The demand for good horses, especially heavy draft and working animals, is always increasing, and prices are consequently high. =Dairy Products.=--In 1912 this industry reached a valuation of nearly 4 million dollars. Poultry raising is a branch of general farming which is beginning to receive special attention in British Columbia. The home market is nowhere nearly supplied either with eggs or poultry, large quantities being imported from Manitoba, Ontario, California, Washington, and elsewhere. Good prices prevail at all seasons of the year. Every portion of British Columbia is suitable for poultry raising. In the Coast districts, hens, ducks, and geese can be raised to great advantage, and the dry belts and uplands are particularly well adapted to turkeys. =Grain.=--Wheat is grown principally in the Fraser, Okanagan, and Spallumcheen Valleys and in the country around Kamloops. Barley of excellent quality is grown in many parts of the Province. Oats are the principal grain crop, the quality and yield being good, and the demand beyond the quantity grown. Potatoes, turnips, carrots, mangolds, and all other roots grow in profusion wherever their cultivation has been attempted. Hop culture is carried on in the Okanagan, Agassiz, and Chilliwak districts. British Columbia hops command a good price in England and recently Eastern Canada and Australia have bid for them. Some attention has been given to the cultivation of sugar-beets, tobacco, and celery, and in each case with the most gratifying results, ensuring an early expansion of operations in all of these lines. In 1912 there was a total agricultural production in the Province of about 14-1/2 million dollars, but there was imported another 15 million dollars' worth. British Columbia agriculturists and fruit growers are particularly fortunate in having a splendid home market for their products, and for their surplus there is the enormous present and illimitable future demand of the Prairie Provinces, assuring always good prices and ready sale for everything they produce. =Game.=--For big-game hunters there are moose, wapiti, sheep, caribou, goat, deer, grizzly, black, and brown bear, wolves, panthers, lynx, and wild cats; in the way of small game there is the best snipe shooting procurable anywhere, and duck and geese, prairie chicken, grouse, and quail abound. In addition to sport with rifle and shot gun, salmon fishing, unknown elsewhere, trout and grayling fishing, unsurpassed in any other country, may be enjoyed at a minimum of cost and inconvenience. [Illustration: In Central British Columbia there is an area of agricultural land that is unexcelled anywhere. Wonderful yields of all small grains are reported.] WHAT WINS IN CENTRAL CANADA The adaptable and friendly man going into Canada will find a welcome awaiting him. There is room for everybody. The man already established, the railways, and the Government are equally anxious to secure further immigration of the right kind. The new man is not looked upon as an intruder but as a producer of new wealth, an enricher of the commonwealth. The new man should buy his tools as he needs them. Until he has more than thirty acres under crop he can work with a neighbour, in exchange for the services of a binder. He may not need to build a granary for two or three years. A cow is a good investment, and a vegetable garden easily pays its own way. A few broad general suggestions might be made to the settlers who come in with varying capital at their command. =The Man Who Has Less Than $300.=--This man had better work for wages for the first year. He can either hire out to established farmers or find employment on railway construction work. During the year, opportunity may open up for him to take up his free grant or make the first payment on a quarter-section that he would like to purchase. =The Man Who Has $600.=--Get hold of your 160-acre free homestead at once, build your shack, and proceed with your homestead duties. During the six months that you are free to absent yourself from your homestead, hire out to some successful farmer and get enough to tide you over the other half of the year which you must spend in residence upon the land. When you have put in six months' residence during each of these years and have complied with the improvement conditions required by the Land Act, you become the absolute owner. =The Man Who Has $1,000.=--Either homestead a farm or purchase one on the installment plan, and get to work at once. A small house and out buildings will be required, with horses or oxen, a plough, a wagon, etc. Working out in the harvest season will be needed to bring in money to tide over the winter and get the crop sown in good condition. As the crop grows, opportunity is given to make the house comfortable, to look around and plan ahead. =What $1,500 Will Buy.=--No farmer should come expecting to make a homestead pay its own way the first year. He needs buildings, an equipment, and money for the maintenance of himself and family, until his first harvest can be garnered. After securing his land and putting up his buildings, $1,500 will give him a fairly good equipment to begin with. This will probably be expended as under: 1 team of good horses $450.00 1 harvester 165.00 4 milch cows at $65 260.00 1 seeder 113.00 1 strong wagon 94.00 4 hogs at $25 100.00 4 sheep at $8 32.00 1 set strong harness 35.00 1 rough sleigh 37.00 1 disc harrow 36.00 1 breaking plough 25.00 1 mowing machine 60.00 1 stubble plough 20.00 1 harrow 20.00 Other smaller tools 40.00 Barnyard fowls 40.00 Total $1527.00 If the settler locates early in the season he may get in a crop of potatoes or oats in May or early June. =Will a Quarter-Section Pay?=--"Will the tilling of a quarter of a section (160 acres) pay?" when asked of those who have tried it provokes the invariable answer that "It will and does pay." "We, or those following us, will make less than that pay," said one who had proved up on a homestead. Another pointed to the fact that many of those who commenced on homesteads are now owners of other quarters--and even larger areas, showing that they have progressed in obtaining more land, while others still have stuck to the homestead quarter and this year are marketing as much as $2,000 worth of grain and often nearer $3,000. =Shall You Buy, Rent or Homestead?=--The question is one that Canadian Government officials are frequently asked, especially in the homes of a family of boys who have become interested in Central Canada. If the young man has grit and inexperience let him homestead. Treating this subject in a newspaper article, a correspondent very tersely says, "He will survive the ordeal and gain his experience at less cost." Another has ample knowledge of farming practice, experience in farm management, but lacks pluck and staying power and the capacity to endure. The food for thought and opportunity for action provided by the management of an improved farm would be just the stimulus required to make him settle into harness and "work out his own salvation in fear and trembling." Many men make excellent, progressive, broad-gauge farmers, by renting, or buying an improved farm in a settled district and keeping in touch with more advanced thought and methods. Their immediate financial success may not be so great; their ultimate success will be much greater, for they have been saved from narrow-gauge ways and withering at the top. Let the boy take the route that appeals to him. Don't force him to homestead if he pines to rent. Don't try to keep him at home if homesteading looks good to him. The thing to remember is that success may be achieved by any one of the three routes. If the foundation is all right, hard work the method, and thoroughness the motto, it makes little difference what road is taken--whether homesteading, buying, or renting--Central Canada is big enough, and good farming profitable enough. [Illustration: Alfalfa is a crop that is now assured in any of the Provinces of Western Canada. The above is a Manitoba illustration, but will apply to the other Provinces.] YOUR OPPORTUNITY Contentment is not necessarily achieved by accomplishments that benefit the world--the world outside the small sphere in which we move; but when accompanied by such accomplishments how the satisfaction broadens! The genius whose inventions have been of service to mankind is in a plane far above that of the simple-minded individual who finds contentment in the little things of life affecting himself alone. Feeding the world is no mean accomplishment. Nor is it a vain or trifling boast to say that this is what the farmer of Western Canada has started out to do. He is sure to find contentment. Part of his contentment will be the consciousness of doing world-wide good; part of it will be the personal enjoyment of an inspiring liberty and independence. Afield and abroad his friends will learn what he is doing. Soon they too will become partners in a work that not only betters their own condition, but ministers to the needs of the whole world in the raising of products that go to "feed the world." It is to those who desire this broad contentment that the Canadian Government extends the heartiest welcome, and to such men it offers the vast opportunities of a country richer in possibilities than any other in the present century. To the man on the farm in other regions, whom success has followed with slow tread; to the farmer's son, who has watched with unsatisfied eye the unrequited efforts of his forbears, seeing the life that has made his mother a "drudge," noting the struggle which has stooped his father's shoulders, dimmed his vision, dwarfed his spirit, and returned nothing but existence and a meagre bank account--it is to these men, father and son, that the opportunities of Western Canada are presented. To them an invitation is extended to secure the contentment found in personal progress and world-wide benefaction. The possibilities of Western Canada are no longer new and untried. Twelve or fifteen years of cultivation have made it a vital, living land, and placed it on the level with the greatest of the food-producing countries. That same redundant energy will shortly make it the richly laden "bread basket" not of England only, but of the entire world. Here every condition is a health bringer as well as a wealth bringer. A few months in this "New World" to which you are invited and where rejuvenating physical and mental changes are wrought; where before hard work was drudgery, it is now a delight; where nothing but fresh trouble darkened the horizon, the outlook is now a rainbow of promise. Industry is seasoned with the compelling spirit of adventure, and the thought of the coming harvest constantly lightens the burden of labor. The crowded city dweller, curbing those natural desires for home-building that are as natural as breathing, will find in Western Canada a country where nothing is so plentiful as space. And in building his home here he is surely laying the foundation for a competence, and very often for a fortune. Along with prosperity there is abounding happiness and good fellowship in the farming communities. The homesteader, beginning in a modest way, rears his first habitation with practical and serviceable ends in view. His next-door neighbours are ready and willing to help him put a roof over his head. There is a splendid lend-a-hand sentiment mixed with the vigorous climate. The first harvest, like all succeeding harvests, comes quickly, because the soil is a lightning producer. All summer long the settler has dreamed of nothing but acres of waving grain; with the autumn the sight of hopes fulfilled compensates him for his months of toil. In due time the crop is harvested and marketed, the debts are wiped out, and the settler proudly opens his bank account. When he has turned the golden grain into the golden coin of the realm he realizes for the first time what it means to be liberally paid for the work of his hand and brain. The reward of the farmer in Western Canada is sure; and as the soil responds faithfully to his husbandry, year after year, he looks back upon the old conditions he has left with devout thankfulness that they are past. After the bumper harvest the happy young farmer can send for the wife or the bride-to-be whom he has left "back home." A few years ago "down on the farm" was an expression synonymous with isolation, loneliness and primitive living. Not so to-day. Whatever his previous outlook, the settler in Western Canada cannot go on raising large crops and selling his products for high prices without enlarging his view of life in general and bettering his material conditions. He needs to practice no rigid economy. He can afford to supply his wife and children with all the best the markets provide. An up-to-date farm house in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, or Alberta has very much the same conveniences as the average home of the well-to-do in any other part of the world. Nine times out of ten it is because he feels confident he can increase the comfort and happiness of his wife and children that the settler emigrates to Western Canada. Western Canada is no longer a land calling only to the hardy young adventurer; it calls to the settler and to his wife and children. And with its invitation goes the promise not only of larger financial returns, but of domestic happiness in a pure, wholesome environment. Railroads bring to the doors of the settler the fruits of all countries and here is to hand the use of every modern idea and invention. The climate is the most health-giving, all-year kind. There is latent riches in the soil, produced by centuries of accumulation of decayed vegetation, and the fat producing qualities of the native grasses are unexcelled in any part of the world. The soil produces the best qualities of wheat, oats, barley, flax, and all kinds of vegetables and roots in less time than many districts farther south in the states. There are inexhaustible coal deposits and natural gas and oil fields, as yet unknown in extent or production. The Canadian Rockies, forming a western boundary to the great agricultural area, supply the needed mineral and building materials. In the north and west there are immense forests. Lakes and rivers are capable of an enormous development for power purposes, besides supplying an abundance of food and game fishes, and forests and prairies are full of big and small game of all kinds. But all this is yet undeveloped and unused. All kinds of live stock can be raised here for less money than in the more thickly populated communities. One Western Canada farmer in 1912 secured a crop of Marquis wheat, yielding 76 bushels per acre. This is spoken of as a record yield, and this is doubtless true, but several cases have been brought to notice where yields almost as large have been produced, and in different parts of the country. During the past year there have been reported many yields of from 35 to 45 bushels of wheat to the acre. Oats, too, were a successful crop and so was the barley and oat crop. Wheat that would yield 40 bushels per acre, would bring on the market 70 cents (a fair figure) per bushel, a gross return of $28 per acre. Allow $12 per acre (an outside figure) there would be a balance of $16 per acre net profit. This figure should satisfy anyone having land that cost less than $100 per acre. GENERAL INFORMATION Owing to the number of questions asked daily, it has been deemed advisable to put in condensed form, such questions as most naturally occur, giving the answers which experience dictates as appropriate, conveying the information commonly asked for. If the reader does not find here the answer to his particular difficulty, a letter to the Superintendent, or to any Government Agent, will secure full particulars. =1. Where are the lands referred to?= In Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and in British Columbia. =2. What kind of land is it?= The land is mostly prairie (except in British Columbia) and can be secured free from timber and stones, if desired, the soil being the very best alluvial black loam from one to two feet deep, with a clay subsoil. It is just rolling enough to give good drainage, and in places there is plenty of timber, while some is underlaid with good coal. =3. If the land is what you say, why is the Government giving it away?= The Government, knowing that agriculture is the foundation of a progressive country, and that large yields of farm produce insure prosperity in all other branches of business, is doing everything in its power to encourage settlement. It is much better for each man to own his own farm, therefore a free grant of 160 acres is given to every man who will reside upon and cultivate it. =4. Is it timber or prairie land?= The province of Manitoba has considerable open prairie, especially in the southwest; towards the centre it is parklike with some timber belts in parts. The southern parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta are chiefly open prairie with growths of timber along the streams. As you go north or northwest about 20 per cent of the country may be said to be timbered. =5. Then as to climate?= The summer days are warm and the nights cool. The fall and spring are most delightful, although it may be said that winter breaks almost into summer, and the latter lasts until October. Winters are pleasant and healthful. There are no pulmonary or other endemic complaints. Snow begins to fall about the middle of November and in March there is generally very little. Near the Rockies the snowfall is not as heavy as farther east, and the chinook winds have a tempering influence. The absence of the snowfall would be regretted by the farmer. Nature has generously provided for every mile of the country, and there is really very little choice with the exception that farther west the climate is somewhat milder. =6. Is there sufficient rainfall?= A sufficient supply can be relied upon. The most rain falls in May and June, when most needed. =7. What are the roads like?= Bridges and culverts are built where needed, and roadways are usually graded up; but not gravelled or macadamized. The natural prairie road is superior to most manufactured roads, and afford good travelling in ordinary seasons and every fall and winter. =8. What sort of people are settled there, and is English generally spoken?= Canadians, English, Scotch, Irish, French, and English-speaking Americans (who are going in, in large numbers), with Germans and Scandinavians. English is the language of the country, and is spoken everywhere. =9. Will I have to change my citizenship if I go to Canada?= An alien, before making entry for free homestead land, must declare his intention of becoming a British subject and become naturalized before obtaining patent for his land. In the meanwhile he can hold possession, and exercise right of ownership. If not a British subject he must reside three years to become naturalized. To become a British subject a settler of foreign birth should make application to anyone authorized to administer oaths in a Canadian Court. An alien may purchase land from any of the railway or land companies and hold title deed without changing his citizenship. =10. How about American money?= American money is taken everywhere in Central Canada at its face value. =11. Can a man who has used his homestead right in the United States take a homestead in Canada?= Yes. =12. If a British subject has taken out "citizen papers" in the United States how does he stand in Canada?= He must be "repatriated," i.e., take out a certificate of naturalization, which can be done after three months' residence in Canada. =13. What grains are raised in Central Canada?= Wheat (winter and spring), oats, barley, flax, speltz, rye and other small grains, and corn is grown chiefly for silo purposes. =14. How long does it take wheat to mature?= The average time is from 100 to 118 days. This short time in accounted for by the long hours of sunlight which during the growing and ripening season, will average 16 hours a day. =15. Can a man raise a crop on the first breaking of his land?= Yes, but it is not well to use the land for any other purpose the first year than for raising garden vegetables, or perhaps a crop of flax, as it is necessarily rough on account of the heavy sod not having had time to rot and become workable. Good yields of oats have been reported on breaking. =16. Is there plenty of hay available?= In many parts there is sufficient wild hay meadow on government or vacant land, which may be rented at a very low rental, if you have not enough on your own farm. Experience has proven that timothy, brome, clover and other cultivated grasses do well. Yields of brome have been reported from two to four tons per acre. Alfalfa under proper cultivation in many places gives successful yields. =17. Do vegetables thrive and what kinds are grown?= Potatoes, turnips, carrots, beets, onions, parsnips, cabbages, peas, beans, celery, pumpkins, tomatoes, squash, melons, etc., are unequalled anywhere. =18. Can fruit be raised and what varieties?= Small fruits grow wild. The cultivated are plums, cranberries, strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, currants. In British Columbia fruit growing of all kinds is carried on very extensively and successfully. =19. About what time does seeding begin?= As a rule farmers begin their seeding from the first to the fifteenth of April, sometimes continuing well into May. The average yield of all grains in Central Canada would be largely increased, did not some farmers unwisely do seeding until the middle of June. =20. How is it for stock raising?= The country has no equal. In many parts cattle and horses are not housed throughout the winter, and so nutritious are the wild grasses that stock is marketed without having been fed any grain. =21. In what way can I secure land in Central Canada?= By homesteading, or purchasing from railway or land companies. The Dominion Government has no land for sale. The British Columbia Government sells land to actual settlers at low figures. =22. Can I get a map or list of lands vacant and open to homestead entry?= It has been found impracticable to keep a publication of that kind up to date, owing to the daily changes. An intending settler on reaching the district he selects should enquire of the Dominion Lands Agent what lands are vacant in that particular locality, finally narrowing down the enquiry to a township or two, diagrams of which, with the vacant lands marked, will be supplied free. A competent land guide can be had. =23. How far are homestead lands from lines of railway?= They vary, but at present the nearest will be from 15 to 20 miles. Railways are being built into the new districts. =24. In which districts are located the most and best available homesteads?= The character of homestead wanted by the settler will decide this. Very few homesteads are vacant in the southern districts; towards the centre and north portions of the provinces, homesteads are plentiful. They comprise a territory in which wood for building purposes and fuel are plentiful. =25. Is there any good land close to the Rocky Mountains?= The nearer you approach the mountains the more hilly it becomes, and the elevation is too great for grain raising. Cattle and horses do well. =26. If a man take his family there before he selects a homestead can he get temporary accommodation?= At the following places the Government maintains Immigration halls with free temporary accommodation for those desiring such and supplying their own provisions. It is always better for the head of the family, or such member of it as may be entitled to homestead, to select and make entry for lands before moving family: Biggar, Brandon, Calgary, Caster, Cereal, Edmonton, Edson, Emerson, Entwistle, Gravelburg, Herbert, Kerrobert, Lloydminster, Lethbridge, Moose Jaw, North Battleford, North Portal, Prince Albert, Regina, Saskatoon, Strathcona, South Battleford, Swift Current, Tisdale, Unity, Vegreville, Vermilion, Viking, Virden, Wainwright, Wilkie, Yonkers. =27. Where must I make my homestead entry?= At the Dominion Lands Office for the district. =28. Can homestead lands he reserved for a minor?= An agent of Dominion Lands may reserve a quarter-section for a minor over 17 years of age until he is 18, if his father, or other near relative live upon homestead or upon farming land owned, not less than 80 acres, within nine miles of reserved homestead. The minor must make entry in person within one month after becoming 18 years of age. =29. Can a person borrow money on a homestead before receiving patent?= No; contrary to Dominion Lands Act. =30. Would the time I was away working for a neighbour, or on the railway, or other work count as time on my homestead?= Only actual residence on your homestead will count, and you must reside on homestead six months in each of three years. =31. Is it permissible to reside with brother, who has filed on adjoining land?= A homesteader may reside with father, mother, son, daughter, brother, or sister on farming land owned solely by him or her, not less than 80 acres, or upon homestead entered for by him or her not more than nine miles from entrant's homestead. Fifty acres of homestead must be brought under cultivation, instead of 30 acres, as is the case when there is direct residence. =32. How shall I know what to do or where to go when I reach there?= Make a careful study of this pamphlet and decide in a general way on the district in which you wish to settle. Then put yourself in communication with your nearest Canadian Government Agent, whose name appears on the second page of cover. At Winnipeg, and in the offices of any of the Dominion Lands Agents in Central Canada, are maps showing vacant lands. Having decided on the district where you will make your home, the services of a competent land guide may be secured to assist in locating. =33. What is the best way to get there?= Write your nearest Canadian Government Agent for routes, and settlers' low railway rate certificate good from the Canadian boundary to destination for passengers and freight. =34. How much baggage will I be allowed on the Canadian railways?= 150 pounds for each full ticket. =35. Are settlers' effects bonded through to destination, or are they examined at the boundary?= If settler accompanies effects they will be examined at the boundary, without any trouble; if effects are unaccompanied they will go through to the nearest bonding (or customs) point to destination. =36. In case settler's family follow him what about railway rates?= On application to Canadian Government Agent, settlers' low railway rate certificate will be forwarded, and they will be given the settlers' privilege. =37. What is the duty on horses and cattle if a settler should want to take in more than the number allowed free into Canada?= When for the improvement of stock free; otherwise, over one year old, they will be valued at a minimum of $50 per head, and duty will be 25 per cent. =38. How much money must one have to start grain farming and how little can he do with if he goes ranching?= See Chapter "What wins in Central Canada," page 37. =39. How can I procure lands for ranching?= They may be leased from the Government at a low rental. Write for full particulars to Secretary of the Interior, Ottawa, Canada. =40. In those parts which are better for cattle and sheep than for grain, what does a man do if he has only 160 acres?= If a settler should desire to go into stock raising and his quarter-section of 160 acres should not prove sufficient to furnish pasture for his stock, he can make application to the Land Commissioner for a lease for grazing lands for a term of twenty-one years, at a very low cost. =41. Where is information to be had about British Columbia?= Apply to Secretary Provincial Bureau of Information, Victoria, B. C. =42. Is living expensive?= Sugar, granulated, 14 to 18 lbs. for $1, according to fluctuation of market. Tea, 30 to 50 cents a lb.; coffee, 30 to 45 cents a lb.; flour, $2.25 to $3.00 per 98 lbs. Dry goods about Eastern Canada prices. Cotton somewhat dearer than in United States, and woollen goods noticeably cheaper. Stoves and furniture somewhat higher than eastern prices, owing to freight charges. =43. Are the taxes high?= No. Having no expensive system of municipal or county organization, taxes are necessarily low. Each quarter-section of land, consisting of 160 acres, owned or occupied, is taxed very low. The only other taxes are for schools. In the locations where the settlers have formed school districts the total tax for all purposes on a quarter-section amounts to from $10 to $14.50 per annum. =44. Does the Government tax the settler if he lets his cattle run on Government lands? If they fence their land, is he obliged to fence his also?= The settler is not required to pay a tax for allowing his cattle to run on Government land, but it is advisable to lease land from the Government for haying or grazing purposes, when needed. If one fences his land, his adjoining neighbour has to stand a proportionate share of the cost of the fence adjoining his property, or build one-half of it himself. =45. Where can a settler sell what he raises? Is there any competition amongst buyers, or has he got to sell for anything he can get?= A system of elevators is established by railway companies and others throughout the entire West. Grain is bought at these and forwarded to the great markets in other parts of Canada, the United States, and Europe. Canadian flour mills, oatmeal mills, and breweries use millions of bushels of grain annually. To the west and northwest of Central Canada lie mining regions, which are dependent upon the prairies for supplies and will to a great extent continue to be. Beef is bought on the hoof at the home of the farmer or rancher. Buyers scour the country in quest of this product. =46. Where can material for a house and sheds be procured, and about what would it cost? What about fuel? Do people suffer from the cold?= Though there are large tracts of forest in the Canadian West there are localities where building timber and material is limited, but this has not proven any drawback as the Government has made provision that should a man settle on a quarter-section deprived of timber, he can, by making application to the Dominion Lands Agent, obtain a permit to cut on Government lands free of charge the following, viz.: 1. 3,000 lineal feet of building timber, measuring no more than 12 inches at the butt, or 9,250 feet board measure. 2. 400 roofing poles. 3. 2,000 fencing rails and 500 fence posts, 7 feet long, and not exceeding five (5) inches in diameter at the small end. 4. 30 cords of dry fuel wood for firewood. The settler has only the expense of the cutting and hauling to his homestead. The principal districts are within easy reach of firewood; the settlers of Alberta and Saskatchewan are particularly favoured, especially along the various streams, from some of which they get all the coal they require, at a trifling cost. No one in the country need suffer from the cold on account of scarcity of fuel. =47. Is it advisable to go into a new country during the winter months with uncertain weather conditions?= A few years ago, when settlement was sparse, settlers were advised to wait until March or April. Now that so many have friends in Western Canada there need be no hesitation when to start. Lines of railway penetrate most of the settled districts, and no one need go far from neighbours already settled. There is no longer the dread of pioneering, and it is robbed of the romance that once surrounded it. With farm already selected, it is perfectly safe, and to the prospective homesteader he can get some sort of occupation until early spring, when he will be on the ground ready for it. =48. What does lumber cost?= Spruce boards and dimensions, about $20 per thousand feet; shiplap, $23 to $28; flooring and siding, $25 up, according to quality; cedar shingles, from $3.50 to $4.25 per thousand. These prices fluctuate. =49. What chance is there for employment when a man first goes there and isn't working on his land?= There are different industries through the country, outside of farming and ranching, such as sawmills, flour mills, brick-yards, railroad building in the summer, and lumbering in the winter. The chances for employment are good as a large percentage of those going in and those already there farm so much that they must have help, and pay good wages. During the past two seasons from twenty to thirty thousand farm labourers have been brought in each year from the eastern Provinces and the United States to assist in caring for the large crops. The capable and willing worker is sure to succeed in Canada. =50. Can I get employment with a farmer so as to become acquainted with local conditions?= This can be done through the Commissioner of Immigration at Winnipeg, who is in a position to offer engagements with well established farmers. Men experienced in agriculture may expect to receive from $25 up per month with board and lodging, engagements, if desired, to extend for twelve months. Summer wages are from $30 to $35 per month; winter wages $10 to $15. During harvest wages are higher than this. =51. If I have had no experience and simply desire to learn farming in Central Canada before starting on my own account?= Young men and others unacquainted with farm life, willing to accept from $8 up per month, including board and lodging, will find positions through the Government officers at Winnipeg. Wages are dependent upon experience and qualification. After working for a year in this way, the knowledge acquired will be sufficient to justify you in securing and farming on your own account. =52. Are there any schools outside the towns?= School districts cannot exceed five miles in length or breadth, and must contain at least four actual residents, and twelve children between the ages of five and sixteen. In almost every locality, where these conditions exist, schools have been established. =53. Are churches numerous?= The various denominations are well represented and churches are being built rapidly even in the most remote districts. =54. Can water be secured at reasonable depth?= In most places it can be had at from fifteen to forty feet, while in other places wells have been sunk to fifty or sixty feet. =55. Where are free homesteads to-day, and how far from railway?= In some well settled districts it may be possible to secure one by cancelling, but such chances are few. Between the lakes in Manitoba as well as north and southeast of Winnipeg. In the central portions of Saskatchewan, Alberta and west of Moose Jaw and Swift Current. A splendid homestead area is that lying north of Battleford, and between Prince Albert and Edmonton north of the Canadian Northern railway. One will have to go at least twelve or fifteen miles from a line of railway at present, but extensions will soon make many homesteads available. VALUABLE HINTS FOR THE MAN ABOUT TO START The newcomer may start for Western Canada during any month in the year. Railroads carry him to a short distance of his new home, the country roads are good, and there is settlement in all parts, so that shelter is easily reached. Temporary provision is required for the family's arrival, when better may be made. If going in the winter months, it is well to have a pair of good strong sleds. As teams cost $5 a day take along your horses and do your own hauling. As they require care, write ahead to some livery barn for room. In shipping your horses have them loaded by the best shipper in your home town. For feeding on the way, put in two-by-four cleats breast high on the horses, and fix to fit the end of a stout trough which is dropped in, afterwards nailing on a top cleat. If they have been used to corn take along twenty bushels for each horse, if possible, not to feed alone along the way, but to use while breaking them in to an oat diet. You need both hay and oat straw on the cars. The new arrival may have to pay $7 a ton for hay and 40 cents per bushel for oats. Railroad construction consumes lots of both, and not half the farmers take time in the fall to put up plenty of hay. Bring all the horses you can. Five big horses can pull a twelve-inch gang through the sod, but six can do it easier, and you can use five on the harrow. You can hitch a team to a goat or scrubber, as they call them here, and lead them behind the drill, making your ground smooth and packing it lightly, as you put in the seed. If you have been intending to bring eight horses, bring twelve; if you were going to bring twelve, bring sixteen. The first two years on the new land is hard on horses, and you will need plenty. If you have any spare time or can get help, they bring in money. I know two men who cleared over $600 apiece doing outside work this last summer. They worked on the roads, in harvest and threshing, and received $5 per day for man and team. One can get all the outside breaking one's team can do at $4 per acre, so horse power is the main thing. Take a supply of meat along, also lard, canned goods, and other things for your cellar. One settler took a sugar barrel packed with canned fruit, and had not a single can broken or frozen, wrapping each in a whole newspaper and then packing in between with old rags, worn out underwear, old vests, and such goods as might otherwise be thrown away. Remember there is no old attic or store-room to go to on the new farm. The same settler says: "Cooked goods are also good. In the cold weather we kept and used beef that had been roasted two weeks before, and a bushel of cookies lasted well into the summer, keeping fresh in a tin box. Bring your cows and also your separator. The latter will not sell for much at the sale and is useful here, as you have no place to store quantities of milk. Bring at least your two best cows with you on the journey. We had milk all along the road and furnished the dining car cooks (we had a diner on our freight train) for favors they extended. Then when we landed we found that milk and cream were scarce, and butter of the farm variety out of range. "We packed two one-gallon jars before we moved and also some to use on the way. This lasted fresh and sweet until it was all used and saved us the trouble of churning or saving cream, hence we lived high on cream for the first few weeks. It came in handy making corn starch, as well as on our fruit and in a dozen other ways. We also had a nice big box of groceries handy and all selected for emergency. Corn starch, tapioca and similar packages are easy to handle while moving, and a big box of such things made cooking easy for the first few weeks. "Do not sell anything that can be used in your new farming. Old belts, singletrees, doubletrees, and such goods are worth far more away out on the prairies than on the old improved farm, and they will cost more here. We even brought our best big rugs and every carpet, even having more carpets than we had rooms. Your new home may not be as warm as the old one. We laid down a carpet and put a big rug right on top of that on the floor, and then we were comfortable in our rough house. Bring all sorts of tools and wagon gears with you; you will save money by doing so, anvil, drills, old bolts, and screws, etc., come in handy. We brought pieces of hardwood for doubletrees and unexpected uses. "Bring your stock remedies. You will be far from a veterinarian. Boracic acid comes in handy, so does a medicine cabinet for the household, with carbolic salve, liniments, etc. "One of the first things you will need is a hayrack, and you will not have time to build one before it is needed, so take the old one or build a new one and take it with you. It can be used for crating and for partitions and other purposes in loading the car. Make the sides of the rack quite close and have a solid bottom. "Bring along your base-burner. I am writing by a hard coal fire in a round oak stove, and it makes a splendid heat. Better soft coal than you ever burned can be had at $9.50 per ton, and hard coal is $13. Wood is plentiful in the parks, chiefly dry poplar and a species of willow. "So far from town one needs big supplies of kerosene, so bring a steel barrel that will not become leaky. You can buy oil cheaper by the barrel and it saves trouble. Also bring a good oil stove. It will do the baking and save hauling fuel in the long working season. "One thing we highly appreciated was a small tank we had made to carry water in the cars for the horses. It was made to hold two barrels, was about three feet in diameter and four high, and had the top soldered on, with a lid just large enough to get in a pail. This was the best arrangement on the train for hauling water. After we landed we had to haul water for our house use and the tank was very useful to draw up a couple of barrels and have a big supply on hand and no slopping when hauling." [Illustration: DOMINION OF CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND 1914] [Illustration] TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Obvious printer's errors, including punctuation have been silently corrected. Hyphenated and accented words have been standardized. All other inconsistencies have been left as in the original, excepted below. Customs Regulations: Missing word added "... is also to _be_ reckoned as..." Freight Regulations: "If the carload _weigh_" changed to "If the carload _weighs_". Page 7: familar changed to familiar. Page 8: Allen, Saskatchewan changed to Allan, Saskatchewan. Verified at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan,_Saskatchewan Two different spellings of Gerlack and Gerlach have been left as in the original. 
32863	----	http://www.archive.org/details/cottageeconomyco00cobb COTTAGE ECONOMY; CONTAINING INFORMATION RELATIVE TO THE BREWING OF BEER, MAKING OF BREAD, KEEPING OF COWS, PIGS, BEES, EWES, GOATS, POULTRY, AND RABBITS, AND RELATIVE TO OTHER MATTERS DEEMED USEFUL IN THE CONDUCTING OF THE AFFAIRS OF A LABOURER'S FAMILY; TO WHICH ARE ADDED, INSTRUCTIONS RELATIVE TO THE SELECTING, THE CUTTING AND THE BLEACHING OF THE PLANTS OF ENGLISH GRASS AND GRAIN, FOR THE PURPOSE OF MAKING HATS AND BONNETS; AND ALSO INSTRUCTIONS FOR ERECTING AND USING ICE-HOUSES, AFTER THE VIRGINIAN MANNER. TO WHICH IS ADDED THE POOR MAN'S FRIEND; OR, A DEFENCE OF THE RIGHTS OF THOSE WHO DO THE WORK, AND FIGHT THE BATTLES. BY WILLIAM COBBETT. New York: Published by John Doyle, 12, Liberty-St. Stereotyped by Conner & Cooke. 1833. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year of our Lord 1833, by John Doyle, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York. CONTENTS. No. I.--Introduction. To the Labouring Classes of this Kingdom--Brewing Beer, 5 II.--Brewing Beer, continued, 23 III.--Making Bread, 41 IV.--Making Bread, continued--Brewing Beer--Keeping Cows, 59 V.--Keeping Cows, continued,--Keeping Pigs, 73 VI.--Keeping Pigs, continued--Salting Mutton, and Beef, 86 VII.--Bees, Geese, Ducks, Turkeys, Fowls, Pigeons, Rabbits, Goats, and Ewes, Candles and Rushes, Mustard, Dress and Household Goods, and Fuel, Hops, and Yeast, 98 VIII.--Selecting, Cutting and Bleaching the Plants of English Grass and Grain, for the purpose of making Hats and Bonnets--Constructing and using Ice-houses, 122 ADDITION.--Mangel Wurzel--Cobbett's Corn, 151 INDEX, 158 COTTAGE ECONOMY. No. I. INTRODUCTION. TO THE LABOURING CLASSES OF THIS KINGDOM. 1. Throughout this little work, I shall _number_ the Paragraphs, in order to be able, at some stages of the work, to refer, with the more facility, to parts that have gone before. The last Number will contain an _Index_, by the means of which the several matters may be turned to without loss of time; for, when _economy_ is the subject, _time_ is a thing which ought by no means to be overlooked. 2. The word _Economy_, like a great many others, has, in its application, been very much abused. It is generally used as if it meant parsimony, stinginess, or niggardliness; and, at best, merely the refraining from expending money. Hence misers and close-fisted men disguise their propensity and conduct under the name of _economy_; whereas the most liberal disposition, a disposition precisely the contrary of that of the miser, is perfectly consistent with economy. 3. ECONOMY means _management_, and nothing more; and it is generally applied to the affairs of a house and family, which affairs are an object of the greatest importance, whether as relating to individuals or to a nation. A nation is made powerful and to be honoured in the world, not so much by the number of its people as by the ability and character of that people; and the ability and character of a people depend, in a great measure, upon the _economy_ of the several families, which, all taken together, make up the nation. There never yet was, and never will be, a nation _permanently great_, consisting, for the greater part, of wretched and miserable families. 4. In every view of the matter, therefore, it is desirable; that the families of which a nation consists should be happily off: and as this depends, in a great degree, upon the _management_ of their concerns, the present work is intended to convey, to the families of the _labouring classes_ in particular, such information as I think may be useful with regard to that management. 5. I lay it down as a maxim, that for a family to be happy, they must be well supplied with _food_ and _raiment_. It is a sorry effort that people make to persuade others, or to persuade themselves, that they can be happy in a state of _want_ of the necessaries of life. The doctrines which fanaticism preaches, and which teach men to be _content_ with _poverty_, have a very pernicious tendency, and are calculated to favour tyrants by giving them passive slaves. To live well, to enjoy all things that make life pleasant, is the right of every man who constantly uses his strength judiciously and lawfully. It is to blaspheme God to suppose, that he created man to be miserable, to hunger, thirst, and perish with cold, in the midst of that abundance which is the fruit of their own labour. Instead, therefore, of applauding "_happy_ poverty," which applause is so much the fashion of the present day, I despise the man that is _poor_ and _contented_; for, such content is a certain proof of a base disposition, a disposition which is the enemy of all industry, all exertion, all love of independence. 6. Let it be understood, however, that, by _poverty_, I mean _real want_, a real insufficiency of the food and raiment and lodging necessary to health and decency; and not that imaginary poverty, of which some persons complain. The man who, by his own and his family's labour, can provide a sufficiency of food and raiment, and a comfortable dwelling-place, is not a _poor man_. There must be different ranks and degrees in every civil society, and, indeed, so it is even amongst the savage tribes. There must be different degrees of wealth; some must have more than others; and the richest must be a great deal richer than the least rich. But it is necessary to the very existence of a people, that nine out of ten should live wholly by the sweat of their brow; and, is it not degrading to human nature, that all the nine-tenths should be called _poor_; and, what is still worse, _call themselves poor_, and be _contented_ in that degraded state? 7. The laws, the economy, or management, of a state may be such as to render it impossible for the labourer, however skilful and industrious, to maintain his family in health and decency; and such has, for many years past, been the management of the affairs of this once truly great and happy land. A system of paper-money, the effect of which was to take from the labourer the half of his earnings, was what no industry and care could make head against. I do not pretend that this system was adopted _by design_. But, no matter for the _cause_; such was the effect. 8. Better times, however, are approaching. The labourer now appears likely to obtain that hire of which he is worthy; and, therefore, this appears to me to be the time to press upon him the _duty_ of using his best exertions for the rearing of his family in a manner that must give him the best security for happiness to himself, his wife and children, and to make him, in all respects, what his forefathers were. The people of England have been famed, in all ages, for their _good living_; for the _abundance of their food_ and _goodness of their attire_. The old sayings about English roast beef and plum-pudding, and about English hospitality, had not their foundation in _nothing_. And, in spite of all refinements of sickly minds, it is _abundant living_ amongst the people at large, which is the great test of good government, and the surest basis of national greatness and security. 9. If the labourer have his fair wages; if there be no false weights and measures, whether of money or of goods, by which he is defrauded; if the laws be equal in their effect upon all men: if he be called upon for no more than his due share of the expenses necessary to support the government and defend the country, he has no reason to complain. If the largeness of his family demand extraordinary labour and care, these are due from him to it. He is the cause of the existence of that family; and, therefore, he is not, except in cases of accidental calamity, to throw upon others the burden of supporting it. Besides, "little children are as arrows in the hands of the giant, and blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of them." That is to say, children, if they bring their _cares_, bring also their _pleasures_ and _solid advantages_. They become, very soon, so many assistants and props to the parents, who, when old age comes on, are amply repaid for all the toils and all the cares that children have occasioned in their infancy. To be without sure and safe friends in the world makes life not worth having; and whom can we be so sure of as of our children? Brothers and sisters are a mutual support. We see them, in almost every case, grow up into prosperity, when they act the part that the impulses of nature prescribe. When cordially united, a father and sons, or a family of brothers and sisters, may, in almost any state of life, set what is called misfortune at defiance. 10. These considerations are much more than enough to sweeten the toils and cares of parents, and to make them regard every additional child as an additional blessing. But, that children may be a blessing and not a curse, care must be taken of their _education_. This word has, of late years, been so perverted, so corrupted; so abused, in its application, that I am almost afraid to use it here. Yet I must not suffer it to be usurped by cant and tyranny. I must use it: but not without clearly saying what I mean. 11. _Education_ means _breeding up_, _bringing up_, or _rearing up_; and nothing more. This includes every thing with regard to the _mind_ as well as the _body_ of a child; but, of late years, it has been so used as to have no sense applied to it but that of _book-learning_, with which, nine times out of ten, it has nothing at all to do. It is, indeed, proper, and it is the duty of all parents, to teach, or cause to be taught, their children as much as they can of books, _after_, and not before, all the measures are safely taken for enabling them to get their living by labour, or for _providing them a living without labour_, and that, too, out of the means obtained and secured by the parents out of their own income. The taste of the times is, unhappily, to give to children something of _book-learning_, with a view of placing them to live, in some way or other, _upon the labour of other people_. Very seldom, comparatively speaking, has this succeeded, even during the wasteful public expenditure of the last thirty years; and, in the times that are approaching, it cannot, I thank God, succeed at all. When the project has failed, what disappointment, mortification and misery, to both parent and child! The latter is spoiled as a labourer: his book-learning has only made him conceited: into some course of desperation he falls; and the end is but too often not only wretched but ignominious. 12. Understand me clearly here, however; for it is the duty of parents to give, if they be able, book-learning to their children, having _first_ taken care to make them capable of earning their living by _bodily labour_. When that object has once been secured, the other may, if the ability remain, be attended to. But I am wholly against children wasting their time in the idleness of what is called _education_; and particularly in schools over which the parents have no control, and where nothing is taught but the rudiments of servility, pauperism and slavery. 13. The _education_ that I have in view is, therefore, of a very different kind. You should bear constantly in mind, that nine-tenths of us are, from the very nature and necessities of the world, born to gain our livelihood by the sweat of our brow. What reason have we, then, to presume, that our children are not to do the same? If they be, as now and then one will be, endued with extraordinary powers of mind, those powers may have an opportunity of developing themselves; and if they never have that opportunity, the harm is not very great to us or to them. Nor does it hence follow that the descendants of labourers are _always_ to be labourers. The path upwards is steep and long, to be sure. Industry, care, skill, excellence, in the present parent, lay the foundation of _a rise_, under more favourable circumstances, for his children. The children of these take _another rise_; and, by-and-by, the descendants of the present labourer become gentlemen. 14. This is the natural progress. It is by attempting to reach the top at a _single leap_ that so much misery is produced in the world; and the propensity to make such attempts has been cherished and encouraged by the strange projects that we have witnessed of late years for making the labourers _virtuous_ and _happy_ by giving them what is called _education_. The education which I speak of consists in bringing children up to labour with _steadiness_, with _care_, and with _skill_; to show them how to do as many useful things as possible; to teach them to do them all in the best manner; to set them an example in industry, sobriety, cleanliness, and neatness; to make all these _habitual_ to them, so that they never shall be liable to fall into the contrary; to let them always see a _good living_ proceeding from _labour_, and thus to remove from them the temptation to get at the goods of others by violent or fraudulent means; and to keep far from their minds all the inducements to hypocrisy and deceit. 15. And, bear in mind, that if the state of the labourer has its disadvantages when compared with other callings and conditions of life, it has also its advantages. It is free from the torments of ambition, and from a great part of the causes of ill-health, for which not all the riches in the world and all the circumstances of high rank are a compensation. The able and prudent labourer is always _safe_, at the least; and that is what few men are who are lifted above him. They have losses and crosses to fear, the very thought of which never enters his mind, if he act well his part towards himself, his family and his neighbour. 16. But, the basis of good to him, is _steady and skilful labour_. To assist him in the pursuit of this labour, and in the turning of it to the best account, are the principal objects of the present little work. I propose to treat of brewing Beer, making Bread, keeping Cows and Pigs, rearing Poultry, and of other matters; and to show, that, while, from a very small piece of ground a large part of the food of a considerable family may be raised, the very act of raising it will be the best possible foundation of _education_ of the children of the labourer; that it will teach them a great number of useful things, _add greatly to their value when they go forth from_ their father's home, make them start in life with all possible advantages, and give them the best chance of leading happy lives. And is it not much more rational for parents to be employed in teaching their children how to cultivate a garden, to feed and rear animals, to make bread, beer, bacon, butter and cheese, and to be able to do these things for themselves, or for others, than to leave them to prowl about the lanes and commons, or to mope at the heels of some crafty, sleekheaded pretended saint, who while he extracts the last penny from their pockets, bids them be contented with their misery, and promises them, in exchange for their pence, everlasting glory in the world to come? It is upon the hungry and the wretched that the fanatic works. The dejected and forlorn are his prey. As an ailing carcass engenders vermin, a pauperized community engenders teachers of fanaticism, the very foundation of whose doctrines is, that we are to care nothing about this world, and that all our labours and exertions are in vain. 17. The man, who is doing well, who is in good health, who has a blooming and dutiful and cheerful and happy family about him, and who passes his day of rest amongst them, is not to be made to believe, that he was born to be miserable, and that poverty, the natural and just reward of laziness, is to secure him a crown of glory. Far be it from me to recommend a disregard of even outward observances as to matters of religion; but, can it be _religion_ to believe that God hath made us to be wretched and dejected? Can it be _religion_ to regard, as marks of his grace, the poverty and misery that almost invariably attend our neglect to use the means of obtaining a competence in worldly things? Can it be _religion_ to regard as blessings those things, those very things, which God expressly numbers amongst his curses? Poverty never finds a place amongst the _blessings_ promised by God. His blessings are of a directly opposite description; flocks, herds, corn, wine and oil; a smiling land; a rejoicing people; abundance for the body and gladness of the heart: these are the blessings which God promises to the industrious, the sober, the careful, and the upright. Let no man, then, believe that, to be poor and wretched is a mark of God's favour; and let no man remain in that state, if he, by any honest means, can rescue himself from it. 18. Poverty leads to all sorts of evil consequences. _Want_, horrid want, is the great parent of crime. To have a dutiful family, the father's principle of rule must be _love_ not _fear_. His sway must be gentle, or he will have only an unwilling and short-lived obedience. But it is given to but few men to be gentle and good-humoured amidst the various torments attendant on pinching poverty. A competence is, therefore, the first thing to be thought of; it is the foundation of all good in the labourer's dwelling; without it little but misery can be expected. "_Health_, _peace_, and _competence_," one of the wisest of men regards as the only things needful to man: but the two former are scarcely to be had without the latter. _Competence_ is the foundation of happiness and of exertion. Beset with wants, having a mind continually harassed with fears of starvation, who can act with energy, who can calmly think? To provide a _good living_, therefore, for himself and family, is the _very first duty_ of every man. "Two things," says AGUR, "have I asked; deny me them not before I die: remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full and deny thee; or lest I be poor and steal." 19. A _good living_ therefore, a _competence_, is the first thing to be desired and to be sought after; and, if this little work should have the effect of aiding only a small portion of the Labouring Classes in securing that competence, it will afford great gratification to their friend WM. COBBETT. _Kensington, 19th July, 1821._ BREWING BEER. 20. Before I proceed to give any directions about brewing, let me mention some of the inducements to do the thing. In former times, to set about to show to Englishmen that it was good for them to brew beer in their houses would have been as impertinent as gravely to insist, that they ought to endeavour not to lose their breath; for, in those times, (only forty years ago,) to have a _house_ and not to brew was a rare thing indeed. Mr. ELLMAN, an old man and a large farmer, in Sussex, has recently given in evidence, before a Committee of the House of Commons, this fact; that, _forty years ago_, there was not a labourer in his parish that did not _brew his own beer_; and that _now_ there is _not one that does it_, except by chance the malt be given him. The causes of this change have been the lowering of the wages of labour, compared with the price of provisions, by the means of the paper-money; the enormous tax upon the barley when made into _malt_; and the increased tax upon _hops_. These have quite changed the customs of the English people as to their drink. They still drink _beer_, but, in general, it is of the brewing of _common brewers_, and in public-houses, of which the common brewers have become the owners, and have thus, by the aid of paper-money, obtained a _monopoly_ in the supplying of the great body of the people with one of those things which, to the hard-working man, is almost a necessary of life. 21. These things will be altered. They must be altered. The nation must be sunk into nothingness, or a new system must be adopted; and the nation will not sink into nothingness. The malt now pays a tax of 4_s._ 6_d._[1] a bushel, and the barley costs only 3_s._ This brings the bushel of malt to 8_s._ including the maltster's charge for malting. If the tax were taken off the malt, malt would be sold, at the present price of barley, for about 3_s._ 3_d._ a bushel; because a bushel of barley makes more than a bushel of malt, and the tax, besides its amount, causes great expenses of various sorts to the maltster. The hops pay a tax of 2_d._[2] a pound; and a bushel of malt requires, in general, a pound of hops; if these two taxes were taken off, therefore, the consumption of barley and of hops would be exceedingly increased; for double the present quantity would be demanded, and the land is always ready to send it forth. 22. It appears impossible that the landlords should much longer submit to these intolerable burdens on their estates. In short, they must get off the malt tax, or lose those estates. They must do a great _deal more_, indeed; but that they must do at any rate. The paper-money is fast losing its destructive power; and things are, with regard to the labourers, coming back to what they were _forty years ago_, and therefore we may prepare for the making of beer in our own houses, and take leave of the poisonous stuff served out to us by common brewers. We may begin _immediately_; for, even at _present prices_, home-brewed beer is the _cheapest_ drink that a family can use, except _milk_, and milk can be applicable only in certain cases. 23. The drink which has come to supply the place of beer has, in general, been _tea_. It is notorious that tea has no _useful strength_ in it; that it contains nothing _nutritious_; that it, besides being _good_ for nothing, has _badness_ in it, because it is well known to produce want of sleep in many cases, and in all cases, to shake and weaken the nerves. It is, in fact, a weaker kind of laudanum, which enlivens for the moment and deadens afterwards. At any rate it communicates no strength to the body; it does not, in any degree, assist in affording what labour demands. It is, then, of no _use_. And, now, as to its _cost_, compared with that of _beer_. I shall make my comparison applicable to a year, or three hundred and sixty-five days. I shall suppose the tea to be only five shillings the pound; the sugar only sevenpence; the milk only twopence a quart. The prices are at the very lowest. I shall suppose a tea-pot to cost a shilling, six cups and saucers two shillings and sixpence, and six pewter spoons eighteen-pence. How to estimate the firing I hardly know; but certainly there must be in the course of the year, two hundred fires made that would not be made, were it not for tea drinking. Then comes the great article of all, the _time_ employed in this tea-making affair. It is impossible to make a fire, boil water, make the tea, drink it, wash up the things, sweep up the fire-place, and put all to rights again, in a less space of time, upon an average, than _two hours_. However, let us allow _one hour_; and here we have a woman occupied no less than three hundred and sixty-five hours in the year, or thirty whole days, at twelve hours in the day; that is to say, one month out of the twelve in the year, besides the waste of the man's time in hanging about waiting for the tea! Needs there any thing more to make us cease to wonder at seeing labourers' children with dirty linen and holes in the heels of their stockings? Observe, too, that the time thus spent is, one half of it, the best time of the day. It is the top of the morning, which, in every calling of life, contains an hour worth two or three hours of the afternoon. By the time that the clattering tea tackle is out of the way, the morning is spoiled; its prime is gone; and any work that is to be done afterwards lags heavily along. If the mother have to go out to work, the tea affair must all first be over. She comes into the field, in summer time, when the sun has gone a third part of his course. She has the heat of the day to encounter, instead of having her work done and being ready to return home at any early hour. Yet early she must go, too: for, there is the fire again to be made, the clattering tea-tackle again to come forward; and even in the longest day she must have _candle light_, which never ought to be seen in a cottage (except in case of illness) from March to September. 24. Now, then, let us take the bare cost of the use of tea. I suppose a pound of tea to last twenty days; which is not nearly half an ounce every morning and evening. I allow for each mess half a pint of milk. And I allow three pounds of the red dirty sugar to each pound of tea. The account of expenditure would then stand very high; but to these must be added the amount of the tea tackle, one set of which will, upon an average, be demolished every year. To these outgoings must be added the cost of beer at the public-house; for some the man will have, after all, and the woman too, unless they be upon the point of actual starvation. Two pots a week is as little as will serve in this way; and here is a dead loss of ninepence a week, seeing that two pots of beer, full as strong, and a great deal better, can be brewed at home for threepence. The account of the year's tea drinking will then stand thus: _L._ _s._ _d._ 18lb. of tea 4 10 0 54lb. of sugar 1 11 6 365 pints of milk 1 10 0 Tea tackle 0 5 0 200 fires 0 16 8 30 days' work 0 15 0 Loss by going to public-house 1 19 0 ------------ _L._ 11 7 2[3] 25. I have here estimated every thing at its very lowest. The entertainment which I have here provided is as poor, as mean, as miserable as any thing short of starvation can set forth; and yet the wretched thing amounts to a good third part of a good and able labourer's wages! For this money, he and his family may drink good and wholesome beer; in a short time, out of the mere savings from this waste, may drink it out of silver cups and tankards. In a labourer's family, _wholesome_ beer, that has a little life in it, is all that is wanted in _general_. Little children, that do not work, should not have beer. Broth, porridge, or something in that way, is the thing for them. However, I shall suppose, in order to make my comparison as little complicated as possible, that he brews nothing but beer as strong as the generality of beer to be had at the public-house, and divested of the poisonous drugs which that beer but too often contains; and I shall further suppose that he uses in his family two quarts of this beer every day from the first of October to the last day of March inclusive: three quarts a day during the months of April and May; four quarts a day during the months of June and September; and five quarts a day during the months of July and August; and if this be not enough, it must be a family of drunkards. Here are 1097 quarts, or 274 gallons. Now, a bushel of malt will make eighteen gallons of better beer than that which is sold at the public-houses. And this is precisely a gallon for the price of a quart. People should bear in mind, that the beer bought at the public-house is loaded with a _beer tax_, with the tax on the public-house keeper, in the shape of license, with all the taxes and expenses of the brewer, with all the taxes, rent, and other expenses of the publican, and with all the _profits_ of both brewer and publican; so that when a man swallows a pot of beer at a public-house, he has all these expenses to help to defray, besides the mere tax on the malt and on the hops. 26. Well, then, to brew this ample supply of good beer for a labourer's family, these 274 gallons, requires _fifteen_ bushels of malt and (for let us do the thing well) _fifteen pounds of hops_. The malt is now eight shillings a bushel, and very good hops may be bought for less than a shilling a pound. The _grains_ and yeast will amply pay for the labour and fuel employed in the brewing; seeing that there will be pigs to eat the grains, and bread to be baked with the yeast. The account will then stand thus: _L._ _s._ _d._ 15 bushels of malt 6 0 0 15 pounds of hops 0 15 0 Wear of utensils 0 10 0 ----------- _L._ 7 5 0[4] 27. Here, then, is the sum of four pounds two shillings and twopence saved every year. The utensils for brewing are, a brass kettle, a mashing tub, coolers, (for which washing tubs may serve,) a half hogshead, with one end taken out, for a tun tub, about four nine-gallon casks, and a couple of eighteen-gallon casks. This is an ample supply of utensils, each of which will last, with proper care, a good long lifetime or two, and the whole of which, even if purchased new from the shop, will only exceed by a few shillings, if they exceed at all, the amount of the saving, arising _the very first year_, from quitting the troublesome and pernicious practice of drinking tea. The saving of each succeeding year would, if you chose it, purchase a silver mug to hold half a pint at least. However, the saving would naturally be applied to purposes more conducive to the well-being and happiness of a family. 28. It is not, however, the _mere saving_ to which I look. This is, indeed, a matter of great importance, whether we look at the amount itself, or at the ultimate consequences of a judicious application of it; for _four pounds_ make a great _hole_ in a man's wages for the year; and when we consider all the advantages that would arise to a family of children from having these four pounds, now so miserably wasted, laid out upon their backs, in the shape of a decent dress, it is impossible to look at this waste without feelings of sorrow not wholly unmixed with those of a harsher description. 29. But, I look upon the thing in a still more serious light. I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth, and a maker of misery for old age. In the fifteen bushels of malt there are 570 pounds weight of _sweet_; that is to say, of nutricious matter, unmixed with any thing injurious to health. In the 730 tea messes of the year there are 54 pounds of sweet in the sugar, and about 30 pounds of matter equal to sugar in the milk. Here are 84 pounds instead of 570, and even the good effect of these 84 pounds is more than over-balanced by the corrosive, gnawing and poisonous powers of the tea. 30. It is impossible for any one to deny the truth of this statement. Put it to the test with a lean hog: give him the fifteen bushels of malt, and he will repay you in ten score of bacon or thereabouts. But give him the 730 tea messes, or rather begin to give them to him, and give him nothing else, and he is dead with hunger, and bequeaths you his skeleton, at the end of about seven days. It is impossible to doubt in such a case. The tea drinking has done a great deal in bringing this nation into the state of misery in which it now is; and the tea drinking, which is carried on by "dribs" and "drabs;" by pence and farthings going out at a time; this miserable practice has been gradually introduced by the growing weight of the taxes on malt and on hops, and by the everlasting penury amongst the labourers, occasioned by the paper-money. 31. We see better prospects however, and therefore let us now rouse ourselves, and shake from us the degrading curse, the effects of which have been much more extensive and infinitely more mischievous than men in general seem to imagine. 32. It must be evident to every one, that the practice of tea drinking must render the frame feeble and unfit to encounter hard labour or severe weather, while, as I have shown, it deducts from the means of replenishing the belly and covering the back. Hence succeeds a softness, an effeminacy, a seeking for the fire-side, a lurking in the bed, and, in short, all the characteristics of idleness, for which, in this case, real want of strength furnishes an apology. The tea drinking fills the public-house, makes the frequenting of it habitual, corrupts boys as soon as they are able to move from home, and does little less for the girls, to whom the gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel. At the very least, it teaches them idleness. The everlasting dawdling about with the slops of the tea tackle, gives them a relish for nothing that requires strength and activity. When they go from home, they know how to do nothing that is useful. To brew, to bake, to make butter, to milk, to rear poultry; to do any earthly thing of use they are wholly unqualified. To shut poor young creatures up in manufactories is bad enough; but there, at any rate, they do something that is useful; whereas, the girl that has been brought up merely to boil the tea-kettle, and to assist in the gossip inseparable from the practice, is a mere consumer of food, a pest to her employer, and a curse to her husband, if any man be so unfortunate as to fix his affections upon her. 33. But is it in the power of any man, any good labourer, who has attained the age of fifty, to look back upon the last thirty years of his life, without cursing the day in which tea was introduced into England? Where is there such a man, who cannot trace to this cause a very considerable part of all the mortifications and sufferings of his life? When was he ever _too late_ at his labour; when did he ever meet with a frown, with a turning off, and pauperism on that account, without being able to trace it to the tea-kettle? When reproached with lagging in the morning, the poor wretch tells you that he will make up for it by _working during his breakfast time_! I have heard this a hundred and a hundred times over. He was up time enough; but the tea-kettle kept him lolling and lounging at home; and now, instead of sitting down to a breakfast upon bread, bacon, and beer, which is to carry him on to the hour of dinner, he has to force his limbs along under the sweat of feebleness, and at dinner time to swallow his dry bread, or slake his half-feverish thirst at the pump or the brook. To the wretched tea-kettle he has to return at night, with legs hardly sufficient to maintain him; and thus he makes his miserable progress towards that death, which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner than he would have found it had he made his wife brew beer instead of making tea. If he now and then gladdens his heart with the drugs of the public house, some quarrel, some accident, some illness, is the probable consequence; to the affray abroad succeeds an affray at home; the mischievous example reaches the children, corrupts them or scatters them, and misery for life is the consequence. 34. I should now proceed to the _details_ of brewing; but these, though they will not occupy a large space, must be put off to the _second number_. The custom of brewing at home has so long ceased amongst labourers, and, in many cases, amongst tradesmen, that it was necessary for me fully to state my reasons for wishing to see the custom revived. I shall, in my next, clearly explain how the operation is performed; and it will be found to be so _easy a thing_, that I am not without hope, that many _tradesmen_, who now spend their evenings at the public house, amidst tobacco smoke and empty _noise_, may be induced, by the finding of better drink at home, at a quarter part of the price, to perceive that home is by far the pleasantest place wherein to pass their hours of relaxation. 35. My work is intended chiefly for the benefit of _cottagers_, who must, of course, have some _land_; for, I purpose to show, that a large part of the food of even a large family may be raised, without any diminution of the labourer's earnings abroad, from forty rod, or a quarter of an acre, of ground; but at the same time, what I have to say will be applicable to larger establishments, in all the branches of domestic economy: and especially to that of providing a family with _beer_. 36. The _kind of beer_, for a labourer's family, that is to say, the _degree of strength_, must depend on circumstances; on the numerousness of the family; on the season of the year, and various other things. But, generally speaking, beer _half_ the strength of that mentioned in paragraph 25 will be quite strong enough; for that is, at least, one-third stronger than the farm-house "_small beer_," which, however, as long experience has proved, is best suited to the purpose. A judicious labourer would probably always have some _ale_ in his house, and have small beer for the general drink. There is no reason why he should not keep _Christmas_ as well as the farmer; and when he is _mowing_, _reaping_, or is at any other hard work, a quart, or three pints, of _really good fat ale_ a-day is by no means too much. However, circumstances vary so much with different labourers, that as to the _sort_ of beer, and the number of brewings, and the times of brewing, no general rule can be laid down. 37. Before I proceed to explain the uses of the several brewing utensils, I must speak of the _quality_ of the materials of which beer is made; that is to say, the _malt_, _hops_, and _water_. Malt varies very much in quality, as, indeed, it must, with the quality of the barley. When good, it is full of flour, and in biting a grain asunder, you find it bite easily, and see the _shell thin_ and filled up well with flour. If it bite _hard_ and _steely_, the malt is bad. There is _pale_ malt and _brown_ malt; but the difference in the two arises merely from the different degrees of heat employed in the drying. The main thing to attend to is, the _quantity of flour_. If the barley was bad; _thin_, or _steely_, whether from unripeness or blight, or any other cause, it will not _malt_ so well; that is to say, it will not send out its roots in due time; and a part of it will still be barley. Then, the world is wicked enough to think, and even to say, that there are maltsters who, when they send you a bushel of malt, _put a little barley amongst it_, the malt being _taxed_ and the barley _not_! Let us hope that this is seldom the case; yet, when we _do know_ that this terrible system of taxation induces the beer-selling gentry to supply their customers with stuff little better than poison, it is not very uncharitable to suppose it possible for some maltsters to yield to the temptations of the devil so far as to play the trick above mentioned. To detect this trick, and to discover what portion of the barley is in an unmalted state, take a handful of the _unground_ malt, and put it into a bowl of cold water. Mix it about with the water a little; that is, let every grain be _just wet all over_; and whatever part of them _sink_ are not good. If you have your malt _ground_, there is not, as I know of, any means of detection. Therefore, if your brewing be considerable in amount, _grind your own malt_, the means of doing which is very easy, and neither expensive nor troublesome, as will appear, when I come to speak of _flour_. If the barley be _well malted_, there is still a variety in the quality of the malt; that is to say, a bushel of malt from fine, plump, heavy barley, will be better than the same quantity from thin and light barley. In this case, as in the case of wheat, the _weight_ is the criterion of the quality. Only bear in mind, that as a bushel of wheat, weighing _sixty-two_ pounds, is better worth _six_ shillings, than a bushel weighing _fifty-two_ is worth _four_ shillings, so a bushel of malt weighing _forty-five_ pounds is better worth _nine_ shillings, than a bushel weighing _thirty-five_ is worth _six_ shillings. In malt, therefore, as in every thing else, the word _cheap_ is a deception, unless the quality be taken into view. But, bear in mind, that in the case of _unmalted_ barley, mixed with the malt, the _weight_ can be no rule; for barley is _heavier_ than malt. No. II. BREWING BEER--(_continued._) 38. As to using _barley_ in the making of beer, I have given it a full and fair trial twice over, and I would recommend it to neither rich nor poor. The barley produces _strength_, though nothing like the malt; but the beer is _flat_, even though you use half malt and half barley; and flat beer lies heavy on the stomach, and of course, besides the bad taste, is unwholesome. To pay 4_s._ 6_d._ tax upon every bushel of our own barley, turned into malt, when the barley itself is not worth 3_s._ a bushel, is a horrid thing; but, as long as the owners of the land shall be so dastardly as to suffer themselves to be thus deprived of the use of their estates to favour the slave-drivers and plunderers of the East and West Indies, we must submit to the thing, incomprehensible to foreigners, and even to ourselves, as the submission may be. 39. With regard to _hops_, the quality is very various. At times when some sell for 5_s._ a pound, others sell for _sixpence_. Provided the purchaser understand the article, the quality is, of course, in proportion to the price. There are two things to be considered in hops: the _power of preserving beer_, and that of giving it a _pleasant flavour_. Hops may be _strong_; and yet not _good_. They should be _bright_, have no _leaves_ or bits of branches amongst them. The hop is the _husk_, or _seed-pod_, of the hop-vine, as the _cone_ is that of the fir-tree; and the _seeds_ themselves are deposited, like those of the fir, round a little soft stalk, enveloped by the several folds of this pod, or cone. If, in the gathering, leaves of the vine or bits of the branches are mixed with the hops, these not only help to make up the _weight_, but they give a _bad taste_ to the beer; and indeed, if they abound much, they spoil the beer. Great attention is therefore necessary in this respect. There are, too, numerous _sorts_ of hops, varying in size, form, and quality, quite as much as _apples_. However, when they are in a state to be used in brewing, the marks of goodness are an absence of _brown colour_, (for that indicates perished hops;) a colour _between green_ and _yellow_; a great _quantity of the yellow farina_; seeds _not too large nor too hard_; a _clammy feel_ when rubbed between the fingers; and a _lively_, pleasant smell. As to the _age_ of hops, they retain for twenty years, probably, their _power of preserving beer_; but not of giving it a pleasant flavour. I have used them at _ten years old_, and should have no fear of using them at twenty. They lose none of their _bitterness_; none of their power of preserving beer; but they lose the other quality; and therefore, in the making of fine ale, or beer, new hops are to be preferred. As to the _quantity_ of hops, it is clear, from what has been said, that that must, in some degree depend upon their _quality_; but, supposing them to be good in quality, a pound of hops to a bushel of malt is about the quantity. A good deal, however, depends upon the length of time that the beer is intended to be kept, and upon the season of the year in which it is brewed. Beer intended to be kept a long while should have the full pound, also beer brewed in warmer weather, though for present use: half the quantity may do under an opposite state of circumstances. 40. The _water_ should be soft by all means. That of brooks, or rivers, is best. That of a _pond_, fed by a rivulet, or spring, will do very well. _Rain-water_, if just fallen, may do; but stale rain-water, or stagnant pond-water, makes the beer _flat_ and difficult to keep; and _hard water_, from wells, is very bad; it does not get the sweetness out of the malt, nor the bitterness out of the hops, like soft water; and the wort of it does not ferment well, which is a certain proof of its unfitness for the purpose. 41. There are two descriptions of persons whom I am desirous to see brewing their own beer; namely, _tradesmen_, and _labourers_ and _journeymen_. There must, therefore, be two _distinct scales_ treated of. In the former editions of this work, I spoke of a _machine_ for brewing, and stated the advantages of using it in a family of any considerable consumption of beer; but, while, from my desire to promote _private brewing_, I strongly recommended the _machine_, I stated that, "if any of my readers could point out any method by which we should be more likely to restore the practice of private brewing, and especially to the _cottage_, I should be greatly obliged to them to communicate it to me." Such communications have been made, and I am very happy to be able, in this new edition of my little work, to avail myself of them. There was, in the _Patent Machine_, always, an objection on account of the _expense_; for, even the machine for _one bushel of malt_ cost, at the reduced price, _eight pounds_; a sum far above the reach of _a cottager_, and even above that of a small tradesman. Its _convenience_, especially in _towns_, where room is so valuable, was an object of great importance; but there were _disadvantages_ attending it which, until after some experience, I did not ascertain. It will be remembered that the method by the brewing machine requires the malt to be put into _the cold water_, and for the water to make the malt _swim_, or, at least, to be in such proportion as to prevent the fire beneath from burning the malt. We found that our beer was _flat_, and that it did _not keep_. And this arose, I have every reason to believe, from this process. The malt should be put _into hot water_, and the water, at first, should be but just sufficient in quantity to _stir the malt in_, and _separate it well_. Nevertheless, when it is merely to make _small beer_; beer _not wanted to keep_; in such cases the brewing machine may be of use; and, as will be seen by-and-by, a moveable _boiler_ (which has nothing to do with the _patent_) may, in many cases, be of great convenience and utility. 42. The two _scales_ of which I have spoken above, are now to be spoken of; and, that I may explain my meaning the more clearly, I shall suppose, that, for the tradesman's family, it will be requisite to brew eighteen gallons of ale and thirty-six of small beer, to fill three casks of eighteen gallons each. It will be observed, of course, that, for larger quantities, larger utensils of all sorts will be wanted. I take this quantity as the one to give directions on. The utensils wanted here will be, FIRST, a _copper_ that will contain _forty gallons_, at least; for, though there be to be but thirty-six gallons of small beer, there must be space for the hops, and for the liquor that goes off in steam. SECOND, a _mashing-tub_ to contain sixty gallons; for the malt is to be in this along with the water. THIRD, an _underbuck_, or shallow tub to go under the mash-tub, for the wort to run into when drawn from the grains. FOURTH, a _tun-tub_, that will contain thirty gallons, to put the ale into to work, the mash-tub, as we shall see, serving as a tun-tub for the small beer. Besides these, a couple of _coolers_, shallow tubs, which may be the heads of wine buts, or some such things, about a foot deep; or if you have _four_ it may be as well, in order to effect the cooling more quickly. 43. You begin by filling the copper with water, and next by making the water _boil_. You then put into the mashing-tub water sufficient _to stir and separate the malt in_. But now let me say more particularly what this mashing-tub is. It is, you know, to contain _sixty gallons_. It is to be a little broader at top than at bottom, and not quite so deep as it is wide across the bottom. Into the middle of the bottom there is a hole about two inches over, to draw the wort off through. In this hole goes a stick, a foot or two longer than the tub is high. This stick is to be about two inches through, and _tapered_ for about eight inches upwards at the end that goes into the hole, which at last it fills up closely as a cork. Upon the hole, before any thing else be put into the tub, you lay a little bundle of _fine birch_, (heath or straw _may_ do,) about half the bulk of a birch broom, and well tied at both ends. This being laid over the hole (to keep back the grains as the wort goes out,) you put the tapered end of the stick down through into the hole, and thus _cork_ the hole up. You must then have something of weight sufficient to keep the birch steady at the bottom of the tub, with a hole through it to slip down the stick; otherwise when the stick is raised it will be apt to raise the birch with it, and when you are stirring the mash you would move it from its place. The best thing for this purpose will be a _leaden collar_ for the stick, with the hole in the collar plenty large enough, and it should weigh three or four pounds. The thing they use in some farm-houses is the iron box of a wheel. Any thing will do that will slide down the stick, and lie with weight enough on the birch to keep it from moving. Now, then, you are ready to begin brewing. I allow _two bushels_ of malt for the brewing I have supposed. You must now put into the mashing-tub as much boiling water as will be sufficient to _stir the malt in_ and _separate it well_. But here occur some of the nicest points of all; namely, the _degree of heat_ that the water is to be at, before you put in the malt. This heat is _one hundred and seventy degrees_ by the thermometer. If you have a thermometer, this is ascertained easily; but, without one, take this rule, by which so much good beer has been made in England for hundreds of years: when you can, by looking down into the tub, _see your face clearly in the water_, the water is become cool enough; and you must not put the malt in before. Now put in the malt and _stir it well in the water_. To perform this stirring, which is very necessary, you have a stick, somewhat bigger than a broom-stick, with two or three smaller sticks, eight or ten inches long, put through the lower end of it at about three or four inches asunder, and sticking out on each side of the long stick. These small cross sticks serve to search the malt and separate it well in the stirring or _mashing_. Thus, then, the _malt is in_; and in this state it should continue for about a quarter of an hour. In the mean while you will have filled up your copper, and made it _boil_; and now (at the end of the quarter of an hour) you put in boiling water sufficient to give you your eighteen gallons of _ale_. But, perhaps, you must have thirty gallons of water in the whole; for the grains will retain at least ten gallons of water; and it is better to have rather too much wort than too little. When your proper quantity of water is in, stir the malt again well. Cover the mashing-tub over with _sacks_, or something that will answer the same purpose; and there let the mash stand for _two hours_. When it has stood the two hours, you draw off the wort. And now, mind, the mashing-tub is placed on a _couple of stools_, or on something, that will enable you to put the _underbuck_ under it, so as to receive the wort as it comes out of the hole before-mentioned. When you have put the underbuck in its place, you let out the wort by pulling up the stick that corks the whole. But, observe, this stick (which goes six or eight inches through the hole) must be raised by degrees, and the wort must be let out _slowly_, in order to keep back the _sediment_. So that it is necessary to have something to _keep the stick up_ at the point where you are to raise it, and wish to fix it at for the time. To do this, the simplest, cheapest and best thing in the world is a _cleft stick_. Take a _rod_ of ash, hazel, birch, or almost any wood; let it be a foot or two longer than your mashing-tub is wide over the top; _split_ it, as if for making hoops; tie it round with a string at each end; lay it across your mashing-tub; pull it open in the middle, and let the upper part of the wort-stick through it, and when you raise that stick, by degrees as before directed, the cleft stick _will hold it up_ at whatever height you please. 44. When you have drawn off the _ale-wort_, you proceed to put into the mashing tub water for the _small beer_. But, I shall go on with my directions about the _ale_ till I have got it into the _cask_ and _cellar_; and shall then return to the small-beer. 45. As you draw off the ale-wort into the underbuck, you must lade it out of that into the tun-tub, for which work, as well as for various other purposes in the brewing, you must have a _bowl-dish_ with a handle to it. The underbuck will not hold the whole of the wort. It is, as before described, a shallow tub, to go _under_ the mashing-tub to draw off the wort into. Out of this underbuck you must lade the ale-wort into the _tun-tub_; and there it must remain till your _copper_ be emptied and ready to receive it. 46. The copper being empty, you put the wort into it, and put in after the wort, or before it, _a pound and a half of good hops_, well rubbed and separated as you put them in. You now make the copper boil, and keep it, with the lid off, at a good _brisk_ boil, for a _full hour_, and if it be an hour and a half it is none the worse. 47. When the boiling is done, put out your fire, and put the liquor into the _coolers_. But it must be put into the coolers _without the hops_. Therefore, in order to get the hops out of the liquor, you must have a _strainer_. The best for your purpose is a small _clothes-basket_, or any other wicker-basket. You set your coolers in the most convenient place. It may be in-doors or out of doors, as most convenient. You lay a couple of sticks across one of the coolers, and put the basket upon them. Put your liquor, hops and all, into the basket, which will _keep back the hops_. When you have got liquor enough in one cooler, you go to another with your sticks and basket, till you have got all your liquor out. If you find your liquor deeper in one cooler than the other, you can make an alteration in that respect, till you have the liquor so distributed as to cool equally fast in both, or all, the coolers. 48. The next stage of the liquor is in the _tun-tub_, where it is _set to work_. Now, a very great point is, the _degree of heat_ that the liquor is to be at when it is set to working. The proper heat is seventy degrees; so that a thermometer makes this matter sure. In the country they determine the degree of heat by merely putting a finger into the liquor. Seventy degrees is but _just warm_, a gentle _luke-warmth_. Nothing like _heat_. A little experience makes perfectness in such a matter. When at the proper heat, or nearly, (for the liquor will cool a little in being removed,) put it into the _tun-tub_. And now, before I speak of the act of setting the beer to work, I must describe this _tun-tub_, which I first mentioned in Paragraph 42. It is to hold _thirty gallons_, as you have seen; and nothing is better than an old _cask_ of that size, or somewhat larger, with the head taken out, or cut off. But, indeed, any tub of sufficient dimensions, and of about the same depth proportioned to the width as a cask or barrel has, will do for the purpose. Having put the liquor into the tun-tub, you put in the _yeast_. About _half a pint_ of good yeast is sufficient. This should first be put into a thing of some sort that will hold about a gallon of your liquor; the thing should then be nearly filled with liquor, and with a stick or spoon you should mix the yeast well with the liquor in this bowl, or other thing, and stir in along with the yeast a handful of _wheat or rye flour_. This mixture is then to be poured out clean into the tun-tub, and the whole mass of the liquor is then to be agitated well by lading up and pouring down again with your bowl-dish, till the yeast be well mixed with the liquor. Some people do the thing in another manner. They mix up the yeast and flour with some liquor (as just mentioned) taken out of the coolers; and then they set the little vessel that contains this mixture down _on the bottom of the tun-tub_; and, leaving it there, put the liquor out of the coolers into the tun-tub. Being placed at the bottom, and having the liquor poured on it, the mixture is, perhaps, more perfectly effected in this way than in any way. The _flour_ may not be necessary; but, as the country people use it, it is, doubtless, of some use; for their hereditary experience has not been for nothing. When your liquor is thus properly put into the tun-tub and set a working, cover over the top of the tub by laying across it a sack or two, or something that will answer the purpose. 49. We now come to the _last stage_; the _cask_ or _barrel_. But I must first speak of the place for the tun-tub to stand in. The place should be such as to avoid too much warmth or cold. The air should, if possible, be at about 55 degrees. Any cool place in summer and any _warmish_ place in winter. If the weather be _very cold_, some cloths or sacks should be put round the tun-tub while the beer is working. In about six or eight hours, a _frothy_ head will rise upon the liquor; and it will keep rising, more or less slowly, for about forty-eight hours. But, the _length of time_ required for the working depends on various circumstances; so that no precise time can be fixed. The best way is, to take off the froth (which is indeed _yeast_) at the end of about twenty-four hours, with a common skimmer, and put it into a pan or vessel of some sort; then, in twelve hours' time, take it off again in the same way; and so on till the liquor has _done working_, and sends up no more yeast. Then it is _beer_; and when it is _quite cold_ (for _ale_ or _strong beer_) put it into the _cask_ by means of a _funnel_. It must be cold before you do this, or it will be what the country-people call _foxed_; that is to say, have a rank and disagreeable taste. Now, as to the _cask_, it must be _sound_ and _sweet_. I thought, when writing the former edition of this work, that the _bell-shaped_ were the best casks. I am now convinced that that was an error. The bell-shaped, by contracting the width of the top of the beer, as that top descends, in consequence of the draft for use, certainly prevents the _head_ (which always gathers on beer as soon as you begin to draw it off) from breaking and mixing in amongst the beer. This is an advantage in the bell-shape; but then the bell-shape, which places the widest end of the cask uppermost, exposes the cask to the admission of _external air_ much more than the other shape. This danger approaches from the _ends_ of the cask; and, in the bell-shape, you have the _broadest_ end wholly exposed the moment you have drawn out the first gallon of beer, which is not the case with the casks of the common shape. Directions are given, in the case of the bell-casks, to put _damp sand_ on the top to keep out the air. But, it is very difficult to make this effectual; and yet, if you do not keep out the air, your beer will be _flat_; and when flat, it really is good for nothing but the pigs. It is very difficult to _fill_ the bell-cask, which you will easily see if you consider its shape. It must be placed on the _level_ with the greatest possible _truth_, or there will be a space left; and to place it with such truth is, perhaps, as difficult a thing as a mason or bricklayer ever had to perform. And yet, if this be not done, there will be an _empty space_ in the cask, though it may, at the same time, run over. With the common casks there are none of these difficulties. A common eye will see when it is well placed; and, at any rate, any little vacant space that may be left is not at an _end_ of the cask, and will, without great carelessness, be so small as to be of no consequence. We now come to the act of putting in the beer. The cask should be placed on a stand with legs about a foot long. The cask, being round, must have a little wedge, or block, on each side to keep it steady. _Bricks_ do very well. Bring your beer down into the cellar in buckets, and pour it in through the funnel, until the cask be full. The cask should _lean a little on one side_, when you fill it; because the beer will _work again_ here, and send more yeast out of the bung-hole; and, if the cask were not a little on one side, the yeast would flow over both sides of the cask, and would not descend in _one stream_ into a pan, put underneath to receive it. Here the bell-cask is extremely inconvenient; for the yeast works up all _over the head_, and _cannot run off_, and makes a very nasty affair. This _alone_, to say nothing of the other disadvantages, would decide the question against the bell-casks. Something will _go off in this working_, which may continue for two or three days. When you put the beer in the cask, you should have a _gallon or two left_, to keep filling up with as the working produces emptiness. At last, when the working is completely over, _right_ the cask. That is to say, block it up to its level. Put in a handful of _fresh hops_. Fill the cask quite full. Put in the bung, with a bit of _coarse linen_ stuff round it; hammer it down tight; and, if you like, fill a coarse bag with sand, and lay it, well pressed down, over the bung. 50. As to the length of time that you are to keep the beer before you begin to use it, that must, in some measure, depend on taste. _Such beer_ as this _ale_ will keep almost any length of time. As to the mode of _tapping_, that is as easy almost as _drinking_. When the cask is _empty_, great care must be taken to cork it _tightly up_, so that no air get in; for, if it do, the cask is _moulded_, and when once moulded, it is _spoiled for ever_. It is never again fit to be used about beer. Before the cask be used again, the grounds must be poured out, and the cask cleaned by several times scalding; by putting in _stones_ (or a _chain_,) and rolling and shaking about till it be quite clean. Here again the round casks have the decided advantage; it being almost impossible to make the bell-casks thoroughly clean, without _taking the head out_, which is both troublesome and expensive; as it cannot be well done by any one but a _cooper_, who is not always at hand, and who, when he is, must be _paid_. 51. I have now done with the _ale_, and it remains for me to speak of the _small beer_. In Paragraph 47 (which now see) I left you drawing off the _ale-wort_, and with your copper full of boiling water. Thirty-six gallons of that boiling water are, as soon as you have got your ale-wort out, and have put down your mash-tub stick to close up the hole at the bottom; as soon as you have done this, thirty-six gallons of the boiling water are to go into the mashing-tub; the grains are to be well stirred up, as before; the mashing-tub is to be covered over again, as mentioned in Paragraph 43; and the mash is to stand in that state for _an hour_, and not two hours, as for the ale-wort. 52. When the small beer mash has stood its hour, draw it off as in Paragraph 47, and put it into the tun-tub as you did the ale-wort. 53. By this time your copper will be _empty_ again, by putting your ale-liquor to cool, as mentioned in Paragraph 47. And you now put the small beer wort _into the copper_, with the hops that you used before, and with _half a pound of fresh hops_ added to them; and this liquor you boil briskly for _an hour_. 54. By this time you will have taken the grains and the sediment clean out of the mashing-tub, and taken out the bunch of birch twigs, and made all clean. Now put in the birch twigs again, and put down your stick as before. Lay your two or three sticks across the mashing-tub, put your basket on them, and take your liquor from the copper (putting the fire out first) and pour it into the mashing-tub through the basket. Take the basket away, throw the hops to the dunghill, and leave the small beer liquid _to cool in the mashing-tub_. 55. Here it is to remain to be _set to working_ as mentioned for the ale, in Paragraph 48; only, in this case, you will want _more yeast in proportion_; and should have for your thirty-six gallons of small beer, three half pints of good yeast. 56. Proceed, as to all the rest of the business, as with the ale, only, in the case of the small beer, it should be put into the cask, not _quite cold_, but a _little warm_; or else it will not work at all in the barrel, which it ought to do. It will not work so strongly or so long as the ale; and may be put in the barrel much sooner; in general the next day after it is brewed. 57. All the utensils should be well cleaned and put away as soon as they are done with; the _little_ things as well as the great things; for it is _loss of time_ to make new ones. And, now, let us see the _expense_ of these utensils. The copper, _new_, 5_l._; the mashing-tub, _new_, 30_s._; the tun-tub, not new, 5_s._; the underbuck and three coolers, not new, 20_s._ The whole cost is 7_l._ 10_s._ which is ten shillings less than the _one bushel machine_. I am now in a farm-house, where the _same set_ of utensils has been used for _forty years_; and the owner tells me, that, with the same use, they may last for _forty years longer_. The machine will not, I think, last _four years_, if in any thing like regular use. It is of sheet-iron, _tinned on the inside_, and this tin _rusts_ exceedingly, and is not to be kept clean without such _rubbing_ as must soon take off the tin. The great advantage of the machine is, that it can be _removed_. You can brew without a _brew-house_.--You can set the boiler up against any fire-place, or any window. You can brew under a cart-shed, and even out of doors. But all this may be done with _these utensils_, if your _copper_ be moveable. Make the boiler of _copper_, and not of sheet-iron, and fix it on a stand with a fire-place and stove-pipe; and then you have the whole to brew out of doors with as well as in-doors, which is a very great convenience. 58. Now with regard to the _other_ scale of brewing, little need be said; because, all the principles being the same, the utensils only are to be proportioned to the _quantity_. If only one sort of beer be to be brewed at a time, all the difference is, that, in order to extract the whole of the goodness of the malt, the mashing ought to be at _twice_. The two worts are then put together, and then you boil them together with the hops. 59. A Correspondent at _Morpeth_ says, the whole of the utensils used by him are a twenty-gallon _pot_, a mashing-tub, that also answers for a tun-tub, and a shallow tub for a cooler; and that these are plenty for a person who is any thing of a contriver. This is very true; and these things will cost no more, perhaps, than _forty shillings_. A nine gallon cask of beer can be brewed very well with such utensils. Indeed, it is what used to be done by almost every labouring man in the kingdom, until the high price of malt and comparatively low price of wages rendered the people too poor and miserable to be able to brew at all. A Correspondent at Bristol has obligingly sent me the model of utensils for _brewing on a small scale_; but as they consist chiefly of _brittle ware_, I am of opinion that they would not so well answer the purpose. 60. Indeed, as to the country labourers, all they want is the ability to _get the malt_. Mr. ELLMAN, in his evidence before the Agricultural Committee, said, that, when he began farming, forty-five years ago, there was not a labourer's family in the parish that did not brew their own beer and enjoy it by their own fire-sides; and that, _now, not one single family did it, from want of ability to get the malt_. It is the _tax_ that prevents their getting the malt; for, the barley is cheap enough. The tax causes a monopoly in the hands of the maltsters, who, when the tax is _two_ and _sixpence_, make the malt, cost 7_s._ 6_d._, though the barley cost but 2_s._ 6_d._; and though the malt, tax and all, ought to cost him about 5_s._ 6_d._ If the tax were taken off, this _pernicious monopoly_ would be destroyed. 61. The reader will easily see, that, in proportion to the quantity wanted to be brewed must be the size of the utensils; but, I may observe here, that the above utensils are sufficient for three, or even four, bushels of malt, if stronger beer be wanted. 62. When it is necessary, in case of falling short in the quantity wanted to fill up the ale cask, some may be taken from the small beer. But, upon the _whole brewing_, there ought to be no falling short; because, if the casks be not _filled up_, the beer will not be good, and certainly will not _keep_. Great care should be taken as to the _cleansing_ of the _casks_. They should be made perfectly _sweet_; or it is impossible to have good beer. 63. The cellar, for beer to keep any length of time, should be cool. Under _a hill_ is the best place for a cellar; but, at any rate, a cellar of good depth, and _dry_. At certain times of the year, beer that is kept long will ferment. The vent-pegs must, in such cases, be loosened a little, and afterwards fastened. 64. Small beer may be tapped almost directly. It is a sort of joke that it should _see a Sunday_; but, that it may do before it be two days old. In short, any beer is better than water; but it should have some strength and some _weeks_ of age at any rate. 65. I cannot conclude this Essay without expressing my pleasure, that a law has been recently passed to authorize the general retail of beer. This really seems necessary to prevent the King's subjects from being _poisoned_. The brewers and porter quacks have carried their tricks to such an extent, that there is _no safety_ for those who drink brewer's beer. 66. The best and most effectual thing is, however, for people to _brew their own beer_, to enable them and induce them to do which, I have done all that lies in my power. A longer treatise on the subject would have been of no use. These few plain directions will suffice for those who have a disposition to do the thing, and those who have not would remain unmoved by any thing that I could say. 67. There seems to be a _great number of things to do_ in brewing, but the greater part of them require only about a _minute_ each. A brewing, such as I have given the detail of above, may be completed in _a day_; but, by the word _day_, I mean to include the _morning_, beginning at four o'clock. 68. The putting of the beer into barrel is not more than an hour's work for a servant woman, or a tradesman's or a farmer's wife. There is no _heavy_ work, no work too heavy for a woman in any part of the business, otherwise I would not recommend it to be performed by the women, who, though so amiable in themselves, are never quite so amiable as when they are _useful_; and as to beauty, though men may fall in love with girls at _play_, there is nothing to make them stand to their love like seeing them at _work_. In conclusion of these remarks on beer brewing, I once more express my most anxious desire to see abolished for ever the accursed tax on _malt_, which, I verily believe, has done more harm to the people of England than was ever done to any people by plague, pestilence, famine, and civil war. 69. In Paragraph 76, in Paragraph 108, and perhaps in another place or two (of the last edition,) I spoke of the _machine_ for brewing. The work being _stereotyped_, it would have been troublesome to alter those paragraphs; but, of course, the public, in reading them, will bear in mind what has been _now_ said relative to the _machine_. The inventor of that machine deserves great praise for his efforts to promote private brewing; and, as I said before, in certain confined situations, and where the beer is to be merely _small beer_, and for _immediate use_, and where _time_ and _room_ are of such importance as to make the _cost_ of the machine comparatively of trifling consideration, the machine may possibly be found to be an useful utensil. 70. Having stated the inducements to the brewing of beer, and given the plainest directions that I was able to give for the doing of the thing, I shall, next, proceed to the subject of _bread_. But this subject is too large and of too much moment to be treated with brevity, and must, therefore, be put off till my next Number. I cannot, in the mean while, dismiss the subject of _brewing beer_ without once more adverting to its many advantages, as set forth in the foregoing Number of this work. 71. The following instructions for the making of _porter_, will clearly show what sort of stuff is sold at _public-houses_ in London; and we may pretty fairly suppose that the public-house beer in the country is not superior to it in quality, "A quarter of malt, with these ingredients, will make _five barrels of good porter_. Take one quarter of high-coloured malt, eight pounds of hops, nine pounds of _treacle_, eight pounds of _colour_, eight pounds of sliced _liquorice-root_, two drams of _salt of tartar_, two ounces of _Spanish-liquorice_, and half an ounce of _capsicum_." The author says, that he merely gives the ingredients, as _used by many persons_. 72. This extract is taken from a _book on brewing_, recently published in London. What a curious composition! What a mess of drugs! But, if the brewers _openly avow_ this, what have we to expect from the _secret practices_ of them, and the _retailers_ of the article! When we know, that _beer-doctor_ and _brewers'-druggist_ are professions, practised as openly as those of _bug-man_ and _rat-killer_, are we simple enough to suppose that the above-named are the _only_ drugs that people swallow in those potions, which they call _pots of beer_? Indeed, we know the contrary; for scarcely a week passes without witnessing the detection of some greedy wretch, who has used, in making or in _doctoring_ his beer, drugs, forbidden by the law. And, it is not many weeks since one of these was convicted, in the Court of Excise, for using potent and dangerous drugs, by the means of which, and a suitable quantity of water, he made _two buts of beer into three_. Upon this occasion, it appeared that no less than _ninety_ of these worthies were in the habit of pursuing the same practices. The drugs are not unpleasant to the taste; they sting the palate: they give a present relish: they communicate a momentary exhilaration: but, they give no force to the body, which, on the contrary, they enfeeble, and, in many instances, with time, destroy; producing diseases from which the drinker would otherwise have been free to the end of his days. 73. But, look again at the receipt for making porter. Here are _eight_ bushels of malt to 180 gallons of beer; that is to say, twenty-fire gallons from the bushel. Now the malt is eight shillings a bushel, and eight pounds of the very _best hops_ will cost but a shilling a pound. The malt and hops, then, for the 180 gallons, cost but _seventy-two shillings_; that is to say, only a little more than _fourpence three farthings a gallon_, for stuff which is now retailed for _sixteen pence a gallon_! If this be not an abomination, I should be glad to know what is. Even if the treacle, colour, and the drugs, be included, the cost is not _fivepence a gallon_; and yet, not content with this enormous extortion, there are wretches who resort to the use of other and pernicious drugs, in order to increase their gains! 74. To provide against this dreadful evil there is, and there can be, no _law_; for, it is _created by the law_. The _law_ it is that imposes the enormous tax on the _malt_ and _hops_; the _law_ it is that imposes the _license tax_, and places the power of granting the license at the discretion of persons appointed by the government; the _law_ it is that checks, in this way, the private brewing, and that prevents _free and fair competition_ in the selling of beer, and as long as the _law_ does these, it will in vain endeavour to prevent the people from being destroyed by slow poison. 75. Innumerable are the benefits that would arise from a repeal of the taxes on malt and on hops. Tippling-houses might then be shut up with justice and propriety. The labourer, the artisan, the tradesman, the landlord, all would instantly feel the benefit. But the _landlord_ more, perhaps, in this case, than any other member of the community. The four or five pounds a year which the day-labourer now drizzles away in tea-messes, he would divide with the farmer, if he had untaxed beer. His wages would _fall_, and fall to his _advantage_ too. The fall of wages would be not less than 40_l._ upon a hundred acres. Thus 40_l._ would go, in the end, a fourth, perhaps to the farmer, and three-fourths to the landlord. This is the kind of work to _reduce poor-rates_, and to restore _husbandry to prosperity_. Undertaken this work _must_ be, and _performed too_; but whether we shall see this until the estates have passed away from the _present race_ of landlords, is a question which must be referred to _time_. 76. Surely we may hope, that, when the American farmers shall see this little Essay, they will begin seriously to think of leaving off the use of the liver-burning and palsy-producing _spirits_. Their _climate_, indeed, is something: _extremely hot_ in one part of the year, and _extremely cold_ in the other part of it. Nevertheless, they may have, and do have, very good beer if they will. _Negligence_ is the greatest impediment in their way. I like the Americans very much; and that, if there were no other, would be a reason for my not hiding their faults. No. III. MAKING BREAD. 77. Little time need be spent in dwelling on the necessity of _this_ article to all families; though, on account of the modern custom of using _potatoes_ to supply the place of _bread_, it seems necessary to say a few words here on the subject, which, in another work I have so amply, and, I think, so triumphantly discussed. I am the more disposed to revive the subject for a moment, in this place, from having read, in the evidence recently given before the Agricultural Committee, that many labourers, especially in the West of England, use potatoes _instead_ of bread to a very great extent. And I find, from the same evidence, that it is the custom to allot to labourers "_a potatoe ground_" in part payment of their wages! This has a tendency to bring English labourers down to the state of the Irish, whose mode of living, as to food, is but one remove from that of the pig, and of the ill-fed pig too. 78. I was, in reading the above-mentioned Evidence, glad to find, that Mr. EDWARD WAKEFIELD, the best informed and most candid of all the witnesses, gave it as his opinion, that the increase which had taken place in the cultivation of potatoes was "_injurious to the country_;" an opinion which must, I think, be adopted by every one who takes the trouble to reflect a little upon the subject. For leaving out of the question the slovenly and beastly habits engendered amongst the labouring classes by constantly lifting their principal food at once out of the earth to their mouths, by eating without the necessity of any implements other than the hands and the teeth, and by dispensing with everything requiring skill in the preparation of the food, and requiring cleanliness in its consumption or preservation; leaving these out of the question, though they are all matters of great moment, when we consider their effects in the rearing of a family, we shall find, that, in mere quantity of food, that is to say of _nourishment_, bread is the preferable diet. 79. An acre of land that will produce 300 bushels of potatoes, will produce 32 bushels of wheat. I state this as an average fact, and am not at all afraid of being contradicted by any one well acquainted with husbandry. The potatoes are supposed to be of a _good sort_, as it is called, and the wheat may be supposed to weigh 60 pounds a bushel. It is a fact clearly established, that, after the _water_, the _stringy_ substance, and the _earth_, are taken from the potatoe, there remains only one _tenth_ of the rough raw weight of nutritious matter, or matter which is deemed equally nutritious with bread, and, as the raw potatoes weigh 56lb. a bushel, the acre will yield 1,830lb. of nutritious matter. Now mind, a bushel of wheat, weighing 60lb. will make of _household bread_ (that is to say, taking out only the _bran_) 65lb. Thus, the acre yields 2,080lb. of bread. As to the _expenses_, the seed and act of planting are about equal in the two cases. But, while the potatoes _must_ have cultivation during their growth, the wheat needs none; and while the wheat straw is worth from three to five pounds an acre, the haulm of the potatoes is not worth one single truss of that straw. Then, as to the expense of gathering, housing, and keeping the potatoe crop, it is enormous, besides the risk of loss by frost, which may be safely taken, on an average, at a tenth of the crop. Then comes the expense of _cooking_. The thirty-two bushels of wheat, supposing a bushel to be baked at a time, (which would be the case in a large family,) would demand _thirty-two heatings of the oven_. Suppose a bushel of potatoes to be cooked every day in order to supply the place of this bread, then we have _nine hundred boilings of the pot_, unless _cold potatoes_ be eaten at some of the meals; and, in that case, the diet must be _cheering_ indeed! Think of the _labour_; think of the _time_; think of all the peelings and scrapings and washings and messings attending these _nine hundred boilings of the pot_! For it must be a considerable time before English people can be brought to eat potatoes in the Irish style; that is to say, scratch them out of the earth with their paws, toss them into a pot without washing, and when boiled, turn them out upon a dirty board, and then sit round that board, peel the skin and dirt from one at a time and eat the inside. Mr. Curwen was delighted with "_Irish hospitality_," because the people there receive no parish relief; upon which I can only say, that I wish him the exclusive benefit of such hospitality. 80. I have here spoken of a large quantity of each of the sorts of food. I will now come to a comparative view, more immediately applicable to a labourer's family. When wheat is _ten_ shillings the bushel, potatoes, bought at best hand, (I am speaking of the country generally,) are about _two_ shillings (English) a bushel. Last spring the average price of wheat might be _six and sixpence_, (English;) and the average price of potatoes (in small quantities) was about _eighteen-pence_; though, by the wagon-load, I saw potatoes bought at a _shilling_ (English) a bushel, to give to sheep; then, observe, these were of the coarsest kind, and the farmer had to fetch them at a considerable expense. I think, therefore, that I give the advantage to the potatoes when I say that they sell, upon an average, for full a _fifth_ part as much as the wheat sells for, per bushel, while they contain four pounds less weight than the bushel of wheat; while they yield only five pounds and a half of nutritious matter equal to bread; and while the bushel of wheat will yield _sixty-five pounds of bread_, besides the ten pounds of bran. Hence it is clear, that, instead of that _saving_, which is everlastingly dinned in our ears, from the use of potatoes, there is a _waste of more than one half_; seeing that, when wheat is _ten shillings_ (English) the bushel, you can have _sixty-five pounds of bread for the ten shillings_; and can have out of potatoes only five pounds and a half of nutritious matter equal to bread for _two shillings_! (English.) This being the case, I trust that we shall soon hear no more of those _savings_ which the labourer makes by the use of potatoes; I hope we shall, in the words of Dr. DRENNAN, "leave Ireland to her _lazy_ root," if she choose still to adhere to it. It is the root, also, of slovenliness, filth, misery, and slavery; its cultivation has increased in England with the increase of the paupers: both, I thank God, are upon the decline. Englishmen seem to be upon the return to beer and bread, from water and potatoes: and, therefore, I shall now proceed to offer some observations to the cottager, calculated to induce him to bake his own bread. 81. As I have before stated, sixty pounds of wheat, that is to say, where the Winchester bushel weighs sixty pounds, will make sixty-five pounds of bread, besides the leaving of about ten pounds of bran. This is household bread, made of flour from which the bran only is taken. If you make fine flour, you take out pollard, as they call it, as well as bran, and then you have a smaller quantity of bread and a greater quantity of offal; but, even of this finer bread, bread equal in fineness to the baker's bread, you get from _fifty-eight to fifty-nine_ pounds out of the bushel of wheat. Now, then, let us see how many quartern loaves you get out of the bushel of wheat, supposing it to be fine flour, in the first place. You get thirteen quartern loaves and a half; these cost you, at the present average price of wheat (seven and sixpence a bushel,) in the first place 7_s_. 6_d._;[5] then 3_d._ for yeast; then not more than 3_d._ for grinding; because you have about thirteen pounds of offal, which is worth more than a 1/2_d._ a pound, while the grinding is 9_d._ a bushel. Thus, then, the bushel of bread of fifty-nine pounds costs you _eight shillings_; and it yields you the weight of thirteen and a half quartern loaves: these quartern loaves _now_ (Dec. 1821) sell at Kensington, at the baker's shop, at 1_s._ 1/2_d._; that is to say, the thirteen quartern loaves and a half cost 14_s._ 7-1/2_d._ I omitted to mention the salt, which would cost you 4_d._ more. So that, here is 6_s._ 3-1/2_d._ saved upon the baking of a bushel of bread. The baker's quartern loaf is indeed cheaper in the country than at Kensington, by, probably, a penny in the loaf; which would still, however, leave a saving of 5_s._ upon the bushel of bread. But, besides this, pray think a little of the materials of which the baker's loaf is composed. The _alum_, the _ground potatoes_, and other materials; it being a notorious fact, that the bakers, in London at least, have _mills_ wherein to grind their potatoes; so large is the scale upon which they use that material. It is probable, that, out of a bushel of wheat, they make between _sixty_ and _seventy_ pounds of bread, though they have no more _flour_, and, of course, no more nutritious matter, than you have in your fifty-nine pounds of bread. But, at the least, supposing their bread to be as good as yours in quality, you have, allowing a shilling for the heating of the oven, a clear 4_s._ saved upon every bushel of bread. If you consume half a bushel a week, that is to say about a quartern loaf a day, this is a saving of 5_l._ 4_s._ a year, or full a sixth part, if not a fifth part, of the earnings of a labourer in husbandry. 82. How wasteful, then, and, indeed, how shameful, for a labourer's wife to go to the baker's shop; and how negligent, how criminally careless of the welfare of his family, must the labourer be, who permits so scandalous a use of the proceeds of his labour! But I have hitherto taken a view of the matter the least possibly advantageous to the home-baked bread. For, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the fuel for heating the oven costs very little. The hedgers, the copsers, the woodmen of all descriptions, have fuel for little or nothing. At any rate, to heat the oven cannot, upon an average, take the country through, cost the labourer more than 6_d._ a bushel. Then, again, fine flour need not ever be used, and ought not to be used. This adds six pounds of bread to the bushel, or nearly another quartern loaf and a half, making nearly fifteen quartern loaves out of the bushel of wheat. The finest flour is by no means the most wholesome; and, at any rate, there is more nutritious matter in a pound of household bread than in a pound of baker's bread. Besides this, rye, and even barley, especially when mixed with wheat, make very good bread. Few people upon the face of the earth live better than the Long Islanders. Yet nine families out of ten seldom eat wheaten-bread. Rye is the flour that they principally make use of. Now, rye is seldom more than two-thirds the price of wheat, and barley is seldom more than half the price of wheat. Half rye and half wheat, taking out a little more of the offal, make very good bread. Half wheat, a quarter rye and a quarter barley, nay, one-third of each, make bread that I could be very well content to live upon all my lifetime; and, even barley alone, if the barley be good, and none but the finest flour taken out of it, has in it, measure for measure, ten times the nutrition of potatoes. Indeed the fact is well known, that our forefathers used barley bread to a very great extent. Its only fault, with those who dislike it, is its sweetness, a fault which we certainly have not to find with the baker's loaf, which has in it little more of the _sweetness_ of grain than is to be found in the offal which comes from the sawings of deal boards. The nutritious nature of barley is amply proved by the effect, and very rapid effect, of its meal, in the fatting of hogs and of poultry of all descriptions. They will fatten quicker upon meal of barley than upon any other thing. The flesh, too, is sweeter than that proceeding from any other food, with the exception of that which proceeds from _buck wheat_, a grain little used in England. That proceeding from Indian corn is, indeed, still sweeter and finer; but this is wholly out of the question with us. 83. I am, by-and-by, to speak of the _cow_ to be kept by the labourer in husbandry. Then there will be _milk_ to wet the bread with, an exceedingly great improvement in its taste as well as in its quality! This, of all the ways of using skim milk, is the most advantageous: and this great advantage must be wholly thrown away, if the bread of the family be bought at the shop. With milk, bread with very little wheat in it may be made far better than baker's bread; and, leaving the milk out of the question, taking a third of each sort of grain, you would get bread weighing as much as fourteen quartern loaves, for about 5_s._ 9_d._ at present prices of grain; that is to say, you would get it for about 5_d._ the quartern loaf, all expenses included; thus you have nine pounds and ten ounces of bread a day for about 5_s._ 9_d._ a week. Here is enough for a very large family. Very few labourers' families can want so much as this, unless indeed there be several persons in it capable of earning something by their daily labour. Here is cut and come again. Here is bread always for the table. Bread to carry a field; always a hunch of bread ready to put into the hand of a hungry child. We hear a great deal about "_children crying for bread_," and objects of compassion they and their parents are, when the latter have not the means of obtaining a sufficiency of bread. But I should be glad to be informed, how it is possible for a labouring man, who earns, upon an average, 10_s._ a week, who has not more than four children (and if he have more, some ought to be doing something;) who has a garden of a quarter of an acre of land (for that makes part of my plan;) who has a wife as industrious as she ought to be; who does not waste his earnings at the ale-house or the tea shop: I should be glad to know how such a man, while wheat shall be at the price of about 6_s._ a bushel, _can possibly have children crying for bread_! 84. Cry, indeed, they must, if he will persist in giving 13_s._ for a bushel of bread instead of 5_s._ 9_d._ Such a man is not to say that the bread which I have described is _not good enough_. It was good enough for his forefathers, who were too proud to be paupers, that is to say, abject and willing slaves. "Hogs eat barley." And hogs will eat wheat, too, when they can get at it. Convicts in condemned cells eat wheaten bread; but we think it no degradation to eat wheaten bread, too. I am for depriving the labourer of none of his rights; I would have him oppressed in no manner or shape; I would have him bold and free; but to have him such, he must have bread in his house, sufficient for all his family, and whether that bread be fine or coarse must depend upon the different circumstances which present themselves in the cases of different individuals. 85. The married man has no right to expect the same plenty of food and of raiment that the single man has. The time before marriage is the time to lay by, or, if the party choose, to indulge himself in the absence of labour. To marry is a voluntary act, and it is attended in the result with great pleasures and advantages. If, therefore, the laws be fair and equal; if the state of things be such that a labouring man can, with the usual ability of labourers, and with constant industry, care and sobriety; with decency of deportment towards all his neighbours, cheerful obedience to his employer, and a due subordination to the laws; if the state of things be such, that such a man's earnings be sufficient to maintain himself and family with food, raiment, and lodging needful for them; such a man has no reason to complain; and no labouring man has reason to complain, if the numerousness of his family should call upon him for extraordinary exertion, or for frugality uncommonly rigid. The man with a large family has, if it be not in a great measure his own fault, a greater number of pleasures and of blessings than other men. If he be wise, and _just_ as well as wise, he will see that it is reasonable for him to expect less delicate fare than his neighbours, who have a less number of children, or no children at all. He will see the justice as well as the necessity of his resorting to the use of coarser bread, and thus endeavour to make up that, or at least a part of that, which he loses in comparison with his neighbours. The quality of the bread ought, in every case, to be proportioned to the number of the family and the means of the head of that family. Here is no injury to health proposed; but, on the contrary, the best security for its preservation. Without bread, all is misery. The Scripture truly calls it the staff of life; and it may be called, too, the pledge of peace and happiness in the labourer's dwelling. 86. As to the act of making bread, it would be shocking indeed if that had to be taught by the means of books. Every woman, high or low, ought to know how to make bread. If she do not, she is unworthy of trust and confidence; and, indeed, a mere burden upon the community. Yet, it is but too true, that many women, even amongst those who have to get their living by their labour, know nothing of the making of bread; and seem to understand little more about it than the part which belongs to its consumption. A Frenchman, a Mr. CUSAR, who had been born in the West Indies, told me, that till he came to Long Island, he never knew _how the flour came_: that he was surprised when he learnt that it was squeezed out of little grains that grew at the tops of straw; for that he had always had an idea that it was got out of some large substances, like the yams that grow in tropical climates. He was a very sincere and good man, and I am sure he told me truth. And this may be the more readily believed, when we see so many women in England, who seem to know no more of the constituent parts of a loaf than they know of those of the moon. Servant women in abundance appear to think that loaves are made by the baker, as knights are made by the king; things of their pure creation, a creation, too, in which no one else can participate. Now, is not this an enormous evil? And whence does it come? Servant women are the children of the labouring classes; and they would all know how to make bread, and know well how to make it too, if they had been fed on bread of their mother's and their own making. 87. How serious a matter, then, is this, even in this point of view! A servant that cannot make bread is not entitled to the same wages as one that can. If she can neither bake nor brew; if she be ignorant of the nature of flour, yeast, malt, and hops, what is she good for? If she understand these matters well; if she be able to supply her employer with bread and with beer, she is really _valuable_; she is entitled to good wages, and to consideration and respect into the bargain; but if she be wholly deficient in these particulars, and can merely dawdle about with a bucket and a broom, she can be of very little consequence; to lose her, is merely to lose a consumer of food, and she can expect very little indeed in the way of desire to make her life easy and pleasant. Why should any one have such desire? She is not a child of the family. She is not a relation. Any one as well as she can take in a loaf from the baker, or a barrel of beer from the brewer. She has nothing whereby to bind her employer to her. To sweep a room any thing is capable of that has got two hands. In short, she has no useful skill, no useful ability; she is an ordinary drudge, and she is treated accordingly. 88. But, if such be her state in the house of an employer, what is her state in the house of a _husband_? The lover is blind; but the husband has eyes to see with. He soon discovers that there is something wanted besides dimples and cherry cheeks; and I would have fathers seriously reflect, and to be well assured, that the way to make their daughters to be long admired, beloved and respected by their husbands, is to make them skilful, able and active in the most necessary concerns of a family. Eating and drinking come three times every day; the preparations for these, and all the ministry necessary to them, belong to the wife; and I hold it to be impossible, that at the end of two years, a really ignorant, sluttish wife should possess any thing worthy of the name of love from her husband. This, therefore, is a matter of far greater moment to the father of a family, than, whether the Parson of the parish, or the Methodist Priest, be the most "_Evangelical_" of the two; for it is here a question of the daughter's happiness or misery for life. And I have no hesitation to say, that if I were a labouring man, I should prefer teaching my daughters to bake, brew, milk, make butter and cheese, to teaching them to read the Bible till they had got every word of it by heart; and I should think, too, nay I should know, that I was in the former case doing my duty towards God as well as towards my children. 89. When we see a family of dirty, ragged little creatures, let us inquire into the cause; and ninety-nine times out of every hundred we shall find that the parents themselves have been brought up in the same way. But a consideration which ought of itself to be sufficient, is the contempt in which a husband will naturally hold a wife that is ignorant of the matters necessary to the conducting of a family. A woman who understands all the things above mentioned, is really a skilful person; a person worthy of respect, and that will be treated with respect too, by all but brutish employers or brutish husbands; and such, though sometimes, are not very frequently found. Besides, if natural justice and our own interest had not the weight which they have, such valuable persons will be treated with respect. They know their own worth; and, accordingly, they are more careful of their character, more careful not to lessen by misconduct the value which they possess from their skill and ability. 90. Thus, then, the interest of the labourer; his health; the health of his family; the peace and happiness of his home; the prospects of his children through life; their skill, their ability, their habits of cleanliness, and even their moral deportment; all combine to press upon him the adoption and the constant practice of this branch of domestic economy. "Can she _bake_?" is the question that I always put. If she can, she is _worth a pound or two a year more_. Is that nothing? Is it nothing for a labouring man to make his four or five daughters worth eight or ten pounds a year more; and that too while he is by the same means providing the more plentifully for himself and the rest of his family? The reasons on the side of the thing that I contend for are endless; but if this one motive be not sufficient, I am sure, all that I have said, and all that I could say, must be wholly unavailing. 91. Before, however, I dismiss this subject, let me say a word or two to those persons who do not come under the denomination of labourers. In London, or in any very large town where the space is so confined, and where the proper fuel is not handily to be come at and stored for use, to bake your own bread may be attended with too much difficulty; but in all other situations there appears to me to be hardly any excuse for not baking bread at home. If the family consist of twelve or fourteen persons, the money actually saved in this way (even at present prices) would be little short of from twenty to thirty pounds a year. At the utmost here is only the time of one woman occupied one day in the week. Now mind, here are twenty-five pounds to be employed in some way different from that of giving it to the baker. If you add five of these pounds to a woman's wages, is not that full as well employed as giving it in wages to the baker's men? Is it not better employed for you? and is it not better employed for the community? It is very certain, that if the practice were as prevalent as I could wish, there would be a large deduction from the regular baking population; but would there be any harm if less alum were imported into England, and if some of those youths were left at the plough, who are now bound in apprenticeships to learn the art and mystery of doing that which every girl in the kingdom ought to be taught to do by her mother? It ought to be a maxim with every master and every mistress, never to employ another to do that which can be done as well by their own servants. The more of their money that is retained in the hands of their own people, the better it is for them altogether. Besides, a man of a right mind must be pleased with the reflection, that there is a great mass of skill and ability under his own roof. He feels stronger and more independent on this account, all pecuniary advantage out of the question. It is impossible to conceive any thing more contemptible than a crowd of men and women living together in a house, and constantly looking out of it for people to bring them food and drink, and to fetch their garments to and fro. Such a crowd resemble a nest of unfledged birds, absolutely dependent for their very existence on the activity and success of the old ones. 92. Yet, on men go, from year to year, in this state of wretched dependence, even when they have all the means of living within themselves, which is certainly the happiest state of life that any one can enjoy. It may be asked, Where is the mill to be found? where is the wheat to be got? The answer is, Where is there not a mill? where is there not a market? They are every where, and the difficulty is to discover what can be the particular attractions contained in that long and luminous manuscript, a baker's half-yearly bill. 93. With regard to the mill, in speaking of families of any considerable number of persons, the mill has, with me, been more than once a subject of observation in print. I for a good while experienced the great inconvenience and expense of sending my wheat and other grain to be ground at a mill. This expense, in case of a considerable family, living at only a mile from a mill, is something; but the inconveniency and uncertainty are great. In my "Year's Residence in America," from Paragraphs 1031 and onwards, I give an account of a horse-mill which I had in my farm yard; and I showed, I think very clearly, that corn could be ground cheaper in this way than by wind or water, and that it would answer well to grind for sale in this way as well as for home use. Since my return to England I have seen a mill, erected in consequence of what the owner had read in my book. This mill belongs to a small farmer, who, when he cannot work on his land with his horses, or in the season when he has little for them to do, grinds wheat, sells the flour; and he takes in grists to grind, as other millers do. This mill goes with three small horses; but what I would recommend to gentlemen with considerable families, or to farmers, is a mill such as I myself have at present. 94. With this mill, turned by a man and a stout boy, I can grind six bushels of wheat in a day and dress the flour. The grinding of six bushels of wheat at ninepence a bushel comes to four and sixpence, which pays the man and the boy, supposing them (which is not and seldom can be the case) to be hired for the express purpose out of the street. With the same mill you grind meat for your pigs; and of this you will get eight or ten bushels ground in a day. You have no trouble about sending to the mill; you are sure to have your _own wheat_; for strange as it may seem, I used sometimes to find that I sent white Essex wheat to the mill, and that it brought me flour from very coarse red wheat. There is no accounting for this, except by supposing that wind and water power has something in it to change the very nature of the grain; as, when I came to grind by horses, such as the wheat went into the hopper, so the flour came out into the bin. 95. But mine now is only on the petty scale of providing for a dozen of persons and a small lot of pigs. For a farm-house, or a gentleman's house in the country, where there would be _room_ to have a walk for a horse, you might take the labour from the men, clap any little horse, pony, or even ass to the wheel; and he would grind you off eight or ten bushels of wheat in a day, and both he and you would have the thanks of your men into the bargain. 96. The cost of this mill is twenty pounds. The dresser is four more; the horse-path and wheel might, possibly, be four or five more; and, I am very certain, that to any farmer living at a mile from a mill, (and that is less than the average distance perhaps;) having twelve persons in family, having forty pigs to feed, and twenty hogs to fatten, the savings of such a mill would pay the whole expenses of it the very first year. Such a farmer cannot send less than _fifty times_ a year to the mill. Think of that, in the first place! The elements are not always propitious: sometimes the water fails, and sometimes the wind. Many a farmer's wife has been tempted to vent her spleen on both. At best, there must be horse and man, or boy, and, perhaps, cart, to go to the mill; and that, too, observe, in all weathers, and in the harvest as well as at other times of the year. The case is one of imperious necessity: neither floods nor droughts, nor storms nor calms, will allay the cravings of the kitchen, nor quiet the clamorous uproar of the stye. Go, somebody must, to some place or other, and back they must come with flour and with meal. One summer many persons came down the country more than fifty miles to a mill that I knew in Pennsylvania; and I have known farmers in England carry their grists more than fifteen miles to be ground. It is surprising, that, under these circumstances, hand-mills and horse-mills should not, long ago, have become of more general use; especially when one considers that the labour, in this case, would cost the farmer next to nothing. To grind would be the work of a wet day. There is no farmer who does not at least fifty days in every year exclaim, when he gets up in the morning, "What shall I set _them_ at to-day?" If he had a mill, he would make them pull off their shoes, sweep all out clean, winnow up some corn, if he had it not already done, and grind and dress, and have every thing in order. No scolding within doors about the grist; no squeaking in the stye; no boy sent off in the rain to the mill. 97. But there is one advantage which I have not yet mentioned; and which is the greatest of all; namely, that you would have the power of supplying your married labourers; your blacksmith's men sometimes; your wheelwright's men at other times; and, indeed, the greater part of the persons that you employed, with good flour, instead of their going to purchase their flour, after it had passed through the hands of a Corn Merchant, a Miller, a Flour Merchant, and a Huckster, every one of whom does and must have a profit out of the flour, arising from wheat grown upon, and sent away from, your very farm! I used to let all my people have flour at the same price that they would otherwise have been compelled to give for worse flour. _Every Farmer_ will understand me when I say, that he ought to pay for nothing in _money_, which he can pay for in any thing but money. His maxim is to keep the money that he takes as long as he can. Now here is a most effectual way of putting that maxim in practice to a very great extent. Farmers know well that it is the Saturday night which empties their pockets; and here is the means of cutting off a good half of the Saturday night. The men have better flour for the same money, and still the farmer keeps at home those profits which would go to the maintaining of the dealers in wheat and in flour. 98. The maker of my little mill is Mr. HILL, of Oxford-street. The expense is what I have stated it to be. I, with my small establishment, find the thing convenient and advantageous; what then must it be to a gentleman in the country who has room and horses, and a considerable family to provide for? The dresser is so contrived as to give you at once, meal, of four degrees of fineness; so that, for certain purposes, you may take the very finest; and, indeed, you may have your flour, and your bread of course, of what degree of fineness you please. But there is also a _steel mill_, much less _expensive_, requiring _less labour_, and yet quite sufficient for a _family_. Mills of this sort, very good, and at a reasonable price, are to be had of Mr. PARKES, in _Fenchurch-street_, London. These are very complete things of their kind. Mr. PARKES has, also, excellent Malt-Mills. 99. In concluding this part of my Treatise, I cannot help expressing my hope of being instrumental in inducing a part of the labourers, at any rate, to bake their own bread; and, above all things, to abandon the use of "Ireland's _lazy_ root." Nevertheless, so extensive is the erroneous opinion relative to this villanous root, that I really began to despair of checking its cultivation and use, till I saw the declaration which Mr. WAKEFIELD had the good sense and the spirit to make before the "AGRICULTURAL COMMITTEE." Be it observed, too, that Mr. WAKEFIELD had himself made a survey of the state of Ireland. What he saw there did not encourage him, doubtless, to be an advocate for the growing of this root of wretchedness. It is an undeniable fact, that, in the proportion that this root is in use, as a _substitute for bread_, the people are wretched; the reasons for which I have explained and enforced a hundred times over. Mr. WILLIAM HANNING told the Committee that the labourers in his part of Somersetshire were "almost wholly supplied with potatoes, _breakfast_ and _dinner_, brought them _in the fields_, and nothing but potatoes; and that they used, in better times, to get a certain portion of bacon and cheese, which, on account of their "poverty, they do not eat now." It is impossible that men can be _contented_ in such a state of things: it is unjust to desire them to be contented: it is a state of misery and degradation to which no part of any community can have any show of right to reduce another part: men so degraded have no protection; and it is a disgrace to form part of a community to which they belong. This degradation has been occasioned by a silent change in the value of the money of the country. This has purloined the wages of the labourer; it has reduced him by degrees to housel with the spider and the bat, and to feed with the pig. It has changed the habits, and, in a great measure, the character of the people. The sins of this system are enormous and undescribable; but, thank God! they seem to be approaching to their end! Money is resuming its value, labour is recovering its price: let us hope that the wretched potatoe is disappearing, and that we shall, once more, see the knife in the labourer's hand and the loaf upon his board. [This was written in 1821. _Now_ (1823) we have had the experience of 1822, when, for the first time, the world saw a considerable part of a people, plunged into all the horrors of _famine_, at a moment when the government of that nation declared _food to be abundant_! Yes, the year 1822 saw Ireland in this state; saw the people of whole parishes receiving the _extreme unction_ preparatory to yielding up their breath for want of food; and this while large exports of meat and flour were taking place in that country! But horrible as this was, disgraceful as it was to the name of Ireland, it was attended with this good effect: it brought out, from many members of Parliament (in their places,) and from the public in general, the acknowledgment, that the _misery_ and _degradation_ of the Irish were chiefly owing to the _use of the potatoe as the almost sole food of the people_.] 100. In my next number I shall treat of the _keeping of cows_. I have said that I will teach the cottager how to keep a cow all the year round upon the produce of a quarter of an acre, or, in other words, _forty rods_, of land; and, in my next, I will make good my promise. No. IV MAKING BREAD--(CONTINUED.) 101. In the last number, at Paragraph 86, I observed that I hoped it was unnecessary for me to give any directions as to the mere _act_ of making bread. But several correspondents inform me that, without these directions, a conviction of the utility of baking bread at home is of _no use to them_. Therefore, I shall here give those directions, receiving my instructions here from one, who, I thank God, does know how to perform this act. 102. Suppose the quantity be a bushel of flour. Put this flour into a _trough_ that people have for the purpose, or it may be in a clean smooth tub of any shape, if not too deep, and if sufficiently large. Make a pretty deep hole in the middle of this heap of flour. Take (for a bushel) a pint of good fresh yeast, mix it and stir it well up in a pint of _soft_ water milk-warm. Pour this into the hole in the heap of flour. Then take a spoon and work it round the outside of this body of moisture so as to bring into that body, by degrees, flour enough to make it form a _thin batter_, which you must stir about well for a minute or two. Then take a handful of flour and scatter it thinly over the head of this batter, so as to _hide_ it. Then cover the whole over with a cloth to keep it _warm_; and this covering, as well as the situation of the trough, as to distance from the fire, must depend on the nature of the place and state of the weather as to heat and cold. When you perceive that the batter has risen enough to make _cracks_ in the flour that you covered it over with, you begin to form the whole mass into _dough_, thus: you begin round the hole containing the batter, working the flour into the batter, and pouring in, as it is wanted to make the flour mix with the batter, soft water milk-warm, or milk, as hereafter to be mentioned. Before you begin this, you scatter the _salt_ over the heap at the rate of _half a pound_ to a bushel of flour. When you have got the whole _sufficiently moist_, you _knead it well_. This is a grand part of the business; for, unless the dough be _well worked_, there will be _little round lumps of flour in the loaves_; and, besides, the original batter, which is to give fermentation to the whole, will not be duly mixed. The dough must, therefore, be well worked. The _fists_ must go heartily into it. It must be rolled over; pressed out; folded up and pressed out again, until it be completely mixed, and formed into a _stiff_ and _tough dough_. This is _labour_, mind. I have never quite liked baker's bread since I saw a great heavy fellow, in a bakehouse in France, kneading bread with his _naked feet_! His feet looked very _white_, to be sure: whether they were of that colour _before he got into the trough_ I could not tell. God forbid, that I should suspect that this is ever done _in England_! It is _labour_; but, what is _exercise_ other than labour? Let a young woman bake a bushel once a week, and she will do very well without phials and gallipots. 103. Thus, then, the dough is made. And, when made, it is to be formed into a lump in the middle of the trough, and, with a little dry flour thinly scattered over it, covered over again to be kept warm and to ferment; and in this state, if all be done rightly, it will not have to remain more than about 15 or 20 minutes. 104. In the mean while _the oven is to be heated_; and this is much more than half the art of the operation. When an oven is properly heated, can be known only by _actual observation_. Women who understand the matter, know when the heat is right the moment they put their faces within a yard of the oven-mouth; and once or twice observing is enough for any person of common capacity. But this much may be said in the way of _rule_: that the fuel (I am supposing a brick oven) should be _dry_ (not _rotten_) wood, and not mere _brush-wood_, but rather _fagot-sticks_. If larger wood, it ought to be split up into sticks not more than two, or two and a half inches through. Bush-wood that is _strong_, not green and not too old, if it be hard in its nature and has some _sticks_ in it, may do. The _woody_ parts of furze, or ling, will heat an oven very well. But the thing is, to have a _lively_ and yet _somewhat strong_ fire; so that the oven may be heated in about 15 minutes, and retain its heat sufficiently long. 105. The oven should be hot by the time that the dough, as mentioned in Paragraph 103, has remained in the lump about 20 minutes. When both are ready, take out the fire, and wipe the oven out clean, and, at nearly about the same moment, take the dough out upon the lid of the baking trough, or some proper place, cut it up into pieces, and make it up into loaves, kneading it again into these separate parcels; and, as you go on, shaking a little flour over your board, to prevent the dough from adhering to it. The loaves should be put into the oven as _quickly_ as possible after they are formed; when in, the oven-lid, or door, should be fastened up _very closely_; and, if all be properly managed, loaves of about the size of quartern loaves will be sufficiently baked in about _two hours_. But they usually take down the _lid_, and _look_ at the bread, in order to see how it is going on. 106. And what is there worthy of the name of _plague_, or _trouble_, in all this? Here is no dirt, no filth, no rubbish, no _litter_, no _slop_. And, pray, what can be pleasanter to _behold_? Talk, indeed, of your pantomimes and gaudy shows; your processions and installations and coronations! Give me, for a beautiful sight, a neat and smart woman, heating her oven and setting in her bread! And, if the bustle does make the sign of labour glisten on her brow, where is the man that would not kiss that off, rather than lick the plaster from the cheek of a duchess. 107. And what is the _result_? Why, good, wholesome food, sufficient for a considerable family for a week, prepared in three or four hours. To get this quantity of food, fit to be _eaten_, in the shape of potatoes, _how many fires_! what a washing, what a boiling, what a peeling, what a slopping, and what a messing! The cottage everlastingly in a litter; the woman's hands everlastingly wet and dirty; the children grimed up to the eyes with dust fixed on by potato-starch; and ragged as colts, the poor mother's time all being devoted to the everlasting boilings of the pot! Can any man, who knows any thing of the labourer's life, deny this? And will, then, any body, except the old shuffle-breeches band of the Quarterly Review, who have all their lives been moving from garret to garret, who have seldom seen the sun, and never the dew except in print; will any body except these men say, that the people ought to be taught to use potatoes as a _substitute for bread_? BREWING BEER. 108. This matter has been fully treated of in the two last numbers. But several correspondents wishing to fall upon some means of rendering the practice beneficial to those who are _unable to purchase_ brewing utensils, have recommended the _lending_ of them, or letting out, round a neighbourhood. Another correspondent has, therefore, pointed out to me _an Act of Parliament_ which touches upon this subject; and, indeed, what of Excise Laws and Custom Laws and Combination Laws and Libel Laws, a human being in this country scarcely knows what he dares do or what he dares say. What father, for instance, would have imagined, that, having brewing utensils, which two men carry from house to house as easily as they can a basket, _he dared not lend them to his son, living in the next street, or at the next door_? Yet such really is the law; for, according to the Act 5th of the 22 and 23 of that honest and sincere gentleman Charles II., there is a penalty of 50_l._ for lending or letting brewing utensils. However, it has this limit; that the penalty is confined to _Cities_, _Corporate Towns_, and _Market Towns_, WHERE THERE IS A PUBLIC BREWHOUSE. So that, in the first place, you may let, or lend, in _any_ place where there is _no public brewhouse_; and in all towns not _corporate or market_, and in all villages, hamlets, and scattered places. 109. Another thing is, can a man who has brewed beer at his own house in the country, bring that beer into town to his own house, and for the use of his family there? This has been asked of me. I cannot give a positive answer without reading about _seven large volumes in quarto of taxing laws_. The best way would be to _try it_; and, if any penalty, pay it by _subscription_, if that would not come under the law of _conspiracy_! However, I _think_, there can be no danger here. So monstrous a thing as this can, surely, not exist. If there be such a law, it is daily violated; for nothing is more common than for country gentlemen, who have a dislike to die by poison, bringing their home-brewed beer to London. 110. Another correspondent recommends _parishes to make their own malt_. But, surely, the landlords mean to get rid of the _malt and salt tax_! Many dairies, I dare say, pay 50_l._ a year each in salt tax. How, then, are they to contend against Irish butter and Dutch butter and cheese? And as to the malt tax, it is a dreadful drain from the land. I have heard of labourers, living "in _unkent places_," making their _own malt_, even now! Nothing is so easy as to make your own malt, if you were permitted. You soak the barley about three days (according to the state of the weather.) and then you put it upon stones or bricks _and keep it turned_, till the root _shoots out_; and then to know when to _stop_, and to put it to dry, take up a corn (which you will find nearly transparent) and look through the skin of it. You will see the _spear_, that is to say, the shoot that would come out of the ground, pushing on towards the _point_ of the barley-corn. It starts from the bottom, where the root comes out; and it goes on towards the other end; and would, if _kept moist_, come out at that other end when the root was about an inch long. So that, when you have got the _root to start_, by soaking and turning in heap, the spear is _on its way_. If you look in through the skin, you will see it; and now observe; when the _point of the spear_ has got along as far as the _middle of the barley-corn_, you should take your barley and _dry it_. How easy would every family, and especially every farmer, do this, if it were not for the punishment attached to it! The persons in the "unkent places" before mentioned, dry the malt in their _oven_! But let us hope that the labourer will soon be able to get malt without exposing himself to punishment as a _violater of the law_. KEEPING COWS. 111. As to the _use_ of _milk_ and of that which proceeds from milk, in a family, very little need be said. At a certain age bread and milk are _all_ that a child wants. At a later age they furnish one meal a day for children. Milk is, at all seasons, good to _drink_. In the making of puddings, and in the making of _bread_ too, how useful is it! Let any one who has eaten none but baker's bread for a good while, taste bread home-baked, mixed with milk instead of with water; and he will find what the difference is. There is this only to be observed, that in _hot weather_, bread mixed with milk will not _keep so long_ as that mixed with water. It will of course turn _sour_ sooner. 112. Whether the milk of a cow be to be consumed by a cottage family in the shape of milk, or whether it be to be made to yield butter, skim-milk, and buttermilk, must depend on circumstances. A woman that has no child, or only one, would, perhaps, find it best to make _some butter_ at any rate. Besides, skim-milk and bread (the milk being boiled) is quite strong food enough for any children's breakfast, even when they begin to go to work; a fact which I state upon the most ample and satisfactory experience, very seldom having ever had any other sort of breakfast myself till I was more than ten years old, and I was in the fields at work full four years before that. I will here mention that it gave me singular pleasure to see a boy, just turned of _six_, helping his father to _reap_, in Sussex, this last summer. He did little, to be sure; but it was _something_. His father set him into the ridge at a great distance before him; and when he came up to the place, he found a _sheaf_ cut; and, those who know what it is to reap, know how pleasant it is to find now and then a sheaf cut ready to their hand. It was no small thing to see a boy fit to be trusted with so dangerous a thing as a reap-hook in his hands, at an age when "young masters" have nursery-maids to cut their victuals for them, and to see that they do not fall out of the window, tumble down stairs, or run under carriage-wheels or horses' bellies. Was not this father discharging his duty by this boy much better than he would have been by sending him to a place called a _school_? The boy is in a school here; and an excellent school too: the school of useful labour. I must hear a great deal more than I ever have heard, to convince me, that teaching children to _read_ tends so much to their happiness, their independence of spirit, their manliness of character, as teaching them to _reap_. The creature that is in _want_ must be a _slave_; and to be habituated _to labour cheerfully_ is the only means of preventing nineteen-twentieths of mankind from being in want. I have digressed here; but observations of this sort can, in my opinion, never be too often repeated; especially at a time when all sorts of mad projects are on foot, for what is falsely called _educating_ the people, and when some would do this by a _tax_ that would compel the single man to give part of his earnings to teach the married man's children to read and write. 113. Before I quit the _uses_ to which milk may be put, let me mention, that, as mere _drink_, it is, unless perhaps in case of heavy labour, better, in my opinion, than any beer, however good. I have drinked little else for the last five years, at any time of the day. Skim-milk I mean. If you have not milk enough to wet up your bread with (for a bushel of flour requires about 16 to 18 pints,) you make up the quantity with water, of course; or, which is a very good way, with water that has been put, boiling hot, upon _bran_, and then drained off. This takes the goodness out of the bran to be sure; but _really good bread_ is a thing of so much importance, that it always ought to be the very first object in domestic economy. 114. The cases vary so much, that it is impossible to lay down rules for the application of the produce of a cow, which rules shall fit all cases. I content myself, therefore, with what has already been said on this subject; and shall only make an observation on the _act of milking_, before I come to the chief matter; namely, the _getting of the food for the cow_. A cow should be milked _clean_. Not a drop, if it can be avoided, should be left in the udder. It has been proved that the half pint that comes out _last_ has _twelve times_, I think it is, as much butter in it, as the half pint that comes out _first_. I tried the milk of ten Alderney cows, and, as nearly as I, without being very nice about the matter, could ascertain, I found the difference to be about what I have stated. The udder would seem to be a sort of milk-pan in which the cream is uppermost, and, of course, comes out last, seeing that the outlet is at the bottom. But, besides this, if you do not milk clean, the cow will give less and less milk, and will become dry much sooner than she ought. The _cause_ of this I do not know, but experience has long established the fact. 115. In providing food for a cow we must look, first, at the _sort of cow_; seeing that a cow of one sort will certainly require more than twice as much food as a cow of another sort. For a cottage, a cow of the smallest sort common in England is, on every account, the best; and such a cow will not require above 70 or 80 pounds of good moist food in the twenty-four hours. 116. Now, how to raise this food on 40 rods of ground is what we want to know. It frequently happens that a labourer has _more_ than 40 rods of ground. It more frequently happens, that he has some _common_, some _lane_, some little out-let or other, for a part of the year, at least. In such cases he may make a different disposition of his ground; or may do with less than the 40 rods. I am here, for simplicity's sake, to suppose, that he have 40 rods of clear, unshaded land, besides what his house and sheds stand upon; and that he have nothing further in the way of means to keep his cow. 117. I suppose the 40 rods to be _clean_ and _unshaded_; for I am to suppose, that when a man thinks of 5 quarts _of milk a day_, on an average, all the year round, he will not suffer his ground to be encumbered by apple-trees that give him only the means of treating his children to fits of the belly-ache, or with currant and gooseberry bushes, which, though their fruit do very well to _amuse_, really give nothing worthy of the name of _food_, except to the blackbirds and thrushes. The ground is to be _clear_ of trees; and, in the spring, we will suppose it to be _clean_. Then, dig it up _deeply_, or, which is better, _trench_ it, keeping, however, the top _spit_ of the soil _at the top_. Lay it in _ridges_ in April or May about two feet apart, and made high and sharp. When the weeds appear about three inches high, turn the ridges into the furrows (_never moving the ground but in dry weather_,) and bury all the weeds. Do this as often as the weeds get three inches high; and by the fall, you will have really clean ground, and not poor ground. 118. There is the ground then, ready. About the 26th of August, but _not earlier_, prepare a rod of your ground; and put some _manure_ in it (for _some_ you must have,) and sow one half of it with Early York Cabbage Seed, and the other half with Sugar-loaf Cabbage Seed, both of the _true_ sort, in little drills at 8 inches apart, and the seeds thin in the drill. If the plants come up at two inches apart (and they should be thinned if thicker,) you will have a plenty. As soon as fairly out of ground, hoe the ground nicely, and pretty deeply, and again in a few days. When the plants have six leaves, which will be very soon, dig up, make fine, and manure another rod or two, and prick out the plants, 4000 of each in rows at eight inches apart and three inches in the row. Hoe the ground between them often, and they will grow fast and be _straight_ and strong. I suppose that these beds for plants take 4 rods of your ground. Early in November, or, as the weather may serve, a little earlier or later, lay some manure (of which I shall say more hereafter) between the ridges, in the other 36 rods, and turn the ridges over on this manure, and then transplant your plants on the ridges at 15 inches apart. Here they will stand the winter; and you must see that the slugs do not eat them. If any plants fail, you have plenty in the bed where you prick them out; for your 36 rods will not require more than 4000 plants. If the winter be very hard, and bad for plants, you cannot _cover_ 36 rods; but you may the _bed_ where the rest of your plants are. A little litter, or straw, or dead grass, or fern, laid along between the rows and the plants, not to cover the leaves, will preserve them completely. When people complain of _all_ their plants being "_cut off_," they have, in fact nothing to _complain_ of but their own extreme carelessness. If I had a gardener who complained of _all_ his plants being cut off, I should cut him off pretty quickly. If those in the 36 rods fail, or fail in part, fill up their places, later in the winter, by plants from the bed. 119. If you find the ground dry at the top during the winter, hoe it, and particularly near the plants, and rout out all slugs and insects. And when March comes, and the ground _is dry_, hoe deep and well, and earth the plants up close to the lower leaves. As soon as the plants begin to _grow_, dig the ground with a spade clean and well, and let the spade go as near to the plants as you can without actually _displacing the plants_. Give them another digging in a month; and, if weeds come in the mean-while, _hoe_, and let not one live a week. Oh! "what a deal of _work_!" Well! but it is for _yourself_, and, besides, it is not all to be done in a day; and we shall by-and-by see what it is altogether. 120. By the first of June; I speak of the South of England, and there is also some difference in seasons and soils; but, generally speaking, by the first of June you will have _turned-in cabbages_, and soon you will have the Early Yorks _solid_. And by the first of June you may get your cow, one that is about to calve, or that has just calved, and at this time such a cow as you will want will not, thank God, cost above five pounds. 121. I shall speak of the place to keep her in, and of the manure and litter, by-and-by. At present I confine myself to her mere food. The 36 rods, if the cabbages all stood till they got _solid_, would give her food for 200 days, at 80 pounds weight per day, which is more than she would eat. But you must use some, at first, that are not solid; and, then, some of them will split before you can use them. But you will have pigs to help off with them, and to gnaw the heads of the stumps. Some of the sugar-loaves may have been planted out in the spring; and thus these 36 rods will get you along to some time in September. 122. Now mind, in March, and again in April, sow more _Early Yorks_, and get them to be fine stout plants, as you did those in the fall. Dig up the ground and manure it, and, as fast as you cut cabbages, plant cabbages; and in the same manner and with the same cultivation as before. Your last planting will be about the middle of August, with _stout plants_, and these will serve you into the month of November. 123. Now we have to provide from _December to May inclusive_; and that, too, out of this same piece of ground. In November there must be, arrived at perfection, 3000 turnip plants. These, _without the greens_, must weigh, on an average, 5 pounds, and this, at 80 pounds a day, will keep the cow 187 days; and there are but 182 days in these six months. The greens will have helped put the latest cabbages to carry you through November, and perhaps into December. But for these six months, you must _depend_ on nothing but the Swedish turnips. 124. And now, how are these to be had _upon the same ground that bears_ the cabbages? That we are now going to see. When you plant out your cabbages at the out-set, put first a row of Early Yorks, then a row of Sugar-loaves, and so on throughout the piece. Of course, as you are to use the Early Yorks first, you will cut every other row; and the Early Yorks that you are to plant in summer will go into the intervals. By-and-by the Sugar-loaves are cut away, and in their place will come Swedish turnips, you digging and manuring the ground as in the case of the cabbages: and, at last, you will find about 16 rods where you will have found it too late, and _unnecessary_ besides, to plant any second crop of cabbages. Here the Swedish turnips will stand in rows at two feet apart, (and always a foot apart in the row,) and thus you will have three thousand turnips; and if these do not weigh five pounds each on an average, the fault must be in the _seed_ or in the management. 125. The Swedish turnips are raised in this manner. You will bear in mind the _four rods_ of ground in which you have sowed and pricked out your cabbage plants. The plants that will be left there will, in April, serve you for _greens_, if you ever eat any, though bread and bacon are very good without greens, and rather better than with. At any rate, the pig, which has strong powers of digestion, will consume this herbage. In a part of these four rods you will, in March and April, as before directed, have sown and raised your Early Yorks for the summer planting. Now, in the _last week of May_, prepare a quarter of a rod of this ground, and sow it, precisely as directed for the Cabbage-seed, with Swedish turnip-seed; and sow a quarter of a rod _every three days_, till you have sowed _two rods_. If the _fly appear_, cover the rows over in the _day-time_ with cabbage leaves, and take the leaves off at night; hoe well between the plants; and when they are safe from the fly, _thin_ them to four inches apart in the row. The two rods will give you nearly _five thousand plants_, which is 2000 more than you will want. From this bed you draw your plants to transplant in the ground where the cabbages have stood, as before directed. You should transplant none much _before_ the middle of July, and not much _later_ than the middle of August. In the two rods, whence you take your turnip plants, you may leave plants to come to perfection, at two feet distances each way; and this will give you _over and above_, 840 pounds weight of turnips. For the other two rods will be ground enough for you to sow your cabbage plants in at the end of August, as directed for last year. 126. I should now proceed to speak of the manner of harvesting, preserving, and using the crops; of the manner of feeding the cow; of the shed for her; of the managing of the manure, and several other less important things; but these, for want of room here, must be reserved for the beginning of my next Number. After, therefore, observing that the Turnip plants must be transplanted in the same way that Cabbage plants are; and that both ought to be transplanted in _dry_ weather and in ground just _fresh digged_, I shall close this Number with the notice of two points which I am most anxious to impress upon the mind of every reader. 127. The first is, whether these crops give an _ill taste_ to milk and butter. It is very certain, that the taste and smell of certain sorts of cattle-food will do this; for, in some parts of America, where the wild _garlick_, of which the cows are very fond, and which, like other bulbous-rooted plants, springs before the grass, not only the milk and butter have a strong taste of garlick, but even the _veal_, when the calves suck milk from such sources. None can be more common expressions, than, in Philadelphia market, are those of _Garlicky Butter_ and _Garlicky Veal_, I have distinctly tasted the _Whiskey_ in milk of cows fed on distiller's wash. It is also certain, that, if the cow eat _putrid_ leaves of cabbages and turnips, the butter will be offensive. And the white-turnip, which is at best but a poor thing, and often half putrid, makes miserable butter. The large _cattle-cabbage_, which, when loaved hard, has a strong and even an offensive smell, will give a bad taste and smell to milk and butter, whether there be putrid leaves or not. If you boil one of these rank cabbages, the water is extremely offensive to the smell. But I state upon positive and recent experience, that Early York and Sugar-loaf Cabbages will yield as sweet milk and butter _as any food that can be given to a cow_. During this last summer, I have, with the exception about to be noticed, kept, from the 1st of May to the 22d of October, _five cows_ upon the grass _of two acres and a quarter of ground, the grass_ being generally _cut up for them_ and given to them in the stall. I had in the spring 5000 cabbage plants, intended for my pigs, eleven in number. But the pigs could not eat _half_ their allowance, though they were not very small when they began upon it. We were compelled to resort to the aid of the cows; and, in order to see _the effect on the milk and butter_, we did not _mix_ the food; but gave the cows two _distinct spells_ at the cabbages, each spell about 10 _days in duration_. The cabbages were cut off the stump with little or no care about _dead leaves_. And sweeter, finer butter, butter of a finer colour, than these cabbages made, never was made in this world. I never had better from cows feeding in the sweetest pasture. Now, as to _Swedish turnips_, they do give a little taste, especially if boiling of the milk pans be neglected, and if the greatest care be not taken about _all_ the dairy tackle. Yet we have, for months together, had the butter so fine from Swedish turnips, that nobody could well distinguish it from grass-butter. But to secure this, there must be no _sluttishness_. Churn, pans, pail, shelves, wall, floor, and all about the dairy, must be clean; and, above all things, the pans must be _boiled_. However, after all, it is not here a case of delicacy of smell so refined as to faint at any thing that meets it except the stink of perfumes. If the butter do taste a little of the Swedish turnip, it will do very well where there is plenty of that sweet sauce which early rising and bodily labour are ever sure to bring. 128. The _other point_ (about which I am still more anxious) is the _seed_; for if the seed be not _sound_, and especially if it be not _true to its kind_, all your labour _is in vain_. It is best, if you can do it, to get your seed from some friend, or some one that you know and can trust. If you save seed, observe all the precautions mentioned in my book on _Gardening_. This very year I have some Swedish turnips, _so called_, about 7000 in number, and should, if my seed had been _true_, have had about _twenty tons_ weight; instead of which I have about _three_! Indeed, they are not _Swedish turnips_, but a sort of mixture between that plant and _rape_. I am sure the seedsman did not wilfully deceive me. He was deceived himself. The truth is, that seedsmen are compelled to _buy_ their seeds of this plant. _Farmers_ save it; and they but too often pay very little attention to the manner of doing it. The best way is to get a dozen of fine turnip plants, perfect in all respects, and plant them in a situation where the smell of the blossoms of nothing of the cabbage or rape or turnip or even _charlock_ kind, can reach them. The seed will keep perfectly good for _four years_. No. V KEEPING COWS--(_continued._) 129. I have now, in the conclusion of this article, to speak of the manner of _harvesting_ and _preserving_ the _Swedes_; of the place _to keep the cow in_; of the _manure_ for the land; and of the _quantity of labour_ that the cultivation of the land and the harvesting of the crop will require. 130. _Harvesting and preserving the Swedes._ When they are ready to take up, the tops must be cut off, if not cut off before, and also the _roots_; but neither tops nor roots should be cut off _very close_. You will have room for ten bushels of the _bulbs_ in the house, or shed. Put the rest into ten-bushel heaps. Make the heap _upon_ the ground in a _round form_, and let it rise up to a point. Lay over it a little litter, straw, or dead grass, about three inches thick, and then earth upon that about six inches thick. Then cut a thin round _green turf_, about eighteen inches over, and put it upon the crown of the heap to prevent the earth from being washed off. Thus these heaps will remain till wanted for use. When given to the cow, it will be best to _wash_ the Swedes and cut each into two or three pieces with a spade or some other tool. You can take in ten bushels at a time. If you find them _sprouting_ in the spring, open the remaining heaps, and expose them to the sun and wind; and cover them again slightly with straw or litter of some sort.[6] 131. _As to the place to keep the cow in_, much will depend upon _situation_ and circumstances. I am always supposing that the cottage is a real _cottage_, and not a house in a town or village street; though, wherever there is the quarter of an acre of ground, the cow _may_ be kept. Let me, however, suppose that which will generally happen; namely, that the cottage stands by the side of a road, or lane, and amongst fields and woods, if not on the side of a common. To pretend to tell a country labourer how to build a shed for a cow, how to stick it up against the end of his house, or to make it an independent erection; or to dwell on the materials, where poles, rods, wattles, rushes, furze, heath, and cooper-chips, are all to be gotten by him for nothing or next to nothing, would be useless; because a man who, thus situated, can be at any loss for a shed for his cow, is not only unfit to keep a cow, but unfit to keep a cat. The warmer the shed is the better it is. The floor should _slope_, but not too much. There are _stones_, of some sort or other, every-where, and about six wheel-barrow-fulls will _pave_ the shed, a thing to be by no means neglected. A broad trough, or box, fixed up at the head of the cow, is the thing to give her food in; and she should be fed three times a day, at least; always at _day-light_ and at _sun-set_. It is not _absolutely necessary_ that a cow ever quit her shed, except just at calving time, or when taken to the bull. In the former case the time is, nine times out of ten, known to within forty-eight hours. Any enclosed field or place will do for her during a day or two; and for such purpose, if there be not room at home, no man will refuse place for her in a fallow field. It will, however, be good, where there is no _common_ to turn her out upon, to have her led by a string, two or three times a week, which may be done by a child only five years old, to graze, or pick, along the sides of roads and lanes. Where there is a _common_, she will, of course, be turned out in the day time, except in very wet or severe weather; and in a case like this, a smaller quantity of ground will suffice for the keeping of her. According to the present practice, a miserable "_tallet_" of bad hay is, in such cases, the winter provision for the cow. It can scarcely be called food; and the consequence is, the cow is both _dry_ and _lousy_ nearly half the year; instead of being dry only about fifteen days before calving, and being sleek and lusty at the end of the winter, to which a _warm lodging_ greatly contributes. For, observe, if you keep a cow, any time between September and June, out in a field or yard, to endure the chances of the weather, she will not, though she have food precisely the same in quantity and quality, yield above _two-thirds_ as much as if she were lodged in house; and in _wet_ weather she will not yield _half_ so much. It is not so much the _cold_ as the _wet_ that is injurious to all our stock in England. 132. _The Manure._ At the _beginning_ this must be provided by collections made on the road; by the results of the residence in a cottage. Let any man clean out _every place_ about his dwelling; rake and scrape and sweep all into a heap; and he will find that he has a _great deal_. Earth of almost any sort that has long lain on the surface, and has been trodden on, is a species of manure. Every act that tends to neatness round a dwelling, tends to the creating of a mass of manure. And I have very seldom seen a cottage, with a plat of ground of a quarter of an acre belonging to it, round about which I could not have collected a very large heap of manure. Every thing of animal or vegetable substance that comes into a house, must _go out of it again_, in one shape or another. The very emptying of vessels of various kinds, on a heap of common earth, makes it a heap of the best of manure. Thus goes on the work of _reproduction_; and thus is verified the words of the Scripture, "_Flesh is grass_, and there is _nothing new under the sun_." Thus far as to the _outset_. When you have _got the cow_, there is no more care about manure; for, and especially if you have a _pig_ also, you must have enough annually for _an acre_ of ground. And let it be observed, that, after a time, it will be unnecessary, and would be injurious, to manure _for every crop_; for that would produce more stalk and green than substantial part; as it is well known, that wheat plants, standing in ground too full of manure, will yield very thick and long _straws_, but grains of little or no substance. You ought to depend more on the spade and the hoe than on the dung-heap. Nevertheless, the greatest care should be taken to preserve the manure; because you will want _straw_, unless you be by the side of a common which gives you rushes, grassy furze, or fern; and to get straw you must give a part of your dung from the cow-stall and pig-sty. The best way to preserve manure, is to have a pit of sufficient dimensions close behind the cow-shed and pig-sty, for the run from these to go into, and from which all runs of _rain water_ should be kept. Into this pit would go the emptying of the shed and of the sty, and the produce of all sweepings and cleanings round the house; and thus a large mass of manure would soon grow together. Much too large a quantity for a quarter of an acre of ground. One good load of wheat or rye straw is all that you would want for the winter, and half of one for the summer; and you would have more than enough dung to exchange against this straw. 133. Now, as to _the quantity of labour_ that the cultivation of the land will demand in _a year_. We will suppose the whole to have _five complete diggings_, and say nothing about the little matters of sowing and planting and hoeing and harvesting, all which are a mere trifle. We are supposing the owner to be _an able labouring man_; and such a man will dig 12 rods of ground in a day. Here are 200 rods to be digged, and here are little less than 17 days of work at 12 hours in the day; or 200 _hours'_ work, to be done in the course of the long days of spring and summer, while it is light long before _six_ in the morning, and long after six at night. What _is it_, then? Is it not better than time spent in the ale-house, or in creeping about after a miserable hare? Frequently, and most frequently, there will be a _boy_, if not two, big enough to help. And (I only give this as a _hint_) I saw, on the 7th of November last (1822,) _a very pretty woman_, in the village of _Hannington, in Wiltshire, digging_ a piece of ground and planting it with Early Cabbages, which she did as handily and as neatly as any gardener that ever I saw. The ground was _wet_, and therefore, _to avoid treading the digged ground in that state_, she had her line extended, and put in the rows as she advanced in her digging, standing _in the trench_ while she performed the act of planting, which she did with great nimbleness and precision. Nothing could be more skilfully or beautifully done. Her clothes were neat, clean, and tight about her. She had turned her handkerchief down from her neck, which, with the glow that the work had brought into her cheeks, formed an object which I do not say would have made me _actually stop my chaise_, had it not been for the occupation in which she was engaged; but, all taken together, the temptation was too strong to be resisted. But there is the _Sunday_; and I know of no law, human or divine, that forbids a labouring man to dig or plant his garden on Sunday, if the good of his family demand it; and if he cannot, without injury to that family, find other time to do it in. Shepherds, carters, pigfeeders, drovers, coachmen, cooks, footmen, printers, and numerous others, work on the Sundays. Theirs are deemed by the law _works of necessity_. Harvesting and haymaking are allowed to be carried on on the Sunday, in certain cases; when they are always carried on by _provident farmers_. And I should be glad to know the case which is more a _case of necessity_ than that now under our view. In fact, the labouring people _do work on the Sunday_ morning in particular, all over the country, at something or other, or they are engaged in pursuits a good deal less religious than that of digging and planting. So that, as to _the 200 hours_, they are easily found, without the loss of any of the time required for constant daily labour. 134. And what a _produce_ is that of a cow! I suppose only an average of 5 _quarts of milk a day_. If made into butter, it will be _equal every week to two days of the man's wages_, besides the value of the skim milk: and this can hardly be of less value than another day's wages. What a thing, then, is this cow, if she earn half as much as the man! I am greatly under-rating her produce; but I wish to put all the advantages at the lowest. To be sure, there is work for the wife, or daughter, to milk and make butter. But the former is done at the two ends of the day, and the latter only about once in the week. And, whatever these may subtract from the _labours of the field_, which all country women ought to be engaged in whenever they conveniently can; whatever the cares created by the cow may subtract from these, is amply compensated for by the _education_ that these cares will give to the children. They will _all_ learn to milk,[7] and the girls to make butter. And which is a thing of the very first importance, they will all learn, from their infancy, to _set a just value upon dumb animals_, and will grow up in the _habit_ of treating them with gentleness and feeding them with care. To those who have not been brought up in the midst of rural affairs, it is hardly possible to give an adequate idea of the importance of this part of _education_. I should be very loth to intrust the care of my horses, cattle, sheep, or pigs, to any one whose father never had cow or pig of his _own_. It is a general complaint, that servants, and especially farm-servants, are not _so good as they used to be_. How should they? They were formerly the sons and daughters of _small farmers_; they are now the progeny of miserable property-less labourers. They have never seen an animal in which they had any interest. They are careless by habit. This monstrous evil has arisen from causes which I have a thousand times described; and which causes must now be speedily removed; or, they will produce a dissolution of society, and give us a _beginning afresh_. 135. The circumstances vary so much, that it is impossible to lay down precise rules suited to all cases. The cottage may be on the side of a forest or common; it may be on the side of a lane or of a great road, distant from town or village; it may be on the skirts of one of these latter: and then, again, the family may be few or great in number, the children small or big, according to all which circumstances, the extent and application of the cow-food, and also the application of the produce, will naturally be regulated. Under some circumstances, half the above crop may be enough; especially where good commons are at hand. Sometimes it may be the best way to sell the calf as soon as calved; at others, to fat it; and, at others, if you cannot sell it, which sometimes happens, to knock it on the head as soon as calved; for, where there is a family of small children, the price of a calf of two months old cannot be equal to the half of the value of the two months' milk. It is pure weakness to call it "_a pity_." It is a much greater pity to see hungry children crying for the milk that a calf is sucking to no useful purpose; and as to the cow and the calf, the one must lose her young, and the other its life, after all; and the respite only makes an addition to the sufferings of both. 136. As to the pretended _unwholesomeness_ of milk in certain cases; as to its not being adapted to _some constitutions_, I do not believe one word of the matter. When we talk of the _fruits_, indeed, which were formerly the chief food of a great part of mankind, we should recollect, that those fruits grew in countries that had a _sun to ripen_ the fruits, and to put nutritious matter into them. But as to _milk_, England yields to no country upon the face of the earth. Neat cattle will touch nothing that is not wholesome in its nature; nothing that is not wholly innoxious. Out of a pail that has ever had grease in it, they will not drink a drop, though they be raging with thirst. Their very breath is fragrance. And how, then, is it possible, that unwholesomeness should distil from the udder of a cow? The milk varies, indeed, in its quality and taste according to the variations in the nature of the food; but no food will a cow touch that is any way hostile to health. Feed young puppies upon _milk from the cow_, and they will never die with that ravaging disease called "_the distemper_." In short, to suppose that milk contains any thing essentially unwholesome is monstrous. When, indeed, the appetite becomes vitiated: when the organs have been long accustomed to food of a more stimulating nature; when it has been resolved to eat ragouts at dinner, and drink wine, and to swallow "a devil," and a glass of strong grog at night; then milk for breakfast may be "_heavy_" and disgusting, and the feeder may stand in need of tea or laudanum, which differ only as to degrees of strength. But, and I speak from the most ample experience, milk is not "_heavy_," and much less is it _unwholesome_, when he who uses it rises early, never swallows strong drink, and never _stuffs_ himself with flesh of any kind. Many and many a day I scarcely taste of meat, and then chiefly at _breakfast_, and that, too, at an early hour. Milk is the natural food of _young people_; if it be too rich, _skim_ it again and again till it be not too rich. This is an evil easily cured. If you have now to _begin_ with a family of children, they may not like it at first. But _persevere_; and the parent who does not do this, having the means in his hands, shamefully neglects his duty. A son who prefers a "devil" and a glass of grog to a hunch of bread and a bowl of cold milk, I regard as a pest; and for this pest the father has to thank himself. 137. Before I dismiss this article, let me offer an observation or two to those persons who live in the vicinity of towns, or in towns, and who, though they have _large gardens_, have "_no land to keep a cow_," a circumstance which they "_exceedingly regret_." I have, I dare say, witnessed this case at least a thousand times. Now, how much garden ground does it require to supply even a large family with _garden vegetables_? The market gardeners round the metropolis of this wen-headed country; round this Wen of all wens;[8] round this prodigious and monstrous collection of human beings; these market gardeners have about _three hundred thousand families to supply with vegetables_, and these they supply well too, and with summer fruits into the bargain. Now, if it demanded _ten rods to a family_, the whole would demand, all but a fraction, _nineteen thousand acres of garden ground_. We have only to cast our eyes over what there is to know that there is not a _fourth_ of that quantity. A _square mile_ contains, leaving out parts of a hundred, 700 acres of land; and 19,000 acres occupy more than _twenty-two square miles_. Are there twenty-two square miles covered with the Wen's market gardens? The very question is absurd. The whole of the market gardens from Brompton to Hammersmith, extending to Battersea Rise on the one side, and to the Bayswater road on the other side, and leaving out loads, lanes, nurseries; pastures, corn-fields, and pleasure-grounds, do not, in my opinion, cover _one square mile_. To the north and south of the Wen there is very little in the way of market garden; and if, on both sides of the Thames, to the eastward of the Wen, there be _three square miles_ actually covered with market gardens, that is the full extent. How, then, could the Wen be supplied, if it required _ten rods_ to each family? To be sure, potatoes, carrots, and turnips, and especially the first of these, are brought, for the use of the Wen, from a great distance, in many cases. But, so they are for the use of the persons I am speaking of; for a gentleman thinks no more of raising a large quantity of these things in his _garden_, than he thinks of _raising wheat there_. How is it, then, that it requires half an acre, or eighty rods, in a _private_ garden to supply a family, while these market gardeners supply all these families (and so amply too) from ten, or more likely, five rods of ground to a family? I have shown, in the last Number, that nearly fifteen tons of vegetables can be raised in a year upon forty rods of ground; that is to say, _ten loads for a wagon and four good horses_. And is not a fourth, or even an eighth, part of this weight, sufficient to go down the throats of a family in a year? Nay, allow that only _a ton_ goes to a family in a year, it is more than _six pound weight a day_; and what sort of a family must that be that really _swallows_ six pounds weight a day? and this a market gardener will raise for them upon less than _three rods_ of ground; for he will raise, in the course of the year, even more than fifteen tons upon forty rods of ground. What is it, then, that they _do_ with the eighty rods of ground in a private garden? Why, in the first place, they have _one crop_ where they ought to have _three_. Then they do not half _till_ the ground. Then they grow things that are _not wanted_. Plant cabbages and other things, let them stand till they be good for nothing, and then wheel them to the rubbish heap. Raise as many radishes, lettuces, and as much endive, and as many kidney-beans, as would serve for ten families; and finally throw nine-tenths of them away. I once saw not less than three rods of ground, in a garden of this sort, with lettuces all bearing _seed_. Seed enough for half a county. They cut a cabbage _here_ and a cabbage _there_, and so let the whole of the piece of ground remain undug, till the _last_ cabbage be cut. But, after all, the produce, even in this way, is so great, that it never could be gotten rid of, if the main part were not _thrown away_. The rubbish heap always receives four-fifths even of the _eatable_ part of the produce. 138. It is not thus that the market gardeners proceed. Their rubbish heap consists of little besides mere cabbage stumps. No sooner is one crop _on_ the ground than they settle in their minds what is to follow it. They _clear as they go_ in taking off a crop, and, as they clear they dig and plant. The ground is never without seed in it or plants on it. And thus, in the course of the year, they raise a prodigious bulk of vegetables from eighty rods of ground. Such vigilance and industry are not to be expected in a _servant_; for it is foolish to expect that a man will exert himself for another as much as he will for himself. But if I was situated as one of the persons is that I have spoken of in Paragraph 137; that is to say, if I had a garden of eighty rods, or even of sixty rods of ground, I would out of that garden, draw a sufficiency of vegetables for my family, and would make it yield enough for a _cow_ besides. I should go a short way to work with my gardener. I should put _Cottage Economy_ into his hands, and tell him, that if he could furnish me with vegetables, and my cow with food, he was my man; and that if he could not, I must get one that could and would. I am not for making a man toil like a slave; but what would become of the world, if a well-fed healthy man could exhaust himself in tilling and cropping and clearing half an acre of ground? I have known many men _dig_ thirty rods of garden ground in a day; I have, before I was fourteen, digged twenty rods in a day, for more than ten days successively; and I have heard, and believe the fact, of a man at Portsea, who digged forty rods in one single day, between daylight and dark. So that it is no slavish toil that I am here recommending. KEEPING PIGS. 139. Next after the _Cow_ comes the _Pig_; and, in many cases, where a cow cannot be kept, a pig or pigs may be kept. But these are animals not to be ventured on without due consideration as to the means of _feeding_ them; for a starved pig is a great deal worse than none at all. You cannot make bacon as you can milk, merely out of the garden. There must be _something more_. A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. The sight of them upon the rack tends more to keep a man from poaching and stealing than whole volumes of penal statutes, though assisted by the terrors of the hulks and the gibbet. They are great softeners of the temper, and promoters of domestic harmony. They are a great blessing; but they are not to be had from _herbage_ or _roots_ of any kind; and, therefore, before a _pig_ be attempted, the means ought to be considered. 140. _Breeding sows_ are great favourites with Cottagers in general; but I have seldom known them to answer their purpose. Where there is an outlet, the sow will, indeed, keep herself by grazing in summer, with a little _wash_ to help her out: and when her pigs come, they are many in number; but they are a heavy expense. The sow must live as well as a _fatting hog_, or the pigs will be good for little. It is a great mistake, too, to suppose that the condition of the sow _previous to pigging_ is of no consequence; and, indeed, some suppose, that she ought to be rather _bare of flesh_ at the pigging time. Never was a greater mistake; for if she be in this state, she presently becomes a mere rack of bones; and then, do what you will, the pigs will be poor things. However fat she may be before she farrow, the pigs will make her lean in a week. All her fat goes away in her milk, and unless the pigs have a _store_ to draw upon, they pull her down directly; and, by the time they are three weeks old, they are starving for want; and then they never come to good. 141. Now, a cottager's sow cannot, without great expense, be kept in a way to enable her to meet the demands of her farrow. She may _look_ pretty well; but the flesh she has upon her is not of the same nature as that which the _farm-yard_ sow carries about her. It is the result of grass, and of poor grass, too, or other weak food; and not made partly out of corn and whey and strong wash, as in the case of the farmer's sow. No food short of that of a fatting hog will enable her to keep her pigs _alive_; and this she must have for _ten weeks_, and that at a great expense. Then comes the operation, upon the principle of _Parson Malthus_, in order to _check population_; and there is some risk here, though not very great. But there is the _weaning_; and who, that knows any thing about the matter, will think lightly of the weaning of a farrow of pigs! By having nice food given them, they seem, for a few days, not to miss their mother. But their appearance soon shows the want of her. Nothing but the very best food, and that given in the most judicious manner, will keep them up to any thing like good condition; and, indeed, there is nothing short of _milk_ that will effect the thing well. How should it be otherwise? The very richest cow's milk is poor, compared with that of the sow; and, to be taken from this and put upon food, one ingredient of which is _water_, is quite sufficient to reduce the poor little things to bare bones and staring hair, a state to which cottagers' pigs very soon come in general; and, at last, he frequently drives them to market, and sells them for less than the cost of the food which they and the sow have devoured since they were farrowed. It was, doubtless, pigs of this description that were sold the other day at Newbury market, for _fifteen pence a piece_, and which were, I dare say, dear even as a gift. To get such a pig to _begin_ to grow will require _three months_, and with good feeding too in winter time. To be sure it does come to be a hog at last; but, do what you can, it is a dear hog. 142. The _Cottager_, then, can hold no competition with the _Farmer_ in the _breeding_ of pigs, to do which, with advantage, there must be _milk_, and milk, too, that can be advantageously applied to no other use. The cottager's pig must be bought ready weaned to his hand, and, indeed, at _four months old_, at which age, if he be in good condition, he will eat any-thing that an old hog will eat. He will graze, eat cabbage leaves, and almost the stumps. Swedish turnip tops or roots, and such things, with a little wash, will keep him along in very good growing order. I have now to speak of the time of purchasing, the manner of keeping, of fatting, killing, and curing; but these I must reserve till my next Number. No. VI. KEEPING PIGS--(_continued._) 143. As in the case of cows so in that of pigs, much must depend upon the situation of the cottage; because all pigs will _graze_; and therefore, on the skirts of forests or commons, a couple or three pigs may be kept, if the family be considerable; and especially if the cottager brew his own beer, which will give him grains to assist the wash. Even in _lanes_, or on the sides of great roads, a pig will find a good part of his food from May to November; and if he be _yoked_, the occupiers of the neighbourhood must be churlish and brutish indeed, if they give the owner any annoyance. 144. Let me break off here for a moment to point out to my readers the truly excellent conduct of Lord WINCHILSEA and Lord STANHOPE, who, as I read, have taken great pains to make the labourers on their estates comfortable, by allotting to each a piece of ground sufficient for the keeping of a cow. I once, when I lived at Botley, proposed to the copyholders and other farmers in my neighbourhood, that we should petition the Bishop of Winchester, who was lord of the manors thereabouts, to grant titles to all the numerous persons called _trespassers on the wastes_; and also to give titles to others of the poor parishioners, who were willing to make, on the skirts of the wastes, enclosures not exceeding an acre each. This I am convinced, would have done a great deal towards relieving the parishes, then greatly burdened by men out of work. This would have been better than digging holes one day to fill them up the next. Not a single man would agree to my proposal! One, a bullfrog farmer (now, I hear, pretty well sweated down,) said it would only make them _saucy_! And one, a true disciple of _Malthus_, said, that to facilitate their rearing of children _was a harm_! This man had, at the time, in his own occupation, land that had formerly been _six farms_, and he had, too, ten or a dozen children. I will not mention names; but this farmer will _now_, perhaps, have occasion to call to mind what I told him on that day, when his opposition, and particularly the ground of it, gave me the more pain, as he was a very industrious, civil, and honest man. Never was there a greater mistake than to suppose that men are made saucy and idle by just and kind treatment. _Slaves_ are always lazy and saucy; nothing but the lash will extort from them either labour or respectful deportment. I never met with a _saucy_ Yankee (New Englander) in my life. Never servile; always civil. This must necessarily be the character of _freemen living in a state of competence_. They have nobody to envy; nobody to complain of; they are in good humour with mankind. It must, however, be confessed, that very little, comparatively speaking, is to be accomplished by the individual efforts even of benevolent men like the two noblemen before mentioned. They have a strife to maintain against the _general tendency of the national state of things_. It is by general and indirect means, and not by partial and direct and positive regulations, that so great a good as that which they generously aim at can be accomplished. When we are to see such means adopted, God only knows; but, if much longer delayed, I am of opinion, that they will come too late to prevent something very much resembling a dissolution of society. 145. The cottager's pig should be bought in the spring, or late in winter; and being then four months old, he will be a year old before killing time; for it should always be borne in mind, that this age is required in order to insure the greatest quantity of meat from a given quantity of food. If a hog be more than a year old, he is the better for it. The flesh is more solid and more nutritious than that of a young hog, much in the same degree that the mutton of a full-mouthed wether is better than that of a younger wether. The pork or bacon of young hogs, even if fatted on corn, is very apt to _boil out_, as they call it; that is to say, come out of the pot smaller in bulk than it goes in. When you begin to fat, do it by degrees, especially in the case of hogs under a year old. If you feed _high_ all at once, the hog is apt to _surfeit_, and then a great loss of food takes place. Peas, or barley-meal is the food; the latter rather the best, and does the work quicker. Make him _quite fat_ by all means. The last bushel, even if he sit as he eat, is the most profitable. If he can walk two hundred yards at a time, he is not well fatted. Lean bacon is the most wasteful thing that any family can use. In short, it is uneatable, except by drunkards, who want something to stimulate their sickly appetite. The man who cannot live on _solid fat_ bacon, well-fed and well-cured, wants the sweet sauce of labour, or is fit for the hospital. But, then, it must be _bacon_, the effect of barley or peas, (not beans,) and not of whey, potatoes, or _messes_ of any kind. It is frequently said, and I know that even farmers say it, that bacon, made from corn, _costs more than it is worth_! Why do they take care to have it then? They know better. They know well, that it is the very _cheapest_ they can have; and they, who look at both ends and both sides of every cost, would as soon think of shooting their hogs as of fatting them on _messes_; that is to say, for _their own use_, however willing they might now-and-then be to regale the Londoners with a bit of potato-pork. 146. About _Christmas_, if the weather be coldish, is a good time to kill. If the weather be very mild, you may wait a little longer; for the hog cannot be too fat. The day before killing he should have no food. To kill a hog nicely is so much of a profession, that it is better to pay a shilling for having it done, than to stab and hack and tear the carcass about. I shall not speak of _pork_; for I would by no means recommend it. There are two ways of going to work to make bacon; in the one you take off the hair by _scalding_. This is the practice in most parts of England, and all over America. But the _Hampshire_ way, and the best way, is to _burn the hair off_. There is a great deal of difference in the consequences. The first method slackens the skin, opens all the pores of it, makes it loose and flabby by drawing out the roots of the hair. The second tightens the skin in every part, contracts all the sinews and veins in the skin, makes the flitch a solider thing, and the skin a better protection to the meat. The taste of the meat is very different from that of a scalded hog; and to this chiefly it was that Hampshire bacon owed its reputation for excellence. As the hair is to be _burnt_ off it must be _dry_, and care must be taken, that the hog be kept on dry litter of some sort the day previous to killing. When killed he is laid upon a narrow bed of straw, not wider than his carcass, and only two or three inches thick. He is then covered all over thinly with straw, to which, according as the wind may be, the fire is put at one end. As the straw burns, it burns the hair. It requires two or three coverings and burnings, and care is taken, that the skin be not in any part burnt, or parched. When the hair is all burnt off close, the hog is _scraped_ clean, but never touched with _water_. The upper side being finished, the hog is turned over, and the other side is treated in like manner. This work should always be done _before day-light_; for in the day-light you cannot so nicely discover whether the hair be sufficiently burnt off. The light of the fire is weakened by that of the day. Besides, it makes the boys get up very early for once at any rate, and that is something; for boys always like a bonfire. 147. The _inwards_ are next taken out, and if the wife be not a slattern, here, in the mere offal, in the mere garbage, there is food, and delicate food too, for a large family for a week; and hog's puddings for the children, and some for neighbours' children, who come to play with them; for these things are by no means to be overlooked, seeing that they tend to the keeping alive of that affection in children for their parents, which, later in life, will be found absolutely necessary to give effect to wholesome precept, especially when opposed to the boisterous passions of youth. 148. The butcher, the next day, cuts the hog up; and then the house is _filled with meat_! Souse, griskins, blade-bones, thigh-bones, spare-ribs, chines, belly-pieces, cheeks, all coming into use one after the other, and the last of the latter not before the end of about four or five weeks. But about this time, it is more than possible that the Methodist parson will pay you a visit. It is remarked in America, that these gentry are attracted by the squeaking of the pigs, as the fox is by the cackling of the hen. This may be called slander; but I will tell you what I did know to happen. A good honest careful fellow had a spare-rib, on which he intended to sup with his family after a long and hard day's work at coppice-cutting. Home he came at dark with his two little boys, each with a nitch of wood that they had carried four miles, cheered with the thought of the repast that awaited them. In he went, found his wife, the Methodist parson, and a whole troop of the sisterhood, engaged in prayer, and on the table lay scattered the clean-polished bones of the spare-rib! Can any reasonable creature believe, that, to save the soul, God requires us to give up the food necessary to sustain the body? Did Saint Paul preach this? He, who, while he spread the gospel abroad, _worked himself_, in order to have it to give to those who were unable to work? Upon what, then, do these modern saints; these evangelical gentlemen, found their claim to live on the labour of others. 149. All the other parts taken away, the two sides that remain, and that are called _flitches_, are to be cured for _bacon_. They are first rubbed with salt on their insides, or flesh sides, then placed, one on the other, the flesh sides uppermost, in a salting trough which has a gutter round its edges to drain away the _brine_; for, to have sweet and fine bacon, the flitches must not lie sopping in brine; which gives it that sort of taste which barrel-pork and sea-jonk have, and than which nothing is more villanous. Every one knows how different is the taste of fresh, dry salt, from that of salt in a dissolved state. The one is savoury, the other nauseous. Therefore, _change the salt often_. Once in four or five days. Let it melt, and sink in; but let it not lie too long. Change the flitches. Put that at bottom which was first put on the top. Do this a couple of times. This mode will cost you a great deal more in salt, or rather in _taxes_, than the _sopping mode_; but without it, your bacon will not be sweet and fine, and _will not keep so well_. As to the _time_ required for making the flitches sufficiently salt, it depends on circumstances; the thickness of the flitch, the state of the weather, the place wherein the salting is going on. It takes a longer time for a thick than for a thin flitch; it takes longer in dry, than in damp weather; it takes longer in a dry than in a damp place. But for the flitches of a hog of twelve score, in weather not very dry or very damp, about six weeks may do; and as yours is to be _fat_, which receives little injury from over-salting, give time enough; for you are to have bacon till Christmas comes again. The place for salting should, like a dairy, always be cool, but always admit of a _free circulation of air_: _confined_ air, though _cool_, will taint meat sooner than the mid-day sun accompanied with a breeze. Ice will not melt in the hottest sun so soon as in a close and damp cellar. Put a lump of ice in _cold water_, and one of the same size before a _hot fire_, and the former will dissolve in half the time that the latter will. Let me take this occasion of observing, that an ice-house should never be _under ground_, or _under the shade of trees_. That the bed of it ought to be three feet above the level of the ground; that this bed ought to consist of something that will admit the drippings to go instantly off; and that the house should stand in a place _open to the sun and air_. This is the way they have the ice-houses under the burning sun of Virginia; and here they keep their fish and meat as fresh and sweet as in winter, when at the same time neither will keep for twelve hours, though let down to the depth of a hundred feet in a well. A Virginian, with some poles and straw, will stick up an ice-house for ten dollars, worth a dozen of those ice-houses, each of which costs our men of taste as many scores of pounds. It is very hard to imagine, indeed, what any one should want ice _for_, in a country like this, except for clodpole boys to slide upon, and to drown cockneys in skaiting-time; but if people must have ice in summer, they may as well go a right way as a wrong way to get it. 150. However, the patient that I have at this time under my hands wants nothing to cool his blood, but something to warm it, and, therefore, I will get back to the flitches of bacon, which are now to be _smoked_; for smoking is a great deal better than merely _drying_, as is the fashion in the dairy countries in the West of England. When there were plenty of _farm_-houses there were plenty of places to smoke bacon in; since farmers have lived in gentleman's houses, and the main part of the farm-houses have been knocked down, these places are not so plenty. However, there is scarcely any neighbourhood without a chimney left to hang bacon up in. Two precautions are necessary: first, to hang the flitches where no _rain_ comes down upon them: second, not to let them be so near the fire as to _melt_. These precautions taken, the next is, that the smoke must proceed from _wood_, not turf, peat, or coal. Stubble or litter might do; but the trouble would be great. _Fir_, or _deal_, smoke is not fit for the purpose. I take it, that the absence of wood, as fuel, in the dairy countries, and in the North, has led to the making of pork and dried bacon. As to the _time_ that it requires to smoke a flitch, it must depend a good deal upon whether there be a _constant fire beneath_, and whether the fire be large or small. A month may do, if the fire be pretty constant, and such as a farm-house fire usually is. But over smoking, or, rather, too long hanging in the air, makes the bacon _rust_. Great attention should, therefore, be paid to this matter. The flitch ought not be dried up to the hardness of a board, and yet it ought to be perfectly dry. Before you hang it up, lay it on the floor, scatter the flesh-side pretty thickly over with bran, or with some fine saw-dust other than that of deal or fir. Rub it on the flesh, or pat it well down upon it. This keeps the smoke from getting into the little openings, and makes a sort of crust to be dried on; and, in short, keeps the flesh cleaner than it would otherwise be. 151. To keep the bacon sweet and good, and free from nasty things that they call _hoppers_; that is to say, a sort of skipping maggots, engendered by a fly which has a great relish for bacon: to provide against this mischief, and also to keep the bacon from becoming rusty, the Americans, whose country is so hot in summer, have two methods. They smoke no part of the hog except the hams, or gammons. They cover these with coarse linen cloth such as the finest hop-bags are made of, which they sew neatly on. They then _white-wash_ the cloth all over with _lime_ white-wash, such as we put on walls, their lime being excellent stone-lime. They give the ham four or five washings, the one succeeding as the former gets dry; and in the sun, all these washings are put on in a few hours. The flies cannot get through this; and thus the meat is preserved from them. The _other_ mode, and that is the mode for you, is, to sift _fine_ some clean and dry _wood-ashes_. Put some at the bottom of a box, or chest, which is long enough to hold a flitch of bacon. Lay in one flitch; then put in more ashes; then the _other flitch_; and then cover this with six or eight inches of the ashes. This will effectually keep away all flies; and will keep the bacon as fresh and good as when it came out of the chimney, which it will not be for any great length of time, if put on a rack, or kept hung up in the open air. _Dust_, or even _sand_, very, very _dry_, would, perhaps, do as well. The object is not only to keep out the flies, but the _air_. The place where the chest, or box, is kept, ought to be _dry_; and, if the ashes should get damp (as they are apt to do from the salts they contain,) they should be put in the fire-place to dry, and then be put back again. Peat-ashes, or turf-ashes, might do very well for this purpose. With these precautions, the bacon will be as good at the end of the year as on the first day; and it will keep two, and even three years, perfectly good, for which, however, there can be no necessity. 152. Now, then, this hog is altogether a capital thing. The other parts will be meat for about four or five weeks. The _lard_, nicely put down, will last a long while for all the purposes for which it is wanted. To make it keep well there should be some salt put into it. Country children are badly brought up if they do not like sweet lard spread upon bread, as we spread butter. Many a score hunches of this sort have I eaten, and I never knew what poverty was. I have eaten it for luncheon at the houses of good substantial farmers in France and Flanders. I am not now frequently so hungry as I ought to be; but I should think it no hardship to eat _sweet_ lard instead of butter. But, now-a-days, the labourers, and especially the female part of them, have fallen into the taste of _niceness_ in food and _finery in dress_; a quarter of a bellyful and rags are the consequence. The food of their choice is high-priced, so that, for the greater part of their time, they are half-starved. The dress of their choice is _showy_ and _flimsy_, so that, to-day, they are _ladies_, and to-morrow ragged as sheep with the scab. But has not Nature made the country girls as pretty as ladies? Oh, yes! (bless their rosy cheeks and white teeth!) and a great deal prettier too! But are they _less_ pretty, when their dress is plain and substantial, and when the natural presumption is, that they have smocks as well as gowns, than they are when drawn off in the frail fabric of Sir Robert Peel,[9] "where tawdry colours strive with dirty white," exciting violent suspicions that all is not as it ought to be nearer the skin, and calling up a train of ideas extremely hostile to that sort of feeling which every lass innocently and commendably wishes to awaken in her male beholders? Are they prettiest when they come through the wet and dirt safe and neat; or when their draggled dress is plastered to their backs by a shower of rain? However, the fault has not been theirs, nor that of their parents. It is _the system_ of managing the affairs of the nation. This system has made all _flashy_ and _false_, and has put all things out of their place. Pomposity, bombast, hyperbole, redundancy, and obscurity, both in speaking and in writing; mock-delicacy in manners; mock-liberality, mock-humanity, and mock-religion. Pitt's false money, Peel's flimsy dresses, Wilberforce's potatoe diet, Castlereagh's and Mackintosh's oratory, Walter Scott's poems, Walter's and Stoddart's[10] paragraphs, with all the bad taste and baseness and hypocrisy which they spread over this country; all have arisen, grown, branched out, bloomed, and borne together; and we are now beginning to taste of their fruit. But, as the fat of the adder is, as is said, the antidote to its sting; so in the Son of the great worker of Spinning-Jennies, we have, thanks to the Proctors and Doctors of Oxford, the author of that _Bill_, before which this false, this flashy, this flimsy, this rotten system will dissolve as one of his father's pasted calicoes does at the sight of the washing-tub. 153. "What," says the cottager, "has all this to do with hogs and bacon?" Not directly with hogs and bacon, indeed; but it has a great deal to do, my good fellow with your affairs, as I shall, probably, hereafter more fully show, though I shall now leave you to the enjoyment of your flitches of bacon, which, as I before observed, will do ten thousand times more than any Methodist parson, or any other parson (except, of course, those of _our_ church) to make you happy, not only in this world, but in the world to come. _Meat in the house_ is a great source of _harmony_, a great preventer of the temptation to commit those things, which, from small beginnings, lead, finally, to the most fatal and atrocious results; and I hold that doctrine to be _truly damnable_, which teaches that God has made any selection, any condition relative to belief, which is to save from punishment those who violate the principles of _natural justice_. 154. _Some_ other meat you may have; but, bacon is the great thing. It is always ready; as good cold as hot; goes to the field or the coppice conveniently; in harvest, and other busy times, demands the pot to be boiled only on a Sunday; has twice as much strength in it as any other thing of the same weight; and in short, has in it every quality that tends to make a labourer's family able to work and well off. One pound of bacon, such as that which I have described, is, in a labourer's family, worth four or five of ordinary mutton or beef, which are great part _bone_, and which, in short, are gone in a moment. But always observe, it is _fat bacon_ that I am talking about. There will, in spite of all that can be done, be _some_ lean in the gammons, though comparatively very little; and therefore you ought to begin at that end of the flitches; for, _old lean bacon_ is not good. 155. Now, as to the _cost_. A pig (a _spayed sow_ is best) bought in March four months old, can be had now for fifteen shillings. The cost till fatting time is next to nothing to a Cottager; and then the cost, at the present price of corn, would, for a hog of twelve score, not exceed _three pounds_; in the whole _four pounds five_; a pot of poison a week bought at the public-house comes to _twenty-six shillings_ of the money; and more than _three times the remainder_ is generally flung away upon the miserable _tea_, as I have clearly shown in the First Number, at Paragraph 24. I have, indeed, there shown, that if the tea were laid aside, the labourer might supply his family well with beer all the year round, and have a fat hog of even _fifteen score_ for the _cost of the tea_, which does him and can do him _no good at all_. 156. The feet, the cheeks, and other bone, being considered, the _bacon and lard_, taken together, would not exceed _sixpence a pound_. Irish bacon is "_cheaper_." Yes, _lower-priced_. But, I will engage that a pound of mine, when it comes _out_ of the pot (to say nothing of the _taste_,) shall weigh as much as a _pound and a half_ of Irish, or any dairy or slop-fed bacon, when that comes out of the pot. No, no: the farmers joke when they say, that their bacon _costs them more than_ they could buy bacon for. They know well what it is they are doing; and besides, they always forget, or, rather, remember not to say, that the fatting of a large hog yields them three or four load of dung, really worth more than ten or fifteen of common yard dung. In short, without hogs, farming _could not go on_; and it never has gone on in any country in the world. The hogs are the great _stay_ of the whole concern. They are _much in small space_; they make no _show_, as flocks and herds do; but with out them, the cultivation of the land would be a poor, a miserably barren concern. SALTING MUTTON AND BEEF. 157. _VERY FAT_ Mutton may be salted to great advantage, and also smoked, and may be kept thus a long while. Not the shoulders and legs, but the _back_ of the sheep. I have never made any flitch of _sheep-bacon_; but I will; for there is nothing like having a _store_ of meat in a house. The running to the butchers daily is a ridiculous thing. The very idea of being fed, of a _family_ being fed, by daily supplies, has something in it perfectly _tormenting_. One half of the time of a mistress of a house, the affairs of which are carried on in this way, is taken up in talking about what is to be got for dinner, and in negotiations with the butcher. One single moment spent at table beyond what is absolutely necessary, is a moment very shamefully spent; but, to suffer a system of domestic economy, which unnecessarily wastes daily an hour or two of the mistress's time in hunting for the provision for the repast, is a shame indeed; and when we consider how much time is generally spent in this and in equally absurd ways, it is no wonder that we see so little performed by numerous individuals as they do perform during the course of their lives. 158. _Very fat parts of Beef_ may be salted and smoked in a like manner. Not the _lean_; for that is a great waste, and is, in short, good for nothing. Poor fellows on board of ships are compelled to eat it, but it is a very bad thing. No. VII. BEES, FOWLS, &C. &C. 159. I now proceed to treat of objects of less importance than the foregoing, but still such as may be worthy of great attention. If all of them cannot be expected to come within the scope of a labourer's family, some of them must, and others may: and it is always of great consequence, that children be brought up to set a just value upon all useful things, and especially upon all _living things_; to know the _utility_ of them: for, without this, they never, when grown up, are worthy of being entrusted with the _care_ of them. One of the greatest, and, perhaps, the very commonest, fault of servants, is their inadequate care of animals committed to their charge. It is a well-known saying that "the _master's eye_ makes the horse fat," and the remissness to which this alludes, is generally owing to the servant not having been brought up to feel _an interest_ in the well-being of animals. BEES. 160. It is not my intention to enter into a history of this insect about which so much has been written, especially by the French naturalists. It is the _useful_ that I shall treat of, and that is done in not many words. The best _hives_ are those made of clean unblighted _rye-straw_. Boards are too cold in England. A swarm should always be put into a _new_ hive, and the sticks should be _new_ that are put into the hive for the bees to work on; for, if the hive be old, it is not so _wholesome_, and a thousand to one but it contain the embryos of _moths_ and other insects injurious to bees. Over the hive itself there should be a cap of thatch, made also of clean rye straw; and it should not only be _new_ when first put on the hive; but a new one should be made to supply the place of the former one every three or four months; for when the straw begins to get rotten, as it soon does, insects breed in it, its smell is bad, and its effect on the bees is dangerous. 161. The hive should be placed on a bench, the legs of which mice and rats cannot creep up. Tin round the legs is best. But even this will not keep down _ants_, which are mortal enemies of bees. To keep these away, if you find them infest the hive, take a green stick and twist it round in the shape of a ring to lay on the ground round the leg of the bench, and at a few inches from it; and cover this stick with _tar_. This will keep away the ants. If the ants come from one home, you may easily _trace them to it_; and when you have found it, pour _boiling water_ on it in the night, when all the family are at home. This is the only effectual way of destroying ants, which are frequently so troublesome. It would be cruel to cause this destruction, if it were not necessary to do it, in order to preserve the honey, and indeed the bees too. 162. Besides the hive and its cap, there should be a sort of shed, with top, back, and ends, to give additional protection in winter; though in summer hives may be kept _too hot_, and in that case the bees become sickly and the produce becomes light. The _situation_ of the hive is to face the South-east; or, at any rate, to be sheltered from the _North_ and the _West_. From the North always, and from the West in winter. If it be a very dry season in summer, it contributes greatly to the success of the bees, to place clear water near their home, in a thing that they can conveniently drink out of; for if they have to go a great way for drink, they have not much time for work. 163. It is supposed that bees live only a year; at any rate it is best never to keep the same stall, or family, over two years, except you want to increase your number of hives. The swarm of _this summer_ should always be taken in the autumn of next year. It is whimsical to _save_ the bees when you take the honey. You must _feed_ them; and, if saved, they will die of old age before the next fall; and though young ones will supply the place of the dead, this is nothing like a good swarm put up during the summer. 164. As to the things that bees make their collections from, we do not, perhaps, know a thousandth part of them; but of all the blossoms that they seek eagerly that of the _Buck-wheat_ stands foremost. Go round a piece of this grain just towards sunset, when the buck-wheat is in bloom, and you will see the air filled with bees going home from it in all directions. The buck-wheat, too, continues in bloom a long while; for the grain is dead ripe on one part of the plant, while there are fresh blossoms coming out on the other part. 165. A good stall of bees, that is to say, the produce of one, is always worth about _two bushels of good wheat_. The _cost_ is nothing to the labourer. He must be a stupid countryman indeed who cannot make a bee-hive; and a lazy one indeed if he _will_ not, if he can. In short, there is nothing but _care_ demanded; and there are very few situations in the country, especially in the south of England, where a labouring man may not have half a dozen stalls of bees to take every year. The main things are to keep away insects, mice, and birds, and especially a little bird called the bee-bird; and to keep all clean and fresh as to the hives and coverings. Never put a swarm into an _old hive_. If wasps, or hornets, annoy you, watch them home in the day time; and in the night kill them by fire, or by boiling water. Fowls should not go where bees are, for they eat them. 166. Suppose a man get three stalls of bees in a year. Six bushels of wheat give him bread for an _eighth part of the year_. Scarcely any thing is a greater misfortune than _shiftlessness_. It is an evil little short of the loss of eyes or of limbs. GEESE. 167. They can be kept to advantage only where there are _green commons_, and there they are easily kept; live to a very great age; and are amongst the hardiest animals in the world. If _well kept_, a goose will lay a hundred eggs in a year. The French put their eggs under large hens of common fowls, to each of which they give four or five eggs; or under turkies, to which they give nine or ten goose-eggs. If the goose herself sit, she must be well and _regularly fed_, at, or near to, her nest. When the young ones are hatched, they should be kept in a warm place for about four days, and fed on barley-meal, mixed, if possible, with milk; and then they will begin to _graze_. Water for them, or for the old ones to _swim_ in, is by no means _necessary_, nor, perhaps, ever even _useful_. Or, how is it, that you see such fine flocks of fine geese all over Long Island (in America) where there is scarcely such a thing as a pond or a run of water? 168. Geese are raised by _grazing_; but to _fat_ them something more is required. Corn of some sort, or boiled Swedish turnips. Some corn and some raw Swedish turnips, or carrots, or white cabbages, or lettuces, make the best fatting. The modes that are resorted to by the French for fatting geese, _nailing_ them down by their webs, and other acts of cruelty, are, I hope, such as Englishmen will never think of. They will get fat enough without the use of any of these unfeeling means being employed. He who can deliberately inflict _torture_ upon an animal, in order to heighten the pleasure his palate is to receive in eating it, is an abuser of the authority which God has given him, and is, indeed, a tyrant in his heart. Who would think himself safe, if at the _mercy_ of such a man? Since the first edition of this work was published, I have had a good deal of experience with regard to geese. It is a very great error to suppose that what is called a Michaelmas goose is _the thing_. Geese are, in general, eaten at the age when they are called green geese; or after they have got their full and entire growth, which is not until the latter part of October. Green geese are tasteless squabs; loose flabby things; no rich taste in them; and, in short, a very indifferent sort of dish. The full-grown goose has solidity in it; but it is _hard_, as well as solid; and in place of being _rich_, it is strong. Now, there is a middle course to take; and if you take this course, you produce the finest birds of which we can know any thing in England. For three years, including the present year, I have had the finest geese that I ever saw, or ever heard of. I have bought from twenty to thirty every one of these years. I buy them off the common late in June, or very early in July. They have cost me from two shillings to three shillings each, first purchase. I bring the flock home, and put them in a pen, about twenty feet square, where I keep them well littered with straw, so as for them not to get filthy. They have one trough in which I give them dry oats, and they have another trough where they have constantly plenty of clean water. Besides these, we give them, two or three times a day, a parcel of lettuces out of the garden. We give them such as are going to seed generally; but the better the lettuces are, the better the geese. If we have no lettuces to spare, we give them cabbages, either loaved or not loaved; though, observe, the white cabbage as well as the white lettuce, that is to say, the loaved cabbage and lettuce, are a great deal better than those that are not loaved. This is the food of my geese. They thrive exceedingly upon this food. After we have had the flock about ten days, we begin to kill, and we proceed once or twice a week till about the middle of October, sometimes later. A great number of persons who have eaten of these geese have all declared that they did not imagine that a goose could be brought to be so good a bird. These geese are altogether different from the hard, strong things that come out of the stubble fields, and equally different from the flabby things called a green goose. I should think that the cabbages or lettuces perform half the work of keeping and fatting my geese; and these are things that really cost nothing. I should think that the geese, upon an average, do not consume more than a shilling's worth of oats each. So that we have these beautiful geese for about four shillings each. No money will buy me such a goose in London; but the thing that I can get nearest to it, will cost me _seven_ shillings. Every gentleman has a garden. That garden has, in the month of July, a wagon-load, at least, of lettuces and cabbages to throw away. Nothing is attended with so little trouble as these geese. There is hardly any body near London that has not room for the purposes here mentioned. The reader will be apt to exclaim, as my friends very often do, "Cobbett's Geese are all _Swans_." Well, better that way than not to be pleased with what one has. However, let gentlemen try this method of fatting geese. It saves money, mind, at the same time. Let them try it; and if any one, who shall try it, shall find the effect not to be that which I say it is, let him reproach me publicly with being a deceiver. The thing is no _invention_ of mine. While I could buy a goose off the common for half-a-crown, I did not like to give seven shillings for one in London, and yet I wished that geese should not be excluded from my house. Therefore I bought a flock of geese, and brought them home to Kensington. They could not be eaten all at once. It was necessary, therefore, to fix upon a mode of feeding them. The above mode was adopted by my servant, as far as I know, without any knowledge of mine; but the very agreeable result made me look into the matter; and my opinion, that the information will be useful to many persons, at any rate, is sufficient to induce me to communicate it to my readers. DUCKS. 169. No water, to _swim_ in, is necessary to the old, and is _injurious_ to the very young. They never should be suffered to swim (if water be near) till _more than a month old_. The old duck will lay, in the year, if _well kept_, ten dozen of eggs; and that is her best employment; for common hens are the best mothers. It is not good to let young ducks out in the morning to eat _slugs_ and _worms_; for, though they like them, these things kill them if they eat a great quantity. Grass, corn, white cabbages, and lettuces, and especially buck-wheat, cut, when half ripe, and flung down in the haulm. This makes fine ducks. Ducks will feed on garbage and all sorts of filthy things; but their flesh is _strong_, and bad in proportion. They are, in Long Island, fatted upon a coarse sort of _crab_, called a horse-foot fish, prodigious quantities of which are cast on the shores. The young ducks grow very fast upon this, and very fat; but wo unto him that has to _smell_ them when they come from the spit; and, as for _eating_ them, a man must have a stomach indeed to do that! 170. When young, they should be fed upon barley-meal, or _curds_, and kept in a warm place in the night-time, and not let out _early_ in the morning. They should, if possible, be kept from water to _swim_ in. It always does them harm; and, if intended to be sold to be killed _young_, they should never go near ponds, ditches, or streams. When you come to fat ducks, you must take care that they get at _no filth_ whatever. They will eat garbage of all sorts; they will suck down the most nauseous particles of all those substances which go for manure. A dead rat three parts rotten is a feast to them. For these reasons I should never eat any ducks, unless there were some mode of keeping them from this horrible food. I treat them precisely as I do my geese. I buy a troop when they are young, and put them in a pen, and feed them upon oats, cabbages, lettuces, and water, and have the place kept very clean. My ducks are, in consequence of this, a great deal more fine and delicate than any others that I know any-thing of. TURKEYS. 171. These are _flying_ things, and so are _common fowls_. But it may happen that a few hints respecting them may be of use. To raise turkeys in this chilly climate, is a matter of much greater difficulty than in the climates that give great warmth. But the great enemy to young turkeys (for old ones are hardy enough) _is the wet_. This they will endure in _no climate_; and so true is this, that, in America, where there is always "_a wet spell_" in April, the farmers' wives take care never to have a brood come out until that spell is passed. In England, where the wet spells come at haphazard, the first thing is to take care that young turkeys never go out, on any account, except in dry weather, till the _dew be quite off the ground_; and this should be adhered to till they get to be of the size of an old partridge, and have their backs well covered with feathers. And, in wet weather, they should be kept under cover all day long. 172. As to the _feeding_ of them, when young, various nice things are recommended. Hard eggs chopped fine, with crumbs of bread, and a great many other things; but that which I have seen used, and always with success, and for all sorts of young poultry, is milk _turned into curds_. This is the food for young poultry of all sorts. Some should be made _fresh every_ day; and if this be done, and the young turkeys kept warm, and especially _from wet_, not one out of a score will die. When they get to be strong, they may have meal and grain, but still they always love the curds. 173. When they get their _head feathers_ they are hardy enough; and what they then want is _room_ to prowl about. It is best to breed them under a _common hen_; because she does not _ramble_ like a hen-turkey; and it is a very curious thing that the turkeys bred up by a hen of the common fowl, _do not themselves ramble much when they get old_; and for this reason, when they buy turkeys for _stock_, in America, (where there are such large woods, and where the distant rambling of turkeys is inconvenient,) they always buy such as have been bred under the hens of the common fowl; than which a more complete proof of the great powers of _habit_ is, perhaps, not to be found. And ought not this to be a lesson to fathers and mothers of families? Ought not they to consider that the habits which they give their children are to stick by those children during their whole lives? 174. The _hen_ should be fed _exceedingly well_, too, while she is _sitting_ and _after_ she has hatched; for though she does not give _milk_, she gives _heat_; and, let it be observed, that as no man ever yet saw healthy pigs with a poor sow, so no man ever saw healthy chickens with a poor hen. This is a matter much too little thought of in the rearing of poultry; but it is a matter of the greatest consequence. Never let a poor hen sit; feed the hen well while she is sitting, and feed her most abundantly when she has young ones; for then her _labour_ is very great; she is making exertions of some sort or other during the whole twenty-four hours; she has no rest; is constantly doing something or other to provide food or safety for her young ones. 175. As to _fatting_ turkeys, the best way is, never to let them be poor. _Cramming_ is a nasty thing, and quite unnecessary. Barley-meal, mixed with skim-milk, given to them, fresh and fresh, will make them fat in a short time, either in a coop, in a house, or running about. Boiled carrots and Swedish turnips will help, and it is a change of sweet food. In France they sometimes _pick turkeys alive_, to make them _tender_; of which I shall only say, that the man that can do this, or order it to be done, ought to be skinned alive himself. FOWLS. 176. These are kept for two objects; their _flesh_ and their _eggs_. As to _rearing them_, every thing said about rearing turkeys is applicable here. They are best _fatted_, too, in the same manner. But, as to _laying-hens_, there are some means to be used to secure the use of them in _winter_. They ought not to be _old hens_. Pullets, that is, birds hatched in the foregoing spring, are, perhaps, the best. At any rate, let them not be more than _two years old_. They should be kept in a _warm_ place, and not let out, even in the day-time, in _wet_ weather; for one good sound wetting will keep them back for a fortnight. The dry cold, even in the severest cold, if _dry_, is less injurious than even a little _wet_ in winter-time. If the feathers get wet, in our climate, in winter, or in short days, they do not get dry for a long time; and this it is that spoils and kills many of our fowls. 177. The French, who are great egg-eaters, take singular pains as to the _food_ of laying-hens in winter. They let them out very little, even in their fine climate, and give them very stimulating food; barley boiled, and given them warm; curds, _buck-wheat_, (which, I believe, is the best thing of all except curds;) parsley and other herbs chopped fine; leeks chopped in the same way; also apples and pears chopped very fine; oats and wheat cribbled; and sometimes they give them hemp-seed, and the seed of nettles; or dried nettles, harvested in summer, and boiled in the winter. Some give them ordinary food, and, once a day, toasted bread sopped in wine. White cabbages chopped up are very good in winter for all sorts of poultry. 178. This is taking a great deal of pains; but the produce is also great and very valuable in winter; for, as to _preserved_ eggs, they are things to run _from_ and not after. All this supposes, however, a proper _hen-house_, about which we, in England, take very little pains. The _vermin_, that is to say, the _lice_, that poultry breed, are the greatest annoyance. And as our wet climate furnishes them, for a great part of the year, with no _dust_ by which to get rid of these vermin, we should be very careful about _cleanliness_ in the hen-houses. Many a hen, when sitting, is compelled to quit her nest to get rid of the lice. They torment the young chickens. And, in short, are a great injury. The fowl-house should, therefore, be very often cleaned out; and sand, or fresh earth, should be thrown on the floor. The nest should not be on _shelves_, or on any-thing fixed; but little flat baskets, something like those that the gardeners have in the markets in London, and which they call _sieves_, should be placed against the sides of the house upon pieces of wood nailed up for the purpose. By this means the nests are kept perfectly clean, because the baskets are, when necessary, taken down, the hay thrown out, and the baskets washed; which cannot be done, if the nest be made in any-thing forming a part of the building. Besides this, the roosts ought to be cleaned every week, and the hay changed in the nests of laying-hens. It is good to _fumigate_ the house frequently by burning dry herbs, juniper wood, cedar wood, or with brimstone; for nothing stands so much in need of cleanliness as a fowl-house, in order to have fine fowls and plenty of eggs. 179. The _ailments_ of fowls are numerous, but they would seldom be seen, if the proper care were taken. It is useless to talk of _remedies_ in a case where you have complete power to prevent the evil. If well fed, and kept perfectly clean, fowls will seldom be sick; and, as to old age, they never ought to be kept more than a couple or three years; for they get to be good for little as layers, and no _teeth_ can face them as food. 180. It is, perhaps, seldom that fowls can be kept conveniently about a cottage; but when they can, three, four, or half a dozen hens to lay in _winter_, when the wife is at _home_ the greater part of the time, are worth attention. They would require but little room, might be bought in November and sold in April, and six of them, with proper care, might be made to clear every week the price of a gallon of flour. If the labour were great, I should not think of it; but it is _none_; and I am for neglecting nothing in the way of pains in order to ensure a hot dinner every day in winter, when the man comes home from work. As to the _fatting_ of fowls, information can be of no use to those who live in a cottage all their lives; but it may be of some use to those who are born in cottages, and go to have the care of poultry at richer persons' houses. Fowls should be put to fat about a fortnight before they are wanted to be killed. The best food is barley-meal wetted with milk, but not wetted too much. They should have clear water to drink, and it should be frequently changed. Crammed fowls are very nasty things: but "_barn-door_" fowls, as they are called, are sometimes a great deal more nasty. _Barn_-door would, indeed, do exceedingly well; but it unfortunately happens that the _stable_ is generally pretty near to the barn. And now let any gentleman who talks about sweet barn-door fowls, have one caught in the yard, where the stable is also. Let him have it brought in, killed, and the craw taken out and cut open. Then let him take a ball of horse-dung from the stable-door; and let his nose tell him how very small is the difference between the smell of the horse-dung, and the smell of the craw of his fowl. In short, roast the fowl, and then pull aside the skin at the neck, put your nose to the place, and you will almost think that you are at the stable door. Hence the necessity of taking them away from the barn-door a fortnight, at least, before they are killed. We know very well that ducks that have been fed upon fish, either wild ducks, or tame ducks, will scent a whole room, and drive out of it all those who have not pretty good constitutions. It must be so. Solomon says that all flesh is grass; and those who know any-thing about beef, know the difference between the effect of the grass in Herefordshire and Lincolnshire, and the effect of turnips and oil cake. In America they always take the fowls from the farm-yard, and shut them up a fortnight or three weeks before they be killed. One thing, however, about fowls ought always to be borne in mind. They are never good for any-thing when they have attained their full growth, unless they be _capons_ or _poullards_. If the poulets be old enough to have little eggs in them, they are not worth one farthing; and as to the cocks of the same age, they are fit for nothing but to make soup for soldiers on their march, and they ought to be taken for that purpose. PIGEONS. 181. A few of these may be kept about any cottage, for they are kept even in towns by labourers and artizans. They cause but little trouble. They take care of their own young ones; and they do not scratch, or do any other mischief in gardens. They want feeding with tares, peas, or small beans; and buck-wheat is very good for them. To _begin_ keeping them, they must not have _flown at large_ before you get them. You must keep them for two or three days, shut into the place which is to be their home; and then they may be let out, and will never leave you, as long as they can get proper food, and are undisturbed by vermin, or unannoyed exceedingly by lice. 182. The common dove-house pigeons are the best to keep. They breed oftenest, and feed their young ones best. They begin to breed at about _nine months old_, and if well kept, they will give you eight or nine pair in the year. Any little place, a shelf in the cow shed; a board or two under the eaves of the house; or, in short, any place under cover, even on the ground floor, they will sit and hatch and breed up their young ones in. 183. It is not supposed that there could be much _profit_ attached to them; but they are of this use; they are very pretty creatures; very interesting in their manners; they are an object to delight _children_, and to give them the _early habit_ of fondness for animals and of _setting a value_ on them, which, as I have often had to observe before, is a very great thing. A considerable part of all the _property_ of a nation consists of animals. Of course a proportionate part of the cares and labours of a people appertain to the breeding and bringing to perfection those animals; and, if you consult your experience, you will find that a labourer is, generally speaking, of value in proportion as he is worthy of being intrusted with the care of animals. The most careless fellow cannot _hurt_ a hedge or ditch; but to trust him with the _team_, or the _flock_, is another matter. And, mind, for the _man_ to be trust-worthy in this respect, the _boy_ must have been in the _habit_ of being kind and considerate towards animals; and nothing is so likely to give him that excellent habit as his seeing, from his very birth, animals taken great care of, and treated with great kindness by his parents, and now-and-then having a little thing to _call his own_. RABBITS. 184. In this case, too, the chief use, perhaps, is to give children those habits of which I have been just speaking. Nevertheless, rabbits are really profitable. Three does and a buck will give you a rabbit to eat for _every three days in the year_, which is a much larger quantity of food than any man will get by spending half his time in the pursuit of _wild_ animals, to say nothing of the toil, the tearing of clothes, and the danger of pursuing the latter. 185. Every-body knows how to knock up a rabbit hutch. The does should not be allowed to have more than _seven litters_ in a year. Six young ones to a doe is all that ought to be kept; and then they will be fine. _Abundant food_ is the main thing; and what is there that a rabbit will _not eat_? I know of nothing _green_ that they will not eat; and if hard pushed, they will eat bark, and even wood. The best thing to feed the young ones on when taken from the mother, is the _carrot_, wild or garden. Parsnips, Swedish turnips, roots of dandelion; for too much green or _watery_ stuff is not good for _weaning_ rabbits. They should remain as long as possible with the mother. They should have oats once a-day; and, after a time, they may eat any-thing with safety. But if you give them too much _green_ at first when they are weaned, they _rot_ as sheep do. A _variety_ of food is a great thing; and, surely, the fields and gardens and hedges furnish this variety! All sorts of grasses, strawberry-leaves, ivy, dandelions, the _hog-weed_ or _wild parsnip_, in root, stem, and leaves. I have fed working horses, six or eight in number, upon this plant for weeks together. It is a tall bold plant that grows in prodigious quantities in the hedges and coppices in some parts of England. It is the _perennial parsnip_. It has flower and seed precisely like those of the parsnip; and hogs, cows, and horses, are equally fond of it. Many a half-starved pig have I seen within a few yards of cart-loads of this pig-meat! This arises from want of the early habit of attention to such matters. I, who used to get hog-weed for pigs and for rabbits when a little chap, have never forgotten that the wild parsnip is good food for pigs and rabbits. 186. When the doe has young ones, feed her most abundantly with all sorts of greens and herbage and with carrots and the other things mentioned before, besides giving her a few oats once a-day. That is the way to have fine healthy young ones, which, if they come from the mother in good case, will very seldom die. But do not think, that because she is a small animal, a little feeding is sufficient! Rabbits eat a great deal more than cows or sheep in proportion to their bulk. 187. Of all animals rabbits are those that _boys_ are most fond of. They are extremely pretty, nimble in their movements, engaging in their attitudes, and always completely under immediate control. The produce has not long to be waited for. In short, they keep an interest constantly alive in a little chap's mind; and they really _cost nothing_; for as to the _oats_, where is the boy that cannot, in harvest-time, pick up enough along the _lanes_ to serve his rabbits for a year? The _care_ is all; and the habit of taking care of things is, of itself, a most valuable possession. 188. To those gentlemen who keep rabbits for the use of their family (and a very useful and convenient article they are,) I would observe, that when they find their rabbits die, they may depend on it, that ninety-nine times out of the hundred _starvation_ is the malady. And particularly short feeding of the doe, while, and before she has young ones; that is to say, short feeding of her _at all times_; for, if she be poor, the young ones will be good for nothing. She will _live_ being poor, but she will not, and cannot breed up fine young ones. GOATS AND EWES. 189. In some places where a cow cannot be kept, a goat may. A correspondent points out to me, that a Dorset ewe or two might be kept on a common near a cottage to give milk; and certainly this might be done very well; but I should prefer a goat, which is hardier and much more domestic. When I was in the army, in New Brunswick, where, be it observed, the snow lies on the ground seven months in the year, there were many goats that _belonged to the regiment_, and that went about with it on shipboard and every-where else. Some of them had gone through nearly the whole of the _American War_. We _never fed_ them. In summer they picked about wherever they could find grass; and in winter they lived on cabbage-leaves, turnip-peelings, potatoe-peelings, and other things flung out of the soldiers' rooms and huts. One of these goats belonged to me, and, on an average throughout the year, she gave me more than three half-pints of milk a day. I used to have the kid killed when a few days old; and, for some time, the goat would give nearly or quite, two quarts of milk a day. She was seldom dry more than three weeks in the year. 190. There is one great inconvenience belonging to goats; that is, they bark all young trees that they come near; so that, if they get into a _garden_, they destroy every thing. But there are seldom trees on commons, except such as are too large to be injured by goats; and I can see no reason against keeping a goat where a cow cannot be kept. Nothing is so hardy; nothing is so little nice as to its food. Goats will pick peelings out of the kennel and eat them. They will eat mouldy bread or biscuit; fusty hay, and almost rotten straw; furze-bushes, heath-thistles; and, indeed, what will they not eat, when they will make a hearty meal on _paper_, brown or white, printed on or not printed on, and give milk all the while! They will lie in any dog-hole. They do very well clogged, or stumped out. And, then, they are very _healthy_ things into the bargain, however closely they may be confined. When sea voyages are so stormy as to kill geese, ducks, fowls, and almost pigs, the goats are well and lively; and when a dog of no kind can keep the deck for a minute, a goat will skip about upon it as bold as brass. 191. Goats do not _ramble_ from home. They come in regularly in the evening, and if called, they come like dogs. Now, though ewes, when taken great care of, will be very gentle, and though their milk may be rather more delicate than that of the goat, the ewes must be fed with nice and clean food, and they will not do much in the milk-giving way upon a common; and, as to _feeding them_, provision must be made pretty nearly as for a cow. They will not endure _confinement_ like goats; and they are subject to numerous ailments that goats know nothing of. Then the ewes are done by the time they are about six years old; for they then lose their teeth; whereas a goat will continue to breed and to give milk in abundance for a great many years. The sheep is _frightened_ at everything, and especially at the least sound of a dog. A goat, on the contrary, will _face a dog_, and if he be not a big and courageous one, beat him off. 192. I have often wondered how it happened that none of our labourers kept goats; and I really should be glad to see the thing tried. They are pretty creatures, domestic as a dog, will stand and watch, as a dog does, for a crumb of bread, as you are eating; give you no trouble in the milking; and I cannot help being of opinion, that it might be of great use to introduce them amongst our labourers. CANDLES AND RUSHES. 193. We are not permitted to make candles ourselves, and if we were, they ought seldom to be used in a labourer's family. I was bred and brought up mostly by _rush-light_, and I do not find that I see less clearly than other people. Candles certainly were not much used in English labourers' dwellings in the days when they had meat dinners and Sunday coats. Potatoes and taxed candles seem to have grown into fashion together; and, perhaps, for this reason: that when the pot ceased to afford _grease_ for the rushes, the potatoe-gorger was compelled to go to the chandler's shop for light to swallow the potatoes by, else he might have devoured peeling and all! 194. My grandmother, who lived to be pretty nearly ninety, never, I believe, burnt a candle in her house in her life. I know that I never saw one there, and she, in a great measure, brought me up. She used to get the meadow-rushes, such as they tie the hop-shoots to the poles with. She cut them when they had attained their full substance, but were still _green_. The rush at this age, consists of a body of _pith_ with a green _skin_ on it. You cut off both ends of the rush, and leave the prime part, which, on an average, may be about a foot and a half long. Then you take off all the green skin, except for about a fifth part of the way round the pith. Thus it is a piece of pith all but a little strip of skin in one part all the way up, which, observe, is necessary to hold the pith together all the way along. 195. The rushes being thus prepared, the _grease_ is melted, and put in a melted state into something that is as _long_ as the rushes are. The rushes are put into the grease; soaked in it sufficiently; then taken out and laid in a bit of bark taken from a young tree, so as not to be too large. This bark is fixed up against the wall by a couple of straps put round it; and there it hangs for the purpose of holding the rushes. 196. The rushes are carried about _in the hand_; but to sit by, to work by, or to go to bed by, they are fixed in _stands_ made for the purpose, some of which are high to stand on the ground, and some low, to stand on a table. These stands have an iron port something like a pair of _pliers_ to hold the rush in, and the rush is shifted forward from time to time, as it burns down to the thing that holds it. 197. Now these rushes give a _better light_ than a common small dip-candle; and they cost next to nothing, though the labourer may with them have as much light as he pleases, and though, without them he must sit the far greater part of the winter evenings _in the dark_, even if he expend _fifteen shillings_ a year in candles. You may do any sort of work by this light; and, if reading be your taste, you may read the foul libels, the lies and abuse, which are circulated gratis about _me_ by the "Society for promoting _Christian Knowledge_," as well by rush-light, as you can by the light of taxed candles; and, at any rate, you would have one evil less; for to be deceived and to pay a tax for the deception are a little too much for even modern loyalty openly to demand. MUSTARD. 198. Why _buy_ this, when you can _grow_ it in your garden? The stuff you buy is half _drugs_; and is injurious to health. A _yard square_ of ground, sown with common Mustard, the crop of which you would grind for use, in a little mustard-mill, as you wanted it, would save you _some money_, and probably save your _life_. Your mustard would look _brown_ instead of _yellow_; but the former colour is as good as the latter: and, as to the _taste_, the _real_ mustard has certainly a much better than that of the _drugs_ and flour which go under the name of mustard. Let any one _try_ it, and I am sure he will never use the drugs again. The drugs, if you take them freely, leave _a burning at the pit of your stomach_, which the real mustard does not. DRESS, HOUSEHOLD GOODS, AND FUEL. 199. In Paragraph 152, I said, I think, enough to caution you, the English labourer, against the taste, now too prevalent, for _fine_ and _flimsy_ dress. It was, for hundreds of years, amongst the characteristics of the English people, that their taste was, in all matters, for things solid, sound, and good; for the _useful_, and _decent_, the _cleanly_ in dress, and not for the _showy_. Let us hope that this may be the taste again; and let us, my friends, fear no troubles, no perils, that may be necessary to produce a return of that taste, accompanied with full bellies and warm backs to the labouring classes. 200. In _household goods_, the _warm_, the _strong_, the _durable_, ought always to be kept in view. Oak tables, bedsteads and stools, chairs of oak or of yew tree, and never a bit of miserable deal board. Things of this sort ought to last several lifetimes. A labourer ought to inherit from his great grandfather something besides his toil. As to bedding, and other things of that sort, all ought to be good in their nature, of a durable quality, and plain in their colour and form. The plates, dishes, mugs, and things of that kind, should be of _pewter_, or even of wood. Any-thing is better than crockery-ware. Bottles to carry a-field should be of wood. Formerly, nobody but the gypsies and mumpers, that went a hop-picking in the season, carried glass or earthen bottles. As to _glass_ of any sort, I do not know what business it has in any man's house, unless he be rich enough to live on his means. It pays a tax, in many cases, to the amount of two-thirds of its cost. In short, when a house is once furnished with sufficient goods, there ought to be no renewal of hardly any part of them wanted for half an age, except in case of destruction by fire. Good management in this way leaves the man's wages to provide an _abundance of good food and good raiment_; and these are the things that make happy families; these are the things that make a good, kind, sincere, and brave people; not little pamphlets about "loyalty" and "content." A good man will be contented fast enough, if he be fed and clad sufficiently; but if a man be not well fed and clad, he is a base wretch to be contented. 201. _Fuel_ should be, if possible, provided in summer, or at least some of it. Turf and peat must be got in summer, and some _wood_ may. In the woodland countries, the next winter ought to be thought of in _June_, when people hardly know what to do with the fuelwood; and something should, if possible, be saved in the bark-harvest to get a part of the fuel for the next winter. Fire is a capital article. To have no fire, or a bad fire, to sit by, is a most dismal thing. In such a state man and wife must be something out of the common way to be in good humour with each other, to say nothing of colds and other ailments which are the natural consequence of such misery. If we suppose the great Creator to condescend to survey his works in detail, what object can be so pleasing to him as that of the labourer, after his return from the toils of a cold winter day, sitting with his wife and children round a cheerful fire, while the wind whistles in the chimney and the rain pelts the roof? But, of all God's creation, what is so miserable to behold or to think of as a wretched, half-starved family creeping to their nest of flocks or straw, there to lie shivering, till sent forth by the fear of absolutely expiring from want? HOPS. 202. I treated of them before; but before I conclude this little Work, it is necessary to speak of them again. I made a mistake as to the _tax_ on the Hops. The positive tax is 2_d._ a pound, and I (in former editions) stated it at 4_d._ However, in all such cases, there falls upon the _consumer_ the _expenses_ attending the paying of the tax. That is to say, the cost of interest of capital in the grower who pays the tax, and who must pay for it, whether his hops be cheap or dear. Then the _trouble_ it gives him, and the rules he is compelled to obey in the drying and bagging, and which cause him great _expense_. So that the tax on hops of our own English growth, may _now be reckoned_ to cost the _consumer_ about 3-1/4_d._ a pound. YEAST. 203. Yeast is a great thing in domestic management. I have once before published a receipt for making _yeast-cakes_, I will do it again here. 204. In Long Island they make _yeast-cakes_. A parcel of these cakes is made _once a year_. That is often enough. And, when you bake, you take one of these cakes (or more according to the bulk of the batch) and with them raise your bread. The very best bread I ever ate in my life was lightened with these cakes. 205. The materials for a good batch of cakes are as follows:--3 ounces of good fresh Hops; 3-1/2 pounds of Rye Flour; 7 pounds of Indian Corn Meal; and one Gallon of Water.--Rub the hops, so as to separate them. Put them into the water, which is to be boiling at the time. Let them boil half an hour. Then strain the liquor through a fine sieve into an earthen vessel. While the liquor is hot, put in the Rye-Flour; stirring the liquor well, and quickly, as the Rye-Flour goes into it. The day after, when it is working, put in the Indian Meal, stirring it well as it goes in. Before the Indian Meal be all in, the mess will be very stiff; and it will, in fact, be _dough_, very much of the consistence of the dough that bread is made of.--Take this dough; knead it well, as you would for _pie-crust_. Roll it out with a rolling-pin, as you roll out pie-crust, to the thickness of about a third of an inch. When you have it (or a part of it at a time) rolled out, cut it up into cakes with a tumbler glass turned upside down, or with something else that will answer the same purpose. Take a clean board (a _tin_ may be better) and put the cakes _to dry in the sun_. Turn them every day; let them receive _no wet_; and they will become as hard as ship biscuit. Put them into a bag, or box, and keep them in a place _perfectly free from damp_. When you bake, take two cakes, of the thickness above-mentioned, and about 3 inches in diameter; put them into hot water, _over-night_, having cracked them first. Let the vessel containing them stand near the fire-place all night. They will dissolve by the morning, and then you use them in setting your sponge (as it is called) precisely as you would use the yeast of beer. 206. There are _two things_ which may be considered by the reader as obstacles. FIRST, where are _we_ to get the _Indian Meal_? Indian Meal is used merely because it is of a _less adhesive_ nature than that of wheat. White pea-meal, or even barley-meal, would do just as well. But SECOND, to _dry_ the cakes, to make them (and _quickly_ too, mind) _as hard as ship biscuit_ (which is much harder than the timber of Scotch firs or Canada firs;) and to do this _in the sun_ (for it must not be _fire_,) where are we, in this climate, to _get the sun_? In 1816 we could not; for, that year, melons rotted in the _glazed frames_ and never ripened. But, in every nine summers out of ten, we have in June, in July, or in August, _a fortnight of hot sun_, and that is enough. Nature has not given us a _peach-climate_; but we _get peaches_. The cakes, when put in the sun, may have a _glass sash_, or a _hand-light_, put over them. This would make their birth _hotter_ than that of the hottest open-air situation in America. In short to a farmer's wife, or any good housewife, all the little difficulties to the attainment of such an object would appear as nothing. The _will_ only is required; and, if there be not that, it is useless to think of the attempt. SOWING SWEDISH TURNIP SEED. 207. It is necessary to be a little more full than I have been before as to the _manner of sowing_ this seed; and I shall make my directions such as to be applied on a small or a large scale.--Those that want to transplant on a large scale will, of course, as to the other parts of the business, refer to my larger work.--It is to get plants for _transplanting_ that I mean to sow the Swedish Turnip Seed. The _time_ for sowing must depend a little upon the nature of the situation and soil. In the north of England, perhaps early in April may be best; but, in any of these southern counties, any time after the _middle of April and before the 10th of May_, is quite early enough. The ground which is to receive the seed should be made very _fine_, and manured with wood-ashes, or with good compost well mixed with the earth. Dung is not so good; for it breeds the fly more; or, at least, I think so. The seed should be sown in drills _an inch deep_, made as pointed out under the head of _Sowing_ in my book on _Gardening_. When deposited in the drills _evenly_ but _not thickly_, the ground should be raked across the drills, so as to fill them up; and then the whole of the ground should be _trodden hard_, with shoes not nailed, and not very thick in the sole. The ground should be laid out in four-feet _beds_ for the reasons mentioned in the "_Gardener_." When the seeds come up, thin the plants to two inches apart as soon as you think them clear from the fly; for, if left thicker, they injure each other even in this infant state. Hoe frequently between the rows even before thinning the plants; and when they are thinned, hoe well and frequently between them; for this has a tendency to make them strong; and the hoeing _before thinning_ helps to keep off the fly. A rod of ground, the rows being eight inches apart, and plants two inches apart in the row, will contain about _two thousand two hundred_ plants. An acre in rows four feet apart and the plants a foot apart in the row, will take about ten thousand four hundred and sixty plants. So that to transplant an acre, you must sow about _five rods of ground_. The plants should be kept very clean; and, by the last week in June, or first in July, you put them out. I have put them out (in England) at all times between 7th of June and middle of August. The first is certainly earlier than I like; and the very finest I ever grew in England, and the finest I ever saw for a large piece, were transplanted on the 14th of July. But one year with another, the last week in June is the best time. For size of plants, manner of transplanting, intercultivation, preparing the land, and the rest, see "_Year's Residence in America_." No. VIII. _On the converting of English Grass, and Grain Plants cut green, into Straw, for the purpose of making Plat for Hats and Bonnets._ KENSINGTON, MAY 30, 1823. 208. The foregoing Numbers have treated, chiefly, of the management of the affairs of a labourer's family, and more particularly of the mode of disposing of the money earned by the labour of the family. The present Number will point out what I hope may become _an advantageous kind of labour_. All along I have proceeded upon the supposition, that the wife and children of the labourer be, as constantly as possible, employed _in work of some sort or other_. The cutting, the bleaching, the sorting, and the platting of straw, seem to be, of all employments, the best suited to the wives and children of country labourers; and the discovery which I have made, as to the means of obtaining the necessary materials, will enable them to enter at once upon that employment. 209. Before I proceed to give my directions relative to the performance of this sort of labour, I shall give a sort of history of the discovery to which I have just alluded. 210. The practice of making hats, bonnets, and other things, of _straw_, is perhaps of very ancient date; but not to waste time in fruitless inquiries, it is very well known that, for many years past, straw coverings for the head have been greatly in use in England, in America, and, indeed, in almost all the countries that we know much of. In this country the manufacture was, only a few years ago, _very flourishing_; but it has now greatly declined, and has left in poverty and misery those whom it once well fed and clothed. 211. The cause of this change has been, the importation of the straw hats and bonnets from _Italy_, greatly superior, in durability and beauty, to those made in England. The plat made in England was made of the straw of _ripened grain_. It was, in general, _split_; but the main circumstance was, that it was made of the straw of _ripened grain_; while the Italian plat was made of the straw of grain, or grass, _cut green_. Now, the straw of ripened grain or grass is brittle; or, rather, rotten. It _dies_ while standing, and, in point of toughness, the difference between it and straw from plants cut green is much about the same as the difference between a stick that has _died on the tree_, and one that has been _cut from the tree_. But besides the difference in point of toughness, strength, and durability, there was the difference in beauty. The colour of the Italian plat was better; the plat was brighter; and the Indian straws, being _small whole_ straws, instead of small straws made by the splitting of large ones, here was a _roundness_ in them, that gave _light and shade_ to the plat, which could not be given by our flat bits of straw. 212. It seems odd, that nobody should have set to work to find out how the Italians _came_ by this fine straw. The importation of these Italian articles was chiefly from the port of LEGHORN; and therefore the bonnets imported were called _Leghorn Bonnets_. The straw manufacturers in this country seem to have made no effort to resist this invasion from Leghorn. And, which is very curious, the Leghorn _straw_ has now began to be imported, and to be _platted in this country_. So that we had _hands_ to plat as well as the Italians. All that we wanted was the _same kind of straw_ that the Italians had: and it is truly wonderful that these importations from Leghorn should have gone on increasing year after year, and our domestic manufacture dwindling away at a like pace, without there having been any inquiry relative to the way in which the Italians _got their straw_! Strange, that we should have imported even _straw_ from Italy, without inquiring whether similar straw could not be got in England! There really seems to have been an opinion, that England could no more produce this straw than it could produce the sugar-cane. 213. Things were in this state, when in 1821, a Miss WOODHOUSE, a farmer's daughter in CONNECTICUT, sent a straw-bonnet of her own making to the _Society of Arts_ in London. This bonnet, superior in fineness and beauty to anything of the kind that had come from Leghorn, the maker stated to consist of a sort of grass of which she sent along with the bonnet some of the _seeds_. The question was, then, would these precious seeds _grow and produce plants in perfection in England_? A large quantity of the seed had not been sent: and it was therefore, by a member of the Society, thought desirable to get, with as little delay as possible, a considerable quantity of the seed. 214. It was in this stage of the affair that my attention was called to it. The member just alluded to applied to me to get the seed from America. I was of opinion that there could be no sort of grass in Connecticut that would not, and that _did not_, grow and flourish in England. My son JAMES, who was then at New-York, had instructions from me, in June 1821, to go to Miss WOODHOUSE, and to send me home an account of the matter. In September, the same year, I heard from him, who sent me an account of the cutting and bleaching, and also a specimen of the plat and grass of Connecticut. Miss WOODHOUSE had told the Society of Arts, that the grass used was the _Poa Pratensis_. This is the _smooth-stalked meadow-grass_. So that it was quite useless to send for _seed_. It was clear, that we had _grass enough_ in England, if we could but make it into straw as handsome as that of Italy. 215. Upon my publishing an account of what had taken place with regard to the American Bonnet, _an importer of Italian straw_ applied to me to know whether I would _undertake to import American straw_. He was in the habit of importing Italian straw, and of having it platted in this country; but having seen the bonnet of Miss WOODHOUSE, he was anxious to get the American straw. This gentleman showed me some Italian straw which he had imported, and as the seed heads were not on, I could not see what plant it was. The gentleman who showed the straw to me, told me (and, doubtless, he believed) that the plant was one that _would not grow in England_. I however, who looked at the straw with the eyes of a farmer, perceived that it consisted of dry _oat_, _wheat_, and _rye_ plants, and of _Bennet_ and other _common grass_ plants. 216. This quite settled the point of _growth in England_. It was now certain that we had the plants in abundance; and the only question that remained to be determined was, Had we SUN to give to those plants the beautiful colour which the American and Italian straw had? If that colour were to be obtained by _art_, by any chemical applications, we could obtain it as easily as the Americans or the Italians; but, if it were the gift of the SUN solely, here might be a difficulty impossible for us to overcome. My experiments have proved that the fear of such difficulty was wholly groundless. 217. It was late in September 1821 that I obtained this knowledge, as to the kind of plants that produced the foreign straw. I could, at that time of the year, do nothing in the way of removing my doubts as to the _powers of our Sun_ in the bleaching of grass; but I resolved to do this when the proper season for bleaching should return. Accordingly, when the next month of _June_ came, I went into the country for the purpose. I made my experiments, and, in short, I proved to demonstration, that we had not only the _plants_, but the _sun_ also, necessary for the making of straw, yielding in no respect to that of America or of Italy. I think that, upon the whole, we have greatly the advantage of those countries; for grass is more abundant in this country than in any other. It flourishes here more than in any other country. It is here in a greater variety of sorts; and for _fineness_ in point of size, there is no part of the world which can equal what might be obtained from some of our _downs_, merely by keeping the land ungrazed till the month of July. 218. When I had obtained the straw, I got some of it made into plat. One piece of this plat was equal in point of colour, and superior in point of fineness, even to the plat of the bonnet, of Miss WOODHOUSE. It seemed, therefore, now to be necessary to do nothing more than to _make all this well known to the country_. As the SOCIETY OF ARTS had interested itself in the matter, and as I heard that, through its laudable zeal, several _sowings of the foreign grass-seed_ had been made in England, I communicated an account of my experiments to that Society. The first communication was made by me on the 19th of February last, when I sent to the Society, specimens of my straw and also of the plat. Some time after this I attended a committee of the Society on the subject, and gave them a verbal account of the way in which I had gone to work. 219. The committee had, before this, given some of my straw to certain _manufacturers_ of plat, in order to see what it would produce. These manufacturers, with the exception of one, brought _such_ specimens of plat as to induce, at first sight, any one to believe that it was nonsense to think of bringing the thing to any degree of perfection! But, was it _possible_ to believe this? Was it possible to believe that it could _answer_ to import straw from Italy, to pay a twenty per cent. duty on that straw, and to have it platted here; and that it would _not answer_ to turn into plat straw of just the same sort grown in England? It was impossible to believe _this_; but possible enough to believe, that persons now making profit by Italian straw, or plat, or bonnets, would rather that English straw should come to shut out the Italian and to put an end to the Leghorn trade. 220. In order to show the character of the reports of those manufacturers, I sent some parcels of straw into Hertfordshire, and got back, in the course of five days, _fifteen specimens of plat_. These I sent to the Society of Arts on the 3d of April; and I here insert a copy of the letter which accompanied them. TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. KENSINGTON, April 3, 1823. SIR,--With this letter I send you sixteen specimens of plat, and also eight parcels of straw, in order to show the sorts that the plat is made out of. The numbers of the plat correspond with those of the straw; but each parcel of straw has two numbers attached to it, except in the case of the first number, which is the _wheat straw_. Of each kind of straw a parcel of the _stoutest_ and a parcel of the _smallest_ were sent to be platted; so that each parcel of the straw now sent, except that of the wheat, refers to _two of the pieces of plat_. For instance, 2 and 3 of the plat is of the sort of straw marked 2 and 3; 4 and 12 of the plat is of the sort of straw marked 4 and 12; and so on. These parcels of straw are sent in order that you may know the _kind_ of straw, or rather, of grass, from which the several pieces of plat have been made. This is very _material_; because it is by those parcels of straw that the _kinds of grass_ are to be known. The piece of plat No. 16 is _American_; all the rest are from my straw. You will see, that 15 is the _finest plat of all_. No. 7 is from the _stout_ straws of the same _kind_ as No. 15. By looking at the parcel of straw Nos. 7 and 15, you will see what sort of grass this is. The next, in point of beauty and fineness combined, are the pieces Nos. 13 and 8; and by looking at the parcel of straw, Nos. 13 and 8, you will see what sort of grass that is. Next comes 10 and 5, which are very beautiful too; and the sort of grass, you will see, is the _common Bennet_. The wheat, you see, is too coarse; and the rest of the sorts are either _too hard_ or _too brittle_. I beg you to look at Nos. 10 and 5. Those appear to me to be the thing to supplant the Leghorn. The colour is good, the straws _work well_, they afford a great _variety of sizes_, and they come from the common _Bennet grass_, which grows all over the kingdom, which is cultivated in all our fields, which is in bloom in the fair month of June, which may be grown as fine or as coarse as we please, and ten acres of which would, I dare say, make ten thousand bonnets. However, 7 and 15, and 8 and 13, are very good; and they are to be got in every part of the kingdom. As to _platters_, it is to be too childish to believe that they are not to be got, when I could send off these straws, and get back the plat, in the course of five days. Far _better work_ than this would have been obtained if I could have gone on the errand myself. What then will people not do, who regularly undertake the business for their livelihood? I will, as soon as possible, send you an account of the manner in which I went to work with the grass. The card or plat, which I sent you some time ago, you will be so good as to give me back again some time; because I have now not a bit of the American plat left. I am, Sir, your most humble and most obedient servant, WM. COBBETT. 221. I should observe, that these written communications, of mine to the Society, _belong_, in fact, to it, and will be published in its PROCEEDINGS, a volume of which comes out every year; but, in this case, there would have been _a year lost_ to those who may act in consequence of these communications being made public. The grass is to be got, in great quantities and of the best sorts, only in _June_ and _July_; and the Society's volume does not come out till _December_. The Society has, therefore, given its consent to the making of the communications public through the means of this little work of mine. 222. Having shown what sort of plat could be produced from English grass-straw, I next communicated to the Society an account of the method which I pursued in the cutting and bleaching of the grass. The letter in which I did this I shall here insert a copy of, before I proceed further. In the original the paragraphs were _numbered_ from _one_ to _seventeen_: they are here marked by _letters_, in order to avoid confusion, the paragraphs of the work itself being marked by _numbers_. TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. KENSINGTON, April 14, 1823. A.--SIR,--Agreeably to your request, I now communicate to you a statement of those particulars which you wished to possess, relative to the specimens of straw and of plat which I have at different times sent to you for the inspection of the Society. B.--That my statement may not come too abruptly upon those members of the Society who have not had an opportunity of witnessing the progress of this interesting inquiry, I will take a short review of the circumstances which led to the making of my experiments. C.--In the month of June, 1821, a gentleman, a member of the Society, informed me, by letter, that a Miss WOODHOUSE, a farmer's daughter, of Weathersfield, in Connecticut, had transmitted to the Society a straw-bonnet of very fine materials and manufacture; that this bonnet (according to her account) was made from the straw of a sort of grass called _poa pratensis_; that it seemed to be unknown whether the same grass would grow in England; that it was desirable to ascertain whether this grass would grow in England; that, at all events, it was desirable to get from America some of the seed of this grass; and that, for this purpose, my informant, knowing that I had a son in America; addressed himself to me, it being his opinion that, if materials similar to those used by Miss WOODHOUSE could by any means be _grown in England_, the benefit to the nation must be considerable. D.--In consequence of this application, I wrote to my son James, (then at New York,) directing him to do what he was able in order to cause success to the undertaking. On the receipt of my letter, in July, he went from New York to Weathersfield, (about a hundred and twenty miles;) saw Miss WOODHOUSE; made the necessary inquiries; obtained a specimen of the grass, and also of the plat, which other persons at Weathersfield, as well as Miss WOODHOUSE, were in the habit of making; and having acquired the necessary information as to cutting the grass and bleaching the straw, he transmitted to me an account of the matter; which account, together with his specimens of grass and plat, I received in the month of September. E.--I was now, when I came to see the specimen of grass, convinced that Miss WOODHOUSE'S materials could be _grown in England_; a conviction which, if it had not been complete at once, would have been made complete immediately afterwards by the sight of a bunch of bonnet-straw _imported from Leghorn_, which straw was shown to me by the importer, and which I found to be that of two or three sorts of our common grass, and of oats, wheat, and rye. F.--That the grass, or plants, could be _grown in England_ was, therefore, now certain, and indeed that they were, in point of commonness, next to the earth itself. But before the grass could, with propriety, be called materials for bonnet-making, there was the _bleaching_ to be performed; and it was by no means certain that this could be accomplished by means of an _English sun_, the difference between which and that of Italy or Connecticut was well known to be very great. G.--My experiments have, I presume, completely removed this doubt. I think that the straw produced by me to the Society, and also some of the pieces of plat, are of a colour which no straw or plat can surpass. All that remains, therefore, is for me to give an account of the manner in which I cut and bleached the grass which I have submitted to the Society in the state of straw. H.--First, as to the _season_ of the year, all the straw, except that of one sort of couch-grass, and the long coppice-grass, which two were got in Sussex, were got from grass cut in Hertfordshire on the 21st of June. A grass head-land, in a wheat-field, had been mowed during the forepart of the day, and in the afternoon I went and took a handful here and a handful there out of the swaths. When I had collected as much as I could well carry, I took it to my friend's house, and proceeded to prepare it for bleaching, according to the information sent me from America by my son; that is to say, I put my grass into a shallow tub, put boiling water upon it until it was covered by the water, let it remain in that state for ten minutes, then took it out, and laid it very thinly on a closely-mowed lawn in a garden. But I should observe, that, before I put the grass into the tub, I tied it up in small bundles, or sheaves, each bundle being about six inches through at the butt-end. This was necessary, in order to be able to take the grass, at the end of ten minutes, out of the water, without throwing it into a confused mixture as to tops and tails. Being tied up in little bundles, I could easily, with a prong, take it out of the hot water. The bundles were put into a large wicker basket, carried to the lawn in the garden, and there taken out, one by one, and laid in swaths as before-mentioned. I.--It was laid _very thinly_; almost might I say, that no stalk of grass covered another. The swaths were _turned_ once a day. The bleaching was completed at the end of _seven days_ from time of scalding and laying out. June is a fine month. The grass was, as it happened, cut on the _longest day in the year_; and the weather was remarkably fine and clear. But the grass which I afterwards cut in Sussex, was cut in the first week in August; and as to the weather my journal speaks thus:-- August, 1822. 2d.--Thunder and rain.--_Began cutting grass._ 3d.--Beautiful day. 4th.--Fine day. 5th.--Cloudy day--_Began scalding grass, and laying it out._ 6th.--Cloudy greater part of the day. 7th.--Same weather. 8th.--Cloudy and rather misty.--_Finished cutting grass._ 9th.--Dry but cloudy. 10th.--Very close and hot.--_Packed up part of the grass._ 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th.--Same weather. 15th.--Hot and clear.--_Finished packing the grass._ K.--The grass cut in Sussex was as _well bleached_ as that cut in Hertfordshire; so that it is evident that we never can have a summer that will not afford sun sufficient for this business. L.--The part of the straw used for platting; that part of the stalk which is _above the upper joint_; that part which is between the _upper joint_ and the seed-branches. This part is taken out, and the rest of the straw thrown away. But the _whole plant must be cut and bleached_; because, if you were to take off, _when green_, the part above described, that part would wither up next to nothing. This part must die in company with the whole plants, and be separated from the other parts after the bleaching has been performed. M.--The time of cutting must vary with the seasons, the situation, and the sort of grass. The grass which I got in Hertfordshire, than which nothing can, I think, be more beautiful, was, when cut, generally in _bloom_; just in bloom. The _wheat_ was in full bloom; so that a good time for getting grass may be considered to be that when the _wheat is in bloom_. When I cut the grass in Sussex, the _wheat was ripe_, for reaping had begun; but that grass is of a very backward sort, and, besides, grew in the _shade_ amongst coppice-wood and under trees, which stood pretty thick. N.--As to the sorts of grass, I have to observe generally, that in proportion as the colour of the grass is _deep_; that is to say, getting further from the _yellow_, and nearer to the _blue_, it is of a deep and _dead yellow_ when it becomes straw. Those kinds of grass are best which are, in point of colour, nearest to that of wheat, which is a fresh pale green. Another thing is, the quality of the straw as to _pliancy_ and _toughness_. Experience must be our guide here. I had not time to make a large collection of sorts; but those which I have sent to you contain three sorts which are proved to be good. In my letter of the 3d instant I sent you _sixteen_ pieces of plat and _eight_ bunches of straw, having the seed heads on, in order to show the sorts of grass. The sixteenth piece of plat was American. The first piece was from _wheat_ cut and bleached by me; the rest from _grass_ cut and bleached by me. I will here, for fear of mistake, give a list of the names of the several sorts of grass, the straw of which was sent with my letter of the 3d instant, referring to the numbers, as placed on the plat and on the bunches of straw. PIECES BUNCHES SORTS OF PLAT. OF STRAW. OF GRASS. No 1.-- No. 1. --Wheat. 2.} { Melica Cærulea; or, Purple Melica 3.} 2 and 3 { Grass. 4.} { Agrostis Stolonifera; or, Fiorin Grass; 12.} 4 and 12 { that is to say, one sort of Couch-grass. 5.} 10.} 5 and 10 Lolium Perenne; or Ray-grass. 6.} { Avena Flavescens; or, Yellow Oat 11.} 6 and 11 { grass. 7.} { Cynosurus Cristatus; or Crested 15.} 7 and 15 { Dog's-tail grass. 8.} { Anthoxanthum Odoratum; or, Sweet 13.} 8 and 13 { scented Vernal grass. 9.} { Agrostis Canina; or, Brown Bent 14.} 9 and 14 { grass. O.--These names are those given at the Botanical Garden _at Kew_. But the same English names are not in the country given to these sorts of grass. The _Fiorin grass_, the _Yellow Oat-grass_, and the _Brown-Bent_, are all called _couch-grass_; except that the latter is, in Sussex, called _Red Robin_. It is the native grass of the _plains_ of Long Island; and they call it _Red Top_. The _Ray-grass_ is the common field grass, which is, all over the kingdom, sown with clover. The farmers, in a great part of the kingdom, call it _Bent_, or _Bennett_, grass; and sometimes it is galled _Darnel-grass_. The _Crested Dog's-tail_ goes, in Sussex, by the name of _Hendonbent_; for what reason I know not. The _sweet-scented Vernal-grass_ I have never, amongst the farmers, heard any name for. Miss WOODHOUSE'S grass appears, from the _plants_ that I saw in the Adelphi, to be one of the sorts of Couch-grass. Indeed, I am sure that it is a Couch-grass, if the plants I there saw came from her seed. My son, who went into Connecticut, who saw the grass growing, and who sent me home a specimen of it, is now in England: he was with me when I cut the grass in Sussex; and he says that Miss WOODHOUSE'S was a Couch-grass. However, it is impossible to look at the specimens of straw and of plat which I have sent you, without being convinced that there is no want of the raw material in England. I was, after my first hearing of the subject, very soon convinced that the grass grew in England; but I had great doubts as to the capacity of our _sun_. Those doubts my own experiments have completely removed; but then I was not aware of the great effect of the _scalding_, of which, by the way, Miss WOODHOUSE had said nothing, and the knowledge of which we owe entirely to my son James' journey into Connecticut. P.--Having thus given you an account of the time and manner of cutting the grass, of the mode of cutting and bleaching; having given you the best account I am able, as to the sorts of grass to be employed in this business; and having, in my former communications, given you specimens of the plat wrought from the several sorts of straw, I might here close my letter; but as it may be useful to speak of _the expense_ of cutting and bleaching, I shall trouble you with a few words relating to it. If there were a field of _Ray-grass_, or of _Crested Dog's-tail_, or any other good sort, and nothing else growing with it, the expense of _cutting_ would be very little indeed, seeing that the _scythe_ or _reap-hook_ would do the business at a great rate. Doubtless there _will be_ such fields; but even if the grass have to be cut by the handful, my opinion is, that the expense of cutting and bleaching would not exceed _fourpence_ for straw enough to make a large bonnet. I should be willing to contract to supply straw, at this rate, for half a million of bonnets. The _scalding_ must constitute a considerable part of the expense; because there must be _fresh water_ for every parcel of grass that you put in the tub. When water has scalded one parcel of cold grass, it will not scald another parcel. Besides, the scalding draws out the _sweet matter_ of the grass, and makes the water the colour of that horrible stuff called London porter. It would be very good, by-the-by, to give to pigs. Many people give _hay-tea_ to pigs and calves; and this is _grass-tea_. To scald a large quantity, therefore would require means not usually at hand, and the scalding is an essential part of the business. Perhaps, in a large and convenient farm-house, with a good brewing copper, good fuel and water handy, four or five women might scald a wagon load in a day; and a wagon would, I think, carry straw enough (in the rough) to furnish the means of making a thousand bonnets. However, the scalding _might_ take place _in the field itself_, by means of a portable boiler, especially if water were at hand; and perhaps it would be better to carry the water to the field than to carry the grass to the farm-house, for there must be _ground to lay it out upon the moment it has been scalded_, and no ground can be so proper as the newly-mowed ground where the grass has stood. The _space_, too, must be _large_, for any considerable quantity of grass. As to all these things, however, the best and cheapest methods will soon be discovered when people set about the work with a view to profit. Q.--The Society will want nothing from me, nor from any-body else, to convince it of the importance of this matter; but I cannot, in concluding these communications to you, Sir, refrain from making an observation or two on the consequences likely to arise out of these inquiries. The manufacture is alone of considerable magnitude. Not less than about _five millions_ of persons in this kingdom have a dress which consists partly of manufactured straw; and a large part, and all the most expensive part, of the articles thus used, now come from abroad. In cases where you can get from abroad any article at _less expense than you can get it at home_, the wisdom of fabricating that article at home may be doubted. But, in this case, you get the raw material by labour performed at home, and the cost of that labour is not nearly so great as would be the cost of the mere carriage of the straw from a foreign country to this. If our own people had all plenty of employment, and that too more profitable to them and to the country than the turning of a part of our own grass into articles of dress, then it would be advisable still to import Leghorn bonnets; but the facts being the reverse, it is clear, that whatever money, or money's worth things, be sent out of the country, in exchange for Leghorn bonnets, is, while we have the raw material here for next to nothing, just so much thrown away. The Italians, it may be said, take some of our manufactures in exchange; and let us suppose, for the purpose of illustration, that they take cloth from Yorkshire. Stop the exchange between Leghorn and Yorkshire, and, does Yorkshire _lose part of its custom_? No: for though those who make the bonnets out of English grass, prevent the Leghorners from buying Yorkshire cloth, they, with the money which they now get, instead of its being got by the Leghorners, buy the Yorkshire cloth themselves; and they wear this cloth too, instead of its being worn by the people of Italy; ay, Sir, and many, now in rags, will be well clad, if the laudable object of the Society be effected. Besides this, however, why should we not _export_ the articles of this manufacture? To America we certainly should; and I should not be at all surprised if we were to export them to Leghorn itself. R.--Notwithstanding all this, however, if the manufacture were of a description to require, in order to give it success, the _collecting of the manufacturers together in great numbers_, I should, however great the wealth that it might promise, never have done any thing to promote its establishment. The contrary is happily the case: here all is not only performed _by hand_, but by hand _singly_, without any combination of hands. Here there is no power of machinery or of chemistry wanted. All is performed out in the open fields, or sitting in the cottage. There wants no coal mines and no rivers to assist; no water-powers nor powers of fire. No part of the kingdom is unfit for the business. Every-where there are grass, water, sun, and women and children's fingers; and these are all that are wanted. But, the great thing of all is this; that, to obtain the materials for the making of this article of dress, at once so gay, so useful, and in some cases so expensive, there requires not _a penny of capital_. Many of the labourers now make their own straw hats to wear in summer. Poor rotten things, made out of straw of ripened grain. With what satisfaction will they learn that straw, twenty times as durable, to say nothing of the beauty, is to be got from every hedge? In short when the people are well and clearly informed of the facts, which I have through you, Sir, had the honour to lay before the Society, it is next to impossible that the manufacture should not become general throughout the country. In every labourer's house a pot of water can be boiled. What labourer's wife cannot, in the summer months, find time to cut and bleach grass enough to give her and her children work for a part of the winter? There is no necessity for all to be _platters_. Some may cut and bleach only. Others may prepare the straw, as mentioned in paragraph L. of this letter. And doubtless, as the farmers in Hertfordshire now sell their straw to the platters, grass collectors and bleachers and preparers would do the same. So that there is scarcely any country labourer's family that might not derive some advantage from this discovery; and, while I am convinced that this consideration has been by no means over-looked by the Society, it has been, I assure you, the great consideration of all with, Sir, your most obedient and most humble Servant, WM. COBBETT. 223. In the last edition, this closing part of the work, relative to the straw plat, was not presented to the public as a thing which admitted of no alteration; but, on the contrary, it was presented to the public with the following concluding remark: "In conclusion I have to observe, that I by no means send forth this essay as containing opinions and instructions that are to undergo no alteration. I am, indeed, endeavouring to teach others; but I am myself only a learner. Experience will, doubtless, make me much more perfect in a knowledge of the several parts of the subject; and the fruit of this experience I shall be careful to communicate to the public." I now proceed to make good this promise. Experience has proved that very beautiful and very fine plat can be made of the straw of divers kinds of _grass_. But the most ample experience has also proved to us that it is to the straw of _wheat_, that we are to look for a manufacture to supplant the Leghorn. This was mentioned as a strong suspicion in my former edition of this work. And I urged my readers to sow wheat for the purpose. The fact is now proved beyond all contradiction, that the straw of wheat or rye, but particularly of wheat, is the straw for this purpose. _Finer_ plat may be made from the straw of grass than can possibly be made from the straw of wheat or rye: but the grass plat is, all of it, more or less _brittle_; and none of it has the beautiful and uniform colour of the straw of wheat. Since the last edition of this work, I have received packets of the straw _from Tuscany_, all of _wheat_; and, indeed, I am _convinced_ that no other straw is any-thing like so well calculated for the purpose. Wheat straw bleaches better than any other. It has that fine, pale, golden colour which no other straw has; it is much more simple, more pliant than any other straw; and, in short, this is the material. I did not urge in vain. A good quantity of wheat was sowed for this purpose. A great deal of it has been well harvested; and I have the pleasure to know that several hundreds of persons are now employed in the platting of straw. One more year; one more crop of wheat; and another Leghorn bonnet will never be imported in England. Some great errors have been committed in the sowing of the wheat, and in the cutting of it. I shall now, therefore, availing myself of the experience which I have gained, offer to the public some observations on the _sort of wheat_ to be sowed for this purpose; on the _season_ for sowing; on the _land_ to be used for the purpose; on the _quantity of seed_, and the _manner_ of sowing: on the _season_ for cutting; on the manner of _cutting_, _bleaching_, and _housing_; on the _platting_; on the _knitting_, and on the _pressing_. 224. The SORT OF WHEAT. The Leghorn plat is all made of the straw of the spring wheat. This spring wheat is so called by us, because it is sowed in the spring, at the same time that barley is sowed. The botanical name of it is TRITICUM �STIVUM. It is a small-grained bearded wheat. It has very fine straw; but experience has convinced me, that the little brown-grained winter wheat is just as good for the purpose. In short, any wheat will do. I have now in my possession specimens of plat made of both winter and spring wheat, and I see no difference at all. I am decidedly of opinion that the winter wheat is as good as the spring wheat for the purpose. I have plat, and I have straw both now before me, and the above is the result of my experience. 225. THE LAND PROPER FOR THE GROWING OF WHEAT. The object is to have the straw as small as we can get it. The land must not, therefore, be too rich; yet it ought not to be _very poor_. If it be, you get the straw of no length. I saw an acre this year, as beautiful as possible, sowed upon a light loam, which bore last year a fine crop of potatoes. The land ought to be perfectly clean, at any rate; so that, when the crop is taken off, the wheat straw may not be mixed with weeds and grass. 226. SEASON FOR SOWING. This will be more conveniently stated in paragraph 228. 227. QUANTITY OF SEED AND MANNER OF SOWING. When first this subject was started in 1821, I said, in the Register, that I would engage to grow as fine straw in England as the Italians could grow. I recommended then, as a first guess, _fifteen_ bushels of wheat to the acre. Since that, reflection told me that that was not quite enough. I therefore recommended _twenty_ bushels to the acre. Upon the beautiful acre which I have mentioned above, eighteen bushels, I am told, were sowed; fine and beautiful as it was, I think it would have been better if it had had twenty bushels; twenty bushels, therefore, is what I recommend. You must sow broad cast, of course, and you must take great pains to cover the seed well. It must be a good even-handed seedsman, and there must be very nice covering. 228. SEASON FOR CUTTING. Now, mind, it is fit to cut in just about one week _after the bloom has dropped_. If you examine the ear at that time, you will find the grain just beginning to be formed, and that is precisely the time to cut the wheat: The straw has then got its full substance in it. But I must now point out a very material thing. It is by no means desirable to have _all_ your wheat _fit to cut at the same time_. It is a great misfortune, indeed, so to have it. If fit to cut altogether, it ought to be cut all at the same time; for supposing you to have an acre, it will require a fortnight or three weeks to cut it and bleach it, unless you have a very great number of hands, and very great vessels to prepare water in. Therefore, if I were to have an acre of wheat for this, purpose, and were to sow all spring wheat, I would sow a twelfth part of the acre every week from the first week in March to the last week in May. If I relied partly upon winter wheat, I would sow some every month, from the latter end of September to March. If I employed the two sorts of wheat, or indeed if I employed only the spring wheat, the TRITICUM �STIVUM, I should have some wheat fit to cut in June, and some not fit to cut till September. I should be sure to have a fair chance as to the weather. And, in short, it would be next to impossible for me to fail of securing a considerable part of my crop. I beg the reader's particular attention to the contents of this paragraph. 229. MANNER OF CUTTING THE WHEAT. It is cut by a little reap-hook, close to the ground as possible. It is then tied in little sheaves, with two pieces of string, one near the butt, and the other about half-way up. This little bundle or sheaf ought to be six inches through at the butt, and no more. It ought not to be tied too tightly, lest the scalding should not be perfect. 230. MANNER OF BLEACHING. The little sheaves mentioned in the last paragraph are carried to a brewing mash, vat, or other tub. You must not put them into the tub in too large a quantity, lest the water get chilled before it get to the bottom. Pour on scalding water till you cover the whole of the little sheaves, and let the water be a foot above the top sheaves. When the sheaves have remained thus a full quarter of an hour, take them out with a prong, lay them in a clothes-basket, or upon a hurdle, and carry them to the ground where the bleaching is to be finished. This should be, if possible, a piece of grass land, where the grass is very short. Take the sheaves, and lay some of them along in a row; untie them, and lay the straw along in that row as thin as it can possibly be laid. If it were possible, no one straw ought to have another lying upon it, or across it. If the sun be clear, it will require to lie twenty-four hours thus, then to be turned, and lie twenty-four hours on the other side. If the sun be not very clear, it must lie longer. But the numerous sowings which I have mentioned will afford you so many chances, so many opportunities of having fine weather, that the risk about weather would necessarily be very small. If wet weather should come, and if your straw remain out in it any length of time, it will be spoiled; but, according to the mode of sowing above pointed out, you really could stand very little chance of losing straw by bad weather. If you had some straw out bleaching, and the weather were to appear suddenly to be about to change, the quantity that you would have out would not be large enough to prevent you from putting it under cover, and keeping it there till the weather changed. 231. HOUSING THE STRAW. When your straw is nicely bleached, gather it up, and with the same string that you used to tie it when green, tie it up again into little sheaves. Put it by in some room where there is no _damp_, and where mice and rats are not suffered to inhabit. Here it is always ready for use, and it will keep, I dare say, four or five years very well. 232. THE PLATTING. This is now so well understood that nothing need be said about the manner of doing the work. But much might be said about the measures to be pursued by land-owners, by parish officers, by farmers, and more especially by gentlemen and ladies of sense, public spirit, and benevolence of disposition. The thing will be done; the manufacture will spread itself all over this kingdom; but the exertions of those whom I have here pointed out might hasten the period of its being brought to perfection. And I beg such gentlemen and ladies to reflect on the vast importance of such manufacture, which it is impossible to cause to produce any-thing but good. One of the great misfortunes of England at this day is, that the land has had _taken away from it those employments for its women and children which were so necessary to the well-being of the agricultural labourer_. The spinning, the carding, the reeling, the knitting; these have been all taken away from the land, and given to the Lords of the Loom, the haughty lords of bands of abject slaves. But let the landholder mark how the change has operated to produce his ruin. He must have the labouring MAN and the labouring BOY; but, alas! he cannot have these, without having the man's wife, and the boy's mother, and little sisters and brothers. Even Nature herself says, that he shall have the wife and little children, or that he shall not have the man and the boy. But the Lords of the Loom, the crabbed-voiced, hard-favoured, hard-hearted, puffed-up, insolent, savage and bloody wretches of the North have, assisted by a blind and greedy Government, taken all the employment away from the agricultural women and children. This manufacture of Straw will form one little article of employment for these persons. It sets at defiance all the hatching and scheming of all the tyrannical wretches who cause the poor little creatures to die in their factories, heated to eighty-four degrees. There will need no inventions of WATT; none of your horse powers, nor water powers; no murdering of one set of wretches in the coal mines, to bring up the means of murdering another set of wretches in the factories, by the heat produced from those coals; none of these are wanted to carry on this manufactory. It wants no _combination_ laws; none of the inventions of the hard-hearted wretches of the North. 233. THE KNITTING. Upon this subject, I have only to congratulate my readers that there are great numbers of English women who can now knit, plat together, better than those famous Jewesses of whom we were told. 234. THE PRESSING. Bonnets and hats are pressed after they are made. I am told that a proper press costs pretty nearly a hundred pounds; but, then, that it will do prodigious deal of business. I would recommend to our friends in the country to teach as many children as they can to make the plat. The plat will be knitted in London, and in other considerable towns, by persons to whom it will be sold. It appears to me, at least, that this will be the course that the thing will take. However, we must leave this to time; and here I conclude my observations upon a subject which is deeply interesting to myself, and which the public in general deem to be of great importance. 235. POSTSCRIPT on _brewing_.--I think it right to say here, that, ever since I published the instructions for brewing by copper and by wooden utensils, the beer at _my own house_ has always been brewed precisely agreeable to the instructions contained in this book; and I have to add, that I never have had such good beer in my house in all my lifetime, as since I have followed that mode of brewing. My table-beer, as well as my ale, is always as clear as wine. I have had hundreds and hundreds of quarters of malt brewed into beer in my house. My people could always make it strong enough and sweet enough; but never, except by accident, could they make it CLEAR. Now I never have any that is not clear. And yet my utensils are all very small; and my brewers are sometimes one labouring man, and sometimes another. A man wants showing how to brew the first time. I should suppose that we use, in my house, about seven hundred gallons of beer every year, taking both sorts together; and I can positively assert, that there has not been one drop of bad beer, and indeed none which has not been most excellent, in my house, during the last two years, I think it is, since I began using the utensils, and in the manner named in this book. ICE-HOUSES. 236. First begging the reader to read again paragraph 149, I proceed here, in compliance with numerous requests to that effect, to describe, as clearly as I can, the manner of constructing the sort of Ice-houses therein mentioned. In England, these receptacles of frozen water are, generally, _under ground_, and always, if possible, under the _shade of trees_, the opinion being, that the _main_ thing, if not the _only_ thing, is to keep away _the heat_. The heat is to be kept away certainly; but _moisture_ is the great enemy of _Ice_; and how is this to be kept away either _under ground_, or under the shade of trees? Abundant experience has proved, that no thickness of _wall_, that no cement of any kind, will effectually resist _moisture_. Drops will, at times, be seen hanging on the under side of an arch of any thickness, and made of any materials, if it have earth over it, and even when it has the floor of a house over it; and wherever the moisture enters, the ice will quickly melt. 237. Ice-houses should therefore be, in all their parts, _as dry_ as possible: and they should be so constructed, and the ice so deposited in them, as to ensure _the running away of the meltings_ as quickly as possible, whenever such meltings come. Any-thing in way of drains or gutters, is too slow in its effect; and therefore there must be something that will not suffer the water proceeding from any melting, to remain an instant. 238. In the first place, then, the ice-house should stand in a place quite open to the _sun and air_; for whoever has travelled even but a few miles (having eyes in his head) need not be told how long that part of a road from which the sun and wind are excluded by trees, or hedges, or by any-thing else, will remain wet, or at least damp, after the rest of the road is even in a state to send up dust. 239. The next thing is to protect the ice against wet, or damp, from _beneath_. It should, therefore, stand on some spot _from which water would run in every direction_; and if the natural ground presents no such spot, it is no very great job to _make it_. 240. Then come the _materials_ of which the house is to consist. These, for the reasons before-mentioned, must not be bricks, stones, mortar, nor earth; for these are all affected by the atmosphere; they will become _damp_ at certain times, and _dampness_ is the great destroyer of ice. The materials are _wood_ and _straw_. Wood will not do; for, though not liable to become damp, it imbibes _heat_ fast enough; and, besides, it cannot be so put together as to shut out air sufficiently. Straw is wholly free from the quality of becoming damp, except from water actually put upon it; and it can, at the same time, be placed on a roof, and on sides, to such a degree of thickness as to exclude the air in a manner the most perfect. The ice-house ought, therefore, to be made of _posts, plates, rafters, laths, and straw_. The best form is the _circular_; and the house, when made, appears as I have endeavoured to describe it in _Fig. 3_ of the plate. 241. FIG. 1, _a_, is the centre of a circle, the diameter of which is ten feet, and at this centre you put up a post to stand fifteen feet above the level of the ground, which post ought to be about nine inches through at the bottom, and not a great deal smaller at the top. Great care must be taken that this post be _perfectly perpendicular_; for, if it be not, the whole building will be awry. 242. _b b b_ are fifteen posts, nine feet high, and six inches through at the bottom, without much tapering towards the top. These posts stand about two feet apart, reckoning from centre of post to centre of post, which leaves between each two a space of eighteen inches, _c c c c_ are fifty-four posts, five feet high, and five inches through at the bottom, without much tapering towards the top. These posts stand about two feet apart, from centre of post to centre of post, which leaves between each two a space of nineteen inches. The space between these two rows of posts is four feet in width, and, as will be presently seen, is to contain _a wall of straw_. 243. _e_ is a passage through this wall; _d_ is the outside door of the passage; _f_ is the inside door; and the inner circle, of which _a_ is the centre, is the place in which the ice is to be deposited. 244. Well, then, we have now got _the posts_ up; and, before we talk of the _roof_ of the house, or of the _bed_ for the ice, it will be best to speak about the making of the _wall_. It is to be made of _straw_, wheat-straw, or rye-straw, with no rubbish in it, and made very smooth by the hand as it is put in. You lay it _in very closely_ and very smoothly, so that if the wall were cut across, as at _g g_, in FIG. 2 (which FIG. 2 represents _the whole building cut down through the middle_, omitting the centre post,) the ends of the straws would present a compact face as they do after a cut of a chaff-cutter. But there requires something _to keep the straw from bulging out between the posts_. Little stakes as big as your _wrist_ will answer this purpose. Drive them into the ground, and fasten, at top, to the _plates_, of which I am now to speak. The plates are pieces of wood which go all round both the circles, and are _nailed on upon the tops of the posts_. Their main business is to receive and sustain the _lower ends of the rafters_, as at _m m_ and _n n_ in FIG. 2. But to the plates also the _stakes_ just mentioned must be fastened at top. Thus, then, there will be this space of four feet wide, having, on each side of it, a row of posts and stakes, not more than about six inches from each other, to hold up, and to keep in its place, this wall of straw. [Illustration: _Fig. 1_, _Fig. 2_, _Fig. 3_] 245. Next come the _rafters_, as from _s_ to _n_, FIG. 2. Carpenters best know what is the _number_ and what the _size_ of the rafters; but from _s_ to _m_ there need be only about half as many as from _m_ to _n_. However, carpenters know all about this. It is their every-day work. The roof is forty-five _degrees pitch_, as the carpenters call it. If it were even _sharper_, it would be none the worse. There will be about _thirty_ ends of rafters to lodge on the plate, as at _m_; and these cannot _all_ be fastened to the top of the centre-post rising up from _a_; but carpenters know how to manage this matter, so as to make all strong and safe. The _plate_ which goes along on the tops of the row of posts, _b b b_, must, of course, be put on in a somewhat sloping form; otherwise there would be a sort of _hip_ formed by the rafters. However, the thatch is to be so deep, that this may not be of much consequence. Before the thatching begins, there are _laths_ to put upon the rafters. Thatchers know all about this, and all that you have to do is, to take care that the thatcher _tie the straw on well_. The best way, in a case of such deep thatch, is to have _a strong man to tie for the thatcher_. 246. The roof is now _raftered_, and it is to receive a thatch of _clean_, _sound_, and well-prepared wheat or rye straw, four _feet thick_, as at _h h_ in FIG. 2. 247. The house having now got _walls_ and _roof_, the next thing is to make the _bed_ to receive the ice. This bed is the area of the circle of which _a_ is the centre. You begin by laying on the ground _round logs_, eight inches through, or thereabouts, and placing them across the area, leaving spaces between them of about a foot. Then, _crossways on them_, poles about four inches through, placed at six inches apart. Then, _crossways on them_, other poles, about two inches through, placed at three inches apart. Then, _crossways on them_, rods as thick as your finger, placed at an inch apart. Then upon these, small, clean, dry, last-winter-cut _twigs_, to the thickness of about two inches; or, instead of these twigs, good, clean, strong _heath_, free from grass and moss, and from rubbish of all sorts. 248. This is the _bed_ for the ice to lie on; and as you see, the top of the bed will be seventeen inches from the ground. The pressure of the ice may, perhaps, bring it to fourteen, or to thirteen. Upon this bed the ice is put, broken and pummelled, and beaten down together in the usual manner. 249. Having got the bed filled with ice, we have next to _shut it safely up_. As we have seen, there is a passage (_e_). Two feet wide is enough for this passage; and, being as long as the wall is thick, it is of course, four feet long. The use of the passage is this: that you may have _two doors_, so that you may, in hot or damp weather, shut the outer door, while you have the inner door open. This inner door may be of hurdle-work, and straw, and covered, on one of the sides, with sheep-skins with the _wool on_, so as to keep out the external air. The outer-door, which must lock, must be of wood, made to shut very closely, and, besides, covered with skins like the other. At times of great danger from heat, or from wet, the whole of the passage may be filled with straw. The door (_p._ FIG. 3) should face the North, or between North and East. 250. As to the _size_ of the ice-house, that must, of course, depend upon the _quantity_ of ice that you may choose to have. A house on the above scale, is from _w_ to _x_ (FIG. 2) twenty-nine feet; from _y_ to _z_ (FIG. 2) nineteen feet. The area of the circle, of which _a_ is the centre, is ten feet in diameter, and as this area contains seventy-five superficial feet, you will, if you put ice on the bed to the height of only five feet, (and you _may_ put it on to the height of seven feet from the top of the bed,) you will have _three hundred and seventy-five cubic feet of ice_; and, observe, a cubic foot of ice will, when broken up, fill much more than a _Winchester Bushel_: what it may do as to an "IMPERIAL BUSHEL," engendered like Greek Loan Commissioners, by the unnatural heat of "PROSPERITY," God only knows! However, I do suppose, that, without making any allowance for the "_cold_ fit," as Dr. Baring calls it, into which "_late_ panic" has brought us; I do suppose, that even the scorching, the burning dog-star of "IMPERIAL PROSPERITY;" nay, that even DIVES himself, would hardly call for more than two bushels of ice in a day; for more than two bushels a day it would be, unless it were used in cold as well as in hot weather. 251. As to the _expense_ of such a house, it could, in the country, not be much. None of the posts, except the main or centre-post, need be _very straight_. The other posts might be easily culled from tree-lops, destined for fire-wood. The straw would _make all straight_. The _plates_ must of necessity be short pieces of wood; and, as to the _stakes_, the _laths_, and the _logs_, _poles_, _rods_, _twigs_, and _heath_, they would not all cost _twenty shillings_. The straw is the principal article; and, in most places, even that would not cost more than two or three pounds. If it last many years, the price could not be an object; and if but a little while, it would still be nearly as good for litter as it was before it was applied to this purpose. How often the _bottom of the straw walls_ might want renewing I cannot say, but I know that the roof would with few and small repairs, last well for ten years. 252. I have said that the interior row of posts is to be nine feet high, and the exterior row five feet high. I, in each case, mean, _with the plate inclusive_. I have only to add, that by way of superabundant precaution against bottom wet, it will be well to make a sort of _gutter_, to receive the drip from the roof, and to carry it away as soon as it falls. 253. Now, after expressing a hope that I shall have made myself clearly understood by every reader, it is necessary that I remind him, that I do not pretend to pledge myself for the complete success, nor for any success at all, of this mode of making ice-houses. But, at the same time, I express my firm belief, that complete success would attend it; because it not only corresponds with what I have seen of such matters; but I had the details from a gentleman who had ample experience to guide him, and who was a man on whose word and judgment I placed a perfect reliance. He advised me to erect an ice-house; but not caring enough about _fresh meat_ and _fish_ in summer, or at least not setting them enough above "_prime pork_" to induce me to take any trouble to secure the former, I never built an ice-house. Thus, then, I only communicate that in which I believe; there is, however, in all cases, this comfort, that if the thing fail as an ice-house, it will serve all generations to come as a model for a pig-bed. ADDITION. _Kensington, Nov. 14th, 1831._ MANGEL WURZEL. 254. This last summer, I have proved that, as keep for cows, MANGEL WURZEL is preferable to SWEDISH TURNIPS, whether as to quantity or quality. But there needs no other alteration in the book, than merely to read _mangel wurzel_ wherever you find _Swedish turnip_; the time of sowing, the mode and time of transplanting, the distances, and the cultivation, all being the same; and the only difference being in the _application of the leaves_, and in _the time of harvesting_ the roots. 255. The leaves of the MANGEL WURZEL are of great value, especially in dry summers. You begin, about the third week in August, to take off by a _downward pull_, the leaves of the plants; and they are excellent food for pigs and cows; only observe this, that, if given to cows, there must be, for each cow, _six pounds of hay a day_, which is not necessary in the case of the Swedish turnips. These leaves last till the crop is taken up, which ought to be in the _first week of November_. The taking off of the leaves does good to the plants: new leaves succeed higher up; and the plant becomes _longer_ than it otherwise would be, and, of course, _heavier_. But, in taking off the leaves, you must not approach too near to the top. 256. When you take the plants up in November, you must cut off the _crowns_ and the remaining leaves; and they, again, are for cows and pigs. Then you put the roots into some place to keep them from the frost; and, if you have no place under cover, put them in _pies_, in the same manner as directed for the Swedish turnips. The roots will average in weight 10 _lbs. each_. They may be given to cows _whole_, or to pigs either, and they are better than the Swedish turnip for both animals; and they do not give any bad or strong taste to the milk and butter. But, besides this use of the mangel wurzel, there is another, with regard to pigs at least, of very great importance. The _juice_ of this plant has so much of _sweetness_ in it, that, in France, they make _sugar_ of it; and have used the sugar, and found it equal in goodness to West India sugar. Many persons in England make _beer_ of this juice, and I have drunk of this beer, and found it very good. In short, the juice is most excellent for the mixing of moist food for pigs. I am now (20th Nov. 1831) boiling it for this purpose. My copper holds seven strike-bushels; I put in three bushels of mangel wurzel cut into pieces two inches thick, and then fill the copper with water. I draw off as much of the liquor as I want to wet pollard, or meal, for little pigs or fatting-pigs, and the rest, roots and all, I feed the _yard-hogs_ with; and this I shall follow on till about the middle of May. 257. If you give boiled, or steamed, _potatoes_ to pigs, there wants some liquor to mix with the potatoes; for the water in which potatoes have been boiled is _hurtful_ to any animal that drinks it. But mix the potatoes with juice of mangel wurzel, and they make very good food for hogs of all ages. The mangel wurzel produces _a larger_ crop than the Swedish turnip. COBBETT'S CORN. 258. IF you prefer _bread_ and _pudding_ to milk, butter, and meat, this corn will produce, on your forty rods, forty bushels, each weighing 60 _lbs. at the least_; and more flour, in proportion, than the best white wheat. To make _bread_ with it you must use _two-thirds_ wheaten, or rye, flour; but in puddings this is not necessary. The puddings at my house are all made with this flour, except meat and fruit pudding; for the corn flour is not adhesive or _clinging_ enough to make paste, or crust. This corn is the very best for hog-fatting in the whole world. I, last April, sent parcels of the seed into several counties, to be given away to working men: and I sent them instructions for the cultivation, which I shall repeat here. 259. I will first describe this _corn_ to you. It is that which is sometimes called _Indian corn_; and sometimes people call it Indian wheat. It is that sort of corn which the disciples ate as they were going up to Jerusalem on the Sabbath-day. They gathered it in the fields as they went along and ate it green, they being "an hungered," for which you know they were reproved by the pharisees. I have written a treatise on this corn in a book which I sell for four shillings, giving a minute account of the qualities, the culture, the harvesting, and the various uses of this corn; but I shall here confine myself to what is necessary for a labourer to know about it, so that he may be induced to raise and may be enabled to raise enough of it in his garden to fat a pig of ten score. 260. There are a great many sorts of this corn. They all come from countries which are hotter than England. This sort, which my eldest son brought into England, is a dwarf kind, and is the only kind that I have known to ripen in this country: and I know that it will ripen in this country in any summer; for I had a large field of it in 1828 and 1829; and last year (my lease at my farm being out at Michaelmas, and this corn not ripening till late in October) I had about two acres in my garden at Kensington. Within the memory of man there have not been three summers so cold as the last, one after another; and no one so cold as the last. Yet my corn ripened perfectly well, and this you will be satisfied of if you be amongst the men to whom this corn is given from me. You will see that it is in the shape of the cone of a spruce fir; you will see that the grains are fixed round a stalk which is called the _cob_. These _stalks_ or _ears_ come out of the side of the plant, which has leaves like a flag, which plant grows to about three feet high, and has two or three and sometimes more, of these ears or bunches of grain. Out of the top of the plant comes the tassel, which resembles the plumes of feathers upon a hearse; and this is the flower of the plant. 261. The grain is, as you will see, about the size of a large pea, and there are from two to three hundred of these grains upon the ear, or cob. In my treatise, I have shown that, in America, all the hogs and pigs, all the poultry of every sort, the greater part of the oxen, and a considerable part of the sheep, are fatted upon this corn; that it is the best food for horses; and that, when ground and dressed in various ways, it is used in bread, in puddings, in several other ways in families; and that, in short, it is the real staff of life, in all the countries where it is in common culture, and where the climate is hot. When used for poultry, the grain is rubbed off the cob. Horses, sheep, and pigs, bite the grain off, and leave the cob; but horned cattle eat cob and all. 262. I am to speak of it to you, however, only as a thing to make you some bacon, for which use it surpasses all other grain whatsoever. When the grain is in the whole ear, it is called corn in the ear; when it is rubbed off the cob, it is called shelled corn. Now, observe, ten bushels of shelled corn are equal, in the fatting of a pig, to fifteen bushels of barley; and fifteen bushels of barley, if properly ground and managed, will make a pig of ten score, if he be not too poor when you begin to fat him. Observe that everybody who has been in America knows, that the finest hogs in the world are fatted in that country; and no man ever saw a hog fatted in that country in any other way than tossing the ears of corn over to him in the sty, leaving him to bite it off the ear, and deal with it according to his pleasure. The finest and solidest bacon in the world is produced in this way. 263. Now, then, I know, that a bushel of shelled corn may be grown upon one single rod of ground sixteen feet and a half each way; I have grown more than that this last summer; and any of you may do the same if you will strictly follow the instructions which I am now about to give you. 1. Late in March (I am doing it now,) or in the first fortnight of April, dig your ground up _very deep_, and let it lie rough till between the seventh and fifteenth of May. 2. Then (in dry weather if possible) dig up the ground again, and make it smooth at top. Draw drills with a line two feet apart, just as you do drills for peas; rub the grains off the cob; put a little very rotten and fine manure along the bottom of the drill; lay the grains along upon that six inches apart; cover the grain over with fine earth, so that there be about an inch and a half on the top of the grain; pat the earth down a little with the back of a hoe to make it lie solid on the grain. 3. If there be any danger of slugs, you must kill them before the corn comes up if possible: and the best way to do this is to put a little hot lime in a bag, and go very early in the morning, and shake the bag all round the edges of the ground and over the ground. Doing this three or four times very early in a dewy morning, or just after a shower, will destroy all the slugs; and this ought to be done for all other crops as well as for that of corn. 4. When the corn comes up, you must take care to keep all birds off till it is two or three inches high; for the spear is so sweet, that the birds of all sorts are very apt to peck it off, particularly the doves and the larks and pigeons. As soon as it is fairly above ground, give the whole of the ground (in dry weather) a flat hoeing, and be sure to move all the ground close round the plants. When the weeds begin to appear again, give the ground another hoeing, but always in dry weather. When the plants get to be about a foot high or a little more, dig the ground between the rows, and work the earth up a little against the stems of the plants. 5. About the middle of August you will see the tassel springing up out of the middle of the plant, and the ears coming out of the sides. If weeds appear in the ground, hoe it again to kill the weeds, so that the ground may be always kept clean. About the middle of September you will find the grains of the ears to be full of milk, just in the state that the ears were at Jerusalem when the disciples cropped them to eat. From this milky state, they, like the grains of wheat, grow hard; and as soon as the grains begin to be hard, you should cut off the tops of the corn and the long flaggy leaves, and leave the ears to ripen upon the stalk or stem. If it be a warm summer, they will be fit to harvest by the last of October; but it does not signify if they remain out until the middle of November or even later. The longer they stay out, the harder the grain will be. 6. Each ear is covered in a very curious manner with a husk. The best way for you will be, when you gather in your crop to strip off the husks, to tie the ears in bunches of six or eight or ten, and to hang them up to nails in the walls, or against the beams of your house; for there is so much moisture in the cob that the ears are apt to heat if put together in great parcels. The room in which I write in London is now hung all round with bunches of this corn. The bunches may be hung up in a shed or stable for a while, and, when perfectly dry, they may be put into bags. 7. Now, as to the mode of _using_ the corn; if for poultry, you must rub the grains off the cob; but if for pigs, give them the whole ears. You will find some of the ears in which the grain is still soft. Give these to your pig first; and keep the hardest to the last. You will soon see how much the pig will require in a day, because pigs, more decent than many rich men, never eat any more than is necessary to them. You will thus have a pig; you will have two flitches of bacon, two pig's cheeks, one set of souse, two griskins, two spare-ribs, from both which I trust in God you will keep the jaws of the Methodist parson; and if, while you are drinking a mug of your own ale, after having dined upon one of these, you drink my health, you may be sure that it will give you more merit in the sight of God as well as of man, than you would acquire by groaning the soul out of your body in responses to the blasphemous cant of the sleekheaded Methodist thief that would persuade you to live upon potatoes. 264. You must be quite sensible that I cannot have any motive but your good in giving you this advice, other than the delight which I take and the pleasure which I derive from doing that good. You are all personally unknown to me: in all human probability not one man in a thousand will ever see me. You have no more power to show your gratitude to me than you have to cause me to live for a hundred years. I do not desire that you should deem this a favour received from me. The thing is worth your trying, at any rate. 265. The corn is off by the middle of November. The ground should then be well manured, and deeply dug, and planted with EARLY YORK, or EARLY DWARF CABBAGES, which will be _loaved_ in the _latter end of April_, and may be either sold or given to pigs, or cows, _before the time to plant the corn again_. Thus you have two very large crops on the same ground in the same year. INDEX. PARAGRAPH Agur 18 Bees 160 Bread, making of 77 Brewing Beer 20, 108 _See also_ "POSTSCRIPT." Brewing-machine 41 Brougham, Mr. 41 Candles and Rushes 199 Castlereagh's and Mackintosh's Oratory 152 Combination Laws 108 Corn, Cobbett 258 Cows, keeping 111 Cusar, Mr. 86 Custom Laws 108 Drennen, Dr. 80 Dress, Household Goods, and Fuel 199 Ducks 169 Economy, meaning of the term 2, 3 Education 11 Ellman, Mr. 20, 60 Excise Laws 108 Fowls 176 Geese 167 Goats and Ewes 189 Hanning, Mr. Wm. 99 Hill, Mr. 98 Hops 202 Ice-houses 236 Leghorn 212 Libel Laws 108 Malthus, Parson 141 Mangel Wurzel 254 Mustard 198 Parks, Mr. 98 Paul, Saint 148 Peel's flimsy Dresses 152 Pigeons 181 Pigs, keeping 139 Pitt's false Money 152 Plat, English Straw 208 Porter, how to make 71 Potatoes 77 Rabbits 184 Salting Mutton and Beef 157 Stanhope, Lord 144 Swedish Turnips 207 Turkeys 171 Walter's and Stoddart's Paragraphs 152 Walter Scott's Poems 152 Want, the Parent of Crime 18 Wakefield, Mr. Edward 78, 99 Wilberforce's Potatoe-Diet 152 Winchelsea, Lord. 144 Woodhouse, Miss 213 Yeast 203 COBBETT'S POOR MAN'S FRIEND; A DEFENCE OF THE RIGHTS OF THOSE WHO DO THE WORK, AND FIGHT THE BATTLES. COBBETT'S POOR MAN'S FRIEND. NUMBER I. TO THE WORKING CLASSES OF PRESTON. _Burghclere, Hampshire, 22d August, 1826._ MY EXCELLENT FRIENDS, 1. Amongst all the new, the strange, the unnatural, the monstrous things that mark the present times, or, rather, that have grown out of the present system of governing this country, there is, in my opinion, hardly any thing more monstrous, or even so monstrous, as the language that is now become fashionable, relative to the condition and the treatment of that part of the community which are usually denominated the POOR; by which word I mean to designate the persons who, from age, infirmity, helplessness, or from want of the means of gaining anything by labour, become destitute of a sufficiency of food or of raiment, and are in danger of perishing if they be not relieved. Such are the persons that we mean when we talk of THE POOR; and, I repeat, that amongst all the monstrous things of these monstrous days, nothing is, in my opinion, so monstrous as the language which we now constantly hear relative to the condition and treatment of this part of the community. 2. Nothing can be more common than to read, in the newspapers, descriptions the most horrible of the sufferings of _the Poor_, in various parts of England, but particularly in the North. It is related of them, that they eat horse-flesh, grains, and have been detected in eating out of pig-troughs. In short, they are represented as being far worse fed and worse lodged than the greater part of the pigs. These statements of the _newspapers_ may be false, or, at least, only partially true; but, at a public meeting of rate-payers, at Manchester, on the 17th of August, Mr. BAXTER, the Chairman, said, that some of the POOR had been _starved to death_, and that _tens of thousands were upon the point of starving_; and, at the same meeting, Mr. POTTER gave a detail, which showed that Mr. BAXTER'S general description was true. Other accounts, very nearly official, and, at any rate, being of unquestionable authenticity, concur so fully with the statements made at the Manchester Meeting, that it is impossible not to believe, that a great number of thousands of persons are now on the point of perishing for want of food, and _that many have actually perished from that cause_; and that this has taken place, and is taking place, IN ENGLAND. 3. There is, then, no doubt of the existence of the disgraceful and horrid facts; but that which is as horrid as are the facts themselves, and even more horrid than those facts, is the cool and _unresentful_ language and manner in which the facts are usually spoken of. Those who write about the misery and starvation in Lancashire and Yorkshire, never appear to think _that any body is to blame_, even when the poor die with hunger. The Ministers ascribe the calamity to "_over-trading_;" the cotton and cloth and other master-manufacturers ascribe it to "_a want of paper-money_," or to the _Corn-Bill_; others ascribe the calamity to the _taxes_. These last are right; but what have these things to do with the treatment of the poor? What have these things to do with the horrid facts relative to the condition and starvation of English people? It is very true, that the enormous taxes which we pay on account of loans made to carry on the late unjust wars, on account of a great standing army in time of peace, on account of pensions, sinecures and grants, and on account of _a Church_, which, besides, swallows up so large a part of the produce of the land and the labour; it is very true, that these enormous taxes, co-operating with the paper-money and its innumerable monopolies; it is very true, that _these enormous taxes_, thus associated, have produced the ruin in trade, manufactures and commerce, and have, of course, produced the _low wages_ and the _want of employment_; this is very true; but it is not less true, that, be wages or employment as they may, the poor are not to perish with hunger, or with cold, while the rest of the community have food and raiment more than the latter want for their own sustenance. The LAW OF ENGLAND says, that there shall be no person to suffer from want of food and raiment. It has placed _officers_ in every parish to see that no person suffer from this sort of want; and lest these officers should not do their duty, _it commands all the magistrates_ to hear the complaints of the poor, and to compel the officers to do their duty. The LAW OF ENGLAND has provided ample means of relief for the poor; for, it has authorized the officers, or overseers, to get from the rich inhabitants of the parish as much money as _is wanted_ for the purpose, without any limit as to amount; and, in order that the overseers may have no excuse of inability to make people pay, the law has armed them with powers of a nature the most efficacious and the most efficient and most prompt in their operation. In short, the language of the LAW, to the overseer, is this: "Take care that no person suffer from hunger, or from cold; and that you may be sure not to fail of the means of obeying this my command, I give you, as far as shall be necessary for this purpose, full power over all the lands, all the houses, all the goods, and all the cattle, in your parish." To the Justices of the Peace the LAW says: "Lest the overseer should neglect his duty; lest, in spite of my command to him, any one should suffer from hunger or cold, I command you to be ready to hear the complaint of every sufferer from such neglect; I command you to summon the offending overseer, and to compel him to do his duty." 4. Such being the language of the LAW, is it not a monstrous state of things, when we hear it commonly and coolly stated, that many thousands of persons in England are _upon the point of starvation_; that _thousands will die of hunger and cold next winter_; that many have _already died of hunger_; and when we hear all this, unaccompanied with one word of _complaint against any overseer_, or any _justice of the peace_! Is not this state of things perfectly monstrous? A state of things in which it appears to be taken for granted, that the LAW is nothing, when it is intended to operate as a protection to the poor! Law is always law: if one part of the law may be, with impunity, set at defiance, why not another and every other part of the law? If the law which provides for the succour of the poor, for the preservation of their lives, may be, with impunity, set at defiance, why should there not be impunity for setting at defiance the law which provides for the security of the property and the lives of the rich? If you, in Lancashire, were to read, in an account of a meeting in Hampshire, that, here, the farmers and gentlemen were constantly and openly robbed; that the poor were daily breaking into their houses, and knocking their brains out; and that it was expected that great part of them would be killed very soon: if you, in Lancashire were to hear this said of the state of Hampshire, what would you say? Say! Why, you would say, to be sure, "Where is the LAW; where are the constables, the justices, the juries, the judges, the sheriffs, and the hangmen? Where can that _Hampshire_ be? It, surely, never can be in Old England. It must be some savage country, where such enormities can be committed, and where even those, who talk and who _lament_ the evils, never utter one word in the way of _blame_ of the perpetrators." And if you were called upon to pay taxes, or to make subscriptions in money, to furnish the means of protection to the unfortunate rich people in Hampshire, would you not say, and with good reason, "No: what should we do this for? The people of Hampshire have the SAME LAW that we have; they are under the same Government; _let them duly enforce that law_; and then they will stand in no need of money from us to provide for their protection." 5. This is what common sense says would be _your_ language in such a case; and does not common sense say, that the people of Hampshire, and of every other part of England, will thus think, when they are told of the sufferings, and the starvation, in Lancashire and Yorkshire! The report of the Manchester ley-payers, which took place on the 17th of August, reached me in a friend's house in this little village; and when another friend, who was present, read, in the speeches of Mr. BAXTER and Mr. POTTER, that tens of thousands of Lancashire people were _on the point of starvation_, and that many had already _actually died from starvation_; and when he perceived, that even those gentlemen uttered not a word of _complaint_ against either overseer or justices of the peace, he exclaimed: "What! are there _no poor-laws_ in Lancashire? Where, amidst all this starvation, is the overseer? Where is the justice of the peace? Surely that Lancashire can never be _in England_?" 6. The observations of this gentleman are those which occur to every man of sense; when he hears the horrid accounts of the sufferings in the manufacturing districts; for, though we are all well aware, that the burden of the poor-rates presses, at this time, with peculiar weight on the land-owners and occupiers, and on owners and occupiers of other real property, in those districts, we are equally well aware, that those owners and occupiers _have derived great benefits_ from that vast population that now presses upon them. There is _land_ in the parish in which I am now writing, and belonging to the farm in the house of which I am, which land would not let for 20_s._ a statute acre; while land, not so good, would let, in any part of Lancashire, near to the manufactories, at 60_s._ or 80_s._ a statute acre. The same may be said with regard to _houses_. And, pray, are the owners and occupiers, who have gained so largely by the manufacturing works being near their lands and houses; are they, _now_, to complain, if the vicinage of these same works causes a charge of rates _there_, heavier than exists _here_? Are the owners and occupiers of Lancashire to enjoy _an age of advantages_ from the labours of the spinners and the weavers; and are they, when a reverse comes, _to bear none of the disadvantages_? Are they to make no sacrifices, in order to save from perishing those industrious and ever-toiling creatures, by the labours of whom their land and houses have been augmented in value, three, five, or perhaps tenfold? None but the most unjust of mankind can answer these questions in the affirmative. 7. But as _greediness_ is never at a loss for excuses for the hard-heartedness that it is always ready to practise, it is said, that _the whole of the rents_ of the land and the houses would not suffice for the purpose; that is to say, that if the poor rates were to be made so high as to leave the tenant no means of paying rent, even then some of the poor must go without a sufficiency of food. I have no doubt that, in particular instances, this would be the case. But for cases like this the LAW has amply provided; for, in every case of this sort, _adjoining parishes_ may be made to _assist_ the hard pressed parish; and if the pressure becomes severe on these adjoining parishes, those _next adjoining them_ may be made to assist; and thus the call upon adjoining parishes maybe extended till it reach _all over the county_. So good, so benignant, so wise, so foreseeing, and so effectual, is this, the very best of all our good old laws! This law or rather code of laws, distinguishes England from all the other countries in the world, _except the United States of America_, where, while hundreds of other English statutes have been abolished, this law has always remained in full force, this great law of mercy and humanity, which says, that _no human being that treads English ground shall perish for want of food and raiment_. For such poor persons as are _unable to work_, the law provides food and clothing; and it commands that _work_ shall be provided for such as are able to work, and _cannot otherwise get employment_. This law was passed more than _two hundred years_ ago. Many attempts have been made to _chip it away_, and some have been made to destroy it altogether; but it still exists, and every man who does not wish to see general desolation take place, will do his best to cause it to be duly and conscientiously executed. 8. Having now, my friends of Preston, stated what the law is, and also the reasons for its honest enforcement in the particular case immediately before us, I will next endeavour to show you that it is founded in the law of nature, and that, were it not for the provisions of this law, people would, according to the opinions of the greatest lawyers, have _a right_ to _take_ food and raiment sufficient to preserve them from perishing; and that _such taking_ would be neither _felony_ nor _larceny_. This is a matter of the greatest importance; it is a most momentous question; for if it be settled in the affirmative--if it be settled that it is _not felony, nor larceny,_ to take other men's goods without their assent, and even against their will, when such taking is absolutely necessary to the preservation of life, how great, how imperative, is the duty of affording, if possible, _that relief which will prevent such necessity_! In other words, how imperative it is on all overseers and justices to obey the law with alacrity; and how weak are those persons who look to "_grants_" and "_subscriptions_," to supply the place of the execution of this, the most important of all the laws that constitute the basis of English society! And if this question be settled in the affirmative; if we find the most learned of lawyers and most wise of men, maintaining the affirmative of this proposition; if we find them maintaining, that it is neither _felony_ nor _larceny_ to take food, in case of _extreme necessity_, though without the assent, and even against the will of the owner, what are we to think of those (and they are not few in number nor weak in power) who, animated with the savage soul of the Scotch _feelosophers_, would wholly abolish the poor-laws, or, at least, render them of little effect, and thereby constantly keep thousands exposed to this dire necessity! 9. In order to do justice to this great subject; in order to treat it with perfect fairness, and in a manner becoming of me and of you, I must take the authorities _on both sides_. There are some great lawyers who have contended that the starving man is still guilty of felony or larceny, if he take food to satisfy his hunger; but there are a greater number of other, and still greater, lawyers, who maintain the contrary. The general doctrine of those who maintain the right to take, is founded on the law of nature; and it is a saying as old as the hills, a saying in every language in the world, that "_self-preservation_ is the _first law_ of nature." The law of nature teaches every creature to prefer the preservation of its own life to all other things. But, in order to have a fair view of the matter before us, we ought to inquire how it came to pass, that the laws were ever made to punish men as criminals, for taking the victuals, drink, or clothing, that they might stand in need of. We must recollect, then, that there was a time when no such laws existed; when men, like the wild animals in the fields, took what they were able to take, if they wanted it. In this state of things, all the land and all the produce belonged to all the people _in common_. Thus were men situated, when they lived under what is called the _law of nature_; when every one provided, as he could, for his self-preservation. 10. At length this state of things became changed: men entered into society; they made laws to restrain individuals from following, in certain cases, the dictates of their own will; they protected the weak against the strong; the laws secured men in possession of lands, houses, and goods, that were called THEIRS; the words MINE and THINE, which mean _my own_ and _thy own_, were invented to designate what we now call _a property_ in things. The law necessarily made it criminal in one man to take away, or to injure, the property of another man. It was, you will observe, even in this state of nature, always _a crime_ to do certain things against our neighbour. To kill him, to wound him, to slander him, to expose him to suffer from the want of food or raiment, or shelter. These, and many others, were crimes in the eye of the law of nature; but, to take share of a man's victuals or clothing; to go and insist upon sharing a part of any of the good things that he happened to have in his possession, could be _no crime_, because there was _no property_ in anything, except in man's body itself. Now, civil society was formed for the _benefit_ of the whole. The whole gave up their natural rights, in order that every one might, for the future, enjoy his life in greater security. This civil society was intended to change the state of man _for the better_. Before this state of civil society, the starving, the hungry, the naked man, had a right to go and provide himself with necessaries wherever he could find them. There would be sure to be some such necessitous persons in a state of civil society. Therefore, when civil society was established, it is impossible to believe that it _had not in view some provision for these destitute persons_. It would be monstrous to suppose the contrary. The contrary supposition would argue, that fraud was committed upon the mass of the people in forming this civil society; for, as the sparks fly upwards, so will there always be destitute persons to some extent or other, in _every community_, and such there are to now a considerable extent, even in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; therefore, the formation of the civil society must have been fraudulent or tyrannical upon any other supposition than that it made provision, in some way or other, for destitute persons; that is to say, for persons unable, from some cause or other, to provide for themselves the food and raiment sufficient to preserve them from perishing. Indeed, a provision for the destitute seems _essential to the lawfulness_ of civil society; and this appears to have been the opinion of BLACKSTONE, when, in the first Book and first Chapter of his Commentaries on the Laws of England, he says, "the law not only regards _life_ and _member_, and protects every man in the enjoyment of them, but also _furnishes him with every thing necessary for their support_. For there is no man so indigent or wretched, but he may _demand_ a supply _sufficient for all the necessaries of life_ from the more opulent part of the community, by means of the several statutes enacted for the relief of the poor; a humane provision _dictated_ by the _principles of society_." 11. No man will contend, that the main body of the people in any country upon earth, and of course in England, would have consented to abandon the rights of nature; to give up their right to enjoy all things in common; no man will believe, that the main body of the people would ever have given their assent to the establishing of a state of things which should make all the lands, and all the trees, and all the goods and cattle of every sort, private property; which should have shut out a large part of the people from having such property, and which should, at the same time, not have provided the means of preventing those of them, who might fall into indigence, from being _actually starved to death_! It is impossible to believe this. Men never gave their assent to enter into society on terms like these. One part of the condition upon which men entered into society was, that care should be taken that no human being should perish from want. When they agreed to enter into that state of things, which would necessarily cause some men to be rich and some men to be poor; when they gave up that right, which God had given them, to live as well as they could, and to take the means wherever they found them, the condition clearly was, the "_principle of society_;" clearly was, as BLACKSTONE defines it, that the indigent and wretched should have a right to "_demand_ from the rich a supply _sufficient_ for all the _necessities_ of life." 12. If the society did not take care to act upon this principle; if it neglected to secure the legal means, of preserving the life of the indigent and wretched; then the society itself, in so far as that wretched person was concerned, ceased to have a legal existence. It had, as far as related to him, forfeited its character of legality. It had no longer any claim to his submission to its laws. His rights of nature returned: as far as related to him, the law of Nature revived in all its force: that state of things in which all men enjoyed all things _in common_ was revived with regard to him; and he took, and he had a right to take, food and raiment, or, as Blackstone expresses it, "a supply sufficient for all the necessities of life." For, if it be true, as laid down by this English lawyer, that the _principles_ of society; if it be true, that the very principles, or _foundations_ of society dictate, that the destitute person shall have a legal demand for a supply from the rich, sufficient for all the necessities of life; if this be true, and true it certainly is, it follows of course that the principles, that is, the base, or _foundation_, of society, is subverted, is gone; and that society is, in fact, no longer what it was intended to be, when the indigent, when the person in a state of extreme necessity, cannot, at once, obtain from the rich such sufficient supply: in short, we need go no further than this passage of BLACKSTONE, to show, that civil society is subverted, and that there is, in fact, nothing legitimate in it, when the destitute and wretched have no certain and legal resource. 13. But this is so important a matter, and there have been such monstrous doctrines and projects put forth by MALTHUS, by the EDINBURGH REVIEWERS, by LAWYER SCARLETT, by LAWYER NOLAN, by STURGES BOURNE, and by an innumerable swarm of persons who have been giving before the House of Commons what they call "_evidence_:" there have been such monstrous doctrines and projects put forward by these and other persons; and there seems to be such a lurking desire to carry the hostility to the working classes still further, that I think it necessary in order to show, that these English poor-laws, which have been so much calumniated by so many greedy proprietors of land; I think it necessary to show, that these poor-laws are the things which men of property, above all others, _ought to wish to see maintained_, seeing that, according to the opinions of the greatest and the wisest of men, they must suffer most in consequence of the abolition of those laws; because, by the abolition of those laws, the right given by the laws of nature would revive, and the destitute would _take_, where they now simply _demand_ (as BLACKSTONE expresses it) in the name of the law. There has been some difference of opinion, as to the question, whether it be _theft_ or _no theft_; or, rather, whether it be a _criminal act_, or _not a criminal act_, for a person, in a case of extreme necessity from want of food, to take food without the assent and even against the will, of the owner. We have, amongst our great lawyers, SIR MATTHEW HALE and SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, who contend (though as we shall see, with much feebleness, hesitation, and reservation,) that it _is theft_, notwithstanding the extremity of the want; but there are many, and much higher authorities, foreign as well as English, on the other side. Before, however, I proceed to the hearing of these authorities, let me take a short view of _the origin of the poor laws in England_; for that view will convince us, that, though the present law was passed but a little more than two hundred years ago, there had been something to effect the same purpose ever since England had been called England. 14. According to the Common Law of England, as recorded in the MIRROUR OF JUSTICES, a book which was written before the Norman Conquest; a book in as high reputation, as a law-book, as any one in England; according to this book, CHAPTER 1st, SECTION 3d, which treats of the "First constitutions made by the antient kings;" According to this work, provision was made for the sustenance of the poor. The words are these: "It was ordained, that the poor should be sustained by _parsons_, by _rectors_ of the church, and by the _parishioners_, so that _none of them die for want of sustenance_." Several hundred years later, the canons of the church show, that when the church had become rich, it took upon itself the whole of the care and expense attending the relieving of the poor. These canons, in setting forth the manner in which the tithes should be disposed of, say, "Let the priests set apart the first share for the building and ornaments of the church; let them distribute the _second to the poor and strangers, with their own hands, in mercy and humility_; and let them reserve the third part for themselves." This passage is taken from the canons of ELFRIC, canon 24th. At a later period, when the tithes had, in some places, been appropriated to convents, acts of Parliament were passed, compelling the impropriators to leave, in the hands of their vicar, a sufficiency for the maintenance of the poor. There were two or three acts of this sort passed, one particularly in the twelfth year of RICHARD the Second, chapter 7th. So that here we have the most ancient book on the Common Law; we have the canons of the church at a later period; we have acts of Parliament at a time when the power and glory of England were at their very highest point; we have all these to tell us, that in England, from the very time that the country took the name, _there was always a legal and secure provision for the poor, so that no person, however aged, infirm, unfortunate, or destitute, should suffer from want_. 15. But, my friends, a time came when the provision made by the Common Law, by the Canons of the Church, and by the Acts of the Parliament coming in aid of those canons; a time arrived, when all these were rendered null by what is called the PROTESTANT REFORMATION. This "Reformation," As it is called, sweeped away the convents, gave a large part of the tithes to greedy courtiers, put parsons with wives and children into the livings, and left the poor without any resource whatsoever. This terrible event, which deprived England of the last of her possessions on the continent of Europe, reduced the people of England to the most horrible misery; from the happiest and best fed and best clad people in the world, it made them the most miserable, the most wretched and ragged of creatures. At last it was seen that, in spite of the most horrible tyranny that ever was exercised in the world, in spite of the racks and the gibbets and the martial law of QUEEN ELIZABETH, those who had amassed to themselves the property out of which the poor had been formerly fed, were compelled to _pass a law to raise money, by way of tax, for relieving the necessities of the poor_. They had passed many acts before the FORTY-THIRD year of the reign of this Queen Elizabeth; but these acts were all found to be ineffectual, till, at last, in the forty-third year of the reign: of this tyrannical Queen, and in the year of our Lord 1601, that famous act was passed, which has been in force until this day; and which, as I said before, is still in force, notwithstanding all the various attempts of folly and cruelty to get rid of it. 16. Thus, then, the present poor-laws are _no new thing_. They are no _gift_ to the working people. You hear the greedy landowners everlastingly complaining against this law of QUEEN ELIZABETH. They pretend that it was _an unfortunate_ law. They affect to regard it as a great INNOVATION, seeing that no such law existed before; but, as I have shown, a better law existed before, having the same object in view. I have shown, that the "Reformation," as it is called, had sweeped away that which had been secured to the poor by the Common Law, by the Canons of the Church, and by ancient Acts of Parliament. There was _nothing new_, then, in the way of benevolence towards the people, in this celebrated Act of Parliament of the reign of QUEEN ELIZABETH; and the landowners would act wisely by holding their tongues upon the subject; or, if they be too noisy, one may look into their GRANTS, and see if we cannot find something THERE to keep out the present parochial assessments. 17. Having now seen _the origin_ of the present poor-laws, and the justice of their due execution, let us return to those authorities of which I was speaking but now, and an examination into which will show the extreme danger of listening to those projectors who would abolish the poor-laws; that is to say, who would sweep away that provision which was established in the reign of QUEEN ELIZABETH, from a conviction that it was absolutely necessary to preserve the peace of the country and the lives of the people. I observed before that there has been some difference of opinion amongst lawyers as to the question, whether it be, or be not, _theft_, to take without his consent and against his will, the victuals of another, in order to prevent the taker from starving. SIR MATTHEW HALE and SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE say that it _is theft_. I am now going to quote the several authorities on both sides, and it will be necessary for me to indicate the works which I quote from by the words, letters, and figures which are usually made use of in quoting from these works. Some part of what I shall quote will be in Latin: but I shall put nothing in that language of which I will not give you the translation. I beg you to read these quotations with the greatest attention; for you will find, at the end of your reading, that you have obtained great knowledge upon the subject, and knowledge, too, which will not soon depart from your minds. 18. I begin with SIR MATTHEW HALE, (a Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench in the reign of Charles the Second,) who, in his PLEAS OF THE CROWN, CHAP. IX., has the following passage, which I put in distinct paragraphs, and mark A, B, and C. 19. A. "Some of the casuists, and particularly COVARRUVIUS, Tom. I. _De furti et rapinæ restitutione_, § 3, 4, p. 473; and GROTIUS, _de jure belli, ac pacis_; lib. II. cap. 2. § 6, tell us, that in case of extreme necessity, either of hunger or clothing, the _civil distributions of property cease_, and by a kind of tacit condition the _first community doth return_, and upon this those common assertions are grounded: '_Quicquid necessitas cogit, defendit._' [Whatever necessity calls for, it justifies.] '_Necessitas est lex temporis et loci._' [Necessity is the law of time and place.] '_In casu extremæ necessitatis omnia sunt communia._' [In case of extreme necessity, all things are _in common_;] and, therefore, in such case _theft is no theft_, or at least not punishable as theft; and some even of our own lawyers have asserted the same; and very bad use hath been made of this concession by some of the _Jesuitical_ casuists of _France_, who have thereupon advised apprentices and servants to rob their masters, where they have been indeed themselves in want of necessaries, of clothes or victuals; whereof, they tell them, they themselves are the competent judges; and by this means let loose, as much as they can, by their doctrine of probability, all the ligaments of property and civil society." 20. B. "I do, therefore, _take it_, that, where persons live under the same civil government, _as here in England_, that rule, at least by the laws of _England_, is false; and, therefore, if a person being _under necessity for want of victuals_, or clothes, shall, upon that account, clandestinely, and '_animo furandi_,' [with intent to steal,] steal another man's goods, it is felony, and a crime, by the laws of _England_, punishable with death; although, the judge before whom the trial is, in this case (as in other cases of extremity) be by the laws of _England_ intrusted with a power to reprieve the offender, before or after judgment, in order to the obtaining the King's mercy. For, 1st, Men's properties would be under a strange insecurity, being laid open to other men's necessities, whereof no man can possibly judge, but the party himself. And, 2nd, Because by the laws of this kingdom [here he refers to the 43 Eliz. cap. 2] sufficient provision is made for the supply of such necessities by collections for the poor, and by the power of the civil magistrate. Consonant hereunto seems to be the law even among the Jews; if we may believe the wisest of kings. Proverbs vi. 30, 31. '_Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry, but if he be found, he shall restore seven-fold, he shall give all the substance of his house._' It is true, _death_ among them was not the penalty of theft, yet his necessity gave him _no exception_ from the ordinary punishment inflicted by their law upon that offence." 21. C. "Indeed this rule, '_in casu extremæ necessitatis omnia sunt communia_,' does hold, in some measure, in some particular cases, where, by the tacit consent of nations, or of some particular countries or societies, it hath obtained. First, among the _Jews_, it was lawful in case of hunger to pull ears of standing corn, and eat, (Matt. xii. 1;) and for one to pass through a vineyard, or olive-yard, to gather and eat without carrying away. Deut. xxiii. 24, 25. SECOND, By the _Rhodian_ law, and the common-maritime custom, if the common provision for the ship's company fail, the master may, under certain temperaments, _break open the private chests of the mariners or passengers_, and _make a distribution_ of that particular and private provision for the _preservation of the ship's company_." Vide CONSOLATO DEL MARE, cap. 256. LE CUSTOMES DE LA MERE, p. 77. 22. SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE agrees, in substance, with HALE; but he is, as we shall presently see, much more eager to establish his doctrine; and, we shall see besides, that he has not scrupled to be guilty of misquoting, and of very shamefully _garbling_, _the Scripture_, in order to establish his point. We shall find him flatly contradicting the laws of England; but, he might have spared the Holy Scriptures, which, however, he has not done. 23. To return to HALE, you see he is compelled to begin with acknowledging that there are great authorities against him; and he could not say that GROTIUS was not one of the most virtuous as well as one of the most learned of mankind. HALE does not know very well what to do with those old sayings about the justification which hard necessity gives: he does not know what to do with the maxim, that, "in case of extreme necessity all things _are owned in common_." He is exceedingly puzzled with these ancient authorities, and flies off into prattle rather than argument, and tells us a story about "_jesuitical_" casuists in France, who advised apprentices and servants to rob their masters, and that they thus "let loose the ligaments of property and civil society." I fancy that it would require a pretty large portion of that sort of faith which induced this Protestant judge to send witches and wizards to the gallows; a pretty large portion of this sort of faith, to make us believe, that the "_casuists_ of France," who, doubtless, _had servants of their own_, would teach servants to rob their masters! In short, this prattle of the judge seems to have been nothing more than one of those Protestant effusions which were too much in fashion at the time when he wrote. 24. He begins his second paragraph, or paragraph B., by saying, that he "_takes it_" to be so and so; and then comes another qualified expression; he talks of civil government "_as here in England_." Then he says, that the rule of GROTIUS and others, against which he has been contending, "he takes _to be false_, at _least_," says he, "_by the laws of England_." After he has made all these qualifications, he then proceeds to say that _such taking is theft_; that it is _felony_; and it is a crime which the laws of England punish with _death_! But, as if stricken with remorse at putting the frightful words upon paper; as if feeling shame for the law and for England itself, he instantly begins to tell us, that the judge who presides at the trial is intrusted, "_by the laws of England_," with power to _reprieve_ the offender, in order to the obtaining of the _King's mercy_! Thus he softens it down. He will have it to be LAW to put a man to death in such a case; but he is ashamed to leave his readers to believe, that an English judge and an English king WOULD OBEY THIS LAW! 25. Let us now hear the reasons which he gives for this which he pretends to be law. His first reason is, that there would be no security for property, if it were laid open to the necessities of the indigent, of which necessities _no man but the takers themselves could be the judge_. He talks of a "strange insecurity;" but, upon my word, no insecurity could be half so strange as this assertion of his own. BLACKSTONE has just the same argument. "Nobody," says he, "would be a judge of the wants of the taker, but the taker himself;" and BLACKSTONE, copying the very words of HALE, talks of the "strange insecurity" arising from this cause. Now, then, suppose a man to come into my house, and to take away a bit of bacon. Suppose me to pursue him and seize him. He would tell me that he was starving for want of food. I hope that the bare statement would induce me, or any man in the world that I do call or ever have called my friend, to let him go without further inquiry; but, if I chose to push the matter further, there would be _the magistrate_. If he chose to commit the man, would there not be a _jury_ and a _judge_ to receive evidence and to ascertain _whether the extreme necessity existed or not_? 26. Aye, says Judge HALE; but I have another reason, a devilish deal better than this, "and that is, the act of the 43d year of the reign of QUEEN ELIZABETH!" Aye, my old boy, that is a thumping reason! "_Sufficient provision_ is made for the supply of such necessities by _collections for the poor_, and by the _power of the civil magistrate_." Aye, aye! that is the reason; and, Mr. SIR MATTHEW HALE, there is _no other reason_, say what you will about the matter. There stand the overseer and the civil magistrate to take care that such necessities be provided for; and if they did not stand there for that purpose, the law of nature would be revived in behalf of the suffering creature. 27. HALE, not content however with this act of QUEEN ELIZABETH, and still hankering after this hard doctrine, furbishes up a bit of Scripture, and calls Solomon the _wisest of kings_ on account of these two verses which he has taken. HALE observes, indeed, that the Jews did not put thieves to _death_; but, to restore seven-fold was the _ordinary punishment_, inflicted by their law, for theft; and here, says he, we see, that the extreme necessity _gave no exemption_. This was a piece of such flagrant sophistry on the part of HALE, that he could not find in his heart to send it forth to the world without a qualifying observation; but even this qualifying observation left the sophistry still so shameful, that his editor, Mr. EMLYN, who published the work under authority of the House of Commons, did not think it consistent with his reputation to suffer this passage to go forth unaccompanied with the following remark: "But their (the Jews') ordinary punishment being entirely _pecuniary_, could affect him _only when he was found in a condition to answer it_; and therefore the same reasons which could justify that, can, by no means, be extended to a _corporal_, much less to a _capital_ punishment." Certainly: and this is the fair interpretation of these two verses of the Proverbs. PUFFENDORF, one of the greatest authorities that the world knows anything of, observes, upon the argument built upon this text of Scripture, "It may be objected, that, in Proverbs, chap. vi. verses 30, 31, he is called a _thief_, and pronounced obnoxious to the penalty of theft, who steals to satisfy his hunger; but whoever closely views and considers that text will find that the thief there censured is neither in such _extreme necessity_ as we are now supposing, nor seems to have fallen into his needy condition merely by ill fortune, without his own idleness or default: for the context implies, that he had _a house and goods sufficient_ to make seven-fold restitution; which he might have either sold or pawned; a chapman or creditor being easily to be met with in times of plenty and peace; for we have no grounds to think that the fact there mentioned is supposed to be committed, either in time of war, or upon account of the extraordinary price of provisions." 28. Besides this, I think it is clear that these two verses of the Proverbs do not apply to _one and the same person_; for in the first verse it is said, that men _do not despise_ a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry. How, then, are we to reconcile this with _morality_? Are we not to despise a _thief_? It is clear that the word _thief_ does not apply to the first case; but to the second case only; and that the distinction was here made for the express purpose of preventing the man who took food to relieve his hunger _from being confounded with the thief_. Upon any other interpretation, it makes the passage contain nonsense and immorality; and, indeed, GROTIUS says that the latter text does not apply to the person mentioned in the former. The latter text could not mean a man taking food from necessity. It is _impossible_ that it can mean that; because the man who was starving for want of food _could not have_ seven-fold; _could not have_ any substance in his house. But what are we to think of JUDGE BLACKSTONE, who, in his Book IV., chap. 2, really _garbles_ these texts of Scripture. He clearly saw the effect of the expression, "MEN DO NOT DESPISE;" he saw what an awkward figure these words made, coming before the words "A THIEF;" he saw that, with these words in the text, he could never succeed in making his readers believe that a man ought to be _hanged_ for taking food to save his life. He clearly saw that he could not make men believe that _God had said this_, unless he could, somehow or other, get rid of those words about NOT DESPISING the thief that took victuals when he was hungry. Being, therefore, very much pestered and annoyed by these words about NOT DESPISING, what does he do but fairly _leave them out_! And not only leave them out, but leave out a part of both the verses, keeping in that part of each that suited him, and no more; nay, further, leaving out one word, and putting in another, giving a sense to the whole which he knew well never was intended. He states the passage to be this: "If a thief steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry, _he_ shall restore seven-fold, _and_ shall give all the substance of his house." No broomstick that ever was handled would have been too heavy or too rough for the shoulders of this dirty-souled man. HALE, with all his desire to make out a case in favour of severity, has given us the words fairly: but this shuffling fellow; this smooth-spoken and mean wretch, who is himself _thief_ enough, God knows, if stealing other men's thoughts and words constitute theft; this intolerably mean reptile has, in the first place, left out the words "_men do not despise_:" then he has left out the words at the beginning of the next text, "_but if he be found_." Then in place of the "_he_," which comes before the words "_shall give_" he puts the word "_and_;" and thus he makes the whole apply to the poor creature that takes to satisfy his soul when he is hungry! He leaves out every mitigating word of the Scripture; and, in his reference, he represents the passage to be in _one_ verse! Perhaps, even in the history of the conduct of crown-lawyers, there is not to be found mention of an act so coolly bloody-minded as this. It has often been said of this BLACKSTONE, that he not only _lied_ himself, but _made others lie_; he has here made, as far as he was able, a liar of King Solomon himself: he has wilfully garbled the Holy Scripture; and that, too, for the manifest purpose of justifying cruelty in courts and judges; for the manifest purpose of justifying the most savage oppression of the poor. 29. After all, HALE has not the courage to send forth this doctrine of his, without allowing that the case of extreme necessity does, "in _some measure_," and "in _particular cases_," and, "by the _tacit_ or _silent_ consent of nations," _hold good_! What a crowd of qualifications is here! With what reluctance he confesses that which all the world knows to be true, that the disciples of JESUS CHRIST pulled off, without leave, the ears of standing corn, and ate them "_being an hungered_." And here are two things to observe upon. In the first place this _corn_ was not what _we call corn_ here in England, or else it would have been very droll sort of stuff to crop off and eat. It was what the Americans call _Indian corn_, what the French call _Turkish corn_; and what is called _corn_ (as being far surpassing all other in excellence) in the Eastern countries where the Scriptures were written. About four or five ears of this corn, of which you strip all the husk off in a minute, are enough for a man's breakfast or dinner; and by about the middle of August this corn is just as wholesome and as efficient as bread. So that, this was _something_ to take and eat without the owner's leave; it was something of value; and observe, that the Pharisees, though so strongly disposed to find fault with everything that was done by Jesus Christ and his disciples, did not find fault of their _taking_ the corn to eat; did not call them _thieves_; did not propose to punish them for _theft_; but found fault of them only for having _plucked the corn on the Sabbath-day_! To pluck the corn was _to do work_, and these severe critics found fault of this working on the Sabbath-day. Then, out comes another fact, which HALE might have noticed if he had chosen it; namely, that our Saviour reminds the Pharisees that "DAVID and his companions, _being an hungered_, entered into the House of God, and did eat the show-bread, to eat which was unlawful in any-body but the priests." Thus, that which would have been _sacrilege_ under any other circumstances; that which would have been one of the most _horrible of crimes against the law of God_, became no crime at all when committed by a person _pressed by hunger_. 30. Nor has JUDGE HALE fairly interpreted the two verses of DEUTERONOMY. He represents the matter thus: that, if you be _passing through_ a vineyard or an olive-yard you may gather and eat, without being deemed a thief. This interpretation would make an Englishman believe that the Scripture allowed of this taking and eating, only where there was a _lawful foot-way_ through the vineyard. This is a very gross misrepresentation of the matter; for if you look at the two texts, you will find, that they say that, "when thou _comest into_;" that is to say, when thou _enterest_ or _goest into_, "thy neighbour's vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure, but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel;" that is to say, that you should not go and make wine in his vineyard and carry it away. Then in case of the corn, precisely the same law is laid down. You may pluck with your _hand_; but not use the _hook_ or a _sickle_. Nothing can be plainer than this: no distinction can be wiser, nor more just. HALE saw the force of it; and therefore, as these texts made very strongly against him, he does not give them at full length, but gives us a misrepresenting abbreviation. 31. He had, however, too much regard for his reputation to conclude without acknowledging the right of seizing on the provisions of others _at sea_. He allows that private chests may be _broken open_ to prevent men from dying with hunger at sea. He does not stop to tell us why men's lives are _more precious_ on sea than on land. He does not attempt to reconcile these liberties given by the Scripture, and by the maritime laws, with his own hard doctrine. In short, he brings us to this at last: that he will _not acknowledge_, that it is _not theft_ to take another man's goods, without his consent, under any circumstances; but, while he will not acknowledge this, he plainly leaves us to conclude, that no English judge and no English king will _ever punish_ a poor creature that takes victuals to save himself from perishing; and he plainly leaves us to conclude, that it is the _poor-laws_ of England; that it is their existence and _their due execution_, which deprive everybody in England of the right to take food and raiment in case of extreme necessity. 32. Here I agree with him most cordially; and it is because I agree with him in this, that I deprecate the abominable projects of those who would annihilate the poor-laws, seeing that it is those very poor-laws which give, under all circumstances, really legal security _to property_. Without them, cases must frequently arise, which would, according to the law of nature, according to the law of God, and as we shall see before we have done, according to the law of England, bring us into a state, or, at least, bring particular persons into a state, which as far as related to them, would cause the law of nature to _revive_, and to make _all things to be owned in common_. To adhere, then, to these poor-laws; to cause them to be duly executed, to prevent every encroachment upon them, to preserve them as the apple of our eye, are the duty of every Englishman, as far as he has capacity so to do. 33. I have, my friends, cited, as yet, authorities only _on one side_ of this great subject, which it was my wish to discuss in this one Number. I find that to be impossible without leaving undone much more than half my work. I am extremely anxious to cause this matter to be well understood, not only by the working classes, but by the owners of the land and the magistrates. I deem it to be of the greatest possible importance; and, while writing on it, I address myself to you, because I most sincerely declare that I have a greater respect for you than for any other body of persons that I know any thing of. The next Number will conclude the discussion of the subject. The whole will lie in a very small compass. _Sixpence_ only will be the cost of it. It will creep about, by degrees, over the whole of this kingdom. All the authorities, all the arguments, will be brought into this small compass; and I do flatter myself that many months will not pass over our heads, before all but misers and madmen will be ashamed to talk of abolishing the poor-rates and of supporting the needy by grants and subscriptions. I am, Your faithful friend and Most obedient servant, WM. COBBETT. NUMBER II. _Bollitree Castle, Herefordshire, 22d Sept. 1826._ MY EXCELLENT FRIENDS, 34. In the last Number, paragraph 33, I told you, that I would, in the present Number, conclude the discussion of the great question of _theft, or no theft_, in a case of taking another's goods without his consent, or against his will, the taker being pressed by extreme necessity. I laid before you; in the last Number, JUDGE HALE'S doctrine upon the subject; and I there mentioned the foul conduct of BLACKSTONE, the author of the "Commentaries on the Laws of England." I will not treat this unprincipled lawyer, this shocking court sycophant; I will not treat him as he has treated King Solomon and the Holy Scriptures; I will not garble, misquote, and belie him, as he garbled, misquoted, and belied them; I will give the whole of the passage to which I allude, and which my readers may find in the Fourth Book of his Commentaries. I request you to read it with great attention; and to compare it, very carefully, with the passage that I have quoted from SIR MATTHEW HALE, which you will find in paragraphs from 19 to 21 inclusive. The passage from BLACKSTONE is as follows: 35. "There is yet another case of necessity, which has occasioned great speculation among the writers upon general law; viz., whether a man in extreme want of food or clothing may justify stealing either, to relieve his present necessities. And this both GROTIUS and PUFFENDORF, together with _many other_ of the foreign jurists, hold in the affirmative; maintaining by many ingenious, humane, and plausible reasons, that in such cases the community of goods by a kind of tacit concession of society is revived. And some even of our own lawyers have held the same; though it seems to be an unwarranted doctrine, borrowed from the notions of some civilians: at least it is now antiquated, the law of England admitting no such excuse at present. And this its doctrine is agreeable not only to the sentiments of many of the wisest ancients, particularly CICERO, who holds that 'suum cuique incommodum ferendum est, potius quam de alterius commodis detrahendum;' but also to the Jewish law, as certified by King Solomon himself: 'If a thief steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry, he shall restore seven-fold, and shall give all the substance of his house:' which was the ordinary punishment for theft in that kingdom. And this is founded upon the highest reason: for men's properties would be under a strange insecurity, if liable to be invaded according to the wants of others; of which wants no man can possibly be an adequate judge, but the party himself who pleads them. In this country especially, there would be a peculiar impropriety in admitting so dubious an excuse; for by our laws such a sufficient provision is made for the poor by the power of the civil magistrate, that it is impossible that the most needy stranger should ever be reduced to the necessity of thieving to support nature. This case of a stranger is, by the way, the strongest instance put by Baron PUFFENDORF, and whereon he builds his principal arguments; which, however they may hold upon the continent, where the parsimonious industry of the natives orders every one to work or starve, yet must lose all their weight and efficacy in England, where _charity is reduced to a system, and interwoven in our very constitution_. Therefore, our laws ought by no means to be taxed with being _unmerciful_, for denying this privilege to the necessitous; especially when we consider, that the king, on the representation of his ministers of justice, hath a power to soften the law, and to extend mercy in cases of peculiar hardship. An advantage which is wanting in many states, particularly those which are democratical: and these have in its stead introduced and adopted, in the body of the law itself, a multitude of circumstances tending to alleviate its rigour. But the founders of our constitution thought it better to vest in the crown the power of pardoning peculiar objects of compassion, than to countenance and establish theft by one general undistinguishing law." 36. First of all, I beg you to observe, that this passage is merely _a flagrant act of theft_, committed upon JUDGE HALE; next, you perceive, that which I noticed in paragraph 28, a most base and impudent garbling of the Scriptures. Next, you see, that BLACKSTONE, like HALE, comes, at last, to the _poor-laws_; and tells us that to take other men's goods without leave, is theft, _because_ "charity is here reduced to a system, and interwoven in our very constitution." That is to say, to relieve the necessitous; to prevent their suffering from want; completely to render starvation impossible, makes a part of our very constitution. "THEREFORE, our laws ought by no means to be taxed with being _unmerciful_ for denying this privilege to the necessitous." Pray mark the word _therefore_. You see, our laws, he says, are not to be taxed with being unmerciful in deeming the necessitous taker _a thief_. And _why_ are they not to be deemed unmerciful? BECAUSE the laws provide effectual relief for the necessitous. It follows, then, of course, even according to BLACKSTONE himself, that if the Constitution _had not_ provided this effectual relief for the necessitous, then the laws _would have been unmerciful_ in deeming the necessitous taker a thief. 37. But now let us hear what that GROTIUS and that PUFFENDORF say; let us hear what these great writers on the law of nature and of nations say upon this subject. BLACKSTONE has mentioned the names of them both; but he has not thought proper to notice their arguments, much less has he attempted to answer them. They are two of the most celebrated men that ever wrote; and their writings are referred to as high authority, with regard to all the subjects of which they have treated. The following is a passage from GROTIUS, on War and Peace, Book II., chap. 2. 38. "Let us see, further, what common right there appertains to men in those things which have already become the property of individuals. Some persons, perchance, may consider it strange to question this, as proprietorship seems to have absorbed all that right which arose out of a state of things in common. But it is not so. For, it is to be considered, _what was the intention of those who first introduced private property_, which we may suppose to have been such, as to deviate as little as possible from _natural equity_. For if even _written laws_ are to be construed in that sense, as far as it is practicable, much more so are _customs_, which are not fettered by the chains of writers.--Hence it follows, first, that, in case of _extreme necessity_, the _pristine right of using things revives_, as much as if they had remained in common; because, in all human laws, as well as in the law of private property, _this case of extreme necessity appears to have been excepted_.--So, if the means of sustenance, as in case of a sea-voyage, should chance to fail, that which any individual may have, should be shared in common. And thus, a fire having broken out, I am justified in destroying the house of my neighbour, in order to preserve my own house; and I may cut in two the ropes or cords amongst which any ship is driven, if it cannot be otherwise disentangled. All which exceptions are not made in the written law, but are presumed.--For the opinion has been acknowledged amongst Divines, that, if any one, in such case of necessity, take from another person what is requisite for the preservation of his life, _he does not commit a theft_. The meaning of which definition is not, as many contend, that the proprietor of the thing be bound to give to the needy upon the principle of _charity_; but, that all things distinctly vested in proprietors ought to be regarded as such _with a certain benign acknowledgment of the primitive right_. For if the original distributors of things were questioned, as to what they thought about this matter, they would reply what I have said. _Necessity_, says Father SENECA, _the great excuse for human weakness, breaks every law_; that is to say, _human law_, or law made after the manner of man." 39. "But cautions ought to be had, for fear this license should be abused: of which the principal is, to try, in every way, whether the necessity can be avoided by any other means; for instance, by making application to the magistrate, or even by trying whether the use of the thing can, by entreaties, be obtained from the proprietor. PLATO permits water to be fetched from the well of a neighbour upon this condition alone, that the person asking for such permission shall dig in his own well in search of water as far as the chalk: and SOLON, that he shall dig in his own well as far as forty cubits. Upon which PLUTARCH adds, _that he judged that necessity was to be relieved, not laziness to be encouraged_." 40. Such is the doctrine of this celebrated civilian. Let us now hear PUFFENDORF; and you will please to bear in mind, that both these writers are of the greatest authority upon all subjects connected with the laws of nature and of nations. We read in their works the result of an age of study: they have been two of the great guides of mankind ever since they wrote: and, we are not to throw them aside, in order to listen exclusively to Parson HAY, to HULTON OF HULTON, or to NICHOLAS GRIMSHAW. They tell us what they, and what other wise men, deemed to be right; and, as we shall by and by see, the laws of England, so justly boasted of by our ancestors, hold precisely the same language with these celebrated men. After the following passage from PUFFENDORF, I shall show you what our own lawyers say upon the subject; but I request you to read the following passage with the greatest attention. 41. "Let us inquire, in the next place, whether the necessity of preserving our life can give us any right over other men's goods, so as to make it allowable for us to seize on them for our relief, either secretly, or by open force, against the owner's consent. For the more clear and solid determination of which point, we think it necessary to hint in short on the causes upon which distinct _properties_ were first introduced in the world; designing to examine them more at large in their proper place. Now the main reasons on which _properties_ are founded, we take to be these two; that the feuds and quarrels might be appeased which arose in the _primitive communion_ of things, and that men might be put under a kind of necessity of being industrious, every one being to get his maintenance by his own application and labour. This division, therefore, of goods, was not made, that every person should sit idly brooding over the share of wealth he had got, without assisting or serving his fellows; but that any one might dispose of his things how he pleased; and if he thought fit to communicate them to others, he might, at least, be thus furnished with an opportunity of laying obligations on the rest of mankind. Hence, when properties were once established, men obtained a power, not only of exercising commerce to their mutual advantage and gain, but likewise of dispensing more largely in the works of humanity and beneficence; whence their diligence had procured them a greater share of goods than others: whereas before, when all things lay in common, men could lend one another no assistance but what was supplied by their corporeal ability, and could be charitable of nothing but of their _strength_. Further, such is the force of _property_, that the _proprietor_ hath a right of delivering his goods with his own hands; even such as he is obliged to give to others. Whence it follows, that when one man has anything owing from another, he is not presently to seize on it at a venture, but ought to apply himself to the owner, desiring to receive it from his disposal. Yet in case the other party refuse thus to make good his obligation, the power and privilege of _property_ doth not reach so far as that the things may not be taken away without the owner's consent, either by the authority of the magistrate in _civil communities_, or in a _state of nature_, by violence and hostile force. And though in regard to bare Natural Right, for a man to relieve another in extremity with his goods, for which he himself hath not so much occasion, be a duty obliging only _imperfectly_, and not in the manner of a _debt_, since it arises wholly from the virtue of _humanity_; yet there seems to be no reason why, by the additional force of a civil ordinance, it may not be turned into a strict and perfect obligation. And this _Seldon_ observes to have been done among the _Jews_; who, upon a man's refusing to give such alms as were proper for him, _could force him to it by an action at law_. It is no wonder, therefore, that they should forbid _their poor_, on any account, to seize on the goods of others, enjoining them to take only what private persons, or the public officers, or stewards of alms, should give them on their petition. Whence the stealing of what was another's, though upon extreme necessity, passed in that state for theft or rapine. But now supposing _under another government the like good provision is not made for persons in want_, supposing likewise that the covetous temper of men of substance cannot be prevailed on to give relief, and that the needy creature is not able, either by his work or service, or by making sale of anything that he possesses, to assist his present necessity, _must_ he, _therefore, perish with famine_? Or _can any human institution bind me_ with such a force that, in case another man neglects his duty towards me, _I must rather die, than recede a little from the ordinary and regular way of acting_? We conceive, therefore, that such a person doth _not contract the guilt of theft_, who happening, not through his own fault, to be in extreme want, either of necessary food, or of clothes to preserve him from the violence of the weather, and cannot obtain them from the voluntary gift of the rich, either by urgent entreaties, or by offering somewhat equivalent in price, or by engaging _to work it out, shall either forcibly or privily relieve himself out of their abundance_; especially if he do it with full intention to pay the value of them whenever his better fortune gives him ability. Some men deny that such a case of _necessity_, as we speak of, can possibly happen. But what if a man should wander in a foreign land, unknown, friendless, and in want, spoiled of all he had by shipwreck, or by robbers, or having lost by some casualty whatever he was worth in his own country; should none be found willing either to relieve his distress, or to hire his service, or should they rather (as it commonly happens,) seeing him in a good garb, suspect him to beg without reason, must the poor creature starve in this miserable condition?" 42. Many other great foreign authorities might be referred to, and I cannot help mentioning COVARRUVIUS, who is spoken of by JUDGE HALE, and who expresses himself upon the subject in these words: "The reason why a man in extreme necessity may, _without incurring the guilt of theft or rapine_, forcibly take the goods of others for his present relief, is because his condition _renders all things common_. For it is the ordinance and institution of nature itself, that inferior things should be designed and directed to serve the necessities of men. Wherefore the division of goods afterwards introduced into the world doth not derogate from that precept of natural reason, which Suggests, that the _extreme wants of mankind may be in any manner removed by the use of temporal possessions_." PUFFENDORF tells us, that PERESIUS maintains, that, in case of extreme necessity, a man is compelled to the action, by a force which he cannot resist; and then, that the owner's consent may be presumed on, because humanity obliges him to succour those who are in distress. The same writer cites a passage from St. AMBROSE, one of the FATHERS of the church, which alleges that (in case of refusing to give to persons in extreme necessity) it is the person who retains the goods who is guilty of the act of wrong doing, for St. AMBROSE says; "it is the _bread of the hungry_ which you detain; it is the _raiment of the naked_ which you lock up." 43. Before I come to the English authorities on the same side, let me again notice the foul dealing of Blackstone; let me point out another instance or two of the insincerity of this English court-sycophant, who was, let it be noted, Solicitor-general to the queen of the "good old King." You have seen, in paragraph 28, a most flagrant instance of his perversion of the Scriptures. He garbles the word of God, and prefaces the garbling by calling it a thing "_certified_ by King Solomon himself;" and this word _certified_ he makes use of just when he is about to begin the scandalous falsification of the text which he is referring to. Never was anything more base. But, the whole extent of the baseness we have not yet seen; for, BLACKSTONE had read HALE, who had quoted the two verses fairly; but besides this, he had read PUFFENDORF, who had noticed very fully this text of Scripture, and who had shown very clearly that it did not at all make in favour of the doctrine of Blackstone. Blackstone ought to have given the argument of PUFFENDORF; he ought to have given the whole of his argument; but particularly he ought to have given this explanation of the passage in the PROVERBS, which explanation I have inserted in paragraph 27. It was also the height of insincerity in BLACKSTONE, to pretend that the passage from CICERO had anything at all to do with the matter. He knew well that it had not; he knew that CICERO contemplated no case of extreme necessity for want of food or clothing; but, he had read PUFFENDORF, and PUFFENDORF had told him, that CICERO'S was a question of the mere _conveniences_ and _inconveniences_ of life in general; and not a question of pinching hunger or shivering nakedness. BLACKSTONE had seen his fallacy exposed by PUFFENDORF; he had seen the misapplication of this passage of CICERO fully exposed by PUFFENDORF; and yet the base court-sycophant trumped it up again, without mentioning PUFFENDORF'S exposure of the fallacy! In short this BLACKSTONE, upon this occasion, as upon almost all others, has gone all lengths; has set detection and reproof at defiance, for the sake of making his court to the government by inculcating harshness in the application of the law, and by giving to the law such an interpretation as would naturally tend to justify that harshness. 44. Let us now cast away from us this insincere sycophant, and turn to other law authorities of our own country. The _Mirrour of Justices_, (quoted by me in paragraph 14,) Chap. 4, Section 16, on the subject of arrest of judgment of death, has this passage. Judgment is to be staid in seven cases here specified: and the seventh is this: "in POVERTY, in which case you are to distinguish of the poverty of the offender, or of things; for if poor people, _to avoid famine, take victuals to sustain their lives, or clothes that they die not of cold_, (so that they perish if they keep not themselves from cold,) _they are not to be adjudged to death, if it were not in their power to have bought their victuals or clothes_; for as much as _they are warranted so to do by the law of nature_." Now, my friends, you will observe, that I take this from a book which may almost be called the BIBLE of the law. There is no lawyer who will deny the goodness of this authority; or who will attempt to say that this was not always the law of England. 45. Our next authority is one quite as authentic, and almost as ancient. The book goes by the name of BRITTON, which was the name of a Bishop of Hereford, who edited it, in the famous reign of EDWARD THE FIRST. The book does, in fact, contain the laws of the kingdom as they existed at that time. It may be called the record of the laws of Edward the First. It begins thus, "Edward by the grace of God, King of England and Lord of Ireland, to all his liege subjects, peace, and grace of salvation." The preamble goes on to state, that people cannot be happy without good laws; that even good laws are of no use unless they be known and understood; and that, therefore, the king has ordered the laws of England thus to be written and recorded. This book is very well known to be of the greatest authority, amongst lawyers, and in Chap. 10 of this book, in which the law describes what constitutes a BURGLAR, or house-breaker, and the punishment that he shall suffer (which is that of death,) there is this passage: "Those are to be deemed burglars who feloniously, in time of peace, break into churches or houses, or through walls or doors of our cities, or our boroughs; with _exception_ of children under age, and of _poor people who for hunger, enter to take any sort of victuals of less value than twelve pence_; and except idiots and mad people, and others that cannot commit felony." Thus, you see, this agrees with the MIRROUR OF JUSTICES, and with all that we have read before from these numerous high authorities. But this, taken in its full latitude, goes a great length indeed; for a burglar is a _breaker-in by night_. So that this is not only _a taking_; but a breaking into a house in order to take! And observe, it is taking to the value of _twelve pence_; and twelve pence then was the price of _a couple of sheep_, and of fine fat sheep too; nay, twelve pence was the price of _an ox_, in this very reign of Edward the First. So that, a hungry man might have a pretty good belly-full in those days without running the risk of punishment. Observe, by-the-by, how time has hardened the law. We are told of the _dark ages_, of the _barbarous customs_, of our forefathers: and we have a SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH to receive and to present petitions innumerable, from the most tender hearted creatures in the world, about "_softening the criminal code_;" but, not a word do they ever say about a softening of _this law_, which now hangs a man for stealing the value of a RABBIT, and which formerly did not hang him till he stole the value of an OX! Curious enough, but still more scandalous, that we should have the impudence to talk of our _humanity_, and our _civilization_, and of the barbarousness of our forefathers. But, if a _part_ of the ancient law remain, shall not the _whole_ of it remain? If we hang the thief, still hang the thief for stealing to the value of _twelve pence_; though the twelve pence now represents a rabbit instead of an ox; if we still do this, would BLACKSTONE take away the benefit of the ancient law from the starving man? The passage that I have quoted is of such great importance as to this question, that I think it necessary to add, here, a copy of the original, which is in the old _Norman-French_, of which I give the translation above. "Sunt tenus burgessours trestous ceux, que felonisement en temps de pees debrusent esglises ou auter mesons, ou murs, ou portes de nos cytes, ou de nos burghes; hors pris enfauntz dedans age, et poures, que, pur feyn, entrêt pur ascun vitaille de meindre value q'de xii deners, et hors pris fous nastres, et gens arrages, et autres que seuent nule felonie faire." 46. After this, _lawyers_, at any rate, will not attempt to gainsay. If there should, however, remain any one to affect to doubt of the soundness of this doctrine, let them take the following from him who is always called the "_pride of philosophy_," the "_pride of English learning_," and whom the poet POPE calls "_greatest_ and _wisest_ of mankind." It is LORD BACON of whom I am speaking. He was Lord High Chancellor in the reign of James the First; and, let it be observed, that he wrote those "_law tracts_," from which I am about to quote, long after the present poor-laws had been established. He says (Law Tracts, page 55,) "The law chargeth no man with default where the act is compulsory and not voluntary, and where there is not consent and election; and, therefore, if either there be an impossibility for a man to do otherwise, or so great a perturbation of the judgment and reason, as in presumption of law a man's nature cannot overcome, such necessity carrieth a privilege in itself.--Necessity is of three sorts: necessity of conservation of life; necessity of obedience; and necessity of the act of God or of a stranger.--First, of conservation of life; _if a man steal viands (victuals) to satisfy his present hunger_, this is _no felony_ nor _larceny_." 47. If any man want more authority, his heart must be hard indeed; he must have an uncommonly anxious desire to take away by the halter the life that sought to preserve itself against hunger. But, after all, what need had we of any _authorities_? What need had we even of _reason_ upon the subject? Who is there upon the face of the earth, except the monsters that come from across the channel of St. George; who is there upon the face of the earth, except those monsters, that have the brass, the hard hearts and the brazen faces, which enable them coolly to talk of the "MERIT" of the degraded creatures, who, amidst an abundance of food, amidst a "_superabundance of food_," lie quietly down and receive the extreme unction, and expire with hunger? Who, upon the face of the whole earth, except these monsters, these ruffians by way of excellence; who, except these, the most insolent and hard-hearted ruffians that ever lived, will contend, or will dare to think, that there ought to be any force under heaven to compel a man to lie down at the door of a baker's and butcher's shop, and expire with hunger! The very nature of man makes him shudder at the thought. There want no authorities; no appeal to law books; no arguments; no questions of right or wrong: that same human nature that tells me that I am not to cut my neighbour's throat, and drink his blood, tells me that I am not to make him die at my feet by keeping from him food or raiment of which I have more than I want for my own preservation. 48. Talk of barbarians, indeed; Talk of "_the dark_ and _barbarous ages_." Why, even in the days of the DRUIDS, such barbarity as that of putting men to death, or of punishing them for taking to relieve their hunger, was never thought of. In the year 1811, the REV. PETER ROBERTS, A. M. published a book, entitled COLLECTANEA CAMBRICA. In the first volume of that book, there is an account of the laws of the ANCIENT BRITONS. Hume, and other Scotchmen, would make us believe, that the ancient inhabitants of this country were a set of savages, clothed in skins and the like. The laws of this people were collected and put into writing, in the year 694 _before Christ_. The following extract from these laws shows, that the moment civil society began to exist, that moment the law _took care that people should not be starved to death_. That moment it took care, that provision should be made for the destitute, or that, in cases of extreme necessity, men were to preserve themselves from death by taking from those who had to spare. The words of these laws (as applicable to our case) given by Mr. ROBERTS, are as follows:--"There are three distinct kinds of personal individual property, which cannot be shared with another, or surrendered in payment of fine; viz., a wife, a child, and argyfrew. By the word _argyfrew_ is meant, clothes, arms, or the implements of a lawful calling. For without these a man has not the means of support, and it would be _unjust_ in the law to _unman_ a man, or to _uncall_ a man as to his calling." TRIAD 53d.--"Three kinds of THIEVES are not to be punished with DEATH. 1. A wife, who joins with her husband in theft. 2. A youth under age. And 3. One who, after he has _asked, in vain_, for support, in _three towns_, and at _nine houses_ in each town." TRIAD 137. 49. There were, then, _houses_ and _towns_, it seems; and the towns were pretty thickly spread too; and, as to "_civilization_" and "_refinement_," let this law relative to a _youth under age_, be compared with the new _orchard and garden law_, and with the tread-mill affair, and new trespass law! 50. We have a law, called the VAGRANT ACT, to _punish men for begging_. We have a law to punish men for _not working to keep their families_. Now, with what show of justice can these laws be maintained? They are founded upon this; the first, that begging is disgraceful to the country; that it is degrading to the character of man, and, of course, to the character of an Englishman; and, that there is no necessity for begging, _because the law has made ample provision for every person in distress_. The law for punishing men for not working to maintain their families is founded on this, that they are _doing wrong to their neighbours_; their neighbours, that is to say, the parish, being _bound to keep the family_, if they be not kept by the man's labour; and, therefore, his not labouring is _a wrong done to the parish_. The same may be said with regard to the punishment for not maintaining bastard children. There is some reason for these laws, as long as the poor-laws are duly executed; as long as the poor are duly relieved, according to law; but, unless the poor-laws exist; unless they be in full force; unless they be duly executed; unless efficient and prompt relief be given to necessitous persons, these acts, and many others approaching to a similar description, are acts of barefaced and most abominable tyranny. I should say that they _would be_ acts of such tyranny; for generally speaking, the poor-laws are, as yet, fairly executed, and efficient as to their object. 51. The law of this country is, that every man, able to carry arms, is liable to be called on, to serve in the militia, or to serve as a soldier in some way or other, _in order to defend the country_. What, then, the man has _no land_; he has _no property_ beyond his mere body, and clothes, and tools; he has nothing that an enemy can take away from him. What _justice_ is there, then, in calling upon this man to take up arms and _risk his life_ in the _defence of the land_: what is the land to him? I _say_, that it is something to him; I _say_, that he ought to be called forth to assist to defend the land; because, however poor he may be, _he has a share in the land_, through the poor-rates; and if he be liable to be called forth to defend the land, _the land is always liable to be taxed for his support_. This is what _I say_: my opinions are consistent with reason, with justice, and with the law of the land; but, how can MALTHUS and his silly and _nasty_ disciples; how can those who want to abolish the poor-rates or to prevent the poor from marrying; how can this at once stupid and conceited tribe look the labouring man in the face, while they call upon him to take up arms, to risk his life, in defence of the land? Grant that the poor-laws are just; grant that every necessitous creature has a right to demand relief from some parish or other; grant that the law has most effectually provided that every man shall be protected against the effects of hunger and of cold; grant these, and then the law which compels the man without house or land to take up arms and risk his life in defence of the country, is a perfectly just law; but, deny to the necessitous that legal and certain relief of which I have been speaking; abolish the poor laws; and then this military-service law becomes an act of a character such as I defy any pen or tongue to describe. 52. To say another word upon the subject is certainly unnecessary; but we live in days when "_stern necessity_" has so often been pleaded for most flagrant departures from the law of the land, that one cannot help asking, whether there were any greater necessity to justify ADDINGTON for his deeds of 1817 than there would be to justify a starving man in taking a loaf? ADDINGTON pleaded _necessity_, and he got a Bill of _Indemnity_. And, shall a starving man be hanged, then, if he take a loaf to save himself from dying? When SIX ACTS were before the Parliament, the proposers and supporters of them never pretended that they did not embrace a most dreadful departure from the ancient laws of the land. In answer to LORD HOLLAND, who had dwelt forcibly on this departure from the ancient law, the Lord Chancellor, unable to contradict LORD HOLLAND, exclaimed, "_Salus populi suprema lex_," that is to say "_The salvation of the people is the first law_." Well, then, if the salvation of the people be the first law, the _salvation of life_ is really and bona fide the salvation of the people; and, if the ordinary laws may be dispensed with, in order to obviate a possible and speculative danger, surely they may be dispensed with, in cases where to dispense with them is visibly, demonstrably, notoriously, necessary to the salvation of _the lives_ of the people: surely, bread is as necessary to the lips of the starving man, as a new law could be necessary to prevent either house of parliament from being brought into _contempt_; and surely, therefore, _Salus populi suprema lex_ may come from the lips of the famishing people with as much propriety as they came from those of the Lord Chancellor! 53. Again, however, I observe, and with this I conclude, that we have nothing to do but to adhere to the poor-laws which we have; that the poor have nothing to do, but to apply to the overseer, or to appeal from him to the magistrate; that the magistrate has nothing to do but duly to enforce the law; and that the government has nothing to do, in order to secure the peace of the country, amidst all the difficulties that are approaching, great and numerous as they are; that it has nothing to do, but to enjoin on the magistrates to do their duty according to our excellent law; and, at the same time, the government ought to discourage, by all the means in their power, all projects for maintaining the poor _by any other than legal means_; to discourage all begging-box affairs; all miserable expedients; and also to discourage, and, where it is possible, fix its mark of reprobation upon all those detestable projectors, who are hatching schemes for what is called, in the blasphemous slang of the day, "_checking the surplus population_" who are hatching schemes for _preventing the labouring people from having children_: who are about spreading their nasty beastly publications; who are hatching schemes of _emigration_; and who, in short, seem to be doing every-thing in their power to widen the fearful breach that has already been made between the poor and the rich. The government has nothing to do but to cause the law to be honestly enforced; and then we shall see no starvation, and none of those dreadful conflicts which the fear of want, as well as actual want, never fail to produce. The bare thought of _forced emigration_ to a foreign state, including, as it must, a _transfer of all allegiance_, which is contrary to the fundamental laws of England; or, exposing every emigrating person to the danger of committing _high treason_; the very thought of such a measure, _having become necessary in England_, is enough to make an Englishman mad. But, of these projects, these scandalous nasty beastly and shameless projects, we shall have time to speak hereafter; and in the mean while, I take my leave of you, for the present, by expressing my admiration of the sensible and spirited conduct of the people of STOCKPORT, when an attempt was, on the 5th of September, made to cheat them into an address, _applauding the conduct of the Ministers_! What! Had the people of STOCKPORT so soon forgotten _16th of August_! Had they so soon forgotten their townsman, JOSEPH SWAN! If they had, they would have deserved to perish to all eternity. Oh, no! It was a proposition _very premature_: it will be quite soon enough for the good and sensible and spirited fellows of STOCKPORT; quite soon enough to address the Ministers, when the Ministers shall have proposed a repeal of the several Jubilee measures, called Ellenborough's law; the poacher-transporting law; the sun-set and sun-rise transportation law; the tread-mill law; the select-vestry law; the Sunday-toll laws; the new trespass law; the new treason law; the seducing-soldier-hanging law; the new apple-felony law; the SIX ACTS; and a great number of others, passed in the reign of Jubilee. Quite soon enough to applaud, that is, for the sensible people of STOCKPORT to applaud, the Ministers, when those Ministers have proposed to repeal these laws, and, also, to repeal the _malt tax_, and _those other taxes_, which take, even from the pauper, one half of what the parish gives him to keep the breath warm in his body. Quite soon enough to applaud the Ministers, when they have done these things; and when in addition to all these, they shall have openly proposed _a radical reform of the Commons House of Parliament_. Leaving them to do this as soon as they like, and trusting, that you will never, on any account, applaud them until they do it, I, expressing here my best thanks to Mr. BLACKSHAW, who defeated the slavish scheme at Stockport, remain, Your faithful friend, and most obedient servant, WM. COBBETT. NUMBER III. _Hurstbourne Tarrant (called Uphusband,)_ _Hants, 13th October, 1826._ MY EXCELLENT FRIENDS, 54. In the foregoing Numbers, I have shown, that men can never be so poor as to have no rights at all: and that, in England, they have a legal, as well as a natural, _right_ to be maintained, if they be destitute of other means, out of the lands, or other property, of the rich. But, it is an interesting question, HOW THERE CAME TO BE SO MUCH POVERTY AND MISERY IN ENGLAND. This is a very interesting question; for, though it is the doom of man, that he shall never be certain of any-thing, and that he shall never be beyond the reach of calamity; though there always has been, and always will be, poor people in every nation; though this circumstance of poverty is inseparable from the means which uphold communities of men; though, without poverty, there could be _no charity_, and none of those feelings, those offices, those acts, and those relationships, which are connected with charity, and which form a considerable portion of the cement of civil society: yet, notwithstanding these things, there are bounds beyond which the poverty of the people cannot go, without becoming a thing to complain of, and to trace to the Government as a fault. Those bounds have been passed, in England, long and long ago. England was always famed for many things; but especially for its _good living_; that is to say, for the _plenty_ in which the whole of the people lived; for the abundance of good clothing and good food which they had. It was always, ever since it _bore the name of England_, the richest and most powerful and most admired country in Europe; but, its _good living_, its superiority in this particular respect, was proverbial amongst all who knew, or who had heard talk of, the English nation. Good God! How changed! Now, the very worst fed and worst clad people upon the face of the earth, those of Ireland only excepted. _How, then, did this horrible, this disgraceful, this cruel poverty come upon this once happy nation?_ This, my good friends of Preston, is, to us all, a most important question; and, now let us endeavour to obtain a full and complete answer to it. 55. POVERTY is, after all, the great badge, the never-failing badge, of slavery. Bare bones and rags are the true marks of the real slave. What is the object of Government? To cause men to live _happily_. They cannot be happy without a sufficiency of _food_ and of _raiment_. Good government means a state of things in which the main body are well fed and well clothed. It is the chief business of a government to take care, that one part of the people do not cause the other part to lead miserable lives. There can be no morality, no virtue, no sincerity, no honesty, amongst a people continually suffering from want; and, it is cruel, in the last degree, to punish such people for almost any sort of crime, which is, in fact, not crime of the heart, not crime of the perpetrator, but the crime of his all-controlling necessities.--To what degree the main body of the people, in England, _are now_ poor and miserable; how deplorably wretched they now are; this we know but too well; and now, we will see what was their state before this vaunted "REFORMATION." I shall be very particular to cite my _authorities_ here. I will _infer_ nothing; I will give no "_estimate_;" but refer to authorities, such as no man can call in question, such as no man can deny to be proofs _more_ complete than if founded on oaths of credible witnesses, taken before a judge and jury. I shall begin with the account which FORTESCUE gives of the state and manner of living of the English, in the reign of Henry VI.; that is, in the 15th century, when the Catholic Church was in the height of its glory. FORTESCUE was Lord Chief Justice of England for nearly twenty years; he was appointed Lord High Chancellor by Henry VI. Being in exile, in France, in consequence of the wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and the King's son, Prince Edward, being also in exile with him, the Chancellor wrote a series of Letters, addressed to the Prince, to explain to him the nature and effects of the Laws of England, and to induce him to study them and uphold them. This work, which was written in Latin, is called _De Laudibus Legum Angliæ_; or, PRAISE OF THE LAWS OF ENGLAND. This book was, many years ago, translated into English, and it is a book of Law-Authority, quoted frequently in our courts of this day. No man can doubt the truth of _facts_ related in such a work. It was a work written by a famous lawyer for a prince; it was intended to be read by other contemporary lawyers, and also by all lawyers in future. The passage that I am about to quote, relating to the state of the English, was _purely incidental_; it was not intended to answer any temporary purpose. It _must have been a true account_.--The Chancellor, after speaking generally of the nature of the laws of England, and of the difference between them and the laws of France, proceeds to show the difference in their effects, by a description of the state of the French people, and then by a description of the state of the English. His words, words that, as I transcribe them, make my cheeks burn with shame, are as follows: "Besides all this, the inhabitants of France give every year to their King the _fourth part_ of all their _wines_, the growth of that year, every vintner gives the fourth penny of what he makes of his wine by sale. And all the towns and boroughs pay to the King yearly great sums of money, which are assessed upon them, for the expenses of his men at arms. So that the King's troops, which are always considerable, are substituted and paid yearly by those common people, who live in the villages, boroughs, and cities. Another grievance is, every village constantly finds and maintains two _cross-bow-men_, at the least; some find more, well arrayed in all their accoutrements, to serve the King in his wars, as often as he pleaseth to call them out, which is frequently done. Without any consideration had of these things, other very heavy taxes are assessed yearly upon every village within the kingdom, for the King's service; _neither is there ever any intermission or abatement of taxes_. Exposed to these and other calamities, the peasants live in great hardship and misery. Their _constant drink is water_, neither do they taste, throughout the year, any other liquor, unless upon some extraordinary times, or festival days. Their clothing consists of _frocks_, or little short _jerkins_, made of canvass, no better than common _sackcloth_; they _do not wear any woollens_, except of the _coarsest sort_; and that only in the garment under their frocks; nor do they wear any trowse, but from the knees upwards; their legs being exposed and naked. The women go barefoot, except on holidays. They do _not eat flesh_, except it be the fat of bacon, and _that in very small quantities_, with which they make _a soup_. Of other sorts, either boiled or roasted, _they do not so much as taste_, unless it be of the inwards and offals of sheep and bullocks, and the like which are killed, for the use of the better sort of people, _and the merchants_; for whom also quails, _partridges_, _hares_, and the like, _are reserved, upon pain of the gallies_; as for their poultry, _the soldiers consume them_, so that scarce the eggs, slight as they are, are indulged them, by way of a dainty. And if it happen that a man is observed to thrive in the world, and become rich, he is _presently assessed to the King's tax_, proportionably more than his poorer neighbours, _whereby he is soon reduced to a level with the rest_." Then comes his description of the ENGLISH, at the same time; those "priest-ridden" English, whom CHALMERS and HUME, and the rest of that tribe, would fain have us believe, were a mere band of wretched beggars.--"The King of England cannot alter the laws, or make new ones, without the express consent of _the whole kingdom in Parliament assembled_. Every inhabitant is at his liberty fully to use and enjoy whatever his farm produceth, the fruits of the earth, the increase of his flock, and the like: all the improvements he makes, whether by his own proper industry, or of those he retains in his service, are his own, to use and enjoy, without the let, interruption, or denial of any. If he be in anywise injured or oppressed, he shall have his amends and satisfactions against the party offending. Hence it is that the inhabitants are _rich in gold, silver_, and in all the necessaries and conveniences of life. _They drink no water_, unless at certain times, upon _a religious score_, and by way of doing penance. They _are fed, in great abundance_, with _all sorts of flesh_ and _fish_, of which _they have plenty every-where_; they are _clothed throughout in good woollens_; their bedding and other furniture in their houses _are of wool_, and that _in great store_. They are also well provided with all other sorts of household goods and necessary implements for husbandry. Every one, according to his rank, hath _all things which conduce to make life easy and happy_."--Go, and read this to the poor souls, who are now eating sea-weed in Ireland; who are detected in robbing the pig-troughs in Yorkshire; who are eating horse-flesh and grains (draff) in Lancashire and Cheshire; who are harnessed like horses, and drawing gravel in Hampshire and Sussex; who have 3_d._ a day allowed them by the magistrates in Norfolk; who are, all over England, worse fed than the _felons_ in the jails. Go, and tell them, when they raise their hands from the pig-trough, or from the grains-tub, and, with their dirty tongues, cry "_No Popery_;" go, read to the degraded and deluded wretches, this account of the state of their _Catholic_ forefathers, who lived under what is impudently called "_Popish superstition and tyranny_," and in those times which we have the audacity to call "_the dark ages_."--Look at the _then_ picture of the French; and, Protestant Englishmen, if you have the capacity of blushing left, blush at the thought of how precisely that picture fits the English _now_! Look at _all the parts_ of the picture; the _food_, the _raiment_, the _game_! Good God! If any one had told the old Chancellor, that the day would come, when this picture, and even a picture more degrading to human nature, would fit his own boasted country, what would he have said? What would he have said, if he had been told, that the time was to come, when the soldier, in England, would have more than twice, nay, more than thrice, the sum allowed to the day-labouring man; when potatoes would be carried to the field as the only food of the ploughman; when soup-shops would be open to feed the English; and when the Judges, sitting on that very Bench on which he himself had sitten for twenty years, would (as in the case of last year of the complaints against Magistrates at NORTHALLERTON) declare that BREAD AND WATER were the general food of working people in England? What would he have said? Why, if he had been told, that there was to be a "REFORMATION," accompanied by a total devastation of Church and Poor property, upheld by wars, creating an enormous Debt and enormous taxes, and requiring a constantly standing army; if he had been told this, he would have foreseen our present state, and would have wept for his country; but, if he had, in addition, been told, that, even in the midst of all this suffering, we should still have the ingratitude and the baseness to cry "_No Popery_," and the injustice and the cruelty to persecute those Englishmen and Irishmen, who adhered to the faith of their pious, moral, brave, free and happy fathers, he would have said, "God's will be done: let them suffer."--But, it may be said, that it was not, then, the _Catholic Church_, but the _Laws_, that made the English so happy; for, the French had that Church as well as the English. Aye! But, in England, the Church was the very _basis of the laws_. The very first clause of MAGNA CHARTA provided for the stability of its property and rights. _A provision for the indigent_, an effectual provision, was made _by the laws_ that related to the Church and its property; and this was not the case in France; and never was the case in any country but this: so that the English people lost more by a "Reformation" than any other people could have lost.--Fortescue's authority would, of itself, be enough; but, I am not to stop with it. WHITE, the late Rector of SELBOURNE, in Hampshire, gives, in his History of that once-famous village, an extract from a record, stating that for disorderly conduct, men were _punished_ by being "compelled to _fast_ a fortnight on _bread and beer_!" This was about the year 1380, in the reign of RICHARD II. Oh! miserable "_dark ages_!" This fact _must be true_. WHITE had no purpose to answer. His mention of the fact, or rather his transcript from the record, is purely _incidental_; and trifling as the fact is, it is conclusive as to the general mode of living in those happy days. Go, tell the harnessed gravel-drawers, in Hampshire, to cry "_No Popery_;" for, that, if the Pope be not put down, he may, in time, compel them to _fast_ on _bread and beer_, instead of suffering them to continue to regale themselves on nice potatoes and pure water.--But, let us come to _Acts of Parliament_, and, first, to the Act above mentioned of KING EDWARD III. That Act fixes the _price of meat_. After naming the four sorts of meat, _beef_, _pork_, _mutton_, and _veal_, the preamble has these words: "These being THE FOOD OF THE POORER SORT." This is conclusive. It is an _incidental_ mention of a fact. It is an Act of Parliament. It _must have been true_; and, it is a fact that we know well, that even the Judges have declared from the Bench, that _bread alone_ is _now the food of the poorer sort_. What do we want more than this to convince us, that the main body of the people have been _impoverished_ by the "Reformation?"--But I will _prove_, by other Acts of Parliament, this Act of Parliament to have spoken truth. These Acts declare what the _wages_ of workmen shall be. There are several such Acts, but one or two may suffice. The Act of 23d of EDW. III. fixes the wages, without food, as follows. There are many other things mentioned, but the following will be enough for our purpose. _s._ _d._ A woman hay-making, or weeding corn, for the day 0 1 A man filling dung-cart 0 3-1/2 A reaper 0 4 Mowing an acre of grass 0 6 Thrashing a quarter of Wheat 0 4 The price of _shoes_, _cloth_, and of _provisions_, throughout the time that this law continued in force, was as follows:-- _L._ _s._ _d._ A pair of shoes 0 0 4 Russet broad-cloth the yard 0 1 1 A stall-fed ox 1 4 0 A grass-fed ox 0 16 0 A fat sheep unshorn 0 1 8 A fat sheep shorn 0 1 2 A fat hog 2 years old 0 3 4 A fat goose 0 0 2-1/2 Ale, the gallon, by proclamation 0 0 1 Wheat the quarter 0 3 4 White wine the gallon 0 0 6 Red wine 0 0 4 These prices are taken from the PRECIOSUM of BISHOP FLEETWOOD, who took them from the accounts kept by the bursers of convents. All the world knows, that FLEETWOOD'S book is of undoubted authority.--We may then easily believe, that "beef, pork, mutton, and veal," were "the food of the _poorer sort_," when a _dung-cart filler_ had more than the price of _a fat goose and a half for a day's work_, and when a woman was allowed, for _a day's weeding_, the price of a _quart of red wine_! Two yards of the cloth made a coat for the _shepherd_; and, as it cost 2_s._ 2_d._, the reaper would earn it _in 6-1/2 days_; and, the dung-cart man would earn very nearly a _pair of shoes every day_! this dung-cart filler would earn a _fat shorn sheep_ in four days; he would earn a _fat hog_, two years old, in twelve days; he would earn a _grass-fed ox_ in twenty days; so that we may easily believe, that "beef, pork, and mutton," were "the food of the _poorer sort_." And, mind, this was "a _priest-ridden people_;" a people "buried in _Popish superstition_!" In our days of "_Protestant light_" and of "_mental enjoyment_," the "poorer sort" are allowed by the Magistrates of Norfolk, 3_d._ a day for a _single man_ able to work. That is to say, a half-penny _less_ than the Catholic dung-cart man had; and that 3_d._ will get the "_No Popery_" gentleman about _six ounces_ of old ewe-mutton, while the Popish dung-cart man got, for his day, rather more than _the quarter of a fat sheep_.--But, the popish people might work _harder_ than "_enlightened_ Protestants." They might do _more work in a day_. This is contrary to all the assertions of the _feelosophers_; for they insist, that the Catholic religion made people _idle_. But, to set this matter at rest, let us look at the price of the _job-labour_; at the _mowing_ by _the acre_, and at the _thrashing_ of wheat by _the quarter_; and let us see how these _wages are now_, compared with the price of food. I have no _parliamentary_ authority since the year 1821, when a report was printed by order of the House of Commons, containing the evidence of Mr. ELLMAN, of Sussex, as to wages, and of Mr. GEORGE, of Norfolk, as to price of wheat. The report was dated 18th June, 1821. The accounts are for 20 years, on an average, from 1800 inclusive. We will now proceed to see how the "popish, priest-ridden" Englishman stands in comparison with the "_No Popery_" Englishman. POPISH MAN. NO POPERY MAN. _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ Mowing an acre of grass 0 6 3 7-3/4 Thrashing a quarter of Wheat 0 4 4 0 Here are "_waust_ improvements, Mau'm!" But, now let us look at the relative _price of the wheat_, which the labourer had to purchase with his wages. We have seen, that the "popish _superstition slave_" had to give _fivepence_ a bushel for his wheat, and the evidence of Mr. GEORGE states, that the "_enlightened_ Protestant" had to give 10 _shillings_ a bushel for his wheat; that is 24 _times_ as much as the "popish _fool_," who suffered himself to be "priest-ridden." So that the "_enlightened_" man, in order to make him as well off as the "_dark_-ages" man was, ought to receive _twelve shillings_, instead of 3_s._ 7-3/4_d._ for mowing an acre of grass; and he, in like manner, ought to receive, for thrashing a quarter of wheat, _eight shillings_, instead of the _four shillings_ which he does receive. If we had the _records_, we should doubtless find, that IRELAND was in the same state. 56. There! That settles the matter as to _ancient_ good living. Now, as to the progress of poverty and misery, amongst the working people, during the last half century, take these facts; in the year 1771, that is, 55 years ago, ARTHUR YOUNG, who was afterwards Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, published a work on the state of the agriculture of the country, in which he gave the allowance for the keeping of _a farm-labourer, his wife and three children_, which allowance, reckoning according to the present money-price of the articles which he allows amounted to 13_s._ 1_d._ He put the sum, at what he deemed the _lowest possible sum_, on which the people could _exist_. Alas! we shall find, that they can be made to exist upon little more than _one-half_ of this sum! 57. This allowance of Mr. ARTHUR YOUNG was made, observe, in 1771, which was before the Old American War took place. That war made some famous fortunes for admirals and commodores and contractors and pursers and generals and commissaries; but, it was not the Americans, the French, nor the Dutch, that gave the money to make these fortunes. They came out of _English taxes_; and the heaviest part of those taxes fell upon the _working people_, who, when they were boasting of "_victories_," and rejoicing that the "JACK TARS" had got "prize-money," little dreamed that these victories were purchased by them, and that they paid fifty pounds for every crown that sailors got in prize-money! In short, this American war caused a great mass of new taxes to be laid on, and the people of England became _a great deal poorer than they ever had been before_. During that war, they BEGAN TO EAT POTATOES, as something to "_save bread_." The poorest of the people, the very poorest of them, refused, for a long while, to use them in this way; and even when I was ten years old, which was just about _fifty years ago_; the poor people would not eat potatoes, except _with meat_, as they would cabbages, or carrots, or any other moist vegetable. But, by the end of the American war, their stomachs had come to! By slow degrees they had been reduced to swallow this pig-meat, (and bad pig-meat too,) not, indeed, without grumbling; but to swallow it; to be reduced, thus, many degrees in the scale of animals. 58. At the end of _twenty-four years_ from the date of ARTHUR YOUNG'S allowance, the poverty and degradation of the English people had made great strides. We were now in the year 1795, and a new war, and a new series of "_victories_ and _prizes_" had begun. But who it was that _suffered_ for these, out of whose blood and flesh and bones they came, the allowance now (in 1795) made to the poor labourers and their families will tell. There was, in that year, a TABLE, or SCALE, of allowance, framed by the Magistrates of Berkshire. This is, by no means, a _hard_ county; and therefore it is reasonable to suppose, that the _scale_ was as good a one for the poor as any in England. According to this scale, which was printed and published, and also acted upon for years, the weekly allowance, for _a man, his wife and three children_, was, according to present money-prices, 11_s._ 4_d._ Thus it had, in the space of twenty-four years, fell from 13_s._ 1_d._ to 11_s._ 4_d._ Thus were the people brought to the _pig-meat_! Food, fit for men, they could not have with 11_s._ 4_d._ a week for five persons. 59. One would have thought, that to make a human being _live_ upon 4_d._ _a day_, and find _fuel_, _clothing_, _rent_, _washing_, and _bedding_, out of the 4_d._, besides eating and drinking, was impossible; and one would have thought it impossible for any-thing not of hellish birth and breeding, to entertain a wish to make poor creatures, and our _neighbours_ too, exist in such a state of horrible misery and degradation as the labourers of England were condemned to by this scale of 1795. Alas! this was happiness and honour; this was famous living; this 11_s._ 4_d._ a week was _luxury_ and _feasting_, compared to what we NOW BEHOLD! For now the allowance, according to present money-prices, is 8_s._ a week for the man, his wife, and three children; that is to say 2-5/7 _d._ In words, TWO PENCE AND FIVE SEVENTHS OF ANOTHER PENNY, FOR A DAY! There, that is England now! That is what the base wretches, who are fattening upon the people's labour, call "the _envy_ of surrounding nations and the _admiration_ of the world." This is what SIR FRANCIS BURDETT applauds; and he applauds the mean and cruel and dastardly ruffians, whom he calls, "the _country gentlemen_ of England," and whose _generosity_ he cries up; while he well knows, _that it is they_ (and he amongst the rest) who are the real and only cause of this devil-like barbarity, which (and he well knows that too) could not possibly be practised without the constant existence and occasional employment of that species of force, which is so abhorrent to the laws of England, and of which this Burdett's son forms a part. The poor creatures, _if they complain_; if their hunger make them _cry out_, are either punished by even harder measures, or are _slapped into prison_. Alas! the jail is really become a place of _relief_, a scene of comparative _good living_: hence the invention of the _tread-mill_! What shall we see next? _Workhouses, badges, hundred-houses, select-vestries, tread-mills, gravel-carts, and harness!_ What shall we see next! And what should we see at last, if this infernal THING could continue for only a few years longer? 60. In order to form a judgment of the cruelty of making our working neighbours live upon 2-5/7_d._ a day; that is to say 2_d._ and rather more than a halfpenny, let us see what the surgeons allow in the hospitals, to patients with _broken limbs_, who, of course, have no _work_ to do, and who cannot even take any _exercise_. In GUY'S HOSPITAL, London, the _daily_ allowance to patients, having _simple fractures_, is this: 6 ounces of meat; 12 ounces of bread; 1 pint of broth; 2 quarts of good beer. This is the _daily_ allowance. Then, in addition to this, the same patient has 12 ounces of butter _a week_. These articles, for a week, amount to not less at present retail prices (and those are the poor man's prices,) than 6_s._ 9_d._ a week; while the working man is allowed 1_s._ 7_d._ a week! For, he cannot and he will not see his wife and children actually drop down dead with hunger before his face; and this is what he must see, if he take to himself more than a _fifth_ of the allowance for the family. 61. Now, pray, observe, that _surgeons_, and particularly those eminent surgeons who frame rules and regulations for great establishments like that of Guy's Hospital, _are competent judges_ of what nature requires in the way of food and of drink. They are, indeed, not only competent judges, but they are the best of judges: they know precisely what is necessary; and having the power to order the proper allowance, they order it. If, then, they make an allowance like that, which we have seen, to a person who is under a regimen for a broken limb; to a person who does _no work_, and who is, nine times out of ten, unable to take any exercise at all, even that of walking about, at least in the open air; if the eminent surgeons of London deem _six shillings and ninepence worth_ of victuals and drink, a week, necessary to such a patient; if they think that _nature calls_ for so much in such a case; what must that man be made of, who can allow to a _working man_, a man fourteen hours every day in the open air, _one shilling and seven pence worth_ of victuals and drink for the week! Let me not however ask what "that _man_" can be made of; for it is a monster and not a man: it is a murderer of men: not a murderer with the knife or the pistol, but with the more cruel instrument of starvation. And yet, such monsters go to _church_ and to _meeting_; aye, and _subscribe_, the base hypocrites, to circulate that Bible which commands _to do as they would be done by_, and which, from the first chapter to the last, menaces them with punishment, if they be hard to the poor, the fatherless, the widow, or the stranger! 62. But, not only is the patient, in a hospital, thus so much more amply fed than the working man; the _prisoners in the jails_; aye, even the _convicted felons_, are fed better, and much better, than the working men now are! Here is a fine "_Old England_;" that country of "roast beef and plumb pudding:" that, as the tax-eaters say it is, "envy of surrounding nations and admiration of the world." Aye; the country WAS all these; but, it is now precisely the reverse of them all. We have just seen that the _honest labouring man_ is allowed 2-5/7_d._ a day; and that will buy him _a pound and a half of good bread a day_, and no more, not a single crumb more. This is all he has. Well enough might the Hampshire Baronet, SIR JOHN POLLEN, lately, at a meeting at Andover, call the labourers "_poor devils_," and say, that they had "_scarcely a rag to cover them_!" A pound and a half of bread a day, and nothing more, and that, too, _to work upon_! Now, then, how fare the prisoners in the jails? Why, if they be CONVICTED FELONS, they are, say the Berkshire jail-regulations, "to have ONLY BREAD and water, _with vegetables_ occasionally from the garden." Here, then, they are already better fed than the honest labouring man. Aye, and this is not all; for, this is only the _week-day_ fare; for, they are to have, "on Sundays, SOME MEAT _and broth_!" Good God! And the honest working man can never, never smell the smell of meat! This is "envy of surrounding nations" with the devil to it! This is a state of things for Burdett to applaud. 63. But we are not even yet come to a sight of the depth of our degradation. These Berkshire jail-regulations make provision for setting the convicted prisoners, in certain cases, TO WORK, and, they say, "if the surgeon think it necessary, the WORKING PRISONERS may be allowed MEAT AND BROTH ON WEEK-DAYS;" and on Sundays, of course! There it is! There is the "envy and admiration!" There is the state to which Mr. Prosperity and Mr. Canning's best Parliament has brought us. There is the result of "_victories_" and prize-money and battles of Waterloo and of English ladies kissing, "Old Blucher." There is the fruit, the natural fruit, of anti-jacobinism and battles on the Serpentine River and jubilees and heaven-born ministers and sinking-funds and "public credit" and army and navy contracts. There is the fruit, the natural, the nearly (but _not quite_) ripe fruit of it all: the CONVICTED FELON is, if he do not work at all, allowed, on week-days, some vegetables in addition to his bread, and, on Sundays, both _meat and broth_; and, if the CONVICTED FELON work, if he be a WORKING convicted felon, he is allowed _meat and broth all the week round_; while, hear it Burdett, thou Berkshire magistrate! hear it, all ye base miscreants who have persecuted men because they sought a reform! The WORKING CONVICTED FELON is allowed _meat and broth every day in the year_, while the WORKING HONEST MAN is allowed _nothing but dry bread_, and of that not half a belly-full! And yet you see the people that seem _surprised_ that _crimes_ increase! Very strange, to be sure; that men should like to _work_ upon meat and broth better than they like to work upon dry bread! No wonder that _new jails_ arise. No wonder that there are now two or three or four or five jails to one county, and that as much is now written upon "_prison discipline_" as upon almost any subject that is going. But, why so good, so generous, to FELONS? The truth is, that they are _not fed too well_; for, to be _starved_ is no part of their sentence; and, here are SURGEONS who have something to say! They know very well that a man may be _murdered_ by keeping necessary food from him. Felons are not apt to lie down and _die quietly_ for want of food. The jails are in _large towns_, where the news of any cruelty soon gets about. So that the felons have many circumstances in their favour. It is in the villages, the recluse villages, where the greatest cruelties are committed. 64. Here, then, in this contrast between the treatment of the WORKING FELON and that of the WORKING HONEST MAN, we have a complete picture of the present state of England; that horrible state, to which, by slow degrees, this once happy country has been brought; and, I should now proceed to show, as I proposed in the first paragraph of this present Number, HOW THERE CAME TO BE SO MUCH POVERTY AND MISERY IN ENGLAND; for, this is the main thing, it being clear, that, if we do not see the real causes of our misery, we shall be very unlikely to adopt any effectual remedy. But, before I enter on this part of my subject, let me _prove_, beyond all possibility of doubt, that what I say relatively to the situation of, and the allowances to, the labourers and their families, IS TRUE. The _cause_ of such situation and allowances I shall show hereafter; but let me first show, by a reference to indubitable facts, that the situation and allowances are such as, or worse than, I have described them. To do this, no way seems to me to be so fair, so likely to be free from error, so likely to produce a suitable impression on the minds of my readers, and so likely to lead to some useful practical result; no way seems to me so well calculated to answer these purposes, as that of taking _the very village, in which, I, at this moment, happen to be_, and to describe, with names and dates, the actual state of its labouring people, as far as that state is connected with steps taken under the poor-laws. 65. This village was in former times a very considerable place, as is manifest from the size of the church as well as from various other circumstances. It is now, as a _church living_, united with an adjoining parish, called VERNON DEAN, which also has its church, at a distance of about three miles from the church of this parish. Both parishes put together now contain only _eleven hundred_, and a few odd, inhabitants, men, women, children, and all; and yet, the _great tithes_ are supposed to be worth _two or three thousand pounds a year_, and the _small tithes_ about _six hundred pounds a year_. Formerly, before the event which is called "THE REFORMATION," there were _two Roman Catholic priests_ living at the parsonage houses in these two parishes. They could not marry, and could, therefore have no wives and families to keep out of the tithes; and, WITH PART OF THOSE TITHES, THEY, AS THE LAW PROVIDED, MAINTAINED THE POOR OF THESE TWO PARISHES; and, the canons of the church commanded them to distribute the portion to the poor and the stranger, "_with their own hands_, in _humility_ and _mercy_." 66. This, as to church and poor, was the state of these villages, in the "_dark ages_" of "_Romish superstition_." What! No poor-laws? No poor-rates? What horribly _unenlightened_ times! No _select vestries_? Dark ages indeed! But, how stands these matters now? Why, the two parishes are moulded into _one church living_. Then the GREAT TITHES (amounting to two or three thousand a year) belong to some part of the _Chapter_ (as they call it) of Salisbury. The Chapter leases them out, as they would a house or a farm, and they are now rented by JOHN KING, who is one of this happy nation's greatest and oldest _pensioners_. So that, _away go_ the great tithes, not leaving a single wheat-ear to be spent in the parish. The SMALL TITHES belong to a VICAR, who is one FISHER, a _nephew of the late bishop of Salisbury_, who has not resided here for a long while; and who has a curate, named JOHN GALE, who being the son of a little farmer and shop-keeper at BURBAGE in Wiltshire, was, by a parson of the name of BAILEY (very _well known and remembered_ in these parts), put to school; and, in the fulness of time, became a _curate_. So that, _away go_ also the small tithes (amounting to about 500_l._ or 600_l._ a year); and, out of the large church revenues; or, rather, large church-_and-poor_ revenues, of these two parishes; out of the whole of them, there remains only the amount of the curate, Mr. JOHN GALE'S, salary, which does not, perhaps, exceed seventy or a hundred pounds, and a part of which, at any rate, I dare say, he does not expend in these parishes: _away goes_, I say, all the rest of the small tithes, leaving not so much as a mess of milk or a dozen of eggs, much less a tithe-pig, to be consumed in the parish. 67. As to _the poor_, the parishes continue to be _in two_; so that I am to be considered as speaking of the parish of UPHUSBAND only. You are aware, that, amongst the last of the acts of the famous JUBILEE-REIGN, was an act to enable parishes to establish SELECT VESTRIES; and one of these vestries now exists in this parish. And now, let me explain to you the nature and tendency of this Jubilee-Act. Before this Act was passed, _overseers of the poor had full authority to grant relief at their discretion_. Pray mark that. Then again, before this Act was passed, _any one justice of the peace might, on complaint of any poor person, order relief_. Mark that. A select vestry is _to consist of the most considerable rate-payers_. Mark that. Then, mark these things: this Jubilee-Act _forbids the overseer to grant any relief other than such as shall be ordered by the select vestry_: it forbids ONE _justice_ to order relief, in any case, except in a case of _emergency:_ it forbids MORE THAN ONE to order relief, except _on oath_ that the complainant has _applied to the select vestry_ (where there is one,) and has been refused relief by it; and that, in no case, the justice's order _shall be for more than a month_; and, moreover, that when a poor person shall appeal to justices from a select vestry, the justices, in ordering relief, or refusing, shall have "_regard to the conduct and_ CHARACTER _of the applicant_!" 68. From this Act, one would imagine, that _overseers_ and _justices_ were looked upon as being too _soft_ and _yielding_ a nature; _too good, too charitable, too liberal_ to the poor! In order that the select vestry may have an agent suited to the purposes that the Act _manifestly has in view_, the Act authorizes the select vestry to appoint what is called an "_assistant overseer_," and to _give him a salary out of the poor-rates_. Such is this Jubilee-Act, one of the last Acts of the Jubilee-reign, that reign, which gave birth to the American war, to Pitt, to Perceval, Ellenborough, Sidmouth, and Castlereagh, to a thousand millions of taxes and another thousand millions of debt: such is the Select Vestry Act; and this now little trifling village of UPHUSBAND _has a Select-Vestry_! Aye, and an "ASSISTANT OVERSEER," too, with a _salary_ of FIFTY POUNDS A YEAR, being, as you will presently see, about a SEVENTH PART OF THE WHOLE OF THE EXPENDITURE ON THE POOR! 69. The Overseers make out and cause to be _printed_ and _published_, at the end of every _four weeks_, an account of the disbursements. I have one of these accounts now before me; and I insert it here, word for word, as follows:-- 70. "The disbursements of Mr. T. Child and Mr. C. Church, bread at 1_s._ 2_d._ per gallon. Sept. 25th, 1826. WIDOWS. £. s. d. £. s. d. Blake, Ann 0 8 0 Bray, Mary 0 8 0 Cook, Ann 0 7 6 Clark, Mary 0 10 0 Gilbert, Hannah 0 8 0 Marshall, Sarah 0 10 0 Smith, Mary 0 8 0 Westrip, Jane 0 8 0 Withers, Ann 0 8 0 Dance, Susan 0 8 0 --------- 4 3 6 BASTARDS. ---- ---- 0 7 0 ---- ---- 0 6 0 ---- ---- 0 7 0 ---- ---- 0 6 0 ---- ---- 2 children 0 12 0 ---- ---- 2 children 0 12 0 ---- ---- - 10 0 ---- ---- - 8 0 ---- ---- - 6 0 ---- ---- - 8 0 ---- ---- - 8 0 ---- ---- - 6 0 ---- ---- - 6 0 ---- ---- - 6 0 ---------- 5 8 0 OLD MEN. Blake, John 0 16 0 Cannon, John 0 14 0 Cummins, Peter 0 16 0 Hopgood, John 0 16 0 Holden, William 0 6 0 Marshall, Charles 0 16 0 Nutley, George 0 7 0 --------- 4 11 0 FAMILIES. Bowley, Mary 0 4 0 Baverstock, Elizabeth, 2 children 0 9 4 Cook, Levi 5 children 0 5 4 Kingston, John 6 ditto 0 10 0 Knight, John 6 ditto 0 10 0 Newman, David 5 ditto 0 5 4 Pain, Robert 5 ditto 0 5 4 Synea, William 6 ditto 0 10 0 Smith, Sarah (Moses) 1 ditto 0 4 8 Studman, Sarah 2 ditto 0 9 4 White, Joseph 8 ditto 0 19 4 Wise, William 6 ditto 0 10 0 Waldren, Job 5 ditto 0 5 4 Noyce, M. Batt, 7do. 6 weeks' pay 1 2 0 --------- 6 10 0 EXTRA IN THIS MONTH. Thomas Farmer, ill 3 days 0 4 0 Levi Cook, ill 4 weeks and 1 day 1 13 4 Joseph White's child, 6 weeks 0 7 0 Jane Westrip's rent 0 2 0 William Fisher, 1 month ill 1 12 0 Paid boy, 2 days ill 0 0 8 James Orchard, ill 1 0 2 James Orchard's daughter, ill 0 8 0 Adders and Sparrows 0 2 3-1/2 Wicks for Carriage 0 1 0 Paid Mary Hinton 0 4 0 Joseph Farmer, ill 3 days 0 2 9 Thomas Cummins 0 6 0 Samuel Day, and son, ill 0 8 2 --------- 6 11 4 Total amount for the 4 weeks 27 3 10-1/2 71. Under the head of "WIDOWS" are, generally, old women wholly unable to work; and that of "OLD MEN" are men past all labour: in some of the instances _lodging places_, in very poor and wretched houses, are found these old people, and, in other instances, they have the bare money; and, observe, that money is FOR FOUR WEEKS! Gracious God! Have we had no mothers ourselves! Were we not born of woman! Shall we not feel then for the poor widow who, in her old age, is doomed to exist on two shillings a week, or threepence halfpenny a day, and to find herself _clothes_ and washing and fuel and bedding out of that! And, the poor old men, the very happiest of whom gets, you see, less than 7_d._ a day, at the end of 70 or 80 years of a life, all but six of which have been years of labour! I have thought it right to put _blanks_ instead of the names, under the _second head_. Men of less rigid morality, and less free from all illicit intercourse, than the members of the Select Vestry of Uphusband, would, instead of the word "_bastard_," have used the more amiable one of "_love-child_;" and, it may not be wholly improper to ask these rigid moralists, whether they be aware, that they are guilty of LIBEL, aye, of real criminal libel, in causing these poor girls' names to be _printed_ and _published_ in this way. Let them remember, that the greater the truth the greater the libel; and, let them remember, that the mothers and the children too, may have _memories_! But, it is under the head of "FAMILIES" that we see that which is most worthy of our attention. Observe, that _eight shillings a week_ is _the wages_ for a day labourer in the village. And, you see, it is only when there are _more than four children_ that the family is allowed anything at all. "LEVI COOK," for instance, has _five children_, and he receives allowance for _one_ child. "JOSEPH WHITE" has _eight children_, and he receives allowance for _four_. There are three widows under this head; but, it is where there is _a man_, the father of the family, that we ought to look with attention; and here we find, that nothing at all is allowed to a family of a man, a wife, and _four children_, beyond the bare eight shillings a week of wages; and this is even worse than the allowance which I contrasted with that of the hospital patients and convicted felons; for there I supposed the family to consist of a man, his wife and _three children_. If I am told, that the farmers, that the occupiers of houses and land, are _so poor_ that they cannot do more for their wretched work-people and neighbours; then I answer and say, What a selfish, what a dastardly wretch is he, who is not ready to do all he can to change this disgraceful, this horrible state of things! 72. But, at any rate, is the salary of the "ASSISTANT OVERSEER" necessary? Cannot that be dispensed with? Must he have as much as _all the widows_, or _all the old men_? And his salary, together with the charge for _printing_ and other his various expenses, will come to a great deal more _than go to all the widows and old men too_! Why not, then, do without him, and double the allowance to these poor old women, or poor old men, who have spent their strength in raising crops in the parish? I went to see with my own eyes some of the "_parish houses_," as they are called; that is to say, the places where the select vestry put the poor people into to live. Never did my eyes before alight on such scenes of wretchedness! There was one place, about 18 feet long and 10 wide, in which I found the wife of ISAAC HOLDEN, which, when all were at home, had to contain _nineteen persons_; and into which, I solemnly declare, I would not put 19 pigs, even if well-bedded with straw. Another place was shown me by JOB WALDRON'S daughter; another by Thomas Carey's wife. The _bare ground_, and that in holes too, was the floor in both these places. The windows broken, and the holes stuffed with rags, or covered with rotten bits of board. Great openings in the walls, parts of which were fallen down, and the places stopped with hurdles and straw. The thatch rotten, the chimneys leaning, the doors but bits of doors, the sleeping holes shocking both to sight and smell; and, indeed, every-thing seeming to say: "_These_ are the abodes of wretchedness, which, to be believed possible, must be seen and felt: _these_ are the abodes of the descendants of those amongst whom _beef_, _pork_, _mutton_ and _veal_ were the food of the poorer sort; to _this are come, at last_, the descendants of those common people of England, who, FORTESCUE tells us, were clothed throughout in good woollens, whose bedding, and other furniture in their houses, were of wool, and that in great store, and who were well provided with all sorts of household goods, every one having all things that conduce to make life easy and happy!" 73. I have now, my friends of Preston, amply proved, that what I have stated relative to the present state of, and allowances to, the labourers is TRUE. And now we are to do all we can to remove the evil; for, removed the evil must be, or England must be sunk for ages; and, never will the evil be removed, until its causes, remote as well as near, be all clearly ascertained. With my best wishes for the health and happiness of you all, I remain, Your faithful friend, and most obedient servant, WM. COBBETT. THE END. Footnotes: [1] 4s. 6d. English, equal to one dollar. [2] 2d. English, equal to four cents, nearly. [3] The above items may be converted into United States' money by reckoning 4s. 6d. to the dollar: Thus As 4_s._ 6_d._ : 1 dollar :: 11_l._ 7_s._ 2_d._ : 50 dollars 48 cents. [4] To convert these sums into United States' money, see page 16. [5] All the calculations in this work, it must be remembered, are in English money but may be turned into United States' money as before directed, page 16. [6] Be sure, now, _before you go any further_, to go to the end of the book, and there read about MANGLE WURZLE. Be _sure_ to do this. And there read also about COBBETT'S CORN. Be sure to do this before you go any further. [7] To me the following has happened within the last year. A young man, in the country, had agreed to be my servant; but it was found _that he could not milk_; and the bargain was set aside. About a month afterwards a young man, who said he was _a farmer's son_, and who came from Herefordshire, offered himself to me at Kensington. "_Can you milk?_" He could not; but _would learn_! Ay, but in the learning, he might _dry up my cows_! What a shame to the _parents_ of these young men! Both of them were in _want of employment_. The latter had come more than a hundred miles in _search of work_; and here he was left to hunger still, and to be exposed to all sorts of ills, because he _could not milk_. [8] London [9] The father of the present Sir Robert Peel, who gained his fortune as a cotton weaver by the help of machinery. [10] Editors of the London Times Newspaper. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). Footnote marker 4 is not in the original text. Some quotation marks are not matched in the original. Obvious errors have been silently matched, while those requiring interpretation have been left unmatched. The following misprints have been corrected: "it" corrected to "is" (page 26) "whorthy" corrected to "worthy" (page 51) "bady" corrected to "bad" (page 68) "buln of the hatch" corrected to "bulk of the batch" (page 119) "the the" corrected to "the" (page 123) "abuudant" corrected to "abundant" (page 126) "pig's" corrected to "pigs" (index) "Chancollor" corrected to "Chancellor" (Part 2, page 47) "Chanceller" corrected to "Chancellor" (Part 2, page 47) "Amecan" corrected to "American" (Part 2, page 55) Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained. 
35816	----	The Philippine Agricultural Review Vol. VIII FIRST QUARTER, 1915 No. 1 SPECIAL ARTICLES CITRUS FRUITS IN THE PHILIPPINES By P. J. Wester BY-PRODUCTS OF SUGAR MANUFACTURE By C. W. Hines A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION ISSUED IN ENGLISH BY THE BUREAU OF AGRICULTURE The Government of the Philippine Islands Department of Public Instruction MANILA BUREAU OF PRINTING 1915 (Entered at the post office at Manila as second-class matter.) CONTENTS. Page. Editorial 3 Citrus Fruits in the Philippines 5 By-products of Sugar Manufacture 29 Coffee in the Philippines 39 Cane-juice Clarification 47 Book Review: "La Fabricación de Azucar Blanco en los Ingenios" 56 Current Notes: First Quarter--Shield Budding the Mango; Experiments in Shield Budding; Improvement of Tropical Fruits in the Philippines; Petioled vs. nonpetioled Budwood; New Sugar Industry; World's Sugar Supply; Progress in Sugar Manufacture 57 ILLUSTRATIONS. Plate I. Plant propagation shed at Lamao Experiment Station Frontispiece. Facing page-- II. Citrus Fruits: (a) Talamisan; (b) Tizon; (c) Philippine Pomelo 16 III. Herbarium Specimens of Citrus: (a) Talamisan; (b) Alemow; (c) Limao 16 IV. Citrus Fruits: (a) Canol; (b) Cabuyao; (c) Limao 16 V. Herbarium Specimens of Citrus: (a) Canci; (b) Cabuyao; (c) Biasong 16 VI. Citrus Fruits: (a) Tihi-tihi; (b) Biasong; (c) Alemow 16 VII. Herbarium Specimens of Citrus: (a) Colo-Colo; (b) Samuyao; (c) Balincolong 16 TEXT FIGURE. Fig. 1 Seedling of C. histrix DC 18 EDITORIAL. THE SUGAR INDUSTRY. It is supposed that the sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) was originally found in India, probably in the region of the Ganges. There is no sugar cane known anywhere to-day in the wild state although there are several species of mammoth grasses closely akin to this plant. As various portions of the earth's surface were explored and finally settled the sugar industry was extended until to-day one finds it flourishing in practically all tropical countries and many subtropical countries as well. Perhaps the last semitropical region to attempt this industry in a commercial way was the State of Arizona, U. S. A., where the desert wastes were turned into flourishing beet and cane fields by the aid of irrigation from the Government storage dam. During the reign of Napoleon in France trade in the sugars from British and other foreign possessions was destroyed by the war with England but this decline in the cane-sugar trade served only as an impetus to the new beet-sugar industry then being started. In the meantime there was such a dearth of sugar and such a fabulous rise in prices, that attempts were made to secure sugar from various plants and fruits growing in France, such as beets, sorghum, maize, grapes, apples, pears, figs, etc. At that time the manufacture of a kind of sugar from grapes became quite important so that during the period from 1811 to 1813 considerable quantities of this class of sugar were made. Simultaneously with this new venture the beet root was gaining in importance year by year, especially in France, and to a certain extent as well in other European countries, until after extensive experiments in plant breeding it was learned that the sucrose value of the root could be very much improved. From this work varieties of beets used to-day have evolved which often contain as high as 20 to 25 per cent sucrose. Another obstacle in the way was the bad taste and odor of the low-grade sugars from the beets and the difficulty of making a high-grade sugar. To-day the heavy liming and the carbonation process give a sugar equal in all respects to the best grade of granulated cane sugar, and one finds a great deal of beet sugar either mixed with cane sugar or marketed alone under the name of cane sugar. At the present time the beet-sugar industry has become so important that more than eight million tons, or about one-half of all the sugar produced, comes from this source. There is a greater consumption of sugar each year which necessitates greater production either through larger areas, heavier yields, or its manufacture from other sacchariferous plants. The maximum in both area and yield have by no means been reached, while in recent years a large number of sacchariferous plants have attracted the attention of various investigators throughout the sugar world, and this will in all probability lead to a new source of supply. The most promising of these plants is the sugar palm (Arenga saccharifera). Extensive work was conducted on this palm by this Bureau and reported in the May, 1914, number of the Philippine Agricultural Review. During the above-mentioned year an entirely new method of juice clarification was elaborated which is applicable to the juices of various other palms as well as to that of the sugar cane. In Bengal the wild date palm (Phoenix silvestris) has produced a low grade of molasses sugar for consumption by the natives for a great number of years. The main obstacle encountered in making a good grade of sugar from this palm has been caused by the difficulty of clarification and the susceptibility of the juice to fermentation. It is thought that the above-mentioned process may bring this palm into greater prominence in the sugar world. There are also the Palmera (Borassus flabelliformis) of Southern India, and the Nipa (Nipa fructicans) of the Philippines. Either of these could undoubtedly be made profitable sugar producers. The latter is used commercially only as a source of alcohol. There is practically no limit to the number of sacchariferous plants one might name in the Tropics and subtropics, but many of these do not contain a sufficient percentage of sucrose, or else they contain such a high percentage of impurities that the low yield of sugar and the high cost of manufacture make their use unprofitable. CITRUS FRUITS IN THE PHILIPPINES. [1] By P. J. Wester, Horticulturist in Charge of Lamao Experiment Station. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. De Candolle, in his "Origin of Cultivated Plants," discusses 5 species belonging to the genus Citrus: The pomelo, C. decumana L.; the citron, lemon, and lime, here considered as distinct species, which he includes under the one species, C. medica L.; the sweet orange, C. aurantium L., which he separates from the sour orange and which is also by him considered as a distinct species, C. vulgaris Risso; and finally the mandarin, C. nobilis Lour. Of these, the pomelo, orange, mandarin, lemon, lime, and citron are important pomologically, the sour orange being grown principally as stock for the other species. The pomelo is by the same author considered to be indigenous to the Pacific Islands east of Java, the citron and affiliated species to have originated in India, and the sour orange east of India, and all to have been in cultivation for over two thousand years. The antiquity of the orange and mandarin is less, both species being from China and Cochin China. All these species have been introduced into the Philippine Archipelago, and are well distributed excepting the sour orange, which is rarely seen. The discussion of all species refers to them as found in the Philippines except when otherwise stated. No very distinct types are found among the oranges or mandarins; the variation in the pomelo is considerable, although, so far as the writer has noted, scarcely enough to warrant the distinction of separate varieties. Both the white and red-fleshed types occur with many gradations, but no studies have been made to note which other correlative characters, if any, are identified with these different forms. The very primitive pomelos (Pl. II, c) that are not infrequently seen in cultivation might indicate that this species is indigenous to the Philippines, though so far as the writer knows the tree has never been seen in the virgin forest. Closer observations have been made on the general type represented by the citron, including the lemon and lime, and several distinct forms have been recognized. The calamondin, C. mitis Blanco, is well known to be indigenous, as well as the cabuyao and related plants that have been referred to C. histrix DC. In the first-named species there seem to be no very marked variations. C. histrix was described by De Candolle, flowers and fruits excepted, from a plant growing in Montpellier, being recognized principally by its long broad-winged petioles and free stamens. The writer has not had the opportunity to see the original description of C. histrix or examine the type specimen, but Swingle refers to it in Jour. of Agri. Research, Vol. I, No. 1, page 10, 1913, as having broadly winged petioles, often larger than the blades, the wings being more gradually narrowed toward the base and usually more abruptly truncate at the tip than C. ichangensis Swingle, making then somewhat triangular in outline. Within these broad limitations a number of otherwise remarkably distinct forms may be recognized some of which were illustrated in a previous publication, Bureau of Agriculture Bulletin No. 27, Citriculture in the Philippines, 1913, and referred to C. histrix with the statement that "some of these forms unquestionably will be recognized as subspecies on closer study, or possibly as separate species." Since then several plants of this type in the citrus collection assembled at Lamao by the Bureau of Agriculture have bloomed and fruited, affording an opportunity for fuller observations, and these have been further complemented during a trip to Bohol and Cebu in May, 1914, and by the fruits forwarded by Mr. E. F. Southwick. However, assuming that C. histrix (or some of its subspecies) is the C. histrix of De Candolle, there still remain, on one hand the limao, and on the other the biasong, balincolong, samuyao, samuyao-sa-amoo, as widely different from each other and the cabuyao and its subspecies as for instance the orange, and pomelo, or the mandarin and the calamondin. A very interesting characteristic has been discovered in several of the citrus fruits that have free stamens in the form of a more or less distinct nucleus in the juice cells; this, so far as the writer knows, has not been previously recorded in a citrus fruit. The fact that the presence of these nuclei is not here referred to in some species with free stamens does not necessarily mean that they are absent, considering that fruits of these particular species have not been examined since the first nuclear cells were discovered. The writer is inclined to believe that these nuclei are correlative to those species having free stamens. To the student in the citrus-growing sections of the United States the characterization of the citron, lemon and lime as given herein is no doubt satisfactory, but in the Philippines various forms called "limon" will appear that do not agree with this and it would then be necessary either to make the descriptions more general so as to cover the additional forms or to classify these as species or subspecies. If the barely margined petioles, comparatively small leaves, the green, tender growth and the white corolla are insisted upon for the lime, for instance, it is difficult to know where to place the purple-growthed, thorny, wide-winged, purplish-petaled, subglobose limes with wide-winged leaves of the Philippines. They cannot well be placed with the lemons, and still less with the citron, though they of course show strong relationship to each. The citron group of the genus perhaps more than any other shows the need of further study and systematization of the entire genus. Attention should be called to the presence in the Philippines of the extremely primitive types of the citron and the lemons; for instance, the fruit illustrated in Bulletin No. 27, Plate XVI (c), and colo-colo, as well as the lombog, referred to C. pseudolimonum in this paper. Of all the plants here discussed, C. micrantha var. microcarpa is botanically furthest removed from the cultivated citrus fruits. Each considered as a separate species and constituting perhaps the most complete description of these species published in English, Mr. H. H. Hume's characterization of the orange, sour orange, mandarin, pomelo, citron, lemon, and lime in his "Citrus Fruits and Their Culture," is here reproduced without alteration. Some writers have grouped several of these as subspecies under one great comprehensive species, but, as Mr. Hume aptly says: "What advantage is there in throwing the sour orange, sweet orange, pomelo, kumquat, and a few other distinctly different trees into one conglomerate species * * * and then placing each of the aforementioned plants under this species as subspecies and varieties. Such a procedure is more likely to result in further confusion than order." The species of the genus Citrus that have come under the observation of the writer, with two exceptions, seem naturally to divide themselves into two groups,--(1) those with more or less united filaments and hypogeal cotyledons, and (2) those with free filaments, and (in all instances where there has been an opportunity for observations) with supra-terraneous, distinct cotyledons (fig. 1). In so far as these characteristics have been observed in the Philippine citrus fruits, long and broad-winged petioles are a third correlative feature distinguishing group No. 2; C. ichangensis recently described by Swingle from China also possesses this last feature, but has connate filaments. The alsem and alemow seem to be intermediate between these forms, the alsem being most closely related to those in the first division, the filaments being connate, while the cotyledons in some lots that have been propagated appeared above ground. The alemow is most closely related to group No. 2, the filaments being nearly always free. The general character of the talamisan together with the presence of hypogeal cotyledons tends to the belief that this species has more or less united filaments and thus would belong to the first group. All descriptions have been made from living plant material either during tours of collection by the writer, or from plants grown at the Lamao experiment station from material sent to the Bureau of Agriculture from time to time since April, 1911. Also, all the material has been collected from plants growing in the yard of some Filipino and so may lay claim to having been domesticated. While this statement may not be altogether reliable it is interesting to note that in Bohol the Filipinos stated that the following trees grew wild in the forest: Among-pong, amontay, balincolong, biasong, canci, colo-colo, limoncito, limao, lombog, and samuyao. While it is believed that the species described in this paper include most of the more distinctive Philippine citrus fruits, and several hitherto unknown even to the botanist, they do not by any means exhaust the Philippine forms of this genus. Several other forms have been noted, and constitute a part of the citrus collection at Lamao but are not here referred to, for the reason that the material on hand is too incomplete to warrant their description at this time. Acknowledgements.--The writer is greatly indebted to Mr. E. F. Southwick, superintendent of the demonstration station at Cebu, for his untiring zeal in repeatedly forwarding sets of citrus fruits and budwood from Bohol and Cebu, and for his most valuable assistance during a collection trip made by him and the writer to Cebu and Bohol in May, 1914, without which it would not have been possible to obtain much of the data and material collected. All the species and varieties credited to Bohol were first called to the attention of the Bureau by Mr. Southwick. Mr. G. W. Weathersbee, formerly agricultural inspector of this Bureau, first called attention to the alemow and has also assisted in the collection of citrus material in Cebu. Mr. A. M. Burton, formerly superintendent of the Trinidad garden, Benguet, has forwarded fruits and budwood of the cabugao and other fruits. Mr. D. B. Mackie, entomologist of the Bureau, first called attention to a variety of alsem in Bontoc of superior quality. M. G. B. Mead sent the first specimens of Panuban. DESCRIPTIONS AND COMMENTS. Citrus aurantium L. Orange. A tree 7.5 to 12 meters in height, with a compact, conical head; bark grayish brown; thorns generally present, 12 to 50 millimeters long, sharp, stout; leaves oval or ovate oblong, 7.5 to 10 centimeters long, smooth, shining, somewhat lighter below than above, margins entire, or very slightly serrate; petiole 12 to 25 millimeters long, slightly winged (occasionally with quite a broad wing); flowers axillary in clusters of one to six, white, sweet scented, smaller than those of C. vulgaris; calyx cupped; sepals four to five, awl-shaped, thick, greenish, persistent; petals usually five, oblong, 25 to 31 millimeters long, thick, fleshy, recurved; stamens twenty to twenty-five, hypogenous, filaments flattened, united in groups, shorter than the petals; pistil distinctly divided into stigma, style and ovary; stigma knob-like; style long and slender; ovary rounded, 10 to 14 loculed; fruit globose to oblate, light orange to reddish; rind smooth; pulp juicy, subacid; juice sacs spindle shaped, sometimes larger than those of C. vulgaris; seeds few or many, oblong ovoid, planoconvex, generally broad, wedged or pointed at the micropylar end, marked with oblique ridges surrounding one or two plain areas. Native to China or Cochin China. While the orange is nowhere planted in orchards it is fairly well distributed. Judging from the prevalence of the citrus fruits in the markets in the various parts of the Archipelago it ranks fifth in production, as compared with the mandarin, pomelo, lime, and calamondin, the only citrus fruits beside the orange that may claim to be of any economic importance even from a Philippine point of view. Excepting a few budded trees of recent importation or distribution by the Bureau of Agriculture all trees are seedlings and nearly always the fruit is poor in quality. So far as noted, there are no variations worthy of notice. Citrus vulgaris Risso. Sour Orange. (Seville orange, Bigarade orange.) A small tree, 6 to 9 meters in height, with a dense compact head; young shoots light green, thorny; thorns alternate, small, sharp and pointed, on older wood larger, strong, stiff; leaves unifoliate, evergreen, alternate, ovate, pointed, strongly and peculiarly scented; petiole 12 to 18 millimeters long, broadly winged; flowers in small, axillary cymes, white, strongly sweet scented, somewhat larger than those of C. aurantium; calyx cupped, segments 4 to 5, blunt; petals linear oblong, conspicuously dotted with oil cells; stamens 20 to 24; filaments united in groups; pistil club shaped, smooth; ovary 6 to 14 loculed; fruit orange colored or frequently reddish when well matured, inclined to be rough; rind strongly aromatic, bitter; pulp acid; juice sacs spindle shaped, rather small; seeds flattened and wedged toward the micropylar end, marked with ridged lines. Native to southeastern Asia, probably in Cochin China. Hardier than the sweet orange. Samples of what seems to be the sour orange have been received from Davao, Mindanao. Citrus nobilis Lour. Mandarin. A small tree 3.6 to 6 meters in height, with a dense head of upright or willowy, drooping branches; bark dark brownish or streaked with gray; branchlets light green or dark in color, small, slender, round or angled, thornless, or provided with small sharp spines; leaves small, lanceolate to oval, slightly crenate; petioles short, wingless, or with very small wings; flowers terminating the branchlets or axillary, sometimes clustered, 18 to 25 millimeters across, sweet scented; calyx small, shallow, cupped, the petals small; petals white, fleshy, recurved; stamens 18 to 23 in number, shorter than the petals; pistil small, resembling that of C. aurantium; ovary 9 to 15 loculed; fruit distinctly oblate, orange to reddish in color; pulp sweet or subacid; juice sacs broad and blunt; seeds top shaped, beaked, cotyledons pistache green; embryos one or more; sections separating readily from each other and from the rind; rind thin, oil cell somewhat balloon shaped or oval. Native to Cochin China. Generally admitted to be somewhat hardier than the sweet orange. The mandarin is the only species in the genus Citrus that has been at all systematically planted and cared for, even though this mostly consists in the planting the trees, now and then the clearing away of the weeds with cutlasses and the harvesting of the fruit. Nevertheless the quality of the fruit is uniform and very good. The mandarin district of the Philippines is confined to a small area principally around Santo Tomás and Tanauan, in the Province of Batangas, and, excepting imported fruit, all mandarins marketed in the Philippines are grown in the above-mentioned region. Scattered trees are found in most parts of the Archipelago. Aside from the tizon, which is described later, and which it is believed may be referred to this species, there are no well-defined varieties of the mandarin. Citrus nobilis var. papillaris Blanco. Tizon. (Plate II, b) A spreading, small tree, attaining a height of 6 meters or more, in habit similar to the pomelo; spines small, or wanting; leaves 10 to 14 centimeters long, 5 to 6 centimeters broad, ovate to elliptical oblong, crenate, dark-green and shining above, crinkly, base broadly acute, apex narrowly acute to almost acuminate and caudate; petioles 17 to 20 millimeters long with narrow wing margin; flowers not seen; fruit large from 6 to 10 centimeters in diameter, 170 to 580 grams in weight, somewhat compressed at basal half, usually ending in a more or less conspicuous nipple which, however, is sometimes wanting; apex flattened, or even depressed; surface smooth, pale greenish turning to orange yellow; skin medium thin; locules 10 to 11, separable from each other and the skin like the mandarin; pulp yellowish, subacid, very juicy, and of good flavor with marked "quinine" taste; juice cells large; seeds very few, rarely more than 7. The tizon is extremely rare and only a few trees are found in cultivation, confined to the citrus district of Batangas, Luzon. The trees are said to be quite prolific, and the fruit matures from September to December. This fruit, on account of its scarcity, is of no commercial importance. However, it would be an acceptable dessert or breakfast fruit, being a little more acid than the orange. It is said to be an introduction from Spain. The tizon is without doubt the C. papillaris described by Blanco in "Flora Filipinas." The tizon is believed to be a natural hybrid between the mandarin and the pomelo. It has inherited the loose-skinned character, large juice cells, and partial absence of spines, and leaf character of the first-named species to which it is (without the writer having had the opportunity to examine the flowers) unquestionably more closely related than to any other species in the genus. The tizon is represented in the citrus collection at the Lamao experiment station under Bureau of Agriculture No. 744 and 745. Citrus decumana L. Pomelo. A tree 6 to 12 meters in height, with a rounded or conical head, and a trunk upwards of 45 centimeters in diameter; bark smooth, grayish brown; young leaves and shoots sparsely pubescent, light green; leaves ovate, blunt, pointed or rounded, emarginate, smooth, dark, glossy green, leathery, margin crenate; petioles articulated, broadly winged; flowers produced singly or in cymose clusters of 2 to 20, sweet scented; calyx cupped, large; sepals 4 to 5, pointed; corolla white, 37 to 43 millimeters across; petals 4 to 5, slightly reflexed, fleshy, oblong; stamens 20 to 25; anthers large, abundantly supplied with pollen, proterandrous; pistil stout; stigma when ripe covered with a sticky, milky fluid; ovary 11 to 14 loculed; fruit large, oblate, globose or pyriform, light lemon or orange colored; flesh grayish or pink; juice sacs large, spindle shaped; flavor a mingling of acid, bitterness and sweetness or subacid; seeds large, light colored, wedge shaped or irregular, with prominent ridges surrounding broad, flat areas. Native to the Polynesian and Malayan Archipelagos. The pomelo is the most widely distributed species in the genus, but here as in the orange the quality of practically all the fruit is wretchedly poor, dry and insipid with a very thick skin. With the exception of the panuban, described below, there are no variations worthy of notice in this genus. Citrus decumana L. Pomelo, var. Panuban. A spiny tree, 3 to 4 meters tall of robust growth; young growth pubescent; leaves 12 to 17 centimeters long, 4.7 to 8 centimeters wide, oblong ovate, crenate, coriaceous; base rounded; petiole 15 to 23 millimeters long, wing margins narrow, at most 18 millimeters broad, and cuneiform; flowers not seen; fruit 5.7 centimeters long, 7 centimeters in transverse diameter, oblate, with shallow apical cavity; surface smooth, lemon yellow; skin very thin; pulp contained in 11 to 12 locules, yellowish, fairly juicy, subacid, acidity and sweetness well blended, aromatic and well flavored; seeds large, polyembryonic. The panuban is said to bloom about New Year and the fruit ripens in September to November; the trees are reported to be very prolific. The panuban has been reported only from Lias, Bontoc, where half a dozen trees are said to grow. Possibly the panuban may be an accidental hybrid between the pomelo and the orange or mandarin; if it is simply a mutation it is certainly one of the most striking in this species. However this may be, the pomelo character is strongly dominant in both the foliage and the fruit. Very well flavored, the fruit is too dry to be acceptable to a discriminating public, but it is not improbable that under cultivation the juiciness would increase. In such a case the panuban might become a fruit of commercial importance. B. A. No. 5160 (Lias, Bontoc). Citrus mitis Blanco. Calamondin. A small, somewhat spiny tree, 4 to 6 meters tall; young growth greenish; leaves elliptic oblong, 4 to 9 centimeters long and about 4 centimeters wide, crenulate; base acute; apex usually emarginate; petiole scarcely winged, 10 to 15 millimeters long; flowers axillary, solitary, rarely in pairs, 21 millimeters in diameter, fragrant; petals white, reflexed; stamens 18 to 20, unequal; filaments united into groups; ovary globose, 6 to 8 loculed; style slender, distinct; stigma knoblike; fruit globose, orange yellow, 2 to 4 centimeters in diameter; skin smooth, thin, brittle, separable from the flesh; pulp orange colored, juicy, acid, with distinct aroma; juice cells rather large, short, and blunt; seeds comparatively large, smooth, plump, sometimes beaked; polyembryonic. The calamondin is widely distributed in the Philippines and occurs wild as well as cultivated. The plant makes an attractive, ornamental, small tree and the fruit may be made into marmalade or utilized in making ade. There are no particularly distinct forms of this species. The trees are almost invariably very prolific and almost everbearing. In Bohol the species is known as "limoncito." B. A. No. 2332 (Tanauan, Batangas). Citrus webberii. Alsem. A shrubby tree with small, sharp spines; leaves averaging 95 millimeters in length, and 32 millimeters in width, oblong-ovate, crenulate, dark green and shining above; base broadly acute; apex emarginate, petiole 27 millimeters long; wings rarely exceeding 12 millimeters in width; flowers terminal, rarely axillary, solitary, 20 millimeters in diameter, sweet scented; calyx small; petals white, reflexed; stamens 19 to 21, about equal; filaments united into groups of several; ovary small, obovoid, 7 to 11 loculed; style distinct, slender; stigma small, club shaped; fruit sometimes attaining a weight of 165 grams, form oblate, 58 millimeters long to 65 millimeters long to 66 across, to roundish oblate, sometimes compressed and wrinkled toward base ending in a pronounced nipple; apex a shallow depression, or mammilate with the circular depression more or less pronounced; surface smooth to fairly smooth; color greenish yellow to lemon yellow, lenticels few, depressed; skin thin, the "kid-glove" character more or less pronounced; flesh whitish to grayish, very juicy, aromatic; juice cells variable, from short and blunt to medium slender and tapering to one end; seeds ovate, flattened, smooth, sometimes beaked. Plants of the alsem have never been seen by the writer in the provinces, the description of the plant having been made from budded plants growing at Lamao, propagated from material collected in Bulacan. The trees have a long flowering season, as fruits are offered in Manila throughout the summer to late in autumn. The variation in the fruit is very great, some being of little value, while others are extremely thin skinned, well flavored, juicy, aromatic, with less rag than perhaps any citrus fruit that has been examined by the writer. The floral characters correspond closely to those of the mandarin, which the fruit in some forms also resembles in appearance and in its loose-skinned character. Flavor and aroma place the alsem in close relationship with the cabuyao, C. histrix, and it is a curious fact that the Tagalogs always call it "cabuyao." In common with the cabuyao it is frequently infested with the rindborer, Prays citri, while the mandarin is practically immune to this pest. An analysis made by the Bureau of Science in November, 1912, of alsem fruits purchased by the writer in Manila gave the following results: Weight of-- Grams. Fruit 56.5 Peel 15 Seed 1.5 Pulp (rag) 13.5 Juice 26.5 Analysis of juice. Per cent. Acidity (citric) 5.41 Sucrose None. Sugar 2.41 Protein .33 Ash .39 Analysis of pulp. Per cent. Acidity (citric) 2.73 Protein 1.03 Ash .58 The alsem was considered a variety of the mandarin in Bulletin No. 27, Plate IV, but a closer study of the plant and fruit shows that it differs so greatly from all other Philippine species of the genus as to be entitled to specific rank, and it has been named in honor of Dr. H. J. Webber, director of the citrus experiment station, Riverside, California, the association with whom, in connection with his citrus and pineapple breeding work, more than any other cause influenced the writer to take up the improvement of tropical economic plants. The Bontoc local name "alsem" is here proposed as the vernacular name for C. webberii. In previous publications by the writer it was called the "mandarin lime," which is hardly suitable, however, since while it has certain resemblances to the mandarin yet is distinct from it, and again, its only resemblance to the lime lies in its acidity and ade-making qualities; moreover the name "mandarin lime" is too long for popular use. B. A. No. 853 (Bulacan), 2275 (Manila), 4292 (Bontoc). Citrus webberii var. montana. Cabugao. A shrubby tree with slender branches and small, weak spines, sometimes absent; young growth green; leaves 8.5 to 14 centimeters long, 3 to 3.5 centimeters broad, ovate to ovate oblong, crenate, dark green above, shining; base broadly acute to rounded; apex blunt pointed, usually retuse; petiole 24 to 38 millimeters long, with narrow wing margin, in large leaves sometimes 17 millimeters broad; flowers not seen; fruit roundish oblate, about 45 millimeters across, somewhat corrugate, 8 loculed. Budwood and fruits of the cabugao were forwarded to the Bureau by Mr. A. M. Burton, from the Mountain Province. The writer did not have the opportunity of examining the fruit, of which, however, an excellent photograph was made, and, to date of writing the plants at Lamao not having bloomed there has been no chance to examine the floral characters. The general character of the plant and fruit indicates that the cabugao is a form of the alsem. Through a typographical error in Bulletin No. 27, Plate XVI (a), the cabugao is credited to Bohol. B. A. No. 2266 (Benguet, Mountain Province). Citrus longispina. Talamisan. (Pls. IIa, IIIa.) An arborescent, very thorny shrub about 5 meters tall, with numerous suckers and interlocking branches, the spines on the stems frequently 10 centimeters long; young growth bright green, nearly always angular; leaves 6.5 to 10 centimeters long, 3 to 4.8 centimeters broad, ovate to broadly elliptical, crenate; base obtuse to broadly acute; apex acute to rounded, usually emarginate; petioles 19 to 25 millimeters long, rather narrowly winged, though in large leaves the wings are up to 18 millimeters broad; flowers not seen; fruit roundish, somewhat flattened at apex, 58 millimeters in diameter, smooth, deep lemon colored; skin thin; locules 11 to 15; pulp very juicy, mildly acid, with a tinge of orange yellow, aromatic and pleasantly flavored; juice cells large, plump, blunt or pointed at one end; seeds rather few, of medium size, fairly plump, more or less reticulate, polyembryonic, and of poor germinating qualities. The talamisan is exceedingly rare, and is found in cultivation in Bohol (one plant has been seen in Cebu) and is fairly productive. Excepting the mandarin, which is also of rare occurrence, it is much superior to all other citrus fruits grown in these two islands, and is eaten by the inhabitants; it is nevertheless very rare and of no economic importance at present. The fruit ripens in January and February, and is a poor keeper. Introduced into cultivation, the fruit of the talamisan could to advantage be used as an ade fruit, and with a little sugar it would make a good breakfast fruit. The dense growth of the plant, with numerous suckers, armed also with formidable spines, would make it a good live fence. The talamisan, or tamisan as it is also called, is one of the most interesting citrus fruits that has come to the attention of the writer. Its angular growth, formidable spines, broad, sometimes almost orbicular, distinct leaves and fruit easily distinguish the talamisan from all other species in the genus. B. A. No. 2529, 4833 (Bohol). Citrus macrophylla. Alemow. (Pls. IIIb, VIc.) A tree attaining a height of 6 meters, of upright growth, and rather long, stout, sharp spines; leaves 14 to 18 centimeters long, 6 to 8 centimeters wide, elliptical to ovate, crenate to serrate; base rounded; apex acute; petioles 18 to 40 millimeters long, broadly winged, wings frequently exceeding 35 millimeters in width; flowers 4 to 7, in compact cymes, sessile, 18 to 22 millimeters in diameter; calyx cupped; petals 4 to 5, oblong; stamens 26 to 30; filaments nearly always free; ovary small, 13 to 16 loculed; style distinct; stigma club shaped, small; fruit 85 to sometimes exceeding 100 millimeters in length, attaining a weight of 500 to 800 grams, subglobose to roundish oblong, more or less compressed towards base, which is nippled and with stem inserted in a shallow cavity; apex flattened with a circular depression around the raised stigmatic area; surface greenish lemon yellow, rather rough, with transverse corrugations; oil cells small, sunken; skin comparatively thin; pulp grayish, rather dry, sharply acid, lemon flavored; juice cells rather slender, long, and pointed; seed medium large, short and plump, smooth, sometimes beaked. The alemow is a very rare fruit occurring in cultivation in Cebu, and considered inedible even by the natives. The description of the flowers was made from fresh specimens collected in May. The tree is said to bloom later in the year during the rainy season having then larger flowers. Partly grown fruit was then seen on the tree and since mature fruit has been examined by the writer from December to late in February the alemow is evidently nearly if not quite everbearing. The principal distinguishing features in this species are the large, broad leaves, the comparatively short but quite broad-winged petioles, the free rarely united filaments, and the quite large, peculiarly shaped fruit; it is thus apparently one of the links between the two branches of the genus, one of which has the filaments more or less united and the other the filaments free, being in the first group most closely related to the pomelo. The alemow was first forwarded to the writer under the name of colo: Bulletin 27, Plate XIV. B. A. No. 2510, 2377, 3677, 4820 (Cebu). Citrus southwickii. Limao. (Pls. IIIe, IVc.) A thorny tree, with dense head and drooping branches, attaining a height of 6 meters; spines small but sharp, leaves 9.5 to 14 centimeters long, 36 to 53 millimeters broad, ovate to roundish ovate, conspicuously crenate, dark green and shining above, leathery; base acute; apex acute to obtuse, frequently emarginate; petioles 35 to 70 millimeters long, the wings 25 to 30 millimeters broad in large leaves, the average wing area somewhat less than half of the leaf blade; flowers 2 to 6, in compact axillary or terminal cymes, sometimes solitary, 14 to 20 millimeters in diameter, white, with trace of purple on the outside; calyx very small; stamens 22 to 28, free; ovary globose to oblate; locules 15 to 19; stigma almost sessile; fruit 45 to 55 millimeters long, 55 to 65 millimeters in equatorial diameter, oblate, with shallow cavity at apex, smooth, with slight longitudinal corrugations; lenticels sparse, small; oil cells usually raised; skin thin; pulp fairly juicy, sharply acid, bitter, with distinct aroma from C. histrix; juice cells short, plump, granulate, small, containing a small, greenish nucleus; seeds numerous. The limao, though rare, is not uncommon in Bohol, where it is cultivated and has also been collected by the writer in Baganga, Mindanao. The flowers appear late in April and during the early part of May, with the fruit ripening in January and February; a few fruits nearly full grown were collected in May. No. 2049 has flowered irregularly from May to December. The fruit is not eaten, but used in washing by the Boholanos and is of no economic importance. The tree is evidently quite drought resistant, and succeeds well in very scanty soil underlaid with limestone. The limao belongs in that group of the citrus fruits having free filaments, the most conspicuous characters being the compact growth of the crown, the dark-green, thick, and distinct leaves, the almost sessile stigma, and the attractive, oblate, regular-shaped fruit with its many locules, exceeding in number those in all other citrus fruits known to the writer. This species has been named in honor of Mr. E. F. Southwick, elsewhere referred to in the paper. B. A. No. 2049 (Baganga, Mindanao), 2504, 4823 (Bohol). Citrus histrix DC. Cabuyao. (Pl. Vb; fig. 1.) A thorny tree, sometimes exceeding 6.5 meters in height; spines medium large and sharp; leaves 13.5 to 18 centimeters long, 4 to 6 centimeters broad, ovate to oblong ovate, coriaceous, dark green and shining above, crenate; base rounded to broadly acute; apex acute, sometimes emarginate; petiole 5.5 to 8 centimeters long, broadly margined, sometimes 4.5 centimeters wide, wing area inferior or equal to sometimes exceeding leaf area; flowers 4 to 7, in axillary or terminal, compact cymes, 17 to 28 millimeters in diameter; calyx small, not cupped; petals 4 to 5, oblong ovate, white, with trace of purple on the outside; stamens 30 to 36, equal, free, with abundant pollen; ovary rather large, globose, 13 to 18 loculed; style short and stout; stigma knob like; fruit subglobose to short pyriform or turbinate, attaining a length of 9 centimeters and a diameter of 7 centimeters; surface smooth; color greenish yellow to lemon yellow; rind medium thick; pulp greenish, juicy, sharply acid, aromatic; juice sacs rather short and blunt, usually containing a more or less distinct nucleus; seeds usually many, flat, reticulate. This fruit, commonly called cabuyao by the Tagalogs in central Luzon, is without question the "copahan" of Bohol. Near Manila the tree has been found in flower in September, while in Bohol flowers were collected in May. The fruit may be used in making ade, but is inferior to the lemon or lime. The native inhabitants eat it together with fish, and also use the fruit in washing. It is of practically no importance. The "amongpong," found in Bohol, and considered a distinct fruit from the copahan by the native inhabitants, differs chiefly in having only 26 to 30 stamens, and a large oblate ovary with a short and slender style. The first has not been examined by the writer and is said to be smooth and short, pyriform, 10 centimeters in diameter. Flowers examined in May. "Calo-oy" is another fruit also found in Bohol considered by the inhabitants as distinct from the "copahan" and "amongpong." The leaf characters in the calo-oy scarcely differ sufficiently to entitle it to rank even as a subspecies; the flowers were just gone when the visit was made to Bohol. The fruit is said to be globose, smooth and about 8 centimeters in diameter. "Amontay" (Pl. IVb) is still another form of C. histrix found in Bohol. This plant was also out of its flowering stage at the time of the visit. The fruit, forwarded to the writer in February by Mr. Southwick, is about 88 millimeters in diameter, irregularly globose, with flattened or depressed base, and rounded apex, smooth, lemon yellow; oil cells mostly raised; skin thick; the pulp, contained in 10 to 12 locules, juicy, and rather pleasantly aromatic; juice cells medium large, short and plump, containing a minute, greenish nucleus; cotyledons supraterraneous, distinct. So far as observed, the amongpong, amontay and the calo-oy are not sufficiently distinct from the cabuyao to entitle them even to rank as subspecies. The various forms above referred to are in the Bureau of Agriculture citrus collection at Lamao, represented as follows: Cabuyao, No. 739 (Lamao); copahan, No. 2570, 4835 (Bohol); amongpong, No. 2496, 4831 (Bohol); calo-oy, No. 4822 (Bohol); amontay, No. 2501, 4830 (Bohol). Citrus histrix var. boholensis. Canci. (Pls. IVa, Va.) A small tree, rarely exceeding 4 meters in height, with compact crown and small, sharp spines; leaves 9 to 12 centimeters long, 30 to 45 millimeters broad, ovate to elliptical ovate, crenulate, coriaceous; base broadly acute; apex acute to acuminate; petioles 35 to 45 millimeters long, 25 to 30 millimeters wide, wing area less than one-half of leaf area; flowers 2 to 6 in compact axillary cymes; petals white, with purplish tinge outside; stamens 20 to 23, equal, free; ovary quite large, oblate; locules 11 to 14; style short, distinct; stigma knob like; fruit 39 millimeters long, 46 millimeters in transverse diameter, oblate, smooth, lemon yellow; oil cells numerous, uniform, raised; skin medium thick; pulp quite juicy with very pronounced acidity; juice cells short, plump, and granular; seeds many, wedge shaped, monoembryonic; cotyledons supraterraneous. The canci is found in cultivation in Bohol and is rather rare. Flowers were collected in May, and ripe fruits have been examined in January. The fruit is eaten with fish by the Filipinos, but is really so little grown that it has no economic importance. The fruit makes a fairly good ade. While the canci undoubtedly belongs to C. histrix yet an examination of its parts shows that it is very distinct from that species as already described. In the leaves, the comparatively short petioles with small, cuneiform wings, as compared with the oblong-spatulate, broad-winged petioles in the cabuyao, etc., is very noticeable; the stamens are 20 to 23 only in the canci, while the locules are 11 to 14, and the fruit is shorter than broad unlike that in C. histrix. Everything considered the plant is apparently an intermediate type between C. histrix and C. webberii. B. A. No. 2525, 4824 (Bohol). Citrus histrix var. torosa Blanco. Colobot. A spiny tree, attaining a height of 6 or more meters; young growth green with a tinge of purple; leaves 9 to 13 centimeters long, 3.5 to 5.5 centimeters broad, ovate to short ovate, bicrenate, dark green and glossy; base rounded, apex emarginate; petiole 4 to 7.5 centimeters long, 2.9 to 5 centimeters wide, oblong, with a broadly acute to obtuse base; wing area nearly equal to or frequently exceeding the leaf area; flowers 20 millimeters across, in axillary clusters of 2 to 6; pedicel slender; calyx small, not cupped; petals 4 to 5, white, with a tinge of purple on the outside; stamens 21 to 26, free, equal; ovary subglobose, 3 millimeters long, 11 to 14 loculed; style short, 1 millimeter long, distinct; fruit 48 to 55 millimeters long, and about 50 millimeters in transverse diameter, irregularly globose to oblate, usually compressed towards base, ending in a small nipple, more or less wrinkled, greenish lemon yellow; pulp greenish, fairly juicy, acid, scarcely edible; juice cells small, short, containing a small greenish nucleus; seeds small, oblong, reticulate. This plant is the C. torosa of Blanco, which has been considered a synonym of C. histrix, and here raised to the rank of a subspecies. A comparative study of C. histrix and the variety torosa shows considerable differences between the two. C. histrix is generally larger in all parts; the wings of C. h. torosa are oblong, maintaining an almost equal width over a large part of the petiole, ending in a rounded to a broadly acute base, while in C. histrix, and in fact in all the species herein described with free stamens, the wings are more or less cuneate to elongate cuneate or oblong-spatulate, ending usually in an acuminate, sometimes an acute base, the one closest approaching the C. h. torosa in this respect being the "balincolong," referred to C. micrantha. The flower of C. h. torosa corresponds with that of C. histrix except that the former has 21 to 26 stamens as compared with 30 to 36 in C. histrix, which also averages more locules to a fruit. B. A. No. 3665, 3666 (Batangas). Citrus micrantha. Biasong. (Pls. Vc, VIb, VIIc.) A tree attaining a height of 7.5 to 9 meters, with comparatively small but sharp spines; leaves 9 to 12 centimeters long, 27 to 40 millimeters broad, broadly elliptical to ovate, crenate, rather thin; base rounded or broadly acute; apex acutely blunt pointed; petioles 35 to 60 millimeters long, broadly winged, up to 40 millimeters wide; wing area sometimes exceeding leaf area; flowers small, 12 to 13 millimeters in diameter, white, with a trace of purple on the outside, 2 to 5, in axillary or terminal cymes; petals 4; stamens free, equal, 15 to 17; ovary obovoid, locules 6 to 8; style slender, distinct; fruit 5 to 7 centimeters long, 3 to 4 centimeters in transverse diameter, averaging 26 grams in weight, obovate to oblong-obovate, somewhat compressed towards base; apex blunt pointed; surface fairly smooth or with transverse corrugations, lemon yellow; skin comparatively thick; pulp rather juicy, grayish, acid; aroma similar to that of the samuyao; juice cells short and blunt to long, slender and pointed, sometimes containing a minute, greenish nucleus; seeds many, flat, pointed, more or less reticulate. The biasong has been collected in Cebu, Bohol, Dumaguete, Negros, and in the Zamboanga and Misamis Provinces in Mindanao, in all of which it is sparingly cultivated. The flowers were described from material collected in Bohol in May. Ripe fruit has been obtained in May, June, August, November, and February, indicating that the species is more or less everbearing. The fruit is used by the native inhabitants as a hair wash, is not eaten, and is of no economic importance. Particularly noticeable in the biasong are the small flowers, with less stamens than any other species, and the oblong-obovate, few-loculed fruits. The "balincolong," by the Filipinos regarded as quite a different fruit, found in Bohol and in Misamis, Mindanao, is a more robust tree attaining a height of 12 meters, and has longer wings and thicker leaves, with smoother fruits which sometimes are almost round, but these differences scarcely justify this form to rank as a subspecies even. Beginning in May, the balincolong (1982) has bloomed continuously at Lamao until date of writing (Dec. 18). Biasong, B. A. No. 2502, 4829 (Bohol), Balincolong, No. 4834 (Bohol), 1981, 1982 (Misamis, Mindanao). Citrus micrantha var. microcarpa. Samuyao. (Pl. VIIb.) A shrubby tree, 4.5 meters tall, with slender branches and small, weak spines; leaves 55 to 80 millimeters long, 20 to 25 millimeters broad, ovate to ovate-oblong or elliptical, crenulate, thin, of distinct fragrance, base rounded to broadly acute; apex obtuse, sometimes notched, petioles 20 to 30 millimeters long, broadly winged, about 14 millimeters wide, wing area somewhat less than one-half of the leaf blade; flowers in compact axillary or terminal cymes, 2 to 7, small, 5 to 9 millimeters in diameter, white, with trace of purple on the outside; calyx small, not cupped, petals 3 to 5; stamens 15 to 18, free, equal; ovary very small, globose to obovate; locules 7 to 9, style distinct; stigma small, knob like; fruit 15 to 20 millimeters in diameter, roundish in outline; base sometimes nippled; apex an irregular, wrinkly cavity; surface corrugate, greenish lemon yellow; oil cells usually sunken; skin very thin; pulp fairly juicy, acid, bitter with distinct aroma; juice cells very minute, blunt, containing a small, greenish nucleus; seeds small, flattened, sometimes beaked. The samuyao occurs sparingly in cultivation in Cebu and Bohol. Flowers were collected in May, partly grown fruits were also obtained, and ripe fruits have been collected in June, and from November to February, showing that the plant is more or less everbearing. The fruit is used by the Filipinos as a hair wash, and is of no economic importance. Throughout, the samuyao gives an impression of dwarfness, by its small size, weak spines, small, and thin leaves; the flowers are even smaller than in the biasong and the fruit is in all probability the smallest in the genus. In Bohol a somewhat more vigorous variety of samuyao was found which is named "samuyao-sa-amoo." The fruits of samuyao-sa-amoo are a little larger, and smoother, and longer than broad, otherwise similar to the samuyao. Samuyao, B. A. No. 2371, 2509 (Cebu), 2530, 4821 (Bohol); Samuyao-sa-amoo 2533, 4832 (Bohol). Citrus medica L. Citron. A shrub or small tree, about 3 meters high, with a short, indistinct trunk and short, thick, irregular, straggling, thorny branches; bark light gray; thorns short, sharp, rather stout; young shoots smooth, violet colored or purplish, stiff; leaves large, 10 to 15 centimeters long, oval oblong, serrate or somewhat crenate, dark green above, lighter beneath; flowers small, axillary, in compact clusters of 3 to 10, often uninsexual; calyx small, cupped; corolla white within, tinged with purple on the outside; petals oblong, the tips incurved; stamens short, irregular in length, 40 to 45 in number; pistil small; [2] ovary 9 to 12 loculed or occasionally more; fruit lemon yellow, large, 15 to 22 centimeters long, oblong, rough or warty, sometimes ridged; apex blunt pointed; rind thick, white, except for the outer colored rim; pulp sparse; juice scant, acid, and somewhat bitter or sweetish; juice sacs small, slender; seeds oval, plump, light colored, smooth. Probably native to India, or it may have been introduced there from farther east, China or Cochin China. Extremely sensitive to cold. The citron is the rarest of all the old cultivated citrus in the Philippines and is very seldom seen in the markets. Citrus medica var. odorata. Tihi-tihi. (Pl. VIIa.) A small, thorny shrub, seldom exceeding 2.5 meters in height, with sharp, stout spines; young growth bright green; leaves 7.5 to 11 centimeters long, 4.3 to 6.5 centimeters broad, elliptical, rather thick and leathery, serrate, of distinct fragrance; base rounded; apex notched; petioles very short 4 to 6 millimeters long, not winged; flowers 1 to 4 in axillary compressed cymes, sessile, rarely exceeding 38 millimeters in diameter; calyx large, prominently cupped; petals 4 to 5, fleshy, white, with a tinge of purple on the outside; stamens 36 to 42, unequal, shorter than stigma; filaments united in groups of 4 to 6; pollen abundant; gynoecium frequently aborted; ovary elevated on a bright green disk, large, 4 millimeters long, 13 to 14 loculed; style tapering from ovary, scarcely more slender, rather short; stigma large, knob like, and cleft; fruit 60 to 65 millimeters long, 7 to 10 centimeters in transverse diameter, weighing 300 to 475 grams, oblate, with a shallow basal cavity, and sometimes a mammilate apex, more or less ridged longitudinally, fairly smooth, clear lemon yellow; lenticels scattered, depressed; oil cells large, equal or a trifle raised; skin rather thick; pulp grayish, rather dry, sharply acid, of lemon flavor; juice cells long and slender; seeds many--sometimes 125 in a single fruit--short, broad, and flattened. The tihi-tihi is a rare plant found in cultivation in Cebu and Bohol; one plant has been seen in Misamis, Mindanao. The plant is very precocious, fruiting as early as the third year from seed, everbearing, and is used by the Filipinos in washing the hair. It is not eaten, and is of no commercial importance. The tihi-tihi differs from the citron in its green, tender, highly aromatic growth, the leaves having been found to contain 0.6 per cent essential oil as analyzed by the Bureau of Science. The fruit is strikingly different from the citron. B. A. No. 19 (Cebu). Citrus medica var. nanus. A small, thorny shrub, rarely exceeding 2 meters in height, with small, sharp spines; leaves 7 to 11 centimeters long, 2.5 to 4.5 centimeters broad, narrowly oblong ovate to elliptical oblong, serrate, darker above than beneath; base rounded; apex frequently notched; petiole 5 to 7 millimeters long, wingless; flowers 2 to 10, in axillary or terminal, rather loose cymes, 3 to 4 centimeters in diameter; calyx large, cupped; petals linear oblong, with tips slightly incurved, white, with trace of purple on the outside; stamens 36 to 50, unequal; filaments usually united into groups, sometimes free; gynoecium sometimes wanting; ovary large, oblong, 10 to 12 loculed; style not distinct, of nearly the same thickness as ovary; stigma large, superior to anthers, knob shaped; fruit 65 or more millimeters long, 55 millimeters in diameter, ellipsoid to almost roundish, pointed at apex, lemon yellow, smooth; rind medium thick; pulp grayish to greenish, acid, rather dry; juice cells long and slender, almost linear; seeds many, rather small, flattened, smooth. The plant is rather common in the Archipelago, and has been noted in Tarlac, Pampanga, Bulacan, Laguna, and Cebu. It is frequently grown and fruited in small pots, and is probably the smallest species in the genus. It is surprisingly productive and precocious, fruiting as early as the second year from seed, and is practically everbearing. The fruit is eaten by the Filipinos but is too dry to be cultivated for the flesh and the skin is too thin for utilization as citron peel. B. A. No. 27 (Cebu), 2384 (Laguna). Citrus limonum Risso. Lemon. A small tree 3 to 6 meters in height, with rather open head of short, round or angular branches, thorny; bark grayish; young shoots purplish, smooth; leaves evergreen, alternate, 50 to 75 millimeters in length, ovate oval, sharp pointed, light green, margin serrate; petioles entirely wingless; flowers solitary, occasionally in pairs, axillary, on distinct peduncles; calyx persistent, segments 4 or 5; corolla large, 38 to 50 millimeters across, white inside, purplish outside; petals oblong, spreading, strongly reflexed; stamens 20 to 26, separate, or more or less united in small groups; ovary considerably elevated on a prominent disk, 7 to 10 loculed; fruit ripening at all seasons, ovoid or oblong, and pointed at both base and apex, about 75 millimeters long, smooth or rough, light yellow in color; rind thin, flesh light colored; pulp acid; juice sacs long and pointed; seeds oval, pointed at the micropylar end, quite smooth. Native of the same regions as the citron. The true lemon is very rarely cultivated in the Philippines and all lemons used are imported from California, Australia and Spain. Citrus pseudolimonum. Colo-colo. (Pl. VIIa.) A thorny shrub, 3 meters tall, with interlocking branches, and short, sharp spines; leaves 8 to 11 centimeters long, 40 to 45 millimeters broad, elliptical to oblong-ovate, crenulate to serrulate; base rounded; apex obtuse, frequently slightly notched; petioles 18 to 25 millimeters long, with narrow wing margin, rarely exceeding 10 millimeters in width; flowers 1 to 5, in terminal or axillary short cymes, 28 to 35 millimeters in diameter, white, purplish outside; calyx cupped; stamens 30 to 37, nearly always free, unequal; ovary broadly obovoid, 14 to 18 loculed; style distinct; fruit roundish to pyriform, small, usually compressed at base; apex irregular; surface greenish lemon, more or less corrugate; oil cells raised; skin comparatively thick; pulp acid; juice cells small, short and plump; seeds undeveloped and sterile. The colo-colo is another of these peculiar Philippine species with more or less winged petioles affiliated to the lemon, etc. Flowers were collected in May, and ripe fruit has been examined in January and February. The nearly always free stamens in a plant belonging to the same general group as the lemon is of interest. Near the colo-colo is the "lombog," considered a distinct fruit, also found in Bohol. This variety is less vigorous than the colo-colo and also differs from the plant in having narrower wing margins and 21 to 28 stamens and 9 to 11 locules. The fruit is said to be about 4.5 centimeters in diameter and similar in shape to that of the colo-colo. The "kunot" is a third variety considered distinct by the Boholanos that also may be referred to C. pseudolimonum. To C. pseudolimonum may perhaps also be referred a thorny, arborescent shrub, attaining a height of 4.5 meters, found in Siquijor, a little island south of Negros. Material of this was collected in August, 1912, by the writer, at which time the tree bore partly grown, oblong, rough, small fruits. The plants at Lamao have flowered during the last two months but have not set fruit. The principal difference in this variety from the colo-colo and lombog is in the number of stamens, here 36 to 41. The fruits of C. pseudolimonum have no economic value. Colo-colo, B. A. No. 2535, 4825; Lombog, No. 2498, 4827 (Bohol), 1953 (Siquijor). Citrus limetta Risso. Lime. A shrub or tree of straggling habit, with small, stiff interlocking or drooping, thorny branches, the thorns small, sharp, numerous; bark grayish brown; young branchlets light green, becoming darker with age; leaves elliptic-oval, glossy green in color, margin slightly indented; petioles margined; flowers small, produced in axillary clusters of 3 to 10; calyx small, four to five pointed; corolla white on both inner and outer surfaces; petals 4 to 5, oblong, fleshy; stamens small, 20 to 25, united in a number of groups; ovary about 10 loculed; fruit rounded or oblong, frequently mammilate, light yellow; rind thin; pulp greenish, acid; juice sacs small, slender, pointed; seeds small, oval, pointed. Native to India and southeastern Asia. The lime, in Luzon known as "dayap," ranks third in importance among the citrus fruits cultivated in the Philippines, and now and then excellent fruit is found in the market, showing what could be done in growing first-class fruit if pains were taken to do a little selection work and plant budded trees. Citrus limetta var. aromatica. A spiny shrub, with rather slender, willowly, drooping branches, and sharp spines; young growth light green, of pleasant and distinct odor when bruised; leaves 7.5 to 10 centimeters long, 3.5 to 5 centimeters broad, ovate oblong to elliptical, serrate to crenate, dull green above; base rounded to broadly acute; apex frequently notched; petiole 6 to 19 millimeters long with a narrow wing margin; flowers solitary or in cymes to 4, terminal or axillary, 28 to 35 millimeters across; calyx rather large, cupped; petals 4 to 5, white with a trace of purple on the outside; stamens unequal, 28 to 32, more or less united; ovary large, oblong, 12 to 13 loculed; style not distinct as in C. aurantium but rather similar to that in C. medica, a trifle more slender than the ovary; fruit 5 centimeters long, 4 to 4.5 centimeters across, roundish to roundish oblong, lemon yellow, smooth; skin thin; pulp pale green, juicy, sharply acid, sometimes almost bitter; juice cells long, slender and pointed; seeds very numerous, small and plump, polyembryonic. This form seems to be fairly well distributed and material has been propagated at Lamao from such distinct points as Mindoro, Palawan and Benguet. Unquestionably a lime, it is quite distinct from the ordinary lime in habit, and in the aromatic tender foliage and purplish-petaled flowers on the outside, which are larger than those in the lime, the number of stamens also exceeding those of the lime. B. A. No. 741 (Palawan), 1749 (Mindoro), 2182 (Benguet). Citrus excelsa. Limon Real. A thorny, tall shrub of vigorous growth, straggly habit and interlocking branches, with stout, long, sharp thorns; young growth purplish; leaves 9.5 to 16 centimeters long, 4.5 to 7 centimeters wide, elliptical oblong to ovate oblong, crenate to serrate, thick and leathery; base rounded; apex retuse; petiole 19 to 37 millimeters long, quite broadly winged, in large leaves the wings frequently exceeding 2 centimeters in width; flowers 3 to 7, in axillary, rather loose cymes, 36 millimeters in diameter; calyx medium large, cupulate; petals showing trace of purple on the outside; stamens 34 to 35, unequal; filaments occasionally free, usually united into groups of 2 to 6; ovary roundish, 10 to 14 loculed, 4.5 millimeters across; style distinct, 5 millimeters long; stigma large; fruit 5 to 7.3 centimeters long, 5.5 to 7.5 centimeters in equatorial diameter, weight 115 to 225 grams; form subglobose; base rounded; apex flattened; surface smooth, greenish to clear lemon yellow; skin thin; pulp greenish to grayish, in good varieties very juicy, mildly acid, and of excellent flavor; juice cells long, slender and pointed. Plant material of the limon real has been collected in Tarlac, Bontoc, and Bohol, and the fruit is at rare intervals offered for sale in small quantities in Manila. The name of the plant, "Royal lemon," indicates the esteem in which the fruit is held by the people, and while it is unfortunately true that most fruits tested have been too dry to be of any value, yet in the best types the fruits in quality and aroma surpass all lemons and limes that the writer has had the opportunity to sample. With its robust, thorny growth, large leaves and broad-winged petioles and considering its affinity to the lime and lemon together with the roundish oblate fruit with 34 to 35 stamens as against the 20 to 26 in those species and with its 10 to 14 locules, this plant is apparently as distinct from the lemon and lime as these species are from each other. B. A. No. 1727 (Bontoc?). Citrus excelsa var. davaoensis. A thorny, arborescent shrub of straggly habit, with interlocking, drooping branches, and of vigorous growth; young growth green with tinge of purple; leaves 8.5 to 13.5 centimeters long, 3.8 to 5 centimeters wide, ovate to oblong ovate, crenulate to serrulate; base rounded; apex sometimes retuse; petiole 16 to 30 millimeters long, with wings ordinarily narrow, in large leaves sometimes 15 millimeters wide; flowers not seen; fruit 6.4 centimeters long, 8 centimeters in equatorial diameter, weighing 317 grams, oblate; base rounded; apex flattened to depressed, wrinkled, with a circular depression around the raised stigmatic area; surface otherwise fairly smooth, lemon yellow; skin thin, central cavity large; pulp contained in about 13 locules, light colored, quite juicy, sharply acid, and of good flavor; juice cells long and slender. Ripe fruit of this species has been received from Davao, Mindanao, in December and January. The fruit is perhaps too large for retail trade, but might possibly be utilized in the manufacture of lime juice and allied products. Full-grown plants of C. excelsa or the variety above described have not been seen, but C. e. davaoensis appears to be smaller than C. excelsa in all respects, the fruits excepted. There has been no opportunity for an examination of the flowers but so far as observed the plant appears more closely related to C. excelsa than any other species herein described. B. A. No. 1009 (Davao, Mindanao). Economic Value of the New or Little Known Species. The horticulturist and plantbreeder, ever on the alert for new plant material that may enhance his profits, extend the cultivable area of his crop, or be used in making new cross combinations, will naturally ask himself of what value are these new plants and fruits. Briefly stated, it may be said that the "Tizon" is a dessert or breakfast fruit of high, if not perhaps the highest, order, its main defect being the unsightly basal projection. Then, as stated elsewhere, the best "limon real" is unsurpassed in quality for "ade" making. Perhaps third in importance are the better types of the alsem for the manufacture of citric acid, etc., and it might find a sale in competition with the lemon and lime, depending to a great extent upon its keeping qualities. The juicy, thin-skinned, and few-seeded talamisan may find lovers as a breakfast fruit and is also of the right size for an ade fruit. If cultivation would increase the juiciness of the panuban, this fruit may find favor with many. A good marmalade may be made of the calamondin. The above species or varieties have more or less of a future on account of their pomological merits, and the plant breeder, by crossing them and the cabuyao and canci with old cultivated species, might obtain valuable results. There is also the prospective value of the new species as stocks. To determine the congeniality of these species and the old cultivated citrus fruits and their value as stocks under various soil conditions would of course require the labor and close observations of many years. The calamondin is quite drought resistant and would probably dwarf the scion. One year old buds of the pomelo, lime, mandarin and orange at Lamao have made satisfactory growth, the buds taking without difficulty. The cabuyao is a very vigorous tree and is also drought resistant. It has recently been budded with the cultivated citrus fruits, the buds "taking" very well. The orange has been budded on the alsem, resulting in a good growth, being now (December, 1914) nine months old. During the trip to Bohol in May, the limao, growing in a coraline lime-stone formation overlaid with a little humus, the exact counterpart of the Bahama Islands or the "hammock lands" in southeast Florida, impressed the writer as one of the best examples of drought resistance among citrus fruits under such conditions. The talamisan also appeared quite drought resistant, and is furthermore of value as a live fence because of its large spines. The "limon real" is of great vigor and hence may be a desirable stock for certain varieties and under certain conditions. BY-PRODUCTS OF SUGAR MANUFACTURE. By Cleve. W. Hines, M. S., Station Superintendent. In various lines of manufacturing there are certain by-products which, years ago, constituted a waste and great loss, but which now under modern methods have become in many cases of considerable importance. This is especially true with the sugar industry. Extreme care and attention is required to keep the balance on the right side of the ledger, and often the proper handling of the by-products forms the deciding factor between success and failure. In order to build up a great sugar industry in these Islands, more attention must be given to the details of the work, and many of the present losses must be turned into profits before great progress can be expected. Cane Tops and Trash. First in the series of by-products in the manufacture of sugar, comes cane tops. The amount of this material produced per hectare will depend upon various factors, including the variety of cane, its stage of maturity, etc. The less of these tops, of course, that may be produced for a given amount of cane, the better it will be for the growers, nevertheless they have a good feeding value if properly handled. Professor Dodson, [3] director of the Louisiana Experiment Station, states that he found cane tops to have the following composition: Per cent. Protein 1.53 Fat 0.41 Carbohydrate 15.62 Fiber 8.87 Water 71.50 Ash 2.07 The fiber content would be slightly higher and the water content lower, for tropical cane, since maturity is completely reached before harvest begins. It may be seen from the above analyses that this makes a most excellent feed for work animals. Certainly greater advantage should be taken of this feeding stuff than is usually done, since there is a scarcity of pasturage near the end of the harvest season and the animals become needlessly thin on account of lack of feed. At present very little of this material is utilized, but instead is burned on the field with the rest of the trash. If the tops are removed and used as a stock feed, only the leaves and pieces of stalk remain, and these make a good fertilizer for cane lands. It is the general custom in these Islands to burn all of this material as soon as the crop is harvested. The object of this burning is to destroy any insects that may be present, as well as to facilitate subsequent cultivation. In the writer's opinion neither of these reasons is sufficiently well based, since in this country large numbers of troublesome cane insects are not found. If they were present in sufficient quantities, the trouble could be handled by placing the trash between the rows and properly treating it before plowing it under. This should be the method of disposing of the trash at all times. In this manner the waste material could be utilized, and the organic matter would be even more valuable than that contained in many of the commercial fertilizers. The nitrogen contained, which amounts to from 0.5 to 2 per cent, would be practically all saved, while with the burning method this is completely lost. In Louisiana, cotton-seed meal forms one of the principal nitrogenous fertilizers for cane lands. This material costs from P50 to P75 per ton and Dr. Stubbs, [4] in his research, found that the trash burned from each ton of cane caused a loss of nitrogen equal to that contained in 27 pounds of cotton-seed meal. Besides this loss of nitrogen encountered in the burning of the trash, the organic matter which would later form humus is completely destroyed. Soils would retain moisture better during the dry season and be more easily handled if the conservation of organic matter were given greater attention. There is also a great injury done to the remaining stumps and top roots by this burning which is very detrimental when the field is to be used for a ratoon crop. Where cane is badly infested with destructive insects, it is quite another thing. This again brings up the fact that the cane points should be treated with chemicals before planting, in order to complete the work of destroying these insects. Use of Ashes. The ash of sugar cane constitutes the mineral matter that has been taken out of the soil. This usually runs about 0.48 per cent of the total weight, according to Payson's classical analyses. Chemically this contains the following: silica, iron, aluminum, lime, magnesia, potash, sodium, phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine, oxygen, water, etc. Of these various elements, the phosphorus and potash are the most valuable to the planter. Lime is also useful for many soils in correcting the acidity, and occasionally in supplying that element, when it happens to be lacking in a particular soil. The cost of different fertilizers is governed by the percentage of these plant-food elements contained. Phosphoric acid is worth $0.05 per pound (P0.22 per kilo) in crude fertilizers. At this rate the value of this element recovered from a crop of 75 tons of cane per hectare would be from P10 to P12. Potash is valued at about P0.26 per kilo and that removed with a crop of 75 tons would cost about P25. The lime contained is a cheaper element but will not act as a detriment on any soil, while on many it will be found very helpful. In spite of the great deficiency in these elements in the cane lands here, and the high cost of commercial fertilizers, this waste material is not only neglected at the majority of the factories but is actually thrown away, yet the same elements that command a high price in commercial fertilizers are contained in these ashes. Filter-press Refuse. In the defecation of cane juice, certain chemicals are often used to precipitate the impurities, which are removed from the subsiders after the clear juice has been drawn off, and sent to the filter presses, where it is filtered through heavy cloths. This material contains coarse particles of bagasse together with other impurities including the lime and phosphoric acid which were used in this work. The composition of the material depends upon the original composition of the juice and the amount of the different chemicals that has been used in the clarification. In any event, it makes a most valuable fertilizer because of the organic matter, nitrogenous bodies, phosphoric acid, and lime that it contains. This organic material is an ideal substance to be applied to the worn-out cane lands (which consist almost entirely of mineral substances) since it induces bacterial action, and during its decomposition certain acids are freed, such as carbonic, nitric, and organic acids. These have the power to act upon the mineral constituents and thus liberate other plant-food elements. The filter-press mud can very well be mixed with the bagasse ashes, and scattered about the cane rows as an almost complete fertilizer for sugar cane, the only element lacking being nitrogen, which was lost in the burning of the bagasse. It will be remembered that in the synthesis of sucrose, which consists of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, there are none of the plant-food elements used which are sought for in commercial fertilizers. These are used only in building the fibrous stalk of the cane and they may all be recovered in the bagasse and cane-juice impurities. The carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen which are used practically all come from the air and water. It is a custom to-day to cart this ash to piles or depressions some distance from the factory. In some places it is thrown into the river, or cast into the sea--an absolute loss. Planters must not depend upon commercial fertilizers for their supply of plant-food material, when there is such an abundance of natural fertilizer being wasted. The cost of the artificial fertilizers in many cases is considered prohibitive and often unnecessary. In order to build up a great sugar industry here, the material at hand must be used, while money should be spent for modern apparatus and equipment. Molasses. The dark-colored viscous substance remaining after the large crystals of sucrose have been removed is called molasses. This contains small crystals of sucrose, which has passed through the perforations of the centrifugal screens, sucrose in solution, glucose, fructose, and other organic substances, such as pectin bodies, albumenoids, coloring substances, etc., besides the inorganic matter constituting the ash upon incineration of the molasses. The composition of the molasses varies with the working of each factory, also with the condition of cane, time of harvest, etc. The juice from green cane and that which has reached ultramaturity will contain a higher percentage of invert sugar and organic non-sugars than a properly matured cane. Then factories that have ample boiling-house provision, and crystallizers as well as magma tanks, will be able to send out a molasses with lower purity, thus recovering more of the crystallizable sugar. In any case there will be some molasses produced, and this constitutes a valuable sugar-house by-product, if properly cared for. It may be disposed of in one of several forms, namely, as a human food, a stock feed, a source of alcohol, factory fuel, and a fertilizer. Cane molasses as a human food.--For many years low-grade cane molasses has been used as a human food in the United States. It was originally sold under the name of New Orleans molasses, but in recent years a number of companies have employed clarifying and bleaching agents and thus turned out a very fancy article, under various trade names, for baking purposes. With the boiling at low temperatures practiced to-day, there is little or no caramel formed during this work, and consequently it is only necessary to clarify and bleach the organic non-sugars, in order to make a salable molasses. The bleaching is usually accomplished by the use of a hydrosulphite, either in the form of sodium or calcium, but sometimes only the sulphurous acid gas is used. The bleaching effect of none of these reagents is permanent, especially when the product is exposed to the air and light. Such chemicals must therefore be used with great caution, and as late in the process as possible. Care must be exercised too that an excessive amount is not employed, since an undesirable tint is liable to result as well as an excessive amount of the sulphites to be admitted, which is not permitted by the Pure-Food Law. It is astonishing how much of this low-grade molasses is thus manufactured and used in the United States for cooking purposes, and what a high price this product commands. Cane molasses as a stock feed.--Perhaps more of the exhausted molasses is used for this purpose in these Islands than for any other. Ordinary molasses contains from 30 to 35 per cent of sucrose and almost as much glucose. These being purely carbohydrates, it is necessary to combine them with some protein-bearing feed in order to make a perfect ration. Many leguminous plants, such as alfalfa, cowpeas, peanut vines, etc., may be cut fine and used as an absorbent for molasses. This makes a most excellent feed as it contains a sufficient amount of roughage, and at the same time offers a balanced ration if properly composed. In this country there is a great amount of exhausted cake from the coconut-oil factories, which is exported to Europe each year. There is no good reason why this should not be used as an absorbent for the molasses in making a concentrated feed, which could be transported to various parts of the Islands or exported abroad for stock. To-day the Philippines are dependent upon Australia and other countries for many thousand head of cattle each year. The by-products from sugar factories are thrown into the rivers or flushed away from the factories through drains, and the leaves and tops of the cane are burned on the ground in order to facilitate cultivation. In the attempt to grow our own beef, these feeds should be an important factor. Cane molasses as a source of alcohol.--Alcohol can be made from a great variety of substances containing the necessary constituents, viz, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Of the numerous alcohols possible, ethyl alcohol is the one ordinarily sought and the easiest produced. This alcohol is represented by the following chemical formula: C2H5-OH. While glucose is the substance which may be easily transferred into alcohol by fermentation, sucrose may also be used, providing it is first changed into glucose or invert sugar. Even cellulose and starch may be used after being transferred into reducing sugars. The process of changing glucose into alcohol and carbon dioxide is called fermentation and is accomplished by a minute organism. Sucrose will not directly ferment, consequently it must first be changed into glucose. This is usually accomplished by an enzyme which is secreted by a ferment. The following chemical formula will serve to show the steps necessary to pass from sugar to an alcohol: C12H22O11 (sucrose) + H2O (water) Presence of an 342 M. W. enzyme --> Invert sugar ------------------------------------------ (C6H12O6 (dextrose) C6H12O6 (levulose)) 180 M. W. 180 M. W. --> C2H5-OH (ethyl alcohol) + 4CO2 (carbon dioxide) 184 (2 M. W.) 176 CM. W. The theoretical yield then of alcohol from sucrose would be 53 per cent and from invert sugar 51 per cent. In practice, however, this yield would not be experienced on account of the yeast converting some of the sugars into substances other than alcohol and carbon dioxide. These will consist mostly of glycerine and succinic acid and will amount to 4 or 5 per cent. Since the working conditions determine to a very great extent the yield of alcohol, it is obvious that a thoroughly efficient person should be in charge of this work. In the selecting of cultures for the fermenting, the manufacturer should use only the purest, otherwise acetic acid and other foreign substances will be formed during fermentation, thus decreasing the yield of the alcohol as well as lowering its purity. Where the percentage of sucrose and glucose of a molasses is known, it is a simple matter to calculate the theoretical amount of alcohol to be recovered and by knowing the efficiency of the factory, a factor may be obtained which multiplied by the theoretical yield will give the true amount of alcohol to be expected. In this manner it is easy to determine the price that may be paid for any molasses. The separation of the alcohol from the water and dirt (lees) is accomplished in an apparatus termed a "still." In this the liquor is heated by steam which causes the alcohol to evaporate. Since ethyl alcohol boils at a temperature of 78° or a little higher, depending upon the percentage present, it may be separated from the water and impurities during the evaporation, and recovered from the coils of the condenser in a fairly pure state. There is always, however, more or less water vapor escaping with the alcohol and consequently it is impossible to secure absolute alcohol without after-treatment, although in the modern still a very high grade is often recovered in the first distillation. In this connection the strength of alcohol is usually determined by referring it to "proof," which is an old English system used before modern methods of testing spirits were available. In its original application, gunpowder was moistened with the spirit and the mixture subjected to the flame of a match. When just enough alcohol was present to set fire to the powder, it was said to be "proof spirit." If not enough alcohol was present to accomplish this, it was said to be "under proof," and when the gunpowder was lighted easily by it, it was said to be "over proof." By an act of the English Parliament, the term "proof spirit" was fixed as one which contains exactly 12/13 of an equal volume of water (distilled) at 51° F., which represents 57.1 per cent of alcohol by volume, or 49.3 per cent by weight. The simplest method of determining the percentage of alcohol is by the use of a gravity spindle for liquids lighter than water, and by referring to the accompanying table for this purpose, the percentage of alcohol may be ascertained. Table for calculating the percentage of alcohol. [5] =================================================================================================== |Specific gravity| |Specific gravity| |Specific gravity| |Specific gravity | at-- | | at-- | | at-- | | at-- Volume.|----------------|Volume.|----------------|Volume.|----------------|Volume.|---------------- | 15.56° 25° | | 15.56° 25° | | 15.56° 25° | | 15.56° 25° | 15.56 15.56 | | 15.56 15.56 | | 15.56 15.56 | | 15.56 15.56 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | | | | P. ct.| | P. ct.| | P. ct.| | P. ct.| 1 | 0.9985 0.9970 | 26 | 0.9698 0.9655 | 51 | 0.9323 0.9246 | 76 | 0.8745 0.8665 2 | .9970 .9953 | 27 | .9691 .9646 | 52 | .9303 .9225 | 77 | .8721 .8641 3 | .9956 .9938 | 28 | .9678 .9631 | 53 | .9283 .9205 | 78 | .8696 .8616 4 | .9942 .9922 | 29 | .9665 .9617 | 54 | .9262 .9184 | 79 | .8664 .8583 5 | .9930 .9909 | 30 | .9652 .9603 | 55 | .9242 .9164 | 80 | .8639 .8558 6 | .9914 .9893 | 31 | .9643 .9594 | 56 | .9221 .9143 | 81 | .8611 .8530 7 | .9898 .9876 | 32 | .9631 .9582 | 57 | .9200 .9122 | 82 | .8581 .8500 8 | .9890 .9868 | 33 | .9618 .9567 | 58 | .9178 .9100 | 83 | .8557 .8476 9 | .9878 .9855 | 34 | .9609 .9556 | 59 | .9160 .9081 | 84 | .8526 .8444 10 | .9869 .9846 | 35 | .9593 .9538 | 60 | .9135 .9056 | 85 | .8496 .8414 11 | .9855 .9831 | 36 | .9578 .9521 | 61 | .9113 .9034 | 86 | .8466 .8384 12 | .9841 .9815 | 37 | .9565 .9507 | 62 | .9090 .9011 | 87 | .8434 .8352 13 | .9828 .9801 | 38 | .9550 .9489 | 63 | .9069 .8989 | 88 | .8408 .8326 14 | .9821 .9793 | 39 | .9535 .9473 | 64 | .9047 .8969 | 89 | .8373 .8291 15 | .9815 .9787 | 40 | .9519 .9456 | 65 | .9025 .8947 | 90 | .8340 .8258 16 | .9802 .9773 | 41 | .9503 .9438 | 66 | .9001 .8923 | 91 | .8305 .8223 17 | .9789 .9759 | 42 | .9490 .9424 | 67 | .8973 .8895 | 92 | .8272 .8191 18 | .9778 .9746 | 43 | .9470 .9402 | 68 | .8949 .8870 | 93 | .8237 .8156 19 | .9766 .9733 | 44 | .9452 .9382 | 69 | .8925 .8846 | 94 | .8199 .8118 20 | .9760 .9726 | 45 | .9434 .9363 | 70 | .8900 .8821 | 95 | .8164 .8083 21 | .9753 .9719 | 46 | .9416 .9343 | 71 | .8875 .8796 | 96 | .8125 .8044 22 | .9741 .9706 | 47 | .9396 .9323 | 72 | .8850 .8771 | 97 | .8084 .8003 23 | .9728 .9692 | 48 | .9381 .9307 | 73 | .8825 .8746 | 98 | .8041 .7960 24 | .9716 .9678 | 49 | .9362 .9288 | 74 | .8799 .8719 | 99 | .7995 .7914 25 | .9709 .9668 | 50 | .9343 .9267 | 75 | .8769 .8689 | 100 | .7964 .7865 =================================================================================================== Molasses as a fuel.--Many experiments have been made, using this substance as a sugar-house fuel, and while ordinarily it may be better employed in some other manner, at the same time where no other provision is made for the use of this material, and where there is a scarcity of fuel as well, satisfactory results may be secured in its combustion if it is properly handled. Waste molasses consists mainly of gums, sucrose, glucose, albuminoids, other organic compounds, water, and a small amount of ash. Sucrose has the chemical formula of carbon 12 (atoms), hydrogen 22 (atoms), and oxygen 11 (atoms). The burning of carbon consists in uniting oxygen to that element, forming carbon dioxide. When hydrogen burns, the oxygen combines with it, forming water. During this oxidation, two atoms of hydrogen combine with one of oxygen, but in the molecule of sugar, these two elements are already present in this proportion, consequently only the carbon may be oxidized and thus give off heat. This is found to be true also of sucrose, reducing sugars, and many organic compounds. An instrument called a calorimeter is used to determine the amount of heat a substance will give off upon oxidation. Tests may be made on molasses in order to determine its value as a fuel, and thus a comparison may be obtained of a pound of this material and one of coal having a standard value. The ash from the molasses contains a great deal of potassium and some magnesium, consequently care must be exercised in the burning of the molasses so that this material does not come in direct contact with the tubes of the boiler, since a heavy coating will be formed that will greatly lower the coefficient of heat transmission. On account of the high potash content, these ashes make a valuable fertilizer, which should be mixed with the bagasse ashes and mud cake, and applied to the cane lands. Molasses as a fertilizer.--While molasses is not used to any great extent as a fertilizer, there is no good reason why exhaustive experiments should not be carried out with this by-product on Philippine soils, when it is now being thrown into drains or wasted, until a better use is provided for the molasses. Experiments have been made in Hawaii, Mauritius, and other places with this form of fertilizer, and very encouraging results were reported. The plant-food elements themselves contained in molasses are small in amount, since they are contained in the low percentage of ash after burning, except, of course, nitrogen, which will be entirely saved. Its main value, however, lies in the power to induce bacterial growth, which is so necessary in worn-out soils. Among the organisms induced by these organic matters may be included certain azotobacter species, which contrary to other forms of plant life, have the power of using nitrogen from the air. Carbohydrates form especially good mediums for their development, and it has been found that the activities of these organisms are increased by an increased amount of this substance. While excellent results have been attained by the use of low-grade molasses for fertilizer in other countries yet it remains for the planters here to determine results under Philippine conditions, and the best method of handling their material. In some places where irrigation water is applied, the molasses is mixed with the water and applied in the usual manner. The plant-food material contained in molasses will vary somewhat with the methods of its production, clarifying agents previously used, etc. The following table will indicate the composition of ash from different molasses: [6] ================================================================================== | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Mill | Diffusion | Open |Carbonitation. |sulphitation.|sulphitation.| kettle. | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Per cent. | Per cent. |Per cent.| Per cent. Potash | 49.48 | 52.20 | 51.48 | 50.16 Soda | .89 | .80 | 1.11 | .32 Lime | 6.47 | 6.78 | 6.58 | 8.53 Magnesia | 4.29 | 3.09 | 3.99 | 2.66 Iron oxide | .35 | .33 | .15 | .47 Alumina | .30 | .22 | .13 | .30 Silica | 4.12 | 4.59 | 2.83 | 4.10 Phosphoric acid | 3.71 | 3.80 | 2.12 | .91 Sulphuric acid | 10.79 | 6.72 | 10.94 | 11.18 Carbonic acid | 7.49 | 11.19 | 13.06 | 15.78 Chlorine | 14.00 | 11.95 | 9.10 | 4.59 ----------------------------------------------------- | 101.89 | 101.67 | 101.49 | 99.00 Deduct O minus Cl. | 3.16 | 2.70 | 2.05 | 1.04 ----------------------------------------------------- | 98.73 | 98.97 | 99.44 | 97.96 ----------------------------------------------------- Undetermined (carbon, etc.) | 1.27 | 1.03 | 0.56 | 2.04 Alkalinity (cc. tenth normal | | | | per gram ash) cc. | 80 | 93 | 95 | 109 ================================================================================== In order to make a wise selection of the method of handling the different by-products the manufacturer must take into consideration many factors. Among them will be the quantity of his output, the facilities for handling it in any specified manner, the demand for different finished products to be made therefrom, etc. All of these and many other points must receive due consideration by a manager who expects to attain success in his work. COFFEE IN THE PHILIPPINES. [7] By P. J. Wester, Horticulturist in Charge of Lamao Experiment Station. Preliminary Remarks. While it cannot be said that the Philippines have ever grown coffee on a scale that made it an important factor in the world's market, yet, before the advent of the coffee blight, coffee growing, from a Philippine point of view, was an industry of considerable magnitude and unquestionably of great promise. However, in the Philippines as in other parts of the eastern Tropics, the blight destroyed the coffee industry, and while in the last few years previous to the appearance of the blight there was an average annual export of about 7,000 tons of coffee, valued at P4,000,000, in 1913 the Philippines produced only 113,031 kilograms of Arabian coffee with an average production of 174 kilograms per hectare, the coffee imports during the same period amounting to 1,138,781 kilograms, valued at P816,744. The leading coffee-producing provinces of the Archipelago were, during 1913, the Mountain, 42,066 kilograms; Moro, 31,040 kilograms; Nueva Vizcaya, 5,792 kilograms; and Batangas, 5,319 kilograms. Varying quantities of coffee, less than 5,000 kilograms in any one, were produced in each of the remaining provinces, excepting Agusan, Bataan, Batanes, Ilocos Sur, Leyte, Pampanga, and Surigao, where coffee is not grown. From a study of the coffee situation in the Eastern Hemisphere it is evident that Arabian coffee will never again become of importance in this part of the world, including of course the Philippines. However, it seems that a satisfactory substitute has been discovered in the robusta coffee. This variety, while not immune to the blight, is so resistant to the effects thereof that the disease ceases to affect the profits of the crop, or at least very slightly. This and other reasons, which will be explained later, have resulted in the planting of robusta coffee on a very large scale in Java and adjacent Dutch possessions, and the reports relative to this variety are such as to recommend it to the serious consideration of Philippine planters. The present paper has been prepared with a view of meeting the almost daily requests that reach this Bureau for information on the subject of coffee, and particularly to give some information relative to the robusta coffee, with which practically all planters in the Archipelago are unfamiliar. It might perhaps be well to state that propagation, handling of the plants from the seed bed to the plantation, culture, etc., are the same for both Arabian and robusta coffee, except where so stated. Arabian Coffee. The decrease in the cultivation of coffee and the present status thereof in the Philippines show conclusively that Arabian coffee cannot be profitably grown here below an altitude of 800 meters. At and above this elevation the climate is so favorable for the growth of the plant that when kept in good condition it is capable of resisting the attack of the blight sufficiently to yield a profitable crop. Nevertheless, the planting of Arabian coffee on a large scale is not recommended even here, because the disease is everywhere present, waiting for a favorable opportunity to spread, and a drought, typhoon, or in fact anything that would devitalize the plants, would be sure to render them liable to a severe attack that might wipe out an entire plantation or district. It is true that Arabian coffee grows below an altitude of 800 meters; in fact, coffee bushes are found at sea level, but a prospective investor should always remember that there is a very great difference between being able to merely grow coffee and to produce it in such quantities that its cultivation becomes profitable. This cannot be done at a low elevation. It is perhaps well to state here that exhaustive experiments have so far failed to yield a fungicide or spray by which the coffee blight can be satisfactorily controlled in the field. Everything considered then, only in certain districts of the Mountain Province and on the table lands of Mindanao may Arabian coffee be successfully and profitably cultivated to any considerable extent. Robusta Coffee. Robusta coffee in Java.--When the blight appeared in Java, coffee growing was one of the most important industries in that island, and after the plantations had been destroyed by the disease, the Dutch Government, having failed to control the blight by repressive measures, instituted investigations with a view of discovering a blight-resistant coffee, in the course of which work several species were introduced and tested. Among these were Liberian coffee (Coffea liberica) and robusta coffee, considered by Wildeman to be a variety of Coffea canephora. Robusta coffee was discovered in the Belgian Congo, and seeds were sent to Brussels, Belgium, and propagated, where plants were first offered for sale in 1901. Some of these plants found their way to Java. Like most new introductions the robusta coffee was at first looked upon rather askance, but as its greater climatological range as compared with that of Arabian coffee, and its productivity, precocity, and resistance to the coffee blight (Hemileia vastatrix) became apparent, it rapidly gained popularity--so rapidly in fact that the Javanese coffee plantations today consist almost entirely of robusta coffee. The fact that in 1909 the total crop of robusta coffee was only 183,000 kilograms, and that in 1911 9,650,000 kilograms were produced, with an estimated yield of 16,000,000 kilograms for 1912, and that during the period from 1907 to 1911, 24,521,000 robusta coffee plants were planted, is ample proof of its popularity in the Dutch East Indies. Introduction into the Philippines.--Robusta coffee has not been introduced into the Philippines to any extent. Bearing trees are reported from Basilan, near Zamboanga, and a few plants are also growing at the Lamao experiment station in Bataan. The latter are in good condition with no indication of blight. Soil and climate.--Robusta grows well from sea level to an altitude of 1,000 meters, doing best at an elevation ranging from 450 to 750 meters. Less particular than Arabian coffee, the robusta thrives well on both light and heavy soils provided they have the necessary fertility. However, good drainage is essential for a good growth and therefore robusta should not be planted on sticky and very heavy, water-holding soils. Poor and sandy soils should also be avoided. This variety is also somewhat sensitive to drought and should be planted only where the rainfall is fairly evenly distributed, and where the dry season is of comparatively short duration. Generally speaking, where the soil conditions are favorable, the cacao, abacá, and coconut growing districts of the Archipelago are perhaps better adapted than other sections to the culture of robusta coffee. Culture. Propagation.--The place selected for seedbed and nursery should be well drained, with a loamy soil, the richer in humus the better. A light bamboo frame should be erected above the nursery plot about 2.5 meters high, and covered with grass or split bamboo to provide about half shade. The land should be spaded thoroughly to a depth of 30 centimeters, and all stones, roots, etc., removed. One meter is a convenient width for seed and plant beds. The seeds should be sown broadcast, not too thick, covered with not more than 1 centimeter of earth, and then watered thoroughly. Hereafter the seedbed should be well watered from time to time whenever the soil appears dry. Frequent light sprinklings that do not allow the water to penetrate more than a few millimeters below the surface are harmful rather than beneficial both in the seedbed and the nursery, in that they encourage a shallow root formation. As soon as the first leaves are fully expanded the seedlings should be transplanted to the nursery beds, which should be prepared like the seedbed. If the land is poor it is well to spade in a liberal quantity of well-decayed manure or compost. The plants should be taken up carefully, the taproot nipped off with the thumb nail, and then transplanted with the aid of a pointed stick or small dibber spacing them 10 to 15 centimeters apart each way. In doing this care should be taken that the roots are not doubled up in the hole and that the soil is well packed around them. More plants should never be removed at one time from the seedbed than can be conveniently transplanted before they show signs of wilting, and the dug plants should not be left exposed until the roots dry out. The plants should be thoroughly watered before and after transplanting, and the beds kept free from weeds and watered as often as necessary. Clearing and planting.--Wherever possible, the land to be planted in coffee should be stumped, and plowed once or twice, so that after the plants have been set out animal-drawn cultivators can be used to keep down the weeds. Thus the cost of weeding is lessened during the early years of the plantation while the plants are small. If plowing is not feasible holes 1 meter in diameter and at least 30 centimeters deep should be grubbed where the plants are to be set. On moderately rich land robusta coffee should be planted 2.1 meters apart each way, 2,265 plants to the hectare; on very fertile land the distance may be increased to 2.5 meters, or 1,600 plants to the hectare. Arabian coffee should be spaced from 2 to 2.5 meters apart or on poor lands even closer. When the plants are 4 to 5 months old they should be about 20 centimeters tall and ready for transplanting. About one-half of the foliage should now be cut off; a trench should be dug at the end of the nursery bed about 20 centimeters or more deep; then a thin, sharp spade or bolo (cutlass) should be passed through the soil, underneath and around the plant, neatly severing all straggling roots, and leaving the plant in the center of a ball of earth. The plants should be set out in the field at the same depth at which they grew in the nursery, great care being taken not to break the ball. If the soil is so loose that it falls away from the roots in the removal from the nursery, great care should be exercised in not allowing the roots to dry out and in setting out the plant so that the roots fall in a natural position. In the course of the planting the soil should be firmly packed about the roots. The sowing of the seed in a given locality should be so timed that the plants are ready for transplanting at the beginning of the rainy season in order to avoid the expense of artificial watering. If transplanted during the dry season the plants necessarily would have to be watered by hand from time to time until they are established. Plants for shade.--As a temporary shade and cover crop of rapid growth while the coffee trees are small, perhaps no plant can compete with the cadios (Cajanus indicus). The plants may be cut down to serve as mulch whenever they grow too high, and may be expected to grow from the stubble twice before the plants die, provided they are not cut off too close to the ground. In Java, where robusta coffee is more extensively planted than anywhere else, permanent shade is considered advisable. Malaganit (Leucaena glauca), a leguminous shrub which grows everywhere in the Philippines, seems to be preferred there to other plants for shade. It is planted alternately with the coffee plants and, as is the case with all plants utilized for shade, thinned out later according to need. Madre de cacao (Gliricidia maculata) and dapdap (Erythrina indica and E. subumbrans) are other leguminous trees readily obtainable in most localities and are adapted for shade. Madre de cacao should be planted at the same distance as the malaganit while the dapdap should be planted one plant to every two coffee trees. All these plants are readily propagated by cutting off limbs or branches 1 to 1.2 meters long and inserting them 20 to 30 centimeters deep in the ground during the rainy season. (This is most conveniently done by the aid of a crowbar.) In a limited way fruit trees, such as the soursop, custardapple, breadfruit, and jak may also be used as shade, and these should be planted from 6 to 12 meters apart according to size. The necessary shading between these trees while they are small may be provided by planting malaganit, etc. Robusta coffee has also been successfully interplanted with coconuts. In this case the palms and coffee should of course be planted at the same time, the palms perhaps not closer than 9 to 10 meters apart, the coffee to be used as a "filler" between the coconuts. In this connection it is perhaps well to state that in Java robusta coffee is very frequently planted as a "catch crop" in the Hevea rubber plantations. Among the shade plants available to the Philippine planter, malaganit, dapdap, and "guango," or raintree (Pithecolobium saman), have given the best results in Java for the robusta with the following ratio yield of coffee: 4.75, 4.10, and 3.06. Cultivation.--On level and well-cleared land, close attention should be paid to keeping the coffee plantation free from weeds during the first year or two by means of animal-drawn shallow cultivators, supplemented with hand-hoeing. Where the topography of the land or the presence of stumps renders this impossible the weeding must of course be done by hand. All weeds should be left in the field where they serve both as a mulch in preserving the moisture and to enrich the soil. As soon as the plants begin to shade the land they thereby aid in the weed eradication, and weeding then becomes less expensive. Pruning.--If the trees are allowed to grow without pruning they become too tall (robusta coffee attains a height of 6 meters or more), and the topmost berries are then difficult to pick. Furthermore unpruned coffee trees (including robusta), have the peculiar habit of bearing their branches near the ground and at the top, leaving the middle bare or nearly so which decreases the producing capacity of the plant. On this account up-to-date planters have generally adopted a system of pruning by which the coffee trees are headed low, giving a maximum yield coupled with easy access to the berries. The pruning consists of topping the robusta trees when they are from 2 to 2.5 meters tall and of subsequent pruning to keep the trees at this height. This work should preferably be done while the plants are of the proper height and the green shoots easily broken off, and not after the trees have exceeded the height limit by several decimeters. The plant, if allowed to do so, usually sends up a large number of suckers from the base, which constitute a drain on the vitality of the plant. Therefore, all superfluous suckers should be removed and not more than 2 to 3 stems to a plant should be permitted to develop. Occasionally robusta plants appear that are more than ordinarily subject to blight, and these should be at once pulled up and burned. Yield.--The yield of robusta coffee is quite variable, much depending upon the fertility of the soil. On the more fertile soils in Java the yield per hectare in the third year was approximately 540 kilograms, and in the fourth and fifth years, 1,400 and 1,830 kilograms, respectively. In old coffee or cacao fields the yields were 325, 540 and 850 kilograms per hectare, respectively, during the third, fourth, and fifth years after planting. It is perhaps well to recall the fact that the average yield of Arabian coffee in the Philippines is 174 kilograms per hectare, which is of course much less than it should be, and it is not believed that the Philippine planter with his present methods of cultivation could equal with robusta coffee the yields quoted from Java. The immense superiority of the robusta as a cropper over the ordinary Arabian coffee is best illustrated in a table published by the Department of Agriculture, Java. We learn here that in Java, under identical conditions, the yield per plant was of Arabian coffee, 53 to 97 grams; of robusta, 992 grams; and of quilloi (a new very rare coffee) 1,020 grams. The Maragogipe hybrid on its own roots yielded 14 to 18 grams, while grafted on robusta the yield was 156 grams, a larger crop than any Arabian coffee has given in Java. This would tend to show the possibilities of robusta as a stock. Further, comparative studies by Cramer have shown that 4 to 5 kilograms of fresh robusta berries make 1 kilogram of coffee while of the Arabian coffee 5 to 6 kilograms of fruit are required to make 1 kilogram of coffee. Owing to the fact that the pulp on the robusta coffee (though smaller in amount) is more difficult to remove than that on the Arabian, robusta needs at least two and one-half days of fermentation. The bean requires rapid drying in order to loosen the silver skin and the drying is therefore done in an artificially heated shed. Quality and marketability.--Relative to the quality of the robusta coffee Doctor Hall says: The appearance of the average marketable robusta is not very beautiful; the beans are small and irregular, and the average product shows little uniformity. There are, however, great differences between the many different types of robusta. Some of them have comparatively large beans, larger even than arabica, others again have very small ones. As regards the quality, though being inferior to Java-arabica, the taste is generally considered to be good and superior to the ordinary arabica sorts, as Santos. Doctor Wildeman states: It is objected that the berries of the robusta group and of other African coffees are small in size and inferior in flavor; but the continually increasing quantities of these coffees sold in Holland, and the satisfactory prices they fetch show that the public is beginning to appreciate them. No objections will be made to the size of the berries when by means of careful cultivation and especially of right preparation, a coffee is obtained equal in flavor to the (old) Java and Arabian coffee. Summary. Arabian coffee cannot be successfully grown in the Philippines below an altitude of 800 meters, and even at this elevation, due to its susceptibility to the coffee blight, extensive planting of Arabian coffee cannot be recommended. Success with Arabian coffee is obtainable only by keeping the plantations clean of weeds and the plants in the best possible condition. For the rehabilitation of the Philippine coffee industry robusta coffee appears more promising at present than any other kind. The advantages of robusta coffee are that it thrives under more varied conditions than Arabian coffee, that it is an earlier and a more prolific bearer and that it is resistant to the blight. Blight resistance in robusta coffee does not mean that it is immune, but that notwithstanding the presence of the blight it grows well and produces abundant crops. Robusta coffee is by some authorities regarded as inferior in quality to Arabian coffee. Nevertheless, considering the optimism with which robusta coffee is regarded by conservative European experts in tropical crops, coupled with the results obtained in Java, it is confidently believed that robusta coffee is worthy of extended planting in the Philippines. From the Dutch department of agriculture in Java the Bureau of Agriculture has imported seed of the best robusta coffee available for distribution, as well as a considerable quantity of seed of the ordinary robusta cultivated in that island. All readers who are interested in planting robusta coffee are cordially invited to communicate with the Bureau of Agriculture. CANE-JUICE CLARIFICATION. By Cleve. W. Hines, M. S., Station Superintendent. The clarification of the juice forms one of the most important operations in sugar manufacture, since the higher the purity of the juice to be concentrated, the greater the percentage of sucrose that will crystallize, and the easier it will be to make a marketable sugar. If a high-grade sugar, or even yellow clarified sugar is to be made, this work should receive still greater attention. Before considering the methods to pursue and the reagents to use, it is well to decide first upon the grade of sugar it is desirable to make. If ordinary centrifugal sugar testing 96° is desired, it will usually be practical to use only lime in the clarification, since in these Islands cane reaches full maturity, and consequently the purity of the normal juice will be quite high, sometimes as high as 90° or 92° (apparent purity). If, however, it is desired to make a white plantation sugar, or granulated sugar, it will be advisable to subject the juice to an acidifying or bleaching treatment, as well as to the lime treatment. Usually sulphurous acid is used for this purpose, but sometimes phosphoric acid, or a form of it, is employed. It is generally best to administer the acidifying agent before the application of the lime, since this raises the acidity and permits a larger amount of the lime to be used. However, this process is reversed by some manufacturers, and very good results are often reported. In the acidifying of any cane juice, care must be exercised that too high an acidity is not reached, since acids have an inverting effect upon sucrose, thus causing a noticeable loss. This of course depends upon the degree of acidity carried, the temperature maintained, and the methods followed during the time the juice remains acid. When it is desired to make a high-grade crystal for granulated sugar, the clarification must be more complete, and a water-white thick liquor should result, without subsequent treatment by bleaching agents and other chemicals, except the neutralizing of the slightly yellowish tint, which will be mentioned later. Reagents Used in Clarification. There is a great variety of reagents at the command of the sugar manufacturer, each of which has certain merits over others, and all are valuable in their place when properly used. It will therefore be the duty of the operator to select those which best meet his individual conditions. It is the purpose of this article to give a brief survey of the more common reagents which, under certain conditions, may be used to advantage in these Islands. Lime.--This is perhaps one of the most common and most widely used of all the reagents. Since the object in view is to increase the purity of the juice, it is obvious that the purest rock obtainable should be used in the preparation of the lime. Another reason why a good lime should be employed, is that one of the main impurities of the lime rock is magnesium, which, when mixed with cane juice, becomes very troublesome in the incrusting of the evaporator tubes, thus greatly lowering the coefficient of heat transmission. Much of the lime on the market in the Philippines has been made without any attempt to select pure clean limestone or shells. This is not suitable for putting into cane juice, and will result in a great deal of trouble whenever used in modern evaporating plants. There is, however, an abundant supply of limestone found in various parts of the Philippines, which analyses show to be almost free from impurities, and which will make a most excellent lime for clarifying purposes if burned properly. At present there is no modern plant for burning this rock on a large scale and consequently much of the work is done in a very crude and unsatisfactory manner. Most of the lime for clarification, in modern sugar factories, is imported, and constitutes a very heavy expense. If a lime kiln were installed in conjunction with some of our sugar factories, fresh and well-burned lime might be made as needed. The carbon dioxide could be used in the juice clarification, as is done in Java, and thus a good grade of plantation sugar could easily be manufactured. Any excess of burned lime might very readily be sold to other factories, which now use only high-priced imported lime. The lime used should be of the unslaked type, and should be protected from the air until a short time before using. The process of preparing this consists of heating lime rock to a very high temperature, in a kiln for that purpose, whereby the limestone is broken into two component parts, expressed by the following chemical equation: CaCO3 (limestone) heated to high temperature-->CaO (calcium oxide) + CO2 (carbon dioxide). This calcium oxide, commonly known as "quick lime," is the substance desired in clarification. It should be slaked by being placed in water just before it is desired for use. This milk of lime should not be used until after the high temperature caused by the violent chemical action has subsided. On account of the heat involved and the high alkalinity in local portions, it is never safe to apply crude lime to the juice without previously slaking it in water, nor is it advisable to use a quantity of juice to mix this lime, as is quite often practiced in these Islands, since in this case there may be a loss of sucrose, with a resulting dark-colored product, which will impair the color of the clarified juice. The following chemical equation will express the reaction when this lime is slaked: CaO (calcium oxide) + H2O (water)-->Ca(OH)2 (calcium hydroxide). This calcium hydroxide is a substance which is very caustic, and care must be exercised in handling it. Like all bases, it has a great affinity for acid, and consequently its first action is to neutralize part of the acids present. It then coagulates albumins and albuminoids, which form a part of the impurities, and throws down insoluble salts of sulphates, carbonates and phosphates, and of the bases iron and aluminum. These act as mechanical precipitants, assisting in bringing down other impurities. The compounds of calcium are practically insoluble in cold cane juices, and may be readily filtered, or settled, and the supernatant liquor drawn off. In the addition of lime, as well as in the application of other reagents, much care must be observed that the proper amount is added. If too little is used, there will be poor clarification and settling of the precipitate, while if too much is used, so that alkalinity is reached, and the juice heated to a high temperature, there will be a darkening of the juice caused by the decomposition of the reducing sugars by the calcium, and the formation of dark-colored compounds, which are very hard to remove. If the juice is limed to three-tenths or four-tenths cubic centimeter acidity against N/10 NaOH, using phenolphthalein as an indicator, there will be little or no chance of trouble. With the above dangers in view, it is not safe to employ the haphazard methods of liming usually practiced here, but the milk of lime should always be made of stated density and a measured or weighed amount should be supplied to each clarifier of juice, corresponding to prevailing conditions. Sulphur dioxide.--Where a better grade of sugar than 96° test is desired, it is often advisable to subject the juice to further treatment, one reason for which is to increase the acidity so that a larger amount of lime may be added to effect the clarification. In addition to this the sulphur acts to some extent directly as a clarifying agent, by precipitating some of the impurities. It also acts as a bleaching agent by extracting the oxygen from the impurities and lastly it acts as a disinfectant. It is formed by burning crude sulphur in a stove made for that purpose. S (sulphur) + O (oxygen heat)-->SO2 (sulphur dioxide). Sometimes bombs filled with liquid sulphur dioxide are purchased for this purpose. These are inconvenient to use, and this method is ordinarily more expensive than the usual one of burning the sulphur and producing the gas directly at the factory. Sulphur dioxide is a heavy gas which is very readily absorbed in water, and at a temperature of zero C. nearly 80 per cent by volume of the gas will be taken up. At 40° C. only about 18 per cent by volume of the gas will be absorbed. It may readily be seen that the percentage of gas contained in the juice when saturated will be determined by the temperature. The following equation expresses the absorption of sulphur dioxide in water at ordinary temperature: SO2 (sulphur dioxide) + H2O (water at low temperature)-->H2SO3 (sulphurous acid). Another thing of very great importance is the cooling of the gases to condense any water that may be present so that no hot gas will reach the juice to be treated or combine with water in the pipes. The equation represented when high temperatures are used is as follows: SO2 (sulphur dioxide) + H2O (water) + O (high temperature)-->H2SO4 (sulphuric acid). This last-named acid is very corrosive and a powerful investing agent. It therefore has the property of rapidly destroying sucrose, especially at a high temperature. In the burning of sulphur it is well that as thorough a combination as possible be obtained, else there will be a loss of sulphur, which will deposit in the tubes and choke them, and more time will be required for the process. The fumes from a well-regulated sulphur furnace should contain from 15 to 16 per cent sulphurous acid. The theoretical percentage obtainable is about 21 per cent of the acid. Carbon dioxide.--In recent years carbon dioxide gas has found a very useful application in the cane-sugar factories, where a good grade of plantation sugar is desired. Java factories have been the foremost in elaborating a system, through their eminent technologists, so that today one may find the bulk of the sugars they turn out from certain factories of a very satisfactory grade and color. The method they use requires a great deal of skill and attention in order to yield results that are satisfactory. It is patterned after the process used in beet-sugar factories, with some distinct modifications, which make it applicable to a juice containing glucose, as is always the case with cane juices. The object of applying any clarifying material is to effect a rise in purity, and it is especially desirable to remove, in all cases, the substance added, since this itself would tend to act as an impurity and thus give a lower coefficient, if not properly removed. The lime, which has been added previously, may be partly removed, as the original precipitate formed, and any free lime or compound which may be easily decomposed will combine with carbon dioxide, forming calcium carbonate or limestone, which is quite insoluble and may be very easily filtered off. Ca(OH)2 (calcium hydroxide) + CO2-->CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) + H2O (water). Whether single or double carbonation is used, the same general methods are employed, and results are expressed by the same chemical equation. As stated before, the carbon dioxide may be recovered from the kilns during the burning of lime, as is commonly done in the beet-sugar industry, or it may be purchased in the form of liquid CO2 contained in heavy iron containers. It is also feasible to use flue gases for this purpose, where a good combustion is obtained, and after they have been properly treated. Phosphoric acid.--It is sometimes advisable to apply a form of phosphoric acid as a clarifying and precipitating agent after the lime. This may be used in various forms depending upon the individual desires of the operator. The compound usually found on the market may consist of one of the following (or a combination of them): H3PO4 (ortho phosphoric acid). CaH4(PO4)2 (mono-calcium phosphate). Ca2H2(PO4)2 (dicalcium phosphate). Na2HPO4 (sodium phosphate). The sodium phosphate contains very little acidity, and the main purpose of its use is based on the principle that the sodium is readily given up for any soluble calcium that may be present. This forms the insoluble calcium phosphate, which is easily removed as a precipitate or filtered off. The "Reserve Factory" in Louisiana has been using this reagent in their clarification for a long time, where a very good grade of granulated sugar is made. Besides these forms of phosphorous, various compounds may be found on the market, under trade names, which have as their base the above acid. "Clariphos" is one of these compounds, which has found extensive use in many of the Louisiana sugar factories. Another is known as "phospho-gelose," which is a combination of dicalcium phosphate Ca2H2(PO4)2 and infusorial silica. It is a patented preparation and is made by the absorption of phosphoric acid by a powdery compound known as "Kieselguhr." After the absorption, the compound is heated to expel the water, and then resaturated. This work is repeated several times until the finished product, which is very hydroscopic, contains about 25 per cent of phosphoric acid. Kieselguhr.--This is a fine light powder containing a high percentage of silica. It is used purely for its mechanical effect in forming particles upon which the impurities may collect, and thus be more readily carried to the bottom. This material often prolongs the workings of the filter presses by collecting the gummy material, which would otherwise gather on the filter cloths. Kieselguhr was used in the beet-sugar industry of Europe many years ago, and is extensively used now for the same purpose in the United States. Hydrosulphites.--These are preparations of great bleaching power, found on the market under various trade names. One of these, widely used in the United States, in both the beet and cane-sugar industries, is known as "Blankit." This is dehydrated sodium hydrosulphite with the chemical formula, Na2S2O4. It has a much greater bleaching and reducing action than sulphurous acid, and oxydizes very readily in combination with moisture, forming sulphate. On this account it is well to purchase the reagent in small parcels for this climate, and to carefully guard the stored material from moisture. This substance, which is a white powder, dissolves very easily in water, forming an alkaline liquid, although this point is sometimes hard to distinguish on account of hydrogen atoms liberated. There is a bleaching preparation made in France known as "Redo," which is simply calcium hydrosulphite (CaS2O4). This is used in the sugar industry to some extent, but it is claimed by many that the results obtained are not as good as those obtained from the sodium compound and that it deteriorates more easily. Hydrosulphites, unlike sulphurous acid, will bleach equally as well in alkaline or neutral medium, as in an acid medium. There is therefore less danger from loss of sugar by inversion when they are used, while the permanency of their effect is about the same. In any case where juices have been bleached by sulphites, the result may be considered as but temporary, since upon exposure to air and light the product assumes a darker color. Hydrosulphites should therefore be introduced as late in the process as possible. Where the material in the vacuum pan is to be bleached, it is well to introduce this reagent just before striking grain, thus furnishing a bright clear material which will act as film over the nucleous of sucrose in the grain. The chemical equation representing the change which takes place with this reagent is as follows: Na2S2O4 (sodium hydrosulphite) + O (oxygen) + H2O (water)-->2(Na H S O3). The amount to be used will depend absolutely upon individual conditions, which may be ascertained only by experimentation. The manufacturers of this product state that the amount of the material used to that of dry sugar should be as 1 is to 10,000. In the writer's experience, two or even three times this amount will usually be required to give maximum results. As stated before, since there is such a variance in the material to be treated, each operator will be required to judge this to a great extent from the condition of his product. In these Islands where a very low grade of open-kettle sugar is still made, which sells very cheaply, attempts are often made to bleach it and recrystalize in order to make a centrifugal sugar. While ordinary clarifying agents help to a great extent, if the melted sugars are very dark from caramel and the decomposition products of calcium glucosate, these reagents can not be expected to give a light-colored juice. While they may improve conditions somewhat, the only solution to such a problem is the use of the boneblack process. Bluing.--In the production of plantation clarified sugars, and sometimes of refinery crystals made from low-grade sugars, there is a thin film surrounding each sugar crystal, which has a yellowish tint. It is this that gives rise to the different grades of white sugars, when color test only is considered. Since this yellowish tinge will give way to a lighter color when neutralized with the proper shade of blue, it is a very common practice to use some form of bluing--usually that known as ultramarine--for this purpose. The action of this reagent is only mechanical and great care must be exercised that the proper quantity is used. This must be determined by trials with the different amounts of the reagent, since the density of the yellowish tint is different in each case. The place of application will also depend very much upon conditions. Some operators apply it only at the centrifugals and others apply it in the pan just at the graining point. Again others use a quantity at both the pan and in the last charge of water at the centrifugals. In any case, a good grade only of the reagent should be used. This must be thoroughly dissolved in clear water, condensed steam being preferred, and passed through cloth or felt filters in order to remove any trace of lumps which would tend to produce uneven bluing, or bluish streaks. While this is an excellent reagent in its place, it must not be expected to whiten molasses sugars as was attempted by a local manufacturer. Animal charcoal or boneblack.--This material is made from bones of animals, by burning them in a kiln built for that purpose. The object of this burning is to remove the organic matter and leave the remainder in a porous condition, so that it may be crushed into particles the proper size. It is not desirable to have a great amount of char dust present, since this retards the passage of the liquors through the filters, as well as impairing the efficiency of the work. Bone char, being very porous, absorbs a great volume of gases, among which is oxygen, and it is ordinarily presumed that its bleaching power may be attributed to this fact. Extensive experiments have been made to determine definitely this point, and the char has been subjected to an atmosphere of other gases than oxygen. This proved that the char still contained great clarifying power. Char also has a great surface attraction, which causes it to collect particles of coloring matter that may be present, and thus acts as an excellent filtering agent. New char should be thoroughly washed with pure water until all the impurities are removed. With the end in view of determining when the last traces of chlorine have disappeared, chemical tests are made on the wash waters. Nitric acid and silver nitrate are employed for this purpose. After animal char has been used for some time in the filters and fails to do its work efficiently, it is reburned, or revived, as it is called. Ordinarily the best results are obtained after a char has been used several times. Reburning of the char at too high a temperature should be avoided, as it incurs an unnecessary loss of fuel, besides causing serious injury to the char by a contraction of the pores. Since, as stated previously, the main value of the char as a clarifying and filtering medium lies in the fact of its porosity, anything which reduces this will greatly impair its efficiency. One thing in connection with the bone-char process of making white sugars is that it is expensive and should not be attempted except on a large scale, since the initial expense of installation, as well as the cost of running, is very great. The writer is sometimes asked by managers of small factories, turning out plantation yellow clarified sugars, if it would not pay them to employ bone-char filters to use in connection with the remainder of their factory, in order to be able to work up an industry with the low-grade open-kettle sugars, during the intercampaign. Most assuredly such a combination of small plantation factory and refinery would not be a paying affair. It takes men of experience and special training to carry out successfully the more detailed work in any technical line. One thing, however, can be very successfully done by these factories, and that is to make a first-class plantation white sugar which will command a ready price in the local markets, or even suffice for export, if the proper manufacturing methods are used. It is not presumed that any one planter will use all of the clarifying reagents mentioned above, but he should choose the ones to fit his individual needs, and secure his supply early, since a great deal of time is required to transport supplies from the place of manufacture to these Islands. This is especially the case when the place of manufacture happens to be in Europe, as is true with a number of the patented clarifying reagents. Then, again, a suitable place should be selected for the storage of reagents, where they may be protected from dampness. The quick-lime and sulphites are especially susceptible to moisture, while the greatest danger of loss, when phosphoric acid compounds are stored, will result from leakage. This is on account of the great oxydizing effect of the acid on the iron loops surrounding the barrels, whereby a great quantity may be lost within a very short time. The writer observed this needless waste in one of the small factories here, when twenty barrels of a high-priced acid were stored on the damp ground of the factory, and a great percentage of it wasted. There are a number of clarifying agents offered on the market under fancy names. Planters are advised to be cautious about the purchasing of such supplies until they have been thoroughly tried out and proven a success. Even then, it is better to experiment only on a small scale until it is known that they will meet their individual needs. Some of these are not only deficient in clarifying power, but actually act as an absolute detriment by introducing impurities which lower the value of the juice as well as increasing the subsequent work of boiling and after working of the sugar. LA FABRICACION DE AZUCAR BLANCO EN LOS INGENIOS. By W. H. Th. Harloff and H. Schmidt. Translated into Spanish by C. J. Bourbakis. (Reviewed by Cleve. W. Hines, M. S., Station Superintendent.) This book is edited by two of the foremost sugar producers of the world, Mr. Harloff, who is manager of a large sugar factory in Java, and Mr. Schmidt, a very able consulting chemist and engineer. The book was originally written in Dutch and was translated into English, and now the Spanish edition has been completed, which will be welcomed by Spanish readers throughout the sugar world. While dealing with a purely technical subject, this work is so simple in its diction that it may be readily comprehended even by those of little technical training. The introduction is divided into five parts as follows: Part I.--The influence of alkalies and alkaline earths on the constituents of cane juice. Mention is here made of the formation of saccharates of barium, strontium, and calcium in low concentrations. The latter is made use of in the famous Steffens process of the beet-sugar industry. Part II.--The influence of acids on the constituents of sugar cane and the hydrolizing effect of dilute acids on sucrose and the resulting constituents, laevulose and dextrose or invert sugar, are explained. Part III.--The influence of heating on the constituents of cane juice is shown. Part IV.--The coloring substances of cane and those produced in the process of manufacture. Part V.--The different fermentations that occur in the sugar factory including lactic, butyric, alcoholic and dextran are discussed. The main part of the text deals with the manufacture of white sugar by the carbonitation and sulphitation processes, and particular attention is given to the acid-thin-juice-method which has been elaborated in the Java factories with such great success during the past few years. This book may be obtained from Norman Roger, 2 St. Dunstan's Hill, London, England. Price 7s. 6d. net (P4 Philippine currency). CURRENT NOTES--FIRST QUARTER. NOTES BY P. J. WESTER, Horticulturist in Charge of Lamao Experiment Station. Shield Budding the Mango. The one defect in the Pound method of shield budding the mango described in Bureau of Agriculture Bulletin No. 18, The Mango, consists of the necessity of placing an apron to protect the long petiole left on the bud from the sun and the entrance of water, which work necessarily requires more time than if the bud could be wrapped as is the case in budding citrus trees. However, a possible use of scarred or nonpetioled budwood as a means of obviating the need of the apron was suggested in the above-mentioned publication. The results obtained in recent experiments conducted at the Lamao experiment station (November and December, 1914) have fully come up to the expectations of this modification, and if the work is carefully performed, the operator should have no trouble in obtaining 85 per cent of live buds by proceeding in accordance with the following directions: (1) Select budwood that is well matured, from the first, second, and third flushes from the end of a branch. This budwood is always green and smooth. (2) Three weeks or more in advance of the date when the budding is to be performed, cut off the leaf blades of the budwood selected. This causes the petioles to drop. When the scars left after the petioles have fallen are well healed the budwood is in condition for budding. (3) The buds should be cut about 4 centimeters long, with an ample wood shield, and inserted in the stock at a point where the bark is green and smooth like the budwood, not where it is rough and brownish. (4) Use waxed tape in tying and cover the entire bud. (5) When in the course of two to three weeks a good union has formed, unwind the wrapping so as to expose the leaf bud from which the growth is to issue, and cut off the top of the stock 10 to 15 centimeters above the bud. (6) Every ten days after unwrapping the buds go through the nursery and carefully rub off all stock sprouts in order to force the buds to grow. All other precautions that are taken in ordinary shield budding must, of course, also be attended to in order to insure success. Experiments in Shield Budding. After repeated attempts the shield-budding experiments at the Lamao experiment station with the camia (Averrhoa Bilimbi) and the santol (Sandoricum koetjape) have been successful, and it has also been found that the barobo (Diplodiscus paniculatus), a nut tree indigenous to the Philippines (Dillenia indica), and the sea grape (Coccoloba uvifera), may be propagated by means of shield budding. Detailed information relative to the budding of these plants will be published on the completion of the experiments. Improvement of Tropical Fruits in the Philippines. The average fruit is so poor that most foreigners never give any attention to the santol, and the fruit is a drug even in the native markets and enormous quantities annually rot on the ground. Few are aware that there are mutations among the santol trees the fruit of which in point of flavor vies with the best fruits in the Tropics, and that in this respect it is superior even to its celebrated relative, the lanzon (Lansium domesticum), the greatest defects being the large seeds and the adherence of the flesh to the seeds. If the seed in these superior santols were abortive in the same proportion as those in the mangosteen, the now despised santol, with its translucent pulp, separable from the pericarp as that of the mangosteen, subacid, juicy and of a vinous, excellent flavor, would rapidly become one of the most popular fruits in the Tropics. Its thick, tough "rind" should make the santol at least equal to the mangosteen as a shipper. What is probably the first horticultural, asexually propagated variety of the santol is now being established at the Lamao experiment station from buds obtained by Mr. F. Galang, assistant agricultural inspector, from a tree in Pampanga, the fruit of which is so highly prized locally that the fruit never retails below the relatively high price of 2 centavos apiece even when other santols are so plentiful as to be literally unsalable. Mr. B. Malvar, assistant agricultural inspector, has obtained in Batangas budwood of a sweet-fruited camia which is also being propagated. This is the first mutation of this kind coming to the attention of the writer. The collection of Philippine citrus fruits of economic value or of botanical interest has been in progress since in 1911, but no systematized selection work in the mandarin district has been attempted until December, 1914, when Mr. B. Malvar was detailed to visit the citrus region in Batangas. Mr. Malvar returned with sample fruits of some twenty odd trees, a number of which were found to be of very good quality. These are being propagated for future distribution. Mr. Malvar also found another "Tizon" (Citrus nobilis var. papillaris) of excellent flavor and quality which has been added to the citrus collection at Lamao. Petioled Vs. Nonpetioled Budwood. The last three years' experiments in shield budding tropical fruits which have been conducted by the writer at the Lamao experiment station indicate that for practical purposes in propagation work the tropical fruits may be divided into two groups: (1) Those species the budwood of which may be cut at the time of budding and the petioles cut off close to the bud--for instance, the citrus fruits, avocado, guava, and carambola; and (2) those species in which decay enters the bud from the adhering remnant of the petiole so frequently as to make impracticable budding from newly cut budwood from twigs with the leaves still adhering, such as the mango, hevi, and cacao. It has been found, however, that this trouble may be easily overcome by the simple method of cutting off the leaf blade about three weeks in advance of when the budding is to be done so as to induce the formation of a leaf scar. Then when the petioles have dropped and a well-healed scar has formed, the budwood may be cut and the buds inserted and tied as in ordinary shield budding. In the case of some species, whether or not the bud is of the same age as the stock at the point of insertion is of little or no practical importance, but in other species this condition is one of the requirements for success. Therefore, two chances of failure are insured against in experimental work with species that hitherto have not been budded--(a) by defoliating the budwood previously to the budding operation, and using what may be termed nonpetioled or scarred budwood; and (b) by inserting the buds at a point in the stock which approximately is of the same age and appearance as the budwood. NOTES BY CLEVE. W. HINES, M. S., Station Superintendent. A New Sugar Industry. The beginning of a tropical industry in what would be considered a semitropical climate was noted in 1914, when the Southwestern Sugar Company of Arizona milled their first crop of sugar cane and made it into sugar. The factory had been used previously for the manufacture of beet sugar only. It is a singular coincidence to find a region where both cane and beets will thrive well and where sugar is made from both sources in the same factory, and the sugar world is looking forward with great interest to the results of this new venture. The World's Sugar Supply. The world's production of sugar amounts to nearly seventeen million tons, practically one half of which is derived from the beet root, the greater percentage of which is produced in Europe. Now that the ravages of war have devastated many of the better beet-sugar regions of Europe a greater demand will be made on the more fortunate sugar countries as soon as the present supply of storage sugar is exhausted and trade resumes its normal condition. Progress in Sugar Manufacture. The past few years have shown great progress in the method of sugar making. It used to be thought that a high grade of sugar could be made only by the use of the bone-black or animal-char process. The beet-sugar producers were the first to diverge from this method and succeeded in making a perfectly satisfactory sugar in their factories in one continuous process by the aid of the carbonitation system. Louisiana had been making a fairly good sugar known as yellow clarified for a number of years, but the great step in improvements along these lines was brought about by the acid-thin-juice process of Java. This was a combination of the carbonitation and sulphitation processes which gave a satisfactory sugar, though unfortunately the yield of resulting molasses was also quite high. The latest improvement in this work was the introduction of the "Battille Process" which has certain similarities to the Steffens process of beet-sugar manufacture. This method has given an excellent grade of sugar and the maximum rendement since practically all of the sugar is extracted in crystalized form. PUBLICATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF AGRICULTURE. Subscription rates for The Philippine Agricultural Review are as follows: In the Philippine Islands and the United States P2 ($1 United States currency) per year; in foreign countries in the Postal Union P4 ($2 United States currency) per year. A limited number of the following-named bulletins are available for free distribution. All communications should be addressed to the Director of Agriculture, Manila, P. I. BULLETINS. No. 7. The Garden. (Spanish.) (62 pp., 9 ill.) No. 12. Abacá (Manila Hemp). (Revised.) (English and Spanish.) (40 pp., 11 ill.) No. 13. The Cultivation of Maguey in the Philippine Islands. (Spanish.) (26 pp., 9 ill.) No. 14. The Cultivation of Sesamum in the Philippine Islands. (Spanish.) (8 pp.) No. 16. Cultivation of Tobacco in the Philippines (Spanish, English, Ilocano, and Ibanag.) (24 pp., 6 ill.) No. 17. Coconut Culture. (Spanish.) (20 pp., 4 ill.) No. 18. The Mango. (English.) (60 pp., 9 ill.) (Out of print.) No. 19. Tests of the Efficiency of Antirinderpest Serum. (English.) (110 pp., 187 Charts and Diagrams.) No. 20. Notes on the Muscular Changes Brought about by Intermuscular Injection of Calves with the Virus of Contagious Pleuropneumonia (English.) (18 pp., 4 ill.) No. 21. A Study of the Normal Blood of Carabao. (English) (12 pp.) No. 24. The Role of Stomoxys calcitrans in the Transmission of Trypanosoma evansi. (English.) (51 pp., 5. ill.) No. 25. The Philippine Coconut Industry. (English.) (67 pp., 21 ill.) No. 26. The Kapok Industry. (English.) (41 pp., 11 ill.) No. 27. Citriculture in the Philippines. (English.) (60 pp., 43 ill.) No. 28. The Mechanical Transmission of Surra by Tabanus striatus. (11 pp.) NOTES [1] Bureau of Agriculture Bulletin No. 27, Citriculture in the Philippines, 1913, contains illustrations of several unnamed citrus fruits described in this paper. Those readers who possess the above-mentioned bulletin may be interested to know that in accordance with the classification herein these fruits should be named as follows: Bull. No. 27, Plate IV, Mandarin Lime = C. webberii; VIII, Lime (Mindanao type) = C. excelsa var. davaoensis; VIII, Lime, "Limon Real" = C. excelsa; X, Cabuyao = C. histrix; XI, Cabuyao = C. histrix var. torosa; XII, Biasong = C. micrantha; XII, Type from Bohol = C. histrix var. torosa; XII, Type from Bohol = C. histrix var. boholensis; XIV, Colo = C. macrophylla; XIV, Samuyao = C. micrantha var. microcarpa; XV, Talamisan = C. longispina; XV, Tizon = C. nobilis var. papillaris; XV, Tihi-tihi = C. medica var. odorata; XVIa = C. webberii var. montana; XVIb = C. southwickii. [2] In the above description the pistil is said to be small. Citron flowers examined by the writer have been found to have large pistils similar to those in C. m. var. odorata and C. m. var. nanus. [3] Paper read before the Louisiana Sugar Planters Assn., June 12, 1913. [4] Cultivation of Sugar Cane, by Dr. Stubbs. [5] From United States Department of Agriculture Bulletin, No. 107, p. 203. [6] Bulletin 91, Louisiana Sugar Experiment Station. [7] All statistics, and much of the information that applies specifically to robusta coffee have been adapted from "Robusta and Some Allied Coffee Species" by Dr. C. J. J. Van Hall, of the department of agriculture, Buitenzorg, Java, published in the Agr. Bul. of the F. M. S., Vol. I: No. 7, 1913, and from a review of a series of articles on robusta coffee by Dr. E. Wildeman, in the Monthly Bul. of Agr. Intelligence, etc., Vol. IV: No. 4, 1913. 
38955	----	THE PRAIRIE FARMER A Weekly Journal for THE FARM, ORCHARD AND FIRESIDE. ESTABLISHED IN 1841. ENTIRE SERIES VOL 56--No 12. CHICAGO, SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1884. PRICE $2.00 PER YEAR IN ADVANCE. [Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was originally located on page 184 of the periodical. It has been moved here for ease of use.] THE CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER. AGRICULTURE--Drainage and Good Husbandry Page 177; Plan for a Flood Gate, 178; Great Corn Crops, 178; A Charming Letter, 178; Prairie Roads, 178; Experiments with Indian Corn, 178; Specialty Farming, 178. HORTICULTURE--Sand Mulching of Orchard Trees, Page 182; Pear Blight, 182; The Black Walnut, 182. Notes on Current Topics, 182; Prunings, 182-183. FLORICULTURE--Some New Plants, Page 183. OUR BOOK TABLE--Page 183. ENTOMOLOGICAL--Insects in Illinois, Page 179. SILK CULTURE--Osage for Silk-Worms, Page 187. SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL--Items, Page 187. LITERATURE--The Gentleman Farmer (Poetry), Page 190; Frank Dobb's Wives, 190-191. FIELD AND FURROW--Items, 179. HUMOROUS--Items, Page 191. POULTRY NOTES--Chicken Chat, Page 186. THE APIARY--Spring Care of Bees, Page 186; Extracted Honey, 186; Southern Wisconsin Bee-Keepers' Association, 186. EDITORIAL--Items, Page 184; Lumber and Shingles, 184; Foot-and-Mouth Disease, 184; Premiums on Corn, 184-185; The First Unfortunate Result, 185; Questions Answered, 185; Wayside Notes, 185. YOUNG FOLKS--Little Dilly Dolly (Poetry) Page 189; Uncle Jim's Yarn, 189; Puddin Tame's Fun, 189; The Alphabet, 189; What a Child Can Do, 189. LIVE STOCK--Items, Page 180; Polled Aberdeen Cattle, 180; Grass for Hogs, 180; A Stock Farm and Ranch, 180; Western Wool-Growers, 180; The Cattle Diseases near Effingham, 180-181. THE DAIRY--Camembert Cheese, Page 181; Few Words and More Butter, 181. COMPILED CORRESPONDENCE--Page 181. VETERINARY--Symptoms of Foot-and-Mouth Disease, Page 181; Shyness and Timidity, 181; Glanders, 181. HOUSEHOLD--How He Ventilated the Cellar, Page 188; An Old Roman Wedding, 188; Mr. Smith's Stovepipe, 188; Progress, 188; A Family Jar, 188; Mouce Trap and other Sweetemetes, 188; A Sonnet on a Ronnet, 188; Pleasantries, 188. NEWS OF THE WEEK--Page 192. MARKETS--Page 192. [Illustration: ABERDEEN-ANGUS BULLOCK, "BLACK PRINCE." Owned by Geary Bros., London, Ont.] Drainage and Good Husbandry. BY C. G. ELLIOTT, DRAINAGE ENGINEER. I. The practical advantage of drainage as it appears to the casual observer, is in the increased production of valuable crops. Ordinary land is improved, and worthless land so far reclaimed as to yield a profit to its owner, where once it was a source of loss and a blemish upon an otherwise fair district. The land-buyer who looks for a future rise in his purchase, recognizes the value of drainage, being careful to invest his capital in land which has natural drainage, or is capable of being drained artificially with no great expense, if it is suitable for use as an agricultural domain. The physician, though perhaps unwilling, is obliged to admit drainage as an important agency in the reduction of malignant diseases and much general ill-health among dwellers in both country and village. Our State Board of Health recognizes the influence of land drainage upon the healthfulness of districts where it is practiced. The Secretary of this Board gives it as his opinion that even good road drainage would diminish the number of preventable diseases 25 per cent. Such are now some of the impressions as to the value of drainage among those who judge from acknowledged effects. That a great change has been brought about by this practice is apparent to the most superficial observer, if he compares pre-drainage with the present. A FEW FACTS. The Indiana Bureau of Statistics made an investigation about two years ago of the influence of tile drainage upon production and health in that State. Two periods of five years were selected, one before drainage was begun, and the other after most of the farms had been drained, the area examined being one township in Johnson county. As near as could be determined, the average yearly yield of wheat for a period of five consecutive years before drainage was nine and a half bushels per acre. The same land and tillage after drainage in a period of five consecutive years produced an average of nineteen and one-fourth bushels per acre. Comparing the corn crops in the same way for the same time, it was found that the average yearly yield before drainage was thirty-one and three-fourths bushels per acre, and after drainage seventy-four and one-fourth bushels per acre. In order to determine the influence of drainage upon health, physicians, who had, during the same two periods of five years each, answered all calls in cases of disease, were asked to report from their books all cases of malarial fever. It was found from this data that, for the first period of five years before drainage, there had been 1,480 cases of malarial disease. During the next five years under a pretty good system of drainage, there were but 490 cases of such disease. These facts show that drainage not only brings material prosperity to the individual, but promotes the general healthfulness of the climate of that district, in which all are interested and all enjoy. It is a matter of note that the Campagne about Rome, which in ancient days was the healthful home of a dense population, is now afflicted with the most deadly fevers. It is claimed by high authorities that this is due to the destruction and choking of the drains which in excavating are found everywhere, but always filled and useless. It will be readily seen that this subject has at least two important bearings upon our prosperity, and though in considering and perfecting general farm drainage, the effect upon health may be manifested without effort being put forth in that direction, yet it should always be kept in mind and receive that consideration which it deserves. DRAINAGE AND FANCY FARMING. It is thought by many who have not yet tested the value of tile drainage, that it is one of those luxuries often indulged in by so-called fancy farmers. By such farmers is meant those who farm for pleasure rather than for profit; those who raise wheat which costs them $1 per bushel, but which is worth only eighty cents on the market; those who raise beef at a cost of ten cents per lb. and sell it for six cents per lb.; in short, they are men (and there are many of them) who receive their income from some other source, and cultivate a farm for recreation. That drainage properly belongs to this class of farmers is a mistaken notion, as hundreds of thrifty, money-making farmers in the West would prove, could they now give their experience. In the example previously given, drainage increased the production of wheat and corn fully 100 per cent, which was a township report for five years. In order to emphasize these statements, we will insert a few practical examples communicated to the Drainage Journal during last year. Geo. P. Robertson: "One ten-acre field failed to produce anything except a few small ears. I drained it, and have cropped it for eight years successively, and have paid time and again for husking 100 bushels of corn per acre." "Mr. Losee, Norwich, Canada, says that as a matter of actual test, his underdrained land yields one-third larger crops than his undrained fields, although the same treatment in other respects is applied, and the land is of the same character throughout. The average wheat yield of his undrained land is twenty bushels per acre, while the drained fields yielded an average of thirty bushels. As the cost of draining on his farm is estimated at $20 per acre, this preparation of the soil pays for itself in two years." Horton Ferguson, Indiana: "The swamp contained twenty-seven acres, and was regarded by all neighbors as utterly worthless except for hunting grounds. Mr. Ferguson, who has great faith in underdraining, determined to undertake to reclaim the land, confident if successfully done, it would be a paying investment. Last year he tile drained and grubbed it, paying customary rates for all the labor and tile, and this year put it in corn, with the following result: Dr. Cr. Tile used for 27 acres $544 87 Paid for ditching 88 00 Expense for clearing and grubbing 275 00 ------- Total expense $907 87 -------- By 2,530 bushels of corn at 50 cents $1,265 00 The land proved to be remarkably rich, having produced, as shown, ninety bushels to the acre, and Mr. F. assures us that several acres exceeded 100 bushels to the acre. It will thus be observed that he realized the first year of cultivation enough to pay the entire expense of reclaiming and had $357.13 left to pay on the crop expense. Next season, if favorable, he expects a still better yield." Every farmer knows that, in these times of easy transportation, profits do not depend so much upon the price his product brings in the market as upon the quantity he has to dispose of. In other words, abundant crops are the farmer's source of income. There is evidence enough at hand to justify the statement that of all improvements put upon farms containing wet land valued at $40 per acre and upwards, drainage pays the largest profit for the outlay. Just what this profit will be will depend upon the soil drained, the necessary cost required to improve it, and the use and management of it after it is drained. All of these things vary so that each case must be considered by itself. Drainage is simply a necessary part of good husbandry which merits the careful consideration of all thinking farmers. Plan for a Flood Gate. To maintain a fence across a water course, is one of the trials and tribulations of the farmer. After a heavy rain, generally fences in such places are either badly damaged or entirely washed away. Having been troubled this way for years, I have hit upon the following plan, which, after two years' trial I find to be a success. A stick of timber, three or four inches in diameter, is placed where the gate is needed, and fastened down with stakes, driven slanting, on each side, the tops of the stakes lapping over the piece so as to hold it securely, and driven well down, so as not to catch the drift, but allowing the piece to turn freely; inch and half holes are bored in the piece and uprights are fitted in them; the material of which the gate is made is fastened to these uprights. A light post is driven on the lower side and the gate fastened to it. This will keep the gate in place in any ordinary flood, but when a Noah comes along, it turns down on the bottom of creek, and waters and drifts pass over it. When the water subsides all that is necessary to do is to turn the gate back to its upright position. If the gate is not needed during the winter, it is better to lay it down and let it remain in that position until spring, for if it is fastened with the post in an upright position, it will be broken with the spring floods. A. E. B. CARTHAGE, ILL. Great Corn Crops. It having been mentioned in the Iowa State Register some weeks ago that Mr. Hezekiah Fagan, of Polk county, in that State, had once grown one hundred and fifty-eight bushels of corn per acre, a son of Mr. Fagan writes the following regarding the kinds of corn, the ground, and the manner of cultivation: "Father's farm joined Brown's Park on the north and run a mile north; the corn was raised where the old orchard now is; it was part prairie and part brush land, and was about the third crop. The ground was plowed in the spring, harrowed and marked out with a single shovel both ways, the rows being four feet apart each way. The corn was dropped by hand and covered with a hoe, and left without harrowing until large enough to plow, and was plowed twice with single shovel, and once with the two horse stirring plow and hilled up as high as possible, and hoed enough to keep clean. The seed was from corn father brought from Rockville, Ind., with him when he moved to Des Moines, in the spring of 1848, and was of the large, yellow variety which matured then and matures now with anything like a good season, and I verily believe that with as good ground and as good treatment and as much care in having every hill standing, and from three to four stalks in every hill, that the amount might be raised again, if it was over 150 bushels per acre, and I must say that I have never seen a large variety of corn that suited me so well, that would yield so much, or mature so well, and if any Iowa farmer will come and look at my crib of corn of this year's raising, and if he will say he can show a better average ear raised on similar ground, with similar treatment, I would like to speak for a few bushels for seed at almost any price, and I will not except the much-puffed Leaming variety." The young man adds that his advice to Iowa farmers is, "to raise big horses, big cattle, big hogs, big corn, and big grass, and if the profits are not big, too, they had better make up their minds farming isn't their forte, and go at something else." Being desirous of knowing something of his big corn yield we wrote to Mr. Clarkson, of the Register, for further information, and received the following reply: DEAR SIR: Yours of the 7th inst., relative to the Fagan corn received. The corn raised by Hezekiah Fagan was thirty years ago, and he received the premium for it at the Iowa State Fair in 1854. The only facts I have relative to it are in the published proceedings of the State Agricultural Society. It states that he raised in Polk county, Iowa, on five acres, at the rate of 139-1/2 bushels per acre, shelled corn. The whole, shelled, measured 697-1/2 bushels, but weighed, it made 151 bushels and fifty-three pounds per acre. At the same fair, J. W. Inskip exhibited, with all of the necessary proofs, 136 bushels per acre. I think there was no mistake in these matters, as great care was taken to have statement correct; it is to this crop which his son refers in a late number of the Register. Yours truly, C. F. CLARKSON. DES MOINES, IOWA. A Charming Letter. At the head of the agricultural department in THE PRAIRIE FARMER I notice a standing invitation, viz.: "Farmers, write for your paper." All right! Now, if you will just move up a little I'll take a seat in your Communicative Association. We, that is my wife and myself, eagerly read and discuss the interesting articles with which THE PRAIRIE FARMER is replete every week, and many are the practical hints that we have found therein. It is not strange that, in the heart of a new country with vast undeveloped resources and unlimited possibilities, a young farmer who has his fortune yet to make, should be particularly enthusiastic. Tired of the atmosphere of the school-room, fagged out by ten years of study and teaching, and plainly seeing the improbability of being able to lay by enough for a rainy day or old age in this noble, but as a rule, unremunerative calling, my mind involuntarily reverted back to my early life on the old homestead in Illinois, to substantials implied in that word, and to its pleasant memories. My mind was made up. With my portion of the old homestead in my pocket, I turned the key in the school-house door, grateful for the experience and lessons of patience gained inside of it, a friend of education, and with a heart full of sympathy for the teachers of our public schools. I came to "the land of the Dakotas" once more to break the "stubborn glebe" and enjoy the sweets of farm life. Next June I shall have had three years' experience in my new undertaking. I have succeeded fairly well. At some future time I may communicate something about raising wheat and vegetables in Dakota, to the readers of "our paper." This winter is proving to be rather long and stormy, but with plenty of fuel, good books and papers, time has not hung heavily on my hands. Indeed, I consider these long Northern winters a decided advantage to those who regard the cultivation of the mind as important as the cultivation of the fields. I am afraid the majority of farmers do not lay enough stress upon mental culture. In this age of cheap books there can be no excuse for being without them. Systematic reading leads to the best results in mental culture just as systematic farming leads to the best results in agriculture. At the beginning of the winter I select some standard work as my principal reading matter and stick to it until I have it completed, reading for an interlude, good weekly newspapers, and one or two of the standard magazines, with which I always like to be supplied. This breaks up all monotony, and makes reading thoroughly enjoyable and instructive. This winter I am reading the works of Goethe, the great German author. March, the last winter month, has come, and although the wind is still howling and snow flying, before the first of April we expect to see the railroads thronged with emigrant cars bringing new settlers, more thrift and more capital. Thousands of new homes will be established on the fertile prairies next summer. Will you please regard this as a kind of an introduction into your "association?" If we find that we are mutually agreeable perhaps we shall find occasion to meet again. KASPER VON ESCHENBACH, PRAIRIE PARK FARM, BATH, D. T. Prairie Roads. The article on prairie roads in THE PRAIRIE FARMER of March 1st, 1884, by A. G. H., of Champaign county, was good, and I would like to see more on the same subject. If we get any better roads, we must keep the ball rolling. The great objection to the Ross plan, or any plan of road-tiling here, is this. When tile is laid in the roadway the teams will travel right over it, and the black soil gets packed and puddled until it is as impervious to water as clay, and the water can't get into the tile. And on the clay hillsides, if the tile is covered with clay, the water can't get into it. This has been well tested here, for we have been road-tiling for six years. The question seems to be to get the water into the tile. The answer is simple enough. We must provide sink holes for it. We must fill the ditch over the tile with sand, gravel, or anything that will let the water in, a yard in length, say, once every rod. Then I think the Ross plan would be perfect. As to the cost, well, $750 per mile seems large, but to take an average of the roads in our county one-half that sum would answer, for it is only the worst places would need the full Ross plan. In a good many places, one string of tile with gravel sinks would do, and others with the laterals to drain all to one side, thus saving the cost of one string of tile, or more than one-third of the whole cost. Now, if we get the commissioners to commence the work, we must vote for men who are in favor of road-tiling as commissioners. There is where the battle must be fought. Buckle on the armor comrades and see that the work is done. W. H. S., MCLEAN CO., ILL. Experiments With Indian Corn. On May 16, 135 kinds of corn were planted in the garden, with the intention of promoting the cross fertilization of the varieties in order to study the effects. The seed used was some of it selected on account of its purity; other seed was from named varieties, still other seed from varieties purposely hybridized, or presumed from their appearance or location on the ear to be hybridized; and seed which possessed peculiarities in appearance. The types represented were the three kinds of pop-corns, the flint pop, the pearl pop, and the rice pop; the flints in eight-rowed and twelve-rowed varieties, and soft or Tuscarora's; the sweets in two or more types of ear, the one corresponding to the flint, another to the dent corn ear; and the dents also in two or more types, the eight-rowed with broad kernel, and another, the many rowed, with deep kernel. We also had a pod or husk corn. Through a study of the crop from these various seeds, we are enabled to make some general conclusions, which probably are sufficient to generalize from, but which certainly apply to the case in hand. The seed of the preceding year gives uniformity of ear; that is, a dent corn seed may produce an eight-rowed flint, or an eighteen-rowed dent, but each ear will be perfect of its kind, and will be free from kernels of other type than its own. The flint corn kernel may produce several varieties of flint corn ear, or dent corn ear, but there will be no variety in the kernel upon the ear; a dent corn seed may furnish a sweet corn ear, and dent corn ears, but not mixed upon the cob. A pop-corn kernel may produce a sweet corn ear, of sweet corn type, a sweet corn ear of pop-corn type, or a pop-corn ear of the various types, without admixture of kernels upon the ears. On the other hand, hybridization of the current year produces changes in the kernel, so that one ear of corn may bear kernels of various colors, and of various types, the tendency, however, being for the shape of the kernel to be governed by the type of the maize ear upon which it is found. The appearance of various types upon an ear allow of some curious generalizations. Thus, the rice pop kernel form does not appear upon ears of other character, nor does the pearl pop kernel form appear upon the rice pop ear. The flint pop does not seem to appear upon either the rice or the pearl pop type, so far as form is concerned, but its structure, however, influences. Sweet corn, however, appears upon the three types of pop-corn indiscriminately, but, on the other hand, the pop-corns do not appear upon the flint corn ears. While flint corn appears abundantly on sweet corn ears, on the other hand, sweet corn does not appear upon the flint corns. Dent corn kernels will appear upon the sweet corn whose type of ear is that of the dent ear, but not upon sweet corn whose type is that of the flint ear. The dent corn, again, does not appear upon the flint ear, but in some isolated instances the flint corn kernel may appear upon the dent ear. The appearance of kernels of one variety upon ears of another variety, for each of the types, is of frequent and constant occurrence, except in the case of red ears. The red ears have a constancy of color which is truly remarkable: where sweet corn appears upon red pop and red dent ears the sweet corn partakes of the red color. The practical value of these deductions consists in the guide they afford toward the improvement of the varieties of corn that we grow. For instance: by planting in adjoining hills, or, better still, the mixed seed of two varieties of corn, one of which is distinguished for its length of ear and smallness of cob, and the other for the large size of its kernel, we should anticipate, in many instances, the transfer of the large kernel to the small ear and of the small kernel to the large ear. By selecting from the crop those ears which have length and the large kernel, we should anticipate, by a series of selections, the attaining of a new variety, in which the large kernel and length of cob would be persistent. The same remarks hold true with the dent corns. But in the matter of selections the true principle would seem to be to plant but one kernel of the desired type from an ear of the desired type, and to keep the plant from this kernel free from the influence of plants of another type, and securing the crop through self-fertilization. After the first year of this procedure, by the selection of two or more kernels of the same type from different plants, cross fertilization should be used, the crop being gradually purified by selection. While the maize plant, as a rule, is not self-fertilized, that is, as a general thing the pollen from one plant fertilizes the silk of another, yet in very many cases the pollen and the silk upon the same plant is synchronous, and self-fertilization becomes possible, and undoubtedly is of frequent occurrence. The pollen ripens from below upward, and thus the fall of the pollen, through the successive ripening of the blooms, may last for three or four days, and there is a great variation in period of blooming as between individual plants. The silk maintains its receptivity for pollen for some little time, but for how long a period we do not yet know from direct observation. It seems, however, true, that closely following pollination, the silk loses its transparent structure and begins to shrivel, while before pollination is effected the silk retains its succulency for several days.--_E. Lewis Sturtevant, Director N. Y. Exp. Station._ Specialty Farming. I noticed in THE PRAIRIE FARMER of February 23d, a communication from Cape Girardeau, Mo., on "The Dignity of Our Calling." It contains some very good reasoning, but I do not indorse it all, and take this mode of expressing my views upon the subject. The point upon which I beg leave to differ from the gentleman is, should a farmer have a smattering idea of everything pertaining to farming? I believe that a man should make a specialty of some particular branch of farming, for it is universally conceded by all competent authority that no man can succeed in a given pursuit unless his time and energies are concentrated in that direction, consequently we have successful men in all the avenues of life--and why? from the simple fact that these men make a specialty of some particular branch of their calling; they are no jack-of-all-trades--not by any means. So it is with farming; the man who endeavors to be proficient in all its departments is apt to be a failure, while his specialist neighbor succeeds, simply because he has his course marked out, and bends his energies in that direction. Life is too short for a man to comprehend everything. It is true, that the farmer has no fixed law by which to guide him; however, he must, in measure, be governed by past experience. If the farmer does his part, God will do the rest. In my opinion, what we want, is not learning in every branch of farming by the same individual, but we do want lore in a given direction, and then success will crown our every effort. Take as an example one of our large machine shops; do we find its workmen, each one, commencing a machine and completing it in all its parts. No; each man has a special task to perform, only that and nothing more. As to farmers' sons longing for other callings, I am forced to admit that it is a lamentable fact which can not be ignored. I believe the reason for this is that they are constantly coming in contact with nature in all her varied forms, and before they have yet reached their majority, they become inspired with an ambition which is prone to go beyond the boundary of farm life, hence we find them, step by step, climbing the ladder of fame. However, we have one consoling fact, and that is, they make some of the most noted men we have--find them where you may. A glorious example of this is in the person of a man who rose from the humble position of plowboy, to that of Chief Executive of the Nation. A few words more and I am done. If the fathers of this land would have their sons follow the noble vocation of farming, let them educate them thoroughly for the branch which they would have them pursue, and by so doing teach them that proficiency in any given direction is sure to command respect and success. SUBSCRIBER. Field and Furrow. One of the strong points in preparing horses for spring work is in having their shoulders in a good, sound condition. With this to start with and soft and well-fitting collars there need be but little fear of any difficulty in keeping them all right, no matter how hard the labor horses have to endure. By keeping the collars well cleared of any dirt which may accumulate upon them from the sweating of the horse, and by bathing them daily with cold water, there need be but little fear of bad shoulders. HUSBANDMAN: Every member of the Elmira Farmers' Club present had used sapling clover, more or less, and all regarded it with favor, although for making hay common red clover is worth more, as it is also for pasture. Mr. Ward expressed the opinion, in which all shared, that there were really but two varieties of field clover in common use at the North, red clover, usually called medium, and the large, or sapling clover. The chief function of the clover root as a fertilizer is in bringing nitrogen from the lower soil upward within reach of succeeding crops and changing its form to meet the requirements of the plant and crops that follow. BROW CHEMICAL CO. CIRCULAR: The wise farmer will change his seed from year to year. A remarkable feature of the variety in potatoes is that no two kinds of potato are made up of the same chemical components in precisely the same proportion. There are now over 300 varieties of potatoes of greater or less merit. Some are celebrated for their large size, some for their fineness of texture and some for the great increase which may be expected from them. One hundred and thirteen years ago there were but two known varieties of potatoes, one being white, the other red. If the soil is too poor potatoes starve, if too wet they catch cold, and refuse to grow to perfection. FARMER'S ADVOCATE: Spring operations will soon commence, and with these a demand for good farm hands. The general rule that is followed in this country is to put off the hiring of men to the last moment, and trust to chances for some one coming along, and then probably some inferior workman has to be taken, or none at all. Men who know their business on a farm will not wait, and are early picked up in the neighborhood in which they may reside. The trusting to men coming along just at the exact moment you are crowded, is a bad policy. There should always be profitable employment for a man in the early spring months before seeding commences, and it will pay any farmer to secure good farm hands early; and pay them good wages. PEORIA TRANSCRIPT: We prepared a half acre of ground as good as we knew how. Upon one-half of this plat we planted one bushel of seed obtained from Michigan, and upon the other half of home-grown seed, both being of the variety known as Snowflake. The two lots of seed cut for planting were similar in appearance, both as regards size and quality. The whole lot received the same treatment during the growing season. The plants made about the same growth on the two plats and suffered equally from bugs; but when it came to digging, those from new seed yielded two bushels of large potatoes for every one that could be secured on the land planted with seed of our own growing. This difference in yield could be accounted for on no other theory than the change in seed, as the quality of seed, soil, and culture were the same. This leads to the belief that simply procuring seed of favorite varieties from a distance would insure us good crops at much less expense than can be done experimenting with new, high-priced seeds. In another column a Kansas correspondent speaks of the crab grass in an exceedingly favorable way. We find the following regarding this grass in a late New York Times: Every Northern farmer knows the common coarse grass called door-yard grass, which has long, broad leaves, a tough, bunchy root, and a three-fingered spreading head, which contains large, round seeds. It is known as Eleusine Indica, and grows luxuriously in open drains and moist places. It appears late in the summer. This is an extremely valuable grass in the South. A friend who went to Georgia soon after the war bought an abandoned plantation on account of the grass growing upon it. It was this door-yard grass. He pastured sheep upon it and cut some for hay. Northern baled hay was selling at $30 a ton at that time. He wrote asking me to buy him two mowers and a baling press, and went to baling hay for the Southern market, selling his sheep and living an easy life except in haying time. His three hundred acres of cleared land has produced an average of 200 tons of hay every year which gives him about four times as much profit as an acre of cotton would do. Perhaps there may come an end to this business, and the grass will run out for want of fresh seed, but with a yearly dressing of Charleston phosphate the grass has kept up its original vigor. Now why could we not make some use of this grass, and of others, such as quack-grass, which defy so persistently all our efforts to destroy them? [Illustration: Entomological] Insects in Illinois. Prof. Forbes, State Entomologist, makes the following report to the State Board of Agriculture: "Now that our year's entomological campaign is completed, a brief review of some of its most important features and results will doubtless be of interest. Early attention was given to the insects attacking corn in the ground, before the sprout has appeared above the surface. A surprising number were found to infest it at this period, the results of their injuries being usually attributed by farmers to the weather, defective seed, etc. Among these the seed corn maggot (Anthomyia zeæ) was frequently noted, and was received from many parts of the State. A small, black-headed maggot, the larva of a very abundant, gnat-like fly (Seiara), was excessively common in ground which had been previously in grass, and attacked the seed corn if it did not germinate promptly and vigorously, but apparently did not injure perfectly sound and healthy grains. A minute yellow ant (Solenopsis fugax) was seen actually gnawing and licking away the substance of the sound kernels in the ground, both before and after they had sprouted. The corn plant-louse (Aphis maidis) was an early and destructive enemy of the crop, often throttling the young shoot before it had broken ground. It was chiefly confined to fields which had been just previously in corn or grass. "The chinch-bug was found in spring depositing the eggs for its first brood of young about the roots of the corn, a habit not hitherto reported. "With the increasing attention to the culture of sorghum, its insect enemies are coming rapidly to the front. Four species of plant-lice, two of them new, made a vigorous attack upon this crop in the vicinity of Champaign, and two of them were likewise abundant in broom-corn. "The corn root-worm (Diabrotica longicornis) was occasionally met with in sorghum, but does not seem likely to do any great mischief to that plant. It could not be found in broom-corn. In fields of maize, however, it was again very destructive, where corn had been raised on the same ground a year or two before. The Hessian Fly did great damage throughout the winter wheat region of the State, many fields not being worth harvesting in consequence of its ravages. Several facts were collected tending to show that it is three brooded in the southern part of the State. Nearly or quite all the last brood passed the summer as "flax seeds" in the stubble, where they might easily have been destroyed by general and concerted action. Fortunately, the summer weather was unfavorable to their development; and the drouth conspired with their parasites to greatly diminish their numbers. In the regions under our observation, not one in a thousand emerged from the midsummer pupa-cases, and numbers of the larvæ were found completely dried up. "The wheat straw-worm (Isosoma tritici), a minute, slender, yellow grub, which burrows inside the growing stem, dwarfing or blighting the forming head, was abundant throughout the winter wheat region of Southern Illinois, causing, in some places, a loss scarcely exceeded by that due to the Hessian Fly. Our breeding experiments demonstrate that this insect winters in the straw as larvæ or pupa, emerging as an adult fly early in spring, these flies laying their eggs upon the stems after they commence to joint. As the flies are very minute, and nearly all are wingless, their spread from field to field is slow, and it seems entirely within the power of the individual farmer to control this insect by burning or otherwise destroying the stubble in summer or autumn, and burning the surplus of the straw not fed to stock early in spring. A simple rotation of crops, devoting land previously in wheat to some other grain or to grass, will answer instead of burning the stubble. "The life history of the wheat bulb-worm (Meromyza Americana) was completed this year. The second or summer brood did decided injury to wheat in Fulton county, so many of the heads being killed that some of the fields looked gray at a little distance. This species was also injurious to rye, but much less so than to wheat. It certainly does not attack oats at all; fields of that grain raised where winter wheat had been destroyed by it, and plowed up, being entirely free from it, while wheat fields adjacent were badly damaged. We have good evidence that postponement of sowing to as late a date as possible prevents the ravages of this insect, in the same way as it does those of the Hessian Fly. "The common rose chafer (Macrodactylus subspinosus) greatly injured some fields of corn in Will county, the adult beetle devouring the leaves. "The 'flea negro-bug' (Thyreocoris pulicarius) was found injurious to wheat in Montgomery county, draining the sap from the heads before maturity, so that the kernel shriveled and ripened prematurely. In parts of some fields the crop was thus almost wholly destroyed. "The entomological record of the orchard and the fruit garden is not less eventful than that of the farm. In extreme Southern Illinois, the forest tent caterpillar (Clislocampa sylvatica) made a frightful inroad upon the apple orchard, absolutely defoliating every tree in large districts. It also did great mischief to many forest trees. Its injuries to fruit might have been almost wholly prevented, either by destroying the eggs upon the twigs of the trees in autumn, as was successfully done by many, or by spraying the foliage of infested trees in spring with Paris green, or similar poison, as was done with the best effect and at but slight expense by Mr. David Ayres, of Villa Ridge. Great numbers of these caterpillars were killed by a contagious disease, which swept them off just as they were ready to transform to the chrysalis; but vast quantities of the eggs are now upon the trees, ready to hatch in spring. "A large apple orchard in Hancock county dropped a great part of its crop on account of injuries done to the fruit by the plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar). There is little question that these insects were forced to scatter through the apple orchard by the destruction, the previous autumn, of an old peach orchard which had been badly infested by them. "In Southern strawberry fields, very serious loss was occasioned by the tarnished plant-bug (Lygus lineolaris), which I have demonstrated to be at least a part of the cause of the damage known as the 'buttoning' of the berry. The dusky plant-bug (Deræcoris rapidus) worked upon the strawberries in precisely the same manner and at the same time, in some fields being scarcely less abundant than the other. I have found that both these species may be promptly and cheaply killed by pyrethrum, either diluted with flour or suspended in water, and also by an emulsion of kerosene, so diluted with water that the mixture shall contain about 3 per cent of kerosene. "The so-called 'strawberry root-worm' of Southern Illinois proves to be not one species merely, but three--the larvæ of Colaspsis brunnae, Paria aterrima and Scelodonta pubescens. The periods and life histories of these three species are curiously different, so that they succeed each other in their attacks upon the strawberry roots, instead of competing for food at the same time. The three together infest the plant during nearly the whole growing season--Colaspsis first, Paria next, and Scelodonta last. The beetles all feed upon the leaves in July and August, and may then be poisoned with Paris green. "The season has been specially characterized by the occurrence of several widespread and destructive contagious diseases among insects. Elaborate studies of these have demonstrated that they are due to bacteria and other parasitic fungi, that these disease germs may be artificially cultivated outside the bodies of the insects, and that when sown or sprinkled upon the food of healthy individuals, the disease follows as a consequence. We have in this the beginning of a new method of combating insect injuries which promises some useful results." Illinois Central Railroad. The elegant equipment of coaches and sleepers being added to its various through routes is gaining it many friends. Its patrons fear no accidents. Its perfect track of steel, and solid road-bed, are a guarantee against them. FARM IMPLEMENTS, Etc. NICHOLS & MURPHY'S CENTENNIAL WIND MILL. [Illustration of a windmill] Contains all the valuable features of his old "Nichols Mills" with none of their defects. This is the only balanced mill without a vane. It is the only mill balanced on its center. It is the only mill built on correct scientific principles so as to govern perfectly. ALL VANES Are mechanical devices used to overcome the mechanical defect of forcing the wheel to run out of its natural position. This mill will stand a heavier wind, run steadier, last longer, and crow louder than any other mill built. Our confidence in the mill warrants us in offering the first mill in each county where we have no agent, at agents' prices and on 30 days' trial. Our power mills have 25 per cent more power than any mill with a vane. We have also a superior feed mill adapted to wind or other power. It is cheap, durable, efficient. For circulars, mills, and agencies, address NICHOLS & MURPHY, Elgin, Ill. (Successors to the BATAVIA MANF. CO., of Batavia, Ill.) THE CHICAGO DOUBLE HAY AND STRAW PRESS [Illustration of a straw press] Guaranteed to load more Hay or Straw in a box car than any other, and bale at a less cost per ton. Send for circular and price list. Manufactured by the Chicago Hay Press Co., Nos. 3354 to 3358 State St., Chicago. Take cable car to factory. Mention this paper. DEDERICK'S HAY PRESSES. are sent anywhere on trial to operate against all other presses, the customer keeping the one that suits best. [Illustration of men working with a hay press] Order on trial, address for circular and location of Western and Southern Storehouses and Agents. TAKE NOTICE.--As parties infringing our patents falsely claim premiums and superiority over Dederick's Reversible Perpetual Press. Now, therefore, I offer and guarantee as follows: FIRST. That baling Hay with One Horse, Dederick's Press will bale to the solidity required to load a grain car, twice as fast as the presses in question, and with greater ease to both horse and man at that. SECOND. That Dederick's Press operated by One Horse will bale faster and more compact than the presses in question operated by Two Horses, and with greater ease to both man and beast. THIRD. That there is not a single point or feature of the two presses wherein Dederick's is not the superior and most desirable. Dederick Press will be sent any where on this guarantee, on trial at Dederick's risk and cost. P. K. DEDERICK & CO., Albany, N. Y. Sawing Made Easy Monarch Lightning Sawing Machine! Sent on 30 Days Test Trial. A Great Saving of Labor & Money. [Illustration of a male figure using a sawing machine] A boy 16 years old can saw logs FAST and EASY. MILES MURRAY, Portage, Mich., writes: "Am much pleased with the MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE. I sawed off a 30-inch log in 2 minutes." For sawing logs into suitable lengths for family stove-wood, and all sorts of log-cutting, it is peerless and unrivaled. Illustrated Catalogue, Free. AGENTS WANTED. Mention this paper. Address MONARCH MANUFACTURING CO., 163 E. Randolph St., Chicago Ill. MONARCH HORSE HOE AND CULTIVATOR COMBINED For Hoeing & Hilling Potatoes, Corn, Onions, Beets, Cabbages, Turnips, &c. [Illustration of hoe-cultivator] SENT ON 30 Days' TEST TRIAL. An immense saving of labor and money. We guarantee a boy can cultivate and hoe and hill potatoes, corn, etc., 15 times as easy and fast as one man can the old way. Illustrated Catalogue FREE. AGENTS WANTED. Mention this paper. Address Monarch Mfg. Co., 206 State St., Chicago, Ill. [Illustration of boiler] THE PROFIT FARM BOILER is simple, perfect, and cheap; the BEST FEED COOKER; the only dumping boiler; empties its kettle in a minute. Over 5,000 in use; Cook your corn and potatoes, and save one-half the cost of pork. Send for circular. D. R. SPERRY & CO., Batavia, Illinois. "THE BEST IS THE CHEAPEST." SAW MILLS, ENGINES THRESHERS, HORSE POWERS, (For all sections and purposes.) Write for Free Pamphlet and Prices to The Aultman & Taylor Co., Mansfield, Ohio. REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year and, the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ [Illustration: LIVE STOCK DEPARTMENT] Stockmen, Write for Your Paper. Well-informed live stock men estimate the drive from Texas the coming spring at 325,000 head, unless shipping rates are unusually favorable, when it may go above 400,000 head. A careful estimate of the stock on the range near the Black Hills is as follows: Cattle, 383,900 head; horses, 2,200; sheep, 8,700. It is asserted that the stock has wintered remarkably well, the loss not exceeding 1-1/2 per cent. A virulent disease resembling blind staggers has appeared among the horses of Oregon, and a large number of valuable animals have succumbed to it. Over 400 have died in two counties. So far the veterinarians have been unable to stay its progress. The period of gestation in the mare is in general forty-eight weeks; the cow forty six weeks; the ewe twenty-one weeks, and the sow sixteen weeks. Having the date of service, the date at which birth is due may be easily ascertained. Careful breeders always keep strict record of each animal. The Illinois State Board of Agriculture has adopted a rule requiring the slaughter of all sweepstakes animals at the next Fat Stock Show, in order that the judgment of the committees may be verified as to the quality of the animals. The premiums for dressed carcasses have been largely increased over last year. Polled Aberdeen Cattle. The subject of our 1st page illustration, Black Prince, is a representative of that black, hornless race, which had its foundation in Scotland several hundred years ago, known as Polled Aberdeen-Angus Cattle. This breed of cattle has grown into very high favor in America during the last five or six years; so much so, that, while in 1879 the number of representatives of this race in America were very few, now the demand for them is so great that the number imported yearly is easily disposed of at prices ranging from $250 to $2,000. Messrs. Geary Bros., London, Ont., say that the demand for such cattle during the past winter has never been equaled in their long experience. As the prevalence of the foot-and-mouth disease in Great Britain, will, without a doubt cause the importation of cattle from that country to be prohibited at an early day, it is safe to say that the value of such stock must rise, as the number of its representatives in America is limited, and those who have such stock in their possession fully appreciate their value; and not being under the necessity of selling, will hold their Aberdeen-Angus cattle unless enticed by a very high price. Therefore, the coming public sale of Aberdeen-Angus cattle in Chicago may be looked forward to as going to show unequaled average prices and especially of individual prize animals. Black Prince was bought by Messrs. Geary Bros., London, Ont., in Scotland, and brought to America last year. In him are to be found all the fine characteristics of his race. He took the second place at the Smithfield Fat Stock Show of 1883; at the Kansas Fat Stock Show of the same year he was placed second to the Short-horn steer Starlight; and at the last Fat Stock Show of Chicago he took first place among the best three-year-olds of the country. At the time of entry for the Chicago Show he was 1,380 days old, and his weight 2,330 pounds, almost 175 pounds less than he weighed before leaving Scotland for this country. Besides the prizes above mentioned, Black Prince won numerous honors in his own country before coming here. Their black, glossy, thick coats, their hornless heads, and particularly their low-set, smooth, round and lengthy bodies are the principal features of this breed. Beef consumers will find them in the front rank for yielding wholesome, nourishing food, juicy, tender, and of the best flavor, free from all unpalatable masses of fat or tallow. It is these favorable characteristics which have gained such an excellent, and widespread reputation for the Aberdeen-Angus cattle. The growing belief that the best breed of beeves is the one that for a given quantity of food, and in the shortest time will produce the greatest weight of nutritious food combined with the smallest amount of bone, tallow, and other waste is going to make these cattle as popular with our beef consumers and producers generally as they have been with those who have long been familiar with their many superior qualities. Grass for Hogs. With plenty of milk and mill-feed to mix with the corn, good hogs may be grown without grass. But with corn alone, the task of growing and fattening a hog without grass costs more than the hog is worth. To make hog-growing profitable to the farmer, he must have grass. In the older States where the tame grasses are plenty, it is a very thoughtless farmer who has not his hog pasture. But out here in Kansas and Nebraska, where we have plenty of corn, but no grass, except the wild varieties, the most enterprising of us are at our wits' ends. Hogs will eat these wild grasses while tender in the spring, and, even without corn, will grow long, tall, and wonderfully lean, and in the fall will fatten much more readily than hogs grown on corn. But fattening the lean hogs takes too much corn. We must have a grass that the hogs will relish, and on which they will both grow and fatten. They will do this on clover, orchard grass, bluegrass, and other tame grasses. But we have not got any of these, nor do we know how to get them. Hundreds of bushels of tame grass seeds are sold every spring by our implement dealers. A few have succeeded in getting some grass, but nine out of ten lose their seed. We either do not know how to grow it, or the seed is not good, or the soil is too new. The truth, perhaps, lies a little in all three. Our agricultural colleges are claiming to have success with these grasses, and their experience would be of value to the farmers if these reports could ever reach them. Not one farmer in a hundred ever sees them. I know of but one farmer of sufficient political influence to receive these reports through the mails. The rest of us can get them for the asking. But not many of us know this, fewer know whom to ask, and still fewer ask. I do not know a farmer that orders a single copy. Farmers, living about our county towns, and doing their trading there, and having leisure enough to loaf about the public offices, and curiosity enough to scratch through the dust-covered piles of old papers and rubbish in the corner, are usually rewarded by finding a copy of these valuable reports. But we, who live far away from the county seat, do our farming without this aid, and mostly without any knowledge of their existence. This looks like a lamentable state of agricultural stupidity. Notwithstanding this dark picture we would all read, and be greatly profited by these reports, if they were laid on our tables. If it pays to expend so much labor and money in preparing these reports and sending them half way to the people, would it not be wise to expend a little more and complete the journey, by making it the duty of the assessor to leave a copy on every farmer's table? Compulsory education. As an explanation of much of the above, it must be remembered that we are nearly all recently from the East, that we have brought with us our Eastern experience, education, literature, and household gods; and that not until we have tried things in our old Eastern ways and failed, do we realize that we exist under a new and different state of things and slowly begin to open our eyes to the existence of Western agricultural reports and papers giving us the conditions on which the best results have been obtained. There will be more grass seed planted this spring than ever before, and the farmers will be guided by the conditions on which the best successes seem to have been obtained. But this seeding will not give us much grass for this coming summer. What must we do? I write for our Western farmers who have no clover, orchard grass, blue grass, but have in their cultivated fields. CRAB GRASS. This grass, the most troublesome weed of the West, smothering our gardens and converting our growing corn-fields into dense meadows, makes the best hog pasture in the world, while it lasts. Put hogs into a pasture containing all the tame grasses, with one corner in crab grass, and the last named grass will all be consumed before the other grasses are touched. Not only do they prefer it to any other grass, but on no grass will they thrive and fatten so well. Last spring I fenced twelve acres of old stalk ground well seeded to crab grass. With the first of June the field was green, and from then until frost pastured sixty large hogs, which, with one ear of corn each, morning and evening, became thoroughly fat. These were the finest and cheapest hogs I ever grew. This grass is in its glory from June till frosts. By sowing the ground early in oats, this will pasture the hogs until June, when the crab grass will occupy all the ground, and carry them through in splendid condition, and fat them, with an ear or corn morning and evening. A. D. LEE. CENTERVILLE, KAN. NOTE.--Many of our readers may be unfamiliar with the variety of grass spoken of by our correspondent. It is known as crop grass, crab grass, wire grass, and crow's foot (_Eleusine Indica_). Flint describes it as follows: Stems ascending, flattened, branching at the base; spikes, two to five, greenish. It is an annual and flowers through the season, growing from eight to fifteen inches high, and forming a fine green carpeting in lawns and yards. It is indigenous in Mississippi, Alabama, and adjoining States, and serves for hay, grazing, and turning under as a fertilizer. It grows there with such luxuriance, in many sections, as never to require sowing, and yields a good crop where many of the more Northern grasses would fail.--[ED. P. F.] A Stock Farm and Ranch. Some years ago Prof. J. B. Turner, of Jacksonville, Ill., whom almost every reader of THE PRAIRIE FARMER in days gone by knows, personally, or by his writings, in company with one of his sons conceived the idea of running an Illinois stock farm in connection with a ranch in Texas. The young animals were to be reared on the cheap lands in the latter State where care and attention amount to a trifle, and to ship them North to finish them off for market on the blue grass and corn of the Illinois farm. To carry out this purpose they purchased nearly 10,000 acres in Coleman county, Texas, and they converted 1,000 acres in a body in Montgomery county, Illinois, into a home stock farm. Unfortunately, just as all things were in readiness for extensive operations, the son died, leaving the business to Prof. Turner, now nearly an octogenarian and entirely unable to bear the burden thus forced upon him. As a consequence, he desires to sell these large and desirable possessions, separate or together, as purchasers may offer. The Illinois farm is well fenced and in a high state of cultivation. There are growing upon it more than 2,000 large evergreens, giving at once protection to stock and beauty to the landscape. There are also 1,500 bearing fruit trees, a vineyard, and a large quantity of raspberries, blackberries, currants, etc. Besides a good farm-house, there is a large barn, in which there are often fed at one time 150 head of horses, with plenty of room for each animal; and an abundance of storage room in proportion for grain and hay. Also a large sheep shed, the feeding capacity of which is 3,000 head. Also a large hog house, conveniently divided into pens with bins for grain. Other numerous out-buildings, granary, hay sheds, stock and hay scales, etc., etc. There are on the farm twelve miles of Osage orange hedge, the best kind of fence in the world, in perfect trim and full growth; and four miles of good rail fence, dividing the farm off into conveniently sized fields of forty, eighty and one hundred and sixty acres each, access to which is easily obtained by means of gates which open from each field into a private central road belonging to the farm, and directly connected with the stock yards near the house, so that it is not necessary to pass over other fields in the handling of stock. Stockmen will appreciate this arrangement. Owing to its special advantages for handling stock, it has become widely known as a "Model Stock Farm." The lands are all naturally well drained; no flat or wet land, and by means of natural branches, which run through every eighty acres, the whole farm is conveniently and easily watered, by an unfailing supply. There are besides three large wind mills, with connecting troughs for watering the stock yards and remotest field. This supply of stock water has never failed. It is therefore specially adapted for all kinds of stock raising, and is well stocked. It has on it a fine drove of Hereford cattle and Norman horses, and is otherwise fully equipped with all the recent improvements in farming implements. This farm is only about fifty miles from St. Louis, Mo., two miles from a railroad station, and six miles from Litchfield, Illinois. Besides its location commercially, and its advantages for handling stock, this farm is in one of the best wheat and fruit producing sections of Illinois, and has now on it 200 acres of fine wheat. The ranch in Texas consists of one body of 9,136 acres of choice land. By means of an unfailing supply of living water the whole ranch is well watered, and has besides a very large cistern. The soil is covered with the Curly Mesquite grass, the richest and most nutritious native stock grass known in Texas. There is also on the ranch a splendid growth of live oak trees, the leaves of which remain green the year round, furnishing shade in summer, and an ample protection for stock in winter. There is on the ranch a large well built stone house, and also a fine sheep shed, with bins for 5,000 bushels of grain. This shed is covered with Florida Cypress shingles and affords protection for 2,000 head of sheep, and can be used just as well for other kinds of stock. Here can be bred and raised to maturity at a mere nominal cost, all kinds of cattle, horses, mules, and other stock, no feed in winter being required beyond the natural supply of grass. After the stock reaches maturity they can be shipped to the Illinois Farm; and while all the cattle easily fatten in Texas enough for the market, still as they are generally shipped to St. Louis or Chicago, it costs but little more, and greatly increases the profits, to first ship them to the Illinois Farm, and put them in prime condition, besides being near the markets, and placing the owner in position to take advantage of desirable prices at any time. With horses and mules this is a special advantage readily apparent to every one. It will be seen at once that any individual with capital, or a stock company, or partnership of two or more men, could run this farm and ranch together at a great profit. All the improvements on both being made solely for convenience and profit and not anything expended for useless show. I do not write this communication from any selfish motive, for I have not a penny's worth of interest in either farm or ranch, but I want to let people who are looking for stock farms know that here is one at hand such as is seldom found, and at the same time to do my life-long friend and yours a slight favor in return for the great and lasting benefits he has, in the past, so freely conferred upon the farmers of the State and country. I know these lands can be bought far below their real value, and the purchaser will secure a rare bargain. I presume the Professor will be glad to correspond with parties, giving full particulars as to terms. SUBSCRIBER. MONTGOMERY CO., ILL. Western Wool-Growers. The Western wool-growers, in convention at Denver, Colorado, March 13th, unanimously adopted the following memorial to Congress: Whereas, The wool-growers of Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Idaho, New Mexico, and Minnesota, assembled in convention in the city of Denver, the 13th of March, 1884, representing 7,500,000 head of sheep, $50,000,000 invested capital, and an annual yield of 35,000,000 pounds of wool, and Whereas, Said Industry having been greatly injured by the reduction of the tariff bill of May, 1883, and being threatened with total destruction by the reduction of 20 per cent, as proposed by the Morrison tariff bill just reported to the House of Representatives by the Committee on Ways and Means; therefore Resolved, That we, the wool-growers in convention assembled, are opposed to the provisions of the Morrison bill now before Congress which aim to make a further reduction of 20 per cent on foreign wools and woolens, and that we ask a restoration of the tariff of 1867 in its entirety as relates to wools and woolens, by which, for the first time in the industrial history of the country, equitable relations were established between the duties on wool and those on woolen goods. Resolved, That we pledge ourselves to work for and to aid in the restoration of the tariff of 1867 on wools and woolens, and request all persons engaged or interested in the wool-growing industry to co-operate with us. Resolved, That we as wool-growers and citizens pledge ourselves to stand by all committees and associations in giving full and complete protection to all American industries in need of the same, and cordially invite their co-operation in this matter. The memorial concludes with an appeal to Western Senators and Representatives in Congress to do all in their power to restore the tariff of 1867. The Cattle Disease Near Effingham. Saturday, March 15, I visited the herds of Messrs. Du Brouck, Schooley and Fannce northeast of Effingham, Illinois, and carefully examined them with Mr. F. F. Hunt, of the university, as they were reported affected with foot-and-mouth disease. In each herd diseased cattle were found; about 20 distinctly marked cases, a few others having symptoms. The disease is unlike anything I have known, but does not resemble foot-and-mouth disease as described by any authority. Only the hind feet are affected, and these without ulceration. In most cases "scouring" was first noticed, followed by swelling above the hoofs. In the most severe cases, the skin cracked about the pastern joint or at the coronet. In four cases one foot had come off. Swelling of pastern and "scouring" were the only symptoms in several cases. The mouth and udders were healthful; appetites good. In one case there was slight vesicle on nostril and slight inflammation of gum. Some animals in contact with diseased ones for weeks remained healthful. Others were attacked after five weeks' isolation. The most marked cases were of eight to ten weeks standing. But one animal had died. What we saw is not foot and mouth disease as known abroad, nor is the contagious character of the disease proven from the cases in these herds. G. E. MORROW, UNIVERSITY, CHAMPAIGN, ILL. [Illustration: The Dairy] Dairymen, Write for Your Paper. Camembert Cheese. The Camembert is one of the variety of French cheeses that find ready sale in England at high prices. Mr. Jenkins describes the process of making this cheese in a late number of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England which information we find condensed in the Dublin Farmer's Gazette: The cows are milked three times a day, at 4.30 and 11.30 a. m., and at 6 p. m. In most dairies the evening's milk is highly skimmed in the morning, butter being made from the cream, and the milk divided into two portions one of which is added to the morning's and the other to the midday's milking. The mixture is immediately put into earthen vessels holding twelve to fifteen gallons each, and after it has been raised to the temperature of about 86 deg. Fahr., a sufficient quantity of rennet is added to make the curd fit to be transferred to the cheese moulds in three or four hours, or, perhaps, a longer interval in winter. The mixture of the rennet with the milk is insured by gentle stirring, and the pots are then covered with a square board. The curd is ready for removal when it does not adhere to the back of the finger placed gently upon it, and when the liquid that runs from the fingers is as nearly as possible colorless. The curd is transferred, without breaking it more than can be avoided, to perforated moulds four inches in diameter. The moulds are placed on reed mats resting on slightly inclined slabs, made of slate, cement, or other hard material, and having a gutter near the outer edge. The curd remains in the moulds twenty-four or even forty-eight hours, according to the season, being turned upside down after twelve or twenty-four hours; that is, when sufficiently drained at the bottom. After turning the face of the cheese, the inside of the mould is sprinkled with salt, and twelve hours afterward the opposite face and the rim of the cheeses are treated in the same way. The cheeses are then placed on movable shelves round the walls of the dairy for a day or two, after which the curing process commences by the cheeses being transferred to the "drying-room," and there placed on shelves made of narrow strips of wood with narrow intervals between them, or of ordinary planks with reed mats or clean rye straw. Here the greatest ingenuity is exerted to secure as dry an atmosphere and as equable a temperature as possible--the windows being numerous and small, and fitted with glass, to exclude air, but not light, when the glass is shut, with a wooden shutter to exclude both light and air; and with wire gauze to admit light and air, and exclude flies and winged insects, which are troublesome to the makers of soft cheese. The cheeses are turned at first once a day, and afterward every second day, unless in damp weather, when daily turning is absolutely necessary. In three or four days after the cheeses are placed in the drying-room they become speckled; in another week they are covered with a thick crop of white mold, which by degrees deepens to a dark yellow, the outside of the cheese becoming less and less sticky. At the end of about a month, when the cheese no longer sticks to the fingers, it is taken to the finishing room, where light is nearly excluded, and the atmosphere is kept very still and slightly damp. Here they remain three or four weeks, being turned every day or every second day, according to the season, and carefully examined periodically. When ready for market--that is to say, in winter, when ripe, and in summer, when half ripe--they are made up in packets of six, by means of straw and paper, with great skill and neatness. Few Words and More Butter. The Wisconsin Dairymen's Association last year offered prizes for the best essays on butter-making, the essays not to exceed 250 words. Competition was active, and many valuable little treatises was the result. The first prize was won by D. W. Curtis, of Fort Atkinson, and reads as follows. We commend it to all butter-makers and to all writers of essays as a model of the boiled-down essence of brevity: COWS. Select cows rich in butter-making qualities. FEED. Pastures should be dry, free from slough-holes, well seeded with different kinds of tame grasses, so that good feed is assured. If timothy or clover, cut early and cure properly. Feed corn, stalks, pumpkins, ensilage and plenty of vegetables in winter. GRAIN. Corn and oats, corn and bran, oil meal in small quantities. WATER. Let cows drink only such water as you would yourself. CARE OF COWS. Gentleness and cleanliness. MILKING. Brush the udder to free it from impurities. Milk in a clean barn, well ventilated, quickly, cheerfully, with clean hands and pail. Seldom change milkers. CARE OF MILK. Strain while warm; submerge in water 48 degrees. Open setting 60 degrees. SKIMMING. Skim at twelve hours; at twenty-four hours. CARE OF CREAM. Care must be exercised to ripen cream by frequent stirrings, keeping at 60 degrees until slightly sour. UTENSILS. Better have one cow less than be without a thermometer. Churns without inside fixtures. Lever butter worker. Keep sweet and clean. CHURNING. Stir the cream thoroughly; temper to 60 degrees; warm or cool with water. Churn immediately when properly soured, slowly at first, with regular motion, in 40 to 60 minutes. When butter is formed in granules the size of wheat kernels, draw off the buttermilk; wash with cold water and brine until no trace of buttermilk is left. WORKING AND SALTING. Let the water drain out; weigh the butter; salt, one ounce to the pound; sift salt on the butter, and work with lever worker. Set away two to four hours; lightly re-work and pack. A MACHINE that can take hay, corn fodder, grass, and grain and manufacture them into good, rich milk at the rate of a quart per hour for every hour in the twenty-four, is a valuable one and should be well cared for. There are machines--cows--which have done this. There are many thousands of them that will come well up to this figure for several months in the year, and which will, besides, through another system of organisms, turn out a calf every year to perpetuate the race of machines. Man has it in his power to increase the capacity of the cow for milk and the milk for cream. He must furnish the motive power, the belts, and the oil in the form of proper food, shelter, and kindly treatment. By withholding these he throws the entire machinery out of gear and robs himself. Compiled Correspondence. KANE COUNTY, MARCH 17.--Snow is nearly all gone. There is but little frost in the ground. The spring birds have come. Hay is plenty, winter wheat and winter rye look green, and have not been winter-killed to any great extent. Cattle and horses are looking well and are free from disease. We fear the spread of the foot-and-mouth disease. Every effort should be made to confine it within its present limits. Its spread in this county of so great dairy interests would be a great calamity. Our factory men will make full cream cheese during the summer months. The hard, skim cheese made last season, and sold at 2 cts per pound, paid the patrons nothing. We hear of factory dividends for January of $1.60 to $1.66. J. P. B. GRAND PRAIRIE, TEX., MARCH 8.--The spring is cold and late here; but little corn planted yet. Winter oats killed; many have sown again. Farmers are well up with their work. G. E. R. * * * * * Brown's Bronchial Troches will relieve Bronchitis, Asthma, Catarrh, Consumption and Throat Diseases. _They are used always with good success._ [Illustration: VETERINARY] Symptoms of Foot-and-Mouth Disease. This disease, which is one of the most easily transmitted of contagious and infectious diseases of domestic animals, is characterized by the appearance of vesicles or small bladders on the mucous surfaces and those parts of the skin uncovered by hair, such as in the mouth, on the gums and palate, on the tongue, and the internal surface of the lips and cheeks; on the surface of the udder and teats, and between the claws. The disease passes through four different stages or periods; but for present purposes it will be sufficient to merely mention the most prominent of the successive changes and appearances, as they occur to the ordinary observer. The incubatory stage, or the time between contamination and the development of the disease, is very short (from twenty-four hours to one or two weeks), and the disease is ushered in by the general symptoms of fever, such as shivering, increased temperature, staring coat, dry muzzle, dullness and loss of appetite. The animals seek seclusion, preferably in sheltered places, where they assume a crouched position, or lie down, and there is more or less stiffness and unwillingness to move. The mouth becomes hot and inflamed looking, and covered with slime, the breath fetid; the animal grinds the teeth, smacks with mouth, and has difficulty in swallowing. There is more or less tenderness of feet and lameness, and in cows the udder becomes red and tender, the teats swollen, and they refuse to be milked. Depending upon the intensity of the fever and the extent to which the udder is affected, the milk secretion will be more or less diminished, or entirely suspended; but throughout the disease the quality or constituents of the milk become materially altered; its color changes to a yellow; it has a tendency to rapid decomposition, and possesses virulent properties. Soon yellowish-white blisters, of various sizes, from that of a small pea to a small hickory nut, appear on the mucous surface within the mouth, and which blisters often in the course of development become confluent or coalesce. They generally break within two to three days, and leave bright red, uneven, and ragged sores or ulcers, to the edges of which adheres shreds of detached epithelial tissue. The animal now constantly moves the tongue and smacks the mouth, while more or less copious and viscid saliva continually dribbles from the mouth. The lameness increases in proportion as the feet are affected, and if the fore feet are most affected, the animal walks much like a floundered horse, with the hinder limbs advanced far under the body, and with arched back. The coronet of the claws, especially toward the heels, becomes swollen, hot, and tender, causing the animal to lie down most of the time. The blisters, which appear at the interdigital space of the claws, and especially at the heels, break in the course of a day and discharge a thick, straw-colored fluid; the ulcers, which are of intensely red or scarlet color, soon become covered with exudating lymph, which dries and forms scabs. On the udder, the blisters appear more or less scattered and variable, and they are most numerous at the base and on the teats. Ordinarily, the disease terminates in two or three weeks, while the animal, which during its progress refuses to partake of any other than sloppy food, gradually regains strength and flesh, and the udder resumes its normal functions. The mortality at times has proved very great in this disease when it has appeared with unusual virulency. Shyness and Timidity. In common "horse language," these propensities are confounded one with the other or else no proper and right distinction is made between them. A horse may be timid without being shy, though he can hardly be said to be shy without being timid. Young horses in their breaking are timid, frightened at every fresh or strange object they see. They stand gazing and staring at objects they have not seen before, fearful to approach them; but they do not run away from, or shy at them; on the contrary, the moment they are convinced there is nothing hurtful in them, they refuse not to approach or even trample upon them. This the shy horse will not do. He can not be persuaded to turn toward or even to look at the object he shies at; much less to approach it. Timid horses, through usage and experience, get the better of their timidity, and in time become very opposite to fearful; but shy horses, unless worked down to fatigue and broken-spiritedness, rarely forget their old sins. The best way to treat them is to work them, day by day, moderately for hours together, taking no notice whatever of their shying tricks, neither caressing nor chastising them, and on no account whatever endeavoring to turn their heads either towards or away from the objects shied at. Glanders. With a view of shedding light on the important question of the contagiousness of glanders, we will mention the following deductions from facts brought forth by our own experience. 1. That farcy and glanders, which constitute the same disease, are propagable through the medium of stabling, and this we believe to be the more usual way in which the disease is communicated from horse to horse. 2. That infected stabling may harbor and retain the infection for months, or even years; and though, by thoroughly cleansing and making use of certain disinfecting means, the contagion may probably be destroyed, it would not perhaps be wise to occupy such stables _immediately_ after such supposed or alleged disinfection. 3. That virus (or poison of glanders) may lie for months in a state of incubation in the horse's constitution, before the disease breaks out. We have had the most indubitable evidence of its lurking in one horse's system for the space of fifteen weeks. 4. That when a stud or stable of horses becomes contaminated, the disease often makes fearful ravages among them before it quits them; and it is only after a period of several months' exemption from all disease of the kind that a clean bill of health can be safely rendered. MISCELLANEOUS. "FACTS ABOUT Arkansas and Texas." A handsome book, beautifully Illustrated, with colored diagrams, giving reliable information as to crops, population, religious denominations, commerce, timber, Railroads, lands, etc., etc. Sent free to any address on receipt of a 2-cent stamp. Address H. C. Townsend, Gen. Passenger Agt., St. Louis, Mo. DISEASE CURED Without medicine. _A Valuable Discovery for supplying Magnetism to the Human System. Electricity and Magnetism utilized as never before for Healing the Sick._ THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO.'s Magnetic Kidney Belt! 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They hold their POWER FOREVER, and are worn at all seasons of the year. Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical treatment Without Medicine," with thousands of testimonials. THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 State Street, Chicago, Ill. NOTE.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our other Magnetic Appliances. Positively no cold feet when they are worn, or money refunded. CONSUMPTION. I have a positive remedy for the above disease; by its use thousands of cases of the worst kind and of long standing have been cured. Indeed, so strong is my faith in its efficacy, that I will send TWO BOTTLES FREE, together with a VALUABLE TREATISE on this disease, to any sufferer. Give Express & P. O. address. DR. T. A. SLOCUM 181 Pearl St., N. Y. REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ [Illustration: HORTICULTURAL] Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper. Sand Mulching of Orchard Trees. In THE PRAIRIE FARMER I notice the interesting note of "O." of Sheboygan Falls, Wis., on the apparent benefit resulting from sand and manure mulching of pear trees. In the very near future I expect to see much of this kind of work done by commercial orchardists. Already we have many trees in Iowa mulched with sand. I wish now to draw attention to the fact that on the rich black prairie soils west of Saratov--about five hundred miles southeast of Moscow--every tree in the profitable commercial orchards is mulched with pure river sand. The crown of the tree when planted is placed about six inches lower than usual with us in a sort of basin, about sixteen feet across. This basin is then filled in with sand so that in the center, where the tree stands, it is three or four inches higher than the general level of the soil. The spaces between these slight depressions filled with sand are seeded down to grass, which is not cut, but at time of fruit gathering is flattened by brushing to make a soft bed for the dropping fruit and for a winter mulch. The close observer will not fail to notice good reasons for this treatment. (1.) The sand mulch maintains an even temperature and moisture of the surface roots and soil and prevents a rapid evaporation of the moisture coming up by capillary attraction from the sub soil. (2.) The soil under the sand will not freeze as deeply as on exposed surfaces, and we were told that it would not freeze as deeply by two feet or more as under the tramped grass in the interspaces. (3.) With the light colored sand about the trees, and grass between, the lower beds of air among the trees would not be as hot by several degrees as the exposed surface, even when the soil was light colored clay. (4.) A bed of sand around the trunks of the trees will close in with the movement of the top by the summer and autumn winds, thus avoiding the serious damage often resulting from the swaying of the trunk making an opening in the soil for water to settle and freeze. Still another use is made of this sand in very dry seasons, which as with us would often fail to carry the fruit to perfection. On the upper side of large commercial orchards, large cisterns are constructed which are filled by a small steam pump. When it is decided that watering is needed the sand is drawn out, making a sort of circus ring around the trees which is run full of water by putting on an extra length of V spouting for each tree. When one row is finished the conductors are passed over to next row as needed. To water an orchard of 1,200 trees--after the handy fixtures are once provided--seems but a small task. After the water settles away, the sand is returned to its place. In the Province of Saratov we saw orchards with and without the sand, and with and without the watering. We did not need to ask if the systematic management paid. The great crops of smooth apples and pears, and the long lived and perfect trees on the mulched and watered orchards told the whole story of the needs of trees planted on black soil on an open plain subject to extreme variations as to moisture and temperature of air and soil. J. L. BUDD., IOWA AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. Pear Blight.--No. 2. The mere "experience" of an individual, whether as a doctor of medicine, horticulture, or agriculture--however extensive, is comparatively worthless. Indeed the million "demonstrate it to be mischievous, judging from the success of quacks and empyrics as to money. An unlimited number of facts and certificates prove nothing, either as to cause or remedy." Sir Isaac Newton's corpuscular theory "explained all the phenomena of light, except one," and he actually assumed, for it "fits." Nevertheless it will ever remain the most thinkable mode of teaching the laws of light, and it is not probable that any more than this will ever be accomplished as to any natural science--if that can be called science about which we must admit that "it is not so; but it is as if it were so." Of more than 300 "Osband Summer" which I grafted on the Anger quince successfully, one remains, and this one was transplanted after they had fruited in a clay soil, to the same sort of soil between "the old standard" and a stable, both of which have occupied the same locality and within twenty yards, during much more than fifty years of my own observation--this "Osband Summer" flourishes. It has borne fruit in its present site, but grew so rapidly last year that the blossoms aborted thus illustrating the large proportion of vital force necessary to the production of fruit, as the site has a perennial supply of manure from the old stable. A number of standard trees, of the same variety, developed beautifully until they attained twenty or thirty feet, but then succumbed to the blight, after the first effort at fruiting. So also the Beurre Clairgean etc., etc. Their exposure to the same influences, and their growth during several years did not occasion the blight, but the debility which must inevitably attend fruiting seems the most prolific cause. All the phenomena of pear blight can be accounted for, and we are greatly encouraged in protecting the trees therefrom if, we assume, it is only the result of weakness and deficient vitality; if so, as in epidemics, all the pear trees may be poisoned or ergotized, but only the weakest succumb; and perhaps this debility may be confined to one limb. The practical value of this view is manifest, as it is impracticable to avoid using the same knife, and remove every blighted leaf from the orchard. Moreover, if the limb is a large one, its prompt removal shocks the vitality of the whole tree[1] and thus renders other parts more vulnerable. On the contrary view, the limb may be allowed to drop by natural process, precisely as all trees in a forest shed their lower limbs, leaving hardly a cicatrice or scar, and this may be insured at any season by a cord of hemp twine, firmly bound around the limb. The inevitable strangulation, and the healing of the stump (without the mycelium of fungi which the knife or saw inevitably propagates by exposing a denuded surface, if not more directly) proceed more rapidly than the natural slough of limbs by starvation. Moreover the fruit may mature on such limbs during their strangulation, as this may not be perfected before the subsequent winter. The next practical result of my view is the fundamental importance of all those means which are calculated to husband the vital force of the tree during its first effort to fruit; one of these is the use of a soil that will not produce more than twenty bushels of corn without manure, thus a large proportion of the setts will be aborted, but one half of what remains should be removed, and subsequently the area beneath the limbs should have a wheelbarrow of good compost. D. S. Footnote 1: NOTE.--The shock as to vital force is demonstrated by the fact that when young trees are not trimmed at all their girth increases more rapidly, and they bear fruit sooner. Moreover, when old trees are severely pruned (though not half the proportion of wood is removed) they fail to bear during the next year. I find that a hemp cord about the size of the stem of a tobacco pipe (one-fourth inch diameter) will soon become imbedded in the bark if firmly tied around a limb, and perhaps this size is more efficient than a thicker cord. The Black Walnut. The black walnut is without doubt the most valuable tree we have for the rich lands of the "corn belt," West, and one which is very easily grown everywhere if the farmer will only learn how to get it started. How few we see growing on our prairies. Why? Simply because to have it we must grow it from the nuts. It is nearly impossible to transplant black walnut trees of any size and have them live; although it is a fact that whenever a non-professional attempts to grow them from the nuts he is almost sure to fail, it is also a fact that there is no tree that is more easily grown from the seed than this, if we only know how to do it. It is my purpose in this note to tell how to do it, and also how not to do it. In the first instance we will suppose a man lives where he can gather the nuts in the woods. When the nuts begin to fall let him plow deeply the plot of ground he wishes to plant and furrow it off three or four inches deep, the distance apart he wishes his rows to be. He will then go to the woods and gather what nuts he wishes to plant, and plant them at once, just as they come from the tree, covering them just out of sight in the furrows. This is all there is of it; simple, is it not? But it will not do to gather a great wagon box full, and let them stand in it until they heat, or to throw them in a great heap on the ground and let them lay there until they heat. It will not do, either, to hull them and let them lay in the sun a week or two, or hull them, dry them and keep them until spring, and then plant; none of these plans will do if you want trees. Of course if the nuts are hulled and planted at once they will grow; but this hulling is entirely unnecessary. Besides, the hulls seem to act as a special manure for the young seedlings, causing them to grow more vigorously. Next, we will suppose one wishes to plant walnuts where they can not be had from the woods, but must be shipped in. There seems to be only one plan by which this can be done safely every time, which is as follows: Gather the nuts as they fall from the trees--of course when they begin to fall naturally all may be shaken down at once--and spread them not over a foot deep, on the bare ground under the shade of trees. Cover out of sight with straw or leaves, with some sticks to hold in place called a "rot heap;" then after they are frozen and will stay so, they may be shipped in bags, boxes, barrels, or in bulk by the car-load, and then, again, placed in "rot heaps," as above, until so early in the spring as the soil is in workable condition. Then plant as directed in the fall, except the soil should be firmly packed around the nuts. Keep free from weeds by good cultivation, and in due time you will have a splendid grove. There was an immense crop of walnuts in this district last fall, and thousands of bushels were put up carefully, in this way, all ready for shipment before the weather became warm; many more thousands were planted to grow seedlings from, for, notwithstanding the walnut transplants poorly when of considerable size, the one year seedlings transplant with as little loss as the average trees. There is no tree better adapted for planting to secure timber claims with than the black walnut, and none more valuable when the timber is grown. For this purpose the land should be plowed deeply, then harrowed to fineness and firmness, and furrowed out in rows four, six, eight, or ten feet apart. The nuts may then be planted as directed. It is best to plant thickly in the rows, then if too thick they can be thinned out, transplanting the thinnings, or selling them to the neighbors. They should be thoroughly cultivated, until large enough to shade the ground, and thinned out as necessary as they grow larger. A walnut grove thoroughly cultivated the first ten years will grow at least twenty feet high, while one not cultivated at all would only grow two to three feet in that time. D. B. WIER., LACON, ILL. Notes on Current Topics. ARBOR DAY. Why can not Illinois have an Arbor Day as well as Nebraska, or any other State. There ought to be ten millions of trees planted the coming spring within its borders--saying nothing of orchard trees--by the roadside, on lawns, for shade, for wind breaks, for shelter, for mechanical purposes, and for climatic amelioration. Nearly all our towns and villages need more trees along the streets or in parks; thousands of our farms are suffering for them; hundreds of cemeteries would be beautified by them, and numberless homes would be rendered more pleasant and homelike by an addition of one, two, or a dozen, to their bleak places. Can not THE PRAIRIE FARMER start a boom that will lead to the establishment of an Arbor Day all over the State? Why not? There is yet time. HOT-BEDS. For the benefit of those who can not command the usual appliances for hot-beds, I will say that they can be made so as to answer a good purpose very cheaply. Take a nice sunny spot that is covered with a sod, if to be had. Dig off the sod in squares and pile them carefully on the north side and the ends of the pit, to form the sides of the bed, with a proper slope. The soil thrown out from the bottom may be banked up against the sods as a protection. After the bed is finished, the whole may be covered with boards, to turn the water off. These answer in the place of glass frames. As the main use for a hot-bed is to secure bottom heat, very good results can be obtained in these cheaply constructed affairs. After the seeds are up, and when the weather will permit, the boards must be removed to give light and air--but replaced at night and before a rain. Of course, where large quantities of plants are to be grown, of tender as well as hardy sorts, it would be better and safer to go to the expense of board frames and glass for covering. DON'T DO IT. Of course, all the peach trees, and many of the other stone fruits, and most of the blackberry and raspberry plants, will show discoloration of wood when the spring opens--so much so that many will pronounce them destroyed, and will proceed to cut them away. Don't do it. Peaches have often been thus injured, and by judicious handling saved to bear crops for years afterward. But they will need to be thoroughly cut back. Trees of six or seven years old I have cut down so as to divest them of nearly all their heads, when those heads seemed badly killed, and had them throw out new heads, that made large growth and bore good crops the following season. Cut them back judiciously, and feed them well, but don't destroy them. And so with the berry plants. Wait and see, before you destroy. PEARS FROM RUSSIA. No one who reads Prof. Budd's articles on Russian Pears, can fail to be interested and struck with the prospect of future successful pear culture in the United States. It is highly probable that Russia is yet to give us a class of that fruit that will withstand the rigors of our climate. But how is this to be accomplished? Individual enterprise can, and doubtless will, accomplish much in that direction; but the object seems to me to be of sufficient importance to justify State or National action. The great State of Illinois might possibly add millions to her resources by giving material aid in the furtherance of this purpose--and a liberal expenditure by the General Government, through the Department of Agriculture, or the American Pomological Society, would be more usefully applied than many other large sums annually voted. At all events, another season of fruitage ought not to be allowed to pass without some concerted action for the purpose of testing the question. Some of our strongest nurserymen will likely be moving in the work, but that will not be enough. The propagator of that fruit, however, who will succeed in procuring from the European regions a variety of pears that will fill the bill required by the necessities of our soil and climate, has a fortune at his command. OLD WINTER lingers in the lap of spring, truly, this year of grace, 1884. Here it is the 10th of March, and for over one hundred days we have had winter--winter; but very few real mild and bright days, such as we had "when I was a boy." The Mississippi is frozen over still, with no signs of breaking up, and men, women, and children are sighing for sunshine and showers, and daisies and violets. The wood and coal bills have been enormous; the pigs squeal in the open pens, and cattle roam, as usual, shivering in the lanes and along the streets. The song of a robin to-morrow morning would be a joyous sound to hear. T. G. Prunings. Tree-worship among the ancients had a most important influence on the preservation of forests in circumscribed places. Beautiful groves, which would otherwise have been sacrificed on the altar of immediate utility, were preserved by the religious respect for trees.--Milwaukee Sentinel. F. K. Phoenix. "Small trees have larger roots in proportion, (2) they cost less, (3) expressage of freight is less--expressing small trees is usually cheaper than freighting large ones, and then so much more speedy, (4) less labor handling, digging holes, etc., (5) less exposed to high winds which loosen roots, and kill many transplanted trees, (6) planters can form heads and train them to their own liking, (7) with good care in, say five years, they will overtake the common larger sized trees. Without good care, better not plant any size." The coming currant is Fay's Prolific. It originated with Lincoln Fay, of Chautauqua county, N. Y. For many years he endeavored to raise a currant that would combine the size of the Cherry currant with the productiveness of the Victoria. To this end he fertilized one with the pollen of the other, and raised some thousands of seedlings, from out of which he selected this as the one that most nearly realized his desires. It is now sixteen years since this seedling was obtained. For some eight or nine years Mr. Fay tested this variety by the side of all the sorts in cultivation, until becoming convinced of its superiority in several particulars over any of these, he planted it extensively for his own marketing. At a late meeting of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the currant worm came in for a good deal of talk. Mr. Satterthwaite said that hellebore, as we have often printed, was the most effectual "remedy." He mixed it with water and applied it with a brush or whisk of straw. If not washed off by rain for twenty-four hours and used every year, the worms were easily got rid of. Mr. Saunders, Superintendent of the Government Gardens at Washington, and a gentleman thoroughly conversant with every branch of horticulture, said that there was nothing so effectual with insects as London purple, and, though equally poisonous as Paris green, was much cheaper. Tobacco stems and refuse have also been found of great value in fruit culture. Pyrethrum, he said, would also kill all sorts of leaf-eating insects; it is now largely cultivated in California, and is hardy at least as far north as Washington. JOSIAH HOOPES in New York Tribune: In Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where, literally, no pears have been grown of late years, the Kieffer is doing well. I know of no fruit so variable. I ate specimens last season finely flavored and delicious; again when they were weak and watery. This fruit needs thinning on the trees and careful ripening in the house. Don't understand me to say that Kieffer is "best of all." But here it is the most profitable for market that I know of, as this is not a pear country, as are portions of New York State. As we go further south the Kieffer seems to improve, and I think Mr. Berckmans, of Georgia, will give it a good name with him. Yes, the Kieffer will command a higher price in Philadelphia than any other pear, and we think some people there know what good fruit is. Don't imagine I have any axe on the grindstone in this matter; pecuniarily the Kieffer is no more to me than the Bartlett or dozens of other varieties. [Illustration: FLORICULTURE] Some New Plants. ABUTILON THOMSONII PLENA. It is one of the peculiarities of plant culture, that after a certain number of years of cultivation, any plant having the properties of sporting freely, that is, changing greatly from the original wild character of the plant, will become double. In most cases it first arises from seed, but with the plant under notice it appears that it was what is called a bud variation, that is, that from some freak of a particular branch of a plant of the well-known A. Thomsonii, the ordinary single flowers were found to be double. This happening on a plant under the eye of a professional florist was taken off the plant and rooted, and at once became its established character. This phenomena of variation being "fixed" by separate propagation, is by no means rare, and not a few of our choice fruits, flowers, and vegetables had their origin by the same means. It remains to be seen whether in this case it will be of much value except as a curiosity, it having precisely the same leaf markings as the original, which are a very distinct yellow mottling of the leaf in a field of green, and for which the plant is valuable alone, the flowers being quite of a secondary character. The flowers are said to be perfectly double, resembling in form a double hollyhock, color deep orange, shaded and streaked with crimson. This is the first year it has been sent out, and we shall not be surprised if it is soon followed by others, for usually, when the "double" condition of things has arrived no one has a monopoly of the curiosity. ALTERNANTHERA AUREA NANA. This is a charming new plant of decided merit to the carpet style of bedding or edging, being very compact in growth, easily kept to a line of the finest character, and producing what is of great importance in the summer, a line of golden yellow. At times the old kind, A. aurea, would come very good, but more often it had far too much of a green shade to furnish the contrast sought after, and, as a result, failed to bring out the effect the planter studied to produce. It is a fitting companion to A. amabilis, A. paronychioides, and A. versicolor, and will be hailed with delight by our park florists and other scientific planters. BOUVARDIA THOMAS MEEHAN. Here we have a double scarlet bouvardia from the same raisers, Nanz and Neuner, that astonished the floral world a few years back, with the double white B. Alfred Neuner. This new addition, unlike the old, which was another "bud variation," was secured by a cross between the old B. leiantha, scarlet with a single flower, and Alfred Neuner, double white. If this is the real origin of the kind, which we somewhat doubt, for if our theory is correct, that a certain amount of cultivation predisposes to double variation, then it is not necessary to cross the double, which in fact can not be done with a perfectly double flower--the organs of fructification being wanting with that of a single and seed-producing kind, to account for the origin of a new double. As is well known the old leiantha is one of the best scarlets yet, and this new candidate for favor is said to unite the brilliant color and profuse blooming qualities of the old favorite B. leiantha with the perfect double flowers of B. Alfred Neuner. There are now of this class of plants the three colors--white, scarlet, and pink--in double as well as single; for instance, a pink President Garfield sported from and was "fixed" from the white A. Neuner, a year or two ago. STATICE SUWOROWII REGAL. In this we have a right regal plant. We first heard of it from the German catalogues, early in the past winter. This plant is now offered for sale by the florists of this country. Its description from the catalogues is as follows: "One of the finest novelties in the list of showy annuals lately introduced. Its branching flower spikes, of a very bright rose, with a crimson shade, appear successively from ten to fifteen on each plant, and measure, each, fully fifteen to eighteen inches in height, and from one-half to one inch in breadth; the foliage, laying flat on the ground, is comparatively small, and completely hidden by the numerous flower spikes, each leaf being five inches long, and from one-half to two inches broad, undulated and glaucous. It is constantly in bloom during the summer and autumn, and when in full bloom is a truly magnificent sight, being one mass of flowers." This class of plants are great favorites, and we should judge by the colored flowers and description that this variety is a decided novelty. TEA ROSES, WHITE BON SILENE. This is another new aspirant for favor, and comes out with the high sounding character of being in a white what the old Bon Silene is as a red winter tea rose. The description from the catalogue is: "The buds are larger and more double than its parent (the red B. S.) and will produce more flower buds than any other white rose in cultivation." It was raised by Francis Morat, of Louisville, Ky., four years ago; it is also a "sport," and from the old B. silene. Should it retain the good flowering qualities, fragrance, and substance of the original kind, with a pure white bud, it will very soon work its way into popular favor. Usually a white variation has not the vitality that its colored progenitor had, so that we say, wait and see. EDGAR SANDERS. [Illustration: OUR BOOK TABLE] Pamphlets, Etc., Received. A full and detailed account of the Polled Galloway breed of cattle is sent us by the Rev. John Gillespie, M. A., Dumfries, Scotland. The catalogue has also an appendix containing a correspondence on Polled-Angus versus Galloway cattle for the Western States of America. Jabez Webster's descriptive wholesale and retail price list of fruit and ornamental nursery stock, etc., Centralia, Ill. Illustrated catalogue and price list of grape vines, small fruits, etc. John G. Burrow, Fishkill Village, Dutchess county, N. Y. The Canadian Entomologist, by William Saunders, London, Ontario. This is an exceedingly neat little pamphlet, and contains articles upon many of the most important subjects relating to entomology, by a number of prominent and well-known writers of the day. The Argus Almanac for 1884. This almanac is replete with useful information concerning the Government, public debt, State elections from 1873 to 1883, finances of State of New York, biographical sketches of State officers and members of the Legislature, etc., etc. Price, 25 cents, Albany, N. Y. "A Primer of Horticulture for Michigan Fruit Growers." This pamphlet has been prepared for the use of beginners in horticulture by Charles W. Garfield, Secretary of the Michigan State Horticultural Society, and will be found very helpful to all such. Price, 15 cents. Waldo F. Brown's illustrated spring catalogue of vegetable and flower seeds. Oxford, Ohio. R. H. Allen & Co.'s descriptive catalogue of choice farm, garden, and flower seeds. Nos. 189 and 191 Water St, N. Y. The Manifesto, a pamphlet devoted to the interests of our Shaker friends. Compliments of Charles Clapp, Lebanon, Ohio. "THE THIRD HOUSE." Its Good and Bad Members--The Remarkable Experiences of a Close Observer of Its Workings During a Long Residence at Washington. [_Correspondence Rochester Democrat._] No city upon the American continent has a larger floating population than Washington. It is estimated that during the sessions of Congress twenty-five thousand people, whose homes are in various parts of this and other countries, make this city their place of residence. Some come here, attracted by the advantages the city offers for making the acquaintance of public men; others have various claims which they wish to present, while the great majority gather here, as crows flock to the carrion, for the sole purpose of getting a morsel at the public crib. The latter class, as a general thing, originate the many schemes which terminate in vicious bills, all of which are either directed at the public treasury or toward that revenue which the black-mailing of corporations or private enterprises may bring. While walking down Pennsylvania avenue the other day I met Mr. William M. Ashley, formerly of your city, whose long residence here has made him unusually well acquainted with the operations of the lobby. Having made my wants in this particular direction known, in answer to an interrogative, Mr. Ashley said: "Yes, during my residence here I have become well acquainted with the workings of the 'Third House,' as it is termed, and could tell you of numerous jobs, which, like the 'Heathen Chinee,' are peculiar." "You do not regard the lobby, as a body, vicious, do you?" "Not necessarily so, there are good and bad men comprising that body; yet there have been times when it must be admitted that the combined power of the 'Third House' has overridden the will of the people. The bad influence of the lobby can be seen in the numerous blood-bills that are introduced at every session." "But how can these be discovered?" "Easily enough, to the person who has made the thing a study. I can detect them at a glance." "Tell me, to what bills do you refer?" "Well, take the annual gas bills, for instance. They are introduced for the purpose of bleeding the Washington Gas Light company. They usually result in an investigating committee which never amounts to anything more than a draft upon the public treasury for the expenses of the investigation. Another squeeze is the _abattoir_ bills, as they are called. These, of course, are fought by the butchers and market-men. The first attempt to force a bill of this description was in 1877, when a prominent Washington politician offered a fabulous sum for the franchise." "Anything else in this line that you think of, Mr. Ashley?" "Yes, there's the job to reclaim the Potomac flats, which, had it become a law, would have resulted in an enormous steal. The work is now being done by the Government itself, and will rid the place of that malarial atmosphere of which we hear so much outside the city." "During your residence here have you experienced the bad results of living in this climate?" "Well, while I have not at all times enjoyed good health, I am certain that the difficulty which laid me up so long was not malarial. It was something that had troubled me for years. A shooting, stinging pain that at times attacked different parts of my body. One day my right arm and leg would torture me with pain, there would be great redness, heat and swelling of the parts; and perhaps the next day the left arm and leg would be similarly affected. Then again it would locate in some particular part of my body and produce a tenderness which would well nigh drive me frantic. There would be weeks at a time that I would be afflicted with an intermitting kind of pain that would come on every afternoon and leave me comparatively free from suffering during the balance of the twenty-four hours. Then I would have terrible paroxysms of pain coming on at any time during the day or night when I would be obliged to lie upon my back for hours and keep as motionless as possible. Every time I attempted to move a chilly sensation would pass over my body, or I would faint from hot flashes. I suffered from a spasmodic contraction of the muscles and a soreness of the back and bowels, and even my eyeballs become sore and distressed me greatly whenever I wiped my face. I became ill-tempered, peevish, fretful, irritable and desperately despondent." "Of course you consulted the doctors regarding your difficulty?" "Consulted them? well I should say I did. Some told me I had neuralgia; others that I had inflammatory rheumatism, for which there was no cure, that I would be afflicted all my life, and that time alone would mitigate my sufferings." "But didn't they try to relieve your miseries?" "Yes, they vomited and physicked me, blistered and bled me, plastered and oiled me, sweat, steamed, and everything but froze me, but without avail." "But how did you finally recover?" "I had a friend living in Michigan who had been afflicted in a similar way and had been cured. He wrote me regarding his recovery and advised me to try the remedy which cured him. I procured a bottle and commenced its use, taking a teaspoonful after each meal and at bed-time. I had used it about a week when I noticed a decrease of the soreness of the joints and a general feeling of relief. I persevered in its use and finally got so I could move around without limping, when I told my friends that it was Warner's Safe Rheumatic Cure that had put me on my feet." "And do you regard your cure as permanent?" "Certainly, I haven't been so well in years as I am now, and although I have been subjected to frequent and severe changes of weather this winter, I have not felt the first intimation of the return of my rheumatic trouble." "Do you object to the publication of this interview, Mr. Ashley?" "Not at all, sir. I look upon it as a duty I owe my fellow creatures to alleviate their sufferings so far as I am able, and any communication regarding my symptoms and cure that may be sent to me at 506 Maine avenue will receive prompt and careful attention." "Judging from your recital, Mr. Ashley, there must be wonderful curative properties about this medicine?" "Indeed, there is, sir, for no man suffered more nor longer than did I before this remedy gave me relief." "To go back to the original subject, Mr. Ashley, I suppose you see the same familiar faces about the lobby session after session?" "No, not so much so as you might think. New faces are constantly seen and old ones disappear. The strain upon lobbyists is necessarily very great, and when you add to this the demoralizing effect of late hours and intemperate habits and the fact that they are after found out in their steals, their disappearance can easily be accounted for." "What proportion of these blood-bills are successful?" "A very small percentage, sir. Notwithstanding the power and influence of the lobby, but few of these vicious measures pass. Were they successful it would be a sad commentary upon our system of government, and would virtually annihilate one branch of it. The great majority of them are either reported adversely or smothered in committee by the watchfulness and loyalty of our congressmen." J. E. D. MISCELLANEOUS. ONE CENT invested in a postal card and addressed as below WILL give to the writer full information as to the best lands in the United States now for sale; how he can BUY them on the lowest and best terms, also the full text of the U. S. land laws and how to secure 320 ACRES of Government Lands in Northwestern Minnesota and Northeastern Dakota. ADDRESS: JAMES B. POWER, Land and Emigration Commissioner, ST. PAUL, MINN. [Illustration of a scale] CHICAGO SCALE CO. 2 TON WAGON SCALE, $40, 3 TON, $50. 4 Ton $60, Beam Box Included. 240 lb. FARMER'S SCALE, $5. The "Little Detective," 1/4 oz. to 25 lb. $3. 300 OTHER SIZES. Reduced PRICE LIST FREE. [Illustration of a tool] FORGES, TOOLS, &c. BEST FORGE MADE FOR LIGHT WORK, $10. 40 lb. Anvil and Kit of Tools. $10. Farmers save time and money doing odd jobs. Blowers, Anvils, Vices & Other Articles AT LOWEST PRICES, WHOLESALE & RETAIL. HOOSIER AUGER TILE MILL. [Illustration of a tile machine] Mills on hand. Prompt delivery. FOR PRICES AND CIRCULARS, ADDRESS NOLAN, MADDEN & CO., Rushville, Ind. DON'T you want a $30, 26 Shot Repeating Rifle for $15, a $30 Breech Loading Shot Gun for $16, a $12 Concert Organette for $7, a $25 Magic Lantern for $12.00. YOU can get any of these articles FREE, If you get up a club for the New American Dictionary. Send $1.00 for a sample copy and try it. If you have a Lantern you can start a business that will pay you from $10 to $50 every night. WANT Send at once for our Illustrated Catalogue of Watches, Self-cocking Revolvers, Spy Glasses, Telescopes, Telegraph Instruments, Organ Accordeons, Violins, &c. It may start you on the road to rapid wealth. WORLD MANUFACTURING CO., 122 Nassau Street, New York. [Illustration of a magnetic truss] RUPTURE Absolutely cured in 30 to 90 days, by Dr. Pierre's Patent Magnetic Elastic Truss. Warranted the only Electric Truss in the world. Entirely different from all others. Perfect Retainer, and is worn with ease and comfort night and day. Cured the renowned Dr. J. Simms of New York, and hundreds of others. New Illustrated pamphlet free, containing full information. MAGNETIC ELASTIC TRUSS COMPANY., 134 MADISON ST., CHICAGO, ILL. A PRIZE. Send six cents for postage, and receive free, a costly box of goods which will help all, of either sex, to more money right away than anything else in this world. Fortunes await the workers absolutely sure. At once address TRUE & CO., Augusta, Maine. $1000 Every 100 Days Positively sure to Agents everywhere selling our New SILVER MOULD WHITE WIRE CLOTHES-LINE. Warranted. Pleases at sight. Cheap. Sells readily at every house. Agents clearing $10 per day. Farmers make $900 to $1200 during Winter. _Handsome samples free._ Address, GIRARD WIRE MILLS, Philadelphia, Pa. PUBLISHERS' NOTICE. THE PRAIRIE FARMER _is printed and published by The Prairie Farmer Publishing Company, every Saturday, at No. 150 Monroe Street._ _Subscription, $2.00 per year, in advance, postage prepaid._ _Subscribers wishing their addresses changed should give their old at well as new addresses._ _Advertising, 25 cents per line on inside pages; 30 cents per line on last page--agate measure; 14 lines to the inch. No less charge than $2.00._ _All Communications, Remittances, &c, should be addressed to_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING COMPANY, _Chicago. Ill._ [Illustration: THE PRAIRIE FARMER] Entered at the Chicago Post Office as Second-Class Matter. CHICAGO, MARCH 22, 1884. WHEN SUBSCRIPTIONS EXPIRE. We have several calls for an explanation of the figures following the name of subscribers as printed upon this paper each week. The first two figures indicate the volume, and the last figure or figures the number of the last paper of that volume for which the subscriber has paid: EXAMPLE: John Smith, 56-26. John has paid for THE PRAIRIE FARMER to the first of July of the present year, volume 56. Any subscriber can at once tell when his subscription expires by referring to volume and number as given on first page of the paper. RENEW! RENEW!! Remember that every yearly subscriber, either new or renewing, sending us $2, receives a splendid new map of the United States and Canada--58x41 inches--FREE. Or, if preferred, one of the books offered in another column. It is not necessary to wait until a subscription expires before renewing. [Transcriber's Note: Original location of Table of Contents.] The next fair of the Jefferson County, Wisconsin, Agricultural Society will be held the second week in September. * * * * * The potato which has sold for the highest price in Boston all the season is the Early Rose. This has been one of the most remarkable potatoes known in the history of this esculent. * * * * * A Gentleman residing at Milk's Grove, Iroquois county, Illinois has obtained a patent for a new and cheap building material; this material is straw and concrete pressed together and bound with wires. He thinks he has a good thing. Time will tell. * * * * * The Chamber of Commerce at Lyons, France, protests to the government against the embargo on American pork. Trichiniasis prevails in various parts of the German empire. It is traced to the use of uncooked home-grown pork. Here we score two points in favor of the American hog product. * * * * * The excellent articles on Silk Culture by E. L. Meyer, Esq., have attracted very general attention, as is proven by the number of letters we have received asking for his address. This was unintentionally omitted. Mr. Meyer resides at Hutchinson, Kan. The article was originally prepared for the quarterly report of the Kansas Board of Agriculture. * * * * * Our Indiana friends should remember that in that State, Arbor Day occurs April 11th. A general effort is being made to interest the teachers, pupils, and directors of the district schools in the observance of the day by planting of trees and shrubs in the school yards. It is to be hoped that the people generally will countenance the observance in all possible ways. * * * * * Prof. S. A. Forbes writes us that there is needed for the Library of the State Natural History Society, back numbers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER for the following years and half years: 1852, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, second half year of 1862, 1864, and 1874. Persons having one or all of these volumes to dispose of will confer a favor by addressing the Professor to that effect at Normal, Ill. * * * * * Florida vegetables are coming into Chicago quite freely. Cucumbers are selling on South Water street at from $1.50 to $2 per-dozen. They come in barrels holding thirty dozen. Radishes now have to compete with the home-grown, hot-house article, and do not fare very well, as the latter are much fresher. Lettuce is comparatively plenty, as is also celery. Apples sell at from $4 to $6 per barrel, and the demand is good. * * * * * Mercedes, the famous Holstein cow owned by Thos. B. Wales, Jr., of Iowa City, died on the 17th inst., of puerperal fever, having previously lost her calf. Mercedes enjoyed the reputation of being the greatest milk and butter cow in the world. Her last year's calf it will be remembered was sold for $4,500. The cow and calf just dropped were valued at $10,000. The butter record alluded to was ninety-nine pounds six and one-half ounces in thirty days. The test was in 1883. * * * * * The Mark Lane Express in its review of the British grain trade last week says the trade in cargoes off coast was more active, but the supply bare. California was taken at 39@41s per quarter. Two cargoes have gone to Havre at 39s 11-1/2d@39s 3d without extra freight. Seven cargoes have arrived, ten were sold, eight withdrawn, and one remained. Sales of English wheat for a week, 59,699 quarters at 37s. 7d. per quarter, against 57,824 quarter at 42s. 2d. the corresponding week of last year. * * * * * At the next American Fat Stock Show in Chicago, there promises to be an extensive exhibit of dairy products. The Illinois Dairymen's Association will have it in charge, and the State Board of Agriculture has decided to appropriate $500 as a premium fund for the Dairymen's Association. It is rather strange, yet nevertheless true, that Illinois has never yet had an exhibition of dairy products at all commensurate with the importance of the dairy interest of the State. It may now be reasonably predicted that this remark will not remain true after November next. We have heard nothing said about it, but it is to be presumed there will be no extra charge to visit this exhibit. The managers of the Fat Stock Show have not been satisfied, we believe, with experiments in this direction. * * * * * Many years ago a young Scotch gardener brought from Mexico to Kenosha, Wis., a specimen of the Century plant. It was then supposed to be about twenty years old. For more than forty years this man cared for his pet with unflagging faithfulness. Dying at the age of sixty-five he left it to the care of a little daughter of a lady who had shown him kindness. This girl grew to womanhood and to middle age caring tenderly for the plant. About two years ago the plant exhibiting signs of blooming, a gentleman joined with the lady and erected a building for it near the Exposition building, in this city. Here it has since been, but through carelessness it was unduly exposed to the terrible freeze of the first week in January last, and the plant is now past recovery. The lady had expended upon it about all the means she possessed expecting to reap from admission fees to see it a rich reward. Thus eighty years of care and constant expense came to naught in a single night. A neglect to order coal resulted in the fire going out just when the cold was the most intense. One can hardly imagine the disappointment and regret of the lady who had nursed it with such care for nearly a lifetime. LUMBER AND SHINGLES. The white pine lumber product of the Northwest last year was according to latest returns, 7,624,789,786 feet against 3,993,780,000 in 1873, and more than double what it was in 1874. In 1882 the production was nearly 100,000,000 feet less than last year. The smallest product of the decade was in 1877--3,595,333,496 feet. What is termed the Chicago District, including the points of Green Bay, Cheboygan, Manistee, Ludington, White Lake, Muskegon, Grand Haven, and Spring Lake, and a few scattering mills gave a product in 1883 of 2,111,070,076 feet. At Ludington and Grand Haven there has been a decline in the product since 1873; at all the other points the increase has been considerable, amounting to a total of nearly 800,000,000 feet. The largest cut is on the Mississippi river in what is known as the West of Chicago District. Here in 1873 the product amounted to 650,000,000 feet; last year it reached 1,290,062,690 feet. The Saginaw Valley gives the next greatest yield 961,781,164 feet. The total Saginaw district gave last year 1,439,852,067 feet against 792,358,000 ten years ago. The total of the West of Chicago District was 3,134,331,793 against 1,353,000,000 in 1873. The Railroad and Interior Mills District has increased something over 200,000,000 feet in this period. In shingles we have the grand product in all the Northwest of 3,964,736,639 against 2,277,433,550 in 1873. The greatest increase was in the Chicago District as given above, and here Ludington and Grand Haven come in for an increase at the former place of over 33,000,000, and the latter of more than 100,000,000. The total production of shingles in 1882 was larger than last year by about 130,000,000, but with that exception was the largest ever known. The census of 1880 placed the annual lumber product of the United States at 18,000,000,000 feet. The Northwest then produced 5,651,295,000 feet or nearly one-third the entire product of the country. If this ratio has been uniform since we must now have a yield of over 20,000,000,000 feet. These are figures of enormous magnitude and of varied import. They mean employment to an army of men, a large shipping interest, vast investments in mills and machinery, and vast incomes to owners of pine lands; they mean houses and barns and fences to a new and populous empire; they mean numberless farms and millions of live stock. They also signify a rapid destruction of our immense forests from the face of the earth, enormous prices for lumber to future generations, and possible floods to devastate our river bottoms, and drouths to scourge the highlands. They should impress us all with the necessity and the profitableness of timber planting on the unsettled and newly settled prairies and in thousands of places in all the older States. FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE. Alarming reports from different parts of the country announcing the presence of foot-and-mouth disease have caused no inconsiderable excitement among the people and in Government circles. First there came news of an outbreak in Effingham county, Illinois, then in Louisa county, Iowa, quickly followed by similar information from Adair county, Missouri. Dr. Paaren, dispatched to Effingham county by the Governor, reports the trouble there not foot-and-mouth disease. There does exist a disease there, however, similar to foot-rot in sheep, that is proving fatal to many cattle. There have also been outbreaks of disease among cattle near Duquoin and Xenia, Illinois, which Dr. Paaren has been directed to investigate. No official reports as to the disease in Iowa and Missouri have been received, though Government Veterinary inspectors are now upon the ground making their investigations. It is said that several hundred head of cattle are affected in Missouri, though this is probably an exaggeration. There is no news regarding the disease in Maine. Reports from Kansas say the infected herds are strictly quarantined, and that as yet no fresh outbreaks have occurred. It is proposed to annihilate the five infected herds. Gov. Glick has convened the Legislature of Kansas in order that proper measures may be taken to protect the cattle interests of the State. A Des Moines dispatch dated the 15th, says letters from Louisa county to the Governor in regard to the new cattle disease were read in the House, and on motion of Mr. Watrous that body adopted the substitute for the bill providing for the appointment of a State veterinary surgeon. The substitute authorizes the veterinary surgeon to destroy all stock affected with contagious disease. The bill is intended to enable the State to take action in the foot-and-mouth disease now affecting the stock. Discussion then followed upon the substitute, which was taken up section by section, and it was for the most part adopted. The series of reported outbreaks mentioned has aroused Congress to the necessity of action. The Senate on Monday passed a joint resolution appropriating $50,000 for the suppression of the disease in whatever State or Territory it appears. It is to be hoped that the Animal Industry bill will at once pass and become a law. The cattle dealers at the Chicago Union Stock Yards have organized a Live Stock Exchange, and the first action taken by it is to fight this bill in Congress. Emory A. Storrs, attorney for the heavy brokers, is in Washington working might and main for its defeat. He finds it uphill work, evidently, for on Monday he sent a dispatch to Nelson Morris in these words: "Send to-day a delegation of strong men; everything now depends on backing; wire me at once protest; have seen several senators this morning; advise me when delegation starts; have them stop at Riggs house." Acting under this advice the Exchange passed the following resolutions of "unbelief." Whereas, It is the universal sentiment of the Chicago Live Stock Exchange, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, that the bill now pending before Congress, known as the "Animal Industry bill," is dangerous in its design, not called for by the condition of the live stock interest in this country, and tends to place too much power in the Department of Agriculture at Washington; therefore, Resolved, That Elmer Washburn, Allan Gregory, F. D. Bartlett, B. F. Harrison, and H. H. Conover, members of this exchange, be, and hereby are, appointed a committee, with instructions to proceed forthwith to Washington, and present these resolutions to the proper authorities to prevent the passage of said "Animal Industry bill." Resolved, Further, that owing to the present excitement throughout the United States over the false alarm of pleuro-pneumonia and "foot-and-mouth" disease, that we, as a body, should express our views fully upon this question. 1. We do not believe there is such a disease as contagious pleuro-pneumonia existing throughout the United States. 2. We do not believe that such a disease as the foot-and-mouth disease exists in either Illinois, Iowa, or Kansas. 3. That at no time within the space of twenty years have the cattle, sheep, or hogs of this country been in as healthy a condition as at the present time; for while we are in favor of strict quarantine laws to prevent any importation of disease into this country from abroad, we believe if any disease should break out in this State, or any other State, that the citizens would be interested sufficiently to stamp it out without expense to the National Government. While these resolutions were being discussed Dr. Detmers appeared in the hall (accidentally of course!) and gave it as his opinion that not a single case of foot-and-mouth disease existed in America to-day. But the Doctor has so often put his foot in it in his mouthings about animal diseases in the past that his beliefs or disbeliefs have little weight with the public. The Doctor is evidently "put out" because he was not called upon to visit the infected districts, for he is reported as ending his harangue by declaring he was tired of working for the Government, and offered his services to the Live Stock Exchange. Such, in brief, is a summary of the news of the week concerning the foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks in the States. PREMIUMS ON CORN. As briefly stated in a previous issue of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, the Illinois State Board of Agriculture offers a premium of $100 for the best bushel of corn (in ear) grown this year in the northern division of the State, and $50 for the second best bushel: and a like premium for the best and second best bushel grown in the central and southern divisions. These divisions correspond with the three judicial divisions of the State. The following are the conditions: Each of the parties awarded the first premium to deliver twenty-five bushels, and each of the parties awarded the second premium to deliver fifteen bushels of corn in the ear in sacks to the State Board of Agriculture at Springfield, Ill. The corn delivered to be equal in quality to the samples awarded the respective premiums. The premiums to be paid when the premium bushels of corn and the amounts called for are compared at the rooms of the Department of Agriculture and favorably reported upon by the committee. Affidavit as to measurement of land and yield of corn are required. We suppose also that competitors are to furnish characteristics of soil, variety of seed, kinds of manure used, mode of cultivation etc., as these facts would seem to be necessary if the public is to receive the full benefits of the experiments the premiums are likely to bring out. It is understood that the corn delivered to the State Board as per above conditions is to be in some judicious manner distributed to the corn-growers of the State for planting in 1885. THE FIRST UNFORTUNATE RESULT. There recently began in Scotland an earnest movement to induce the British Government to remove the restrictions regarding the importation of American cattle, so far at least as to allow the admission of store cattle for feeding purposes. Meetings have been held in various parts of Scotland at which petitions like the following were adopted. To the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone. We, the undersigned, farmers and others, respectfully submit that the present law which allows the importation of cattle from the United States, and shuts out store cattle, is unjust and oppressive to the farmers of this country, and enhances the price of meat to the public. We therefore crave that her Majesty's Government would open the Scottish ports to the introduction of store cattle from the Western States where disease does not exist. At a meeting at Montrose, where the above petition was favorably acted upon, Mr. Falconer, an Angus farmer, in supporting the motion, said that the first great remedy for the present depression was to get cheap store cattle, and that would never be got until they opened their ports to the Western States of America. He held that if farmers would agree to insist on live store cattle being allowed to be landed in Britain, they would soon get them. When they get them, he, if then alive, would be quite willing to take all the responsibility if they found an unsound or unhealthy animal amongst them. He appealed to butchers in Montrose, who had been in the way of killing States or Canadian cattle, if they were not totally free of disease; and he would like to ask them how many Irish cattle they killed which were perfectly healthy. If they got stores from America, they would not effect a saving in price, but, as they all knew, sound healthy cattle fed much quicker than unsound, and were of better quality, and thus an additional item of profit would be secured to the farmer. Mr. A. Milne, cattle-dealer, Montrose, corroborated Mr. Falconer's statements as to the healthiness of American stock, while Irish cattle, as a rule, he said, had very bad livers. Mr. Adamson, Morphie, said he had recently been in the Western States of America, and had seen a number of the ranches in Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado. The cattle there were certainly fine animals--well bred, as a rule, either from Herefords or Short-horns, with a dash of the Texan cattle in them. When there, he made careful inquiries as to the existence of disease, and he was universally told that such a thing as epidemic disease was unknown. No doubt in the southern part of Texas there was a little Texan fever, but that, like yellow fever, was merely indigenous to the district. It was never seen out of these parts. He considered it would be a great boon to the farmers of Scotland if they could get cattle £3 or £4 cheaper than at present. It would save a very considerable amount of money in stocking a farm, and would also tell on the profits of the feeders, and the prices paid by the consumers. They had them to spare in America in the greatest possible abundance. At a late meeting of the Prairie Cattle Company, having headquarters in Scotland, sheriff Guthrie Smith expressed the opinion that the great profit in the future of American ranch companies must be the trade in young cattle. He believed that Scottish farmers would ere long get all their young cattle, not from Ireland, but from the United States. It did not pay them to breed calves; they were better selling milk. The fattening of cattle for the butcher was the paying part of the business, but the difficulty was to get yearlings or two-year-olds at their proper price. Here promised to arise a new outlet for American stock, and one which most of us probably never thought of. The proposition had in it the elements for the building up of a great commercial industry and of affording a new and rapid impetus to the breeding of cattle upon the plains. But just at this time comes the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Kansas, Maine, and Illinois, and of course puts an end to all hopes in this direction, for many months at least. This is the result of the disease at its first appearance. Here is prospective loss before the Government veterinary surgeons fairly reach the field of operations against its spread--the loss of a trade which would have been worth many millions to the cattle raisers of the great West. It is to be feared that this is but the beginning of the losses the disease will entail upon us. Can Congress longer hesitate in this matter of providing an efficient law for protection from contagious animal diseases? It would seem not. Our State authorities, also, must be alert, and render all possible aid in preventing the spread of this wonderfully infectious disease. * * * * * We have a large number of letters and postal cards asking where various seeds, plants, shrubs, trees, silk-worm eggs, bone dust and so on and so forth to an indefinite extent, may be obtained. We have answered some of these inquiries by letter, some through the paper, but they still keep coming. We have one favor to ask of those seeking this sort of information: First look through the advertisements carefully, and see if what is wanted is not advertised. The seedsmen's advertisements do not, of course, enumerate all the parties have for sale, but it may be taken for granted that they keep nearly all kinds of grass, grain, and vegetable seeds. We would also say to seedsmen that it will probably be found to pay them to advertise the seeds of the new grasses, alfalfa, the special fertilizers, etc., that are now being so much inquired about. We have a large number of inquiries about where to obtain silk-worm eggs. Persons who have them certainly make a mistake in not advertising them freely. Questions Answered. O. G. B., SHEBOYGAN FALLS, WIS.--Will you give directions which will be practical for tanning skins or pelts with the fur or hair on by the use of oak bark? ANSWER.--We know of no way the thing can be done unless a part of the methods are used that are employed in the tanning of goat skins for making Morocco leather. These are: to soak the skins to soften them; then put them into a lime vat to remove the hair, and after to take the lime out in a douche consisting of hen and pigeon dung. This done, the skins are then sewed up so as to hold the tanning liquid, which consists of a warm and strong decoction of Spanish sumac. The skins are filled with this liquid, then piled up one above the other and subsequently refilled, two or three times, or as fast as the liquid is forced through the skins. If the furs or pelts were first soaked to soften them, all the fatty, fleshy matter carefully removed, after sewed up as goat skins are, and then filled and refilled several times with a strong decoction of white oak bark, warm, but not hot, no doubt the result would prove satisfactory. DR. J. F. SCHLIEMAN, HARTFORD, WIS.--Are there any works on the cultivation of the blueberry, and if so could you furnish the same? Do you know of any parties that cultivate them? ANSWER.--We have never come across anything satisfactory on the cultivation of the blueberry except in Le Bon Jardiniere, which says: "The successful cultivation of the whole tribe of Vacciniums is very difficult. The shrubs do not live long and are reproduced with much difficulty, either by layers or seeds." The blueberry, like the cranberry, appears to be a potash plant, the swamp variety not growing well except where the water is soft, the soil peaty above and sandy below. The same appears also to be true of the high land blueberry; the soil where they grow is generally sandy and the water soft. You can procure Le Bon Jardiniere (a work which is a treasure to the amateur in fruit and plants) of Jansen, McClurg & Co., of Chicago, at 30 cents, the franc. Some parties, we think, offer blueberry plants for sale, but we do not recollect who they are. H. HARRIS, HOLT'S PRAIRIE, ILL.--Will it do to tile drain land which has a hard pan of red clay twelve to eighteen inches below the surface? ANSWER.--It will do no harm to the land to drain it if there is a hard pan near the surface, but in order to make tile draining effective on such land, the drains will have to be at half the distance common on soils without the hard pan. SUBSCRIBER, DECATUR, ILL.--In testing seed corn, what per cent must sprout to be called first-class. I have some twenty bushels of Stowell's Evergreen that was carefully gathered, assorted, and shelled by hand. This I have tested by planting twenty-one grains, of which sixteen grew. How would you class it? ANSWER.--Ninety-five, certainly. If five kernels out of twenty-one failed to grow, that would be 31 per cent of bad seed, and we should consider the quality inferior. But further, if under the favorable condition of trial, 31 percent failed, ten grains in every twenty-one would be almost sure to, in the field. It was a mistake to shell the corn; seed should always remain on the cob to the last moment, because if it is machine or hand-shelled at low temperature, and put away in bulk, when warm weather comes, it is sure to sweat, and if it heats, the germ is destroyed. Better spread your corn out in the dry, and where it will not freeze, as soon as you can. L. C. LEANIARTT (?) NEBRASKA.--I wish to secure a blue grass pasture in my timber for hogs. 1. Will it be necessary to keep them out till the grass gets a good start? 2. Shall I follow the directions you gave Mr. Perkins in THE PRAIRIE FARMER, February 9? 3. Is not blue grass pasture the best thing I can give my hogs? ANSWER.--1. Better do so, and you will then be more likely to get a good catch and full stand. 2. Certainly, if the conditions are the same. 3. Blue grass is very good for hogs, but it is improved by the addition of clover. C. C. SAMUELS, SPRINGFIELD, ILL.--1. What pears would you recommend for this latitude? 2. Are there any which do not blight? 3. I have some grape vines, light colored fruit, but late, Elvira, I think the nurseryman told me, which appear to be suffering from something at the roots. What is the phylloxera, and what shall I do to my grape vines if they infest the roots? ANSWER.--The Bartlett for _certain_--it being the best of all the pears--and the Kieffer and Le Conte for _experiment_. If the latter succeed you will have lots of nice large fruit just about as desirable for eating as a Ben Davis apple in May. 2. We know of one only, the Tyson, a smallish summer pear that never blights, at least in some localities, where all others do more or less. 3. If your Elviras are afflicted with the phylloxera, a root-bark louse, manure and fertilize them at once, and irrigate or water them in the warm season. The French vine-growers seem at last to have found out that lice afflict half starved grape roots, as they do half starved cattle, and that they have only to feed and water carefully to restore their vines to health. J. S. S., SPRINGFIELD, ILL.--I am not a stock man nor a farmer; but I have some pecuniary interests, in common with others, my friends, in a Kansas cattle ranch. I am therefore a good deal exercised about this foot-and-mouth disease. Is it the terrible scourge reported by one cattle doctor, who, according to the papers, says, "the only remedies are fire or death." What do you say? ANSWER.--The disease is a bad one, very contagious, but easily yields to remedies in the first stages. THOMAS V. JOHNSON, LEXINGTON, KY.--There is a report here that your draft horses of all breeds are not crossing with satisfaction on your common steeds in Illinois, and that not more twenty five in one hundred of the mares for the last three years have thrown foal, nor will they the present season. Can you give me the facts? ANSWER.--Our correspondent has certainly been misinformed, or is an unconscious victim of local jealousy, as he may easily convince himself by visiting interior towns, every one of which is a horse market. Wayside Notes. BY A MAN OF THE PRAIRIE. A neighbor of mine who has been intending to purchase store cattle and sheep at the Chicago Stock Yards soon, asked me last night what I thought about his doing so. I asked him if he had read what THE PRAIRIE FARMER and other papers had contained of late regarding foot-and-mouth disease in Maine, Kansas, Illinois, and Iowa. He had not; did not take the papers, and had not heard anything about the disease here or in England. Then I explained to him, as best I could, its nature, contagious character, etc., and having a PRAIRIE FARMER in my pocket, read him your brief history of the ailment in Great Britain. Well, that man was astonished. Finally, said he, What has that got to do with my question about buying cattle and sheep at the stock yards? Just this, I replied: every day there are arrivals at the stock yards of many thousands of cattle from these infected States. Perhaps some of them come from the very counties where this disease is known to exist. The disease may break out any day in scores of places in all these States. It may appear--indeed is quite likely to do so at the stock yards. For aught I know it may be there now. The cattle brokers will not be very likely to make known such an unwelcome fact a minute sooner than they are obliged to. In fact, from what they have lately been saying about the absurdity of new and stringent enactments concerning animal diseases, I conclude they will labor to conceal cases that may really exist. Now you go there to pick up cattle to consume your pasturage this spring and summer, and don't you see you run the risk of taking to your home and neighborhood a disease that may cost you and your neighbors many thousands of dollars? If I were you I would pick up the stock I want in my own neighborhood and county, even though not exactly the kind I would like to have, and though it would cost me a great deal more time and trouble. You see to a Man of the Prairie things look a little squally in this cattle business. We have all got to be careful about this thing. We have a terrible enemy at our stable doors and pasture gates, and we must guard them well. I am not an alarmist, but I would run any time, almost, rather than get licked, and I have always tried to keep a lock on the stable door before the horse is stolen. I am in favor of _in_-trenchment. Perhaps my advice to my neighbor was not sound, but according to the light I have, I have no desire to recall it till I hear more from the infected districts. To show the difference between the winter in Colorado and the States this way and further west, the Farmer, of Denver, mentions the fact that it knows a farmer who has had about two hundred acres of new land broken between the middle of November and the first of March. Still, these Eastern States have advantages which render them rather pleasant to live in. Our farmers find plenty of time in fall and spring in which to do their plowing and sowing, and our severe winters don't seem to hurt the ground a bit. In fact, I suppose it has got used to them, sort of acclimated, as it were. We have pretty good markets, low railway fares, good schools and plenty of them, and we manage to enjoy ourselves just as well as though we could hitch up to the plow and do our breaking in December and January. We can't all go to Colorado, Dakota, Montana, or Washington Territory, nor to those other Edens at the South and Southwest where a man, so far as winter is concerned, may work about every day in the year; but don't do so any more than we here at the North where we have the excuse of severe weather for our laziness between November and April. I like Colorado and Wyoming, Arkansas and Texas, Alabama and Florida--for other people who like to make their homes there, but my home is here and I like it. "I don't _have_ to" plow in winter, and I don't need to. I am going to try to do my duty and be happy where I am, believing Heaven to be just as near Illinois as any other State or any Territory. I read in the dispatches this morning that the barns on a ranch near Omaha burned the other night. With the barns were consumed twenty-six cows, eighteen horses, 1,000 bushels of corn and a large lot of hay and oats. In all the loss amounted to above $10,000 and there was no insurance. From all over the country and at all times of the year I read almost daily of similar losses varying from $100 up into the thousands, and the closing sentence of about nine out of ten of these announcements is "no insurance." Now I am neither an insurance agent nor a lightning rod peddler, but there are two luxuries that I indulge in all the time, and these are an insurance policy to fairly cover my farm buildings and their contents, and what I believe to be well constructed lightning rods in sufficient number to protect the property from electric eccentricities. True, my buildings have never suffered from fire or lightning and these luxuries have cost me no inconsiderable amount of cash, but this money has brought me relief from a heap of anxiety, for I know in case my property is swept away I am not left stripped and powerless to provide for my family, and I know that it will not be necessary to mortgage the farm to furnish them a shelter. I don't take _cheap_ insurance either, but invest my money in the policy of a company which I believe has abundant capital and is cautiously managed. A wealthy man can take his fire risks in his own hands if he chooses, but for a man of small or moderate means it seems to me the height of folly to do so. I would rather go without tobacco or "biled shirts" than insurance and lightning rods. I don't know that an American farmer ever had the gout. Certainly I never heard of such a case. If one does get the ailment, however, if he keeps bees he always has a sure remedy at hand. A German has discovered that if a bee is allowed to sting the affected part, a cure is instantaneous. Why don't Bismarck try this home remedy for his complication of gout and trichinæ? REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ [Illustration: Poultry Notes.] Poultry-Raisers. Write for Your Paper. Chicken Chat. One of my correspondents writes: "My hens don't eat well--they just pick over the food as if it were not good enough for them--and they don't lay well; in fact they don't do much of anything except to mope about--not as if sick, but as if lazy." Probably you have fed the same thing every day for the last six months, and the hens are getting tired of it. Hens are like other people--they like a change of provender once in awhile--especially when confined indoors. Sometimes over-feeding will cause indigestion, and then the biddies will exhibit the symptoms you describe. In either case, let the fowls fast for a whole day, and then for a few days feed lightly with food that is different from what they have been living on. Give plenty of green food, also Douglas' mixture in the drinking water twice a week. Another correspondent wants to know why I always advise giving cooked food to fowls and chicks when uncooked food is the natural diet. I advise cooked food because experience has taught me that it is much better for poultry than the raw articles would be. Because raw bugs and worms constitute the "natural diet" of fowls in their wild state, it does not follow that raw meal and potatoes would be the best and most economical food for our domestic fowls. Other things being equal, chicks that are fed on cooked food grow fatter, are less liable to disease, and thrive better generally than those who worry along on uncooked rations. If you are short of sitting hens and don't own an incubator, make the hens do double duty. Set two or more at the same time, and when the chicks come out, give two families to one hen, and set the other over again. To do this successfully, the chicks must be taken from the nest as soon as dry and given to the hen that is to raise them; for if a hen once leaves the nest with her chicks, no amount of moral suasion will induce her to go back. Before giving the hen fresh eggs, the nest should be renovated and the hen dusted with sulphur or something to prevent lice. A lady who commenced raising thoroughbred poultry last season writes me that she proposes to sell eggs for hatching this season, and asks for information about advertising, packing eggs, etc. The advertising is easy enough: all you have to do is to write a copy of your "ad.," send it to THE PRAIRIE FARMER and other papers that circulate among farmers, pay the bills, and answer the postals and letters as they come. But if I were in your shoes, I would "put my foot down" on the postals to begin with; they don't amount to anything anyway; the people who ask a long string of questions on a postal card are not, as a rule, the ones who become customers. Before we went into the poultry business an old poultry-breeder said: "Don't have anything to do with postals, it don't pay." We thought differently, but to satisfy ourselves, we kept track of the postals, and to-day I have the addresses of over 300 people who wrote us on postal cards. How many of those people became customers? Just one, and he was an Ohio man. When I go into that branch of the poultry business again, my advertisements will contain a postscript which will read thusly: "No postals answered." And you need not expect that every letter will mean business; people who have not the remotest idea of buying eggs will write and ask your prices, etc., and you must answer them all alike. Here is where circulars save lots of work and postage. I have sent you by mail what I call a model circular, and from that you can get up something to fit your case. Pack your eggs in baskets in cut straw or chaff, first wrapping each egg separately in paper. The eggs should not touch each other or the basket. Put plenty of packing on top, and with a darning needle and stout twine sew on a cover of stout cotton cloth. For the address use shipping tags, or else mark it plainly on the white cotton cover; I prefer the latter way. A day or two before you ship the eggs send a postal telling your customer when to look for them; that's all that postals are good for. Concerning the duplicating of orders in cases of failure of the eggs to hatch, I quote from one of my old circulars: "I guarantee to furnish fresh eggs, true to name, from pure-bred, standard fowls, packed to carry safely any distance. In cases of total failure, when the eggs have been properly cared for and set within two weeks after arrival, orders will be duplicated free of charge." I furnished just what I promised, and when a total failure was reported I sent the second sitting free--though sometimes I felt sure that the eggs were not properly cared for, and once a man reported a failure when, as I afterwards learned, eight eggs of the first sitting hatched. But, generally speaking, my customers were pretty well satisfied. It sometimes happens that only one or two eggs out of a sitting will hatch, and naturally the customer feels that he has not received the worth of his money. In such cases, if both parties are willing to do just what is right, the matter can be arranged so that all will be satisfied. And you will sometimes get hold of a customer that nothing under the heavens will satisfy; when this happens, do just exactly as you would wish to be done by, and there let the matter end. If the lady who wrote from Carroll county, Illinois, concerning an incubator, will write again and give the name of her postoffice, she will receive a reply by mail. FANNY FIELD. [Illustration: THE APIARY.] Spring Care of Bees. Although yesterday was very cold and inclement, to-day (March 11th) is warm and pleasant, and bees that are wintered upon their summer stands will be upon the wing. It would be well on such days as this to see that all entrances to hives are open, so that no hindrances may be in the way of house-cleaning. This is all we think necessary for this month, provided they have plenty of stores to last until flowers bloom. Handling bees tends to excite them to brood rearing, and veterans in bee-culture claim that this uses up the vitality of bees in spring very fast. Although more young may be reared, it is at the risk of the old ones, as they leave the hive in search of water; many thus perish, which often results in the death of the colony, as the young perish for want of nurses. Sometimes, also, in handling bees early in the season the queens are lost, as they may fall upon the ground, yet chilled, and perish. Bees consume food very fast while rearing brood; naturalists tells us that insects during the larvæ state consume more food than they do during the remainder of their existence. Where a bee-keeper has been so improvident as to neglect to provide abundance of stores for his bees he should examine them carefully, and if found wanting, remove an empty frame, substituting a full one in its place. Where frames of honey are not to be had, liquid honey and sugar can be kneaded together, forming cakes, which can be placed over the cluster. Care should be taken that no apertures are left, thus forming a way for cold drafts through the hive. These cakes are thought to excite bees less than when liquid food is given; they have another advantage, also, viz., bees can cluster upon them while feeding, and do not get chilled. Bees that have been wintered in cellars, or special repositories, are often injured by being removed too early to their summer stands. It would be better to let them remain, and lower the temperature during warm days with ice, until warm weather has come to stay. An aged veteran in Vermont that we visited the season following the disastrous winter of 1880-81, told us that his neighbors removed their bees from the cellar during a warm spell early in spring, and they were then in splendid condition. He let his bees remain until pollen was plentiful, and brought them out, all being in fine order; by this time his neighbors' colonies were all dead. Good judgment and care must be exercised in removing bees from the cellar, or disastrous results will follow. We know of an apiary of over one hundred colonies that was badly injured, indeed nearly ruined, by all being taken from the cellar at once on a fine, warm day. The bees all poured out of the hives for a play spell, like children from school, and having been confined so long together in one apartment had acquired, in some measure, the same scent, and soon things were badly mixed. Some colonies swarmed, others caught the fever, and piled up together in a huge mass. This merry making may have been fun for the bees, but it was the reverse of this for the owner, as many queens were destroyed, and hives that were populous before were carried from the cellar and left without a bee to care for the unhatched brood. When it is time to remove bees from the cellar the stands they are to occupy should be prepared beforehand. They should be higher at the back, inclining to the front; if the height of two bricks are at the back, one will answer for the front. This inclination to the front is an important matter; it facilitates the carrying out of dead bees and debris from the hive, the escape of moisture, and last, and most important item, bees will build their comb straight in the frame instead of crosswise of the hive, and their surplus comb in boxes correspondingly. If a few hives are removed near the close of the day and put in different parts of the apiary, the danger from swarming out is avoided, for the bees will become quiet before morning, and being far apart will not mix up when they have their play spell. The success of bee-keeping depends upon the faithful performance of infinite little items. The many friends of the Rev. L. L. Langstroth will be pained to learn that he has a severe attack of his old malady and unable to do any mental work. May the Lord deal kindly and gently with him. During the last fall and winter he has been the light of many conventions, and it will be remembered as a pleasant episode in the lives of many bee-keepers that they had the privilege of viewing his beaming countenance, hearing the words of wisdom as they escaped from his lips, and taking the hand of this truly great and good man. MRS. L. HARRISON Extracted Honey. A couple of copies of THE PRAIRIE FARMER have lately come to my desk, a reminder of my boyhood days, when, in the old home with my father, I used to contribute an article now and then to its columns. There is an old scrap-book on the shelf, at my right, now, with some of those articles in it, published nearly thirty years ago. But my object in writing now is to add something to Mrs. Harrison's article on Extracted Honey. Last year my honey crop was about 3,000 pounds, and half of this was extracted, or slung honey, as we bee-keepers often call it; but for next year I have decided to raise nearly all comb honey, for the reason that I do not get customers so readily for extracted honey. I have never extracted until the honey was all, or nearly all, capped over, and then admitted air into the vessels holding it, so as to be absolutely sure of getting it "dry," and proof against souring. This method has given me about half the amount others obtained by extracting as soon as the combs were filled by the bees, and ripening afterward. But in spite of all these precautions I find so much prejudice against extracted honey, growing out of the ignorance of the public with regard to this sweet, ignorance equaled only by the ignorance in regard to bees themselves, that the sale of such honey has been very slow; so slow that while my comb honey is reduced at this date to about 150 pounds, I have several ten-gallon kegs of pure white honey still on hand. Especially is there a prejudice against candied honey, though that is an absolute test of purity, and it can be readily liquified, as Mrs. H. says, without injury. When I say that it is an absolute test of purity I mean that all honey that candies evenly is pure, though some of the best honey I have ever had never candied at all. In one case I knew the honey to candy in the combs of a new swarm early in autumn; but some seasons, particularly very dry ones, it will hardly candy at all. This difference seems to be due to the varying proportion of natural glucose, which will crystallize, and levulose, or mellose, which will not crystallize. Manufactured glucose will not crystallize; and some of our largest honey merchants, even the Thurbers, of New York, have mixed artificial glucose with honey to avoid loss by the ignorant prejudice of the public. WM. CAMM., MORGAN CO., ILL. South'n Wisconsin Bee-keepers' Ass'n. The bee-keepers met in Janesville, Wis., on the 4th inst., and organized a permanent society, to be known as the Southern Wisconsin Bee-keepers' Association. The following named persons were elected officers for the ensuing year: President, C. O. Shannon; Vice-President, Levi Fatzinger; Secretary, J. T. Pomeroy; Treasurer, W. S. Squire. The regular sessions of the association will be held on the first Tuesday of March in each year. Special meetings will also be held, the time of which will be determined at previous meeting. The object of the association is to promote scientific bee-culture, and form a bond of union among bee-keepers. Any person may become a member by signing the constitution, and paying a fee of fifty cents. The next meeting will be held at the Pember house, Janesville, on the first Tuesday in May at 10 o'clock A. M. All bee-keepers are cordially invited to attend. The Secretary, of Edgerton, Rock Co., Wis., will conduct the correspondence of the association. * * * * * Blue Stem Spring Wheat!! The best variety of Prairie Wheat known. Yields largely and is less liable to blight than any other variety. Also celebrated Judson Oats for sale in small lots. Samples, statement of yield and prices sent free upon application to SAMPSON & FRENCH, Woodstock, Pipestone Co., Minn., or Storm Lake, Iowa. MAPS. RAND, McNALLY & CO.'S NEW RAILROAD --AND-- COUNTY MAP --OF THE-- UNITED STATES --AND-- DOMINION OF CANADA. Size, 4x2-1/2 feet, mounted on rollers to hang on the wall. This is an ENTIRELY NEW MAP, Constructed from the most recent and authentic sources. --IT SHOWS-- _ALL THE RAILROADS_, --AND-- Every County and Principal Town --IN THE-- UNITED STATES AND CANADA. A useful Map In every one's home, and place of business. Price, $2.00. Agents wanted, to whom liberal inducements will be given. Address RAND, McNALLY & CO., Chicago, Ill. By arrangements with the publishers of this Map we are enabled to make the following liberal offer: To each person who will remit us $2.25 we will send copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER one Year and THIS MAP POST-PAID. Address PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., CHICAGO. ILL. PUBLICATIONS. MARSHALL M. KIRKMAN'S BOOKS ON RAILROAD TOPICS. DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A RAILROAD MAN If You Do, the Books Described Below Point the Way. The most promising field for men of talent and ambition at the present day is the railroad service. The pay is large in many instances, while the service is continuous and honorable. Most of our railroad men began life on the farm. Of this class is the author of the accompanying books descriptive of railway operations, who has been connected continuously with railroads as a subordinate and officer for 27 years. He was brought up on a farm, and began railroading as a lad at $7 per month. He has written a number of standard books on various topics connected with the organization, construction, management and policy of railroads. These books are of interest not only to railroad men but to the general reader as well. They are indispensable to the student. They present every phase of railroad life, and are written in an easy and simple style that both interests and instructs. The books are as follows: "RAILWAY EXPENDITURES THEIR EXTENT, OBJECT AND ECONOMY."-A Practical Treatise on Construction and Operation. In Two Volumes, 850 pages $4.00 "HAND BOOK OF RAILWAY EXPENDITURES."--Practical Directions for Keeping the Expenditure Accounts 2.00 "RAILWAY REVENUE AND ITS COLLECTION."--And Explaining the Organization of Railroads 2.50 "THE BAGGAGE, PARCEL AND MAIL TRAFFIC OF RAILROADS."--An interesting work on this important service; 425 pages 2.00 "TRAIN AND STATION SERVICE."--Giving The Principal Rules and Regulations governing Trains; 280 pages 2.00 "THE TRACK ACCOUNTS OF RAILROADS."--And how they should be kept. Pamphlet 1.00 "THE FREIGHT TRAFFIC WAY-BILL."--Its Uses Illustrated and Described. Pamphlet 50 "MUTUAL GUARANTEE."--A Treatise on Mutual Suretyship. Pamphlet 50 Any of the above books will be sent post-paid on receipt of price, by PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., 150 Monroe St. CHICAGO, ILL. Money should be remitted by express, or by draft check or post office order. YOU can secure a nice RUBBER GOSSAMER CIRCULAR, or a nice decorated CHAMBER SET, or a nice imported GOLD BAND, or MOSS ROSE TEA SET, or a nice WHITE GRANITE DINNER SET FREE, in exchange for a few hours' time among your friends, getting up a little club order for our choice TEAS, COFFEES, Etc., at much lower prices than stores sell them. We are the cheapest Tea House east of San Francisco. A GUARANTEE given to each Club member. TESTIMONIALS and full particulars for getting up Clubs FREE. Write at once to the old reliable SAN FRANCISCO TEA CO., 1445 State St., CHICAGO. Mention this paper.--A reliable firm--_Editor_. CORN, GRASS, AND FRUIT FARMS BY ANDREWS & BABCOCK, HUMBOLDT, KAN. Money Loaned netting investors 7 per cent. Write us. Silk Culture. Osage for Silk-Worms. In a private letter to the editor of THE PRAIRIE FARMER Dr. L. S. Pennington, of Whiteside County, Illinois, says: "Many thanks for your instructive articles on Silk Culture. Could the many miles of Osage orange found in this State be utilized for this purpose, the industry would give employment to thousands of dependent women and children, by which means they could make themselves, at least in part, self-supporting. I hope that you will continue to publish and instruct your many readers on this subject." Anent this subject we find the following by Prof. C. V. Riley in a late issue of the American Naturalist: "There is a strong disposition on the part of those who look for making money by the propagation and sale of mulberry trees, to underrate the use of Osage orange as silk-worm food. We have thoroughly demonstrated, by the most careful tests, on several occasions, that when Maclura aurantiaca is properly used for this purpose, the resulting silk loses nothing in quantity or quality, and we have now a strain of Sericaria mori that has been fed upon the plant for twelve consecutive years without deterioration. There has been, perhaps, a slight loss of color which, if anything, must be looked upon as an advantage. It is more than likely, how ever, that the different races will differ in their adaptability to the Maclura, and that for the first year the sudden transition to Maclura from Morus, upon which the worms have been fed for centuries, may result in some depreciation. Mr. Virion des Lauriers, at the silk farm at Genito, has completed some experiments on the relative value of the two plants, which he details in the opening number of the Silk-Grower's Guide and Manufacturer's Gazette. Four varieties of worms were reared. The race known as the "Var" was fed throughout on mulberry leaves. The "Pyrenean" and "Cevennes" worms were fed throughout on leaves and branches of Osage orange, while the "Milanese" worms were fed on Maclura up to the second molt and then changed to mulberry leaves. At the close examples of each variety of cocoons were sent to the Secretary of the Silk Board at Lyons, and appraised by him The Maclura-fed cocoons were rated at 85 cents per pound, those raised partly on Osage and partly on mulberry at 95 cents per pound, and those fed entirely on mulberry at $1.11 per pound. "This, Mr. des Lauriers thinks, seems to show that the difference between Maclura and Morus as silk-worm food is some 'twenty-five to thirty per cent in favor of the latter, while it is evident that the leaf of the Osage orange can be used with some advantage during the first two ages of the worms, thus allowing the mulberry tree to grow more leafy for feeding during the last three ages.' The experiment, although interesting, is not conclusive, from the simple fact that different races were used in the different tests and not the same races, so that the result may have been due, to a certain extent, to race and not to food." SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL. A writer in an English medical journal declares that the raising of the head of the bed, by placing under each leg a block of the thickness of two bricks, is an effective remedy for cramps. Patients who have suffered at night, crying aloud with pain, have found this plan to afford immediate, certain, and permanent relief. California stands fifth in the list of States in the manufacture of salt, and is the only State in the Union where the distillation of salt from sea water is carried on to any considerable extent. This industry has increased rapidly during the last twenty years. The production has risen from 44,000 bushels in 1860 to upwards of 880,000 bushels in 1883. The amount of attention given to purely technical education in Saxony is shown by the fact that there are now in that kingdom the following schools: A technical high school in Dresden, a technical State institute at Chemnitz, and art schools in Dresden and Leipzig, also four builders' schools, two for the manufacture of toys, six for shipbuilders, three for basket weavers, and fourteen for lace making. Besides these there are the following trade schools supported by different trades, foundations, endowments, and districts: Two for decorative painting, one for watchmakers, one for sheet metal workers, three for musical instrument makers, one for druggists (not pharmacy), twenty-seven for weaving, one for machine embroidery, two for tailors, one for barbers and hairdressers, three for hand spinning, six for straw weaving, three for wood carving, four for steam boiler heating, six for female handiwork. There are, moreover, seventeen technical advanced schools, two for gardeners, eight agricultural, and twenty-six commercial schools. The Patrie reports, with apparent faith, an invention of Dr. Raydt, of Hanover, who claims to have developed fully the utility of carbonic acid as a motive agent. Under the pressure of forty atmospheres this acid is reduced to a liquid state, and when the pressure is removed it evaporates and expands into a bulk 500 times as great as that it occupied before. It is by means of this double process that the Hanoverian chemist proposes to obtain such important benefits from the agent he employs. A quantity of the fluid is liquified, and then stowed away in strong metal receptacles, securely fastened and provided with a duct and valve. By opening the valve free passage is given to the gas, which escapes with great force, and may be used instead of steam for working in a piston. One of the principal uses to which it has been put is to act as a temporary motive power for fire engines. Iron cases of liquified carbonic acid are fitted on to the boiler of the machine, and are always ready for use, so that while steam is being got up, and the engines can not yet be regularly worked in the usual way, the piston valves can be supplied with acid gas. There is, however, another remarkable object to which the new agent can be directed, and to which it has been recently applied in some experiments conducted at Kiel. This is the floating of sunken vessels by means of artificial bladders. It has been found that a bladder or balloon of twenty feet diameter, filled with air, will raise a mass of over 100 tons. Hitherto these floats have been distended by pumping air into them through pipes from above by a cumbrous and tedious process, but Dr. Raydt merely affixes a sufficient number of his iron gas-accumulators to the necks of the floats to be used, and then by releasing the gas fills them at once with the contents. DAIRY SUPPLIES, Etc. THE DAVIS SWING CHURN. The Most Popular Churn on the Market. [Illustration of a swing churn] Because it makes the most butter. Because no other Churn works so easy. Because it makes the best grained butter. Because it is the easiest cleaned. It has no floats or paddles inside. Also the Eureka Butter Worker, the Nesbitt Butter Printer, and a full line of Butter Making Utensils for Dairies and Factories. Send for Illustrated Circulars. VERMONT FARM MACHINE CO., Bellows Falls, Vt. The Cooley Creamer [Illustration of a creamer] Saves in labor its entire cost every season. It will produce enough more money from the milk to Pay for itself every 90 days over and above any other method you can employ. Don't buy infringing cans from irresponsible dealers. By decision of the U. S. Court the Cooley is the only Creamer or Milk Can which can be used water sealed or submerged without infringement. Send for circular to JOHN BOYD, Manufacturer, 199 LAKE ST., CHICAGO, ILL. CHOCOLATES. GRATEFUL--COMFORTING. EPPS'S COCOA. BREAKFAST. "By a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which govern the operations of digestion and nutrition, and by a careful application of the fine properties of well-selected Cocoa, Mr. Epps has provided our breakfast tables with a delicately flavored beverage which may save us many heavy doctors' bills. It is by the judicious use of such articles of diet that a constitution may be gradually built up until strong enough to resist every tendency to disease. Hundreds of subtle maladies are floating around us ready to attack wherever there is a weak point. We may escape many a fatal shaft by keeping ourselves well fortified with pure blood and a properly nourished frame."--_Civil Service Gazette._ Made simply with boiling water or milk. Sold only in half-pound tins by Grocers, labeled thus: JAMES EPPS & CO., Homoeopathic Chemists, London, England. When you write mention The Prairie Farmer. MISCELLANEOUS. 3% LOANS, For men of moderate means. Money loaned in any part of the country. Address, with 2-cent stamp. MICHIGAN LOAN & PUB. CO., CHARLOTTE, MICH. [Illustration of a ring] This Elegant Solid Plain Ring, made of Heavy 18k. Rolled Gold plate, packed in Velvet Casket, warranted 5 years, post-paid. 45c., 3 for $1.25. 50 Cards, "Beauties," all Gold, Silver, Roses, Lilies, Mottoes, &c., with name on, 10c., 11 packs for a $1.00 bill and this Gold Ring FREE. U. S. CARD CO., CENTERBROOK, CONN. SEEDS, Etc. THE DINGEE & CONARD CO'S BEAUTIFUL EVER-BLOOMING ROSES The Only establishment making a SPECIAL BUSINESS of ROSES. 60 LARGE HOUSES for ROSES alone. We GIVE AWAY, in Premiums and Extras, more ROSES than most establishments grow. Strong Pot Plants suitable for immediate bloom delivered safely, post-paid, to any post office. 5 splendid varieties, your choice, all labeled, for $1; 12 for $2; 19 for $3; 26 for $4; 35 for $5; 75 for $10; 100 for $13. Our NEW GUIDE, _a complete Treatise on the Rose_, 70 pp, _elegantly illustrated_ FREE THE DINGEE & CONARD CO., Rose Growers, West Grove, Chester Co., Pa. 1884--SPRING--1884. TREES Now is the time to prepare your orders for NEW and RARE Fruit and Ornamental Shrubs, Evergreens, ROSES, VINES, ETC. Besides many desirable Novelties; we offer the largest and most complete general Stock of Fruit and Ornamental Trees in the U. S. Abridged Catalogue mailed free. Address ELLWANGER & BARRY, Mt. Hope Nurseries, Rochester, N. Y. [Illustration of trees] FOREST TREES. _Largest Stock in America._ Catalpa Speciosa, Box-Elder, Maple, Larch, Pine, Spruce, etc. _Forest and Evergreen Tree Seeds._ R. Douglas & Sons, _WAUKEGAN, ILL._ EVERGREENS For everybody. Nursery grown, all sizes from 6 inches to 6 feet. Also EUROPEAN LARCH AND CATALPA and a few of the Extra Early Illinois Potatoes. Price List FREE. Address D. HILL, Nurseryman, Dundee, Ill. FOREST TREE SEEDS! I offer a large stock of Walnuts, Butternuts, Ash, and Box Elder Seeds, suitable for planting. All the growth of 1883. I control the entire stock of the SALOME APPLE, a valuable, new, hardy variety. Also a general assortment of Nursery stock. Send for catalogue, circular, and price lists. Address BRYANT'S NURSERY, Princeton, Ill. SEED CORN. Yellow and White Dent, Michigan Early Yellow Dent, Chester-White King Phillip, Yellow Yankee, Etc., Etc. Also the Celebrated MURDOCK CORN. L. B. FULLER & CO., 60 State St., Chicago. CUTHBERT RASPBERRY PLANTS! 10,000 for sale at Elmland Farm by L P. WHEELER, Quincy, Ill. SPECIALTY FOR 1884. 200 bush. Onion sets, 20,000 Asparagus roots, Raspberry and Strawberry roots, and Champion Potatoes. Italian Bees a specialty. Send for price list for 1884. SEND EARLY TO A. J. NORRIS, Cedar Falls, Iowa. SEEDS Our new catalogue, best published. Free _to all_. 1,500 _varieties_, 300 _illustrations_. You ought to have it. BENSON, MAULE & Co., Philadelphia, Pa. A Descriptive, Illustrated Nursery Catalogue and Guide to the Fruit and Ornamental Planter. Sent free to all applicants. WM. H. MOON, Morrisville, Bucks Co., Pa. SEED CORN NORTHERN GROWN, VERY EARLY. Also Flower Vegetable and Field Seeds 44 New Varities of Potatoes Order early. Catalogue Free. FRED. N. LANG, Baraboo, Wis. [Illustration of a fruit evaporator] CULLS AND WINDFALL APPLES Worth 50 Cents Per Bushel Net. SAVE THEM BY THE "PLUMMER PATENT PROCESS." Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue and full Particulars mailed free. PLUMMER FRUIT EVAPORATOR CO., No. 118 Delaware St., Leavenworth, Kan. When you write mention the Prairie Farmer. FERRY'S SEED ANNUAL FOR 1884 Will be mailed FREE to all applicants and to customers of last year without ordering it. It contains illustrations, prices, descriptions and directions for planting all Vegetable and Flower Seeds, Plants, etc. Invaluable to all. D.M. FERRY & CO. DETROIT, Mich. [Illustration of a cabbage with a face] J. B. ROOT & CO.'S Illustr'd Garden Manual of VEGETABLE and FLOWER SEEDS, ready for all applicants. Market Gardeners SEEDS a Specialty. Write for Wholesale Price List. --> SENT FREE ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS. FLORAL GIFTS! [Illustration of a ring with hearts] [Illustration: Magnifies 1,000 times] 50 CARDS SOUVENIRS OF FRIENDSHIP Beautiful designs, name neatly printed, 10c. 11 PACKS, this Elegant Ring, Microscopic Charm and Fancy Card Case, $1. Get ten of your friends to send with you, and you will obtain these THREE PREMIUMS and your pack FREE. Agent's Album of Samples, 25cts. NORTHFORD CARD CO., Northford, Conn. ONION SEED FOR SALE. Early Red Globe, Raised In 1883. JAMES BAKER, Davenport, Iowa. NEW CHOICE VARIETIES OF SEED POTATOES A Specialty. Twenty-five kinds. Will not be under-sold. Satisfaction guaranteed. Send postal, with full address, for prices. BEN F. HOOVER, Galesburg, Illinois. FOR SALE One Hundred Bushels of Native Yellow Illinois Seed Corn, grown on my farm, gathered early and kept since in a dry room. Warranted to grow. Price $2 per bu. H.P. HUMPHREYS & SON, Sheffield, Ill. Onion Sets Wholesale & Retail J. C. VAUGHN, _Seedsman_, 42 LaSalle St., CHICAGO, Ill. MARYLAND FARMS.--Book and Map _free_, by C. E. SHANAHAN, Attorney, Easton, Md. NOW Is the time to subscribe for THE PRAIRIE FARMER. Price only $2.00 per year is worth double the money. Peter Henderson & Co's COLLECTION OF SEEDS AND PLANTS embraces every desirable Novelty of the season, as well as all standard kinds. A special feature for 1884 is, that you can for $5.00 select Seeds or Plants to that value from their Catalogue, and have included, without charge, a copy of Peter Henderson's New Book, "Garden and Farm Topics," a work of 250 pages, handsomely bound in cloth, and containing a steel portrait of the author. The price of the book alone is $1.50. Catalogue of "Everything for the Garden," giving details, free on application. PETER HENDERSON & CO. SEEDSMEN & FLORISTS, 35 & 37 Cortlandt St., New York. GARDEN SEEDS. DIRECT FROM THE FARM AT THE LOWEST WHOLESALE RATES. SEED CORN that I know will grow; White Beans, Oats, Potatoes, ONIONS, Cabbage, Mangel Wurzel, Carrots, Turnips, Parsnips, Celery, all of the best quality. Catalogue with directions of cultivation FREE. --> SEEDS FOR THE CHILDREN'S GARDEN. 25 per cent. discount. Let the children send for my Catalogue AND TRY MY SEEDS. They are WARRANTED GOOD or money refunded. Address JOSEPH HARRIS, Moreton Farm, Rochester, N.Y. SEEDS ALBERT DICKINSON, Dealer in Timothy, Clover, Flax, Hungarian, Millet, Red Top, Blue Grass, Lawn Grass, Orchard Grass, Bird Seeds, &c. POP-CORN. Warehouses {115, 117 & 119 KINZIE ST. {104, 106, 108 & 110 Michigan St. OFFICE. 115 KINZIE ST., CHICAGO, ILL. FAY GRAPES Currant HEAD-QUARTERS. ALL BEST, NEW AND OLD. SMALL, FRUITS AND TREES. LOW TO DEALERS AND PLANTERS. Stock First-Class. Free Catalogues. GEO. S. JOSSELYN, Fredonia, N. Y. Remember _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._ [Illustration: HOUSEHOLD.] For nothing lovelier can be found In woman than to study _household_ good.--_Milton._ How He Ventilated the Cellar. The effect of foul air upon milk, cream, and butter was often alluded to at the Dairymen's meeting at DeKalb. A great bane to the dairyman is carbonic acid gas. In ill ventilated cellars it not only has a pernicious effect upon milk and its products, but it often renders the living apartments unhealthful, and brings disease and death to the family. In the course of the discussion Mr. W. D. Hoard, President of the Northwestern Dairymen's Association, related the following incident showing how easily cellars may be ventilated and rendered fit receptacles for articles of food: "In the city of Fort Atkinson, where I do reside, Mr. Clapp, the president of the bank told me that for twenty years he had been unable to keep any milk or butter or common food of the family in the cellar. I went and looked at it, and saw gathered on the sleepers above large beads of moisture, and then knew what was the matter. The cellar was full of foul air. I said to him, 'Prof. Wilkins is here and will tell you in a few moments how to remedy this difficulty, and make your cellar a clean and wholesome apartment of your house.' I went down and got the professor, and he went up and looked at the cellar, and he says, 'for ten dollars I will put you in possession of a cellar that will be clean and wholesome.' He went to work and took a four-inch pipe, made of galvanized iron, soldered tightly at the joints, passing it down the side of the cellar wall until it came within two inches of the bottom of the cellar, turned a square elbow at the top of the wall, carried it under the house, under the kitchen, up through the kitchen floor and into the kitchen chimney, about four feet above where the kitchen stovepipe entered. You know the kitchen stove in all families is in operation about three times a day. The heat from this kitchen stove acting on the column of air in that little pipe caused a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum, and the result was that in twenty-four hours that little pipe had drawn the entire foul air out of the cellar, and he has now a perfect cellar. I drop this hint to show you that it is within easy reach of every one, for the sum of only about ten dollars, to have a perfectly ventilated cellar. This carbonic acid gas is very heavy. It collects in the cellar and you can not get it out unless you dip it out like water, or pump it out; and it becomes necessary to apply something to it that shall operate in this way." This is a matter of such importance, and yet so little thought about, that we had designed having an illustration made to accompany this article, but conclude the arrangment is so simple that any one can go to work and adapt it to the peculiar construction of his own house, and we hope thousands will make use of Mr. Hoard's suggestion. An Old Roman Wedding. As far as the nuptial ceremony itself was concerned, the Romans were in the habit of celebrating it with many imposing rites and customs, some of which are still in use in this country. As soon, therefore, as the sooth-sayer had taken the necessary omens, the ceremony was commenced by a sheep being sacrificed to Juno, under whose special guardianship marriage was supposed to rest. The fleece was next laid upon two chairs, on which the bride and bridegroom sat, over whom prayers were then said. At the conclusion of the service the bride was led by three young men to the home of her husband. She generally took with her a distaff and spindle filled with wool, indicative of the first work in her new married life--spinning fresh garments for her husband. Five torches were carried to light her. The threshold of the house was gaily decorated with flowers and garlands; and in order to keep out infection it was anointed with certain unctuous perfumes. As a preservative, moreover, against sorcery and evil influences, it was disenchanted by various charms. After being thus prepared, the bride was lifted over the threshold, it being considered unlucky for her to tread across it on first entering her husband's house. The musicians then struck up their music, and the company sang their "Epithalamium." The keys of the house were then placed in the young wife's hands, symbolic of her now being mistress. A cake, too, baked by the vestal virgins, which had been carried before her in the procession from the place of the marriage ceremony to the husband's home, was now divided among the guests. To enhance the merriment of the festive occasion, the bridegroom threw nuts among the boys, who then, as nowadays enjoyed heartily a grand scramble. Mr. Smith's Stovepipe. Once upon a time there lived a certain man and wife, and their name--well, I think it must have been Smith, Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. One chilly day in October Mrs. Smith said to her husband: "John, I really think we must have the stove up in the sitting-room." And Mr. Smith from behind his newspaper answered "Well." Three hundred and forty-six times did Mr. and Mrs. Smith repeat this conversation, and the three hundred and forty-seventh time Mr. Smith added: "I'll get Brown to help me about it some day." It is uncertain how long the matter would have rested thus, had not Mrs. Smith crossed the street and asked neighbor Brown to come over and help her husband set up a stove, and as she was not his wife he politely consented and came at once. With a great deal of grunting, puffing, and banging, accompanied by some words not usually mentioned in polite society, the two men at last got the stove down from the attic. Mrs. Smith had placed the zinc in its proper position, and they put the stove way to one side of it, but of course that didn't matter. Then they proceeded to put up the stovepipe. Mr. Smith pushed the knee into the chimney, and Mr. Brown fitted the upright part to the stove. The next thing was to get the two pieces to come together. They pushed and pulled, they yanked and wrenched, they rubbed off the blacking onto their hands, they uttered remarks, wise and otherwise. Presently it occurred to Mr. Smith that a hammer was just the thing that was needed, and he went for one. Mr. Brown improved the opportunity to wipe the perspiration from his noble brow, totally oblivious of the fact that he thereby ornamented his severe countenance with several landscapes done in stove blacking. The hammer didn't seem to be just the thing that was needed, after all. Mr. Smith pounded until he had spoiled the shape of the stovepipe, and still the pesky thing wouldn't go in, so he became exasperated and threw away the hammer. It fell on Mr. Brown's toe, and that worthy man ejaculated--well, it's no matter what he ejaculated. Mr. Smith replied to his ejaculation, and then Mr. Brown went home. Why continue the tale? Everybody knows that Mr. Smith, after making a great deal of commotion, finally succeeded in getting the pipe into place, that he was perfectly savage to everybody for the rest of the day, and that the next time he and Brown met on the street both were looking intently the other way. But there is more to tell. It came to pass in the course of the winter that the pipe needed cleaning out. Mrs. Smith dreaded the ordeal, both for her own sake and her husband's. It happened that the kitchen was presided over by that rarest of treasures, a good-natured, competent hired girl. This divinity proposed that they dispense with Mr. Smith's help in cleaning out the pipe, and Mrs. Smith, with a sigh of relief, consented. They carefully pulled the pipe apart, and, holding the pieces in a horizontal position that no soot might fall on the carpet, carried it into the yard. After they had swept out the pipe and carried it back they attempted to put it up. That must have been an unusually obstinate pipe, for it steadily refused to go together. The minds of Mrs. Smith and her housemaid were sufficiently broad to grasp this fact after a few trials; therefore they did not waste their strength in vain attempts, but rested, and in an exceedingly un-masculine way held a consultation. The girl went for a hammer, and brought also a bit of board. She placed this on the top of the pipe, raised her hammer, Mrs. Smith held the pipe in place below, two slight raps, and, lo, it was done. See what a woman can do. This story is true, with the exception of the names and a few other unimportant items. I say, and will maintain it, that as a general thing a woman has more brains and patience and less stupidity than a man. I challenge any one to prove the contrary.--_N. E. Homestead._ Progress. In the course of a lecture on the resources of New Brunswick, Professor Brown, of the Ontario Agricultural College, told the following story by an Arabian writer: "I passed one day by a very rude and beautifully situated hamlet in a vast forest, and asked a savage whom I saw how long it had been there. 'It is indeed an old place,' replied he. 'We know it has stood there for 100 years as the hunting home of the great St. John, but how long previous to that we do not know.' "One century afterward, as I passed by the same place, I found a busy little city reaching down to the sea, where ships were loading timber for distant lands. On asking one of the inhabitants how long this had flourished, he replied: 'I am looking to the future years, and not to what has gone past, and have no time to answer such questions.' "On my return there 100 years afterward, I found a very smoky and wonderfully-populous city, with many tall chimneys, and asked one of the inhabitants how long it had been founded. 'It is indeed a mighty city,' replied he. 'We know not how long it has existed, and our ancestors there on this subject are as ignorant as ourselves.' "Another century after that as I passed by the same place, I found a much greater city than before, but could not see the tall chimneys, and the air was pure as crystal; the country to the north and the east and the west, was covered with noble mansions and great farms, full of many cattle and sheep. I demanded of a peasant, who was reaping grain on the sands of the sea-shore, how long ago this change took place? 'In sooth, a strange question!' replied he. 'This ground and city have never been different from what you now behold them.' 'Were there not of old,' said I, 'many great manufacturers in this city?' 'Never,' answered he, 'so far as we have seen, and never did our fathers speak to us of any such.' "On my return there, 100 years afterward, I found the city was built across the sea east-ward into the opposite country; there were no horses, and no smoke of any kind came from the dwellings. "The inhabitants were traveling through the air on wires which stretched far into the country on every side, and the whole land was covered with many mighty trees and great vineyards, so that the noble mansions could not be seen for the magnitude of the fruit thereof. "Lastly, on coming back again, after an equal lapse of time, I could not perceive the slightest vestige of the city. I inquired of a very old and saintly man, who appeared to be under deep emotion, and who stood alone upon the spot, how long it had been destroyed. 'Is this a question,' said he, 'from a man like you? Know ye not that cities are not now part of the human economy? Every one travels through the air on wings of electricity, and lives in separate dwellings scattered all over the land; the ships of the sea are driven by the same power, and go above or below as found to be best for them. In the cultivation of the soil,' said he, 'neither horse nor steam-power are employed; the plow is not known, nor are fertilizers of any more value in growing the crops of the field. Electricity is carried under the surface of every farm and all over-head like a net; when the inhabitants require rain for any particular purpose, it is drawn down from the heavens by similar means. The influence of electricity has destroyed all evil things, and removed all diseases from among men and beasts, and every living thing upon the earth. All things have changed, and what was once the noble city of my name is to become the great meeting place of all the leaders of science throughout the whole world.'" A Family Jar. "Yes," said Mrs. Gunkettle, as she spanked the baby in her calm, motherly way, "it's a perfect shame, Mr. G., that you never bring me home anything to read! I might as well be shut up in a lunatic asylum." "I think so, too," responded the unfeeling man. "Other people," continued Mrs. Gunkettle, as she gave the baby a marble to swallow, to stop its noise, "have magazines till they can't rest." "There's one," said Mr. G., throwing a pamphlet on the table. "Oh, yes; a horrid old report of the fruit interests of Michigan; lots of news in that!" and she sat down on the baby with renewed vigor. "I'm sure it's plum full of currant news of the latest dates," said the miserable man. Mrs. Gunkettle retorted that she wouldn't give a fig for a whole library of such reading, when 'apple-ly the baby shrieked loud enough to drown all other sounds, and peace was at once restored. Mouce Traps and Other Sweetemetes. The following advertisement is copied from the Fairfield Gazette of September 21, 1786, or ninety-seven years ago, which paper was "printed in Fairfield by W. Miller and F. Fogrue, at their printing office near the meeting house." Beards taken, taken of, and Registurd by ISSAC FAC-TOTUM Barber, Peri-wig maker, Surgeon, Parish Clerk, School Master, Blacksmith and Man-midwife. SHAVES for a penne, cuts hair for two pense, and oyld and powdird into the bargain. Young ladys genteeely Edicated; Lamps lited by the year or quarter. Young gentlemen also taut their Grammer langwage in the neatest manner, and great care takin of morels and spelin. Also Salme singing and horse Shewing by the real maker! Likewice makes and Mends, All Sorts of Butes and Shoes, teches the Ho! boy and Jewsharp, cuts corns, bleeds. On the lowes Term--Glisters and Pur is, at a peny a piece. Cow-tillions and other dances taut at hoam and abrode. Also deals holesale and retale--Pirfumerry in all its branchis. Sells all sorts of stationary wair, together with blacking balls, red herrins, ginger bread and coles, scrubbing brushes, trycle, Mouce traps, and other sweetemetes, Likewise. Red nuts, Tatoes, sassages and other gardin stuff. P. T. I teches Joggrefy, and them outlandish kind of things----A bawl on Wednesday and Friday. All pirformed by Me. ISAAC FAC-TOTUM. * * * * * A SONNET ON A BONNET. A film of lace and a droop of feather, With sky-blue ribbons to knot them together; A facing (at times) of bronze-brown tresses, Into whose splendor each furbelow presses; Two strings of blue to fall in a tangle, And chain of pink chin In decorous angle; The tip of the plume right artfully twining Where a firm neck steals under the lining; And the curls and braids, the plume and the laces. Circle about the shyest of faces, Bonnet there is not frames dimples sweeter! Bonnet there is not that shades eyes completer! Fated is he that but glances upon it, Sighing to dream of that face in the bonnet. --_Winnifred Wise Jenks._ * * * * * Little Pleasantries. A Sweet thing in bonnets: A honey bee. It will get so in Illinois, by and by, that the marriage ceremony will run thus: "Until death--or divorce--do us part." He had been ridiculing her big feet, and to get even with him she replied that he might have her old sealskin sacque made over into a pair of ear-muffs. A Toronto man waited until he was 85 years old before he got married. He waited until he was sure that if he didn't like it he wouldn't have long to repent. How a woman always does up a newspaper she sends to a friend, so that it looks like a well stuffed pillow, is something that no man is woman enough to understand. "Yes, my dear," said Mrs. Ramsbothom, speaking of her invalid uncle, "the poor old gentleman has had a stroke of parenthesis, and when I last saw him he was in a state of comma." "Uncle, when sis sings in the choir Sunday nights, why does she go behind the organ and taste the tenor's mustache?" "Oh, don't bother me, sonny; I suppose they have to do it to find out if they are in tune." A couple of Vassar girls were found by a professor fencing with broomsticks in a gymnasium. He reminded the young girls that such an accomplishment would not aid them in securing husbands. "It will help us keep them in," replied one of the girls. A clergyman's daughter, looking over the MSS. left by her father in his study, chanced upon the following sentence: "I love to look upon a young man. There is a hidden potency concealed within his breast which charms and pains me." She sat down, and blushingly added: "Them's my sentiments exactly, papa--all but the pains." "My dear," said a sensible Dutchman to his wife, who for the last hour had been shaking her baby up and down on her knee: "I don't think so much butter is good for the child." "Butter? I never give my Artie any butter; what an idea!" "I mean to say you have been giving him a good feed of milk out of the bottle, and now you have been an hour churning it!" We wish to keep the attention of wheat-raisers fixed upon the Saskatchewan variety of wheat until seeding time is over, for we believe it worthy of extended trial. Read the advertisement of W. J. Abernethy & Co. They will sell the seed at reasonable figures, and its reliability can be depended upon. [Illustration: OUR YOUNG FOLKS] LITTLE DILLY-DALLY. I don't believe you ever Knew any one so silly As the girl I'm going to tell about-- A little girl named Dilly, Dilly-dally Dilly, Oh, she is very slow, She drags her feet Along the street, And dilly-dallies so! She's always late to breakfast Without a bit of reason, For Bridget rings and rings the bell And wakes her up in season. Dilly-dally Dilly, How can you be so slow? Why don't you try To be more spry, And not dilly-dally so? 'Tis just the same at evening; And it's really quite distressing To see the time that Dilly wastes In dreaming and undressing. Dilly-dally Dilly Is always in a huff; If you hurry her Or worry her She says, "There's time enough." Since she's neither sick nor helpless, It is quite a serious matter That she should be so lazy that We still keep scolding at her. Dilly-dally Dilly, It's very wrong you know, To do no work That you can shirk, And dilly-dally so. Uncle Jim's Yarn. Old "Uncle Jim," of Stonington, Conn., ought to have a whole drawer to himself, for nothing short of it could express the easy-going enlargement of his mind in narratives. Uncle Jim was a retired sea captain, sealer, and whaler, universally beloved and respected for his lovely disposition and genuine good-heartedness, not less than for the moderation of his statements and the truthful candor of his narrations. It happened that one of the Yale Professors, who devoted himself to ethnological studies, was interested in the Patagonians, and very much desired information as to the alleged gigantic stature of the race. A scientific friend, who knew the Stonington romancer, told the Professor that he could no doubt get valuable information from Uncle Jim, a Captain who was familiar with all the region about Cape Horn. And the Professor, without any hint about Uncle Jim's real ability, eagerly accompanied his friend to make the visit. Uncle Jim was found in one of his usual haunts, and something like the following ethnological conversation ensued: Professor--They tell me, Capt. Pennington, that you have been a good deal in Patagonia. Uncle Jim--Made thirty or forty voyages there, sir. Professor--And I suppose you know something about the Patagonians and their habits? Uncle Jim--Know all about 'em, sir. Know the Patagonians, sir, all, all of 'em, as well as I know the Stonington folks. Professor--I wanted to ask you, Captain, about the size of the Patagonians--whether they are giants, as travelers have reported? Uncle Jim--No, sir--shaking his head slowly, and speaking with the modest tone of indifference--no, sir, they are not. (It was quite probable that the Captain never had heard the suggestion before). The height of the Patagonian, sir, is just five feet nine inches and a half. Professor--How did you ascertain this fact, Captain? Uncle Jim--Measured 'em, sir--measured 'em. One day when the mate and I were ashore down there, I called up a lot of the Patagonians, and the mate and I measured about 500 of them, and every one of them measured five feet nine inches and a half--that's their exact height. Professor--That's very interesting. But, Captain, don't you suppose there were giants there long ago, in the former generations? All the travelers say so. Uncle Jim--Not a word of truth in it, sir--not a word. I'd heard that story and I thought I'd settle it. I satisfied myself there was nothing in it. Professor--But how could you know that they used not to be giants? What evidence could you get? Mightn't the former race have been giants? Uncle Jim--Impossible, sir, impossible. Professor--But how did you satisfy yourself? Uncle Jim--Dug 'em up, sir--dug 'em up speaking with more than usual moderation. I'd heard that yarn. The next voyage, I took the bo'sen and went ashore; we dug up 275 old Patagonians and measured 'em. They all measured exactly five feet nine inches and a half; no difference in 'em--men, women, and all ages just the same. Five feet nine inches and a half is the natural height of a Patagonian. They've always been just that. Not a word of truth in the stories about giants, sir.--_Harper's Magazine_. Puddin' Tame's Fun. "Nice child, very nice child," observed an old gentleman, crossing the aisle and addressing the mother of the boy who had just hit him in the eye with a wad of paper. "How old are you, my son?" "None of your business," replied the youngster, taking aim at another passenger. "Fine boy," smiled the old man, as the parent regarded her offspring with pride. "A remarkably fine boy. What is your name, my son?" "Puddin' Tame!" shouted the youngster, with a giggle at his own wit. "I thought so," continued the old man, pleasantly. "If you had given me three guesses at it, that would have been the first one I would have struck on. Now, Puddin', you can blow those things pretty straight, can't you?" "You bet!" squealed the boy, delighted at the compliment. "See me take that old fellow over there!" "No, no!" exclaimed the old gentleman, hastily. "Try it on the old woman I was sitting with. She has boys of her own, and she won't mind." "Can you hit the lady for the gentleman, Johnny?" asked the fond parent. Johnny drew a bead and landed the pellet on the end of the old woman's nose. But she did mind it, and, rising in her wrath, soared down on the small boy like a blizzard. She put him over the line, reversed him, ran him backward till he didn't know which end of him was front, and finally dropped him into the lap of the scared mother, with a benediction whereof the purport was that she'd be back in a moment and skin him alive. "She didn't seem to like it, Puddin'," smiled the gentleman, softly. "She's a perfect stranger to me, but I understand she is a matron of truants' home, and I thought she would like a little fun; but I was mistaken." And the old gentleman sighed sweetly as he went back to his seat. The Alphabet. The discovery of the alphabet is at once the triumph, the instrument and the register of the progress of our race. The oldest abecedarium in existence is a child's alphabet on a little ink-bottle of black ware found on the site of Cere, one of the oldest of the Greek settlements in Central Italy, certainly older than the end of the sixth century B. C. The Phoenician alphabet has been reconstructed from several hundred inscriptions. The "Moabite Stone" has yielded the honor of being the most ancient of alphabetic records to the bronze plates found in Lebanon in 1872, fixed as of the tenth or eleventh century, and therefore the earliest extant monuments of the Semitic alphabet. The lions of Nineveh and an inscribed scarab found at Khorsabad have furnished other early alphabets; while scarabs and cylinders, seals and gems, from Babylon and Nineveh, with some inscriptions, are the scanty records of the first epoch of the Phoenician alphabet. For the second period, a sarcophagus found in 1855, with an inscription of twenty-two lines, has tasked the skill of more than forty of the most eminent Semitic scholars of the day, and the literature connected with it is overwhelming. An unbroken series of coins extending over seven centuries from 522 B. C. to 153 A. D., Hebrew engraved gems, the Siloam inscription discovered in Jerusalem in 1880, early Jewish coins, have each and all found special students whose successive progress is fully detailed by Taylor. The Aramæan alphabet lived only for seven or eight centuries; but from it sprang the scripts of five great faiths of Asia and the three great literary alphabets of the East. Nineveh and its public records supply most curious revelations of the social life and commercial transactions of those primitive times. Loans, leases, notes, sales of houses, slaves, etc., all dated, show the development of the alphabet. The early Egyptian inscriptions show which alphabet was there in the reign of Xerxes. Fragments on stone preserved in old Roman walls in Great Britain, Spain, France, and Jerusalem, all supply early alphabets. Alphabets have been affected by religious controversies, spread by missionaries, and preserved in distant regions by holy faith, in spite of persecution and perversion. The Arabic alphabet, next in importance after the great Latin alphabet, followed in eighty years the widespread religion of Mohammed; and now the few Englishmen who can read and speak it are astonished to learn that it is collaterally related to our own alphabet, and that both can be traced back to the primitive Phoenician source. Greece alone had forty local alphabets, reduced by careful study to about half a dozen generic groups, characterized by certain common local features, and also by political connection. Of the oldest "a, b, c's" found in Italy, several were scribbled by school-boys on Pompeian walls, six in Greek, four in Oscan, four in Latin; others were scratched on children's cups, buried with them in their graves, or cut or painted for practice on unused portions of mortuary slabs. The earliest was found as late as 1882, a plain vase of black ware with an Etruscan inscription and a syllabary or spelling exercise, and the Greek alphabet twice repeated. What a Child Can Do. "Pa, I have signed the pledge," said a little boy to his father, on coming home one evening; "will you help me keep it?" "Certainly," said the father. "Well, I have brought a copy of the pledge; will you sign it, papa?" "Nonsense, nonsense, my child! What could I do when my brother-officers called--the father had been in the army--if I was a teetotaler?" "But do try, papa." "Tut, tut! why you are quite a little radical." "Well, you won't ask me to pass the bottle, papa?" "You are quite a fanatic, my child; but I promise not to ask you to touch it." Some weeks after that two officers called in to spend the evening. "What have you to drink?" said they. "Have you any more of that prime Scotch ale?" "No," said he; "I have not, but I shall get some. Here, Willie, run to the store, and tell them to send some bottles up." The boy stood before his father respectfully, but did not go. "Come, Willie; why, what's the matter? Come, run along." He went, but came back presently without any bottles. "Where's the ale, Willie?" "I asked them for it at the store, and they put it upon the counter, but I could not touch it. O pa, pa! don't be angry; I told them to send it up, but I could not touch it myself!" The father was deeply moved, and turning to his brother-officers, he said: "Gentlemen, do you hear that? You can do as you please. When the ale comes you may drink it, but not another drop shall be drank in my house, and not another drop shall pass my lips. Willie, have you your temperance pledge?" "O pa! I have." "Bring it, then." And the boy was back with it in a moment. The father signed it and the little fellow clung round his father's neck with delight. The ale came, but not one drank, and the bottles stood on the table untouched. Children, sign the pledge, and ask your parents to help you keep it. Don't touch the bottle, and try to keep others from touching it. MISCELLANEOUS. Stock Farms FOR SALE; one of the very best in Central Illinois, the finest agricultural region in the world; 1,100 acres, highly improved; unusual facilities for handling stock; also a smaller farm; also one of the finest Stock Ranches In Central Texas, 9,136 acres. Each has never-failing water, and near railroads; must be sold; terms easy; price low. For further particulars address J. B. or F. C. TURNER, Jacksonville, Ill. Cut This Out & Return to us with TEN CTS. & you'll get by mail A GOLDEN BOX OF GOODS that will bring you in MORE MONEY, in One Month than anything else in America. Absolute Certainty Need no capital. M. Young, 173 Greenwich St. N. York Self Cure Free Nervous Debility Lost Manhood Weakness and Decay A favorite prescription of a noted specialist (now retired). Druggists can fill it. Address DR. WARD & CO., LOUISIANA, MO. MAP Of the United States and Canada, Printed in Colors, size 4 x 2-1/2 feet, also a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER for one year. Sent to any address for $2.00. BREEDERS DIRECTORY. The following list embraces the names of responsible and reliable Breeders in their line, and parties wishing to purchase or obtain information can feel assured that they will be honorably dealt with: SWINE. Chester Whites. W. A. Gilbert, Wauwatosa, Wis. LIVE STOCK, Etc. PUBLIC SALE OF POLLED ABERDEEN-ANGUS AND Short-Horn Cattle. [Illustration of a cow] We will, on March 27 and 28, at Dexter Park, Stock Yards, Chicago, offer at public sale 64 head of Polled Aberdeen-Angus, and 21 head of Short-horns, mostly Imported and all highly bred cattle, representing the best strains of their respective breeds. Sale each day will begin at 1 P. M., sharp. Catalogues now ready. Address as below. NOTE--ENGLISH SHIRE HORSES,--Three stallions and four mares of this breed (all imported) will be offered at the close of the second day's sale of cattle. Geo. Whitfield, Model Farm, Model Farm, Geary Bros., Bli Bro. Stock Farm, London, Canada. At Kansas City, Mo., on April 15, 16, and 17, the same parties will offer at public sale a choice lot of Aberdeen-Angus and Short-horn cattle. When you write mention The Prairie Farmer. HOLSTEINS AT LIVING RATES. DR. W. A. PRATT, ELGIN, ILL., Now has a herd of more than one hundred head of full-blooded HOLSTEINS mostly imported direct from Holland. These choice dairy animals are for sale at moderate prices. Correspondence solicited or, better, call and examine the cattle, and select your own stock. SCOTCH COLLIE SHEPHERD PUPS, --FROM-- IMPORTED AND TRAINED STOCK --ALSO-- Newfoundland Pups and Rat Terrier Pups. Concise and practical printed instruction in Training young Shepherd Dogs is given to buyers of Shepherd Puppies; or will be sent on receipt of 25 cents in postage stamps. For Printed Circular, giving full particulars about Shepherd Dogs, enclose a 3-cent stamp, and address N. H. PAAREN, P. O. Box 326.--CHICAGO, ILL. VICTORIA SWINE. [Illustration: FALSTAFF.] Winner of First Prize Chicago Fat Stock Show 1878. Originators of this famous breed. Also breeders of Pekin Ducks and Light Brahma Fowls. Stock for sale. Send for circular A. SCHIEDT & DAVIS, Dyer, Lake Co. Ind STEWART'S HEALING POWDER. [Illustration of two people and a horse] SOLD BY HARNESS AND DRUG STORES. Warranted to cure all open Sores on ANIMALS from any cause. Chester White Pigs. Good as the best at prices to suit the times. Also, Short-horn cattle. Send for price list. S. H. OLMSTEAD, Freedom, La Salle Co., Ill. Reduced rates by express. 2086 Lbs. W'ght Of Two Ohio IMPROVED CHESTER HOGS. Send for description of this famous breed, Also Fowls, L. B. SILVER, CLEVELAND, O. SILVER SPRINGS HERD, JERSEY CATTLE, combining the best butter families. Correspondence solicited. T. L. HACKER, Madison, Wis. PIG EXTRICATOR To aid animals in giving birth. Send for free circular to WM. DULIN, Avoca, Pottawattamie Co., Ia. CARDS 40 Satin Finish Cards, New Imported designs, name on and Present Free for 10c. Cut this out. CLINTON BROS. & Co., Clintonville, Ct. 40 (1884) Chromo Cards, no 2 alike, with name, 10c., 13 pks. $1. GEORGE I. REED & CO., Nassau, N. Y. THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the Cheapest and Best Agricultural Paper published. Only $2.00 per year. [Illustration: LITERATURE.] THE GENTLEMAN FARMER. He owned the farm--at least 'twas thought He owned, since he lived upon it,-- And when he came there, with him brought The men whom he had hired to run it. He had been bred to city life And had acquired a little money; But, strange conceit, himself and wife Thought farming must be something funny. He did not work himself at all, But spent his time in recreation-- In pitching quoits and playing ball, And such mild forms of dissipation. He kept his "rods" and trolling spoons, His guns and dogs of various habits,-- While in the fall he hunted coons, And in the winter skunks and rabbits. His hired help were quick to learn The liberties that might be taken, And through the season scarce would earn The salt it took to save their bacon. He knew no more than child unborn, One-half the time, what they were doing,-- Whether they stuck to hoeing corn, Or had on hand some mischief brewing. His crops, although they were but few, With proper food were seldom nourished, While cockle instead of barley grew, And noxious weeds and thistles flourished. His cows in spring looked more like rails Set up on legs, than living cattle; And when they switched their dried-up tails The very bones in them would rattle. At length the sheriff came along, Who soon relieved him of his labors. While he became the jest and song Of his more enterprising neighbors. Back to the place where life began, Back to the home from whence he wandered, A sadder, if not a wiser man, He went with all his money squandered. MORAL. On any soil, be it loam or clay, Mellow and light, or rough and stony, Those men who best make farming pay Find use for brains as well as money. _--Tribune and Farmer._ FRANK DOBB'S WIVES. "The great trouble with my son," old Dobb observed to me once, "is that he is a genius." And the old gentleman sighed and looked with melancholy eyes at the picture on the genius's easel. It was a clever picture, but everything Frank Dobb did was clever, from his painting to his banjo playing. Clever was the true name for it, for of substantial merit it possessed none. He had begun to paint without learning to draw, and he could pick a tune out of any musical instrument extant without ever having mastered the mysteries of notes. He talked the most graceful of airy nothings, and could not cover a page of note paper without his orthography going lame, and all the rest of his small acquirements and accomplishments were proportionately shallow and incomplete. Paternal partiality laid it to his being too gifted to study, but the cold logic, which no ties of consanguinity influenced, ascribed it to laziness. Frank was, indeed, the idlest and best-natured fellow in the world. You never saw him busy, angry, or out of spirits. He painted a little, thrummed his guitar a little longer or rattled a tune off on his piano, smoked and read a great deal, and flirted still more, all in the same deliberate and easy-going way. Any excuse was sufficient to absolve him from serious work. So he lead a pleasant, useless life, with Dobb senior to pay the bills. He had the handsomest studio in New York, a studio for one of Ouida's heroes to luxuriate in. If the encouragement of picturesque surroundings could have made a painter of him he would have been a master. The fame of his studio, and the fact that he did not need the money, made his pictures sell. He was quite a lion in society, and it was regarded as a favor to be asked to call on him. He was the beau ideal of the artist of romance, and was accorded a romantic eminence accordingly. So, with his pictures to provide him with pocket money, and his father to see to the rest, he lived the life of a young prince, feted and flattered and spoiled, artistically despised by all the serious workers who knew him, and hated by some who envied him the commercial success he had no necessity for, but esteemed by most of us as a good fellow and his own worst enemy. Frank married his first wife while Dobb senior was still at the helm of his own affairs. She was a charming little woman whose acquaintance he had made when she visited his studio with a party of friends. She had not a penny, but he made a draft upon "the governor," as he called him, and the happy pair digested their honeymoon in Europe. They were absent six months, during which time he did not set brush to canvas. Then they returned, as he fancifully termed it, to go to work. He commenced the old life as if he had never been married. The familiar sound of pipes and beer, and supper after the play, often with young ladies who had been assisting in the representation on the stage, was traveled as if there had been no Mrs. Dobb at home in the flat old Dobb provided. Frank's expenditures on himself were as lavish as they had been in his bachelor days. As little Brown said, it was lucky that Mrs. Dobb had a father-in-law to buy her dinner for her. She rarely came to her husband's studio, because he claimed that it interfered with the course of business. He had invented a fiction that she was too weak to endure the strain of society, and so he took her into it as little as possible. In brief, married by the caprice of a selfish man, the poor little woman lived through a couple of neglected years, and then died of a malady as nearly akin to a broken heart as I can think of, while Frank was making a trip to the Bahamas on the yacht of his friend Munnybagge, of the Stock Exchange. He had set out on the voyage ostensibly to make studies, for he was a marine painter, on the principle, probably, that marines are easiest to paint. When he came back and found his wife dead, he announced that he would move his studio to Havana for the purpose of improving his art. He did so, putting off his mourning suit the day after he left New York and not putting it on again, as the evidence of creditable witnesses on the steamer and in Havana has long since proved. His son's callousness was a savage stab in old Dobb's heart. A little, mild-looking old gentleman, without a taint of selfishness or suspicion in his own nature, he had not seen the effect of his indulgence of him on his son till his brutal disregard for his first duty as a man had told him of it. The old man had appreciated and loved his daughter-in-law. In proportion as he had discovered her unhappiness and its just cause, he had lost his affection for his son. I hear that there was a terrible scene when Frank came home, a week after his wife had been buried. He claimed to have missed the telegram announcing her death to him at Nassau, but Munnybagge had already told some friends that he had got the dispatch in time for the steamer, but had remained over till the next one, because he had a flirtation on hand with little Gonzales, the Cuban heiress, and old Dobb had heard of it. Munnybagge never took him yachting again; and, speaking to me once about him, he designated him, not by name, but as "that infernal bloodless cad." However, as I have said, there was a desperate row between father and son, and Frank is said to have slunk out of the house like a whipped cur, and been quite dull company at the supper which he took after the opera that night in Gillian Trussell's jolly Bohemian flat. When he emigrated, with his studio traps filling half a dozen packing cases, none of the boys bothered to see him off. They had learned to see through his good fellowship, and recalled a poor little phantom, to whose life and happiness he had been a wicked and bitter enemy. About a year after his departure I read the announcement in the Herald of the marriage of Franklin D. Dobb, Sr., to a widow well-known and popular in society. I took the trouble to ascertain that it was Frank's father, and being among some of the boys that night, mentioned it to them. "Well," remarked Smith, "that's really queer. You remember Frank left some things in my care when he went away? Yesterday I got a letter asking about them, and informing me that he had got married and was coming home." He did come home, and he settled in his old studio. What sort of a meeting he had with his father this time I never heard. The old gentleman had been paying him his allowance regularly while he was away, and I believe he kept up the payment still. But otherwise he gave him no help, and if he ever needed help he did now. His wife was a Cuban, as pretty and as helpless as a doll. She had been an heiress till her brother had turned rebel and had his property confiscated. Unfortunately for Frank, he had married her before the culmination of this catastrophe. In fact, he had been paying court to her with the dispatch announcing his wife's death in his pocket, and had married her long before the poor little clay was well settled in the grave he had sent it to. In marrying her he had evidently believed he was establishing his future. So he was, but it was a future of expiation for the sins and omissions of his past. The new Mrs. Dobb was a tigress in her love and her jealousy. She was childish and ignorant, and adored her husband as a man and an artist. She measured his value by her estimation of him, and was on the watch perpetually for trespassers on her domain. The domestic outbreaks between the two were positively blood curdling. One afternoon, I remember, Gillian Trussell, who had heard of his return, called on him. Mrs. D. met her at the studio door, told her, "Frank," as she called him, was out; slammed the door in her face, and then flew at him with a palette scraper. We had to break the door in, and found him holding her off by both wrists, and she frothing in a mad fit of hysterics. From that day he was a changed man. She owned him body and soul. The life the pair lived after that was simply ridiculously miserable. He had lost his old social popularity, and was forced to sell his pictures to the cheap dealers, when he was lucky enough to sell them at all. The paternal allowance would not support the flat they first occupied, and they went into a boarding house. Inside of a month they were in the papers, on account of outbreaks on Mrs. Dobb's part against one of the ladies of the house. A couple of days after he leased a little room opening into his studio, converted it into a bed-room, and they settled there for good. Such a housekeeping as it was--like a scene in a farce. The studio had long since run to seed, and a perpetual odor of something to eat hung over it along with the sickening reek of the Florida water Mrs. D., like all other creoles, made more liberal use of than of the pure element it was half-named from. Crumbs and crusts and chop-bones, which the dog had left, littered the rugs; and I can not recall the occasion on which the caterer's tin box was not standing at the door, unless it was when the dirty plates were piled up, there waiting for him to come for them. I dined there once. Frank had had a savage quarrel with her that day, and wanted me for a bender. But the scheme availed him nothing, for she broke out over the soup and I left them to fight it out, and finished my feast at a chop house. All of his old flirtations came back to curse him now. His light loves of the playhouse and his innocent devotions of the ball room were alike the instruments fate had forged into those of punishment for him. The very names of his old fancies, which, with that subtle instinct all women possess, she had found out, were sufficient to send his wife into a frenzy. She was a chronic theatre-goer, and they never went to the theatre without bringing a quarrel home with them. If he was silent at the play she charged him with neglecting her; if he brisked up and tried to chat, her jealousy would soon pick out some casus belli in the small talk he strove to interest her with. A word to a passing friend, a glance at one of her own sex, was sufficient to set her going. I shall never question that jealousy is a form of actual madness, after what I saw of it in the lives of that miserable man and woman. A year after his return he was the ghost of his old self. He was haggard and often unshaven; his attire was shabby and carelessly put on; he had lost his old, jaunty air, and went by you with a hurried pace, and his head and shoulders bent with an indescribable suggestion of humility. The fear of having her break out, regardless of any one who might be by, which hung over him at home, haunted him out of doors, too. The avenger of Mrs. Dobb the first had broken his spirit as effectually as he had broken Mrs. Dobb's heart. Smith occupied the next studio to him, and one evening I was smoking there, when an atrocious uproar commenced in the next room. We could distinguish Frank's voice and his wife's, and another strange one. Smith looked at me, grinned, and shrugged his shoulders. The disturbance ceased in a couple of minutes, and a door banged. Then came a crash, a shrill and furious scream, and the sound of feet. We ran to the door, in time to see Mrs. Dobb, her hair in a tangle down her back, in a dirty wrapper and slipshod slippers, stumbling down stairs. We posted after her, Smith nearly breaking his neck by tripping over one of the slippers which she had shed as she ran. The theatres were just out and the streets full of people, among whom she jostled her way like the mad woman that she was. We came up with her as she overtook her husband, who was walking with McGilp, the dealer who handled his pictures. She seized him by the arm and screamed out: "I told you I would come with you." His face for a moment was the face of a devil, full of fury and despair. I saw his fist clench itself and the big vein in his forehead swell. But he slipped his hands into his pockets, looked appealingly at McGilp, and said, shrugging his shoulders, "You see how it is, Mac?" McGilp nodded and walked abruptly away, with a look full of contempt and scorn. We mingled with the crowd and saw the poor wretches go off together, he grim and silent, she hysterically excited--with all the world staring at them. Smith slept on a lounge in my room that night. "I couldn't get a wink up there," he said, "and I don't want to be even the ear witness of a murder." The night did not witness the tragedy he anticipated, though. Next day, Frank Dobb came to see me--a compliment he had not paid me for months. He was the incarnation of abject misery, and so nervous that he could scarcely speak intelligibly. "I saw you in the crowd last night, old man," he said, looking at the floor and twisting and untwisting his fingers. "What do you think of it? A nice life for a fellow to lead, eh?" What else could I reply than, "Why do you lead it then?" "Why?" he repeated, breaking into a hollow, uneasy laugh. "Why, because I love her, damn me! and I deserve it all." "Is this what you came to tell me?" I asked. "No," he answered, "of course not. The fact is, I want you to help me out of a hole. That row last night has settled me with McGilp. He came to see me about a lot of pictures for a sale he is getting up out West, and the senora kept up such a nagging that he got sick and suggested that we should go to 'The Studio' for a chop and settle the business there. She swore I shouldn't go, and that she would follow us if I did. I thought she'd not go that far; but she did. So the McGilp affair is off for good, I know. He's disgusted, and I don't blame him. What I want of you is this. Buy that Hoguet you wanted last year." The picture was one I had fancied and offered him a price for in his palmy days, one that he had picked up abroad. I was only too glad to take it and a couple more, for which I paid him at once; and next evening, at dinner, I heard that he had levanted. "Walked out this morning," said Smith, "and sent a messenger an hour after with word that he had already left the city. She came in to me with the letter in one hand and a dagger in the other. She swears he has run away with another woman, and says she's going to have her life, if she has to follow her around the world." She did not carry out her sanguinary purpose, though. There were some consultations with old Dobb and then the studio was to let again. Some one told me she had returned to Cuba, where she proposed to live on the allowance her father-in-law had made her husband and which he now continued to her. I had almost forgotten her when, several years later, in the lobby of the Academy of Music, she touched my arm with her fan. She was promenading on the arm of a handsome but beefy-looking Englishman, whom she introduced to me as her husband. I had not heard of a divorce, but I took the introduction as information that there had been one. The Englishman was a better fellow than he looked. We supped together after the opera, and I learned that he had met Mrs. Dobb in Havana, where he had spent some years in business. I found her a changed woman--a new woman, indeed, in whom I only now and then caught a glimpse of her old indolent, babyish and foolish self. She was not only prettier than ever, but she had become a sensible and clever woman. The influence of an intelligent man, who was strong enough to bend her to his ways, had developed her latent brightness and taught her to respect herself as well as him. I met her several times after that, and at the last meeting but one she spoke of Frank for the first time. Her black eyes snapped when she uttered his name. The devil was alive in them, though love was dead. I told her that I had heard nothing of him since his disappearance. "But I have," she said, showing her white teeth in a curious smile. "Indeed!" I replied, quite astounded. "The coward!" she went on bitterly; "and to think I could ever have loved such a thing as he! Do you know, Mr. X., that I never knew he had been married till after he had fled? Then his father told me how he had courted my father's money, with his wife lying dead at home. Oh! Senor Francisco, Senor Francisco! Before I heard that, I wanted to kill the woman who had stolen you from me. The moment after I could have struck you dead at my feet." She threw her arm up, holding her fan like a dagger. I believed her, and so would any one who had seen her then. "I had hardly settled in Havana," she continued, "before I received a letter from him. Already he wanted to come back to me. Had the other woman tired of him already? I asked myself, or was it really true, as his father had told me, that he had fled alone? I answered the letter, and he wrote again. Again I answered, and so it was kept up. For two years I played with the love I now knew was worthless. He was traveling round the world, and a dozen times wanted to come directly to me. I insisted that he should keep his journey up--as a probation, you see. He submitted. But oh! how he did love me!" The exultation with which she told this was absolutely fiendish. I could see in it, plainer than any words could tell it to me, the scheme of vengeance she had carried out, the alternating hopes and torments to which she had raised, and into which she had plunged him. I could see him wandering around the globe, scourged by remorses, agonized by doubts, and maddened by despairs, accepting the lies she wrote him as inviolable pledges, and sustaining himself with the vision of a future never to be fulfilled. She read the expression of my face, and laughed. "Was it not an idea?" she asked. "Was that not better than this?" And again she stabbed the air with her fan. "But--pardon me the question--but you have begun the confidence," I said. "How will it end?" "It has ended," she answered. "How?" "I had been divorced while I was writing to him. A year ago he was to be in London, where I was to meet him. While he was sailing from the Cape of Good Hope I was being married to a man who loved me for myself, and to whom I had confided all. Instead of my address at the London post office he received a notification of my marriage, addressed to him in my own hand and mailed to him by myself. He wrote once or twice still, but my husband indorsed the letters with his own name and returned them unopened. He may be dead for all I know, but I hope and pray he is still alive, and will remain alive and love me for a thousand years." She opened her arms, as if to hug her vengeance to her heart, and looked at me steadily with eyes that thrilled me with their lambent fire. No wonder the wretched vagabond loved her! What a doom his selfishness and his duplicity had invoked upon him! I believe if he could have seen her as I saw her then, so different from and better than he knew her to be, he would have gone mad on the spot. Poor Mrs. Dobb the first was indeed avenged. We sipped our chocolate and talked of other things, as if such a being as Frank Dobb had never been. Her husband joined us and we made an evening of it at the theatre. I knew from the way he looked at me, and from the increased warmth of his manner, that he was conversant with his wife's having made a confidant of me. But I do not think he knew how far her confidence had gone. I have often wondered since if he knew how deep and fierce the hatred she carried for his predecessor was. There are things women will reveal to strangers which they will die rather than divulge to those they love. I saw them off to Europe, for they were going to establish themselves in London, and I have never seen or directly heard from them since. But some months after their departure I received a letter from Robinson, who has been painting there ever since his picture made that great hit in the Salon of '7--. "I have odd news for you," he wrote. "You remember Frank Dobb, who belonged to our old Pen and Pencil Club, and who ran away from that Cuban wife of his just before I left home? Well, about a year ago I met him in Fleet street, the shabbiest beggar you ever saw. He was quite tight and smelled of gin across the street. He was taking a couple of drawings to a penny dreadful office which he was making pictures for at ten shillings a piece. I went to see him once, in the dismalest street back of Drury Lane. He was doing some painting for a dealer, when he was sober enough, and of all the holes you ever saw his was it. I soon had to sit down on him, for he got into the habit of coming to see me and loafing around, making the studio smell like a pub, till I would lend him five shillings to go away. I heard nothing of him till the other day I came across an event which this from the Telegraph will explain." The following newspaper paragraph was appended: "The man who shot himself on the door-step of Mr. Bennerley Green, the West India merchant, last Monday, has been discovered to be an American who for some time has been employed furnishing illustrations to the lower order of publications here. He was known as Allan, but this is said to have been an assumed name. He is stated to be the son of a wealthy New Yorker, who discarded him in consequence of his habits of dissipation, and to have once been an artist of considerable prominence in the United States. All that is known of the suicide is the story told by the servant, who a few minutes after admitting his master and mistress upon their return from the theatre, heard the report of a pistol in the street, and on opening the door found the wretched man dead upon the step. The body was buried after the inquest at the charge of the eminent American artist, Mr. J. J. Robinson, A. R. A., who had known him in his better days." The second husband of Mrs. Frank Dobb is Mr. Bennerley Green, the West India merchant.--_The Continent._ * * * * * CONSUMPTION CURED. An old physician, retired from practice, having had placed in his hands by an East India missionary the formula of a simple vegetable remedy for the speedy and permanent cure of Consumption, Bronchitis, Catarrh, Asthma and all throat and Lung Affections, also a positive and radical cure for Nervous Debility and all Nervous Complaints, after having tested its wonderful curative powers in thousands of cases, has felt it his duty to make it known to his suffering fellows. Actuated by this motive and a desire to relieve human suffering, I will send free of charge, to all who desire it, this recipe, in German, French, or English, with full directions for preparing and using. Sent by mail by addressing with stamp, naming this paper. W. A. NOYES, _149 Power's Block_, _Rochester_, _N. Y._ [Illustration: HUMOROUS] Many cures for snoring have been invented, but none have stood the test so well as the old reliable clothes-pin. A Clergyman says that the baby that pulls whiskers, bites fingers, and grabs for everything it sees has in it the elements of a successful politician. A Hartford man has a Bible bearing date 1599. It is very easy to preserve a Bible for a great many years, because--because--well, we don't know what the reason is, but it is so, nevertheless. A Vermont man has a hen thirty years old. The other day a hawk stole it, but after an hour came back with a broken bill and three claws gone, put down the hen and took an old rubber boot in place of it. Alexander Gumbleton Ruffleton Scufflton Oborda Whittleton Sothenhall Benjaman Franklin Squires is still a resident of North Carolina, aged ninety-two. The census taker always thinks at first that the old man is guying. A little five-year-old friend, who was always allowed to choose the prettiest kitten for his pet and playmate before the other nurslings were drowned, was taken to his mother's sick room the other morning to see the two tiny new twin babes. He looked reflectively from one to the other for a minute or two, then, poking his chubby finger into the plumpest baby, he said decidedly, "Save this one." In promulgating your esoteric cogitation on articulating superficial sentimentalities and philosophical psychological observation, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversation possess a clarified conciseness, compact comprehensiveness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cognancy; eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity and jejune babblement. In other words, don't use such big words. HOW HE WAS "SLEIGHED." A boy once took it in his head That he would exercise his sled. He took the sled into the road And, lord a massy! how he slode. And as he slid, he laughing cried, "What fun upon my sled to slide." And as he laughed, before he knewed, He from that sliding sled was slude. Upon the slab where he was laid They carved this line: "This boy was sleighed." "A Farmer's Wife" wants to know if we can recommend anything to destroy the "common grub." We guess the next tramp that comes along could oblige you. MISCELLANEOUS THE UNION BROAD-CAST SEEDER. [Illustration of a seeder] The only 11-Foot Seeder In the Market Upon Which the Operator can Ride, See His Work, and Control the Machine. NO GEAR WHEELS, FEED PLACED DIRECTLY ON THE AXLE, A POSITIVE FORCE FEED, Also FORCE FEED GRASS SEED ATTACHMENT. We also manufacture the Seeder with Cultivators of different widths. For Circulars and Prices address the Manufacturers, HART, HITCHCOCK, & CO., Peoria, Ill. When you write mention The Prairie Farmer. [Illustration of coulter parts] Don't be Humbugged With Poor, Cheap Coulters. All farmers have had trouble with their Coulters. In a few days they get to wobbling, are condemned and thrown aside. In our "BOSS" Coulter we furnish a tool which can scarcely be worn out; and when worn, the wearable parts, a prepared wood journal, and movable thimble in the hub (held in place by a key) can be easily and cheaply renewed. We guarantee our "BOSS" to plow more acres than any other three Coulters now used. OUR "O.K." CLAMP Attaches the Coulter to any size or kind of beam, either right or left hand plow. We know that after using it you will say it is the Best Tool on the Market. Ask your dealer for it. Manufactured by the BOSS COULTER CO., Bunker Hill, Ill. "THE GOLDEN BELT" ALONG THE KANSAS DIVISION U. P. R'WAY. KANSAS LANDS STOCK RAISING Buffalo Grass Pasture Summer and Winter. WOOL-GROWING Unsurpassed for Climate, Grasses, Water. CORN and WHEAT 200,000,000 Bus. Corn. 30,000,000 Wheat. FRUIT The best In the Eastern Market. Pamphlets and Maps free. B. McALLASTER, Land Commis'r, Kansas City, Mo. [Illustration of a typewriter] THE STANDARD REMINGTON TYPE-WRITER is acknowledged to be the only rapid and reliable writing machine. It has no rival. These machines are used for transcribing and general correspondence in every part of the globe, doing their work in almost every language. Any young man or woman of ordinary ability, having a practical knowledge of the use of this machine may find constant and remunerative employment. All machines and supplies, furnished by us, warranted. Satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded. Send for circulars WYCKOFF, SEAMANS & BENEDICT. 38 East Madison St. Chicago, Ill. GRATEFUL--COMFORTING. EPPS'S COCOA. BREAKFAST. "By a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which govern the operations of digestion and nutrition, and by a careful application of the fine properties of well-selected Cocoa, Mr. Epps has provided our breakfast tables with a delicately flavored beverage which may save us many heavy doctors' bills. It is by the judicious use of such articles of diet that a constitution may be gradually built up until strong enough to resist every tendency to disease. Hundreds of subtle maladies are floating around us ready to attack wherever there is a weak point. We may escape many a fatal shaft by keeping ourselves well fortified with pure blood and a properly nourished frame."--_Civil Service Gazette_. Made simply with boiling water or milk. Sold only in half-pound tins by Grocers, labeled thus: JAMES EPPS & CO., Homoeopathic Chemists, London, England. When you write mention The Prairie Farmer. Nebraska Seed Corn. I have about 1,000 bushels of very choice selected yellow corn, which I have tested and know all will grow, which I will put into good sacks and ship by freight in not less than 5-bushel lots at $1 per bushel of 70 lbs., ears. It is very large yield and early maturing corn. This seed is well adapted to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and the whole Northwest. Send money by P.O. order, registered letter, or draft. Address: C. H. LEE, Silver Creek, Merrick Co., Neb. NOTE--Mr. C. H. Lee is my brother-in-law, and I guarantee him in every way reliable and responsible. M. J. LAWRENCE, Ed. Ohio Farmer. [Illustration of a pocket watch] We will send you a watch or a chain BY MAIL OR EXPRESS, C. O. D., to be examined, before paying any money and if not satisfactory, returned at our expense. We manufacture all our watches and save you 30 per cent. Catalogue of 250 styles free. EVERY WATCH WARRANTED. ADDRESS: STANDARD AMERICAN WATCH CO., PITTSBURGH PA. [Illustration of an anvil-vise tool] Anvil, Vise, Out off Tool for Farm and Home use. 3 sizes, $4.50, $5.50, $6.50. Sold by hardware dealers. To introduce, one free to first person who gets up club of four. Agents wanted. Write for circulars. CHENEY ANVIL & VISE CO., DETROIT, MICH. AGENTS WANTED EVERYWHERE to solicit Subscriptions for this paper. Write Prairie Farmer Publishing Co., Chicago, for particulars. TO PRESERVE THE HEALTH Use the Magneton Appliance Co.'s MAGNETIC LUNG PROTECTOR! PRICE ONLY $5. They are priceless to LADIES, GENTLEMEN, and CHILDREN WITH WEAK LUNGS; no case of PNEUMONIA OR CROUP is ever known where these garments are worn. They also prevent and cure HEART DIFFICULTIES, COLDS, RHEUMATISM, NEURALGIA, THROAT TROUBLES, DIPHTHERIA, CATARRH, AND ALL KINDRED DISEASES. Will WEAR any service for THREE YEARS. Are worn over the under-clothing. CATARRH It is needless to describe the symptoms of this nauseous disease that is sapping the life and strength of only too many of the fairest and best of both sexes. Labor, study, and research in America, Europe, and Eastern lands, have resulted in the Magnetic Lung Protector, affording cure for Catarrh, a remedy which contains NO DRUGGING OF THE SYSTEM, and with the continuous stream of Magnetism permeating through the afflicted organs, MUST RESTORE THEM TO A HEALTHY ACTION. WE PLACE OUR PRICE for this Appliance at less than one-twentieth of the price asked by others for remedies upon which you take all the chances, and WE ESPECIALLY INVITE the patronage of the MANY PERSONS who have tried DRUGGING THEIR STOMACHS WITHOUT EFFECT. HOW TO OBTAIN This Appliance. Go to your druggist and ask for them. If they have not got them, write to the proprietors, enclosing the price, in letter at our risk, and they will be sent to you at once by mail, post-paid. Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical Treatment WITHOUT MEDICINE," with thousands of testimonials, THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 State Street, Chicago, Ill. NOTE.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our Magnetic Appliances. Positively _no cold feet where they are worn, or money refunded_. [Illustration of person holding a card] Print Your Own Cards Labels, Envelopes, etc. with our #3 Printing Press. Larger sizes for circulars, et., $8 to $75. For pleasure, money-making, young or old. Everything easy, printed instructions. Send 2 stamps for Catalogue of Presses Type, Cards, etc., to the factory. KELSEY & CO., Meriden, Conn. GENERAL NEWS. St. Louis is to have a dog show about the middle of April. South Chicago had a $75,000 fire on the night of the 17th. New York is to have a new water supply to cost $30,000,000. There are about 50,000 Northern tourists in Florida at this time. Another conspiracy against the Government is brewing in Spain. A sister of John Brown, of Osawatomie is a resident of Des Moines. Dakota will spend nearly a million and a half for school purposes this year. King's Opera House and several adjacent buildings at Knoxville, Tenn., were burned Monday night. A child in Philadelphia has just been attacked by hydrophobia from the bite of a dog three years ago. Captain Traynor, who once crossed the Atlantic in a dory, now proposes to make the trip in a rowboat. During the present century 150,000,000 copies of the Bible have been printed in 226 different languages. The Governor General at Trieste was surprised Tuesday by the explosion of a bomb in front of his residence. The man who fired the first gun in the battle of Gettysburg lives in Malvern, Iowa. His name is Dick Gidley. St. Patrick's Day was appropriately (as the custom goes) celebrated in Chicago, and the other large cities of the country. Kansas has 420 newspapers, including dailies, weeklies, semi-weeklies, monthlies, semi-monthlies, tri-monthlies, and quarterlies. A Dubuque watchmaker has invented a watch movement which has no dial-wheels, and is said will create a revolution in watch-making. In the trial of Orrin A. Carpenter for the murder of Zura Burns, now in progress at Petersburg, Illinois, the prosecution has rested its case. All the members of the United States Senate signed a telegram to Simon Cameron, now in Florida, congratulating him on his eighty-fifth birthday. The inventor of a system of electric lighting announces that he is about to use the water-power at Niagara to furnish light to sixty-five cities. The British leaders in Egypt have offered a reward of $5,000 for the capture of Osman Digma, the rebel leader, whom Gen. Graham has now defeated in two battles. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe road is at war with the Western Union Telegraph Company in Texas, and sends ten-word messages through that State for fifteen cents. Thirty-four counties and twenty-one railroads between Pittsburg and Cairo report fifty-five bridges destroyed by the February flood. The estimated cost of replacing them is $210,000. There is a movement on foot in Chicago which may result in the holding of both the National Conventions in Battery D Hall, which is said to have better acoustic properties than the Exposition Building. It is reported that more than six thousand Indians are starving at Fort Peck Agency. Game has entirely disappeared, and those Indians who have been turning their attention to farming, raised scarcely anything last year. The announcement is made at St. Louis that the Pacific Express Company lost $160,000 by Prentiss Tiller and his accomplices, and that $25,000 of the amount is still missing. Tiller, the thief, and a supposed accomplice, are under arrest. The British House of Commons was in session all last Saturday night, considering war measures. It is rumored that Parliament will be dissolved, and a new election held to ascertain if the Ministry measures are pleasing to the majority of the people. The crevasse at Carrollton, Louisiana, has been closed. A break occurred Monday morning in the Mulatto levee, near Baton Rouge, and at last advices was forty feet wide and six feet deep, threatening all the plantations down to Plaquemine. The Egyptian rebels, as they are called, fight with great bravery. So far, however, they have been unable to cope with their better armed and disciplined enemy, but it is reported that they are not at all discouraged, but swear they will yet drink the blood of the Turks and their allies from England. [Illustration: MARKETS] FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL. OFFICE OF THE PRAIRIE FARMER,} CHICAGO. March 18, 1884. } There was a better feeling in banking circles on Monday but transactions were not heavy. Interest rates remain at 5@7 per cent. Eastern exchange sold between banks at 25c per $1,000 premium. Foreign exchange unchanged. The failures in the United States during the past seven days are reported to have numbered 174, and in Canada and the Provinces 42, a total of 216, as compared with 272 for the previous week, a decrease of 56. The decrease is principally in the Western, Middle, and New England States. Canada had the same number of failures as for the preceding week. GRAIN AND PROVISIONS. The week opened with the bears on top and prices were forced downward. Speculation was heavy. Ocean freights are low, yet but little grain comparatively is going out. London and Liverpool advices were not encouraging and the New York markets were easy. Corn was unusually dull. WHEAT.--Red winter, in store No. 2, 98c; spring No. 2 92@93c; No. 3. 85@89c on track. CORN.--Moderately active. Car lots No 2, 53@53-1/2c; rejected, 46c; new mixed, 52-1/2c. OATS.--No. 2 on track closed 34-1/4@35c. RYE.--No. 2 59@62c. BARLEY.--No. 2, 66c; No. 3, f.o.b. 6l@62c; No. 5 50c. FLAX.--Closed at $1 60@1 61 on track. TIMOTHY.--$1 28@l 34 per bushel. Little doing. CLOVER.--Quiet at $5 50@5 70 for prime. HUNGARIAN.--Prime 60@67-1/2c. BUCKWHEAT.--70@75c. MILLET.--45@50c. PROVISIONS.--Mess pork. May $18 10@18 25. Green hams, 11-3/4c per lb. Short ribs, $9 55@9 60 per cwt. LARD.--$9 60@9 75. COUNTRY PRODUCE. NOTE.--The quotations for the articles named in the following list are generally for commission lots of goods and from first hands. While our prices are based as near as may be on the landing or wholesale rates, allowance must be made for selections and the sorting up for store distribution. BRAN.--Quoted at $15 50@15 75 per ton on track. BEANS.--Hand picked mediums $2 10@2 15. Hand picked navies, $2 15@2 25. BUTTER.--Choice to extra creamery, 33@35c per lb.; fair to good do 25@30c; fair to choice dairy 24@28c; common to choice packing stock fresh and sweet, 9@10c; ladle packed 10@13c. BROOM-CORN.--Good to choice hurl 7@8c per lb; green self-working 6@6-1/2c; red-tipped and pale do 4@5c; inside and covers 3@4c; common short corn 2-1/2@3-1/2c; crooked, and damaged, 2@4c, according to quality. CHEESE.--Choice full-cream cheddars 14@l5c per lb; medium quality do 10@12c; good to prime full-cream flats 15@15-1/2c; skimmed cheddars 9@10c; good skimmed flats 7@9c; hard-skimmed and common stock 5@7c. EGGS.--The best brands are quotable at 20@21c per dozen, fresh. FEATHERS.--Quotations: Prime live geese feathers 52@54c per lb.; ducks 25@35c; duck and geese mixed 35@45c; dry picked chicken feathers body 6@6-1/2c; turkey body feathers 4@4-1/2c; do tail 55@60c; do wing 25@35c; do wing and tail mixed 35@40c. HAY.--No 1 timothy $10@10 75 per ton; No 2 do $850@9 50; mixed do $7@8; upland prairie $7@8 50; No 1 prairie $6@7; No 2 do $4 50@5 50. Small bales sell at 25@50c per ton more than large bales. HIDES AND PELTS.--Green-cured light hides 8-1/2c per lb; do heavy cows 8c; No 2 damaged green-salted hides 6-1/2c; green-salted calf 12@12-1/2 cents; green-salted bull 6 c; dry-salted hides 11 cents; No. 2 two-thirds price; No. 1 dry flint 14@14-1/2c, Sheep pelts salable at 25@28c for the estimated amount of wash wool on each pelt. All branded and scratched hides are discounted 15 per cent from the price of No. 1. HOPS.--Prime to choice New York State hops 27@28c per lb; Pacific coast of 23@25c; fair to good Wisconsin 15@20c. HONEY AND BEESWAX.--Good to choice white comb honey in small boxes 15@17c per lb; common and dark-colored, or when in large packages 12@14c; beeswax ranged at 25@30c per lb, according to quality, the outside for prime yellow. POULTRY.--Prices for good to choice dry picked and unfrozen lots are: Turkeys 16@l7c per lb; chickens 12@13c; ducks 14@15c; geese 10@11c. Thin, undesirable, and frozen stock 2@3c per lb less than these figures; live offerings nominal. POTATOES.--Good to choice 38@42c per bu. on track; common to fair 30@36c. Illinois sweet potatoes range at $4@5 per bbl for yellow. TALLOW AND GREASE.--No 1 country tallow 7@7-1/4c per lb; No 2 do 6-1/4@6-1/2c. Prime white grease 6@6-1/2c; yellow 5-1/4@5-3/4; brown 4-1/2@5. VEGETABLES.--Cabbage, $10@15 per 100; celery, 35@45c per per doz bunches; onions, $1 50@1 75 per bbl for yellow, and $1 for red; turnips, $1 35@1 50 per bbl for rutabagas, and $1 00 for white flat. Pie plant, 10c per lb. Spinach, $1@2 per bbl. Cucumbers, $1 50@2 00 per doz; radishes, 40c per doz; lettuce, 40c per doz. WOOL.--From store range as follows for bright wools from Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Eastern Iowa--dark Western lots generally ranging at 1@2c per lb. less. Coarse and dingy tub 25@30 Good medium tub 31@34 Unwashed bucks' fleeces 14@15 Fine unwashed heavy fleeces 18@22 Fine light unwashed heavy fleeces 22@23 Coarse unwashed fleeces 21@22 Low medium unwashed fleeces 24@25 Fine medium unwashed fleeces 26@27 Fine washed fleeces 32@33 Coarse washed fleeces 26@28 Low medium washed fleeces 30@32 Fine medium washed fleeces 34@35 Colorado and Territory wools range as follows: Lowest grades 14@16 Low medium 18@22 Medium 22@26 Fine 16@24 Wools from New Mexico: Lowest grades 14@16 Part improved 16@17 Best improved 19@23 Burry from 2c to 10c off; black 2c to 5c off. LIVE STOCK MARKETS. The total receipts and shipments for last week were as follows: Received. Shipped. Cattle 30,963 15,498 Calves 375 82 Hogs 62,988 34,361 Sheep 18,787 10,416 CATTLE.--Diseased cattle of all kinds, especially those having lump-jaws, cancers, and running sore, are condemned and killed by the health officers. Shippers will save freight by keeping such stock in the country. Receipts were fair on Sunday and Monday and the demand not being very brisk prices dropped a little. The supply of choice beeves was light. We quote Choice to prime steers $6 00@ 6 85 Good to choice steers 6 20@ 6 50 Fair to good shipping steers 5 55@ 6 15 Common to medium dressed beef steers 4 85@ 5 50 Very common steers 5 00@ 5 50 Cows, choice to prime 5 00@ 5 50 Cows, common to choice 3 30@ 4 95 Cows, inferior 2 50@ 3 25 Common to prime bulls 3 25@ 5 50 Stockers, common to choice 3 70@ 4 75 Feeders, fair to choice 4 80@ 5 25 Milch cows, per head 25 00@ 65 00 Veal calves, per 100lbs 4 00@ 7 75 HOGS.--All sales of hogs in this market are made subject to a shrinkage of 40 lbs for piggy sows and 80 lbs for each stag. Dead hogs sell at 1-1/2c per lb for weight of 200 lbs and over, and 1c for weights of less than 200 lbs. With the exception of cripples and milch cows, all stock is sold per 100 lbs live weight. There were about 3,000 head more on Sunday and Monday than for same days last week, the receipts reaching 11,000 head. All but the poorest lots were readily taken at steady prices. Common to choice light bacon hogs were sold from $5 80 to $6 70, their weights averaging 150@206 lbs. Rough packing lots sold at $6 20@6 75. and heavy packing and shipping hogs averaging 240@309 lbs brought $6 80@7 40. Skips were sold at $4 75@$5 75. SHEEP.--This class of stock seems to be on the increase at the yards. Sunday and Monday brought hither 5,500 head, an increase of 2,500 over receipts a week ago. Prices weakened a little. Sales ranged at $3 37-1/2@5 65 for common to choice, the great bulk of the offerings consisting of Nebraska sheep. MARKETS BY TELEGRAPH. NEW YORK, March 17.--Cattle--Steers sold at $6@7 25 per cwt, live weight; fat bulls $4 60@5 70; exporters used 60 car-loads, and paid $6 70@7 25 per cwt, live weight, for good to choice selections; shipments for the week, 672 head live cattle; 7,300 qrs beef; 1,000 carcasses mutton. Sheep and lambs--Receipts 7,700 head; making 24,300 head for the week; strictly prime sheep and choice lambs sold at about the former prices, but the market was uncommonly dull for common and even fair stock, and a clearance was not made; sales included ordinary to prime sheep at $5@6 37-1/2 per cwt, but a few picked sheep reached $6 75; ordinary to choice yearlings $6@8; spring lambs $3@8 per head. Hogs--Receipts 7,900 head, making 20,100 for the week; live dull and nearly nominal; 2 car-loads sold at $6 50@6 75 per 100 pounds. ST. LOUIS, March 17.--Cattle--Receipts 3,400 head; shipments 1,600 head; wet weather and liberal receipts caused weak and irregular prices, and some sales made lower; export steers $6 40@6 90; good to choice $5 75@6 30; common to medium $4 85@5 60; stockers and feeders $4@5 25; corn-fed Texans $5@5 75. Sheep--Receipts 900 head; shipments 800 head; steady; common to medium $3@4 25; good to choice $4 50@5 50; extra $5 75@6; Texans $3@5. KANSAS CITY, March 17--Cattle--Receipts 1,500 head; weak and slow; prices unsettled; native steers, 1,092 to 1,503 lbs, $5 05@5 85; stockers and feeders $4 60@5; cows $3 70@4 50. Hogs--Receipts 5,500 head; good steady; mixed lower; lots 200 to 500 lbs, $6 25 to 7; mainly $6 40@6 60. Sheep--Receipts 3,200 head; steady; natives, 81 lbs, $4 35. EAST LIBERTY, March 17.--Cattle--Dull and unchanged; receipts 1,938 head; shipments 1,463 head. Hogs--Firm; receipts 7,130 head; shipments 4,485 head; Philadelphias $7 50@7 75; Yorkers $6 50@6 90. Sheep--Dull and unchanged; receipts 6,600 head; shipments 600 head. CINCINNATI, O., March 17.--Hogs--Steady; common and light, $5@6 75; packing and butchers', $6 25@7 25; receipts, 1,800 head; shipments, 920 head. MISCELLANEOUS. [Illustration of a steamer] SPERRY'S AGRICULTURAL STEAMER. The Safest and Best Steam Generator for cooking feed for stock, heating water, etc.; will heat a barrel of cold water to boiling in 30 minutes. D. R. SPERRY & CO, Mfgs. of the Profit Farm Boiler. Caldrons, etc., Batavia, Ill. F. RETTIG, De Kalb, Ill., breeder of Light Brahmas, Plymouth Rocks, Black and Partridge Cochin fowls, White and Brown Leghorns, W. C. Bl. Polish fowls and Pekin Ducks. Send for illustrated catalogue. MUSICAL. KNABE PIANOFORTES. UNEQUALLED IN Tone, Touch, Workmanship and Durability. WILLIAM KNABE & CO. Nos. 204 and 206 West Baltimore Street, Baltimore. No. 112 Fifth Avenue, N. Y. MISCELLANEOUS. FARMERS Read what a wheat-grower says of his experience with the Saskatchawan FIFE WHEAT It is the best wheat I ever raised or saw. I sowed one quart and got from it three bushels of beautiful wheat weighing 63 pounds to the bushel, which took the first premium at our county fair. I have been offered $15 a bushel for my seed, but would not part with a handful of it. If I could not get more like it, I would not sell the three bushels I raised from the quart for $100. WM. STEABNER, Sorlien's Mill, Yellow Medicine Co., Minn. Farmers, if you want to know more of this wheat, write to W. J. ABERNETHY & CO, Minneapolis, Minn., for their 16-page circular describing it. When you write mention The Prairie Farmer. THE SUGAR HAND BOOK A NEW AND VALUABLE TREATISE ON SUGAR CANES, (including the Minnesota Early Amber) and their manufacture into Syrup and Sugar. Although comprised in small compass and _furnished free to applicants_, it is the BEST PRACTICAL MANUAL ON SUGAR CANES that has yet been published. BLYMER MANUFACTURING CO, Cincinnati O. _Manufacturers of Steam Sugar Machinery, Steam Engines, Victor Cane Mill, Cook Sugar Evaporator, etc._ FARMS. MINNESOTA. DAKOTA. LESS THAN RAILROAD PRICES, on LONG TIME. Send for lists and prices. GRAVES & VINTON, ST. PAUL, MINN. BY MAIL POST-PAID: Choice 1 year APPLE, $5 per 100; 500, $20 ROOT-GRAFTS, 100, $1.25; 1,000, $7. STRAWBERRIES, doz., 25c.; 100, $1. BLACKBERRIES, RASPBERRIES, RED AND BLACK, 50c. dozen; 100, $3. Two year CONCORD and other choice GRAPES, doz $1.65. EARLY TELEPHONE, our best early potato, 4 lbs. $1. This and other choice sorts by express or freight customer paying charges, pk. 50c., bu. $1.25. Price list free. F. K. PHOENIX & SON, Delavan, Wis. Lang's Pig Forceps. [Illustration of forceps] To aid animals in giving Birth. $1.20 post-paid. Agents Wanted. For particulars address G. J. LANG. Malcom, Iowa. GOSSAMER GARMENTS FREE. To any reader of this paper who will agree to show our goods and try to influence sales among friends we will send post-paid two full size Ladies' Gossamer Rubber Waterproof Garments as samples, provided you cut this out and return with 25 cts,. to pay cost, postage, etc. EMPIRE MFG. CO. Williamsburg. N. Y. Valuable Farm of 340 acres in Wisconsin _to exchange for city property_. Beautiful situation on bank of lake. Fine hunting and fishing, suitable for Summer resort. 100 rods from village and railway station. 100 acres under cultivation. Good buildings. Milwaukee or Chicago property preferred. K., care of LORD & THOMAS. STRAWBERRIES And other Small fruit plants a specialty. Catalogues free on application. Address, PHIL. STRUBLER, Naperville, Du Page County, Ill. ROOT GRAFTS 100,000 Best Varieties for the Northwest. In lots from 1,000 upward to suit planter, at $10 to $15 per thousand. Now ready. Send for list. J. C. PLUMB & SON, Milton, Wis. Silver Globe Onion Seed. Send in your order for a supply of GENUINE SILVER GLOBE ONION SEED. Guaranteed pure, at $2.50 per lb. We have a sample of the Onion at our store! WATTS & WAGNER 128 S. Water St., Chicago. FREE 40 Extra Large Cards, Imported designs, name on 10 cts, 10 pks. and 1 Lady's Velvet Purse or Gent's Pen Knife 2 blades, for $1. ACME CARD FACTORY, Clintonville, Ct. SILKS Plushes and Brocade Velvets for CRAZY PATCHWORK. Send for 50c. or $1 package. Empire Silk Works, Clintonville, Ct. 100 Chromo Cards, no 2 alike, name on, and 2 sheets Scrap Pictures, 20c. J. B. HUSTED, Nassau, N. Y. THE BIGGEST THING OUT ILLUSTRATED BOOK Sent Free. (new) E. NASON & CO., 120 Fulton St., New York. Transcriber's Notes: Italics are indicated with underscores. Punctuation and hyphenation were standardized. Missing letters within words were added, e.g. 'wi h' and 't e' were changed to 'with' and 'the,' respectively. Footnote was moved to the end of the section to which it pertains. Duplicate words, e.g. 'in in,' were removed. Substitutions: --> for pointing hand graphic. 'per' for a graphic in the 'Markets' section, e.g. 'lambs $3@8 per head.' Other corrections: 'Pagn' to 'Page' ... Table of Contents entry for 'Entomological' 'Frauk' to 'Frank' ... Frank Dobb's Wives, ... in Table of Contents '101' to '191' ... '190-191.' Table of Contents entry for 'Literature' 'Dolly' to 'Dally' to ... 'Dilly Dally' ... in Table of Contents 'whcih' to 'which' ... point upon which I beg leave ... 'pollenation' to 'pollination' ... before pollination ... following pollination ... 'some' to 'same' ... lot received the same treatment ... 'two' to 'to' ... asking me to buy him ... 'gurantee' to 'guarantee' ... are a guarantee against them ... 'Farmr' to 'Farmer' ... Prairie Farmer County Map ... 'or' to 'of' ... with an ear of corn ... '1667' to '1867' ... tariff of 1867 on wools ... 'earthern' to 'earthen' ... earthen vessels ... 'of' added ... the inside of the mould ... 'factorymen' to 'factory men' ... Our factory men will make ... 'hear.' missing in the original. 'heigth' to 'height' ... eighteen inches in height,... 'Holstien' to 'Holstein' ... the famous Holstein cow ... 'us' to 'up' ... the skins are sewed up so as to ... 'postcript' to 'postscript' ...contain a postscript which will read ... 'whlie' to 'while' ... cluster upon them while feeding ... 'Varities' to 'Varieties' ... New Varieties of Potatoes ... 'arrangment' to 'arrangement' ... conclude the arrangment ... 'purfumes' to 'perfumes' ... with certain unctuous perfumes ... 'Mr.' to 'Mrs.' ... continued Mrs. Gunkettle,... 'accordi?gly' to 'accordingly' ... a romantic eminence accordingly... 'ridicuously' to 'ridiculously' ... was simply ridiculously miserable. 'wabbling' to 'wobbling' ... they get to wobbling,... 'sutble' to 'subtle' ... Hundreds of subtle maladies ... 'weightt' to 'weight' ... for weight of 200 lbs ... 'Recipts' to 'Receipts' ... lambs--Receipts 7,700 head;... 
39869	----	_FARMING with_ DYNAMITE _A few hints to_ FARMERS [Illustration: DU PONT] ESTABLISHED 1802 Farming With Dynamite _SAVES_ MONEY TIME LABOR _REMOVES_ STUMPS BOULDERS HARD-PAN _ENSURES_ NEW, RICH SOIL INCREASED ACREAGE EASY PLOWING BIGGER YIELDS [Illustration: DU PONT] E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS POWDER CO. ESTABLISHED 1802 WILMINGTON, DEL. COPYRIGHTED 1910 BY E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS POWDER CO. WILMINGTON, DEL. PRINTED BY THE LORD BALTIMORE PRESS BALTIMORE, MD. WHAT IS DYNAMITE? Some farmers have a wrong idea about dynamite. They know it is a powerful explosive, and believe it is dangerous to handle. Dynamite _is_ very powerful, much more so than gunpowder, but is actually safer to handle. After more than a hundred years' experience in making and using explosives, we can truthfully state that by following simple directions with ordinary care, anyone can use our "Red Cross" Dynamite without harm. The purpose of this booklet is to tell you the wonderful value of the use of "Red Cross" Dynamite on the farm. If it interests you, as it surely will, and if you are progressive and ambitious, write for a copy of our "Handbook of Explosives for Farmers, Planters and Ranchers," which will be sent free of charge and which tells just how to use "Red Cross" Dynamite safely and easily, and make it the greatest aid to profitable farming. We will be glad to correspond with you about any special requirements of your farm, or give you any information you want. Write our nearest office (see last page) and your letter will receive prompt, personal attention. Chief Uses of Dynamite on the Farm. As farmers all over the country begin to understand the value of "Red Cross" Dynamite in their work, they are constantly reporting new uses for this powerful assistant. The chief uses are mentioned below and are explained in detail further on. Complete instructions are furnished in the "Handbook of Explosives for Farmers, Planters and Ranchers." =Clearing Land of Stumps, Trees and Boulders,= =Breaking up Hard-Pan, Shale, or Clay Subsoils,= =Plowing,= =Planting and Cultivating Orchards,= =Digging Ditches, Post Holes, Wells and Reservoirs,= =Road-Making and Grading,= =Excavating Cellars and Foundation Trenches,= =Regenerating Old, Worn-out Farms.= Clearing Land of Stumps, Boulders and Trees. It is needless to tell you the advantages of clearing land. The stump covered site of a former piece of woods, is, as you know, new, rich soil that needs no fertilizer. You also know that pulling stumps with a machine is the hardest kind of work--liable to injure seriously your horses, and certain to require a lot of work to get rid of the stump after pulling. Then too, it leaves the field full of holes, that must be filled; and plowing the hard packed soil around old roots is no joke. If instead of pulling the stumps, you burn them out, the intense heat required destroys the chief fertile elements of the soil all around the fire. After all your hard work you will leave a burned field instead of new, fertile soil. You can dynamite all those stumps for about one-third the cost of pulling and chopping them up. The blast splits up the stump into firewood, removes all the dirt, breaks all the main roots, and loosens the soil for yards around. You can blast fifty stumps in the time it would take to pull and chop up one or two. One man can do all the work, if necessary. After the stumps are all blasted out, you will have a new, rich field, and easy to cultivate, requiring no fertilizer to yield bumper crops. If you want to remove a whole tree, "Red Cross" Dynamite will lift it bodily out of the ground, and it will usually fall with the wind. When this is done, _there is no stump left to remove_. Boulders, which you are now obliged to plow around, can be broken up into easily handled blocks by a single blast. What it Costs to Blast Out Stumps. At the latest "Farming with Dynamite" demonstration, held under the auspices of the Norfolk and Western Railroad, at Ivor, Va., on August 11, 1910, one and one-half acres, containing forty-six stumps were cleared in one day, at an expense of $18.00, including labor, or an average of 39 cents per stump. Records kept by the Long Island Railroad, covering operations on their Experimental Farm, showed that, including the wages of the men who did the work, the cost of blasting out stumps averaged about 16 cents per stump. Records kept of the cost of this work in different sections of the country show as follows: Locality and Kind of Stump. Average Average Cost Diameter. Per Stump. =Southern=-- Pine Stumps 29 inches $0.30 =Pennsylvania=-- Apple, Ash and Chestnut 34-1/2 inches .56 =Michigan=-- White Pine, Maple and Birch 32 inches .47 =Minnesota=-- Birch, Ash, Spruce and Pine 20 inches .16 =Illinois=-- Oak, Walnut and Gum 30 inches .53 =Western=-- Fir, Pine and Cedar 50 inches 1.13 Redwood 8 feet and over 2.00 and over Records kept by Prof. A. J. McGuire, Superintendent Experimental Farm of the University of Minnesota, show even lower costs. Breaking Up Hard-Pan, Shale or Clay Soils. This is probably the most important use of "Red Cross" Dynamite. It is possible, although difficult and expensive, to clear land of stumps and boulders in other ways, but it is not possible to break up hard-pan, or clay subsoils, without the use of "Red Cross" Dynamite. Land that has a waterproof subsoil is practically worthless, as it holds the surface water in such quantities on level ground, that the roots of trees and plants are rotted away; on hilly ground, it allows the surface water to run off, thus preventing the storage of moisture, with the result that vegetation dies quickly in hot weather. Such land can be rendered fertile at once by blasting with "Red Cross" Dynamite. The subsoil is completely broken up and the dry, dead top soil converted into a rich loam for less than the amount of the taxes for a year or two. The following extract from the Topeka, Kansas, "Mail and Breeze" proves the wonderful results of this use of dynamite:-- "A few years ago M. T. Williams bought a quarter section of land near Medicine Lodge in Barber County, and, conceiving the same idea that Ex-Governor Crawford and others have, used dynamite in dealing with a hard subsoil. The land was overgrown with sunflowers and cockleburs and would have been considered dear at $10 per acre. It was underlaid with a hard subsoil that was almost impervious to water. Mr. Williams' idea was to loosen this subsoil with dynamite. He bored holes in the earth some 3 feet deep and about 40 feet apart, and in each hole placed a part of a stick of dynamite. The explosion of the dynamite loosened the hard subsoil, and made a reservoir for the rains, which had formerly run off the land nearly as fast as they fell. On this quarter there is now 100 acres of, perhaps, as fine alfalfa as can be found in the state. Mr. Williams has refused $15,000 for the quarter and gathers a net income from his alfalfa of from $30 to $35 per acre every year. "Last season Mr. Williams proposed to the ladies of the Baptist church that he would give them a load of hay, provided they would come out to the place, shock the hay, load it on wagons and haul it to town. They took him at his word and shocked and hauled to town two tons which sold for $16. When the second crop was ready the ladies came again, and 'touched' Mr. Williams for a little more than two tons which sold as well as the first load." Plowing With Dynamite. Ordinarily plowing merely turns over the same old soil year after year, and constant decrease in crops is only prevented by rotation or expensive fertilizing. With "Red Cross" Dynamite you can break up the ground all over the field to a depth of two or three feet, for less than the cost of adequate fertilizing, and with better results. Fertilizing only improves the top soil. Dynamiting renders available all the moisture and elements of growth throughout the entire depth of the blast. In an article by J. H. Caldwell, of Spartanburg, S. C., in the September, 1910, Technical World Magazine, he states that before the ground was broken up with dynamite, he planted his corn with stalks 18 inches apart in rows 4 feet apart and raised 90 bushels to the acre. After the ground was blasted, it was able to nourish stalks 6 inches apart in rows the same distance apart, and to produce over 250 bushels to the acre. This means an increase of about _160 bushels to the acre_, every year, for an original expense of $40 an acre for labor and explosives. F. G. Moughon, of Walton County, Georgia, reports that he has been raising crops of watermelons, weighing from 50 to 60 pounds each, on land blasted by exploding charges of about 3 ounces of dynamite in holes 2-1/2 to 3 feet deep, spaced 8 to 10 feet apart. Planting and Cultivating Orchards. In the orchard "Red Cross" Dynamite not only saves much labor and time in planting the trees, but ensures the best growth and large yields. A man will spend an hour digging a tree hole that dynamite will excavate in an instant. The spaded hole will be hard all the way down, making it difficult for the transplanted roots to take hold. This is one of the chief reasons why transplanted trees so often die. "Red Cross" Dynamite not only excavates the required hole, but also loosens the ground for yards around, killing all grubs, and forming a spongy reservoir for moisture. That is why trees planted in dynamited holes live and thrive. A whole row of tree holes can be excavated in one instant when charged with "Red Cross" Dynamite. Old trees are benefited by exploding small charges under them, or between the rows. This keeps the ground loose, and free from grubs. A well known fruit grower reports that he planted peach trees some years ago to determine whether anything was to be gained by using dynamite. A number of trees were planted in holes by detonating a charge of explosives to make the holes, and others were planted in holes of the regulation size, dug by hand. Three years later the trees planted in the blasted holes were strong and healthy, each producing between five and six bushels of very fine peaches. The other trees planted on the same ground without blasting, bore no peaches, both fruit and leaves having shriveled up and dropped off during the dry season. Digging Ditches, Post Holes, Wells and Reservoirs. Excavating of any kind is slow, hard work when done with pick and shovel, especially in mixed ground containing large stones, roots, streaks of gravel or shale. Several rods of ditch can be excavated in an instant with dynamite, varying the size of each charge according to the nature of the ground at that point. Most of the dirt is thrown out by the blast and the remainder is broken up ready for the shovel. A Missourian advises us of a ditch he has just blasted through a swamp for $100, which he says would have cost him $500 if dug in the usual way. On August 11, 1910, at the demonstration at Ivor, Va., above referred to, a ditch 85 feet in length, 3 feet deep and 4-1/2 feet wide at the top, was blasted with dynamite, at a cost not exceeding 10 cents per yard, or about $2.75 for the entire work. "Red Cross" Dynamite is especially useful in excavating wells and reservoirs, as it opens up all the springs in nearby ground. Road-Making and Grading. "Red Cross" Dynamite is a big saver of time and labor in making new roads, or leveling grades on old roads. Rock, shale, clay, gravel or sand, can all be broken up with ease, simply by varying the charge according to the nature of the ground and the depth of excavation desired. Excavating Cellars and Foundation Trenches. This work can be done with "Red Cross" Dynamite in one-tenth the time required for hand and team shoveling, and the cost of the dynamite is but a fraction of the value of the labor saved. Regenerating Old, Worn-Out Farms. All over the Eastern and Southern sections of the United States are farms and plantations, once rich, fertile and profitable, but now either abandoned, or so unproductive as to be almost worthless. The chief trouble with these farms is that the top soil is worked out. "Red Cross" Dynamite can be used with complete success to turn up an entirely fresh, fertile soil, and convert a $10 an acre "worked-out farm" into land worth $50 to $100 an acre. The cost in dynamite for this conversion would be about $10 to $15 an acre according to the nature of the soil. This matter is worthy of as much consideration on the part of farmers, and all others concerned with national resources, as the reclamation of desert areas in the West. Surely it is as important to restore the productiveness of established farms in the East, as it is to open up new, fertile fields in the West and Southwest. If any portion of your farm is not productive, it is probable that "Red Cross" Dynamite can make it productive. The leading railroads of the country are taking the greatest interest in the increasing use of dynamite on the farm, because they know by actual results that it means more and better crops, bigger shipments and greater prosperity all along their lines. Mr. H. B. Fullerton, Director Agricultural Development of the Long Island Railroad, is one of the pioneers in this movement, and in an article entitled "Reclaiming Waste Land on Long Island," his wife, Edith Loring Fullerton, graphically describes the use of dynamite in the preparation of waste land for cultivation. How Can We Help You? For more than a hundred years we have been making and selling explosives. We maintain a highly skilled corps of chemists, explosive specialists, and field representatives, whose sole duties are to study conditions and devise means for handling them. If there is any soil condition on your farm that we have not mentioned, and which you think might be remedied or improved by dynamite, please write us all about it. There will be no charge for the information we will send you; in fact, we will be much obliged to you for giving us the opportunity to study any peculiar condition. Bear in mind that the age, reputation and high standing of this Company are ample assurance that any statements made by us are conservative, and based on long and varied experience. In any case we want you to write for our "Handbook of Explosives for Farmers, Planters and Ranchers," which we send out only on request, as it is too valuable to send to anyone not interested enough to ask for it. Asking for it puts you under no obligation to us except to read it. We believe that when you have read it you will understand how simple, safe and economical the use of "Red Cross" Dynamite is, and that you will find many ways to save and make money with its aid. E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS POWDER CO. WILMINGTON, DELAWARE November, 1910 E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS POWDER COMPANY HOME OFFICE: WILMINGTON, DEL. ESTABLISHED 1802 _BRANCH OFFICES_ BOSTON, MASS. BIRMINGHAM, ALA. BUFFALO, N.Y. CHICAGO, ILL. CINCINNATI, O. CITY OF MEXICO DENVER, COLO. DULUTH, MINN. HAZLETON, PA. HOUGHTON, MICH. HUNTINGTON, W. VA. JOPLIN, MO. KANSAS CITY, MO. MEMPHIS, TENN. NASHVILLE, TENN. NEW ORLEANS, LA. NEW YORK, N.Y. PHILADELPHIA, PA. PITTSBURG, KAS. PITTSBURGH, PA. PORTLAND, ORE. SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. SCRANTON, PA. SEATTLE, WASH. SHREVEPORT, LA. SPOKANE, WASH. SPRINGFIELD, ILL. ST. LOUIS, MO. TERRE HAUTE, IND. 
42187	----	of the Digital Library@Villanova University (http://digital.library.villanova.edu/)) CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY. AGRICULTURAL LIFE. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION OF IMMIGRATION TO THE LAND. A STATEMENT IN REGARD TO THE RELATIONS WE HOLD TOWARDS IMMIGRANTS. WHAT THEY MAY EXPECT. MINNESOTA. GENERAL STATE STATISTICS. CROP STATISTICS. FARM STATISTICS. GENERAL REMARKS. CATHOLIC COLONIES IN MINNESOTA. SWIFT COUNTY COLONY. GRACEVILLE COLONY. ST. ADRIAN COLONY. AVOCA COLONY. THE BEST TIME TO COME. A CHAPTER FOR ALL TO READ. HOW TO SECURE GOVERNMENT LAND. ADVERTISEMENTS. Transcriber's Notes. CATHOLIC COLONIZATION IN MINNESOTA. REVISED EDITION. PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC COLONIZATION BUREAU OF MINNESOTA. UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE RIGHT REV. JOHN IRELAND, COADJUTOR BISHOP OF ST. PAUL. ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, JANUARY, 1879. THE PIONEER PRESS CO. INTRODUCTORY. The increase in the number of our Catholic Colonies in Minnesota, and the changes which population and other causes have brought about, make it necessary to publish a revised edition of the Immigration Pamphlet, issued by the Catholic Colonization Bureau of Minnesota, in 1877. We are pleased to notice the increased interest which is manifested all over the country, by Catholics, in the matter of Catholic immigration from the cities to the land. The sympathy, aid, and words of cheer, we are continually receiving from friends totally unconnected with our local work, assure us of this pleasing fact; which we attribute, in a great measure, to the honest, intelligent advocacy, and generous support our Catholic newspapers have given to the question. For ourselves, we are glad to gratefully acknowledge the liberal support the Catholic editors have given to our work: the confidence which they placed, from the very beginning, in the purity of our motives and the soundness of our business arrangements, is an indorsement of which we are justly proud. They have recognized that our aim is to do good to the many; and in all cases where our advice has been taken, our instructions followed, our warnings heeded, we do not fear that we have injured one. The approbation of our co-religionists, conveyed to us from all parts of the country, the success which God has been pleased to give to our humble labors, are cheering guarantees that we are on the right road; and we pray God that He will continue to bless our efforts, enlighten us in our present task, and keep our ardor in the cause we have espoused strictly within the bounds of truth. It is an axiom that "they who own the soil own the country." Happily, in this country, the people's title to the land is recognized, they are invited to take possession of their own, and the tall, luxuriant grasses of the broad prairie are the messengers it sends forth from its virgin bosom, telling of the wealth it has in store to reward honest, patient labor. There is no angry contest here for the possession of the soil, but there is, and should be, a noble, wise emulation among the various races that have emigrated to these shores, for their just portions of it. The surplus populations in our cities, the depression of business, the scarcity of employment, the poverty, suffering and discontent attending thereon, the magnitude of labor strikes, and the dread of their repetition, have made the question of immigration to the land from our over-crowded cities of pressing, national interest. The policy of our people immigrating in large numbers to the lands of the West, is no longer a theory to discuss, but a necessity, calling for the active support of every good, intelligent Catholic. It is not necessary to review the many causes which have heretofore retarded the immigration of our people to the land. Among those causes was one which should endear them to every Catholic heart, and which stands out in bright contrast to the irreligious indifference of the age. _They feared that if they came West, they would be beyond the reach of church and priest._ The danger of a Catholic settling in any of the Western States now, and finding himself entirely isolated, by distance, from his church, is scarcely to be apprehended, for the West has now its handsome churches, its priests and Catholic schools; but it might come to pass, that coming undirected, and without any Catholic organization to which he might apply, the Catholic immigrant might find himself settled in a locality inconveniently distant from church and priest, and where he and his family would be separated from Catholic associations. Bearing this in mind, the religious welfare of those coming to our colonies, was one of the main features to which Bishop Ireland devoted his attention when organizing the Catholic Colonization Bureau. Before the arrival of any of our immigrants, the rule was established that whenever we opened a colony and invited our people to it, the resident priest and church should go in with our first settlers, be their number small or large. To this good rule we attribute, to a great extent, not alone our success in bringing settlers to our colonies, but likewise their general contentment in their new homes and brave cheerfulness in meeting the trials, hardships, and set-backs, which are incident to new settlements. No question is so frequently asked by our correspondents as, "How near can I get land to a Catholic Church?" In no portion of any of the Catholic Colonies of Minnesota, established by the Catholic Bureau, under the auspices of the Right Rev. Bishop Ireland, shall a settler find himself beyond the easy reach of church and priest. AGRICULTURAL LIFE. ADVANTAGES OF AGRICULTURAL LIFE OVER CITY LIFE, TO THE MAN WHO MAKES HIS LIVING BY THE SWEAT OF HIS BROW. INDEPENDENCE ON THE LAND. GENERAL PROSPERITY OF CATHOLIC SETTLEMENTS IN MINNESOTA.--INDIVIDUAL PROSPERITY. WHAT OUR EARLY SETTLERS HAD TO GO THROUGH--HOW THEY GOT THROUGH IT AND CAME OUT AT THE TOP OF THE HEAP. THEIR BRAVE BATTLE FOR INDEPENDENCE--THEIR BOUNTIFUL REWARD. "It's na' to hide it in a hedge; It's na' for train attendant; But for the glorious privilege Of being independent." Thus sung Robert Burns long ago in praise of independence. This is one of the rewards which the land holds out to the honest, hard-working, persevering settler; and never does it break its promise to industry and perseverance. In the city, dangers surround the poor laboring man; temptations arise on every side to drag him down; insurmountable barriers oppose his advancement. Well, he may avoid the dangers--we wish to give the best view of the case, and, thank God, there are thousands of instances to sustain it--spurn the temptations, and even surmount some of the outward barriers to his advancement. He may be respectably housed and clothed; he may have a good boss. Ah, there is the rub, good or bad-- HE HAS A BOSS, a man at whose nod he must come and go. He may have money in a savings bank honestly managed; but if a spell of sickness prostrates him, how much of his hard-earned savings will be left when he rises from his sick bed? And suppose he feels that he has his death sickness, can you, by going into sorrow's counting-house, attempt to estimate the agony of the poor Catholic parent when he thinks of the fate which may await his children, left fatherless in a sinful city? There are other pictures of a poor man's city life, which we care not to draw. But we will take this prosperous workingman, with a good boss, from the city, and place him in his first rude house on his own land. He misses many things, many comforts. He misses the society of friends who used to come round from time to time--the milkman's bell, the butcher's cart: everything was so handy in the city. He is lonely: a feeling of desolation comes over him as he stands at the door of his new home, and looks around at the unimproved land. The land is rich and good, and the scene is fair to look at; but the reality is so different from the mental picture he made before setting out for the West, that he feels sad and disappointed. Then as he looks around him _at his own_, HE MISSES THE BOSS. At the thought, the spirit of independence which has led this man thousands of miles, perhaps, to seek a new home, and which sadness and disappointment--the first effects of a great change--for awhile subdued, leaps in his heart, and sends the red blood surging through his veins. NO BOSS. His eyes grow bright with pride as he looks out upon the land, a wide circle of which he calls his own. THE BOSS HAS DISAPPEARED, And the man, the owner of a wide stretch of real estate, conscious of a great awaking of self-respect in his being, stands erect at the door of his own house, on his own property, and feels that no one better than he is, shall pass him by all day. How the consciousness of independence, the feeling of self-respect, will sustain this man through many hardships, disappointments and trials! In a short time one or two cows take the place of the dingy cans of the milkman, and some young grunters in the hog pen represent the meat-market. After some years are past we visit the scene again. There is no loneliness here now, for it is harvest time, and the farmer and his sons are busy in the fields, his wife and eldest daughters busy in the house preparing for the keen appetites the men will bring in with them. The first rude shanty has given place to a nice two-story frame house, well sheltered from sun and wind by the healthy young trees the farmer planted with his own hands, and in the rear are the snug barn and granary. Where once the wild prairie grass waved, comes the cheery clatter of the harvester, and swath after swath of the golden grain falls down before it. By and by the younger children return from school, rosy and hungry, and a small skirmisher is thrown out and enters the pantry; he is repulsed and falls back on the main body; then, taking advantage of the "good woman," being obliged to run to the oven to keep the bread from burning, the whole force advance, a pie is spiked and carried off in triumph. As the shades of evening fall, a herd of cattle march lazily into the farm yard, and then from the field come the farmer and his sons. Lonely, indeed! Why the noise of Babel is renewed here. Dipping his hot face in a basin of cool water, the farmer splutters out his directions; seizing a jack towel, he scrubs his face, and continues to halloo to Mike, and Tom, and Patrick. Why, _the boss has come back_. Ay, but THE MAN HIMSELF IS THE BOSS NOW. All things come to an end, so does the farmer's supper; and as we sit with him on the porch outside we say, "You have a splendid place here." "It will do," he answers quite carelessly; but he can't fool us. We know that he is proud of his success. "I had to work hard for it," he continues, "but God has been very good to us." We are not romancing. We have drawn a picture from the original, which can be duplicated a thousand fold in this State. It is not individual success alone we can point to, but likewise the success of whole farming communities, where the people commenced poor--many of them, perhaps the majority, with scarcely any means at all--under disadvantages that would now appear to us, with railroads and markets on every side, almost insurmountable, and where to-day we cannot find one exceptional case of failure without an exceptional cause for it. Thoroughly acquainted with the Catholic settlements in Minnesota, we cannot call to mind a case where a hard-working, industrious, sober man failed to make a comfortable home for his family. We know of many cases where such a man met with reverses, lost his crop, his cattle, his horses; but never a case where a man met his reverses with a brave heart and trust in God, that he did not overcome them, and come out of the battle a better and prouder man. Let a poor man in the city find his all swept away from him, and what does he do? He slinks into its alleys and lanes, his pleasant, decent rooms are changed for one foul room in a tenement house, from whence, after a little, charity carries him to a pauper's grave. We have spoken of the general prosperity of our Catholic settlements in Minnesota, and we have not to travel far from its capital to find some of them--only into the adjoining county, Dakota, one of the very finest in the State. Fully two-thirds of the lands of the county are owned (mind, _owned_.) by Catholic settlers, Irish and German. Some twenty-five years ago, a few poor Irishmen settled in the timber in this county. It was very generally supposed, at that time, that people could not live on a prairie in Minnesota; but by and by, those who had settled in Dakota county found out their mistake, and commenced making claims on the adjoining prairie, Rosemount prairie, to-day the garden of Minnesota. But not before Hugh Derham, of the County Meath, Ireland, now the Honorable Hugh Derham, came along and put up his shanty on the prairie. "I had seven hundred dollars," he said to us some time ago, "when I came on here; oxen were dear then, and when I had a yoke bought, together with a cow, and my shanty up, I had little or none of the money left. But I went to work, broke up all the land I could, got seed, put in my first crop, and lost every kernel of it." To-day this man owns four hundred acres of improved land, in a circle round his house. Fifty dollars an acre would be a low value to put on his land. Some four years ago his neighbor, a man of the name of Ennis, bought one hundred and twenty acres of land adjoining, for something like ten thousand dollars. When Hugh Derham settled here there was not a railroad nearer than two hundred miles of him, now passengers on the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, passing within half a mile in front of his house, point from the windows of the cars to his place, as a model home of a thrifty farmer. His handsome, two-story frame house stands embowered in the orchard and shade trees, sturdy Hugh Derham planted with his own hands; his barn alone cost three thousand dollars; he has flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and horses as he requires them; and he has a good wife, who assisted him in his early struggles, healthy, fresh and handsome still. He has had his eldest daughter at a convent school, and bought for her last year a five hundred dollar piano. It is said that he has some ten thousand dollars loaned out at interest. Now, is Hugh Derham's an exceptional case? If you came along, and we were inclined to brag, and show you a specimen of our Catholic farmers in Minnesota, we would bring you direct to Hugh Derham, not for his herds, and stock, and well filled granary--he is surpassed by many of our farmers in all these--but for the look of respectable thriftiness all around him. There is his next neighbor, Wm. Murphy, another well-to-do, respectable farmer, not perhaps as well off as Derham, but still able to bear some time ago a loss of five thousand dollars by fire, and to make no poor mouth about it. Another neighbor, Mich. Johnson, a prosperous man, better still, a high spirited, fine fellow, and an earnest worker in the cause of temperance. Another neighbor, Tom Hiland, as rich a man as Derham. In the next township, the Bennetts--three or four brothers that a poor but good, intelligent, widowed mother, with much struggling, managed to bring West, and locate on government land. These brothers now farm five times as much land as Derham, and raise five times as much wheat. And as we have been led into giving individual cases of success,--not at first intended, for such cases must be always in certain features more or less exceptional--we will give one more, that of Mich. Whalen of Whalen township, Fillmore county. His history is a remarkable one, as told by himself to us; remarkable in his brave struggle for independence, his sagacity, and final success. We give some points: About thirty years ago Mich. Whalen landed from Ireland in New York. He was then forty years of age, and had a wife and eight children--all his wealth. Yes, his wealth, he thought, if he could but reach with them the broad acres of the West. So he sawed wood for seventy-five cents a cord in the city of New York: the more he sawed the less he liked the work, and making a brave effort he found himself, with wife and children, squatted on one hundred and sixty acres of government land in Fillmore county, Minnesota. When the land came into market he was not able to pay the government price, one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, but Capt. McKenney, the then receiver of the U. S. Land Office, managed to give him time, and the next year's crop enabled him to pay up. At this time John, his eldest of six sons, was sixteen years of age, and able to help his father. To-day Mich. Whalen is the owner of thirteen hundred acres of land in Fillmore county. The village of Whalen with mills and a fine water power, is on his land: or rather, on the land of his son John, for as the boys get married the old man gives them title to portions of the land, on which they build. There is another mill within a few rods of the old homestead, and there is not less than from six thousand to ten thousand bushels of wheat raised on the farm each year. "Why, Mr. Whalen," said a friend some time ago, "you got on splendidly; with such a large and almost helpless family at the beginning, I don't see how you could have managed it." "We put our trust in God, _avourneen_!" replied the old man, "and we stuck together." Where were the special advantages in this man's case; which enabled the poor wood-sawyer of New York to become one of the solid men of a rich county? They are to be found in the fact that he was blessed with good children, who, as they grew up and became able to help him, remained at home and did help--and amply are they rewarded for it to day-- "THEY STUCK TOGETHER." But it is of the general prosperity of our Catholic settlements in Minnesota that we wish more particularly to speak, for as a general rule there is no business which has not its representative successful men. Dakota County being close to the capital of the State, (St. Paul,) and possessing the advantage of having, on the Mississippi River, a market for its produce, at a time when there was not a mile of railroad in the State, was settled up at an early day. Among its settlers were Irish and German Catholics. From that period out these settlers have not alone held their own, but, year after year receiving fresh additions to their numbers, they have advanced from township to township, buying improved farms and wild land, until, as we have stated before, two-thirds of the lands of the county belong to them. Travel which side you will, and you shall find evidence that one "can read as he runs" of their prosperity, intelligence and respectability; handsome houses, good offices, young orchards, ornamental planting, and the grand big wheat fields around, which have supplied the means to build up those pleasant homes. Traveling along down the Mississippi to the eastern boundary of the State and taking a wide range of country on the Minnesota side of the river, we find many prosperous settlements of our people. Again southwest, up the beautiful valley of the Minnesota River, in Scott, Sibley, Le Sueur, Nicollet and Blue Earth counties, there are numerous Catholic settlements, both in the woods and on the prairie. So, too, in the midland counties of Rice, Steele, Waseca, Olmsted, Dodge and Mower counties, our people are settled, prosperous and happy, their valuable farms giving ample and cheerful evidence, how bountifully the soil rewards honest labor. Nor, in their prosperity, have they forgotten Him from whom all blessings flow. Where a few years ago the Catholic settlers, few and poor, waited anxiously for the visit of the priest, and where the holy sacrifice of the mass was offered up in the settler's cabin, we now find the resident priest, the handsome church, and in many instances, the Sisters' school. In those settlements the whole atmosphere is Catholic; here, with no bad influences around them, the young people grow up pure and virtuous, with the love of their religion warm in their hearts. An ample reward to their parents, those brave men, the early settlers, who displayed such indomitable perseverance in their battle for INDEPENDENCE. They had to steer their way with the compass, over trackless prairies, often while the snow lay upon the ground, to blaze their way through the forest or follow an Indian trail, carrying their provisions on their backs, and when the claim shanty was put up and the provisions exhausted, the new settler would often have to return twenty, forty, sixty miles to some place where he could buy a few more pounds of flour, and with this and perhaps half a bushel of potatoes to put in the ground, he would again set off to his new claim. But in all the privations they went through, those connected with religion they felt the most. And, praise be to God, among the earliest evidences of their growing prosperity was the erection of temples to His worship, that to-day, on every side, ornament the State. Wherever in the State there is a clustering of Catholic settlements, there you will find a clustering of Catholic churches. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION OF IMMIGRATION TO THE LAND. To a Catholic, this is, after all, the most important view, and must not be overlooked; at the same time it is obvious that it cannot be done justice to in a condensed pamphlet of this kind. There is about the same difference between the moral atmosphere of the rural Catholic colonies to which we invite our people, and the back streets and alleys of the over-crowded city, as there is between the pure air of the prairie and the foul air of the city lane. Some time ago, a friend from the East, to whom we were showing some of our Catholic settlements, said to us, "Why, it is not surprising that the people settled out here in the country should be moral and religious, they have much to make them so, and nothing to make them otherwise in their surroundings; but look at our poor people, huddled together in the tenement houses of New York. When you find them good, give them praise." "And many of them are good," we said. "Oh, yes," he answered; "but the great danger is to the children. The priest does his best, the Catholic parent grounded in his religion before he ever saw a city does his best, but his circumstances compel him to live where the foul air reeks with blasphemy, and low debauchery; vice and drunkenness are ever before their eyes." This is a very sad picture, but a very true one. It is a fearful reality before the eyes of many a poor Catholic parent, who obliged to be continually absent from his children, knows but too well the society they are likely to fall into. In our Catholic colonies in Minnesota a parent has no such dread. He knows where his boys are on week days; they are helping him on the farm. He knows where they are on Sundays; they are with him at church. When they are amusing themselves, he knows that they are with the young people of his neighbors, their companions and co-religionists. Here, too, the anxious heart of the loving mother is at rest; for she sees her daughters associating with the good and innocent of their own age, and growing up pure and virtuous. "God made the country and man made the town," is an old saying. The immigration of those of our people adapted to agricultural life from the city to the land will be a benefit, not alone to themselves, but to those they leave behind. By this healthful drain the latter will be left more room, and have more opportunities to better their condition. From any side we view it, it is a great and good work to encourage and labor for Catholic immigration to the land, where INDEPENDENCE shall reward labor, and Catholic zeal shall spread our holy faith over the fertile prairies of the West. We would be very sorry to see, even if it was practicable, our people leaving the cities _en masse_. Many of them, well adapted for city life, rise to prosperity and social position in the city. Some to high professional or business standing, others to moderate respectable independence; others, in humbler walks of life, to decent homes of their own, and the city affords to the well brought up children of such homes, many solid advantages. We want full representation for our people in the city, and full representation on the land. By encouraging those of our people adapted, and best adapted for agricultural pursuits, to seek the land, we benefit them and benefit those who remain behind as well, for we give the latter healthy room and more opportunities: in a word, we improve the condition of our people, both in the city and in the country. A STATEMENT IN REGARD TO THE RELATIONS WE HOLD TOWARDS IMMIGRANTS. WHAT THEY MAY EXPECT. THE CLASS WE INVITE.--THE PROPER TIMBER MUST BE IN THE MAN HIMSELF. The great drawback to organized colonization is, that people expect too much; therefore we will be explicit, and state exactly what is proposed to be done for those coming to the Catholic colonies of Minnesota. In the first place, they will get in this pamphlet truthful and full statistics of the State, so far as those statistics are of interest to them; they will also get full details in regard to our colonies, and all the directions and information necessary. When they arrive here (in St. Paul,) by calling at the office of the Catholic Colonization Bureau they will be directed to whichever colony they may wish to go. Arrived at the colony, they will be shown over its lands. Then when the immigrant has made his selection and taken possession, he must depend from thenceforth, on himself, and the more he does so the more he will feel himself a man. The Catholic immigrant coming now to Minnesota will not be subject to the severe trials and hardships the early settlers encountered, while he will be altogether exempt from the religious and social privations they had to bear through many lonely years. The immigrant is now conveyed to the Catholic Colony he may select, by railroad train, and finds before him church and priest, market and settlers; nevertheless he should be a man possessing that noble quality which western life so well develops-- SELF-RELIANCE. Under God, it is on himself he must depend for future success. And here is the proper place to speak of the class of persons whom we can confidently invite to our Catholic colonies-- FARMERS ALONE. Not necessarily those who have heretofore been engaged altogether in agricultural pursuits, but persons who come to settle on farms, and who are able and willing to hold the plow. The poor man to succeed on a farm in Minnesota, must hold his own plow, and do his own chores; and, above all, have courage and strength to depend upon himself. If he has a good, healthy, cheerful, wife, who prefers the prattle of her children to the gossip of the street, why, all the better--let him come along, and we will put him on the road to PROSPERITY. He has made more than half the journey already, when he has secured a good wife. MINNESOTA. ITS GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION--SIZE--OPINIONS OF DISTINGUISHED MEN--FERTILITY, BEAUTY AND HEALTHFULNESS OF THE STATE. The State contains 83,153 square miles or 53,459,840 acres, and is, therefore, one of the largest in the Union. It occupies the exact centre of the continent of North America. It lies midway between the Arctic and Tropic circles--midway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans--and midway between Hudson's Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It embraces the sources of three vast water systems which reach their ocean termini, northward through Hudson's Bay, eastward through the chain of great lakes, and southward via the Mississippi River. It extends from 43-1/2° to 49° of north latitude, and from 89° 29' to 97° 5' of west longitude; and is bounded on the north by the Winnipeg district of British America, on the west by the Territory of Dakota, on the south by the State of Iowa, and on the east by Lake Superior and the State of Wisconsin. In official reports before us, we find many interesting extracts from the writings of well-known public men, agriculturists, geologists, professors in various branches of science, engineers, surveyors and government officials, who have visited Minnesota at various times on business or pleasure, and who have borne enthusiastic testimony of her resources, the fertility of her soil, the healthfulness of her climate and the beauty of her scenery. A few sentences from all these writings will suffice for us in this place. In the official report of General Pope, who was commissioned by the government to make a topographical survey of portions of the State, we find the following sentence, which embraces almost all that can be said in praise. He says: "I KNOW _of_ NO COUNTRY _on_ EARTH _where so_ MANY _advantages are presented to the_ FARMER AND MANUFACTURER." The adaptability of our rich soil for all the staple crops, as proven by experience, the large yield per acre in wheat, oats, potatoes, &c., &c., the immense quantity of good land in large bodies, the truly magnificent water power within the State, and so beneficently located in its different sections; all these advantages, seen beneath a sky always bright, and in a climate at all seasons healthy, may well account for the enthusiasm which inspired the above eulogy on Minnesota. The accredited correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, who visited this State some three years ago, is equally enthusiastic in his published letters to his paper. We give two extracts from those letters. "No wonder the people here wear such smiling countenances. They are full of hope. I have yet to see the first despairing or gloomy face. Melancholy belongs to the overcrowded cities, and there is plenty of it in Chicago. "Is it not astonishing that so many able-bodied men should hang about our large cities doing nothing, because they can find nothing to do, and nearly starving to death, when these broad and fertile prairies are calling upon them to come and release the treasures which lie within the soil. "The resources or this State are immense. It has every variety of wealth, and every facility for profitable exchange. There is no more productive soil in the world. Then the State has an abundance of pine timber. It has a vast amount of available water power, and offers every facility and encouragement to manufacturing industry. It has mineral wealth on Lake Superior of iron and copper, in inexhaustible abundance. There is no region in this country, or any country, that I am aware of, that is so well watered. And the water is everywhere clear and pure. It is a land of great rivers, pellucid lakes, and sparkling streams. "All this may sound enthusiastic, but every word is calmly written and justified by the facts; and it is strictly within the facts. If the advantages of this region were only adequately made known, there would surely be a great flow of labor from the cities and places where it is not wanted, into a region like this, where every variety of labor is needed and where it is certain to meet with a rich reward." In the second extract we give, this correspondent expresses himself in language very similar to that made use of by General Pope. He says, still speaking of Minnesota: "I know of no other portion of the earth's surface where so many advantages are concentrated, and where the man of industry and small means may so quickly and with so much certainty render himself independent. Here you have a climate of exceeding purity, a soil of amazing productiveness, abundance of the clearest water, with groves, and lakes, and rivers and streams wherever they are wanted. Then the great railway lines are beginning to intersect this country in all directions, and thus furnish the farmer with a cheap and immediate outlet for his produce." We will close these brief extracts--taken from the writings of persons well qualified to form a sound judgment on the subject they were discussing, and totally unconnected personally with the interests of Minnesota--with two extracts from a speech of the distinguished statesman, Hon. Wm. H. Seward, delivered in St. Paul, the capital of our State, so far back as 1860. Mr. Seward said, and America has not produced so far-seeing a statesman: "Here is the place--the central place--where the agriculture of the richest region of North America must pour out its tributes to the whole world. On the east, all along the shore of Lake Superior, and west, stretching in one broad plain in a belt quite across the continent, is a country where State after State is yet to rise, and where the productions for the support of human society in the old crowded States must be brought forth. * * * * * I now believe that the ultimate last seat of government on this great continent will be found, somewhere within a circle or radius not very far from the spot on which I stand, at the head of navigation on the Mississippi river." GENERAL STATE STATISTICS. LAKES, RIVERS, TIMBER, CLIMATE, SOIL, STOCK RAISING. In the following we have borrowed much from authorized State reports, adding our own comments when necessary. LAKES. Minnesota abounds in lakes of great beauty. They are from one to fifty miles in diameter, and are well stocked with a variety of fish. Those beautiful lakes are found in every portion of the State, sparkling on the open prairie, hidden in groves, or resting calm and pure in the depths of the silent forest. "It may be interesting," says John W. Bond, Secretary of the Minnesota State Board of Immigration, "to note the areas of a few of the largest lakes in our State. Lake Minnetonka contains 16,000 acres; Lake Winnebagoshish, 56,000 acres; Leech Lake, 114,000 acres; and Mille Lacs, 130,000 acres. Red Lake, which is much larger than any other in the State, has not yet been surveyed. "The above estimate of 2,700,000 acres in lakes does not embrace the vast water areas included in the projected boundary lines of the State in Lake Superior and Lake of the Woods, and along the great water stretches of the international line." The importance to the State of having Lake Superior as an outlet for its produce cannot be overestimated. The day is not distant when a large amount of grain will be shipped in bulk from the Minnesota harbor (Duluth) on Lake Superior, to the Liverpool market in England. RIVERS. Minnesota has five navigable rivers. The Mississippi (The Father of Waters,) having its rise in Lake Itaska, in the northern part of the State. The St. Croix, flowing through a large portion of the lumbering region. The Minnesota, rising in Dakota Territory and flowing through a large portion of the State empties into the Mississippi, five miles above St. Paul. It is navigable, in favorable seasons, about 300 miles. The Red River of the North, forming the northwestern boundary of the State for a distance of 380 miles, and navigable about 250. The St. Louis River, flowing into Lake Superior on our northeastern boundary, a distance of 135 miles. Besides these, the largest rivers are the Root, Rum, Crow, Sauk, Elk, Long Prairie, Crow Wing, Blue Earth, Le Sueur, Maple, Cobb, Watonwan, Snake, Kettle, Redwood, Wild Rice, Buffalo, Chippewa, Marsh, Pomme de Terre, Lac qui Parle, Mustinka, Yellow Medicine, Two Rivers, Cottonwood, Cannon, Zumbro, Whitewater, Cedar, Red Lake, Straight, Vermillion, and others. These, with a vast number of smaller streams tributary to them, ramifying through fertile upland and grassy meadow, in every section of the State, afford invaluable facilities for the various purposes of lumbering, milling, manufacturing and agriculture. In connection with her rivers, we will say that Minnesota has perhaps the finest water power, within her bounds, to be found in the world. This power is found all over the State, and though only very partially developed, it serves to manufacture 2,600,000 barrels of flour annually, and runs 250 saw mills. TIMBER. Minnesota is neither a timber nor a prairie State; yet it possesses in a large degree the advantages of both, there being unquestionably a better proportion of timber and prairie, and a more admirable intermingling of the two than in any other State. It is estimated that about one-third of Minnesota is timbered land, of more or less dense growth. In Iowa, it has been officially estimated that only about one-tenth to one-eight of the State is timbered. On the head-waters of the various tributaries of the extreme Upper Mississippi and St. Croix rivers is an extensive forest country, known as the "pine region," comprising an estimated area of 21,000 square miles. Extending in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction, about 100 miles long, and an average width of 40, is the largest body of hard-wood timber between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. It lies on both sides of the Minnesota River, comprising in all an area of 5,000 square miles, and is known as the "Big Woods." CLIMATE. Prominent among the questions proposed by the immigrant seeking a new home in a new country, are those concerning the climate, its temperature, adaptation to the culture of the grand staples of food, and its healthfulness. "The climate of Minnesota has often been the subject of unjust disparagement. 'It is too far north;' 'the winters are intolerable.' These and other similar remarks have found expression by those who should have known better. To the old settler of Minnesota, the seasons follow each other in pleasing succession. As the sun approaches his northern latitude, winter relaxes its grasp, streams and lakes are unbound, flowers spring up as if by the touch of some magic wand, and gradually spring is merged into the bright, beautiful June, with its long, warm days, and short, but cool and refreshing nights. The harvest months follow in rapid succession, till the golden Indian summer of early November foretells the approach of cold and snow; and again winter, with its short days of clear, bright sky and bracing air, and its long nights of cloudless beauty, completes the circle." "Men," says the late J. B. Phillips, Commissioner of Statistics, "suffer themselves to be deluded with the idea that heat is in some way a positive good, and cold a positive evil. The world is in need of a sermon on the gospel and blessing of cold. "What is there at best in the indolent languor of tropic siestas for any live man or woman to be pining after? Macauley, after his residence in India, did not. He said that you boiled there four or five months in the year, then roasted four or five more, and had the remainder of the year to 'get cool if you could.' 'If you could!' No way of refrigerating a tropic atmosphere has ever yet been devised; while you can be perfectly comfortable in any north temperate zone." Again he says: "The healthfulness of Minnesota is one of its strongest points. Having been, for a long time, a sanitary resort for persons threatened with pulmonary complaints, it has disappointed no reasonable expectation. It is equally favorable for those afflicted with liver diseases. Thus for the two great organs in the tripod of life, the liver and lungs, that is for two-thirds of life, Minnesota offers the most favorable conditions. She is more exempt from paludial fevers then any new State settled in the last half century. The fearful cost of human life it has required to subdue the soil in the States along the line of lat. 40° has never been estimated. With a moist, decaying vegetation, and a certain intensity and duration of summer and autumn heat, sickness of that kind is certain to come, no matter what they may _say_ about having 'no sickness here.' It always exists when the requisite conditions are present. Freed from the depressing influence of this decimating foe, the average Minnesotian eats with a craving appetite, sleeps well, moves with a quick step and elastic spirits, and fights his life-battle sturdily and hopefully to the issue." The mean yearly temperature of our Minnesota climate, (44.6,) coincides with that of Central Wisconsin, Michigan, Central New York, Southern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine; but in the dryness of its atmosphere it has, both for health and comfort, at great advantage over those States. It is well known that dampness is the element from whence come sickness and suffering, either in cold or warm weather, and the dry atmosphere of winter in Minnesota, at an average temperature of 16°, makes the cold less felt than in warmer but damper climates several degrees farther south. With the new year generally commences the severe cold of our winter, but for the last few seasons the old Minnesota winters seem to be giving place to much milder ones. During last winter the thermometer, in the most exposed places, scarcely ever marked zero, and now, on the 21st of December--weeks after they have had fierce snow storms south and southwest of us--good sleighing in Chicago and St. Louis--we are getting our first regular fall of snow, (only a slight sprinkling before,) which is falling unaccompanied with either wind or cold and giving a good promise of merry sleigh rides during the Christmas holidays. Whether or not there has come a permanent change in our Minnesota winters, brought about by causes affected by population and settlement, we cannot say; but that such a change would not be acceptable to many of our old settlers we are convinced; not certainly to the enthusiast who writes as follows of our old, crisp, bright winters: "Winter in Minnesota is a season of ceaseless business activity, and constant social enjoyment; and by those accustomed to long wintry storms, and continued alternations of mud, and cold, and snow, is pronounced far preferable to the winters in any section of the Northern States. Here there is an exhilaration in the crisp atmosphere which quickens the blood, and sends the bounding steps over the ringing snow with an exultant flurry of good-spirits akin to the highest enjoyment." Doubtless this was written from the stand-point of warm robes, a light cutter, a fast horse, and tingling sleigh-bells; nevertheless it is in the main true. When the surface of the body is warmly clothed, one can enjoy out-door exercise in the winter with every comfort. The greatest and only objection that we find against the winter season in Minnesota, is its length.--It is true that, as a general rule, we have all our spring wheat in the ground, and for the most part over ground, before the end of April.--This infringement of winter, as we may term it, upon the domain of spring, is the draw-back to our climate. It is a slight one compared to those of other climates, where spring brings with its flowers, fever, ague, and chills. The summer months are pleasant. We have hot days, as one can judge by bearing in mind that our wheat crop is put into the ground, cut and often threshed, all within three months, but our nights are always beautiful and cool. Then comes autumn, when the wayside copse, blushing at the hot kisses of the sun, turns scarlet, and every tint of shade and color is seen in the variegated foliage of the forest; and then the hazy, Indian summer--nothing so lovely could last long on earth--when forest and prairie, dell and highland, palpitate with a hushed beauty, and to live is happiness sufficient. Pure air is health, life. Winter and summer, fall and spring, the air of Minnesota, free from all malaria, is pure. We promise to the new settler making a home on land in Minnesota, plenty of hard work, and the best of health and spirits--so far as climate has any effect on those blessings, and it has a great deal--while doing it. It will not be necessary for him to get acclimated, but to pitch right in. Disturnell, author of a work on the "Influence of Climate in North and South America," says that "_Minnesota may be said to excel any portion of the Union in a healthy and invigorating climate_." In connection with this very important subject, health, the following comparative statement as to the proportion of deaths to population, in several countries in Europe and States in the Union, will be read with interest: Minnesota 1 in 155 | Wisconsin 1 in 108 Great Britain and Ireland 1 in 46 | Iowa 1 in 93 Germany 1 in 37 | Illinois 1 in 73 Norway 1 in 56 | Missouri 1 in 51 Sweden 1 in 50 | Michigan 1 in 88 Denmark 1 in 46 | Louisiana 1 in 43 France 1 in 41 | Texas 1 in 46 Switzerland 1 in 41 | Pennsylvania 1 in 96 Holland 1 in 39 | United States 1 in 74 The above is so conclusive an exhibit in confirmation of the healthfulness of the Minnesota climate, that it exhausts the subject. SOIL. Under this head, the late J. B. Phillips, Commissioner of Statistics, from whose work we have already quoted, says: "The soil of the arable part of the State is generally of the best quality, rich in lime and organic matter, and particularly well adapted to the growth of wheat, over 26,400,000 bushels of which cereal were produced in 1873, and over 30,000,000 in 1875. Although its fertility has never been disputed, these authentic figures prove it beyond question. Good wheat lands in a favorable season will produce from 25 to 30 bushels to the acre. I believe the whole county of Goodhue, in a yield of between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 bushels, very nearly averaged the first figures in 1875. A great portion of the State is equally adapted to stock raising, and many farmers think it would be more profitable." We will add to this, by way of a note, that in 1877, as will be seen on another page, Minnesota with only 3,000,000 acres of her land under cultivation, produced 35,000,000 bushels of wheat, almost all No. 1 quality, and that Goodhue County, mentioned in the extract quoted, had a yield of 4,050,250 bushels. STOCK RAISING. We know of no country where stock, horses and sheep, do better than in Minnesota, and we believe that it will be found true that the climate conducive to the health of human beings is one where all kinds of domestic animals will thrive. We had, some time ago, a very interesting conversation with Mr. Featherston, an English gentleman residing in Goodhue County, on this subject. He informed us that he had farmed in England, in the State of New York, in Kansas, and now in Minnesota, and he was never in a place where sheep and stock did better than here. "I attribute this," he said, "to the dryness of our winter weather. Sheep here are not weighed down with wet fleeces; and as for cattle, they suffer more in southern Kansas, where they can remain out all the year, than they do here in the coldest days of winter." "How is that?" we asked. "Easily accounted for," he replied. "One part of the day, in Kansas, it will be raining, the coats of the cattle will be saturated with wet, then it comes on to freeze, and they become sheeted with ice; this is very injurious to the health of a beast. Sheep raising in Minnesota I have found very profitable farming indeed." "What about the soil of Minnesota?" we asked. "Well," he replied, "I was home in England two years ago, traveled about a good deal, and did not see any soil equal to the soil of Minnesota." Now, in speaking of Minnesota for stock-raising, it must be borne in mind that it is more expensive to keep cattle here, where they must be fed many months in the year, than where they can run at large the whole year; but, if properly housed during winter, young cattle fed on wild hay--which can be put up for $1.50 per ton--will come out in the spring in fine condition. The opportunities of getting wild hay in the localities where our Catholic colonies are located, are not surpassed in any part of the State; and it will be borne in mind that if there is extra expense and trouble in raising cattle here, there is also extra good prices to get for them. A steer that will sell for $10 in places where, like Topsey, he "just grows," will sell here for from $30 to $40. The following, taken from a late report of a committee of the Chamber of Commerce, St. Paul, will be read with interest: "Our climate and soil appear to be peculiarly adapted for grazing purposes. Its healthfulness for cattle of every kind is well established. The abundant and prolific yield of both tame and wild or natural grasses, of every description incident to the West, affords abundant and cheap pasturage during the summer, and the choicest of hay for winter, which is produced at less expense per ton than in most of the States in the Union. If necessary, your committee could refer to countless instances in regard to the profit of raising stock in the State. The demand for horses has always been in excess of the supply. Thousands are introduced into our midst every year from the adjoining States. The demand will increase as the country west of us becomes settled. Choice herds of cattle have been imported into the State during the past few years, attended in every instance, as far as your committee have been able to learn, with much profit to the enterprising parties who embarked in the lucrative business. The dairy is being introduced in the shape of cheese and butter factories in many neighborhoods and attended with much success. It appears that shipments of both these home products have been made to England with satisfactory results. The sheep-fold to some extent has been neglected, but those who have engaged in wool-growing are greatly encouraged. Flocks of sheep brought from the East have, with their progeny, improved to such an extent by the influence of our climate, that they have been repurchased by those from whom they were originally bought, and transported back East to improve the breed of their stock. The wool becomes of a finer texture when produced in our State, also an increase in size of the carcass of the sheep." The advantages which our present Catholic colonies afford, abounding in nutritious grasses and the best quality of wild hay lands, will we trust turn the attention of settlers to stock raising, butter packing and cheese factories, and we are informed that some enterprising parties are going to establish one of the latter at Clontarf, in Swift County Colony. Farming to be prosperous the industry on the farm must be diversified; there should be rotation of crops. It will not do to depend altogether on wheat or to be too ambitious to have a great breadth of it under cultivation; not an acre more than the farmer knows he will be well able to have out of the ground in good season, making no chance calculations. CROP STATISTICS. WHEAT, OATS, POTATOES, CORN, HAY, SORGHUM, FRUITS. In 1849, Minnesota was organized into a territory, and the following year, 1850, she had under cultivation 1,900 acres of land. In 1877, she had 3,000,000 acres. In these twenty-seven years, during which the breadth of her cultivated lands has increased over one thousand five hundred fold, the quality and average quantity per acre of all the great staple crops have been equally satisfactory, until we find her to-day, taking the foremost place as an agricultural State. To quote from the writings of the Hon. Pennock Pusey, than whom there is no more upright gentleman nor one more qualified to deal with statistics, we find that "According to the census of 1870, the entire wheat product of New England was sufficient to feed her own people only three weeks! That of New York sufficient for her own consumption six months; that of Pennsylvania, after feeding her own people, afforded no surplus; while the surplus of Ohio was but 3,000,000 bushels for that year, and for the past six years her wheat crop has fallen below her own consumption. In the ten years ending in 1870, the wheat crop of these States decreased 6,500,000 bushels. "In the light of these facts, the achievements of Minnesota in wheat growing, as well as her untaxed capacity for the continued and increased production of that grain, assume a proud pre-eminence." This is not too high praise for Minnesota, when we find the great State of Ohio for the last six years failing to raise sufficient wheat for her own consumption, while Minnesota with but 2,232,988 acres under wheat, has, after bountifully supplying her own population, exported in 1877 over fifteen million of bushels. The important position which Minnesota is destined, in the near future, to assume as a great contributor to the supply of the most important article of food used by the human family, is well put forward by Mr. Pusey in the paper we have already quoted from. He says: "But a more practical as well as serious aspect of the subject pertains to those social problems connected with supplies of bread. The grave significance of the question involved is not susceptible of concealment, when the fact is considered, that while the consumption of wheat, as the choice food of the human race, is rapidly extending, the capacity of wheat-growing regions for its production is rapidly diminishing." We will now give some extracts from the report of the late J. B. Philips, Commissioner of Statistics. We select from his report with great satisfaction, because he has been very careful to make his calculations rather under than over the truth. We find the following under the head of WHEAT, 1875. The number of bushels of wheat gathered and threshed, according to the returns reported to the Commissioner for the year 1875, was 28,769,736; but there were 77,032 acres unreported, which at 17-1/2 bushels per acre, (the general average,) would make a total of 30,079,300 bushels. The number of acres reported as cultivated in wheat for 1875 was 1,764,109. Illinois, with her large cultivated area, has until recently been the largest wheat-raising State. In 1860 she produced 23,837,023 bushels, and in 1870 30,128,405 bushels. "In 1871," says one of her statisticians, "the United States produced 235,884,700 bushels of wheat, of which 27,115,000 are assigned to Illinois, or about 700,000 bushels more than any other State." In 1871 the product of the United States was 230,722,400 bushels, of which Illinois had 25,216,000, being followed by Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa. In 1870 Illinois produced 30,128,405. "But," says the same authority, "we now (1870) find Iowa close alongside of us, her product being 29,435,692 bushels of wheat." It is to be remarked that neither Minnesota nor California were deemed worthy of notice in this rivalry of these older States. But in three years from that date Minnesota, as well as Iowa, was "close alongside" of Illinois, raising from 15 millions in 1870 to 22 millions in 1872, and 26,402,485 in 1873. In 1874 the wheat product of Minnesota was within a fraction of 24 millions. I give her yields in this table: WHEAT YIELD FOR FOUR YEARS IN SUCCESSION. Bushels. Average per acre. 1872 22,069,375 17.40 1873 26,402,485 17.04 1874 23,988,172 14.23 1875 30,059,300 17.05 I am not aware that any State ever did, or can, show a better record than this for four successive years. I give below a few of the MAXIMUM WHEAT PRODUCTS OF STATES. Ohio, 1850 30,309,373 California, 1874 30,248,341 Illinois, 1870 31,128,405 Minnesota, 1875 30,079,300 Iowa, 1870 29,435,692 "It will be observed," remarks the Commissioner, "that according to these figures Minnesota ranks fourth." True enough, but fast on the heels of 1875 comes the crop of 1877, and with a bounce to 35,000,000 bushels of wheat Minnesota stands at the head of all as a wheat-producing State. 35,000,000 BUSHELS of almost all No. 1 grade. In 50,000 bushels of wheat graded in Minneapolis, something less than 300 bushels graded No. 2, and none under that figure. We now give the following condensed statistics for the year 1877. Number of acres under cultivation in 1877 3,000,000 Crops. Bushels. Wheat 35,000,000 Oats 20,000,000 Corn 12,000,000 Barley 3,000,000 Potatoes 3,000,000 ---------- Total 73,000,000 Or 24-1/3 bushels to every acre under cultivation. But the average is much higher than this, for in the above table no account is taken of the gardens and large breadth of flax under cultivation. The official report, when published, may differ slightly with the above, but not to an extent to make any alteration necessary. We are informed that, in several instances, land giving wheat for the last twenty years, without being fertilized or manured, produced in 1877 over twenty bushels of wheat to the acre; a fact creditable to the land, but very discreditable to the farmers engaged in such _land murder_. While Minnesota has, without dispute, established her reputation as a great wheat producer, and the dangers which always lie in wait for the growing crops are perhaps less here than in most of the other western States, still it must not be supposed that we can expect to be always free from them. If we had any such idea it would have been dispelled by our experience the past season. Never since the State was organized was there a finer prospect of a magnificent wheat yield than we had during the months of May, June and the first half of July, 1878. It was not that the general crop was good, but one could not, in a day's travel, find one poor looking field; but just as the wheat was within a few days of being fit to cut, a fierce, hot sun, lasting a week or so, came and wilted up the grain, so that the crop lost materially in quality, weight and measure. Yet this evil had its compensating good. Our corn and potato crops were very fine, so that our farmers have learned a lesson in the value of having diversity of crops as a leading feature in their farming system, and be it remembered that without system there is no successful farming. The following statement is taken from the immigration pamphlet, issued by the Minnesota Board of Immigration for 1878: OATS. Oats is peculiarly a northern grain. It is only with comparatively cool atmosphere that this grain attains the solidity, and yields the return which remunerate the labor and cost of production. The rare adaptation of the soil and climate of Minnesota to the growth of this grain, is shown not only by the large average, but the superior quality of the product, the oats of this State being heavier by from three to eight pounds per bushel than that produced elsewhere. The following is an exhibit of the result for the several years named: No. bushels Average yield Year. No. acres sown. produced. per acre. 1868 212,064 7,831,623 36.00 1869 278,487 10,510,969 37.74 1870 339,542 10,588,689 31.02 1875 401,381 13,801,761 34.38 1877 432,194 16,678,000 37.75 The following is a statement of the product of oats in Minnesota, compared with that in the other States named: Average Bushels to per acre. each inhabitant. Ohio, average of 11 years 23. 9.17 Iowa 28.30 17.80 Minnesota 37.70 23.88 CORN. The foregoing exhibits abundantly sustain the extraordinary capacity of Minnesota for the production of those cereals which are best produced in high latitudes. Our State is often supposed to be too far north for Indian corn. This is a great mistake, founded on the popular fallacy that the latitude governs climate. But climates grow warmer towards the west coasts of continents; and although its winters are cold, the summers of Minnesota are as warm as those of Southern Ohio. _The mean summer heat of St. Paul is precisely that of Philadelphia_, five degrees further south, while it is considerably warmer during the whole six months of the growing season than Chicago, three degrees further south. The products of the soil confirm these meteorological indications. The average yield of corn in 1868 was 37.33 bushels per acre, and in 1875--a bad year--25 bushels. In Illinois--of which corn is the chief staple--Mr. Lincoln, late President of the United States, in the course of an agricultural address in 1859, stated that the average crop from year to year does not exceed twenty bushels per acre. These results, so favorable to Minnesota as a corn growing as well as wheat growing State, will surprise no one who is familiar with the fact established by climatologists, that "the cultivated plants yield the greatest products near the northernmost limits at which they will grow." COMPARISON WITH OTHER STATES. A comparison with other States affords the following exhibit: Bushels per acre. Ohio, average of nineteen years 32.8 Iowa, average of six years 31.97 Minnesota, average of nine years 30.98 POTATOES. The average yield in Minnesota and other States is here shown: Bushels per acre. Minnesota, average for five years 120.76 Iowa, average for five years 76.73 Ohio, average for nine years 74.55 HAY. Among the grasses that appear to be native to the soil of Minnesota are found timothy, white clover, blue grass and red top. They grow most luxuriantly, and many claim that they contain nearly as much nutriment as ordinary oats. So excellent are the grasses that the tame varieties are but little cultivated. The wild grasses which cover the immense surface of natural meadow land formed by the alluvial bottoms of the intricate network of streams which everywhere intersect the country, are as rich and nutritious in this latitude as the best exotic varieties, hence cultivation is unnecessary. The yield of these grasses is 2.12 tons to the acre, or 60 per cent more than that of Ohio, the great hay State! SORGHUM. The cultivation of the sugar cane is fast becoming popular among the farmers of Minnesota, and one Mr. Seth H. Kenney, of Rice county, claims that it can be made more profitable than even the wheat crop. The syrup and sugar produced is of the finest character, possessing an extremely excellent flavor. An acre of properly cultivated land will yield from one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred gallons of syrup, worth seventy cents a gallon. FRUITS. The following short extracts are taken from a paper written by Col. D. A. Robertson, of St. Paul, a scientific amateur fruit grower; one thoroughly conversant with the subject on which he writes, and to whose disinterested labors in this branch of industry the State owes much: "There is no doubt that Minnesota will become a great fruit State, because wherever wild fruits of any species grow, improved fruit of the same or cognate species may be successfully cultivated. The indigenous flora of Minnesota, embraces apples, plums, cherries, grapes, strawberries, raspberries, currants and gooseberries. We may, therefore, successfully and profitably cultivate the improved kinds of all these fruits. The conditions of success are only these:--experience, knowledge and perseverance. "All kinds of Siberian Crab apples, (which are valuable chiefly for preserves,) including the improved Transcendant and Hyslop, are perfectly adapted to our climate; and flourish in almost every soil and situation where any other tree will grow, and also produce great crops. "At our State Fair at St. Paul, in October, 1871, there was a magnificent display of home grown fruits, which would have been creditable to any State in the West. Among the numerous varieties of excellent fruit exhibited in large quantities were the following: "APPLES.--Duchess of Oldenburg, Red Astracan, Saxton or Fall Stripe, Plum Cider, Fameuse, Haas, Jefferson County, Perry Russet, American Golden Russet, Yellow Bellflower, Ramsdale Sweeting, Geniton, Lucy, Winona Chief, Jonathan, Price's Sweet, Westfield, Seek no Further, Sap, Wagner, Winter Wine Tay, English Golden Russet, Dominie, St. Lawrence, Pomme Gris, Ben Davis, Sweet Pear, and about thirty other varieties." RAILROAD AND POPULATION STATISTICS--HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION LAW IN MINNESOTA: TABULATIONS FROM COMPANY REPORTS. LENGTH AND LOCATION. _The Railroads of Minnesota, with Termini and Lengths in this State, on June 30, 1876._ ========================================================= Name of road. | Abbrev. ---------------------------------------------+----------- Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul-- | River Division | a Hastings and Dakota Division | b Iowa and Minnesota Division | c Iowa and Minnesota Division, Branch | d Iowa and Minnesota Division, Branch | e Chicago, Dubuque and Minnesota | f Central Railroad of Minnesota | g St. Paul & Duluth | h Minneapolis & Duluth | i Minneapolis & St. Louis | j Northern Pacific | k St. Paul & Sioux City | l Sioux City & St. Paul | m St. Paul & Pacific, First Division--Main Line| n " --Branch | o " --St. Vincent Extension| p " " | q " " | r St. Paul, Stillwater & Taylor's Falls | s " --Branch | t " --Branch | u Southern Minnesota | v Stillwater & St. Paul | w Winona & St. Peter | x Winona, Mankato & New Ulm | y ===================================================================== Road abbrev. | Termini. | Miles. -----------------+-----------------------------------------+---------- a | From La Crescent to St. Paul | 128 b | " Hastings to Glencoe | 75 c | " St. Paul to Southern State line | 127 d | " Mendota to Minneapolis | 9 e | " Austin to Lyle | 12 f | " La Crescent to southern State Line| 25 g | " Mankato to Wells | 40 h | " St. Paul to Duluth | 156 i | " Minneapolis to White Bear | 15 j | " Minneapolis to Sioux City Junction| 27 k | " Duluth to Moorhead | 253-1/2 l | " St. Paul to St. James | 121-1/4 m | " St. James to southern State line | 66-1/4 n | " St. Anthony to Breckenridge | 207 o | " St. Paul to Sauk Rapids | 76 p | " Sauk Rapids to Melrose | 35 q | " Brainerd, 4-1/2 miles south | 4-1/2 | " a point 12 miles S. of Glyndon to | r | a point 28 miles N. | 104 | of Crookston | s | " St. Paul to Stillwater | 17-1/2 t | " Junction to Lake St. Croix | 3-1/4 u | " Stillwater to South Stillwater | 3 v | " Grand Crossing to Winnebago City | 167-1/2 w | " White Bear to Stillwater | 13 x | " Winona to western State line | 288-1/2 y | " Junction to Mankato | 3-3/4 +---------- | 1978 Since the publication of the report of the railroad commissioner as given above, showing 1978 miles of railroads in Minnesota; there have been 216 miles built in 1877, and 350 miles in 1878--total, 2544 miles now operated in the State. In 1862, we had but ten miles of railroad in Minnesota; in 1878, sixteen years afterwards, two thousand five hundred and forty-four miles. This past year, the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad has extended its line to the British Possessions in Manitoba, connecting with a road there and giving us direct railroad communication with the vast country lying north of us; while the Southern Minnesota, the Hastings & Dakota, the St. Cloud branch of the St. Paul & Pacific, are extending their lines, like arteries, through the heart of the State. In much less than ten years, Minnesota will have the most perfect railroad system on this continent. POPULATION. Number. Population in 1870 439,706 Population in 1875 597,407 Population in 1877 750,000 HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION LAW. We are proud of the Homestead Law of Minnesota. The State says to its citizen: you may be unfortunate, even culpably improvident, nevertheless you and your family shall not be left homeless or without means to enable you to retrieve past misfortunes or faults. The law reads-- "That a homestead consisting of any quantity of land not exceeding eighty acres, and the dwelling house thereon and its appurtenances, to be selected by the owner thereof, and not included in any incorporated town, city or village, or instead thereof, at the option of the owner, a quantity of land not exceeding in amount one lot, being within an incorporated town, city or village, and the dwelling house thereon and its appurtenances, owned and occupied by any resident of this State, shall not be subject to attachment, levy, or sale, upon any execution or any other process issuing out of any court within this State. This section shall be deemed and construed to exempt such homestead in the manner aforesaid during the time it shall be occupied by the widow or minor child or children of any deceased person who was, when living, entitled to the benefits of this act." Thus the State, in its bountiful protection, says to its citizen, "You may be unfortunate, even blamably improvident, nevertheless the State shall not allow you and yours to be thrown paupers on the world. Your homestead is still left to you, a competency at least." There are also reserved for the settler, free from all law processes, all his household furniture up to the value of $300, 3 horses, or in lieu 1 horse and yoke of oxen, 2 cows, 11 sheep, 3 hogs, wagon, harness, and all his farming machinery and implements; also a year's supply of family provisions or growing crops, and fuel, and seed grain not exceeding 50 bushels each of wheat and oats, 5 of potatoes, and one of corn, also mechanics' or miners' tools, with $400 worth of stock-in-trade, and the library and instruments of professional men. This is the beneficent protection which the State throws around the poor man's home. Yet there is one way in which he may forfeit it. Should he have the misfortune to mortgage his homestead the law can no longer protect him; he is in the toils of the money lender, and should poor crops or other set-backs come to him now, there is every probability that he will lose his home. We say to our settlers, avoid this fatal error, misfortune almost always follows it; toil, slave, fast, rather than mortgage your homestead. FARM STATISTICS. We come now to a very important part of our work. Under this head we have made several calculations, for the guidance of the immigrant. They have been made with care, and are, we think, as nearly correct as it is possible to make such calculations. By a careful study of them the intending immigrant will learn WHAT HE HAS TO DO WHEN HE HAS SECURED HIS LAND. THE VARIOUS MODES HE MAY TAKE TO OPEN HIS FARM. THE EXPENSES INCURRED BY EACH METHOD. THE EXPENSE OF LIVING UNTIL HIS FIRST CROP COMES IN. These, with minor details, we have set forth in the following calculations. They embrace the case of the poor man with a small capital and the man with quite a respectable capital, who may wish to put it in a bank that never fails, and in which he will himself be the director and owner. THESE TABLES CLEARLY SHOW THE LEAST CAPITAL a man requires to settle in one of our colonies, and also, if he can afford it, how advantageously he can lay out a considerable sum for which he will receive a quick return. We will take up the poor man's case first, as it is the one we have the most interest in, and we land him on his land IN THE SPRING. He puts up a very cheap house; by and by, he will have a better one--but, in the meantime, he can make this one comfortable, warm and clean--much better than a cheap lodging in a city. We will give the dimensions of the house as 16 � 18 ft., to be built of single boards; these to be sodded on the outside to any depth the owner may wish. In this way, he can have a house far warmer than a poorly put up frame house, at the following cost: 1,600 feet of lumber $25 00 2 windows, 2 doors 6 50 Shingles 7 25 ------ Total $38 75 Now, we must furnish the house: HOUSE FURNITURE. Cooking stove $25 00 Crockery 5 00 Chairs 2 00 Table 2 00 3 bedsteads 9 00 ------ Total $43 00 CATTLE AND FARMING IMPLEMENTS He buys a breaking yoke of oxen, weighing from 3,200 to 3,400 lbs. at about $100 00 Breaking plow 23 00 Wagon 75 00 ------- Total $198 00 Then he goes to work and breaks up, we will say, 50 acres of land. He has to live sixteen months before his principal crop comes in, but he can have his potatoes and corn, planted on the sod, within a few months, to help him out in his living; that is, when he breaks his land the first year, he will plant a portion of it under corn, potatoes, and other vegetables, sufficient for his own use, and for feed for his cattle. WHAT IT WILL COST HIM TO LIVE. For a family of four, 30 bushels of wheat, ground into flour, at $1, a bushel $30 00 Groceries 15 00 1 cow for milk 25 00 Fuel 30 00 ------ Total $100 00 He has besides, vegetables, and corn sufficient, that he raised on his breaking, and two hogs that he raised and fattened on the corn, and for which we should have charged him two or three dollars. In the fall, his hogs weigh 200 lbs. each, and he can sell them or eat them; we recommend the latter course. HOW HE STANDS THE SECOND SPRING. He has laid out, for a house $38 75 For Fuel 30 00 " Furniture 43 00 " Cattle and farming implements 198 00 Cost of living, including price of cow 100 00 ------- Total $409 75 This sum he will absolutely require to have when he arrives on the land. To this, in his calculations, he must add his expenses coming here. Railroad fares from different points will be given in another place. We have not here made any calculations in regard to the purchase of his land, in the first place because the lands are different prices in different colonies, and secondly because most of our settlers with small means, buy their farms on time, getting very easy terms of payments. All information in this respect will be found in its proper place, when we come to speak of our colonies. It must be born in mind (and it may be as well said here as elsewhere) that the Catholic Bureau owns no lands; we but control them and hold them at their original prices for our immigrants. We have also secured advantages in prices and terms of payment which immigrants cannot get outside of our colonies. Now having no crop the first year, he works out in the harvest and earns $60.00. This he requires now, and more when he puts in his first crop, but, as he will get time for some, perhaps all, of the following charges, we will not charge them to his original capital. SECOND SPRING'S WORK AND EXPENSES. 1 drag to put in the crop, shaking the seed by hand $12 00 Seed wheat for 50 acres. 1 bushel and 2 pecks to the acre 75 00 Hires his grain cut and bound 75 00 Shocking, stacking, etc., done by exchanging work with neighbors. Machine threshing at 5 cents a bushel 50 00 Extra labor done by exchanging work. ------- $212 00 We have now come down to the harvest and the second year on the land Up to this the settler's expenses have been $621 75. Let us see what the land is likely to set off against this sum, 50 acres of wheat 20 bushels to the acre $1,000 00 Charges 621 75 --------- Balance in favor of crop $378 25 Adding to this the sixty dollars the man earned the first harvest, he has in hand $438.25. It must be borne in mind that the settler has supported himself and family for sixteen months, his home is made, stock paid for, his farm opened, and at least $300 added to the value of his land. We will suppose that he plows the second year fifty acres more and has one hundred acres under his second crop. With this good set off, we leave him. Now we will give the CASH EXPENSES, for the same number of acres, where a man hires all his work done. He may prefer to do this, to buying cattle or horses to break, as he may be a man who can earn high wages, until his first crop comes in. Breaking 50 acres, at $2.50 per acre $125 00 Seed wheat 75 00 Seeding and dragging, at 90 cents per acre 45 00 Cutting and binding, $1.50 per acre 75 00 Stacking, five days, two men and team 25 00 Threshing and hauling to market, at 12 cents a bushel 120 00 ------- Cash expenses of crop $465 00 CREDITS. Fifty acres of wheat, 20 bushels to the acre, at $1 per bushel $1,000 00 Charged to the crop 465 00 --------- Balance in favor of crop $535 00 Now, the expense of breaking, by right, should not be charged to the first crop, for it is a permanent value, added to the value of the land, and should be calculated as capital: 50 acres broken on a farm of a 160, adds fully $2 an acre to the value of the property. But in the above calculation, we have not alone charged the first crop with the breaking expenses, but also with the cash price of every dollar's worth of labor expended, until the wheat is in the railroad elevator, and the owner has nothing more to do, unless to receive his money for it; and yet there is a clear profit over all expenses of $535.00. In making these calculations, it is necessary to put a certain value on the wheat per bushel, and to allow for a certain amount of bushels to the acre, but it will be obvious to any reader that in both these important items there are continual variations. The calculations we now give appeared in the edition of our pamphlet for 1877, and were based, in a measure, on our fine wheat crop for that year. The crop of 1878, as we have already stated, fell short of 1877, and were we basing our estimate on it we should calculate wheat second grade at 66 cents per bushel, but the crop of 1879 may surpass the crop of 1877; taking the average of many years' crops and prices, our calculations are as near correct as they can be made. SECOND CALCULATION OF HOUSE BUILDING. In our calculation of the smallest sum a man would require, coming to settle on the land, we made an estimate of a very cheap house indeed, nevertheless one that can be made warmer than many a more expensive one. We give an estimate of the cost of a frame house 16�24, a story and a half high, with a T addition, and a cellar 12 by 16. We give the exact expenses of a house of this kind as it stands at present in one of our colonies. It has three rooms up stairs with a hall, two rooms down stairs with a hall and pantry, and has had one coat of plaster: Material for house $280 Work 75 ---- Total $355 A man himself helping, can lessen this item for work, say $25, leaving the cost of the house $330. In our first calculation we put down as the lowest sum a man would require to have after his arrival on the land, $409.75. But in this calculation we gave him a house, such as it was, for $38.75. Now, if he wants the better house we have just described, his capital should be $726. WHAT A MAN WITH MODERATE CAPITAL CAN DO. We now come to the case of a man with moderate capital, who wishes to start with a complete outfit of farming machinery, &c. Coming in the spring, in time to commence breaking, the end of May, he buys Three horses $375 00 One sulky plow--seat for driver, breaker attachment 70 00 Seeder 65 00 Harrow 12 00 Harvester and self-binder 285 00 Horse rake and mower 125 00 Wagon 75 00 --------- Total $1,007 00 N. B.--It is calculated that the grain saved by the self-binder over hand work, pays for the wire used in binding, and in labor 50 cents an acre is saved, besides the board of two men. We will soon have twine and straw binders perfected, an improvement which will do away with the expense of wire altogether. With a sulky plow and three horses, our farmer breaks 100 acres of land, and puts it under wheat the following year. He has been already at an outlay for horses and machinery of $1,007 00 Seed wheat costs 150 00 Shocking and stacking 70 00 Threshing and hauling, using his three horses, 10 cents a bushel 200 00 --------- Total $1,427 00 CREDITS. 2,000 bushels of wheat $2,000 00 Hay cut by mower 200 00 --------- $2,200 00 Expenses 1,427 00 --------- Balance in favor of crop $773 00 Now, it will be born in mind, that we have charged the first crop with horses and machinery, property that, by right, should come under the head of capital; we have charged it with what will work the farm for years, and help to produce successive crops, not of one hundred acres, but of two or three hundred acres; and yet, with all the charges, the crop shows a profit of $773. What other business can make such a showing as this? As a matter of fact, all the ready money the settler will require to provide himself with machinery, will be ten per cent. on the price; for the balance he will get two years time at 12 per cent. interest. GENERAL REMARKS. While our figures and illustrations in regard to the opening of a farm, and the expenses attending thereon, have been as explicit and full as our space would permit, still we regard them but as a basis for a variety of similar calculations to be made by intending immigrants. For instance, two friends might buy a breaking team between them, and break, say twenty acres, on each one's farm. One could do the breaking, while the other might be doing some other work. In fact, each man's case has its own peculiar features, which he must bring his own judgment to bear upon, and we don't pretend to have done more than to have given him a good guide to assist him in his calculations. Twenty acres would be a pretty fair breaking for a poor man the first year, and quite sufficient to enable him to support a small family. We have farmers in the woods, now prosperous men, who for years had not more than from five to ten acres cleared, for it is hard work to clear heavy timbered land, and much easier to plant young trees than to cut old ones down. But heretofore poor men were frequently deterred from going on prairie land on account of the heavy expense attached to fencing their tillage land. This was about the highest item of expense. It is not so now, for in the counties in which our Catholic colonies are situated, and in the adjoining counties, A HERD LAW is in force, whereby cattle have to be herded during the day, and confined within bounds during the night. In this way one man or boy can herd the cattle of a whole settlement, and the heavy, vexatious and continual tax of fencing is entirely done away with. All the lands in our Catholic colonies are prairie lands, and in the colonies and adjoining counties, as we have already stated, the herd law is in full force. No one, at the present day, who has any experience in farming in the West, would settle on an unimproved timber farm. It takes a lifetime to clear such a farm, and even then a man leaves some stumps for his grandchildren to take out. But we earnestly impress upon our settlers the necessity of setting out trees around their prairie homes. The rapid growth of trees set out on any of our prairies, is absolutely wonderful. In six years after planting, a man will have nice, sheltering, young groves, around his house. One of the first things a settler should do after breaking up his land is to set out some young trees, which he can buy very cheap. All our railroads carry such freight free. If he cannot get the trees he can sow the seed, which will do as well. For comfort on a prairie, trees are a necessity; but it is worse than useless, it is loss of time, to set them out, unless they are taken care of: give them solitude, and keep the weeds and cattle from them for a little while, and they will soon be able to take care of themselves. Cord-wood can be bought at any of the railroad stations in our colonies at an average of about five dollars a cord. There is another matter which may well come under the head of general remarks. While we have shown by figures the good profits which may be calculated upon by an industrious farmer, still, he must not look for a great increase of money capital, for some years at least. While he will be enabled under God, by industry, sobriety and perseverance to give his family a good, comfortable living, it must be to the increase in the value of his farm each year, that he must look for an increase of capital, to that and the increase of his LIVE STOCK. Above all things, he must attend to the latter; it is almost incredible the way young stock will increase. A man starting with one cow will have his yard full of young stock in a few years by raising the calves that come to him. It is a fact that men who came to this State without any means whatever, and settled on land, are to-day among our most prosperous farmers; but they came uninvited, at their own risk, and if they had failed, they could only blame themselves. The case is altogether different in regard to persons coming to our Catholic colonies. They come invited, and depending upon the information we give to them; therefore, there must be no misunderstanding on either side. We say to the immigrant, with the capital we have specified, you can open a farm in Minnesota, and if you are industrious, brave and hopeful, we promise you, under God, an independent home. If you come without this capital, you do so at your own risk. CATHOLIC COLONIES IN MINNESOTA. LOCATION, POPULATION, SOIL, TOWNS, EXTRACTS FROM INTERESTING LETTERS FROM RESIDENTS, &c., &c. We now come to speak of our Catholic Colonies. In doing so we will be as accurate and as truthful as it is possible to be. At the same time we recognize the difficulty of making others see things as we see them, they are too apt to draw imaginary pictures from our facts. For instance when we speak of settled communities and towns, it should be borne in mind that our oldest settlement was only opened in the spring of 1876, our two latest in the spring of 1878, and that both farms and towns exhibit the rough, unfinished appearance of new places in the West, which it takes time, perseverance and industry to mould into thrifty comeliness; with the aid of the two latter (perseverance and industry) the former (time) will be but a very short period indeed. We have now four Catholic Colonies in Minnesota, two in the western and two in the southwestern part of the State. SWIFT COUNTY COLONY. This is the oldest and doubtless best known of our colonies. The colony lands commence 120 miles west of St. Paul and extend for 30 miles on each side of the St. Paul and Pacific railroad. Within the bounds of the colony are four railroad towns, one of them, Benson, being the county seat; but the two colony towns proper, are De Graff and Clontarf, being organized and run, as they say out West, by our own people. In fact, Swift County Colony may very well be spoken of as two colonies, for the present under one name, the Chippewa River dividing the colony lands about in the center, having De Graff on the east and Clontarf on the west. Each town too, has its own Catholic church, congregation and resident priest--the Rev. F. J. Swift, pastor at De Graff, and the Rev. A. Oster, pastor at Clontarf. The colony lands on the east side of the Chippewa, stretch out from the town of De Graff, 18 miles in length and 12 miles in width, and Clontarf lands on the west side of the river, have equal proportions. This division and explanation may be of service to correspondents, some of whom frequently write to one or other of the resident priests, for information, in preference to writing direct to the Catholic Bureau, in St. Paul. When Bishop Ireland in 1876, got control of the unsold railroad lands within the present bounds of Swift County Colony, there was a large quantity of Government lands lying beside these railroad lands, and open for homestead and pre-emption entries, so that a great number of our people were able to secure farms of 80 and 160 acres by merely paying the fees of the U. S. Land Office. Early settlers too, on the railroad lands, had an opportunity by paying cash to get their farms much below the market value, for the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company (the owner) having fallen behind hand in paying the interest on its bonds held by foreign capitalists, these bonds became depreciated in the market, but were, nevertheless, good for their full amount, in payment of the lands belonging to the company. In this way we were enabled in the first edition of our pamphlet for the year 1877, to offer lands, much below, in some instances more than half below, their average value; but as prices depend altogether on the market value of the bonds, a value which is always fluctuating, we deem it unwise to bind ourselves to arbitrary prices. The average railroad price of lands in Swift County Colony is $6.50 per acre; the actual cash price, by buying bonds and paying for the land with same, will be much less than this, and we will, when called upon get the bonds for the immigrant at their then value, but what the exact prices of the bonds may be or how long they will remain in the market available for the purchase of land, we cannot take upon ourselves to say. In this connection we wish to point out to immigrants, that irrespective of paying for land in bonds, for which they must pay cash, they can make contracts, on long time, with the company, for their farms. There are other ways too by which our people can make homes in this well-settled colony. Non-Catholics who were settled in the county before the colony was established, will be willing to sell out. Homesteaders, too, who got their land free from the government, and made improvements, are frequently anxious to realize a little capital by the sale of those improved farms, and go still farther west. There is also a large quantity of school and State lands in the county, which will be in the market in 1879; so notwithstanding that the greater part of the colony railroad lands have passed from the control of the Bureau into the possession of settlers, and that all the government lands have been taken up, we look forward, with pleasure, to see many more of our people settling in Swift county next spring. They will find a goodly number of their co-religionists settled before them and anxious to give them a friendly welcome. There are very few of the New England or Middle States that have not representatives in the colony. From a communication received from the Register of the United States Land Office at Benson, the county seat, we find that since the Bureau opened this colony in 1876, 425 Catholic settlers have taken up government land in the colony; of these, 300 families were Irish, the remainder Germans, Poles and French. About an equal number of Catholics--a large majority Irish--have taken railroad lands--80,000 acres of which have been sold; so that we can claim at least 800 Catholic settlers, with their families, in Swift County Colony at the present writing. Driving west from De Graff to Clontarf, seventeen miles, and still eleven miles farther west from Clontarf to the _Pomme de Terre_ River, one is never out of sight of a settler's house; and some of those farm houses would be a credit to a much older settlement, for we have settlers who farm as much as five hundred acres, while others again farm but eighty acres. The general quality of the soil is a dark loam, slightly mixed with sand and with a clay sub-soil, admirably adapted for wheat, oats, &c., &c., while the bountiful supply of good water and the large quantity of natural meadow lands, scattered all over the colony--there is scarcely a quarter section (160 acres) without its patch of natural meadow--give the settler an opportunity to combine stock raising and tillage on his farm. The village or town of De Graff has a railroad depot and telegraph office; a grain elevator, with steam power--which is the same as saying, a cash market for all farm produce--six or seven stores, with the general merchandise found in a country town; lumber yard, machine warehouse, blacksmith, carpenter and wagon maker shops; an immigrant house, where persons in search of land can lodge their families until they are suited; a resident doctor, and resident priest, Rev. F. J. Swift; a fine commodious church; a handsome school house and pastor's residence. No saloon. The business men of the town are our own people, and a Catholic fair, for the benefit of the new church, held last fall, and patronized exclusively by the colonists, netted $1,000 clear. Traveling along the railroad and passing through Benson, half way between De Graff and Clontarf, we come to the latter, the youngest town in this young settlement, but it has a very fine class of settlers around it: west of the village the land is as fine as any in the State, known as the Hancock Ridge. Clontarf has two general stores, a grain elevator, an immigrant house, a railroad depot, blacksmith shop, a large church and a very handsome residence for the priest, the Rev. A. Oster. No part of the colony is settling up more rapidly than the portion around Clontarf and several new buildings will go up in the village next summer. Swift County Colony is fast beginning to wear the features of a settled community. Many of our farmers have harvested this year their second crop; our merchants report that they are doing a lively business; bridges are being built, roads laid out, plans of improvement discussed by the settlers; and we challenge any part of the West to produce a more intelligent rural class. True to the memory of the old land and their love for their church, the settlers have given familiar names to many of the townships in the colony, such as Kildare, Cashel, Dublin, Clontarf, Tara, St. Michaels, St. Josephs, St. Francis, &c., &c. The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, running through the whole length of the colony, has, by its late extension, become one of the great railroad thoroughfares of the northwest, and added much to the value of the colony lands. Commencing at St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, it crosses the Northern Pacific at Glyndon in this State and continues on to St. Vincent, situated on the line separating the State of Minnesota and the British Possessions in Manitoba. Here it connects with a railroad just completed and running to Winnipeg, the capital of the British province of Manitoba. GRACEVILLE COLONY. This colony is located in Big Stone County, west of Swift. It is our Homestead Colony, and one which we feel very proud of. What is thought of Big Stone County by Western men, in connection with stock raising, is shown by the following extract from a published communication. "Stock raising now receives more attention from the prairie farmers than ever before, since the erroneous impression heretofore existing that the wintering of cattle was too expensive, has been entirely disproved. Numbers of settlers from the lower part of our State, and from Iowa, have removed to Big Stone County with large droves of cattle, that they herd on the vast natural meadows of that county, which also furnish all the necessary hay for winter food." We will add to this, that the soil of Big Stone County, for agricultural purposes, is deemed as good as any in the State, without exception. The lands in the county being government lands, we could not of course have any control of them, they were open to all comers; but by prompt action the Bureau located during the months of March, April and May, one hundred and seventy-five families in the county. Many of those colonists were poor people who were induced to leave Minnesota towns and settle on land. But we will let a resident of the colony, one who has examined every quarter section in it and materially aided in its settlement, speak for it. In answer to a letter from us, Col. J. R. King, a resident of Graceville, and a practical surveyor, who has acted as agent for the Bureau since the opening of the colony, writes: "During the months of March and April, 1878, a great number of claims for our people were entered in the United States Land Office, but before any of them come on to their lands, Bishop Ireland shipped, in March, five car loads of lumber for erecting a church building; the church was commenced the same month and completed, in the rough, in about three weeks. This is the first instance, in my knowledge, where a church was erected in advance of settlement. Our Right Rev. Bishop must have had a foreknowledge of what was to follow. "In the short space of three months there was built, in a radius of six miles from Graceville Church, over 150 comfortable cabins, and on each claim from five to ten acres broken for a garden and planted with potatoes, corn, beans, turnips, &c., &c., which yielded quite a good supply for the present winter. Our colonists had the advantage of being early on the ground and had their gardens planted in May. "The colonists broke during last summer from fifteen to thirty acres per man, so that next spring they will be able to get in wheat sufficient to carry them through the second winter handsomely. They are all in the very best spirits and could not be induced to return to the cities--for they already feel independent and masters of the situation. "The soil here is splendid and the country beautiful. Gently rolling prairie, with numerous ponds or small lakes and plenty of the finest hay. "The balance of Big Stone County, outside of our colony, has all been taken up; a large majority of the claims occupied and substantial improvements made by the settlers, who are first class. Traverse County, adjoining us on the north, is fast filling up. "I must not forget to say that we have good water in abundance; my own well is sixteen feet deep, with as fine, pure water as ever was found. "And now to tell you about our little village, Graceville, named in honor of our revered Bishop, the Right Rev. Thos. L. Grace. It is beautifully situated on the north shore of one of the two large lakes known as Tokua Lakes, and has three general stores, one hotel, one blacksmith and wagon shop, a very handsome little church and the priest's residence attached. Around the lake is a fine belt of timber which adds much to the beauty of the place. The village is 26 miles due east from Morris, on the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, but the Hastings & Dakota Railroad, now built close to the line, will run through our county next summer; by and by we will have a cross road running through the colony lands. "Our resident pastor is the Rev. A. V. Pelisson, a veteran missionary, who is doing a wonderful deal of good, temporal and spiritual, among his people, and is 'the right man in the right place,' full of energy and zeal. "The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered up in our church every day, and on Sundays we have High Mass, for Graceville has a sweet church choir. "It is most edifying to see the crowd of men, women and children who flock in from all points of the compass to church on Sundays. Father Pelisson had the first temporary church taken down and in its place he has erected one of the prettiest and neatest churches in the State; a credit both to the good father and his people who so cheerfully assisted in its erection, under many difficulties. "From the roof of the church I can count to-day over 70 houses where last March there was nothing but a bare prairie. If God prospers our people next season with good crops, they will be over their difficulties, in a fair way to prosperity." We do not know that we have anything to add to Col. King's very graphic and truthful statement in regard to Graceville Colony and the prospects of its settlers, very many of whom were so poor when they went in, that it required Western pluck to face the prairie. The building of the Hastings & Dakota Railroad last summer, giving them employment, was a great help. No doubt they had and will have a rough time of it for a little longer, but, they are toiling with hope, with the hope of an honest independence in the future. And with this hope in his heart, the settler toils and feels himself "every inch a man." Traverse County, mentioned in Col. King's letter, has, at the present writing, a large quantity of government land open to homestead and pre-emption entries. (See the Homestead Law in another place.) There is no doubt too, but that persons, during the land excitement last year, made government claims in Big Stone County--some within the colony bounds--which, from one cause or another, they will neglect to hold, by not fulfilling the conditions required by the law governing such claims. In all cases of the kind the lands revert to the government and are again subject to entry. Yet, so rapidly are those lands taken up that we cannot promise to our people, coming from the East, that when they arrive, they will find any homestead land adjoining or within any of our colonies. ST. ADRIAN COLONY. This colony, situated in Nobles County, in the southwestern portion of the State, close to the State line of Iowa, on the Luverne and Sioux Falls branch of the Sioux City and St. Paul Railroad, was opened in September, 1877. Before going into details in regard to the colony we will give some extracts from an article (lately published) treating of southwestern Minnesota, where, as we have stated, St. Adrian colony is located. "Southwestern Minnesota has made rapid progress in stock raising. As capital increases, and the utility and profit of stock raising become better understood by the farmer, we shall see fine flocks and herds, in addition to the fields of waving grain, and our rich prairies teeming with the life they can so amply sustain. The abundance of clear, sweet water, dry atmosphere, its elevation, rich pasturage, freedom from disease, and direct and ready access to all the prominent markets, unite to make Minnesota the paradise of stock raisers. Good hay can be put in the stack in Southwestern Minnesota for $1.25 per ton. It can be secured without other expense than cutting, and with very little labor, enough can be made for the maintenance of a large amount of stock. * * * * * "This section has been settled but seven years, yet it is already teeming with a population of wide-awake, industrious people, whose fields are evidences of the innate wealth of the region. The soil of Southwestern Minnesota is adapted to the successful cultivation of grain, and so celebrated has its grain producing qualities become, that capitalists have put their money into large tracts of land, and have now immense fields under cultivation, and their investments have proven extremely profitable. There are farms of 600, 1,000 and 2,000 acres, all producing Minnesota's great staple, wheat. Every year, as the success of these investments becomes known, new and large farms are opening. * * * * * "Southwestern Minnesota is on the move, and to those who wish to locate in a thriving, driving, pushing, growing country, no locality on the green earth promises more faithfully, and none will redeem its pledges with greater pride to the wide-awake, stirring husbandman. The very soil teams with wealth, and the air is laden with the most precious gifts of health." Making allowance for the rather high coloring of the above extracts, its facts are correct. Southwestern Minnesota has many advantages for stock raising, its soil is good, none better. Stock raising has been carried on successfully there to the advantage of a great many poor settlers, and men of wealth have opened large grain farms in this section of the State; the largest of these farms adjoins the colony lands of St. Adrian. Of the 70,000 acres of railroad land which Bishop Ireland holds the control of for colony purposes, 22,000 acres have been sold to settlers. The colony lands adjoin the railroad town of Adrian. A little over a year ago it had three houses, now it is one of the brightest, liveliest, most bustling little burgs in Southwestern Minnesota. But, as in the case of Graceville, we will let a resident of St. Adrian speak for the town and colony. The following is an extract from a letter which we received the other day from the Rev. C. J. Knauf, the pastor in charge of the St. Adrian colony. Father Knauf resides in the town of Adrian--where immigrants, bound for the colony, leave the train--and takes an active part in locating immigrants. Father Knauf writes: "The village of Adrian consisted of three houses when I came here, September 20, 1877, one year and three months ago to-morrow; now there are 68 houses in the village. We have three hotels, one restaurant (no beer,) three lumber yards, one steam feed mill, four general stores, one drug, two hardware stores, one jewelry store, one barber shop, one large livery stable, two furniture dealers, four dealers in farming machinery, one shoe maker, one tailor, three blacksmiths, one carpenter shop, four wheat and produce buyers; a public school house, costing $1,800; a Catholic Church, well finished, and the pastor's house, the latter costing $1,840. "I sold, up to date, 22,000 acres of land. Thousands of acres were broken last season. I was the first Catholic to arrive here: now we have sixty Catholic families in the colony. Next spring we will have 160 Catholic families, for a great many bought farms last year, had breaking done--some broke extensively, others moderately--and will move on, with their families, to their new farms, next spring, in time to put in their first crop." In explanation of that portion of Father Knauf's letter which speaks of parties who have purchased farms in the colony but who have not moved on to them as yet, we will say, that since the Bureau, at the solicitation of many correspondents, agreed to have land selected and contracts made out for persons anxious to secure land in some one of our colonies, and yet unable, from one cause or another, to come on immediately; a great many have adopted this mode to get land. We find from Father Knauf's letter that he has on his books the names of one hundred families who have secured land in St. Adrian colony, and will move on to their new homes next spring, so that he is looking forward to very lively times. There is also coming out to St. Adrian Colony in the spring a brave-hearted little lady from Brooklyn, N. Y., to get in her first crop, and put up her first farm house. She was on here last summer, spent a month or so at St. Adrian, bought 270 acres of land, left money to pay for the breaking of 200 acres, and will come on to settle in the spring. She has no doubt but that she will make the venture pay, and prefers to make the trial rather than have her money bearing small interest in the East. Lands sell in the colony from $5 to $7.50 per acre. A discount of 20 per cent. from these prices is allowed for cash. The conditions for time contracts are as follows: At time of purchase, one-tenth of principal and interest on unpaid principal; second year, interest only; third year one-fourth of remaining principal and interest on unpaid principal; same for three ensuing years: after the expiration of which the full price of the land is paid. As an instance, showing the value set on land in this part of Minnesota, we will state, that school lands, sold last spring, at public sale, in the neighborhood of St. Adrian, brought from $7.50 to $17 per acre: the price obtained heretofore having been $5 per acre. On stepping from the train at St. Adrian, last summer, one witnessed a scene of bustle and activity similar to those frequently described by writers in sketches of Western life in new settlements, with some important exceptions, for neither in Adrian nor in any of the towns under the control of the Catholic Bureau, can there be found rowdies, nor the saloons that vomit them forth. This fact may take from the dramatic effect of such sketches, but it is the anchor of family unity and love, the harbinger of prosperity. The town of Adrian is 197 miles from St. Paul. A daily train from St. Paul to Sioux Falls, D. T., passes through it; it has also railroad communication with Sioux City, Iowa. The lands of the colony are first-class, both for agriculture and stock raising: and to those of fair capital we strongly recommend St. Adrian Colony. The colonists are German and Irish Catholics. AVOCA COLONY. This is the latest opened of our colonies, Bishop Ireland having only secured control of the lands last April. It is situated in Murray County (Southwestern Minnesota,) adjoining Nobles County on the north, and in the whole 52,000 acres of land secured by the Bishop for the colony, we very much doubt if one poor section (640 acres) could be found, nor do we suppose that any of the land will remain unsold by the 1st of next July. While the beauty of the location and fertility of the soil, make Avoca one of the most desirable locations in Minnesota, the easy terms on which a farm can be secured, are additional and substantial advantages for men of small means. The centre of the colony--the village of Avoca, situated on a beautiful lake--is just twenty miles from Heron Lake, a station on the St. Paul and Sioux City Railroad, 160 miles southwest of St. Paul; but the Southern Minnesota Railroad, which will give this portion of the State a direct communication with the Milwaukee and Chicago markets, is now completed to within forty-five miles of Avoca, and we expect to see it running through our colony lands by next fall. This will give to the settlers in Avoca Colony, a direct southern route to Chicago, and a choice of markets for their produce: the latter an advantage which farmers can well appreciate. The price of lands in the colony are from $5 to $6.50 per acre, on the following easy terms of payment. At the time of purchase, interest only, one year in advance, seven per cent., is required; at the end of one year, interest only for another year; at the end of two years, one-tenth of the principal, and a year's interest on the balance; at the end of three years, one-tenth of the principal, and interest on balance; at the end of each year thereafter, twenty per cent. of the principal, and interest on balance; until all is paid. We subjoin a practical illustration of these terms: We will say that January, 1879, a man contracts for 80 acres of land at $5 per acre, this will come to $400, with 7 per cent. interest, which sums he will have to pay as follows: Jan. 1st, 1879, At time of purchase, one year's interest in advance, at 7 per cent. $28 00 Jan. 1st, 1880, One year's interest in advance, at 7 per cent. 28 00 Jan. 1st, 1881, Ten per cent. of principal. $40 00 One year's interest on balance $360, at 7 per ct. 25 20 ------ 65 20 Jan. 1st, 1882, Ten per cent. of principal. 40 00 One year's interest on balance $320, at 7 per ct. 22 40 ------ 62 40 Jan. 1st, 1883, Twenty per cent. of principal. 80 00 One year's interest on balance $240, at 7 per ct. 16 80 ------ 96 80 Jan. 1st, 1884, Twenty per cent. of principal. 80 00 One year's interest on balance $160, at 7 per ct. 11 20 ------ 91 20 Jan. 1st, 1885, Twenty per cent. of principal. 80 00 One year's interest on balance $80, at 7 per ct. 5 60 ------ 85 60 Jan. 1st, 1886, Twenty per cent. of principal. 80 00 ------ Total. $537 20 The advantage of the terms is, that the principal payments are all postponed until the farmer has had time to raise several crops from his land. A quarter-section of land will support a family, pay for itself, leave after seven years a balance in cash, and be worth more than twice its original value. We have already selected several 80 and 160 acre farms in Avoca for persons not in a position to come on immediately to the land. Now let us explain how this operates. An intending immigrant writes to the Bureau to have 80 acres of land in Avoca at $5 per acre, selected for him, (as a general rule a man should take a quarter-section, 160 acres, by doing so he will be likely to have both meadow and tillage land on his farm.) For those 80 acres, he pays down, before getting his contract from the railroad company, one year's interest, $28. He writes on then, next spring, to the Bureau, to have 30 acres of his land broken and ready for a crop the following spring--1880. His breaking will cost at $2.50 per acre, $75. He will have paid the first year $103, and have his land ready for the seed; he comes on then the second spring, 1880, pays $28, another year's interest, to the railroad company, puts in his crop and has it saved and ready for market in August. Up to this time--not calculating the expenses chargeable to the crop, which we have estimated already in another place--he has paid out $131, and has his farm opened and in a fair way to pay for itself. In soil and location the Colony of Avoca is not surpassed in the Northwest. Nine miles from the village of Avoca there is a large body of timber. Settlers can also get coal from Iowa. The Rev. Chas. Koeberl is pastor of the colony, address, Avoca, Murray County, Minnesota. He writes to us under date of December 20th, 1878: "In regard to this colony it promises, thank God, to be a great success. Since June, when the land sales commenced, we have sold 9,850 acres, and forty-five Catholic families are preparing to move into the colony next spring. Immigrants will have in our village of Avoca, a building where they can leave their families until they have put up their houses, also a boarding house and store. "In speaking of our climate you can boast honestly of its health. Among 200 families belonging to my missionary district, I have not known of one case of internal disease, during my seven months' stay here. It would be well to particularly mention in your forthcoming pamphlet, that this is a prairie, not a timber county. I receive so many letters asking about the cost of clearings, &c., &c. "I expect quite a rush for land in Avoca, next spring, and will be glad if our people come on early, in time to plant potatoes, corn, &c." * * * * * In bringing this brief review of our Catholic colonies to a close, we again thank the Catholic press of this country, for its honest advocacy of Catholic immigration to the land. The favorable notices its editors have given to our humble labors in our own field of duty, and the service rendered to our work thereby, can never be forgotten by us. Our friend, P. Hickey, Esq., editor of the _Catholic Review_, came specially from New York, last summer to visit our colonies, to judge for himself; and what he saw, the favorable impressions he carried away with him, together with sound argument in favor of Catholic colonization, have appeared, from time to time, since his return, in able and lucid articles from his pen. * * * * * God has blessed our labors beyond our expectations. We see our colonies fast merging into settled communities, where honest labor goes hand in hand with religion, and where men work not for a mere pittance from a master's hand, to support them for a day or a week, but with the hope, the prospect, of an inheritance for their children, in the future. THE BEST TIME TO COME. WHEN TO COME, WHAT TO BRING--WHO SHOULD COME. RAILROAD FARES FROM DIFFERENT POINTS--HALF FARES FROM ST. PAUL TO OUR COLONIES. WHERE TO CALL IN ST. PAUL. Decidedly the best time for the emigrant to come to Minnesota is the spring. If possible, he should not arrive later than the first week in May. He should have his land selected in time to commence to break for garden stuff and corn about the 20th of May, then he can continue to break, for his next year's wheat crop, up to the early part of July. The month of June is the month for breaking, for then the grass is young and succulent, and will rot readily. A man coming in the early part of June can have land broken for his next year's crop, but he loses the advantages of garden stuff and sod corn to help him out in his living until his first crop comes in. WHAT TO BRING. All your bedding that is of value. All your bedclothes. All wearing apparel, good clothing of every description: nothing more. Do not think of bringing stoves, nor any kind of house furniture. You can get all such at the stores in the colonies, or here in St. Paul, new, for nearly what the freight on your old furniture, worthless and broken, perhaps, by the time it arrived here, would come to. The better way is to sell what you have in this line, before leaving, and buy here. WHO SHOULD COME. We intend that our closing remarks shall treat fully and clearly on this very important portion of our subject. They will be found under the head of A CHAPTER FOR ALL TO READ. Here we will but say what we have already written. WE INVITE FARMERS ONLY to our colonies. No doubt the country builds up the town, and we look for quite a building up of our young Catholic towns next summer; but, in the way of business, stores and mechanics' shops, the home supply is generally fully up to the demand, and at present we would not feel justified in inviting any one to our Catholic colonies but a man WHO WANTS A FARM, And who is able and willing to work one. RAILROAD FARES FROM DIFFERENT POINTS. 1st Class. 2d Class. Immigrant. New York $35 25 $30 25 $24 00 Philadelphia 33 50 28 45 24 00 Montreal 36 25 26 00 Toronto 29 25 23 00 Buffalo 29 25 23 00 Cleveland 25 25 20 00 Chicago 15 25 12 00 Milwaukee 12 25 9 00 N. B.--The above are the fares from the points mentioned to St. Paul. Doubtless persons coming in a large party from the same place would get special low rates. From St. Paul to any of our colonies, immigrants are carried for half fare; about $3 for an adult. They also get low rates for baggage &c., &c. WHERE TO GO ON ARRIVING IN ST. PAUL. Immigrants, on arriving in St. Paul, will immediately report themselves at the Catholic Colonization Office, situated in the basement of the Cathedral school building, corner of Sixth and Wabashaw streets. There they will be received by an agent of the Bureau, who will give them all necessary information and instructions, also half-fare tickets to railroad points in the Catholic colonies, and procure for them half-freight charges on goods and extra baggage. Office hours from 8 o'clock A. M. to 6 o'clock P. M. All communications should be addressed to THE CATHOLIC COLONIZATION BUREAU, St. Paul, Minn. A CHAPTER FOR ALL TO READ. We wish that this concluding chapter of our pamphlet may be read carefully, and thought well over by intending immigrants. We wish it for their benefit, and our own benefit and protection. It is, we might say, a fearful responsibility to advise another in a matter which contemplates a change in his habits, mode of life, and home, and such a change should never be undertaken, especially by a man of family, without a most thorough investigation, not alone as to the place he intends going to, but likewise as to his own fitness for the change. When you have examined this pamphlet from cover to cover, then commence an examination of yourself, not forgetting your wife, if you have one, who is part of you, and a very important part in connection with this question of your going upon land. This is especially necessary if you and your wife have lived for years in a city and become habituated to city life. It is a great change from city life in the East to country life in the West, especially when the part of the country one moves to is new and settlements just forming. You are not to expect to realize the advantages of the change right off; it is through yourself, through your own grit and industry, those advantages must come. To a Western farmer there is nothing bleak or lonely in a prairie; to a man coming fresh from a city and looking on it, for the first time, with city eyes, it may, very likely, seem both. Indeed, a sense of loneliness akin to despondency is a feeling which the newly-arrived immigrant has generally to contend against, a feeling which may increase to a perfect scare if he is a man anxious to consult Tom, Dick and Harry--who are always on hand--as to the wisdom of the step he has just taken. We speak from experience, from facts we have a personal knowledge of. Our labors in the cause of immigration have brought to us much happiness and some pain. To illustrate: Two immigrants arrived here last year, in high spirits, called at our office a few minutes after landing, and so impatient were they to go hunt up land that they were quite disappointed to find they would have to stop over one night in St. Paul. Well, the next morning they called at the office again, all courage, all desire to go upon land wilted out of them, and informed us that they had changed their minds and were going back to Massachusetts. Why? Well, they had met a man at the boarding house they stopped over night at, who advised them not to go out and settle on a prairie. He told them, too, that "he was fifteen years in Minnesota and never could get a dollar ahead." Now here were men, rational to all appearance, having traveled two thousand miles or so to settle upon land, when they came within sight of the land, as we may say, losing all desire to visit it, all courage, all confidence in disinterested, experienced friends, and in the information they gave to them; in everything but the word of a loafer, who never did a day's good in his life, nor never will, and who was anxious to shuffle off the onus of his slipshod condition from himself to the country. Here is another case, which occurred a few months after Swift Colony was opened and while the country around looked still wild and lonely. Two men arrived here from Philadelphia. They went on to the Catholic colony in Swift County, and in a day or two returned, saying that they had made up their minds to go back to Philadelphia. Why? Did they not find everything as it was reported to them? "Oh, yes, the land was good, and there was a good chance for a poor man to make a home on it, if he could content himself, but it was too lonely for them." Lonely, to be sure it was; with the noise of the city still ringing in their ears, with its crowds and its gaslights still in their eyes, these men found the prairie lonely, and without pausing to consider all the circumstances, they turned their back upon it. They were both decent, intelligent men, and, had they remained, taken land, gone to work, opened a farm, and seen their first crop ripening, you could no more have got them back to Philadelphia than you could get them into the penitentiary. Now, we say to those for whose benefit this pamphlet has been written, if you come here you must come fully prepared to feel the effects of a great change. If you come from a city, you will, doubtless, feel lonely for a while, until you get accustomed to prairie life; you will miss many immediate comforts; you will have to put up with discomforts, with disappointments, with trials. The man who feels he can stand up against all such difficulties in the present, and look bravely to the future for his reward, let him come to Minnesota. The man who feels within him no such strength, who is easily disheartened and inclined to listen to the idle talk of every man whom he meets, let him stop away and listen; better to listen now, where you are, than after going to the expense of coming here. To the family man we say: We would much prefer that you should come on here in the spring and see for yourself before breaking up your present home and bringing on your family. If you settle down, you can send or go for your family; if you are not pleased with the change, there will not be much harm done. Another very important piece of advice we give to you: If your wife is very much opposed to going upon land, do not come out. A discontented wife on a new farm is far worse than the Colorado beetle. But if she urges you to come, if, in this matter, she thinks of your welfare and that of her children, rather than of the society of the gossips she will leave behind her; if she says to you, "we will have the children out of harm's way anyhow," then come with a brave heart and the smile of the true wife and mother shall be as a sunbeam in your prairie home. HOW TO SECURE GOVERNMENT LAND. Although we cannot promise government land in any of our colonies, still we give the following synopsis of the laws affecting such land, as likely to be of benefit to those who wish to secure homes in this way. HOMESTEADS. 1. _Who may enter._--First, every head of a family; second, every single person, male or female, over the age of twenty-one years, who are citizens of the United States, or have declared their intentions to become such. 2. _Quantity that may be entered._--80 acres within ten miles on each side of a land-grant railroad, and 160 acres without. 3. _Cost of entry._--Fourteen dollars. 4. _Time for settlement._--After making his entry the settler has six months within which to remove upon his land. 5. _Length of settlement._--The settler must live upon and cultivate his entry for five years. At any time after five, and within seven years, he makes proof of residence and cultivation. 6. _Proof required._--His own affidavit and the testimony of two witnesses. 7. _Residence._--Single, as well as married men, are required to live upon their homesteads. 8. _Soldiers' Homesteads._--Every honorable discharged soldier, sailor or marine, who served for ninety days, can enter 160 acres within railroad limits, upon payment of eighteen dollars. The time spent in the service will be deducted from the five years' residence required. TIMBER CULTURE ENTRY. 1. _Who may enter._--The same qualifications are required as in a homestead entry. 2. _Quantity that may be entered._--40, 80, or 160 acres. 3. _Limitations._--But one-fourth of any section can be entered. 4. _Requirements._--No settlement is required. By the amended law only ten acres need be broken and set out in trees on 160 acres, (quarter section.) First year, break five acres. Second year, break five acres and cultivate in crop first year's breaking. Third year, set out trees in first five acres broken and crop second five acres. Fourth year, set out trees in latest five acres broken. N. B.--Seed or cuttings can be put in in place of trees. If the timber entry be but 80 acres, one-half the quantity before given is planted; if 40 acres, one-fourth. 5. _Proof required._--Affidavit of party, and testimony of two witnesses. 6. _Cost of entry._--Fourteen dollars for any entry, without regard to quantity. A man making a Homestead entry, is also entitled to make a Timber-culture entry. This would give him, outside of the ten miles railroad grant, half a section of land; a son or daughter, twenty-one years of age, can also enter under the Homestead and Timber-claim acts, half a section; and thus one family can secure a whole section of land. PRE-EMPTION ACT. Under this act, a man can enter 80 acres of government land, inside the ten miles railroad limits, price $2.50 per acre; or 160 acres, outside the railroad grant, for which he will have to pay, getting two years time $1.25, government price. If he wishes, he can pay up in six months, on proof of actual residence, having made the improvements on the land required by the law, which are easily done, and get his title; having secured this, he can then enter 80 or 160 acres more, under the Homestead act. He cannot Pre-empt and Homestead at the same time. None of the government conditions for securing land are at all burdensome to the actual settler; whether required by law or not, to be a farmer, a man must live upon his land and cultivate it. [ADVERTISEMENT.] THE VERY BEST LINE TO ST. PAUL OR MINNEAPOLIS, IS THE CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE & ST. PAUL RAILWAY. _It is the only Northwestern Line connecting in same Depot in Chicago, with any of the great Eastern or Southern Lines, and is the most conveniently located with reference to reaching any depot, hotel, or place of Business in that city._ PASSENGERS approaching Chicago by any Railway, will find Parmalee's Omnibus Checkman on the trains, who will exchange their checks, and give them all requisite information. Parmalee's Omnibusses are on hand at all depots, on arrival of trains, to convey passengers to the depot of this Company. Passenger Agents of this Company are at the several depots, on arrival of connecting trains, for the purpose of directing and assisting passengers. A thoroughly ballasted Steel Rail Track, Palace Coaches and Sleeping Cars, and finely upholstered Second Class Cars, all perfect in every particular, equipped with the WESTINGHOUSE IMPROVED AUTOMATIC AIR BRAKE, with MILLER'S SAFETY PLATFORMS AND COUPLINGS, are distinguishing features of this Popular Route. _Tickets for St. Paul and Minneapolis are good either via Watertown, Sparta, La Crosse, Winona, and the famed Mississippi River Division, or via Madison, Prairie du Chien, McGregor, Austin and Owatonna._ TICKET OFFICES: 228 Washington Street. Boston. 63 Clark Street, Chicago. Union Depot, cor. Canal and West Madison Streets, Chicago. And at all Principal Ticket Offices in the country. _T. E. CHANDLER, Agent, Chicago._ A. V. H. CARPENTER, Gen'l Passenger and Ticket Agent. [ADVERTISEMENT.] THE MINNESOTA CHIEF The Crowning Success of a Century's Experience. [Illustration] Neither Vibrator nor Apron Machine but combines the good qualities of both. _It Threshes more Grain, Separates more Perfectly, is Lighter Running, Cleans Grain Cleaner, than all others, and has no equal for Timothy or Flax._ It will thresh and separate wet grain as well as dry. It has at the same time both an over and an under blast. In strength, durability, and economy, it has no rival. =IMPROVED MOUNTED PITTS POWER=, with a Powerful Brake and a Drop Gear Attachment. =IMPROVED MOUNTED WOODBURY POWER=, more strongly and durably built than any other of its kind in the market. For Sale at most of the principal towns in the West. For Circulars and Price Lists, address, _Manufactured by_ SEYMOUR, SABIN & CO. STILLWATER, MINNESOTA. [ADVERTISEMENT.] The North-Western Chronicle. A CATHOLIC FAMILY NEWSPAPER. The Catholic Newspaper of the North-west. Devoted to Catholicity, Literature and General Information. THE LATEST NEWS FROM ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD RELATING TO THE CONDITION AND PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH. ALL FOREIGN and DOMESTIC NEWS. =Farm Statistics, Local Intelligence=, AND MARKET REPORTS. =TERMS.= =$2.50 per Year, Payable in Advance.= N. W. PUBLISHING CO. Catholic Block, Third Street. ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA. [ADVERTISEMENT.] GAMMON & DEERING, HARVESTING MACHINERY. The Marsh Harvester and Harvester King, with or without their celebrated Automatic Crane Binder Attachment for 1879. [Illustration] We present, on this page, a cut representing the latest improvements in grain-cutting machinery, as shown in the celebrated _Marsh Harvester with Automatic Crane-Binder Attachment_. The Marsh Harvester itself is too widely and favorably known to require an extended description or commendation. It was the first of this class of grain-harvesting machines, and, indeed, for some years the only one, forcing itself into favor against the united opposition of the various reaper manufacturers who are now so clamorous in praise of their imitation harvesters. It also made practicable automatic grain binding. All attempts to put self-binding attachments to other reapers proved futile, and have only been successful when attached to harvesters cutting and elevating the grain, as is done by this harvester. The manufacturers of the Marsh Harvester have been fully alive to the importance of having a self-binding attachment to their harvesters that should be correspondingly for a binder what their harvester is admitted to be--_the best of its class_. To this end they have had skilled labor specially employed for several years, and have invented and patented several important improvements and devices, and have bought others. They have also had their binders in the grain fields for several years past, following the progress of the harvest from Texas to Manitoba. Last season this binder did remarkable work. Such minor defects as the most thorough tests and roughest usage developed have been carefully remedied. It is no longer a question of success with this binder, success is a fully demonstrated fact. Another thing will be obvious to all who carefully examine this binder, that it is very simple and easily understood. This is an indispensible requisite to a successful machine. Farmers are too busy and too much hurried in harvest time to study mechanics or tinker on machinery. They want a machine they can put in the field, and do good work, without bother, loss of time or undue perplexity. This harvester and binder will do good work with certainty. The Marsh Harvester cuts a five-foot swath the King cuts six feet. All of these harvesters are so made this year that a binder attachment can be put on at any time hereafter, so that a farmer, desiring to divide the expense, can buy the harvester this year and the binder next. Look at it! A few years ago it required six or seven men to do, with a self-rake reaper, what the Marsh Harvester and Binder will do with one man or one boy. The Harvester also does the work cleaner and better. It binds every straw, and saves enough in this way to nearly or quite pay for the wire. The wire-bound bundles can be made as large or as small as you like. The wire is unobjectionable in threshing, the wire passing through without injury to the thresher. No cattle will eat wire, and no one has ever been known to be injured by it. It requires about three pounds of wire to an acre of grain of average stand. This machine reduces the cost and the labor of grain harvesting to a minimum. No progressive farmer can afford to do his work with an old-fashioned reaper. He might almost as well return to the hand sickle. It is now a question of the best binder. _Thus far the manufacturers of the Marsh Harvester have furnished the best harvester, and now they offer the best binder_, and still propose to keep their machines in the lead, as they have been, and are now. We also manufacture the old and reliable WARRIOR MOWER, admitted by all to be one of the best mowers in use. Apply to the nearest agency or to Gammon & Deering, Chicago, Ill., for circulars containing full particulars in regard to those machines. =_W. H. JONES & CO._=, =_GAMMON & DEERING_=, General Agents for Minnesota Manufacturers, Chicago, Ill. and Manitoba. Transcriber's Notes: The original edition did not include a table of contents. Some inconsistent hyphenation (i.e. overcrowded vs. over-crowded) has been retained from the original -- text quoted from different sources may have different standards. Within several long quotes, series of asterisks on line ends have been replaced with thought breaks -- these presumably indicate abbreviations to the quotations. Page 14, changed "successs" to "success." Page 16, changed "similiar" to "similar." Page 24, removed stray comma from "average, quantity." Page 30, changed "indegenous" to "indigenous." Page 31, inconsistent capitalization in table retained from original. Split table to fit width of text edition; HTML edition provides better rendering. Page 37, changed "every dollars'" to "every dollar's." Page 42, added missing period after "Rev" in "Rev. F. J. Swift." Pages 43 and 44, normalized "DeGraff" to "De Graff" for consistency. Page 49, changed "$1800" to "$1,800" for consistency. Page 53, converted oe ligature to oe in "Koeberl" for Latin-1 compatibility; HTML edition retains ligature. Page 55, added period after "Minn." Page 60, removed extraneous space from "$2. 50." Page 64, changed "to busy" to "too busy." 
4525	----	The Farm That Won't Wear Out By Cyril G. Hopkins Preface THE FARM THAT WON'T WEAR OUT WAS FIRST published serially in THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, the privilege having been granted the author of subsequent publication. It is now issued in book form in response to numerous requests coming especially from the Central, Eastern, and Southern States. CYRIL G. HOPKINS. CHAMPAIGN, ILL. _"Population must increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil."--Lincoln._ _"It is not the land itself that constitutes the farmer's wealth, but it is in the constituents of the soil, which serve for the nutrition of plants, that this wealth truly consists."--Liebig._ CONTENTS CHAPTER I: What Goes To Make Up Permanent Fertility CHAPTER II: The Nitrogen Problem And Its Economical Solution CHAPTER III: Phosphorus: The Master Key To Permanent Agriculture CHAPTER IV: Permanent Soil Fertility: Its Relation to Profits and Future Values CHAPTER I WHAT GOES TO MAKE UP PERMANENT FERTILITY IT IS an old saying that "any fool can farm," and this was almost the truth when farming consisted chiefly in reducing the fertility of new, rich land secured at practically no cost from a generous Government. But to restore depleted soils to high productive power in economic systems is no fool's job, for it requires mental as well as muscular energy; and no apologies should be expected from those who necessarily make use of technical terms in the discussion of this technical subject, notwithstanding the common foolish advice that farmers should be given a sort of "parrot" instruction in almost baby language instead of established facts and principles in definite and permanent scientific terms. The farmer should be as familiar with the names of the ten essential elements of plant food as he is with the names of his ten nearest neighbors. Safe and permanent systems of soil improvement and preservation may come with intelligence--never with ignorance--on the part of the landowners. When the knowledge becomes general that food for plants is just as necessary as food for animals, then American agriculture will mean more than merely working the land for all that's in it. This knowledge is as well established as the fact that the earth is round, although the people are relatively few who understand or make intelligent application of the existing information. Agricultural plants consist of ten elements, known as the essential elements of plant food; and not a kernel of corn or a grain of wheat, not a leaf of clover or a spear of grass can be produced if the plant fails to secure any one of these ten elements. Some of these are supplied to plants in abundance by natural processes; others are not so provided and must be supplied by the farmer, or his land becomes impoverished and unproductive. Foods That Plants Live On Two elements, carbon and oxygen, are contained in normal air in the form of a gas called carbon dioxid, and this compound is taken into the plant through the breathing pores, which are microscopic openings located chiefly on the under side of the leaves. Some plants have more than a hundred thousand breathing pores to the square inch of leaf surface. When plants or plant products are burned or decomposed the carbon of the combustible material--grass, wood, coal, and so forth--unites with the free oxygen of the atmosphere to re-form the carbon dioxid, which thus returns as a gas to the air. Even the food taken into the animal system, after being digested and carried into the blood, is brought, into contact with the oxygen of the air--which also passes into the blood through the cell walls of the lungs--and a form of combustion takes place, the heat generated serving to warm the body while the carbon dioxid passes back into the lungs and is exhaled into the open air. By these circulation processes the supply of carbon dioxid in the atmosphere is renewed and maintained without any special effort on the part of man. Hydrogen is one of the elements of which water is composed. Water is taken into the plant through the roots, carried through the stems to the leaves, and there, under the influence of chlorophyll, sunlight and the life principle, the carbon, oxygen and hydrogen are made to unite into some of the most important plant compounds, such as the sugars, which are later transformed into starch and fiber. Though these three elements constitute the larger part of the mature agricultural plant they are no more necessary for plant growth than the seven which are supplied by the soil. Iron is one of the essential elements of plant food; but the amount required by plants is so small and the amount contained in the soil is so large that soils have never been known to become deficient in iron. Though sulfur is found in plants in very appreciable amounts and is known to be essential to plant growth, it is evident that plants do not need so much sulfur as they often contain, some of it being taken up and merely tolerated, as is the case with all of the sodium and silicon found in plants, neither of these being required for normal growth, although commonly found in plants in very considerable amounts. The supply of sulfur in normal soils is not large; but, with the combustion and decay of organic materials--coal, wood, grass, leaves, and so forth--sulfur passes into the air and is brought back to the soil dissolved in rain or absorbed by direct contact of soil and air. Thus under normal conditions the supply of sulfur naturally provided is ample to meet the needs of the staple farm crops, although there are some plants, such as cabbage, for example, which may possibly be benefited by fertilizing with sulfur. But there are five other essential elements of plant food, and these require special consideration in connection with permanent soil fertility. They are potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus and nitrogen. There are also five important points to be kept in mind in relation to each of these elements: (1) the soil's supply, (2) the crop requirements, (3) the loss by leaching, (4) the methods of liberation, and (5) the means of renewal. The neglect of one or more of these important points in relation to one or more of these five elements has reduced the fertility of most cultivated soils in the United States, has greatly impoverished the older farm lands, and has brought agricultural abandonment to millions of acres in the original thirteen states. On the other hand, intelligent attention to these same factors will bring restoration and high productive power to such lands. England's Best Lesson in Farming Where these five elements were supplied regularly to land on the Rothamsted Experiment Station the average yield of wheat for the thirty years, 1852 to 1881, was 35.9 bushels an acre, while 13.6 was the average yield of similar unfertilized land; and during the next thirty years--1882 to 1911--the corresponding average yields were 38 bushels an acre on the fertilized land, and 11.7 bushels where no plant food was applied. These statements are not mere opinions, but determined facts whose accuracy stands unquestioned. On another field at Rothamsted, England, the average yield of barley for the same sixty years was 43 bushels an acre where nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium were regularly applied, 42.6 where all five elements--including potassium and magnesium--were added, but only 14.3 on unfertilized land. On still another Rothamsted experiment field, where a four-year crop rotation of turnips, barley, clover (or beans) and wheat has been practiced since 1848, the yield of turnips in 1908 was 717 pounds an acre on unfertilized land and 35,168 pounds where the five important elements of plant food had been regularly applied once every four years--for the turnips only--since 1848. In 1909 the barley yielded 33.4 bushels an acre on the fertilized land, but only 10 bushels where no plant food was applied. The yield of clover in 1910 was 8590 pounds an acre on the land fertilized for turnips, but only 1949 on the unfertilized land. The wheat following the clover with no other fertilizer produced 24.5 bushels an acre in 1911, but 38 bushels where plant food is always applied for turnips grown three years before. These are the established facts from the longest accurate record, and thus the most trustworthy data the world affords; and when one hears promulgated the very pleasing doctrine that the rotation of crops will maintain the fertility of the soil it is time to remember that "to err is human." Fertility in Normal Soils Of the four important mineral elements, potassium is by far the most abundant in common soils. Thus, as an average of ten residual soils from ten different geological formations in the eastern part of United States, two million pounds of subsurface soil were found to contain: Potassium 37,860 pounds Magnesium 14,080 pounds Calcium 7,810 pounds Phosphorus 1,100 pounds Even the depleted, and to some extent abandoned, gently undulating upland "Leonardtown loam," which was farmed for generations and which, according to the surveys of the Federal Bureau of Soils, covers 41 per cent of St. Mary's County, Maryland, and more than 45,000 acres of Prince George's County--still contains in two million pounds of surface soil--corresponding to the plowed soil of an acre about 6-2/3 inches deep: Potassium 18,500 pounds Magnesium 3,480 pounds Calcium 1,000 pounds Phosphorus 160 pounds The brown silt loam prairie soil of the early Wisconsin glaciation is the most common type of the greatest soil area in the Illinois Corn Belt. Two million pounds of this surface soil contain as an average: Potassium 36,250 pounds Magnesium 8,790 pounds Calcium 11,450 pounds Phosphorus 1,190 pounds The older gray silt loam prairie, the most extensive soil of Southern Illinois, contains in two million pounds of soil: Potassium 24,940 pounds Magnesium 4,690 pounds Calcium 3,420 pounds Phosphorus 840 pounds These data represent averages involving hundreds of soil analyses, and they emphasize the fact that normal soils are rich in potassium and poor in phosphorus. This is to be expected, for most soils are made from the earth's crust, and normal soils should bear some relation in composition to the average of the earth's crust, which contains in two million pounds 49,200 pounds of potassium and 2,200 pounds of phosphorus, as shown by the weighted averages of analyses involving about two thousand samples of representative rocks, reported by the United States Geological Survey. Measuring Fertility Losses The plant food required for one acre of wheat yielding 50 bushels, one acre each of corn and oats yielding 100 bushels, and one acre of clover yielding four tons, includes for the total crops: Potassium 320 pounds Magnesium 68 pounds Calcium 168 pounds Phosphorus 77 pounds If only the grain, including a yield of 4 bushels an acre of clover seed, is considered, the straw, stalks and hay being returned to the soil--either directly or in farm fertilizer--then the loss per acre from four years of cropping as above would be as follows: Potassium 51 pounds Magnesium 16 pounds Calcium 5 pounds Phosphorus 42 pounds The average annual loss by leaching from good soils in humid sections is known by the results of many analyses to be about as follows per acre: Potassium 10 pounds Calcium 300 pounds Phosphorus 2 pounds The average annual loss of magnesium in drainage water from good soils is probably 30 pounds or more an acre, but the data thus far secured are inconclusive with respect to that element. A careful consideration of the trustworthy data clearly reveals the fact that potassium is very abundant in normal soils, while phosphorus is relatively very deficient; and, all things considered, calcium--and probably magnesium--is of much greater significance than potassium, from the standpoint of the maintenance of usable plant food in the soil. It should be noted, too, that certain crops which are exceedingly important for economic systems of permanent agriculture require very large amounts of calcium as plant food. Thus a four-ton crop of clover hay takes about 120 pounds of calcium from the soil, or the same amount as of potassium; while such a crop of alfalfa requires about 145 pounds of calcium, but only 96 pounds of potassium. When it is known that the abandoned "Leonardtown loam" still contains in two million pounds of surface soil 18,500 pounds of potassium and only 1000 pounds of total calcium, the significance of these chemical and mathematical data must be apparent. The Liberation of Fertility Probably there has never been a greater waste of time and effort in the name of science than in the endeavor to determine the "available" plant food in soils. The almost universal assumption has been that the plant food in the soil exists in two distinct conditions, "available" and "unavailable," and that the determination of the "available" plant food would reveal both the crop-producing power of the soil and the fundamental fertilizer requirements for the improvement of the soil for crop production. After ascertaining the total stock of plant food in the plowed soil, the next important question is not how much is "available," but rather how much can be made available during the crop season, year after year. In other words we must make plant food available by practical methods of liberation, by converting it from insoluble compounds into soluble and usable forms; for plant food must be in solution before the plant can take it from the soil. For the present, space is taken only to emphasize the value of decaying organic manures in the important matter of making plant food available; and attention is also called to the fact that the decomposition of the organic matter of the soil--including both fresh materials and old humus--is hastened by tillage and by underdrainage, which permit the oxygen of the air to enter the soil more freely, oxygen being a most active agent in nitrification and other decomposition processes of organic matter, as well as in the more common combustion of wood, coal, and so forth. The Renewal of Fertility In rational systems of general farming the supply of any element which is normally very abundant may be renewed from the subsoil by even the very slight erosion which occurs on all ordinary lands in humid sections. This statement applies to iron and potassium, and often to magnesium. If two million pounds of normal surface soil contain 30,000 pounds of potassium, one inch an acre would contain 4500 pounds of that element; and if a third of this--1500 pounds--were removed by cropping and leaching before its removal by surface washing, then two-thirds of a century could be allowed for the erosion of one inch of soil, with crop yields of 50 bushels of wheat, 100 bushels of corn and oats, and 4 bushels of clover seed to the acre, provided the stalks, straw and clover hay were returned to the land, either directly or in farm manure. This amount of surface washing is likely to occur on land sufficiently undulating for good surface drainage, provided the land is plowed and cultivated as frequently as would be required for a four-year rotation as suggested above. Where hay, straw, potatoes, root crops or common market garden crops are sold, very much larger amounts of potassium leave the farm than in grain farming or live-stock farming, and in such cases potassium must ultimately be purchased and returned to the soil, either in commercial form or in animal manures from the cities. Thirty Bushels for Potassium There are some soils, however, which are not normal--soils whose composition bears no sort of relation to the average of the earth's crust; such, for example, as peaty swamp soil or bog lands, which consist largely of partly decayed moss and swamp grasses. These soils are exceedingly poor in potassium, and they are markedly and very profitably improved by potassium fertilizers, such as potassium sulphate and potassium chloride--commonly but erroneously called "muriate" of potash. Thus, as an average of triplicate tests each year, the addition of potassium to such land on the University of Illinois experiment field near Manito, Mason county, increased the yield by 20.7 bushels more corn to the acre in 1902, by 23.5 in 1903, by 29 in 1904 and by 36.8 in 1905; and the proceedings of the midsummer session of the Illinois State Farmers' Institute for 1911 report that the use of $22,500 in potassium salts on the peaty swamp lands in the neighborhood of Tampico, Whiteside county, increased the value of the corn crop in 1910 by $210,000, the average increase for potassium being about 30 bushels of corn to the acre. Some sand soils, particularly residual sands, which often consist largely of quartz-silicon dioxid--are very deficient in potassium; consequently the experiments or demonstrations conducted by the potash syndicate at Southern Pines, North Carolina, show very marked increases from the use of potassium salts on such soil, although the result ought not to be used to encourage the use of such fertilizers on normal soils, which are exceedingly rich in potassium. Even in soils abundantly supplied with potassium temporary use may well be made of soluble potassium salts when no adequate supply of decaying organic matter can be provided. For this purpose, kainit--which contains potassium and also magnesium and sodium in chlorides and sulfates--is preferred to the more concentrated and more expensive potassium salts. About 600 pounds an acre every four years is a good application. The kainit will not only furnish soluble potassium and magnesium but will also help to dissolve and thus make available other mineral plant food naturally present or supplied, such as natural phosphates. When the supply of organic matter produced in crops and returned either in farm manure or in crop residues becomes sufficiently abundant, then the addition of kainit may be discontinued on normal soil. Thus, as an average of 112 separate tests covering four different years, on the Southern Illinois experiment field on worn, thin land, at Fairfield, the use of 600 pounds an acre of kainit once in four years increased the yield of corn by 10.7 bushels where no organic manure was used, and by only 1.7 bushels when applied with eight tons of farm manure. Liming the Soil In the form of ashes, marl or chalk, lime has been used as a fertilizer for thousands of years. It serves two very important purposes: to correct the acidity of sour soils and to supply calcium and sometimes magnesium as plant food. Burned lime has also been much used, but in more recent years the development of machinery for crushing and pulverizing rock--especially in cement manufacture--has made possible the production of pulverized natural limestone, and at much less expense than for caustic lime made by burning and slaking. Where ground limestone can be easily procured it takes the place of burned lime, and it produces better results at less expense, even though 1-3/4 tons of ground limestone are required to equal 1 ton of quicklime in calcium content and in power to correct acidity. Furthermore, ground limestone can be applied in any amount with no injurious results, while caustic lime destroys the organic matter or humus of the soil, dissipates soil nitrogen, is disagreeable to handle, and may injure the crop unless applied in limited amounts or several months before the crop is to be planted. The most valuable and trustworthy investigation on record in regard to the comparative value of burned lime and ground limestone has been conducted by the Pennsylvania Experiment Station. A four-year rotation of crops was practiced, including corn, oats, wheat and hay (clover and timothy) on four different fields, each crop being represented every year. After twenty years the results for the four acres showed that the land treated with ground limestone had produced 99 bushels more corn, 116 bushels more oats, 13 bushels more wheat and 5.6 tons more hay than the land treated with about an equivalent amount of burned lime. At the end of sixteen years the analysis of the soil showed that the burned lime had destroyed 4.7 tons of humus and had dissipated 375 pounds of nitrogen to the acre, as compared with the ground limestone, this loss being equivalent to 37-1/2 tons of farm manure. Other trustworthy experiments by the Maryland and Ohio Experiment Stations confirm the Pennsylvania results in showing better crop yields when unburned lime carbonate was used; and more extensive experiments by the Tennessee Experiment Station also agree with the Pennsylvania data in regard to the destruction of organic matter and loss of soil nitrogen from the use of burned lime. If dolomitic limestone is used, magnesium as well as calcium is thus added to the soil. Limestone need not be very finely pulverized. If ground so that it will pass through a ten-mesh sieve it is amply fine, assuming that the entire product is used, including the finer dust produced in grinding, and it is very possible that final investigations will show that the entire product from a quarter-inch screen is even more economical and profitable in permanent systems. Limestone is quite easily soluble in soil water carrying carbonic acid. It is thus readily available; in fact, it is too available to be durable if very finely ground; and in humid sections the loss by leaching far exceeds that removed by cropping. In practical economic systems of farming about two tons an acre of ground limestone should be applied every four years, or corresponding amounts for other rotation periods. The essential facts relating to potassium, magnesium and calcium and to the use and value of different forms of lime have been stated above, and they may be accepted with confidence for use in economic systems of farming on normal soils. CHAPTER II THE NITROGEN PROBLEM AND ITS ECONOMICAL SOLUTION IN THE previous chapter emphasis has been laid upon the fact that plants as well as animals must have food, and that the neglect or ignorance of this factor in American agriculture has led to soil depletion and land ruin on vast areas, especially in the older states. It has been shown that of the ten essential elements of plant food, five are provided by natural processes without the intervention of man; that, of the remaining five, potassium is the most abundant in normal soil, but requires liberation by good systems of farming; that ground natural limestone is the ideal material with which to supply calcium and to prevent or correct soil acidity; and that if dolomitic limestone be used magnesium is also supplied in suitable form for plant food, Thus only nitrogen and phosphorus remain for consideration. Keeping in mind that systems of permanent profitable agriculture in America must be founded upon an intelligent understanding of the foundation principles involved, let us pray for strength to acknowledge the truth and cease trying to deceive ourselves. The truth is that by soil enrichment alone the average crop yields of the United States could be doubled, with the same seed and seasons and with but little more work than is now devoted to the fields; and we should cease trying to deceive ourselves in the hope or belief that the fertility of our soil will be maintained if we continue year after year to take crops from the land and fail to make adequate return. Nitrogen is both the most abundant agriculturally and the most expensive commercially of all the elements of plant food; and yet there is a method by which it can be secured not only without money but with profit in the process. The percentage of nitrogen in normal soils decreases with depth, so that subsoils are almost devoid of nitrogen. This would be more generally understood if it were known that the supply of soil nitrogen in humid countries is contained only in the organic matter. This organic or vegetable matter consists of the partly decomposed residues of plants, including the roots and fallen leaves which may accumulate naturally, and the green manure crops, crop residues and farm manure which may be supplied in farm practice. Thus the nitrogen of a soil is measured approximately by its content of organic matter; and, vice versa, the percentage of nitrogen is an approximate measure of the organic matter, because nitrogen is a regular constituent of the organic matter normally contained in soils. Consequently if the organic matter of a soil is reduced the supply of nitrogen is also reduced. In the most depleted soils nitrogen is usually the most deficient element, although it may not be the only deficiency. Thus in the depleted "Leonardtown loam," which occupies such extensive areas of land in Southern Maryland, near the District of Columbia, and which has been to a large extent agriculturally abandoned after one or two centuries of farming, only 900 pounds of nitrogen are found in the plowed soil of an acre--that is, in 2,000,000 pounds of surface soil, corresponding to about 6-2/3 inches an acre. This total amount if made available would be sufficient for only six such crops of corn as are actually produced on our best land in good seasons, and yet it is four times as much as is contained in an equal weight of the subsoil. The average prairie land of the Corn Belt contains only 5000 pounds of nitrogen in the plowed soil of an acre 6-2/3 inches deep, whereas a 100-bushel crop of corn removes 150 pounds of nitrogen from the soil. A simple computation shows the supply in the plowed soil to be sufficient for only 33 such crops. Even the 100-bushel crop of corn per acre is known to have been produced in many places on exceptionally rich land, and yet the ten-year average yield in the United States is only 25 bushels to the acre. 200 Per Cent for Nitrogen On Broadbalk Field at Rothamsted, England, wheat has been grown on the same land every year for about two-thirds of a century. As an average of the sixty years, 1852 to 1911 the yield was 12.6 bushels an acre on unfertilized land, 14.6 where mineral plant food was annually applied, 20.3 where nitrogen salts alone were used, and 37 where both nitrogen and mineral plant food were applied. During the thirty years, 1882 to 1911 the average yields were 11.7 bushels an acre on the unfertilized land, 14 with minerals, 18.7 where only nitrogen salts were used, and 38 where both nitrogen and minerals were regularly supplied. These absolute data from the oldest agricultural experiment station in the world should help us to understand why the ten-year average yield of wheat is 33 bushels an acre for all of Great Britain, 37-1/2 for England alone, and only 14 for the United States. The application of nitrogen increased the yield of wheat by 24 bushels an acre--from 14 to 38 bushels--as an average of the last thirty years, following an average increase of 26.3 for the nitrogen applied during the previous thirty years. It is true that the cost of the fertilizers used exceeded the value of the increase in yield; but let us bear in mind that this truth does not destroy the other truth. Prove all things, and hold fast that which is good. It is a good fact that 1218 bushels of wheat were produced by the application of nitrogen to an acre of land during a period of sixty years, over and above the produce of another acre which differed only by not receiving nitrogen; whereas the total produce from an acre of unfertilized land was only 756 bushels during the same sixty years. It is a good fact that the increase alone from the nitrogen applied is more than twice the total yield of the unfertilized land during the last thirty years, and he does well who holds fast this fact. It is also a good fact that as an average of sixty years the yield of barley was increased by 21.6 bushels an acre by nitrogen; that nitrogen increased the yield of hay on permanent meadow land at Rothamsted by 1-1/2 tons an acre as a fifty-year average; and that nitrogen increased the average yield of potatoes by 88 bushels as an average of twenty-six years; while the average of the unfertilized land was only 51 bushels an acre, these increases in barley, bay, and potatoes being obtained over and above the yields where minerals alone were used. Where Is Nitrogen? If nitrogen has such enormous power to increase the yield of our great staple farm crops then we may well inquire, Where is nitrogen, and how can it be secured economically and utilized profitably in practical agriculture? The weight of the atmosphere is 15 pounds to the square inch. This means that a column of air 1 inch square taken to the full height of the terrestrial atmosphere weighs 15 pounds. More than three fourths of the air is nitrogen. Since there are 43,560 square feet in one acre, it follows that the nitrogen in the air above each acre of the earth's surface amounts to 70,000,000 pounds, or nearly 500,000 times the 150 pounds of nitrogen required for a hundred-bushel crop of corn. The leaves of the corn plant are blown about by the wind carrying 75-1/2 per cent of nitrogen, but cannot utilize an ounce of this supply. Many people know that clover and other legumes have power, through the bacteria which inhabit their root tubercles, to feed upon the inexhaustible supply of atmospheric nitrogen which freely enters the pores of the soil; but who knows how much nitrogen is taken from the air by a given crop of clover? Not one in a thousand can answer this question; and meanwhile our continued agricultural and national prosperity depends in large part upon the possibility of wide dissemination and practical application of a quantitative knowledge of the nitrogen problem. As a rule the so-called "practical" farmer is a theorist. He first believes that the virgin soil is inexhaustible, even though cropped continuously. Later he clings to the popular theory that the rotation of crops will maintain the productive capacity of the land; and it is safe to say that a large majority of the farmers of the United States gladly hold to the erroneous theory that clover grown once every three to five years will increase and permanently maintain the fertility of the soil. The fact that clover was grown for generations on the lands of the older Eastern states until the clover crop itself finally failed on millions of acres now agriculturally abandoned is overlooked or forgotten by present-day farmers, especially by the descendants of those who have gone West and settled on new, rich lands. Six Facts and a Question The following six facts will furnish a comprehensive basis for the solution of the nitrogen problem in practical general agriculture: (1) To produce 100 pounds of grain requires about 3 pounds of nitrogen, of which 2 pounds are deposited in the grain itself and 1 pound in the straw or stalks. (2) In live-stock farming one-fourth of the nitrogen in the food consumed is retained in the animal products--meat, milk, wool, and so on--and three-fourths may be returned to the land in the excrements if saved without loss. (3) When grown on soils of normal productive capacity legumes secure about two-thirds of their total nitrogen from the air and one-third from the soil. (4) Clover and other biennial or perennial legumes have about two-thirds of their total nitrogen in the tops and one-third in the roots, while the roots of cowpeas and other annual legumes contain only about one-tenth of their total nitrogen. (5) Hay made from our common legumes contains about 40 pounds of nitrogen per ton. (6) Average farm manure contains 16 pounds of nitrogen per ton. Question: How many tons of average farm manure must be applied to a 40-acre field in order to provide as much nitrogen as would be added to the soil by plowing under 2-1/2 tons of clover per acre? Answer: 400 tons. Either method will furnish about as much nitrogen as would be taken from the soil by a 50-bushel crop of wheat, a 75-bushel crop of corn or a 100-bushel crop of oats per acre. The decision by the individual between live-stock farming and grain farming should be based upon preference and profit rather than upon the erroneous teaching that farm manure is either essential or sufficient for the maintenance of soil fertility in this country. Bread is the staff of life, and many must sell grain. I do not advise all grain farmers to become live-stock farmers; but I do advise both grain farmers and live-stock farmers to enrich their soils by practical, profitable and permanent methods. Both classes of farmers may secure new nitrogen--that is, they can positively increase their nitrogen supply by sufficient use of legume crops. How to Supply Nitrogen The cotton-grower who sells cotton lint at 10 cents a pound and the market gardener who sells from $100 to $300 worth of fruits and vegetables from one acre may well make liberal use of commercial nitrogen at 15 or 20 cents a pound; but if after deducting the cost of harvesting, threshing, storing and marketing the average farmer receives only 1 cent a pound for his grain and if 40 per cent of the commercial nitrogen applied is lost by leaching, then the total crop of grain would bring only enough money to pay for the nitrogen required to produce it, at 20 cents a pound. We may sometimes advise the American grain-grower to buy water with which to irrigate his crop, but not to buy nitrogen with which to fertilize it. If the grain farmer grows 40 bushels of wheat to the acre, clover having been seeded on the same land in order to plow under the equivalent of 1-1/2 tons of hay as green manure the following spring, and follows this by a 60-bushel crop of corn and a 50-bushel crop of oats, and this the fourth year by two crops of clover aggregating 3 tons an acre, including 2 bushels of seed, he can thus secure from the air about 180 pounds of nitrogen in the 4-1/2 tons of clover. Moreover, if the first cutting of clover the fourth year is left on the land and the threshed clover straw from the seed crop and likewise all straw and stalks are returned to the soil, only 154 pounds of nitrogen an acre would leave the farm if the total grain and clover seed were sold. With 80 cents a bushel for wheat, 50 cents for corn, 40 cents for oats and $8 for clover seed, the total returns from the four acres would amount to $98. On the other hand the live-stock farmer may grow two 60-bushel crops of corn, followed by 50 bushels of oats and then 3 tons of clover hay containing 120 pounds of new nitrogen. The four crops would contain 350 pounds of nitrogen; and if the grain and hay and half the corn-stalks are used for feed, with the straw and the remainder of the stalks for bedding, it is likewise possible to replace the 230 pounds of nitrogen required for the grain crops, provided not more than one-seventh of the manure is lost before being returned to the land. The important weakness on the common live-stock farm lies in the enormous waste of manure. If 10 pounds of feed produce 1 pound increase in the live-weight of the animals fed, and if they bring 6 cents a pound on the hoof, the gross returns aggregate $107.50 from the four acres, barring losses from accidents, animal diseases, and so on. Thus, with a few established facts in mind, one can easily determine how to maintain or even to increase the supply of nitrogen in the soil, and without the purchase of nitrogen in any form; and it is just as possible and just as necessary thus to provide the nitrogen needed in grain farming as in livestock farming. When we consider that animals destroy two-thirds of the organic matter in the food consumed we find that as between the two systems above described the organic matter or humus of the soil will be better maintained in the grain system outlined. Live-Stock or Grain Farming For those who believe that live-stock farming must be adopted for the maintenance of fertility on all farms, attention should be called to the fact that there are 900,000,000 acres of farm-land in the United States and only 90,000,000 head of live-stock equivalent to cows, including all farm animals. Will the manure from one cow serve to enrich 10 acres of land? It should also be known that a hundred bushels of grain will support five times as many people as could live for the same length of time on the meat and milk that could be made by feeding the grain to domestic animals. It is because of this fact that the consumer may sometimes boycott meat or other animal products, while he never boycotts bread; but let us hope that permanent systems will become generally adopted in America, for the production of both grain and live stock, so that high standards of living may be maintained for all classes of people in this country. The oldest direct comparison between these two systems of farming, so far as the writer has learned, is on the experiment fields of the University of Illinois, where as an average of six years the yield of corn has been 87 bushels an acre in grain farming and 90 bushels in live-stock farming, the same crop rotation being practiced. Where wheat was introduced the average yield for six years was 43.1 bushels in grain farming and 43.5 in live-stock farming. No nitrogen was purchased in any form in either of these systems; but clover is grown in the rotation to secure nitrogen from the air and then the crop residues or farm manure is returned to the soil to provide sufficient nitrogen for the grain crops. In all cases phosphorus was used for these yields. Even more encouraging than these six-year average results from Illinois are the results of sixty years from Agdell Field at Rothamsted. Where mineral plant food was regularly applied, and where all the manure produced by feeding the turnips was returned to the soil, in a four-year rotation of turnips, barley, clover (or beans) and wheat, with no other provision made for supplying nitrogen, the yields per acre were as follows: Turnips, 24,724 lbs. in 1848, and 26,410 in 1908. Barley, 42.8 bushels in 1849 and 22.1 in 1909 Clover, 5586 pounds in 1850 and 7190 in 1910. Wheat, 32 bushels in 1851 and 37.8 in 1911. Here we have data which span a period of sixty years and which show that where mineral plant food has been provided the clover in rotation and the manure produced by the feeding of only one of the four crops have maintained the yield of all crops except the barley-the third crop after clover-and without the application of nitrogen in any other form. If the clover and straw had been returned to the land either directly or in farm manure the additional nitrogen thus provided would have been sufficient both to maintain the yield of barley and to prevent the moderate decrease which has occurred in the nitrogen content of the soil. CHAPTER III PHOSPHORUS: THE MASTER KEY TO PERMANENT AGRICULTURE THE greatest economic loss that America has ever sustained has been the loss of energy and profit in farming with an inadequate supply of phosphorus. Phosphorus is a Greek word which signifies "light-bringer"; but it is a light which few Americans have yet seen, else we should not permit the annual exportation of more than a million tons of our best phosphate rock, for which we receive at the mines the paltry sum of five million dollars, carrying away from the United States an amount of the one element of plant food we shall always need to buy, which if retained in this country and applied to our own soils would be worth not five million but a thousand million dollars for the production of food for the oncoming generations of Americans. For five million dollars we export to Europe each year enough phosphorus for 1,400,000,000 bushels of wheat, or twice the average crop of the entire United States. Meanwhile our ten-year-average yield of wheat is 14 bushels an acre, while Germany's yield has gone up to 29, Great Britain's to 33, England's to 37-1/2 and Denmark's to more than 40 as the average for a decade. Potato Yield Twice Doubled There is only one place in the world where we can go for the results of soil improvement for more than a quarter of a century in connection with the growing of potatoes. Of course this place is Rothamsted, England, where as an average for twenty-six years the yield of potatoes was 51 bushels an acre on unfertilized land and exactly 102 bushels where only a phosphate fertilizer was applied. Where the same amount of phosphorus--29 pounds of the element per acre per annum--was used in connection with other minerals--300 pounds of potassium sulfate and 100 pounds each of the sulfates of magnesium and sodium--the average yield of potatoes was 109 bushels. Where 86 pounds of nitrogen was applied in sodium nitrate the average yield was 79 bushels; but where the nitrogen, phosphorus and other minerals were all applied the average yield for the twenty-six years was 203 bushels. At 50 cents a bushel for potatoes, the investment in phosphorus alone paid 600 per cent net profit; and even the complete fertilizer, including 392 pounds of acid phosphate, 550 pounds of sodium nitrate and 500 pounds of alkali salts, aggregating 1442 pounds, and costing at moderate prices $24.28 an acre per annum, paid back $76 a year as a twenty-six year average, thus making 300 per cent even on an investment of nearly $25 an acre a year. Phosphorus Helps Good Farming There is also but one place in the world where we can learn the results secured from the application of phosphorus for a period of thirty-six years in a good system of farming; and again this place is Rothamsted. In 1848 Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry Gilbert began investigations on Agdell Field. The Norfolk rotation, already known at that time as one of the best rotation systems, was turnips, barley, clover, and wheat; and in these practical field experiments the turnips were fed on the land and the animal fertilizer thus produced was returned to the soil, which was well supplied with limestone. During the next thirty-six years $29.52 worth of phosphorus per acre was applied to one part of the field; and in comparison with another part of the same field cropped and managed similarly, except that no phosphorus was applied, the $29.52 worth of phosphorus produced $98.02 increase in the value of the turnips, $37.45 in barley, $48.93 in clover (and beans) and $45.99 in wheat. The total value of the crops grown on the land not receiving phosphorus during the thirty-six years was $432.43 an acre, while on the phosphated land the crop values amounted to $662.82, an increase of $230.39 from an investment of $29.52, the turnips being figured at $1.40 a ton, barley at 50 cents a bushel, clover hay at $6 a ton, beans at $1.25 a bushel, wheat at 70 cents a bushel, and phosphorus at 12 cents a pound. As a general average at these conservative prices, the investment of $3.28 an acre every four years paid back $25.60 in the four crops. In most states the legal rate of interest is 6 per cent but here is an investment that paid the principal and 680 per cent interest every four years. And these investigations show that the phosphorus was used with profit for the production of markedly different crops, including potatoes and turnips, barley and wheat, clover and beans. But the soil at Rothamsted is no poorer in phosphorus than is the average soil of the United States; and these results are given here not only because they are the oldest and most trustworthy the world affords, but because they are strictly applicable to the production of common crops on vast areas of agricultural land in our own country. The Form of Phosphorus to Use The unfertilized soil at the Rothamsted station contains, in 2,000,000 pounds--corresponding to about 6-2/3 inches to the acre--1000 pounds of phosphorus and 35,000 of potassium, while an acre of plowed soil of the same weight at State College, Pennsylvania, contains 1100 pounds of phosphorus and 50,700 of potassium. In a word, normal soils are deficient in phosphorus, and the application of phosphorus in good systems of farming produces marked and profitable increases in crop yields. But what form of phosphorus shall we apply? This is a very important question in agricultural economics, for we have many different kinds of fertilizing materials that contain phosphorus, and one may cost ten times as much as another as a source of phosphorus. Thus 250 pounds of phosphorus in a ton of finely ground natural rock phosphate can be purchased at the mines in Tennessee and delivered at the farmer's railway station in the heart of the Corn Belt for $8. Or the ton of raw phosphate may be mixed with a ton of sulfuric acid in the fertilizer factory, and the two tons of acid phosphate may be sold to the same farmer for $32. Or the fertilizer manufacturer may mix the two tons of acid phosphate with two tons of "filler," containing a little nitrogen and potassium, and then sell the same farmer the four tons of so-called "complete" fertilizer for $80; and the farmer gets no more phosphorus in the four tons of "complete" fertilizer for $80 than in the one ton of natural phosphate for $8. The Pennsylvania State College conducted an experiment for twelve years--1884 to 1895--in which $1.05 an acre was invested in ground raw rock phosphate with a rotation of corn, oats, wheat and hay (clover and timothy), and the value of the increase produced by the phosphorus amounted to $5.85 as an average for the twelve years, and to $8.41 as an average for the last four years. Thus the profit was from about 560 to 800 per cent on the investment, counting corn at 35 cents a bushel, oats at 30 cents, wheat at 70 cents, and hay at $6 a ton. These figures represent the increase produced by phosphorus over and above the value of the crops grown without phosphorus fertilizer. In this case no farm manure was used on either part of the field; but commercial nitrogen and potassium were applied alike on both parts, and clover was grown in the rotation. Acid phosphate was also used in direct comparison; and, in answer to the question whether the general farmer should apply liberal amounts of finely ground natural rock phosphate, or whether he should pay four times as much for phosphorus after the fertilizer manufacturer has mixed one part of the raw rock with one of sulfuric acid and thus produced two parts of acid phosphate, these Pennsylvania experiments tell us that the yearly average for the twelve years gave a gain per year of $2.45 from the raw phosphate and 48 cents from the acid phosphate, at the prices used by the Pennsylvania Experiment Station. But we must not draw general conclusions from this one experiment, even though it covers twelve years. In 1895 the Maryland Experiment Station began field experiments with different forms of phosphorus; and, as an average of six tests every year for twelve years, $1.965 invested in ground raw rock phosphate produced increases in corn, wheat and hay that were worth $22.11, at 35 cents a bushel for corn, 70 cents for wheat, $6 a ton for hay, and 3 cents a pound for phosphorus in the ground natural phosphate. How would you like 1000 per cent profit as the result of mixing brain with brawn, in connection with the improvement of your own business, thus keeping the investment under your own control? Mind you, this does not prove that farming is profitable, but only that the intelligent use of phosphorus in farming is profitable. In other words the admixture--brains--is profitable. In commenting upon his investigations the director of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station states that the raw phosphate produced a higher total average yield than acid phosphate, and at less than half the cost. The Rhode Island Experiment Station began a series of experiments with different forms of phosphorus in 1894. If we add together all the hay and grain crops grown during the decade following the first year of these experiments, we find that the increases per acre were 14,580 pounds for raw phosphate and 14,550 pounds for acid phosphate, on unlimed land; while lime and raw phosphate produced 27,030 pounds, and lime and acid phosphate 29,690 pounds, of increase; and the acid phosphate cost three times as much as the raw phosphate. In commenting upon these investigations the director of the Rhode Island Experiment Station states that the raw phosphate gave very good results with such farm crops as oats, peas, crimson clover, millet, soy beans, and so forth, but very poor results with such garden crops as turnips, rutabagas, cabbage, beets, lettuce, squash, and so forth, and its use for these garden crops is not advised. In 1890 the Massachusetts Experiment Station began investigations with different phosphates applied in equal money value, and in his report for 1900 the director states that the raw rock phosphate ranks above the acid phosphate both as an average for the entire period and as an average between 1895 and 1900, during which time the land to which no phosphorus was applied produced only 55 per cent as much as where raw phosphate was used--a result worth every farmer's consideration. More Bushels and Tons The Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station has reported investigations covering sixteen years in which raw phosphate was compared with acid phosphate costing twice as much per acre. As an average of all results secured, 320 pounds of raw phosphate applied with manure on clover sod produced 8.4 bushels more corn, 4.7 bushels more wheat, and 0.49 ton more hay per acre than where manure alone was used, and 320 pounds of acid phosphate, costing twice as much money but containing only half as much phosphorus, applied with the same amount of manure, produced 7.5 bushels more corn, 5.1 bushels more wheat, and 0.46 ton more hay than where the manure alone was used. Now I have presented the averages or summaries of all investigations that have been reported covering ten years or more where equal money values of raw phosphate and acid phosphate have been used, or where any apparent provision was made to supply some organic manure, whether as farm manure, green manure or merely as clover grown in the rotation; and I invite the reader to mix his own brains with these data and not to expect me to state whether he should use the relatively cheap ground natural phosphate rock or the more costly manufactured acidulated phosphate in the improvement of his own soil in systems of permanent profitable agriculture. Making Phosphate Available If the natural rock is used it should be ground so that at least 90 per cent will pass through a sieve with 10,000 meshes to the square inch, and of course its content of phosphorus (from 12 to 15 per cent) or of so-called "phosphoric acid" (from 27 to 34 per cent) should also be guaranteed. Moreover it should be used liberally and in connection with plenty of decaying organic matter. People sometimes ask, "How much of the phosphorus in raw phosphate is available?" The best answer to this question is, "None of it; and, if you are not going to make it available, don't use it." On my own farm I use about one ton per acre of raw phosphate once every six years, thus adding at least 250 pounds of phosphorus at a cost of less than $8; whereas 200 pounds of the common "complete" fertilizer per acre yearly would cost $12 every six years, and would supply only 40 pounds of phosphorus. I do not use "complete" fertilizers, because there is plenty of nitrogen in the air and plenty of potassium in the soil; and because, by growing and plowing under plenty of clover, I not only secure nitrogen from the air and liberate potassium from the soil but also liberate the phosphorus from the raw rock phosphate applied to the soil. In beginning the use of raw phosphate where the supply of organic manures is limited, I apply one ton of phosphate and 600 pounds of kainit in intimate connection, turn them under, preferably with organic matter, then add ground limestone if needed, and thus prepare to grow clover. By far the most important agencies under the farmer's control for the liberation of plant food are the decomposition products of fermenting or decaying organic matter, such as green manures, crop residues and ordinary farm manures. In the decomposition of these organic materials sour or acid products are formed. Thus vinegar, containing acetic acid, is formed from the fermentation of apple juice, hard cider being an intermediate product. Sweet, chopped, immature field corn becomes sour silage in the silo, lactic, acetic, carbonic and other acids being formed. By a similar process cabbage is turned into sauerkraut. Likewise sweet milk becomes sour, with the formation of lactic acid. Oxalic, citric, tartaric, succinic, malic, gallic and tannic are other well-known organic acids. Some of these are contained in the sap or juice of certain plants, and these or others are formed when crop residues are decomposed in the soil. In the ultimate decomposition of organic matter the carbon appears in the form of carbon dioxid which when combined with water forms carbonic acid. Though this is a very weak acid, its solvent action is very important. But, in addition to the various organic acids and carbonic acid, we have also to consider the formation of nitric acid in connection with the decomposition of organic manures. Nitric acid is one of the strongest known, and in solvent power it is excelled by no single acid. The nitrogen contained in crop residues and other organic manures is chiefly in chemical combination with carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, much of it in insoluble protein compounds. Normally this organic nitrogen is transformed in the soil, first into ammonia nitrogen, next into nitrite nitrogen, and lastly into nitrate nitrogen, these three transformations being effected by biochemical action produced by different kinds of living microscopic organisms called bacteria. Though detectable amounts of free nitric acid do not accumulate during this process of nitrification, the soluble nitrate or final product is formed by the action of nitric acid upon a mineral base, such as calcium, magnesium, or potassium, which may have been in the soil in insoluble form, so that the nitrogen must pass through the form of nitric acid in the transformation into nitrates. While the organic matter applied to the soil contains about twenty times as much carbon as nitrogen, and while corresponding amounts of carbonic acid and important amounts of intermediate organic acids must be formed, it is of much interest to know that even the nitric acid formed in the transformation of organic nitrogen to nitrate nitrogen in sufficient quantity for a given crop is seven times as much acid as would be required to convert raw rock phosphate into soluble phosphate to furnish the phosphorus required for the same crop. A knowledge of this definite quantitative relationship should help us to appreciate the possibilities of decaying organic manures in the important matter of making plant food available, including potassium, calcium and magnesium as well as phosphorus and nitrogen. The value of rye, rape, buckwheat and other non-legumes when used as green manures is very largely due to the liberation of plant food by their decomposition in contact with the natural phosphates, potash and other minerals contained in the soil. The farmer has no more important business than that of making plant food available, especially by supplying liberal amounts of decaying organic matter. The following suggestions are offered to the land owner: To enrich the soil apply liberal amounts of limestone, organic manures and phosphorus. To enrich the seller apply small amounts of high-priced "complete" commercial fertilizers. Thus the average of seventy-three "Cooperative Fertilizer Tests on Clay and Loam Soils," extending into thirty-eight different counties in Indiana (Bulletin 155), shows 13 cents as the farmer's profit from each dollar spent for "complete" fertilizers used for corn, oats, wheat, timothy, and potatoes, if valued in the field at 40 cents a bushel for corn, 30 cents for oats, 80 cents for wheat, 50 cents for potatoes, and at $10 a ton for hay, over and above the extra expense for harvesting and marketing the increase, and of course the soil grows poorer, because the crops harvested removed much more plant food than the fertilizers supplied. CHAPTER IV PERMANENT SOIL FERTILITY Its Relation to Profits and Future Values THOUGH intelligent soil improvement is the most profitable business in which an honest man can engage, ordinary farming is not a highly remunerative occupation, and to a large extent the fortune of the farmer is bound up with the increase or depreciation in the market value of his land. There are at least three important factors of influence which induce people to continue farming: First, the farmer is his own employer. He controls his own job, is his own boss and has no superior officer to lay him off because of disagreement, dull business or political preferment. Farmers constitute by far the largest class of citizens who own their own business, and are thus "independent." Second, the farmer is able as a rule to make some sort of a living for his family very largely out of the produce of the farm, so that he gets some return for his labor in terms of food, even when there is no profit in farming as a business; whereas the wage-earner of the city, as soon as his wages stop and his savings and credit are exhausted, must see his family supported by charity or starve. This is not fiction, but fact. Third, land is usually considered a safe investment, in which one may hold a perfect and undivided title to his property; and people will retain possession of a farm even when it pays a low rate of interest, rather than sell and invest the proceeds in some other enterprise which they cannot control as individuals or which may suddenly depreciate in earning power, fail or be utterly destroyed. Is Land a Safe Investment? Though it is true that farm land does not pass out of existence in a day, nevertheless it is by no means a safe investment, as witness the numerous abandoned farms in the older agricultural sections of this new country. It is easily possible for one of means to become land-poor--to have investments in land which will not pay the taxes and upkeep of buildings, fences and so forth. At prevailing prices for farm produce and labor there are vast areas of land in the older states far past the point of possible self-redemption; and, as a matter of business, one might better burn his money and save his energy than to expend all his resources in half-paying for such depleted land, depending upon the immediate income from it to raise a mortgage covering the unpaid balance. Intelligent optimism is admirable, but fact is better than fiction; and blind bigotry paraded as optimism is dangerous and condemnable. Some one has said that such a bigot is not an optimist but a "cheerful idiot." To purchase rich, well-watered land at a low price and become wealthy by merely waiting till the land increases in value tenfold, while making a living by taking fertility from the soil, has been easy and common in the great agricultural states during the last half-century. But, paradoxical as it may seem, land values have increased while fertility and productiveness have decreased and, with shorter days for higher priced and less efficient farm labor, with more middlemen absorbing the profits between the producer and the consumer, it is now difficult indeed to buy land with borrowed money and pay for it from subsequent farm profits. If continued soil depletion is practiced, ultimate failure is the only future for such investments. That vast areas of land once cultivated with profit in the original thirteen states now lie agriculturally abandoned is common knowledge; and that the farm lands of the great Corn Belt and Wheat Belt of the North-Central states are even now undergoing the most rapid soil depletion ever witnessed is known to all who possess the facts. Unless this tendency is checked these lands will go the way of the abandoned farms. Some Broad Facts The United States Bureau of the Census reports that the total production of our five great grain crops--corn, wheat, oats, barley and rye--amounted to 4,414,000,000 bushels in 1899, and to 4,445,000,000 bushels in 1909, an increase of less than one per cent. Furthermore, if we assume the average production reported by the United States Department of Agriculture for the three-year periods 1898 to 1900 and 1908 to 1910 as the normal for 1899, and 1909, respectively, and compare these averages with the production actually reported by that department for 1899 and 1909, we find that as an average of all these crops 1909 was a slightly more favorable season than 1899, which indicates that with strictly comparable seasons the increase from 1899 to 1909 was less than 1/2 per cent in the production of these five great grain crops of the United States. On the other hand, the Bureau of Census reports that during the same decade the acreage of farm land in the United States increased by 4.8 per cent, and that the acreage of improved farm land-that is, farmed land-increased by 154 per cent. Thus the census data plainly show reduced yield per acre. In addition we have actual records which show that during the decade our wheat exports decreased from 210,000,000 to 108,000,000 bushels, and that our corn exports decreased from 196,000,000 to 49,000,000 bushels, in order to help feed the increase of 21 per cent in our population. And yet the people complained of the high cost of plain living and many have been forced to adopt lower standards for the table. Meanwhile the value of the farm land in the United States increased by 118 per cent during the ten years--from $13,000,000,000 to $28,500,000,000--as reported by the Bureau of Census. The Value of Land The great primary reason why land values have increased so markedly during the last thirty years is that America has no more free land of good quality in humid sections. Civilized man is characterized by hunger for the ownership of land. Our population continues to increase by more than 20 per cent each decade, but all future possible additions to the farm lands of the United States amount to only 9 per cent of the present acreage, and most of this small addition requires expensive irrigation or drainage. If it cost $4 an acre to raise corn, 5 cents a bushel to harvest and market the crop, 9 cents a bushel to maintain the fertility of the soil, and 1/2 per cent on the value of the land for taxes, then, if money is worth 5 per cent, land that produces 20 bushels of 40-cent corn is worth $21.81 an acre. On the same basis, what would land be worth that produces 40 bushels of corn and equivalent values of other crops? At first thought one might say, $43.62; but this answer would be far from the correct one, which is $116.36. And, if we again double the yield, making it 80 bushels an acre, the value of the land becomes not $87.24, and not $232.72; but easy computation will show that the gross receipts from an 80-bushel crop will pay $7.20 an acre for soil enrichment, $4 for raising the crop, $4 for harvesting and marketing, $1.53 for taxes and 5 per cent interest on a valuation of $305.45 an acre. The average yield of corn in the United States is only 25 bushels an acre, and the average net returns even from the farms of the Corn Belt will not pay 4 per cent interest on their present market value. But the intelligent investment of $2 an acre annually in positive soil enrichment will increase the crop yield by two bushels of corn each year--or by equivalent amounts of other crops grown in the rotation--and will maintain this increase for at least a dozen years on the average land now under cultivation in the United States; and no other safe investment can be named that will pay so great returns. Of course, the cost is $1 a bushel for the first year's increase, and even the second year the 4 bushels of corn cost $2; but what is the cost per bushel of the increase the tenth year? It is 10 cents; and the twelfth year the 24 bushels of increase cost only 8-1/3 cents a bushel, with a return of nearly 500 per cent on the annual investment in soil improvement. And this is not based on mere theoretical considerations. The average Corn-Belt land is producing only 40 bushels of corn to the acre; while a six-year average yield of 90 bushels has been produced on the common Corn-Belt land with proper and profitable soil treatment. Thus is it too much for any farmer to adopt a definite system based upon established practical scientific information which makes it possible for his yield to increase from 40 bushels to an average of 64 bushels an acre? But let him make sure that the system he adopts is cumulative and truly permanent, and not merely stimulating and temporary. What Phosphorus Did on One Farm On his 500-acre farm near Gilman, in the heart of the Illinois Corn Belt, Mr. Frank I. Mann has produced a 70-bushel average yield of corn for a five-year period, and with 200 acres of land in corn annually. It cost him only $1 an acre a year in fine-ground natural rock phosphate to produce increased yields of 16 bushels more corn, 23 bushels more oats and 1 ton more clover than the average yields secured without adding phosphorus. But this progressive, practical farmer is only putting into profitable practice the results of the long-continued careful investigations with raw phosphate conducted by such public-service institutions as the agricultural experiment stations of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Ohio and Illinois. He knows also that on four different fields of typical Corn-Belt land in McLean county, Illinois, the total crop values per acre for a period of ten years were $148.75 $151-30, $149.43 and $149.96, respectively, and that on four other adjoining or intervening fields, which differed only by two liberal additions of phosphorus during the ten years, the respective crop values for the same time were $229,37, $221.30, $229.20 and $225.57. Of course, Mr. Mann does not buy nitrogen, but he takes it from the inexhaustible supply in the air by means of clover and alfalfa or other legumes. He does not buy potassium because he knows how to liberate it from the inexhaustible supply contained in the soil, and because he knows that in the Illinois investigation just cited the crop values from four different fields not receiving potassium were $148.75, $151.30, $229.37 and $221.30; while four other adjoining fields, which differed only by liberal applications of potassium, produced during the same ten years $149.43, $149.96, $229.20 and $225.57, respectively. Thus, as a general average, phosphorus increased the crop values by $76.50 an acre, which amounts to more than 300 per cent on the investment, and at the end of the ten years the soil on the best treated and highest yielding land was 10 per cent richer in phosphorus than at the beginning; while the crops from the unfertilized land removed an amount of phosphorus equal to nearly one-tenth of the total supply in the plowed soil. But a similar general average shows that potassium produced increased crop values worth only 86 cents, or 3 per cent of its cost. What other results should be expected from land containing in the plowed soil of an acre less than 1200 pounds of phosphorus and more than 36,000 pounds of potassium? "Working" the Land If there is one agricultural fact that needs to be impressed upon the American people it is that the farmers of this country have been living, not upon the interest from their investments, but upon their principal; and whatever measure of apparent prosperity they have had has been taken from their capital stock. The boastful statement sometimes made, that the American landowner has become a scientific farmer, is as erroneous as it is optimistic. Such statements are based upon a few selected examples or rare illustrations, and not upon any adequate knowledge of general farm practice. Even to this date almost every effort put forth by the mass of American farmers has resulted in decreasing the fertility of the soil. The productive power of normal land in humid climates depends almost wholly upon the power of the soil to feed the crop; but the American farmer does everything except to restore to the soil the plant food required to maintain permanently its crop-producing power. These ought be to have done, but not to leave the other undone. Thus, tile drainage adds nothing to the soil out of which crops are made, but only permits the removal of more fertility in the larger crops produced on the well-drained land. More thorough tillage with our improved implements of cultivation is merely "working the land for all that's in it." The use of better seed produces larger crops, but only at the expense of the soil. Even the farm manure is so limited and is spread so thinly with manure-spreaders made for the purpose that it adds but little to the soil in comparison with the crops removed and sold in grain and hay as well as in meat and milk. Clover, as commonly produced and harvested, adds little or no nitrogen to the soil. The ordinary high-priced, manufactured, acidulated, so-called "complete" commercial fertilizers, in the small amounts that farmers can afford to use, and do use quite generally in the older states, serve in part as soil-stimulants and commonly leave the land poorer year by year; and if the farmers of the great Corn and Wheat Belts are ever to adopt systems of permanent agriculture, it must be done in the near future, or they too will awake to find their lands impoverished beyond self-redemption. Even in the state of Massachusetts, where a most active campaign has been waged for forty years by the mixed commercial fertilizer interests, urging and persuading many farmers to use their high-priced artificial soil stimulants, very large areas of land are being agriculturally abandoned. Thus the following statement appears in the report of the United States Bureau of Census in regard to the farm land of Massachusetts: "The area of improved land decreased without interruption until in 1910 it was only about one-half what it was in 1880." It should not be forgotten, however, that market gardeners often sell from $100 to $300 worth of produce from an acre and they can well afford to use large amounts of soluble commercial plant food (acid phosphate, nitrates, etc.) as well as animal manures from the cities. Is the Soil Inexhaustible? It is not the fault of the farmer alone that soil-robbing and land ruin have followed his work in America. Neither the average farmer of today nor any of his ancestors received any agricultural instruction in the schools; and the greedy fertilizer agent has persuaded him to buy his patent soil medicine and has taken $100 of the farmer's money and given him in return only $10 worth of what he really needs to buy; and even the Bureau of Soils of the Federal Government has for several years promulgated the erroneous and condemnable theory expressed in the following quotations: "From the modern conception of the nature and purpose of the soil it is evident that it cannot wear out; that, so far as the mineral food is concerned, it will continue automatically to supply adequate quantities of the mineral plant foods for crops." (United States Bureau of Soils, Bulletin No. 55, p. 79.) "There is another way in which the fertility of the soil can be maintained: namely, by arranging a system of rotation and growing each year a crop that is not injured by the excreta of the preceding crop: then when the time comes round for the first crop to be planted again, the soil has had ample time to dispose of the sewage resulting from the growth of the plant two or three years before." (United States Farmers' Bulletin No. 257, p. 21.) "The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that cannot be used up." (United States Bureau of Soils, Bulletin No. 55, p. 66.) And these are only samples of the false teaching spread abroad by this bureau of theorists, even though the congressmen of the United States can not enter the capitol of the nation from any direction without passing depleted and agriculturally abandoned lands. Is it not in order to ask the Congress or the president of the United States how long the American farmer is to be burdened with these pernicious, disproved and condemnable doctrines poured forth and spread abroad by the Federal Bureau of Soils? It is true that these erroneous teachings have been opposed or ridiculed in Europe; they have been denounced by the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists of the United States, and rejected by every land-grant college and agricultural experiment station that has been heard from, including those in forty-seven states; and yet this doctrine, emanating from what should be the position of highest authority, is the most potent of all existing influences to prevent the proper care of our soils. The Values in Land It was Baron von Liebig who taught, both in Germany and in England, that--"it is not the land itself that constitutes the farmer's wealth, but it is in the constituents of the soil, which serve for the nutrition of plants, that this wealth truly consists." And it is in the application of this teaching, completely verified by sixty years of investigation and demonstration by Lawes and Gilbert at Rothamsted, that England has been able to raise her 10-year average yield of wheat to 37-1/2 bushels an acre, while the average for the United States stands at 14 bushels. In Illinois, where the agricultural college and experiment station, the state farmers' institute and the agricultural press have been working in perfect co-operation in teaching and demonstrating the need and value of soil enrichment as well as of seed selection and proper tillage, the 10-year average yield of wheat is already 3 bushels higher and the 10-year average yield of corn is 7-1/2 bushels higher than the averages for the 25-year period ending with 1890, before the definite information from Illinois investigations began to be widely disseminated; and yet it must be confessed that on the average Illinois is producing only 16 bushels of wheat and 36 bushels of corn to the acre, which is less than half a crop, measured by the possibilities of our soil and climate. But what shall we say of Georgia, both an older and a larger state, and with far better climatic conditions for corn, yet with a 10-year average yield of less than 12 bushels of corn to the acre, notwithstanding the yearly expenditure of $20,000,000 for more than 2000 different brands of commercial fertilizers that have been bought by Georgia farmers? The facts are that while some profit can be secured from the use of high-priced mixed commercial fertilizers for cotton with lint at 10 cents a pound, they scarcely pay their cost when used for corn, even at Georgia prices. Working Mind and Muscle But Georgia spends money enough for fertilizers to double the average crop yields of the entire state within a decade if wisely invested in positive soil enrichment in rational permanent systems of agriculture. Why should not the farmers of Georgia and other Southern states be brought to understand and to apply the results of those most valuable investigations conducted by the Louisiana Experiment Station on typical worn upland soil of the South, which show that the use of organic manures produced upon the farm-farm manure, legume cover-crops and cottonseed meal--re-enforced by liberal additions of phosphorus, increased the crop yields from 466 to 1514 pounds per acre of seed cotton, from 9.4 to 31.4 bushels of corn, and from 16.4 to 41.8 bushels of oats, as the averages for nineteen years? This experiment occupied 6 acres of land, but when the results are applied to a 60-acre farm it is found that the gross returns from the untreated land would amount to $595.76, while the net returns from the soil treatment amount to $956.08 annually, both the value of produce and the cost of fertilizer being computed at the prices that were used by the Louisiana Experiment Station. Thus the combined _gross_ earning power of both land and labor is less than $600 a year; while the brain work applied to the improvement of the soil on the same farm brings a net return of more than $950. Once in three years 50 pounds an acre of kainit was also applied. This would contain only 5 pounds of potassium, or less than would be required for one 7-bushel crop of corn. These are the oldest experiments in the United States in which organic manures have been re-enforced with phosphorus, and the only addition suggested for the profitable improvement of this system is ground limestone on acid soils. These results only emphasize the fact that the average farm yields small returns upon the capital and labor invested, but the statement may well be repeated that the intelligent improvement of his soil, in systems of permanent agriculture, is the most profitable business in which the farmer and land owner can engage. AUTHOR'S NOTE The following generous statements are quoted here only because of the hope and earnest desire that those who have read the preceding pages may continue their study of the soil--the foundation of all agriculture--until they master the subject, and make their own the existing knowledge of the fundamental principles of permanent soil fertility. "Another Great Sermon" Have you read it? It is "The Story of the Soil," by Doctor Cyril G. Hopkins, and not since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin has any writer in the world produced a book of such tremendous importance to present and future generations. This sermon is in harmony with 20th century ideals. H. A. McKEENE, _Secretary Illinois State Farmers Institute._ "The Story of the Soil:" from the basis of absolute science and real life. This is an odd book. It has a love story running through it, and it has an index, not a usual appendix to a novel. And yet it is not really a novel, but a scientific book on agriculture. There is just enough story to entice the less willing reader to absorb some of the latest results of soil analysis. The young man of the story visits Virginia and New England, with a view to purchasing a worn-out farm and building it up. He finally buys such a farm, and by the methods carefully explained restores it to fertility and profit. This requires dialogs and letters on scientific husbandry, even in the love-making, and one who reads and digests it will make a better farmer.--_The Independent,_ New York. "The Story of the Soil" has proven an inspiration to many of our California farmers. We wish for the book a widespread circulation.--_California Cultivator._ I doubt if a dozen people in the country would believe that it is possible to write a novel about the soil--these big soil problems handled so ably, so plainly that any person can understand. Here is a book that certainly every man in the land should read.--Editor CHARLES W. BURKETT, _of American Agriculturist and of Ginn & Company's Country Life Education Series._ I must say that I think the book is destined to do more good, stir more thought, encourage more upward effort among the farmers of this country, than any other publication that has yet appeared. It was a happy thought making a human story of it.--Ex-Gov. W. D. HOARD, _Editor of Hoard's Dairyman, Fort Atkinson, Wis._ When Dr. Cyril Hopkins sets out to write a book we know we are in for something unconventional, but this time he has excelled himself in unconventionality, and has essayed a task that no author has attempted for the last sixty years,--to tell the story of the soil in the form of a chronicle. The result is remarkable; a clear account is given of the soil in relation to the crop, and the interest of the subject is broadened by skillfully weaving in the threads of a mild novel. Light reading the book certainly is, as the author intended, but it has depth and permanent value.--DR. E.J. Russell, _Director of the Rothamsted Experiment Station, England,--from "Nature."_ In this book Dr. Hopkins has embodied in the shape of an interesting story, dealing with life on a farm, the science of soil fertility and permanent agriculture. He has demonstrated how the most badly run-down soil can be restored to more than virgin fertility, and with profit in the doing of the work.--Editor J. F. JACKSON, _of the Southern Planter, Richmond, Va._ I wish that every farmer and farmer's family in the land could read "The Story of the Soil," for it gives in a nutshell the results of years of patient study and investigation upon the most vital question that now confronts the farmer: How shall he conserve his soil? I have read it with great pleasure and profit.--FRED L. HATCH, _Farmer, Spring Grove, Ill._ In the form of a story--a real, live, interesting story--the book develops a very large number of highly important facts in connection with soils and farm fertility. We have not seen anything like it before and owing to the hold it gets upon the reader it will be a power in carrying soil and fertility facts to many who would not read the purely scientific works. The author is a leading authority and the statements in the book are reliable.--_Ohio Farmer._ "The Story of the Soil," by Cyril G. Hopkins, Professor of Soils and Crops, University of Illinois, a practical farmer and a scientific soil investigator; a book of 360 pages printed on heavy wove white paper, in strong and durable binding; illustrated with photographic reproductions of actual results secured in profitable systems of permanent soil improvement; with comprehensive index and glossary. Price $1.00 Can also be obtained from the publisher for $1.12 postpaid. 
46995	----	THE RURAL MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY _EVENING FIRE-SIDE_. [Illustration: "Venerate The Plough."] PHILADELPHIA: PUBLISHED BY RICHARDS & CALEB JOHNSON, _No._ 31, _Market Street_. 1820 INDEX. ADDRESS, preliminary 1 ---- Tilghman's to the Philadelphia Agricultural Society 104 Adams, John, original letter from 50 Agriculture, treatise on 13, 54, 90, 129, 165, 211 Arabian horse, account of 31 Ants of Valencia 115 Agricultural education 100 Antediluvian oak 148 Antique nugea ib. Anecdote 149 ---- ib. Air jacket ib. Africa 154 Agriculture, essay on 169 ---- letters on 332, 370 Agricultural memoranda 172, 227, 317, 380 Appraisement act 182 Agricultural discourse 267 Almanacks, origin of 276 American ginseng 380 ---- saltpetre 397 Anecdote of Lycurgus ib. Agriculture, honour paid to, in China 407 Agricultural school at Hofwyl 205 ---- hints 292 Abstracts from Philadelphia Agricultural Society's memoirs 293 Absence of mind 429 American plants and minerals 172 Anecdote 432, 315 African people, the 325 Ants, natural history of 448 ---- wars of 458 Advice and Caution 475 Antidotes to poison, vegetable 474 Anecdote 472 Boerhaave, notice of 78 Barrett, Starr, decease of 116 Backster, George, decease of ib. Botany bay, a view of 141 Bear, sagacity of 147 Boring, legalized 152 Breweries, London 154 Brewing, family machine 248 Benezet, Anthony, anecdote of 273 Bulls, Irish 278 Boots without seams ib. Bones, &c. as manure 216 Bank note exchange 280, 240, 320, 360, 400, 440 Benevolence 394 Books, on 234 Bees, attack by 422 Banks, Sir Joseph 427 Boon, colonel, death of 472 Botany, curious fact in 475 Cotton, rice, tobacco, sugar, wine, statistical account of 23 Coffee plant 27 Cow tree 29 Cattle, Herefordshire, breed of 35 Cowley, Robert, decease of 117 Congress, list of members of 39 Cottage Society, account of 36 Chestnut wood, for dyeing 115 Cobb, Christopher, decease of 117 Cattle, mill feed for 127 Cow, singular account of one 147 Coaches 148 Charity, ladies ib. Chimnies ib. Catwg, wisdom of ib. Combustion, spontaneous 151 Cold, severe 153 Cotton, exportation of, from New Orleans ib. Cameronians, account of the 185 Comfortable discovery 196 Cambricks, flax for 380 Characters, weight of great 394 Cave, Weir's in Virginia 396 Camels 398 Corn pounder, Lincoln 220 Caterpillars 172, 223 Curious phenomenon 231 Cattle, valuable breed of 295 Chester Agricultural Society 306 Cider, on making 339 Cabbages for cattle 340 Culinary poisons, letter on, &c. 348 Correspondents, notice to 120, 160 Carpets, cheap and elegant 453 Cement, Turkey 473 Chemistry applied to industrious economy 475 Corrosive sublimate, gluten an antidote for 471 Council Bluffs 473 Christians, new sect of 474 Desultory Remarker, 45, 81, 121, 161, 201, 244, 283, 321, 361, 401, 441 Domestic economist noticed 78 Deaths, list of, in the principal cities of the United States 117 Deaf and dumb marriage 197 Delametaire, Etienne, death of 236 Death, instance of premonition of 290 Diving bell 120 Domestic manufactures, premiums for 174 Drink, parallel of enjoyment and suffering, 314 Diamond, the 461 Drought 474 Druids 477 Dreaming ib. Disputants 476 Education, agricultural 100 Ellery, William, decease of 116 Economy of Nature 150 Ephraim, my neighbour 262 Education 382 Ellery, Mr. account of 75, 232 Earth, the productions of the 328 Europe, statistics of 352 Edgeworth, Richard L. esq. memoirs of 412 Excursion from Edinburgh to Dublin 444 Economical bread, receipt for making 465 Fig tree, American 28 Fire places, improvement in 37 Franklin, Dr. original letter of 44 Fry, Mrs. account of 126 Flax, on dressing 170 Franklin, Dr. anecdotes of 179 Fulton, Robert, steam-ship 192 Family brewing machine 248 Foreign tongue, the English a 274 Franklin's, Judge, address 366 Farmers, hint to 380 Flemish husbandry 219, 303 Fruit trees, on the oiling of 222 Fruit garden 226 Fruit trees, method of forcing 228 Firmity and Hominy 291 Farmers, encouragement for, on poor land 332 Fuel, economy in 339 French women, 352 Forest trees, on the culture of 223 Fiction, works of 231 Flax for cambricks 280 Fata Morgana 451 Flowers in Holland 453 Food, cheap 457 Fox, Charles J. character of 467 Gas lights 151 Green crops, manures of 168 Glass, method of rendering it less brittle, 195 Grape vine, native 247 Gossip, view of a 262 Glass making, introduction of into France 273 Gimcrackery, on 326 Garrick, anecdote of 355 Ginger 457 Governors, mode of electing 477 Gil Blas and Don Quixote 476 Gourd, Jonah's 465 Grape vine, on the 69, 101 Horses, disease among 30 ---- wild, of the west 31 ---- cheap food for, &c. 246 ---- cure for foundered 227 History, on the study of 49 Holkham sheep shearing 379 Honey, on taking, without destroying the bees 224 Historical sketches 229 Horse, the Arabian 31 Hams, to cure, Westphalia fashion 172 Hartford fair 431 Horse, running 470 Jewish emigrants 76 "Is it peace, Jehu?" 88 Indian jurisprudence 116 Jones, David, decease of 116 Intemperance, expose of the causes of 133 Iron boat 277 Indian corn, its good and bad culture 364 Internal wealth 397 Indian corn, new method of preserving 228 Ice, power of 235 Ivory paper 474 Indian, double-jointed 473 King, the, death of, &c. 145 Letters of a citizen, to his friends in the country 5, 47, 89 Letter to the editors 3 ---- from an Englishman in this country, to his friends at home 11, 51 ---- original, from John Adams 50 ---- ---- from Dr. Franklin 44 ---- On Mrs. Fry's proceedings in Glasgow 126 Light, without heat, or combustion 36 Libraries, public, of Germany 80 Law case 113, 231 Longitude (new theory of) 115 Lane, Thomas, decease of 116 Library, apprentices' 146 London 151 Lapland 152 Leeches 153 Lybia 154 Longevity, extraordinary 155 Law suit 184 Lord Thurlow 277 Locust tree, the 412 Lincoln corn pounder 220 Lycurgus, anecdote of 308 Law work, new 476 Ladies, learned ib. Lands, public 468 Moral plough boy 15, 59 Mummies 79 Miscellany 75, 115, 145, 193, 223, 274, 314, 354, 394, 433, 471 Modes of salutation 115 Mill feed for cattle 127 Mine, silver 150 Missouri, boundaries of 152 Maple Sugar, on the culture of the 164, 218 Manufactures, domestic, premiums for 174 Manner, on the importance of 177 Mortgage act 184 Maine 275 Modern inventions 278 Madeira, island of 387 Missouri, staples of 418 Marivaux 230 Microscope, beauties of the 345 Martial glory 233 Marriages, list of 155, 197 Mammoth cave in Kentucky, account of 464 Nicholson's prize essay 17, 62, 93 Natural curiosity 386 Niagara falls, route to 289 Needle, variation of the 351 Natural history, curious facts in 428 Nunneries in Rome, visit to two 454 Narrow resources, advantages of 462 Otto, Joseph, decease of 117 Oil spring 145 Oil stones 276 Oxen, on the use of, &c. 309 Oranges 227 O'Groat's, John house 430 Oil, cotton seed 470 Political Economics 26 Peruvian bark, singular effect of 29 Pumpkin seed, oil of 30 Pleasure, on the pursuit of 43 Phenomenon! 147 Paint, a newly discovered 149 Potatoes, seed 151 Portugal 153 Poultry houses, method of preserving from vermin 155 Peaches, to dry 173 Plum trees, canker on 174 Poultry 196 Pickle, Frederick, decease of 197 Pennsylvania hospital 276 Prices current 239, 280, 320, 360, 400, 440 Parmesan cheese dairy 376 Punctuality 384 Prompter, the 391, 417, 466 Plaster, remarks on 223 Pear tree, on the 226 Potatoes, young, in the winter 227 Peaches, to preserve from frost 227 People, the African 325 Pompeia, present state of 341 Potatoes 338 Pyroligneous acid, antisceptic power of 456 Population in America, increase of 474 Ruth, story of 125 Ralp, Elizabeth, decease of 116 Russia, 153 Republican manners 175 Rain gauge, state of, at Philadelphia 197, 239, 280, 320, 360, 400, 440, 479 Rhode Island 275 Rivers, machine for crossing 277 Rain, cattle scenting 278 Rice, wild 377 Rags, conversion of, into sugar 224 Ruta Baga, experiments 225 Rural Magazine, a friend of, to its readers 281 Riddle, Baron Smyth's 476 Raindeer 475 Slavery, extension of 6 Sugarcane 27 Savannah, fire in 76 Straw bonnets 80 Seeds (from the plough boy's cottage) 85 Starch, to make 115 Staughton, Don Juan, decease of 116 Sweden, latitude of, trees in 150 Spider, anecdote of ib. Snow, red 152 Smokers, hint to 155 Shoes, wooden scaled 175 Sentiments of an old soldier 179 Shepherd's dog 190 Snow Storm, the 253 Seeds, on 378 Salt, remarks on, as a manure 411 Speech, natural to man 419 Strawberry, improved method of cultivating 222 Spanish inquisition 232 Sullivan, O. Theodore, death of 236 Sugar, domestic, on the increase of, in the United States 330 Steam coach, 419 Subscribers, address to 240, 281 ----, notice to 480 Scottish adventurers 355 Salt mines of Meurthe in France 357 Stone Floors, &c. 421 Sounds, increase of, during night 476 Silk, domestic sewing 476 Seduction 472 Thermometer, state of, at Philadelphia, 40, 240, 280, 319, 360, 400, 440, 479 Trees, new method of inoculating 173 Turkeys, cheap food for 272 Tortoise, land 276 Turkmans, the 383 Turks, account of the 392 Trees, to prevent decay in 223 Turnips, on the culture of 308 Thrift, lessons on 344 Transplanting wheat, on 434 Travels, Burckhardt's 469 Tooth, drawing the wrong 475 United States, congress of the 471 ---- ---- square miles of the 474 Vine dressing, near Vevay 25 Village teacher, 41, 83, 123, 163, 203, 241, 286, 322, 403, 443 Vine grape 173 Variety 363 Vineyards at Vevay 295 Watt, James, Life of 32 Whale fisheries 36 Wool, imports of, into England, 74 Wolf bounty 78 Water, preservation of, at sea 116 Writing, legible 150 Webb, Margaret, decease of 156 Wayne, William, decease of ib. Winchell, J. M. decease of ib. Whimsical conflict, 184 West, Benjamin, death of 232 Whale, surprising vigour of a 310 Wild horses and asses, 313 Workmanship, premiums for 313 Waste of life 343 Wooden soaled shoes 175 Whale, Spitzbergen, zoology of the 423 Wonders of nature 452 Wirt, extracts from 461 Whale fishery, Nantucket 470 Wheat, cutting, before it is ripe 472 Yeast, receipt to make 278 POETRY. The aspen tree 118 Song of gratitude ib. The hamlet ib. Verses written after seeing Windsor castle 119 Finland song ib. Quiet mind ib. Moonlight and calm at sea 120 Go, idle lays! ib. The graves of my fathers 157 Auld age ib. Dreadful hard times 158 Winter 159 To ---- ib. Versification from the book of Ruth ib. The peasant and his wife 160 Agriculture ib. Time 198 Winter evening's amusement for Jane and me ib. Youth and old age ib. Cure for trouble ib. Lines inscribed to M. Wiltshire ib. On intemperance ib. Hope ib. To my wife 200 The Icelander's song ib. To the snow drop ib. The soldier's adieu 279 Evening ib. On the return of the new year ib. The fox and the cat 399 Stanzas, from Barton's poems ib. Memory ib. The deaf and dumb boy 237 On man's dependance on his creator ib. Ode to imagination 238 An invocation to poverty 239 Glory to God ib. Prayer and praise to God ib. Hymn to resignation 318 The beau and the bedlamite ib. Silent worship 319 Paddy M'Shane ib. The braes of Yarrow 358 The ivy ib. To a country girl 359 On prayer ib. On the duke of Bridgewater 438 On the kitten ib. An autumnal tale 439 The Cherokee's grave 478 Hope ib. Angler ib. The mother's lament 479 Church Fellowship, ib. THE RURAL MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY EVENING FIRE-SIDE. [Illustration: "VENERATE THE PLOUGH."] VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA, _First Month_, 1820. _No._ 1. It is not without feelings of anxiety that the editors of the RURAL MAGAZINE issue forth their first number to the public; for they are aware of the lasting effect of a first impression, and that they have now fairly embarked in an adventure, the success and the termination of which are alike uncertain. Diffident however as they are of their own abilities, they have full confidence in the excellence of their plan, and the kindness and assistance of their friends. Of the value of this assistance, the work itself will testify; of the plan which they have marked out, it is but fair that the reader should be informed. A leading object of the _Rural Magazine_ will be to furnish correct views of the science of Agriculture, and the various improvements which are daily made or suggested in it. For this purpose the best and most recent European works on the subject will be consulted, and selections made from the American newspapers that are devoted or friendly to the cause. The best information on the subject will thus be condensed in a form less unwieldy than a newspaper, and more popular than in scientific books. We also expect original papers from our agricultural friends, being confident that there is much in the farming of our neighbouring counties, well worthy of being widely known and imitated. Yet, as we wish our Magazine to have an extensive circulation, and to be interesting not merely to the farmer, but to the citizen and the general reader, a considerable part of every number will be occupied with topics of general literature, selections from approved new publications, particularly Biography and Travels, Essays, and information on scientific subjects; and original miscellaneous communications. To original and well written essays, our pages will always be accessible; and we particularly solicit such as will throw light on the history, antiquities, geography, curiosities, and productions of our own country. With the genuine productions of the Muse we shall always be glad to adorn our pages; but we have no desire to patronize the unfledged attempts at versifying, the lamentable ditties with which the public is weekly besieged, for we hold that in poetry there is no tolerable medium. But to an American and a philanthropist, there are still higher objects to be gained by the circulation of such a paper, than the mere diffusion of agricultural intelligence or general literature. He lives under a system of government which is ideally perfect; and he sees it distorted by the vices and the passions of its subjects. He is the disciple of a religion which breathes good-will to mankind; and on whichsoever side he turns, are to be seen oppression, the darkness of ignorance, self-inflicted wretchedness, and amalgamating corruption. He sees a large portion of the human family held in chains by the very nation that has pronounced all men to be free and equal. The condition of that unhappy race, even when emancipated, excites his deepest commiseration and most anxious fears. He sees the aborigines of our country, a noble race of men, perishing like the beasts of the forest before our approach; and that under every circumstance of wretchedness and degeneracy.--Above all, the great and fatal delusion of war, more bloody than the superstitions of Moloch, still overspreads the world, and renders man the destroyer of man. To all these subjects will the _Rural Magazine_ be watchful and alive; for the editors believe them to be subjects of the deepest interest, and having relation to our highest duties. He who tills his field, or pursues his occupation with diligence and skill, is a deserving and honourable citizen. He who, in addition to this, cultivates his mind, and stores it with useful and ornamental knowledge, raises himself in the scale of being, and adds to his capacities both for happiness and usefulness. But when he adds to this industry, and to these talents and accomplishments, the benevolence of a Christian philanthropist, and renders them subservient to the welfare of his species, he attains to the highest dignity of his nature, and fulfils all the obligations which devolve on him as a citizen and a man. Such are the general outlines of our plan; and as we feel no local or political prejudices, they shall never have place in the discussion of any subject which may appear in our columns. Combining in this manner an agricultural, a literary, and philanthropic journal, we look with confidence to the support of our enlightened fellow citizens; and assure them, that no exertions on our part shall be wanting to fill up the measure which we have meted out, and render the _Rural Magazine_ deserving of their patronage. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. _To the Editors._ You are about embarking in a literary voyage, calculated, if ably and prudently conducted, to subserve the best interests of society. Previously, however, to your taking a final leave of terra firma, and before its shores shall recede from your view, it may be the part of wisdom to contemplate the nature and object of your journey, by the steady lights of experience. The legitimate end of every enterprise of the kind, is to enlighten the understanding, and improve the heart. To produce a result so important, no exertion should be omitted, and no means neglected, to impart a useful interest to your miscellany. Of the truth of these preliminary observations, you are no doubt sufficiently impressed. To please every taste, however fastidious, or to gratify in all respects, the wishes of the million, would be a task altogether hopeless; and which a temperament the most sanguine, would scarcely indulge. However transcendent may be the merit of any periodical journal, and however brilliant its success, should the editor listen at all the avenues of public opinion, his ear will notwithstanding be saluted by many an ungrateful sound. Some readers will complain of what they are pleased to call its dull monotony; while others will lament the sacrifice of what they conceive to be matters of importance, in the pursuit of endless variety.--Those who seek for novelty alone, will sometimes be disappointed; while others will start objections, because sufficient respect is not accorded to the venerated opinions of the olden time. The gay may sometimes meet with nothing to excite the smile of merriment, and the grave and reflecting may regret to find so little solid food for the mind. He, however versatile his talents, who would be a favourite with them all, must first be successful in his chase of the ignis fatuus; or obtain from that fairy region in which the rainbow reposes its brilliant arch upon the earth, its treasures of gold. But if your labours should happily tend to give "energy to virtue, and confidence to truth," you will not fail to gratify the wishes of those whose approbation alone is worth desiring--_the well principled_ of all parties. It has been said, and repeated times without number, that to call a rose by any other name, its odour would be equally delightful. Although the fact may be so, the inference that a name is altogether unimportant, cannot be supported on just principles of deduction. Authors, who have reflected the brightest honours on the cause of literature and virtue by their writings, have encountered a difficulty at the very threshold, in selecting for them an appropriate name. It was after some time anxiously devoted to the subject, by which it would appear _they_ considered it a matter of no trifling consequence, that the pious and elegant _Addison_ adopted that of a Spectator, and the _Sage_ of Litchfield that of a Rambler; under which, with such signal effect, to inculcate the lessons of moral truth. It has been observed by one who knew something of the world, that few circumstances contribute more essentially to general success in life, than an engaging first appearance. So, likewise, the garb in which it appears, as well as the name by which it is distinguished, is more intimately connected with the extensive popularity of a work, intended for the general reader, than at first may be supposed. It is gratifying therefore to find, that both these considerations have had with you their due weight. The _Rural Magazine_ will not only be a repository for articles of miscellaneous interest, but peculiarly so for every thing connected with agriculture, and a country residence. It is to rural scenes, and rural innocence, and rural employments, that man is principally indebted for many of those blessings and enjoyments, which impart a charm to human existence, and lighten its load of cares and sorrows. The man, whoever he is, that has long been confined to a populous city, will at length with _Shenstone_ sicken with the unceasing recurrence of artificial life, and long to breathe the pure atmosphere of the country. He will hail with delight the blue bird, earliest harbinger of spring, and welcome the primrose, eldest daughter of Flora, and contemplate with rapture the vernal season, in which youth, and beauty, and melody, walk hand in hand, over verdant lawns, variegated with flowers, inhaling the zephyrs of health. Then he will witness summer, with brown, vigorous, and manly aspects; and autumn, groaning with her ripe and mellow fruits; succeeded by winter, clothed in storms and glittering with pendent icicles; who notwithstanding a sternness of mood, and a manner somewhat uncourteous, is in the hands of a beneficent Creator the minister of great good to man. The fury of the tempest may rage, and the clattering hail beat against the windows; the driving snows may deform the face of day, and nature assume the appearance of old age and decay: notwithstanding all this, that portion of the circling year, of which we are speaking, will continue to have its positive pleasures. These will be closely and intimately united in the domestic circle, where in charmful confederacy they will be found clustering round the _Evening Fire-side_. Who does not associate with this delightful scene his earliest images of innocent gayety and exquisite enjoyment; in which garrulous old age and lisping infancy mingle their voices, and where carking care never intrudes? But as the hours are hastening on with feathery footsteps, they should likewise minister to the cause of mental and moral improvement. The _farmer_ should cultivate a taste for reading, and store his mind with useful knowledge; and thus become qualified to assume the dignified station to which, in this happy country, he is fairly entitled. He should remember, that the plough has been guided and venerated by the "awful fathers of mankind;" and that a profession, to which _Cincinnatus_ and _Washington_ were zealously and practically devoted, and for which the emperor _Charles_ V. exchanged his sceptre and his crown, must be intrinsically elevated and respectable. It is among the yeomanry of our country that the love of literature, by whom it is already cherished to a creditable degree, should be more widely and universally disseminated. In order to promote an object so desirable, may you succeed in assembling at your _Evening Fire-side_ a cheerful happy group, who, bidding defiance to the rude clamours of the storm without, shall entertain topics of public utility, while cultivating and improving the domestic virtues; and with warm and expansive gratitude ascribe their blessings to a benignant Providence, _from whom alone they are all derived_. E. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. _Letters of a Citizen to his Friends in the Country_. NO 1. The establishment of a periodical work, designed in part for circulation among my agricultural fellow citizens, furnishes an opportunity which I have often desired, to address you. In contemplating the dignity and utility which are combined in the occupations of an American husbandman, in estimating the extent of influence which belongs to his character, and regarding his elevated independence, I have long since been led to the conclusion, that the _Farmers_ of the soil form the basis of the nation's strength, and ought largely to contribute to its ornament. In the occasional communications which I propose to make to you through this medium, I shall adopt a plain, familiar, and candid manner; and endeavour to point not only at those errors which certainly exist, but also attempt to suggest how they can be most effectually removed. "What!" methinks I hear some hardy son of the field exclaim--"who is this that promises to improve our mode of farming?" _A Citizen, forsooth._ Now let us at the threshold understand each other. I do not intend to meddle much, if at all, with your system of agriculture, though I conceive it quite possible for a man who has been born and educated in a _city_, to furnish important hints for the improvement of rural affairs. My purpose is to interest your attention with subjects which may tend to enlarge and elevate your _minds_. It is a lamentable fact, that too little regard is paid to _intellectual cultivation_, among those who till the earth. A well managed farm, supplied with substantial buildings, and under good fence, is creditable to its possessor, and forms a part of the public wealth. Every individual who thus improves his land, not only enriches himself, but should be considered as a benefactor of the commonwealth. Here, unhappily, the energies of the farmer are limited. This is a radical error. With the pecuniary means which his industry has accumulated, he should increase his own intelligence, and confer upon his children the benefits of _substantial education_. I do not admit as truth, what is frequently asserted, that the best examples of morality and virtue are to be met with in the country; for whereever the improvement of the mind is neglected, those ennobling qualities will be rarely found. It is idle to suppose that our intellectual capacities will yield fruits which dignify and adorn our nature, if they be solely devoted to increase our worldly possessions. The plough turns up from the soil no nourishment for the mind, neither do the scythe and sickle prostrate the vices of the heart. Abstractedly, therefore, a man may be as destitute of good principles who lives amidst rural scenes, as he whose pursuits confine him to the busy haunts and contagious influences of the multitude. But I am beginning to lecture before I have an audience. I took up the pen merely to introduce my proposals to your notice. You have a specimen of my way of thinking. If you like it, so much the better; if not, I cannot promise to serve a more palatable dish--but am always your friend, CIVIS. [The subject of the Missouri state bill, involves, in our opinion, an agricultural question, important to the last degree to the farmers of America:--Whether that great country west of the Mississippi, compared with which all the United States are small, shall, in future ages, be dotted over with pleasant villages and comfortable farm houses, and cultivated by the industrious owners of the soil, each vieing with his neighbour in beautifying the face of nature: or be blotted and defaced by innumerable wretched habitations of miserable slaves, with here and there, on distant eminences, the _lone_ mansions of their masters. Whether that great country, now left rich by nature, shall be converted into barren wastes by continued exhausting crops of tobacco and Indian corn, without one shovel-ful of manure to invigorate the expiring soil, as has been the case in some of the fine districts of Virginia and Maryland; or whether it shall be covered with luxuriant fields of wheat, rich meadows and innumerable herds.--Viewing this great national question, so intimately connected with our favourite subject, we feel the more interest by giving an insertion to the following communication of our correspondent SANDIFORD.]--_Ed._ FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. _Extension of Slavery._ It is the great and distinguishing feature of our free government, that it is built upon the eternal principles of justice and rectitude. The passions and the interests of its subjects or administrators may pervert its original design, and wield the power it confers to the purposes of oppression or licentiousness. So long, however, as we have access to the charter of our constitution, the great original fountain of our laws, we may renew or purify those streams which have become choked up or polluted. It forms a perpetual and unerring standard by which to judge of principles and policy; and whatever measures are found wanting in its scale, may safely be pronounced to be unwise and unsound. The flux and change of opinions and interests, the perpetual encroachments of wealth and power, the decay of old prejudices and jealousies, and the rise of new ones, wear away continually the old landmarks, and imperceptibly give to our institutions a new aspect and new bearings. While we admit this flexibility to be in a certain measure necessary for the conservation of peace and union, we must steadily insist upon its being limited by the great leading features of the constitution, and that reference should constantly be had to first principles, as to a fountain of life and strength. Never, surely, has there been a question agitated, in which those principles were so deeply at issue, as in the one which is now before the American people. I need scarcely say, that I allude to the Missouri state bill, and to the introduction of slaves beyond the Mississippi. This subject has been ably and repeatedly discussed. A universal expression of sentiment has gone forth from the people of the northern and middle states, and it has awakened powers of eloquence and argument that have seldom been surpassed. That first burst of emotion has subsided; and now that the question is upon the point of being settled, it may not be altogether useless to recall the attention of the public to the subject. That slavery is a crime against God and nature, and that its existence in our free country is a most dangerous and lamentable evil, cannot be doubted. Our only apology as a nation for its existence, is, that we found it among us, and that an overruling necessity obliged us to leave its extirpation to the hand of time and experience. The august founders of our republic have not once named it in the constitution, as if they were unwilling that so foul a name should stain the purity of our escutcheon, as if it were a crime against humanity too execrable to be uttered. They looked forward to a period when it should cease and be forgotten, and made ample provision for its future annihilation. Their solemn declaration to the world, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain _unalienable_ rights, and that among these are life, _liberty_, and the pursuit of happiness," had otherwise been the worst of mockeries. The words of the constitution, "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states _now existing_ shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress, prior to the year 1808; but a tax may be imposed on such person not exceeding ten dollars for each person,"--clearly show, beyond the possibility of a cavil, that the right to legislate concerning slaves is vested in the general government, and that the convention was fearful that the attempt to exercise it might be made, before the southern states were prepared for any laws upon the subject. The Congress has, in fact, uniformly exercised this right in all its laws for the government of the new states and territories. It prohibited the importation of slaves and their migration into the northwestern territory. The states which ceded the territory south of the Ohio, and east of the Mississippi, were fully aware of this power of Congress; and they ceded it with certain stipulations in favour of the slave holder. Yet even over the states which were formed in this region, has Congress exercised its power, and secured to the slave the right of trial by jury and of the habeas corpus. All these laws were passed without exciting any suspicion that Congress was transcending its powers in thus clogging the constitutions of the new states. They were regarded as decent and becoming in a government founded in justice and freedom, "as extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty." That northwestern territory offered no inducement to the slave holder, or to a slave agriculture. Now, however, the case is altered. A province adapted to the cultivation of cotton and tobacco, and in obtaining which the government made no stipulations in favour of slavery, claims to be elevated to the rank of a state. It is a desirable situation for the planters, and holds out from its situation and fertility a golden prospect. They claim accordingly to be admitted there, with their slaves; and a clamour is raised because the people of the United States are unwilling further to extend slavery--to sacrifice the principles of our republic upon the altar of avarice. The pretence--it scarcely deserves the name of argument--is, that such restriction would be _unconstitutional_, _oppressive_, and _inexpedient_. It is UNCONSTITUTIONAL!--The refutation is a part of our history, and is written in the pages of our statute book. It is OPPRESSIVE! It would exclude the southern states from sharing in the benefits of these new settlements. Are not the lands open to all, and disposed of at public sale? They can only be made valuable, it is true, by incessant labour, under severe privations. But this the hardy yeomanry of the eastern and middle states are willing to endure for the sake of independence and an establishment for their families. We see them accordingly in the van of our empire, subduing the forest and filling the wilderness with the busy sounds of industry and contentment. Are the slave holders of the south a privileged order, that these labours would demean them? Are they oppressed by being placed on an equality with their brethren of the north, who leave behind them all the artificial distinctions and luxurious indulgences of society? Are not their arms and limbs as capable of labour, and their bodies of fatigue? Where then is the inequality and the oppression? A citizen of a slave holding state, at home, and under his state laws, may be a petty monarch; and he is apt to fancy that he derives the power from an inherent birth-right. But out of his state, and from under its laws, he is an individual unit, a mere citizen of the United States; and can claim no privilege which is not granted to every American, or which is opposed to the spirit and intent of the constitution. That constitution pays no respect to persons. It does not recognise the existence of slavery; and the petition to admit it in the new states, is a glaring mockery of its character. It has been contended, that after the state was organized, the inhabitants might assemble in convention, and alter the constitution in this respect. Such an assertion betrays the grossest ignorance of the true principles of the Union. Our government is emphatically a _compact_, originally between the people; and since then, between Congress as their representative, and the new members. It is binding on both sides, and the terms of admission are, that Congress approves of the constitution which the state has formed. Its power of rejection, it is true, is limited to certain points. But upon those points that power is absolute; and amongst them, without a shadow of doubt, is _slavery._ The state which, having accepted of a limitation to its power in this respect, should presume to alter it, would set that power at defiance. But the restriction is INEXPEDIENT! And what is the amount of inexpediency? Some thousands of dollars less to the public revenue--some hundreds of thousands less in the sale of public lands! Forbid it, Justice! forbid it, the Genius of the Constitution! that we should barter our free inheritance for a mess of pottage; that the countrymen of Washington should coolly calculate the profits of a desertion of principle. But not only is the restriction not inexpedient, it is called for by the clearest dictates of sound policy. We are now entering upon a region of almost boundless extent and fertility, destined at some future day to be the abode of millions of human beings. Upon the decision of the present question, in all probability, will it depend, whether that population will be a free and industrious race, or whether the great majority will be bound in the chains of slavery, stinting the growth and paralyzing the energies of the community. If it be fairly decided that slavery shall not exist to the west of the Mississippi, we shall soon see the rich vallies of that territory occupied by industrious farmers, proving what is no doubt the fact, that freemen can cultivate the staple commodities of that country more advantageously than slaves. Let us for a moment contrast the opposite pictures which are here presented. The privileged order of the southern states have, it is true, every temporal blessing they can desire, save that of security. But their hordes of slaves--a million of labourers, chained down to cheerless and incessant toil, shrouded in utter intellectual darkness, cut off from all that ennobles and adorns existence, stationary amidst the general march of improvement, and sold and driven about like herds of cattle;--is there not in this picture, retouch it and soften it as you may, subject for bitter regret? and is there nothing to cheer the heart of the patriot in the reverse? A country studded with villages and farms; a smiling and contented population; intelligent, virtuous, and industrious, and the strength and the pride of the nation, and becoming in its turn the hive for fresh swarms of emigrants. This is no exaggerated or romantic representation. These opposite conditions exist in our country; and Congress have now to decide which of them shall give its features to the western valley of the Mississippi. But it is from motives of humanity and security, say some, that we plead the extension of slavery. The evil will thus be diluted and lessened. Admirable politicians! profound economists! A poisonous plant has overgrown one of your fields, and you seek to extirpate it by spreading the seeds throughout your possessions! A concealed fire is smouldering in your house, and you would prevent its conflagration by scattering the embers upon your neighbours' dwellings! It is not thus that slavery is to be mitigated or done away. Confine slavery within its present limits, and we may then hope to see it extinguished. We are young, and may outgrow it. There is a great body of active and enlightened philanthropy in the southern states; and it may yet devise means for its extinction. Build around it a circumvallation of freemen, and you render impotent its fearful threatenings. But give to it that principle of indefinite increase which our white population derives from the inexhaustible extent of our country, and you spread it over the face of the Union; you clothe it a hundred fold with terrors; you render it coeval with our empire. But not only this. The slave trade from Africa to the United States will never be abolished, if we allow of slavery to the west of the Mississippi. So great will be the value of slaves along the rich bottoms of that territory, that no laws, however severe, can put a stop to their importation. That accursed traffic is even now carried on with impunity, and to an incredible extent. Fifteen thousand victims have been worse than immolated at its shrine within a single year. With greater temptations to engage in it, in more remote situations, and along an unguarded frontier, no human power can altogether check it. Nor will it be merely a foreign slave trade that this extension will encourage. An internal traffic will take place. The poorer and more healthy states will become the breeders for the new and unhealthy districts; and it will happen as it has ever done, that the pursuit of a trade, wicked and cruel in itself, will entail the commission of crimes, the violation of every moral law, _the begetting of offspring for the purposes of an unholy traffic_. A deadly taint will spread over the morals and character of our country, which not all our professions of liberty can purify; and if there be any prophecy in history, the rights of these long degraded beings will one day be vindicated with awful retribution. I have treated this subject with warmth; with more warmth, perhaps, than has served my cause. But I cannot think without indignation of the attempt which is now making to extend the empire of slavery--a despotism in the bosom of a republic; and which I believe to be pregnant with the most disastrous consequences. It is necessary that the public mind should be kept awake on the subject; and I cannot refrain from lifting up my feeble voice on the occasion. One word more, and I have done. The division in Congress upon this subject, has been truly called a geographical division. The members from the south, with scarcely an exception, voted for the introduction of slaves. Yet from the same quarter do we hear of splendid schemes for colonization and emancipation, for eradicating slavery, and pouring the light of civilization and religion upon ravaged and benighted Africa. Many of the most conspicuous actors in this great scheme of benevolence, are the men who have exerted all their talents upon the floor of Congress to increase the evils over which in another place they mourn; to sink us still deeper in the dangers into which they have confessed we are plunged. What are we to think, Gentlemen, of the purity of your motives, or the sincerity of your professions? Is it that your fears, and not your benevolence, impel you; that you wish to rid yourselves of the free blacks, and rivet and extend your dominion over the slaves? If these imputations are false, show yourselves at least to be consistent. Do not by your own act extend the evils you so eloquently regret. Give us that proof of the sincerity of your benevolence (the only one we can believe) that it is stronger than your sense of private interest. Prove to us that you are honestly bent upon exterminating slavery, and there are thousands who now stand aloof, that will join you with all their strength in any scheme that can effect it; thousands, whose daily prayer is, that the mercy of an all-just Providence may avert from our country the calamities of a servile war and a divided empire. We ask of you no extravagant or impracticable scheme of emancipation; We do not wish to see your Helots invested suddenly with privileges which they would only abuse; nor do we look _for your relief and theirs_, to any other means than those which time and cautious experience may suggest. But we beseech you, as you are sincere in your plans of colonization, as you value the fair fame of our common country, as you regard the security and prosperity of all future generations--to stay the plague of slavery from spreading, and to give to the inhabitants of the Missouri a charter which shall not disgrace the great principles of our revolution, nor _allow man to be the tyrant of his fellow man_. SANDIFORD. FAMILIAR LETTERS _From an Englishman in this country to his Friend at home_. (Communicated for the Rural Magazine.) No. I. PHILADELPHIA, _Sept_. 8, 1819. My dear G.--You will perhaps be surprised at my dating this letter from this place, but I shall shortly explain to you the reason. We arrived in perfect safety at Baltimore on the 6th inst., after a very pleasant passage; not unusually short, but rendered exceedingly _comfortable_ (that dear English word, although they have here naturalised it, as they do almost everything that comes from us,) by the kind, social, and attentive manners of Capt. ----. To give you a detail of all the circumstances of our voyage would be unnecessary. I do not wish to nauseate you with the revolting particulars of a landsman's initiation to the ocean. We had not that humiliation to undergo which would have been our lot if the equinoctial had unfortunately crossed our path; but we had enough to inspire us with a perfect sense of our own inferiority to, and dependence on that Power that can rule the winds and the waves. However, our dear Mrs. and Miss ---- were so much affected by the motion of the ship, and other associations, that we enjoyed very little of their company. The first appearance of land, even that land, which since my recollection has been supposed to be inhabited by spirits, hostile in late, although similar in early habits to ourselves, was greeted with most sincere satisfaction. That land was inhabited by Christians, by men like ourselves, derived from the same origin, boasting of equal laws adopted from our code in general principles, and operating like our own upon freemen. We were landed in consequence of an unfavourable wind, at Norfolk; where, although we staid but a few minutes, I was sorrowfully convinced that all the inhabitants of the land I was visiting were not freemen. A public sale of blacks was about to take place, and my first introduction to the country I had so joyfully pictured, was associated with feelings to which I had till then been a stranger. Poor wretches, thought I, as they passed badly clothed and manacled through the streets, you give an alien a strange idea of the consistency of your rulers, and a lamentable evidence of the truth of the political axiom, that those who feel power, forget right. As I shall probably visit Norfolk in common with the other maritime towns of Virginia, before I return, sufficient interest has been excited in my mind to enable me to assure you, that I shall give you further details of the situation of that unfortunate class of human beings. From Norfolk our voyage to Baltimore surpassed all my former ideas of rapidity. We passed up to Baltimore in so short a space of time, and in _such_ a steam-boat, that I dread your incredulity were I to give you particulars. Let it suffice that _but a few hours_ brought us to Baltimore, reputed to be in commercial importance the fourth city in the Union. You know it was my first object to visit the respectable gentlemen in this place to to whom I have letters, and most of whom have at one time or another done business with our house. But on the instant of my arrival I was utterly confounded by the intelligence that the yellow fever, that scourge of America, and so justly dreaded by all Europeans, but more particularly by the inhabitants of northern climates, had made its appearance at a place called Fell's Point, either in the vicinity of the city, or forming one of the suburbs; I was in too much consternation to learn which. Indeed I was so much annoyed by the continual reports of the _yellow fever_ at _the Point_, and what they called the _bank fever_ in the city, that I could hardly tell where I was, or what I was to do.--Luckily, a very good looking gentleman, seeing my perplexity, and imagining--for I cannot tell how else he happened to fix upon me--that I was an Englishman, told me that I could not get out of the city of Baltimore too soon, because it had had the curse of Cain upon it ever since the celebrated mob business (that we heard our Maryland friend R. speak about) some years ago, that it had the plague at the Point, and the yellow or white fever, he did not care which, at the other end of the town. This would have been news almost enough to frighten our lamented friend General R. (if he ever could have known fear;) and instead of visiting the spot where he terminated his brief career in this world, which I intended to have done on the moment of my landing, as performing the last pious act of duty to his memory that affection demanded, I determined to fly from this new enemy with almost as much precipitation as the Yankees (by _our_ official accounts) fled from our departed hero in his various incursions in the states, adjoining the waters of the Chesapeake. I ordered a post chaise _instanter_. The servant replied, "it went before day, sir." Is it possible, said I, that at a house frequented as this is, (Mr. G's.) there is but one post chaise. Get me one at any rate, I returned in a pretty quick tone, and have my baggage put to it immediately. "Why, master," rejoined George, (I thought the better of him for his name, and perhaps, novice as I am, because he was black) "there is no other post chaise till to-morrow; but the steam-boat will go at five o'clock, master, if that will suit you." It wanted but a few minutes of that hour. I leaped into a hackney coach, (which by the way I was surprised to see in such a new country, unless it had been moved by steam) and ere the hour had struck, was safe on board a very commodious vessel, furnished with every thing to make a night passage pleasant. It is upwards of one hundred miles from Baltimore to Philadelphia, by land, even by their lately improved roads; yet, with no interruption except being transported some sixteen or twenty miles over good roads, in very bad stage coaches, we enjoyed ourselves in our births till I was awakened before nine the next morning, by the steward, who informed me we were at the wharf, in the place of our destination. I forthwith repaired, as my previous instructions directed, to the large and commodious hotel of Mr. R.; where I met with several of my old friends, and some quondam fellow-voyagers, who, influenced by business, or perhaps the same instinctive dread of yellow fever with myself, had found their way to this city.--Here, my dear W., I still remain. In the twenty-four hours that have scarcely elapsed since my arrival, I have seen nothing distinctly; for after the monotony of a sea voyage, and the dizziness consequent on an exchange from the ocean to _terra firma_, some few days must be allotted to repose. _Treatise on Agriculture_. SECT. I. On the Rise and Progress of Agriculture. The origin of this art is lost among the fables of antiquity, and we have to regret, that in the present state of knowledge, we are even ignorant of the _time_, when the plough was invented, and of the _name_ and _condition_ of the inventor. When therefore we speak of the beginning of the art, we but allude to certain appearances which indicate its existence, and the employment given by it to the minds, as well as to the hands, of mankind. Such were the artificial canals and lakes of Egypt. Menaced at one time by a redundancy of water, and at another by its scarcity or want, the genius of that extraordinary people could not but employ itself, promptly and strenuously, in remedying these evils, and eventually, in converting them into benefits; and hence it was, that when other parts of the world exhibited little more of agricultural knowledge than appertains to the state of nature, imagined by philosophers, the Egyptians thoroughly understood and skilfully practised _irrigation_, that most scientific and profitable branch of the art.[1] Like their own Nile, their population had its overflow, which colonized Carthage and Greece, and carried with it the talent and intelligence of the mother country. The former of these states, though essentially commercial, had its _plantations_, and so highly prized were the agricultural works of Mago, that when Carthage was captured, they alone, of the many books found in it, were retained and translated by the Romans. A similar inference may be drawn from the history of Greece; for assuredly that art could not have been either unknown or neglected, which so long employed the pen and the tongue of the great Xenophon.[2] It must however be admitted, that of the ancient nations, it is only among the Romans, that we find real and multiplied evidences of the progress of the art; _facts_, substituted for _conjectures_ and _inferences_. Cato, Varro, Columella, Virgil and Pliny, wrote on the subject, and it is from their works we derive the following brief exposition of Roman husbandry. [1] The best practical illustration of this opinion is found in the valley of the Po--where "every rood of earth maintains its man." [2] Xenophon wrote several treatises on husbandry, and gave public lectures on it at Scillonte, whither a weak and wicked government had banished him. The plough, the great instrument of agricultural labour, was well known and generally used among them; it was drawn exclusively by horned cattle. Of fossile _manures_, we know that they used _lime_, and probably _marle_,[3] and that those of animal and vegetable basis, were carefully collected. Attention to this subject, even made part of the national religion; the dunghill had its god, and Stercutus, his temple and worshippers. Their corn crops were abundant; besides _barley_ and _far_,[4] they had three species of _wheat_; the _robus_ or red--the _siligo_ or white--and the _triticum trimestre_, or summer wheat; they had besides millet, panis, zea (Indian corn) and rye, all of which producing a flour convertible into bread, were known by the common name of _frumentum_. Leguminous crops were frequent; the lupin in particular was raised in abundance, and besides being employed as a manure,[5] entered extensively into the subsistence of men, cattle and poultry. The cultivation of garden vegetables was well understood and employed many hands; and meadows, natural and artificial, were brought to great perfection. Lucern and fenugrec were the basis of the latter, and peas, rye and a mixture of barley, beans and peas, called _farrago_, were occasionally used in the stables as green food. Their flocks were abundant, and formed their first representatives of wealth, as is sufficiently indicated by their word _pecunia_. Vines and olives, and their products (wine and oil) had a full share of attention and use. The rearing of poultry made an important part of domestic economy, nor were apiaries and fish ponds forgotten or neglected. [3] For the first part of this assertion we have the authority of Pliny; for the latter, the practice of their colonies both in Gaul and Britain. [4] Of this last, there were three kinds, neither of which is now cultivated. [5] The lupinus albus of Linneus: "many other vegetables are used for this purpose, particularly the _bean_, but do not answer as well as the _lupin_; when this is heated in an oven and then buried, it forms the most powerful of all manures." T. C. L. Simonde. _Tableau de L'agriculture Toscane_. If we pause for a moment, to glance at the civil institutions of this wonderful people, we discover how soon and how deeply it entered into their policy, not merely to promote, but to dignify agriculture and its professors.[6] When Cicero said, that "nothing in this world was better, more useful, more agreeable, more worthy of a free man, than agriculture;"[7] he pronounced, not merely his own opinion, but the public judgment of his age and nation. Were troops to be raised for the defence of the republic? The _tribus rusticus_ was the privileged nursery of the legions![8] Did exigencies of state require a general or dictator? he was taken from the _plough_! Were his services rewarded? this was done not with ribbands or gold, but by a donation of _land_.[9] [6] Tanus and Numa were deified for services rendered to agriculture. [7] Cicero de officiis. L. 2. [8] This continued till the time of Marius. [9] As much as he could plough in a day. With such support from public opinion, it was not to be supposed that the laws would be either adverse or indifferent to this branch of industry. We accordingly find the utmost security given to the labours of the husbandman;[10] no legislative interposition between the seller and buyer, neither forced sales--nor limitation of prices--and a sacredness of boundaries never disturbed;[11] fairs and markets multiplied and protected against invasion or interruption,[12] and highways leading to these every where established, and of a character to call forth benedictions and admiration.[13] [10] To cut or destroy in the night the crop of his neighbour, subjected the Roman to death. [11] Terminus was among their gods. [12] Assemblies of the people on days designated for fairs, and on subjects other than those of trade, were not lawful. [13] The Appian way, yet remains the wonder and reproach of modern times. Nor were these regulations confined to the proper territory of Rome. What of her own policy was good, she communicated to her neighbours; what of theirs was better, she adopted and practised herself. Her arts and arms were therefore constant companions. Wherever her legions marched, her knowledge, practices, and implements followed; and it is to these we are to look for the foundation of modern agriculture in Italy, France, Spain, &c. _[Albany Argus_. (To be continued.) _The Moral Plough Boy_. "In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand." The words of our motto were probably addressed by an Eastern monarch to those of his subjects, who followed husbandry, and to whom the importance of early rising was the greater, as the climate was excessively warm, and the stoutest labourer found the noon-tide heat too powerful for the energies of his frame to encounter.--This is the case in most of the oriental climes, where the morning and the evening are improved by the cultivator of the soil, as well as the man of business of every class, cast or profession.--The middle or hottest part of the day is, in those countries, given to ease and relaxation; and the charms of conversation, and the sweets of refreshment, are then the substitutes for toil and care. But the time thus spent is not lost, because they attend strictly to the advice of the sacred moralist, and make it up by the fidelity of their morning and evening labours in the field, the workship or the counting-room. Besides the earth is there more prolific than in colder climes, like ours, and to less labour yields a greater supply, a more abundant harvest. But abundantly as the earth yields her products, beneath an oriental sky, still it was there that man was first taught by his Maker, that she would not yield them without the sweat of the human brow. Implicit obedience was the first law given to our progenitors in Eden, as the condition of enjoying life without labour, of being surrounded by the perpetual verdure of spring, and regaled by the never-dying fragrance of its odours: But this fair condition violated, and they were doomed to know, that fruitful as the earth had come from the hands of its Creator, they should cultivate it with toil, and care, and anxiety, before it should yield them the means of enjoyment and subsistence. But for one fatal mistake, they would never have been called upon to sow their seed in the morning, and at evening to watch over it with a careful hand. We have seen then, that the first Plough Boys were obliged to work early and late; and their successors in the same climes, are still subjected to the same diurnal labour. But the American Plough Boy enjoys a milder clime, and may perhaps think himself less obliged to rise with the dawn of day, or pursue his labours with the declining sun. He may perhaps flatter himself that the morning may be spent at a neighbouring bar-room, and the evening at a shooting-match or a horse-race, and the day still afford time enough for all the labour that he may have to perform. But this is, indeed, an error the most fatal to his present, as well as future happiness. The mid-day beams of the sun are not so fierce on the hills or vales of America, as on the plains of Asia, where our first parents were doomed to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. But they are still fierce enough to make the PLOUGH BOY feel their enervating effects, and to impress upon his physical as well as mental frame the necessity and importance of _sowing his seed in the morning_, and of extending to it the _vigilance of his hand in the evening_. If our American Plough Boys would, one and all, adopt with energy and perseverance this injunction of oriental wisdom, how different would be the face of our country, in many places, from what it now is! How many orchards would be planted; how many fruit trees, of every kind, would be seen growing in beauty and luxuriance, where now the eye of the traveller, or sojourner, is obliged to rest upon nought but wilds and weeds? How many fields would be ploughed and sown, and cultivated with success, which now lie waste, and barren as the deserts of Arabia. How many cattle, and domestic animals of every description, fit for the use of man, would be seen thriving and healthy, awaiting a profitable market, where now there are none, or those whose sickly and squalid appearance, bespeaks the indolence and neglect of their owners! How many substantial rail fences would be erected, where there is now scarcely a brush bulwark against the encroachments of man or beast? How many neat stone walls would take the place of rail fences, and remain as lasting monuments of the virtue of their owners--for _industry_ and _virtue_ are synonimous in agricultural life! How many ditches would be seen running through our swamps, and yielding or restoring to wholesome vegetation, those nurseries of wild, unprofitable, and poisonous plants; whose dark, damp shades are not only lost to agriculture; but send forth daily their pestilential vapours, spreading disease and death among the Plough Boys! It is not the industrious Plough Boy who will feel the application of these remarks. He will take care that his fields and his fences, his flourishing fruit-trees, his overflowing cribs and barns, and his fat cattle, plump and smooth as a turtle-fed alderman, shall prove to the world that he never fails to attend to the admonition of our motto. But it is to the slothful that this short essay is addressed. Pluck up the weeds, and the useful plants will take care of themselves. Reform the indolent, and the industrious will find a new spur to exertion. Ye careless and slothful Plough Boys, then, be advised by a friend. Cast off the sin of idleness, which so easily besets you, and imitate your industrious neighbours. Resolve for the future, _in the morning to sow your seed, and in the evening to withhold not your hand_; and you will soon find, that the blessings of Heaven await those who deserve them; and that health, prosperity, and a quiet conscience, are the never-failing rewards of virtuous industry. H. H. Jr. _[Plough Boy_. Mr. Nicholson's Prize Essay. _On a Rotation of Crops, and the most profitable mode of collecting, preserving, and applying Manures_. (Communicated to the Albany County Agricultural Society.) Some soils are peculiarly adapted for the growth of particular plants, and in such case many successive yearly growths of them may be raised, without manure, and without material diminution of product. We have known an instance of 14 good crops of wheat raised successively on the same ground; another of 18 crops of oats; others of at least 10 of barley, and nearly of 20 rye: But these were peculiar soils; and although this sameness of culture was found successful, no inference is therefore to be drawn that it was the most profitable, or that such soils would not eventually tire of their favourite crops, and then be found exhausted and unfit for others. Generally speaking, we conceive that one of the most important points in husbandry is a judicious rotation of such crops as are most profitable for culture, and at the same time best adapted for the particular soils which are to be cultivated. Lands seem naturally to require a change of growths. Where the oak has disappeared, after it had lifted its head to the springs of ages, another oak will not naturally rise, but some other tree. Instances have been known of lands covered solely with trees of deciduous growth, where the knots of the pitch pine were still to be found; a proof that pine was once a tenant of the soil. In the southern states, where lands have been exhausted with injudicious cropping, and then thrown out to common, they soon become covered with growths of trees different from those they originally bore. Some plants are so unfit for long continuance in any particular place that they are endowed with migratory powers, either by their winged seeds, which are wafted abroad by the winds; by their roots, by which they change their places of growth beneath the surface; or by their vines, by which they travel above ground, and thus locate themselves in different situations. Of the first description are the varieties of the thistle, the milk-weed, and the fire-weed; of the second, the potato and some other bulbous rooted plants; of the third, the straw-berry, the black-berry, the different species of the gourd tribe. The stalks of erect plants fall when they ripen, and thus the seed reaches the ground at a distance from the roots which produced them. There seems, indeed, to be generally a disposition in the earth to require changes in the plants it nourishes, in order that it may impart the food that is best adapted for each; and Providence, in his infinite wisdom, has endowed these while growing in a state of nature, with such properties as are best calculated to effect the changes. Let the cultivator, therefore, study nature, and follow her dictates, if he wishes either success or applause in his employment. In regard to changes of crops, a general rule has been recommended of alternate growths of leguminous and culmiferous kinds, and of green crops and grain crops; but perhaps it would be quite as philosophical to insist upon alternate growths of fibrous, and tap-rooted plants; the former deriving their food from the surface of the earth, the latter from greater depths. But the value of crops, and the expense of raising each, should be duly estimated in making selections for rotations. Let us say, for instance, that the average crops of wheat, barley, and Indian corn, at their greatest extent, may average 50 dollars in value to the acre, after the grain is ready for market; crops of rye, oats and peas, not more than two thirds of this amount; buck-wheat, considerably less. From lands suitable for ruta baga, or mangel wurzel, it would seem that from five to six hundred bushels to the acre may be expected with good culture; which at 18 cents per bushel, a price certainly not beyond the proportionate value we have just given to the grain crops, will average about a hundred dollars to the value of an acre. The entire expense of either of these crops of roots, when ready for use, is not essentially greater than the expense incurred in producing grain crops; of course, it must be evident that these afford from 30 to 50 dollars an acre less of clear profit than a crop of either of the roots first mentioned. With a proper application of the requisite quantity of manure to ruta baga, it may be successfully grown on almost any dry soil, when well and deeply mellowed, from the sandy to the deep rich loams. Soils of the latter description are best adapted for mangle wurzel. Either of these roots, when steam boiled, and especially with the addition of some meal, will answer all the purposes for which grain is used for feeding cattle of all sorts, from the horse down to the hog. Even stage horses, which, from the severity of their labour, require the most nourishing food, have been kept in England on hay and steam-boiled ruta baga. Mr. Cobbett says, "a hog of a good sort may be sufficiently fatted with this root when steam-boiled." Allowing, what we believe can hardly be admitted, that a bushel of oats contains as much nutriment as three of this root, still it is evident that the usual product of one acre of it will go as far in keeping horses as four of oats. Neither of these root crops require any considerable expenditure in seed, and on this account, if on no other, they are preferable to crops of the potato and of the Jerusalem artichoke, which in the article of seed are perhaps the most expensive of any whatever. We however consider crops even of these roots more profitable than those of grain, and particularly the potato, when judiciously cultivated in climates most suitable for its growth. For the various uses of this root for culinary purposes it stands indeed without a rival. In point of profit we would also give to the carrot, the parsnip, and the onion, a preference to crops of grain; but the soils well adapted for them is more limited, and their culture is more expensive; and although they should form a part of the products of the farm we cannot recommend them as being in all instances proper for a judicious rotation of crops. The common turnip, and the cabbage, are also entitled to attention. The pumpkin is as nutritious as the same weight of any root or vegetable whatever, and its culture is cheap; but whether its product, in weight, can be made to compete with that of roots, is a matter of which we are not informed. If 15 tons to the acre could be usually obtained of this species of gourd, we should be induced to pronounce the crop, in point of profit and use, unrivalled as a preparative for a crop of winter grain. The crop would be found among those which are least expensive in seed, in culture and in gathering; none would occasion less exhaustion of soil, nor require less for manure, as a little gypsum to the hills, or drills, will be found to have a powerful effect on its growth, but of its more complete cultivation we shall presently speak. In Pennsylvania, and farther to the south, a successful mode of culture has been put in practice of growing Indian corn and potatoes in alternate rows or drills, and in this way about a sixth more of product in the aggregate, is obtained from the ground, than if these two sorts of crops were cultivated separately. Such is found to be the fact, and the reason for it seems to be that each crop has, in this way, more space given for the extension of its roots in search of its favourite food, and each has the like room above ground for deriving from the air the nutriment that is most suitable. Corn, in particular, it is well known, is liable to much injury, if planted too closely. There is, indeed, a variety of cases where this mingling of growths is found very advantageous, and whenever we shall venture to recommend the practice, it will be founded on a conviction of its utility. There are also some instances, even in this northern latitude, in which two crops may be had in a season from the same ground, and any case where it may be advisable shall be duly noted. It should farther be observed that in suggesting what may be deemed the most suitable changes of crops, no reference will be had to the actual state of farming among us, but merely what the state of farming ought to be; and in pursuance of this course, we shall, in a great measure, discard the idea, too long prevalent in this country, that we should make the most of our labour, not the most of our land; we shall, on the contrary, insist that, generally speaking, making the most of our lands, under a proper course of husbandry, is the right way to realize the most from our labour. We shall therefore begin with the most usual soil of this country, the dry, arable lands, which are usually suited for a variety of crops. Of the stiff clays, the hard gravels, and light sands, soils which abound but little here, we shall speak in particular. In ploughing we shall advise that the usual depth be about six inches, or about a third deeper than our farmers commonly plough: but that the depth should sometimes be greater than this, and sometimes less. We shall also insist on the ploughing being done in the most perfect manner, and not in the slight way too often practised; and we shall farther premise that the plan of culture we recommend is necessarily connected with the business of the dairy, to greater or less extent, and with that of the grazier, in feeding and fatting cattle of every description. Such we conceive to be the only true and profitable course to conduct farming in this country, but deviations from this may in some cases be found equally profitable. In general, however, we advise to this course of farming, for in this way the greatest quantity of manure is afforded, and for most lands manure is essential for obtaining the greatest crops, and of course for realizing the greatest profits. We shall begin with the ground in wheat or rye stubble, as at the end of our course we propose to leave it. Let the stubble ground be well turned over in the fall, to the depth of, say, six inches. It should not be turned over until a sward of white clover has covered the ground, which is to be produced by giving it a top-dressing of gypsum, in the spring. Under the subject of manures the reasons for this will be explained, when treating of gypsum. In the spring give the ground one or two ploughings more, as the nature of the soil may require, and of the same depth, and let the last ploughing be just before the proper time for planting Indian corn; for this crop, with an intermixture of other plants, is what we propose to begin with. Say, for instance, that the intermixture shall consist of the potato, of the pumpkin, and of the common pumpkin, a third part of each. We propose planting these crops in drills, in preference to hills, from a well founded conviction that in the former method considerably more may be obtained from the ground. Let furrows be run, at a good depth, for the drills, at the distance of about every three and a half feet. In these furrows lay off the shortest and best of the fresh barn dung, at the rate of about 20 wagon loads to the acre. For the drills intended for potatoes the longer sort of barn dung is as good as any other. If the different sorts of barn dung can be applied to the soils most suitable for each, as is mentioned in speaking of manures; this should always be attended to; that is, sheep and horse dung for the moister parts of the land, and cow dung for the drier. As fast as the dung is laid, it should be well covered, by a furrow, moderately deep, thrown over it from each side; but where potatoes are to form the alternate drills, let the seed for these be laid on the dung, previous to covering; and for this purpose, let the potatoes be cut in halves, lengthways, so as to give each about an equal number of eyes, and then wet them and roll them in gypsum before laying them down, which should be at the distances of about 15 inches. The potato drills being thus covered, by the furrows thrown from each side, the same process serves to cover the dung in the other furrows, and thus the beds are formed for planting the other crops in the drill method. Indian corn may be drilled in at one operation by a drill machine for the purpose; the same may be observed of the turnip crop, and probably of the pumpkin; but though attended with more labour, it may usually be expected that they will be drilled in by manual operation. We should advise that the seed in the turnip drills be liberally strewn, in order that if part of the plants be destroyed by the flies, enough may still be left. The corn and pumpkin seed may be dropped at the distances of six inches, and thinned at the first hoeing, so as to have the growing plants of the former about a foot apart, and the latter about 16 inches. If any vacant places should happen in any of these drills, such vacancies may readily be supplied by transplanting sets, taken from parts where more plants are standing than are necessary. Any young plants may be transplanted after they have attained a suitable size, which is usually in from two to four weeks growth. The vacancies may be quickly filled by transplanting, and it is a matter well worthy of attention. The practice, lately introduced, of laying barn dung at a good depth, and then covering it with mould to the depth of about three or four inches, and planting the seeds over the manure thus covered, seems to answer the best purpose for every drilled crop except potatoes, and we would therefore recommend this method of using barn dung in preference to every other, as far as it may be wanted for drilled crops. In this way this manure may be profitably applied while fresh; but in many instances we consider it more efficacious when applied after the process of rotting or fermentation has commenced. Such is the theory of Sir Humphrey Davy, and we have full confidence in its correctness. When thus buried in the earth, the growing plants, placed above the manure, have the utmost means of absorbing all its garious and soluble parts, while the process of its decomposition is going on. In preparing seeds we would, as a general rule, advise to their being soaked about 12 hours in a strong solution of saltpetre, or of common salt, and then rolled in gypsum before being committed to the earth. The effect of this mode of preparing the seed seems to be, that the young plants start with more vigour, and grow larger than they do where this treatment of the seed is neglected; and the solution of saltpetre has the further effect of bringing plants to maturity from one to two weeks sooner than they otherwise would ripen. In selecting seed for the corn crop, take such stalks as bear two ears, and select the best ear from each of such stalks, the grains on each end to be rejected. In all cases where it is practicable, the seeds should be taken from the largest and most perfect plants, or roots, as the case may be. By attending to this mode of selecting seed the product of the corn crop in particular will soon be found greatly augmented; a discovery, the honour of which is due to Mr. Cooper, of New Jersey. It is said that sprinkling a little gypsum on the silk of the ears of corn, will make them fill to the ends. Nipping off the blossoms of the potato crop, as fast as they appear, is found, by accurate experiment, to increase the growth of the roots about one sixth part. Salt and gypsum have each a powerful effect on their growth, though by applying too much of the latter it may cause them to run too much to vines. To the corn and pumpkin crop apply some of this latter manure after the plants are up. What effect it has on turnips we have never understood. In ploughing between the drills let it be to a good depth, first turning the furrows from the plants, running about four inches from them, and then turning the furrows back, when the hoeing and hand weeding are to follow. The second ploughing should be similar to the first, but farther from the plants; and in general, we believe, it will be found advantageous to plough and hoe the crops the third time. We have seen it highly recommended to plough among Indian corn as late as in August. Frequent deep ploughing is certainly the best means of keeping the ground moist, and should never be omitted in case of drought. Ground that has become quite dry will be found moist after a thorough deep ploughing. At all events, the ground should be so cultivated as to prevent any weeds from going to seed in the fall, for if this be suffered, the ground will remain constantly stocked with the seeds of weeds. We advise to the cultivation of the common turnip, the potato, and the pumpkin, in the manner we have mentioned, for the purpose of affording the early supply of food for feeding and fatting cattle in the fall and the forepart of the winter, before the ruta baga crop should be used, of which we shall presently speak. We also advise to this variety of crops, in order that the cattle may have a greater variety of food, a matter of considerable importance in feeding and fatting cattle. For this purpose also the culture of the cabbage is worthy of attention. Horses, and all sorts of cattle, fatten well on pumpkins, but for swine they should be steam boiled, and the seeds taken out, as these prove injurious to those animals, by causing too great a secretion of urine. The seeds afford an oil equal to that of the olive, and are well worth preserving for this purpose. As soon as the ears of the corn crop have somewhat hardened, the crop may be cut up and set in shocks, with the tops tied closely together to keep out the rains, in which way the grain will harden as well as in any other, and a great addition of fodder may thus be acquired. During the next season we propose to take two crops from the ground, to wit, a crop of ruta baga, preceded by such spring crop as ripens sufficiently early to be harvested in time for preparing the ground for a full growth of this root. In the meridian of New York, Mr. Cobbett says that from the 26th of July until some of the first days in August, is the proper time to transplant this crop, the plants for the purpose being previously grown. The method of cultivating the crop by transplanting, he insists, is the preferable way, and from our own experience we are fully disposed to agree with him. Advancing to the northward, from New York, the seasons are shorter, and of course the crop should be transplanted earlier, while at the same time the spring crops are later in ripening. At New York, barley could be taken from the ground in time sufficient for preparing for ruta baga; farther to the north this could not be the case. In the more northerly parts of this state, it would, perhaps, be difficult to find any crop, now raised in this country, with the exception of flax, that would be sufficiently early. The fact is, we want a particular crop for this purpose; and that would seem to be the new sort of spring wheat lately introduced into France, which is there called _le ble de Mai_, in English, the wheat of May. It is said to be a very productive species of wheat, affording a grain from which flour is made of about a medium whiteness between that of rye and wheat, and in that country it is fit to harvest in the latter end of May. In this state it would probably ripen no where later than the first of July, which would be in time sufficient for the crop of ruta baga. Until we can procure this wheat, we can only recommend that the preceding crop be such only as will ripen sufficiently early, and where none can be had for the purpose, to be content with raising the crop of ruta baga only in the course of the season. Where previous spring crops can however be obtained, let them be taken from the ground as quick as possible, and the ground deeply turned over, and mellowed by three deep ploughings, then furrowed at the distances of about 30 inches, the manure laid in, and covered by furrows thrown over it from each side, and the plants of ruta baga immediately set on the ridges, by transplanting, at the distance of about a foot from each other. From our own experience we are fully convinced that the plan of transplanting is, in the end, much the cheapest, and most advisable. We would, however, recommend not to transplant before the appearance of a heavy shower, but at any time afterwards; that the plants be of good size, say of five or six weeks growth, and that in setting, special care be taken to have the lower parts of the roots well enclosed with earth. For further particulars in regard to the culture of this crop, the time and manner of using it, and of saving it, we refer the reader to Mr. Cobbett's book on the subject, from a conviction that it is the best essay that has ever been published on the culture and use of this valuable plant. It will be seen, however, that we differ from Mr. C. in the distances in which the plants are to be set, and in the manner of forming the ridges. He forms his ridges by four gathering furrows, by which the ridges are each about 4 feet in breadth. We propose to form the ridges by two gathering furrows, and at the distances of 30 inches. In England, the plan we recommend is generally pursued, and the ridges are usually but 27 inches wide. (To be continued.) FROM NILES' WEEKLY REGISTER. _Cotton, Rice, Tobacco, Sugar, Wine._ The National Intelligencer informs us that in New York 133 bushels of Indian corn have been gathered this year from _one acre_; and 714 bushels of potatoes from one acre. This has led to the following statistical facts. COTTON.--In 1817 the export of cotton from the United States was (85,649,328_lbs._) more than eighty-five million. One acre yields, at a moderate estimate, 250lbs. of clean cotton. The whole export, therefore, is the product of only 535 square miles: this is less than the 108th part of Georgia, and less than the 520th part of the cotton regions of the U. States. RICE.--The maximum export of rice was 73,329 tierces, (in 1790,) or (43,997,400_lbs._) nearly forty-four million pounds. This, on an average crop, is the produce of only sixty-five square miles, which is less than the 440th part of South Carolina, and less than two-thirds of the District of Columbia. TOBACCO.--The maximum export of tobacco was 12,428 hogsheads, in 1791. A hogshead is about one thousand weight; and, on average, one acre will yield one hogshead. The export, therefore, was the product of about 176 square miles, which is less than the 363d part of Virginia. Each of the 97 counties of that state contains, on an average, more than 659 square miles, viz: more than three times the quantity of land which furnished the above export. SUGAR.--Such is, generally, the fertility of the equinoctial regions of America, that all the sugar consumed in France, estimated at twenty million kilogrammes, (about 54,000,000 pounds,) may be produced on an extent of 7 square leagues, which is not equal to one-thirtieth part of the smallest department of France. WINE.--About 1,600,000 arpents, or 1,350,400 acres, are in France employed in the culture of the vine. The value of the annual product is about 100,800,000 dollars, at about twenty cents a gallon. In 1790 Bordeaux alone exported more than fifteen million gallons of wine. The 1,600,000 arpents are less than one 80th part of France, and less than one 20th part of Pennsylvania. The value of the annual produce of these five interesting articles, may be thus estimated: Cotton, at 15 cents, $12,847,399 Rice, $20 a tierce, 1,466,580 Tobacco, $60 a hogshead, 6,745,680 Wine, 20 cents a gallon, 100,800,000 Sugar consumed in France, at 10 cents a pound, 5,400,000 ------------- $127,259,659 For the product of these articles the following quantities of land are cultivated, viz. Square miles. For cotton 555 rice 65 tobacco 176 sugar 63 wine 2110 ---- 2969 This is little less than three-fourths of the state of Connecticut. The authority for cotton, rice, and tobacco, is Seybert's Statistical Annals, and the personal information of gentlemen of experience in the culture of those articles. For sugar I have the authority of Humboldt's _Essai Politique_. For wine I depend on Chaptal: his "Treatise, theoretical and practical, on the culture of the vine, and the art of making wine, brandy, spirits of wine, and vinegars, simple and compound," is a truly classic work, in which he had the aid of Rozier, Parmentier, and Dussieux. It contains all that the chemist, or botanist, or vine cultivator, or enlightened statesman can reasonably ask or wish to know. It is in two octavo volumes, of about 500 pages each, with 21 plates. This admirable treatise should be translated for the use of our fellow citizens who occupy our wine-yielding regions. For, in a few years, the United States will produce wine for their domestic consumption and exportation. A revolution of our planet on its axis would present to the eye of an observer, at the distance of a few thousand miles, a few spots or specks (China or Holland) fully cultivated. The rest would be as a desert. Pauperism in England, now so extensive and so dangerous, is fulfilling the prophecies of Goldsmith's Deserted Village. "Political economy (says Jean Baptiste Say,) is founded on statistical knowledge, or (what is the same thing) history;" and that "the American confederacy will have the glory of proving that the loftiest policy is in accordance with moderation and humanity." The most active mind has not yet conceived an adequate idea of the vast resources of the United States. _Washington City_. NOTES AND REMARKS--BY THE EDITOR OF THE REGISTER. The _general_ average value of the products of the United States exported, may be estimated as amounting to 45,000,000 dollars, at fair prices; the cotton, tobacco, and rice, included in which, may be valued at 21,000,000--the balance is made up of bread stuffs and meats, the product of the forest and of the sea, and 2,000,000 in manufactures. The chief things that we have for _export_ bear about the following proportions to their respective quantities _consumed_ in the United States--assuming 45 millions as the amount of value exported, and taking our products at their average quantities. _Val. or am't Val. or am't exported. consumed_. Bread stuffs, meats & drinks, D. 13,500,000 270,000,000 Provender for horses, &c. (say) 50,000 60,000,000 Manufactures, (in general) 2,000,000 220,000,000 Product of the fisheries 1,500,000 9,000,000 -------------- forest 6,000,000 60,000,000 Cotton, lbs. 85,000,000 40,000,000 Tobacco, hhds. 75,000 25,000 Rice, tierces 80,000 80,000 The value of the cotton, tobacco, and rice consumed in the United States, being considered as included in the aggregate values of the manufactures used, or other stuffs consumed, will give a value to the consumption equal to 619, say 620 millions of dollars per annum; and assuming our population at 9,500,000, the average for each individual is 65 dollars a-year. This amount includes ALL sorts of disbursements needful to the subsistence, convenience and comfort of the people, except the product of the value of labour directly applied to the _erection_ of buildings or other permanent works. The amount, though it appears enormous, I am satisfied is less than the actual value consumed. It brings out the general result, that our exports stand to our consumption as 45 is to 620--or as _one_ is to _fourteen_, at the present time. When the price of commodities was higher, the rate was as _one_ to _seventeen_. The ratio of each of the preceding items are about as follows: _Exported. Consumed._ Bread stuffs, meats & drinks, as 1 is to 21 Provender, 1 -- 200 Manufactured articles, 1 -- 110 Product of the fisheries, 1 -- 6 ---- forest, 1 -- 10 Cotton, 2 -- 1 (nearly.) Tobacco, 3 -- 1 Rice, 1 -- 1 It would be excessively tedious to attempt to detail the multitude of items that affect these general conclusions. Accuracy is not pretended in either of them. Probabilities only are aimed at. From these facts assumed as being pretty near the truth, we may estimate the importance of the home trade, or internal commerce and consumption of the people, and arrive at a multitude of highly interesting considerations. Take the following for an example: The sudden introduction of less than 500,000 persons, would leave us no surplus of _present_ products of food for men. But it is a demand for this surplus, no matter how created, that assesses the value of the whole product. Such products, let the fact be recollected, were at as high prices during the late war, when there was very little export of them, as they are now, the difference in the value of our circulating medium being also considered. This was caused by a partial want of agricultural labourers; but more by the waste of provisions that belong to a belligerent state. Foreign commerce, nevertheless, has a powerful bearing on the consideration of value in a state of peace, to the growers of grain, meats, &c. The amount beyond their own _immediate_ consumption and that of their families, may be about two fifths of the whole, besides the foreign export, or nearly 110 millions,--the _price_ of which is fixed by the small amount of 13,500,000 dollars' worth sent abroad! And, this little surplus remaining unconsumed, or without being wasted, at home, would depreciate the general value of the whole surplus at least 50 per cent. Hence, it would seem of greater interest to the farmers even to _destroy_ a portion of their products, than to cast them into a glutted market, according to the principles acted upon by the Dutch in regard to spices. A policy not to be recommended on the score of morality, but as according with the spirit of trade. It cannot, therefore, be advantageous to the agriculturist to depend upon a foreign market to assess the value of his articles, for it is, and ever must be uncertain and unsteady. It is his interest to have a market at home, for this may be depended upon, and the product will be regulated by the demand, so as to leave a fair profit. A gentleman of observation, on a certain occasion, when I Was speaking on this subject, related the following case in point. At an interval of about 10 years, he had stopped for a short time at a certain village in Connecticut--when first there, it contained two first rate taverns, and one other respectable establishment of the same kind. Two lines of stages made it their halting place every night, and all seemed flourishing and lively. When there again, the three taverns were shut up, or at least not occupied as such, and he had to apply at a private house to be accommodated during his stay, and every thing appeared dull and desolate. He asked the reason.--It was the establishment of steam-boats which had destroyed the lines of stages, and driven off the persons and horses that they had given employment to, and of course the market they created, which hitherto took off all the surplus products of the neighbourhood, had ceased to be. A thousand instances of this sort might be noted to prove that a _ready market_ is the prosperity of a neighbourhood, country, state, or nation. On the different items, especially those of _cotton_ and _sugar_, as mentioned by the writer in the National Intelligencer, we intend to speak particularly hereafter, in the essays we have promised to write under the head of "Political Economics," the introduction to which appeared in the Register of the 13th ult. page 162. _Vine Dressing near Vevay._ VEVAY, (Indiana) Oct. 28. The season for making wine is just over; and notwithstanding the uncommon dry season, the vine dressers near Vevay have made four thousand eight hundred and ninety-two gallons. [We copy the following from Niles' Weekly Register, with an intention, as his proposed essays appear, of giving them a place in the _Rural Magazine_,--having no doubt, from our knowledge of the editor, but they will be instructive as well as Interesting to our readers.--_Ed._] _Political Economics._ INTRODUCTORY. Though so much has been said on political economy as applicable to the national prosperity, by profits derived from national industry, that we despair of offering any new thing on the subject, we have so far yielded to the wishes of many friends as to resolve upon the publication of a new series of essays, to elucidate some of the facts that belong to this deeply interesting concern--a concern that presses itself into every man's business, which invades our fire-sides and accompanies us to our bed-chambers: yet, so beset with it, and feeling it in all that we have to sell or want to buy, and in whatsoever business we do that requires the aid of money or use of credit--still we shrink from the trouble of ascertaining its operation and extent. The mind, by repeated mortifications and disappointments, loses its tone; and we seem rather disposed to trust to the chapter of accidents for redress, than rouse ourselves to an exertion to put an end to our wrongs, through the means afforded; forgetting that effects flow from causes. It has pleased Providence to bless us with a "goodly land," and we are favoured with the best system of government ever devised--but the seat of ancient Paradise is a howling waste, and Greece and Rome are tenanted by slaves. A nation's prosperity is the happiness of the individuals composing it. The freeman cannot be a happy man unless private industry secures private independence; and freedom itself must pass into despotism. The power of a government rests in the moral and physical force of the governed, and its wealth is constituted by personal acquisitions of property. Governments were made for the good of the people, not the people for governments; and their object fails when private happiness ceases to be respected. Emancipation from political tyranny, without the means of preserving personal liberty, is a nullity. The gift of life without the means of living, is destitute of value. Production is the only source of national wealth that can be depended upon. The home market, even to the most commercial nations, is of many times the amount of the foreign one. The former is not easily effected, except by a self-mistaken policy; but the latter is as capricious as the winds, and beyond our control. Speculation does not create value--the purchase and sale of a million's worth of goods does not improve their quality or add to their quantity, to the amount of a cent. A change of commodities between different countries, may increase their value to the extent of the labour expended in transporting them; and it is generally convenient, if not advantageous, when exchanges are made on equal terms. But poverty must be the lot of every society which barters the labour of two or more of its members for that of one person in another society. Employment is the best preservative of health and morals. Things should be so that every person willing to labour for his living, should find labour to do, and live plentifully. If it is otherwise, an error has been committed that ought to be corrected immediately, for it is pregnant with the greatest evils. It is the chief check to population, and more powerful than the sword to destroy the liberties of nations. Nations and individuals are spendthrifts of the worst description when they purchase that which they can make from the spare labour at home. Who will give away a hundred dollars and their interest for ever, for the sake of receiving twenty dollars of his own money as a premium? Yet thus a nation acts when, for the sake of the duties on imports, it accepts of another nation any commodity which it might supply itself with, without detriment to its other branches of industry. Agriculture is the noblest and best occupation of man; and in a country like the United States, where land is plenty and labour scarce, it will always be pushed to the extent which a profitable market demands. Yet if none worked but those who laboured in the field, society could not exist long. We should perish with cold and hunger. It is by an association of the arts that we live--and our comfort materially depends on their respective perfections. Only about one fifth of a population are fitted for agricultural labours, in general. The other four fifths, if idle would consume the whole amount of value produced, and send the labourers supperless to bed. It is the capacity of production in the most numerous body that must be brought into action, if families and nations would prosper and be happy. If they purchase any thing which their lost time might be applied to the fabrication of--they might as well throw its cost into the sea. In the course of our essays, which we expect to commence in two or three weeks, we shall endeavour to point out some of the chief things that require the protection of government, just as those of a well regulated family are managed; and shew that the well being of a nation depends upon a fair exchange of labour for labour, substantials for substantials, and even luxuries for luxuries. The man who exchanges wheat for _ear-rings_, unless those rings are manufactured in his country, wastes to the country the whole amount of the _intrinsic_ value of the wheat over that of the _ear-rings_, which latter is only that of the metal composing them. A nation cannot be independent, if it looks to another for necessaries--it cannot be rich, if it exchanges necessaries for luxuries. And luxuries, especially, should not be received at all, unless things of the same class are remitted in payment for them. The effect of these on population and manners, will also be considered, and illustrated by many statistical facts--as leisure is allowed to arrange them. FROM HUMBOLDT'S PERSONAL NARRATIVE. _The Coffee Plant._ The coffee tree flowers only the second year, and the flowering lasts only twenty-four hours. At this time the shrub has a charming aspect; seen from afar, it seems covered with snow. The produce of the third year becomes very abundant. In plantations well weeded and watered, and recently cultivated, we find trees bearing sixteen, eighteen, and even twenty pounds of coffee. In general, however, a produce of more than a pound and a half or two pounds cannot be expected from each plant; and even this is superior to the mean produce of the West India Islands. Rains at the time of the flowering, the want of water for artificial irrigations, and a patastic plant, a new species of coranthus, which clings to the branches, are extremely injurious to the coffee trees. _Sugar Cane._ Three species of sugar cane can be distinguished even at a distance, by the colour of their leaves; the ancient Creole sugar cane, the Otaheite cane, and the Batavia cane. The first has a leaf of a deeper green, the stem less thick, and the knots nearer together.--This sugar cane was the first introduced from India into Sicily, the Canary Islands and the West Indies. The second is of a lighter green; and its stem is higher, thicker, and more succulent. The whole plant displays a more luxuriant vegetation. We owe this plant to the voyages of Bougainville, Cook, and Bligh. Bougainville carried it to the Isle of France, whence it passed to Cayenne, Martinique, and since 1792, to the rest of the West India Islands. The sugar cane of Otaheite, the _To_ of those islanders, is one of the most important acquisitions, for which colonial agriculture is indebted to the travels of naturalists. It yields not only one third more of juice than the Creolian cane on the same space of land; but from the thickness of its stem, and the tenacity of its ligneous fibres, it furnishes much more fuel. The last advantage is important to the West Indies, where the destruction of the forests has for a long time obliged the planters to use the canes deprived of their juice, to keep up the fire under their boilers. But from the knowledge of this new plant, the progress of agriculture on the continent of Spanish America, and the introduction of the East India and Java sugars, the revolutions of St. Domingo, and the destruction of the great sugar plantations of that island, would have had a more sensible effect on the prices of colonial produce in Europe. The Otaheite sugar cane was carried from the Isle of Trinidad to Caraccas. From Caraccas it passed to Cicuta and San Gil in the kingdom of New Grenada. In our days its cultivation during twenty-five years almost entirely removed the apprehension, which was at first entirely entertained, that, transplanted to America, the plant would by degrees degenerate, and become as slender as the Creole cane. If it be a variety, it is a very constant one. The third species, the violet sugar cane, called _Cana de Batavia_, or _de Guinea_, is entirely indigenous in the island of Java, where it is cultivated in preference in the districts of Jupara and Pasuruan. Its foliage is purple, and very broad; and it is preferred in the province of Caraccas for rum. The _tablones_, or grounds planted with sugar canes, are divided by hedges of a collossal gramen; the latta, or gynesium with distich leaves. _American Fig Tree_. The trunks of these trees are covered with very odoriferous plants of vanilla, which, in general, flower only in the month of April.--We were here again struck with those ligneous excrescenses, which in the form of ridges, or ribs, augment, in so extraordinary a manner, and as far as twenty feet above the ground, the thickness of the trunk of the fig trees of America. I found trees twenty-two feet and a half in diameter near the roots.--These ligneous ridges sometimes separate from the trunk at a height of eight feet, and are transformed into cylindrical roots two feet thick. The tree looks as if it were supported by buttresses. This scaffolding, however, does not penetrate very deep into the earth. The lateral roots wind at the surface of the ground, and when at twenty feet distance from the trunk, they are cut with the hatchet, we see the milky juice of the fig tree gush out, which, when deprived of the vital influence of the organs of the tree, is altered and coagulates. What a wonderful combination of cells and vessels exist in these vegetable masses; in these gigantic trees of the torrid zone, which, without interruption, perhaps during a thousand years, prepare nutritious fluids, raise them to the height of 180 feet, convey them down again to the ground, and conceal beneath a rough and hard bark, under the inanimate layers of ligneous matter, all the movements of organic life! _The Cow Tree._ "Amid the great number of curious phenomena which have presented themselves to me in the course of my travels, I confess there are few that have so powerfully affected my imagination, as the aspect of the cow tree. "Whatever relates to milk, whatever regards corn, inspires an interest, which is not merely that of the physical knowledge of things, but is connected with another order of ideas and sentiments. We can scarcely conceive how the human race could exist without farinaceous substances, and without that nourishing juice which the breast of the mother contains, and which is appropriated to the long feebleness of the infant. The amylaceous matter of corn, the object of religious veneration among so many nations, ancient and modern, is diffused in the seeds and deposited in the roots of vegetables; milk, which serves us as an aliment, appears to us exclusively the produce of animal organization.--Such are the impressions we have received in our earliest infancy; such is also the source of that astonishment which seizes us at the aspect of the tree just described. It has not here the solemn shades of forests, the majestic course of rivers, the mountains wrapped in eternal frosts, that excite our emotion.--A few drops of vegetable juice recal to our minds all the powerfulness and fecundity of nature. On the barren flank of rock grows a tree with coriaceous and dry leaves. Its large woody roots can scarcely penetrate into the stone. For several months of the year not a single shower moistens its foliage. Its branches appear dead and dried; but when its trunk is pierced, there flows from it a sweet and nourishing milk. It is at the rising of the sun that this vegetable fountain is most abundant. The blacks and natives are then seen hastening from all quarters, furnished with large bowls to receive the milk, which grows yellow, and thickens at its surface. Some employ their bowls under the tree itself, others carry the juice home to their children. We seem to see the family of a shepherd, who distributes the milk to his flock. "I have described the sensation which the cow tree awakens in the mind of the traveller, at the first view. In examining the physical properties of animal and vegetable products, science displays them as closely linked together; but it strips them of what is marvellous, and perhaps also a part of their charms, of what excited our astonishment.--Nothing appears insolated; the chemical principles that were believed to be peculiar to animals are found in plants; a common chain links together all organic nature." _Singular effect of Peruvian Bark._ A French merchant, at Guayra, named Delpech, in 1806, had occasion to receive several travellers, inhabitants of those countries. The apartments destined for visitors being filled, and the number of his guests increasing, he was under the necessity of putting several of them in rooms occupied by _cinchona_. Each of them contained from 8 to 10 thousand pounds of that bark. One of his guests was ill of a very malignant fever. After the first day he found himself much better, though he had taken no medicine; but he was surrounded with an atmosphere of cinchona which appeared very agreeable to him. In a few days he felt himself quite recovered without any medical treatment whatever. This unexpected success led M. Delpech to make some other trials. Several persons, ill of fever, were placed successively in his magazine of cinchona, and they were all speedily cured, simply by the effluvia of the bark. In the same place with the cinchona, he kept a bale of coffee, and some bottles of common French brandy. In some time M. Delpech, when visiting his magazine, observed one of the large bottles uncorked. He suspected at first the fidelity of a servant, and determined to examine the quality of the brandy. What was his astonishment to find it infinitely superior to what it had been!--A slightly aromatic taste added to its strength, and rendered it more tonic and more agreeable. Curious to know if the coffee had likewise changed its properties, he opened the bale, and roasted a portion of it. It was more bitter and left in the mouth a taste similar to that of the effluvia of bark.--The bark which produced these singular effects was fresh. Would the cinchona of commerce have the same efficacy? _Oil of Pumpkin Seed._ C. S. KAPINESQUE, Esq. to Doct. SAMUEL MITCHELL. _New York, 20th Feb. 1819._ While I was at Harmony, on the banks of the Wabash, in the state of Indiana, last summer, I was told by the industrious German Society of the Harmonites, that instead of throwing away or giving to the pigs the seeds of their pumpkins, as is usually done all over the country, they collected them and made an oil from them which they use for all the purposes of lamp oil and olive oil. It is well known, that all the different species and varieties of pumpkins (genus _cuburbita_ Linnæus) afford an oil which has valuable medical properties, possessing in the highest degree the refrigerative quality; but I had never heard before of its being made on a large scale, and for economical uses. It will be sufficient to mention this fact to some of our enlightened farmers, to induce them to imitate the worthy Harmonites, and I recommend highly the practice, as likely to become eminently beneficial. The pumpkin seeds afford their oil with the greatest facility and abundance. One gallon of seeds will give about half a gallon of oil. They may be pressed like rape and flax seed.--Their oil is clear, limpid pale, scentless, and when used for salad instead of sweet oil, has merely a faint insipid taste; it burns well, and without smoke. Those advantages entitle it to our attention, as an indigenous production of first necessity. Pumpkins grow all over the United States, from Maine to Louisiana, and with such luxuriance, as to produce sometimes as much as 50,000_lbs._ weight of fruits, and about 2000 _lbs._ weight of seeds, in one acre of Indian corn without injuring the crop of corn. Those 2000 _lbs._ of seeds might produce about 200 gallons of oil, worth about 200 dollars. I calculate that about two millions of gallons of such oil could be made annually in the United States, from the seeds that are wasted or given to cattle and pigs. This is worth saving--and in addition to the bread, pies, soups, dishes, feed, &c. afforded by pumpkins, we shall have a good and wholesome home-made vegetable oil for lamps and food. _Disease among Horses._ MIFFLINTOWN, (Penn.) Nov. 20. A disease prevails among the horses in this part of the country, by some called the Burnt Tongue. We understand that it originated in the western section of this state, and has extended along this route from Pittsburg to Philadelphia. It has in a few instances proved fatal: but we understand that the stages west of the Alleghany have been stopped, and numbers of wagonners are obliged to lie by in consequence of it. It affects the tongue and prevents the creature from eating, and is very catching, so much so, that it is said a beast will take it in consequence of its having been _hitched_ at the same place that the one has stood which was affected. LANCASTER, (Penn.) Nov. 23. The following method of practice and recipe for the care of the prevailing disease among horses, called _sore mouth_, was obtained from Mr. Tomlinson, (one of the proprietors of the Western Mail Stages) on his return from visiting the sick horses in the line, and I am authorized to say, will, if strictly attended to, succeed in curing in 99 _cases in_ 100--by inserting it you will oblige MANY. RECIPE. On the commencement of the disease, bleed moderately. If the blood, after cooling, appears to have much buff on it, repeat the bleeding; give a pint of castor oil; if it does not operate in 16 hours, give two thirds of a pint. Nitre may be given at the rate of 2 _oz_. a day, or salts two or three times a week; 1/4 _lb._ at a time. These may be given in a thin mash, or rather slop of bran, it being the best food for the animal while diseased. Take half a pint of honey, one table spoonful of borax, and one quart of strong sage tea. Mix them well together; then take a stick and tie a soft rag to the end of it, dip it in the mixture, and wash the tongue, gums and mouth well; the more frequent the better, at least every two hours. Sweet milk in the tea will do no harm, or a little nitre may occasionally be put in it with good effect. Be particular in keeping the mouth clean and nursing the horse with care. The pulse and appearance of the blood must govern as to the necessity of bleeding more than once. _The Arabian Horse_. This noble animal, which lately arrived in the ship Horatio, has been sold for _four thousand dollars_, to Messrs. Allison and Van Ranst, and has been conveyed to Long Island. _Wild Horse of the West._ The horse of the Columbia River will rank with the finest of his species in the known world. His size is fifteen or sixteen hands, even in a state of nature, unprovided with food or shelter by the hands of man. His form exhibits much bone and muscle, but not the mass of flesh which is found on the fat European horse.--His limbs are clean and slender; the neck arched and rising; the hoofs round and hard; and the nostrils wide and thin. He is equally distinguished for speed and bottom. He runs rapidly, and for a long time; rivalling, in this respect, all that we have heard of the English hunting horses. In other respects--in the docility of his nature, in his capacity to sustain hunger and hardship, in his powers to provide food for himself and his master, he is wholly unrivalled. He is readily trained to the business of his master's life, that of hunting, and pursues the game with all the keenness of the dog, and with equal sagacity and more success. He will run down the deer in the _prairies_, with or without his master on his back, and, when overtaken, will hold it with his teeth. When rode after game he needs no guiding of the bridle to direct him. He will pursue a drove of buffaloes, and, coming up with them, will stop one by biting him with his teeth. The animal bitten, immediately wheels to defend himself with his horns; the horse wheels at the same instant to avoid it; and at this moment, when the side of the buffalo is presented, the Indian lets fly an arrow, which often passes entirely through his body. The wounded animal always turns out of the drove to lay down and die. The horse and his rider pursue the gang to make fresh slaughter. Another horse trained to a second part of the game, with other Indians, take the trail of the wounded buffalo, which is butchered and carried into camp. These things seem incredibel; but we have them upon the authority of Lewis and Clarke, and a great number of traders who have been upon the Columbia river since the time of their discovery; some of whom are now in this town. The capacity of this horse to sustain fatigue, and to provide food for himself, is equally astonishing. He is galloped all day, sometimes 80 or 90 miles in the space of 10 or 12 hours, and is then left to shift for himself during the night. In the spring, summer and autumn, he finds no difficulty; the short and sweet grass of that country gives him an abundant and nutricious repast. In the winter, and towards the mountains, where the snow is several feet deep, his unerring instinct tells him where to search; he scrapes away the snow with his hoof till he comes to the ground, and rooting there with his nose, finds wherewith of moss and grass to sustain his life. On the borders of creeks and rivers he feeds on the boughs of willows, and other soft wood, which his master has sometimes the kindness to fell for him with a hatchet. This fine animal is found on the banks of the Columbia, in latitude 46, in the great plain which lies on the borders of this river, between the upper and lower range of mountains. His origin is traced to Mexico, thence to Spain, thence to the North of Africa, where the Arabian barb is found in all the perfection of his species. His fine form, his generous spirit, and his noble qualities, are preserved upon the Columbia river; and certainly it is worthy the experiment to endeavour to transplant him into other parts of the United States. Many citizens have attempted to do so; but have always been robbed by the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. Lewis and Clarke procured 73, said by Gov. Clark to be the most beautiful collection of horses that he has ever seen together before or since; but the whole number was stolen from them by Indians, who followed their trail, and never ceased their operations until they had carried off the last. [_St. Louis Inquirer._ JAMES WATT. (Ascribed to an eminent writer.) Death is still busy in our high places; and it is with great pain that we find ourselves called upon, so soon after the loss of Mr. Playfair, to record the decease of another of our illustrious countrymen, and one to whom mankind has been still more largely indebted. Mr. James Watt, the great improver of the steam-engine, died on the 25th ult. at his seat of Heathfield, near Birmingham, in the 84th year of his age. This name, fortunately, needs no commemoration of ours; for he that bore it survived to see it crowned with undisputable and unenvied honours; and many generations will probably pass away before it shall have "gathered all its fame." We have said that Mr. Watt was the great _improver_ of the steam-engine; but, in truth, as to all that is admirable in its structure, or vast in its utility, he should rather be described as its _inventor_. It was by his inventions that its action was so regulated as to make it capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivances, it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility; for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease and precision, and ductility, with which they can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant that can pick up a pin or rend an oak is nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal like wax before it, draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as a gossamer, and lift up a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin and forge anchors, cut steel into ribbands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves. It would be difficult to estimate the value of the benefits which these inventions have conferred upon the country. There is no branch of industry that has not been indebted to them; and in all the most material, they have not only widened most magnificently the field of its exertions, but multiplied a thousand fold the amount of its productions. It is our improved steam-engine which now enables us to pay the interest of our debt, and to maintain the arduous struggle in which we are still engaged, with the skill and capital of countries less oppressed with taxation. But these are poor and narrow views of its importance. It has increased indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments, and rendered cheap and accessible all over the world the materials of wealth and prosperity. It has armed the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to which no limits can be assigned, completed the dominion of mind over the most refractory qualities of matter, and laid a sure foundation for all those future miracles of mechanic power, which are to aid and reward the labours of after generations. It is to the genius of one man too that all this is mainly owing; and certainly no man ever before bestowed such a gift on his kind. The blessing is not only universal, but unbounded; and the fabled inventors of the plough and the loom, who were deified by the erring gratitude of their rude contemporaries, conferred less important benefits on mankind than the inventor of our present steam-engine. This will be the fame of Watt with future generations; and it is sufficient for his race and his country. But to those to whom he more immediately belonged, who lived in his society and enjoyed his conversation, it is not, perhaps, the character in which he will be most frequently recalled--most deeply lamented--or even most highly admired. Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary, and in many respects, a wonderful man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and such varied and exact information--had read so much, or remembered what he had read so accurately and so well. He had infinite quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, and a certain rectifying and methodising power of understanding, which extracted something precious out of all that was presented to it. His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were immense--and yet less astonishing than the command he had at all times over them. It seemed as if every subject that was casually started in conversation with him, had been that which he had been last occupied in studying and exhausting; such was the copiousness, the precision, and the admirable clearness of the information which he poured out upon it without effort or hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and compass of knowledge confined in any degree to the studies connected with his ordinary pursuits. That he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in chemistry and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical science, might perhaps have been conjectured; but it could not have been inferred from his usual occupations, and probably is not generally known, that he was curiously learned in many branches of antiquity, metaphysics, medicine, and etymology, and perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted too with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their most recent literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear the great mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding, for hours together, the metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticising the measures or the matter of the German poetry. His astonishing memory was aided, no doubt, in a great measure, by a still higher and rarer faculty--by his power of digesting and arranging in its proper place all the information he received, and of casting aside and rejecting, as it were instinctively, whatever was worthless or immaterial. Every conception that was suggested to his mind seemed instantly to take its place among its other rich furniture, and to be condensed into the smallest and most convenient form. He never appeared, therefore, to be at all incumbered or perplexed with the verbiage of the dull books he perused, or the idle talk to which he listened; but to have at once extracted, by a kind of intellectual alchemy, all that was worthy of attention, and to have reduced it to his own use, to its true value and to its simplest form. And thus it often happened, that a great deal more was learned from his brief and vigorous account of the theories and arguments of tedious writers, than an ordinary student could ever have derived from the most faithful study of the originals; and that errors and absurdities became manifest from the mere clearness and plainness of his statement of them, which might have deluded and perplexed most of his hearers without that invaluable assistance. It is needless to say, that with those vast resources, his conversation was at all times rich and instructive in no ordinary degree; but it was, if possible, still more pleasing than wise, and had all the charms of familiarity, with all the substantial treasures of knowledge. No man could be more social in his spirit, less assuming or fastidious in his manners, or more kind and indulgent towards all who approached him. He rather liked to talk, at least in his latter years; but though he took a considerable share of the conversation, he rarely suggested the topics on which it was to turn, but readily and quickly took whatever was presented by those around him, and astonished the idle and barren propounders of an ordinary theme, by the treasures which he drew from the mine which they had unconsciously opened. He generally seemed, indeed, to have no choice or predilection for one subject of discourse rather than another, but allowed his mind, like a great cyclopædia, to be opened at any letter his associates might choose to turn up, and only endeavoured to select from his inexhaustible stores what might be best adapted to the taste of his present hearers. As to their capacity, he gave himself no trouble; and, indeed, such was his singular talent for making all things plain, clear, and intelligible, that scarcely any one could be aware of such a deficiency in his presence. His talk, too, though overflowing with information, had no resemblance to lecturing or solemn discoursing, but, on the contrary, was full of colloquial spirit and pleasure. He had a certain quiet and grave humour, which ran through most of his conversation, and a vein of temperate jocularity, which gave infinite zest and effect to the condensed and inexhaustible information which formed its main staple and characteristic. There was a little air of affected testiness, and a tone of pretended rebuke and contradiction, with which he used to address his younger friends, that was always felt by them as an endearing mark of his kindness and familiarity, and prized accordingly far beyond all the solemn compliments that ever proceeded from the lips of authority. His voice was deep and powerful, though he commonly spoke in a low and somewhat monotonous tone, which harmonized admirably with the weight and brevity of his observations, and set off to the greatest advantage the pleasant anecdotes which he delivered with the same grave brow and the same calm smile playing soberly on his lips. There was nothing of effort indeed, or impatience, any more than of pride or levity, in his demeanour; and there was a finer expression of reposing strength, and mild self-possession in his manner, than we ever recollect to have met with in any other person. He had in his character the utmost abhorrence for all sorts of forwardness, parade and pretensions; and, indeed, never failed to put all such impostors out of countenance, by the manly plainness and honest intrepidity of his language and deportment. In his temper and dispositions he was not only kind and affectionate, but generous and considerate of the feelings of all around him, and gave the most liberal assistance and encouragement to all young persons who showed any indications of talent, or applied to him for patronage or advice. His health, which was delicate from his youth upwards, seemed to become firmer as he advanced in years; and he preserved, up almost to the last moment of his existence, not only the full command of his extraordinary intellect, but all the alacrity of spirit, and the social gaiety which had illuminated his happiest days. His friends in this part of the country never saw him more full of intellectual vigour and colloquial animation, never more delightful or instructive, than in his last visit to Scotland, in autumn, 1817. Indeed, it was after that time that he applied himself, with all the ardour of early life, to the invention of a machine for mechanically copying all sorts of sculpture and statuary, and distributed among his friends some of its earliest performances, as the productions of a young artist just entering on his 83d year. This happy and useful life came at last to a gentle close. He had suffered some inconveniences through the summer; but was not seriously indisposed till within a few weeks from his death. He then became perfectly aware of the event which was approaching; and with his usual tranquillity and benevolence of nature, seemed only anxious to point out to the friends around him the many sources of consolation, which were afforded by the circumstances under which it was about to take place. He expressed his sincere gratitude to Providence for the length of days with which he had been blessed, and his exemption from most of the infirmities of age, as well as for the calm and cheerful evening of life that he had been permitted to enjoy, after the honourable labours of the day had been concluded. And thus, full of years and honours, in all calmness and tranquillity he yielded up his soul, without pang or struggle, and passed from the bosom of his family to that of his God! He was twice married, but has left no issue but one son, long associated with him in his business and studies, and two grand-children by a daughter who predeceased him. He was a fellow of the Royal Societies both of London and Edinburgh, and of the few Englishmen who were elected members of the National Institute of France. All men of learning and science were his cordial friends; and such was the influence of his mild character and perfect fairness and liberality, even upon the pretenders to these accomplishments, that he lived to disarm even envy itself, and died, we verily believe, without a single enemy. [_London Times_. At the recent sale of the late Mr. B. Tompkins' prime Herefordshire cattle, one cow and her calf (a two years old bull) sold for the sum of nine hundred and fifty pounds: four bulls for one thousand and seventy-one pounds; and two bull calves, for three hundred and sixty-two pounds five shillings! The king of England is now in the 60th year of his _reign_--a reign longer in its duration, by nearly four years, than that of any sovereign of England, that of Henry the 3d being only 56 years. A Mr. Wright, of London, proposes, in an English paper, to institute a cottage society, in shares of ten pounds sterling each, for the purpose of procuring lands, either waste or by purchase, to be divided into lots, from four to twelve acres each, whereon to erect cottages, for the accommodation of the poor. Mr. Wright considers the monopoly of small farms by the great landholders, as the principal cause of the prevailing pauperism in England, by having thrown too great a mass of the population into the towns. He computes that, from the enclosure of commons and waste lands, within the last fifty years, there have been 120,000 small farms and cottages annihilated, which, at five souls each, gives 600,000 persons who have been driven from the pursuits of agriculture. _Light without Heat or Combustion._ EXTRACT OF A LETTER. "I have lately seen an account of a discovery of a singular and highly important character, announced in the latter part of August, at Paris, by a Professor _Meinike_, (a German probably) viz. an artificial _gas_, confined in _glass_, assuming, by the electric shock, a permanent, steady light, without _heat_ or _combustion_! "Here is a grand desideratum, indeed--a candle which can be thrust into _carded cotton_ innoxious, or into a cistern of water unextinguished; which can be placed under one's pillow while we sleep, and taken out at pleasure. Our houses may be built with it in such a manner as to avoid the necessity of those cold holes of winter--windows. "The whale may keep his _blubber_, and the shark his _liver_; the coasts of the ocean may be lined with those newly discovered (_Pharoi_) light bearers; they may be sunk on reefs, and _shine_ up _information_ through the deep; and, by anchoring them in lines through oceans, we may mark the _ship road_, and have _guide posts_ which tell the best path, for each month in the year, across the parallels of this ball. Extravagant as this may seem, I assure you that I have often entertained the idea that an insulated mass of _electron_, (according to Augustus B. Woodward,) or some _phosphorus_, might be produced in a permanently useful form. We now _bottle_ up _lightning_--we _cork_ up the enemy of the _small pox_, and let him out at pleasure; we see our way by peeping at the skies, or into a box, (mariner's compass,) where we keep a little modicum of _polar essence_, to steer by, &c. You recollect that, in 1799, a hearty laugh was raised against the democrats, by comparing them to the philosopher of Lugghagg, extracting _sunbeams from cucumbers_. Dean Swift would have put into his philosophical _whim-whams_ the bottling of lightning, together with the extracting of sun-beams from cucumbers, had he thought of it, or known that it was ever dreamed of. May Congress soon be supplied, every man of them, with a _pocket light_ upon this new plan!" The ingenious writer of this letter, adds the correspondent who communicated it, might have added, that this invention will be of excellent service to Captain Symmes and his fellow travellers, among the _concentric spheres_ in the interior of our planet. [_Nat. Int._ _Whale Fisheries._ Our whale fisheries are, perhaps, more flourishing now than at any former period. I have formed an estimate of the probable amount thus employed from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and this port, which would be at risk in case of a war with Spain, which may awaken the attention of those whom it may concern. From New Bedford, there are round Cape Horn or on their passage, 18 ships and 1 brig, whose tonnage is 5347 tons; and they with their outfits cost $565,000 Their return cargoes would probably amount in value to 800,000 From the Vineyard there are two ships which cost 50,000 Their return cargoes would probably amount to 93,000 From Nantucket fifty ships, which probably cost 1,350,000 Their return cargoes would probably amount to 2,342,000 From New Bedford, on this side Cape Horn, there are eleven ships and eight brigs, which probably cost 277,000 Their return cargoes probably will amount to 363,000 From Nantucket ten ships, which probably cost 140,000 And their return cargoes will probably amount to 227,000 ---------- Amounting in all to $6,000,000 ---------- _New Bedford Paper_.] _Fire-Places_. FROM THE DOWNINGSTON REPUBLICAN. _Fire-places_, for warming rooms, have been for a long time in use; and the best plan for constructing them continues to be an interesting subject of investigation. Whether or not fire-places and chimneys are of very ancient date, and mentioned by Virgil Appian, and Aristophanes, or whether they are of more modern invention, is not of much practical importance; and may be left to philosophers to determine. But as the proper construction of a chimney and fire-place is one of the greatest comforts of domestic life, I cannot doubt but that government will grant me a handsome premium for making public an unerring rule by which they can be so built as never to fail of drawing well, without emitting any smoke into the apartment. When the principle was first discovered by me, I wondered how it could so happen, that we had any defective chimnies amongst us; for I remembered to have heard that Dr. Franklin and count Rumford had devoted much attention to this subject, and must, of course, as I thought, have discovered a principle so plain and self-evident; and consequently, every mechanic must have learnt it, as not they only were interested in it, but every one of the civilized world.--After thinking of it in this way, I took an opportunity of inquiring into their opinions, and I find that the principle was never new to either of them; and as far as I know, I am the first and only discoverer of it. The principle consists simply in making the size of the flue bear a certain proportion to the size of the fire-place in front. To ascertain what would be the smallest proportion which the flue would bear to the front of the fire-place, would require some experiments. But it is probable that a fire-place 2-1/2 feet square in front, would draw well enough to carry up all the smoke, by a flue 12 by 14 inches, and probably by a one foot square: or even less may probably do. If one foot square, would carry all the smoke of such a fire-place, the proportion would be 144 to 900, or a little more than 1/7, and a little less than 1/6. But for greater certainty, we will say 1/5 is the proper proportion, and that a flue to a fire-place 2-1/2 feet square, shall be 12 by 15 inches. If the front be twice that size, (3 feet 6 and near a half square) then the flue or chimney must be 12 by 30 inches, or near 19 inches square. If it be three times the first size, or near 4 feet 4 inches square, then the flue must be 12 by 45--15 by 36, or nearly 23-1/4 inches square. Or if it be four times the size of the first, or 5 feet square, the flue must be equal to nearly 27 inches square, and so accordingly, whatever may be the dimensions of the fire-place in front. I do not know that a lesser proportion would not do: and whatever experience may establish, as that best adapted to answer the end proposed, it will not invalidate the principle laid down, but confirm it. One thing, however, is true, that the smaller the fire-place is in proportion to the flue, the harder it will draw, and by being thus proportioned, it may have any degree of draught given to it at pleasure, from that of an air furnace to that which will scarcely draw up the smoke. Any one may convince himself of the truth of this doctrine, by taking a board and closing up the fire-place, downwards from the mantle, and in proportion as it diminishes by the board moving downwards, the power of its draught will be increased. Franklin was aware of this fact, but was ignorant of the principle on which it depended, as he supposed the height of the chimney, and not its dimensions governed the fact itself,--and hence mentions that the higher the chimney, the larger the opening may be: and that 2-1/2 feet square may be risked on a lower floor and 1-1/2 on the upper, &c. The common ten plate stove furnishes an example of the truth of this principle: when the large fire door is open, the stove will smoke, because the large door is an over proportion in size to the size of the pipe--but shut the large door and leave the small one open, the stove immediately draws like a furnace, because its area is smaller than the area of a section of the pipe. If it were true that 2-1/2 feet square was the largest size which could be made to draw well, it would indeed be an unfortunate fact, as we could never have a comfortable kitchen fire-place--but if the principle here laid down be true, we can, with equal certainty, build a fire-place ten feet wide and five high, or of greater dimensions if we choose. The height of the chimney I believe to be a matter of no importance to the draught, and that a low one will draw as well as a high one. The worst smoking chimney that I ever saw was about 47 feet high, in my own house: it smoked because it was too small, and was cured by adding to it the flue of a fire-place directly above it; on account of which I had to lose a fire-place on the 2d floor. In this case the size of both chimneys was barely sufficient to vent the smoke of the lower one. The height is a subject which I have not investigated, but it strikes me that a low chimney is most favourable to drawing well: if any one want an explanation on it, I will give it again; but it cannot be of much practical importance. The fashion of a fire-place is of no importance to the draught: it may be made to please the fancy of the builder. I, however, should prefer one something near count Rumford's plan. The throat of the chimney may be contracted or not at pleasure; but for beauty and advantage of heat, I should prefer having the back drawn forward and the throat narrowed, more especially in a low fire-place. There may be local contingent circumstances connected with chimneys, which cause them to smoke, and must have appropriate remedies: but such do not effect the general principles here laid down. Smoke, from fires, is naturally carried upward by the heated air, which is specifically lighter than the surrounding atmosphere, and consequently ascends, carrying the smoke with it, and if it meet with no resistance, will pass up the chimney; but if that be too small to vent it, it regurgitates, as it were, into the apartment; which can only be remedied on the principle heretofore laid down. It might be asked, why will not a small chimney vent all the smoke of a small fire, in a large fire-place? Two reasons may be assigned: First, the heat of such fire cannot produce a brisk enough current of rarified air to carry the smoke, and that which is heated, not having free vent, it whirls in eddies into the apartment. Secondly, smoke, in itself, is specifically heavier than atmospheric air; consisting of aqueous vapour, carbonic acid, and oxid of carbon, and coming in contact with air not much heated, and parting with a portion of its own heat, it has then no disposition, in itself, to ascend. But this would lead to a discussion foreign to my present subject. Yours, &c. N. * * * * * Samuel Sprigg, Esq. has been elected by the legislature, governor of Maryland; and Thomas Mane Randolph governor of Virginia, in the room of Mr. Preston, whose constitutional term of office has expired. _List of the Members_ OF THE S I X T E E N T H C O N G R E S S. SENATE. _New Hampshire._ David L. Morrill, terms end in 1823 John F. Parrott,[14] 1825 _Massachusetts._ Prentiss Mellen, 1821 Harrison G. Otis, 1823 _Rhode Island._ William Hunter, 1821 James Burrill, Jr. 1823 _Connecticut._ Samuel W. Dana, 1821 James Lanman,[14] 1825 _Vermont._ Isaac Tichenor, 1821 William A. Palmer, 1825 _New York._ Nathan Sandford, 1821 ---- ---- 1825 _New Jersey._ James J. Wilson, 1821 Mahlon Dickerson, 1823 _Pennsylvania._ Johnathan Roberts, 1821 Walter Lowrie,[14] 1825 _Delaware._ Outterbridge Horsey, 1821 Nicholas Vandyke, 1823 _Maryland._ William Pinkney, Edward Lloyd, _Virginia._ James Barbour, 1821 John W. Eppes, 1823 _North Carolina._ Montfort Stokes, 1823 Nathaniel Macon, 1825 _South Carolina._ William Smith, 1823 John Gaillard, 1825 _Georgia._ Freeman Walker,[14] 1823 John Elliot,[14] 1825 _Kentucky._ John J. Crittenden, 1823 William Logan,[14] 1825 _Tennessee._ John H. Eaton, 1821 John Williams, 1823 _Ohio._ Benjamin Ruggles, 1821 William A. Trimble,[14] 1825 _Louisiana._ Henry Johnson, 1823 James Brown,[14] 1825 _Indiana._ James Noble, 1821 Waller Taylor, 1825 _Mississippi._ Walter Leake, 1821 Thomas H. Williams, 1823 _Illinois._ Jesse B. Thomas, 1823 Ninian Edwards, 1825 _Alabama._ John W. Walker,[14] William R. King.[14] HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. _New Hampshire_--6. Joseph Buffum, Jr.[14] Josiah Bartlett, Clifton Clagget, Arthur Livermore, William Plumer, Jr.[14] Nathianiel Upham. _Massachusetts_--20. Benjamin Adams Samuel C. Allen Joshua Cushman Edward Dowse Walter Folger Jr. Timothy Fuller John Holmes Mark L. Hill[14] Martin Kingsley[14] Jonas Kendall[14] Enoch Lincoln Samuel Lathrop[14] Jonathan Mason Marcus Morton Jeremiah Nelson James Parker[14] Henry Shaw Zabdiel Sampson Nathaniel Silsbee Ezekiel Whitman. _Vermont_--6. Samuel C. Crafts, Ezra Meech,[14] Orsamus C. Merrill, Charles Rich, Mark Richards, William Strong.[14] _Rhode Island_--2. Samuel Eddy,[14] Nathaniel Hazard.[14] _Connecticut_--7. Henry W. Edwards,[14] Samuel A. Foote,[14] Jonathan O. Mosely, Elisha Phelps,[14] John Russ,[14] James Stevens,[14] Gideon Tomlinson.[14] _New York_--27. Nathaniel Allen,[14] Caleb Baker,[14] Walter Case,[14] Robert Clark, Jacob H. De Witt,[14] John D. Dickenson, John Fay,[14] William D. Ford,[14] Ezra C. Gross,[14] Aaron Hackley, Jr.[14] George Hall,[14] Joseph S. Lyman,[14] Henry Meigs,[14] Robert Monell,[14] Harmanus Peek,[14] Nathaniel Pitcher,[14] Jona Richmond.[14] Ebenezer Sage,[14] Henry R. Stoors, Randall S. Street,[14] James Strong,[14] John W. Taylor, Caleb Tompkins, Albert H. Tracy,[14] Sol. Van Renselaer,[14] Peter H. Wendover, Silas Wood.[14] _New Jersey_--6. Ephraim Bateman, Joseph Bloomfield, John Condit,[14] John Linn, Bernard Smith,[14] Henry Southard. _Pennsylvania_--23. Henry Baldwin, Andrew Boden, Wm. Darlington,[14] George Dennison,[14] Samuel Edwards,[14] Thomas Forest,[14] David Fullerton,[14] Samuel Gross,[14] Joseph Heister, Joseph Hemphill,[14] Jacob Hibsliman,[14] Jacob Hostetter, Jacob Humphreys,[14] Wm P. Maclay, David Marchand, Robert Moore, Samuel Moore, John Murray, Thomas Patterson, Robert Philson,[14] Thomas J. Rogers, John Seargeant, James Wallace. _Delaware_--2. Willard Hall, Louis Mc Lane. _Maryland_--9. Stephenson Archer,[14] Thomas Bayly, Thomas Culbreth, Joseph Kent,[14] Peter Little, Ralph Neale,[14] Samuel Ringgold, Samuel Smith, Henry R. Warfield.[14] _Virginia_--23. Mark Alexander,[14] Wm. Lee Ball, Philip P. Barbour, Wm. A. Burwell, John Floyd, Robert S. Garnett, James Johnson, James Jones,[14] William M'Coy, Charles F. Mercer, Hugh Nelson, Thomas Newton, Severn E. Parker,[14] James Pindall, James Pleasants, John Randolph,[14] Ballard Smith, Alexander Smyth, George F. Strother, T. Van Swearengen, George Tucker,[14] John Tyler, Jared Williams.[14] _North Carolina_--13. H. G. Burton,[14] John Culpepper,[14] William Davidson, Welden N. Edwards, Charles Fisher, Thomas H. Hall, Charles Hook,[14] Lemuel Sawyer, Thomas Settle, Jesse Slocumb, James S. Smith, Felix Walker, Lewis Williams. _South Carolina_--9. Joseph Brevard,[14] Elias Earle, James Ervin, William Lowndes, John M'Creary, James Overstreet,[14] Charles Pinckney,[14] Eldred Simkins, Sterling Tucker. _Georgia_--6. Joel Abbott, Thomas W. Cobb, Joel Crawford, John A. Cuthbert,[14] Robert R. Reid, William Terrell. _Kentucky_--10. R. C. Anderson, Jr. William Brown, Henry Clay, Benjamin Hardin,[14] Alney M'Lean,[14] Thomas Metcalfe,[14] Tunstall Quarles, George Robertson, David Trimble, David Walker. _Tennessee_--6. Robert Allen,[14] Henry H. Bryan,[14] Newton Cannon,[14] John Cocke,[14] Francis Jones, John Rhea. _Ohio_--6. Philemon Beecher, Henry Brush,[14] John W. Campbell, Samuel Herrick, Thomas R. Ross,[14] John Sloane.[14] _Louisiana_--Thomas Butler. _Indiana_--William Hendricks. _Mississippi_--Christopher Rankin.[14] _Illinois_--Daniel P. Cook.[14] _Alabama_--John Crowell. DELEGATES FROM TERRITORIES. _Michigan_--William Woodbridge. _Missouri_--John Scott. [14] _Not Members of the last Congress._ STATE OF THE THERMOMETER AT PHILADELPHIA, _During the Year_ 1819. (Communicated for the Rural Magazine.) --------+------------------------------------------------------------ | AVERAGE. | Sun 3 Sun Months. | Sun ris. | 3 o'clo. | Sun set. | ris. o'cl. s't. --------+------------------------------------------------------------ _1st._ | 29.2 | 40. | 35.5 {[15] 15 25 22 | | | {[16] 40 53 50 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _2d._ | 30.5 | 41.6 | 38. {[15] 14 28 25 | | | {[16] 52 60 55 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _3d._ | 30.8 | 41.9 | 37.7 {[15] 16 28 26 | | | {[16] 55 67 63 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _4th._ | 43.6 | 59.2 | 53. {[15] 28 43 39 | | | {[16] 59 80 72 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _5th._ | 52.3 | 67.2 | 60.7 {[15] 40 51 46 | | | {[16] 63 82 73 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _6th._ | 65. | 80.6 | 73.6 {[15] 55 71 67 | | | {[16] 73 89 82 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _7th._ | 67.5 | 82.2 | 75.6 {[15] 60 76 67 | | | {[16] 74 90 85 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _8th._ | 67. | 82.4 | 75. {[15] 52 65 59 | | | {[16] 77 90 85 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _9th._ | 61. | 75.5 | 71. {[15] 48 57 55 | | | {[16] 75 90 80 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _10th._ | 46.8 | 60.7 | 53.6 {[15] 31 50 43 | | | {[16] 65 76 70 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _11th._ | 40.3 | 53.6 | 48.5 {[15] 23 38 35 | | | {[16] 57 68 60 --------------------------------------------------------------------- _12th._ | 28.7 | 39.6 | 26. {[15] 25 33 32 | | | {[16] 46 53 50 ---------------------------------------------------------- [15] Coldest. [16] Warmest. * * * * * PHILADELPHIA, PUBLISHED BY RICHARDS & CALEB JOHNSON, _No. 31, Market Street_, At $3.00 per annum. * * * * * GRIGGS & DICKINSON--_Printers, Whitehall._ * * * * * Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without noe. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. 
35696	----	WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING: A SERIES OF BRIEF AND PLAIN EXPOSITIONS OF PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE AS AN ART BASED UPON SCIENCE: BY HORACE GREELEY. "I _know_ That where the spade is deepest driven, The best fruits grow." JOHN G. WHITTIER. NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY THE TRIBUNE ASSOCIATION. 1871. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by HORACE GREELEY, at the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. TO THE MAN OF OUR AGE, WHO SHALL MAKE THE FIRST PLOW PROPELLED BY STEAM, OR OTHER MECHANICAL POWER, WHEREBY NOT LESS THAN TEN ACRES PER DAY SHALL BE THOROUGHLY PULVERIZED TO A DEPTH OF TWO FEET, AT A COST OF NOT MORE THAN TWO DOLLARS PER ACRE, THIS WORK IS ADMIRINGLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS. PAGE I. Will Farming Pay? 13 II. Good and Bad Husbandry 18 III. Where to Farm 23 IV. Preparing to Farm 29 V. Buying a Farm 34 VI. Laying off a Farm; Pasturing 39 VII. Trees; Woodlands; Forests 44 VIII. Growing Timber; Tree-Planting. 49 IX. Planting and Growing Trees 56 X. Draining; My Own 62 XI. Draining Generally 69 XII. Irrigation; Means and Ends 74 XIII. Possibilities of Irrigation 79 XIV. Plowing, Deep or Shallow 85 XV. Plowing, Good and Bad 91 XVI. Thorough Tillage 96 XVII. Commercial Fertilizers--Gypsum. 102 XVIII. Alkalis--Salt, Ashes, Lime. 107 XIX. Soils and Fertilizers 112 XX. Bones, Phosphates, Guano 118 XXI. Muck--How to Utilize It 124 XXII. Insects; Birds 129 XXIII. About Tree-Planting 134 XXIV. Fruit-Trees--The Apple 139 XXV. More about Apple-Trees 145 XXVI. Hay and Hay-Making 150 XXVII. Peaches, Pears, Cherries, Grapes 156 XXVIII. Grain-Growing--East and West 162 XXIX. Esculent Roots--Potatoes 170 XXX. Roots--Turnips, Beets, Carrots 178 XXXI. The Farmers' Calling 183 XXXII. A Lesson of To-day 189 XXXIII. Intellect in Agriculture 195 XXXIV. Sheep and Wool-Growing 200 XXXV. Accounts in Farming 207 XXXVI. Stone on a Farm 212 XXXVII. Fences and Fencing 219 XXXVIII. Agricultural Exhibitions 225 XXXIX. Science in Agriculture 231 XL. Farm Implements 237 XLI. Steam in Agriculture 241 XLII. Co-operation in Farming 248 XLIII. Farmers' Clubs 254 XLIV. Western Irrigation. 260 XLV. Sewage 266 XLVI. More of Irrigation 274 XLVII. Undeveloped Sources of Power 280 XLVIII. Rural Depopulation 286 XLIX. Large and Small Farms 292 L. Exchange and Distribution. 297 LI. Winter Work 303 LII. Summing up 308 PREFACE. Men have written wisely and usefully, in illustration and aid of Agriculture, from the platform of pure science. Acquainted with the laws of vegetable growth and life, they so expounded and elucidated those laws that farmers apprehended and profitably obeyed them. Others have written, to equally good purpose, who knew little of science, but were adepts in practical agriculture, according to the maxims and usages of those who have successfully followed and dignified the farmer's calling. I rank with neither of these honored classes. My practical knowledge of agriculture is meager, and mainly acquired in a childhood long bygone; while, of science, I have but a smattering, if even that. They are right, therefore, who urge that my qualifications for writing on agriculture are slender indeed. I only lay claim to an invincible willingness to be made wiser to-day than I was yesterday, and a lively faith in the possibility--nay, the feasibility, the urgent necessity, the imminence--of very great improvements in our ordinary dealings with the soil. I know that a majority of those who would live by its tillage feed it too sparingly and stir it too slightly and grudgingly. I know that we do too little for it, and expect it, thereupon, to do too much for us. I know that, in other pursuits, it is only work thoroughly well done that is liberally compensated; and I see no reason why farming should prove an exception to this stern but salutary law. I may be, indeed, deficient in knowledge of what constitutes good farming, but not in faith that the very best farming is that which is morally sure of the largest and most certain reward. I hope to be generally accorded the merit of having set forth the little I pretend to know in language that few can fail to understand. I have avoided, so far as I could, the use of terms and distinctions unfamiliar to the general ear. The little I know of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, &c., I have kept to myself; since whatever I might say of them would be useless to those already acquainted with the elementary truths of Chemistry, and only perplexing to others. If there is a paragraph in the following pages which will not be readily and fully understood by an average school-boy of fifteen years, then I have failed to make that paragraph as simple and lucid as I intended. Many farmers are dissuaded from following the suggestions of writers on agriculture by the consideration of expense. They urge that, though men of large wealth may (perhaps) profitably do what is recommended, their means are utterly inadequate: they might as well be urged to work their oxen in a silver yoke with gold bows. I have aimed to commend mainly, if not uniformly, such improvements only on our grandfathers' husbandry as a farmer worth $1,000, or over, may adopt--not all at once, but gradually, and from year to year. I hope I shall thus convince some farmers that draining, irrigation, deep plowing, heavy fertilizing, &c., are not beyond their power, as so many have too readily presumed and pronounced them. That I should say very little, and that little vaguely, of the breeding and raising of animals, the proper time to sow or plant, &c., &c., can need no explanation. By far the larger number of those whose days have mainly been given to farming, know more than I do of these details, and are better authority than I am with regard to them. On the other hand, I have traveled extensively, and not heedlessly, and have seen and pondered certain broader features of the earth's improvement and tillage which many stay-at-home cultivators have had little or no opportunity to study or even observe. By restricting the topics with which I deal, the probability of treating some of them to the average farmer's profit is increased. And, whatever may be his judgment on this slight work, I _know_ that, if I could have perused one of like tenor half a century ago, when I was a patient worker and an eager reader in my father's humble home, my subsequent career would have been less anxious and my labors less exhausting than they have been. Could I then have caught but a glimpse of the beneficent possibilities of a farmer's life--could I have realized that he is habitually (even though blindly) dealing with problems which require and reward the amplest knowledge of Nature's laws, the fullest command of science, the noblest efforts of the human intellect, I should have since pursued the peaceful, unobtrusive round of an enthusiastic and devoted, even though not an eminent or fortunate, tiller of the soil. Even the little that is unfolded in the ensuing pages would have sufficed to give me a far larger, truer, nobler conception of what the farmer of moderate means might and should be, than I then attained. I needed to realize that observation and reflection, study and mental acquisition, are as essential and as serviceable in his pursuit as in others, and that no man can have acquired so much general knowledge that a farmer's exigencies will not afford scope and use for it all. I abandoned the farm, because I fancied that I had already perceived, if I had not as yet clearly comprehended, all there was in the farmer's calling; whereas, I had not really learned much more of it than a good plow-horse ought to understand. And, though great progress has been made since then, there are still thousands of boys, in this enlightened age and conceited generation, who have scarcely a more adequate and just conception of agriculture than I then had. If I could hope to reach even one in every hundred of this class, and induce him to ponder, impartially, the contents of this slight volume, I know that I shall not have written it in vain. We need to mingle more thought with our work. Some think till their heads ache intensely; others work till their backs are crooked to the semblance of half an iron hoop; but the workers and the thinkers are apt to be distinct classes; whereas, they should be the same. Admit that it has always been thus, it by no means follows that it always should or shall be. In an age when every laborer's son may be fairly educated if he will, there should be more fruit gathered from the tree of knowledge to justify the magnificent promise of its foliage and its bloom. I rejoice in the belief that the graduates of our common schools are better ditch-diggers, when they can no otherwise employ themselves to better advantage, than though they knew not how to read; but that is not enough. If the untaught peasantry of Russia or Hungary grow more wheat per acre than the comparatively educated farmers of the United States, our education is found wanting. That is a vicious and defective if not radically false mental training which leaves its subject no better qualified for any useful calling than though he were unlettered. But I forbear to pursue this ever-fruitful theme. I look back, on this day completing my sixtieth year, over a life, which must now be near its close, of constant effort to achieve ends whereof many seem in the long retrospect to have been transitory and unimportant, however they may have loomed upon my vision when in their immediate presence. One achievement only of our age and country--the banishment of human chattelhood from our soil--seems now to have been worth all the requisite efforts, the agony and bloody sweat, through which it was accomplished. But another reform, not so palpably demanded by justice and humanity, yet equally conducive to the well-being of our race, presses hard on its heels, and insists that we shall accord it instant and earnest consideration. It is the elevation of Labor from the plane of drudgery and servility to one of self-respect, self-guidance, and genuine independence, so as to render the human worker no mere cog in a vast, revolving wheel, whose motion he can neither modify nor arrest, but a partner in the enterprise which his toil is freely contributed to promote, a sharer in the outlay, the risk, the loss and gain, which it involves. This end can be attained through the training of the generation who are to succeed us to observe and reflect, to live for other and higher ends than those of present sensual gratification, and to feel that no achievement is beyond the reach of their wisely combined and ably self-directed efforts. To that part of the generation of farmers just coming upon the stage of responsible action, who have intelligently resolved that the future of American agriculture shall evince decided and continuous improvement on its past, this little book is respectfully commended. H. G. _New York, Feb. 3, 1871._ WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. I. WILL FARMING PAY? I commence my essays with this question, because, when I urge the superior advantages of a rural life, I am often met by the objection that _Farming doesn't pay_. That, if true, is a serious matter. Let us consider: I do not understand it to be urged that the farmer who owns a large, fertile estate, well-fenced, well-stocked, with good store of effective implements, cannot live and thrive by farming. What is meant is, that he who has little but two brown hands to depend upon cannot make money, or can make very little, by farming. I think those who urge this point have a very inadequate conception of the difficulty encountered by every poor young man in securing a good start in life, no matter in what pursuit. I came to New-York when not quite of age, with a good constitution, a fair common-school education, good health, good habits, and a pretty fair trade--(that of printer.) I think my outfit for a campaign against adverse fortune was decidedly better than the average; yet ten long years elapsed before it was settled that I could remain here and make any decided headway. Meantime, I drank no liquors, used no tobacco, attended no balls or other expensive entertainments, worked hard and long whenever I could find work to do, lost less than a month altogether by sickness, and did very little in the way of helping others. I judge that quite as many did worse than I as did better; and that, of the young lawyers and doctors who try to establish themselves here in their professions, quite as many earn less as earn more than their bare board during the first ten years of their struggle. John Jacob Astor, near the close of a long, diligent, prosperous career, wherein he amassed a large fortune, is said to have remarked that, if he were to begin life again, and had to choose between making his first thousand dollars with nothing to start on, or with that thousand making all that he had actually accumulated, he would deem the latter the easier task. Depend upon it, young men, it is and must be hard work to earn honestly your first thousand dollars. The burglar, the forger, the blackleg (whether he play with cards, with dice, or with stocks), may seem to have a quick and easy way of making a thousand dollars; but whoever makes that sum honestly, with nothing but his own capacities and energies as capital, does a very good five-years' work, and may deem himself fortunate if he finishes it so soon. I _have_ known men do better, even at farming. I recollect one who, with no capital but a good wife and four or five hundred dollars, bought (near Boston) a farm of two hundred mainly rough acres, for $2,500, and paid for it out of its products within the next five years, during which he had nearly doubled its value. I lost sight of him then; but I have not a doubt that, if he lived fifteen years longer and had no very bad luck, he was worth, as the net result of twenty years' effort, at least $100,000. But this man would rise at four o'clock of a winter morning, harness his span of horses and hitch them to his large market-wagon (loaded over night), drive ten miles into Boston, unload and load back again, be home at fair breakfast-time, and, hastily swallowing his meal, be fresh as a daisy for his day's work, in which he would lead his hired men, keeping them clear of the least danger of falling asleep. Such men are rare, but they still exist, proving scarcely anything impossible to an indomitable will. I would not advise any to work so unmercifully; I seek only to enforce the truth that great achievements are within the reach of whoever will pay their price. An energetic farmer bought, some twenty-five years ago, a large grazing farm in Northern Vermont, consisting of some 150 acres, and costing him about $3,000. He had a small stock of cattle, which was all his land would carry; but he resolved to increase that stock by at least ten per cent. per annum, and to so improve his land by cultivation, fertilizing, clover, &c., that it would amply carry that increase. Fifteen years later, he sold out farm and stock for $45,000, and migrated to the West. I did not understand that he was a specially hard worker, but only a good manager, who kept his eyes wide open, let nothing go to waste, and steadily devoted his energies and means to the improvement of his stock and his farm. Walking one day over the farm of the late Prof. Mapes, he showed me a field of rather less than ten acres, and said, "I bought that field for $2,400, a year ago last September. There was then a light crop of corn on it, which the seller reserved and took away. I underdrained the field that Fall, plowed and sub-soiled it, fertilized it liberally, and planted it with cabbage; and, when these matured, I sold them for enough to pay for land, labor, and fertilizers, altogether." The field was now worth far more than when he bought it, and he had cleared it within fifteen months from the date of its purchase. I consider that a good operation. Another year, the crop might have been poor, or might have sold much lower, so as hardly to pay for the labor; but there are risks in other pursuits as well as in farming. A fruit-farmer, on the Hudson above Newburg, showed me, three years since, a field of eight or ten acres which he had nicely set with Grapes, in rows ten feet apart, with beds of Strawberries between the rows, from which he assured me that his sales per acre exceeded $700 per annum. I presume his outlay for labor, including picking, was less than $300 per annum; but it had cost something, to make this field what it then was. Say that he had spent $1,000 per acre in underdraining, enriching and tilling this field, to bring it to this condition, including the cost of his plants, and still there must have been a clear profit here of at least $300 per acre. I might multiply illustrations; but let the foregoing suffice. I readily admit that shiftless farming doesn't pay--that poor crops don't pay--that it is hard work to make money by farming without some capital--that frost, or hail, or drouth, or floods, or insects, may blast the farmer's hopes, after he has done his best to deserve and achieve success; but I insist that, as a general proposition, GOOD _Farming_ DOES _pay_--that few pursuits afford as good a prospect, as full an assurance, of reward for intelligent, energetic, persistent effort, as this does. I am not arguing that every man should be a farmer. Other vocations are useful and necessary, and many pursue them with advantage to themselves and to others. But those pursuits are apt to be modified by time, and some of them may yet be entirely dispensed with, which Farming never can be. It is the first and most essential of human pursuits; it is every one's interest that this calling should be honored and prosperous. If not adequately recompensed, I judge that is because it is not wisely and energetically followed. My aim is to show how it may be pursued with satisfaction and profit. II. GOOD AND BAD HUSBANDRY. Necessity is the master of us all. A farmer may be as strenuous for deep plowing as I am--may firmly believe that the soil should be thoroughly broken up and pulverized to a depth of fifteen to thirty inches, according to the crop; but, if all the team he can muster is a yoke of thin, light steers, or a span of old, spavined horses, which have not even a speaking acquaintance with grain, what shall he do? So he may heartily wish he had a thousand loads of barn-yard manure, and know how to make a good use of every ounce of it; but, if he has it not, and is not able to buy it, he can't always afford to forbear sowing and planting, and so, because he cannot secure great crops, do without any crops at all. If he does the best he can, what better _can_ he do? Again: Many farmers have fields that must await the pleasure of Nature to fit them for thorough cultivation. Here is a field--sometimes a whole farm--which, if partially divested of the primitive forest, is still thickly dotted with obstinate stumps and filled with green, tenacious roots, which could only be removed at a heavy, perhaps ruinous, cost. A rich man might order them all dug out in a month, and see his order fully obeyed; but, except to clear a spot for a garden or under very peculiar circumstances, it would not pay; and a poor man cannot afford to incur a heavy expense merely for appearance's sake, or to make a theatrical display of energy. In the great majority of cases, he who farms for a living can't afford to pull green stumps, but must put his newly-cleared land into grass at the earliest day, mow the smoother, pasture the rougher portions of it, and wait for rain and drouth, heat and frost, to rot his stumps until they can easily be pulled or burned out as they stand. So with regard to a process I detest, known as Pasturing. I do firmly believe that the time is at hand when nearly all the food of cattle will, in our Eastern and Middle States, be cut and fed to them--that we can't afford much longer, even if we can at present, to let than roam at will over hill and dale, through meadow and forest, biting off the better plants and letting the worse go to seed; often poaching up the soft, wet soil, especially in Spring, so that their hoofs destroy as much as they eat; nipping and often killing in their infancy the finest trees, such as the Sugar Maple, and leaving only such as Hemlock, Red Oak, Beech, &c., to attain maturity. Our race generally emerged from savageism and squalor into industry, comfort and thrift, through the Pastoral condition--the herding, taming, rearing and training of animals being that department of husbandry to which barbarians are most easily attracted: hence, we cling to Pasturing long after the reason for it has vanished. The radical, incurable vice of Pasturing--that of devouring the better plants and leaving the worse to ripen and diffuse seed--can never be wholly obviated; and I deem it safe to estimate that almost any farm will carry twice as much stock if their food be mainly cut and fed to them as it will if they are required to pick it up where and as it grows or grew. I am sure that the general adoption of Soiling instead of Pasturing will add immensely to the annual product, to the wealth, and to the population, of our older States. And yet, I know right well that many farms are now so rough and otherwise so unsuited to Soiling as to preclude its adoption thereon for many years to come. Let me indicate what I mean by Good Farming, through an illustration drawn from the Great West: All over the settled portions of the Valley of the Upper Mississippi and the Missouri, there are large and small herds of cattle that are provided with little or no shelter. The lee of a fence or stack, the partial protection of a young and leafless wood, they may chance to enjoy; but that it is a ruinous waste to leave than a prey to biting frosts and piercing north-westers, their owners seem not to comprehend. Many farmers far above want will this Winter feed out fields of Corn and stacks of Hay to herds of cattle that will not be one pound heavier on the 1st of next May than they were on the 1st of last December--who will have required that fodder merely to preserve their vitality and escape freezing to death. It has mainly been employed as fuel rather than as nourishment, and has served, not to put on flesh, but to keep out frost. Now I am familiar with the excuses for this waste; but they do not satisfy me. The poorest pioneer might have built for his one cow a rude shelter of stakes, and poles, and straw or prairie-grass, if he had realized its importance, simply in the light of economy. He who has many cattle is rarely without both straw and timber, and might shelter his stock abundantly if he only would. Nay, he could not have neglected or omitted it if he had clearly understood that his beasts must somehow be supplied with heat, and that he can far cheaper warm them from without than from within. The broad, general, unquestionable truths, on which I insist in behalf of Good Farming are these; and I do not admit that they are subject to exception: I. It is very rarely impracticable to grow good crops, if you are willing to work for them. If your land is too poor to grow Wheat or Corn, and you are not yet able to enrich it, sow Rye or Buckwheat; if you cannot coax it to grow a good crop of anything, let it alone; and, if you cannot run away from it, work out by the day or month for your more fortunate neighbors. The time and means squandered in trying to grow crops, where only half or quarter crops can be made, constitute the heaviest item on the wrong side of our farmers' balance-sheets; taxing them more than their National, State, and local governments together do. II. Good crops rarely fail to yield a profit to the grower. I know there are exceptions, but they are very few. Keep your eye on the farmer who almost uniformly has great Grass, good Wheat, heavy Corn, &c., and, unless he drinks, or has some other bad habit, you will find him growing rich. I am confident that white blackbirds are nearly as abundant as farmers who have become poor while usually growing good crops. III. The fairest single test of good farming is the increasing productiveness of the soil. That farm which averaged twenty bushels of grain to the acre twenty years ago, twenty-five bushels ten years ago, and will measure up thirty bushels to the acre from this year's crop, has been and is in good hands. I know no other touchstone of Farming so unerring as that of the increase or decrease from year to year of its aggregate product. If you would convince me that X. is a good farmer, do not tell me of some great crop he has just grown, but show me that his crop has regularly increased from year to year, and I am satisfied. --I shall have more to say on these points as I proceed. It suffices for the present if I have clearly indicated what I mean by Good and what by Bad Farming. III. WHERE TO FARM. When my father was over sixty years old, and had lived some twenty years in Erie County, Pennsylvania, he said to me: "I have several times removed, and always toward the West; I shall never remove again; but, were I to do so, it would be toward the East. Experience has taught me that the advantages of every section are counterbalanced by disadvantages, and that, where any crop is easily produced, there it sells low, and sometimes cannot be sold at all. I shall live and die right here; but, were I to remove again, it would not be toward the West." This is but one side of a truth, and I give it for whatever it may be worth. Had my father plunged into the primitive forest in his twenty-fifth rather than his forty-fifth year, he would doubtless have become more reconciled to pioneer life than he ever did. I would advise no one over forty years of age to undertake, with scanty means, to dig a farm out of the dense forest, where great trees must be cut down and cut up, rolled into log-heaps, and hurried to ashes where they grew. Where half the timber can be sold for enough to pay the cost of cutting, the case is different; but I know right well that digging a farm out of the high woods is, to any but a man of wealth, a slow, hard task. Making one out of naked prairie, five to ten miles from timber, is less difficult, but not much. He who can locate where he has good timber on one side and rich prairie on the other is fortunate, and may hope, if his health be spared, to surround himself with every needed comfort within ten years. Still, the pioneer's life is a rugged one, especially for women and children; and I should advise any man who is worth $2,000 and has a family, to buy out an "improvement" (which, in most cases, badly needs improving) on the outskirt of civilization, rather than plunge into the pathless forest or push out upon the unbroken prairie. I rejoice that our Public Lands are free to actual settlers; I believe that many are thereby enabled to make for themselves homes who otherwise would have nothing to leave their children; yet I much prefer a home within the boundaries of civilization to one clearly beyond them. There is a class of drinking, hunting, frolicking, rarely working, frontiersmen, who seem to have been created on purpose to erect log cabins and break paths in advance of a different class of settlers, who regularly come in to buy them out and start them along after a few years. I should here prefer to follow rather than lead. If Co-operation shall ever be successfully applied to the improvement of wild lands, I trust it may be otherwise. He who has a farm already, and is content with it, has no reason to ask, "Whither shall I go?" and he may rest assured that thoroughly good farming will pay as well in New England as in Kansas or in Minnesota. I advise no man who has a good farm anywhere, and is able to keep it, to sell and migrate. I know men who make money by growing food within twenty miles of this city quite as fast as they could in the West. If you have money to buy and work it, and know how to make the most of it, I believe you may find land really as cheap, all things considered, in Vermont as in Wisconsin or Arkansas. And yet I believe in migration--believe that there are thousands in the Eastern and the Middle States who would improve their circumstances and prospects by migrating to the cheaper lands and broader opportunities of the West and South. For, in the first place, most men are by migration rendered more energetic and aspiring; thrown among strangers, they feel the necessity of exertion as they never felt it before. Needing almost everything, and obliged to rely wholly on themselves, they work in their new homes as they never did in their old; and the consequences are soon visible all around them. "A stern chase is a long chase," say the sailors; and he who buys a farm mainly on credit, intending to pay for it out of its proceeds, finds interest, taxes, sickness, bad seasons, hail, frost, drouth, tornadoes, floods, &c., &c., deranging his calculations and impeding his progress, until he is often impelled to give up in despair. There are men who can surmount every obstacle and defy discouragement--these need no advice; but there are thousands who, having little means and large families, can grow into a good farm more easily and far more surely than they can pay for it; and these may wisely seek homes where population is yet sparse and land is consequently cheap. Doubtless, some migrate who might better have forborne; yet the instinct which draws our race toward sunset is nevertheless a true one. The East will not be depopulated; but the West will grow more rapidly in the course of the next twenty years than ever in the past. The Railroads which have brought Kansas and Minnesota within three days, and California within a week of us, have rendered this inevitable. But the South also invites immigration as she never did till now. Her lands are still very cheap; she is better timbered, in the average, than the West; her climate attracts; her unopened mines and unused water-power call loudly for enterprise, labor and skill. It is absurd to insist that her soil is exhausted when not one-third of it has ever yet been plowed. I do not advise solitary migration to the South, because she needs schools, mills, roads, bridges, churches, &c., &c., which the solitary immigrant can neither provide nor well do without: and I have no assurance that he, if obliged to work out for present bread, would find those ready to employ and willing to pay him; but let a hundred Northern farmers and mechanics worth $1,000 to $3,000 each combine to select (through chosen agents) and buy ten or twenty thousand acres in some Southern State, embracing hill and vale, timber and tillage, water-power and minerals, and divide it equitably among themselves, after laying it out with roads, a park, a village-plat, sites for churches, schools, &c., and I am confident that they can thus make pleasant homes more cheaply and speedily there than almost anywhere else. Good farming land, improved or unimproved, is this day cheaper in the United States, all things considered, than in any other country--cheaper than it can long remain. So many are intent on short cuts to riches that the soil is generally neglected, and may be bought amazingly cheap in parts of Connecticut as well as in Iowa or Nebraska. When I was last in Illinois, I rode for some hours beside a gray-coated farmer of some sixty years, who told me this: "I came here thirty years ago, and took up, at $1-1/4 per acre, a good tract of land, mainly in timber. I am now selling off the timber at $100 per acre, reserving the land." That seems to me a good operation--not so quick as a corner in the stock-market, but far safer. And, while I would advise no man to incur debt, I say most earnestly to all who have means, "Look out the place where you would prefer to live and die; take time to suit yourself thoroughly; choose it with reference to your means, your calling, your expectations, and, if you can pay for it, _buy_ it. Do not imagine that land is cheap in the West or the South only; it is to be found cheap in _every_ State by those who are able to own and who know how to use it." I earnestly trust that the obvious advantages of settling in colonies are to be widely and rapidly improved by our people, nearly as follows: One thousand heads of families unite to form a colony, contribute $100 to $500 each to defray the cost of seeking out and securing a suitable location, and send out two or three of the most capable and trustworthy of their number to find and purchase it; and now let their lands be surveyed and divided into village or city lots at or near the center, larger allotments (for mechanics' and merchants' homes) surrounding that center, and far larger (for farms) outside of these; and let each member, on or soon after his arrival, select a village-lot, out-lot, farm, or one of each if he chooses and can pay for them. Let ample reservations of the best sites for churches, school-houses, a town hall, public park, etc., be made in laying out the village, and let each purchaser of a lot or farm be required to plant shade-trees along the highways which skirt or traverse it. If irrigation by common effort be deemed necessary, let provision be made for that. Run up a large, roomy structure for a family hotel or boarding-house; and now invite each stockholder to come on, select his land, pay for it, and get up some sort of a dwelling, leaving his family to follow when this shall have been rendered habitable; but, if they insist on coming on with him and taking their chances, so be it. IV. PREPARING TO FARM. I write mainly for beginners--for young persons, and some not so young, who are looking to farming as the vocation to which their future years are to be given, by which their living is to be gained. In this chapter, I would counsel young men, who, not having been reared in personal contact with the daily and yearly round of a farmer's cares and duties, purpose henceforth to live by farming. To these I would earnestly say, "No haste!" Our boys are in too great a hurry to be men. They want to be bosses before they have qualified themselves to be efficient journeymen. I have personally known several instances of young men, fresh from school or from some city vocation, buying or hiring a farm and undertaking to work it; and I cannot now recall a single instance in which the attempt has succeeded; while speedy failure has been the usual result. The assumption that farming is a rude, simple matter, requiring little intellect and less experience, has buried many a well-meaning youth under debts which the best efforts of many subsequent years will barely enable him to pay off. In my opinion, half our farmers now living would say, if questioned, that they might better have waited longer before buying or hiring a farm. When I was ten years old, my father took a job of clearing off the mainly fallen and partially rotten timber--largely White Pine and Black Ash--from fifty acres of level and then swampy land; and he and his two boys gave most of the two ensuing years (1821-2) to the rugged task. When it was finished, I--a boy of twelve years--could have taken just such a tract of half-burned primitive forest as that was when we took hold of it, and cleared it by an expenditure of seventy to eighty per cent. of the labor we actually bestowed upon that. I had learned, in clearing this, how to economize labor in any future undertaking of the kind; and so every one learns by experience who steadily observes and reflects. He must have been a very good farmer at the start, or a very poor one afterward, who cannot grow a thousand bushels of grain much cheaper at thirty years of age than he could at twenty. To every young man who has had no farming experience, or very little, yet who means to make farming his vocation, I say, Hire out, for the coming year, to the very best farmer who will give you anything like the value of your labor. Buy a very few choice books, (if you have them not already,) which treat of Geology, Chemistry, Botany, and the application of their truths in Practical Agriculture; give to these the close and thoughtful attention of your few leisure hours; keep your eyes wide open, and set down in a note-book or pocket-diary each night a minute of whatever has been done on the farm that day, making a note of each storm, shower, frost, hail, etc., and also of the date at which each planted crop requires tillage or is ripe enough to harvest, and ascertaining, so far as possible, what each crop produced on the farm has cost, and which of them all are produced at a profit and which at a loss. At the year's end, hire again to the same or another good farmer and pursue the same course; and so do till you shall be twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, which is young enough to marry, and quite young enough to undertake the management of a farm. By this time, if you have carefully saved and wisely invested your earnings, you will have several hundred dollars; and, if you do not choose to migrate to some region where land is very cheap, you will have found some one willing to sell you a small farm on credit, taking a long mortgage as security. Your money--assuming that you have only what you will have earned--will all be wanted to fix up your building, buy a team and cow, with the few implements needed, and supply you with provisions till you can grow some. If you can start thus experienced and full-handed, you may, by diligence, combined with good fortune, begin to make payments on your mortgage at the close of your second year. I hate debt as profoundly as any one can, but I do not consider this really running into debt. One has more land than he needs, and does not need his pay for it forthwith; another wants land, but lacks the means of present payment. They two enter into an agreement mutually advantageous, whereby the poorer has the present use and ultimate fee-simple of the farm in question, in consideration of the payment of certain sums as duly stipulated. Technically, the buyer becomes a debtor; practically, I do not regard him as such, until payments fall due which he is unable promptly to meet. Let him rigorously avoid all other debt, and he need not shrink from nor be ashamed of this. I have a high regard for scientific attainments; I wish every young man were thoroughly instructed in the sciences which underlie the art of farming. But all the learning on earth, though it may powerfully help to make a good farmer, would not of itself make one. When a young man has learned all that seminaries and lectures, books and cabinets, can teach him, he still needs practice and experience to make him a good farmer. --"But wouldn't you have a young man study in order that he may become a good farmer?" --If he has money, Yes. I believe a youth worth four or five thousand dollars may wisely spend a tenth of his means in attending lectures, and even courses of study, at any good seminary where Natural Science is taught and applied to Agriculture. But life is short at best; and he who has no means, or very little, cannot really afford to attend even an Agricultural College. He can acquire so much of Science as is indispensable in the cheaper way I have indicated. He cannot wisely consent to spend the best years of his life in getting ready to live. He who has already mastered the art of farming, and has adequate means, may of course buy a farm to-morrow, though he be barely or not quite of age. He has little to learn from me. Yet I think even such have often concluded, in after years, that they were too hasty in buying land--that they might profitably have waited, and deliberated, and garnered the treasures of experience, before they took the grave step of buying their future home; with regard to which I shall make some suggestions in my next chapter. But I protest against a young man's declining or postponing the purchase of a farm merely because he is not able to buy a great one. Twenty acres of arable soil near a city or manufacturing village, forty acres in a rural district of any old State, or eighty acres in a region just beginning to be peopled by White men, is an ample area for any one who is worth less than $2,000. If he understands his business, he will find profitable employment hereon for every working hour: if he does not understand farming, he will buy his experience dear enough on this, yet more cheaply than he would on a wider area. Until he shall have more money than he needs, let him beware of buying more land than he absolutely wants. V. BUYING A FARM. No one need be told at this day that good land is cheaper than poor--that the former may be bought at less cost than it can be made. Yet this, like most truths, may be given undue emphasis. It should be considered in the light of the less obvious truth that _Every farmer may make advantageous use of_ SOME _poor land_. The smallest farm should have its strip or belt of forest; the larger should have an abundance and variety of trees; and sterile, stony land grows many if not most trees thriftily: Even at the risk of arousing Western prejudice, I maintain that New-England, and all broken, hilly, rocky countries, have a decided advantage (abundantly counterbalanced, no doubt) over regions of great fertility and nearly uniform facility, in that human stupidity and mole-eyed greed can never wholly divest them of forests--that their sterile crags and steep acclivities must mainly be left to wood forever. Avarice may strip them of their covering of to-day; but, defying the plow and the spade, they cannot be so denuded that they will not be speedily reclothed with trees and foliage. I am not a believer that "Five Acres" or "Ten Acres" suffice for a farm. I know where money is made on even fewer than five acres; but they who do it are few, and men of exceptional capacity and diligence. Their achievements are necessarily confined to the vicinage of cities or manufacturing villages. The great majority of all who live by Agriculture want room to turn upon--want to grow grass and keep stock--and, for such, no mere garden or potato-patch will answer. They want genuine farms. Yet, go where you may in this country, you will hear a farmer saying of his neighbor, "He has too much land," even where the criticism might justly be reciprocated. We cannot all be mistaken on this head. There are men who can each manage thousands of acres of tillage, just as there are those who can skillfully wield an army of a hundred thousand men. Napoleon said there were two of this class in the Europe of his day. There are others who cannot handle a hundred acres so that nothing is lost through neglect or oversight. Rules must be adapted to average capacities and circumstances. He who expects to live by cattle-rearing needs many more acres than he who is intent on grain-growing; while he who contemplates vegetable, root, and fruit culture, needs fewer acres still. As to the direction of his efforts, each one will be a law unto himself. If I were asked, by a young man intent on farming, to indicate the proper area for him, I would say, _Buy just so large a farm as half your means will pay for_. In other words, "If you are worth $20,000, invest half of it in land, the residue in stock, tools, etc.; and observe the same rule of proportion, whether you be worth $1,000,000 or only $1,000. If you are worth just nothing at all, I would invest in land the half of that, and no more. In other words, I would either wait to earn $500 or over, or push Westward till I found land that costs practically nothing." This, then, I take to be the gist of the popular criticism on our farmers as having unduly enlarged their borders: _They have more land than they have capital to stock and till to the best advantage._ He who has but fifty acre has too much if he lets part of his land lie idle and unproductive for lack of team or hands to till it efficiently; while he who has a thousand acres has none too much if he has the means and talents wherewith to make the best of it all. I have said that I consider the soil of New England as cheap, all things considered, for him who is able to buy and work it, as that of Minnesota or Arkansas--that I urge migration to the West only upon those who cannot pay for farms in the old States. I doubt whether the farmers of any other section have, in the average, done better, throughout the last ten years, than the butter-makers of Vermont, the cheese-dairymen of this State. And yet there is, in the ridgy, rocky, _patchy_ character of most of our Eastern farms, an insuperable barrier to the most economic, effective cultivation. If the ridges were further apart--if each rocky or gravelly knoll were not in close proximity to a strip of bog or morass--it would be different. But the genius of our age points unmistakably to cultivation by steam or some other mechanical application of power; and this requires spacious fields, with few or no obstacles to the equable progress of the plow. I apprehend that, for this reason, the growth of bread-corn eastward of the Hudson can never more be considerably extended, so long as the boundless, fertile prairies can so easily pour their exhaustless supplies upon us. Fruits, Vegetables, Roots and Grass, we must continue to grow, probably in ever-increasing abundance; but we of the East will buy our bread-corn largely if not mainly from the West. He, therefore, who bays land in the Eastern States should regard primarily its capacity to produce those crops in which the East can never be supplanted--Grass, Fruits, Vegetables, Timber. If a farm will also produce good Corn or Wheat, that is a recommendation; but let him place a higher value on those capacities which will be more generally required and drawn upon. In the West, the case is different; for, though Wheat-culture still recedes before the footsteps of advancing population, and Minnesota may soon cease to grow for others, as Western New-York, Ohio, Indiana, and Northern Illinois, have already done, yet Indian Corn, being the basis of both Beef and Pork, will long hold its own in the Valley of the Ohio and in that of the Upper Mississippi. As it recedes slowly Westward, Clover and Timothy, Butter and Cheese, will press closely on its footsteps. Good neighbors, good roads, good schools, good mechanics at hand, and a good church within reach, will always be valued and sought: few farmers are likely to disregard them. Let whoever buys a farm whereon to live, resolve to buy once for all, and let him not forget that health is not only wealth but happiness--that an eligible location and a beautiful prospect are elements of enjoyment not only for ourselves but our friends; let him not fancy that all the land will soon be gobbled up and held at exorbitant prices, but believe that money will almost always command money's worth of whatever may be needed, so that he need not embarrass himself to-day through fear that he may not be able to find sellers to-morrow, and he can hardly fail to buy judiciously, and thus escape that worst species of home-sickness--sickness of home. VI. LAYING OFF A FARM--PASTURING. Whoever finds himself the newly installed owner and occupant of a farm, should, before doing much beyond growing a crop in the ordinary way, study well its character, determine its capacities, make himself well acquainted with its peculiarities of soil and surface, with intent to make the most of it in his future operations. I would devote at least a year to this thoughtful observation and study. To one reared amid the rugged scenery of New-England; or on either slope of the Allegheny ridge, all prairie farms look alike, just as a European supposes this to be the case with all negroes. A better acquaintance will show the average prairie quarter-section by no means an unbroken meadow, "level as a house-floor," but diversified by water-courses, "sloughs," and gentle acclivities--sometimes by considerable ravines and "barrens" or elevated "swales," thinly covered with timber, or brush, or both. But I will contemplate more especially a Northern farm, made up of hill and vale or glade, rocky ridge and skirting bog or other low land, with a wood-lot on the rear or not far distant, and clumps or belts of timber irregularly lining brook and ravine, or lurking in the angles and sinuosities of walls and wooden fences, and a ragged, mossy orchard sheltered in some quiet nook, or sprawling over some gravelly hill-side. A brook, nearly dry in August, gurgles down the hill-side or winds through the swamp; while fields, moderately sloping here and nearly level there, interposed as they can be, have severally been devoted, for a generation or more, alternately to Grain and Grass--the latter largely preponderating. We will suppose this farm to measure from 50 to 150 acres. Now, the young man who has bought or inherited this farm may be wholly and consciously unable to enter upon any expensive system of improvement for the next ten years--may fully realize that four or five days of each week must meantime be given to the growing or earning of present bread--yet he should none the less study well the capacities and adaptations of each acre, and mature a comprehensive plan for the ultimate bringing of each field into the best and most useful condition whereof it is susceptible, before he cuts a living tree or digs a solitary drain. He is morally certain of doing something--perhaps many things--that he will sadly wish undone, if he fails to study peculiarities and mature a plan before he begins to improve or to fit his several fields for profitable cultivation. And the first selection to be made is that of a pasture, since I am compelled to use an old, familiar name for what should be essentially a new thing. This pasture should be as near the center of the farm as may be, and convenient to the barns and barn-yard that are to be. It should have some shade, but no very young trees; should be dry and rolling, with an abundance of the purest living water. The smaller this pasture-lot may be, the better I shall like it, provided you fence it very stoutly, connect it with the barn-yard by a lane if they are not in close proximity, and firmly resolve that, outside of this lot, this lane, this yard and the adjacent stable, your cattle shall never be seen, unless on the road to market. Very possibly, the day may come wherein you will decide to dispense with pasturing altogether; but that is, for the present, improbable. _One_ pasture you will have; if you live in the broad West, and purpose to graze extensively, it will doubtless be a large one; but permitting your stock to ramble in Spring and Fall all over your own fields--(and perhaps your neighbors' also)--in quest of their needful food, biting off the tops of the finer young trees, trampling down or breaking off some that are older, rubbing the bark off of your growing fruit-trees, and doing damage that years will be required to repair, I most vehemently protest against. The one great error that misleads and corrupts mankind is the presumption that _something may be had for nothing_. The average farmer imagines that whatever of flesh or of milk may accrue to him from the food his cattle obtain by browsing over his fields or through his woods, is so much clear gain--that they do the needful work, while he pockets the net proceeds. But the universe was framed on a plan which requires so much for so much; and this law will not submit to defiance or evasion. Under the unnatural, exceptional conditions which environ the lone squatter on a vast prairie, something may be made by turning cattle loose and letting them shift for themselves; but this is at best transitory, and at war with the exigencies of civilization. Whoever lives within sight of a school-house, or within hearing of a church-bell, is under the dominion of a law alike inexorable and beneficent--the law that requires each to pay for all he gets, and reap only where he has sown. You can hardly have a pasture so small that it will not afford hospitality to weeds and prove a source of multiform infestations. The plants that should mature and be diffused will be kept down to the earth; those which should be warred upon and eradicated will flourish untouched, ripen their seed, and diffuse it far and wide. Thistles, White Daisy, and every plant that impedes tillage and diminishes crops, are nourished and diffused by means of pastures. I hold, therefore, that the good farmer will run a mowing-machine over his pasture twice each Summer--say early in June, and then late in July--or, if his lot be too rough for this, will have it clipped at least once with a scythe. Cutting all manner of worthless if not noxious plants in the blossom, will benefit the soil which their seeding would tax; it will render the eradication of weeds from your tillage a far easier task; and it will prevent your being a nuisance to your neighbors. I am confident that no one who has formed the habit of keeping down the weeds in his pasture will ever abandon it. I think each pasture should have (though mine, as yet, has not) a rude shed or other shelter whereto the cattle may resort in case of storm or other inclemency. How much they shrink as well as suffer from one cold, pelting rain, few fully realize; but I am sure that "the merciful man" who (as the Scripture says) "is merciful to his beast," finds his humanity a good paying investment. I doubt that the rule would fail, even in Texas; but I am contemplating civilized husbandry, not the rude conditions of tropical semi-barbarism. If only by means of stakes and straw, give cattle a chance to keep dry and warm when they must otherwise shiver through a rainy, windy day and night on the cold, wet ground, and I am sure they will pay for it. In confining a herd of cattle to such narrow limits, I do not intend that they shall be stinted to what grows there. On the contrary, I expect them to be fed on Winter Rye, on Cut Grass, on Sowed Corn, Sorghum, Stalks, Roots, etc., etc., as each shall be in season. With a good mower, it is a light hour's work before breakfast to cut and cart to a dozen or twenty head as much grass or corn as they will eat during the day. But let that point stand over for the present. VII. TREES--WOODLAND--FORESTS. I am not at all sentimental--much less mawkish--regarding the destruction of trees. Descended from several generations of timber-cutters (for my paternal ancestors came to America in 1640), and myself engaged for three years in land-clearing, I realize that trees exist for use rather than for ornament, and have no more scruple as to cutting timber in a forest than as to cutting grass in a meadow. Utility is the reason and end of all vegetable growth--of a hickory's no less than a corn-stalk's. I have always considered "Woodman, spare that tree," just about the most mawkish bit of badly versified prose in our language, and never could guess how it should touch the sensibilities of any one. Understand, then, that I urge the planting of trees mainly because I believe it will _pay_, and the preservation, improvement, and extension, of forests, for precisely that reason. Yet I am not insensible to the beauty and grace lent by woods, and groves, and clumps or rows of trees, to the landscape they diversify. I feel the force of Emerson's averment, that "Beauty is its own excuse for being," and know that a homestead embowered in, belted by, stately, graceful elms, maples, and evergreens, is really _worth_ more, and will sell for more, than if it were naked field and meadow. I consider it one positive advantage (to balance many disadvantages) of our rocky, hilly, rugged Eastern country, that it will never, in all probability, be so denuded of forests as the rich, facile prairies and swales of the Great Valley may be. Our winds are less piercing, our tornadoes less destructive, than those of the Great West. I doubt whether there is another equal area of the earth's surface whereon so many kinds of valuable trees grow spontaneously and rapidly, defying eradication, as throughout New England and on either slope of the Alleghenies; and this profusion of timber and foliage may well atone for, or may be fairly weighed against, many deficiencies and drawbacks. The Yankee, who has been accustomed to see trees spring up spontaneously wherever they were not kept down by ax, or plow, or scythe, and to cross running water every half mile of a Summer day's journey, may well be made homesick, by two thousand miles of naked, dusty, wind-swept Plains, whereon he finds no water for fifty to a hundred miles, and knows it impossible to cut an ax-helve, much more an axle-tree, in the course of a wearying journey. No Eastern farmer ever realized the blessedness of abundant and excellent wood and water until he had wandered far from his boyhood's home. No one may yet be able fully to explain the inter-dependence of these two blessings; but the fact remains. All over "the Plains," there is evidence that trees grew and flourished where none are now found, and that springs and streams were then frequent and abiding where none now exist. A prominent citizen of Nevada, who explored southward from Austin to the Colorado, assured me that his party traveled for days in the bed of what had once been a considerable river, but in which it was evident that no water had flowed for years. And I have heard that since the Mormons have planted trees over considerable sections of Utah, rains in Summer are no longer rare, and Salt Lake evinces, by a constant though moderate increase of her volume of waters, that the equilibrium of rain-fall with evaporation in the Great Basin has been fully restored--or rather, that the rain-fall is now taking the lead. I have a firm faith that all the great deserts of the Temperate and Torrid Zones will yet be reclaimed by irrigation and tree-planting. The bill which Congress did not pass, nor really consider, whereby it was proposed, some years since, to give a section of the woodless Public Lands remote from settlement to every one who, in a separate township, would plant and cherish a quarter-section of choice forest-trees, ought to have been passed--with modifications, perhaps, but preserving the central idea. Had ten thousand quarter-sections, in so many different townships of the Plains, been thus planted to timber ten to twenty years ago, and protected from fire and devastation till now, the value of those Plains for settlement would have been nearly or quite doubled. A capital mistake, it seems to me, is being made by some of the dairy farmers of our own State. One who has a hundred acres of good soil, whereof twenty or thirty are wooded, cuts off his timber entirely, calculating that the additional grass that he may grow in its stead will pay for all the coal he needs for fuel, so that he will make a net gain of the time he has hitherto devoted each Winter to cutting and hauling wood. He does not consider how much his soil will lose in Summer moisture, how his springs and runnels will be dried up, nor how the sweep of harsh winds will be intensified, by baring his hill-tops and ravines to sun and breeze so utterly. In my deliberate judgment, a farm of one hundred acres will yield _more_ feed, with far greater uniformity of product from year to year, if twenty acres of its ridge-crests, ravine-sides, and rocky places, are thickly covered with timber, than if it be swept clean of trees and all devoted to grass. Hence, I insist that the farmer who sweeps off his wood and resolves to depend on coal for fuel, hoping to increase permanently the product of his dairy, makes a sad miscalculation. Spain, Italy, and portions of France, are now suffering from the improvidence that devoured their forests, leaving the future to take care of itself. I presume the great empires of antiquity suffered from the same folly, though to a much greater extent. The remains of now extinct races who formerly peopled and tilled the central valleys of this continent, and especially the Territory of Arizona, probably bear witness to a similar recklessness, which is paralleled by our fathers' and our own extermination of the magnificent forests of White Pine which, barely a century ago, covered so large a portion of the soil of our Northern States. Vermont sold White Pine abundantly to England through Canada within my day: she is now supplying her own wants from Canada at a cost of not less than five times the price she sold for; and she will be paying still higher rates before the close of this century. I entreat our farmers not to preserve every tree, good, bad, or indifferent, that may happen to be growing on their lands--but, outside of the limited districts wherein the primitive forest must still be cut away in order that land may be obtained for cultivation, to _plant and rear at least two better trees for every one they may be impelled to cut down_. How this may, in the average, be most judiciously done, I will try to indicate in the succeeding chapter. VIII. GROWING TIMBER--TREE-PLANTING. In my judgment, the proportion of a small farm that should be constantly devoted to trees (other than fruit) is not less than one-fourth; while, of farms exceeding one hundred acres in area, that proportion should be not less than one-third, and may often be profitably increased to one-half. I am thinking of such as are in good part superficially rugged and rocky, or sandy and sterile, such as New-England, eastern New-York, northern New-Jersey, with both slopes of the Alleghenies, as well as the western third of our continent, abound in. It may be that it is advisable to be content with a smaller proportion of timber in the Prairie States and the broad, fertile intervales which embosom most of our great rivers for at least a part of their course; but I doubt it. And there is scarcely a farm in the whole country, outside of the great primitive forests in which openings have but recently been made, in which _some_ tree-planting is not urgently required. "Too much land," you will hear assigned on every side as a reason for poor farming and meager crops. Ask an average farmer in New-England, in Virginia, in Kentucky, or in Alabama, why the crops of his section are in the average no better, and the answer, three times in four, will be, "Our farmers have too much land"--that is, not too much absolutely, but too much relatively to their capital, stock, and general ability to till effectively. The habitual grower of poor crops will proffer this explanation quite as freely and frequently as his more thrifty neighbor. And what every one asserts must have a basis of truth. Now, I do not mean to quarrel with the instinct which prompts my countrymen to buy and hold too much land. They feel, as I do, that land is still cheap almost anywhere in this country--cheap, if not in view of the income now derived from it, certainly in contemplation of the price it must soon command and the income it might, under better management, be made to yield. Under this conviction--or, if you please, impression--every one is intent on holding on to more land than he can profitably till, if not more than he can promptly pay for. What I _do_ object to is simply this--that thousands, who have more land than they have capital to work profitably, will persist in half-tilling many acres, instead of thoroughly farming one-half or one third so many, and getting the rest into wood so fast as may be. I am confident that two-thirds of all our farmers would improve their circumstances and increase their incomes by concentrating their efforts, their means, their fertilizers, upon half to two-thirds of the area they now skim and skin, and giving the residue back to timber-growing. In my own hilly, rocky, often boggy, Westchester--probably within six of being the oldest Agricultural County in the Union--I am confident that ten thousand acres might to-morrow be given back to forest with profit to the owners and advantage to all its inhabitants. It is a fruit-growing, milk-producing, truck-farming county, closely adjoining the greatest city of the New World; hence, one wherein land can be cultivated as profitably as almost anywhere else--yet I am satisfied that half its surface may be more advantageously devoted to timber than to grass or tillage. Nay; I doubt that one acre in a hundred of rocky land--that is, land ribbed or dotted with rocks that the bar or the rock-hook cannot lift from their beds, and which it will not as yet pay to blast--is now tilled to profit, or ever will be until it shall be found advisable to clear them utterly of stone breaking through or rising within two feet of the surface. The time will doubtless arrive in which many fields will pay for clearing of stone that would not to-day; these, I urge, should be given up to wood now, and kept wooded until the hour shall have struck for ridding them of every impediment to the steady progress of both the surface and the subsoil plow. Were all the rocky crests and rugged acclivities of this County bounteously wooded once more, and kept so for a generation, our floods would be less injurious, our springs unfailing, and our streams more constant and equable; our blasts would be less bitter, and our gales less destructive to fruit; we should have vastly more birds to delight us by their melody and aid us in our not very successful war with devouring insects; we should grow peaches, cherries, and other delicate fruits, which the violent caprices of our seasons, the remorseless devastations of our visible and invisible insect enemies, have all but annihilated; and we should keep more cows and make more milk on two-thirds of the land now devoted to grass than we actually do from the whole of it. And what is true of Westchester is measurably true of every rural county in the Union. I have said that I believe in cutting trees as well as in growing them; I have not said, and do not mean to say, that I believe in cutting everything clean as you go. That was once proper in Westchester; it is still advisable in forest-covered regions, where the sun must be let in before crops can be grown; but, in nine cases out of ten, timber should be thinned or culled out rather than cut off; and, for every tree taken away, at least two should be planted or set out. We have pretty well outgrown the folly of letting every apple-tree bear such fruit as it will; though in the orchard of my father's little farm in Amherst, N. H., whereon I was born, no tree had ever been grafted when I bade adieu to it in 1820; and I presume none has been to this day. By this time, almost every farmer realizes that he _can't afford_ to grow little, gnarly, villainously sour or detestably bitter-sweet apples, when, by duly setting a graft at a cost of two dimes, he may make that identical tree yield Greenings or Pippins at least as bounteously. I presume the cumulative experience of fifty or sixty generations of apple-growers has ripened this conclusion. Why do they not infer readily and generally that growing indifferent timber where the best and most valued would grow as rapidly, is a stupid, costly blunder? It seems to me that whoever has attained the conviction that apple-trees should be grafted ought to know that it is wasteful to grow Red Oak, Beech, White Maple, and Alder, where White Oak, Hickory, Locust, and White Pine, might be grown with equal facility, in equal luxuriance, provided the right seeds were planted, and a little pains taken to keep down, for a year or two, the shoots spontaneously sent up by the wrong ones. North of the Potomac, and east of the Ohio, and (I presume) in limited districts elsewhere, rocky, sterile woodlands, costing $2 to $50 per acre according to location, etc., are to-day the cheapest property to be bought in the United States. Even though nothing were done with them but keep out fire and cattle, and let the young trees grow as they will, money can be more profitably and safely invested in lands covered by young timber than in anything else. The parent, who would invest a few thousands for the benefit of children or grandchildren still young, may buy woodlands which will be worth twenty times their present cost within the next twenty years. But better even than this would it be to buy up rocky, craggy, naked hill-sides and eminences which have been pastured to death, and, shutting out cattle inflexibly, scratch these over with plow, mattock, hoe, or pick, as circumstances shall dictate, plant them thickly with Chestnut, Walnut, Hickory, White Oak, and the seeds of Locust and White Pine. I say Locust, though not yet certain that this tree must not be started in garden or nursery-beds and transplanted when two or three years old, so puny and feeble is it at the outset, and so likely to be smothered under leaves or killed out by its more favored neighbors. I have experiments in progress not yet matured, which may shed light on this point before I finish these essays. _Plant thickly_, and of diverse kinds, so as to cover the ground promptly and choke out weeds and shrubs, with full purpose to thin and prune as circumstances shall dictate. Many farmers are averse to planting timber, because (they think) nothing can be realized therefrom for the next twenty or thirty years, which is as long as they expect to live. But this is a grave miscalculation. Let us suppose a rocky, hilly pasture-lot of ten or twenty acres rudely scratched over as I have suggested, and thickly seeded with hickory nuts and white oak acorns only: within five years, it will yield abundantly of hoop poles, though the better, more promising half be left to mature, as they should be; two years later, another and larger crop of hoop-poles may be cut, still sparing the best; and thenceforth a valuable crop of timber may be taken from that land; for, if cut at the proper season, at least two thrifty sprouts will start from every stump; and so that wood will yield a clear income each year while its best trees are steadily growing and maturing. I do not advise restriction to those two species of timber; but I insist that a young plantation of forest-trees may and should yield a clear income in every year after its fourth. As to the Far West--the Plains, the Parks, and the Great Basin--there is more money to be made by dotting them with groves of choice timber than by working the richest veins of the adjacent mountains. Whoever will promptly start, near a present or prospective railroad, forty acres of choice trees--Hickory, White Oak, Locust, Chestnut, and White Pine--within a circuit of three hundred miles from Denver, on land which he has made or is making provision to irrigate--may begin to sell trees therefrom two years hence, and persist in selling annually henceforth for a century--at first, for transplanting; very soon, for a variety of uses in addition to that. * * * * * --But this paper grows too long, and I must postpone to the next my more especial suggestions to young farmers with regard to tree-planting. IX. PLANTING AND GROWING TREES. Whoever has recently bought, inherited, or otherwise become the owner of a farm, has usually found some part or parts of it devoted to wood; and this, if not in excess, he will mainly preserve, while he studies and plans with a view to the ultimate devotion to timber of just those portions of his land that are best adapted to that use. In locating that timber, I would have him consider these suggestions: I. Land wisely planted with trees, and fenced so far as need be to keep out cattle, costs nothing. Whatever else you grow involves labor and expenditure; trees grow of their own accord. You may neglect them utterly--may wander over the earth and be absent for ten or twenty years, while your fences decay and your fields are overcropped to exhaustion; even your meadows may be run out by late mowing and close feeding at both ends of the season, till a dozen acres will hardly subsist a span of horses and a cow; but your woods need only to be let alone to insure that their value shall have decidedly increased during your absence. They will richly reward labor and care in thinning, trimming, and transplanting--you may profitably employ in them any time that you can spare them--but they will do very well if simply let alone. And, unlike any other product with which I am acquainted, you may take crop after crop of wood from the same lot, and the soil will be richer and more productive after the last than it was before the first. Whether wholly because their roots permeate and break up the soil during their life and enrich it in their decay, or for diverse reasons, it is certainly true that land--and especially _poor_ land--is enriched by growing upon it a crop of almost any timber, the evergreens possibly excepted. So, should you ever have land that you cannot till to profit, whether because it is too poor, or because you have a sufficiency that is better, you should at once devote it to wood. II. Your springs and streams will be rendered more equable and enduring by increasing the area and the luxuriance of your timber. They may have become scanty and capricious under a policy of reckless, wholesale destruction of trees; they will be rëenforced and reinvigorated by doubling the area of your woods, while quadrupling the number, and increasing the average size, of your trees. III. All ravines and steep hill-sides should be devoted to trees. Every acre too rocky to be thoroughly cleared of stone and plowed should be set apart for tree-growing. Wherever the soil will be gullied or washed away by violent rains if under tillage, it should be excluded from cultivation and given up to trees. Men often doubt the profit of heavy manuring; and well they may, if three-fourths of the fertilizers applied are soaked out and swept away by flooding rains or sudden thaws and floated off to some distant sea or bay; but let all that is applied to the soil only remain there till it is carted away in crops, and it will hardly be possible to manure too highly for profit. IV. Trees, especially evergreens, may be so disposed as to modify agreeably the average temperature of your farm, or at least of the most important parts of it. When I bought my place--or rather the first installment of it--the best spot I could select for a garden lay at the foot of a hill which half surrounded it on the south and east, leaving it exposed to the full sweep of north and north-west winds; so that, though the soil was gravelly and warm, my garden was likely to be cold and backward. To remedy this, I planted four rows of evergreens (Balsam Fir, Pine, Red Cedar, and Hemlock), along a low ridge bounding it on the north, following an inward curve of the ridge at its west end; and those evergreens have in sixteen years grown into very considerable trees, forming a shady, cleanly, inviting bower, or sylvan retreat, daintily carpeted with the fallen leaves of the overhanging firs. I judge that the average temperature of the soil for some yards southward of this wind-break is at least five degrees higher, throughout the growing season, than it formerly was or would now be if these evergreens were swept away; while the aspect of the place is agreeably diversified, and even beautified, by their appearance. I believe it would sell for some hundreds of dollars more with than without that thrifty, growing clump of evergreens. V. I have already urged, though not strongly enough, that crops, as well as springs, will be improved by keeping the crests of ridges thickly wooded, thus depositing moisture in Winter and Spring, to be slowly yielded to the adjacent slopes during the heat and drouth of Summer. I firmly believe that the slopes of a hill whose crest is heavily wooded will yield larger average crops than slope and crest together would do if both were bare of trees. VI. The banks of considerable streams, ponds, etc., may often be so planted with trees that these will shade more water than land, to the comfort and satisfaction of the fish, and the protection of those banks from abrasion by floods and rapid currents. Sycamore, Elm, and Willow, do well here; if choice Grape-Vines are set beside and allowed to run over some of them, the effect is good, and the grapes acceptable to man and bird. VII. Never forget that a good tree grows as thriftily and surely as a poor one. Many a farmer has to-day ten to forty acres of indifferent cord-wood where he might, at a very slight cost, have had instead an equal quantity of choice timber, worth ten times as much. Hickory, Chestnut, and Walnut, while they yield nuts that can be eaten or sold, are worth far more as timber than an equal bulk of Beech, Birch, Hemlock, or Red Oak. Chestnut has more than doubled in value within the last few years, mainly because it has been found excellent for the inside wood-work of dwellings. Locust also seems to be increasing in value. Ten acres of large, thrifty Locust near this City would now buy a pretty good farm; as I presume it would, if located near any of our great cities. VIII. Where several good varieties of Timber are grown together, some insect or atmospheric trouble may blast one of them, yet leave the residue alive and hearty. And, if all continue thrifty, some may be cut out and sold, leaving others more room to grow and rapidly attain a vigorous maturity. IX. Wherever timber has become scarce and valuable, a wood-lot should be thinned out, nevermore cleared off, unless it is to be devoted to a different use. It seems to me that destroying a forest because we want timber is like smothering a hive of bees because we want honey. X. Timber should be cut with intelligent reference to the future. Locust and other valuable trees that it is desirable should throw up shoots from the stump, and rapidly reproduce their kind, should be cut in March or April; while trees that you want to exterminate should be cut in August, so that they may _not_ sprout. There may be exceptions to this rule; but I do not happen to recollect any. Evergreens do not sprout; and I think these should be cut in Winter--at all events, not in Spring, when full of sap and thus prone to rapid decay. XI. Your plantation will furnish pleasant and profitable employment at almost any season. I doubt that any one in this country has ever yet bestowed so much labor and care on a young forest as it will amply reward. Sow your seeds thickly; begin to thin the young trees when they are a foot high, and to trim them so soon as they are three feet, and you may have thousands thriving on a fertile acre, and pushing their growth upward with a rapidity and to an altitude outrunning all preconception. XII. Springs and streams will soon appear where none have appeared and endured for generations, when we shall have reclothed the nakedness of the Plains with adequate forests. Rains will become moderately frequent where they are now rare, and confined to the season when they are of least use to the husbandman. I may have more to say of trees by-and-by, but rest here for the present. The importance of the topic can hardly be overrated. X. DRAINING--MY OWN. My farm is in the township of Newcastle, Westchester County, N. Y., 35 miles from our City Hall, and a little eastward of the hamlet known as Chappaqua, called into existence by a station on the Harlem Railroad. It embraces the south-easterly half of the marsh which the railroad here traverses from south to north--my part measuring some fifteen acres, with five acres more of slightly elevated dry land between it and the foot of the rather rugged hill which rises thence on the east and on the south, and of which I now own some fifty acres, lying wholly eastward of my low land, and in good part covered with forest. Of this, I bought more than half in 1853, and the residue in bits from time to time as I could afford it. The average cost was between $130 and $140 per acre: one small and poor old cottage being the only building I found on the tract, which consisted of the ragged edges of two adjacent farms, between the western portions of which mine is now interposed, while they still adjoin each other beyond the north and south road, half a mile from the railroad, on which their buildings are located and which forms my eastern boundary. My stony, gravelly upland mainly slopes to the west; but two acres on my east line incline toward the road which bounds me in that direction, while two more on my south-east corner descend to the little brook which, entering at that corner, keeps irregularly near my south line, until it emerges, swelled by a smaller runnel that enters my lowland from the north and traverses it to meet and pass off with the larger brooklet aforesaid. I have done some draining, to no great purpose, on the more level portions of my upland; but my lowland has challenged my best efforts in this line, and I shall here explain them, for the encouragement and possible guidance of novices in draining. Let me speak first of _My Difficulties._--This marsh or bog consisted, when I first grappled with it, of some thirty acres, whereof I then owned less than a third. To drain it to advantage, one person should own it all, or the different owners should coöperate; but I had to go it alone, with no other aid than a freely accorded privilege of straightening as well as deepening the brook which wound its way through the dryer meadow just below me, forming here the boundary of two adjacent farms. I spent $100 on this job, which is still imperfect; but the first decided fall in the stream occurs nearly a mile below me; and you tire easily of doing at your own cost work which benefits several others as much as yourself. My drainage will never be perfect till this brook, with that far larger one in which it is merged sixty rods below me, shall have been sunk three or four feet, at a further expense of at least $500. This bog or swamp, when I first bought into it, was mainly dedicated to the use of frogs, muskrats and snapping-turtles. A few small water-elms and soft maples grew upon it, with swamp alder partly fringing the western base of the hill east of it, where the rocks which had, through thousands of years, rolled from the hill, thickly covered the surface, with springs bubbling up around and among them. Decaying stumps and imbedded fragments of trees argued that timber formerly covered this marsh as well as the encircling hills. A tall, dense growth of blackberry briers, thoroughwort, and all manner of marsh-weeds and grasses, covered the center of the swamp each Summer; but my original portion of it, being too wet for these, was mainly addicted to hassocks or tussocks of wiry, worthless grass; their matted roots rising in hard bunches a few inches above the soft, bare, encircling mud. The bog ranged in depth from a few inches to five or six feet, and was composed of black, peaty, vegetable mold, diversified by occasional streaks of clay or sand, all resting on a substratum of hard, coarse gravel, out of which two or three springs bubbled up, in addition to the half a dozen which poured in from the east, and a tiny rivulet which (except in a very dry, hot time) added the tribute of three or four more, which sprang from the base of a higher shelf of the hill near the middle of what is now my farm. Add to these that the brook which brawled and foamed down my hill-side near my south line as aforesaid, had brought along an immensity of pebbles and gravel of which it had mainly formed my five acres of dryer lowland, had thus built up a pretty swale, whereon it had the bad habit of filling up one channel, and then cutting another, more devious and eccentric, if possible, than any of its predecessors--and you have some idea of the obstacles I encountered and resolved to overcome. One of my first substantial improvements was the cutting of a straight channel for this current and, by walling it with large stones, compelling the brook to respect necessary limitations. It was not my fault that some of those stones were set nearly upright, so as to veneer the brook rather than thoroughly constrain it: hence, some of the stones, undermined by strong currents, were pitched forward into the brook by high Spring freshets, so as to require rësetting more carefully. This was a mistake, but, not one of _My Blunders._--These, the natural results of inexperience and haste, were very grave. Not only had I had no real experience in draining when I began, but I could hire no foreman who know much more of it than I did. I ought to have begun by securing an ample and sure fall where the water left my land, and next cut down the brooklet or open ditch into which I intended to drain to the lowest practicable point--so low, at least, that no drain running into it should ever be troubled with back-water. Nothing can be more useless than a drain in which water stagnates, choking it with mud. Then I should have bought hundreds of Hemlock or other cheap boards, slit them to a width of four or five inches, and, having opened the needed drains, laid these in the bottom and the tile thereupon, taking care to _break joint_, by covering the meeting ends of two boards with the middle of a tile. Laying tile in the soft mud of a bog, with nothing beneath to prevent their sinking, is simply throwing away labor and money. I cannot wonder that tile-draining seems to many a humbug, seeing that so many tile are laid so that they can never do any good. Having, by successive purchases, become owner of fully half of this swamp, and by repeated blunders discovered that making stone drains in a bog, while it is a capital mode of getting rid of the stone, is no way at all to dry the soil, I closed my series of experiments two years since by carefully rëlaying my generally useless tile on good strips of board, sinking them just as deep as I could persuade the water to run off freely, and, instead of allowing them to discharge into a brooklet or open ditch, connecting each with a covered main of four to six-inch tile; these mains discharging into the running brook which drains all my farm and three or four of those above it just where it runs swiftly off from my land. If a thaw or heavy rain swells the brook (as it sometimes will) so that it rises above my outlet aforesaid, the strong current formed by the concentration of the clear contents of so many drains will not allow the muddy water of the brook to back into it so many as three feet at most; and any mud or sediment that may be deposited there will be swept out clean whenever the brook shall have fallen to the drainage level. For this and similar excellent devices, I am indebted to the capital engineering and thorough execution of Messrs. Chickering & Gall, whose work on my place has seldom required mending, and never called for reconstruction. _My Success._--I judge that there are not many tracts more difficult to drain than mine was, considering all the circumstances, except those which are frequently flowed by tides or the waters of some lake, or river. Had I owned the entire swamp, or had there been a fall in the brook just below me, had I had any prior experience in draining, or had others equally interested coöperated in the good work, my task would have been comparatively light. As it was, I made mistakes which increased the cost and postponed the success of my efforts; but this is at length complete. I had seven acres of Indian Corn, one of Corn Fodder, two of Oats, and seven or eight acres of Grass, on my lowland in 1869; and, though the Spring months were quite rainy, and the latter part of Summer rather dry, my crops were all good. I did not see better in Westchester County; and I shall be quite content with as good hereafter. Of my seven hundred bushels of Corn (ears,) I judge that two-thirds would be accounted fit for seed anywhere; my Grass was cut twice, and yielded one large crop and another heavier than the average first crop throughout our State. My drainage will require some care henceforth; but the fifteen acres I have reclaimed from utter uselessness and obstructions are decidedly the best part of my farm, Uplands may be exhausted; these never can be. The experience of another season (1870) of protracted drouth has fully justified my most sanguine expectations. I had this year four acres of Corn, and as many of Oats, on my swamp, with the residue in Grass; and they were all good. I estimate my first Hay-crop at over two and a half tuns per acre, while the rowen or aftermath barely exceeded half a tun per acre, because of the severity of the drouth, which began in July and lasted till October. My Oats were good, but not remarkably so; and I had 810 bushels of ears of sound, ripe Corn from four acres of drained swamp and two and a half of upland. I estimate my upland Corn at seventy (shelled) bushels, and my lowland at fifty-five (shelled) bushels per acre. Others, doubtless, had more, despite the unpropitious season; but my crop was a fair one, and I am content with it. My upland Corn was heavily manured; my lowland but moderately. There are many to tell you how much I lose by my farming; I only say that, as yet, no one else has lost a farthing by it, and I do not complain. XI. DRAINING GENERALLY. Having narrated my own experience in draining with entire unreserve, I here submit the general conclusions to which it has led me: I. While I doubt that there is _any_ land above water that would not be improved by a good system of underdrains, I am sure that there is a great deal that could not at present be drained to profit. Forests, hill-side pastures, and most dry gravelly or sandy tracts, I place in this category. Perhaps one-third of New-England, half of the Middle States, and three-fourths of the Mississippi Valley, may ultimately be drained with profit. II. _All_ swamp lands without exception, nearly all clay soils, and a majority of the flat or gently rolling lands of this country, must eventually be drained, if they are to be tilled with the best results. I doubt that there is a garden on earth that would not be (unless it already had been) improved by thorough underdraining. III. The uses of underdrains are many and diverse. To carry off surplus water, though the most obvious, stands by no means alone. 1. Underdrained land may be plowed and sowed considerably earlier in Spring than undrained soil of like quality. 2. Drained fields lose far less than others of their fertility by washing. 3. They are not so liable to be gullied by sudden thaws or flooding rains. 4. Where a field has been deeply subsoiled, I am confident that it will remain mellow and permeable by roots longer than if undrained. 5. Less water being evaporated from drained than from undrained land, the soil will be warmer throughout the growing season; hence, the crop will be heavier, and will mature earlier. 6. Being more porous and less compact, I think the soil of a drained field retains more moisture in a season of drouth, and its growing plants suffer less therefrom, than if it were undrained. In short, I thoroughly believe in underdraining. IV. Yet I advise no man to run into debt for draining, as I can imagine a mortgage on a farm so heavy and pressing as to be even a greater nuisance than stagnant water in its soil. Labor and tile are dear with us; I do not expect that either will ever be so cheap here as in England or Belgium. What I _would_ have each farmer in moderate circumstances do is to _drain his wettest field_ next Fall--that is, after finishing his haying and before cutting up his corn--taking care to secure abundant fall to carry off the water in time of flood, and doing his work thoroughly. Having done this, let him subsoil deeply, fertilize amply, till carefully, and watch the result. I think it will soon satisfy him that such draining pays. V. I do not insist on tile as making the only good drain; but I have had no success with any other. The use of stone, in my opinion, is only justified where the field to be drained abounds in them and no other use can be made of them. To make a good drain with ordinary boulders or cobble-stones requires twice the excavation and involves twice the labor necessarily expended on tile-draining; and it is neither so effective nor so durable. Earth will be carried by water into a stone drain; rats and other vermin will burrow in it and dig (or enlarge) holes thence to the surface; in short, it is not the thing. Better drain with stone where they are a nuisance than not at all; but I predict that you will dig them up after giving them a fair trial and replace them with tile. In a wooded country, where tile were scarce and dear, I should try draining with slabs or cheap boards dressed to a uniform width of six or eight inches, and laid in a ditch dug with banks inclined or sloped to the bottom, so as to form a sort of V; the lower edge of the two side-slabs coming together at the bottom, and a third being laid widely across their upper edges, so as to form a perfect cap or cover. In firm, hard soil, this would prove an efficient drain, and, if well made, would last twenty years. Uniformity of temperature and of moisture would keep the slabs tolerably sound for at least so long; and, if the top of this drain were two feet below the surface, no plowing or trampling over it would harm it. VI. As to draining by what is called a Mole Plow, which simply makes a waterway through the subsoil at a depth of three feet or thereabout, I have no acquaintance with it but by hearsay. It seems to me morally impossible that drains so made should not be lower at some points than at others, so as to retain their fill of water instead of carrying it rapidly off; and I am sure that plowing, or even carting heavy loads over them, must gradually choke and destroy them. Yet this kind of draining is comparatively so cheap, and may, with a strong team, be effected so rapidly, that I can account for its popularity, especially in prairie regions. Where the subsoil is rocky, it is impracticable; where it is hard-pan, it must be very difficult; where it is loose sand, it cannot endure; but in clays or heavy loams, it may, for a few years, render excellent service. I wish the heavy clays of Vermont, more especially of the Champlain basin, were well furrowed or pierced by even such drains; for I am confident that they would temporarily improve both soil and crop; and, if they soon gave out, they would probably be replaced by others more durable. --I shall not attempt to give instructions in drain-making; but I urge every novice in the art to procure Waring's or some other work on the subject and study it carefully: then, if he can obtain at a fair price the services of an experienced drainer, hire him to supervise the work. One point only do I insist on--that is, draining into a main rather than an open ditch or brook; for it is difficult in this or any harsher climate to prevent the crumbling of your outlet tile by frost. Below the Potomac or the Arkansas, this may not be apprehended; and there it may be best to have your drains separately discharge from a road-side bank or into an open ditch, as they will thus inhale more air, and so help (in Summer) to warm and moisten the soil above them; but in our climate I believe it better to let your drains discharge into a covered main or mains as aforesaid, than into an open ditch or brook. Tile and labor are dear with us; I presume labor will remain so. But, in our old States, there are often laborers lacking employment in November and the Winter months; and it is the wisest and truest charity to proffer them pay for work. Some will reject it unless the price be exorbitant; but there are scores of the deserving poor in almost every rural county, who would rather earn a dollar per day than hang around the grog-shops waiting for Spring. Get your tiles when you can, or do not get them at all, but let it be widely known that you have work for those who will do it for the wages you can afford, and you will soon have somebody to earn your money. Having staked out your drains, set these to work at digging them, even though you should not be able to tile them for a year. Cut your outlet deep, and your land will profit by a year of open drains. XII. IRRIGATION--MEANS AND ENDS. While few can have failed to realize the important part played by Water in the economy of vegetation, I judge that the question--"How can I secure to my growing plants a sufficiency of moisture at all times?"--has not always presented itself to the farmer's mind as demanding of him a practical solution. To rid his soil and keep it free of superfluous, but especially of stagnant water, he may or may not accept as a necessity; but that, having provided for draining away whatever is excessive, he should turn a short corner and begin at once to provide that water shall be supplied to his fields and plants whenever they may need it, he is often slow to apprehend. Yet this provision is but the counterpart and complement of the other. I had sped across Europe to Venice, and noted with interest the admirable, effective irrigation of the great plain of Lombardy, before I could call any land my own. I saw there a region perhaps thirty miles wide by one hundred and fifty along the east bank of the Po, rising very gently thence to the foot of the Austrian Alps, which Providence seems to have specially adapted to be improved by irrigation. The torrents of melted snow which in Spring leap and foam adown the southern face of the Alps, bringing with them the finer particles of soil, are suddenly arrested and form lakes (Garda, Maggiore, Como, etc.) just as they emerge upon the plain. These lakes, slowly rising, often overflow their banks, with those of the small rivers that bear their waters westward to the Po; and this overflow was a natural source of abiding fertility. To dam these outlets, and thus control their currents, was a very simple and obvious device of long ago, and was probably begun by a very few individuals (if by more than one), whose success incited emulation, until the present extensive and costly system of irrigating dams and canals was gradually developed. When I traversed Lombardy in July, 1851, the beds of streams naturally as large as the Pemigewasset, Battenkill, Canada Creek, or Humboldt, were utterly dry; the water which would naturally have flowed therein being wholly transferred to an irrigating canal (or to canals) often two or three miles distant. The reservoirs thus created were filled in Spring, when the streams were fullest and their water richest, and gradually drawn upon throughout the later growing season to cover the carefully leveled and graded fields on either side to the depth of an inch or two at a time. If any failed to be soon absorbed by the soil, it was drawn off as here superfluous, and added to the current employed to moisten and fertilize the field next below it; and so field after field was refreshed and enriched, to the husbandman's satisfaction and profit. It may be that the rich glades of English Lancashire bear heavier average crops; but those of Lombardy are rarely excelled on the globe. Why should not our Atlantic slope have its Lombardy? Utah, Nevada, and California, exhibit raw, crude suggestions of such a system; but why should the irrigation of the New World be confined to regions where it is indispensable, when that of the Old is not? I know no good reason whatever for leaving an American field unirrigated where water to flow it at will can be had at a moderate cost. When I first bought land (in 1853) I fully purposed to provide for irrigating my nearly level acres at will, and I constructed two dams across my upland stream with that view; but they were so badly planned that they went off in the flood caused by a tremendous rain the next Spring; and, though I rebuilt one of them, I submitted to a miscalculation which provided for taking the water, by means of a syphon, out of the pond at the top and over the bank that rose fifteen or twenty feet above the surface of the water. Of course, air would work into the pipe after it had carried a stream unexceptionably for two or three days, and then the water would run no longer. Had I taken it from the bottom of the pond through my dam, it would have run forever, (or so long as there was water covering its inlet in the pond;) but bad engineering flung me; and I have never since had the heart (or the means) to revise and correct its errors. My next attempt was on a much humbler scale, and I engineered it myself. Toward the north end of my farm, the hill-side which rises east of my lowland is broken by a swale or terrace, which gives me three or four acres of tolerably level upland, along the upper edge of which five or six springs, which never wholly fail, burst from the rocks above and unite to form a petty runnel, which dries up in very hot or dry weather, but which usually preserved a tiny stream to be lost in the swamp below. North of the gully cut down the lower hill-side by this streamlet, the hill-side of some three acres is quite steep, still partially wooded, and wholly devoted to pasturage. Making a petty dam across this runnel at the top of the lower acclivity, I turned the stream aside, so that it should henceforth run along the crest of this lower hill, falling off gradually so as to secure a free current, and losing its contents at intervals through variable depressions in its lower bank. Dam and artificial water-course together cost me $90, which was about twice what it should have been. That rude and petty contrivance has now been ten years in operation, and may have cost $5 per annum for oversight and repairs. Its effect has been to double the grass grown on the two acres it constantly irrigates, for which I paid $280, or more than thrice the cost of my irrigation. But more: my hill-side, while it was well grassed in Spring, always gave out directly after the first dry, or hot week; so that, when I most needed feed, it afforded none; its herbage being parched up and dead, and thus remaining till refreshed by generous rains. I judge, therefore, that my irrigation has _more_ than doubled the product of those two acres, and that these are likely to lose nothing in yield or value so long as that petty irrigating ditch shall be maintained. I know this is small business. But suppose each of the hundred thousand New-England farms, whereof five to ten acres might be thus irrigated at a cost not exceeding $100 per farm, had been similarly prepared to flow those acres last Spring and early Summer, with an average increase therefrom of barely one tun of Hay (or its equivalent in pasturage) per acre. The 500,000 tuns of Hay thus realized would have saved 200,000 head of cattle from being sent to the butcher while too thin for good beef, while every one of them was required for further use, and will have to be replaced at a heavy cost. Shall not these things be considered? Shall not all who can do so at moderate cost resolve to test on their own farms the advantages and benefits that may be secured by Irrigation? XIII. THE POSSIBILITIES OF IRRIGATION. I have given an account of my poor, little experiment in Irrigation, because it is one which almost every farmer can imitate and improve upon, however narrow his domain and slender his fortune. I presume there are Half a Million homesteads in the United States which have natural facilities for Irrigation at least equal to mine; many of them far greater. Along either slope of the Alleghenies, throughout a district at least a thousand miles long by three hundred wide, nearly every farm might be at least partially irrigated by means of a dam costing from twenty-five to one hundred dollars; so might at least half the farms in New-England and our own State. On the prairies, the plans must be different, and the expense probably greater, but the results obtained would bounteously reward the outlay. I shall not see the day, but there are those now living who _will_ see it, when Artesian wells will be dug at points where many acres may be flowed from a gentle swell in the midst of a vast plain, or at the head of a fertile valley, expressly, or at least mainly, that its waters may be led across that plain, adown that valley, in irrigating streams and ditches, until they have been wholly drank up by the soil. I have seen single wells in California that might be made to irrigate sufficiently hundreds of acres, by the aid of a reservoir into which their waters could be discharged when the soil did not require them, and there retained until the thirsty earth demanded them. An old and successful farmer in my neighborhood affirms that Water is the cheapest and best fertilizer ever applied to the soil. If this were understood to mean that no other is needed or can be profitably applied, it would be erroneous. Still, I think it clearly true that the annual product of most farms can be increased, and the danger of failure averted, more cheaply by the skillful application of water than by that of any other fertilizer whatever, Plaster (Gypsum) possibly excepted. I took a run through Virginia last Summer, not far from the 1st of August. That State was then suffering intensely from drouth, as she continued to do for some weeks thereafter. I am quite sure that I saw on her thirsty plains and hillsides not less than three hundred thousand acres planted with Indian Corn, whereof the average product could not exceed ten bushels per acre, while most of it would fall far below that yield, and there were thousands of acres that would not produce one sound ear! Every one deplored the failure, correctly attributing it to the prevailing drouth. And yet, I passed hundreds if not thousands of places where a very moderate outlay would have sufficed to dam a stream or brooklet issuing from between two spurs of the Blue Ridge, or the Alleghenies, so that a refreshing current of the copious and fertilizing floods of Winter and Spring, warmed by the fervid suns of June and July, could have been led over broad fields lying below, so as to vanquish drouth and insure generous harvests. Nay; I feel confident that I could in many places have constructed rude works in a week, after that drouth began to be felt, that would have saved and made the Corn on at least a portion of the planted acres through which the now shrunken brooks danced and laughed idly down to the larger streams in the wider and equally thirsty valleys. Of course, I know that this would have been imperfect irrigation--a mere stop-gap--that the cold spring-water of a parched Summer cannot fertilize as the hill-wash of Winter and Spring, if thriftily garnered and warmed through and through for sultry weeks, would do; yet I believe that very many farmers might, even then, have secured partial crops by such irrigation as was still possible, had they, even at the eleventh hour, done their best to retrieve the errors of the past. For the present, I would only counsel every farmer to give his land a careful scrutiny with a view to irrigation in the future. No one is obliged to do any faster than his means will justify; and yet it may be well to have a clear comprehension of all that may ultimately be done to profit, even though much of it must long remain unattempted. In many cases, a stream may be dammed for the power which it will afford for two or three months of each year, if it shall appear that this use is quite consistent with its employment to irrigation, when the former alone would not justify the requisite outlay. It is by thus making one expense subserve two quite independent but not inconsistent purposes that success is attained in other pursuits; and so it may be in farming. As yet, each farmer must study his own resources with intent to make the most of them. If a manageable stream crosses or issues from his land, he must measure its fall thereon, study the lay of the land, and determine whether he can or cannot, at a tolerable cost, make that stream available in the irrigation of at least a portion of his growing crops when they shall need water and the skies decline to supply it. On many, I think on most, farms situated among hills, or upon the slopes of mountains, something may be done in this way--done at once, and with immediate profit. But this is rudimentary, partial, fragmentary, when compared with the irrigation which yet shall be. I am confident that there are points on the Carson, the Humboldt, the Weber, the South Platte, the Cache-le-Poudre, and many less noted streams which thrid the central plateau of our continent, where an expenditure of $10,000 to $50,000 may be judiciously made in a dam, locks and canals, for the purposes of irrigation and milling combined, with a moral certainty of realizing fifty per cent. annually on the outlay, with a steady increase in the value of the property. If my eye did not deceive me, there is one point on the Carson where a dam that need not cost $50,000 would irrigate one hundred square miles of rich plain which, when I saw it eleven years ago, grew nought but the worthless shrubs of the desert, simply because nothing else could endure the intense, abiding drouth of each Nevada Summer. Such palpable invitations to thrift cannot remain forever unimproved. In regions like this, where Summer rains are the rule rather than the exception, the need of irrigation is not so palpable, since we do or may secure decent average crops in its absence. Yet there is no farm in our country that would not yield considerably more grain and more grass, more fruit and more vegetables, if its owner had water at command which he could apply at pleasure and to any extent he should deem requisite. Most men, thus empowered, would at first irrigate too often and too copiously; but experience would soon temper their zeal, and teach them "The precious art of Not too much;" and they would thenceforth be careful to give their soil drink yet, not drown it. * * * * * Whoever lives beyond the close of this century, and shall then traverse our prairie States, will see them whitened at intervals by the broad sails of windmills erected over wells, whence every gale or breeze will be employed in pumping water into the ponds or reservoirs so located that water may be drawn therefrom at will and diffused in gentle streamlets over the surrounding fields to invigorate and impel their growing crops. And, when all has been done that this paper faintly foreshadows, our people will have barely indicated, not by any means exhausted, the beneficent possibilities of irrigation. The difficulty is in making a beginning. Too many farmers would fain conceal a poverty of thought behind an affectation of dislike or contempt for novelties. "Humbug!" is their stereotyped comment on every suggestion that they might wisely and profitably do something otherwise than as their grandfathers did. They assume that those respected ancestors did very well without Irrigation; wherefore, it cannot now be essential. But the circumstances have materially changed. The disappearance of the dense, high woods that formerly almost or quite surrounded each farm has given a sweep to the heated, parching winds of Summer, to which our ancestors were strangers. Our springs, our streams, do not hold out as they once did. Our Summer drouths are longer and fiercer. Even though our grandfathers did not, we _do_ need and may profit by Irrigation. XIV. PLOWING--DEEP OR SHALLOW. Rules absolutely without exception are rare; and they who imagine that I insist on plowing all lands deeply are wrong for I hold that much land should never be plowed at all. In fact, I have seen in my life nearly as large an area that ought not as I have that ought to be plowed, by which I mean that half the land I have seen may serve mankind better if devoted to timber than if subjected to tillage. I personally know farmers who would thrive far better if they tilled but half the area they do, bestowing on this all the labor and fertilizers they spread over the whole, even though they threw the residue into common and left it there. I judge that a majority of our farmers could increase the recompense of their toil by cultivating fewer acres than they now do. Nor do I deny that there are soils which it is not advisable to plow deeply. Prof. Mapes told me he had seen a tract in West Jersey whereof the soil was but eight inches deep, resting on a stratum of copperas (sulphate of iron,) which, being upturned by the plow and mingled with the soil, poisoned the crops planted thereon. And I saw, last Summer, on the intervale of New River, in the western part of Old Virginia, many acres of Corn which were thrifty and luxuriant in spite of shallow plowing and intense drouth, because the rich, black loam which had there been deposited by semi-annual inundations, until its depth ranged from two to twenty feet, was so inviting and permeable that the corn-roots ran _below_ the bottom of the furrow about as readily as above that line. I do not doubt that there are many millions of acres of such land that would produce tolerably, and sometimes bounteously, though simply scratched over by a brush harrow and never plowed at all. In the infancy of our race, when there were few mouths to fill and when farming implements were very rude and ineffective, cultivation was all but confined to these facile strips and patches, so that the utility, the need, of deep tillage was not apparent. And yet, we know the crops often failed utterly in those days, plunging whole nations into the miseries of famine. The primitive plow was a forked stick or tree-top, whereof one prong formed the coulter, the other and longer the beam; and he who first sharpened the coulter-prong with a stone hatchet was the Whitney or McCormick of his day. The plow in common use to-day in Spain or Turkey is an improvement on this, for it has an iron point; still, it is a miserable tool. When, at five years old, I first rode the horse which drew my father's plow in furrowing for or cultivating his corn, it had an iron coulter and an iron share; but it was mainly composed of wood. In the hard, rocky soil of New-Hampshire, as full of bowlders and pebbles as a Christmas pudding is of plums, plowing with such an implement was a sorry business at best. My father hitched eight oxen and a horse to his plow when he broke up pebbly green-sward, and found an acre of it a very long day's work. I hardly need add that subsoiling was out of the question, and that six inches was the average depth of his furrow. I judge that the best Steel Plows now in use do twice the execution that his did with a like expenditure of power--that we can, with equal power, plow twelve inches as easily and rapidly as he plowed six. Ought we to do it? Will it pay? I first farmed for myself in 1845 on a plat of eight acres, in what was then the open country skirting the East River nearly abreast the lower point of Blackwell's Island, near Fiftieth-st., on a little indentation of the shore known as Turtle Bay. None of the Avenues east of Third was then opened above Thirtieth-st.; and the neighborhood, though now perforated by streets and covered with houses, was as rural and secluded as heart could wish. One fine Spring morning, a neighbor called and offered to plow for $5 my acre of tillage not cut up by rows of box and other shrubs; and I told him to go ahead. I came home next evening, just as he was finishing the job, which I contemplated most ruefully. His plow was a pocket edition; his team a single horse; his furrows at most five inches deep. I paid him, but told him plainly that I would have preferred to give the money for nothing. He insisted that he had plowed for me as he plowed for others all around me. "I will tell you," I rejoined, "exactly how this will work. Throughout the Spring and early Summer, we shall have frequent rains and moderate heat: thus far, my crops will do well. But then will come hot weeks, with little or no rain; and they will dry up this shallow soil and every thing planted thereon." The result signally justified my prediction. We had frequent rains and cloudy, mild weather, till the 1st of July, when the clouds vanished, the sun came out intensely hot, and we had scarcely a sprinkle till the 1st of September, by which time my Corn and Potatoes had about given up the ghost. Like the seed which fell on stony ground in the Parable of the Sower, that which I had planted had withered away "because there was no root;" and my prospect for a harvest was utterly blighted, where, with twelve inches of loose, fertile, well pulverized earth at their roots, my crops would have been at least respectable. When I became once more a farmer in a small way on my present place, I had not forgotten the lesson, and I tried to have plowed deeply and thoroughly so much land as I had plowed at all. My first Summer here (1853) was a very dry one, and crops failed in consequence around me and all over the country; yet mine were at least fair; and I was largely indebted for them to relatively deep plowing. I have since suffered from frost (on my low land), from the rotting of seed in the ground, from the ravages of insects, etc.; but never by drouth; and I am entirely confident that Deep Plowing has done me excellent service. My only trouble has been to get it done; for there are apt to be reasons?--(haste, lateness in the season, etc.)--for plowing shallowly for "just this time," with full intent to do henceforth better. * * * * * I close this paper with a statement made to me by an intelligent British farmer living at Maidstone, south of England. He said: "A few years ago there came into my hands a field of twelve acres, which had been an orchard; but the trees were hopelessly in their dotage. They must be cut down; then their roots must be grubbed out; so I resolved to make a clean job of it, and give the field a thorough trenching. Choosing a time in Autumn or early Winter when labor was abundant and cheap, I had it turned over three spits (27 inches) deep; the lowest being merely reversed; the next reversed and placed at the top; the surface being reversed and placed below the second. The soil was strong and deep, as that of an orchard should be; I planted the field to Garden Peas, and my first picking was very abundant. About the time that peas usually begin to wither and die, the roots of mine struck the rich soil which had been the first stratum, but was now the second, and at once the stalks evinced a new life--threw out new blossoms, which were followed by pods; and so kept on blossoming and forming peas for weeks, until this first crop far more than paid the cost of trenching and cultivation." Thus far my English friend. Who will this year try a patch of Peas on a plat made rich and mellow for a depth of at least two feet, and frequently moistened in Summer by some rude kind of irrigation? The fierceness of our Summer suns, when not counteracted by frequent showers, shortens deplorably the productiveness of many Vegetables and Berries. Our Strawberries bear well, but too briefly; our Peas wither up and cease to blossom after they have been two or three weeks plump enough to pick. Our Raspberries, Blackberries, etc., fruit well, but are out of bearing too soon after they begin to yield their treasures. I am confident that this need not be. With a deep, rich soil, kept moistened by a periodical flow of water, there need not and should not be any such haste to give over blooming and bearing. The fruit is Nature's attestation of the geniality of the season, the richness and abundance of the elements inhering in the soil or supplied to it by the water. Double the supply of these, and sterility should be postponed to a far later day than that in which it is now inaugurated. XV. PLOWING--GOOD AND BAD. There are so many wrong ways to do a thing to but one right one that there is no reason in the impatience too often evinced with those who contrive to swallow the truth wrong end foremost, and thereupon insist that it won't do. For instance: A farmer hears something said of deep plowing, and, without any clear understanding of or firm faith in it, resolves to give it a trial. So he buys a great plow, makes up a strong team, and proceeds to turn up a field hitherto plowed but six inches to a depth of a foot: in other words, to bury its soil under six inches of cold, sterile clay, sand, or gravel. On this, he plants or sows grain, and is lucky indeed if he realizes half a crop. Hereupon, he reports to his neighbors that Deep Plowing is a humbug, as he suspected all along; but now he knows, for he has tried it. There are several other wrong ways, which I will hurry over, in order to set forth that which I regard as the right one. Here is a middling farmer of the old school, who walks carefully in the footsteps of his respected grandfather, but with inferior success, because sixty annual harvests, though not particularly luxuriant, have partially exhausted the productive capacity of the acres he inherited. He now garners from fifteen to thirty bushels per acre of Corn, from ten to twenty of Wheat, from fifteen to twenty of Rye, from twenty to thirty of Oats, and from a tun to a tun and a half of Hay, as the season proves more or less propitious, and just contrives to draw from his sixty to one hundred acres a decent subsistence for his family; plowing, as his father and grandfather did, to a depth of five to seven inches: What can Deep Plowing do for _him_? I answer--By itself, nothing whatever. If in every other respect he is to persist in doing just as his father and his grandfather did, I doubt the expediency of doubling the depth of his furrows. True, the worst effects of the change would be realized at the outset, and I feel confident that his six inches of subsoil, having been made to change places with that which formerly rested upon it, must gradually be wrought upon by air, and rain, and frost, until converted into a tolerably productive soil, through which the roots of most plants would easily and speedily make their way down to the richer stratum which, originally surface, has been transposed into subsoil. But this exchange of positions between the original surface and subsoil is not what I mean by Deep Plowing, nor anything like it. What I _do_ mean is this: Having thoroughly underdrained a field, so that water will not stand upon any part of its surface, no matter how much may there be deposited, the next step in order is to increase the depth of the soil. To this end, procure a regular sub-soil plow of the most approved pattern, attach to it a strong team, and let it follow the breaking-plow in its furrow, lifting and pulverizing the sub-soil to a depth of not less than six inches, but leaving it in position exactly where it was. The surface-plow turns the next furrow upon this loosened sub-soil, and so on till the whole field is thus pulverized to a depth of not less than twelve inches, or, better still, fifteen. Now, please remember that you have twice as much soil per acre to fertilize as there was before; hence, that it consequently requires twice as much manure, and you will have laid a good foundation for increased crops. I do not say that all the additional outlay will be returned to you in the increase of your next crop, for I do not believe anything of the sort; but I _do_ believe that this crop will be considerably larger for this generous treatment, especially if the season prove remarkably dry or uncommonly wet; and that you will have insured better crops in the years to come, including heavier grass, after that field shall once more be laid down; and that, in case of the planting of that field to fruit or other trees, they will grow faster, resist disease better, and thrive longer, than if the soil were still plowed as of old. (I shall insist hereafter on the advantage and importance of subsoiling orchards.) Take another aspect--that of subsoiling hill-sides to prevent their abrasion by water: I have two bits of warm, gravelly hill-side, which bountifully yield Corn, Wheat and Oats, but which are addicted to washing. I presume one of these bits, at the south-east corner of my farm, has been plowed and planted not less than one hundred times, and that at least half the fertilizers applied to it have been washed into the brook, and hence into the Hudson. To say that $1,000 have thus been squandered on that patch of ground, would be to keep far within the truth. And, along with the fertilizers, a large portion of the finer and better elements of the original soil have thus been swept into the brook, and so lavished upon the waters of our bay. But, since I had those lots thoroughly subsoiled, all the water that falls upon them when in tillage sinks into the soil, and remains there until drained away by filtration or evaporation; and I never saw a particle of soil washed from either save once, when a thaw of one or two inches on the surface, leaving the ground solidly frozen beneath, being quickly followed by a pouring rain, washed away a few bushels of the loosened and sodden surface, proving that the law by virtue of which these fields were formerly denuded while in cultivation is still active, and that Deep Plowing is an effective and all but unfailing antidote for the evil it tends to incite. We plow too many acres annually, and do not plow them so thoroughly as we ought. In the good time coming, when Steam shall have been so harnessed to a gang of six to twelve plows that, with one man guiding and firing, it will move as fast as a man ought to walk, steaming on and thoroughly pulverizing from twelve to twenty-five acres per day, I believe we shall plow at least two feet deep, and plow not less than twice before putting in any crop whatever. Then we may lay down a field in the confident trust that it will yield from two and a half to three tuns of good hay per annum for the next ten or twelve years; while, by the help of irrigation and occasional top-dressing, it may be made to average at least three tuns for a life-time, if not forever. When my Grass-land requires breaking up--as it sometimes does--I understand that it was not properly laid down, or has not been well treated since. A good grazing farmer once insisted in my hearing that grass-land should _never_ be plowed--that the vegetable mold forming the surface, when the timber was first cut off; should remain on the surface forever. Considering how uneven the stumps and roots and cradle-knolls of a primitive forest are apt to leave the ground, I judge that this is an extreme statement. But land once thoroughly plowed and subsoiled ought thereafter to be kept in grass by liberal applications of Gypsum, well-cured Muck, and barn-yard Manure to its surface, without needing to be plowed again and reseeded. Put back in Manure what is taken of in Hay, and the Grass should hold its own. XVI. THOROUGH TILLAGE. My little, hilly, rocky farm teaches lessons of thoroughness which I would gladly impart to the boys of to-day who are destined to be the farmers of the last quarter of this century. I am sure they will find profit in farming better than their grandfathers did, and especially in putting their land into the best possible condition for effective tillage. There were stones in my fields varying in size from that of a brass kettle up to that of a hay-cock--some of them raising their heads above the surface, others burrowing just below it--which had been plowed around and over perhaps a hundred times, till I went at them with team and bar, or (where necessary) with drill and blast, turned or blew them out, and hauled them away, so that they will interfere with cultivation nevermore. I insist that this is a profitable operation--that a field which will not pay for such clearing should be planted with trees and thrown out of cultivation conclusively. Dodging and skulking from rock to rock is hard upon team, plow, and plowman; and it can rarely pay. Land ribbed and spotted with fast rocks will pay if judiciously planted with Timber--possibly if well set in Fruit--but tilling it from year to year is a thankless task; and its owner may better work by the day for his neighbors than try to make his bread by such tillage. So with fields soaked by springs or sodden with stagnant water. If you say you cannot afford to drain your wet land, I respond that you can still less afford to till it without draining. If you really cannot afford to fit it for cultivation, your next best course is to let it severely alone. A poor man who has a rough, rugged, sterile farm, which he is unable to bring to its best possible condition at once, yet which he clings to and must live from, should resolve that, if life and health be spared him, he will reclaim one field each year until all that is not devoted to timber shall have been brought into high condition. When his Summer harvest is over, and his Fall crops have received their last cultivation, there will generally be from one to two Autumn months which he can devote mainly to this work. Let him take hold of it with resolute purpose to improve every available hour, not by running over the largest possible area, but by dealing with one field so thoroughly that it will need no more during a long life-time. If it has stone that the plow will reach, dig them out; if it needs draining, drain it so thoroughly that it may hereafter be plowed in Spring so soon as the frost leaves it; and now let soil and subsoil be so loosened and pulverized that roots may freely penetrate them to a depth of fifteen to twenty inches, finding nourishment all the way, with incitement to go further if ever failing moisture shall render this necessary. Drouth habitually shortens our Fall crops from ten to fifty per cent.; it is sure to injure us more gravely as our forests are swept away by ax and fire; and, while much may be done to mitigate its ravages by enriching the soil so as to give your crops an early start, and a rank, luxuriant growth, the farmer's chief reliance must still be a depth of soil adequate to withstand weeks of the fiercest sunshine. I have considered what is urged as to the choice of roots to run just beneath the surface, and it does not signify. Roots seek at once heat and moisture; if the moisture awaits them close to the surface, of course they mainly run there, because the heat is there greatest. If moisture fails there, they must descend to seek it, even at the cost of finding the heat inadequate--though heat increases and descends under the fervid suns which rob the surface of moisture. Make the soil rich and mellow ever so far down, and you need not fear that the roots will descend an inch lower than they should. _They_ understand their business; it is _your_ sagacity that may possibly prove deficient. I suspect that the average farmer does far too little plowing--by which I mean, not that he plows too few acres, for he often plows too many, but that he should plow oftener as well as deeper and more thoroughly. I spent three or four of my boyish Summers planting and tilling Corn and Potatoes on fields broken up just before they were planted, never cross-plowed, and of course tough and intractable throughout the season. The yield of Corn was middling, considering the season; that of Potatoes more than middling; yet, if those fields had been well plowed in the previous Autumn, cross-plowed early in the Spring; and thoroughly harrowed just before planting-time, I am confident that the yield would have been far greater, and the labor (save in harvesting) rather less--the cost of the Fall plowing being over-balanced by the saving of half the time necessarily given to the planting and hoeing. Fall Plowing has this recommendation--it lightens labor at the busier season, by transferring it to one of comparative dullness. I may have said that I consider him a good farmer who knows how to make a rainy day equally effective with one that is dry and fair; and, in the same spirit, I count him my master in this art who can make a day's work in Autumn or Winter save a day's work in Spring or Summer. Show me a farmer who has no land plowed when May opens, and is just waking up to a consciousness that his fences need mending and his trees want trimming, and I will guess that the sheriff will be after him before May comes round again. * * * * * There is no superstition in the belief that land is (or may be) enriched by Fall Plowing. The Autumn gales are freighted with the more volatile elements of decaying vegetation. These, taken up wherever they are given of in excess, are wafted to and deposited in the soils best fitted for their reception. Regarded simply as a method of fertilizing, I do not say that Fall Plowing is the cheapest; I _do_ say that any poor field, if well plowed in the Fall, will be in better heart the next Spring, for what wind and rain will meantime have deposited thereon. Frost, too, in any region where the ground freezes, and especially where it freezes and thaws repeatedly, plays an important and beneficial part in aerating and pulverizing a freshly plowed soil, especially one thrown up into ridges, so as to be most thoroughly exposed to the action of the more volatile elements. The farmer who has a good team may profitably keep the plow running in Autumn until every rood that he means to till next season has been thoroughly pulverized. In this section, our minute chequer-work of fences operates to obstruct and impede Plowing. Our predecessors wished to clear their fields, at least superficially, of the loose, troublesome bowlders of granite wherewith they were so thickly sown; they mistakenly fancied that they could lighten their own toil by sending their cattle to graze, browse, and gnaw, wherever a crop was not actually on the ground; so they fenced their farms into patches of two or ten acres, and thought they had thereby increased their value! That was a sad miscalculation. Weeds, briars and bushes were sheltered, and nourished by these walls; weasels, rats and other destructive animals, found protection and impunity therein; a wide belt on either side was made useless or worse; while Plowing was rendered laborious, difficult, and inefficient, by the necessity of turning after every few hundred steps. We are growing slowly wiser, and burying a part of these walls, or building them into concrete barns or other useful structures; but they are still far too plentiful, and need to be dealt with more sternly. O squatter on a wide prairie, on the bleak Plains, or in a broad Pacific valley, where wood must be hauled for miles and loose stone are rarely visible, thank God for the benignant dispensation which has precluded you from half spoiling your farm by a multiplicity of obstructing, deforming, fences, and so left its soil free and open to be everywhere pervaded, loosened, permeated, by the renovating Plow! XVII. COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS--GYPSUM. Prices vary so widely in different localities that no fertilizer can be pronounced everywhere cheapest or best worth buying; and yet I doubt that there is a rood of our country's surface in fit condition to be cultivated to which Gypsum (Plaster of Paris) might not be applied with profit. Where it costs $10 or over per tun, I would apply it sparingly--say, one bushel per acre--while I judge three bushels per acre none too much in regions where it may be bought much cheaper. Even the poor man who has but one cow, should buy a barrel of it, and dust his stable therewith after cleaning it each day. He who has a stock of cattle should never be without it, and should freely use it, alike in stable and yard, to keep down the noisome odors, and thus retain the volatile elements of the manure. Every meadow, every pasture, should be sown with it at least triennially; where it is abundant and cheap, as in Central New-York, I would apply it each year, unless careful observation should satisfy me that it no longer subserved a good purpose. As to the _time_ of application, while I judge any season will do, my present impression is that it will do most good if applied when the Summer is hottest and the ground driest. If, for instance, you close your haying in mid-Summer, having been hurried by the rapid ripening of the grass, and find your meadows baked and cracked by the intense heat, I reckon that you may proceed to dust those meadows with Gypsum with a moral certainty that none of it will be wasted. So if your Corn and other Fall crops are suffering from and likely to be stunted by drouth, I advise the application of Gypsum broadcast, as evenly as may be and as bounteously as its price and your means will allow. I do not believe it so well to apply it specially to the growing stalks, a spoon-full or so per hill; and I doubt that it is ever judicious to plant it _in_ the hill with the seed. The readiest and quickest mode of application is also, I believe, the best. _How_ Gypsum impels and invigorates vegetable growth, I do not pretend to know; but that it _does_ so was demonstrated by Nature long before Man took the hint that she freely gave. The city of Paris and a considerable adjacent district rest on a bed of Gypsum, ranging from five to twenty feet below the surface, and considerably decomposed in its upper portion by the action of water. This region produces Wheat most luxuriantly, and I presume has done so from time immemorial. At length it crawled through the hair of the tillers of this soil that the substance which did so much good fortuitously, and (as it were) because it could not do otherwise, might do still more if applied to the soil, with deliberate intent to test its value as a fertilizer. The result we all understand. Gypsum is a chemical compound of Sulphur and Lime--so much is agreed; and the theory of chemists has been that; as the winds pass over a surface sown with it, the Ammonia which has been exhaled by a thousand barn-yards, bogs, &c., having a stronger affinity for Sulphur than Lime has, dissolves the Gypsum, combines with the Sulphur, forming a Sulphate of Ammonia, and leaves the Lime to get on as it may. I accept this theory, having no reason to distrust it; and, knowing that Sulphate of Ammonia is a powerful stimulant of vegetable growth (as any one may be assured by buying a little of it from some druggist and making the necessary application), I can readily see how the desired result _might_ in this way be produced. For our purpose, however, let it suffice that _it is_ produced, of which almost any one may be convinced by sowing with Gypsum and passing by alternate strips or belts of the same clover field. I suspect that not many fertilizers repay their cost out of the first crop; but I account Gypsum one of them; and I submit that no farmer can afford not to try it. That its good effect is diminished by many and frequent applications, is highly probable; but there is no hill or slope to which Gypsum has never yet been applied which ought not to make its acquaintance this very year. I am confident that there are pastures which might be made to increase their yield of Grass one-third by a moderate dressing of it. I have heard Andrew B. Dickinson, late of Steuben County, and one of the best unscientific, unlearned farmers ever produced by our State, maintain that he can not only enrich his own farm but impoverish his neighbors' by the free use of Gypsum on his woodless hills. The chemist's explanation of this effect is above indicated. The plastered land attracts and absorbs not only its own fair proportion of the breeze-borne Ammonia, but much that, if the equilibrium had not been disturbed by such application, would have been deposited on the adjacent hills. As Mr. D. makes not the smallest pretensions to science, the coincidence between his dictum and the chemist's theory is noteworthy. Now that our country is completely gridironed with Canals and Railroads, bringing whatever has a mercantile value very near every one's door, I suggest that no township should go without Gypsum. Five dollars will buy at least two barrels of it almost anywhere; and two barrels may be sown over five or six acres. Let it be sown so that its effect (or non-effect) may be palpable; give it a fair, careful trial, and await the result. If it seem to subserve no good purpose, be not too swift to enter up judgment; but buy two barrels more, vary your time and method of application, and try again. If the result be still null, let it be given up that Gypsum is not the fertilizer needed just there--that some ill-understood peculiarity of soil or climate renders it there ineffective. Then let its use be there abandoned; but it will still remain true that, in many localities and in countless instances, Gypsum has been fully proved one of the best and cheapest commercial fertilizers known to mankind. I never tried, but on the strength of others' testimony believe in the improvement of soils by means of calcined clay or earth. Mr. Andrew B. Dickinson showed me where he had, during a dry Autumn plowed up the road-sides through his farm, started fires with a few roots or sticks, and then piled on sods of the upturned clay and grass-roots till the fire was nearly smothered, when each heap smoked and smouldered like a little coal-pit till all of it that was combustible was reduced to ashes, when ashes and burned clay were shoveled into a cart and strewn over his fields, to the decided improvement of their crops. Whoever has a clay sod to plow up, and is deficient in manure, may repeat this experiment with a moral certainty of liberal returns. XVIII. ALKALIS ... SALT--ASHES--LIME. I do not know a rood of our country's surface so rich in _all_ the materials which enter into the production of the Grains, Grasses, Fruits, and Vegetables, which are the objects and rewards of cultivation, that it could not be improved by the application of fertilizers; if there be such, I heartily congratulate the owners, and advise them not to sell. Nor do I believe that there are many acres so fertile that they would not produce more Indian Corn, more Hemp, more Cotton, and more of whatever may be their appropriate staple, if judiciously fertilized. If there be farms or fields originally so good that manure would not increase their yield, I am confident that the first half-dozen crops will have taken that conceit out of them. Prairies and river-bottoms may yield ever so bounteously; but that very luxuriance of growth insures their gradual exhaustion of certain elements of crops, which must needs be replaced or their product will dwindle. Whoever has sold a thousand bushels of grain, or its equivalent in meat, from his farm, has thereby impoverished that farm, unless he has applied something that balances its loss. "I perceive that virtue has gone out of me," observed the Saviour, because the hem of his garment had been touched; and every field that had been cropped might make a similar report whenever its annual loss by abstraction has not been balanced by some kind of fertilizer. The farmer who grows the largest crops is the most merciless exhauster of the soil, unless he balances his annual drafts (as good farmers rarely fail to do) by at least equal reënforcements of the productive capacity of his fields. The good farmer begins by inquiring, "Wherein was my soil originally deficient? and of what has it been exhausted by subsequent crops?" I judge that my gravelly hill-sides would reward the application of two hundred loads (or tuns) of pure clay per acre, as I think the clay flats which border Lake Champlain would pay for a like application of sand or fine gravel where that material is found in convenient proximity; and yet, I know very well that, on at least three-fourths of our country's area, such application would cost far more than it would be worth. Every farmer must act on his knowledge of his soil and its peculiar needs, and not blindly follow the dictum of another. Yet I know few farms which, were they mine, I would not consider enhanced in value by a vigorous application of _some_ alkaline substance--Lime, Salt, Ashes, or some of the cheaper Nitrates. I should be very glad to apply one thousand bushels of good house-made, hard-wood Ashes to my twenty acres of arable upland, if I could buy them, delivered, at twenty five cents per bushel; but they are not to be had. I doubt that there are a hundred acres of warm, dry, gravelly or sandy soil east of the Alleghanies that would not amply reward a similar application. But Ashes in quantity are unattainable, since no good farmer sells them, and Coal is the chief fuel of cities and villages. The Marls of New-Jersey I judge fully equal in average value to Ashes which have been nearly deprived of their potash by leaching, but not quite half equal, bushel for bushel, to _un_leached Ashes. I judge that average Marl is worth 10 cents per bushel where Ashes may be had for 25. But Marl is found only in a few localities, and a material worth but 10 cents per bushel will not bear transportation beyond 40 miles by wagon or 200 by water. Salt is only found or made at a few points, and is too dear for general use as a fertilizer. Where the refuse product of Salt-Works can be cheaply bought, good farmers will eagerly compete for it, if their lands at all resemble mine. I judge the tun of Potash I ordered fifteen years ago from Syracuse, paying $50 and transportation, was the cheapest fertilizer I ever bought. It was so impregnated with Salt (from the boiling over of the salt-kettles into the ashes) as to be worthless for other than agricultural purposes; but I mixed it with a large pile of Muck that I had recently dug, and, six or eight months thereafter, applied the product to a very poor, gravelly hill-side which I had just broken up; and the immediate result was a noble crop of Corn. That hill-side has not yet forgotten the application. --If I should try to explain just how and why Lime is a fertilizer, I should probably fail; and I am well assured that liming has in some cases been overdone; yet I think most observers will concur in my statement that _any region which has been limed year after year produces crops of noticeable excellence_. I cite as examples Chester and Lancaster Counties, Pennsylvania, with Stark and adjacent counties of Ohio. Possibly, results equally gratifying might be secured by applying some other substance; I only _know_ that frequently limed lands are generally good lands, as their crops do testify. I heartily wish that the flat clay intervales of Western Vermont could have a fair trial of the virtues of liming. I should expect to see them thereby rendered friable and arable; no longer changing speedily from the semblance of tar to that of brick, but readily plowed and tilled, and yielding liberally of Grain as well as Grass. I am confident that most farms in our country will pay for liming to the extent of fifty bushels per acre where the cost of quick-lime does not exceed ten cents per bushel; and most farmers, by taking, hot from the kiln, the refuse lime that is deemed unfit for building purposes, can obtain it cheaper than that. I wish some farmer who gives constant personal attention to his work--as I cannot--would make some careful tests of the practical value of alkalis. For instance: the abundance and tenacity of our common sorrel is supposed to indicate an acid condition of the soil; and all who have tried it know that sorrel is hard to kill by cultivation. I suggest that whoever is troubled with it should cover two square rods with one bushel of quick-lime just after plowing and harrowing this Spring; then apply another bushel to _four_ square rods adjacent; then make similar applications of ashes to two and four square rods respectively, taking careful note of the boundaries of each patch, and leaving the rest of the field destitute of either application. I will not anticipate the result: more than one year may be required to evolve it; but I am confident that a few such experiments would supply data whereof I am in need; and there are doubtless others whose ignorance is nearly equal to mine. Many have applied Lime to their fields without realizing any advantage therefrom. In some cases, there was already a sufficiency of this ingredient in the soil, and the application of more was one of those many wasteful blunders induced by our ignorance of Chemistry. But much Lime is naturally adulterated with other minerals, especially with Manganese, so that its application to most if not to all soils subserves no good end. In the absence of exact, scientific knowledge, I would buy fifty bushels of quick-lime, apply them to one acre running through a field, and watch the effect. If it doesn't pay, you have a bad article, or your soil is not deficient in Lime. XIX. SOILS AND FERTILIZERS. A farmer is a manufacturer of articles wherefrom mankind are fed and clad; his raw materials are the soil and the various substances he mingles therewith or adds thereto in order to increase its productive capacity. His art consists in transforming by cultivation crude, comparatively worthless, and even noxious, offensive materials into substances grateful to the senses, nourishing to the body, and sometimes invigorating, even strengthening, to the mind. I have heard of lands that were naturally rich enough; I never was so lucky or perchance so discerning as to find them. Yet I have seen Illinois bottoms whereof I was assured that the soil was fully sixteen feet deep, and a rich, black alluvium from top to bottom; and I do not question the statements made to me from personal observation that portions of the strongly alkaline plain or swale on which Salt Lake City is built, being for the first time plowed, irrigated, and sown to Wheat, yielded ninety bushels of good grain per acre. I never saw, yet on evidence believe, that pioneer settlers of the Miami Valley, wishing, some years after settling there, to sell their farms, advertised them as peculiarly desirable in that the barns stood over a creek or "branch," which swept away the manure each Winter or Spring without trouble to the owner; and I have myself grown both Wheat and Oats that were very rank and heavy in straw, yet which fell so flat and lay so dead that the heads scarcely bore a kernel. Had I been a wiser, better farmer, I should have known how to stiffen the straw and make it do its office, in spite of wind and storm. [And let me here say, lest I forget it in its appropriate place, that I am confident that most farmers sow grain too thickly for any but very poor land. If one thinks it necessary to scatter three bushels of Oats per acre, I tell him that he should apply more manure and less seed--that land which requires three bushels of seed is not rich enough to bear Oats. He might better concentrate his manure on half so much land, and save two-thirds of his seed.] I do not hold that the remarkably rich soils I have instanced needed fertilizing when first plowed; I will presume that they did not. Yet, having never yet succeeded in manuring a corn-field so high that a few loads more would not (I judge) have increased the crop, I doubt whether even the richest Illinois bottoms would not yield more Corn, year by year, if reënforced with the contents of a good barn-yard. And, when the first heavy crop of Corn has been taken from a field, that field--no matter how deep and fertile its soil--is less rich in corn-forming elements than it was before. Just so sure as that there is no depletion or shrinkage when nothing is taken from nothing, so sure is it that something cannot be taken from something without diminishing its capacity to yield something at the next call. Rotation of crops is an excellent plan; for one may flourish on that which another has rejected; but this does not overbear Nature's inflexible exaction of so much for so much. Hence, if there ever was a field so rich that nothing could be added that would increase its productive capacity, the first exacting crop thereafter taken from it diminished that capacity, and rendered a fresh application of some fertilizer desirable. Years ago, a Western man exhibited at our Farmers' Club a specimen of the soil of his region which was justly deemed very rich, taken from a field whereon Corn had been repeatedly grown without apparent exhaustion. A chemical analysis had been made of it, which was submitted with the soil. It was claimed that nothing could improve its capacity for producing the great Illinois staple. Prof. Mapes dissented from this conclusion. "This soil," said he, "while very rich in nearly every element which enters into the composition of Corn, gives barely a trace of Chlorine, the base of Salt. Hence, if five bushels per acre of Salt be applied to that field, and it does not thereupon yield five bushels more per annum of Corn, I will agree to eat the field." Many men fertilize their poor lands only, supposing that the better can do without. I judge that to be a mistake. My rule would be to plant the poorest with such choice trees as thrive without manure, and pile the fertilizers upon the better. It seems to me plain that of two fields, one of which has a soil containing nine-tenths of the elements of the desired crop, while the other shows but one to three-tenths, it is a more hopeful and less thankless task to enrich the former than the latter. If you are required to supply to a field nearly everything that your proposed crop will withdraw from it, I do not see where the profit comes in; but if you are required to supply but a tenth, because the soil as you found it stood ready to contribute the remaining nine-tenths, it seems to me that the margin for profit is here decidedly the greater. How many tuns of earth ought a farmer to be obliged to turn over and over in order to obtain therefrom a hundred bushels of Corn? Two hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? _Five_ thousand? Other things being equal, no one will doubt that, if he can make the Corn from one hundred tuns of soil, it were better to do so than to employ five hundred or five thousand. It seems clear to my mind that, though other conditions be unequal, it is generally well to endeavor to produce the required quantity from the smaller rather than the larger area. I fully share the average farmer's partiality for barn-yard manure in preference to most, if not all, commercial fertilizers. In my judgment, almost any farmer who has cattle, with fit shelter and Winter fodder, can make fertilizers far cheaper than he can buy them. I judge that almost every farmer who has paid $100 or over for Guano (for instance), might have more considerably enriched his farm by drawing muck from some convenient bog or pond into his barn-yard in August or September and carting it thence to his fields the next Fall. If he can get no muck within a mile, let him cut, when they are in blossom, all the weeds that grow near him, especially by the road-side, cart them at once into his barn-yard, and there convert them into fertilizers. In Autumn, replace the hay-rack on the wagon or cart, and pile load after load of freshly-fallen leaves into your yard; taking them, if you may, from the sides of roads and fences, and from any place where they may have been lodged or heaped by the winds, your own wood-lot excepted. Plow the turf off of any scurvy lot or road-side, and pile it into the barn-yard; nay, dig a hundred loads of pure clay, and place it there, if you can get it at a small expense, and your average soil is gravelly or sandy. The farmer who is unable or reluctant to buy commercial fertilizers should apply his whole force every Autumn to replenishing his barn-yard with that material which he can obtain most easily which the trampling of his cattle may readily convert into manure. A month is too little, two months would not be too much, to devote to this good work. Some may seem obliged to postpone it to Winter; but that is to run the risk of embarrassment by frost or snow, and encounter the certainty that your material will be inferior in quality, or not so well fitted to apply to grain-crops the ensuing Fall. --All this, you may say, is not instruction. We ought to know exactly what lands are enriched by Gypsum, and what, if any, are not; why these are fertilized, why those are not, by a common application; how great is the profit of such application in any case; and what substitute can most nearly subserve the same ends where Gypsum is not to be had. I admit all you claim, and do not doubt that there shall yet be a Scientific Agriculture that will fully answer your requirements. As yet, however, it exists but in suggestions and fragments; and attempts to complete it by naked assertions and sweeping generalizations tend rather to mislead and disgust the young farmer than really to enlighten and guide him. At all events, I shall aim to set forth as true no more than I know, or with good reason confidently believe. I close by rëiterating my belief that no farmer ever yet impoverished himself by making too much manure or by applying too much of his own manufacture. I cannot speak so confidently of _buying_ commercial fertilizers; but these I will discuss in my next chapter. XX. BONES--PHOSPHATES--GUANO. I hate to check improvement or chill the glow of Faith; yet I do so keenly apprehend that many of our people, especially among the Southern cotton-growers, are squandering money on Commercial Fertilizers, that I am bound to utter my note of warning, even though it should pass wholly unheeded. Let me make my position as clear as I can. I live in a section which has been cultivated for more than two centuries, while its proximity to a great city has tempted to crop it incessantly, exhaustively. Wheat while its original surface soil of six to twelve inches of vegetable mold (mainly composed of decayed forest-leaves) remained; then Corn and Oats; at length, Milk, Beef, and Apples--have exhausted the hill-sides and gentler slopes of Westchester County, except where they have been kept in heart by judicious culture and liberal fertilizing; and, even here, that subtle element, Phosphorus, which enters minutely but necessarily into the composition of every animal and nearly every vegetable structure has been gradually drawn away in Grain, in Milk, in Bones, and not restored to the soil by the application of ordinary manures. I am convinced that a field may be so manured as to give three tuns of Hay per acre, yet so destitute of Phosphorus that a sound, healthy animal cannot be grown therefrom. For two centuries, the tillers of Westchester County knew nothing of Chemistry or Phosphorus, and allowed the unvalued bones of their animals to be exported to fatten British meadows, without an effort to retain them. Hence, it has become absolutely essential that we buy and apply Phosphates, even though the price be high; for our land can no longer do without them. Wherever a steer or heifer can occasionally be caught gnawing or mumbling over an old bone, there Phosphates are indispensable, no matter at what cost. Better pay $100 per tun for a dressing of one hundred pounds of Bone per acre than try to do without. But no lands recently brought into cultivation--no lands where the bones of the animals fed thereon have been allowed, for unnumbered years past, to mingle with the soil--can be equally hungry for Phosphates; and I doubt that any cotton-field in the South will ever return an outlay of even $50 per tun for any Phosphatic fertilizer whatever. That _any_ preparation of Bone, or whereof Bone is a principal element, will increase the succeeding crops, is undoubted; but that it will ever return its cost and a decent margin of profit, is yet to be demonstrated to my satisfaction. No doubt, there are special cases in which the application even of Peruvian Guano at $90 per tun is advisable. A compost of Muck, Lime, &c., equally efficient, might be far cheaper; but months would be required to prepare and perfect it, and meantime the farmer would lose his crop, or fail to make one. If a tun of Guano, or of some expensive Phosphate, will give him six or eight acres of Clover where he would otherwise have little or none, and he needs that Clover to feed the team wherewith he is breaking up and fitting his farm to grow a good crop next year, he may wisely make the purchase and application, even though he may be able to compost for next year's use twice the value of fertilizers for the precise cost of this. But I am so thorough in my devotion to "home industry," that I hold him an unskillful farmer who cannot, nine times in ten, make, mainly from materials to be found on or near his farm, a pile of compost for $100 that will add more to the enduring fertility of his farm than anything he can bring from a distance at a cost of $150. Understand that this is a general rule, and subject, like all general rules, to exceptions. Gypsum, I think every farmer should buy; Lime also, if his soil needs it; Phosphates in some shape, if past ignorance or folly has allowed that soil to be despoiled of them; Wood Ashes, if any one can be found so brainless as to sell them; Marl, of course, where it is found within ten miles; Guano very rarely, and mainly when something is needed to make a crop before coarser and colder fertilizers can be brought into a condition of fitness for use; but the general rule I insist on is this: A good farmer will, in the course of twenty or thirty years, make at least $10 worth of fertilizers for every dollar's worth he buys from any dealer, unless it be the sweepings or other excretions of some not distant city. I have used Guano frequently, and, though it has generally made its mark, I never yet felt sure that it returned me a profit over its cost. Phosphates have done better, especially where applied to Corn in the hill, either at the time of planting or later; yet my strong impression is that Flour of Bone, applied broadcast and freely, especially when Wheat or Oats are sown on a field that is to be laid down to Grass, pays better and more surely than anything else I order from the City, Gypsum, and possibly Oyster-Shell Lime, excepted. My experience can be no safe guide for others, since it is not proved that the anterior condition and needs of their soils are precisely like those of mine. I apprehend that Guano has not had a fair trial on my place--that carelessness in pulverizing or in application has caused it to "waste its sweetness on the desert air," or that a drouth following its application has prevented the due development of its virtues. And still my impression that Guano is the brandy of vegetation, supplying to plants stimulus rather than nutrition, is so clear and strong that it may not easily be effaced. It seems to me plainly absurd to send ten thousand miles for this stimulant, when this or any other great city annually poisons its own atmosphere and the adjacent waters with excretions which are of very similar character and value, and which Science and Capital might combine to utilize at less than half the cost of like elements in the form of Guano. My object in this paper is to incite experiment and careful observation. No farmer should absolutely trust aught but his own senses. A Rhode Islander once assured me that he applied to four acres of thin, slaty gravel one hundred pounds per acre of Nitrate of Soda which cost him $4 per hundred, and obtained therefrom four additional tuns of good Hay, worth $15 per tun: Net profit (after allowing for the cost of making the Hay), say $30. He might not be so fortunate on a second trial, and there may not be another four acres of the earth's surface where Nitrate of Soda would do so well; but, should I ever have a fair opportunity, I mean to see what a little of that Nitrate will do for _me_. And I hope farmers may more and more be induced to conform in practice to the Apostolic precept, "Prove all things: Hold fast that which is good." No one's success or failure in a particular instance should be conclusive with others, because of the infinite diversity of antecedent and attendant circumstances; but if every thrifty farmer would give to each of the commercial fertilizers--Lime, Gypsum, Guano, Raw Bone, Phosphates, Ashes, Salt, Marl, etc.--such a careful trial as he might, observing closely and recording carefully the results, we should soon have a mass of facts and results, wherefrom deductions might be drawn of signal practical value to the present and to future generations. I firmly believe that great results of signal beneficence are to be slowly but surely achieved by means of the household convenience known as the Earth-Closet, and by kindred devices for rendering inoffensive and utilizing the most powerful fertilizer produced on every farm and in every household. That is a vulgar squeamishness which leaves it to poison the atmosphere and offend the senses on the assumption that it is too noisome to be dealt with or utilized. A true refinement counsels that it be daily covered, and its odor absorbed or suppressed by earth, or muck, or ashes, and thus prepared for removal to and incorporation with the soil. It is far within the truth to estimate our National loss by the waste of this material at $1 per head, or $40,000,000 in all per annum: a waste which is steadily diminishing the productive capacity of our soil. This cannot, must not, be allowed to continue. We must devise or adopt _some_ mode of securing and applying this powerful fertilizer; and I defer to that which is already in extensive and daily expanding use. Let whoever can do better; but meantime let us welcome and diffuse the Earth Closet. XXI. MUCK--HOW TO UTILIZE IT. The time will be, I cannot doubt, when chemists can tell us the exact positive or relative value of a cord of Muck--how this swamp or that pond affords a choice article, while the product of another will hardly pay for digging. There may be chemists whose judgment on these points is now worth far more than mine, since mine is worth exactly nothing. I _do_ know, however, that Muck is a valuable fertilizer, and that digging and composting it _does pay_. I judge that I have transferred at least three thousand loads of it from my swamp to my upland; and the effect had been all that I expected. Let me speak of Muck generally, in the light, of my own experience. Wherever rocks in ridges come to the surface of a valley, plain, or gentle slope, water is apt to be collected or retained by them, forming ponds or shallower pools, which may or may not dry up in Summer, but which are seldom dry late in Autumn, when plants are dying and leaves are falling. The latter, caught in their descent by the harsh winds of the season, are swept along the bare, dry ground, till they strike the water, which arrests their progress and soon engulfs them. Thus an acre of watery surface will often collect, and retain the dead foliage of five to ten acres of forest; and next Fall will render its kindred tribute, and the next, and the next, for ever. There cannot be less than fifty millions of acres of Swamps in our old States (including Maine); whereof I presume the larger area was covered with water until the slow contributions of leaves and weeds filled them above the level at which water is no longer retained on the surface. And still, they are so moist and boggy, and their rank vegetation is so retentive, that the leaves swept in from the adjacent hills and glades are firmly retained and aid to increase the depth of their vegetable mold, which varies from a few inches to twenty and even thirty feet. In my old County of Westchester, I roughly estimate that there are at least five thousand acres of bog, whereof but a very few hundreds have yet been subdued to the uses of cultivation. Whoever digs a quantity of Swamp Muck and applies it _directly_ to his fields or garden, will derive little or no immediate benefit therefrom. It is green, sour, cold, and more likely to cover his farm thickly and persistently with Sorrel, Eye-smart, Rag-weed, Parsley, and other infestations, than to add a bushel per acre to his crop of Grain or Roots. And thus many have tried Muck, and, on trial, pronounced it a pestilent humbug. But let any farmer turn his whole force into a bog or marsh directly after finishing his Summer harvest (when it is apt to be driest and warmest), and, having freed it of water to the best of his ability, dig and draw out one hundred cords of its black, oozy substance, and he will know better than to unite in that hasty judgment. If the bog be near his farm-yard, let the Muck be shoveled at once into a cart and drawn thither; but, if not, let it be simply brought out in wheel-barrows and deposited, not more than two feet deep, on the most convenient bank that is well drained and perfectly dry. Here let it dry and drain till after Fall harvest, and then begin to draw it gradually into the yards, and especially where it may be worked over by swine and scratched over for seeds and insects by fowls. Assuming that the farm-yard is lowest in the centre and allows no liquid to escape save by evaporation, the Muck may well be dumped on the drier sides; thence, after being worked over and trampled through and through, to be shoveled into the centre and replaced by fresh arrivals. A hundred cords may thus be so mixed and ripened as to be fit to draw out next May and used as a fertilizer for Grain or Roots, though, if not so treated, it should lie exposed to sun and wind a full year; being applied in the Fall to crops of Winter grain or spread upon the fields to be planted or sowed next Spring. All the manure made during the Winter should be spread over that which lies in the yard at least monthly; and then new Muck drawn in, to be rooted or scratched over, trampled into the underlying strata, and overspread in its turn. Thus treated, I am confident that each hundred cords of Muck will be equal in value to an equal quantity of manure, though it may not give up its fertilizing properties so freely to the first crop that follows its application. I have land that did not yield (in pasture) the equivalent of half a tun of hay pet annum when I bought it, that now yields at least three tuns of good hay per annum; and its renovation is mainly due to a free application of Swamp Muck. To those who have a good stock of animals, with Muck convenient to their yards, I would not recommend any other treatment than the foregoing; but there are many who keep few animals, or whose muck-beds lie at the back of their farms, two or three hundred rods from their barns; while they wish to fertilize the fields in this quarter, which have been slighted in former applications, because of the distance over which manure had to be hauled. If these possess or can buy good hard-wood, house-made Ashes at twenty-five cents or less per bushel, I would say, Mix these well, at the rate of two or three bushels to the card, with your Muck as you dig it; work it over the next Spring, and apply it the ensuing Fall, so as to give it a full year to ripen and sweeten, and it will be all right. But, if you have not and cannot get the Ashes, and _can_ procure dirty, refuse Salt from some meat-packer or wholesale grocer, apply this as you would have applied the Ashes, but in rather larger quantity; and, if you can get neither Ashes nor Salt, use quick Lime, as fresh and hot from the kiln as you can apply it. The best Lime is that from burned Oyster-Shells; I consider this, if nowise slaked, nearly equal to refuse Salt; but Oyster-Shell Lime is too dear at most inland points; and here the refuse of the kilns--that which is not good enough for mason-work--must be used. Usually, the lime-burner has a load or more of this at the clearing out of every kiln, which he will sell quite cheap if it be taken out of his way at once; and this should be looked for and secured. Being inferior in quality (often because imperfectly burned), it should be applied in larger quantity--not less than four bushels to each cord of Muck. * * * * * I will not here describe the process of mixing Salt with Lime commended by Prof. Mapes, because it is not easy to bring these two ingredients together so as to mix them with the Muck as it is dug: and, though I have used them after Prof. Mapes's recipe, and purpose to do so hereafter, I do not feel certain that any positive advantage results from their blended application as a Chloride of Lime. If I should gain further light on this point before completing this series, I shall not fail to impart it. XXII. INSECTS--BIRDS. If I were to estimate the average absolute loss of the farmers of this country from Insects at $100,000,000 per annum, I should doubtless be far below the mark. The loss of fruit alone by the devastations of insects, within a radius of fifty miles from this City, must amount in value to Millions. In my neighborhood, the Peach once flourished, but flourishes no more, and Cherries have been all but annihilated. Apples were till lately our most profitable and perhaps our most important product; but the worms take half our average crop and sadly damage what they do not utterly destroy. Plums we have ceased to grow or expect; our Pears are generally stung and often blighted; even the Currant has at last its fruit-destroying worm. We must fight our paltry adversaries more efficiently, or allow them to drive us wholly from the field. Now, I have no doubt that our best allies in this inglorious warfare are the Birds. They would save us, if we did not destroy them. The British plowman, turning his sod with a myriad of crows, blackbirds, etc., chasing his steps and all but getting under his feet in their eager quest of grubs, bugs, etc., is a spectacle to be devoutly thankful for. Whenever clouds of birds shall habitually darken our fields in May and (less notably) throughout the Summer months, we may reasonably hope to grow fair crops of our favorite Fruits from year to year, and realize that we owe them to the constant, and zealous, though not quite disinterested, efforts of our friends, the Birds. But I do not regard the ravages of Insects as entirely due to the reckless destruction and consequent scarcity of our Birds. I hold that their multiplication and their devastations are largely incited by the degeneracy of our plants caused by the badness of our culture. On this point, consider a statement made to me, some fifteen or twenty years ago, by the late Gov. William F. Packer, of Pennsylvania: "I know (said Gov. P.) the narrow valley of a stream that runs into the west branch of the Susquehanna, which was cleared of the primitive forest some forty or fifty years since, and has ever since been alternately in tillage and grass. A road ran through the middle of it, dividing it into two narrow fields. A few years ago, this road was abandoned, and the whole of this little valley, including the road-way, thrown into a single field, which was thereupon sown to Wheat. At harvest-time, this remarkable phenomenon was presented: A good crop of sound grain on the strip four or fire rods wide formerly covered by the road; while nearly every berry on either side of it was destroyed by the weevil or midge." Now I do not infer from this fact that insect ravages are _wholly_ due to our abuse and exhaustion of the soil. I presume that Wheat and other crops would be devastated by insects if there were no slovenly, niggard, exhausting tillage. But I do firmly hold that at least half our losses by insects would be precluded if our fields were habitually kept in better heart by deep culture, liberal fertilizing, and a judicious rotation of crops. I heard little of insect ravages in the wheat-fields of Western New-York throughout the first thirty years of this century; but, when crop after crop of Wheat had been taken from the same fields until they had been well nigh exhausted of their Wheat-forming elements, we began to hear of the desolation wrought by insects; and those ravages increased in magnitude until Wheat-culture had to be abandoned for years. I believe that we should have heard little of insects had Wheat been grown on those fields but one year in three since their redemption from the primal forest. But, whatever might once have been, the Philistines are upon us. We are doomed, for at least a generation, to wage a relentless war against insects multiplied beyond reason by the neglect and short-comings of our predecessors. We are in like condition with the inhabitants of the British isles a thousand years ago, whose forefathers had so long endured and so unskillfully resisted invasion and spoliation by the Northmen that they had come to be regarded as the sea-kings' natural prey. For generations, it has been customary hereabout to slaughter without remorse the birds, and let caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers, etc., multiply and ravage unresisted. We must pay for past errors by present loss and years of extra effort. And, precisely because the task is so arduous, we ought to lose no time in addressing ourselves to its execution. The first step to be taken is very simple. Let every farmer who realizes the importance and beneficence of Birds teach his own children and hirelings that, except the Hawk, they are to be spared, protected, kindly treated, and (when necessary) fed. They are to be valued and cherished as the voluntary police of our fields and gardens, constantly employed in fighting our battles against our ruthless foes. The boy who robs a bird's nest is robbing the farmer of a part of his crops. He who traverses a farm shooting and mangling its feathered sentinels diminishes its future product of Grain and nearly destroys that of Fruit. The farmer might as well consent that any strolling ruffian should shoot his Horses or Cattle as his Birds. Begin at home to make this truth felt and respected, and it will be the easier to impress it also on your neighbors. Next, there should be neighborhood or township associations for the protection of insect-eating birds. We must not merely agree to let them live--we must cherish and protect them. I believe that very simple cups or bowls of cast-iron, having each a hole in its centre of suitable size, that need not cost sixpence each, and could be fastened to the side of a tree with one nail lightly driven, would in time be adopted by many birds as nesting strongholds, whence they might laugh to scorn their predacious enemies. If every harmless bird could build its nest among us in a place where its eggs would be safe from hawks, crows, cats, boys, and other robbers, the number of such birds would quickly be doubled and quadrupled. And we must summon the law to our aid. Though law can do little or nothing against stealthy, skulking nest-plunderers, it can help us materially in our warfare with the cowardly vagabonds who traverse our fields with musket or rifle, blazing away at every unsuspecting robin or thrush that they can discover. Make it trespass, punishable with fine and imprisonment, to shoot on another's land without his express permission, and the cowardly massacre of the farmers' humble allies would be checked at once, and, when public sentiment had been properly enlightened, might, in civilized regions, be arrested altogether. XXIII. ABOUT TREE-PLANTING. I have had so little experience in Tree-Planting that I should have preferred to say no more about it; but letters that have reached me imply that the ignorance of others is even denser than mine. For the sake of those only who are conscious that they know nothing, yet are not unwilling to learn, I venture a few timid suggestions with regard to Tree-Planting. I. Ten or twelve years ago, I bought a pound or more of Locust seed rather late in the Spring, scalded it by plunging for a moment the little cotton bag which held it into a pot of boiling water, and letting the seed steep and steam in the bag till next morning, when the seed was planted in rows in a newly broken bit of poor old pasture-land. This was a mistake; I should have given that seed the richest available spot in my garden, to say nothing of planting it as early as April 20th. My locusts came up slowly and grew feebly that year, not to speak of the many seeds that did not sprout at all. Still many came up and survived, and my place is this day the richer for them. It might have been still richer had I seasonably known more. II. What I would now advise as to Locust and most other trees is that the best seed be procured in the Fall, or so soon as it drops from the trees; that part of it be sown in drills, two feet apart, with two inches between seeds in the drills, and that the richest of dry, warm garden-soil be devoted to this purpose. Fill a large box with rich loam, stir four ounces of seed into this, and set the box in a cool cellar where frost does not enter, and here let it remain till April; then take out the seed and earth together, and sow in drills as above. If some one who cuts Locust during the Winter or Spring will allow you to trace the smaller surface-roots from the new-made stumps and cut or dig them up, cut fifty or a hundred pieces of root the size of your finger each two feet long, and plant these, about May 1, in the places where you want Locusts to come forward most rapidly. Some of them may not grow, but I think many will; and, from all these sources, I judge that you will obtain a good supply of young trees. Let those you start from the seed get two years' growth before you take them up and set them where you want trees, whether in your present woods, in rugged, rocky pastures, on the sides of steep ravines, or around your buildings. You cannot fail to obtain _some_ trees if you follow these directions. III. Begin early this Fall to gather Chestnuts, Hickory Nuts, Walnuts, White Oak, Acorns, etc., to plant. Select the largest and finest nuts, giving the preference to those which ripen and fall earliest. Keep them in cool, damp earth in some barn or cellar where rats and mice cannot reach them, and persist in collecting till December. Then plant a part in your garden or in any rich ground where they are not likely to be disturbed; letting the residue remain in the boxes of moist earth where you first placed them till early Spring; then plant these, like the former, in rows two feet apart, with six inches between seed and seed in each row, and give the rows careful culture for two years; after which, set them where you wish them to grow. I venture to suggest that he who has a ragged, stony hill or other lot which he wishes to surrender to forest should plow it, if it can be plowed, next September or October; if too rocky to be even imperfectly plowed, dig up the earth with pick and spade, and sow it thickly with hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts, locust and other tree-seeds, expecting that some will be dug up and carried off by squirrels, etc., and that others will fail to germinate. Go over it with hoes the ensuing June or July, killing all weeds and other infestations; and, nearly a year later, repeat the operation, taking up young trees from your garden or nursery, and filling them in wherever there is room. Plant thickly in order to force an upward rather than a scraggy growth; and so that you may begin to cut out the superfluous saplings for bean-poles, hoop-poles, etc., three or four years thereafter. Cut late in Winter or early in Spring, so that the stumps will each throw up two or more shoots or sprouts, which usually grow much faster than the original tree did. And the process of thinning may thus be continued indefinitely, while the choicer trees are allowed to attain their stateliest proportions. And thus a rocky, sterile hill-side or knoll may be made to yield a crop annually after the first two or three years from planting, while growing trees of decided value. I judge that almost any land within fifty miles of a great city and not more than two miles from a railroad depot or from navigable water may thus be made to earn a good interest on $100 per acre, after meeting all the cost of breaking up and planting. I confidently assert that many thousands of sterile, rocky acres, which now yield less than $5 per acre annually in pasturage, would net at least double that sum to the owner if wisely devoted to forest-trees. * * * * * I have a hearty love of forests. They proffer gentle companionship to the thoughtful and rest to the overworked, fevered brain. Our streams will be fuller and less capricious, our gales less destructive, our climate more equable, when we shall have reclothed our rugged slopes and rocky crests with trees. Timber grows yearly scarcer and dearer, when it ought to be becoming more plentiful and accessible, and _would_ be if we devoted to trees all the land which we cultivate at a loss or fail to cultivate at all. Let our boys be incited to gather seeds and plant nurseries; let young trees be bought by the thousand where they now are by the dozen, and let us all coöperate in covering our unsightly rocks and making glad our waste places by a superabundance of choice, thrifty, healthy trees. Many of our young men have a taste for adventure and excitement which leads them to the ocean, the mines, to Australia or some other far-off land recently and scantily peopled by civilized beings. I will not quarrel with their taste; but I judge that there are openings for their enterprise and daring within the area of our own country. Let one thousand of them resolve to devote the next five years to planting forests on the treeless plains and virtual deserts of the Great Basin and on either side of it; let them select locations where some acres may cheaply and surely be irrigated, and, having carefully provided themselves with an abundance of the best seeds, let them start patches of woodland at points the most remote from present timber, until a thousand different forests--one to each of the associates--shall have been started and guarded till their roots have taken firm hold of the earth. I presume Congress would grant them preëmptions to each section on which they thus planted at least forty acres of forest, and that most of these preëmption rights could, within ten years, be sold to settlers for many times their original cost. XXIV. FRUIT-TREES--THE APPLE. If I were asked to say what single aspect of our economic condition most strikingly and favorably distinguished the people of our Northern States from these of most if not all other countries which I have traversed, I would point at once to the fruit-trees which so generally diversify every little as well as larger farm throughout these States, and are quite commonly found even on the petty holdings of the poorer mechanics and workmen in every village and in the suburbs and outskirts of every city. I can recall nothing like it abroad, save in two or three of the least mountainous and most fertile districts of northern Switzerland. Italy has some approach to it in the venerable olive-trees which surround or flank many, perhaps most, of her farm-houses, upholding grape-vines as ancient and nearly as large as themselves; but the average New-England or Middle State homestead, with its ample Apple-orchard and its cluster of Pear, Cherry and Plum-trees surrounding its house and dotting or belting its garden, has an air of comfort and modest thrift, which I have nowhere else seen fairly equaled. Upland Virginia and the mountainous portion of the States southward of her may in time surpass the most favored regions of the North in the abundance, variety and excellence of their fruits; for the Peach and the Grape find here a congenial climate, while they are grown with difficulty, where they can be grown at all, in the North; but, up to this hour, I judge that our country north of the Potomac is better supplied with wholesome and palatable tree-fruits than any other portion of the earth's surface of equal or nearly equal area. On the whole, I deem it a misfortune that our Northern States were so admirably adapted to the Apple and kindred fruit-trees that our pioneer forefathers had little more to do than bury the seeds in the ground and wait a few years for the resulting fruit. The soil, formed of decayed trees and their foliage, thickly covered with the ashes of the primitive forest, was as genial as soil could be; while the remaining woods, which still covered seven-eighths of the country, shut out or softened the cold winds of Winter and Spring, rendering it less difficult, a century ago, to grow fine peaches in southern New-Hampshire than it now is in southern New-York. Devastating insects were precluded by those great, dense woods from diffusing themselves from orchard to orchard as they now do. Snows fell more heavily and lay longer then than now, protecting the roots from heavy frosts, and keeping back buds and blossoms in Spring, to the signal advantage of the husbandman. I estimate that my apple-trees would bear at least one-third more fruit if I could retard their blossoming a fortnight, so as to avoid the cold rains and cutting winds, often succeeded by frosts, which are apt to pay their unwelcome farewell visits just when my trees are in bloom or when the fruit is forming directly thereafter. Hence, I say to every one who shall hereafter set an orchard, Give it the northward slope of a hill if that be possible. Other things being equal, the orchard which blossoms latest will, in a series of years, yield most fruit, and will be most likely to bear when the Apple-crop of your vicinity proves a failure. I do not recommend storing ice to plant or bury under the trees in April, for that involves too much labor and expense; yet I have no doubt that even that has been and sometimes might be done with profit. In the average, however, I judge that it would not pay. In locating and setting an orchard, the very first consideration is thorough drainage. Nothing short of a destructive fire can be more injurious to an apple-tree than compelling it to stand throughout Winter and Spring in sour, stagnant water. Barrenness, dead branches, and premature general decay, are the natural and righteous consequences of such crying abuse. There are many reasons for choosing sloping or broken ground for an apple-orchard, whereof comparative exemption from frost and natural facility of drainage are the most obvious. A level field, thoroughly undrained to-day, may, through neglect and the mischiefs wrought by burrowing animals, have become little better than a morass thirty years hence; but an orchard set on a tolerably steep hillside is reasonably secure against wet feet to the close of its natural life. A gravelly or sandy loam is generally preferred for orchards; yet I have known them to flourish and bear generously on heavy clay. Whoever has a gravelly field will wisely prefer this for Apples, not merely to clay but to sand as well. And, while many young orchards have doubtless been injured by immoderate applications of rank, green manures, I doubt that any man has ever yet bestowed too much care and expense on the preparation of his ground for fruit-trees. Where ridges or plateaus of fast stone do not forbid, I would say, Turn over the soil to a depth of at least fifteen inches with a large plow and a strong team; then lift and pulverize the subsoil to a depth of not less than nine inches; apply all the Wood-ashes you can get, with one thousand bushels of Marl if you are in a Marl region; if not, use instead from thirty to fifty bushels of quick Lime (oyster-shell if that is to be had) with one hundred loads per acre of Swamp Muck which has lain a year on dry upland, baking in the sun and wind; and now you may think of setting your trees. If your soil was rich Western prairie or Middle-State garden to begin with, you can dispense with all these fertilizers; yet I doubt that there is an acre of Western prairie that would not be improved by the Lime or (perhaps better still) a smaller quantity of refuse Salt from a packing-house or meat retailing grocery. There are not many farms that would not repay the application of five bushels per acre of refuse Salt at twenty-five cents per bushel. Your trees once set--(and he who sets twenty trees per day as they should be set, with each root in its natural position, and the earth pressed firmly around its trunk, but no higher than as it originally grew, is a faithful, efficient worker), I would cultivate the land, (for the trees' sake), growing crops successively of Ruta Bagas, Carrots, Beets, and early Potatoes, but no grain whatever, for six or seven years, disturbing the roots of the trees as little as may be, and guarding their trunks from tug, or trace, or whiffle-tree, by three stakes set firmly in the ground about each tree, not so near it as to preclude constant cultivation with the hoe inside as well as outside of the stakes, so as to let no weed mature in the field. Apply from year to year well-rotted compost to the field in quantity sufficient fully to counterbalance the annual abstraction by your crops. Make it a law inflexible and relentless that no animal shall be let into this orchard to forage, or for any purpose whatever but to draw on manures, to till the soil, and to draw away the crops. Thus until the first blossoms begin to appear on the trees; then lay down to grass _without_ grain, unless it be a crop of Rye or Oats to be cut and carried off for feed when not more than half grown, leaving the ground to the young grass. Let the grass be mowed for the next two or three years, and thenceforward devote it to the pasturage of Swine, running over it with a scythe once or twice each Summer to clear it of weeds, and taking out the Swine a few days before beginning to gather the Apples, but putting them back again the day after the harvest is completed. Let the Swine be sufficiently numerous and hungry to eat every apple that falls within a few hours after it is dropped, and to insure their rooting out every grub or worm that burrows in the earth beneath the trees, ready to spring up and apply himself to mischief at the very season when you could best excuse his absence. I do not commend this as all, or nearly all, that should be done in resistance to the pest of insect ravage; but I begin with the Hog as the orchardist's readiest, cheapest, most effective ally or servitor in the warfare he is doomed unceasingly to wage against the spoilers of his heritage. I will indicate some further defensive enginery in my next chapter. XXV MORE ABOUT APPLE-TREES. In my opinion, Apple-trees, in most orchards, are planted too far apart and allowed to grow taller and spread their limbs more widely than is profitable. I judge that a pruner or picker should be able to reach the topmost twig of any tree with a ten-foot pole, and that no limb should be allowed to extend more than eight feet from the trunk whence it springs. Our Autumnal Equinox occurs before our Apples are generally ripe for harvest, and, finding our best trees bending under a heavy burden of fruit, its fierce gales are apt to make bad work with trees as well as apples. The best tree I had, with several others, was thus ruined by an equinoctial tempest a few years since. Barren trees escape unharmed, while those heavily laden with large fruit are wrenched and twisted into fragments. And, even apart from this peril, a hundred weight of fruit at or near the extremity of limbs which extend ten or twelve feet horizontally from the trunk, tax and strain a tree more than four times that weight growing within four or five feet of the trunk, and on limbs that maintain a semi-erect position. I diffidently suggest, therefore, that no apple-tree be allowed to exceed fifteen feet in height, nor to send a limb more than eight feet from its trunk, and that trees be set (diamond-fashion) twenty-four feet apart each way, instead of thirty-two, as some of mine were. I judge that the larger number of trees (72 per acre) will produce more fruit in the average than the larger but fewer trees grown on squares of two by two rods to each, that they will thrive and bear longer, and that not one will be destroyed or seriously harmed by winds where a dozen would if allowed to grow as high and spread as far as they could. * * * * * Every apple-tree should be pruned each year of its life: that is, it should be carefully examined with intent to prune if that be found necessary. It should be pruned with a careful eye to giving it the proper shape, which, from the point where it first forks upward, should be that of a tea-cup, very nearly. I have seen young trees so malformed that they could rarely, if ever, bear fruit enough to render them profitable. And the pruning should be so carefully, judiciously done from the outset that no wood two years old should ever be cut away. With old, malformed, diseased, worm-eaten, decaying trees, the best must be done that can be; but he who, pruning a tree that he set and has hitherto cared for, finds himself obliged to cut off a limb thicker than his thumb, may justly suspect himself of lacking a mastery of the art of fruit-growing. Sprouts from the root of an apple-tree remind me of children who habitually play truant or are kept out of school. They not merely can never come to good, but they are a nuisance to the neighborhood and bring reproach on the community. The apple-grower should never forget that every producer needs to be fed in proportion to his product. If a cow gives twenty quarts of milk per day, she needs more grass or other food than if she gave but two quarts; and an acre of orchard that yields a hundred barrels of Apples per annum needs something given to the soil to balance the draft made upon it. Nature offers us good bargains; but she does not trust and will not be cheated. When she offers a bushel of Corn for a bushel of dirty Salt, Shell Lime, or Wood-Ashes, a load of Hay for a load of Muck, we ought not to stint the measure, but pay her demand ungrudgingly. * * * * * And now a last word on Insects. My township (Newcastle) is said to have formerly grown more Apples per annum than any other township in the United States; its apple-trees are still as numerous as ever, but their product has fallen off deplorably. I estimate the average yield of the last three years at less than a bushel per annum for each full-grown tree; I think a majority of the trees have not borne a bushel each in all these three years. Unseasonable frosts, storms, etc., have borne the blame of this barrenness--perhaps justly, if we consider only immediate causes--but the caterpillar and other vermin are, in my view, our more potent, though remoter, afflictions. Not less than four times within the last sixteen years have our trees been covered with nests and worms; and I have seen whole orchards stripped of nearly every leaf till they were as bare (of every thing but caterpillars) in July as they should have been in December. After the scourge had passed, the trees reclad themselves with leaves; but they grew old under that visitation faster in one year than they would have done in ten of healthful fruit-bearing; and they are now prematurely gray and moss-covered because of the terrible infliction. I lay down the general proposition that no man who harbors caterpillars has any moral right to Apples--that each grower should be required to make his choice between them. Slovenly farmers say, "O there are so many of them that I cannot kill half so fast as they multiply." Then I say, cut down and burn up the trees you can best spare, until you have no more left than you can keep clear of worms. If it were the law of the land that whoever allowed caterpillars to nest and breed in his fruit-trees should pay a heavy fine for each nest, we should soon be comparatively clear of the scourges. In the absence of such salutary regulation, one man fights them with persistent resolution, only to see his orchard again and again invaded and ravaged by the pests hatched and harbored by his careless neighbors. He thus pays and repays the penalty of others' negligence and misdoing until, discouraged and demoralized, he abandons the hopeless struggle, and thenceforth repels the enemy from a few favorite trees around his dwelling, and surrenders his orchard to its fate. Thus bad laws (or no laws) are constantly making bad farmers. The birds that would help us to make head against our insect foes are slaughtered by reckless boys--many of them big enough to know better--and our perils and losses from enemies who would be contemptible if their numbers did not render them formidable increase from year to year. We must change all this; and the first requisite of our situation is a firm alliance of the entire farming and fruit-growing interest defensive as to birds, offensive toward their destroyers, and toward the vermin multiplied and shielded by the ruthless massacre of our feathered friends. Since the foregoing was written we have had (in 1870) the greatest Apple-crop throughout our section that mine eyes did ever yet behold. It was so abundant that I could not sell all my cider-apples to the vinegar-makers, even at fitly cents per barrel. This establishes the continued capacity of our region to bear Apples, and should invite to the planting of new orchards and the fertilization and renovation of old ones. XXVI. HAY AND HAY-MAKING The Grass-crop of this, as of many, if not most, other countries, is undoubtedly the most important of its annual products; requiring by far the largest area of its soil, and furnishing the principal food of its Cattle, and thus contributing essentially to the subsistence of its working animals and to the production of those Meats which form a large and constantly increasing proportion of the food of every civilized people. But I propose to speak in this essay of that proportion of the Grass-crop--say 25 to 35 per cent. of the whole--which is cut, cured and housed (or stacked) for Hay, and which is mainly fed out to animals in Winter and Spring, when frost and snow have divested the earth of herbage or rendered it inaccessible. The Seventh Census (1850) returned the Hay-crop of the preceding year at 13,838,642 tuns, which the Eighth Census increased to 19,129,128 tuns as the product of 1859. Confident that most farmers underestimate their Hay-crops, and that hundreds of thousands who do not consider themselves farmers, but who own or rent little homesteads of two to ten acres each, keeping thereon a cow or two and often a horse, fail to make returns of the two to five tuns of Hay they annually produce, considering them too trivial, I estimate the actual Hay-crop of all our States and Territories for the current year at 40,000,000 tuns, or about a tun to each inhabitant, although I do not expect the new Census to place it much, if any, above 25,000,000 tuns. The estimated average value of this crop is $10 (gold) per tun, making its aggregate value, at my estimate of its amount, $400,000,000--and the quantity is constantly and rapidly increasing. That quantity should be larger from the area devoted to meadows, and the quality a great deal better. I estimate that 30,000,000 acres are annually mowed to obtain these 40,000,000 tuns of Hay, giving an average yield of 1-1/3 tuns per acre, while the average should certainly not fall below two tuns per acre. My upland has a gravelly, rocky soil, not natural to grass, and had been pastured to death for at least a century before I bought it; yet it has yielded me an average of not less than 2-1/2 tuns to the acre for the last sixteen years, and will not yield less while I am allowed to farm it. My lowland (bog when I bought it) is bound henceforth to yield more; but, while imperfectly or not at all drained, it was of course a poor reliance--yielding bounteously in spots, in others, little or nothing. In nothing else is shiftless, slovenly farming so apt to betray itself as in the culture of Grass and the management of grass lands. Pastures overgrown with bushes and chequered by quaking, miry bogs; meadows foul with every weed, from white daisy up to the rankest brakes, with hill-sides that may once have been productive, but from which crop after crop has been taken and nothing returned to them, until their yield has shrunk to half or three-fourths of a tun of poor hay, these are the average indications of a farm nearly run out by the poorest sort of farming. Such farms were common in the New England of my boyhood; I trust they are less so to-day; yet I seldom travel ten miles in any region north or east of the Delaware without seeing one or more of them. Fifty years ago, I judge that the greater part of the hay made in New-England was cut from sour, boggy land, that was devoted to grass simply because nothing else could be done with it. I have helped to carry the crop off on poles from considerable tracts on which oxen could not venture without miring. It were superfluous to add that no well-bred animal would eat such stuff, unless the choice were between it and absolute starvation. In many cases, a very little work done in opening the rudest surface-drains would have transformed these bogs into decent meadows, and the product, by the help of plowing or seeding, into unexceptionable hay. There are not many farmers, apart from our wise and skillful dairymen, who use half enough grass-seed; men otherwise thrifty often fail in this respect. If half our ordinary farmers would thoroughly seed down a full third of the area they usually cultivate, and devote to the residue the time and efforts they now give to the whole, they would grow more grain and vegetables, while the additional grass would be so much clear again. We sow almost exclusively Timothy and Clover, when there are at least 20 different grasses required by our great diversity of soils, and of these three or four might often be sown together with profit; especially in seeding down fields intended for pasture, we might advantageously use a greater variety and abundance of seed. I believe that there are grasses not yet adopted and hardly recognized by the great body of our farmers--the buffalo-grass of the prairies for one--that will yet be grown and prized over a great part of our country. As for Hay-Making, my conviction is strong that our grass is cut in the average from two to three weeks too late, and that not only is our hay greatly damaged thereby, but our meadows needlessly impoverished and exhausted. The formation and perfection of seed always draw heavily upon the soil. A crop of grass cut when the earliest blossoms begin to drop--which, in my judgment, is the only right time--will not impoverish the soil half so much as will the same crop cut three weeks later; while the roots of the earlier cut grass will retain their vitality at least thrice as long as though half the seed had ripened before the crop was harvested. Grass that was fully ripe when cut has lost at least half its nutriment, which no chemistry can ever restore. Hay alone is dry fodder for a long Winter, especially for young stock; but hay cut after it was dead ripe, is proper nutriment for no animal whatever--not even for old horses, who are popularly supposed to like and thrive upon it. The fact that our farmers are too generally short-handed throughout the season of the Summer harvest, while it seems to explain the error I combat, renders it none the less disastrous and deplorable. I estimate the depreciation in the value of our hay-crop, by reason of late cutting, as not less than one-fifth; and, when we consider that a full half of our farmers turn out their cattle to ravage and poach up their fields in quest of fodder a full month earlier than they should, because their hay is nearly or quite exhausted, the consequences of this error are seen to diffuse themselves over the whole economy of the farm. * * * * * From the hour in which grass falls under the Mower, it ought to be kept in motion until laid at rest in the stack or the barn; keep stirring it with the tedder until it is ready to be raked into light winrows, and turn these over and over until they will answer to go upon the cart. In any bright, hot day, the grass mowed in the morning should be stacked before the dew falls at night; while, if any is mowed after noon, it should be cocked and capped by sunset, even though it be necessary to open it out the next fair morning. I have a dream of hay-making, especially with regard to clover, without allowing it to be scalded by fierce sunshine. In my dream, the grass is raked and loaded nearly as fast as cut, drawn to the barn-yard, and there pitched upon an endless apron, on which it is carried slowly through a drying-house, heated to some 200° Fahrenheit by steam or by charcoal in a furnace below, somewhat after the manner of a hop-kiln. While passing slowly through this heated atmosphere, the grass is continually forked up and shaken so as to expose every lock of it to the drying heat, until it passes off thereby deprived of its moisture and is precipitated into a mow or upon a stack-bottom at the opposite side; load after load being pitched upon the apron continuously, and the drying process going steadily forward by night as well as by day, and without regard to the weather outside. I do not assert that this vision will ever be realized; but I have known dreams as wild as this transformed by time and thought into beneficent realities. I ask no one to share my dreams or sympathise with their drift and purpose. I only insist that Hay-making, as it is managed all around me, is ruder in its processes and more uncertain in its results than it should or need be. We cut our grass rapidly and well; we gather and house it with tolerable efficiency; but we cure much of it imperfectly and wastefully. The fact that most of it is over-ripe when cut aggravates the pernicious effects of its subsequent exposure to dew and rain; and the net result is damaged fodder which is at once unpalatable and innutritious. XXVII. PEACHES--PEARS--CHERRIES--GRAPES. Our harsh, capricious climate north of the latitudes of Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St. Louis--so much severer than that of corresponding latitudes in Europe--is unfavorable, or at least very trying, to all the more delicate and luscious Fruits, berries excepted. Except on our Pacific coast, of which the Winter temperature is at least ten degrees milder than that of the Atlantic, the finer Peaches and Grapes are grown with difficulty north of the fortieth degree of latitude, save in a few specially favored localities, whereof the southern shore of Lake Erie is most noted, though part of that of Lake Ontario and of the west coast of Lake Michigan are likewise well adapted to the Peach. It is not the mere fact that the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer sometimes ranges below zero, and the earth is deeply frozen, but the suddenness wherewith such rigor succeeds and is succeeded by a temperature above the freezing point, that proves so inhospitable to the most valued Tree-Fruits. And, as the dense forests which formerly clothed the Alleghenies and the Atlantic slope, are year by year swept away, the severity of our "cold snaps," and the celerity with which they appear and disappear, are constantly aggravated. A change of 60°, or from 50° above to 10° below zero, between morning and the following midnight, soon followed by an equally rapid return to an average November temperature, often proves fatal even to hardy forest-trees. I have had the Red Cedar in my woods killed by scores during an open, capricious Winter; and my observation indicates the warmest spots in a forest as those where trees are most likely to be thus destroyed. After an Arctic night, in which they are frozen solid, a bright sun sends its rays into the warmest nooks, whence the wind is excluded, and wholly or partially thaws out the smaller trees; which are suddenly frozen solid again so soon as the sunshine is withdrawn; and this partly explains to my mind the fact that peach-buds are often killed in lower and level portions of an orchard, while they retain their vitality on the hill-side and at its crest, not 80 rods distant from those destroyed. The fact that the colder air descends into and remains in the valleys of a rolling district contributes also to the correct explanation of a phenomenon which has puzzled some observers. Unless in a favored locality, it seems to the unadvisable for a farmer who expects to thrive mainly by the production of Grain and Cattle, to attempt the growing of the finer Fruits, except for the use of his own family. In a majority of cases, a multiplicity of cares and labors precludes his giving to his Peaches and Grapes, his Plums and Quinces, the seasonable and persistent attention which they absolutely require. Quite commonly, a farmer visits a grand nursery, sees with admiration its trees and vines loaded with the most luscious Fruits, and rashly infers that he has only to buy a good stock of like Trees and Vines to insure himself an abundance of delicious fruit. So he buys and sets; but with no such preparation of the soil, and no such care to keep it mellow and free from weeds, or to baffle and destroy predatory insects, as the nurseryman employs. Hence the utter disappointment of his hopes; borers, slugs, caterpillars, and every known or unknown species of insect enemies, prey upon his neglected favorites. At intervals, some domestic animal or animals get among them, and break down a dozen in an hour. So, the far greater number come to grief, without having had one fair chance to show what they could do, and the farmer jumps to the conclusion that the nurseryman was a swindler, and the trees he sells scarcely related to those whose abundant and excellent fruits tempted him to buy. I counsel every farmer to consider thoughtfully the treatment absolutely required for the production of the finer Fruits before he allows a nurseryman to make a bill against him, and not expect to grow Duchesse Pears as easily as Blackberries, or Ionas and Catawbas as readily as he does Fox-grapes on the willows which overhang his brook; for if he does he will surely be disappointed. Some of our hardier and coarser Grapes--the Concord preëminent among them--are grown with considerable facility over a wide extent of our country; and many farmers, having planted them in congenial soil, and tended them well throughout their infancy, are rewarded by a bounteous product for two or three years. Believing their success assured, they imagine that their vines may henceforth be neglected, and in the course of two or three more years they are often utterly ruined. I know that there are wild grapes of some value, in the absence of better, which thrive and bear without attention; but I do not believe that any grape which will sell in a market where good fruit was ever seen, can be grown north of Philadelphia but by constant care and labor, or at a cost of less than five cents per pound, under the most judicious and skillful treatment. In California, and I presume in most of our States south of the Potomac and Ohio, choice grapes may be grown more abundantly and more cheaply. Yet I think the localities are few and far between in which a tun of good grapes can be grown as cheaply as a tun of wheat, under the most judicious cultivation in either case. I do not mean to discourage grape-growing; on the contrary, I would have every farmer, even so far north as Vermont and Wisconsin, experiment cautiously with a dozen of the most promising varieties, including always the more hardy, in the hope of finding some one or more adapted to his soil, and capable of enduring his climate. Even in France, the land of the vine, one farm will produce a grape which the very next will not: no man can satisfactorily say why. The farmer, who has tried half a dozen grapes and failed with all, should not be deterred from further experiments, for the very next may prove a success. I would only say, Be moderate in your expectations and careful in your experiments; and never risk even $100 on a vineyard, till you have ascertained, at a cost of $5 or under, whether the species you are testing will thrive and bear on your soil. In my own case, my upland mainly sloping to the west, with a hill rising directly south of it, I have had no luck with Grapes, and I have wasted little time or means upon them. I have done enough to show that they can be grown, even in such a locality, but not to profit or satisfaction. I would advise the farmer who proposes to grow Pear, Peaches, and Quinces, for home use only or mainly, to select a piece of dry, gravelly or sandy loam, underdrain it thoroughly, plow or trench it very deeply, and fertilize it generously, in good part with ashes and with leaf-mold from his woods. Locate the pig-pen on one side of it, fence it strongly, and let the pigs have the run of it for a good portion of each year. In this plat or yard, plant half a dozen Cherry and as many Pear trees of choice varieties, the Bartlett foremost among them; keep clear of all dwarfs, and let your choicest trees have a chance to run under the pig-pen if they will. Plant here also, if your climate does not forbid, a dozen well-chosen Peach-trees, and two each year thereafter to replace those that will soon be dying out; and give half a dozen Quinces moist and rich locations by the side of your fences; surrounding each tree with stakes or pickets that will preclude too great familiarity on the part of the swine, and will not prevent a sharp scrutiny for borers in their season. Do not forget that a fruit-tree is like a cow tied to an immovable stake, from which you cannot continue to draw a pail of milk per day unless you carry her a liberal supply of food; and every Fall cart in half a dozen loads of muck from some convenient swamp or pond for your pigs to turn over: Should they leave any weeds, cut them with a scythe as often as they seem to need it; never allowing one to ripen seed. There may be easier and surer ways to obtain choice fruits; but this one commends itself to my judgment as not surpassed by any other. I think few have grown fruits to profit but those who make this a specialty; and I feel that disappointment in fruit-culture is by no means near the end. You _can_ grow Plums, or Grapes, or Peaches, outside of the climate most congenial to them, but this is a work wherein success is likely to cost more than its worth. Try it first on a small scale, if you will try it; and be sure you do it thoroughly. XXVIII. GRAIN-GROWING--EAST AND WEST. I disclaim all pretensions to ability to teach Western farmers how to grow Indian Corn abundantly and profitably, while I cheerfully admit that they have taught _me_ somewhat thoroughly worth knowing. In my boyhood, I hoed Corn diligently for weeks at a time, drawing the earth from between the rows up about the stalks to a depth of three or four inches; thus forming hills which the West has since taught me to be of no use, but rather a detriment, embarrassing the efforts of the growing, hungry plants to throw out their roots extensively in every direction, and subjecting them to needless injury from drouth. I am thoroughly convinced that Corn, properly planted, will, like Wheat and all other grains, root itself just deep enough in the ground, and that to keep down all weeds and leave the surface of the corn-field open, mellow and perfectly flat, is the best as well as the cheapest way to cultivate Corn. And I do not believe that so much human food, with so little labor, is produced elsewhere on earth as in the spacious fields of Wheat and Corn in our grand Mississippi valley. And yet I have seen in that valley many ample stretches covered with Corn, whereof the tillage seemed susceptible of improvement. Riding between these great corn-fields in October, after everything standing thereon had been killed by frost, it seemed to my observation that, while the corn-crop was fair, the weed-crop was far more luxuriant; so that, if everything had been cut clean from the ground, and the corn and the weeds placed in opposite scales, the latter would have weighed down the former. I cannot doubt that the cultivation, or lack of cultivation, which produces or permits such results, is not merely slovenly, but unthrifty. The West is for the present, as for a generation she has been, the granary of the East. In my judgment, she will not long be content to remain so. Fifty years ago, the Genesee valley supplied most of the wheat and flour imported into New-England; ten years later, Northern Ohio was our principal resource; ten years later still, Michigan, Indiana, northern Illinois, and eastern Wisconsin, had been added to our grain-growing territory. Another decade, and our flour manufacturers had crossed the Mississippi, laying Iowa and Minnesota under liberal contributions, while western New-York had ceased to grow even her own breadstuffs, and Ohio to produce one bushel more than she needed for home consumption. Can we doubt that this steady recession of our Egypt, our Hungary, is destined to continue? Twenty-three years ago, when I first rode out from the then rising village of Chicago to see the Illinois prairies, nearly every wagon I met was loaded with wheat, going into Chicago, to be sold for about fifty cents per bushel, and the proceeds loaded back in the form of lumber, groceries, and almost everything else, grain excepted, needed by the pioneers, then dotting, thinly and irregularly, that whole region with their cabins. Now, I presume the district I then traversed produces hardly more grain than it consumes; taking Illinois altogether, I doubt that she will grow her own breadstuffs after 1880; not that she will be unable to produce a large surplus, but that her farmers will have decided that they can use their lands otherwise to greater advantage. Iowa and Minnesota will continue to export grain for perhaps twenty years longer; but even their time will come for saying, "New-York and New-England (not to speak of _Old_ England) are too far away to furnish profitable markets for such bulky products; the cost of transportation absorbs the larger part of the cargo. We must export instead Wool, Meat, Lard, Butter, Cheese, Hops, and various Manufactures, whereof the freight will range from 2 up to not more than 25 per cent. of the value." They thus save their soil from the tremendous exaction made by taking grain-crop after grain-crop persistently, which long ago exhausted most of New-England and eastern New-York of wheat-forming material, and has since wrought the same deplorable result in our rich Genesee valley; while eastern Pennsylvania, though settled nearly two centuries ago, having pursued a more rational and provident system of husbandry, grows excellent wheat-crops to this day. I insist that the States this side of the Delaware; though they will draw much grain from the Canadas after the political change that cannot be far distant, will be compelled to grow a very considerable share of their own breadstuff; that the West will cease to supply them unless at prices which they will deem exorbitant; and that grain-growing eastward of a line drawn from Baltimore this north to the Lakes will have to be very considerably extended. Let us see, then, whether this might not be done with profit even now, and whether the East is not unwise in having so generally abandoned grain-growing. I leave out of the account most of New-England, as well as of Eastern New-York, and the more rugged portions of New-Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the rocky, hilly, swampy face of the country seems to forbid any but that _patchy_ cultivation, wherein machinery and mechanical power can scarcely be made available, and which seem, therefore, permanently fated to persevere in a system of agriculture and horticulture not essentially unlike that they now exhibit. In the valleys of the Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Hudson, and of our smaller rivers, there are considerable tracts absolutely free from these natural impediments, whereon a larger and more efficient husbandry is perfectly practicable, even now; but these intervales are generally the property of many owners; are cut up by roads and fences; and are held at high prices: so that I will simply pass them by, and take for illustration the "Pine Barrens" of Southern New-Jersey, merely observing that what I say of them is equally applicable, with slight modifications, to large portions of Long Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. The "Pine Barrens" of New-Jersey are a marine deposit of several hundred feet in depth, mainly sand, with which more or less clay is generally intermingled, while there are beds and even broader stretches of this material nearly or quite pure; the clay sometimes underlying the sand at a depth of 10 to 30 or 40 inches. Vast deposits of muck or leaf-mold, often of many acres in extent and from two to twenty feet in depth, are very common; so that hardly any portion of the dry or sandy land is two miles distant from one or more of them, while some is usually much nearer; and half the entire region is underlaid by at least one stratum of the famous marl (formed of the decomposed bones of gigantic marine monsters long ago extinct) which has already played so important and beneficent a part in the renovation and fertilization of large districts in Monmouth, Burlington, Salem, and other counties. Let us suppose now that a farmer of ample means and generous capacity should purchase four hundred acres of these "barrens," with intent to produce therefrom, not sweet potatoes, melons, and the "truck" to which Southern Jersey is so largely devoted, but substantial Grain and Meat; and let us see whether the enterprise would probably pay. Let us not stint the outlay, but, presuming the tract to be eligibly located on a railroad not too distant from some good marl-bed, estimate as follows: Purchase-money of 400 acres at $25 per acre $10,000 Clearing, grubbing, fencing and breaking up ditto at $20 per acre, over and above the proceeds of the wood 8,000 One thousand bushels of best Marl per acre, at 6 cents per bushel delivered 24,000 One hundred loads of Swamp Muck, per acre, at 50 cents per load 20,000 Fifty bushels (unslaked) of Oyster-shell Lime (to compost with the Muck), per acre, at 25 cents per bushel, delivered 5,000 One hundred tuns of Bone Flour at $50 per tun 5,000 ------- [Net cost, $180 per acre.] Total $72,000 I believe that this tract, divided by light fences into four fields of 100 acres each, and seeded in rotation to Corn, Wheat, Clover and other grasses, would produce fully 60 bushels of Corn and 30 of Wheat per acre, with not less than 3 tuns of good Hay; and that by cutting, steaming, and feeding the stalks and straw on the place, not pasturing, but keeping up the stock, and feeding them, as indicated in a former chapter of these essays, and selling their product in the form of Milk, Butter, Cheese and Meat, a greater profit would be realized than could be from a like investment in Iowa or Kansas. The soil is warm, readily frees itself, or is freed, from surplus water; is not addicted to weeds; may be plowed at least 200 days in a year; may be sowed or planted in the Spring, when Minnesota is yet solidly frozen; while the crop, early matured, is on hand to take advantage of any sudden advance in the European or our own seaboard markets. Labor, also, is cheaper and more rapidly procured in the neighborhood of this great focus of immigration than it is or can be in the West; and our capable farmers may take their pick of the workers thronging hither from Europe, at the moment of their landing on our shore. Of course, the owner of such an estate as I have roughly outlined, would be likely to keep a part of his purchase in timber, proving the quality thereof by cutting out the less desirable trees, trimming up the rest, and planting new ones among them; and he would be almost certain to devote some part of his farm annually to the growth of Roots, Vegetables, and Fruits. But I have aimed to show only that he would grow grain here at a profit, and I think I have succeeded. His 60 bushels of corn (shelled) per acre could be sold at his crib, one year with another, for 60 silver dollars; and he need seldom wait a month after husking it for customers who would gladly take his grain and pay the money for it. This would be just about double what the Iowa or Missouri farmer can expect to average for _his_ Corn. The abundant fodder would also be worth in New-Jersey at least double its value in Iowa; and I judge that the farmer able to buy, prepare, fertilize, and cultivate 1,200 acres of the Jersey "barrens," could make more than thrice the profit to be realized by the owner of 400 acres. He would plow and seed as well as thrash, shell, cut stalks and straw, and prepare the food of his animals, wholly by steam-power, and would soon learn to cultivate a square mile at no greater expense than is now involved in the as perfect tillage of 200 acres. This essay is not intended to prove that Grain is not or may not be profitably cultivated at the West, nor that it is unadvisable for Eastern farmers to migrate thither in order so to cultivate it. What I maintain is, that Wheat, Indian Corn, and nearly all our great food staples, may also be profitably produced on the seaboard, and that thousands of square miles, now nearly or quite unproductive, may be wisely and profitably devoted to such production. Let us regard, therefore, without alarm, the prospect of such a development and diversification of Western Industry as will render necessary a large and permanent extension (or rather revival) of Eastern grain-growing. XXIX. ESCULENT ROOTS--POTATOES. In no other form can so large an amount and value of human food be obtained from an acre of ground as in that of edible roots or tubers; and of these the Potato is by far the most acceptable, and in most general use. Our ancestors, it is settled, were destitute and ignorant of the Potato prior to the discovery of America, though Europe would now find it difficult to subsist her teeming millions without it. In travelling pretty widely over that continent, I cannot remember that I found, any considerable district in which the Potato was not cultivated, though Ireland, western England, and northern Switzerland, with a small portion of northern Italy, are impressed on my mind as the most addicted to the growth of this esculent. Other roots are eaten occasionally, by way of variety, or as giving a relish to ordinary food; but the Potato alone forms part of the every day diet alike of prince and peasant. It is an almost indispensable ingredient of the feasts of Dives, while it is the cheapest and commonest resort for satiating or moderating the hunger of Lazarus. I recollect hearing my parents, fifty years ago, relate how, in their childhood and youth, the poor of New-England, when the grain-crop of that region was cut short, as it often was, were obliged to subsist through the following Winter mainly on Potatoes and Milk; and I then accorded to those unfortunates of the preceding generation a sympathy which I should now considerably abate, provided the Potatoes were of good quality. Roasted Potatoes, seasoned with salt and butter and washed down with bounteous draughts of fresh buttermilk, used in those days to be the regular supper served up in farmers' homes after a churning of cream into butter; and I have since eaten costly suppers that were not half so good. The Potato, say some accredited accounts, was first brought to Europe from Virginia, by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586 or 1587; but I do not believe the story. Authentic tradition affirms that the Potato was utterly unknown in New-England, or at all events east of the Connecticut, when the Scotch-Irish who first settled Londonderry, N. H., came over from _old_ Londonderry, Ireland, bringing the Potato with them. They spent the Winter of 1719 in different parts of Massachusetts and Maine--quite a number of them at Haverhill, Mass., where they gave away a few Potatoes for seed, on leaving for their own chosen location in the Spring; and they afterward learned that the English colonists, who received them, tried hard to find or make the seed-balls edible the next Fall but were obliged to give it up as a bad job; leaving the tubers untouched and unsuspected in the ground. I doubt that the Potato was found growing by Europeans in any part of this country, unless it be in that we have acquired from Mexico. It is essentially a child of the mountains, and I presume it grew wild nowhere else than on the sides of the great chain which traversed Spanish America, at a height of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet above the surface of the ocean. Here it found a climate cooled by the elevation and moistened by melting snows from above and by frequent showers, yet one which seldom allowed the ground to be frozen to any considerable depth, while the pure and bracing atmosphere was congenial to its nature and requirements. In this country, the Potato is hardiest and thriftiest among the White Mountains of New-Hampshire, the Green Mountains of Vermont, on the Catskills and kindred elevations in our own State, and in similar regions of Pennsylvania and the States further South and West. My own place is at least 15 miles from, and 500 feet above, Long Island Sound; yet I cannot make the Potato, by the most generous treatment, so prolific as it was in New-Hampshire in my boyhood, where I dug a bushel from 14 hills, grown on rough, hard ground, but which, having just been cleared of a thick growth of bushes and briars, was probably better adapted to this crop than though it had been covered an inch deep with barn-yard manure. He who has a tolerably dry, warm sandy soil, covered two or three inches deep with decayed or decaying leaves and brush, may count with confidence on raising from it a good crop of Potatoes, provided his seed be sound and healthy. On the other hand, all authorities agree that animal manures, unless very thoroughly rotted and intimately mixed with the soil, are injurious to the quality of Potatoes grown thereon, stimulating any tendency to disease, if they do not originally produce such disease. I believe that Swamp Muck, dug in Summer or Autumn, deposited on a dry bank or glade, and cured of its acidity by an admixture of Wood-Ashes, of Lime, or of Salt (better still, of Lime and Salt chemically compounded by dissolving the Salt in the least possible quantity of Water, and slaking the lime with that Water), forms an excellent fertilizer for Potatoes, if administered with a liberal hand. A bushel of either of these alkalies to a cord of muck is too little; the dose should be doubled if possible; but, if the quantity be small, mix it more carefully, and give it all the time you can wherein to operate upon the muck before applying the mixture to your fields. Where the muck is not easily to be had, yet the soil is thin and poor, I would place considerable reliance on deep plowing and subsoiling in the Fall, and cross-plowing just before planting in the Spring. Give a good dressing of Plaster, not less than 200 lbs. to the acre, directly after the Fall plowing; if you have Ashes, scatter them liberally in the drill or hill as you plant; and, if you have them not, supply their place with Superphosphate or Bone-dust. I think many farmers will be agreeably surprised by the additional yield which will accrue from this treatment of their soil. Those who have no swamp muck, and feel that they can afford the outlay, may, by plowing or subsoiling early in the Fall, seeding heavily with rye, and turning this under when the time comes for planting in the Spring, improve both crop and soil materially. But even to these I would say: Apply the Gypsum in the Fall, and the Ashes or Lime and Salt mixture in the Spring; and now, with good seed and good luck, you will be reasonably sure of a bounteous harvest. If a farmer, having a poor worn-out field of sandy loam, wants to do his very best by it, let him plow, subsoil, sow rye and plaster in the Fall, as above indicated, turn this under, and sow buckwheat late in the next Spring; plow this under in turn when it has attained its growth, and sow to clover; turn this down the following Spring, and Plant to late potatoes, and he will not merely obtain a large crop, but have his land in admirable condition for whatever way follow. I am quite well aware that such an outlay of labor and seed, with an entire loss of crop for one season, will seem to many too costly. I do not advise it except under peculiar circumstances; and yet I am confident that there are many fields that would be doubled in value by such treatment, which would richly repay all its cost. That most farmers could not afford thus to treat their entire farms at once, is very true; yet it does not follow that they might not deal with field after field thus thoroughly, living on the products of 40 or 50 acres, while they devoted five or six annually to the work of thorough renovation. A quarter of a century ago, we were threatened with a complete extinction of the Potato, as an article of food: the stalks, when approaching or just attaining maturity, were suddenly smitten with fatal disease--usually, after a warm rain followed by scalding sunshine--the growing tubers were speedily affected; they rotted in the ground, and they rotted nearly as badly if dug; and whole townships could hardly show a bushel of sound Potatoes. A desolating famine in Ireland, which swept away or drove into exile nearly two millions of her people, was the most striking and memorable result of this wide-spread disaster. For several succeeding seasons, the Potato was similarly, though not so extensively, affected; and the fears widely expressed that the day of its usefulness was over, seemed to have ample justification. Speaking generally, the Potato has never since been so hardy or prolific as it was half a century ago; it has gradually recovered, however, from its low estate, and, though the malady still lingers, and from time to time renews its ravages in different localities, the farmer now plants judiciously and on fit ground, with a reasonable hope that his labor will be duly rewarded. It seems to be generally agreed that clayey soils are not adapted to its growth; that, if the quantity of the crop be not stinted, its quality is pretty sure to be inferior; and I can personally testify that the planting of Potatoes on wet soil--that is, on swampy or spongy land which has not been thoroughly drained and sweetened--is a hopeless, thriftless labor--that the crop will seldom be worth the seed. As to the ten or a dozen different insects to which the Potato-rot has been attributed, I regard them all as consequences, not causes; attracted to prey on the plant by its sickly, weakly condition, and not really responsible for that condition. If any care for my reasons, let him refer to what I have said of the Wheat-plant and its insect enemies.[1] There has been much discussion as to the kind of seed to be planted; and I think the result has been a pretty general conviction that it is better to cut the tuber into pieces having two or three eyes each, than to plant it whole, since the whole Potato sends up a superfluity of stalks, with a like effect on the crop to that of putting six or eight kernels of corn in each hill. Small Potatoes are immature, unripe, and of course should never be planted, since their progeny will be feeble and sickly. Select for seed none but thoroughly ripe Potatoes, and the larger the better. My own judgment favors planting in drills rather than hills, with ample space for working between them; not less than 30 inches: the seed being dropped about 6 inches apart in the drill. The soil must be deep and mellow, for the Potato suffers from drouth much sooner than Indian Corn or almost any other crop usually grown among us. I believe in covering the seed from 2 to 2-1/2 inches; and I hold to flat or level culture for this as for everything else. Planting on a ridge made by turning two furrows together may be advisable where the land is wet; but then wet land never can be made fit for cultivation, except by underdraining. And I insist upon setting the rows or drills well apart, because I hold that the soil should often be loosened and stirred to a good depth with the subsoil plow; and that this process should be persevered in till the plant is in blossom. Hardly any plant will pay better for persistent cultivation than the Potato. As to varieties, I will only say that planting the tubers for seed is an unnatural process, which tends and must tend to degeneracy. The new varieties now most prized will certainly run out in the course of twenty or thirty years at furthest, and must be replaced from time to time by still newer, grown from the seed. This creation of new species is, and must be, a slow, expensive process; since not one in a hundred of these varieties possess any value. I don't quite believe in selling--I mean in buying--Potatoes at $1 per pound; but he who originates a really valuable new Potato deserves a recompense for his industry, patience, and good fortune; and I shall be glad to learn that he receives it. FOOTNOTES: [1] See Chapter XXII. XXX. ROOTS--TURNIPS--BEETS--CARROTS If there be any who still hold that this country must ultimately rival that magnificent Turnip-culture which has so largely transformed the agricultural industry of England and Scotland, while signally and beneficently increasing its annual product, I judge that time will prove them mistaken. The striking diversity of climate between the opposite coasts of the Atlantic forbids the realization of their hopes. The British Isles, with a considerable portion of the adjacent coast of Continental Europe, have a climate so modified by the Gulf Stream and the ocean that their Summers are usually moist and cool, their Autumns still more so, and their Winters rarely so cold as to freeze the earth considerably; while our Summers and Autumns, are comparatively hot and dry; our Winters in part intensely cold, so as to freeze the earth solid for a foot or more. Hence, every variety of turnip is exposed here in its tenderer stages to the ravages of every devouring insect; while the 1st of December often finds the soil of all but our Southern and Pacific States so frozen that cannon-wheels would hardly track it, and roots not previously dug up must remain fast in the earth for weeks and often for months. Hence, the turnip can never grow so luxuriantly, nor be counted on with such certainty, here as in Great Britain; nor can animals be fed on it in Winter, except at the heavy cost of pulling or digging, cutting off the tops and carefully housing in Autumn, and then slicing and feeding out in Winter. It is manifest that turnips thus handled, however economically, cannot compete with hay and corn-fodder in our Eastern and Middle States; nor with these and the cheaper species of grain in the West, as the daily Winter food of cattle. Still, I hold that our stock-growing farmers profitably may, and ultimately will, grow _some_ turnips to be fed out to their growing and working animals. A good meal of turnips given twice a week, if not oftener, to these, will agreeably and usefully break the monotony of living exclusively on dry fodder, and will give a relish to their hay or cut stalks and straw, which cannot fail to tell upon their appetite, growth and thrift. Let our cattle-breeders begin with growing an acre or two each of Swedes per annum, so as to give their stock a good feed of them, sliced thin in an effective machine, at least once in each week, and I feel confident that they will continue to grow turnips, and will grow more and more of them throughout future years. The Beet seems to me better adapted to our climate, especially south of the fortieth degree of north latitude, than any variety of the Turnip with which I am acquainted, and destined, in the good time coming, when we shall have at least doubled the average depth of our soil, to very extensive cultivation among us. I am not regarding either of these roots with reference to its use as human food, since our farmers generally understand that use at least as well as I do; nor will I here consider at length the use of the Beet in the production of Sugar. I value that use highly, believing that millions of the poorer classes throughout Europe have been enabled to enjoy Sugar through its manufacture from the Beet who would rarely or never have tasted that luxury in the absence of this manufacture. The people of Europe thus made familiar with Sugar can hardly be fewer than 100,000,000; and the number is annually increasing. The cost of Sugar to these is considerably less in money, while immeasurably less in labor, than it would or could have been had the tropical Cane been still regarded as the only plant available for the production of Sugar. But the West Indies, wherein the Cane flourishes luxuriantly and renews itself perennially, lie at our doors. They look to us for most of their daily bread, and for many other necessaries of life; while several, if not all of them, are manifestly destined, in the natural progress of events, to invoke the protection of our flag. I do not, therefore, feel confident that Beet Sugar now promises to become an important staple destined to take a high rank among the products of our national industry. With cheap labor, I believe it might to-day he manufactured with profit in the rich, deep valleys of California, and perhaps in those of Utah and Colorado as well. On the whole, however, I cannot deem the prospect encouraging for the American promoters of the manufacture of Beet Sugar. But when we shall have deepened essentially the soil of our arable acres, fertilized it abundantly, and cured it by faithful cultivation of its vicious addiction to weed-growing, I believe we shall devote millions of those acres to the growth of Beets for cattle-food, and, having learned how to harvest as well as till them mainly by machinery, with little help from hand labor, we shall produce them with eminent profit and satisfaction to the grower. On soil fully two feet deep, thoroughly underdrained and amply fertilized, I believe we shall often produce one thousand bushels of Beets to the acre; and so much acceptable and valuable food for cattle can hardly be obtained from an acre in any other form. * * * * * So with regard to Carrots. I have never achieved eminent success in growing these, nor Beets; mainly because the soil on which I attempted to grow them was not adapted to, or rather not yet in condition for, such culture. But, should I live a few years longer, until my reclaimed swamp shall have become thoroughly sweetened and civilized, I mean to grow on some part thereof 1,000 bushels of Carrots per acre, and a still larger product of Beets; and the Carrot, in my judgment, ought now to be extensively grown in the South and West, as well as in this section, for feeding to horses. I hold that 60 bushels of Carrots and 50 of Oats, fed in alternate meals, are of at least equal value as horse-feed with 100 bushels of Oats alone, while more easily grown in this climate. The Oat-crop makes heavy drafts upon the soil, while our hot Summers are not congenial to its thrift or perfection. Since we must grow Oats, we must be content to import new seed every 10 or 15 years from Scotland, Norway, and other countries which have cooler, moister Summers than our own; for the Oat will inevitably degenerate under such suns as blazed through the latter half of our recent June. Believing that the Carrot may profitably replace at least half the Oats now grown in this country, I look forward with confidence to its more and more extensive cultivation. The advantage of feeding Roots to stock is not to be measured and bounded by their essential value. Beasts, like men, require a variety of food, and thrive best upon a regimen which involves a change of diet. Admit that hay is their cheapest Winter food; still, an occasional meal of something more succulent will prove beneficial, and this is best afforded by Roots. XXXI THE FARMER'S CALLING. If any one fancies that he ever heard _me_ flattering farmers as a class, or saying anything which implied that they were more virtuous, upright, unselfish, or deserving, than other people, I am sure he must have misunderstood or that he now misrecollects me. I do not even join in the cant, which speaks of farmers as supporting everybody else--of farming as the only indispensable vocation. You may say if you will that mankind could not subsist if there were no tillers of the soil; but the same is true of house-builders, and of some other classes. A thoroughly good farmer is a useful, valuable citizen: so is a good merchant, doctor, or lawyer. It is not essential to the true nobility and genuine worth of the farmer's calling that any other should be assailed or disparaged. Still, if one of my three sons had been spared to attain manhood, I should have advised him to try to make himself a good farmer; and this without any romantic or poetic notions of Agriculture as a pursuit. I know well, from personal though youthful experience, that the farmer's life is one of labor, anxiety, and care; that hail, and flood, and hurricane, and untimely frosts, over which he can exert no control, will often destroy in an hour the net results of months of his persistent, well-directed toil; that disease will sometimes sweep away his animals, in spite of the most judicious treatment, the most thoughtful providence, on his part; and that insects, blight, and rust, will often blast his well-grounded hopes of a generous harvest, when they seem on the very point of realization. I know that he is necessarily exposed, more than most other men, to the caprices and inclemencies of weather and climate; and that, if he begins responsible life without other means than those he finds in his own clear head and strong arms, with those of his helpmeet, he must expect to struggle through years of poverty, frugality, and resolute, persistent, industry, before he can reasonably hope to attain a position of independence, comfort, and comparative leisure. I know that much of his work is rugged, and some of it absolutely repulsive; I know that he will seem, even with unbroken good fortune, to be making money much more slowly than his neighbor, the merchant, the broker, or eloquent lawyer, who fills the general eye while he prospers, and, when he fails, sinks out of sight and is soon forgotten; and yet, I should have advised my sons to choose farming as their vocation, for these among other reasons: I. There is no other business in which success is so nearly certain as in this. Of one hundred men who embark in trade, a careful observer reports that ninety-five fail; and, while I think this proportion too large, I am sure that a large majority do, and must fail, because competition is so eager and traffic so enormously overdone. If ten men endeavor to support their families by merchandise in a township which affords adequate business for but three, it is certain that a majority must fail; no matter how judicious their management or how frugal their living. But you may double the number of farmers in any agricultural county I ever traversed, without necessarily dooming one to failure, or even abridging his gains. If half the traders and professional men in this country were to betake themselves to farming to-morrow, they would not render that pursuit one whit less profitable, while they would largely increase the comfort and wealth of the entire community; and, while a good merchant, lawyer, or doctor, may be starved out of any township, simply because the work he could do well is already confided to others, I never yet heard of a temperate, industrious, intelligent, frugal, and energetic farmer who failed to make a living, or who, unless prostrated by disease or disabled by casualty, was precluded from securing a modest independence before age and decrepitude divested him of the ability to labor. II. I regard farming as that vocation which conduces most directly and palpably to a reverence for Honesty and Truth. The young lawyer is often constrained, or at least tempted, by his necessities, to do the dirty professional work of a rascal intent on cheating his neighbor out of his righteous dues. The young doctor may be likewise incited to resort to a quackery he despises in order to secure instant bread; the unknown author is often impelled to write what will sell rather than what the public ought to buy; but the young farmer, acting _as_ a farmer, must realize that his success depends upon his absolute verity and integrity. He deals directly with Nature, which never was and never will be cheated. He has no temptation to sow beach sand for plaster, dock-seed for clover, or stoop to any trick or juggle whatever. "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap," while true, in the long run, of all men, is instantly and palpably true as to him. When he, having grown his crop, shall attempt to sell it--in other words, when he ceases to be a farmer and becomes a trader--he may possibly be tempted into one of the many devious ways of rascality; but, so long as he is acting simply as a farmer, he can hardly be lured from the broad, straight highway of integrity and righteousness. III. The farmer's calling seems to me that most conducive to thorough manliness of character. Nobody expects him to cringe, or smirk, or curry favor, is order to sell his produce. No merchant refuses to buy it because his politics are detested or his religious opinions heterodox. He may be a Mormon, a Rebel, a Millerite, or a Communist, yet his Grain or his Pork will sell for exactly what it is worth--not a fraction less or more than the price commanded by the kindred product of like quality and intrinsic value of his neighbor, whose opinions on all points are faultlessly orthodox and popular. On the other hand, the merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, especially if young and still struggling dubiously for a position, are continually tempted to sacrifice or suppress their profoundest convictions in deference to the vehement and often irrational prepossessions of the community, whose favor is to them the breath of life. "She will find that _that_ won't go down here," was the comment of an old woman on a Mississippi steamboat, when told that the plain, deaf stranger, who seemed the focus of general interest, was Miss Martineau, the celebrated Unitarian; and in so saying she gave expression to a feeling which pervades and governs many if not most communities. I doubt whether the social intolerance of adverse opinions is more vehement anywhere else than throughout the larger portion of our own country. I have repeatedly been stung by the receipt of letters gravely informing me that my course and views on a current topic were adverse to public opinion: the writers evidently assuming, as a matter of course, that I was a mere jumping-jack, who only needed to know what other people thought to insure my instant and abject conformity to their prejudices. Very often, in other days, I was favored with letters from indignant subscribers, who, dissenting from my views on some question, took this method of informing me that they should no longer take my journal--a superfluous trouble, which could only have meant dictation or insult, since they had only to refrain from renewing their subscriptions, and their _Tribune_ would stop coming, whenever they should have received what we owed them; and it would in no case stop till then. That a journalist was in any sense a public teacher--that he necessarily had convictions, and was not likely to suppress them because they were not shared by others--in short, that his calling was other and higher than that of a waiter at a restaurant, expected to furnish whatever was called for, so long as the pay was forthcoming--these ex-subscribers had evidently not for one moment suspected. That such persons have little or no capacity to insult, is very true; and yet, a man is somewhat degraded in his own regard by learning that his vocation is held in such low esteem by others. The true farmer is proudly aware that it is quite otherwise with _his_ pursuit--that no one expects him to swallow any creed, support any party, or defer to any prejudice, as a condition precedent to the sale of his products. Hence, I feel that it is easier and more natural in his pursuit than in any other for a man to work for a living, and aspire to success and consideration, without sacrificing self-respect, compromising integrity, or ceasing to be essentially and thoroughly a gentleman. XXXII. A LESSON OF TO-DAY. The current season is quite commonly characterized as the coldest, the hottest, the wettest, or the dryest, that was ever known. Men undoubtingly assert that they never knew a Summer so hot, or a Winter so cold, when in fact several such have occurred within the cycle of their experience. Hardly anything else is so easily or so speedily forgotten as extremes of temperature or inclemencies of weather, after they have passed away. I presume there have been six to ten Summers, since the beginning of this century, as hot and as dry as that of 1870; yet the fact remains that, throughout the Eastern section of our country, to say nothing of the rest, the heat and drouth of the current Summer have been quite remarkable. For two months past, counting from the 10th of June, nearly every day has been a hot one, with blazing sunshine throughout, rarely interrupted and slightly modified by infrequent and inadequate showers; and, as a general result of this tropical fervor, the earth is parched and baked from ten to forty inches from the surface; streams and ponds are dried up or shrunk to their lowest dimensions; forests are often ravaged and desolated by fires; our pastures are dry and brown; while crops of Hay, Oats, Potatoes, Buckwheat, etc., either have proved, or certainly must prove, a disappointment to the hopes of the growers. I estimate the average product for 1870 of the farms of New-England, eastern New-York and New-Jersey, as not more than two-thirds of a full harvest; while the earth remains at this moment so baked and incrusted that several days' rain is needed to fit it for Fall plowing and the sowing of Winter grain. Such seasons must not be regarded as extraordinary. The Summer of 1854 was nearly or quite as dry as this; and I presume one or two such have intervened since that time. The heat of 1870 is remarkable for its persistence rather than its intensity. Every Summer has its heated term; that of 1870 has been longer in this region than any before it that I can remember, though doubtless the recollection of others might supply its perfect counterpart. Nearly every Summer has its drouth; the present is peculiar rather for its early commencement than its extreme duration. As our country is more and more denuded of its primitive forests, drouths longer and severer even than this may naturally be expected. What our farmers have to do is, to prepare for and provide against them. Such seasons are disastrous to those only who farm as if none such were to be expected. Those who plow deeply, fertilize bountifully, and cultivate thoroughly, need not fear them, as fields of Hay and Oats already harvested, and of Corn and Potatoes now hastening to maturity in almost every township of the suffering region, abundantly attest. I doubt that more luxuriant crops of Corn, Tobacco, or Onions, were ever grown on the bottom-lands of the Connecticut Valley than may be seen there to-day, with failures all about them, and under drouth so fierce that Blackberries and Whortleberries are withered when half grown; even the bushes in some cases perishing for lack of moisture. My last trip took me along the banks of the upper Hudson, through the rugged county of Warren, N. Y. The narrow, irregular intervale of this mountain stream appear to have been cultivated for the last fifty or sixty years by a hardy race, who look mainly to the timber of the wild region north of them for a subsistence. In such a district, whatever ministers to the sustenance of man or beast bears a high price; and Corn, Rye, Oats, Buckwheat, Apples and Grass, are grown wherever the soil is not too rugged or too sterile for culture. I presume half a crop of Hay has been secured throughout this valley, with perhaps a full crop of Rye where Rye was sown; but of Oats the yield will be considerably less than that, while of Corn and Buckwheat it will range from ten bushels per acre down to nothing. When I, last Summer, passed through spacious field after field of Corn in Virginia that would not mature a single ear, I spoke of it as something unknown at the North; but there are fields planted to Corn, in the upper valley of the Hudson, that will not produce a single sound ear, nor one bushel even of the shortest and poorest "nubbins;" and alongside of these are acres of Buckwheat, blossoming at an average hight of four inches, and not likely to get two inches higher. Now, if this land were so poor or so rocky that good crops could not be extracted from it, far be it from me to disparage the agriculture whereof the results are so meagre; but I am speaking of a river intervale of considerable natural fertility, from which deep and thorough cultivation would insure ample harvests, subject only to the contingency of early frosts in Autumn. Were these lands fertilized and cultivated as they might be, and as mine are, they would yield 30 bushels of Rye or 60 of Indian Corn per acre, and would richly repay the husbandman's outlay and efforts. Now, I venture to say that all the grain I saw growing in the valley of the Hudson through Warren County will not return the farmer 75 cents for each day's labor expended thereon, allowing nothing for the use of the land. "But how shall we obtain fertilizers?" I am often asked. "We are poor; we can afford to keep but few cattle; Guano, Phosphate, Bones, Lime, etc., are beyond our means. Even if we could pay for them, the cost of transportation to our out-of-the-way nooks would be heavy. We cannot deal with our lands so bountifully as you do, but must be content to do as we can." To all which I make answer: No man ever lacked fertilizers who kept his eyes wide open and devoted two months of each Fall and Winter to collecting and preparing them. Wherever swamp muck may be had, wherever bogs exist or flags or rushes grow, there are materials which, carted into the barn-yard in Autumn or Winter, may be drawn out fertilizers in season for Corn-planting next Spring. Wherever a pond or slough dries up in Summer or Autumn, there is material that may be profitably transformed into next year's grass or grain. In the absence of all these--and they are seldom very far from one who knows how to look for them--rank weeds of all sorts, if cut while green and tender, or forest leaves, gathered in the Fall, used for litter in the stable, and thence thrown into the yard, will serve an excellent purpose. Nay, more: I am confident that the farmer who lacks these, but has access to a bed or bank of simple clay, may cart 200 loads of it in November into an ordinary farm-yard, have it trampled into and mixed with his manure in the Winter, and draw it out in the Spring, excellently fitted to enrich his sandy or gravelly land, and insure him, in connection with deep and thorough culture, a generous yield of Corn, even in such a season as the present. Dr. George B. Loring, the most successful farmer in Massachusetts, uses naked beach sand in abundance as litter for his 80 cows, mixes it with his manure throughout the Winter, and draws out the compound to fertilize his clay meadows in the Spring, with most satisfactory results. Depend on it, no man need lack fertilizers who begins in season and is willing to work for them. And yet once more: From the hills which inclose this valley of the upper Hudson (and from ever so many other valleys as well), brooks and rivulets, copious in Spring, when their waters are surcharged and discolored by the richest juices of the uplands, pour down in frequent cascades and dance across the intervale to be lost in the river. There is scarcely an acre of that intervale which might not be irrigated from these streams at a very moderate outlay of work at the season when work is least pressing: the water thus held back by dams being allowed to flow thence gently and equably across the intervale, conveying not moisture only, but fertility also, to every plant growing thereon. I am confident that I passed many places on the upper Hudson, as well as on the Connecticut and Ammonoosuc, where 100 faithful days' work providing for irrigation would have given 100 bushels of grain, or 10 tuns of hay additional this year, and as much per annum henceforth, at a cost of not more than two days' work in each year hereafter. Farmers, but above all farmers' sons, think of these things. XXXIII. INTELLECT IN AGRICULTURE. If a man whose capital consists of the clothes on his back, $5 in his pocket, and an ax over his right shoulder, undertakes to hew for himself a farm out of the primitive forest, he must of course devote some years to rugged manual labor, or he will fail of success. It is indeed possible that he should find others, even on the rude outposts of civilization, who will hire them to teach school, or serve as county clerk, or survey lands, or do something else of like nature: thus enabling him to do his chopping trees, and rolling logs, and breaking up his stumpy acres, by proxy; but the fair presumption is that he will have to chop and log, and burn off and fence, and break up, by the use of his own proper muscle; and he must be energetic and frugal, as well as fortunate, if he gets a comfortable house over his head, with forty arable acres about him, at the end of fifteen years' hard work. If he has brains, and has been well educated, he may possibly shorten this ordeal to ten years; but, should he begin by fancying hard work beneath him, or his abilities too great to be squandered in bushwhacking, he is very likely to come out at the little end of the horn, and, straggling back to some populous settlement, more needy and seedy than when he set forth to wrest a farm from the wilderness, declare the pioneer's life one of such dreary, hopeless privation that no one who can read or cypher ought ever to attempt it. A poor man, who undertakes to live by his wits on a farm that he has bought on credit, is not likely to achieve a brilliant success; but the farmer whose hand and brain work in concert will never find nor fancy his intellect or his education too good for his calling. He may very often discover that he wasted months of his school-days on what was ill-adapted to his needs, and of little use in fighting the actual battle of life; but he will at the same time have ample reason to lament the meagerness and the deficiency of his knowledge. I hold our average Common Schools defective, in that they fail to teach Geology and Chemistry, which in my view are the natural bases of a sound, practical knowledge of things--knowledge which the farmer, of all men, can least afford to miss. However it may be with others, he vitally needs to understand the character and constitution of the soil he must cultivate, the elements of which it is composed, and the laws which govern their relations to each other. Instruct him in the higher mathematics if you will, in logic, in meteorology, in ever so many languages; but not till he shall have been thoroughly grounded in the sciences which unlock for him the arcana of Nature; for these are intimately related to all he must do, and devise, and direct, throughout the whole course of his active career. Whatever he may learn or dispense with, a knowledge of these sciences is among the most urgent of his life-long needs. Hence, I would suggest that a simple, lucid, lively, accurate digest of the leading principles and facts in Geology and Chemistry, and their application to the practical management of a farm, ought to constitute the Reader of the highest class in every Common School, especially in rural districts. Leave out details and recipes, with directions when to plant or sow, etc.; for these must vary with climates, circumstances, and the progress of knowledge; but let the body and bones, so to speak, of a primary agricultural education be taught in every school, in such terms and with such clearness as to commend them to the understanding of every pupil. I never yet visited a school in which something was not taught which might be omitted or postponed in favor of this. Out of school and after school, let the young farmer delight in the literature illustrative of his calling--I mean the very best of it. Let him have few agricultural books; but let these treat of principles and laws rather than of methods and applications. Let him learn from these how to ascertain by experiment what are the actual and pressing needs of his soil, and he will readily determine by reflection and inquiry how those needs may be most readily and cheaply satisfied. All the books in the world never of themselves made one good farmer; but, on the other hand, no man in this age can be a thoroughly good farmer without the knowledge which is more easily and rapidly acquired from books than otherwise. Books are no substitute for open-eyed observation and practical experience; but they enable one familiar with their contents to observe with an accuracy, and experiment with an intelligence, that are unattainable without them. The very farmer who tells you that he never opened a book which treats of Agriculture, and never wants to see one, will ask his neighbor how to grow or cure tobacco, or hops, or sorgho, or any crop with which he is yet unacquainted, when the chances are a hundred to one that this particular neighbor cannot advise him so well as the volume which embodies the experience of a thousand cultivators of this very plant instead of barely one. A good book treating practically of Agriculture, or of some department therein, is simply a compendium of the experience of past ages combined with such knowledge as the present generation have been enabled to add thereto. It may be faulty or defective on some points; it is not to be blindly confided in, nor slavishly followed--it is to be mastered, discussed, criticised, and followed so far as its teachings coincide with the dictates of science, experience, and common sense. Its true office is suggestion; the good farmer will lean upon and trust it as an oracle only where his own proper knowledge proves entirely deficient. By-and-by, it will be generally realized that few men live or have lived who cannot find scope and profitable employment for all their intellect on a two-hundred-acre farm. And then the farmer will select the brightest of his sons to follow him in the management and cultivation of the paternal acres, leaving those of inferior ability to seek fortune in pursuits for which a limited and special capacity will serve, if not suffice. And then we shall have an Agriculture worthy of our country and the age. Meantime, let us make the most of what we have, by diffusing, studying, discussing, criticizing, Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry, Dana's Muck Manual, Waring's Elements, and the books that each treat more especially of some department of the farmer's art, and so making ourselves familiar, first, with the principles, then with the methods, of scientific, efficient, successful husbandry. Let us, who love it, treat Agriculture as the elevated, ennobling pursuit it might and should be, and thus exalt it in the estimation of the entire community. We may, at all events, be sure of this: Just so fast and so far as farming is rendered an intellectual pursuit, it will attract and retain the strongest minds, the best abilities, of the human race. It has been widely shunned and escaped from, mainly because it has seemed a calling in which only inferior capacities were required or would be rewarded. Let this error give place to the truth, and Agriculture will win votaries from among the brightest intellects of the race. XXXIV. SHEEP AND WOOL-GROWING. Ours is eminently an agricultural country. We produce most of our Food, and export much more than we import of both Grain and Meat. Of Cotton, we grow some Three Millions of bales annually, whereof we export fully two-thirds. But of this we rëimport a portion in the shape of Fabrics and of Thread; and yet, while we are largely clothed in Woolens, and extensive sections of our country are admirably adapted to the rearing of Sheep and the production of Wool, we not only import a considerable share of the Woolens in which we are clad, but we also import a considerable proportion of the Wool wherefrom we manufacture the Woolens fabricated on our own soil. In other words: while we are a nation of farmers and herdsmen, we fail to grow so much Wool as is needed to shield us against the caprices and inclemencies of our diverse but generally fitful climates. There is a seeming excuse for this in the fact that extensive regions in South America and Australia, are devoted to Sheep-growing where animals are neither housed nor herded, and where they are exclusively fed, at all seasons, on those native grasses which are the spontaneous products of the soil. I presume Wool is in those regions produced cheaper than it can permanently be on any considerable area of our own soil; and yet I believe that the United States should, and profitably might, grow as much Wool as is needed for their own large annual consumption. Here are my reasons: I. When the predominant interest of British Manufactures constrained the entire repeal of the duties on imported Wool, whereby Sheep-growing had previously been protected, the farmers apprehended that they must abandon that department of their industry; but the event proved this calculation a mistake. They grow more Sheep and at better profit to-day than they did when their Wool brought a higher price under the influence of Protective duties, because the largely increased price of their Mutton more than makes up to them their loss by the reduced prices of their Wool. So, while I do not expect that American Wool will ever again command such high prices as it has done at some periods in the past, I am confident that the general appreciation in the prices of Meat, which has occurred within the last ten or fifteen years, and which seems likely to be enduring, will render Sheep-growing more profitable in the future than it has been in the past. At all events, while our farmers are generally obliged to sell their Grain and Meat at prices somewhat below the range of the British markets, it is hardly conceivable that they should not afford to grow Wool, for which they receive higher average prices than the British farmers do, who feed their Sheep on the produce of lands worth from $300 to $500 (gold) per acre. II. Interest being relatively high in this country, and Capital with most farmers deficient, it is a serious objection to cattle-growing that the farmer must wait three or four years before receiving a return for his outlay. If he begins poor, with but a few cows and a team, he naturally wants to rear and keep all his calves for several years in order to adequately stock his farm, so that little or no income is meantime realized from his herd; whereas a flock of Sheep yields a fleece per head each year, though not even a lamb is sold, while its increase in numbers is far more rapid than that of a herd of cattle. III. Almost every farmer, at least in the old States, finds some part of his land infested with bushes and briers, which seem to flourish by cutting, if he finds time to cut them, and which the ruggedness of his soil precludes his exterminating by the plow. In every such case, Sheep are his natural allies--his unpaid police--his vigilant and thorough-going assistants. Give them an even start in Spring with the bushes and briers; let their number be sufficient; and they are very sure to come out ahead in the Fall. IV. Our farmers in the average are too much confined in Summer and Autumn to salt meats, and especially to Pork. However excellent in quality these may be, their exclusive use is neither healthful nor palatable. With a good flock of Sheep, the most secluded farmer may have fresh meat every week in haying and harvest-time if he chooses; and he will find this better for his family, and more satisfactory to his workmen, than a diet wherefrom fresh meat is excluded. V. Now, I do not insist that every farmer should grow Sheep, for I know that many are so situated that they cannot. In stony regions, where walls are very generally relied on for fences, I am aware that Sheep are with difficulty kept within bounds; and this is a serious objection. In the neighborhood of cities and large villages, where Fresh Meat may be bought from day to day, one valid reason for keeping them has no application; yet I hold that twice as many of our farmers as now have flocks ought to have them, and would thereby increase their profits as well as the comfort of their families. The most serious obstacle to Sheep husbandry in this country is the abundance and depredations of dogs. Farmers by tens of thousands have sold off, or killed off, their flocks, mainly because they could not otherwise protect themselves against their frequent decimation by prowling curs, which were not worth the powder required to shoot them. It seems to me that a farmer thus despoiled is perfectly justifiable in placing poisoned food where these cut-throats will be apt to find it while making their next raid on his Sheep. I should have no scruple in so doing, provided I could guard effectually against the poisoning of any other than the culprits. In a well-settled, thrifty region, where ample barns are provided, I judge that the losses of Sheep by dogs may be reduced to a minimum by proper precautions. Elsewhere than in wild, new frontier settlements, every flock of Sheep should have a place of refuge beneath the hay-floor of a good barn, and be trained to spend every night there, as well as to seek this shelter against every pelting storm. Even if sent some distance to pasture, an unbarred lane should connect such pasture with their fold; and they should be driven home for a few nights, if necessary, until they had acquired the habit of coming home at nightfall; and I am assured that Sheep thus lodged will very rarely be attacked by dogs or wolves. As yet, our farmers have not generally realized that enhancement of the value of Mutton, whereby their British rivals have profited so largely. Their fathers began to breed Sheep when a fleece sold for much more than a carcase, and when fineness and abundance of Wool were the main consideration. But such is no longer the fact, at least in the Eastern and Middle States. To-day, large and long-wooled Sheep of the Cotswold and similar breeds are grown with far greater profit in this section than the fine-wooled Merino and Saxony, except where choice specimens of the latter can be sold at high prices for removal to Texas and the Far West. The growing of these high-priced animals must necessarily be confined to few hands. The average farmer cannot expect to sell bucks at $1,000, and even at $5,000, as some have been sold, or at least reported. He must calculate that his Sheep are to be sold, when sold at all, at prices ranging from $10 down to $5, if not lower, so that mechanics and merchants may buy and eat them without absolute ruin; and he must realize that 100 pounds of Mutton at 10 cents, with 6 pounds of Wool at 30 cents, amount to more than 60 pounds of Mutton at 8 cents, and 10 pounds of Wool at 60 cents. Farmers who grow Sheep for Mutton in this vicinity, and manage to have lambs of good size for sale in June or July, assure me that their profit on these is greater than on almost anything else their farms will produce; and they say what they know. The satisfactory experience of this class may be repeated to-day in the neighborhood of any considerable city in the Union. Sheep-growing is no experiment; it is an assured and gratifying success with all who understand and are fitly placed for its prosecution. Wool may never again be so high as we have known it, since the Far West and Texas can grow it very cheaply, while its transportation costs less than five per cent. of its value, where that of Grain would be 75 per cent.; but Mutton is a wholesome and generally acceptable meat, whereof the use and popularity, are daily increasing; so that its market value will doubtless be greater in the future than it has been in the past. I would gladly incite the farmers of our country to comprehend this fact, and act so as to profit by it. But the new region opened to Sheep-growing by the pioneers of Colorado, and other Territories, is destined to play a great part in the satisfaction of our need of Wool. The elevated Plains and Valleys which enfold and embrace the Rocky Mountains are exceedingly favorable to the cheap production of Wool. Their pure, dry, bracing atmosphere; the rarity of their drenching storms; the fact that their soil is seldom or never sodden with water; and the excellence of their short, thin grasses, even in Winter, render them admirably adapted to the wants of the shepherd and his flocks. I do not believe in the wisdom or humanity, while I admit the possibility, of keeping Sheep without cured fodder on the Plains or elsewhere; on the contrary, I would have ample and effective shelter against cold and wet provided for every flock, with Hay, or Grain, or Roots, or somewhat of each of them, for at least two months of each year; but, even thus, I judge that fine Wool can be grown in Colorado or Wyoming far cheaper than in New England or even Minnesota, and of better quality than in Texas or South America. And I am grievously mistaken if Sheep husbandry is not about to be developed on the Plains with a rapidity and success which have no American precedent. XXXV. ACCOUNTS IN FARMING. Farmers, it is urged, sometimes fail; and this is unfortunately true of them, as of all others. Some fail in integrity; others in sobriety; many in capacity; most in diligence; but not a few in method or system. Quite a number fail because they undertake too much at the outset; that is, they run into debt for more land than they have capital to stock or means to fertilize, and are forced into bankruptcy by the interest ever-accruing upon land which they are unable to cultivate. If they should get ahead a little by active exertion throughout the day, the interest would overtake and pass them during the ensuing night. Few of the unsuccessful realize the extent to which their ill fortune is fairly attributable to their own waste of time. Men not naturally lazy squander hours weekly in the village, or at the railroad station, without a suspicion that they are thus destroying their chances of success in life. To-day is given up to a monkey-show; half of to-morrow is lost in attendance on an auction; part of next day is spent at a caucus or a jury trial; and so on until one-third of the year is virtually wasted. Now, the men who have achieved eminent success, within my observation, have all been rigid economists of time. They managed to transact their business at the county-seat while serving there as grand or petit jurors, or detained under subpoena as witnesses; they never attended an auction unless they really needed something which was there to be sold, and then they began their day's work earlier and ended it later in order to redeem the time which they borrowed for the sale. I do not believe that any American farmer who could count up three hundred full days' work in every year between his twenty-first and his thirtieth ever yet failed, except as a result of speculation, or endorsing, or inordinate running into debt. I would, therefore, urge every farmer to keep a rigid account current of the disposal of his time, so as to be able to see at the year's end exactly how many days thereof he had given to productive labor; how many to such abiding improvements as fencing and draining; and how many to objects which neither increased his crop nor improved his farm. I am sure many would be amazed at the extent of this last category. If every youth who expects to live by farming would buy a cheap pocket-book or wallet which contains a diary wherein a page is allotted to each day of the year, and would, at the close of that day, or at least while its incidents were still fresh in his mind, set down under its proper head whatever incidents were most noteworthy--as, for instance, a soaking rain; a light or heavy shower; a slight or killing frost; a fall of snow; a hurricane; a hail-storm; a gale; a decidedly hot or notably cold temperature; the turning out of cattle to pasture or sheltering them against the severity of Winter; also the planting or sowing of each crop or field, and whether harm was done to it by frost in its infancy or when it approached maturity--he would thus provide himself with annual volumes of fact which would prove instructive and valuable throughout his maturer years. The good farmer will of course keep accounts with such of his neighbors as he sees fit to deal with; and he ought to charge a lent or credit a borrowed plow, harrow, reaper, log-chain, or other implement, precisely as though it were meal or meat of an equal value. I judge that borrowed implements, if regularly charged at cost, and credited at their actual value when returned, would generally come home sooner and in better condition. But the farmer, like every one else, should be most careful to keep debt and credit with himself and his farm. If a dollar is spent or lent, his books should show it; and let items and sum total stare him in the face when he strikes a balance at the close of the year. If there has been no leakage either of dimes or of hours, he will seldom be poorer on the 31st of December than he was on the 1st of the preceding January. Most farmers fail to keep accounts with their several fields and crops; yet what could be more instructive than these? Here are ten acres of Corn, with a yield of 20 to 40 bushels per acre--a like area and like yield of Oats; a smaller or larger of Rye, Buckwheat, or Beans, as the case may be. If the produce is sold, most farmers know how much it brings; but how many know how much it cost? Say the Corn brings 75 cents per bushel, and the Oats 50 cents: was either or both produced at a profit? If so, at what profit? Here is a farmer who has grown from 100 to 800 bushels of Corn per annum for the last 20 years; ought he not to know by this time what Corn costs him in the average, and whether it could or could not with profit give place to something else? Most farmers grow some crops at a profit, others at a loss; ought they not to know, after an experience of five or ten years, what crops have put money into their pockets, and what have made them poorer for the growing? Of course, there is complication and some degree of uncertainty in all such account-keeping; for every one is aware that some crops take more from the soil than others, and so leave it in a worse condition for those that are to follow, and that some exact large reënforcements of fertilizers, whereof a part only is fairly chargeable to the first ensuing product, while a large share inures to the subsequent harvests. Each must judge for himself how much is to be credited for such improvement, and how much charged against other crops for deterioration. He, for example, whose meadows will cut from two to three tuns per acre of good English Hay may generally sell that Hay for twice if not thrice the immediate cost of its production, and so seem to be realizing a large profit; but, if he gives nothing to the soil in return for the heavy draft thus made upon it, his crop will dwindle year by year, until it will hardly pay for cutting; and the diminution in value of his meadows will nearly or quite balance the seeming profit accruing from his Hay. But account-keeping in every business involves essentially identical calculations; and the merchant who this year makes no net profit on his goods, but doubles the number of his customers and the extent of his trade, has thriven precisely as has the farmer whose profit on his crops has all been invested in drains permeating his bogs, and in Lime, Plaster, and other fertilizers, applied to and permanently enriching his dryer fields. "To make each day a critic on the last," was the aspiration of a wise man, if not a great poet. So the farmer who will keep careful and candid accounts With himself, annually correcting his estimates by the light of experience, will soon learn what crops he may reasonably expect to grow at a profit, and to reject such as are likely to involve him in loss; and he who, having done this, shall blend common sense with industry, will have no reason to complain thereafter that there is no profit in farming, and no chance of achieving wealth by pursuing it. XXXVI. STONE ON A FARM. This earth, geologists say, was once an immense expanse of heated vapor, which, gradually cooling at its surface, as it whirled and sped through space, contracted and formed a crust, which we know as Rock or Stone. This crust has since been broken through, and tilted up into ranges of mountains and hills, by the action of internal fires, by the transmutation of solid bodies into more expansive gases; and the fragments torn away from the sharper edges of upheaved masses of granite, quartz, or sandstone, having been frozen into iceberg, floating, or soon to be so, have been carried all over the surface of our planet, and dropped upon the greater part, as those icebergs were ultimately resolved, by a milder temperature, into flowing water. When the seas were afterward reduced nearly or quite to their present limits, and the icebergs restricted to the frigid zones and their vicinity, streams had to make their way down the sides of the mountains and hills to the subjacent valleys and plains, sweeping along not merely sand and gravel, but bowlders also, of every size and form, and sometimes great rocks as well, by the force of their impetuous currents. And, as a very large, if not the larger portion of our earth's surface bears testimony to the existence and powerful action through ages, of larger and smaller water-courses, a wide and general diffusion of stones, not in place, but more or less triturated, smoothed, and rounded, by the action of water, was among the inevitable results. These stones are sometimes a facility, but oftener an impediment, to efficiency in agriculture. When heated by fervid sunshine throughout the day, they retain a portion of that heat through a part of the succeeding night, thereby raising the temperature of the soil, and increasing the deposit of dew on the plants there growing. When generally broken so finely as to offer no impediment to cultivation, they not merely absorb heat by day, to be given off by night, but, by rendering the soil open and porous, secure a much more extensive diffusion of air through it than would otherwise be possible. Thus do slaty soils achieve and maintain a warmth unique in their respective latitudes, so as to ripen grapes further North, and at higher elevations, than would otherwise be possible. The great Prairies of the West, with a considerable portion of the valleys and plains of the Atlantic slope, expose no rock at their surfaces, and little beneath them, until the soil has been traversed, and the vicinity of the underlying rock in place fairly attained. To farmers inured to the perpetual stone-picking of New-England, and other hilly regions, this is a most welcome change; but when the pioneer comes to look about him for stone to wall his cellar and his well, to underpin his barn, and form the foundations of his dwelling, he realizes that the bowlders he had exulted in leaving behind him were not wholly and absolutely a nuisance; glad as he was to be rid of them forever, he would like now to call some of them back again. Yet, the Eastern farmer of to-day has fewer uses for stone than his grandfather had. He does not want his farm cut up into two or three-acre patches, by broad-based, unsightly walls, which frost is apt to heave year after year into greater deformity and less efficiency; nor does he care longer to use them in draining, since he must excavate and replace thrice as much earth in making a stone as in making a tile drain; while the former affords shelter and impunity to rats, mice, and other mischievous, predatory animals, whose burrowing therein tends constantly to stimulate its natural tendency to become choked with sand and earth. Of the stone drains, constructed through parts of my farm by foremen whose wills proved stronger than my own, but two remain in partial operation, and I shall rejoice when these shall have filled themselves up and been counted out evermore. Happily, they were sunk so low that the subsoil plow will never disturb them. Still, my confidence that nothing was made in vain is scarcely shaken by the prevalence and abundance of stone on our Eastern farms. We may not have present use for them all; but our grandsons will be wiser than we, and have uses for them which we hardly suspect. I rëinsist that land which is very stony was mainly created with an eye to timber-growing, and that millions of acres of such ought forthwith to be planted with Hickory, White Oak, Locust, Chestnut, White Pine, and other valuable forest-trees. Every acre of thoroughly dry land, lying near a railroad, in the Eastern or Middle States, may be made to pay a good interest on from $50 up to $100, provided there be soil enough above its rocks to afford a decent foothold for trees; and how little will answer this purpose none can imagine who have not seen the experiment tried. Sow thickly, that you may begin to cut out poles six to ten feet long within three or four years, and _keep_ cutting out (but never cutting off) thenceforward, until time shall be no more, and your rocky crests, steep hillsides and ravines, will take rank with the most productive portions of your farm. In the edges of these woods, you may deposit the surplus stones of the adjacent cultivated fields, in full assurance that moth and rust will not corrupt nor thieves break through and steal, but that you and your sons and grandsons will find them there whenever they shall be needed, as well as those you found there when you came into possession of the farm. I am further confident that we shall build more and more with rough, unshapen stone, as we grow older and wiser. In our harsh, capricious climate, walls of stone-concrete afford the cheapest and best protection alike against heat and frost, for our animals certainly, and, I think, also for ourselves. Let the farmer begin his barn by making of stone, laid in thin mortar, a substantial basement story; let into a hillside, for his manure and his root-cellar; let him build upon this a second story of like materials for the stalls of his cattle; and now he may add a third story and roof of wood for his bay and grain, if he sees fit. His son or grandson will, probably, take this off, and replace it with concrete walls and a slate roof; or this may be postponed until the original wooden structure has rotted off; but I feel sure that, ultimately, the dwellings as well as barns of thrifty farmers, in stony districts, will mainly be built of rough stone, thrown into a box and firmly cemented by a thin mortar composed of much sand and little lime; and that thus at least ten thousand tuns of stone to each farm will be disposed of. It may be somewhat later still before our barn-yards, fowl inclosures, gardens, pig-pens, etc., will be shut in by cemented walls; but the other sort affords such ample and perpetual lurking places for rats, minks, weasels, and all manner of destructive vermin, that they are certain to go out of fashion before the close of the next century. As to blasting out Stone, too large or too firmly fixed to be otherwise handled, I would solve the problem by asking, "Do you mean to keep this lot in cultivation?" If you do, clear it of stone from the surface upward, and for at least two feet downward, though they be as large as haycocks, and as fixed as the everlasting hills. Clear your field of every stone bigger than a goose egg, that the Plow or the Mower may strike in doing its work, or give it up to timber, plant it thoroughly, and leave its stones unmolested until you or your descendants shall have a paying use for them. A friend deeply engaged in lumbering gives me a hint, which I think some owners of stony farms will find useful. He is obliged to run his logs down shallow, stony creeks, from the bottom of which large rocks often protrude, arresting the downward progress of his lumber. When the beds of these creeks are nearly dry in Summer, he goes in, with two or three stout, strong assistants, armed with crowbars and levers, and rolls the stones to this side and that, so as to leave a clear passage for his logs. Occasionally, he is confronted by a big fellow, which defies his utmost force; when, instead of drilling and blasting, he gathers dead tree-tops, and other dry wood of no value, from the banks, and builds a hot fire on the top of each giant bowlder. When the fire has burned out, and the rock has cooled, he finds it softened, and, as it were, rotten, on the top, often split, and every way so demoralized that he can deal with it as though it were chalk or cheese. He estimates his saving by this process, as compared with drilling and blasting as much more than fifty per cent. I trust farmers with whom wood is abundant, and big stones superabundant, will give this simple device a trial. Powder and drilling cost money, part of which may be saved by this expedient. I have built some stone walls--at first, not very well; but for the last ten years my rule has been: Very little fence on a farm, but that little of a kind that asks no forbearance of the wildest bull that ever wore a horn. The last wall I built cost me at least $5 per rod; and it is worth the money. Beginning by plowing its bed and turning the two furrows together, so as to raise the ground a foot, and make a shallow ditch on either side, I built a wall thereon which will outlast my younger child. An ordinary wall dividing a wood on the north from an open field of sunny, gravelly loam on the south, would have been partly thrown down and wholly twisted out of shape in a few years, by the thawing of the earth under its sunny side, while it remained firm as a rock on the north; but the ground is always dry under my entire wall; so nothing freezes there, and there is consequently nothing to thaw and let down my wall. I shall be sorely disappointed if that wall does not outlast my memory, and be known as a thorough barrier to roving cattle long after the name of its original owner shall have been forgotten. XXXVII. FENCES AND FENCING. Though I have already indicated, incidentally, my decided objections to our prevalent system of Fencing, I deem the subject of such importance that I choose to discuss it directly. Excessive Fencing is peculiarly an American abuse, which urgently cries for reform. Solon Robinson says the fence-tax is the heaviest of our farmer's taxes. I add, that it is the most needless and indefensible. Highways we must have, and people must traverse them; but this gives them no right to trample down or otherwise injure the crops growing on either side. In France, and other parts of Europe, you see grass and grain growing luxuriantly up to the very edge of the beaten tracks, with nothing like a fence between them. Yet those crops are nowise injured or disturbed by wayfarers. Whoever chooses to impel animals along these roads must take care to have them completely under subjection, and must see that they do no harm to whatever grows by the wayside. In this country, cattle-driving, except on a small scale, and for short distances, has nearly been superceded by railroads. The great droves formerly reaching the Atlantic seaboard on foot, from Ohio or further West, are now huddled into cars and hurried through in far less time, and with less waste of flesh; but they reach us fevered, bruised, and every way unwholesome. Every animal should be turned out to grass, after a railroad journey of more than twelve hours, and left there a full month before he is taken to the slaughter-pen. We must have many more deaths per annum in this city than if the animals on which we subsist were killed in a condition which rendered them fit for human food. Ultimately, our fresh Beef, Mutton and Pork, will come to us from the Prairies in refrigerating cars: each animal having been killed while in perfect health, unfevered and untortured by days of cramped, galled, and thirsty suffering, on the cars. This will leave their offal, including a large portion of their bones, to enrich the fields whence their sustenance was drawn and from which they should never be taken. The cost of transporting the meat, hides, and tallow, in such cars, would be less than that of bringing through the animals on their legs; while the danger of putrefaction might be utterly precluded. But to return to Fencing: Our growing plants must be preserved from animal ravage; but it is most unjust to impose the cost of this protection on the growers. Whoever chooses to rear or buy animals must take care that they do not infest and despoil his neighbors. Whoever sees fit to turn animals into the street, should send some one with them who will be sure to keep them out of mischief, which browsing young trees in a forest clearly is. If the inhabitants of a settlement or village surrounded by open prairie, see fit to pasture their cattle thereon, they should send them out each morning in the charge of a well-mounted herdsmen, whose duty should be summed up in keeping them from evildoing by day and bringing them safely back to their yard or yards at nightfall. Fencing bears with special severity on the pioneer class, who are least able to afford the outlay. The "clearing" of the pioneer's first year in the wilderness, being enlarged by ax and fire, needs a new and far longer environment next year; and so through subsequent years until clearing is at an end. Many a pioneer is thus impelled to devote a large share of his time to Fencing; and yet his crops often come to grief through the depredations of his own or his neighbor's breachy cattle. Fences produce nothing but unwelcome bushes, briers and weeds. So far as they may be necessary, they are a deplorable necessity. When constructed where they are not really needed, they evince costly folly. I think I could point out farms which would not sell to-day for the cost of rebuilding their present fences. We cannot make open drains or ditches serve for fences in this country, as they sometimes do in milder and more equable climates, because our severe frosts would heave and crumble their banks if nearly perpendicular, sloping them at length in places so that animals might cross them at leisure. Nor have we, so far north as this city, had much success with hedges, for a like reason. There is scarcely a hedge-plant at once efficient in stopping animals and so hardy as to defy the severity, or rather the caprice, of our Winters. I scarcely know a hedge which is not either inefficient or too costly for the average farmer; and then a hedge is a fixture; whereas we often need to move or demolish our fences. Wire Fences are least obnoxious to this objection; they are very easily removed; but a careless teamster, a stupid animal, or a clumsy friend, easily makes a breach in one, which is not so easily repaired. Of the few Wire Fences within my knowledge, hardly one has remained entire and efficient after standing two or three years. Stone Walls, well built, on raised foundations of dry earth, are enduring and quite effective, but very costly. My best have cost me at least $5 per rod, though the raw material was abundant and accessible. I doubt that any good wall is built, with labor at present prices, for less than $5 per rod. Perhaps I should account this costliness a merit, since it must impel farmers to study how to make few fences serve their turn. Rail Fences will be constructed only where timber is very abundant, of little value, and easily split. Whenever the burning of timber to be rid of it has ceased, there the making of rail fences must be near its end. Where fences must still be maintained, I apprehend that posts and boards are the cheapest material. Though Pine lumber grows dear, Hemlock still abounds; and the rapid destruction of trees for their bark to be used in tanning must give us cheap hemlock boards throughout many ensuing years. Spruce, Tamarack, and other evergreens from our Northern swamps, will come into play after Hemlock shall have been exhausted. As for posts, Red Cedar is a general favorite; and this tree seems to be rapidly multiplying hereabout. I judge that farmers who have it not, might wisely order it from a nursery and give it an experimental trial. It is hardy; it is clean; it makes but little shade; and it seems to fear no insect whatever. It flourishes on rocky, thin soils; and a grove of it is pleasant to the sight--at least, to mine. Locust is more widely known and esteemed; but the borer has proved destructive to it on very many farms, though not on mine. I like it well, and mean to multiply it extensively by drilling the seed in rich garden soil and transplanting to rocky woodland when two years old. Sowing the seed among rocks and bushes I have tried rather extensively, with poor success. If it germinates at all, the young tree is so tiny and feeble that bushes, weeds, and grass, overtop and smother it. That a post set top-end down will last many years longer than if set as it grew, I do firmly believe, though I cannot attest it from personal observation. I understand the reason to be this: Trees absorb or suck up moisture from the earth; and the particles which compose them are so combined and adjusted as to facilitate this operation. Plant a post deeply and firmly in the ground, butt-end downward, and it will continue to absorb moisture from the earth as it did when alive; and the post, thus moistened to-day and dried by wind and sun to-morrow, is thereby subjected to more rapid disintegration and decay than when reversed. My general conclusion is, that the good farmer will have fewer and better fences than his thriftless neighbor, and that he will study and plan to make fewer and fewer rods of fence serve his needs, taking care that all he retains shall be perfect and conclusive. Breachy cattle are a sad affliction alike to their owner and his neighbor; and shaky, rotting, tumble-down fences, are justly responsible for their perverse education. Let us each resolve to take good care that his own cattle shall in no case afflict his neighbors, and we shall all need fewer fences henceforth and evermore. XXXVIII. AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITIONS. I must have attended not less than fifty State or County Fairs for the exhibition (mainly) of Agricultural Machines and Products. From all these, I _should_ have learned something, and presume I did; but I cannot now say what. Hence, I conclude that these Fairs are not what they might and should be. In other words, they should be improved. But how? As the people compose much the largest and best part of these shows, the reform must begin with them. Two-thirds of them go to a Fair with no desire to learn therefrom--no belief that they can there be taught anything. Of course, not seeking, they do not find. If they could but realize that a Farmer's Fair might and should teach farmers somewhat that would serve them in their vocation, a great point would be gained. But they go in quest of entertainment, and find this mainly in horse-racing. Of all human opportunities for instruction in humility and self-depreciation, the average public speaker's is the best. He hurries to a place where he has been told that his presence and utterance are earnestly and generally desired--perhaps to find that his invitation came from an insignificant and odious handful, who had some private ax to grind so repugnant to the great majority that they refuse to countenance the procedure, no matter how great the temptation. Even where there is no such feud, many, having satiated their curiosity by a long stare at him, walk whistling off, without waiting or wishing to hear him. But the speaker at a Fair must compete with a thousand counter-attractions, the least of them far more popular and winning than _he_ can hope to be. He is heard, so far as he is heard at all, in presence of and competition with all the bellowing bulls, braying, jacks, and squealing stallions, in the county; if he holds, nevertheless, a quarter of the crowd, he does well: but let two jockeys start a buggy-race around the convenient track, and the last auditor shuts his ears and runs off to enjoy the spectacle. Decidedly, I insist that a Fair-ground is poorly adapted to the diffusion of Agricultural knowledge--that the people present acquire very little information there, even when they get all they want. What is needed to render our annual Fairs useful and instructive far beyond precedent, I sum up as follows: I. Each farmer in the county or township should hold himself bound to make _some_ contribution thereto. If only a good hill of Corn, a peck of Potatoes, a bunch of Grapes, a Squash, a Melon, let him send that. If he can send all of these, so much the better. There is very rarely a thrifty farmer who could not add to the attractions and merits of a Fair if he would try. If he could send a coop of superior Fowls, a likely Calf, or a first-rate Cow, better yet; but nine-tenths of our farmers regard a Fair as something wherewith they have nothing to do, except as spectators. When it is half over, they lounge into it with hands in their pockets, stare about for an hour, and go home protesting that they could beat nearly everything they saw there. Then why did they not try? How can we have good Fairs, if those who might make the best display of products save themselves the trouble by not making any? The average meagerness of our Fairs, so generally and justly complained of, is not the fault of those who sent what they had, but of those who, having better, were too lazy to send anything. Until this is radically changed, and the blame fastened on those who might have contributed, but did not, our Fairs cannot help being generally meager and poor. II. It seems to me that there is great need of an interesting and faithful running commentary on the various articles exhibited. A competent person should be employed to give an hour's off-hand talk on the cattle and horses on hand, explaining the diverse merits and faults of the several breeds there exhibited, and of the representatives of those breeds then present. If any are peculiarly adapted to the locality, let that fact be duly set forth, with the simple object of enabling farmers to breed more intelligently, and more profitably. Then let the implements and machinery on exhibition be likewise explained and discussed, and let their superiority in whatever respect to those they have superseded or are designed to supersede be clearly pointed out. So, if there be any new Grain, Vegetable, or Fruit, on the tables, let it be made the subject of capable and thoroughly impartial discussion, before such only as choose to listen, and without putting the mere sightseers to grave inconvenience. A lecture-room should always be attached to a Fair-ground, yet so secluded as to shut out the noise inseparable from a crowded exhibition. Here, meetings should be held each evening, for general discussion; every one being encouraged to state concisely the impressions made on him, and the improvements suggested to him, by what he had seen. Do let us try to reflect and consider more at these gatherings, even though at the cost of seeing less. III. The well supported Agricultural Society of a rich and populous county must be able, or should be able, to give two or three liberal premiums for general proficiency in farming. If $100 could be proffered to the owner or manager of the best tilled farm in the county, $50 to the owner of the best orchard, and $50 to the boy under 18 years of age who grew the best acre of Corn or Roots that year, I am confident that an impulse would thereby be given to agricultural progress. Our premiums are too numerous and too petty, because so few, are willing to contribute with no expectation of personal benefit or distinction. If we had but the right spirit aroused, we might dispense with most of our petty premiums, or replace them by medals of no great cost, and devote the money thus saved to higher and nobler ends. IV. Much of the speaking at Fairs seems to me insulting to the intelligence of the Farmers present, who are grossly flattered and eulogized, when they often need to be admonished and incited to mend their ways. What use or sense can there be in a lawyer, doctor, broker, or editor, talking to a crowd of farmers as if they were the most favored of mortals and their life the noblest and happiest known to mankind? Whatever it might be, and may yet become, we all know that the average farmer's life is not what it is thus represented: for, if it were, thousands would be rushing into it where barely hundreds left it: whereas we all see that the fact is quite otherwise. No good can result from such insincere and extravagant praises of a calling which so few freely choose, and so many gladly shun. Grant that the farmer's _ought_ to be the most enviable and envied vocation, we know that in fact it _is_ not and, agreeing that it should be, the business in hand is to make it so. There must be obstacles to surmount, mistakes to set right, impediments to overcome, before farming can be in all respects the idolized pursuit which poets are so ready to proclaim it and orators so delight to represent it. Let us struggle to make it all that fancy has ever painted it; but, so long as it is not, let us respect undeniable facts, and characterize it exactly as it is. V. If our counties were thoroughly canvassed by township committees, and each tiller of the soil asked to pledge himself in writing to exhibit something at the next County Fair, we should soon witness a decided improvement. Many would be incited to attend who now stay away; while the very general complaint that there is nothing worth coming to see would be heard no more. As yet, a majority of farmers regard the Fair much as they do a circus or traveling menagerie, taking no interest in it except as it may afford them entertainment for the passing hour. We must change this essentially; and the first step is to induce, by concerted solicitation, at least half the farmers in the county to pledge themselves each to exhibit something at the next annual Fair, or pay $5 toward increasing its premiums. VI. In short, we must all realize that the County or Township Fair is _our_ Fair--not got up by others to invite our patronage or criticism, but something whereto it is incumbent on us to contribute, and which must be better or worse as we choose to make it. Realizing this, let us stop carping and give a shoulder to the wheel. XXXIX. SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURE. I am not a scientific farmer; it is not probable that I ever shall be. I have no such knowledge of Chemistry and Geology as any man needs to make him a thoroughly good farmer. I am quite aware that men have raised good crops--a good many of them--who knew nothing of science, and did not consider any acquaintance with it conducive to efficiency or success in their vocation. I have no doubt that men will continue to grow such crops, and to make money by agriculture, who hardly know what is meant by Chemistry or Geology; and yet I feel sure that, as the years roll by, Science will more and more be recognized and accepted as the true, substantial base of efficient and profitable cultivation. Let me here give briefly the grounds of this conviction: Every plant is composed of elements whereof a very small portion is drawn from the soil, while the ampler residue, so long as the plant continues green and growing, is mainly water, though a variable and often considerable proportion is imbibed or absorbed from the atmosphere, which is understood to yield freely nearly all the elements required of it, provided the plants are otherwise in healthful and thrifty condition. Water is supplied from the sky, or from springs and streams; and little more than the most ordinary capacity for observation is required to determine when it is present in sufficient quantity, when in baleful excess. But who, unaided by Science, can decide whether the soil does or does not contain the elements requisite for the luxuriant growth and perfect development of Wheat, or Fruit, or Grass, or Beets, or Apples? Who knows, save as he blindly infers from results, what mineral ingredients of this or that crop are deficient in given field, and what are present in excess? And how shall any one be enlightened and assured on the point, unless by the aid of Science? I have bought and applied to my farm some two thousand bushels of Lime, and ten or a dozen tuns of Plaster; and I infer, from what seemed to be results, that each of these minerals has been applied with profit; but I do not _know_ it. The increased product which I have attributed to one or both of these elements may have had a very different origin and impulse. I only grope my way in darkness when I should clearly and surely see. An agricultural essayist in Maine has recently put forth a canon which, if well grounded, is of great value to farmers. He asserts that the growth of acid plants like Sorrel, Dock, etc., in a field, results from sourness in the soil, and that, where this exists, Lime--that is, the ordinary Carbonate of Lime--is urgently required; whereas the application of Plaster or Gypsum (Sulphate of Lime) to that field must be useless and wasteful. If such be the truth, a knowledge of it would be worth millions of dollars to our farmers. But I lack the scientific attainment needed to qualify me for passing judgment thereon. There is great diversity of opinion among farmers with regard to the value of Swamp Muck. One has applied it to his land to good purpose; so he holds Muck, if convenient, the cheapest and best fertilizer a farmer can add to his ordinary barn-yard manure; another has applied cords upon cords of Muck, and says he has derived therefrom no benefit whatever. Now, this contrariety of conclusion may result from imperfect judgment on one side or the other, or from the condition precedent of the diverse soils: one of them requiring what Muck could supply, while the other required something very different from that; or it may be accounted for by the fact that the Muck applied in one case was of superior quality, and in the other good for nothing. Where Muck is composed almost wholly of the leaves of forest-trees which, through thousands of years, have been blown into a bog, or shallow pond, and there been gradually transformed into a fine, black dust or earth, I do not see how it can possibly be applied to an upland, especially a sandy or gravelly soil, without conducing to the subsequent production of bounteous crops. True, it may be sour when first drawn from the stagnant pool or bog in which it has lain so long, and may need to be mixed with Lime, or Salt, or Ashes, and subjected to the action of sun and frost, to ripen and sweeten it. But it seems to me impossible that such Muck should be applied to almost any reasonably dry land, without improving its consistency and increasing its fertility. But all Muck is not the product of decayed forest-leaves; and that which was formed of coarse, rank weeds and brakes, of rotten wood and flags, or skunk cabbage, may be of very inferior quality, so as hardly to repay the cost of digging and applying it. Science will yet enable us to fix, at least approximately, the value of each deposit of Muck, and so give a preference to the best. The Analysis of Soils, whereof much was heard and whence much was hoped a few years since, seems to have fallen into utter discredit, so that every would-be popular writer gives it a passing fling or kick. That any analysis yet made was and is worthless, I can readily concede, without shaking in the least my conviction that soils will yet be analyzed, under the guidance of a truer, profounder Science, to the signal enlightenment and profit of their cultivators. Here is a retired merchant, banker, doctor, or lawyer, who has bought a spacious and naturally fertile but worn-out, run-down farm, on which he proposes to spend the remainder of his days. Of course, he must improve and enrich it; but with what? and how? All the manure he finds, or, for the present, can make on it, will hardly put the first acre in high condition, while he grows old and is unwilling to wait forever. He is able and ready to buy fertilizers, and does buy right and left, without knowing whether his land needs Lime, or Phosphate, or Potash, or something very different from either. Say he purchases $2,000 worth Of one or more of these fertilizers: it is highly probable that $1,500 might have served him better if invested in due proportion in just what his land most urgently needs; and I unflinchingly believe that we shall yet have an analysis of soils that will tell him just what fertilizers he ought to apply, and what quantity of each of them. Science has already taught us that every load of Hay or Grain drawn from a field abstracts therefrom a considerable quantity of certain minerals--say Potash, Lime, Soda, Magnesia, Chlorine, Silica, Phosphorus--and that the soil is thereby impoverished until they be replaced, in some form or other. As no deposit in a bank was ever so large that continual drafts would not ultimately exhaust it, so no soil was ever so rich that taking crop after crop from it annually, yet giving nothing back, would not render it sterile or worthless. Sun and rain and wind will do their part in the work of renovation; but all of them together cannot restore to the soil the mineral elements whereof each crop takes a portion, and which, being once completely exhausted, can only be replaced at a heavy cost. Science teaches us to foresee and prevent such exhaustion--in part, by a rotation of crops, and in part by a constant replacement of the minerals annually borne away: the subtraction being greater in proportion as the crop is more exacting and luxuriant. What I know of Science applicable to Farming is little indeed; but I know that there _is_ such Science, and that each succeeding year enlarges, improves, and perfects it. I know that I should thus far have farmed to far better purpose, if I had been master even of so much Science as already exists. Understand that I am not a teacher of this Science--I stand very low in the class of learners. I began to learn too late in life, and have been too incessantly harassed by a multiplicity of cares, to make any satisfactory progress. Any tolerably educated boy of fifteen may know far more of Agricultural Science by the time he has passed his eighteenth birthday than I do. What I know in this respect can help him very little; my faith that there is much to be known, and that he may master it if he will, is all that is of much importance. If I can convince a considerable number of our youth that they may surely acquire a competence by the time they shall have passed their fortieth year, without excessive labor or penurious frugality, by means of that knowledge of principles and laws subservient to Agriculture which their fathers could not, but which they easily may attain, I shall have rendered a substantial service alike to them and to our country. XL. FARM IMPLEMENTS. A good workman, it is said, does not quarrel with his tools--which, if true, I judge is due to the fact that he generally manages to have good ones. To work hard throughout a long day under a burning sun, is sufficiently trying, without rendering the labor doubly repugnant by the use of ill-contrived, imperfect, inefficient implements. The half-century which nearly bounds my recollection has witnessed great improvements in this respect. The Plow, mainly of wood, wherewith my father broke up his stony, hide-bound acres of New-Hampshire pebbles and gravel, in my early boyhood, would now be spurned if offered as a gift to the poorest and most thriftless farmer among us; and the Hoes which were allotted to us boys in those days, after the newer and better had been assigned to the men, would be rejected with disdain by the stupidest negro in Virginia. Though there is still room for improvement, we use far better implements than our grandfathers did, with a corresponding increase in the efficiency of our labor; but the cultivators of Spain, Portugal, and the greater part of Europe, still linger in the dark ages in this respect. Their plows are little better than the forked sticks which served their barbarian ancestors, and their implements generally are beneath contempt. With such implements, deep and thorough culture is simply impossible, unless by the use of the spade; and he must be a hard worker who produces a peck of Wheat or half a bushel of Indian Corn per day by the exclusive use of this tool. The soil of France is so cut up and subdivided into little strips of two or three roods up to as many acres each--each strip forming the entire patrimony of a family--that agricultural advancement or efficiency is, with the great mass of French cultivators, out of the question. Hence, I judge that, outside of Great Britain and Australia, there is no country wherein an average year's work produces half so much grain as in our own, in spite of our slovenly tillage, our neglect and waste of fertilizers, and the frequent failures of our harvests. Belgium, Holland, and northern France, can teach us neatness and thoroughness of cultivation; the British isles may fairly boast of larger and surer crops of Wheat, Oats, Potatoes, and Grass, than we are accustomed to secure; but, in the selection of implements, and in the average efficiency of labor, our best farmers are ahead of then all. Bear with me, then, while I interpose a timid plea for our inventors and patentees of implements, whose solicitations that a trial, or at least an inspection, be accorded to their several contrivances, are too often repelled with churlish rudeness. I realize that our thriving farmers are generally absorbed in their own plans and efforts, and that the agent or salesman who insists on an examination of his new harrow, or pitchfork, or potato-digger, is often extravagant in his assumptions, and sometimes a bore. Still, when I recollect how tedious and how back-breaking were the methods of mowing Grass and reaping Grain with the Scythe and Sickle, which held unchallenged sway in my early boyhood, I entreat the farmer who is petitioned to accord ten or fifteen minutes to the setting forth, by some errant stranger, of the merits of his new horse-hoe or tedder, to give the time, if he can; and that without sour looks or a mien of stolid incredulity. The Biblical monition that, in evincing a generous hospitality, we may sometimes entertain angels unawares, seems to me in point. A new implement may be defective and worthless, and yet contain the germ or suggest the form of a thoroughly good one. Give the inventor or his representative a courteous hearing if you can, even though this should constrain you to make up the time so lost after the day's work would otherwise have ended. I suspect that the average farmer of our completely rural districts would be surprised, if not instructed, by a day's careful scrutiny of the contents of one of our great implement warehouses. So many and such various and ingenious devices for pulverizing the earth applying fertilizers to the soil, planting or sowing rapidly, eradicating weeds, economizing labor in harvesting, etc., will probably transcend not merely his experience, but his imagination; and every one of these myriad implements is useful in its place, though no single farmer can afford to buy all or half of them. It will yet, I think, be found necessary by the farmers of a school-district, if not of a township, to meet and agree among themselves that one will buy this implement, another that, and so on, until twenty or thirty such devices as a Stump or Rock-Puller, a Clod-Crusher, Thrashing-Machine, Fanning-Mill, etc., shall be owned in the neighborhood--each by a separate farmer, willing to live and let live--with an understanding that each shall be used in turn by him who needs it; and so every one shall be nearly as well accommodated as though he owned them all. For the number and variety of useful implements increase so rapidly, while their usefulness is so palpable, that, though it is difficult to farm efficiently without many if not most of them, it is impossible that the young farmer of moderate means should buy and keep them all. True, he might hire when he needed, if what he wanted were always at hand; but this can only be assured by some such arrangement as I have suggested, wherein each undertakes to provide and keep that which he will most need; agreeing to lend it whenever it can be spared to any other member of the combination, who undertakes to minister in like manner to _his_ need in return. I think few will doubt that the inventions in aid of Agriculture during the last forty years will be far surpassed by those of the forty years just before us. The magnificent fortunes which, it is currently understood, have rewarded the inventors of the more popular Mowers, Reapers, etc., of our day, are sure to stimulate alike the ingenuity and the avarice of clever men throughout the coming years, and to call into existence ten thousand patents, whereof a hundred will be valuable, and ten or twelve eminently useful. Plowing land free from stumps and stones cannot long be the tedious, patience-trying process we have known it. The machinery which will at once pulverize the soil to a depth of two feet, fertilize and seed it, not requiring it to be trampled by the hoofs of animals employed in subsoiling and harrowing, will soon be in general use, especially on the spacious, deep, inviting prairies of the Great West.--But I must defer what I have to say of Steam and its uses in Agriculture to another chapter. XLI. STEAM IN AGRICULTURE. As yet, the great body of our farmers have been slow in availing themselves of the natural forces in operation around them. Vainly for them does the wind blow across their fields and over their hill-tops. It neither thrashes nor grinds their grain; it has ceased even to separate it from the chaff. The brook brawls and foams idly adown the precipice or hillside: the farmer grinds his grain, churns his cream, and turns his grindstone, just as though falling water did not embody power. He draws his Logs to one mill, and his Wheat, Corn, or Rye to another, and returns in due season with his boards or his meal; but the lesson which the mill so plainly teaches remains, by him unread. Where running or leaping water is not, there brisk breezes and fiercer gales are apt to be. But the average farmer ignores the mechanical use of stream and breeze alike, taxing his own muscle to achieve that which the blind forces of Nature stand ready to do at his command. It may not, and I think it will not, be always thus. Steam, as a cheap source of practically limitless power, is hardly a century old; yet it has already revolutionized the mechanical and manufacturing industry of Christendom. It weaves the far greater part of all the Textile Fabrics that clothe and shelter and beautify the human family. It fashions every bar and every rail of Iron or of Steel; it impels the machinery of nearly every manufactory of wares or of implements; and it is very rapidly supplanting wind in the propulsion of vessels on the high seas, as it has already done on rivers and on most inland waters. Water is, however, still employed as a power in certain cases, but mainly because its adaptation to this end has cost many thousands of dollars which its disuse would render worthless. I am quite within bounds in estimating that nine-tenths of all the material force employed by man in Manufactures, Mechanics, and Navigation, is supplied by Steam, and that this disproportion will be increased to ninety-nine hundredths before the close of this century. For Agriculture, Steam has done very much, in the transportation of crops and of fertilizers, but very little in the preparation or cultivation of the soil. Of steam-wagons for roads or fields, steam-plows for pulverizing and deepening the soil, and steam-cultivators for keeping weeds down and rendering tillage more efficient, we have had many heralded in sanguine bulletins throughout the last forty years, but I am not aware that one of them has fulfilled the sanguine hopes of its author. Though a dozen Steam-Plows have been invented in this country, and several imported from Europe, I doubt that a single square mile of our country's surface has been plowed wholly by steam down to this hour. If it has, Louisiana--a State which one would not naturally expect to find in the van of industrial progress--has enjoyed the benefit and earned the credit of the achievement. Of what Steam has yet accomplished in direct aid of Agriculture, I have little to say, though in Great Britain quite a number of steam-plows are actually at work in the fields, and (I am assured), with fair success. Until something breaks or gives out, one of these plows does its appointed work better and cheaper than such work is or can be done by animal power; but all the steam-plows whereof I have any knowledge seem too bulky, too complicated, too costly, ever to win their way into general use. I value them only as hints and incitements toward something better suited to the purpose. What our farmers need is not a steam-plow as a specialty, but a locomotive that can travel with facility, not only on common wagon-roads, but across even freshly-plowed fields, without embarrassment, and prove as docile to its manager's touch as an average span of horses. Such a locomotive should not cost more then $500, nor weigh more than a tun when laden with fuel and water for a half-hour's steady work. It should be so contrived that it may be hitched in a minute to a plow, a harrow, a wagon, or cart, a saw or grist-mill, a mower or reaper, a thresher or stalk-cutter, a stump or rock-puller, and made useful in pumping and draining operations, digging a cellar or laying up a wall, as also in ditching or trenching. We may have to wait some years yet for a servant so dexterous and docile, yet I feel confident that our children will enjoy and appreciate his handiwork. The farmer often needs far more power at one season than at another, and is compelled to retain and subsist working animals at high cost through months in which he has no use for them, because he must have them when those months have transpired. If he could replace those animals by a machine which, when its season of usefulness was over, could be cleaned, oiled, and put away under a tight roof until next seeding-time, the saving alike of cost and trouble would be very considerable. When our American reapers first challenged attention in Great Britain, the general skepticism as to their efficiency was counteracted by the suggestion that, even though reaping by machinery should prove more expensive than reaping by hand, the ability to cut and save the grain-crop more rapidly than hitherto would over-balance that enhancement of cost. In the British Isles, day after day of chilling wind and rain is often encountered in harvest-time: the standing Wheat or Oats or Barley becoming draggled, or lodged, or beaten out, while the owner impatiently awaits the recurrence of sunny days. When these at length arrive, he is anxious to harvest many acres at once, since his Grain is wasting and he knows not how soon cloud and tempest may again be his portion. But all his neighbors are in like predicament with himself, and all equally intent on hurrying the harvest; so that little extra help is attainable. If now the aid of a machine may be commanded, which will cut 15 or 20 acres per day, he cares less how much that work will cost than how soon it can be effected. Hence, even though cutting by horse-power had proved more costly than cutting by hand, it would still have been welcome. So it is with Plowing, here and almost everywhere. Our farmers have this year been unable to begin Plowing for Winter Grain so early as they desired, by reason of the intense heat and drouth, whereby their fields were baked to the consistency of half-burned brick. Much seed will in consequence have been sown too late, while much seeding will have been precluded altogether, by inability to prepare the ground in due season. If a machine had been at hand whereby 15 or 20 acres per day could have been plowed and harrowed, thousands would have invoked its aid to enable them to sow their Grain in tolerable season, even though the cost had been essentially heavier than that of old-fashioned plowing. I traversed Illinois on the 13th and 14th of May, 1859, when its entire soil seemed soaked and sodden with incessant rains, which had not yet ceased pouring. Inevitably, there had been little or no plowing yet for the vast Corn-crop of that State; yet barely two weeks would intervene before the close of the proper season for Corn-planting. Even if these should be wholly favorable, the plowing could not be effected in season, and much ground must be planted too late or not planted at all. In every such case, a machine that would plow six or eight furrows as fast as a man ought to walk, would add immensely to the year's harvest, and be hailed as a general blessing. I recollect that a German observer of Western cultivation--a man of decided perspicacity and wide observation--recommended that each farmer who had not the requisite time or team for getting in his Corn-crop in due season should plow single furrows through his field at intervals of 3 to 3-1/2 feet, plant his Corn on the earth thus turned, and proceed, so soon as his planting was finished, to plow out the spaces as yet undisturbed between the springing rows of Corn. I do not know that this recommendation was ever widely followed; but I judge that, under certain circumstances, it might be, to decided advantage and profit. I have not attempted to indicate all the benefits which Steam is to confer directly on Agriculture, within the next half-century. That Irrigation must become general, I confidently believe; and I anticipate a very extensive sinking of wells, at favorable points, in order that water shall be drawn therefrom by wind or steam to moisten and enrich the slopes and plains around them. Such a locomotive as I have foreshadowed might be taken from well to well, pumping from each in an hour or two sufficient water to irrigate several of the adjacent acres; thus starting a second crop of Hay on fields whence the first had been taken, and renewing verdure and growth where we now see vegetation suspended for weeks, if not months. I feel sure that the mass of our farmers have not yet realized the importance and beneficence of Irrigation, nor the facility wherewith its advantages may be secured. XLII. CO-OPERATION IN FARMING. The word of hope and cheer for Labor in our days is CO�PERATION--that is, the combination by many of their means and efforts to achieve results beneficial to them all. It differs radically from Communism, which proposes that each should receive from the aggregate product of human labor enough to satisfy his wants, or at least his needs, whether he shall have contributed to that aggregate much, or little, or nothing at all. Coöperation insists that each shall receive from the joint product in proportion to his contributions thereto, whether in capital, skill, or labor. If one associate has ten children and another none, Communism would apportion to each according to the size of his family alone; while Coöperation would give to each what he had earned, regardless of the number dependent upon him. Thus the two systems are radical antagonists, and only the grossly ignorant or willfully blind will confound them. A young farmer, whose total estate is less than $500, not counting a priceless wife and child, resolves to migrate from one of the old States to Kansas, Minnesota, or one of the Territories: he has heard that he will there find public land whereon he may make a home of a quarter-section, paying therefor $20 or less for the cost of survey and of the necessary papers. So he may: but, on reaching the Land of Promise, whether with or without his family, he finds a very large belt of still vacant land beyond the settlements already transformed into private property, and either not for sale at all or held on speculation, quite out of his reach. The public land which he may take under the Homestead law lies a full day's journey beyond the border settlements, to which he must look for Mills, Stores, Schools, and even Highways. If he persists in squatting, with intent to earn his quarter-section by settlement and cultivation, he must take a long day's journey across unbridged streams and sloughs, over unmade roads, to find boards, or brick, or meal, or glass, or groceries; while he must postpone the education of his children to an indefinite future day. Gradually, the region will be settled, and the conveniences of civilization will find their way to his door, but not till after he will have suffered through several years for want of them; often compelled to make a journey to get a plow or yoke mended, a grist of grain ground, or to minister to some other trivial but inexorable want. He who thus acquires his quarter-section must fairly earn it, and may be thankful if his children do not grow up rude, coarse, and illiterate. But suppose one thousand just such young farmers as he is, with no more means and no greater efficiency than his, were to set forth together, resolved to find a suitable location whereon they might all settle on adjoining quarter-sections, thus appropriating the soil of five or six embryo townships: who can fail to see that three-fourths of the obstacles and discouragements which confront the solitary pioneer would vanish at the outset? Roads, Bridges, Mills,--nay, even Schools and Churches--would be theirs almost immediately; while mechanics, merchants, doctors, etc., would fairly overrun their settlement and solicit their patronage at every road-crossing. Within a year after the location of their several claims, they would have achieved more progress and more comfort than in five years under the system of straggling and isolated settlement which has hitherto prevailed. The change I here indicate appeals to the common sense and daily experience of our whole people. It is not necessary, however desirable, that the pioneers should be giants in wisdom, in integrity, or in piety, to secure its benefits. A knave or a fool may be deemed an undesirable neighbor; but a dozen such in the township would not preclude, and could hardly diminish, the advantages naturally resulting from settlement by Coöperation. Nor are these confined to pioneers transcending the boundaries of civilization. I wish I could induce a thousand of our colored men now precariously subsisting by servile labor in the cities, to strike out boldly for homes of their own, and for liberty to direct their own labor, whether they should settle on the frontier in the manner just outlined, or should buy a tract of cheap land on Long Island, in New-Jersey, Maryland, or some State further South. I cannot doubt that the majority of them would work their way up to independence; and this very much sooner, and after undergoing far less privation, than almost every pioneer who has plunged alone into the primitive forest or struck out upon the broad prairie and there made himself a farm. The insatiable demand for fencing is one of the pioneer's many trials. Though he has cleared off but three acres of forest during his first Fall and Winter, he must surround those acres with a stout fence, or all he grows will be devoured by hungry cattle--his own, if no others. Whether he adds two or ten acres to his clearing during the next year, they must in turn be surrounded by a fence; and nothing short of a very stout one will answer: so he goes on clearing and fencing, usually burning up a part of his fence whenever he burns over his new clearing; then building a new one around this, which will have to be sacrificed in its turn. I believe that many pioneers have devoted as much time to fencing their fields as to tilling them throughout their first six or eight years. It is different with those who settle on broad prairies, but not essentially better. Each pioneer must fence his patch of tillage with material which costs him more, and is procured with greater difficulty, than though he were cutting a hole in the forest. Often, when he thinks he has fenced sufficiently, the hungry, breachy cattle, who roam the open prairies around him, judge his handiwork less favorably; and he wakes some August morning, when feed is poorest outside and most luxuriant within his inclosure, to find that twenty or thirty cattle have broken through his defenses and half destroyed his growing crop. If, instead of this wasteful lack of system, a thousand or even a hundred farmers would combine to fence several square miles into one grand inclosure for cultivation, erecting their several habitations within or without its limits, as to each should be convenient-- apportioning it for cultivation, or owning it in severalty, as they should see fit--an immense economy would be secured, just when, because of their poverty, saving is most important. Their stock might range the open prairie unwatched; and they might all sleep at night in serene confidence that their corn and cabbages were not in danger of ruthless destruction. Among the settlers in our great primitive forests, the system of Coöperative Farming would have to be modified in details, while it would be in essence the same. And, once adopted with regard to fencing, other adaptations as obvious and beneficent would from day to day suggest themselves. Each pioneer would learn how to advance his own prosperity by combining his efforts with those of his neighbors. He would perceive that the common wants of a hundred may be supplied by a combined effort at less than half the cost of satisfying them when each is provided for alone. He would grow year by year into a clearer and firmer conviction that short-sighted selfishness is the germ of half the evils that afflict the human race, and that the true and sure way to a bounteous satisfaction of the wants of each is a generous and thoughtful consideration for the needs of all. * * * * * And here let me pay my earnest and thankful tribute to Mr. E. V. de Boissière, a philanthropic Frenchman, who has purchased 3,300 acres of mainly rolling prairie-land in Kansas, near Princeton, Franklin County, and is carefully, cautiously, laying thereon the foundations of a great coöperative farm, where, in addition to the usual crops, it is expected that Silk and other exotics will in due time be extensively grown and transformed into fabrics, and that various manufactures will vie with Agriculture in affording attractive and profitable employment to a considerable population. I have not been accustomed to look with favor on our new States and unpeopled Territories as an arena for such experiments, since so many of their early settlers are intent on getting rich by land-speculation--at all events, through the exercise of some others' muscles than their own--while the opportunities for and incitements to migration and relocation are so multiform and powerful. Doubtless, M. de Boissière will be often tried by stampedes of his volunteer associates, who, after the novelty of coöperative effort has worn off, will find life on his domain too tame and humdrum for their excitable and high-strung natures. I trust, however, that he will persevere through every discouragement, and triumph over every obstacle; that the right men for associates will gradually gather about him; that his enterprise and devotion will at length be crowned by a signal and inspiring success; and that thousands will be awakened by it to a larger and nobler conception of the mission of Industry, and the possibilities of achievement which stud the path of simple, honest, faithful, persistent Work. XLIII. FARMERS' CLUBS. Farmers, like other men, divide naturally into two classes--those who do too much work, and those who do too little. I know men who are no farmers at all, only by virtue of the fact that each of them inherited, or somehow acquired, a farm, and have since lived upon and out of it, in good part upon that which it could not help producing--they not doing so much as one hundred fair days' work each per annum. One of this class never takes a periodical devoted to farming; evinces no interest in county fairs or township clubs, save as they may afford him an excuse for greater idleness; and insists that there is no profit in farming. As land steadily depreciates in quality under his management, he is apt to sell out whenever the increase of population or progress of improvement has given additional value to his farm, and move off in quest of that undiscovered country where idleness is compatible with thrift, profits are realized from light crops, and men grow rich by doing nothing. The opposite class of wanderers from the golden mean is hardly so numerous as the idlers, yet it is quite a large one. Its leading embodiment, to my mind, is one whom I knew from childhood, who, born poor and nowise favored by fortune, was rated as a tireless worker from early boyhood, and who achieved an independence before he was forty years old in a rural New-England township, simply by rugged, persistent labor--in youth on the farms of other men; in manhood, on one of his own. This man was older at forty than his father, then seventy, and died at fifty, worn out with excessive and unintermitted labor, leaving a widow who greatly preferred him to all his ample wealth, and an only son who, so soon as he can get hold of it, will squander the property much faster, and even more unwisely, than his father acquired it. To the class of which this man was a fair representative, Farmers' Clubs must prove of signal value. Though there should be nothing else than a Farmers' Club in his neighborhood, it can hardly fail in time to make such a one realize that life need not and should not be all drudgery; that there are other things worth living for beside accumulating wealth. Let his wife and his neighbor succeed in drawing such a one into two or three successive meetings, and he can hardly fail to perceive that thrift is a product of brain as well as of muscle; that he may grow rich by learning and knowing as well as by delving, and that, even though he should not, there are many things desirable and laudable beside the accumulation of wealth. A true Farmers' Club should consist of all the families residing in a small township, so far as they can be induced to attend it, even though only half their members should be present at any one meeting. It should limit speeches to ten minutes, excepting only those addresses or essays which eminently qualified persons are requested to specially prepare and read. It should have a president, ready and able to repress all ill-natured personalities, all irrelevant talk, and especially all straying into the forbidden regions of political or theological disputation. At each meeting, the subject should be chosen for the next, and not less than four members pledged to make some observations thereon, with liberty to read them if unused to speaking in public. Those having been heard, the topic should be open to discussion by all present: the humblest and youngest being specially encouraged to state any facts within their knowledge which they deem pertinent and cogent. Let every person attending be thus incited to say something calculated to shed light on the subject, to say this in the fewest words possible, and with the utmost care not to annoy or offend others, and it is hardly possible that one evening per week devoted to these meetings should not be spent with equal pleasure and profit. The chief end to be achieved through such meetings is a development of the faculty of observation and the habit of reflection. Too many of us pass through life essentially blind and deaf to the wonders and glories manifest to clearer eyes all around us. The magnificent phenomena of the Seasons, even the awakening of Nature from death to life in Spring-time, make little impression on their senses, still less on their understandings. There are men who have passed forty times through a forest, and yet could not name, within half a dozen, the various species of trees which compose it; and so with everything else to which they are accustomed. They need even more than knowledge an intellectual awakening; and this they could hardly fail to receive from the discussions of an intelligent and earnest Farmers' Club. A genuine and lively interest in their vocation is needed by many farmers, and by most farmers' sons. Too many of these regard their homesteads as a prison, in which they must remain until some avenue of escape into the great world shall open before them. The farm to such is but the hollow log into which a bear crawls to wear out the rigors of Winter and await the advent of Spring. Too many of our boys fancy that they know too much for farmers, when in fact they know far too little. A good Farmers' Club, faithfully attended, would take this conceit out of them, imbuing them instead with a realizing sense of their ignorance and incompetency, and a hearty desire for practical wisdom. A recording secretary, able to state in the fewest words each important suggestion or fact elicited in the course of an evening's discussion, would be hardly less valuable or less honored than a capable president. A single page would often suffice for all that deserves such record out of an evening's discussion; and this, being transferred to a book and preserved, might be consulted with interest and profit throughout many succeeding years. No other duty should be required of the member who rendered this service, the correspondence of the Club being devolved upon another secretary. The habit of bringing grafts, or plants, or seeds, to Club meetings, for gratuitous distribution, has been found to increase the interest, and enlarge the attendance of those formerly indifferent. Almost every good farmer or gardener will sometimes have choice seeds or grafts to spare, which he does not care or cannot expect to sell, and these being distributed to the Club will not only increase its popularity, but give him a right to share when another's surplus is in like manner distributed. If one has choice fruits to give away, the Club will afford him an excellent opportunity; but I would rather not attract persons to its meetings by a prospect of having their appetites thus gratified at others' expense. A Flower-Show once in each year, and an Exhibition of Fruits and other choice products at an evening meeting in September or October, should suffice for festivals. Let each member consider himself pledged to bring to the Exhibition the best material result of his year's efforts, and the aggregate will be satisfactory and instructive. The organization of a Farmers' Club is its chief difficulty. The larger number of those who ought to participate usually prefer to stand back, not committing themselves to the effort until after its success has been assured. To obviate this embarrassment, let a paper be circulated for signatures, pledging each signer to attend the introductory meeting and bring at least a part of his family. When forty have signed such a call, success will be well-nigh assured. XLIV. WESTERN IRRIGATION. I have already set forth my belief that Irrigation is everywhere practicable, is destined to be generally adopted, and to prove signally beneficent. I do not mean that every acre of the States this side of the Missouri will ever be thus supplied with water, but that _some_ acres of every township, and of nearly every farm, should and will be. I propose herein to speak with direct reference to that large portion of our country which cannot be cultivated to any purpose without Irrigation. This region, which is practically rainless in Summer, may be roughly indicated as extending from the forks of the Platte westward, and as including all our present Territories, a portion of Western Texas, the entire State of Nevada, and at least nine-tenths of California. On this vast area, no rain of consequence falls between April and November, while its soil, parched by fervid, cloudless suns, and swept by intensely dry winds, is utterly divested of moisture to a depth of three or four feet; and I have seen the tree known as Buckeye growing in it, at least six inches in diameter, whereon every leaf was withered and utterly dead before the end of August, though the tree still lived, and would renew its foliage next Spring. Most of this broad area is usually spoken of as desert, because treeless, except on the slopes of its mountains, where certain evergreens would seem to dispense with moisture, and on the brink of infrequent and scanty streams, where the all but worthless Cotton-wood is often found growing luxuriantly. A very little low Gamma Grass on the Plains, some straggling Bunch-grass on the mountains, with an endless profusion of two poor shrubs, popularly known as Sage-brush and Grease-wood, compose the vegetation of nearly or quite a million square miles. I will confine myself in this essay to the readiest means of irrigating the Plains, by which I mean the all but treeless plateau that stretches from the base of the Rocky Mountains, 300 to 400 miles eastward, sloping imperceptibly toward the Missouri, and drained by the affluents of the Platte, the Kansas, and the Arkansas rivers. The North Platte has its sources in the western, as the South Platte has in the eastern, slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Each of them pursues a generally north-east course for some 300 miles, and then turns sharply to the eastward, uniting some 300 miles eastward of the mountains, where the Plains melt into the Prairies. Between these two rivers and the eastern base of the mountains lies an irregular delta or triangle, which seems susceptible of irrigation at a smaller cost than the residue. The location of Union Colony may be taken as a fair illustration of the process, and the facilities therefor afforded by nature. Among the streams which, taking rise in the eastern gorges of the Rocky Mountains, run into the South Platte, the most considerable has somehow acquired the French name of Cache la Poudre. It heads in and about Long's Peak, and, after emerging from the mountains, runs some 20 to 25 miles nearly due east, with a descent in that distance of about 100 feet. Its waters are very low in Autumn and Winter, and highest in May, June and July, from the melting of snow and ice on the lofty mountains which feed it. Like all the streams of this region, it is broad and shallow, with its bed but three to four feet below the plains on either side. Greeley, the nucleus of Union Colony, is located at the crossing of the Cache la Poudre by the Denver-Pacific Railroad, about midway of its course from the Kansas Pacific at Denver northward to the Union Pacific at Cheyenne. Here a village of some 400 to 500 houses has suddenly grown up during the past Summer. The first irrigating canal of Union Colony leaves the Cache la Poudre six or eight miles above Greeley, on the south side, and is carried gradually further and further from the stream until it is fully a mile distant at the village, whence it is continued to the Platte. Branches or ditches lead thence northward, conveying rills through the streets of the village, the gardens or plats of its inhabitants, and the public square, or plaza, which is designed to be its chief ornament. Other branches lead to the farms and five-acre allotments whereby the village is surrounded; as still others will do in time to all the land between the canal and the river. In due time, another canal will be taken out from a point further up the stream, and will irrigate the lands of the colony lying south of the present canal, and which are meantime devoted to pasturage in common. Taking the water out of the river is here a very simple matter. At the head of an island, a rude dam of brush and stones and earth is thrown across the bed of the stream, so as to raise the surface two or three feet when the water is lowest, and very much less when it is highest. Thus deflected, a portion of the water flows easily into the canal. A very much larger and longer canal, leaving the Cache la Poudre close to the mountains, and gradually increasing its distance from that stream to four or five miles, is now in progress by sections, and is to be completed this Winter. Its length will be thirty miles, and it will irrigate, when the necessary sub-canals shall have been constructed, not less than 40,000 acres. But it may be ten years before all this work is completed or even required. The lands most easily watered from the main canal will be first brought into cultivation; the sub-canals will be dug as they shall be wanted. At first, members of the Colony arriving at its location, hesitated to take farm allotments and build upon them, from distrust of the capacities of the soil. They saw nothing of value growing upon it; the little grass found upon it was short, thin, and brown. It was not black, like the prairies and bottoms of Illinois and Kansas, but of a light yellow snuff-color, and deemed sterile by many. But a few took hold, and planted and sowed resolutely; and, though it was too late in the season for most grains, the results were most satisfactory. Wheat sown in June produced 30 bushels to the acre; Oats did as well; while Potatoes, Beets, Turnips, Squashes, Cabbages, etc., yielded bounteously; Tomatoes did likewise, but the plants were obtained from Denver. Little was done with Indian Corn, but that little turned out well, though I judge that the Summer nights are too cold here to justify sanguine expectations of a Corn-crop--the altitude being 5,000 feet above the sea, with snow-covered mountains always visible in the west. For other Grains, and for all Vegetables and Grasses, I believe there is no better soil in the world. To many, the cost of Irrigation would seem so much added to the expense of cultivating without irrigation; but this is a mistake. Here is land entirely free from stump, or stick, or stone, which may easily and surely be plowed or seeded in March or April, and which will produce great crops of nearly every grain, grass or vegetable, with a very moderate outlay of labor to subdue and till it. The farmer need not lose three days per annum by rains in the growing season, and need not fear storm or shower when he seeks to harvest his grass or grain. Nothing like ague or any malarious disease exhausts his vitality or paralyzes his strength. I saw men breaking up for the first time tracts which had received no water, using but a single span of horses as team; whereas, breaking up in the Prairie States involves a much larger outlay of power. The advantage of early sowing is very great; that of a long planting season hardly less so. I believe a farmer in this colony may keep his plow running through October, November, and a good portion of December; start it again by the 1st of March, and commence seeding with Wheat, Oats, and Barley, and keep seeding, including planting and gardening, until the first of June, which is soon enough to plant potatoes for Winter use. Thenceforth, he may keep the weeds out of his Corn, Roots, and Vegetables, for six Weeks or two months; and, as every day is a bright working-day, he can get on much faster than he could if liable to frequent interruptions by rains. I estimate the cost of bringing water to each farm at $5 per acre, and that of leading it about in sub-ditches, so that it shall be available and applicable on every acre of that farm, at somewhat less; but let us suppose that the first cost of having water everywhere and always at command is $10 per acre, and that it will cost thereafter $1 per acre to apply it, I maintain that it is richly worth having, and that nearly every farm product can be grown cheaper by its help than on lands where irrigation is presumed unnecessary. There are not many acres laid down to grass in New-England, whether for hay or pasture, that would not have justified an outlay of $10 per acre to secure their thorough irrigation simply for this year alone. XLV. SEWAGE. The great empires of antiquity were doomed to certain decay and dissolution by a radical vice inherent in their political and social constitution. Power rapidly built up a great capital, whereto population was attracted from every quarter; and that capital became a focus of luxury and consumption. Grain, Meat, and Vegetables--the fat of the land and the spoils of the sea--were constantly absorbed by it in enormous quantities; while nothing, or, at best, very little, was returned therefrom to the continually exhausted and impoverished soil. Thus, a few ages, or at most a few centuries, sufficed to divest a vast surrounding district, first, of its fertility, ultimately of its capacity for production. And so Nineveh, Thebes, Babylon, successively ceased to be capitals, and became ruins amid deserts. Rome impoverished Italy south of the Apennines; then Sicily; and, at last, Egypt: her sceptre finally departing, because her millions could no longer be fed without dispersion. That some means must be devised whereby to return to the soil those elements which the removal of crop after crop inevitably exhausts, is a truth which has but recently begun to be clearly understood. Unluckily, the difficulty of such restoration is seriously augmented by the fact that cities, and all considerable aggregations of human beings, tend strongly in our day to locations by the sea-side, in valleys, and by the margins of rivers. Anciently, cities and villages were often built on hill-tops, or at considerable elevations, because foes could be excluded or repelled from such locations more surely, and with smaller force, than elsewhere. From such elevations, it need not have been difficult to diffuse, by means of water, all that could be gladly spared which would aid to fertilize the adjacent farms and gardens. A kindred distribution of the exuviæ of our modern cities is a far more difficult and costly undertaking, and involves bold and skillful engineering. Yet the problem, though difficult, must be solved, or our great cities will be destroyed by their own physical impurities. The growth and expansion of cities, throughout the present century, have been wholly beyond precedent; and thus the difficulty of making a satisfactory disposition of their offal has been fearfully augmented. The sewerage of our streets and houses modifies the problem, but does not solve it. Desolating epidemics, like the Plague, Yellow Fever, and the Cholera, will often visit our great cities, and decimate their people, unless means can be found to cleanse them wholly and incessantly of whatever tends to pollute and render noisome their atmosphere. SEWAGE is the term used in England to designate water which, having been slightly impregnated with the feculence and ordure of a city or village, is diffused over a farm or farms adjacent, in order to impart at once fertility and moisture to its soil. To secure an equable and thorough dissemination of Sewage, it is essential that the land to which it is applied, if not originally level or nearly so, shall be brought into such condition that the impregnated water may be applied to its entire surface, and shall thence settle into, moisten, and fertilize, each cubic inch of the soil. This involves a very considerable initial outlay; but the luxuriance of the crops unfailingly produced, under the influence of this vivifying irrigation, abundantly justifies and rewards that outlay. As yet, the application of Sewage is in its infancy; since the perfect and total conversion of all that a great city excretes into the most available food for plants, requires not only immense mains and reservoirs, with a costly network of distributing dykes or ditches, but novel appliances in engineering, and a large investment of time as well as money. Years must yet elapse before all the excretions of a great city like London or New-York can thus be transmuted into the means of fertilizing whole counties in their vicinity. But the work is already well begun, and another generation will see it all but completed. Meantime, many smaller cities, more eligibly located for the purpose, are already enriching by their Sewage the rural districts adjacent, which they had previously tended strongly to impoverish. Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is among them. The little village of Romford, England, is one of those which have recently been made to contribute by Sewage to this beneficent end; and a visit of inspection paid to it, on the 15th of October last, by the London Board of Works, elicited accounts of the process and its results, in the London journals, which afforded hints for and incitement to similar undertakings in this and other countries--undertakings which may be postponed, but the only question is one of time. _The Daily News_ of Oct. 17th, says: "Breton's Farm consists of 121 acres of light and poor gravelly soil; and it now receives the whole available sewage of the town of Romford--that is, of about 7,000 persons. This is conveyed to the land by an iron pipe of 18 inches in diameter, which is laid under ground, and discharges its contents into an open tank. From this tank, the sewage is pumped to a height of 20 feet, and is then distributed over the land by iron or concrete troughs, or 'carriers,' fitted with sluices and taps, so that the amount of sewage applied to any given portion of the field can be regulated with the greatest facility and nicety. To insure the regular and even flow of the sewage when discharged from the carriers, it was necessary to lay out the land with mathematical accuracy; and it has been leveled and formed by the theodolite into rectilinear beds of uniform width of thirty feet, slightly inclining from the centres, along which the sewage is applied. The carriers or open troughs, by which the sewage is conveyed, run along the top of each series of these beds or strikes; and at the bottom there is in every case a good road, by means of which free access is provided for a horse and cart, or for the steam plow--the use of which is in contemplation--to every bed and crop. These arrangements--the carrying out of which involved the removal of six hundred trees and a great length of heavy fences, the filling up of a number of ditches and no less than nine ponds, as well as the complete underdraining of the whole farm--were mainly effected last year; but it was not until the middle of April, 1870, that Mr. Hope received any of this sewage from the town of Romford, and not until the following month that he obtained both the day and night supply. Satisfactory, therefore, as have been the results of the present season's operations, they have been obtained under disadvantageous circumstances, and cannot be regarded as affording complete evidence of the benefits which may be derived from the application of sewage to even a poor and thin soil, which had already ruined more than one of those who had attempted to cultivate it. To mention only one drawback which arose from the lateness of the period at which the sewage was first received, Mr. Hope had not the advantage of being able to apply it to his seed-beds: and thus many, if not all his plants were not ready for setting out so early as they would be in a future year, and some of the crops have suffered in consequence--that is to say, have suffered in a comparative sense. Speaking positively, they have in all instances been much larger, not only than any that could have been grown upon the same land without the use of sewage, but than any which have been raised from much superior land in the immediate neighborhood. The crops which have been or are being raised on different parts of the firm, are of diverse character; but, with all, the method of cultivation adopted has been attended with almost equal success. Italian rye-grass, beans, peas, mangolds, carrots, broccoli, cabbages, savoys, beet-root, Batavia yams, Jersey cabbages, and Indian corn, have all grown with wonderful rapidity and yielded abundant harvests under the stimulating and nourishing influence of the Romford sewage. The visitors of Saturday last, as they tramped over the farm under the guidance of its energetic proprietor, had an opportunity of witnessing the abundance and excellence of many of these crops. Even where the mangolds, from being planted late, had not attained any extraordinary size, it was noticeable that the plants were especially vigorous, and that there was not a vacant space in any of the rows. All the plants which had been placed in the ground had thriven, and would give a good return. Where this crop had been specially treated with a view to forthcoming shows, the roots had attained an enormous size, and, like some of the cabbages, had assumed almost gigantic proportions. The carrots were very fine and well-grown, and the heads of the Walcheren broccoli were as white, and firm, and crispy, as the finest cauliflowers; while the savoys, of unusual size and weight, were as round and hard as cannon balls; and some of the drumhead cabbages, although equally distinguished for closeness and firmness, were large enough in the heart to hold a good-sized child, and might, as was suggested upon the ground, very well be introduced into some pantomimic scene representing the kingdom of Brobdingnag. The Indian corn had reached the respectable height of some eight feet, and, with few exceptions, each stalk carried a good-sized and well-filled cob or ear. These, unless we should have another spell of exceptionally hot weather, will not ripen; but in their green state they are readily eaten by horses and cattle, and prove excellent fodder. In the course of their peregrinations, Mr. Hope's guests of course paid a visit to the tank in which the sewage is received before it is pumped on the land. We need hardly say that the appearance of this miniature lake of nastiness was anything but agreeable; but its odor was by no means overpowering, nor, indeed, very offensive. The rill of bright, clear water which flowed in at one corner, and some of which was handed about in tumblers, looking as pure as the limpid stream which flows from the most effective filters that are to be seen in the windows of London dealers, had only a short time before flowed out of this hideous reservoir in a very different state. We had met it in the "carriers" flowing along in a dark, inky stream, not smelling much, but covered with an ugly gray froth which reminded one of some of the most disagreeable details in the manufacture of sugar and rum, or suggested the idea that it had been used for a very foul wash indeed. With these reminiscences fresh in one's memory, it required some courage to comply with the pressing invitations to taste this 'effluent water.' There were, however, many of the party who braved the attempt; and, by all who tasted it, the water was pronounced to be destitute of any except a slightly mineral flavor. In dry weather, this effluent water, which has passed through the land and been collected by the drains, after mixing with the sewage, is again pumped over the fields; in wet weather, it can be turned into the brook which is dignified with the name of the river Rom. * * * We have omitted to mention that the rent paid by Mr. Hope is £3 per acre, and the cost of the sewage (at 2s. per head) £6 more." --I think few thoughtful readers will doubt that here is the germ of a great movement in advance for the Agriculture of all old and densely peopled communities, and that our youngest cities and manufacturing villages may wisely consider it deeply, with a view to its ultimate if not early imitation. That we are not prepared to incur the inevitable expense of a thorough system of sewerage with reference to the application to the soil of all the fertilizing elements that a city would gladly spare, by no means proves that we should not consider and plan with a view to the ultimate creation and utilization of Sewage. XLVI. MORE OF IRRIGATION. I have thus far considered Irrigation with special reference to those limited, yet very considerable districts, which are traversed or bordered by living streams, and, having a level or slightly rolling surface, present obvious facilities for and incitements to the operation. Such are the valleys of the Platte, and of nearly or quite all its affluents after they leave the Rocky Mountains; such is the valley of the upper Arkansas; such the valleys of the Smoky Hill and the Republican, so far down as Irrigation may be considered necessary. Irrigation on all these seems to me inevitable, and certain to be speedily, though capriciously, effected. I believe a dam across either fork of the Platte, at any favorable point above their junction, raising the surface of the stream six feet, at a cost not exceeding $10,000, would suffice to irrigate completely not less than fifty square miles of the valley below it, while serving at the same time to furnish power for mills and factories to a very considerable extent; for the need of Irrigation is not incessant, but generally confined to two or three months per annum, and all of the volume of the stream not needed for Irrigation could be utilized as power. Thus the valleys of the few constant water-courses of the Plains may come at an early day to employ and subsist a dense and energetic population, engaged in the successful prosecution alike of agriculture and manufactures, while belts, groves, and forests, of choice, luxuriant timber, will diversify and embellish regions now bare of trees, and but thinly covered with dead herbage from June until the following April. But, when we rise above the bluffs, and look off across the blank, bleak areas where no living water exists, the problem becomes more difficult, and its solution will doubtless be much longer postponed. To a stranger, these bleak uplands seem sterile; and, though such is not generally the fact, the presumption will repel experiments which involve a large initial outlay. The railroad companies, which now own large tracts of these lands, will be obliged either to demonstrate their value, or to incite individuals and colonists to do it by liberal concessions. As the case stands to-day, most of these lands, which would have been dear at five cents per acre before the roads were built, could not be sold at any price to actual settlers, even with the railroad in plain sight, because of the dearth of fuel and timber, and because also the means of rendering them fruitful and their cultivation profitable are out of reach of the ordinary pioneer. Hence, so long as the valleys of the living streams proffer such obvious invitations to settlement and tillage, by the aid of Irrigation, I judge that the higher and dryer plains will mainly be left to the half-savage herdsmen who rear cattle and sheep without feeding and sheltering them, by giving them the range of a quarter-section to each bullock, and submitting to the loss of a hundred head or so after each great and cold snow-storm, as an unavoidable dispensation of Providence. But in process of time even the wild herdsmen will be softened into or replaced by regular farmers, plowing and seeding for vegetables and small grains, sheltering their habitations with trees, and sending their children to school. This change involves Irrigation; and the following are among the ways in which it will be effected: The Plains are nowhere absolutely flat (as I presume the "desert" of Sahara is not), but diversified by slopes, and swells, and gentle ridges or divides, affording abundant facilities for the distribution of water. A well, sunk on the crest of one of these divides, will be filled with living water at a depth ranging from 50 to 100 feet. A windmill of modest dimensions placed over this well will be rarely stopped for want of impelling power: Wind being, next to space, the thing most abundant on the Plains. A reservoir or pond covering three or four acres may be made adjacent to the well at a small cost of labor, by excavating slightly and using the earth to form an embankment on the lower side. The windmill, left alone, will fill the reservoir during the windy Winter and Spring months with water soon warmed in the sun, and ready to be drawn off as wanted throughout the thirsty season of vegetable growth and maturity. Carefully saved, the product of one well will serve to moisten and vivify a good many acres of grass or tillage. Such is the retail plan applicable to the wants of solitary farmers; but I hope to see it supplemented and invigorated by the extensive introduction of Artesian wells, whereof two, by way of experiment, are now in progress at Denver and Kit Carson respectively. I need not here describe the Artesian well, farther than to say that it is made by boring to a depth ranging from 700 to more than a 1000 feet, tubing regularly from the top downward until a stream is reached which will rise to and above the surface, flowing over the top of the tube in a stream often as large as an average stove-pipe. Such a well, after supplying a settlement or modest village with water, may be made to fill a reservoir that will sufficiently irrigate a thousand cultivated acres. Its water will usually be warmer than though obtained from near the surface, and hence better adapted to Irrigation. Of course, the Artesian well is costly, and will not soon be constructed for uses purely agricultural; but the railroads traversing the Plains and the Great Basin will sometimes be compelled to resort to one without having use for a twentieth part of the water they thus entice from the bowels of the earth; and that which they cannot use they will be glad to sell for a moderate price, thus creating oases of verdure and bounteous production. The palpable interest of railroads in dotting their long lines of desolation with such cheering contrasts of field and meadow and waving trees, render nowise doubtful their hearty coöperation with any enterprising pioneer who shall bring the requisite capital, energy, knowledge, and faith, to the prosecution of the work. These are but hasty suggestions of methods which will doubtless be multiplied, varied, and improved upon, in the light of future experience and study. And when the very best and most effective methods of subduing the Plains to the uses of civilized man shall have been discovered and adopted, there will still remain vast areas as free commons for the herdsmen and sporting-grounds for the hunter of the Elk and the Antelope, after the Buffalo shall have utterly disappeared. I do not doubt the assertion of the plainsmen that rain increases as settlements are multiplied. Crossing the Plains in 1859, I noted indications that timber had formerly abounded where none now grows; and I presume that, as young trees are multiplied in the wake of civilization, finally thickening into clumps of timber and beginning a forest, more rain will fall, and the extension of woodlands become comparatively easy. But, relatively to the country eastward of the Missouri, the Plains will always be arid and thirsty, with a pure, bracing atmosphere that will form a chief attraction to thousands suffering from or threatened with pulmonary afflictions. A million of square miles, whereon is found no single swamp or bog, and not one lake that withstands the drouth of Summer, can never have a moist climate, and never fail to realize the need of Irrigation. The Plains will in time give lessons, which even the well-watered and verdurous East may read with profit. Such level and thirsty clays as largely border Lake Champlain, for example, traversed by streams from mountain ranges on either hand, will not always be owned and cultivated by men insensible to the profit of Irrigation. Nor will such rich valleys as those of the Connecticut, the Kennebec, the Susquehanna, be left to suffer year after year from drouth, while the water which should refresh them runs idly and uselessly by. Agriculture repels innovation, and loves the beaten track; but such lessons as New-England has received in the great drouth of 1870 will not always be given and endured in vain. XLVII. UNDEVELOPED SOURCES OF POWER. The more I consider the present state of our Agriculture, the more emphatic is my discontent with the farmer's present sources and command of power. The subjugation and tillage of a farm, like the running of a factory or furnace, involves a continual use of Power; but the manufacturer obtains his from sources which supply it cheaply and in great abundance, while the farmer has been content with an inferior article, in limited supply, at a far heavier cost. Yet the stream which turns the factory's wheels and sets all its machinery in motion traverses or skirts many farms as well, and, if properly harnessed, is just as ready to speed the plow as to impel the shuttles of a woolen-mill, or revolve the cylinders of a calico-printery. Nature is impartially kind to all her children; but some of them know how to profit by her good-will far more than others. No doubt, we all have much yet to learn, and our grandchildren will marvel at the proofs of stupidity evinced in our highest achievements; but I am not mistaken in asserting that, as yet, the farmers' control of Nature's free gifts of power is very far inferior to that of nearly every other class of producers. I have been having much plowing done this Fall--in my orchards, for what I presume to be the good of the trees; on my drained swamp, because it is not yet fully subdued and sweetened, and I judge that the Winter's freezing and thawing will aid to bring it into condition. And then my swamp lies so low and absolutely flat that the thaws and rains of Spring render plowing it in season for Oats, or any other crop that requires early seeding, a matter of doubt and difficulty. All the land I now cultivate, or seek to cultivate, has already been well plowed more than once; no stump or stone impedes progress in the tracts I have plowed this Fall; yet a good plow, drawn by two strong yoke of oxen, rarely breaks up half an acre per day; and I estimate two acres per week about what has been averaged, at a cost of $18 for the plowman and driver; offsetting the oxen's labor against the work done by the men at the barn and elsewhere apart from plowing. In other words: I am confident that my plowing has cost me, from first to last, at least, $10 per acre, and would have cost still more if it had been done as thoroughly as it ought. I am quite aware that this is high--that sandy soils and dry loams are plowed much cheaper; and that farmers who plow wall (with whom I do not rank those who scratch the earth to a depth of four or five inches) do it at a much lower rate. Still, I estimate the average cost in this country of plowing land twelve inches deep at $5 per acre; and I am confident that it does not cost one cent less. Nor is cost the only discouragement. There is not half so much nor so thorough plowing among us, especially in the Fall; as there should be. The soil is, for a good part of the time, too dry or too wet; the weather is inclement, or the ground is frozen: so the plow must stand still. At length, the signs are auspicious; the ground is in just the right condition; and we would gladly plow ten, twenty, fifty acres during the brief period wherein it remains so; but this is impossible. Others want to improve the opportunity as well as we; extra teams are rarely to be had at any price; and our own slow-moving oxen refuse to be hurried. Standing half a mile off, you can see them move; if your eye-sight is keen, and you have some stationary object interposed whereby to take an observation; but it is as much as ever. If your soil is such that you can use horses, you get on, of course, much faster; but all that you gain in breadth you are apt to lose in depth. There may be spans that will take the plow right along though you sink it to the beam; but they are sure to be slow travelers. I never knew a span that would plow an acre per day as I think it should be plowed; though, if your only object be to get over as much ground as possible, you may afflict and titillate two acres, or as much more as you please. Now, I have before me a letter to _The Times_ (London) by Mr. William Smith, of Woolston, Bucks, who states that he has just harvested his fifteenth annual crop cultivated by steam-power, and has prepared his land for the sixteenth; and he gives details, showing that he breaks up and ridges heavy clay soils at the rate of six acres per day, and plows lands already in tillage at the rate of fully nine acres per day. He gives the total cost, (including wear and tear,) of breaking up a foot deep and ridging 65 acres in September and October in this year, 1870, at £20 _6s. 6d._ or about $100 in gold: call it $112 in our greenbacks, and still it falls considerably below $2 (greenbacks) per acre. Say that labor and fuel are twice as dear in this country as in England, and this would make the cost of thoroughly pulverizing by steam-power a heavy clay soil to a depth of twelve inches less than $4 per acre here. I do not believe this could be done by animal power at $10 per acre, not considering the difficulty of getting it thoroughly done at all. Mr. Smith pertinently says: "Horse-power could not give at any cost such valuable work as this steam-power ridging and subsoiling is." He tills 166 acres in all, making the cost of steam-plowing his stubble-land _4s. 8-1/2d._ per acre (say $1.30 greenback). And he gives this interesting item: "No. 5, light land, 12 acres, was ridge-plowed and subsoiled last year for beans: that operation left the land, after the bean-crop came off, in so nice a state, that cultivating once over with horses, at a cost of _2s._ per acre, was all that was needed this Autumn for wheat next year. The wheat was drilled four days back." --Now I am not commending Steam as the best source of power in aid of Agriculture. I hope we shall be able to do better ere long. I recognize the enormous waste involved in the movement of an engine, boiler, etc., weighing several tons, back and forth across our fields, and apprehend that it must be difficult to avoid a compression of the soil therefrom. A stationary engine and boiler at either end of the field, hauling a gang of plows this way and that by means of ropes and pulleys, must involve a very heavy outlay for machinery and a considerable cost in its removal from farm to farm, or even from field to field. Either of these may be the best device yet perfected; but we are bound to do better in time. Precisely how and when the winds which sweep over our fields shall be employed to pulverize and till the soil, are among the many things I do not know; but, that the end will yet be achieved, I undoubtingly trust. I know somewhat--not much--of what has been done and is doing, both in Europe and America, to extend and diversify the utilization of wind as a source of power, and to compress and retain it so that the gale which sweeps over a farm to-night may afford a reserve or fund of power for its cultivation on the morrow or thereafter. I know a little of what has been devised and done toward converting and transmitting, through the medium of compressed air, the power generated by a waterfall--say Niagara or Minnehaha--so that it may be expended and utilized at a distance of miles from its source, impelling machinery of all kinds at half the cost of steam. I know vaguely of what is being done with Electricity, with an eye to its employment in the production of power, by means of enginery not a tenth so weighty and cumbrous as that required for the generation and utilization of Steam, and by means of a consumption (that is, transformation) of materials not a hundredth part so bulky and heavy as the water and steam which fill the boilers of our factories and locomotives. I am no mechanician, and will not even guess from what source, through what agencies, the new power will be vouch-safed us which is in time to pulverize our fields to any required depth with a rapidity, perfection, and economy, not now anticipated by the great body of our farmers. But my faith in its achievement is undoubting; and, though I may not live to see it, I predict that there are readers of this essay who will find the forces abundantly generated all around us by the spontaneous movement of Wind, Water, and Electricity--one or more, and probably by all of them--so utilized and wielded as to lighten immensely the farmer's labor, while quadrupling its efficiency in producing all by which our Earth ministers to the sustenance and comfort of man. XLVIII. RURAL DEPOPULATION. Complaint is widely made of a decrease in the relative population of our rural districts; and not without reason, or, at least, plausibility. I presume the Census of 1870 will return no more farmers in the State of New York, and probably some fewer in New England, than were shown by the Census of 1860. The very considerable augmentation of the number of their people will be found living wholly in the cities and incorporated villages. I doubt whether there are more farmers in the State of New York to-day than there were in 1840, though the total population has meantime doubled. Many farms have been transformed into country-seats for city bankers, merchants, and lawyers; others have been consolidated, so that what were formerly two or three, now constitute but one; and, though every body says, "Our farms are too large for our capital," "We run over too much land," etc., etc., yet, I can hear of few farms that have been, or are expected to be, divided, except into village or city lots; while the prevalent tendency is still the other way. An inefficient farmer dies heavily in debt, or is sold out by the sheriff: his farm is rarely divided between two purchasers, while it is quite often absorbed into the estate of some thrifty neighbor; and thus small farmers are selling out and moving westward much oftener than large ones. Such are the obvious facts: now for some of the reasons: I. Our State, like New England, was originally all but covered by a heavy growth of forest. The removal of this timber involved very much hard work, most of which has been done in this century, and much of it by the present generation. When I first traversed Chautauqua County, forty-three years ago, from two-thirds to three-fourths of her acres must have been still covered with the primeval forest--a tall, heavy growth of Beech, Maple, Hemlock, White Pine, etc., which yielded very slowly to the efforts of the average chopper. Many a pioneer gave half his working hours for twenty years to the clearing off of Timber, Fencing, cutting out roads, etc., and had not sixty acres in arable condition at the last. Outside of the villages, the population of that county was probably as great in 1830 as it is to-day, though the annual production of her tillage was not half what it now is. Her farms are now made; her remaining woodlands are worth about as much per acre as her tillage; there is now comparatively little timber-cutting, or land-clearing; and two-thirds of the pioneers, or their sons who inherited their farms, have sold out, or been sold out, and pushed further westward. Meantime, Grazing and Dairying have extensively supplanted Grain-growing; and farmers who found more work than they could do on 60 or 80 acres, now manage 160 to 320 acres with ease. I do not say that they ought not to farm better; I only state the facts that they thrive by this dairy-farming, and are not exhausting their lands. And what is true of Chautauqua is measurably true of half the rural Counties in our State. II. Formerly, Wood was the only fuel known to our farmers, while immense quantities of it were burned in our cities, at the salt-works, etc. At present, wood is scarcely used for fuel, except as kindling, in any of our cities, villages, or manufactories, while the consumption of Coal by our farmers is already very large, and rapidly extending. All this reduces the demand for labor on our farms and in our forests, while increasing the corresponding demand in the Coal Mines, and on the railroads. Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, has doubled her population within the last twelve or fourteen years; and this at the expense of our rural districts. III. Our agricultural implements and machinery grow annually more effective, and at the same time more costly. The outfit of a good farm costs five-fold what it did forty years ago. The farmer makes and secures his Hay far more rapidly and effectively than his father did, but pays far more for Reapers, Mowers, Rakers, etc.; in other words, he makes Winter work abridge that of Summer--makes a hundred days' work in some village or city save thrice as many days' work on his farm. This enhances his profits, but swells our urban, while it diminishes our rural population. IV. Much has been said of the degeneracy and increasing sterility of the New England Puritan stock. All this is shallow and absurd. There never before were so many people who proudly traced their origin to a New England ancestry as now. What is true in the premises is this: The New England stock is becoming very widely diffused, and is giving place, to a considerable extent, to other elements in its original home. Forty years ago, at least seven-eighths of the inhabitants of Boston were of New England birth and lineage; now, hardly half are so. The descendants of the Pilgrims are scattered all over our wide country; while hundreds of thousands have flowed in from Ireland, from Germany, from Canada, to fill the places thus relinquished; and, since most of the immigrants, whether into or out of New England, seek their future homes in the spring-time of life, their children are mainly born to them after rather than before their migration. The Yankees have no fewer children than formerly; but they are now born in Minnesota, in Illinois, in Kansas; while those born in New England are, for identical reasons, in large proportion of Irish or of Canadian parentage. There are New England townships, whereof most of the heads of families are long past the prime of life; their children having left them for more attractive localities, and the work on their farms being now done mainly by foreign-born employés. As a general rule, the boys first wandered off; leaving the girls only the alternative of following, or dying in maidenhood. Marked diversities of race, of creed, and of education, have thus far prevented any considerable intermingling of the Yankee with the foreign element by marriage. And what is true of New England is measurably true of our own State. I have not intended by these observations to combat the assumption that our people too generally prefer other employments to farming. The obstacles to effective modern Agriculture--that is, to agriculture prosecuted by the help of efficient machinery--presented by that incessant alternation of rock and bog, which characterizes New England and some parts of New York, I have already noted; and they interpose a serious, discouraging impediment to agricultural progress. A farm intersected by two or three swamps and brooks, separated by steep, rocky, ridges, and dotted over with pebbly knolls, sometimes giving place to a strip of sterile sand, is far more repulsive to the capable, intelligent farmer of to-day than it was to his grandfather. So far as my observation extends, there are more New England farms on which you cannot, than on which you can, find ten acres in one unbroken area suitable for planting to Corn, or sowing to Winter Grain. Hence, Agriculture in the East will always seem petty and irregular when brought into contrast with the prairie cultivation of the West. Grain can never be grown here so cheaply nor so abundantly as there; while the tendency of our pastures to cover themselves over with moss and worthless shrubs, unless frequently broken up and reseeded, makes even dairying more difficult and costly in New England and along its western border than in almost any other part of our country. Yet, these discouragements are balanced by compensations. Timber springs luxuriantly and grows rapidly throughout this region; while our harsh, capricious climate gives to our Hickory, White Oak, White Ash, and other varieties, qualities unknown to such grown elsewhere, while prized everywhere. Apples, and most fruits of the Temperate Zone, do well with us; while our cities and manufacturing villages proffer most capacious markets. Potatoes and other edible roots produce liberally, and generally command good prices. Hay sells for $12 to $30 per ton, is easily grown, and is in eager and increasing demand. We ought to produce twice our present crop from the same area, and have need of every pound of it; for neither our cattle nor our sheep are nearly so numerous nor so well fed as they should be. In short, there is money to be made, by those who have means and know how, by buying New England farms, tilling them better, and growing much larger crops than their present occupants have done. There are many who can do better in the West; but the right men can still make money by farming this side of the Susquehanna and the Genesee; and I would gladly incite some thousands more of them to try. XLIX. LARGE AND SMALL FARMS. There is fascination for most minds in naked magnitude. The young colonel, who can hardly handle a brigade effectively in battle, would like of all things to command a great army; and the tiller of fifty rugged acres has his ravishing dreams of the delights inherent in a great Western farm, with its square miles of corn-fields, and its thousands of cattle. Each of them is partly right and partly wrong. There are generals capable of commanding 100,000 men, Napoleon says there were two such in his day--himself and another: and these generally find the work they are fit for, without special effort or aspiration. So there are men, each of whom can really farm a township, not merely let a herd of cattle roam over it unfed and unsheltered, living and dying as may chance: the owners expecting to grow rich by their natural increase. This _ranching_ is not properly farming at all, but a very different and far ruder art. I judge that the farmers who can really till--or even graze--several thousand acres of land, so as to realize a fair interest on its value, are even scarcer than the farms so capacious. But there is such a thing as farming on a large scale; and it is a good business for those who understand it, and have all the means it requires. The farmer who annually grows a thousand acres of good Grain, and takes reasonable care of a thousand head of Cattle, is to be held in all honor. He will usually grow both his Grain and his Beef cheaper than a small farmer could do it, and will generally find a good balance on the right side when he makes up and squares his accounts of a year's operations. I could recommend no man to run into debt for a great farm, expecting that farm to work him out of it but he who inherited or has acquired a large farm, well stocked, and knows how to make it pay, may well cling to it, and count himself fortunate in its possession. But the great farmer is already regarded with sufficient envy. Most boys would gladly be such as he is; the difficulty in the case is that they lack the energy, persistency, resolution, and self-denial, requisite for its achievement. We will leave large farms and farming to recommend themselves, while we consider more directly the opportunities and reasonable expectations of the small farmer. The impression widely current that money cannot be made on a small farm--that, in farming, the great fish eat up the little ones--is deduced from very imperfect data. I have admitted that Grain and Beef can usually be produced at less cost on great than on small farms, though the rule is not without exceptions. I only insist that there are room and hope for the small farmer also, and that large farming can never absorb nor enable us to dispense with small farms. I. And first with regard to Fruit. Some Tree-Fruits, as well as Grapes, are grown on a large scale in California--it is said, with profit. But nearly all our Pears, Apples, Cherries, Plums, etc., are grown by small farmers or gardeners, and are not likely to be grown otherwise. All of them need at particular seasons a personal attention and a vigilance which can seldom or never be accorded by the owners or renters of large farms. Should small farms be generally absorbed into larger, our Fruit-culture would thenceforth steadily decline. II. The same is even more true of the production of Eggs and the rearing of Fowls. I have had knowledge of several attempts at producing Eggs and Fowls on a large scale in this country, but I have no trustworthy account of a single decided success in such an enterprise. On the contrary, many attempts to multiply Fowls by thousands have broken down, just when their success seemed secure. Some contagious disease, some unforeseen disaster, blasted the sanguine expectations of the experimenter, and transmuted his gold into dross. Yet, I judge that there is no industry more capable of indefinite extension, with fair returns, than Fowl-breeding on a moderate scale. Eggs and Chickens are in universal demand. They are luxuries appreciated alike by rich and poor; and they might be doubled in quantity without materially depressing, the market. Our thronged and fashionable watering-places are never adequately supplied with them; our cities habitually take all they can get and look around for more. I believe that twice the largest number of Chickens ever yet produced in one year might be reared in 1871, with profit to the breeders. Even if others should fail, the home market found in each family would prove signally elastic. This industry should especially commend itself to poor widows, struggling to retain and rear their children in frugal independence. A widow who, in the neighborhood of a city or of a manufacturing village, can rent a cottage with half an acre of southward-sloping, sunny land, which she may fence so tightly as to confine her Hens therein, whenever their roaming abroad would injure or annoy her neighbors, and who can incur the expense of constructing thereon a warm, commodious Hen-house, may almost certainly make the production of Eggs and Fowls a source of continuous profit. If she can obtain cheaply the refuse of a slaughter-house for feed, giving with it meal or grain in moderate quantities, and according that constant, personal, intelligent supervision, without which Fowl-breeding rarely prospers, she may reasonably expect it to pay, while affording her an occupation not subject to the caprices of an employer, and not requiring her to spend her days away from home. III. Though the ordinary Market Vegetables may be grown on large farms, the fact that they seldom are is significant. Cabbages, Peas, Poled Beans, Tomatoes, and even Potatoes, are mainly grown on small farms, as they always have been. There are sections wherein no cash market for Vegetables exists or can be relied on; and here they will continue to be grown to the extent only of the growers' respective needs; but wherever the prevalence of manufactures or the neighborhood of a great city gives reasonable assurance of a market, they are grown at a profit per acre which is rarely realized from a Grain-crop. No less than $100 per acre is often, if not generally, achieved by the growers of Cabbage around this city; and this not from rich, deep garden-mold, but from fair farming land, underdrained, subsoiled, and liberally manured. The careless, slipshod farmer may do better--that is, he will not fail so signally--in Grain cultivation; but there are few more decided or brilliant successes than have been achieved within the last few years within sight of this City, and wholly in the tillage of small farms. I trust I have here said enough to show that there is a legitimate and promising field for agricultural enterprise and effort, other than that which contemplates the acquisition and rule of a township, and that, while farming on a large area is to many attractive and inspiring, there are scope and incitement also for tillage on a humbler scale--for tillage that permits no weed to ripen seed, and no nest of caterpillars to flourish a month undisturbed--for tillage that achieves large crops and profits from small areas, and rejoices in that neatness and perfection of culture attainable only in the management of small farms. L. EXCHANGE AND DISTRIBUTION. The machinery whereby the farmer of our day converts into cash or other values that portion of his products which is not consumed in his house or on his farm, seems to me lamentably imperfect. Let me illustrate my meaning: After three all but fruitless years, we have this year a bountiful Apple-crop, in this State and (I believe) throughout the North. Our old orchards being still, for the most part, preserved and in bearing condition, while a good many young ones, planted ten to twenty years ago, begin to fruit considerably, we had, throughout the three Fall months, a superabundance of this homely, wholesome, palatable fruit. It should have been cheap for the great body of our mechanics and laborers to provide their families with all the ripe, good Apples that they could consume without injuring themselves by gluttony. Good Apples should have been constantly displayed on every workingman's table, to be eaten raw as a dessert, or baked and eaten with bread and milk for breakfast or supper. Each provident housewife should now have her tub of applesauce, her barrel of dried apples, or both, for Winter use; while a dozen bushels of good keepers should be stored in every cellar, to be drawn upon from day to day during the next four or five months. In short, Apples should have been and be, from last August to next May, as common as bread and potatoes, and should have been and be as freely eaten in every household and by every fireside. How nearly have we realized this? I will not guess how many millions of bushels have rotted under the trees that bore them, been eaten by animals to little or no profit, or turned into cider that did not sell for so much as it cost, counting the Apples of no value. Living immediately on a railroad that rims into this City, wherefrom my place is 35 miles distant, I should be able to do better with Apples than most growers; and yet I judge that half my Apples were of no use to me. Many of them sold in this City for $1 per barrel, including the cask, which cost me 40 cents; and, when you have added the cost of transportation, you can guess that I had no surplus, after paying men $1.50 per day for picking and barreling them. I sold all I could to vinegar-makers at fifty cents per bushel for cider-apples--the casks being returned. But they could not take all I wished to sell them, there being so many sellers pressing to get rid of their windfalls before they rotted on their hands that even this market was glutted. That it was much worse for the farmer a dozen miles from a railroad and a hundred from the nearest city, none can doubt. I have heard that, in parts of Connecticut, cider was sold for fifty cents per barrel to whoever would furnish casks, and that their size was hardly considered. Manifestly, this left nothing for the apples. If Apples could have been daily supplied to our poorer citizens in such quantities as they could conveniently take, at from fifty to seventy-five cents per bushel, according to quality and comeliness, I am confident that this City and its suburbs would have taken Two or Three Millions of bushels more than they have done; and the same is true of other cities. But the poor rarely buy a barrel of Apples at once; and they have been required to pay as much for half a peck as I could get for a bushel just like them. In other words: the hucksters and middlemen set so high a price on their respective services in dividing up a barrel of Apples and conveying them from the rural producer to the urban consumer that a large portion of the farmer's apples must rot on his hands or be sold by him for less than the cost of harvesting, while the poor of the cities find them too dear to be freely eaten. Nor are Apples singular in this respect. I would like to grow a thousand bushels of English (round) and French or Swede Turnips per annum if I could be sure of getting $1 per barrel for them delivered at the railroad. If the poor of this City could buy such Turnips throughout their season by the half peck at the rate of $2 per barrel, I believe they would buy and eat many more than they do. But they are usually asked twenty-five cents per half peck, which is at the rate of $5 per barrel; and at this rate they hold them too dear for every-day use. So the Turnips are not grown, or the cattle are invited to clear them off before they rot and become worthless and nuisance. Quite often, a green youth undertakes to get rich by farming near some great city. He has heard and believes that Cabbages bring from $5 to $8 and even $10 per hundred, Squashes from $10 to $25 per hundred, Watermelons from $20 to $50, and so on. He has made his calculations on this basis, and sanguinely expects to make money rapidly. But his products, in the first place, fall short of his estimates; they are not ready for market so soon as he expected they would be; and, when at length they are ready, every one else seems to have rushed in ahead of him. The market is glutted; no one seems to want his "truck" at any figure; he sells it for a song, and quits farming disgusted and bankrupt. May be, his stuff would have sold much better next week or the week after; but he could not afford to bring it to market and take it back day after day, on the chance that the demand for it would improve by-and-by. I judge that more young men have on this account turned their backs on farming, after a brief trial, than on any other. They might have borne up against the shortness of their crops, hoping for better luck next time; but the necessity for selling them for a price that would not have reimbursed their cost, had they been ever so luxuriant, utterly disheartens and alienates them. I preach no crusade against hucksters and middlemen. I hold them, in the actual state of things, benefactors to both producers and consumers. In so far as they deal honestly and meet promptly their obligations, they deserve commendation rather than reproach. What I urge is, that more economical and efficient machinery of exchange and distribution ought to be devised and set at work--machinery that would do all that is required at a moderate, reasonable cost. I would like to see one of our solvent, well-managed Railroads advertise that it would henceforth buy at any of its stations all the farmers' produce that might be offered, and pay the highest prices that the state of the markets would justify. Let its agents purchase whatever came along--a basket of eggs, a coop of chickens, a barrel of apples, a sack of beans, a pail of currants--anything that could be sold in the city to which it runs, and which would conduce to human sustenance or comfort. Its object should be Freight--the rapid and vast increase of its transportations, not extra profit on the articles transported. But let its agents be ready to buy at fair prices whatever was offered, paying cash down, and pushing everything purchased directly into market, so as to have the money back to buy more with directly. The Railroad Company, thus owning nearly everything edible it brought into market, would buy and sell at uniform prices, and not bid against itself, as a crowd of hucksters and middlemen will often do. I am confident that a Railroad that would inaugurate this system on a right basis, saying to every farmer living near it, "Grow whatever your soil is best adapted to, and bring it to our station: there, you shall have cash down for it, at the highest price we can afford to give," would rapidly double and quadruple its freights, and would thus build up a business which has no parallel under the present system. It is urged, in opposition to this proposal, that a Railroad so managed would monopolize markets, and deal on its own terms with the producer and consumer. If there were but one railroad entering a great city, and no other mode of reaching it, this objection would be plausible, but not in the actual case. Whoever chose would be at liberty to start an opposition, and to use the railroad or dispense with it as he found advisable. LI. WINTER WORK. THE dearth of employment in Winter for farm laborers is a great and growing evil. Thousands, being dismissed from work on the farms in November, drift away to some city, under a vague, mistaken impression that there must be work at some rate where so much is being done and so many require service, and squander their means and damage their morals in fruitless quest of what is not there to be had. When Spring at length arrives, they sneak back to the rural districts, ragged, penniless, debauched, often diseased, and every way deteriorated, by their Winter plunge. For their sakes not only, but for the sakes also of those who will employ and those who must work with them hereafter, this drifting to the cities should be stopped. In its present magnitude, it is a very modern evil. Far within my recollection, there was timber to cut and haul to the saw-mill, wood to cut, draw, and prepare for the year's fuel, with forest-land to be cleared and fitted for future cultivation, even in New-England. Those who chose to work with ax or team were seldom idle in Winter. Now, there is little timber to cut, little land to clear, and coal is rapidly supplanting wood as fuel. So a larger and larger number of farm laborers is annually turned off when the ground freezes to live as they may for the next three or four months. I recognize the right of the farmer, who has given twelve or more hours per day to the tillage of his acres and the saving of his crops throughout the genial months, to take the world more easily in Winter. He should now have leisure to return visits, to post and balance his books, and to improve his mind by study and reflection. Having worked hard when he must, he ought to rest and recuperate when he can. But he gravely errs who supposes that, the ground being frozen, there is no longer work to be done on the farm until the ground is fit to plow again. On the contrary, he who realizes that the farmer is a manufacturer of food and fibrous substances from raw materials of far inferior value must see that, so soon as one harvest has been secured, the cultivator should devote his attention to the collection and utilization of the elements wherefrom a larger crop may be obtained from the same acres next season. And first as to Muck. No one who has not valued and sought it is likely to know how generally abundant and accessible this material is. I have found it in inexhaustible supply on the land of a pretty good cultivator who, after working a fair farm ten years, sold it because (as he supposed) it was destitute of this basis of extensive fertilization. "Seek, and ye shall find," implies that those who do not seek will rarely find; and such is the fact. Where rock abounds, Muck is rarely wanting. It covers many thousand acres of Jersey sands, where rock is unknown; but show me a region ridged or ribbed with rock, and I shall confidently expect to find Muck on it, though none has been known or supposed to exist there. And he who either has or can buy a bed of Muck within half a mile of his barn, his sty, his hen-house, may dig and draw from it all Winter with a moral certainty that it will generously reward his outlay. Begin as soon after haying as you can spare the time, and cut an outlet so deep that you may thereafter work dryshod; thenceforth, dig and pile on the nearest accessible spot of dry ground, to be drawn away to the barn-yard and out-houses as opportunity presents itself. But, even though you have done nothing till the ground freezes, do not say it is now too late, but set to work. You can often team in Winter where you could not at any other season; and, in digging Muck from a swamp or bog well frozen over, you are not apt to be troubled with water. Draw all you can; but dig much more; for no money at lawful interest pays so well as Muck left to dry and cure for months before you draw it. I think I do not over-estimate the average value of a cubic yard of Muck, well cured and mixed with warmer fertilizers before application to the soil, at one dollar; and I think there are few farmers in the Old Thirteen States who cannot obtain it for less than that. Where Muck is not to be had, I believe the tiller of a sandy or gravelly farm who can get access to a bed or bank of clay may profitably dig and draw this, to be used as he would use Muck if he had it, and even for direct application to the soil. I do not think this method the most advisable; yet I feel sure that clay spread over a sandy or gravelly field that has been laid down to grass is worth fifty cents per cubic yard wherever Hay is worth $12 per tun; but I would wish to apply it not later than December. He who has fit places of deposit should draw all his Lime, Plaster, and other commercial fertilizers, in Winter, so as to be ready for use when required. Mix your Lime while fresh from the kiln with Muck, at the rate of a bushel of the former to a cubic yard of the latter, and the Muck will be ready for use far sooner than it otherwise would be. Be careful _not_ to mix Lime with animal manures in any case, since it expels Ammonia, whereas the sulphur of Plaster combines with that volatile element and fixes it. There are some farmers who do, but twenty times as many who do not, use Plaster enough about their stables and pig-pens. They ought to realize that a bad smell implies a waste of Ammonia, which a farmer, unless very rich, can hardly afford. Fences should all be scrutinized as Winter goes off, and put into thorough condition for next season's service. Fruit-trees should be relieved of all dead or dying branches, all suckers, and cut back where towering to high, or spreading too wide. It may be better for the trees to do all pruning in May or June; but the farmer who defers it to that season is very likely to be hurried into postponing it to another year--and another. There is scarcely a forest of second or later growth which would not pay for thinning and trimming, if well done. That which is out may be turned to good account as bean-poles, pea-brush, Summer fuel, etc., while that which is left will grow faster, taller, and more shapely, to reward you doubly for your pains. --These are but suggestions. Any farmer can add to or improve upon them if he will give an hour's thought to the subject. The best laborers can be hired for a full year at a price not very much exceeding that which will secure their services for eight or nine months. In the interest alike of good crops and good morals, I urge every one who can to resolve that he will henceforth hire by the year, or in some way manage to employ his laborers in Winter as well as in Summer. LII. SUMMING UP. In the foregoing essays, I have set forth, as clearly as I could, the facts within my knowledge which seem calculated to cast light upon the farmer's vocation, and the principles or rules of action which they have suggested to my mind. I have been careful not to throw any false, delusive halo over this indispensable calling, and by no means to induce the belief that the farmer's lot is necessarily and uniformly a happy one. I know that his is not the royal road to rapid acquisition, and that few men are likely to amass great wealth by quietly tilling the soil. I know, moreover, that what passes for farming among us is not so noble, so intellectual, so attractive, a pursuit as it might and should be--that most farmers might farm better and live to better purpose than they do. Of all the false teaching, I most condemn that which flatters farmers as though they were demigods and their calling the grandest and the happiest ever followed by mortals, when the hearer, unless very green, must feel that the speaker doesn't believe one word of all be utters; for, if he did, he would be farming, instead of living by some profession, and talking as though his auditors did not know wheat from chaff. I regard the Agriculture of this country as very far below the standard which, it should ere this have reached: I hold that the great mass of our cultivators might and should farm better than they do, and that better farming would render their sons better citizens and better men. If a single line of this little work should seem calculated to cajole its readers into self-complacency rather than instruct them, I beg them to believe that their impression wrongs my purpose. I am fully aware that others have treated my theme with fuller knowledge and far greater ability than I brought to its discussion. "Then why not leave them the field?" Simply because, when all have written who can elucidate my theme, at least three-fourths of those who ought to study and ponder it will not have read any treatise whatever upon Agriculture--will hardly have yet regarded it as a theme whereon books should be written and read. And, since there may be some who will read this treatise for its writer's sake--will read it when they could not be persuaded to do like honor to a more elaborate and erudite work--I have written in the hope of arousing in some breasts a spirit of inquiry with regard to Agriculture as an art based on Science--a spirit which, having been awakened, will not fall again into torpor, but which will lead on to the perusal and study of profounder and better books. In the foregoing essays, I have sought to establish the following propositions: 1. That _good_ farming is and must ever be a paying business, subject, like all others, to mischances and pull-backs, and to the general law that the struggle up from nothing to something is ever an arduous and almost always a slow process. In the few instances where wealth and distinction have been swiftly won, they have rarely proved abiding. There are pursuits wherein success is more envied and dazzling than in Agriculture; but there is none wherein efficiency and frugality are more certain to secure comfort and competence. 2. Though the poor man must often go slowly, where wealth may attain perfection at a bound, and though he may sometimes seem compelled to till fields not half so amply fertilized as they should be, it is nevertheless inflexibly true that bounteous crops are grown at a profit, while half and quarter crops are produced at a loss. A rich man may afford to grow poor crops, because he can afford to lose by his year's farming, while the poor man cannot. He ought, therefore, to till no more acres than he can bring into good condition--to sow no seed, plow no field, where he is not justified in expecting a good crop. Better five acres amply fertilized and thoroughly tilled than twenty acres which can at best make but a meager return, and which a dry or a wet season must doom to partial if not absolute failure. 3. In choosing a location, the farmer should resolve to choose once for all. Roaming from State to State, from section to section, is a sad and far too common mistake. Not merely is it true that "The rolling stone gathers no moss," but the farmer who wanders from place to place never acquires that intimate knowledge of soil and climate which is essential to excellence in his vocation. He cannot read the clouds and learn when to expect rain, when he may look for days of sunshine, as he could if he had lived twenty years on the same place. Choose your home in the East, the South, the Center, the West, if you will (and each section has its peculiar advantages); but choose once for all, and, having chosen, regard that choice as final. 4. Our young men are apt to plunge into responsibilities too hastily. They buy farms while they lack at once experience and means, incur losses and debts by consequent miscalculations, and drag through life a weary load, which sours them against their pursuit, when the fault is entirely their own. No youth should undertake to manage a farm until after several years of training for that task under the eye of a capable master of the art of tilling the soil. If he has enjoyed the requisite advantages on his father's homestead, he may possibly be qualified to manage a farm at twenty-one; but there are few who might not profitably wait and learn, in the pay of some successful cultivator, for several years longer; while I cannot recall an instance of a youth rushing out of school or a city counting-house to show old farmers how their work ought to be done, that did not result in disaster. It is very well to know what Science teaches with regard to farming; but no man was ever a thoroughly good farmer who had not spent some years in actual contact with the soil. 5. While every one says of his neighbor, "He farms too much land," the greed of acquisition does not seem at all chastened. Men stagger under loads of debt to-day, who might relieve themselves by selling off so much of their land as they cannot profitably use; but every one seems intent on holding all he can, as if in expectation of a great advance in its market value. And yet you can buy farms in every old State in the Union as cheaply per acre as they could have been bought in like condition sixty years ago; and I doubt their selling higher sixty years hence than they do now. No doubt, there _are_ lands, in the vicinage of growing cities or villages, that have greatly advanced in value; but these are exceptions: and I counsel every young farmer, every poor farmer, to buy no more land than he can cultivate thoroughly, save such as he needs for timber. Never fear that there will not be more land for sale when you shall have the money wherewith to buy it; but shun debt as you would the plague, and prefer forty acres all your own to a square mile heavily mortgaged. I never lifted a mill-stone; but I have undertaken to carry debts, and they are fearfully heavy. 6. I know that most American farms east of the Roanoke and the Wabash have too many fields and fences, and that the too prevalent custom of allowing cattle to prowl over meadow, tillage and forest, from September to May, picking up a precarious and inadequate subsistence by browsing and foraging at large, is slovenly, unthrifty, and hardly consistent with the requirements of good neighborhood. It is at best a miseducation of your cattle into lawless habits. I do not know just where and when _all_ pasturing becomes wasteful and improvident; but I do know that pasturing fosters thistles, briers, and every noxious weed, and so is inconsistent with cleanly and thorough tillage. I know that the same acres will feed far more stock, and keep them in better condition, if their food be cut and fed to them, than if they are sent out to gather it for themselves. I know that the cost of cutting their grass and other fodder with modern machinery need not greatly exceed that of driving them to remote pastures in the morning and hunting them up at nightfall. I know that penning them ten hours of each twenty-four in a filthy yard, where they have neither food nor drink, is unwise; and I feel confident that it is already high time, wherever good grass-land is worth $100 per acre, to limit pasturage to one small field, as near the center of the farm as may be, wherein shade and good water abound, into which green rye, clover, timothy, oats, sowed corn, stalks, etc., etc., may successively be thrown from every side, and where shelter from a cold, driving storm, is provided; and that, if cows could be milked here and left through night as well as day, it would be found good economy. 7. I know that most of us are slashing down our trees most improvidently, and thus compelling our children to buy timber at thrice the cost at which we might and should have grown it. I know that it is wasteful to let White Birch, Hemlock, Scrub Oak, Pitch Pine, Dogwood, etc., start up and grow on lands which might be cheaply sown with the seeds of Locust, White Oak, Hickory, Sugar Maple, Chestnut, Black Walnut, and White Pine. I know that no farm in a settled region is so large that its owner can really afford to surrender a considerable portion of it to growing indifferent cord-wood when it would as freely grow choice timber if seeded therefor; and I feel sure that there are few farms so small that a portion of each might not be profitably devoted to the growing of valuable trees. I know that the common presumption that land so devoted will yield no return for a life-time is wrong--know that, if thickly and properly seeded, it will begin to yield bean-poles, hoop-poles, etc., the fifth or sixth year from planting, and thenceforth will yield more and more abundantly forever. I know that _good_ timber, in any well-peopled region, should not be _cut off_, but _cut out_--thinned judiciously but moderately and trimmed up, so that it shall grow tall and run to trunk instead of branches; and I know that there are all about us millions of acres of rocky crests and acclivities, steep ravines and sterile sands, that ought to be seeded to timber forthwith, kept clear of cattle, and devoted to tree-growing evermore. 8. I do not know that all lands may be profitably underdrained. Wooded uplands, I know, could not be. Fields which slope considerably, and so regularly that water never stagnates upon or near their surface, do very well without. Light, leachy sands, like those of Long Island, Southern Jersey, Eastern Maryland, and the Carolinas, seem to do fairly without. Yet my conviction is strong that _nearly all land which is to be persistently cultivated will in time be underdrained_. I would urge no farmer to plunge up to his neck into debt in order to underdrain his farm. But I _would_ press every one who has no experience on this head to select his wettest field, or the wettest part of such field, and, having carefully read and digested Waring's, French's, or some other approved work on the subject, procure file and proceed next Fall to drain that field or part of a field thoroughly, taking especial precautions against back-water, and watch the effect until satisfied that it will or will not pay to drain further. I think few, have drained one acre thoroughly, and at no unnecessary cost, without being impelled by the result to drain more and faster until they had tiled at least half their respective farms. 9. As to irrigation, I doubt that there is a farm in the United States where _something_ might not be profitably done forthwith to secure advantage from the artificial retention and application of water. Wherever a brook or runnel crosses or skirts a farm, the question--"Can the water here running uselessly by be retained, and in due season equably diffused over some portion of this land?"--at once presents itself. One who has never looked with this now will be astonished at the facility with which some acres of nearly every farm may be irrigated. Often, a dam that need not cost $20 will suffice to hold back ten thousand barrels of water, so that it may be led off along the upper edge of a slope or glade, falling off just enough to maintain a gentle, steady current, and so providing for the application of two or three inches of water to several acres of tillage or grass just when the exigencies of crop and season most urgently require such irrigation. Any farmer east of the Hudson can tell where such an application would have doubled the crop of 1870, and precluded the hard necessity of selling or killing cattle not easily replaced. Of course, this is but a rude beginning. In time, we shall dam very considerable streams mainly to this end, and irrigate hundreds and thousands of acres from a single pond or reservoir. Wells will be sunk on plains and gentle swells now comparatively arid and sterile, and wind or steam employed to raise water into reservoirs whence wide areas of surrounding or subjacent land will be refreshed at the critical moment, and thus rendered bounteously productive. On the vast, bleak, treeless Plains of the wild West, even Artesian wells will be sunk for this purpose; and the water thus obtained will prove a source of fertility as well as refreshment, enriching the soil by the minerals which it holds in solution, and insuring bounteous crops from wide stretches of now barren and worthless desert. Immigration will yet thickly dot the great Sahara with oases of verdure and plenty; but it will, long ere that, have covered the valleys of our Great Basin and those which skirt the affluents of the savage and desolate Colorado with a beauty and thrift surpassing the dreams of poets. And yet, its easiest and readiest triumphs are to be won right here--in the valleys of the Connecticut, the Hudson, the Susquehanna, and the Potomac. 10. As to Commercial Fertilizers, I think I have been well paid for the application of Gypsum (Plaster of Paris) to my upland grass at the rate of one bushel per acre per annum, while my tillage has been supplied with it by dusting my stables with it after each cleaning, and so applying it mingled with barn-yard manures. Lime (unslaked) from burned oyster-shells, costing me from 25 to 30 cents per bushel delivered, I have applied liberally, and I judge, with profit. Bones, ground, (the finer the better) I have largely and I think advantageously used; but my land had been mainly pastured for nearly two centuries before I bought it, and thus continually drained of Phosphates, yet never replenished: so my experience does not prove that the farmers of newer lands ought to buy bones, though I advise them to apply all they can save or pick up at small cost. Pound them very fine with a beetle or ax-head on a flat stone, and give them to your fowls: if they refuse a part of them, your soil will prove less dainty. I am not sure that it pays to buy any manufactured Phosphate when you can get Raw Bone; though I doubt not that, for instant effect, the Phosphate is far superior. As to Guano, it has not paid me; but that may be the fault of careless or unskillful application. I judge that any one who has to deal with sterile sands that will not bring Clover, may wisely apply 400 pounds of Guano per acre, provided he has nothing else that will answer the purpose. After he has produced one good stand of Clover, I doubt that he can afford to buy more Guano, unless he can apply it to better purpose than I have yet done. I have a strong impression that most farmers can do better at making and saving fertilizers than by buying them. Lime and Sulphur (Gypsum), if your soil lacks them, you must buy; but a good farmer who keeps even a span of horses, three or four cows, as many pigs, and a score of fowls, can make for $100 fertilizers which I would rather have than two tuns of Guano, costing him $180 to $200. If he has a patch of bog or a miry pond on his farm--any place where frogs will live--he can dig thence, in the dryest time next Fall, two or three hundred loads of Muck, which, having been left to dry on the nearest high ground till November or later, and then drawn up and dumped into his barn-yard, pig-pen, and fowl-house, will be ready to come out next Spring in season for corn-planting, and, being liberally applied, will do as much for his crop as two tons of Guano would, and will strengthen his land far more. If he has no Muck, and no neighbor who can spare it as well as not, let him at midsummer cut all the weeds growing on and around his farm, and in the Fall gather all the leaves that can be impounded, using these as litter for his cattle and beds for his pigs, and he will be agreeably surprised at the bulk of his heap next Spring. I am an intense believer in Home Production. We send ten thousand miles for Guano, and suffer the equally valuable excretions of our cities to run to waste in rivers and bays, poisoning or driving away the fish, and filling the air with stench and pestilence. No farmer ever yet intelligently _tried_ to enrich his land and was defeated by lack of material. He may not be able to do all he would like to at first; but persistent effort cannot be baffled. 11. Shallow culture is the most crying defect of our average farming. Poverty may sometimes excuse it; but the excuse is stretched quite too far. If a farmer has but a poor span of horses, or a light yoke of thin steers, he cannot plow land as it should be plowed; but let him double teams with his neighbor, and plow alternate clays on either farm; or, if this may not be, let him buy or borrow a sub-soil plow, and go once around with his surface plow, then hitch on to the sub-soil, and run another furrow in the bottom of the former. There are a few intervales of rich, mellow soil, deposited by the inundations of countless ages, where shallow culture will answer, because the roots of the plants run freely through fertile earth never yet disturbed by the plow; but these marked and meagre exceptions do not invalidate the truth that nine-tenths of our tillage is neither so deep nor so thorough as it should be. As a rule, the feeding-roots of plants do not run below the bottom of the furrows, though in some instances they do; and he who fancies that five or six inches of soil will, under our fervid suns, with our Summers often rainless for weeks, produce as bounteous and as sure a crop as twelve to eighteen inches, is impervious to fact or reason. He might as sensibly maintain that you could draw as long and as heavily against a deposit in bank of $500 as against one of $1,500. 12. Finally, and as the sum of my convictions, we need more thought, more study, more intellect, infused into our Agriculture, with less blind devotion to a routine which, if ever judicious, has long since ceased to be so. The tillage which a pioneer, fighting single-handed and all but empty-handed with a dense forest of giant trees, which he can do no better than to cut down and burn, found indispensable among their stumps and roots, is not adapted to the altered circumstances of his grandchildren. If our most energetic farmers would abstract ten hours each per week from their incessant drudgery, and devote them to reading and reflection with regard to their noble calling, they would live longer, live to better purpose, and bequeath a better example, with more property, to their children. * * * * * My self-imposed task is done. I undertook to tell What I Know of Farming through one brief essay for each week in 1870; and, in the face of multifarious and pressing duties, and in despite of a severe, protracted illness, the work has been prosecuted to completion. Had I not kept ahead of it while in health, there were weeks when I must have left it unaccomplished, as I was too ill to write or even stand. I close with the avowal of my joyful trust that these essays, slight and imperfect as they are, will incite thousands of young farmers to feel a loftier pride in their calling and take a livelier interest in its improvement, and that many will be induced by them to read abler and better works on Agriculture and the sciences which minister to its efficiency and impel its progress toward a perfection which few as yet have even faintly foreseen. INDEX. ACCOUNTS--ACCOUNTS IN FARMING, chap. xxxv, 207; the causes of pecuniary failure, 207; loss from waste of time, 207; the author has found all successful farmers rigid economists of time, 208; farmers urged to keep a rigid account of how they dispose of their time, 208; keeping a diary recommended, 208; what it should contain, 209; accounts with neighbors, 209; the farmer should keep an account of the expenses of his farm, and the receipts therefrom, 209; importance of keeping an account with the several fields and crops, 210; complication and uncertainty in account-keeping considered, 210-211; the advantage of keeping careful accounts, 211. AGRICULTURE. _See_ FARMING: books on practical, referred to, 30. ALABAMA, 50. ALDER, 53. ALKALIS, as fertilizers. _See_ FERTILIZERS, COMMERCIAL. ALLEGHANY RIDGE, 39. ALLEGHANIES, the, 45, 49, 79, 81, 156. ALPS, 75. ALPS, AUSTRIAN, 75. AMERICA, 44, 170. AMHERST. N. H., 52. AMMONIA, 104, 306. AMMONOOSUC, the river, 194. ANTELOPE, 278. APENNINES, 267. APPLE, the, 53, 118, 129. FRUIT-TREES. THE APPLE, chap. xxix, 139; fruit-trees form a distinguishing feature of Northern farms and holdings, 139; unequaled in that respect elsewhere, 140; our country north of the Potomac excels, in its supply of tree-fruits, all other portions of the earth's surface of equal area, 140; the Northern States admirably adapted to the apple and kindred fruit-trees, 140; effects of such adaptability, 140; give an orchard the northern slope of a hill where possible, 140; the one which blossoms latest, yields, on the average, most fruit, 141; storing ice to place under trees, not recommended, 141; importance of drainage, 145; some reasons for choosing sloping ground for an apple-orchard, 141; the soil for such, 142; preparation of the soil, 142-3; treatment and care of the land devoted to an orchard, 143-4; MORE ABOUT APPLE TREES, chap. xxv, 145; apple trees are planted too far apart, and allowed to grow too tall, 145; consequences, 145-6; trees should be set diamond fashion, 146; pruning should be attended to annually, 146; sprouts valueless, 147; the demands which apple-trees make on the soil should be supplied, 147; apple-trees in the township of Newcastle, Westchester, N. Y., 147; causes of their unproductiveness, 147-8; caterpillars and their ravages, 148; duties of farmers and fruit growers, 149; the abundant apple-crop of 1870, 149; establishes the capacity of our regions to bear Apples, 149, 191, 232, 291, 294; the apple-crop of 1870, as an illustration of the imperfect means of exchanging farm products, 297-8-9; loss to consumers and producers, 299-300. ARIZONA, 48. ARKANSAS, State of, 25, 36; the river, 73, 261; the upper river, 274. ARTESIAN WELLS, 77, 277-8, 316. ASHES as fertilizers, 108-9, 127, 128; use in preparing for an orchard, 142, 174. _See_ also FERTILIZERS, COMMERCIAL. ATLANTIC, the coast, 156, 178; seaboard, 220; slope, 76, 157, 213. AUSTIN, 46. AUSTRALIA, 138, 200, 238. AUTUMN, 89, 97, 99, 116, 124, 173, 178, 179, 192, 193, 202, 262. BABYLON, 266. BALSAM FIR, 58. BALTIMORE, 165. BARLEY, 245, 265. BARN, the use of stone recommended in building a, 216 BATAVIA YAMS, 271. BATTENKILL, 75. BEANS, 210, 271, 296. BEECH, 19, 53, 60, 287. BEEF, 37, 118, 220, 294. BEETS. _see_ ROOTS, also 143, 232, 264, 271. BELGIUM, 70, 238. BERRIES, 90. BIRCH, 60. BIRDS--INSECTS, BIRDS, chap. xxii, 129; birds our best allies against insects, 129; the destruction of birds not the sole cause of insect ravages, 130; birds should be protected and kindly treated, 132; associations should be formed to do so, 132; artificial nests, 133; legal measures to protect birds, 133. BLACK ASH, 30. BLACKBERRIES, 90, 158. BLACK WALNUT, 314. BLACKWELL'S ISLAND, 87. BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS, 81. BOARD OF WORKS (London), 269. BOISSI�RE, E. V, DE, 253-4. BONES. _See_ COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS, also 118, 119, 192, 317. BONE-DUST, 174. BONES, flour of, 121. BONE FLOUR, 167. BONES, raw, 317. BOSTON, farm near, 15, 289. BOTANY, 30. BUCKEYE, 260. BUCKWHEAT, 21, 189, 191, 210. BUFFALO, 278. BUFFALO GRASS, 153. BURLINGTON, N. J., 166. BUTTER, 38, 164, 167. BRIDGES, 250. BRITISH ISLES, 178, 245. BROCCOLI, 271. CABBAGES, 264, 271, 296, 300. CACHE-LA-POUDRE, the river, 82, 262, 263. CALIFORNIA, 26, 76, 80, 159, 181, 260. CANADA, 48, 165, 289; creek, 75. CANALS, 105. CAROLINAS, the, 166, 315. CARROTS. _See_ ROOTS, also 143, 271. CARSON, the river, 81, 83. CATTLE, 15; Pasturing, 19-20; Soiling, 20; treatment of herds of, in the Mississippi and Missouri Valleys, 20; rearing of, referred to, 35, 132, 150, 157, 219, 220, 224, 293. CATSKILLS, the, 172. CENSUS: the Seventh, 150; the Eighth, 150; the, of 1870, 286. CHAMPLAIN, the, basin, 72; lake, 279. CHAPPAQUA, 62. CHAUTAUQUA Co., N. Y., 287, 288. CHEESE, 38, 164, 167. CHEMISTRY, 30, 119, 196, 231. CHERRIES. _See_ FRUITS, also 129, 139, 294. CHESTER CO., Penn., 110. CHESTNUT, 54, 55, 60, 135, 136, 215, 314. _See also_, TREES. CHEYENNE, 262. CHICAGO, 164. CHICKENS, 295. _See_ FOWLS. CHLORINE, 114, 235. CHLORIDE OF LIME, 128. CHOLERA, 268. CHURCHES, 250. CINCINNATI, 156. CLIMATES, American, for the finer fruits, 156. CLOVER, 120, 153, 167, 318. CLUBS. _See_ FARMERS' CLUBS. COAL, 109, 288. COLONIES, advantage of settling in, 28; the course to adopt in organizing one, 28; Union Colony, 262; its location, 262; the City of Greeley, its nucleus, 262; irrigation canals of, 262-4; fertility of the soil at, 264. COLONISTS, English, 171. COLORADO, 181, 206, 317; river, 46. CONGRESS, 46. CONNECTICUT, 27, 171, 299; river, 194, 279; valley of the, 317. COMO, lake, 75. COMMON SCHOOLS, 196-7. COMMUNISM: Differs radically from Co-operation, 248. CONCLUSIONS, General, SUMMING UP, chap. lli, 308; the facts set forth in the essays, 308; common misrepresentations, 308-9; object of the author in writing these essays, 309; the propositions sought to be established therein, 310; good farming must ever be a paying business, 310; thorough tillage advocated, 310; a location should be permanent, 310; the too great haste in incurring responsibilities, 311; the greed for land, 310; common abuses in fencing and cattle-raising, 312-13; tree-cutting and tree-planting, 314-15; underdraining, 315; irrigation, 316; commercial fertilizers, 317-8-9; shallow culture, 319-20; the need for study and inquiry, 320-21; concluding remarks, 321. CO-OPERATION, reference to, in regard to wild lands, 24; CO-OPERATION IN FARMING, CHAP. XLII, 248; Co-operation is the word of hope and cheer for labor, 248; its meaning, 248; differs radically from communism, 248; the difficulties of a young farmer who migrates to Kansas, Minnesota or one of the Territories, 248-9; the different circumstances consequent on settlement by co-operation, 250; advantages of co-operation not limited to colonizing distant tracts, 250; would benefit colored men, 250-1; fencing as an illustration of the loss consequent on want of co-operation, 251-2; how co-operation would remedy it, 252; further application of the system, 252-3; Mr. E. V. de Boissière's co-operative farming, 254-5. CORN, 20, 21, 22 growing of bread-corn eastward of the Hudson, 37, 43, 67, 68, 81, 86, 88, 92, 94, 99, 103, 107, 113, 114, 115, 118, 147. GRAIN GROWING--EAST AND WEST--chap. xxviii, 162; hoeing is of no use to Corn, 162; the best and cheapest way to cultivate corn, 162; the fields of the Mississippi Valley are the most productive in the world, 163; the tillage, in some places, seemed susceptible of improvement, 163; the West is the granary of the East, 163; a change imminent, 163; changes since twenty-three years ago when the author visited Illinois, 164; the course the West will ultimately adopt, 164; exhaustion of the soil in New England and Eastern New York, 164; in the Genesee Valley, 165; Eastern Pennsylvania profits by a provident system of husbandry, 165; the States this side of the Delaware will yet have to grow a large share of their breadstuffs, 165; can it be done with profit now, considering, also, if the East has wisely, so largely abandoned grain-growing, 165-9; the places not taken into account, 165; the "Pine Barrens" of New Jersey selected to illustrate the profits of grain-growing in the East, 168; their nature, 168; estimate of expenses thereon, 167; the product anticipated, 167; the favorable conditions the cultivator would enjoy, 168; the money value of his crop, 168; great economy could be achieved in the cost of cultivating, 169; conclusions, 169; also 177, 191, 192, 193, 210, 228, 238, 242, 246-7, 264, 265, 271-2, 290. COTTON, 107, 200. COTTON-GROWERS, Southern, 118. COTTONWOOD, 261. CREDIT, buying a farm on, 25. CROPS, Fall, 97. CURRANTS, 129. DAIRYING, 288. DANA'S MUCK MANUAL, 199. DELAWARE, the State of, 165; the river, 152, 165. DENVER, 264, 277; Pacific Railroad, the, 262. DEPOPULATION, (RURAL)--RURAL DEPOPULATION, chap. xlviii, 286; the alleged decrease in the relative population of rural districts, 286; no increase since 1859 in the number of farmers in the State of New York, 286; probable slight decrease in that of New England, 286; consolidating farms, 286; small farmers are selling out and migrating, 287; reasons therefore, 287; the changed character of the tillage, 287-8; the general use of coal has reduced the demand for labour, 288; labour-saving implements, 288-9; the supposed degeneracy of the New England Puritan stock, 289; the migration from New England, 289-90; the assumption that Americans prefer other pursuits to farming, 291; the rock and bog of New England form a discouraging impediment to agricultural progress, 290; compensation therefor, 291. DIARY, the keeping of one recommended, 31. DICKINSON, Andrew B., 105, 106. DISTRIBUTION (of farm products). _See_ EXCHANGE. DOCK, 232. DOGWOOD, 314. DOGS; their depredations on sheep, 203-4. DRAINING-- DRAINING--MY OWN, chap. x, 62; the author's farm, 62; situation of the land thereon requiring drainage, 62-3; difficulties it presented, 63; blunders, 66; how repaired, 66; condition of the marsh before draining it, 61; how success was retarded, 67; evidence of success, 67; the crops of 1870 on the reclaimed land, 68; DRAINING GENERALLY, chap. xi, 69; general conclusions from the author's experience, 69; extent of land to be drained, 69; _all_ swamp lands and nearly all of some other kinds must be drained to be well tilled, 69; the many uses of underdrains, 69-70; no one should run into debt for draining, 70; tile and stone drains, 71; draining by a Mole Plow, 72; general direction, 72-3; covered mains recommended, 73; the question of labor, 73; a case where the rudest surface drains would have changed bog into decent meadows, 152; the stone drains on the author's farm, 214; the author's summing up on, 315. DROUTH--habitually shortens our Fall crops, 98; A LESSON OF TO-DAY (1870), chap. xxxii, 189; the popular view of hot and cold seasons, 189; the Summer of 1870, effects of the drouth, 189-190; general character of each Summer, 190; proof that drouth need not be feared by those who farm prudently, 190; the author's observations during a trip through Warren Co., N. Y., 191-2; results to be attained there by right cultivation, 192; the inquiry: how are the people there to obtain fertilizers? 192; answered, 193; irrigation might be applied profitably, 194. EARTH CLOSET, 123. EASTERN STATES, pasturing in, 19. EASTERN STATES, the, 23, 25-6, 37, 179, 189, 204, 215, 279, 311. EDINBURGH, 269. EGGS, 294-5. EGYPT, 164, 167. ELECTRICITY, 285. ELK, 278. ELM, 59. EMERSON, R. W., 44. ENGLAND, 70, 89, 164; (Western) 170, 178, 268. ERIE Co., Pa., 23. EUROPE, 35, 74, 156, 163, 170, 171, 178, 180, 219, 238. EXCHANGE: EXCHANGE AND DISTRIBUTION, chap. l, 297; the machinery for disposing of surplus farm products imperfect, 297; the abundant apple crop of 1870 as an illustration thereof, 297-8-9; apples should have been as common as bread or potatoes, 298; the actual facts, 298; cause of both the waste and dearness of apples, 299-300; consequent loss to producers and consumers, 299-300; turnips as a further illustration, 300; disappointments of inexperienced farmers, 300-1; hucksters and middlemen, 301; suggestion to have a railroad purchase and sell farm products, 301-2; results to be expected, 302; an objection answered, 302. EXHIBITIONS (AGRICULTURAL)--AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITIONS, chap. xxxviii, 225; author has attended at least fifty, 225; concludes they were not what they might and should be, 225; the reform must begin with the people, 225; the lot of the public speaker, 225-6; what is needed to render our annual Fairs useful and instructive detailed, 226; each farmer should hold himself bound to make some contribution to his, 226; an interesting and running commentary should given, 227-8; liberal premiums should be given for proficiency in farming, 228-9; need for improvement in the character of the public speaking, 229; counties should be canvassed to enrol exhibitors, 230; all in a locality should feel a common interest in their fair, 230. EYE-SMART, 125. FABRICS, 200. FAIRS. _See_ EXHIBITIONS. FALL, the, 126, 173, 174, 193, 318. FARMING-- WILL FARMING PAY, chap. i, 13; will it pay considered, 13; the case of a man without capital, 13; difficulties common to all pursuits, 13-4; Astor referred to, 14; earning the first thousand dollars, 14; instance of remarkable success in farming, near Boston, 15; case of a farmer in Northern Vermont, 15-6; Professor Mapes's success, 14; profitable return from a fruit farm on the Hudson, 15-6; that shiftless farming don't pay admitted, 17; good farming profitable, 17; farming not recommended as a pursuit to every man, 17; it can never be dispensed with, 17; it is the first, and most essential of human pursuits, 17; all are interested in having it honored and prosperous, 17; if unprofitable, it is from mismanagement, 17; the author's aim in these essays, 17. GOOD AND BAD HUSBANDRY, chap. ii, 18; good and bad farming considered, 18; necessity master of us all, 18; dictates the line to follow in farming, 18-9; application of the principle to pasturing, 19-20; illustration of good farming, 20-21; excuses for waste insufficient, 21; truths on which good farming depend, 21; good crops invariably practicable, 21-2; rarely fail to pay, 23; increasing productiveness of the soil the fairest single test, 22; where to farm considered, 23; experience of the author's father regarding the East and West, 23; circumstances qualifying it, 23; the difficulties of the pioneer's life, 23-4; purchase of an "improvement" recommended in certain cases, 24; civilized places are to be preferred for settlement, 24; co-operation may change matters, 24; good farming will pay everywhere, 25; no one having a good farm advised to migrate, 25; money is made by farming near New York as fast as in the West, 25; where migration is advised, and its advantages, 25; troubles attendant on buying on credit, 25; the West will grow more rapidly than the East during the next twenty years, 26; the South invites immigration, 26; great inducements offered, 26; combined effort recommended, 26; good farming land cheapest in the United States, 27; an incident in Illinois farming, 27; counsel to intending purchasers, 27; land cheap in every State, 28; advantages of settling in colonies, 28; the first steps toward doing so, 28; division of the lands, 28; laying out the town, 28; the progress it ought to make, 28; economy of capital accomplished, 28; PREPARING TO FARM, chap. iv, 29; counsel intended for young men unaccustomed to farming, 29; patience recommended, 29; penalties of over haste, 29; value of experience illustrated, 30; an inexperienced young man advised to hire out, 30; procure books, 30; general counsel, 31; how the course advised differs from running into debt, 31-2; experience and practice essential, 32; circumstances where theoretical study is approved, 32; qualifying remarks, 32-3; he who has mastered farming is competent to buy a farm, 33; exceptions, 33; a young man should not wait until he can buy a large farm, 33; twenty acres ample for $2,000 capital, 33; that extent is sufficient to test his aptitude, 33; BUYING A FARM, chap. v, 34; it is better to buy good land than poor, 34; poor land can be turned to account, 34; the smallest farm should have its strip of forest, 34; advantage of New England and countries of like surface over very fertile regions, 34; cannot be divested of forest, 34; "Five Acres" or "Ten Acres" not sufficient, 35; exceptions, 35; genuine farms, the general want, 35; the remark "he has too much land," 35; some men specially adapted for large farms, 35; individual circumstances control, 35; counsel to a young man intent on buying a farm, 36; means of buying to be the main guide, 36; capital the true limit, 36; New England farms comparatively as cheap as Western, 36; migration urged only for those who cannot buy farms in the Old States, 36; success of the butter-makers of Vermont, 36; also of New York cheese dairymen, 36; insuperable barriers in the East to effective cultivation, 37; cultivation by steam must render large farms necessary, 37; grain growing not likely to be extended in the East, 37; the West to be the source of supply of bread-corn to the East, 37; main considerations in buying land in the Eastern States, 37; in the West the case is different, 37; social considerations, 38; make a permanent investment, 38; have confidence that industry will be rewarded, 38; LAYING OFF A FARM, chap. vi, 39; the surface and soil of a farm should be carefully studied, 39; misconception of the similarity of prairie farms, 39; a Northern farm selected for illustration, 40; preparatory steps in laying off, 40; care necessary, 40; a pasture to be first selected, 40; what it should be, 41; the one great error in relation to this matter, 41; weeds inseparable from pasture, 42; treatment of a pasture, 42-3; it should have a rude shed, 43; fodder to be brought to cattle, 43; "too much" land and tree planting, 50; farming in Westchester County, N. Y., 51; management of grass lands a test of farming, 152; THE FARMER'S CALLING: chap. xxxi, 183; merits of farmers as a class, 183; the author would have advised one of his sons if spared to attain manhood to become a good farmer, 183; difficulties attending the farmer's calling, 184; author's reason for recommending farming as a vocation to his son, 184; no other business in which success is so nearly certain as it, 184-5; farming conduces to a reverence for honesty and truth, 185-6; it is conducive to thorough manliness of character, 186-7; advantages the farmer enjoys in that respect over persons in other pursuits, 187; incidents of the author's experience as a journalist in this regard, 187-8; independent position of the true farmer, 188; difficulties a young farmer encounters as a pioneer, 248-9; considerably obviated be co-operation, 250; co-operation admits of wider application, 250-1; fencing as an illustration of the want of co-operation, 251-2; wide adaptability of co-operation, 252-3; Mr. E. V. de Boissière's co-operative farm, 253-4; farming in Colorado, 265; mistaken calculations of inexperienced farmers, 299-300; summing up: the farmer's calling, 308; American farming, 309; good farming is and must ever be a paying business, 310; thorough tillage, 310; choosing a location, 311; prudence enjoined, 311-2; the greed for land, 312-3; shallow culture, 319; need for study and inquiry, 320. FARMS: LARGE AND SMALL FARMS, chap. xlix, 292; naked magnitude has fascination for most minds, 292; some men can farm a township, 292; large farmers, 293; the opportunities and expectations of the small farmer, 293; making money from small farms, 293-4; large farming can never enable us to dispense with small farms, 294; evidence thereof, 294; fruit culture, 294; the production of eggs and the rearing of fowls, 294; the inducements offered to fowl-breeders, 295; this industry should comment itself to poor widows, 295; the growing of market vegetables, 296; the profits realized therein; 296; general conclusions, 296-7. FARMERS' CLUBS--FARMERS' CLUBS, chap. xliii, 254; farmers divide into two classes, 254; characteristics of those who do too little work, 255; the farmers who work too much, 255; illustration thereof, 255; value of the club to them, 256; who should form the club, 256; its rules, 256-7; the chief end to be attained, 257; habits of observation and reflection, 257; evidence of the need thereof, 257; a genuine interest in their vocation is needed by farmers, 257-8; false fancies to be removed, 258; the officers of the club, 258; grafts, plants or seeds for gratuitous distribution, 258; an annual flower show, 259; an exhibition of fruits, 259; the organization of a farmers' club is the chief difficulty, 259; how removed, 259. FARM IMPLEMENTS--FARM IMPLEMENTS, chap. xli, 237; labor arduous enough without adding inefficient implements, 237; improvements therein during fifty years, 237; proofs thereof, 237; the inferior implements used in the greater part of Europe, 237-8; the claim of inventors or their agents to attention, 238-9; the stock of an implement warehouse, 239; a co-operative plan will be found necessary to secure the needful implements, 240; reasons therefor, 240; greater inventions are certain to be made, 241; inventions for plowing, 241. FENCES, 100-1. FENCES AND FENCING, chap. xxxvii, 219; excessive fencing general, 219; fences are commonly dispensed with in France and other parts of Europe, 219; drivers must there keep their cattle from injuring the wayside crops, 219; American railroads have largely superseded cattle-driving, 220; fresh meat will ultimately come from the Prairies, in refrigerating cars, 220; owners of animals should be responsible for their care, 220-221; fencing bears with special severity on the pioneer, 221; fences, where necessary, are a deplorable necessity, 221; obstacles to introducing ditches and hedges, 221-2; wire fences, 222; stone walls, 222; rail fences, 222-3; posts and boards are the cheapest material for fences, 223; Red Cedar posts, 223; Locust posts, 223; posts set top-end down last longest, 224; general conclusions, 224; forms one of the pioneer's many trials, 251; it is different, but not better, with settlers on broad prairies, 251; co-operation would secure an immense economy in, 252, 287; should be scrutinized in winter, 306; most American farms east of the Roanoke and Wabash have too many fences, 313. FERTILIZERS, Commercial. COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS--GYPSUM, chap. xvii, 102; Gypsum might be generally applied to cultivated land, with profit, 102; the case where it costs $10, or over, per ton, considered, 102; it should be used in all stables and yards, 102; on meadows and pastures, 102; _time_ and mode of application, 103; _how_ Gypsum impels and invigorates vegetable growth, referred to, 103; its value practically demonstrated in and around Paris, 303-4; the nature of Gypsum, 104; the chemists' theory of it, 104; its actual effect assumed as the basis of these remarks, 104; Gypsum ought to be extensively applied to pastures and slopes, 104-5; a farmer's observations on its effects, 105; it may be easily procured, 105; its trial requested, 105-6; soils can be improved by means of calcined clay, 105; a successful trial thereof, 106. ALKALIS ... SALT--ASHES--LIME, chap. xvii, 107; all our country's surface might be improved by the use of suitable fertilizers, 107; not many acres but might be made more fertile by their use, 107; comparative exhaustion of the soil soon renders them necessary, 107-8; the good farmer's inquiry on the subject, 108; the state of each soil respectively, the true guide in using fertilizers, 108; alkaline substances might be universally applied with profit, 108; the use of ashes considered, 108-9 Marls of New Jersey, 109; Salt, 109; Potash, 109; the author's trial of, 109-10; Lime as a fertilizer, 110; careful tests of the value of Alkalis suggested, 110-11. SOIL AND FERTILIZERS, chap. xix, 112; the farmer a manufacturer, 112; the opinion that some lands are naturally rich enough, 112; the great wheat product at the Salt Lake City Plain, 112; the author's experience regarding the imperfect manuring of land, 113; more manure and less seed should be applied by most farmers, 113; the richest soils deteriorate after successive crops, 114; Nature's law of inflexible exaction, 114; rich soil from the West exhibited at the N. Y. Farmers' Club, 114; chemical analysis made of same, 114; Professor Mapes' remark thereon, 114; the mistake of fertilizing poor lands only, 115; better to produce the same quantity of Corn from a small than a large area in certain cases, 115; barn-yard manure, and its use, 115-6; no farmer ever impoverished by making and using manure of his own manufacture, 117; Lime has been used without advantage, 111; reasons therefor, 111; adulteration of Lime, 111; farmers advised to be discriminating, 111; experiment recommended where there is doubt, 111; BONES--PHOSPHATES--GUANO, chap. xx, 118; wasteful outlay for fertilizers, 118; fertilizers needed and used in Westchester Co., N. Y., 118; where not needed, 119; unprofitable use of Guano, 120; exceptions to the general rule, 120; the other fertilizers, 120; author's trial of Guano, 121; not of general application, 121; experiments and careful observation recommended, 122; results that may be expected, 123; the earth closet, 123; importance of it and kindred devices, 123; oyster-shell lime is the best, 128; the fertilizers to be used in preparing for an orchard, 142-3; treatment of swamp muck for potatoes, 173; fertilizers for potatoes when muck cannot be had, 173-4; supposed inquiry of the people of Warren Co., N. Y, "How shall we obtain fertilizers?" 192; answered, 193; a Maine essayist on sourness of the soil and its remedy, 232-3; necessity for scientific knowledge on the effects of, 232; importance of some standard to go by in using, 234-5; the digging and drawing of clay as winter work, 306; value of clay for grass land, 306; procuring commercial fertilizers, as winter work, 306. FRUIT: a profitable fruit farm on the Hudson, 14; culture of, 35, 37, 107; ravages of insects on fruits, 129-30. PEACHES--PEARS--CHERRIES--GRAPES, chap. xxvii, 156; adaptability of American climates as regards fruit-growing, 157; why the climates of some sections are unfavorable for the most valued tree fruits, 156-7; author's personal observations, 157; difficulties attending the growing of finer fruits, 158; counsel thereon to farmers mainly engaged in the production of grain and cattle, 157-8; grape-growing, 159; the mistake of neglecting vines, 159; experiment recommended, 159; necessary precautions, 160; the course recommended to a farmer who proposes to grow pears, peaches, and quinces, 160-1, 168, 228, 232, 259; the descriptions of fruit grown by small farmers, 294; fruit culture would decline should small farms be generally absorbed into larger, 294; treatment of fruit-trees in winter, 307. GAMMA GRASS, 261. GARDA, Lake, 75. GENESEE, Valley of the, 163, 165, 292. GEOLOGY, 30, 190, 231. GERMANY, 289. GRAIN, 22, 35, 40, 107, 110, 118, 125, 126, 132, 157, 167, 186, 206, 228, 235, 239, 264, 266, 291, 293, 294, 296. _See also_ CORN. GRAPES, 16, 59, 140, 226, 294. _See also_ FRUITS. GREAT BASIN, the, 138, 278, 317. GREAT BRITAIN, 179, 238. GRASS, 22, 40, 43, 67, 68, 95, 107, 110, 121, 152-3, 191, 232, 238, 239, 264. _See also_ PASTURING AND HAY. GREELEY, Horace--Arrival in New York, 13-4; own experience of the difficulties of securing a good start in life, 14; remark of his father to, on migration toward the West, 23; own evidence of the value of experience, 30; is descended from several generations of tree-cutters, 44; engaged for three years in land clearing, 44; reference to Amherst, N. H., his birthplace, 52; description of his farm, 62; drainage thereof. 63-8; observations in Italy, 74-6; experiments in irrigation, 76-7; observations in Virginia, 80; experience of the plowing of his plat in New York city, 87-8; tries deep plowing, 88; plowing of the hill-sides on his farm, 94; benefits thereof, 94; judges that the gravelly hill-sides of his farm would repay applying 200 tons per acre of pure clay, 108; experience of guano, 121; raising locust from seed, 134; hay product of his farm, 151; helps in hay-making from swamps, 152; hoed corn in his boyhood, 162; observations on the corn-fields of the Mississippi valley, 163; observations at Chicago twenty-three years ago, 164; finds potatoes less prolific on his farm than in New Hampshire, 173; speaks as a journalist's and farmer's calling, 187; observations in Warren county, N. Y., 191; the stone wall on his farm, 218; experience of agricultural exhibitions, 225; the plowing on his farm, 281; mentions the sale of his apples as an illustration of the imperfect means of exchanging farm products, 298. GREELEY, the city of, 262. GUANO, 116, 120, 121, 192, 318. GULF STREAM, 178. GYPSUM, 120, 121, 122, 174, 233, 317, 318. _See also_ FERTILIZERS, COMMERCIAL. HARLEM RAILROAD, 62. HAWK, the, 132. HAY, 20, 68, 78, 95, 119, 122, 147. HAY AND HAY-MAKING, chap. xxvi, 150; importance of the grass crop, 150; the portion made into hay, 150; its quantity, 150; the product and quality should be better, 151; author's experience, 151; the management of grass lands is a criterion of farming, 150; hay-making in New England fifty years ago, 152; too little grass-seed is now used, 152; too little discrimination used in sowing grass seeds, 153; the variety of good grasses will be increased, 153; grass is cut in the average too late, 153; consequences, 153-54; the plea that our farmers are short-handed in the summer harvest, 154; treatment of grass when cut, 154; the author's anticipation of how hay-making will yet be carried on, 155; the need for improvement in hay-making insisted on, 155; explanation thereof, 155. Also 167, 189, 191, 211, 235, 288, 291, 306. _See also_ GRASS. HAY-MAKING, _See_ HAY. HEMLOCK, 19, 58, 60, 66, 223, 287, 314. HICKORY, 53, 54, 55, 59, 135, 136, 215, 291, 314. HIGHWAYS, 249. HOES, 237. HOGS, 143. HOLLAND, 238. HOMESTEAD LAW, 249. HOPS, 164. HORSES, 132; carrots as food for, 182. HUDSON, the, 16; a fruit farmer on the, 16; the valley of the, 165; banks of the upper, 191; the valley of the upper, 190, 191, 317. HUMBOLDT, the river, 81. HUMBOLDT, the, or Canada Creek, 75. HUNGARY, 164. ILLINOIS, State of, 37; Northern, 163, 164; prairies of, 164, 246, 264, 289. INDIANA, 37, 163. INSECTS--INSECTS--BIRDS, chap. xxii, 129; the serious loss to farmers from insects, 129; birds our best allies, 129; what good they can do, 130; ravages of insects not entirely due to the scarcity of birds, 130; degeneracy of our plants largely causes their ravages, 130; Gov. Packer of Pennsylvania's observations thereon, 130-31; the case of wheat and other plants, 131; a war against insects must continue for a generation, 131; the destruction of birds, 132; the measures to be adopted against insects, 132; birds should be preserved, 132; associations should be formed to do so, 132; artificial posts, 133; legal measures proposed, 133; their ravages in Newcastle township, Westchester, N. Y., 147-8; caterpillars, 148; numerous from neglect, 148; duties of farmers and fruit growers, 149. INTELLECT (in Agriculture)--INTELLECT IN AGRICULTURE, chap. xxxiii, 195; years of rugged manual labor essential to success in hewing a farm out of the forest, 195; value of education to the farmer, 196; our average common schools defective in not teaching geology and chemistry, 196; the leading principles and facts of these sciences ought to constitute the reader of the highest class in the common schools, 196; counsel to the young farmer on agricultural books, 197; their value demonstrated, 198; a two-hundred acre farm will be found to give ample scope, 199; instructions regarding particular books, 199; men of the strongest minds and best abilities will be attracted to farming so fast and so far as it becomes intellectual, 199. INTEREST, relatively high in this country, 202. IOWA, 27, 163, 164, 168. IRELAND, 170, 175, 289. IRRIGATION-- IRRIGATION--MEANS AND ENDS, chap. xii. 74; need of water for crops not often kept in view, 74; the authors observations in Lombardy (Italy), 74-5; the Atlantic Slope and Irrigation, 76; author's experience in irrigation, 76-7; results, 76; irrigation of New England farms, 78; advantages that would result therefrom, 78. POSSIBILITIES OF IRRIGATION, chap. xiii, 79; natural facilities for irrigation general, 79; artesian wells on the prairies, 79; wells in California, 80; water as a fertilizer, 80; crops in Virginia suffering from want of irrigation, 80-1; counsel to farmers on irrigation, 81-2; great profits to be realized by irrigation, 82-3; need of irrigation in the Eastern and Middle States considered, 83; the prairie States after 1900, 83; common objections to irrigation, 84; it must become general, 247; wells will be sunk for the purpose, 247; a steam locomotive for the purpose referred to, 247; irrigation will become general, 247; WESTERN IRRIGATION, chap. xliv, 260; irrigation is practicable everywhere, 260; the portion of our country which cannot be cultivated without irrigation, 260; its extent, 260; its climate, 260; it is spoken of as desert, 261; the readiest means of irrigating the plains, 261; their extent, 261; the North and South Platte rivers, 261; Union Colony, 262; its location, 262; location of Greeley, 262; the first irrigating canal of Union Colony, 262; branches and ditches therefrom, 262-3; how the water is deflected to it, 263; the larger and longer canal, 263; doubts at first entertained respecting the capacities of the soil, 264; proved baseless, 264; products of the soil, 264; the cost of irrigation is not in excess of cultivating without it, 264; demonstration thereof, 265; it would pay to expend $10 per acre for irrigating New England grass lands, 266; MORE OF IRRIGATION, chap. xlvi, 274; irrigation of places bordered by streams referred to, 274; the facilities the Platte offers for irrigation, 274-5; results that may be attained, 275; the Plains, 275; obstacles to their cultivation, 275-6; the change that will be yet effected, 276; how the plains will be irrigated, 276-7; artesian wells, 277-8; the co-operation of railroad companies anticipated, 278; rain increases as settlements are multiplied, 278; the permanent character of the Plains, 279; tracts needing irrigation in the East, 279; summing up of the author's views on, 315-6-7. IRON, 242. ITALY (Northern), 171. KANSAS, 25, 26, 167, 249, 261, 264, 289. KANSAS PACIFIC, the railroad, 262. KENNEBEC, the valley of the, 165; the river, 279. KENTUCKY, 50. KIT CARSON, the, 277. LABORERS, Farm--Dearth of employment for, in winter, a great and growing evil, 303. LAKES, the Northern, 165. LANCASTER COUNTY, Penn., 110. LANCASHIRE (England), 76. LAND. _See_ FARMING. LANDS, public, 46. LARD, 164. LIEBIG'S agricultural chemistry, 199. LIME, 104; as a fertilizer, _see_ FERTILIZERS, COMMERCIAL; _also_, 104, 110, 111, 120; oyster shell, 121, 122, 128; use in preparing for an orchard, 142, 143, 147, 167, 174, 192, 211, 232-3, 235, 306, 317, 318. LOCUST, the, tree, 53, 54, 55, 60, 134, 215, 223, 314. LOMBARDY, 74, 75, 76. LONDON, 269. LONDONDERRY (Ireland), 171; New Hampshire, 171. LONG ISLAND, N. Y., 166, 251, 315; Sound, 172. LONG'S PEAK, 262. LORING, Dr. George B. (of Mass.), 193. LUMBERING--How rocks in creeks are removed by a lumberman, 217. MACHINES, agricultural, 225. MAGGIORE, Lake, 75. MAGNESIA, 235. MAIDSTONE (England), 89. MAINE, 125, 171, 232. MANGANESE, 111. MANGOLDS, 271. MANUFACTURES, 164, 243. MANURE, 95. MAPLE, 287. MAPES, Professor, 16, 85, 114, 128. MARL, 109, 120, 122, 142, 167. _See also_ FERTILIZERS, COMMERCIAL. MARTINEAU, Miss., 187. MARYLAND, 166, 251; Eastern, 315. MASSACHUSETTS, 171, 193. McCORMICK, C., 86. MEATS, 150, 164, 167, 200, 201; meat will be ultimately conveyed in refrigerating cars, 220, 266. MECHANICS, 243. MELON, 226. MEXICO, 172. MICHIGAN, State of, 163; Lake, 156. MIDDLE STATES, 139. MILK, 115, 167, 171. MILLS, 249, 250. MINNEHAHA, the, 285. MINNESOTA, 25, 26, 36, 37, 163, 164, 168, 206, 249, 289. MISSOURI, valley of the, 20; State of, 168; the river, 260, 261, 279. MISSISSIPPI, valley of the upper, 20, 38; valley of the, 45, 69, 163; the river, 163. MOLE PLOW, the, 72. MONMOUTH, N. J., 166. MORMONS, tree planting by, 46. MORTGAGE, buying land on, 31. MIDDLE STATES, pasturing in, 19, 25, 69, 142, 179, 204, 215. MUCK, 95, 109, 116, 120; use in preparing for an orchard, 142. MUCK--HOW TO UTILIZE IT, chap. xxi, 124; chemists will yet be able to determine the value of all kinds, 124; use of muck profitable, 124; the author's trial of it, 124; how swamp muck forms, 124-5; its vast extent, 125; little benefit derived from applying it _directly_, 125; the true course to adopt to secure good returns, 126-7; practical evidence of its value, 127; the course to be adopted by farmers having few animals, 127-8; mixing salt with lime, 128, 147, 167; diversity of opinion about, 233; as an illustration of the need for more scientific knowledge, 233-4; as an illustration of winter work, 304; it is abundant and accessible, 304; proof thereof, 305-6; value of muck, 305; where to procure, 318. MUTTON. _See_ SHEEP; _also_, 200, 220. NAPOLEON I, 33, 292. NEVADA, 46, 76, 83, 260. NEWBURG, N. Y., a fruit farm above, on the Hudson, 16. NEWCASTLE (township), Westchester Co., N. Y., 62, 147. NEW ENGLAND, 25, 34, 36, 39, 45, 50, 69, 78, 79, 139, 152, 163, 164, 165, 171, 190, 206, 214, 266, 279, 286, 287, 289, 290, 291, 303. NEW HAMPSHIRE, 87, 140, 172, 237. NEW JERSEY, 49, 85, 109, 165; Southern, 166, 167, 168, 169, 190, 251, 305, 315. NEW RIVER, Va., 86. NEW YORK (city), 13, 60, 87, 129, 269. NEW YORK STATE, 37, 49; cheese dairymen of, 36, 47, 62, 68, 79, 102, 131, 140, 164; Western, 163; Eastern, 164, 165, 190, 286, 290. NIAGARA, the falls of, 285. NINEVEH, 266. NITRATES. _See_ FERTILIZERS. NITRATE OF SODA, 122. NORTHERN STATES, 48, 139, 140, 192, 297. OATS, 67, 92, 94, 113, 118, 121, 143, 189, 191, 210, 238, 245, 264, 265. OHIO, State of, 37, 163, 220; valley of the river, 38; the river, 53, 159. OLD STATES, the, 73, 249, 306. ONIONS, 191. ONTARIO, Lake, 156. PACIFIC STATES, 178. PACIFIC, the coast, 156; valley, a broad, 101. PACKER, Gov. William F., of Penn., 130. PARIS, 103. PASTURES--Pasturing will soon disappear in the Eastern and Middle States, 19; its pernicious effects, 19; soiling is preferable to pasturing, 20; a pasture should be the first field selected on a new farm, 40; where it should be placed, 41; misconceptions respecting indiscriminate pasturing, 41; treatment of a pasture, 42-3; should have a shed, 43; appearance of pastures where there is bad farming, 152; summing up of the author's views on pasturing, 313-4. _See also_ HAY. PEACH-TREES. _See_ FRUITS, _also_ 129, 140, 161. PEARS. _See_ FRUITS, _also_ 129, 139, 156, 204. PEAS, 89, 90, 271, 296. PENNSYLVANIA, 23; Eastern, 165, 172, 288. PEMIGEWASSET, the river, 75. PHILADELPHIA, 156, 159. PHOSPHATES. _See_ COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS, _also_ 119, 121, 122, 192. PHOSPHORUS, 118, 119, 235. PIPPINS, 53. PITCH-PINE, 314. PILGRIMS, the descendants of the, 289. PINE, 58, 223. PINE BARRENS, 166. PLAGUE, the, 268. PLAINS, the, 46, 101, 261; irrigation of, 275-9, 316. PLASTER (Gypsum). _See_ COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS, _also_ 80, 173, 211, 232, 233. PLATTE, the river, 82, 260, 261, 262; valley of the, 274. PLOWS, steel, 87. PLOWING: PLOWING, DEEP OR SHALLOW, chap. xiv, 87; the Deep Plowing of _all_ lands, not advocated, 85; reasons therefor, 85; instances where Deep Plowing was unadvisable, 85-6; the primitive plow, 86; plowing in New Hampshire in the author's boyhood, 87; will Deep Plowing pay? 87; author's experience of the plowing of a plat in New York city, 87-8; plows deeply with profit, 88-9; an English farmer's trial of Deep Plowing, 89-90; the imperative reasons for Deep Plowing, 90. PLOWING--GOOD AND BAD, chap. xv, 91; misconceptions regarding Deep Plowing, 91; the right conditions for Deep Plowing, 91; case of a farmer of the old school cited, 91-2; how Deep Plowing will prove profitable to him, 92-3; how he should proceed, 92-3; subsoiling hill-sides, 94; author's own experience, 94; the revolution that steam-plowing will cause, 95; plowing of Grass land considered, 95; treatment of Grass land that has been plowed, 95; plowing of a poor man's rugged sterile farm, 97-9; Fall-plowing, 99-100; fences impede plowing, 100; favored lot of the squatter on the prairie in regard to plowing, 101; the plows of sixty years ago, 237; the plows used in the greater part of Europe, 238; improvement in plowing inevitable, 241; the improved system would be adopted in the West, 241; steam plows and their inventors, 243; at work in Great Britain, 243-4; the locomotive that is needed for steam-plowing, 244; losses from want of such, 244-5; necessity for greater rapidity in plowing demonstrated, 246; advice of a German observer on plowing for Corn, 246-7; author's experience of the cost and delay of plowing, 281-2; not half so much or so thorough plowing done as there should be, 282; the imperfect means of plowing, 282; steam-plowing in England, 283-4-5; application of the facts to this country, 284. _See also_ STEAM. PLUM-TREES. _See_ FRUITS, _also_ 129, 139, 294. PO, the river, 74-5. PORK, 37, 99, 143, 186, 191, 220, 238, 291. POTASH. _See_ FERTILIZERS, COMMERCIAL, also 109. POTATOES, 88, 99. ESCULENT ROOTS--POTATOES, chap. xxix, 170; their productiveness, 170; cultivated universally in Europe, 170; they alone form part of the every-day food of prince and peasant, 170; the poor of New England depended on them when the grain crop was cut short, 171; formed part of the regular supper in farmers' homes, 171; the history of the Potato, 171; it is essentially a mountainous plant, 172; it may have grown wild on the sides of the great chain traversing Spanish America, 172; everything there congenial to it, 172; results attained by the author in growing potatoes, 172; conditions which insure a good crop, 172-3; swamp muck treated as described, makes an excellent fertilizer for, 173; how to act where such is not to be had, 173-4; instructions to a farmer having a poor, worn-out field of sandy loam, 174; objections thereto considered, 174-5; the potato blights, 175-6; the kind of seed to plant, 176; drills are preferable, in the author's judgment, 176-7; preparation of the soil, 177; varieties considered, 177; growing from tubers tends to degeneracy, 177; the originator of a valuable new potato entitled to a recompense, 177; also, 189, 264, 296. POTOMAC river, the, 53, 73, 140, 159; valley of the, 317. PORTUGAL, 237. POWER--UNDEVELOPED SOURCES OF POWER, chap. xlvii, 280; the farmer's sources and command of power less than the manufacturer's, 280; both have the same opportunities, 280; author's experience of the delay and cost of plowing, 281-2; further illustrations of the imperfect means of plowing, 282; steam plowing in England, 282-3-4; steam not commended as a source of power to the farmer, 284; reasons therefor, 284; wind as a source of power, 284-5; the further anticipated sources, 285; the triumphs of the future, 285. PRAIRIE, 24; prairies, the, of the West, 213; the, 261. PRAIRIE STATES, 46, 83. PRUNING, 146. PUBLIC LANDS, 24, 46. PURSLEY, 125. QUINCES. _See_ FRUITS. RAG-WEED, 125. RAILROADS, their influence on the progress of the West, 26, 105; suggestions to have one act as factor of farm products, 301-2. RALEIGH, Sir Walter, 171. "RANCHING," 292. RASPBERRIES, 90. REAPERS, American, 245. RED CEDAR, 58, 157, 223. RED OAK, 19, 53, 60. REPUBLICAN, valleys of the, 274. ROADS, 250. ROBINSON, SOLON, on fencing, 219. ROCK. _See_ STONE. ROCKY MOUNTAINS, 206, 261, 262, 274. ROMFORD, England, 269-70. ROOTS, culture of, 35, 43; all seek heat and moisture, 98, 126, 168, 206, 228, 242, 265; FERTILIZERS, COMMERCIAL; also 109, 114, 122, 127, 128, 143, 147, 174. SALT LAKE, 46. SALT LAKE CITY, 112. SAVOYS, 271. SCHOOLS, 249, 250. SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURE, 32; SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURE, chap. xxxix, 231; author disclaims being a scientific farmer, 231; men have raised good crops, who knew nothing of science, 231; science is the true base of efficient cultivation, 231; the elements of every plant, 231; necessity for scientific knowledge, 232; author's personal experience, 232; the assertion of a Maine essayist, as an illustration of the need of scientific information, 233; the diversity of opinion as to the value of swamp muck as a further illustration, 233-4; analysis of soils considered, 234; the necessity for some standard to go by in manuring land, 234; illustration thereof, 234-5; science explains the impoverishment of soils, 235; author's testimony on the value of science, from personal experience, 236; a competence is reserved for young men fully conversant with agriculture, 236. SCOTCH-IRISH, the, 171. SCOTLAND, 178, 269. SCRUB OAK, 314. SCYTHES, 239. SEASONS, Dry. _See_ DROUTH. SEWAGE--SEWAGE, chap. xlv, 266; causes which doomed ancient empires to decay, 266; illustrations thereof, 266-7; the soil must receive back the elements taken from it, 267; obstacles thereto, 267; location of ancient and modern cities, 267; imperative necessity for cleansing treat cities, 267-8; meaning given to sewage in England, 268; conditions necessary for its equable diffusion over the soil, 268; application of sewage, 268; difficulties of utilizing it, 268-9; the progress made, 269; the measures taken to utilize sewage at Romford, England, 269; farm whereon it was used, and the results attained, 269-70-1-2-3; conclusion therefrom, 273-4. SHEEP--SHEEP AND WOOL GROWING, chap. xxxiv, 200; production of wool in the United States insufficient, 200; they might profitably grow as much as they consume, 201; reasons therefore, 201; the increased price of mutton will make up for the reduction on wool, 201; sheep-growing in England as an illustration, 201; sheep soon make a return for the outlay on them, 202; they successfully contend with bushes and briars, 203; more mutton should be consumed, 202-3; all farmers are not counseled to grow sheep, 203; depredations of dogs, 203-4; precautions against them, 204; the change in the relative values of mutton and wool, 204; the relative prices and product the farmer must expect in the future, 205; growing sheep for mutton near New York, 205; profit thereof, 205; sheep-growing is no experiment, 205; encouragement thereto, 205-6; sheep growing in Colorado and other Territories, and its future, 206. SICILY, 267. SICKLE, 239. SILICA, 235. SMITH, WILLIAM (Woolston, Eng.), 283. SOCIETY, Agricultural, an, 228. _See_ FARMERS' CLUBS. SODA, 235. SOILS, analysis of, 234. SORGHUM, stalks of, 43. SORREL, 125, 232. SOUTH, 25; inviting immigration, 26; the inducements she offers, 26-7-8, 178, 311. SOUTH AMERICA, 200, 206. SPAIN, 86, 237. SPANISH AMERICA, 172. SPRING, 67, 70, 73, 75, 76, 78, 81, 87, 88, 99, 111, 126, 127, 134, 135, 136, 137, 140, 141, 150, 168, 171, 173, 174, 193, 194, 202, 258, 303, 319. SPRUCE, 223. SQUASH, 226, 264. STARK COUNTY, Ohio, 110. STEAM IN AGRICULTURE, cultivation by, 37; application of steam to plowing, 95. STEAM IN AGRICULTURE, chap. xli, 241; farmers have been slow in utilizing the natural forces around them, 241; evidence thereof, 242; steam as a source of power is hardly a century old, 242; the revolution it has effected, 242; it will effect still greater, 243; steam has contributed very little to preparing the soil, 243; disappointments of inventors of steam plows, 243; steam plowing in Louisiana, 243; steam plows in Great Britain, 243-4; the locomotive that is needed for steam plowing, 244; the saving it would effect, 244-5; American reapers in England, their value appreciated, 245; need for a machine to plow rapidly demonstrated, 246; recommendation of a German observer regarding plowing, 246; irrigation will become general, 247; the locomotive referred to above could be used for sinking wells, 247; steam plowing in England, 283-4-5. STEAM PLOWS. _See_ STEAM. STEEL, 242. STEUBEN COUNTY, N. Y., 105. STONE--STONE ON A FARM, chap. xxxvi, 213; formation of the earth, 212; diffusion of stones over the surface, 213; these are sometimes a facility, but oftener an impediment to efficient agriculture, 213; no rock on the surface of the great prairies of the West, and a portion of the valleys and plains of the Atlantic slope, 213; advantages and disadvantages thereof to the pioneer, 214; less use for stone now than formerly, 214; the stone on Eastern farms to be yet utilized, 214-5; very stony land should be planted with trees, 215; rough, unshapen stones will be more and more used for building, 215-6; instructions for building a barn partly with stone concrete, 216; its advantages, 216; blasting out stone considered, 216-7; the mode a lumberman employs to remove rocks in creeks, 217; the author's experience regarding the fencing of his farm, 218; his stone walls, 218. STONES, 249. STRAWBERRIES, 16, 90. SUGAR, production of, from the beet, 180; maple, 19, 314. SULPHUR, 104. SUMMER, 47, 59, 64, 67, 78, 83, 84, 86, 88, 99, 103, 124, 126, 130, 154, 173, 178, 189, 190, 191, 202, 260, 264, 279, 288. SUPER-PHOSPHATE, 174. SUSQUEHANNA, the, 279, 292; the valley of the, 317. SWAMP LAND: about 50,000,000 acres of, in the old States (including Maine), 125; _See_ DRAINING. SWINE, 143. SWITZERLAND, 139; Northern, 171. SYCAMORE, 59. TAMARACK, 223. TERRITORIES, the, 206, 249. TEXAS, 43, 205, 206; (Western), 260. TEXTILE FABRICS, 242. THEBES, 266. THISTLES, 42. THREAD, 200. TILLAGE: THOROUGH TILLAGE, chap. xvi, 96; rocky character of the author's own fields, 96; clearing off stones profitable, 96; cultivating wet lands without draining unprofitable, 97; the course a poor man with a rugged, sterile farm should adopt, 97; should reclaim one field each year, 97; should plow often, deeply and thoroughly, 98-9; reasons therefor, 99; Fall plowing, 99; enriches the soil, 99-100; fences, 100; the favored lot of the squatter on the prairie, 101. _See_ also, PLOWING--DRAINING--FARMING. THE TIMES (London),282 TIMBER. _See_ TREES. TIMOTHY GRASS, 38, 153. TOBACCO, 191. TOMATOES, 264, 296. TRIBUNE, the, New York, 188. TURKEY, 86. TURNIPS. _See_ ROOTS, also 178, 264, 300. TREES: clearing off timber, 30; New England must always be well wooded, 34, 37; TREES--WOODLANDS--FORESTS, chap. vii; the author not sentimental regarding the destruction of, 44; utility the reason and end of vegetable growth, 44; profit the main consideration, 44; the beauty and grace of trees, 44; New England a favored section in regard to tree-growing, 45; disadvantage of prairie land in that respect, 45; trees once grew on "the Plains," 46; tree-planting in Utah, and its climatic influence, 46; failure of congress to pass a bill encouraging tree planting, 46; mistake of the New York dairy farmers in destroying trees, 47; Spain, Italy, and portions of France suffering from the destruction of their forests, 47; other illustrations of improvidence, 48. GROWING TIMBER--TREE-PLANTING, chap. viii, 50; proportion of a farm that should be devoted to trees, 49; the question of "too much land" and tree-growing, 51-2; its general application, 52; timber should be culled out rather than cut off, 52; the care of apple trees applicable to all trees, 52; some woodlands, the cheapest property in the United States, 53; another profitable field of labor, 54; plant thickly, 54; a common objection answered, 54; the Far West and tree-planting, 55. PLANTING AND GROWING TREES, chap. ix, 56; timber general on most farms, 56; suggestions for locating trees, 56; trees once planted cost nothing for cultivation, 56; the soil is richer even after repeated crops of wood, 57; poor land improved by growing timber on it, 57; springs and streams will be rendered more equable and enduring by tree-growing, 57; trees should be set on all hill-sides and ravines, 57; trees accumulate manure, 58; they can be placed so as to modify agreeably the temperature of a farm, 58; author's experience, 58; trees on the crest of a hill improve the crops on the slope, 59; trees may be placed with advantage on banks of rivers, &c., 59; a good tree grows as thriftily as a poor one, 59; evidence thereof, 60; diversity profitable, 60; wood-lot should be thinned out, not cleared, 60; the future should be considered when cutting, 60; evidence thereof, 60; a plantation furnishes employment at all seasons, 61; tree-growing will make springs appear, and cause rain, 61, 97. ABOUT TREE-PLANTING, chap. xxiii, 134; author's experience in raising Locust plants, 134; general counsel on the raising of locust and most other trees, 135; sowing seed and raising plants therefrom, 135; the raising of Chestnut, Hickory, White Oak, 135-6; how a farmer, having a rugged, stony hill should act, 136; profits which can be realized, 137; the utility of forests, 137-8; tree-planting as a field for adventurous young men, 138; how they should proceed, 138; the great profits to be realized, 138; drouths may be expected as the country is more and more denuded of its forests, 100; how stony land may be advantageously used for tree-planting, 215; treatment of forests in winter, 307; summing up of author's views on, 314. TREE-FRUITS. _See_ APPLES AND FRUITS. TREE-PLANTING. _See_ TREES. UNION COLONY--Its location, 262; the city of Greeley its nucleus, 262; irrigating canals of Union Colony, 262-4; doubts of the fertility of the soil of its location, 264; proved groundless, 264. UNITED STATES, 27, 53; the annual hay crop of, 150, 151, 315. UTAH, 46, 76, 181. VEGETABLES, culture of, 35, 37, 90, 107, 168, 228, 264, 265, 266; the growing of market, as a source of profit, 296. VENICE, 74. VERMONT--A grazing farm in Northern Vermont, 15, 25, 36, 48, 110, 159, 172. VINES. _See_ FRUIT. VIRGINIA, 50, 80, 86, 140, 166, 191, 237. WALNUT, 54, 60, 135, 136. WARREN COUNTY, N. Y., 191, 192. WARING, on drainage, 72; elements of agriculture by, 199; on drainage, 315. WATER, 231-2. _See also_ IRRIGATION. WATER MELONS, 300 WEBER, the river, 81. WEEDS, in pastures, 43. WEST, the, a farmer who migrated to, 16; illustration of good farming drawn from, 20, 23, 25, 26, 27, 36, 37, 41; regards tree growing, 45, 55, 142; the granary of the East, 163, 165, 168, 169, 179; the Far, 205; the Great, 241, 291, 311. WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N. Y., 49, 52, 62, 67, 118, 119, 125. WESTERN IRRIGATION. _See_ IRRIGATION. WHEAT, 21, 22, 37, 92, 94, 112, 113, 121, 131, 162, 167, 169, 238, 242, 245, 264, 265. _See_ also CORN. WHITE ASH, 291. WHITE BIRCH, 314. WHITE DAISY, 42. WHITE MAPLE, 53. WHITE MOUNTAINS, N. H., 172. WHITE OAK, 54, 55, 135, 215, 291, 314. WHITE PINE, 30, 48, 53, 54, 55, 215, 287, 314. WHITNEY, Eli, 86. WILLOW, 59. WINDMILL, 276-7. WINDS--Utilizing the Winds for power, 284. WINTER, 47, 59, 73, 81, 89, 113, 126, 135, 140, 141, 150, 154, 156, 157, 171, 178, 179, 193, 206, 209, 222, 258, 262, 263, 288, 298. WINTER. _See_ WORK, WINTER. WISCONSIN, 25, 159; Eastern, 163. WOOD ASHES, 120, 147, 173. WOOL, 164. _See_ SHEEP. WOOL GROWING. _See_ SHEEP. WORK, WINTER--WINTER WORK, chap. li. 303; dearth of winter work a great and growing evil. 303; consequences thereof, 303; it is quite a modern evil, 303-4; the hard-working farmer's claim to leisure, 304; he errs in supposing that there is no winter work to be done, 304; the drawing and preparing of muck as an illustration, 304-5-6; the work to be substituted where muck is not to be had, 306; procuring commercial fertilizers, 306; fences, 306; fruit trees, 306; forests, 307; general counsel, 307. WYOMING, 206. ZONE, temperate, 46; torrid, 46. THE END. _HORACE GREELEY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY._ RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE: Including REMINISCENCES OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND POLITICIANS, From the Opening of the Missouri Contest to the Downfall of Slavery. By HORACE GREELEY. In one elegant octavo volume. Beautifully printed and handsomely bound. 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Address =THE TRIBUNE, New York=. +------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the | | original document have been preserved. | | | | Typographical errors corrected in the text: | | | | Page 20 lea changed to lee | | Page 99 transfering changed to transferring | | Page 224 breechy changed to breachy | | Page 224 but changed to butt | | Page 272 Brobdignag changed to Brobdingdag | | Page 283 consideraby changed to considerably | | Page 324 BROCOLI changed to BROCCOLI | | Page 326 Mape's changed to Mapes's | | Page 327 Bolsalere's changed to Boissière's | | Page 332 ot changed to of | +------------------------------------------------+ 
48741	----	Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed. The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. * * * * * THE RURAL MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY EVENING FIRE-SIDE. [Illustration: "VENERATE THE PLOUGH."] VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA, _Second Month_, 1820. _No. 2._ FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. THE VILLAGE TEACHER. I cannot exactly tell why it was, that I felt particularly interested in the prospectus for the _Rural Magazine_; but I instantly resolved to become a subscriber, and fell to ruminating upon the benefits it might confer upon the country. Whether I conceived at once the idea of writing these essays, and took to myself a full share of its imagined usefulness and celebrity; or whether my satisfaction arose from disinterested motives, I felt a glow of kind feeling towards the editors, which expanded itself upon all around me. I dismissed my little school at an earlier hour than usual, and having simply reprimanded some idle culprits, to whom I should otherwise have administered the _ferule_, I devoted the remainder of the afternoon to writing a letter to a friend in town; in which I concluded a declamation upon the worthlessness of literary fame, by requesting him to place my name in the list of subscribers and contributors. Since then, the Magazine has frequently been the subject of my reveries; for the design is exactly what I have long desired to see attempted. Every man who has travelled half way up the hill of life, and has gained its fortieth milestone, will have amassed stores of thought and observation, which he is apt to think of inestimable value:--at least I find it so with me. There are many topics on which I differ from my friends, and in regard to which I am anxious to develope my opinions. Some others to which I attach a greater importance than is usually done; and many upon which my particular station in life has thrown lights which may be new and interesting to the public mind. For these reasons, I have long desired to extend my voice and authority beyond the precincts of my little kingdom, and to try the experiment of schooling the public in some of those great truths, which are too little regarded or understood, and bringing back its taste to the pure and simple enjoyments of rural life. Whether I shall succeed in my attempt to gain the public ear, will depend, perhaps, upon accident; for while the greatest merit has often languished in obscurity, folly and incapacity have as often caught the gale of popular favour. If I fail, I shall not be without consolation; for the most unsuccessful author finds it easier to censure the public for want of penetration, than himself for want of talent. I trust that I shall have occasion for no such reflections. It may be an author's vanity, and yet the voice of praise can scarcely reach my secluded abode; but my fancy already paints the bright eyes, and glowing cheeks that will hang over these essays, and the sober approbation with which mature age will perceive that they are devoted to the cause of truth and sound morality. Neighbour Schemer is welcome to pass over my numbers in search of the newest plans of farming, so long as he allows his blooming Emily to pause over them; and what do I care though old Lovegain pronounce them to be stupid stuff? I had rather possess the approbation and esteem of his lovely Sophia, than half his acres! It is a hopeless task, and may seem full of vanity, to enter the lists where so many have been foiled, and where all the great prizes have been born away by the master spirits of former times. But not to mention that fame is no object of my pursuit; the lofty rewards I speak of, were gained by the finest geniuses in our language, and conferred by the approbation of the world. My humbler attempt is to please villagers and farmers; and my ambition will be attained, if they crown me with the fragrant and perishing wreath that shall resemble their grateful though short-lived recollections. Custom and authority have assigned to the essayist a peculiar character. He is privileged at all places and in every family. Childhood loves and fondles upon him; and age and fashion, the man of pleasure and the man of business, alike consult and confide in him: above all, he is the particular favourite of the ladies, and is supposed to be knowing in all the labyrinths of the female heart, and all the points of etiquette and gallantry. He has, therefore, from time immemorial, been their faithful adviser, transmitted their billetsdoux, and corrected their letters. He is a notable dreamer, a great traveller, and a universal scholar: he generally passes for a grey headed sage, and yet is a very Proteus in his appearance and behaviour. The family is descended from Isaac Bickerstaff, esq.; a venerable gentleman, who made a considerable figure, and acquired much substance in queen Anne's time. Some of his descendants have been solemn and pedantic, and others giddy and frolicksome; but the features I have portrayed, run more or less through the whole family. Its enemies say that it is no longer what it was; that it has retained its homely peculiarities, without its originality and freshness, its wit and gallantry of character. Gentle reader, believe me, this is an unfounded calumny! A branch of the family settled in this country about eighty years since, and some of the American descendants have proved worthy of the original stock. One of them, renouncing the social habits of his kinsmen, went abroad among the fields and the solitudes of Nature, and there poured forth his soul in strains, of which a poet might have been emulous. It was he who first made the English Muses familiar with the sublimity of our native forests. Another, whose natural disposition was checked by the force of circumstances, devoted himself to the education of a favourite niece and nephew; and has given a signal example that an old bachelor is not always a useless being. A third, more merry and more melancholy, more sarcastic and more eccentric than all who went before him, divided his time between laughing at the world, and wandering over the scenes of his youthful and perished enjoyments. He still lives, although in a foreign clime and under an assumed name, to enjoy the love and admiration of his countrymen. Reader, I have already told thee how humble are my own pretensions. If I do not attract thy regard from my own merits, love me for the sake of my family; and have a kind eye to my rude speech and rustic manners, in the recollection of those from whom I boast to have descended. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. ON THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE. ----Trahit sua quemque voluptas.... Virgil. It is a fact which can never be successfully controverted, that man, in every stage of society, is addicted to pleasure; the uncultivated savage, and the sage philosopher are equally devoted to the attainment of felicity; are equally desirous to secure a perpetuity of happiness. The benevolent Creator of the universe seems to have endowed the human race with faculties peculiarly susceptible of pleasurable sensations; accordingly it becomes the business of every one, almost from his first entrance into life, to seek after such pleasures as are peculiar to the bent of his disposition, and to avoid every object or pursuit that has a tendency to pain or disappointment. If, however, all pleasures were in their nature innocent, and left behind no sting of remorse and anxiety, still man would inevitably soon feel the approaches of languor, especially whilst indulging in a round of mere sensual gratifications, and would earnestly sigh for some more permanent species of felicity; a felicity which might gently affect his mind, without overpowering his faculties in such a degree as to produce subsequent pain. But as the world is now constituted, it becomes the indispensable duty of the moralist, not only to guard mankind against excess in their pleasures, but also to warn them against such as are accompanied with vice and criminality. He therefore is not the true friend of mankind, who recommends to his fellow beings a continual abstinence from every gratification, or who would lead them to expect pleasure from sensual gratifications alone; but he who points out to their notice, those delights which are most durable, and at the same time, consistent with the strictest virtue. It must, without hesitation, be allowed, that religion is the source of the most exalted happiness that any human being can enjoy. Religion alone inspires the soul with a perfect dependance on the goodness and love of the DEITY, and diffuses over the mind that calmness and serenity, which inevitably proceed from a reception of his mercy and benevolence, ever manifested towards all his creatures. All the pleasures of life are so many poisonous ingredients in our cup, till religion purifies and destroys the noxious qualities with which they are tainted. Let religion mingle with our pleasures, and every thing of an evil tendency vanishes before it. Religion furnishes genius with its noblest theme, and it affords the fullest employment for all the energies of the human intellect. But another species of pleasure, most grateful, and ennobling to the human mind, arises from the exercise of the understanding in literary pursuits, and in the study and admiration of the various productions of human genius. A life thus devoted will afford more real gratification to an uncorrupted mind, than voluptuousness, with all her allurement, can offer, or than intemperance, with her bacchanalian crew, has power to bestow. We may indeed almost venture to assert, that if pure and rational happiness is any where to be found, except in the temples of religion, she resides in the studies of the learned, and sweetens all their labours. The cultivation of a literary taste is the source of rational and innocent entertainment; it is a powerful preservative from vice, and contributes to exercise in the soul a love of virtue. The pleasures of sense are all transitory in their nature, and have a direct tendency to debase the mind; while on the contrary, intellectual pursuits, delight us the more we are engaged in them, and even when their novelty is worn off, they still retain their charms. From the first period in which man is endowed with the use of his reasoning faculties, there is a constant struggle between the animal and intellectual powers. These endeavour to raise man to a state of immortal felicity, those, to sink and degrade him to a level with the brutes. Whatever pleasures, therefore, tend to increase the predominance of reason over the sensual desires, are favourable to the interests of virtue and religion. The pleasures of literature are of this nature; they strengthen and invigorate the faculties of the mind, and render it capable of manly exertion; they inspire cheerfulness and serenity, and produce an exquisite gratification to the mental powers; in short, they are as much superior to any thing of a sensual nature, as the nature of the human soul is superior to that of the body. W. M. Jan. 4th, 1820. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. The following is a copy from the original of a letter written by Dr. Franklin, and never before published. As the subject is one, invested at the present moment, with considerable interest to the people of this country, and coming from the pen of a celebrated man, whose patriotism, it is believed, was never doubted, it may perhaps be acceptable to your readers, and worthy of preservation in the pages of the _Rural Magazine_. Whether the Doctor is right or wrong in his theory, the public will determine. I. _"London, Feb. 20, 1768._ "DEAR FRIEND.--I wrote to you a few lines by Capt. Falconer, and I sent you Dr. Watson's new piece, of experiments in inoculation, which I hope will be agreeable to you. "The Boston people pretending to interfere with the manufactures of this country, make a great clamour here against America in general. I have endeavoured, therefore, to palliate matters a little in several public papers. It would, as you justly observe, give less umbrage if we meddled only with such manufactures as England does not attend to. That of linen might be carried on more or less in every family, (perhaps it can only do in a family way) and silk I think in most of the colonies. But there are many manufactures that we cannot carry on to advantage, though we were at entire liberty. And after all, this country is fond of manufactures beyond their real value: _for the true source of riches is husbandry_. Agriculture is truly _productive of new wealth_; manufacturers only change forms; and whatever value they give to the materials they work upon, they in the meantime consume an equal value in provisions, &c.; so that riches are not _increased_ by manufacturing; the only advantage is, that provisions in the shape of manufactures, are more easily carried for sale to foreign markets, and where the provisions cannot be easily carried to market, 'tis well so to transform them for our own use as well as foreign sale. In families also, where the children and servants of farmers have some spare time, 'tis well to employ it in making something; and in spinning, or knitting, &c. to _gather up the fragments_ of time, _that nothing be lost_; for these fragments though small in themselves, amount to something great in the year, and the family must eat whether they work or are idle. But this nation seems to have increased the number of its manufactures beyond reasonable bounds, (for there are bounds to every thing,) whereby provisions are now risen to an exorbitant price by the demand for supplying home mouths; so that there must be an importation from foreign countries: but the expense of bringing provisions from abroad to feed manufacturers here, will so enhance the price of the manufactures, that they may be made cheaper where the provisions grow, and the mouths will go to the meat. "With many thanks for your good wishes, I am, dear friend, affectionately yours, B. FRANKLIN. "DR. CADWALLADER EVANS." FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. THE DESULTORY REMARKER.--No. I. At lucre or renown let others aim, I only wish to please the gentle mind, Whom Nature's charms inspire, and lore of humankind. _Beattie._ Perhaps there is no nation existing, amongst whom there is so large a proportion of readers, as may be found in the United States. The freedom of our form of government, and its appropriate concomitant, the freedom of the press, impart the requisite facilities for a wide dissemination of knowledge, and furnish the motives and the means for cultivating it with success. Of newspapers, we have, if not a redundant, at least a copious supply. They are introduced into almost every nook and by-place of our extensive territory; and no individual who can read, need deny himself the gratification, of poring over their pages, and learnedly descanting on their contents. The moral influence of these popular vehicles of intelligence, may therefore from these facts, be properly estimated, and the importance of their being judiciously conducted, will at once be acknowledged. It is not the ponderous volume, the learned and elaborate dissertation, the abstruse researches of the ontologist, that moulds the sentiments of the great mass of any people, and implants in their bosoms the every-day principles of action; for to these they are utter strangers, and the laborious student may continue to monopolize them, without exciting in their minds the slightest regret: that however, which is brief, and simple, and practical, in other words, that which will be _generally read_, cannot fail to produce a deep and lasting impression on the public mind. With these convictions on the subject, it is contemplated, as leisure and inclination may suggest, to furnish a series of occasional papers, under the title indicated above. The plan of the writer, like those of his illustrious predecessors, is broad and liberal; unencumbered by systematic restraint; he intends to ramble over hill and dale, to seek for admission, not only at the cottage, but also at the mansion of opulence; and no topic shall be excluded calculated to promote general utility. To liberalise the public sentiment, to enlighten the public mind, in fine, to _make men better_, and by a necessary consequence, to promote public and private happiness, shall be his cardinal and favourite object. Human life and its incidents, men and things, literature and morals, will all be kept in view; and facts and illustrations, which may be subservient to his purpose, whether derived from observation or reflection, from society or from books, will not be forgotten or disregarded. Of the negative qualities of his proposed papers, he can speak without reserve and with entire confidence; they shall never offend the eye or ear of delicacy or of virtue. Immediate and personal observation, is entitled to a decided preference where it is possible to be consulted; but to him, the extent of whose migrations have been merely "from the blue bed to the brown," this is a resource which will often fail. Distant countries and former periods of time will therefore be contemplated, to use a significant phrase of Dryden, "through the spectacles of books." By thus cultivating an acquaintance with the generations which are past, and by thus holding converse with the mighty dead, we may augment the power of useful information, fortify our good principles, and become better qualified to perform the respective duties assigned us in the world. Human nature continues to travel onward with her venerable but untiring companion, Time, without the least change of character. Every feature, which appertained to her, six thousand years ago, will still be recognized by the discerning observer. It is, therefore, extremely desirable, that experience should not be lost upon us; but that her beacons should serve as a polar star, by which to steer our course with safety, through the dangerous and perplexing labyrinths of life. There is no question, that the very essence of papers, which shall successfully prefer claims to popular favour, or to practical utility, _must be variety_. The strength of Johnson himself could not shield his great moral work from the charge of unvaried and monotonous solemnity. He inculcated the doctrine, and exemplified it by his own writings, that even "uniformity of excellence" will at length nauseate the palate, not merely of the fastidious reader, but of him likewise whose only object is truth. A prominent purpose will be attained, if the dominion of fashionable folly shall be narrowed, and the attention of her votaries withdrawn from the frivolous and giddy circles in which they revolve; and steadfastly directed to the great interests of society, the cause of sound morals and unsophisticated virtue. Is it not a fact calculated to awaken the most profound regret, that many of our fellow citizens, particularly in the wealthy metropolis of Pennsylvania, who are invested with an elevated rank in life, and enjoy in profusion its good things, appear to live only for themselves? Men of this description, are really blanks in existence; and mistake most egregiously, the great errand of life. They may appropriately adopt the language of Pomfret: Custom the world's great idol we adore; And knowing this, we seek to know no more. Now education more than truth prevails, And naught is current but what custom seals. Thus from the time we first began to know, We live and learn, but not the wiser grow. Although sometimes assuming the province of a censor, the _Desultory Remarker_ will on all proper occasions, delight to unbend the stern and rigid brow of reproof, to mingle in the circles of innocent mirth and cheerfulness. He who increases the stock of "harmless pleasure," makes the public his debtor; but in order to ascertain that such is the character of pleasure, the requisite tests must be faithfully and rigorously applied. Cheerfulness uniformly shuns all intercourse with vice, but virtue is her favourite and appropriate companion. The innocent are gay--the lark is gay, That dries his feathers, saturate with dew, Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest. The _Desultory Remarker_ having thus in a spirit at once unreserved and candid, introduced himself to the reader will for the present respectfully take his leave; but with the hope of having other opportunities of cultivating a further acquaintance. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. _Letters of a Citizen to his Friends in the Country._ No. II. My own observation, and the opinions of others, induce me to believe, that generally speaking, less attention is given to _education_ among the farmers of Pennsylvania than was the case half a century ago. At any rate, the opportunity for instruction within the last fifty years, has not kept pace with the increased ability to furnish it. Land has appreciated, and the productions of the soil have yielded great profits to the husbandman; but the intellectual harvest has been of little account. The habits and manners of each successive generation, display the avidity with which foreign customs and fashions are embraced by the yeomanry of the country, but these _outside_ evidences of what is called _refinement_, have added nothing to the stock of our mental resources, and greatness. My purpose however, is to suggest plans of improvement, rather than to find fault with existing errors, for I am convinced that if a liberal and judicious system be adopted for enlarging the minds of our youth, and storing them with sound principles, the follies, (perhaps the vices,) which now so much engross their attention, disfigure their character, and mar their usefulness, would be ultimately corrected. Scholastic learning _alone_ will not, I am fully satisfied, mend the heart, or sanctify the understanding; but I am equally sure, that _ignorance as a quality_, never contributed to render the mind over which it held a dark and dreary reign, in a greater degree susceptible of those benign views, and exalted aims, which give to the _accountable being_, a just conception of the design of his Creator. If my opinion be worth any thing, of which you must be the judges, I would recommend the establishment of schools in every neighbourhood; but upon a very different foundation from that which generally obtains. Instead of an itinerant schoolmaster, who goes forth in the latter part of autumn in search of subsistence through the winter months, often without qualifications for the task he solicits, and not unfrequently of equivocal moral reputation, select a teacher estimable for his private virtues as a man, and respectable for his literary and scientific acquirements; remunerate him with a liberal salary; erect a suitable and comfortable building for the accommodation of the school: supply it with maps, globes, &c., and commence a library of useful books. Send your children regularly to school throughout the year, and thus make their education as much a business, and duty, as the cultivation of your farms. Short of this, will not fulfil the obligations which every parent owes to his offspring. We are social beings, and our prosperity and happiness depend primarily upon ourselves, and secondarily upon others; so that we are advancing our own interests and comforts, when we promote that of those by whom we are surrounded. In every neighbourhood in the country there are a few individuals whose pecuniary means will not permit them to defray the expenses of education, which the more wealthy can afford, and the condition of the indigent has been seriously affected in this respect, by the institution of _boarding schools_. To those seminaries, the children of the affluent are sent; the common schools are consequently neglected; the poor go uninstructed, and a wide, and fatal distinction is thus created, among the inhabitants of the same vicinage. Rather, fellow citizens, than perpetuate this sort of classification in society, direct your attention to the formation of good schools at home, to which every child may be admitted; where all may partake of the same common benefits and blessings. You will thus place all on a par in the advantages of instruction, create in the minds of all, the same respect for those moral obligations which hold the community together in the bond of safety and peace, and confer upon your offspring the most solid security. A youth, the son of one who is competent to defray the expense of his education at a boarding school, or college, is sent from home at the age of sixteen; is absent three or four years; has formed new associations, and contracted new notions; he returns to his birth-place; he has outgrown the recollections, and intimacies of his childhood; he feels a sort of elevation above the children of his neighbourhood, who have been groping in ignorance during his absence; he stands aloof; jealousy takes hold on the minds of those who observe this difference, and every evil passion begins its operation; the consequences are as sad, as they are certain. Contemplate the reverse of the picture. Behold the youth of adjoining farms for several miles in circumference, collected together in one school; pursuing the same studies; partaking of the same general care, in a moral and religious point of view, which every conscientious teacher will find it his pleasure to extend toward his pupils; participating in the same innocent recreations; growing up together with similar views of private duty, and public obligation; witness such an instance as this, and you may be assured that from hence will proceed much which will dignify and adorn the locality, where it is found to exist. As these reflections have occurred to me, I have taken the freedom of presenting them to your consideration. I am influenced by no other motive than that which would induce me to be the humblest agent in promoting the true interests of our country, and enlarging, if it were in my power, the circle of human happiness. CIVIS. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. HISTORY. There is scarcely any thing which is more injurious to the mind, or which will more effectually prevent the acquisition of knowledge, than a habit of reading for amusement only.--For, it will necessarily happen, that impressions, which have not been strengthened by reflection, will be quickly obliterated; and we cannot expect to derive permanent advantage from the mere pursuit of temporary enjoyment. To obviate the effects of a practice so pernicious, and to accustom the mind to the investigation of causes, the study of history is peculiarly adapted, for while it furnishes to the reflecting mind, ample room for the exercise of its powers, it is in itself, sufficiently attractive, to engage the attention of the most careless reader, it is indeed delightful, to --------------------------"Steal From all we may be, or have been before; to associate with men, upon whom a world has gazed with fear and wonder, to mingle in the conflicts Of nations, and to dwell upon the restlessness of ambition, the fearless perseverence of patriotism: nor is it less instructive to mark the gradual unfoldings of virtuous or vicious propensities, and to observe how frequently the sacrifice of all the enjoyments of life to the attainment of some favourite objects has been rewarded, with the hopeless gloom attendant upon satiety. History may thus be said to convey to us the experience of ages; and he must be an indifferent or a prejudiced observer, who cannot find his own feelings portrayed in the motives which it developes. But, with whatever views we may have undertaken this important study, we shall find it fruitless of permanent benefit, unless we shall have been impressed with the conviction of the absolute necessity of examining into the evidence of facts, and the correctness of deductions. It is thus only that we can be preserved from the danger of imbibing erroneous opinions on subjects affecting the common prejudices of mankind, or the peculiar doctrines of our authors. It is this assumption of popular sentiments which has degraded the human character, and reduced the highest intellectual powers to a dependence upon the lowest; and it is this reliance upon the impartiality of the historian, which has lent its assistance to the speculations of a false philosophy, in leading men into all the wanderings of scepticism. Let the student of history who is in pursuit of truth, endeavour to acquaint himself with the private opinions of the author whom he has taken for his guide, and let him beware, lest he admit any conclusion, however unimportant, which may seem to be at variance with the dictates of reason or of experience. Two important ends will thus be attained. By establishing a connection between the events detailed in history, and the reasonings founded upon them, they will be more likely to be retained in the memory; and by convincing himself of the fallacies in the arguments of its opponents, the reality of any truth will be more deeply impressed upon the mind. He who is thus habituated to scrutiny, will derive instruction from the errors of those with whom he is conversant; and may be compared (to borrow from the beautiful simile of bishop Horne,) to those who visit the country in spring, for whom "the very hedges are in bloom, and every thorn produces a a flower." C. ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. The following is an extract of a letter from the late President Adams, to a friend of the editors. Any thing from the pen of this eminent and venerable man will be read with interest, and ought to be public property. The anecdote is characteristic, and the obvious moral influence to be deduced from it, will strike the mind of every attentive reader. _Quincy, January_ 12th, 1820. DEAR SIR.--I thank you for your New-Year's letter, &c. * * * * As agriculture is the nursing mother of us all, it cannot be too assiduously cultivated; nor is it likely to be too much honoured, while mercantile profits are so much greater, and military glory is esteemed the highest glory! The "American"[1] is an able writer; but I wish he had avoided so many appearances of endeavouring to justify, or at least to apologize for slavery in general. His arguments _ad hominem_ from the Bible, reminded me of an anecdote, which as I am an old man, and as old age has a privilege to be talkative and narrative, I will attempt to relate: In the winter of '76, Mr. Paine's Common Sense and my Thoughts on Government, made their appearance in public, the one not long after the other. Common Sense recommended the Thoughts on Government; an organization in three distinct departments, as independent of each other as human beings can be;--the legislature to consist of three branches. Mr. Paine came flying to my apartment, to reproach me for publishing a monarchico, aristicratico, democratico system. He scolded violently, but I soothed him down by laughing at him in my turn. Paine, said I, how could you be such an abominable hypocrite, as to pretend to prove in your Common Sense from the Old Testament, that monarchy was not lawful by the word of GOD? This struck him dumb for a moment, but recovering himself, and shrugging his shoulders, and laughing, said, with great contempt; "I believe nothing of the Old Testament, nor the New neither;" and then pausing, said, "I have had thoughts of publishing my opinions upon religion, but upon the whole I have concluded to put _it_ off till the latter part of my life." This plan he consistently pursued. [1] The author of a long letter to the "Edinburgh Reviewers," published in the National Intelligencer. I am not sorry his bones are gone to England, to moulder in the soil where they grew; for I claim neither to myself or to my country, any honour from having once supported them. I am, Sir, your obliged friend, and humble servant, JOHN ADAMS. FAMILIAR LETTERS _From an Englishman in this country to his Friend at home._ (Communicated for the Rural Magazine.) No. II. _Philada. Sept. 16, 1819._ My Dear G. You know how very apt persons are to form an opinion of other persons with whom accident or design makes them acquainted, either on the _very_ wise principles of Lavater, or the _still wiser_ principles of Doctor--what's his name--(I wish I could forget as easily the labour I lost in studying him)--who first conceived craniology. You know also that I had every predisposition to the study of both these abstruse sciences, and the consequent deductions; so you will not be much surprised when I tell you that I have employed the time that has elapsed since the date of my last, in observing the physiognomy of Philadelphia. I did this, before I trespassed on the good-will, the hospitality, or the politeness of any of its citizens. You will observe I am perfectly distinct in my classification, and I beg of you to remember this, when you peruse any of my rambling epistles hereafter. My letters would, I hope, have commanded the civil attention of any person to whom they were addressed, independent of any particular kindness to which the recommendation of our venerable Quaker friend D---- of London would on the principle of reciprocity entitle me. But before I penetrated like Asmodeus in "Le Diable Boiteaux," into the domestic circle, the parlour, the halls, the tables, or the toilettes, or (shall I say it) to the counter and the desk. I wished to see the roofs, at least, if I could not see through them. So for the last week I have been studying physiognomies. There can be no need of apology to you my friend, who, (Heaven be praised) have never had occasion to leave the precincts of your ancient patrimony for any thing but pleasure, for dilating on a city that so far as it regards myself, has hitherto been on a par with Herculaneum or Pompeia. Some manuscripts and some printed accounts I _have_ seen, but like those saved from the lava of Vesuvius, they were hardly worth unfolding. Indeed, I always pitied poor Sir Humphrey for so incomprehensible a task. He had better have staid at home, and made experiments in separating the brick and mortar from the old ruins lord L---- boasts of having been in his family, at the smallest calculation from William Rufus. I do wonder what it could have been that the ancients took such care of. Well--I have _seen_ Philadelphia.--And if it were not for the dull monotony of its right angles--the wide streets that throw such an immense space between your lodgings and any desired object--the want of all the cries I have been used to in all the popular cities I have frequented, except, indeed, the solitary halloo of a _sweep_, (and then only before one gets up in a morning) and the everlasting _gong_ that wakes me from my sweetest slumber, and dreams of home, with all its indefinable attractions, I would say that Philadelphia was a very decent, orderly, well arranged, and handsome city. But give me Hogarth's line of beauty; I hate your everlasting parallels that run together to infinity, and never unite. By the way I am told that I shall be amply gratified in this respect in New York and Boston. There is only one street in this city, called Dock street, that is entitled to any claim to my fancy; and that is too broad, and nobody lives in it--all shops and warehouses. The weather is remarkably fine,--every body complains of a want of rain:--for my part I must confess I had enough at home; and if I must find fault with the climate, it is too hot. Yet I do not find the lassitude I expected, consequent on exercise in the open air. Notwithstanding a mid-day sun, that in England we should have thought intolerable, a young gentleman with whom I formed an acquaintance at our excellent hotel, prevailed upon me to take a promenade along the Philadelphia Bond street, which here is denominated Chesnut street. We saw some mansions that would not have disgraced one of our fashionable squares;--some ladies that would have honoured the very first equipage that sports in Hyde Park. Only a few could boast of our Saxon complexion; but their forms were cast in a superior mould;--this I apprehend is aboriginal--and although I cannot learn that any are willing to acknowledge their derivation from the native Indians, several circumstances induce me to believe there has been a greater mixture with the first occupants of this vast continent than has been generally supposed. But more of this hereafter--if in my contemplated visit next summer to the falls of Niagara, I should meet with some of the _deer_ skinned heroes and heroines of this western hemisphere. I have laid all those of the sock and buskin on the shelf, and am enthusiast enough to expect perfection among the savages of North America. Why should I not? Through all the obloquy that has been thrown upon them by their ruthless despoilers, "More savage still than they," through all that inveteracy of feeling which those who injure universally entertain--and "they who injure never pardon," you may still find a confession, or rather an admission of their virtues and their talents, of their magnanimity of character, and their elevation of soul. Not merely that indifference to privation and bodily suffering which we have been taught, was characteristic of savage life, but in spite of the natural principle of retaliation and revenge, (and I will maintain that it is a natural principle) they have evinced that virtue which the Bible has never taught many of us who have had access to it--_forgiveness of our enemies_. Do not, however, think that I have lost myself in the interminable forests which still remain to the original proprietors of this continent--or that I have assumed the rifle and the moccasin. I should even prefer taking up my residence in this place which you know we have always considered one of the advanced posts in the march of civilization. It is true I have not yet descended from the roofs as aforesaid, to see what kind of an animal a Philadelphian really is in his own family circle, and shall have to defer a picture of this non-descript till opportunity of observation occurs. I have as yet seen only the outside. I have seen the Pennsylvania hospital externally; I have seen the figure of old William Penn standing like a good old fashioned broad brimmed sentinel before the door of the edifice, like all sentries exposed to the wind and the weather, with his head as it were drooping over the fine hot-house plants that surround him. But a bronze statue of the old gentleman I must confess seemed rather _outre_, although he richly deserved an equipment in that same costume from the perseverance which history tells us he evinced in the strife with the bailiffs that beset him in our old island. But let that pass; I would consent to be surrounded by tipstaves all my life to leave such a character as he did behind.--I have seen the Academy of Fine Arts, most modestly retiring from public view, behind a range of buildings that some of the cits have unconscionably erected on the front of the street, thus clearly evincing their disposition, to use the words of my Chesnut street friend, to throw the fine arts in the _back ground_. By the way the good people here are said to be (by the New Yorkers at least) most intolerably given to _punning_, and I must admit that some of the gentlemen who attend our excellent ordinary, have put off a few attempts at that vile species of wit, of a most contemptible character. I should, however, be very sorry to pass an opinion on the whole genus by the few specimens I have seen. Philadelphia is really a very handsome city; yet to take a panoramic view of it, _you_ would be exceedingly disappointed. There are no steeples, or rather there is _one_, and that a very decent one--the architecture of which is by no means contemptible; but then there is _but one_ steeple in a city of upwards of fifteen thousand houses, principally constructed of brick. If there were only a standard or ensign appended to its spire, which is about 200 feet from the ground, and that standard in proportion to its height, this goodly town would look like one grand encampment. Few of the houses exceed three stories, of about ten or twelve feet each. The city is however, flanked by two shot towers, one in the southeast, the other in the northwestern extremity; which afford some relief to the dead uniformity in the general aspect of the town. How successful the proprietors of these said towers may have been in the pursuit of their vocation, I know not; but for ornament to this place, I would not give one steeple, like that which is bottomed in the good old diocesan episcopal church for a thousand of them. You see I have obeyed the injunction laid on me at parting, to express every thing as it presented itself to my observation, but in nothing can you find more sincerity of feeling than when I assure you neither time nor distance has diminished the warmth of affection with which I continue to be your friend. _Treatise on Agriculture._ SECT. II. Of the actual state of Agriculture in Europe. This is very different in different states, and even in different parts of the same state; its greater or less degree of perfection, depending on causes physical, or political, or both. Where a state, or part of a state, from _soil_, _climate_, _manners_, or _geographical position_, draws its principal subsistence from the fishery or the chase, as in the more northern parts of Europe, agriculture will not succeed; when a state is from any cause both essentially maritime or manufacturing, as in England, or principally manufacturing, as in Prussia; where public opinion has degraded manual labour, as in Spain, Portugal, and the Papal territory; or where laws villainize it, as in Russia, Prussia, Poland, Hungary, &c. &c. it is in vain to expect pre-eminent agriculture.--These principles will receive illustration as we go along. 1. In the Campania of Rome, where in the time of Pliny were counted twenty-three cities, the traveller is now astonished and depressed at the silence and desolation that surround him.--Even from Rome to Trescati, (four leagues of road the most frequented) we find only an arid plain, without trees, without meadows, natural or artificial, and without villages, or other habitation of man! Yet is this wretchedness not the fault of soil or climate, which (with little alteration[2]) continue to be what they were in the days of Augustus. "_Man is the only growth that dwindles here_," and to his deficient or ill directed industry, are owing all the calamities of the scene.[3] Instead of the hardy and masculine labours of the field; the successors of Cato and of Pliny employ themselves in fabricating _sacred vases, hair powders and pomatums, artificial pearls, fiddle strings, embroidered gloves, and religious relics_! They are also great collectors of pictures, statues, and medals--"dirty gods and coins," and find an ample reward in the ignorance and credulity of those who buy them. [2] The climate of Italy is now warmer than it was in the Augustan age, which Buffon ascribes to the draining of great tracts of swampy lands in Germany. [3] "Un Romain meme le plus indigent rougiroit de cultiver la terre." Bosc. 2. How different from this picture is that of _Tuscany_! where the soil, though less fertile,[4] is covered with grains, with vines, and with cattle; and where a surface of 1200 square leagues, subsists a population of nine hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, of whom eighty thousand are agriculturists. It may amuse, if it does not instruct, the reader, to offer a few details of a husbandry, among the most distinguished of the present age. The plough of the north of Europe, as of this country, has the powers of a wedge, and acts perpendicularly; but that of Tuscany resembles a shovel, is eight or nine inches long, and nearly as broad, and cuts the earth horizontally. This instrument is particularly adapted to the loose and friable texture of the soil. A second plough, of the same shape, but of smaller size, follows that already described, and with the aid of the hoe and the spade,[5] throws the earth, already broken and pulverised, into four feet ridges, or beds, on which the crop is sown. The furrows answer a threefold purpose; they drain the beds of excessive moisture, ventilate the growing crops, and supply paths for the weeders. [4] "Two thirds of Tuscany consist of mountains." Vol. viii. p. 232. _Geographic, Mathematique et Phisique_: See also Forsyth's remarks, p. 80, where are detailed the principal causes of her prosperity. "Leopold," says he, "in selling the crown lands, studiously _divided large tracts_ of rich but neglected land, into _small properties_. His favourite plan of encouraging agriculture consisted, not in _boards_, _societies_, and _premiums_, but in giving _the labourer a security and interest in the soil_--in multiplying small freeholders--in extending the livelli, or life leases, &c. &c. [5] It is among the most important covenants of a Tuscan lease, that one third of the ground be annually worked with a spade. The _rotation of crops_, employs two periods of different length; the one of three, the other of five years. In the rotation of _three_ years, the ground is sown five times, and in that of four years, seven times, as follows. First year, wheat, and after wheat lupins. Second year wheat, and after wheat turnips. Third year, Indian corn or millet. First year, wheat, and after wheat beans. Second year, wheat, and after wheat lupins. Third year, wheat, and after wheat lupinella: (annual clover.) Fourth year, Indian corn, or millet. In the _Syanese Maremna_, where the lands want neither repose or manure, the constant alternation is _hemp_ and _wheat_, and the produce of the latter, often twenty-four bushels threshed, for one sown. It will be seen from this course of crops, that the principal object of Tuscan agriculture, is wheat, of which they have two species, the one bald, the other bearded; both larger than the corresponding species in other countries of Europe; convertible into excellent bread and pastes, and probably but varieties of that _Sicilian family_, which Pliny describes, as yielding "_most flour_ and _least bran_, and _suffering no degradation from time_." It is harvested about the middle of June and when the grain crop is secured, the ploughing for the second, or forage crop, begins; which besides lupins, lupinella, and beans, often consists of a mixture of lupins, turnips, and flax. The lupins ripen first and are gathered in autumn; the turnips are drawn in the winter and the flax in the spring. Besides the application of _ordinary manures_, the lupin is ploughed down, _when in flower_; a practice that began with the Romans: Columella says, "of all leguminous vegetables, the _lupin_ is that which most merits attention, because it costs least, employs least time and furnishes an _excellent manure_." The culture of this vegetable is different, according to the purposes for which it is raised; if for grain, the ground has two ploughings and twenty-five pounds weight of seed to a square of a hundred toises: if for manure, one ploughing is sufficient. Like our buckwheat, its vegetation is quick and its growth rapid; whence the farther advantage of suppressing, and even of destroying the weeds that would have infested any other crop. In the neighbourhood of Florence, they are in the practice of _burning the soil_; which they do by digging holes, filling them with faggots and raising the earth into mounds over them.--The faggots are then inflamed and burnt, and with them the incumbent earth, which is afterwards scattered, so as to give the whole field the same preparation. 3d. "The countries," says Arthur Young, "the most rich and flourishing of Europe, in proportion to their extent, are probably _Piedmont_ and the _Milanese_. We there meet all the signs of prosperity--an active and well conditioned population, great exportations, considerable interior consumption, superb roads, many opulent towns, a ready and abundant circulation, the interest of money low, the price of labour high; in one word, it is impossible to cite a single fact that shews that Manchester, Birmingham, Rouen, and Lyons, are in a condition equally prosperous, as the whole of these Dutchies." Their population is stated at "1,114,000, and the territory at little more than two millions of arpents, (acres.) Wheat, rye, indian corn, flax and hemp, the vine and the olive, the caper and the cotton tree, with all kinds of garden fruits and vegetables, are cultivated here: the soil knows no repose, and much of it yields annually and uniformly two crops of grain, or three of grass."[6] These are the miracles of irrigation; not a drop of water is lost. Besides the permanent supplies furnished from lakes, ponds, rivers, creeks and springs, even the winter torrent and summer shower, are every where intercepted by drains, and led to reservoirs; whence they are distributed at will to the neighbouring grounds. [6] Geographic, Mathematique, &c. Article Italie. In 1770, an agricultural school was established at Milan, consisting of 220 boys, who were instructed in theoretical and practical husbandry.--This institution has escaped the notice of travellers; and we are unable to say whether it has or has not, fulfilled the intentions of its projectors. 4. _Switzerland_ has about 1444 square leagues of surface, and presents an assemblage of mountains, one rising above another, until the summits are lost in masses of snow and ice, which never melt. This short description sufficiently indicates the character of both the soil and the climate; yet unpropitious as these are, we find a population of 1242 inhabitants to each square league! "This is perhaps the country of the world, which presents the most happy effects of an industry always active and persevering. The traveller who climbs her mountains, is struck with admiration when he beholds vineyards and rich pastures in those places, which before appeared naked and barren rocks. The traces of the plough are perceived on the border of precipices, where the most savage animals do not pass without danger; in one word the inhabitants appear to have conquered all obstacles, whether arising from soil, position or climate and to have drawn abundance from territory, condemned by nature to perpetual sterility."[7] [7] Idem. Article Helvetia. 5. The classical reader will remember, that _Spain_ was the garden of the Hesperides of the Roman writers; by which was meant the combinations of a fine climate, a rich soil and an active and intelligent agriculture. To this state of things, even the empire of the Goths was not fatal,[8] and that of the Moors rendered it still more distinguished. In their hands, the plains of Valentia were cultivated throughout, with the utmost care and skill; and where their wheels, reservoirs, and drains of irrigation, yet remain, the soil continues to yield the richest and most abundant products. In Catalonia, Navarre, Galitia and the Austurias, many species of the ancient agriculture are yet in vigour, because "the _leases are long_, and the _landlord cannot capriciously violate them_." The same causes are followed by the same effects, in the three districts of Biscaya, Guiposcoa and Alava. "In running over these, every thing one finds is animated by the presence of liberty and industry; nothing can be more charming than the coasts, nothing more attractive than the culture of the vallies. Throughout the thirty leagues that separate Bedassod from Vittoria, every quarter of an hour we discover some well built village, or comfortable cottage."[9] [8] It appears from Varro _Dere rustica_ and the letters of Cassiodorus, that the Goths introduced into Spain the subterranean granaries, called _Siilos_, and the _art of irrigation_. The former are now exclusively used in Tuscany, and Cato's precept, 'Prata irrigua,' &c. shews whence their knowledge of the latter was derived. [9] Burgoing's modern Spain, vol. i. How different is the aspect of the other provinces! In these, not more than two thirds of the earth are cultivated; and "it is not uncommon to travel eight and ten leagues together, without finding a trace of human industry. In the district of Badejoz alone, is a desert of twenty-six leagues in length and twelve in breadth.[10] Ten of the fourteen leagues that traverse the duchy of Medina Sidonia, consist altogether of pasturage. There is no where a vestige of man; not an orchard, not a garden, not a ditch, not a cottage to be seen! The great proprietor appears to reign, like the lion in the desert, repulsing by his roaring all who would approach him. But, instead of human colonies, we encounter troops of horned cattle and of _mares_, wandering, self directed, over plains, to which the eye can discover no boundary or barrier, and which brings to one's recollection the days when the beasts shared with man the empire of the earth."[11] [10] Borde's Hineraira de l'Espagne, vol. iv. p. 30. [11] Burgoing. Spain has been long renowned for its horses. The Romans, in settling their pedigree and illustrating their swiftness, called them '_the children of the winds_.' "Even when the plough is used, it is little more than a great knife fastened to a stick, that just scratches the surface. The grain is threshed by horses, or mules driven over it, of by means of a plank studded with nails or flint stones and drawn across it. With even this miserable culture, the land in Andalusia yields considerable crops; yet are the inhabitants too lazy or too few to gather them together. This is done by Galiegos, who are the labourers of Spain." We need scarcely remark, that in a state of agriculture like this, the peasantry cannot be either well fed or well clothed. "The mountaineers live principally upon roasted acorns and goats' milk, and those of the plain (from Barcelona to Malaga) on bread steeped with oil, and occasionally seasoned with vinegar."[12] [12] Swinburne's Travels, Vol. I. A Spanish peasant, who has earned or begged enough for the wants of the day, will refuse to earn more, even by running an errand. Striking as this fact is, it does not so well illustrate Spanish indolence as the following anecdote from the same pen. In the great sedition at Madrid, which ended in the defeat of the king and the disgrace of his minister, (the Marquis des Squillas) and in its most fervid moments, both parties retired about dinner time to take their _nap_ or _meridiana_, after which they returned to the combat with new vigour and enraged fury. If _habits_ can thus control the _passions_, to what important uses might not a wise legislation turn them? It is wide of our object to examine the causes of the degradation of character, which marks the agriculture of Spain. Well informed writers have ascribed it to the expulsion of the Moors and Jews, to the weight of taxes and imposts, to the _mesta_ or common right of pasturage, to the discovery of America and its consequences, to the effect of climate and the ill judged charity of bishops and convents, but principally to the great _manorial grants_ and _unequal division_ of the soil, which followed the conquest. "We often find six, eight, ten, and even fifteen leagues of extent belonging to one master. The nobility and clergy possess nearly the whole country. One third of Spain belongs to the families of Medina, Celi, D'Alva, De l'Infatado, D'Aceda, and to the archbishops, bishops and chapters of Toledo, Compostella, Valentia, Seville and Murcia. A great proportion of these lands remain untilled and untenanted, and those which are let in _Cortijo_ or farms are double or treble the quantity that can be occupied in tillage."[13] [13] Le Borde's Heneraire D'Espagne, Vol. 1. 6. The agriculture of _Portugal_, has been subjected to the same evils as that of Spain, to which may be superadded, her connexion with Great Britain; under whose policy she has become a raiser of _fruit_ instead of _grain_. 7. _France_ is probably the country of Europe, which most unites the great desiderata of an extended and profitable agriculture; fertility of soil, mildness of climate, a dense population, an enlightened government, and facility of exportation. Within her ancient limits, she boasts of a surface of more than one hundred and fifteen millions of arpents, and a population of twenty-two millions of inhabitants. The following tables will shew, in a compressed form, the nature of her soil, and the use to which it is put.[14] [14] See Geographique, &c. Vol. VI. Art. _France_, p. 13, and Young's tour through France. GEOLOGICAL TABLE. Arpents or Acres. Alluvial and other rich soil, 26,159,340 Chalky do 13,268,911 Gravelly do 3,261,826 Stony do 18,128,660 Sandy do 7,553,956 Substratum of clay with a slight covering of sand--called _landes_, 21,879,120 Granitic and other mountains 25,261,946 AGRICULTURAL TABLES. Arable land 63,600,000 Vineyards, 4,764,960 Woods, 15,931,850 Natural meadows, 5,464,800 Artificial meadows, 6,332,100 Lakes, marshes, wastes, 19,400,049 ----------- Total, 115,493,759 From the average of a number of statistical tables made by the Abbe D'Expillyt and others, it appears that in 1777, the agriculture of France was sufficient for the subsistence of its inhabitants, and had a surplus to spare;[15] and though it be universally admitted that her condition in this respect is not less prosperous _now_ than it was _then_,[16] still it cannot be dissembled that her husbandry has many defects. [15] The products of agricultural labour, were, in these tables, stated at 114,552,000 L. T. Those of manufacturing labour at 128,015,000. [16] The effects of the revolution of 1789 on _agriculture_ are no longer doubtful. The suppression of _tythes_--of the _exclusive privilege_--of the _chase_--of every species of _corvee_ (labour performed by tenants for landlords)--of _taxes_ or _rents_, and of _rights_ of _commonage_--was among these effects; and if to these we add the _division_ of the _great landed estates of the nobility and clergy_, there can no longer be any scepticism on this point. No truth is better established than the advantage of _small_ farms over _great_, as far as the _public_ is concerned. The Roman latifundia (military grants) destroyed Roman agriculture. 1. A supposed resemblance between the earth and animals, gave rise to _fallows_; because men and horses required repose after _labour_, it was supposed that after _cropping_, the earth also required it. Faithful to this absurd analogy, the French landlord binds down his tenent by lease, not to crop the soil more than _three_ years in _four_, which in effect is to consign to barrenness or weeds, one fourth of the whole arable land of France yearly! 2. There is not a sufficiently fixed, or steady proportion, between _arable_ and _pasture_ land.--The production of grain is the great object of culture--often with too little regard to the nature of the soil, and generally without any to its improvement. "Where pasturage is scanty, where natural meadows are bad, where artificial are rare, and root husbandry little extended, cattle cannot be either numerous or well conditioned; and as without these there can be no manure, so without manure there can be no abundance."[17] [17] Herbin's statistique Gen. de la France Vol. I. introduc. 3. The land is generally worked by _farmers, hired for that purpose, or by renters on short leases_; which in neither case betters the condition of the soil; the one having no interest in improvements, and the other too small a one to justify any expense in making them. 4. A _good rotation system_, adapted to the soil and climate, is not absolutely unknown, and may be found even in whole districts (as in French Flanders) but much too rarely. We have seen _wheat_ and _fallows_ alternately for years; and _wheat_, _rye_, _hemp_, and _rye_, and many others equally ridiculous. 5. To the eye, more than one half of France is a common, without fences of any kind, excepting garden or park walls. Can there be order, economy and security, under such circumstances? Can the _police_ and the _gens d'armes_ be sufficient substitutes? [_Albany Argus._ (To be continued.) _The Moral Plough Boy._ In that volume whose morality is as sound, as the religion, it inculcates is celestial; and which is in fact an inexhaustible source of human wisdom, as well as a pure and incorruptible fountain of divine light; we are taught to "_despise not the day of small things_." How much better off than they are, would thousands of their countrymen be at this moment, had this injunction never failed of its proper effect upon their conduct! If they had constantly cherished it in their recollection and carried it into practice in their daily occupations. But to contemplate the past or the present is needless, if it be not with a view to awaken the soul not only to a proper train of reflection, but to a salutary system of practice for the future. If we had not "_despised the day of small things_," and sought too eagerly after brilliant speculations and splendid fortunes, thousands of us might now be blessed with ease and competence, and still animated by a sober and useful spirit of industry, who are, on the contrary, plunged into embarrasment, stripped of our property, and paralyzed in our energies. We began the world with fair prospects, and we thought, at the same time with firm resolutions not to blast them by seeking too eagerly after _fairer_ ones; but man is rarely contented with what is simply good or bright; he must have something _better_ and _brighter_. There is always some tree whose fruit is forbidden, or beyond his reach, but of which he cannot rest easy till he has tasted. He can never think of resting upon the clear declivity, whilst the "cloud-capped" summit is above him, veiling something which he has not seen, and which may be, as he is apt to imagine, a pleasing, a valuable or a wonderful discovery. Thus it is that we always reject the good within our grasp, in the delusive hope of grasping something better beyond it; that we lose sight of the content and happiness which are to-day within our reach; and look to the morrow to bring forth that which will satisfy our desires, and cause us to rejoice in our existence. But the morrow comes, our anticipations are not realized, and we vainly regret that we had not enjoyed the day before, as we might have done, without trusting to a deceitful futurity. We aim to inculcate moderation in the desire of wealth, or of any other acquisition which is supposed to contribute to human happiness, combined with a steady, industrious and persevering attention to the means of obtaining what we desire. To this end, we must not "_despise the day of small things_;" but must set out in every undertaking with a determination to take advantage of the most trivial, as well as the most important circumstance, calculated to favour our designs. We must watch with the eyes of an _Argus_ for Opportunity, never forgetting, that she is bald behind, and must therefore be caught by the forelock, if caught at all. When once she turns her back upon us, she is soon out of sight, and we vainly attempt to overtake her. She mocks at our folly, and leaves us to brood, in hopeless amazement, over our own blindness and imbecility. But who are they that "_despise the day of small things_?" They are too numerous for description in a brief essay; but we shall point out a few, and leave the reader's imagination to enlarge the catalogue. The MECHANIC who puts off a small job, as unworthy of his attention, because he happens to have a larger one on hand; without stopping to reflect, that small streams are more numerous than large ones; that the former continually supply the latter; and that by a steady succession of small jobs, he may acquire a capital to execute large ones upon his own account. The MERCHANT who will sit behind his counter with a segar in his mouth, and think it derogatory to his dignity to reply to a demand for a shilling's worth of any thing. Such "_small things_" are too insignificant for this man of smoke; and consequently when those who call for them, and find themselves neglected, have occasion to make a _large_ purchase, they go to him, who will not only lay down his segar, but leave his dinner, if required to wait upon them in ever so small a way. The PHYSICIAN, who passes by the the poor man's door hardly stopping to give a hasty prescription, although he never fails to loiter in the sick rooms of the rich and the powerful, till his sycophancy becomes as disgusting to the mind, as his medicine is nauseating to the stomach of his patient. The LAWYER who turns a deaf ear to an honest client with but _five_ dollars in his pocket; but is quick of hearing when accosted by a party with a _fifty dollar bill_, and not over scrupulous either about the justice of the cause. The CLERGYMAN--and what shall we say of the Clergyman, who "_despises the day of small things_;" who forsakes and forgets the poor, but pious flock, which first cherished him, to gratify his pride and ambition, and acquire those robes and riches which moths may corrupt and thieves may steal; and who is so eager withal to make converts, that he does not stop to be satisfied that conversion is the offspring of conviction, forgetting how much joy there is in Heaven over one sinner that truly repenteth; and that the hope of the hypocrite shall perish for-ever! The FARMER who clears more land than he can cultivate to advantage, destroying the present and preventing the future growth of timber to no purpose; who keeps his produce on hand, when he can get a good and saving price, in hopes it may rise; who sells it at last for less than he could have had at first; and who is not as grateful to God for a scanty harvest, as he is for a plentiful one. We might enlarge the catalogue of those, who, by "_despising the day of small things_," never arrive at that of great ones; but we do not wish to tire the reader with a tedious essay, when a light and pleasant one is our aim. There is, however, one precious delinquent, in whose soul we would gladly awaken those moral energies which alone can save it from eventual ruin; from the tortures of self condemnation, the contempt of mankind, and the horrors of despair. We mean the YOUNG STUDENT of GENIUS, who consumes the vigour of his youth in the haunts of vice and infamy--who despises the minutia of his profession, whatever it may be, and wantonly neglects his daily studies for the _present_, in pursuit of pleasure, intending, perhaps, to make great and rapid strides at a _future_ time--but when that time arrives may find his former neglect and dissipation have destroyed the energies of his mind, and left it like a sieve, incapable of containing any thing but dregs! In this case the ruin is indeed a melancholy one; for instead of being "led, through paths of glory, to the grave," the stews and the state prison are too often the pathways of such a youth to that closing scene; and his _hic jacet_ may be found, if found at all, in the _Potter's field_, that last receptacle of the dregs of humanity! Think of this, ye giddy, ye thoughtless young men, who are squandering your precious moments in idleness and vice, dishonouring yourselves, disgusting your friends, disappointing the expectations of your country, breaking the hearts of your fond parents, and bringing their "grey hairs with sorrow to the grave!" How bitter will be your feelings, when you are driven to reflect, as you finally must be, and perhaps at the foot of the gallows, that by your folly and wickedness, you have not only sealed your own ruin, but madly "Steep'd a mother's couch in tears, "And ting'd a father's glowing cheek with shame!" Many of those giddy young men, to whom these remarks apply, may perhaps sneer at the idea of being brought up at last, in their mad career, by the arm of the public executioner. But let them turn, in some hour of solitude, if such hours ever bless them with the sweets of calm reflection, to the pages of the _Criminal Recorder_! They will there find, that from GEORGE BARNWELL, down to JAMES HAMILTON, those who have died upon the gallows have not always plunged at once into the depths of depravity; but have gone on, step by step, from slight deviations to serious ones, till they have lost all sense of shame, and become rebels to God as well as man. In this degraded state of their souls, they have not stopt at the brothel, the cock-pit, or the gambling table; but urged by the demons of hell, they have wantonly seized the dagger of assassination, and bathed it in the blood of innocence! thus closing their criminal career by a deed of desperation. H. H. jr. Mr. Nicholson's Prize Essay. _On a Rotation of Crops, and the most profitable mode of collecting, preserving, and applying Manures._ (Communicated to the Albany County Agricultural Society.) [CONTINUED.] In the spring of the third year, we propose to sow the ground with barley, after two or three ploughings--seed, two and a half bushels to the acre. At the same time also, give the ground at least 12 pounds of red clover seed to the acre, which may be carefully mixed with the barley, and sown together. Harrow the ground before sowing, and harrow in the seed, after it has been prepared in the manner before directed; then, if the farmer is in possession of the roller, let this be passed over the ground, particularly if it be somewhat dry; for, in such case, barley, being covered with a husk, requires a close envelopement with earth, in order that the progress of its germination be not either partially or wholly retarded. Next spring give the ground a top dressing of gypsum, of from one to two bushels to the acre, as circumstances may seem to require.--Two clover crops are to be expected this season. The next, either one or two may be taken, according to the climate, but usually one only in more northerly regions; and in this case let the second growth be laid prostrate, by the roller passing over it in the same direction in which the plough is to follow, in order that the growth may be carefully turned under, which will form an excellent lay for winter wheat, or for rye, if the climate is not adapted to the growth of the former crop. In suitable climates, wheat will succeed on a good clover lay even on light sandy lands. It is believed, however, that the species of wheat which is considerably cultivated in Pennsylvania, called spelt, (_triticum spelta_) may be successfully cultivated in any part of the northern states where wheat of the common sorts do not flourish.--When the sward has thus been turned under, let the surface be levelled by running the harrow lightly over it, in the same direction in which the plough runs, and then cover the seed with the harrow, run in a similar direction. Let the seed wheat be prepared in the manner before described, and let it be free from any mixture of rye, or the seeds of cockle, or other weeds. Next spring give the ground another top dressing of gypsum, in order that a growth of white clover may rise after harvest, as this will afford considerable fall feed, and a fresh sward to be turned under in the latter part of the fall, the effect of which will be explained when speaking of manures, &c. Thus our rotation requires six seasons for its completion, and is composed of six or more different and successive crops. In exhibiting our plan, we intend it merely as an outline of what we deem at least one of the best and most profitable systems of culture that can be pursued in good arable lands, where all obstructions to the most complete culture have been removed.--Other courses may probably be devised which may be as good, but we feel confident there can be none better. We consider this rotation as comprehending a sufficient variety of crops for every purpose of affording the land rest by changes; and although a course of rotation might be made to include a greater variety of crops, still the profits of them in the aggregate, would probably be less than in the plan we propose. We insist much on the culture of root crops for the greatest possible profits. In some instances the growths of roots and vines we propose, as well as of the grain crops, might be substituted for others, and sometimes, for the sake of further variety of growths, particularly of roots, it might be advisable; all this must, however, depend on the soil, and on other circumstances. If the soil be rich and deep, perhaps the mangel wurzel, should have a preference to the common turnip, and the pumpkin, in the first years crop, and perhaps in such soil the cabbage culture should sometimes come in for a share. We should hardly advise that crops of carrots or of parsnips should ever enter the list of a general rotation of crops, as they require peculiar soils, and uncommon preparation. They are very valuable crops for particular purposes, but their uses for feeding and fatting cattle seem to be in a great measure superseded by the less expensive culture of the crops before-mentioned. There are, however some mellow fertile soils, of sandy texture, where these roots, particularly carrots, may be cultivated with great advantage. A very serious objection to the culture of parsnips is, that in the soils most suitable for them they extend so deeply that their extraction from the earth is a matter of no small difficulty. In recommending the alternate culture of the pumpkin with the corn crop, we have been influenced by two considerations; firstly, from an account we have lately seen of a trial made of the culture of the large sort of pumpkin by itself, in which at the rate of 25 tons to the acre were raised; and, secondly we are of opinion that in cultivating the crop in the way we propose, nearly as great a product may be obtained as if the ground were planted entirely with this crop.--Growing in drills by itself it will not impede the growth of the corn, nor do we conceive that this crop will be injured by the extension of the pumpkin vines over the ground; whereas if the two crops were planted together in the same hills, or drills, as is commonly practised, the growth of the one must, in a great measure, serve to rob the other of its due share of nutriment. The large sort of pumpkin, to which we have reference, has been raised of the weight of upwards of 150 pounds, but it is probably less nutritious, because less sweet, than pumpkins of the common sorts. Another large sort, which we have seen exhibited in this county, of more than four feet in length, is probably entitled to a preference for culture, as it appears to be as sweet as pumpkins of the smaller kinds. In selecting seed for the pumpkin crop, take such plants as bear the greatest weight of pumpkins, and from the largest of these let the seed be preserved. We have next to speak of the rotations proper for clayey lands, or those which have more or less alumin in their composition. Lands of this description are various, as well in regard to their natural fertility, as to their being more or less inclined to a superabundance of moisture. Some are naturally too wet for cultivating even grain crops with success, and should therefore be kept for mowing and grazing lands. Some again may be merely too wet for crops of winter grain, and in such case spring crops should be substituted, while at the same time the lands should be more applied to the business of the dairy, and of the grazier. In the mean time, let the possessor of lands which are naturally too wet, proceed to laying at least a part of them dry, by hollow drains; and then by making his barn dung principally into heaps of compost, in which lime and sand shall be considerably used as additional ingredients, and applying such compost manure to the drilled crops before-mentioned, and in the manner before directed, he will find no difficulty whatever in pursuing the course of crops we have recommended, nor of raising them of luxuriant growth. Where clayey lands are naturally dry enough for winter crops, we advise to a similar course of crops, with the manure prepared and used in a similar manner. In all stiff soils, however, an important point in husbandry, is to keep the ground, while under a course of crops, in a mellow crumbly state; and for this purpose nothing is more conducive than frequent deep ploughings, and raising the ground into high narrow ridges, as well to lie in that state during winter, as for the culture of all the drilled crops in particular. The ridges are to be formed by four gathering furrows, and in cleaving the ridges down new ones are formed with the middle or highest part of each where the last furrows were of the former ridges. When, therefore, the manure is to be used for the drilled crop, it is to be laid in the furrows, between the ridges, and then covered over with two gathering furrows run on each side, and thus the beds or ridges for the crop prepared. If, however, it should still be found that some clays, even with this management for the purpose of ameliorating them, should still be found unsuitable for Indian corn, and for the turnip and ruta baga crops, we can only advise that, for the former, the Windsor bean, and for the two latter the mangle wurzel and the cabbage crop, be made substitutes. The Windsor bean is considerably cultivated in the clay lands of Great Britain; and Mr. Deane, in his Farmer's Dictionary, says its growth on such lands in this country is luxuriant. Perhaps in place of this species of the bean, another, which is cultivated in the southern states, and is there called the cow pea, should be prefered. It should be further observed, that gypsum, when applied as a top dressing to clay lands, particularly those which are too wet, has but very little effect; but when they are laid dry by hollow drains, and thrown into ridges as before-mentioned, the effect of this manure upon them is nearly the same as in other dry arable lands.--And as we conceive it essentially necessary that all clay lands which are to be cultivated for spring crops, as well as all other soils which are naturally too wet, should lie in ridges during the winter, we advise that, at the beginning of the rotation we have mentioned, such lands have a second ploughing in the fall, for the purpose of being laid in such ridges. When thus laid they are easily reduced to a mellow state in the spring; but if this be neglected, they will usually be found, more or less, in hard baked clods, a state very unfit for good cultivation. In Great Britain it is found essentially requisite that clay lands should be effectually summer fallowed as often as every sixth year; as well for the purpose of extirpating growths of weeds, as for mellowing the soil, and rendering it more lively. A fallowing there is performed by many repeated ploughings and harrowings during the summer. But it should be remembered that the climate of that country is very different from this. Their wheat harvest is in autumn, their summers being wet and cool. Here we have time after the harvest is over to cleanse and enliven the soil by repeated ploughings and harrowings. On hard gravelly lands, which are unfit for any crops of roots, except perhaps potatoes, no very extensive rotation can be had to advantage without plentiful manuring. Gypsum has a powerful effect on such lands, and with the aid of this manure alone even the poorest of gravels may be made to yield good crops of buckwheat and of red clover; and on a lay of this latter crop turned under, a tolerable good crop of rye may be had. St. Foin, and some other tap rooted grasses, flourish in such soils better than might be expected. Gravelly lands require very deep and frequent ploughings, in order to make them sufficiently retentive of moisture. They are usually much assisted by compost manures where clay, mud, upland marl, &c. form a considerable share of the ingredients. But as there are different degrees of fertility in gravelly lands, according to the nature of the gravel, and its greater or less predominance in the soil, we can lay down no definite course of crops that in all cases would be found most advisable. Say, however, that with effectual deep ploughings, and plenty of suitable manure for the drills, the first crop shall be Indian corn, intermixed with the potato and the pumpkin growths, as before-mentioned; next spring, oats, or barley, if the ground will answer for this crop. As soon as this crop comes off, turn the stubble under, and harrow in buckwheat for a green dressing, in the manner mentioned in treating of manures, and on this growth, turned under, sow rye, if the ground is too gravelly for wheat. Sow the clover seed the next spring, in the quantity before-mentioned, and then harrow the ground, which will serve the purpose of covering the seed, and also of assisting the growth of the crop of wheat, or rye, as the case may be. The advantage derived from harrowing these crops in the spring has been well ascertained by experiment. After the second year's growth of clover has been fed or mowed off, turn over the ground in the fall to commence the rotation anew. When we speak of gravelly lands, we do not mean to include those which are, properly speaking gravelly loams; for soils of this description are generally well fitted for the rotation first mentioned. By gravelly lands we mean those where gravel is mostly predominant, as we call those lands sandy where silex forms the greatest proportion of the soil, and of these something is now to be said. As a specimen of what may be called light sandy lands we will refer to much of those lying between Albany and Schenectady. These, like the gravelly lands just mentioned, are not, in their natural state, calculated for the production of many different crops in perfection, nor indeed for any without manure. With the aid of gypsum alone, however, good crops of peas, and of buckwheat, may be had on most of these lands, tolerable of red clover, and on the lay of clover turned under, middling crops of rye may be had. Probably, with this manure, valuable crops of pumpkins might be raised on them. Lands of this description have, however, very essential properties, which gravelly lands do not possess; they are much easier cultivated than the harder soils, and, in proportion to their natural fertility, no lands are better adapted for root crops of almost every sort, or for the grasses whose roots extend deep into the earth, among which are clover of different kinds, St. Foin, Lucerne, &c.--Such lands are least adapted for crops of wheat and Indian corn; but when sufficiently manured with clay, or upland marle, which is better, they will yield tolerable crops of the latter, and also of the former, when raised on a lay of red clover. Where little else than the contents of the barn yard and gypsum can be had for manuring sandy lands of the above description, the common turnip and ruta baga culture would not, perhaps, be advisable, but the rotation should be something like the following: First year, potatoes and pumpkins in alternate drills, manured and treated as before described; second, peas, soaked in the solution before-mentioned, and rolled in gypsum before sowing, with a top dressing of that manure; third, buckwheat, treated in the same manner, and clover seed sown with the crop; third and fourth, clover, with a top dressing of gypsum each spring; fifth, rye, on the clover turned under, as before described, which completes the course. But where upland marle, or even clay, can be had, for the purpose of forming compost manures with the barn dung and the addition of some lime, as is described under manures, &c. we should advise to the rotation first described, or something similar, in which the root crops should form a prominent part; and in such case, let the manure be plentifully applied to the drilled crops. At first, perhaps, some of the crops would not be so abundant; but under this management the soil would be constantly improving, and of course the crops increasing. At first, perhaps, rye should be substituted for the wheat crop, but each addition to the soil of the caluminous and calcarious matter, of which the compost is principally composed, would render the land better adapted for grain crops of every description. It is a matter of the first importance to the cultivator to possess an adequate knowledge of the different substances which may be used with advantage for fertilizing his land, of the different soils to which such substances are best adapted, of the proper quantities to be used, and of the most advantageous time and manner of their application. There is but little even of the richest earths that will not become exhausted with constant cropping without manure; and soils are seldom so sterile, but that with a proper application of suitable manures to them, they may be made the residence of plenty. Manures are of different kinds: of animal, of vegetable, of fossil, and of mixed; of each of which notice will be taken in their order. The flesh of animals is an excellent manure for all soils, and is used to a considerable extent on the sea coast, where fish are caught in plenty. It is believed that flesh is used to most advantage in composts, and the same may be observed with more certainty in regard to the use of the blood. The shavings of the horney substances of animals, have very desirable effects as a manure, in dry soil, by enduing such with a greater power to retain moisture: and the same may also be observed of the hair and wool. The bones, when calcined, are also valuable, as they are principally phosphate of lime. The miasma, produced by the putrefaction of the flesh and blood of animals, is also food for plants, or at least its presence assists their growth. The urine is a fertilizer principally by reason of the salt it contains, and probably also by its producing miasma. When animals die, it is usual to let them lie above ground, to the annoyance of the public; but, if covered with earth, this together with the flesh, &c. of the animal, would be converted into good manure. Of vegetable substances, it may be generally observed, that almost every sort of vegetable, not of woody texture, buried in the soil while green, is more or less efficacious as a manure; and that many sorts of these, when turned under where they grew, and while in a green state, will add much more fertility to the soil than their growth extracted from it; but that the same growth, when suffered to ripen on the ground, and then turned under, after the exhaustion of its juices, will not generally repay the soil the nutriment it extracted from it while growing. It would seem that the ripening of plants is the principal cause of the exhaustion of soils, and, for this reason, green dressings, that is, ploughing of green crops under, has been found advantageous in enriching lands. Where green dressings are resorted to, as a manure, such growth should be selected for the purpose as are cheap in the article of seed, and at the same time quick and bulky in their growths. Buckwheat has been much used for the purpose, though perhaps some other plants should be preferred. The growth should be turned under when in blossom; and, in order that this be done effectually, it should be laid prostrate, by running the roller over it, in the same direction in which the plough is to follow; after which, the ground should not be stirred again till this manure has sufficiently rotted. Generally, we think it would be most advisable to sow on the lay or furrow, by which the green crop is turned under. There may be some instances where manuring with green dressings may be advisable, particularly where it can be done without preventing the growth of any intervening crop: Where this is not practicable, we should hardly advise to this method of manuring, unless in cases where other manures were not to be obtained. One case we will however mention, where a green dressing might be given to advantage. Suppose, for instance, a crop of rye, oats, or barley, harvested, and the ground cleared of the crop by the 20th of July; in that case, let the stubble be immediately turned under, and the ground harrowed in with buckwheat; by the 20th of September this growth would be fit to be turned under, when a crop of wheat might be sown on the lay. It should be understood, that rye is one of the best crops to precede a crop of wheat, or to follow it. In the same manner, therefore, the crop for a green dressing may be raised in the wheat stubble turned under, and the green crop turned under for a crop of rye. But the contents of the barn-yard, and the excrements of cattle, are the principal sources of manure of the vegetable kind; and of these it is necessary to treat particularly, as well of the qualities of the different sorts, as of their most advantageous applications to soils. The sorts of dung or excrement to be noticed, are those of horses, neat cattle, sheep, and swine. The dung of swine is most valuable, where properly applied; that of sheep is the next; that of cows ranges in the third degree, and that of horses in the fourth. The dung of the latter, if suffered to lie in a heap till it becomes thoroughly heated, assumes a white, or mouldy colour, and is then of but little value. It is of a warm nature, and is best adapted for being well buried in moist or clayey soils; cow dung on the contrary, is most suitable for dry soils; sheep dung answers best on the soils for which that of horses is best suited, but is very valuable for almost any soil. Hog dung should only be applied to dry arable lands, and is most powerful in those of a sandy or gravelly nature. Dung, of all sorts, loses much of its valuable qualities by exposure to frequent rains, particularly when lying at but little depth over a considerable surface. Its good qualities are best preserved by lying in large heaps, and if under cover so much the better. The stercorary is the most effectual method for preserving barn dung, and it is believed that every farmer will find his money well expended in the erection of this receptacle for the contents of that part of his barn-yard, which is not used in the spring. The stercorary may serve for a sheep fold during winter, and will thus answer a two fold purpose. It may be, for instance, 40 feet in length, 16 in breadth, and of suitable height. The floor is to be made of a layer of clay, with the surface smoothly paved with small stones, and highest in the middle, so that the juices of the dung may run off to the sides, where a gutter receives this liquid, and carried it into a reservoir, sunk at one end, into which a pump is to be fixed to raise the liquid and throw it back over the heap. The floor, gutter, and reservoir, are on a plan similar to those of a cider press. The liquid that runs from the heap is the most valuable part, and should never be lost: this plan is therefore calculated to preserve it; and, for the purpose of absorbing the whole of it, any dry vegetable matter, or rich earth, may be laid over the heap, and this liquid thrown on that, which will serve to convert the whole into good manure. The juices and the soluble and gaseous parts of the excrements of cattle, together with the stale, are what principally affords nutriment for growing plants; and every means by which these can be saved, by their being absorbed in other substances, of rich earthy or vegetable matter, would seem to be well worthy of attention. We will next designate what is usually considered the methods most proper for the application of dung. Where lands are in grasses of the fibrous rooted kinds, it is the generally received opinion of the best cultivators, that barn dung, as well as every other kind, should be applied as a top dressing, that is, by spreading it on the surface; but that for tap rooted grasses, or those whose roots extend deeply, as well as for all grain and root crops, this manure should be buried in the soil, at such depths as are best suited to the nature of the roots of the plants to be cultivated. The operation of barn dung, and of all vegetable and animal substances used in manure, seems to be this: If laid at a certain depth beneath the surface of the soil, in the progress of their decomposition their soluble parts pass into the form of gas, or vapour, and of course rise to the surface, and in their ascent are more or less absorbed by the roots of the plants; on the contrary, if these manures be laid on the surface, these soluble parts, in the progress of decomposition, never become aeriform, but are washed downwards, in their liquid state, where they are in like manner absorbed by the roots of the plants. This is probably as correct an explanation as can be given of the effect of these manures. It is well known, that ground long used as a graveyard, becomes very fertile, notwithstanding the substances which are the cause of such fertility, are laid at a very great depth. It has been held by some English writers that barn dung should be well rotted previous to its application as a manure, but this opinion is rejected by Sir Humphrey Davy, one of the most scientific agriculturists of Great Britain, and also by Arthur Young, Esq. Mr. Davy contends that this manure may in most instances be as well applied fresh as in any other way, by its being laid at a proper depth beneath the surface, and that in scarcely any instance it is advisable that it should undergo more than the first stage of decomposition before it is used. When well rotted it is, however, more efficacious for a single crop, but its use is of much shorter duration. It seems, also, to be generally agreed that using this manure for drill crops, burying it at a good depth, and raising the plants over the dung thus buried, is the best possible way in which it can be used. We lately saw an account published of upwards of 100 bushels of Indian corn to the acre being raised by this mode of culture. The success of Mr. Cobbett, and others, in raising great crops of ruta baga by this method of using this manure, seems to demonstrate its utility, if evidence was wanting further than what appears in English publications on the subject. The plan that we would therefore recommend, is, to apply the fresh barn dung to all drill crops which are to be put in the ground in the spring, and for these we refer to what has been said under rotation of crops. The shortest dung should be used for these purposes, except for potatoes, and it should, as far as practicable, be applied to the soils best adapted for each kind of dung, as has before been mentioned. The longer or more strawey parts of the dung we should advise to be laid in the stercorary, if this building has been provided, or else somewhere under cover; or if no cover can be afforded, let it be thrown into a heap about 3 or 4 feet high; and wherever it be laid let it be stirred up from the bottom in the course of about five or six weeks after it has thus been heaped or otherwise stored away, after which it will soon be found well fitted for being used for the crop of ruta baga. It is also advisable to cover the heap with a layer of good earth, which will serve to absorb and retain much of the steam or gaseous matter that rises from the heap, and when saturated with this, and mixed with the mass of dung, will be found a valuable addition. (To be continued.) FROM THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER. _On the Grape Vine, with its wines, brandies, and dried fruits._ No. 1. No principle of action in the business and industry of the United States has been so beneficial to them as the adoption of _new objects of culture_ by the planters and farmers, whose old objects of culture were likely to become redundant, and to fall in price. _Cotton_ and _sugar_ are well known and important examples. There are good grounds for estimating our whole cotton of our best year, (Sept. 1817, to Sept. 1818,) at forty-two millions of dollars, according to the price on the wharves of our sea-ports for that which was exported to foreign countries, and the price at our factories, stores, and dwellings, of that which was manufactured at home. It is now manifest that the East Indian and South American cotton greatly injure our markets; and as this arises from growing, permanent, and substantial causes, there is reason to expect the continuance of the injury to us from the foreign rival cotton cultivation. A brief and plain view of the history and prospect of cotton, will be found in the Philadelphia edition (A.D. 1818) of _Rees' English Cyclopædia_, by Murray, Bradford & Co. under the article or head of the "_United States_." The facts there stated, with many known subsequent circumstances, will give rise to serious reflections, in the minds of the landholder and the statesman, upon the subject of the protection of the productions of our own soil. The industry of the landed men of the United States is manifestly and unalterably much greater than any, and than all, the other branches of our domestic or national industry. The mercantile and manufacturing branches result almost entirely from the landed industry. While, therefore, the legislative and executive governments raise revenues of 27½ to 60 per cent. on a great quantity of foreign cotton cloths from India and Europe, and a greater revenue from the foreign manufactures of tobacco, and a still greater revenue from the foreign manufactures of grain, of fruit, and of the cane, to the great fundamental and convenient support of American manufactures, and while they are free to go further, if they find it right, in the joint encouragement of our agricultural and manufacturing industry it will be found beneficial to the landed interest to inquire into other means of promoting the prosperity of the _Colossus of our country_--the agricultural industry. There can be no doubt that, between the sites of the vineyards of the Lower Schuylkill, Southwark, of Pennsylvania, Butler, of Pennsylvania, Glasgow, of Kentucky, New Vevay, of Indiana, and Harmony, of the same state, on the north, and the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, on the south, the United States possess the climates and soils of "_the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France_." The sweet orange grows, in safety, in groves and gardens, in the vicinity of New Orleans, at a greater distance from the sea than any place of equally safe growth, in Provence or Languedoc, of France. As our country shall be cleared and drained, our climate will be still less severe in the states on the Mexican gulf. In the north, our climates of New Vevay and Harmony, in Indiana, Glasgow, in Kentucky, 37° to 38° 30' N. which are the present northern extremes of successful experiments in the vine cultivation, are as favourable and mild as the climates of Champagne, Tokay, Lorraine, Burgundy, and Hockheim, which are fine northern regions of the vine in France and Germany. Between our New Vevay, in Indiana, and the Gulf of Mexico, the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, and large parts of Virginia and Kentucky, must give us _all the vine climates of France_, _Germany_, _Switzerland_, and _Upper Italy_. This vine district of the United States is much larger than all those vine countries of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Upper Italy. The crop of wine and brandy in the vine country of France alone--though our vine country is more than twice the size--has been estimated at 100 millions of dollars. Let us then consider the propriety of a diligent inquiry into the cultivation of the vine, and the preparation of wines, brandies, dried fruits, and cremor tartar, in the United States, in order to maintain the prosperity of the landed interest by the variety and prices of our crops. The present duties on foreign distilled and fermented spirits and liquors, (brandy, gin, rum, arack, wines, beer, ale, and porter,) and on dried fruits, though laid for revenue, afford a great and sure encouragement to the establishment and the manufacture of the grape. The demand will increase with our population, and the facility and certainty of the culture and crop will grow with the clearing and draining of our country. Ridges, hills, mountains, rocky lands, any steep ground, gravelly, stony, sandy, and other inferior lands, (if only dry,) will yield profit in large crops or in fine qualities of wine, or both. Fresh and dried grapes are both favourable to health and frugality. Ripe grapes have been administered to whole regiments of troops in France, who have been ravaged by fluxes and dysentaries.[18] The quantity of wine computed to be produced in France, is ten millions of casks, of nearly 63 gallons each, on two millions of arpents (not 2,000,000 acres) of land, often not fit for wheat, rice, or tobacco, valued very low, on a medium at fifty francs the cask or French hogsheads. This is three times the value of the cotton crop of the U. States, on a medium value, produced in 1818 or in 1819, and demands our early and serious attention, particularly from the Gulf of Mexico to the end of the 39th degree, when the country in that degree shall be cleared and drained in its wet or marshy parts. [18] See Doctor Tissot's advice to the people of Lusanne. It has been already observed, that ridges and hills are the most suitable shape or form of country for vineyards. The most proper exposure is from south-east to south. It is believed that all southern exposures will do. The propagation may be by seeds, or by cuttings, or by bending and covering a part of an old vine so as to make it grow out in another place at a proper distance. The plough is of much use in the cultivation, so that care must be taken to plant the vines at such distances as to facilitate the use of the plough and the harrow. The best grapes which can be obtained should be used, in order to put the culture forward. These may be foreign or American, native or imported. A harsh grape to the taste may produce a better wine than was expected, and more and better brandy. The finest grapes of Europe and the African isles are supposed to be native wildings improved by culture and selection. The region of the plum and peach appears to include the region of the vine. Although the south is the proper sphere of the grape, its cultivation there will leave the bread grains, tobacco, hemp, the grasses and cattle, to the more exclusive and profitable culture of the states north of the proper region of fine and abundant crops of wine. We pay annually to foreign nations a sum of money for wines, spirits, and materials to make spirits, and for fresh and dried grapes, as great as our whole specie medium. So important is this subject, in various points of view, to all the states, that it is respectfully recommended to the superintendants of all our public, agricultural, and philosophical libraries, to procure all the treatises on the culture of vines and making of grapes which are to be found in the languages of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Great Britain. The experiments made at Harmony in Pennsylvania, at Vevay, on the Ohio, and Harmony, on the Ouabache, both in Indiana, merit the utmost attention of the United States. It appears that in the present uncleared and uncultivated state of the country, Harmony, on the Ohio, in Penn. was probably too far north for making wine, though not for fruit. That Vevay and Harmony, in Indiana, are more suitable climes for the wines, will appear from the following letter from a respectable gentleman at Vevay to a very respectable friend of his, lately on a visit to Philadelphia. It is dated the 28th of August, 1819. The intelligent and experienced writer from Vevay, thus expresses himself: He "thinks the whole of Alabama doubtless better adapted to the culture of vines than the more northern country of the United States;[19] because the only two species of grapes that succeed in the United States are of the late sort, _having not time at Vevay, (Ind.) to ripen_. The Alabama season, being longer, will give more time, especially the Madeira grape, which gives the best wine of the two, where it can ripen and yields most. But it will not do at all at Vevay; and does better at Glasgow,[20] Ky. The various gardeners at Kentucky can furnish some. Vine dressers would go to new vineyards from Vevay. They have had 500 gallons of wine per acre at Vevay; more often 150; and 260 is a good crop. The Madeira grape would give more than the Cape of Good Hope grape, _where it would prosper_, but must have time to ripen, to be good. Of the labour, much may be done by women. They do about half. The men trim, make layers to fill vacancies, plough, harrow, hoe, and carry the grapes, and make the wine. None of those works are heavy. But trimming requires attention and discernment, for the vine-dresser must look two years before him, when he cuts each scion; women never do it, though light work. He has seen many women do it as well as any man. A little work in vineyards is to be done by night with lamps. When the grapes have got their size, the crickets, (not of the house or field) eat, in the night, the bark of the stem of the bunches, and ring or girdle them so that they die. They injure the bunches rapidly. They must be watched and searched for with lamps, by night, and destroyed. He says the native vines will not do to graft good kinds of grapes on: he has tried it often, without success. Grape vines grafted on the same kinds do well, yet they are a different tree, being _dioic_, while the vineferous kinds are _hermaphrodites_. I have found the same wild vines in Switzerland, and the kind called sour grapes makes pretty good wines; but are a smaller bearer than the grape vines. They are in Morerod's vineyard, at Glasgow, Kentucky. The Spanish grapes of Mexico and South America should be tried. They have been long cultivated. He is raising grape vines from the seed, to obtain flavour and quantity of wine. _The vine is of long life_, but it is ten or fifteen years before it bears _fully_ from the _seed_. Variety, however, is an object. Vines planted by cuttings, which have taken root freely in the first year, bear fruit in three years: in five they are in full force. He has considered and inspected the vineyards of Europe, and the cultivation by the plough and otherwise. It is to be studied to _save labour_ and make the _greatest crops_. If the _fendant vert_ will grow as well here as in Switzerland, 800 gallons per acre might be made. They cultivate by the plough in Languedoc, about Montpelier and Lunel. We make wine here to be like Madeira, and sell it at 37½ cents per quart, and $1 25 per gallon; but cannot make enough to send abroad, or to keep for ripening. Morerod made a cask of 800 gallons, full of wine, of last vintage, to be kept eighteen months or two years. He has seen wine (made of grapes like Vevay) at Glasgow, (in Barren county, Kentucky,) better than Vevay wine. The grapes were gathered a fortnight before the Vevay grapes. It is probable that wine of the banks of Tennessee will make 1-4 brandy; if of Cape of Good Hope grapes, common proof; Vevay yielded 1-5th; the best cider 1-10th; so do the best Burgundy wine, and that of the border of the lake of Geneva, in good years. The strongest of all the wines that I know of, is that of the south of France and Spain, which yields 1-3d brandy. The peculiar mode of vine cultivation at Vevay, Indiana, is worthy of attention, being a combination of various European modes, and American improvements adapted to the country. Some young men, bred at Vevay, would be useful in other places. Mr. D. thinks the blacks may be taught to cultivate vines." So runs and concludes the letter from the judicious writer, at Vevay of the United States, settled by persons from the original Vevay of Switzerland. It is very instructive and would seem to prove, as so much of our country continues in the wood and forest state, and with many undrained swamps, making a humid atmosphere, and a moist soil. Vevay, in 38° 30', is not yet perfectly so favourable, as the vicinity of Glasgow, in Kentucky, where a dry, hard soil, occasions the grape to be freer from injury by moisture of the earth, and of the air. Glasgow is about one degree and one half more southern than Vevay. These indications are distinct, nice, clear, and strong in regard to the vine climate of our country, at present and in prospect. [19] Vevay, on the Ohio, is in 38° 30' N. [20] Glasgow is in 37°. In the hilly Spanish colonial country of North America, about the 29th degree of north latitude, south of the Rio bravo del Norte, there is authentic evidence, in a report to the government, that the vine grows well, though its culture was forbidden by the crown, produces good crops of fine wine, and supplies the province and its neighbours. That country being as far south as any part of the Floridas, it is ascertained that, where this country has become, or shall be made dry enough and cleared, the vine region runs to the southern limits of the United States, even if we should maintain our right to Louisiana _in extenso_, in consequence of the apparent frustration of our offer _to limit ourselves by the Sabine_. The most distinguished wine of Spain is the true and best _Xeres_, or Sherry of the district around the city of _Xeres_ de la Frontera, in Andalusia. The vineyards of that district are, in situations corresponding in temperature with the most extreme southern parts of East Florida and Louisiana. It is interesting to our inquiry, that all the Portuguese European wines are produced in situations north of Xeres, such as those called by us the Lisbon, the Careavella, the red and the white Port, or Oporto. It is observable, also, that the Malaga, or sweet and dry mountain wines of Spain, long highly esteemed by medical men, those of Alicante and Catalonia, which three kinds we principally import, and all the Spanish brandies we consume, come from districts as far north as that of Xeres. The wines of Castile, and other interior districts of Spain which are consumed at home, and are not exported, are from places also north of Xeres. We can have no reason to doubt, then, that, as our country now is, and shall in future be cleared and drained, and if ridges, hills, and mountain sides, with south exposures, shall be carefully selected, the most southern of our states, territories, and districts, will be as suitable for the vine, its wines, and dried fruits, as the most proper and fruitful parts of the peninsula of Spain and Portugal. The works of travellers, agriculturists, and men of distinction in the arts and sciences, upon the subject of the vine, and wines, and dried grapes of Spain and Portugal, are therefore strongly recommended, by our best interests, to the attention of our citizens, especially concerning the vineyards of _Xeres_, St. Lucar, Malaga, and Oporto. The Portuguese send to us no brandy; the Spaniards a little of that spirit which is not estimated as good. It seems, from the excellence of the French _Cognac_ brandy, the best, and the farthest north of any denomination of brandy which we know, that the extreme south is not the most favourable for the delicacy, though it is for the quantity of that spirit. The _Cette_ brandy of France is not liked here, but it has been said that much Armagnac brandy is used in Paris. The celebrated French chemist[21] of the grape and of distilled and fermented wine spirits, was a native of Montpelier, and took very great pains to improve the vine, and all its liquors, in that southern region. _A Friend to the National Industry._ PHILADELPHIA, NOV. 1, 1819. [21] _Chaptal_, whose writings on the subject should be in every planter's hands, and in every agricultural and public library. The title of Mr. Chaptal's work is "A Theoretical and Practical Treatise on the culture of the Vine, with the art of preparing wine, brandy, &c. By Chaptal, Parmentier, and Dasseux. 2 vols. octavo, Paris, A. D. 1801." In French, Chaptal, P. and D. sur la culture de la Vigne, &c. Paris, 1801, 2 tom. oct. _A Wild Goose Chase._ At the early dawn of Thanksgiving day, Mr. Eliphalet Thayer, of Dorcester, (Massachusetts,) took his gun and went to Neponset river for the purpose of getting a shot at gulls. He saw seven wild geese in the river, at which he fired, and hit the gander so as to break his wing. The other geese immediately flew; but the call of the gander brought them down again, so that he had the chance of firing again, and killed the old goose, and one of the young; the four others rose, but the wounded gander by his calls served as a decoy, and they again alighted by him. The third shot crippled another.--Mr. T. then took a boat, and from it killed two as they rose to fly; and soon after shot the seventh. He returned home to his breakfast, about nine o'clock, bringing his seven geese, which weighed about eight pounds each, and produced him above 3 _lbs._ of feather. [_Salem Gazette._ _Imports of Wool into England._ WOOL. AN ACCOUNT OF THE QUANTITY OF WOOL, (SHEEP'S) IMPORTED INTO GREAT BRITAIN, IN TEN YEARS; DISTINGUISHING EACH YEAR, AND THE COUNTRIES FROM WHENCE IMPORTED.--_From an English Paper._ Countries from whence imported. 1802. 1803. 1804. 1805. 1806. ------------------------------------------------------ lbs. lbs. lbs. lbs. lbs. Denmark & Norway -- 105,956 212,086 445,125 61,783 Heligoland -- -- -- -- -- Russia -- -- -- -- 7,567 Sweden -- -- -- -- -- Poland and Prussia 228 3,532 7,925 25,189 30,767 Germany 426,091 238,256 21,628 36,787 683,988 Holland 195,843 155,270 63,019 30,244 1,127 Flanders and France 201,195 54,714 -- -- -- Portugal & Madeira 495,213 230,430 161,204 200,366 239,945 Spain and Canaries 5,646,522 4,355,254 6,990,194 6,858,738 5,444,165 Gibraltar and Malta 25,000 107,876 159,176 41,395 28,216 Italy and Levant 86,258 437,856 206,426 35,173 8,679 Ireland, Guernsey 80,754 117,225 242,113 484,929 576,914 and Jersey Asia -- -- -- -- 245 Africa 453,953 163,746 3,360 -- -- America, North 40,216 26,073 4,939 5,304 1,636 America, South -- 20,012 86,898 21,649 20,493 Prize 105,839 4,568 48,175 361,499 168,468 ------------------------------------------------------ Total 7,749,112 6,020,775 8,157,213 8,546,378 7,333,996 Countries from whence imported. 1807. 1808. 1809. 1810. 1811. ------------------------------------------------------ lbs. lbs. lbs. lbs. lbs. Denmark & Norway 481,696 11,253 35,523 363,671 12,081 Heligoland -- 58,814 246,441 67,311 112 Russia 5,211 168 896 32,149 -- Sweden -- -- 8,633 15,424 504 Poland and Prussia -- -- 76,528 123,057 -- Germany 192,010 7,549 367,372 711,524 30,165 Holland 34,536 -- 237,052 2,873 -- Flanders and France 61,633 -- -- -- -- Portugal & Madeira 289,067 30,619 969,033 3,018,961 1,790,286 Spain and Canaries 10,291,316 1,961,750 4,283,674 5,952,407 2,581,262 Gibraltar and Malta 14,349 78,130 297,445 889,098 210,236 Italy and Levant 6,992 -- 10,244 21,554 780 Ireland, Guernsey 299,809 75,409 93,341 63,494 10,353 and Jersey Asia 3,222 -- -- 868 -- Africa 6,298 10,717 3,320 29,717 11,791 America, North 406 14,196 -- 4,111 20,192 America, South 61,176 67,193 213,812 116,178 69,323 Prize 25,205 37,927 3,619 23,837 2,551 ------------------------------------------------------ Total 11,768,926 2,353,725 6,845,933 10,936,224 4,739,972 MISCELLANY. The President of the United States transmitted a message to Congress on the 20th of last month, relating to the acts prohibiting the slave trade, in which he stated that a public vessel was to be sent to Africa, with two public agents, tools and implements necessary to form a settlement, and thereby give relief and support to the people of colour who may be captured on board of slave ships and returned thither. * * * * * In Denmark much confusion is stated to prevail, on account of the Jews, particularly at Copenhagen. The king had interfered in their behalf, but neither the people nor the army appeared to pay much respect to him in this matter. A vessel, laden with 500 Jews, flying from persecution in Germany, had arrived at Copenhagen, but were not permitted to land. * * * * * It appears by a census lately taken, that the population of the city of New York is 119,657. When the census was taken by order of Rep. Vandam, then president of the province in the year 1731, the population was 8622. The increase in ninety years is nearly twelve-fold. * * * * * Died suddenly on the 29th ult. at Salem, (Mass.) the Rev. W. Bentley, D. D. in the 61st year of his age, minister at the east meeting house, and the character to whom the public were indebted, during a great many years, for the unparalleled summaries and notices of events, with historical and critical notes, which so distinguished the _Salem_, or as it is now denominated, the _Essex Register_. He was universally respected as a pious and good man. * * * * * Great exertions are making, says H. Niles, in his Register, to introduce the practice of manufacturing sugar and molasses from grain, into the western country; and from the representations made, we apprehend that it must be very beneficial in all parts of our country, distant from a market. It is said, that one bushel of good wheat, rye, or corn, will yield from 3½ or 4 gallons of molasses, or about 15 pounds of sugar. The discovery has been patented to James Wiseheart. * * * * * The venerable William Ellery, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, is now living at Newport, (R.I.) in the 93d year of his age. * * * * * Walsh's "Appeal from the judgments of Great Britain," which appeared in this country about the end of September, was republished in London from the American copy, as early as the 23d of November. The price of the English copy is 18 shillings sterling. * * * * * News has been received from Great Britain to the 3d of January. The country continued in a very disturbed state. Parliament was opened on the 23d of November. The Regent recommended such strong measures as to manifest how the matter is viewed by government. His speech was echoed from both houses by great majorities. * * * * * The confidential servants of the crown have proposed several bills to parliament, and which were under debate; they are to the following effect. 1st. A stamp duty upon all publications, except religious tracts, and such works consisting of fewer than a stated number of sheets. 2d. Persons convicted a second time of a political libel are subjected to a long imprisonment, banishment, or transportation, at the discretion of the court. 3d. All printers and publishers of works comprehended in the first law, are required to enter into securities with two sureties to be answerable for penalties. 4th. Public meetings not convened by regular constituted authorities are prohibited; it is also proposed to make it unlawful for any person to attend a public meeting out of his own parish, or township. 5th. Magistrates, on information or even on suspicion, are empowered to enter any man's house, in search of arms, and to seize them if found, giving the persons suffering such visits, a right of appeal to the quarter sessions. * * * * * Generally the accounts from England prove that the country does not yet experience the blessings of repose, nor are there any indications that it speedily will. On the one hand the reformers appear to be uniting and preparing themselves; and on the other, the government is adopting stronger measures to quell and disperse them. * * * * * The reformers have agreed to abstain from all intoxicating liquors, tobacco, and such other exciseable articles as can conveniently be dispensed with, and they strenuously adhere to the principle. This has already had a very severe effect upon the revenue. * * * * * Many parts of Ireland appear to be equally unsettled and distressed. The county of Roscommon, in particular, has been declared by proclamation, in a state of disturbance. * * * * * The king of France, in his speech to the Chambers, represents that country as in the most auspicious and flourishing condition. * * * * * The king of Spain, on the occasion of his marriage, has granted an amnesty to prisoners and subjects in rebellion, with some few exceptions. * * * * * Germany, in general, seems still unsettled, and great anxiety apparently prevails. There is much dread of secret societies, and many reports of bands of robbers. * * * * * Standt, the murderer of the celebrated _Kotzebue_, is stated to have recovered from his wounds which he inflicted on himself, and is soon to be brought to trial. * * * * * The plague had ceased at Algiers, but still continued to rage at Tunis, where it is said to have carried off 60,000 persons. * * * * * Of the number of manuscripts found in the ruins of Herculaneum, and which have been there enclosed for 1696 years, 88 have been unrolled, and are now legible. The unrolling is effected by means of an expensive chemical operation. * * * * * The whole district and territory of Kutch, a country situated on the N. W. of Bombay, and including several towns and villages have been destroyed by an earthquake, together with 2000 inhabitants. * * * * * A man at Montreal has been fined for cruelly beating his dog.--A person in the state of New York has been fined $30, for maliciously and vexatiously hindering with his wagon, other persons in a carriage from passing him on the highway, by turning his horses so as to impede them. * * * * * A fire broke out in Savannah on the night of the 10th ult. which has reduced to ashes the greater and much the most valuable part of that city. Scarcely a fire-proof building is left. The town presents a most wretched picture: 400 houses are said to be entirely consumed. Not a hardware, saddler, or apothecary's shop, or scarcely a dry-good store to be seen. The loss is estimated at from 3 to 5,000,000 of dollars. * * * * * _Jewish Emigrants._ Among the memorials presented to the legislature of the state of New York, is one from Mordecai M. Noah, of the city of N. York, setting forth that he "is desirous of purchasing that tract of land belonging to the state, known by the name of Grand Island, situated in the Niagara river, between lake Erie and lake Ontario, and bounded by the possessions of Great Britain in Upper Canada." The object of the memorialist in this purchase, is to build a town or city, to be inhabited "by a community of Jewish emigrants." Grand Island is stated to contain 20,000 acres of land, being about six miles in length, and two in width. * * * * * A pamphlet has been published in Europe, recommending the Jews to form a colony in the United States. The Upper Mississippi and Missouri is recommended for its soil, situation, and climate, as the most suitable place for purchase and settlement. * * * * * A national vaccine institution is about forming at Washington, with the view of affording greater facility and certainty in the distribution of vaccine matter. * * * * * On the 20th December last, Robert De Bow, of Allentown, (N. J.) killed a hog 23 months old, which, when dressed, weighed 700 pounds. * * * * * _Boston, Jan. 13._ The great ox, fattened by Mr. Luke Fiske of Waltham, which gained the first premium at Brighton, has been slaughtered, and the beef exhibited for sale in State street. The weight of the parts is as follows: Fore quarter, _lbs._ 482 do. 477 Hind quarter, 407 do. 407 Hide, 159 Tallow, 305 ---- Total, 2237 * * * * * In Spain some experiments have lately been made for the purpose of testing the efficacy of inoculating for the plague. The trials were made on some deserters, 14 in number. The virus was taken from plague sores of the most malignant cast. The patients had olive oil administered internally and externally. Soon after the inoculation, the patients experienced some slight attacks, and little sores broke out on them; but in a few days they were all restored to health. These experiments are calculated to induce a belief that inoculation for the plague may prove as beneficial as it has for the small pox. * * * * * The mechanics of Ontario county, (N. Y.) have prepared a memorial to the legislature, which they expect will be supported in other counties, praying that the legislature may pass a law to prevent the sales of mechanical tools and implements by execution or in distress for rent. * * * * * From England many are emigrating to the Cape of Good Hope: 1,500 families sailed for that country in November last. Upwards of 12,000 emigrants arrived at Quebec, from Great Britain, during the last season. * * * * * Mr. W. Parker, and about 400 others, left England in November last, to establish a colony in Africa, between Cape Town and Algoa bay. * * * * * A cast iron pillar, about 48 feet high, is about to be erected in the centre of the town of Sheffield, England, at the top of which, a large ball, lighted with gas is to be placed, for the purpose of lighting the whole town, and its environs. * * * * * Twenty-five miles up the Severn, England, a whale, 60 feet in length, and 10 in breadth, was lately stranded. The visit of his whaleship proved highly welcome, and considerable confusion and contention ensued among the neighbouring people who should have the largest part of him. * * * * * A London paper of November 7, says, that a new palace is to be begun for the Prince Regent in the spring, on the same spot where Buckingham house now stands. It is to be a superb palace of three fronts, to overlook all Pimlico; and the _moderate_ sum of _seven millions_ is the estimate of its cost! But, as the Prince Regent is reluctant to apply to parliament, the ground of St. James' palace, the King's Mews, and Warwick house are to be sold, and then but 700,000_l._ will be wanting to complete the new structure. The duke of York is to have Carleton house for a _valuable_ consideration. The triumphal arch is to be the grand entrance to London from the new palace. * * * * * Wm. Ogden Niles of Baltimore, has issued proposals for publishing a weekly paper, to be entitled, "The Domestic Economist," to be devoted exclusively to manufacturing industry and political economy, with statistical facts and remarks. Price $3 per annum. * * * * * _Wolf Bounty._ The Comptroller of the State of New York, has communicated to the legislature a detailed statement of the monies paid out of the state treasury, to the several counties, during the last five years, as bounties for the destruction of wolves. The following exhibits the amount paid to each county. _Dolls._ Allegany, 5527 Albany, 40 Broome, 1760 Chautauque, 1762 Chenango, 440 Cayuga, 600 Clinton, 280 Cortland, 77 Delaware, 1490 Essex, 577 Franklin, 2445 Greene, 520 Genesee, 1937 Herkimer, 260 Jefferson, 2177 Lewis, 1250 Madison, 162 Montgomery, 160 Niagara, 1475 Otsego, 143 Oswego, 1180 Orange, 200 Ontario, 1450 Oneida, 1320 Onondaga, 480 St. Lawrence, 3190 Saratoga, 165 Schenectady, 22 Steuben, 3520 Seneca, 67 Schoharie, 120 Sullivan, 970 Tioga, 1487 Tompkins, 20 Ulster, 380 Warren, 435 Washington, 20 ------ Total, D. 38,259 * * * * * The earl of Dalhousie is appointed governor of the Canadas. Sir P. Maitland administers the government till spring. * * * * * _Boerhaave in his old age._ All peculiarities in the lives of great men are interesting, and much more so when they relate to their latter years. The name of Boerhaave is regarded as the most illustrious in the annals of modern medicine. After having courageously withstood the evils of poverty in his youth, his talents and reputation enabled him, it is said, to realize a property of two millions of florins, which he left to an only daughter. Let us see whether his wealth had not changed his occupations and taste. In a letter, written in his 67th year, to his old pupil Bassand, then appointed Physician to the Emperor of Germany, he speaks thus of himself: "My health is very good--I sleep at my country house, and return to town at five in the morning; I am engaged till six in the evening in visiting the sick. I know something of chemistry--I amuse myself with reading--I revere, I love, I adore God alone. On my return to the country, I visit my plants--and gratefully acknowledge and admire the liberal presents of my friend Bassend. My garden appears proud of the variety and vigour of its trees. I waste my life in contemplating my plants, and grow old with the desire of possessing new ones--Pleasing delusion! who will give me the large-leaved linden tree of Bohemia, and that of Silicia, more extraordinary, with _folio cucullato_. Thus riches serve only to increase the thirst for wealth, and the covetous man abuses the liberality of his benefactor. Pardon the dotage of an old friend, who wishes to plant trees, the beauty and shade of which can charm only his nephews. Thus my years glide on without any chagrin, but that of your absence." How much is there in these few lines! what activity, what zeal for suffering humanity, what piety; what innocence and vivacity in his taste, at an age when they are nearly extinct in most men. [_Literary Panorama._ * * * * * _Mummies._ Under the mountains adjoining Kiow, on the frontiers of Russia and in the deserts of Podolia, are several catacombs or subterranean vaults, which the ancients used for burying places, and where a great number of human bodies are still preserved entire, though interred many ages since, having been better embalmed, and become neither so hard nor so black as the Egyptian mummies. Among them are two princes in the habits they used to wear. It is thought that this preserving quality is owing to the nature of the soil, which is dry and sandy. [_London Paper._ * * * * * A correspondent, who observed some time since a publication relative to the extraction of oil from pumpkin seeds, has recently, from curiosity, made an experiment of the same on a very limited scale. He assures us, the extract obtained, is of equal flavour and sweetness with the best of olive oil. Our correspondent is of opinion, that the publication alluded to above, originated with the "Harmony Society," in the state of Pennsylvania; and if so, is desirous of knowing the best method in practice for extracting the oil from the seed. [_Bost. Pat._ * * * * * There are few sentiments stronger, or more natural to the human heart, than that of indignation at oppression. So predominant is it, that it is to be found, not with the good and virtuous only, but even amongst the most unprincipled and vicious. If there is any thing that addresses itself to all that is generous in the heart, it is this sentiment. What is more, it is the solemn duty of every man, to set his face against injustice. * * * * * _New Invention._ We understand a patent has lately been taken out, by a gentleman from Massachusetts, for an invention which seems to promise extensive, advantage to navigation, if once fairly brought into operation. It consists, principally, in a new method for _sub-marine ploughing_, to any necessary depth, by the power of a steam boat. When the matter is effectually loosened up and pulverized, it cannot reasonably be doubted but the rapidity of ebb-tides, united with the natural current of the rivers, will soon carry it off, and keep the channel open. The inventor is now in this city, giving a perspicuous view of his plan, which appears uncommonly simple and practicable. The advantages of being able to plough open channels through the shoals which so frequently form in many of our immense rivers, would, alone, be an object of very great advantage to our southern and western states; but, when we consider the invention as extending to opening channels for large ships to enter the harbours and rivers throughout our whole sea-board, the advantages presented to view are incalculable. [_Nat. Int._ * * * * * The Agricultural Society of Fredericksburg, in Virginia, have drawn up and transmitted a remonstrance to Congress, against the attempts making by our Domestic manufacturers, and their friends, to increase the duties upon foreign goods, wares and merchandise. * * * * * In the short space of two years and five months, _One hundred and twenty miles_ of Artificial Navigation, on two great canals through the interior of the State of New York have been completed, by which the physical practicability of uniting the Atlantic Ocean, with the great western lakes, is rendered no longer doubtful! * * * * * _Straw Bonnets._ It is estimated that the value of straw bonnets manufactured in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, exceeds 300,000 dollars in the 1817, and great improvements have latterly been made,--which, together with the discovery of a vegetable by which the best quality of Leghorn bonnets are successfully imitated, is likely to render our fair country-women independent of foreign supplies in this respect, and at the same time furnish a delicate employment to many others of their own sex. There are few things that more properly demand the attention of congress than this manufacture, so far as its amount goes. As, _gentleman_, certainly they will encourage the ladies in their industrious habits. * * * * * _Phenomena._ _Boston (Mass.) Jan. 5th._ Saturday about noon two very brilliant PARHELIA, (or Mock Suns[22]) and beautiful CORONA, attracted the attention of numerous spectators. Mock Suns were equidistant from the Sun (by conjecture about 20° East and West of it) with _comas_, or tails, extending in opposite directions from the luminary five or six times their diameter, which appeared to the eye a little less than the apparent diameter of the Sun. The Corona was estimated to be about 30° to the northward of the Sun, and nearly in our zenith, and exhibited all the bright colours of the rainbow, the inside next the Sun being red. The colour of the Parhelia was orange colour of white flame. The Corona formed an are of about a quarter of a circle; and between it and the Sun was a segment less brilliant and defined. [22] Sailors, we believe, call them _dog suns_. The atmosphere was unusually clear, and the space between the Mock Suns, and the real Sun, was a perfect blue expanse, without the least appearance of the vapour and spicula which must have occasioned the phenomena. We noticed them nearly an hour, when they gradually disappeared, leaving a cloudless sky. The phenomena was observed at Salem. * * * * * _A curiosity._--It is stated in an English paper of Nov. 12th, that Mr. Creswick, of New Street, Birmingham, has a singular article of cutlery in his possession, viz: a knife which contains 400 _blades_, and which, before it was put together, consisted of 5000 _parts_. * * * * * _Public libraries of Germany._ The royal library of Munich contains a collection of 400,000 volumes. That of Gottingen, which is one of the most celebrated in Germany, contains 280,000 volumes, 110,000 academic dissertations, and 5000 manuscripts; the Dresden library contains 250,000 printed books, 100,000 dissertations, and 4000 manuscripts. The library of Wolfenbuttel is particularly celebrated for its valuable collection of ancient works; it contains 190,000 printed volumes, 10,000 dissertations, and 4000 manuscripts. Among the 182,000 volumes which compose the library of Stutgard, there are 12,000 different editions of the Bible. There are seven public libraries in Berlin; the two principal ones are the royal library and the library of the academy; the former contains 160,000 volumes, and the latter 30,000. It may be calculated that the total number of books contained in the public libraries of the German States, amount to upwards of 4,000,000, besides the various memoirs, pamphlets, periodical publications, dissertations, and manuscripts. [_English Paper._ PHILADELPHIA, PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY RICHARDS & CALEB JOHNSON, _No. 31, Market Street_, At $3.00 per annum. GRIGGS & DICKINSON--_Printers, Whitehall_. 
48748	----	Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed. The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. * * * * * THE RURAL MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY EVENING FIRE-SIDE. VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA, _Fourth Month_, 1820. _No_. 4. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. THE DESULTORY REMARKER. No. III. He whose object is to make an impression on the public mind, must first, as an indispensable preliminary, secure the public attention. Much that is said or written, partakes in so great a degree of an unimpressive and a common-place character, as to be utterly disregarded. To succeed in obtaining the public ear, is as difficult as it is important. This success is perhaps most efficiently promoted, by listening with attention to every remark of criticism, whether good-natured or severe;--by then adopting the counsels of wisdom, and leaning on the solid column of experience. If these papers should fail to acquire popularity, and, like many of their predecessors, sink into _undeserved_ oblivion; it shall not be from the want of a disposition to please, but from the absence of higher powers. It is the peculiar province of genius to render prolific the most sterile soil, to invest with interest the most intractable topic, and to mould into the form of beauty the most unpromising materials. For this rare and brilliant endowment, no adequate substitute can be found. Should every public speaker, or public writer, be required to confine themselves to what is absolutely original, or strictly relevant to their subject; what would become of a vast majority of the tribe of authors, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of our orators in Congress? Of a speech of three or five hours in length, one effect may be confidently predicted; that those of the audience who do not fall asleep, will be fatigued and justly irritated, by such an unwarrantable trespass on their time and patience. Our national character is not yet completely formed; but some features of it are assuming a permanent shape. Among these, there is one, by no means calculated to elevate us in the estimation of the rest of the world. Instead of that simplicity and Spartan brevity, by which republicans should be distinguished, we habituate ourselves to the unnecessary use of a multitude of words. WE ARE GIANTS IN PROFESSION, BUT PIGMIES IN ACTION. It has been confidently asserted, that the speeches of one of the members of our federal legislature, from Tennessee, have actually cost the United States more money, than would defray the entire expense of completing the Delaware and Chesapeake canal. Now that the Missouri discussion is terminated, how _honourable_ to the nation, it is not my present purpose to inquire; it would be desirable to ascertain whether the vote of a solitary member was changed, by the endless speeches which were delivered on the subject. If not, I should presume it was a pretty clear point, that they cost the PEOPLE much more than they were worth; and that such a prodigal waste of the time and treasure of the nation, is highly reprehensible. But instead of arraigning the conduct of others, and exposing their weakness and defects, it may perhaps be the part of prudence to spare our censure for errors to be met with much nearer home. By giving publicity to the following communication, I trust I shall not trespass on the indulgence of my readers; while at the same time I shall evince a spirit of no fictitious candour, by which I wish at all times to be actuated. "HARRISBURG, _March 20._ "_To the Desultory Remarker._ "SIR--You will pardon the liberty which, as a perfect stranger, I take of addressing you. I have long cultivated a taste for literature; not that which abounds in circulating libraries, but that which is met with in those "_founts of English undefiled_," the classical poets and essayists of Great Britain. Of the latter, I have a decided preference for ADDISON; because his humour is as innocent as it is exquisite; and because his sincere and fervid piety is diametrically opposed to every thing like monastic gloom and austerity. He was a benefactor to mankind during the course of his life; and left them his example in the hour of death--"_See how a Christian can die!_" I have not trimmed the midnight lamp, in perusing the pages of sentimental and mischievous nonsense; but derive the highest gratification from those books which have long enjoyed the united suffrages of virtue. But to my purpose. You have embarked in an honourable undertaking, and one in which very few have been successful. You should profit, not merely by the wisdom of those that have gone before you, but also by their mistakes. I have read your two first numbers; and unless some improvement shall take place, either in your matter or manner, you will never be a favourite of mine.--There is too much unvaried gravity, and studied elaboration, in them.--When we take up a newspaper, or magazine, we do not expect to meet with a sermon, however well disposed we might be to welcome it on a proper occasion. Permit me to observe, that a long, prosing, lifeless essay, _will never be read_; and, if frequently met with, will create a distaste for the journal itself, in which it may appear. Being friendly to your success, you will indulge me in repeating, that should you fail to impart a greater degree of vanity and interest, to your future numbers; if you do not more frequently smooth the wrinkled brow of care, and assume the aspect of cheerfulness, you will lose many of the female readers you have at present, and among the rest, "Your humble servant, "STELLA." This is a sensible, well written letter; and, if it would not be indecorous to express an opinion as to another feature of it, not overburthened with compliment. I am aware of the force and truth of some of STELLA's observations; and will endeavour _occasionally_ to profit by them. Though considerably advanced in the vale of years, I hope never to be insensible to the good opinion of that sex, which can successfully prefer claims to excellence, in every department of virtue; and whose influence on the well-being of society, is so incalculably important. What if my temples be encircled with the frosts of many winters, and the wings of my fancy be enfeebled, by that incurable malady, old age; I still shall be delighted to minister to the pleasure of those, whose approbation is worth desiring-- The wise and the learned, the witty and the fair. An outline of the female character has been thus happily and accurately sketched, by the pencil of a poet.--The last couplet is descriptive of a trait in this character, which is as amiable as it is true. Oh! Woman, in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light, quivering aspen made; _When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou_. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. THE VILLAGE TEACHER. In my younger days, I passed a considerable time in the pleasant village of G----. The society was lively and agreeable; and, as it consisted chiefly of ladies, our usual place of meeting was at the tea table and the evening circle. Literature, the news of the day, and our little amusements, furnished the principal subjects of conversation; and although the society was elegant and well educated, yet the frequency of our meetings often drove us, for variety, to the intrigues and petty scandal of the neighbourhood. The disposition for this kind of entertainment became at last so strong, that we grew ashamed of it; and resolved one evening to create a "Court of Scandal," by which all offences against the good breeding and charity of speech should be tried, and whose decisions we bound ourselves to obey. When I observe how strong is our propensity for scandal, and with what greediness evil-speaking is listened to, I cannot help wishing that there were such a tribunal in every one's bosom. Did it exist, or rather did we suffer the voice which there speaks, to be heard; we should often be humbled at its decisions. If we unmask our actions and our motives, we shall find this propensity at the bottom of much of what is called--virtuous indignation. At one time, it assumes the mock appearance of charity; at another, it tries to hide itself in sallies of wit, or lurks beneath a half whispered insinuation, or a kind doubt, or a malicious inquiry. Its seeds are deeply sown, and take still deeper root in the human breast; and it requires the strictest self-examination, and the greatest candour, to avoid being overrun, if I may so express myself, with this nightshade. I know of nothing more despicable, than the little mincing scandal which buzzes about in our polite circles. Always on the wing, with honey in its mouth, and poison and bitterness in its trail, it spreads the injurious aspersion, and the doubtful insinuation; and fastens them, like mildew, upon the fairest and purest characters. It is a vice essentially grovelling, and low-minded, and which grows upon us at unawares. It advances imperceptibly through all its various degrees; from idle curiosity to the deep and settled malignity, which has no pleasure but in the weaknesses, the errors, and misfortunes, of those around it. Beware, reader! lest while giving to my description a local habitation in the person of thy neighbours, thou indulgest the disposition thyself, and turnest my counsel into food for thy propensity.--But I have wandered from my original plan, which was, to give some account of our court of scandal, and of the decisions which it pronounced. The first cause that came before it, was, a complaint from Julia Manners against Miss Busy, who had circulated a report that Julia was about to be married. Miss Busy lived opposite to Julia's father's; and generally took her morning and afternoon station at the parlour window. She one day espied from thence, a well dressed young man escorting Julia home. Her curiosity was immediately excited; and she sallied out to the next neighbour's, to inquire who the stranger was, and to wonder if he was not a suitor. The answer, _It is like enough_, was sufficient. She continued her walk, discovered his name at the next place where she inquired, and received some trivial confirmation of her conjecture at a third. From that time forward, she asked all whom she visited, or received, if they had seen Miss Manners' suitor. Conjecture was built upon conjecture, till at last poor Julia was to be married and sent off in the space of a fortnight. After a patient hearing of an hour, the court decreed, that Miss Busy should be interdicted any of our circle for two weeks, and that her parlour windows should be kept closed for as many months. Miss Lively happening to mention at the tea table, one afternoon, that Maria Harwood had jilted Captain Jones, was immediately called to an account. She blushed, and said it was common rumour, and that she knew nothing but what she had heard. The court decided that this circumstance would not excuse her, for that she thus lent the authority of her name to an idle story which she confessed she had no reason to believe was true. It was declared, that the person who assisted in circulating what was mere rumour, shared in the guilt of the fabricator; and that as Miss Lively was Maria Harwood's particular friend, she had in this instance doubly offended. Miss Lively was therefore examined again as to her authority for what she had said. After much inquiry and prevarication, it turned out, that her mother's chamber-maid had heard Mr. Harwood's cook say, that it would serve such a proud thing right, if Miss Maria would turn him off. The court ordered the fair offender to be reprimanded. The punishment had the proper effect; and for six weeks she could not mention an article of doubtful intelligence, without being asked if it came from Mr. Harwood's cook. The next cause which I recollect, was of rather a more intricate nature. Julia Manners and Emma Harwood were near neighbours, and lived on terms of close intimacy. Julia was unconcealing, generous, and frank; free in her expressions, and warm in all her feelings. Emma was amiable and correct, but jealous of her dignity; and rather eager in listening to the opinions of others respecting her. Such a disposition always finds some one ready to gratify it; and Emma heard much to excite her jealousy, and alarm her pride. A young lady, _a mutual friend_, wondered to Emma that she should be so intimate with Miss Manners, and was sure she did not know all that Julia said about her. _What?_ eagerly exclaimed Emma. "She could not say: it was told in confidence, and she did not like to hurt any one's feelings." This only excited more curiosity, and Emma at last forced her half willing friend to confess, that Julia had called her proud and touchy; and said she did not like her half so well as she did her sister. Miss Harwood felt much hurt; and behaved very coolly to her old friend for several weeks. Julia at last complained to the court, and the affair was investigated. We found out, upon examining the witnesses, that Julia had only tacitly assented to these opinions, which had been expressed by the fair informer herself; and had never suffered them to influence her conduct. Emma was thereupon ordered to kiss her old companion, and make an acknowledgment before the company of the injustice she had committed; and we unanimously agreed to banish their mutual friend from our circle. I had intended to give some further decisions of our court, in which the gentlemen are particularly interested; but my good friends, the Editors, are already looking askance for the end of my paper. _In publica commoda peccem_--if I longer take up the room devoted to my worthy neighbours, the farmers. I shall only add, that we found our court of scandal so efficacious, that it restored our conversation in a few weeks to its former tone, and entirely banished the spirit of which I have complained. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. "THE STORY OF RUTH." "And, behold, Boaz came from Beth-lehem, and said unto the reapers, The Lord be with you. And they answered him, The Lord bless thee." There are moments in the life of every virtuous man, when the vices and the enormities by which he is surrounded, and above all, the glaring deficiencies which he is compelled to remark, even in those "whom he hath delighted to honour," come back upon the mind with an overpowering force, and spread their disheartening influence over the whole train of his reflections. At such moments, when we have turned with disgust from the corruptions of human nature, and have almost been tempted to seek in "some boundless contiguity of shade," a retreat from their contaminating influence; it is peculiarly delightful to recur to some scene of virtuous enjoyment, or to disperse the gloom which has gathered around us by a reference to the simplicity of other times. While dwelling upon the records of ancient purity, we become conscious of a joyous complacency; the mind is elated in the contemplation of its own capability of happiness, and reposes with delight upon the recollection of those peaceful pleasures, which can only exist among a virtuous people. There is, perhaps, no narrative to be found among the works of ancient or modern authors, upon which the man who has become weary of the follies of the world, can dwell with more soothing sensations, than upon the story of Ruth. It is not to the unrivalled beauty of its style, nor to the pathetic eloquence which it contains, nor to the affecting nature of its incidents, that it is indebted for its principal attractions. But it is in the delineations of the peculiar practices of a people, who, as yet, had not forgotten the characteristic simplicity of their fathers; and in the striking allusions to their habits of social intercourse, that we feel ourselves most deeply interested. Many have delighted to paint the pleasures of rural life in all their most glowing colours; they have dilated upon its real and its fancied enjoyments; and have laboured to represent it as divested of all that shall darken the lustre of native purity, or detract from the reverence of virtue. But it may well be doubted whether they have ever presented us with so engaging, and yet so perfectly natural a picture, as that which is to be found in the simple and unlaboured narrative of inspiration. In the very salutations between Boaz and his reapers, we seem to have an evidence of that happy equality, and that habitual piety, which are alike the concomitants of untainted simplicity, and the victims of luxury and corruption. "The Lord be with you," was the address of "a mighty man of wealth" to his reapers; "and they answered him, The Lord bless thee." These are doubtless to be considered as the accustomed salutations of the people; and they may frequently have carried with them nothing more than the idea of mere ceremony. But they were salutations which must have originated among a religious people; and it was a ceremony which must have been associated with all that is helpless and dependant in man, and all that is merciful and omnipotent in his Creator. C. Most of our readers will probably recollect the amiable and enterprising ELIZABETH FRY, who has been for some time past, like the celebrated Howard, engaged in visiting the prisons of England. The peculiarity of the undertaking, for a female, and her unexpected success in drawing the attention of the wretched objects of her care, to something like their native dignity, have excited much interest in the public mind. A copy of the following letter, giving some account of her proceedings in Glasgow, was handed to us, with the privilege of publishing it.--ED. Communicated for the Rural Magazine. _Letter to Mrs. Fletcher, from a friend in Glasgow._ Mrs. Fry's manner and voice are delightful; her communications, free and unembarrassed.--She met, by appointment, several of the magistrates, Mr. Erving, and a number of ladies, at Bridewell. She told them, with much simplicity, what had been done at Newgate; and proposed something similar, if practicable, in Glasgow. She entered into very pleasant conversation with every one. All were delighted when she offered to speak a little to the poor women: but the Keeper of Bridewell said he feared it was a dangerous experiment; for that they never, but by compulsion, listened to reading, and were generally disposed to turn all into ridicule. She said she was not without fear of this happening; but she thought it would give pleasure to some, and would serve to show the ladies what she meant. The women, about a hundred, were then assembled in a large room; and when she went in, seemed astonished, misdoubting, and lowering. She took off her little bonnet, and sat down on a low seat, fronting the women; and looking round with a kind and conciliating manner, but with an eye that met every one, she said--"I had better just tell you what we are come about." She said "she had had to do with a great many poor women, sadly wicked; more wicked than any now present, and how they had recovered from evil." Her language was often Biblical, always referring to our Saviour's promises, and cheering with holy hope those desolate beings. "Would you like to turn from that which is wrong? Would you like if ladies would visit you, and speak comfort to you, and help you to be better? Would you tell them your griefs? for they who have done wrong have many sorrows." As she read them the rules, asking them always if they approved, they were to hold up their hands if they acceeded. At first we saw them down, and many hands were unraised; but as she spoke, tears began to fall. One beautiful girl near me, had her eyes swimming in tears; and her lips moved as if following Mrs. Fry's. An older woman, who had her Bible, we saw pressing upon it involuntarily, as she became more and more engrossed. The hands were now almost all ready to rise at every pause; and these callous and obdurate offenders were, with one consent, bowed before her. At this moment, she took the Bible, and read the parables of the _lost sheep_, and the _pieces of silver_, and the _prodigal son_.--It is not in my power to express the effect of her saintly voice, speaking such blessed words. She often paused, and looked at the "poor women," as she named them, with such sweetness, as won all their confidence, and she applied with a beauty and taste such as I had never before witnessed, the parts of the story--_His father saw him when he was afar off_, &c.--A solemn pause succeeded the reading. Then, resting the large Bible on the ground, we saw her on her knees before the women. Her prayer was soothing and elevating; and her musical voice, in the peculiar recitative tone of her sect. I felt it like a mother's song to a suffering child. Communicated for the Rural Magazine. BRANDYWINE, _2d mo. 3, 1820._ REUBEN HAINES, _Esteemed friend_--I avail myself of a leisure hour to communicate my opinion on the subject on which we had some conversation when thou wast at my house. I allude to the importance of a more general use of mill feed for cattle in the neighbourhood of cities and towns, where hay almost always commands a high price. We will, in the first place, view the subject at the cost of the respective articles in your market at this time.--Shorts can now be had at 30 cents per double bushel, weighing about 35 lbs. 100 bushels of shorts, weighing 3500 lbs. neat, will cost D.30 00 3500 wt. of hay, at 25 dolls. per ton, will cost 39 12 ______ Difference, D. 9 12 Here there is a difference of $9, 12 cents, in favour of shorts, in a given weight of each; but I am quite confident, in my own opinion, that, taking an equal weight of each, there is _double the sustenance_ in the shorts; and if this opinion be correct, it shows the following important result: 7000 lbs. of hay, at 25 dls. per ton, would cost D.78 25 While 3500 lbs. of shorts, in which there is equal if not greater nutriment, would cost only 30 00 ______ Gain in favour of shorts, D.48 25 But it appears to me there is another important saving would result to the farmer, from the introduction of mill feed. It would enable him to keep his stock of horses at a great deal less expense than he now keeps them. They would be more healthy, and _all his hay_ might be saved for the horned cattle. By a very slight mixture of shorts with cut straw, or cut corn-stalks, it would make very palatable food; and the result in this method, compared with foddering on hay, would be as follows. One hundred bushels of shorts would be ample to mix with two tons of straw, and two tons of stalks. The shorts, as heretofore stated, would cost D.30 00 2 tons of wheat, barley, or oat straw, at 5 dolls. per ton, 10 00 The corn-stalks are now generally put in the barn-yard: allow what paid for hauling them, say D.2 50 per ton, 5 00 Allow also for trouble in cutting the straw and stalks, 10 00 ______ 55 00 _The Weight of the foregoing as follows_, viz. The shorts, 3500 lbs. 2 tons of straw, 4480 2 tons of stalks, 4480 ______ 12,460 lbs. An equal weight of hay, at the present price, 25 dolls. would cost 139 25 ______ Difference, D.84 25 Thou wilt readily perceive, without my dwelling on it, that the above method would answer equally well for store cattle as for horses. By the present mode the corn stalks are almost wholly lost, and a great proportion of the straw trodden under foot in the barn-yards. One benefit that would result from the change of feeding, and which must be obvious to every one, would be its enabling every farmer to keep a larger stock; and thus _increase his manure_,--the grand secret, after all is said, in farming well, and doing it to advantage. If it is alleged that my calculation of hay is too high, it may be observed, that the shorts are also estimated at a price higher than they often command in the Philadelphia market. I have known them as low as 20 cents; and 25 cents is a very common price in the fall of the year. They may safely be put in bulk in the 11th mo. and will keep sweet until the ensuing spring.--I have thus hastily thrown my ideas together on this subject. If thou canst glean from them any thing of importance, I shall be glad. Thy assured friend, JAMES CANBY. _Treatise on Agriculture_. SECT. II. Of the actual state of Agriculture in Europe. 12. The climate and soil of _Great Britain_ and _Ireland_, are particularly favourable to husbandry; nor is her geographical position less auspicious--placed, as she is, on the longest line, and amidst the most important markets of the continent of Europe. If to these advantages be added the laborious, enlightened, and enterprising character of the nation, we cannot but expect results the most favourable to agriculture: yet is the fact notoriously otherwise. To show that this opinion is neither hasty nor unfounded, we must enter into details, which may not be unprofitable. The surface of England is estimated at 37,265,853 acres, which are distributed as follows: In pasturage, 18,796,458 In tillage, 11,350,501 In cities, roads & canals, 3,454,740 Lands fit for pasturage or tillage not cultivated, 3,515,238 Lands unfit for cultivation, 2,148,921 Of the arable land the following annual disposition is made: Lands unfit for cultivation, 2,148,921 In wheat and rye, 2,000,000 In peas, beans, and buckwheat, 2,000,000 In barley and oats, 4,000,000 In fallow, or in turnips or cabbages, 3,400,000 The lands, in wheat and rye, yield on an average of ten years, _three quarters_ per acre, or 6,000,000 quarters; yet there is an annual deficit in England of 1,820,000 quarters, which must be drawn from foreign markets.[1] [1] A _quarter_ is equal to six bushels, and the average produce in wheat and rye 18 bushels per acre. For the whole kingdom the deficit is 2,820,000 quarters. See Geographic Mathematic, art. Great Britain. There is certainly nothing very flattering in this view of English agriculture; but it may be said to be one of statists and politicians, and probably underrated. Let us then see what their own most eminent agriculturists, their Young and Sinclair, and Dickson and Marshall, say on this subject--"_A very small portion of the cultivated parts of Great Britain, is to this day, submitted to a judicious and well conducted system of husbandry; not in fact more than four counties_, (Norfolk, Sussex, Essex, and Kent:) _while many large tracts of excellent soil are managed in a way the most imperfect and disadvantageous_."[2] [2] See the introduction to Dickson's Practical Agriculture, 2d vol. quarto. Nor is her management of cattle better. "Considering the domestic animals in a general way, we find each species, and almost every race, capable of great improvement, and, with a few exceptions, the sheep much neglected. In some districts are whole races of cattle incapable of improvement (within a reasonable time) in the three great objects which they are expected to yield, viz. milk, flesh, and labour."[3] We now add _some_ of the causes to which this defective husbandry has been ascribed: "to enumerate all would be impossible, from their number and complication."[4] [3] Marshal, vol. iv. p. 575. [4] Dickson's Practical Agriculture. "1st. The _commons_, or unenclosed grounds, which in many places amount to near one half of the whole arable land, and which are submitted to the most absurd and ruinous system of culture."[5] [5] Idem. "2d. The _terms_ (amounting to personal servitude) under which many of the lands are held." "3d. The _shortness of leases_ given by corporations (civil and religious) and by individuals, and which seldom exceed _three_, _five_, or _seven_ years, excepting in the counties of Norfolk, Sussex, Essex, and Kent, where (with great advantage to both landlord and tenant) they are frequently extended to twenty-one years." "4th. The _tithes in kind_, paid by the farmers to the church; a tax highly vexatious in its character, and oppressive in its effects: and "5th. The _poor tax_, which has become enormous, and of which the yeomanry pay three fourths. Of this tax it has been truly said, that it is a powerful instrument of depopulation--a barbarous contrivance for checking all national industry."[6] [6] Young's Tour through Ireland, vol. ii. p. 302. To these causes, assigned by British writers, may be added the _increase_ of _population_, common to every nation of Europe, and which in Great Britain is beyond all proportion greater than the progress of agriculture; the _augmentation_ of _cattle_, which occasions that of pasturage, and the diminution of tillage;[7] the _establishment_ of _great farms_ at the expense of _small_ ones, and the _multiplication_ of _parks_ and _pleasure grounds_; and lastly, the _attraction of great cities_, and the _continual drafts_ made upon the agricultural population, for the army and navy, and for commerce and manufactures. [7] Mr. Hume quotes with approbation an author, who complains of the decay of tillage in the reign of Elizabeth, and who ascribes it to the increase of pasturage, in consequence of the restraints imposed on the exportation of grain, while that of butter, cheese, &c. was free. The history of Europe, if read with an eye to public economy, furnishes an abundant proof, that the greatest obstructions to agriculture have arisen from the interference of government. We have here no sly allusion to our own projects of a state board of agriculture, of a chymico agricultural professorship, nor even of an agricultural college, if the treasury in its wealth, and the legislature in its wisdom, should deem such institutions useful or necessary. SECT. III. Theory of Vegetation. Vegetables may be regarded as the intermediate link in the great chain of creation, between animals and minerals. The latter grow by mere chymical affinity, and by additions, sometimes analogous and sometimes foreign from their own nature; while plants, like animals, have an organization that enables them to receive their food, digest and assimilate it to their own substance, reproduce their species, and maintain an existence of longer or shorter duration. Thus far the learned are agreed, but at the next step they differ. What is this food that gives to plants their developement, and maturity, and powers of reproduction? Lord Bacon believed that _water_ was the source of vegetable life, and that the earth was merely its home, its habitation, serving to keep plants upright, and to guard them against the extremes of heat and cold. Tull, on the other hand, (and after him Du Hamel) pronounced _pulverized earth_ the only pabulum of plants, and on this opinion built his system of husbandry. Van Helmont and Boyle opposed this doctrine by experiments: the former planted and reared a cutting of willow in a bed of dry earth, carefully weighed and protected against accretion by a tin plate, so perforated as to admit only rain and distilled water, with which it was occasionally moistened. At the end of five years the plant was found to have increased _one hundred and sixty-four pounds_, and the bed of earth to have lost, of its original weight, only _two ounces_. Boyle pursued a similar process with gourds, and with a similar result. Notwithstanding the apparent conclusiveness of these experiments, their authority was shaken, if not subverted, by others made by Margraff, Bergman, Hales, Kirwan, &c. &c. The first of these showed, that the rain water employed by Van Helmont, was itself charged with saline and other earthy matter; Bergman demonstrated this by analysis, while Kirwan and Hales proved that the earth in which the willow cutting was planted, could absorb these matters through the pores of the wooden box which contained it, and that a glass case could alone have prevented such absorption. Hunter, finding that oil and salt entered into the composition of plants, concluded that these formed their principal food, and accordingly recommended, as the great desideratum in agriculture, an _oil compost_. Lord Kaimes attempted to revive the expiring creed of Lord Bacon, but finding from Hales' statics, that one third of the weight of a green pea was made up of carbonic acid, he added _air_ to the watery aliment of the English philosopher--but entirely rejected _oil_ and _earth_, as too gross to enter the mouths of plants, and _salt_ as too acrid to afford them nourishment. Quackery, which at one time or other, has made its way into all arts and sciences, could not easily be excluded from agriculture. Hence it was, that the Abbe de Valemont's _prolific liquor_, and De Hare's and De Vallier's _powders_, &c. &c. were believed to be all that was necessary to vegetation, and found the more advocates, as they promised much and cost little. But before the march of modern chymistry, quackery could not long maintain itself; and from the labours of Bennet, Priestly, Saussure, Ingenhouz, Sennebier, Schæder, Chaptal, Davy, &c. &c. few doubts remain on this important subject.--These will be presented in the course of the following inquiry. 1st. Of _earths_, and their relation to vegetation. Of six or eight substances, which chymists have denominated _earths_, four are widely and abundantly diffused, and form the crust of our globe. These are _silica_, _alumina_, _lime_, and _magnesia_.--The first is the basis of quartz, sand and gravel; the second, of clay; the third, of bones, river and marine shells, alabaster, marble, limestone and chalk; and the fourth, of that medicinal article known by the name of calcined magnesia.--In a pure or isolated state,[8] these earths are wholly unproductive; but when decomposed and mixed,[9] and to this mixture is added the residuum of dead animal or vegetable matter,[10] they become fertile, take the general name of _soils_, and are again specially denominated, after the earth that most abounds in their compositions respectively. If this be silica, they are called _sandy_; if alumina, _argillaceous_; if lime, _calcareous_; and if magnesia, _magnesian_. Their properties are well known: a _sandy_ soil is loose, easily moved, little retentive of moisture, and subject to extreme dryness; an _argillaceous_ soil is hard and compact when dry, tough and paste-like when wet, greedy and tenacious of moisture; turns up, when ploughed, into massive clods, and admits the entrance of roots with great difficulty. A _calcareous_ soil is dry, friable and porous; water enters and leaves it with facility; roots penetrate it without difficulty, and (being already greatly divided) less labour is necessary for it than for clay. _Magnesian_, like calcareous earth, is light, porous and friable; but, like clay when wet, takes the consistency of paste, and is very tenaceous of water. It refuses to combine with oxygen, or with the alkalies; is generally found associated with granite, gneiss, and schiste, and is probably among the causes of their comparative barrenness.[11] [8] See Gisbert's experiments on _pure earths_ and _their mixtures_. See also Davy's Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, p. 156. [9] In this respect nature has been neither negligent or niggardly, if (as Fourcroy asserts) the purest sand be a mixture of quartz, alumina, and sometimes of calcareous matter. _Speculative geology_ is romance, and does not merit the name of science; yet is science obliged to borrow her theory of soils. The alternation of heat and cold, moisture and dryness, decomposed the mountains of primitive, secondary and tertiary formation; rains, and the laws of gravity, brought these from places of more, to places of less elevation--where, by mechanical mixture and chymical combination, the present substrata were formed. But these were yet naked and unproductive, when the Cryptogamia family (mopes and lichens) took possession of them, and in _due time_ produced that vegetable matter, which made the earth productive and the globe habitable! [10] Dead animal and vegetable matter, in the last stage of decomposition, give a black or brown powder, which the French chymists call _terreau_ or _humus_, and which Mr. Davy calls an _extractive matter_; _this_ is the fertilizing principle of soils and manures. [11] The opinion is general among the chymists of Europe, that magnesian earth is not only barren itself, but the cause of barrenness in other soils in which it may abound, unless saturated with carbonic acid. See Base, Tennant, and Davy. In these qualities are found the _mechanical relations_ between earths and vegetables. To the divisibility of the former it is owing, that the latter are enabled to push their roots into the earth; to their _density_, that plants maintain themselves in an erect posture, rise into the air, and resist the action of the winds and rains; and to their _power_ of _absorbing_ and _holding_ water, the advantage of a prolonged application of moisture, necessary or useful to vegetable life. But besides performing these important offices, there is reason to believe that they contribute to the _food_ of vegetables. This opinion rests on the following considerations and experiments: 1. If earths do not contribute directly to the food of plants, then would be all soils alike productive; or in other words, if air and water _exclusively_ supply this food, then would a soil of pure sand be as productive as one of the richest alluvion. 2. Though plants may be made to grow in pounded glass, or in metallic oxides, yet is the growth, in these, neither healthy nor vigorous; and, 3. All plants, on analysis, yield an earthy product;[12] and this product is found to partake most of the earth that predominates in the soil producing the analyzed plant; if _silica_ be the dominant earth, then is the product obtained from the plant _silicious_; if _lime_ prevail, then is the product _calcareous_, &c. &c. This important fact is proved by De Saussure. [12] Davy says this never exceeds one fiftieth of the whole product. _1st Experiment._ Two plants (the pinus abies) were selected, the one from a calcareous, the other from a granitic soil, the ashes of which gave the following products; Granitic Calcareous soil. soil. Potash 3 60 15 Alk. and mu. sul 4 24 15 Carbonate of lime 46 34 63 Carbonate of magnesia 6 77 00 Silica 13 49 00 Alumina 14 86 16 Metallic oxides 10 52 00 _2d Experiment._ Two Rhododendrons were taken, one from the calcareous soil of Mount de la Salle, the other from the granitic soils of Mount Bevern. Of a _hundred_ parts, the former gave fifty-seven of carbonate of lime and five of silica; the latter, thirty of carbonate of lime, and fourteen of silica. _3d Experiment._ This was made to determine whether vegetables, the product of a soil having in it no silica, would, notwithstanding, partake of that earth.--Plants were accordingly taken from Reculey de Thoiry, (a soil altogether calcareous) and the result was a very small portion of silica. These experiments, says Chaptal, leave little if any doubt, but that vegetables derive the earthy matter they contain from the soil in which they grow.[13] [13] Shæder maintains the doctrine, that the earths found in plants are created there by the process of vegetation. His essay on this subject was crowned by the academy of Berlin, in 1801. His experiments were the first to determine the different quantities of silica found in different kinds of grain. 2. Of _water_, as an agent in vegetation. Seeds placed in the earth, and in a temperature above the freezing point, and _watered_, will develope; that is, their lobes[14] will swell, their roots descend into the earth, and their stems rise into the air. But without humidity, they will not germinate; or deprived of humidity after germinating, they will perish. When germination is complete, and the plant formed, its roots and leaves are so organized as to _absorb water_. The experiments of Hales prove, that the weight of plants is increased in wet and diminished in dry weather; and that in the latter, they draw from the atmosphere (by means of their leaves)[15] the moisture necessary to their well being.--Du Hamel (and after him Sennebier) has shown, that the filaments that surround the roots of plants, and which has been called their hair, perform for them in the _earth_, the office that leaves perform in the atmosphere, and that if deprived of these filaments the plants die. [14] Moisten a bean in warm water, and detach the skin that covers it, and it readily divides into two parts; these are called _lobes_. [15] Bonnet's experiments show, that it is the under surface of the leaf that performs this function, The upper surface has a different office. It would be easy, but useless, to multiply facts of this kind tending to establish a doctrine not contested, but which after all does not assert, that water makes part of the food of plants. On this point two opinions exist--the one, that this liquid is a solvent and conductor of alimentary juices: the other, that is itself an aliment and purveyor of vegetable food at the same time. The first opinion is abundantly established. Water when charged with oxygen, supplies to germinating seeds the want of atmospheric air, and saturated with animal or vegetable matter in a state of decomposition, or slightly impregnated with carbonic acid, very perceptibly quickens and invigorates vegetation. The second opinion is favoured by some of De Saussure's experiments. On these, Chaptal makes the following remark, which expresses very distinctly an approbation of the doctrine they suggest:--"The enormous quantity of hydrogen (which makes so large a part of vegetable matter) cannot be accounted for but by admitting (in the process of vegetation) the _decomposition_ of _water_, of which hydrogen is the principal constituent; and that though there is nothing in the present state of our experience that directly establishes this doctrine, yet that its truth ought to be presumed, from the analysis of plants and the necessary and well-known action of water on vegetation. (To be continued.) _Correction._--In copying the second section, page 55, an error escaped in relation to the _Tuscan_ plough; the passage should have read thus--"The plough of the north of Europe, like that of this country, has the power of a wedge, and acts horizontally--that that of Tuscany has the same direction, but very different form. With the outline of a shovel, it consists of two inclined planes, sloping from the centre, and forms a gutter and two ridges. Review for the Rural Magazine. _An Expose of the Causes of Intemperate Drinking, and the means by which it may be obviated. By Thomas Herttell of the city of New York. Published by order of the New York society for the promotion of internal improvement_.--New York, 1819.--pp. 56. This is an ingenious and interesting pamphlet. It is written with much force and originality; and we think we shall do the public a service by laying before our readers some of the author's remarks. There is no vice which steals upon us in so many attractive and deceitful shapes as that of intemperate drinking. In this country it is a national sin and infects every class of society. We meet its temptations in our social intercourse, at our public festivals--in the resorts of business; we see it indulged in by men of eminent character; spirituous liquors are kept in every sideboard, and brought forth upon almost every occasion. One class of society imitates the practice of another, and habitual drunkenness has become the stigma and disgrace of our country. The pamphlet before us, remarks (page 6) that "the existence of this vice is now generally acknowledged, its progress marked, and its effects deplored. It is traced to the grog-shop where many of its most degrading _effects_ are discovered, and _mis_taken for _causes_, and the remedy attempted to be applied." "Though I am not disposed to become the advocate of grog-shops, or to avert from them any portion of merited animadversion--or inclined to become the apologist of those who, under colour of keeping a tavern, follow the business of dram-selling; I am not willing that these places should be considered either as the _primary_ or _principal cause_ of the evil under review. The current opinion that such is the case, is incorrect, as I shall endeavour to shew. And I am induced to do this, from the conviction that the mistake is calculated to stop investigation short of the true source, and thus prevent the remedies from reaching the fountain-head of the evil. It happens in this, as in too many other instances, that the little sinners become the subjects of censure, while those whose crimes differ from them only in magnitude, are overlooked, or treated with complaisance. Is it _wrong_ to sell liquor by the _glass_, to those who drink it--and is it _not wrong to sell it by the hogshead_, for the purpose of being so disposed of? Are both these culpable, and shall those who import and sell it by the cargo, escape obloquy? And does the distiller differ from all those, in any other respect, than that he makes while they sell the poison for the purpose of its being drank? It is not my intention to censure the latter any more than the former class of dealers in ardent drink; and justice forbids that blame should attach itself exclusively to either. They are all _particepes criminis_, inasmuch as they all contribute facilities to the practice of intemperate drinking, and thus aid the continuance and increase of the evil. But its most prolific sources are not to be found among those classes of our fellow-citizens, considered in the _business character_. They only conform to the _customs_ and _habits_ of the community in which they live. They find their neighbours in the practice of using ardent drink, and profit by their folly. No one would be so weak as to invest his money in ardent liquor with the expectation of _learning_ people to drink. It is the _already acquired habit_, which constitutes the basis of his calculations of profit. So far, therefore, from grog-shops being the _primary_ or _principal cause_ of intemperate habits, the reverse of the position approaches nearer the truth. The habit of _intemperance is the cause of grog-shops_. "As the vice under consideration did not originate at those places, it is not limited to the class of people who drink there. The customers of coffee houses, hotels, and other taverns, and the sideboards and wine-cellars of private houses, prove the truth of this position. The landlords of those establishments would take it in dudgeon, to be told that their customers were of the lowest grade of society; and the proprietors of well stored sideboards and wine-cellars, would be highly offended at the imputation of drinking, or learning to drink, at grog-shops. If the practice of tippling was confined to the lower order of society, it could not with any propriety be regarded as a national sin. The character and habits of that class of the community can never alone constitute national character. Admitting, therefore, that intemperate drinking is justly attributed to us as a feature of our national character, it follows irrefutably, that the _causes_ which produce that _effect_ are not confined to the purlieus of bar or tap-rooms. The upper classes of society never follow the examples of the lower: but the latter do, as far as they are able, imitate the customs of the former. Had the habit of intemperance originated in the lower class, it would not, in all probability, have extended beyond it. As its prevalence is so general as to become a reproach to the nation, the inference is conclusive, that it is the progeny of higher parentage than grog-shops." "The radical sources of the evil" says judge Herttell, "are _in the fashions, customs, and examples, of what are called the upper or wealthy classes of the community_." After remarking the common practice that intoxicating liquors are universally used as a table drink, he proceeds, "Such being the practice, the parents of a family must, of necessity, adopt one of the two following measures:--The children must be permitted to partake of the common table beverage, or they must not. In the first case they are reared from their childhood to the _habitual use of ardent drink_. If the other course is pursued, and the use of the liquor interdicted to the children, while the parents daily drink it in their presence, he is very little acquainted with human nature, who does not know, that the value of the article is thereby arbitrarily enhanced--the disposition to enjoy it increased,--and, that as soon as the restraints of the parents are removed, and an opportunity presents, the forbidden fruit will be tasted, with as much avidity as if both conscience and justice demanded satisfaction for lost time and pleasures. Under such circumstances, how vain is it to hope that children will not acquire the habit of intemperance--and how weak is it to wonder at their becoming drunkards! Parents can hardly be said to have arrived to years of discretion, who shall expect that their admonitions against intemperance will be heeded, while their daily example is counteracting their influence. How ridiculous is it for them, while drinking wine and brandy in the presence of their children, to attempt to persuade them, that it is not good for them! Should it happen, that in a family of half a dozen sons, there should be a sober man, the merit is his, and not his parents'; nor are they to be pitied, except for their folly, should they all be drunkards; and such is frequently the result. Thus, almost every family becomes a school for intemperance, and a nursery of customers for taverns and grog-shops. "Again; inebriating liquors have become the medium _universally adopted by society for manifesting friendship and good will, one to another_. It need only to be mentioned to be admitted, that it is the common practice, when friends or even strangers visit each other, they have scarcely time after being seated, to make the usual inquiries about health, and the common place remarks on the weather, before they are invited to drink intoxicating liquors. The welcome is deemed kind and sincere, in proportion to the frequency, and earnestness of the importunities to drink--liberal in proportion to the variety of the liquors; and their richness and profusion add to the other temptations to drink. Not to offer them would be deemed unfriendly, mean, or unmannerly. Not to accept them, would be attributed to ill-nature, or a want of politeness. Hence, the visitor drinks to reciprocate good will for the proffered kindness, or in self-defence against the imputation of ill-breeding. And the visited, takes a glass for the company's sake, as it is called; and to evince his satisfaction on seeing his hospitality accepted _in the spirit_ in which it is offered. In this way do the laws of _fashion_ and _custom constrain people to drink_, who otherwise would have no inclination, or who have acquired that inclination, from the frequent if not daily occasions which occur, for tendering and reciprocating through the customary channel, sentiments of hospitality and good will to their associates, friends, and strangers. _Thus is the vice of intemperate drinking ingrafted on the virtue of hospitality_; and so long as that virtue is cherished, and ardent liquors continue to be tendered as evidence of its existence, so long will the use of that article as a drink continue, and the vice of intemperance grow out of it. _This unnatural blending of virtue and vice, together with the practice of using inebriating drink as a table beverage, are the radical sources of that intemperance, which is said to be "the crying and increasing sin of the nation."_ It is at the family table, the first rudiments of intemperance are taught; the first examples set, and the first essays at tippling attempted. The practice is continued by the frequent display of hospitality and politeness, through the medium of ardent drink. The _acquired habit_, shows itself on holy-days, at dining and other parties, and on all convivial occasions--is pursued at taverns, and at last, descends to, and terminates its career at grog-shops. Look at the catalogue of family misfortunes, and few will be found to have escaped the direful disease of intemperance; few which have not had their prosperity and happiness blighted by the extreme of that vice, in some one or more of their members." No doubt it is in the opulent that many of the vices of society originate. Their weaknesses and errors are palliated; their example imitated and their indulgences eagerly craved by the poor. While therefore, the general practice of using ardent spirit continues among them, our author reasons that the popular remedy of curtailing the number of grog-shops, though it would lessen the _practice_ would not _destroy_ the habit of intemperance. Should there remain a solitary place where liquor can be procured, the sin of intemperance will continue to be committed, and its associate vices and immorality entailed on society. "What!" says he, "it may be asked by the reader, are we required to relinquish the use of wine and ardent spirits, in order to prevent their abuse by others? Shall we deny ourselves the _reasonable enjoyment_ of them, because others become _intemperate_? Are we to be interdicted the _moderate_ use of them, because others drink to excess and get drunk? As well say the querists, might it be expected that we should extract our tongues, because others back-bite their neighbours! "In the first place, permit me to remark, that I have not uttered a word against the _moderate_ or _reasonable_ use of ardent liquors. But before we go farther, it may be proper to analyze the terms, _moderation_ and _intemperance_, as they relate to the use of inebriating drink. There can be no objection to its _reasonable_, _necessary_, and _moderate_ use. But I do contend, that the use of it by any person _in a full state of health, is at all times unnecessary_. The effect of strong drink, is to excite the animal spirits to a preternatural action.--When taken by a person in full health, it raises the animal spirits above the healthy standard. This is _unnecessary_--and inasmuch as it creates a deviation from a state of real health, it produces _disease_, and hence its use is _immoderate_, _intemperate_. The _indirect debility_ which succeeds the exhausted stimulant, is another and a worse state of _disorder_, which goes to confirm the truth, that the _first_ draught of ardent drink taken by those in full health, is _unnecessary_, _unreasonable_, and _excessive_. Nor is this all--this indirect debility prompts a repetition of the draught--and now the _practice_ of drinking has commenced. The animal spirits having sunk as far below as they have been raised above the healthy standard, an _increased_ quantity is required to raise them as high as before. Thus the habit of intemperance _progresses_. The spirits, now ebbing lower than before, demand increased support, the yielding to which demand, _confirms the habit of intemperance_. But it unfortunately happens, that the term _moderate_, when applied to intoxicating drink, by those who use it, is as unmeaning as the word _enough_ in the mouth of a miser, when speaking of his money. Each drinks according to his taste and strength of habit, and calls it _moderate_. Thus every grade of drinking, from the single glass of the novice, to the full bottle of the initiated, is termed _moderate_. And every degree of excitement, from _moderately merry_ to _moderately drunk_, is honoured with the same name. The real truth is, it is a poor apology for a bad practice; and a _moderate_ degree of reflection would lead those not slaves to the habit, to view it in that light." "I have the authority of distinguished physicians for remarking, that next to _intemperate eating_, intemperate _drinking_ engenders more bodily diseases, than any other single cause. That _more die_ of disorders occasioned by drinking, _before they become drunkards_, than _live to extend their intemperance to that extreme_. That the constant exercise of the labouring class, _procrastinates_, while the want of exercise tends to _facilitate_ the fatal effects of intemperance in the other class of society--and hence it is, that the _moderate drinking_, as it is modestly termed, of the _latter_, destroys at least as many as the _drunkenness of the former_, and in that ratio is as injurious to the community. The reason these facts are not subjects of general observation, is, that when people who are not reputed drunkards, die of complaints brought on by drinking, their death is imputed to the disorder, while that escapes being attributed to its true cause--whereas, reputed drunkards stand little or no chance of dying by any other means; for be they drowned by accident or hanged for murder, their end is generally, and perhaps too often, correctly ascribed to intemperate drinking." "It is really wonderful to witness how fertile is the love of ardent liquor, in excuses and pretences for its gratification. It is drank at one time, _because the weather is warm_--at another, _because it is cold_. It is drank with enemies "to _reconcile them_"--with friends, "_because they don't meet every day_"--on all festive, anniversary and other holydays, "_because they only come once a year_." And if at any or on all those times, the bounds of _moderation_ are exceeded, it is allowed to be _excusable_, "_because they are all extraordinary occasions!_" Real or _pretended_ disorders are also often plead as an apology for drinking ardent liquor; and instances are not rare where, though it may have been regularly prescribed for medical purposes, and may have cured the disorder, it has finally killed the patient. It is doubtless for this reason, that distinguished gentlemen of the faculty have admitted, that the internal use of ardent liquor, even in cases in which it is indicated as a medical remedy, is often productive of far more hurt than good. "The most common pretence, however, is, that _the water is bad_, and requires a _little spirits to qualify it_; and hence it is infused with a poison of a more deleterious quality than any it naturally possessed. This _qualifying_ of the water, has been the means of _disqualifying_ many a valuable man, for nearly every purpose, except to bring disgrace, ruin, and misery on himself, his family and connexions." "I have taken no pains to ascertain the authority by which retailers of ardent drink are permitted to fix stands and booths at the Park and other places, on days of public parade and festivity. The concentrating of so many grog-shops at times and places of the greatest collection of people, tends rather to produce tumult and confusion, than to preserve good order. These places not only tempt men to indulge to excess, but boys are often seen in them following the example--and it has been remarked, that more of this youthful class are seen disguised with liquor on those days, than in all the year beside. Indeed, it very rarely occurs that a boy is seen thus degraded on any other occasion. Should these travelling taverns be permitted only on condition that ardent spirits should not be carried to them, or sold, or given gratis there, it would remove the greatest objection which can be urged against them. The public would then be accommodated with every necessary refreshment, without jeopardizing their peace by means of intemperate drinking. "It would essentially benefit the community, should the _inducements to frequent taverns be lessened_. This may be done in a variety of instances. It is usual in the country towns, to muster the militia at or in the immediate vicinity of taverns. This practice tends neither to improve the morality or discipline of the men--and if they must continue as now to be mustered at those places or _not mustered at all_, I have no hesitation in saying, that the public would sustain no material injury, should the latter course be adopted; for it is certainly true, and the reason is obvious, that many of the men, at the close of their exercise on those parade days, are not so well qualified to serve their country, as when they come to the rendezvous. Much of the evil of the present practice would be obviated, should military officers, vested with power to muster any corps of militia, in the country towns, for the ordinary purposes of exercise or inspection, be bound by law to locate the parade ground at least a mile from any tavern or retail grocery. The carrying of ardent liquor to the rendezvous, and the selling it there, or giving it gratis to any person, especially the soldiers, should be interdicted, under proper penalties, and provision made for due execution of the law. Other refreshments than ardent drink, being as usual permitted, all the reasonable conveniences of taverns would be enjoyed, and many of those disgusting instances of riot and disturbance, occasioned by intemperate drinking, and which often convert our militia parades in the country, into scenes of disorder and insubordination, rather than schools for military instruction and discipline, would be done away. "The legislature should prohibit justices' courts being held at taverns. The disgraceful scenes which are too often the consequences of trials at those places, would thereby be prevented, and the cause of _morality_, and not unfrequently, that of _justice_, essentially benefited. The same objection lies, though perhaps not with equal force, against sheriff's courts being held at those places. If the Court House is not at hand, it must be a beggarly office which would not afford the appropriating of a room for the performance of its duties in the dwelling of its incumbent, or pay for the use of a convenient place elsewhere for the purpose. The practice of holding trials at taverns, before referees, appointed by order of the court, is not exempt from serious objections.--These, however, being less frequent, are not so productive of evil, and, perhaps, are more difficult to be obviated. "The holding of auction sales at taverns, as is frequently the case in the country, is pregnant with mischief sufficient to justify legislative interposition.--Those who have witnessed, can best describe them--I only know them by description. On these occasions, the number who go to buy, is but small, compared to those who attend from other motives. The owner of the property for sale, is seldom backward in circulating the glass freely at his own expense, because he is like to receive more than cent. per cent. profit from the consequent indiscretion of those who become affected with the _spirit of bidding_. Many are thus led on to buy unnecessarily and dear; and frequent instances occur, where people bid off more than they have means to pay for--and thence law-suits, trials, at taverns, family distress, the insolvent act, and perhaps poverty and pauperism close the account. These are only the outlines of the picture, which those who have seen the original, are best qualified to fill up with neglect of _domestic concerns_--_horse-racing_ and _jockeying_--_profane swearing_--_drunkenness_--_quarrelling_, and sometimes _fighting_, and a variety of other _amusements_, not unusual on such occasions. "The lamentable consequences of holding the polls of our political elections at public houses, are too generally known to require particular description. Suffice it to say, that the noise and tumult--the heated, irritating and useless discussions which frequently occur, and which go to impair the respectability of the electors, and the credit of the elective franchise, are oftner the result of the _spirit of liquor_ than the _spirit of patriotism_. As far as legislative provisions can obviate the evil, it ought to be done. The expense would be small and the benefit great, should each ward in the cities, and each town in the country, build a house or room for the purpose of elections. The profit which might accrue from its use on other occasions, would, in many instances, more than pay the interest on its cost. It is a little remarkable, that the sagacity which prompted the interdiction of military parades on the days of election, as dangerous to the freedom of the elective franchise, did not foresee and guard against the evils consequent on locating the election polls at public houses. "It is hoped that the good sense of the community will operate to abolish the custom of giving extravagant entertainments, on any occasion, in honour of distinguished characters. This practice, by leading many to taverns, and tempting them to indulge freely, is productive of more mischief than benefit to society. As an example, it is bad. People, in the lower walks of life, cannot be taught, that it is wrong to get drunk in company with, and out of mere good humour to their friends, while they see too many of the upper circles retire from those feasts, not exactly sober. I humbly conceive it would be manifesting far higher respect for a great man, to compliment him with a written address, approbating his character and conduct, accompanied with a medal, a piece of plate, or other present, embellished with appropriate insignia and inscriptions.--These would be lasting testimonials of character and worth. Being always visible, they would act continually as a stimuli to urge others to emulate the honourable course by which they were acquired;--whereas, those public entertainments are scarcely noticed beyond the day they are _puffed_ in the newspapers--and if they were, the honoured guest could derive no great satisfaction in the reflection, that his friends had _eaten_ and _drank immoderately_, in _honour of his virtues_. There is a strong family likeness between these dinners and those _eaten ex-officio_ by our city corporation. "The meetings of self-created societies at taverns, cannot, perhaps, at all times, be well avoided. There doubtless are many of those institutions which are useful--but that there are many which do more hurt than good, is equally true. They ought, indeed, to be productive of great benefit, to counterbalance the evil tendency they have, to draw their members to taverns at night. Many a good citizen has, in this way, unwarily contracted irregular habits--and many a deserving wife, and family of innocent babes, have had reason to lament the truth of this remark. It will be a great pity, if those societies cannot be prevailed on, to procure places at which to hold their meetings.--This might easily be effected, unless too strong a predeliction for tavern meetings should counteract so reasonable a proposition." "In the year 1740, Admiral Vernon commanded the British fleet in the West Indies. His undress coat was made of _grogram_, a cloth fabricated of silk and worsted. He was very unpopular in the fleet, and the sailors, in allusion to his coat, nick-named him _Old Grogram_; and afterwards, by way of shortening it, they called him _Old Grog_. When ardent liquor was first given to sailors, and until the time above-mentioned, it was drank _raw_--but being found to produce many fatal bodily diseases, and the naval service thereby much injured, the Admiral directed that the rum should be weakened with water. The men were highly displeased at having their drink thus _spoiled_, and in derision of the admiral, called it by his abbreviated nick-name, "_Grog._" This is the reason that rum, mixed with water, bears that name. Let it be observed, _because_ the _raw_ rum was found to produce deleterious effects on the health of the sailors, the Admiral ordered that it should be mixed with water. Now, as it probably could not require many years to make that discovery, it is fair to conclude, that the first use of ardent spirits, as a daily drink on ship-board, could not have been a very great length of time anterior to the year 1740." "On another occasion, I have mentioned, and will here repeat, that the baleful practice of giving ardent liquor to labourers, ought to be exploded. This custom has so powerfully aided other causes of intemperance, that there is scarcely to be found among the labouring class, any who do not drink, and drink too much. It is unquestionably owing, in a great measure, to this, that the apprentices to many mechanical branches, are initiated into the habit of intemperance, before they acquire a knowledge of their trade; and it is certainly owing to the same cause, that many do not gain a perfect knowledge of their business. Here, too, we see a powerful objection operating, to prevent many respectable parents from putting their sons to mechanical occupations. Hence, many a promising mechanical genius is smothered in the warehouse, or doomed to add a useless member to the already over-run and over-rated learned professions. This serves to degrade the honourable calling of mechanics, which suffers another depression from the necessity which these circumstance create, of taking apprentices from the lower circles of society, whose want of the requisite education disqualifies them for attaining an adequate knowledge of their trade. In addition to this, the master mechanic, growing wealthy by his business, too often becomes infected with the follies and _fashions_ of upper life--in which sphere some are fitted only to appear ridiculous. Their sons, forsooth, must be _above_ their fathers' business. They must be brought up gentlemen--and, of course, reared in idleness and extravagance, or become _professionable_ men or _merchants_.--Thus, by their conduct, they give countenance to those whose weakness may dispose them to undervalue mechanical occupations. "The great number of public holy-days (as they are termed) which are generally observed, are not without their pernicious influence on the morals of society.--Was the manner of their celebration such as to honour the events they are intended to commemorate, their observance, if not useful, would at least be innocent in their consequences. But were we to judge their objects solely by the manner in which they are kept, and the effects they produce, we might be led to the erroneous conclusion, that they were instituted to subserve the causes of vice and immorality. The general suspension of useful employment on those days, is followed by an increased indulgence in drinking; and this accounts for there being more crimes committed on those days, than in any other equal period of time. On the authority of a gentleman who was on the Grand Jury which sat in the present year, I state, that far the greatest portion of the business of that Jury, grew out of crimes and disorders committed during the Christmas and New-Year holy-days. When it is observed, that the court for the trial of criminals is held once a month, and crowded with business, it would be superfluous to add arguments to such facts. "The custom of giving wine and other liquors at funerals, is not at all calculated to increase the solemnity of those occasions. The practice is bad, and ought to be discountenanced by those whose example may influence others to follow it. Instances have happened, where the _effects_ of this _ill-timed hospitality_, have been very justly lamented. How such an absurd custom was first introduced, is not, perhaps, so evident as the impropriety of its continuance. "To conclude--'To what purpose,' an inconsiderate though well-intentioned friend, has said, and others as thoughtless, may say, 'do you attempt to write down the use of ardent drink? Notwithstanding all you have said, or may say, people will continue to drink as usual.' In the first place, I answer, _I am not sure of that_--and in the next place, _I am sure_, that if they will continue to use spirituous liquor as _a daily table drink_, and give and receive it as the _token_ of _friendship_ and _good will_, thereby associating the _vice_ of _drinking_ with the _virtue_ of _hospitality_--if they will _accustom their children to the use_ or _witness_ the use of ardent drink, and rear them in _idleness_ and _extravagance_, with the mistaken idea of thus making them _ladies_ and _gentlemen_--if they will continue to 'have wine in their (public) feasts,' and license taverns by thousands, and create a thousand temptations to frequent them--if they will persist in the practice of giving strong drink to the working class of society, and _thereby contribute to degrade their character, and bring useful industry_ into contempt--if they will continue to celebrate their anniversaries by a course of unrestrained intemperance--then, I again repeat, _I am sure_, that notwithstanding all their professions of patriotism, morality, philanthropy and religion, they cannot escape the imputation of loving ardent spirits more than the work of reformation: and moreover, cannot avert, and will merit all the ills which are flowing, and must continue to flow, from the demoralizing influence of intoxicating drink. Intemperance, the reigning sin of the nation, will go on 'increasing to increase,' till immorality, spreading far and wide, shall debase the people, corrupt their rulers, and destroy the liberties of our country. Then dark illimited despotism, with its genial concomitant, blind superstition, weak-minded bigotry, and black-hearted fanaticism; while forging the chains, preparing the wheel, and igniting the faggots of unholy and merciless persecution, will rear its head, and impiously exult in the downfall of the only government on earth, the existence of which, is not a reproach to the common sense of mankind." "_New York, January, 1819._" _A view of Botany Bay._ In the 63d number of the Edinburgh Review, for July last, we find an interesting account of the settlement called Botany Bay in New South Wales, discovered by the Dutch in 1616, and taken possession of by the British in 1770. On the close of the war by which the United States obtained their independence, the government of Great Britain, at a loss for a receptacle for convicts sentenced to banishment, at last selected this remote country, and made the first settlement there in 1778. This colony, now a very flourishing one, was thus planted with the rogues of England, Ireland and Scotland, sent thither, in exile, as a punishment for their crimes--transportation to that distant and savage land being more dreaded there, perhaps, than our penitentiary is here, from which escapes are made with so much facility--the _certainty_ of punishment deterring from the commission of crime more than its _severity_. The criminals landed in this southern clime, finding themselves placed in a new situation, where little could be got by theft, and having a better chance than in the mother country of earning a comfortable subsistence, often changed their habits, and became industrious, if not honest men. They are probably destined to be a great nation, having an abundant scope of territory, 2,700 miles in length, and 2,000 in breadth, (three-fourths the extent of Europe,) and will, at a future day, in imitation of America, cast off the shackles of colonial subjection, and assert the prerogative of self-government. The climate of Botany Bay is represented to be equal to any in Europe, but rather Asiatic than European--Favourable on the whole to health and longevity. December, January, and February, are the summer months of that country, and then the heat, which at noon is at 80 deg. is tempered by a strong sea-breeze. The winter months, June, July, and August, have very cold nights, and fire through the day is comfortable. The Reviewer humorously calls this colony "a land of convicts and kangaroos," and sportively observes, that, "in this remote part of the earth Nature (having made horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, and all regular and useful productions, for the rest of the world) seems determined to have a bit of play, and to amuse herself as she pleases. Accordingly, she makes cherries with the stone on the outside; and a monstrous animal, as tall as a granadier, with the head of a rabbit, a tail as big as a bed-post, hopping at the rate of five hops to a mile, with three or four young kangaroos looking out of its false uterus to see what is passing. Then comes a quadruped as big as a large cat, with the eyes, colour, and skin of a mole, and the bill and web-feet of a duck--'puzzling Dr. Shaw' and rendering the latter half of his life miserable, from his utter inability to determine whether it was a bird or a beast. Add to this a parrot, with the legs of a sea-gull; a skate with the head of a shark, and a bird of such monstrous dimensions that a side bone of it will dine three real carnivorous Englishmen; together with many other productions that agitate Sir Joseph, and fill him with mingled emotions of distress and delight." The colony has made the following progress: In 1778. 1817. Horned cattle 5 44,753 Horses 7 3,072 Sheep 29 170,920 Hogs 74 17,842 Land cultivated _none_ acres, 47,564 Inhabitants 1,000 20,379 Sydney, the principal town and seat of government, has a population of 7000 souls; it has a newspaper, a bank, and many public and private buildings, that would not disgrace the best parts of London--So says Mr. Wentworth, a native of Botany Bay, who has lately published a statistical, historical, and political description of the country. The attention paid to the education of the children, by their "larcenous forefathers," is worthy of commendation and of imitation in other parts of the world, where the morals of the parent stock are less depraved. "The town of Sydney contains 2 good public schools, for the education of 224 children of both sexes. There are establishments also for the diffusion of education in every populous district throughout the colony: the masters of these schools are allowed stipulated salaries from the Orphans' fund. Mr. Wentworth states, that one-eighth part of the whole revenue of the colony is appropriated to the purposes of education: this eighth he computes at 2500_l._ Independent of these institutions, there is an Auxiliary Bible Society, a Sunday School, and several good private schools. This is all as it should he: The education of the poor, important every where, is indispensable at Botany Bay. Nothing but the earliest attention to the habits of children can restrain the erratic finger from the contiguous scrip, to prevent the hereditary tendency of larcenous abstraction. The American arrangements respecting the education of the lower orders, is excellent. Their unsold lands are surveyed, and divided into districts. In the centre of every district, an ample and well selected lot is provided for the support of future schools. We wish this had been imitated in New Holland; for we are of opinion that the elevated nobleman, Lord Sidmouth, should intimate what is good and wise, even if the Americans are his teachers. Mr. Wentworth talks of 15,000 acres set apart for the support of the Female Orphan schools; which certainly does sound a little extravagant; but then 50 or 100 acres of this reserve are given as a portion to each female orphan; so that all this pious tract of ground will be soon married away. This donation of women, in a place where they are scarce, is amiable and foolish enough. There is a school also for the education and civilization of the natives, we hope not to the exclusion of the children of convicts, who have clearly a prior claim upon public charity." Great exertions have been made in public roads and bridges. Toll gates have been established on all the principal roads. The general average of unimproved land in the neighbourhood of the town is 5_l._ sterling per acre. The inhabitants of New South Wales have suffered greatly from the tyranny and caprice of the rulers placed over them by Britain. There is no sufficient check on the Governor of the colony--far from the parent country, there is no Council to restrain his excesses, nor any Colonial Legislature to assert the rights of the people. There is no trial by jury. The Governor imposes what taxes he pleases. [_Geo. Journal._ INTELLIGENCE. Died, at Windsor Castle, George William Frederic Guelph on the 29th of January. His Majesty George the Third, was born on the 24th of May, 1738, which since the alteration of the style, has become the 4th of June. At his death, therefore, he had reached the advanced age of eighty-one years seven months and twenty-six days. He was proclaimed king on the 25th of October, 1760.--On September 8th, 1761, he was married to her late majesty, and had issue seven sons and five daughters, of whom six of the former and four of the latter survive him. His royal highness the Prince of Wales was appointed Regent on the 6th of Feb. 1811, and from that time he has been virtual sovereign, acting in the name and on the behalf of his majesty. His majesty, from the appointment of the Regent, remained in retirement at Windsor Castle, under the guardianship of a council, who met every month, or more frequently as occasions might require, and issued a report of the state of his indisposition. After the death of his late majesty had been formally announced, the following instrument was prepared and signed. "Whereas, it hath pleased the Almighty God, to call to his mercy our late sovereign lord, king George the 3d. of blessed memory, by whose decease the imperial crown of the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, is solely and rightfully come to the high and mighty prince, George prince of Wales: We, therefore, the lords spiritual and temporal of this realm, being here assisted with those of his late majesty's privy council, with numbers of other principal gentlemen of quality, with the lord mayor, aldermen and citizens of London, do now hereby, with one voice and consent, of tongue and heart, publish and proclaim, that the high and mighty prince, George, prince of Wales, is now, by the death of the late sovereign, of happy memory, become our only lawful and rightful liege, lord George the 4th. by the grace of God, king of Great Britain and Ireland, defender of the faith, &c. to whom we do acknowledge all faith and constant obedience, with all hearty and humble affection; beseeching God, by whom kings and queens do reign, to bless the royal prince, George the 4th with long and happy years, to reign over us. Given at the court at Carlton-house, this 30th day of January, 1820. GOD SAVE THE KING." Then follows the signature of the Privy councillors, &c. present. The king's fourth son, Edward Guelph, duke of Kent, &c. died at Sidmouth, after a short but very severe illness on the 23d of January. He was born November 2, 1767. The interment of the king of England, took place on the 16th of February; and on the following day, both houses of parliament convened according to adjournment. A message from the new king was received and read, and _an address of condolence and congratulation_ was adopted in the house of lords. A new parliament is to be summoned; and great activity every where prevails in preparing for the approaching general election. _Ancient Custom._--On the day that the present King was to be proclaimed as George the Fourth, a procession was formed fronting the Palace of Carlton-house, and proceeded for the city, when, on the cavalcade arriving at Temple-bar they found the gates, according to ancient custom, closed. "The City Marshall was sent forward to the gate, intimation having been given to the lord Mayor that there was a loud knocking at the gate, and a demand of admittance from some persons outside. The Marshall went to the gate, and asked, 'Who knocks,' and was answered, 'The Herald King at Arms. I attend with a warrant to proclaim King George the Fourth. Open your gates.' The City Marshall answered, 'I shall inform the Lord Mayor that you are waiting at the gate.' The Marshall then rode back to the Lord Mayor, and having informed him that the Herald King at Arms was in waiting for admission, to proclaim George the Fourth, King of England, was directed by his Lordship to give the admission required, which was to be limited to the Herald King at Arms. The Marshall upon going to the gates, said to the officers, 'Open one side of the gates and admit the Herald King at Arms, and him alone.' The Herald then rode in, supported by his guards, and was accompanied by the City Marshall to the Lord Mayor. The Herald King at Arms presented the warrant.--The Lord Mayor immediately said, 'admit the whole procession into our city of London.'" Sir Isaac Heard, the Garter-King-at-Arms, is 90 years of age. George the 4th was proclaimed as King, at Liverpool, without parade, on the 31st of Jan. but was proclaimed there again on the 19th of Feb. with much pomp and ceremony.--There was a grand military and civil procession; and among the latter, all the mechanic professions, each with appropriate standards. The late King is said to have given between 60 and $70,000 a year in charities. _London_, Feb. 18. We have received this morning the Paris papers of Tuesday. They are, of course, painfully interesting, for they communicate a variety of facts connected with the assassination of his Royal Highness the Duke de Berri. Among the most important of these is the undeniable one, that the atrocious crime was committed from political motives. This alarming truth was distinctly admitted, not only by the Members of the two Chambers, who met to address his Majesty, upon the mournful occasion but it is recognized by the King himself, in the concluding sentence of his answer to the Address of the Deputies.--"The Chamber cannot doubt," said his Majesty, "that, feeling as a man, and acting as a king, I shall adopt every necessary measure to preserve the _State from dangers, of which I am but too forcibly forewarned by the crime of this day_." The assassin himself, indeed, according to the letter of our private correspondent, upon being interrogated, avowed that he had exterminated the Duke, as the youngest of the Royal Family, "knowing that nature would soon relieve him from the necessity of abridging the days of the King." The Duke of Berri was in his 42d year, and was, next to his aged father, Count d'Artois, heir to the throne. "The assassin is about 30 years of age; his name is Louvel. It appears he was one of those who went and returned with Bonaparte from Elba, and has since been employed, up to the very time of the fatal deed, in his Majesty's hunting establishment. A vessel has arrived at Portsmouth from St. Helena, which place she left on the 10th of December. Bonaparte, at that time, was well, and continued his out-door exercise, in the grounds attached to Longwood. "His new house was nearly ready for his reception, and it is in every respect a most spacious and commodious mansion; containing, with a ball room, 17 excellent rooms." MISCELLANY. From a late report of the Secretary of the Treasury it appears that the banking capital of the United States, including the United States' bank, and excluding all banks incorporated since 1817, amounts to $125,000,000. A curious circumstance occurred on Monday week at Market Levington, Wilts. A person named Jane Webb attended divine service attired precisely in the same suit of mourning for our late sovereign George III. as was worn by her for king George II. The singularity of its make, attracted much notice. This venerable and frugal spinster has attained her 76th year. An oil spring has been discovered in the county of Morgan, Ohio, which is stated to yield an inexhaustible quantity of this liquid. It sells for fifty cents a gallon. It is used for lamps, for currying leather, for mixing in medicines, &c. Whether it is calculated for mixing in paints had not been ascertained. _Worm in a Horse's eye._--Dr. William Scott, of Madras, has extracted a worm from the aqueous humour of a horse's eye to which he gave the name of _Accaris pellucidus_. The legislature of New Jersey has passed a law for incorporating a company for the purpose of embanking and draining the salt marsh on Barbadoes neck in that state. In the British Quarterly Review, mention is made of a British statute now in force, in which the punishment of a certain offence is _transportation_ for 14 years; and on conviction, one half thereof is to go to the _informer_, and the other half to the _king_! Did ever an Irish parliament make such a blunder as this? _Virginia_ is much engaged in laying out works of internal improvement; especially with a project of uniting the waters of James river with those of Kenawha. _The Bordeaux ship of discovery_, (says a New York paper) has arrived at Bordeaux, after an absence of three years and a half. This ship has traversed the Pacific Ocean, and collected at the Sandwich Islands, some interesting accounts of the fate of _La Peyrouse_ and his companions. A London paper states, that the account will soon be published. _Shawneetown, Illinois, Feb. 17._ _Arrival from New York!_--The Steam Boat Manhattan, from New York, arrived here this day, 30 days from New Orleans. She brings consignments for two houses in this place, from the city of New York. Freight three dollars only. _Imports at Liverpool from the United States._ _Flour, bbls._ _Rice, casks._ _Tobacco, hds._ _Cotton, bags._ 1817 540,000 195,000 7,361 314,330 1818 350,000 100,000 110,000 423,500 1819 43,000 78,000 8,790 366,000 The Maine and Missouri questions are at length settled. Both districts of country are admitted into the Union, as states; the former, from its population, requiring no restriction of slavery; and the latter admitted on the same terms--4 majority in the house of representatives in favour of the bill as it has passed. The bill, however, excludes slavery from all the territory North of 36-1/2 deg. of N. latitude, Missouri excepted. From a respectable correspondent in Pauling, Duchess county, we have the following singular case. Mr. Luther Brownwell of Beekman, in that county having, in the month of April 1815, a sow with a litter of five pigs, and she dying when they were only two days old, he appropriated the milk of one of his new milch cows for their support. The cow was milked four or five times a day for this purpose, and the pigs were learned to drink the milk. When pasturing time came, they were put in the field where the cow with nine others was kept. At the age of two months, the pigs had the sagacity to single out this cow from the rest, and when hungry would come round her, root at her legs, squeak, and exhibit the usual signs of their wants. The cow at length learned to lay down, and let them suck what they wanted. In this way they grew very rapidly until some time in September, when they were put up to fatten, and were killed the November following. Their average weight was _240lbs._ or _1200lbs._ of pork, which he sold for $8,50 a hundred. Aside from the singularity of this case, the inquiry naturally presents itself, could the milk of the cow have been put to a more profitable use? Is it not probable that her milk made an addition of at least _600lbs._ to the quantity of pork? [_Plough Boy._ An apprentices' library is about to be established in New York, on the same plan as the one in this city and in Boston. The library in Boston consists of about 1000 volumes, principally of books on the mechanic arts, of history, travels, and other useful knowledge, and on moral and religious subjects. _Steam Boats._--Among many interesting articles in the second number of the German Correspondent, published in New York, we find the following: "The steam boat Blucher was lately launched at Potsdam. Several members of the royal family were present, and Prince Albseeth conferred the name. This is probably the largest steam boat in Europe, the whole length being 200 feet. It draws but 20-1/2 inches of water. The boat contains _two_ engines, which perform exceedingly well. The utmost precaution is used against accidents by fire. As this vessel will carry merchandize of great value, and in large quantities, the hold has been divided into nine compartments by water proof partitions, so that, in case it should spring a leak, there is every probability that the vessel would not fill--besides, by means of tubes there is a communication between these chambers and the locations of the engines, which are so arranged as to pump any quantity of water out of the divisions where the leak may exist. This improvement appears to be well calculated for the steam boats on the Mississippi." _Sagacity of a bear._--A bear which had stolen a sheep, being closely persued by several dogs, promptly resorted to a most ingenious expedient. He tore the sheep in pieces, and threw the dogs one of the hinder legs; and while they were partaking of this repast, had full time to escape. This fact is formally certified, by a game-keeper in Transylvania, where there are a great many bears. The most remarkable circumstance was, that from that time the dogs would never attack any of these animals, but on the contrary, received them in the most friendly manner, as if they expected a dinner. The owner of the flock was obliged to have the dogs shot, that he might not have those hungry guests always about him. [_German Paper._ PHENOMENON. _To the Editor of the Literary Gazette._ SIR, I lately read an account of the figure, which, under some peculiar state of the atmosphere, appears on the Hartz mountain, in Germany. It reminds me of an extraordinary illusion to which I was once exposed; if it have interest enough for publication, it is at your service. About seven years since, I was one evening, in the month of October, returning late from a friend's house in the country, where I had dined, to the neighbouring town, about a mile distant: the night was exceedingly dark, and I had been requested to take with me a lantern; a pocket one could not be found, and I was provided with that which the servants generally carried swung in the hand. I had to pass through some fields over high ground: soon after I had entered the second of these, I observed something large moving along with me. I placed the lantern on the ground, and walking toward it, saw a gigantic figure retiring with astonishing speed. I immediately perceived it was my own shadow on a fog, which I had not before observed. The appearance of retiring was phantasmagoric, and arose from my interruption of the rays of light from the lantern, at a lesser angle, as my distance from the light increased. My return to the light was terrific; the figure appeared to advance upon me with frightful rapidity, till it seemed forty feet high. If I had been ignorant of the cause of this appearance, the effects might have much alarmed me, and led to my telling such stories as I should not have gained credit by relating: but aware of the cause, I was delighted with the singularity of my situation; and might have been thought mad by an observer, for every fantastic attitude and action I could assume I did, to be mimicked by my new and shadowy acquaintance. I am, sir, your obedient servant, W. _English vegetables._--In the former part of the reign of king Henry VIII. there did not grow in England a cabbage, carrot, turnip, or other edible root--and even Queen Catherine could not command a sallad for dinner, till the king brought over a gardener from the Netherlands.--The artichoke, apricot, and damask rose, then made their first appearance in England. _Coaches._--Coaches were introduced in 1585; before which time, Queen Elizabeth rode, on public occasions, behind her Lord Chamberlain. _Ladies' Charity._--In the letters of Madame D. upon England, which have just been published, we find the following passage, which shows how little a woman used to the coteries of Paris can appreciate the purest of our Christian charities.--"The most elegant women in London have a certain day, upon which they go to a large room surrounded with counters, at the end of Argyle Street; they go in person, to sell, for the profit of the poor, the trifles, which they amuse themselves in making during the course of the year. You may imagine that a young gentleman who pays his court to a young lady, is not permitted to hesitate at the price of the work of her fair hands. In fact, I saw several who were really foolishly extravagant, and the bank-notes were showered down on the counters of these ladies. "I observed in this assembly the prettiest young women I ever saw in my life; all the men loiter delighted before her counter, and it was she whose stock was the soonest disposed of. The last man who stopped at it took a handful of bank-notes, and exchanged them for a watch-ribbon. I departed, enchanted with this scene." _Chimnies._--In the age next preceding Queen Elizabeth, there were few chimnies, even in capital towns: the fire was laid to the wall, and the smoke issued at the roof, or door, or window. The houses were wattled, and plastered over with clay; and all the furniture and utensils were of wood. The people slept on straw pallets, with a log of wood for a pillow. "_The wisdom of Catwg_--The seven questions proposed by Catwg the wise to seven wise men in his college at Llanfeithin, with their answers. "1. What constitutes supreme goodness in a man? Equity. "2 What shews transcendent wisdom in a man? To refrain from injuring another when he has the ability. "3. What is the most headstrong vice in a man? Incontinence. "4. Who is the poorest man? He who has not resolution to take of his own. "5. Who is the richest man? He who coveteth nothing belonging to another. "6. What is the fairest quality in a man? Sincerity. "7. What is the greatest folly in a man? The wish to injure another without having the power to effect it." _Antediluvian oak._--In digging the capacious drain in Bilsby parish, connected with the new work of sewers near Alford, at the depth of thirty feet some oak trees have been found, which are at this time the subject of examination by the curious. They are as black as ebony, but the heart is firm wood, notwithstanding the trees are believed to have been deposited for several thousand years. The conjecture formed by those best qualified for considering the subject of similar discoveries in other situations is, that they existed before Noah's flood. _Nugæ Antiquæ._--From a household book of the Earl of Northumberland in the reign of Henry VIII. it appears, that his family, during winter, fed mostly on salt fish and salt meat, and with that view there was an appointment of 160 gallons of mustard. The Earl had two cooks, and more than 200 domestics. Holinshed says, that merchants, when they gave a feast, rejected butchers' meat as unworthy of their table: having jellies of all colours, and in all figures, representing flowers, trees, beasts, fish, fowl and fruit. The streets of Paris, not being paved, was covered with mud; and yet for a woman to travel those streets in a cart was held an article of luxury, and prohibited by Philip the Fair. An old tenure in England binds the vassal to find straw for the King's bed, and hay for his horse. It was a luxurious change of wood platters for pewter plates, and from wooden spoons to those of tin. Holinshed says, "when our houses were built of willow, then had we oaken men? but now that our houses are made of oak, our men are not only become willow but, many, through Persian delicacy, crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration." _Reproof._--A person was remonstrating with a friend, inclined too much to dandyism, on the absurdity of following such foppish fashions. "They are really contemptible, (said he,) and I am sure all who see you must think you ridiculous." "I don't value the opinion of the world, (answered he,) I laugh at all those who think me ridiculous." "Then you can never give over laughing," drily observed his mentor. _Anecdote._--When the English Court interfered in favour of the protestant subjects of Louis XIV. and requested his majesty to release some who had been sent to the gallies, the king asked angrily, "What would the king of Great Britain say were I to demand the prisoners of Newgate from him?" Sir, (replied the ambassador,) my master would give every one of them up to your majesty, if, as we do, _you reclaim them as brothers_. If you think this little anecdote worth a place in the _Rural Magazine_, you may be assured of its authenticity. A. B. "A guilty conscience needs no accuser." A singular instance of the truth of this saying occurred a few days ago, in Market Street. A sharper, under pretence of buying some small article in a store, managed to take from a countryman present, his pocket book, and having secured, as he supposed, his booty, paid his little bill and retired. The honest storekeeper discovering he had given him too little change, immediately went to the door and called him to stop. The fellow supposing himself detected, took, to his heels. The croud in the street observing the circumstances cried stop thief! stop thief! He was soon overtaken and brought back, when the pocket book, which had not been missed by the owner, was found on him, and he taken before the proper authority. Communicated for the Rural Magazine. _A Newly discovered, cheap and durable Paint._ I send you for publication in the Rural Magazine, a receipt for a newly discovered paint, it is cheap and will no doubt be useful to some of your readers. D. To a common 3 gallon pail of whitewash, add 1 pint of cheap molasses and 1 pint of white table salt. The best store lime should be selected and boiling water used in slaking it. It should be frequently stirred as you put it on. Two thin coats will be sufficient to cover the weatherboards of out-buildings. It will not wash or scale off like common whitewash and is beautifully white. For other colours mix ochres of various kinds. _Air Jacket._--Mr. Charles Kendal lately made an experiment on the Thames, of the efficacy of his jacket, or Life-preserver, which completely succeeded. He went from the southwark Bridge through London Bridge with great ease and on to the London Docks in 20 minutes, walking upright in the water accompanied by his man all the way. _A new and cheap conductor of lightning and fluid._--Mr. Capostolle, Professor of Chemistry in the departments of the Somme, affirms that a rope of straw supplies the place of the expensive metal conductors. The experiments, which he has made in the presence of many learned men and which have been repeated by them, confirms as he says that the lightning enters a rope of straw placed in its way and passes through it into the ground so gently that the hand of a person holding the rope at the time does not perceive it. Mr. Capostolle brings the following proof of this assertion. It is well known says he that a severe shock is received by a person who immediately touches the Leyden vial. But if a person takes a rope of straw, only seven or eight inches long, in his hand, and touches, with the end of this rope a Leyden vial, so strongly charged that an ox might be killed by it, he will neither see a spark, or feel the slightest shock. According to Mr. Capostolle's opinion, such conductor made of straw, which would not cost alone three francs, would be able to protect an extent of sixty acres of ground from hail; and if the houses and fields were protected in this manner, neither hail nor lightning could do any damage to them. _Economy of Nature._--In the sunshine vegetables decompose the _carbonic acid gas_ of the atmosphere, the _carbon_ of which is absorbed, and becomes a part of their organized matter, but the _oxygen gas_, the other constituent is given off; thus the economy of vegetation is made subservient to the general order of the system of nature. Again, _Carbonic acid gas_ is formed in the respiration of animals, and as yet no process is known in nature by which it can be consumed, except vegetation. Animals thus produce a substance which appears to be a necessary food for vegetables;--vegetables evolve a principle necessary to the existence of animals: the two kingdoms seem to be thus connected together in the exercise of their functions, and, to a certain extent, made to depend upon each other for their existence. _Legible Writing._--The Grand Duke of Baden has issued an ordinance, enjoining all public functionaries in his dominions, who sign their names in an illegible manner, through _affectation_, to write them in future so that they can be read, under the pain of having any document illegibly signed, thrown back on their hands. While Mr. Samuel Chandler was boring for salt near Zanesville, Ohio, he found a metallic substance six feet three inches thick, which being analysed, was found to be silver, nearly as pure as the common coin. This singular account is attested in the National Intelligencer by a member of Congress. _Square Mile._--It may be thought wonderful that the whole population of this country could stand on considerably less than a square mile. Allowing six men to a square yard, the mile would accommodate _eighteen millions five hundred and eighty five thousand six hundred men!_ _Latitude of Trees in Sweden._--From the researches made in Sweden on the different kinds of wood indigenous to the country, it has been ascertained that the birch reaches the farthest north, growing beyond the 70th degree; the pine reaches to the 69th; the fir tree to the 68th; the ozier, willow, aspen and quince, to the 66th; the cherry and apple tree to the 63d; the oak to the 60th; and the beech to the 57th; while the lime tree, ash, elm, poplar and walnut, are only to be found in Scavia. [_Lond. Journ. of Science._ _Singular Anecdote of the Spider, by Capt. Bagnold._--Desirous of ascertaining the natural food of the scorpion, I enclosed one (which measured three fourths of an inch from the head to the insertion of the tail) in a wide mouthed phial, together with one of those large spiders so common in the West Indies, and closed it with a cork, perforated by a quill, for the admission of air: the insects seemed carefully to avoid each other, retiring to opposite ends of the bottle, which was placed horizontally. By giving it a gradual inclination, the scorpion was forced into contact with the spider, when a sharp encounter took place, the latter receiving repeated stings from his venomous adversary, apparently without the least injury, and with his web, soon lashed the scorpion's tail to his back, subsequently securing his legs and claws with the materials. In this state I left them some time, in order to observe what effect would be produced on the spider by the wounds he had received. On my return, however, I was disappointed, the ants having entered and destroyed them both. [_Ibid._ _Spontaneous Combustion._--_From the Baltimore Morning Chronicle._--At my mills there was an iron kettle used for holding ashes--it had remained with ashes in from the 5th to the 9th month at which time flaxseed oil was by accident spilled into the ashes; in about 24 hours the ashes were found to be on fire, and wishing to have it fully ascertained, whether it was the oil which occasioned the ashes to take fire, I filled a kettle with cold dry ashes, in which I poured a pint of flaxseed oil, and in 24 hours I examined it, and found that, as far as the oil had penetrated the ashes were in a state of combustion, and, applying some shavings and chips of wood, it immediately caused them to blaze. From an apprehension that many buildings have been consumed by fires from the foregoing cause, I have been induced to give publicity to the fact. JOSEPH ATKINSON. _Ellicot Patapsco Mills_, } _1 mo. 22d. 1820._ } _Spontaneous Combustion._--SIR I observe, in your paper of yesterday that your correspondent _Davyana_ has made an _unsuccessful_ experiment, to verify the account given by Mr. Atkinson of a _Spontaneous Combustion_, produced some time ago, at his mills near Baltimore, by the accidental mixture of linseed oil and wood ashes. An experiment has also been made, with a similar view, at the _Mint_ of the United States. The ashes employed were chiefly from hickery wood, well sifted, and cold; and the quantity of linseed oil, one pint. No change of temperature was perceived, till about 46 hours after the oil had been poured on the ashes, when the mixture was fairly ignited, and in a short time emitted flame, which continued upwards of an hour. After the flame had ceased, the ignition continued for about 18 hours, and the ashes were then poured out of the vessel. R. P. [_Poulson's Am. Daily Adv._ _Gas lights._--The number of gas lights already in use in the metropolis of London amounts to upwards of 51,000. The total length of mains in the streets through which the gas is conveyed from the gas light manufactories into the houses now measure 288 miles. _Seed Potatoes._--It has been recently ascertained from the most decisive experiments, that late potatoes, or such as are not ripe, were the best seed, and that planting such restores a degenerated variety to its original qualities. The discoverer of this fact recommends the planting of seed from cold and late situations, and to plant so late as June and July, taking up those unripe, and preserving them as seed for the following year. [_Vermont Intelligencer._. _London._--The consumption of sheep and lambs in London, during the last twelve months, amounted in number to one million, sixty-two thousand, seven hundred. The number of horned cattle slaughtered, was one hundred and sixty-four thousand--and by the inspector's return, it appears, that the number of horse hides produced at Leadenhall market, amounted to twelve thousand nine hundred. BORING _legalized_.--Last week we mentioned that a silver mine was said to have been discovered near Zanesville, in Ohio. By the last Columbus papers we are informed that the bill incorporating the "Muskingum Silver Mining Company" has passed the legislature. It is said that the rock about twenty feet below the surface of the earth, extends under nearly the whole territory of Ohio; that the silver was found after penetrating the rock about 100 feet; and that, therefore, there is an even chance that this stratum of silver, near 7 feet in thickness, is as extensive as the state. Verily, should this prove to be the case, what an alteration would it make in our affairs! Neighbouring states would supply Ohio with corn and whiskey--her keen speculators would become lazy nabobs--Yankee pedlars might venture to drive their trade there, without danger of being _bitten_--her rag banks, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, would prove to have had at all times, a _specie foundation_: and Owl Creek and Cincinnati bank notes command a premium over eastern funds. Capt. SYMMES has long expressed great anxiety _to get into the earth_, and, as it is a long journey to the north pole, (where there is certainly a hole big enough for Capt. Symmes to get in) and the Captain says he cannot undertake the journey for the want of "disposable means,"--now, therefore, this may be entirely a manoevre of the captain's, or of his friends, to get a cheap passage into the earth, whereby he may embark near home, and without expense in the outfit. At any rate, we hope the company will persevere in _boring_--it is a good subject--for should they either find silver or provide a passage for Capt. Symmes, they will silence the hungry complaints of many speculators--both in real estate and in the learned and fashionable _ologies_ of the day. [_Detroit Gazette._ STATE OF MISSOURI. _Boundaries._--Beginning in the middle of the Mississippi river, on the parallel of 36° N. lat.--thence west to the St. Francois river--thence up the middle of the St. Francois, to 36° 30' N. lat.--thence west till it intersects a meridian line, passing through the middle of the mouth of the Kansas river, where it empties into the Missouri--thence, from said point of intersection, due north to the intersection of the parallel of latitude which passes through the Rapids of the river Des Moines, (making this line correspond with the Indian boundary)--thence east from the point of intersection last mentioned, to the middle of the main fork of the Des Moines--thence down the middle of that river to the Mississippi--thence, down the middle of the Mississippi to the beginning. By the 8th section of the law authorising the people of Missouri to form a state government, slavery is for ever prohibited in all the territories of the United States, west of the Mississippi, north of 36° 30' except so much as is included in Missouri. The Convention to form the constitution is to consist of 40 representatives, from the respective counties, as follows: Howard 5, Cooper 3, Montgomery 2, Pike 1, Lincoln 1, St. Charles 3, Franklin 1, St. Louis 8, Jefferson 1, Washington 3, St. Genevieve 4, Madison 1, Cape Girardeau 5, New Madrid 2, Wayne and Lawrence 1. _Red Snow._--Mr. Francis Bauer from a number of accurate observations, with microscopes of great power on the Red Snow, in a melted state, from Baffin's Bay pronounces the colouring matter to be a new species of uredo (a minute fungus) to which he proposes to give the name nivalis. _Lapland._--The greatest water-fall in Europe has been recently discovered in Lapland. It is on the river Latting; it is half a mile broad, and falls in a perpendicular descent of _four hundred feet_. _Portugal._--The weather has been so severe at Lisbon, that in one night, thirty-five fishermen and three sentinels were frozen to death. The ice formed three inches thick in one night, a circumstance unprecedented at that place. _Russia._--It has been so cold in Russia, the past season, that all the public places of amusement had been closed. The thermometer at St. Petersburg, stood at 35-1/2 below Zero. The frost has been severe in France and England. At Paris on the 11th, the thermometer of the engineer Chevalier, stood at 11 below 0. The Seine was frozen over. Petitions are getting up in Ireland, in favour of a dissolution of the union with Great Britain! It had been colder in the month of January in England, than was ever known before in that country. In the city of London the thermometer stood twenty-three degrees below the freezing point. At Islington, the silver in the barometer on the 14th, was down into the bowl. Upwards of 2,200,000 eggs were imported into England from France the last three months. _Extraordinary produce of a potato._--A single potato was cut into eyes, and planted in the garden of C. Moore, esq. at Woodbridge, Suffolk; and the produce was the surprising quantity of a bushel skep without being heaped, and it weighed _64lbs._--The potatoes are remarkably fine and clean. BROWNSVILLE, (PENN.) MARCH 13. _Accident._--On Thursday last, the chain bridge over Dunlap's creek, between Brownsville and Bridgeport broke down with a wagon and six horses upon it. The wagon fell on the bank, this side of the stream, the horses in the water. The driver, who was on the saddle horse, was pitched between the two middle horses, where he was held entangled in the gears, until relieved by the citizens. He received no material injury, but two of the horses were killed. The team, we understand, was the property of a person named Hackney, near Winchester, (Va.) The distance from the floor of this bridge to the surface of the water, must have been at least 30 feet. _Leeches._--The Montrose (English) Review of January 1st, states that a gentleman examining two bottles containing 3 leeches each, found the water a complete mass of ice, with the leeches frozen. He dissolved the ice gradually before the fire, when he found the whole 6 alive, and very animated. _Annual consumption of the necessaries of life in London._ Consumption of bullocks, 110,000 Sheep and lambs, 976,000 Calves, 250,000 Hogs, 210,000 Sucking pigs, 60,000 Gallons of milk--the produce of 8900 cows, 908,000 Quarters of wheat, 900,000 Chaldrons of coal, 800,000 Barrels (36 galls.) of ale and porter 1,775,500 Gallons of spirituous liquors, 11,146,783 Pipes of wines, 65,000 Pounds of butter, 27,600,000 Cheese, 25,000,000 Acres of land cultivated in the vicinity of London for vegetables, 10,000 Ditto for fruit, 4,000 The sum paid annually for vegetables amounts to, _l._645,000 Abstract of the exports of cotton and tobacco from New Orleans from the 1st of October, 1818, until the 31st of the same month, 1819. _Cotton._ England 48,840 bales. France 29,989 Holland 1,998 Coastwise 15,710 ______ Total 95,537 bales. _Tobacco._ England 10,122 hhds. France 4,865 Holland and Germany, 7,632 Coastwise 13,048 ______ Total 85,667 hhds. _Fall of rain._--An account of the water that fell in rain and snow, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from 1812 to 1819, inclusive, and the number of days, in each year, in which there was falling weather. 1819. _Years._ _Inches._ _Days._ _Months._ _Inches._ _Days._ 1812, 33-4/8 69 January, 1/8 1 1813, 40-1/8 75 Feb'ry, 2-5/8 6 1814, 52-2/8 74 March, 2-6/8 8 1815, 37-7/8 57 April, 2-1/8 5 1816, 30-7/8 70 May, 3-1/8 8 1817, 40-6/8 77 June, 1 4 1818, 36-4/8 68 July, 4-3/8 9 August, 8-3/8 11 Sept. 1-4/8 4 October, 1 2 Nov. 1-2/8 3 Dec. 2-2/8 5 ______ __ 31-4/8 66 _London Breweries._--The Breweries of London, (says a late traveller over the British Island,) "may justly be ranked amongst its greatest curiosities, and the establishment of Messrs. Barclay &. Co. is one of the most considerable. A steam engine, of the power of 30 horses, does the greatest part of the work; for although there are nearly two hundred men employed, and a great number of horses, these are mostly for the out-door work; the interior appears quite solitary. Large rakes with chains moved by an invisible power, stir to the very bottom the immense mass of malt in boilers 12 feet deep; elevators which nobody touches, carry up to the summit of the building 2500 bushels of malt a day, thence distributed through wooden channels to the different places where the process is carried on.--Casks of truly gigantic sizes are ready to receive the liquors. One of them contains 3000 barrels. Now, at 8 barrels to a ton, this is equal to a ship of 375 tons. By the side of this are other enormous vessels, the smallest of which, containing about 800 barrels, are worth when full 3000 pounds sterling each. All this immense apparatus is so arranged that every part is accessible, and the whole is contained under one roof. The stock of liquor is estimated at 300,000 pounds; the barrels alone in which it is carried about to customers cost 80,000 pounds; and the whole capital is not less than half a million sterling; 250,000 barrels of beer are sold annually, which would load a fleet of 150 merchantmen, of the burden of 200 tons each. The building is incombustible--walls of brick, and floors of iron. _Africa._--Several attempts are now making to explore the interior of this country, and a scheme for opening a grand commercial intercourse with Tumbuctoo and Sudan, has been planned, which promises success through the protection of the emperor of Morocco. _London Nov. 30._--We learn by a letter from the celebrated Italian traveller, _M. Belzoni_, that he has recently performed a journey into the deserts of Lybia, to examine there the environs and ruins of the temple Jupiter Ammon. This journey lasted 50 days, during which time he saw different ruins, several temples and other remarkable objects. After having traversed the desert, he arrived at the place where the temple is supposed to have existed. The country was fertile, and he found some villages, but the inhabitants of the country, where, perhaps, for several centuries a European had not been seen, were very savage, and would not suffer him to pass, because they imagined that he was looking for treasures in their country. The ruins of the temple he discovered had been employed in the construction of another temple, which is already in part destroyed, and in forming the foundation of the cabins of a village. The most remarkable thing, however, discovered by _M. Belzoni_ in those environs is a spring of living water, of which _Herodotus_ makes mention, warm in the morning and evening, cold at noon, and boiling hot at midnight. _M. Belzoni_ has brought away some of this water for the purpose of analysing it. _A Hint to Smokers._--The city of New York, is said to contain 130,000 inhabitants. Let 50,000 of them smoke only three Spanish segars a day, and it will amount in the year to the enormous sum of $1,095,000; a sum sufficient to pay the salary of the President and Vice-President of the United States, the Secretaries of State, of the Treasury, of war, and of the Navy, and of the Attorney, General, for 20 years, 10 months, and 8 days. [_N. Y. Gazette._ _Extraordinary Longevity._--Dr. KNOTT MARTIN, of Marblehead, who died at the age of 88, left seven children by his first wife, who are now living, at the following ages, viz:-- Thomas, aged 88--Knott, aged 87--Eleanor, aged 80--Hannah, aged 77--Richard, aged 73--Arnold, aged 71--and Mary, aged 69. The aggregate of the seven being 554, and the average 78 years. Also, by his second wife, Betsey, aged 53, and Bartholomew, aged 51. He had three other children, one of whom died in infancy, and the other two at an advanced age. Eight of the nine now living reside at Marblehead, the other at Beverly, and all of them have a numerous posterity. [_Salem Register._ _An effectual Method of Preserving Poultry houses free from Vermin._ Sir--As I do not know that you have positively interdicted all communications from farmer-_esses_, I must ask you to record a grand discovery, which I consider myself to have made, in the noble art of--_raising poultry_. It may save much trouble to my sister housewives, to whom, according to the order prescribed by the _lords of the creation_, this department of domestic economy has been assigned. It is well known, that in this branch of our humble duties, the greatest difficulty arises from our poultry houses being so much infested with _vermin_; or, to be more plain, in the slang of the poultry yard, with _chicken lice_. Now, I have proved, by long experience, that they will not resort to houses wherein the roots, nest boxes, &c. &c. are made of _sassafras wood_. You may smile, and ask me, the _reason of it_: I am no philosopher, but I tell you, _sassafras wood_ will keep lice out of hen houses: I know it to be a fact, and when you will tell me _why it is_ that chips of cedar wood or tobacco will keep woollen free from _moth_, then I will endeavour to tell you _why_ it is, that sassafras wood will keep away chicken lice--one is universally known to be true, the other no less true, though less known. A SPINSTER. [_Am. Farmer._ The London Globe, of Jan. 29, says--"We understand that the lords of the treasury have given directions to allow mechanics, artificers, &c. to emigrate from Great Britain to any country and in any ship. At Brighton, the wildest of the feathered tribe have been so punished with the frost, that they have left the woods, for warmer shelter in the habitations of men. Black birds, starlings, larks and thrushes have been pursued by boys, at mid-day, and easily taken by the hand. MARRIED. On the 6th of March, RUBENS PEALE, of Philadelphia, to ELIZA PATTERSON, of Chesnut-Hill. At Washington City, SAMUEL LAWRENCE GOUVERNEUR, Esq. of New York, to MARIA HESTER MUNROE, youngest daughter of JAMES MUNROE, President of the United States. On the 2d ult. at the Friends' Meeting House, Alexandria, D. C. J. ELLICOTT CAREY, of Baltimore, to ANN H. IRWIN, daughter of Thomas Irwin, Esq. THOMAS H. B. JACOBS, to JANE BOWEN, both of Chester County, Pennsylvania. DAVID STUCKERT, of Germantown, to MARGARET TAYLOR, of this city. In December last, at New-Castle, (England) Mr. SILVERTOP to Mrs. PEARSON. This lady has been married three times. Her first husband was a Quaker, the second a Roman Catholic, and the third is of the established church. Every husband was twice her own age; at 16 she married a man of 32, at 30 she took one of 60, and now at 42, she is united to a man of 84. In England, on the 16th of Jan. last, WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, Esq. eldest son of the honourable and philanthropic William Wilberforce, M.P. to Miss MARY OWEN, second daughter of John Owen, A. M. Rector of Pagelsham. DIED. On Monday afternoon, the 13th of March, after a lingering and painful illness, Mrs. MARGARET WEBB, being in her ninetieth year. On Monday night, between 6 and 7 o'clock, after a confinement of two months, WILLIAM WAYNE, sen. in the ninetieth year of his age. In England, 22d Nov. aged 95, JOHN SPOONER, who had been for more than thirty years successively the stranger's attendant at Brimham Rocks, in the county of York. At Perth, Scotland, 1st Feb. widow M'LEAN, aged 102 years. Although infirm, she had the complete enjoyment of sight, and never required the use of spectacles. At Inverfolla, Scotland, 5th of November, DONALD M'INTYRE, aged 101. He was the last of the followers of Prince Charles, in that district to whose interests he was ardently devoted, so much so, that amidst the infirmities of old age he seemed "strong with the vigour of youth" at the mention of his favourite's name, and the remembrance of his misfortunes. In Curracoa, A. D. M. SENIOR, aged 85, the oldest member of the Hebrew community, and one of the oldest inhabitants of the island. At New Orleans, 4th of Feb. Don FELIPE FATIO, Consul of Spain, formerly secretary of the Spanish legation at Washington. Near New Orleans, Mr. ETIENNE BORRIE, the first person that succeeded in cultivating the sugar cane on the Mississippi. In the city of Trenton, (N. J.) on the 8th of March, SAMUEL LEAKE, Esq. in the 73d year of his age, formerly one of the most distinguished advocates at the New Jersey Bar. In Vincent township, Chester County, on the 3d of March Mr. JAMES EVANS, in the 94th year of his age. At Boston, on Tuesday, the 22d of Feb. the Rev. JAMES M. WINCHELL, Pastor of the first Baptist Church of that city. In January, at Grant's Braes, near Haddington, the venerable mother of the Scottish Bard, ROBERT BURNS, in her 88th year. In Hesse, Hamburg, FREDERICK LOUIS WILLIAM CHRISTIAN, Landgrave of Hesse Hamburg, aged 72, leaving a very numerous offspring, one of whom is married to Princess Elizabeth, of England. In Hesse, WILHELMINA CAROLINE, wife of the Elector of Hesse Cassel, aged 73. She was a daughter of Frederick V. king of Denmark. In Germany, Count Stolberg, a celebrated German Poet. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. Whether the result of education and early associations, or derived immediately from Nature herself, there is excited in every bosom possessed of sensibility, a sensation of awe and veneration, when approaching the mansions of the dead. Here the storm of passion subsides into peace; and even savage ferocity, when contemplating the house appointed for all living, is moulded into mildness and mercy. Who does not delight to behold the verdant hillock, which designates the spot, where the remains of a dear friend or relative are deposited, decorated with vernal beauty, and alike protected from the withering inroads of neglect, and the rude approach of violence? There is a chord in every feeling heart, which vibrates in unison with the magic touch of memory when delineating in vivid colours, some departed object of our love and affection. The GRAVE-YARD furnishes a scene, in which memory is necessarily a prominent actor. THE GRAVES OF MY FATHERS. Evergreen be the spot where in silence reposing, The bones of my fathers so tranquilly sleep, Let no hostile foot-step with rudeness imposing, Disturb the fond vigils affection shall keep. Leave to monarchs their pageants of pomp and of glory, To heroes their laurels all dripping with tears, Give to Jackson his fame in the pages of story, Where the wrong of the Indian abhorrent appears; Let the relics of princes whose names are enshrouded, In the gloom and the darkness of Egypt's long night, Be distinguish'd by tombs on whose summits beclouded, The eagle seeks rest in her towering flight: But spare, oh but spare me, that hallow'd enclosure, Which spring will soon visit with aspect serene, Where the earliest sunbeam to April's exposure, Shall bespangle with flow'rets her favourite scene. While the songsters of nature with voices in chorus, Attuned to those feelings which nature inspires, And that moss-cover'd temple arising before us, Will quell all those rebels--our vicious desires: Where the pure gospel fount so transparent in beauty, Oft in silence refreshes with gladness the soul, Which in humble devotion to heaven and duty, Seeks through faith and repentance a glorious goal. Evergreen be the spot where in silence reposing, The bones of my fathers so tranquilly sleep, Every tye of affection their virtues disclosing, While the dew drops of eve shall in sympathy weep. E. AULD AGE Is that Auld Age that's tirling at the pin? I trow it is, then haste to let him in: Ye're kindly welcome, friend; na dinna fear To shaw yoursel', ye'll cause na trouble here. I ken there are wha tremble at your name, As tho' ye brought wi' ye reproach or shame; And wha, "a thousond lies wad bear the sin," Rather than own ye for their kith or kin; But far frae shirking ye as a disgrace, Thankfu' I am t' have lived to see thy face; Nor s'all I ere disown ye, nor tak pride, To think how long I might your visit bide, Doing my best to mak ye well respecked, I'll no fear for your sake to be neglecked; But now ye're come, and through a' kind of weather We're doomed frae this time forth to jog the-gither, I'd fain mak compact wi' ye firm and strang, On terms of fair giff gaff to haud out lang; Gin thou'lt be civil, I s'all lib'ral be, Witness the lang lang list o' what I'll gie; First, then, I here mak owre for gude and ay, A' youthfu' fancies, whether bright or gay, Beauties and graces, too, I wad resign them, But sair I fear 'twad cost ye fash to find them; For 'gainst your dady, Time, they cou'd na stand, Nor bear the grip o' his unsonsy hand; But there's my skin, whilk ye may further crunkle, And write your name at length in ilka wrunkle. On my brown locks ye're leave to lay your paw And bleach them to your fancy white as snaw. But look na, age, sae wistfu' at my mouth, As gin ye lang'd to pu' out ilka tooth! Let them, I do beseech, still keep their places, Though, gin ye wish't ye're free to paint their faces. My limbs I yield ye; and if ye see meet, To clap your icy shackles on my feet, Ise no refuse; but if ye drive out gout, Will bless you for't, and offer thanks devout. Sae muckle was I gi' wi' right good will, But och! I fear that maer ye look for still, I ken by that fell glow'r and meaning shrug, Ye't slap your skinny fingers on each lug; And unca fain ye are I trow, and keen, To cast your misty powders in my een; But O in mercy, spare my poor wee twinkers, And I for ay s'all wear your chrystal blinkers! Then 'bout my lugs I'd fain a bargain mak, And gi' my hand, that I shall ne'er draw back. Well then, wad ye consent their use to share, Twad serve us baith, and be a bargain rare-- Thus I wad ha't when babbling fools intrude, Gabbling their noisy nonsense, lang and loud; Or when ill-nature well brush'd up by wit, Wi' sneer sarcastic takes its aim to hit; Or when detraction, meanest slave o' pride, Spies out wee fau'ts and seeks great worth to hide; Then mak me deaf as deaf as deaf can be; At a' sic times my lugs I lend to thee. But when in social hour ye see combin'd Genius and Wisdom--fruits of heart and mind, Good sense, good humour, wit in playfu' mood, And candour e'en frae ill extracting good; Oh, then, auld friend, I maun ha' back myhearing, To want it then wad be an ill past bearing. Better to lonely sit i' the douf spence Than catch the sough o' words without the sense.-- Ye winna promise? Och ye're unco dour, Sae ill to manage, and sae cauld and sour. Nae matter, hale and sound I'll keep my heart, Nor frae a crum o't s'all I ever part: It's kindly warmth will ne'er be chilled by a' The cauldest breath your frozen lips can blaw. Ye need na' fash your thumb, auld carle, nor fret, For there affection shall preserve its seat; And though to tak my hearing ye rejoice, Yet spite o' you I'll still hear Friendship's voice. Thus, though, ye tak the rest, it shan'na grieve me, For ae blythe spunk o' spirits ye maun leave me; And let me tell you in your lug Auld Age, I'm bound to travel wi' ye but ae stage: Be't long or short, ye canna keep me back; And, when we reach the end o't, ye maun pack. For there we part for ever; late or air. Another guess companion meets me there: To whom ye--nill ye will ye, maun me bring; Nor think that I'll be wae or laith to spring Fra your poor dosen'd side, ye carle uncouth, To the blest arms of everlasting youth. By him, whate'er ye ye've rifl'd sto'wn, or ta'en, Will a' be gi'en wi' interest back again: Froze by a' gifts and graces, thousands moe Than heart can think of, freely he'll bestoe. Ye need na wonder, then, nor swell wi' pride, Because I kindly welcome ye, as guide, To one sae far your better. Now as tauld, Let us set out upo' our journey cauld; Wi' nae vain boasts, nor vain regrets tormented, We'll e'en jog on the gate, quiet and contented. [Taken from "Memoirs of Eliza Hamilton," by Miss Benger. "DREADFUL HARD TIMES." Yesterday I walked down, to that part of the town, Where people collect at the sign of the Tun, To discuss and debate the great matters of state, And show how things that go wrong should be done: There was ragged Sam Bent, who is not worth a cent, There was idle Dick Lawless, and noisy Jack Grimes, And swaggering Jim Bell, who has nothing to sell, All cursing the Banks, and these dreadful hard times. There was old daddy Slop, who has lost his last crop, By neglecting to mend up some gaps in his fence; There was shabby Ned Thorn, who had planted his corn, But had never put hoe, no, nor plough to it since; There was dashing Bill Sutton, with his fine dandy coat on, Who was ne'er out of debt, nor was worth twenty dimes: They too join'd the throng, and still kept up the song, A curse on the Banks, and these dreadful hard times. Next came in Dick Short, who was summon'd to court, For some hundreds of half pints of whiskey and rum; He had brought the last sack of his grain on his back; Tho' his children were crying with hunger at home; Here, landlord, said Short, come, bring me a quart; I must treat these, my friends, Sir, and merry Jack Grimes; I've the corn, sir, to pay, there's no booking to-day; Then he fell to cursing the Banks, and hard times. Next came in Tom Sargent who had lately turn'd merchant, And bought a full store, I can scarcely tell how! But this much I know, about twelve months ago, That the Constable sold at the post, his last cow; Yet Tom dash'd away, spending hundreds each day, Till his merchants brought suits for their dry goods and wines; So Tom join'd the throng, and assisted the song, With a curse on these Banks, and these dreadful hard times. Next appear'd Madam Pride, (and a beau at her side) With her silks, spread with laces, quite down to her trail; Her husband that day, unable to pay For the dress she then wore, had been lock'd up in jail; She turn'd to the throng, as she tripped it along, And she "hop'd that the merchants would swing for such crimes "As to make people pay their old debts, in this way;" And she curs'd all the Banks, and these dreadful hard times. Now said I, Mr. Short, you are summon'd to court, And must soon go to jail for these long whiskey scores; And you, Mr Drew, aye, and you sir, and you, Who are hanging round taverns, and running to stores; And you madam Pride, must your silks lay aside, And you, Mr. Idle and you, Mr. Grimes, Must all to your labours, like some of your neighbours, And you'll soon put an end to these dreadful hard times. [_Gallia Gazette._ WINTER. Though now no more the musing ear Delights to listen to the breeze That lingers o'er the greenwood shade, I love thee, Winter! well. Sweet are the harmonies of Spring, Sweet is the Summer's evening gale, Pleasant the Autumnal winds that shake The many coloured grove; And pleasant to the sobered soul The silence of a wintry scene, When Nature shrouds her in her trance, In deep tranquillity. Not undelightful now to roam The wild-heath sparkling on the sight; Not undelightful now to pace The forest's ample rounds; And see the spangled branches shine, And snatch the moss of many a hue That varies the old tree's brown bark, Or o'er the grey stone spreads. The clustered berries claim the eye, O'er the bright holly's gay green leaves; The ivy round the leafless oak Clasps its full foliage close. ROBERT SOUTHEY. TO ----. When the bloom on thy cheek shall have faded away, When thine eye shall be closed in the grave, Thou shalt dwell in my heart like the last gleam of day. That purples with twilight the wave. And if souls are allowed in a happier sphere To watch o'er the spirits they love, Be the guardian--the friend that thou wert to me here, Be my guide--my protector above. I know thou must die, and the cold earth will hide The form I shall ever adore; But in death, as in life, it will still be my pride Such virtue as thine to deplore. And, oh! when I gaze in the stillness of night On those orbs that bespangle the sky, I will think there thou dwellest an angel of light, And hearest thy sorrower's sigh. It will sooth me to feel, though a wilderness grows, This lone world all unpeopled for me; That, though drooping and withering, there still is one rose In this wilderness blossoms for thee. Though it will not be thine its last blushes to greet, To weep o'er its bloom to decay; If worthy such bliss, in a world we shall meet Where thou'lt chase every dew-drop away. The following versification was from the pen of a very young, and interesting woman, in reply to the solicitations of her family not to accompany her unfortunate husband into exile. The lovely author of these lines, whose beauty can only be exceeded by her retiring modesty, is wholly unconscious of their publication, and we well know will blush at celebrity which the accomplishments of her mind, the graces of her person, and the misfortunes of her destiny, have rendered inevitable. _Versification from the book of "Ruth."_ INSCRIBED TO ---- Where'er thou goest, I will go, O'er Egypt's sands, or Zembla's snow! Where'er thy weary eyelids close. There will thy Charlotte seek repose; Though on the naked earth we lie, While tempests rule the darkning sky, Still, still undaunted will I be, And find the holiest calm with thee. That people whom thou call'st thy own, Shall only to my heart be known, And our great Father, God, above, With equal warmth we both will love. Where'er thy last expiring breath, Is yielded to relentless Death, On that same spot will Charlotte die, And in the tomb, thy Charlotte lie. The Lord do this, and more to me, If more than this, part thee from me, As living, but one heart we own. So dying we will still be ONE. [_Port Folio._ _The Peasant and his Wife._ HE. The long, long day, again has pass'd In sorrow and distress: I strive my best--but strive in vain, I labour hard--but still remain Poor, and in wretchedness. SHE. Nay, we have health--you love your wife-- And she returns its flame; Want still is absent from our cot, God gives us breath to sooth our lot, What more can you desire? HE. I wish'd to earn a little sum, My dearest wife for thee; I wish'd, by toiling day and night, To gain some wealth that might requite Thy fond fidelity. SHE. No wealth repays fidelity, Nor gold nor monarch's crown; My heart which doth to thee incline, Finds all its love repaid by thine, And smiles at Fortune's frown. HE. But ah! to see thee live in want, It fills my soul with care. That thou so noble just and good, Must slave and toil for daily food, That drives me to despair. SHE. I gaily work [God knows my heart] Contented at your side: More joys than wealth can give I prove, To share thy sorrows and thy love; Thy faithful heart's my pride. HE. But who, when I am snatch'd from thee Will hush thy trembling sighs? And when our babe shall weeping say, "Oh mother! give me bread I pray!" Who then will heed its cries; SHE. God! whom the worm and sparrow shields, Man in his need can aid; He'll be my comfort when thou'rt fled-- The orphan's sire will give him bread-- O! be his will obey'd. HE. Wife of my heart, how great thou art! Thy love is all my weal; I feel so proud of one like thee-- Thy love and thy fidelity Inspire me with fresh zeal. AGRICULTURE. Thou first of arts, source of domestic ease, Pride of the land, and patron of the seas, _Thrift Agriculture!_ lend thy potent aid; Spread thy green fields where dreary forest's shade; Where savage men pursue their savage prey, Let the white flocks in verdant pastures play; From the bloom'd orchard and the showery vale Give the rich fragrance to the gentle gale: Reward with ample boon the labourer's hand, And poor thy gladdening bounties o'er our land. Columbia's sons, spurn not the rugged toil; _Your nation's glory is a cultur'd soil._ Rome's Cincinnatus, of illustrious birth, Increas'd his laurels while he tilled the earth: E'en China's monarch lays his sceptre down, Nor deems the task unworthy of the crown. TO CORRESPONDENTS. "AMICUS" wishes to know why his communications have not appeared in the _Rural Magazine_. This kind of request is sometimes very difficult for an editor to comply with. In the present instance, we feel much obliged to our correspondent for his intention of serving us, and did we know him personally, would give him our reasons for omitting his pieces. We have anticipated the request of "AGRICOLA" of Susquehannah county, by inserting in our last number the address of _Judge Tilghman_. "AGRICOLA's" remarks upon, and large quotations from it, could not with so much propriety be now admitted. PHILADELPHIA, PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY RICHARDS & CALEB JOHNSON, _No. 31, Market Street_, At $3.00 per annum. Griggs & Dickinson--_Printers_, _Whitehall_. 
30975	----	produced from images produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University) [Illustration: Author] SOIL CULTURE; CONTAINING A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, POMOLOGY, DOMESTIC ANIMALS, RURAL ECONOMY, AND AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. BY J. H. WALDEN, A. M. ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY ROBERT SEARS, 181 WILLIAM STREET. 1858. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, BY J. H. WALDEN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Northern District of Illinois. SAVAGE & McCREA, STEREOTYPERS, C. A. ALVORD, PRINTER, 13 Chambers Street, N.Y. No. 15 Vandewater Street, N.Y. * * * * * TO THE PRACTICAL CULTIVATORS OF THE SOIL, The True Lords of the Manor, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED, BY THEIR SINCERE FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. * * * * * PREFATORY NOTE TO THE READER. If "he who causes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before, is a benefactor of his race," he is not less so who imparts to millions a knowledge of the methods by which it is done. The last half century has been the era of experiments and writing on the cultivation of the soil. The result has been the acquisition of more knowledge on the subjects embraced, than the world had attained in all its previous history. That knowledge is scattered through many volumes of numerous periodicals and books, and interspersed with many theories, and much speculation, that can never be valuable in practice. In the form in which it is presented, it confuses, rather than aids, the great mass of cultivators. Hence the prejudice against "_book-farming_." Provided established facts only are presented, they are none the worse for being printed. The object of this volume is to condense, and present in an intelligible form, all important established facts in the science of soil-culture. The author claims originality, as to the discovery of facts and principles, in but few cases. During ten years of preparatory study for this work, he has sought the rewards of industry, in sifting out the certain and the useful from the hypothetical and the fanciful, and the results of judicious discrimination between fallacy and just reasoning, in support of theories. This volume is designed to be a complete manual for all but amateur cultivators. While it is believed that he who follows its directions will be certain of success, it is not intended to disparage the merits of other works, but to encourage and extend their perusal. We can not too strongly recommend to young culturists to keep themselves well posted in this kind of literature, and give to every discovery and invention in this science a fair trial; not on a large scale, so as to sink money in fruitless experiments, but sufficient to afford a sure test of their real value. To no class of men is study more important than to soil-culturists. It is believed that the directions here given, if followed, will save millions of dollars annually to that class of cultivators who can least afford to waste time and money in experimenting. With beginners it is important to be successful at first; which is impossible without availing themselves of the experience of others. While we thus aim to give our volume this exclusively practical form, and utilitarian character, we do not undervalue the labors of amateur cultivators. A meed of praise is due to those who are willing to spend time and money in experiments, by which great truths are evolved for the benefit of mankind. Perfection is not claimed for this volume. But the author hopes nothing will be found here that is untrue. A fear of inserting errors may have induced us to omit some things that may yet prove valuable. If anything seems to be at variance with a cultivator's observation, in a given locality, he will discover in our general principles on climate, soil, and location, that it is a natural result. _Accurate as far as we go_ has been our motto. It is hoped the form is most convenient. All is arranged under one alphabet, with a complete index. The author has consulted many intelligent cultivators and writers, who, without exception, approve his plan. All agree in saying that it is designed to fill a place not occupied by any other single volume in the language. It is impossible, without cumbering the volume, to give suitable credit to the authors and persons consulted. Suffice it to say, the author has carefully studied all the works mentioned in this volume, and availed himself of a great variety of verbal suggestions, by scientific and practical men. If this work shall, in any good degree, serve the purpose for which it is intended, it will amply reward the author for an amount of labor, experiment, observation, and study, appreciable only by few. J. H. WALDEN. NEW YORK, _January 1, 1858_. ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Apple-Worms 22 Apple-Tree Borer 24 Caterpillar Eggs 25 Canker-Worm Moths 25 Baldwin Apple 34 Bellflower Apple 35 Early Harvest Apple 36 Spitzbergen Apple 37 Rhode Island Greening 38 Fall Pippin 39 Newtown Pippin 40 Rambo Apple 41 Rome Beauty 42 Westfield Seek-no-further 43 Northern Spy 44 Roxbury Russet 45 Swaar Apple 46 Maiden's Blush 47 Barberries 56 Working Bee, Queen and Drone 69 High-Bush Blackberry 83 Budding (Six Illustrations) 91 Cherries (Six Illustrations) 122 _Milking Qualities of Cows Illustrated_ The Flanders Cow 145 The Selvage Cow 147 The Curveline Cow 148 The Bicorn Cow 149 The Demijohn Cow 150 The Square Escutcheon Cow 151 The Lemousine Cow 151 The Horizontal Cut Cow 152 Bastards 152 Cranberries 156 Fig 181 Cleft and Tongue Grafting 210 Isabella Grapes 223 Catawba Grapes 223 Rebecca Grapes 224 Delaware Grapes 225 Hedge-Pruning (4 engravings) 238 Ground Plan of Farm Buildings 252 Ground Plan of Piggery 253 Ground Plan of Country Residence, Farm Buildings, Fruit Garden, and Grounds 254 Laying out Curves Illustrated 255 Ground Plan of Farm-House 255 Summer-House 256 Laborer's Cottage 257 Ground Plan of Laborer's Cottage 257 Italian Farm-House 258 Ground Plan of Italian Farm-House 258 Neglected Peach-Tree 324 Properly-Trimmed Peach-Tree 324 Plan of a Pear-Orchard 338 Bartlett Pear 340 Beurré Diel Pear 341 White Doyenne Pear 342 Flemish Beauty 343 Seckel 345 Gray Doyenne Pear 346 The Curculio 355 Lawrence's Favorite Plum 356 Imperial Gage 357 Egg-Plum 357 Green Gage 358 Jefferson Plum 358 Washington Plum 359 French Merino Ram 386 Shepherdia, or Buffalo Berry 390 Strawberry Blossoms 397 Fan Training (Four Illustrations) 417, 418 Horizontal Training (Two Illustrations) 419 Conical Training (Four Illustrations) 420 SOIL CULTURE. ACCLIMATION. This is the art of successfully changing fruits or plants from one climate to another. Removal to a colder climate should be effected in the spring, and to a warmer one in the fall. This may be done by scions or seeds. By seeds is better, in all cases in which they will produce the same varieties. Very few imported apple or pear trees are valuable in this country; while our finest varieties, perfectly adapted to our climate, were raised from seeds of foreign fruits and their descendants. The same is true of the extremes of this country. Baldwin apple-trees, forty or fifty years old, are perfectly hardy in the colder parts of New England; while the same imported from warmer sections of the Union fail in severe winters. This fact has given many new localities the reputation of being poor fruit-regions. When we remove fruit-trees to a similar climate in a new country, they flourish well, and we call it a good fruit-country. Remove trees from the same nursery to a different climate and soil, and they are not hardy and vigorous, and we call it a poor fruit-country. These two localities may be equally good for fruit, with suitable care in acclimating the tree and preparing the soil. Thus the rich prairies of central Illinois are often said not to be adapted to fruit. Give time to raise fruits from the seed, and to apply the principles of acclimation, and those rich prairies will be among the great fruit-growing regions of the world. Two things are essential to successful fruit-culture, on all the alluvial soils of the Northwest: raise from seed, and prune closely and head-in short, and thus put back and strengthen the trees for the first ten years, and no more complaints will be heard. The peach has been gradually acclimated, until, transplanted from perpetual summer, it successfully endures a temperature of thirty-five degrees below zero. This prince of fruits will yet be successfully grown even beyond the northern limits of Minnesota. Many vegetables may also be grown in very different climates, by annually importing the seed from localities where they naturally flourish. Sweet potatoes are thus grown abundantly in Massachusetts. We wonder this subject has received so little attention. We commend these brief hints to the earnest consideration of all practical cultivators, hoping they may be of great value in the results to which they may lead. ALMONDS. Almonds are natives of several parts of Asia and Africa. They perfectly resemble the peach in all but the fruit. The peach and almond grow well, budded into each other. In France, almond-stocks are preferred for the peach. Their cultivation and propagation are in all respects the same as the peach. _Varieties._--1. Long, hard shell. This is the best for cultivation in western and middle states, and in all cold regions. Very ornamental. 2. Common sweet. Productive in middle states, but not so good as the first. 3. Ladies' thin shell. Fruit large, long, and sweet; the very best variety, but not so hardy as the first two. Grows well in warm locations, with slight protection in winter. 4. The bitter. Large, with very ornamental leaves and blossoms. Fruit bitter, and yielding that deadly poison, prussic acid. 5. Peach almond. So called from having a pulp equal to a poor peach. Not hardy in northern climates. Other varieties are named, but are of no consequence to the practical cultivator. 6. Two varieties of ornamental almonds are very beautiful in spring--the large, double flowering, and the well-known dwarf flowering. But we regard peach-blossoms quite as ornamental, and the ripe peaches much more so, and so prefer to cultivate them. Almonds are extensively cultivated in the south of Europe, especially in Portugal, as an article of commerce. They will grow equally well in this country; but labor is so cheap in Europe, that American cultivators can not compete with it in the almond market. But every one owning land should cultivate a few as a family luxury. APPLES. The original of all our apples was the wild European crab. We have in this country several native crabs larger and better than the European; but they have not yet, as we are aware, been developed into fine apples. Apple-trees are hardy and long-lived, doing well for one hundred and fifty years. Highly-cultivated trees, however, are thought to last only about fifty years. An apple-tree, imported from England, produced fruit in Connecticut at the age of two hundred and eight years. The apple is the most valuable of all fruits. The peach, the best pears, the strawberries, and others, are all delicious in their day; but apples are adapted to a greater variety of uses, and are in perfection all the year; the earliest may be used in June, and the latest may be kept until that time next year. As an article of food, they are very valuable on account of both their nutritive and medicinal qualities. As a gentle laxative, they are invaluable for children, who should always be allowed to eat ripe apples as they please, when they can be afforded. Children will not long be inclined to eat ripe fruit to their injury. An almost exclusive diet of baked sweet apples and milk is recorded as having cured chronic cases of consumption, and other diseases caused by too rich food. Let dyspeptics vary the mode of preparing and using an apple diet, until it agrees with them, and many aggravated cases may be cured without medicine. It is strange how the idea has gained so much currency that apples, although a pleasant luxury, are not sufficiently nutritious for a valuable article of diet. There is no other fruit or vegetable in general use that contains such a proportion of nutriment. It has been ascertained in Germany, by a long course of experiments, that men will perform more labor, endure more fatigue, and be more healthy, on an apple diet, than on that universal indispensable for the poor, the potato. Apples are more valuable than potatoes for food. They are equally valuable as food for fowls, swine, sheep, cattle, and horses. Hogs have been well fattened on apples alone. Cooked with other vegetables, and mixed with a little ground grain or bran, they are an economical food for fattening pork or beef. Sweet or slightly-acid apples, fed to neat stock or horses, will prevent disease, and keep the animals in fine condition. For human food they may be cooked in a greater variety of ways than almost any other article. Apple-cider is valuable for some uses. It makes the best vinegar in general use, and, when well made and bottled, is better than most of our wines for invalids. Apple-molasses, or boiled cider, which is sweet-apple cider boiled down until it will not ferment, is excellent in cookery. Apple-butter is highly esteemed in many families. Dried apples are an important article of commerce. Green apples are also exported to most parts of the world. Notwithstanding the increased attention to their cultivation during the last half-century, their market value is steadily increasing, and doubtless will be, for the best varieties, for the next five hundred years. It does not cost more than five or six cents per bushel to raise apples; hence they are one of the most profitable crops a farmer can raise. No farm, therefore, is complete without a good orchard. The man who owns but five acres of land should have at least two acres in fruit-trees. _Soil._--Apples will succeed well on any soil that will produce good cabbages, potatoes, or Indian corn. Land needs as much manure and care for apple-trees as for potatoes. Rough hillsides and broken lands, unsuitable for general cultivation, may be made very valuable in orchards. It must be enriched, if not originally so, and kept clean about the trees. On no crop does good culture pay better. Many suppose that an apple-tree, being a great grower, will take care of itself after having attained a moderate size. Whoever observes the great and rapid growth of apple-trees must see, that, when the ground is nearly covered with them, they must make a great draft on the soil. To secure health and increased value, the deficiency must be supplied in manure and cultivation. The quantity and quality of the fruit depend mainly on the condition of the land. The kinds and proportions of manures best for an apple-orchard are important practical questions. We give a chemical analysis of the ashes of the apple-tree, which will indicate, even to the unlearned, the manure that will probably be needed:-- _Analysis of the ash of the apple-tree._ Sap-wood. Heart-wood. Bark of trunk. Potash 16.19 6.620 4.930 Soda 3.11 7.935 3.285 Chloride of sodium 0.42 0.210 0.540 Sulphate of lime 0.05 0.526 0.637 Phosphate of peroxyde } 0.80 0.500 0.375 of iron } Phosphate of lime 17.50 5.210 2.425 Phosphate of magnesia 0.20 0.190 Carbonic acid 29.10 36.275 44.830 Lime 18.63 37.019 51.578 Magnesia 8.40 6.900 0.150 Silicia 0.85 0.400 0.200 Soluble silicia 0.80 0.300 0.400 Organic matter 4.60 2.450 2.100 ______ _______ _______ 100.65 104.535 111.450 This table will indicate the application of plenty of wood-ashes and charcoal; lime in hair, bones, horn-shavings, old plaster, common lime, and a little common salt. Lime and ashes, or dissolved potash, are indispensable on an old orchard; they will improve the fruit one half, both in quantity and quality. _Propagation._--This is done mainly by seeds, budding and grafting. The best method is by common cleft-grafting on all stocks large enough, and by whip or tongue grafting on all others. (See under article, Grafting.) Grafting into the sycamore is recommended by some. The scions are said to grow profusely, and to bear early and abundantly; but they are apt to be killed by cold winters. We do not recommend it. Almost everything does best budded or grafted into vigorous stocks of its own nature. Root-grafting, as it is termed,--that is, cutting up roots into pieces three or four inches long, and putting a scion into each--has been a matter of much discussion and diversity of opinion. It is certainly a means of most rapidly multiplying a given variety, and is therefore profitable to the nurseryman. For ourselves, we should prefer trees grafted just above, or at the ground, using the whole stock for one tree. We do not, however, undertake to settle this controverted point. Our minds are fixed against it. Others must do as they please. Propagation by seed is thought to be entirely uncertain, because, as is supposed, the seeds will not reproduce their own varieties. We consider this far from being an established fact. When grafts are put into large trees, high up from the ground, their fruit may be somewhat modified by the stock. There is also a slight tendency in the seeds of all grafts to return to the varieties from which they descended. But we believe the general rule to be, that the seeds of grafts, put in at the ground and standing alone, will generally produce the same varieties of fruit. The most prominent obstacle in the way of this reproduction is the presence of other varieties, which mix in the blossom. The planting of seeds from any mixed orchard can never settle this question, because they are never pure. Propagation by seeds, then, is an inconvenient method, only to be resorted to for purposes of acclimation. But it is so seldom we have a good bearing apple-tree so far removed from others as not to be affected by the blossoms, that we generally get from seeds a modification of varieties. Raising suitable stocks for grafting is done by planting seeds in drills thirty inches apart, and keeping clear of weeds until they are large enough to graft. The soil should be made very rich, to save time in their growth. Land where root-crops grew the previous year is the best. If kept clear of weeds, on rich, deep soil, from one to two thirds of them will be large enough for whip-grafting after the first year's growth. The pomice from the cider-mill is often planted. It is better to separate the seeds, and plant them with a seed-drill. They will then be in straight, narrow rows, allowing the cultivator and hoe to pass close by them, and thus save two thirds of the cost of cultivation. The question of keeping seeds dry or moist until planting is one of some importance. Most seeds are better for being kept slightly moist until planted; but with the apple it makes no difference. Keep apple-seeds dry and spread, as they are apt to heat. Freezing them is not of the slightest importance. If you plant pomice, put in a little lime or ashes to counteract the acid. For winter-grafting, pull the seedlings that are of suitable size, cut off the tops eight inches from the root, and pack in moist sand in a cellar that will not freeze. After grafting, tie them up in bunches, and pack in tight boxes of moist sand or sawdust. _Transplanting._--This is fully treated elsewhere in this work. We give under each fruit only what is peculiar to that species. In mild climates transplant in the fall, and in cold in the spring. Spring-planting must never be done until the soil has become dry enough to be made fine. A thoroughly-pulverized soil is the great essential of successful transplanting. Trees for spring-planting should always be taken up before the commencement of vegetation. But in very wet springs, this occurs before the ground becomes sufficiently dry; it is then best to take up the trees and heel them in, and keep them until the soil is suitable. The place for an apple-tree should be made larger than for any other tree, because its roots are wide-spreading, like its branches. The earth should be thrown out to the depth of twenty inches, and four or five feet square, for an ordinary-sized tree. This, however, will not do on a heavy clay subsoil, for it would form a basin to hold water and injure the tree. A ditch, as low as the bottom of the holes, should extend from tree to tree, and running out of the orchard, constructed in the usual method of drains, and, whatever be the subsoil, the trees will flourish. The usual compost to manure the trees in transplanting will be found elsewhere. In the bottom of these places for apple-trees should be thrown a plenty of cobblestones, with a few sods, and a little decaying wood and coarse manure. We know of nothing so good under an apple-tree as small stones; the tree will always be the larger and thriftier for it. This is, in a degree, beneficial to other fruits, but peculiarly so to the apple. _Size for transplanting._--Small trees usually do best. Large trees are often transplanted with the hope of having an abundance of fruit earlier. This usually defeats the object. The large trees will bear a little fruit earlier than the small ones; but the injury by removal is so much greater, that the small stocky trees come into full, regular bearing much the soonest. From five to eight feet high is often most convenient for field-orchard culture. But, wherever we can take care of them, it is better to set out smaller trees; they will do better for years. A suitable drain, extending through the orchard, under each row of trees, will make a good orchard on low, wet land. _Trimming at the time of transplanting._--Injured roots should be removed as in the general directions under Transplanting. But the idea of cutting off most of the top is a very serious error. When large trees are transplanted, which must necessarily lose many of their roots in removal, a corresponding portion of the top must be separated; but in no other case. The leaves are the lungs of the tree. How shall it have vitality if most of them are removed? It is like destroying one lung and half of the other, and then expect a man to be in vigorous health. We have often seen the most of two years' growth of trees lost by such reckless pruning. If the roots are tolerably whole and sound, leave the top so. A peach-tree needs to be trimmed much closer when transplanted, because it has so many more buds to throw out leaves. _Mulching._--This is quite as beneficial to apple-trees as to all transplanted trees. Well done, it preserves a regularity of moisture that almost insures the life of the tree. _Pruning._--The tops should be kept open and exposed to the sun, the cross limbs cut out, and everything removed that shows decided symptoms of decay. The productiveness of apple-trees depends very much upon pruning very sparingly and judiciously. There are two ways to keep an open top: one is, to allow many large limbs to grow, and cut out most of the small ones, thus leaving a large collection of bare poles without anything on which the fruit can grow;--the other method is to allow few limbs to grow large, and keep them well covered with small twigs, which always bear the fruit. The latter method will produce two or three times as much fruit as the former. The head of an apple-tree should be formed at a height that will allow a team to pass around under its branches. _Distance apart._--In a full-grown orchard, that is designed to cover the ground, the trees should be two rods (thirty-three feet) apart. When it is designed always to cultivate the ground, and land is plenty, set them fifty or sixty feet apart. You will be likely always to have fine fruit, and a crop on the land beside. Our recommendation to every one is to set out all orchards, of whatever fruit, so as to have them cover the whole ground when in maturity. Among apple-trees, dwarf pears, peaches, or quinces, may be set, which will be profitable before the apples need all the ground. _Bearing years._--A cultivator may have a part of his orchard bear one year, and the remainder the next, or he may have them all bear every year. There are two reasons why a tree bears full this year and will not bear the next. One is, it is allowed to have such a superabundance of fruit to mature this year, that it has no strength to mature fruit-buds for the next, and hence a barren year; the other reason is, a want of proper culture and the specific manures for the apple. Manure highly, keep off the insects, cultivate well, and do not allow too much to remain on the trees one season, and you will have a good crop every year. But if one would let his trees take the natural course, but wishes to change the bearing year of half of his orchard, he can accomplish it by removing the blossoms or young fruit from a part of his trees on the bearing year, and those trees having no fruit to mature will put forth an abundance of buds for fruit the following season; thus the fruit-season will be changed without lessening the productiveness. Go through a fruit-region in what is called the non-bearing seasons, and you will find some orchards and some trees very full of fruit. Trees of the same variety in another orchard near by will have very little fruit. This shows that the bearing season is a matter of mere habit, in all except what is determined by late frosts. This fact may be turned to great pecuniary value, by producing an abundance of apples every year. _Plowing and pasturing._--An apple-orchard should be often plowed, but not too deep among the roots. When not actually under the plow, it should be pastured, with fowls, calves, or sheep. Swine are recommended, as they will eat all the apples that fall prematurely, and with them the worms that made them fall. But we have often seen hogs, by their rooting and rubbing, kill the trees. Better to pick up the apples that fall too early, and give them to the swine. Turkeys and hens in an orchard will do much to destroy the various insects. They may be removed for a short time when they begin to peck the ripening fruit. Orchards pastured by sheep are said not to be infested with caterpillars. Sheep pastured and salted under apple-trees greatly enrich the soil, and in those elements peculiarly beneficial. _Enemies._--There are several of these that are quite destructive, when not properly guarded against. Two things are necessary, and, united and thoroughly performed, they afford a remedy or a preventive for most of the depredations of all insects: 1. Keep the trees well cleared of all rough, loose bark, which affords so many hiding-places for insects. 2. Wash the trunks and large limbs of the trees, twice between the 25th of May and the 15th of August, with a ley of wood-ashes or dissolved potash. Apple-trees will bear it strong enough to kill some of the finest cherries. We add another very effectual wash. Let cultivators choose between the two. Into two gallons of water put two quarts of soft-soap and one fourth pound of sulphur. If you add tobacco-juice, or any other very offensive article, it will be still better. _Apple-worm._--The insect that produces this worm lays its egg in the blossom-end of the young apple. That egg makes a worm that passes down about the core and ruins the fruit. Apples so affected will fall prematurely, and should be picked up and fed to swine. This done every day during their falling, which does not last a great while, will remedy the evil in two seasons. The worm that crawls from the fallen apple gets into crevices in rough bark, and spins his cocoon, in which he remains till the following spring. Bonfires, for a few evenings in the fore part of June, in an orchard infested with moths, will destroy vast numbers of them, before they have deposited their eggs. This can not be too strongly insisted upon. [Illustration: Apple-Worms. _a_ The young worm. _b_ The full-grown worm. _c_ The same magnified. _d_ Cocoon. _e_ Chrysalis. _f_ Perfect insect. _g_ The same magnified. _h i_ Passage of the worm in the fruit. _j_ Worm in the fruit. _k_ Place of egress.] _Bark-louse._--Dull white, oval scales, one tenth of an inch long, which sometimes appear on the stems of trees in vast numbers, may be destroyed by the wash recommended above. _Woolly aphis_--called in Europe by the misnomer, _American blight_--is very destructive across the water, but does not exist extensively on this side. It is supposed to exist, in this country, only where it has been introduced with imported trees. It appears as a white downy substance in the small forks of trees. This is composed of a large number of very minute woolly lice, which increase with wonderful rapidity. They are easily destroyed by washing with diluted sulphuric acid--three fourths of an ounce, by measure, from the druggist's--and seven and a half ounces of water, applied by a rag tied to the end of a stick. The operator must keep it from his clothes. After the first rain this is perfectly effectual. _Apple-tree borer._--This is a fleshy-white grub, found in the trunks of the trees. It enters at the surface of the ground where the bark is tender, and either girdles or thoroughly perforates the tree, causing its death. This is produced by a brown and white striped beetle about half an inch long. It does not go through its different stages annually, but remains a grub two or three years. It finally comes out in its winged state, early in June, flying in the night and laying its eggs. If the borers are already in the tree, they may be killed by cutting out, or by a steel wire thrust into their holes. But better prevent them. This can be done effectually by placing a small mound of ashes or lime around each tree early in the spring. On nursery-trees their attacks may be prevented by washing with a solution of potash--two pounds in eight quarts of water. As this is a good manure, as well as a great remedy for insects, it had better be used every season. [Illustration: Borer. Eggs. Beetle.] _Caterpillars_ are the product of a miller of a reddish-brown color, measuring about an inch and a half when flying. They deposit many eggs about the forks and near the extremities of young branches. These hatch in spring, in season for the young foliage, on which they feed voraciously. When neglected for two or three years, they often defoliate large trees. The habits of the caterpillar are favorable to their destruction. They weave their webs in forks of trees, and are always at home in rainy weather, and in the morning till nine o'clock. The remedy is to kill them. This is most effectually done by a sponge on the end of a pole, dipped in strong spirits of ammonia. Each one touched by it is instantly killed, and it is not difficult to reach them all. They may also be rubbed off with a brush or swab on the end of a pole, and burned. The principle is to get them off, web and all, and destroy them. This can always be effectually done, if attended to early in the season, and early in the morning. If any have been missed, and come out in insects to deposite more eggs, bonfires are most effectual. These should be made of shavings, in different parts of the orchard, and about the middle of June, earlier or later, according to latitude and season. The ends of twigs on which the eggs are laid in bunches of hundreds (see figure), may be cut off in the fall and destroyed. As this can be done with pruning-shears, it may be an economical method of destroying them. [Illustration: Caterpillar Eggs. Canker-worm Moths, Male and Female.] _Canker-worm._--The male moth has pale-ash colored wings, with a black dot, and is about an inch across. The female has no wings, is oval in form, dark-ash colored above, and gray underneath. These rise from the ground as early in spring as the frost is out. Some few rise in the fall. The females travel slowly up the body of the tree, while the winged males fly about to pair with them. Soon you may discover the eggs laid, always in rows, in forks of branches and among the young twigs. Every female lays nearly a hundred, and covers them over carefully with a transparent, waterproof glue. The eggs hatch from May 1st to June 1st, according to the latitude and season, and come out an ash-colored worm with a yellow stripe. They are very voracious, sometimes entirely stripping an orchard of its foliage. At the end of about four weeks they descend to the ground, to remain in a chrysalis state, about four inches below the surface, until the following spring. These worms are very destructive in some parts of New England, and have been already very annoying, as far west as Iowa. They will be likely to be transported all over the country on young trees. Many remedies are proposed, but to present them all is only to confuse. The best of anything is sufficient. We present two, for the benefit of two classes of persons. For all who have care enough to attend to it, the best remedy is to bind a handful of straw around the tree, two feet from the ground, tied on with one band, and the ends allowed to stand out from the tree. The females, who can not fly, but only ascend the trunk by crawling, will get up under the straw, and may easily be killed, by striking a covered mallet on the straw, and against the tree below the band. This should be attended to every day during the short season of their ascent, and all will be destroyed. Burn the straw about the last of May. But those who are too indolent or busy to do this often till their season is past, may melt India-rubber over a hot fire, and smear bandages of cloth or leather previously put tight around the tree. This will prevent the female moth from crossing and reaching the limbs. Tar is used, but India-rubber is better, as weather will not injure it as it will tar, so as to allow the moth to pass over. Put this on early and well, and let it remain till the last of May. But the first, the process of killing them, is far the best. _Gathering-and preserving._--All fruit, designed to be kept even for a few weeks, should be picked, and not shaken off, and laid, not dropped into a basket, and with equal care put into the barrels in which it is to be kept or transported. The barrel should be slightly shaken and filled entirely full. Let it stand open two days, to allow the fruit to sweat and throw off the excessive moisture. Then head up tight, and keep in a cool open shed until freezing weather; then keep where they can occasionally have good air, and in as cool a place as possible, without danger of freezing. Of all the methods of keeping apples on shelves, buried as potatoes, in various other articles, as chaff, sawdust, &c., this is, on the whole, the best and cheapest. Wrapping the apples in paper before putting them into the barrels, may be an improvement. Apples gathered just before hard frosts, or as they are beginning to ripen, but before many have fallen from the trees, and packed as above, and the barrels laid on their sides in a good dry, dark cellar, where air can occasionally be admitted, can be kept in perfection from six to eight weeks, after the ordinary time for their decay. Apples for cider, or other immediate use, may be shaken off upon mats or blankets spread under the tree for that purpose. They are not quite so valuable, but it saves times in gathering. _Varieties_ are exceedingly numerous and uncertain. Cole estimates that two millions of varieties have been produced in the single state of Maine, and that thousands of kinds may there be found superior to those generally recommended in the fruit-books. The minute description of fruits is not of the least use to one out of ten thousand cultivators. The best pomologists differ in the names and descriptions of the various fruits. Some varieties have as many as twenty-five synonyms. Of what use, then, is the minute description of the hundred and seventy-seven varieties of Cole's American fruit-book, or of the vast numbers described by Downing, Elliott, Barry, and Hooper? The best pear we saw in Illinois could not be identified in Elliott's fruit-book by a practical fruit-grower. We had in our orchard in Ohio a single apple-tree, producing a large yield of one of the very best apples we ever saw; it was called Natural Beauty. We could not learn from the fruit-books what it was. We took it to an amateur cultivator of thirty years' experience, and he could not identify it. This is a fair view of the condition of the nomenclature of fruits. The London experimental gardens are doing much to systemize it, and the most scientific growers are congratulating them on their success. But it never can be any better than it is now. Varieties will increase more and more rapidly, and synonyms will be multiplied annually, and the modification of varieties by stocks, manures, climates, and location, will render it more and more confused. We can depend only upon our nurserymen to collect all improved varieties, and where we do not see the bearing-trees for ourselves, trust the nurseryman's description of the general qualities of fruit. Seldom, indeed, will a cultivator buy fruit-trees, and set out his orchard, and master the descriptions in the fruit-books, and after his trees come into bearing, minutely try them by all the marks to see whether he has been cheated, and, if so, take up the trees and put out others, to go the same round again, perhaps with no better success. Hence, if possible, let planters get trees from a nursery so near at hand that they may know the quality of the fruit of the trees from which the grafts are taken, get the most popular in their vicinity, and always secure a few scions from any extraordinary apple they may chance to taste. It is well, also, to deal only with the most honorable nurserymen. Remember that varieties will not do alike well in all localities. Many need acclimation. Every extensive cultivator should keep seedlings growing, with a view to new varieties, or modifications of old ones, adapted to his locality. We did think of describing minutely a few of the best varieties, adapted to the different seasons of the year. But we can see no advantage it would be to the great mass of cultivators, for whom this book is designed. Those who wish to acquaint themselves with those descriptions will purchase some of the best fruit-books. We shall content ourselves with giving the lists, recommended by the best authority, for different sections, followed by a general description of the _qualities_ of a few of the best. Downing's lists are the following:-- APPLES FOR MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN PORTIONS OF THE EASTERN STATES, RIPENING IN SUCCESSION. Early Harvest. Vandevere of New York. Red Astrachan. Jonathan. Early Strawberry. Melon. Summer Rose. Yellow Bellflower. William's Favorite. Domine. Primate. American Golden Russet. American Summer Pearmain. Cogswell. Garden Royal. Peck's Pleasant. Jefferis. Wagener. Porter. Rhode Island Greening. Jersey Sweet. King of Tompkins County. Large Yellow Bough. Swaar. Baldwin. Gravenstein. Lady Apple. Maiden's Blush. Ladies' Sweet. Autumn Sweet Bough. Red Canada. Fall Pippin. Newtown Pippin. Mother. Boston Russet. Smokehouse. Northern Spy. Rambo. Wine Sap. Esopus Spitzenburg. APPLES FOR THE NORTH. Red Astrachan. Fameuse. Early Sweet Bough. Pomme Gris. Saps of Wine or Bell's Canada Reinette. Early. Yellow Bellflower. Golden Sweet. Golden Ball. William's Favorite. St. Lawrence. Porter. Jewett's Fine Red. Dutchess of Oldenburgh. Rhode Island Greening. Keswick Codlin. Baldwin. Hawthornden. Winthrop Greening. Gravenstein. Danvers Winter-Sweet. Mother. Ribston Pippin. Tolman Sweet. Roxberry Russet. APPLES FOR THE WESTERN STATES, Made up from the contributions of twenty different cultivators, from five Western states. Early Harvest. Domine. Carolina Red June. Swaar. Red Astrachan. Westfield Seek-no-further. American Summer Pearmain. Broadwell. Sweet June. Vandevere of New York, or Newtown Spitzenburg. Large Sweet Bough. Ortly, or White Bellflower. Summer Queen. Yellow Bellflower. Maiden's Blush. White Pippin. Keswick Codlin. American Golden Russet. Fall Wine. Herfordshire Pearmain. Rambo. White Pearmain. Belmont. Wine Sap. Fall Pippin. Rawle's Janet. Fameuse. Red Canada. Jonathan. Willow Twig. Tolman Sweet. APPLES FOR THE SOUTH AND SOUTHWEST. Early Harvest. Nickajack. Carolina Juice. Maverack's Sweet. Red Astrachan. Batchelor or King. Gravenstein. Buff. American Summer Pearmain. Shockley. Julian. Ben Davis. Mangum. Hall. Fall Pippin. Mallecarle. Maiden's Blush. Horse. Summer Rose. Bonum. Porter. Large Striped Pearmain. Rambo. Rawle's Janet. Large Early Bough. Disharoon. Fall Queen, or Ladies' Meigs. Favorite. Cullasaga. Oconee Greening. Camack's Sweet. Some varieties are included in all these lists, showing that the best cultivators regard some of our finest apples as adapted to all parts of the country. A careful comparison of Hooper's lists, as recommended by the best Western cultivators, whose names are there mentioned, will show that they name the same best varieties, with a few additions. We have carefully examined the varieties recommended by Ernst, by Kirtland and Elliott, by Barry, and by the national convention of fruit-growers, and find a general agreement on the main varieties. There are some differences of opinion, but they are minor. They have left out some of Downing's list, and added some, as a matter of course. All this only goes to show the established character of our main varieties. Out of all these, select a dozen of those named, in most of the lists, and you will have all that ever need be cultivated for profit. The best six might be still better. Yet, in your localities, you will find good ones not named in the books, and new ones will be constantly rising. Downing adds that "Newtown Pippin does not succeed generally at the West, yet in some locations they are very fine. Rhode Island Greening and Baldwin generally fail in many sections, while in others they are excellent." Now, it is contrary to all laws of vegetation and climate, that a given fruit should be good in one county and useless in the next, if they have an equal chance in each place. A suitable preparation of the soil, in supplying, in the specific manures, what it may lack, getting scions from equally healthy trees, and grafting upon healthy apple-seedling stocks--observing our principles of acclimation--_and not one of our best apples will fail, in any part of North America_. On a given parallel of latitude, a man may happen to plant a tree upon a fine calcareous soil, and it does well. Another chances to plant one upon a soil of a different character, and it does not succeed. It is then proclaimed that fruit succeeds well in one locality, and is useless in another near by and in the same latitude. The truth is, had the latter supplied calcareous substances to his deficient soil, as he might easily have done, in bones, plaster, lime, &c., the fruit would have done equally well in both cases. We should like to see this subject discussed, as it never has been in any work that has come under our observation. It would redeem many a section from a bad reputation for fruit-growing, and add much to the luxuries of thousands of our citizens. Apples can be successfully and profitably grown on every farm of arable land in North America. We present, in the following cuts, a few of our best apples, in their usual size and form. Some are contracted for the want of room on the page. We shall describe a few varieties, in our opinion the best of any grown in this country. These are all that need be cultivated, and may be adapted to all localities. We lay aside all technical terms in our description, which we give, not for purposes of identification, but to show their true value for profitable culture. The quality of fruit, habits of the tree, and time of maturity, are all that are necessary, for any practical purpose. NICKAJACK.--_Synonyms_--Wonder, Summerour. Origin, North Carolina. Tree vigorous, and a constant prolific bearer. Fruit large, skin yellowish, shaded land striped with crimson, and sprinkled with lightish dots. Yellowish flesh, fine subacid flavor. Tender, crisp, and juicy. Season, November to April. BALDWIN.--_Synonyms_--Late Baldwin, Woodpecker, Pecker, Steele's Red Winter. [Illustration] Stands at the head of all apples, in the Boston market. Fruit large and handsome. Tree hardy, and an abundant bearer. It is of the family of Esopus Spitzenburg. Yellowish white flesh, crisp and beautiful flavor, from a mingling of the acid and saccharine. Season, from November to March. On some rich western soils, it is disposed to bitter rot, which may be easily prevented, by application to the soil of lime and potash. CANADA RED.--_Synonyms_--Old Nonsuch, Richfield Nonsuch, Steele's Red Winter. An old fruit in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Tree not a great grower, but a profuse bearer. Good in Ohio, Michigan, and other Western states. Retains its fine flavor to the last. January to May. BELLFLOWER.--_Synonyms_--Yellow Bellflower, Lady Washington, Yellow Belle-fleur. [Illustration] Fruit very large, pale lemon yellow, with a blush in the sun. Subacid, juicy, crisp flesh. Tree vigorous, regular and excellent bearer. Season, November to March. Highly valuable. EARLY HARVEST.--_Synonyms_--Early French Reinette, Prince's Harvest, July Pippin, Yellow Harvest, Large White Juneating, Tart Bough. [Illustration] The best early apple. Bright straw color. Subacid, white, tender, juicy, and crisp. Equally good for cooking and the dessert. Season, the whole month of July in central New York; earlier south, and later north, as of all other varieties. RED ASTRACHAN.--Brought to England from Sweden in 1816. One of the most beautiful apples in the whole list. Fruit very large, and very smooth and fair. Color deep crimson, with a little greenish yellow in the shade and occasionally a little russet near the stalk. Flesh white and crisp, rich acid flavor. Gather as soon as nearly ripe, or it will become mealy. Abundant bearer. July and August. ESOPUS SPITZENBURG.--_Synonym_--True Spitzenburg. [Illustration] Large, fine flavored, lively red fruit. It is everywhere well known, as one of the very best apples ever cultivated, both for cooking and the desert. December to February, and often good even into April. A very great bearer. KING OF TOMPKINS COUNTY.--_Synonym_--King Apple. This is an abundant annual bearer. Skin rather yellowish, shaded with red and striped with crimson. Flesh rather coarse, but juicy and tender, with a very agreeable vinous aromatic flavor. One of the best. December and March. RHODE ISLAND GREENING.--_Synonyms_--Burlington Greening, Jersey Greening, Hampshire Greening. [Illustration] A universal favorite, everywhere known. Acid, lively, aromatic, excellent alike for the dessert and kitchen. Great bearer. November to March. It is said to fail on some rich alluvial soils at the West. Avoid root grafting, and apply the specific manures, and we will warrant it everywhere. BONUM.--_Synonym_--Magnum Bonum. From North Carolina. Fruit large, from light to dark red. Flesh yellow, subacid, rich, and delicious. Tree hardy, vigorous, and an early and abundant bearer. AMERICAN GOLDEN RUSSET.--_Synonyms_--Sheep Nose, Golden Russet, Bullock's Pippin, Little Pearmain. The English Golden Russet is a variety cultivated in this country, but much inferior to the above. The fruit is small, but melting juicy, with a very pleasant flavor. It is one of the most regular and abundant bearers known. Tree hardy and thrifty. October to January. We know from raising and using it at the West, that it is one of the very best. PIPPIN, FALL.--Confounded with Holland Pippin and several other varieties. [Illustration] A noble fruit, unsurpassed by any other autumn apple. Very large, equally adapted to table and kitchen. Fine yellow, when fully ripe, with a few dots. Flesh is white, mellow, and richly aromatic. October and December. A fair bearer, though not so great as many others. NEWTOWN PIPPIN.--_Synonyms_--Green Newtown Pippin, Green Winter Pippin, American Newtown Pippin, Petersburg Pippin. [Illustration] This is put down as the first of all apples. It commands the highest price, in the London market. It keeps long without the least shriveling or loss of flavor. Fruit medium size, olive green, with small gray specks. Flesh greenish white, juicy, crisp, and of an exceedingly delicious flavor. _The best keeping apple_, good for eating from December to May. The yellow pippin, is another variety nearly as good. PORTER.--A Massachusetts fruit, very fair; a very great bearer. Is a favorite in Boston. Deserves general cultivation. September and into October. SMOKEHOUSE.--_Synonyms_--Mill Creek Vandevere, English Vandevere. An old variety from Pennsylvania, where the original tree grew by a gentleman's smoke-house; hence its name. Skin yellow, shaded with crimson, sprinkled with large gray or brown dots. September to February. One of the very best for cooking. RAMBO.--_Synonyms_--Romanite, Bread and cheese apple, Seek-no-further. [Illustration] This is a great fall apple. Medium size, flat, yellowish white in the shade, and marbled with pale yellow and red in the sun, and speckled with large rough dots. Flesh greenish white, rich, subacid. October to December. CANADA REINETTE.--This has ten synonyms in Europe, which indicates its popularity. In this country it is known only under the above name. Fruit of the very largest size. A good bearer. The quality is in all respects good. Lively, subacid flavor. December to April, unless allowed to hang on the tree too long. Pick early in the fall. ROME BEAUTY.--_Synonyms_--Roman Beauty, Gillett's Seedling. [Illustration] Fruit large, yellow, ground shaded, and striped with red, and sprinkled with little dots. Flesh yellowish, juicy, tender, subacid. Bears every year a great crop of very large showy apples. It is not superior in flesh or flavor, but keeps and sells very well. Always must be very profitable, and hence very popular. AUTUMN SWEET BOUGH.--_Synonyms_--Late Bough, Fall Bough, Summer Bell Flower, Philadelphia Sweet. Tree very vigorous and productive. Fruit medium. Skin smooth, pale yellow with a few brown dots. Flesh white, tender, sweet vinous flavor. One of the best dessert sweet apples. August and October. WESTFIELD SEEK-NO-FURTHER.--_Synonyms_--Seek-no-further, Red Winter Pearmain, Connecticut Seek-no-further. [Illustration] Fruit large, pale dull red, sprinkled with obscure russety yellow dots. Flesh white, tender and fine-grained. On all accounts good. October to February according to Downing. Elliott says from December to February. But the doctors often disagree. So you had better eat your apples when they are good, whether it be October or December, or according to Downing, Elliott, or Hooper. RIBSTON PIPPIN.--_Synonyms_--Glory of York, Travers', Formosa Pippin, Rock hill's Russet. This occupies as high a place in England, as any other apple. In this country, two or three others, as Baldwin and Newtown Pippin, are more highly esteemed. This is most successfully grown in the colder parts of the United States and Canada. Fruit medium, deep yellow, firm, crisp; flavor sharp aromatic. November to April. NORTHERN SPY.--This is a new American variety, with no synonyms. It originated near Rochester, N. Y. [Illustration] There is not a better dessert apple known. It retains its exceedingly pleasant juiciness, and excellent flavor from January to June. In western New York, they have been carried to the harvest field, in July in excellent condition. A fair bearer of beautiful fruit. Subacid with a peculiar freshness of flavor. Dark stripes of purplish red in the sun, but a greenish pale yellow in the shade. High culture and an open top for admission of the sun, affects the fruit more favorably than any other. ROXBURY RUSSET.--_Synonyms_--Boston Russet, Putnam Russet. [Illustration] An excellent fruit, and prodigious bearer. Medium size, flesh greenish white, rather juicy, and subacid. Good in January, and one of the best in market in June. There are other russets of larger size, but much inferior. This should be in every collection. It is not first in richness and flavor, but it is superior to most in productiveness, and is one of the best keepers. LARGE YELLOW BOUGH.--_Synonyms_--Early Sweet Bough, Sweet Harvest, Bough. No harvest-apple equals this, except the EARLY HARVEST. Excellent for the dessert, but rather sweet for pies and sauce. Fruit above medium. Tree a moderate grower, but a profuse bearer. Flesh white and very tender. Very sweet and sprightly. July and August. Should have a place, even in a small collection. SWAAR.--One of the best American fruits. Its name in Dutch, where it originated on the Hudson River, means heavy. [Illustration] Fruit is large, and when fully ripe, of a dead gold color, dotted with many brown specks. Flesh yellowish, fine grained, and tender. Flavor aromatic and exceedingly rich. Bears good crops. December to March. WINESAP.--This is one of the best apples for cider, and good also for the table and kitchen. Fruit hangs long on the tree without injury. It is very productive, and does well on a variety of soils. Very fine in the West. Yellow flesh, very firm, and high flavored. November to May. Deservedly, a very popular orchard variety. MAIDEN'S BLUSH.--A comparatively new variety from New Jersey. Remarkably beautiful. Admired as a dessert fruit, and equally good for the kitchen and for drying. Clear lemon yellow, with a blush cheek, sometimes a brilliant red cheek. Rapid growing tree, with a fine spreading head, bearing most abundantly. August and October. [Illustration] LADIES' SWEETING.--The finest sweet apple, for dessert in winter, that has yet been produced. Skin smooth and nearly covered with red, in the sun. Flesh is greenish white, very tender, juicy, and crisp. Without any shriveling or loss of flavor, it keeps till May. So good a winter and spring sweet apple is a desideratum in any orchard or garden. The foregoing are all that any practical cultivator will need. Most will select from our list, perhaps half a dozen, which will be all they wish to cultivate. From our descriptions, which are not designed to enable planters to identify the varieties, but to ascertain their qualities, any one can select such as he prefers. And they are so generally known, that there will be but little danger of getting varieties, different from those ordered. We subjoin, from Hooker's excellent Western Fruit-Book, the following-- LIST OF APPLES FOR THE WESTERN STATES. "The following list," says Hooker, "contains a catalogue of the most popular varieties of apples, recommended by various pomological societies of the United States for the Western states." These varieties can be obtained of all respectable nurserymen. The list may be of use to some cultivators in the different states mentioned. The general qualities of the best of these will be found in our descriptions under the cuts:-- _Baldwin._--Ohio, Missouri, Illinois. _Roxbury Russet._--Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois. _Rhode Island Greening._--Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois. _Swaar._--Ohio, Illinois, Michigan. _Esopus Spitzenburg._--Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio. _Early Harvest._--Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa. _Sweet Bough._--Illinois, Virginia, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio. _Summer Rose._--Ohio, Missouri, Illinois. _Fall Pippin._--Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois. _Belmont._--Michigan, Ohio. _Golden Sweet._--Missouri. _Red Astrachan._--Iowa, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois. _Jonathan._--Ohio, Missouri. _Early Strawberry._--Ohio. _Danvers Winter Sweet._--Ohio. _American Summer Pearmain._--Illinois. _Maiden Blush._--Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois. _Porter._--Ohio, Missouri. _Gravenstein._--Ohio. _Vandevere._--Missouri, Indiana, Illinois. _Yellow Bellflower._--Michigan, Iowa, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois. _Fameuse._--Illinois. _Newtown Pippin._--Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois. _Rambo._--Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois. _Smokehouse._--Virginia, Indiana. _Fallawalden._--Ohio. _Golden Russet._--Ohio, Illinois. _Wine Sap._--Ohio, Illinois. _White Bellflower._--Missouri, Illinois. _Holland Pippin._--Michigan, Missouri, Indiana. _Raule's Janet._--Iowa, Virginia, Illinois. _Lady Apple._--Ohio, Missouri. For the value of these varieties, in the states mentioned, you have the authority of the best pomological societies. The several states are mentioned so frequently, that it will be seen that most of them are adapted to all the states. Attend to acclimation and manure, and guard against insects, and they will all flourish, in all parts of the West and of the Union. APRICOT. This is a fruit about half-way between a peach and a plum. The stone is like the plum, and the flesh rather more like the peach. It is esteemed, principally, because it comes earlier in the season than anything else of the kind. It is used as a dessert-fruit, for preserving, drying, and various purposes in cookery. It does well on plum-stock, and best in good deep, moist loam, manured as the peach and plum. The best varieties produce their like from the seed. Seedlings are more hardy than any grafted trees. Grafts on plums are much better than on the peach. The latter seldom produce good hardy, thrifty trees, although many persist in trying them. The apricot is a favorite tree for espalier training against walls and fences, in small yards, where it bears luxuriantly. It also makes a good handsome standard tree for open cultivation. It is as much exposed to depredations from curculio as the plum, and must be treated in the same way. Cultivation same as peach. It produces its fruit, like the peach, only on wood of the previous year's growth; hence it must be pruned like the peach. Especially must it be headed in well, to secure the best crop. _Varieties_ are quite numerous, a few of which only deserve cultivation. Any of the nine following varieties are good:-- BROWN'S EARLY.--Yellow, with red cheek. A very productive, great grower. NEWHALL'S EARLY.--Bright-orange color, with deep-red cheek. A good cling-stone variety, every way worthy of cultivation. MOORPARK.--Yellow, with ruddy cheek. An enormous bearer, though of slow growth. It is a freestone variety of English origin, and needing a little protection in our colder latitudes. DUBOIS' EARLY GOLDEN.--Color, pale-orange. Very hardy and productive. In 1846, the original tree at Fishkill, N. Y., bore ninety dollars' worth of fruit. LARGE EARLY.--Orange, but red in the sun. An excellent, early, productive variety. HEMSKIRKE.--Bright-orange, with red cheek. An English variety, vigorous tree, and good bearer. PEACH.--Yellow, with deep-brown on the sun-side. An excellent French variety. BREDA.--Deep-orange, with blush spots in the sun. A vigorous, productive, African variety. ROMAN.--Pale-yellow, with occasionally red dots. Good for northern latitudes. From these, planters may select those that best suit their localities and fancy. They are a little liable to be frost-bitten in the blossoms, as they bloom very early. Otherwise they are always very productive. They are ornamental, both in the leaf and in the blossom. Eaten plain, before thoroughly ripe, they are not healthy; otherwise, harmless and delicious. Every garden should have half a dozen. ARTICHOKE. There are two plants known by this name. The Jerusalem artichoke, so called, not from Jerusalem in Palestine, but a corruption of the Italian name which signifies the tuber-rooted sunflower. The tubers are only used for pickling. They make a very indigestible pickle, and the plant is injurious to the garden, so they had better not be raised. The artichoke proper grows something like a thistle, bearing certain heads, that, at a particular stage of their growth, are fine for food. The soil should be prepared as for asparagus, only fifteen inches deep will do well. The plot of ground should be where the water will not stand on it at any time in the winter, as it will on most level gardens. This will kill the roots. When a new bed is made with slips from old plants, carefully separate vigorous shoots, remove superfluous leaves, plant five inches deep in rows five feet apart, and two feet apart in the rows. Keep very clean of weeds. The first year, some pretty good, though not full-sized heads will be produced. Plant fresh beds each year, and you will have good heads from July to November. Small heads will grow out along the stalk like the sunflower. Remove most of these small ones when they are about the size of hens' eggs, and the others will grow large. When the scales begin to diverge, but before the blossoms come out, is the time to cut them for use. Lay brush over them to prevent suffocation, and cover with straw in winter, to protect from severest cold. Too much warmth, however, is more injurious than frost. Spring-dress much like asparagus. Remove from each plant all the stocks but two or three of the best. Those removed are good for a new bed. A bed, properly made, will last four or five years. To save seed, bend down a few good heads, so as to prevent water from standing in them; tie them to a stake, until the seed is matured. But, like Early York cabbage, imported seed is better. The usual way of serving them is, the full heads boiled. In Italy the small heads are cut up, with oil, salt, and pepper. This vegetable would be a valuable accession to American kitchen gardens. ASHES. Are one of the best applications to the soil, for almost all plants. Leeched ashes are a valuable manure, but not equal to unleached. Few articles about a house or farm should be saved with greater care. Be as choice of them as of your small change. They are worth three times as much on the land as they can be sold for other purposes. On corn, at first hoeing, they are nearly equal to plaster. On onions and vines, they promote the growth and keep off the insects. Sprinkle on dry, when plants are damp, but not too wet. Do not put wet ashes on plants, or water while the ashes are on. It will kill them. Mix ashes and plaster with other manures, and their power will be greatly increased. Mixed in manure of hot-beds, they accelerate the heat. On sour land they are equal to lime for correcting the acidity. ASPARAGUS. This is a universal favorite in the vegetable garden. By the application of sand and compost, the soil should be kept loose, to allow the sprouts to spring easily from the crowns. Propagation is best effected by seed, transplanting after one year's growth. Older roots divided and transplanted are of some value, but not equal to young roots, nor will they last as long. _Preparation of the soil_ for an asparagus-bed is most important to success. Dig a trench on one edge of the plat designed for the bed, and the length of it, eighteen inches wide and two feet deep. Put in the bottom one foot of good barn-yard manure, and tread down. Then spade eighteen inches more, by the side of and as deep as the other, throwing the soil upon the manure in the trench. Fill with manure and proceed as before, and so until the whole plat has been trenched; then wheel the earth from the first ditch to the other side and fill into the last trench, thus making all level. If there is danger that water will stand in the bottom, drain by a blind ditch. If this is objected to as too expensive, let it be remembered that such a bed, with a little annual top-dressing, will be good for twenty years, which is the age at which asparagus-plants begin to deteriorate; then a new bed should be ready to take its place. _Planting._--Mark the plat into beds five feet wide, leaving paths two feet wide between them. In each bed put four rows lengthwise, which will be just fifteen inches apart, and set plants fifteen inches apart in the row. Dig a trench six inches wide and six inches deep for each row; put an inch of rich mould in the bottom; set the plants on the mould, with the roots spread naturally, with the ends pointing a little downward. Be very particular about the position of the roots. Fill the trench, and round it up a little with well-mixed soil and fine manure. The bed is then perfect, and will improve for many years. _After-Culture._--In the fall, after the frost has killed the stalks, cut them down and burn them on the bed. Cover the bed with fine rotted manure, to the depth of two inches, and one half-bushel salt to each square rod. As soon as frost is out in spring, with a fork work the top-dressing into the soil to the depth of four inches, and stir the soil to the depth of eight inches between the rows, using care not to touch the crowns of the roots with the fork. _Cutting_ should never be performed until the third year. Set out the plants when one year old, let them grow one year in the bed, and the next year they will be fit to cut. Cut all the shoots at a suitable age, up to the last days of June. The shoots should be regularly cut just below the surface, when they are four or six inches high. If you are tempted to cut after the 25th of June, leave two or three thrifty shoots to each root, to grow up for seed, or you will weaken the plants, and they will die in winter. This is the reason why so many vacancies are seen in many asparagus beds. This plant may be forced in hotbeds, so as to yield an abundance of good shoots long before they will start in the open air, affording an early luxury to those who can afford it. This vegetable is equal or superior to green peas, and by taking all the pains recommended above, in the beginning, an abundance can be raised for twenty years, on the same bed, at a very trifling cost. Early radishes and other vegetables can be raised, between the rows, without any harm to the asparagus. BALM. This is a medicinal plant, very useful, and easily raised. A strong infusion of the leaves, drank freely for some time by a nervous, hypochondriacal person, is, perhaps, better than any other medicine. It is also good in flatulency and fevers. Its _propagation_ is by slips or roots. It is perennial, affording a supply for many years. Gather just as the blossoms are appearing, and dry quickly in a slow oven, or in the shade. Press and do up in white papers, and keep in a tight, dry drawer, until needed for use. BARBERRY. [Illustration: Barberries.] A prickly shrub, from five to ten feet high, growing wild in this country and in Europe, on poor, hard soils, or in moist situations, by walls, stones, or fences. Its _propagation_ is by seeds, suckers, or offshoots. This shrub is used for jellies, tarts, pickles, &c. Preserves made of equal parts of barberry and sweet apples, or outer-part of fine water-melons, are very superior. It is also one of the best shrubs for hedge. The bark has much of the tannin principle, and with the wood, is used for coloring yellow. Shrub, blossoms, and fruit, are quite ornamental, forming a beautiful hedge, but rather inclined to spread. Will do well on any land and in any situation. The discussion in New England about its blasting contiguous fields of grain, is about as sensible as the old witchcraft mania. Every garden should have two or three. BARLEY. Does best on land which was hoed the previous year. If properly tilled, such land is rich, free from weeds, and easily pulverized. Sod, plowed deep in the fall, rolled early in the spring, well harrowed, the seed sown and harrowed in, and all rolled level, will produce a good crop. Two bushels of seed should be sowed on an acre, unless the land be very rich; in that case, one half-bushel less. Essential to a good crop is rain about the time of heading and filling. Hence early sowing is always surest. In many parts of the country it is of little use to sow barley, unless it be gotten in VERY EARLY. In not more than one season in twelve can you get a good crop of barley from late sowing in all the middle and western states. Barley is more favorably affected than any other grain, by soaking twenty-four hours before sowing, and mixing with dry ashes. A weak solution of nitre is best for soaking the seed. _Varieties_ are two, four, and six rowed. The two-rowed grows the tallest, and is most conveniently harvested. It is controverted whether the six-rowed variety yields the largest crop to the acre. If the weather be dry, and the worms attack the young plants, rolling when two or three inches high, with a heavy roller, will save and increase the crop. Rolling is a great help to the harvesting, as it levels the surface. _Harvesting_ should always be attended to just as it turns, but by all means before the straw becomes dry. If it stands up, cut with cradle or reaper, and bind. If lodged, cut with a scythe, and cure in small cocks like clover. Standing until very ripe, or lying scattered until quite dry, is very wasteful. _Products_ are all the way from fifteen to seventy bushels to the acre, according to season and cultivation. Reasonable care will secure an average annual crop of forty-five or fifty bushels per acre, which makes it a profitable crop while the demand continues. It is a good crop for ground feed for all animals, the beards being a little troublesome when fed whole. The straw is one of the very best for animals. Barley requires the use of the land only ninety days, leaving it in good condition for fall-grain. _Used_ for malting, and for food for men and beasts. It makes handsome flour and good bread. Hulled, it is a better article of food than rice. It succeeds well on land not stiff and tenacious enough for wheat, or moist and cool enough for oats. If farmers should raise only for malt, the nation would become drunk and poor on beer, and the market would be ruined. But raised as food, it is one of the most profitable agricultural products. BARNS. A barn should always front the north. The yard for stock should be on the south side, with tight fences for protection on the east and west. As this is designed for winter use, it is a great saving of comfort to the creatures. The barn-yard should be hollowed out by excavation, until four or five feet lower in the centre than on the edges. The border should be nearly level, inclining slightly toward the centre, to allow the liquid in the yard to run into it for purposes of manure. The front of a barn should be on the summit of a small rise of ground, to allow water to run away from the door, to prevent mud. In hilly countries it is very convenient to build barns by hills, so as to allow hay and grain to be drawn in near the top, and be thrown down, instead of being pitched up. These general principles are sufficient for all ordinary barns. Those who are able to build expensive barns had better build them circular, eight or sixteen square, and one hundred feet in diameter--the lower part, to top of stable, of stone. Let the stable extend all around next to the wall, and a floor over the stable, that teams may be driven all around to pitch into the bays, and upon the mows and scaffolds, at every point. Thus teams may go round and out the door at which they entered. Such a floor will accommodate several teams at the same time. The cellar should be in the centre, surrounded by the stable. Such a cellar would never freeze, and would hold roots enough for one hundred head of cattle, which the stable would easily accommodate. Let the mangers be around next the cellar, for convenience of feeding. Such a barn would be more convenient for a dairy of one hundred cows, or for winter-fattening of cattle, than any other form. It would cost no more than many barns in western New York that are not half as convenient. BEANS. These are divided into two classes--pole and bush beans. They are subdivided into many varieties. We omit the English, or horse-bean, as being less valuable, for any purpose, than our well-known beans or peas. Pole beans are troublesome to raise, and are only grown on account of excellence of quality, and to have successive gatherings from the same vines. Pole beans are only used for horticultural purposes. _Field-Beans._--For general culture there are three varieties of white--small, medium, and large. Of all known beans, we prefer the medium white. The China bean, white with a red face, is an early variety. All ripen nearly at the same time. It cooks almost as soon as a potato, and is good for the table; but it is less productive, and less saleable because not wholly white. For planting among corn, as for a very late crop, this bean is valuable, because it matures in so short a time. Good beans may be raised among corn, without injury to the corn-crop. This can only be done when it is designed to cultivate the corn but one way. Many fail in attempts to grow beans among corn, by planting them at first hoeing. The corn, having so much the start, will shade the beans and nearly destroy them. But plant at the same time of the corn, and they will mature before the corn will shade them much, and not be in the way even of the ordinary crop of pumpkins. But double-cropping land in this way, at any time, is of very doubtful utility. A separate plat of ground for each crop, in nearly all cases, is the most economical. To raise a good crop of beans, prepare the soil as thoroughly as for any other crop. Beans will mature on land so poor and hard as to be almost worthless for other crops. But a rich, mellow soil is as good for beans as anything else, though not so indispensable. Drill in with a planter as near together as possible, and allow a cultivator to pass between them. One bushel to the acre on ordinary land, and three fourths of a bushel on very rich land, is about the quantity of seed requisite. Hoe and cultivate them while young. Late cultivation is useless--more so than on most other crops. Beans should not be much hilled in hoeing, and should never be worked when wet. All plants with a rough stalk, like the bean, potato, and vine, are greatly injured, sometimes ruined, by having the earth stirred around them when they are wet, or even damp. Beans are usually pulled; this should be done when the latest pods are full-grown, but not dry. Place them in small bunches on the ground with the roots up. If the weather be dry, they need not be moved until time to draw them in. If the weather be damp, they should be stacked loosely in small stacks around poles, and covered with straw on the top, to shed rain. Always haul in when very dry. Avoid stacking if possible, for they are always wasted rapidly by moving. In drawing in, keep the rack under them covered with blankets to save those that shell. In pulling beans, be sure and take hold below the pods, otherwise the pods will crack; and although no harm appears then to be done, yet, when they dry, every pod that has been squeezed by pulling, will turn wrong side out, and the contents be wasted. If your beans are part ripe and the remainder green, and it is necessary to pull them to save the early ones, or guard against frost, when the ripe ones are dry, thrash them lightly. This will shell all the ripe ones, and none of the green ones. Put the straw upon a scaffold and thrash again in winter. Thus you will save all, and have beautiful beans. Bean-straw should always be kept dry for sheep in winter; it is equal to hay. _Garden-Beans._--There are many varieties, a few of which only should be cultivated. Having the best, there is no object in raising an inferior quality. The best early string-bean is the Early Mohawk; it will stand a pretty smart spring-frost without injury; comes early, and is good. Early Yellow, Early Black, and Quaker, or dun-colored, are also early and good. Refugee, or Thousand-to-one, are the best string-beans known; have a round, crisp, full, succulent pod; come as soon as the Mohawks are out of the way; and are very productive. Planted in August, they are excellent until frost; the very best for pickling. For an early shell-bean we recommend the China red-face; the white kidney and numerous other varieties are less certain and productive. _Running Beans_ are numerous. The true Lima, very large, greenish, when ripe and dry, is the richest bean known; is nearly as good in winter, cooked in the same way, as when shelled green. They are very productive, continuing in blossom till killed by frost. In warm countries they grow for years, making a tree, or growing like a large grapevine. The London Horticultural--called also Speckled Cranberry, and Wild Goose--is a very rich variety. The only objection is the difficulty of shelling; one only can be removed at once, because of the tenderness of the pod. The Carolina or butter bean often passes for the Lima. It has similar pods, the bean is of similar shape, but always white, instead of greenish like the Lima, and smaller, earlier, and of inferior quality. The Scarlet Runner, formerly only grown as an ornament on account of its great profusion of scarlet blossoms continuing until frost, is a very productive variety; pods very large and very succulent, making an excellent string-bean; a rich variety when dry, but objectionable on account of their dark color. The Red and the White Cranberries, Dutch Caseknife, and many other varieties, have good qualities, but are inferior to those mentioned above. Beans may be forwarded in hotbeds, by planting on sods six inches square, put bottom-up on the hotbed, and covered with fine mould; plant four beans on each sod; when frost is gone, remove the sod in the hill beside the pole, previously set, leave only two pole-beans to grow in a hill; they will always produce more than a greater number. A shrub six feet high, with the branches on, is better than a pole for any running bean; nearly twice as many will grow on a bush as on a pole. Use a crowbar for setting poles, or drive a stake down first, and set poles very deep, or they will blow down and destroy the beans. BEES AND BEEHIVES. The study of the honey-bee has been pursued with interest from remote ages. A work on bees, by De Montfort, published at Antwerp in 1649, estimates the number of treatises on this subject, before his time, at between five and six hundred. As that was two hundred and eight years ago, the number has probably increased to two thousand or more. We have some knowledge of the character of these early works, as far back as Democritus, four hundred and sixty years before the Christian era. The great men of antiquity gave particular attention to study and writing on the honey-bee.--Among them we notice Aristotle, Plato, Columella, Pliny, and Virgil. At a later period, we have Huber, Swammerdam, Warder, Wildman, _&c._ In our own day, we have Huish, Miner, Quinby, Weeks, Richardson, Langstroth, and a host of others. For the first two thousand years from the date of these works, the bee was treated mainly as a curious insect, rather than as a source of profit and luxury to man. And although Palestine was eulogized as a land flowing with milk and honey, before the Hebrews took possession of it, yet the science of _bee-culture_ was wholly unknown. In the earliest attention to bees, they were supposed to originate in the concentrated aroma of the sweetest and most beautiful flowers. Virgil, and others of his time, supposed them to come from the carcasses of dead animals. But the remarkable experiments of Huber, sixty years ago, developed many facts respecting their origin and economy. Subsequent observers have added still more to the stock of our knowledge respecting these wonderful creatures. The different stages of growth, from the minute egg of the queen to a full grown bee, and the precise time occupied by each, are well established. The three classes of bees, in every perfect colony, and the offices of each; their mechanical skill in constructing the different sized and shaped cells, for honey, for raising drones, workers, and queens, all differing according to the purposes for which they are intended; the wars of the queens, and their sovereignty over their respective colonies; the methods by which working-bees will raise a young queen, when the old one is destroyed, out of the larvae of common bees; the peculiar construction and situation of the queen cells; and, above all, the royal jelly (differing from everything else in the hive) which they manufacture for the food of young queens; the manner in which they ventilate their hives by a swift motion of their wings, causing the buzzing noise they make in a summer evening; their method of repairing broken comb, and building fortifications, before their entrances, at certain times, to keep out the sphinx--all these curious matters are treated fully in many of our works on bees. But we must forego the pleasure of presenting these at length, it being our sole object to enable all who follow our directions, so to manage bees as to render them profitable. In preparing the brief directions that follow, we have most carefully studied all the works, American and foreign, to which we could get access. Between this article and the best of those works there will be found a general agreement, except as it respects beehives. We present views of hives, that we are not aware have ever been written. The original idea, or new principle (which consists in constructing the hive with the entrance near the top), was suggested to us by Samuel Pierce, Esq., of Troy, N. Y., who is the great American inventor of cooking-ranges and stoves. We have carefully considered the principle in its various relations to the habits of the bee, and believe it correct. To most of our late works on honey-bees we have one serious objection: it is, that they bear on their face the evidence of having been written to make money, by promoting the sale of some patent hive. These works all have a little in common that is interesting; the remainder seems designed to oppose some former patent and commend a new one. They thus swell their volumes to a troublesome and expensive size, with that which is of no use to practical men. A work made to fight a patent, or to sell one, can not be reliable. The requisites to successful bee-management are the following:-- 1. Always have large, strong swarms. Such only are able successfully to contend with their enemies. This is done by uniting weak swarms, or sending back a young, feeble swarm when it comes out (as herein after directed). 2. Use medium-sized hives. In too large hives, bees find it difficult to guard their territories. They also store up more honey than they need, and yield less to the cultivator. The main box should be one foot square by fifteen inches high. Make hives of new boards; plane smooth and paint white on the outside. The usual direction is to leave the inside rough, to aid in holding up the honey, but to plane the inside edges so as to make close joints. We counsel to plane the inside of the hive smooth, and draw a fine saw lightly length wise of the boards, to make the comb adhere. This will be a great saving of the time of bees, when it is worth the most in gathering honey. They always carry out all the sawdust from the inside of their hives. Better save their time by planing it off. 3. To prevent robberies among bees, when a weak colony is attacked, close their entrances so that but one bee can pass at once, and they will then take care of themselves. To prevent a disposition to pillage, place all your hives in actual contact, on the sides, and make a communication between them, but not large enough to allow bees to pass. This will give the same scent to the whole, and make them feel like one family. Bees distinguish strangers only by the smell: hence, so connected, they will not quarrel or pillage. 4. Comb is usually regarded better for not being more than two or three years old. The usual theory is, that cells fill up by repeated use, and, becoming smaller, render the bees raised in them diminutive. This is not probable, as a known habit of the bee is to clean out the cells before reusing them. Huber demonstrated that bees raised in drone-cells (which are always larger than for workers) grew no larger than in their own natural cells. And as bees build their cells the right size at first, it is probable they keep them so. Quinby assures us that bees have been grown twenty years in the same comb, and that the last were as large as the first. But for other reasons, it is better to change the comb. In all ordinary cases, it is better to transfer the swarm to a new hive every third year. Many think it best to use hives composed of three sections, seven and a half inches deep each, screwed together with strips of wood on the sides, and the top screwed on that it may easily be removed; thick paper or muslin should be pasted around, on the places of intersection, to guard against enemies; the two lower sections only allowed to contain bees--the upper one being designed for the honey-boxes, to be removed. Each spring, after two years old, the lower section is taken out and a new one put on the top, the cover of the old one having been first removed. This is the old "pyramidal beehive," which is the title of a treatise on bees, by P. Ducouedic, translated from the French and abridged by Silas Dinsmore in 1829. This has recently been revived and patented as a new thing. We think with Quinby, that these hives are too expensive and too complicated, and that the great mass of cultivators will succeed best with hives of simple construction. 5. Allowing bees to swarm in their own time and way is better than all artificial multiplication of colonies. If there are no small trees near the apiary, place bushes, upon which the bees will usually light, when they come out. If they seem determined to go away without lighting, throw sand or dust among them; this produces confusion, and causes them to settle near. The practice of ringing bells and drumming on tin, &c., is usually ridiculed; but we believe it to be useful, and that on philosophic principles. The object to be secured is to confuse the swarm and drown the voice of the queen. The bees move only with their queen; hence, if anything prevents them from hearing her, confusion follows, and the swarm lights: therefore, any noise among them may answer the purpose, and save the swarm. To hive bees, place them on a clean white cloth, and set the hive over them, raised an inch or two by blocks under the corners. It is said that a little sweetened water or honey, applied to the inside of the hive, will incline the bees to remain. The best preparation is to fasten a piece of new white comb on the top of the inside of the hive. This is done by dipping the end of a piece of comb in melted beeswax, and sticking it to the top. Bees should never be allowed to send off more than two colonies in one season. To restrict them to one is still better. Excessive swarming is a precursor of destruction, rather than an evidence (as usually regarded) of prosperity. A given number of bees will make far less honey in two hives than in one, unless they are so numerous as greatly to crowd the hive. When a late swarm comes out, take away the queen, and they will immediately return. Any one may easily find the queen: she is always in the centre of the bunch into which the swarm collects on lighting. If they form two or three clusters, it is because they have that number of queens. Then all the queens should be destroyed. The following cuts of the three classes of bees will enable one to distinguish the queen. [Illustration: Working Bee. Queen. Drone.] The queen is sometimes, but not always, larger than the common bee; but her body is always longer, and blackish above and yellowish underneath. To unite any two swarms together, turn the hive you wish to empty bottom-up, and place the one into which you would have them go on the top of the other, with their mouths together; then tie a cloth around, at the place of intersection, to prevent the egress of the bees. Gently rap the lower hive on all sides, near the bottom, gradually rising until you reach the top of the lower hive, and all the bees will go into the upper one. In the same way, it is easy to remove a colony into a new hive, whenever you think they need changing. This should be performed in the dusk of the evening, and need occupy no more than half an hour. The hive should then be put in its place. Uniting weak new swarms, may be done whenever they come out; but changing a swarm from an old hive to a new one should be performed as early as the middle of June. If moths get in, change hives at any time when it is warm enough for bees to work, and give them all the honey in their old hive. If you discover moths too late for the bees to build comb in a new hive, take the queen from the hive infested with moths, and place it where the bees will unite with another colony, and feed them all the honey from the deserted hive. This, or the destruction of the bees and saving the honey, is always necessary, when moth-worms are in possession, unless they are so near the bottom, that all the comb around them may be cut out. Bees are fond of salt. Always keep some on a board near them. They also need water. If a rivulet runs near the apiary, it is well. If not, place water in shallow pans, with pebbles in them, on which the bees can stand to drink. Change the water daily. It is too late to speak of the improvidence of killing bees, to get their honey. Use boxes of any size or construction you choose. In common hives, boxes should be attached to the sides, and not placed on the top. It is a wasteful tax upon the time and strength of loaded bees, to make them travel through the whole length of the hive, into boxes on the top. Place boxes as near as possible to their entrance or below that entrance. Bees should be kept out of the boxes until they have pretty well filled the hive, or they may begin to raise young bees in the boxes. _Wintering bees_ successfully, is one of the most difficult matters in bee-culture. Two evils are to be guarded against, dampness and suffocation. Excessive dampness, sometimes causes frost about the entrance that fills it up and suffocation ensues. Sometimes snow falls, or is blown over the entrance, and the bees die in a few hours for the want of air. Many large colonies, with plenty of honey, are thus destroyed. Dampness is very injurious to bees on other accounts. In a good bee-house there is no danger from snow, and little from dampness. Bees, not having honey enough for winter, should be fed in pleasant fall weather, after they have nearly completed the labors of the season. Weighing hives is unnecessary. A moderate degree of judgment will determine whether a swarm has a sufficient store for winter. If not, feed them. Never give bees dry sugar. They take up their food, as an elephant does water in his trunk; it, therefore, should be in a liquid form. Boil good sugar for ten minutes in ale or beer, leaving it about as thick as honey. Put it in a feed trough; which should be flat-bottomed. Fasten together thin slats, one fourth of an inch apart, so as to fit the inside of the feed trough and lie on the surface of the liquid, so as to rise and fall with it. Put this in a box and attach it to the hive, as for taking box-honey, and the bees will work it all up. Put out-door, it tempts other bees, and may lead to quarrels, and robbery. It is not generally known, that a good swarm of bees may be destroyed, by feeding them plenty of honey, early in the spring. They carry it in and fill up their empty cells and leave no room for raising young bees; hence the whole is ruined for want of inhabitants, to take the places of those that get destroyed, or die of age. To winter bees well, utterly exclude the light during all the cold weather, until it becomes so warm, that they will not get so chilled when out that they can not return. Intense cold is not injurious to bees, provided they are kept in the hive and are dry. A large swarm, will not eat two pounds of honey during the whole cold winter, if kept from the light. When tempted out, every warm day they come into the sunshine and empty themselves, and return to consume large quantities of honey. Kept in the dark, they are nearly torpid, eat but a mere trifle, and winter well. Whatever your hive or house, then, keep your bees entirely from the light, in cold weather. This is the only reason why bees keep so well in a dark dry cellar, or buried in the ground, with something around them, to preserve them from moisture, and a conductor through the surface, to admit fresh air. It is not because it keeps out the cold, but because it excludes the light, and renders the bees inactive. Gilmore's patent bee-house, is a great improvement on this account. Of the diseases of bees, such as dysentery, &c., we shall not treat. All that can profitably be done, to remedy these evils, is secured by salt, water, and properly-prepared food, as given above. But the great question in bee-culture is, How to prevent the depredation of the wax-moth? To this subject, much study has been given, and respecting it many theories have been advanced. The following suggestions are, to us, the most satisfactory. The miller, that deposites the egg, which soon changes to the worm, so destructive in the beehive, commences to fly about, at dark. In almost every country-house, they are seen about the lights in the evening. They are still during all the day. They are remarkably attracted by lights in the evening. Hence our first rule:-- 1. Place a teasaucer of melted lard or oil, with a piece of cotton flannel for a wick, in or near the apiary at dusk; light it and allow it to burn till near morning, expiring before daylight. This done every night during the month of June, will be very effectual. 2. Keep grass and weeds away from the immediate vicinity of your apiary. Let the ground be kept clean and smooth. This destroys many of the hiding-places of the miller, and forces him away to spend the day. This precaution has many other advantages. 3. Keep large strong colonies. They will be able to guard their territories, and contend with this and all other enemies. 4. Never have any opening in a beehive near the bottom, during the season of millers (see Beehive). Let the openings be so small, that only one or two bees can pass at once. To accommodate the bees, increase the number of openings. Millers will seldom enter among a strong swarm, with such openings. All around the bottom, it should be so tight, that no crevice can be found, in which a miller can deposite an egg. Better plaster around, closely, with some substance, the place of contact between the hive and the board on which it stands, and keep it entirely tight during the time in which the millers are active. 5. If, through negligence, worms have got into a hive, examine it at once; and if they are near the bottom only, within sight and reach, cut out the comb around them, and remove them from the hive. If this is not practicable, transfer the swarm to a new hive, or unite it with another, without delay. 6. The great remedy for the moth is in the right construction of a BEEHIVE. Whatever the form of the hive you use, have the entrance within three or four inches of the top. Millers are afraid of bees; they will not go among them, unless they are in a weak, dispirited condition. They steal into the hive when the bees are quiet, up among the comb, or when they hang out in warm weather, but are still and quiet. If the hive be open on all sides (as is so often recommended), the miller enters on some side where the bees are not. Now bees are apt to go to the upper part of the hive and comb, and leave the lower part and entrance exposed. If the entrance be at the upper part, the bees will fill it and be all about it. A bee can easily pass through a cluster of bees, and enter or leave a hive; but a miller will never undertake it: this, then, will be a perfect safeguard against the depredations of the moth. This hive is better on every account. Moisture rises: in a hive open only at the bottom, it is likely to rise to the top of the hive and injure the bees; with the opening near the top it easily escapes. The objection that would be soonest raised to this suggestion is, that bees need a good circulation of fresh air, and such a hive would not favor it. To this we reply, a hive open near the top secures the best possible air to the swarm; any foul air has opportunity freely to escape. That peculiar humming heard in a hive in hot weather is produced by a certain motion of the wings of the bees, designed to expel vitiated air, and admit the pure, by keeping up a current. In the daytime, when the weather is hot, you will see a few bees near the entrance on the outside, and hear others within, performing this service, and, when fatigued, others take their place. This is one of the most wonderful things in all the habits and instincts of bees. They thus keep a pure atmosphere in a crowded hive in hot weather. Now, it would require much less fanning to expel bad air from a hive open at the top, than from one where all that air had to be forced down, through an opening at the bottom. This theory is sustained by the natural habits of bees in their wild state. Wild bees, that select their own abodes, are found in trees and crevices of rocks. They usually build their combs _downward_ from their entrance, and their abode is air-tight at the bottom; they have no air only what is admitted at their entrance, near the top of their dwelling, and with no current of air only what they choose to produce by fanning. The purest atmosphere in any room is where it enters and passes out at the top; in such a room only does the external atmosphere circulate naturally. It is on the same principle that bees keep better buried than in any other way, provided only they are kept dry. Yet they are in a place air-tight, except the small conductor to the atmosphere above them. The old "pyramidal beehive" of Ducouedic, with three sections, one above the other, allowing the removal of the lower one each spring, and the placing of a new one on the top--thus changing the comb, so that none shall ever be more than two years old, with the opening always within three or four inches of the top, is the best of the patent hives. We prefer plain, simple hives. The general adoption of this principle, whatever hives are used, would be a new era in the science of bee-culture. No beehive should ever be exposed to the direct rays of the sun in a beehouse. A hive standing alone, with a free circulation of air on every side, will not be seriously injured by the sun. But when the rays are intercepted by walls or boards, in the rear and on the sides, they are very disastrous. Other hints, such as clearing off occasionally, in all seasons except in the cold of winter, the bottom board, &c., are matters upon which we need not dwell. No cultivator would think of neglecting them. Let no one be alarmed at finding dead bees on the bottom when clearing out a hive; bees live only from five to seven months, and their places are then supplied with young ones. The above suggestions followed, and a little care taken in cultivating the fruits, grains, and grasses, that yield the best flowers for bees, _would secure uniform success_ in raising honey. This is one of the finest luxuries; and, what is a great desideratum, it is within the easy reach of every poor family, even, in all the rural districts of the land. Good honey, good vegetables, and good fruit, like rain and sunshine, may be the property of all. The design of this volume is to enable the poor and the unlearned to enjoy these things in abundance, with only that amount of care and labor necessary to give them a zest. BEETS. Of this excellent root there are quite a number of varieties. Mangel-Wurtzel yields most for field-culture, and is the great beet for feeding to domestic animals; not generally used for the table. French Sugar or Amber Beet is good for field-culture, both in quality and yield; but it is not equal to the Wurtzel. Yellow-Turnip-rooted, Early Blood-Turnip-rooted, Early Dwarf Blood, Early White Scarcity, and Long Blood, are among the leading garden varieties. Of all the beets, three only need be cultivated in this country--the Wurtzel for feeding, and the Early Blood Turnip-rooted and Long Blood for the table. The Early Blood is the best through the whole season, comes early, and can be easily kept so as to be good for the table in the spring. The Long Blood is later, and very much esteemed. Beets may be easily forwarded in hotbeds. Sow seed early, and transplant in garden as soon as the soil is warm enough to promote their growth. When well done, the removal retards their growth but little. Young beets are universally esteemed. To have them of excellent quality during all the winter, it is only necessary to plant on the last days of July. If the weather be dry, water well, so as to get them up, and they will attain the size and age at which they are most valued. Keep them in the cellar for use, as other beets. They will keep as well as old ones. _Field-Culture._--Make the soil very mellow, fifteen to eighteen inches deep. Soil having a little sand in its composition is always best. Even very sandy land is good if it be sufficiently enriched. Choose land on which water will not stand in a wet season. Beets endure drought better than extreme wet. Having made the surface perfectly mellow, and free from clods, weeds, and stones, sow in drills, with a machine for the purpose, two feet apart. This is wide enough for a small cultivator to pass between them. After planting, roll the surface smooth and level; this will greatly facilitate early cultivation. On a rough surface you can not cultivate small plants without destroying many of them; hence the necessity of straight rows and thorough rolling. The English books recommend planting this and other roots on ridges: for their climate it is good, but for ours it is bad. They have to guard against too much moisture, and we against drought; hence, they should plant on ridges, and we on an even surface. To get the largest crop, plow a deep furrow for each row, put in plenty of good manure, cover it with the plow and level the surface, and plant over the manure. When well growing, they should be thinned to six or eight inches in the row. Often stirring the earth while they are young is of great benefit. The quality and quantity of a root-crop depend much upon the rapidity of its growth. Slow growth gives harder roots of worse flavor, as well as a stinted crop. _Harvesting_ should be done just before severe frosts. They will grow until frost comes, however early they were planted, or whatever size they may have attained. They grow as rapidly after light frosts as at any time in the season; but very severe frosts expose them to rot during winter. _Preserving_ for table use is usually done by putting in boxes with moist sand, or the mould in which they grew. This excludes air, and, if kept a little moist, will preserve them perfectly. Roots are always better buried below frost out-door on a dry knoll, where water will not stand in the pits. But in cold climates it is necessary to have some in the cellar for winter use. The common method of burying beets, and turnips, and all other roots out-door, is well understood. The only requisites are, a dry location secured from frost, straw next the roots, a covering of earth, not too deep while the weather is yet mild; as it grows cold, put on another covering of straw, and over it a foot of earth; as it becomes very cold, put on a load or two of barnyard manure: this will save them beyond the power of the coldest winter. Vast quantities of roots buried outdoor are destroyed annually by frost, and there is no need of ever losing a bushel. You "_thought_ they would not freeze," is not half as good as spending two hours' time in covering, so that you _know_ they can not freeze. There is hardly a more provoking piece of carelessness, in the whole range of domestic economy, than the needless loss of so many edible roots by frost. _The table use_ of beets is everywhere known; their value for feeding animals is not duly appreciated in this country. No one who keeps domestic animals or fowls should fail to raise a beet-crop; it is one of the surest crops grown; it is never destroyed by insects, and drought affects it but very little. On good soil, beets produce an enormous weight to the acre. The lower leaves may be stripped off twice during the season, to feed to cows or other stock, without injury to the crop. Cows will give more milk for fifteen days, fed on this root alone, than on any other feed; they then begin to get too fat, and decline in milk: hence, they should be fed beets and hay or other food in about equal parts, on which they will do better than in any other way. Horses do better on equal parts of beet and hay than on ordinary hay and grain. Horses fed thus will fatten, needing only the addition of a little ground grain, when working hard. Plenty of beets, with a little other food, makes cows give milk as well as in summer. Raw beets cut fine, with a little milk, will fatten hogs as fast as boiled potatoes. All fowls are fond of them, chopped fine and mixed with other food. Sheep, also, are fond of them. They are very valuable to ewes in the spring when lambs come, when they especially need succulent food. The free use of this root by English farmers is an important reason of their great success in raising fine sheep and lambs. They promote the health of animals, and none ever tire of them. As it needs no cooking, it is the cheapest food of the root kind. Beets will keep longer, and in better condition, than any other root. They never give any disagreeable flavor to milk. It is considered established, now, that four pounds of beet equal in nourishment five pounds of carrot. Every large feeder should have a cellar beyond the reach of frosts, and of large dimensions, accessible at all times, in which to keep his roots. These beets should be piled up there as cord-wood, to give a free circulation of the air. In Germany, the beet-crop takes the place of much of their meadows, at a great saving of expense, producing remarkably fine horses, and fattening immense herds of cattle, which they export to France. We insist upon the importance of a beet-crop to every man who owns an acre of land and a few domestic animals, or only a cow and a few fowls. BENE PLANT. Introduced into the Southern states by negroes from Africa. They boil a handful of the seed with their allowance of Indian corn. It yields a larger proportion than any other plant of an excellent oil. It is extensively cultivated in Egypt as food for horses, and for culinary purposes. It is remarkable that this native of a southern clime should flourish well, as it does, in the Northern states. It should be cultivated throughout the North as a medicinal herb. A Virginia gentleman gave Thorburn & Son, seed-dealers of New York, the following account of its virtues: a few green leaves of the plant, plunged a few times in a tumbler of cold water, made it like a thin jelly, without taste or color. Children afflicted with summer-complaint drink it freely, and it is thought to be the best remedy for that disease ever discovered; it is believed that three thousand children were saved by it in Baltimore the first summer after its introduction. Plant in April, in the middle states, about two feet apart. When half grown, break off the plants, to increase the quantity of leaves. We recommend to all families to raise it, and try its virtues, under the advice of their family physicians. BIRDS. These are exceedingly useful in destroying insects. So of toads and bats. No one should ever be wantonly killed. Boys, old or young, should never be allowed to shoot birds, or disturb their nests, only as they would domestic fowls, for actual use. A wanton recklessness is exhibited about our cities and villages, in killing off small birds, that are of no use after they are dead. Living, they are valuable to every garden and fruit-orchard. In every state, stringent laws should be made and enforced against their destruction. Even the crow, without friends as he is, is a real blessing to the farmer: keep him from the young corn for a few days, as it is easy to do, and, all the rest of the year, his destruction of worms and insects is a great blessing. Birds, therefore, should be baited, fed, and tamed, as much as possible, to encourage them to feel at home on our premises. Having protected our small fruits, they claim a share, and they have not always a just view of the rights of property, nor do they always exhibit good judgment in dividing it. It is best to buy them off by feeding them with something else. If they still prefer the fruit, hang little bells in the trees, where they will make a noise; or hang pieces of tin, old looking-glass, or even shingles, by strings, so that they will keep in motion, and the birds will keep away. Images standing still are useless, as the birds often build nests in the pockets. BLACKBERRY. This berry grows wild, in great abundance, in many parts of the country. It has been so plentiful, especially in the newer parts, that its cultivation has not been much attended to until recently. Like all other berries, the cultivated bear the largest and best fruit. _Uses._--It is one of the finest desert berries; excellent in milk, and for tarts, pies, &c. Blackberries make the best vinegar for table use, and a wine that retains the peculiar flavor, and of a beautiful color. This berry comes in after the raspberries, and ripens long in succession on the same bush. [Illustration: High-bush Blackberry.] _Varieties_ of wild ones, usually found growing in the borders of fields and woods, are the low-bush and the high-bush. Downing gives the first place to the low. Our experience is, that the high is the best bearer of the best fruit. We have often gathered them one and one fourth inches in length, very black, and of delicious sweetness. The low ones that have come under our observation have been smaller and nearer round, and not nearly so sweet. The best cultivated varieties are-- THE DORCHESTER--Introduced from Massachusetts, and a vigorous, large, regular bearer. LAWTON, OR NEW ROCHELLE.--This is the great blackberry of this country, by the side of which, no other, yet known, need be cultivated. It is a very hardy, great grower. It is an enormous bearer of such fruit that it commands thirty cents per quart, when other blackberries sell for ten. On a rather moist, heavy loam, and especially in the shade, its productions are truly wonderful. Continues to ripen daily for six weeks. _Propagation_ is by offshoots from the old roots, or by seeds. When by seeds, they should be planted in mellow soil, and where the sun will not shine on them between eight and five o'clock in hot weather. In transplanting, much care is requisite. The bark of the roots is like evergreens, very tender and easily broken, or injured by exposure to the atmosphere; hence, take up carefully, and keep covered from sun and air until transplanted. This is destined to become one of the universally-cultivated small fruits--as much so as the strawberry. The best manures are, wood-ashes, leaves, decayed wood, and all kinds of coarse litter, with stable manure well incorporated with the soil, before transplanting. Animal manure should not be very plentifully applied. We have seen in Illinois a vigorous bush, and apparently good bearer, of perfect fruit--a variety called _white blackberry_. The fruit was greenish and pleasant to the taste. BLACK RASPBERRY. The common wild, found by fences, especially in the margin of forests, in most parts of the United Sates, is very valuable for cultivation in gardens. Coming in after the red raspberry, and ripening in succession until the blackberry commences, it is highly esteemed. Cultivated with little animal manure, but plenty of sawdust, tan-bark, old leaves, wood, chips, and coarse litter, it improves very much from its wild state. Fruit is all borne on bushes of the previous year's growth; hence, after they have done bearing, cut away the old bushes. To secure the greatest yield on rich land, cut off the tops of the shoots rising for next year's fruit, when they are four or five feet high. The result will be, strong shoots from behind all the leaves on the upper part of the stalk, each of which will bear nearly as much fruit as would the whole have done without clipping. A dozen of these would occupy but a small place in a border, or by a wall. Not an American garden should be found without them. BONES. Bones are one of the most valuable manures. They yield the phosphates in large measure. On all land needing lime, they are very valuable. The heads, &c., about butchers' shops will bear a transportation of twenty miles to put upon meadows. Break them with the head of an axe, and pound them into the sod, even with the surface. They add greatly to the products of a meadow. Ground, they make one of the best manures of commerce. A cheap method for the farmer is to deposite a load of horse-manure, and on that a load of bones, and alternate each, till he has used up all his bones. Cover the last load of bones deep with manure. It will make a splendid hotbed, and the fermentation of the manure will dissolve or pulverize the bones, and the heap will become one mass of the most valuable manure, especially for roots and vines, and all vegetables requiring a rich, fine manure. BORECOLE, OR KALE. There are some fifteen or twenty kinds cultivated in Europe. Two only, the green and the brown, are desirable in this country. Cultivate as cabbage. In portions of the middle states they will stand the frosts of winter well, without much protection; further north, they need protection with a little brush and straw during severe frosts. Those grown on rather hard land are better for winter; being less succulent, they endure cold better. Cut them off for use whenever you choose. They do not head like cabbage; they have full bunches of curled leaves. Cut off so as to include all, not over eight inches long. In winter, after having been pretty well exposed to the frost, they are very fine. Set out the stumps early in spring, and they will yield a profusion of delicious sprouts. This would be a valuable addition to many of our kitchen gardens. BROCCOLI. This may be regarded as a late flowering species of cauliflower. It should be planted and treated as cabbage, and fine heads will be formed, in the middle states, in October: at the South much earlier, according to latitude. Take up in November, and preserve as cabbage, and good ones may be had in winter. To prevent ravages of insects, mix ashes in the soil when transplanting, or fresh loam or earth from a new field; or trench deep, so as to throw up several inches of subsoil, which had not before been disturbed. To save seed, transplant some of the best in spring; break off all the lower sprouts, allowing only a few of the best centre ones to grow. Tie them to stakes, to prevent destruction by storms. Be sure to have nothing else of the cabbage kind near your seed broccoli. BROOM CORN. Cultivated like other corn, only that this is more generally planted in drills. Three feet apart, and six inches in the drill, it yields more weight of better corn to the acre than to have it nearer. The great fault in raising this crop is getting it too thick. The finest-looking brush is of corn cut while yet so green that the seed is useless. But the brush is stronger, and will make better brooms for wear, when the corn is allowed to stand until the seed is hard, though not till the brush is dry. The land should be rich. This is a hard, exhausting crop for the soil. To harvest, bend down, two feet from the ground, two rows, allowing them so to fall across each other as to expose all the heads. Cut off the heads, with six or eight inches of the stalk, and place them on top of the bent rows to dry. In a week, in dry weather, they will be well cured, and should be then spread thin, under cover, in plenty of air. There is no worse article to heat and mould. In large crops, they usually take off the seed before curing; it is much lighter to handle, and less bulky. It may be done then, or in winter, as you prefer. The seed is removed on a cylinder eighteen inches long, and two and a half feet in diameter, having two hundred wrought nails with their points projecting. It is turned by a crank, like a fanning mill. The corn is held in a convenient handful, like flax on a hatchel. Where large quantities are to be cleaned of the seed, power is used to turn the machine. Ground or boiled, the seed makes good feed for most animals. Dry, it has too hard a shell. Fowls, with access to plenty of gravel, do well on it. Broom-corn is not a very profitable crop, except to those who manufacture their own corn into brooms. There is much labor about it, and considerable hazard of injuring the crop, by the inexperienced; hence, young farmers had, generally, better let it alone. There are two varieties--they may be forms of growth, from peculiar habits of culture--one, short, with a large, stiff brush running up through the middle, with short branches to the top, called pine-top: it is of no value;--the other is a long, fine brush, the middle being no coarser than the outside. It should be planted with a seed-drill, to make the rows straight and narrow for the convenience of cultivation. Harrowing with a span of horses, with a =V= drag, one front tooth out, as soon as the corn is up, is beneficial to the crop. BRUSSELS SPROUTS. This is a species of cabbage. A long stem runs up, on which grow numerous cabbage-heads in miniature. The centre head is small and of little use, and the large leaves drop off early. It will grow among almost anything else, without injury to either. It is raised from seed like cabbage, and cultivated in all respects the same. Eighteen inches apart each way is a proper distance, as the plant spreads but little. Good, either as a cabbage, or when very small, as greens. They are good even after very hard frosts. By forwarding in hotbed in the spring, and by planting late ones for winter, they may be had most of the year. If they are disposed to run to seed too early, it may be prevented by pulling up, and setting out again in the shade. Save seed as from cabbage, but use great caution that they are not near enough to receive the farina from any of the rest of the cabbage-tribe. BUCKTHORN. This is the most valuable of the thorn tribe, for hedge, in this country. It never suffers from those enemies that destroy so much of the hawthorn. This is also used for dyeing and for medicine. BUCKWHEAT. This will grow well on almost any soil; even that too poor for most other crops will yield very good buckwheat--though rich land is better for this, as for all other crops. The heat of summer is apt to blast it when filling; hence, in the middle states, it is not best to sow it until into July. It fills well in cool, moist weather, and is quite a sure crop if sowed at the right time. On poor land, one bushel of seed is required for an acre, while half a bushel is sufficient on rich land, where stalks grow large. The blossoms yield to the honey-bee very large quantities of honey, much inferior to that made of white clover; it may be readily distinguished in the comb by its dark color and peculiar flavor. Ground, it is good for most animals, and for fowls unground, mixed with other grain. It remains long in land; but it is a weed easily killed with the hoe; or a farmer may set apart a small field for an annual crop, keeping up the land by the application of three pecks of plaster per acre each year. It is very popular as human food, and always made into pancakes. The free use of it is said to promote eruptive diseases. The India buckwheat is more productive, but of poorer quality. The bran is the best article known to mix with horse-manure and spade into radish beds, to promote growth and kill worms. BUDDING. This is usually given under the article on peaches. But, as it is a general subject, it should be in a separate article, reserving what is peculiar to the different fruits to be noticed under their respective heads. [Illustration: Budding.] Budding small trees should usually be performed very near the ground, and on a smooth place. Any sharp pocket-knife will do; but a regular budding knife, now for sale in most hardware-stores, is preferable. Cut through the bark in the form of a horizontal crescent (_a_ in the cut). Split the bark down from the cut three fourths of an inch, and, with the ivory-end of the knife, raise the corners and edges of the bark. Select a vigorous shoot of this year's growth, but having buds well matured--select a bud that bids fairest to be a leaf-bud, as blossom-buds will fail--insert the knife half an inch below the bud, and cut upward in a straight line, severing the bark and a thin piece of the wood to one half inch above the bud, and let the knife run out: you then have a bud ready for insertion (_c_ in cut). The English method is to remove the wood from the bud before inserting it; this is attended with danger to the vitality of the bud, and is, therefore, less certain of success, and it is no better when it does succeed. Hence, American authorities favor inserting the bud with the wood remaining. Insert the lower end of this slip between the two edges of the bark, passing the bud down between those edges, until the top of the slip comes below the horizontal cut, and remaining contiguous to it. If the bud slip be too long, after it is sufficiently pressed down, cut off the top so as to make a good fit with the bark above the cut (_b_ in cut). The lower end of the bud will have raised the split bark a little more to make room for itself, and thus will set very close to the stalk. Tie the bud in with a soft ligature; commence at the bottom of the split, and wind closely until the whole wound is covered, leaving only the bud exposed (_d_ in cut). It is more convenient to commence at the top, but it is less certain to confine the slip opposite the bud in close contact with the stalk: this is indispensable to success. We have often seen buds adhere well at the bottom, but stand out from the stalk, and thus be ruined. _Preparation of Buds._--Take thrifty, vigorous shoots of this year's growth, with well-matured buds; cut off the leaves one half inch from the stalks (_e_ in cut); wrap them in moist moss or grass, or put them in sawdust, or bury them one foot in the ground. _Bands._--The best yet known is the inside bark of the linden or American basswood. In June, when the bark slips easily, strip it from the tree, remove the coarse outside, immerse the inside bark in water for twenty days; the fibres will then easily separate, and become soft and pliable as satin ribbon. Cut it into convenient lengths, say one foot, and lay them away in a dry state, in which they will keep for years. This will afford good ties for many uses, such as bandages of vegetables for market, &c. Matting that comes around Russia iron and furniture does very well for bands; woollen yarn and candle-wicking are also used; but the bass-bark is best. After ten days the bands should be loosened and retied; then, if the bud is dried, it is spoiled, and the tree should be rebudded in another place; at the end of three weeks, if the bud adheres firmly, remove the band entirely. Better not bud on the south side; it is liable to injury in winter. In the spring, after the swelling of buds, but before the appearance of leaves, cut off the top four inches above the bud; when the bud grows, tie the tender shoot to the stalk (growing bud in cut, _f_). In July, cut the wood off even with the base of the bud and slanting up smoothly. _Causes of Failure._--If you insert a blossom-bud you will get no shoot, although the bud may adhere well. If scions cut for buds remain two hours in the sun with the leaves on, in a hot day, they will all be spoiled. The leaves draw the moisture from the bud, and soon ruin it. Cut the leaves off at once. If you use buds from a scion not fully grown, very few of them will live; they must be matured. If the top of the branch selected be growing and very tender, use no buds near the top of it. If in raising the bark to make room for the bud, you injure the soft substance between the bark and the wood, the bud will not adhere. If the bud be not brought in close contact with the stalk and firmly confined there, it will not grow. With reasonable caution on these points, not more than one in fifty need fail. _Time for Budding._--This varies with the season. In the latitude of central New York, in a dry season, when everything matures early, bud peaches from the 15th to the 25th of August--plums, &c., earlier. In wet and great growing seasons, the first ten days in September are best. Much budding is lost on account of having been done so late as to allow no time for the buds to adhere before the tree stops growing for the season. If budding is performed too early, the stalk grows too much over the bud, and it gums and dies. It is utterly useless to bud when the bark is with difficulty loosened; it is always a failure. BUSHES. The growth of bushes over pastures, along fences, and in the streets, shows a great want of thrift, and an unpardonable carelessness in a farmer. In pastures, so far from being harmless, they take so much from the soil as to materially injure the quality and quantity of the grass. The only truly effectual method of destroying noxious shrubs, is by grubbing them up with a mattock. Frequent cutting of bushes inclining to spread only increases the difficulty, by giving strength and extension to the roots. Cutting bushes thoroughly in August, in a wet season, and applying manure and plaster to promote the growth of grass, will sometimes quite effectually destroy them. Larger trees, as the sweet locust, that are troublesome on account of sprouting out from the roots, when cut down, are effectually killed by girdling two feet from the ground, and allowing to stand one year. The tree, roots, and all, are sure to die. BUTTER. Raising the cream, churning, working, and preserving, are the points in successful butter-making. To raise cream, milk may be set in tin, wood, or cast-iron dishes. The best are iron, tinned over on the inside. Tin is better than wood, only on account of its being more easily kept clean. No one can ever make good butter without keeping everything about the dairy perfectly clean and sweet. Milk should never stand more than three inches deep in the pans, to raise the best and most cream. It should be set in an airy room, containing nothing else. Butter and milk will collect and retain the flavor of any other substance near them, more readily than anything else; hence, milk set in a cellar containing onions, or in a room with new cheese, makes butter highly flavored with those articles. _Temperature_ is an important matter. It should be regular, at from fifty to fifty-five degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. It is sometimes difficult to be exact in this matter, but come as near it as possible. This can be well regulated in a good cool cellar, into which air can be plentifully admitted at pleasure. Those who are so situated that their milk-house can stand over a spring, with pure water running over its stone floor, are favored. Those who will take pains to lay ice in their milk-rooms, in very warm weather, will find it pay largely in the quality and quantity of their butter. Those who will not follow either of the above directions, must be content to make less butter, and of rather inferior quality, out of the same quantity of milk. _Skimming_ should be attended to when the milk has soured just enough to have a little of it curdle on the bottom of the pan. If it should nearly all curdle, it would not be a serious injury, unless it should become old. If you have not conveniences for keeping milk sufficiently warm in cold weather, place it over the stove at once, when drawn, and give it a scalding heat, and the cream will rise in a much shorter space of time, and more plentifully. Milk should be strained and set as soon as possible after being drawn from the cow, and with the least possible agitation. The unpleasant flavor imparted to milk from the food of the cows, such as turnips or leeks, may be at once removed by adding to the milk, before straining, one eighth of its quantity of boiling water; or two ounces of nitre boiled in one quart of water and bottled, and a small teacupful put in twelve quarts of milk, will answer the same purpose. _Milking_ should be performed with great care. Experiments have demonstrated that the last drawn from a cow yields from six to sixteen times as large a quantity of better cream than that first drawn. Careless milking will make the quantity of butter less, and the quality inferior, while it dries up the cows. There are probably millions of cows now in the United States that are indifferent milkers from this very cause. Quick and clean milking, from the time they first came in, would have made them worth twice as much, for butter and milk, as they are now. Always milk as quickly as possible, and without stopping, after you commence, and as nearly as possible at the same hour of the day. Leaving a teacupful, or even half that quantity, in milking each cow, will very materially lessen the products of the dairy, and seriously injure the cows for future use. Great milkers will yield considerable more by having it drawn three times per day. The quantity of milk given by a cow will never injure her, provided she be well fed. As it takes food to make meat, so it does also to make milk; you can never get something for nothing. The best breeds of swine, cattle, or fowls, can not be fattened without being well fed: so the best cows will never give large messes of milk unless they are largely fed. _Churning._--This is entirely a mechanical process. The agitation of the cream dashes the oily globules in the cream against each other, and they remain together and grow larger, until the butter is, what the dairy woman calls, gathered. The butter in the milk, when drawn from the cow, is the same as when on the table, only it is in the milk in the form of very small globes: churning brings them together. The object then to be secured, by any form of a churn, is agitation, or dashing and beating together. _Temperature of the Cream_ should be from sixty to sixty-five degrees--perhaps sixty-two is best. This had better always be determined by a thermometer immersed in it. Many churns have been invented and patented; and every new one is, of course, the best. A cylinder is usually preferred as the best form for a churn, and the churning is performed by turning a crank. An oblong square box is far better than a cylinder. In churning in a cylinder, it may often occur that the cream moves round in a body with the dasher, and so is but slightly agitated. But change that cylinder into an oblong square, and the cream is so dashed against the corners of the box that a most rapid agitation is the result, and the churning is finished in a short space of time. Any person of a little mechanical genius can construct a churn, equal to any in use, and at a trifling expense. It is well to make a churn double, leaving an inch between the two, into which cold or warm water can be poured, to regulate the temperature of the cream. This would be a great saving of time and patience in churning. Those who use the old-fashioned churns with dashes can most conveniently warm or cool their cream, by placing the churn containing it in a tub of cold or boiling water, as the case may require, until it comes to the temperature of sixty or seventy degrees. To make butter of extra quality for the fair, or for a luxury on your own table, set only one third of the milk, and that the last drawn from the cow. The Scotch, so celebrated for making butter of more marrowy richness than any other, first let the calves draw half or two thirds of the milk, and then take the remainder. This makes the finest butter in the world. _Preserving Butter_ depends upon the treatment immediately after churning. Success depends upon getting the buttermilk all out, and putting in all the salt you put in at all, immediately--say within ten minutes after churning. Some accomplish this by washing, and others by working it, being much opposed to putting in a drop of water. Those who use water in their butter, and those who do not, are equally confident of the superiority of their own method. But all good butter-makers agree, that the less you work butter, and still remove all the milk, the better it will be; and the more you are obliged to work it, the more gluey, and therefore the poorer the quality. Very good butter is made by immediately working all the milk out and salting thoroughly--working the salt into every part, without the use of water. _Working over_ butter, the next day after churning, should be nothing more than nicely forming it into rolls, without any further working or any more salt. An error, that spoils more butter than any other, is that of doing very little with butter when it first comes out of the churn, because it must be gone through with the next day. Many do not know why their butter has different colors in the same mass--some white, and some quite yellow, and all shades between. The reason always is, putting in the salt immediately on churning, but neglecting to incorporate that salt into every part of the mass equally: thus, where there is most salt there will be one color, and where less, another. Another evil is, when the salt is thus put in carelessly, while much buttermilk remains, that salt dissolves; and when the butter is worked over the next day, the salt is mostly worked out, with the milk or water left in, the previous day. The addition of more salt then will not save it. It has received an injury, by retaining the milk or water for twenty-four hours, from which no future treatment will enable it to recover. We recommend washing as preferable; it has the following advantages: it cools butter quickly in warm weather, bringing it at once into a situation to be properly worked and salted. The buttermilk is also removed more speedily than in any other way; this is a great object. It removes the milk with less working, and consequently with less injury, than the other method. These three advantages, cooling in hot weather, expelling the milk in the shortest time, and working the butter the least, lead us to prefer using water, by one hundred per cent. We have for years used butter that has been made in this way, and never tasted better. Butter made in this way in summer will keep well till next summer, to our certain knowledge. Immediately after churning, pour off all the milk and put in half a pailful of water, more or less according to quantity; agitate the whole with the dasher, and pour off the water. Repeat this once or twice until the water runs off clear, without any coloring from the milk, and nearly all the buttermilk is out; this can all be done in five minutes after churning. Press out the very little water that will remain, and put in all the salt the butter will require, and work it thoroughly into every part. All this need occupy no more than ten minutes, and the butter is set away for putting up in rolls, or packing down in jars the next day. Such butter would keep tied up in a bag, and hung in a good airy place. Best to put it down in a jar, packed close; put a cloth over top, and cover with half an inch of fine salt. The only difficulty in keeping butter grows out of failure to get out all the milk, and thoroughly salt every particle, within fifteen minutes after churning. Speedy removal of buttermilk and water, and speedy salting, will make any butter keep. This subject is so important, as good butter is such a luxury on every table, that we recapitulate the essentials of good butter making:-- 1. Keep everything sweet and clean, and well dried in the sun. 2. Milk the cows, as nearly as possible, at the same hour, and draw the milk very quickly and very clean. 3. Set the milk, in pans three inches deep, in good air, removed from anything that might give it an unpleasant flavor, and where it will be at a temperature of fifty to sixty degrees. 4. Churn the cream at a temperature of sixty-two degrees. 5. Get out the buttermilk, and salt thoroughly within fifteen minutes after churning, either with water or without, as you prefer. Mix the salt thoroughly in every particle. Put up in balls, or pack closely in jars the next day. 6. Remember to work the butter as little as possible in removing the milk; the more it is worked, the more will it be like salve or oil, and the poorer the quality: hence, it is better to wash it with cold water, because you can wash out the buttermilk with much less working of the butter. 7. To make the best possible quality of butter, use only one third of the milk of the cows at each milking, and that the last drawn. 8. In the winter, when cream does not get sufficiently sour, put in a little lemon-juice or calves' rennet. If too white, put in a little of the juice of carrot to give it a yellow hue. BUTTERNUT. This is a rich, pleasant nut, but contains rather too much oil for health. The oil, obtained by compression, is fine for clocks, &c. The root, like the branches, are wide-spreading, and hence injurious to the land about them. Two or three trees on some corner not desired for cultivation, or in the street, will be sufficient. A rough piece of ground, not suitable for cultivation, might be occupied by an orchard of butternut-trees, and be profitable for market and as a family luxury. The bark is often used as a coloring substance. CABBAGE. The best catalogues of seeds enumerate over twenty varieties, beside the cauliflowers, borecoles, &c. A few are superior, and should, therefore, be cultivated to the exclusion of the others. EARLY YORK is best for early use. It is earlier than any other, and with proper treatment nearly every plant will form a small, compact, solid head, tender, and of delicious flavor. No garden is complete without it. EARLY DUTCH, AND EARLY SUGARLOAF, come next in season to the Early York, producing much larger heads. LARGE YORK is a good variety, maturing later than the preceding, and before the late drumheads. Large Drumhead, Late Drumhead, or Large Flat Dutch, are the best for winter and spring use. There are many varieties under these names, so that cultivators often get disappointed in purchasing seeds. It is now difficult to describe cabbages intelligibly. Every worthless hybrid goes under some excellent name. A Dutch cabbage, with a short stem and very small at the ground, is the best with which we are acquainted. Of this variety (the seed of which was brought from Germany), we have raised solid heads, larger than a half bushel, while others called good, standing by their side, did not grow to more than half that size. This variety may be distinguished by the purple on the top of the grown head, and by the decided purple of the young plants, resembling the Red Dutch, though not of quite so deep a color. RED DUTCH, having a very hard, small head, deep purple throughout, is the very best for pickling; every garden should have a few. They are also good for ordinary purposes. GREEN CURLED SAVOY, when well grown, is a good variety. The _Imperial_, the _Russian_, Large Scotch for feeding, and others, are enumerated and described, but are inferior to the above. It is useless to endeavor to grow cabbages on any but the best of soil. Plant corn on poor land, and it will mature and yield a small crop. Plant cabbages on similar soil, and you will get nothing but a few leaves for cattle. Therefore, if your land designed for cabbages be not already very rich, put a load of stable-manure on each square rod. Cabbages are a very exhausting crop. The soil should be worked fully eighteen inches deep, and have manure well mixed with the whole. The best preparation we ever made was by double-plowing--not subsoiling, but plowing twice with similar plows: put on a good coat of manure, and plow with two teams in the same furrow, one plow gauged so as to turn a light furrow, and the other a very deep one, throwing it out of the bottom of the first; when the first plow comes round, it will throw the light furrow into the bottom of the deep one. This repeated over the whole plot will stir the soil sixteen or eighteen inches deep, and put from four to six inches of the top, manure and all, in the bottom, under the other. We have done this admirably with one plow, changing the gauge of the clevis every time round, and going twice in a furrow: this is the best way for those who use but one team in plowing; it is worth much more than the additional time required in plowing. Enrich the surface a little with fine manure, and you have land in the best possible condition for cabbages. This is a fine preparation for onions and other garden vegetables, and for all kinds of berries. Subsoiling is good, but double-plowing is better in all cases, where you can afford to enrich the surface, after this deep plowing. The alluvial soils of the West need no enriching after double-plowing. Land so level, or having so hard a subsoil as to allow water to stand on it in a wet season, is not good for cabbages. They also suffer more than most crops from drought. One of the most important offices of plenty of manure is its control of the moisture. Land well manured does not so soon feel the effects of drought. One of the best means of preserving moisture about the roots of cabbages, is to put a little manure in the bottom of the holes when transplanting; put it six inches below the surface. Manure from a spent hotbed is excellent for this purpose; it is in the best condition about the time for transplanting cabbages. It is then very wet, and has a wonderful power of retaining the moisture. Manure from the blacksmith-shop, containing hoof-parings, &c., is very good. If the manure be too dry, pour in water and cover immediately. Set the plant in the soil, over the manure, the roots extending down into it, with a little fine mould mixed in it, and it will retain moisture through a severe drought; no further watering will be necessary, and not one out of twenty-five of all your plants will fail to make a good head. In climates subject to drought in summer, cabbages should be set out earlier; they require more time in dry weather than in wet. Should they incline to crack open from too rapid growth, raise them a little, and push them down again; this will break some roots, and so loosen the remainder that the growth will be checked and the heads saved. Winter cabbages should be allowed to stand in the ground as long as possible, without danger of freezing in. The question of transplanting, and of sowing the seed in the places where they are designed to head, has been much controverted. We have succeeded well in both ways, but prefer transplanting; it gives opportunity to stir the ground deep, and keep down weeds, and thus preserve moisture until summer, when it is time to transplant; it also makes shorter, smaller, and straighter stems, which is favorable to a larger growth of heads. Sow seed on poor land; the plants will be straighter, more hardy, and less affected by insects. Seed for early spring cabbages should be sown on poor soil in September or October; if inclined to get too forward, transplant, once or twice; late in fall, set them close together, lay poles in forks of limbs put down for the purpose, and cover with straw, as a protection from severe frost; the poles are to prevent the covering from lying on the plants. _Preserving_, for winter or spring use, is best done by plowing a furrow on land where water will not stand, and placing the heads in the furrow with the roots up. Cover with earth from three to six inches deep, letting the roots protrude. The large leaves will convey all the water off from the heads, and they will come out as fresh and good as in the fall. If you wish some, more easily accessible, for winter use, set them in the cellar in a small trench, in which a little water should be kept, and they will not only be preserved fresh, but will grow all winter, if the cellar be free from frost. They are also well preserved put in trenches eighteen inches deep, out door, with a little good soil in the bottom, and protected with poles and straw as directed for winter plants. Cabbages that have scarcely any heads in the fall, so treated, will grow all winter, and come out good, tender, fresh heads in spring. _Transplanting._--This is usually done in wet weather: if it be so wet as to render the soil muddy by stirring, it injures the plants. This may be successfully done in dry weather, not excessively hot. Have a basin of water, in which dip the root and shake it, so as to wash off all the earth from the seed-bed that adheres to it. Put the plant in its place at once, and the soil in which it is to grow takes hold of the roots readily, and nearly every one will live. Transplant with your hand, a transplanting trowel, a stick, or a dibble made of a spade-handle, one foot long, sharpened off abruptly, and the eye left on for a handle. Put the plant in its place, thrust the dibble down at a sharp angle with the plant, and below it, and move it up to it. The soil will thus be pressed close around the roots, leaving no open space, and the plant will grow. Do not leave the roots so long that they will be doubled up in transplanting--better cut off the ends. Large cabbages should be three feet apart each way, and in perfectly straight rows; this saves expense in cultivating, as it can be done with a horse. The usual objections of farmers to gardening, on account of the time required to hoe and weed, would be remedied by planting in long, straight rows, at suitable distances apart, to allow the free use of horse, cultivator, and plow, in cultivating; thus, beets, carrots, cabbages, onions, &c., are almost as easily raised as corn. An easy method of raising good cabbages is on greensward. Put on a good dressing of manure, plow once and turn over handsomely, roll level, and harrow very mellow on the top, without disturbing the turf below; make places for planting seeds at the bottom of the turf; a little stirring of the surface, and destruction of the few weeds that will grow, will be all the further care necessary. The roots will extend under the sod in the manure below it, and will there find plenty of moisture, even when the surface is quite dry, and will grow profusely. _Seed._--Nothing is more difficult in cabbage culture than raising pure seed; nothing hybridizes worse, and in nothing else is the effect worse. It must not be raised in the same garden with anything else of the cabbage or turnip kind; they will mix in the blossoms, and the worse will prevail. Raise seeds only from the best heads, and only one variety; break off all the lower shoots, allowing only a few of the best to mature. Seeds raised from stumps, from which the head has been removed for use, will incline the leaves to grow down, as we often see, instead of closing up into heads. CALVES. The best method of raising calves is of much importance. It controls the value and beauty of grown cattle. Stint the growth of a calf, and when he is old he will not recover from it. Much attention has been paid to the breed of cattle, and some are very highly recommended. It is true that the breed of stock has much to do with its excellence. It is equally true that the care taken with calves and young cattle, has quite as much to do with it. We can take any common breed, and by great care in raising, have quite as good cattle, for market or use, as can another, who has the best breed in the world, but keeps them indifferently. But good breeds and good keeping make splendid animals, and will constantly improve them. The old adage, "Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well" is nowhere more true, than in the care of calves. We shall not pause to present the various and contradictory methods of raising calves, that are presented in the numerous books, on the subject, that have come under our observation. Hay-tea, various preparations of linseed-meal, oilcake-meal, oatmeal, and every variety of ground feed, sometimes mixed up with gin, or some kind of cheap spirits (for the purpose of keeping calves quiet), are recommended. The discussion of the merits of these, would be of no practical benefit to our readers. The following brief directions are sufficient:-- 1. Seldom raise late calves. Their place is in the butcher's shop, after they are five weeks old. 2. Raise only those calves that are well formed. Straight back, small neck, not very tall, and a good expression of countenance, are the best marks. 3. Let every calf suck its dam two days. It is for the health of the calf and the good of the cow. 4. To fatten a calf, let it suck one half the milk for two weeks, three fourths the third, and the whole the fourth. Continue it another week, and the veal will be better. But we think it preferable to take calves off from the cow after two days. Feed them the milk warm from the cow, and give them some warm food at noon. Feed three times a day, they will fatten faster. It also gives opportunity to put oatmeal in their food after the second week, which will improve the veal, and give you a little milk, if you desire it. Our first method is easier, and our last better, for fattening calves. 5. To raise calves for stock, take them from the cows after the second day. Feed them half the milk (if the cow gives a reasonable quantity) for the first two weeks. Begin then to put in a little oatmeal. After two weeks more, give one fourth of the milk, and increase the quantity of meal. When the calf is eight or ten weeks old, feed it only on meal and such skimmed milk, sour milk, or buttermilk, as you may have to spare. This is the course when the object is to save milk. If not, let the calf have the whole, with such addition of meal as you think desirable. The easiest way to raise calves, when you do not desire the milk for the family or dairy, is to let them run with the cows and have all the milk when they please. Others let them suck a part of the milk, and feed them with meal, &c., besides. This is difficult. If you milk your own share first, you will leave much less for the calf than you suppose. If he gets his portion first, he will be sure to get a part of yours also. This can only be well done by allowing the calf to suck all the udders, but not clean. The remainder, being the last of the milk will make the best of butter. But it is difficult to regulate it as you please, and more difficult to feed a calf properly, that sucks, than one that depends wholly upon what you feed him. Hence it is preferable to feed all your calves, whether for veal or stock. A little oilcake pulverized is a valuable addition. Indian-meal and the coarse flour of wheat are good for calves, but not equal to oatmeal. Good calves have been raised on gruels made of these meals, without any milk after the first two weeks. 6. In winter, feed chopped roots and meal, mixed with plenty of hay and pure water, and always from a month old give salt twice a week. 7. If calves are inclined to purge or scour, as the farmers call it, put a little rennet in their food. If they are costive, put in a little melted lard, or some kind of inoffensive oil. These will prove effectual remedies. There is, however, very little danger of disease, to calves, well, regularly, and properly fed, as above. Fat calves are not apt to have lice. But should such a thing occur, washing in tobacco-water is a speedy and perfect remedy. 8. During cold nights in fall, and all of the first winter, calves should be shut up in a warm dry place. Keep them curried clean. The cold and wet of the first winter are very injurious. After they are a year old they will give very little trouble. The great difficulty with calves is a want of enough to eat. They should not only be kept growing, but fat, all the first year. They will then make fine, healthy, and profitable animals. Chalk or dry yellow loam, placed within their reach is very useful. They will eat of it, enough to correct the excessive acidity of their stomachs. The operation of changing calves into oxen, should be performed before they are twenty days old. It will then be only slightly injurious. CANS. These are much used for preserving fruits and vegetables. There are a number of patent articles said to work well. They are, in our opinion, more expensive, and more likely to fail in inexperienced hands, than those that an ordinary tinman can readily make. The best invention for general use is that that is most simple. Cans should be made in cylindrical form, with an orifice in the top large enough to admit whatever you wish to preserve, and should contain about two quarts. Fill the cans and solder on the top, leaving an opening as large as a pin-head, from which steam may escape. Set the cans in water nearly to their tops, and gradually increase the heat under them until the water begins to boil. Take out the cans, drop solder on the opening, and all will be air-tight. This operation requires at least three hours, as the heating must be moderate. You may preserve in glass bottles, filling and putting in a cork very tight, and well tied, and gradually heating as above; this will require four hours, as glass will be in danger of bursting by too rapid heating. But for tomatoes, or anything that you have no objection to boiling and seasoning before preserving, the best way is to prepare and cook as for the table, putting in only pepper and salt, and fill cans while the mass is boiling, and, with a sealing-wax that you can get at any druggist's laid around the orifice, place the cover upon it; the heat will melt the wax, and when it cools, the cover will be fastened, and all will be air-tight. This will require no process of slow boiling. Set the cans or bottles in a cool cellar, and whatever they contain may be taken out, at the end of a year, as good as when put in. The last method is the best and most simple of all. The whole principle of preserving is to make the cans air-tight. CARROTS. These are cultivated for the table, and for food for animals. Boiled and pickled, or eaten with an ordinary boiled dish, they are esteemed. They are really excellent in soups. As a root for animals, they are very valuable. They are often preferred to beets;--this is a mistake--four pounds of beet are equal to five pounds of carrot for feeding to domestic animals. Work the soil for carrots very deep, make it very rich with stable manure, with a mixture of lime; harrow fine and mellow, and roll entirely smooth. Plant with a seed-sower, that the rows may be straight; rows two feet apart will allow a horse and small cultivator to pass between them. Planted one foot apart, and cultivated with a horse, and a cultivator that will take three rows at once, they will yield much more to the acre, and may be cultivated at a moderate expense, exceeding but a little that of ordinary field-crops. Sow as early as convenient, as the longer time they have, the larger will be the product. They grow until hard frosts, whenever you may sow them. There are several varieties, but the Long Orange is the only one that it is ever best to grow; it is richer than the white, and yields as well: the earlier sorts are no better, as the carrot may be used at any stage of its growth. They should be kept in the ground as long as it is safe. They will stand hard frosts, but, if too much frozen, they are inclined to rot in winter. Dig in fair weather, dry in the sun, and keep dry. It is the best of all root crops, except the beet. All animals will eat it freely, while they have to acquire a taste for the beet. CAULIFLOWER. The two varieties known in this country are the English and the French--distinguished, also, as early and late. The French only is suitable for cultivation here; especially in the colder regions, as it is earlier. This is cultivated in every way like cabbage. In several respects it is preferable to cabbage; it has a more pleasant flavor, and is more easy of digestion. It is excellent for pickling. Seeds may be raised in the same way, and with the same precautions, as cabbage; but it is generally imported. CELERY. This is one of the finest of our table vegetables, eaten raw with salt, or in soups. Sow seed, early in spring, in open ground; or sow in hotbeds, if you wish it very early. When the plants are six inches high, they should be transplanted in trenches eighteen inches deep, containing six inches of well-rotted manure or compost. This should be well watered, and fine mould mixed with it, and the plants placed in it eight inches apart. The trenches should be from four to six feet apart. If the weather be warm and sun bright at the time of transplanting, a board laid lengthwise over the top of the trench will afford perfect protection. As the plants grow, draw the earth up to them, not allowing it to separate the leaves; do this two or three times during the season, and the stalks will be beautifully bleached. Heavy loam is much better than sand. _Preserving_ for winter is best done by taking up late in the fall, cutting the small roots off, and rounding down to a point the large root, removing the coarse, useless leaves, and placing in a trench at an angle of forty-five degrees, so that six inches of the upper end of the leaves will be above the surface. Cover with soil and place poles over, and cover with straw, and in a very cold climate cover with earth. Keep out the water. The end can be opened to take it out whenever you please, and it will be as fresh as in the fall. This is better than the methods of keeping in the cellar; it is more certain, and keeps the celery in perfect condition. CHEESE. The methods of cheese-making differ materially in different countries, and in different parts of the same country. It is also so much a matter of experience and observation, that we recommend to beginners to visit cheese-dairies, and get instructions from practical makers. But we give the following more general outlines, leaving our readers to learn all further details as recommended above. Rennet, or the calf's stomach, is used, as nature's agent to turn the milk, or to curdle it without having it sour. There are many fanciful ways of preparing the rennet, putting in sweet herbs, &c. But the ordinary plain method is quite sufficient--which is, to steep it in cold salt water. The milk should be set at once on coming from the cow. Setting it too hot, or cooling it with cold water, inclines the cheese to heave. Too much rennet gives it a strong, unpleasant smell and taste. Break the curd as fine as possible with the hand or dish, or better with a regular cheese-knife with three blades. This is especially important in making large cheeses; small ones need less care in this respect. If the curd be too soft, scald it with very hot whey or water; if it be hard, use a little more than blood-warm whey: it should stand a few minutes in this whey and then be separated, and the curd put into the cheese-hoop, making it heaped full, and pressed hard with the hand. Spread a cloth over it, and turn it out. Wash the hoop and put back the cheese, with the cloth between the curd and the hoop, and put it in the press. After a few hours take it out, wash the cloth and put it again around the cheese, and return it to the press. After seven or eight hours more take it out again, pare off the edges if they need it, and rub salt all over it--as much as it will take in: this is the best way of salting cheese; the moisture in it at this stage will cause it to absorb just about as much salt as will be agreeable. Return it to the press in the hoop without the cloth; let it stand in the press over night; in the morning turn it in the hoop, and continue it in the press until the next morning. Place it upon the shelf in the cheese-room, and turn it every day, or at least every other day. If the weather be hot, the doors and windows of the cheese-room should be shut; if cool, they should be open to admit air. _Color._--The richest is supposed to be about that of beeswax. This is produced by annotta, or otter, rubbed into the milk at the time of setting, when warm from the cow--or, if the milk has stood till cold, after it has been warmed. Cold milk must, before setting, be warmed to about blood or milk heat. This coloring process has no virtue but in its influence on the looks of the cheese. Sage cheese is colored by the juice of pounded sage-leaves put into the fine curd before it is put in the hoop; this is the reason of its appearing in streaks, as it would not do if put into the milk, like the annotta. When the cheese is ten days old, it should be soaked in cold whey until the rind becomes soft, and then scraped smooth with a case-knife; then rinse, and wipe and dry it, and return it to the cheese-room, and turn it often until dry enough for market. Rich cheeses are apt to spread in warm weather; this is prevented by sewing them in common cheap cotton, exactly fitting. _Skippers._--Some persons are very fond of skippery cheese. But few, however, like meat and milk together, especially if the meat be alive: hence, to remove skippers from cheese into which they have intruded is quite desirable. The following method is effectual:--wrap up the cheese in thin paper, through which moisture will readily strike; dig a hole two feet deep in pure earth, and bury the cheese;--in thirty-six hours every skipper will be on the outside; brush them off and keep the cheese from the flies, and you will have no further trouble. A mixture of Spanish brown and butter, rubbed on the outside of a cheese, frequently gives that yellow coating so often witnessed, and exerts some influence in preserving it. The rank and putrid taste sometimes observed in cheese may be prevented by putting a spoonful of salt in the bottom of each pan, before straining the milk; it will also preserve the milk in hot weather, and give more curd. An English cheese called "Stilton cheese," from the name of the place most celebrated for making it, is a superior article, made in the following way: put the cream of the night's milk with the morning's milk; remove the curd with the least possible disturbance, and without breaking; drain and gradually dry it in a sieve; compress it gradually until it becomes firm; put it in a wooden hop on a board, to dry gradually; it should be often turned between binders, top and bottom, to be tightened as the cheese grows smaller. This makes the finest cheese known. As the size makes no difference, it can be made by a person having but one cow. To preserve cheese, keep it from flies, and in a place not so damp as to cause mould. Of cheese-pressers there is a great variety: each maker will select the one which he considers best or most convenient, within his reach. In some places, as on the Western Reserve, in Ohio, one establishment makes all the cheese for the neighborhood, buying the curd from all the families around. In such places they have their own methods, which they have understood by all their customers. CHERRY. Cherries are among our first luxuries in the line of fruits. We have cultivated varieties, ripening in succession throughout the cherry season. There is no necessity for cultivating the common red and very acid cherry, except in climates too vigorous for the more tender cultivated varieties. The cherry is an ornamental tree, making a beautiful shade, besides the luxury of its fruit. It is one of the most suitable trees we have for the roadside;--it ought to be extensively planted by the highways throughout all our rural districts, as it is in some parts of Europe. In northern Germany the highways are avenues, shaded with cherry-trees for distances of fifty or sixty miles together: these trees have been planted by direction of the princes, and afford shade and refreshment to the weary pedestrian, who is always at liberty to eat as much of the fruit as he pleases; this is eminently worthy of imitation in our own country. Extremes of cold and heat are not favorable to the cherry: hence, cool places must be selected in hot countries, and warm locations in cold regions. Very much, however, can be done by acclimation; it will, probably, yet naturalize the cherry throughout the continent. A deep and moderately rich loam is the best soil for the cherry; very rich soil causes too rapid growth, which makes the tree tender. It will bear more moisture than the grape or peach, and requires less than the apple or pear. It will endure very dry situations tolerably well, while in very wet ones it will soon perish. _Propagation_ is generally by budding small trees near the ground. The best stocks are those raised from the seeds of the common black Mazzard. It makes a more thrifty tree than any other. The tree grows very large, and bears an abundance of medium black fruit, smallest at the blossom end, and having seeds very large in proportion to the size of the fruit. In White's Gardening for the South, it is stated that the common Morello of that region does better, by far, for seedling stocks for budding, than the Mazzard. Use, then, the Mazzard for the North, and the Mahaleb or common Morello for the South. Pick them when ripe; let them stand two or three days, till the pulp decays enough to separate easily from the seed by washing. Immediately plant the seeds in rows where you wish them to grow; this is better than keeping them over winter in sand, as a little neglect in spring will spoil them, they are so tender, when they begin to germinate. Keep them clean of weeds. The next spring, set them in rows ten inches or a foot apart, placing the different sizes by themselves, that large ones need not overshadow small ones and prevent their growth. In the following August, or on the last of July, bud them near the ground. The stocks are to be headed back the following spring, and the bud will make five or six feet of growth the same season. The cherry-tree seldom needs pruning, further than to pinch off any little shoots that may come out in a wrong place (and they will be very few), and cut away dead branches. Any removal of large limbs will produce gum, which is apt to end in decay, and finally in the death of the tree. Whatever pruning you must do, do it in the hottest summer weather, and the wounds will dry and prevent the exudation of gum. Trees are generally trained horizontally. Some, however, are trained as espaliers against walls, and in fan shape. When once the form is perfected (as given under Training), nothing is necessary but to cut off--twice in each season, about six weeks apart, in the most growing time--all other shoots that come out within four inches of their base. New shoots will be constantly springing, and the tree will keep its shape and bear excellent fruit. Trees so trained are usually in warm locations, and where they can be easily protected in winter; hence, this is adapted to the finer and more tender varieties. The varieties of cherries are numerous, and rapidly increasing. They are less distinguishable than most other fruits. We shall only present a few of the best, and give only their general qualities, without any effort to enable our readers to identify varieties. (See our remarks on the nomenclature of apples.) Downing, in 1846, recommended the following, as choice and hardy, adapted to the middle states:-- 1. Black Tartarean. 2. Black Eagle. 3. Early White Heart. 4. Downton. 5. Downer's Late. 6. Manning's Mottled. 7. Flesh-color'd Bigarreau 8. Elton. 9. Belle de Choisy. 10. May Duke. 11. Kentish. 12. Knight's Early Black. The National Convention of Fruit-growers recommend the following as the best for the whole country:-- 1. May Duke. 2. Black Tartarean. 3. Black Eagle. 4. Bigarreau. 5. Knight's Early Black. 6. Downer. 7. Elton. 8. Downton. We recommend the following as all that need be cultivated for profit. They are adapted alike to the field and the garden. We omit the synonyms, and give only the predominant color. The figures in the cuts refer to our numbers in the list:-- Name. Color. Time. 1. Rockport Bigarreau, red. June 1st. 2. Knight's Early Black, black. June 5th. 3. Black Tartarean, purplish. June 15th. 4. Kirtland's Mary, marbled, light-red. June, July. 5. Delicate, amber-yellow. June 25th. 6. Late Bigarreau, deep-yellow. June 30th. 7. Late Duke, dark-red. Aug. 10th. 8. Cleveland Bigarreau, red. June 10th. 9. American Heart, pale. June 1st. 10. Napoleon, purplish-black. July 5th. The time is that of their greatest perfection, but varies with latitude and location. We know none better than the foregoing. In the long lists of the fruit-books, there are others of great excellence, some of which are hardly distinguishable from our list. We recommend to all cultivators to procure the best in their localities, under the advice of the best pomologists in their vicinity. Such men as Barry will be consulted for the latitude of Western New York; Elliott and Kirtland for Cleveland, Ohio; Cole and others for New England and Canada; Hooker and other great fruit-growers of Southern Ohio, &c., &c. These gentlemen, like all scientific men, are happy to communicate their knowledge for the benefit of others. [Illustration: Cherries--Natural Size and Shape. (See page 121.)] We see no reason for cultivating more than ten or twelve varieties; and, as the above are productive and excellent, including all desirable colors and qualities, and ripening through the whole cherry season, we know not what more would be profitable to the cultivator. If you wish more for the sake of variety, your nurseryman will name them, and show the quality of each, that renders it "_the best_ that ever was," until you will become tired of hearing, and more weary of paying for them. Decayed wood, spent tanbark, and forest-leaves, are good for the cherry. In removing and transplanting, be careful not to injure the roots, or expose them to sun and air, as they are so tender, that a degree of exposure that would be little felt by the apple or peach tree will destroy the cherry. If you are going to keep a cherry-tree out of the ground half an hour, throw a damp mat, or damp straw, over the roots, and you will save disappointment. The rich alluvial soils of the West are regarded unfavorable to the cherry. We know from observation and experience that the common red cherry does exceedingly well there, while the best cultivated are apt to suffer much from the winters. One reason is, the common cherry is a slow-going, hardy tree, while the cultivated is more thrifty, and therefore more tender. We give the following as a _sure method_ of raising the cultivated cherries in great perfection on all the rich prairies of the West. It is all included in dry locations, root-pruning, and slight heading-in:-- 1. Dry locations. It is known that the rich alluvial soils of the West are remarkable for retaining water in winter. On level, and even high prairie land, water will stand in winter, and thoroughly saturate the soil and freeze up. This is very destructive to the tender, porous root of the cherry-tree. How shall such locations be made dry, and these evils prevented? By carting on gravel and sand. Put two or three loads of sand or gravel, or both, in the shape of a slight mound, for each cherry-tree. There should first be a slight excavation, that the sand and gravel may be about half below the level of the surrounding soil, and half above it: this will so elevate the tree that no water can stand around it, and none can stand in the gravel and sand below it. The freezing of such soil will not be injurious to the roots of the tree. 2. Root-pruning is to prevent too rapid growth. Such growth is always more tender and susceptible of injury from sudden and severe freezing. (See Root-pruning.) 3. Heading-in puts back the growth and throws the sap into the lateral twigs, thus maturing the wood already grown, instead of producing new wood, so young and tender that it will die in winter and spread decay through the whole tree. Heading-in, with the cherry, must only be done with small twigs. Cultivators will see at a glance that this method will certainly succeed in all the West and Southwest. It is considered difficult to raise cherries at the South; the hot sun destroys the trees. Plant in the coolest situations, where there is a little shade from other trees, though not too near, or from buildings; cut them back, so as to cause shoots near the ground, and then head-in as the peach, so as to keep the whole covered with leaves, to shade the trunk and large limbs, and perfect success will crown your efforts. But in all cutting-back and heading-in of cherry-trees, remove the limbs when very small. CHARCOAL. There are but few who realize the value of charcoal applied to the soil. Whoever will observe fields where coal has been burned, will see that grass or grain about the bed of the former pits, will be earlier and much more luxuriant than in any other portion of the field. This difference is discernible for twenty years. It is the best known agent for absorbing any noxious matter in the soil or in the moisture about the roots of the trees. No peach-tree should be planted without a few quarts of pulverized charcoal in the soil. This would also prove highly beneficial to cherry-trees on land where they might be exposed to too much moisture. Its color also renders it an excellent application to the surface of hills of vines. It is quite effectual against the ravages of insects, and so absorbs the rays of the sun as to promote a rapid growth of the plants. CHESTNUTS Are among our best nuts, if not allowed to get too dry. When dried hard they are rather indigestible. The tree grows well in most parts of the United States, provided the soil be light sand or dry gravel. If the soil be not suitable, every man may have a half-dozen chestnut-trees, at a trifling expense. Haul ten or fifteen loads of sand upon a square rod, and plant a tree in it, and it will flourish well. Five or six trees would afford the children in a family a great luxury, annually. The blossoms appear so very late, that they are seldom cut off by the frost. The second growth chestnut-tree is also decidedly ornamental. CIDER. The usual careless way of making cider, in which is used all kinds of apples, even frozen and decayed ones, and without any reference to their ripeness; without straining, and neglecting all means of regulating the fermentation, is too well known. This is the more general practice throughout the country; but it makes cider only fit for vinegar, although it is used for general purposes. We give the most approved method of making and keeping cider, that is better for invalids than any of our adulterated wines (and this is the character of nearly all our imported wines). Our domestic wines, and bottled cider, should take the place of all others. Select apples best suited for cider, and gather them at the commencement of hard frosts. Let them lie a few days, until they become ripe and soft. Then throw out all decayed and immature fruit. Grind fine and uniform. Let the pulp remain in the vat two days. It will increase the saccharine principle and improve the color. Put into the press in dry straw, and strain the juice into clean casks. Place the casks in an open shed or cellar, if it be cold weather, give plenty of air and leave the bung out. As the froth works out of the bung, fill up every day or two, with some of the same pressing kept for the purpose. In three weeks or less this rising will cease, and the bung should be put in loose, and after three days driven in tight. Leave a small vent-hole near the bung. In a cool cellar the fermentation will cease in two days. This is known by the clearness of the liquor, the thick scum that rises, and the cessation of the escape of air. Draw off the clear cider into a clean cask. If it remains quiet it may stand till spring. A gill of fine charcoal added to a barrel will secure this end, and prevent fermentation from going too far. But if a scum collects on the surface, and the fermentation continues, rack it off again at once. Then drive the vent-spile tight. Rack it off again in early spring. If not perfectly clear, dissolve three quarters of an ounce of isinglass in cider, and put it in the barrel, and it will soon be perfectly fine. Bottle between this and the last of May. Fill the bottles within an inch of the bottom of the cork, and allow them to stand an hour, then drive the cork. Lay them in dry sand, in boxes in a cool cellar, and the cider will improve by age, and is better for the sick than imported wines. CITRONS Are only used for preserving. Their appearance and growth resemble in all respects the watermelon. Planted near the latter, they utterly ruin them, making them more citron than melon. They are injurious to most other contiguous vines. They are to be planted and cultivated like the watermelon. Are very fine preserved; but we think the outside (removing the rind) of a watermelon better, and should not regret to know, that not another citron was ever to be raised. CLOVER. The only varieties successfully cultivated in this country, are the red and the white. Red clovers are divided into large, medium, and small. The white is all alike. The long-rooted clover of Hungary is an excellent productive variety, enduring successfully almost any degree of drought. But in all the colder parts of this country it winter-kills so badly as to render it unprofitable. Clover makes good pastures, being nutritious, and early and rapid growing. Red-clover makes fair hay, though inferior to timothy or red-top. White clover is unsuitable for hay; it shrinks so much in drying, that it is very unproductive. It is the best of all grasses for sheep pasture, and its blossoms afford in abundance the best of honey. Red clover plowed in, even when full-grown, is an excellent fertilizer. It begins to be regarded, in western New York, as productive of the weevil, so destructive to wheat. Further observation is necessary to settle this question. Red-clover hay is too dusty for horses, and too wasteful for cattle. The stalks are so large a proportion, and so slightly nutritious, that it is unprofitable even as cut-feed. It is best to cultivate clover mainly for pastures and as a fertilizer. Sowing clover and timothy together for hay is much practised. The first year it will be nearly all clover, and the second year mostly timothy. But sown together, they are not good for hay, because they do not mature within ten or fifteen days of the same time. But, for those who are determined to make hay out of red clover, the following directions for curing may be valuable: mow when dry, spread at once, and let it wilt thoroughly; then put up into small cocks, not rolled, but one fork full _laid_ upon another until high enough;--it will then shed water; but when rolled up, water will run down through. Let it stand till thoroughly dried, and then draw into the barn; it will be bright and sweet. Another method is to cut when free from dew or rain, spread even, and allow it to wilt, and the leaves and smaller parts to dry; then draw into the barn, putting alternate loads of clover and dry straw into the mow, salting the clover very lightly. The clover is sometimes put in when quite green, and salted sufficiently to preserve it. It is injurious to cattle, by compelling them to eat more salt than they need. Cattle will eat but little salt in winter, when it stands within their reach; too much salt in hay compels them to eat more, which engenders disease. Clover cured as above makes the best possible clover-hay, if great care be used to prevent excessive salting. Saving clover-seed is a matter of considerable importance. The large red clover is too late a variety to produce seed on a second crop the same season, as do the medium and small. The first growth must be allowed to ripen. Cut when the heads are generally dead, but before it has begun to shell. The medium and small red clovers will produce a good crop of seed from second growth, if it be not too dry, immediately after mowing. Cut when the heads generally are dry, rake into small winrows at once, and soon put it in small bunches and let it stand until very dry, and then draw in. Raking and stirring after it becomes dry will waste one half of it. COFFEE BEAN. This grows in a pod somewhat resembling the pea; easily raised, as other beans; and is very productive. Browned and ground, it is used as a substitute for coffee. By many persons it is much esteemed. If this and the orange carrot were adopted extensively, instead of coffee, it would afford a great relief to the health, as well as the pockets, of the American people. CORN. This is the most valuable of all American products of the soil, not excepting wheat or cotton. It is used for human food all over the world. And there is no domestic animal or fowl, whose habits require grain, whether whole or ground, that is not fond of it. It is easily raised, and is a sure and abundant crop, in all latitudes south of forty-six degrees north. The varieties are few, and principally local. The soil can not be made too rich for corn. It should be planted in rows each way, to allow cultivating both ways with a horse. The distance of rows apart has been a subject of some differences of opinion; there is a disposition to crowd it too near together. In western New York, where much attention has been given to it, the usual distance is three and one half feet each way; others plant four feet apart. On all land we have ever seen, we believe four feet apart each way, with four or five stalks in a hill, will produce the largest yield. It lets in the sun sufficiently around every hill, and the proportion of ears to the stalks will be larger than in any other distance. Planting with a span of horses, and a planter on which a man can ride and plant two rows at once, is the easiest and most expeditious. We can not too strongly recommend harrowing corn as soon as it comes out of the ground. It increases the crop, and saves much expense in cultivating. All planters should know that Indian corn is one of those plants which will come to maturity at a certain age, whether it be large or small; hence, anything that will increase the growth while young will add to the product. Corn neglected when small receives, thereby, an injury from which it will never recover; after-hoeing may help it, but never can fully restore it. If there are small weeds, the harrowing will destroy them, and give all the strength of the soil to the young corn; if there are no weeds, the effect of the harrowing will be to give the young plants twice as large a growth in the first two weeks as they would make without it. Harrow with a =V= drag, with the front tooth out, that the remaining teeth may go each side of the row. Use two horses, allowing the row to stand between them; let the harrow-teeth run as near the corn as possible. Never plant corn until the soil has become warm enough to make it come up quickly and grow rapidly. If you feed corn to cattle whole, feed it with the husks on, as it will compel them to chew it better, and will thus be a great saving. Crib corn only when very dry, and avoid the Western and Southern method of leaving cribs uncovered; the corn thus becomes less valuable for any use. A little plaster or wood-ashes applied to corn on first coming up, and again when six inches high, will abundantly repay cost and labor;--it will pay even on the prairie-lands of the West, and is quite essential on the poorer soils of the East and North. It had better never be neglected. The crop will weigh more to the acre, by allowing it to stand as it grew, until thoroughly dry. The next larger crop is when the stalks are cut off above the ear (called topping) after it has become glazed. Still a little less will be the product when it is cut up at the ground, while the leaves are yet quite green. The two latter methods are adapted for the purpose of saving fodder in good condition for cattle. Intelligent farmers regard the fodder of much more value than the decrease in the weight of the grain. Corn thus cut up, and fed without husking, is the best possible way for winter-fattening cattle on a large scale, and where corn is abundant. To save the whole, swine should follow the cattle, changing yards once a week. Seed-corn should be gathered from the first ripe large ears before frost, and while the general crop is yet green. Select ears above the average size, that are well filled out to the end, and your corn will improve from year to year. Take your seed indiscriminately from the crib at planting-time, and your corn will deteriorate. The largest and best ears ripen neither first nor last; hence, select the largest ears before all is ripe, and reject the small earliest ears. Soaking seed twenty-four hours, and then rolling in plaster before planting, is recommended; it is conveniently practised only where you plant by hand. Soaking without rolling in plaster is good, if you plant in a wet time; but if in a dry time, it is absolutely injurious. Once in a while there occurs quite a general failure of seed-corn to come up. Farmers say that their corn looks as fair as ever, but does not vegetate well. When this is general, there is a remedy that every farmer can successfully apply. The difficulty is not (as we have often heard asserted) from the intense cold of the winter: it is sometimes the result of cold, wet weather after planting. But we do not believe that such would be the effect, with good seed, on properly-prepared land. The difficulty is, the fall was very wet, and the seed was allowed to stand out and get thoroughly soaked; when it was gathered it was damp, and the intense cold of winter destroyed its vitality, without injuring its appearance. There is no degree of cold, in a latitude where corn will grow, that will injure the seed, if it be gathered dry and kept so. Our rules for saving seed, given above, will always remedy this evil. This is, perhaps, the most profitable of all green crops for soiling cattle. Sown on clean, mellow land, it will produce an enormous weight of good green fodder, suitable for summer and early fall feeding of cows, just at a time when dry weather has nearly destroyed their pastures. Corn-fodder, well cured, is better for milch-cows than the best of hay. Cut fine and mixed with ground feed, it is excellent for cattle and horses. It is best preserved in small stacks or large shocks, that will perfectly dry through. The tops and leaves, removed while green, are very fine. COTTON. No product of the soil is more useful than this. To this country alone we give the highest value to Indian corn. But, in usefulness to the whole world, corn must yield the palm to cotton. It employs more hands and capital in manufacturing, and enters more largely into the clothing of mankind, than any other article. The history of cotton and the cotton-gin, and of the manufacture of cotton goods, is exceedingly interesting. The eminence of Great Britain as the first commercial nation of the world is due, in no small degree, to her cotton manufactures. And the influence of this great staple American product upon all the interests of this country, social and political, civil and religious, is universally felt and acknowledged. The cotton-fields of the South, at certain stages of growth, and especially when in bloom, present scenes of beauty unsurpassed by any other growing crop. It does not come within our design in this work to give a very extended view of cotton culture. This business in the United States is confined principally to a particular class of men, known as planters. They cultivate it on a large scale, having the control of large means. Such men seek knowledge of those of their own class, and would hardly condescend to listen to an essay on their peculiar business, written by a Northern man, not experienced in planting. And yet an article, not covering more than ten pages of this volume, might be written, condensing in a clear manner all that is established in this branch of American industry, as found in the publications of the South. Such an article, well written, by a man who would be regarded good authority, would be of vast pecuniary value to the South. Whoever carefully reads Southern agricultural papers, and "TURNER'S COTTON-PLANTER'S MANUAL," will see a great conflict of opinions on the subject, and yet a presentation of many facts, that one thoroughly conversant with soil culture in general would see to be true and important. The embodiment of these facts and principles in a brief, plain article that would be received and practised, would add value to the annual cotton crop, that would be counted by millions. What better service can some Southern gentleman do for his own chosen and favorite region than to write such an article? We give the following brief view of the whole subject, not presuming to teach cotton-planters what they are supposed to understand much better than we do, but to throw out some thoughts that may be suggestive of improvements that others may mature and carry out, and to lead young men, just commencing the business of planting, to look about and see if they may not make some improvements upon what they behold around them. This will not fail of being interesting to Northern men, most of whom know nothing of the cotton-plant, or the modes of its cultivation. It is interesting, too, that some of the most essential points are in perfect accordance with the great principles of soil culture throughout the world. There are three species of cotton: tree-cotton, shrub-cotton, and herbaceous cotton. The tree-cotton is cultivated to considerable extent in northern Africa, and produces a fair staple of cotton for commerce; being produced on trees from ten to twenty-five feet high, it is not so easily gathered. The shrub-cotton is cultivated in various parts of the world, particularly in Asia and South America. Growing in the form of small bushes, it is convenient, and the staple is fair. But these are both inferior to the herbaceous cotton. This is an herb growing annually, like corn, a number of feet in height, more or less according to soil and season, and producing the best known cotton. Under these species there are many varieties: we need speak only of the varieties of herbaceous cotton. Writers vary in their estimates of varieties; some say there are eight, and others put them as high as one hundred. This is a question of no practical moment. The sea-island cotton, called also "long staple" on account of its very long silky fibres, is the finest cotton known. Its name arose from the fact of its production in greatest perfection on the low, sandy islands near the coasts of some of the Southern states. It does well on low land near the seashore. The saltness and humidity of such locations seem peculiarly favorable to its greatest perfection. It yields about half as much as the "short staple" called Mexican and Petit gulf cotton, and known in commerce as upland cotton. But the sea-island, or long staple, sells for three or four times as much per pound, and, hence, is most profitable to the planter, in all regions where it will flourish well. The Mexican is very productive on most soils, and is easily gathered and prepared for market. There are quite a number of other varieties; as, banana, Vick's hundred-seed, Pitt's prolific, multibolus, mammoth, sugar-loaf, &c., &c. The sugar-loaf is highly commended, as are some of the others named. They have had quite a run among seed-sellers. Most of these varieties are the improved Mexican. It is well to get seed frequently from a distance; but any extravagant prices are unwise. Improvement of cotton-seed is an important part of its most profitable culture. While much said about it by interested parties is doubtless mere humbug, yet there is great importance to be attached to improvement of seed. This is true of all agricultural products, and no less so of cotton than of others. Two things only are essential to constant improvement in cotton-seed--_selection_ and _care_. Select from the best quality, producing the largest yield, and maturing early; pick it before much rain has fallen on it after ripening; dry it thoroughly before ginning, and dry it very thoroughly after it is clear of the fibre, before putting it in bulk. Cotton-seed, without extra care in drying, has moisture enough to make it heat in bulk, by which its germinating power is greatly impaired. It is this, and the effects of fall rains, that causes seed to trouble planters so seriously by not coming up: this makes it difficult to obtain good even stands, and causes much loss by diminished crops. Care in these respects would add many pounds to the acre in most cotton-fields of the land. _Preparing the Soil for Planting._--On all land not having a porous subsoil, plow very deep; it gives opportunity for the long tap-root of the plant to penetrate deep, and guard against excessive drought. The usual custom is to lay the ground into beds, elevated a little in the middle, and a depression between them, in which excessive moisture may run off; also to increase the action of the sun and air. The surface of the soil to be planted should be made very fine and smooth. This is true of everything planted--it should be in finely-pulverized soil; it comes up more readily and evenly. Soil left in coarse lumps or particles gives the air too much action on the germinating seeds and young plants, and retards and stints their growth. Deep plowing guards alike against too much or too little moisture. Too much water has room to sink away from the surface and allow it to dry speedily. It also forms a sort of reservoir to hold water for use in a drought. The seed should be planted in as straight a line as possible, from three and a half to five and a half feet apart one way, and from fourteen to twenty-five inches the other, according to the quality of the land, and the growth of the variety planted. Rich lands will not bear the plants so close as the poor. Many are great losers by not securing plants enough on the ground. Straight lines greatly facilitate culture, as it can mostly be done with the plow or cultivator. Turning land over deep, just before planting, is the best known remedy for the cut-worm; it is said to put them back until the plants grow beyond their reach. The best planters generally cover with a piece of plank drawn over the furrow in which the seed is dropped. It would be far better to roll it, as some few planters do; the effect on the early vegetation of the seed and rapid growth of the young plant would be very great, on the general principles given on "Rolling." The object of cultivation is to keep down the grass, which is the great enemy of the cotton. Plowing the last thing before planting aids this, by giving the cotton quite as early a start as the weeds or grass. Cultivate early, and the grass will be easily covered and killed. Always plant when it will come up speedily and grow rapidly; this is better than very early planting, and certainly much better than very late. Thin out to one in a place, as early as the plants are out of danger of dying. Gathering should commence as soon as bolls enough are in right condition to allow a hand to gather forty pounds per day. It is better and cheaper than to risk the injury from rains after the crop is ripe. MANURES.--Perhaps this is, at the present time, the greatest question for cotton-planters. The application of all the most approved principles and agents of fertilization would do more for the interests of the cotton crop than anything else. Cotton-plantations are sometimes said to run down so as to render it necessary to abandon portions of the land, and select new. Instead of this, land may not only be kept up with proper manuring, but made to yield larger crops from year to year. The following analysis of the ash of the cotton-plant will indicate the wants of the soil in which it grows:-- 1. Potash 29.58 2. Lime 24.34 3. Magnesia 3.73 4. Chloride 0.65 5. Phosphoric acid 34.92 6. Sulphuric acid 3.54 7. Silica 3.24 ---- 100.00 This analysis shows that the soil for cotton needs much lime, bones or bone-dust, and wood-ashes, besides the ordinary barn-yard and compost manures. All the preparations and applications of manures specified in this work, under the head of "Manures," are applicable to cotton. The usual recommendations of rotation in crops is, perhaps, more important in cotton culture than anywhere else. Judicious fallowing, on principles adapted to a Southern climate, is another great means of keeping up and improving the land. This is also the only effectual means of guarding against the numerous enemies and diseases of the cotton-plant. The health of the plants is secured, and they are made to outstrip their enemies only by the fertility and fine tilth of the soil in which they grow. This is confirmed on every hand by the correspondence of the most intelligent planters of the South. Let cotton-growers go into a thorough system of fertilization of their soils, and attend personally to the improvement of their cotton-seed, by selection, as recommended above, and the result will be an addition of one eighth, or one fourth, to the products of cotton in the United States, without adding another acre to the area under cultivation. When this comes to be understood, men of small means will cultivate a little cotton by their own individual labor, as the poorer men do corn and other agricultural products, and thus improve their condition. The above suggestions are the conclusions to which we come, from a thorough examination of what has been published to the world on this subject. We recommend the careful perusal of "The Cotton-Planter's Manual," by Turner (published by Saxton and Co., New York), and increased attention to the subject, by the intelligent, educated, and practical men with whom the cotton-growing regions abound. COWS. The cow occupies the first place among domestic animals, in value to the American people, not excepting even the horse. From the original stock, still kept as a curiosity on the grounds of some English noblemen, cattle have been greatly improved by care in breeding and feeding. Those wild animals are still beautiful, but only about one third of the weight of the ordinary improved cattle, and not more than one fourth that of the _most improved_. Improving the breed of cattle is a subject by itself, demanding a separate treatise. It is not to be expected that we should go into it at length in a work like this. But so much depends upon the cow, that we can hardly write an article on her without giving those general principles that lie at the foundation of all improvement in cattle. The few suggestions that follow, if heeded, would be worth many times the value of this book to any farmer not already familiar with the facts. The cow affects all other stock in two ways; first, the form of calves, and consequently of grown cattle, is affected as much by the cow as by the bull. The quality and quantity of her milk, also, has a great influence upon the early growth of all neat stock. Cattle are usually named from their horns, as "short horns," &c. It is a means of distinction, like a name, but not expressive of quality. The leading marks of a good cow are, medium height for her weight, small neck, straight and wide back, wide breast--giving room for healthy action of the lungs--heavy hind-quarters, and soft skin with fine hair, skin yellowish, with much dandruff above the bag behind. A smart countenance is also expressive of good qualities; there is as much difference in the eyes and expression of cattle as of men. Select only such cows to raise stock from, and allow them to go to no bull that has not good marks, and is not of a superior form. Another important matter is to avoid breeding in and in. This is injurious in all domestic animals and fowls. Always have the cow and the bull from different regions: attention to this would constantly improve any breed we have, and by improving the size of cattle, and milking qualities of cows, would add vast amounts to the wealth of farmers, without the necessity of purchasing, at a great price, any of the high-bred cattle. We have observed, in our article on calves, that abundant feeding during the first year has much to do with the excellence of stock. Unite with these regularity in feeding, watering, and salting, keeping dry and warm in stormy, cold weather, and well curried and clean, and a farmer's stock will be much more profitable to him. But this brief mention of the general principles must suffice, while we give all the further space we can occupy with this article to-- THE INFALLIBLE MARKS OF THE MILKING QUALITIES OF COWS.--M. Francis Guenon, of France, has published a treatise, in which he shows, by external marks alone, the quality and quantity of milk of any cow, and the length of time she will continue to give milk. These marks are so plain, that they are applicable to calves but a few weeks old, as well as to cows. Whoever will take a little pains to understand this, can know, when he proposes to buy a cow, how much milk she will give, with proper feed and treatment, the quality of her milk, and the length of time she will give milk after having been gotten with calf. If the farmer has heifer-calves, some of which he proposes to send to the butcher and others to raise, he may know which will make poor milkers, and which good ones, and raise the good and kill the poor. Thus, he may see a calf that his neighbor is going to slaughter, and, from these external marks, he may discover that it would make one of the best milking cows of the neighborhood; it would then pay to buy and raise it, though he might have to kill and throw away his own, which he could see would make a poor cow if raised. Thus, all extraordinary milkers would be raised, and all poor ones be slaughtered: this alone would improve the whole stock of the country twenty-five per cent. in as many years. Attention has been called to this, in the most emphatic manner, by _The New York Tribune_--a paper that always takes a deep interest in whatever will advance the great industrial interests of the whole people--and yet, this announcement will be new to a vast number of farmers into whose hands this volume will fall. To many it will be utterly incredible, especially when we inform them that the indications are, mainly, the growth of the hair, on the cow behind, from the roots of the teats upward. "Impossible!" many a practical, common-sense man will say. But that same man will acknowledge that a bull has a different color, different neck, and different horns, left in his natural state, from those he would exhibit if altered to an ox. Why is it not equally credible that the growth of the hair, &c., should be affected by the secretion and flow of the milk on that part of the system where those operations are principally carried on? But, aside from all reasonings on the subject, the fact is certain, and whoever may read this article may test its correctness, as applied to his own cows or those of his neighbor. The great agriculturists of France (and it is no mean agricultural country) have tested it, under the direction of the agricultural societies, and pronounced it entirely certain. This was followed by an award, by the French government, of a pension of three thousand francs per annum to Guenon, as a benefactor of the people by the discovery he had made. The same has been amply tested in this country, with the same certain results. It now only remains for every farmer to test it for himself, and avail himself of the profits that will arise from it. Guenon divides cows into eight classes, and has eight orders under each class, making sixty-four cows, of which he has cuts in his work. He also adds what he calls a bastard-cow in each class, making seventy-two in all. Now, to master all these nice distinctions in his classes and orders would be tedious, and nearly useless. Efforts at this would tend to confusion. We desire to give the indications in a brief manner, with a very few cuts; and yet, we would hope to be much better understood by the masses than we believe Guenon to be. We claim no credit; Guenon is the discoverer, and we only promulgate his discovery in the plainest language we can command; and if we can reach the ear of the American farmers, and call their attention to this, we shall not have labored in vain. The appearance of the hind-part of the cow, from a point near the gambrel-joint up to the tail, Guenon calls the escutcheon. The following cuts show the marks of all of Guenon's eight classes, the first and the last in each class. The intermediate ones are in regular gradation from the first to the eighth order. Each class is divided into high, medium, and low, yielding milk somewhat in proportion to their size. We give the quantity of milk which the large cows will yield. This also supposes cows to be well fed on suitable food. Smaller cows of the same class and order, or those that are poorly cared for and fed, will, of course, give less. The names of all these eight classes are entirely arbitrary--they mean nothing. M. Guenon adopted them on account of the shape of the escutcheon, or from the name of the place from which the cows came. But cows with these peculiar marks are found among all breeds, in all countries, and of all colors, sizes, and ages. These marks are certain, except the variations that are caused by extra care or neglect. [Illustration: Fig. 1. FIRST CLASS. Fig. 2. _Order_ 1. FLANDERS COW. _Order_ 8.] This class of cows has a delicate bag, covered with fine downy hair, growing upward from between the teats, and, above the bag behind, it blends itself with a growth of hair pointing upward, and covering the region marked in figure 1. This upward growth of hair begins on the legs just above the gambrel-joint, covers the inside of the thighs, and extends up to the tail, as in figure first. Above the hind teats they generally have two oval spots, two inches wide by three long, formed by hair growing downward, and of paler color than the hair that surrounds them (E, E, in fig. 1). The skin covered by the whole of this escutcheon is yellowish, with a few black spots, and a kind of bran, or dandruff, detaches from it. Cows of this class and order, when well kept, give about twenty-two quarts of milk per day, when in full flow, and before getting with calf again; after this a little less, but still a large quantity. They will continue to give milk till eight months gone with calf, or till they calve again, if you continue to milk them. This, however, should never be done; it exposes the health of cows at the time of calving, and injures the young. From this there is a gradual diminution in the quantity of milk through the orders, down to the eighth. Cows of this order (fig. 2), or with the marks you see in the drawing, will never yield more than about five quarts per day in their best state, and they will only continue to give milk until two months with calf: hence, these are only fit for the butcher. The intervening six in Gruenon's classification are gradually poorer than the first, and better than the last, in our cuts. The marks are but very slightly different from the above, except in size; the difference is so trifling, that any one can at once see that they belong to this class;--and the comparative size of this mark will show, infallibly, their value compared with the above. In the intermediate grades, the spots (E, E, fig. 1) are smaller, and as the orders descend, these spots are wanting, and some slight changes in the form of the whole mark are observed, yet the general outline remains the same. Now, as the decrease in the eight orders in each class is about from two and a half to three or three and a half quarts, no man with eyes need be deceived in buying a cow, or raising a calf, in the quantity of milk she may be made to give. Any man can tell, within one or two quarts, the yield of any cow or heifer. The only chance for mistake is in the case of bastard-cows, which rapidly dry up on getting with calf. [Illustration: Fig. 3. SECOND CLASS. Fig. 4. _Order_ 1. SELVAGE COW. _Order_ 8.] In this class, the shape of the escutcheon is entirely distinct, so that no one will confound it with the first. The gradations are the same as in the preceding, only this class, all through, is inferior to the other. The first (fig. 3) will give only twenty or twenty-one quarts, and the poorest only four quarts. This escutcheon is formed by ascending hair, but with a very different outline from the first class; it has the same spots above the hind teats as the first, formed by descending hair. In the lower orders these disappear--first one, then one small one, and then none at all--and as they descend, similar spots appear, formed in the same way, on one or both sides of the vulva (F, fig. 3). The skin of the inside surface of the thigh is yellowish. The time of giving milk--viz., eight months gone with calf, or as long as you continue to milk them--is the same as in the first class. The last order (fig. 4) of this class give very little milk after getting with calf. [Illustration: Fig. 5. THIRD CLASS. Fig. 6. _Order_ 1. CURVELINE COW. _Order_ 8.] This escutcheon is easily distinguished from the others, by its outline figure. The spots on the bag above the hind teats are formed as in the preceding, and as gradually disappear in the lower orders. In those orders there is a slight difference in the outline, but its general form is the same. The first of this class (fig. 5) yields twenty or twenty-one quarts a day, and gives milk till within a month of calving. The last order of the class (fig. 6) gives only three and a half quarts, and goes dry on getting with calf. The intermediate gradations between the first and eighth orders are the same as in the preceding classes. [Illustration: Fig. 7. FOURTH CLASS. Fig. 8. _Order_ 1. BICORN COW. _Order_ 8.] These escutcheons are unmistakably diverse from either of the others; gradations, from first to eighth orders, the same. The first order in this class (fig. 7) will give eighteen quarts a day, and give milk until eight months with calf. The dandruff which detaches from the skin within the escutcheon of the first order is yellowish or copperish color. The two marks on the sides of the vulva are narrow streaks of ascending hair, not in the general mark. The last order of the class (fig. 8) gives three and a half quarts only a day, and goes dry when with calf. [Illustration: Fig. 9. FIFTH CLASS. Fig. 10. _Order_ 1. DEMIJOHN COW. _Order_ 8.] Here is another general mark, easily distinguishable from all the others by its outline. The first order (fig. 9) will give eighteen quarts a day, and give milk eight months, or within a month of calving. Yellowish skin; delicate bag, covered with fine downy hair, as in the higher orders of all the preceding classes. The eighth order of this class (fig. 10) will give only two and a half quarts per day, and none after conceiving anew. The gradation from first to eighth order is regular, as in the others. SIXTH CLASS. Yield of first order (fig. 11) eighteen quarts per day; time, eight months. Skin within the escutcheon same color, bag equally delicate, and hair fine, as in all the first orders. Eighth order (fig. 12) yields about two quarts per day, and dries up on getting with calf. [Illustration: Fig. 11. Fig. 12. _Order_ 1. SQUARE ESCUTCHEON COW. _Order_ 8.] [Illustration: Fig. 13. SEVENTH CLASS. Fig. 14. _Order_ 1. LIMOUSINE COW. _Order_ 8.] First order in this class (fig. 13) gives fifteen quarts; time, eight months. The skin, bag, and hair, same as in the higher orders in all the classes. The eighth order (fig. 14) will yield two and a half quarts per day, and dry up when with calf. EIGHTH CLASS. First order (fig. 15) will give fifteen quarts per day; time, eight months. Skin in escutcheon reddish-yellow and silky, hair fine, teats far apart. The eighth order (fig. 16) yields two and a half quarts a day, and dries up on getting with calf. [Illustration: Fig. 15. Fig. 16. _Order_ 1. HORIZONTAL CUT COW. _Order_ 8.] Each class of cows has a kind called bastards, among those whose escutcheons would otherwise indicate the first order of their class: these often deceive the most practised eye. The only remedy is to become familiar with the infallible marks given by Guenon by which bastards may be known. This defect will account for the irregularity of many cows, and their suddenly going dry on becoming with calf, and often for the bad quality of their milk. They are distinguished by the lines of ascending and descending hair in their escutcheon. [Illustration: Fig. 17. Fig. 18. Fig. 19.] In the FLANDERS COW (fig. 17) there are two bastards; one distinguished by the fact that the hair forming the line of the escutcheon bristles up, like beards on a head of grain, instead of lying smooth, as in the genuine cow; they project over the intersection of the ascending and descending hair in a very bristling manner. The other bastard of the FLANDERS COW is known by having an oval patch of downward growing hair, about eight inches below the vulva, and in a line with it; in the large cows it is four inches long, and two and a half wide, and the hair within it always of a lighter color than that surrounding it. Cows of this mark are always imperfect. In the bastards, the skin on the escutcheon is usually reddish; it is smooth to the touch, and yields no dandruff. Bastards of the SELVAGE COW are known by two oval patches of ascending hair, one on each side of the vulva, four or five inches long, by an inch and a half wide (fig. 18). The larger the spot, and the coarser the hair, the more defective they prove, and vice versa. Bastards of the CURVELINE COW are known by the size of spots of hair on each side of the vulva (fig. 18). When they are of four or five inches by one and a half, and pointed or rounded at the ends, they indicate bastards. If they be small, the cow will not lose her milk very rapidly on getting with calf. Bastards of the BICORN COW are indicated precisely as in the preceding--by _the size_ of the spots of ascending hair, above the escutcheon and by the sides of the vulva (F, F, fig. 18). Bastards of the DEMIJOHN COW are distinguished precisely as the two preceding--_size of the streaks_ (fig. 18). The SQUARE ESCUTCHEON COW indicates bastards, by a streak of hair at the right of the vulva (fig. 19). When that ascending hair is coarse and bristly, it is a sure evidence that the animal is a bastard. LIMOUSINE COWS show their bastards precisely as do the CURVELINE and BICORN, by the size of the ascending streaks of hair, on the right and left of the vulva. (Fig. 19.) Bastards of the HORIZONTAL CUT COWS have no escutcheon whatever. By this they are always known. Some bastards are good milkers until they get with calf, and then very soon dry up. Others are poor milkers. Those with coarse hair and but little of it, in the escutcheon, give poor, watery milk. Those of fine, thick hair will give good milk. BULLS have escutcheons of the same shape as the cows, but on a smaller scale. Whenever there are streaks of descending hair bristling up among the ascending hair of the escutcheon, rendering it quite irregular and rough in its appearance, the animal is regarded as a bastard. Never put a cow to any bull that has not a regular, well-defined, and smooth escutcheon. This is as fully as we have room to go into M. Guenon's details. We fear this will fall into the hands of many who will not take the pains to master even these distinctions. To those who will, we trust they will be found plain, and certain in their results. From all this, one thing is certain, and that is of immense value to the farmer: it is, that on general principles, without remembering the exact figure of one of the indications above given, or one of the arbitrary terms it has been necessary to use, any man can tell the quality and quantity of milk a cow will give, and the time she will give milk, with sufficient accuracy to buy no cow and raise no heifer that will not be a profitable dairy cow, if that is what he desires. The rules by which these things may be known are the following: No cow, of any class, is ever a good milker, that has not a large surface of hair growing upward from the teats and covering the inner surface of the thighs, and extending up toward or to the tail. No cow that is destitute of this mark, or only has a very small one, is ever a good milker. Every cow having a scanty growth of coarse hair in the above mark will only give poor, watery milk; and every cow having a thick growth of fine hair on the escutcheon, or surface where it ascends, and considerable dandruff, will always give good rich milk, and be good for butter and cheese. Every cow on which this mark is small will give but little milk, and dry up soon after getting with calf, and is not fit to be kept. Observe these brief rules, and milk your cows _at certain hours every day_--milk _very quickly_, without stopping, and _very clean_, not leaving a drop--and you never will have a poor cow on your farm, and at least twenty-five per cent. will be added to the value of the ordinary dairy, that is made up of cows purchased or raised in the usual, hap-hazard way. If your cows' udders swell after calving, wash them in aconite made weak with water; it is very good for taking out inflammation. Other common remedies are known. If your cow or other creature gets choked, pour into the throat half a pint, at least, of oil; and by rubbing the neck, the obstruction will probably move up or down. Curry your cows as thoroughly as you do your horses; and if they ever chance to get lousy, wash them in a decoction of tobacco. CRANBERRY. [Illustration] This is native in the northern parts of both hemispheres. In England and on the continents of Europe and Asia, native cranberries are inferior, in size and quality, to the American. Our own have also been greatly improved by cultivation. They have become an important article of commerce, and find a ready sale, at high prices, in all the leading markets of the country. Their successful cultivation, therefore, deserves attention, as really as that of other fruits. Mr. B. Eastwood has written a volume on the subject, which probably contains all the facts already established, together with many opinions of scientific and practical cultivators. The work is valuable, but much less so than it would have been, had the author put into a few pages the important facts, and left out all speculations and diversities of opinion. The objection to most of this kind of literature is the intermixture of facts and valuable suggestions with so much that is not only useless, but absolutely pernicious, by the confusion it creates. We think the following directions for the cultivation of the cranberry are complete, according to our present knowledge:-- _Soil._--It is universally agreed that _beach sand_ is the best. Not from the beach of the ocean barely, but of lakes, ponds, or rivers. There is no evidence that any saline quality that may be in sand from the beach of the sea, is particularly useful. It is the cleanness of the sand, on which account it is less calculated to promote a growth of weeds, and allows a free passage of moisture toward the surface. Hence white sand is preferable, and the cleaner the better. Whoever has a moist meadow in the soil of which there is considerable sand has a good place for a cranberry bed. If you have not a sand meadow, select a plat of ground as moist as any you have, upon which water will not stand unless you confine it there, and draw on sand to the depth of four or six inches, having first removed any grass or break-turf, that may be in danger of coming up as weeds to choke the vines. If you make the ground mellow below and then put on the sand, you will have a bed that will give you but little further trouble. Peat soils will do, if you take off the top and expose to the weather, frosts and rains, one year before planting. The first year, peat will dry and crack, so as to destroy young cranberry vines. But after one winter's frost, it becomes pulverized and will not again bake. Hence it is next to sand for a cranberry bed. _Situation._--The shore of a body of water, or of a small pond is best, if it be not too much exposed to violent action of wind and waves. Land that retains much moisture within a foot of the surface, but which does not become stagnant, is very valuable. The bottoms of small ponds that can be drained off are very good. Any land that can be flowed with water at pleasure is good. By flooding, the blossoms are kept back till late spring frosts are gone. Any upland can be prepared as above. But if it be a very dry soil it must have a liberal supply of water during dry weather, or success may not be expected. _Planting._--There are several methods. Sod planting consists in preparing the land and then cutting out square sods containing vines, and setting them at the distances apart, you desire. This was the general method; but it is objectionable, on account of the weeds that will grow out of the sod and choke the vines. This method is improved by tearing away the sod, leaving the roots naked, and then planting. Another method is to cut off a vigorous shoot, and plant the middle of it, with each end protruding from the soil two or three inches apart. Roots will come out by all the leaves that are buried, and promote the springing of many new vines, and thus the early matting of the bed which is very desirable. Others take short slips and thrust four or five of them together down into the soil as they do slips of currant bushes, thus making a hill of as many plants. And yet another method is, to cut up the vines into pieces of two or three inches in length, and broad cast them on mellow soil, and harrow them in as wheat--Others bury the short pieces in drills. In either case they will soon mat the whole ground, if the land be not weedy. The best plan for small beds is probably the middle planting. Distances apart depend upon your design in cultivating. If your soil is such that so many weeds will grow as to require cultivating with a horse, or much hoeing, four feet one way and two the other is the best. Better have land so well covered with clean sand, that very few weeds will grow and no cultivation be needed. Then set vines one foot apart and very soon the whole ground will be perfectly matted and will need very little care for years. For two or three years pull out the weeds by hand, and the ground will be covered and need nothing more. _Varieties._--There are three principal ones of the lowland species. The bell, the bugle, and the cherry cranberries. These are named from their shape. Probably the cherry is the best, being the size, shape, and color of the cultivated red cherries. There has recently been discovered an upland variety, on the shores of Lake Superior, that bids fair to be as hardy and productive as the common currant. On all poor, hard, and even very dry uplands, it does remarkably well. It grows extensively in the northern part of the British provinces. The fruit is smaller than the other varieties but is delicious, beautiful in color, and very abundant. It will probably be one of our great and universal luxuries. _Healthy and Unhealthy Plants._--By this cultivators denote those that bear well and those that do not. And yet the unhealthy, or those that bear the least, are the larger, greener-leaved, and rapid-growing varieties. It is difficult to describe them so that an unpractised eye would know them from each other. The best way to be sure of getting the right kind is to purchase of a man you can trust, or visit the beds when the fruit is in perfection and witness where the crop is abundant, mark it, and let it remain until you are ready to plant. This is always best done in the spring, or from May 15th to June 15th. _Gathering_--is performed by hand, or with a cranberry-rake. Hand-picking is best for the vines, but is more expensive. If a rake be used, it will draw out some small runners and retard the growth of young vines. But it is such a saving of expense, it had better be used, and always drawn the same way. The fruit should be cleared of leaves and decayed berries; and if intended for a near market, be packed dry in barrels. If to be transported far, put them in small casks, say half-barrels, with good water. They may thus be carried around the globe in good condition. To keep well they should not be exposed to fall frosts, and should not be picked before ripe. A little practice, and at first on a small scale, may enable American cultivators of the soil, generally, to have good cranberry beds. Much of the practical part of this can only be learned by experience. The above suggestions will save much loss and discouragement. _Enemies_--are worms that attack the leaves, and another species that attack the berries. There are only two remedies proposed, viz., fire and water. If you can flood your beds you will destroy them. If not, take a time not very dry so as to endanger burning the roots, and burn over your cranberry-beds, so as to consume all the vines. Next season new vines will grow up free from worms. CUCUMBERS. There are quite a number of varieties. But a few only deserve attention. The best, for all uses, is the Early Cluster, a great bearer of firm, tender, brittle fruit. Early Frame, Long White, Turkey, and Long Green Turkey, are rather beautiful, but not prolific varieties. Long Prickly, is very good for pickles, and fills a cask rapidly, but is by no means so pleasant as the Early Cluster. The Short Prickly and White Spined are considerably used. The West India or small Gherkin is used only for pickling, and is considered fine. But we regard all these inferior to the Early Cluster. _Soil_ should be made very rich with compost and vegetable mould, with a liberal application of sand. All vines do better in a sandy soil. Plant in the open air only after the weather has become quite warm. An effort to get early cucumbers by early out-door planting is usually a failure; seeds decay, or having come up, after a long while, they grow slowly, and vines and fruit are apt to be imperfect. Six feet apart, each way, is the best distance; and after the plants get out of the way of insects, and become well established, two vines in each hill is better than more: the fruit will be better and more abundant, and they will bear much longer than when vines are left to grow very thick. They need water in dry weather (see Watering). The first week in July is the best time to plant for pickling. In a warm, dry climate, cucumbers do better a little shaded, but not too much. Planted among young fruit-trees, or in alternate rows with corn, they do well. If allowed to run up bushes like peas, they produce more and better fruit. Forcing for an early crop is often done, by digging a hole in the ground, two feet deep and two feet square, and filling with hot manure, stamped down well, and covered with six inches of fine mould. Put around a frame and cover with glass, at an angle of thirty-five degrees to the sun. Plant one hundred seeds on the two feet square; when they come up, put two plants in a pot, set in a regular hotbed, and keep well watered and aired until the weather be warm enough to transplant in the open air; then remove from the pots without breaking the ball of earth, and plant six feet apart. Four plants left in the original hill will bear earlier than those that have been removed. To get a large quantity of very early ones, plant a corresponding number of hills, with the two feet of manure, as above; whenever the weather becomes hot, they will need to be well watered, or they will dry up. All cucumber-plants forced should have the main runner cut off, after the second rough leaf appears; this brings fruit earlier and twice as abundant. On transplanting cucumbers, or any other vines, cover them wholly from the sun for three days, or, if the weather be dry, for a whole week. We once thought melons and cucumbers very difficult to transplant successfully; but we ascertained the only difficulty to be, the want of sufficient water and shade. When roots and soil were so dry that the dirt all fell off, we have transplanted with perfect success; but for a week the plants appeared to be ruined. We kept them covered and well watered, and they revived and made a great crop, much earlier than seeds planted at the same time. Protection of plants from insects has been a subject of much study and many experiments. Ashes and lime, and various decoctions and offensive mixtures, have been recommended. We discard them all, as both troublesome and ineffectual. Our experience is, most decidedly, in favor of fencing each hill, of all vines, to keep off insects. A box a foot square and fifteen inches high, the lower edge set in the soil, will usually prove effectual. Put over a pane of glass, and it will be more sure, and increase the warmth and consequently the growth of the plants. Put millinet over the boxes, instead of glass, and not a hill will be lost. If a cutworm chances to be fenced in, he will show himself by cutting off a plant. Search him out and kill him, and all will be safe. Such boxes, well taken care of, will last for ten years. This, then, is a cheap as well as effectual method. Cucumbers are a cooling, healthy article of diet, used in reasonable quantities. They should be sliced into cold water, taken out, and put in sharp vinegar with pepper and salt. Ripe cucumbers make one of the best of pickles: for directions in making, we refer to the cook-books. If you have room near your back door for one large hill of cucumbers, you may obtain a remarkable growth. Dig down deep enough to set in an old barrel, with head and bottom out, leaving the top even with the surface. Fill with manure from the stable, well trod down. In fine rich mould, around on the outside of the barrel, plant twenty or thirty cucumber-seeds. Put a pail of water in the barrel every day. The water comes up through the soil to the roots of the plants, bringing with it the stimulus of the manure, and the effect is wonderful. A large barrel has been filled with pickles from one such hill. If bushes be put up to support the vines, it is still better. Neglect to pour in water, and they will dry up; but continue to water them, and they will bear till frost in autumn. CURRANTS. These are among the very best of all the small fruits; immensely productive in all locations, and adapted to a great variety of uses, and hang long on the bushes after ripening. There is quite a number of varieties, some of which are probably the mere result of cultivation of others well known. The common red is too well known to need description--very acid, and always remarkably productive, in all soils and situations. The size and quality of the fruit are affected by location and culture. The native currants, as found in the north of Europe, are small and inferior; but all excellent modern varieties have sprung from them by cultivation. In working these important changes, the Dutch and French gardeners have been the chief agents: hence our names, Red and White Dutch currants. The common red and the common white are still cultivated in the great majority of American gardens; and yet, they are not worthy to be named with the White Dutch and the Red Dutch, which may easily be obtained by every cultivator. These two varieties are all that ever need be cultivated. Long lists of currants are described in many of the fruit-books; the result, as in all such cases, is confusion and loss to the mass of growers. We will not even give the list. The common red and the white currants are greatly improved by cultivation. But the Dutch have longer bunches, of larger fruit, the lower ones in the stem holding their size much better than common currants; the stems are usually full and perfect, and the fruit less acid and more pleasant. A new, strong-growing variety, called the "cherry currant" on account of its large size, is now considerably grown. A few bushes for variety, and for their beautiful appearance, may be well enough; but it is not a very good bearer, and therefore is not so profitable as the Dutch. The Attractor is a new French variety, said to be valuable. Knight's Early Red has the single virtue of ripening a few days earlier than the others. The Victoria is perhaps the latest of all currants, hanging on the bushes fully two weeks longer than others. The White Grape, the Red Grape, and the Transparent, are all good and beautiful. The utilitarian will cultivate the Red Dutch and the White Dutch as his main crop, with two or three of the others for a variety. The amateur will get all the varieties, and amuse himself by comparing their qualities, and trying his skill at modifying them. As these efforts have resulted, in past time, in the production of our best varieties, so they may, in future, in something far better than we yet have. There is no probability that any of our fruits have reached the acme of perfection. The common black, or English black currant has long been cultivated. A jam made of it is valuable for sore throat. The highest medical authority pronounces black currant wine the best, in many cases of sickness, of any wine known. The Black Naples possesses the same virtues, and being a much larger fruit, and more productive, should take the place of the English black, and exclude it from all gardens. _Cultivation._--Currant-bushes should be set four feet apart each way, and the whole ground thoroughly mulched; it keeps down all weeds and grass, saving all further labor in cultivation, and greatly increases the size and quantity of the fruit. On nothing does mulching pay better. (See article Mulching.) Any good garden-soil is suitable for currants. On the north side of a wall or building, or in the shade of trees, they will be considerably later. The same effect may be produced by covering bushes a part of the time with blankets or mats. Some are retarded by this means, so as to be in perfection after others are gone: thus, the currant that naturally comes to perfection about midsummer is preserved on the bushes until October. Many cultivate currants in the tree form; allowing no sprouts from the roots, and no branches within a foot or two of the ground. This object is secured by cutting from the slip you are to plant, from which to raise a bush, all the lower buds to within two or three of the top, and then pinching off at once all shoots that may start out of the stem below; this makes beautiful little shrubs, but the top is apt to be broken off by the wind, and they must be replaced by new ones every four or five years. Downing strongly recommends it, but we can not do so. Let bushes grow in the natural way, removing all old, decaying branches, and all suckers that rise too far from the parent-bush, and keep the clusters of bushes and leaves thin enough to allow the sun free access, and prevent continued moisture in wet weather, which will rot the fruit, and you will find it the cheapest and best. We have seen quite as large and as fine fruit grow on such bushes, that we knew to be more than twenty years old, as we ever saw of the same variety when cultivated in the tree form. DAIRY. For cheese, the dairy should contain three rooms: one for setting the milk, with suitable boilers, &c.; next, a press-room, in which the cheese should be salted, as given under article _Cheese_; the third, a store-room. In all climates a cheese-house should be made as tight as possible;--thick stone walls are best; windows should be on two sides, north and west, but not on opposite sides, so as to create a draught: this is no better for cheese or butter, and is always dangerous to the operator. Let all persons who would enjoy good health avoid a draught of air as they would an arrow. If your cheese-house can be shaded on the east, south, and west, by trees, and have only a northern exposure, it will aid you much in guarding against extremes of heat and cold. Windows should be fitted closely, and covered with wire-cloth on the outside, so as to exclude all flies. A dairy for butter needs but two rooms, and a cool, dry cellar, with windows in north and west. The first room should be for setting and skimming the milk, and the other for churning and working the butter, and scalding and cleaning the utensils. If your milk-room can be a spring-house with stone-floor, and a little water passing over it, you will find it a great benefit. The shade, situation of windows, avoiding a current, &c., should be the same as in the cheese-dairy. To prevent the taste of turnips or other food of cows in milk and butter, put one quart of hot water into eight quarts of the milk just drawn from the cow, and strain it at once. It has been recently declared, by intelligent farmers, that if you feed the turnips to cows immediately after milking, the next milking, twelve hours after feeding the roots, will be free from their taste or odor. The easiest remedy is the boiling water. DECLENSION OF FRUITS. That there are instances of decided decline in the quality of fruits is certain. But on the causes of those changes pomologists do not agree. One theory is, that fruits, like animals and vegetables of former ages, may decline and finally become extinct. Should this theory be established, the declension would be so gradual that a century would make no perceptible change. But we do not credit the theory, even as applied to former geological periods in the history of our globe. The changes of past ages, as revealed in geology, have been brought about, not gradually, but by great convulsions of nature, such as volcanoes, or the deluge, that resulted in the destruction of the old order of things, and in a new creation. The true theory of this declension of varieties of fruits, is, that it is the result of repeated budding upon unhealthy stocks, and of neglect and improper cultivation. Apply the specific manures--that is, those particularly demanded by a given fruit--prune properly, mulch well, and bud or graft only on healthy seedling stocks of the same kind, and, instead of declension, we may expect our best fruits to improve constantly, in quality and quantity. DILL. An herb, native in the south of Europe, and on the Cape of Good Hope. It is grown, particularly at the South, as a medicinal herb. The leaves are sometimes used for culinary purposes; but it is principally cultivated for its sharp aromatic seed, used for flatulence and colic in infants, and put into pickled cucumbers to heighten the flavor. The seeds may be sown early in the spring, or at the time of ripening. A light soil is best. Clear of weeds, and thin in the rows, are the conditions of success. DRAINS. Drains are of two kinds--under-drains and surface-drains. The latter are simply open ditches to carry off surface-water, that might otherwise stand long enough to destroy the prospective crop. These are frequently useful along at the foot of hills, when they should be proportioned to the extent of the surface above them. They are also very useful on low, level meadow-lands. Properly constructed, they will reclaim low swamps, and make them excellent land. Millions of acres of land in the United States, as good as any we have, are lying useless, and spreading pestilence around, that by this simple method of ditching might be turned to most profitable account. The direction of these drains should be determined by the shape of the land to be drained by them--straight whenever they will answer the purpose, but crooked when they will do better. On low and very level land, they should be not more than five rods apart; they should be three times as wide at the top as they are at the bottom, and as deep as the width at the top; made so slanting, the sides will not fall in;--they should be so shaped as to allow only a very gentle flow of the water: if it flows too rapidly, it will wash down the sides, and obstruct the ditch, and waste the land. Excavations for under-draining are made in the same way, only the top need not be so much wider than the bottom; it would be a waste of labor in excavating a useless quantity of earth. There are four methods of filling up the ditch, viz., with brush; with small stones thrown in promiscuously; with a throat laid in the bottom and filled with small stones; and with a throat made of tile from the pottery. In all cases, that with which the ditch is filled must not come so near the surface as to be reached by the plow. Brush, put in green and covered with straw or leaves, will answer a good purpose for several years, and may be used where small stones can not easily be obtained. The tile is more expensive than either of the others, and not so good as the stones; it is so tight that the water does not enter it so readily; and if by any chance dirt gets into the throat, it obstructs it, and there is no other channel through which the water can pass off. Small stones thrown in promiscuously serve a good purpose for a long time, if they be covered with straw or cornstalks before the earth is put in. But the best method is to make a throat, six inches square, in the bottom of the drain, laying the large stones over the top of it, and filling in the small stones above, and covering with straw;--the water will find its way into the throat through the numerous openings; and if the throat should ever be filled, the water could still pass off between the small stones above. Such drains will last many years, and add one half to the products of all wet springy land. The earth over the new drain should be six inches higher than the surface of the field, that, when well settled, it may be level. Leave no places open for surface-water to run in; that would soon fill up and ruin a drain. Drains made to carry off spring-water are often useless by being in a wrong location. Springs come out near the foot of rising ground. Just where they come out should be the location of the drain, which would then carry off the water and prevent it from saturating and chilling the soil in the field below. Many persons locate their ditch down in the centre of the wet level below the rise of ground; this is of no use to the surface above, to the point where the water springs. Locate the drain just at the point where the land begins to be unduly wet. On very wet, level land, a small drain may also be needed below the first and main one. The cost of a covered drain as described above will be from fifty to seventy-five cents per rod, and an uncovered one will cost from twenty to thirty cents. When you have low swamps to drain, you can realize more than the cost of draining, by carting the excavations upon other land, or into the barnyard as material for compost. Perhaps no expenditure, on land needing it, pays so well as thorough draining. It is important, for all fruit-orchards on low land, to put a drain through under each row of trees: it is indispensable to cherries, and highly favorable to all other fruits. DUCKS. There are a number of varieties, the wild Black Spanish, the Canvass-Back, and the ordinary little duck of the farmyard, are all good. The common duck is the only one we recommend for the American poultry-yard. A close pasture, including a rivulet, or a small stream of water, affords facilities for raising ducks at a cheap rate. From one hundred to one thousand ducks may be raised in such an enclosure of an acre or two, quite profitably. If there is plenty of grass, they will still need a little grain. In the winter the cheapest feed is beets or potatoes cut fine, with a very little grain. Each duck, well kept, will lay from fifty to one hundred eggs, larger than hen's eggs, and about as good for cooking purposes. They may be picked as geese, for live feathers, though not quite so frequently. The feathers will nearly pay for keeping, leaving the eggs and increase as profit. DWARFING. This has some advantages in its application to fruit-trees. It will enable the cultivator to raise more fruit on a small plat of ground, to get fruit much earlier than from standard trees, and sometimes, with high cultivation, the fruit will be larger. Dwarfing is done by grafting into small slow-growing stocks. Almost all fruits have such kinds. Grafting into other stocks, as the pear into the foreign quince, is a very effectual method. The Paradise stock for the apple, the Canada and other slow-growing stocks for the plum, the dwarf wild cherry of Europe and the Mahaleb for cherries. Dwarfs produced by grafting upon other stocks are short-lived, compared with standards of the same varieties. They should only be used to economize room, to test varieties, and produce fruit while standards are coming into bearing. Better and much longer-lived dwarfs may be produced by frequent transplanting, thorough trimming of the roots, and repeated heading-in. The fruit on such dwarfs must be well thinned out when young, or it will be smaller than is natural. The effect of heading in is to cause the sap to mature an abundance of fruit-buds. This will tax the tree too much, unless they be well thinned out. Root-pruning is an effectual method of dwarfing (see Pruning). Dwarfing by root-pruning, repeated transplanting, and thorough heading-in, will not render the trees very short-lived, and in many situations it is profitable. The same is true of the dwarf pear on the quince. All other dwarfing is more for the amateur than the utilitarian. EARLY FRUITS AND VEGETABLES Are often considered a great luxury, and always command a high price. Early vegetables are secured by hotbeds and the various methods of forcing, as given under the different species. Early fruits are obtained by dwarfing, as given on that subject. Location, soil, and mode of cultivation, also, have much to do with it. Warm location, finely-pulverized soil, often stirred and kept moist, will materially shorten the time of the maturity of fruits and vegetables. Seeds imported from the North, where seasons are shorter, will mature earlier. Another means of hastening maturity is to plant successively, from year to year, the very first that ripens; this tends to dwarf in proportion as the time of maturity is hastened. In this way such dwarfs as the little Canada corn, that will mature at the South in six weeks, have been produced. Various early plants, as tomatoes, cabbages, peppers, and egg-plants, may be started in boxes or flower-pots in the house. Planted in February here, or in January in the South, they will grow as well as house-plants, and acquire considerable size before it is time to place them in the open ground. This is convenient for those who have no hotbeds. They must be kept from frost, and occasionally set out in a warm day to harden, and they will do well. EGG PLANT. The white is merely ornamental. The large purple is one of the greatest luxuries of the vegetable garden. Plant seeds in hotbed at the time of planting tomatoes or peppers. Set out in land made very rich with stable-manure and decayed forest-leaves, two feet and a half apart each way. Kept clean, and earthed up a little, and the bugs kept off while the plants are small, they will produce an abundance of fruit. There are two varieties of the purple--_large prickly-stem purple_, growing sometimes eight inches in diameter; and the _long purple_, bearing smaller, long fruit, but a large quantity, and considerably earlier than the large. Many do not like them at first; but after tasting a few times, almost all persons become very fond of them. If not properly cooked, they are not at all palatable. Although it belongs to the cook-book, yet, to save this excellent plant from condemnation, we give a recipe for cooking it. It is fit for use from one third grown, until the seeds begin to turn. Without paring, cut the fruit into slices one third of an inch thick; put it in a little water with plenty of salt, and let it stand over night, or six hours at least; take it out, and fry very soft and brown in butter or fresh lard--if not fried soft and brown, it is disagreeable. Salt, ashes, and bonedust, or superphosphate of lime, are the best manures, as more than two thirds of the fruit is made up of potash, soda, and phosphates, as shown by chemical analysis. EGGS. Of the quality of eggs you can always judge correctly by looking at them toward the light: if they are translucent they are good; if they look dark they are old--or you may get a chicken, when you only paid for an egg. Many methods for preserving eggs are recommended. Packed away in fine salt they will keep, but, like salt meat, have not the same flavor as fresh. Set them on their small ends in a tight cask, and fill it with pure lime-water, and they will keep, but it changes their flavor. This, however, is a very common method. The best way known to us, is to pack fresh eggs down in Indian meal, allowing no two to touch each other. Keep very dry in a cool cellar, and they will remain for months unchanged. ELDERBERRY. This is a healthy berry, dried and used for making pies, especially mixed with some other fruit. The blossoms are much used as medicine for small children. The common sweet elder is the only kind cultivated. The earlier red are offensive and poisonous. They are easily grown on rough waste land, or in any situation you prefer. Of this berry is made a wine, superior in flavor and effect to any port wine now to be obtained in market; it has had the preference among the best judges in the country;--it is fast coming into notice and cultivation. The wine is so entirely superior to the poisonous substances of that name in commerce, that it would be well for every neighborhood to make enough for their sick. The process is sure and easily intelligible to all. (See article Wine.) ENDIVE. This is a well-known winter-lettuce. Sow from July to September, according to latitude. It should come into maturity at the time of the first smart frosts. To get beautiful, white, tender bunches, they should be tied up when the leaves are about six inches long. When frost comes, protect by covering. In very cold climates, place it in the cellar, with the roots in moist earth, and it will keep for a long time. It will not be extensively used in this country for soups and stews, as it is in Europe; and but few of the American people care much about winter-lettuce. This is the best variety of lettuce, except for those who have hot-houses and attend to winter-gardening. They will prefer the other finer varieties. There are two varieties of endive cultivated in this country: _green curled_, which is the most common, and used principally as a salad; the _broad-leaved_, or Batavian, has thicker leaves and large heads, and is principally used in stews and soups. Still another variety, called _succory_, which is used to some extent in Europe as a winter-salad, but is cultivated mainly for the root. It is dried and ground to mix with coffee: some consider it quite as good. This is more cultivated at the South than at the North--their winters are much better adapted to it. The medicinal virtues of this plant are nearly equal to those of the dandelion. When it is bleached, by tying or earthing up, the bitterness is removed, and the taste is pleasant; this must be done when the plants are dry, or they will rot. Plant them in a sunny place and in a light soil. FEEDING ANIMALS. Feed as nearly as possible at the same hours. All creatures do much better for being so fed. Do not feed domestic animals too much: animals will be more healthy, grow faster, and fatten better, by being fed almost, but not quite as much as they will eat. Giving food to lie by them is poor economy; always let them eat it all up, and desire a little more;--at the same time, let it be remembered that creatures kept very poorly for a considerable time, especially while young, will never fully recover from it. This is often done under the idea of keeping them cheap, but it is dear keeping. They never can make as fine animals afterward. All grains and vegetables, except beets and turnips, are better for being boiled or steamed. The increased value is much more than the cost of cooking, provided persons are not so careless as to allow food to be injured by standing after cooking. Cooking is supposed to add one fourth to the value of food. Grinding dry grains adds nearly as much to their value, as feed for animals, as cooking. If you neither grind nor boil hard grain for feed, it will pay well to soak it somewhat soft before feeding. Variety of food is as pleasant and healthy for animals as for men. FENCES. These are matters of great importance to the farmers of the whole country, but especially to those on the prairies of the west. In all localities where stone can be obtained from the fields or quarry, the best and cheapest fence is a stone wall. If the stones are flat, make the wall two feet thick at bottom, and one at top, five feet high. If the stones are very irregular the wall should be thicker. Stone walls should have transverse rows of shingles, boards, or split sticks, about half an inch thick, laid in the wall at suitable distances. If stones are quite flat three rows are desirable, one two, the next three, and the other four feet from the ground. If the wall is made of rough stones it will require one more course of sticks, leaving them only a foot apart. The sticks should be of such lengths as to come out just even with the wall, on each side. The lower courses will be longer than the upper ones. These sticks are to keep the wall from falling down. Dig a ditch one foot deep, two feet from the wall, and throw the earth excavated up against the wall, and the water will run off and prevent heaving by frost, and such a wall will need the merest trifle of attention during a generation, and will last for centuries. A cord of stones will make one rod. We can not too strongly recommend this kind of fence, in all places where stones can be obtained reasonably. The pieces of wood laid in a wall, will keep well for thirty years, when they will need replacing. Next to stone is a good board fence. Well made and of good materials, it is durable and always in its place. Hence it is a cheap fence. Of the various styles of picket, and other fancy fences for front yards, &c., it is more the province of the architect or the mechanic to treat. Styles vary and are constantly increasing in number. The great point to be secured in all such, to render them most durable, is to have the smallest possible points of contact. A picket fence with horizontal base should never have the pickets standing on the base board. They should be separated, from one quarter to one half an inch. A good style for villages, is a cap, water tight, and wide enough to cover the ends of the posts and pickets with a neat little cornice. It looks well and is very durable. In all localities where timber is not too valuable, a cheap and substantial fence is made of split rails. The crooked rail-fence, with stakes and riders, is well known. Also that with upright stakes and caps, which is decidedly preferable. It will stand much longer, and the stakes are out of the way. No farmer should ever risk his crop with a rail-fence without stakes. But the best of all rail-fences, is that made of posts and rails. The rails are put in as bars, but so firmly that the fence can not be taken down, without commencing at the end. Where cedar or locust posts, and oak or cedar rails can be obtained, a fence may be made that will not get out of repair for twenty-five years. No creature can tear it down, for human hands can not take it down without tools, or without commencing at the end. This is considered expensive. But as the farmer may prepare his posts and rails in winter, and it will require no attention to keep it up, and is very durable and perfectly effectual against cattle, it is an economical fence. For hedges, see that article. FENNEL. This is a hardy perennial plant of Southern Europe, and belongs to both the culinary and the medicinal departments. It grows well on almost any soil, and is propagated by seeds, offshoots, or by parting the roots. It is much inclined to spread. A few roots, kept within reasonable bounds, are enough for a family. It is much used in Europe for soups, salads, and garnishes. The Italians treat it as celery. In this country it is mostly used medicinally. It is stimulant and carminative. Very beneficial to children in cases of flatulency and colic. FIGS. [Illustration] This fruit is native in the warmer parts of Asia: hence, the cold winters of the Middle, Northern, and Western states, and of Canada, would destroy the trees in the open air without protection. But as the trees are low-growing shrubs, they may easily be protected either in cellars, greenhouses, or the open air, and uncovered or planted out in the beginning of warm weather. Frequent removals and transplantings injure the fig less than any other fruit, and our summers are long enough to produce large crops of excellent figs. In New England they are raised in tubs, set out of the cellar in spring, and produce largely. South of Virginia, the fig is hardy, and may be cultivated with profit in the open air. The best method of raising all kinds of fruit, in climates where the winters are too cold for them, is to build a wall twelve feet high on one side, and six feet on the other, with the ends closed, and cover it with glass facing the south. This should only be kept warm enough to prevent freezing, which would require only a small outlay. Men of moderate means might thus have oranges, lemons, figs, &c., of their own raising. In all except our coldest latitudes, such fruits might be raised at a profit. _Soil._--The best is a deep, rich loam, with a dry subsoil. _Propagation_ is by layers and cuttings. The latter should be taken off in the spring, be of last year's growth, with half an inch of the previous year's growth: they take root better. _Varieties_ are numerous, and names uncertain. White, in his Gardening for the South, says, some of the best varieties are not in the books, or so imperfectly described that they can not be recognised. This is true of all the fruits, and hence our decision, in this work, not to attempt to describe fruits with a view to their identification. As this fruit is more for the South than the North, we give the whole of White's list, as being adapted to those regions:-- 1, Brunswick; 2, Brown Turkey; 3, Brown Ischia; 4, Small Brown Ischia; 5, Black Genoa; 6, Celestial; 7, Common Blue; 8, Round White, Common White, Lemon Fig; 9, White Genoa, White Italian; 10, Nerii; 11, Pregussatta; 12, Allicant; 13, Black Ischia; 14, White Ischia. These, with a few others, are those described in most of our fruit-books. The catalogue of the London Horticultural Society enumerates forty-two varieties. Only a few of them have been introduced into this country. Any of these varieties are good at the South. The five following are the most hardy, and, being in all respects good, are all we need in our more northern latitudes:-- 1. _Brunswick._--Very hardy, productive, and excellent. 2. _Brown Turkey._--The very hardiest, and one of the most regular and abundant bearers. 3. _Black Ischia._--Bears an abundance of medium-sized, excellent fruit, very dark-colored. 4. _Nerii._--Said to be the richest fig in Britain: from an acid mixture in its flavor, it is exceedingly delicious. 5. _Celestial._--This may be the "Malta" of Downing. Under whatever name, though small, it is one of the very best figs grown in this country. For forcing under glass, the best are the Allicant and Marseilles. With care, the first three of the above list may be raised in the Middle states, without removal in winter. Any variety may be protected by bending and tying down the branches, and covering with four inches of soil. Below Philadelphia, a little straw will be a sufficient protection. Dried figs are an important article of import into this country; yet they might be raised as plentifully and profitably in the Southern states. Prune only to keep the tree low and regular. The fig-tree is a great and regular bearer, only when the wood makes too strong a growth, as it is somewhat apt to do. The remedy is _root-pruning_. Cut off, on the first of November, the roots to half the length of the branches from the tree, and occasionally shorten the branches a little, and the fruit will be abundant, and not fall off. The ripening of the fruit may be hastened and perfected by putting a drop of oil in the blossom-end of each fig. This is done by dipping the end of a straw in oil, and then putting it into the end of the fruit. This is extensively practised in France. Compost, containing a pretty liberal proportion of lime, is the best manure for the fig. FISH. The cultivation of fish is attracting much attention in this country and in Europe. The study and experiments of scientific and practical men have established important facts upon this subject. Fish may be successfully cultivated wherever water can be conveniently obtained. The creeks, ponds, and small rivers of our land may be well stocked with fish. Fish may be raised as a source of profit and luxury, with as much ease and certainty, and at a much less expense than fowls. This is so important to the whole people, that it demands the earnest attention of our state authorities, as it has engaged that of the government of France. The species of fish best adapted to artificial culture, in particular climates and in different kinds of water, have been ascertained. A man may know what fish to put in his waters, as well as what crops to put on his land, or what stocks on his farm. The following brief synopsis of the best methods of cultivation will be sufficient to insure success. The first requisite is suitable water for hatching eggs that have been artificially fecundated, and for the occupancy of fish of different ages, and for different species of fish. Fish of different ages are much inclined to destroy each other for food; and hence, in order to multiply them most rapidly, they should be kept in separate ponds until considerably grown, when they will take care of themselves. A spring sending forth a rivulet of clear water, and not subject to overflow in freshets, is the best location. Clear, cool water is essential to the trout, while some other fish will do well in warm and even roily water. The rivulet running from the spring should be made to form a succession of ponds, three or four in number. These ponds should be connected with flumes made of plank. If the space they must occupy be small, make the flumes zigzag, to increase their length. Put across those flumes, once in four or five feet, a piece of plank half as high as the sides of the flume, with a notch cut in the centre of the top, that the fish may easily pass over: this will afford a succession of little falls, in which the trout very much delights. These different ponds are for the occupancy of fish of different ages, one age only inhabiting one pond. The flumes should have four inches of fine and coarse gravel in the bottom, making the most perfect spawning-ground. Although you would not wish the female-trout to deposite her eggs in the natural way, but will extrude them by the hand (as hereinafter directed), yet they must have these natural conveniences, or they will not incline to spawn at all. At the upper end of each of these flumes separating the ponds, there should be a gate of wire-cloth, to prevent the passage of the fish from one pond to the other; also one at the outlet of the lower pond, to prevent egress of the fish. These must all be so arranged that freshets will not connect them all together. When trout are about to spawn in their natural waters, they select a gravelly margin, and remove, from a circle of about one foot or two feet in diameter, all the sediment, leaving only clean gravel, among which they deposite their eggs, where they are hatched. They want running water of three or four inches in depth for this purpose. A male and female occupy each nest. If left to themselves, they will gradually increase; but so many of their eggs fail of being fecundated, and so many are destroyed before they hatch, by enemies, and by the collection of sediment in the nest, that the number of young fish is small compared with the whole number of eggs deposited. Artificial spawning, fecundation, and hatching, are far more productive. The process is simple and easy: when the female-fish first begins to deposite her eggs, catch her with a small net. It can not be done with bait, for fish will bite nothing at the time of spawning. We recollect, often when a boy, of trying to catch trout out of the brooks in October, where we could see large, beautiful fish, lying lazily in the places from which we had caught many in the summer, and put our bait carefully on every side of them, and they would not bite. Then we knew not the cause: since studying the habits of fish, we have learned that they never will bite while spawning; with trout, this is done from the 1st to the 15th of October, some few spawning till the last of November. Having caught two fish, male and female, take the female in one hand, and press her abdomen gently with the other hand, gradually moving it downward, and the eggs will be easily extruded, and should fall into an earthen vessel of pure water. Then take the male-fish, and go through the same process, which will press out the spermatic fluid, which should be allowed to fall into the same vessel with the eggs; stir up the whole together, and, after it has stood fifteen minutes, pour off the water, put in more and stir it up, and let it stand as before. This having been done three times, the eggs will be thoroughly fecundated, and are ready to be deposited in the nests for hatching. If the fish are caught before the time of beginning to spawn, the eggs and the spermatic fluid will not be mature, and will be only extruded by hard pressing, and failing to be fecundated, the eggs will perish. The fluid from one male will fecundate the eggs of half a dozen females. These eggs may be hatched in the flumes described above, though hatching-boxes are preferable. The old fish can be returned to the water, and may live many years and produce thousands of fish. These fish, carefully treated and fed, will become so tame as to eat out of your hand, like the "Naiad Queen" of Professors Ackley and Garlick, of Cleveland, Ohio. Among all the hatching apparatus we have seen described, we regard that of the above professors at Cleveland the best. To these gentlemen the country is much indebted for the knowledge derived from their zeal and success in fish culture. At the head of a spring they built a house eight by twelve feet; in the end of the house toward the spring they made a tank four feet wide, eight feet long, and two feet deep; this was made of plank. Water enters the tank through a hole near the top, and escapes through a similar one at the other end, and is received into a series of ten successive boxes, each one a little lower than the preceding one. These boxes were eighteen inches long, eight inches wide, and six inches deep. These were filled to the depth of two inches with clean sand and gravel. The impregnated eggs were scattered among the gravel, care being exercised not to have them in piles or masses. Clean water is necessary, as the sediment deposited by impure water is very destructive to the eggs. If it be seen to be collecting, it should be removed by agitating the water with a goose-quill or soft brush, and allowing it to run off; continue this till it runs clear. But there is a method of preventing impurities in spring-water, that will be always effectual: just around on the upper side of the spring make a tight fence two feet high, and it will turn aside, and cause to run around the spring, all the water that may flow down the rise above in time of rains. The house being near the head, there will not water enough get into the spring, in any storm, to roil the water. On the side of the boxes where the water escapes should be wire-cloth, so fine as not to allow the eggs to pass through. Such an apparatus will be perfect. This great care is only necessary for trout. All other fish worthy of cultivation, will only need spawning-beds on the margin of their pond. A convenient hatching apparatus is a number of wicker-baskets, fine enough not to allow the eggs to pass through, set in a flume of clear running water. The method of Gehen and Remy, the great fish-cultivators of France, whose efforts and discoveries have contributed more to this science than those of any, if not of all other men, was to place the eggs in zinc-boxes of about one foot in diameter, having a lid over them--the top and sides of the boxes pierced with small holes, smooth on the inside; these boxes were partly filled with clean sand and gravel, and set in clear running water. M. Costa's method, at the college of France, is to arrange boxes in the form of steps, the top one being supplied with water by a fountain, and that passing from one to the other through all the series, and the eggs placed on willow-hurdles instead of gravel. Another very simple method may be arranged in the house. It is a reservoir--a barrel or cask--set perhaps two and a half feet from the floor, and a little hatching trough a few inches lower, into which water gradually runs through a faucet, from the reservoir. This water running through the hatching-box, escapes into a tub a little below. Whatever plan be adopted, great care is necessary in preventing sediment from depositing. Cleanliness is a principal condition of success. The eggs of the trout thus fecundated and deposited in October or November will hatch in the spring. Young trout need no feeding for a month after leaving the egg. There is a small bladder or vesicle under the fore part of the body, when they first come out, from which they derive their sustenance. After this disappears, or at the end of about a month, they should be fed, in very small quantities. Too much will leave a portion to decay on the bottom and injure the water. The best possible food (except the angle-worm) is lean flesh of animals, boiled and hashed fine for the young fish. The flesh of other kinds of fish, when they are plenty and not very valuable, would be very good. These young fish should be kept in the first pond until a year old. Then let them into the second pond, closing the gate after them, to make room for another brood in the first pond. The next year let them into the third, and those into the second that are now in the first, and so on till the fourth. In the last pond, those of different ages will all be large enough to take care of themselves. But sometimes a trout two years old is said to swallow one a year old. But when they get to be three or four years old, this sort of cannibalism ceases. These principles can be carried out in small streams, by constructing gates to keep sections separate, and by forming banks and waste ways for water, with wire gates so high, that the water will not overflow in freshets, and carry the fish away. In taking trout use angle-worms or the fly. A fine light-colored small line is best. They are very shy. The following is a list of other fish, beside the trout, that are well worthy of cultivation:-- _Black Bass._--When full grown, this fish is from twelve to eighteen inches in length. One of the better fish for the table, and profitable to raise in a pond covering not less than half an acre. Chub, being a very prolific little fish, may be kept in the same pond as food for the black bass and other large fish. They are very fond of them. Minnows are the best bait for these fish, though they will bite a trolling hook of any ordinary kind. You may raise them as given for the trout above, or allow them to deposite their eggs in spawn beds of their own selection in their pond. They will do well in water less pure than is demanded for the trout. _White Bass._--Not so large as the black bass. Seldom weighs more than two pounds. One of the best for food. Thrives well in small ponds. Requires the same treatment as the preceding. Spawns in May and hatches soon. Easily caught, as he is a great biter, at almost any bait. _Grass Bass or Roach._--One of the most beautiful of the bass kind, and as a panfish highly esteemed. It prefers sluggish water, and hence is well adapted to small artificial ponds. Spawns in May. May be treated as the preceding. Bites the angle-worm well, and several other kinds of bait. _Rock Bass._--A small fish seldom reaching a pound in weight, but is fine and very easily raised in small ponds of any kind of water. Spawns in May and may be treated in all respects as the rest of the bass family, only it will flourish well in quite small ponds. _Pickerel._--Is one of the best of fish, weighs from three to fifteen pounds. Suitable only for large ponds. Spawns early in the spring in the marshy edges of sluggish water. The eggs may be procured and treated as the trout, only cold running water is not necessary. Best caught by trolling. It is not a good fish to raise with others, as it is apt to eat them up. _Yellow Perch._--Is everywhere well known as a beautiful little fresh-water fish, and good for the table, at all seasons when the water is cool. Perfectly hardy and adapted to sluggish waters, it is one of the best for artificial ponds. Treat like all the preceding; or allowed to take its own course in the pond, it will increase rapidly. _Sun-Fish._--Rarely weighs more than half a pound, but is a good pan-fish. This and the grass bass and yellow perch may be put together in the same pond. _Eels._--May be cultivated with great success in almost any water. But we are so prejudiced against them, never consenting to taste one, that we can not speak in their favor. Of the methods of introducing fish into our rivers and creeks, from which they have nearly all been taken by the fishermen, it is not our design to treat. That subject may be found fully presented in treatises on fish culture, and should command the immediate attention of the authorities in all the states. We have here given all that is necessary to success among the masses all over the land. There is hardly a township in the United States or British provinces, where good fish-ponds might not be constructed so as to be a source of profit and luxury to the inhabitants. Fish are so certainly and easily raised, that the practice of cultivating them should be universally adopted. Transporting fish alive is somewhat hazardous, especially if they be of considerable size. The difficulty is greatly lessened by keeping ice in the water with the fish. Change water twice a day and keep ice in it, and you may safely transport fish around the globe. Eggs of fish are best transported in boxes six inches square, filled with alternate layers of sand and eggs scattered over. When full, make quite wet, and fasten on the cover. Other methods are adopted which will be easily learned of those engaged in the trade. FLAX. Change the seed every season. This will greatly increase the quantity, and improve the quality. In nothing else is it more important. In Ireland, the great flax-growing country of the world, they always sow foreign seed when it can be procured. American seed is preferred, and brings the highest price. Experiments with different seeds, on varieties of soils, are much needed. Changing from all the soils and latitudes of our country would be useful. The general rule, however, as with all seeds, is to change from colder to warmer regions. _Soils._--The best are strong alluvial soils. Any soil good for a garden is good for flax. As much clay as will allow soil soon to become dry and easily to be made mellow, is desirable; black loam, with hard, poor clay-subsoil, is also good. Mellow, friable soils are not more important to any other crop than to flax. Land must not be worked when too wet. The land should be rich from a previous year's manuring. Salt, lime, ashes, and plaster, are good applications to flax after it has come up. On light soil with bad tillage, when the flax was so poor that the cultivator was about to plow it up, the application of three bushels of plaster, in the morning when the dew was on, produced a larger yield of better flax from an acre than adjoining growers got from two acres of their best land. FLOWERS. Floriculture is an employment appropriate to all classes, ages, and conditions. No yard connected with a dwelling is complete without a flower-bed. The cultivation of flowers is eminently promotive of health, refinement of manners, and good taste. Constant familiarity with the most exquisite beauties of nature must refine the feelings and produce gentleness of spirit. Association with flowers should be a part of every child's education. Their cultivation is suitable for children and young ladies in all the walks of life. House-plants, and bouquets in sick-rooms, are injurious; their influence on the atmosphere of the rooms is unhealthy. But the cultivation of flowers in the garden or yard is in every way beneficial. We earnestly recommend increased attention to flowers by the whole American people. The necessary limits of our article will allow us to do but little more than to call attention to the subject. Those who become interested will seek information from some of the numerous works devoted exclusively to ornamental flowers. Flowers should be planted on rather level land, that the rains may not wash off the seeds and fine mould. Choose a southern or eastern exposure whenever practicable. Avoid, as much as possible, planting in the shade. _Soil_--Should be a deep, rich mould, neither too wet nor too dry, and should be enriched with a little compost, every year. _Sowing the Seeds_ is a most important matter in cultivating flowers. Many fail to come up, solely on account of improper planting. The seeds of most flowers are very fine and delicate. Planted in coarse earth, they will not vegetate; planted near the surface in a dry time, they usually perish. It is best to cover all small flower-seeds, by sifting fine mould upon them; and if the weather does not do it, use artificial means to keep the soil suitably moist until the seeds are fairly up. Stir the soil gently often, and keep out all weeds. It is always best to plant the seeds in rows or hills, with small stakes to indicate their location; you can then stir the ground freely without destroying them. Flowers usually need more watering than most other plants. The usual application of water to the leaves by using a sprinkler is injurious; it may be better than no watering at all, but is the worst way to apply water. Make a basin in the soil near the plants, and fill it with water. The selection of suitable varieties for a small flower-garden is quite important. We shall only mention a brief list. Those who would make this more of a study, are recommended to study "_Breck's Book of Flowers_," which is quite as complete for American cultivators as anything we have. The principal divisions are, bulbous flowering roots, flowering shrubs, and flowering herbs--annual, biennial, and perennial--the first blossoming and dying the year they are sown; the second blossoming and dying the second year, without having blossomed the first; the last blossoming, and the top dying down and coming up the next spring, for a series of years. _Bulbous Flowering Roots._--These need considerable sand in their soil. They should be taken up after the foliage is all dead, and if they are hardy, put the soil in good condition, and dry the bulbs and reset them, and let them remain through the winter. They may need slight protection, by spreading coarse straw, manure, or forest-leaves over them late in the fall; but all the more tender bulbs do better kept in sand until early spring. The best list with which we are acquainted, for a small garden, is the following: the well-known lilies, the tulips, gladiolas, hyacinths, Feraria tigrida, crocus, narcissus, and jonquils. _Flowering Shrubs._--The following is a select small list: Roses, as large a variety as you please, out of the hundreds known; flowering almond, Indigo shrub, wahoo or fire-shrub, the mountain-ash, althea, snowball, lilac, fringe-tree, snow-drop, double-flowering peach, Siberian crab, the smoke-tree, or French tree, or Venitian sumach, honeysuckle, double-flowering cherry. The list of beautiful herbaceous flowers is very lengthy. We give only a few of those most easily raised, and most showy; the list is designed only to aid the inquiries of those who are unacquainted with them: superb amaranth, tri-colored amaranth, China and German astors--the latter are very beautiful--Canterbury bell, carnation pinks (great variety), chrysanthemum (many varieties and splendid until very late in autumn), morning glory or convolvulus, japonicas, Cupid's car, dahlias, dwarf bush, morning bride or fading beauty, fox-glove, golden coreopsis (we have raised a variety that proved biennial, which was superb all the season), ice-plant, larkspur, passion-flower, peony, sweet pea, pinks, sweet-williams, annual China pink, polyanthus (a great beauty), hyacinth bean, scarlet-runner bean, poppy, portalucca, nasturtium, marigolds (especially the large double French, and the velvet variegated), martineau, cypress vine. FOWLS. We are glad to believe that _the hen mania_, that has prevailed so extensively during the last fifteen or twenty years, has considerably abated. After all the extravagant notions about the profits of hens shall have passed away, the truth will be seen to be about the following: Every farmer who has considerable waste grain about, and plenty more to supply the deficiency when the fowls shall have gathered up all the scatterings, had better keep a hundred hens. If he has sand and gravel, and wheat-bran and lime for shells, within their reach, and plenty of fresh water, they will do well, without much further care, in mild weather. In cold weather in winter, keep not more than forty hens together, in a tight, warm place, well ventilated; give them their usual food, with burnt bones pounded fine and mixed with mush, given warm, with occasionally a little animal food and boiled vegetables, and they will lay more than in summer. They will lay all winter without being inclined to set. Every family, who will treat them as above, may profitably keep one or two dozen through the winter. Most persons who undertake, with a few acres of land, to keep fowls as a business, will lose by it. A few only of the most experienced and careful can make money by it. It may be cheapest for some persons to raise a few chickens for their own use, although they cost them more than the market-price, though it would not be best to raise chickens in that way to sell. "But some one raised the chickens in market for the market-price, and why not I?" Because, they raised a few that got fat on waste grain, and you must buy grain for yours, and give more for it than you can get for your chickens. Whoever would make money by raising fowls on a large scale, must first serve some kind of an apprenticeship at it, as in all other business. Get this experience, and learn by experiment the cheapest and most profitable food, and keep from five hundred to a thousand fowls, and a reasonable though not large profit may be realized. For store-fowls, boiled vegetables and beets cut very fine, with a little meal mixed in, are a good and cheap feed. When keeping fowls out-door in warm weather, keep no more than fifty together, and them on not less than one fourth of an acre of land. The expensive hen-houses and artificial nests are mostly humbugs. Have many places of concealment about, where they can make their nests as they please. When a hen begins to set, remove her, nest and all, to a yard to which layers have no access, and you need have no difficulty with her. Set a hen near the ground, in a dry place, on fifteen fresh eggs, all put under her at once, and they will hatch about the same time at the end of twenty days. Old hens, of the common kind, are best to set. Let them have their own way in everything but running in the wet with their young chickens--and that they will not be much inclined to do if they are well fed. Much is said about the diseases of fowls and their remedies. We have very little confidence in any of it. Sick chickens will die _unless they get well_. Time spent in doctoring them does not generally pay. Wormwood and tansy, growing, or gathered and scattered, or steeped and sprinkled about the premises occupied by hens, will protect them from small vermin. Never give them anything salt or sour, unless it be sour milk. The eggs of ducks, turkeys, or geese, may be hatched under hens. Time, thirty days. Hence, if put under with hens' eggs, they must be set ten days earlier, that they may all hatch at once. Fattening chickens may be well done in six days, by feeding rice, boiled rather soft in sweet skimmed milk, fed plentifully three times a day. Feed these in pans, well cleaned before each meal, and give only what they will eat up at once, and desire a very little more. Put a little pounded charcoal within their reach, and a little rice-water, milk, or clear water. This makes the most beautiful meal at a low price. Never feed a chicken for sixteen or twenty-four hours before killing it. _Varieties or Breeds._--This has been matter of much speculation. The result has been (what was probably a main object) the sale of many fowls and eggs at exorbitant prices. When chickens have sold at fifty dollars per pair, and eggs at six dollars a dozen, some persons must have made money, while others lost it. Yet, there is some choice in the breed of hens. The kind makes less difference, as far as flesh is concerned, than is usually imagined. It requires about a given quantity of grain to make a certain amount of flesh. Large fowls give us much larger weight of flesh than small ones, but they also eat a much larger quantity of grain. Large fowls are certainly large eaters. The three best layers are the black Polands, the Malayas, and the Shanghaes. Half-bloods, by crossing with the common fowl, are better for this country than either of the above, pure. Fowls are generally improved by frequent crossing. The best we have ever had, for their flesh, we produced by putting a black Poland rooster with common hens; they grew larger than either, and their flesh was very fine. Shanghaes and half-blood Shanghaes have proved permanently the best layers we have ever had. Early pullets make great fall and winter layers, and late chickens are great layers in the spring, when older ones wish to set. Ducks we have considered in a separate article. We shall do the same with turkeys. Killing, dressing, and preparing all fowls for market, will be treated under the head of "Poultry." Geese will also be considered in another place. We should give drawings of aviaries, but we consider these generally worse than useless, as they are usually constructed. An airy place for summer, and a warm room for winter, poles with _rough bark_ on for roosts, and plenty of feed and water, sand, gravel, and lime, will give abundant success. FRUIT. The value of fruit is not fully appreciated in this country. As an article of diet nothing is more natural and healthy. The Creator gave this to man for food, when human nature, physically, was in its normal condition. And why meats have since been allowed, I know not, unless it be the reason why Moses allowed divorce in certain cases, although it was not so in the beginning, viz., the hardness of their hearts. Why the stomach, upon the healthy condition of which all physical, mental, and moral functions so materially depend, should be made the receptacle of dead animals, and especially those so long dead, as much of the meat offered in market, it would puzzle a philosopher to tell. But we will not write an elaborate article on the healthfulness of a diet composed mainly of milk, fruits, and vegetables. Suffice it to say that experience and observation, as well as analysis and physiology, unite in demonstrating that ripe fruits contain virtues, that go far toward preventing the ordinary diseases of men. They are good, plain or cooked, and for sick or well persons, except in extreme cases. They regulate the bowels and control the secretions, better than any other article of food. They are so highly nutritious, that they sustain nature under arduous toil, better than either meat, fine bread, or the Irish potato. With proper care the fruits are cheaper than any other article of food. They can be raised cheaper than corn or potatoes. They may be enjoyed all the year, are profitable for market, and for food for animals. FRUITFULNESS. _Inducing it in Fruit-Trees._--Fruit-trees often grow luxuriantly, but bear no fruit, or very little. In nearly all cases the evil may be remedied. One remedy is shortening in. This is done by cutting off half the present year's growth in July. This checks the tendency of the sap to promote so large a growth, and forces it to mature blossom-buds for the next season. Another effectual means is to bend down all the principal branches and tie them down. This has a great influence in checking excessive growth and forming fruit-buds. Frequent transplanting has a tendency also to induce fruitfulness. Root pruning is one of _the best means_ of securing this object. Lay bare the upper roots and cut off all the larger ones two feet from the tree. This will check excessive formation of wood and foliage, render the wood firm, and the organic matter of the sap will form abundance of fruit-buds. These methods will produce fruit in abundance on nineteen twentieths of barren or poor-bearing fruit-trees. GARDEN. The garden has been the most delightful abode of man ever since his creation, before and since the fall. One of the most pleasant pastimes, for ladies and children, is gardening. The flower, vegetable, and fruit departments are all pleasant and healthful. _Situation_ of a garden is important. This varies with climates. In a cold country the warmest exposures are best, and in a hot climate select the coolest. A garden combining both is the best possible. The warmest exposure is good for early vegetables, and the cooler and more shady for the main crop. Much can be done to regulate this by fences and buildings. They will be warm and early on one side, and cool and late on the other. _Soil._--A rich loam is always best. To convert stiff clay, or light sand and gravel, into a good loam, is an easy matter on so small a plat as is usually devoted to a garden. Draw an abundance of sand on clay-ground, plow deep and mix well, and one winter's frost will so pulverize the whole that it will be in excellent condition. In warm climates, the incorporation of the sand with the clay is effected by frequent plowing and rains. On sand and gravel draw plenty of clay and loam, if it can be easily procured; thus it is easy to form a good friable, retentive loam, adapted to every variety of soil-culture. Decayed wood and forest-leaves are excellent for garden-soils. Manure well; but remember that it is possible to overfeed the soil of a garden, so as to render it unproductive. Deep plowing or spading is very important; it is the best possible remedy for excessive drought or unusual rains. The water will not stand on the surface when it first falls, and will be retained long in the soil for the use of the plants. The soil should be very mellow. Plowing or spading too early, in hope of getting earlier vegetables, is often a failure. The earlier the better, if you can pulverize the soil; otherwise not. Plowing when covered with a heavy dew, or when it rains gently, is equal to a good coat of manure. A garden should be on level land well drained; if much inclined, rains will wash off the best of the soil, and destroy many seeds and plants. No weeds should be allowed to grow to any considerable size in a garden. Early and frequent hoeings are important to success. Directions for the cultivation of each garden vegetable and fruit are given under each of those articles respectively. Methods of gardening at the South and the North vary but little in the main articles. At the North we have to guard against too much cool weather, and at the South against too much heat. Some vegetables that need planting on ridges in the North, to obtain more sun and heat, should be planted on level land at the South, to guard against too much heat and drought. Besides this, the main difference is in the time of planting, which varies more or less with every degree of latitude, or every five hundred feet of elevation. Have no fruit-trees in your vegetable or fruit garden, unless it may be a few dwarf-pears on the quince-stock, and these had better be by themselves. The plan of a garden is a matter of taste, and depends much upon its size and necessary situation. We prefer ornamental shrubs in front of the house, the flowers adjoining it and passing the windows of those rooms that are constantly occupied, and the fruit-department in the rear of the flowers, while the vegetable-garden should be at the right or left of the fruit, and in the rear of the kitchen. On the other side of the house should be the larger fruit-trees, extending back as far as the fruit and vegetable garden, and in the rear of it, the carriage-house and other out-buildings. The best fence is of good wrought iron, sharp and strong enough to exclude all intruders. When this can not be afforded, a good hedge, made of the plants best adapted to hedges in your latitude, is preferred; next to this a good tight board-fence. All fruit-gardens should have alleys, eight or ten feet wide, within four rods of each other, to afford space for carting on manures, &c. A vegetable-garden of one acre should have such an alley through the centre each way, with a place in the end, opposite the entrance, to turn around a summer-house, arbor, or tool-house. One rod from the fence, on all sides, should be an alley four or five feet wide; other small alleys as convenience or taste may require. The usual way is to sink the alleys three or four inches below the level of the beds, and cover with gravel, tanbark, shells, &c. We strongly recommend raising the alleys in their middle, at least four inches above the surface of the beds. The paths are always neater, and the moisture is retained for the use of the plants. Excessive rains can be allowed to pass off. This making alleys low sluice-ways for water is a great mistake in yards and gardens. GARLIC. This is a hardy perennial plant, from the south of Europe, and has been in cultivation, as a garden vegetable, for hundreds of years. It is cultivated as the onion, and needs much ashes, bonedust, and lime, in the soil. It is much esteemed in some countries, in soups. It is but little used in the United States: it is used at the South as a medicinal herb. We know of no important use of garlic for which onions will not answer as well, and therefore do not recommend garlic as an American garden vegetable. Those who wish to cultivate it will pursue the same course as in raising onions from sets. This will always be successful. GATHERING FRUITS. This is almost as important as proper cultivation. This is especially true of the pear. Many cultivators raise inferior pears from trees of the very best varieties, for want of a correct knowledge of the best methods of gathering, preserving, and ripening the fruit. Complete directions will be found under each fruit. GEESE. Farmers usually are opposed to keeping geese, believing them to destroy more than they are worth. If you have a suitable place to keep them, they may be profitable. They should have a pasture with a fence they can not pass, enclosing a spring, pond, or stream. They do better to have a little grain the year round. This, with plenty of grass in summer and cut roots in winter, will keep them in fine condition. The feathers will pay the cost of keeping, leaving the increase and feathers of the young as profit. On an acre or two, one hundred geese may be kept, and if the proportion of males and females be right, they will yield a profit of two dollars each. GOOSEBERRY. This is a native of the north of Europe and Asia, from which all our fine varieties have been produced by cultivation. Our own native varieties are not known to have produced any very desirable ones. Probably the zeal of the Lancashire weavers, in England, will surpass all that Americans will do for the next century in gooseberry culture. They publish a small book annually, giving an account of new varieties. The last catalogue of the London Horticultural Society mentions one hundred and forty-nine varieties, as worthy of cultivation. A few only should receive attention among us. Gooseberries delight in cool and rather moist situations. They do not flourish so naturally south of Philadelphia; though they grow well in all the mountainous regions, and may produce fair fruit in many cool, moist situations. Deep mulching is very beneficial; it preserves the moisture, and protects from excessive heat. The land must be trenched and manured deep. In November, cut out one half of the top, both old and new wood, and a good crop of fine fruit may be expected each year, for five or six years, when new bushes should take the place of old ones. Propagate by cuttings of the last growth. Cut out all the eyes, below the surface, when planted. Plant six inches deep in loam, in the shade. Press the soil close around them. To prevent mildew, it is recommended to sprinkle lime or flour of sulphur over the foliage and flowers, or young fruit. The fruit-books recommend the best varieties, and very open tops, as not exposed to mildew. We recommend spreading dry straw, or fine charcoal, on the surface under the bushes, as a perfect remedy, if the top be not left too thick. There is no necessity for mildew on gooseberries. The fall is much the best season for trimming, though early spring will do. Varieties are divided into red, green, white, and yellow. These are subdivided into hundreds of others, with names entirely arbitrary. The following are the best varieties, generally cultivated in this country:-- 1. _Houghton's Seedling._--Flavor, superior; skin, thin and tender; color, reddish-brown. Prodigious grower and bearer--none better known. Free from mildew. Native of Massachusetts. 2. _Red Warrington._--Later and larger than the preceding; hangs long on the bush without cracking, and improves in flavor. 3. _Woodward's Whitesmith_--is one of the best of the white varieties. 4. _Cleworth's White Lion._--Large and late; excellent. 5. _Collier's Jolly Angler_--is a good green gooseberry; fruit large, excellent, and late. 6. _Early Green Hairy._--Very early; rather small; prolific. 7. _Buerdsill's Duckwing_--is a good, late, yellow gooseberry; large fruit, and a fine-growing bush. 8. _Prophets Rockwood._--Very large fruit of excellent quality, ripening quite early. The foregoing list, giving two of each of the four colors, and early and late, are all, we think, that need be cultivated. Many more varieties, nearly equalling the above, may be selected; but we are not aware that any improvement would be made. Downing gives the following list for a garden:-- _Red._--Red Warrington, Companion, Crown Bob, London, Houghton's Seedling. _Yellow._--Leader, Yellow Ball, Catharine, Gunner. _White._--Woodward's Whitesmith, Freedom, Taylor's Bright Venus, Tally Ho, Sheba Queen. _Green._--Pitmaston Green Gage, Thumper, Jolly Angler, Massey's Heart of oak, Parkinson's Laurel. Thus you have Downing's authority; his list includes most of those we have recommended above. The varieties are less important than in most fruits, provided only you get the large varieties of English gooseberry. Proper cultivation will insure success. Whoever cultivates, only tolerably well, the Houghton Seedling, will be sure to raise good berries, free from mildew. GRAFTING. This is one of the leading methods of obtaining such fruits as we wish, on stocks of such habits of growth and degrees of hardiness, as we may desire. The stock will control, in some degree, the growth of the scion, but leave the fruit mainly to its habits on its original tree. The advantages of grafting are principally the following:-- Good varieties may be propagated very rapidly. A single tree may produce a thousand annually, for a series of years. Large trees of worthless fruit may be changed into any variety we please, and in a very short time bear abundantly. Fruits not easily multiplied in any other way, can be rapidly increased by grafting. Early bearing of seedlings can be secured by grafting on bearing trees. Tender and exotic varieties may be acclimated by grafting into indigenous stocks. Fruit can be raised on an uncongenial soil, by grafting into stocks adapted to that soil. Several varieties may be produced on the same tree, for ornament or economy of room. Dwarfs of any variety may be produced by grafting on dwarf stocks, and we may thus grow many trees on a small space. A slow-growing variety may be made to form a large top, by grafting into large vigorous-growing stocks. We are enabled to carry varieties to any part of the world, at a cheap rate, as the scions, properly done up, may safely be carried around the globe. _Time of Grafting._--Grafts may be made to live, put in in any month of the year, but the beginning of the opening of the buds in spring, is the preferable season. Stone fruits should be budded; and all fruits may be made to do well budded. Budding is usually only practised on small trees, while grafting may be performed on trees of any size. _Cutting and preserving Scions._--Mature shoots of the previous year's growth are best. Those of the year before will also do. They may be cut at any time from November to time of setting. Perhaps the month of February is best. They may be well preserved in moist sawdust in tight boxes. The more there are together the better they will keep. They keep better by being cut a little below the beginning of the last year's growth, but it is more injurious to the tree. They may be kept well in fine sand, moist and cool. Too much moisture is always injurious. Put the lower ends in shallow water, and they will look very fine, but not one of them will live. Scions cut in the fall and buried six inches deep in yellow loam or fine sand, will keep well till next spring. There are several methods of grafting only two of which deserve particular attention. These are cleft-grafting and tongue or splice grafting, see figures. [Illustration: Cleft-Grafting.] [Illustration: Tongue-Grafting.] _Cleft-Grafting_ is performed in most cases, when scions are grafted upon stocks much larger than themselves. It is too well known to need particular description. Tools should be sharp, and it should be performed before the bark slips so easily as to be started by splitting the stock. It endangers the growth of the scions. The requisite to success in all grafting, is to have some point of actual contact, between the inside barks of both the scion and the stock. This is more certainly secured by causing the scion to stand at a slight angle with the stock. _Tongue-Grafting_ is generally used in grafting on small stocks--seedlings or roots. With a sharp knife, cut off the scion slanting down, and the stock slanting up, split each in the centre, and push one in to the other until the barks meet, and wind with thick paper or thin muslin, with grafting wax on one side. This is generally used in root-grafting. The question of root-grafting has excited considerable discussion recently. Many suppose it to produce unhealthy trees, and that retaining the variety is less certain than by other modes. Root-grafting is a cheap and rapid means of multiplying trees, and hence is greatly prized by nursery men. Practical cultivators of Illinois have assured us, that it is impossible to produce good Rhode Island greenings in that state, by root-grafting--that they will not produce the same variety. We see no principle upon which they should fail, but will not undertake to settle this important question. For ourselves we prefer to use one whole stock for each tree, cutting it off at the ground and grafting there. _Grafting Composition or Wax._--One part beef's tallow, two parts beeswax, and four parts rosin, make the best. Harder or softer, it is liable to be injured by the weather. Warm weather will melt it, and cold will crack it. Melt these together and pour them into cold water, and pull and work as shoemaker's wax. When using, it is to be kept in cool or warm water, as the weather may demand. In its application, it is to be pressed closely over all the wound made by sawing and splitting the limb, and close around the scions, so as to exclude air and water. Clay is often used for grafting, but is not equal to wax. You can use grafting tools, invented especially for the purpose, or a common saw, mallet, knife, and wedge. GRAPES. Those cultivated so extensively in Europe were natives of Persia--showing that they may be acclimated far from their native home. Foreign grapes are not suitable for out-door culture in this country, except a very few varieties, which do well in the Southern states. The native grapes of this country have produced some excellent varieties, which are now in general cultivation. Others are beginning to attract notice, and seedlings will probably multiply rapidly, and great improvements in our native grapes may be expected. The subject of grape-culture deserves greatly-increased attention. To all palates the grape is delicious; it is not only one of the most palatable articles of diet, but is more highly medicinal than any other fruit. It is the natural source of pure wine. Pure wine made of grapes is only to be procured, in this country, by domestic manufacture. Probably not one out of a thousand gallons of imported wines, sold as pure, contains a drop of the juice of the grape;--they are manufactured of poisonous drugs and ardent spirits--generally common whiskey. A French chemist discovered a method of imitating fermented liquor without fermentation, and distilled spirits without distillation. His process has been published in this country in book form, and by subscription; and while those books are unknown in the bookstores, they are generally possessed by prominent liquor dealers;--and the practice of those secret arts is terribly dangerous to the community. Antecedent to this chemical manufacture of poisonous liquors, such a disease as _delirium tremens_ was unknown. Thus the Frenchman's discovery filled the liquor-sellers' pockets with cash, and the land with mourning, over frequent deaths by a disease, the horror of which is equalled only by hydrophobia. In self-defence, all should give up the use of everything purporting to be imported wines or liquors. Wine should not be used as a common beverage by the healthy. The best medical authority in the world has pronounced it absolutely injurious. But in many cases of sickness, especially in convalescence from fevers, it is one of the very best articles that can be used; hence, a pure article, of domestic manufacture, should be accessible to all the sick. (See our article on "Wine.") The luxury of good grapes can be enjoyed by every family in the land who have a yard twenty feet square. In the cities, almost every house may have a grapevine or two where nothing else would grow. Allow a vine to run up trellis-work in the rear of the house, and over the roof of a wing, or rear-part, raised two feet above the roof, supported by a rack. In such situations they will bear better than elsewhere, will be out of the way, and decidedly ornamental. In such small yards, from five to twenty-five bushels have often grown in a season. Some climates and soils are much better suited to grape-culture than others. But we have varieties that will flourish wherever Indian corn will mature. _Location._--For vineyards, the sides of hills are usually chosen, sometimes for the purpose of a warm exposure, but generally to secure the most perfect drainage. A northern exposure is preferable for all varieties adapted to the climate. To mature late varieties, choose a southern or eastern exposure. _Soil._--Gravelly, with a little sand, on a dry subsoil, is preferable, though good grapes may be grown upon any land upon which water will not stand. Grapes always need much lime. If the vineyard is not located on calcareous soil, lime must be liberally supplied, especially for wine-making. A dry subsoil, or thorough draining, is indispensable to successful grape-culture. We prefer level land, wherever thorough draining is practicable. _Propagation._--Choice grapes are propagated by grafts, layers, or cuttings. New ones are produced from seeds. The more kinds that are cultivated together, the greater will be the varieties raised from their seeds, by cross-fertilization in the blossoms. A small grape crossed with a large one, or an early with a late one, or two of different flavors, will produce mediums between them. Seeds should be cleaned, and planted in the fall, or kept in sand till spring. In the fall, cover up the young vines. The second or third year, the young vines should be set in the places where they are designed to remain. By efforts to get new varieties, we may adapt them to every latitude, from the gulf of Mexico to Pembina. _Layers._--These produce large vines and abundance of fruit earlier than any other method of propagation. Put down old wood in May or early June, and new wood a month later; fasten down with pegs having a hook to hold the vine, and cover up with earth; they will take root freely at the joints, and may be removed in autumn or spring. If you put down wood too late, or do not keep it covered with moist earth, it will fail; otherwise it is always sure. _Cuttings_--may be from any wood you have to spare, and should be about a foot long, having two buds. Plant at an angle of forty-five degrees, one bud and two thirds of the cutting under the soil. A little shade and moisture will cause nearly all to grow. A little grafting-wax on the top will aid the growth, by preventing evaporation. The cutting, so buried as to have the top bud half an inch under fine mould, is said to be surer. Cuttings should be made late in fall, or early in winter, and preserved as scions for grafting. Cuttings made in the spring are less sure to grow, and their removal is much more injurious to the vine. Vines raised from cuttings may be transplanted when one or two years old. _Grafting_--should be performed after the leaves are well developed in the spring. The sap becomes thick, which aids the process. Remove the earth, and saw off the vine two or three inches below the surface. Graft with scions of the previous year's growth, but well matured, and apply cement, to keep the sap from coming out. Cover all but the top bud. In stocks an inch in diameter put two scions. Very few need fail. _Budding_--maybe done as in other cases, but always after the leaves are well developed, to avoid bleeding. These modes of propagation stand in the following order in point of preference, the best being named first: layers, cuttings, grafting, budding. _Culture and Manure._--Land prepared by deep subsoil plowing, highly manured and cultivated the previous season in a root-crop, is the best for a vineyard. The trenches for the rows should be spaded twenty inches deep, and a part of the surface-soil put in the bottom. After planting the vines, stir the ground often and keep clear of weeds. At first, stir the soil deep; but, as the roots extend, avoid working among them, and never disturb the roots with a plow. Mulching preserves the soil in a moist, loose condition, and is a good preventive of mildew. In many instances it is said to have doubled the crop. Common animal-manures are good for young vines, and in preparing the soil, but are rather too stimulating for bearing vines, often injuring the fruit. Ashes and cinders from the smith's forge, wood-ashes, charcoal, soapsuds, bones and bonedust, lime, and forest and grape leaves and trimmings, carefully dug into the soil around the vines, are all very good. A liberal supply of suitable manures will keep the vines in a healthy condition, and preserve the fruit from disease and decay. This, with judicious pruning, will render the grape-crop regular and sure. _Vineyards_--should be in rows five feet apart, with vines four feet apart in the row. Layers of one, and cuttings of two years' growth, will bear the second year, and very plentifully the third year. A good vineyard in the latitude of Cincinnati yields about one hundred and fifty bushels of grapes per acre, making four hundred gallons of wine. The average yield of wine per acre, throughout the country, is estimated at two hundred gallons. _Training under Glass._--By this means the fine foreign varieties may be brought to perfection in our high latitudes. With most of the best kinds, this can be done by solar heat alone. A house covered with glass at an angle of forty-five degrees, facing the south, will answer the purpose. With a slight artificial heat, the finest varieties may be perfected, and others forwarded, so as to have fine grapes at most seasons of the year. The vines are planted on the outside of the grapehouse, and allowed to pass in through an aperture two feet from the ground, and are trained up near the glass on the inside. Protect the roots in winter by a covering of coarse straw manure. Wind the vines on the inside with straw, lay them down on the ground in the grape-house, and keep it closed during the winter. A house one hundred feet long and twenty-five feet wide, filled mainly with Black Hamburg, with a few other choice varieties, would afford a great luxury, and prove a profitable investment. From one such house, near a large city, a careful cultivator may realize a thousand dollars per annum. Native and even hardy varieties are often greatly improved by cultivation under glass, or by a little protection in winter. The Isabella grape is hardy and productive in western New York. In 1856, we noticed a vine that had been laid down in a dry place and covered slightly with earth, in autumn; the fruit was more abundant, and one fourth larger, than that on a similar vine by its side that had remained on the trellis during winter: this shows the value of protection even to hardy vines. _Training._--There are many methods, and the question of preference depends upon the location of the vines, the space they may occupy, and the taste of the cultivator. There are four principal systems--the cane or renewal system, spur system, fan-training, and spiral or hoop training. The renewal system we prefer for trellises. Put posts firmly in the ground eight feet apart, allowing them to be seven feet above ground after they are set; put slats of wood or wire across these, a foot apart, commencing a foot above the ground. Set vines eight feet apart; let the vines be composed of two branches, coming out near the ground: these can be formed by cutting off a young vine near the ground, and training two of the shoots that will spring from the bottom. These two vines should be bent down in opposite directions, and tied horizontally to the lower slat of the trellis; cut these off, so as to have them meet similar vines from the next root; upright shoots from these will extend to the top of the trellis, and it is then covered, and the work is complete. After these upright canes have borne, cut off every alternate one, two or three inches from its base, and train up the strongest shoot for a bearer next year: thus cut off and train new alternate ones every year, and the vine will be constantly renewing, and be in the most productive state; keep the vines clipped at the top of the trellis, and the sap will mature strong buds for next year's fruit. We regard this the most effectual of all training. The principle of renewal can be applied to any form of vine, and eminently promotes fruitfulness. Many complain that their vines, though liberally pruned, do not bear well. The difficulty may be that the new wood is principally removed, while the old is left to throw out strong-growing shoots, bearing abundance of foliage and little fruit. More of the old wood removed, and more of the young saved, would have produced less vines and much more fruit. _Pruning_--is the most important part of successful grape-culture. Mistakes on this subject are very injurious. Let vines grow in their own way, and you will have much wood and foliage, and very little, poor fruit. Some cut off the shoots in summer just above the fruit, and remove most of the leaves around it to expose the fruit to the sun. This often proves to be a ruinous mistake; the sap ascends to the leaves, and there amalgamates with what they absorb from the atmosphere, and thus forms food for the vine and fruit. It is the leaves, and not the fruit, which need the sun: the leaves are the lungs, upon the action of which the life and health of the fruit depend. Blight of the leaves destroys the fruit, and a frequent repetition of it destroys the vine. Grape-vines should not be pruned at all until three years old, as it retards the growth of the roots, and thus weakens the vines. Older vines should be freely pruned in November or December; pruned in winter they _may_ bleed in the spring, and pruned in the spring they _certainly_ will bleed. Tender vines, not protected, may have an excess of wood left in the fall to allow for what may perish in winter; in this case, cut away the dead and surplus wood in spring, but never until the leaves are well developed, so as to prevent bleeding. Necessary summer-pruning is of much importance. Remove no leaves, except the ends of branches, that have already made as much wood as they can mature. In the Middle states this should be done about the last of July, and at the South a month earlier. Weak lateral branches, that bear no fruit, may be removed, but not all of them, for it is on the wood of this year's growth that the fruit will be found the following season. Old wood does not send out wood in spring that will bear fruit the same season; that wood will bear fruit next season if allowed to remain. Whoever observes will notice that grapes grow on young shoots of the same season; but they are shoots from wood of the previous year's growth, and not from old wood. Many suppose if they trim their vines very closely, as the old vines send forth abundance of new wood, and it is new wood on which the fruit grows, of course they will have abundance of grapes; and they are disappointed by a failure. The explanation of the whole is, fruit grows on new wood, from wood of previous year's growth, and not from old vines; hence, in lessening a vine, remove old wood. This is the renewal system, whatever the form of the vine, and is the whole secret of successful pruning. This accounts for the great success of the Germans in producing such quantities of grapes on low vines. In their best vineyards, they do not allow their vines to grow more than six or seven feet high, and yet they produce abundantly for many years. They so prune as to have plenty of last year's wood for the production of fruit the current season; after this has borne fruit, they remove it to make room for the young wood that will produce the next season. This principle is applicable to vines of any shape or size you may choose to form. The removal, in summer, of excessive growth, and shortening the ends of those you design to retain, throws the strength of the vine into the fruit, and to perfect the wood already formed. Liberal fall-pruning is necessary to induce the formation of new wood the next season, for bearing the following year. Parts that grow late do not mature sufficiently to bear fruit the next season; hence, cut off the ends in summer, and let what remains have the benefit of all the sap. _Reduction of Fruit._--The grape is disposed to excessive bearing, which weakens the vine, and injures the quality of the fruit. Liberal pruning in autumn does much to remedy this evil, by not leaving room for an excessive amount of fruit: hence, when you have a plenty of fruit-bearing wood, cut off the ends, so as to leave spurs with two buds, or at the most only four; when too much fruit sets, remove it very early, before the juices of the vine have been wasted upon it. A vine cut or wounded in spring will bleed profusely. Sheet India-rubber, or two or three thicknesses of a bladder, wet and bound closely around, may prevent the bleeding. _Mildew_--is very destructive in confined locations, without a good circulation of air. Sulphur and quicklime, separate or combined, dug into the soil around the vines, is a preventive. Straw or litter of any kind, spread thick under the vines, is, perhaps, the best remedy--the action of it is in every way beneficial. _Insects._--The rosebug, spanworm, great greenworm, and many other insects, infest grapevines, and do much injury. The large worms are most easily destroyed by hand; the small insects by flour-of-sulphur, or by snuff, sprinkled over profusely when the vines are wet. The various applications recommended in this work for the destruction of insects, are useful on the grapevine. The principle is to apply something offensive to the insects, without being injurious to the vines. _Preserving Grapes._--Packed in sawdust or wheat-bran, always thoroughly dried by heat, they will keep well until spring. Another method is packing them in cotton-batting or wadding (the latter is best); or put them in baskets holding no more than four or five quarts, cover tight with cotton, and hang up in a cool, airy place, and they will long remain in good condition. In shallow boxes, six inches deep, put a sheet of wadding, and on it a layer of bunches of grapes, not allowed to touch each other; on the top of the grapes put another sheet of cotton, and then another layer of grapes, and so the third, covering the last with cotton, and put the cover on tight, and keep in a cool place. This is the most successful method. A new method is to suspend hoops by three cords, like a baby-jumper, and hang the bunches of grapes all around it, as near as possible without touching, on little wire hooks, passing through the lower ends of the clusters, allowing the stem end to be suspended, and the grapes hang away from each other, and if the place be not damp enough to mould them, and not dry enough to cause them to shrivel, they keep exceedingly well. It requires more care and judgment, than the other methods. A very cool situation, without freezing, is essential in all cases. It is also necessary to remove all broken or immature grapes, from the clusters you would preserve. _Varieties_ are very numerous, and their nomenclature is confused, as that of other fruits. It is utterly useless to cultivate foreign grapes in the open air in this country. They succeed very imperfectly, even in the Southern states. But for cultivation under glass, they are preferable to any of our own. The following foreign grapes are preferred in this country:-- Black Prince, White Muscat, White Constantia, White Muscadine, White Sweet-water, Early White Muscat, Black Cluster, Black Hamburg. The latter is the best of all foreign grapes for cultivation under glass. It is very delicious, a great bearer, of very large clusters. It requires only solar heat to bring it to perfection. _Native Grapes._--Of these we now have a large number, many of which are valuable. We call attention only to a very few of the best. The _Isabella_ as a table luxury is hardly surpassed. In the Eastern, Middle, and Western states, it is generally hardy and prolific. In northern Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, it does not ripen well. The seasons are too short. It also feels somewhat the severity of the weather, on the western prairies. It is also apt to decay at the South. For all other parts it is one of the very best. It is an enormous bearer, one vine having been known to produce more than ten bushels, in a single year. [Illustration: The Isabella Grape.] [Illustration: The Catawba Grape.] Next is the _Catawba_, better for wine, more vinous but not so sweet as the Isabella, ripens two or three weeks later, and hence not so good in high latitudes. _The Rebecca Grape._--This is a comparatively new variety, of great promise. White like the Sweet-water, flavor very fine, vine hardy and productive. _The Diana_ is a small delicious grape, excellent flavor for the dessert, and ripens two weeks earlier than the Isabella. Hence good for northern latitudes. _The Concord._--Large, showy, of good but not the best flavor, and ripens with the Diana. Should be cultivated at the North. _The York Madeira_ is similar to the Isabella, smaller and a few days earlier. [Illustration: The Rebecca Grape.] [Illustration: The Delaware Grape.] _The Delaware_ is a small brown grape, excellent and hardy. Ripens quite as early as the Isabella. Best outdoor grape, in many localities. _The Canadian Chief._--One of the very best grapes for Canada. _Canby's August._--Very fine; considered better for the table than the Isabella, ripens ten days earlier, and as it is a good bearer, it should be generally cultivated. _The Ohio Grape_ is a good variety, beginning to attract much notice. _The Scuppernong_ is the best of all grapes, for general cultivation at the South. It is never affected by the rot. Not easily raised from cuttings. Layers are better. It does best trained on an arbor. The soil and climate of the South are well adapted to the grape, even the finer varieties that do not flourish well at the North. They are, however, seriously affected by the rot, an evil incident to the heat and humidity of the climate. It being very warm, the dews and rains incline the fruit to decay. We think the evil may be prevented by two very simple means: Keep the vines very open, that they may dry very soon after rain; and train them to trellises, from six to ten feet high, and over the top put a coping of boards, in the shape of a roof, extending eighteen inches on each side of the trellis. It will prevent the rain and heavy dews from falling on the grapes, and is said to preserve them perfectly. This arrangement is about equal, in a warm climate, to cold graperies at the north. We recommend increased attention to this great luxury, in all parts of the country. Seedlings will arise, adapted to every locality on the continent. GRASSES. There is a great number of varieties, adapted to cultivation in some countries and climates, but not suitable for American culture. On the comparative value of different grasses there is a diversity of opinions. The best course for the practical farmer is, having the best and surest, therewith to be content. Sir John Sinclair says there are two hundred and fifteen grasses cultivated in Great Britain. We shall notice a very few of them, with a view to their comparative value:-- 1. _Sweet-scented Vernal Grass._--Small growth; yield of hay light. For pastures it is very early, and grows quickly after being cropped, and is excellent for milch-cows; grows well on almost any soil, but most naturally on high, well-drained meadows. It grows in great abundance in Massachusetts. 2. _Meadow Foxtail._--Early like the preceding, but more productive and more nutritious. It is one of the five or six kinds usually sown together in English pastures; best for sheep and horses. 3. _Rough Cocksfoot._--_Orchard-grass_ of the United States; cows are fond of it. In England it is taking the place of clovers and rye-grass. About Philadelphia it is supplanting timothy. It is earlier, and therefore better to mix with clover for hay, as they mature at the same time; grows well in the shade, and on both loams and sands; springs rapidly after being cropped. Colonel Powell, one of the best American farmers, says it produces more pasture than any other grass he has seen in this country. Two bushels of seed are sown on an acre. 4. _Tall Oat-Grass._--A valuable grass, deserving increased attention. It will produce three crops in a season; grows four or five feet high, and should be cut for hay when in blossom. Of all grasses, it is the earliest and best for green fodder. 5. _Tall Fescue._--Cut in blossom, it contains more nutriment than any other known grass. Grows well by the sides of ditches, and is well adapted to wet bogs, as, by its rapid growth, it keeps down coarse, noxious grass and weeds. 6. _Rye Grass._--This is extensively cultivated in Scotland and in the north of England. It is mixed with clover. Respecting its comparative value there is a diversity of opinion. Some do not speak well of it. 7. _Red Clover and White Clover._--See article "Clover." 8. _Lucern._--This yields much more green feed at a single crop than any other grass. For soiling cattle it is one of the best, and may be cut twice as often as red clover. This makes a good crop, soon after time for planting corn. Common corn or pop-corn, and later, Stowell's evergreen sweet corn, are the best for soiling cattle; but for early soiling, use lucern, or some other quick-growing, large grass. Lucern needs clean land, or cultivation at first, as young plants are tender. The tap-root runs down very deep; hence, hard clay or wet soils are not favorable. It stands the cold, in latitudes forty to forty-five degrees in this country, better than red clover. 9. _Long-rooted Clover._--This is a Hungarian variety--biennial, but resows itself several years in succession, on good, clean land. Its yield of hay and seed is abundant. Needs a deep, dry soil, and stands a drought better than any other grass. To plow in as a fertilizer, or for soiling cattle, it is valuable, wherever it will flourish. 10. _Sain-Foin._--Adapted to calcareous or chalky soils; considered one of the best plants ever introduced into England; but in New England it proves almost a failure--it requires more cool moisture and less frost. 11. _Timothy._--In England, _Meadow Cats'-tail_, and in New England, _Herd's-grass_. This is the most valuable of all the grasses, and wherever it will thrive well, should never be superseded by anything else for hay. It should be cut when the seed has begun to harden, but before it begins to shell, and never in the blossom. Let every farmer remember that timothy, cut in the seed, contains twice as much nutriment as when cut in the blossom; hence, it is not worth more than half as much for hay, sown among clover, as when sown by itself, as it must be cut too early, to avoid losing the clover. 12. _Red Top._--We can not find this described in agricultural books; but we have been familiar with it for thirty-five years, and can not find a New York or New England farmer who does not know it well and prize it highly. For low, moist, rich meadows, the red top is the best for hay of any known grass. It yields abundantly, and may be cut at any time, from July to last of September. The hay is better for cattle than timothy. Many intelligent gentlemen insist that it is the most healthy hay for horses. After all that has been written on the various grasses, we regard it best for farmers throughout the continent to cultivate only the following:-- For early pastures, _vernal grass_ and _meadow foxtail_; pastures through the season, _white clover_, _cocks-foot_, _meadow foxtail_, _red clover_, and _timothy_; for lowland pastures, _red top_ and _tall fescue_; for hay, _timothy_, _red top_, _orchard grass_, and _tall fescue_; for the shade of fruit-trees, _orchard grass_; to be plowed in as fertilizers, _red clover_ and _white clover_, for soiling cattle, _tall oat-grass_ and _lucern_. Time of sowing grass-seed is important. Some prefer the fall, and others the spring. Fall sowing should be very early or very late. Early sowing will give the young plants strength to endure the frosts of winter, which would kill late sown; but sow so late that it will not vegetate until spring, and it will come up early and get out of the way of the droughts of summer. Grass-seed sown late in the spring will always fail, except when followed by a very wet season. Sow timothy with fall grain, or late in the fall, or on a light snow toward the close of winter. Do not sow clover in the fall, as the young plants will generally fail in the cold winter;--sow it on the last light snow of winter, and it will always succeed. Roll the land in spring on which you have sown grass-seed in the last of winter; it will benefit the grain, and cause the grass-seed to catch well, and get an earlier and more rapid growth. Let all who would not lose their seed and labor, remember that grass-seed not sown so as to form good roots, before the frosts of winter or the drought of summer, will be lost; the plants will be killed. Timothy-seed sown in the fall, one peck to the acre, will produce a good crop the next season. GREENHOUSE. Greenhouses vary as much in style and cost as dwellings. The simplest is any tight enclosure, covered with a glass roof at an angle of forty-five degrees, facing the south, and kept warm by artificial heat. The temperature is not allowed to be lower than forty nor higher than seventy degrees of Fahrenheit; this will keep plants growing and make them blossom, and affords a good place for starting plants to be transplanted to out-door hotbeds, and finally to the vegetable garden, after frosts are over. There is but one main danger in greenhouse culture, and that is obviated by a little care: it is, allowing the air to become too much heated for the health of the plants; they require but little heat, but need it regularly. Some greenhouses are warmed by stoves, and serve a good purpose; others have a stove set in a flue which is built in the wall, gradually rising until it has passed around two or three sides of the building. Place three or four sheet-iron pans over this flue, at different points, and keep them filled with water; the fire in the flue will heat the water, and impart both warmth and humidity to the atmosphere, which is very favorable to the health and growth of plants. Such a house is favorable to the growth of tender exotic fruits and plants. A similar house without any artificial heat affords an excellent place for the cultivation of the finest varieties of foreign grapes. GYPSUM, OR PLASTER OF PARIS. The fertilizing properties of this article were discovered by a German laborer in a quarry, who observed the increased luxuriance of the grass by his path, when the dust fell from his shoes and clothes. This led to experiments which demonstrated its fertilizing power. With the protracted controversies on gypsum we have nothing to do; certain important facts are established which are valuable to agriculturists. Gypsum is valuable as an application to the soil, at from three fourths to one and a quarter bushels to the acre. On poor land, for a flax crop three bushels per acre, applied after the plants were up, and when wet, produced a great crop. It should be applied only once in two years, or in very small quantities every year. Applied as a top-dressing, it will do no good until a considerable quantity of rain has fallen upon it. If it be applied in the spring, and the summer prove a dry one, its greatest effect will be felt the next season. Its most marked effects are on poor soils; on land already rich it seems to produce but little effect; on dry, sandy or gravelly soils, it will increase a clover crop from one fourth to two thirds; sowed among clover and immediately plowed in, it acts powerfully. Plants of large leaves feel its influence much more than those with small ones, hence its excellence on clover, potatoes, and vines. Some soils contain enough plaster already: the farmer must determine by analysis or experiment. On the compost heap it is valuable in small quantities; it is also useful on all long, coarse, or fresh manures of the previous winter. Seeds rolled in it before planting vegetate sooner and stronger. Mixed with an equal quantity of ashes and a little lime, and applied to any crop immediately after hoeing, or when just coming up, it adds materially to its growth. It is better to apply it twice--on first coming up, and immediately after first hoeing; small quantities are best;--it will ten times repay the cost and labor. Upland pastures and meadows, except clay soils, are greatly benefited by it. A time-saving method of sowing plaster on fields of grass or grain, is to sow out of a wagon driven slowly through the field, the driver being guided by his former tracks, while two men sow out of the wagon. It is customary to put plaster and ashes, mixed, around the hills of corn, or throw it upon the plants. Sown on the field of hoed or hill crops, its effects are much greater than when only put on the hill. It should be sown equally over the whole ground. HARROWING. The very liberal use of the harrow is one of the principal requisites of successful farming. No other single tool does so much to pulverize the soil, as the harrow. A full crop can only be raised on a fine mellow soil. Seeds planted in soil left coarse and uneven, will vegetate unevenly, grow unequally, ripen at different times, and produce unequal quantities. Many farmers insist that it is a mere notion, without reason, to harrow land four or five times, and roll it once or twice. Not one in five hundred believes in the full utility of such a thorough working of the soil. Coarse lumpy soils expose the seeds and roots of young plants to drought, and to too strong action of the atmosphere. (See article on _Rolling_.) Harrow sandy and sod land whenever you please. If you work any other soil when very wet, it will not recover from the effects of it during the whole season. Harrow land the first time the same way it was plowed. The form of a harrow is of no importance, except avoiding the butterfly drag, that seldom works well. The square harrow with thirty teeth is usually preferred. Every farmer should have a =V= drag also. Corn, potatoes, peas, and other crops that are planted in straight rows, should be harrowed just after coming up, with a =V= drag, drawn by two horses. The front teeth should be taken out that the row may pass between the teeth, as well as between the horses. Such a cultivation will do more good than any other single subsequent one. It stirs the whole surface, pulverizing the soil, keeps it mellow and moist, and destroys the weeds, and all at the best possible time, for the benefit of the crop. No other form of cultivation is so good for a young crop. Try two acres, one in the usual way, and the other by harrowing, as we recommend, when it first comes up, and you will never after neglect harrowing all your hoed crops. HAY. Farmers differ in their modes of making and preserving hay. The following directions for timothy and clover, are applicable to all grasses suitable for hay, as they are all divided into two classes, broad-leaved, and the fine-leaved, or grasses proper. The principles involved in these directions may be considered comparatively well settled, and they are sufficient for all purposes. Cut clover when half the blossoms are dried, and the other half in full bloom. Cut later, the stalks are so dried, that they are of much less value. Cut earlier, it is so immature, as to be of small value for hay. In case of great growth and lodging down, clover may be cut earlier, as it is better to save hay of less value, than to lose the whole. To cure clover for hay, spread it evenly, immediately after the scythe, let it thoroughly wilt, but not dry. Rake it up, before any of the leaves are dry so as to break, and put it in small cocks, such as a man can pitch upon a cart at once or twice with a fork. This should be _laid_ on and not _rolled_ up from a winrow. In the former case it will shed nearly all the water, and the latter method suffers the rain to run down through the whole. Unless the weather be very wet, clover will cure in this way, without opening until time to haul it in, and will retain its beautiful green color, almost equal to that of England and Germany, cured in the shade, which, at two or three years old, appears almost as bright as though not cured at all. If the weather be quite wet, cut clover when free from dew or rain, wilt it at once, and draw it in, put as much as possible in thin layers on scaffolds, and under cover, to cure in the shade. Put the remainder in alternate layers with equal quantities of dry straw, with one peck of salt to a ton. A ton may bear half a bushel of salt, less is better, and more is injurious to stock, by compelling them to eat too much salt. The most beautiful and palatable clover hay is that cured in the shade, on scaffolds and afterward mowed away. Timothy should never be cut, until the seed is far enough advanced to grow. Careful experiments have shown that cut in the blossom, the hay will contain only about one half as much nutriment, as when cut in the full-grown seed, but before it commences shelling. Cure as clover, but in twice as large cocks, and never salt, unless compelled to draw in when damp or too green. HEDGE. The question of fencing in this country, so much of which is prairie, and in other parts of which there is such a wanton waste of timber, gives great importance to successful hedging. The same plants are not equally good for hedge in all parts of the country. There are but few plants suitable for hedges in our climate. _The Osage Orange_--is the best, in all latitudes where it will flourish. It has no diseases or enemies by which it will be destroyed, except too cold winters. Of Southern origin, yet it flourishes in many places at the North. In cold localities, where there is but little snow, it suffers much until three or four years old. It is being extensively introduced into central and northern Illinois, where unusually cold winters destroy vast quantities of young plants, and kill the tops of much old hedge. It is still insisted that it will succeed; but we consider it too uncertain, and consequently too expensive, for general fencing in such climates. The roots and lower parts of the plants may be preserved, however, by setting them out for a hedge on level ground, instead of ridges as usual, and plowing a furrow three feet from each side of the row, to drain off surplus water. Mulch thoroughly in the fall, and thus protect from frost until they have been set in the hedge for three years, and they may succeed and make a good live fence. To raise the plants, soak the seeds thoroughly, and, at the usual time of corn-planting, plant in straight rows, and keep clean of weeds. Set out in hedge the following spring. The soil of the hedge-row should be deep, mellow, and moderately, not excessively rich. Too rich soil makes a larger growth, of spongy and more tender wood. Plants should have a portion of the tap-root cut off, and be planted a foot apart in the row. _The Hawthorn_--will never be extensively cultivated for live fence in this country, being subject to borers, as destructive as in fruit-trees. _The Virginia Thorn_--is equally uncertain. _The Buck Thorn_--after fifteen years' trial, in New England, bids fair to answer every purpose for American live fence: it is easily propagated, of rapid growth, very hardy, thickens up well at the bottom, and is exempt from the depredations of insects. It may yet prove the great American hedge-shrub. _The Newcastle Thorn_--cultivated in New England, is much more beautiful, and promises to rival the buck thorn, but has not been sufficiently tested to settle its claims. Much is anticipated from it. [Illustration: Shearing down young hedges.] [Illustration: Properly-trimmed hedge (end view).] [Illustration: Badly-trimmed hedge (end view).] [Illustration: Neglected hedge (side view).] There are plants well adapted to hedge at the South, which are too tender for the North. In White's Gardening for the South, we have the following given as hedge-shrubs, adapted to that region: Osage Orange, Pyracanth, Cherokee, and single White Macartney roses. The Macartney, being an evergreen thorn, and said to make as close a hedge as the Osage Orange and much more beautiful, is quite a favorite at the South. They usually train the rose-shrubs for hedge on some kind of paling or wire fence. They render some of them impenetrable even by rabbits or sparrows; this is done by layers, and trimming twice a year, commencing after the first three months' growth. Pruning is the most important matter in the whole business of hedging. A hedge set out ever so well, and composed of the best variety of plants, if left in the weeds, without proper care in trimming, will be nearly useless. A well-trimmed hedge around a fruit-orchard will keep out all fruit-thieves. The great difficulty is the _unwillingness_ of cultivators to cut off, so short and so frequently, _the fine growth_. Shear off the first year's growth (_a_) within three inches of the ground (_b_). Cut the vigorous shoots that will rise from this shearing, four inches higher, about the middle of July, and similar and successive cuttings, each a little longer, in the two following years; these will bring the hedge to a proper height. The form of trimming shown in end view of properly-trimmed hedge, protects the bottom from shade by too much foliage on the top: the effects of that shade are seen in neglected hedge in the cut. HEMP. This is one of the staple articles of American agriculture. It is much cultivated in Kentucky and other contiguous states. Its market value is so fluctuating that many farmers are giving up its cultivation. The substance of these directions is taken from an elaborate article from the pen of the honorable Henry Clay. Had not the length of that article rendered it inconsistent with the plan of this volume, we should have given it to the American people as it came from the hand of their greatest statesman, who was so eminently American in all his sentiments and labors. _Preparation of the Soil_--should be as thorough as for flax;--this can not be too strongly insisted on. Much is lost by neglect, under the mistaken notion that hemp will do about as well on coarse, hard land. Plants for seeds should be sown in drills four feet apart, and separate from that designed only for the lint. The stalks should be allowed to stand about eight inches apart in the rows. Plants are male and female, distinguished in the blossoms. When the farina from the blossoms on the male plants (the female plants do not blossom) has generally fallen, pull up the male plants, leaving only the females to mature. Cut the seed-plants after the first hard frost, and carry in wet, so as to avoid loss by shelling. Seed is easily separated by a common flail. After the seeds are thrashed out, they should be spread thin, and thoroughly dried, or their vegetative power will be destroyed by heat or decay. They should be spread to be kept for the next spring's planting, and not be kept in large bulk. Their vegetation is very uncertain after they are a year old. Sow hemp for lint broadcast, when the weather has become warm enough for corn-planting. Opinions vary as to the quantity of seed, from one bushel to two and a half bushels per acre. Probably a bushel and a peck is best. Plowing in the seed is good on old land; rolling is also useful. If it gets up six inches high, so that the leaves cover the ground well, few crops are less effected by the vicissitudes of the weather. Some sow a part of their hemp at different times, that it may not all ripen at once and crowd them in their labor. Cutting it ten days before it is ripe, or allowing it to stand two weeks after, will not materially injure it. Hemp is pulled or cut. Cutting, as near the ground as possible, is the better method. The plants are spread even on the ground and cured; bound up in convenient handfuls and shocked up, and bound around the top as corn. It is an improvement to shake off the leaves well before shocking up. If stacked after a while, and allowed to remain for a year, the improvement in the lint is worth more than the loss of time. There are two methods of rotting--dew-rotting, =and= water-rotting--one by spreading out on grass-land, and the other by immersing in water; the latter is much the preferable mode. The question of sufficient rotting is determined by trial. Hemp is broken and cleaned like flax. The stalks need to be well aired and dried in the sun to facilitate the operation. Extremes in price have been from three to eight dollars per hundred pounds: five dollars renders it a very profitable crop. Thorough rotting, good cleaning, and neat order, are the conditions of obtaining the first market price. An acre produces from six hundred to one thousand pounds of lint--an average of about one hundred pounds to each foot of height of the stalks. Hemp exhausts the soil but a mere trifle, if at all; the seventeenth successive crop on the same land having proved the best. Nothing leaves the land in better condition for other crops; it kills all the weeds, and leaves the surface smooth and even. HOEING. Much depends upon the proper and timely use of the hoe. Never let weeds press you; hoe at proper times, and you never will have any large weeds. As soon as vegetables are up, so that you can do it safely, hoe them. The more frequent the hoeing while plants are young, the larger will be the crop. Premium crops are always hoed very frequently. Hoeing cabbages, corn, and similar smooth plants, when it rains slightly, is nearly equal to a coat of manure. But beans, potatoes, and vines, and whatever has a rough stalk, are much injured by stirring the ground about them while they are wet, or even much damp. We have known promising crops of vines nearly destroyed by hoeing when wet. Hoeing near the roots of vines after they have formed runners one or two feet long, will also nearly ruin them;--the same is true of onions: hoe near them, cutting off the lateral roots, and you will lessen the crop one half. In hoeing, make no high hills except for sweet potatoes. High hilling up originated in England, where their cool, humid, cloudy atmosphere demands it, to secure more warmth. In this country we have to guard more against drought and heat. HOPS. These are native in this country, being found, growing spontaneously, by many of our rivers. There are four or five varieties, but no preference has been given to any particular one. Moist, sandy loam is the best soil, though good hops may be grown in abundance on any land suitable for corn or potatoes. Plow the land quite deep in autumn; in the spring, harrow the same way it was plowed. Spread evenly over the surface sixteen cords of manure to the acre, if your soil be of ordinary richness; cross-plow as deep as the first plowing; furrow out as for potatoes, four feet apart each way. Plant hops in every other hill of every other row, making them eight feet apart each way. Plant all the remaining hills with potatoes. Four cuttings of running roots of hops should be planted in each hill. Many hop-yards are unproductive on account of being too thick;--less than eight feet each way deprives the vines of suitable air and sun, and prevents plowing them with ease. The first year, they only need to be kept clean of weeds by hoeing them with the potatoes. In the fall of the first year, to prevent injury from hard frosts, put a large shovelful of good manure on the top of each hill. Each spring, before the hops are opened, spread on each acre eight cords of manure; coarse straw manure is preferable. Plow both ways at first hoeing. They require three hoeings, the last when in full bloom in the beginning of August. Open the hops every spring by the middle of May; at the South, by the last of April. This is done by making four furrows between the rows, turning them from the hills; the earth is then removed from the roots with a hoe, and all the running roots cut in with a sharp knife within two inches of the main roots. The tops of the main roots must also be cut in, and covered with earth two inches deep. Set the poles on the first springing of the vines; never have more than two poles in a hill, or more than two vines on a pole, and no pole more than sixteen feet high. Neglect this root-pruning, and multiply poles and crowd them with vines, and you will get very few hops. Select the most thrifty vines for the poles, and destroy all the others. Watch them during the summer, that they do not blow down from the poles. They must be picked as soon as they are ripe, and before frosts. The best picking-box is a wooden bin made of light boards, nine feet long, three feet wide, and two and a half feet deep; the poles are laid across this, and the hops picked into it by hand. In gathering hops, cut the vines two feet from the ground, that bleeding may not injure the roots. _Curing_ is the most important matter in hop-growing. Hops would all be of one quality, and bring the first price, if equally well cured. The following description (with slight abbreviation) of the process of curing, by William Blanchard, Esq., is, perhaps, as complete as anything that can be obtained. Much depends upon having a well-constructed kiln. For the convenience of putting the hops on the kiln, a side hill is generally chosen for its situation; it should be a dry situation. It should be dug out the same bigness at the bottom as at the top; the side walls laid up perpendicularly, and filled in solid with stone to give it a tunnel form: twelve feet square at the top, two feet square at the bottom, and at least eight feet deep, is deemed a convenient size. On the top of the walls sills are laid, having joists let into them, as for laying a floor, on which laths, about one and a half inches wide, are nailed, leaving open spaces between them three fourths of an inch, over which a thin linen cloth is spread and nailed at the edges to the sills. A board about twelve inches wide is set up on each side of the kiln, on the inner edge of the sill, to form a bin to receive the hops. Fifty pounds, after they are dry, is all such a kiln will hold at once. The larger the stones made use of in the construction of the kiln the better, as it will give a more steady and dense heat. The inside of the kiln should be well plastered with mortar to make it air-tight. Charcoal is the best fuel. Heat the kiln well before putting on the hops; keep a steady and regular heat while drying. Hops must not remain in bulk long after being picked, as they will heat and spoil. Do not stir them while drying. After they are thoroughly dry, remove them into a dry room, and lay in heaps, and not stir unless they are gathering dampness that will change their color; then spread them. This will only occur when they have not been properly dried. They are bagged by laying cloth into a box, so made that it can be removed, and give opportunity to sew up the bag while in the press. The hops are pressed in by a screw. In bulk they will sweat a little, which will begin to subside in about eight days, at which time they should be bagged. If they sweat much and begin to change their color, they must be dried before bagging. The best size for bags is about two hundred and fifty pounds' weight, in a bag about five feet long. Common tow-cloth or Russia-hemp bags are best. Extensive hop-growers build houses over the kiln, that they may be able to use them in wet weather. In this case, keep the doors open as much as possible without letting in the rain. Dried without sufficient air, their color is changed, and their quality and market-value injured. These houses are made much larger than the kiln, in many instances, for the convenience of storing and bagging the hops when dry; in this case, tight partitions should separate the storerooms from the kiln, to avoid dampness from the drying hops. The form of manuring recommended is contrary to the old practice of putting a little manure only in the hill: that practice exposed vines to decay and destruction by worms, and this does not; our system also produces hops equal to new land. HORSE. This noble animal is in general use, and everywhere highly prized. By the last census, we see that there are two thirds as many horses as cows in the United States--4,335,358 horses, and over six millions of cows. But, valuable as is the horse, he suffers much ill treatment and neglect from his master. To give a history of the horse, the various breeds of different countries, and the efforts to improve them, would be interesting, did it fall within the limits of our design. The patronage of the kings and nobility of England has done much to elevate the horse to his present standard of excellence. It has now become the custom for intelligent gentlemen in rural districts, in all enlightened countries, to give much attention to the improvement of horses. Unfortunately, some of that enthusiasm is perverted to the channel of horse-racing, a practice alike injurious to horses and the morals of men. A few brief hints are all we have space for, where a volume would be interesting and useful. The farmer should exercise constant care to improve the breed of his horses: it pays best to raise good horses. This depends upon the qualities of the dam and sire, and upon proper feed and care. This is a subject that farmers should carefully study from books and from their own observation. The most important matter in raising horses, is care in working and feeding. Nineteen out of twenty of all sick horses are made so by bad treatment. The prevention of disease is better than cure. Steady, and even hard work, will not injure a horse that is well and regularly fed. But a few moments of crowding a horse's speed, or of an unnatural strain on his strength, may ruin him. Let it always be remembered that it is speed, and not heavy loads, that most injures a horse. A mile an hour too fast will soon run down your horse. A horse fed with grain, or watered, when warm, is liable to be foundered; and if not so fed as actually to be foundered, he will gradually grow stiff. Horses are liable to take cold by any unreasonable exposure to the weather, in the same circumstances as men, and the effects on health and comfort are very similar. A horse having become warm by driving, should never stand a minute without a blanket. When a man goes from a heated room, or in a perspiration, into inclement weather, he takes cold the moment the cold or storm strikes him: in a few moments the effects on the pores of the body are such that there is no particular exposure. It is so with a horse. He takes cold when you are only going to allow him to "stand but a minute," and during that time you leave him uncovered. If you are under the necessity of doing an unusual day's work with a horse, do not feed him heavily on that day. Unusual feed the day before and the day after will do him good; but on the day of excessive work it injures him. Never feed horses too much; they will often eat one third more than is good for their health. Keep the bottom of the trough in which you feed your horses grain, plastered over with a mixture of equal parts of salt and ashes, that they may eat a little of it when they please. When the water of your horse becomes thick and yellowish, or whitish, give him a piece of rosin as large as a walnut, pulverized and put in his grain. If a horse has the heaves, give him no hay or oats; corn, ground or soaked, should be his only grain, and green corn-fodder in summer, and cornstalks, cut fine, with a little warm water on them, mixed with meal, should constitute his only food. All except a few of the most confirmed and long-standing cases of heaves are _entirely relieved_ by this course of feeding, and that relief is permanent as long as the feed is continued, and it frequently effects a cure so radical that the disease will not return on a change of food. To bring up horses that have had hard usage and poor feed, and to secure growth in colts, feed them milk. The milk of a butter-dairy is not more profitably used in any other way, than fed to horses and colts. Give them no water for two or three days, and they will readily learn to drink all the sour, thick milk you will give them. Colts will grow faster on milk than on any other food. Horses should be often rubbed down and kept clean, and when put in the stable wet, they should be rubbed dry. It is very essential to the health of a horse that he have pure air. Stables in this country are usually airy enough. But if the stable be tight, it should be well ventilated. The gases from a wet stable floor are injurious. Disinfecting agents are good remedies; a little plaster-of-Paris spread over a stable-floor is very useful. These brief directions, followed, will prevent most of the diseases to which horses are subject; or in case a horse be attacked, he will have the disease lightly, as temperate men do epidemics. HORSERADISH. This is regarded a healthy condiment, especially in the spring of the year. Grated, with a little vinegar, it may be eaten with any food you choose. Small shavings of the root are esteemed in mangoes. When steeped in vinegar for two weeks, it is said effectually to remove freckles from the face. Any pieces of the roots will grow in any good garden-soil. Larger and better roots may be produced, by trenching the bed two feet deep, and putting in the bottom, ten inches of good manure, and planting selected roots, about six inches deep. HOTBEDS. These are designed to force an early growth of plants. It is done by the use of solar heat, and that arising from fermenting manures, combined. The following directions for constructing and managing hotbeds will enable every one to be successful. Nail boards on pieces of scantling placed in the inside corners, in the form of a box, sixteen feet long and six feet wide; make it three and a half feet high on the back-side, and two feet high in front, facing the sun; nail a piece of board across the middle, let in at the top, to prevent the box from spreading when filled. Fill that with good, fresh horse-manure, with but little straw; tread it down firmly. Put over the whole, sashes made with cross-pieces but one way, and filled with glass, lapped half an inch, like shingles on a roof, to carry off the rain; putty in the glass lightly, or it may adhere to fresh-painted frames; let the frames be halved on their edges, so as to lap and be tight; put these over the filled hotbed, perfectly fitted all around, and enough of them to cover the whole bed; in two or three days the manure will become pretty warm, when it should be covered, four inches deep, with rich mould, sheltered for the purpose the previous fall, and the seeds planted. When the plants come up, see that they are kept sufficiently moist, and not have the hot sun pour upon them intensely, and they will grow rapidly; when too warm, they should be partly covered with mats, and the frames raised to let in air. Put small wedges between the sash and the boards, which will let in sufficient air. Keep it closed when the air is cold, and covered with mats when the sun is too hot. Plants are often destroyed by over-heating. When in danger of freezing, cover closely with mats or straw, or both. We have had plants growing in such a bed when the thermometer stood eight degrees below zero. If the heat of the manure subsides too early, pack fresh horse-manure all around the outside of the box, and as it heats it will communicate warmth to the inside of the bed. As plants grow up, transplant a part to a fresh bed, so as to give all a chance to grow stocky and strong. Almost everything that grows in the garden may be forwarded greatly in the hotbed. Vines, beets, tomatoes, cabbages, peppers, egg-plants, celery, beans, corn, and potatoes, may be obtained much earlier by this means. Those that are injured most by transplanting should be planted in the hotbed, on inverted sods, or grass turfs, six inches square, which can be removed with the growing plants on them, without seriously disturbing the roots. Plenty of shade and moisture on transplanting will save the most tender plants, and they will speedily recover. Make a hotbed of any size you may desire on the same principle. The boards and frames will last many years, with proper care, and occasional supply of a broken light of glass. Into such sash, broken glass of any size can be put, by cutting it to a proper width in one direction, no matter how far the points lap. HOUSES. It is not our design to give an extended view of rural architecture. But this work can not be complete without a brief notice of farm-buildings, and a few plans for such buildings, adapted to the wants of those possessing limited means. We hope these directions and plans will prove important aids in getting up cheap, yet convenient and beautiful, country residences, especially in all the newer parts of the country. Our reading on rural architecture, and an extensive observation in many states of the Union, have made us acquainted with nothing, combining beauty, cheapness, and utility, better than the following. The scale at the bottom will enable any mechanic to determine the size of each of these buildings, and their relation to each other. They can, on the same general plan, be made of any dimensions, to suit the wishes of the proprietor. The wagon-house in the range is forty feet long, affording ample shelter for all kinds of vehicles, connected by a covered way with the horse-stables and barn-floor. [Illustration: Range of Farm-Buildings.] A lean-to is built on the north side of the wagon-house, in which is a tool-house opening into it, and a stable for eight milch-cows, that will thus be convenient for winter-milking; these cows are fed from the loft over the wagon-house. The barn is thirty by forty feet, with floor in the middle and bay on each side: this can be driven into on one side and out on the other. From the floor is a covered way to cattle and horse stables, and into the wagon and tool house, without going outdoor. _The Piggery._--Large and small swine do not do so well together; hence, the larger ones are to occupy the feeding-pen and bed on the right (in the cut), those of medium size on the left, and the smaller ones in the rear. The dimensions and relative size of apartments can be determined from the plan. The other buildings sufficiently explain themselves in the cut. [Illustration: Ground-plan of Piggery.] With this range of buildings, let a farmer do his own thrashing, with a small horse-power, and thrash a part at a time during the winter, keeping the straw in an apartment in the bay, dry for litter, and for cut feed for cattle and horses, and it will be the best and most economical method of thrashing and keeping stock. Every farmer should do at least a part of his thrashing in this way, during the winter, for the benefit of fresh straw, &c. _Country Residence._--This includes the range of buildings given opposite, their distance from the house, and all the parts of a complete residence, with all the comforts and conveniences that can be crowded into such a space, and at a very reasonable expense. Three fourths of an acre are devoted to the ornamental grounds; except the walks and small flower-beds, it is all green turf. Plowed very deep and thoroughly enriched, the trees are set out, and all then made very level, and one and a half bushels grass-seed sown on it and brushed in very smooth. This soon makes a very thick green turf, to be cut every ten days during the most growing season, and less frequently as the season advances. The trees, for a few years, need careful working around and mulching. The gravel carriage-road is twelve feet wide, and winding around shrubbery, it leads to the carriage-house in the range of buildings. The foot-walks are five feet wide. The curves in the walks may be accurately laid out in the following manner. Determine the general position by a few points measured off. Lay a pole upon the ground, in the direction of the walk; stick a peg in the ground at the first end and at its middle; move the pole round a little, leaving the middle the same,--then stick a peg at its end, and move it forward--moving it forward and round equally, each time, by measurement. A longer or shorter curve is made by a greater or less side-movement of the pole. In a regular curve, the movements are the same; but in going from a shorter to a longer, or from a longer to a shorter curve, the side-measurement must increase or diminish regularly. [Illustration: Country Residence, Farm Buildings, Grounds, and Fruit-Gardens.] [Illustration: Laying out Curves.] [Illustration: First floor.] [Illustration: Chambers.] The following cuts show the plan of the house: three principal rooms and a bed-room below, and four rooms above. The hall extends through the house, affording good ventilation in summer, and entrance to each room, without passing through another. The chimney in the centre economizes heat. This small and cheap house affords more conveniences than most large ones. One of the finest things about such a house is a good cellar. For a farm-house, the cellar should be under the whole; make it eight feet deep, gravel and water lime made smooth on the bottom, flagging under the bottom of the wall extending out a foot, the wall above ground built double, the inside four inches thick, with brick, with a space of two inches, and outside stone wall a foot thick. The windows should be double and well fitted, the inside one hung on hinges; the outside one to be removed in spring, and its place supplied with a well-fitted frame, covered with wire-cloth to admit air and exclude intruders during summer. This will not freeze, and never need banking. No rat can enter, for they always work close to the wall, and coming to the projecting flat stone at the bottom, they give it up. On one side of the cellar, under the kitchen, make a large rain-water cistern, with a pump in the kitchen and a faucet in the cellar, and the whole arrangement is perfect. If the farm be large, you will need some of the good, but cheap houses described in the following part of this article, where your men will live and board themselves, which is always the best and cheapest way. An open view from the house in the country residence extends to the summer-house (_b_) on the right. This is one of the neatest cheap summer-houses that can be made. The following directions for making it may be useful. Set eight cedar posts, six inches in diameter, in the ground, in a circle; saw them off even at the top, and connect them by plank nailed on their tops. Make an eight-sided roof of boards; nail lath from post to post, forming lattice-work, leaving a space between two posts for a door. Put a seat around on the inside. Leave all the materials except the seat unplaned, and cover with a white or brown wash, and it need not cost more than five or six dollars, and, covered with vines of some kind, it will be ornamental. [Illustration: Summer-house.] [Illustration: Laborer's Cottage.] [Illustration: Plan of Laborer's Cottage.] This form of a cheap house is convenient and pleasant. Built of four-inch scantling, the plates and sills being connected only by the upright plank, and the wings thoroughly bracing the upright posts; when lumber is cheap, it may be built for one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars, with cellar, well, and cistern. Occasional whitewash is as good as paint. With cellar under the whole, filled in with brick, and having blinds, it may cost three hundred and fifty dollars. The plan of the house sufficiently explains itself. The next cut illustrates a neat country-house, for a family who think more of neatness, comfort, and intellectual pursuits, than of mere ornament, and may serve the purpose of a farmhouse, or the residence of a retired or professional gentleman. It has the unconstrained air of the Italian style, without a rigid adherence to any rules, and may therefore be altered or added to without destroying its effect. [Illustration: Italian Farmhouse.] [Illustration: Plan of Italian Farm House.] The plan is intelligible without explanation. Built in a plain way, the four large rooms not larger than fifteen by seventeen, and ten feet high, plain in its finish, it would cost about sixteen hundred dollars complete. It may go up from that, according to size and height of rooms, and style of finish, to three thousand dollars. It then makes as good a house as any person ever need to occupy, out of great cities. HYBRIDS. Although this subject has received far too little attention, yet our limits will only allow us to mention a few facts, of the most practical moment. Plants hybridize only through their blossoms. This can only occur in plants of similarity, in nature and habits. Squashes and pumpkins planted near each other mix badly, and the poorer will prevail. Varieties of corn mix at considerable distances, by the falling of pollen from the tassel upon the silk of another variety. Watermelons are always ruined by being planted near citrons. The seeds from melons so grown will not produce one good melon. How far watermelons and muskmelons, or squashes with melons, will hybridize, is uncertain. By planting nutmeg muskmelons with the common roughskinned variety, we have produced a kind about half way between them, that was of great excellence. Two kinds of cabbage or turnip seed should never be raised in the same garden. Cabbage and turnip seed raised near together is valueless. In strawberries, different plants are essential to each other, the quality of the fruit being determined by the plant fertilized, and not by the fertilizer. This subject is further treated under articles on different plants. INARCHING. This is a method of effecting a union of trees or branches, while both retain their hold in the ground. Shave off a little wood from each, and put them together, fitting closely, so that the barks will meet, as in grafting; tie firmly, and cover with wax. When they have got well to growing, cut off the top of the old one, and after a while cut the new one from the ground. When you have a tree that it is difficult to propagate in the usual way, you may transplant it to a thrifty stock. Vigorous branches may by this means be transferred to old, poor-bearing, or slow-growing trees. So also may a tree be prolonged beyond its ordinary age, as the pear on the quince, by inarching young shoots. We can only recommend this to the curious experimenter, who has little else to do. INSECTS. These are the natural enemies of fruits and plants; and to prevent their depredations requires much care. There is no universal remedy. Birds and young fowls--especially ducks and chickens--are useful in a garden. The ducks must not be kept there too long. They will appropriate a little to their own use, but will save much more for the proprietor. Insects have their peculiar tastes for particular fruits and plants, of which we have treated, under those heads, respectively. Success in many branches of horticulture and pomology, depends upon attention to the habits of insects. The most general remedy is to wash trees or plants with a strong decoction of some offensive herb, or with whale-oil soapsuds. Tobacco is very useful for this purpose. IRON FILINGS. It has been ascertained by analysis, that iron enters largely into the composition of the pear. Iron filings spread under them, or worked into the soil, increases the growth of pear-trees, and improves the quality of the fruit. IRRIGATION. This is one of the most important matters, that can engage the attention of agriculturists of the present day. A stream of water that may be caused to flow gently over a field, or different parts of a farm, at pleasure, is a mine of wealth. Plants receive their food from the air and water. We shall discuss this more fully when treating of manures. A poor, porous, sandy, or gravelly soil usually produces a fine crop, in a wet season. That is an addition to the soil of nothing but water. Hence all springs and streams can be turned to great account, on a farm or garden. Watering gardens by hand or with a garden-pump, will often pay better than any other expenditure on the land. Employing a man, in a dry season, to spend his whole time in watering five acres of garden, of berries and vegetables, as cabbages, vines, onions, and potatoes, will pay a very large profit. Strawberries will bear twice as much and twice as long, for daily watering, after they begin to bud for blossoms, until the fruit is gone. It is a necessary caution not to water irregularly, and only occasionally, in a dry season. Better not commence than to leave off, or neglect it in a dry time, before a rain. Read further in our article on "Watering." LABELS. It is important, on many accounts, to have fruit-trees and shrubs well labelled. Many labels have been invented. We prefer Cole's, as given in his Fruit Book, to any other. Take a piece of sound pine or other soft wood, whittle two sides smooth, leaving one wider than the other, with a sharp corner between them. For one, cut one notch in the edge, and so up to four, four notches for four. For five, cut across the narrow side. For ten cut across the wide side, and a notch for every ten up to forty. For fifty, cut obliquely across the narrow side, and for one hundred cut obliquely across the wide side. Keep the names in a book, with numbers corresponding with the notches or numbers on the labels. Fasten these to trees, loosely, by a small copper or brass wire. Transported to any distance, exposed to any weather, or buried in the ground, they will not be obliterated. Pieces of sheet lead, tin, or zinc, cut wide at one end, and written on with a sharp awl, and narrow at the other end, to be bent around a limb, will answer a pretty good purpose. Any soft wood, made smooth, and a little white paint applied, and written on with a good pencil, will preserve the mark for a long time. Fasten with small wire. There are many labels, but we know none preferable to the above. By all means make labels accurate and permanent. Otherwise great losses may occur by budding or grafting from wrong varieties. LANDSCAPE GARDENS. These deserve much more attention than they receive in this country. On most farms land enough is lying waste, to make a picturesque landscape, at a small expense. Trees planted, weeds destroyed, grass cultivated, and paths made, according to the most approved rules of carelessness, would secure this object. With a wealthy man, the omission of such a park about his dwelling is hardly pardonable. Landscape gardening is an extensive subject. We can only give a few of the most general simple rules, that may be practised, without the possession of very large means. 1. Place the house some distance from the main street. 2. Make the carriage-way leading to the house, at least twelve feet wide, and do not allow it to extend in a straight line, but in gentle curves, around clusters of trees and plats of grass, apparently rendering the curves necessary. 3. Have no large trees directly in front of the house. 4. Plant trees of the thickest and greenest foliage near the house, and those of more open tops at a greater distance. Standard pear, and handsome cherry trees, do well planted among the forest trees. Clusters of them, at suitable distances, are not only beautiful, but they bear exceedingly well. They are well protected by the forest trees, and standing alone are injured less by insects. 5. Never set trees in a landscape garden, in straight rows, nor trees of similar size and form together. Nature never does so. 6. Let none of the walks be straight lines, but curves, meandering among trees and grass. If there be any water in the vicinity, let there be an open space, giving a fair view of it from the house. If you have a stream, make rustic bridges over it, the plainer the better. Here and there have rustic arbors. Attached to all this should be three other gardens, one of flowers, another of vegetables, and the third of fruits. These three should never grow together. Fruit-trees ruin vegetables and injure flowers. And flowers in a vegetable garden are mere weeds. A separate plat for each is the correct rule, both for beauty and profit. All this need require but little time and expense. All landholders can, at a moderate cost, live amid scenes of perpetual beauty, while the rich may spend as much money in this way as they choose. LAYERING. This is a method of propagation, by bending down a branch, and fastening it under the soil, leaving the upper end projecting, until it takes root. Cut half way through the branch so as to raise the top, and fasten it at the point where it is cut, in a trench, with a stick thrust into the ground over it nearly horizontally, or with a stick having a hook made by cutting off a limb. Cover well with soil, and mulch it, and water when dry. This done in the spring, in August the branch will be well rooted, and may be cut away from the parent stalk. This is important in any tree or shrub (like the snowball), difficult to propagate by slips or grafting. LAYING IN TREES. Dig a trench where water will not stand, and lay the trees in at an angle of forty-five degrees, and cover the roots and lower part, very closely, with earth. In this way they may be well preserved through the winter, if buried so deep that the tap-root will not freeze, which is always injurious to trees that have been removed from their original soil. Such freezing is always destructive to trees out of the ground. Small trees and seedlings may be covered entirely, to be kept through the winter. Put coarse straw manure on the earth, over trees large enough for setting, that are to be preserved heeled in during winter; and straw or corn-fodder over the tops, during the coldest weather, and they will come out perfect in the spring. If not ready to set out your trees at once, you may preserve them in perfect condition to very late in spring, in this way, by raising them once, to check vegetation, and putting them back, and shading their stems and mulching the roots, after the commencement of warm weather. Trees may thus be preserved in better condition for transplanting than those left in the nursery, and they will make a larger growth the first season. LEEKS. These are said to be natives of Switzerland. We think this doubtful, as they are an article of daily food in Egypt, and were so highly esteemed there, centuries ago, as to become an object of worship. They are used as a pot-herb, to give a flavor to soups and stews. They are not bulbous, like onions, but have a long stem, which is principally used. They are transplanted very deep, so as to obtain a long white neck. The ends of the roots are to be cut off when transplanted, and they should be set in rows a foot apart, and from four to six inches in the row. There are several varieties, distinguished mainly by the width of the leaves,--the _Flanders_ (or _narrow-leafed_), the _Scotch_, and the _Broad London_. We know no use of leeks for which onions would not be equally good, and, hence, do not recommend their cultivation. LEMON. This is the finest acid fruit grown, and belongs to warm climates; but by getting good budded trees from the South, and setting in glass-houses, protected from severe frosts, we may grow lemons in abundance at the North. By a system of acclimation and protection, we anticipate seeing oranges and other Southern fruits grown at the North as a domestic luxury, and perhaps at a profit for market. The houses necessary for protection may be worth more for other purposes than their cost and care, without interfering with their use for orange and lemon culture. LETTUCE. The varieties are numerous, and most of them do well on very rich land, well hoed. Only two kinds of summer-lettuce need be cultivated--the _ice-head lettuce_, and the _brown_. The ice-head has a very thick and tender leaf, continuing to be excellent up to midsummer, from one sowing; and if not allowed to stand nearer together than six inches, it will produce fine heads. The brown lettuce is very large and very good. There are other, earlier kinds, and many others that form large heads. But we can get the above kinds early, by sowing in a hotbed and transplanting; or by sowing so as to have plants get of considerable size in the fall, and protect by covering in winter. These will be suitable for the table early in the spring. Lettuce does better for transplanting; it forms larger heads than in the original bed, and is a little later. Make the soil very rich with stable-manure. Lettuce is more affected by the quality of the soil than most other vegetables. This is a pleasant and healthy article of food, in spring and early summer. LICORICE. This is a hardy plant from Southern Europe. The root in substance, or the extracted dried juice, is much used. Needs a deep, rich soil. It is propagated by cuttings of roots set out in deeply-trenched land, in rows three feet apart, and one foot in the row. Small vegetables may be grown among the plants the first year; afterward keep clear of weeds, and manure every autumn. At the end of the third year, after the leaves are dead, take up the roots and dry them thoroughly. This does well at the South. A few roots are sufficient for a family, and the demand will not be sufficient to require its culture very extensively as an article of commerce. The low price of labor in Southern Europe enables them to supply the demand cheaper than can be afforded in this country. LIME. This is a valuable application to the soil. For wheat it is very important, except on soil containing a large proportion of calcareous matter. Usually air-slaked, and applied as a top-dressing, or plowed or harrowed in, its effects are important. On moist, sour land, producing wild grass, it corrects the acidity, introduces other grass, and prepares the soil for cultivation. On hard, stiff lands, it has a tendency to make them friable, and keep them in a mellow condition, thus saving more than its cost, in the labor of cultivation. Very valuable in a compost heap. So much may be applied as to burn the soil and prove injurious. It will not do as a substitute for everything else. See further on "Manures." LIME. A fruit resembling the lemon, growing in the same climate, but of smaller size. It is used for the same purposes as the lemon, but is not so valuable. Preserved green, it is highly esteemed. It is cultivated as the orange and lemon, needing the same protection in cold climates. To preserve all these from destruction by insects, wash them in a strong decoction of bitter or offensive herbs, or with whale-oil soap-suds; tobacco is very effectual. These remedies are useful on all fruit-trees. LOCATION. This is important to everything we cultivate. But, as everything can not have the best location, we should study it with reference to those things most affected by it, especially fruits. Fruits escape late frosts when growing near rills or small brooks. Orchards near the shores of bodies of water--as on Lake Erie about Cleveland, Ohio--bear luxuriantly when all fruit a few miles back is cut off by late frosts. On the summits of hills, fruits escape late frosts, when they are all cut off in the valleys below. On the Ohio river above Cincinnati, peaches are very liable to destruction by late frosts. We have seen them all frozen through in one night, and turned black the next day, in the month of May, after they had grown to the size of marrowfat-peas. One season, when there were no peaches in any other locality within a hundred miles, we knew an orchard, on a Kentucky hill, so high and steep, that it took miles of winding around the hill, to ascend it with a team. Those trees were perfectly loaded with peaches, that sold on the tree at four dollars per bushel, and in Cincinnati market at seven to eight dollars. In Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia, there are such hills, that may be turned to more valuable account than any of the rest of their land, that are not now considered good for anything--even for sheep-pastures. The same is true in the hilly parts of all the states. Good fruit of some kind will grow on them all, every year. LOCUST-TREES. It will soon be a great object with American farmers to cultivate locust-trees, in all locations to which they are adapted. Even in this new world, we shall soon be dependent on cultivated timber for fence-posts, railroad-ties, and building purposes. Our native forests are rapidly disappearing, while demand for timber is as rapidly increasing. Probably no other tree is so profitable for cultivation in this country as the locust. It is of rapid growth, and hard and durable, and adapted to many uses. The second-growth locust is not so durable as the native forest-tree, as found in parts of Ohio; but, cut at a suitable age and at the right season of the year, it is as durable as white cedar, and much more valuable. The profits of the culture would be great. An acre of locust-trees fifteen or twenty years old would be worth fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars. The expense of growing it, aside from the use of the land, would be trifling. The grove would afford a good place for fowls, while the blossoms would be nearly equal to white clover for honey. The limbs would make excellent wood, and the ground would need no planting for a second growth. Fortunate will be the men on the prairies of the West, and along the railroads and rivers of the land, who shall early plant fields of locust. The profits of it will greatly exceed the increase in the value of the land. MANURES. Soils, manures, and preparing the soil--plowing, harrowing, &c.--are the three great subjects in any good agricultural work. We shall treat this subject under the following divisions:-- 1. The substances of which manures are composed. 2. Preparation and saving of manures. 3. Time and modes of application. 4. The principles of their action upon plants. Manures are of two classes--called putrescent and fossil. The putrescent are composed of decayed, or decaying, vegetable and animal substances. The fossil are those dug from the earth, as lime, marl, and gypsum. All vegetable substances not useful for other purposes are valuable for manure. Rotten wood, leaves, straw, and all the vegetable parts of stable manure, and any spoiled vegetables or grain, are all valuable. At the South, their immense quantities of cotton-seed are a mine of wealth, if properly prepared and applied as manure. Animal manures consist of the animal parts of stable manure, dry and liquid, parts of bones, brine, spoiled meat, kitchen slops, soapsuds, and all dead animals. In decaying, these substances all pass through a process of fermentation. Left exposed without suitable care, they become unhealthy and offensive. It is probable that a large share of the diseases suffered in the rural districts are caused by these impurities; and the impossibility of keeping large cities free from these substances is the cause of their increased mortality. In the country, a little timely caution and labor, in removing these substances and regulating their fermentation, would save much sickness; while the labor would pay a larger per-cent. profit than any other performed on the soil. No manures should be allowed to ferment, or decay, without being mixed or covered with enough common earth, sand, peat, or muck, to retain all the gases and exhalations of such putrescence. The smallest quantity that will answer is one load of earth to two of the decaying substances. The proportions reversed would be better: put one bushel of lime to two loads, two quarts of ground plaster, and half a bushel of ashes, and you have the very best compost heap. The following are brief general rules for the preparation of manures. It is always most economical to feed cattle in the stable or under cover, and never have manure exposed to the weather. But if cattle must be fed outdoor, let them be fed in a yard, lowest in the centre, that the liquids and washings may run into the centre, and be absorbed by straw and litter. Put manure on the land, or into heaps for compost, before very warm weather. Always feed sheep under cover, and keep their manure from rain; heap it together with earth in the spring, or apply it to the soil at once. Manure thrown out of a stable should be kept under cover, out of the rain, and not allowed to heat in winter; its best qualities are evaporated by fermentation in the yard. Manures often rained on in winter, or left in large piles without intermixture of earth, lime, plaster, and ashes, will ferment and waste. Construct your stables so that the liquid manure will run into a vat filled with earth; muck is best. Experiments have shown that the liquid manures are at least one sixth better than the solid. A gentleman dug a pit, thirty-six feet square and four feet deep, and walled it in on all sides. He filled his vat from a cultivated field, and so constructed his sewers from the stables adjoining that the urine saturated the whole. He kept fourteen head of cattle there for five months, allowing none but the liquid part of the manure to pass into the vat. He spread forty loads of this on an acre. For ten years he tried equal quantities of this and well rotted and prepared stable-manure, side by side, in the same field, and obtained great crops; but in no stage of their growth could he see that crops on the land manured from the stable were any better than those that had received only the soil from the vat. The latter were quite as good as the former. The contents of his vat manured seven acres, or half an acre to each creature stabled. The result is proof that one cow discharges urine sufficient in five months to manure abundantly half an acre of land. Save the solid manure equally well, and a cow will make manure enough, in five or six months, to increase a crop sufficiently to pay for herself. It is certainly safe to say, that a careful man can make the manure of a cow pay for her body every year. Is not this an important branch of farming operations? Few pay sufficient attention to it. Fowls should roost where their droppings may be mixed with common garden soil or loam. The manure from each fowl, carefully saved and judiciously applied, will pay for its body twice a year. The hogstye may be very productive of manure, one fourth better than that from the stable. Connected with your hogpen, have a yard fifteen feet square for every five hogs; let that yard have no floor. Throw the straw out of their sleeping-room frequently to make room for new; throw into the yard, also, all sorts of weeds, refuse vegetables, corn-husks, peapods, &c.; also the dirt that will naturally accumulate in the backyard of a dwelling, including sawdust, fine chips, cleanings of cellars, scrapings of ditches, and occasionally a load of loam, muck, or clay--and six loads of manure to each hog may be made, that will prove far better than any stable manure; it has been known to produce fifty bushels of corn to the acre, when stable-manure produced but forty bushels. Old wood, brush, and chips, should never be allowed to remain on uncultivated, useless land. Wood throws out the same amount of heat in decaying as it does when consumed as fuel. The action of that heat on the soil is highly beneficial, retaining it long in a mellow state: hence, all wood, too old to be of value for any other purpose, should be put in heaps, covered up till decomposed, and then applied to the soil, as other manures. For potatoes or vines, but especially melons, it is preferable to any other manure. Nothing is so good for muskmelons as old chips from the woodyard. Leaves of fruit and forest trees are also very good; blood and offal of animals, hair, hoofs, bones, horns, refuse feathers, woollen rags, mud from sewers, rivers, roads, swamps, or ponds, turf, ashes, old brine, soapsuds, all kinds of fish, oyster and clam shells--all are valuable, and no part of them should ever be thrown away or wasted; they are all good in compost heaps, or applied directly to the soil. Bones are best ground, but may be used whole, pounded, or chemically dissolved, or mixed with alternate layers of fresh horse-manure, they will be decomposed by the fermentation of the manure (see "Bones"). Perhaps there is as much imprudence in wasting manures as in any part of American domestic economy. One who leaves his stock without care, and so exposed to the weather as to lose half of them and injure the others, is not fit to be a farmer; yet, many waste manure that would produce plants for man and beast, of far more value than the loss of stock complained of, and yet no one notices it--it is a matter of course, exciting no surprise. Wastefulness in a family, if it be of bread, flour, or meat, is considered wicked and impoverishing; while ten times that amount may be wasted in manures, that would enrich the soil, and excite little or no disapprobation. We hope the agricultural periodicals will keep this subject before the people, until these mines of wealth will no longer be neglected or wasted. _Application of Manures_ is a subject that has been much discussed, and respecting which, intelligent agriculturists differ materially. Some apply them extensively as a top-dressing for grass lands. This does much good, but probably one half of their virtues is lost by washing rains, and by evaporation. A better way is not to keep land down in grass long at a time, and, when under the plow, manure thoroughly. We knew a piece of light land that annually produced half a ton of hay per acre. The owner plowed it up, raised a crop, put a moderate quantity of stable-manure, and ten loads of leached ashes to the acre. We saw it in haying time, the third season after it had been manured and subsoiled and seeded down, and they were then taking fully three tons of timothy hay from an acre, which was the quantity it had yielded three years in succession, without any top-dressing. If a top-dressing of manure is to be applied, harrow the land quite thoroughly, and always apply the manure in the fall--it is worth twice as much as when applied in the spring. The rains and snows of winter cause it to sink into the soil, while the heat of spring and summer evaporate it. A mixture of plaster, lime, ashes, and a very little salt, sowed on meadows, immediately after haying, secures a good growth of feed, much sooner than it will come on other meadows. It also increases, quite considerably, the hay crop of the following season. It is a universal rule not to allow manure to lie long on the surface to which it is applied, before plowing in. Place manure in heaps, as large as will be convenient for spreading, and spread it just before the plow. Never spread manure one day to be plowed in the next. When manuring in the hill, have the planters follow the manure-cart. In manuring potatoes in the hill, drop the potatoes, and put the manure on them and cover at once. In a dry season, the yield will be double that of those planted in the usual way. For fall grains, plow in the manure, just before sowing the seed. This is better than plowing it in under the sod. If the land be not sod land, and you can plow the manure in only deep enough to cover it, and then, just before sowing the seed, plow again very deep, the effect is excellent. Apply manure to land in the fall, or just after harvest, and plow it in, let the land remain till spring, and then plow deep, and you get the best possible effect. On an onion crop, manure does the most good on the surface. On those raised from sets, or on any onions, after they get large enough to give room, put fine manure enough to keep down all weeds, and it will double the crop. Gypsum is better sowed than in any other way. Mixed with a little lime and salt, or wood-ashes and salt, the effect on corn is better than from either alone. To hoed crops apply these articles twice, and always by sowing, and not by putting it around or upon the hills; the effect is much greater sowed, besides the labor that is saved. In applying guano, do not allow it to come in contact with the plants, as it is apt to destroy them. It only remains to consider the principles on which manure acts upon soils, and produces growth in plants. The action of manure on the soil, by which it is enabled to retain and appropriate moisture, constitutes its main, if not its whole benefit. It may afford a stimulus to the roots of plants. Even the specific manures, that are supposed to supply organic matter to particular plants, may impart their benefits by their action upon the air and water. Facts are certainly at hand to show that the great and leading benefits of manures are in their control of moisture, and where that control is not needed, plants get a great growth on what we call poor soil. No manures, either fossil or putrescent, afford any considerable food for plants. Vegetation receives its growth mainly from water and from the atmosphere. Facts in support of this theory are abundant. A trial was made to ascertain whence comes the matter of which a tree is composed. A quantity of kiln-dried earth was weighed and then put into a tight vessel. A willow shrub was also weighed and planted in that earth, and the vessel covered with perforated tin to keep out the dust; for a year and a half it was supplied only with pure water. The tree was then taken out, and found, by weight, to have gained one hundred and sixty pounds. The earth was then kiln-dried, as before, and weighed, and its weight was found to be only two ounces less than it was a year and a half before, when it was deposited there. The tree, then, must have received its growth, not from the soil, but from the water or the atmosphere, or both. Another fact: take a load of manure, dry it thoroughly, and weigh it. Then moisten it and apply it to the soil, and it will increase the weight of vegetation from ten to thirty or forty times its own weight when dry, and yet most of that manure may still be found in the soil. Hence it can only feed plants in a very limited degree. Its action must be on air and water, or the control it gives the soil over those elements. It is also matter of common observation that soil well manured, will continue moist for a long time after similar land by its side, but which has not been manured, is dried up. Hard coarse soils dry up very quickly, while soft, mellow, and friable ones will endure a long drought. The gases and moisture generated by the decomposition of manures produce this mellow state. Hence the necessity of having that decomposition take place under the soil, or of plowing in the manure. Another important fact bearing on this question is, that what are regarded very poor soils, such as light sandy or gravelly land, will produce good crops in a season remarkable for the frequency of showers. On such soils crops are from twice to four times as large, in a wet season as in a dry, and yet there is an addition of nothing but moisture, and in such a manner, as not to have it stand and become stagnant among the roots of the plants. Yet another evidence is in the strength of clay soils. A hard clay is very unproductive. But so disintegrated that plants can grow in it, it produces a great crop. This is because clay is of so close a texture, that when mixed with manure, turf, sand, or muck, although friable, it retains more moisture, than sand or ordinary loam. This is the reason of the superior fertility of land annually overflowed with water, as Egypt in the vicinity of the Nile. It is not that the Nile brings down deposites from the mountains of the Moon, so rich above all that is in the valleys below. The entire weight of all that a river deposites on ten acres would not equal in weight the increased vegetation of a single acre. The cause of the increased fertility is the fact that the deposite is so fine that it prevents rapid evaporation, and thus causes the soil to retain moisture for the large growth, and maturity of the plants. One more evidence is found on our sandy pine plains. Our common forest-trees, as beech, maple, elm, or linden, will not flourish there. Such land will produce comparatively no corn, oats, or wheat. But rye that stands drought better than any other grain, grows tolerably well. But such plains always produce an enormous growth of pine timber, hardly equalled in the number of cords to the acre, by the heaviest-timbered land of the river bottoms. Why is this? Does a maple need so much more food than a pine, or is it in the habits of the trees? It is not in the richness or poverty of the soil, but in the adaptation of the trees to reach and appropriate moisture. The roots of the maple and beech, spread out near the surface of the ground. And it being a light, porous, sandy soil, it does not retain moisture enough to promote their growth. But whoever notices a pine-tree that has been turned up from the roots by the wind, will see that the roots run down almost perpendicularly ten or fifteen feet into the sand. There they find plenty of moisture and hence their great growth. This principle explains the comparative productiveness of all soils. A soil composed of light muck, or a kind of peet-soil, will dry up soon. There is nothing to prevent rapid evaporation; hence it is always unproductive, for want of suitable moisture. Mix with it clay, to render its texture more firm, and it will retain the moisture, and be very productive. Clay alone is too solid to retain moisture; it runs off, as from a brick. Mix sand with it, and it becomes mellow, and retains moisture, and produces great growth. Sand allows so free and rapid an evaporation that it is unproductive. We say it leaches and is hungry, and so it is, because it has little power to retain water. Our manures do it good, only as they are calculated to aid it in controlling moisture. If we apply a light manure as we would to clay, it is comparatively useless; it adds no firmness to the texture of the soil, and hence does not increase its capacity for controlling water. On such land, the only good that manure does, is while decomposition is taking place in the soil, it renders it more moist, and hence more productive. Apply clay to such a soil, and it will increase its firmness and consequent capacity of retaining and appropriating moisture, and thus render it highly valuable. Dry straw manure is sometimes said to dry up land, and ruin crops. So of turf in a dry season. In a wet season they greatly increase the growth of crops. Now they contain just as much food for plants in one season as another. Hence a soil too easily impervious to the atmosphere, will be a poor soil, that is, will produce poorly, simply because it has no power to retain the necessary moisture. We suppose these facts and reasons to establish our theory, that the principal benefit of manures, and of mixing different soils, is in the control they give over the moisture and the atmosphere. Hence the greatly increased crop of clover from the application of three quarters of a bushel of plaster to an acre. The increased weight of clover on five square rods, would outweigh the plaster applied, and still that plaster remains, in almost its full weight, on the soil. This principle explains the benefit of mulching trees, plants, or vegetables. This is the best means of preserving trees, the first year after transplanting, and of securing a great growth, of any kind of shrubs or plants. This may be done with common straw or leaves. Now wherein is their utility? Not in the nourishment they afford the plants, but in the fact that mulching so covers the surface as to prevent rapid evaporation. In such cases, it is the more abundant moisture that secures the greater growth. Hence the first study of a soil culturist should be to ascertain how he shall so mix and manage the materials at his command, as to cause them to retain moisture for the longest time, without leaving water to stand about the roots of his plants. On this depends the whole importance of deep plowing and ditching. On this theory we may also account for the fact that certain plants prefer a certain kind of manure to all others. It is that those plants act in a certain manner on the soil requiring a specific action of manure to enable it to appropriate moisture and tax the atmosphere for their growth. This theory explains why too much manure is bad. Not because we give too much food to plants, but because excess of manure dries up the land. But whatever theory we adopt, we all agree in the utility of fertilizers. And the experience of practical farmers is of more value in aiding us to reach right conclusions, than all chemical essays on the subject that have ever been written. MARL. This is one of the best distributed and most universal fertilizers. Marl proper contains nearly equal proportions of clay and lime. Sand-marl is spoken of, in which sand and lime are the main ingredients. Clay-marls are to be applied to sandy and gravelly soils, and sand-marls to clayey soils. Shell-marls are very valuable, and seldom contain clay. Marls may easily be known, even by those not at all acquainted with chemistry. Apply any mineral acid, or even very strong vinegar, and if it be a marl, an effervescence will at once be observed: this effect is produced by acid upon lime. MARJORUM. There are two varieties in cultivation--the _sweet_, an annual herb; and the _winter_, a hardy perennial. They are grown and used as summer savory--used green, or dried for winter. They give a sweet, aromatic flavor to soups, stews, and dressings. The cultivation is, in all respects, like other garden-herbs of the kind, whether for medicinal or culinary purposes. MELONS. There are two species--musk and water melons--which are subdivided into many varieties of each. These are among the most delicious of all the products of the garden. A little use makes all persons very fond of them. The climate of the Middle and Southern states is well adapted to raising melons; much better than the same latitudes in Europe. The following brief directions will insure success in their cultivation. A light, rich soil is always desirable. There should always be a little sand in the composition of soil for melons. If not there naturally, supply it; it will always pay. The warm sands of Long Island and New Jersey are the best possible for melons, especially for water-melons. It may be well to trench deep for the hills, and mix in a little well-rotted manure, and cover it with fine mould. A quantity of manure, left in bulk under the hills, will dry them up at the worst possible time. When you plant only a few in a garden, mulch your musk-melons with chips or sawdust from the wood-yard, or leaves and decayed wood from the forest, and you will get a great growth. They will grow luxuriantly in a pile of chips, with a little soil, in a door-yard, where hardly any other plant would flourish. The water-melon does best in almost pure sand, if it be enriched with liquid or some other of the finer manures. Plant musk-melons six feet apart, and water-melons nine feet each way. When the plants become established, never leave more than two or three in a hill. The product will be greatly increased in number and size, by picking off the end bud of the first runners when they show their blossom-buds; this causes them to throw out many strong lateral vines, which will produce abundantly. The attacks of striped bugs, so well known as the enemies of vines, and also of the black fleas, or hoppers (very minute, but quite destructive to tender vines when first up), may be prevented (says Downing) by sprinkling near the plants a little guano. As but a small portion of cultivators will have it, or can obtain it, we recommend to put many seeds in a hill, to provide for the depredations of the bugs, and sprinkle offensive articles around them. These will not always be effectual. We have recommended elsewhere to fence each hill, as the most effectual method. A box, with gauze or a pane of glass over the top, is a certain remedy in every case; it also greatly promotes the growth of the young vines. This is equally effectual against the cutworm and all other insects; and, as the boxes will last a dozen years or so, we should use them if we had ten acres of melons. But by early and late planting, and watchfulness, and replanting, you will succeed without protection. An excessive quantity of stable-manure does not increase the growth, especially of water-melons. Plaster, bonedust, and ashes, are good applications; hog-manure is the best of all. The seeds should be soaked two days, and planted an inch deep on broad hills, raised in the centre four inches above the level of the bed, that water may not stand around them; planted low, they sometimes perish in a few hours in a hot sun, after a rain. Hoe them often, but never when they are wet, and never hoe near them after they have commenced running; the roots spread, about as much as the vines, and hoeing deep near them cuts off the roots, and materially injures them. Many a promising plat of melons has been ruined by stirring the soil when they were wet, and hoeing around them after they had begun to run. In walking among melons, great harm is done by stepping on the ends of vines. No one should be allowed among melons but the one who hoes or picks them. Many are lost by drought, after great care. We have often used an effectual remedy; it consists in turning up the vines, if they have begun to run before the drought, and putting around each hill from a peck to half a bushel of wet, well rotted manure; that from a spent hotbed is excellent for this purpose; and hoe from a distance between the hills, and cover the manure an inch or two deep with fine mould, lay down the vines, and saturate the hill with water, and they will hardly get dry again during the season. A little judicious watering will give you a great crop in the most severe drought. _Varieties of the Musk-melon._--These are numerous, and the nomenclature uncertain. The London Horticultural Society's catalogue enumerates seventy. Most of them are of no use to any one. Two or three of the best are sufficient. There are three general classes of musk-melons--the _green-fleshed_, as the citron and nutmeg; _yellow-fleshed_, as the cantelope, or long yellow; and _Persian melon_. The last is the finest of all, but is too tender for general cultivation with us, requiring much care and very warm seasons. The yellow-fleshed are very large, but much inferior in quality to either of the others. The green-fleshed are _the_ musk-melons for this whole country. The nutmeg has long been celebrated; but, it being much smaller than the citron, and in no way superior in quality, we think the latter the best for all American gardens. The following are enumerated in "White's Gardening for the South," as adapted to the latitude of the Southern states: _Christiana_, _Beechwood_, _Hoosainee_, _Sweet Ispahan_, _Pineapple_, _Cassabar_, _Netted Citron_, and _Rock_. These are doubtless all fine, and would do well at the North, with suitable care and protection. Downing's catalogue is nearly the same, with a very few additions. _Varieties of Water-melons_--are also numerous, and names uncertain. The best varieties, however, are well known. The most choice are the following: _Imperial_, _Carolina_, _Black Spanish_, _Mountain-Sprout_, _Mountain-Sweet_, _Apple-seeded_, and _Ice-cream_. The following excellent water-melons all originated in South Carolina: _Souter_; _Clarendon_, or _dark-speckled_; _Bradford_, very dark-green, with stripes mottled and streaked with green; _Ravenscroft_, and _Odell's large white_. There is a fine little melon, called the orange-melon, because the flesh and skin separate like an orange. These varieties will all do well with care. To preserve any one of them, it must be grown at some distance from other varieties. All water-melons should be far removed from citrons, which resemble them, raised only for preserving. They always ruin the next generation of water-melons. Different varieties of musk-melons planted together produce hybrids, partaking of the qualities of both, and are often very fine. We raised a cross between the yellow-fleshed cantelope and the nutmeg, which was excellent. Seeds of most vines are better for being two or three years old, as they produce less vines, but more fruit. Melons are a luxury that should grow in every garden, and the state should enact severe laws against stealing them, making the punishment no less than fine and imprisonment. MILLET. This is a species of grain, partaking much of the nature of a large grass. Sowed thin, it produces a good yield. The seed is excellent for fowls. Ground, it is good for keeping or fattening all domestic animals. It is about equal to Indian corn for bread. Cut while green, but when nearly ripe, it is a good substitute for hay, producing a much larger quantity per acre. All animals prefer millet, cut in the milk, to hay. It is a less profitable crop for grain, on account of the irregularity of its ripening, and its extreme liability to shell, when dry. It must be cut as soon as the seed begins to harden. It also attracts swarms of birds, which are exceedingly fond of the seed. About three tons per acre is an average crop on tolerably good land. From one to three pecks of seed to the acre are sown broadcast. When sown in drills and cultivated, it grows very large, and requires only four quarts of seed per acre. It will make good fodder sown at any time from April to July. Its more extensive cultivation for fodder is recommended. MINT. This genus of plants comprises twenty-four species. Those usually cultivated in gardens are three, _Peppermint_, _Spearmint_, and _Pennyroyal mint_. All mints are propagated by the same methods. Parting the roots, offset young plants, and cuttings from the stalks. Spearmint and peppermint like a moist and even wet soil. Pennyroyal does better in a rich loam. Plants come into use the same season they are set. Set the plants eight inches apart, and on beds four feet wide, leaving a path two feet between them. In field culture, for the oils and essences, place them two feet apart, for the convenience of going between the rows with a horse. Thus cultivation becomes easy. They should be cut in full blossom, and dried in small bunches in the shade, but better by artificial heat, like hops. They should be cut when dry. For domestic uses, dry quickly, and pulverize, and put away in tight glass bottles. They will retain all their strength, keep free from dust, and always be ready for use. The same is true of all the herbs for domestic use. As a field crop, mints are profitable. MULBERRY. There are three varieties cultivated in this country. We place them in the order of their qualities:-- 1. _The Johnson._--A new variety, thus described by Kirtland: "Fruit very large; oblong cylindric; blackish, subacid, and of mild and agreeable flavor. Growth of wood strong." 2. _The Black Mulberry._--An Asiatic variety, rather tender for the North, though it succeeds tolerably well in some parts of New England. Fruit large and delicious; tree low and spreading. Easily cultivated on almost any soil. Propagated by seeds, layers, cuttings, or roots. 3. _The Red Mulberry._--A native of this country. Fruit small and pleasant, but inferior to the two preceding. MULCHING. This is placing around plants or trees, coarse manure or litter of any kind, to keep down weeds, and prevent too rapid evaporation of moisture. All straw, corn stalks, old weeds or stubble, forest leaves, seaweeds, old wood, sawdust, old tanbark, chips, &c., are good for mulching. Any tree taken up and planted with reasonable care, and well mulched and watered, will live. One of fifty need not die. Cover the loose earth deep enough to prevent the springing of weeds. Put a little earth on the outer edge of the manure, leaving it dishing about the tree. Fill that occasionally with water, and you will get a good growth, even in a dry season. Plant gooseberries or currants, and mulch the whole ground between the bushes, and give them no other cultivation, and the berries will grow nearly twice as large as the same varieties standing neglected, to grow up to weeds, in the usual way. Mulching with clean, dry straw, or with charcoal, is a preventive of mildew. It is the easiest method of taking care of strawberries after they are in blossom; the vines will bear much more and finer fruit, and it will be clean and neat. Mulching vines is a great means of insuring a crop. Every crop that can be mulched will be greatly benefited by it; hence, all the straw and litter that can be saved is money in the pocket; for mulching alone, it is worth five times as much as it can be sold for. Burning or in any way destroying cobs, cornstalks, stubble, old straw, or decaying wood, is extravagant wastefulness. MUSHROOMS Are vegetables growing up in old pastures, or on land mulched and the straw partly covered with soil. They are also cultivated in beds for the purpose. Picked at the right stage, they are a fine article of diet, almost equalling oysters. The use of the wild ones, however, is attended with some danger, for the want of knowledge of the varieties, or of the difference between the genuine mushroom, and the toadstools that so much resemble them. Persons have been poisoned unto death by eating toadstools instead of mushrooms. When of middle size, mushrooms are distinguished by the fine pink or flesh color of their gills, and by their pleasant smell. In a more advanced stage, the gills become of a chocolate color; they are then apt to be confounded with injurious kinds. The toadstool that most resembles the true mushroom is slimy to the touch, and rather disagreeable to the smell. The noxious kind grows in the borders of woods, while the mushroom only grows in the open field. It is better, however, not to eat them unless gathered by a practised hand, so as to be sure of no mistake. With the help of one accustomed to gathering them, you will learn in a few moments, so as to be accurate and safe. _Mushroom Beds._--Prepare a bed in the corner of the hothouse, or, in the absence of that, in a warm, dry cellar. The first of October is the best time. Make the bed four feet wide, and as long as you require. It should be one foot high perpendicularly at the edges, and sloping toward the middle; it should be of horse-manure, well forked, and put in compact and even, so as to settle all alike. Cover it with long straw, to preserve heat and the exhalations that would rise. At the end of ten days, the heat will be such as to allow you to remove the straw, and put an inch of good mould over the top of the bed. On this put the spawn or seed of the mushroom, in rows of six inches apart. The spawn are white fibres, found in old pastures, where mushrooms grow, or in old spent hotbeds, and sometimes under old stable floors. The warmth of the bed will produce mushrooms plentifully for a considerable time. If the production diminishes and nearly ceases, it may be renewed by removing the mould, and putting on good horse-manure to the depth of twelve inches, and covering and planting as before, and the production will be plentiful for a number of weeks. MUSTARD. There are two kinds cultivated, the black and the white, annuals, and natives of Great Britain. The white mustard is cultivated in this country principally for greens, and sometimes for a small salad like the cress. It may be sown at any time from opening of spring to the beginning of autumn. But sown in hot weather, the bed must be shaded. The Spaniards prefer the white mustard for grinding for table use, because of its mildness and its whiter flour. White mustard-seed, being much larger than the black, is preferred for mangoes, and all pickling purposes. Black mustard is cultivated principally in the field, for the mills. It is there ground, and makes the well known condiment found on most tables. Sow in March or April, broadcast on land tolerably free from weeds, and if you get it too thick, hoe up a part. In July or August, you may get a good crop. Cradle it as wheat, before ripe enough to shell. Mustard used in various ways is medicinal. It is one of the safest and most speedy emetics. Stir up a table-spoonful of the flour and drink it. Follow it with repeated draughts of warm water, and in half an hour, you will have gone through all the stages of a thorough emetic, without having been weakened by it. NASTURTIUM. This annual plant, found in most gardens, is too well known to need description. Were it not so common, its flowers, that appear in great profusion, from early summer till destroyed by frost, would be regarded very beautiful. Its main use is for pickles. Its green berries are nearly equal to capers for that purpose. It grows well on any good garden soil; bears more berries on less vines, planted on land not too rich. Single vines four feet apart, on rich land, do best. NECTARINE. This is only a fine variety of the peach, having a smooth skin. Downing gives instances of its return to the peach, and others of the production of nectarines and peaches on the same limb. The appearance of the tree is hardly distinguishable from the peach. It is one of the most beautiful of dessert fruits: it has no down on the skin, being entirely smooth and beautiful, like waxwork. Its smooth skin exposes it to the ravages of the curculio. It is longer-lived on plum-stocks, but is more generally budded on the peach. It is usually productive wherever peaches flourish, if not destroyed by the curculio. It is even more important than in the peach to head-in the trees often, to produce good large fruit. _Varieties_--are divided into freestone and clingstone, with quite a number in each class. We give only a few of those most esteemed. _Boston._--Freestone, American seedling; hardy and productive; color deep-yellow, with a bright-red cheek. Time, September 1st. _Due du Telliers._--Freestone, pale-green, with a marbled reddish cheek; flesh whitish, inclining to green; very fine; a great bearer of rather large fruit. Time, last of August. _Hunt's Tawny._--Very fine and early; a great bearer; tree hardy; color, pale-orange, with a dark-red cheek, with many russety specks. Time, forepart of August. _Pitmaston Orange._--A fine yellow nectarine, maturing the last of August. _The Early Violet_--is an old French variety, everywhere esteemed; it has sixteen synonyms; fruit high-flavored. Time, last of August. _Newington._--A good clingstone; an English variety that has long been cultivated; it has many synonyms; the color dark-red when exposed. Time, 10th of September. _Newington Early_--Is one of the best, earlier, larger, and better, than the preceding; ripens first of September. The same varieties are excellent for the South, where they ripen considerably earlier. The following selection of choice, hardy nectarines for a small garden, is from Downing:-- Early Violet, Elruge, Hardwicke Seedling, Hunt's Tawny, Boston, Roman, and New White. NEW FRUITS. That these are constantly appearing, is a matter of common observation; but the manner of their production has given rise to much diversity of opinion. The theory that they are the results of replanting, from the seeds of successive generations of the same tree, is called the Van Mons' theory, after Dr. Van Mons, of Belgium, who devoted many years of close study and application to the improvement of fruit, especially of pears, by this method. His directions may be briefly summed up as follows. Plant seeds from any good variety of fruit; let those seedlings stand without grafting, until they bear. Take the first fruit from the best of those seedlings, and plant it and produce other seedlings, and so on. The peach and plum are said to reach a high state of excellence in the third generation, while the pear requires the fifth. Seeds from old trees are said to have a great tendency to return to their wild origin, while those of young, improving trees will more generally produce a better fruit. The seeds from a graft from a young tree does not produce a better than itself. The succession must be of seedlings. This theory requires long practice, and is exposed to interruptions by the crosses that will necessarily occur between different trees in blossom. And we have in so many cases had a fruit of great perfection arise from a single planting of seed from some known variety, that we must conclude the improvement to be produced by some other principle than that of the Van Mons' theory. The evidence is in favor of the opinion that new varieties of fruit arise from cross-fertilization in the blossoms of different kinds, and that the improvement of the qualities of any given variety is the result of cultivation. Some of the best plums we have are known to have been the product of fertilizing the blossoms of one tree from the pollen of another; this is constantly taking place with our fruits, and is consequent upon our mixed orchards. Let this be attended to artificially, by covering branches with gauze, to prevent the fertilization by bees and winds, and make the cross between any two varieties you choose, and the results may prove highly beneficial. The amateur cultivator may render essential service to pomology by this practice. We know that all our choice fruits have come from those not fit for use. It is not improved cultivation of the old, barely, but the production of new varieties. The subject of further improvement, therefore, demands careful study and practice. The seeds of established varieties, planted at once without drying, will often reproduce the same. We are not certain but they generally would, if not affected by blossoms of contiguous trees. NURSERY. Of this subject we can only give the general outlines. This department of soil-culture is so distinct, that the few who engage in it as a business are expected to make it an especial study. In a work like this, it is only desirable to give those general principles that will enable the cultivator of the soil to raise such trees as he may desire on his own premises. These directions may be considered reliable, and, as far as they go, are applicable to all nurseries. _Location._--This is the first point demanding attention. If a piece of land containing a variety of soils can be selected, it will prove beneficial, as different trees require different soils for their greatest perfection. A situation through which a rivulet may run, or in which a pond may be constructed, fed by a spring or hydrant, is of great value for watering. The situation of the nursery, as it respects shade or exposure, is also important. Trees should generally be as much exposed to the elements, in the nursery, as they will be when transplanted in the orchard. Trees removed from shaded situations to the open field will be stinted in growth for some time, and may be permanently injured. Never allow your nursery to be shaded by large trees. Bearing trees, designed to show the quality of your fruit, should occupy a place by themselves. _Soil._--A theory that has had many adherents is that trees raised on poorer and harder land than that they will occupy in the orchard, will grow more vigorously, and do better, than those transplanted from better to worse soil. Thus, trees have often been preferred from high, hard hills, to transplant in good loam or alluvium. On the same principle, a calf or colt should be more healthy, and make a better creature, for having been nearly starved for the first year or two. Neither of these is true. Give fruit-trees as great a growth as possible while young, without producing too tender and spongy wood for cold winters. It is only desirable to check the early growth of fruit-trees on the rich prairies of the West, and that should be done, not by the poverty of the soil, but by root-pruning or heading-in; this prevents a spongy, tender growth, that is apt to be injured by their trying winds. Trees that are brought from a colder to a warmer region, always do better. _Preparation of the Soil._--It should be made quite rich with stable-manure, lime, and wood-ashes, and cultivated in a root-crop the previous year--any roots except potatoes. Those left in the ground will come up so early and vigorous in the spring, that you can not eradicate them without destroying many of your young seedlings. The land should be worked very deep by subsoiling, or better with double-plowing, by which the manure and top-soil are put in the bottom. As manure always works up, the effect will be excellent. Buckwheat is good to precede a nursery; it shades the ground so densely as to protect it from the scorching sun, and effectually destroy all weeds. Trees planted on land prepared by double-plowing (see our article on "Plowing") will make one third greater growth, in a given time, than those on land prepared in the ordinary way. In double-plowing, if the subsoil be very poor, it will be necessary to give a top-dressing of well-rotted manure, worked in with a cultivator. Thorough draining is also very essential to a nursery. _Time of Planting._--The general practice is to plant in the fall, at any time before the ground freezes. The better way is to keep seeds in moist sand, or dry and spread thin, until spring, and plant as early as the ground will allow. Freezing apple-seeds is of no use. Hard-shelled seeds had better be frozen, to open the stones and give them an opportunity to germinate. The advantage of spring-planting is, the ground can be put in much better condition, and the seeds will start quite as early as the weeds, and much labor may be saved in tending. _Method of Planting._--Plant with a drill that will run about an inch deep, putting the seeds in straight rows, not more than an inch wide, and two and a half feet apart; this will allow the use of a small horse and cultivator, which will destroy nearly all the weeds. Use a potato-fork or hoe, across the rows, among the seedlings, and very little weeding will be necessary. It is not more than one fourth of the ordinary work to keep a nursery clean in this way. Two thirds of those thus planted and cultivated will be large enough for root-grafting the first season, and for cleft-grafting the second. When your seedlings are six inches high, if you thoroughly mulch them with fine straw or manure, you will be troubled with no more weeds, and your trees will get a strong growth. For root-grafting, pull up those of suitable size very late in the fall, cut off the tops eight inches from the root, and pack in boxes, in moist sand, and keep in a cellar that does not freeze; graft in winter, and repack them in the boxes with moist sand, sawdust, or moss, and keep them until time to transplant in spring. They should not be wet, but only slightly moist. In the spring, plant them in rows three feet apart, and ten inches in the row. The second year, if they are not wanted in market, they should be taken up and reset, in rows four feet apart, and two feet in the row. Cut off the ends of large roots, to encourage the growth of numerous fibrous roots. Large nursery-trees, that have not been transplanted, are of little value for the orchard, being nearly destitute of fibrous roots. But large trees, even of bearing size, when transplanted in the orchard, do quite as well as small ones, provided they have been several times transplanted in the nursery. This produces many fibrous roots, upon which the health and life of the tree depend. In many regions, great care must be taken to prevent destruction of young trees by snow-drifts. This is done by selecting locations, and by constructing or removing fences, to allow the snow to blow off; treading it down as it falls is also very useful, both in protecting the trees from breaking down by the settling of drifts in a thaw, and from the depredations of mice under the snow. Trees should be taken up from the nursery with the least possible injury to the roots. Do not leave them exposed to the air for an hour, not even in a cloudy day. It is an easy matter to cover the roots with mats, straw, or earth. Protect also from frosts; many trees are ruined by exposure to air and frost, of which the nurseryman is very careful in all other respects. For transportation, they should be closely packed in moist straw, and wound in straw or mats, firmly tied and kept moist. Trees, cared for and packed in this way, may be transported thousands of miles, and kept for two months, without injury. NUTS. More attention to the cultivation of nuts, would add materially to our domestic luxuries. There are so many nuts in market, that are the spontaneous productions of other countries, or raised where labor is cheap, that we can not afford to raise them as an article of commerce. But a few trees of the various kinds, would be a great addition to every country residence. We could always be certain that our nuts were fresh and good. A small piece of ground devoted to nuts, and occupied by fowls, would be pleasant and profitable. English walnuts do well here. We have varieties of hickory nuts, native in this country, which, to our taste, are not surpassed by any other. Chestnuts are easily grown here (see our directions elsewhere in this volume). Butternuts, filberts, peanuts (growing in the ground like potatoes), and even our little forest beechnuts, are easily raised. The dwarf chestnut of the Middle and Southern states is decidedly ornamental in a fruit garden. Its qualities are in all respects like the common chestnut, only the fruit is but half the size, and the tree grows from five to ten feet high. In all our landscape gardens, and in all places where we retain forest trees for ornamental purposes, it is better to cultivate trees that will bear good nuts. The varieties of nut-bearing trees, interspersed with evergreens, make a beautiful appearance. OAKS. Raising oak-timber, on a large scale, will soon be demanded in this country. In some sections we have immense quantities of native oaks; but they are fast disappearing, and the present expense of transporting the timber, to places where it is needed, is much greater than would be the cost of raising it. A million of acres of oaks ought to be planted within the next five years. A crop of white oak, of only twenty-five years' growth, would be very valuable; and twenty-five or fifty acres, of forty years' growth, would be worth a handsome fortune, especially in the West. On all the bluffs in the West they grow well, and on the prairies they will do even better, after they have been cultivated a few years. The application of a little common salt on rich alluvial soils, is a great advantage in growing timber. Preserve acorns in moist sand during winter, and plant in the spring, in rows six feet apart, to give opportunity for other crops among them for a year or two, to encourage good cultivation. Plant a foot apart in the row, that, in thinning out, good straight trees may be left; at three or four years old, thin to four feet in the rows; afterward, only remove as appears absolutely necessary. Trim straight and smooth. The question of transplanting is important. Shall we plant thick, as in a nursery, and then transplant, or shall we plant where they are to grow? In fruit-trees, the object is to get a low, full, and spreading top, of horizontal branches, that will bear much fruit. This is eminently promoted by transplanting, root-pruning, and heading-in. But in raising timber, the object is to get trees of long, straight bodies, with the fewest possible low branches. Such are the native trees of the forest. This is best promoted by planting thick, never transplanting, and keeping all the lower limbs well trimmed off. These directions are for raising timber on good tillable land. Such groves may be good for pastures, and for poultry-yards, for a long time. Beside this, we have large areas of rough land, that will not soon be brought into cultivation for other purposes. Fine timber may be grown on such land, with no care but trimming. OATS. This is one of the great staple agricultural products of all regions, sufficiently moist and cool for their successful growth. Oatmeal makes the most wholesome bread ever eaten by man. For all horses, except those having the heaves, oats are the best grain; to such horses they should never be fed--corn, soaked or ground, is best. They are valuable for all domestic animals and fowls. _Varieties._--These are numerous. Those called side-oats yield the largest crops: but of these there are several varieties. The genuine _Siberian_ oats are tall, heavy, dark-colored side-oats, the most productive of any known. _Swedish_ oats, and other new varieties, are coming into notice; most of these are the Siberian, under other names, and perhaps slightly modified by location and culture. The barley-oats, Scotch oats, and those usually cultivated, will yield only about two thirds as much per acre as the true Siberian; the same difference is apparent in the growth of straw. Oats will produce something on poor land, with bad tillage, but repay thorough fertilization and tillage as well as most other crops. Enrich the land, work it deep and thoroughly, and roll after harrowing. Moist, cool situations are much preferable for oats: hence, success in warm climates depends upon very early sowing. Oats sowed as late as the first of July, in latitude forty-two and further north, will mature; yet, all late oats, even with large straw and handsome heads, will be found to be only from one half to two thirds filled in proportion to the lateness of sowing. The entire _profits_ of an oat-crop depend upon _early sowing_. Harvest as soon as the grain begins to harden, and the straw to turn yellow. Allowed to get quite ripe, they shell badly, and the straw becomes useless, except for manure. Cut with reaper or cradle, and bind: all grain so cut is more easily handled, thrashed, and fed. Mow no grain that is not so lodged down that a cradle or reaper can not be used. The straw of oats cut quite green is nearly as good as hay. OKRA. A valuable garden plant, easily propagated by seeds. It is excellent in cookery, as a sauce. Its ripe seeds, used as coffee, very much resemble the genuine article. The green pods are much used in the West Indies, in soups and pickles. Plant at the usual time of corn-planting, in rows four feet apart, two or three seeds in a place, eight inches apart in the row; leave but one in a place after they get a few inches high, and hoe as peas, and the crop will be abundant. OLIVES. These are natives of Asia, but have, beyond date, been extensively cultivated in Southern Europe. Olive-oil is an important article of commerce in most countries. Its use in all kinds of cookery, in countries where it flourishes, renders olives as important, to the mass of the people, as cows are in New England. It should be a staple product of the Southern states, to which it is eminently adapted. It is hardy further north than the orange. With protection, it may be cultivated, with the orange and lemon, all over the country. Olive-trees attain a greater age than any other fruit-tree. An Italian olive-plantation, near Terni, is believed to have stood since the days of Pliny. Once set out, the trees require very little attention, and they flourish well on the most rocky lands, that are utterly useless for any other purpose. Calcareous soils are most favorable to their growth. They are propagated by suckers, seeds, or by little eggs that grow on the main stalk, and are easily detached by a knife, and planted as potatoes or corn. Olives will bear at four or five years from the seed; they bear with great regularity, and yield fifteen or twenty pounds of oil per annum to each tree. There are several varieties. Plantations now growing at the South are very promising. ONIONS. Of this well-known garden vegetable there are quite a number of varieties. 1. _The Large Red._--One of the most valuable. 2. _The Yellow._--Large and profitable, keeping better than any other. 3. _The Silver-skin._--The handsomest variety, excellent for pickling, brings the highest price of all, but is not quite so good a keeper as the red or yellow, and does not yield as well. 4. _The White Portugal._--A larger white onion, often taken for the true silver-skin. It is a good variety. The preceding are all raised from the black seed, growing on the top. 5. _The Egg Onion._--So called from its size and shape. On good rich soil, the average size may be that of a goose-egg, which it resembles in form. It is of a pale-red color, and more mild in flavor than any other. They are usually raised by sowing the black seed, very thick, to form sets for next year. Those sets, put out early, will form large onions for early market, that will sell more readily than any other offered. 6. _The Top Onion._--So called because the seed consists of small onions, growing on the top of the stalks, in place of the black seed of other onions. These are good for early use, grow large, but are poor keepers. 7. _The Hill or Potato Onion_.--Of these there are several kinds, most of which are unworthy of cultivation. The _Large English_ is the only valuable variety. The small onions, for sets, grow in the ground from the same roots, by the side of the main onion. Some of these grow large enough for cooking. The main onion is the earliest known, grows large, and has a mild, pleasant flavor;--they will mature at a certain season, whatever time you plant them; hence, they must be planted very early to produce a good crop. We have planted them on good ground so late as to get little more than the seed. They are fine for summer and fall use, but keep poorly. The foregoing are all that are necessary. They can all be brought forward by early planting of sets raised the previous season, by sowing the black seed so thick that they can not grow larger than peas, or small cherries. Good sandy loam and black muck are the best soils for onions. Any good garden soil may be made to produce large crops; good, well rotted stable-manure and leached ashes are the best. The theory of shallow plowing, and treading down onion-beds is incorrect. The roots of onions are numerous and long. The land should be well-manured, double-plowed, and thoroughly pulverized. The only objection to a very mellow onion-bed is the difficulty of getting the seed up: this is obviated by rolling after sowing, which packs the mould around the seed, so as to retain moisture and insure vegetation. Fine manure, mixed in the surface of the soil for onions, is highly beneficial; on no other crop does manure on the surface do so much good. Mulching the whole bed, as soon as the plants are large enough, is in the highest degree beneficial, both in promoting growth, and keeping down weeds. An onion-bed must be made very smooth and level, to favor very early hoeing, without destroying the small plants. All root-crops that come up small, are tended with less than half the expense, if the surface be made very smooth and level. Never divide your onion-ground into small beds, but sow the longest way, in straight narrow rows, eighteen inches apart, for convenience of weeding and hoeing. Cultivate while very young, and work the soil toward the rows, so as to hill up the plants; this should be removed after they begin to form large bulbs. Breaking down the tops to induce them to bottom, is a fallacy: it will lessen the crop. Rich soil, deep plowing, thorough pulverizing, early sowing, and frequent hoeings, will insure success. Our system of double-plowing is the best for this crop. They will do equally well, some say improve, for twenty years on the same bed. Work the tops into the soil where the plants grow. Let the rows be very narrow and very straight, and you will save half the ordinary expense of cultivation. _To gather and preserve well_, you should house them when very dry. A day's exposure to a warm autumn sun is very beneficial. Keep them in an open barn or shed until there is danger of frost. A warm, damp cellar always ruins them; keep them through winter in the coolest dry place possible, without severe freezing. Once freezing is not injurious, but frequent freezing and thawing ruins them. They are very finely preserved braided into strings and hung in a cool, dry room. ORANGES. This name covers a variety of species of the same general habits. It flourishes well on the coast of Florida, and all along the gulf of Mexico. It will stand considerable freezing, if protected from sudden thawing. In southern Europe, they are grown abundantly by being protected by a shed of boards. They may become perfectly hardy, as far north as Philadelphia. And by a thorough system of acclimation, and a little winter protection, they may be grown abundantly, in every state of the Union. The great enemy of the orange-tree is the scaled insect. It has been very destructive in Florida. A certain remedy is said to have been discovered in the _camomile_. Cultivate the plant under orange-trees, and it will prevent their attacks. The herb hung up in the trees, or the tree and foliage syringed with a decoction of it, will effectually destroy these insects. The orange is long-lived. A tree called "The Grand Bourbon" at Versailles was planted in 1421, and now, being 437 years old, is "one of the largest and finest trees in France." There are several varieties mentioned in the fruit books. The common Sweet Orange, the Maltese, the Blood Red--very fine with red flesh. The Mandarin Orange, an excellent little fruit from China. The St. Michael's is described as the finest of all oranges, and the tree the best bearer. Oranges are propagated by budding, and cultivated much in the same way as the peach. ORCHARDS. An orchard is a plat of ground, large or small, occupied by trees for the purpose of bearing fruit. The main directions for orchard culture, are given under the respective fruits. Any soil good for vegetables or grains, is suitable for orchards. Any land where excessive moisture will not stand, to the injury of the trees, may be adapted to any of the fruits. Set pears on the heaviest land, peaches on the lightest, and the other fruits on the intermediate qualities. Although peaches will do quite well on light soil, yet they do better on a rich deep loam, or alluvium. When it is desirable to set out an orchard on land originally too wet, a blind ditch must pass under each row, extending out of the orchard, and the place where each tree is to stand, should be raised a foot above the level around it. _The aspect_ is also important. A southern or eastern exposure is preferable, in all latitudes where the transitions from summer to winter, and from winter to summer are so sudden as to allow but little alternate thawing and freezing. This would therefore be the rule in high latitudes. In climates of long changeable springs, a northern or western exposure is better. Trees may be made to start and blossom later in the spring by snow and ice about them, well pressed down in winter, and covered with straw. This will prevent the first warm weather from starting the leaves and blossoms, and cause them to be a little later, but surer and better. _Subsoiling_ ground for an orchard, is of great importance. Plant two orchards, one on land that has been subsoiled very deep, and the other upon that plowed in the ordinary way, and for ten years the difference will be discernable, as far as you can distinguish the trees in the two orchards. _Manures_ of all kinds, are good for orchards, except coarse stable manure, which should be composted. A bushel of fine charcoal, thoroughly mixed in the soil in which you set a fruit-tree, will exert a very beneficial influence, for a dozen years. Orchards should be cultivated every alternate three successive years, and the rest of the time be kept in grass. Just about the trees, the ground should be kept loose, and free from weeds and grass. This may be done by spading and hoeing, but better by thorough mulching. _Distances apart._--Apples thirty-three feet. Pears twenty feet. Peaches and plums, sixteen feet. Pruning, destroying insects, and all other matters bearing on successful fruit growing, are treated under the several fruits. OXEN. Every farmer who can afford to keep two teams, should have a pair of oxen. For many uses on a farm, they are preferable to horses; especially for clearing up new land. Oxen to be most valuable, should be large, well matched, ruly, and not very fat. They should be kept in good heart, by the quality of their food. Fast walking is one of the best qualities in both horses and oxen, for all working purposes, provided they are judiciously used and not overloaded. Well built, strong animals are best for work. Working oxen should be turned out for beef, at eight or nine years old. _To break oxen well_, commence when they are very young. Put calves into yokes frequently, until they will readily yield to your wishes. Yoke them often, and tie their tails together to prevent them from turning the yoke and injuring themselves. If left without training, until they are three or four years old, they will improve every opportunity to run away, to the danger and damage of proprietor and driver. It is quite an art to learn oxen to back a load. Place them before a vehicle, in a locality descending in the rear. As it rolls down hill, they will easily learn to follow, backward. Then try them on level ground. Then accustom them to back up hill, and finally to back a load, almost as heavy as they can draw. Breaking vicious animals is always best done by gentleness. We have known vicious horses whipped severely, and in every way treated harshly, and finally given up as useless. We have seen those same horses, in other hands, brought to be regular, gentle, and safe, as could be desired, by mild means, without a blow or harsh word. Oxen should be driven in a low tone of voice, and without much use of the goad. The usual manner of driving, by whipping and bawling, to the annoyance of the whole neighborhood, and until the driver becomes hoarse with his perpetual screams, is one of the most pernicious habits on a farm. Oxen will grow lazy and insensible under threat, or scream, or goad. Driven in a low tone of voice, without confusion by rapid commands, and no whoa put in, unless you wish them to stand still, oxen may be made more useful on a farm than horses. Their gears are cheap and never in the way. They can draw more and in worse places than horses, and it costs less to keep them. The various methods of drawing with head or horns, in vogue in other countries, need not be discussed here, as the American people will not probably change their yoke and bows for any other method. Feed oxen, as other animals, regularly, both in time and quantity. Curry them often and thoroughly. It improves their looks, health, and temper, and attaches them to their owner. PARSLEY. This is a hardy biennial, highly prized as a garnish, and as a pot-herb for flavoring soups and boiled dishes. The large-rooted variety is used for the table, as carrots or parsnips. The principal varieties are--the _double-curled_, the _dwarf-curled_, the _Siberian_ (single, very hardy, and fine-flavored), the _Hamburgh_ (large-rooted, used as an edible root). The double-curled is well known, easily obtained, and suitable for all purposes. Those who desire the roots instead of parsnips, &c., should cultivate the Hamburgh or large-rooted. It needs the same treatment as beets. Seed should always be of the previous year's growth, or it may not vegetate. It is four or five weeks in coming up, unless it be soaked twelve hours in a little sulphur-water, when it will vegetate in two weeks. By cutting the leaves close, even, and regular, a succession of fine leaves may be had for a whole year from the same plants, when they will go to seed, and new ones should take their place. In cold climates they should be covered in winter with straw or litter. The Siberian is cultivated in the field, sown with grass or the small grains. It is said to prevent the disease called "_the rot_" in sheep, and is good for surfeited horses. The large-rooted should not be sowed in an excessively rich soil, as it produces an undue proportion of tops. PARSNIPS. English authors speak of but one variety of this root in cultivation in England. The French have three--the _Coquaine_, the _Lisbonaise_, and the _Siam_. The first runs down, in rich mellow soil, to the depth of four feet, and grows from six to sixteen inches in circumference; the Lisbonaise is shorter and larger round; the Siam is smaller than the others, of a yellowish color, and of excellent quality. We are not aware that our little hollow-crown carrot, so early and good, is included in the French varieties. We cultivate only the hollow-crown, and a common large variety; both are good for the table, and as food for animals. They need a light, deep, rich soil. A sandy loam is best, as for all roots. Seed kept over one season seldom vegetates. Should be soaked a day or two, and sown in straight rows, covered an inch deep, and the rows slightly rolled. It is much better, with this and the carrot, to sow radish-seed in the same rows. They come up so soon that they protect the parsnips and carrots from too hot a sun while tender, and also serve to mark the rows, so that they may be hoed early, without danger of destroying the young plants. Parsnips may be grown many years on the same bed without deterioration, provided a little decomposed manure or compost be annually added. Fresh manure is good if it be buried a foot deep. The yield will be greater if thinned to eight inches apart. Rows two feet apart, and the plants six inches in the row, are most suitable in field-culture. They will grow till frost comes, and are better for the table, when allowed to stand in the ground through the winter. They may be dug and preserved as other roots. Parsnips contain more sugar than any other edible root, and are therefore worth more per bushel for food. All domestic animals and fowls fatten on them very rapidly, and their flesh is peculiarly pleasant. Fed to cows, they increase the quantity of milk, and impart a beautiful color and agreeable flavor to the butter. It is superior to the beet, that we have so highly recommended elsewhere, in all respects except one--it is less easily tended and harvested. Still, they should be cultivated on every farm where cattle, hogs, or fowls, are kept. PASTURES. These are very important to all who keep domestic animals. The following brief directions for successful pasturing are essential. It is very poor economy to have all your pasture-lands in one field, or to put all your animals together. Pasture fields in rotation, two weeks each, allowing rest and growth for six weeks: first horned cattle, next horses, then sheep. Horses feed closer than cattle, and sheep closer than horses; each also eats something that the others do not relish. Pasturing land with sheep thickens the grass on the ground. For the kinds of grass preferable for pastures, see our article on _Grasses_. Plaster sown on pastures containing clover, materially increases their growth. A little lime, plaster, and common salt, sown on any pasture, will prove very beneficial. Streams or springs in pastures double their value. The idea that creatures need no water when feeding on green grass is a mistake. Every pasture without a spring or stream should have a well. Cattle in a pasture in warm weather need shade. It is usual to advise the growth of trees in the borders, or scattered over the whole field. Sheds are much better. Trees absorb the moisture, stint the growth of the grass, and injure its quality. A pasture containing many trees is not worth more than half price; it will keep about half as much stock, and keep them poorly. Bushes, which so often occupy pastures, should be grubbed up, and by all means destroyed; so should all thistles, briers, and large weeds. Hogs and geese should be kept in no pastures but their own. Never turn into pastures when the ground is very soft and wet, in the spring; the tread of the creatures will destroy much of the turf. Creatures in pasture should be salted twice a week. The age of grass, to make the best feed for animals, is often mistaken: most suppose that young and tender grass is preferable; this is far from correct. Grass that is headed out, and in which the seed has begun to mature, is far more nutritious, as every farmer can ascertain by easy experiments. Tall grass, approaching maturity, will fatten cattle much faster than the most tender young growth. Pasturing land enriches it. It is well to mow pastures and pasture meadows occasionally, though few meadows and pastures should lie long without plowing. Top-dressings of manure, on all grass-lands, are valuable; better applied in the fall than in the spring; evaporation is less, and it has opportunity to soak into the soil. PEAS. These are sown in the field and garden. As a field-crop, peas and oats are sown together, and make good ground or soaked feed for horses, or for fattening animals. Early peas and large marrowfats are frequently sown broadcast on rich, clean land, near large cities, to produce green peas for market. It does not pay as well as to sow in rows three feet apart, and cultivate with a horse. All peas, for picking while green, are more convenient when bushed. They may produce nearly as well when allowed to grow in the natural way, but can not be picked as easily, and the second crop is less, and inferior, from the injury to the vines by the first picking. Early Kent peas (the best early variety) mature so nearly at the same time that the vines may be pulled up at once. All other peas had better be bushed, that they may be easily picked, and that the later ones may mature. Bushes need not be set so close as usual. A good bush, put firmly in the ground, to enable it to resist the wind, once in two and a half feet, is quite sufficient. Those clinging to the bushes will hold up the others. To bush peas in this way is but little work, and pays well. It is often said that stable-manure does no good on pea-ground---that peas are neither better nor more abundant for its use. We think this utterly a mistake. We have often raised twice the quantity on a row well manured, that grew on another row by its side, where no manure had been applied. If peas be sowed thick on thoroughly-manured land, the crop will be small: it is from this fact that the idea has gained currency. They are generally planted too thick on rich land. Peas planted six inches deep will produce nearly twice as much as those covered but an inch. Plowing in peas and leveling the surface is one of the best methods of planting. To get an early crop in a cold climate, they may be forced in hotbeds, or planted in a warm exposure, very early, and protected by covering, when the weather is cold. At the South, it is best to plant so as to secure a considerable growth in the fall, and protect by covering with straw during cold weather. The only known remedy for the bugs that are so common in peas, is late sowing. In latitude forty-two, peas sown as late as the 10th of June will have no bugs. Bugs in seed-peas may be killed by putting the peas into hot water for a quarter of a minute; plant immediately, and they will come up sooner and do well. Seed imported from the more northern parts of Canada have no bugs; it is probably owing to the lateness of the season of their growth. But late peas are often much injured by mildew; this is supposed to be caused by too little moisture in the ground, and too much and too cool in the atmosphere, in dew or rain. Liberal watering then would prevent it. _Varieties_--are numerous. Two are quite sufficient. _Early Kent_ the earliest we have ever been able to obtain, ripen nearly all at once; moderate bearers, but of the very best quality. This variety of pea is the only garden vegetable with which we are acquainted that produces more and better fruit for being sowed quite thick. The other variety that we recommend is the _large Marrowfat_. These should not stand nearer together, on rich land, than three or four inches, and always be bushed. There are many other varieties of both late and early peas, but we regard them inferior to these. White's "Gardening for the South" mentions Landreth's Extra Early, Prince Albert, Cedo-Nulli, Fairbank's Champion, Knight's tall Marrow, and New Mammoth. Whoever wishes a greater variety can get any of these under new names. The large blue Imperial is a rich pea, like many of the dwarfs, both of the large and small, but is very unproductive. We advise all to select the best they can find, and plant but two kinds, late and early. Plant at intervals to get a succession of crops. But very late peas, in our dry climate, amount to but little, without almost daily watering. PEACH. This native of Persia is one of the most healthy and universally-favorite fruits. In its native state, it was hardly suitable for eating, resembling an almond more than our present fine peaches. Perhaps no other fruit exhibits so wide a difference in the products of seeds from the same tree. All the fine varieties are what we call chance products of seeds, not one out of a thousand of which deserved further cultivation. The prevailing opinion is, that planting the seeds is not a certain method of propagating a given variety; hence the general practice of budding (which see). Others assert that there are permanent varieties, that usually produce the same from the seed, when not allowed to mix in the blossoms. Some prefer to raise the trees for their peach-orchards from seed, thinking them longer-lived and more healthy. Whole peaches planted when taken from the tree, or the pits planted before having become dry, are said to be much more certain to produce the same fruit. We know an instance in which the fruit of an early Crawford peach, thus planted, could not be distinguished from those that grew on a budded tree in the same orchard. One of the difficulties in reproducing the same from seed, is the great difficulty in getting the seed of any variety pure. We everywhere have so many varieties of fruit-trees in the same orchard, that the seeds of no one can be pure; they mix in the blossoms. On this account, the surest method of perpetuating a variety is by budding. This tree is of rapid growth, often bearing the third year from the seed, and producing abundantly the fifth. The peach-tree is often called thrifty when its growth is very luxuriant, but tender and unhealthy, perishing in the following winter. A moderate, steady, hardy growth is most profitable. The following directions, though brief, are complete:-- _Raising Seedlings._--Dry the pits in the shade; put them away till the last of winter; then soak them two days in water, and spread them on some place in the garden where water will not stand, and cover them an inch deep with wet sand, and leave them to freeze. When about time to plant them (which is early corn-planting time), take them up and select all those that are opened by the frost, and that are beginning to germinate, and plant in rows four feet apart and one foot in the row. These will grow and be ready for budding considerably earlier than those not opened by frost. Crack the others on a wooden block, by striking their side-edge with a hammer; you thus avoid injury to the germ that is endangered by striking the end. Plant these in rows like the others, but only six inches apart in the row, as they will not all germinate. Plant them on rich soil covering an inch or two deep. Keep them clear of weeds, and they will be ready for budding from August 15th to September 10th, according to latitude or season. In a dry season, when everything matures early, budding must not be deferred as long as in a wet season. For full directions for budding, see our article on that subject. _Transplanting._--Perhaps no other fruit-tree suffers so much from transplanting when too large. This should always be done, after one year's growth, from the bud. The best time for transplanting is the spring in northern latitudes subject to hard frosts, and in autumn in warmer climates. _Soil and Location._--All intelligent fruit-growers are aware that these exert a great influence upon the size, quality, and quantity, of all varieties of fruits. An accurate description of a variety in one climate will not always identify it in another. Some few varieties are nearly permanent and universal, but most are adapted to particular localities, and need a process of acclimation to adapt them to other soils and situations. Light sandy soils are usually regarded best for the peach: it is only so because nineteen out of twenty cultivators will not take pains to suitably prepare other soils. Some of the best peaches we have ever seen grew on the richest Illinois prairie, and others on the limestone bluffs of the Ohio river. Thorough drainage is indispensable for the peach, on all but very light, porous soils: with such drainage, peaches will do best on soil best adapted to growing corn and potatoes. Bones, bonedust, lime, ashes, stable-manure, and charcoal, are the best applications to the soil of a peach-orchard. Whoever grows peaches should put at least half a bushel of fine charcoal in the earth in which he sets each tree. Mix it well with the soil, and the tree will grow better, and the fruit be larger and finer, for a dozen years. Any good soil, well drained and manured with these articles, will produce great crops of peaches. For the location of peach-orchards, see our general remarks on "Location of Fruit-trees." But we would repeat here the direction to choose a northern exposure, in climates subject to late frosts. Elevations are always favorable, as are also the shores of all bodies of water. In our remarks on location, we have shown by facts the great value of hills, so high as to be useless for any other purpose. Between Pittsburgh and the mouth of the Ohio river, there are enough high elevations, now useless, to supply all the cities within fifty miles of the rivers, down to New Orleans, with the best of peaches every year. In no year will they ever be cut off by frost on those hills. Warm exposures, with a little winter protection, will secure good peaches in climates not adapted to them. In some parts of France, they grow large quantities for market by training them against walls, where they do not flourish in the open field. By this practice, and by enclosures and acclimation, the growth of this excellent fruit may be extended to the coldest parts of the United States. _Transplanting_--should be performed with care, as in the case of all other fruit-trees. Every injured root should be cut off smooth from the under side, slanting out from the tree. Leave the roots, as nearly as possible, in the position in which they were before. Set the tree an inch lower than it stood in the nursery; it saves the danger of the roots getting uncovered, and of too strong action of the atmosphere on the roots, in a soil so loose. The opposite is often recommended, viz., to allow the tree in its new location to stand an inch or two higher than before; but we are sure, from repeated trials, that it is wrong. Shake the fine earth as closely around the roots as possible, mulch well, and pour on a pailful of tepid water, if it be rather a dry time, and the tree will be sure to live and make a good growth the first year. When a peach-tree is transplanted, after one year's growth from the bud, it should have the top cut off within eighteen inches or two feet of the ground, and all the limbs cut off at half their length. This will induce the formation of a full, large head. A low, full-branching head is always best on a peach-tree. _Pruning_ is perhaps the most important matter in successful peach culture. The fruit is borne wholly on wood of the previous year's growth. Hence a tree that has the most of that growth, in a mature state, and properly situated, will bear the most and the finest fruit. A tree left to its natural state, with no pruning but of a few of the lower limbs from the main trunk, will soon exhibit a collection of long naked limbs, without foliage, except near their extremities (see the cut overleaf). In this case fruit will be too thick on what little bearing wood there is, and it should be thinned. But very few cultivators even attend to that. The fruit is consequently small, and it weakens the growth of the young wood above, for next year's fruiting, and thus tree and fruit are perpetually deteriorating. Observe a shoot of young peachwood, you will see near its base, leaf-buds. On the middle there are many blossom-buds, and on the top, leaf-buds again. The tendency of sap is to the extremity. Hence the upper leaf-buds will put out at once. And for their growth, and the maturity of the excessive fruit on the middle, the power of the sap is so far exhausted, that the leaf-buds at the base do not grow. Hence when the fruit is removed, nothing is left below the terminal shoots, but a bare pole. This is the condition in which we find most peach-trees. For this there is a certain preventive. It consists in shortening in, by cutting off in the month of September, from a third to a half of the current season's growth. If the top be large, cut off one half the length of the new wood. If it be less vigorous and rank, and you fear you will not have room for a fair crop of peaches, cut off but one third. This heading-in is sometimes recommended to be done in the spring. For forming a head in a young tree the spring is better. But to mature the wood, and increase the quantity, and improve the quality of the fruit, September is much the best. Such shortening in early in September, directs the sap to maturing the wood, already formed and developing fruit-buds, instead of promoting the growth of an undue quantity of young and tender wood, to be destroyed by the winter, or to hinder the growth of the fruit of the next season. This heading-in process, with these young shoots, is most easily performed with pruning shears, with wooden handles, of a length suited to the height of the tree. [Illustration: Neglected Peach-Tree.] [Illustration: Properly-trimmed Peach-Tree.] But a work to precede this annual shortening-in, is the original formation of a head to a peach-tree. Take a tree a year old from the bud, and cut it down to within two and a half feet from the ground. Below that numerous strong shoots will come out. Select three vigorous ones and let them grow as they please, carefully pinching off all the rest. In the fall you will have a tree of three good strong branches. In the next spring cut off these three branches, one half. Below these cuts, branches will start freely. Select one vigorous shoot to continue the limb, and another to form a new branch. Check the growth of the shoots below, by cutting off their ends, but do not rub them off, as they will form fruit branches. At the close of the season you will have a tree with six main branches, and some small ones for fruit, on the older wood. Repeat this process the third year, and you have a tree with twelve main branches, and plenty smaller ones for fruit. All these small branches on the old wood, should be shortened in half their length, to cause the leaf-buds near their base to start, so as to produce large numbers of young shoots. Continue this as long as you please, and make just as large a head and just such a form as you may wish, being careful only to control the shape of the top so as to let the sun and air freely into every part. Trees thus trained may be planted thick enough to allow four hundred to stand on an acre, and will bear an abundance of the finest fruit, and all low enough to be easily picked. This method of training is much better than allowing the tree to shoot out on all sides from the ground: in that case, the branches are apt to split down and perish. This system of heading-in freely every year, preserves the life and health of the tree remarkably. Many of the finest peach-trees in France are from thirty to sixty years old, and some a hundred. We may, in this country, have peach-trees live fifty years, in the most healthy bearing condition. By trimming in this way, and carrying out fully this system, some have thrifty-looking peach-trees, more than a foot in diameter, bearing the very best of fruit. It is sheer neglect that causes our peach-orchards to perish after having borne from three to six years. Let every man who plants a peach-tree remember, that this system of training will make his tree live long, be healthy, grow vigorously, and bear abundantly. _Diseases_ of peach-trees have been a matter of much speculation. The result is, that the hope of the peach-grower is mainly in preventives. _The Yellows_ is usually regarded as a disease. Imagination has invented many causes of this evil. Some suppose it to be produced by small insects; others that it is in the seed. Again, it is ascribed to the atmosphere. It has been supposed to be propagated in many ways--by trimming a healthy tree with a knife that had been used on a diseased one; by contagion in the atmostphere, as the measles or small-pox; by impregnation from the pollen, through the agency of winds or bees; by the migration of small insects; or by planting diseased seeds, or budding from diseased trees. This great diversity of opinion leaves room to doubt whether the yellows in peach-trees be a disease at all, or only a symptom of general decay. The symptoms, as given in all the fruit-books, are only such as would be natural from decay and death of the tree, from any cause whatever. This may result from neglect to supply the soil with suitable manures, and to trim trees properly, and especially from over-bearing. This view of the case is more probable, from the fact that none pretend to have found a remedy. All advise to remove the tree thus affected at once, root and branch. We have seen the following treatment of such trees tried with marked success. Cut off a large share of the top, as when you would renew an old, neglected tree; lay the large roots bare, making a sort of basin around the body of the tree, and pour in three pailfuls of _boiling_ water: the tree will start anew and do well. This is an excellent application to an old, failing peach-tree. The sure preventive of the yellows is, planting seeds of healthy trees, budding from the most vigorous, heading-in well, supplying appropriate manures, and general good cultivation. _Curled Leaves_ is another evil among peach-trees, occurring before the leaves are fully grown, and causing them to fall off after two or three weeks. Other leaves will put out, but the fruit is destroyed, and the general health of the tree injured. Elliott says the curl of the leaf is produced by the punctures of small insects. One kind of curled leaf is, but not this. But we have no doubt that Barry's theory is the correct one, viz., that it is the effect of sudden changes of the weather. We have noticed the curled leaf in orchards where the trees were so close together as to guard each other. On the side where the cold wind struck them, we noticed they were badly affected; while on the warm side, and in the centre where they were protected by the others, they exhibited very few signs of the curl. In western New York, unusual cold east winds always produce the curled leaves, on trees much exposed: hence, the only remedy is the best protection you can give, by location, &c. _Mildew_ is a minute fungus growing on the ends of tender shoots of certain varieties, checking their growth, and producing other bad effects. Syringe the trees with a weak solution of nitre, one ounce in a gallon of water, which will destroy the fungus and invigorate the tree. _The Borer_ has been the great enemy of the peach-tree, since about the close of the last century. The female insect, that produces the worms, deposites her eggs under rough bark, near the surface of the ground. This is done mostly in July, but occasionally from June to October. The eggs are laid in small punctures, and covered with a greenish glue; in a few days they come out, a small white worm, and eat through the bark where it is tender, just at, or a little below, the surface of the ground; they eat under the bark, between that and the wood, and, consuming a little of each, they frequently girdle the tree; as they grow larger, they perforate the solid wood; when about a year old, they make a cocoon just below the surface of the ground, change into a chrysalis state, and shortly come out a winged insect, to deposite fresh eggs. But the practical part of all this is the _remedy_: keep the ground clean around the trees, and rub off frequently all the rough bark; place around each tree half a peck of air-slaked lime, and the borer will not attack it. This should be placed there on the first of May, and be spread over the ground on the first of October; refuse tobacco-stems, from the cigar-makers, or any other offensive substance, as hen-manure, salt and ashes, &c., will answer the same purpose. We should recommend the annual cultivation of a small piece of ground in tobacco, for use around peach-trees. We have found it very successful against the borer, and it is an excellent manure; applied two or three times during the season, it proves a perfect remedy, and is in no way injurious, as an excessive quantity of lime might be. _Leaf Insects._--There are several varieties, which cause the leaves to curl and prematurely fall. This kind of curled leaf differs from the one described as the result of sudden changes and cold wind; that appears general wherever the cold wind strikes the tree, while this only affects a few leaves occasionally, and those surrounded by healthy leaves. The remedy is to syringe them with offensive mixtures, as tobacco-juice, or sprinkle them when wet with fine, air-slaked lime. _Varieties._--Their name is legion, and they are rapidly increasing, and their synonyms multiplying. A singular fact, in most of our fruit-books, is a minute description of useless kinds, and such descriptions of those that they call good, as not one in ten thousand cultivators will ever try to master--they are worse than useless, except to an occasional amateur cultivator. Elliott, in his fruit-book, divides peaches into three classes: the first is for general cultivation; under this class he describes thirty-one varieties, with ninety-eight synonyms. His second class is for amateur cultivators, and includes sixty-nine varieties, with eighty-four synonyms. His third class, which he says are unworthy of further cultivation, describes fifty-four varieties, with seventy-seven synonyms. Cole gives sixty-five varieties, minutely described, and many of them pronounced worthless. In Hooker's Western Fruit-Book, we have some eighty varieties, only a few of which are regarded worthy of cultivation. Downing gives us one hundred and thirty-three varieties, with about four hundred synonyms. In all these works the descriptions are minute. The varieties of serrated leaves, the glandless, and some having globose glands on the leaves, and others with reniform glands. Then we have the color of the fruit in the shade and in the sun, which will, of course, vary with every degree of sun or shade. We submit the opinion that those books would have possessed much more value, had they only described the best mode of cultivating peaches, without having mentioned a single variety, thus leaving each cultivator to select the best he could find. Had they given a plain description of ten, or certainly of not more than fifteen varieties, those books would have been far more valuable _for the people_. We give a small list, including all we think it best to cultivate. Perhaps confining our selection to half a dozen varieties would be a further improvement:-- 1. The first of all peaches is _Crawford's Early_. This is an early, sure, and great bearer, of the most beautiful, large fruit;--a good-flavored, juicy peach, though not the very richest. It is, on the whole, the very best peach in all parts of the country. Time, from July 15th to September 1st. Freestone. 2. _Crawford's Late_ is very large and handsome; uniformly productive, though not nearly so good a bearer as Crawford's Early. Ripens last of September and in October. Fair quality, and always handsome; freestone; excellent for market. 3. _Columbia._--Origin, New Jersey. It is a thoroughly-tested variety, raised and described by Mr. Cox, who wrote one of the earliest and best American fruit-books. Fine specimens were exhibited in 1856, grown in Covington, Ky. Excellent in all parts of the United States. Freestone. 4. _George the Fourth._--A large, delicious, freestone peach, an American seedling from Mr. Gill, Broad street, New York. The National Pomological Society have decided the tree to be so healthy and productive as to adapt it to all localities in this country. It has twenty-five synonyms. 5. _Early York._--Freestone; the best, and first really good, early peach. Time July at Cincinnati, and August at Cleveland. Time of ripening of all varieties varies with latitude, location, and season. 6. _Grass Mignonne._--A foreign variety, a great favorite in France, in the time of Louis XIV. Very rich freestone, flourishing in all climates from Boston south. The high repute in which it has long been held is seen in its thirty synonyms. One of the best, when you can obtain the genuine. Time, August. 7. _Honest John._--A large, beautiful, delicious, freestone variety. Highly prized as a late peach, maturing from the middle to the last of October. Indispensable in even a small selection. 8. _Malacatune._--A very popular American freestone peach, derived from a Spanish, and is the parent of the Crawford peaches, both early and late. 9. _Morris White._--Everywhere well known; a good bearer; best for preserving at the North; a good dessert peach South. 10. _Morris Red Rare-ripe._--A favorite, freestone, July peach. The tree is healthy and a great bearer. 11. _Old Mixon._--Should be found in all gardens and orchards; it is of excellent quality and ripens at a time when few good peaches are to be had; it endures spring-frosts better than any other variety; profitable. 12. _Old Mixon Cling._--One of the most delicious early clingstones. Deserves a place in all gardens. 13. _Monstrous Cling._--Not the best quality, but profitable for market on account of its great size. 14. _Heath Cling._--Very good South and West. Wrapped in paper and laid in a cool room, it will keep longer than any other variety. Tree hardy and often produces when others fail. Excellent for preserving, and when quite ripe, is superior as a dessert fruit. 15. _Blood Cling._--A well-known peach, excellent for pickling and preserving. It sometimes measures twelve inches in circumference. The old French Blood Cling is smaller. Many of these varieties will be found under other names. You will have to depend upon your nursery-man to give you the best he has, and be careful to bud from any choice variety you may happen to taste. Difficulties and disappointments will always attend efforts to get desired varieties. PEAR. The pear is a native of Europe and Asia, and, in its natural state, is quite as unfit for the table as the crab-apple. Cultivation has given it a degree of excellence that places it in the first rank among dessert-fruits. No other American fruit commands so high a price. New varieties are obtained by seedlings, and are propagated by grafting and budding: the latter is generally preferred. Root-grafting of pears is to be avoided; the trees will be less vigorous and healthy. The difficulty of raising pear-seedlings has induced an extensive use of suckers, to the great injury of pear-culture. Fruit-growers are nearly unanimous in discarding suckers as stocks for grafting. The difficulty in raising seedling pear-trees is the failure of the seeds to vegetate. A remedy for this is, never to allow the seeds to become dry, after being taken from the fruit, until they are planted. Keep them in moist sand until time to plant them in the spring, or plant as soon as taken from the fruit. The spring is the best time for planting, as the ground can be put in better condition, rendering after-culture much more easy. The pear will succeed well on any good soil, well supplied with suitable fertilizers. The best manures for the pear are, lime in small quantities, wood-ashes, bones, potash dissolved, and applied in rotten wood, leaves, and muck, with a little stable-manure and iron-filings--iron is very essential in the soil for the pear-tree. In all soils moderately supplied with these articles, all pear-trees grafted on seedling-stocks, and those that flourish on the foreign quince, will do well. A good yellow loam is most natural; light sandy or gravelly land is unfavorable. It is better to cart two or three loads of suitable soil for each tree on such land. The practice of budding or grafting on apple-stocks, on crab-apples, and on the mountain-ash, should be utterly discarded. For producing early fruit, quince-stocks and root-pruning are recommended. Setting out pear-trees properly is of very great importance. The requisites are, to have the ground in good condition, from manure on the crop of the last season, and thoroughly subsoiled and drained. Pear-trees delight in rather heavy land, if it be well drained; but water, standing in the soil about them, is utterly ruinous. Pear-trees, well transplanted on moderately rich land, well subsoiled and well drained, will almost always succeed. By observing the following brief directions, any cultivator may have just such shaped tops on his pear-trees as he desires. Cut short any shoots that are too vigorous, that those around them may get their share of the sap, and thus be enabled to make a proportionate growth. After trees have come into bearing, symmetry in the form of their heads may be promoted by pinching off all the fruit on the weak branches, and allowing all on the strong ones to mature. Those two simple methods, removing the fruit from too vigorous shoots, and cutting in others, half or two-thirds their length, will enable one to form just such heads as he pleases, and will prove the best preventives of diseases. _Diseases._--There are many insects that infest pear-orchards, in the same manner as they do apples, and are to be destroyed in the same way. The slugs on the leaves are often quite annoying. These are worms, nearly half an inch long, olive-colored, and tapering from head to tail, like a tadpole. Ashes or quicklime, sprinkled over the leaves when they are wet with dew or rain, is an effectual remedy. _Insect-Blight._--This has been confounded with the frozen-sap blight, though they are very different. In early summer, when the shoots are in most vigorous growth, you will notice that the leaves on the ends of branches turn brown, and very soon die and become black. This is caused by a worm from an egg, deposited just behind or below a bud, by an insect. The egg hatches, and the worm perforates the bark into the wood, and commits his depredations there, preventing the healthy flow of the sap, which kills the twig above. Soon after the shoot dies, the worm comes out in the form of a winged insect, and seeks a location to deposite its eggs, preparatory to new depredations. The remedy is to cut off the shoots affected at once, and burn them. The insect-blight does not affect the tree far below the location of the worm. Watch your trees closely, and cut off all affected parts as soon as they appear, and burn them immediately, and you will soon destroy all the insects. But very soon after the appearance of the blight they leave the limb; hence a little delay will render your efforts useless. These insects often commit the same depredations on apple and quince-trees. We had an orchard in Ohio seriously affected by them. We know no remedy but destruction as above. _The Frozen-Sap Blight_ is a much more serious difficulty. Its nature and origin are now pretty well settled. In every tree there are two currents of sap: one passes up through the outer wood, to be digested by the leaves; the other passing down in the inner bark, deposites new wood, to increase the size of the tree. Now, in a late growth of this kind of wood, the process is rapidly going on, at the approach of cold weather, and the descending sap is suddenly frozen, in this tender bark and growing wood. This sudden freezing poisons the sap, and renders the tree diseased. The blight will show itself, in its worst form, in the most rapid growing season of early summer, though the disease commenced with the severe frosts of the previous autumn. Its presence may be known by a thick, clammy sap, that will exude in winter or spring pruning, and in the discoloration of the inner bark and peth of the branches. On limbs badly affected on one side, the bark will turn black and shrivel up. But its effects in the death of the branches only occur when the growth of the tree demands the rapid descent of the sap: then the poisoned sap which was arrested the previous fall, in its downward passage, is diluted and sent through the tree; and when it is abundant, the whole tree is poisoned and destroyed in a few days; in others more slightly affected, it only destroys a limb or a small portion of the top. Another effect of this fall-freezing of sap and growing wood, is to rupture the sap-vessels, and thus prevent the inner bark from performing its functions. This theory is so well established, that an intelligent observer can predict, in the fall, a blight-season the following summer. If the summer be cool, and the fall warm and damp, closed by sudden cold, the blight will be troublesome the next season, because the plentiful downward flow of sap, and rapid growth of wood, were arrested by sudden freezing. If the summer is favorable, and the wood matures well before cold weather, the blight will not appear. This is of the utmost practical moment to the pear-culturist. Anything in soil, situation, or pruning, that favors early maturity of wood, will serve as a preventive of blight; hence, cool, moist situations are not favorable in climates subject to sudden and severe cold weather in autumn. Root-pruning and heading-in, which always induce early maturity of wood, are of vast importance; they will, almost always, prevent frozen-sap blight. If, in spite of you, your pear-trees will make a late luxuriant growth, cut off one half of the most vigorous shoots before hard freezing, and you will check the flow of sap, by removing the leaves and shoots that control it, and save your trees. If blight makes its appearance, cut off at once all the parts affected. The effects will be visible in the wood and inner bark, far below the external apparent injury. Remove the whole injured part, or it will poison the rest of the tree. When this frozen sap is extensive, it poisons and destroys the whole tree; when slight, the tree often wholly recovers. If a spot of black, shrivelled bark appears, shave it off, deep enough to remove the affected parts, and cover the wound with grafting-wax. Remove all affected limbs. These are the only remedies. But the practice of pruning both roots and branches will prove a certain preventive. A tree growing in grass, where it grows more slowly, and matures earlier in the season, will escape this blight; while one growing in very rich garden soil, and continuing to grow until cold weather, will suffer severely. The effects on orchards, in different soils and localities everywhere, confirm this theory. A little care then will prevent this evil, which has sometimes been so great as to discourage attempts at raising pears. In some localities, some of the finer varieties of pears, as the virgalieu, are ruined by cracking on the trees before ripening. Applications of ashes, salt, charcoal, iron-filings, and clay on light lands, will remedy this evil. _Distances apart._--All fruit-trees had better occupy as little ground as is consistent with a healthy vigorous growth. They are manured and well cultivated, at a much less expense. The trees protect each other against inclement weather. The fruit is more easily harvested. And it is a great saving of land, as nothing else can be profitably grown in an orchard of large fruit-trees. The two kinds of pear-trees, dwarf and standard, may be planted together closely and be profitable for early and abundant bearing. The plan given on the next page of a pear-orchard, recommended in Cole's Fruit Book, is the best we have seen. In the plan the trees on pear-stocks, designed for standards, occupy the large black spots where the lines intersect. They are thirty-three feet apart. The small spots indicate the position of dwarf-trees on quince stocks. Of these there are three on each square rod. An acre then would have forty standard trees, and four hundred and eighty dwarfs. The latter will come into early bearing, and be profitable, long before the former will produce any fruit. This will induce and repay thorough cultivation. They should be headed in, and finally removed, as the standards need more room. One acre carefully cultivated in this way, will afford an income sufficient for the support of a small family. [Illustration: Plan of a Pear-Orchard.] _Gathering and Preserving._--Most fruits are better when allowed fully to ripen on the tree. But with pears, the reverse is true; most of them need to be ripened in the house, and some of them, as much as possible, excluded from the light. Gather when matured, and when a few of the wormy full-grown ones begin to fall, but while they adhere somewhat firmly to the tree. Barrel or box them tight, or put them in drawers in a cool dry place. About the time for them to become soft, put them in a room, with a temperature comfortable for a sitting-room, and you will soon have them in their greatest perfection. They do better in a warm room, wrapped in paper or cotton. A few only ripen well on the trees. Those ripened in the house keep much longer and better. _Varieties._--The London Horticultural Society have proved seven hundred varieties, from different parts of the world, in their experimental garden. Cole speaks of eight hundred and Elliott of twelve hundred varieties. There are now probably more than three thousand growing in this country. Many seedlings, not known beyond the neighborhood where they originated, may be among our very best. From six to ten varieties are all that need be cultivated. We present the following list, advising cultivators to select five or six to suit their own tastes and circumstances, and cultivate no more. We do not give the usual descriptions of the varieties selected. The mass of cultivators, for whom this work is specially intended, will never learn and test the descriptions. They will depend upon their nursery-man, and bud and graft from those they have tasted. We give their names and some of their synonyms, their adaptation to quince or pear stocks, their manner of growth, and time of maturity. These will enable the culturist to select whatever best suits his taste; adapted to quince or pear stocks; for the table or kitchen; for summer, fall, or winter use, and for home or the market. BELLE LUCRATIVE.--_Fondante d' Automne, Seigneur d' Esperin._ Tree of moderate growth, but a great bearer. A fine variety, on quince or pear, better perhaps on the pear stock. Season, last of September. BEURRÉ EASTER with fifteen synonyms that few would ever read. Best on quince. Requires a warm soil and considerable care in ripening, when it proves one of the best. Its season--from January to May--makes it very desirable. Large, yellowish-green, with russet spots. [Illustration: Bartlett.] BARTLETT.--_William's, William's Bon Chretien, Poire Guilliaume_. Tree, a vigorous grower, and a regular, early, good bearer, of long, handsome, perfectly-formed fruit; on the quince or pear stock. Time, August and September. [Illustration: Beurré Diel.] BEURRÉ DIEL.--_Diel_, _Diel's Butterbirne_, _Dorothee Royale_, _Grosse Dorothee_, _Beurré Royale_, _Des Trois Tours_, _De Melon_, _Melon de Kops_, _Beurré Magnifique_, _Beurré Incomparable_. Grows well on quince or pear, but perhaps does best on quince. Large, beautiful, luscious fruit. Season, October to last of November. [Illustration: White Doyenne.] WHITE DOYENNE.--_Virgalieu._ Tree vigorous and hardy on pear or quince. Everywhere esteemed as one of the very best. Needs care in supplying proper manure and clay on light soils, to prevent the fruit from cracking. September to November. If we could have but one we should choose this. COLUMBIA.--_Columbian Virgalieu._ Native of New York, bearing abundantly, a uniformly smooth, fair, large fruit. Color, fine golden yellow, dotted with gray. Season, December and January. [Illustration: Flemish Beauty.] FLEMISH BEAUTY.--_Belle de Flanders, &c._ This is a large, beautiful, and delicious pear. One of the finest in its season, but does not last long. Ripens last of September. Very fine on the quince, and is excellent on the rich prairie-lands of the West. Deserves increased attention. BEURRÉ D'AREMBERG.--_Duc d'Aremberg, and eight other synonyms._ Tree very hardy, does well on the pear stock, and bears early, annually, and abundantly. A very fine foreign variety. The fruit hangs on the tree well, and may be ripened at will from December to February, by placing in a warm room, when you would ripen them. BUFFUM.--A native of Rhode Island, and very successful wherever grown. A great bearer of handsome fruit, though not of the best quality. It is, however, an excellent orchard pear. Fruit, medium size, ripening in September. LOUISE BONNE OF JERSEY.--_William the Fourth_, and three other useless foreign synonyms. Not surpassed, on the quince. Tree very vigorous, producing a great abundance of large fruit. Season, October. MADELEINE.--_Magdalen_, _Citron des Carmes_. This bears an abundance of small but delicious fruit. Is valuable also on account of its season--the last half of July. Good on pear or quince. Must be checked in its growth, on very rich land, or it will be subject to the frozen sap-blight. ONONDAGA.--American origin. Equally good on pear or quince. Large, hardy, and very productive tree. The fruit is very large, fine golden yellow when ripe. Excellent for market. Season, October and November. POUND PEAR.--_Winter Belle_, and twelve other synonyms, which are unimportant. This is the great winter-pear for cooking. The tree is a very vigorous grower and great bearer. A very profitable orchard variety. December to March. PRINCE'S ST. GERMAIN.--_New St. Germain_, _Brown's St. Germain_. Hardy and productive. Good keeper, ripening as easily and as well as an apple. December to March. [Illustration: Seckel.] SECKEL.--There are a number of synonyms, but it is always known by this name. Tree is small, but a good and regular bearer of small excellent fruit. Time in warm climates, September and October. STEVEN'S GENESEE.--_Stephen's Genesee_, _Guernsey_. Desirable for all orchards and gardens, on quince or pear. Fine grower and very productive. Fruit large and excellent. Elliott says "even the wind-falls are very fine." VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.--Eight synonyms, but it will hardly be mistaken by nursery-men. Does well on quince. It is thrifty and very productive of fruit of second quality. Yet it is generally profitable. November to January. WINTER NELLIS.--Its six foreign synonyms are of no consequence. This is the best of all winter-pears, grown on quince or pear. Exceedingly well adapted to the rich western prairies. An early and great bearer. November to January 15. [Illustration: Gray Doyenne.] GRAY DOYENNE.--A superior October pear. Tree hardy and productive on both pear or quince. Partakes much of the excellence of the White Doyenne. From these you can select five or six just adapted to your wishes. The diversity of views, of the merits of different varieties of pears, arises mainly from the influence of location, soil, and culture. The established known varieties, may be grown in great perfection anywhere, with suitable care. At the West they _must be root-pruned_ and _headed-in_ until they are ten years old, after which they will be hardy and productive. If allowed to grow as fast as they will incline to, on alluvial soils, when they are exposed to severe winters, they will disappoint growers. With care they will be sure and profitable. PEPPERS. The red peppers, cultivated in this country, are used for pickling, for pepper-sauce, as a condiment for food, and as a domestic medicine. _Varieties_--are named principally from their shape. The _large squash-pepper_ is best for green pickles, on account of its size and tenderness. The _Cayenne_, a small, long variety, much resembling the original from which it is named, is very pungent, used mostly for pepper-sauce. Grind, not very fine, any of the varieties, and they are useful on any food of a cold nature and not easily digestible. They are all good for medicinal purposes. The capsicum needs a dry, warm soil, with exposure to the sun. Plants should stand two feet apart each way; as they are slow growers, they should be started in an early hotbed. Many will ripen during summer, and may be gathered. In the fall, when frost comes, the vines will be covered with blossoms and with peppers of all sizes. Fall-grown green ones, strung on a thread, and hung in a warm, dry room, will ripen finely. They are very hardy, and may be transplanted without injury. Hen-manure is best for them. PEPPERGRASS. This is a variety of cress, of quick growth, used as lettuce. On a rich, finely-pulverized soil, sow the seeds in drills, fifteen inches apart, and cover very lightly. Sow thick and water in dry weather. For use, cut the tops while they are very tender. A second crop will grow, but inferior to the first. The water-cress, growing spontaneously by rills and springs, is a kind of wild peppergrass, and is by some persons more esteemed than the garden variety. We prefer early lettuce to cresses or peppergrass, and see no reason for their cultivation, but their rapid growth. PLOWING. This is one of the most important matters in soil-culture. When, how, and how much, shall we plow? are the three questions involving the whole. When should plowing be done? As it respects wet or dry, plow sandy or gravelly land whenever you are ready. It will neither be hard when dry, nor injured by being plowed when very wet. Good loams may be plowed at all times except when excessively wet. Clays can only be worked profitably when neither excessively wet or dry. Plowing land in a warm rain is almost equal to a coat of manure. Plowing in a light snow in the spring will injure it the whole season. We have noticed a marked difference in corn growing but a rod apart, on land where snow was plowed in, and the other plowed two or three days later, after the snow was gone; this difference was noticeable in the rows throughout the entire field. Spring or fall plowing is a question that has been much discussed. Sod-land is better plowed in the fall. The action of winter rains and frosts on the turf is beneficial. The same is true of land trenched deep, where much of the hard, poor subsoil is brought to the surface: it is benefited by winter exposure. Other cultivated fields are injured by fall-plowing, unless it be very early. All stubble-land is much benefited by being plowed as soon as the grain is taken off. The weeds and stubble, plowed under, will be decomposed by the warm weather and rains, and benefit the soil almost as much as an ordinary coat of manure. Plowed late, such action does not take place, and the surface is injured by winter-exposure: hence, do all the _early_ fall-plowing possible, but plow nothing _late_ in the fall but sod-land. How shall we plow? All land should be subsoiled, except that having a light, porous subsoil; one deep plowing on such land is sufficient. Subsoiling is done by using two teams at once--one with a common plow, running deep, and the other with a subsoil-plow with no mould-board, and which will, consequently, stir and disintegrate the earth to the depth at which it runs, without throwing it to the surface. The next surface-furrow will cover up this loosened subsoil. In this way, land may be plowed eighteen inches deep, to the great benefit of any crop grown on it. If the surface be well manured, this method of plowing will place the manure between the first furrow and the subsoil, and increase its value. Such plowing is very valuable on land for young fruit-trees. There is another method, which we denominate double-plowing, which is more beneficial than ordinary subsoiling: it is performed by two common plows, one following in the furrow of the other; the first furrow need not be very deep--let the furrow in the bottom of the first be as deep as possible, and thrown out upon the surface; the next furrow will throw the surface and manure into the bottom of the deep furrow; the next furrow will cover this surface-soil and manure very deep, and, as manure always works up, it will impregnate the whole. This, for garden-vegetables, berries, nurseries, or young orchards, is the best form of plowing that we have ever tried. It may be done with one team, by simply changing the gauge of the clevis every time round, gauging it light for the first furrow, and deep for the second. We once prepared a plat in this way with one team, on which cabbages made a remarkable growth, even in a dry season. Still a farther improvement would be a light coat of fine manure on the surface. All furrows, in every description of plowing, should be near enough together to move the whole, leaving no hard places between them. The usual "cut and cover" system, to get over a large area in a day, is miserable economy. The more evenly and flatly land can be turned over in plowing, the better it will be; it retards the growth of weeds, and secures a better action upon substances plowed under. An exception to deep plowing is in breaking up the original prairies of the West: they have to be broken with plows kept sharp as a knife, and not more than two inches deep. The grass then dies and the sod rots. But plowed deep, the grass comes up through the turf, and will prove troublesome for two or three years. It must also be broken at a certain season of the year, to insure success. It may be profitably done for two months after the grass gets a good start in the spring. _How much_ is it best to plow land? Once double-plowed, or thoroughly subsoiled, and well turned over, is better than more. Land once plowed so as to disintegrate the whole to the depth of the furrow, will produce more, and require less care, than the same would do if cross-plowed once or twice. Excessive plowing is a positive injury. All land should be broken up once in three or four years, and not kept longer than that under the plow at one time. Some farmers keep land perpetually in grass, refusing to have a plow touch it on any condition. They see wrong tillage produce barrenness. But by this practice they are great losers; they never get over one half the hay or pasturage that could be obtained by frequent tillage and manuring, and a rotation of crops. PLUM. This is one of our best fruits, but suffers more from enemies than any other. _Propagation_ is by seeds or layers, budding or grafting. Seeds from trees not exposed to mixture with other varieties in the blossom, will produce the same; hence, this is the best method of propagating a given variety, standing alone. But, for most situations, budding is preferable to any other method. This should be performed earlier than on the peach. The plum matures earlier, and hence should be budded about the last of July, or first of August. Bud on the north side of the tree to avoid the hot sun; and tie more tightly than in budding other trees. Bud plum-trees the second year from the seed. Grafting should be resorted to only when buds have failed, and there is a prospect that the trees will be too large for budding another season. The common wild plums make good stocks, if grafted at the ground. Thoroughly mulch all newly-grafted plum-trees. Root-grafting will succeed, but should never be practised. In all grafting of plums, put the graft in at the surface of the ground, and cover with sawdust or mould, leaving but one bud on the graft exposed. _Soil._--All soils are good for the plum, provided they be thoroughly drained, and properly fertilized. Hard soils are recommended as being almost proof against the curculio. That a soil affording a rather hard, smooth surface, will afford less burrows for curculio, and consequently lessen their ravages, is no doubt true. But it is not a perfect remedy, and, on other accounts, such a soil is no better. A good firm loam is best. Plums will do well also on light land, but are more exposed to injury from the curculio. _Transplanting._--The plum being perfectly hardy, we recommend transplanting in autumn. Shorten in the top, cut off considerable of the tap-root, and the ends of the long roots, transplant well, and mulch so thoroughly as to prevent too strong action of the frost on the roots, and they will start early and do well. Twelve feet apart for small varieties, and twenty feet for larger growers, are the distances usually recommended. We think a rod apart each way will do well for all varieties. _Pruning._--Once started in a regular growth, in such a shape as you desire, no further pruning will be necessary but occasionally heading-in a too luxuriant shoot, and removing diseased and cross limbs. On rich Western lands, and in warm Southern climes, young plum-trees must be root-pruned and headed-in, or they will be unfruitful and unhealthy. Root-pruning should be done in August, in the following manner. In case of a tree ten feet high, take a sharp spade, and in a circle around the tree, two feet from the trunk (making the circle four feet in diameter), cut off all the roots within reach. In smaller trees, make the circle smaller, and in larger ones, larger. At the same time, shorten in the current year's growth, by cutting off one half the length of all the principal shoots; this will give vigor, symmetry, and fruitfulness, and prove a valuable preventive of disease. Plum-trees should always have good, clean cultivation. _Manures_ from the stable and slaughter-house, with wood-ashes, lime, and plenty of salt, are the best for the plum. The following analysis, by Richardson, of the fruit of the plum, will aid the culturist in his selection of manures:-- Potash 59.21 Soda .54 Lime 10.04 Magnesia 5.46 Sulphuric acid 3.83 Silicic acid 2.36 Phosphoric acid 12.26 Phosphate of iron 6.04 Hence, as wood-ashes contains much potash, and as this is the largest ingredient in the plum, it must be the best application to the soil for this fruit. Bones, dissolved in sulphuric acid, would also be very valuable. Bones, bonedust, salt, wood-ashes, and barnyard manure, with a little lime, will be all that will be necessary. _Diseases._--In most northern latitudes, the black wart, or knot, is fatal to many plum-trees. It is less prevalent at the South: its origin is not known. Many theories respecting it are put forth by different cultivators; they are unsatisfactory, and their enumeration here would be useless. It may be either the result of general ill health in the tree, from budding on suckers and unhealthy stocks, and a want of proper elements in the soil, or of improper circulation of sap, caused by the roots absorbing more than the leaves can digest. In the latter case, root-pruning and heading-in would be an effectual preventive. In the former, supply suitable manures, and give good cultivation. In every case, remove at once all affected parts, and wash the wounds and whole tree, and drench the soil under it, with copperas-water--one ounce of copperas to two gallons of water. This is stated to be a complete remedy. _Defoliation_ of seedlings and bearing trees often occurs in July and August. Land well supplied with the manures recommended, especially wood-ashes, salt, and the copperas-water, has not been known to produce trees that drop their leaves. _Decay of the Fruit_ is another serious evil. Professor Kirtland and others suppose it to be a species of fungus. Poverty of soil, and wet weather, may be the cause. If the season be unusually wet, thin the fruit, so that no two plums shall touch each other. Keep the soil properly manured, and spread charcoal or straw under the tree, and you will generally be able to preserve your fruit. _The Curculio_ is the great enemy of the plum, and frequently of all smooth-skinned fruits, as the grape, nectarine, &c. [Illustration: (1) Curculio, in the beetle-form, life-size. (2) Its assumed form when disturbed or shaken from the tree. (3) Larva, or worm, as found in the fallen fruit. (4) Pupa, or chrysalis state, in which it lives in the ground.] Many remedies are proposed: making pavements, or keeping the ground hard and smooth, under the trees; pasturing swine and keeping fowls in the plum-orchard; syringing the whole tops of the trees four or five times with lime and salt water, or lime and sulphur-water--the proportions are not material, provided it be not excessively strong. It is recommended to apply with a garden-syringe. But, as few cultivators will have that instrument, they may sprinkle the mixture on the trees in any way most convenient. Salt, worked into the soil under plum-trees, is said to destroy this insect in its pupa state. At any rate, the salt is a good manure for the plum-tree. We know a remedy for the ravages of the curculio, unfailing in all seasons and localities--that is, to kill them: spread a cloth under the tree, and with a mallet having a head, covered with India-rubber or cloth that it may not injure the bark, strike the body and large limbs sudden blows, which will so jar them as to cause the insects to fall upon the cloth, and you can then burn them. Do this five or six times in the season, commencing when the fruit begins to set, and continuing till it becomes nearly full-grown. This is best done in the cool of the morning, while the insects are still; their habits of fear and quiet, when there is a noise about, are greatly in favor of their destruction by this method. This is somewhat laborious, but is a sure remedy, and will pay well in all plum-orchards, large or small. After two or three years of this treatment, there will be few or none of those insects left. _Uses_ of the plum are various. The fine varieties, well ripened, are a good dessert-fruit; for sweetmeats and tarts they are much esteemed; they are one of the better and more wholesome dried fruits. The foreign ones are called prunes, and are an article of commerce. With a little care, we can raise much better prunes than the imported. Like all fruits, they are better for quick drying by artificial heat. The French prunes, the process of drying which is minutely described by Downing in his fruit-book, are no better than our best varieties, quickly dried by artificial heat in a dry house, or moderately-heated oven. All dried fruit is much better for having become perfectly ripe before picking. It is a great mistake to suppose unripe fruit will be good dried. [Illustration: Lawrence's Favorite.] _Varieties_ are numerous, and many of them ought to be forgotten, as is the case with all other fruits. We give a small list, containing all the good qualities of the whole:-- _Bleecker's Gage._--A hardy tree and sure bearer. Time, August. [Illustration: Imperial Gage.] [Illustration: Egg.] _Imperial Gage._--This is an American variety. It is of a lightish-green color, and excellent flavor. Season, July at the South, and September at the North. _Egg._--The above cut represents one of the egg-plums, of excellent quality in all respects. There are many of this name. _Lawrence's Favorite._--This is a fine plum, of the gage family. It was raised from the seed of the green gage; its qualities are seldom surpassed. _Washington._--This is a very good plum for high latitudes. At the South it is too dry. [Illustration: Green Gage.] [Illustration: Jefferson.] _Green Gage._--With fifteen synonyms. Excellent. _Jefferson._--One of the very best. Time, last of August. _Denniston's Purple, or Red._--Vigorous grower and very productive. Time, August 20. _Madison._--A hardy, productive, and excellent October plum. The foregoing varieties, with the little black damson-plum, so hardy and productive, and so much esteemed for preserving, will answer all needful purposes. You will find long lists in the fruit-books. Some of them are the above varieties, under different names. Procure four or five of the best you can find in your vicinity, and cultivate them, and you will need no others. [Illustration: Washington.] POMEGRANATE. This is one of the most delicious and beautiful of all the dessert-fruits. Native in China, and much cultivated in Southern Europe. It will do quite well as far north as the Ohio river. Trained as an espalier, with protection of straw or mats, it will do tolerably well throughout the Middle states. The fruit is about as large as an ordinary apple, and has a tough, orange-colored skin, with a beautiful red cheek. The tree is of low growth. Blossoms are highly ornamental, as is also the fruit, during all the season. It is cultivated as the orange. There are several varieties: the _sweet-fruited_, the _sub-acid_, and the _wild_ or _acid-fruited_. The first is the best, and the second the one most cultivated in this country; the latter yields a very pleasant acid, making an excellent sirup. Pomegranates should be extensively cultivated at the South, and form an important article of commerce for Northern cities. POTATO. This is far the most valuable of all esculent roots; supposed to be a native of South America. It is called the Irish potato, because it was grown extensively first in Ireland. It was first planted on the estate of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1602. It was introduced into England in 1694. It has been represented as having been introduced into England from Virginia as early as 1586, but attracted no attention, and for two centuries formed no considerable part of British agriculture. It has become naturalized in all temperate regions, and in many locations in high latitudes. In tropical climates, it flourishes on the mountains, at an elevation sufficient to secure a cool atmosphere. Cool moist regions, as Ireland and the northern parts of the United States, are most favorable for potatoes. In warm climates the potato grows less luxuriantly, yields much less, and is liable to be ruined by a second growth. In the latitude of southern Ohio, a severe drought, while the tubers are small, followed by considerable rain, causes the young potatoes to sprout, and send up fresh shoots, and often make a very luxuriant growth of tops, to the complete ruin of the tubers. This is called second growth. In cooler climates this second growth simply makes prongs on the tubers, thus injuring the appearance and quality, but increasing the crop. The only preventive is watering regularly in a dry time. This can be done advantageously in a garden, and on a small scale. In field culture, when second growth occurs, dig your potatoes at once, if they are large enough to be of much use. If not they will all be lost. _Propagation_ is by annually planting the tubers. No mixture of sorts ever takes place from planting different varieties together. This can only be done in the blossoms, and will consequently appear in young seedlings. To raise good potatoes, always plant ripe seed, and the largest and best, and leave them whole. Selecting small potatoes for seed, and cutting them up, and planting mere eyes and pearings as some do, has done much to injure the health, quality, and quantity of yield of the potato. Selecting the poorest for seed, will run out anything we grow in the soil. _New varieties_ have been multiplying within the past few years from seed. Some gentlemen are raising varieties by thousands. Not more than one out of a thousand prove truly valuable. The quality of a new variety can not be established earlier than the fifth year. Many that promised well at first proved worthless. To raise from seed, gather the balls after they have matured, hang them in a dry place till they become quite soft, when separate the seeds and dry them as others, and plant as early as the temperature of the soil favors vegetation. Chance varieties from seed of balls left to decay in the fall, as tomatoes, are recorded. Probably our present best varieties had such an origin. Raising new varieties requires much care and patience. Keep each one separate, plant only the best, and then you must wait four or five years to determine whether, out of a thousand, you have one good variety. _Varieties._--These are numerous. Those best adapted to one locality, are often inferior in another. That excellent potato, the Carter, so firm in New England and western New York, is ill-shapen and inferior in many localities in Illinois. The Neshannock or common Mercer produces a larger yield in Illinois than in the Eastern states, but of a slightly inferior quality. Most seeds do better transported from a colder to a warmer climate, but with the potato the reverse is true. The best potatoes of Ireland are usually inferior in the warmer latitudes of this country. In ordering potatoes for seed it is better to describe the quality than to order by the name. We omit any list, of even the best varieties. They are known by different names, and are not equally good in all localities. And all varieties are scattered over the whole country, very soon, by dealers, and through the agency of agricultural societies and periodicals. Different varieties should be kept separate, as they look better for market, and no two will cook in precisely the same time. _Plant the large potatoes and plant them whole._ From a small eye or a small potato to the largest they will vegetate equally well. And in a wet, cool season, the small seed will produce nearly as good a crop as the large. But the large seed matures earlier, and in a dry season produces a much larger crop. The moisture in a large potato decaying in the hill, is of great use to the growing plants, in a dry season. It is also generally conceded that potatoes growing from cut seed are more liable to be affected by the rot. _Quantity of seed per acre._--The practices of farmers vary from five to twenty bushels. It takes a less number of bushels per acre when the seed is cut. The quantity is also affected by the size of the seed, the larger the potatoes the more will it take to seed an acre. Plentiful, but not excessive, seeding is best. It is a universal fact that you can never get something for nothing. Hence light seeding will bring a light yield. We think it best to put one good-sized potato in a place and make the rows three feet apart each way. We think they yield better than at any other distances or in any other way. We have often tried drills, and found them more trouble, with no greater yield. The soil should be disintegrated to the depth of sixteen inches and the potatoes planted four inches deep, and cultivated with subsoil plow, and other suitable tools, in a manner to leave the surface nearly flat. Hilling up potatoes never does any good. We advise always to harrow the crop, as soon as they begin to appear through the soil. _Soil._--Any good rich garden soil is good for this crop, provided it be well drained. Potatoes like moisture, but are ruined by having water stand in the soil. New land and newly broken-up old pastures are best. _Manures._--All the usual fertilizers are good for potatoes, but especially ashes and plaster. The application above all others, for potatoes, is potash. Dissolve it in water, making it quite weak, and saturate your other manures with it, and the effect will always be marked. The tops contain a great deal of potash, and should always be plowed in and decay in the soil where they grow, otherwise they will rapidly exhaust the land. It is supposed that nothing will do more to restore the former vigor and health of the potato than a liberal application of potash in the soil in which they grow. The crop will be much increased in a dry season by manuring in the hill, dropping the potato first and putting the manure on the top of it. _Gathering and Preserving._--The usual hand-digging with hoe or potato-fork are well known, and do well when the crop is not large. But for those who grow potatoes for market, it is better to employ the plow in digging. Modern inventions for this purpose can everywhere be found in the agricultural warehouses. Potatoes are well preserved in a good cool cellar, in boxes or barrels; and are better for being covered with moist sand. The usual method of burying them outdoor is effectual and safe, if they be covered beyond the reach of frost, and have a small airhole at the apex, filled with straw. _The Potato Disease._--This is altogether atmospherical. A new piece of land was cleared for potatoes. In the middle was a close muck, on a coarse, gravelly subsoil. In the lowest place a ditch was dug, to carry off the superabundance of water; from that ditch the coarse gravel was thrown out on one side, and suffered to remain at considerable depth. Only two or three rods distant, on one side the plat extended over a knoll of loose sand. Potatoes were planted, from the same seed, at the same time, and in the same manner, on these three kinds of land, side by side. They were all tended alike, needing little hoeing or care, the land being new. The rot prevailed badly that season. On digging the potatoes, it was found that in the coarse gravel, where the air could circulate almost as freely as in a pile of stove-wood, all the potatoes were rotten: on the muck, which was unlike a peat-bog, very fine and tight, almost impervious to the atmosphere, they were nearly all sound; on the sand, which was quite open, but tighter than the gravel, part were decayed and the rest sound. Their condition was graduated entirely by the condition of the soil. It is an apparent objection to this theory, that when the rot prevails, the best potatoes are raised on light, sandy soils. It is said that they are open to the action of air. To this it is replied, that whether they rot or not, in sandy soils, depends on the kind of sand. On some sand they rot very badly, on others hardly at all. Sandy soils differ very materially: some are almost pure silex; while others are filled with a fine dust, and, although apparently loose, are much more nearly impervious to the air than heavier soils; on the former, nearly all will decay, and on the latter, most will be preserved. Look at the immense potato crops near Rochester, N. Y., on sandy land. We have personally examined it, and find it to be filled with dust, that excludes the air, and saves the potato from rot. Why, then, is a heavy clay useless for potatoes? Is not clay a very tight soil? Unbroken it is; but, when plowed, it is always left in larger particles than other land--it is but seldom pulverized. The spaces between the particles are all open to the free action of the air; hence, instead of being close, it is one of the most open of all our soils. This confirms the theory. The influence of manuring land is still another confirmation. We are directed not to manure our land for potatoes when the disease prevails. It is said we can raise no sound potatoes on rich land when the rot is abroad. This is an error. The richness of the soil does not promote the disease; but if any kind of manure be applied that, from its bulk and coarseness, keeps the soil open to the air, the potatoes will rot. But fertilize to the highest extent, in any way that does not make the soil too open, and let in the air, and the crop will be greatly increased with perfect safety. Thus, this theory, like every truth, perfectly fits in all its bearings. There is, then, no perfect remedy for the disease but in the power of Him who can purify the atmosphere. Numerous remedies and preventives have been recommended, by those who suppose they have tried them with success. But in other localities and soils, all their remedies have failed, as will all others that will yet be discovered. A careful examination of the texture of the soils, upon the principles here indicated, and a repetition of their experiments, will show the discoverers that their success depended upon their soils, while others failed in using the same remedies on other soils. The practical uses of this theory are obvious. When the disease is abroad, we should select soil that excludes, as much as possible, the atmosphere, and plant _deep_; on all land not liable to have water stand on the subsoil. Do not be deceived into the belief that all sandy land will bear good potatoes, in the seasons when the disease prevails. The worst rot we ever had was in 1855, on very sandy land. This year (1857) we have witnessed the worst rot in open sand and gravel. Add to this, great care in preserving the health of the tubers. Plant very early, only whole potatoes, and of mature growth, thoroughly ripe; apply a little salt and lime, plaster rather plentifully, and potash, or plenty of wood-ashes--and you will succeed in the worst of seasons. PRESERVING FRUITS, &c. The essentials in preserving fruits, berries, and vegetables, during the whole year, are, a total exclusion from atmospheric action, and, in some vegetables, a strong action of heat. We have a variety of patent cans, and several processes are recommended. The patent cans serve a good purpose, but, for general use, are inferior to those ordinarily made by the tinman. The patent articles are only good for one year, and are used with greater difficulty by the unskilful. The ordinary tin cans, made in the form of a cylinder, with an orifice in the top large enough to admit whatever you would preserve, will last ten years, with careful usage, and they are so simple that no mistakes need be made. It is usually recommended to solder on the cover, which is simply a square piece of tin large enough to cover the orifice. Soldering may be best for those cans that are to be transported a long distance, but it is troublesome, and is entirely unnecessary for domestic use. A little sealing-wax, which any apothecary can make at a cheap rate, laid on the top of the can when hot, will melt, and the cover placed upon it will adhere and cause it to be air-tight. All articles that do not part with their aroma by being cooked, may be perfectly preserved in such cans, by putting them in when boiling, seasoned to your taste, and putting on the covers at once. The cans should be full, and set in a cool place, and the articles will remain in a perfect state for a year. The finest articles of fruit, as peaches and strawberries, may be preserved so as to retain all their peculiar aroma, by putting them into such cans, filled with a sirup of pure sugar, and placing the cans so filled in a kettle of water, and raising it to a boiling heat, and then putting on the cover as above; the heat expels the air, and the cover and wax keep it out. Stone jugs are used for the same purposes, but are not sufficiently tight to keep out the air, unless well painted after having become cold. Wide-mouthed glass bottles are excellent. But, in using glass or stone ware, the corks must be put in and tied at the commencement, leaving a small aperture for the escape of steam, and the process of raising the water to a boiling heat must be gradual, requiring three or four hours, or the bottles will be broken by sudden expansion. Make the corks air-tight by covering with sealing-wax on taking from the boiling water. Some vegetables, as peas, beans, cauliflowers, &c., need considerable boiling, in order to perfect preservation. Tin cans may stand in the water and boil an hour or two, if you choose, and then be sealed. The bottles should be corked tight, have the cork tied in, and then be immersed and boil for an hour: take them out, and dip the cork and mouth of the bottles in sealing-wax, and all will be safe. By one of these processes, exclusion of the atmosphere and thorough boiling, we may preserve any fruit or vegetable, so as to have an abundance, nearly as good as the fresh in its season, the whole year, and that at a trifling expense. All fruits and vegetables may also be preserved by drying. By being properly dried, the original aroma can be mostly retained. The essentials in properly drying are artificial heat and free circulation of the air about the drying articles. Fruit dried in the sun is not nearly so fine as that dried by artificial heat. An oven from which bread has just been taken is suitable for this purpose; but a dry-house is better. A tight room, with a stove in the bottom, and the fruit in shallow drawers, put in from the outside, serves a good purpose. Construct the room so as to give a draft, the heated air passing out at the top, and the process of drying will be greatly facilitated, and the more rapid the process, without cooking the fruit, the better will be its quality. This process is applicable to all kinds of vegetables. Roots, as beets, carrots, parsnips, or potatoes, should be sliced before drying. The object in drying the latter articles would be to afford the luxury of good vegetables for armies and ships' crews, in distant regions, and in climates where they are not grown. Milk can be condensed and preserved for a long time, and, being greatly reduced in quantity, it is easily transported. It is not generally known in the country that Mr. Gail Borden, of New York, has invented a method of condensing milk, fresh from the cow, so that it will perfectly retain all its excellences, including the cream, and by being sealed up in tin cans, as above, may be kept for many months. The milk and the process of condensation have been scientifically examined by the New York Academy of Medicine, and pronounced perfect, and of great value to the world. We have used the condensed milk, which was more than a month old; it had been kept in a tin can without sealing and without ice, but in a cool place. It was sweet and good, differing in no respect from fresh milk from the cow, except that the heat employed in condensing it gave it the taste of boiled milk. If kept in a warm place, and exposed to the atmosphere, it may sour nearly as soon as other milk: but it may be sealed up and kept cool so as to be good for a long time. The condensation is accomplished by simple evaporation of the watery part, in pans in vacuo. No substance whatever is put into the milk. Four gallons of fresh milk are condensed into one. When wanted for use, the quantity desired is put into twice the quantity of water, which makes good cream for coffee; or one part to four of water makes good new milk; and one part to five or six makes a better milk than that usually sold in cities. Steamers now lay in a supply for a voyage to Liverpool and return, and on arrival in New York, the milk is as good as when taken on board. The advantages will be numerous. Such milk will be among regular supplies for armies and navies, and for all shipping to distant countries. All cities and villages may have pure, cheap milk, as the condensation will render transportation so cheap that milk can be sent from any part of the country where it is most plenty and cheapest. The process is patented, but will be granted to others at reasonable rates, by Borden & Co.; and eventually it will become general, when farmers can condense and lay by, in the season when it is abundant, milk for use in the winter, when cows are dry. This will make milk abundant at all seasons of the year, and plenty wherever we choose to carry it. It will also save the lives of thousands of children, in cities, that are fed on unwholesome milk or poisonous mixtures. There is no temptation to adulterate such milk, for the process of condensation is cheaper than any mixture that could be passed. Preserving hams is effectually done by either of the following methods. After well curing and smoking, sew them up in a bag of cotton cloth, fitting closely, and dip them into a tub of lime-whitewash, nearly as thick as cream, and hang up in a cool room. This is a good method, though they will sometimes mould. The other process, and the one we most recommend, is to put well cured and smoked hams in a cask, or box, with very fine charcoal; put in a layer of charcoal, and then one of hams; cover with another layer of coal and then of hams, and so on, until the cask is full, or all your hams are deposited. No mould will appear, and no insect will touch them. This method is perfect. Another process, involving the same principles as the preceding, is to wrap the hams in muslin, and bury them in salt. The muslin keeps the salt from striking in, and the salt prevents mould and insects. PUMPKIN. There are some five or six varieties in cultivation. Loudon says six, and Russell's catalogue has five. The number is increasing, and names becoming uncertain. Certain varieties are called pumpkins by some, and squashes by others. The large yellow Connecticut, or Yankee pumpkin, is best for all uses. The large cheese pumpkin is good at the South and West. The mammoth that has weighed as high as two hundred and thirty pounds, is a squash, more ornamental than useful. The seven years' pumpkin is a great keeper. It has doubtless been kept through several years without decay. Pumpkins will grow on any good rich soil, but best on new land, and in a wet season. Do best alone, but will grow well among corn and better with potatoes. A good crop of pumpkins can seldom be raised, two years in succession, on the same land. Care in saving seed is very important. The spot on the end that was originally covered by the blossom, varies much in dimensions, on pumpkins of the same size. Seeds from those having small blossom-marks, bear very few, and from those having large ones, produce abundantly. They are good fall and winter feed for most animals. They will cause hogs to grow rapidly, if boiled with roots, and mixed with a little grain. Fed raw to milch cows and fattening cattle, they are valuable. Learn a horse to eat them raw, and if his work be not too hard, he will fatten on them. They may be preserved in a dry cellar, in a warm room as sweet potatoes, or in a mow of hay or straw, that will not freeze through. But for family use they are better stewed green, and dried. QUINCE. This fruit, with its uses, for drying, cooking, marmalades, flavors to tarts and pies made of other fruits, and for preserving as a sweetmeat, is well known and highly esteemed. The quince is rather a shrub than a tree. It should be set ten feet apart each way, in deep, rich soil. It needs little pruning, except removing dead or cross branches, and cutting off and burning at once, twigs affected with the insect-blight, as mentioned under pears. The soil should be manured every year, by working-in a top-dressing of fine manure, including a little salt. _Propagation_--is by seeds, buds, or cuttings. Budding does very well. Seedlings are not always true to the varieties. Cuttings, put out early and a little in the shade, nearly all take. This is the best and easiest method of propagation. There are several varieties; the _apple-shaped_, _pear-shaped_, and the _Portugal_, are the principal. The apple-shaped, or orange quince (and perhaps the large-fruited may be the same) is, on the whole, the best of all. Early, a great bearer, and excellent for all uses. The pear-shaped is smaller, harder, and later. It may be kept longer in a green state, and therefore be carried much farther. The only reason for cultivating it would be its lateness and its keeping qualities. The Portugal quince is the finest fruit of all, but is such a shy bearer as to be unprofitable. The _Rea quince_ is a seedling raised by Mr. Joseph Rea, of Greene county, New York, and is pronounced by Downing "an acquisition." The fruit is very handsome, and one third larger than the common apple or orange quince. The tree is thrifty, hardy, and productive. It is a valuable modification of the apple-shaped or orange quince, superior to the original. Such varieties may be multiplied and improved, by new seedlings and high cultivation. RABBITS. To prevent rabbits and mice from girdling fruit-trees in winter, is very important to fruit-growers. The meadow-mouse is very destructive to young trees, under cover of snow. Rabbits will girdle trees after the green foliage on which they delight to feed is gone. Take four quarts of fresh-slaked lime, the same quantity of fresh cows' dung, two quarts of salt, and a handful of flour of sulphur; mix all together, with just enough water to bring it to the consistency of thick paint. At the commencement of cold weather, paint the trunks of the trees two feet high with this mixture, and not a tree will suffer from rabbits or mice. Treading own the snow does good, but it is very troublesome, and not a perfect remedy. Experience has never known the foregoing wash to fail. RADISH. This is a well-known root, eaten only raw, and when young and tender. A rich sandy soil is best. Like most turnips, the roots are more tender and perfect when grown in rather cool weather; hence, those grown in early spring are better than a summer growth. They do well in an early hotbed. The _Scarlet_ and _White Turnip-rooted_ are fine for early use. They are always small, but fair, and very early. The _Scarlet Short-top_ comes next, and is a very fine variety. These may be had through the whole season, by sowing at proper intervals; hence, others are unnecessary. Other good varieties are the _Summer_, or _Long White Naples_; _Long Salmon_, a large, gray radish, not generally described in the books (a splendid variety in southern Ohio); and the _Black Spanish_ for fall and winter use. This grows large like a turnip, and is preserved in the same way. The best method of guarding against worms is to take equal quantities of fresh horse-manure and buckwheat-bran, and mix and spade them into the bed. Active fermentation follows, and toadstools will grow up within forty-eight hours, when you should spade up the bed again and sow the seed; they will grow very quickly, be very tender, and entirely free from worms. Radish-seed is sown with slow-vegetating seeds, as carrots, beets, parsnips, &c. The radishes mark the rows, so that they may be cleared of weeds, and the ground stirred before the plants would otherwise be discernible, and also shade the germinating seeds and the young plants from destruction from a hot sun. The radishes may be pulled out when the main crop needs the ground and sun. For this purpose the scarlet short-top variety is used, because the long root loosens the soil in pulling; and as the crown stands so much above the surface, they may be crushed down with a small roller, and thus destroyed without the labor of pulling. Sowing radish-seed among root-crops, and cultivating early with a root-cleaner, an acre of roots can be raised with about the same labor as an acre of corn. RASPBERRY. The common black raspberry we have noticed elsewhere as one of the most profitable in cultivation. The other varieties, worthy of general cultivation, are the Franconia, the Fastollf, the red, and the white or yellow Antwerp. Any good garden-soil is suitable for raspberries. It should be worked deep, and have decayed wood and leaves mixed with barnyard manure and wood-ashes. In all but very cold latitudes, raspberries should be planted where they may be a little shaded. None of the finer old varieties produce a good crop of fruit without winter-protection. The canes may live without it, but will bear but little fruit. The best method of protection is to bend down the canes at the beginning of winter, before the ground freezes, and cover them lightly, with the soil around them. They should first have some well-rotted manure put around the canes. Stools should be four feet apart, and have about five or six canes in a stool. Cut away the rest. The best of all manures for raspberries is said to be spent tan-bark. Put it around in the fall to the depth of two inches; work it into the soil in the spring, and put around fresh tan-bark, to the same depth. The varieties for general cultivation are few. The common black is one of the best. The common wild American red, native in all the Middle and Eastern states, is greatly improved by cultivation. As it is perfectly hardy, and a great and early bearer, it should have a place in every collection. The Franconia is a fine fruit, and, among those generally cultivated, occupies the first place. The yellow Antwerp is fine-flavored and good-sized, but too soft for a general market-berry. The same is true of the Fastollf. The red Antwerp is good, but quite inferior to the new red Antwerp, or Hudson River Antwerp. The Ohio Evergreen is a new variety, hardy, prolific, and a long bearer, fine fruit in considerable quantities having been picked on the 1st of November. On this account, it should be in every garden. There are two kinds of red raspberries brought to notice by Mr. Lewis P. Allen, of Black Rock, N. Y., that deserve extensive cultivation, if they warrant his recommendation. Mr. Allen says he has cultivated them for a number of years, and, with no winter protection, they have borne a large crop of excellent fruit every year, pronounced by dealers in Buffalo market superior to any other variety. Should these varieties prove equally good elsewhere, they deserve a place in every garden in the land. RHUBARB. There are several varieties of rhubarb now in cultivation. _The Victoria, Mammoth, and Scotch Hybrid_, all of which (if they be really distinct) are fine and large, under proper culture. There is much of the old inferior kind, which generally affords only small short leaves, and which is of no value, compared with the large varieties. The method of growing is very simple, and yet the value of the plant depends mainly on right cultivation. Propagation is by seeds, or by dividing the roots. By seed is preferable. The idea that the largest kinds will not produce seed is incorrect. We raised four or five quarts of seed from a single plant of the largest variety, in one season. Young plants are suitable for transplanting after the first year's growth. They should be set three feet apart each way. The soil should be thoroughly enriched and trenched two feet deep, with plenty of well-rotted manure in the bottom, and mixed in all the soil. Plant the crowns two or three inches below the surface to allow stirring the ground in the spring, without injury. After this they will only want enriching with well-rotted manure in rather liberal quantities, worked in with a fork in the fall or spring. Covering up with manure in the fall is good. Those who raise the largest leaves, lay bare the crowns in spring, and with a sharp knife, remove all the smaller crown-buds. The leaves will be greatly reduced in number, but increased in size. We have often seen a single stem of a leaf that weighed a full pound. The roots live many years. We know a single root, in St. Lawrence county, N. Y., from which we ate pies and tarts twenty-two years ago, and which is now so vigorous as to yield more than a supply for two families through the season. The only care it has ever had, has been liberal supplies of well-rotted manure. The seed stocks have generally been broken off. They should always be, unless you wish to raise seed, then save one or two of the strongest. New crowns come out on the sides, from year to year, until each plant will cover a considerable space. The one mentioned, as being twenty-two years old, has never been moved during the whole time. It is not the giant kind, but the leaves are large and long. Rhubarb has a better flavor and requires much less sugar, by blanching. This is best done by placing an old barrel, without a bottom, over the hill as it begins to grow. The leaves will grow long, with white tender stems. Use it when the leaves are half or full grown, as you please. RICE. This, in its value to the world as an article of food, is next to Indian corn. It is the main article of diet for one third of the human race. It is produced only in certain parts of the world, and its cultivation is so simple and easy, and so much a department of agriculture by itself, that we omit directions for growing it. The ravages of the rice-weevil, so destructive to rice lying in bulk, are prevented by the application of common salt, at the rate of half a pound to the bushel. ROCKS. We frequently find, on some of our best land, large boulders, very hard, and too large to be removed, with any team we can command, and which would be in the way, in any place to which we might remove them. The best way to get rid of them, when it can be afforded, is to burn or blast them into pieces small enough to be easily handled. When this can not be afforded, the best method is to make an excavation by the side of them, deep enough to let them sink below the reach of the plow, and allow them to fall in, being careful not to get caught by them. ROLLER. This is quite as indispensable to good farming and gardening as any other tool. It serves a great variety of useful purposes. The first is to pulverize soils. No man can get a full crop on a soil not made fine on the surface, however rich that soil may be. It is often the case that land needs rolling two or three times before the last harrowing and sowing the seed. Another purpose is, on all light soils, to place the soil close around the seeds after they have been covered. When this is not done, seeds will vegetate very unevenly, and, in dry weather, some of them not at all. Another advantage of rolling a field-crop is the greater facility and economy with which it can be harvested. It makes a level, smooth surface, sinking small stones out of the way of the scythe or reaper. Rolling makes grass-seed catch, when sown with a spring-crop. All beds of small seeds--as onions, beets, carrots, parsnips, &c.--should be rolled after planting. It will so smooth the surface, that hoeing and cultivating can be done without injury to the plants. The rows are also much more easily seen while the plants are young. Any crop will grow better and larger by not being too much exposed to the action of the atmosphere on its roots. When the soil is coarse, part of the seeds and roots are greatly exposed to the action of the atmosphere, and this exposure is very irregular. The roller so crushes the lumps and fills up the openings in the soil as to cause the atmosphere to act regularly on the whole crop. Few farmers stop to think that the pressure of the atmosphere on their soils is fifteen pounds' weight on every square inch, and that, hence, the air must penetrate to a considerable depth into the soil; and where the soil is coarse, the air enters too freely, and acts too powerfully for the good of the plants. Rollers are made of wood, iron, or freestone. For most purposes, wood is best. A log made true and even, or, better, narrow plank nailed on cylindrical ends, are the usual forms. From eighteen inches to three feet in diameter is the better size. Iron or stone rollers, in sections, are best for pulverizing soil disposed to cake from being annually overflowed with water, or from other causes. ROOT CROPS. It is important that American farmers learn to attach much greater importance to the culture of roots. The potato is the best of all roots for feeding; but, as the yield has become so light in most localities, and the demand for it for human food has so greatly increased, it will no longer be grown extensively as food for animals. Farmers must, therefore, turn their attention to beets, carrots, and parsnips. Reasonable tillage will produce one thousand bushels to the acre of beets and carrots, and two hundred more of parsnips. These roots, raw or cooked, are valuable for all domestic animals. A horse will do better on part oats and part carrots, or beets, than upon clear oats. For milch cows, young stock, and fattening cattle, and for sheep and fowls, they are highly valuable. With the facilities now enjoyed, they may be raised at a cheap rate. Plant scarlet short-top radish-seed in the rows, to shade the vegetating seed and young plants, and to mark the rows, to facilitate clearing and stirring the ground, while the plants are very young, and using the most approved root-cleaners, and the same amount of food can not be grown at the same price in any other crops. SAFFRON. This is a well-known medicinal herb, as easily grown as a bean or sunflower. It is principally used in eruptive diseases, to induce moisture of the skin and keep the eruption out. Sow in any good soil, in rows eighteen inches apart, and keep clean of weeds. When in full bloom, the flowers are gathered and dried. SAGE. This is a hardy garden-herb, easily grown. Its value for medicinal and culinary purposes is well known. It is propagated by seeds, or by dividing the roots. With suitable protection in winter, roots will live for a number of years, bearing seed after the first. _Varieties_ are, the _red_, the _broad-leaved_, the _green_, and the _small-leaved green_. The red is most used for culinary purposes, and the broad-leaved is most medicinal. All the varieties may be used for the same purposes. Any garden-soil, not decidedly wet, is suitable for sage. Raise new plants once in three or four years. Plants may be renovated, by certain culture and care, but it is better to grow new ones. Cut the leaves two or three times in the season, and dry quickly, and put away in paper bags; or, better, pulverize and cork up in glass bottles. This is the best method of preserving all herbs for domestic use. SALSIFY, OR VEGETABLE OYSTER. This is a hardy biennial vegetable, resembling a small parsnip, and as easily grown. When properly cooked, its flavor resembles the oyster, whence its name. Sow and cultivate as parsnips or carrots. It is suitable for use from November to May. It is better for being allowed to remain in the ground until wanted for use, though it may be well kept, in moist sand in the cellar. Care is necessary in saving seed as it shells and blows away like thistle seed, as soon as ripe. It must be sown quite thick, on account of its proneness not to vegetate. It should be more extensively cultivated. SCRAPING LAND. This is a process needed only on land that has not been under cultivation long enough to become level. All new land has many knolls of greater or less size. As soon as the roots are out sufficiently to allow it, the knolls should be plowed and leveled with a common scraper. Most farmers neglect it as injurious to the soil, and too expensive. But when we consider that rough land never gets well plowed, and that the gradual wearing away of the knolls will continue their unproductiveness for a number of years, it will be seen that the cheapest way is to plow and scrape the land level at once, and thoroughly manure the places from which the soil has been scraped. SEEDS. The best of everything should be saved for seed. Peas, beans, corn, tomatoes, &c., should not be gathered promiscuously, finally preserving the last that matures, for seed. Leave some of the finest and earliest stocks, and from them save seed, not from the first or the last that matures, but from the earliest that grows large and fair. Save tomato-seed from those that grow largest, but near the root. Gather all seeds as soon as mature, as remaining exposed to the weather is unfavorable to vegetation. Dry in a warm place in the shade, but not too near a stove or fire. Keep in paper bags, hung in a dry airy place, beyond the reach of mice. Trying the quality of seeds is important, as it may save loss and disappointment, from sowing seeds that will not vegetate. A little cotton wool or moss in a tumbler containing a little water, and placed in a warm room, will afford a good means of testing seeds. Seeds placed on that wool, will vegetate sooner than they would do in the soil. But a more speedy, and generally sure method, is by putting a few seeds on the top of a hot stove. If they are good they will crack like corn in parching; otherwise they will burn without noise, and with very little motion. The improvement or declension of fruits, grains, and vegetables, depend very materially upon the manner of gathering and preserving seeds. Gather promiscuously and late, and keep without care, and rapid declension will be the result. Gather the earliest and best, and plant only the very best of that saved, and constant improvement will be secured. SHEEP. These are the most profitable of all domestic animals. The original cost is trifling, and the expense of raising and keeping is so light, and the sale of meat, tallow, hide, and wool, is so ready, that sheep-growing is always profitable. So important has this always been considered, that in all ages of the world, there have been shepherds, whose sole business it has been to tend their flocks. Were the flesh of sheep and lambs more extensively substituted for that of swine, in this country, it would be equally healthy and economical. American farmers do not attach to sheep-growing half the importance it deserves. We recommend a thorough study of the subject, in the use of the facilities afforded by the writings of practical men. We can only give the outlines of the subject in a work like this. A theory has been scientifically established by Peter A. Brown LL. D. of Philadelphia, in which it is shown that all sheep are divided into two species, Hair-bearing and Wool-bearing. These species crossed, produce sheep that bear both wool and hair, as the two never change. The hair makes blankets that will not shrink. The wool is good for making fulled cloth. Blankets made from the fleeces of sheep that are the product of the cross of these two species, will shrink in some places and not in others, just as the hair or wool prevails. It is also true that the hair-bearing sheep delight in low, moist situations and sea-breezes, while the wool-bearing sheep does best on high, airy, and dry land. These fleeces all pass as wool, but the microscope shows a marked and permanent difference, and one can easily learn to distinguish it at once, by the touch and with the naked eye. This is thrown out here to induce a thorough examination of the whole subject. There are three staples of wool, short, three inches long, middling, five inches, and long, eight inches. Varieties of sheep are numerous. We shall only mention a few. The question of the best breeds has been warmly controverted. We have no disposition to try to settle it. The question of the best variety must depend upon locality and design. If the wool is the object, then the Vermont Merino for the North, and the pure Saxony for the South, are evidently the best. If located near large cities, where the flesh is the main object, then the large-bodied, long-wooled breeds are much preferable. Among those much esteemed we note the following:-- The _Cotswold_ mature young, and the flesh will vary in weight from fifteen to thirty pounds per quarter. The _New Leicester_ is less hardy than the Cotswold, but heavier, weighing from twenty-four to thirty-six pounds per quarter. The _Teeswater sheep_, improved by a cross with the Leicester, is considered valuable. The _Bampton_ is one of the very best grown in England. Fat ewes average twenty pounds per quarter, and wethers from thirty to thirty-five pounds. The _Sussex_, _Hampshire, and Shropshire_ varieties of the Down sheep, are all highly esteemed. The _Leicester_ are very valuable. An ordinary fleece weighs from three to five pounds. Mr. Joseph Beers of New Jersey had one that sheared thirteen pounds at one time, and the live weight of the sheep was 378 pounds. There are _French_, _Silesian_, and _Spanish Merinoes_, much esteemed in Vermont and elsewhere. The average weight of a flock of ewes of French merinoes after shearing was 103 pounds. Their fleeces averaged twelve pounds and eight ounces. The fleece of one buck of the same flock weighed twenty pounds and twelve ounces. [Illustration: The French Merino Ram.] The _Silesian Merinoes_ are smaller, but produce beautiful fleeces. In a flock of nineteen ewes, the average weight of fleece was seven pounds and ten ounces, and that of the buck weighed ten and a half pounds. A large flock of _Spanish Merinoes_ yielded an average of a little over five pounds of well-washed wool. All these varieties are valuable for wool. The wool of the pure Saxony sheep, however, is best. The _Tartar sheep_, called also Shanghae and Broadtail, is a recently-imported breed, of great promise for mutton. Their fleece is a fine silky hair, making fine blankets that will not shrink, but not good for fulled cloths. The ewes are remarkably prolific, producing sometimes five lambs at a time, and often twice a year. One ewe bore seven lambs in one year, all living and being healthy. The flesh is of the highest quality. This may stand at the head of all our sheep as a market animal. The cross of this with our common sheep has proved fine. They need to be further tested in this country. A new kind of sheep has also been imported from Africa, within a few years; a variety unknown to naturalists, but having some points in common with the Tartar sheep. _Diseases of Sheep._--There are several that have been very troublesome, but which experience has enabled us to cure. _Scours_ is often very injurious. A little common soot from the chimney, or pulverized charcoal, is a sure remedy. Mix it with water, not so thick as to make it difficult to swallow, and give a teaspoonful every two hours, and relief will soon be experienced. _Water in the head_ is a disease caused by long exposure to wet and cold. This is prevented by a small blanket on the back of the sheep. The wool on the backs of sheep will be seen to be often parted, exposing the skin. Water falling on the back will penetrate the wool and run down, and wet and chill the whole body. A small cotton blanket, fifteen inches wide, and long enough to reach from the neck to the tail, fastened to its place by tying to the wool, and painted on the outside, will cause all the water to run off, saving the health of the sheep, and causing him to require less food. In the cold, wet season, every sheep should have such a blanket; they would cost three or four cents each, and be worth many times their cost in the saving of feed for the animals. The more comfortable an animal is, the less food will he require. Applying tar above the noses of sheep at shearing, that they may be compelled to smell it and eat a little for a long time, is considered favorable to their general health, and a preventive of rot. The foot-rot, in cattle, sheep, and hogs, is a prevalent disease. Boys walking the path, barefoot, where such diseased animals frequently pass, may contract the disease. This is always cured by washing in blue vitriol. Most cases are cured by one application, and the most confirmed by two or three. Make a narrow passage, where only one animal can pass at once. Put in a trough twelve feet long, twelve inches wide, and as many deep. Put in that fifty pounds of blue vitriol and fill with water, throwing a little straw over the top. Cause the diseased animals to pass through that, and they will be cured. This is thought to be an invariable remedy. If sheep do not appear healthy on lowland pasture, give them small quantities of fine charcoal and salt, and they will be as healthy as on the hills. A little salt for sheep is useful during the whole year. The health of sheep is injured more in fall than at any other season; they are very apt to be neglected at the beginning of winter. They grow poor rapidly when their green feed first fails; a little hay and grain and a few roots then will keep them up, prevent disease, and make it less expensive to keep them through the winter. Feed in racks or troughs, when they can not get their food under foot, and as far as practicable, under shelter, and in a warm place. It is much cheaper, and keeps the sheep much more healthy. They should have fresh water, where they can drink, two or three times a day. Salt, mixed with wood-ashes and pulverized charcoal, should also be constantly within their reach. A few beets, carrots, or parsnips, are always valuable. Some green feed is very essential for ewes, for some time before the yeaning season. Corn is good for fattening sheep; but, for increasing the wool, it is not half as valuable as beans. Good bean-straw is better than hay. Corn-fodder is excellent. The product of one and a half acres of land, sowed with corn, will winter, in fine condition, one hundred sheep--the corn sowed the 20th of June, and cut up after it has begun to lose its weight slightly, and shocked up closely, bound round the top with straw, and then allowed to stand till wanted for feeding. To have healthy sheep, do not use a ram under two, or over six or seven years old, and raise no lambs from unhealthy ewes or rams. The expense of keeping sheep, as all other animals, is much less when they are kept warm. Much feed is wasted in keeping up animal heat, which would be saved by warm quarters. Sheep-manure is better than any other, except that of fowls. No other parts with its qualities by exposure so slowly. Some farmers save all labor of carting and spreading sheep-manure, by having movable wire fences, and putting their sheep on one acre for a few days, and then removing to another. One hundred sheep may thus be made to manure an acre of land in ten days, better than any ordinary dressing of other manure. We should prefer carefully collecting and saving it under cover, mixed with muck or loam, and apply where and when we choose. Keeping a suitable number of sheep on a farm is very important in keeping up the farm. A farm devoted to grain or vegetables, without a suitable number of animals, usually runs down. The time when lambs should be allowed to come is important. We much prefer letting them come when they please, if we have warm quarters, and can take a little extra care of them. This will give a larger growth, and furnish large lambs for market, at a season of the year when they are most desired, and bring the greatest price. For those who will not take the necessary pains, let them come when the weather has become warm and grass plenty. Sometimes a ewe loses her lamb, and you wish her to raise one of another ewe's, that has two. To make a ewe own another's lamb, take off the skin of her dead lamb, and bind it on to the other lamb, and she will smell it and own the lamb; after which the skin may be removed. Sheep-culture is a subject to which farmers should give increased attention, until the average weight of sheep in the United States shall become one third greater than at present, and until there shall be ten sheep to one of all we have at present. SHEPHERDIA OR BUFFALO BERRY. [Illustration] This is an ornamental shrub, growing from six to fifteen feet high, bearing a roundish red fruit, much esteemed for preserves. Trees are of two kinds, male and female, one bearing staminate and the other pistillate flowers. Hence no fruit can be grown without setting out the trees in pairs from six to fifteen feet apart. If you set out only two, and they chance to be of the same kind, you will get no fruit. SOILS. The nature and management of soils must be measurably understood by any one who would be a thorough cultivator. The productive power of a soil depends much upon the character of the subsoil. A gravelly subsoil is, on the whole, the best. A thin soil lying on a cold clay subsoil--the hardpan of the East, and the crowfish clay of the West--however rich it may be, will be unproductive; while the same soil, on a gravelly subsoil, would produce abundantly. The best soils, for all purposes, are the brown or hazel-colored. Plowed in wet weather, they do not make mortar, and in dry weather they will not break in clods. Dark-mixed and russet moulds are considered the next best. The worst are the dark-gray or ash-colored. The deep-black alluvial soils of the Western prairies are an exception to all other soils, possessing, under proper treatment, great powers of production. Soils do not, to any considerable extent, afford food for plants. A willow-tree has been known to gain one hundred and fifty pounds' weight, without exhausting more than two or three ounces of the soil, and even that might have been wasted in drying and weighing. In our article on manures, we have shown that it is the texture of soils, and their power to control moisture and heat, that renders them productive: hence, no soil can be poor that is stirred deep and kept in a friable condition, without being too open and porous; and no soil can be good that is hard and not retentive of moisture, without having water stand upon it. Hence, the great secret of successful farming, is, such a mixture of the soils, and of fertilizers with the soil, as shall keep it friable and moist, and such thorough drainage as will prevent water from standing so as to become stagnant, and to unduly chill the roots of growing plants. Nature has provided, near at hand, all that is essential to productiveness; all that is necessary is to properly mix them. We do not believe that there is an acre of land now under cultivation in the United States, in a latitude where corn will grow, on which we can not raise a hundred bushels of shelled Indian corn, without applying anything but what may be raised out of that soil, and procured in the shape of manure by animals in consuming that product. The poorest farm in America may be brought up to a state of great fertility, without applying one dollar's worth of any foreign substance. Plow _deep_, turn under all the green substances possible, and feed out the products on the farm and apply the manure, and mix opposite soils, that may be found in different localities. Three years will secure great productiveness, and the same course will increase its value, from year to year, without cost. Three things only are essential to convert poor land into the best; deep and thorough stirring and pulverization, suitable draining, and thorough mixture of soils of different qualities, and the incorporation of such animal and vegetable substances as can be produced on the land itself. We would not declare against foreign manures, but insist that the necessary ingredients are found, or may be manufactured near at hand. The philosophy of deep plowing and thorough pulverization is obvious. A fine soil will retain and appropriate moisture in an eminent degree, on the principle of capillary attraction, or as a sponge or a piece of loaf sugar will take up water. There is also room for excess of water to sink away from the surface, and return again when needed. It also affords room for the roots of plants. Such a soil also receives moisture from the atmosphere. The atmosphere also contains much water, and more in the heat of summer than at any other time. The air also, with a constant pressure of fifteen pounds to the square inch, enters to a considerable depth into the soil, and the deeper it is stirred, and the more thoroughly it is pulverized, the more it will enter. In coming in contact with the cool moisture below, it is condensed and waters the soil, on the principle that a pitcher of cold water in a warm room has large drops of water on the outside; that water is a mere condensation of moisture in the atmosphere. The cool subsoil acts in the same way upon the atmosphere at night. A deeply disintegrated soil, also, seldom washes by rain. Shallow-plowed and coarse land sends off the water after a slight rain, while deep-plowed and thoroughly pulverized land retains it. The philosophy of manures involves the same principles. All the fertilizers act upon soils in such a manner as to render them fine, and open an immense surface to the action of the atmosphere, and form large reservoirs for moisture through their innumerable fine pores. Draining is to carry off an excess of water that would stand on an unfavorable subsoil. That water, on undrained land, causes two evils; it stagnates and renders plants unhealthy, and it is too cool, rendering land what we call cold. Thus, the deeper you plow land, and the finer you make it, the warmer it will be, and the more perfectly it will control moisture. Mixing soils by subsoiling, trenching, and deep plowing, and by carting on foreign substances, is wholly on this principle. Sand that drifts about with the wind is too light to retain moisture, and needs clay carted on. By this means the poorest white sand has often been converted into the most productive soil. Definite rules for this mixture of soils can not be safely given. The rules must differ in different localities and circumstances; it must, therefore, be determined by experiment. Analyzing soils is sometimes of use, but usually has too much importance attached. We do not advise farmers to study it. Let them try applications and mixtures, at first on a small scale: they will soon learn what is best on their farms, and may then proceed without loss. Some lands are of such a character that the carting on, and suitably mixing, the substances in which they are deficient, may cost as much as it did to clear the land of its original forest; but it will pay well for a long series of years. So well are we persuaded of the utility and correctness of these brief hints, that, in selecting a farm, we should regard the location more than the quality of the soil. The latter we could mend easily; while we should find it difficult to move our farm to a more favorable location. Poor land near a city or large town, or on some great thoroughfare, we should much prefer to good land far removed from market, or in an unpleasant location. SPINAGE, OR SPINACH. Both these names are correct; the former is the general one among Americans. This plant is used in soups, but more generally boiled alone and served as greens. In the spring of the year, this is one of the most wholesome vegetables. By sowing at different times, we may have it at any season of the year, but it is more tender and succulent in the spring. The male and female flowers are produced on separate plants. The male blossoms are in long, terminal spikes, and the female in clusters, close at the stalk, on each joint. _Varieties_--The two best are the _broad_, or _summer_, and the _prickly_, or _fall_. There are three others--the _English Patience Dock_, the _Holland_, or _Lamb's Quarter_, and the _New Zealand_. The first two are sufficient. Sow in August and September for winter and spring use, and in spring for summer. Sow in rich soil, in drills eighteen inches apart. Thin to three inches in the row, and when large enough for use, remove every other one, leaving them six inches apart. To raise seed, have male plants at convenient distances, say one in two or three feet. When they have done blossoming, remove the male plants, giving all the room to the others, for perfecting the seed. Success depends upon very rich soil and plenty of moisture. SQUASH. There are several varieties of both summer and winter squashes. All the summer varieties have a hard shell, when matured. They are usually eaten entire, outside, seeds and all, while young and tender, from one quarter to almost full grown. They are also used as a fall and winter squash, rejecting the shell and that portion of the inside which contains the seeds. The _Summer Crookneck_, and _Summer Scolloped_, both _white_ and _yellow_, are the principal summer squashes. The finest is the _White Scolloped_. The best winter varieties are the _Acorn_, _Valparaiso_, _Winter Crookneck_, and _Vegetable Marrow_ or _Sweet Potato squash_. The latter is the best known. Cultivate as melons, but leave only two plants in a hill. They do best on new land. Varieties should be grown far apart, and far removed from pumpkins, as they mix very easily, and at a great distance. Bugs eat them worse than any other garden vegetable. The only sure remedy is the box covered with gauze or glass. As they are great runners, they do better with their ends clipped off. Used as a vegetable for the table, and in the same manner as pumpkins, for pies. STRAWBERRY. None of our small fruits are more esteemed, or more easily raised, and yet none more frequently fails. Failures always result from carelessness, or the want of a little knowledge of the best methods of cultivation. We omit much that might be said of the history and uses of the strawberry, and confine ourselves to a few brief directions, which, if strictly followed, will render every cultivator uniformly successful. No one need ever fail of growing a good crop of strawberries. In 1857, we saw plats of strawberries in Illinois, in the cultivation of which much money had been expended, and which were remarkably promising when in blossom, but which did not yield the cultivators five dollars' worth of fruit. In the language of the proprietors, "they blasted." Strawberries never blast; but, for the want of fertilizers at suitable distances, they may not fill. There are but three causes of failure--want of fertilizers, excessive drought, and allowing the vines to become too thick. Of most of our best varieties, the blossoms are of two kinds--pistillate and staminate, or male and female--and they are essential to each other. The pistillate plants bear the fruit, and the staminates are the fertilizers, without which the pistillates will be fruitless. There are three kinds of blossom--pistillate, staminate, and perfect, as seen in the cut. [Illustration: 1. Perfect blossom. 2. Staminate blossom. 3. Pistillate blossom.] The first (1) is perfect; that is, has both the stamens and pistils well developed: this will produce a fair crop of fruit, without the presence of any other variety. The second (2) has the stamens large, while the pistils (the apparently small green strawberry in the centre) are not sufficiently developed to produce fruit: such plants seldom bear more than a few imperfectly-formed berries. The third (3) has pistils in abundance, but is destitute of stamens, and hence, will not bear alone. The two latter are to be placed near each other, to render them productive; they may be readily distinguished when in blossom. It is always safe to cultivate the hermaphrodite plants; that is, those producing perfect blossoms; but the pistillates and staminates, in due proportions, produce the largest crops, and finer fruit. _Soil._--Much has been said against high fertilization with animal manures, and in favor of vegetable mould only. We feel entirely satisfied that the largest crops of strawberries are grown on land highly manured with common barnyard manure. To plant and manure a strawberry-bed, begin on one side, and dig a trench eighteen inches deep (from two to three feet is much better) and as wide; put six inches of common manure in the bottom; dig another trench as deep, and place the soil upon the manure in the first trench; fill the last with manure as the first, and so on over the whole plat. Manure the surface lightly with very fine manure and wood-ashes. _Transplanting_ is usually better in the month of August. If done at that season, and it be not too dry, the plants will get such a growth the same season as to produce quite a good crop of fruit the next season. Planted as early in the spring as it will do to stir the soil, they are more sure to grow and yield a very few berries the first season, and very abundantly the next. If you would cultivate in hills, put them two feet apart each way; if otherwise, two feet one way, and one foot the other. Cut off the roots to two or three inches in length, and remove all the dead leaves; dip them in mud, which is a great means of causing them to grow; and set them in fine mould, the crown one inch below the level of the soil around, and leave it in a slight basin, and water it, unless the weather be damp. Many plants are lost from not being set low enough to escape drought. The basin will hold water, and nearly every plant will grow; excessive water will destroy them. Set out three or four rows of pistillate plants, and then one of the staminates, or fertilizers. Some set them out in beds and allow them to cover the whole ground, and cultivate by spading up the bed in alternate sections of eighteen inches or two feet each year, turning under, in the spring, that portion that bore fruit the previous season--which has long been recommended by good authority. This was the lamented Downing's method. We think rows preferable for this reason. The young plants formed by the runners are less vigorous after the first; hence, the tendency is to deterioration by this mode of culture. And this method does not afford so good an opportunity for stirring the soil around the plants as planting in rows; this stirring the soil is a great means of protecting from drought, and securing the most vigorous growth. Deep subsoiling between the rows early in the spring, or after fruiting, is valuable; hence, we always advise to cultivate in hills two feet apart each way, and renew them after they have borne two, or at most three crops. Hermaphrodites are best for cultivation in beds. Many strawberry-beds do well the first year of their bearing, but are almost useless afterward. The cultivator says they all run to vines. In such cases, they overlook the fact that the staminate plants grow altogether the fastest, because their strength goes to support foliage in the absence of fruit, while bearing vines require much of their strength to mature the fruit; hence, if they are allowed to run together the second, or at most the third year, the fertilizers will monopolize the ground and prevent fruiting. This is the greatest cause of failure of a crop, next to a want of both kinds of plants. This is the origin of fears of having land too rich. It is said it all runs to vines without fruit; this is because the wrong vines have intruded--the staminates have overcome the pistillates. We reject the whole theory of the luxuriance of the vines preventing the production of fruit. The larger the vines the more fruit, provided only the vines are bearers, and not too thick: hence this invariable rule--_always have fertilizers within five feet, and never allow the two kinds to run together._ Manures should be applied in August, well spaded in. Applying in the spring to increase the crop for that season, is like feeding chickens in the morning to fatten them for dinner--it is too late. Fertilizing in August is a good preparation for a large crop for the next season. Strawberry-vines, in all freezing climates, should be covered, late in the fall, with forest-leaves or straw, to protect from the severity of winter, and enrich the land by what can be dug into the soil in spring. Rotten wood, fine chips, sawdust, &c., are all good for a fall top-dressing. After well hoeing and weeding in spring, until blossom-buds appear, just before the blossoms open, cover the bed thoroughly with spent tanbark, sawdust, or fine straw. This will keep down weeds, preserve moisture in the soil, enrich the ground, and protect the fruit from injury by rains, and in part from worms and insects. This should never be omitted. _Varieties_ are numerous, and, from the ease with which they are raised from seed, will rapidly increase; it is so frequent to have blossoms fertilized by pollen from several different varieties. Some of the most marked varieties are known in different parts of the country by very different names; hence, we advise cultivators to select the best in their locality. Every valuable variety is soon scattered over the country. The following are good:-- _Burr's New Pine._--Originated at Columbus, Ohio, in 1856. Hardy, vigorous, and quite productive; very early; tender for market, but superior for a private garden. _Western Queen._--Originated at Cleveland, Ohio, by Professor J. P. Kirtland, 1849. Very hardy and productive; larger than the Hudson or the Willey; good for market; bears carriage well. _Longworth's Prolific._--Origin, Cincinnati, 1848. Regular, sure, full bearer of large, delicious fruit; good for market; an independent bearer. _M'Avoy's Superior._--Cincinnati, 1848. Received one-hundred-dollar prize from the Cincinnati Horticultural Society in 1851. Exceedingly large; hardy; female or pistillate flowers; needs fertilizers, and then is one of the best ever grown; rather tender for carriage, though it is extensively sold in Western markets. _Jenney's Seedling._--Valuable for ripening late; fruit large and regular; very productive, 3,200 quarts having been gathered from three quarters of an acre. _Hovey's Seedling._--Elliott puts it in his second class; but we can not avoid the conviction that it is one of the best that ever has been raised. It is pistillate, but with fertilizers it yields immense crops, of very fine large fruit. Boston Pine is one of the best fertilizers for the Hovey Seedling. _Hudson Bay._--A hardy and late variety, highly esteemed. _Pyramidal Chilian._--Hermaphrodite, highly valued. _Crimson Cone._--An old variety, quite early, and something of a favorite in Eastern markets. _Peabody's New Hautbois._--Originated in Columbus, Georgia, by Charles A. Peabody. Said to bear more degrees of heat and cold than any other variety. Very vigorous, fruit of the largest size, very many of the berries measuring seven inches in circumference. Flesh firm, sweet, and of a delicious pine-apple flavor. Rich, deep crimson. It may be seen in full size in the patent office report on agriculture for 1856. If this new fruit sustains its recommendations, it will prove the best of all strawberries. Downing describes over one hundred varieties. We repeat our recommendation to select the best you can find near home. The following rules will insure success: 1. Make the ground very rich. 2. Put fertilizers within five feet of each other, and never allow different kinds to run together. 3. Cover the ground two inches deep with tan-bark, sawdust, or fine straw, just before the blossoms open; tan-bark is best. 4. Never allow the vines to become very thick, but thin them out. 5. Water every day from the appearance of the blossoms until done gathering the fruit; this increases the crop largely, and, at the South, has continued the vines in bearing until November. Daily watering will prolong the bearing season greatly in all climates, and greatly increase the crop. 6. Protect in winter by a slight covering of forest-leaves, coarse straw, or cornstalks. 7. To get a late crop, keep the vines covered deep with straw. You can retard their maturity two weeks, and daily watering will prolong it for weeks. 8. Apply, twice in the fall and once in the spring, a solution of potash, one pound in two pails of water, or two pounds in a barrel of water in which stable-manure has been soaked. 9. The best general applications to the soil, in preparing the bed, are lime, charcoal, and wood-ashes--one part of lime to two of ashes and three of charcoal. The application of wood-ashes will render less dissolved potash necessary. These nine rules, strictly observed, will render every cultivator successful in all climates and localities. SUGAR. There have, until recently, been but two general sources of our supply of sugar--the sugar-cane of the South, and the sugar-maple of the North. Beet-sugar will not be extensively manufactured in this country. We now have added the Sorgho, or Chinese sugar-cane, and the Imphee, or African sugar-cane, adapted to the North and the South, flourishing wherever Indian corn will grow, and raised as easily and surely, and much in the same way. Of the methods of making sugar from the old sugar-cane of the South, we need give no account. It is not an article of general domestic manufacture. It is made on a large scale on plantations, and is in itself simple, and easily learned by the few who become sugar-planters. The process of manufacturing sugar from the maple-tree is very simple and everywhere known. It is to be regretted that our sugar-maples are being so extensively destroyed, and that those we pretend to keep for sugar-orchards are so unmercifully hacked up, in the process of extracting the sap. To so tap the trees as to do them the least possible injury, is a matter of much importance. Whether it should be done by boring and plugging up with green maple-wood after the season is over, or be done by cutting a small gash with an axe and leaving open, has been a disputed point. Many prefer the axe, and think the tree will be less blackened in the wood, and will last longer, provided it be judiciously performed. Cut a small, smooth gash; one year tap the tree low, and another high, and on alternate sides; scatter the wounds, made from year to year, as much as possible. Another process of tapping is now most popular with all who have tried it. Bore into the tree half an inch, with a bit not larger than an inch, slanting slightly up, that standing sap or water may not blacken the wood. Make the spout out of hoop-iron one and a fourth inches wide; cut the iron, with a cold chisel, into pieces four inches long; grind one end sharp; lay the pieces over a semicircular groove in a stick of hard wood, and place an iron rod on it lengthwise over the groove--slight blows with a hammer will bend it. These can be driven into the bark, below the hole made by the bit. They need not extend to the wood, and hence make no wound at all. If the wound dries before the season is over, deepen it a little by boring again, or by taking out a small piece with a gouge. This process will injure the trees less than any other. The spouts will be cheaper than wooden ones, and may last twenty years. Always hang buckets on wrought nails, that may be drawn out. Buckets made of tin, to hold three or four gallons, need cost only about twenty-five cents each, and, with good care, may last twenty years. A crook in the wire of the rim will make a good place to hang upon the nail. A hole bored in the ear of other buckets will answer the same purpose. In all windy situations, the bucket must be near the end of the spout, or much will be lost by being blown over by the wind. Great care to keep all vessels used, clean and sweet, and not burn the sugar in finishing it, will enable any one to succeed in making good maple-sugar. The various forms in which it is put up, and the manner of draining, are familiar to all makers. It is only necessary to add, that there are few small farms on which the sugar-maple will grow, where there might not be raised two or three hundred maples, within fifteen or twenty years, that would add greatly to the beauty, comfort, and value of the farm. On the highway as shade-trees, or on the side of lots, they would be very ornamental and profitable, without doing injury. We can not too strongly recommend raising sugar-maples. Always cultivate trees that will bear fruit, yield sugar, or be good for timber. Sorgho, or Chinese sugar-cane, is raised much as Indian corn--only, it will bear some ten or twelve stalks in a hill, instead of three or four. In all parts of our continent, it produces enormous crops of stalks. The trials thus far indicate, that the quantity of saccharine matter it contains is not quite equal to that of the common sugar-cane; but, with the necessary facilities for manufacturing, it makes quite as good sugar and as fine sirups as the other cane. Suitable machinery, that need not be expensive, owned by a neighborhood of farmers, may enable all Northern men, where other cane will not grow, to make their own sugar cheaper than to buy. But it will be made probably by large establishments as other sugar. We give no method of making it. The subject is so new, that every method of manufacture finds its way into all the newspapers, and what might appear the best to-day would be quite antiquated to-morrow. We have seen as fine sugars and sirups, of all the different grades, made from this new cane, as any others we have ever tasted. The question is settled that imphee and sorgho will make good sugar in abundance. A few years will place such sugars among the great staple products of the country. SUMMER-SAVORY. This is a hardy annual, raised from seed on any good soil, with no care but keeping free from weeds. The seed is small, and may not vegetate well in dry, warm weather, without a little shade or regular watering. Its use for culinary and medicinal purposes is well known. Gather and dry when nearly ripe. Keep in paper bags, or pulverize and put in glass bottles. For the benefit of persons who keep those sprightly pets called fleas, we mention the fact that dry summer-savory leaves, put in the straw beds, will expel those insects. SUNFLOWER. This large, hardy, annual plant would be considered very beautiful, were it not so common. Three quarts of clear, beautiful oil are expressed from a bushel of the seed, in the same way as linseed-oil. The seed, in small quantities, is good for fowls. It may be grown with less labor than corn. SWEET POTATO. This is a Southern plant, but is now being acclimated in Northern latitudes. Good sweet potatoes are now grown in the colder parts of Vermont, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. There are many varieties, and they are increasing by seedlings. Not long since, they were said to bear no seed; but recently, in different parts of the country, seeds have been found, and new varieties grown from them. Certain varieties are best in different localities. They will always find their way through growers of plants. The process of growing is simple, but must be carefully followed to insure success. Plant the seed potatoes in a moderate hotbed, at the time when grass begins to start freely. Keep well watered, and do not allow them to get too warm. An hour's over-heating will cause them all to decay. The heat, when it begins to rise too high, is at once checked by a thorough drenching with cold water: if too low, the heat is raised by a tight cover, in a warm sun, and by watering with warm water. Water them every day after they are up. The sprouts, when six inches high, are pulled off from the potato, and set out as cabbage-plants; this should be done as soon as all danger of frost has ceased. The same potatoes will sprout as many times as they are pulled off. Sweet potatoes need much sun and warmth; they are, therefore, planted on round hills, or, better, on ridges, which may be principally thrown up with a plow, and made from a foot to eighteen inches high. Set the plants in the top, about fifteen inches or two feet apart; keep clear of weeds, making the hill or ridge a little larger by each hoeing. The tops, being long running vines, will soon cover the ground. They produce better tubers for throwing the vines, in a twist, up over the top of the rows. They will take root at each joint of vine, when undisturbed, which roots will draw from the main tuber. These roots would be as good and large as any, if they had time: hence, at the South, one half of the crop is grown from sets, from cuttings of the ends of the early-planted vines. At the North, where seasons are short, these joints must be prevented--by throwing up, as above, or loosening--from taking root. The tubers will need all the strength; the plant and tuber are tender, and a little frost will kill the vines and cause the potatoes to decay. They may be kept for use until January by packing, when dug in a warm day, in the soil in which they grew;--kept through winter, packed in straw or chaff, in boxes that will contain about two or three bushels each, and kept in a room with a fire: the room should be at a temperature of from forty to sixty degrees; fifty-five is best, though seventy will not destroy them; more or less will cause them to decay. The boxes may be placed one upon another, but should be left open, that their moisture may evaporate. Dry sand (kiln-dried), sifted over and close among them, will preserve them. Free circulation of air is indispensable. It is usually cheapest to buy the plants of those who make a business of raising them. They are very hardy--may be transported one thousand miles and do just as well. To transplant with perfect safety in a dry time, after the plant has been put in its place, pour in a pint of water, and cover it with a little dry soil to prevent baking--and not one out of fifty will perish. These few brief directions will enable any one to be successful wherever corn will grow. A new variety has just been brought into Alabama from Peru, that is pronounced superior to all others; a prodigious bearer, even on poor sandy land, and far more hardy than other varieties, the root retaining its excellence as it came out of the ground till the following May. SWINE. Hogs are evil in their propensities, mischievous and filthy in their habits, and yet profitable to the farmer. Every farmer should keep a few in proportion to the refuse grain and various slops that his establishment may afford. Buying hogs and then purchasing grain on which to fatten them in the usual way is the poorest economy. Such pork is often made to cost from twelve to twenty cents per pound. There are many breeds of swine highly recommended. Some of the varieties of the Chinese are the most prolific and have the greatest tendency to fattening of any known. They have formed the basis of the great improvements in the breeds in Great Britain. Farmers will be able to select the best breed from their own knowledge and observation, better than from any directions we can give them. Every new variety will be introduced by dealers, and farmers must be cautious how they accept their representations. _Age of Swine for Pork._--It is most profitable and least troublesome, to keep over winter, no swine but breeding sows, to have pigs early in spring, to kill in autumn. Of any of the good breeds, they can be made to weigh from 300 to 350 pounds, by the proper time for killing. The practice of keeping swine till eighteen or twenty-four months old, and only fattening them late in the fall and beginning of winter, is very unprofitable. It is best to give pigs about what they will eat, from the time of beginning to feed them until they are slaughtered. This is in every way most economical. It secures fattening in the hot weather in summer, when pork can be made faster and cheaper than at any other time. Many farmers begin to fatten their pork, after the season in which it can most rapidly and cheaply be done. Hogs having been kept poor, on being fed freely for fattening, become cloyed, and much time is lost, while those that always have had what they would eat, of good wholesome food, always have a good appetite for as much as they need, and not root over and injure more. _Food for Swine._--They do better shut up in a pen, but where they can get access to the ground. All edible roots are good and all the grains. But grain should be ground or soaked. It pays well to cook all food for swine. Boiled potatoes, carrots, beets, and parsnips, are all good. Ground feed should be mixed with cooked vegetables. The disposition that swine have to root deep in the ground, indicates the want of something, not found in sufficient quantities in their ordinary food. Numerous experiments show that that deficiency is abundantly supplied by having charcoal within their reach. The stories of fattening pork wholly on charcoal, which we find in the books, we do not credit. But that small quantities of it are uniformly healthy for swine, is an established fact. The question of sour food has many respectable advocates. Cultivators and writers take different sides of the question, based as they say upon their carefully-tried and noted experiments, one affirming that fermented food is superior, and others that it has done his hogs positive injury. This discrepancy grows out of not carefully distinguishing the different kinds of fermentation, the sweet, the vinous, the acid, and the putrid. The first makes excellent food, the second will do quite well, the third is injurious, and the last absolutely poisonous. As it requires much care and observation to get this right, and mistakes are easy, it is best to take the sure method, give them food in a natural state, ground, and either cooked or fed raw. Either will make good pork at a reasonable cost, but cooked food is preferable. Sows are prevented from destroying their young by quiet, plenty of food, and little animal food, and but a very little straw in a dry pen, or washing the pig's backs with a strong decoction of aloes. TOBACCO. This is a plant abhorred by everything but man and the tobacco-worm. Its use for chewing and snuffing is happily becoming more and more offensive to refined society, and we hope it may, after a long struggle, go out of use. For those who will cultivate it as an article of commerce, the following brief directions are sufficient. Burn over a small bed, on which sow the seed early in March. When the leaves are as large as a quarter of a dollar, transplant them in deep, rich soil, or on new land, in rows three feet apart each way, or four feet one way and two the other. Tend as cabbage. It is necessary, twice in the season, to destroy, by hand, the large green worms that feed on this plant. When the plants are from two and a half to three and a half feet high, according to the richness of the soil on which they grow, pick out the head or blossom-buds, except in the few plants you would have go to seed. Pinch off also the suckers, or shoots behind the leaves, as they come out. When the leaves are full grown and begin to ripen, which is known by the small, dusky spots appearing on the leaves, cut up the stalks and lay them down singly to wilt; when they are thoroughly wilted, lay them together, that they may sweat for forty-eight hours, then hang them up in a tolerably tight room to dry--hang across poles, one on each side. A sharp stick put through the but of the stalks and laid over the pole, leaving one stalk on each side, is a very good method. When it becomes well dried, pick off the leaves, and tie the stems together in small bunches, and pack away in hogsheads or boxes, in a dry place. We recommend to every agriculturist to cultivate a little tobacco--not for himself or others to chew, snuff, or smoke, but to use in destroying insects. A strong decoction, used in washing animals, will destroy lice on horses and cattle, and ticks on sheep. Tobacco-water applied to plants, or trees, will effectually destroy all insects with which they may be infested. Boil tobacco-stems or stalks, or the refuse-tobacco of the cigar-makers, until you make a strong decoction, and apply with a syringe, or in any other way, and it will prove more effectual than anything else known. Tobacco-stems, stalks, or leaves, laid around peach-trees in the month of May, will protect them from the attacks of the borer. This is also a good manure for peach-trees. TOMATO. This vegetable is well known, and has recently come to be generally esteemed. It can always be grown without failure, and more easily and at one fourth of the cost of potatoes. Its use for cooking, eating raw, and pickling in various forms, is known to all. There are several varieties. The best of all is the large red--not the largest, but the smooth ones: although smaller, they contain more, and are much more conveniently used, than the very large rough or scolloped variety. The large yellow are less liable to decay on the vines, and have less of the tomato taste. The small plum-tomato, both red and yellow, and the pear or bell-shaped, are good for preserving as a common sweetmeat, and for pickling whole. They should be started in early hotbed--in February in the Middle States--and transplanted after frosts are over, in rows eight feet apart each way. That distance will leave none too much room for letting in the sun and for the convenience of picking. They will mature on the poorest land; but the amount of the crop is graduated altogether by the richness of the soil, and the care given them. They will produce frequently a bushel to a vine, lying on the ground. But they ripen better, and as the vines are not injured by picking the early ones, they will produce more, by being trained up. A few sticks to hold them up at first, and let them break down over them later, is of no use. Train them, and tie up all the principal bunches, and they will be greatly benefited thereby. Tied to slats, or any board fence, in a kind of fan-training form, they do very well. In all cities and villages, enough for a large family can be grown on twenty-five feet of board-fence, exposed to the southern or eastern sun, and not occupy the ground a single foot from the fence. Drive in nails, and tie up the branches as they grow. Removing some of the branches and leaves, and letting in the sun, or placing the fruit on a shingle or stone, hastens its ripening. TOOLS. It is no part of our design to go into any general description of agricultural implements. There are constant changes and improvements, and they are introduced at once to the whole country by the inventors or dealers. We also wish to avoid all participation in the controversies respecting the merits of various new inventions. We have several forms of cultivators, horse-hoes, subsoil-plows, drills, seed-sowers, land-diggers, and drainers, various formed plows, root-cleaners, corn-planters, &c., &c. These possess different degrees of merit; all have their day, and will be superseded by others, in the general advancement that marks the science of soil-culture. We strongly recommend the use of the best tools, especially subsoil-plows, seed-planters, and root-cleaners. Always have a tool-house, as much as you do a kitchen. Use the best tools; never lay them down but in their proper place; and always clean them before putting them away. Keep all the wood-work of tools well painted, and the iron and steel in a condition, by the application of oil and otherwise, to prevent rust. Good tools facilitate and cheapen cultivation, and increase the yield of crops, Money paid out for such tools is well expended. TRAINING. This is a matter that has received much attention from all fruit-growers. The influence of different modes of training and pruning is very great on the bearing qualities of trees. The peculiarities demanded by the various fruit-trees, vines, and bushes, are given under these articles respectively. We give here only some general principles. The health, beauty, and profit, of most fruit-trees depend upon judicious pruning and training. The following are the general objects:-- 1. To secure regular growth and prevent deformities, and thus promote the health of trees. 2. To secure a sufficient number of fruit-bearing shoots, and in right locations, and to throw sufficient sap into those shoots to enable them to mature the fruit. With a certain amount of pruning, you may double the quantity of fruit, or destroy half that the trees would have produced if not trained at all. One half of the fruit of any orchard depends upon correct pruning. It also has a great influence upon the quality of fruit. The cherry is almost the only fruit-tree that throws out nearly the right number of branches, and in the right places. It needs a very little direction while young, and afterward only the removal of decaying branches. The quince needs considerable trimming at first; but, the head once formed, it will need very little after-pruning. Next comes the plum, needing, perhaps, a little more pruning than the cherry or quince, but much less than the other fruits. The plum is apt to throw out strong branches, in some directions, quite out of proportion with the rest of the top. Such need shortening in, to distribute the sap equally through the tree, and thus produce a symmetrical form. This is all the trimming necessary. The roots of a plum-tree are usually stronger than the top, and absorb more than the leaves can digest; hence some of its diseases. The natural remedy would be root-pruning, and leaving the top in its natural state, except shortening-in the disproportioned branches. Removing much of the top of a plum-tree would ordinarily prove injurious. The apple needs considerable pruning, but not of the spurs and side-twigs which bear the fruit, but of limbs that grow too thick, and of disproportioned luxuriance. (See under Apple.) So the pear must be often slightly pruned to check the too vigorous growth and encourage the too tardy. The peach must be so pruned as to prevent the long bare poles so often seen, and to secure annually the growth of a large number of shoots for next year's bearing, and to check the flow of the sap by cutting off the ends of the growing young shoots, so as to cause the formation on each, of a few vigorous fruit-buds. Peach-trees, so pruned, will be healthy and do well for fifty years, and produce a larger number of better peaches than will grow on trees left in the usual way. By a system of pruning that will equalize the growth and strength, the bearing will be general on all the branches of the tree. This will make the fruit more abundant and of better quality. The following six principles--first stated by M. Dubreuil, of France, and since presented to the American people in Barry's "Fruit-Garden," and still later in Elliott's "Fruit-Book"--will guide any attentive cultivator into the correct method of pruning and training:-- 1. The vigor of a tree, subject to pruning, depends, in a great measure, upon the equal distribution of sap in all its branches. 2. The sap acts with greater force, and produces more vigorous growth on a branch pruned short than on one pruned long. 3. The sap, tending always to the extremities, causes the terminal shoots to push with more vigor than the laterals. 4. The more the sap is obstructed in its circulation, the more likely it will be to produce fruit-buds. 5. The leaves serve to prepare the sap for the nourishment of the tree, and to aid in the formation of fruit-buds. Therefore, trees deprived of their foliage are liable to perish, and they are injured in proportion to their defoliation. 6. When the buds of any shoot or branch do not develop before the age of two years, they can only be forced into activity by very close pruning; and this will often fail, especially in the peach. Observe the foregoing, and never cut large limbs from any tree, except in grafting an old tree (and then only graft a part of the top in one year, especially in the pear), and of old, neglected peach-trees, to renew the top, and any careful cultivator can raise an orchard of healthy, beautiful, and profitable trees. There are different forms of training that have gone the rounds of the fruit-books, that are nearly all more fanciful than useful. There are four forms of fan-training, and several of horizontal and conical. The following only are useful:-- _Fan-Training._--A tree but one year from the graft, or bud, is planted and headed down to within four buds of the ground, the buds so situated as to throw out two shoots on each side (see fan-training, first stage). [Illustration: Fan-training, 1st stage.] [Illustration: Fan-training, 2d stage.] [Illustration: Fan-training, 3d stage.] [Illustration: Fan-training, Complete.] The following season, the two upper shoots are to be cut back to three buds, so as throw out one leading shoot, and one shoot on each side. The two lower shoots are to be cut back to two buds, so as to throw out one leading shoot, and one shoot on the upper side. In this second stage, you will have a tree with five leading shoots on each side (see cut, fan-training, 2d stage). These shoots form the future tree, and should neither be shortened in, nor allowed to bear fruit this year. Each shoot should now be allowed to produce three shoots, one leading one, and two others on the upper side, one near the bottom, and the other half way up the stem. All others should be pinched off when they first appear. At the end of the third year you will have the appearance in the cut (Fan-training, third stage). After this it may bear fruit, but not too much, as a young tree so trained, is disposed to over-bearing. These shoots, except the leading ones, should be shortened back; but to what length depends upon the vigor of the tree. This is to be continued and extended as the grower may choose, always preventing the top from becoming too dense, and the shoot too long for a proper flow of sap, and maturity of fruit-buds. A good form, though slightly irregular, is seen in the cut (Fan-training, complete). Such trees trained against walls, or better, on trellis-work, are beautiful and very productive. [Illustration: Horizontal Training, first stage.] _Horizontal Training_ is another form contributing to fruitfulness, by regulating the flow of the sap. This is done by preserving an upright leader with lateral shoots at regular distances. To secure this, such shoots as you wish to train must be tied in a horizontal position, and all others pinched off on first appearance. [Illustration: Horizontal Training, fourth year.] The process is simple and easy, continued as long as you please. Head in the shoots of these lateral branches to two or three buds and they will bear abundantly. As the growth increases, remove all that are not in the right places, and train all you spare, as before. In the fourth year, you will have trees of the appearance in the cut (Horizontal Training, fourth year). _Conical Training._--The Quenouille (pronounced _kenoole_) of the French, is the best of all forms of training, especially for the pear. To produce conical standards, plant young trees four or five feet high, and after the first year's growth, head back the top, and cut in the side branches, as in the cut (Progressive stages of conical training). [Illustration: Progressive stages of Conical Training.] [Illustration: Conical Training complete.] The next season several tiers of side branches will shoot out. The lowest should be left about eighteen inches from the ground, and by pinching off a part, others may be made to grow, at such distances as you may desire. At the end of the second year, the leader is headed back to increase the growth of the side shoots. The laterals will constantly increase, and you must save only a sufficient number. The third or fourth year, the lateral branches may be bent down and tied to stakes. The branches must be tied down from year to year, and the top so shortened in as to prevent too vigorous growth, and throw the sap into the laterals. This may be continued until the tree will exhibit the appearance in the cut (conical training complete). When the tree has become thoroughly formed it will retain its shape without keeping the branches tied. The fan and horizontal training are valuable for fruits that need winter protection, and they are also very ornamental, and enable us to cultivate much fruit on a small place. All these forms of training increase largely the productiveness of fruit-trees. It is recommended for all small gardens and yards, and will pay in growing fruit for market. TRANSPLANTING. Trees should be transplanted in spring in cold climates, and in autumn in warm regions. The top should be lessened about as much as the roots have been by removal. Cutting off so large a part of the top as we often see is greatly injurious. Trees frequently lose one or two years' growth, by being excessively trimmed when transplanted. The leaves are the lungs of the tree, and how can it grow if they are mostly removed? All injured roots should be cut off smoothly on the lower side, slant out from the tree, and just above the point of injury. Places for the trees should be prepared as given under the different fruits and the trees set firmly in them an inch lower than they stood in the nursery. The great point is to get the fine mould very close around all the roots, leaving them in the most natural position. Trees dipped in a bucket of soil or clay and water, thick enough to form a coat like paint, just at the time of transplanting, are said to be less liable to die. Every transplanted tree should have a stake, and be thoroughly mulched. Trees properly transplanted will grow much faster, and bear a year or two earlier, than those that have been carelessly set out. For further remarks on this important matter, see under the different fruits. TURNIP. This is one of the great root crops of England, and to considerable extent in this country, for feeding purposes. We think it should be displaced, mostly, by beets, carrots, and parsnips. They are more nutritious, as easily raised, and more conveniently fed. The Rutabaga is a productive variety, and possesses a good deal of nutriment. The essentials in raising good turnips of most varieties, are very rich soil, worked deep, and finely pulverized. They should stand in rows two feet apart, and one foot apart in the rows. They may be mainly tended with a small cultivator or root-cleaner. English turnips are extensively grown as a second crop on wheat stubble, &c. The soil is highly enriched and the seed sown in rows to allow cultivation. The best method, however, is to turn over old greensward say June 1, and yard cattle or sheep on it till July 10, and then harrow thoroughly, and sow the seed broadcast. The yield will usually be large, and they will need very little weeding. If it is not convenient to yard cattle on the turnip-ground, apply fifteen double wagon loads of fine manure with a few bushels of lime to the acre, and the crop will be large. The usual time of sowing turnips is from the 10th to the 25th of July. We think the yield is larger when sown by the middle of June. The only way to get good early turnips is to sow them very early. The flat, or common field turnip, is easily grown on new land, or on any rich soil tolerably free from weeds and not infested with worms. WHEAT. This is the most highly esteemed of all grains, and has more enemies, and is more affected in its growth by the weather, than any other. It has engaged more attention in the study and writings of agriculturists than all other cereals. The outlines only of the results of the vast field of investigation and experiment on wheat-growing can be presented here. There are doubts respecting the origin of wheat. The more general and probable theory is, that it is the product of the cultivation, for a series of years, of a species of grass called Ægilops. This is indigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean, in those countries which, from time immemorial, have been the sources of our wheat. No one has ever found wild wheat in any country; it would be as strange as a wild cabbage or turnip. But the practical question is, How can wheat be most surely and profitably grown? The first requisite is a suitable soil. A clay or limestone soil is usually considered best, as there is much lime in wheat-bran. Such soil is better than light sand, or some of the poorer loams. But the large yields of wheat on the Western prairies, and on the rich alluvial soils of California river-bottoms, shows that the best of wheat may grow on other than clay lands. The truth of the matter respecting soils for wheat, is, that any soil good for corn, potatoes, or a garden, may, with proper tillage, produce the best of wheat. Experience in England, and in all the old countries on the continent of Europe, shows us that old land may be made to yield as large crops of wheat as the virgin soil of the New World. The production of wheat at suitable intervals, for a century, on the same land, need not lessen its power to produce good wheat in large quantities. Wheat is a plant demanding a rich soil, worked deep, and not too wet: these three things will produce a good crop on any land. We say to all farmers, raise wheat on any land that you can afford to prepare. First, if your land has not a dry subsoil, underdrain it thoroughly: water standing in the soil, and becoming cold or stagnant, is very injurious to wheat. Drainage is hardly more essential to any other crop than this. Next, plow deep. Subsoiling, on most lands, is very important to wheat. Manure highly, and put the manure between the soil and the subsoil: this attracts the roots deep into the soil, which is the greatest protection against winter-killing, and the effects of excessive drought. Render the surface of the soil as fine as possible. A finely-pulverized soil is as essential for wheat as for onions. Coarse lumpy soils are so open to the action of the atmosphere as to render the growth unequal, and cause the roots of the plant to grow too near the surface, for dry weather or the cold of winter. Always apply lime to wheat-lands, unless it be a limestone soil--not too much at once, but a few bushels to the acre annually. On no other crop do wood-ashes and dissolved potash, applied in the coarse manures, pay so well as on wheat. Sowing the seed is next in importance. The three questions in sowing are the manner, the depth, and the quantity. Shall it be drilled or sowed broadcast? Broadcast sowing requires more seed, and is liable to be less evenly covered; hence, we should prefer drilling. The depth of the seed is to be determined by the texture of the soil. Careful experiments have shown, that on clay land there is no perceptible difference in the growth of the plants, at any of the stages, in seed sown at any depth, from a slight covering to three or four inches. At a greater depth, it comes up less regularly, and in every way is in a worse condition. But on a light soil, it is, no doubt, best to plant it from four to six inches deep. On very loose soils, as muck land and alluvial soils, the roots of the plants grow too near the surface, and are exposed to being thrown out by winter frosts, and destroyed. The remedy is deep sowing and thorough rolling. The quantity of seed now more generally sown is from five pecks to two bushels per acre. Rich land will not bear so much seed as the poorer. It will grow so thick as to render the straw tender, and expose it to lodge and ruin the crop. Wheat tillers, or thickens up at the bottom, making many stalks from a single seed, quite as much as any other grain; hence, we believe that if it be sown at a proper time on very rich land, three pecks to the acre would be better than more. Such sowing would make more vigorous plants, with much stronger roots, which would withstand cold and unfavorable weather better than any other. We should still more strongly recommend another form of sowing, practised by some European cultivators with great success: it is, to drill in wheat, in rows two feet apart, and give it a spring cultivation; this gives great strength to the plants, destroys the weeds, promotes rapid growth by stirring the soil, and favors tillering, so that the rows will meet, and give a great growth. We doubt not this will yet be extensively adopted in this country. All wheat-land had better be rolled after sowing, and light lands, with a very heavy roller. Light sandy land, having a little clay mixed in as recommended under soils, well manured, the seed planted six inches deep, and the whole rolled with a heavy roller, will bear great crops of wheat. As it respects fall or spring wheat, no positive directions can be given, adapted to all climates. In many localities it is of little use to sow winter wheat, as it is very uncertain. In other localities winter wheat almost always succeeds best. This question then must be determined by circumstances. The time of sowing winter wheat varies in different climates, according as it may be exposed to depredations of worms and insects in the fall. Farmers are not liable to mistake in this matter. Spring wheat, in all climates, should be sowed very early. It is hardly possible in all the Middle and Northern states to prepare the ground in spring, and get in wheat in suitable season. The yield of a crop of spring wheat, depends materially upon the growth in the cool and moist weather of spring, when it spreads and its roots get a strong hold before the hot weather, that hurries up the stalks and ears to maturity. Hence plow in the fall, and harrow in the wheat, as early as possible, in the spring. _The varieties_ of wheat are numerous and uncertain. In the state of Maine, an intelligent cultivator, in 1856, recommended Java wheat as having a very stiff straw, and producing a very heavy yield. The Mediterranean wheat is also a favorite variety. Club wheat has also had a great run, and is now very popular at the West. But of varieties no one can be confident. We notice in the discussions of the best agriculturists of England and Scotland, that they have doubts of the proper names of some of the best varieties. In a certain rich part of Illinois we know an unusually popular wheat, sold at high prices for seed, under the name of _mud club_, as being much better than the ordinary club. We happened to learn that it was nothing but common club wheat, sown on rather low ground, where it happened to grow very fair that season. It is only occasionally that such tricks are successfully played, but it is true that many varieties are the result of extra good or chance cultivation. The celebrated Chidham wheat, named from a place where it was successfully grown, was also called Hedge wheat, because a head found growing in a hedge was supposed to be the origin of it. Now it is not probable that that head was the only one of the kind in all the country, and it would by no means be identified in all localities. And as all wheat is the result of the cultivation of the Ægilops or some other wild grass, it shows us that varieties may be produced by cultivation. Great importance is therefore to be attached to frequently changing seed; especially bringing it from colder into warmer climates, and changing from one soil to a very different one. Thus seed raised on hard hills is highly valuable for alluvial soils. Thus the efforts to introduce so many new varieties from the dominions of the sultan, will prove of vast advantage to wheat culture in America. So let us be constantly importing the best from Great Britain and the British provinces and from California, and all the extremes of our own country. Such wheats are worth more for seeds than others, but any extravagant prices for seed wheat, under the idea of almost miraculous powers of production, are unwise. It would be useless to go into a more extended notice of varieties, as some do best in certain localities, and all are rapidly spread through the dealers, and by the influence of agricultural periodicals. The best time to harvest wheat is when the straw below the head has turned yellow, and the grain is so far out of the milk as not to be easily mashed between the fingers, but before it has become hard. The grain is heavier and of better quality, and wastes far less in harvesting, than when allowed to ripen and dry standing in the field. Drying in good shocks is far better than drying before cut. Some have gone to extremes in early cutting, and harvested their wheat while in the milk, and suffered serious loss in its weight. We sometimes have rain in harvest, which causes all the wheat in a large region to grow before getting it dry enough to house. A remedy is, to go right on and cut your wheat, rain or shine, and put it up, without binding, in large cocks of from three to five bushels, packing together as close as possible, however wet, and cover the centre with a bundle of wheat to shed rain. It will dry out without growing; and, although the straw will be somewhat mouldy, the grain will be perfectly good, even when it has been so wet as to make the top of the shocks perfectly green with grown wheat. This process is of great value in a wet season. To prepare seed-wheat for sowing, soak it for a day or two in very strong brine; skim off all that rises; remove the grain from the brine, and while wet, sift on fresh-slaked lime until it slightly coats the whole grain; put on a little plaster to render the sowing more pleasant to the hand. Wheat will lie in this condition for days without injury. So prepared, it will exhibit a marked superiority in the growing crop. _Enemies_ of wheat are numerous, and various remedies are proposed. The wire-worm is sometimes very destructive. Wheat planted with a drill, with a heavy cast-iron roller behind each tooth, will not suffer by them; they will only work in the mellow ground between the drills. Drive over a field of wheat exposed to injury from wire-worms with a common ox-cart, and you will notice a marked difference; wherever the cartwheel passed over, the wheat remains unharmed by the wire-worm, while on either side much of it will be destroyed. But the wheat-midge, or weevil, is the great enemy, rendering the cultivation of wheat in some localities useless. One precaution is, to get the wheat forward so early and fast as to have it out of the way before they destroy it. This is often done by early sowing, high fertilization, and warm land. Sometimes wheat is too late for them, and then a good crop is secured. But this can only be relied on in cool, moist climates. Our hot, dry seasons are not suitable for wheat, late enough to be out of the way of the weevil. The great remedy for this enemy is his destruction. Burning the chaff at thrashing is useless for this purpose. The worm has entered the ground to remain for the winter, before the wheat is harvested. We know of but one way to kill the weevil, and that is, by insect lamps or torches in the field in the evening. The flies are inactive until evening, when, from dusk till eight or nine o'clock, they deposite their eggs in the blossoms and chaff of the wheat. Now, it is ascertained that this fly, like many other insects, will fly several rods to a light. Twenty-five torches at equal distances, in a ten-acre lot of wheat, would be near enough. Nearly all the flies in a field would fly to them in half an hour. These need be lighted only on pleasant evenings, as weevils will not work in wind or rain, and they only commit their depredations during the time the wheat is in blossom. Let twenty-five racks, or holders of some kind, be put up on ten acres of wheat, and have pitch-pine put in them and ignited, after the manner of night fishermen, and let this be done a few nights, during the blossoming season of wheat, and the fly will be destroyed and the crop saved, in the worst weevil-season that ever occurred. In the absence of pitch-pine, some other light can be devised--as, balls of rags dipped in turpentine and sulphur, as in a torchlight procession. Something can be devised that will burn brilliantly for an hour: this will not cost fifty cents an acre, during the weevil-season, and will prove almost a perfect remedy. Rust in wheat is only avoided by getting your wheat to maturity before the rust strikes it. If it is nearly mature, and the rust strikes it, cut it and shock it up in the shortest time possible. Wheat is a great subject in agriculture, on which many volumes have been written, and on which it is customary to write long articles. We trust the recapitulation of what we have said, in the following brief rules, is more valuable to the practical wheat-culturist than any large volume could be. Analyses of wheat-bran and straw, the philosophy of rust in wheat, the length, size, and color of the weevil, and the great diversity of opinions on wheat-growing, are not what practical men regard. The one question is, How can I grow wheat surely and profitably? The following rules answer this important question, rendering failure unnecessary:-- 1. Make your soil very rich, putting the manure as deep as convenient. Apply lime, wood-ashes, and potash, the latter dissolved and applied to your coarse manure. 2. Under-drain thoroughly all wheat-land, except that on a dry subsoil. 3. Plow deep and subsoil all wheat-lands, except those on a gravelly or sandy bottom. 4. Plant wheat from two to six inches deep, according to the texture of the soil--deepest on the lightest soil. Roll after sowing, and roll light lands with a heavy roller. 5. Always get your wheat in early, and in a finely-pulverized soil, and be careful not to seed too heavy. 6. Sow seed that has not long been grown in your vicinity, and steep it two days, before sowing, in a brine, with as much salt as the water will dissolve, sifting fine, fresh lime over the wet grain, after removing it from the brine; put on, also, plaster-of-Paris or wood-ashes. 7. Harvest wheat before the straw becomes dry, or the grain hard. 8. Destroy weevil by lights in the field, on the pleasant evenings during the blossoming season. WHORTLEBERRY. Of this excellent berry there are several varieties, distinguished by the height of the bushes, or by the color of the fruit. The main divisions are, the _Swamp_ and the _Plain Whortleberries_. The swamp variety has been transferred to gardens, in Michigan, and has proved valuable. The shrub attains considerable size, producing fruit more surely and regularly than in its wild state, and of an improved quality and larger size. It may be grown as well as currants all over the country. The small plain variety is usually found on sandy plains, and is a great bearer of fruit everywhere highly prized. It may be transferred to all our gardens, by making a bed of sand six inches or a foot deep, or it may be so acclimated as to grow well in any good garden soil, and become a universal luxury. We recommend it as a standing fruit for all gardens. WILLOW. The cultivation of willow for osier-work is pursued to some extent in this country, and might be greatly increased. At one fourth the present prices, it would pay as well as any other branch of agriculture. Some varieties will grow on land of little value for other purposes, and all on any good land. Willows will take care of themselves after the second or third year. The more usual method of planting is of slips, ten inches long, set in mellow ground about eight inches deep, in straight rows four or six feet apart, and one foot apart in the rows--except the green willow, which is put two feet apart in the row. They should be kept clear of weeds for the first two years. The osiers are to be cut when the bark will peel somewhat easily, and may be put through a machine for the purpose, invented by J. Colby, of Jonesville, Vermont, at the rate of two tons per day, removing all the bark, without injuring the wood. Different opinions prevail respecting the varieties most profitable for cultivation; they vary in different localities. The manufacture of willow-ware will increase with the increased production of osiers, and the consequent reduction of their cost. WINE. We have elsewhere stated that our only hope for pure wine in this country is in domestic manufacture. We shall here give two recipes that will insure better articles than are now offered under the name of imported wines. _Currant Wine._--This, as usually manufactured, is a mere cordial, rather than a wine. The following recipe gathered from the _Working Farmer_, is all that need be desired, on making wine from currants, cherries, and most berries, that are not too sweet. Take clean ripe currants and pass them between two rollers, or in some other way, crush them, put them in a strong bag, and under a screw or weight, and the juice will be easily expressed. To each quart of this juice, add three pounds of _double-refined_ loaf sugar (no other sugar will do) and water enough to make a gallon. Or in a cask that will hold thirty gallons, put thirty quarts of the juice, ninety pounds of the sugar, and fill to the bung with water. Put in the bung and roll the cask until you can not hear the sugar moving on the inside of the barrel, when it will all be dissolved. Next day roll it again, and place it in a cellar of very even temperature, and leave the bung out to allow fermentation. This will commence in two or three days and continue for a few weeks. Its presence may be known by a slight noise like that of soda water, which may be heard by placing the ear at the bung hole. When this ceases drive the bung tight and let it stand six months, when the wine may be drawn off and bottled, and will be perfectly clear and not too sweet. No alcohol should be added. Putting in brandies or other spirituous liquors prevents the fermentation of wine, leaving the mixture a mere cordial. The use of any but double-refined sugar is always injurious, and yet many will persist in using it, because it is cheaper. The reason for discarding, for wine-making, all but double-refined sugar, may be easily understood. Common sugar contains one half of one per cent. of gum, that becomes fetid on being dissolved in water. The quantity of this gum in the sugar, for a barrel of wine, is considerable--enough to give a bad flavor to the wine. This is avoided by using double-refined sugar, which contains no gum. This recipe is equally good for cherry wine. The following recipe for making _Elderberry Wine_, produces an article that the best judges in New York and elsewhere have pronounced equal to any imported wine. Its excellence has made quite a market for elderberries in New York. These berries are so easily grown, and the wine so excellent, that their growth will be encouraged throughout the country. It is not only an exceedingly palatable wine, but is better for the sick, than any other known. To every quart of the berries, put a quart of water and boil for half an hour. Bruise them from the skin and strain, and to every gallon of the juice add three pounds of _double-refined_ sugar and one quarter of an ounce of cream of tartar and boil for half an hour. Take a clean cask and put in it one pound of raisins to every three gallons of the wine, and a slice of toasted bread covered over with good yeast. When the wine has become quite cool, put it into the cask, and place it in a room of even temperature to ferment. When the fermentation has fully ceased, put the bung in tight. No brandy or alcohol of any kind will be necessary. Any one following this recipe _exactly_, will be surprised at the excellence of the wine that will be the result. Of _Grape Wines_, there are several varieties, whose peculiarities are determined mainly by the process of manufacturing. A full treatment of the subject would require a volume. The following brief directions will insure success in making the most desirable grape wines: 1. Let the grapes become thoroughly ripe before gathering, to increase their saccharine qualities and make a stronger wine. All fruits make much better wine for being fully ripe. Cut the bunches with a sharp knife and move carefully to avoid bruising. Spread them in a dry shade to evaporate excessive moisture. 2. Assort the grapes before using, removing all decayed, green, or broken ones, using only perfect berries. 3. Mash the grapes with a beater in a tub, or by passing them through a cider-mill. "_Treading the wine vat_" was the ancient method of mashing the grapes, not now practised except in some parts of Europe. 4. To make light wines put them at once into press, as apple pomace in a cider-press. 5. To make higher-colored wines let the pomace stand from four to twenty-four hours before pressing. They will be dark in proportion to the length of time the pomace stands. 6. To make wines resembling the Austere wines of France and Spain, let the pomace stand until the first fermentation is over, called "fermenting in the skin." 7. The "must" or grape-juice is to be put into casks, the larger the better, but only one pressing should be put into one cask. Put in a cellar of even temperature, not lower than fifty nor higher than sixty-five degrees of Fahrenheit, and where there is plenty of air. Prepare the cask by burning in it a strip of paper or muslin, dipped in melted sulphur, and suspended by a wire across the bung-hole. Fermentation commences very soon and will be completed within a few days or weeks according to the temperature. Its completion is marked by the cessation of the escape of gas. No sugar, brandy, or any other substance, should be added to the grape-juice to make good wine. They are all adulterations. The wine having settled after this fermentation, may be racked off into clean casks, prepared as before. A second fermentation will take place in the spring. It should not be bottled until after this second fermentation, as its expansion will break the glass. While in the casks they should always be kept full, being occasionally filled from a small cask, kept for the purpose. When this fermentation ceases, bottle and cork tight, and lay the bottles on their sides, in a cool cellar. The wine will improve with age. Sometimes it remains on the lees without racking and is drawn off and bottled. Frequently the wine does not become wholly clear and needs fining. Various substances are used for this purpose, as fish-glue, charcoal, starch, rice, milk, &c. The best of these substances is charcoal, or the white of eggs and milk. Add by degrees according to the foulness of the wine. An ounce of charcoal to a barrel of wine is an ordinary quantity; or a pint of milk with the white of four eggs--more or less according to the state of the wine. _Rhine Wine_ of Germany may be made as follows:-- Take good Catawba or Isabella grapes, and pound or grind them so as to crush every seed and leave them in that state for twenty-four hours. Fumigate the cask by burning strips of muslin dipped in sulphur as in the preceding recipe. Strain or press out the juice into the cask filling it and keeping it _entirely full_, that impurities may run out of the bung, during fermentation. In the spring prepare another cask in the same way and rack it off into that. When a year old bottle it and it is fit for use. Sweeter wines than any of the above are made by adding sugar to the must before fermentation. It should be _double-refined_ sugar, and still it is an adulteration. WOODLANDS. One of the greatest errors of American farmers is their neglect to cultivate groves of trees for woodlands, in all suitable places. Our primeval forests have been wantonly destroyed, and the country is not yet old enough to feel the full force of neglecting to replenish them, by new groves, in suitable localities. On the points of hills, rough stony places, sides of steep hills, ravines that can not be cultivated, and by the side of all the highways of the land, trees should be cultivated: in some places fruit-trees, but in most places forest-trees. The advantages would be manifold; they would afford shade for cattle, groves for birds, which would destroy the worms; they would break off the cold winds from crops, cattle, fruit-orchards, and dwellings; would greatly enrich the soil by their annual foliage, afford abundance of fuel at the cheapest rates, give much good timber, provide for fine maple-sugar, and be the greatest ornaments of the rural districts. Only think of the comfort and beauty of fifty miles square, in which not a street could be found which had not trees on each side, not more than twelve feet apart. When such trees should become twenty years old, the pedestrian or the carriage could move all day in the shade, listening to the music of the birds, and inhaling the aroma of the foliage or flowers. To every owner or occupant of the soil we say, plant trees. POULTRY. Fattening and preparing poultry for the market are important items in rural economy. Plenty of sweet food and pure water given at regular times, and the fowls not allowed to wander, are the requisites of successful fattening. The best feed for fattening fowls is oat-meal. Next to this is corn-meal. Three things are essential in food for fattening animals, flesh-forming, fat-forming, and heat-producing substances. Of all the grains ordinarily fed, oat-meal contains these in the best proportions, and next to this comes yellow Indian corn meal. Fat is good, but must be given in a hard form as in mutton or beef suet. Rice boiled in sweet milk, fed for a day or two before killing fowls is said to render the flesh of a white delicate color. At least one third of the value of poultry in the market depends upon properly preparing and transporting it. 1. Do not feed fowls at all for twenty-four hours before killing them. 2. Kill by cutting the jugular vein with a sharp pen-knife, just under the sides of the head, and hang them up to bleed. 3. Pick carefully and very clean, without tearing the skin, and without scalding. Singe slightly if need be. Dip in hot water for three or four seconds and in cold water half a minute. 4. Do not open the breast at all, but remove the entrails from the hind opening, leaving the gizzard in its place. Put no water in but wipe out the blood with a dry cloth. Leaving the entrails in is injurious, tending to sour the meat and taint it with their flavor. 5. Do not allow your poultry to freeze by any means. For transporting to a distant market, pack in shallow boxes never containing over three hundred pounds each and in clean straw without chaff or dust, and in such a manner that no two fowls will touch each other. 6. Geese and ducks look better with the heads cut off. But all fowls having their heads removed must have the skin drawn down and tightly tied over the end of the neck bone. This will preserve them well and give a good appearance. To preserve fowls for a long time in a perfectly sweet condition for family use, fill them half full or more with pulverized charcoal, which will act as an absorbent and prevent every particle of taint. AGRICULTURAL PERIODICALS. The following list of Agricultural Periodicals embraces all that have come to our knowledge. In a subsequent edition we shall endeavor to render the list more complete, and give the special design of each, with the frequency of publication, form, price, editor's and publisher's names, etc. NAME OF PAPER. PLACE OF PUBLICATION. American Farmers' Magazine _New York City._ American Farmer _Baltimore, Md._ Alabama Planter _Mobile, Ala._ American Agriculturist _New York City._ Canadian Agriculturist _Toronto, C. W._ Cultivator _Albany, N. Y._ Cotton Planter _Montgomery, Ala._ Cultivator _Columbus, Ohio._ Cultivator _Boston, Mass._ California Farmer _San Francisco, Cal._ Country Gentleman _Albany, N. Y._ Farmer and Planter _Pendleton, S. C._ Granite Farmer _Manchester, N. H._ Genesee Farmer _Rochester, N. Y._ Horticulturist _Albany, N. Y._ Homestead _Hartford, Ct._ Journal of Agriculture _Chicago, Ill._ Maine Farmer _Augusta, Me._ Michigan Farmer _Detroit, Mich._ Magazine of Horticulture _Boston, Mass._ Massachusetts Ploughman _Boston, Mass._ New England Farmer _Boston, Mass._ New Jersey Farmer _Trenton, N. J._ North Carolina Planter _Raleigh, N. C._ Ohio Valley Farmer _Cincinnati, Ohio._ Ohio Farmer _Cleveland, Ohio._ Prairie Farmer _Chicago, Ill._ Rural New Yorker _Rochester, N. Y._ Rural Southerner _Ellicott's Mills, Md._ Rural American _Utica, N. Y._ Southern Planter _Richmond, Va._ Southern Cultivator _Augusta, Ga._ Southern Homestead _Nashville, Tenn._ Valley Farmer _St. Louis, Mo._ Vermont Stock Journal _Middlebury, Vt._ Wisconsin Farmer _Madison, Wisc._ Working Farmer _New York City._ INDEX. Acclimation; 9 Agricultural Periodicals, List of; 440 Almonds; 10 Animals, Rules for feeding; 178 Apples; 12 Apple-Tree Wood, Analysis of; 14 Apple-Worm, Remedy for; 22 Apricot; 50 Artichoke; 52 Ashes; 53 Asparagus; 54 Atmosphere, Important Auxiliary in the Growth of Plants; 278 Balm; 56 Barberry; 56 Barley; 57 Barns; 59 Bean, Coffee; 130 Beans; 60 Bees and Beehives; 64 Beets; 77 Bene Plant; 81 Berries, Preservation of; 367 Birds useful in destroying Insects; 82 Blackberry; 83 Black Currant; 165 Black Raspberry; 85 Board Fences; 179 Bones, their Value as a Fertilizer; 85, 275 Borden's Milk Condensation; 369 Borecale; 86 Borer, Preventive and Remedy for; 23 Breck's Book of Flowers; 195 Breeding in, Deteriorating Effects of; 142 Broccoli; 86 Broom-Corn; 87 Brussels Sprouts; 89 Buckthorn; 89 Buckwheat; 90 Budding; 91 Buffalo Berry; 390 Bulbous Flowering Roots; 195 Bushes, Eradication of Noxious; 94 Butter; 95 Butter Dairy; 167 Butter-Making, Essential Rules for; 100 Butternuts; 102 Cabbage; 102 Calves; 108 Canker-Worm, Remedy for; 25 Cans; 111, 367 Carrots; 112 Caterpillars, how destroyed; 24 Cauliflower; 113 Celery; 114 Charcoal; 125 Cheese; 115 Cheese-House; 167 Cherries; 118 Chestnuts; 125 Chickens; 197-199 Churn, Best Form of; 98 Churning, Brief Rules for; 97 Cider; 126 Citron; 127 Cleft-Grafting; 210 Clover; 128, 235 Coffee Bean; 130 Colts, Milk from the Dairy Excellent food for; 248 Conical Training; 420 Corn; 131 Corn, Broom; 87 Cottage, Economical Plan of a Laborer's; 257 Cotton; 134 Cotton Plant, Analysis of; 139 Country Residence, Plan of; 255 Cows; 140 Cranberry; 156 Cucumber; 161 Curculio on Plum-Trees, Unfailing Remedy for; 355 Currants; 164 Currants, Black; 165 Currant Wine, Recipe for making; 433 Dairy; 167 Declension of Fruits, Cause of and Remedy for; 168 Dill; 169 Downing's List of Gooseberries; 208 Drains; 170 Ducks; 172 Dwarfing Fruit-Trees, Process of; 173 Early Fruits and Vegetables, how produced; 174 Eastern States, Varieties of Apples adapted to; 20 Eastwood's Work on Cranberry Culture; 156 Egg Plant; 175 Eggs, how to test and preserve them; 176 Elderberry; 176 Elderberry Wine, a Recipe for Making; 434 Endive; 177 Fan Training of Trees; 417 Farm-Buildings; 251 Feeding Animals; 178 Fences; 179 Fennel; 181 Figs; 181 Fish; 184 Flax; 192 Flowering Shrubs; 195 Flowers; 193 Foot-Paths, Circular, how laid out; 254 Foot-Rot in Animals, Remedy for; 388 Forest Trees; 437 Fowls; 196 Fruit; 200 Fruits, Declension of; 168 Fruits, Early, how produced; 174 Fruits, Preservation of; 367 Fruits, Manner of Gathering; 205 Fruit-Trees, Location of; 269 Fruit-Trees, how to induce Productiveness in; 201 Garden; 202 Garlic; 205 Gathering Fruits; 205 Geese; 205 Gooseberry; 206 Grafting; 208 Grafting-Wax, how made; 211 Grapes; 212 Grape-Wine, Method of making; 435 Grasses; 227 Greenhouse; 231 Guano, Care requisite in the Application of; 277 Guenon's Treatise on the Milking Qualities of Cows; 142 Gypsum; 232, 247 Hams, Preservation of; 370 Harrowing; 233 Hay, making and preserving of; 234 Hedge; 236 Hedge-Pruning; 238 Hedges, Shrubs suitable for the Formation of; 57, 89, 236-238 Hemp; 239 Hens; 196 Herbaceous Flowers; 196 Hive, Proper Construction of; 74 Hoeing; 241 Hogs; 409 Hogstye, Plan of; 252 Hogstye, Manure from the; 274 Hops; 242 Hops, Method of curing; 244 Horizontal Training; 419 Horse; 246 Horseradish; 249 Hotbeds; 249 Hothouse; 231 Houses; 251 Hybrids; 259 Inarching; 259 Insects; 260 Iron-Filings, Beneficial to Pear-Trees 261 Irrigation; 261 Italian Farmhouse, Plan of; 228 Kale; 86 Labels for Fruit-Trees; 202 Laborer's Cottage, Plan of; 257 Landscape Gardens; 263 Lawton Blackberry; 84 Layering; 264 Laying in Trees; 265 Leeks; 266 Lemon; 266 Lettuce; 267 Licorice; 268 Lime, Value of as a Fertilizer; 268 Limes; 269 Liquid Manures, Value of; 273 Location; 269 Locust-Trees; 270 Manures; 271 Maple-Trees, Best Method of tapping; 404 Marjorum; 283 Marl; 282 Melons; 283 Mice, Protection of Fruit-Trees from in Winter; 373 Milk, Condensation and Preservation of; 369 Milking Qualities of Cows, Infallible Marks of; 142-155 Milking, Rules for; 96, 155 Milk, Value of for Horses; 248 Millet; 287 Mint; 288 Moisture, Retention of, leading Benefit of Manure; 277 Mulberry; 289 Mulching; 289 Mushrooms; 290 Muskmelons; 283 Mustard; 292 Nasturtium; 293 Nectarine; 293 New Fruits; 295 New Rochelle (Lawton) Blackberry 84 Northern States, Varieties of Apples suitable for; 30 Nursery; 296 Nuts; 300 Oaks; 301 Oats; 303 Okra; 304 Olives; 304 Onions; 305 Oranges; 308 Orchards; 309 Orchards, Favorable Locations for; 269 Osage Orange; 236 Oxen; 311 Parsley; 312 Parsnips; 313 Pastures; 315 Peas; 316 Peach;; 319 Pear;; 332 Pear-Orchard, Plan of; 337 Pennyroyal Mint; 288 Peppers; 347 Peppergrass; 348 Peppermint; 288 Picket Fences; 180 Piggery, Plan of; 252 Plaster of Paris; 232 Plowing; 348 Plum; 351 Plum, Analysis of; 353 Pomegranate; 359 Potato; 360 Potato-Rot, Cause of and Remedy for; 364 Potato, Sweet; 406 Poultry; 438 Preserving Fruits and Vegetables 367 Protection of Trees for Transplanting 265, 300 Prunes, Domestic; 356 Pruning and Training; 414 Pruning Peach-Trees; 323 Pumpkin; 371 Quince; 372 Rabbits, a Protection of Fruit-Trees from in Winter; 373 Radish; 374 Rail Fences; 180 Raspberry; 375 Raspberry, Black; 85 Rennet, how prepared; 115 Rhubarb; 377 Rice; 378 Rocks, Methods of removing; 379 Rollers; 379 Root Crops; 380 Root-Pruning, Method of; 353 Saffron; 381 Sage; 381 Salsify or Vegetable Oyster; 382 Scraping Land; 382 Seeds; 383 Shade-Trees; 437 Sheep; 384 Sheep-Manure, Value of; 389 Shepherdia, or Buffalo Berry; 390 Skippers in Cheese; 117 Soils; 391 Sorgho, or Chinese Sugarcane; 405 South, Apples adapted to the Climate of the; 31 Spearmint; 288 Spinage or Spinach; 394 Squash; 395 Stable; 59 Stilton Cheese, Method of Making; 117 Strawberry; 396 Subsoil Plowing; 349 Succory; 177 Sugar; 403 Summer-House, Plan of; 256 Summer Savory; 406 Sunflower; 406 Sweet Potato; 406 Swine; 409 Tobacco; 411 Tomato; 412 Tongue-Grafting; 211 Tools; 414 Training and Pruning; 414 Transplanting; 421 Turnip; 422 Van Mon's Theory of the Production of New Fruits; 295 Vegetables, Early; 174 Vegetable Oyster; 382 Vineyards; 213, 216 Wagon-House; 251 Walls, Stone; 179 Watering Gardens in Dry Seasons, Benefits of; 261 Watermelons; 283 Wax-Moth, Protection against; 73 Weevil, or Wheat Midge, Remedy for; 430 Western States, Varieties of Apples suitable for the; 30, 48 Wheat; 423 White Blackberry; 84 Whortleberry; 432 Willow; 432 Wine; 433 Wines, Adulteration of Imported; 212 Winter Lettuce; 177 Wood-Ashes, Value of as a Manure; 53 Woodlands; 437 Woolly Aphis, Remedy for; 23 * * * * * AGRICULTURAL BOOKS, PUBLISHED BY A. O. MOORE, (LATE C. M. SAXTON & CO.) 140 FULTON STREET, NEW YORK, _And sent by mail to any part of the United States on receipt of the price._ 1 American Farmers' Encyclopedia. A work of great value $4 00 2 Dadd's Modern Horse Doctor 1 00 3 Dadd's Anatomy and Physiology of the Horse 2 00 4 Do. do. do. do. colored plates 4 00 5 Dadd's American Cattle Doctor 1 00 6 The Stable Book 1 00 7 The Horse's Foot, and how to keep it sound; paper 25 cts., cloth 50 8 Bridgeman's Gardener's Assistant 1 50 9 Bridgeman's Florist's Guide, half cloth 50 cts., cloth 60 10 Bridgeman's Gardener's Instructor, half cloth 50 cts., cloth 60 11 Bridgeman's Fruit Cultivator, half cloth 50 cts., cloth 60 12 Field's Hand-Book of Pear Culture 60 13 Cole's American Fruit Book 50 14 Cole's American Veterinarian 50 15 Buist's American Flower Garden Directory 1 25 16 Buist's Family Kitchen Gardener 75 17 Browne's American Bird Fancier; paper 25 cts., cloth 50 18 Dana's Muck Manual, cloth 1 00 19 Dana's Prize Essay on Manures 25 20 Stockhardt's Chemical Field Lectures 1 00 21 Norton's Scientific and Practical Agriculture 60 22 Johnston's Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry (for Schools) 25 23 Johnston's Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology 1 00 24 Johnston's Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry and Geology 1 25 25 Downing's Landscape Gardening 3 50 26 Fessenden's Complete Farmer and Gardener 1 25 27 Fessenden's American Kitchen Gardener 50 28 Nash's Progressive Farmer 60 29 Richardson's Domestic Fowls 25 30 Richardson on the Horse 25 31 Richardson on the Hog 25 32 Richardson on the Pests of the Farm 25 33 Richardson on the Hive and Honey Bee 25 34 Milburn and Stevens on the Cow and Dairy Husbandry 25 35 Skinner's Elements of Agriculture 25 36 Topham's Chemistry Made Easy 25 37 Breck's Book of Flowers 1 00 38 Leuchar's Hot Houses and Green Houses 1 25 39 Chinese Sugar Cane and Sugar Making 25 40 Turner's Cotton Planter's Manual 1 00 41 Allen on the Culture of the Grape 1 00 42 Allen's Diseases of Domestic Animals 75 43 Allen's American Farm Book 1 00 44 Allen's Rural Architecture 1 25 45 Pardee on the Strawberry 60 46 Peddar's Farmer's Land Measurer 50 47 Phelp's Bee-keeper's Chart 25 48 Guenon's Treatise on Milch Cows; paper 38 cts., cloth 60 49 Domestic and Ornamental Poultry, plain $1.00, colored plates 2 00 50 Randall's Sheep Husbandry 1 25 51 Youatt, Randall, and Skinner's Shepherd's Own Book 2 00 52 Youatt on the Breed and Management of Sheep 75 53 Youatt on the Horse 1 25 54 Youatt, Martin, and Stevens, on Cattle 1 25 55 Youatt and Martin on the Hog 75 56 Barry's Fruit Garden 1 25 57 Munn's Practical Land Drainer 50 58 Stephens' Book of the Farm, complete, 450 illustrations 4 00 59 The American Architect, or Plans for Country Dwellings 6 00 60 Thaer, Shaw, and Johnson's Principles of Agriculture 2 00 61 Smith's Landscape Gardening, Parks, and Pleasure Grounds 1 25 62 Weeks on the Bee: paper 25 cts., cloth 50 63 Wilson on Cultivation of Flax 25 64 Miner's American Bee-keeper's Manual 1 00 65 Quinby's Mysteries of Bee-keeping 1 00 66 Cottage and Farm Bee-keeper 50 67 Elliott's American Fruit Grower's Guide 1 25 68 The American Florist's Guide 75 69 Hyde on the Chinese Sugar Cane, paper 25 70 Every Lady her own Flower Gardener; paper 25 cts., cloth 50 71 The Rose Culturist; paper 25 cts., cloth 50 72 History of Morgan Horses 1 00 73 Moore's Rural Hand Books, 4 vols. 5 00 74 Rabbit Fancier; paper 25 cts., cloth 50 75 Reemelin's Vine-Dresser's Manual 50 76 Neill's Fruit, Flower, and Vegetable Gardener's Companion 1 00 77 Browne's American Poultry Yard 1 00 78 Browne's Field Book of Manures 1 25 79 Hooper's Dog and Gun 50 80 Skilful Housewife; paper 25 cts., cloth 50 81 Chorlton's Grape Grower's Guide 60 82 Sorgho and Imphee, Sugar Plants 1 00 83 White's Gardening for the South 1 25 84 Eastwood on the Cranberry 50 85 Persoz on the Culture of the Vine 25 86 Boussingault's Rural Economy 1 25 87 Thompson's Food of Animals; paper 50 cts., cloth 75 88 Richardson on Dogs; paper 25 cts., cloth 50 89 Liebig's Familiar Letters to Farmers 50 90 Cobbett's American Gardener 50 91 Waring's Elements of Agriculture 75 92 Blake's Farmer at Home 1 25 93 Rural Essays 3 00 94 Fish Culture 1 00 95 Flint on Grasses 1 25 96 Warder's Hedges and Evergreens 1 00 
31373	----	http://www.archive.org/details/solarisfarm00edsorich SOLARIS FARM; A Story of the Twentieth Century. by MILAN C. EDSON. Published by the Author at 1728 New Jersey Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C. In the Year 1900. Press Work by Byron S. Adams. [Illustration: CAPTAIN MILAN C. EDSON.] Copyright, 1900 by Milan C. Edson. All Rights Reserved. DEDICATION. This book, is dedicated to the sons and daughters of the farms of the Republic as an expression of the author's realization, that Agricultural people constitute a large majority of its working units: That as such, its destiny is in the hands of their boys and girls, as its future guardians, fathers and mothers: That for the reasons stated, they should become its dominant thinkers and leaders: That Agriculture is the true basis of industrial and commercial success; hence, it should be made the most noble and pleasing of all occupations: That the alarming encroachments of land monopoly, and the inability of the small farm to meet the expense of using the latest and best machinery, threatens the total extinction of all land-owning farmers, and of their consequent reduction to the dependent caste of farm laborers: That the isolated life and the severe toil of the small farm, has a dangerously depressing effect on the minds of its people: That all of these things, seem to demand the changes suggested by the contents of this book. PREFACE. Strong in my convictions that all civilizations are false, which do not civilize the lowest units of any social order, I have written Solaris Farm as my contribution towards the improvement of agriculturists as a class, of the race as a whole; towards the establishment of a truer civilization, organized for the purpose of securing the same degree of progress for the lowest orders of humanity, which have been or can be attained by the highest. In any social or political fabric, wide differences of wealth, of education, of refinement in its sub-divisions are dangerous, they swiftly lead to the introduction of caste. Caste is the dry rot, which, when once established, will surely destroy all progress, all vitality, by slowly eating away the social, industrial and political life of the nation. In preparing this book for the press, I wish to acknowledge my obligations to the following authors, for much valuable information and inspiration: To Elmer Gates, the discoverer of new domains in Psychology, the inventor and discoverer of the art of Mentation, the founder of the Elmer Gates Laboratory, at Chevy Chase, Maryland: To Henry George, the author of "Progress and Poverty:" To Edward Bellamy, the author of "Equality," and "Looking Backward:" And lastly to that greatest of living Frenchmen, M. Godin, the author of "Social Solutions," and the founder of the "Familistere," with its famous industrial enterprise, located at the city of Guise, France; the grandest co-operative success of the age! A last word to my readers: Do you wish to join forces with the humanitarians? If so, always strive so to educate the people, that they may fully understand the true object and purpose of human life; and the necessity for the upbuilding of social, industrial and political institutions, in harmony with the demands of that purpose. This will require unselfish, persistent, co-operative effort and thought. In no other way, can you so greatly aid the cause of progress. MILAN C. EDSON. No. 1728 N. J. Ave., N. W. WASHINGTON, D. C., SEPT. 1ST, 1900. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE 1. A FARMER'S SON WITH PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES 1 2. THE OUTLINES OF A GREAT PROBLEM 4 3. AN ADVERTISEMENT INTRODUCES THE HEROINE 9 4. THE STORY OF A STONE AND WHAT CAME AFTER 10 5. FAIRY FERN COTTAGE 27 6. FENNIMORE FENWICK 34 7. AN ALASKA KINDERGARTEN 37 8. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE "FAIRIES." 41 9. THE PROBLEM VS. A GOOD MAN WHO IS AS RICH AS HE IS NOBLE 49 10. THE REAPING OF THE DEATH ANGEL 53 11. THE MARTINA MINE 58 12. SPIRIT AND MORTAL--FATHER AND DAUGHTER 61 13. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 63 14. THE ETHICS OF PLANETARY EVOLUTION 71 15. THE CO-OPERATIVE FARM AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 75 16. FILLMORE AND FERN 87 17. SOLARIS FARM 93 18. CLUB LIFE AT SOLARIS 112 19. FENWICK HALL 121 20. THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA 133 21. HIS WOOING PROSPERS WHILE OUR HERO ENJOYS HIS FIRST VACATION 141 22. A SURPRISE PARTY AND RECEPTION COMBINED 150 23. FORMATION OF POPULAR SCIENCE CLUBS 160 24. A TWENTIETH CENTURY LOVE LETTER 162 25. THE REPLY 171 26. FERN FENWICK ARRIVES AT SOLARIS 179 27. THE FESTIVAL 185 28. THE ORATION 187 29. THE STORY OF GILBERT GERRISH; OR, THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAKEST UNIT 216 30. OUR HERO AND HEROINE DISCUSS AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS 227 31. THE DISCUSSION GROWS MORE INTERESTING 248 32. SOCIAL SOLUTIONS 256 33. SOLARIS SCRIP 270 34. THE INSURANCE OFFERED BY CO-OPERATIVE FARMING 273 35. THE MOTHERS' CLUB 287 36. THE CO-OPERATIVE FARM AS A FACTOR IN THE CAPITAL AND LABOR PROBLEM 299 37. THE CO-OPERATIVE FARM TRIUMPHANT 313 38. THE KINDERGARTEN AT SOLARIS 327 39. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR 346 40. THE COMING ERA OF GOOD ROADS 362 41. CO-OPERATIVE ETHICS 371 42. RURAL LIFE UNDER THE REIGN OF CO-OPERATION 387 43. A TWENTIETH CENTURY HONEYMOON 416 44. THE NEW CRUSADE 423 SOLARIS FARM. A STORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. A FARMER'S SON WITH PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES. One bright summer afternoon, near the close of the month of August, 1905, two young college chums, Fillmore Flagg and George Gaylord, just met after a long separation, were seated on a rustic bench near a well-appointed mountain hotel. The superb view before them was well worthy of their half-hour's silent admiration. Full one thousand feet above the sea stands "Hotel Mount Meenahga" in the heart of the "Shawangunks," a mountain range in the state of New York, famed for its scenic beauty, cool dry air, pure water and commanding elevation. Looking northward a most charming landscape presents itself, a wonderful group of mountain ranges, stretching for seventy-five miles from near the Delaware Water-gap eastward to and including the Alpine peaks of the famous Catskills. Within this lovely semicircle lie the highlands of Ulster, Sullivan and Orange, lifted like seats in some vast amphitheater, tier above tier, while nearer a beautiful mingling of villages and hamlets, broad fields, green woods and silvery water-courses, constitutes a picture of enchanting beauty--a picture constantly changed, shaded and intensified by broad patches of moving shadow and sunlight from a great fleet of fleecy clouds sailing so swiftly, so silently and so majestically across the summer sky. "How exquisitely beautiful!" murmured Fillmore Flagg, "I wish I had my camera that I might make it captive, carry it hence and keep it, a rare token of beauty, a source of joy forever." At this point, a brief description of the young men will serve by way of a further introduction. Fillmore Flagg was fully six feet in height, though his compact, well-rounded figure made him seem less tall; his straight, muscular limbs were in harmony with his deep chest and symmetrical shoulders. His rather large but beautifully turned neck and throat rose straight from the spinal column, firmly supporting a noble head, everywhere evenly and smoothly developed. His thick, soft brown hair, worn rather short, was inclined to curl, giving to the outlines of the head a still more heroic size. His forehead was large, full, dome shaped and remarkably smooth; the brows, finely penciled and well arched, were matched in color and slenderness by a short moustache which seemed a shade or two darker than the hair. His eyes were large, very expressive, of a soft dark brown, bright and flashing with emotion, full of pensive light when partially shaded by their thick silken lashes; his smiling glance possessed a curiously fascinating magnetic charm. The attractiveness of the entire face and neck was intensified by the wonderful marble-like smoothness of skin which accompanies that rare, pale olive tint of complexion. A soft Alpine hat and a neat business suit of dark clothing completes this picture of the personal appearance of Fillmore Flagg. Later on we shall learn to know him better by his genial temperament, mental and moral characteristics. George Gaylord was above medium height, slender and pale, slightly inclined to stoop; wore glasses, and a thick black moustache which entirely concealed his thin lips. His heavy growth of long, coal black hair was naturally bent on falling over his high white forehead. His large black eyes were deeply set under heavy dark brows, more square than arched. His straight nose and smoothly shaven chin were set in line with his high square forehead. While both face and figure suggested the student, a tall silk hat and a square cut, closely buttoned black frock coat, stamped him at once as a clerical student. "Tell me, George," said Fillmore Flagg, "how have you fared since we parted, and what are your ambitions and plans for the future?" "There is not much to tell you, Fillmore. As you know, when I left college, my mother was a widow with a very limited income, which made it difficult to meet my college expenses. Mother had set her heart on my entering the ministry. Her only brother, a childless widower, and a man of some wealth and great influence in the church affairs of his prosperous New England town, promised his assistance. Behold the result! I have just graduated with fair honors from a prominent theological institute. I am to take charge, this coming November, of a large church and congregation in the manufacturing city where my uncle resides. Uncle George, for whom I was named, is now with my mother visiting friends in New York. They have kindly selected as my future wife, my uncle's favorite niece and prospective heiress to his wealth. When last we met, four years ago, Martha Merritt was a sweet little miss in short dresses; but gave promise, even then, of unfolding into a lovely woman. To tell you the truth, under the circumstances, I am more than half prepared to fall in love with her when we meet again. However ambitious my day dreams in the past may have been, a not unkindly fate has woven the web of destiny for me and fixed my future life work without much effort on my part; and yet I am quite content to have it so. Two weeks ago I left the heat and bustle of the great city for a month's rest in this quiet place. I little dreamed of meeting you here; I need not say I am delighted: I am, thoroughly so. I find you looking your best, yet I can easily perceive you have been hard at work as usual. I do not believe you could possibly keep still and rest, even for one short week, let the inducement to do so be ever so great. And now, my dear Fillmore, since I have, so to speak, brought myself up to date for your benefit, may I ask for a similar service on your part?" CHAPTER II. THE OUTLINES OF A GREAT PROBLEM. Fillmore Flagg, seemingly self absorbed, remained silent for some moments, softly stroking his chin with his strong, shapely hand, his dreamy eyes with far-off vision intent, apparently noting details in the hazy borders of the distant landscape. At last, turning to his friend with a hearty hand clasp he said: "George Gaylord, I congratulate you; your future is bright; you deserve it, your mother deserves it. The fates have been very generous with you. I am glad you are content to accept the good things of life which they bring to you. "As for myself, my lines of life are cast in swift waters. My environments, in their reaction upon me from within, seem to develop a determined will to wrench from the rocks of destiny by ceaseless and persistent effort, whatever gifts I am to possess or enjoy. Work I must. Obstacles seem only to stimulate my ambition to overcome them. Yet I am passionately fond of the beautiful; poetry, music and art in all the loveliness of its varied forms; they affect me profoundly. This poetic side of my nature I inherit from my dear, devoted mother--my highest ideal of all that is good, lovely and angelic in woman. Sadly and often have I missed her loving tenderness, her watchful care, her beautiful smile. The shadowy Angel of Death claimed her and bore her from my sight when I was but four years old. Young as I was at that time, this beautiful world has never seemed quite so bright to me since. "My father, Fayette Flagg, was a noble man of sterling worth. He belonged to a class of thrifty, hard-working, pioneer farmers, on the broad, fertile prairies of the state of Nebraska. Until the death of my mother he was happy and prosperous, hopeful, helpful and brave. After that great blow came to him, he recovered slowly, as from a long, severe illness and never again was quite so courageous and strong, or as hopeful as before. "With the advent of the last decade of the nineteenth century a feeling of foreboding unrest seemed to brood over the western farmer: blight and drouth destroyed his best crops just when they seemed to promise most; farm stock had to be reduced. The good years were few, the bad years were many. The great strain of carrying a large outfit of expensive agricultural machinery which on a small farm could be used with profit only from ten to forty days in the year, began to be felt. The debts, incurred by the purchase of the machinery, were growing steadily larger. With each renewal of the mortgage on the farm, came the demand for a bonus and a higher rate of interest. Meanwhile the price of land and of all farm products kept on falling, falling steadily year after year. Only taxes and freight rates from farm to market kept up. High rates of interest and of freight swallowed up everything and seemed to accelerate the terrible shrinkage of values. My father found, to his amazement, that his farm was now mortgaged for more than it would sell for under the hammer. He gave up the struggle in despair. The savings of a lifetime, his health, strength and courage all exhausted; his homestead and farm sold from under him; he lost all hope and in a few short weeks died, a broken-hearted man. I went to him a few months before the end: I tried all in my power to save him, but alas! I could do nothing but bury his body beside that of my mother and come away, filled with the determination of solving the most difficult problem of a lifetime--a problem that lies at the very foundation of the permanency of this republic. 'How to keep the farm lands of America in the hands of the native farmers of this and the coming generations? How to help them to help themselves?' The decree has gone forth. The small farm and farmer must go. They are doomed. A great wave of land monopoly, rolled up by a large class of very shrewd, far-seeing capitalists, is even now sweeping across the continent. Seventy-five years hence only a pauperized peasantry of ignorant farm laborers, bound to the soil as hopelessly as the slave to the master, will coin their lives of ceaseless, unrequited toil to swell the rent roll of the non-resident landowner, who, as lord of the domain, through his heartless agent, will exact his tribute to the uttermost farthing. Must the sons and daughters of the farms of this republic come to the bitter heritage of such a life? Surely! We have already seen the beginning of the end! The sad case of my father can be duplicated a hundred times or more in almost every county of our western states. States that are incalculably rich in their magnificent domain of broad acres of the most fertile land the sun ever shone upon; capable, when permanently placed in the hands of a properly equipped, scientifically educated class of people, of producing the food supply of the world: but under the blight of the monopoly system, history will repeat itself. Our agricultural interests will languish and wither; dependent manufactures, and all branches of exchange and commerce, must, in time, follow. What then will happen to society? To government of both state and nation? In the face of this appalling situation, how stupendous the problem! By what effort can a great counter tidal-wave be set in motion upon whose crest the salt and salvation of the republic, the sons and daughters of American farms, may be carried safely to the permanent heritage of the soil they till? As in the past, so in the future must we look to them for our true reformers, leaders, thinkers and statesmen. They are endowed by birth, by constant association in youth with soil and sunlight, fields and grass, green meadows and mossy brooks and, best of all, doubly endowed by the inbreathing of ozone laden breezes from mountain and forest, with that rare combination of nerve, moral, mental and physical stamina, courage and patriotism which is necessary to preserve this republic and to keep it, ever and always, a model of progressive excellence for all the nations of the earth. This means the embodiment by them of more and better mind, that they may do better, wiser and more dominant thinking; be able to comprehend the sum of human knowledge to such an extent that they may add to it; to so understand their lives, and their relations to the Universe around them, that they may become masters of themselves and their environments--a law unto themselves--fitting them for a perfect citizenship of a perfected republic. This most desirable of all accomplishments, requires better surroundings, more leisure and opportunity for self-improvement, more money, shorter hours of more remunerative labor--labor transformed from a hated drudgery to a desirable occupation. Behold, friend Gaylord, you have before you the outlines of the problem. Can you suggest anything towards its solution?" "I can suggest nothing," said George Gaylord; "You have stated the case with the clearness and eloquence of a Henry George. If what you say is true, the problem is a very serious one. But are you quite sure the facts will fully warrant your conclusions? If so, what are your plans and what have you been doing towards working out this puzzling question?" "Oh yes!" said Fillmore Flagg, "I am very sure of my position. The more I study the question, the firmer my conviction that I have understated the case instead of overstating it. I am studying the agricultural question from every possible standpoint and I propose to make it a life work. Every branch of science may aid me; I must master at least a portion of each. Since we left college I have become fairly proficient in surveying and civil engineering; have devoted considerable time to photography; I am classed as a skilled electrician; I have thoroughly mastered agricultural chemistry and several of the more important branches of that interesting and most wonderful science. As you know, I am very fond of mechanics and of all kinds of machinery. I could not rest until I had gained a practical knowledge of all kinds of tools and learned how to repair or construct most kinds of machinery. Two months ago I completed a general course of study at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art, which, for the especial work I have in view, I consider by far the most beneficial and practicable of all my acquirements. I am now resting, cogitating and waiting for the golden opportunity which, sooner or later, must come, to enable me to commence my work." CHAPTER III. AN ADVERTISEMENT INTRODUCES THE HEROINE. "By the way, I have something to show you. I clipped this advertisement from a leading New York daily paper this morning, and have read it carefully many times. Somehow, I have an abiding conviction that it will lead me to the high road, on the way towards the successful solution of my problem. I am going to apply in person." Full of curiosity, George Gaylord took the clipping and slowly read aloud: "WANTED: A skilled mechanic, qualified to act in the capacity of landscape gardener and agricultural chemist. Applicant must be a strong, healthy young man, of good habits, pleasing address; with a general knowledge of business methods, and an excellent moral character. Qualifications must be well attested by recommendations from reliable parties. A graduate of the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art is preferred. Salary liberal. Apply in person at the office of BITTERWOOD & BARNARD, Atty's., Atlantic Building, Washington, D. C." "This is curious! It seems to point directly to you, Fillmore. I do wonder in what peculiar capacity you are to act, and who your real employer is to be? I shall be full of unsatisfied curiosity until I know the sequel." At this moment George Gaylord was suddenly interrupted by an unlooked-for gust of wind whirling around the shoulders of the big rock standing above and behind them. The fluttering paper slipped from his fingers and went sailing away over the tree tops, down the mountain side, with that erratic up and down, eddying motion peculiar to run away, fly away papers. In an instant both young men were upon their feet, intently watching the uncertain flight of the clipping. A few moments later it fell to the ground, just at the feet of two ladies who, with heads protected from the sun by large parasols, were slowly walking around the bend of the broad, well kept road, winding down the mountain side. The younger of the two ladies picked up the advertisement, hurriedly scanned it, and then raised her eyes to discover the two young men as probable owners of the truant paper. "Ah!" said George Gaylord, "I recognize those people. It is Miss Fenwick and her travelling companion. Come along Fillmore, let us join them at once and claim your lost clipping. The opportunity for an introduction to two very interesting ladies, who are among the most noted guests of the hotel, is too good to be lost." Accordingly they hurried down the steep path that joined the road near where the ladies were still waiting, at a point full three hundred feet below. Approaching, with hats in hand, George Gaylord said: "Allow me, Miss Fenwick, to introduce to you my friend and college chum, Fillmore Flagg: for a peculiar purpose of his own he wishes to regain possession of that flighty paper which, fortunately for him, the prank playing wind carried to your feet but a moment ago." With a slight inclination of her queenly head, she turned with a dazzling smile to meet the inquiring glance of Fillmore Flagg. In a clear musical voice, full of thrilling cadence and power, she said: "Mr. Flagg, if you are particularly interested in this paper, I am very sure I am quite happy to meet you, and take pleasure in returning it to you now; I trust that we may have the opportunity of becoming better acquainted before you leave these lovely mountains." Turning to her companion she continued: "Permit me, gentlemen, to introduce my friend and companion, Mrs. Bainbridge; Mr. George Gaylord, who is just entering the ministry, and his college friend, Mr. Fillmore Flagg." Mrs. Bainbridge responded with a pleasant smile. She was a tall, well formed, well preserved woman of forty; full of a quiet dignity, with an air of refinement that fitted her like a garment. Her heavy dark hair, coiled high on her shapely head, was just slightly silvered with gray and seemed to be a fitting foil to her large melancholy black eyes--eyes that from their slumbering depths seemed to impress the beholder with suggestions of some mysterious power, gleaming messages, like beacon flashes, from her inner life. With her becoming dress of rich, dark cloth, gloves and parasol to match, she looked the cultured lady to perfection. Turning her steps up the mountain, Fern Fenwick said: "Gentlemen, as it is near the hour for supper, we had best return to the hotel at once. I think too, by this time the mail from the station must have arrived." Fillmore Flagg was at her side in an instant, choosing the side opposite the parasol, which gave him a clear view of her charming profile. George Gaylord and Mrs. Bainbridge followed a little more slowly. The conversation soon became animated. While they are thus occupied let us try to get a more complete picture of Miss Fern Fenwick. Her round, exquisitely proportioned figure was of medium height, straight as an arrow, full of grace with every movement. Her quick, firm, elastic step was Youth personified: a charming maiden, she, of twenty summers. The artistic outlines of her plump arms and shoulders, beautifully modelled bust, throat and neck, so admirably proportioned, would have satisfied the most carping critic; poet or painter, he would have pronounced them a dream of perfect symmetry. Her queenly shaped head, so gracefully poised, like a clear cut cameo, was a poem of intellectual development on lines of rarest beauty. Her thick, glossy hair of dark chestnut brown, fine as spun silk and inclined to a wavy crimp, was artistically coiled in a most becoming style; small ears of perfect shape, and transparently pink, were set close to the head. The curve of the brow, in perfect line with the pleasing oval of both cheek and chin; a Grecian nose and cherub mouth completed the perfect contour of a face and head of marvellous beauty--a beauty made more brilliant by large, lustrous eyes of blended sapphire and amethyst, flashing jewels of deep violet blue, so clearly expressing the varying emotions by their ever changing tints of sparkling light. Her dress, a close fitting gown of rich, soft, silver gray material, was stylishly made, with a narrow line of lovely lace at the throat; perfect fitting gloves of the same shade of gray, with a parasol to match, completed a costume that seemed to bring out and intensify a most charming complexion of pale pink and white, faultlessly smooth and transparently pure: at once indicative and prophetic of a strong vital temperament, perfect mental and physical health; pure, highly cultured mind and a wealth of personal magnetism--that silent charm of mysterious potency--pervading and surrounding her like the perfume of sweet flowers, winning the unsought admiration, friendship and fidelity of all who came within the radiance of her powerful magnetic aura. All this, and more, Fillmore Flagg perceived and felt. He walked and talked as one in a dream. Never before had he met so fair a vision of female loveliness, with grace so winning, gestures so perfect and voice so musical. His heart, overflowing with a new ecstatic emotion, paid silent homage to this queenly creature. He was lost in admiration. Swallowed up and absorbed by the first incoming wave of a great love. He was lifted out of himself, above and beyond all gross things of earth, into a heaven of pure delight. His better nature was thrilled and profoundly moved. He felt that in the presence of this pure, angelic woman he could never again do an unworthy act. A life work, up to the standard of his highest ideal, was a tribute of devotion he would willingly lay at her feet. All too soon for Fillmore Flagg the moments flew by. Almost before he was aware of it they were ascending the steps of the hotel. Pausing on the broad veranda for a moment before separating, Fern Fenwick said: "Gentlemen, Mrs. Bainbridge and myself have planned for a carriage drive to-morrow to Sam's Point. We have two seats in our conveyance at your disposal and would be delighted to have you accompany us. May we hope that you both can come with us?" Fillmore Flagg and George Gaylord both eagerly accepted the invitation, the ladies passed on to their rooms, while the young men turned their steps once more to the rustic bench to enjoy the magnificent sunset view of the landscape they had so much admired earlier in the day. CHAPTER IV. THE STORY OF A STONE AND WHAT CAME AFTER. Sam's Point, the crowning backbone of the highest mountain in the Shawangunk range, bends away from the general course of its fellows apparently for the especial purpose of giving the mountain climber, by its isolation, a commanding view in almost every direction except to the north-east. For miles in extent the flat, rocky top of this crown forms a promenade of magnificent proportions up amid the clouds. In shape it is a long, slender triangle, about three miles from its base westward to the point where its highest altitude is reached, two thousand three hundred and forty feet above tide-water. Cradled in its rocky bosom, near the base of the triangle, lies a crystal lake--one hundred and fifty acres of sparkling water. At this point the promenade is fully three-fourths of a mile wide, gradually narrowing to a width of less than one hundred feet at the extreme point. The long battlemented sides of this lofty triangle, like some mighty fortress, grim and frowning, are protected and supported by perpendicular cliffs of black rock, rising like some bastioned wall of terrifying proportions, two hundred feet above the shoulder of the mountain. In a sheltered nook, near the point, about five hundred feet below the base of the cliffs, stands the Sam's Point Hotel, scarcely more than a cottage in size. Here Fern Fenwick's party left the carriage. Taking the narrow, zig-zag pathway that led to the cliffs and often pausing to admire the immensity and grandeur of the black rock palisades towering so far above them, they soon found themselves under the nose of the point of rocks. Entering the crevice in the cliffs known as "The Chimney Stairway," they commenced the steep and toilsome climb to the summit; Fillmore Flagg taking the lead and assisting Miss Fenwick, George Gaylord performing the same service for Mrs. Bainbridge; fifteen minutes later they stood, almost breathless, upon the summit, the blue sky all about them, a precipice on either hand where shimmering, giddy space seemed to yawn so frightfully near. Meanwhile a strong, buffeting wind tugged at ribbons and capes, hats and bonnets, so furiously that walking was hazardous; it gave one such an uneasy sensation of giddiness and unstable equilibrium generally, that the temptation to fly over the edge of the cliff was hard to resist. A huge egg-shaped boulder, twenty-five feet in height and as large as a house, poised rather unsteadily on its rounded base, was quite near and gave promise of protection from the violence of the wind. With one accord our party scrambled towards it, the ladies clinging tightly to their escorts with one hand, a firm grip on hat or bonnet with the other. Thus sheltered, and more at ease, they slowly drank in the glorious vision which greeted the eye on every hand. Looking down as from a balloon, at the foot of the mountain, on the north side, the eye was charmed by the length and beauty of the Rondout Valley, through which ran the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and the Rondout River. For miles on either side of canal and river the valley was made more lovely by its checkered farms and gleaming white villages. Directly at the foot of the mountain on the south side, the broader valley of the Wallkill presented an equally beautiful and diversified picture of farm, hamlet and village. Beyond these, in every direction save to the north-east, vast stretches of country lay spread out like a map; the mountains far and near, so dwarfed as to give to the surface the appearance of billowy plains, almost level where they approached the edge of the horizon. The wonderful extent and scope of the view was bounded by the line of the horizon, at least one hundred miles distant. Three-fourths of this sweeping circle responded to the unaided vision, disclosing the blue hills and hazy mountain peaks located in five states: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, altogether presenting in its immensity a landscape as variegated and charming as it was wondrously beautiful and attractive--a marvellous picture of indescribable loveliness never to be forgotten. "How inspiringly magnificent!" said Fillmore Flagg: "All the sublimity of my nature is satisfied." "And I," said Fern Fenwick, "am too profoundly impressed to talk. I would that I could spend hours here in silent admiration." "I think," said Mrs. Bainbridge, "that we would better move further back on the rocky summit where doubtless, sheltered seats may be found, then we can all enjoy this most wonderful of views at our leisure and with some degree of comfort." "Yes," said George Gaylord, "that will be ever so much nicer." "Stop a moment," said Fern Fenwick, who for some moments had been examining the huge boulder which sheltered them, "Have you noticed the curious formation of this immense stone? How many hundreds of tons it may weigh, I hardly dare guess. Geologically speaking, it is a 'stranger rock,' not in any way related to the rocks of this mountain, nor of the mountains near here. It is a mammoth conglomerate of such an interestingly curious compound and of such flinty hardness. At the time of its formation enormous pressure, coupled with the most intense heat, must have molded this strange mass together. Coarse and fine gravel, smooth, round pebbles, from the size of a pigeon's egg to that of a two-hundred-pound boulder, are all jumbled together in great confusion, and so firmly cemented in this immense globular mass of that peculiar, tenacious clay of greenish gray color, which forms so large a part of the drift formation, and which is so widely distributed over the face of our globe--that strange, unaccountable, isolated and unrelated formation, which still remains an unsolved puzzle by our best geologists. I wish you to observe the long sides of this strange rock, especially where the exposed sides of the pebbles have been worn down smooth and even with the clay--how they are marked and striated by shallow grooves, all running in one direction as straight as though graven by rule. Is it possible that any freak or flood of the glacial period could have floated this huge rock to its resting place on the very summit of this high mountain, almost two thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea? Oh! tell me, ye listening mortals, or ye winged winds that blow and pull my ribbons so! whence came this stranger rock? how formed? and how were its smooth, worn sides so systematically engraved?" Fern Fenwick closed her series of queries with a gradually rising pitch and inflection in the ringing tones of her clear, musical voice. With figure erect, eyes flashing, cheeks glowing and hands uplifted, she seemed the personification of some priestess of science. Fillmore Flagg and George Gaylord gazed at her with the admiration of amazement. Mrs. Bainbridge exclaimed: "Why Fern Fenwick! How you do go on with such nonsense, to be sure. No doubt these gentlemen, from this time forward, will look at you as some scientific freak or geological professor of the female persuasion, but recently escaped from the walls of some famous college!" "Mrs. Bainbridge," said Fillmore Flagg, "of course we understand that you were joking in what you said just now: that you really admire the terse, clear, and wonderfully complete description of this strange rock by Miss Fenwick, quite as much as we do." Turning to Fern Fenwick, he continued: "I believe, Miss Fenwick, that I can throw some light on the puzzling questions you have so poetically propounded." "Pray do tell us, Mr. Flagg," said Fern Fenwick; "I can't remember when I was so excited with interest on any subject before." "Very well," said Fillmore Flagg: "That curiously able and intellectual man, Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, in his very interesting book called 'Ragnarok,' or 'The Age of Fire and Gravel,' puts forth a most remarkable theory regarding the drift formation, to the truth of which this huge rock seems to bear witness. The theory, briefly stated, is as follows: A great many ages ago, when this globe of ours was still in the period of cataclysms, rolling through space around the sun, it came in contact with a portion of the end of the tail of some enormous comet, sweeping through the universe on its erratic course. This great boulder is a sample of the component parts of that fiery tail, which smote the exposed face of the earth so terribly with the drift deposit at that time of dire disaster. The age of fire and gravel, surely! This curious clay, now of such flinty hardness, was at one time the exceedingly fine dust of the comet, cohering, collecting and embedding its mixture of pebbles and gravel by the heat and pressure of the friction caused by its incalculably swift passage through space for periods of uncounted ages. Remember that the heat of all drift material in the tail of the comet was greatly intensified by the explosion of accompanying gases as they came in contact with the atmosphere of our earth. All inflammable material on the face of the globe, which was exposed at the time of its passage through the tail of the comet, was burned up: both earth and sky were on fire! Fortunately our flying globe made a quick passage, thus it happened that large portions of its unexposed surface wholly escaped this terrible downpour of fire and gravel, and the absence of all drift deposit on these places is logically accounted for. The atmosphere, so heated during that awful period, drank up the waters of the earth--then came the floods, as the waters fell again. Then followed the reaction period of extreme cold, snow and ice--the glacial period. This particular rock, while following in the train of its parent comet, though lagging many thousands of miles behind, still, being so very large, moved with accelerated speed towards the comet's head, passing on its way countless millions of smaller particles, whose cutting edges scored these grooves. On entering the earth's atmosphere, on account of its great size, this boulder, through the law of attraction, quickly moved to the outermost fringe of the comet's tail nearest the earth, therefore was the first to alight on the top of this mountain, far away from all smaller drift material. "I hope, Miss Fenwick, that my brief and rather speculative answers to your questions, reasoning as I did, from Mr. Donnelly's point of view, may prove at least in a measure satisfactory." "Thank you, Mr. Flagg," said Fern Fenwick, "your answers to my questions have all been very ingenious: equally interesting and satisfactory, especially as to how this mammoth conglomerate came by its grooved lines and, later how it managed to find a resting place on this mountain top, so far from its kind. Mr. Donnelly's theory of accounting for the widely scattered deposits of the drift formation is the most reasonable and logical of anything I have ever read or heard. Doubtless, in course of time, it may be proven the only true one. I see Mr. Gaylord and Mrs. Bainbridge are becoming weary of all this talk about rocks: let us move further back from the point in search of more sheltered and comfortable seats." Accordingly they chose the central path and were soon seated, enjoying the changed landscape from a new point of view. However, Mr. Gaylord was not yet satisfied and soon proposed a walk to the lake. Mrs. Bainbridge was willing but Miss Fenwick had walked enough for one day. A quiet enjoyment of her lofty outlook was what she now most desired. "Very well, Fern," said Mrs. Bainbridge, "Mr. Gaylord will accompany me to the lake and we will bring back for lunch some of those very large, delicious blueberries, which Mr. Gaylord assures me are growing so abundantly around the shores of the lake. You and Mr. Flagg shall remain here with the lunch baskets." This plan was agreed to, and very soon Mrs. Bainbridge and her escort had disappeared on their way to the lake. To Fillmore Flagg it seemed a long time that Fern Fenwick had been sitting so quietly, apparently absorbed in admiring the billowy miles of landscape unrolled so far to the southward. In reality, each was thinking of the other. "Mr. Flagg," said Fern Fenwick slowly, "will you pardon me for asking you some very abrupt questions, or what may seem such when considering our brief acquaintance?" "Certainly," said Fillmore Flagg, "I hope my replies this time may prove as satisfactory as those I gave in regard to the rock. The pardon you crave is granted in advance. Pray proceed." "Tell me, Mr. Flagg, why are you so much interested in that advertisement which came to me so unceremoniously yesterday? And again, tell me why you are so moved and determined to better the conditions of farm life? I suppose you know that I have wealth and leisure at my disposal; it may prove that I can be of great assistance to you. This is my excuse for asking you for more details in regard to your personal plans." With a heart filled with hope, Fillmore Flagg began the recital of the story he had given to George Gaylord on the terrace bench. With frequent glances of encouragement from Fern Fenwick, his inspiration and eloquence grew upon him. He gave a masterly statement of the work, his preparation, hopes and plans. Delighted beyond measure with the undisguised appreciation and approval of this charming woman, whose very destiny in the vista of a coming future, seemed to him to be linked in some mysterious manner with the success of his most cherished ambitions, he cleverly enlarged and perfected the original statement. As he concluded, Fern Fenwick rose to her feet with hands extended, her face glowing with interested enthusiasm, saying: "Mr. Flagg, I most heartily congratulate you on the noble life-work you have planned and chosen, I thank you again and again for the valuable facts you have placed so confidingly in my possession, in regard to yourself and your work. Rest assured my interest and assistance henceforth are at your command. You will understand this more clearly when I tell you that Bitterwood & Barnard are my attorneys, and the advertisement which played such an important part in bringing us together here in these mountains, was drawn up by them for my purposes. That it should bring to me a person of your wonderful ability, integrity, skill and knowledge, is an almost unhoped for piece of good fortune. You are the one, of all others, most eminently fitted to help me to a successful solution of my problem, which you have so admirably stated. Hereafter I am your debtor. I hope to prove a not unworthy employer, or, to put it more pleasantly, an interested co-worker. Will you do me the favor of considering yourself as pledged from this moment to take up my work? Go at once to my attorneys in Washington, ask them for a letter of introduction to me, that you may get more complete details of my plans and work, saying not a word of our present acquaintance. I will furnish you with a check on my Washington bankers, with which to defray your expenses. To-morrow, in company with Mrs. Bainbridge, I go to my summer home on the Hudson near Newburgh, where letters will reach me. This is the twenty-eighth of August; on the fifth of September, at noon meet me in the station at Newburgh. Come prepared to devote a week at the least in discussing the scope and plan of our work, devising ways and means etc. I very much desire that you have an interview with my father, I know he will be pleased with you. Do these arrangements suit your convenience? Do they meet your entire approval?" "I am greatly elated," said Fillmore Flagg, "at this my golden opportunity of commencing what you have so kindly named as 'our' work, under such auspicious circumstances. I thank you, Miss Fenwick, more than words can tell, for your confidence in my integrity and ability, I will do my best to retain that confidence. I am ready to start for Washington to-morrow. I will follow your instructions, and will report to you by letter from that city, and then meet you at Newburgh at the appointed time." As he finished his reply Fern Fenwick said: "Mr. Flagg, I am very much pleased with your prompt decision in favor of my arrangements. I see our friends returning from the lake, will you help me to spread the lunch?" With keen appetites they enjoyed the lunch especially the delicious blueberries which George Gaylord and Mrs. Bainbridge had brought from the lake. The hours passed quickly; the drive back to the hotel was without mishap or incident: the entire party, on separating, voted it a day of perfect pleasure, Fillmore Flagg and George Gaylord expressing their thanks to the ladies for their kind invitation which had given them such a delightful excursion. Later, George Gaylord called at the room of his chum for a few moments chat. "Come in," said Fillmore Flagg, "I was just thinking of you. I have made up my mind to go to Washington to-morrow for the purpose of answering that advertisement. How much longer do you propose to remain here?" "Not more than two weeks," replied George Gaylord. "I understand Miss Fenwick and Mrs. Bainbridge are going away to-morrow. I am likely to have a very quiet time, all by my lone self: I think I must take to bowling for an hour or two each day just to keep up my exercise and kill time. I hope you may be entirely successful in your interview with Bitterwood & Barnard. Remember how much I am interested in this matter, and your promise to let me know the result. By the way, what a perfectly delightful day we have had, thanks to that lucky gust of wind which tore your clipping from my fingers and landed it at Miss Fenwick's dainty feet. What a talented young lady she is, and so handsome too. Her lecture on the mountain top about that stone would have been a credit to any one. I never saw her look such a picture of perfect beauty before. She seemed wonderfully interested in you, Fillmore, especially after your brilliant reply to her series of apparently unanswerable questions. I declare, the profoundness, the ingeniousness, and the boldness of your successful answers filled me with amazement! You fairly surpassed yourself; all the time looking your best, just like a hero. Yet when you looked at Miss Fenwick you seemed just at the point of falling down to worship her. I can't blame you. What a glorious couple you two would make! If it were not for her immense wealth I believe you could win her; any one can see that you have made a very favorable impression. Perhaps you can win her as it is--I wish you all success, you certainly deserve it. Mrs. Bainbridge tells me that at the death of Miss Fenwick's father, some years ago, she became sole heir to his vast fortune; most of it in very rich Alaska gold mines." "Are you quite sure," said Fillmore Flagg, "that her father is dead?" "Yes Fillmore, I am quite sure; although it is just possible that I may have misunderstood Mrs. Bainbridge. In my hotel acquaintance with that lady I discover that she is a very intelligent and accomplished person of rare good sense. Splendid company; we seem to get on famously together, I shall miss her very much I am sure. As usual, I am doing all the talking: it is now your turn to say something." "I think I could," said Fillmore Flagg, "if my chatterbox friend, George Gaylord, would only give me a chance. Miss Fenwick I regard as the most beautiful and cultured woman I have ever met. I do admire her very much, but the possibility of ever winning her for a wife is, at this time, too remote for me to consider for a moment. I must now pack my trunk and then see the hotel clerk about getting it to the railway station. So good night, George, I will see you again in the morning." That night Fillmore Flagg could not sleep. The beautiful image of Fern Fenwick was before him the moment he closed his eyes. The events of the past two days, with their crowding memories, kept racing through his mind: he could not think calmly or connectedly. He was in a fever of expectancy regarding the meeting at Newburgh, and the prospect of spending a whole week at Miss Fenwick's cottage on the Hudson. Then and there, no doubt, she would tell him all about herself, her father, her particular work, when and why she became interested in it etc. But what about the father? How could he have an interview with her father, if Mrs. Bainbridge was correct in saying that Mr. Fenwick had been dead for several years? It was a mystery he could not solve. He did not doubt Fern Fenwick for a moment and felt sure she would, at the proper time, make everything plain. How gracious and winning she had been to him; she seemed to bid him to have courage. In spite of her great wealth, and a hundred other obstacles that might exist, he was more and more in love every hour. If proving himself worthy of her confidence in every way would win her love, surely then, he would win it. With this determination fixed in his mind he fell asleep. In her room that night, as Fern Fenwick brushed her hair and prepared herself for rest, she often paused to ponder over her strange meeting with Fillmore Flagg; thinking what a fine, manly looking fellow he was, and how well he could talk; how thoroughly equipped he was to take up the question of improving farm life, the lives of farmers and their families--the question of all questions for her. Surely, Mr. Flagg bore the stamp of destiny! He was the man of all men to make her work a complete success. How fortunate she was to secure his valuable services. How strange, that after a brief acquaintance of only two days, she should have such perfect confidence in a comparative stranger. Yet, she did not doubt his integrity; she knew he was loyalty itself; she intuitively felt that she could trust him implicitly--he would never betray her interests under any circumstances. She knew from his every look, tone and gesture that he admired her intensely, devotedly. Her own feelings, she did not care to analyze. With a sigh, more of pleasure than weariness, she composed herself for the night and was soon lost in sleep. CHAPTER V. FAIRY FERN COTTAGE. One week has passed since the events narrated in the previous chapter. At Cornwall on the Hudson, on a West Shore train speeding north, we find Fillmore Flagg; his mission at Washington successfully accomplished, the letter of introduction from Bitterwood & Barnard secured. In another short hour he will be at Newburgh. Will the lovely face of Fern Fenwick be the first to greet him? As the moments fly by, his heart beats faster. He feels the surging tide of his all-absorbing love for this beautiful woman, thrilling and permeating his entire being. He tries to be calm, to think what he ought to say that would be fitting and appropriate; he knows his eyes are blazing and his cheeks glowing with an unwonted fire, still his thoughts refuse to flow into the satisfying forms of speech he most desires to use at the coming meeting, which seems to him to be the marking of a great crisis in his life. Ah! There is the whistle sounding! The speed of the train is checked as it approaches the station. He steps on to the platform while the train is still moving. He beholds many upturned faces in the surging crowd between him and the doorway of the ladies' waiting room, but Miss Fenwick he cannot see. Will he ever reach that room? Has anything happened to her? A great fear contracts his heart, he fancies he fairly staggers as he enters the door. In an instant he is suffused with a great joy. By the window, awaiting his approach, stands Fern Fenwick, the perfect picture of cool, contented loveliness. She extends her hand and greets him with a firm clasp of hearty welcome, and a second edition of that dazzling smile, so becoming to her, so bewitching to him. "How do you do, Mr. Flagg? I believe your train must be late. How well you are looking, in spite of the heat and the dust! We will have your baggage secured as soon as possible and placed in the carriage, then we will drive to the cottage in time for lunch." "Thank you Miss Fenwick, I am delighted to see you looking so well. My journey from Washington has been a very pleasant one; I have enjoyed it and have not suffered from the heat." The carriage now came up, they stepped in and commenced the beautiful drive of one and one-half miles to "Fairy Fern Cottage," which was charmingly located on the summit of these famously terraced hills. Hills that have been historic since the revolutionary days of General Washington, when their slopes were white with the tents of his soldiers. As they approached the cottage, the artistic eye of Fillmore Flagg noted with pleasure the broad expanse of spacious lawn, gently sloping down to the road. Half-moon-shaped, it presented for his admiration five acres of smoothly shaven, velvety green. For one-eighth of a mile, the entire width of the lawn and cottage grounds, a low wall of ornamental cut stone separated the lawn from the road and formed the straight line of the half-moon. From the gates at either end of the wall a broad, beautifully kept driveway swept around the semicircle of the lawn, passing just in front of the cottage at the center of the deep bay of the half-moon. On each side of the driveway the greensward was beautified by alternating star and diamond-shaped plots of geraniums, roses, gladioluses, canna and nasturtions. Sitting close to the outer edge of the drive, about ten feet apart, commencing at the corners of the porch on either side, were rows of potted palms extending around the curve, one hundred and fifty feet each way--the palms gradually growing smaller as the distance from the cottage became greater. The effect was beautifully unique and suggestively semi-tropical. The cottage and lawn was embayed by a crowning crescent of choice foliage and shade trees; the thin horns of the crescent terminated at the gateways in low gray stone towers. From these points the horns gradually grew broader and the shrubbery rose higher. First the rhododendrons mixed with clumps of hollyhocks, next flowering almonds, roses, spireas and syringas; then came the drooping long leaf sugar pines, with an artistic mingling of slender limbed graceful silver birches: farther back were the taller firs and spruces, interspersed with thick clumps of small copper beeches, extending to and joining at the back of the cottage, the dense forest of tall, straight bodied elms, oaks and maples which partly hid and shaded the stables and the kitchen portion of the cottage. The cottage itself was built of gray stone; with thick walls and large, low, deep seated windows. It was two stories in height, with three square towers rising twenty feet higher. The central tower was larger, and gave space within its walls for one grand room of magnificent proportions, thirty feet square and with a fifteen foot ceiling. The general effect of the cottage, lawn, and crescent background of foliage and forest, was as novel as it was beautiful. As the carriage entered the farther gateway, Fillmore Flagg was surprised and delighted: "How perfectly exquisite!" he exclaimed: "A real gem! A romantic scene from fairyland! Rightly named 'Fairy Fern Cottage!' It is a fitting home for Fern Fenwick." "Thank you, Mr. Flagg," said Fern Fenwick as they stepped from the carriage to the porch: "I appreciate your praise of my cottage home. I love it, I am proud of it, I give you a hearty welcome to its halls. May your memories of it prove always pleasant. Let us enter. During your stay you are to occupy the front room on the second floor, the one under the right hand tower. I think you will find the view from the windows very pleasing and attractive. The luncheon bell will sound in just half an hour." In the dining room Fillmore Flagg found Mrs. Bainbridge who greeted him very cordially. She sat at the left of Fern Fenwick, who was at the head of the table. The table itself was oval shaped, very large, seemingly of rich, solid mahogany; the china and silver were elegant and artistic. The center piece was a large silver tray filled with a wonderful collection of rare ferns. Around it a ring of cut glass bouquet holders, filled with spikes of flaming gladioluses, formed a most effective border. "You are to sit here at my right, Mr. Flagg," said Fern Fenwick. As Fillmore Flagg took the proffered seat, he thought her a most charming hostess, admirably fitted to preside over this exquisitely decorated table. He looked in vain for her father; finally concluding that Mr. Fenwick must be a confirmed invalid, confined to his room. Luncheon over, Fern Fenwick invited Fillmore Flagg to her study to consider the business of the work before them. Her study proved to be the large square room in the central tower, which was so generously lighted by its eight large windows. The furniture was of carved oak; the carpet and hangings, rich and heavy, were of a pale lilac tint, which gave an air of peaceful quiet and harmony to the room. From the front window, looking eastward, a long stretch of the beautiful Hudson could be seen at one sweeping glance. In the south east corner of the room stood Fern Fenwick's desk, a large one with a roll top. At the right of the desk, on an easel against the wall, was a very fine, life size crayon portrait of a noble looking man of sixty winters or more. The massive forehead was both broad and high and very smooth. The eyes were wide apart, large and expressive, the full beard, thick and fine; the hair, abundant and wavy. Both hair and beard were evenly tinged with gray. The body was large, erect and well proportioned--it fittingly matched the noble head. The portrait impressed one as being life-like and full of character. Close beside the easel was a large arm chair, upholstered with stuffed leather, a grayish brown. Lying across the arms of the chair was a large, peculiarly shaped trumpet of aluminum, ornamented with a heavy cord and tassel of gray silk. "Mr. Flagg," said Fern Fenwick, "this is my private workroom; here I am undisturbed and not at home to callers. This is my desk. Here you see my father's portrait: this is his favorite chair. Will you be seated in the smaller chair near it? I will sit in the chair at my desk." "Pardon me, Miss Fenwick," said Fillmore Flagg, "Up to this time I had thought of you as living here with your father: I now perceive, from the way you speak of his portrait and of his favorite chair, that he must be dead. Please correct me if I am wrong in my conclusions." "I will explain the situation in a very few words," said Fern Fenwick. "In the eyes of the world I am an orphan, my father and mother having both passed from this to the land of spirit. The world, in its blind ignorance, calls them dead. To me, thanks to my mediumship, and to the mighty truth of spirit communion, they are still conscious, living, loving parents. Every day, here in this room, they come to me and through the trumpet there, speak to me as naturally, as fluently and as lovingly as ever. I feel and realize their constant watchfulness and loving care. In times of need their advice never fails, always proving as wise as it is unerring. They never for a moment allow me to realize that I am an orphan in any sense of the word. The word Death has no terrors for me: I realize that for them it means simply a happy transition to a higher life, filled with broader and brighter possibilities; and, blessed truth! that they are permitted to come to me when I need them. I sometimes shudder when I think what might have happened to me if I had not been born and bred a spiritualist and a medium. However, we will speak of these things more at length later on. At this time, under my father's guidance and with your assistance, I am to carry out and complete his plans for the improvement of farm life on lines quite in harmony with your ideas. I know he approves of you and of your work, and has confidence in your integrity and ability. At the proper time he will speak to you personally through the trumpet. Let us now consider another matter pertinent at this time. "In order that you may thoroughly understand the situation that surrounds and affects our work, it will be necessary for me to tell you the story of my life, and with it the story of the life of my father." CHAPTER VI. FENNIMORE FENWICK. "On a pioneer farm in northwestern Iowa, with a broad expanse of beautiful prairie on every side, far from town or village, lived my grandfather, George Fenwick. On this farm in October, 1840, my father, Fennimore Fenwick, was born. Of a family of nine children, five boys and four girls, he was the fifth, two of the brothers and two of the sisters being older. Closely associated as a healthy, harmonious family of children, they grew up surrounded by the conditions of an isolated farm life, so general in the widely scattered settlements of those early days, with only now and then rare chances for a little schooling of the most primitive character. However, they shared with each other their joys and sorrows, their plays and privations; always forbearing and patient, kind and affectionate, light-hearted, sympathetic and helpful, they did much to develop that broad, loving, genial nature which made my father kin to all mankind. So just and true! So nobly unselfish! A signal illustration of the great blessing which Nature's beneficent law of compensation brings to large families. "Passing on to September, 1865, at the close of the war of the rebellion, we find the large family, so long and harmoniously united, now separated and widely scattered. Grandfather and grandmother Fenwick both died during the closing year of the war. With the exception of my father, the brothers and sisters were all married and settled on farms of their own: some in Iowa, one in Missouri, two in Kansas, and two in Minnesota. The homestead was divided between the two younger brothers. All of the brothers served as soldiers, good and true, during the war; the two younger only one year each. My father, more fortunate than the others, by his bravery and soldierly excellence won a commission, and came home the captain of his company. "From this point forward we will follow my father's career as he makes a pathway in life for himself. "From 1865 to 1871 he devoted his time and his savings to hard study in the best of schools, finishing a master of his profession--a mining engineer and expert in assaying and metallurgy. From 1871 to 1882 he was general manager of a wealthy mining company in Colorado at a large salary, making a name for himself as one of the most skillful and successful men in the profession. While in Colorado my father was haunted by an intuitive feeling that the gold-bearing quartz region of Alaska held a rich find in store for him. In October, 1882, a very strong corporation was organized in San Francisco, 'The Alaska Mining Co.,' to open and operate their extensive mines in Alaska. The directors of the company chose my father manager. They offered him an increased salary to go to Alaska to take entire charge of the work. This position he accepted and retained for five years. During that time he discovered a very rich mine on a small, rocky island near the coast. In partnership with his old friend, Mr. Dunbar, one of the San Francisco directors of the Alaska Mining Co., my father, at the end of five years service for the company, had developed the mine on the island into one of the best paying and most extensive of that famously rich gold bearing quartz region. This was the foundation and support of his vast fortune, which thereafter required his entire attention. At the death of Mr. Dunbar, which occurred in 1890, his one-third interest in the mine passed to his son, Dewitt C. Dunbar, a young man of great energy and integrity, with an excellent business education. He impressed my father as one in every way trustworthy and capable. At my father's request, Dewitt C. Dunbar, accompanied by his young wife, at once removed to Alaska. Under my father's tuition he began to prepare himself to take the active management of the mine, which had been christened 'The Martina.' "In 1882, while on his first visit to San Francisco, my father met and loved Martina Morrison, my mother--my beautiful mother. She was twenty-seven, my father forty-two. They were perfectly adapted to each other, and both equally charmed and devoted. She possessed a fine mind, well cultured; a handsome physique, charmingly graceful in every movement; and, her crowning glory, an exceedingly amiable disposition. Martina Morrison, by those who knew her longest and best, was declared to be the soul of honor. She was an excellent medium, an enthusiastic and devoted Spiritualist--one of its purest and most eloquent exponents, highly esteemed by all as an able and earnest worker in the service of the two worlds. Fennimore Fenwick, my father, soon became much interested in her wonderful mediumship, and later became convinced of the absolute verity of the mighty truths of Spiritualism. He at once declared himself its willing and outspoken advocate: in his enthusiasm of delight he even hailed it as the coming religion of the world. "Martina Morrison had such confidence in my father's future mining success, that she readily yielded to his urgent request for a speedy marriage, that she might accompany him on his first trip to Alaska. And thus it was they sailed away on their bridal tour, their destination that far off land of flashing glacier and unexplored forest, almost, if not quite, beyond the borders of civilization. This long voyage to an unknown country had no terrors for them. They were all the world to each other. A bright halo of hope and happiness spread a soft glow of enchantment over ship and sail, sea and sky, so vivid, so far reaching, that it even touched and tinted the distant shores of that far off, rock bound coast of Alaska. Smooth seas, lovely weather and favoring winds speeded the voyagers: those halcyon days flew swiftly by. Almost before they dreamed it possible the vessel came to anchor in the port that marked the end of the voyage. Safely landed, my father reported at once at the office of The Alaska Mining Company, only a few miles distant. There he commenced his five years of management for the Company, of which I have already spoken. There my mother remained until December, 1884, when she returned to San Francisco, to visit her friends. My father followed her five months later." CHAPTER VII. AN ALASKA KINDERGARTEN. "In June, 1885, I was born, and soon became a very active member of the Fenwick family. I was pronounced by all who saw me an offspring in every way worthy of my noble father and my beautiful mother. When I was two months old, my parents returned to Alaska, taking me with them. There I remained until I was seven years old--seven years in that forbidding clime, so near the Arctic Circle. Isolated from other children, yet how happy and contented I was. Those years recall a troop of joyous memories, with not a bitter one to mar the group. My beloved parents were my only companions, playmates, teachers and confidants. I was papa's own girl. He was very proud of me and wished me to be with him as much as possible. He never wearied in the endless task of answering my questions, always so skillfully directing them by suggestions, that in my receptive mind there was soon unfolded a clear conception of the outlines of the different branches of all useful knowledge. When I was four years of age I knew the alphabet perfectly and could spell and construct a great number of words with my lettered blocks, and then copy them on my slate. When I was five years old, thanks to my mother's patient teaching, I could read fairly well. My father's ingenious methods soon made me familiar with the key-words of geology, chemistry, (including the names of minerals, metals and gases) botany, history, geography, physics and astronomy. I was unconsciously taught to associate these words or names with the groups, or families, to which they belong. I would spend hours with my father in the most delightful game of separating and classifying a miscellaneous heap of different colored blocks, bearing the names of minerals, metals and gases and the key-words of the studies I have just mentioned. To illustrate: The astronomy blocks were blue with the names in white letters; the geology blocks were a deep reddish brown, with names in gray; chemistry, red, lettered in black; botany, green, lettered in yellow; geography, gray, lettered in blue; history, black, lettered in red; physics, a deep orange yellow, lettered in white; mathematics was represented in a small way by the cipher and nine digits, lettered in black upon ten plain unpainted blocks, giving in their forms that number of the principal geometrical figures, to which was added a shallow box with a broad lid, perforated by ten holes, corresponding to the blocks in number, size and shape, but large enough for the blocks to easily pass through into the box. "In these groupings my childish interest and delight was intensified by my father's personification of the different families, such as: 'Mr. Astronomy Blue,' 'Mrs. Geology Brown,' 'Mr. Chemistry Red,' etc. For instance, the wonderful stories he told to me of the minerals, metals and gases--the sons and daughters of Mr. Chemistry Red, as he termed them--describing their loves and hates, the great variety of pranks they played, the queer combinations they entered into, the good and the bad work they performed, etc. These to me were fairy stories of the most charming kind, while at the same time they gave me a correct idea of the powers and properties of these unfamiliar things and served to identify them more closely as members of the chemistry family. My mother was a natural teacher, very proficient in botany, and in history, with its flower and fruitage of classic prose and inspiring poetry. She entered into my father's 'block-signal-system' of education with an enthusiasm as zealous and childish as my own, therefore her contributions to the rapidly increasing store of blocks were large and exceedingly interesting. Her stories regarding the numerous members of the botany and history families proved equally profitable and charming; those about plants and trees especially so. These stories and plays of science grouping, always associated with such pleasant emotions of my childish heart, became permanently fixed and dominant in my mental growth, forming separate brain structures around which the details of the accumulated knowledge of future years could easily and naturally classify and crystallize. "Thus swiftly passed those happy years of my early girlhood. So constantly was I associated with my dear father and mother that schools I did not need. In my seventh year, under their supervision, I commenced a systematic course of scientific reading which I kept up until after I graduated from college. I commenced with the Science Primer Series, reading aloud to my parents one half hour each morning and evening, conversing and commenting on the different topics as we went along. This proved to be a continuation of the game of blocks: just as interesting, equally entertaining; all about the same familiar families. I enjoyed it so much and never once dreamed I was accomplishing a great deal of good hard study. To me it was play; play that gave me more pleasure than any of my childish sports. I soon began to ask for an extension of the half hour lessons to an hour each; when my request was granted my cup of pleasure was full, my joy complete. With each succeeding week my interest in all my studies continued to grow. Yet my health remained perfect: my physical kept an even pace with my mental growth, largely owing, no doubt, to the much enjoyed hours of good romping exercise and the dancing and singing which followed my reading lessons. "You must pardon me, Mr. Flagg, if I should tire you with such a detailed account of my child life; my excuse must be, the valuable hints it may offer when we come to consider a school system for the children of our model co-operative farm." "I am profoundly interested," said Fillmore Flagg. "The very wonderful result flowing from the wise methods conceived by your parents and carried out by them so devotedly, fills my mind with admiration and offers a flood of suggestions as to the possibilities of what may be accomplished by a properly conducted, well equipped school on a co-operative farm. But you must not allow me to interrupt--please proceed with your very interesting story." CHAPTER VIII. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE "FAIRIES." Fern Fenwick rose from her seat saying: "As it is near sunset, Mr. Flagg, I have something to show you in the way of a surprise, which I wish you to see before it becomes too dark: after having seen it you will better understand why this house was named 'Fairy Fern Cottage.' Therefore I propose that we now adjourn to the cool shade of the grounds at the rear of the cottage, postponing the recital of the remainder of my story until this evening." "I shall be delighted to follow you," said Fillmore Flagg. "You have excited my curiosity; I am just in the mood to learn all I can about this lovely cottage and its beautiful surroundings." As they reached the shady lawn, so cool and sweet from its recent sprinkling, Fillmore Flagg observed that a wide, straight avenue, shaded by towering oaks and widely branching elms, led from the rear porch of the cottage to the broad front of the roomy stone stables, some two hundred and fifty feet distant. In the center of this avenue, with a finely graveled carriage drive on either side, rose a long line of huge stone arches, ten in number. These imposing structures of solid masonry were full thirty feet high, spreading to a width of thirty feet at the base. The two center arches were each twenty feet thick; the others, ten feet each. The open space between the arches was uniformly ten feet; the open circle under each arch was twenty feet in diameter. The vista formed by the spaces and arches together, was over two hundred feet in length. From the farther arch to the front of the stables lay thirty feet of smooth, clean gravel which covered, at this point, the full width of the avenue, seventy-five feet, forming the open court, around which was built the stables and the two tastefully designed stone buildings on either side--one, beautifully fitted up for the residence of the superintendent, the other containing the heating and pumping apparatus and the electric generator. The two wide center arches supported the huge metal tank which held the ample water supply of both cottage and outbuildings. Evidently, they were admirably adapted to that particular purpose. The rough stone work of the outside of all the arches was artistically covered and beautified by a luxuriant growth of intermingled ivy and cinnamon vine, which gave a still deeper shade to the interior. To the beholder, the exterior effect of the vines on the long line of arches was as beautifully romantic as if it really were one of those old Abbeys in picturesque ruin, so charmingly described by Sir Walter Scott. Deep grooves in the stone work, with light iron frames fastened near the outer edges of the arches, gave support during the cold weather to a roof of double glass, which covered all the open spaces between the arches, converting the whole into one vast greenhouse, through which passed the system of heating pipes from the furnace room to the cottage, thus providing a roomy winter home for an army of tropical plants and shrubs and at the same time protecting the water supply from the ill effects of all frost. A screen of interlacing vines, in place of the glass roof, now served to make the shade of the archway almost complete. Having sufficiently examined the exterior and becoming to some extent familiar with the general plan and purpose of these unique arches, Fillmore Flagg and Fern Fenwick returned to the covered entrance from the kitchen porch. Here, as they were standing a few feet above the ground, they had an unobstructed view of the interior of the archway. Through the center, where the lower disc of the open circles touched the ground, ran a deep bed of coarse gravel, covered with a thick layer of smooth round pebbles, forming a perfectly drained pathway about three feet in width which extended uniformly from one end of the archway to the other. Conforming to the contour of the arches, rising and receding in unison, this pathway was bordered on either side by what appeared to be a continuous terrace of three stone benches, each one foot high and of the same width. These benches really were very heavy square terra cotta pipes, ingeniously cemented together with telescopic joints, and having thick, grooved covers which formed the protecting conduits for the wires of the lighting system and the pipes of the irrigating and heating apparatus. Artistically arranged on these benches, in pots that were beautifully modeled, colored and glazed, was a wonderful collection of choice ferns, embracing all of the known varieties in prodigal profusion. The pots were so arranged that the smaller varieties occupied the lower benches, with the larger ones in gradually increasing sizes on the higher benches farther back. Viewed from either end of the archway they formed two matchless banks of the rarest verdure and the loveliest foliage the world ever saw. Everywhere the eye was delighted by great masses of drooping fronds of delicate green, like rare lace in fineness--outrivaling in beauty the plumes of the famous birds of paradise. "This is simply superb!" exclaimed Fillmore Flagg. "I never saw anything one half so lovely! Shall we walk through now?" "Wait a moment, Mr. Flagg," said Fern Fenwick. "The twilight shadows are so deep you have, as yet, caught only a glimpse of the rare beauty of my lovely ferns." Stepping quickly to the right side of the first arch, she pressed a button and lo! those wonderful banks of ferns, and all the space of the archway, was flooded with a glory of soft, clear light. A thousand tiny bulbs, in a lovely variety of flower and fern leaf patterns, gleamed and glowed from beneath the ferny banks or hung pendant, rainbow like, from the roof of this rock ribbed archway. Held spellbound for some moments by his surprise, admiration and delight, Fillmore Flagg murmured softly, almost in a whisper: "Can anything surpass this vision of perfect beauty?" "Yes," said Fern Fenwick, radiant and smiling, "I think it can be surpassed, but we must allow the enchantress to use her magic once more, by giving my darling ferns their bath of beauty. Then you shall see them in their diamond robes." Saying this, she pressed another button. A thousand tiny pipes, concealed in the ribs of the stone roof, gave forth a shower of fine spray, filling the long fernery with a hazy mist of cobweb fineness. Very soon millions of globules of moisture gathered on leaf, stock, frond, plume and tiny tip of every leaflet, reflecting each ray of light with diamond-like brilliancy. Pressing another button to shut off the spray, Fern Fenwick said: "Now, Mr. Flagg, my ferns have donned their royal robes and are ready for your tour of admiring inspection. I assure you they are worthy of it. As a choice collection of ferns in such perfect condition, its equal cannot be found in all the wide world! As a collector I am an enthusiast; for many months I have travelled far and wide in my efforts to add new specimens of rare beauty to the original collection. You may guess how much I prize it when I tell you that money could not buy it." "You are surely a most wonderful enchantress," replied Fillmore Flagg. "I feel that under the potent spell of your magical wand, I have entered the inner mysteries of some glorious temple of ferns, in a world of enchantment! I am so fascinated and dazzled by this marvellous display of brilliancy and beauty, that I am moved to pay homage to you, Miss Fenwick, as a fitting tribute of loyal devotion to Fern, the Fairy Queen of this fair temple." As he finished his gallant speech, the deep tones of emotion vibrating in the full rich voice of Fillmore Flagg, and the look of intense admiration which shone so eloquently from his eyes, brought a flush of color to the fair face of Fern Fenwick and warned her that it was time to be moving. Skillfully keeping up the personification, she quickly said: "Mr. Flagg, I am delighted on behalf of the fairies to express thanks for the glowing tribute to their Queen which you have so beautifully voiced. Let us now walk through to the end of the fernery and return. As we pass along I will point out my favorite plants." Only a few steps had been taken when Fillmore Flagg paused, listening and looking about him in all directions, with a very puzzled expression. A delightfully cool breeze was fanning their faces: this breeze was laden with some strangely sweet perfume both soothing and stimulating to the senses. The air all about them seemed to vibrate with the distant melody of some angelic music, now sinking, now swelling in perfect harmony; so soft, so clear, so bright, so inspiring in its wealth of tone and joyous movement. "Ah! Miss Fenwick," said Fillmore Flagg, "my senses are all entranced! Your wonderful fairies in this grotto of magic are at this moment thrilling my being with sensations of the most intense delight! How can the Fairy Queen explain? What has she been doing with her magical wand to produce such delicious perfume; such entrancing music?" Fern's merry laugh rang out musically clear, and her eyes sparkled roguishly as she replied: "I assure you Mr. Flagg, that in this instance the fairies are not responsible. The explanation is quite simple but rather long. Therefore let us move forward while I give you the details: As we were stepping down on this graveled walk, I turned the switch and started the ventilating fans, at the same time connecting the electric current with a series of melophones located near the top of the arches. Along the ventilating tubes, in a series of small compartments, are sponges saturated with different kinds of perfume. These sponges can be exposed to the air current or withdrawn at will, yielding a single perfume or a blending of as many kinds as one may wish. The wonderful variety of these choice blendings, which can be so easily produced, affords a constant succession of sweet surprises. The melophones which you hear, represent the highest achievement of art in the production of automatic musical instruments. This set is the most complete and the most expensive one in existence. In construction and final completion they cost the inventor and maker three years of constant thought and labor. The result is truly marvellous. The perfection of harmony and purity of tone are convincing testimonials of their excellence. In operation these instruments are placed in a very large double tube made from a peculiar kind of metallic alloy recently discovered, which affords the most perfect conditions for the conservation and conductivity of all musical vibrations. They are capable of producing an almost endless variety of choice music. The selection which we hear at this time, is one which I have re-named 'The Carol of the Ferns.' Pardon me, Mr. Flagg, if in my enthusiasm over the beauties of what you have so poetically termed my 'magical temple of ferns,' some of my statements should sound like boasting; I assure you they are not so intended. I trust that now I have cleared up the mystery to your perfect satisfaction." "Charmingly," said Fillmore Flagg, "Nevertheless my fairyland illusions still abide with me; I confess I am still under the spell of the great happiness they have given to me--I shall never forget it. The truth in this case proves even stranger than fiction; I quite agree with you that in all the wide world there is nothing like this! It seems to me that those extraordinary melophones yield the finest music I have ever heard. In sweetness and purity of tone, softness and wealth of harmony, which is pervaded by some electric quality of inspiration, so stirring, so thrilling that every nerve and every cell in the body responds. They stand unrivaled as the very acme of musical art. I now understand why your lovely home here should be named 'Fairy Fern Cottage.' I fully appreciate the significance of the title. This royal temple of ferns makes the name most fittingly appropriate, and easily ranks this cottage as the eighth wonder of the world! The fame of its rare beauty should be known in every land. You ought to be very proud of it. I assure you, Miss Fenwick, that you are abundantly justified in praising it enthusiastically at all times, without fear of being considered egotistical. But tell me, if I may be permitted to ask, who was the wonderful genius who first conceived and planned the building of this imposing line of arches? So useful, so ornamental, so unique, yet so perfectly adapted as a summer and a winter home for your ferns and flowers and, withal, offering such a perfect title to your unrivaled cottage home." "Thank you, Mr. Flagg, for that question. In my reply I am eager to pay a deserved tribute to the dearest and noblest of men--my father. Inspired by his love for me, his brilliant mind conceived the entire plan and purpose of this curiously novel structure. He succeeded in completing it and also in filling it with the original collection of ferns, without my knowledge. On the morning of my fifteenth birthday, he brought me here to bestow upon me this priceless gift. The surprise was a perfect one. When he made me understand that he gave with it a deed to the cottage and grounds, the surprise became so intense that it fairly took my breath away. I was so overjoyed that by turns I laughed, and cried, and hugged papa, until I came very near to having a genuine fit of hysteria! At that time we changed the name of the house to Fairy Fern Cottage. This is why I am so proud and so fond of my cottage home. This is why I appreciate your praise of it so much--why I am so thankful for it. I feel sure that you will now appreciate my sincerity when I repeat that money could not buy it!" CHAPTER IX. THE PROBLEM VS. A GOOD MAN WHO IS AS RICH AS HE IS NOBLE. After supper Fern Fenwick and Fillmore Flagg returned to the tower room for the continuation of the story. She began by saying: "Let us return to my father's mining operations in Alaska. In 1892, Dewitt C. Dunbar assumed the active management of the Martina mine. A large proportion of my father's surplus capital from the mine had been invested, through trusty agents, in the cities of San Francisco, Saint Paul, Chicago, Washington and New York. We at once planned a tour of travel that would give him the opportunity to personally inspect these investments, and at the same time give me a chance to see the world, and to mingle in society, or so much of it as a continuous hotel life might offer. "For my mother and myself this delightful tour was one long holiday. We enjoyed it so much. To me especially, it proved exceedingly profitable; geographically speaking, my ideas of the largeness of the world, and the vast number of its people, were wonderfully expanded. In December, 1893, father completed his investments by the purchase of a winter home in the city of Washington, and this summer home here. This cottage was built in the year 1900. "During the summer of 1894 we visited the brothers and sisters of my father, who were at that time living with their families on farms in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri. As was generally the rule, with a large class of farmers in those states at that time, we found them, with but few exceptions, poor, in debt, and very much discouraged by the menacing outlook for the future. Farm interests everywhere were in a desperate condition. A succession of twenty years of falling prices for all farm products, accompanied by frequent calamities, such as hail storms, hurricanes, hot, blighting winds, drouth and armies of grasshoppers, had so multiplied and magnified the farm debts, and so reduced the value of farm, stock, and product, that even the interest on the indebtedness could no longer be kept up; ruin and beggary threatened the entire community of farmers. Under the severe pressure of these conditions, great numbers of the more unfortunate abandoned their farms in despair and sought employment elsewhere, mostly in manufacturing centres and the large eastern cities. Much of the money and wealth of the land had flown to those points, thither logically, they followed, to enter the ranks of that vast army of competitors for the crumbs that might fall from the table of an already glutted labor mart; to learn by bitter experience how cruelly the system of competition in all kinds of business can grind the helpless poor; to learn, through years of suffering, the real meaning of competition, that so long as it rules over commercial and industrial systems, the rich must grow richer and fewer in number, while the poor must grow poorer, and more and more numerous; to apprehend, slowly and painfully, that by coming from farm to city they had still farther congested the already overstocked labor market, thereby adding fierceness to the competition, insuring an increase in the purchasing power of the dollars of those who held the labor market, while they correspondingly decreased the possibilities for earning the dollars they must have in order to live; to perceive dimly in their desperation, that congestion of the labor market speedily affected all markets; that an overstocked labor market always meant a decrease of wages, which in turn, caused a corresponding shrinkage in the number of purchasers for all salable goods in the general market, followed by increased panic and stringency in the money market; which speedily rolled up another disaster, sweeping in turn, additional thousands into the ranks of the unemployed; demonstrating, finally, that a repetition of these evils is inevitable; that competition in its last analysis, means the complete destruction of all business. "As my father came to understand the full significance of this deplorable situation, involving and distressing his own brothers and sisters, his noble nature was grieved and shocked. He made haste to place his people in a condition of financial independence. How happy and grateful they were! And my father rejoiced with us that he was able to offer such timely assistance. He then announced to us his determination to devote the remainder of his life, and so much of his fortune as might be necessary, to the solution of the problem of how best to overcome the blighting evils of the competitive system. After much thought, long research and hard study, he decided to commence with the land as the necessary basis of all progress; with the farm as the rational progressive unit; with improved farm methods on co-operative lines, as the lever by which to restore the control of the land to the farmers, and to lift them and their sons and daughters from the class of ignorant dependents, to a class of cultured independents, which should be well worthy of serving as a model in the race of progress, for all the other classes. In his efforts to modify, correct, and reform social and business methods, he proposed to use the strong and kindly arms of Co-operation in fighting the evils of Competition, or its representative, the pitiless competitive system. He reasoned that all forms of government are but the result of co-operative effort. Both experience and observation had taught him that the measure of excellence of any government is the measure of its perfection in co-operation. Therefore it logically follows, that the more perfect the co-operation achieved by the administration of any form of government, the greater the degree of justice and equality attained in the distribution of benefits to all of the governed." CHAPTER X. THE REAPING OF THE DEATH ANGEL. "Towards the close of the summer of 1895, my father placed me in the preparatory department of Vassar College, where I made rapid progress. I began to appreciate the superior wisdom of the methods of teaching which my parents had so systematically carried out for my improvement. Thanks to their efforts, I held the key to all of the sciences, history and literature, prose and poetry! All of their principal words or terms with their definitions, were familiar friends to me; while all new facts regarding their various subdivisions, auxiliaries, etc., and the relations existing between them as such, were matters of absorbing interest to me; so much so, that I soon became master of the subject I was studying, very often proving a puzzling surprise to my teachers. At the age of twelve I entered the regular course and graduated from college just as I was entering my eighteenth year, being by four years the youngest member of a graduating class of one hundred girls. "Some months after my fourteenth birthday, my darling mother was taken from me in the mortal form, very suddenly and most unexpectedly. My father was away from home on a long trip to Alaska. I was at Vassar. My mother was with a congenial party of friends at a favorite seaside resort. One day while bathing, one lady of the party swam too far out, was taken with a cramp and shrieked for help. My mother, who was nearest, being an excellent swimmer, courageously went to her assistance. Unfortunately, the tide was running full and strong and was against my mother in her heroic struggle to save her friend. Alas! before aid could reach them both sank beneath the waves and were lost. My noble mother had generously sacrificed her earthly existence in her brave effort to save the life of another! This was my first experience of the grief and desolation that follows the reaping of the Death Angel. In my youth, my half-dazed condition, I could neither realize nor understand what later became so plain to me; that to die is to live again. That death, so-called, is but the change from one form of life to another, which is still higher in the scale of progress. Nor could I then realize, that for the purpose of bringing to me a consciousness of the possibilities of my spiritual being; under the ministrations of the angel of compensation, out of the very depths of the gulf of bereavement and sadness through which I was passing, there was coming to me the precious gift of a priceless mediumship, the marvelous key! the all-potent 'open sesame' with which to unlock the gates between the two worlds and reunite the separated loved ones on either side. "At that time Mrs. Bainbridge, then but recently widowed, was in charge of the old home here. She was an excellent medium who had often proved herself worthy of my mother's entire confidence. Acting under the guidance of my arisen mother, she at once, without hesitation, took charge of all business arrangements, especially those of preparing for the cremation of my mother's body, in accordance with her often expressed wish. She telegraphed the sad news to my father in Alaska, asking for instructions. He replied at once that the body must be cremated, as my mother had directed in her will. He would return as soon as possible, but at the best he could not hope to arrive in less than two months. In the meantime, Mrs. Bainbridge was authorized to take entire charge of 'Fern,' and of his business affairs that needed attention, until he came. "I came home from college, sorely grieved and shocked at the awful suddenness of my mother's transition, but through the mediumship of Mrs. Bainbridge, my mother, having her in a deep trance, was soon able to comfort me; to make me realize that she was not dead, but still near me with all a mother's love and tender care. From time to time she directed Mrs. Bainbridge how to manage the pressing business that came up. She told me that she had long known that I was endowed with wonderful mediumistic power, which must now be fully developed for her sake, as a necessary and natural channel of communication so desirable to her, which she should prize very highly. Also as a source of comfort for myself and my father, especially as a joyful surprise for him when he came home. Therefore it was decided between us that I was to sit one hour each day with Mrs. Bainbridge for development. My mother seemed to feel sure that I would make an excellent trumpet medium, and encouraged me by predicting my speedy development as such. Strangely enough, so it proved. My progress was rapid. In two weeks time my mother could speak to me through the trumpet without difficulty and much to my delight. I began to appreciate the great value of my wonderful gift and to understand what it meant. Our dear family circle, which in my despair I had thought broken forever, was now reunited. Father, mother, daughter! just us three as of yore. And--the wonder of it--I, the youngest, the weakest and the least wise of the trio, was the instrument! When I thought of the possibilities, of the joy and consolation it would bring to my father and mother, my heart swelled with gratitude and thankfulness that this mighty power had come to me. The power to destroy the dread of death; to demonstrate the continuity of life; to prove that the binding love of family ties, kindred, and cherished friends still shone with untarnished lustre beyond the shadows of the silent grave. How beautiful, how wonderful, how glorious it was! And with this power came the solemn charge that I was to cherish it with care and keep it pure and holy. Yes, I resolved that I would do this conscientiously. It should be my highest ambition to ever use my mediumship with my best and most unselfish aspirations, to keep it apart from the grosser things of life, to dedicate it to good and to good alone. And thus it was that my mediumship continued to develop and grow in perfection. My mother could talk with me as often as she wished and as long at each sitting as she desired. I was no longer alone or despondent, my darling mother still could be, and was really, my mentor, friend, parent, teacher and spiritual guide. I forgot to mourn or to feel lonely, though I longed for my father's homecoming that we might share this new found joy. So interested was I and so occupied, that the two months quickly passed and my dear father reached his home in safety. I had arranged for a quiet evening with him alone. When my mother, through the trumpet, joined in the conversation and welcomed him with loving words of endearment, so familiar in the greetings of other days, he was almost overcome by the flood of ecstatic emotions that moved and thrilled him as he began to appreciate the significance of such a miraculous surprise. His heart was glowing and his entire being permeated with this great wave of happiness. His face was radiant with joy and beamed with fatherly affection and pride as he pressed me to his heart again and again, thanking me for my thoughtful spiritual work in the development of my wonderful gift, which, for his consolation, I had striven so unselfishly, so ardently and so earnestly to attain, while facing alone the one great crisis of my young life. Still holding me in his arms, he looked into my eyes long and fondly, almost adoringly, as he said: 'With such a daughter, whose loving heart and purity of soul has won for her the marvellous power to reunite our broken family circle, I am indeed the most fortunate of all men.' Then in a moment I perceived that I was no longer a child, I was a woman; that henceforth my father would think of me as a woman--still his loving daughter--but also his equal, his confidant, his trusted friend, his adviser in times of need, his oracle, his medium of communication with the loved ones who dwelt in the world of spirit. How good and beautiful was life in the light of this new vista of possibilities and responsibilities for me! For the moment I seemed to be transported to some grand spiritual height, where as a responsive spiritual unit, I felt the throbbing of the limitless sea of environmental life surrounding me like a golden mist, on every hand. Every pulsation proclaimed my immortality as a part of that boundless sea; boundless, fathomless, unthinkably shoreless! of life, all-producing, all-containing! My soul no longer questioned. It was filled with a peace and joy that passeth the power of words to describe. "Thus inspired and encouraged for the future, I was ready and eager to take up again the active duties of life. In resuming my collegiate studies, it was agreed between my father and mother and myself, that I should come home from Vassar every Friday evening, returning by the early train Monday morning, the intervening time to be sacredly devoted to our trumpet family circles. Oh, Mr. Flagg! How happy we were then! For the next three years nothing was allowed to interfere with these delightful reunions, whose memories are associated with so many incidents that bound us three so closely with the silver cords of pure affection. "After leaving college, I accompanied my father in all of his journeyings after new data in economics and agriculture. For this purpose we spent the winter of 1902-3, travelling in France, Italy, Germany and England, returning to America in April, 1903." CHAPTER XI. THE MARTINA MINE. "Early in June of the same year, Dewitt C. Dunbar discovered a new lead in the Martina mine which proved to be of such marvelous size and richness, that my father's personal inspection was demanded at the earliest possible moment, to decide on the best methods of pushing forward the new work, and also to determine what part of the old work should be continued. The numerous letters and telegrams from Mr. Dunbar, all urging the utmost haste on my father's part, gave him but little time to consider the results of such a long journey, or to make the proper preparations for it. It was evident that Mr. Dunbar must be in a state of intense excitement. In order to catch the next steamer from San Francisco, father left a number of important items of business for me to transact. I wished very much to go with him but all the circumstances seemed to conspire against me. Father promised to return at the earliest possible moment, meanwhile he was to send me a dispatch announcing his safe arrival in Alaska. By the end of July, messages, and later, letters began to reach me announcing the wonderful output of gold from the new lead. So rich was the ore that for a time it was thought best to abandon all work in the old mine. I could see very plainly from his letters that the fever of Mr. Dunbar's excitement and enthusiasm had also claimed my father as a victim. I then foresaw that his stay in Alaska would be prolonged far beyond my expectations or his own. I began to feel very uneasy and to wish most fervently that I had insisted on going with him. I resolved in future to keep him company wherever he journeyed. Meanwhile the yield of gold from the new lead continued to increase. The value of the Martina rose like magic; offers to purchase at fabulous prices came pouring in. Mr. Dunbar would not accept, and decided, then and there, to remain another ten years as manager and resident superintendent of the mine. That settled the question. After that, my father announced that the mine was not for sale at any price. In writing to me concerning the matter, he says: "'My Dear Fern: * * * I at that time decided that my interest in the mine which I had named for your mother, and which had proven the luckiest and richest in Alaska, should pass to you as it came to me, entirely unencumbered. So rest assured, my daughter, so long as Dewitt C. Dunbar is able and willing to manage the mine, both my interests and yours are in safe hands; in skill, honesty and ability he is one of the grandest men I have ever known; he is a treasure. You can trust him implicitly!' "As I had anticipated, it was December before my father could leave Alaska. In a letter dated Dec. 5, to which I shall again refer, he says: "'I have planned to leave here on a steamer that sails on the tenth of this month. I fear the voyage may prove a rough one. I have a foolish dread of it, which is quite unusual for me. I am oppressed by an uneasy feeling which I strive in vain to shake off. However, I have taken good care to make such arrangements with Mr. Dunbar as will cover all possible contingencies. This is to be my last trip.' "On the twelfth of December I received a message from Mr. Dunbar, stating that Fennimore Fenwick had sailed on the tenth as he had planned; that he was well and strong, and would wire me as soon as he reached San Francisco. This cheering message gave me new courage, I began to count the days and to look forward more hopefully. I decided, although it was so late in the season, to wait here in the cottage until my father came. When Mrs. Bainbridge left to open our house in Washington, I had intended to follow her a few days before Christmas, but for some unexplained reason, I could not make up my mind to leave the cottage. After the message came the question was settled--I was to remain here." CHAPTER XII. SPIRIT AND MORTAL.--FATHER AND DAUGHTER. "At this point, Mr. Flagg, I wish you to carefully note the significance of the strange event which soon followed. Christmas Eve, 1903, found me here alone, seated at my desk, alternately reading, musing and writing. All day a terrific snow storm had been raging, at nightfall it continued with increased severity. I could hear the fierce gale shriek as it lashed the tree tops furiously. I shuddered when I thought what danger such a gale might mean to the good steamer, bearing my father homeward bound across the rough, icy waters of that far off wintry sea; that yawning, terrible, treacherous sea! "During the afternoon I had been nervous and lonely. As a solace, I had a long talk from my mother through the trumpet, which cheered and comforted me greatly, especially her confident promise that I should hear from papa even sooner than I had hoped. Over this I was musing when a strange thing happened. I was startled by the low tones of a familiar voice from the trumpet. Almost frozen with fear, I heard: 'Do not be frightened, my darling; I am your father, Fennimore Fenwick, who loves you, if possible, more than ever. A frightful storm wrecked the steamer and released me from my body. Nearly all of the passengers and crew perished with me. A few still survive; they are in a single open boat, tossing helplessly in the awful surge of that wild waste of water, possibly they may yet be saved. My dear wife, Martina, your own beautiful mother, was watching and waiting for me at the scene of the wreck. Hers the beautiful arms that welcomed me as I was born into the new life of the spirit. How glorious it was that she, so dear to me, could be there. In the radiance and splendor of all her spiritual loveliness, I was charmed almost to the point of forgetfulness. I seemed to be floating on the bosom of a sea of golden mist, my spirit filled with a measureless contentment. Presently I awoke to a vivid consciousness of my new life. In the light of the loving eyes of my peerless Martina, I was soon made to realize that I had just passed painlessly from life mortal to life spiritual. I perceived that time and space no longer barred the flight of my freed spirit. Hand in hand we came; almost before I knew it we were here. Thanks to your mediumship, and to this trumpet, I could come and speak to you so soon. Yes, my dear child, we three, a loving trio, are still united just as of yore. I shall be permitted to help you, from this side of life, to carry out and complete my plans and purposes regarding improved modes of farm life. I wrote you from Alaska on the fifth of this month, announcing my intention of sailing on the tenth; that letter came by a Victoria steamer and will soon reach you. At that time I was weighed down by a premonition of some impending disaster. So seriously was I impressed, that I at once made arrangements with Dewitt C. Dunbar, in case of my death, to continue to operate the mine in partnership with you on the terms now in force, and this he was perfectly willing to do. By the terms of my will, now in the hands of my attorneys at Washington, you are at this moment, sole heir to my large fortune. As you know, I long ago placed my brothers and sisters beyond the reach of want. Well do I know, my dear girl, that I can trust you perfectly, to carry forward my work.' "As his voice ceased to vibrate in the trumpet, I sprang to my feet with outstretched and imploring hands: 'Father!' I cried, 'How can I do this work alone? I am yet but a child, with a very limited business experience to fit me for this great responsibility.' He at once replied: 'Fear not, my child. Faithful, capable, and trustworthy help shall be brought to you. At all times I shall be near, to advise, and to guard you and your interests. Go forward bravely in the conscious power of your own potential spirit, dominant and dauntless. Armed with the majesty and mystery of your mediumship, all obstacles shall yield, and naught shall prevail over you!' This prophetic command, so thrilling, so imperative, touched and stirred my inner self; my soul responded to the appeal. In one brief moment I regained my self control; was calm, could think clearly and reason logically. "At intervals throughout the night I continued to consult with my parents. My father advised me to write at once, announcing his death, and requesting Mr. Dunbar to fix a time at which he could meet me in San Francisco, for a conference. This I did at the earliest practicable moment." CHAPTER XIII. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. At this point in her story, Fern Fenwick said: "Mr. Flagg, I now realize the wonderful prescience of my father's promise of abundant and timely help, especially when I consider your life work, and the masterly way you have equipped yourself for it, and finally, by the mysterious manner in which we were brought together. Is it not almost like a miracle?" "Really, Miss Fenwick, I am lost in amazement! It seems to me that I must be dreaming! The situation is so entirely outside of my experience, so unthinkably strange to me, that I doubt my ability to discuss it intelligently. Your story is the most marvelous of anything I have ever heard. I feel quite sure that it must be strictly true, yet I can scarcely comprehend it. A host of questions arise in my mind, which I wish to ask, if I may be permitted. When you heard the voice from the trumpet, how could you feel so sure it was your father speaking? That he had been swallowed up by the sea? That the shipwreck had really occurred?" "I do not wonder at your questions, Mr. Flagg," said Fern Fenwick, "I will gladly answer as best I can. Without considering or discussing the fact that the crucial test of identity was disclosed by almost every word which my father uttered, yet I could not for a moment doubt his presence. I knew he was there. I recognized every intonation of the voice. I felt the identity of his spiritual personality, radiant with the silent force of his love for me, quite as plainly as though at that moment his physical personality had entered the room. My experience after my mother's transition, the development of my mediumship, and my increased sensitiveness to the presence of spiritual entities, no doubt aided me greatly. At that time I perceived and recognized without question, that life in the physical is but the expression of the spirit, or Ego; that after the passing of the physical, the Ego inherits and possesses immortality as a conscious individual entity, clothed with a spiritual body, perfectly fitted for its continued existence in the realms of the world of spirit; that, through the action of a natural law, the law of mediumship, such spirits can and do, come to and communicate with their friends and loved ones in earth life. All these things, I knew my father understood clearly, therefore I was prepared to accept the verity of his spiritual presence as readily as I would any other phenomenon of nature. In conclusion, I may as well tell you at this point, that the letter referred to by father as having been written by him in Alaska on December fifth, together with my conference in San Francisco, some months later, with Dewitt C. Dunbar; the arrival in port at that time of a China steamer, bringing the mate and four sailors as sole survivors from the wreck of the ill-fated steamer, and my interview with them, all confirmed, in every particular, the truth of the statements concerning the matter, which were made by my spirit father, just after his passage through the gateway of death from life mortal to life spiritual. Can I add anything more convincing?" "Pardon me, Miss Fenwick! I believe what you have told me is absolutely true. I can perceive and appreciate its wonderful significance only in part. I understand now clearly why it was necessary for me to know so much of the story of your life and that of your noble father. I have listened to your story with almost breathless interest, with all I am profoundly impressed. A new world is opening to me. My mental and spiritual horizon has been extended beyond the power of words to express. Life has a thousand new meanings: In them I read the importance and responsibility of the great work we are about to undertake. I wait with increased interest for my personal interview with your father. Now that I have heard so much of him, I bow with added reverence to his great and noble love for humanity which prompted, and his wonderful genius which conceived and planned the work so generously. I am proud and thankful that I have been chosen as an instrument deemed capable and worthy of helping to carry it forward. "As to things spiritual, pertaining to a life beyond the grave, I am intensely interested and eager to know more. May I hope, Miss Fenwick, that you will kindly consent to become my teacher in this new school of wonderful phenomena and spiritual law? I too, am alone in the world; my father and mother have both passed the bitter flood of the dark river of death. They too, like your parents, must now be living in the world of spirit as conscious, loving father and mother, with hearts filled with a living, glowing affection that can and will respond to my own. Can it be possible that I am to feel and know this by direct communication with them?" "I shall be delighted, Mr. Flagg, to help you in this matter in any way that I can. Your desire for a direct communication from your parents is perfectly natural and right and, I doubt not, will be fully gratified in a few days. "In this connection, let me ask: Have you ever had a seance with a medium? Do you know anything about the laws that control and govern mediumship? Have you been interested to any extent in reading the all-comprehensive philosophy which mediumship demonstrates?" "I am very glad, Miss Fenwick, that you have put those questions. I desire to state briefly and frankly my attitude, up to this time, towards mediumship and the philosophy and phenomena of spiritual manifestations generally: I believe I was a born agnostic. All my life I have been skeptical as to the verity of a life beyond the grave. In this I have differed widely from my people, a large majority of whom have been zealous Presbyterians for at least five generations, while I have followed Voltaire and Ingersoll. In the ranks of their following I have been content to cry: 'I don't know! I can wait! One world at a time is enough for me!' As to mediumship, or any manifestations of it, I know almost nothing. The few mediums I have met accidentally, have unfortunately failed to impress me favorably. All that I have heard or read of them has had a strong tendency to prejudice me against them and the philosophy they taught. Therefore, until my visit to this cottage, I have never been at all interested in the matter. I now perceive that in studying the great problem of life, and how best to learn most about it, I have utterly ignored one of the most important sources of both information and inspiration. My prejudice and indifference have vanished. I wonder at myself, at my readiness to accept your point of view regarding your most marvelous mediumship and its wonderful manifestations; at my feverish interest and anxiety to learn all I can about things spiritual at the earliest possible moment; at my intense longing for the complete verification of all the beautiful propositions relating to spiritual life which you have stated so eloquently and so convincingly; but most of all do I wonder and am amazed that these things are not miracles; that they occur through the action of natural law, which, if true, makes it possible--nay probable--that mediumship and its manifestations are as old as life itself. This, Miss Fenwick, defines my position as clearly as I can state it. Do you think I am likely to prove a pupil worthy of his teacher?" "I most assuredly do, Mr. Flagg," said Fern. "I think you are now prepared for the promised interview with my father. However, before he joins us, I wish to say by way of explanation, that when I am here alone, he can use the trumpet with ease at any moment and in any kind of light, but in the presence of strangers, different conditions are required. We shall at first be obliged to use another kind of light. By the aid of this light you can plainly see the trumpet, supported horizontally in the air just over his chair, but you will be unable to discern even the faintest outline of the spiritual form holding it; as in using the trumpet, the vital force of both the manifesting spirit and the medium is concentrated in the trumpet in the effort of speaking. Sit perfectly quiet for a moment; I will close the windows and prepare the room." A few touches on the small keyboard in her desk, and lo the heavy double curtains swiftly and silently unrolled and covered the windows. At the same moment, the beautifully ornamented, dome shaped center of the lofty ceiling began to glow with a constellation of soft, phosphorescent lights, filling the room with a radiance as mild and silvery as moonlight, and yet even more soothing to the nerves. Presently the air was vibrant with the low, sweet strains of distant music, soft and slow and of such exquisite harmony that it seemed a rare combination of all that was inspiring, charming and beautiful in the variations of time, sound and rythm. The combined effect of the light and the music on Fillmore Flagg was electrical. Every nerve was thrilled with rapture. He was completely absorbed. As the music ceased he turned with a start to look for the trumpet. As he looked, it slowly rose from the chair and there came from it the clear tones of a manly voice, full of sweetness and power. He heard these words: "Fern, my daughter, will you tell this gentleman who I am?" "My dear father," said Fern, "How glad I am that you have joined us! Mr. Flagg, this is my father, Fennimore Fenwick, of whom I have told you so much. Father, this is Mr. Fillmore Flagg, who, as you already know, has promised to devote himself to our work." As the trumpet slowly moved nearer, Mr. Fenwick said: "Mr. Flagg, as the father of Fern Fenwick, I extend to you a cordial greeting and a most hearty welcome to Fairy Fern Cottage. I trust this is but the commencement of a long and uninterrupted acquaintance, which may soon ripen into a true friendship, that shall bring much pleasure and profit to both. I am exceedingly well pleased with your advanced ideas on the subject of co-operative farming as the proper cure for the evils that now make farm life so miserable and so unsatisfactory. I wish particularly to congratulate you on the thoroughly systematic and successful methods you have adopted to it yourself so well for this peculiar work. "Now my young friend, one moment to another matter which is likely to prove of great interest to you. I find your parents in spirit life. I met them since you came to the cottage. They approve of your chosen life work. They are very proud of you, their beloved son and only child. They bid me give you a message of love with the assurance that they will speak to you through this trumpet very soon." "Mr. Fenwick," said Fillmore Flagg, "I thank you for the encouragement of your kindly greeting and for the many pleasant things you have said of me and my work. In the future I shall strive conscientiously to merit your praise, and hope to earn your lasting friendship. As to the glad tidings from my parents in spirit life, I am rejoiced. In my heart the torch of hope is lighted; its pure flame is fast burning away the barriers of the belief I have so long entertained, that 'Death ends all,' also of the equally depressing creed of my Presbyterian people, who have so long taught and thought that 'The dead know not anything;' that my parents, with that vast army of souls, having passed the portals of the tomb, are now lost in the oblivion of that long unconscious, dreamless slumber, which stretches from the new made grave to The Day of Judgment. Hence, the message of love from my parents, with the assurance that they will speak to me so soon, has made me very happy. I am content to wait patiently for such further messages as opportunity may bring to me. I am ready and eager, Mr. Fenwick, to hear your plans. Please proceed." "Very well," said Fennimore Fenwick. "Fern, my daughter, you are to remain at your desk with pencil and note book, prepared to take down what I have to say." CHAPTER XIV. THE ETHICS OF PLANETARY EVOLUTION. "In order to plan this work wisely, and to discuss it understandingly, it will be necessary at the beginning to go back to first principles, to try to discover the real object and purpose of human life on this planet. In searching along the pathway of countless ages in our planet's history, we discover a continuous upward movement in the progression of the manifestations of life; from the mineral to the vegetable; from the vegetable to the animal; from the animal to man. Man representing the apex of progress in the constantly ascending spiral of the evolution of life from the birth of the planet to the present time. Therefore, both spirit and mortal, we are all children of the planet, chained to its destiny, all alike working factors in the achievement of its purpose so mighty. Through the planet, its solar system, and the system of systems in a long line of an infinite series, far beyond the power of computation, we are also the children of the Great Oversoul, the Source and Center of all life! "Human life, then, is the flower and fruit of the planet--the highest combined expression of its life--each life a planetary seed, a concentrated possibility of all expressions of planet life. Perhaps the most convincing and beautiful illustration of the truth of this vital and all important proposition is, that the reproductive cells of man in his highest state of development, multiply by fission, or self-division into halves, as did the primal sperm of protoplasm at the very beginning of vegetable and animal life. This great philogenetic vine with its myriads of branching arms, reaches in an unbroken line from the lowest to the highest forms of life; all alike are fruit of this vine. This offers indisputable evidence of the common brotherhood of humanity! the motherhood of the planet! the fatherhood of the Great Oversoul! "From these premises we may safely conclude that the object and purpose of this planet is the evolution of human beings, their continued growth and development, until the state of perfection for the entire race is reached. With this comes the complete achievement of the purpose of the existence of the planet. Hence, we perceive that human life is the most precious production of the planet. Henceforth its energies are to flow towards the perfecting of the human race. "In the great, white light of a higher understanding of these basic and vital truths, let us strive to make conditions for the protection of ALL human life. The task becomes less difficult as we more readily comprehend and appreciate the magnitude of the thought, that through the planet, this sacred life is the immortal and enduring expression of the Eternal Spirit. Viewed in this light, we apprehend clearly that all acts, by society or individuals, which tend to protect, promote and purify this life, are good, right and holy, and in their doing, become the highest and best expression of a sacred religious duty. On the contrary, all acts of society or individuals, which tend to destroy, injure, poison or sully this sacred life, or to bar its ordained progress are, in themselves, unholy, wrong, criminal and cruel, and in commission, become the greatest and most unpardonable of all sins. "All this becomes more apparent, when we consider that the sum of the pleasant sensations of the individual, and the happifying emotions which flow from them, constitutes the sum of human happiness. All conditions of life which promote right living, ethical culture and moral growth, nourish and call forth emotions of truth and honesty, pure pleasure, adoration, worship, hope, affection, love and all the higher and nobler characteristics, build up life and increase its capacity for happiness. Through the action of an equally inexorable and unswerving law, the misery and crime which poverty breeds, with its bitterness of hate, grief and despair, and all the train of other evil emotions engendered thereby, are poisonous in their nature; they tear down and destroy life. Therefore that social and industrial system which affords most abundantly, and for all of the people, conditions that are life-promoting and poverty-banishing, is logically the nearest just and right, because it is the nearest in harmony with natural law, and the object and purpose of human life. "Society as a whole, like a chain with defective links, is no stronger socially, morally, industrially, or politically, than its weakest unit. Hence it becomes the self interest of every individual member to endeavor unselfishly to build up and strengthen the weaker units in every possible way. "These propositions furnish the only sound basis for a perfect system of political economy--a system which shall afford the greatest amount of good or happiness to all the people. In considering the clearness and startling significance of these truths, we discover the cruel, criminal wrong of any system of competition, based on the old barbaric law of the survival of the fittest, which in its application means the pleasure and happiness of the few at the expense of the toil, pain and misery of the many. In this connection we note that man, in his evolutionary progress, has reached a point where, being mentally and spiritually awakened to a knowledge of the higher purposes of life, he perceives the true effect of environmental conditions, with their good and evil tendencies. He also perceives the cause and the cure. Armed with the talisman of this knowledge, he boldly enters the field of causation and thenceforward becomes a self-directing factor in his own evolution. At this important stage, he clearly comprehends, that the injury of one is the concern of all; that the perfection of all becomes the highest interest of each; that the unprogressive law of the survival of the fittest, is nullified and replaced by the higher law of unselfishness of the individual for the advancement of the race; that the dual nature of man, physical and spiritual, must be considered as inseparable, when dealing with the practical questions of life; that physical life, as the primary school of existence, is ephemeral, while the spiritual is the permanent and enduring; that, consequently, the path of progress for the human soul, lies almost entirely in the realms of the spiritual; that a life on the physical plane, devoted solely to selfishness, dwarfs and chokes the spiritual nature, and becomes a serious bar to unfoldment and progress on the spiritual plane of existence: Finally, that, like the pent up energies of some mighty volcano, the irresistible upward thrust of nature's unfoldment, ever producing and disclosing higher expressions of life, is to find its present outlet through these channels, by the wise use of methods in harmony with the principles stated." CHAPTER XV. THE CO-OPERATIVE FARM AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. "From the thorough understanding and appreciation of these principles, by the workers on your model co-operative farm, must come the necessary zeal, the cementing enthusiasm of a mighty purpose which, with ever increasing volume, shall urge them forward to the goal of complete success. As one of the means to insure this success, we must strive to introduce a new era for agriculture, in which co-operative working shall be supplemented and reinforced by co-operative thinking. As applied to farm work, this is a new and untried field which promises grand results. "In all kinds of productive labor, muscular effort is a mental demonstration! The keener the mentality controlling the muscles, the more satisfactory the work accomplished. The more interested and the healthier and happier the laborer is in his work, the easier it becomes for him to produce superior results. For centuries, farm work has been considered the natural avocation of the ignorant and the illiterate! Strange as it may appear, it seems to have been generally conceded that the typical clodhopper was the ordained farmer! That this perverted idea regarding the requirements of a tiller of the soil, should have maintained its existence for so many ages, is a matter of profound astonishment to every intelligent thinker!" "Pardon me, Mr. Fenwick," said Fillmore Flagg, "if at this time I quote a case in point from my own state. As late as the year 1897, a Bishop Withington, of Nebraska, speaking of farmers' sons who were struggling for an education, says of them: "'The farmers' sons--a great many of them--who have absolutely no ability to rise, get a taste of education and follow it up. They will never amount to anything--that is, many of them--and they become dissatisfied to follow in the walk of life that God intended they should, and drift into cities. It is the over-education of those who are not qualified to receive it that fills our cities, while the farms lie idle.' "This, Mr. Fenwick, is but a sample of many like expressions from the lips of public men, showing the stigma and low estimate which is placed on farmers as a class, by clerical, professional and commercial people. When we consider that farming people form a large majority of the citizens of our republic, a republic whose constitution guarantees equal rights for all; whose chief corner stone from the beginning, has been its admirable system of free education in its public schools; the manifest endeavor of the Bishop and his class, to consign the tillers of the soil to a caste of low order, and to argue that education is for the few and not for the farmer, indicates something radically wrong in our social system that augurs ill for the future of our republic. That the dissatisfaction is widespread and serious, is manifest to all thinkers and observers. To discover the cause and cure, and to speedily apply the remedy for this growing discontent, becomes an imperative duty for all patriotic people. In my experience, the following are some of the most prolific causes: "The isolation and loneliness of the small farm. "The long hours of tedious, monotonous toil for both man and woman. "The constantly increasing competition of large farms, armed with capital and expensive machinery, which tends to reduce the price of farm products. "The want of proper society, healthful amusements, books, and many other necessary educational facilities. "The discouraging meagerness of the financial returns for a year of such constant toil. "These things all tend to destroy the farmer's love for, and pride in, his occupation, until farm work becomes a repulsive drudgery, and he flies to the city for a more congenial employment. Is it then, under the circumstances, any wonder that the farmers' sons should become dissatisfied with the occupation of their birth? That in company with their sisters and sweethearts they should be determined, at all hazards, to escape from the evils of what Bishop Withington terms a 'God-ordained' class of hewers of wood, drawers of water, and tillers of the soil, a class which dooms them and their children to a future of hopeless toil? "Agriculture forms the basis and support of our national, industrial and commercial success. Therefore it is imperative that agricultural pursuits be made to become the most noble and pleasing of all occupations. How can this be accomplished? "Surely, co-operative farming, with its improved conditions and methods, is the remedy indicated!" "Yes, Mr. Flagg," said Fennimore Fenwick, "Co-operative farming is the partial remedy which shall start the healing process, and lead to the discovery of a perfect cure. You have ably stated the evils which make living on small farms so unsatisfactory. You have also made an excellent argument for our work from the text Bishop Withington has so blindly and unthinkingly furnished. It is quite evident that neither he nor his class, have the least conception of the true cause of the discontent they so deeply deplore. It is also equally clear that with all the advantages of superior conditions, with the observation and education of a lifetime, they have so far, utterly failed to understand or appreciate the real object and purpose of human life. They are sorely in need of an object lesson which we must furnish. "In efforts to slake a natural thirst for knowledge, the brightest minds, the most profound thinkers of the past ten centuries, at the end of lives devoted to study, have declared that the vast domain of knowledge still remained practically an unexplored field. This domain is for coming generations to conquer and possess. It invites the efforts of millions of co-operative thinkers, born and trained for the task. Hence, to me, it is as clear as the noonday sun that the embodiment of more mind by our agricultural people, is a matter of imperative necessity. They should have the leisure and the opportunity to become familiar with all the varied phenomena of nature, through the recorded observations that comprise the different sciences, which describe and explain all phases of surrounding life. Thus equipped, they will be able to discover that they are a living, working, part of nature, which defined, means the combined life of the planet; that they act upon all things about them and are in turn acted upon. A comprehension of these things can come only to the cultivated mind, and the richer its store of facts, the more perfect its grasp and control of surrounding conditions. Therefore mind, as the expression of the soul and body of the dual individual on the physical plane of existence, is EVERYTHING! It controls and molds structure; the body; the people around. All history is but a detailed description of the action of mind. "The great minds are the dominant thinkers; they sway the multitude, mold public opinion, effect legislation and shape the nation. These dominant minds should come from the people of the soil, as best equipped to discover and proclaim the law of the planet's unfoldment, also best able to conceive and formulate the wise laws which should guide and govern its people. Hence the necessity for our farmers to become thinkers--dominant thinkers. "What are the best conditions for mind unfoldment? "As Professor Elmer Gates so wisely says, 'The human body is composed of myriads of living organisms--a co-operative colony of more or less intelligent cells--which respond to the control of the individual Ego through the action of the mind, and to the electrical conditions which flow from the emotions.' Hence the body is an important part of the thinking machine and, therefore, a perfect mind must absolutely be the highest expression of a perfect body. The perfect body needs to be well born. To be well born, is to demand conditions for a perfect motherhood, and the perfect unfoldment of both mother and child together. "Where can these conditions be found? "We find them best and most abundant in the rural districts, far from the turmoil and strife, the smoke and poisonous gases of the great city. Surrounded by fields and forests, in the pure air of a broad expanse of country, domed with the blue sky, and flooded with golden sunlight, on the soil of the farm, close to the fostering bosom of our planet mother, Earth. Therefore it must be the distinctive and well defined purpose of our co-operative farm to furnish and perfect these conditions, thus uniting in perfect harmony stirpiculture with agriculture, a union as poetical as it is practical. From these conditions must come a race of dominant thinkers, the exponents and champions of the real objects and purposes of human life. "With the coming of such a race, comes the beginning of the era of unselfishness, and the end of the present era of selfishness, the age of gold worship, where greed for gold blights and withers public and private conscience, dominates and corrupts all forms of society, and makes conditions which breed monopolies, caste, tramps, paupers, armies of idle men, strikes, discontent, starvation and revolution! "Verily, a perfect catalogue of the ways and means by which 'Man's inhumanity to man, makes countless millions mourn!' With the dawn of the unselfish era, comes the demonstration of how man's humanity to man can and will make countless millions rejoice! "In selecting the people who are to be the active, working members of our co-operative farm, it is a matter of the utmost importance that they should be chosen from a class of persons who are capable of thinking in harmony on religious and political questions, who are already in sympathy with progressive ideas and co-operative work, intelligently alive to its importance and to its advantages, capable of understanding and appreciating that it is not the sole purpose of the organization to make money but also to accomplish a multitude of things besides: "First and foremost, to ennoble the occupation of their birthright. "To make farming the most charming and healthful and most desirable of all vocations. "To make it so remunerative that a reserve fund can be accumulated, sufficiently large to enable its members to purchase the necessary land for an ever increasing series of co-operative farms, for their children and their children's children for generations yet to come. "To unite stirpiculture so closely with agriculture that a race of perfect children shall be the crowning glory of all the productions of the farm. "To afford ideal conditions for motherhood and childhood, that all children may be proudly welcomed to a world of loving hearts; that they may be well born, wisely and beautifully unfolded mentally, morally, spiritually and physically; that they may be skillfully taught how to work, to think, to reason, and to comprehend and appreciate the true purposes of life, consequently their duties as true men and women--self-poised and noble, a law unto themselves--capable and fully prepared to enter the walks of life as worthy and honored citizens of an ideal republic. "That it is to be the province of the farm, by the co-operative thinking of its workers, to develop and increase the fertility and productiveness of the valleys and plains to such an extent that the hills and mountains may be reclothed with beautiful forests of choice trees, of varieties most valued for lumber and timber; also great orchards of the choicest varieties of fruit and nut bearing trees, as a source of future pleasure and profit, at the same time preparing the way for a more complete control of climatic conditions. By the process of shading and protecting the slopes of both hill and mountain by these valuable forests, a magical change for the better is effected. Everywhere a soft, spongy carpet of fallen leaves, ever increasing in thickness, is spread out, moistening and enriching the soil and conserving the waters of the increased rainfall. A thousand living springs of pure, sparkling water make glad the plains and valleys. The evils of flood, erosion and drouth are checked; the climate made more congenial; the value of both hill and mountain, as a source of wealth, increased a thousand fold. "Aided by the organization of our co-operative association, which makes it possible to treat large tracts of land as a single farm, this great work can be easily and surely accomplished by the earnest and united efforts of a people who, surrounded by conditions of comfort and plenty, are in a suitable mood to plant what their children and coming generations may enjoy. "As an evidence of man's awakening consciousness of his power, by means of intelligent co-operation, to make conditions that shall protect him and his loved ones from the many calamities which have hitherto beset and overwhelmed human lives, we note the extraordinary work accomplished by the different classes of insurance companies, during the past fifty years. These companies are in fact large bodies of people, incorporated and working co-operatively and systematically together to protect themselves. The success which has followed their efforts in this direction has, for the thinker, a marked significance, pregnant with suggestions for the future. In the co-operative farm, organized and carried forward on lines in harmony with the principles and purposes before stated, this system of insurance, in its simplest, least expensive and most practical form, is to be carried to its fullest extent into all the departments of life. By its wise provisions for the care and protection of the weaker units, it insures its members against loss of employment or wages; against sickness, injury or accident; against poverty, hunger and crime. It insures to all, for themselves and their children, the perpetual right to occupy and till the soil, and thus to secure by short hours of pleasant, attractive labor, the generous return which can be obtained only by the most perfect system of scientific, co-operative farming, armed with abundant capital. In addition, it insures to them all the advantages of birth, health, education, society and amusement which money can buy for the wealthy: more leisure, more opportunities for mental, social, ethical and scientific self-culture. It also insures to the world at large an object lesson which shall demonstrate that the way is open for the poorest farm laborer to secure the same results by joining these progressive co-operative bodies. "In looking forward to the effect upon society which these combined farms may have, we must consider the numbers and strength of the opposing force which, on every hand, will rise up as a bar to progress. For years, gold, that concentrated essence of selfishness, has been recognized by its worshipers as the crowned king of society, whose crimson banners have borne these suggestive mottoes: 'I am not my brother's keeper! His injuries concern me not!' 'Every man for himself!' 'It is well and good and right that the happiness of the few should be secured at the expense of the misery of the many, for is it not written, "The poor ye have always."?' "Fortunately, the law of compensation limits and finally crushes the reign of selfishness, causing it to perish by its own efforts to live, which in time destroy the substance upon which it feeds. Hence we may look hopefully to the future. With prophetic eyes we may behold the victorious march of these farm units by companies, battalions, regiments, brigades and divisions, like a vast army of peace, silently spreading, absorbing and conquering the old selfish system, grandly demonstrating the solidarity of human life, and the irresistible force of the combined efforts of thousands of bravely unselfish souls, working and thinking in unison, filled with enthusiasm kindled and inspired by the magnitude and grandeur of the true purposes of life. "Having thus broadly outlined the scope of the work, with its underlying principles, we may now give attention to the details of the plan for the initial farm. In this I would advise that the enterprise be made to adapt itself, so far as possible, to the present commercial and industrial conditions. That it be an incorporated stock company, limited. That its corporate life be for the longest possible term of years, with the right to renew. That it shall secure and control at least five thousand acres of land, to more readily enable it to dominate the township, as the lowest political unit of the republic; and also to give room for the planting of suitable forests. That its capital stock be limited to one thousand shares, to be divided equally among five hundred co-operators, composed of two hundred and fifty couples or families. That at the end of five years the stock be issued to the subscribers as paid up stock, by cash from the sinking fund, paid in for that purpose. That the stock of a retiring member can be sold only to the treasury of the company, the same to be re-issued to the succeeding member. That in order to avoid friction with the outside commercial world, the stockholders collectively shall sell to themselves individually, at ruling market prices, whatever they may need, the profits to go as a contribution from all to the insurance fund for the aged. That the care of the sick and the injured, and the education of the children, be classed and paid as a legitimate expense of the farm. That the co-operators collectively, pay to themselves individually, a wage sufficiently generous to enable them to purchase what they may desire in the way of furniture, food and clothing; allowing for a liberal percentage to be devoted to the sinking fund, to pay for the farm, the stock, and also for the additional land that may be secured as future farms for the children. That all other details necessary for the successful carrying out of these plans, be left for a satisfactory solution, to the practical working and co-operative thinking of the members of the farm. "I wish you, Mr. Flagg, as soon as may be convenient, to make a tour of inspection for the purpose of selecting and purchasing ten of the most available sites for such farms that you can find. From the ten you shall choose the one best adapted to the conditions required for the initial farm. "After occupation, at the end of five years, these lands are to be sold to the co-operators, at the purchase price, which, in any event, must not exceed the sum of ten dollars per acre. Until the deeds are made to the co-operators, these lands are to be in your custody as sole agent and director. "In these matters my daughter, Fern, will aid you in every possible way. Many times you will find her advice valuable, therefore when needed, command it without hesitation. I have an abiding faith that her inspiration will benefit you in many ways in achieving success for the model farm; a matter in which I am greatly interested and to which, as both mortal and spirit, I have for a number of years given close attention and much earnest thought. I now leave the matter to you and to Fern for such thought and discussion as the occasion may demand. I shall be glad at any time to answer questions concerning any particular point. Good night, Mr. Flagg; Good night my daughter." As Fennimore Fenwick bade them good night, both Fillmore and Fern returned the salutation, and Fern rose from her chair, saying: "I think, Mr. Flagg, that until now I have never quite understood the broad principles of real unselfishness. In the light of my father's comprehensive statement of the true purpose of human life, they stand forth in bold relief, clear and strong. What a grand incentive they offer, to stir the zeal and enthusiasm of our co-operative workers! All life is affected by them and discloses new meanings. All life seems more precious, more sacred. Yet the task assigned to you, Mr. Flagg, is not an easy one: I foresee many difficulties, but you will overcome all of them. The plan is so thoroughly in harmony with right and justice, so fraught with happiness for the masses, that it must succeed! I trust that you feel encouraged to go forward hopefully with the work?" "Thanks to Fennimore Fenwick," replied Fillmore Flagg, "I am armed against all obstacles by a new philosophy of life. Its possibilities, as applied I to practical work, are beyond computation! His masterly statement of the true theory and purpose of human life, embodies the crystallized wisdom of centuries. I am profoundly impressed with it. Applied to my chosen life work, it demands my best thought, my entire devotion: to co-operative work as exemplified by our proposed model farm, it means unqualified success! "Pardon me, Miss Fenwick, you have been hard at work, writing rapidly for a long time. You need rest. Let us then postpone further discussion until tomorrow." "Yes, I think that will be best," replied Fern, "so good night, Mr. Flagg." "Good night, Miss Fenwick." CHAPTER XVI. FILLMORE AND FERN. For Fillmore Flagg, a never-to-be-forgotten week has passed since the interview with Fennimore Fenwick, noted in our previous chapter. He is still at Fairy Fern Cottage, busy with preparatory work for his coming tour. Momentous events, which have radically changed his life, have followed each other in quick succession. Hours have passed as moments fly, in absorbing interviews with his spirit father and mother. His store of questions in relation to their experiences in spirit life, have all been answered: these answers have in turn suggested many more, until now he is satisfied. For him, the two worlds have been united--the continuity of life beyond the grave has been established as a verity past contradiction. As conscious individuals and loving parents in the realms of spirit life, his father and mother are as real to him as mortals. With each succeeding interview this conviction has grown, until, fully conscious of their loving sympathy and support, he begins to comprehend the connection between life and immortality; the stupendous meaning of immortal life--of never-ending progression--overshadows and dominates all other thoughts. In profound reverence he repeats to himself: "How noble, how sacred, how wonderful is life! A few years, comparably brief as moments, on the mortal plane of existence, to be followed by an endless Eternity, spent in gleaning wisdom and happiness from the rich fields of infinite progression. By the measure of immortality, who shall attempt to describe or limit the destiny of a human soul? As the epitome of the planet, the universe, and the universal cosmos, it must follow that the human soul is the repository of infinite possibilities. This, then, is the spiritual heritage of all. Sin and suffering, selfishness and greed, crime and vice in the transitory stage of the mortal, might stain and retard his spiritual growth, but they could never destroy the glorious possibilities of the final unfoldment." This broad conception of the possibilities of human life, here and hereafter, came to Fillmore Flagg as a revelation of the most sacred and marvelous character: in the light of such a revelation, the hideousness of selfishness stood revealed like a grim and warning monster. Now he saw the path of duty plain before him. On the higher, broader plane of unselfishness, he must strive to develop new powers and new aspirations to aid him in making better conditions for a more perfect protection and unfoldment of human life. To satisfy his highest ideal, he must devote himself to this work. The inspiration of the two worlds was upon him! His love for Fern Fenwick, the personification of all that was noble and beautiful, urged him forward; intensified and developed his highest aspirations for good; permeated, glorified and dominated his entire being. Love and life!--the former, the mystery and the crowning glory of the latter. Hours of self communion, alone in his room, had for Fillmore Flagg a hitherto unknown charm. The crowding memories of the happiest and by far the the most important week of his life, with a tenacity like fever-born visions, passed through and occupied his mind again and yet again. The bright image of Fern Fenwick was the central figure of each event, her grace and beauty was its chief point of interest. At her unrivaled cottage home he had been the honored guest to whom she had paid her undivided attention. Thanks to her wonderful mediumship, he no longer felt himself an orphan--the gateway of death was also the gateway of life. His father and mother had been restored to him, joined again to his life--his heritage of immortality assured! The truth had been made plain to him that the people of the two worlds were joined by everlasting ties of love and sympathy into the one great flood of humanity, all human beings, all immortal spirits, incarnate, excarnate. Again, to Fern's mediumship he owed his acquaintance with Fennimore Fenwick, whom he had learned to know, to admire, to love and respect as the highest type of a wise, great and noble man. How fortunate he was in having so many opportunities for learning from such a great master! He prophesied then and there, that the gratitude of coming generations was to bear witness to the power, wisdom and eloquence of Fennimore Fenwick's teachings. How the memory of all these things swelled the tide of love for Fern Fenwick, in the heart of Fillmore Flagg. How bright and amiable, how gloriously beautiful she was. How kind and gracious she was to him, and what a delightful deference she paid to his opinions! Would he ever again experience another week so full of unalloyed happiness? He had but to close his eyes--a radiant vision of Fern Fenwick was before him, thrilling his heart with hope, urging him forward to the goal of duty. With a sigh he thought of the coming journey. For one blissful week, in the light of her angelic eyes, in the radiance of her loveliness, in the subtle charm of her magnetic presence, he had basked as in the sunshine of paradise: now the hour of parting was approaching, he must not allow himself to be despondent, that would be unmanly; he must hope, wait, and work. Surely his star of destiny augured well for his future. Doubt he could not; doubt he would not! Yes, he would banish all thought of parting. He would think of the work, of its demands, of how Fern had helped him to prepare for it. Oh how proud he was of the peerless girl that had grown so dear to him! As he recalled the many hours they had spent together in discussing the plans of Fennimore Fenwick; as applied to the several stages of development of the model farm, how he had admired and appreciated Fern's brilliant ideas, her pertinent suggestions, her wonderful power to foresee administrative difficulties and to provide most efficiently against them. How well these accomplishments attested the high order of her intellectual training; how perfectly they demonstrated the astuteness of her power of thought, when applied to practical subjects. With such mental and spiritual attributes, supplemented and intensified by the deep inspiration and the awe inspiring majesty of her mediumship, how immeasurably superior she appeared when compared with other women. What problem in life so knotty that she could not solve? With the aid of such a matchless woman, how could he fail in the work before him? Together Fern and Fillmore had examined many maps for the purpose of deciding on the particular states to be inspected during the coming tour. The great south-west seemed to offer the best field for choosing. The Indian lands, just coming into market, were not to be ignored. They were located in a climate that would promote the growth of a large variety of crops, therefore were especially desirable. Much time was spent by them in going over these important questions very carefully. Fennimore Fenwick, from time to time, had given his opinion on many doubtful points. Now everything was settled. Tomorrow Fillmore Flagg was to start for the rich lands of the great west and south-west, with careful instructions to keep Fern Fenwick informed, by frequent letters, of his progress and whereabouts. Whenever a particular plot of ground was selected, Fern was to send him a certified check for its purchase. This plan was to be followed until all of the desired plots had been secured. The preparatory work on the model farm was then to be commenced. On the eve of his departure, Fillmore Flagg in reviewing these arrangements, began to perceive that many days must pass before he could hope to see Fern Fenwick again. The intensity of his love for her urged an immediate declaration, that he might know his fate before commencing his long journey; on the other hand, prudence counselled a more patient waiting and wooing as the only safe and honorable course for him to pursue, as to declare his love at this time would be, under all the circumstances which had made him a guest at the cottage, taking an unfair advantage of the confidence and hospitality of his charming hostess, who had become so inexpressibly dear to him. Yes, he would take up the burden of his work, full of confidence in the wisdom and watchfulness of his guiding star. Hope whispered in his heart: "Fern's destiny is so closely interwoven with thine own, that no fear of the future need disturb thee; in peace and contentment await thou the fulfillment of thy brightest hopes." Meanwhile, in the heart of Fern Fenwick, the impression left by the events of the week, were marked and apparent even to herself. A change in her regard for Fillmore Flagg was manifest. He was so capable, so loyal to her, and to her interests; and withal so intensely in love with her, that in turn her admiration for him grew apace--in fact she did not attempt to hold it in check. She adored an honest frankness as much as she despised smooth deceit. She knew that Fillmore Flagg was the soul of honor and that she could trust him under all circumstances, else her father would not have chosen him to be her worthy and trusted assistant in the work. In manly beauty he was very near to her ideal; in nobleness of heart, intellectual development and training, he was her equal: therefore it was but natural for her to bestow glances of encouragement on a lover so attractive, so cultured, so unselfish and so ardent. Perhaps she had met her fate! However, before dismissing the subject, she decided at the first opportunity to call the attention of her father and mother to the matter and ask their advice, which would govern her course in the future. She felt that whatever the advice might be, in any event, it would not mar or blight her true happiness. CHAPTER XVII. SOLARIS FARM. One year from the time Fillmore Flagg left Fairy Fern Cottage on his trip to the west, we find him at "Solaris Farm," the title chosen for the model or experimental co-operative farm. The location was nearly midway, on one of the through lines of railway which connect St. Louis, the great central city of the Mississippi valley, with the gulf and inland cities of the mammoth state of Texas. The land was beautifully located, the soil was rich and easy to cultivate. The entire tract was well watered by a fine, clear, swift flowing stream. In extent, the farm comprised ten sections, laying compactly together, and making in all, 6,400 acres of choice land. Nine of the sections formed a perfect square, each of the four sides being three miles in length. The tenth section joined the west line of the south-west section in the square, which made the south line of the farm four miles in length. The railroad passed through the farm near the north line of the southern tier of sections, touching on the way an ideal site for the farm village. About four thousand acres of the land was broad, rolling prairie, combined with a large proportion of unusually rich river bottom, both well adapted to the growth of a great variety of crops. The remainder of the farm presented a rough, broken surface, with a soil not so rich, sometimes quite poor and gravelly, but being protected by a great bend in the river, was well covered by a valuable growth of timber. The surface of the roughest ground covered large deposits of lead, zinc, mica and several varieties of choice clay. Numerous bold bluffs contained fine quarries of excellent stone for building purposes, also for an abundant supply of lime and cement. A number of the ridges offered unlimited quantities of gravel and sand. Here and there several rich veins of a very good quality of bituminous coal cropped out. In making his preliminary examination, the quick eye of Fillmore Flagg soon discovered that this eighteen-hundred-acre tract, of what the owners considered their poorest lands, marred and disfigured by a tangle of undergrowth, a confusion of unsightly rocks, gullies and bluffs; was in reality a treasure, a vast store of choice material for coming needs. When the ten sections, including this broken tract, were offered for the lump sum of thirty two thousand dollars, Fillmore Flagg quickly closed the bargain. He was confident that at last, after many weeks of patient searching, a most desirable site for the initial farm had been secured, at the low average price of five dollars per acre. No wonder he was elated and proud of his achievement! The remaining lands of the township were sparsely settled by about fifty families, generally occupying large ranches. Acting on Fern Fenwick's advice, as soon as the site of the model farm was chosen, Fillmore Flagg prepared an advertisement for publication in three of the leading spiritual papers, setting forth the purposes of the organization, together with the requirements necessary for membership. The applications which soon followed were so numerous that at the end of the first three months he had been able to complete a very choice selection for the colony. Before the end of the next three months, he had placed them on the farm, prepared for active work. In the accomplishment of this remarkable feat in so short a time, he had the able assistance of his trusted friends, George and Gertrude Gerrish, who were, from the beginning, most thoroughly in sympathy with him and eager to join him in the work. Fillmore Flagg had known them from childhood and had learned to appreciate them as progressive people of the most pronounced type, who were honest, courageous, and gifted to a high degree with the power to win the love and confidence of all who knew them. George and Gertrude Gerrish were born and reared on Nebraska farms, near the home of Fillmore Flagg. George was thirty-five; Gertrude, younger by three years. They had been married fifteen years and were noted as a handsome couple, being large, tall, straight and finely formed, with strong, even temperaments. Their only son, Gilbert, was a delicate lad, in his fourteenth year, handsome, spirituelle and intellectual to a remarkable degree. He was a real genius, passionately fond of books, art and music; already an accomplished player on both the piano and violin. Yet withal, he was very reticent, sensitive and shy, on account of his small size and deformed body, the result of spinal trouble caused by a fall while an infant. The Gerrish family, for the eight years previous, had resided in St. Louis, where George and Gertrude were employed as teachers. When Fillmore Flagg made them a visit while on his way west from Newburgh, he was both surprised and delighted to find them spiritualists. They at once became interested in his mission, and his plans for the establishment of a model co-operative farm. At his urgent request, they promised to move at once to the farm, whenever located, in order to be prepared to receive the colonists properly as soon as they should commence to assemble. This promise Fillmore Flagg considered a most extraordinary piece of good fortune, and so it proved. As a result of this wisely planned co-operative work, at the end of the first six months, a carefully selected, most efficient colony, of five hundred adults and one hundred and fifty children, had been assembled and organized; the business of the incorporation completed; the stock all taken; the officers chosen and a general plan of the work prepared. George Gerrish was chosen as President of the Solaris Farm Company, Fillmore Flagg was made trustee and general manager. The members of the company were young and strong, accustomed to farm labor, full of enthusiasm for pushing forward the work. They were all wide awake and progressive, quick to perceive and appreciate the importance and advantage of applying co-operative thought and co-operative work to systematic farming on a large scale. They were thoroughly in earnest and equally determined to make the model farm a complete success. With such an army of vigorous, intelligent workers, it was easy to accomplish before the close of the first year, the magical changes which had been effected at the farm. The land had all been surveyed, examined and tested; the farm carefully subdivided and platted, with a view to keeping a complete record, which should include a debit and credit account with each subdivision. The size and boundaries of these tracts were determined with reference to the capacity of the soil to best produce certain kinds or crops of grains, grasses, vegetables, vines, berries, fruits or trees. The crests of ridges, and all rough, gravelly lands, were set apart for timber, fruit and vineyard culture; the separate areas to be devoted to these three classes were carefully calculated, described and marked on the plat. The number of roads required to connect the various fields and subdivisions with the village, were laid out and made passable by building the necessary bridges. The site selected for the village was quite near to the railroad, and large enough to give abundant space for future factories, shops, lawns and ornamental pleasure grounds. The whole was graded, well drained and artistically laid out around the four sides of a spacious central square. A large, well constructed freight and passenger station, of Solaris brick, was built and established at the most convenient point on the railroad. In this building were the post office, express office and telegraph office, all in excellent business form and perfect working order. The manufacture of brick had been one of the first industries developed at the farm. An inexhaustable supply of most excellent clay had been discovered just at the edge of the village site, and speedily connected with it by a short tramway. From this clay the product of Solaris brick proved in every way desirable. In form, color, size and design, they were much superior to ordinary brick. With them, the builder could, in one half the time, with less cement, construct walls that were thick, solid and durable, yet presenting beautiful surfaces both inside and outside. These walls would remain for many years in perfect sanitary condition, kept free from dampness by the dry air circulation, due to the constructive design of the brick. The very fine appearance of the new railroad station, so advertised the beauty and excellence of Solaris brick, that orders from abroad soon came pouring in. To fill these orders without delaying the work on the village buildings, it became necessary to double the size of the brick-making plant; also to increase the number of workers. The unexpected development of such a large and profitable allied industry, at almost the first stage of the preparatory work at the farm, so encouraged Fillmore Flagg and his co-workers, so stimulated and quickened the spirit of inventive genius, that thereafter the efficiency and capacity of the machinery kept pace with the steadily increasing demand for brick, that too without further adding to the working force or to the size of the plant. A deeper excavation of the clay beds brought to light a much finer class of clays, which proved so excellent for the purposes of manufacturing general pottery, terra cotta ware, drain tiles and sewer pipe, that in connection with the brick works, a factory for making that kind of material was at once put in operation. The tramway was extended a half mile further from the village to reach the newly-opened stone quarries and coal mines, passing on the way large deposits of sand and gravel. By means of the tramway, an abundant supply of all kinds of the necessary materials could be placed on the building site very quickly. The best of stone for the foundations, quantities of brick, lime, sand and cement were at hand, waiting for the builder. All this made possible the swift construction of superior buildings, equipped with all of the modern improvements, including artistic ornamentation. As a result, before the expiration of the first six months after the arrival of the co-operators, the following buildings had been completed and were ready for use: On the south side of the public square, fronting north; one large mill for grinding flour and feed; one extensive building, large enough to be occupied as a saw mill and planing mill, machine, carpenter, repair and blacksmith shop all combined. On the north side of the square, fronting south; one large three story and basement block of apartment houses, sufficiently capacious to accommodate eight hundred people. The three upper stories were high enough to afford twelve-foot ceilings between the floors. The rooms were large, well lighted, well ventilated, and so arranged on each floor as to offer to every family a parlor, sitting room, dining room, two bed rooms, one bath room, and a kitchen. The basement of the entire block was furnished and fitted to be used as a restaurant, with the necessary dining rooms, kitchens, furnace rooms, store rooms and cellars. The light frame dwellings, located on one of the rear streets, which had given a temporary shelter to the people until the completion of the apartment house, were now utilized as work rooms, seed rooms, assorting rooms, store rooms, and for dairy and apiary purposes. On the west side of the square, fronting east, just across the corner from the apartment house, the well-appointed hall of Education and Amusement was erected. It was three stories high, seventy five feet wide, and one hundred and fifty feet long. The upper story was entirely devoted to the library, assembly and amusement hall, with its large stage, numerous offices and ante rooms. The lower rooms were arranged to be used for the business offices of the farm, the spacious school rooms for its one hundred and fifty children, the printing office and editorial rooms of the press club, and the eleven additional club rooms reserved for the use of the adults. On the same side of the square, fronting eastward and separated from the hall of amusement and education by one hundred feet of space, was the Solaris company store; four stories high, two hundred feet wide, two hundred feet long, built around three sides of a beautifully arranged rose and flower garden. The two lower stories were used to display a large stock of general merchandise, while the upper stories were occupied by the force engaged in the manufacture of general clothing, underwear, and in tailoring and dress making. All of these fine structures were built of Solaris brick, with cut stone foundations; the ornamental brick used in the fronts were especially designed for the purpose and proved wonderfully effective. In every particular the buildings were a credit to the company, being beautifully planned, skillfully constructed, and located with due regard for architectural effect. From the preparation of the stone, the making of the brick, lime and mortar, to the final completion of the buildings, including the making and laying of the sewer pipes, nineteen-twentieths of the total cost was represented by the labor of the co-operators. Of course they were led and taught by a few skilled workmen, directed by Fillmore Flagg, who had prepared the plans. The remarkable success achieved, proved a good lesson in the economics of co-operation, of the utmost significance and value; a lesson which filled the hearts of the members of the company with pride and joy, riveted and clinched their devotion to the model farm and opened their eyes to the possibilities of the future. Having finished this first series of buildings for immediate use, attention was given to the matter of improving the appearance of the public square. In the center of the broad, smooth green, stood the tall, straight flag-pole; from its top floated the stars and stripes. Eastward from the foot of the flag-staff, and slightly raised above the grassy surface of the smoothly shaven lawn, was spread a living flag in true colors, red, white and blue. This flag was of magnificent proportions, twenty-five feet in width by fifty feet in length, and presented such an effective appearance that it soon became the pride and delight of the farm children, an object of never failing interest, a beautiful living motto which expressed their appreciation of patriotism. While the building operations were being pushed forward, a carefully selected force of workers had been equally busy in making numerous agricultural improvements. Two thousand acres of virgin soil had been broken up and prepared for planting. One hundred acres of the best of this newly upturned soil, so clean and free from weeds, had been planted with a well selected series of vegetables, capable of producing a remunerative crop of assorted garden seeds. The series included all of the best known varieties with the addition of several new ones. As a result of skillful culture and favorable conditions, a great many tons of choice seeds had been grown, gathered and prepared for market. Large propagating gardens had been fitted and seeded with reference to the future demands of fruit and forestry culture. An abundant supply of all kinds of vegetables for farm use had been grown and stored. Goodly crops of corn, oats and potatoes, grown and harvested. Plenty of hay cut, cured and housed. Pastures, roomy enough to accommodate large herds of horses and cattle, securely enclosed, supplied with water and the proper shelter. Small herds of fine cattle and horses secured and well provided for. These herds were selected chiefly for breeding purposes, while a sufficient number of mules were purchased for the needs of the farm work. The bees in the well stocked apiary had already gathered a fine supply of honey from the wild flowers of the surrounding prairies. The extensive yards and buildings prepared for poultry farming on an unusually large scale, were so well stocked and in such fine condition as to promise large profits at an early day. In reviewing the work at the close of the first year, which included many important items not yet enumerated, the general results were so satisfactory that the officers and members of the Solaris Farm Company were very much encouraged. Owing to sales of seeds and brick in such considerable quantities, together with the manufacture at the farm of almost every kind of building material, the sum advanced by Fern Fenwick, the patroness, for farm buildings and equipment was less than one-half the amount named in Fillmore Flagg's estimate. The amount required for the coming year would be very much less. The general plan provided for and embraced the supplementing of agricultural work by a series of allied manufactures, such as naturally grew out of the needs of the farm: carpentering, blacksmithing, machine work and repairing, furniture making, turning, polishing, painting, staining and general wood working and finishing, pattern making, broom and brush making, a factory for spinning rope and cordage, basket and all kinds of osier weaving, brick making, pottery and all kinds of clay or porcelain work; together with many other things that would suggest themselves as time passed and the capacity of the farm was increased by the invention of better machinery and superior methods. The application of inventive genius on the part of the co-operators to operations at the brick works and pottery, had already proved equal to the demands of any emergency which might arise. The great variety of these added employments would afford a pleasant change from the monotony and routine of ordinary farm work. They could be pursued sometimes for weeks together, when legitimate farm work would be out of season, in this way so greatly increasing the products and profits of the farm, that the bonanza farm of the capitalist, which depended on wheat growing alone for profits, could no longer successfully compete. After much discussion by the board of management and the officers of the company, it was decided with the unanimous consent of the membership, that eight hours should be considered a day's work--six hours for the farm work, with two hours additional to be devoted to such of the manufacturing works as the member might choose. This course proved entirely satisfactory; it soon gave to the farm an able corps of skilled workmen, at the same time augmenting the collective power of the membership to do more effective co-operative thinking for the advancement of the best interests and general welfare of all. In the matter of wages, a uniform price of three dollars per day was fixed for each member of the company; this amount was diminished by deducting ten per cent for the sinking fund, five per cent for the general service fund, and five cents daily from each member for the special fund. The special fund was for the purposes of education and amusement. After subtracting these deductions, two dollars and fifty cents were left as the net per diem pay of each one. The assessments provided the goodly sum of $54,000 00 annually for the sinking fund, $27,000 00 for the general service fund, and $9,000 00 for the special fund. The Solaris Farm company was incorporated for ninety-nine years, with a provision for re-incorporation at the expiration of that period. This provision practically made the company a perpetual institution. The stock of the company was capitalized at $250,000 00, and divided into one thousand shares, with a par value of $250 00 each. The number of share holders or subscribers was limited to five hundred adults, about two hundred and fifty couples or families; at the end of five years, two shares of stock were issued to each subscriber, male or female, married or single. This stock, however, could not be issued until $45,000 00 had been paid into the sinking fund. With the issue of the stock, the purchase price of the farm should be paid from the sinking fund to Fillmore Flagg, the trustee, who would then deed the farm to the corporation. Thereafter the company was to maintain a sinking fund amply sufficient to provide such additional farms as the children of its members might need. In accordance with his instructions from Fennimore Fenwick, the money received in this way by Fillmore Flagg, was to be held by him as a trust for the purchase of other farms. It was further provided that the Solaris Farm company retained the sole right to purchase all stock which might be offered for sale. The general service fund was to be used in defraying the expense of stocking, equipping and improving the farm. It was also determined that settlements made with members, who from any cause might wish to leave the company, should be made on a basis of two dollars and fifty cents per day for the time they had been co-operators, with the return of whatever capital they might have invested plus interest at three per cent per annum; all stock subscribed for to return to the company's treasury. The general plan further provided for the erection of separate cottages, with small gardens adjoining, for the use and occupancy of such families as might desire them. The apartment house, now completed, had many of its suites of rooms arranged for independent housekeeping, but so far, the members of the company preferred to take their meals at the company restaurant, paying for them the ordinary prices. They also preferred to patronize the laundry, general clothing, tailoring and dress-making departments which were connected with the company store. To prevent any conflict with the commercial interests of the outside world, the restaurant and the company store sold food and goods at the ruling market prices for first-class articles, realizing that it was plainly the policy of the company to keep only the best of everything for sale--the generous profits from all sales to go as a general contribution from the entire membership to the insurance fund for the helpless and the aged. As liberal wages afforded ample means, large purchases were encouraged, and all tendency toward a miserly hoarding was discouraged. It was marked that all the members were quick to appreciate the fact that the more liberal their purchases, the more generously they swelled the fund that was set apart to provide for the needs and happiness of declining years. With each passing month it was observed that this particular feature of insurance continued to grow in popular favor. To enable the company to dispense with a great deal of expensive bookkeeping, to do business with a small amount of actual cash, and at the same time add another check against the disposition to hoard money; the payment of wages to the members of the company was made in Solaris scrip, good at its face value for all purchases made from the company. Whenever cash was needed by any of the members, an order on the treasurer drawn by the president and approved by the general manager, could easily be obtained for reasonable amounts. On presentation of the order, U. S. legal tenders to the amount specified, would be exchanged for the scrip, dollar for dollar; the treasurer cancelling this scrip by stamping across its face the date of the exchange and the name of the member, retaining the cancelled scrip as his voucher for the disbursement of the money. When scrip was exchanged at the store for goods, it was cancelled in the same way by the manager of the store. The plan seemed to work without friction and gave general satisfaction. At the beginning of each month an executive committee, composed of three men and three women, was chosen by the members of the company. This committee, with the general manager as chairman, made an order of work for each day and assigned the members to the different kinds of work named in the order. These assignments were always accepted cheerfully. The co-operators without exception and without murmur worked steadily and with zeal for one common result. They were keenly alive to both the importance and the advantages of this new kind of co-operative work, which gave them so many hours of leisure for rest and recreation. With the experience of each passing month, they realized more than ever before that sixteen hours out of the twenty-four so devoted, soon stimulated and reinforced the vital energies to such an extent that active labor seemed really desirable. As a matter of fact, each day they began to look forward eagerly to the six hours of farm work and the two hours additional of skilled labor, as opportunities which gave them refreshing and delightful exercise. Exercise that was necessary to promote health and happiness--exercise which left them with an added relish and brighter mental conditions for the enjoyment of the hours of study and amusement that were to follow. Here again, the wisdom of nature's law of compensation was demonstrated. A grave question of the utmost importance to the progress of mankind was for them forever settled. The discovery had dawned on the minds of these people that labor, no longer a curse, was in reality nature's richest blessing! Among the more important improvements on the farm which Fillmore Flagg had carefully planned, was the necessary preparatory work on the large propagating gardens, located near the river, not far from the village. In connection with the construction of the village water works, at the time of the grading and sewering of the village grounds, these gardens were furnished with a complete system of irrigating pipes. These, together with the thousands of pots required at a later period, were made in the pottery at the brick works--another product of farm labor. With such a complete control of the necessary moisture, the sprouting process in the long seed beds proved unusually successful. These beds, which covered several acres of very rich soil, were thickly planted with all kinds of fruit and tree-bearing seeds; together with grape cuttings, mulberries for the silkworm culture, quinces, currants, tea plants, a great variety of berries, a fine selection of ornamental shrubbery, dwarf fruit trees, roses, and many other plants besides. The young plants soon reached a stage of growth where potting became necessary in order to make them strong, well grown, independent young shoots, ready at any time to be transplanted without injury into nursery rows, the vineyard or the berry plots. To pot the contents of these beds required the labor of many hands, consequently the task furnished a pleasant, congenial employment for a major part of the female co-operators. A large, well floored, wide roofed shed was constructed just at the edge of the gardens nearest the village. It was wide enough to accommodate two rows of roomy tables, and of a length sufficient for fifty tables in each row. Adjoining the end of the potting shed towards the village, was the storehouse, containing quantities of prepared soil and a large supply of assorted pots. A double track system of narrow tramways passed between the rows of tables, on its way from the storehouse to the different seed beds in all parts of the garden. On this tramway the little cars came from the storehouse to the tables, laden with supplies of pots and prepared soil; these they exchanged for trays of potted plants to be returned to the seed beds. In returning from the gardens on the other track, they brought cargoes of shallow trays filled with little plantlets just lifted from the seed beds. This cargo-bearing process, on the part of the tram cars, continued throughout the day as often as required, making light work for all concerned. To witness the work under the shed as it goes bravely on is a pleasing sight. Let us pause a moment to enjoy it. At each table are two operators, who may sit or stand while they work. Protected by strong gloves, the deft fingers swiftly fly--the long, double lines of maidens and matrons are as merry as crickets! The buzz of musical chatter, song and story, inspires the work, fitting time with swift pinions and transforming such toil into six hours of fun and frolic! This class of work proved so charming that a majority of the women preferred it to employment in the apiary, dairy, nursery, school, office, restaurant, or any department of the company store. With this glimpse of the general development of Solaris Farm, its improvements and its people, during the first year, we discover that Fillmore Flagg has been a very busy man; that his skill, inventive genius, and executive ability have been tried severely; that he has been able to respond to the demands of every occasion. However, such was his confidence in the wisdom of Fern Fenwick, that when he found himself puzzled or in doubt, he relied largely on her advice to suggest some proper solution for each vexing question. He had, from the beginning, furnished her with a complete history of every stage of the development of the farm, along with his weekly reports. At the close of each one he gave a list of topics on which her opinions were solicited; the suggestions in her replies led to such a speedy unraveling of the tangled situations and troublesome questions, that Fillmore Flagg was impressed more than ever, with her excellent judgment and the brilliancy of her genius. His admiration grew; his love grew faster! In his personal letters, transmitting the weekly reports, the expression of these sentiments of admiration and adoration continued to grow in force and fervor until he finally gained courage to request permission to address her as a lover: a lover whose happiness would be largely increased by every effort he might make to put in words the thoughts born of his devotion to her--the one adorable woman in the world, for him. In her reply, Fern Fenwick frankly stated that she was inclined to consider his request with some degree of favor. That she had sought advice from her parents. That in response her father, Fennimore Fenwick, had expressed himself as convinced of the integrity, honesty, and purity of Fillmore's love for her; but he could not consent to an engagement binding his daughter to marriage, until the unqualified success of the model farm, at the end of the first five years, had demonstrated the worthiness of Fillmore Flagg. After that event, if both continued to desire a marriage engagement, his consent might be considered as assured. Her mother, she said, had repeated and emphasized her father's advice: this advice she felt in duty bound to heed and respect. Therefore, on the conditions named, she was willing to accept him as a lover, with the distinct understanding however, that he must not claim her hand in marriage until after the achievement of the complete success of Solaris Farm. In the postscript at the close of her letter, Fern adroitly, though perhaps innocently, lighted the torch of hope in the heart of Fillmore Flagg by archly expressing herself as follows: "Henceforth my personal interest in the progress and final success of the model farm will, no doubt, fully equal your own." This little postscript was a never failing source of comfort and encouragement to Fillmore Flagg. He read it and re-read it again and again: in his ecstacy he caught himself kissing it a dozen times the first week after it reached him. With each reading his hitherto dormant love nature gathered force and intensity. In the throbbing tide of joyful emotions, he was suffused with a strange new happiness. He blushed like a girl as the certainty came home to his heart that at last his love for this beautiful woman was returned. It may be marked as noteworthy that this important letter came to Fillmore Flagg just eight months after his parting with Fern Fenwick at her cottage home on the Hudson. While meditating and luxuriating under the spell of the happy significance of this event, as affecting his future life, he thanked his angel friends for so successfully speeding his wooing. With this assurance he was confident that at last his star of destiny was dominant in the sky of love. Calmly serene, he could now await the approach of whatever trials in life the future might have in store for him. Nothing could shake him from this fortress of love! Nothing could intervene to separate his life from the life of his beloved Fern! With a sigh of contentment, he prepared to devote himself more ambitiously and more industriously than ever before, to the development of Solaris Farm. He wooed every inventive thought; he planned night and day to overcome all obstacles that presented themselves. In his letters to Fern Fenwick, rejoicing in a freedom to express himself without restraint on the limitless theme of his great love for her, he filled page after page with eloquent adoration of his heart's chosen one--his highest ideal of the glorious perfection of womanhood. The effect on Fillmore Flagg of this fervent, all-absorbing love, was most excellent; it broadened and purified his life, eliminating from it all the dross of selfishness. He took a new interest in the lives of every married couple and every pair of lovers on the farm. By persevering effort, tact and skill, he completely won their confidence. He shared their hopes, plans, joys, sorrows, loves and crosses. In all this he never once failed to increase their love for him and their devotion to the farm. CHAPTER XVIII. CLUB LIFE AT SOLARIS. In the work of building up in the minds of the co-operators, an abiding faith in Solaris Farm and its future success, Fillmore Flagg had the able support of George and Gertrude Gerrish. They had proved themselves the right people in the right place! In the schools and nursery Gertrude had become invaluable. Her genial temperament, her fondness for children, the kindly influence of her great mother-heart, with its never failing store of sympathy, patience, tact and skill, all attested that she was a natural teacher whose presence among the children was a perpetual benefaction, while the wonderful store of her personal magnetism brought her the love, respect and obedience of both the old and the young. They instinctively felt her power to make them wiser, better and happier. This was a well merited tribute of praise, worth a king's ransom in gold! George Gerrish soon became very popular on account of the extraordinary ability he displayed in organizing the members of the farm company into the numerous clubs devised to promote the interests of education, science and amusement. The description which follows will serve to illustrate his skill as an organizer in carrying out the general plan prepared by Fillmore Flagg. In addition they will give a clear idea of the scope and variety of the talent developed, together with a proper conception of the splendid equipment of the farm for the social, educational, ethical and scientific development of its people. First in order came the Press Club. To it was assigned the duty of editing and publishing the "SOLARIS SENTINEL," a weekly paper devoted to the interests of the farm. It was filled with topics of general interest to the community; themes, essays, poems, personals and social notices contributed by the club members, suggestions and ideas leading to better methods for the care and culture of the farm stock and crops, also as to preparing, the same for market. The range of topics included hints regarding any of the allied manufacturing industries which were carried forward by the farm company. In addition the paper gave full weekly reports from the officers of the different clubs. The literary budget for each week was completed by selections from the general contribution box, a very large one, which was fastened to the outer door of the rooms of the club. Into this box every man, woman and child was invited to drop such written scraps, signed or unsigned, brief or lengthy, as they might be moved to offer for publication. The selections from this box were eagerly read. They often proved surprisingly brilliant, novel or suggestive, frequently disclosing rare literary merit,--altogether constituting the most popular department of the paper. The editorials were carefully prepared and well written. They were usually along lines of co-operative work; its desirability as an encouragement to unselfishness, and also to show how the work might best improve social, industrial and political conditions. The volume and excellence of the reading matter thus produced, was marked by general comment as a matter of astonishment. The unstinted praise which it elicited reflected much credit on the club: therefore to be chosen a member was a coveted honor which was reserved for the meritorious few. The Dancing Club, in point of popularity, was the most successful of all, and deservedly so. Its membership embraced the entire colony, both old and young who, one and all, seemed to enter into the spirit of the movement with a zealous abandon, a united joyousness, most delightful to behold. The social ties which bound them together, grew and strengthened with the recurrence of each meeting. On two afternoons of each week, the club teachers gave two-hour lessons or drills to all who might desire them. On three evenings of each week, in the large hall of education and amusement, two and one-half hours were devoted to dancing, in which all the members took part. These evening dances proved so fascinating that as a rule very few members were ever noted as being absent. An attack of illness which prevented the attendance of a member, must be desperate indeed. In the matter of general improvement the results were most excellent. To bestow perfect deportment, dignified control of the body and limbs, with an easy, graceful movement on all occasions, there is nothing like dancing. To eliminate the depressing effects of grief, mental or business cares, harassing trials of temper, physical exhaustion, or disturbed spiritual equilibrium, dancing is a remedy of marvelous potency. For the key to the reason why this is true, we are indebted to the wonderful discoveries in psychology and psychurgy made by that able scientist, renowned thinker and brilliant writer, Professor Elmer Gates. The following is a very brief statement of his reasons as to how and why the emotions of the individual affect the vital forces of life: "The human body is a collection of co-operative cells, more or less intelligent and responsive, therefore an important part of the thinking machine which is acted upon by the superior mind of the brain. The superior mind is in turn reacted upon by the automatic metabolism set up in the cells. Automatic metabolism of the cell, is its ability to carry on within itself the various processes of life that may be necessary to best fit it for the performance of special functions, as a particular part of the co-operative body. Violent emotions of anger, hate, despair and grief, are katabolic, poisonous and harmful; they tear down and destroy life. The poisonous deposits left in the cells by these emotions are called 'katastates.' Laughter and merriment, with all the emotions of pleasure, adoration, worship, love, affection, hope, beauty, etc., are 'anabolic,' or life-preserving. The vital, health-giving deposits left in the cells by these emotions are called 'anastates.' Nature accomplishes her perfect work by beautiful methods. The cells are fed and sustained by the circulation of the blood; they are reached from the smaller branching arteries by a network of minute, thread-like channels, sometimes called 'arterioles.' These arterioles are accompanied by the equally fine wires of the nervous system, closely connected with the brain centers. These wires are electrified by the emotions; they expand the arterioles, and the cells are flooded with an unusual supply of blood; thus they are correspondingly vitalized or poisoned, according to the kind of the dominant emotion, its duration and its intensity." From the foregoing we readily perceive that the joyful emotions stirred by that poetical trinity, the melody, the rythm and motion of dancing, arouses the circulation so potently that every cell in the body tingles with its superabundance of vitality; both the heart and the brain respond to the invigorating tide, while its precious freight of anastates is vivifying and thrilling every cell. These happifying emotions soon become permanently dominant, the depressing emotions grow weaker, fade away and disappear. The individual is vitalized and rejuvenated! We begin to understand that when properly indulged in, dancing is the most fascinating, healthful and helpful of all the amusements. The Solaris Farm people were both fascinated and benefited by the dancing exercises so generously provided by the club; the growing interest and enthusiasm aroused was a matter of astonishment even to themselves. With the continuation of the club dances, the intensity of the enjoyment and the capacity for it, seemed to increase; this, together with the pleasing memories of bygone dances, seemed to bind them yet more closely to the destinies of Solaris Farm. Strong, straight, lithe figures, happy faces, and eyes shining with the fires of perfect health, gave testimony to the efficacy of music and motion as applied to physical development. With grateful hearts, these happy people realized that this pure font of happiness came to them as the result of unselfish, harmonious co-operation. The effect on Gilbert Gerrish of this universal spirit of gaiety, was as marked as it was beneficial. On the raised platform at the head of the dancing hall, violin in hand, and surrounded by a chosen few of his friends in the musical club, he seemed to grow in stature as he breathed in the pervading merriment; living a new life, in which his deformity no longer marred his pleasure. Through the association of many months he had grown accustomed to the personal magnetism of the farm people. They were very proud of him and of his many brilliant accomplishments. This all-pervading sentiment of loving pride came to him as a benediction, which his refined, sensitive nature graciously absorbed. His shyness and reticence disappeared; his face glowed with the flush of happiness; his beautiful eyes shone with the fires of a new inspiration. With the hand of a master he swept the strings with a bow of magic; new strains of sweet, thrilling music stirred the dancers and moved them as one mass to the throbbing rythm of the intoxicating melody: a melody so charming that none could resist. Filled with the power of a new grace and dignity at such moments, Gilbert Gerrish felt a keen triumph in his ability to stir the emotional natures of these people whom he loved; to inspire them to better deeds and to nobler lives. They, in turn, recognized and paid willing homage to a noble soul, a great genius, whose power to sway and control them was not in the least deflected or dimmed by a thought of his deformed body. Under the mystic spell of divine music, which appeals to the highest aspirations of the human heart; which calls forth the hidden forces of the soul: they came in such perfect rapport with him in his inner life, that they sensed with soulful eyes the strong, radiant, symmetrical spirit shining through the defects and barriers of a fleshly prison. Thus transfigured, they saw him, not as he appeared to ordinary mortals, but as he really was. To these people of Solaris, this transfiguration was lasting. Very soon they came to regard him as a talisman of good fortune--the mascot of the farm. The Photographic Club, organized by George Gerrish soon after the press club with the intention of making it the nucleus of a future art club, proved a surprising success at an early stage of its existence. Very soon after active work began, fifty members had been enrolled. In discussing with the executive committee a general plan of formation, Fillmore Flagg remarked that he felt very sure the club would soon prove a valuable aid to the farm in the direction of furnishing attractive illustrations of the farm itself, its products, stock, fruits and flowers, to be used as advertisements. With this in view, he made arrangements to provide suitable rooms, large, well lighted and fitted for the work, in connection with the construction of an isolated building, made as nearly fire-proof as possible which, when finished, was to be devoted mainly to the needs of farm experiments in the department of agricultural chemistry. The completed rooms, with a large lot of cameras of various sizes, together with an abundant supply of photographic material, were placed at the disposal of the working members of the club. These things were rightly considered a necessary part of an educational outfit. Fillmore Flagg and George Gerrish both were skillful photographers: with the wise guidance of two such able teachers, the class soon began to produce creditable work. After the expiration of a fixed period, in compliance with an imperative club rule, each member was obliged to complete all work from start to finish without assistance. This would give scope and opportunity for expressions of spontaneity and inventive genius in the individual treatment of the work, which might tend to the evolution of superior methods. It was clearly an advantage for the members to be able to say truthfully that photographs produced under such requirements were actually the results of their own individual handiwork; from focusing the object, timing the exposure of the plate, on through the various stages of developing, toning, printing and mounting, up to the final process of polishing the finished picture. At the end of each month the members individually were required to submit twelve finished photographs to the inspection of a committee of five. This committee was composed of two ladies and two gentlemen in addition to Fillmore Flagg, who was the chairman. From this collection of twelve lot pictures, representing the finest work of the club, the committee selected four photographs from each lot, which were chosen to become a part of the farm exhibit to be displayed on the walls of the library, hall of education and the school-rooms. This monthly award for meritorious work acted as a wonderful stimulus to all the club members, so increasing their ambition, industry and artistic invention, that an ever increasing number of delightful surprises followed each monthly examination. In considering the selections as a class, the extent and variety of the subjects treated covered a wide range. Among them we may name the general and special views of the farm, its buildings, fields of grain, corn, cotton and broom corn; bits of forest, meadow or brookside landscapes; specimens of the different vegetables and garden products; interior views of the different buildings; photographs of groups and of individual members of the company; pictures of manufactured articles, tableware, ornamental brick and tile work, and general pottery; a great variety of cabinet work, furniture and willow ware; splendid photographs of horses, mules, cattle, sheep, hogs and poultry, also wild animals and birds, singly and in groups; views of trees, streams, roads, bridges and railroad trains; enlarged photographs of the insect enemies of farm products; others of the birds which prey upon such insects; artistic views of seed beds, nursery rows, potting sheds, brick and pottery works--in fact, pictures of every possible aspect of the agricultural and manufacturing industries on the farm. Taken together, this collection presented a most interesting series for the school rooms, which proved an object lesson of great value to both pupil and teacher. The landscapes were especially excellent in giving correct ideas of distance values in perspective drawing. As time passed, the inventive genius of the club members began to crop out in the repair shop, where they not infrequently, and sometimes much to their surprise, found themselves able to construct better and cheaper instruments, lenses and attachments than they were able to buy. With these improvements they soon achieved success in color photography. Later this led to making magnificently colored slides for stereopticon, kinetescope and biograph exhibits, which soon attracted wide attention and were in such demand that a large trade resulted. In this way another exceedingly profitable allied industry was added to the now famous Solaris Farm. CHAPTER XIX. FENWICK HALL. In the infancy of this Republic, when its government was looking about for a permanent home, Gen. Washington was moved to found and lay out the City of Washington as its Capitol. With a marvelous prescience he foresaw the coming needs and future greatness of the newly-united states. Impressed with visions of the glorious destiny awaiting his beloved people, his cherished republic, he wisely concluded to provide generously for the growth of a magnificent city which, a century later, should reflect credit as the capital of a mighty nation. Careless of the gibes and sneers of many of his most intimate friends, Washington, the far-seeing statesman, the invincible soldier, deliberately planned, platted and surveyed through the wilderness of forest at that time covering the great triangular basin lying between the Heights of Columbia and the waters of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers; such a bewildering array of broad streets, wide avenues, and roomy public parks, as would be ample and suitable for a brilliant city like Paris, (whose system of streets he had taken as a model,) at least sufficient for the wants of a population of a half million. The dawn of the twentieth century saw a complete realization of General Washington's brightest hopes, a verification of his prophetic visions. The wand of progress had transformed the straggling village of "magnificent distances," into the most royally beautiful city on the continent. A city which had become the pride and delight of one hundred millions of free people, who individually felt a personal interest in the vastness, the beauty and the imposing grandeur of its magnificent public buildings, which represented the crowning loveliness of architectural design, the highest artistic expression of American genius; altogether most perfectly and fittingly adorning the unrivaled capitol city of the most progressive, powerful, and meritoriously dominant republic on the face of the planet! To this Mecca of republics, as the social and political center of the western hemisphere, came the great thinkers, scientists, artists, orators and statesmen of the world. Commandingly situated on Columbia Heights, overlooking this surpassingly beautiful city, was Fenwick Hall, the home of Fern Fenwick. The Hall was a large quadrangular structure of imposing appearance, erected in the center of spacious grounds, most charmingly laid out, with a rare combination of lawn, flowers and shrubbery. The material used in its construction was Seneca sandstone, in color a rich dark red, and was trimmed with a pale mottled green stone, quite as beautiful as serpentine. The effect of the combination was as harmonious as it was ornamental. The main building was four full stories in height above the deep basement. It was made more conspicuous and more picturesque by the four octagonal towers, one-half of which projected from each corner of the building. These beautiful towers of a uniform size, rose thirty feet above the roof of the building itself. The basement and towers were of rough green stone; the caps and sills of the long, deep windows, together with the arcade, were of green stone, beautifully carved and polished. The arcade, which served both as a covered way, and a portico over the main entrance, was at once artistic and unique. It was formed by a picturesque combination of four Moorish arches. These arches were uniformly twenty-five feet in height and twenty-five feet in width: the openings of the double arch were placed in front with the single openings at either side. By this arrangement the beauty of the entire structure was greatly enhanced, while a very appropriate entrance to Fenwick Hall was the result. At the rear of the grounds, on a line with the center of the mansion, were the roomy stables. They were built of rough Seneca sandstone. Like Swiss cottages, they were made more beautiful by a profusion of richly colored slates which covered the broad, steep roof and the wide eaves. Between the mansion and the stables, on the same line, twenty-five feet distant from the former, was the pretty two story building, of the same material, devoted to the kitchen, the heating and the lighting plants. Both buildings were connected with each other and with the main building by a long colonnade of harmonious proportions; its heavy cornice, narrow, steep roof, and long double line of slender supporting pillars, were all of the same red stone. The color effects offered by the lovely contrast between the velvety green of the broad, smoothly shaven lawns and the rich reds of the Seneca stone, were simply delightful! Architecturally considered, the combined effect of the group of buildings, arcade and colonnade, was as artistic as it was excellent. Under the arcade, just inside the double arch, a broad flight of stone steps led up to the heavy oak doors opening into the wide hall on the main floor. This hall was remarkable for its unusual size; it was thirty feet wide and of a proportionate height, fifteen feet from floor to ceiling. In connection with a cross hall twenty feet in width, it served to divide the entire space on this floor--one hundred and sixty feet by ninety--into four very large rooms; the two parlors, the library, and the dining room: each one thirty feet in width by seventy feet in length, with fifteen foot ceilings. The grand proportions of these magnificent rooms and stately halls, excited universal admiration; they impressed the beholder with a dominant idea of the spacious luxury which marked the interior appointments of Fenwick Hall. In the center of the main hall, thirty feet from the front entrance, began the flight of the grand stairway. The general design of this stairway was boldly unique. It was in harmony with the scale of magnificence which characterized the halls and parlors. In three long flights of twenty-five steps each, it rose to the fourth floor. Counting the fifteen-foot landings on the second and third floors, it was practically one structure with a generous breadth of fifteen feet. It was built of the same material--American mahogany--with casings, cornices, banisters and newels of the same pattern and finish, all highly polished and rich with ornamental carving. The beautiful color effects of the polished mahogany, were brought out more vividly by the pale neutral tint of the heavy velvet carpet, which covered the stairs and landings. As an illustration of the great space occupied by this grand stairway of such ideal proportions, each one of its seventy-five broad steps would afford a comfortable seat for eight persons--a goodly company of six hundred, all told. This royal trinity of stairways ranked as the distinguishing feature of the mansion. They gave it an air of stately elegance, tempered with the glow and warmth of a generous hospitality. The halls on the second and third floors were counterparts of the main hall in size and style. The hall on the fourth floor was fifty feet wide by one hundred and sixty feet long. It was arranged to be used as a ball room, or for concerts, lectures, operas and theatricals. For such events, it would comfortably seat an audience of one thousand people. The roomy stage was furnished with the latest and most approved appliances; it was also equipped with a remarkable series of twelve drop curtains for the lectures. Number one of the series, was a twelve by twenty-four foot map of the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico and other territorial possessions. This map was accurately drawn to a large scale, it was artistically colored and marked in such a way as to show at a glance the boundaries of original territory; the ceded territory, the date of cession, and from whom acquired; the dividing lines between states and between counties; the location of all cities and towns having a population of one thousand or over; the principal state and county roads, all railroads, lakes, rivers, mountains, public parks, valuable forests, arid lands, irrigable lands, mineral deposits; all noted mines of coal, iron, gold, silver, copper, etc., together with a great variety of important items: all of which proved exceedingly valuable as an added means by which to illustrate in an interesting and comprehensive way, lectures on geographical, geological and historical subjects, together with lectures on the natural wealth and resources of our country; its manufacturing, mining, commercial and agricultural interests, with a great number of kindred topics as well. The second curtain was uniform in size with the first and with the entire series. On the same large scale, it gave a magnificent illustration of the solar system. The background was a pale bluish gray. The sun appeared as the central figure, surrounded by the planets in their orbits, carefully drawn as to comparative size and position. The whole map was colored with exquisite taste in perfect harmony with the beautiful sky effects of the background. The skillful work of the map maker proved especially strong in furnishing a lesson of wholesome humility for the over-proud denizens of the little planet Earth who, puffed up with much vanity, have for ages proclaimed the Earth as the pivotal center of all creation. The third curtain was simply a heavy, plain white one, perfectly fitted for the display of stereopticon views, and more especially for the moving panoramic views of the kinetescope, the vitascope and the biograph, which have proved such attractive and entertaining aids to the general lecturer, dealing with any special subject capable of such profuse illustration. The remaining nine curtains were devoted to outline maps of the world, and to illustrated object-lessons in the most important and interesting departments of nature. The side walls of this remarkable hall were wainscoted in polished hard wood, for a distance of five feet above the floor: the remaining wall space was divided into large ornamental panels, with beautifully scrolled historical borders. In these panels were painted, one in each, large maps of the States and Territories, which were drawn to uniform scale, minutely accurate, with every post office, post road, wagon road or cycle path plainly marked. In addition, at least twice the number of details usual to large maps showing counties and townships, were carefully noted. The effect of this unique educational system of ornamentation was as interesting as it was fascinating. In harmony with this idea, the entire length of the broad ceiling overhead was painted a pale blue; it was divided into two large panels with ornate borders; each panel was dotted with stars and planets in such a methodical way as to form a complete astronomical map of the visible heavens, both northern and southern hemispheres. This, with several of the large drop curtains, served as adjuncts to the well equipped observatory which was located in one of the large towers at the rear of the mansion. On the main floor, on each side of the front hall, were the two grand parlors, whose exact dimensions have been stated heretofore. They were carpeted and furnished with all the art and luxury that skill could devise, or wealth could procure. Two wide archways of Moorish style and majestic proportions, opened from each parlor into the main hall. The chief adornments which marked these fine parlors as unapproachably superb, were two immense mirrors, alike in every way, mounted in heavy frames, rich with leaf gold. They occupied the entire wall space at the rear end of these enchanting saloons of artistic luxury. When distinguished groups of brave men and beautiful women were assembled here, the magical effect of these mirrors in reproducing the brilliant company as one magnificently framed panoramic picture, was ever the source of perpetual admiration and delight. On such occasions the thirty feet of the main hall in front of the stairway, served as the third or reception parlor. The grand stairway shone resplendent as one magnificent centerpiece of loveliness. Up the long flight on either side, it was banked by a wealth of potted flowers, ferns and palms, festooned with wreaths of lovely smilax. Just in front of this unrivaled background of beauty, standing alone upon the movable reception platform, which was merely a small circular extension of the first step of the grand stairway, the charming young hostess of Fenwick Hall, with the grace and courtesy of a born princess, gave a greeting of welcome to her delighted guests, or dismissed them with a gracious smile as they entered or retired. The library, in the rear of the parlor at the left of the main hall and separated from it by the cross hall, was an exceedingly imposing and attractive room. With its quiet array of costly appointments, it seemed to possess some hidden charm. Its mahogany shelves were laden with a rare collection of choice books, elegantly bound, skillfully arranged and classified. The assortment of scientific books was a remarkably large one. Marble statues, and exquisitely painted portraits of a host of famous authors and artists, whose works had enriched the literature of the world, fittingly adorned this ideal realm of drowsy quiet, where both lore and luxury reigned supreme. The dining room was uniform in size with the parlors and the library. Its walls and ceiling were frescoed with groups of graceful figures, which represented the merry sprites of pleasure in carnivals of feasting, song and dancing. Each figure was a carefully studied type of beauty; each group a perfect expression of grace and gaiety. Studied singly or as parts of the entire composition, they were exquisite as works of art, charming the attention of the beholder with a bewildering fascination. The floor was one vast mosaic of superbly colored tiles. The heavy mahogany tables and sideboards were glittering with their costly equipments of shining silver, sparkling cut glass, and rare, translucent china. Large oval mirrors in heavy carved frames, duplicated the lovely adornments of this brilliant room from a dozen points of vantage. The dazzling effect of this home of the feast, was intensified by cascades of light from the two unrivaled chandeliers. They supported a great number of slender bulbs containing the electric lights, which were arranged in the form of a mass of drooping fern leaves, rising like a pyramid of soft radiance, into the perfect shape of two superb fountains. Tiny streams of short prisms, clear, flashing, crystal, pendant and vibrating, formed the tip of each fern leaf. This skillful combination seemed to complete the startling illusion of this rare vision of loveliness, until one could almost hear the musical tinkle of falling water. The three halls on the main, second and third floors, were really galleries of art "par excellence," they were so profusely adorned with choice collections of photographs, etchings, water colors, paintings and statuary. On entering the main hall, two very large paintings of extraordinary significance and rare merit claimed instant admiration. Companion pictures, each with a canopy and background of crossed American flags, from whose voluminous folds shone the blazing glory of color in the matchless beauty of the stars and stripes. In each picture under these flags, the dominant spirit of the republic breathed in the noble figures so exquisitely painted; typifying in the one on the right, the Goddess of Liberty watching over the destiny of the republic. In the one on the left, Liberty with her torch lighting the world. So perfectly did the painter's art portray the "Spirit of '76," that a new tide of patriotic devotion to the republic and its glorious flag, swelled the hearts of all who saw these justly famous pictures. The well lighted, well ventilated rooms in the basement were used as store rooms, a suitable number being set apart for the servants, as dressing rooms, dining room and sitting room. In a large bay window extension at the rear of the main hall, a sumptuously furnished elevator connected the basement with all of the halls, the roof and the towers. The rooms on the second and third floors were arranged in suites of three: reception, sleeping and bath. In size, fittings and furnishings, they were models of comfort and luxury. The four octagonal tower rooms were uniformly twenty-five feet in diameter, with lofty dome ceilings. The right front tower was occupied by Fern Fenwick as her private study and work room. It was fitted and furnished much the same as the library. The left front tower was arranged as a seance room for spiritual manifestations, and more especially for the different phases of mediumship possessed by Mrs. Bainbridge, including materialization. As before stated, the right hand tower at the rear was perfectly equipped as an observatory, while the rooms under it were devoted to the demonstration of kindred sciences. The left tower at the rear was furnished and arranged as a laboratory. The rooms under it were set apart for experiment and demonstrations in chemistry, metallurgy, photography and several other sciences of like nature. An able corps of carefully trained servants, under the direction of Mrs. Bainbridge, the housekeeper, made it easy to keep this remarkable establishment in perfect order. One and all, these model servants were devoted to their lovely young mistress, and this devotion was based on their keen appreciation of her noble ideas in regard to the true purpose of human life, to her high estimation of its sacredness. They were eager to serve her faithfully and well for less than ordinary wages, contented and confident in the knowledge that, in accordance with her clear sense of justice, they were sure of being retired on half pay after having reached the age of fifty-five. This brief description of the exterior and interior of Fenwick Hall, its equipment, its lovely mistress and its people, will but faintly suggest its extraordinary possibilities as a potent factor in the upper circles of Washington life. Almost three years have passed since the transition of Fennimore Fenwick, which left his only daughter, Fern Fenwick, as the sole heir to his vast wealth. With the exception of three months each summer, spent at Fairy Fern Cottage, or some mountain resort near it, she had remained quietly at Fenwick Hall, busily engaged in rebuilding and refitting it. Meanwhile under the instruction of able teachers, she had been hard at work in efforts to supplement her excellent collegiate education with a better knowledge of history and by a more complete mastery of the subtle secrets of the higher sciences, as exponents of the powers, properties and purposes of the inherent forces belonging to the various departments of Nature's vast domain. After much deliberation she had undertaken this work to enable her to wisely prepare and plan for a life work in harmony with her lofty ideas on the subject--ideas which had been slowly ripening in her mind for many months. Having passed the ordeal of this severe post graduate course of general study, she felt herself prepared to commence the work contemplated by her general plan, which embraced a skillful use of the great educational and social advantages of Fenwick Hall, in her endeavors to bring to the leading minds of the political and social circles of Washington a clear conception of the importance and significance of the real purpose of human life; with a view to reforming ethical, social, industrial and political organizations on the true basis of the unselfishness of the individual for the advancement of the race; thus bringing these organizations into exact and co-operative harmony with the object and purpose of the existence of the planet. Systems so organized, would then be in line with a true conception of the functions of an ideal republic--a government for the people, of the people and by the people; conducted for the benefit, protection and development of all the people. With the world organized into families of such republics, the advent of the millennium could be predicted, and the advancement of the race to the point of perfection would be insured. CHAPTER XX. THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA. From a careful review of her historical studies, Fern Fenwick came to the conclusion that the competitive system was responsible for a majority of the evils which had so retarded the world's progress. She discovered that this same system was the father of a conscienceless commercial spirit which had existed for many centuries as the basis of all social organization. That as such, it was a constant menace to all good society; the embodiment of a cruel selfishness of a savage type, which insisted that might makes right--that the strong should thrive by preying upon the weak. In this position it boldly denied the immortality of the soul, so far as the weaker workers were concerned. Therefore the cheap lives of these poor people had no claim to be considered as sacred, because they represented so many human souls. In the absence of any practical or effective protest from the religions of the world, this monstrous system of selfishness had in all these years, grown unchecked and unmolested in its methods of cruel greed. From the shadows and gloom of these threatening conditions, existing so manifestly in direct violation of all progressive law, came a demand that the negative belief in the immortality of the soul, be speedily replaced by a positive knowledge of it. A knowledge sustained and supported by practical demonstrations, through the action of natural law, whose manifestations and demonstrations should be so direct and indisputable as to appeal convincingly to the hard headed thinkers, who as a class, seemed to represent a materialistic element that threatened to overthrow all belief in immortality. In answer to this demand, about the beginning of the last half of the nineteenth century, there happened an event of the utmost importance, potent with promise for the mighty spiritual unfoldment and general advancement of the people of the twentieth century. In the humble home of the Fox family, at the little village of Hydesville, near Rochester, New York, by the co-operative efforts of mortals and spirits, there was constructed and established a line of communication between the two worlds--the mortal and the spiritual. Two little children, the Fox girls, were the mediums, a combination of operator and electric battery--or, in other words the necessary instruments for successful spiritual telegraphy. In this obscure home of the poor and lowly, in a quiet way, unheralded and unannounced, there came to the world a knowledge of the existence of one of nature's grandest laws, the law of mediumship; thereafter the way was open, on the physical plane of existence, for an unlimited series of practical demonstrations of the immortality of the human soul: the continuity of conscious life was substantiated by an endless variety of proofs of the most convincing character. With this solution, of the destiny of the human soul as an immortal and imperishable entity, came the solid ground on which to build a permanent foundation for a social and industrial organization, on a basis of unselfish, harmonious co-operation in perfect accord with planetary evolution, and the real object and purpose of human life. This strong combination of the working factors of the problem, suggested to the mind of Fern Fenwick the importance of first attempting to interest the minds of the people she wished to control, in the question of immortality as a natural fact that followed the dual nature of all human life, as a result of planetary evolution. Once interested, she could then convince them of the immortality of the soul, as a conscious, imperishable entity, by practical demonstrations through the law of mediumship. These demonstrations would make it clear to them that life on the physical plane of existence is transitory and ephemeral; somewhat in the nature of a very brief period of primary experiences; that life on the spiritual plane of existence is permanent and enduring; that therefore the pathway of progress for the human soul must be almost entirely within the realms of the world of spirit; that this great truth should have careful consideration when dealing with questions affecting human lives; that the dominant immortal spirit of the dual individual possesses a corporeal body, or mortal form, as a crude outward expression of the indwelling spirit in its earthly existence; that this mortal form enfolds all the possibilities of a life of eternal progression for the Ego or spirit as a conscious identity on the spiritual plane of existence; that the change called death is a natural one, to be approached calmly without a fear; that it is really a new birth, which does not disturb the continuity of life. Once convinced of the verity of these great truths, all lovers of humanity, all progressive people, all earnest thinkers, would readily understand and appreciate the sacredness of human life, as the flower and fruit of the planet--its highest expression; they would then be prepared to co-operate with any progressive movement for the advancement of the race. To make the necessary conditions for the accomplishment of this great work was the grand purpose of Fern Fenwick's Washington life. With this purpose in view, Fenwick Hall had been especially fitted and equipped. For this she had cultivated a large circle of acquaintances among the fashionable leaders of the best society of the Capital City. Caring but little for the ceaseless round of soul-wearying social functions which so completely absorbed these people; yet filled with a determination to win them to a higher life, she bore herself bravely through the season which proved one long procession of social triumphs. Inspired by the intensity of a grand purpose; endowed with a clear, musical voice, perfect health, youth and beauty, combined with a charmingly irresistible personal magnetism; armed with the quiet dignity of perfect self-control, and the genius of her brilliant mind, so broadly cultured; an adept in psychic lore; an entertaining and eloquent conversationalist, our heroine created a profound sensation in the most select circles of the social world. Everywhere she was the center of attraction, surrounded by admiring throngs of cultured people, representing wealth and leisure, who hastened to pay homage to her as a Twentieth Century society goddess, whose wand of magic controlled millions of money. In the homes of the exclusive few, she was hailed as a thrice welcome guest; celebrities, ranking high as statesmen, soldiers, poets, artists, authors, representative professional men and leading men of business, were completely charmed and curiously fascinated by this new queen of the social realm, and vied with each other in eager efforts to win her favor and perhaps her friendship, in the hope of gaining admittance to the very limited circle of fortunate people who were the recipients of invitations to the famous dinners, receptions and entertainments at Fenwick Hall. These people instinctively felt the attractive power of some silent, mysterious force, some high motive, which, combined with dazzling beauty and brilliant genius, drew them to her side, without the wish or power to resist. This phenomenal wave of popularity continued to increase until a choice of the best people in every branch of the social world, was at the command of this new leader of the exclusive set; they were ready to assist in carrying forward any progressive movement she might choose, by her championship to make the fashion. However, this universal willingness to follow her leadership, seemed based on a firm conviction in some way unconsciously established in the minds of her devotees, that all of Fern Fenwick's plans and purposes were for the good of humanity, wisely guided by a skill and judgment most remarkably rare--apparently far beyond her years! The whole situation was a complex problem they could not analyze: they did not even try! With the advent of modern spiritualism in 1848, came the first opportunity to bring woman forward as a teacher and leader in the great work of elevating and spiritualizing the masses. As a heritage from her sister oracles, who spake in the mystic temples of the ancient past, the modern woman was endowed with the divinity of a rarely sensitive and highly refined spiritual organization. By virtue of this endowment, she speedily demonstrated her peculiar fitness for this new mission. Her eloquence and inspiration charmed the multitude from a thousand rostrums. Her work in this new field was so startlingly brilliant, important and successful as to attract the attention of the whole civilized world; affording a remarkable object lesson which demonstrated her possession, as the mouth-piece of inspiration, of a wonderful magnetic power to sway the people; to enthuse, interest and educate them up to higher mental, moral and spiritual conditions; by making them aware of the vast import of the true purpose of human life; by helping them to realize to a limited degree, the significance of immortality, their individual responsibility in relation to the universe, as important factors in the evolutionary advancement of the race toward the millennium of its final destiny. These inspired teachings touched a responsive chord in the hearts of all womankind as they began, dimly at first, to perceive the all-pervading force and rythm of the dominant key-note to the evolution of the race, which in thunder tones ever proclaims the mighty truth, that all progress of the race depends entirely upon the elevation, education and refinement achieved by woman. They also began to understand something of the glorious possibilities of a perfected womanhood, as a regenerator of mankind. A magnificent array of future victories for woman's work loomed up before them as a command to awake; to prepare for the coming dawn of the twentieth century--the beginning of a new cycle in the life of the planet; the commencement of woman's golden era! To woman the command was imperative that she must strive for more wisdom, for more light on her holy mission as the evangel of evolving life; that she might reach a higher consciousness of her individual responsibility as the keeper and guardian of the sacred temple of human life--a temple in which is ever repeated the evolution, ontogeny, and phylogeny of the race; where, by this most mysteriously beautiful of all processes, there is constantly being welded together the planetary growth, physical, mental and psychical experiences of ages upon ages in the past; with the higher, purer, better and more spiritual possibilities of the race in its planetary progress for uncounted ages yet to come. From this general awakening there followed--for the purpose of securing that practical education of training, which actual contact and individual experience alone can confer--a vigorous effort on the part of the brightest and most progressive women of the Nineteenth Century, to enter, singly and as organizations, into all the activities of life. Hampered by the blinding prejudice of a long line of centuries; many of these earlier organizations, as might have been foreseen, were unsparingly criticised as exhibitions of ill-directed foolishness, altogether crude, unprogressive and unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, the dominant spirit of courageous and persistent effort, combined with high purpose and pure motive, soon won the approval of the better classes and accomplished a marked improvement in both work and method. This rapid improvement pointed unerringly to future achievement of that success shown in the conditions which prevailed at the close of the century, whereby woman was very generally recognized as a necessary and successful co-worker in all the suitable employments of life. Fern Fenwick, in full sympathy with the movement, was alive to the demands of the situation. With the purpose of concentrating the efforts of all the women's organizations which held their annual conventions in Washington, into one channel, leading to perfect motherhood, as the result of woman's social and financial independence; she identified herself with them as a generous contributor. Soon she became the friend and trusted adviser of all of the leaders. She placed Fenwick Hall at their disposal, for use as a general headquarters. In this way, a wise direction of the combined women's movement into a united work along lines in harmony with planetary evolution for the perfection of the race, became an integral part of Fern Fenwick's broad plan for a life work. By the end of Fillmore Flagg's first year at Solaris Farm, Fern Fenwick had matured her plans for her own peculiar work. Much to her satisfaction, the necessary conditions had been created, the whole movement organized and well in hand. Fillmore's work for the education and elevation of the agricultural classes, had given her energy and inspiration to accomplish a similar and co-operative work among people of wealth and leisure, who, ignorant of the true object and purpose of life, were unwittingly wasting precious years in leading indolent and aimless lives, by lending themselves body and soul to the care and canker of the fashionable game of killing time. One year's experience had taught her that the task was a difficult one, to accomplish which required time, patience and perseverance, reinforced by courage, skill and tact. CHAPTER XXI. HIS WOOING PROSPERS WHILE OUR HERO ENJOYS HIS FIRST VACATION. Fern Fenwick's interest in the experimental farm was intense. She read with eagerness the weekly reports from Fillmore Flagg, which were accompanied by such charmingly ardent love letters. She was very proud of the success he had achieved in two short years. She blushed as she thought how dear to her he had become in those busy months which swiftly passed. How much she should miss him and his fascinating love letters, if by evil chance anything should happen to take him away from her! She could not contemplate such a possibility without a shudder. Now that her studies were finished and her plans perfected, why not send for him to come to Fenwick Hall for a week's vacation? He had certainly earned the privilege which he would prize so much. The opportunity to personally compare notes and exchange suggestions would no doubt prove helpful to the farm work and to her own. She longed for the confidential companionship of some one who was in perfect sympathy with her, who could understand her work, and appreciate her motives in carrying it forward; some one who would be able to advise her wisely and unselfishly; one in whom she had implicit confidence. Who so capable and so desirable as Fillmore Flagg? Acting on the impulse of the moment, she wrote the letter directing him to come at once. To Fillmore Flagg, the summons to Washington proved as welcome as it was unexpected. He came at the earliest possible moment. The hope of again meeting the noblest, sweetest, and dearest woman in the world for him, his heart's idol; of again being permitted to look long and lovingly into her gloriously beautiful eyes, stirred his emotional nature intensely, and fired his throbbing pulse with the fever of impatient expectancy. The beautiful words of the poet Dennison, in his "Night Ride of a Lover," were ever in his mind and on his lips. Over and over again he murmured: "Though fleet as an arrow he flies, Though sundering space swiftly dies, My heart cries 'Oh haste! All time is a waste 'Till I drink of her soul at her eyes!'" The speediest express train seemed a laggard, left far behind in the race of the journey by his swift desire, which kept pace with the telegram announcing his departure from Solaris and the probable time of his arrival in Washington. At length his heart was made glad by a distant glimpse of the dome of the Capitol, which seemed to give him a welcome greeting as it marked his approach to the great city. He found Fern Fenwick's carriage, with Mrs. Bainbridge waiting for him at the depot. Half an hour later he was shown into the library at Fenwick Hall, where in radiant beauty his blushing sweetheart gave him a royal welcome. As he approached her, with shining eyes and face aglow, soul and body radiant with the grace and adoration of his all-absorbing love, the heroic order of his manly beauty thrilled the heart of Fern Fenwick with its irresistible charm. The kisses claimed by a lover's privilege, she was powerless to deny. Nay! she did not try to hide the shining light of a great happiness from the adoring eyes of such a noble lover, whose magnetic presence stilled the tumult of her fluttering heart with the ecstatic calm of a measureless content; that unmistakable signature of sanction, that crowning seal of nature's approval which greets the meeting of kindred souls, who, mated in the warp and woof of the web of destiny, in the flashing flight of Cupid's dart, become the harmoniously united halves of a perfect whole. Ah, thrice happy, thrice blessed, thrice crowned lovers! How swiftly passed those golden hours, as hand in hand, they sat entranced, with soulful eyes in silent communion, dreaming and drifting in the cloud-land of love's harvest-moon, in whose silvery mist they lost all consciousness of the existence in this world of aught else beside themselves! The next morning after his arrival at Fenwick Hall, Fillmore Flagg having breakfasted with Fern Fenwick and Mrs. Bainbridge, accompanied the former to her work room in the tower. Here, as had been arranged on the previous evening, she gave him a complete account of her work in Washington, since the transition of her father. She also gave the details of her general plan for enlarging the scope of the work to include the women's movement and of directing the combined work in such a way as to become an aid to the work of the model farm. "My dear Fillmore," said Fern, "How are you impressed by my scheme for carrying out the chosen plans? Can you suggest anything that may be of assistance to me?" "Your scheme," replied Fillmore Flagg, "is a glorious one which promises to start a revolution in the aristocratic circles of society. It impresses me profoundly, as a deep laid plot, cunning and strong, which must accomplish a vast amount of good for the interests of humanity. So deep, so broad and so vast are its possibilities, that a week devoted to study and reflection would but poorly prepare me to understand its significance or perfection as a whole, much less to pronounce judgment upon it. But at this moment, of one thing I feel sure--that the noble purpose which has inspired your skill and genius in the construction of this remarkable plan, which deals so effectively and practically with human life as the result of planetary evolution, will prove a sure guide to success. The plan itself, in all of its details, is already so perfect, in my estimation, as to leave nothing for me to suggest by way of improvement. It is characteristic of you and of your capacity for brilliant work! I am, more than ever before, amazed at this exhibition of your intellectual greatness, which demonstrates your power to think so deeply and plan so wisely. I am very proud of you! I am especially grateful for this opportunity to burn incense as a worshipper at the shrine of your genius! You ask to what extent will the work affect the destiny of woman? I answer, its possibilities in that direction are limitless! They are beyond the power of any living mortal to comprehend! With woman surrounded by such conditions of financial independence, and such harmonious environments as will permit her to devote the best energies of her soul to the perfection of the highest type of motherhood, there will come a solution of the problem of how best to accomplish the perfection of the race. Surely, generations far in the future shall rise up to call you blessed! Dearest, best and noblest of women! Go forward bravely without a fear for the result. Undoubtedly your plan possesses all the elements of success. With the talisman of your goodness and beauty as the moving force, you cannot fail. Whatever I am capable of doing to assist you, I shall do gladly, with all my heart and strength." "Thank you, my dear Fillmore," said Fern, "your words of assurance and approval, so beautifully expressed, have appealed potently to all that is good and spiritual in my nature. They have inspired me to better and nobler deeds. They are very grateful to me and I prize them highly. "Now that you are so much interested, I feel sure you will be able to help me in thinking out some problems which puzzle me. For instance: From among the people I have interested, I wish to select and concentrate the dominant thinkers and workers of both sexes and from all classes, into some kind of a club organization, for the purpose of still further perfecting the efficiency of organized co-operative effort. Question: Shall this society take the form of a club? If so, what name shall I choose for it? In its formation what method shall I use? Can you evolve anything from your inner consciousness in answer to these questions?" Absorbed in the intensity and earnestness of her questioning spirit, Fern Fenwick left her chair and as her interrogatories came to an end, she stood by the side of Fillmore Flagg, looking straight into his eyes with such a penetrating, magnetic glance, that for some moments he was unable to reply. With his beautiful curl-crowned head thrown back to meet and return her entrancing gaze, he breathed but slowly and for the moment seemed rigid as a man of marble; a far-off, dreamy look shone from his half closed eyes. Presently, with a long sigh, speaking very slowly and softly, he said: "Ah! Miss Fenwick, I think I see what you are reaching out for. Your idea is coming to me now quite clearly." Then with returning animation he continued: "Yes, I grasp the idea; it is capital! I believe I can help you. I would suggest the use of the club formation without using the word 'club' in its title. I would call it 'The Twentieth Century Cosmos.' I would choose for its badge of membership a small silver fern leaf, crossed by a large gold key. I would advise that you alone, as the founder and sole director of the club, should have the power to select the members, and to decorate them with the badge of membership. To be in harmony with the century idea, the number of members should be limited to one hundred. All meetings of the club should be held in suitable rooms at Fenwick Hall; these rooms should be known as Cosmos Court. Admittance to each meeting should be gained by the presentation at the door, of an invitation, printed on club paper, bearing the name of the member, giving the date and stating the object of the meeting, all duly attested by your written signature as director. "The object and purpose of the existence of the club may be stated as follows: That its membership may secure, by the harmonious association of properly qualified minds,--which shall represent the dominant thinkers in all departments of knowledge--a higher, broader conception of the possibilities and purposes of life; as the necessary basis which shall make it possible to acquire a larger store of cosmic wisdom, by the use of systematic methods of co-operative research, study and thought. "This system of formation for a club would certainly be unique. I believe it will prove to be especially well fitted for the accomplishment of your peculiar work. Does the plan proposed meet your approval by offering satisfactory answers to your questions?" "Oh! my dear Fillmore," said Fern, "what a darling, clever boy you are, to be sure! Now it is my turn to praise your wisdom and your genius. I think your plan is an excellent one, which will suit the exigencies of my purpose most admirably. Before you return to Solaris we will consider the details more at length. Now let us change the subject. "In keeping you so long at my work, how selfish and thoughtless I have been! I shall try to make amends! I have planned to make your brief visit as pleasant as possible. To-day I must show you over the house and grounds. In the afternoon we shall take a long drive which will give you a glimpse of the beautiful streets, buildings, parks and monuments of our lovely city. Each afternoon these drives are to be repeated, until you are familiar with the great possibilities of this city of destiny, this priceless gift--the perpetual home of the government of the nation--from General George Washington, who is forever enshrined in the hearts of the people as the founder of the republic, the father of his country! When you return to our farm people, I wish you to be able to impress them with the matchless beauty, vastness and importance of the City of Washington, the political center of this unrivaled republic. It is my great desire to have them always think of it and speak of it with love and pride, with feelings of individual proprietary interest, as they realize that they are important factors, as voters and working units of the government, in the great work of shaping its destiny. "As you are the guest of honor at Fenwick Hall, I am going to do my best to make you, for one week, the happiest man in town! The evenings are to be devoted to the theatre, the opera, and to various society events at Fenwick Hall, arranged for your especial benefit and edification." "My dear Fern," said Fillmore, "How good and kind you are! To be near you, to hear your voice, to look into your beautiful eyes; is paradise for me! A week so full of happiness, I shall cherish as the one week of a lifetime! As to these society events of which you speak, I shall be jealous of each moment so devoted which shall take you from my side. Pray then, my good angel, do make such moments as short as possible!" "Rest assured, my knight of the farm, you shall have no cause to complain," said Fern, with a saucy smile as she laid her hand caressingly on his arm. "You are to come with me, prepared to look and listen, while I show you the beauties of my Washington home!" * * * * * As the "Saint Louis Express" left the Washington station, westward bound, Fillmore Flagg caught a final glimpse of Fern Fenwick, as with characteristic grace and enthusiasm she continued to wave a parting salute with her dainty lace handkerchief, until the train had vanished around the curve. With a sigh he returned to his seat to muse over the events of the week which had passed so sweetly yet so very swiftly for him. Yes, Fern had kept her pledge up to the last moment. As the guest of honor at Fenwick Hall, she as hostess, in all the graciousness of her bewitching beauty, marked by such charming tenderness, had made him conscious each day that he was indeed the happiest man in town. He now returned to Solaris with renewed courage and enthusiasm, to prepare for the celebration at the farm of the coming arbor-day festival, which Fern had promised to attend. As this celebration was to mark her first visit to Solaris Farm, he wished most ardently to have it prove a great success. The events of the past week had been a revelation to Fillmore Flagg: a host of new attributes to the noble character of Fern Fenwick had shone forth and dazzled him by their unexpected brilliancy. He began to realize what a wonderful woman she was in this new role, as the queen of the select set in the aristocratic circles of Washington society. Her strange power to mold the minds of these people; to make them strive for the accomplishment of social and industrial reforms, which meant the redemption of the masses, impressed him most profoundly. By what remarkable process had she, in so short a time, achieved such commanding heights of intellectual and spiritual greatness? Heights, where by operating from the vantage ground of the social and political center of the republic, like some chief marshal on the broad field of human events, she could, by the unseen and irresistible power of hypnotic suggestion, inspire, guide and control the causative and law-making forces which so powerfully affect all social and industrial conditions. Was it possible that spiritual unfoldment alone, could confer such marvelous power? Apparently in response to the intensity of his question, came the reply: "When a person representing combined physical, intellectual and spiritual unfoldment, is inspired by a noble, unselfish desire to accomplish a great good for all human life, by the use of methods that are in conjunctive harmony with the evolutionary progress of the planet: then such a desire acquires an irresistible force. Naught can prevail against it! In compliance with the demands of a wise cosmic law, it has received the omnistic seal of nature's approval." The clearness and wisdom of this unexpected reply, appealed strongly to the reason of Fillmore Flagg. Profoundly moved, yet outwardly calm, he perceived at once that the truth of the statement was absolute! In the new light of this remarkable revelation, he wished to carefully examine the claim of the model co-operative farm to the seal of nature's approval. Were the desires, the ideas and the methods in conjunctive harmony with planetary evolution? Apparently they were! That the success of the model farm meant the elevation and future happiness of humanity, was true beyond question. Equally so was the intensity and unselfishness of the desire which had inspired his action and the acts of Fennimore Fenwick and his daughter, Fern. Surely then, the project bore the unmistakable stamp of approval which foretold success! It could not fail! It must succeed! It was irresistible and invincible! CHAPTER XXII. A SURPRISE PARTY AND RECEPTION COMBINED. As the train approached the station at Solaris, Fillmore, in blissful ignorance of coming events, began to prepare himself to leave the coach. In response to a letter from George Gerrish, he had wired from St. Louis the time of his arrival. As he was stepping from the train to the long platform, his hand baggage was seized by trusty hands and quickly disappeared. He noted with amazement the gaily decorated station and the throng of waiting people. Before he had recovered from his surprise, Gertrude Gerrish, evidently striving to assume a very dignified deportment, advanced to meet him. As she gave him a hearty welcome, she said: "As the leader of the reception committee, representing the membership and children of the Solaris Farm Company, who are gathered here in holiday attire, unanimous in a desire to do honor to you; I greet you! I welcome you back to Solaris Farm!" Turning quickly, with a wave of her hand, she said: "People of Solaris, three cheers for our General Manager!" At this time, the train having departed, the farm people almost covered the platform with two deep lines, facing a narrow lane in the center, with heads uncovered, prepared and waiting for the signal. The response came instantly in a ringing cheer from six hundred well-trained throats: "Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah for Fillmore Flagg! Welcome! Welcome! Welcome back to Solaris Farm!" Almost before Fillmore was aware of what had really happened, Gertrude Gerrish had taken his arm, as with a mysterious smile she said: "I am now to escort you to the carriage prepared for your reception. We are then to be escorted by the procession to the public square, in front of the hall of education and amusement, where the final ceremonies are to take place. Of course you are surprised! We have planned for that very purpose! So come along now without one word of protest! At the proper moment you are to have as much time as you may desire in which to relieve your mind. For the present you are to keep quiet and obey me--a despotic master of ceremonies whose will is imperative and whose dignity is not to be questioned, even for a moment!" Fillmore Flagg, now obediently dumb, entered into the spirit of the occasion. He was very much surprised--nay, well-nigh dazed--yet withal delighted, as the happy significance of this unexpected welcome came slowly into his mind. With hat in hand, bowing and smiling, arm in arm with Gertrude Gerrish, he slowly passed between the long lines of happy faces, keeping step with the throbbing measure of the soft sweet music discoursed by the band. At regular intervals, groups of gaily dressed children waved their pretty flags or playfully pelted him with roses. As the twain reached the end of the lines, a novel chariot was waiting: a ladder-wagon of the Solaris fire company, drawn by twenty brawny fire laddies, was equipped with a broad platform, beautifully draped, bearing at each corner a choice selection of fine large potted palms. In the center of this platform was a smaller one, raised still higher; on this was placed the seat of honor, which was covered by a lovely canopy of artistically interwoven ferns and flowers. A broad flight of rough board steps, carpeted and decorated, led up to the lofty seat on this unique chariot. While our hero and the "Master of Ceremonies" were climbing to reach it, the procession quickly formed about the chariot into an elongated hollow square, eight ranks deep; the children with their flags marching in alternating lines of boys and girls, formed the front of the square, while the adults arranged in the same order, formed the sides and the rear. Gilbert Gerrish, with the band of musicians, selected by him from the ranks of the musical club, was placed in front of the square. He was very proud and happy as he flourished his baton and gave the signal for the procession to move forward. In this order they marched gaily along the broad, tree lined avenue which led from the railroad station to the village square. The chariot came to a halt just in front of the hall of education and amusement, with the seat of honor facing eastward toward the center of the public square. The procession quickly reformed into three sides of a square, with the eight ranks facing inward. For a brief period silence reigned. Then at a signal from Gertrude Gerrish, as Fillmore Flagg arose with uncovered head and stood by her side, the cheers and greetings of welcome were repeated by the ranks with redoubled animation and intensity. At this juncture, George Gerrish came forward to the front of the raised platform, while Gertrude, turning to Fillmore, said; "The president of the Solaris Farm Company has been chosen by its people to present to you a gift which they have selected, as a tribute of their affection and also of their devotion to you and to Solaris Farm." "My esteemed friend and co-worker, Fillmore Flagg," said George Gerrish: "As the mouth piece of our people, I am happy to be permitted to join in the active work of this reception. The people of Solaris Farm, moved by one impulse, inspired by sentiments of sincere friendship and enthusiastic loyalty, desire to present for your acceptance, this Solaris album, as a testimonial of their loving admiration; as a token of their absolute confidence in the wisdom of your leadership. This album contains photographs of all the members of the company. Each picture is endorsed with the signature and with the place and date of birth of the individual. They are arranged and indexed in alphabetical order. Our people were guided to a choice of this gift because they were so profoundly impressed with the importance of the experiment represented by this farm. Because they felt so confident that its assured success would sound the key-note of a general movement for the emancipation and elevation of humanity by the gradual introduction of wiser and better social and industrial methods, which would eventually result in the banishment of poverty and crime. "Taking this view of the future, we may be pardoned for prophesying that fifty years hence, this album of the pioneers of the movement, will possess a greatly enhanced historical value. We trust, therefore, that this possibility may make our gift more acceptable. I now ask you to receive it in the spirit of love which inspired its donation. In conclusion allow me to assure you that under all circumstances, you can count on the life-long friendship and loyalty of the people whose pictures will greet you, as the years come and go, whenever you may feel inclined to look through the picture laden pages of Solaris Album." As George Gerrish concluded his speech, a swelling storm of cheers for Fillmore Flagg burst from the ranks of the square. Again and again came the repeated roar of cheers, accompanied by the roll of the drums, and a circling cloud of waving handkerchiefs, hats and flags. Fillmore Flagg, inspired by the enthusiasm and excitement of his cherished people, looked very handsome and heroic as he stood with his manly figure erect, his noble head thrown back, his eyes shining with emotion, the album held firmly in his right hand. Bowing and smiling, he turned gracefully to face the greetings from the ranks of familiar faces, which were swaying with joy and shouting so wildly. Waiting for a few moments, he then raised his left hand, with the open palm outward, as a signal for silence. The tumult was stilled as if by magic. "People of Solaris!" he said; his clear, strong voice vibrating with emotion: "To you, through your worthy president and your able committee, with a grateful heart, I return my thanks for this most unexpected and charming reception; for this beautiful and appropriate gift, which I prize much more than words can tell. Believe me when I say that I most thoroughly appreciate the noble sentiments which inspired its selection. I am delighted with the happy significance of this demonstration, as a prophecy of the complete success of this experimental farm. This exhibition of your loyalty to me and to Solaris Farm, fills my heart with emotions of grateful joy. You have made me very proud and very happy! I shall never forget the encouragement of your enthusiastic support, which has given me renewed vigor and strength to carry forward the work. I now pledge to you my sacred word of honor that the golden memories of this glorious occasion, and the possession of this precious album, shall henceforth inspire me to still greater efforts for the success of our cherished enterprise, which means so much for us, so much more for humanity. "I am willing to acknowledge without a moment's hesitation, that your surprise for me was skillfully planned; that its execution was charmingly successful! I wish to return the compliment. I have a surprise in store for you! The present moment is propitious; I will disclose it! I am the bearer of a gift for you--a gift wisely chosen, which is in every way worthy of your admiration and appreciation. A gift of such exceeding value, that I cannot speak of it without becoming eloquent. Gold and silver cannot measure its worth to you! Securely packed in strong cases, which are now lodged in our express office, is a rare collection of books. This collection contains ten complete sets of the best text books for each one of the classified sciences, together with the vocabularies, dictionaries, charts and drawings belonging thereto. Accompanying each set is a miscellaneous collection of the best works written descriptively on that particular science. These books are intensely interesting and very valuable, although they are not classed as text books. Altogether the five hundred volumes form the finest and most comprehensive collection of scientific works I have ever seen. They are the most useful and expensive books published that can be found in the whole range of scientific literature. They contain the knowledge we most need in our enterprise, to enable us as an associated body of people to do better, wiser and more effective co-operative thinking and working. "To meet and satisfy our needs in this direction, these books were chosen as a gift to our library, by Miss Fern Fenwick, the beautiful and generous patroness of Solaris Farm. She desires me to emphasize her wish that you abstain from any public expression of thanks. In lieu thereof, she prefers to accept the measure of your diligence and enthusiasm in acquiring the stores of knowledge thus offered, as the most appropriate and satisfactory measure of your gratitude to her for the gift. "To master the contents of these books, is to master the sum of human knowledge in the various departments of science. With this mastery there will come to us the largest understanding, and the clearest obtainable conception of our relations toward each other, and to the universe around us. Thus enlightened, we may discover that ignorance is a sin; that as responsible entities in the great pulsing sea of cosmic life, with more or less power to help or hinder the purpose and perfect unfoldment of all life--we cannot afford to be selfish, sinful or cruel in our actions toward each other, or toward any other form of cosmic life. Having once acquired these convictions, with this most important fund of information, we possess the key which will unlock the mystery of the action and reaction of the potent and unseen forces of nature, which affect us as individuals, as they do the earth, air and water, the elements so necessary to our existence. The restless, never-satisfied, questioning spirit, born with every human soul, is the expression of a divine purpose! To gratify this insatiable desire for more knowledge, is to comply with the demands of a wise cosmic law. By so doing, we enter into the enjoyment of a never-failing source of perpetual delight. We are crowned with a happiness of the purest type! "In viewing this vast field of knowledge, spread so invitingly before us; in anticipating the joy we may glean therefrom; we catch a glimpse of the exceeding richness of the boon of immortality, which, as a spiritual heritage, is waiting for us. We begin slowly to understand ourselves as the repositories of infinite possibilities!--as cosmic units of the larger Cosmos--as a perfect microcosm of the macrocosm! With feelings of awe-inspiring adoration, we reflect that we may know ourselves as individuals, only as the extent of our knowledge of the universe around us is increased. Responding to the law of action and reaction, the more we reflect, the greater becomes our desire to know more of ourselves. Always more! Ever more! Never quite satisfied! Fortunately, the immortality of the wisdom loving human soul embraces all time, and all eternity! Therefore, through the law of eternal progression, we may naturally and rightfully aspire to the acquirement of all possible knowledge. In cultivating these aspirations, we may rest assured that we shall constantly gain new conceptions and new meanings for the word 'Heaven.' "In conclusion, my friends and co-workers, my brothers and sisters, let us congratulate ourselves as the fortunate recipients of this priceless gift: let us endeavor to show our appreciation by a speedy mastery of the contents of these valuable books. Let us approach the work, full of joyful anticipation and enthusiasm, with the proud consciousness that we are invited guests to a great feast of learning. Let us strive in every way to make study thoroughly enjoyable. Let us make it one long holiday in honor of the Goddess of Wisdom! One grand harvest-home of our gathering of the golden fruit from the tree of knowledge. Let us be as earnest as we are enthusiastic--let us be thorough, and withal methodical and systematic. "The ten sets of text-books, suggest the formation of the membership of the company into that number of scientific clubs; which I recommend. This division would give fifty adults as the average membership of each club. We have at least ten available rooms large enough to accommodate clubs of that size. Each club should begin with the primary text-book, which should be read, discussed, analyzed and re-read until clearly understood by the entire class. The club to proceed in the same order with the next of the series, until all are thoroughly mastered. I will volunteer to join the club to which is assigned that scientific study which may prove the most difficult, least inviting and most unpopular. By the force of a united purpose, working co-operatively together, we shall soon develop a capacity for severe mental labor, which will make the mastery of the remainder of the course a constant source of pleasure. What we need in the way of equipment, chemicals, instruments, etc., can be easily and quickly secured. "George and Gertrude Gerrish will have an advisory superintendence over the work of all the clubs. Years of experience in teaching have prepared them to quickly untangle the mixed quantities or conditions that may confront us, and thus skillfully turn our difficulties into delights. "With this general plan for conducting our literary festival, I will leave the subject with you for consideration at the proper time. "I feel conscious that under the circumstances, I owe you an apology for having so trespassed upon your patience and good nature, by the length of my remarks. Therefore I desire to acknowledge my thrice doubled appreciation of your manifest interest, attention and sympathy, which have both flattered and encouraged me greatly. "I will now close by thanking you, through your worthy officers, for this cordial and beautiful reception; also for the opportunity to address you on a subject in which I am so deeply interested." CHAPTER XXIII. FORMATION OF POPULAR SCIENCE CLUBS. As the days passed after the reception, the new books were unpacked by Fillmore Flagg, assisted by George Gerrish. As soon as possible they were arranged and placed on appropriate shelves in each one of the ten rooms prepared for them. Large steel engravings in plain oak frames, of all the authors, together with the maps and charts, all neatly glazed and mounted, adorned the walls of the particular room to which they belonged, adding greatly to the attractiveness of the general collection. As the work progressed, the keen interest displayed by all members of the farm company seemed to increase. They could talk of nothing else; they were eagerly and almost impatiently waiting for the announcement of the formation of the clubs. Accordingly therefore, as soon as the rooms were ready, a complete schedule of the books in each series was made; these schedules being numbered from one to ten, to indicate the series to which they belonged. They were printed and distributed among the members of the company, with a request that one week later, each member should return two of the numbered schedules marked as first and second choice of the studies they desired to take up. By this method of voluntary selection, the clubs were quickly and easily formed, without friction or embarassment. Well stimulated by an ever increasing fund of interest and enthusiastic ambition, the club members, impressed with the wisdom of Fillmore Flagg's advice, promptly took up the class work of the study chosen, eager to secure a generous share of the educational benefits to be dispensed at the board of this great literary feast, to which they had been so kindly invited as especially selected guests. With some misgivings as to the final result, Fillmore Flagg carefully watched the preliminary club work while yet in its organic stage. He had been somewhat doubtful of the ability of the average club member, who was not a trained student, to acquire a sufficient interest in such abstract subjects, with which to develop the mental force so necessary in order to digest and finally master them. However, much to his surprise and delight, at the very threshold of the work, the display of energy, ability and mental acuteness on the part of the entire club membership, dispelled the last remaining doubt from his mind; he was convinced of the practicability and final success of the course. In carefully analyzing the subject, he perceived that they were quickened by the momentum of a united co-operative effort; also that they were--perhaps subconsciously--pushed forward by a great number of new ideas concerning the desirability of at once acquiring a larger store of scientific lore, as a necessary and more complete equipment for the practical duties of the battle of life. Dominant and central among these ideas, was the one which so temptingly promised an increased knowledge of themselves as individuals, by the mastery of the broad and hitherto unexplored field of explanatory science; which might lead to a better solution of the mystery of environmental conditions. Finally, they were no doubt inspired strongly by a firm conviction that, once armed with a thorough scientific education, they would possess an additional power to aid in making Solaris Farm a speedier and more pronounced success. Fillmore Flagg accepted this demonstration of the combined ability of the farm people to conquer the most difficult problems of science, without the advantage of previous training, as an added proof that the ideas and methods of the model farm were most assuredly in conjunctive harmony with planetary evolution; therefore with the great force of combined co-operative mental effort to push it forward, still more surprising results might reasonably be expected, when these efforts were more wisely and skillfully directed along lines indicated by nature as lines of the least possible resistance. A realization of these expectations would seem to suggest that the key to future success in all educational work lies in discovering systems, methods, associations and surroundings for the students, which are nearest in conjunctive harmony with natural evolution, consequently along a pathway presenting the fewest possible obstacles. CHAPTER XXIV. A TWENTIETH CENTURY LOVE LETTER. "All the world loves a lover!" is a trite but beautiful saying, which touches a responsive chord in the great heart of humanity! We cannot remain indifferent to the magnetic effect of the strong tide of his eloquent and impetuous wooing. Nor can we withhold a sympathetic desire to aid him in reaching the goal of success--to win the precious prize. Quite as naturally, we are intensely and delightfully interested in the birth, the unfoldment, and the blossoming of every individual entity in the great ocean of cosmic life. Instinctively we recognize that love is life. One could not exist without the other. Old and young alike understand the potency of the spell which binds the lover; which holds him for unconscious periods of time, absorbed in dreamy contemplation of his ecstatic devotion to the heroic virtues, graces, accomplishments and attributes of the charming woman, whom his heart has chosen to represent all things in the universe which have meaning and worth for him. Through this adorable woman, the crowned and glorified object of his all-absorbing love, he can best respond to the rythmic throbbing of all cosmic life. In this superior state of beautiful transfiguration, he forgets self, and lives for long happy months in the rare upper strata of real unselfishness. Under the powerful influence of pure love, the highest and holiest emotion which stirs, controls and makes better the life of every mortal; lost in the blissful alembic of this great chemical change, the lover recognizes himself in every demonstration of universal life around him. He also becomes aware, from some inner consciousness, of the extent to which the emotional nature controls and molds the individual; that among the anabolic emotions, love is the queen of the emotional empire; that the touch of her magical scepter is so potent and penetrating as to render the individual receptive and responsive to all of the ennobling, purifying, progressive and exalting elements of the universe: but, on the other hand, what is still more marvelous: that the same touch renders the individual negative to the inflowing currents from all of the baser elements. With this awareness comes the conviction that the Empire of Love is boundless and limitless; that it permeates and glorifies the vast ocean of infinity! On the strong, swift tide of this shoreless ocean, the lover floats, secure, serene and confident, on his voyage toward destiny's most distant port. The following letter from Fillmore Flagg to Fern Fenwick, will serve in some measure to illustrate the power of love to change, expand, energize and spiritualize the entire character of the lover: to purify and strengthen the moral disposition of our hero, to eliminate from it all tendency to selfishness; to endow him with a broader wisdom, with higher and nobler aspirations of life; to fit him more perfectly to carry forward his great work for humanity at Solaris Farm. * * * * * "My Darling Fern: Noblest, purest and most beautiful of women! Like the rose to the sunlight, like the needle to the pole, my heart turns in adoration to you. My own true love! My peerless one! My guiding star in love's azure sky! My soul swells and sings with its full tide of joy, as willing fingers attempt to put in words the thoughts born of my great love for you. What miracle have you wrought for me, my precious one, that I am so happy? The earth, the sky, the verdant woods, the grand mountains, the green meadows, the shady nooks, the babbling brooks;--all thrill my innermost being with a thousand new charms! The bees, the birds, the flowers and trees as they bend or sigh to the passing breeze; the solemn stillness of majestic night; the deep blue sea, overarched by nature's matchless crown of diamonds, a countless multitude of brilliant stars, in the silvery moonlight of love--how eloquent their song! All things in nature speak to me; they bless you for loving me! In the halo of that blessing, as I think of you, I am transfigured by a newly-born ecstacy! To breathe, to exist, is to realize the superlative degree of my exquisite happiness! Hidden away from the clouds and storms of life, by the golden mist which veils the measureless sea of love, infinite love, I sail serene and confident upon its heaving tide. Gently rocked by the lapping lullaby of the rythmical waves of paradise, I fearlessly float. I care not for time nor tide, nor distant port of a future destiny! Entranced by the music of love's beautiful sea, I dream love's dream alone with myself, the outer world shut away--swallowed up by the overwhelming tide of my sweet and blissful contentment. "From such hours of exaltation, I am sometimes rudely awakened by a monster reflex wave of self-examination. Ah, dear heart! It is then that I ask of my soul: What am I? What have I done? What sweet guardian spirit guides my life, that I should be made so exceedingly happy by the priceless love of such a beautiful woman? Am I worthy of such a blessing? Can I properly appreciate the great good fortune of being fondly and truly loved by such a peerless woman, who is so dear to me, so noble, so good, so true; so pure, so bright, so beautiful; so truly wise, so eloquent; in every way so well fitted by birth, wealth, and education to reign as queen in the most brilliant and most exclusive circles of the social world; even in the grandly beautiful city of Washington, where the princes and potentates of the earth, lords of other lands, of wealth and fashion of high degree, vie with each other and with the republic's most honored statesmen, for one smile, one look of recognition from this marvelous woman, who is everywhere recognized as the dominant center of attraction? Oh, the wonder of it! This is she who holds the key to my heart! "Ah, my adored one! As this picture of your life fills my mind, I wonder what would happen to me under such circumstances, with any other woman in your place. I know I should be both furiously jealous and foolishly despondent: but with you, the very apotheosis of truth and honesty!--Impossible! It could not be: so base a thought would perish with the thinking! I know you are as true as steel. The pure soul which shines from your eyes has spoken to mine. I am content; I fear not; I know that the compass of your love is constancy. "Oh! my darling! Chosen one of my soul! How great is the mystery of love! How priceless the blessing it brings to the lover! How brilliant the constellation, how spiritualizing the multitude of new thoughts to which it gives birth! How I pity those who have not been touched and quickened by the life-giving power of love! How sad and desolate is the pathway of the soul so unfortunate as to be shut away from the sunshine of love! Better, far better, to die of love! To die of love is to live by it! It is to have discovered the great deeps of the infinite: for love itself is a revelation of the infinite! The aspiration of love is the inspiration of paradise. Who can understand the significance, or the great mystery of immortality, or the fulness of the promise of eternal happiness to be gained by a life of endless progression, without first having lived a life of love? The smile of love is the rainbow of life! Every tender emotion of love is a prayer, pure and potent, for a higher life. "The truth of these things, my sweet heart, I realize more fully each day. I feel and know that every link in the chain of eternal existence, is a link of love! My love for you has been for me a spiritual blessing indeed! It has opened the eyes of my soul, so that I may perceive the significance of the miracle of love, which must precede the miracle of birth, as the necessary beginning of the unfoldment of the individual up to his highest estate--the repository of infinite possibilities. Love, then, my dear one, is the highest and holiest attribute of the human soul: that inspiring, controlling force, which wings the soul to such sublime spiritual heights, as are far above and beyond the storms of common passions, and the evil influences of the baser emotions. "Ah! sweetheart of mine! How much do I owe to the uplifting power of love! I question and wonder! When its divine radiance shines upon me, through the glory of your beautiful eyes, I am led up the steep acclivities of the mountain of wisdom by a new pathway. I perceive that as the oracle of life, love is the potency which crowns woman with that entrancing aura of soft, sweet, melting force, which for ages has proclaimed her the greatest and most fascinating mystery of the universe! I also perceive that, responding to the stimulant of this potential aura, I am thrilled, spiritualized, energized, encouraged and more perfectly fitted to perform whatever difficult or heroic work the needs of our farm people may demand. Fortunate for me was the day when Fennimore Fenwick left you heir to his plans for redeeming the lives of these people! Fortunate indeed, was the time when I was chosen by you to discover, select and institute Solaris Farm, with the broad humanitarian work which its success represents. Each memory of this farm; of my every thought, plan or deed for its improvement: of its people; of their lives, health, and happiness; of their sublime confidence in me, of the prompt obedience they so cheerfully render to my slightest command; of the peculiar pride expressed by the appreciation of their importance as working units of the farm, all united, harmoniously blended, in one perfected co-operative mass;--is a memory made more delightfully permanent by the wonderful light of your love! "Never before have I been so busy or so blessed! Every emotion of pride, enthusiasm, ambition, joy or love, which stirs the hearts and quickens the pulse of these people, who are working with me for one object so faithfully, so earnestly; through the magnetic halo of your love, is reflected upon me with redoubled intensity. In the strong current of this electrical stream of power, I am quickened, strengthened and prepared to do better thinking and more effective work for the perfect development of the farm. "At this point, dear Fern, I must mention an item of farm news, in which I am sure you will be greatly interested. We have arranged to have our arbor-day celebration, or tree planting festival, on the 10th day of the month of March in each year, as the season, in this climate most suitable for the work. For some months past, for the purpose of exciting in the minds of our people a keener interest, I have been giving a course of lectures on the general subject of forestry. These lectures have proved so attractive, that as a result, they have been exceptionally well attended by both old and young. The amount of interest displayed by my hearers, is a continual source of surprise and delight to me. Early in the course, this extraordinary interest culminated in such a perfect shower of questions in regard to the details of the subject, that I was obliged to refer my questioners to the various books written on the subject, as most completely and satisfactorily answering the multitude of their queries. As a consequence, the botany club has had a great boom. While every book in the library on forestry, or the care and culture of plants and trees, including those in a full series of annual reports from the Department of Agriculture, is in constant use. You would be delighted, my dearest, could you note the readiness of even the children to grasp the idea, to understand the immensity of the benefits which may be conferred on future generations by our systematically directed efforts in tree planting here on this farm. Both young and old alike, are quick to appreciate the important fact that while we are enjoying a holiday, to which we may look forward each year with increasing delight; we are at the same time furnishing the world with an object lesson as to the practicability and great value of the good work which may be accomplished by all classes of agricultural people, in the general observance of such a festival. "The announcement of the good news that you are to visit the farm in time to attend our first arbor day celebration, on the tenth of next month, has made our people very happy. They are simply wild with delight at the prospect of seeing you so soon: of having an opportunity to thank you in person for the many favors you have so generously bestowed upon them. Hitherto they have admired and adored the beautiful and generous young patroness of Solaris Farm, through the medium of a life-size crayon portrait, made some months ago, from one of your recent photographs. Since then, this lovely shadow of the idol of my heart, adorned by a suitable frame, has occupied the post of honor, as the only picture on the walls of the library. The advent of such a charming picture, at once converted the library into the throne room of the village, where gathered daily, admiring throngs of our people to feast their eyes in silent worship at the shrine of this life-like shadow of your lovely face. In thus exposing this picture, so dear, so sacred to me, to the earnest and respectful admiration of our people without your knowledge or consent; I trust, Dear Heart, that I may not have outraged your sense of propriety in the slightest degree. It occurred to me that it would be just and right, also most fitting and proper that, as the patroness of the farm, your portrait should appear in the place it now occupies; that it would be the most appropriate method of linking your individuality, in the minds of our people, with the peculiar work and destiny of the farm. If you consider my action from this point of view, I am sure you will approve. Like some good fairy, the silent charm of your portrait has each day, each hour, wrought its perfect work in my life and in the lives of our people. It has proved a constant source of delight! An added talisman to insure the final success of our enterprise! "Ah, my good angel! my Princess Charming! At last comes the crowning thought which completes my wreath of happiness! It comes to me daily, again and again! It is this, Dear Heart; that every step toward the final and complete success of Solaris Farm, is an added link in the chain of a shining destiny which shall bind our lives more firmly together, until at last this beautiful chain of love shall have become proof against the dissolving power of the passing ages of an Eternity! "In conclusion, sweetheart, may a bright band of faithful guardian spirits, ever watchful, ever near, guide and guard you, the crowning treasure of my life, is the earnest prayer of "Your devoted, loving and loyal, "FILLMORE FLAGG." CHAPTER XXV. THE REPLY. "MY DARLING FILLMORE: Words fail to express the happy effect of the pleasing emotions that arise as I muse and dream, build castles in the air and indulge myself, again and again, in the luxury of reading line by line, the glowing tributes of love in your marvelous letter. I am electrified by its wonderful logic, rythm and melody. Ah, my chosen one! So manly; so noble; so true! The witchery of your eloquence is a conquering force, that Cupid with his bow might well be proud of! My heart rejoices under the influence of its magical spell! I am so happy and so proud of you! The great deeps of my emotional nature have responded to the poetical sublimity of your charmingly expressed sentiments. They thrill my soul like the dawn of some glorious summer day; like the exquisite perfume of a sweet flower; like that sublimely sweet surprise which steals over the senses, while a fleecy veil of silvery mist, responding to the power of the advancing king of day, slowly rises and discloses the shoreless grandeur of that tidal mystery, the majestic, restless, billowy bosom of Old Ocean; like some grand symphony of masterful music, penetrating and resonant, with that mysterious potency which awakens every echo of the soul's musical possibilities! Yet, sweetheart, every word is charged with your personal magnetism; is stamped with your individuality; freighted with the wealth of your spiritual and intellectual development. In every line, sentence and paragraph, I recognize you as my ideal of a lover, the dearest and most noble of men! "In my retrospective moods, the cloud of memories, born of the incidents which have marked our past acquaintance, form a telescopic vista. Through this vista, examined in the crucible of much correspondence, the intimate association and the mutual friendship of many months duration, I perceive that I have discovered and have learned to appreciate the sterling worth of your character. Through this avenue I become conscious that you represent to me the superior nobility of true American genius; the highest and grandest type of manhood! Idealized as my hero, I place you in the front rank of America's dominant thinkers; a peer among peers, both potential and progressive--yet withal so modest, so free from dogmatism. "I seem to feel intuitively that you are standing at the very beginning of a new cycle in the history of our planet: a cycle in which symmetry of mind and power of brain, fix the standard by which nature selects the leaders she deems most worthy of ruling the destinies of her people. I feel that you have been measured by such a standard, and chosen as the instrument for the accomplishment of a special work of the utmost importance! "This bit of hero-worship on my part is due, no doubt, to the intensity of my devotion to our Republic; to the earnestness of my convictions in regard to its manifest destiny as a saving power--an uplifting force--among the nations of the earth. These growing convictions are emphasized by the keener perceptions of my spiritual nature, which declare that this almost resistless force which dominates our Republic, that may be likened to the world's storage battery, is due to the progressive power gained by the universal enlightenment of the American people as a mass. This important thought seems to emphasize the wisdom and the importance of universal education. "I must now refer to a matter mentioned in your letter, in which I am particularly interested. In declining to become jealous of the bevy of titled lords, who pay fawning court to my wealth and social position, here in Washington, you do yourself justice; while at the same time, you pay me the compliment of a lifetime! When compared with you, how puny and feeble are the princes and titled lords, made by kings and courts, in lands where selfishness reigns supreme at the expense of millions of unfortunate subjects! An impecunious host of these fortune-hunting lords swarm in the society of our large cities. With faded titles of doubtful value, as their only stock in trade, they fittingly represent the decaying nobility of passing monarchies. They are looking for victims! They become the highly honored guests of selfish, title-crazy, match-making mothers! Oh the pity of it! Oh the shame of it! How American girls, who are born to wealth, with all of the advantages which wealth may command, including the best education possible in this land of progressive liberty; who should love devotedly the vital principles of our democracy;--can be so dazzled by the false glitter of a title, that they deliberately choose to mate themselves (and their riches,) with such sorry specimens of lordliness; such brainless, nerveless bundles of selfishness, is something too monstrous for my comprehension! "Are these girls really Americans at heart? Do they represent the women of our land? Can they understand or appreciate the privilege as a birthright, of proudly taking an honored part in the coming motherhood of this great and progressive land of republican liberty; a republic which to day stands as the hope of the world? Is it possible that they can knowingly wish to become mothers of a feeble race of puny children--children who are cruelly bereft of moral, physical and intellectual vigor by the tainted heritage which, like some avenging nemesis, through the action of an inexorable law, surely follows the unfortunate offspring of lordling fathers, who are born as the very dregs from twenty generations of the vice and depravity of kingly courts? "My dear Fillmore, to these interrogatories I answer, No! A thousand times No! Ignorance! A shameful ignorance of the true object and purpose of human life, on the part of these misguided girls, is their only sin. They are well-nigh hopelessly ignorant of the significance, or even the existence, of the great basic truths of evolutionary life. They know not that each age in the series of evolution grows out of the preceding one; that each in its order is the parent of the next; that the same is true of each generation of people. In the midnight darkness of their ignorance, they are incapable of knowing that virtue inherently possesses the germ of perpetuity. They can neither understand nor heed the warning cry of history, which proves that crime and depravity have in themselves the seeds of natural death. They have never read history's tragic story of the total extinction of the royal houses of Capet, Valois, Tudor, Stuart and Bourbon;--a story which demonstrates so conclusively the avenging results that follow the crimes of royal fathers. "To redeem these girls from such dense ignorance; to rescue them from the thralldom of such a fashionable sin, which threatens to become a fad; to open their eyes to the horrible consequences which follow such misalliances, is a work so important as to demand the immediate attention and united effort of a host of America's patriot mothers. "Pardon me, dear Fillmore, for devoting so much space in my letter to this particular topic. I feel sure you will kindly excuse any excess of fervor which may have marked the expression of my indignation. Because you so well understand the intensity of my devotion to the broadly progressive principles of our matchless republic, you may, consequently, guess the full measure of my scorn for this foolish, title-hunting class of creatures who, like silly moths, blindly sacrifice themselves in folly's funereal flame. The bare idea of marriage to gain a foreign title has always been exceedingly repugnant to me. With passing years, I am each day more thankful that since my early childhood there has been buried deep in my heart, a determination that when the time came for me to select a husband, the only title of the one chosen should be the stamp of honor which marked him as a true type of an American citizen--a real American genius; a truly noble soul, perfectly and beautifully expressed by a harmonious combination of physical and intellectual development! "Fortunate the day for me when that lucky advertisement brought you to my side, as a trusty, capable co-worker, whom I have learned to respect, to admire and to love. My dreams have been realized. I have found my ideal. You may fearlessly trust in the absolute truth of your assertion that 'the compass of my love is constancy!' "Now my hero! My ideal of a gallant Knight of Most Excellent Agriculture, whose nodding plumes, of tassels of corn, artistically interwoven with splendid pompons of waving wheat, barley, oats and rye have so dazzled my eyes and charmed my heart; having chanted my song of love, I hasten to assure you that your last report concerning the administration of the affairs of the farm, has pleased me greatly. I think the progress achieved in so short a time, is truly marvelous! Only my Fillmore could have accomplished so much! I am full of curiosity about the details. When I come, you must be prepared to answer a host of questions; to go with me on many excursions of discovery before I shall have completed my tour of agricultural investigation. "I approve of the disposition you have made of my portrait. Of course my personal pride is gratified by the sincere admiration and praise it has excited. I am happy in the knowledge that it has proved so efficacious as a talisman of good fortune for the farm. I think I understand your reasons for the feeling that my individuality should be in some way directly interwoven with the destiny of the farm. "Reasoning from the peculiar environments which so affect our lives, I realize more fully each day that my personal interest in every step toward its final success, must necessarily be quite equal to your own. "I am delighted with the idea of being present at your first Arbor day celebration. I hope there is to be in the order of exercises an oration which you are to deliver. If so, I know you will not disappoint me! I am prepared to prophesy that you will do yourself justice, do credit to Solaris and at the same time you will cover the subject with a halo of glory. Such a result seems assured when I consider the extraordinary interest which was aroused by your lectures on forestry. This signal conquest of your eloquence has gratified my pride very much. I am strongly impressed with the vast importance of this tree-planting school, which you are about to institute at Solaris. The success which you have won in the preliminary work is so promising, that I am sure you have undertaken a task which is worthy of your genius. In my judgment, you have already demonstrated your ability to accomplish many wonderful things. Great opportunities are before you. By the force of your logic, by the earnestness of your eloquence, you will be able to instill and to permanently fix in the minds of our people--both parents and children--the true progressive principles of American citizenship. You will thus enable them to perceive the serious import of the responsibilities which, like a mantle of power, descends upon them, as the representative working units of this great republic. You can so inspire them that they will be eager and proud to take up with honor the burden of these responsibilities. You can so change and elevate the lives of these people and a multitude of others, that first they shall become masters of themselves; later, masters of the republic; through the controlling force, the imperial dominancy of scientifically developed, symmetrical minds; whose intellectual, ethical, inspirational, logical and constructive power, combined as an elevating agency, shall raise the republic of the future to still more commanding heights. To accomplish these things, is the glorious beginning of a great career! In visions of your life work, it comes to me that this preparatory work on the farm is but the introduction to a more important mission, in the vastly wider field of a near future. In this coming work we shall stand side by side. Hand in hand, with hearts united by the bonds of a supreme love, we shall go forth armed with the power to overcome and to conquer the great hosts of ignorance and selfishness which so hinder the world's progress. "Really, my true love, although this letter is so long, I cannot close it without again expressing my appreciation of your soul-satisfying letter; so laden with the fragrance, the benediction of your love; so potent with the charm of happiness for me. To its benign influence my heart responds by the awakening of the highest and best emotions of my spiritual nature. Written in clear, plain English, it appeals to me as a letter of such sterling intelligence as only my ideal of a lover could write. How different it is from the soft, sweet nonsense of fashionable fops; the effusive gush of poetical dudes. "Now, I must say to you Good bye, my sweetheart! Remember that waking or dreaming, I love you truly. Only you, so dear to me--you, so generous, so noble, so good. Bright are the links of love's golden chain which time cannot sever. Constancy, our love shall bless, now and forever. May the sweet guardian spirits who guide your footsteps, keep you safely until we meet again, is the ever-present thought which is inspired by love's whisper in the heart of your devoted, "FERN FENWICK." CHAPTER XXVI. FERN FENWICK ARRIVES AT SOLARIS. Fern Fenwick, accompanied by Mrs. Bainbridge, arrived at Solaris on the afternoon of the third day previous to the tree-planting festival. When the train reached the station, they were met by Fillmore Flagg accompanied by George and Gertrude Gerrish, the committee representing the farm company. With this escort to the village, they were soon installed in a handsome suite of rooms, beautifully decorated and furnished for their reception. After a late luncheon, Fern Fenwick gave a private interview to Fillmore Flagg. During this interview, which lasted more than two hours, matters both of business and of love were discussed: love, however, claimed the lion's share of the time. Very soon, by mutual consent, the major part of the business was postponed until after the tour of the farm, planned for the following day, had been completed. Then with a sigh of relief, they resigned themselves to the sway of that potent charm of blending magnetic and spiritual auras, which so swiftly transports reunited lovers to a paradise of their own. In accordance with previous plans, the next day was spent by the visitors in driving about the farm. The first motor carriage was occupied by Mrs. Bainbridge accompanied by George and Gertrude Gerrish, Fillmore Flagg and Fern Fenwick following in another. Pursuing a carefully arranged program, all points of interest were visited; the barns and stables, herds and flocks, the meadows, the cotton and grain fields, poultry yards, dairy, apiary, gardens, mills, store-houses, packing-houses, factory buildings, the brick works and pottery, the clay-beds, stone-quarries, coal and other mines. This tour of inspection, which occupied nearly the whole day, proved very interesting to Fern Fenwick. With her note-book in hand, and her keen eyes on the alert to catch every salient point, she kept our hero busy answering a host of questions. It was a long, happy day for him! To sit so near her, to look into her smiling eyes, to listen to the musical tones of her voice, to answer her swiftly spoken questions, to respond to the pressure of her gloved hand upon his arm as she directed his attention to some particular object; all seemed to him such a delicious bit of experience, that he almost wished it might go on forever! In the evening the reception given in honor of the Patroness of the farm, was held in the large hall of education and amusement. In this hall, which was handsomely decorated for the event, the people of Solaris were assembled. They were a unit in eagerness to give expression to demonstrations of delight when, for the first time, they were permitted to greet the one they wished to honor: a woman whose name they reverenced as the title of the noblest guest they could ever hope to entertain. George and Gertrude Gerrish, with Mrs. Bainbridge, were already seated on the stage, when Fillmore Flagg appeared, escorting Fern Fenwick from the waiting room. Moved by one dominant impulse, the entire audience arose to receive her. The repeated cheers of welcome were intensified by the accompaniment of a fleecy cloud of waving handkerchiefs. Our heroine was well worthy the ovation: richly and artistically gowned, she was a perfect picture of loveliness! Her cheeks flushed with the excitement of such an unexpected demonstration, her beautiful eyes flashing with the inspiration of her wonderful enthusiasm, her perfect figure proudly erect with the grace and dignity of an all-conquering magnetic presence, she captured the hearts of the people even before she had opened her lovely lips to address them. Warned by a gesture from Fillmore, the cheering ceased and the audience became seated. He then introduced Fern Fenwick by a neat little speech which provoked another storm of applause more demonstrative than the first. When order was again restored, at a signal from George Gerrish the double quartet of mixed voices, which had been selected from the singers of the musical club, came forward and, in a style which reflected much credit on the club, gave a song of welcome composed for this particular reception, and entitled; "She comes, she comes, she comes to us; our wise and lovely patroness." This song, which created a real sensation, was followed by an eloquent address of welcome delivered by George Gerrish in his official capacity, as president of the company. His remarks were seconded and emphasized most vigorously by long continued demonstrations of approval from the assembled members. In response, Fern Fenwick replied at some length in her most charming manner. Turning to George Gerrish, she said: "To you, the president, and through you, to the officers, members and children of the company here assembled, I offer my sincere thanks for the honor conferred, and for the pleasure given to me by this delightful reception. The sentiments of kindly greeting, of keen appreciation, of admiring approval, so beautifully expressed in your address of welcome, have touched me deeply. I am so profoundly moved, that my heart overflows with grateful emotions! Equally charming, and even more gracious to me were the words and music of the song which your sweet singers have rendered so artistically. These testimonials have so wonderfully impressed me that I can not forget them! As the years come and go, I shall cherish the bright memories of this eventful evening, as added jewels with which to mark and adorn the shining links, interwoven with the chain of my experience in life. These memories shall also serve to strengthen my already intense interest in this most extraordinary farm. A farm with such a wide range of improvements; with such an imposing collection of large well constructed buildings; with so many profitable allied industries in the full tide of successful operation; with a general equipment so magnificent, that at every turn I am astonished and delighted. I now understand why and how you have succeeded in transforming the hated drudgery of farm labor into such a pleasant, desirable occupation. "Since the beginning of the enterprise, my interest in the work has been constantly stimulated by the detailed accounts contained in the full weekly reports furnished by your general manager. These reports from time to time, I have studied carefully. Therefore I came here expecting much. However, after my tour of inspection, I hasten to assure you, that I was not all prepared to find such an ideal farm, already in successful operation! A farm with proportions so generous, an equipment so complete, and a future so promising; that when I pause to contemplate the magical changes wrought upon it in the brief space of thirty months, I am filled with admiration for its wonder-working, epoch-making people! I consider it a coveted honor to be known as the patroness of such a grand institution. People of Solaris, I am happy to be thus identified with you. I am proud of you and your work! A work which shall yet cause millions to rejoice! You cannot guess; no one can even estimate, the exceeding value of this work as a shining example of what properly organized labor can accomplish. You have succeeded far beyond my expectations! Do not waver or turn aside for one moment! Go forward bravely; be strong and steadfast; be encouraged with the assurance that all times, I am ready and willing to assist you in every possible way! Success with her golden crown waits to reward you! All the world is watching and waiting for the victory, which you have already won. Therefore, in the name of humanity, I am justified here and now, in thanking you for this superb lesson in unselfish co-operation. This lesson in self evolution, which you have given to the world, is a result on your part as individuals, of a wise exercise of mutual trust and confidence in each other; reinforced by the combined industry, zeal, persistence and skill displayed in your noble efforts. By such efforts you have made the name of Solaris justly famous throughout the length and breadth of this Republic! "In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, and friends, allow me to again express my thanks for your greetings of welcome, and for every demonstration of loving appreciation which you have so generously showered upon me." While the hall still rang with the plaudits of a delighted people; before Fern Fenwick could move towards her seat, George and Gertrude Gerrish and Fillmore Flagg all hastened to her side, to offer congratulations on the eloquence and excellence of her impromptu address. To the observer, it was plainly evident that the effect of such a stirring speech on the assembled co-operators was unusually impressive. They seemed to be inspired with a deeper reverence and a more perfect loyalty of devotion for this remarkable woman, who had so charmed them by the power of her eloquence. Swayed by the intensity of this deep feeling which could not well express itself in noisy cheering; they eagerly pressed forward in a quiet orderly way toward the stage, where George Gerrish was waiting to introduce them individually to our heroine, the patroness of the farm. Smiling graciously as they approached and were presented, she took each one by the hand in such an earnest cordial manner, that all feelings of shyness or embarassment were quickly banished. After the exchange of a few words of pleasant greeting, they quietly returned to their seats. As the reception progressed, many of the members improved the brief moments in expressing their grateful appreciation, for the words of praise which she had so enthusiastically bestowed upon them, in a speech they could never forget. When all were again seated, George Gerrish announced that the program for the evening would close with three short selections, to be given by volunteer members from the ranks of the musical and dramatic clubs. With this part of the entertainment finished, before the people could be dismissed, Fern Fenwick arose to bid them good night, and to thank them for such a charming reception, which she pronounced "simply delightful!" CHAPTER XXVII. THE FESTIVAL. Fortunately for the tree-planters, the day of the celebration at Solaris, proved exceptionally fine! No one could resist the exhilarating tonic of such a perfect day! A day made more glorious by a cloudless expanse of blue sky, a flood of golden sunlight, and breezes, soft as the balmy breath of gentle spring could make them! The tools and the potted trees, each labeled with the name of the planter, were hauled in wagons from the nursery to the site of the future forest, where the ground had already been prepared to receive them. At nine o'clock in the morning the band in the public square began to play, as the signal for the people to assemble. At ten the procession was formed, ready to march to the planting grounds. First: the band under the leadership of Gilbert Gerrish. Second: the children in alternating fours of boys and girls. Third: the adults in the same order; followed by the carriages with the President, the Patroness, Mrs. Bainbridge, Fillmore Flagg and Gertrude Gerrish. Having reached the grounds, the procession was massed into a square of close columns. The ranks were divided into planting classes of twenty, with an instructor for each class. After the classification, the double quartet of mixed voices, sang a hymn to the forest; the assembly joining in the chorus. As the square broke up, the members of each class, carrying tools and plants, followed the teacher to the particular planting grounds prepared for them. At a given signal, three blasts from the bugle, the work began, and went merrily forward, with much vigor and a vast deal of lively chatter. In just twenty minutes, the planting was finished and the square reformed. The children altogether as a chorus, then gave "An Ode to Growing Trees," which they rendered so sweetly and so effectively, that they earned a great deal of well deserved praise. The order for the return march was sounded--the procession quickly re-formed and returned to the village in the same order in which it came. A twenty-minute band-concert, given in the large dancing pavillion in the center of the public square, came next, and closed the order of exercises for the forenoon. An intermission until one o'clock was declared. Promptly at one o'clock the people were again assembled in the great hall of education and amusement, to hear the oration. The hall itself was handsomely decorated for the occasion, with a profusion of flags and ribbons. The roomy platform was transformed into a garden of verdure, by a brilliant array of ferns, flowers, palms, potted plants and young trees. Seated near the center of the platform were Fern Fenwick, Mrs. Bainbridge, Gertrude Gerrish, Fillmore Flagg and George Gerrish. The latter, as the president of the farm company, in a few well chosen words, introduced General Manager Flagg, as the orator of the day. Inspired by the cheers which greeted him, happy in the presence of his beloved Fern; yet with all alert, and confident of his complete mastery of the subject; our hero never before seemed quite so handsome as when he began to speak. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE ORATION. "People of Solaris, I thank you for the honor of having been chosen as the orator, for this our first Arbor-day Celebration! I assure you, that I am both proud and happy to serve you in that capacity! "In the beginning, let us consider the art of tree-planting, from the stand-point of an acorn, as being a typical nut or tree-bearing seed, such as I now hold in my hand. "This tiny nut, with such a smooth hard shell of polished brown, contains a kernel with magical possibilities. Within this kernel, closely packed and safely cradled, lies the embryo oak. So small and so insignificant is this nut, that one may travel for months over land and sea, with the possible ancestor of a half-dozen future oak-forests snugly tucked away in some inside pocket. This, too, without ever once receiving a demand from the lynx-eyed custom officials, for the payment of either import or export duties upon it. Half way round the globe, from the spot occupied by its parent tree, this highly-polished, much-traveled nut, if given the proper conditions, will at once commence the mysterious transformation process, which marks the beginning of the life and growth of another oak tree. This growth, under favorable circumstances, may continue for the historical period of ten centuries. Ministering meanwhile, to the needs of forty passing generations of people. Reproducing itself, perhaps a million times in the aggregate, by the enormous annual crops of acorns it may have borne. What a history of marvels, is the history of such a growth! As it is with the oak, so it is in a large measure, with all other trees which are produced from seeds. "This fascinatingly mysterious process of passing from seed to plant,--from passive to active life, we have watched with keen interest and growing pleasure, as from week to week, in the seed beds and nursery rows of our tree-garden, it has steadily progressed, under the varying conditions of sunshine and storm. Having reached a suitable size for transplanting, we have this morning commenced the actual work of tree planting, by carefully placing the young trees in the proper soil and location, where they may complete the sturdy growth they have so well begun. The preparatory work, we began some months ago, when as individuals, we selected the three trees, of some one chosen variety, which we especially desired to plant in forest formation, on the occasion of this festival. "By the months of thoughtful care and attention which we have given to these trees, we have gained a personal interest in them which we cannot lose. In this initiative work, I am convinced that we have wisely established such a broad foundation of general interest in forestry and kindred topics, that sooner or later, it will lead us to a complete mastery of the whole subject. The individual interest thus established, will continue to expand until it embraces the entire tree-family of the world. By constantly adding to our stores of knowledge in this direction, we shall be surprised to find how much we have extended our field of pleasure. In the same ratio, there will come to us a corresponding increase of affection and appreciation for our benefactors, the trees; a solace in the sojourn of life, so generously supplied by Mother Nature. "The location of Solaris as an experimental tree-planting farm, is particularly fortunate. It possesses a soil and climate which will promote the perfect growth of more than one hundred different varieties of trees. Among these, we find a majority of the valuable timber and nut-bearing trees of the world. Consequently, a very wide field of experimentation awaits our efforts. Let us improve our splendid opportunities so industriously, that a wide spread interest in forestry, may follow and become firmly established in the minds of the people of our Republic. "By way of an introduction to the general subject, of the importance of trees, as an adjunct to the progress, welfare and civilization of mankind. I wish to relate to you the story of my first great lesson in the seductive lore of forestry. "Near the beginning of the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, in the year of 1893, it was my good fortune to visit the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago. I was then a lad of fifteen years, full of boyish enthusiasm, in the enjoyment of my first vacation from the preparatory school, where I was being fitted for my collegiate course. "I was born and reared on my father's farm, on the broad rolling prairies of Nebraska; up to that time I had never been far from home; as a consequence my knowledge of growing trees was limited to the following fast-growing varieties, which were planted and cultivated by prairie farmers for fuel, fencing and storm-protection. I will name these varieties in the order of their value for fuel and timber. White ash, soft maple, cottonwood and white willow. At a later period I learned that perhaps with the exception of white ash, the timber furnished by these trees, is considered valueless, in the markets of the world. "Under such circumstances you may imagine my astonishment when I first beheld that wonderfully unique, Forestry Building; with its bristling array of tree-trunk flag poles. Try first to picture in your mind's eye, a building in the form of a parallelogram, large enough to afford two acres of floor-space; with the first story surrounded on every side by a wide, open veranda: with a full length second story one hundred feet wide, rising gracefully from the central roof of the first; altogether, completing a design of exterior so boldly rustic in its general effect, as to suggest the idea of trees and forests at every point; then, you may get the delightfully novel effect, which the architect conveyed to my mind as I approached this curiously fascinating structure. A closer inspection increased the rustic effect of the general design. The main outside walls, were composed of thousands of wide, bark-coated slabs, cut from the choice typical trees of our American forests. "The wide roof, was in itself an ideal creation; it was thickly covered with curving tiles of rough bark, in alternating layers of the varying kinds, which formed a picturesque combination redolent with the spicy resinous odors of birch, basswood, hemlock and fir. "Completely encircling the building, with feet firmly planted on its solid stone foundation, rising to the roof through the floor of the veranda at its outer edge, were the thickly planted supporting pillars. These pillars like a long line of watchful sentinels, were placed in trios. The two outside pillars of each trio, were only separated from the middle one by a few inches of space, and were as nearly as possible, ten inches in diameter. The one in the center was much larger and held the post of honor as the flag bearer of its triumvirate. By pushing its way through the roof it became a huge flag pole, fifty feet from base to tip, with a beautiful banner proudly waving from its ball crowned summit. These pillars, both large and small, were bark-coated below the roof. Each one had been carefully selected for its symmetrical straightness, as a representative tree from the different forests of the world. Altogether, they formed a most interesting collection, to which might well be devoted, many hours of admiring inspection, by every lover of trees. "A wide lattice work of bark-laden tree limbs, of a uniform size completed the charmingly rustic cornice, which, like some endless curtain seemed to hang suspended from the caves of this bark-thatched roof. "Having sufficiently studied the exterior beauties of this remarkable building, of such arborescent magnificence; let us mount the steps to the broad, breezy veranda. Pausing a moment to inhale the refreshing coolness of the crisp air; and to admire the wave curving sparkle of the blue waters of Lake Michigan, we then pass to the shining portal of richly colored, highly polished woods, which form the main entrance. Here, covering the entire available floor-space, piled high in splendid profusion; we behold the garnered riches from the forests of the world. "I shall not attempt to describe my varying emotions of wonder and delight, as I wandered for hours through a bewildering maze of the wonderful exhibits, which formed this unrivalled collection of choice woods. As I advanced, my admiration for its variety and extent continued to grow. I began to perceive that, spread out before me, was the opportunity of a life time, which, if properly utilized would prove for me the permanent foundation of an education on the subject of timber, trees and forestry products. With this realization came the resolve, that I would devote time enough to each exhibit, to permit me to examine it in detail, leisurely and carefully. "The separate exhibits from the States of the Union and from other nations, were skillfully classified and so artistically arranged, as to show in the most effective manner the lovely grain, color and finished beauty, of the different woods. "All the valuable timbers were represented by three specimens. The first and second, were polished planks displaying the grain-finish, of both radial and transverse sections. The third, a cross section or disc, showing the heart, body-wood, sap-wood and bark; the full size of the tree represented. These discs proved by far the most interesting part of the exhibit. To me they were a revelation! They at once introduced me to the individuality of the tree. I could read the history of its life as I scanned the ever-widening circle of annual rings, which, from center to circumference, marked the slow growth of ages, as the tree advanced from infancy to maturity. "By means of these polished discs, I could touch and become personally acquainted with the precious, the famous, and the historical trees of the world. The mighty teak and deodar from India. The giant mahogany from Central America. The olive of Palestine. The cedars of Lebanon. The ancient oaks of Dodona. The magnificent dye-wood and rosewood of Brazil. The majestic live-oak of Florida. The druidical-oaks of England. The smooth, elastic bamboo, which by its size and strength becomes so useful in house-building, in both China and Japan. The towering spruces and sugar pines of our Pacific Coast. The great elms of New England. The justly famous, white pines of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The wonderful spice-woods of Java and Ceylon. The curious soap and rubber trees of Brazil. The tall sugar maples and smooth, symmetrical beeches of New York. The great hemlocks of Pennsylvania. The stately cypress, the royal tulip tree, and the beautiful evergreen white holly, of our southern forests. The highly prized black-walnut of Tennessee and North Carolina. The fruitful, free-growing chestnut, so common all over the United States. Finally, that towering king of all trees, the matchless mammoth redwood of California. "These redwoods are such veritable giants in size, that the half disc displayed in the California Section, with its thick ring of bark on the rounding side uppermost, stood sixteen feet high. From the huge trunk of this tree came the accompanying plank of such extraordinary dimensions, that a placard proclaimed it the largest plank the world ever saw. This plank was five inches thick, twenty-five feet long and sixteen feet nine inches wide; containing about two thousand feet of lumber, board measure. "In the Brazilian Section I found a large disc, accompanied by a specimen branch, with the leaves, flowers and fruit of a most remarkable tree. To this tree, the world owes a debt of gratitude for its generous unfailing supply of a rich wholesome food. Almost every child through the sense of sight, touch and taste, is familiar with that peculiar, triangular-shaped, sharp-edged, black-coated nut of commerce, with such a delicious kernel, known as the brazil nut. Very few however, know anything of the tree which bears them, or how they are attached to the branches from which they are suspended. As it is a matter of such general interest to both old and young, I shall take the liberty of devoting a few moments to a brief description of this gigantic tree, which the botanist has named 'The Bertholletia Excelsa.' "These wonderful trees grow most abundantly in the valleys of the Amazons, and generally throughout tropical America. In size and beauty, they rank as monarchs of their native forests. They attain an average height of one hundred and thirty feet, having smooth cylindrical, beautifully proportioned bodies; which often have the astonishing diameter of fourteen feet, when measured fifty feet above the ground. Like columns in some vast cathedral, these majestic representatives of the vegetable kingdom, raise their massive trunks one hundred feet toward heaven, before they commence to branch out, and to form a medium sized, symmetrical top. At this height grow the flowers and fruits. "The fruits are globular, with a diameter of five or six inches. Each fruit contains within its black, woody, shell, from eighteen to twenty-five closely packed seeds or brazil-nuts. These fruits, as they ripen, fall from their lofty position. At the proper season they are collected, broken open and marketed by the Indians, who roam through these dark, gloomy, miasmatic forests. The extraordinary abundance of the crop may be measured by the fact, that one port alone on the Amazon River, exports annually more than fifty millions of these excellent nuts. "Brazil-nuts are largely eaten as a nutritious and palatable food, by a multitude of people in many lands. They yield a generous supply of fine bland oil, which is highly prized for use in cookery, and also for lubricating all kinds of delicate machinery. "The timber furnished by these fruitful and beautiful trees, is light and durable, easily worked, well adapted to the purpose of boat-building; especially canoes of the largest size. Indeed! I may add as a final tribute to these noble trees, that they are the peculiar product of the American Continent, of which it may well be proud! They have bodies so tall, so straight, so large, so symmetrical, so free from knots, and so easily dug out, that the largest ship used by the hardy and fearless old Vikings of the Eleventh Century, could easily have been fashioned from a single one! "In connection with the main exhibit in the Forestry Building itself, I visited and examined the magnificent and astonishing timber displays shown in the State buildings of California, Oregon, and Washington. These exhibits were in every way worthy of those three great states of the Pacific Coast; they also served to largely increase the preponderance of the exhibit from the United States as a whole, over that of all other nations combined. The demonstrated extent, variety and wealth of our timber supply, was a matter of profound astonishment to visitors from other lands; while at the same time these things were equally a source of surprise and pride to every citizen of the Republic who saw them. "After a most delightfully well spent week, devoted almost entirely to forestry productions, I was prepared to sum up my impressions of the significance and value of the knowledge I had gained in my first lesson. It was plain to me that the magnitude and importance of the subject, was but little understood or appreciated, by the average American citizen. I saw that our people were very much in need of some great object lesson like the forestry exhibit of the Columbian Exposition, to make them properly realize the immensity of our debt of gratitude to Mother Nature for her munificent gift of trees to mankind. "I shall now conclude my story of the Forestry Exposition, by naming from the exhibit the following, as a few of the many things of use and value, which we owe to our benefactors, the trees; things which are so necessary to our comfort and happiness, which in so many ways, affect the progress, welfare and civilization of the world's people. "Among the more important gifts from the trees I shall place lumber and shingles, used in the construction of houses, barns and all kinds of habitable or industrial buildings; bridges, boats, ships and sailing vessels of all kinds; furniture, fencing and a great variety of farming utensils. Under the head of fuel, I may mention fire-wood and charcoal. In the class of vehicles we have wagons and all kinds of carriages from the stage coach to the pullman palace car. Some kind of lumber or timber enters very largely into the construction of almost every kind of machinery. In the miscellaneous group we find wood-alcohol, dye-wood, medicinal barks, roots and galls; precious gums, resins and all of the spices; the various kinds of excelsior used for packing, bedding and upholstery; wood-pulp and paper, inlaid work, vegetable ivory, and cocoanut shells; the entire series of willow ware, and wooden, or hollow ware. In food products, we are confronted by a most astonishing array of edible sprouts, berries, delicious fruits and nutritious nuts, forming altogether a multitude of things which, in civilized life, we could not possibly do without. "In considering the impressions conveyed to our minds by growing trees, which inherently possess a sturdy vitality, that can resist the vicissitudes of passing ages; we instinctively recognize them as nature's noblest gift to man. As majestic monarchs, in the empire of plant life, they appeal to us as companions, which become dearer with the associations of each passing year, until love for them becomes a feeling almost akin to worship. "This worshipful feeling, no doubt, comes to us as a heritage from a remote ancestry. In the days of ancient story, groves of noble trees offered primitive man, nature's grandest and most appropriate cathedrals, for the celebration of his worshipful rites. Is it a matter of wonder, that he unhesitatingly accorded to them, the distinction of being sacred? The emotional nature of this primitive man was a mystery which he could neither understand nor control. Often, he suffered untold tortures from the agonizing perturbations to which it easily became a prey. Hidden in the deep shade of his sacred grove, in his happier moments, the sighing of each passing breeze through his leafy canopy, become to his untrained ear, the whispered blessing of nature's placated God! When the dark pall of the Storm King shrouded all things with a terrifying gloom, the restless moaning of such a mass of writhing boughs, lashed by the fury of the blast, became the angry shriek of the Demons of Destruction, which left him prostrate and trembling in the throes of a paroxysm of worshipful fear. Analyzed, these actions show the result of man's environment. "By the way of a contrast, and as a testimonial to the planetary growth of man's emotional nature, gained from the ages of progress; let us question modern man as he leans confidingly, in a contemplative mood, against the broad trunk of some giant of the forest. With uncovered head, he muses in silence; he senses a vague feeling of awe for this magnificent specimen of matured life in the vegetable world. With every sense attuned to the overtones and undertones, produced by the vibrations of nature's harp; he catches the rythmic song of the sappy currents, as they swiftly fly to feed the swelling cells, where the building energy of their tiny hearts of protoplasm, ceaselessly changes the elements of soil and sunlight, into the woody fibre of this mighty tree. How beautiful! How like the complicated mechanism of the human body! Wonderingly he questions! Can it be possible, that the pulsing energy of the protoplasmic life of the tree, is identical with that of man, and all other forms of cosmic life? Does each great throb of the planetary heart, re-energize and move in unison, the protoplasmic centers of all forms of life? Who shall say? "In discussing the peculiar fitness of our present organization, to deal effectually with the question of tree planting, we discover, that in the co-operative association of so many people, we possess a marked advantage over the small farmer, which enables us to treat large tracts of land as a single farm; by devoting all of the rough, stony ground, steep hill sides, unsightly gullies and areas of poor, gravelly soils, to the purposes of timber and fruit culture. "Harmoniously united, we are financially and intellectually stronger; less influenced or retarded by motives of selfishness and greed; surrounded by conditions of easy comfort; armed with skill by study and experience; and withal inspired by a knowledge of the great necessity for replacing our forests; we are exceptionally well prepared to carry forward this great work, so successfully and to such an extent, that a few decades hence our hill sides and mountains, shall be re-clothed with beautiful forests of much finer trees--all choice timber--vastly more valuable than the original stock. "By more systematic methods of terracing the steep hills; by close planting of the young trees, with varieties selected by reason of their value for lumber, timber, nuts and fruit; by a judicious thinning out of these young trees so soon as they have grown to a useful size; a profitable crop of timber may be secured each year, with a positive benefit to the remaining trees. This operation may be repeated many times, before a partial replanting becomes necessary. By an extended use of these methods, the excellence of the timber supply may be doubled, while the aggregate yield will be trebled. The landscape will be beautified and permanently changed. Barren, unprofitable hills, and rough unsightly mountain tracts, rejoicing in a new growth of beautiful verdure-clad trees, will become objects of general admiration; while at the same time, the value of these lands, as a source of wealth, will be increased a thousand fold. "As these forests continue to grow, the shade deepens, the store of retained moisture increases, perceptible changes in the climate are effected; the evils of flood, erosion and drought are checked; the soil made deeper and richer; the rainfall largely increased; the climatic conditions become more genial, and the cooling, drouth-dispelling rains become more frequent. "The interesting and beautiful process, by which these changes are accomplished, may be briefly stated as follows: With the growth of each year, the area of the leafy surfaces of these forest trees is enormously extended. Measured by the same increasing ratio, many additional thousands of tons of moisture are pumped up and given to the winds in the form of a fine vapor, by the tireless industry of these lovely leaves. This vapor is taken up by the clouds--nature's aerial reservoirs. Soon this treasure of waters thus accumulated, is restored to the thirsty earth by a largely increased rainfall. Autumnal frosts ripen and loosen each crop of leaves; they fall silently to the ground, where they quickly form a thick, soft carpet of ever increasing thickness. Through the action of shade and moisture, the under surface of this carpet becomes a layer of fine leaf mold, which in turn offers rich food for the sustenance of millions of tiny feeding rootlets from the trees of the forest. The closely interwoven fibre of these rootlets, everywhere forms a strong web for the carpet, which firmly holds in place the soft, porous, underlying soil, safely protecting it from the destructive erosion which, especially on the steeper slopes, swiftly follows the dashing violence of heavy rain storms. Gradually this leafy carpet grows in strength and thickness; like some great sponge it sucks up and retains the waters of the snows of winter, with those of the increased rain-fall of summer. "Thousands of mountain torrents, the beginnings of destructive floods, are thus checked, absorbed and shorn of their disintegrating energies. The garnered waters from this wonderful leafy sponge, slowly percolate through the soil, to reappear in a multitude of living springs of pure sparkling water. From these springs gently flow the tiny rivulets, which in turn become the full streams that gladden the plains and valleys throughout the long scorching months of summer. "By a close analysis of the beneficial results which follow the annual recurrence of these beautiful processes, we may form a correct estimate of the vast importance of this tree-planting labor, to which this day, we gladly offer our best energies and our best thought. We begin to perceive the magnitude of the blessing which may be conferred on mankind, in general and on the agriculturist in particular, by the continued work of covering our hills and mountains with valuable forests. "We have discovered from nature the secret of a power that shall enable us to control many of our environmental conditions. We hold the key to the solution of a great problem, which for the past quarter of a century, has puzzled the brightest minds and best thinkers among our statesmen. The problem of how best to control the devastating floods, which each year, with increasing power and violence, continue to destroy hundreds of lives and millions of dollars worth of property, on the farms and in the towns and cities throughout the river valleys of our broad land. For this growing terror, we hold the cure! With the completion of this system of forestry, the floods will disappear. The interests of our coastwise and inland commerce, will be greatly extended and benefited. Many rivers, with beds choked and obstructed by the unsightly rocks and debris deposited by the annual floods, and for the same reason, dry for many months in each year, will again become navigable. Perennial streams, fed by permanent mountain springs, will serve to keep these rivers with full channels throughout the year. "The clear water will be free from the lighter silt which now finds its way to the sea; slowly filling up the river-mouth harbor, and finally destroying the commerce of the city which depends upon it. In this way, every individual, child or adult, who plants a tree, aids directly in the restoring some distant seaport to its former commercial importance; and has proudly earned the right to be placed as an important working member, on the peoples' great 'Committee for Improvement of Rivers and Harbors.' "Tree-planting, persistent tree-planting, by all classes of agricultural people, offers the only means or hope of checking the wide-spread, calamity-producing floods and erosions, which commenced with the destruction of our mountain forests. The destructive process is accelerated with each passing year. Unchecked, it threatens, a few centuries hence, to rob us of all fertile soil; to reduce our hills and mountains to a dreary waste of bare, sun-scorched rocks: our plains and valleys, to uninhabitable deserts. United action is therefore imperative! "Other incentives, worthy of our attention, urge us to commence the work. By yielding even one-half of the area of our tillable lands to the needs of forestry, we have all the richest lands left in the remaining half. The productiveness and fertility of these lands is sure to be speedily doubled. The amount of labor required to produce the same crops from the diminished areas, will be reduced one-half. A most important consideration! "The third generation of people, after the planting of these forests, will gather from them, such an abundant harvest of nuts, fruits, and valuable timbers, as will more than repay the entire cost of the land and labor required to produce them; leaving a handsome surplus to be devoted to carrying forward the work on a still larger scale; in regions less promising and more remote, even within the borders of the arid lands. With this lesson before us, how can we hesitate or falter in our efforts to successfully carry forward this important work? "I wish now, to call your attention to the following facts regarding the farms and farmers of our Republic, which altogether offer additional incentives for the speedy adoption of co-operative farming on a scale large enough to admit of timber culture, as the only available source of relief. The significance of these facts has scarcely been considered, by those most deeply interested. The farming lands now owned or controlled by our agricultural people, represent the accumulated capital or savings of a life time; frequently of several generations of the same family. "A steady decline in the market values of all farm products during the past twenty-five years, has in the same ratio, affected the selling value of the farm to such an extent, that from forty to fifty per cent of its value at the commencement of the decline, has been swept away and lost to the farmer, from the credit side of his available resources. This alarming shrinkage, has in the aggregate, amounted to many millions, yes, billions of dollars! The financial distress which has followed, has correspondingly affected many other industries. It has been the real cause of the forced sale of many fine farms at such ruinously low prices, as to sacrifice at one blow, the savings of a life-time. Each sale of this character serves to depress the market value of all lands in that particular locality. In this way the disaster spreads and gathers additional force. "A very large number of farmers, who have not as yet been forced to sell their farms, have found themselves so financially cramped, as to be unable to secure the additional lands they had hoped and planned to purchase for their children. What is the result? A most abundant harvest of blasted hopes for the sons and daughters of our American farms! "Capital in the hands of shrewd people, is always on the alert, waiting for such opportunities for investment. These investors through capital wish to live without effort, upon the proceeds of the labor of others. They seem to understand clearly, that to own land, is to own the services of the people who must have access to the land in order to live. This is why a land monopoly is more to be feared than other kind. For this reason we may well be alarmed, as we note from time to time, the large tracts of land which are being purchased by wealthy individuals, foreign syndicates, home corporations and land monopolists generally, who are quietly operating, while prices are so abnormally low, to obtain such complete control of our valuable agricultural lands, as will enable them in the near future, by a concert of action, to raise prices to such a pitch, that practically they would then be beyond the reach of the ordinary farmer. "These shrewd, far-seeing monopolists, having obtained control of the lands in question, can dictate such rents to all applicants, as will barely enable them to live. As a matter of fact, it is quite probable that they would much prefer not to rent their lands, because they could save for their own pockets, the wages of a great many workers, for at least five months in each year, by placing five-thousand-acre-farms in charge of a superintendent; who with two assistants, could live on the farm, taking proper care of the stock, tools and machinery, throughout the year. During the seven busy months, beginning about the first of April, transient labor, of the homeless tramp order, could easily be procured to work by the day, week or month, as the needs of the farm might demand. "The growing competition for even this kind of uncertain employment, would tend constantly to reduce the wages. The danger from this source has been fully demonstrated during the past twenty-five years, by the adoption of this disposition of their holdings, on the part of a great number of large land owners. The success of the bonanza farm, has proved perniciously infectious. Our small farmers, already in financial distress, cannot hope to compete with such large farms, so recklessly cropped by the monopolist for the largest possible cash returns, without regard for the future condition of the soil. To double the capital invested in five years' time, is the only concern of the investor. Whatever the land will sell for thereafter, is only so much additional profit. "We cannot close our eyes to these warning facts. They foretell the coming whirlwind of disaster. We may be sure that, if these things are allowed to continue without opposition, long before the close of the twentieth century, our agricultural people will be reduced individually to the abject serfdom of a houseless, homeless day-laborer. At this time it is almost impossible for a majority of the sons and daughters of the farms of our Republic to obtain possession of enough land to enable them to follow in the footsteps of their parents, by devoting their lives to agricultural pursuits. Many of them have already entered the downward path of the unfortunate tenant. Many others have been forced to find employment in other pursuits. "You ask how can this coming disaster be averted? How can our people be saved from such a hopeless future? "I answer, by the farmers, united with those who wish to become farmers, coming together everywhere in force; by pooling their issues; by helping themselves; by organizing co-operative farms like this, armed with schools in which skilled workmen may be taught to successfully carry on profitable allied manufacturing industries. Monopolistic farms cannot then successfully compete. With demonstrations, such as we are making here to-day, springing up by hundreds and thousands in each county and state, during the next thirty years, what may we expect? The last remaining serf will have been emancipated. The hopeless tenant and the landless farmer can no longer be found. No one can be induced to toil, for owners of the monopolistic farm. The owners will not and cannot work themselves. The experience of a few unprofitable years will urge them to sell their lands to the co-operators at such prices as they may be inclined to offer. The victory will be ours. A glorious victory truly! But, we must not expect to gain this victory without a severe struggle. In the earlier stages of the movement, the monopolist will soon recognize the co-operative farm as an enemy which must be fought to the bitter end, must be stamped out. To this end they will strive in every way to prevent us from obtaining possession of desirable lands. "This determined opposition we must expect and be prepared to meet. Forestry will help us to another solution of the problem. As the tree-planting farms continue to multiply, the increased rainfall will cause the area of tillable lands, to gradually extend beyond the borders of the arid lands. Therefore in case of necessity, we may turn to these arid lands for relief. In such an event, the question of forestry becomes an important factor. "By referring to the tenth annual report of the director of the U. S. Geological Survey, we learn that the arid regions of the United States, comprise the astonishing area of one million, three hundred thousand square miles. This immense region contains more than one-third of all our lands; a territory much larger than that of the thirteen original states combined. North and south, it stretches for hundreds of miles on either side of the Rocky Mountain Range, that great backbone and water-shed of our Continent. On the west, it covers nearly all of the surface of that vast, broken and irregular basin, lying between the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains. On the east, it occupies that extended and peculiar domain of high plateaus, treeless plains and alkali barrens, known as the Great American Desert. "From this broad expanse of arid lands, in accordance with the statements of the survey officials, we may choose an area of one hundred and fifty thousand square miles of irrigable lands; that is lands which may be restored to productive fertility, by means of irrigating ditches along the valleys, and by building great catch basins, near the head waters of a multitude of mountain streams, in which may be conserved, the wasting waters of melting snows and those of the heavy mountain rainfalls combined. At this point we may mention incidentally, that this area of irrigable lands could be largely increased, by covering the available slopes of the Rocky Mountains with dense forests of fine timber. With this accomplished, the annual rainfall would be doubled, while the necessary conditions would be established, which, a few decades hence might yield an annual crop of valuable timber, that would soon repay the entire cost of planting and culture. "In addition to the last named increase, we may add an area of lands equal in size to the state of Illinois, which are beyond the reach of irrigating streams. We find these lands along the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and around the borders of the Great American desert. They may easily be restored to fertility, by the skillfully applied labor of a legion of co-operative farms. At varying depths beneath these lands, flow perennial streams of artesian water. By the spouting, life-giving waters of a vast number of artesian wells, a large proportion of these desert lands can be transformed to an agricultural paradise. The cost of these wells, would be but little more than the expense of the labor required to bore them. "But, says the objector, are not these mostly alkali lands? Of course they are! And for that reason offer greater possibilities of value! Can they be made to grow wheat, and thus increase the bread supply? Is a question that comes from the mouths of the world's great army of bread eaters, six hundred million strong. Just think of it! "For reasons which I shall state presently, I hope to be able to show why these alkali lands when properly irrigated, can be made to produce abundant crops of wheat. "For the past twenty years, leading men of science, who, alive to the importance of increasing the world's supply of wheat; have given close attention to statistics which seemed to indicate that the yield per acre, of the wheat fields in all countries, is steadily decreasing. Decreasing to such an extent as to make it probable, that in the near future, the yield on a large proportion of these lands, will become too meagre to pay the cost of cultivation. A long series of carefully conducted experiments demonstrated the truth of these alarming statistics. "This discovery led to a general search for some cheap, available, chemical, compound, which might restore these worn out wheat lands to their former productiveness. "In an address, delivered at Bristol, England, near the close of the nineteenth century, by Professor William Crookes, president of the British Association for the advancement of science; he says; 'Wheat pre-eminently demands as a dominant manure, nitrogen fixed in the form of ammonia or nitric acid. Many years of experimentation with nitrate of soda, or Chili salt-petre, have proved it to be the most concentrated form of nitrogenous food demanded by growing wheat. This substance occurs native, over a narrow band of the plain of Tamarugal, in the northern province of Chili, between the Andes and the coast hills. In this rainless district for countless ages, the continuous fixation of atmospheric nitrogen by the soil, its conversion into nitrate by the slow transfiguration of billions of nitrifying organizations, its combination with soda, and the crystallization of the nitrate have been steadily proceeding, until the nitrate fields of Chili have become of vast importance, and promise to be of inestimably greater value in the future. The growing exports of nitrate from Chili at present, amount to about 1,200,000 tons annually.' "In carefully analyzing this lesson from the lips of Professor Crookes, we discover that the same peculiar climatic conditions which made a Chilian desert so valuable, have been continuously at work in our great American desert for a great many thousands of years. "For this reason, our uncounted acres of alkali lands, are so rich with stores of this valuable nitrogenous compound, that by proper treatment they may become the most valuable wheat-producing lands in the world. The desert shall become the source of abundance! Under the transforming influence of a generous water supply, forests shall spring up, and fields of waving grain shall flourish around the village homes of a happy, prosperous people! Altogether, we have an empire of these irrigable lands now worthless, awaiting the transforming labor of the homeless and landless, to restore them to productive fertility. "When thus restored, these lands, at the lowest estimate, will be worth the enormous sum of two billion, eight hundred and eighty million dollars, which in due time may be transferred to the credit side of the wealth account of the nation! Long before this available domain of such vast possibilities has been conquered and reclaimed, the longing desires of all who wish for land, and for agricultural lives, for themselves and their children, will have been most abundantly satisfied. "In looking over this broad field of possibilities spread so temptingly before us, we are able to discover the importance of the work of tree-planting, which now demands our attention. Strengthened by concerted action, encouraged by new ideas and better methods we become firm in our convictions, that it is an imperative duty for us to continue the good work. We must increase the number of our co-operative farms with their tree-planting schools, until, educated and moved by the force of so many demonstrations, a great majority of the people of this Republic shall demand, that the entire area of the range of the Rocky Mountains within our geographical limits, shall become a permanent, public park; with such a wealth of territory and variety of climate, such beauty of scenic grandeur and magnitude of picturesque proportions, as the world never saw before. This matchless reservation is to be devoted to the needs and uses of forestry, mining, the preservation of its great variety of natural curiosities, and of American Game. "In addition to this Pride-of-the-World-Park, the people shall also demand, that all of the most available portions of the mountains of the Pacific Coast Range, the Sierra Nevadas, the Alleghenies, the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, shall be reserved by the government, and set apart for the same uses and purposes. "With the passing of this magnificent domain of mountain territory to the permanent control of the government, would come the beginning of the great public forests; which would clothe with new beauty, cover and protect in the most useful manner, the principal water-sheds of our broad continental possessions. Thus increasing to a degree approaching perfection, the purity and abundance of the crystal flood, that shall flow from a countless multitude of new springs of living water. The volume of water from these springs, shall furnish a supply sufficient to maintain with full channels, a perpetual flow in that net-work of lakes and rivers, that arterial system of fertility and commerce, which variegates and adorns the bright face of our fair land. "Altogether, in considering the broad scope of this stupendous plan as a whole, we have before us a most important work, which must be accomplished! A work which affects the welfare and happiness of every citizen of our Republic! A work which is in every way worthy of our most earnest and persistent effort! "This day, we have made a propitious beginning, which augurs well for success. Let us on all occasions encourage tree-planting as a sacred duty which we owe to future generations! A duty which must not be neglected! From this time forward, let us strive in every way to organize a broader, wiser, more powerful movement! Carried forward by the resistless force of an enthusiasm born of a mighty purpose; with strong hands and willing hearts, let us undertake the speedy accomplishment of our chosen task! Let us remember our responsibilities as immortal beings! Let us be mindful that life on this plane of existence is very brief; that an eternity of countless ages lies beyond! Therefore we cannot afford to be selfish! Let us heed the warning of nature's just law of compensation, which declares that in the higher life, selfishness becomes a torment in comparison with which a crown of thorns would seem a coveted blessing! "In our devotion to this noble work, let us ignore all unworthy thoughts of self interest! Possibly we may not as mortals, live long enough in the material form to reap many of the benefits that are to follow. But, being immortal; and having passed to a higher realm, where we are endowed with a keener, broader, mental, and spiritual vision; lost to the sense of time or physical pain, we may then behold the results of our work, in the increased enjoyment of our children and our children's children; while the centuries, like moments, glide swiftly by and are lost in the endless procession of passing ages! "Finally, as an additional source of encouragement to continue a work which we may not live to see mature; let us consider carefully the significance of the fact, that he who causes two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before, is counted a public benefactor. Judged by the same standard, he who causes two trees to grow where only one grew before, is a benefactor of mankind, whose good works shall earn for him the blessings of a hundred generations! By the same logic, it surely follows, that the people, who cause a forest of trees to spring from the arid bosom of desert earth, become the distinguished benefactors of the human race, who offer shade, shelter, fuel, fertility and sustenance, to a thousand future generations! They shall be thrice blessed! Having arisen to the demands of a higher life of unselfishness, where the solidarity of all life is recognized as a self-evident truth; they have gathered a sufficient store of love and wisdom to admit them to the domain of causation. Classed as worthy workers in that domain, they are entrusted by nature, with the magical key which unlocks the climatic gate, to her pent up floods of fertility. "In conclusion, people of Solaris, I leave this presentation of the subject for your earnest consideration until the recurrence of our next annual festival. During the interval, I feel confident that you will all join me in a closer study, of a topic which has already proved one of such absorbing interest,--of such vast importance. "Thanking you for your close attention, and for the frequent applause, which has demonstrated your approval, I recommend that we do now adjourn, to enjoy the waiting banquet which is to follow as the next order of the day." * * * * * Great applause greeted Fillmore Flagg at the close of his oration. George Gerrish arose and paid a glowing tribute to the wisdom and eloquence of the orator; after which, grasping him by both hands, he said, "Fillmore, I am proud of you! Solaris is more than proud of the masterful way in which you have treated the entire subject! Your presentation of the theme, seemed to me to be so perfect, so exhaustive and eloquent, that in the future I may not expect to again hear its equal." The next moment Fern Fenwick came forward, radiant in her loveliness, her beautiful eyes shining with emotions of love and gratified pride. In a voice, whose clear, well modulated tones, thrilled him as no music could, she said, "Nobly done, Mr. Flagg! I knew you would not disappoint me! Your speech was the most lovely poem in prose that I have ever heard! So perfectly charming, that I find it far beyond my best words of praise! In return for such an eloquent tribute, the trees should join in a grateful anthem! You have sounded the key-note; it is the evident destiny of co-operative farming in the twentieth century, to restore these noble trees to their rightful domain." The banquet, which followed the oration proved a great success. It was really one long, interwoven garland of witty speech and inspiring music, together with the merry jingle and melodious crash of silver and china. The enjoyable zest of the entertainment, was spiced and flavored with the appetizing aroma of an abundance of delicious, well-cooked food. Placed at the head of the first table, our hero and heroine were at all times the center of attraction; the observed of all observers. "A handsome couple, evidently heaven-ordained for each other," was the universal comment. The dance in the evening, was fittingly chosen as the closing function of this famous festival. In arranging the program, Fern and Fillmore were selected by the floor managers as the leading couple. Inspired by the music of an excellent band under the leadership of Gilbert Gerrish, the assembled guests with the vigor and enthusiasm of youth caught the prevailing spirit of merriment, and gave themselves up to the fascinating movement of musical measures. Lost in the charm of the mazy dance, the merrymakers noted not the flight of time. The last number on the program came all too soon for them. Dismissed by George Gerrish, the people of Solaris left the hall in a joyful mood. They declared with one accord, that the day of the tree-planting festival, had proved the happiest one on the farm. CHAPTER XXIX. THE STORY OF GILBERT GERRISH; OR, THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAKEST UNIT. To Gilbert Gerrish the day of the festival was one long to be remembered: a day so laden with enjoyment for him, that all consciousness of his affliction was blotted out. His musical genius was free and unfettered. In such a mood, the music he drew from his violin was more wonderful and entertaining than ever before. Fern Fenwick was astonished and delighted. She soon became so much interested, that at intervals between the dancing, she came upon the platform to engage him in conversation. Grateful for such marked attention from the distinguished patroness of the farm, the natural shyness and reticence of the young musician, was quickly dispelled. To Fern, it was remarkable how eloquently and interestingly he could talk upon almost every topic she chose to introduce. On the subject of ethical, social, inventive and educational work, as exemplified by the different phases of club life at the farm; Gilbert was at his best. He spoke with such enthusiasm and perfect knowledge of details that Fern Fenwick was profoundly impressed. She then and there determined, at the first convenient opportunity, to have Fillmore Flagg relate to her more in detail, the many incidents connected with his farm life, and how this interesting boy had managed in so short a time, to make himself such a universal favorite with the farm people, both old and young. That night before retiring, Gilbert told his mother in confidence, that Miss Fenwick was the brightest, most beautiful and most lovable woman he had ever met. "Tell me truly, Mamma! Do you think she is really in love with Mr. Flagg? I hope it may be true! For I know he deserves to win the love of the best and most charming woman that ever was born!" While this confidential interview between mother and son was in progress, Fern and Fillmore were speaking of Gilbert in such a way, that if overheard by Gertrude Gerrish it would have stirred the pride in her mother heart. "I declare, Fillmore!" said Fern, "to my mind that clever lad, Gilbert Gerrish, is one of the most astonishing products of Solaris Farm! You have promised to tell me the story of his life here on the farm. I am now ready to hear it. At the festival dance I had an opportunity to engage him in conversation, and the good fortune to so win his confidence, that he could talk to me without embarassment. It was then that I discovered what a brilliant intellectual prodigy, eloquent talker, skilled musician, and cultured artist he really was. There is something mysterious about his strong, intellectual, spiritual nature, which has aroused my interest in him, and my sympathy for him, to a degree that is very unusual for me. The more I know of him the more I wish to win his friendship. "What a terrible misfortune, that he is so afflicted by the deformity of that spinal trouble! I cannot help picturing him as possessed of a physique in harmony with his glorious intellectual and spiritual unfoldment. How naturally then, he could win the love of some equally gifted, noble woman. How happy they could make each other through the passing changes of a long and useful life. Aside from my speculative fancies, I do wonder what the future has in store for him? How bravely he bears himself! He does not seem inclined to be gloomy or misanthropical under the burden of his misfortune!" "I think, my dear Fern, that my story will unravel the mystery. I am delighted to find that you have already become interested in Gilbert, and have discovered so many of his good qualities! I can assure you that he is worthy of your sympathy and friendship! He is a noble fellow! Richly endowed, with a remarkable, intuitive, spiritual nature! His enthusiasm, persevering efforts and ingenious devices, have contributed much towards the success of this co-operative farm. The value and variety of his especial work in the department of experimental farming, has proved his extraordinary ability, and justly earned for him the title of the 'wonder worker of the farm!' "On account of Gilbert's frail form and sensitive nature, it was deemed wise by his ever watchful parents, to give him the protection of an isolated home life. For this purpose, a cozy cottage was built in the center of its own grounds, some distance away from all other buildings. This cottage was charmingly fitted and furnished in such style and taste as would satisfy the artistic ideas of this domestic trio, and at the same time, afford quiet, retired, spacious rooms, for Gilbert's musical and other studies. Rooms where violin and piano practice, at any hour that might suit his fancy, could disturb no one. "Referring to that haunting desire which impresses you to picture Gilbert as possessing a magnificent physique, in harmony with his brilliant, mental and spiritual unfoldment; I accept it as another proof of the growth of his spiritual body to the beautiful proportions you seem to see. All psychics who come within the radius of his powerful, spiritual aura, sense or see this strong symmetrical body. His affectionate and emotional nature is beautifully developed. No one can appreciate the graces and charms of a refined, beautiful woman more keenly than Gilbert Gerrish! Yet, I know, that in this life, he does not for one moment, even dream of a possible marriage with any woman. He is loyally devoted to his spiritual ideal! "For many months, I have been to Gilbert a trusted friend and confidential companion. In this capacity, I have learned his story of the hidden romance of his young life. This story I will repeat to you as an illustration of the high order of his boyish character. It cannot fail to increase both your admiration and your respect, for this youthful devotee at the shrine of love. "When Gilbert was ten years old, while attending school at St. Louis, he became acquainted with Rita Estelle Ringwood. She was in many ways a remarkable girl; only two months younger than Gilbert. Tall and straight, with a well rounded figure, already as large as a maid of fourteen, Rita gave promise of an early development into a lovely woman. With a large, finely formed head, crowned by a luxuriant growth of soft, thick, wavy, chestnut hair; a smooth, creamy complexion, pleasing features, firm mouth and well rounded chin; large, full, soft, brown eyes, unusually expressive; a strong, well turned white throat and neck, symmetrical shoulders, perfectly formed hands and feet; and a well poised, graceful carriage, she appeared to Gilbert as some divine creature. From the first moment of meeting, a strong bond of mutual attraction drew them together. If kept long apart, both became nervous and restless. When again united, they were quickly at peace with themselves and all the world. By a strange coincidence, as it transpired; Rita's parents lived in a house just across the street, almost in the front of the one occupied by the Gerrish family. Through the children, the parents soon became intimate friends. As Gilbert had never cared to play with boys of his own age, either on the streets or at school, it was natural under the circumstances, that he should devote himself entirely to Rita, as the only congenial playmate he had ever known. Very soon, as a consequence, the twain were almost always together, either in one home or the other. They read or studied from the same book, often pausing to discuss some question of more than usual interest. In music, they had the same tastes, the same predominating passion for it. Gilbert soon taught Rita to use the violin; while Rita in turn taught Gilbert to play the piano. Each could then alternate, in playing violin accompaniments to piano music. Much practice soon enabled these artistic children, to render such duets with thrilling effect. In so delightful an occupation, hours passed swiftly by. A series of selections were chosen for evening concerts. The parents were called in to enjoy them. In the eyes of the parents, both children were manifestly helpful to each other. Rita never seemed to notice Gilbert's misshapen body. She evidently responded, only to impressions emanating from his more perfect and dominant, spiritual body. Gilbert was conscious of this fact, and always seemed at ease in her presence. As the months flew swiftly by; these strange children grew more devotedly fond of each other. Three summers had witnessed the growing together of these two harmoniously attuned souls. "The day following Gilbert's thirteenth birthday, he was depressed by some overshadowing cloud of sadness. He could not explain it, nor, could he throw it off. The sequel came the following week, when a great wave of pestilence, in the form of malignant typhoid fever, swept over the city. It claimed Rita as one of its first victims. "Heart broken! Rita's parents hastily returned to New York, where, surrounded by early associations, they vainly and hopelessly struggled to forget their terrible bereavement. "To Gilbert, the shock was frightful! His parents, George and Gertrude Gerrish were alarmed. They feared for his life! He wandered about with dry, staring eyes, like one in a trance. He could not weep! For days, he could neither eat nor drink! At last, came the crisis! Reason seemed about to leave her throne! Then it happened, that Gilbert grew strangely calm and hopeful. "In a few short days the improvement was magical. His beautiful eyes shone with the fires of new inspiration! Questioned by his parents, he assured them that Rita still lived. He knew that she was not dead! Clairvoyantly, he had seen her, more beautiful than ever. Clairaudiently, he had heard, over and over again, the sweet familiar tones of her voice. All this through his own mediumship and more besides. Controlling his hand and arm, in her own identical hand-writing, she had written to him long messages filled with loving consolation, bidding him look hopefully forward to a happy reunion in the land of the spirit, the home of the soul! Almost nightly in dreams, she came to him, when for happy hours they were again united in the enjoyment of the old familiar companionship, so dear to his waking memories. "Through Gilbert's mediumship, his parents became spiritualists. This happened some months before I visited them in St. Louis, on my first trip west, from Newburgh. Some months later, the family came to Solaris. "In a recent conversation, speaking to me of his life work, his hopes and his ambitions, Gilbert said: 'Fillmore, I know that my life here will be short. I know that I have a work to do here on this farm, for the future benefit of my brothers and sisters in earth life. I know that in spirit life, Rita waits for me to join her, when that work is finished. I now realize that swiftly passing days, weeks, months and years, are precious portions of time which I must improve to the utmost. I know that this primary school of life has many useful lessons, which I must master as quickly as possible. I know that the sooner they are mastered, the sooner I shall be prepared to enter a higher class in spirit life. I know that as a spirit, in that land of golden sunlight, freed from the burden of this unsightly prison of flesh, I shall be clothed in a spiritual body as symmetrically perfect as my highest ideal can picture. I know that thus clothed, and crowned with the perpetual youth of the spirit; I shall again be united with my darling Rita, never more to part. Together, in obedience to the law of an infinite love, we shall go hand in hand, up the paths of wisdom which lead to the summits of the hills of everlasting progress. I know that during my sojourn here, when I am weary and most need the healing balm of her presence, my Rita can come to cheer and help me. Knowing all this, life is full of promise! I have no time to be sad or lonely! The world is bright! I am ambitious to make its people my friends, by creating for them, better and brighter conditions for the enjoyment of life.' "This, my dear Fern! is the romance, which like some secret charm, Gilbert wears in his heart. His armor against all evil! The bright star of his ambition! The beacon light of his hope!" "The romance is indeed a most extraordinary one! The story is exquisitely beautiful! Its pathos fills my heart with both joy and sadness! In the development of his mediumship, following his bereavement, how like my own, has been his experience! This explains my sympathetic desire for his friendship. What a noble fellow he is! I shall be proud to claim him as my friend! Now Fillmore, you must tell me of his work for the farm. I am anxious to know more of the peculiar methods of this inspired genius." "Very well! In the center of the large garden at the rear of the Gerrish cottage, is a roomy workshop, built for Gilbert's sole use and occupancy. Alone in this shop, he has mapped out for himself such a course of study, experimental work, and industrial amusement, as might suit the fancy of his swiftly changing moods; or conform to the passing whims of his busy brain. To the combined interests of Solaris farm, he is intensely devoted. To keep a realistic picture of the farm always in his mind, he has drawn an immense map, large enough to completely cover the wall space on one side of the shop. He subdivided, colored and named the subdivisions on the map, after a bold, brilliant scheme of his own. The result is a matter of astonishment to all beholders. The map seems to possess some charm of attraction, which no one can explain. On each subdivision from time to time, Gilbert has tacked cards filled with finely written notes, setting forth from his own standpoint, a history of the subdivision, its peculiarities, and capabilities of the different soils; character of crops and fertilizers, together with such suggestions for perfection or improvement, as his thorough knowledge of chemistry might determine; or his keen, analytical, observation of the crops produced, might indicate. "This map of itself, is a most valuable work; involving an immense amount of intelligent, skillful labor; also much study of chemistry, and of horticultural and agricultural authorities. As an indication of our appreciation of its value, this map has been taken as a suggestive model for the completion of those made and kept by the clerical force employed in the farm office. "On the south side of his shop, two large doors open into a roomy, glass-roofed hot house, containing a very unique collection of potted plants, which, under the skillful hands of this young enthusiast, are undergoing the different stages of experimental treatment, such as he may deem necessary, to prove or disprove his many pet theories or fancies, in regard to care, growth, insect enemies, and to application of electric light, sun light, heat, moisture and fertilizers. Each plant bears a fruitful crop of cards, giving a summary of results and conclusions. Each one of these cards may contain, in skeleton form, the subject matter of a brief essay, brimful of valuable suggestions and interesting statements. Sooner or later, these essays, signed 'Experimenter,' are liable to find their way into the contribution box at the door of the Press Club. "Gilbert's collection of birds and insects, forms another interesting feature of his industrial museum. These collections were made, arranged and classified, in order to afford opportunities for making a careful study of the insect enemies of his plants, and also to discover what birds were most destructive to the different insects. The birds he kept in cages; the insects in glass-covered boxes. "The care of these things, and the time and labor necessary to collect, classify and arrange them, would to most people, prove a grievous burden. To Gilbert, it was simply another mode of recreation and amusement. On the live insects, he tried the effects of such chemicals as might destroy them without injury to the growing plants. To his caged birds, Gilbert fed his bugs, worms and moths, carefully noting the kinds they most eagerly swallowed. His conclusions were always briefly written out. They proved a perfect mine of valuable information, to be used in perfecting better methods for farm culture. "Aside from this kind of work; in the departments of his shop devoted to experiments with clays, mica, soils, minerals and the various powers, attractions and affinities of electricity, his constructive ideation and inspired mentality, always gave him an excellent crop of good results. Altogether, such superior work, carried forward in his own unique way, has added many hundreds of dollars to the annual income of the farm. In the department of experimental farming, as I have before stated, his work has proved most brilliant and helpful; generally leading to the adoption of many improved methods for successfully selecting, planting and growing these new crops. "Considered as a whole, such a variety of valuable contributions have convinced our people, that physically speaking, one of the farm's weakest units, under the fostering development of co-operative organization, is capable of becoming one of its most valued productive workers. The wonder of it all, is, that Gilbert is able to accomplish such important results, while following a scheme he has devised as a source of personal diversion! "Turning to Gilbert's intellectual, artistic and esthetic life, we discover that this gifted boy finds the same source of comfort and amusement in his devotion to the art of music. In this branch of accomplishments, you, my dear Fern! have had occasion to observe how important a factor he has become, in organized social life at Solaris. He is such a general favorite, that without an effort, he has been able to so impress the strong individuality of his noble character upon the minds of our farm people, that the effect for good has been truly wonderful!" "This is exceedingly interesting, Fillmore! How charmed I am with your completed story of this marvelously gifted boy! All that you have told me about Gilbert, only seems to confirm my previous convictions, that he is really one of the most astonishing products of Solaris farm! No wonder he is such a general favorite! He has nobly earned the title! With such intelligence and genius, possessed, embodied and expressed by its weaker units; is it any cause for wonder, that the success of Solaris as a co-operative colony, is so pronounced?" CHAPTER XXX. OUR HERO AND HEROINE DISCUSS AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS. On the day following the festival, we find Fillmore Flagg in the office of the farm, going over the books of the company with Fern Fenwick. To most women, such a task would soon prove unbearably monotonous and tiresome. However, she neither grew restless or inattentive. At all times on the alert to note each new point of interest; her questions on every subject indicated a remarkably intelligent conception of the general plan of the work. Finally, having satisfied herself that she understood the status of the farm well enough to enable her to propound her list of queries in the proper order, and in such a manner, as would most successfully bring to her the information she wished to obtain: with note-book in hand, she commenced by saying: "Now Fillmore, I am ready to take up my series of questions about Solaris, which you have kindly consented to answer. I promise in advance to be good; to try to refrain from untimely interruptions, by asking a host of irrelevant questions at inopportune moments! "First, I wish you would tell me just what is represented by the one thousand shares of capital stock, of the Solaris Farm Company?" "The corporation, as you know, is so limited," said Fillmore, "that the land cannot be sold, and the stock can only be sold to the Company; nevertheless, the original cost of the land is covered by the stock. The entire capitalization of $250,000, which I think will fairly represent the financial status of the farm at the end of the first five years, is divided as follows: Purchase price of land $ 32,000 Improvements 68,000 Buildings 100,000 Live stock, equipment and machinery 50,000 -------- $250,000 Of the last named item, about $25,000 is estimated for machinery. However, this amount does not fully represent its real value. In many instances, it only gives the actual cost of the raw material used in construction. This capitalization does not seem so large, when we consider the small individual holdings. Having a par value of $250 a share, we have only $500, in the two shares, for each one of the five hundred co-operators. I think it has been wisely determined by a majority vote, that as the resources of the farm continue to develop and mature, the increase of profits shall come to the individual stockholder in the shape of larger wages, instead of by dividends on stock. Although this is not a money-making institution, and was not so intended from the beginning; a fact properly emphasized by the foregoing. Yet, by the way of arriving at some estimate of its future value, I feel safe in predicting, that, if the stock should be offered in the markets of the world, and dividends declared in the usual way, twenty years hence, these certificates of stock would be worth $1,500 per share. In other words, would have doubled in value six times during that period." "Judging by what I already know of the farm and its resources," said Fern, "I quite agree with you in this view of the matter. "In considering the future needs of such a large number of co-operators, which in ten years may be increased by pensioners and children, to one thousand people; do you think this farm is large enough to meet the demand?" "For the purpose in view it is ample," said Fillmore. "Operated in connection with so many allied industries, I think a farm of 5,000 acres would be sufficient. That would be ten acres for each one. Here in Solaris, we have 12-8/10 acres of land for every adult member of the company. By carrying the process of intensive farming to a very high state of perfection; Prof. Grandeau, at Capelle, France, has actually demonstrated, that it is possible to grow 8½ bushels of wheat--one man's bread food for the year--on one-twentieth part of an acre of land. Armed with so many advantages, with better conditions, superior methods, and more intelligent workers; I feel sure we can easily accomplish here, all that Grandeau has done in France, and more. Besides, you must remember, that we shall have the additional support of quite a large number of profitable industries, to help us in meeting the demands of an increased number of consumers." "That sounds logical and reasonable," said Fern. "I now remember, that while traveling in Europe with my father, gathering agricultural statistics: the Capelle experiments were brought to our attention at that time, as worthy of careful consideration. I am greatly pleased to know that you are already familiar with them. To continue the subject, I wish to say that I am much impressed with the outlook for intensive farming at Solaris. Aided by the wonderful power of applied co-operative thinking, combined with your careful and comprehensive system of book-keeping, which embraces every field and department of the farm! I believe that ten years hence, you will be able to give to the world, some very valuable statistics on the whole subject of farming, both intensive and diversified. "I have noticed with an unusual degree of interest, the apparently lavish use of electric power in operating the factory works and farm machinery. I am really quite curious to know just how it is generated." "That is a very large question!" said Fillmore. "At different times since the commencement of our work, we have used three methods for generating electricity. First, the old fashioned steam dynamo. Second, the direct conversion of coal into electricity. Third, the gathering of great quantities of this subtle force from the atmosphere, through a certain vibratory action, set up by intense concentration of the sun's rays. As a result of a vast deal of co-operative thinking and careful experimentation; the last named process, has been so perfected and cheapened, as to entirely supersede the first two. The powerful batteries of Solaris concentrators, which you see around the power-house, and at various points on the farm, are important factors in this work. I confess, that I am rather proud of the remarkable success, which we have achieved in this line of invention. When I gave a title to the farm, I had a premonition, that solar heat and force would be so successfully harnessed to both industrial and agricultural work, that the suggestive name of Solaris, would soon become as famous, as it was fitting and well earned. "In applying this power to all kinds of farm and factory work, we have succeeded far beyond my most sanguine expectations. With a plant almost entirely built by our own co-operative labor, we are able to generate an abundance of cheap power, which can be easily and safely conducted to the most distant portions of the farm. This power is readily available at any desired point, and for all kinds of work; becoming the magic motor by which we operate trains of trolley cars, for handling grain, hay, corn and all heavy crops; great gang-plows, rollers, harrows, cultivators, planters, drills, reapers, threshers and motor wagons; all so perfectly constructed and so easily controlled; that with them a woman, fittingly dressed and gloved, protected from the heat of the sun by a canopy, comfortably seated on cushions and springs, may accomplish the roughest and heaviest kind of farm work, without fatigue or discomfort. In fact, our women soon find it the most delightfully, fascinating work on the farm. "In connection with such a powerful motor, a single person, operating one of these improved agricultural machines, can do an amount of work in six hours, which under the old system would require ten hours of severe toil by six men and twelve horses. Of course, such machinery can only be produced and operated by large co-operative farms like this; with a carefully chosen force of co-operators, who are thinkers as well as workers; who are intellectually, physically and socially prepared to invent and construct machines that are perfectly fitted to do this particular kind of work." "Really!" said Fern, "this is as interesting as it is remarkable! This sun-generated force, this magic motor, so perfectly adjusted to agricultural work, under the test of practical use; which has proved so easily controlled; together with the tireless host of wonder-working machines, which this force has called into being; is truly a marvel worthy of the twentieth century! "Tell me, Fillmore! Why is it that these things have not been done before?" "There are many reasons. I think I can give you the principal one. From a remote period of time, a large majority of the people of this planet have gained a living by following agricultural pursuits. Bowed down under the weight of severe toil, hopeless under the pressure of a belief, that labor was a curse which they might not seek to escape; confined by ignorance to a narrow sphere of action, which kept them from looking upward and outward; it is not strange, that so many passing generations of these people, should never once dream of adopting a series of progressive changes for the betterment of their condition. "Such people were incapable of understanding, that, in order to secure the best and most successful results from agricultural work, it requires a systematic application of the highest order of brain work: that this brain work, must inspire a harmonious collection of trained, muscular workers, operating under the most favorable conditions. By the way of a contrast, how helpless were the lives of these farmers! As a rule they worked under the most discouraging conditions, distrustful and envious, uneducated and narrow minded; how could they be prepared to comprehend that basic law of progress, which is embodied in the idea of unselfish co-operation? "For these reasons, co-operative thinking and co-operative farming, have not heretofore been successfully combined. Here and now, in the first decade of the twentieth century, a few unselfish souls, the advance guard of the coming army, responding to the pressure of progressive evolution, have risen to such intellectual heights as has enabled them to discover, that by the aid of a harmonious union of thought and labor, a collection of people, working the soil unselfishly together, can easily attain results which, the most brilliant individual effort, armed with the wealth of a millionaire, could never hope to accomplish. Inspired with this idea, the people of Solaris, as pioneers in the work, are striving earnestly to demonstrate the absolute success of co-operative farming." "What I have seen with my own eyes, I know as a verity!" said Fern, enthusiastically. "Therefore I feel like shouting in the ears of our people: Well done, good and faithful servants in the cause of progress! The victory is already won! It is yours! "Your explanation of the cause of the late coming of practical co-operation in agriculture, appeals to my mind, as a very clear one. That the ignorance and selfishness of the individual, has from the beginning, proved the real obstacle, is now quite plain to me. "However, returning to my list of questions. How is it, that the fields and cultivated grounds at Solaris, are so free from weeds?" "Ah!" said Fillmore. "The answer to that question, is another argument in favor of co-operative farming. Weeds have always been counted by farmers, as among the worst of the pests which they have been obliged to contend with. Under the most adverse conditions, weeds will grow, flourish, and ripen an appalling quantity of seed; where all useful plants will languish and finally perish. To keep them down, is a task which requires a great deal of hard work. To destroy them, root and branch, is a problem which has occupied the minds of our people for the past thirty months. After much thoughtful work, we have reached a solution. "During the period of frost, from the first of December to the first of March, the weedy ground is thoroughly stirred several times. After each stirring, the ground is swept by a broad stream of concentrated heat-rays--both light and dark. These rays are generated by a number of batteries of Solaris mirrors, or great sun glasses. This operation soon warms the ground and causes the weeds to put forth a tender growth. After such a growth, a week of frosty weather kills it down. This process is repeated until the weeds are all gone. When the necessary frosts do not appear, or when the work is carried on during warmer weather, a scorching from the sun glasses, kills the weeds even more effectively than frost. In this way the cultivated ground on the farm, has been entirely freed from weeds. As a result, the yield of crops has been largely increased, while the labor of cultivation has been correspondingly reduced. That back-aching work of hoeing, has been almost entirely dispensed with. Machine culture does the work. "The great advantage gained by cropping soil free from weeds, is most apparent in case of wheat culture. In such soils, the wheat can be deeply sown by the drill, beyond the reach of predatory birds. This develops a strong root-growth in the young plant, which as a consequence requires more space. To meet this demand, care is taken to have the drill-rows made one foot apart--running north and south. These wide rows allow free access of air and sunlight to the soil, which may then be cultivated. Under the old system this space would be full of weeds; therefore impracticable. This gives the young wheat a chance to spread out, to send up from twenty to forty stout stems from the root-system of a single grain of seed. The growing stems become more sturdy, bear larger heads, heads with more and larger kernels, of heavier, brighter wheat. With this culture, the yield is increased one-third--many times one-half--and the quality wonderfully improved. Fully one-half of the usual quantity of seed is saved. "By repeating this method for a few years, carefully choosing the seed for each planting from the best kernels borne by the largest heads, the ordinary wheat-crop, without extra fertilization, may easily be doubled two and one-half times; while the quality of the entire crop is raised to the grade of extra fine, which will readily sell at fancy prices for seed wheat. The net gain, is a large cash balance in favor of cultivating a weedless soil. What is true of wheat culture in such soils, is true in a large measure with most other crops; more especially with corn, cotton and all kinds of garden crops." "Stop a moment, Fillmore! "Did I understand you to say that these immense discs, these mammoth, weed-scorching mirrors, were made here at Solaris? How can such expensive things be made, for a price that would allow so many to be used?" "Yes, these concentrating mirrors and burning glasses combined, are the product of the inventive genius and skillful work of our people. A combination of brain and muscular work so successful, that these discs, although they are of such great size and weight, are quickly and cheaply made from thick plates of flat glass, which we manufacture from our abundant supply of excellent sand! The quality of the glass in these plates is of the best; clear, soft, and tough, just the kind that will most readily take the proper concave and convex surfaces, when treated by the evenly applied heat of swiftly revolving electric brushes. With plenty of strong machinery to handle these heavy plates, a few skilled workers, can with ease, soon transform them into perfect, lense-shaped discs. Similar discs, made by the slow, tedious process of nineteenth century methods, would cost many thousands of dollars for each one." "You have answered my question both briefly and perfectly! I recognize in these great mirrors, a swift, wonder-working agency, that shall make possible a new system of farming; which means, in the improved conditions for mankind that must follow, a revolution in social methods, calculated to bring them quickly into harmony with a rate of progress demanded by the twentieth century. "I will take up another question. It is in connection with the large amount of cultivated ground devoted to vegetables. How do you manage to make it profitable to grow such a quantity of perishable things?" "That is another important question, which will require an answer so lengthy, that perhaps you may grow weary before I have finished. However, I will try to be brief. During the past year, we have taken from the ground devoted to vegetable growing, more than 100,000 bushels of cabbage, cauliflower, onions, beets, mangel-wurzel, carrots, parsnips, salsify, potatoes, sweet-potatoes, cassava, turnips, kohlrabi and artichokes. The best part of the story is, that this heavy crop has proved profitable, to a degree far beyond our expectations! As a rule, this class of vegetables, so heavy and so perishable, cannot be profitably grown in large quantities, except in locations near a large market town. This advantage, Solaris does not possess. To overcome this difficulty, was an additional task, which must be conquered, by the allied forces of co-operative thinking and co-operative working. In the solution of this puzzling question which was finally reached, the great mirrors and burning glasses of the Solaris concentrators, were again called upon to play an important part. "The first necessity, was to reduce the weight of the vegetables, and at the same time, to arrest all tendency to decay. The second was to protect them from the attack of insects, by placing them in neat, strong, insect-proof packages. "A large curing establishment was built and equipped with machinery; most of which was made at Solaris, from especially devised patterns. Convenient trolley lines, connected the curing-house with the fields. The vegetables, crisp and fresh from the ground, were quickly brought to the washing machines, on trains of cars laden with shallow trays, which permitted them to be swiftly handled without bruising. In these machines, they were thoroughly cleansed, scraped, and freed from tops, rootlets and imperfections. This process complete, they were placed in trays on traveling carriers, which delivered them to the dicing machines. In the dicing machines, they were soon reduced to inch-cubes. "In passing from these machines, the cubes fell on traveling screens of fine wire, which formed the first of a long series of drying rollers. The drying rollers, on the way to the packing rooms in the large store-house, passed through a long system of sheet-iron conduits, which were well heated by the concentrated rays of the sun from the mirrors and sunglasses. So well did the drying rollers do their work, that by the time the cubes had reached the store-house, and were delivered by the elevators into the storing-bins in the packing house, they were reduced to a dry, hard kernel. They had lost three-fourths in bulk, and about the same proportion in weight. "The funnel-shaped bottoms to the storing-bins were so arranged as to be above the long rows of packing tables. A series of graduated spouts, delivered the cured vegetables to the packers, who, standing or sitting as they might prefer, could, with but little effort and much speed, fill the prepared boxes with the little cubes. "These boxes, of a uniform size and shape, were made from thick layers of heavy straw-paper, made stiff and firm under high pressure. The farm in manufacturing them, was able to utilize large quantities of surplus straw from the grain fields, which could not be used as forage. In the corners of the boxes, between layers of paper, while they were being molded into shape, were inserted small, triangular pieces of wood. These bevel-shaped strips were cut six inches in length, just the depth of the boxes, in which they served as upright cornerposts. The shallow covers fitted each box with a telescope joint. "In the process of box-making, the layers of paper were saturated with a chemical, germicide solution, which made the boxes insect-proof; yet, which would not odorize, nor in any way injure the contents. In the process of packing, each box and cover was lined with thin sheets of parafine paper, as an additional guard against moisture. When the boxes were filled and sealed, they were strongly coopered, by adding four thin laths of strong wood. These laths, one-eighth of an inch thick, two inches wide, and just the length of the box; two at the bottom, and two at the top, were securely nailed to the cornerposts; thus completing a package which was cheap, strong, light, durable, rodent and insect-proof. With a capacity of a half-bushel, it weighed only five pounds. Filled with cubes, the gross weight was but thirty-five pounds. An ideal package, which could be piled high in transportation or store-house without injury; the upright cornerposts taking all the pressure. "The half-bushel or thirty pounds of dried cubes in each box, represent two bushels of fresh vegetables. Cured and packed in this way, they reach distant markets, sound, sweet, clean and nutritious. No waste, no worms, no musty smell, no decay! Frost cannot hurt them, heat preserves them! For long voyages, army and navy use, mining, lumbering, and hunting outfits, they are simply invaluable! For all classes of consumers, they are cheaper, cleaner and more wholesome than the ordinary stale and wilted vegetables, for sale in the city markets! We have named these cubes, 'Solaris Vegetable Concentrates,' a title which we have copyrighted. The packages readily wholesale at 75 cents, to be retailed at one dollar. At these prices, they yield a handsome profit to the farm. "Last year we placed hundreds of sample packages on the general market, which soon proved the excellence of the goods, and later brought heavy orders for this year; even more than we can fill, for many of the varieties. A valuable hint to us, that we must devote more ground to growing those particular kinds. "Our 'Solaris Mixture Concentrates' are almost equally popular. We also have a growing demand for our 'Solaris Stock Food,' which we put in cheaper packages, to wholesale and retail at 50 and 75 cents. This mixture is made up of equal proportions of dried cubes of potatoes, carrots, cassava, and mangel-wurzel. It has proved the acme of a healthful, fattening stock-food; especially beneficial in counteracting the evil effects of heavy grain-feeding; or in cases of emergency, to take the place of forage or cut-straw food. "In a weedless soil, much of the heavy labor of growing vegetables is eliminated. In curing and preparing them for market in this way, a great amount of light, pleasant work, is available for our women co-operators. Considered as a whole, this vegetable scheme is one of the notable achievements of Solaris farm, of which the members of the company are justly proud." "This is surely a most excellent work! It is a clear demonstration of what important results may be attained, by the application of thinking to agricultural work. In this instance, the lesson of your brilliant success, impresses my mind as a most convincing argument in favor of co-operative farming. I feel sure that it will appeal to the multitude with the same force. It is but another illustration of the old saying, 'Nothing succeeds like success!' A few such examples will serve to overthrow the prejudices of a thousand years! They will win for you a host of followers in the cause of co-operative farming. "Now Fillmore, let us consider another matter. At the time we made our tour of inspection, my attention was attracted to groups of oddly constructed barns, scattered here and there about the farm. What are these buildings, and for what purpose are they used?" "Those are curing-barns. They mark another wide departure from the usual methods of ordinary farming. For many years it has been a ruinously, wasteful custom with farmers, to allow their crops of corn, grain and hay, to stand in the fields while curing. All, subject meanwhile to the destructive effects of storms, dews and all kinds of adverse weather, which as a rule, destroyed much of the crop, and reduced the remainder to the condition of an inferior grade. "By the use of these barns, we are able to inaugurate an entirely different system, which succeeds admirably. These barns, located near the grain fields, are constructed with strong frames. They are both tall and wide, and so anchored to their foundations as not to be overthrown by high winds. Each roof is supplied with a series of latticed ventilators. In building the side walls, every alternate ten feet, was left open from ground to roof. These open spaces were fitted with roller screens of jointed, wooden slats, operated by weights and springs, which allowed the interior to be well lighted and thoroughly ventilated. These screens could all be raised or lowered at pleasure. While the barns were being filled, they were all open. "As the fields of grain commenced to ripen, while the straw was still green and full of sap, and the swollen kernels were just passing out of the dough stage of maturing; with the aid of a large force of workers, operating improved machinery, entire fields of standing grain at just precisely the proper stage of maturity, could be transferred to the shelter of these barns in a single day. As the heavy green bundles of grain were delivered from the fields, to the adjustable elevators working through the open spaces of the barns, from either side, these bundles were carried to the hands of the rick-builders, who piled them into narrow ricks five feet in width, across the barn and up to the roof. As the ricks grew in height, strong wire screens were hooked to the dividing posts which marked the boundaries of the ricks. These screens kept the bundles in place, and the ricks securely upright. When the barns were filled in this way, the ricks were separated by four feet of open space, with a ventilator in the roof for each pair of ricks and spaces. "When the grain crops were thus housed without waste from shelling, the curing process went forward swiftly and securely. The advantages gained, were many. The wheat straw, full of sap when harvested, in curing slowly, kept the plump kernels of grain from shrinking, while it left them with clear, smooth, thin skins, and a quality, which produced less bran and more gluten, in the flour they would yield when ground. The kernels were all more uniform in size, larger, firmer and fairer; would all grade as number one. No sprouted wheat! No must! No blight! No rust! "This was also true of oats and barley. The straw came from the improved threshers, in straight, compact bundles, thoroughly freed from grain, fragrant and bright, almost as nutritious for forage as hay. In fact, this straw, in such excellent shape for cutting, feeding, storing, or transportation, possessed more than twice the selling value of the best of ordinary straw. The oat straw, being softer and more pliable, was still more valuable as forage. The barley straw, less desirable for stock food, was sent to the paper mill for the use of the box factory. By this method of harvesting and curing grain, the increase in quality and selling value, was largely augmented. The general result was a marked saving of grain, time, labor and money. "In cutting and curing the hay crops, the same kind of barns were used. The loosely packed hay in the tall, thin ricks, was soon dry enough to bale, and then be transferred to the storing barns; leaving room for the corn crop which was to follow. Hay cured in this way is superior to anything on the market, and always brings tip-top prices! "In curing corn, more time and wider ricks are necessary. The corn could be cut earlier, thus leaving the ground free to be prepared for the succeeding crop of fall wheat or late vegetables. During stormy weather, after this slower curing process was complete, a jolly army of huskers invaded the barns. The ripe corn, free from husk, was carefully assorted and stored in the ventilated bins prepared for it. The selected husks were packed and baled, ready for market. The stalks were stripped and topped by a clever machine. The excellent forage thus accumulated, was baled and stored. The pith in the large part of the stalk, was then extracted by another machine. These piths were then treated to a water-proofing process, sent to a shop on the farm, and made up into life preservers. Both life preservers and life rafts, made from pith treated in this way, proved lighter, cheaper, and more buoyant than those made from cork. This, you will observe is another profitable industry, added to the financial resources of Solaris. It is also an addition to the fitting employments for women. "A still more desirable employment for our women co-operators, was found at the grain mill, where wheat, oats, and barley were transformed into popular brands of 'Solaris Breakfast Food.' Thus prepared, the market value of a bushel of grain was increased four fold. "A new food preparation, from a mixture of pop-corn with equal parts of thoroughly ground, roasted sweet corn, is really an excellent article of diet. In small, neat packages, this healthy and attractive food can be sold at a large profit. "All of these sources of profit, naturally grow out of the new methods of harvesting and housing grain, which is made possible by the curing barns. While in appearance, these barns may not prove attractive, yet, I think you will readily acknowledge that they are very useful buildings; buildings which Solaris could not well do without." "Really! Fillmore, I think these buildings are very fine! More than that, they are wonderfully well adapted to the purpose for which they were constructed! In this respect they certainly excel in usefulness, all other classes of barns. In your description of them, and of the new methods in harvesting; I have been as much interested and entertained as though you were relating some fascinating romance. Indeed, I have been so absorbed, that I fear my poor note-book has been sadly neglected! "How much land do you devote to cotton growing? How has co-operative methods, affected its culture as a paying crop?" "Last year, we planted twelve hundred acres in cotton. By the use of choice seed, a weedless soil, improved methods in the destruction of insect enemies, a better selection of fibre-producing fertilizers, a less wasteful plan of planting, and a more careful culture, we have increased the yield per acre from 300 to 500, and in a few instances to 550 pounds. When the crop was picked and ginned, we had twelve hundred bales of fine cotton. The quality of the fibre in the whole lot, was so excellent and so uniformly well ripened, that we were offered two cents per pound above the ruling price of ordinary cotton. As a result, this one crop gave the farm a cash income of $65,000. $60,000 for the fibre, and $5,000 for the seed, oil and oil cake. Choice seed for planting, was a large item in the last named amount. "Heretofore, the great difficulty experienced by single farmers in growing large crops of cotton, has arisen from the want of sufficient help during the picking season. At Solaris, we always have an abundance of help. If the needs of the work seem to demand it, we can put two six-hour reliefs of pickers into the field each day, with 200 pickers in each relief. By working such a force, a large crop can soon be gathered without waste or damage. The pickers, all receiving the same daily wages, have a pocket interest in saving the cotton, therefore clean, careful picking, with a view of preserving a high grade of fibre, soon becomes the rule. This is an important matter, as green, immature fibre is worthless for the purpose of making a strong, durable thread or fabric; therefore pickers must be sufficiently intelligent, to understand why they should select only the thoroughly ripened cotton. "Care is taken to make the pickers as comfortable as possible. For this purpose, broad, movable awnings, are provided to protect them from sun and showers. Under such circumstances, the picking season becomes one of fun and frolic, to which our co-operators, look forward with rejoicing. Six hours in each day spent in such light, pleasant work, is hardly regarded as toil. Yet, the amount of cotton picked by each individual, measured by the number of hours employed, is fully up to the standard set by good pickers, under the old system of long hours. The nimble-fingered women easily bear off the palm, as the expert pickers. If they were paid by the pound, their earnings would be greater than those of the men. Judged by such practical work, women cannot much longer be classed with the weaker units of an agricultural colony!" "I consider that, as a very important point, well stated! But pardon me Fillmore, for the question! You spoke of better methods for the destruction of insect enemies. What are those insects, and how did you manage to destroy them?" "Those that proved the most troublesome, were the cut-worm and boll-worm. Both were hatched from the eggs laid by certain kinds of moths. During the nights of the egg-laying season, for these moths, they were easily trapped and destroyed. By the use of a large number of electric light traps, suspended from convenient wires, thousands of these insects were lured to destruction before they could deposit their eggs. We are encouraged to believe, that a few years of such wholesale extermination, will soon rid us of these pests altogether. "With a view of securing a continuous improvement in the quality of the cotton, we propose during the next five years, to carefully select the seed for each successive planting, from the largest, most prolific stalks, that produce the finest fibre. Reasoning from past experience, I think it will not be difficult to obtain a yield at least one-third greater than that of last year; which, on account of extra-superior quality, will readily sell for a still higher price. A careful reading of the annual reports, made by our consuls, who are stationed at the principal commercial ports of the world, has taught us, that to sell well, American cotton must be baled to meet the requirements of foreign markets. These markets demand that we must use a finer, better quality of baling burlaps, that will enable us to make closer, stronger, smoother packages, such as will at once impress the prospective buyer with the fact that they are really fine, because in appearance they are so tight, tidy, and attractive. To secure this, a small additional expense for baling material, is money well spent. "Considering cotton as a cash crop, our experience so far, proves it to be especially adapted to the needs and methods of co-operative farming. A single crop has put money enough into our treasury, to pay more than double the purchase price of this farm." "From your very clear and comprehensive answers to my questions, it appears that a co-operative farm, by reason of the number and organization of its workers, is equipped to carry on the culture of cotton with more than ordinary profit. This I accept as being absolutely true! Therefore I hail your success as a revelation of new possibilities, which must surely follow in the near future!" CHAPTER XXXI. THE DISCUSSION GROWS MORE INTERESTING. "Now Fillmore," said Fern, "I wish to ask, what have you been doing in the department of experimental farming?" "Much of the work in that department is still in such a preliminary stage, that definite results cannot yet be declared. However, among the experiments worthy of mention, are the fields containing the various kinds of true sugar cane, and of sorghum or Chinese sugar cane. "By hybridizing and other methods, we are striving to increase the hardiness of the former and the crystallizing-sugar product of the latter. By the results already obtained we are encouraged to believe, that five years hence, we shall have produced a sugar-cane equal to the best, that may be grown with much profit, as far north as St. Louis. "Small plots of ground have also been devoted to growing tea, peppers, sage, hops, ginseng and other medicinal plants, with such excellent results, that no doubt they will soon develop into profitable ventures. "The ten acres planted to broom-corn, have produced the necessary material with which to keep the workers in the broom and brush factory profitably employed. "In the line of fibre plants, other than the cotton crop before mentioned; we have grown enough hemp and flax, to supply the needs of our rope and twine works. In 'bromelia fibrista,' a new fibre plant, we find a product that bids fair to rival silk in producing a fabric of fine, smooth, beautiful texture. "In addition to the foregoing, several swampy plots have been planted to willow, and as a consequence, a growing basket-weaving industry has been developed. "At the very beginning of our work here, while I was preparing to stock the seed beds in the nursery, one of our co-operators, a very intelligent and observing young man, who had been railroading in Mexico for two years previous to his joining our colony, called my attention to the Mexican quince. So strongly did he assert his belief that the fruit would thrive at Solaris, that I soon became a convert to his enthusiasm. With the young man for a guide, two weeks later we were on the way to Mexico; returning shortly, with enough three-year-old nursery stock, to plant one hundred acres. In addition, we secured the seed for 500,000 young plants. Since that time, our plantation of quince bushes has grown finely. "Last year we gathered the first crop. Not a large one--perhaps, from fifteen to twenty-five quinces from each clump of bushes. As the fruit was large and the bushes thickly planted, the yield was about one hundred crates to the acre. An aggregate of ten thousand crates for the entire crop. We have every reason to believe, that the crop this year will be double that amount. "Owing to the fact that this quince thrives best on the elevated table lands of Mexico, where it is subject to periods of cold and frost of considerable length; it has readily adjusted itself to this location and climate. We are now able to pronounce it, a complete success! It is a magnificent fruit! Much superior in size, color, flavor and fragrance, to our own domestic quince. In keeping qualities and a firmness of flesh that will bear long distance transportation without injury, it is fully equal to the northern quince. In a deep-toned richness of color, perfection of shape and smoothness of skin, these peerless quinces are veritable apples of gold! They are pictures of beauty which sell at sight! The flavor is so fine, that Mexicans eat them with as much relish as the people of New York eat apples. Dried, these quinces are delicious! "In Mexico, large quantities are annually reduced to a soft mass of pulp, spread out in thin layers, and dried into sheets of what is termed quince-leather. Armed with a generous roll of this excellent preparation, the traveler in the desert countries of hot, dry climates, may bid defiance to thirst. With such a wealth of recommendations, we were able to sell our first crop of quinces at a net price of two dollars per crate; or $20,000 in cash. Hereafter we shall save the commissions, as we have already received advance orders for our next crop, at $2.25 per crate, delivered on board the cars here at Solaris. Next year, we propose to enlarge our quince orchard by adding another hundred acres. Taking all these items into consideration, I think we have good reason to be proud of our first attempt at experimental farming in the line of quince culture! "I have two additional experiments to describe. They are the last on my list. "While in Mexico securing the quince plants, I found what to me was a new variety of table grapes. They were marked by the following characteristics. Large clusters, berry large oblong, thin skin, few seeds, fine sweet pulp, delicious bouquet, color when ripe, a pale amber green; ripens about the first of July. As we found these grapes growing on the high table lands, I determined to try them at Solaris. By the dint of hard work, I procured enough young vines to set fifty acres. From those vines, we have rooted enough cuttings in the nursery, to give us 100,000 young vines, which have now reached the proper size for setting in the vineyard. This fine grape we have named 'Solaris Early.' "Last July we gathered our first crop--5000 ten-pound baskets, which we readily sold at the fancy wholesale price of one dollar per basket. In packing them for the market we carefully reject small, poor bunches. The bunches selected are freed from all bruised berries. The stems of the bunches are then dipped in melted wax. After this treatment they are packed in layers of finely cut, soft chaff, made from clean, bright, fragrant oat straw. The chaff serves to keep the berries and clusters well apart, and also to keep out the air, which otherwise would soon wilt the fruit. Packed in this way the grapes reach distant markets in perfect condition. In fact, they are the only good table grapes on the market at that season; therefore in choice lots they will always command fancy prices. The experiment with them has proved so successful that next season, we shall increase the size of the vineyard to two hundred acres. "By way of a commencement in small fruit culture, we have fifty acres of ground, devoted to growing a great variety of berries. They require the work of a large number of hands during the picking season. Owing to the perishable nature of such small fruits, we do not attempt to market them fresh, but make them into jellies, jams, marmalades, and preserves. These we pack in glass jars, of the various sizes demanded by the wholesale and retail trade. In preparing and packing these goods, we use only the best of everything. This is in line with our purpose to establish a reputation of a high degree of excellence, for each article put on the market under a Solaris label. By a rigid observance of this rule, we manage to sell the products of our berry crops at a good profit. "When the farm books are balanced at the end of the year, we are encouraged to find that the fifty acres of berries, has a larger credit than any other fifty acres on the farm. "In the line of an extension of this kind of farming, we are now preparing for next year, with the purpose of starting a factory for canning our output of sweet corn, green peas, beans, asparagus, tomatoes, peaches, plums and pears. This completes my list of items under the head of experimental farming, which Solaris now has to offer. What do you think of it so far?" "I think very well of it indeed! I am especially impressed with the Mexican quinces, early grapes, and the berries. They seem to promise the greatest success, and the largest financial returns. Taken altogether, I think the outlook for experimental farming at Solaris, is very bright! "Now, by the way of recapitulation, can you give to me, a brief statement of the crops grown last year; with an approximate one, of the cash derived therefrom?" "That will not be difficult. I will endeavor to make my statement as brief as possible. "By looking at this map, you will observe that during the season just past, we have cultivated about 4,000 acres of land. The crops planted, were nearly as follows: 1,200 acres to cotton; 1,000 acres to wheat; 1,100 acres divided between corn, oats, barley and hay; 150 acres to vegetables, and 550 acres to a miscellaneous variety of crops, such as the nursery, the quince orchard, the vineyard, the berries, the gardens, and all ground devoted to experimental culture. "The aggregate cash income derived from these crops, which found a market in the outside world, in addition to those sold to our own people, amounted in round numbers to $193,000. Of this amount, $95,000 came from sales of cotton and wheat. Next year we have good reason to expect a cash income of $250,000 from our farm products alone. Last year we realized $57,000 from the sale of our manufactured products; such as brick, terracotta, drain pipes, tiles, earthen ware, furniture, brooms, willow ware, and the output of several other minor industries. This brought the total income of the farm for the year, up to $250,000. "You ask what disposition has been made of this money? $50,000 has been expended in additional improvements, machinery, buildings, and live stock for the farm. $25,000 more, has been added to the stock in our store, which now has a supply of goods, sufficient to meet the demands of adjacent settlers who wish to trade with us. $25,000 is held in our treasury, for use in any emergency which may arise. The remaining $150,000, has been placed in the sinking-fund. "Our farm-store, has proved a very important institution. The clothing, tailoring, dressmaking and millinery departments, have proved surprisingly successful; with a constantly increasing demand for the goods turned out. This opens a wide field of remunerative labor, for our women co-operators. "The 2,400 acres of untilled lands, are now utilized as follows: 500 acres are covered by a fairly good native forest; 500 more, by the scattered timber around the stone quarries, gravel beds, sand pits, clay deposits and the various other mines. 400 acres are used for pasture, 100 acres belong to the village site. 200 acres are planted to apple trees; 25 acres to pear; 25 acres to peach; and 200 acres to nut-bearing trees. 100 acres are now being prepared for the addition to the quince orchard. Another 100 acres for the vineyard. The remaining 250 acres, for other desirable varieties of fruit. "Of the 100 acres set apart for the village site, only forty, are at present occupied by the streets in use, the buildings, and the public square. The remaining sixty acres, are laid out with walks, drives, lawns, oval, circular, and star-shaped plots. The latter, are filled with choice roses and flowers. The ovals and circles, are thickly planted with fruit trees and ornamental shrubbery. The fruits, such as cherries, plums, peaches, pears and figs, have all been the result of experimental potting and planting by the school children. The same is true in a large measure, of the rose gardens and the shrubbery. "The effect of this amusing work on the children, is most excellent. A taste for the beautiful becomes permanent, while they acquire a fund of useful knowledge about the care and culture of trees, and also how to enjoy themselves in the conscious zeal of pushing forward some useful employment; which will make them stronger, healthier and happier. With the advent of spring, comes a wealth of bloom to reward their toil--a paradise of beauty and fragrance; everywhere, clouds of pink sprays and snowy petals charm the sight. "This last item, like a long, ornamental flourish, must conclude my summing up of the distribution of crops, the division of forest, pasture and fruit lands, over the whole farm; with its complete chain of financial resources, and its outlook for the coming season. I hope I have not made my recapitulation too lengthy! Also, that I have succeeded in answering your questions satisfactorily." "Your summing up has shown surprising results! The magnitude of the cash income, is really a crown of triumph for co-operative farming! I congratulate you, and the people of Solaris, most heartily! In justice to the able answers to my questions, I must say that many times you have answered, even before I could frame them into words. With each succeeding reply, my wonder and delight has increased. I have discovered many new possibilities, in pleasant, productive and profitable methods for farm work, of which I have never before dreamed. Now that you have made them plain to me in such a charming manner; I am beginning to understand how it is, that Solaris can produce such quantities of marketable goods, that can so easily be turned into cash. I have yet a number of important questions remaining unanswered, but they do not pertain to growing crops." CHAPTER XXXII. SOCIAL SOLUTIONS. "I now wish," said Fern, "to consider the social and domestic interests of the colony. How do you manage to keep up the necessary degree of cleanliness, demanded by perfect sanitation in the living rooms of the co-operators, without seriously disturbing the privacy of the family." "That is a delicate matter, which by choice of the co-operators themselves, easily adjusts itself to the requirements of the committee members, who are chosen to take charge of the tri-weekly scrubbing and sweeping. The detail for this work for each week, is made by the assignment committee. "They select from a class of workers, known as both skillful and trustworthy. All rooms which the occupants desire to have cleaned, are left open. All rooms that are found locked, are reported to the chairman of the committee, whose duty it is to inspect them at a later period, while the occupants are present. It is a matter which is well understood by the members of the company, that rooms not accessible to the regular cleaning force, must be kept sweet and tidy by the occupants themselves, during hours which might be otherwise devoted to rest, amusement or study. "Under the pressure of such conditions, even the most exclusive, soon voluntarily open all their rooms to the authorized force. Causes for complaint against any member of the sanitary, inspection or assignment committee, are corrected by the voters at monthly elections, held for the purpose of selecting new committees. This system so appeals to that innate sense of justice and harmony reigning in the hearts of our people, that after a few months of experience, they are ready to co-operate heartily in any sort of discipline which may be necessary to secure the welfare of the entire colony. "The peculiar charm of colony-life appeals to them so strongly, that to be voted out of the organization on account of violation of rules, or of any improper conduct, is universally considered as a most dreadful calamity. The possibility of such a fate, like some hidden spectre, acts as a restraining influence, which holds in check the most lawless, stubborn, or self-opinionated. It soon makes them zealous, peace-loving and obedient. Having once tasted the sweets of the co-operative system, they have a wholesome dread of being obliged to return to the cruel bitterness of the old competitive system! "Among the most potent charms which have proved so attractive to Solaris workers, is the condition of health, comfort and beauty, which surrounds the laborer in every department of the farm. "In store, work-shop, seed-room, dairy, mill, factory or packing-house, the rooms are large, the light is abundant, ventilation perfect, ceilings high; while both walls and ceilings are so beautifully and artistically decorated, that love for the beautiful in the esthetic nature, swells and grows to be a dominant passion. This passion soon takes hold of both heart and brain, becoming the foundation of a character-building-work of high order. Thus happily environed, our people feast their eyes and merrily sing away the hours, which are devoted to tasks they have learned to love. The tendency of these things, is ever toward the good, the right, the pure and true! Under such conditions, the demon of discontent, evil thinking and evil doing, cannot thrive! His power wanes, he flies to the more congenial surroundings which mark the dingy, ill smelling, overcrowded work-shops of the competitive system! "No wonder, when away from Solaris, our people are so anxious to return! They come back convinced, that they have fortunately escaped from the thralldom of a debasing, cruel system. A system which--utterly ignoring the sacredness of human life--in a frenzy of selfish greed, has, so far as the toilers of the world are concerned, turned the triumphs of modern civilization into the mockery of a bitter curse! As affecting themselves, our people perceive that, under the protecting mantle of financial conditions which prevail here at Solaris, they, as members of the company, are sure to secure every benefit, profit or advantage, that may flow from the use of the best and most expensive kinds of labor-saving machinery. Once aware of all the facts, thereafter, they cannot under any circumstances, be induced to return to employment under the old system. "The advantage in favor of co-operative work is so great, that among our women co-operators, there is a general desire to have it utilized to the utmost; especially in all kinds of housework. The introduction of such a wholesale system of house-cleaning, soon demands a better class of sweepers, to take the place of the housewife's broom and dust pan. "Large suction sweepers, worked by a powerful inhaling bellows, which swiftly and silently suck up, from carpet, furniture, and curtains, all particles of accumulated dust, are the perfected instruments chosen; unlike the ordinary dust-raising machines, which must be followed by an army of dusting cloths, these suction machines do perfect work, leaving the air of the renovated room pure, wholesome and fairly free from floating dust, with its accompanying cloud of disease-laden germs. Many similar accomplishments in other departments of housework, soon convince all opponents, that personal prejudice must not be allowed to interfere with the working of the system." "Pardon me Fillmore! If at this point I interrupt you, with a question which I wish to preface with this remark! In the estimation of most women, well-kept hands, are considered as a rule, to indicate the measure of the owners refinement. According to my judgment, there is nothing which so quickly destroys the contour and suppleness of the hands, and that much prized, white, velvety smoothness of skin, as dishwashing. As a matter of fact, the woman's self-respect is involved in the loss. For this reason, I believe women dislike that disagreeable part of housework more than any other. Premising that my theory is true, how can you manage this matter at Solaris, in order to avoid trouble?" "I accept your question as a welcome interruption! It gives me a chance to tell you more about our kitchen work, which I feel sure will interest you greatly! "For reasons which I shall state presently, our women workers do not desire to avoid frequent six-hour details as dishwashers at the restaurant. By our new methods, the task is easily and quickly accomplished. "The washers are not required to put their hands into hot or cold water during the process. Traveling carriers on either side of the dining rooms, run to and from the kitchen. In one, the food comes to the tables, in response to phone orders from the waiter. In the other, the dishes are returned to the kitchen. There, the washers scrape the bones and rejected food into the waiting barrels. These barrels when filled, go to the feeding yards of the pigs and poultry. "The dishes, after being scraped, are then placed in the washing machine. This machine, run by electric power, is a wide, deep, round-bottomed trough, built in a circle twenty feet in diameter. Along the bottom of this trough, is a moving track, which travels slowly around the circle with its train of metal carriers. On these carriers are placed the dishes as they come from the hands of the scrapers. When the carrier thus laden commences its circular journey, the dishes--placed well apart--are subjected to dashing jets of warm, soapy water, and then to more torrential jets of hot, and very hot pure water. "Comfortably seated, at convenient points around the machine, the washers control the force and quantity of the water jets, and whenever necessary, assist the cleansing process with their long-handled swabs. When this process is finished, the dishes arrive at the drying boards, so hot that by the time the wipers with their thick towels have placed them in the racks where they belong, all are perfectly clean and dry. "Our pots, sauce pans, stew pans and kettles, are all designed for electric cooking, and are made in shapes best adapted for easy cleaning. For these, an additional washing-sink is provided. Over this sink, connected with the electric wires, we have rigged three hanging spindles, of as many different sizes. These spindles can be raised or lowered by the operator, while they are in motion. Each spindle is armed on every side with loose wings of alternating wire scrapers and dish-cloths. The vessel to be cleansed is placed on the movable carrier at the bottom of the sink. Passing under a spindle of the proper size, the spindle is lowered, and at once begins to revolve with a strong, rotary pressure. This searching, chafing pressure, in connection with the hot-water jets, soon cleans and polishes the most obstinate among the kettles. "The kitchen and dish pantry combined, is a very large, well-lighted, well-ventilated room. This room is constantly kept sweet and comfortable by electric fans. The work is light, and never monotonous. Only two, of the six hours devoted to kitchen duty, are spent in the active work of dish washing. During the remaining hours, the washers take lessons in cookery, from the chief and the two assistants. These three important officials, are chosen from the ranks of competent volunteers. They are responsible for the kitchen work. They plan all the meals, and direct the work of the under cooks. The system soon comes to work like a charm! I can truthfully say, that it gives general satisfaction. "The success attending this extension of co-operative methods, to embrace the entire list of worry-producing details which belong to general house work, is hailed with delight by our matrons and maidens. They keenly appreciate the great blessing of this movement, which has rescued them from the harassing, health-destroying drudgery, of a house wife on a small farm. They well know the sad story, which comes from thousands of such farms, where isolated lives, overburden of cares and long hours of irritating, never-ending toil, have produced such fearful, mental depression, that as a result, we find six hundred farmers' wives, among the inmates of asylums for the insane, in each one of the States of Michigan and Kansas. The proportion for other agricultural States, is doubtless much the same. What a horrible array of statistics, this is to contemplate! What an indictment against existing agricultural conditions! What a sad fate, to overtake the mothers of so many sons and daughters of the farms of this Republic! Who can measure the intensity of the agony and suffering, these children may thus inherit! What possible argument, can speak more eloquently, or call more loudly, for the immediate adoption of co-operative farming by our agricultural people? "In the matter of frequent bathing to maintain personal cleanliness; the popularity, with both old and young, of our fine hot and cold, plunge, swimming and shower baths, free to all, which are kept open in connection with the laundry; proves conclusively, that the habit of cleanliness, like all other habits, is the result of environment; or in other words, of opportunity and the strong impulse of social example. "In treating your question as though it contained several sub-divisions, I may perhaps have made my answer too lengthy. Do you find it so?" "Oh no! On the contrary it is clear, brief, interesting and to the point! You have told me just what I most desired to know! I perceive that the practical working of a co-operative colony, answers a great many puzzling questions, which hitherto, we have passed by as hopeless problems. From the commencement of this work, I have been concerned, lest the discipline necessary to maintain a proper working harmony in such a large colony, should prove a fruitful source of discontent. I am rejoiced to find that my fears were groundless! "This brings me to my second question. Do you find homesickness among the colonists, a frequent cause of discontent?" "On the contrary, the number of such cases has been surprisingly small. Owing, doubtless, to the marked change from isolated conditions of small farm life, to the superior advantages for education, amusement, social enjoyment, and the all-pervading enthusiasm of congenial, co-operative work; which here at Solaris, leaves no time for such fits of brooding over the past, as usually result in that severe mental depression, which we call homesickness. Perhaps one individual in fifty, is so constituted that homesickness becomes a serious illness. In such cases, the executive committee is authorized to grant the necessary leave of absence. Always providing of course, that the applicant is willing to comply with a rule of the organization, which assigns the pay of the absentee to the general service fund, for the number of days such absence may continue. A strict observance of this rule, leaves no cause for complaint by those who remain. "In considering the question from another standpoint, we find the general tone and disposition of our people, has been raised to a much higher, happier pitch, by the evolution of the musical spirit, introduced and inspired by the work of the dancing and musical clubs. Stimulated by the prizes offered by the general manager, a great number of beautiful farm songs have been completed, and adapted to a large variety of farm work. These songs have been taken up by a goodly number of glee clubs, organized for the purpose from among those members of the musical club, who had the good fortune to possess a fine quality of voice. "Careful training and steady practice, soon enabled these lesser vocal organizations, to render the entire list of songs, with a mellow smoothness, an inspiring swing of rythm, and a well rounded tone of perfection, which was really quite surprising. These vocalists, scattered through the fifties and hundreds of farm workers in the hay, harvest, corn and cotton fields; the nursery, gardens, orchards and vineyards; the dairy, mills, factories and packing-houses; the brick works, mines and quarries; the workshops of the store, and the assembly meetings of the co-operators; became competent teachers, who, by their leadership and example, soon made it possible for every member of the colony, to master both words and music of all the songs. This course of vocal training proved so fascinating, that our people literally absorbed it! The children, even more quickly than the adults! "Thoroughly tested in the practical work of every department of the farm; the beneficial effect has proved a marvel, which has far exceeded the expectations of our musical enthusiasts. Many fine voices have been discovered, developed and trained. The benign influence of this musical wave, has shown a constant tendency to extend its sway in all directions. This blending of voices, has added a hitherto unknown zest to the work; and a stronger tie to every association connected with it. Best of all, as directly affecting the question under discussion! It has proved a most potent factor in driving away the spirit of ill-humor, inharmony, and discontent; also in breaking the charm of old associations, home ties, and retrospective, social memories, so conducive to attacks of homesickness. The exhilarating, helpful rythm, of these inspiring songs, has given an added force to the working power of the farm. It has largely reduced the fatigue, and increased the amount of work that can be performed in a given time. Further, we find the general mental, physical and spiritual health of our people, correspondingly improved. "A curious fact, is disclosed by these vocal experiments. It is this, that the vibration of musical tones, in the blending voices of a mixed multitude, produces a moral, mental and spiritual harmony, such as cannot be achieved in any other way. In point of fact, we get a composite expression of the highest soul element of the mass--a new phase of the exceeding fruitfulness of co-operative effort! It may be stated in conclusion, that there comes to the minds of our people, an added power, flowing from the general hypnotic effect, of harmonious co-operation. This power brings with it a right conception of human life, in which a certain amount of necessary, productive labor, becomes the keynote, which completes a perfect anthem, and more symmetrically rounds out the full measure, melody and grandeur, of an individual existence. What think you of these results?" "They are very wonderful indeed! They reflect much credit on the excellent work inspired by the dancing and musical clubs; also on the genius and culture of the vocalists, and the marvelous efficiency of a well-directed co-operative effort. This triumph in a new field, which so increases the possibilities of soul expression, suggests the use of music as a prime factor in all future systems for ethical culture. "Now Fillmore, please tell me. How has the example of Solaris farm, affected the industrial, social, and political situation in this town and county?" "The effect has been favorable in every way! The attractiveness of our social organization! the financial success which has crowned our farming and manufacturing operations; the opportunities offered for young men to learn so much of the industrial arts; the short hours of light labor; the long hours of leisure for rest, study and amusement; the educational, health-giving character, of the amusements; the fascination, of the club-system of education for adults; the irresistible charm, of the dancing and vocal entertainments; the generous wages paid to the co-operators, which affords for them such an abundant supply of food, clothing and books; the fine quality and perfect reliability of the large assortment of goods in the farm-store; the advantages of a rational scheme of insurance, which stands as an absolute safe-guard against accidents, sickness and old-age; the improved conditions for women, which largely relieves them from the irritating, nerve-destroying worry, of a constant burden of household cares; the fostering care for children, which insures for them ideal opportunities for birth, unfoldment and education; the manifest advantage of farming on a scale large enough to allow the use of the latest and best labor-saving machinery; the astonishing array of huge, modern barns, storing, curing and packing houses; the wonderful cheapness and utility of the electric power; the long list of farm implements, many of them especially invented, which followed the introduction of this magic-working power; the wide publicity given to these things through the columns of the Solaris Sentinel, our weekly farm paper, sent free to friends of the colonists, and to all who ask for it; considered altogether as a comprehensive whole, is a startling combination, which has arrested the attention, aroused the interest and provoked the astonishment of surrounding communities, far and near. As a consequence, our office has been overwhelmed with a flood of correspondence from interested enquirers, followed by an ever-increasing stream of visitors to Solaris, to see for themselves, the verity of this twentieth century model of farm innovation. In order to answer the great bulk of queries, emanating from these two sources, a series of articles describing the object and purpose, and explaining the details of the enterprise, has been prepared for the columns of the Sentinel. With an extra large edition of this newspaper, we are prepared to supply as many interested people as may apply. "The applications to join the company, made by progressive young farmers in this and adjacent counties, have become so frequent and persistent, that finally we have consented to prepare the leaders for another co-operative colony, which we propose to locate on a certain one, of the nine remaining Fenwick-farm-sites, which happens to be in this county, only ten miles distant from Solaris. This preparatory class, is limited to fifty people; one-half females, married couples ranging from eighteen to twenty-five years of age, preferred. The course for this class, contemplates one year of practical work, embracing all departments of the farm. "The membership of this class, was filled six months ago. Six months hence, the graduates will be prepared to organize the new colony. I am greatly interested in the scheme, and have promised to aid in every possible way. "To this body of pupils, is referred all applications from prospective co-operators. Judging from the mass of applications already accumulated, when the time of organization for the new colony arrives, the list of eligible applicants will probably contain a thousand names. The outlook for the new farm company, seems unusually bright! "Both board and tuition for these pupils, are donated by Solaris Farm. At the end of the year, $100 in Solaris scrip, will be paid to each one, as some sort of compensation for the year's work. This arrangement is accepted by the pupils, as fair and perfectly satisfactory. "Referring to the relations existing between the Solaris Farm Company, and the township and county officials. It is noteworthy, that no serious friction has arisen. One year ago, a large proportion of town officers, including the assessor, town clerk, magistrate and chairman of the Board of Supervisors, were chosen from Solaris. Owing to the small, much-scattered, population of this county, the present county sheriff, auditor and treasurer, are also Solaris co-operators. The manifest integrity of this institution, seems to be accepted by the voters of the county, as a guarantee of the honesty and ability of its members. The significance of this approval, so early in the history of the movement, augurs well for the future dominancy of our social and industrial system, as a political factor in both town and county. "The Solaris Company has erected a roomy, substantial building, for the use of the town officials, for which a moderate rent is paid from the town-treasury. The county officers have secured one hundred acres of land two miles from Solaris, just outside the farm limits. On this, they propose to erect a suitable brick building for the county offices. The farm company, now has the contract to furnish the brick and erect the building. Pending its completion, the county officials occupy rented quarters in Solaris, which is by far the largest business center in the county. From this statement of the situation, you will observe that our co-operative vote already holds a balance of power, which controls the policy of both town and county. With the advent of Colony number 2, the interests of co-operation in this county, are secure for all time. Meanwhile, we are encouraged to hope that before the close of the twentieth century, what co-operation has already achieved at Solaris, may be accomplished in every town, county and state in the Republic! "You ask, what disposition is made of the salaries of such co-operators as are elected to fill town and county offices? "They are paid in scrip. The salaries or fees which they receive from town or county, are turned into the company treasury. As these co-operators, in holding such offices, are in a position to materially aid the co-operative movement. They are justly excused from farm-work, whenever their official duties require attention." "Splendid! my dear Fillmore! Your report is very interesting, and even more encouraging! It seems the beginning of a fulfillment of my father's hopes, dreams and prophecies! I am anxious for the time to come, when he can tell you how much he is pleased with your work!" CHAPTER XXXIII. SOLARIS SCRIP. "Returning again, Fillmore, to the financial operations of the farm; with such a volume of business to transact, how do you manage to get along without having recourse to some local bank?" "To a large extent, we do our own banking business. Our treasurer, has his office in the cash room of the store. In this room we have a large vault, containing a fire-proof safe of the latest type. The books, records and funds of the company, are all kept in this safe. For our commercial business, we have selected one of the principal banks of St. Louis as our bank of deposit. A large percentage of purchases for the store and farm are made in that city, which is also a market for the bulk of our farm produce. "The farm company has an office near the bank, where some member of the executive committee, or other representative of the company, may be found every business day of the year. It is the duty of this agent to attend to purchases, consignments and sales; also to have charge of all business transacted through the bank of deposit. Taking care, to keep the amount of available funds up to the ten thousand dollar mark. To do this, it sometimes becomes necessary for the company to issue drafts on the bank of deposit for thirty, sixty and ninety days. These drafts are accepted by dealers, for purchases made in Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia or New York, the same as cash. "As borrowers, our only dealings have been with you. In these dealings, at times when much in need of more capital, we have not been required to pay interest. Now, having returned our borrowed capital, and being free from debt, we have grown more independent and self-sustaining; therefore more averse to the idea of paying interest to any one. We are convinced by past experience, that all necessity for incurring interest-bearing obligations can be avoided. The use of Solaris Scrip in all intercolonial transactions, has proved a most potent factor in helping us to arrive at such a fortunate conclusion. By its use, ninety per cent of our business can be transacted on a cash basis, without using one cent of actual cash. In addition, we can use it as a basis on which to borrow. To illustrate! Suppose we need ten thousand dollars to replenish the stock of goods in the store, pending the sale of products on hand. We borrow that amount from the insurance fund, the sum being part of the accumulated profits on sales at the store and restaurant. We then replace this sum by scrip of the same face value. This scrip, to the pensioner or beneficiaries, is the same as cash. When they have drawn and spent it, the debt is cancelled. No interest is paid. The store and restaurant become the clearing house, through which these drafts against the resources of the farm are liquidated. In the same way, temporary loans can be made from other funds, whenever it is for the benefit of the united interests of the co-operators to do so. "How is it possible, you ask, to keep perfect control of such a large issue of scrip, with a certainty that all in use is genuine? "That is a matter which is easily regulated by our simple system of issue. In the first place, we print the scrip here at Solaris, from plates which, when not in use, are kept in the safe, in the custody of the treasurer. The five denominations issued, are as follows: five, two, and one dollar bills; which, together with the fifty and twenty-five-cent, fractional-currency scrip, make up the list. Every denomination has a numbered series, of ten thousand. Each series, with the stubs attached to the bills, is bound in book form. When issued, each stub remaining in the book, will show the date of issue, serial number, and amount of the issued bill. When cancelled, the bills are returned to the book, and again attached to the stub to which they belong. At any time, an examination of the books of issued and unissued scrip in the hands of the treasurer, will give the amount outstanding. The co-operators are requested to keep a record of the serial numbers of the scrip they hold or handle, and to report the loss or destruction of such as may happen. A history of the loss is attached to the stub, and the amount of the bill carried to the profit and loss account of the company. "If the genuineness of any piece of scrip should be questioned, a comparison with the stub should show the same date, number, amount and serrated edges, made by the peculiar pattern of the perforator belonging to that series. If so, the bill must be genuine. As time passes, we are more than ever convinced of the wonderful advantage gained by the use of this scrip. Our people find it much lighter and more desirable to carry and use, than the same amount of gold or silver coin; therefore they frequently request to be allowed to exchange coin for scrip. In summing up my replies to your questions: it seems probable, from the constantly increasing volume of business, that the company will soon be obliged to take a charter that will authorize it to do a complete banking business." CHAPTER XXXIV. THE INSURANCE OFFERED BY CO-OPERATIVE FARMING. "I notice, Fillmore, that you mention the borrowing of ten thousand dollars from the insurance fund; the same being a part of the accumulated profits on the business of the store and restaurant. Tell me; how is it possible for so large a sum to be saved in such a short time?" "A complete answer to your question, will bring up the whole subject of insurance; which presents some interesting problems. I will first try to give you the basis for such an amount of savings. The net per-diem pay of $2.50 for each adult member of the company, will give an annual income of a little more than $900. If we include an added pro rata for the children, each one will spend annually at least $450 with the store for goods; and $350 with the restaurant for food. Our statistics show much larger sums; but these will do for an estimate. Taking these figures for a basis, we find that the annual sales made to our own people by the store and restaurant combined, reach the startling sum of $400,000. A net profit of five per cent on this amount, gives $20,000 each year to the insurance fund. At this rate, the profits for thirty months, reach the goodly sum of $50,000. To which we may add $2,500 more, as profits on sales to the amount of $50,000, made during that period by the store and restaurant, to people from surrounding communities. Altogether, we have a grand up-to-date total for the insurance fund of $52,500. These profits will continue to increase with larger sales to outside people; also with the increased wages or incomes of the co-operators, as the products and profits of the farm continue to grow. "Such favorable statistics are very encouraging. They demonstrate that only a five per cent profit will be needed, to meet all future demands against the insurance fund, even when the colony has its maximum number of children and superannuated co-operators. The remaining profits, which in some departments of the store are large, may wisely be devoted to educational and missionary work. "From another point of view, this eloquent array of figures, has an additional value. They show conclusively, that the restaurant alone furnishes a home market annually for $175,000 worth of farm produce: beef, mutton, pork, lard, honey, syrup, milk, butter, cheese, eggs, poultry, vegetables, fruits and grains. "If we consider the sales made by the store, we find after deducting the cost of raw material, that at least fifty per cent of the goods purchased by our people, are really the products of the skilled labor of the farm: such as crockery, furniture, willow ware, picture frames, brushes, clothing, underwear, bed furnishings, and goods from the tailoring, dress-making and millinery departments. From this showing it will appear, that the store becomes a home market each year, for farm products to the amount of $112,500. To this, let us add the sums of sales through the restaurant, and those made through the markets of the outside world. Altogether, we have a grand total of $787,500 for the market value of farm products last year. "Does this exhibit appeal to you as a reasonable basis for the accumulated savings named in your questions?" "I am sure the exhibit has astonished me greatly! Your figures and statements are both fascinating and convincing. They are all, most excellent arguments in favor of co-operative methods. I now perceive that even on the basis of present conditions, a five per cent profit turned into the insurance fund, at the end of the first ten years, will amount to the extraordinary sum of $200,000. With this magnificent fund, you can afford to extend the scope of your original plan! How will you dispose of it? At what age do you propose to retire the active workers?" "Yes, our original plans have been changed, and very much enlarged. The insurance fund has grown so rapidly, that it was deemed wise to expend a portion of it, in building a hospital for the accommodation of our farm people, and perhaps a few outside patients. Last year, a two-story and basement brick building, was erected just in the heart of our finest shrubbery dotted lawn, some distance from the public square. It is large enough for about one hundred patients. Viewed from any point, it presents a charming appearance. It is conceded by all to be the handsomest structure on the farm. Inside, with its polished floors, magnificent windows, large rooms, high, beautifully frescoed walls and ceilings, dainty couches, cozy chairs, and wide, breezy halls, with picture-laden walls; every condition is present to satisfy the highest ideal of sick-room comfort. Brighter, sunnier, more health-inspiring rooms never soothed, charmed or healed a nerve shattered patient! "Under the supervision of the sanitary committee, the hospital at present, is in charge of a young surgeon employed by the company. His services are utilized in teaching and preparing a class of trained nurses. He also teaches the members of the chemistry and physiology clubs, in their new study rooms at the hospital. At a later period this surgeon will be superseded by two of our own people. A young woman and a young man, both with some previous knowledge of pharmacy, who have been in charge of the drug department at the store; have recently developed a strong desire to take a thorough course of medicine and surgery at some leading school. Upon the recommendation of the general manager, approved by a unanimous vote of the co-operators, the expense of this schooling is to be taken from the insurance fund, with the understanding however, that after graduating, they are to relieve the company of the expense of a hired surgeon, by taking permanent charge of the hospital, or as our people have christened it, the 'Temple of health.' "Relative to the question of retiring members of the company; much thought and discussion on the part of our officers and co-operators, has been required, to properly and wisely fix the age at which such retirement shall take place. "Many important questions have been considered. Our present colony, as you know, is composed of young people, as a rule not yet thirty years of age. Individually they possess strong, disease-resisting, vital organizations, which have been reinforced by harmonious, mental and physical development. This immunity from disease to such a large extent, has been still further strengthened and fortified, by the beneficial effects of our organized sanitary, social and industrial methods. These methods have lifted the weary burden of toil from our people, and substituted therefor, a light exhilarating labor, simply healthful exercise. Under such favorable conditions, our workers ought to reach the age of fifty, with health and vigor still unimpaired. For the reasons named, very few of our co-operators, outside the ranks of the mother's club, are at present entitled on account of either illness or accident, to draw their wages from the insurance fund. Fortunately, so far, not one has become permanently disabled! All things considered, it was not unexpected, when a final vote on the question was taken, that a majority was found to be in favor of fixing the age of retirement at fifty years. "This decision will give the farm company, twenty years in which to prepare for the event. In the light of our past experience, no one doubts our ability to accumulate an adequate fund, with which to meet the additional drain upon it. This drain will prove a heavy one, as the retired pay of the co-operators, who have reached the age of fifty, has been fixed at two-thirds of their present pay, that is, fifty dollars per month or $600 per annum. Premising that the maximum number on the retired list at any one time will not exceed fifty; the total annual retired pay will then amount to $30,000. "The following plan has been devised to meet this additional expenditure. It has been demonstrated conclusively, that five years hence, the income of the farm, will warrant the increase of the wages of each member of the company, to $1,500 per year. At least $1,200 of this amount, will be spent at the store or restaurant. We shall then have a new basis for calculating the five per cent profit for the insurance fund; that is, $600,000 annually, which will give $30,000 each year for the fund. Allowing that savings at the present rate, $20,000 per annum, for seven and one-half years, aggregating $150,000; will prove ample for incidental needs, until the time for the retirement of the first co-operator! We calculate that fifteen years of savings on the new basis, will give us twenty years hence, a fund of $450,000 to commence with. "If practical experience should prove that larger savings are necessary; an additional two and one-half per cent profit, may be set aside for this fund, without seriously curtailing the sums devoted to educational and missionary purposes. This will surely cover all possible contingencies. More especially, as seven and one-half per cent of all retired pay, will come back to the fund as profits on purchases--active workers having taken the place of the retired members. Considering the generous annuity provided by this insurance, together with the fact that the wants of the pensioners will become fewer as age increases; doubtless, at the end of each year, many of them will turn back into the fund, considerable sums of unused pay. "As another important factor, connected with the question of this kind of insurance, it should be well understood, that after reaching the age of retirement, our members do not cease to be valuable productive workers, either for the financial gain of the colony, or for the general welfare of the movement, which the colony represents. On the contrary, in many cases, their services are liable to become more valuable than ever before. Between the ages of fifty and sixty, they remain subject to assignments to serve on committees, to act as traveling agents for the company, to represent the company as lecturers and organizers, for the spread of the movement; to act as aids to the teachers in the schools and the numerous clubs. They are also eligible to election as town, county, state or United States officials. In committee work, connected with the store and the various factories, their riper judgment, based on many years of experience, would prove especially valuable: often by timely advice, they would be able to save for the company in one transaction, an amount in money more than equal to their entire wages for the year. "In another way their services would prove equally advantageous. With such an increase of leisure, there would come to these retired co-operators, a desire, and the opportunity, to enter more actively into the practical work of the scientific clubs. If inclined, they could take up all kinds of scientific research; making themselves especially useful in the practical, productive and profitable work of the educational, microscopical, chemical and photographic clubs. Those who had a talent for invention, could then devote as much time, energy and thought to it, as they chose. To aid them, they would have the advantage of an acquired skill in the use of tools, and of all kinds of complicated machinery, which would be a part of the outfit belonging to the thoroughly equipped machine shop at their disposal. In the laboratory, they could find the books, maps, and drawings, necessary to bring them up to date in any line of invention which they might choose to enter. "Taking these important factors into consideration, we discover that our co-operative inventor, would be armed to conquer his subject by a magnificent equipment, such as an ordinary inventor could not hope to command. "So ably reinforced by the advantages enumerated, our corps of inventors, of both sexes, would be inspired by a labor of love. Unbiased by any selfish motives, they would be working for the farm and for humanity. With no cause to distrust their fellows, they could openly discuss their discoveries, without fear of having them stolen; consequently, they could have the willing assistance of all the inventive minds in the colony, in developing and perfecting their original inventions. This would be an experience utterly unheard of, in the annals of an industry based on the competitive system. It would be the beginning of co-operative invention as an art. It would mark another great step in harmonious, practical and profitable co-operative thinking, that would lead to discoveries of vast importance to the world; discoveries that could not be made in any other way. It is difficult for even the most enthusiastic optimist to imagine, what a revolution in the inventive world, will follow the introduction of such superior co-operative methods; or what wonders will be wrought by them, before the close of the first half of the twentieth century! "Let us consider what they might do for our superannuated farmers. Quickened by such an added potency of perfect, co-operative, mental, conditions, our inventors would naturally aspire to still higher achievements. Each year they would be able to produce many valuable inventions, which could not be used by the farm, but which could be sold by the company after being patented, for good round sums in cash! In this way it becomes evident, that our old members might prove the most prolific cash producers on the farm. It is even possible, and quite probable, that the sale of one invention, might bring to the company, a sum of money, more than equal to the combined pensions of the retired co-operators for one year. From this particular source, would flow an additional fund for educational work in pushing the movement before the public. "Viewed in this light, to be retired on two-thirds pay at the age of fifty, is simply a matter of justice! When justice is done, the mission of charity is finished! "In considering the growing interest in the insurance question among people of the outside world, we find great numbers of laboring people, and of small farmers everywhere, who are beginning to understand that it is a question of vital importance, an open gateway through which they may gain access to the broad fields of abundance. Every day, both by observation and experience, they are taught that without the aid of some special insurance, nine out of ten who start in business fail. Also, that nine farmers out of ten, who start with a meagre capital, after twenty years of constant toil, find themselves the slaves of some money lender who holds a mortgage on the farm. These mortgages are largely the result of a hopeful struggle on the farmer's part, in a last vain effort to compete with the expensive methods of syndicate and bonanza farms. "No wonder the average worker is anxious to discover some method of insurance, that will safe-guard him against the disasters which have overwhelmed so many of his predecessors! No wonder these workers come to believe it possible, that out of a given number of say one thousand men, who start in life without capital, except such as they possess in ordinary health and strength; at least fifty per cent are liable to die in the poor-house, or in some way become helpless dependents on charity! Against such an alarming proposition, the average optimist or plutocrat, cries out, impossible! No, No! In this Republic, such things could never happen! Besides, how preposterous! Don't you know, that the general prosperity of the country was never greater than now! Why the wealth of the nation is growing at a marvelous rate! Never before, were fortunes made so easily! The way is open for every industrious man; no matter how poor he may be at the start. If people come to want in the midst of such golden opportunities, they have only themselves to blame. "By way of an answer to these optimistic assertions, let us apply the figures collected by Prof. A. G. Warner, published in his 'American Charities.' In this book he has tabulated the results of fifteen investigations, both in this country and abroad, into the actual causes of poverty. These investigations embrace over one hundred thousand individual cases, found in the cities of Baltimore, New York, Boston, Cincinnati, London, England, and seventy-six cities in Germany. In the causes of poverty stated, eleven per cent are due to intemperance, ten and three-tenths per cent to other kinds of misconduct; while seventy-four and four-tenths per cent are due to misfortune, such as poorly-paid work, lack of work, sickness, etc. Here, we have actual proof that seventy-five thousand in the ranks of this vast army of poverty-stricken people, were reduced to such straits, by causes which they could not control. How dreadful the significance of these terrible figures! What a blot they become, on the fair page of progress achieved by the nineteenth century! What a warning to the people of the twentieth! What an indictment against existing, social, and industrial conditions! What argument could be more convincing, or demand more imperatively, the immediate adoption of co-operative methods, which offer absolute insurance against the recurrence of such calamities? "As relating to the insurance question, and by the way of a contrast between competitive and co-operative methods, let us consider the following statement. "We learn from statistics, that for the family of a skilled workman of the better class--a family of five persons--the average annual cost of living is $420. This includes food, shelter, raiment, fuel, laundry, light, water, medical attendance, medicine, education and recreation. "Under the competitive system, to earn this sum required, on the part of the adults and such of the children as were able to work, the continuous toil of three hundred days, twelve hours long--counting the possible workers of the family as three, and the labor day as twelve hours long--we have in the aggregate, say eleven thousand weary hours of this nerve depressing labor. A labor often performed in the midst of the most repulsive and unsanitary conditions; to which the toilers were constantly goaded by the cruel spur of necessity. This is a picture of the living expenses and daily working life of a family of the superior class, far above the average among the workers under the competitive system. "To illustrate what the co-operative system can do, let us transfer the account of this family, to a co-operative agricultural colony like this. On the basis of three hundred days of labor annually, we should have daily for the two adults--the children being in school--six hours of productive labor and two hours of educative labor, an aggregate of four thousand, eight hundred hours, of work for the year. This work would be separated by such generous periods of rest and recreation, and performed amidst such pleasant surroundings, that the worker could truthfully count them as so many hours spent in necessary healthful exercise. "As a result of this labor, we could place the annual income of the family at $1,800. All available, for providing the very best of food, shelter, clothing, heat, light, laundry, hospital service, medical attendance, medicine, education and amusement. Also superior social surroundings, with increased facilities for being well born; with educative advantages, embracing a higher order of intellectual amusements, art-culture, musical training, and industrial skill. "In addition, the family would enjoy a savings account of generous proportions, represented by the constantly increasing value of the farm, its stock, crops, buildings, store and goods, material, machinery, industrial plants, orchards, vineyards and forests. "Still better! They would have savings in the sinking fund, providing land, and homes for their children and grand-children in a long line of future generations. "Best of all! This family would have savings in the insurance fund, providing for an old age of ease and comfort, free from care, sweetened and brightened by leisure, travel and the refinements of study, art and music! "In striking a balance between these two accounts, we discover a difference in favor of the co-operative system, with its magical insurance, which is wider, deeper and more startling than the difference between the illustrations of Dante's Inferno, and the descriptions of Milton's paradise! "A careful study of this insurance question, has taught our people many valuable lessons. They have learned to consider from a new standpoint, the object and purpose of life, and the amount of work necessary to support that life. "They have learned that poverty is a needless crime against progress, which can and must be abolished! "They have learned, that in these days of general prosperity, marked by a wealth of labor-saving machinery, never before dreamed possible, co-operation has demonstrated, that an average of but six hours each day, devoted to farm work, will abundantly supply the means which will yield them, the highest advantages of birth, education, amusement, and everything necessary to a healthful enjoyment of life. "They have learned that the true purpose of work, is not to make and hoard money; but to secure these advantages for themselves and their children. "They have learned that money is not a necessity; that it is only the means to an end. They have learned that confidence in each other, among members of a co-operative colony, working unselfishly together, largely takes the place of money. "They have learned that practical education equips them with a knowledge, of how to deal justly with each other, in all the social relations of life. "They have learned that the pathway which leads to success, in winning the largest measure of all these advantages, is reached by adopting unselfish methods, which will insure the welfare of all. They have learned that this condition may be attained by building up co-operative systems that furnish remunerative self employment, and at the same time enables them to enjoy free access to the natural sources of life. "They have learned that this free access cannot be secured, without first obtaining permanent control of the necessary tracts of land, not less than ten acres per capita. They have learned that these tracts should contain at least five thousand acres, in order to properly support an industrial co-operative colony of one thousand people. "They have learned that the social, ethical and intellectual advantages offered to the individual, by this co-operative colony life, are even greater than those relating to the question of finance. "They have learned, that when selfish distrust of each other is once banished from the minds of the workers by the force of repeated examples of co-operative success; then, it will be practical and easy to organize the farms and farm laborers of this Republic, with its army of the poor and the unemployed of every class, into systems of co-operative farm villages, or similar industrial associations. "In this knowledge our people rejoice! They are filled with an unselfish desire to spread the good news broadcast! Can you, my dear Fern! imagine for them, a purpose in life more noble or more worthy?" "No, my dear Fillmore! I cannot! So eloquently have you stated the case, that the outlook for the future is glorious! How graphically you have pictured the growing importance of this question of insurance! I am amazed, and more deeply interested than ever! I never before dreamed it possible, that the co-operative farm could offer so much defense against the calamities of life, which grow out of the pinching pressure of poverty! "The scheme for providing for the members of the Mother's Club, and for retiring co-operators at the age of fifty, meets my enthusiastic approval! I am sure it will commend itself to the workers and thinkers of the world! To me, it seems admirable, from every point of view!" CHAPTER XXXV. THE MOTHER'S CLUB. "Mark it well, Fillmore! I have now reached a very important question. What have you to tell me about stirpiculture, as a part of the co-operative farm movement?" "As a basis for the preliminary work, we have been following carefully, the suggestions of your father, Fennimore Fenwick. You will remember, my dear Fern, that they were to the effect, that the children of the farm, should be the crowning glory of all its products; that it should be the province of the corporation to provide for the children of the co-operators, every advantage of favorable pre-natal conditions, birth, unfoldment and education, that money could procure for the wealthy. Therefore, that ideal environments for mothers and motherhood, must be created and maintained. "In order to carry out these epoch-making ideas, such of our matrons as are willing to assume the conditions, responsibilities, and cares of motherhood, are relieved from all farm work, at any time they may chose. However, much of the work is so enjoyable, and affords so much pleasant exercise, that many of them become volunteers. Meanwhile, they are paid regular wages from our insurance fund. With this abundant leisure and freedom from care, they are prepared to become zealous workers in the Mother's Club. "Our Mother's Club at Solaris, was organized by Gertrude Gerrish, as the fulfillment of a long cherished dream. She has reason to be proud of her work! Like that other Gertrude, made so famous by Pestalozzi's charming story, Gertrude Gerrish is a born teacher, an ideal mother, one of nature's noble women. Much of the success attained by the club, is due to her wonderful power as a leader. Her enthusiasm is infectious. It has carried all obstacles before it. To this self appointed task, she has given her best energies, a rich harvest of ripe experience, with its fruitage of earnest thought, radiant and glowing with the genial influence of her sunny temperament, and withal, rendered more potent, by an overflowing love from the deep fountain of her great mother heart. Is it a matter of wonder, that she is such a general favorite with club members! Her word they accept as law. Her suggestions as commands. "To Gertrude Gerrish, motherhood was a holy and sacred office, which demanded from its devotees, a season of careful preparation, and a thorough knowledge of the physiological and psychological laws, which govern that life-evolving function, that crowning glory of womanhood. She seemed to be inspired with the idea, that progress has ordained, that unwilling, ignorant and accidental mothers, must be replaced by those who are predetermined, properly educated and fully prepared. These ideas, she has endeavored to impress most forcibly, upon the minds of all club members. She has also taught them the importance of maintaining joyous, healthful, mental conditions; consequently, of carefully avoiding all emotions of selfishness, cruelty, anger, envy, or melancholy. In this connection, for the purpose of creating in the minds of our club mothers, as many good and pleasurable emotions as possible, and of repeating these anabolic emotions so often, that they may become dominant during the entire gestative period; Gertrude Gerrish has wisely planned for them, a great deal of open air exercise, study and amusement. "The study of botany, and botanizing parties, have become very popular. These prospective mothers, have quickly learned how to amuse themselves, by combining study with pleasure. When organized into congenial outing parties, almost every fine day they may be found, seated in the luxuriously appointed motor carriages which belong to the club, ready for a lively spin away to the woods. This gives them an opportunity to enjoy the pure air and bright sunshine, the wide, undulating landscape, tinted by the exquisite coloring of every flowering plant, shrub and tree. How delightful to them, is the restful green of dewy meadows; the sweet music of birds, the charming chatter and playful antics, of the swift-footed squirrels! How grateful, the leafy coolness and bracing ozone of the forest; the dancing shadows of its deep glens, with their garnered treasures of mosses and ferns! How inspiring, the merry tinkle of the clear streamlet, swiftly flowing over its rocky bed; or the louder roar of the rushing waterfall, where drooping boughs glisten and sparkle with spray-laden foliage! All these, are nature's matchless charms, which appeal to our young mothers in their best moments, their most responsive moods; banishing all thoughts of evil, awakening in their hearts, new spiritual impulses, feelings of worshipful adoration; emotions of the highest and purest order. Than this, nothing could prove more helpful in maintaining perfect conditions of mental and spiritual serenity. "Inhaling the pure, invigorating air of the country, far from the dust and filth, the smoke and poisonous gases, the turmoil and strife, the ceaseless din, the selfishness and sin of the great city, close to the fostering bosom of mother earth, under a broad dome of blue sky, bathed in floods of golden sunlight, exulting in the exuberance of perfect health, these grateful young mothers, realize how much they owe to the co-operative farm movement, for surrounding them with such ideal conditions of life. "They realize, the great, good fortune of children, who are born and reared in the midst of such delightful environments. They perceive, with a keen sense of sorrow, that children who are born and bred away from these rural conditions, are robbed of more than one-half their natural rights. They realize, more than ever before, the filth, the misery, the squalor, the fetid air, and the unsanitary conditions, of our great cities. They shudder, when they contemplate, the bitterness of the misfortune, the cruelty of the deprivation, of the great mass of children, who must be born and bred in the midst of such depressing, unhealthy surroundings. They know intuitively, that only a puny, sickly, half-developed race of people, can come from such a sad birth. Under such circumstances, they do not wonder, that fully one-third of the human family, die in infancy. "Indoors, the handsomely furnished, beautifully decorated club rooms, which are located in the kindergarten building, offer the maximum of elegance and comfort to club members. There, in harmonious groups, they may engage in conversation, study, writing, musical exercises, and other varieties of club work. The esthetic tastes of the members are quickened, and their pleasures much enhanced, by the fine display of oil paintings, water colors, pencil sketches, etchings, and photographs, which have been hung on the walls, by admiring friends from the art and photography clubs. It has been the chosen work of the last named club, to supply the center tables in the reading rooms, with a series of large portfolios, containing a choice collection of finely finished, beautifully mounted photographs. This collection is varied, unique and valuable; and withal, exceedingly interesting. It embraces artistic copies of the world's finest statuary, pictures of eminent men, noted, historic buildings, rare landscapes and most picturesque scenery. These, supplemented by an abundant supply of choice books, furnish excellent conditions, and a most fascinating incentive, for a harmonious, satisfying, self-culture, of the highest type. Under the able leadership of Gertrude Gerrish, the interest shown, the enthusiasm awakened, and the progress achieved, is something remarkable. "Thus prepared, the members find themselves on a higher mental and spiritual plane of existence, where they can appreciate the possibilities, of what may be accomplished by true motherhood, as a regenerator of society. They can understand the significance of the great lesson taught by history, which is, that all progress for the race, depends upon the elevation, education and refinement, achieved by woman. With quickened vision, they can perceive, that with the dawn of the twentieth century, comes the beginning of a new cycle in the life of the planet; the commencement of woman's golden era! In the higher light of such a vision, they become aware, that they must strive continually, for more wisdom, that they may reach a higher consciousness of individual responsibility, as keepers and guardians of the sacred temple of human life. "In the preparatory work for a progressive parentage, club members are taught, that prospective fathers and mothers, must become familiar with the sciences, the industrial, and the higher arts, if they wish their children to inherit, whatever intellectual progress, they as parents, may achieve. The new psychology, with a better knowledge of nature's evolutionary methods, declares, that these trained intellectual attributes, may be transmitted to offspring, if the parents are willing to prepare themselves, to respond to the demands of natural law. "In the domain of more practical club work, the members are taught how to prepare the diet and clothing, which may be necessary for the proper care of healthy nursing mothers and infants. They are also taught the hygiene and physiology of motherhood; in addition, as much as possible, about the laws that govern the procreative body of woman, when it becomes the temple of evolving life. In connection therewith, they are instructed to observe closely, the initial and pre-natal conditions, which dominate this primal stage of embryo life. "As a result of this comprehensive course of training, our young mothers soon find themselves, inspired by a hypnotic wave of enthusiasm, which is sure to follow many days of pleasant association, discussion, and systematic study. Stimulated by this enthusiasm, and aided by the potency of co-operative thinking, they endeavor to discover new avenues, through which they may reach and maintain, better physical, mental and spiritual conditions, which shall bring them into a more perfect harmony, with the laws of unfoldment which govern planetary evolution. The success, which has rewarded their efforts in this direction, has far exceeded, even the ambitious hopes of Gertrude Gerrish. "For the purpose of preserving a series of valuable records, for the benefit of this and coming generations; club members are urged to put in writing, such ideas as may come to them, as the result of individual thought, or from co-operative study, discussion and observation. These papers are carefully condensed, sifted, classified, and placed in proper record form, by the editing committee of the club. This committee, is also instructed to prepare short extracts, essays and descriptive articles relating to club work, for publication in the mothers' column of the Solaris Sentinel. "This outline sketch, my dear Fern, will give you some idea of the scope of the work, in which, I know you are greatly interested. In brief, it means a practical illustration, of the use of scientific methods, for improving the race. The club hopes to give a satisfactory answer to the great question, of how to be well born. It will strive to convince the world, that the time has arrived, in which the twentieth century demands the immediate introduction of a scientific system, for the thorough breeding of children as a fine art. The art of all arts! The highest of all possible achievements! "Hitherto, the world's people, in trying to accumulate riches, or to escape the poorhouse, have had neither time nor inclination, to consider this most important of all questions. As a matter of fact, greed for gold has become so dominant, human life, so cheap, and its progress through culture, held in such low estimation; that it is not unusual, not even a matter of comment, to hear of a wealthy stockbreeder, who willingly pays from ten to twenty thousand dollars a year to the trainer of his horses; while he grudgingly pays five hundred dollars a year to the teacher of his children. This would indicate, that the demand for a change is imperative. The great wave of evolutionary progress, is fast rising to a flood tide! The selfish, commercial spirit, born of the competitive system, must soon give way for something better! The advent of a system of unselfish, co-operative farming, which proposes to unite a rational agriculture, with a scientific stirpiculture, offers opportunities for substantial progress, and a new hope for the coming race." "This is exceedingly interesting, Fillmore! What additional work, has Gertrude Gerrish planned for the club members?" "A great deal more than I have time to enumerate, just now! However, by the way of an illustration of her ingenious methods, and also, of the great variety of the topics introduced, all of which really belong to the work, as an integral part of the movement. I may mention the latest scheme introduced by Gertrude Gerrish, which proposes to increase the average length of human life, by giving to children as a birthright, well developed vital, physical, and mental organizations. This, she claims, is the only true ground work, for real progress in the right direction. The scheme has proved a popular one. It has so aroused the zeal and enthusiasm of the club members, that they write, think and talk on the subject, with an inspiration and eloquence quite surprising. As a result of the remarkable interest awakened, they have diligently read books on evolution, physiology, psychology, vital statistics, physical culture, and a great number, on the general subject of health. In this respect, the work of the club as a promoter of longevity, may well serve as an object lesson, for the hundred-year clubs, that have been organized during the past ten years, for the purpose of checking the alarming increase of suicide clubs. "Touching the question of suicide, as an enemy to longevity: In discussing the subject, many members of the club maintain, that it is an imperative duty for them to give the world a new cure for suicide. They would offer its would-be victims, such a tempting array of the meanings, purposes and opportunities, for gaining wisdom, which may crown every rightly conducted, harmoniously environed life; making it so busy, so absorbing, and so happy; that there would be no room, for the morbid hallucination of a suicidal desire. This proposition is based on the presumption, that all suicides are possessed with an insanely erroneous idea, regarding the true object and purpose of human life. After the passing of a few generations, under the wide-spread reign of co-operative stirpiculture, with its hosts of mothers' clubs, suicide will soon become an utter impossibility. "In the ever broadening scope, of progressive kindergarten training, our young mothers have wrought their most important work. A work, which reflects on the club, a great deal of well-earned credit. As centers of the first and second-year nursery groups, in their cargosita excursions around the great hall, for the purpose of sight, color and image training; the service rendered by these mothers, has proved invaluable. As teachers, assistants, directors and leaders, in the third and fourth-year groups, while engaged in exercises and games, which have been devised and instituted, for the purpose of sense training, science training, and science recreation; in addition to the ordinary kindergarten course; their excellent work, has justly excited the pride of the colony. "In conclusion, my dear Fern! I must tell you something about 'The club babies,' as they are proudly designated by the members. They are very bright and beautiful! In fact, they seem born with a consciousness, that it is their peculiar privilege, to commence the study of life as a fine art, at its very threshold. They are the zealously guarded treasures of the club, and the pride of the farm! They give a glorious promise, that they will prove worthy leaders, of a coming host of dominant thinkers, which are to be given to the world, by the mothers' clubs of the next quarter of a century. "As champions and exponents of the true object and purpose of human life, these thinkers will be armed with a wonderful potency, with which to overcome and conquer, the selfish reign of the competitive system. A cruel system, which has proved the very incarnation, of 'Man's inhumanity to man,' causing countless millions to mourn! In this great work, they will be inspired, by the high purpose of replacing its evil, poverty-breeding dominancy, by an unselfish, co-operative system, a union of spiritualizing, educative, stirpiculture and agriculture, which shall insure a higher civilization, and the perpetual reign of peace and plenty for all mankind." "What you have told to me so charmingly, Fillmore, is almost too good to be true! How eloquently, and how interestingly, you have described, the scope and work of this wonderful club, with its gifted leader! I hail the advent of this club, as one of the most important results, achieved by the Solaris Farm Company! I am delighted, with its thorough organization, broad plans, high aims, earnest work, and the remarkable enthusiasm, of its members! They represent a cause, which is dear to my heart! "The question, of how to be well born, is to my mind, the foremost question of the day! A question, which demands universal consideration! This twentieth century union, of agriculture and stirpiculture, this scientific, systematic, generation of the race as a fine art; which has been so well demonstrated, by the surprising work of these enthusiastic young mothers, is something to be proud of! The good, which must follow the work of this club, cannot now be estimated. The one hope, for the regeneration and final salvation of society, is centered in the mothers of the Republic! Nothing, is so well calculated to impress the importance of this grand truth, on the minds of the people, as the practical work of an ever increasing host of mothers' clubs. "In their devotion to the Republic, these mothers are patriots of the purest type! They have arisen to such spiritual heights, that they may fearlessly proclaim the law of motherhood, for the sons and daughters of the new Republic! They have demonstrated that this law declares, that a worthy mother of the new Republic, must be absolutely free! She must be free, religiously, mentally, socially, physically, and financially! Thus unshackled, she may be properly prepared, to bear a race of children who are endowed by birth, with the incarnate spirit and genius of true liberty. Such liberty, as shall become the talisman and watchword, of the model Republic of the twentieth century. A Republic of peers, of intellectual giants! The very flower of spiritual unfoldment! The highest order of civilization! Under the starry flag of such a government, neither slave, nor pauper, nor criminal, shall be found to cloud with shame, the fair escutcheon of true liberty! "I shall endeavor, before leaving Solaris, to meet with the members, by attending some session of the club. I shall then take pleasure in restating these ideas, as an expression of my appreciation of the great work for humanity, which they have so successfully inaugurated. "To Gertrude Gerrish, that noble woman, with such a magnificent talent, and so loyal a heart; who has won my deepest gratitude, my undying respect; I must pay the tribute of my admiration, by taking her lovingly to my heart, as a sister woman, whose wonderful ability, as a thinker, organizer, and leader, has made me proud of my sex." CHAPTER XXXVI. THE CO-OPERATIVE FARM AS A FACTOR IN THE CAPITAL AND LABOR PROBLEM. "I am curious to know, to what extent co-operative farming will effect the capital and labor problem. What think you, Fillmore?" "No doubt the effect will be very marked. Many of the solutions arrived at in experimenting with the insurance question, will apply with equal force towards a final solution of the capital and labor problem. The toiler once having been taught the art of self-employment, that will furnish him superior conditions for a perfected healthful enjoyment of life, with all of the advantages for himself and his children that money can buy for the wealthy; can never again become the working slave of capital. He has learned, by a practical lesson, very similar to the famous 'Gurnsey Market House' exploit, that labor unaided by capital, can produce an abundance of things which go to make up the wealth of the nation, the community or the individual; while capital unaided by labor can produce nothing. "In searching for a remote cause for this ever growing warfare between capital and labor, which has so long vexed our Republic; and which, even now, threatens its final disintegration; we soon discover our arch enemy, the competitive system, as the party responsible for the mischief. This fact becomes more apparent, as we consider, that from the beginning of the historical period, people in a fierce struggle for existence, have been compelled by the competitive system, to wage a brutal, relentless warfare with each other. Always the stronger, against the weaker. In this wicked war, millions of human lives have been sacrificed to the fiery moloch of selfish greed. "The older the civilization the more fiercely has the war been waged; until to-day, thousands among the lower classes everywhere, dwarfed and embittered by a hopeless struggle to sustain life, in a ceaseless combat with competing foes on every hand; spurred to a frenzy of fury, curse the day which gave them birth. Why should they live only to suffer? With moral natures starved and withered, they declare that all justice is a mockery, all honesty, a myth! They have lost faith in God, and confidence in man! They care not for the needs of posterity, or for the nemesis of a future existence! In this desperate condition, they either commit suicide, or become an easy prey to the temptation, to join the outlaws in taking the world by the throat. From such material is formed the dregs of society, that lower social strata of living dynamite, that constant menace, which threatens in the near future, to destroy all civilization which rests upon it. This is a typical piece of the handiwork of the competitive system, a system in which the roots of society to-day are grounded. "Once seriously considered in this light, how can any sane person, who believes in an All-Wise Creator, in justice and mercy, in a common brotherhood for humanity, ever again defend the wickedness, of a society based on the selfish cruelty of such a system? What treatment may unorganized, unprotected labor, expect from this system? "Hitherto, fortunately for the progress of the world, the laborers of this Republic, have enjoyed more of the advantages of life, than those of any other country. With better wages and shorter hours for work, they have been able to educate themselves and their children, to a degree that would fit them to become good citizens of the Republic. A republic which for its continued existence, depends on the integrity, ability and intelligence of its working units. As such, our laborers have proved themselves the best in the world. Now, alas! The whole industrial situation is changed by the swift dominancy of the competitive system, with its ever increasing brood of trusts, which have swallowed up all natural opportunities, and monopolized all the leading business enterprises, of this hitherto progressive nation. "The people of the Republic are divided into two classes; the employers, and the employed. The invention and introduction of new and expensive machinery each year, augments the power of the trusts, to control the markets and the industrial situation. By the same means and at the same time, they are fast reducing the number of employers, and increasing the number of those who must seek employment. Under such circumstances, each year the fate of the worker in any class, either skilled or unskilled, grows more desperate. He becomes more completely the slave of the trusts or capitalists who own the tools and who monopolize the industries. The larger the dependent family of the worker, the more abject the slavery, and the less his power to resist a constant reduction of wages. "In the efforts made by organized labor unions, to resist this tendency to reduce wages, we have both the cause and the beginning of the war between capital and labor. With a courage and patriotism worthy of the days of 'Seventy-Six,' this war has been waged by the toilers, with a determination to maintain rights guaranteed to them by the constitution of the Republic. A right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A right to labor and to enjoy the fruits of their labor, by having free access to a reasonable share of the natural advantages belonging to the public domain. "In this heroic struggle, so sturdily maintained during the past twenty-five years against the competitive system and its well trained hosts; the campaign, which has been marked by many mistakes, followed by frequent defeat and disastrous failure, has always proved successful as an educator, both for the toilers and the great middle classes, who sympathized with them. On the other hand, alarmed by sudden success, achieved by the disruption of long-lived business methods, and the loss of confidence in exchange values, on the part of the public in consequence of this disruption; the generals of the competitive system, aided with but few exceptions, by the press, university and pulpit, have shrewdly endeavored to evade responsibility, for the disastrous panics which have followed such revolutionary methods. These panics have left the country disturbed and embarrassed, by armies of unemployed men. "In the same line of tactics, these competitive leaders, have endeavored to confuse the question, and to mystify the people, by raising the cry of over-production! The inexorable law of supply and demand! The impossibility of our manufacturers longer competing in the markets of the world, against the cheap products of the pauper labor of Europe, while they are obliged by the unions, to pay such exorbitant wages here. This cry has grown more insistent, with each succeeding year. Nevertheless, the fact still remains, that but for the continuous opposition of the united labor organizations, long before this time, the wages paid in Europe, would govern the price of labor in this Republic. What then would have happened to our workers, the basic units of our government? Fortunately, the campaign of education still continues! The people at large are just beginning to wake up to the importance of the labor question! They have studied it carefully and earnestly. They have learned that in productive labor, muscular effort is a mental demonstration. "They have learned, that the products of the skillfully educated, intelligent, refined, moral, self-respecting worker of this Republic, can successfully, compete with the inferior products, of a less intelligent or pauperized labor of any country, in any of the markets of the world. No matter how high the wages of the former, or how low the wages of the latter may be. "They have learned, that the demand, in any market for a superior article, will always drive out the inferior. "They have learned, that the question of the unemployed, is a question of the utmost importance, which demands the immediate attention of all patriots. They have learned, that the unemployed we shall have with us in ever increasing numbers, so long as the competitive system shall last. "They have learned, that not one from the ranks of the unemployed, can again become a worker, without paying a handsome bonus for the privilege, by allowing some one to pocket the lion's share of the profits he may be able to earn. "They have learned, that when society encourages conditions, which cause the laborer to look upon any calamity as a blessing in disguise, because it offers work for the unemployed; that society, must be reorganized. "They have learned, that whenever an industrial system produces conditions, which make the laborer see only disaster for his individual interests, in every labor-saving invention which may be introduced; such a system, must be superseded by a better one. "They have learned, that the competitive system, by the very nature and terms of its organization, obliges its followers to be selfish, cruel, heartless, unmanly and unpatriotic. They have learned, that its reign has become so dominant, that it justifies a recent writer of most excellent wit, who declares that 'Man by birth, education and training, has become so essentially selfish, that no preaching has any effect upon him, if it does not advise him to lay up treasures for himself somewhere.' "They have learned, that the dangers which most seriously threaten the perpetuity of our Republic, do not come from the clamor of dissatisfied laborers, who are wrongfully accused of law-breaking; but, that these dangers do come, from the lawlessness of capital, and the anarchy of corporations. "They have learned that so far as the interests of the working units of the Republic are concerned, or care for its continued existence as a representative government; the press, the university, and the pulpit, have all been syndicated and censored by the competitive system to such an extent, that they can no longer be trusted to furnish teachers, leaders, and guides. "They have learned, that the only safe course is, for the people to depend upon themselves, to develop and establish a new social and industrial order, from which shall spring a class of incorruptible leaders and statesmen, whose pure, unselfish motives, dominant, evenly developed minds, and superior ability, shall mark them as fitting rulers for a more perfect Republic. Such a Republic as shall meet the demands of a twentieth century progress. "They have learned, that the remedy indicated is a change to an industrial system, that will secure to the laborer an equitable share of the benefits, which follow the introduction of labor-saving machinery. Under such conditions, the laborer himself, having more leisure and unexpended vitality, will be stimulated to increase his available resources by cultivating his brain capacity for invention, thereby largely increasing his power to produce. "After many years, the rank and file of the workers in the labor unions, have learned, that self-employment is the key to the situation. Although late, they have learned, that if all the money wasted in unsuccessful strikes, had been invested in the purchase of choice locations, undeveloped mines and mineral lands, and in the erection of manufacturing plants, the labor question would now be a thing of the past. They would be masters of the situation, to whom the capitalists would be glad to offer such a liberal system of profit-sharing, as would practically make the workmen self-employed, by reason of a part ownership in the enterprise they labored to exploit. "Finally, and most important of all; they have learned that all manufacturing industries, naturally grow out of agriculture. That the success of one, is the measure, for the success of the other. That they must co-operate to such an extent, that a constant, healthy growth of both, may be maintained. "They have become convinced of the imperative necessity for this equable, co-operative, progress, by a careful study of the threatening conditions which obtain, in countries where agriculture has declined; and where manufacturing industries have become abnormally predominant. In such countries, the food supply at once becomes a question of daily, nay of hourly importance. It must be imported from distant lands, subject to the tax of insurance, import and export duties, freight charges, and commissions. Under such adverse conditions, available supplies for but a few days only, stand between the toiler and gaunt hunger. Any catastrophe which may happen to already congested lines of transportation, will precipitate a famine. Then prices would go up with a bound. The constant menace of such a possibility, always serves to keep food-prices above the natural level of a fair profit. On the other hand, in countries where progress in agriculture and manufacture goes hand in hand; a constantly increasing home market for manufactured products is steadily maintained. A most important consideration! At the same time, the industrial centers have the advantage of the immediate vicinity of abundant food supplies, which are not subject to the vicissitudes of traffic or transportation, or to the tax of much handling. "In considering these things, the minds of a great majority of the laboring people, have been prepared to accept the conclusion, that the great question of the hour is, how to open the way for every worthy worker to become his own employer. The co-operative farm opens the way. Therefore, it is to these self-educated toilers in the ranks of the labor organizations, that the manifest advantages of co-operative farming will appeal most successfully. If properly approached, a majority of them would be, not only willing but anxious for an opportunity to give this new system of co-operative agriculture a thorough trial. "Having once become practically interested, these people would soon learn to consider the object and purpose of life from a new standpoint. From this new concept of the meaning and necessities of life, they would perceive that it did not require the hoarding of much wealth, in order to satisfy them. The insurance system in providing for the wants of old age, would forever banish the haunting specter of a pauper's death in the poor-house. They would then realize that money, was not so precious as a human life! They would clearly understand that money was an absolute necessity, only to those under the competitive system who had lost confidence in each other, and faith in the fact of a common brotherhood for humanity! "They would soon respond to happier surroundings, in every way so conducive to a natural, soul growth, and to the harmonious unfoldment of the individual from within. In this unfoldment, a new meaning for immortality would come to them. Spiritual law would become operative. It would teach them that, as immortal beings, as cosmic units of the larger cosmos--The Great Over Soul--they could not become totally depraved, even under pressure of evil conditions of the most degrading character; no matter how much their spiritual natures had been stained or starved. "With this new standard as a guide, there would come an inspiration to strive for the attainment of a higher, purer, better life. A life more in harmony with the design of an All-Wise Creator! Angry, antagonistic feelings, against hitherto competitors, would disappear. The world would wear a smile instead of a frown! Brotherly love between man and man, would become the rule in place of the exception! Gold would lose its charm! Avarice would pass away! Selfish instincts, born of bitter years under a cruel system would soon follow! Long dormant, spiritual natures would be awakened! A new spiritual growth would take place! A vastly wider, mental, and spiritual horizon, would be added to the wisdom of the individual! In the light of this wisdom would come the discovery, that the virtue of right living, bears the seeds of a perpetuity, which begets true and lasting happiness! An overwhelming answer in the affirmative, from every point of view, to the question, does it pay to be unselfish? "With higher ideals of life and its duties, these physically, mentally, and spiritually emancipated toilers, would find themselves prepared to co-operate most effectually, in establishing and maintaining any social and industrial evolution, which the best interests of the people and the Republic might demand. "From this presentation, my dear Fern! you may imagine how important and desirable it is, that these two powerful industrial forces should become harmoniously united in working for the interests of a natural progressive evolution. Against such an invincible combination, the hosts of the competitive system might not hope to prevail! Once thus united, each co-operative farm would then become the nucleus of a new industrial organization, capable of such unlimited expansion and perfection as the needs of surrounding communities might be able to sustain. "As this twin series of giant industries continued to grow and expand, the ways by which they might co-operate with mutual benefit, would continue to multiply. In political matters such a combination would prove remarkably strong; first in the township and county; later, in state and national legislatures, where it would soon be able to demand and push forward favorable legislation, and also to strangle much that might threaten to prove adverse. In such efforts, would come opportunities for introducing to the arena of public life, an abler, nobler, purer class of young men; who, born of a better social, industrial system, by reason of superior conditions for birth and training, would be properly endowed with that inspiring patriotism, sterling integrity, and commanding ability, so necessary to maintain the dominancy and perpetuity of the Republic, as a government of the people, for the people and by the people." "Bravo! Well done Fillmore! Your statement of the subject is grand, indeed! The eloquent summing up, forms a fitting climax in answer to my last question, the closing one of the series. But, as much as I admire and appreciate its general excellence, you must allow me to suggest one criticism. Do you not think Fillmore, that you put the case rather too strongly, when you place the press, the university and the pulpit, so completely under the control of trusts, or the leaders of the competitive system? Would they dare to do such a thing?" "Bless you my dear girl! They are capable of doing anything! So far as the trusts and the competitive system are concerned, I have stated the case very mildly. Not one-half of the story has been told. Let us probe this question a little deeper. "What is a trust? It is the highest form of monopoly. It is a nest of corporations, laid and hatched by the competitive system! It has neither conscience to hold it in check, nor soul to be damned! It dares to do anything! Indeed! It is formed for the sole purpose of making money. Nothing is allowed to stand in the way. Born of the consolidating pressure, which marks the competitive system, it seeks to monopolize all of the advantages of that cruel system, without incurring its penalties. Once thoroughly organized, and armed with the almost unlimited power of its enormous capital; the trust immediately commences the wholesale destruction of all opposing industries or interests. In pushing this work, it regards neither the equities of commercial law, nor the vested rights of others. Securely protected by its monopoly, this modern juggernaut in the commercial world, rolls remorselessly onward toward its goal of wealth. It cares not for the safety of worshippers, friends or foes. If by chance they represent competing interests, they must either leave the field or be crushed. There is no alternative! There is no escape! "A few of the leading trusts, those most completely representing the competitive system, have recently become so defiant, so audaciously bold, that they are prepared to undertake, to consolidate the business of the whole earth. They will stick at nothing! They have the gorge to swallow one government or ten! It matters little to them! Like the ring of conspirators, in Donnelley's 'Ceaser's Column,' a few of the leading spirits, of these daring trusts, are secretly plotting in Gotham! Just at present, they have their eyes fixed on the all-powerful money question. The vision seems a pleasing one! "What is that question, which so completely absorbs the attention of these people? Can it be possible, that the mills of the competitive system will grind up rich bankers, as unconcernedly as they do the helpless poor! They surely will! The plot grows and thickens! Let us give it close attention. Let us watch these people. Keeping in mind meanwhile, that hitherto, the bankers of the country, have complacently considered themselves masters and kings of the financial situation, whose thrones were secure for all time. Strongly intrenched behind well-filled money bags, they have felt themselves safe in helping the trusts to fleece the public. Now they are becoming alarmed. They are shaking in their fifteen-dollar boots! They behold that dreadful handwriting on the wall! In giant letters, seemingly towering forty feet tall, these bankers read the doom, which the trust conspirators are now preparing for them. They catch the frightful significance of the question, which the trust leaders are discussing. It is this. Why should the business of the United States, support such an army of banks? More than ten thousand. We know very well, that the entire money transactions of this country, could be handled more safely, more swiftly, and more cheaply, by one grand central institution. With one voice the conspirators exclaim! Let us form a pool! Let us consolidate the whole business, into one magnificent money trust! Let us select, say twenty-five, of the brainiest bankers in the business! Let us give them fat salaries, and make them superintendents of the financial agencies, now called banks. Counting the whole number of banks, both public and private, as ten thousand, with three professional bankers to each one, the result would be a total of thirty thousand bankers. Of this number, we could reduce twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and seventy-five, to the station of bank clerks. Let us pause for a moment to contemplate the result! What enormous savings would accrue, by the introduction of such a wholesale scheme of consolidation! These savings would be ours! Intoxicated with the brilliancy and the hugeness of the idea; the conspirators with one impulse, spring to their feet, with outstretched hands they form a ring, they execute a round dance extraordinary. While thus engaged, they gaily shout, 'There is millions in it for us!' "No wonder the bankers are alarmed! With the exercise of one-half of their usual cunning and foresight, they should have scented the danger sooner. No doubt, they were so engrossed by the fascinating game of money grabbing, that they were wholly blind to danger, as the result of the combined audacity and perfidy of their former partners. They have evidently failed to learn one plain lesson, which is taught by the logic of events. It is this. When once fairly started, the process of the larger corporation, swallowing the lesser, goes forward with such an ever-increasing rate of speed, that it soon overtakes and gobbles up banks and bankers. "At this point, it is pertinent to propound the following questions: If this is a Republic? If the people are the government, and the government is the people? And if the consolidating business, is so good and so profitable for the trusts? Why, should not the government, own and run this giant central bank? Why, should it not own and operate the railroads, the canals, the shipping, the mines, the forests, and all other industries? This would give the people a chance to share equally, in the enjoyment of these enormous profits. Why not? "What say you my dear Fern! Would it not be infinitely better, than to allow the government to be swallowed by one monster trust?" "Better Fillmore! Far better! I am convinced! I withdraw my criticism. You have maintained your point so vigorously, that I have not the courage, to offer one single word in reply. I am ready and willing, to consider the discussion as finally closed." CHAPTER XXXVII. THE CO-OPERATIVE FARM TRIUMPHANT. The beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century, saw the final triumph of the co-operative farm at Solaris. The five years of trial and probation, have swiftly passed into history. The labors of the colony, have been crowned with a rich harvest of success. A great work for humanity, has been accomplished. A grand lesson in the economics of unselfish co-operation, has been demonstrated. A kaleidoscope of new charms, of fresh beauty, of an infinite variety of change, of unexpected opportunities, of a host of new expressions, in the possibilities of social and industrial life; the culmination of untried methods, new hopes and new aspirations; have marked this victorious climax. All have contributed, to the happiness of the contented villagers at Solaris; filling their hearts with brighter hopes for the future. A new era in agriculture has dawned. With it has come, a new order of life for farm people. The links of social life, have become more firmly knit. New chains of enthusiastic interest, in the humanitarian work represented by the farm, have been forged by the binding associations of passing years. Ethical, industrial and spiritual life, has been unfolded, in harmony with the law of progressive planetary evolution. As an illustration of the perfected possibilities of rural life, this suggestive and pleasing picture is well nigh complete. Verily! Virtue has been richly rewarded, by the pure pleasure of right living! To the truths of these things, the lives of the unselfish co-operators at Solaris, bear most abundant and convincing testimony. Happiness and contentment, reign supreme! Social solutions, offer new fields of pleasure to a generous, progressive people, who are daily becoming better educated, more dominant as thinkers, more unselfish in all things, therefore, more virtuous. In passing from the experimental, to a more perfect stage of co-operative life, a marvelous change for the better is noted. New factories have been built, new industries instituted, and organized. The busy hum of industrial prosperity, everywhere claims attention. Meanwhile, the demands for a better esthetic culture, have not been neglected. The interiors of both factory and workshop, have been made additionally attractive, by a more artistic, educative class of decorations. All industrial buildings, are surrounded by well-kept lawns. Many handsome cottages, showing a great variety of beautiful designs, cosey, vine-clad and picturesque, environed by gardens and lawns, have been added to the architectural display of the village. Order, symmetry and cleanliness, have become the established law of the farm. Barns, stables, stock yards, pig pens and poultry yards, have been placed at a safe distance from the village. In the erection of these necessary buildings, care has been taken, to provide for the removal and sanitary dry storage, of the daily accumulation of valuable manures. Especially designed machinery, accomplishes this otherwise unpleasant task, quickly and easily. By this convenient arrangement, with a very little labor, these buildings, and the stock housed in them, can at all times, be kept healthy and clean. A most important consideration! Everywhere, appear evidences, of the farms increasing wealth in live stock. Great herds of fine cattle, are fattening in the fields, pastures and barns. Prize collections of choice sheep, are roaming over grassy slopes. Fine droves of well grown, healthy swine, in assorted lots, are contentedly feeding in small fields of fresh clover. The large drove of beautiful, highly bred horses, is a very valuable one. The poultry yards, are filled with many varieties of fine fowls. All show the effects of careful attention, from the hands of care takers, who are both kind and skillful. On the opposite side of the village, near the nursery, the numerous fish ponds are located. Flower bordered, island studded, and tree margined, with surfaces dotted here and there, by tiny fleets of graceful, shell-like pleasure boats. They add much to the rare beauty of this pastoral picture. Beneath the rippling surface of the clear water, in these miniature lakes, flash the shining scales of a swarming host, of the most delicious of food fishes. Fragrant, purple and gold, the heavily laden vineyards, are growing and glowing in the bright sunlight. They give promise of an early generous fruitage. Thrifty orchards of healthy well-grown fruit trees, including many varieties, are fast coming to maturity. Waving fields of golden grain, ripple in the simmering heat of a noon-day sun, or rustle and billow with each passing breeze, under the pale light of a harvest moon. Beautiful fields of cotton and corn, are an inspiration to behold. Fine fields of vegetables, nurseries, gardens and shrubberies, with a wealth of lovely flower plots, all add to the charm of the general effect. The extension of the co-operative system, to embrace the second farm, has been well started. Fenwick Farm, is the name chosen for this farm number two, of the series. Two years of intelligent, well-directed work, by its wide awake, industrious people, have shown surprising results! They are constantly inspired to do better work by the hope of being able to reach a degree of success, equal to that achieved by Solaris. In this respect, the spirit of healthy rivalry, which has arisen, gives them an advantage, which the parent colony did not have. The success already attained by Fenwick Farm, has attracted widespread attention, in the surrounding communities. The effect for the good of the county, and of its people, socially, politically and financially, has been quite remarkable. The tax payers of the county, are delighted! They have been completely won over, to the side of co-operative farming, by the force of this second example. One of the greatest gains, which has arisen from co-operative effort for mutual benefit, between the two colonies, has been practically illustrated, in the great work of road building. These two co-operative farm villages, are now connected by a broad, smooth, well graded road. This road, ten miles in length, is margined by a wide strip of beautifully kept parking. Five miles of this parking, on either side of this magnificent boulevard, become the especial care, of each village. No city in the union, could display better taste, or greater pride, in keeping these beautiful parks, in the most perfect condition. In order to keep the park lawns, foliage and flowers, always looking clean and bright, it becomes necessary to keep this road free from dust. For this purpose, the entire road surface, is given a frequent sprinkling with petroleum. After each sprinkling, the enormous pressure of an hundred-ton roller, soon converts the layer of moistened dust, into a hard, smooth mass of oily rock. This process is repeated until a thick, heavy, durable surface of water-proof rock, is secured. This makes an ideal road! The hard, well pounded, gravelly soil, below, gives a permanent foundation, because it is so well protected against moisture, by this broad, indestructible roof of oily rock. The wide, slightly rounded surface of the road, sheds water like a duck's back. Consequently, it is always free from mud and dust. The broad rubber tires of a great variety of freight motors, pleasure mobiles and motor cycles, do not wear its perfect surface. The very acme of pleasure is reached, in riding over such a delightful road! After work hours have passed, the pleasure seekers from both villages, in merry congenial parties are awheel, enjoying to the utmost, the pure, sweet, flower-perfumed air, together with the soothing, restful beauty of a park lined drive, of such extent and variety, as a multi-millionaire, might not be able to command. Could anything more delightful be imagined! Is it any wonder, that people from adjoining counties, thirty miles away, come in droves, to enjoy a ride over this now famous road! In the hearts of all comers, is stirred the imitative spirit of rivalry. They return to their homes, determined to co-operate with their neighbors, at least to an extent that will enable them to build such roads for themselves. They are convinced, that the excellence of its roads, in any community, is the only sure test, which will indicate the exact degree of civilization, attained by its people. At the village of Solaris, the universal use of Solaris brick, of the various patterns and sizes, has proved an important factor in the construction of sidewalks, store houses, industrial buildings, cottages, the hotel, the schools and the theatre. The visitor is at once impressed by the wholesome, attractive, substantial appearance, given to the town by the use of this excellent and durable brick. In this respect, the square mosaic bricks, of unique design, used in laying the broad sidewalks, twenty feet in width, which border Railroad Avenue, the street leading straight from the public square, to the railroad station, create an effect so marked that it never fails to attract attention and admiration. The symmetrical trees and well-kept parking which line this avenue, serve to enhance the pleasing effect. The artistic skill acquired by the people of Solaris, in the making and laying of this new style of brick, adds another important advantage, to the long list offered by co-operative methods. In color, thickness, sanitary shapes, variety of designs, fire-proof qualities, polished smoothness and durability, these bricks recommend themselves to the favor of the general public, wherever they go. Without any effort in the line of advertising, the general demand for them has continued to increase, until brick-making has become the leading lucrative industry on the farm. Among the new buildings at Solaris, most worthy of mention, are the theatre, and the two large school buildings, on either side of it. These structures, are by far the finest ones in the village. The affectionate pride they excite in the hearts of the villagers, is well deserved. Centrally located, on the east side of the public square, this triumvirate of noble buildings, claims the admiration of the beholder, from any point of view on the open square. The front walls are beautifully ornamented, in harmony with an architectural design, which is considered by critics, as exceedingly artistic. Inside, they have been constructed, finished, fitted and furnished, in accordance with a design, that will afford to the villagers, the highest order of education and amusement. The theatre is two hundred feet long, and seventy-five feet wide. The schools, are each one hundred and seventy-five feet in length, by forty feet in width. They are separated from the theatre, by twenty feet of space. A roomy covered way from the rear, connects them with that building. In construction, care has been taken, to secure perfect light and ventilation. The school on the left, is for pupils who enter the primary, and the first, second and third, intermediate classes. The one on the right, is for students, who may be promoted to the first, second and third, high schools. The seating capacity of each one, is ample for three hundred children. The decorations of the walls and ceilings are, to a remarkable degree, both educative and ornamental. The equipment of school furniture, such as seats, desks, dictionaries, text books, globes and outline maps; drawing-boards, blackboards and laboratory outfit; glass cases, for collections of geological specimens and minerals; life size, physiology models and charts; together, with a complete series of charts for the other sciences; is the best that could be designed or procured. The theatre, is a very important part of the educative system. Fortunately, the acoustic properties, are remarkably fine! The entire interior, including the high ceiling, is decorated with such boldly beautiful designs, that they never fail to gratify the artistic sense of the beholder. At night, the charming effect of these embellishments, is intensified, by the use of a great number of brilliantly colored electric lights; which are skillfully grouped and interwoven, as a part of the general decorative plan. The wide seats, are designed for ease and comfort. They are richly and durably upholstered, with dark-brown, polished leather. The seating capacity of this cosey little theatre, is twenty-five hundred. The colonists have found this histrionic temple, very useful. It is an ideal place for farm and village festivals; and for all kinds of entertainments; such as orations, school exhibitions, graduation exercises, vocal and instrumental concerts and dramas; lectures, operas and every class of theatricals. It is also, equally useful and fitting, for stereopticon and biograph exhibits, of the astronomy, geology, botany, natural history, microscopical, and photographic clubs. The large, well equipped stage and dressing rooms, offer a permanent, desirable home, for the musical, choral and dramatic clubs. At intervals of three months, four weeks in each year; excellent professional troups occupy the stage; presenting a fine variety, of wholesome dramas and operas. In this way, the stage of this farm theatre, is made to represent and reflect, the passing progress of the dramatic and operatic world. During the intervals between these star-company weeks, the home-talent club, presents regular, tri-weekly performances, under the supervision of a skillful director. The remaining nights are as a rule, pretty well utilized by the numerous local entertainments, before mentioned. This brief sketch of the generous provision, made for the education and amusement of the people of Solaris, will, in connection with the nursery and kindergarten, hereafter to be described, show what the co-operative farm can do, when it undertakes to give to its people a class of educational training and amusement, which in many respects, is superior to the best that money can buy for the wealthy. It will also demonstrate, what can be accomplished, when the farm determines to produce, and to fittingly educate and train, a superior class of children, as the most important part of the legitimate work of a co-operative farm. The highest expression of agriculture! The culture of children as a fine art! The production of such children, as will make ideal citizens for a perfect Republic! The practical class in farm chemistry, only twelve in number, is an organization made up by a careful selection from the brightest minds and best thinkers in the colony. Under the leadership of Fillmore Flagg, it has accomplished some excellent experimental work. It has been able to add several valuable allied industries to the resources of the farm, in addition to those already described. In breaking ground for opening the new mica and zinc mines, a great quantity of peculiar clay was discovered. This clay was of a very fine quality, entirely free from sand, gravel or other impurities. Yet, strangely enough, it would not make good china, porcelain, or pottery! There was a greasy smoothness of feeling possessed by this clay, which suggested its name, tallow clay. After considerable exposure to the air, it would crack and slack until finally dissolved into a fine powder. The class was puzzled. The members were on their mettle! The more they worked with this curious clay and failed, the more they became interested and determined to persevere, until some discovery should reward them. The greasy quality of the clay, suggested soap-stone. Now, the class members had long wished for some material out of which they could manufacture a first-class quality of artificial soap-stone. This tallow clay promised good results, if they could only eliminate the few constituents, which were not present in the real soap-stone. The weeks of careful research spent in this eliminating process, finally crowned the efforts of the class with a complete success. The result, was an artificial soap-stone of excellent quality. Even, when molded in thin plates, it would withstand exposure to intense heat for long periods of time, without warping or shrinking. It soon became evident, that it could be made more useful and more valuable, than real soap-stone. After some weeks of experimental work, in various processes of manufacture, the right method was reached. Fillmore Flagg was convinced, that thousands of tons of this product, yielding a large profit, could be placed on the market much cheaper than the best quality of fire brick. For a great number of uses in the industrial arts, and for chemical furnaces, ore-roasting ovens, furnace linings, stove linings and even stoves, it would prove immeasurably superior. The popular demand for this new soap-stone, soon sustained the judgment of Fillmore Flagg. This demand continued to increase until the new industry, became one of the most profitable on the farm. After the first success, the class in farm chemistry, in search of another prize, returned with renewed vigor, to attack the tallow clay. In working over the formidable heap of tailings, which had accumulated from the soap-stone experiments, the second prize was quickly found. It proved even more important than the first! This mass of rejected clay was found to be exceedingly rich in aluminum. Better still! It was just in the proper condition, to be most cheaply and easily extracted! It was a great find! The class members were crowned with laurels! Of course, they were jubilant. But they were not puffed up with pride! That, was not their style! During the fifth year of the reign of the co-operative farm at Solaris, the following mining industries, were added to its resources. Valuable mines of mica, lead and zinc, were opened and successfully worked. Electric car lines, connected these mines with the freight depot at Solaris Station. There, the lead and zinc, high grade ores, found a ready market at good prices. The mica was prepared for use at Solaris. It was then sold at a fine profit, in connection with orders for soap-stone. For two years, the canning factory, had furnished another avenue for profitably marketing large crops of sweet-corn, green peas, asparagus, tomatoes, peaches, and many kinds of perishable fruits and berries. The demand for Solaris Vegetable Concentrates, and for Solaris Mixture Concentrates, has more than doubled. The same is true of the Solaris breakfast foods, and of the material for delicious breakfast dishes, prepared from mixtures of parched, sweet, and pop-corn. The vineyards and the quince, peach, plum and cherry orchards, have reached the stage of full bearing. Improved methods, careful culture and the constant use of better chemical agents, for the destruction of insect enemies, have made the heavy crops of fruits from these vineyards and orchards, even more desirable and more salable than ever before. The farm income from grapes and quinces alone amounting to over one hundred thousand dollars per annum. The quantity of jellies, jams, preserves and marmalades, made from small fruits, has more than doubled. The excellence of quality, and established reputation for absolute purity, has rapidly increased the demand for them at fancy prices. Altogether, the rapid and continuous growth of the farm income, from its allied agricultural and manufacturing industries, has largely increased the wages of the co-operators. The purchases at the store have been correspondingly augmented. The sale of goods by the store, to surrounding communities, has been greatly extended. The result has been a constantly increasing volume of the seven and one-half per cent profits, steadily pouring into the insurance fund. Both the general service fund and the fund for purposes of education and amusement, have been equally benefited. Fifty thousand dollars, have been added to the stock of goods, in the store. The store building, has been enlarged and improved. A large hotel for the accommodation of the constantly increasing number of visitors, has been erected and equipped. At all times, plenty of money has been at hand, with which to push forward all necessary farm or village improvements. The fame of such general prosperity, has gone abroad, in the land; placing the financial standing of the Solaris Farm Company, on a firm basis with the commercial world. Five years of co-operative work, have convinced the people of Solaris, that successful agriculture, demands the determined effort, the best thought, the scientific work and the combined energy of a well organized force of earnest, unselfish, steadfast workers. They are very enthusiastic over the wonderful results achieved. Freed from the shackles and sins of a selfish life, they bear the unmistakable stamp of progress, socially, industrially, intellectually and ethically. Having cast aside the burden of care and worry about the future, both for themselves and their children, they have had a chance to grow and expand in the real sunshine of life. They have become dignified, self-poised, well dressed, educated, refined, cultured and polished men and women. Good citizens, of which, any commonwealth might well be proud! Vitally, and vastly more important! They have become dominant thinkers, who are capable of wisely and unselfishly, thinking and planning for the benefit of the Republic! In the remarkable success achieved by Solaris Farm, our hero, Fillmore Flagg, has realized his highest ambition, his brightest hopes. Relieved from further responsibility, as general manager, by the last annual election of the Solaris Farm Company, he has had an opportunity to turn his attention to organizing companies, for the eight remaining farm sites. In this work, he has had valuable assistance from the officers and members of the company. With a view of making Solaris the present headquarters of the general movement; acting on advice of Fillmore Flagg, the Solaris Farm Company, has amended its charter, to increase the membership of the company to one thousand; doubling the capital stock. Five thousand acres of adjoining lands have been secured, the farmers from whom they were purchased, coming into the company as stock-holders. This course seemed necessary and wise, in order to properly balance the growing industrial and commercial importance of Solaris. With such a large increase in the number of co-operators, a surplus of capable young men and women, would be available, from which to select volunteers, as the nucleus of a corps of experienced officers for the newly organized farm companies. In this way, Solaris, as the parent farm, would become very important as the training school, for teachers that were to supply the wants of such new farms as might grow out of the general movement. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE KINDERGARTEN AT SOLARIS. Among the important buildings at Solaris, we must consider the large, well appointed nursery, kindergarten and mothers' club combined. The mothers' club occupying a handsome wing to the main building. Located just in the rear of the long row of palace homes, and connected with them by a long, wide, many-windowed hall, it has proved admirably adapted to the purpose for which it was built. This beautiful structure, is environed by a lovely lawn, charmingly variegated with flowers and shrubbery. It is surrounded on three sides, by a wide, low veranda, only one step above the lawn. This veranda, except where a broad step connects it with the lawn, is shut in by a tall balustrade. By this means unguarded children are prevented from falling. A broad, overhanging roof, of picturesque design, covers the entire building. From the interior, many windows coming down to the floor, open on to the veranda. The entire floor space, the full size of the main building, sixty by two hundred feet, is unobstructed by a partition. That portion devoted to the nursery, is only separated from the kindergarten by a low balustrade. A large skylight, in the central roof, floods this extraordinary room with an abundance of light. Screens of thin, white, silky cloth are so arranged, that this light may be regulated and softened to any desired extent. The lofty ceiling is arched, groined and decorated, very like a cathedral. The high walls are modestly tinted a pale green. A broad, beautifully designed, exquisitely colored border, in perfect harmony with the splendor of the ceiling, runs uniformly around the upper walls of this delightful room, adding immensely to the general artistic effect. One peculiarity in connection with the floor, marks a wide departure from the ordinary arrangements of a nursery or kindergarten school. Six feet distant from the washboard, a depressed railway track, equipped with long platform cars, ten feet in width, having their surfaces just level with the main floor, describes a circuit of the room. Except at the places of entrance or exit, this circular train or section of floor on wheels, is guarded on either side by a low railing. These railings also extend across the cars, far enough from the ends to allow a four foot passage between each one. In material and finish, the floor of the train is uniform with that of the room. The railings are all of polished oak. Two cute little gates on each car open to the passage way at the ends. The machinery which propels this exaggerated perambulator, is run by electric power. It is so adjusted, as to be perfectly under the control of the nurses and teachers in charge of the room. The iron frames from which fifty swinging cribs are hung, occupy considerable space on several cars. These cribs are for the exclusive use of infants, too young or too weak to sit up. The remaining space on the cars of this infantile merry-go-round, which the mothers' club members have named the Cargosita, is furnished with a remarkable variety of single and double seats, made low enough to be comfortable for children from eight to thirty months old. These seats are as artistic as they are unique! They represent on a small scale, ostriches, swans, geese, dogs, goats, horses, mules, zebras, camels, elephants, tigers, and lions; wagons, phaetons, cycles, cars and a great variety of pleasure boats. The seating capacity of the cargosita is about three hundred, the number of children in the nursery and kindergarten, who are under four years of age. Older children become inmates of the regular schools. The cargosita, when ornamented with a profusion of silk flags, resplendent with gaily colored ribbon streamers, handsome mats and a choice collection of small potted plants, palms and flowers; becomes a thing of beauty, well calculated to capture and fascinate the childish heart. When the train is in motion, gaily spinning around this five-hundred-foot oval; the cribs and seats filled with bright happy children, smiling and crowing, their chubby little hands clapping in unison with the measure of such exquisite music as is discoursed by a giant orchestrion, or the electric piano, the vision becomes the loveliest and most inspiring one of a life time! When we consider the cargosita as an instrument for education, we find that it is even more potent as such, than as a thing for amusement. For the purpose of educating the senses, thus laying a sure foundation, for a broad, healthy, harmonious, development of the mind, it is invaluable! A child is the repository of infinite possibilities! Education, is the process of unfolding these possibilities, in harmony with natural law. To discover, and to apply this law, is the important work of the educator! To Prof. Elmer Gates, and to his remarkable discoveries in Psychology and Psychurgy, the modern educator owes a heavy debt of gratitude! From the teachings of Prof. Gates, we deduce; that in brain building, that primary step in education, psychologic functioning creates organic structure, and that organic structure is a manifestation in the concrete, of the activities of the mind. In other words, that planted, watered and nourished, by the emotions of the individual, the thoughts, ideas, concepts and images which arise, create a corresponding growth of cell structure in the brain. That these brain cells become the working tools of the mind. It follows then, that we cannot have thoughts, without first having sensations to form images and concepts, the soil out of which all thoughts naturally grow. Therefore, if in a practical way, all possibilities in the way of sensations, which may come through the avenue of each one of the child's senses, are fully developed; a sure foundation has been laid, for the largest possible development of brain and the corresponding growth of thought. In the natural order of the growth of thought, nature prescribes the following sequence: A union of sensations, produces images; a grouping of images, produces concepts; a relationing of concepts, produces ideas; a generalizing of ideas, produces thoughts of the first order; a generalization of thoughts of the first order, produces thoughts of the second order: a still wider generalization of thoughts of the second order, produces thoughts of the third order; progressing in like manner, to the highest ladder of the mental scale. In considering this order, we observe that sensations, form the base of the educational pyramid. All knowledge which comes to the ego, the seat of consciousness, must come through sensations produced by contact with material things in the domain of nature. Hence, as a primary step in educational work, a careful training of the senses, becomes a matter of the greatest importance. This training cannot be commenced, without first ascertaining what these senses are, and the natural order of their evolution. Commencing with the lowest, we have muscle feelings, or the sense of musculation; the sense of touch, the sense of pressure, the sense of warmth, the sense of cold, the sense of smell, the sense of taste, the sense of hearing and the sense of seeing. Altogether, we have nine important avenues, through which the inner man may gain a correct knowledge of the outer world. Professor Gates has discovered a system of sense training, which may be successfully applied to kindergarten children. In application, only a few minutes daily practice by each child, is required. By this training, in extending the upper and lower thresholds of sensation, the capacity of each sense, may be doubled from five to eight times. To the inexperienced, this proposition is so stupendous, that it seems almost unthinkable! However, we may state parenthetically, that an application of this system, to children in the Solaris kindergarten, has shown such marvelous results, that its efficacy and excellence have been well established. It has proved fully equal to the demands of twentieth century progress! Turning again to the teachings of Prof. Gates, we learn that mind is the key-stone and the arch of life, the all-containing attribute, which combines all forms of its expression: that to properly cultivate the mind, is to extend the scope and usefulness of life. Hence, that in choosing a system of education, which will be in harmony with planetary evolution, therefore, the easiest and most natural. We must never lose sight of one great, central, primal fact. It is this. The mind of the child, which is to be unfolded, is the production of the cosmic universe; therefore, cannot be in fundamental antagonism with it. It follows, then, that if children gather their sensations, images, concepts, ideas, and thoughts, directly from the phenomena of that universe, they will acquire a kind of knowledge, so real, so superior, that it will stand the test of an eternity. It is actual knowledge! There is no theory, no speculation, no guesswork about it! The sciences, are facts regarding the phenomena of the universe, classified and arranged in an orderly manner. All facts of every kind, naturally fall into the domain of some one of the sciences. Man, as the highest expression of the planet, in his three-fold nature, becomes the gleaner, the classifier, and the repository of these facts. A beautiful exposition of the clever handiwork, of the law of action and re-action. As a cosmic unit of the larger cosmos, the more perfect his knowledge of the universe, the more complete, is his store of knowledge in relation to himself. Children, in order to become properly equipped students, must, when ready to take up the sciences, be prepared to determine what the actual sensations are, out of which the different possible images of the sciences are composed. To achieve the most thorough education possible, they must know the actual number of concepts in each science, and precisely the images out of which they have arisen! They will then be prepared, to collect and classify, the mentative data of the sciences. That is, they will be able to determine for themselves, experimentally, the sensations, images, concepts, ideas and thoughts, which belong to each one. Practice in this useful training, will lead the pupil, to the higher, wider generalizations of thought, which belong to the domain of pure reason. In the work of classification, by detecting differences, a knowledge of the inductive process is gained. Similarly, by detecting likenesses, a knowledge of deductive reasoning is acquired. The body, like the brain, being composed of a co-operative colony of more or less intelligent cells, is an important part of the mind, which responds to educational training. True education, then is a development of both mind and body, in accord with the law of natural evolution, that embraces all there is in the domain of morals, pertaining to right thinking, right living and right doing. In other words, the action of the mind comprehends the physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual expression of the individual. Therefore, by the rightly conducted processes of a higher education, we may form an evenly developed character of the highest order. A character, unfolded physically, intellectually and spiritually, in harmony with the requirements of cosmic law. Hence, the imperative necessity, in the early training of children, of introducing the first steps of this system of true education. From these premises we must conclude, that the first four years of a child's life, should be devoted to some systematic method, for acquiring a most complete equipment of exact images, which will afford the basis for typical sensations, emotions, ideas and thoughts, regarding things in the domain of nature, about which, later in life, the child must know in order to become educated. To this end, children must have opportunities during these important years of image building, to experience all the sensations, and to form all the true images, that can come to them through the senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, feeling and sensations of temperature, such as heat and cold. It is of the utmost importance, that these early images, which are to become the standard of the mind, in all judgments of future years; should be made as complete and as perfect as possible. A child is primarily and instinctively imitative. From the first dawn of intelligence, children strive to emulate the acts of their brighter, older and better-taught associates. Hence, the necessity for a nursery and kindergarten training, such as the one instituted at Solaris. Practical work, in this novel and magnificently equipped institution, has proved conclusively, that, even in early infancy, associated together in happy groups, children acquire intellectual, moral and physical training, much more easily and swiftly, than is possible under any other circumstances. This affords another demonstration, of the efficacy of co-operative group work, in the primary steps of education. The cargosita, is well calculated to offer children the most perfect conditions, for accumulating a well selected store of sensations and images, through the avenues of the different senses. A teacher or nurse, usually some member of the mothers' club, is seated on each car as the center of its group. It becomes her pleasure, to direct attention to the various objects. Let us follow the cargosita with its precious freight, as it slowly moves around the oval. Images produced by the sense of seeing, are first in order. Large sheets of thick, heavy paper mounted on cloth, seven in number, displaying the different colors of the rainbow, are hung at uniform intervals around the room. They can be raised or lowered, to reach an easy angle of vision from the cars. After each primary color, appear half-width sheets of the same height, displaying the various hues, tints and shades of that particular color. Printed across each sheet in large white letters, is the name of the color, hue, tint or shade. Altogether, this color scheme forms a combination of great length, of such remarkable variety, that it becomes for the little ones, a well nigh inexhaustable source of fascinating amusement. Red, with its various hues, tints and shades, is the first color to be exhibited. Three days later, another color series is substituted. This course is continued until the entire series is finished. The children have experienced in a regular sequence, the sensations and images, produced by the entire scale of color. These mental pictures have been repeated so often, in connection with the muscular sense of exhilarating motion, that they have become permanently enregistered in brain-cell formation. A review every few months, serves to fix these images more firmly in the brain. This primary course of educative work is continued, by taking up consecutively, in regular order; on a separate series of sheets, life size, naturally colored photographs, of fishes, reptiles, insects, birds, animals, and people. Later, geological specimens, glass, rocks and minerals. To be followed by pictures of life in the vegetable kingdom, flowers, fruits, plants and trees. Again, with photographs of works of art, paintings and statuary. Interspersed with this general course, are short lessons, offered to produce true images, in the hearing, smelling and tasting areas of the brain. First, by repeating at different times, while the cargosita is in motion, with its cargo of infantile passengers, all of the best musical compositions, executed vocally, and on the electric piano, the giant orchestrion, the violin, and a great variety of other musical instruments. These lessons in hearing, are repeated and varied, until the children have become familiar with most of the sounds in the tone scale. The mental sound images produced, have been associated with the happy scenes of this merry kindergarten life. By this interweaving of pleasant sensations, they have become more firmly fixed in a healthy group of brain cells, thus planted and established in the hearing areas of the brain. Second: In a similar manner, the taste sensations and images, are produced and registered. Day after day, one by one, tiny packages of confections, beautifully wrapped in brilliantly colored papers, are given to the children while on their cargosita excursions. These interesting lessons are continued, until the entire range of savors has been exhausted. The curiosity, excitement, pleasure and eagerness exhibited by children, in these tasting investigations, is something surprising. Third: Flowers, beautiful flowers of all kinds, are largely used in producing sensations and images, to be registered in the brain areas of the sense of smell. The essence of odors which cannot be gotten from flowers, are used to saturate small sachet bags, of charming color and artistic design. These bags make attractive play-things for the children. While using them they soon, unconsciously, become very skillful in detecting the slightest differences between the various odors. Brain areas usually left barren, are now filled and developed. Later in life, when children come to study the different sciences, this ability to detect the presence of the slightest odor, becomes invaluable, in the difficult work of classification. With such an unusual equipment, they will be far in advance of those pupils, who have not wisely, left uncultivated this important sense of smelling. In connection with the regular course of exercises, prescribed for third- and fourth-year children, there is introduced in the play and work rooms of the kindergarten, a special training, designed to develop the various sensations of heat and cold: changes in temperature, from one extreme to the other: sensitiveness to touch: to recognize any degree of pressure, from zero to the violence of pain: ability to detect size, length, breadth, and thickness: degrees of smoothness, elasticity, and hardness: all through the senses of touch, pressure, and muscular feeling. Interesting plays are invented for the children, into which, these exercises are skillfully introduced. These plays, have a peculiar fascination. They excite an intense interest, which seems to always attract and hold the child's attention, until there is enregistered, in regular sequence, in the touch areas of the brain, all the sensations and images, which can be produced by many weeks of training, in this systematic course. The training of the senses, is also carried forward through the medium of such plays as are calculated to bring out the child's capacity to distinguish the least noticeable difference, in pitches of color, degrees of light, pitches of sound, with its degrees of volume and loudness; together, with ability to discover the least noticeable difference, in resistance to pressure, or the slightest increase or decrease of rythmical motion, etc. The lines of least noticeable difference, in the capacity of the various senses, having been well established, the training commences along those lines. Very soon, in the brain areas of the senses under training, there comes an increased cell growth, which gives added sharpness and capacity. The line of least noticeable difference, is moved one step nearer the limit. This process is continued with each sense separately, until the limit for all has been reached. As a general result of this training, we find that the child has acquired an extraordinary reinforcement of brain power and intellectual acuteness. Regular kindergarten work, for children at Solaris, between two and four years of age; is again reinforced, by adding to the list of exercises, a large number of plays, which introduce the variously colored, lettered blocks, so successfully used in Fern Fenwick's early training, during her seven years of Alaska life. The collection of blocks, is a very large one. It is calculated to furnish a series of new combinations, which cannot be exhausted, in the plays of one whole year. These blocks are made and colored with the greatest care. The groups or families, are distinguished, by size, shape and color. The Alphabet blocks, are large cubes, painted white, with the letter showing in black on every side. All other blocks, have a uniform thickness of one-half inch. They are as large as can be fashioned from blocks two inches square. The names appear in white letters, on all alike. The astronomy blocks are star shaped, painted blue. The geology blocks are diamond shaped, painted brown. The chemistry blocks are hexagonal in shape, painted red. The geography blocks are globular in shape, painted gray. The blocks representing physics, are octagon shaped, painted yellow. The botany blocks are oblong, painted green. The physiology blocks are triangular in shape, painted pink. The history blocks are square, painted black. A large number of the key-words of the sciences, are painted on blocks, which, in size, shape and color, are counterparts of those that represent the heads of families to which they belong. This scheme of blocks, furnishes the ground work for the construction of a great number of games, for the amusement and edification of the children. Games of word-building, such as spelling out the names of fishes, insects, reptiles, birds and animals. Also of building the names of familiar things, houses, stables, light-houses, factories and mills; rivers, ponds, lakes, mountains, trees and fields; hats, shoes, coats, cloaks and other articles of clothing; common household utensils in every day use, such as pots, kettles, pans, pails, cups, knives, forks and spoons; stove, shovel, tongs, mop and broom; toys, dolls, balls, kites, tops, etc. By the use of many such ingenious games, the children unconsciously become familiar with the names of the sciences, and with all the principal words, which belong to each one. For example: Names of heavenly bodies in the domain of astronomy. The sun, the moon, the milky way, the planets, the constellations, the polar star, and the names of twenty stars of the greatest magnitude: In the domain of geology, fossils, shells, minerals, rocks, shales, clays, gravels, and the names of geological periods: In the domain of chemistry, the names of acids, gases, metals, crucibles, retorts, mortars, and the names of a great variety of chemical combinations: In the domain of geography, globes, hemispheres, continents, islands, oceans, gulfs, bays, and straits; equator, tropics, circles, longitude, latitude, etc. These examples, will furnish an approximate idea of the wide scope in scientific names, covered by these key-words, when applied to all of the sciences. In such plays of science grouping, the interest and pleasure of the children is intensified, by applying a system of personification, to the families of the different sciences: For instance, Mr. Astronomy Blue; Mrs. Geology Brown; Mr. Chemistry Red; Mrs. Geography Gray, etc. In the greatest and most useful of all games, the game of classification: Groups of children, spend hours with their teachers or directors, in separating and classifying, heaps of miscellaneous blocks, bearing the names of the sciences and the key-words belonging thereto. They are silent, absorbed, contented, thoroughly interested and happy. So intense is the interest displayed, that after the fourth or fifth game, every child can correctly classify the blocks, by quickly placing them in the groups to which they belong. They rapidly learn to call the name at sight, which is printed on any block they may happen to pick up. Those who have not learned to read by playing word-building games with the alphabet blocks, only need to have an unfamiliar name, repeated to them three or four times by the director, and it is fixed. Size, shape and color of block, with length of name and shape of its letters, soon serves to make the little ones, perfect masters of the most difficult names. These children have learned the value of time. They have learned to appreciate the joyousness of useful amusement. They have no desire to clog their minds, with the untruthful trash of fairy tales and Mother Goose stories, which played such an important part in nineteenth century methods. They no longer need such silly things, as a source of amusement. They seem to realize, that they only have mind-room, for the truthful, the useful and the practical. The value and significance of figures, is taught by the game of forming the pyramid. On badges of broad, blue ribbon, are printed large gold figures, from one to ten. Inside the oval, in the center of the large room, ten rows of seats are arranged: with one seat in the first, and ten in the last row. That is, one seat is added to each succeeding row. At the commencement of the game, when number one is called by the director, the little boy or girl, who is decorated with the badge bearing that number, takes the first seat, which forms the apex of the pyramid. The two children who wear number two badges; when called take seats in the second row. Observing this order, the calling is continued until the seats are filled, and the pyramid of fifty-five children is complete. The director, having taken a position a short distance in front of the apex of the pyramid, proceeds to call the children to their feet. Calling by number, commencing with the tens, the rows rise in succession, from the base to the apex. Each row is called upon to perform some part of a short series of graceful gymnastics. Then, the whole group in unison. Later, these exercises are made more interesting, by giving each child a small silk flag. In this part of the game, the children are at their best. The picture they make, is just lovely! In the closing part of the game, the children are seated and the mathematical exercises are introduced. The director says: "Each child has one nose. How many noses, have the number tens? Again, each child has one body. How many bodies, have the number nines? Each child has two eyes. How many eyes, have the number eights? Each child has two ears. How many ears, have the number sevens? Each child has one mouth. How many mouths, have the number sixes? Each child has two arms. How many arms, have the number fives? Each child has two hands. How many hands, have the number fours? Each child has two legs. How many legs, have the number threes? Each child has two feet. How many feet, have the number twos? Each child has ten fingers and ten toes. How many fingers and toes, has number one?" These questions are varied and repeated, day after day, until every child in the pyramid, can answer any one of the questions, correctly and promptly. To be chosen as a member of this game, is a coveted honor, it is conferred as a reward for good conduct. Consequently, the pride and pleasure exhibited by these decorated and selected children, is commensurate with the importance of this very primitive class in mathematics and physiology. This very brief outline, of the plays, exercises and studies, which form the nursery and kindergarten course, for children at Solaris, who are under four years of age, will serve to show how much important knowledge, a child can accumulate during those fruitful image-bearing years, while pleasantly and zealously engaged, day after day, in a series of wisely directed games. In playing these games, the children have become interested in, and have learned a very large number of useful words. These words in the mind of the child, are as familiar and as easily remembered, as are the names of favorite toys, such as balls, bats, kites and dolls. This wide vocabulary of key-words which has become the mental property of the child, has planted in the mind the necessary images, which in future years of study, will serve as a sure foundation, for the quick and easy mastery of all branches of useful knowledge. Many a man of the world has gone through life, without acquiring such a vocabulary. Considering this primary course of study from another point of view, we have an illustration of the value of a method for cultivating the faculty of memory, which differs widely from any thing known to ordinary systems of education. From this illustration, we perceive that the perfectness and permanency of memory, is dependent on the foundations which have been laid for it, by the quantity and quality of sensations and images, regarding the things to be remembered, which have been registered or planted in brain-cell formation. These living images, fixed on the sensitive plate of the brain by the law of vibration, in a manner somewhat analogous to etching on the cylinders of a phonograph, are capable of being reproduced by the will-force of the individual. From these premises, we have gained a new definition for the word memory. It is a process of refunctioning or reregistering, any sensation, image, concept, idea, or thought, which at any time has become a part of the growth of the brain. In the child's mind, memories regarding objects or words which have become familiar, are as a rule, closely connected with memories of keen enjoyment, resulting from participation in some childish sport. These memories are many times repeated. A few small groups of brain cells have become dominant in growth, because they have received the full force of the entire stimulating power of the brain. Hence, the memories of childhood, are much more enduring than those of after life. Hence, it becomes a matter of the utmost importance, that these early images, should be connected with the greatest possible number of natural objects, their names, and the key-words of the sciences, which are used to describe them. In these restless years for the little ones, it becomes a matter of great moment, to keep their minds busily employed, at what appeals to their self-consciousness, as some useful work. In this respect, the popular science games, gratify and completely satisfy the pride and dignity of these embryo men and women. The mind is naturally unfolded. The brain areas, are all evenly and harmoniously developed. The children, when so usefully employed, are kept amiable. They do not become nervous, irritable, cross, or vicious. They are taught, as soon as they can walk and talk, that the self-respect and innate dignity, which belongs to them as little men and little women, demands that they should always treat each other lovingly, politely, kindly, unselfishly. It is continually urged upon them, that they must learn to obey the nurse or teacher, without delay, without a murmur; that they must not cry or be fretful; that in these things, they must always strive to imitate the good acts of older comrades or playmates. In this way, the moral unfoldment and education of the child, keeps pace with the intellectual and the physical. Altogether, the effect is most excellent! Thousands of children have gone to ruin, for the want of just such training, in the first four years of life! The planning and final organization, of this novel scheme for nursery and kindergarten training, has been the joint work of Fern Fenwick, Fillmore Flagg, Gertrude and George Gerrish. In striving for the best results, this quartet of co-operative educators, have been ambitious to perfect a system, which would satisfy the demand for a natural, harmonious unfoldment of the well-born babies, which were to represent the highest product of Solaris Farm. The success which has attended the practical operation of the scheme, has made them very happy. Towards this success, Fern Fenwick has been able to contribute largely, on account of her early Alaska training, and her thorough knowledge of the improved methods, growing out of the important discoveries made by Prof. Gates. In applying the system to the class work of the regular schools, the long experience, trained skill and natural aptitude as teachers, of George and Gertrude Gerrish, has proved wonderfully effective. By supplementing the system, with a very complete course of manual training in the use of tools, and in acquiring a competent knowledge of the industrial arts, Fillmore Flagg has been equally successful, in educating the muscular children, and in arming them most effectively, both mentally and physically, for the practical work of life. Altogether, the complete course, results in an all-round development of brain power, more than five times greater than that offered by any other system. A result, which marks the beginning of a new educational era. A result, which promises to give to the world, a dominant race of thinkers, whose ability to bless mankind, is to be so great, that it cannot now be estimated. CHAPTER XXXIX. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. In the month of August, 1911, six years after our first introduction to him, we find our hero, Fillmore Flagg, seated in his private office at Solaris. This office was located in a building on the public square, near the store, which has been especially designed and constructed, for use as the central office for the general co-operative, farm movement. Here, Fillmore Flagg, has been busily engaged for more than two months, in planning the preliminary work for eight new farms. For the moment, he seems absorbed in a dreamy reverie. From this, he was sharply aroused by the entrance of a messenger, who announced a visitor. The visitor proved to be none other, than our old acquaintance, George Gaylord. The greetings, exchanged between these re-united college chums, were cordial indeed! In the conversations which are to follow, the reader will find a continuation of the story of Solaris Farm. "Shades of venus! How well you are looking, Fillmore! I need not ask how you have fared since last we met! One look at your face, tells the whole story! The goddess of good fortune, must have smiled on you right royally! I congratulate you most heartily! The fame of your exploits here at Solaris, has reached New England! What a lovely village you have made! And the farm too, is just delightful! To behold it, is well worth the price of a long journey! Of course, at some convenient time, you are to show me the farm, and tell me all about it." "Thank you George, for your congratulations; You have surmised correctly! I have been prospered, far beyond my most sanguine expectations! At the proper time, I shall take pleasure in relating the whole story for your benefit. Now, I am anxious to hear something regarding yourself. Tell me, my dear fellow! To what piece of good fortune, do I owe this unexpected visit? And, may I hope, that the goddess you just mentioned, has been equally gracious with her smiles for you!" "It is a long story, Fillmore, and I can assure you it is not a pleasant one. It seems a pity to mar your peace of mind by relating such a miserable tale of woe! During the past five years, the unkind fates have frowned upon me, and I have suffered much! In order to give you an intelligent reason for my visit to Solaris, I must tell you of some good, and many bitter things which have transpired, since we parted at the hotel on Mount Meenahga." "Really! George, I am sorry for your misfortunes! But surmising so much from your preparatory statement, I now wish to know all that you can consistently tell me. For the bitterness and suffering, you have my sympathy in advance." "Thank you Fillmore! I knew that I could rely on your sympathy and friendship, under all circumstances. Please pardon any lack of coherence or orderly arrangement of details, in what I am about to relate. "Late in the month of November, which followed our parting in the mountains, in accordance with previous arrangements, I took charge of the church in the New England city, where my uncle George resided. My relations with the members of the congregation, proved as pleasant as could be desired. I became acquainted with Martha Merritt, my uncle's niece by marriage. She was a beautiful girl! Very winning, sweet and amiable. I soon became fond of her company. This seemed to please both my uncle and my mother. I could see that they had set their hearts on a marriage between Martha and myself. "About the middle of the following January, acting on a suggestion from uncle George, I asked Martha for her hand in marriage. After taking a whole week for consideration, she finally consented and we were engaged. Some days later, I urged her to name an early day for our wedding. Very much to my surprise, she said 'You must not hurry me, George! You must give me time!' I hastened to assure her that I did not wish to be inconsiderate, and begged her to take another week, in which to fix the date. During this time, I saw very little of Martha. In the brief interviews that followed, she was pale and agitated. At the end of the week, again her old-time self, she came to me with the news that our wedding day had been fixed for the fifteenth of June, five months distant. "Early in February, the clouds of disaster began to gather. My mother was confined to her bed with what proved to be a serious illness. After four months of almost constant suffering, which she bore with the patience and fortitude of a martyr, she was borne across the dark water, to join that vast majority, that silent, mysterious, ever increasing host of the buried dead. "My mother was buried on the fifteenth of June. Overwhelmed with grief, I readily assented to Martha's suggestion, that our wedding should be postponed until the first of October. Recovering slowly from the shock of my bereavement, I turned eagerly to Martha, for loving consolation. I was horrified, to find that her affection for me had turned to ill-concealed aversion! There was a terror-stricken, haunted look in her eyes, as she strove in every possible way, to avoid being left alone with me even for a moment, which frightened and almost crushed me with grief. I knew that something dreadful, must have happened! She was so pitiful to behold, that I could not be angry or jealous! But, I resolved to know the truth. At the first opportunity, I demanded an explanation. Bursting into tears, she told me the story of her bitter experience. "Falling on her knees beside my chair, Martha implored me to be merciful. 'George,' she said, 'I know that I am the most wretched, and the most desperately wicked girl on the face of the earth! You have been so kind, and I have treated you so shamefully! How, can you ever forgive me? The only reparation that I can now make, is to tell you the whole truth, without reservation. Ten months before I saw you, while I was at school near Boston, I met Phillip Plato. The fates would have it, that we should fall desperately in love with each other, at our first meeting. In a short time we were engaged. In entering into this engagement, I did so without the knowledge of my uncle, or any friend. I did not stop for a moment, to consider my duty to uncle George, who had always been so good to me. I could think of no one but Phillip, and of my love for him. In the delirium of love's first dream, the weeks passed as days! Alas! The dream was passing brief! Somehow, Phillip's parents became aware of our engagement. They were very wealthy, and exceedingly ambitious to have Phillip marry more wealth. Angry with him, they came to me and cruelly declared, that they would never allow him to wed such a fortuneless girl! With look and gesture of scorn, they told me that they were just on the eve of going abroad, taking Phillip for two years of travel, in which they should strive to cure him completely of his insane infatuation. This, then was the end of my romance. My cruelly wounded pride, rose up in rebellion. I was furious! I returned scorn for scorn! I bade them begone! "'I returned to my uncle's home, my heart hot with the indignation of an outraged pride, and filled with a determination, to show to the world no sign, but to use all my strength of will, to cast Phillip out of my life; to utterly forget him and his selfish, greedy, heartless parents. When you came, George, I was more anxious than ever before, to please my uncle in every possible way. I foolishly imagined, that in encouraging your attentions as a lover, I was helping myself, to forget my love for Phillip. Oh! What a terrible, cruel mistake! How terrible, how cruel, I was soon to realize. You will remember, George, how strangely I behaved at that interview, in which you asked me to fix the day for our wedding. Let me explain. A few hours previous, while I was lost in one of my occasional fits of melancholy moping, the voice of Phillip came to my ears with startling distinctness. The voice said Martha, you must remain true to me! I love you as devotedly as ever! I am determined, never to give you up! I am coming home to wed you! I am surely coming! Wait for me! These words kept ringing in my ears, like the tolling of a funeral bell. They thrilled me through and through! The barriers of my pride gave way. The returning tide of my love for Phillip, swept in upon me with such force, that my heart almost ceased to beat! I was faint, deadly faint! When I recovered consciousness and afterwards, at our interview, I was absolutely wretched! Your request, added to my anguish. I was powerless to answer, I could only beg for more time. All through that dreadful week, I strove to convince myself that my ears had deceived me, that the voice was not real, only a phasma, a hallucination, born of my fits of melancholy. Unfortunately, I finally succeeded! "'Now, George, you shall hear the sequel, the climax of my wretchedness. The day before your mother died, I received a long letter from Phillip. It was written at Rome. Every line of that letter, was eloquent with Phillip's steadfast devotion, and love for me. In brief, a complete verification of what the warning voice had told me. His parents had relented. He was coming home to make me his bride. He had planned to arrive at Boston, in time to celebrate the New Year. He spoke of a long letter, which he had written to me, just on the eve of his going abroad. In that letter he had assured me of his undying love, of his determination never to give me up. In closing, he had begged me to wait for him, to remain true to him. He had repeated its contents, because he had been constantly haunted with the idea that the letter in question, had failed to reach me. And so it had. "'This, George, is the summing up of my misery! It has filled my heart with the anguish of despair! I can never love anyone but Phillip! I cannot marry you, George! I cannot! It would be an unpardonable sin against you, against my own soul! What shall I do? What can I do? What atonement can I ever make, for the shame, the humiliation, the suffering, which I have brought into your life?' "In this brief sketch, Fillmore, you have the substance of Martha's sad story. I believe it was absolutely true. I was deeply moved, by her abject misery and humiliation. A great wave of tender sympathy, swelled in my heart; blotting out all thoughts of self. I gave her back her engagement, and bade her go free; free to marry whomsoever her heart had chosen; assured of my forgiveness, and of my wish for her future happiness. I need not repeat her grateful thanks. From this time forward, our lives were widely separated. "During the long tedious months that followed, I was going through a bitter, humiliating experience. I strove by every effort to so interest myself in my church work, that I might forget my griefs and my disappointments. In this, I failed utterly. I found to my amazement, that I did not possess a thorough belief or confidence, in the efficacy of the atonement, the very ground work of the entire scheme of Christian salvation. Without this belief, I could not hope to do effective work in the ministry. No doubt, this was the cause of my lack of interest in my pastoral duties; the one thing, during this time of trials, which most disturbed my mental equilibrium, and added to the intensity of my sufferings. My growing antipathy towards all kinds of church work, daily increased the mental tension, caused by anxious seasons of watching, praying, and fighting, against the farther dominancy of this monstrous antipathy. All opposing efforts proved useless. With each succeeding week, my Sunday services became more burdensome, more perfunctory, more unsatisfactory, more self-accusing. At last, in self defense, the church trustees proposed my taking a year's vacation, for recuperation. "This welcome respite, I gladly accepted. My vacation, is now nearly finished. I cannot go back to my church. I do not wish to go. I realize, that I am wholly unfitted for its duties. I feel, that I have made life a failure! In fact, Fillmore, you see before you in your friend George Gaylord, a man who is aimlessly drifting on the sea of life, like a ship without a rudder. A man not yet thirty, without a home, without ambition, hope or purpose! Possibly, I may be in the clutches of some approaching attack of nervous prostration, I hope not, I am sure! "You must pardon my prolixity, Fillmore. I will now give you the reason for my present visit to Solaris. After my mother became very ill, some weeks before her death, she received a letter from Caroline Houghton, a life long friend, an old schoolmate. At that time, Mrs. Houghton was residing in a small town near Denver, Colorado. She was a widow with scant means of support; with only one child, a daughter. Mrs. Houghton, in her letter, said: 'I am dying among strangers! I am leaving my darling daughter alone in the world, without money, without relatives; simply in charge of recently acquired friends. As a last request, I beg you, after I am gone to exercise a protecting care over my orphaned child!' "This letter worried my mother greatly. I think if she had been well, she would have hurried to Mrs. Houghton's bedside. After some delay, she finally turned the letter over to me to answer. Just at that time, my mind was wholly preoccupied with preparations for my fast approaching wedding day; and also, with the adjustment of a number of important church matters, which demanded my immediate attention. Without taking time to read the letter, without realizing its importance, or its urgency; I mechanically placed it in my desk, thinking meanwhile, that when the time came in which I could pen a reply, I would then confer with mother for further instructions. Unfortunately, the letter became misplaced and all memory of its existence, passed out of my mind! "One month ago, while busily engaged in assorting and rearranging a confusing mass of papers, I found the lost letter. After reading it carefully, I became conscience-smitten, as I thought what serious results might have followed my criminal negligence. I then commenced a search for this young lady, which has finally lead me to Solaris. I have traced her here, as a member of your colony. Her name is Honora Eloise Houghton. Do you know her, Fillmore! Is she here?" "Make yourself perfectly easy, friend Gaylord! She is here! She is all right! Miss Houghton does not need your protecting care, or the protecting care of anyone. She is abundantly able to take good care of herself and of plenty of other people besides! She can dissipate your troubles in a jiffy! She can give you something to think of, which will not fail to hold your close attention. She can soon find a work for you, in which you will be interested in spite of yourself! In fact George, Honora Eloise Houghton, is one of the brightest, most independent, capable, self-poised, self-supporting young women at Solaris! If she should kindly consent to take you under the brooding care of her protecting wing, in one month's time you would not know yourself, you would be transformed into a new man! But, Miss Houghton is a very busy woman. One of the most useful on the farm! Just at present, she is the leading director of the nursery and kindergarten school; the principal female teacher, in the gymnasium; the president of the dancing club; the secretary and treasurer of the physiology club; and vice-president of the botany, chemistry and history clubs. After faithfully performing the duties belonging to these offices, she still finds time to do a great amount of scientific research and reading; so much, that last year, she easily carried off the prize, which was awarded to the best qualified, scientific student among the young ladies at Solaris." "Stop, Fillmore! You grieve and astonish me! You surely must be jesting, in dishing up this long rigmarole, about Miss Houghton's accomplishments! After what I have told you, I cannot conceive how you can fail to understand, that I am not in a mood for jesting. As for the girl, I very much desire to meet her, that I may have an opportunity to express the regrets and apologies for my unfortunate neglect of her mother's letter, to which she is so justly entitled. This painful duty once performed, my interest in Miss Houghton will cease." "I assure you, George, I am not jesting! I am very much in earnest! I think I understand your case thoroughly. I know that you do not realize the seriousness of that paralyzing, apathetic condition, into which you have fallen. I do not think you need condolence, or any form of mild sympathetic treatment. I am sure you do need very much, to be aroused by new associations, scenes, friends and acquaintances; strong magnetic people, with ideas so radical, so startling, that by one quick wrench, your line of thought may be diverted into some entirely new channel. If therefore, in my talk to you about Miss Houghton, I have succeeded in arousing your indignation, in the slightest degree, I shall be encouraged by knowing that my efforts for your good, have been made in the right direction." "Pardon me, Fillmore! I fear I have been hasty! And, that I have entirely misjudged your motive! I am now in a much better frame of mind, to listen attentively to what you have to say." "That sounds much more reasonable, George. I will now return to my description of Miss Houghton, which was broken off by your interruption. For the reasons I have just stated, I believe that Miss Houghton, is the one individual in a thousand, whose acquaintance just at present, would prove most beneficial for you. Of course you have not seen her, you do not know her; therefore, you cannot appreciate the peculiar charm of her magnetic presence, or the force and dignity of her attractive character. For this reason, a personal description, will fail to give you an adequate idea of the noble type of womanhood which she represents. "However, George, after these preliminary remarks, I hasten to assure you, that as a woman, Honora Eloise Houghton, is a goodly person to behold. One inch less than six feet in height, straight as an arrow, broad of shoulder, and round of limb, swift of hand and foot, lithe and willowy in every motion, her commanding figure possesses the grace and beauty, of a Venus and a Diana combined. Her large, full, well turned neck and throat, fittingly supports a symmetrical, well poised head, of the same noble proportions. A long, thick, luxuriant growth of golden hair, brilliant with changing hues of a coppery tinge, seemingly so surcharged with electro-magnetic force, as to form a halo of sunshine around both face and head, is her chief personal adornment. Her large, oval face, well formed mouth, strong white teeth, firm chin, finely arched, strongly defined brows, broad, smooth forehead, and straight grecian nose; all denote a character of marked type and unusual force. Full, clear, gray eyes, set well apart, beautifully and mirthfully expressive, together, with a bright, ruddy complexion, are both indicative of Miss Houghton's perfect health and strong, vital, nervous-sanguine temperament. With this temperament and such a magnificent physique, reinforced by wonderful psychic powers, she is an ideal healing medium. The very personification of health! Such is the potency of her magnetic force, that among the people of Solaris, cures performed by the simple process of laying on of hands, have made her the marvel of the village; they have won for her the confidence, respect, admiration and love, of every member of the colony; man, woman or child. "In conclusion, George, I may say with pride, that Miss Houghton represents one of the noblest of women, which may be discovered, evolved or grown by the co-operative farm. As an exponent of what the movement can do for woman, she is a shining example, of which our people may well be proud! "Try to be patient with me, George! I have described this young lady, at such length, in order that you may meet her without prejudice. We will now go in search of Miss Houghton, for an interview. After introducing you, I will return here. When the interview is at an end, I will have my light, road mobile ready, and we will take a spin around the farm. Afterwards, if there should be time, we will take a run over to Fenwick, ten miles away." "That arrangement will suit me very well, Fillmore! I am now quite curious to meet Miss Houghton. After my interview with her is concluded, I shall be delighted to accompany you on a mobile excursion over the farm. I have in mind a host of questions, which I wish to ask; after my tour of inspection, I am sure I can frame them more intelligently." Four days later, we find George Gaylord, again seated in the office with Fillmore Flagg. They are speaking of things which have transpired, during the interval named. "You are looking decidedly better, to-day, George! I congratulate you! After the fright you gave me, while at the club dance, that evening after your arrival at Solaris, I thought you were ticketed for a long, serious illness." "Really, Fillmore, I have Miss Houghton to thank for being able to again walk and talk with some degree of steadiness! She is truly, the most marvelous woman, that I have ever met! There seems to be a healing power in the very touch of her garments! I feel quite sure, that she has saved my life. I ought to apologize to the members of the dancing club, for the very awkward sensation, which must have followed my unfortunate collapse; that sudden attack of giddiness and loss of consciousness. Miss Houghton tells me, that the attack lasted over an hour, after I had been placed on a cot in the hospital. Were you there, Fillmore?" "What a question, George! Of course I was there! That one hour, seemed three to me. Knowing something of your critical condition, I was blaming myself, for having foolishly attempted to crowd so much into your first day's experience at Solaris. However, Miss Houghton assured me, that I need not be alarmed over the trance-like condition, into which you had fallen. She seemed to understand your case from the first, and declared that she could cure you with a few days' treatment. She further stated for my benefit, that I was in no wise responsible for the attack of vertigo, which in your condition, was liable to occur at any time. "So far as the dancing club people are concerned, no apologies on your part are needed. They understand the circumstances, and wish me to assure you, that they will rejoice with you over your speedy recovery. It seems, George, that your physician prescribes plenty of fresh air and sunshine for you, during the next few days. Do you think you are strong enough to-day, for another mobile excursion over the farm?" "Yes Fillmore, quite strong enough, provided the excursion is not too long. To-morrow, if the weather should be fine, I hope we may be able to take that trip to Fenwick, which you spoke of on the afternoon of my arrival. The more I see of the farm, the more I am interested and delighted. In a very short time, I believe I might become an enthusiast on the agricultural question. Hitherto, I have had an unexpressed antipathy, towards farm work. "Strongly impressed with the idea, that a farm life must necessarily, be as dull as ditch water; I find Solaris a revelation, which has opened my eyes and scattered my foolish prejudices to the four winds. At every turn, some new surprise awaits me. My typical farmer, with his shock of untrimmed hair and beard, his stooping shoulders, his shambling, plow-following gait, his great cow-hide boots, his coarse, soiled, slouchy, ill-fitting blouse and overalls, his grimy hands, his ill-at-ease, uncultured manners, and his born-tired expression of countenance, I cannot find. In his place, much to my astonishment, I do find a splendid people, in the prime of life, lithe, active and energetic, in the possession of a superabundance of vitality, which gives them the graceful air of having grown to a perfect maturity, on the sunny side of life. What does it mean? Everywhere, I am politely greeted, by dignified, graceful, self-poised, rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed, happy, well-dressed, educated, refined and polished men and women. Can it be possible, that they are farm laborers?" "Every one, friend Gaylord! It is to rightly organized farm labor, properly supplemented by appropriate machinery, that these people owe the superior condition in which you find them." "You have surely created a new era in farming, Fillmore! Do you think a general introduction of co-operative farming, will produce equally successful results elsewhere?" "Much better and more satisfactory, George! Co-operative farming, even here at Solaris, has as yet scarcely passed the threshold of the experimental stage. Every new farm, will profit by the errors and successes of those previously established. Each one will add to the strength and working capacity of the mass. This improvement will steadily increase, until the children born under the new system, become its principal working factors. When that time arrives, the influence of the born and bred agriculturalists, will have grown so strong, socially and politically, that a new impetus will be given to the movement, by the favorable legislation which they can then command. "When we consider the future of the co-operative farm, as a working factor for good, in the affairs of the Republic; we can then appreciate the great importance of the movement. Stirpiculture, wedded to agriculture, ushers in a new era for the birth and education of an epoch-making race of dominant thinkers, so well born, so self-poised, so harmoniously developed, physically, intellectually, and spiritually, that without effort, they are naturally chosen by the masses, as social and political leaders." "What an enthusiastic dreamer you are, Fillmore! The picture of the future of the movement, which you have so graphically drawn, seems too good to be true! My brain is in a whirl trying to follow you! Let us now prepare for that promised ride." CHAPTER XL. THE COMING ERA OF GOOD ROADS. "Since our mobile excursion to the farm village of Fenwick, I have been haunted by the beauty, smoothness, utility and durability, of the magnificent highway, which now connects the two villages. I am more than ever impressed with the power of the co-operative movement, to effect a revolution in all industrial methods; especially, in travel and the transportation of farm products. Tell me, Fillmore! Do you think this road-building fever, will continue to spread with the growth of the movement?" "Yes, George, with every new road, will come an added impetus to the movement, which will insure a steady progress. The importance of good roads as a source of wealth, and a mark of civilization, is just beginning to be understood by agricultural people, and by rural populations generally. Oppressed on every hand by the universal extortion of railroad monopoly, they are slowly awakening to a realization of the fact, that the question of cheap transportation, is for them, the one, overshadowing question, which demands immediate attention. "As an object lesson on the subject of good roads, the introduction, and constantly increasing use, of bicycles, motor cycles, motor freight wagons, automobiles, electro mobiles, locomobiles, and the entire class of vehicles equipped with rubber tires, has aroused a widespread interest, which is prophetic of great results. Acting as a strong reinforcement to this educational work, the co-operative farm, with the advantage of its village organization, representing in the public mind, such an attractive combination of agricultural, industrial and social life; will by the force of example, give an additional impetus to the systematic construction of broad, permanent highways; that shall prove a source of pride, to the community through which they pass; roads, that shall last for centuries. "Reacting favorably, in broadening the mission of the co-operative farm-village, with its promise of permanent homes, and employment for the unemployed, and the homeless; the continuous construction of these free avenues of travel and transportation, will soon affect the status of all rural populations, by vastly increasing their wealth and power. For them, the vexed problem of transportation, will be solved. They will discover by actual experience, that these wide, durable wagon roads, will connect them with distant centers of traffic, and serve them better and more honestly, than steam railroads; that in cost of construction and repair, they are much cheaper; that when constructed, they belong to the people as absolutely, free highways; that no greedy corporation, can control them; that no threatening, irritating, lawless force, of Pinkerton's armed thugs, is required to protect them; and finally, that they offer every inducement to unfettered genius, to invent and to freely exploit, better and cheaper vehicles. "As one grand result of this combined educational work, rural life will become exceedingly desirable and charming. The great city, will lose its attractive force. The tide of migration, will flow back to the pure air, invigorating sunshine, blue sky, and the verdure-clad hills of the country. In a general way, we may predict, that a few years hence, everywhere throughout this broad land, we shall find picturesque, prosperous, well populated villages. As the minor centers of education, art-culture, refinement, amusement, progressive race-culture, scientific agriculture, esthetic, social and co-operative life; they will be embroidered, like a vast net-work of shining pearls, on a perfect system of broad, smooth, highways. In their construction, ornamentation and maintenance, these good roads will utilize and express, the pride, energy and best inventive genius, of the village centers thus linked together. As a result, the Republic will be gridironed with a superb system of free highways, more permanent, more perfect, and more beautiful, than those old, historic, Roman roads, which even now are existing monuments to the solid character of Roman civilization. "This imperial road system will be complete, when the co-operative farm has reached every township in the union. Then, we may calculate the results, which are to follow. Broad, tree-shaded, park-lined, flower-bordered boulevards, will connect New York with San Francisco; Galveston with Saint Paul; Portland, Maine, with Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles with Saint Louis; Boston with Buffalo, Philadelphia, and Baltimore with Jacksonville, Florida; New Orleans with Cincinnati and Chicago; the wonders of Yellowstone Park, with the crags and glens of the White Mountains, Niagara Falls, with the Grand Canon of the Colorado; the orange groves of Florida and California, with the picturesque, cool, invigorating, health resorts of Lake Superior; the wheat fields of the great Northwest, with the coal mines of Pennsylvania; Washington, the nation's capital, with every seaside resort, every mountain view, every beautiful city, every healing spring, and every hamlet and village of the Republic. "Pulsing with a new tide of social and industrial life, flowing through the arteries of this unequaled system of great highways; all of these places, both great and small, will become more closely bound together, by the links of a new social order; representing the beginning of a higher civilization. Then, these beautiful highways, will be glorified and appreciated by mankind, as the monumental work of one, broad system, of co-operative farm villages. Then, these villages, which have made such a system possible, may collectively claim the proud distinction, of being known as the Nation's Committee on Good Roads." "Excellent! Most excellent! Fillmore. Your prophetic vision, with the vastness and the brilliancy of its sweeping scope, fairly takes my breath! Yet, I must confess, that judging from the masterly system of road-building inaugurated by Solaris and Fenwick, the evolutionary results which you so confidently predict, are both reasonable and logical. What additional results, do you claim for the system?" "At this time, George, neither tongue nor pen, may attempt to describe the marvelous results which will follow the introduction of an era of good roads. In a brief way, I will try to give a few of the most important. In the matter of travel and transportation, these free highways, will annually, save millions of dollars to citizens of the Republic, by enabling them to escape from the clutches of the largest and most powerful of all monopolies; the railway monopoly. A monopoly, that for many years, has held the public by the throat; exacting a tariff so exorbitant, as to be almost prohibitory. A monopoly, which has had the amazing gall to pose as the farmer's especial benefactor. A monopoly, that while so posing, has robbed the country of one-half its wealth, by transferring the same to cities. A monopoly, that in the name of good business, has had the stupidity to decree through its tariff schedule, that miles and miles of empty freight cars, shall daily, throughout the land, roll past hundreds of thousands of farms, where countless tons of heavy freight, in the way of fresh vegetables, lie rotting for the want of a market. A monopoly, that never neglects an opportunity for fleecing the public. A monopoly, so unscrupulous, that for the pork trust, it will haul a hog across the continent for ninety cents; while for indifferent service, it dares to charge the people, from two and one-half, to five cents per mile. "And yet, George, just think of it! In the beginning, this monopoly was chartered to serve the people who granted the franchise. A monopoly, now grown so bold, that when the public protests that the franchise is violated, because the interests of the people are no longer served; a Vanderbilt railroad king, insolently replies: 'The public be damned!' A monopoly that has killed all healthy competition, by organizing all railroads into one giant pool; thereby creating the mother of trusts, controlling a corruption fund of enormous magnitude. A monopolistic trust, grown so rich and powerful, as to be beyond the reach of law; boldly corrupting courts, buying legislators, and turning the administration of justice into a farce. In fact, this monstrous combine, has become so dangerous to every interest of good government, that the law of self-preservation demands that it shall be speedily wiped out, by the government ownership of all railroads. "We may now consider the ways and means, by which our co-operative system of good roads, can control railroad freights, and finally drive railroads to government ownership. Long before the close of the first half of the twentieth century, thousands of miles of these fine wagon roads, will be found in every State. Responding to the demands of legions of voters, who reside in the co-operative farm villages bordering these charming highways; a strong force of legislators, will everywhere rise up, as eloquent advocates of the good roads movement. Honest and faithful, inspired by a tenacity of purpose which will brook no opposition from railroad lobbies; encouraged and strengthened, by an ever increasing army of enthusiastic voters behind them, these tireless legislators will not halt, until the entire system of good roads, so well begun by the farm villages, shall be taken up, completed, and perfected by the State. Ten years of such forceful work, will surely accomplish the task. "Then, to the champions of the system, shall come their reward. They shall behold, flowing in mighty streams, over the wide, petroleum treated, dustless surfaces, of these far-reaching, absolutely free highways, the traffic and travel of a mighty Republic! "Then, will come the demonstration of what American genius can do, toward the evolution of a superior class of rubber tired, horseless vehicles, which shall prove the best, cheapest and most durable, for purposes of freight, traffic, and travel, on such a complete system of fine roads. The best of our present types, when compared with these twentieth century road flyers and freight rollers, will seem poor, crude affairs. The irresistible volume of this swift stream of the new travel, and the new transportation, eloquent with the progress of the century, will herald the coming of a well-merited doom for the monopolistic railroad combines. "Then, local travel and traffic, will make haste to desert the iron rails. Railroad freights everywhere, will fall to zero. Short railroads--branches and feeders to main lines--will become useless and worthless. Many of them will be sold at auction, for less than the cost of the iron in the road-bed. "Then, shorn of their ill-gotten gains, the mighty railroad kings of the land, will fall from their tall pedestals of pride, where for years, they have posed as owners of the earth. With financial ruin staring them in the face, they, and the whole brood of erstwhile railroad kings, will make urgent haste to sell to the government, at the bare cost of construction, such great through lines as may be necessary to maintain inter-state commerce, and across-the-continent traffic. Other roads, they may not sell at any price. A government for the people, and by the people, will have no further use for them. "Then at last, the supreme folly of having a half-dozen competing lines, running side by side through the same territory, will be fully demonstrated. With this demonstration, will come the opportunity, to scores of paid press writers, pessimistic bigots, self-conceited, unprogressive wiseacres, who have so long and so loudly derided the government ownership of railroads, as the most suicidal and unbusiness like scheme ever hatched; to answer this pertinent question: Would it be possible, for government engineers building public railroads, to ever be guilty of such monumental stupidity? "The social effect of these good roads, on the lives of all agricultural people, will prove even more important than the financial advantages gained. Hitherto, they have been so hampered by environments, by lack of means, and lack of leisure, that as a class they have been unable to enjoy or to appreciate the wonderful, the educational, the broadening and the refining effect of much travel, on the mind of the individual. From lack of experience, they do not realize that the sum of human life is the sum of its sensations, which are produced by change of environment, contact with a larger or lesser series of natural phenomena, and more especially with other lives. "The more progressive lessons of life, are learned from example and not from precept. Men and women, are only children of a larger growth, they are imitative creatures with a natural instinct to choose other, higher, and better lives as models. Hence the great value of travel as an educator. The larger the area covered by the traveler, the wider the field of experience and choice. Through the law of action and reaction, social contact with a multitude of actors and thinkers, refines the individual. A healthy spirit of emulation is aroused, which leads on to progress. "With the advent of a universal system of good roads, cheap travel, and a dominant combination of co-operative, industrial and agricultural enterprise, an extraordinary era of recreation and travel, will dawn for all rural people. Opportunity, leisure, and means will be abundant. All co-operative workers, can afford to take an annual vacation of at least one month. The ownership of a swift, roomy, durable, road machine, capable of making from twenty to thirty-five miles an hour, will be within the means of every family. In this private car, the family, or a select party, could easily and leisurely accomplish a five thousand mile tour in twenty days. Along the whole distance, farm villages, from fifteen to twenty minutes apart, would offer the travelers, machine supplies, repairs, and excellent hotel accommodations, for an expense not in excess of the same at home. Than this, no traveling excursion could be more delightful! For pure enjoyment, a select party of nineteenth century millionaires, could not equal it. "The enjoyment of such delightful opportunities for even a single decade, would make the rank and file of the republic thoroughly acquainted, with the soil, scenery, forests, lakes and rivers; the mining and manufacturing possibilities; the peculiar characteristics of the people, their local ambitions, political wants and future demands, of every state and county in the union. "Thus equipped with this important knowledge, each voter, both men and women alike, would be prepared at any time to vote intelligently and wisely, on every question affecting the welfare of the republic as a whole, or in part. Elected to Congress, these voters would appear as the ablest, most patriotic, most just, and most incorruptible body of law-makers ever known. Understanding the equities of righteous dealing between themselves as fellow citizens, they would be prepared to decide correctly on all questions of an international character, which might affect the interests of the world at large. This would be a demonstration of the rule, as to the formation of a true republic. To make the entire political fabric both enduring and progressive, the units or voters, must be well born and rightly trained. Of this training, travel is an essential part, which should not, which must not be overlooked. "As affecting their social and intellectual progress, these years of travel would improve all classes of agricultural and industrial people, to a still higher degree than the one achieved in political expression. A general interest would be aroused in questions of political economy, race culture, psychology, and physiology; geology, geography and history, botany, chemistry, and mineralogy; which later, would lead to close reading and hard study in the whole domain of scientific research, as the one sure method of increasing the scope of individual happiness. Every succeeding year of this travel-training, would result in binding all classes still more firmly together, into one harmonious, homogeneous mass. Now George, tell me what you think of the good-roads question! Is it not one affecting the vital interests of humanity to a marvelous extent?" "Marvelous, Fillmore! Most marvelous! Hereafter, you can count on me as an enthusiastic advocate. I cannot say too much in its favor." CHAPTER XLI. CO-OPERATIVE ETHICS. "Speaking of wages," said George Gaylord, "did I understand you to say, that all of the co-operators at Solaris receive the same pay?" "Yes, George, equal wages for all classes of workers, is the motto at Solaris. Recognizing the solidarity of the interests of society, simple justice demands the same rate of pay for each member of the company; without regard to sex, or particular qualification." "It seems to me, Fillmore, that justice would demand that each one should be paid according to skill and capacity. I cannot understand, how anyone capable of being a foreman, would be content to accept, as a just equivalent for his services, a compensation as low as that awarded to the least capable worker in the colony." "I think I shall be able to convince you, George, that a correct view of this question, is largely a matter of education. You have, perhaps unconsciously, voiced the usual argument against the equity of equality, which is made by the champions of the competitive system. Our people have learned from experience, that the co-operative farm movement is a leveling up process, which purposes to raise the weaker units, to the condition of the higher. They have learned, that society is a purely co-operative institution. They have learned, that the wants of society, create value for the products of labor. Society, then, is labor's market. In this market, the wants of the weaker units, are just as important, as are those of the stronger. Stimulated by the number and variety of these wants, inventive genius has given to us tools and machinery, which have increased, at least one hundred fold, the capacity of labor to produce. In the creation of tools and machinery, the mental acuteness and inventive skill of the weaker unit, often surpasses that of the stronger. It follows, then, that each one of the weaker units, is justly entitled to an equal share of the advantages which are conferred on labor by society, with its market and equipment of tools and machinery. These advantages, make the productive work of all classes, nearly equal. Let us try to find the real difference, between the daily labor products of the strongest and the weakest workers. Let us consider present conditions here at Solaris, as an illustration. Let us take one hundred dollars, as the value of the product of one day's labor, by an average person, plus the advantage of such superior social organization, training, tools and equipment, as Solaris can now furnish. On the other hand, let us take fifty cents, as the value of one day's labor, by the strongest, most capable worker, when isolated from his fellows, and from all social organization, with its tools and equipment. Under the circumstances, allowing that the strongest could produce twice as much as the weakest, we should have twenty-five cents, as the value of the daily product of the weakest worker. These sums, compared with one hundred dollars, would give us the exact difference between the strongest and the weakest, under the favorable co-operative conditions, existing at Solaris. A difference, so trifling as to be scarcely worthy of consideration, only one-fourth of one per cent. What think you, George! Where now is the injustice of equal wages? Remember, when justice is done, the mission of charity is finished!" "Your clear statement of the case, has proved a revelation to me, Fillmore! I am quite ready to acknowledge the exact justice, of your co-operative system of equal wages. I am profoundly impressed with the soundness of your argument, that women and all weaker units in the army of labor, are justly entitled to an equal share of the advantages conferred on labor, by social organization, and by the education, training and equipment, resulting from that organization. This view of the question, is a new one to me. It places the whole subject, in quite a different light. By the aid of this light, I am beginning to understand something of the intricacy and force, of this co-operative machine, which we call society; and how much it affects the question of labor and wages. "My experience with co-operative farming here at Solaris, is beginning to bear fruit. Under your instruction, friend Flagg, I think I can now understand the wide difference, between the competitive and the co-operative systems of organized labor. The former, benefits the few at the expense of the many. The latter, raises the individual, by benefiting the mass. The first, seems to be a constant menace, which threatens the peace, welfare and stability of society; clearly making for evil. The second, striving for the interests of all, builds up, strengthens and purifies the weaker units; unmistakably making for good. The results seem to marshal themselves on the side of co-operation, for the purpose of demonstrating the truth of its shibboleth, that the injury or weakness of one, is the concern of all. In other words, to raise the lower strata of society, means a corresponding elevation for the upper. The average morality, happiness and prosperity of society, is measured by the morality, happiness and prosperity of its weaker units. Tell me, Fillmore, does the acceptance and advocacy of this view of the relations existing between labor and society, make one a socialist?" "They surely do, George! They make you a socialist of the most progressive type. I am both surprised and delighted, to find how well you have learned the lesson of co-operation." "If the co-operators at Solaris, are socialists, then they must be good people. I am perfectly willing to be classed with them. At all events, I am a thorough convert to the co-operative system. I can now understand the scope and significance of the work; and why it is, that the Solaris workers, are so much superior to any farm people I have ever known. I begin to perceive that the success of the co-operative farm, means the regeneration of society. "This morning, Fillmore, under the guidance of Miss Houghton, I visited the kindergarten, the schools, the club rooms and the theatre. I was amazed, to find such a magnificent system of education and amusement, in successful operation, for the benefit of a farm village. Indeed! A city of fifty thousand people, would be very fortunate, in the possession of such a fine one! How did you manage to make it possible?" "In carrying out the wise plans of Fennimore Fenwick, you behold to-day, the result of combined co-operative agriculture and stirpiculture, which affords to our people, and to their children, conditions for education and amusement, fully equal to anything, money can procure for the wealthy. Children born at Solaris, under carefully prepared conditions for a perfect motherhood, are endowed with a precious birth-right, far superior to anything heretofore known to heirs of wealth. The system is being constantly improved. As it now stands, I consider it the crowning success of the co-operative movement. "Speaking of Miss Houghton, George, reminds me of a question! You have yet to tell me, the result of your first interview with her. Did she seem to blame you so very much, for not answering her mother's letter?" "Oh! no! She was kindness personified. She hastened to assure me that, in the light of subsequent events, she came to understand the whole situation. It appears, that after writing the letter in question, her mother grew very much better. In this improved state, she lingered for some time, and did not die until several weeks after Miss Houghton had read to her, the notice of my mother's death, which came to them through the columns of an occasional New England newspaper. "Having answered your question, Fillmore, I will now return to the subject of my visit to the schools. The interest manifested by both children and teachers is something to be proud of. The amount of general information of a practical character, which the pupils have acquired, even in the lower classes, is quite surprising. This is especially noticeable, in the ready knowledge they display, regarding current political events; including the personal history, character and ability, of the various political leaders. Is it wise, to devote so much time to teaching politics; and to commence this teaching with children so young? Do you really consider it so very important?" "Yes, George, it is a matter of the utmost importance! A republic of ignorant people, is a republic only in name; in reality, it is an oligarchy. On the contrary, a true republic, is one in which all its units or voters, are so educated, that they are familiar with the theory and practice of government. They must know that true government is a co-operative institution, which must guard and protect with exact justice, the interests of all of the governed. They must know, the extent and condition of the agricultural, manufacturing, commercial, mineral and lumbering resources of the country. They should understand diplomatic, domestic and foreign relations. They should know every detail, of the educational, financial and political wants of the masses, in the domain of each State or Territory. Finally, they must be familiar with the character, trustworthiness and ability, of all political leaders. Children of the co-operative farm, are educated and trained, in a manner that will best fit them to become true citizens of such a republic. This is why, a practical, political education, to be successful, must become a matter of interest to the children while they are young. They will then learn, that a true republic, is a co-operative machine, which cannot run smoothly, while one imperfect cog remains to retard the action of its wheels. This valuable lesson, they cannot learn too soon. What think you, friend Gaylord?" "I cannot quite agree with you in this matter, Fillmore! I think it would be far wiser, while they are so young, to teach these children such lessons as will give them the ground work for a sound religious faith. Then they will understand the first importance, of being prepared to save their own souls. Later, in the closing school years, they could be taught your progressive, political scheme, which I think is a remarkably good one." "Stop one moment, George! I see Miss Houghton is coming. She will be delighted with an opportunity to answer some of your objections, to the co-operative code of ethics, evolved by the people of Solaris." "You are a welcome visitor, Miss Houghton! You have arrived, just in the nick of time! Our mutual friend here, Mr. Gaylord, has been telling me of his visit to our schools, under your guidance. While he praises the wonderful progress made by the pupils; he seems to think, that we teach too much politics and too little religion." "Pardon me, Miss Houghton!" said George Gaylord, "I assure you, that I was not indulging the spirit of fault finding! Allow me to explain! I had reached a point in our discussion, where I was about to remark, that since Adam's time, the people of the world have been born, heirs to the dominancy of total depravity. With this heritage, we are as prone to sin, as are the sparks to fly upward. Under such circumstances, it would surely be the height of folly, to attempt to overcome this natural tendency toward evil, without the aid of the strong arm of the church, with its broad mantle of christian faith and saving grace." "I grant you, Mr. Gaylord, that with your peculiar training, such a conclusion would be quite natural." "Now, Mr. Flagg! I have a word for you! We must make every allowance, for Mr. Gaylord's theological education. An education, that has filled his mind with somewhat distorted meanings, for the terms, religious faith, soul, sin, salvation, religion, total depravity and many others of a similar import, which theology has applied to man's spiritual welfare. Just at present, the difference between us, is wholly a matter of definition. When we have acquired a true meaning for these disputed terms, we shall stand harmoniously on a common ground. We shall then be ready to accept the higher teachings of the new religion. A religion of spiritual evolution and unfoldment, which responds to the progress of the twentieth century." "You are quite right, Miss Houghton! I am very willing to make the generous allowance you suggest. I think Mr. Gaylord would be glad to hear your views, regarding the practical teachings of the new religion." "Thank you, Fillmore!" said George Gaylord, "you have voiced a request, I was about to make. I trust Miss Houghton, will proceed at once. I will promise to be a listener, who is both interested and attentive." "I will promise one thing, Mr. Gaylord. It is this, before I have finished, I shall do my best, to convince you, that in embracing the new religion, the people of Solaris have devoted themselves to a system of religious teaching, which is far too broad for the limitation of church walls. That this new religion, is so practical, and so exacting, that its followers, if they are true, are in duty bound to observe it as a rule of life, seven days in the week, year in and year out. "As a primary basis, the new religion teaches, that all human life is sacred. That it is the highest expression on this planet, of an Omniscient purpose. Conscious life, or the capacity to become conscious of anything, is a Deific attribute. All knowledge comes to the mind through the avenue of the senses, or from sensations produced by contact with existing things in the domain of Nature. The domain of Nature, is the domain of the Omniscient! All real knowledge, acquired from this domain by right methods, which is in harmony with natural evolution, is Truth. Truth, then, is Divine! "From these broad premises, we may deduce, that to acquire knowledge, or to accumulate truth, becomes the highest duty of life, a religious activity of the highest order. To be engaged in the intellectual process of gaining knowledge, is to be engaged in a spiritual work. The intellectual process, is a spiritual process. By the psychologic action of the mind, through its sub-conscious functioning, all knowledge coming through the senses, first becomes the spiritual possession of the Ego, the Soul, the seat of consciousness, before it can be expressed materially by the mortal man. Hence, spiritual evolution, is a natural growth, a crowning part of physical and intellectual evolution. The body, as an associated colony of more or less intelligent cells, is an important part of the thinking machine. Body, brain and intellect, in their dual existence on the material plane, form an important trinity, which enables the Spirit to accumulate knowledge, and also to retain that knowledge, after the passing of the physical. To dispute this postulate, would be manifestly absurd, as the spiritual man is the conscious Ego, the real gleaner and possessor of knowledge. It follows then, that to be engaged in any kind of educational work, is to be engaged in a religious work of great spiritual importance. That, through proper intellectual training, we may obtain spiritual growth, rebuild the moral character, exterminate vice, and unfold the graces of virtue, purity, honesty and goodness. These are spiritual attributes, which embrace all there is in the domain of morals. "In appealing to the new religion, for a broader, truer definition of the term, Soul, we learn that Soul, as a cosmic unit of the larger cosmos, is the repository of infinite possibilities: That evolution is the law, by which these possibilities are unfolded: That it inherits immortality as a birthright, from the Great Over Soul, the source and center of all life: That, in fulfilling the law of life, by sojourning in the flesh for a brief period, it cannot be lost, or become totally depraved; although the body, which is but its earthly expression, may become so debased by poverty, selfishness and sin, as to momentarily thwart the Divine purpose of life. "From the same source, and by the same authority, in response to a sincere desire for a better definition of the word Sin; we are taught, that the object and purpose of the existence of this planet, is the evolution and perfection of the human race. Human life, then, is the flower and fruit of the planet. As such, it is the direct expression of a Divine purpose. At the command of a higher law, this life must at all times, be treated as sacred. From this high rock of observation, we perceive that all acts, by society or individuals, which tend to promote, protect and purify this life, are helpful along lines of evolution; therefore, righteous and good. In their doing, these acts become the highest expression of a religious duty. On the contrary, all acts, by society or individuals, which tend to destroy, injure, poison or sully this sacred life, or to bar its ordained progress, are in themselves, unholy, wrong and criminal. In commission, these acts become the greatest of all sins. The logic of this deduction, is beyond dispute; because they are direct attempts to thwart the progressive and evolutionary purpose of the planet; therefore, they must be considered as sins of the first magnitude. "Second in magnitude, and akin to these in wickedness, is the sin of society against women. A sin so potent for evil, that at the behest of selfishness, greed and lust, government, church and society, with one accord and without a protest, join in denying to woman an existence of financial independence. This denial makes slaves of women, who should be noble, pure, self-poised, self-sustaining and absolutely free. But the acme of wickedness is reached, when this denial reduces women to creatures of merchandise, when every year, it drives unnumbered thousands of them to lives of degredation and shame; thus perpetrating the crime of the century against unborn generations, by tainting and poisoning the fountain of life at its very source. The new religion has decreed, that the mothers of a perfected republic, must of a necessity, be both pure and free. It purposes to cure this crime, by working through the strong arms of an ever-increasing series, of unselfish co-operative brotherhoods, where a progressive union of agriculture, and stirpiculture, shall provide for and protect both mothers and children; at the same time furnishing the ways and means, which offer an honorable, useful self-sustaining existence to all woman kind, be they wives, mothers, sisters or sweethearts. "Third in magnitude and closely allied to the first two, is the great sin of ignorance. The mother of bigotry and superstitious fear; the father of duplicity and craven cowardice! What we know, we fear not. It is only the mysterious darkness of the unknown, that is filled with terror. To abolish ignorance, is to make the mind master over matter. Mind is both the spiritual and the intellectual expression of the soul. True culture of the mind, is moral culture. It is only the well grown, highly cultured mind, that can reflect the inherent graces of the spirit, which mark all noble characters. To the individual, who has acquired a knowledge of the law of evolution and environment, is given the power to control environmental conditions; by wresting from nature the secrets of success, in feeding, clothing, housing, educating and elevating humanity. It follows then, that to overcome the sin of ignorance, is to banish poverty. To banish poverty, is to banish want. To banish want, is to take away the very foundations of the sin of selfishness. Selfishness, is the father of a multitude of sins, which must perish with it. "From these premises we must deduce, that all educative work in the proper sense, is a religious activity, which makes us better acquainted with the relations which exist, between man and his Creator, the Great Over Soul. The spiritualizing influence of this intellectual work, carries with it the compensation of a great reward. It crowns the gleaner, with happiness of the purest type. As knowledge increases, the field of knowledge expands, the flood of happiness swells in volume. A long busy life on the material plane of existence, is far too short to acquire this vast treasure, which is commensurate with the needs of progress for an eternity of spiritual existence, to which, this life is simply the primary school. With a better understanding of the nature of sin, and of the alarming extent of its evil influence over human life; the new religion undertakes to bless mankind, by banishing ignorance, poverty and crime. To this practical, spiritual work, the people of Solaris religiously devote themselves, as being a life-work of the noblest order. "The three principal sins which we have considered, may be justly regarded as the parents of all lesser sins. Having given a few brief suggestions as to methods of cure, which are offered by the new religion; I am now ready, Mr. Gaylord, to take up the doctrine of total depravity; which plays such an important part in your theology. "As the primary step, I will re-state a prior postulate, as follows: The spiritual man, is the conscious Ego, the Soul, or a cosmic unit of the larger cosmos; an indestructible part of the great life principle. As such, it is the repository of infinite possibilities, which are destined to be unfolded by the law of progressive evolution. From the Great Over Soul, it inherits immortality and indestructibility; therefore, it cannot be lost, saved, or become depraved. The mortal body is an outer covering, through which it must express itself on the material plane of existence. Physical, intellectual and spiritual life, are subject to the law of evolution, by which they achieve progression and fulfill the purpose of existence. "To assume, that the people of this planet, are born subject to the dominancy of total depravity, is to deny immortality, and the truth of these postulates. In denying them, it denies the existence of a dominant principle of good, and affirms the existence of a dominant principle of evil. It also denies all progress, all moral reform, every noble aspiration, every good deed, all evolution, all science and all reason. Where then, in the economy of nature, is there room or use for the doctrine of total depravity? A doctrine so pernicious, that in the mouths of its advocates, it has done more than aught else, to destroy the confidence of mortals, in the wisdom and justice of the Divine plan of the universe. To even assert its existence, is to question the existence of a universe, under the reign of justice, law and order. Evidently, the doctrine of total depravity, does not belong to the domain of fact. It is equally clear, that it must be a theological fiction. A sin of theology against progress, which in the dazzling whiteness of the spiritual light of the new religion, must soon fade into oblivion. "Can we teach politics to school children, as a part of our religious duties? Is a question we will now consider. The answer, will depend largely on the definition, which we give to the word religion. Let us try to find a true definition, broad enough to embrace an affirmative answer to our question. As a basis, we have human life as the highest expression of the planet. With the physical body, as the basis for intellectual evolution. With intellectual evolution, as the basis for spiritual evolution. Hence, we have as a conclusion, that the spiritual development and unfoldment of the race, up to a point where it can accept the truth of immortality, is the logical purpose to be accomplished by all religions. Reasoning from these premises, it would seem clear, that the practical value of any religion, must be measured by its ability to teach the people how to help themselves; how to master the great problem of physical life, by attaining perfection in the arts of feeding, clothing, housing, educating and spiritualizing the race. If, in connection with these solid foundations for a natural religion, we add the important fact, that this is a republic, in which the wish of the majority, should become the law of the mass; we shall discover that politics become the natural channel, through which the wishes of the majority are expressed; that corrupt politics, result in bad government; that pure politics, insure good government; that a wise, just government, is the greatest political benefit which can be conferred on the people governed. United, these conclusions give an affirmative answer to our question. They also tell us why, the new religion, the mouth-piece of inspiration, reason, science, evolution and progress, should proclaim it a religious duty, to teach our children,--embryo citizens of the republic--every practical detail of pure politics. "What think you, Mr. Gaylord? Have your objections, been satisfactorily answered? Can we agree to accept new definitions, for the disputed religious terms, which we have been discussing?" "I am satisfied, Miss Houghton, that I have been quite too hasty in my conclusions! You have convinced me of the importance of teaching pure politics to children, as a part of their religious training. With regard to other religious questions, you have answered my objections in a most masterly manner! The practical religion, which you have so beautifully outlined and so clearly defined, seems worthy of all the eloquence which you have bestowed upon it. That dreadful doctrine of total depravity, which you have so effectually demolished, has always been a repulsive one to me! For years, it has been a tormenting theological thorn in my side! I could never quite reconcile its existence, with the overruling dominion of an all-wise Creator; the very embodiment of Infinite goodness. I may as well say frankly, that I have often tried to find some good reason for denying it! Now, I have found one, that will satisfy my conscience. With the vexing doctrine of total depravity eliminated from the religious problem, a definition for the term, practical religion, becomes much more simple. A new light is thrown on the whole subject. Just at present, under the influence of this light, I am inclined to think, that your statements and your premises, are all true. Granting this, I will cheerfully admit, that the people of Solaris, are nobly living practical religious lives. I am very much interested in the wonderful claims of this new religion. I trust, that after some weeks of careful examination, I may be able to accept them without one single reservation. After that, I venture to promise, that we shall be able to agree on a satisfactory definition, for all disputed religious terms." "Bravo! George! Now, you are talking more like your old self, more like a reasonable man. You are making great progress, in mastering the underlying principles and practical work of the co-operative movement! I think, Miss Houghton, that you ought to join in offering congratulations. Will you not?" "Yes, Mr. Flagg! I shall be glad to do so! First, I want to compliment Mr. Gaylord, on his excellence as a listener! Then again, I wish to thank him, for his kindly summing up, of the impressions, which came to him from my rather long sermon on practical religion. "Now gentlemen, you must excuse me! I have an engagement, which demands my immediate presence at the kindergarten." CHAPTER XLII. RURAL LIFE UNDER THE REIGN OF CO-OPERATION. "I wish, Fillmore," said George Gaylord, "to question your statement, as to the ability of the co-operative movement, to check the rush from country to city life. The tide of the movement is a strong one, that has been constantly increasing in volume, for the past twenty years. I fear that even the popular co-operative movement, will fail to turn the flood." "The thing is sure to be accomplished, George! But, to understand the workings of the underlying force, which shall make this change possible, we must first study the units of rural society. Of course, the financial basis of these units, must be supported by agriculture. Agriculture is, and must continue to be the main support of all rural populations. Fifty years ago, agriculture as a whole, comprised a vast collection of small farms and farmers. Then, the small farmer and his family, as the stable unit of suburban society, was financially and practically independent. Questions of over-production of food products, rise or fall in the price of exchange, panic in the money market, or an adverse balance of trade, disturbed them not. "Under the spur of necessity, and as a part of the legitimate farm work, the farmer and his family, in a crude way, practiced many of the industrial arts, such as leather working, harness making, boot and shoe making, cloth making, the carding, spinning and weaving of wool; the preparation, spinning and weaving of flax or linen fabrics; the manufacture of many farm implements, brooms, baskets, harrows, sleds and carts; tailoring, making all kinds of underwear, hosiery, gloves and mittens; linen furnishings, for table and bed, together with many other articles of household use. Often, the forge and the anvil, with tools for rough iron working, were added to the equipment of the farm. In those days, farming required a knowledge of the use of tools; the square, the level, the plumb-bob; the hammer, the saw and the plane; were as necessary to the farmer, as they were to the carpenter. "If we carefully study the significance of these things, we shall soon discover, that in reality those farms were practically, combined agricultural and manufacturing institutions, which were self-supporting and self-sustaining to such an extent, that farm people were the most independent on the face of the globe. As such, these small farm centers were potent factors, in swiftly advancing the permanent wealth and civilization of rural society. Born and trained in this practical school of life; financially unshackled, therefore politically free; our farmers of fifty years ago, developed a spirit of sturdy independence, a patriotic devotion, a steadfastness of purpose, a self-confidence, and a power of the initiative, which made them the pride and the bulwark of the nation. They were the well trained, trustworthy citizens, of a true republic. "Evolutionary progress, moves forward by waves. The depression between the crest of the last and the summit of the succeeding wave, represents the transition, from one step of progress to the next higher. Therefore, periods of depression, need not cause alarm, they are in reality prophecies of progress. Let us apply this evolutionary law to agriculture and its people, as being in the transition stage, during the past forty years. "Since the beginning of the last half of the nineteenth century, the separation between agriculture and manufacture has been going forward, the gulf between them becoming wider and more absolute, with each succeeding year. Invention, improved machinery, combinations of capital, the sub-division of the various trades into specialties, leaving the worker, master of none; all have served to develop the entire system of manufacturing industries, to a degree out of all harmony with the tardy progress made by agriculture. The mining and manufacturing craze, has swallowed up all other interests. Like a whirlwind, it has spread over the land, drawing into the ranks of its toilers hosts of agricultural workers; thus swelling the army, producing manufactured articles, and correspondingly reducing the home market for such things. "These conditions have naturally produced a congested market. Logically, there has followed, periods of stagnation, labor riots on account of reduced wages, periods of enforced idleness, and panics in the money market; all culminating in a loud demand for relief from the burden of over-production, by securing control of foreign markets. So completely has the manufacturing craze dominated the commercial and political economy of the republic, that both leaders and people are blind to the real cause of the calamity. An aggressive and progressive minority begin to realize, that the laborer and the farmer are no longer free, that they are the slaves of capital with its factories and machines, or of railroad combines, which control all lines of transportation. But no one sufficiently understands the situation, to be able to answer why. "Now let us study the history of agriculture, during the past forty years. This trying period of transition, has been marked by many changes. The small farm family, shorn of its ability to manufacture, even in a crude way; for shoes, clothing, bedding and table linen, must patronize factories located in distant cities. In order to pay for these things, much farm produce must be shipped to remote markets. In both cases, such heavy freights, commissions and profits, are paid to lines of transportation, middle men and handlers, that at the end of the year, the farmer's net proceeds are reduced to zero, or at least very close to that point. If the farmer be in debt, he finds himself unable to pay the interest on the indebtedness. If the farm represents much invested capital, the net income of the farm becomes too meagre to pay even a moderate rate of interest on its cost value; therefore its selling value must shrink to the level of its reduced income. In this way a large share of the available assets of the small farmer, are swept away. The savings of years, are swallowed up and lost. Savings, that in the aggregate, amount to many millions of dollars. What has become of these values? They have been absorbed by the cities and the railroad monopolies, whose servants the cities are. "Four decades of this process, has robbed the farm-center, as a unit of rural society, of its former wealth, independence and power. Rural society as a whole, is no stronger than its weakest unit. This is why agricultural districts are depopulated, while cities are over crowded. These results are the work of the competitive system, with its wasteful, wicked methods of distribution and exchange, which so widely separates the farm and the factory, the farmer and the artisan, the food and the consumer. "From another point of view, we may discover that inventive genius, has added a long list of labor-saving machinery, to the equipment of the farm. Since wheat growing, has become the leading crop, this expensive machinery must be included in the outfit of every successful farm. The burden of this expense, has proved too great for the capacity of the small farm. It has encumbered thousands of them with an indebtedness so hopeless, that its annual interest swallows up the income of the farm. From these causes, a crisis in the affairs of agriculture has arisen, which has demanded larger farms, more capital, more brain force and more systematic, better organized, co-operative labor. Hence, the evolution of the bonanza farm; with which the small farm can no longer compete. Notwithstanding its many wasteful methods, the bonanza farm has been a step in the right direction. It has taught our agricultural people a valuable lesson, as to what may be accomplished by the combined co-operation of brains, labor and capital. It has demonstrated the necessity for the evolution of the co-operative farm. It has prepared the way for it. "With the advent of the co-operative farm, will come the beginning of a new agricultural era. The co-operative farm village, with its well organized, allied industries, will again unite agriculture with manufacture. The village will represent the new unit of rural society. This unit will be free, independent and self-sustaining. The occupation of farming, will be lifted into a new realm. It will become the occupation of the noble, the cultured and the progressive. The people of these farm centers, will form the warp and woof of agricultural society, organized as a whole. The presence of organized society, largely adds to the value of all lands and to the value of agricultural and manufactured products. "The brilliant author of 'Volney's Ruins,' well understood the force of this principle as applied to increasing agricultural wealth, and at the same time largely adding to the general prosperity of the State. In an essay published in 1790, Volney lays down the following principles: 'The force of a State is in proportion to its population; population is in proportion to plenty; plenty is in proportion to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate interest, that is to the spirit of property. Whence it follows, that the nearer the cultivator approaches the passive condition of a mercenary, the less industry and activity are to be expected from him; and, on the other hand, the nearer he is to the condition of a free and entire proprietor, the more extension he gives to his own forces, to the produce of his lands, and to the general prosperity of the State.' "Each co-operative farm, will become a new center of permanent wealth; a new center of social progress; of organized labor; of distribution and exchange. These new centers, by again bringing together the food and the consumer, will save millions for themselves, which under the competitive system, were thrown away in freights and commissions. As these farm centers continue to increase, they may stretch away in one unbroken chain, perhaps five hundred miles in length. Each link in the chain, will be a five or ten-mile boulevard. Altogether, forming one continuous system of broad, free highways, the finest the world ever saw! Aided by trains of horseless carriages, there will be developed between the centers along this highway, a new system of transportation, distribution, commerce and exchange. With the establishment of each new system, the co-operative movement will gain an added impetus. The centers of exchange, distribution and commerce, located in great cities, will gradually lose their dominancy. The long lines of monopolized railroads, connecting these cities, will as surely lose a large proportion of their traffic. The magnetic wealth and bustle of the great city, will lose its attractive power. As a consequence, and by the action of a natural law, the tide of wealth and population, will flow back to the country; with its meadows and fields, its mountains and streams, its sunshine, blue skies, pure air and wholesome, enjoyable village life. Amid such surroundings, upright and just, fearless and free, the model citizen of a true republic, may find a natural home." "Pardon me, Fillmore, for the interruption! I freely concede the desirability of the results, which you have so glowingly pictured. Nevertheless, I cannot quite agree with you, about the existence of a law, through which the tide of wealth and population will again flow towards the country. I am inclined to think, that facts and figures are against such a result. The statistics of the census of 1890, indicate that about one-third of the population, and over seventy-five per cent of the wealth of the nation, were then located in the cities. A little later, able thinkers and writers of the Josiah Strong type, proclaimed, that by the middle of the twentieth century, this would be a nation of cities, with less than ten per cent of its wealth and population remaining rural. As startling as these predictions are, I very much fear, that the logic of events favor their fulfillment!" "If you will give me a little more time George, I think I shall be able to show you where these writers erred, in reasoning from wrong premises. They have judged the trend of events and the probable results that are to follow, from the standpoint of the competitive system. A system, which they have accepted without question as a permanent one, never to be replaced by another. This was the fatal error, which has robbed their conclusions of all value. "In discussing the status of our great cities, these writers all agree, that they are a constant menace to the nation; centers of political corruption, which are in every way antagonistic to the letter and spirit of a republican form of government; aggregations of the most dangerous elements of society, which are incapable of self-government. These admissions have a wonderful significance. Let us examine them. "The question of society, becomes a potent factor in the solution of this problem. Society, like a great leviathan, covers the face of our country. Representing the aggregate of life, it affects all lives. As the social side of the body politic, it has the power to strangle or to nourish, every interest which is dear to those lives. Dominant society, is the support and inspiration of government. The excellence of any government, may be measured by the excellence of the society upon which that government is based. Under the standard of a republic, society may be divided into two classes; the true and the false. Reasoning from these premises, we may conclude, that in order to have a true republic, we must first evolve a true society. "The society representing the competitive system, has its centers or units in our great cities. Its votaries, are worshippers of wealth. They are importers of foreign fashions, and foreign ideas of government. They believe in caste. They detest equality. They have no love and very little respect for the equal rights guaranteed by the Constitution. They despise honest labor. They consider it menial, as a badge of servitude. They believe that wealth is a power which can raise the wealthy few to the dominancy of a privileged class. They believe that as members of this class, they can treat all other classes as servitors and dependents, who may be hired to do anything for money. They view with complacency, the crowded populations of our great cities. The greater and more dense the mass of people, the larger, more dependent and more obsequious the class of servitors. They are naturally, more or less in sympathy with monarchial and despotic institutions. They believe that the rulers, judges and law-makers, should come from the ranks of the privileged class. They are out of harmony with the republic, because it is the true form of a co-operative government. Co-operation, they hate, it smacks of equality! They are devoted to the competitive system. They recognize its power to maintain a perpetual warfare among competitors, which shall forever keep the main host in such abject poverty, that they willingly become slaves to the wealthy. Having lost their independence, the votes of these competitors are at the command of their financial masters. Than this, nothing could be more harmful to the welfare of a true republic. "This form of urban society, is the flower of the competitive system. The tendency of this society is to so engender selfishness, and to so destroy patriotism, that a multi-millionaire of the William Waldorf Astor type, deliberately achieves the acme of shame, by renouncing his allegiance to a country to which he owes everything. He expatriates himself, and flies to the refuge of a monarchy, to escape the honest burden of a just taxation. A taxation based on an assessment of less than one-third the rate, which is applied to the average farmer of the republic. One example of such ignominy, ought to teach every patriot, that the true republic must be built on the solid foundation of a society and industrial system, which represents justice and equality. "Let us now question the co-operative movement, with the purpose of ascertaining its fitness to become the base of a new society, and also the proper foundation for a true republic. In a society growing out of the co-operative system, as our rural and agricultural societies may now do. We find the conditions are reversed. Labor, is the badge of respectability. It is the title to an honorable independence. In such a society, both men and women are free. All are co-operators, none are servitors. No beggars! No caste! The units of a co-operative society, are sound and healthy to the core. Co-operation, insures self-employment. Self-employment brings freedom, ambition, independence, self-respect, leisure and education; with all the comforts and refinements of life. With these insured, the co-operator cannot be bought or corrupted by wealth. Each co-operator becomes a citizen, who without fear and without restraint, may speak, write and vote, in accordance with the highest dictates of conscience. A healthful degree of honorable, self-sustaining labor for all, is the key-note of this social organization. Men and women are placed on the same plane of equality, financially, socially and industrially. For woman, this is a matter of the utmost importance. "Productive co-operative labor, crowns woman with a self-supporting, self-respecting independence, which emphasizes her freedom from every form of bondage. In this, we have a perfect demonstration of the power of labor to bless humanity. Progressive life and invigorating labor, go hand in hand. One is the complement of the other. Labor as naturally promotes grace, strength, virtue and long life; as idleness breeds helplessness, vice, disease and extinction. Here we discover the wisdom, and the universal application of nature's law of labor. This law demands, that women who wish to become mothers of a dominant race, and who desire to secure perpetuity and progress for that race, must take an active part in some useful, productive labor. If we consider the significance of this demand, we shall perceive, that any form of social or industrial organization which denies this right to woman, or which takes from her the opportunity, the necessity, or the desire to labor, becomes her worst enemy, a foe to humanity, that is conspiring to reduce her to the degredation of a helpless dependent, a mere parasite. In her declaration, that 'The human female parasite, is the most deadly microbe which can make its appearance on the surface of any social organism;' Olive Schreiner has summed up in one sentence, the grave danger from this source which threatens the race. "The combined and marvelous effects of the co-operative system and society on the woman question, rightfully places that industrial and social system far above all others, in the choice of a secure basis for the foundation of a true republic. In fact, George! After carefully considering the bearings of the questions involved, I feel sure that you will heartily agree with me in the assertion, that co-operative society, is the very embodiment of even handed justice, in which the rights of all are considered. Furthermore, you will be willing to admit, that it teaches the value of labor, and how to discover its uses and abuses. In eliminating its abuses, it will appear, that true progress, is to so improve and increase the ease and attractiveness of all kinds of labor, that they can no longer be classed as toil, or even disagreeable tasks. This then, is the legitimate field of inventive genius. Success in this field is assured, because it is in harmony with all laws of progress. Every hardship, every difficulty and every danger, which is eliminated from physical labor, increases in the same proportion, the opportunity and the demand for mental labor. This demonstrates the action of nature's law of compensation, which in elevating the character of labor, maintains its quantity." "Yes Fillmore, I am convinced! I am willing to admit the truth of the assertions, which you have made concerning co-operative society, as the result of the co-operative movement. No doubt, they are destined in the near future to supersede the competitive system and the city society which grew out of it. As I view the situation now, that time cannot come too quickly! Yet, there is one point which still puzzles me. It is in connection with the rapid improvement of labor saving agricultural machinery, which, as Josiah Strong says, will soon enable a few farmers to do all the farm work, forcing all other agriculturalists to seek employment in manufacturing cities. How can you answer that argument, from the co-operative standpoint?" "That is a pertinent question George, to which co-operation can furnish many conclusive answers. Let us consider the significance, and the conclusiveness, of some of the following: "Under the co-operative system, every new labor-saving machine applied to agriculture, means just so much added wealth for the farm colony. It affords that much additional income, for active workers; so much more money to swell the annuity fund, for the retired members; so much more cash capital, for the sinking fund, with which to purchase, and to retain the permanent control, of an ever-increasing series of co-operative farms, for the lasting benefit of their people. With co-operative genius to invent, and an abundance of capital with which to buy, the advent of any conceivable quantity of improved machinery on the co-operative farm, would only serve to increase the wealth, leisure and independence of the co-operators. "Such well-conditioned people could not, under any circumstances, be forced to leave homes of luxury and refinement in the country, to become the working slaves of a manufacturing syndicate in the city. Indeed! Why should they? Why should these co-operators, or any one with the opportunity to become such, go to the city to accept an insufficient and uncertain wage; to be compelled to pay five prices for food, when a better and more abundant supply, could be raised on lands of their own, with less than one-half the exertion? Having good homes of their own, why should these people pay exorbitant rents to owners of tenement houses, for the poor privilege of living in stuffy rooms, choked with smoke and filth, and surrounded by the clatter, the strife, the poverty and the soul-wearing competition of the great city. "Why should they rob their children of health and happiness, by depriving them of a natural birthright, healthful exercise, free access to the pure air, the bright sunshine, the blue sky and the unnumbered charms of country life, with its fascination of ever changing landscape, a picturesque mingling of verdure clad hills, green meadows, shady forests, clear lakes and bold mountains? Why should these children be compelled to live a cramped, unnatural life, confined to the narrow streets, poisoned both mentally and physically, by the foul air, disease, corruption, crime and misery of the densely populated city? Why should agriculturists, who are independent co-operative owners of the soil, humiliate themselves by joining the vast army of struggling competitors, who throng the already overcrowded labor market in our great cities? Why should they be eager to become the financial and political slaves of the leaders of the competitive system; the social autocrats, who form the society of the 'Four Hundred?'" "Can a Josiah Strong answer these questions? No! Why not? Because, in blindly reasoning and writing from the competitive standpoint, he has quite overlooked the fact that agriculture is the base of all wealth. He has forgotten, that as a class, agricultural people who own the farming lands of the country, hold the key to the situation. Made conscious of their strength by co-operation, they are the most independent people living. They are in a position to dictate terms to all other classes. They cannot be forced to do anything, which they do not wish to do. In arriving at his conclusions, it seems quite probable that Josiah Strong has made the serious mistake of accepting as true, a very prevalent idea, that in due course of business, (competitive business) all lands everywhere, would belong to the city capitalist; therefore, that all farmers would then be tenants at will, who could be turned off the land at the caprice of the owner. In this fatal mistake, we discover the error which has vitiated all premises from which he has been reasoning. "Thanks to the forceful lessons, taught by Henry George, to which our agricultural people have given two decades of careful study. They have learned, that free access to land, is absolutely necessary to a natural enjoyment of life. They have learned, that for this reason, those who own land are masters of those who do not. With a sturdy independence which should characterize all citizens of a true republic, they have an intense antipathy towards all forms of slavery. Determined to remain free; they have redoubled their efforts to possess, and to retain permanent control of lands, sufficient for themselves and their children. In this work, they have discovered that co-operation leads to perfect success. "In answering other arguments advanced to show why the city should dominate the country, and therefore absorb its population; the question of rent plays an important part. It should be studied carefully. The law of rent, is an enigma to the poorer classes, upon whose necks its yoke presses as a grievous burden. They sweat and groan under the burden, but can discover no way of escape. They must be educated. They must know the cause, before they can learn to avoid the effect. "Rent, is a legal harness which enables the capitalist who owns houses and lands, to bind needy people to do his work. Through the exactions of rent, he can compel these people who can least afford to do it, to pay his taxes, his interest on capital invested, his living expenses, his traveling expenses, his insurance and such wide margins of profit, as necessity, opportunity and favorable location, may allow him to take. Rent values, like land values and market values, are exponents of social organization. Human lives, enter into the equation of these values. The absence of people diminishes these values, the presence of people increases them. For this reason, rents are highest in great cities, lowest in the sparsely settled country, touching zero on lands occupied by nomads. Land values, are affected in the same way. This will give us a clue, to the transitory character of wealth composed of values. It will give us another reason, for the shrinkage in value of farm lands, and the increased wealth of cities; which follows the migration of people from country to city. "We may now consider another important factor, which affects rent values in great cities. It is the spur of a sharp want, of the urgent necessity of helplessness, which must drive and control the actions of a large majority of the inhabitants. The presence of these elements is necessary, in order to create the highest markets for rents. The larger the throng and the keener the necessities of the crowd of bidders competing, the higher the prices they will pay for rent. Under the reign of the competitive system, this is a conclusive demonstration of the truth of the saying, 'That the necessities of the poor, are the opportunities of the rich.' Is anything further needed, to prove that the competitive system is the essence of a cruel barbarism, which blots the civilization and shames the humanity of the republic? Why not change it for the co-operative system? "Under the progressive and beneficent reign of co-operation, there would be homes for the homeless, land for the landless, work for the unemployed and independence for all. This would mean, a total absence of want; that imperative spur, which is so necessary to the life of competition. "Transportation and taxation, are two factors yet unnoticed, which materially affect rent values in great cities. "Taking up the question of transportation; we soon discover its importance. The great manufacturing city, is the center of a complete network of railroads. The inhabitants of the city, are at the mercy of these railroads. Nominally, they are supposed to be competing lines. As a matter of fact, by means of traffic association, they become one huge, consolidated monopoly. A monopoly so dangerous, so powerful, so unscrupulous, and so voracious, that it does not hesitate in fixing and maintaining rates so exorbitant, as to be actually prohibitory, at least so far as two-thirds of the city dwellers are concerned. Meanwhile the monopoly arbitrarily depresses rents and land values in the country, while it increases them in the city. "Let me give you an illustration of the methods, by which these results are accomplished. Take if you please, the case of an average city, factory-worker; receiving an average wage of one dollar and fifty cents per day. On this wage, he has a family to support. In the country, thirty miles away, he can have a comfortable house, with a nice large garden, for the moderate rent of five dollars per month. A most desirable home! But, here comes the opportunity for the railroad! A ten cent fare each way, six days in the week, would pay the railroad a handsome profit. But, a handsome profit does not satisfy a monopoly! The handsome profit must be doubled six times, before it will consent to serve the public! As a result, this workman, not having the ready cash with which to purchase a monthly commutation ticket, must pay to the monopoly, at its lowest rate (two cents per mile) the gross amount of one dollar and twenty cents per day for transportation. Subtract this sum from the workman's daily wage; there will remain the scant trifle of thirty cents, with which to pay bills for food, fuel, clothing, medicine and other family expenses. Utterly impossible! Even if the owner of the country house and lot, should consent to reduce its price and its rent one-half, the workman would still be prohibited by the railroad, from taking advantage of the reduction. He would gladly pay the ten cent fare, for then he would be able to pay ten dollars per month rent, for the luxury of occupying such a desirable country home. This would be a blessing to all interested parties; still, it cannot be, because the monopoly says no! Being a monopoly under the protection of the competitive system, its dictates may not be questioned. "Although, the case cited, may be duplicated a thousand times, every day in the week, in every large city of the republic; yet, everywhere, on all possible occasions, the common sense of the people is outraged, and their ears offended, by the loud shouts of the competitive leaders, who praise without stint the great usefulness of the monopolistic trust. Solemn as owls, with an air of great learning, they assure the people that these beneficent trusts, are the natural outgrowth of high-grade business methods, which must be let alone. Do the poor people, the farmers, the country land owners, and the working men, join in these shoutings? Obviously and most assuredly, they do not! "Let us now follow our factory workman back to the city, for the purpose of noting the effect of this monopolized transportation, on city rents. Baffled in his desire to live in the country, he seeks to make the best of a bad situation. As a consequence, he is obliged to pay to the owner of some tenement house, a rental of fifteen dollars per month for three small rooms; poorly ventilated, unfurnished and unheated. These rooms are so undesirable on account of difficult access, bad location, unsavory smells, and the immediate presence of other tenants in the house, who are quarrelsome, drunken, filthy and generally disreputable; that but for the prohibitory tariff maintained by the railroads they would remain unoccupied, even if the rent should be reduced to seven dollars and fifty cents per month. However, poor workmen receiving scant wages, may not expect to be choosers. They with their wives and children, must ever bravely strive to adjust themselves to their environments, which more often than otherwise, prove cruelly bitter and oppressive. "In the case of our artisan, who is a brave, industrious, hopeful fellow; after paying his rent, he will have left from his monthly wages, the small sum of twenty-one dollars. Providing of course, that throughout the month, he has been so fortunate as to remain well and to lose no time. With this amount, (seventy cents per day) he must manage as best he can, under such adverse circumstances, to feed, warm, clothe, shoe, and protect his family. With such a meagre sum to supply so many wants, it is impossible for him, even under the most favorable circumstances, to make petty savings with which to meet emergencies. When the misfortune of sickness overtakes him, the situation becomes appalling! "From this illustration, we may judge how much the city is indebted to the railroad monopoly for its high rents. To great cities, high rent is a matter of the utmost importance. Take all rent advantages from them, and the entire list of their manufacturing industries, could be carried on in country villages with equal profit. It is quite evident then, that these cities are alive to the fact that rent is a measure of the value of locations." "Before going farther, Fillmore, allow me to inquire! Why could not these working men and their families, who are confined to the city by the high rates of the railroad monopoly, find cheap country homes near the city; say within a radius of from five to ten miles?" "Thank you George, for such an opportune question! Its answer leads directly to a discussion of the question of taxation. "A land monopoly, is more to be feared, more harmful to the poor and more disastrous to the interests of the general public, than any other kind. The worst form of land monopoly, may be found in full force, along the outskirts of large cities. These monopolies are made possible, by the unjust application of a faulty system of taxation. "As a preliminary step, a hungry host of individual capitalists and land syndicates, proceed to purchase large tracts of adjacent lands at farm prices. These lands are then sub-divided into villa sites, and into a variety of sizes of town lots. Prices are placed on these lots, which would about equal the value of the ground, when in course of time, at the edge of the city, they should be covered by dwellings or business houses. This accomplished, the holders like cormorants, sit and wait for the growth of the city and the efforts and capital of other people, to so increase the value of their holdings, that they can realize their prices and take their profits. These periods of waiting, may cover a long time, often, from one to twenty years. Meanwhile, these monopolized lands are kept out of use, because on account of high price, they cannot be used for agricultural purposes. "Why can these land monopolists afford to wait so long? Because an inequitable system of taxation, discriminates in their favor; offering aid and encouragement for them to do so. Without this aid, it would be impossible to keep these lands out of use. "How can this happen? In the first place, these sub-divided lands, as a whole in large tracts, are assessed at the rural rates applied to unused and unoccupied lands. These assessed values, may be so low, as to be less than one per cent of the asking price of the lots. As time passes, they are liable to be slowly increased. Under such a discriminating system of assessment, the taxes that may be collected, are merely nominal. This unequal system of taxation, is applied, in a proportionate degree, to all unoccupied lands inside the city limits, which are held out of use by the land speculators. "How does this state of affairs affect city rents, and at the same time, assist in preventing the poorer classes from enjoying the advantage of country homes? First, it establishes a broad zone of monopolized land around the city. This zone continues to increase in width with the growth of the city. Scattered through this zone, are many tracts of farming lands in active use. For this reason, they have to bear an extra burden of taxes, in order to equalize the low rates on such large tracts of idle land. These heavy taxes are patiently borne by the resident farmers, with the hope of reimbursement in the near future, by being able to sell their farms for extraordinary prices. In this way, abnormal prices become firmly established throughout the zone; which like some great barrier most effectively confines the working man and his family, to the narrow limits of a city tenement, with its high rents. "If a builder with some idle capital, should wish to erect a considerable number of modest cottages, within the limits of this monopolized zone; with the purpose of renting them to working men; he would find it impossible, or at least impracticable to do so. Why? Because he would have to pay almost city prices for the ground; then, having covered the lots with houses, he would be obliged to pay a heavy penalty for this outlay of capital, by the grievous burden of taxation, which would fall upon him. Houses built under these circumstances, could not be let at a rent low enough to be within the means of the working man. "The number of people who are confined to city life by the causes named, is very large. Just how large, I have no means of ascertaining. Families, who are subsisting on incomes of ten dollars per week and less, furnish a large proportion of this number. "We have seen that the disastrous crowding, the alarming density of our large city populations, is mainly due to two causes. High transportation, caused by the railroad combine; and an outrageous land monopoly, made possible by a bad system of taxation. We have seen, that this dense mass of needy humanity, constantly creates such a fierce competition, that rents must grow higher and wages must grow lower. We have seen, that the causes named, are steadily diminishing the wealth of rural sections, by transferring it to the great city. We have seen that this whole movement, which tends to transform the great majority of the independent citizens of a republic, into the financial slaves of an oligarchy, is the natural outgrowth of the competitive system. Taught by history, we know, that as the oligarchy rises and reigns, the republic dies. "Knowing the causes which have produced these conditions, we are prepared to discover, and to apply the most efficient remedies. It is only by associated effort, that rural populations can successfully oppose the concentration of wealth in cities. The well organized mass, becomes a great power. The new century demands a new industrial organization. The co-operative system, answers the demand. It is in harmony with the idea, that life is the most precious of all things. Therefore, it recognizes that opportunity to labor, and to enjoy the fruits of that labor, is the highest privilege of life. Under the reign of co-operation, this is insured. United in congenial co-operative associations, farming and working people in the country, reinforced by large numbers of recruits from cities, may build up for themselves, new centers of combined industries, society, wealth, distribution, exchange, education, amusement and insurance; which will place them in the ranks of the self-employed, who are financially and politically free. By growth and expansion, these centers will become the units of a vast co-operative system, which must soon wholly displace the competitive. "The inspiring motive of this co-operative system, will be the elevation and perfection of human lives. To this end will tend the invention of every labor-saving machine; increasing the product and shortening the hours of labor. With the physical man thus properly nourished and developed; the intellectual and spiritual man, will for the first time in history, have the necessary conditions in which to expand, blossom and bear fruit. Under such circumstances, life in the country will be both altruistic and idealistic. By comparison, life in cities will become a hardship which few will care to choose. The few, it may be taken for granted, will be so bound to the wheels of Mammon that they cannot get away. "The larger independence and better education of the co-operative majority of voters, will soon enable them to find a relief for the imprisoned populations of cities, which are now confined by the pressure of land monopolies and railroad combines. They will see to it, that these railroads become the property of the government; well knowing that they can never be made to serve the public honestly, until the public owns them. As for the land monopolists, they will find their holdings so burdened with taxes, that they can no longer keep them out of use. The erection of fine buildings will be encouraged. Costly mansions, dwellings, or factories, will not increase the tax. With these barriers removed, the densely packed populations will quickly expand. They will fly from center to circumference of the city. Later, they will be attracted to the country village, where more congenial homes and employments await them. Then educated and emancipated, they will no longer pay rent. "We have seen that the economics of society vitally affect the status of human lives; physically, morally and spiritually; industrially, financially and politically. "We have seen, that rural society, based on the co-operative farm colony as a unit; answers every demand for the protection and development of human life. We have seen that the inspiration of this society, is to secure for all, a lasting reign of peace, plenty, harmony and progress; a most convincing proof, that it is the ideal society on which to build a true republic, that shall be self-sustaining. "We have seen that the perfect emancipation of woman, and the exalted motherhood, which is made possible by the advantages of the co-operative system, insures the permanency and the dominancy of a republic so supported. "In analyzing the workings of the competitive system, we have seen that its methods are those of war. In the never-ending struggle of competing strife, opposing armies of human beings slowly grind each other to death; leaving unaccomplished the real object and purpose of life. This enormous waste of life, violates every principle of a republican form of government. It aborts even the efforts of planetary evolution. "We have seen that the competitive system produces monopolies and trusts, with a constantly increasing tendency to concentrate wealth in cities; placing it in the hands of the few, who are the financial masters of the many. "We have seen that from the ranks of the wealthy few, come the leaders of competitive society, who make their strong holds in the great city. They are the shining lights of the competitive system. They believe in a constant warfare of competition, which brings suffering to the many and success to the few. We have seen that a surfeit of wealth and power, has made these leaders so despicably selfish and unpatriotic, that they are unwilling to pay a just proportion of tax for support of the government. "We have seen that the monopolist, encouraged by the sympathy of competitive society, endeavors to monopolize administrative and executive functions. By means of unequal rates of taxation, and more especially of unjust assessments, he is able to shift most of his taxes to the shoulders of farmers and small property holders in state, county and town. This outrageous evasion by the rich, of their just share of the burdens of government, is shameful to the last degree! It robs the poor of all protection, that governments are bound to offer! It is a crime against humanity! It is a sin against the perpetuity of the republic! It is anarchy! If a government is no longer able to protect its poor; then, such a government has forfeited all right to exist! "We have seen that a true government, republican in form, is a co-operative institution, which must be based on justice, and equal rights, for all; thus recognizing the common brotherhood of humanity. Organized and maintained for the purpose of conserving, developing and protecting life; such a government, would at all times be guided by the beacon light of the axiom, 'That the injury of one is the concern of all.' It would wisely measure its strength and perfection as a government, by the strength and perfection of its weakest unit. "We have seen that with members of competitive society, the accumulation of wealth, becomes the sole ambition of life; that they may enjoy the ease, luxury and social power which follows. We have seen that wealth develops selfishness and idleness. Idleness breeds helplessness, vice, disease, and extinction. The predominance of such a society, would mean the death of the republic. "Having compared the merits and demerits of the two industrial systems, and of their closely related societies; taking it for granted, that as the highest expression of social evolution, the republic must endure; which, George, do you think will prove the true system, the true society, that must predominate; that must naturally develop most social and political power; most perfect conditions of life; most happiness?" "There can be but one answer, Fillmore! The co-operative is the true system, and the true society! You have made it very plain that the republic cannot endure without them. It is equally evident, that with restraining influences removed, city populations in a large measure, will again return to the country for homes; attracted thither by the many advantages offered by co-operative village life." "Speaking of homes, George, reminds me that I must now confer with you in regard to a personal matter, which may affect your work and your welfare for many years. This is the fifteenth of September. You have now been in Solaris, a little over one month, with an opportunity to study the co-operative movement quite extensively. I believe you are in harmony with it; and can do a good work for it. "This office, as you know, is the present headquarters of the general movement. Tomorrow I am going East, to be absent at least one month, perhaps three. I wish you, as my private secretary, to at once take charge of the office. I can offer you a salary of $1,500 for the first year. The office staff is a capable one, which will make your work quite light. I have made arrangements with Mr. and Mrs. Gerrish and with Miss Houghton, to co-operate with you as advisers. Since the first establishment of the office, Miss Houghton has so often volunteered to assist me, that she is now familiar with the routine work. Finally, I shall at all times while away, be within reach by phone or wire; by which I wish you to consult me whenever occasion may demand. What say you, George! Can you accept my proposal?" "Yes, Fillmore, I accept without one moment's hesitation! I shall be delighted with the opportunity to work for the interests of co-operation. You may trust me to do my best! "By the way, Fillmore! I take it for granted, that before you return you will meet Miss Fenwick, and her friend Mrs. Bainbridge, if so, please present my regards." "I shall not forget your message, friend Gaylord! Miss Fenwick is now at Fairy-Fern-Cottage, on the Hudson. She will meet me at Fenwick Hall, in Washington, where we are to be married on the twentieth day of this month. "The wedding is to be strictly private and informal, only Miss Fenwick's attorneys are to be present as the necessary witnesses. After the wedding, the customary tour will be omitted; leaving us free to remain at Fenwick Hall, until the inspiration of the moment brings the choice of some mountain or sea-side resort. "I shall expect you, George, to mail weekly reports from the office, to Fenwick Hall. Wire me for instructions, whenever you are in doubt." "I shall obey your wishes to the letter, Fillmore! What you tell me of the coming wedding, is glorious news! I congratulate you with all my heart, on your great good fortune! You deserve it; you have well earned it!" CHAPTER XLIII. A TWENTIETH CENTURY HONEYMOON. At Fenwick Hall, in the early twilight of their wedding day, we find our hero and heroine, the bride and groom, now husband and wife. They are sitting side by side, hand in hand, looking forth from the large southern window of that magnificent tower room, hitherto known as the private retreat of Fern Fenwick. The outlook from that window was a revelation of beauty, as perfect as a dream of fairy land. As the twilight deepened, high in the southern sky, the full-orbed splendor of a September moon, glorified with its soft radiance, the marked beauty of the Capital City--the Pearl City of the republic. From the mysterious depths of stilly night, intensifying the soothing charm of moonlight; there came softly stealing through the open window, the balmy airs of evening, laden with the fragrant breath of a thousand flowers. From the Aqueduct Bridge to Fort Foote, a long line of brilliant light, with many a graceful curve, marked the pathway of the broad Potomac, whose unruffled bosom shone like a mirror of burnished silver. Stretching across the valley from distant heights, a fleecy veil of enchantment woven in the loom of mist, etherealized city and river, dome and monument, tower and steeple, cottage and castle; adding a weird beauty to the magnificent array of public buildings, which owned the Capitol and the Library as chief. Above and beyond all else in its unapproachable glory, the Dome of the Capitol in the mellow, hazy moonlight, shone resplendent as a matchless crown to the architecture of the Occident! Responsive to the spell woven by the fairy fingers of moonlight, in which soul and sense sink to the spiritual repose of that serene calm, where in silence, happiness of the purest type best expresses itself; these newly wedded lovers, living in the inner world, lost to the outer, remained motionless and absorbed in the ecstasy of contemplation. Fern was the first to break the silence. She said: "My dear Fillmore! Tell me, is this the beginning of some reign of enchantment? The culmination of love's dream? Are we waking or dreaming? Can it be possible, that this glorious moonlight, so auspiciously ushering in our honeymoon, is typical and indicative of its endurance, of its unalloyed brightness?" "My wife! Chosen one of all women! Your devoted lover for six years; having passed the stage of love at first sight, hopeless love, worshiping love from afar, patient love, love requited and love rewarded; I am now so happy, so unspeakably optimistic, that I accept without question the happy augury of enchanted moonlight, as being truly prophetic. Besides, having a wife so noble, so good and so wise, to make it possible; how could our honeymoon be other than the most delightful ever known to the history of love? You may trust me, dear heart, to do my best towards making that prophecy come true!" "In discussing honeymoons, even my own; I may not be permitted to trust, in what is given to me to know. As a maiden of twenty-six summers, now your wife; I know very well that a husband who is just, loving, noble and true, is the most important of all factors, in securing the perfection of the ideal honeymoon. That six-year ordeal of loyal, patient love, which you have so thoughtfully analyzed and classified, has made you very dear to me! In overcoming this ordeal so victoriously, you have displayed a strength of character which has commanded my admiration. You have been unselfish, courageous, persistent of purpose, trustful, thoughtfully sagacious, perfectly trustworthy, and strictly honorable. For these characteristics, so like those possessed by my father; I love you more than for all else. Since crowned with conscious life, my father has been to me, the standard of an ideal man! If ever a daughter worshipped a father; I was that daughter. In character, you, of all the men I have met, are the nearest like him. Stronger words of praise than these, the lips of a proud, loving wife, could not utter! Now Fillmore! My dear husband! I am going to kiss you, as an antidote; lest the fervor of my speech, should make you vain, just a little!" "The antidote seems to work like a charm! Yet, a speech so full of such crushing praise, coming from the lips of the loveliest and most thoughtful of wives, is very provocative to vanity. It makes my case so desperate, that it really requires heroic treatment. To make the antidote effective, I should say, increase the quantity of the dose; administer very frequently! "But seriously, my dear wife! I am overwhelmed by the tribute of praise, which you have paid to my character! To me, the character of Fennimore Fenwick, is nobleness personified! To have my own continually compared with one so exalted, is a very trying ordeal. I tremble for the consequences! I am now so happy, that in the very selfishness of my love for you, I may shatter your ideal. To disappoint you; would be to forfeit my paradise! In times of trial, I shall appeal to you as the noblest and best of wives, to use your highest gifts of occult power to assist me in retaining your respect, admiration and love. Meanwhile, my dear wife! I shall cherish in my heart, the memory of your tribute, as a talisman, as a perpetual inspiration to live up to my highest ideal! Whatever happens, I shall be myself." "That, Fillmore, has the true ring of your natural nobility! Be yourself, and we shall be lovers forever! With that question settled; under the inspiration of this lovely moon, let us commence the construction of our castles in the air. In marrying a woman with a great fortune, you have pledged yourself to share equally with her, the pleasures, cares and responsibilities of her riches. Remembering, that henceforth, we are joint trustees, under my father's direction, for the wise use and distribution of this wealth. It becomes our duty to make competent and well-considered plans for the work. What say you, my dear husband! Shall we not do well, if we devote a generous share of our honeymoon to the making, development and perfection of these plans?" "What you propose, my dear Fern, will make me very happy! I shall be delighted with the opportunity to relieve you of a portion of the burden of your responsibilities, by sharing them. How, and when shall we commence the plan making?" "Before undertaking the plans, it will be necessary for us to ascertain just how much we are worth, financially speaking. For this purpose, we must make a complete and carefully classified inventory of our properties, both real and personal. This important task, we will take up tomorrow, working deliberately until it is finished. It is quite likely to prove a long one, bristling with interesting data, suggestive and educative, as to the extent of your newly assumed responsibilities. "After the inventory is complete, we will each in favor of the other, make and execute a will, conveying the property described by the inventory. Then, we shall be prepared for the accidents, emergencies and unexpected changes of a mortal existence. "Having disposed of the wills, we will return to the inventory. Going over it without haste, item by item. While considering each one, I will give its history; then, we will make a short note, embodying our individual ideas as to the best present or future disposition of that particular piece of property. These notes to be attached to the inventory. By the time we have finished this work, you will have acquired such a firm mental grasp of our financial situation, that you can advise me wisely, or act alone, as the occasion may demand." "Pardon me, sweetheart! What of our coming conference with your father, Fennimore Fenwick? Is that to be postponed until we have finished the preliminary work, which you have outlined?" "Yes, my lover! I would not have you take part in the consultation, without first being equipped with this important knowledge. Besides, it was so understood, by father and myself, when we arranged to have the conference take place on the afternoon of the fifth day after the wedding. There will be plenty of time. You are perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, are you not?" "More than satisfied, my good angel! I can hardly realize my good fortune! I am eager to begin the work. What a delightful time we shall have! To have you introduce me to our wealth, by the way of this unique, honeymoon program; is something very like a fairy story! I could not devise or imagine anything more delightful! "Six years ago, at the time of our meeting, I was hopeful and ambitious. My heart was filled with an earnest longing for the fulfillment of my one great purpose in life. But, how to accomplish that purpose, was hidden from me by the veil of the future. Then, I never dreamed that waiting behind the veil, love was the goddess of good fortune, who was to guide me to success! It is the unexpected which always happens! Thinking not of self; destiny smiled on my unselfishness, and kindly led me to my fate! Having met you, I dared to love! Discovering that you cherished a purpose in life like my own, I dared to hope! Trusting to love, as the messenger of destiny; in the unalloyed happiness of this glorious honeymoon, I have reached the goal of all my ambitious hopes! When I reflect on the magical change of my environments, and the new career in life which has opened for me; I can appreciate the full significance of the miracle which love has wrought! "Knowing the importance of unselfishness on the part of the individual, as a necessary factor in the successful co-operation of the multitude; I perceive that selfishness must be overcome by a comprehensive system of education, organized for that particular purpose. The organization of such a system must be accomplished by a small number of enthusiasts, who are willing to devote their lives to it. This means, that they must be people of wealth and leisure. "As an evidence of appreciation of responsibility, for my stewardship of the wealth which you have bestowed upon me; I wish now to declare my purpose. It is, to devote the remainder of my life to this educational work. It now comes to me, that this is the work described for us, in your letter, written to me over thirty months ago; where, in a vision of the future, you saw us united, side by side, hand in hand, fighting successfully against the poverty breeding hosts of selfishness. From the innermost depths of my being, I rejoice over this most fortunate opportunity, which permits me to take an active part in such an important work! My heart swells with pride and happiness, when I feel and know that I am to have the honor of standing by your side, in the fore-front of the fight! "I can now appreciate the utility of my long apprenticeship on the co-operative farm. In no other way, could I have been so well prepared for leadership in the educational movement. I have learned just what agricultural people need to make them perfect citizens of a perfected republic. A republic of peace, without a police; without the burden of a standing army, to menace and oppress its citizens, because they are already a law unto themselves, at peace with all the world. When I analyze the influences which have inspired and led me, throughout this extraordinary course of training; I recognize the action of a dominant, guiding mind; the far-seeing wisdom of my noble friend and benefactor, Fennimore Fenwick. To him, and to the spirit world, I shall ever be profoundly grateful! Is it not a most beautiful illustration, of the power of spirits to co-operate with mortals?" "Very true and rightly spoken, my prince of husbands! I too, am glad, that during the six years of your preparatory training, destiny's messenger--love--has guided you so wisely. With your intuitive nature, I am not surprised that you have divined so clearly, the general scope of the life work, which my father has planned for us. At the coming conference, he is to unfold the details of the work. Let us well employ the intervening time, in doing the preliminary work; which, as you have so well said, will give us an added relish for the enjoyment of our delightful honeymoon." CHAPTER XLIV. THE NEW CRUSADE. The beautiful seance room at Fenwick Hall, was known to the chosen few, as the "Tower of the Psychics." In fittings, furniture, and equipment, it was much the same as the square room in the central tower at Fairy Fern Cottage. From the beginning, this room had been devoted to but one purpose; that of an audience chamber for the intercommunion of the Two Worlds, the spirit and the mortal. Every visiting mortal felt the presence of a refined spiritual atmosphere, a highly charged, electrostatic potential, which made possible superior spiritual conditions. In this room, Fennimore Fenwick was at home, to the chosen few of his friends on the mortal plane of existence. On the afternoon of the conference, we find our hero and heroine in this room, awaiting the coming of Fennimore Fenwick. While Fillmore was admiring the full length, life size painting of his spiritual friend and benefactor, which hung on the wall opposite the entrance to the room; the familiar voice of the original, through the trumpet very near, gave him a cordial greeting. "Bless you, my son! How glad I am, to welcome you to Fenwick Hall, as its new master! May your reign here as such, prove long and prosperous! In the enthusiasm of my fatherly pride, allow me to congratulate you on your rare good fortune, in winning the hand and heart of my daughter, Fern. She is a pearl above price! Ever love her devotedly, my boy! Cherish her tenderly, as the brightest jewel in your crown of life!" "Thank you, Mr. Fenwick! For your affectionate and kindly words of welcome! To me, they are more gracious, more inspiring and more delightful, than words can express! They have so taken me by surprise, that I am overwhelmed by the strong tide of emotions welling up from my grateful heart! As to your commands in relation to my precious wife; you may trust me! Waking or sleeping, I shall never forget them! They are burned into my heart, by the intensity of my love for her, by the force of my lasting esteem and admiration for you! How can I ever properly thank you, my noble benefactor, for your great goodness to me; for your supreme confidence in my integrity? In return, I can only ask you to accept my pledge, to ever strive to merit that confidence!" "Do not thank me, my son! Thank Love! Destiny's messenger; who, as a reward for your unselfishness, has kindly led you to the goal of your present happiness!" "And you, my beloved daughter! Are you quite happy! May I also congratulate you, on having so wisely chosen a husband, who is in every way worthy? Do you remember the promise I made to you, on the night of my transition? A promise to bring to your side, a friend, a counselor, a protector, whose wisdom and integrity, should at all times, prove sufficient for the needs of the hour. Are you satisfied, my dear girl? Have I faithfully kept my promise?" "Yes, father! I am more than satisfied! I am a contented woman, I am very happy! The quiet delicious calm of my happiness, is a new experience for me. Heretofore, I had supposed that happy women must be vivacious and voluble, from the very effervescence of their happiness. Now I know that it is not so. Your characteristic words of praise, for the one I have chosen as a husband, have made me very proud of him and deeply grateful to you! In him, I have found the promised friend, counselor and protector; also, an ideal lover. But, my dearest, kindest, best of fathers; you know very well, that to trust you implicitly, is a law of my life! I have always trusted you! Therefore, I am not disappointed; neither am I very much surprised. I am just perfectly happy. That is the whole story in a nutshell!" "This is as it should be, my children! When I first saw you, Fillmore, I felt intuitively, that you and Fern were made for each other. I knew I could trust you together, to finish my work. Now, I rejoice, that my intuitions were so prophetic! "In your work at Solaris Farm, Fillmore, you have succeeded beyond my most sanguine hopes. I congratulate you heartily, my son, on this initial success for the co-operative movement! This is but the beginning of the work. As we go farther, wider fields are opened for more extended efforts. You have already correctly surmised, that selfishness in humanity has become so dominant, so crystallized, from long centuries under the heartless reign of competition, that only a far-reaching, well organized, especially designed scheme of education, can conquer the evil. By means of this educational program, we shall be able to open the eyes of both poor and rich, to the benefits of co-operation. "It has been wisely and truthfully said, that: 'The destruction of the poor, is their poverty. That conversely, the poverty of the poor, is the real power of the rich.' In these two short sentences, we have the most scathing indictment against present social and industrial conditions, that could be made! These conditions are wickedly abnormal! They are entirely out of harmony with the law of progress, and of planetary evolution! To change them for something better, is the crying need of the hour! "It were a mercy to both rich and poor alike, to make them financially independent of each other! Then, freed from the thraldom of selfishness, they could discover and appreciate, each for themselves, the true object and purpose of human life. For this reason, our new educational movement, must be so arranged, that it may successfully appeal to all classes. "For the industrial classes, the agriculturalists and the artisans, we can use the co-operative farm movement as a basis of education. As for the wealthy remainder, they must first be taught to respect the sacredness and the true purpose of human life, before they can contemplate any form of social or co-operative progress, with feelings other than contempt, or at least angry opposition. This is to be expected. It is the natural outgrowth of the teachings of a society, which is controlled by the hierarchy of competition. Both the co-operative farm and the broader educational movement, are to be embraced by the work of the New Crusade. "The New Crusade, is to be organized, promoted and maintained, for the peaceful conquest of poverty; and the consequent banishment of ignorance and crime. These grand purposes, shall be emblazoned on its banners, appealing to the chivalry and knighthood of the republic for support. Never before has the bugle of the crusader, blown the assembly call for so noble a cause! Victory for this glorious cause, means a recognition of the true nobility of labor: The establishment of peace on earth, and happiness for all: An abundant harvest, for all productive toil: The sacredness and divine significance of life: The brotherhood of humanity: And the solidarity of all social interests. To the victors, shall come the well earned plaudits of a thousand future generations; whose sons and daughters shall chant the story of the unparalleled chivalry of such noble, unselfish deeds! "To you, my children, is assigned the task and the honor of inaugurating this peaceful campaign. From you, it will demand extraordinary activity, courage and administrative ability; reinforced by large sums of money. Fortunately, the Fenwick fortune is ample. Use it without stint. Fenwick Hall, is roomy and well fitted for the headquarters of the New Crusade; and for the housing of its organizing staff; which, from the magnitude of the work, will be a large one. A bureau of literature must be formed. A newspaper and a magazine, devoted to the cause of the Crusade, must be published. They must be the best of their kind. The editorial talent must be of the highest order, the ablest in the land. Every State in the Republic, must be made a department of the Crusade. A select army corps of teachers, organizers and leaders, must be assembled, trained and thoroughly prepared, to take charge of these departments. They will be the executive and recruiting officers of the Crusade; rendering weekly reports to the headquarters in Washington. Every co-operative farm, will become an outpost and a recruiting station; every State, a grand encampment. "In recruiting crusaders from the ranks of the wealthy, a special effort should be made, to have them take up the cause as a fashionable fad. They can be diplomatically led, where they cannot be coaxed or driven. In the face of any opposition they may display, it must ever be borne in mind, that the hearts of nine-tenths of the wealthy, are good and true. Their natural promptings are to do right; to use their riches for the advancement of science, and for the cause of humanity. They would do better, if they only knew how. They must be educated. The competitive system, under which they were born, trained and made rich, is at fault. By it, they have been taught, that poverty is a necessary and permanent state; to which, a large majority of the people of the earth, are assigned by the action of a divine law. Therefore, any attempt to banish poverty would be not only useless, but actually sinful. Nevertheless, prompted by a higher law, many of them annually dispense large sums in charity. Under the competitive system, charity only aggravates the malady. It is money thrown away! As the recipients are thus enabled to work for less wages; increasing the gains of competitive masters; and finally, swelling the ranks of the helpless poor. After a few trials, even the most persistent alms-giver soon discovers, that as an antidote to poverty, charity is a wretched failure. Taking it for granted, that the competitive system is a permanent one which is to endure forever, he gives up the problem as hopeless. "It is to be the business of the New Crusade, to show why the co-operative should be substituted for the competitive system. It must teach the wealthy classes, the vast importance of the great lesson taught at Solaris. Namely, that by organized, unselfish co-operation; independent self-employment, producing an abundance for all, may be speedily and practicably substituted for every form of poverty. The Crusade must demonstrate, that ignorance, poverty and crime, are handmaidens, which cannot exist apart. That if one-half the money expended for charity during the past fifty years, had been used to promote co-operative self-employment, poverty, tramps and ignorance, would now be things of the past. "To the people of the republic at large, must be taught the significance of the contrast between the war-like competitive system, and the peaceful methods of a co-operative association. Co-operation, makes combined individual effort, equal to the wealth of independence. The co-operator, being self-employed, no longer strives to displace a fellow workman by offering service at a lower price. "Competition, emphasizes the poverty and helplessness of the individual, because it sets every man against his neighbor, against the whole world. The competitor deliberately shuts himself away from all gain that might come to him from the force and effectiveness of associated effort. He loses all faith in mankind; in honesty and justice. He views the good fortune of a fellow toiler, as a personal injury, which he ought to resent. In fact, he becomes too selfish to even be patriotic! "The quickest way to convince the people of the barbarism, the cruelty, and the wickedness of such a system, is to establish a co-operative farm in every available township throughout the land. The free, healthy, trained, and well-educated social communities, growing up on these farms, will become the units of a true society; the underlying foundation, on which to build the true republic. "Society dominates the political expression of nations. It molds and controls public opinion, business methods and commercial usage. Under the reign of competitive business and society, the market is largely composed of small wage earners, whose necessities are so great, whose tenure of employment is so uncertain, and whose wages are so scanty; that they are forced to buy the cheapest of everything. On the part of tradespeople, the fierce competition to control this cheap market, encourages the use of an outrageous system of food adulteration, and with it, every possible degree of lying, cheating, fraud and deception; until the moral tone of both business and society, has become blunted; yes, well nigh destroyed. As a result of this shameful state of commercial affairs, the successful man in any line of business, can no longer afford to be honest. He knows very well, that in competitive business, he can utterly ignore honor, conscience, and self-respect, without losing the approval of competitive society. Can such a rotten society ever become a safe foundation for the government of a true republic? "It is to be the mission of the New Crusade to teach and to demonstrate, that under the reign of a co-operative system, and society, these conditions would be reversed. All incentives to cheapen goods, or to adulterate food products, would vanish. The co-operators would then form the bulk of the market. Buying at wholesale collectively, to sell to themselves individually; they would be in a financial condition to pay remunerative prices, for whatever was genuine, pure, wholesome, good, reliable and lasting. Inferior articles, they would not purchase at any price. The demand for cheap stuff would cease. The dominant motive of the commercial world, would be revolutionized. Among manufacturers and producers, the cry would be, not how cheap, but how excellent, can we make our goods! The long-practiced, skillful chicanery of competitive methods, would be at a discount; they would be worse than useless! Honest men could then engage in business, without violating either honor, or conscience! Cheating and lying, would no longer form a part of the business code! At all times, and under all circumstances, to respect the sacredness of life, and the natural rights of man, would become the universal watchword! Justice would dethrone charity! The high moral tone of the industrial and commercial world, would pervade the social and political. The injury of the weakest, would become the concern of the strongest. The rising tide of humanitarianism would submerge poverty. The fires of ignorance and crime, would be extinguished by its conquering flood. "Than this, no lesson more important, could be taught to the people. The scales of selfishness having fallen from their eyes, they can be made to understand, that all of these wonderful things may be accomplished, quickly and easily, by the plain, practical methods of unselfish co-operation. Methods, whose assured results are as easily demonstrable, as the solution of a mathematical problem. Once convinced, they will make haste to discard the wasteful methods of the competitive system; substituting therefor, the co-operative conservation of national wealth. In this conservation, the wealth of the unit, will be the measure of the wealth of the nation. "This conservation will usher in a new era, of the means of gathering, and of the higher uses of national wealth. A magnificent national fund, accumulated for the benefit, education, refinement and enjoyment of all. The swiftness of its accumulation and the magnitude of its billions, will become the marvel of the world! By contrast, all former standards of the wealth of nations, will fade and shrink to insignificance! Why must this prove true? Because, under the beneficent reign of co-operative equality, money, shorn of its power, would only be valued for its use. The store of national wealth, being for the equal use and benefit of every individual citizen; the incentive for its accumulation, would inspire all alike. As a result, the people as a mass would enjoy all the benefits of great wealth, minus its burdens, abuses, temptations and dangers. In this, any one of them might be envied by the competitive millionaires. "Among the many lessons in addition to those enumerated, which the Crusade must teach to the people; I would strongly emphasize the following: "That human life, as the flower and fruit of the planet--each individual being a microcosm of the macrocosm--must always be held as the most sacred and the most precious of all things. Because it is the object and purpose, the beginning, the expression, the commandment and the fulfillment of the law. "That the law of life and the law of progress, are complements of each other. Like twin sisters, they act as a bond between the systems of the universe; they embrace all things, from an atom to the Infinite! "That activity, is the expression of life! Necessity and glory, are the two poles of human activity; its inspiration and its motor power! "It is the evident purpose of natural law, that the activity of man shall unceasingly produce for all, an abundance of the necessities, comforts and luxuries of life. "Ignorance, is the giant who bars the pathway of progress! Labor from necessity, reigns as a rule, in all ages of ignorance! Misery and poverty, are its children! "Labor for glory, marks the age of enlightened progress, where all may have an opportunity to express individuality, through their handiwork; to taste the great joy, that comes with the consciousness of participation in spontaneous, unselfish, intelligent activity, which shall insure the reign of perpetual peace and plenty. In this, man's conquest over matter, becomes the true glory of labor! In the variety of self-chosen, self-directed, co-operative, productive labor, is found life's greatest blessing. "Organized, unselfish co-operation, will teach the people to appreciate the dignity, and the true nobility of labor. From it, they will learn that labor, however simple or insignificant, is far nobler than any kind of enervating idleness; no matter how much that idleness may be gilded by the varnish of honor! Godin says: 'A day's work well done, is worth more than a whole existence of inactivity!' "Labor develops the possibilities of life! It is the effective instrument which makes possible the progress of nations, the emancipation of peoples! The labor of passing ages has evolved a fund of ideas, best adapted to guide humanity towards a true interpretation of the object and purpose of human life. "Labor will cease to be a burden, when man comprehends its true mission. Stripped of its drudgery, released from the harness of toil and the spur of necessity, the brightness of the blessing of labor shines forth resplendent. In the halo of this radiant truth, can anyone be guilty of a blasphemy, which degrades labor to the penalty of a punishment. "The question of politics is intimately associated with the question of labor. The science of politics, is the science of life. Government, is its expression. Self-government by the individual, is its keynote. The study of this science should be pursued by all classes, with the enthusiasm born of a religious zeal. A few of its most important principles may be found embodied in the following propositions. If we wish to be able to take an interest in moral life; we must first satisfy the demands of physical life. If we wish to practice justice, we must first learn the law of Right and Duty; that is, in striving to satisfy our own material wants, we must learn how to protect the rights of others. We must remember, that they too are toiling for the same purpose. "In order to protect the welfare of each political unit, these principles must form the basis of all scientific politics. In the social units evolved by co-operative life, these conditions are embodied and expressed. In them, we shall find the basis upon which to build a grand, social, industrial and political organization. An organization, which shall truly represent Liberty and Justice; which, in its expression as a whole, shall be the government of the New Republic! "Co-operation is the foe of despotism! Associated, intelligent, political co-operation, is the educator which shall teach the people, that a true republic cannot exist until, in the minds of its leaders, every vestige of the spirit of despotism has been cast out. "In the accomplishment of this great political work, faith in the destiny of this republic, its people, and its mission, is to prove a most important factor. To endow a people with faith, is to multiply their strength tenfold! Faith, reinforced by knowledge, is an irresistible force, against which naught can prevail! Hence, it becomes imperative, that in each school and kindergarten of the republic, its children should be taught in broad outlines, the vastness of its territory, and the magnitude of its natural resources. "I cannot too strongly emphasize the necessity for this important part of the political education of children! As the future guardians and law makers of the republic, its children should acquire a thorough knowledge of the widely diversified characteristics of each geographical sub-division. This, they must accomplish, before they can be prepared to appreciate the overshadowing significance, of its past, present, and future destiny. "The kindergarten offers perfect conditions, for the introduction of a primary course of this political instruction. By using a large outline map, showing the geographical and geological formation, the mineral deposits, the extent or area of timbered and agricultural lands, the manufacturing centers, the principal wagon-roads and lines of transportation, the natural trade centers, the population, the schools, the chief officers, and the well known political leaders of each sub-division; a series of intellectual excursions could be so arranged, and made so interesting to the children, that they would soon master these statistics, as identified with every State and Territory in the Republic. Having finished the subdivisions, attention could then be given to a much larger map of the United States, on which the States and Territories on a smaller scale, would show the same statistics. From this map, the study of the political statistics of the States and Territories, by groups, could then be commenced. "A comparative study of the groups, would be full of interest for the children, and would offer a great number of delightful surprises. The six groups in natural order, should be classified as follows: The New England, the Middle, the Southern States; the States of the great basin of the Mississippi Valley, including the imperial State of Texas; the Rocky Mountain States, and the States of the Pacific Slope, including that remarkable, and only partially explored Territory, Alaska. "From these group studies, the children may learn many object lessons, which might demonstrate to them, the natural supremacy of this republic, over other nations. I may mention the following, as noteworthy: The Great Lakes of the Middle West; with a coast line of more than three thousand miles in length; with an interstate commerce which exceeds in tonnage, the combined shipping trade of France and Germany. The marvelous capacity of the great agricultural States of the Mississippi Valley to become the granary of the world; to furnish its entire food supply, of bread, beef and pork. The imperial State of Texas, with its wealth of wheat, cane, corn, cotton and cattle; with a domain so wide, that it equals in extent, that of Great Britain, European Turkey, Switzerland, Denmark and Portugal. Again, passing to the uttermost regions of the Great Northwest, we should find the mammoth Territory of Alaska, rich in its unexplored forests, mineral deposits and golden sands; with a picturesque coast line of fabulous extent, stretching away to the North far beyond the Arctic Circle, indented by a multitude of romantic bays and inlets, where jutting crags, bold promontories of basaltic rock, countless islands, sparkling water and shining glaciers, fill the measure of beauty and grandeur. "Thus educated, the future guardians of the political welfare of the republic, would understand the natural wants of its widely separated sub-divisions; they would fully appreciate the significance of its destiny as a nation. They would always be loyal to the demands of that destiny, which should be commensurate with its inexhaustable resources, with the magnitude of its domain. A domain so immense, that when compared with the countries of the Old World, without counting island possessions, or the Territory of Alaska, it exceeds in extent, the combined areas of China proper, Japan, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Greece, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, and European Turkey. With the hearts of its voters inspired by such patriotic teachings, the Republic must endure; must fulfill its prophetic destiny! Naught can prevail against it! Not even the selfish schemes of a corrupt oligarchy; no matter how boldly they plan or how many billions of capital they may control! "In teaching these things, my children; also in enlarging and perfecting the work of the Crusade, I can promise you the support and co-operation of the spirit world. The broad outlines, which I have given, will suggest the more complete details of the work, which I now leave in your hands." "That thought alone, Mr. Fenwick," said Fillmore, "ought to prove a tower of strength to us. May we not make that co-operation more effective, by a closer study of the conditions that prevail, and of the laws which govern spirit life?" "Later on my son, that will be advisable. But just at present, it is of the utmost importance, that every effort should be made to improve the social, industrial, mental and physical condition of mortals, as the necessary foundation for true spiritual growth. "Mental growth must precede the spiritual. Power exercised by the mind over the body, in moulding physical structure, multiplies the power of the spirit acting on matter, again reacting on both mind and body. Consciousness, is spiritual life. To enlarge the sphere of consciousness, is to add to spiritual growth. Evolution, is nature's effort towards progression. The new spiritual era, which began with the last half of the nineteenth century, was marked by a dawning consciousness in the mind of man, that he might become a self-directing factor in his own evolution. This consciousness in turn, became the starting point of spiritual evolution on the mortal plane of existence. The last, having been made possible by the first. "Reasoning from the premises stated, we must logically conclude that the embodiment of more mind, of better mind, is a matter of the utmost importance to the whole human race. As body and brain are working parts of the mind, its machinery of expression; it is equally important, that both mind and body should be perfected together. Hence, the necessity for better social conditions, more financial independence, less labor, more leisure, longer life and larger brain capacity; and finally, as the crowning requirement, to be well born! To banish poverty, is to make these things possible. "Before a proper conception of the spiritual world can be entertained by mortals, their minds, by the aid of the sciences, must have acquired such knowledge of their environments, as shall satisfy the requirements of spiritual evolution. Every item of real knowledge thus gained, is just so much added preparation towards the understanding of the spiritual; towards a harmonious interblending, and co-operation of the two worlds. In accordance with the law of progression, truth, to the ever changing stages of consciousness, is relative. In order to illustrate the relativity of truth, and the magnitude of the domain of knowledge in the mortal state, which must be conquered before consciousness can be extended beyond the confines of the spiritual; let us consider the following, somewhat approximate postulates. "Let us suppose, that the life of the planet, Earth, embraces all forms of life; each individual life pulsating in harmony with the great mother heart of the planet. "Let us suppose, that spirits, both embodied and disembodied, incarnate and excarnate, considered as a mass, may act as the terrurgic spiritual body and brain of the planet; subjective and responsive to the inspiration and guidance of the universal cosmic mind, acting from the cosmic center. "Let us suppose, that the material world, with the atom as its smallest unit, is the medium of mortal existence. Again, that the impalpable ether of the interstellar spaces, is the medium of existence for the spiritual world. And again, as a measure of the fineness of ether, that the difference between an ether particle and an atom, should be as wide as the difference between the atom and the planet. "Considering these posits as a basis for comparing life in the two realms, we at once perceive that life, organized to correspond with the coarse meshes of the material plane of existence, can be permeated, filled and quickened, by organized spiritual life, without disturbing the unity of either organization. The interblending of spirit and matter, is accomplished. The mystery of the dual existence of soul and body, is explained. The soul in the body, yet, not of the body! The permanent and the enduring, mated with the changing and the ephemeral! The cell life of the physical, with the soul life of the eternal! "In comparing the two states of existence, the physical with the spiritual, we find the horizon of consciousness in the former, is vaguely defined and very much limited; while in the latter, it is sharply defined and widely extended. The more we study and compare, the more readily we understand, that space, duration, size, minuteness, solidity and porosity, are all relative terms which depend for their significance entirely on the standpoint of consciousness. So apparent is this fact, that we soon learn how impossible it is for the mortal mind to understand, even the more simple elements of spirit life, until the dual or spiritual mind, with its consciousness, has grown and unfolded to the required extent. Hence, growth of consciousness, is growth of spirit; the spirit which molds and controls matter. "Self-conscious consciousness, is the immortal ego! As a part of the progressive, all inclusive, spiritual life of the planet, it takes part in the evolution and progression of the mass. This mass, in the fulfillment of the purpose of existence, is subjective and responsive to cosmic law, and to cosmic inspiration. "In these postulates, we have the key which unlocks the mystery of life. We catch a glimpse of its true meaning, purpose, glory and grandeur. They raise the theory and practice of human progress to a question of the first magnitude; to a science of life, which demands the attention of every student. The school of human life, lies at the base of the curiculum of knowledge. It becomes the foundation of spiritual progress, as well. Hence, the importance of rightly cultivating the mind, of extending its consciousness to the uttermost limits of human capacity. "Selfishness and despotism, are frowning barriers across the pathway of human progress. They thrive by war. War, is the foe of spirituality, the mother of murder! War must be abolished, before man can hope for true spiritual evolution! It is the fortunate destiny of this republic, to lead the race in a crusade against it; to open the way for its final abolition. It is to be the province of the Crusade to teach the people, that war has been the scourge of humanity since the beginning of the historical era; the greatest crime ever perpetrated against the sacredness of human life! Peace, multiplies the products of labor. Labor, is the genius of life! War, destroys the laborer and his product. War is the genius of death! War, is a symbol of barbarism; it is both the throne and the refuge of despotism. For the purpose of maintaining despotism, people for centuries have been subjected to the hard conditions of unremitting toil, that they might endure the fatigues of war without a murmur. For the same reason, despots have kept the masses in ignorance, lest they should discover the true quality of justice; the moral law, which condemns both despotism and war; lest they should come to realize all the horrors of the most outrageous crime possible to the conception of human reason; the crime of war! War is such an overwhelming calamity, that it is almost impossible to estimate the ruin and the destruction which it has wrought! If the millions of lives and the billions of treasure spent in the world's wars, had been employed in protecting the people, in generating, rearing, sustaining and developing them to the highest attainable point, this earth would now witness a social millennium; where peace and prosperity, high culture and harmonious brotherhood, would reign supreme! "I rejoice, that I am permitted to prophesy its downfall! Long before the close of the twentieth century, standing armies will disappear; war will be at an end; the angel of peace will spread her white wings over all the nations of the earth! This Crusade, is the beginning of the end! For the encouragement of our Crusaders, I will indicate two causes, acting from opposite directions, which will serve to hasten war's dissolution. "First: The competitive system, for centuries, has been war's chief recruiting office. Under its reign, in the fierce struggle for existence, it has kept up a perpetual warfare between man and man; always the stronger against the weaker. When vanquished, the weaker as a last resort, could and did, enlist as a soldier. Thanks to the co-operative farm, spread broadcast by the Crusade; the early substitution of the co-operative, for the competitive system, will make the weak strong; make them financially independent! Soldiering as a trade, is made possible by poverty! Whenever a people are emancipated from the cringing slavery of want, naturally averse to being slaughtered, they will rise en masse, and refuse to be apprenticed to the brutal trade of killing their kind. Thus it will happen, that armies will melt away and disappear, for the want of fighting men! "Second: Strange as it may appear, the inventors of mighty engines of war, of terrible explosives, of deadly missiles, each in turn, more horribly destructive than the others; are all envoys of peace; that sweet peace, which shall bring rest, renewed energy, and swift progress, to all classes. Through the multiplied and combined efforts of these inventors, the bloody and barbarous art of war, is fast becoming so suicidal, and so financially disastrous to the nations of the earth who have the misfortune to engage in it; that such as wish to preserve a national existence, must do so by making haste to ally themselves with the friends of universal peace, through international arbitration. "Under such circumstances, the nations of the earth, ground between the inexorable, upper and lower millstones of the first and second cause, acting under pressure of self-preservation, will, with one accord, join in covenanting for a total disarmament, and a perpetual peace. All hail, the glad day! "Then, will dawn man's era of true spiritual evolution! Then, will the true object and purpose of life, be understood! Then, will the sacredness of human life, be rightly conceived, appreciated, maintained and respected! Then, wholesale murder, no longer sanctioned by man-made laws, it will be possible to banish the spirit of murder from the life of the individual! Then, the lesser crimes, the demons of despotic selfishness, greed, cruelty, and lust for power, which now clog progress and prevent the realization of a practical brotherhood for humanity, can be shaken off and rendered harmless! "Then, the emancipated legions of toilers, will rise to a true understanding of the blessing of labor as the real expression of life; that the glory of labor, is man's conquest over matter; that food, shelter, raiment, and sustenance for body, mind and soul, are the essential elements of life; a natural equipment for the conquest! Then, it will be the province of a natural religion to teach the people how to help themselves! how to master the great problem of physical life, by attaining the greatest perfection in feeding, clothing, housing, educating, and spiritualizing humanity! "Then, the solidarity of the spiritual welfare of mankind, will equal that of the physical! Then, the measure of spiritual progress achieved by the mass, will be the measure of progress attained by its weakest unit! Then, will come perfect co-operation, between the spiritual and the physical! Then, will come the reign of liberty and justice, the guardian spirits of a true republic! Then, will come the social, the industrial, and the spiritual millennium! Then, the barriers of selfishness will have been burned away; the two worlds will be united; in the new atmosphere of brotherly love, spirit and mortal may harmoniously walk, talk, and work together for the perfection of the race! "Then, the great armies of the world, no longer in the guise of organized barbarism, or a tax on the industries of the nations, will be converted into armies of peace, engaged in the production of real wealth! Then, the heretofore undreamed of store of public wealth, will, in its proper distribution, give to all mankind, the acme of universal education, civilization and happiness!" CONCLUSION. Born leaders of a progressive age; filled with the inspiration of one great purpose in life; at all times, equal to the demands of the hour; hand in hand, with hearts united by the bonds of a supreme love; nobly unselfish, and spiritually refined; generous, handsome, accomplished; wealthy, eloquent and magnetic; Fillmore and Fern, our hero and heroine, were everywhere recognized as a commanding force in the social and political world. A force which quickly overcame all opposing obstacles. They were so much interested, and so absorbed in the ever increasing success of the Crusade, that the happy months and years flew swiftly by. Their devotion to each other, was a potent charm which begat in the hearts of a legion of admiring followers, an intense loyalty to them, and to the banner of the Crusade, which had led them to so many victories in the cause of humanity. The second decade of the century was throbbing with the birth of epoch-making events. The astrological forces seemed in conjunction with planetary evolution. The time was ripe for the incoming wave of a new social era. The spirit of progress was brooding in the air; stirring in the hearts of the people, who hailed the Crusaders as blessed evangels of the new life, for which they had yearned and prayed so many years. The gospel of the new life, was the gospel of co-operative labor. The wonderful strength and effectiveness of the co-operative farm movement, to lift the laborer from conditions of ignorance and poverty, to those of financial independence, comfort and refinement; was practically demonstrated, a thousand times over. To the people, each demonstration was an ever growing source of astonishment and delight. The enthusiasm aroused, burning with the fires of a religious zeal, irresistibly drew them into the ranks of this powerful organization. With rapidly increasing numbers, it swept over the land with the force and fury of a great tidal wave! In its track, on the ruins of the competitive system, there was established, the reign of co-operative peace and plenty, the social and political millennium. Among the leaders of the Crusade, assembled at Washington, George and Gertrude Gerrish were especially prominent. To them was assigned the task of organizing the lecturing or missionary bureau of the Crusade; its trained force of traveling educators. The good work accomplished by this force, was another well earned tribute to their extraordinary skill as organizers. As well fitted for the responsible duties; George Gaylord and Honora Eloise Houghton, having become inseparable friends, engaged lovers, and finally a well-mated, conjugal couple; were placed in charge of the traveling educators on the Pacific Slope. So eloquently and effectively did they labor in this wide field, that throughout its length and breadth, they became very popular, winning hosts of friends for themselves and the cause. Solaris Farm and village, the working center of the movement, soon doubled many times, its territory and population. It became an important manufacturing center, which made an ideal home for the National Co-operative Farm School; a normal school, which every year graduated teachers by the score. The history of Solaris as the initial farm made it so famous, that thousands of enthusiastic co-operators annually visit it. It is the business of the reception committee appointed by the normal school, to receive, entertain and instruct these visitors. Gilbert Gerrish, true to his arisen sweetheart, and to his own peculiar purpose in life; declined to leave Solaris, with his parents. Indeed, he was so universally beloved by its young people, that they could not, and would not give him up! To the visiting stranger, he seems by far the most popular and the most highly honored young man in the village. This distinguished consideration, he has rightfully and honestly earned. Happy himself, in generously using his rare gifts for making other people happy! Thus endeth the story of Solaris Farm. May its purposes haunt the minds of its readers, like the memories of some prophetic dream, which may not be obliterated, which can not be forgotten. * * * * * A FEW POINTERS FROM THE PEN OF THE REVIEWER. Solaris Farm is the title of a new book "with a purpose." In fact it is a book with many purposes. While the author writes intelligently and forcefully upon stirpiculture, education, invention, hygiene, sanitation, moral, physical and mental growth and culture, and injects many new, beautiful and practical thoughts into each of these subjects, his chief theme is unselfish co-operation, his chief purpose is to exhibit the benefits, moral, physical, social and financial, that will be showered upon the human family when they become wise enough to cease competing with each other, and progressive enough to begin co-operating. The story is the logical development of the following situation: Fern Fenwick, an heiress to a vast estate, had promised her father before his death to use a good share of the Fenwick millions in bettering the condition of the race. Her first experiment is a co-operative farm of about five thousand acres, whereon about two hundred and fifty families settle and work out the many problems which the author desires to discuss. In all of these operations she has the able assistance of Fillmore Flagg, a farmer's son, who, having seen his father and dozens of his old neighbors crushed in spirit and broken in fortune by the resistless trend of events under the competitive system with all its waste of misdirected energy, has become disgusted with the meager results of farm work and having by great energy obtained a practical education has determined to do something for the alleviation of the miseries of a competition crushed society. He meets Fern Fenwick and is by her employed to superintend the co-operative farm. A very pretty little love story, which the author has told with pleasant humor, is the result of their meeting, but the weightier themes with which the book is filled are likely to more fully engross the attention of the reader. Co-operative ventures have usually been founded upon some "ism," and were held together by its religious or other influence. In the Solaris Farm colony a very comprehensive scheme of insurance against accident, poverty, sickness and old age is the binding principle. The premium is the profit which the co-operators collectively make by producing what they want (or by buying at wholesale what they cannot produce) and selling the same to themselves individually at regular market rates. The excellence of their wares attract many purchasers from the outside and the profits resulting therefrom also tend to swell the insurance fund of the co-operators. All kinds of business, and manufacturing are carried on by the co-operators in addition to farming. Co-operative thinking solves the knottiest problems for the colony, invention flourishes and, once started, money flows into their coffer at a fairly satisfactory rate. Co-operation is the key-word, the essence, the very soul of Solaris Farm. All the successes achieved by the characters that people the book are the results of co-operative working, thinking and saving. Every stockholder lends a hand, and lo! the hours of labor are short and delightful; when a disagreeable task must be done, co-operative thinking invents a machine which does the work better than a man could do it; the dignity of toil is established on a sure foundation, and the statement that "muscular effort is a mental demonstration," is verified. "Will it pay?" is sometimes called "the American question." In Solaris Farm the author has successfully undertaken to present an unselfishness that will pay--not in the fairy gold of a far-off Heaven, but in the coin of the realm, here and now. Leisure for study and recreation; books, pictures, objects of beauty and art; better health; longer life; the society of delightful people none of whom are competing for the lion's share, but all of whom are co-operating for the benefit of the community; absence of the fear of poverty; certainty of support in sickness and old age;--all these and thousands of other comforts are some of the certain wages of unselfishness. A feature of Solaris Farm which will commend itself to every well-wisher of the race is the high estimate which the author places on humanity. Man, he says, is the flower and fruit of the planet, its highest and best product. To arrive at the highest point possible in his evolution, it is necessary for him to be well born and this necessitates happy, healthy, prosperous parents and proper environments. To follow out this idea to its logical conclusion would be to repeat the author's arguments, for he has completely filled the field. The reader is referred to the story for the facts proving that unselfish co-operation will furnish everything needful for the complete unfoldment of the now almost dormant possibilities of human nature. The pursuit of happiness and the hope of its ultimate possession is the motor which induces all human endeavor. No act is ever done except in obedience to this law of our nature which compels us to seek pleasure. Ignorance of the nature of true pleasure has led us after many a will-o'-the-wisp, and our unlearned race has soiled its garments many times in error, commonly called "sin." "Sinful pleasures," against which our parents, the clergy, and all moral philosophers have warned us, do not exist. _There is no pleasure in sin._ Our race beliefs, based upon untruth and ignorance, have bequeathed us a heritage of appetites, passions and desires which are wrong, and hurtful when gratified. Among the most hurtful of race beliefs is the fixed idea that labor is a curse. Nothing could be further from the truth. As has been aptly said: "Art is the expression of a man's joy in his work." Labor--muscular exertion, having a definite productive object--is a blessing and a joy when the worker is in love with his work. Work is a curse only under the competitive system, which by its wasteful methods extends the hours of toil beyond the limits of endurance, robs the worker of the full benefits of his labor and gives him no time for self-improvement. The experience of the stockholders of Solaris Farm shows how the ancient curse was removed by unselfish co-operation, and labor crowned with the dignity that is its due. While Solaris Farm was not intended as a propaganda of spiritualism, that cult has been introduced with considerable dramatic effect for two apparent reasons. The first and least important of these reasons is to cater to the ever-growing taste of the reading public for the occult; but the second reason is peculiar to the book. In discussing man as the most valuable product of the planet, and the relation which the soul bears to the body, it became necessary to approach the subject from the view-point of one who is in nowise affected by the petty altercations, jealousies and strifes of the world; one who knows by experience all the hardships of life and its many temptations, but who has also progressed beyond the sphere of their influence. The most natural and obvious way of obtaining this coveted point of observation was to let the spirit of such a noble character as Fennimore Fenwick speak from the fulness of his experience, both as mortal and spirit, of the needs of the race, the curse of competition, the value of proper environmental conditions for perfect motherhood, pre-natal education and adequate training of mind and body, such as may not be secured even by the most wealthy in the present condition of society, but which would be the heritage of every individual in a co-operative community. The utterances of Fennimore Fenwick rank with the best thought on these subjects and no person can read them without having implanted in his breast a higher regard for his race, and a greater solicitude for the material and spiritual unfoldment of humanity. For many years, orators and agitators have vied with each other in proclaiming that capital and labor were the two factors of financial success. They were and still are mistaken. Within the pages of Solaris Farm the reader is given the true formula, which may be algebraically stated thus: "Capital + Labor + Brains = Financial Success." Financial Success, however is not the complete product of these factors when selfishness, greed and wasteful competition are eliminated from the equation by the substitution of unselfish co-operation. The happy result of the experiment at Solaris Farm must convince the reader of the correctness of the formula and the value of the substitution. In considering the broad field covered by this attractive book; its wide departure from the mission of the ordinary novel, its probable use as a text-book of advanced thought on true socialism, progressive co-operation, a new order of political economy and the ways and means of making colony life desirable, successfully coherent, self-supporting and practically delightful; the price of Solaris Farm (50 cts, in paper covers, $1.25 in cloth binding) will commend itself to the purchaser as not only reasonably moderate, but also if he be an interested reader, with business intentions, that the large end of the bargain is very much in his favor. Solaris Farm was written by Captain Milan C. Edson, whose military title was earned during the great Civil War. He was a farmer and the son of a farmer. He enlisted as a private soldier and without influence rose to a captaincy by merit and bravery alone. He is a profound thinker, a lover of his race and has given many years to the study of social and political questions. It has been his desire to found a community where his ideas of true success might be wrought out, as an object lesson to the world, of the advantages of unselfishness. This pleasure having been denied him, he has incorporated his leading ideas in Solaris Farm, in the hope that some one more fortunate than himself may be able to receive the blessings which must inevitably flow from such a noble life. 
59316	----	The Internet Archive Transcribers Note Text emphasis denoted as _Italics_ and =Bold=. Computers on the Farm Farm Uses for Computers, How to Select Software and Hardware, and Online Information Sources in Agriculture [Illustration] [Illustration] United States Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin Number 2277 Cover Photo: Fran and Brian Schnarre, a farm couple from Columbia, Missouri, working at their computer. _Photo by Duane Dailey, University of Missouri_. Prepared by Office of Information, Office of Governmental and Public Affairs =Issued March 1984= Contents Purpose of This Bulletin 5 What a Computer Can Do for You 5 Recordkeeping 6 Farm Management Analysis 6 Process Controllers 6 Telecommunications 7 Other Uses 7 Computers on the Farm 7 How to Choose a Microcomputer System 8 Strategies for Getting into Computers 9 Alternatives to Buying a Microcomputer 10 Information Available from Your County Extension Agent 10 How to Select Software 11 Checklist for Evaluating Software 11 Where to Look for Good Software 13 Compatibility Counts 13 How to Select Hardware 14 Checklist for Evaluating Hardware 14 Where to Look for Good Hardware 16 Types of Hardware 16 Components of a Microcomputer 17 Try It Out 18 Computers Need an Investment of Time and Money 19 Information Available Online from USDA, State, and Private Sources 20 Other Computer Development at USDA 30 Learning More about Computers on the Farm 32 Glossary of Computer Terms 34 =Computers on the Farm= =by Deborah Takiff Smith= =Purpose of This Bulletin= How can a computer help you operate your farm better? How do you select useful computer programs (software) and equipment (hardware)? If you have a computer or plan to get one, what information can you obtain with your computer that will be useful for your farm operation? This publication will help you answer such questions. It will help you evaluate and select a new system, or get more out of the one you already have. The key components of computer systems you may want to know about are: Hardware--the physical equipment itself. Software--the computer programs on tape or disk, and Online sources of information--such as current market and weather information and technical reports. This publication offers guidelines to help farmers select hardware, software, and online information. (See the glossary at the end of this publication for definitions of specialized computer terms.) =What a Computer Can Do for You= You can use a microcomputer to help you-- Determine the most economical feed ration for dairy cows and other farm animals. Schedule irrigation, Get quick access to records, Keep machinery inventories and depreciation schedules, Help with tax records and making out income tax returns, Keep livestock breeding and production records, Keep a record of loans and cash flow to meet interest and principal payments, Determine levels of earnings by working through a profit and loss statement and by calculating a percentage return to capital and a percentage return to equity, Decide the optimum production choice for a particular farm in a given year, and the optimum combination of inputs to grow the crops or livestock chosen, Store large amounts of data, and Get current market and weather information if the microprocessor is connected via the telephone to data bases (see section on online services). Software programs are also available in such areas as financial management, crop and field records, mailing lists for customers of certified seed and breeding stock, machinery purchase versus custom hiring, investment feasibility of building and livestock facilities, commodity price charts and tables, income taxation, marketing, soil conservation, and integrated pest management. The computer and its associated software packages can help you do four kinds of work: (1) store and manipulate records, (2) provide analyses for management decisions, (3) control machines or monitor production, and (4) communicate faster with other people through their computers and data bases. =Recordkeeping= Many experts recommend that you start on a small scale, computerize one thing at a time, and learn as you go along--rather than trying to put information on your entire farm operation into the computer all at once. A good place to start is with farm records. You can use microcomputers to keep track of financial records--such as cash flow, bank balances, accounts payable, accounts receivable, net worth statements, costs, and returns--as well as other records--such as livestock breeding and production reports, crop and field records, and mailing lists. =Farm Management Analysis= After computerizing the farm records, the next step would be to do simple analyses on the microprocessor. A good place to start is by analyzing data already stored in the computer or available in the files. For example, you could use the recordkeeping capabilities of the computer to record and depreciate equipment, and to decide whether it is cheaper to lease or buy farm equipment. General software is available to help you with accounting and bookkeeping, basic business functions. =Process Controllers= Besides analyzing farm management problems and storing data, computers have another key use--as process controllers. They can control such devices as pumps and gates, record milk output per cow, and control grain drying. To save water and energy, some farmers have switched to sophisticated irrigation scheduling by programing their computers to read the moisture in the soil, the weather, and the humidity, and to provide information on a plant's age and irrigation needs. The computer then tells the farmer when to water a crop and for how long--and can even turn the water on and off. =Telecommunications= You can also use a computer as an up-to-date source for communication, linking you to banks of information that are available almost instantaneously from public and private online information sources. With the computer hooked up to the telephone, you can get information quickly, receive it visually, and record it in detail if you wish. Some key information sources are listed on page 20 of this bulletin. =Other Uses= Farm families can use microcomputers the same way other families do--to plan the family budget, keep an inventory of household furnishings, keep track of recipes, keep mailing lists, turn lights and heat on and off, type homework and other documents, learn new skills, and play games. =Computers on the Farm= Most of the computers farmers are getting are microcomputers, also called home computers or personal computers. They are the basis of the "computer revolution" that has been occurring since the late 1970's and they are the focus of this publication. Many farmers, especially the owners of the larger farms, already have computers. But you don't have to be a large farmer to afford a microcomputer. Computers can be useful in almost all areas of a farming operation--helping you decide what, when, and how to plant; how to sell; and how to arrange the farm business to be more efficient and more profitable. The computer can supplement the calculator, typewriter, and file cabinet. And it can send and receive written or graphic messages by telephone (in most areas of the country) that might be too long or complex to do verbally. A computer can be very useful when repetitive analyses are needed or when data storage is important, as with financial records or daily milk output per cow. More and more, farming requires sophisticated management decisions and management of basic resources, including land, water, labor, production inputs, and capital. These are the kinds of decisions the computer can help you make faster and more cost-effectively. Although a computer program for your farm operation could make recordkeeping and analysis easier and improve your ability to manage, it might be hard to measure these improvements in dollars. But the dollars you save by having better information on when to sell a crop, how to monitor the business, and how to diagnose a problem before it gets out of control might pay for the computer. Farmers and ranchers with large feedlot or other livestock operations might find that a feed formulation program could cut costs enough to pay for the computer system within a few months. =How to Choose a Microcomputer System= Should you buy a microcomputer? How do you decide on a system that's best for you? Here are some factors to consider in making these decisions. The first step is to think about your needs. What would you do with your computer system? How would you actually use it to help you run your operation better? List your primary needs, the important things you want to do right away with your computer. Then, think of secondary needs--things you might do in the future once you have a computer. Once you've identified your needs, the next step is to shop around--to find some software that fulfills your needs and to see some systems in operation. Go to computer stores or get in touch with the salespeople in your area. You could decide to have custom programs written for your operation, but they will be significantly more expensive than programs that have already been developed. Talk to other farmers, ranchers, extension and university specialists, and business people who are using microcomputers. Find out what software they are using. Do some research (by reading books or magazines, taking a course or seminar, or visiting a trade show) so you'll be an informed customer when you shop seriously. Many computer experts strongly recommend against buying a computer first and then shopping for the software packages. So identify your needs and select the software packages or materials that will help you do what you want to with your computer. Then find the hardware to run the programs. =The Computer Revolution= "The advent of computers to farm management ... is already underway and seems likely to have a powerful influence," said USDA historian Wayne Rasmussen in 1982. "The computer should lead to more efficient management of machines and energy and should help in other farming operations such as cost accounting, mixing feed rations and applying fertilizers and other resources efficiently. Some farmers now have computers of their own, and many others have access to computer systems through their county agricultural agents," Rasmussen pointed out. The computer can be seen as the "third revolution" in American farming. The first revolution was the use of the horse, which added animal power to human power. The second was the switch from the horse to the tractor, which again expanded the power an individual could wield. But the computer is a different kind of technological advance because it adds to the farmer's power to manage. By 1990, the computer will probably be as important a part of a commercial farmer's operation as the pickup truck. Farmers may flip on their computers first thing in the morning--instead of their radios--to get the latest market prices. They can get a rundown on weather and growing conditions for major worldwide production areas; pertinent data on prices, market conditions, credit terms, transportation and storage rates, and related forecasts; and finally a list of priorities each day to take advantage of these conditions. Getting the right system--the combination of hardware (the physical equipment) and software (the computer programs)--is the problem farmers must solve before they can make the most of the computer revolution. =Strategies for Getting Into Computers= If you're interested in getting your farm's operations computerized, and you're just starting, you could choose various strategies for doing so. One way is to first buy the basic hardware and components you think you need, and then add memory and other components later. If you do that, be sure you can add additional disk drives, memory, and a printer to your computer, all at a reasonable cost. What can you do with a small computer once you outgrow it, and you want to get a bigger one? You might want to use your older computer in a small, specialized farm operation, or keep it to retrieve and analyze records that you stored on the old equipment. Other alternatives would be to trade it in on a larger computer, advertise to sell it through the local want-ads, trade or sell it to a friend or neighbor, keep the small computer for someone else in the family (perhaps a game-playing youngster), or donate it to a local school or religious or charitable group and take a tax write-off. The farm of the future may have many computers, some for specific functions such as irrigation scheduling or dairy operations, and one for financial records. Having several computers would help farmers deal with the problem of malfunctioning computers, so that the whole farm would not be shut down if one computer goes down. =Alternatives to Buying a Microcomputer= You might consider alternatives to buying a computer. You may be able to lease one to see what it will do for you, and use it until your needs make it worthwhile to buy one. Prices keep coming down. The best time to buy is when you find you can profitably make use of a computer. Even though it becomes technically obsolete, it will still do for you what you purchased it for. A programmable calculator may be an appropriate tool that is much less costly then a microcomputer. If you like what a computer can do for your operation but aren't ready to buy one or to use it yourself, you might hire a consultant to help you select an appropriate system. Or you might retain an accountant or computer consultant to run the financial analysis programs you need. This kind of service gives quick results, and relieves you of having to do it yourself. =Information available From Your County Extension Agent= State Cooperative Extension Services are helping States provide computers for county offices. Many State Extension Services already have computers in nearly every county Extension office. If you are considering buying or leasing a computer system, or want software or timesharing services to make the most of the system you have, a good place to go is to your State or county Extension office. In many States, county Extension offices have terminals connecting them to mainframe computers; some have microcomputers which give them access to information on crop management, animal production, and marketing. The county Extension staff can tell you what is available online in your area that is tailored to your kind of farming and your region. The Extension staff will also be able to tell you the software programs applicable in your State. Many State Extension offices have publications on computers, and others have or are developing online information networks linking farmers and other users to the State university mainframe computer and its data base. State Extension specialists are a logical place to start when looking for software that is appropriate to your needs. Many State Extension computer and agricultural experts have produced software materials that are available, and the county agent will know about them. In some cases the county Extension office can lend you software. If you don't have a computer, the Extension office may be able to run programs for you, choosing the appropriate software available and plugging in the precise conditions and problems on your farming or ranching operation. Or they may be able to use the computer to search for information you need, perhaps communicating with a large State, regional, or national data base. As lower cost computers with improved software have become available, an increasing number of people are turning to their State Cooperative Extension Services for training in computer fundamentals, equipment selection, and software evaluation. County agents can help people find what is available, but they probably will not be preparing software programs themselves. =How to Select Software= The key criteria for selecting good software are the following: Does it meet your needs? Does it do what it says it will do? And does it have good support documentation? =Checklist for Evaluating Software= Here are some factors to consider when evaluating and comparing software: =Documentation.= Look at the "documentation" or the written (paper) materials that come with your program. These should explain clearly what the program does and what you have to do to use it. =Ease of Use.= Is the program fairly easy to use? Does it guide you through the program? =Instructions.= Another factor you should consider in evaluating software is the instructions. Are there instructions in the program or in the written documentation? Are they readable? You should be sure you understand how to operate the program. =Help.= What help can you get if you run into problems? Does the program have a "help" function? When you don't know how to answer a question or need help, can you turn to a separate part of the computer program or to a part of the accompanying documentation to answer your question? Is there a company phone-in service you can call if you need help? Some software programs may come to you with bugs (errors) in them. Find out what backup services are available. Is there a hotline you can call for help if the program has a problem you can't solve? Does the company provide updated versions periodically? Are they free or at nominal cost? =Compatibility with Hardware.= Is the software compatible with hardware you already have, or does it run on an operating system you can use with your hardware? Some computers use tape cassettes, like audio tape you use on a tape recorder. The most standard storage medium for programs and data is the floppy diskette, which looks like a soft phonograph record. The diskette comes in several sizes--the most common are 8 inches and 5¼ inches. A newer possibility is the 8-inch hard disk. The hard disk may be used for storage, but you buy the software on a floppy disk and transfer it. =Memory.= Does your computer have enough memory to run the program? =Recommendation.= Does the program come from a reputable source, or does it come with a recommendation from someone you trust? =Effectiveness.= Does the program do what you want it to do correctly and consistently? =Where to Look for Good Software= Where do you find good software? Some farmers and ranchers write their own programs or pay a programmer to write a custom program. But most get existing programs either from State Extension sources or from commercial outlets. Many operations farmers need to perform on a computer can be done by using generalized software packages readily available through commercial sources. Check with your County Extension Agent. He or she may know of the programs that have been tailored for your operation. The Extension Service has published a directory of agricultural software programs produced by State Extension Services, entitled "Updated Inventory of Agricultural Computer Programs."[A] [Footnote A: To order a copy, send $3.50, payable to the University of Florida, to Administrative Services Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) Bldg. 664 University of Florida Gainesville, FL ] There are also various private directories of software that is compatible for particular equipment. You can get these programs at computer stores or through mail-order sources. Many trade journals carry ads of agricultural software vendors. The land-grant university in your State may have computer programs available for farmers at nominal cost. Many States have produced extensive computer software. There are also many commercial software houses that produce computer programs in the field of agriculture. The best programs are written by people who combine strong expertise in the agricultural subject matter with the ability to write good computer programs that are relatively "friendly" or easy to use. The 1980's have seen a big jump in the number, quality, and friendliness of agricultural software. But you still need to evaluate carefully the programs you are considering. Remember that software selection and evaluation are important factors to consider when planning a computer system for your farm. =Compatibility Counts= Computers and marriages should share one thing in common: Compatibility. If it's not there, the system won't work. Not all hardware and software are compatible. In fact, hundreds of producers of computer equipment and computer programs are in the market, and there are few across-the-board standards. So it's important to get hardware and software that are compatible. Software, or the computer programs themselves, are not like records that can be played on any record player. They have to be compatible with the hardware in terms of the programing language used, operating system, size, format, and other factors. Try to find a store in your area where you will get the expertise you need to obtain the right combination of software and hardware to meet your needs. When you buy a computer, find out whether it comes with a standard operating language that will allow you to use a wide variety of programs written in different languages on your computer. Even then, you may find that a disk that supposedly works with that operating language will not work on your machine. =How to Select Hardware= =Checklist for Evaluating Hardware= Here are some factors to consider when evaluating and comparing hardware: =Software.= The first questions to ask are, "What software do you plan to use?" and "Which computer will run that program?" Does the computer come with a standard operating system so that it will be compatible with a range of software programs? =Memory.= How much memory, or information storage capacity, do you need? The computer's memory is measured in kilobytes (abbreviated K), and most computers come in sizes ranging from 2K up to 256K. (A kilobyte is equal to roughly 1,000 characters.) You need to know the software program you will use and your recordkeeping requirements to accurately estimate the capacity of the equipment you need. Some agricultural programs use 48K or 64K of memory. User friendly programs, which require little training to use and which guide you through the program, may be easier; but they may require more memory for the program itself, leaving you less storage space or memory for the data. =Computation.= What kind of computational ability do you want your computer to have? Will it serve the computing needs you have identified for now and later? =Input and Output Devices.= What kind of output do you need? What additional pieces of equipment or peripherals (such as separate screen, disk drive, modem, printer) will you need to buy to make this system do what you want it to? Most agricultural programs require a printer. A dot matrix printer (which produces characters made of small dots) may be sufficient. Another option is a letter quality printer, which is more expensive. How big a screen do you need? (Screens are measured in characters and in inches.) Do you need an 80-column or 40-column monitor? Do you need color and strong graphics capability? What quality screen image do you need? Can you add memory and other components later if you need to? =External Storage.= What kind of external storage does the system use, floppy disk, hard disk, or tape? Cassette tape storage costs less, but compared to disk storage, it has several disadvantages. If the hardware uses floppy disks, is the disk drive included as part of the computer package or does it come separately? Is a second disk drive included in the package or does it come separately? What kind of a disk drive(s) do you need, single or double density? Hard or floppy? =Training.= What training is available in the use of the new equipment? =Backup and Maintenance Services.= What backup and maintenance services are available from the vendor or other sources, once you've bought this computer? What happens when the computer is down (not working)? Does the company or store from which you plan to buy offer a service contract, and how much does it cost? Will you have to carry your computer to their site for servicing, and how long are you likely to be without it? How far away is your dealer and where will the computer actually be serviced? It's important to buy something that you can have fixed fairly quickly and cheaply, since elements of your system, especially the mechanical parts, may well need repair at some time. =Value.= What equipment and software programs come with the basic package, and are these items included in the base price? Compare prices carefully, considering the components and software you are getting for a particular price. Do not buy on the basis of price alone, but consider also the reliability of the equipment and the vendor, and the service you will be getting to set up, maintain, and support your system. =Where to Look for Good Hardware= Many buyers get their computers at specialty stores that handle computers and other electronics. Some handle only one brand of computer. It's worthwhile to shop around and see various systems. The big national department store chains sell computers, too. Talk to your neighbors about what they're using, and be sure to get hands-on practice with systems you are considering. Try to find a reputable dealer who can offer backup support. Consider the pros and cons of getting all equipment from a single vendor versus shopping around for peripherals from different manufacturers. A reliable dealer who handles several brands can help you make this decision. Check with your Extension office. It may have a State publication on computers or a checklist for buying one. =Types of Hardware= Farmers are using several different types of computers. Besides the microcomputer, which is the most widely used, other kinds of farm computers include interactive terminals, videotex terminals, handheld processors, and minicomputers. A microcomputer can be used as a stand-alone unit, working on its own with a software disk or tape. Or it can be connected to outside information sources if it is equipped with a device known as a modem, which allows the computer to communicate with other computers over the telephone. The modem turns the computer from an information processor and storage machine into a piece of communications equipment. An interactive terminal has no data storage capability but is linked to a central computer through the telephone. This is called a "dumb" terminal because it can receive, display, and send information, but it cannot process that information. Programs and data are stored in the central computer and the user pays a fee to access the system. A videotex keyboard terminal can be connected to a telephone jack and any television set. The user can request and receive any kind of information stored in the central computer. Some of the online services use this type of equipment (see section about online information systems on page 20). Many farmers are also using handheld programmable calculators. These are convenient to use in the field, and can record often repeated data, such as daily milk production. They have little memory (usually 2K) and their output can be printed on 2-inch paper tape. They are much cheaper than the microcomputer. Farmers use them to record daily milk production, formulate dairy and beef rations, estimate value of dairy forages, estimate cost of operating farm machinery, and calculate depreciation and investment tax credit. Some very large farm operations use minicomputers, which are larger, have more memory, can do more functions than the microcomputers, and can support multiple users. However, the newer microcomputers have more memory and more functions, and the difference between minicomputers and microcomputers has narrowed. =Computer System Components= [Illustration: Printer; Display Screen; Telephone/Modem; Disk Drive; Floppy Disk; and Central Processor with Keyboard] =Components of a Microcomputer= One way to understand how a microcomputer works is to see its key components. The =central processing unit= (CPU) is the silicon chip that is the "brain" of the computer. It does all the computation and controls all the other processing. The CPU stores =memory= of several kinds. Part of the memory is wired into the computer permanently by the manufacturer. This is called Read Only Memory (ROM). It contains such things as the operating system and program language. Random Access Memory (RAM) is the memory bank that includes the computer program or instructions, as well as the data. Your storage devices--tape cassettes, floppy disks, or hard disks--that store computer programs and data, are sometimes called external memory. The computer system also needs =input devices= and =output devices=. Your keyboard is an input device; disk drives and tape drives are also input devices. The output will probably be a cathode ray tube (CRT), which looks like a video monitor. The printer is the other output device you may choose to include in your computer system. Make sure the microcomputer has an adequate number of input and output ports for future needs. If you use your computer for communications, you'll need a telephone =modem=. Here is a possible shopping list of hardware for a farmer's starting microcomputer system: CPU (computer) with 48K or 64K of memory. CRT or monitor with adequate character width for the programs you plan to use. One or two disk drives, either 5¼ or 8 inches in diameter. Dot matrix printer (optional). Modem for communication with large computer (optional). =Try it Out= Be sure you try the system you plan to buy. Test run on a sample problem the hardware and software combination you are considering using. See if you think the solutions the computer puts out are what you need. If you insist on a thorough demonstration of the material you are considering buying, you can evaluate it in terms of its ease of use and the usefulness of its analysis. If you're thinking of buying a new software package for a computer you already have, ask to try it out first. Some software distributors in the public sector will give you a trial period to make sure the program is satisfactory and runs on your equipment. Or you may be able to obtain a demonstration disk. At least, try out new programs with the same microprocessor, printer, and screen you use to make sure they will work on your equipment. It's useful to have software evaluated by a reputable source--for example your local county Extension agent, State Extension specialist, or a neighbor who has had experience. "Let the buyer beware" is a good motto to remember as you shop around for a computer system. =Getting Comfortable with Computers= If you can use a typewriter, you can use a computer. Most agricultural program's do not require particular math or technical skills, just a knowledge of your farming operation and the ability to think in a logical, orderly way. Most new programs are user friendly; they ask you questions in plain English, and you type the answer on the keyboard. A good way to feel comfortable with computers is to try one out at your local computer store, or at fairs, conferences, or workshops at universities. =Computers Need an Investment in Time and Money= In addition to considering the cost of a computer system, consider the time and effort it takes to learn the equipment and the programs, and to keep records. Who will be operating the microcomputer? Does he or she have the patience and skills to learn to operate the computer, and to enter the large amounts of data that will be required initially? The computer may save time and money. Many farmers find that they don't save time but they accomplish more in the time they do spend. Don't underestimate the amount of time and effort it will require to collect data, make sure it's accurate, enter the data, and run the analyses. It's important to consider how user-friendly the computer is, and how much the computer's software will do to guide you through the analysis. A computer will do calculations very quickly, perhaps saving hours of laborious figuring. A computer will store information from one time period to the next, and recalculate alternatives quickly. By making the information available, it will help you identify strong and weak points in your operation. However, these functions will depend on your data. If the records you use in making a computation are incomplete, for example, the computer cannot fill in the gaps for you nor overcome inaccuracies in the data. =Information available Online From USDA, State, and Private Sources= You can transform your own microprocessor or other computer into a powerful communications device by adding a modem to it and communicating over the telephone. This will help you gather information on news, weather forecasts, emergencies or disasters, crop and livestock production, and marketing (including current and future prices). Online computer services also include buying and selling farm products; purchasing farm and home supplies, including teleshopping; banking services; business management advice; ordering theater tickets; information concerning farm and public policy; and personal education and entertainment. Many farmers who are computerizing their operations, as well as others in agriculture, can use some form of online information. There are more than 1,300 public and private information sources available on computer. New ones seem to come out every week. The following selected list of information you can receive on computer includes some of the major private online information services with agricultural applications, as well as the main ones available from USDA and the State land-grant institutions. Most of these information networks are paid for by the user based on the amount of use. Many charge an initial fee, and then most charge the user by the amount of time he or she spends on the system. No one computer system or online system may be adequate for everyone. There are many good systems, and different systems are good for different tasks. =1. AGNET= AGNET is a major online information and problem-solving service for farmers, ranchers, agribusinesses, and homes. It is sponsored jointly by five State Cooperative Extension Services--Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington--and operated by the University of Nebraska. County Extension offices in several States participate, and farmers in nearly all the 50 States and Canada subscribe to AGNET. It helps people make marketing and production decisions and solve agricultural management problems, and it provides current information on market conditions and news items. It offers cash and futures market reports, international market reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), reports and report abstracts from the USDA's Economic Research Service and Statistical Reporting Service, and market comments by Extension Service economists. Also available are electronic mail service and electronic conferencing, which allows groups of users with similar interests to share ideas and information. Farmers and ranchers who have computer terminals with communication capability can access AGNET. Others can tap into AGNET through their county Extension services. AGNET subscribers are typically agricultural lenders and bankers. Extension specialists, farm managers, home economists, agricultural consulting firms, farmers and ranchers, and exporters of agricultural commodities. ADDRESS: AGNET University of Nebraska 105 Miller Hall University of Nebraska Lincoln, NE 68583 =2. AGRICOIA= AGRICOIA is an online information service produced by the National Agricultural Library (NAD of USDA), and is available commercially from a number of sources (including DIALOG and Bibliographic Retrieval Services). It provides comprehensive access to information on published literature pertaining to agriculture. AGRICOIA is the catalog and index for NAL and covers materials published since 1970. It includes about 1.5 million citations. AGRICOIA contains citations to worldwide published books, serial titles, and journal articles on agriculture and related subjects. In addition to bibliographic citations of published literature, the system offers information through several specialized subfiles; these subfiles include brucellosis (BRU), environmental impact statements covering 1977 and 1978 (ENV), and the Food and Nutrition Information Center, which emphasizes human nutrition research and education and food technology (FNC). Librarians are the main users of this system. ADDRESS: To find out more about AGRICOIA, contact: Educational Resources Staff National Agricultural Library Room 1402 Beltsville, MD 20705 =3. AgriData Network= AgriData is a private information and computing network specializing in agriculture. It offers immediate access to more than 10,000 pages of continuously updated business, financial, marketing, weather, and price information, as well as analyses and recommendations from its own and other reporters, analysts, economists, meteorologists, and researchers. It offers several different services, including an online computing service that allows users to access a library of microcomputer software programs that can be transferred to the user's microcomputer; an agricultural production technology service offering data bases from 40 land-grant universities and from agricultural, chemical, fertilizer, equipment, seed, and feed companies; an "electronic yellow pages," or product service directory for farmers; and electronic mail. ADDRESS: AgriData Resources, Inc. 205 West Highland Ave. Milwaukee, WI 53203 =4. Agri-Markets Data Service (AMDS)= Agri-Markets Data Service is an agricultural data base service offered by Capital Publications in Arlington, Va. The service provides market information, such as prices and shipments, as well as commentary and other information. It gives daily and weekly market commentary on local and national market activity in livestock, grain, fruits and vegetables, and poultry and dairy products. ADDRESS: Agri-Markets Data Service 1300 North 17th St., Suite 1600 Arlington, VA 22209 =5. AMS Market News Network= The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has a Market News Telecommunications System that reports up-to-the-minute information on commodity prices, demand, and movement. The system transmits between 700 and 900 different reports each day on more than 150 farm commodities. Each report is re-transmitted an average of 30 times. The initial use of this market news system is to transmit reports to the news media and among market news offices; firms and individuals may also subscribe at their own cost. In addition, AMS and the Public Broadcasting Service deliver market information directly to farmers via a television captioning system called Farm Market INFODATA, available in several cities around the country. By selecting a special channel on a closed captioning decoder, anyone within the broadcast coverage area of the participating public television station may receive the market information. Additional stations in a number of States have instituted this service on their own. For more information, contact: AMS Communications and Operations Branch Administrative Services Division, Room 0092 U.S. Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C. 20250 =6. AutEx Systems= AutEx Systems designs and operates computer-based communications systems which link buyers and sellers in specific industries. Two agricultural services are its Produce Network and its Floral Marketing Network. Subscribers to the networks use AutEx supplied terminals to access a nationwide communications network that includes buyer and seller offers. This online data communications system offers pretrading information. The terminal prints information needed to compare buying and selling opportunities in fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as floral products. The company is owned by Xerox. ADDRESS: AutEx Systems 55 William St. Wellesley, MA 02181 =7. Chase Econometrics= Chase Econometrics, a subsidiary of Chase Manhattan Bank, offers economic and financial information and analyses in the areas of industrial economics, energy, fertilizer, minerals, international economics, U.S. economics, and agriculture through its information system. Data and forecasting services on agribusiness cover international, national, regional, and statewide levels. Subscribers receive regular reports and analyses, and also have access to a number of historical and forecast data bases acquired through internal data collection activities or from other organizations. Many of its customers are large food and agribusiness firms. ADDRESS: Chase Econometrics 150 Monument Rd. Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004 =8. CMN (Computerized Management Network)= Developed by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University as a national information system for use by State Extension Services, CMN helps Extension workers in solving problems, retrieving information, and evaluating programs. To date, many CMN programs have provided the foundation for several highly successful Extension programs. Two of the most popular are the Simplified Dairy Cattle Feeding Program, which has had a substantial impact on the economics of feeding dairy herds, and COIN, which provides low-cost user access to USDA reports on marketing, futures, and summary information on all major crops and livestock enterprises. The CMN system is designed to be used by people who have no special training with computers, and is available nationwide and in Canada. ADDRESS: CMN Virginia Cooperative Extension Service Plaza I, Bldg. D Blacksburg, VA 24061 =9. COIN (Computerized Outlook and Information Network)= COIN is a nationwide source of information from the Extension Service, which can be accessed by State and county extension staff, as well as by researchers, farmers, and agribusiness. It contains USDA outlook, market, and other information on a national computer network. Information from the USDA which is available through COIN includes Statistical Reporting Service (SRS) Crop Reporting Board reports. Economic Research Service (ERS) economic situation summaries. World Agricultural Outlook Board reports on world agriculture supply and demand. Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) weekly roundup of world production and trade reports. Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) summary of daily grain market prices, and USDA news releases. Some States use a multi-State computer network, or an in-State computer system, or both, to transfer agricultural outlook and production information to county offices and disseminate it to the general public. State Extension outlook specialists load their outlook analyses directly onto COIN (with a remote terminal) many times throughout the year. COIN is available on the Computerized Management Network (CMN) and through USDA ONLINE (see those entries on this list). =10. CompuServe= CompuServe Information Service offers access to more than 500 data bases. Some of the subjects of particular interest to farmers include agribusiness, agricultural news, finance and investment, news, weather, specific commodities including cotton futures prices and cattle prices, and the Commodity News Service data. It also offers electronic shopping and banking, electronic mail, hobby and special interest newsletters, and games. ADDRESS: CompuServe Incorporated 5000 Arlington Centre Blvd. Post Office Box 20212 Columbus, OH 43220 =11. CRIS--Current Research Information System= CRIS--Current Research Information System--is a computer based information storage and retrieval system. It covers most of the Nation's publicly supported agricultural and forestry research, and contains about 30,000 summaries of research projects. The data base is updated monthly. CRIS summaries provide information about ongoing research projects conducted or sponsored by USDA research agencies, 58 State agricultural experiment stations, 17 State forestry schools, 28 schools of veterinary medicine, 16 land-grant colleges of 1890, Tuskegee Institute, and other cooperating State institutions. It went online in 1977. Through this retrieval system, an individual can obtain a brief description of the research, along with the investigators' names, performing organization and location, current progress, and a list of the latest publications resulting from the research. CRIS inhouse search services are provided primarily to research scientists and research managers in USDA and State participating institutions. The public can directly access the CRIS data base through the DIALOG online retrieval system. Researchers in public and private institutions are the main users of CRIS. ADDRESS: Customer Service DIALOG Information Retrieval Services, Inc. 3460 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94340 =12. DRI (Data Resources, Inc.)= DRI is a private forecasting service with regional models that forecast acreage planted and harvested, and yield for all commodities. This service does independent forecasts of production, prices, and demand for livestock, and has a separate program for fertilizer. DRI has software programs for potato producers. Some of its main clients are big agricultural supply companies and food processing firms. ADDRESS: Data Resources, Inc. 24 Hartwell Ave. Lexington, MA 02173 =13. ESTEL (Extension Service Telecommunication System)= ESTEL is a pilot project from the University of Maryland's Cooperative Extension Service. It provides farmers with information via a microprocessor or videotex equipment, which receives the information and displays it on a video screen. The videotex equipment may be cheaper to purchase than a microcomputer. ESTEL provides current information on market news, local weather conditions, pesticides, production information, and energy conservation tips, as well as home economics and 4-H programs. ADDRESS: ESTEL (Extension Service Telecommunication System) Maryland Cooperative Extension Service University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 =14. Farm Bureau ACRES= The American Farm Bureau Federation has a program to provide marketing information and advice for its members. Known as Farm Bureau ACRES, this marketing information project involves several State farm bureaus. AFBF members can retrieve information from the host computers via telephone hookup and, at the same time, send messages to State computers, thereby providing a two-way daily contact between State coordinators and farmer-members. For more information, contact your county or State Farm Bureau. =15. Firsthand= Based on French videotex technology known as "Teletel," Firsthand is a transactional videotex system originally started by the First Bank System of Minneapolis and now available in other areas too. With this system, participants can access agribusiness bookkeeping systems; weather, commodity, and financial reports; and domestic and international news through a local telephone number. Clients can also do their shopping electronically from a catalog, and obtain commodity reports and other agribusiness information offered by other information providers. They can see their bank statements and balances, make transfers between accounts, and pay bills electronically. ADDRESS: Videotex 220 Soo Line Bldg. Minneapolis, MN 55402 =16. Grassroots= Grassroots is a Canadian videotex system that provides agribusiness with comprehensive, up-to-date information. It helps farmers make effective purchasing, operating, financing, and marketing decisions. It offers market information on current and future prices of all major agricultural commodities, and carries farm management programs as well. It also offers information from companies offering products and services of interest to agriculture, including material on chemicals, fertilizers, equipment, real estate, seed, feed, grain, and livestock. Material on financial services, banking, and insurance is updated daily. ADDRESS: Infomart 164 Merton St. Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M4S 3A8 =17. Instant Update= Instant Update is a timesharing information delivery system designed for the Professional Farmers of America. The system offers its users a variety of services and information, including electronic mail, agribusiness news and analyses, weather reports, and technical information. ADDRESS: Instant Update Professional Farmers of America 219 Parkade Cedar Falls, IA 50613 =18. Market Data Systems, Inc.= Market Data Systems carries information from 13 commodity exchanges for the benefit of customers. It leases terminals on which to receive the information. ADDRESS: Market Data Systems, Inc. 3835 lamar Ave. Memphis, TN 38118 =19. NEMA (National Electronic Marketing Association, Inc.)= NEMA offers marketing firms computerized marketing systems for many agricultural products. It is a way of linking buyers and sellers without having to first transport the products to market. Electronic marketing enables buyers and sellers to negotiate transactions in a public market while remaining in their own offices. NEMA is developing several marketing systems for agricultural markets. NEMA was developed by Virginia Tech Extension and Research staff in cooperation with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Commerce and AMS. Through a telephone hookup to computer terminals in any location, buyers and sellers are brought together at a specific time to determine the price, on a competitive basis, for the products being offered for sale. Prospective buyers can obtain written descriptions of the products before sale time. One pricing technique is a computerized auction process, where the computer acts as the auctioneer. During the auction, the computer drops the asking price until a bid is received, then raises the price from that point until there is only one bidder left. At the end of a sale, the highest bidders receive summaries of their purchases. The products are shipped efficiently from seller to buyer. State Cooperative Extension Services, producers' organizations. State departments of agriculture, and other agencies have developed and implemented NEMA, as well as some other electronic marketing systems in the United States. Today computerized systems sell slaughter and feeder livestock, cotton, and shell eggs. This system is for market agents and buyers. ADDRESS: National Electronic Marketing Assn., Inc. P.O. Box 722 Christiansburg, VA 24073 =20. NPIRS (National Pesticide Information Retrieval System)= NPIRS is a nationally accessible online data base containing information about all pesticides registered with the Environmental Protection Agency, and indicating which are registered for use against specific pests on specific crops or sites. States can also insert information about State pesticide registrations. Purdue University is developing the system under a cooperative agreement with USDA and is managing the data base, which uses facilities provided by Martin-Marietta, Inc. ADDRESS: National Pesticide Information Retrieval System Entomology Hall Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 =21. Rural Ventures= Rural Ventures offers courses and data, recommends solutions to problems of small farmers, and promotes economic efficiency in small-scale agriculture and food processing enterprises. It is a joint venture by Control Data Corporation and other groups, which started with a project in Princeton, Minnesota. A Rural Venture project gives farmers the capability to determine the optimum selection of crops, livestock, and equipment, and offers a full range of computer-based education and training programs. ADDRESS: Rural Ventures, Inc. 120 South LaGrande Ave. Princeton, MN 55371 =22. The Source= The Source, a subsidiary of Reader's Digest, provides access to more than 1,200 programs and services in a variety of subject areas, including agriculture. It carries the Commodity News Service general news reports and daily price activities for major commodities. The system also supplies news and commentary on current business trends along with updated listings of stocks, bonds, commodities, and futures. ADDRESS: The Source Source Telecomputing 1616 Anderson Road McLean, VA 22102 =23. Telplan= Telplan is a timesharing computer service with several interactive problem-solving packages. Its agricultural programs are in the areas of farm finance and animal nutrition, and it offers family finance and human nutrition programs as well. It is operated by Michigan State University and is available nationwide. ADDRESS: Telplan--Michigan State University Room 27 Agriculture Hall Department of Agricultural Economics Michigan State University East Lansing, Ml 48824-1039 =24. USDA Online= USDA Online delivers news and other current information from USDA's Office of Information. Services include the following reports as they are released: (1) USDA national news releases about policy and program announcements, (2) USDA regional and State news releases about program announcements, (3) outlook and situation report summaries, (4) Crop Reporting Board reports, report highlights, and summaries, (5) Foreign Agricultural Service reports and announcements on foreign crops, world production, and trade, (6) Economic Research Service report abstracts, (7) a daily agricultural news summary called "AG a.m.," and (8) a weekly "Farm Paper Letter" for farm magazine and newspaper editors and others interested in the summary and highlights of USDA reports for the week. Through USDA Online, users can also access COIN (see p. 24-25) and several other data bases. Another communications network available to users of USDA Online is an electronic mail service linking various offices at USDA and the State Extension Services, land-grant Universities, State Departments of Agriculture, other Federal and State agencies, and other organizations interested in agriculture. ADDRESS: News Division, Room 404-A Office of Information U.S. Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C. 20250 =Rural Telephone Lines= One question to consider when you are selecting a computer system to be used in a rural area is whether your telephone line is adequate for potential users in your area. You must have a private line. Line quality is also important; excessive line noise or dips and surges in power may cause the communications system to disconnect you. In the future, farmers will be able to get information by satellite rather than through the phone, which could eventually be a cost saver for those who are far from the information source. =Other Computer Developments at USDA= Besides online information services, there are several other computer developments available through USDA that are of use to farmers and ranchers. Many USDA agencies are using computers to disseminate information. Here is a partial list: Since 1981, the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) has been releasing information electronically that previously had been distributed as publications through the mail. The FAS electronic information system includes agricultural trade leads received from agricultural attaches relating to potential purchases of commodities by foreign buyers. The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), in cooperation with the Extension Service, has developed two software packages to help farmers make decisions about the kind and amount of crop insurance they will need. ARCIE (All Risk Crop Insurance Evaluation) comes in "mini" and "complete" versions. Mini-ARCIE takes individual farm data and calculates a projected cash flow under various yield conditions with and without crop insurance. It takes about 15 minutes to run. Complete-ARCIE, which takes about an hour, analyzes risk and loss probabilities over an extended period. It prompts farmers to enter expected prices and yields, and to include historical data. Both programs examine the insurance options available--both public and private--and show how these options compare and how they complement each other. Federal Crop Insurance is currently available on about 30 major crops nationwide. These programs are designed to run on most microcomputer models. Your State Extension Service, State Vocational Education Office, or your local crop insurance agent may already have the programs. For further information, including how to obtain a copy of the program, write to: The ARCIE Project Department of Agricultural Economics 107 Agricultural Building Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77840 The =Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service= (ASCS) is planning to put small computers into all its county offices starting in 1985. They will keep lists of farmers and their acreage allotments and bases, record set-aside histories, and record and maintain the other myriad facts necessary to make the USDA farm programs work. The system will keep farm records, addresses for mailings, election registers, and records of payments. Even checks to pay farmers will be produced by the decentralized county computer systems. The computers will also be tied into State systems and a central computer for some recordkeeping functions, and can be used for electronic mail and other communications. One function of the new system will be to mesh FAS trade opportunity leads into the ASCS data base. This will permit a farmer or local agribusiness person to go into the ASCS office and immediately learn about trade leads reported by agricultural attaches. This program will go into operation during the mid-1980's. The =Economic Research Service= (ERS) releases its Outlook and Situation reports through AGNET. Summaries of these are available through USDA Online. =Learning More About Computers on the Farm= The computer field is changing so fast that it is difficult to keep up with the changes. One way to keep current is to join a users group for your particular brand of computer, or an agricultural users group. Another way to get up-to-date information about new computer hardware and software products is to read a private newsletter. Some of these are: AgriComp 1001 East Walnut, Suite 201 Columbia, MO 65201 Agricultural Computing Doane-Western, Inc. 8900 Manchester Road St. Louis, MO 63144 Agricultural Microcomputing Ridgetown College of Agricultural Technology Ridgetown, Ontario CANADA NOP 2CO Compu-Farm Alberta Agricultural Box 2000 Olds, Alberta CANADA TOM 1PO Computer Farming Newsletter Lloyd Dinkins P.O. Box 22642 Memphis, TN 38122 Farm Computer News Successful Farming 1716 Locust Street Des Moines, IA 50336 Friendly Farm Computer Newsletter FBS Systems, Inc. P.O. Box 201 Aledo, IL 61231 =Glossary of Computer Terms= Listed below are some of the shorthand or jargon terms in the computer field. Understanding these terms will help you discuss hardware and software systems and their operation. =ADDRESS:= A number specifying a particular location in the computer's memory. =BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code):= A relatively easy-to-use computer language that comes with most small and personal computer systems. =BAUD RATE:= The speed at which information is exchanged over communications lines, generally expressed in characters per second. 300 baud is the most common rate. It is equivalent to 30 characters per second. =BINARY:= A two-digit numbering system based on the digits 0 and 1. It is the basis for calculations on all computers, and the basis for storing and retrieving information, including alphabet characters. =BIT:= The smallest unit of information the computer recognizes. A bit is represented by the presence or absence of an electronic pulse, 0 or 1. =BUG:= A fault or error in a computer program. =BYTE:= A byte is composed of several bits, and is used to represent one character--such as a letter, number, or punctuation mark. The older microcomputer systems used 8 bits per byte, but the newer ones are based on 16 or 32 bits per byte. =CHIP:= A thin silicon wafer on which electronic components are deposited lithographically in the form of integrated circuits. =COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language):= A high-level programing language widely used in business applications. =COMPUTER NETWORK:= Two or more computers that are connected so they can exchange information. =COMPUTER PROGRAM:= A collection of instructions that together direct the computer to perform a particular function. =CP/M (Control Program for Microprocessors):= A popular operating system for small computers. =CPU (Central Processing Unit):= The part of the computer that controls and organizes the operations of the other parts of the computer and does the calculations. =CRT (Cathode Ray Tube):= A video screen that can be used for viewing output. =DATA:= The information, such as numbers or letters, that are put into the computer system. =DEBUG:= To remove the errors in a computer program. =DIAGNOSTIC:= A program for detecting and isolating a problem or mistake in the computer system; features that allow systems or equipment to self-test for flaws. =DISK:= A revolving plate on which data and programs are stored. Also called DISKETTE. =DISK DRIVE:= A part of the computer system that reads and writes material on the disk. It can be part of the main hardware or a peripheral attached to the system. =DOCUMENTATION:= 1. The instruction manual for a program (software) or piece of hardware. 2. The process of describing a computer program so others using the program can see how it works. =DOWNTIME:= Any time a computer is not available or not working because of a machine fault or failure. Downtime includes repair delay time, repair time, and machine-spoiled work time. =EDIT:= To change or add data to an existing document or program. =FLOPPY DISK:= A small, flexible storage device made of magnetic material. It looks like a soft phonograph record and is usually 5¼ inches or 8 inches in diameter. =FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation):= A computer language widely used to solve scientific and engineering problems, mainly for large commercial systems. =GARBAGE:= Meaningless information. =HARD COPY:= A printout on paper of information from the computer. =HARDWARE:= All the physical parts of the computer system, including the computer itself, the input and output equipment and peripherals, and the physical disk or tape equipment. (The computer programs are software.) =INPUT:= The data that are put into the computer, or the process of putting it in. =INSTRUCTION:= A group of bits that designates a specific computer operation. =INTEGRATED CIRCUIT:= An electronic circuit or combination of circuits contained on semiconductor material, or chip. =INTERACTIVE:= A computer system that allows two-way communication between the user and the computer. =INTERFACE:= A piece of equipment used to connect two parts of a computer system that cannot interact directly with each other. =K (kilobyte):= A measure of computer memory capacity. Each K of information is 1,024 bytes. =LOAD:= To put data or programs into a computer. =MAGNETIC TAPE:= A recording device used to store programs and data. It resembles audio tape used in tape recorders. =MEMORY:= That part of the computer that stores information. Also, the external material, such as floppy disks, hard disks, or cassette tapes that store information. =MICROCOMPUTER:= A small computer in which the CPU is an integrated circuit deposited on a silicon chip. =MICROPROCESSOR:= A silicon chip that is the central, controlling part of the computer. =MINICOMPUTER:= A computer that is usually larger, more powerful, and more expensive than a microcomputer, but is smaller than a mainframe in memory and functions. =MODEM (MODulator/ DEModulator):= A device used to attach a computer or one of its devices to a communication line, often a telephone. =OPERATING SYSTEM:= A special group of programs which controls the overall operation of a computer system. It mediates between the hardware and the particular software program. =OUTPUT:= The information generated by a computer. =PERIPHERAL:= A device, such as a CRT, disk drive, or printer, used for entering or storing data into, or retrieving it from, the computer system. =PRINTER:= An output device to print the information from a computer. =PROGRAM:= A set of coded instructions directing a computer to perform a particular function. =PROGRAMING LANGUAGE:= A special language of words and rules that is used to write programs so the computer can understand them. =RAM (Random Access Memory):= The portion of the computer's memory in which data, instructions, and other information are stored temporarily. Also called read-write memory. =ROM (Read Only Memory):= The portion of the computer's memory that contains information and instructions that are stored permanently. This memory cannot be altered or added to. =SEMICONDUCTOR:= A material such as silicon with a conductivity between that of a metal and an insulator. It is used in the manufacture of solid-state devices such as diodes, transistors, and the complex integrated circuits that comprise computer logic circuits. =SOFTWARE:= A general term for computer programs, procedural rules, and sometimes the documentation involved in the operation of a computer. =SYSTEM:= The computer and all its related components, including hardware and software, that work together. =TERMINAL:= A peripheral device through which information is entered into or extracted from the computer, usually with a keyboard and an output device such as a CRT or printer. =TIMESHARING:= A method by which more than one person can use a computer at the same time at separate terminals. =TURNKEY SYSTEM:= A computer system that has all hardware and software installed. Supposedly, all you have to do is turn it on. =WORD PROCESSING:= Typing, editing, storing, and printing text with a computer. * * * * * The mention of commercial products, services, or companies does not constitute endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If additional computer services of interest to the agricultural community are available, we would be glad to consider them for inclusion in possible revisions of this bulletin. * * * * * Transcribers Note The title "Computor System Components" (p. 17) was changed to "Computer ...". Under COIN (p. 25) the reference to "Computer Management Network" was corrected to "Computerized ...". 
43844	----	CLARET AND OLIVES, FROM THE GARONNE TO THE RHONE; OR, NOTES, SOCIAL, PICTURESQUE, AND LEGENDARY, BY THE WAY. BY ANGUS B. REACH, AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF A BUCCANEER," ETC. [Illustration] LONDON: DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET. MDCCCLII. LONDON: HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET. TO CHARLES MACKAY, ESQ., LL. D., MY EARLIEST AND KINDEST LITERARY FRIEND, These Pages ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE The Diligence--French Country Places--The English in Guienne--Bordeaux--Old Bordeaux--A Bordeaux Landlord--A Suburban Vintaging--The Vintage Dinner 1-20 CHAPTER II. Claret _v._ Port--The Claret Soil--The Claret Vine--Popular Appetite for Grapes--Variable qualities of the Claret Soil--French Veterans--The "Authorities" in France 21-38 CHAPTER III. The Claret Vintage--The Treading of the Grape--The Last Drops of the Grape--Wanderings amongst the Vineyards--Wandering Vintagers--The Vintage Dinner--The Vintagers' Bedroom--The Claret Chateaux--The Chateau Margaux 39-57 CHAPTER IV. The Landes--The Bordeaux and Teste Railway--M. Tetard and his Imitator--Start for the Landes--The Language of the Landes--A Railway Station in the Landes--The Scenery of the Landes--The Stilt-walkers of the Landes--A Glimpse of Green 58-76 CHAPTER V. The Clear Water of Arcachon--Legend of the Baron of Chatel-morant--The Resin Harvest--The Witches of the Landes--The Surf of the Bay of Biscay--French Priests--Do the Landes Cows give Milk?--The _Amour Patriæ_ of the Landes 77-101 CHAPTER VI. Dawn on the Garonne--The Landscape of the Garonne--The Freaks of the Old Wars in Guienne--Agen--Jasmin, the Last of the Troubadours--Southern Cookery and Garlic--The Black Prince in a New Light--Cross-country Travelling in France 102-126 CHAPTER VII. Pau--The English in Pau--English and Russians--The View of the Pyrenees--The Castle--The Statue of Henri Quatre--His Birth--A Vision of his Life--Rochelle--St. Bartholomew--Ivry--Henri and Sully--Henri and Gabrielle--Henri and Henriette d'Entragues--Ravaillac 127-136 CHAPTER VIII. The Val d'Ossau--The Vin de Jurancon--Pyrenean Cottages--The Bernais Peasants--The Devil learning Basque--The Wolves of the Pyrenees--The Bears of the Pyrenees--The Dogs of the Pyrenees--An Auberge in the Pyrenees--Omens and Superstitions in the Pyrenees--The Songs of the Pyrenees 137-155 CHAPTER IX. Wet Weather in the Pyrenees--Eaux Chaudes out of Season, and in the Rain--Plucking the Indian Corn at the Auberge at Laruns--The Legend of the Wehrwolf, and the Baron who was changed into a Bear 156-166 CHAPTER X. The Solitary Big Hotel--The Knitters of the Pyrenees--The Weavers of the Pyrenees--Pigeon-catching in the Pyrenees--The Giant of the Pyrenean Dogs--Murray and _Commis Voyageurs_--The Eastern Pyrenees--The Legend of Orthon 167-186 CHAPTER XI. Languedoc--The "Austere South"--Beziers and the Albigenses--The Fountain of the Greve--The Bishop and his Flock--The Canal du Midi--The Mistral--Rural Billiard-playing 187-199 CHAPTER XII. Travelling by the Canal du Midi--Travelling French People--The Salt Harvest--Equestrian Thrashing Machines--Cette--The Mediterranean--The "Made" Wines--The Priest on Wines--_La Cuisine Française_ 200-218 CHAPTER XIII. The Olive-gathering--A Night with the Mosquitoes--Aigues-Mortes--The Fever in Aigues-Mortes--My _Cicerone_ in Aigues-Mortes--The Pickled Burgundians--Reboul's Poetry--The Lighthouse of Aigues-Mortes 219-235 CHAPTER XIV. Fen Landscape--Tavern Allegories--Roman Remains--Roman Architecture--Roman Theatricals--The Maison Carrée--Greek Architecture--Catholic and Protestant--The Weaver's _Cabane_--Protestant and Catholic 236-255 CHAPTER THE LAST. Backward French Agriculture--French Rural Society--The Small Property System--French "Encumbered Estates" 256-264 [Illustration] CLARET AND OLIVES. CHAPTER I. THE DILIGENCE--OLD GUIENNE AND THE ENGLISH IN FRANCE--BORDEAUX AND A SUBURBAN VINTAGING. "_Voila la voila! La ville de Bordeaux!_" The conductor's voice roused me from the dreamy state of dose in which I lay, luxuriously stretched back amid cloaks and old English railway-wrappers, in the roomy banquette of one of the biggest diligences which ever rumbled out of Caillard and Lafitte's yard. "_Voila! la Voila!_" The bloused peasant who drove the six stout nags therewith stirred in his place; his long whip whistled and cracked; the horses flung up their heads as they broke into a canter, and their bells rang like a joy peal; while Niniche, the conductor's white poodle, which maintained a perilous footing in the leathern hood of the banquette, pattered and scratched above our heads, and barked in recognition of his master's voice. I rubbed my eyes and looked. We were on the ridge of a wooded hill. Below us lay a flat green plain, carpetted with vines. Right across it ran the broad, white, chalky highway, powdering with dust the double avenue of chestnuts which lined it. Beyond the plain glittered a great river, crowded with shipping, and beyond the river rose stretching, apparently for miles, a magnificent façade of high white buildings, broken here and there by the foliage of public gardens, and the dark embouchures of streets; while, behind the range of quays, and golden in the sunrise, rose high into the clear morning air, a goodly array of towering Gothic steeples, fretted and pinnacled up to the glancing weather-cocks. It was, indeed, Bordeaux. The long journey from Paris was all but over, yet though I had been tired enough of the way, I felt as if I could brave it again, rather than make the exertion of encountering octroi officers, and plunging into strange hotels. For after all, comfortable Diligence travelling makes a man lazy. It is slow, but you get accustomed to the slowness; in the banquette, too, you are never cramped; there is luxurious roominess behind, and you plunge your legs in straw up to the knees. Then leaning supinely back, you indulge a serene passiveness, rolling lazily on with the rumbling mountain of a vehicle. The thunder of the heavy wheels, and the low monotonous clash, clash, clash, of the hundred grelots, form a soothing atmosphere of sound about you, and musingly, and dreamingly you watch the action of the team--these half dozen little but stout tough work-a-day horses, trotting manfully in their rough harness, while the driver--oh, how different from our old coaching dandies!--a clumsy peasant, in sabots, and a stable-smelling blouse, sits slouched, and round-shouldered like a sack before you, incessantly flourishing that whistling whip, and shouting in the uncouth jargon of his province, to the jingling team below. And next you watch the country or the road. A French road, like a mathematical line, on, and on, and on, straight, straight, mournfully, dismally, straight, running like a tape laid across the bleak bare country, till it fades, and fades, and seems to tip over the horizon; or if you are in an undulating wooded district, you catch sections of it as it climbs each successive ridge; and you know that in the valleys it is just the same as on the hill tops. You see your dinner before you, as Englishmen say over roast mutton. You see your journey before you, as Frenchmen may say, over the slow trotting team. And how drear and deserted the country looks--open, desolate, and bare. Here and there a distant mite of a peasant or two bending over the sun-burnt clods. No cottages, but ever and anon a congregation of barns--the _bourgs_ in which the small land-owners collect; now a witch of an old woman herding a cow; anon a solitary shepherd all in rags, knitting coarse stockings, and followed by a handful of sheep, long in the legs, low in the flesh, with thin dirty fleeces as ragged as their guardian's coat. Upon the road travellers are scanty. The bronzed Cantonier stares as you pass, his brass-lettered hat glittering in the glare. There go a couple of soldiers on furlough, tramping the dreary way to their native village, footsore, weary and slow, their hairy knapsacks galling their shoulders, and their tin canteens evidently empty. Another diligence, white with dust, meeting us. The conductors shout to each other, and the passengers crane their heads out of window. Then we overtake a whole caravan of _roulage_, or carriers, the well-loaded carts poised upon one pair of huge wheels, the horses, with their clumsy harness and high peaked collars, making a scant two miles an hour. Not an equipage of any pretension to be seen. No graceful phaeton, no slangy dog-cart, no cosey family carriage--only now and then a crawling local diligence, or M. le Curé on a shocking bad horse, or an indescribably dilapidated anomalous jingling appearance of a vague shandry-dan. And so on from dawn till sunset, through narrow streeted towns, with lanterns swinging above our heads, and open squares with scrubby lime trees, and white-washed cafés all around; and by a shabby municipality with gilded heads to the front railings, a dilapidated tricolor, and a short-legged, red-legged sentinel, not so tall as his firelock, keeping watch over it; and then, out into the open, fenceless, hedgeless country, and on upon the straight unflinching road, and through the long, long tunnels of eternal poplar trees, and by the cantonnier, and the melancholy _bourgs_, and the wandering soldiers, and the dusty carriers' carts as before. One thing strikes you forcibly in these little country towns--the marvellously small degree of distinction of rank amid the people. No neighbouring magnate rattles through the lonely streets in the well-known carriage of the Hall or the Grange, graciously receiving the ready homage of the townspeople. No retired man of business, or bustling land-agent, trots his smart gig and cob--no half-pay officer goes gossipping from house to house, or from shop to shop. There is no banker's lady to lead the local fashions--no doctor, setting off upon his well-worked nag for long country rounds--no assemblage, if it be market day, of stout full-fed farmers, lounging, booted and spurred, round the Red Lion or the Plough. Working men in blouses, women of the same rank in the peasant head-dress of the country, and here and there a nondescript personage in a cap and shooting jacket, who generally turns up at the scantily-attended table d'hôte at dinner time--such are the items which make up the mass of the visible population. You hardly see an individual who does not appear to have been born and bred upon the spot, and to have no ideas and no desires beyond it. Left entirely to themselves, the people have vegetated in these dull streets from generation to generation, and, though clustered together in a quasi town--perhaps with octroi and mairie, a withered tree of liberty, and billiard tables by the half-dozen--the population is as essentially rural as though scattered in lone farms, unvisited, except on rent-day, by either landlord or agent. It often happens that a large landed proprietor has not even a house upon his ground. He lets the land, receives his rent, and spends it in Paris or one of the large towns, leaving his tenants to go on cultivating the ground in the jog-trot style of their fathers and their grandfathers before them. The French, in fact, have no notion of what we understand by the life of a country gentleman. A proprietor may pay a sporting visit to his land when partridge and quail are to be shot; but as to taking up his abode _au fond de ses terres_, mingling in what we would call county business, looking after the proceedings of his tenants, becoming learned, in an amateur way, in things bucolic, in all the varieties of stock and all the qualities of scientific manures--a life, a character, and a social position of this sort, would be in vain sought for in the rural districts of France. There are not, in fact, two more differing meanings in the world than those attached to our "Country Life," and the French _Vie de Chateau_. The French proprietor is a Parisian out of Paris. He takes the rents, shoots the quails, and the clowns do the rest. An Englishman ought to feel at home in the south-west of France. That fair town, rising beyond the yellow Garonne, was for three hundred years and more an English capital. Who built these gloriously fretted Gothic towers, rising high into the air, and sentinelled by so many minor steeples? Why Englishmen! These towers rise above the Cathedral of St. Andrew, and in the Abbey of St. Andrew the Black Prince held high court, and there, after Poitiers, the captive King of France revelled with his conqueror, with the best face he might. There our Richard the Second was born. There the doughty Earl of Derby, long the English seneschal of Bordeaux, with his retinue, "amused themselves," as gloriously gossipping old Froissart tells, "with the citizens and their wives;" and from thence Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, went forth, being eighty-six years of age, mounted upon a little palfrey, to encounter the Duke of Anjou, in those latter days when our continental dominions were shrinking, as we deserved that they should shrink, after the brutal murder of the glorious Maid of Domrémy. It is true that we are at this moment in the department of the Dordogne, and that when we cross the river we shall be in that of the Gironde. But we Englishmen love the ancient provinces better than the modern departments, which we are generally as bad at recognising, as we are in finding out dates by Thermidors and Brumaires. No, no, departments may do for Frenchmen, but to an Englishman the rich land we are crossing will ever be Guienne, the "Fair Dutchy," and part and parcel of old Aquitane, the dowry of Eleanor, when she wedded our second Henry. Is it not strange to think of those old times, in which the English were loved in the Bourdelois--fine old name--and the French were hated, in which the Gascon feudal chiefs around protested that they were the "natural born subjects of England, which was so kind to them?" Let us turn to Froissart:--The Duke of Anjou having captured four Gascon knights, forced them, _nolens volens_, to take the oath of allegiance to the King of France, and then turned them about their business. The knights went straight to Bordeaux, and presented themselves before the seneschal of the Landes, and the mayor of the city, saying, "Gentlemen, we will truly tell you that before we took the oath, we reserved in our hearts our faith to our natural lord, the king of England, and for anything we have said or done, we never will become Frenchmen." Our gallant forefathers appear on the whole, to have led a joyous life in Guienne. In truth, their days and nights were devoted very much to feasting themselves, and plundering their neighbours: two pursuits into which their Gascon friends entered with heart and soul. It is quite delightful to read in Froissart, or Enguerrand de Monstrelet, how "twelve knights went forth in search of adventures," an announcement which may be fairly translated, into how a dozen of gentlemen with indistinct notions of _meum_ and _tuum_, went forth to lay their chivalrous hands upon anything they could come across. Of course these trips were made into the French territory, and really they appear to have been conducted with no small degree of politeness on either side, when the English "harried" Limousin, or the French rode a foray into Guienne. The chivalrous feeling was strong on both sides, and we often read how such-and-such a French and English knight or squire did courteous battle with each other; the fight being held in honour of the fair ladies of the respective champions. Thus, not in Guienne, but in Touraine, when the English and the Gascons beleaguered a French town, heralds came forth upon the walls and made this proclamation:--"Is there any among you gentlemen, who for love of his lady is willing to try some feat of arms? If there be any such, here is Gauvin Micaille, a squire of the Beauce, quite ready to sally forth, completely armed and mounted, to tilt three courses with the lance, give three blows with the battle-axe, and three strokes with the dagger. Now look you, English, if there be none among you in love." The challenge was duly accepted. Each combatant wounded the other, and the Earl of Shrewsbury sent to the squire of Beauce his compliments, and a hundred francs. This last present takes somewhat away from the Amadis de Gaul, and Palmerin of England vein; but the student of the old chroniclers, particularly of the English in France, will be astonished to find how long the chivalric feeling and ceremonials co-existed with constant habits of plundering and unprovoked forays. Another curious trait of our forefathers in Guienne is the early development of the English _brusquerie_, and haughtiness of manner to the Continentals. The Gascons put up, however, with many a slight, inasmuch as their over sea friends were such valiant plunderers, and they, of course, shared the spoils. Listen to the frank declaration of a Gascon gentleman who had deserted from the English to the French side. Some one asking him how he did, he answers: "Thank God, my health is very good; but I had more money at command when I made war for the king of England, for then we seldom failed to meet some rich merchants of Toulouse, Condom, La Reole, or Bergerac, whom we squeezed, which made us gay and _debonnair_; but that is at an end." The questioner replies: "Of a truth, that is the life Gascons love. They willingly hurt their neighbour." Not even all the plunder they got, however, could silence the grumblings of the native knights at the haughty reserve of the English warriors. "I," says the canon of Chimay, "was at Bordeaux when the Prince of Wales marched to Spain, and witnessed the great haughtiness of the English, who are affable to no other nation than their own. Neither could any of the gentlemen of Gascogny or Acquitaine obtain office or appointment in their own country, for the English said they were neither on a level with them, nor worthy of their society." So early and so strongly did the proud island blood boil up; while many an Englishman, to this good day, by his reserved and saturnine bearing among an outspoken and merry-hearted people, perpetuates the old reproach, and keeps up the old grievance. All sensible readers will be gratified when I state that I have not the remotest intention of describing the archæology of Bordeaux, or any other town whatever. Whoever wants to know the height of a steeple, the length of an aisle, or the number of arches in a bridge, must betake themselves to Murray and his compeers. I will neither be picturesquely profound upon ogives, triforia, clerestorys, screens, or mouldings; nor magniloquently great upon the arched, the early pointed, the florid, or the flamboyant schools. I will go into raptures neither about Virgins nor Holy Families, nor Oriel windows, in the fine old cut-and-dry school of the traveller of taste, which means, of course, every traveller who ever packed a shirt into a carpet bag; but, leaving the mere archæology and carved stones alone in their glory, I will try to sketch living, and now and then historical, France--to move gossippingly along in the by-ways rather than the highways--always more prone to give a good legend of a grey old castle, than a correct measurement of the height of the towers; and always seeking to bring up, as well as I can, a varying, shifting picture, well thronged with humanity, before the reader's eye. [Illustration: BORDEAUX.] When I got to Bordeaux, the vintage time had just commenced, and having ever had a special notion that vintages were very beautiful and poetic affairs, and a still more confirmed taste and reverence for claret, it was my object to see as much of the vintage as I could--to see the juice rush from the grape, which makes so good a figure in the bottle. Letters of introduction I had none. But there is a knack of making one's own way--of making one's own friends as you go--in which I have tolerable confidence, and which did not fail me in the present conjuncture. First, to settle and make up my notions, I strolled vaguely about the city, buying local maps and little local guide-books. Bordeaux is emphatically what the French call a _riant_ town, with plenty of air, and such pure, soft, bright, sunny air. In the centre of a broad grand _Place_,--dotted with very respectable trees for French specimens, emblazoned with gay parterres, sprinkled with orange shrubs in bloom, and holed with no end of round stone basins, in which dolphins and Neptunes spout from their bronze mouths the live-long day, and urns, and pillars, and Dianas, and Apollos stand all around--there rises upon his massive pedestal the graven image of a fat comfortable gentleman in the ample cloak and doublet of Louis Quatorze, knots of carven ribbons decorating his shoulders, and flowing locks descending from under his broad-brimmed, looped-up hat. This is the statue of a M. de Tournay, an ancient intendant of the province, who was almost the creator of modern Bordeaux. Under his auspices the whole tribe of dolphins and heathen gods and goddesses were invoked to decorate the city. He reared great sweeps of pillared and porticoed buildings, and laid out broad streets and squares, on that enormous scale so characteristic of the _grand monarque_. He made Bordeaux, indeed, at once vast, prim, and massively magnificent. The mercantile town got quite a courtly air; and when the tricolor no longer floated in St. Domingo, and the commerce of the Gironde declined, so that not much was left over and above the wine trade, which, as all the world knows, is the genteelest of all the traffics, Bordeaux became what it is--a sort of retired city, having declined business--quiet, and clean, and prim, and aristocratic. Such, at least, is the new town. With old Bordeaux, M. de Tournay meddled not; and when you plunge into its streets you leap at once from eighteenth century terraces into fourteenth century lanes and tortuous by-ways. Below you, rough, ill-paved, unclean, narrow thoroughfares; above, the hanging old houses of five ages ago, peaked gables, and long projecting eaves, and hanging balconies; quaint carvings in blackened wood and mouldering stone;--the true middle-age tenements, dreadfully ricketty, but gloriously picturesque--charming to look at, but woful to live in; deep black ravines of courts plunging down into the masses of piled up, jammed together dwellings; squalid, slatternly people buzzing about like bees; bad smells permeating every street, lane, and alley; and now and then the agglomeration of darksome dwellings clustering round a great old church, with its vast Gothic portals, and, high up, its carven pinnacles and grinning _goutieres_, catching the sunshine far above the highest of these high-peaked roofs. This is the Bordeaux of the English and the Gascons--the Bordeaux which has rung to the clash of armour--the Bordeaux which was governed by a seneschal--the Bordeaux through whose streets defiled, "With many a cross-bearer before, And many a spear behind," the christening procession of King Richard the Second. We shall step into one church, and only one, that of the Feuillans. There, upon a dark and massive pedestal, lies stretched the effigy of an armed man. His hands are clasped, his vizor up shows his peaked beard, and he is clad _cap-à-pied_ in steel. Who was the doughty warrior, thus resting in his mail? Strange to say, no warrior at all; but the quietest and most peaceable of God's beings. He had an odd, pedantic father, who brought him up in strange Paganwise. The boy was never addressed but in Latin. He never had a mother-tongue. He was surrounded with a blockade of Latin speakers to keep afar off the profanation of French; he was mentally fed upon the philosophers and the poets of old Rome, and taught to weep for Seneca in the tub, as the nearest catastrophe which could touch his sympathies. Furthermore, his father, out of respect for his nerves, had him awakened every morning by the sound of soft music. Happily, even this sublimity of pedantry and pedagoguism was insufficient to ruin the native genius of Michael, Seigneur of Montaigne, whose "essays ought to lie in every cottage window." I have said that I was in search of some one to introduce me to the vineyards and the vintagers. In a day or two I had pitched upon my landlord as my protector. His hotel was a very modest one, where never before, I do believe, had Englishmen come to make everything dear and disagreeable. The red boards of the aristocratic Murray were unknown in his _salle à manger_. He hadn't an ounce of tea in his house, and very probably, if he had, he would have fried it with butter, and served it _à la_ something or other. When I say he, however, I mean madame, not monsieur. The latter would have made a capital English innkeeper, but he was a very bad French one. My gentleman, who was more than six feet high, and a stately personage, was cut out for a "mine host." He would have presided in a bar--which means drinking a continued succession of glasses of ale--with uncommon effect, for his temperament was convivial and gossippy; but he had no vocation for the kitchen, which is the common sphere of a French innkeeper not of the first class, and where, under the proud denomination of the _chef_, and clad in white like a grimly ghost, he bustles among pipkins and stew-pans and skillets, and lifts little trap-doors in his smoky range, and peers down them at blue charcoal furnaces--over which the _plats_ are simmering. Now my good landlord never troubled himself about these domestic matters; but he was very clever at standing on the outer steps of his door, smoking cigars; and, indeed, would stay very willingly there all day--at least, until he heard his wife's voice, upon which he would make a precipitate retreat to a neighbouring café, where he would drink _eau sucreé_ and rattle dominoes on a marble table till dinner-time. With this worthy I formed a personal acquaintance, by buying from him, at the reasonable rate of six sous a-piece, a number of quaint brass-set flat stones, very like red and grey cornelians, and just as pretty, which it was the fashion in the days of the Directory to mount in watch-keys, and wear two at a time, one dangling from each fob. These stones are picked up in great quantities from the light shingly soil, whereon ripens the grape, which is pressed into claret wine; and handsome and lustrous in themselves, they thus become a species of mementos of chateau Margaux and chateau Lafitte. To the landlord, then, I stated that I wished to see some vine-gathering. "Could anything be more lucky? His particular friend M. So-and-so was beginning his harvesting that very day, and was going to give a dinner that very night on the occasion. I should go--he should go. A friend of his was M. So-and-so's friend; in fact, we were all friends together." The truth I suspect to be, that my ally was dreadfully in want of an excuse to go to the dinner, and he welcomed my application as the Israelites did manna in the desert. It was meat and drink and amusement to him, and off we went. As I shall presently describe the real claret vintage upon a large scale, I shall pass the more quickly over my first initiation into the plucking of the grapes. But I passed a merry day, and eke a busy one. There are no idle spectators at a vintage--all the world must work; and so I speedily found myself, after being most cordially welcomed by a fat old gentleman, hoarse with bawling, in a pair of very dirty shirt-sleeves and a pouring perspiration--with a huge pair of scissors in my hand cutting off the bunches, in the midst of an uproarious troop of young men, young women, and children--threading the avenues between the plants--stripping, with wonderful dexterity, the clustered branches--their hands, indeed, gliding like dirty yellow serpents among the broad green leaves--and sometimes shouting out merry badinage, sometimes singing bits of strongly rhythmed melody in chorus, and all the time, as far as the feat could be effected, eating the grapes by handfuls. The whole thing was very jolly; I never heard more laughing about nothing in particular, more open and unblushing love-making, and more resolute quizzing of the good man, whose grapes were going partly into the baskets, tubs, pots, and pans, carried every few moments by the children and old people out of the green alleys to the pressing-tub, and partly into the capacious stomachs of the gatherers. At first I was dainty in my selection of the grapes to be chosen, eschewing the under-ripe and the over-ripe. A damsel beside me observed this. From her woolly hair and very dark but merry face, I imagined her to have a touch of Guadeloupe or Martinique blood. "Cut away," she said; "every grape makes wine." "Yes--but the caterpillars--" "They give it a body." "Yes--but the snails--" "O, save the snails, please do, for me!" said a little girl, holding out her apron, full of painted shells. "What do you do with them?" I inquired. "Boil them and eat them," said my juvenile friend. I looked askance. "You cant think how nice they are with vinegar!" said the mulatto girl. I remembered our own appetite for periwinkles, and said nothing; but added my mite of snail-flesh to the collection. I was talking to the lord of the vineyard, when some one--there was petticoats in the case--dashed at him from behind, and instantly a couple of hands clasped his neck, and one of them squashed a huge bunch of grapes over his mouth and nose, rubbing in the burst and bleeding fruit as vigorously as if it were a healing ointment, while streams of juice squirted from between the fingers of the fair assailant, and streamed down the patron's equivocal shirt. After being half burked, the good man shook his fist at the girl as she flew, laughing, down the alley; and then resuming his talk with me, he said: "We call that, _Faire des moustaches_. We all do it at vintage time." And ten minutes thereafter I saw the jolly old boy go chasing an ancient crone of a pail-bearer, a bunch of very ripe grapes in his hand, amid the delighted hurrahs of all assembled. Dinner was late, for it behoves vintagers to make the best of the daylight. The ordinary hired labourers dined, indeed, soon after noon; but I am talking of the feast of honour. It was served in a thinly-furnished, stone-paved, damp and dismal _salle à manger_. A few additional ladies with their beaux, grand provincial dandies, all of whom tried to outstrip each other in the magnificence of their waistcoats, had arrived from Bordeaux. It had been very hot, close weather for a day or two past, and everybody was imprecating curses on the heads of the mosquitos. The ladies, to prove the impeachment, stripped their sleeves, and showed each other the bites on their brown necks; and the gentlemen swore that the scamps were biting harder and harder. Then came the host, in a magnificently ill-cut coat--all the agricultural interest could not have furnished a worse--and his wife, very red in the face, for she had cooked dinner for the vintagers and for us; and then our host's father, a reverend old man in a black velvet scull cap, and long silver hair. The dinner was copious, and, as may be conceived, by no means served in the style of the _café de Paris_. But _soupe_, _bouilli_, _roti_, the stewed and the fried, speedily went the way of all flesh. Everybody _trinque-ed_ with everybody: the jingle of the meeting glasses rose even over the clatter of the knives and forks; the jolly host's heart grew warmer at every glass, and he issued imperious mandates for older and older wine. His comfortable wife, whose appetite had been affected by the cooking, made up for the catastrophe at the dessert. The old grandfather garulously narrated tales of wondrous vintages long ago. The waistcoats had all the scandal of Bordeaux at their finger ends; and the young ladies with the mosquito bites took to "making moustaches" on their male friends, with pancakes instead of grapes--a process by which the worthy host was, as usual, an especial sufferer. As may be conceived, my respected landlord was far more in his element than at home with his wife. He eat more, drank more, talked more, and laughed more than any two men present. Afterwards he grew tender and sentimental, and professed himself to be an ardent lover of his kind--a proposition which I suspect he afterwards narrowed specially in favour of a most mosquito-ridden lady next him--to the high wrath of a waistcoat opposite, who said sarcastic and cutting things, which nobody paid any attention to; and the landlord, being really a good-looking and plausible fellow, went on conquering and to conquer, and drinking and being drunk to; until, under a glorious outburst of moonlight which paled the blinking candles on the table, the merry company broke up; and mine host of Bordeaux, after certain rather unsteady walking, suddenly stopped on the centre of the bridge, and refused to go further until he had told me a secret. This was said with vast solemnity and aplomb, so we paused together on the granite pavement, and, after looking mysteriously at the Garonne, the moon, and the dusky heights of Floriac, my companion informed me in a hoarse whisper that he should leave France, his native and beloved land, where he felt sure that he was not appreciated, and pitch his tent, "_la bas, en Angleterre, parceque les Anglais etaient si bons enfants!_" "So ho!" thought I; "a strange reminiscence of the old Gascons." But on the morrow, my respectable entertainer had a bad headache, a yellow visage, and an entire forgetfulness of how he had got home at all. [Illustration: MOUSTACHE AT THE VINTAGE] CHAPTER II. CLARET--AND THE CLARET COUNTRY. That our worthy forefathers in Guienne loved good wine, is a thing not to be doubted--even by a teetotaller. When the Earl of Derby halted his detachments, he always had a pipe set on broach for the good of the company; and it is to be presumed that he knew their tastes. The wines of the Garonne were also, as might be expected, freely imported into England: "Whit wyn of Oseye, and of Gascoyne, Of the Ruele, and of the Rochel wyn." As far down, indeed, as Henry VIII.'s time you might get Gascony and Guienne wine for eightpence a gallon, and the comfortable word "claret" was well known early in the seventeenth century. One of its admirers, however, about that time gave odd reasons for liking it, to wit--"Claret is a noble wine, for it is the same complexion that noblemen's coats be of." This gentleman must have been a strenuous admirer of the aristocracy. The old Gascon growth was, however, in all probability, what we should now call coarse, rough wine. The district which is blessed by the growth of Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafitte, was a stony desert. An old French local book gives an account of the "savage and solitary country of Medoc;" and the wines of the Bordelais, there is every reason to believe, were grown in the strong, loamy soil bordering the river. By the time that the magic spots had been discovered, blessed with the mystic properties which produce the Queen of Wine we had been saddled with--our tastes perverted, and our stomachs destroyed--by the woful Methuen treaty--heavy may it sit on the souls of Queen Anne, and all her wigged and powdered ministers--if, indeed, men who preferred port wine to claret can be conceived to have had any souls at all, worth speaking about--and thenceforth John Bull burnt the coat of his stomach, muddled the working of his brain, made himself bilious, dyspeptic, headachy, and nationally stupid, by imbibing a mixture of strong, coarse, wines, with a taste but no flavour, and bedevilled with every alcoholic and chemical adulteration, which could make its natural qualities worse than they were. See how our literature fell off. The Elizabethans quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or Rochel wyn;" and we had the giants of those days. The Charles II. comedy writers worked on claret. Port came into fashion--port sapped our brains--and, instead of Wycherly's _Country Wife_, and Vanbrugh's _Relapse_, we had Mr. Morton's _Wild Oats_, and Mr. Cherry's _Soldier's Daughter_. It is really much to the credit of Scotland, that she stood staunchly by her old ally, France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty little slice of the worst part of Spain--Portugal, or her brandified potations. In the old Scotch houses a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap. In the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter _tappit hen_, holding some three quarts--think of that, Master Slender,--"reamed," _Anglice_ mantled, with claret just drawn from the cask, and you quaffed it, snapping your fingers at custom-houses. At length, in an evil hour Scotland fell: "Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, Firm was his mutton, and his claret good; 'Let him drink port!' the English statesman cried. He drank the poison, and his spirit died!" But enough of this painful subject. As Quin used to say, "Anybody drink port? No! I thought so: Waiter, take away the black strap, and throw it out." Upon the principle, I suppose, of the nearer the church, the further from God, Bordeaux is by no means a good place for good ordinary wine; on the contrary, the stuff they give you for every-day tipple is positively poor, and very flavourless. In southern Burgundy, the most ordinary of the wines is capital. At Macon, for a quarter of a handful of sous they give you nectar; at the little town of Tain, where the Rhone sweeps gloriously round the great Hermitage rock, they give you something better than nectar for less. But the ordinary Bordeaux wine is very ordinary indeed; not quite so red-inky, perhaps, as the _Vin de Surenne_, which, Brillat Savarin says, requires three men to swallow a glassful--the man who drinks, and the friends who uphold him on either side, and coax, and encourage him; but still meagre and starveling, as if it had been strained through something which took the virtue out of it. Of course, the best of wine can be had by the simple process of paying for it, but I am talking of the ordinary work-a-day tipple of the place. A few days' lounging in Bordeaux over, and hearing that the vintage was in full operation, I put myself into a respectable little omnibus, and started for the true claret country. In a couple of hours I was put down at the door of the only auberge in the tiny village of Margaux, and to any traveller who may hereafter wish to visit the famous wine district, I cordially commend "The Rising Sun," kept by the worthy "Mere Cadillac." There you will have a bedroom clean and bright as a Dutch parlour; a grand old four-poster of the ancient regime, something between a bed and a cathedral; a profusion of linen deliciously white and sweet smelling; and _la Mere_ will toss you up a nice little potage, and a cotelette done to a turn, and an omelette which is perfection; and she will ask you, in the matter of wine, whether you prefer _ordinaire_ or _vieux_? and when you reply, _Vieux et du meilleur_, she will presently bustle in with a glorious long-necked, cobwebby flask, the first glass of which will induce you to lean back in a tranquil state of general happiness, and contemplate with satisfaction even the naughty doings of the wicked Marguerite of Burgundy, and her sisters Blanche and Henriette, with Buridan and Gaulnay, in the _Tour de Nesle_--illustrations of which popular tragedy deck the walls on every side. While thus agreeably employed, then, I may enlighten you with a few topographical words about the claret district. Look at the map, and you will observe a long tract of country, dotted with very few towns or villages, called the Landes, stretching along the sea coast from the Pyrenees to the mouth of the Gironde. At one place the Landes are almost sixty miles broad, but to the north they fine gradually away, the great river Garonne shouldering them, as it were, into the sea. Now these Landes (into which we will travel presently) are, for the most part, a weary wilderness of pine-wood, morasses, sand-deserts, and barren shingle. On the other hand, the low banks of the Garonne are generally of a fat, loamy, and black soil, called, locally, _Palus_. Well, between the Palus and the Landes, there is a longish strip of country from two to five miles broad, a low ridge or backbone, which may be said to be the neutral and blending point of the sterile Landes and the fat and fertile Palus. And truth to tell, the earth seems as if the influence of the latter had much to do to bear up against the former. A Norfolk farmer would turn with a contemptuous laugh from the poor-looking stony soil. "Why," says he, "it's all sand, and gravel, and shingle, and scorched with the sun. You would not get a blade of chickweed to grow there." The proprietors of Medoc would be very glad if this latter assertion were correct, for the weeding of the vineyards form no inconsiderable item in the expense of cultivation; but this much may be safely predicted of this strange soil, that it would not afford the nourishment to a patch of oats, which that modest grain manages to extract from the bare hill-side of some cold, bleak, Highland croft, and yet that it furnishes the influence which produces grapes yielding the most truly generous and consummately flavoured wine ever drank by man since Noah planted the first vine slip. You have now finished the bottle of Vieux. Up, and let us out among the vineyards. A few paces clears us of the little hamlet of Margaux, with its constant rattle of busy coopers, and we are fairly in the country. Try to catch the general _coup d'oeil_. We are in an unpretending pleasant-looking region, neither flat nor hilly--the vines stretching away around in gentle undulations, broken here and there by intervening jungles of coppice-wood, by strips of black firs, or by the stately avenues and ornamental woods of a first-class chateau. Gazing from the bottoms of the shallow valleys, you seem standing amid a perfect sea of vines, which form a monotonous horizon of unvaried green. Attaining the height beyond, distant village spires rise into the air--the flattened roofs and white walls of scattered hamlets gleam cheerfully forth from embowering woods of walnut trees--and the expanse of the vineyards is broken by hedged patches of meadow land, affording the crops of coarse natural hay, upon which are fed the slowly-moving, raw-boned oxen which you see dragging lumbering wains along the winding dusty way. And now look particularly at the vines. Nothing romantic in their appearance, no trellis work, none of the embowering, or the clustering, which the poets are so fond of. Here, in two words, is the aspect of some of the most famous vineyards in the world. [Illustration] Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking, scrubby bushes, seldom rising two feet above the surface, planted in rows upon the summit of deep furrow ridges, and fastened with great care to low, fence-like lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken ranks from one end of the huge fields to the other. These espaliers or lathes are cuttings of the walnut-trees around, and the tendrils of the vine are attached to the horizontally running stakes with withes, or thongs of bark. It is curious to observe the vigilant pains and attention with which every twig has been supported without being strained, and how things are arranged so as to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a goodly allowance of sun. Such, then, is the general appearance of matters; but it is by no means perfectly uniform. Now and then you find a patch of vines unsupported, drooping, and straggling, and sprawling, and intertwisting their branches like beds of snakes; and again, you come into the district of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter affair, a grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet dwarfs are invariably the great wine givers. If ever you want to see a homily, not read, but grown by nature, against trusting to appearances, go to Medoc and study the vines. Walk and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened, scrubby, dwarfish, expanse of snobbish bushes, ignominiously bound neck and crop to the espaliers like a man on the rack--these utterly poor, starved, and meagre-looking growths, allowing, as they do, the gravelly soil to show in bald patches of grey shingle through the straggling branches--these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and the most inimitably flavoured wines. Such are the vines which grow Chateau Margaux at half a sovereign the bottle. The grapes themselves are equally unpromising. If you saw a bunch in Covent Garden you would turn from them with the notion that the fruiterer was trying to do his customer, with over-ripe black currants. Lance's soul would take no joy in them, and no sculptor in his senses would place such meagre bunches in the hands and over the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes, or his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and beware of judging of the nature of either men or grapes by their looks. Meantime, let us continue our survey of the country. No fences or ditches you see--the ground is too precious to be lost in such vanities--only, you observe from time to time a rudely carved stake stuck in the ground, and indicating the limits of properties. Along either side of the road the vines extend, utterly unprotected. No raspers, no ha-ha's, no fierce denunciations of trespassers, no polite notices of spring guns and steel traps constantly in a state of high go-offism--only, when the grapes are ripening, the people lay prickly branches along the way-side to keep the dogs, foraging for partridges among the espaliers, from taking a refreshing mouthful from the clusters as they pass; for it seems to be a fact that everybody, every beast, and every bird, whatever may be his, her, or its nature in other parts of the world, when brought among grapes, eats grapes. As for the peasants, their appetite for grapes is perfectly preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sickened grocer's boys, who, after the first week loathe figs, and turn poorly when sugar-candy is hinted at, the love of grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on. Every garden is full of table vines. The people eat grapes with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper, and between breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper. The labourer plods along the road munching a cluster. The child in its mother's arms is tugging away with its toothless gums at a bleeding bunch; while as for the vintagers, male and female, in the less important plantations, Heaven only knows where the masses of grapes go to, which they devour, labouring incessantly at the _metier_, as they do, from dawn till sunset. A strange feature in the wine country is the wondrously capricious and fitful nature of the soil. A forenoon's walk will show you the earth altering in its surface qualities almost like the shifting hues of shot silk--gravel of a light colour fading into gravel of a dark--sand blending with the mould, and bringing it now to a dusky yellow, now to an ashen grey--strata of chalky clay every now and then struggling into light only to melt away into beds of mere shingle--or bright semi-transparent pebbles, indebted to the action of water for shape and hue. At two principal points these blending and shifting qualities of soil put forth their utmost powers--in the favoured grounds of Margaux, and again, at a distance of about fifteen miles further to the north, in the vineyards of Lafitte, Latour, and between these latter, in the sunny slopes of St. Jullien. And the strangest thing of all is, that the quality--the magic--of the ground changes, without, in all cases, a corresponding change in the surface strata. If a fanciful and wilful fairy had flown over Medoc, flinging down here a blessing and there a curse upon the shifting shingle, the effect could not have been more oddly various. You can almost jump from a spot unknown to fame to another clustered with the most precious vintage of Europe. Half-a-dozen furrows often make all the difference between vines producing a beverage which will be drunk in the halls and palaces of England and Russia, and vines yielding a harvest which will be consumed in the cabarets and estaminets of the neighbourhood. It is to be observed, however, that the first-class wines belong almost entirely to the large proprietors. Amid a labyrinth of little patches, the property of the labouring peasants around, will be a spot appertaining to, and bearing the name of, some of the famous growths; while, conversely, inserted, as if by an accident, in the centre of a district of great name, and producing wine of great price, will be a perverse patch, yielding the most commonplace tipple, and worth not so many sous per yard as the surrounding earth is worth crowns. How comes this? The peasants will tell you that it doesn't come at all. That it is all cant and _blague_ and puff on the part of the big proprietors, and that their wine is only more thought of because they have more capital to get it bragged about. Near Chateau Lafitte, on a burning afternoon, I took refuge beneath the emblematic bush; for the emblem which good wine is said not to require, is still, in the mid and southern districts of France, in universal use; in other words, I entered a village public-house. Two old men, very much of the general type of the people of the country--that is, tall and spare, with intelligent and mildly-expressive faces and fine black eyes, were discussing together a sober bottle. One of them had lost an arm, and the other a leg. As I glanced at this peculiarity, the one-legged man caught my eye. "Ah!" he said, "looking at our misfortunes; I left my leg on Waterloo." "And I," chimed in his companion, "left my arm at Trafalgar." "_Sacré!_" said the veteran of the land. "One of the cursed English bullets took me in the knee, and spoiled as tight a lancer as they had in the gallant 10th." "And I," rejoined the other, "was at the fourth main-deck gun of the Pluton when I was struck with the splinter while we were engaging the Mars. But we had our revenge. The Pluton shot the Mars' captain's head off!"--a fact which I afterwards verified. Captain Duff, the officer alluded to, was thus killed upon his quarter-deck, and the same ball shattered two seamen almost to pieces. "_Sacré!_" said the _ci-devant_ lancer, "I'd like to have a rap at the English again--I would--the English--_nom de tonnerre_--tell me--didn't they murder the emperor?" A rising smile, which I could not help, stopped him. I had spoken so few words, that the fact that a son of _perfide Albion_ was before them was only manifested by the expression of my face. "_Tiens!_" continued the Waterloo man, "_You_ are an Englishman." The old sailor, who was evidently by no means so keen a hand as his comrade, nudged him; a hint, I suppose, in common phrase, to draw it mild; but the ex-lancer of the 10th was not to be put down. "Well, and if you are, what then, eh? I say I would like to have another brush with you." "No, no! We have had enough of brushes!" said the far more pacific man of the sea. "I think--_mon voisin_--that you and I have had quite enough of fighting." "But they killed the emperor. _Sacré nom de tous les diables_--they killed the emperor." My modest exculpation on behalf of Great Britain and Ireland was listened to with great impatience by the maimed lancer, and great attention by the maimed sailor, who kept up a running commentary: "_Eh! eh! entendez cela._ Now, that's quite different (to his friend) from what you tell us. Come--that's another story altogether; and what I say is, that's reasonable." But the lancer was not to be convinced--"_Sacré bleu!_--they killed the emperor." All this, it is to be observed, passed without the slightest feeling of personal animosity. The lancer, who, I suspect, had passed the forenoon in the cabaret, every now and then shook hands with me magnanimously, as to show that his wrath was national--not individual; and when I proposed a bottle of rather better wine than they had been drinking, neither soldier nor sailor had a word to say in objection. The wine was brought, and very good it was, though not, of course, first-class claret. "What do you think of that?" said the sailor. "I wish I had as good every day in England," I replied. "And why haven't you?" said the fierce lancer. "You might, if you chose. But you drink none of our wines." I demurred to this proposition; but the Waterloo man was down on me in no time. "Yes, yes; the wines of the great houses--the great proprietors. _Sacré!_--the _farceurs_--the _blageurs_--who puff their wines, and get them puffed, and great prices for them, when they're not better than ours--the peasant's wines--when they're grown in the same ground--ripened by the same sun! _Mille diables!_ Look at that bottle!--taste it! My son-in-law grew it. My son-in-law sells it; I know all about it. You shall have that bottle for ten sous, and the Lafitte people and the Larose people would charge you ten francs for it; and it is as good for ten sous as theirs for ten francs. I tell you it grew side by side with their vines; but they have capital--they have power. They crack off their wines, and we--the poor people!--we, who trim and dig and work our little patches--no one knows anything about us. Our wine--bah!--what is it? It has no name--no fame! Who will give us francs? No, no; sous for the poor man--francs for the rich. Copper for the little landlord; silver--silver and gold for the big landlord! As our curé said last Sunday: 'Unto him who has much, more shall be given.' _Sacré Dieu de dieux!_--Even the Bible goes against the poor!" All this time, the old sailor was tugging his comrade's jacket, and uttering sundry deprecatory ejaculations against such unnecessary vehemence. The Trafalgar man was clearly a take-it-easy personage; not troubled by too much thinking, and by no means a professional grievance-monger. So he interposed to bring back the topic to a more soothing subject, and said that what he would like, would be to see lots of English ships coming up the Gironde with the good cottons and woollens and hardwares we made in England, and taking back in exchange their cheap and wholesome wines--not only the great vintages (_crus_) for the great folk, but the common vintages for the common folk. "Indeed, I think," he concluded, "that sitting here drinking this good ten sous' wine with this English gentleman--who's going to pay for it--is far better than fighting him and hacking him up, or his hacking us up, with swords and balls and so forth." To this most sensible opinion we had all the pains in the world to get the doughty lancer to incline. He couldn't see it at all. He would like to have another brush. He wasn't half done for yet. It was all very well; but war was grand, and glory was grand. "_Vive la guerre!_" and "_Vive la gloire!_" "But," said the sailor, "there is death in glory!" "_Eh bien!_" shouted the warrior, with as perfect French sentiment as ever I heard, "_Vive la mort!_" In the end, however, he was pleased to admit that, if we took the peasant wines, something might be made of us. The case was not utterly hopeless; and when I rose to go, he proposed a stirrup-cup--a _coup de l'étrier_--to the washing down of all unkindness; but, in the very act of swallowing it, he didn't exactly stop, but made a motion as if he would, and then slowly letting the last drop run over his lips, he put down the glass, and said, bitterly and coldly, "_Mais pourtant, vous avez tué l'Empereur!_" I have introduced this episode principally for the purpose of showing the notions entertained by the small proprietary as to the boasted superiority of the large vineyards; but the plain truth is, that the great growers are perfectly in the right. I have stated that the quality of the soil throughout the grape country varies almost magically. Well, the good spots have been more or less known since Medoc was Medoc; and the larger and richer residents have got them, by inheritance, by marriage, and by purchase, almost entirely into their own hands. Next they greatly improved both the soil and the breed of plants. They studied and experimentalized until they found the most proper manures and the most promising cultures. They grafted and crossed the vine plants till they got the most admirably bearing bushes, and then, generation after generation, devoting all their attention to the quality of the wine, without regard to the quantity--scrupulously taking care that not a grape which is unripe or over-ripe finds its way to the tub--that the whole process shall be scrupulously clean, and that every stage of fermentation be assiduously attended to--the results of all this has been the perfectly-perfumed and high-class clarets, which fetch an enormous price; while the peasant proprietors, careless in cultivation, using old vine plants, anxious, at the vintage, only for quantity, and confined to the worst spots in the district, succeed in producing wines which, good as they are, have not the slightest pretence to enter into competition with the liquid harvests of their richer and more enlightened neighbours. But it is high time to sketch, and with more elaboration than I have hitherto attempted, the claret vintage and the claret vintagers. Yet still, for a moment, I must pause upon the threshold. Will it be believed--whether it will or not it is, nevertheless, true--that the commencement of the vintage in France is settled, not by the opinion or the convenience of the proprietors, but by the _autorités_ of each _arrondissement_? As September wanes and the grape ripens, the rural mayor assembles what he calls a jury of _experts_; which jury proceed, from day to day, through the vineyards, inspecting and tasting the grapes and cross-questioning the growers; after which, they report to the mayor a special day on which, having regard to all the vineyards, they think that the vintage ought to commence. One proprietor, in a very sunny situation and a hot soil, may have been ready to begin a fortnight before; another, in a converse locality, may not be ready to commence for a fortnight afterwards. _N'importe_--the French have a great notion of uniform symmetry and symmetrical uniformity, and so the whole district starts together--the mayor issuing, _par autorité_, a highly-official-looking document, which is duly posted by yellow-breeched _gens-d'armes_, and, before the appearance of which, not a vine-grower can gather, for wine purposes, a single grape. Now, what must be the common sense of a country which permits, for one instant, the continuance of this wretched little tyrannical humbug? Only think of a trumpery little mayor and a couple of beadles proclaiming to the farmers of England that now they might begin to cut their wheat! The mayor's mace would be forced down the beadle's throat, and the beadle's staff down the mayor's. But they manage these things--not exactly--better in France. What would France be without _les autorités_? Could the sun rise without a prefect? Certainly not. Could it set without a sub-prefect? Certainly not. Could the planets shine on France unless they were furnished with passports for the firmament? Clearly not. Could the rain on France unless each drop came armed with the _visé_ of some wonderful bureau or other? Decidedly not. Well, then, how could the vintage begin until the people, who know nothing about the vintage, command it? It is quite clear, that if you have any doubt about these particulars, you know very little of the privileges, the rights, the functions, and the powers, of the "authorities" in France. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE VINTAGE.] CHAPTER III. THE VINTAGE AND THE VINTAGERS. So much, then, for preliminary information. Let us now proceed to the joyous ingathering of the fruits of the earth--the great yearly festival and jubilee of the property and the labour of Medoc. October, the "wine month," is approaching. For weeks, every cloud in the sky has been watched--every cold night breeze felt with nervous apprehension. Upon the last bright weeks in summer, the savour and the bouquet of the wine depend. Warmed by the blaze of an unclouded sun, fanned by the mild breezes of the west, and moistened by morning and evening dews, the grapes by slow degrees attain their perfect ripeness and their culminating point of flavour. Then the vintage implements begin to be sought out, cleaned, repaired, and scoured and sweetened with hot brandy. Coopers work as if their lives depended upon their industry; and all the anomalous tribe of lookers-out for chance jobs in town and country pack up their bag and baggage, and from scores of miles around pour in ragged regiments into Medoc. There have long existed pleasing, and in some sort poetical, associations connected with the task of securing for human use the fruits of the earth; and to no species of crop do these picturesque associations apply with greater force than to the ingathering of the ancient harvest of the vine. From time immemorial, the season has typified epochs of plenty and mirthful-heartedness--of good fare and of good-will. The ancient types and figures descriptive of the vintage are still literally true. The march of agricultural improvement seems never to have set foot amid the vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the East, so it is with the modern children of men. The goaded ox still bears home the high-pressed grape-tub, and the feet of the treader are still red in the purple juice which maketh glad the heart of man. The scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and even sacred associations. The songs of the vintagers, frequently chorussed from one part of the field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer air, pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of laughter shouted hither and thither. All the green jungle is alive with the moving figures of men and women, stooping among the vines or bearing pails and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown crossroads, along which the labouring oxen drag the rough vintage carts, groaning and cracking as they stagger along beneath their weight of purple tubs heaped high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The congregation of every age and both sexes, and the careless variety of costume, add additional features of picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired old man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket which his black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries rejoicingly away. Quaint broad-brimmed straw and felt hats--handkerchiefs twisted like turbans over straggling elf locks--swarthy skins tanned to an olive-brown--black flashing eyes--and hands and feet stained in the abounding juices of the precious fruit--all these southern peculiarities of costume and appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics. The clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy questions, and more saucy retorts--of what, in fact, in the humble and unpoetic but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff,"--is kept up with a vigour which seldom flags, except now and then, when the butt-end of a song, or the twanging close of a chorus strikes the general fancy, and procures for the _morceau_ a lusty _encore_. Meantime, the master wine-grower moves observingly from rank to rank. No neglected bunch of fruit escapes his watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the precious berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded of his slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the careful superintendent. He turns up the clusters to ascertain that no leaves nor useless length of tendril are entombed in the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to the pressing-trough, anxious to find that the lusty treaders are persevering manfully in their long-continued dance. Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or _cuvier de pressoir_, consists, in the majority of cases, of a massive shallow tub, varying in size from four square feet to as many square yards. It is placed either upon wooden trestles or on a regularly-built platform of mason-work under the huge rafters of a substantial outhouse. Close to it stands a range of great butts, their number more or less, according to the size of the vineyard. The grapes are flung by tub and caskfuls into the cuvier. The treaders stamp diligently amid the masses, and the expressed juice pours plentifully out of a hole level with the bottom of the trough into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops the passage of the skins, and from thence drains into tubs below. Suppose, at the moment of our arrival, the cuvier for a brief space empty. The treaders--big, perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up trowsers--spattered to the eyes with splatches of purple juice, lean upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads. But their respite is short. The creak of another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately the waggon is backed up to the broad open window, or rather hole in the wall, above the trough. A minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub, and to tilt their already half-mashed clusters splash into the reeking _pressoir_. Then to work again. Jumping with a sort of spiteful eagerness into the mountain of yielding quivering fruit, the treaders sink almost to the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in the masses of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about their feet, and rush bubbling and gurgling away. Presently, having, as it were, drawn the first sweet blood of the new cargo, the eager trampling subsides into a sort of quiet, measured dance, which the treaders continue, while, with their wooden spades, they turn the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither and thither, so as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible way to the muscular action of the incessantly moving feet. All this time, the juice is flowing in a continuous stream into the tubs beneath. When the jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with the wooden spades, and, as though a new force had been applied, the juice-jet immediately breaks out afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three-quarters of an hour thoroughly to squeeze the contents of a good-sized cuvier, sufficiently manned. When at length, however, no further exertion appears to be attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of expressed juice are carried by means of ladders to the edges of the vats, and their contents tilted in; while the men in the trough, setting-to with their spades, fling the masses of dripping grape-skins in along with the juice. The vats sufficiently full, the fermentation is allowed to commence. In the great cellars in which the juice is stored, the listener at the door--he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to enter further--may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool shade of the great darkened hall, the bubblings and seethings of the working liquid--the inarticulate accents and indistinct rumblings which proclaim that a great metempsychosis is taking place--that a natural substance is rising higher in the eternal scale of things, and that the contents of these great giants of vats are becoming changed from floods of mere mawkish, sweetish fluid to noble wine--to a liquid honoured and esteemed in all ages--to a medicine exercising a strange and potent effect upon body and soul--great for good and evil. Is there not something fanciful and poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred--for the atmosphere about the vats is death--as if Nature would suffer no idle prying into her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful nature--fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by the invisible halo of stifling gas? I saw the vats in the Chateau Margaux cellars the day after the grape-juice had been flung in. Fermentation had not as yet properly commenced, so access to the place was possible; still, however, there was a strong vinous smell loading the atmosphere, sharp and subtle in its influence on the nostrils; while, putting my ear, on the recommendation of my conductor, to the vats, I heard, deep down, perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the influence of the working Spirit, and now and then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil. Within twenty-four hours, the cellar would be unapproachable. Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter upon anything like a detailed account of wine-making. I may only add, that the refuse-skins, stalks, and so forth, which settle into the bottom of the fermentation vats, are taken out again after the wine has been drawn off and subjected to a new squeezing--in a press, however, and not by the foot--the products being a small quantity of fiery, ill-flavoured wine, full of the bitter taste of the seeds and stalks of the grape, and possessing no aroma or bouquet. The Bordeaux press for this purpose is rather ingeniously constructed. It consists of a sort of a skeleton of a cask, strips of daylight shining through from top to bottom between the staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular iron screw. The _rape_, as the refuse of the treading is called, is piled beneath it; the screw is manned capstan fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and stalks, undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials end there. The wine-makers are terrible hands for getting at the very last get-at-able drop. To this end, somewhat on the principle of rinsing an exhausted spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch the very flavour still clinging to the glass, they plunge the doubly-squeezed _rape_ into water, let it lie there for a short time, and then attack it with the press again. The result is a horrible stuff called _piquette_, which, in a wine country, bears the same resemblance to wine as the very dirtiest, most wishy-washy, and most contemptible of swipes bears to honest porter or ale. Piquette, in fact, may be defined as the ghost of wine!--wine minus its bones, its flesh, and its soul!--a liquid shadow!--a fluid nothing!--an utter negation of all comfortable things and associations! Nevertheless, however, the peasants swill it down in astounding quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction. And now a word as to wine-treading. The process is universal in France, with the exception of the cases of the sparkling wines of the Rhone and Champagne, the grapes for which are squeezed by mechanical means, not by the human foot. Now, very venerable and decidedly picturesque as is the process of wine-treading, it is unquestionably rather a filthy one; and the spectacle of great brown horny feet, not a whit too clean, splashing and sprawling in the bubbling juice, conveys at first sight a qualmy species of feeling, which, however, seems only to be entertained by those to whom the sight is new. I looked dreadfully askance at the operation when I first came across it; and when I was invited--by a lady, too--to taste the juice, of which she caught up a glassful, a certain uncomfortable feeling of the inward man warred terribly against politeness. But nobody around seemed to be in the least squeamish. Often and often did I see one of the heroes of the tub walk quietly over a dunghill, and then jump--barefooted, of course, as he was--into the juice; and even a vigilant proprietor, who was particularly careful that no bad grapes went into the tub, made no objection. When I asked why a press was not used, as more handy, cleaner, and more convenient, I was everywhere assured that all efforts had failed to construct a wine-press capable of performing the work with the perfection attained by the action of the human foot. No mechanical squeezing, I was informed, would so nicely express that peculiar proportion of the whole moisture of the grape which forms the highest flavoured wine. The manner in which the fruit was tossed about was pointed out to me, and I was asked to observe that the grapes were, as it were, squeezed in every possible fashion and from every possible side, worked and churned and mashed hither and thither by the ever-moving toes and muscles of the foot. As far as any impurity went, the argument was, that the fermentation flung, as scum to the surface, every atom of foreign matter held in suspension in the wine, and that the liquid ultimately obtained was as exquisitely pure as if human flesh had never touched it. In the collection of these and such like particulars, I sauntered for days among the vineyards around; and, utterly unknown and unfriended as I was, I met everywhere the most cordial and pleasant receptions. I would lounge, for example, to the door of a wine-treading shed, to watch the movements of the people. Presently the proprietor, most likely attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange faded outer garment, half shooting-coat half dressing gown, would come up courteously to the stranger, and, learning that I was an English visitor to the vintage, would busy himself with the most graceful kindness, to make intelligible the _rationale_ of all the operations. Often I was invited into the chateau or farm-house, as the case might be; a bottle of an old vintage produced and comfortably discussed in the coolness of the darkened, thinly-furnished room, with its old-fashioned walnut-tree escrutoires, and beauffets, its quaintly-pannelled walls, and its polished floors, gleaming like mirrors and slippery as ice. On these occasions, the conversation would often turn upon the general rejection, by England, of French wines--a sore point with the growers of all save the first-class vintages, and in which I had, as may be conceived, very little to say in defence either of our taste or our policy. In the evenings, which were getting chill and cold, I occasionally abandoned my room with illustrations from the _Tour de Nesle_ for the general kitchen and parlour of Madame Cadillac, and, ensconcing myself in the chimney corner--a fine old-fashioned ingle, crackling and blazing with hard wood logs--listened to the chat of the people of the village; they were nearly all coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the day's work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest modicum of very thin wine. I never benefitted very much, however, by these listenings. It was my bad luck to hear recounted neither tale nor legend--to pick up, at the hands of my _compotatores_, neither local trait nor anecdote. The conversation was as small as the wine. The gossip of the place--the prospects of the vintage--elaborate comparisons of it with other vintages--births, marriages, and deaths--a minute list of scandal, more or less intelligible when conveyed in hints and allusions--were the staple topics, mixed up, however, once or twice with general denunciations of the niggardly conduct of certain neighbouring proprietors to their vintagers--giving them for breakfast nothing but coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette to wash it down with, and for dinner not much more tempting dishes. In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers--the fixed and the floating population; and the latter, which makes an annual inroad into the district just as the Irish harvesters do into England and Scotland, comprising a goodly proportion of very dubious and suspicious-looking characters. The _gen-d'armerie_ have a busy time of it when these gentry are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles hung out to dry have no more chance than if Falstaff's regiment were marching by; and garden-fruit and vegetables, of course, share the results produced by a rigid application of the maxim that _la propriété c'est le vol_. Where these people come from is a puzzle. There will be vagrants and strollers among them from all parts of France--from the Pyrenees and the Alps--from the pine-woods of the Landes and the moors of Brittany. They unite in bands of a dozen or a score men and women, appointing a chief, who bargains with the vine-proprietor for the services of the company, and keeps up some degree of order and subordination, principally by means of the unconstitutional application of a good thick stick. I frequently encountered these bands, making their way from one district to another, and better samples of "the dangerous classes" were never collected. They looked vicious and abandoned, as well as miserably poor. The women, in particular, were as brazen-faced a set of slatterns as could be conceived; and the majority of the men--tattered, strapping-looking fellows, with torn slouched hats, and tremendous cudgels--were exactly the sort of persons a nervous gentleman would have scruples about meeting at dusk in a long lane. It is when thus on the tramp that the petty pilfering and picking and stealing to which I have alluded to goes on. When actually at work, they have no time for picking up unconsidered trifles. Sometimes these people pass the night--all together, of course--in out-houses or barns, when the _chef_ can strike a good bargain; at other times they bivouac on the lee-side of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy fashion. You may often see their watchfires glimmering in the night; and be sure that where you do, there are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a neighbouring hen-roost. One evening I was sauntering along the beach at Paulliac--a little town on the river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the mouth of the Gironde, and holding precisely the same relation to Bordeaux as Gravesend does to London--when a band of vintagers, men, women, and children, came up. They were bound to some village on the opposite side of the Gironde, and wanted to get ferried across. A long parley accordingly ensued between the chief and a group of boatmen. The commander of the vintage forces offered four sous per head as the passage-money. The bargemen would hear of nothing under five; and after a tremendous verbal battle, the vintagers announced that they were not going to be cheated, and that if they could not cross the water, they could stay where they were. Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. Creeping under the lee of a row of casks, on the shingle of the bare beach, the women were placed leaning against the somewhat hard and large pillows in question; the children were nestled at their feet and in their laps; and the men formed the outermost ranks. A supply of loaves was sent for and obtained. The chief tore the bread up into huge hunks, which he distributed to his dependents; and upon this supper the whole party went coolly to sleep--more coolly, indeed, than agreeably; for a keen north wind was whistling along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red blaze of high-piled faggots was streaming from the houses across the black, cold, turbid waters. At length, however, some arrangement was come to; for, on visiting the spot a couple of hours afterwards, I found the party rather more comfortably ensconced under the ample sails of the barge which was to bear them the next morning to their destination. The dinner-party formed every day, when the process of stripping the vines is going on, is, particularly in the cases in which the people are treated well by the proprietor, frequently a very pretty and very picturesque spectacle. It always takes place in the open air, amongst the bushes, or under some neighbouring walnut-tree. Sometimes long tables are spread upon tressles; but in general no such formality is deemed requisite. The guests fling themselves in groups upon the ground--men and women picturesquely huddled together--the former bloused and bearded personages--the latter showy, in their bright short petticoats of home-spun and dyed cloth, with glaring handkerchiefs twisted like turbans round their heads--each man and woman with a deep plate in his or her lap. Then the people of the house bustle about, distributing huge brown loaves, which are torn asunder, and the fragments chucked from hand to hand. Next a vast cauldron of soup, smoking like a volcano, is painfully lifted out from the kitchen, and dealt about in mighty ladlefuls; while the founder of the feast takes care that the tough, thready _bouilli_--like lumps of boiled-down hemp--shall be fairly apportioned among his guests. _Piquette_ is the general beverage. A barrel is set abroach, and every species of mug, glass, cup, and jug about the establishment is called in to aid in its consumption. A short rest, devoted to chatting, or very often sleeping in the shade, over, the signal is given, and the work recommences. "You have seen our _salle à manger_," said one of my courteous entertainers--he of the broad-brimmed straw hat; "and now you shall see our _chambre à coucher_." Accordingly, he led me to a barn close to his wine-cellars. The place was littered deep with clean, fresh straw. Here and there rolled-up blankets were laid against the wall; while all round, from nails stuck in between the bare bricks, hung by straps and strings the little bundles, knapsacks, and other baggage of the labourers. On one side, two or three swarthy young women were playfully pushing each other aside, so as to get at a morsel of cracked mirror stuck against the wall--their long hair hanging down in black elf-locks, in the preliminary stage of its arrangement. "That is the ladies' side," said my _cicerone_, pointing to the girls; "and that"--extending his other hand--"is the gentlemen's side." "And so they all sleep here together?" "Every night. I find shelter and straw; any other accommodation they must procure for themselves." "Rather unruly, I should suppose?" "Not a bit. They are too tired to do anything but sleep. They go off, sir, like dormice." "_Oh, sil plait à Mossieu!_" put in one of the damsels. "The chief of the band does the police." (_Fait la gen-d'armerie._) "Certainly--certainly," said the proprietor; "the gentlemen lie here, with their heads to the wall; the ladies there; and the _chef de la bande_ stretches himself all along between them." "A sort of living frontier?" "Truly; and he allows no nonsense." "_Il est meme éxcessivement severe_," interpolated the same young lady. "He need be," replied her employer. "He allows no loud speaking--no joking; and as there are no candles, no light, why, they can do nothing better than go quietly to sleep, if it were only in self-defence." One word more about the vintage. The reader will easily conceive that it is on the smaller properties, where the wine is intended, not so much for commerce as for household use, that the vintage partakes most of the festival nature. In the large and first-class vineyards the process goes on under rigid superintendence, and is as much as possible made a cold matter of business. He who wishes to see the vintages of books and poems--the laughing, joking, singing festivals amid the vines, which we are accustomed to consider the harvests of the grape--must betake him to the multitudinous patches of peasant property, in which neighbour helps neighbour to gather in the crop, and upon which whole families labour merrily together, as much for the amusement of the thing, and from good neighbourly feeling, as in consideration of francs and sous. Here, of course, there is no tight discipline observed, nor is there any absolute necessity for that continuous, close scrutiny into the state of the grapes--all of them hard or rotten, going slap-dash into the _cuvier_--which, in the case of the more precious vintages, forms no small check upon a general state of careless jollity. Every one eats as much fruit as he pleases, and rests when he is tired. On such occasions it is that you hear to the best advantage the joyous songs and choruses of the vintage--many of these last being very pretty bits of melody, generally sung by the women and girls, in shrill treble unison, and caught up and continued from one part of the field to another. [Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE.] Yet, discipline and control it as you will, the vintage will ever be beautiful, picturesque, and full of association. The rude wains, creaking beneath the reeking tubs--the patient faces of the yoked oxen--the half-naked, stalwart men, who toil to help the cart along the ruts and furrows of the way--the handkerchief-turbaned women, their gay, red-and-blue dresses peeping from out the greenery of the leaves--the children dashing about as if the whole thing were a frolic, and the grey-headed old men tottering cheerfully adown the lines of vines, with baskets and pails of gathered grapes to fill the yawning tubs--the whole picture is at once classic, venerable, and picturesque, not more by association than actuality. And now, Reader, luxuriating amid the gorgeously carven and emblazoned fittings of a Palais Royal or Boulevard restorateur, Vefours, the Freres, or the Café de Paris; or perhaps ensconced in our quieter and more sober rooms--dim and dull after garish Paris, but ten times more comfortable in their ample sofas and carpets, into which you sink as into quagmires, but with more agreeable results,--snugly, Reader, ensconced in either one or the other locality, after the waiter has, in obedience to your summons, produced the _carte de vins_, and your eye wanders down the long list of tempting nectars, Spanish and Portuguese, and better, far better, German and French--have you ever wondered as you read, "ST. JULLIEN, LEOVILLE, CHATEAU LA LAFITTE, CHATEAU LA ROSE, and CHATEAU MARGAUX, what these actual vineyards, the produce of which you know so well--what those actual chateaux, which christen such glorious growths, resemble?" If so, listen, and I will tell you. As you traverse the high road from Bordeaux to Pauillac, some one will probably point out to you a dozen tiny sugar-loaf turrets, each surmounted by a long lightning-conductor, rising from a group of noble trees. This is the chateau St. Jullien. A little on, on the right side of the way, rises, from the top of a tiny hill overlooking the Gironde, a new building, with all the old crinkum-crankum ornaments of the ancient fifteenth century country house. That is the chateau Latour. Presently you observe that the entrance to a wide expanse of vines, covering a series of hills and dales, tumbling down to the water's edge, is marked by a sort of triumphal arch or ornamented gate, adorned with a lion couchant, and a legend, setting forth that the vines behind produce the noted wine of Leoville. The chateau Lafitte rises amid stately groves of oak and walnut-trees, from amid the terraced walks of an Italian garden--its white spreading wings gleaming through the trees, and its round-roofed, slated towers rising above them. One chateau, the most noted of all, remains. Passing along a narrow, sandy road, amid a waste of scrubby-looking bushes, you pass beneath the branches of a clump of noble oaks and elms, and perceive a great white structure glimmering garishly before you. Take such a country house as you may still find in your grandmothers' samplers, decorated with a due allowance of doors and windows--clap before it a misplaced Grecian portico, whitewash the whole to a state of the most glaring and dazzling brightness, carefully close all outside shutters, painted white likewise--and you have chateau Margaux rising before you like a wan, ghastly spectre of a house, amid stately terraced gardens, and trimmed, clipped, and tortured trees. But, as I have already insisted, nothing, in any land of vines, must be judged by appearances. The first time I saw at a distance Johannesberg, rising from its grape-clustered domains, I thought it looked very much like a union workhouse, erected in the midst of a field of potatoes. [Illustration] [Illustration: LANDES SHEPHERDS.] CHAPTER IV. THE LANDES--THE BORDEAUX AND TESTE RAILWAY--NINICHE--THE LANDSCAPE OF THE LANDES--THE PEOPLE OF THE LANDES--HOW THEY WALK ON STILTS, AND GAMBLE. Turn to the map of France--to that portion of it which would be traversed by a straight line drawn from Bordeaux to Bayonne--and you will observe that such a line would run through a vast extent of bare-looking country--of that sort, indeed, where "Geographers on pathless downs Place elephants, for want of towns." Roads, you will observe, are few and far between; the names of far-scattered towns will be unfamiliar to you; and, indeed, nine-tenths of this part of the map consists of white paper. The district you are looking at is the Landes, forming now a department by itself, and anciently constituting a portion of Gascony and Guienne. These Landes form one of the strangest and wildest parts of France. Excepting here and there small patches of poor, ill-cultivated land, the whole country is a solitary desert--black with pine-wood, or white with vast plains of drifting sand. By these two great features of the district, occasionally diversified by sweeps of green morass, intersected by canals and lanes of stagnant and often brackish water, the Landes take a goodly slice out of La Belle France. Their sea-line bounds the French side of the Bay of Biscay, stretching from Bayonne to the mouth of the Gironde; and at their point of greatest breadth they run some sixty miles back into the country; thence gradually receding away towards the sea, as though pushed back by the course of the Garonne, until, towards the mouth of the river, they fade away altogether. So much for the _physique_ of the Landes. The inhabitants are every whit as rugged, strange, and uncultivated. As the Landes were four centuries ago, in all essential points, so they are now; as the people were four centuries ago, in all essential points, so they are now. What should the tide of progress or of improvement do in these deserts of pine and sand? The people live on French soil, but cannot be called Frenchmen. They speak a language as unintelligible to a Frenchman as an Englishman; they have none of the national characteristics--little, perhaps, of the national blood. They are saturnine, gloomy, hypochondriac, dismally passing dismal lives in the depths of their black forests, their dreary swamps, and their far-spreading deserts of white, fine sand. Such an odd nook of the world was not to be passed unvisited; besides, I wanted to see the Biscay surf; and accordingly I left Bordeaux for the Landes--not in some miserable cross-country vehicle--not knight-errantwise, on a Bordelais Rosinante--not pilgrim-wise, with a staff and scrip--but in a comfortable railway-carriage. Yes, sir, a comfortable railway-carriage; and the railway in question--the Bordeaux and Teste line--is the sole enterprise of the kind undertaken and achieved in the south-west of France. "Railways!" said the conductor of the Paris and Bordeaux diligence to me, with that magnificent condescension with which a Frenchman explains to a Briton all about _Perfide Albion!_--"Railways, monsieur," he said, "as all the world knows, have achieved the ruin of the Old England, and presently they will do as much for France. _Tenez_; they are cursed inventions--particularly the Paris and Bordeaux Railway." But if the ruin of France is to be consummated by railways, France, like bankrupt linendrapers, will take a long time to ruin. The Bordeaux line crawls but slowly on. In 1850, we left the rails and took to the road at Tours; and, barring the bits of line leading down from some of the Mediterranean towns to Marseilles, the Bordeaux and Teste fragment was the sole morsel of railway then in operation south of Lyons. The question comes, then, to be, What earthly inducement caused the construction of this wilderness line, and how it happens that the only locomotives in fair Guienne whistle through the almost uninhabited Landes? The fact seems to be, that, once upon a time, the good folks of Bordeaux were taken with an inappeasable desire to have a railway. One would have thought that the natural course of such an undertaking would have been northward, through the vines and thickly-peopled country of Medoc to the comparatively-important towns of Paulliac and Lesparre. The enterprising Bordelais, however, had another scheme. Some forty miles to the west of the city, the sands, pines, and morasses of the Landes are broken by a vast shallow basin, its edges scolloped with innumerable creeks, bays, and winding friths, into which, through a breach in the coast line of sand-hills, flow the waters of the Atlantic. On the southern side of this estuary lie two or three scattered groups of hovels, inhabited by fishermen and shepherds--the most important of the hamlets being known as Teste, or Teste-la-buch. Between Teste and Bordeaux, the only line of communication was a rutty road, half sand and half morass, and the only traffic was the occasional pilgrimage to the salt water of some patient sent thither at all risks by the Bordeaux doctors, or now and then the transit towards the city of the Garonne of the products of a day's lucky fishing, borne in panniers on the backs of a string of donkeys. Folks, however, were sanguine. The speculation "came out," shares got up, knowing people sold out, simple people held on, and the line was actually constructed. No doubt it was cheaply got up. Ground could be had in the Landes almost for the asking, and from terminus to terminus there is not an inch of tunnel-cutting or embankment. The line, moreover, is single, and the stations are knocked up in the roughest and most primitive style. The result, however, astonished no one, save the shareholders. The traffic does not half pay the working expenses. Notwithstanding that some increase in the amount of communication certainly did take place, consequent upon the facility with which Teste can now be reached--a facility which has gone some way to render it a summer place of sea-side resort--the two trains which _per diem_ seldom convey more than a dozen or so of third-class passengers, and the shareholders at length flung themselves into the hands of the Government; and, insisting upon the advantages which would accrue to the State as soon as the Paris and Bordeaux line was finished, by a direct means of communication between the metropolis and a harbour in the Bay of Biscay, they succeeded in hypothecating their line to the Government for a small annual subvention. Such is the present agreeable position of the single railway in the south-west of France. I was somewhat late, as I feared, for the train, and, calling a _citadine_, got the man to urge his horse to a gallop, so that we pulled up at the terminus with the animal in a lather. A porter approached, and grinned. "Monsieur has made haste, but the winter season begins to-day, and the train does not go for an hour and a half." There was no help for it, and I sauntered into the nearest _café_ to read long disquisitions on what was then all the vogue in the political world--the "situation." I found the little marble slabs deserted--even the billiard-table abandoned, and all the guests collected round the white Fayence stove. Joining them, I perceived the attraction. On one of the velvet stools sat an old gentleman of particularly grave and reverend aspect--a most philosophic and sage-like old gentleman--and between his legs was a white poodle, standing erect with his master's cane in his paws. All the company were in raptures with Niniche, who was going through his performances. "Niniche," said the patriarch, "what does Monsieur Tetard do when he comes home late?" The dog immediately began to stagger about on its hind legs, sometimes losing its balance and then getting up again, looking all the time with a sort of stupid blinking stare at its master. It was clear that M. Tetard, when he came home late, did not come home sober. "_Tiens! c'est admirable!_" shouted the spectators--burly fellows, with black beards, and honest tradesman-looking people, with glasses of _eau sucreé_ in their hands. "And now," said the old gentleman, the poodle's proprietor and instructor, "what does Madame Tetard do when Monsieur Tetard comes home late?" The dog straightway began to utter, with wonderful volubility, a series of loud, shrill, yelping snaps, jerking itself up and down on its haunches, and flinging its paws about as if it had the hydrophobia. The spectators were enraptured. "It is actually her voice," said one. "Only the dog is too good-looking for her," said another. "_Voilà petite!_" vociferated a third, holding a huge piece of bluish-tinted beetroot sugar to the performer, when suddenly the group was broken by a fussy, fat old gentleman with a white baggy cravat, very snuffy, and a pair of heavy gold spectacles. "_Je dis--moi!_" shouted the new comer, in violent wrath; "_que c'est abominable ce que vous faites là Père Grignon._" A murmur of suppressed laughter went through the group. Père Grignon looked considerably taken aback, and the speaker aimed a hearty kick at Niniche, who dodged away round the stove. It was evident that he was no other than the injured and maligned Tetard himself. Instantly he broke into loud objurgations. He knew how that atrocious old _Père Grignon_ had taught his dog to malign him, the _bête misérable_! But as for it, he would poison it--shoot it--drown it; and as for Père Grignon, who ought to have more sense, all the quartier knew what he was--an _imbécille_, who was always running about carrying tales, and making mischief. But he would appeal to the authorities; he would lay his complaint before the commisary of the quartier; he would--he would--. At this moment the excited orator caught sight of the offending poodle slipping to the door, and instantly sprung vigorously after him:-- "_Tenez-tenez_; don't touch Niniche--it's not his fault!" exclaimed the poodle's proprietor. But the dog had bolted, with Tetard in hot chase of his imitator, and vowing that he should be _écraséd_ and _abiméd_ as soon as caught. There was, of course, great laughter at the whole proceeding; and then the group betook themselves to the marble slabs and dominoes--the instructor of the offending quadruped coolly lighting his pipe, as he muttered that old Tetard was, after all, a _bon enfant_, and that over a _petit verre_ he would always listen to reason. At length the tedious hour and a half wore away, and I entered the terminus--a roughly built wooden shed. The train consisted of a first, second, and third-class carriage; but there were no first-class passengers, only one solitary second-class, and about a dozen third-classes, with whom I cast my lot. Miserable as the freight was, the locomotive whistled as loud and panted as vehemently as if it were yoked to a Great Western express; and off we went through the broad belt of nursery gardens, which encircles every French town, and where the very best examples of the working of the small proprietary system are to be seen. A rapid run through the once greatly famed and still esteemed vineyards of Hautbrion, and we found ourselves scurrying along over a negative sort of country--here a bit of heath, there a bit of vineyard--now a bald spot of sand, anon a plot of irregularly-cut stubble; while a black horizon of pine-wood rose gradually on the right and left. On flew the train, and drearier grew the landscape; the heath was bleaker--the pines began to appear in clumps--the sand-stretches grew wider--every thing green, and fertile, and _riant_ disappeared. He, indeed, who enters the Landes, appears to have crossed a French frontier, and left the merry land behind. No more bright vineyards--no more rich fields of waving corn--no more clustered villages--no more chateau-turrets--no more tapering spires. You look up to heaven to see whether the sky has not changed, as well as the land. No; all there is blue and serene as before, and the keen, hot sun glares intensely down upon undulating wastes of marsh, fir, and sand, among which you may travel for leagues without seeing a man, hearing a dog bark, or a bird sing. At last we were fairly among the woods, shooting down what seemed an eternal straight tunnel, cleft by lightning through the pines. The trees stood up stark and stiff, like cast-iron; the fir is at once a solemn and a rigid tree--the Puritan of the forest; and down the side of each Puritan I noticed a straight, yellowish gash, running perpendicularly from the spread of the branches almost to the earth, and turned for explanation to an intelligent-looking man, evidently a citizen of Bordeaux, opposite me. "Ah!" he said, "you are new to our Landes." I admitted it. "And these gashes down the trees--these, monsieur, give us the harvest of the Landes." "The harvest! What harvest?" "What harvest? Resin, to be sure." "Ay, resin," said an old fellow with a blouse and a quick eye; "resin, monsieur; the only harvest that man can grow in sand." "_Tenez_," said my first interlocutor; "the peasants cut that gash in the tree; and at the root they scoop a little hollow in the ground. The resin perspires out of the wood, flows slowly and glutinously down the gash, and in a month or so, according to the heat of the weather, the hole is full, and the man who rents the trees takes up the sticky stuff, like soup, with a ladle." "That's a very good description," said the old bloused gentleman. "And then, sir" (addressing me), "we barrel our crop of the Landes. Yes, indeed, we barrel it, as well as they do the crop of the Medoc." "Only you wouldn't like to drink it so well," said the Bordeaux man. Presently we pulled up at a station--a mere shed, with a clearing around it, as there might have been in Texas or Maine. I observed the name--TOHUA-COHOA, and remarked that it did not look like a French one. "French one!" said he of Bordeaux; "you don't expect to find French in this chaos? No, no; it is some of the gibberish the savages hereabout speak." "No such gibberish, and no such savages either," said the little keen-eyed man. "_Moi, je suis de Landes_; and the Landes language is a far finer language than French. French! phoo, phoo!" And he took a pinch of snuff indignantly and triumphantly. The Bordeaux gentleman winked blandly at me, as if the keen-eyed man was a character to be humoured, and then looked doubtful and unconvinced. "Tohua-Cohoa," he said; "it has a _sacré tonnerre_ of a barbarous sound; has it any meaning?" "Meaning!" exclaimed the man of the Landes; "I should think so. Tohua-Cohoa means, in French, _Allez doucement_; and the place was so called because there was there a dangerous swamp, in which many a donkey coming up from Teste with fish to you of Bordeaux was smothered; and so it got to be quite proverbial among the drivers of the donkeys, and they used to shout to each other, 'Tohua-Cohoa!' whenever they came near the slough; meaning to look out, and go gently, and take care of the soft places." The man with the blouse, who was clearly the champion of the Landes, then turned indignantly from the Bordeaux man and addressed himself to me. "The language which the poor people here speak, monsieur, is a fine and expressive language, and liker the Spanish than the French. The people are poor, and very ignorant. They believe, monsieur, in ghosts, and witches, and sorceries, just as all France did two or three hundred years ago. Very few of them can read, monsieur, and they have bad food and no wine. But nevertheless, monsieur, they are _bons enfants--braves gens_, monsieur. They love their pine-woods and their sands as much as other people do their corn-fields and their vines, monsieur. They would die, monsieur, if you took them away from the sand and the trees. They are not like the Auvergnats, who go in troops to Paris to carry water from the fountains, and who are _betes--betes--bien betes_! They stay at home, monsieur. They wear their sheep-skins and walk upon their stilts, like their forefathers before them, monsieur; and if you are coming here to see the Landes, and if you lose yourself in the woods, and see a light glimmering through the trees, and rap at the cottage door, monsieur, you will be welcomed, monsieur, and have the best they can offer to eat, and the softest they can offer to sleep on. _Tenez, tenez; nous sommes pauvres et ignorants mais nous sommes, loyals et bons!_" The tears fairly stood in the keen black eyes of the Landes man as he concluded his harangue, of which I have only reported the main points; for, truth to tell, the poor fellow's vehemence was so great, and his utterance so rapid, that I lost nearly as much as I caught. The Bordeaux gentleman hammered the floor with his umbrella in satirical approbation, the rest of the passengers looked curiously on, and, the engine whistling, we pulled up again at a station similar to the first--a shed--a clearing, and black pine all around. There were just three persons on the rough platform--the station-master in a blouse, and two yellow-breeched _gens-d'armes_. What could they find to occupy them among these drear pine-woods? What thief, who had not made a vow of voluntary starvation, or who had not a morbid taste for living upon resin, would ever have ventured among them? But the authorities! Catch a bit of France without an "authority!" As they certainly are omnipotent, and profess to be omniscient, it is only to be supposed that they should be omnipresent. One man left the train at the station in question--a slouching, stupid, swarthy peasant, the authorities pounced upon him, evidently in prodigious glee at catching somebody to be _autoritised_ over, and we left them, spelling and squabbling over the greasy-looking "papers" presented by the profoundly respectful Jacques or Pierre. And now, before proceeding further, I may be allowed to describe, with some minuteness, the landscape which will greet the traveller in the Landes. Its mere surface-aspect I have already sketched; but general terms go but a small way towards indicating the dreary grandeurs of that solemn wilderness. Over all its gloom and barrenness--over all its "blasted heaths" and monotonous pine-woods, and sodden morasses, and glaring heaps of shifting sand--there is a strong and pervading sense of loneliness, a grandeur and intensity of desolation, which, as it were, clothes the land with a sad, solemn poetry peculiar to itself. Emerging from black forests of fir, the wanderer may find himself upon a plain, flat as a billiard-table, and apparently boundless as the ocean, clad in one unvaried, unbroken robe of dusky heath. Sometimes stripes and ridges, or great ragged patches of sand, glisten in the fervid sunshine; sometimes belts of scraggy young fir-trees appear rising from the horizon on the left, and fading into the horizon on the right. Occasionally a brighter shade of green, with jungles of willows and coarse water-weeds, giant rushes, and marish-mosses, and tangled masses of dank vegetation, will tell of the unfathomable swamp beneath. Dark veins of muddy water will traverse the flat oozy land, sometimes, perhaps, losing themselves in broad shallow lakes, bordered again by the endless sand-banks and stretches of shadowy pine. The dwellings which dot this dreary, yet, in its way, solemnly poetic landscape, are generally mere isolated huts, separated sometimes by many miles, often by many leagues. Round them the wanderer will descry a miserable field or two, planted with a stunted crop of rye, millet, or maize. The cottages are mouldering heaps of sod and unhewn and unmortared stones, clustered round with ragged sheds composed of masses of tangled bushes, pine stakes, and broadleaved reeds, beneath which cluster, when not seeking their miserable forage in the woods, two or three cows, mere skin and bone, and a score or two of the most abject-looking sheep which ever browsed. Proceeding through the Landes towards the coast, a long chain of lakes and water-courses, running parallel to the ocean, breaks their uniformity. The country becomes a waste of shallow pools, and of land which is parched in summer and submerged in winter. Running in devious arms and windings through moss and moor and pine, these "lakes of the dismal swamp" form labyrinths of gulfs and morasses which only the most experienced shepherds can safely thread. Here and there a village, or rather bourg, will be seen upon their banks, half hidden in the pine-woods; and a roughly-built fishing-punt or two will be observed floating like the canoe of a savage in the woodland lakes. Sometimes, as in the case of the basin of Arcachon, which will be presently described, these waters are arms of the sea; and the retreating tide leaves scores of square miles of putrid swamp. Sometimes they are mere collections of surface-drainage, accumulating without any means of escape to the ocean, and perilous in the extreme to the dwellers on their shores. For, forming the extreme line of coast, there runs, for near two hundred miles, from the Adour to the Garonne, a range of vast hills of white sand, as fine as though it had been sifted for an hour-glass. Every gale changes the shape of these rolling mountains. A strong wind from the land flings millions of tons of sand per hour into the sea, to be washed up again by the surf, flung on the beach, and in the first Biscay gale blown in whirlwinds inland. A winter hurricane again from the west has filled up with sand square miles of shallow lake, driving the displaced waters inland, dispersing them in gleaming lakes among the pine-woods, flooding, and frequently destroying the scattered hamlets of the people, and burying for ever their fields of millet and rye. I shall presently have occasion to touch upon some disasters of this sort. Meantime, having made the aspect of the Landes familiar to the reader, I pursue the thread of my journey. The novelty of a population upon stilts--men, women, and children, spurning the ground, and living habitually four or five feet higher than the rest of mankind--irresistibly takes the imagination, and I leant anxiously from the carriage to catch the first glimpse of a Landean in his native style. I looked long in vain. We passed hut after hut, but they seemed deserted, except that the lean swine burrowing round the turf walls gave evidence that the pork had proprietors somewhere. At last I was gratified; as the train passed not very quickly along a jungle of bushes and coppice-wood, a black, shaggy figure rose above it, as if he were standing upon the ends of the twigs. The effect was quite eldritch. We saw him but as a vision, but the high conical hat with broad brims, like Mother Red-cap's, the swarthy, bearded face, and the rough, dirty sheep-skin, which hung fleecily from the shoulders of the apparition, haunted me. He was come and gone, and that was all. Presently, however, the natives began to heave in sight in sufficient profusion. There were three gigantic-looking figures stalking together across an expanse of dusky heath. I thought them men, and rather tall ones; but my companions, more accustomed to the sight, said they were boys on comparatively short stilts, herding the sheep, which were scattered like little greyish stones all over the waste. Anon, near a cottage, we saw a woman, in dark, coarse clothes, with shortish petticoats, sauntering almost four feet from the ground, and next beheld at a distance, and on the summit of a sand-ridge, relieved against the sky, three figures, each leaning back, and supported, as it seemed, not only by two daddy long-legs' limbs, but by a third, which appeared to grow out of the small of their backs. The phenomenon was promptly explained by my bloused _cicerone_, who seemed to feel especial pleasure at my interest in the matter. The third leg was a pole or staff the people carry, with a new moon-shaped crutch at the top, which, applied to the back, serves as a capital prop. With his legs spread out, and his back-stay firmly pitched, the shepherd of the Landes feels as much at home as you would in the easiest of easy chairs. "He will remain so for hours, without stirring, and without being wearied," said my fellow-passenger. "It is a way of sitting down in the Landes. Why, a shepherd, could stand so, long enough to knit a pair of stockings, ay, and not have an ache in his back. Sometimes they play cards, so, without once coming off their stilts." "Ay, and cheat! _Mon Dieu!_ how they cheat!" said the Bordeaux gentleman. The native of the Landes reluctantly admitted that was the truth, and the other went on:-- "These fellows here on the stilts are the most confounded gamblers in Europe. Men and women, it's all the same--play, play, play; they would stake their bodies first, and their souls after. _Tenez_; I once heard of a lot of the fellows playing in a wood till they were all but starved. In the day they played by daylight, and when night came, they kindled a bonfire and played in the glare. They played on and on, in spite of hunger and thirst. They staked their money--not that they had much of that--and their crops--not that they were of great value either--and their pigs, and their sheep, and their Landes ponies, and then their furniture, and then their clothes, and, last of all, their stilts--for a Landes man thinks his stilts the principal part of his wardrobe; and, _sacré!_ monsieur, three of the fellows were ruined out and out, and had to give up their hats, and sheep-skins, and sabots, while the man who was the greatest winner walked home on his own stilts, with the stilts of all his comrades tucked under his arm." "Gaming is their fault--their great fault," meekly acknowledged the blouse. "Not at all!" said his antagonist. "Cheating is their great fault. A Landes shepherd would cheat the devil with a greasy pack of cards." "The fact is," replied the apologist, "that they count cheating part of the game. Their motto is, win anyhow; so it is no worse for one than the other. Cards is chance; but cheating needs skill, and _voila tout_." We were fast approaching Teste, and had passed two or three clusters of poor huts, and a party of women up to their waists in a sluggish stream washing fleeces, while yellow patches of ripening maize began to recur quicker and quicker, showing that we had reached a comparatively thickly-peopled district, when all at once there burst upon my eyes a glorious-looking prairie of gently undulating land, of the brightest green I ever looked upon. The green of the greenest lawns of England, the green of the softest bogs of Ireland, the green even of the most intensely green patches of the Curragh of Kildare, were brown, and fuzzy, and rusty, compared to this wonderful hue. The land looked like one huge emerald, sparkling in the sun. The brightness, the freshness, the radiance of the tint, was almost supernatural, and the eye, nursed for it, as it were, after our journey over the brown moors and black pines, caught the bright fresh beauty of the colour with rapture. "Come," I thought, "there are, at least, oases in the Landes. Never was turf so glorious; never was sward so bewitching." And then, gazing far and wide upon the prairie, I saw it dotted with human figures labouring at the soil, and great wains and carts drawn by oxen, looking like black specks upon a great, fresh, green leaf. But, in a moment, I saw something more. Could I believe my eyes? A ship! Yes, verily, a ship, fast aground, high and dry upon the turf! and not only one, but two, three, four, good-sized schooners and _chasse marées_, with peasants digging about them, and country carts high heaped with green rural-looking burdens. The Landes man saw my bewilderment. "The green-looking land," he said, "is the flat bottom of part of the bay of Arcachon. It is now dead low-water, and the country people have come down with their carts to fill them with that green slimy seaweed, which makes capital manure; and some of them, perhaps, have brought casks of resin for those ships which principally belong to Bordeaux, Rochelle, and Nantes, and come here and into other bays along the coast for the harvest of the Landes." The engine whistled. We were at Teste--a shabby, ancient little village, with a deep stream flowing sluggishly around it, and dividing itself into a many-forked delta along the level sand; fishermen's hovels scattered on the beach, brown boats drawn up beneath them, nets drying, a considerable fishy smell pervading the atmosphere, with, beyond again, the black, unvarying mantle of pine-woods. There is a very good hotel at Teste; thanks to its being one of the Bordeaux watering-places; and there, for dinner, was provided red mullets, which would have made the red mullet-loving Duke of Devonshire crazy, as he noted the difference between the fish from the bay of Arcachon and their brethren from the coast of Weymouth. CHAPTER V. THE LANDES--THE BAY OF ARCACHON AND ITS FISHERS--THE LEGEND OF CHATEL-MORANT--THE PINE-WOODS--THE RESIN-GATHERER--THE WILD HORSES--THE SURF OF THE BAY OF BISCAY--THE WITCHES OF THE LANDES--POPULAR BELIEFS, AND POPULAR CUSTOMS. The sun was low in the heavens next morning when I was afoot and down to the beach, the glorious bay now brimming full, and the schooners and _chasse marées_, like the swan on St. Mary's Loch, floating double, ships and shadows. The scene was very strange. The green meadow had disappeared, and where it had been, a gleaming lake stretched brilliant in the sunshine, set in the pine-woods like a mirror in an ebony frame, cutting slices of sweeping bay out of their dusky margins, and piercing their depths with silent, weedy water-veins. [Illustration] Where the villages lie, there have been clearings made in the wood, precisely as one would expect to see in a New Zealand or Australian bay. Close to high-water mark, rows of rounded huts serve as storehouses for nets, and spars, and sails. Before them straggling jetties run on piles far to seaward; behind, huddled amid scanty vineyards and patches of broadleaved Indian corn, groups of houses--their roofs nearly flat, and their walls not above six feet, in some places not four feet, high--seem cowering away from observation. For every cottage built of stone, there are half-a-dozen out-houses, sheds, pig-sties, and so forth, piled up with old oars, broken masts, furze, pine-cuttings, and Irish-looking sod. I made my way to what seemed the principal landing-place--a bleached jetty. A dozen or so of boats floated round it, roughly built, very narrow, and very light, lying upon the very top of the water, and just, in fact, as like canoes as the scene about resembled some still savage country. Three boats were starting for the oyster fishery, manned each by four as buxom, blithe, and debonnaire wenches as you would wish to see. They had short petticoats--your Nereides of all shores have--and straw hats, shaped like a man's. In the stern-sheets of each boat a venerable, ancient mariner held the tiller; and as I approached, the damsels, who were getting their clumsy oars inserted between the thole-pins, clamoured out in a torrent of vociferous gabble, offering me a day's oyster-fishing, if I would go with them. They were evidently quite _au fait_ to ridding the Bordeaux loungers of their spare francs, in the shape of passage-money, for a frolic on the oyster-banks; but I had determined to pass the day in another fashion. I wanted a sail on the bright, still bay, a walk in the pine-woods, and a glance at the surf tumbling in from the Bay of Biscay; so I scrutinized the faces of two or three lounging boatmen, with as much reference to Lavater's principles as I might, and selecting the most intelligent-looking of the lot--a mild, grey-eyed man, who spoke gently and slowly--we soon made a bargain, and were speedily afloat in the bean-cod looking canoe of which he was the skipper. I was gazing doubtfully at the heavy oars, and the expanse of water, when a flying cat's-paw made just a pretence of ruffling it. "_Merci, le bon vent!_" said the fisherman. Up went a mast; up went a light patch of thin white canvass, and straightway the bubbles flew fast and faster by the gunwale, and there arose a sweet gurgle from the cleaving bow. "You can see how fast we're going by the bottom," said the boatman. I leant over the gunwale, and looked down. Oh, the marvellous brightness of that shining sea! I gazed from the boat upon the sand through the water, almost as you might through the air upon the earth from a balloon. Ghost-like fish gleamed in the depths, and their shadows followed them below upon the ribbed sea-sand. Long flowing weeds, like rich green ribbons, waved and streamed in the gently running tidal current. You could see the white pebbles and shells--here a ridge of rocks, there a dark bed of seaweed; and now and then a great flat-fish, for all the world like a burnished pot-lid set in motion--went gleaming along the bottom. "Once," said the boatman, "all the bottom of this great bay that you are looking at was dry land, and there were cottages upon it, and an ancient chateau. That was the chateau of Armand de Chatel-morant, an old baron of these parts, a wicked man and a great magician, who had a familiar spirit, which came when he blew a horn, and who was able, by his sorceries, to rule the winds that blow. Only, once he raised a storm he could not quell; and it was that storm which made the Bay of Arcachon; for the wind blew the sand of the sea-shore up the country, like a snow-storm, and the sand-hills rolled before it; and what the wind began, the _coup de mer_ finished, and the ocean came bursting through the breach it had battered in the sand-ridges of the coast, and swallowed up the chateau and drowned the magician, and there was an end of him." "Well," said I, "so be it; he deserved his fate." "For many a year after the flood the baron had made," the boatman continued, "you could see, out of a boat, the pointed tops of the towers of the chateau below you, with the weather-cocks still pointing to the west, and the green seaweed hanging to them, like pennons from a ship's vanes." "But I fear it is not to be seen now." "Oh! no. Ages and ages ago it rotted and rotted away; but the old men of the village have heard from their fathers that the fishermen only ventured there in calm summer weather and in good daylight; for, in the dark, look you, and when a Biscay wind was blowing, they said they heard the sounding of Chatel-morant's magic horn, and they saw his imp flying above them and wailing like a hurt seabird." Of course, I was on thorns to hear all the story; and so my boatman recounted a rude, disjointed tale, which I have hitched, legendwise, into the following narrative:-- The Baron Armand de Chatel-morant sat in his dim studio high up in the most seaward tower of the chateau of Chatel-morant. His hair and his beard were white, but his eyes were keen, and his cheeks as ruddy as the eyes and the cheeks of a young man. He had a furnace beside him, with implements of projection, crucibles, and powders. On the table were astrological instruments, and the magic crystal, which his Familiar had given him, and in which--only, however, when the Familiar pleased--the baron could read the future; but, for every reading of the future, the baron was a year older--the Familiar had a year of his life. The baron was clothed in a long furred robe, and he wore red shoes, with peaked toes, as long again as his feet. His face was moody, and clouds went driving along his brow. He took up his instruments, and laid them down, and opened a big book, full of spells and cantrips, and shut it; then he walked about the room; and then he stopped and blew a silver whistle. Very prompt at the sound came an old man--reverent and sorrowful looking--with a white wand; for he was the seneschal of the chateau of Chatel-morant. "Your niece," said the baron, "who comes hither from the town of Bordeaux to visit you, and whom I saw but yester even,--has she returned?" "She went this morning, monseigneur," said the seneschal; "she has preparations to make; for, God save the pretty child! she is to be married on the day of Blessed St. John." The baron frowned; for he was not an admirer of the saints, being quite, indeed, on the other side of the hedge. "Say the number of the day, and the name of the month," he replied, angrily; "and do not torment me with that shaveling jargon which they talk in the monastery of Andrew, whom they call St. Andrew at Bordeaux." The seneschal, who was accustomed to be bullied, particularly upon religious subjects, crossed himself behind his back; for he was a prudent man, and, owing to the absence of mind of the baron, who was always experimentalizing in the black art, managed, one way or other, to pick up so much as to make his place a tolerably profitable one. "Married!" said the baron; "and to whom?" "Just to honest and brave Jacques Fort--the stoutest mariner who sails out of the Garonne. He has got a ship of his own, now--the _Sainte Vierge_; and to-day he sails upon his first voyage, as far as Bayonne." "He sails to-day--so; and the maiden's name--your niece's name--what is that?" "Toinette, so please you, sir." "You may go." And go the seneschal did, wondering very much at the uncommon interest his master seemed to be taking in vulgar, sublunary things. Then Baron Armand de Chatel-morant paced the room a long time in gloomy meditation. At length he sat down again, and said aloud: "There is no doubt of it--I am in love. That face haunts me; Toinette's face is ever floating opposite to me. 'Tis an odd feeling; I was never so before. But, since it is so, I must even have the maiden--she will cheer me--I love her face. I will send to-morrow to Bordeaux, as from her uncle; and when she comes here, by the star of Aldeboran, she stays here, Jacques Fort to the contrary notwithstanding!" "Wrong--quite wrong!" said a voice. The baron turned coolly round, and saw, sitting upon the arm of the chair close to him, the figure of a very thin dwarf, with a long, unearthly face, and fingers like hawks' claws. This was the imp--the baron's Familiar. "How, Klosso!" said Armand; "you come without being called?" "Yes; but you would have called me soon." "You know what I am thinking of--of Toinette. I love her--I must have her." "You will not have her." "Why so?" "Because it is so decreed." "Klosso," said the baron, "I don't believe you. You know the future; but you lie about it when you speak." "Will you, then," answered the demon, "look into the crystal: that can't lie. Come--it's only another year--give yourself a treat--come!" "I have given you many years already," said the baron, musing; "look how grey my hair is!" "Dye it," said the imp, who, if he was a Familiar, certainly behaved as such. But the baron took no notice of his impertinence. He was dreadfully smitten by Toinette, and said he'd have a twelvemonths' worth of knowledge of futurity for her sake. The thin dwarf grinned, and then made a motion of relief, as one who saw before him the speedy end of a long, long watch. So he took the crystal, uttered, as may be supposed, some magic words; and the baron looked upon the clear surface. "Malediction!" he exclaimed, as he saw in the crystal a huge hearth, with pots on the fire, and poultry roasting before it, and Toinette tending the cookery, and a stalwart fellow helping her clumsily. "That is Toinette!" cried the baron; "but who is the rascal with her?" "Her husband, Jacques Fort." "Curses on him!" Here the baron saw Jacques fling his arm round Toinette's waist, and kiss her so naturally, that he ground his teeth. "Domestic felicity," said the imp; "a charming picture, baron--they're cooking the christening feast for young Jacques." The baron flung the crystal down. "Pay me," said the imp; and he passed the bird-like hand over the baron's face, and each of his fingers drew a wrinkle. A shudder went over the sorcerer's frame, and then he breathed heavily, and looked wistfully at the imp. He was a year older. "Klosso!" shouted Armand, leaping to his feet, "I will fight fate!" "Better not," said Klosso. "Curse the future!" exclaimed the baron; "I will alter the future, and give the lie to the crystal, as to you!" "If you try," replied the imp, coolly, "you will belong to me before the morning." "Silence, slave!" cried Armand, who was not a man to be put out of his way; "you rule the winds--I rule you. Make the west wind blow." The imp raised its hand, and they heard the whistling of a strong, gusty wind, and the creaking of the weather-cocks, as they all turned towards the sea. "Stronger--stronger--stronger!" shouted the baron; and the whistle became a roar, and the roar a howl; and the castle shook and swayed in the blast. "Good--good!" laughed the baron; "something more than a puff there--ha! ha!--as Jacques Fort has found by this time on the deck of his new ship in the Bay of Biscay." The Familiar gently remarked that the weather was roughish, when the seneschal rushed into the room in a dreadful state of terror at the storm. "My lord--my lord!" he said, "we shall all be blown away; the air is full of sand; you would be suffocated outside. The wind is tearing up the pines; and oh, poor Jacques Fort is at sea, and drowned--drowned, by this time, to a certainty!" "Yes," said Armand, "I should rather think so. Toinette must take up with somebody else.--Stronger!" The last injunction was addressed to the imp, and instantly complied with. The tempest roared like the up-bursting of a volcano, and screeched and screamed through the sugar-loaf turrets and the lattices, which it had burst in, and the loop-holes, like a hundred thousand devils' whistles. The seneschal fell on his knees. "Stronger still!" said the baron. And meantime what was Jaques Fort doing in his new ship? With every rag of canvass torn out of the bolt-ropes, the _Sainte Vierge_ was flying on the very top, as it seemed, of the driving spray, on to the breakers. Jacques was the only man left on deck--every one of the rest had been washed overboard, and were already sleeping in the sea; and he knew that in a moment he would follow them. The staggering ship rose on the back of a mighty breaker; and the captain knew that with its fall upon the beach his vessel would be ground to powder. "Oh, Toinette!" he murmured, as the ship was hove forward like a bolt from a bow, and then fell shooting into a creaming current of rushing water, while the sand-hills appeared right and left for a moment, and then were left astern. The last grand wave had burst the barrier, and the frail ship and the kneeling mariner were borne onward on the ridge of the advancing flood, which formed the lake of Arcachon. Jacques Fort saw a light, and steered towards it: it was the light in the baron's chamber at the chateau of Chatel-morant. There, by the burst-in lattice, stood the baron, his grey hair flying above his head, and ever shouting to the imp, "Stronger, Klosso--stronger!" And every time he used the words, the hurricane burst louder and louder upon the rocking turrets. And still Armand clung to the stone-work of the burst-in lattice, through which the flying sand drove in, and clustered in his robes and hair. And now the terrified domestics began to rush up to the chamber of the baron. "My lord, such a storm was never heard of!" "My lord, the devil is loose, and riding on the wind!" "My lord, the end of the world is at hand!" "Klosso!" shouted the baron, "stronger!" As he spoke, the wind burst like a thunder-clap over them, and they heard the crash of a falling tower. The serving men and women grovelled in terror on the floor; the baron clung by the window; the imp, visible only to him, sat on the back of the arm-chair, as he had sat since his appearance. But hush! Another sound, mingling with the roar of the wind, and deeper and more awful still. It rapidly increased, and the baron found his face besprinkled with driving drops of water--they were salt. "My lord--my lord!" screamed the seneschal, sinking, as he spoke, at the baron's knees; "my lord--the sea!" A cry was heard without; the lights of the hamlet beneath disappeared; and then a shock from below made the chateau swing and rock, and white waves were all around them. "The sea, my lord," said the seneschal, "has burst the sand-banks; the castle stands on low ground. We are all dead men--the sea--the sea!" The Baron Armand turned to Klosso: "Does he speak truth?" "The worthy gentleman," said the imp, "is perfectly in the right; you are all dead men; and, Monseigneur le Baron, when you gave me last a year of your life, you gave me the last you had to give." Up rose the water, and higher dashed the waves. Up, foot by foot, and yard by yard; and still the baron stood erect amid the raving of the elements--his face as white as his hair, but his eyes as bright and keen as ever. "Klosso," he said, "I am yours; and the future is the future." He looked at the iron lamp swinging above his head. "It will soon be out," said Klosso. Jacques Fort still steered to the light. It came nearer and nearer; and he saw, even through the gloom and the driving spray, that it shone from a castle-turret, and he seized the tiller to change the course of the vessel; but as he did so, the grand, triumphant, finishing blast of the hurricane fell upon the seething flood like iron--heaved up one bristling, foaming sea, which caught the _Sainte Vierge_ upon its crest, and flung the ship almost into the air. The light gleamed for a moment almost beneath him; and Jacques, rushing to the bow, saw below it, as in a prison, a fierce convulsed face, and staring eyes, and flying white hair; and the eyes saw him. As Jacques recognised the sorcerer Armand of Chatel-morant, so did Armand recognise the face and form he had seen helping Toinette to cook the christening feast. The next instant the _Sainte Vierge_ was borne over and over the highest turret of the chateau, her keel a fathom good above the loftiest and the gaudiest of all the gilt weather-cocks. The event foreshadowed in the crystal duly took place on the anniversary of the day which saw the chateau de Chatel-morant swallowed in the Bay of Arcachon. The legend of the submerged chateau, with which I plead guilty to having taken a few liberties, but "only with a view" (as the magistrate said when he put his neighbour into the stocks)--"only with a view towards improvement," occupied us during the greater part of our smooth and pleasant sail. Dismissing matters legendary, we talked of the fishermen of the bay, and their neighbours, the shepherds on stilts. The man of the sea held the men of the land cheap. The peasants were never out of the forests and the sand, he said; the fishermen often went to Bordeaux, and sometimes to Rochelle, and sometimes even to Nantes. They (the boatmen) never used stilts; but as soon as the peasant's children were able to toddle, they were clapped upon a pair of sticks, and many a tumble, and many a broken face they caught, before they could use them easily. "They are a good set of people, but very ignorant, and they believe whatever you tell them. They are frightened out of their wits if you speak of witches or sorcerers; but we know that all these old tales are nothing but nonsense. We go to Bordeaux very often as pilots, and to Rochelle, and even to Nantes." I was further informed, that in the winter time the fishermen pursued their occupation in the bay in such boats as that in which I was sailing; and that in summer they went out into the Atlantic; but never ventured more than a few miles to sea, and never, if they could help it, stayed out a night. This kind of conversation brought us tolerably well to the narrow passage, all fenced with intricate sand-banks, which leads to the open sea. A white, graceful lighthouse rose above the sand-banks on our right, into which the pine-woods were stretching in long, finger-like projections; and the boat, beginning to rise and fall upon the slow, majestic heave which the swell without communicated to the shallow water within the bar, assured me that if we went further, the surf would prevent our landing at all. We ran the boat upon the beach, and drawing her up high and dry, plunged into, not the greenwood, but the black-wood tree. It was hard walking. The pines grew out of fine bright sand, bound here and there together by carpets of long bent grass, and the air was sickly with the peculiar resinous smell of the rich sap of the tree fermenting and distilling down the gashes. In our ramble, we encountered two of the peasants, whose dreary work it is to hack the pines and ladle up the flowing proceeds. We heard the blows of the axe echoing in the hot silence of the mid-day, and made our way to whence the sound proceeded, speedily descrying the workman, perched upon a slight bending ladder, gashing the tree. This man, and, indeed, all his brethren whom I saw, were miserable-looking creatures--their features sunken and animal-like--their hair matted in masses over their brows--their feet bare, and their clothing painfully wretched. Their calling is as laborious as it is monotonous. Starting with the dawn, they plunge--a ladder in one hand, and an adze in the other--into the recesses of the pine-wood, repeating the same process to every tree. The ladder in question is very peculiar, consisting of a single strip of elastic wood, about ten feet long, dotted with knobs cut plain upon one side for the foot to rest upon, and thus serving instead of rounds or steps. This primitive ladder is sliced away towards the top, so as to rest more commodiously upon the tree. When in use, it is placed almost perpendicularly, and the workman ascends it like a monkey, never touching the tree, but keeping the ladder in its position by the action of his legs, which, from the knee downward, seem to cling round and round the bending wood, and keep it in its place, even when the top, laid perhaps against the rounded side of the trunk, appears to be slipping off every moment. "Well," said my guide, the Teste boatman, "I would rather reef topsails in a gale of wind than go up there, at any rate." The ladder, its proprietor told me, could not be used except with naked feet. The instrument with which he cut the tree was as sharp as a razor, and required long practice to acquire the knack of using it. I wondered that the gashing did not kill the trees, as some of the largest were marked with half-a-dozen cuts from the ground to the fork. Here and there, indeed, you found one which had succumbed to the process, rotted, and fallen; but the majority seemed in very good case, nevertheless. "Look at that tree," said a resin-gatherer. More than half the bark had certainly gone in these perpendicular stripes, and yet it looked strong and stately "That tree is more than a hundred years old; and that is not a bad age for either a man or a fir." Leaving the peasant behind, we pushed steadily towards the sea. The ground, thanks to the debris of the pines, was as slippery as ice, except where we plunged into fine hot sand, half way to the knees. Every now and then we crossed what I cannot describe better than by calling it a perfectly bald spot in the woods--a circular patch of pure white sand--in certain lights, you might have taken it for snow. All around were the black pines; but not a blade or a twig broke the drifted fineness of the bald white patch. You could find neither stone nor shell--nothing but subtle, powdery sand--every particle as minute and as uniform as those in an hour-glass. "That," said my guide, when we came in view of the first of these singular little saharas--"that is a devil's garden." "And what does he grow there?" I asked. The man lowered his voice: "It is in these spots of fine white sand that all the sorcerers and witches, and warlocks in France--ay, and I have heard, in the whole world--meet to sing, and dance, and frolic; and the devil sits in the middle. So, at least," he added, after a pause, and in a more sprightly tone--"so the peasants say." "And do you say it?" "Well, I do not know. There's witches, for certain, in the Landes,--old women--but whether they come flying out here to dance round the devil or no--the peasants say so for certain--but I don't think I believe it." "I should hope you didn't." "They enchant people, though; there's no doubt of that. They can give you the fever so bad that no doctor can set you to rights again; and they can curse a place, and keep the grass from growing on it; but I don't believe they fly on broomsticks, or dance round the devil." "Are there any young women witches?" "Well, I do hear of one or two. _Mais elles ne sont pas bien fortes._ It is only the old ones make good witches, and the uglier they are the better." "Well, now, did they ever do any harm to you?" The man paused, and looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Our little Marie," he said, "has fits; and my wife does say--" Here he stopped. "No, monsieur," he said, "I do not believe in witches." But he did, as firmly as King Jamie; only now and then, in the bright sunlight, and with an incredulous person, he thought he did not. On, however, we went mile after mile, over the slippery ground, and in the shadow of the pines, ere we saw gleaming ahead, the region of fine sand, and heard--although the little breeze which blew was off the shore--the low thunder of the "coup de mer"--the breaking surf of the ocean. Presently, passing through a zone of stunted furze, and dry thin-bladed grass, we emerged into the most fearful desert I ever looked upon--a sea of heights and hollows, dells and ridges, long slopes and precipitous ravines--all of them composed of pure white, hot, drifting sand. The labour of walking was excessive. I longed for the stilts I had seen the day before. Every puff of breeze sent the sand, like dry pungent powder, into our faces, and sometimes we could see it reft from the peaks of the ridges, and blown like clouds of dust far out into the air. All at once my guide touched my arm, "_Voila! donc, voila! des chevaux sauvages!_" It certainly only required a breed of wild horses to make the country an exact counterpart of Arabia; and I eagerly turned to see the steeds of the desert, just succeeding in catching a glimpse of a ruck of lean, brown, shaggy ponies, disappearing round a hill, in a whirlwind of sand. There is, undoubtedly, something romantic and Mazeppaish in the notion of wild horses of the desert; but stern truth compels me to add, that a more stunted, ragged lot of worthless brutes, not bigger than donkeys, than were the troop of desert steeds of the Landes which I had the fortune to see, could be nowhere met with. My fisherman told me that, when caught and tamed, they were useful in carrying sacks and panniers along the sandy ways; but that there were not more vicious, stubborn brutes in nature than Landes ponies. A doubly fatiguing trudge, unbroken by any further episodical visions of desert steeds, but enlivened by the fast increasing thunder of the surf, at length brought us to its foam. Winding through a succession of sand valleys, we climbed a steepish bank, sinking to our knees at every step, and from this last ridge beheld a long, gentle slope, as perfectly smooth as though the sand had been smoothed by a ruler--fining away down to the white creaming sheets of water which swept, with the loud peculiar hiss of the agitated sea, far up and down the level banks. The full force of the great heaving swells was expended in breakers, roaring half a mile from the land; and from their uttermost verge to the tangled heaps of seaweed washed high and dry upon the beach, was a vast belt of foaming water, extending away on either hand in a perfectly straight line as far as the eye could reach, and dividing the shipless expanse of water from the houseless expanse of land. The scene was very solemn. There was not even a seabird overhead--not an insect crawling or humming along the ungrateful sand. Only the grand organ of the surf made its incessant music, and the sharp thin rustle of the moving sand came fitfully upon the ear. I sat down and listened to it, and as I sat, the continually shifting sand gradually rose around me, as the waters rose round the chateau of Chatel-morant. Had I stayed there long enough, only my head would have been visible, like the head of the sphinx. I dined that day at the hotel, _tete-à-tete_ with a young priest, who was returning to Bordeaux from a visit to his brother, one of the officers of the Preventitive Service, whose lonely barracks are almost the only human habitations which break the weary wilderness stretching from the Adour to the Gironde. One would have thought that there could be but little smuggling on such a coast; but the Duaniers are always _autorités_, and the waves of the Gulf of Gascony could not, of course, break on French ground without _autorités_ to help them. With respect to the priest, however, he had one of the finest heads and the most perfectly chiselled features I ever saw. The pale high brow--the keen bright eyes, with remarkably long eye-lashes--the tenuity of the cartilage of the nose, and the perfect delicacy of the mouth--all told of intellect in no common development; while the meek sweetness of the noble face had something in it perfectly heavenly. Fling in imagination an aureole round that head, and you had the head of a youthful martyr, or a saint canonized for early virtues. There was devotion and aspiration in every line of the countenance--a meek, mild gentleness, beautifully in keeping with every word he uttered, and every movement he made. I was the more struck with all this, inasmuch as there is not an uglier, meaner, nor, I will add, dirtier, set of worthy folks in all the world, than the priests of France. Nine times out of ten, they are big-jowled, coarse, animal-looking men, with mottled faces, and skins which do not take kindly to the razor. The arrangements about the neck show a decided scarcity of linen, and a still greater lack of soap and water. They are seldom or never gentlemen, their figures are ungainly, their motions uncouth, and--barring, of course, their scholastic and theological knowledge--I found the majority with whom I conversed stupid, illiterate, and unintelligent. Now, the young priest at Teste was the reverse of all this. With manners as polished as those of any courtly _abbé_ of the courtly old _regime_, there was a perfect atmosphere of frankness and quiet good-humour about my companion, and his conversation was delightfully easy, animated, and graceful. I do not know if my friend belonged to the College of Jesus; but, if he did, he was cut out for the performance of its highest and subtlest diplomacy. We talked of the strange part of the world I was visiting, and I found he knew the people and the country well. I mentioned the submerged chateau and its legend, and he replied that it was an undoubted fact, that both chateaux and villages had been overwhelmed--both by the inbursting of the sea, and by great gales blowing vast hills of sand down into the existing lakes, and so forcing them out of their ancient beds. The sand, indeed, he said, was more dangerous than the water. Often and often the coast-guard stations had to be dug out after a gale; and he believed that, on one occasion, a small church near the mouth of the Gironde had been overwhelmed to such a height that only a few feet of the spire and the weathercock were left apparent. The story put me forcibly in mind of the remarkably heavy fall of snow experienced by my old friend, Baron Munchausen; but, for all that, I see no reason why it should not be literally correct. The pines, the priest informed me, were the saving of the country, by fixing the unstable soil, and the Government had engineers busily engaged in laying out plantations all along the coast--the object being to get the trees down to high-water mark. I mentioned the superstitions of the people. "Alas!" said the priest, "What you have heard is perfectly true. We are improving a little, perhaps. The boys and girls we get to come to school are taught to laugh at the notion of their old grandmothers being witches, and in another generation or two there will be a great change." "And how do your witches work?" I asked. "As ours in England used to do--by spell and charm?" "Precisely. They are said to make clay figures of their victims, and to stick pins in them, or bake them in a fire; and then they have rhymes and cabalistical incantations, and are greatly skilled in the magic power of herbs. The worst of it is, that a year seldom passes without an outrage on some poor old woman. A lout, who thinks himself bewitched by such a person, will attack her and beat her; and occasionally a bullet has been fired at night through the cottage-window." "The Landes people have, or had, other queer notions, as well as the witch ones?" "Oh, yes! They long held out against potatoes, which, they said, gave them apoplexy, and they have only lately begun to milk their cows." "Why so? As a pastoral people, they ought to be great in butter and cheese." "On the contrary, they dislike them, and use lard or goose-grease instead. Indeed, for centuries and centuries, they religiously believed that Landes cows gave no milk." "But was not the experiment ever tried?" "Scores of times. An anxious reformer would go to a Landes farmer, and urge him to milk his cows. 'Landes cows give no milk,' would be the answer. 'Will you let me try?' would, perhaps, be replied. The Landes man would have no objection; and the cow would be brought and milked before him." "Well, seeing that would convince him." "Ah, you don't know the Landes people--not in the least; why, the farmer would say, 'Ay, there are a few drops, perhaps; but it's not worth the trouble of taking. Our fathers never milked their cows, and they were as wise as we are. And next day he would have relapsed into the old creed, that Landes cows never gave milk at all." I inquired about the rate at which the stilt-walkers progressed--whether they could, as one sometimes hears, keep up with a horse at the gallop; and found, as I expected, that six or seven miles an hour was as much as they ever managed to achieve. The priest went on succinctly to sketch the costume and life of the people. When in regular herding dress, the shepherd of the Landes appears one uncouth mass of dirty wool. On his body he wears a fleece, cut in the fashion of a rude paletot, and sometimes flung over one shoulder, like a hussar's jacket. His thighs and legs are defended on the outside by cuisses and greaves of the same material. On his feet he wears sabots and coarse worsted socks, covering only the heels and the instep. His remaining clothing generally consists of frayed and tattered home-spun cloth; and altogether the appearance of the man savours very strongly of that of a fantastically costumed scarecrow. So attired, then, with a gourd containing some wretched _piquette_ hung across his shoulders, and provided with a store of rye-bread, baked, perhaps, three weeks before, a few dry sardines, and as many onions or cloves of garlic, the Landes shepherd sallies forth into the wilderness. He reckons himself a rich man, if his employer allows him, over and above his food, sixty francs a-year. From the rising to the setting of the sun, he never touches the ground, shuffling backwards and forwards on his stilts, or leaning against a pine, plying the never-pausing knitting-needle. Sometimes he drives his flock home at eventide; sometimes he bivouacs in the wild. Unbuckling his stilts, and producing his flint and steel, he has soon a rousing fire of fir-branches, when, gathering his sheep-skins round him, he makes himself comfortable for the night, his only annoyances being the mosquitoes and the dread of the cantrips of some unchancy old lady, who may peradventure catch a glimpse of him in the moonlight, as she rides buxomly on her besom to a festal dance in a devil's garden. "Yet still," continued the young priest, "they are a good, honest-hearted, open-handed people. For their wild, solitary life they have a passionate love. The Landes peasant, taken from his dreary plains, and put down in the richest landscape of France, would pine for his heath, and sand, and woods, like a Swiss for his hills. But they seldom leave their home here in the forests. They live and die in the district where they were born, ignorant and careless of all that happens beyond their own lonely bounds. France may vibrate with revolution and change--the shepherds of the Landes feel no shock, take no heed, but pursue the daily life of their ancestors, perfectly happy and contented in their ignorance, driving their sheep, or notching their trees in the wilderness." CHAPTER VI. UP THE GARONNE--THE OLD WARS ON ITS BANKS--ITS BOATS AND ITS SCENERY--AGEN--JASMIN, THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS--SOUTHERN COOKERY AND GARLIC--THE BLACK PRINCE IN A NEW LIGHT--A DREARY PILGRIMAGE TO PAU. A solemn imprecation is on record, uttered against the memory of the man who invented getting up by candle-light; to which some honest gentleman, fond of long lying, has appended a fellow curse, fulminated against the man who invented getting up at all. Whatever we may think of the latter commination, I suppose we shall all agree in the propriety of the former. At all events, no one ever execrated with more sincere good will the memory of the ingenious originator of candle-light turnings-out than I did, when a red ray shone through the keyhole of my bedroom, and the knuckles of--one would call him boots at home--rattled at the door, while his hoarse voice proclaimed, "_Trois heures et demi_,"--a most unseasonable and absurd hour certainly; but the Agen steamer, having the strong stream of the Garonne to face, makes the day as long as possible; and starts from the bridge--and a splendid bridge it is--of Bordeaux, crack at half-past four. There was no help for it; and so, leaving my parting compliments for my worthy host, I soon found myself following the truck which conveyed my small baggage, modestly stuck into the interstices of an Alp-like pile of ricketty boxes and faded valises, the property of an ancient _commis voyageur_, my fellow-lodger; and pacing, for the last time, the stately quays of the city of the Black Prince. Early as it was, and pitch-dark, the steam-boat pier was crowded and bustling enough. Men with lanterns and luggage were rushing breathlessly about--and gentlemen with brushy black beards were kissing each other with true French _éffusion_--while a crowd of humble vintagers were being stowed away in the fore part of the boat. On the pier I observed a tent, and looking in, found myself in a genuine early breakfast shop, where I was soon accommodated with a seat by a pan of glowing charcoal. The morning was bitter cold; and a magnificent bowl of smoking coffee, bread hot from the oven, and just a nip of cognac, at the kind suggestion of the jolly motherly-looking old lady in no end of shawls, who presided over the establishment, and who pronounced it "_Bon pour l'estomac, du monsieur le voyageur_." Then aboard; and after the due amount of squabbling, bell-ringing, and contradictory orders, we launched forth upon the black, rushing river. A dreary time it is waiting for the daylight of an autumnal morning, watching the pale negative lighting of the east--then the spreading of the dim approaching day--stars going out, and the outlines of hills coming in--and houses and trees, faint and comfortless, looming amid the grey, cold mist. The Garonne gradually turned from black to yellow--the genuine pea-souppy hue--and bit by bit the whole landscape came clearly into stark-staring view--but still cold and dreary-looking--until the cheering fire stood upon the hill-tops, and announced the rising sun. In half an hour the valley of the Garonne was a blaze of warmth and cheerfulness, and nothing could be more picturesquely beautiful, seen under such auspices, than the fleet of market-boats through which we threaded our way, and which were floating quietly down to Bordeaux. I dismiss the mere vegetable crafts; but the fruit-boats would have made Mr. Lance leap and sing for joy. They were piled--clustered--heaped over--with mountains of grapes bigger than big gooseberries--peaches and apricots, like thousands of ladies' cheeks--plums like pulpy, juicy cannon-balls--and melons big as the head of Gog or Magog. I could not understand how the superincumbent fruit did not crush that below; but I suppose there is a knack in piling. At all events, the boats were loaded to the gunwales with the luscious, shiny, downy, gushing-looking globules, purple and yellow, and both colours mellowed and softened by the grateful green of the clustering leaves. These boats looked like floating cornucopias. Amongst them sometimes appeared a wine-boat--one man at the head, one at the stern, and a Pyrenees of wine casks between them--while here and there we would pass a huge Noah's ark of a barge, towed by a string of labouring oxen, and steered from a platform amidships by a tiller a great deal longer, thicker, and heavier than the mast. And now for a bit of the landscape. We have Gascony to our right, and Guienne to our left. Here and there, then, particularly in Guienne, the Garonne is not unlike the tamer portions of the Rhine. The green vine-clothed banks rise into precipitous ridges, whitened by streaks of limestone cliff, cottages nestling in the crevices and ravines, and an occasional feudal tower crowning the topmost peak. The villages passed near the water's edge are doleful-looking places, ruinous and death-like; whitish, crumbling houses, with outside shutters invariably closed; empty and lonesome streets, and dilapidated piers, the stakes worn and washed away by the constant action of the river. Take Langon and Castres as specimens of these places: two drearier towns--more like sepulchres than towns--never nurtured owls and bats. They seem to be still lamenting the old English rule, and longing for the jolly times when stout English barons led the Gascon knights and men-at-arms on profitable forays into Limousin and Angoumais. Occasionally, however, we have a more promising and pleasing looking town. These, for the most part, are tolerably high up the river, and possess some curious and characteristic features. You will descry them, for instance, towering up from a mass of perpendicular cliffs; the open-galleried and bartizaned red houses, reared upon arches and pillars, rising from the rock; flights of stairs from the water's edge disappearing among the buildings, and strips of terraced gardens laid out on the narrow shelves and ledges of the precipice. The ruins of old feudal castles are numerous on both sides of the river; and if the red mossy stone could speak, many a tale of desperate siege and assault it could, no doubt, tell--for these strongholds were perpetually changing masters in the wars between the French and the English and Gascons; and often, when peace subsisted between the crowns, were they attacked and harried by moss-trooping expeditions led by French Watts Fire-the-Braes, or by English Christies of the Clinthill. While, then, the steamer is slowly plodding her way up stream, turning reach after reach, and showing us another and yet another pile of feudal ruins, let us sit down here with Froissart beneath the awning, and try to gain some inkling into the warlike customs of the times when these thick-walled towers--no doubt built, as honest King James remarked, by gentlemen who were thieves in their hearts--alternately displayed the Lion Rampant and the Fleur-de-Lis. In all the fighting of the period--I refer generally to the age of the Black Prince--there would appear to have been a great deal of chivalric courtesy and forbearance shown on either side. It was but seldom that a place was defended _à outrance_. If the besiegers appeared in very formidable force, the besieged usually submitted with a very good grace, marched honourably out, and had their turn next time. I cannot find that there was anything in the nature of personal animosity between the combatants, but there was great wantonness of life; and though few men were killed in downright cold blood, a man was frequently made the victim of a sort of murderous frolicsomeness, the manner of his death being suggested, by the circumstances of the moment. For instance, on one occasion, an English and Gascon garrison was besieged in Auberoche--the French having "brought from Toulouse four large machines, which cast stones into the fortress night and day, which stones demolished all the roofs of the towers, so that none within the walls dared to venture out of the vaulted rooms on the ground-floor." In this strait, a "varlet" undertook to carry letters, requesting succour, to the Earl of Derby, at Bordeaux. He was unsuccessful in getting through the French lines, and being arrested, the letters were found upon him, hung round his neck, and the poor wretch bound hand and foot, inserted in one of the stone-throwing machines. His cries for mercy all unheeded, the engine made two or three of its terrific swings, and then launched the screaming "varlet" into the air, right over the battlements of Auberoche, "so that he fell quite dead amid the other varlets, who were much terrified at it;" and presently, the French knights, riding up to the walls, shouted to the defenders: "Gentlemen, inquire of your messenger where he found the Earl of Derby, seeing that he has returned to you so speedily." But the Earl of Derby did come, and took signal vengeance. The battle, which Froissart tells in his best manner, resulted in the capture by the English of nine French viscounts, and "so many barons, squires, and knights, that there was not a man-at-arms among the English that had not for his share two or three." The captains of the pillaging bands, who preyed both upon the English and the French, and the hired auxiliaries, who transferred their services from one side to the other, were, however, miserable assassins, thirsting for blood. These men were frequently Bretons; and, says Froissart, "the most cruel of all Bretons was Geoffrey Tete-Noire." With this Geoffrey Tete-Noire, continues the old chronicler, "there was a certain captain, who performed many excellent deeds of arms, namely, Aimerigot Marcel, a Limousin squire, attached to the side of the English." One of the "deeds of arms" performed under this worthy's auspices is narrated as follows:-- "Aimerigot made one day an excursion, with only twelve companions, to seek adventures. They took the road towards Aloise, near St. Fleur, which has a handsome castle in the bishopric of Clermont. They knew the castle was only guarded by the porter. As they were riding silently towards Aloise, Aimerigot spied the porter sitting upon the branch of a tree without side of the castle. The Breton, who shot extraordinary well with a cross-bow, says to him, 'Would you like to have that porter killed at a shot?'--'Yea,' replied Aimerigot; 'and I hope you will do so.' The cross-bow man shoots a bolt, which he drives into the porter's head, and knocks him down. The porter, feeling himself mortally wounded, regains the gate, which he attempts to shut, but cannot, and falls down dead." This delectable anecdote, Froissart--probably as kind-hearted a man by nature as any of his age--tells as the merest matter of course, and without a word of compunction or reproof. The fact is, that the gay and lettered canon of Chimay cared and thought no more of the spilling of blood which was not gentle, than he would of the scotching of a rat or a snake. Lingeringly and wofully does he record the deaths of dukes, and viscounts, and even simple knights and squires, who have done their _devoirs_ gallantly; but as to the life-blood of the varlets--the vilains--the kernes--the villagios--the Jacques Bonhommes--foh! the red puddle--let it flow; blood is only blood when it gushes from the veins of a gentleman! [Illustration: JASMIN.] The evening was closing, and the mist stealing over the Garonne, when we came alongside the pier at Agen. A troop of diligence _conducteurs_ and canal touters immediately leaped on board, to secure the passengers for Toulouse, either by road or water. Being, fortunately, not of the number who were thus taken prisoners, I walked up through the sultry evening--for we are now getting into the true south--to the very comfortable hotel looking upon the principal square of the town. One of my objects in stopping at Agen was, to pay a literary visit to a very remarkable man--JASMIN, the peasant-poet of Provence and Languedoc--the "Last of the Troubadours," as, with more truth than is generally to be found in _ad captandum_ designations, he terms himself, and is termed by the wide circle of his admirers; for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are written in the _patois_ of the people, and that _patois_ is the still almost unaltered _Langue d'Oc_--the tongue of the chivalric minstrelsy of yore. But Jasmin is a Troubadour in another sense than that of merely availing himself of the tongue of the _ménestrels_. He publishes, certainly--conforming so far to the usages of our degenerate modern times; but his great triumphs are his popular recitations of his poems. Standing bravely up before an expectant assembly of perhaps a couple of thousand persons--the hot-blooded and quick-brained children of the South--the modern Troubadour plunges over head and ears into his lays, working both himself and his applauding audience into fits of enthusiasm and excitement, which, whatever may be the excellence of the poetry, an Englishman finds it difficult to conceive or account for. The raptures of the New Yorkers and Bostonians with Jenny Lind are weak and cold compared with the ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation given shortly before my visit at Auch, the ladies present actually tore the flowers and feathers out of their bonnets, wove them into extempore garlands, and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the editors of the local papers next morning assured him, in floods of flattering epigrams, that, humble as he was now, future ages would acknowledge the "divinity" of a Jasmin! There is a feature, however, about these recitations, which is still more extraordinary than the uncontrollable fits of popular enthusiasm which they produce. His last entertainment before I saw him was given in one of the Pyrenean cities (I forget which), and produced 2000 francs. Every sous of this went to the public charities; Jasmin will not accept a stiver of money so earned. With a species of perhaps overstrained, but certainly exalted, chivalric feeling, he declines to appear before an audience to exhibit for money the gifts with which nature has endowed him. After, perhaps, a brilliant tour through the South of France, delighting vast audiences in every city, and flinging many thousands of francs into every poor-box which he passes, the poet contentedly returns to his humble occupation, and to the little shop where he earns his daily bread by his daily toil, as a barber and hairdresser. It will be generally admitted, that the man capable of self-denial of so truly heroic a nature as this, is no ordinary poetaster. One would be puzzled to find a similar instance of perfect and absolute disinterestedness in the roll of minstrels, from Homer downwards; and, to tell the truth, there does seem a spice of Quixotism mingling with and tinging the pure fervour of the enthusiast. Certain it is, that the Troubadours of yore, upon whose model Jasmin professes to found his poetry, were by no means so scrupulous. "Largesse" was a very prominent word in their vocabulary; and it really seems difficult to assign any satisfactory reason for a man refusing to live upon the exercise of the finer gifts of his intellect, and throwing himself for his bread upon the daily performance of mere mechanical drudgery. [Illustration: A POET'S HOUSE.] Jasmin, as may be imagined, is well known in Agen. I was speedily directed to his abode, near the open _Place_ of the town, and within earshot of the rush of the Garonne; and in a few moments I found myself pausing before the lintel of the modest shop inscribed, _Jasmin, Perruquier, Coiffeur de jeunes Gens_. A little brass basin dangled above the threshold; and, looking through the glass, I saw the master of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now, I had come to see and pay my compliments to a poet; and there did appear to me to be something strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to some extent in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and unelevated a species of performance. I retreated, uncertain what to do, and waited outside until the shop was clear. Three words explained the nature of my visit; and Jasmin received me with a species of warm courtesy, which was very peculiar and very charming--dashing at once, with the most clattering volubility and fiery speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in general, and his own in particular--upon the French language in general, and the _patois_ of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence, and Gascony in particular. Jasmin is a well-built and strongly limbed man, of about fifty, with a large, massive head, and a broad pile of forehead, overhanging two piercingly bright black eyes, and features which would be heavy were they allowed a moment's repose from the continual play of the facial muscles, which were continually sending a series of varying expressions across the swarthy visage. Two sentences of his conversation were quite sufficient to stamp his individuality. The first thing which struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. "God only made four Frenchmen poets!" he burst out with; "and their names are Corneille, Lafontaine, Beranger, and Jasmin!" Talking with the most impassioned vehemence, and the most redundant energy of gesture, he went on to declaim against the influences of civilization upon language and manners as being fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far removed from cities, _salons_, and the clash and din of social influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, who poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished to make poetry, but because they were joyous and true. Colleges, academies, schools of learning, schools of literature, and all such institutions, Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write poetry in French now, than you could in arithmetical figures. The language had been licked, and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, and chipped--(I am trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used)--and pranked out, and polished, and muscadined, until, for all honest purposes of true high poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible jargon. It might do for cheating _agents de change_ on the Bourse--for squabbling politicians in the Chambers--for mincing dandies in the _salons_--for the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse drolleries of Palais Royal farces; but for poetry the French language was extinct. All modern poets who used it were mere _faiseurs de phrase_--thinking about words, and not feelings. "No, no," my Troubadour continued; "to write poetry, you must get the language of a rural people--a language talked among fields, and trees, and by rivers and mountains--a language never minced or disfigured by academies, and dictionary-makers, and journalists; you must have a language like that which your own Burns (whom I read of in Chateaubriand) used; or like the brave old mellow tongue--unchanged for centuries--stuffed with the strangest, quaintest, richest, raciest idioms, and odd, solemn words, full of shifting meanings and associations, at once pathetic and familiar, homely and graceful--the language which I write in, and which has never yet been defiled by calculating men of science or jack-a-dandy _litterateurs_." The above sentences may be taken as a specimen of the ideas with which Jasmin seemed to be actually overflowing at every pore in his body, so rapid, vehement, and loud was his enunciation of them. Warming more and more as he went on, he began to sketch the outlines of his favourite pieces, every now and then plunging into recitation, jumping from French to _patois_, and from _patois_ to French, and sometimes spluttering them out, mixed up pell-mell together. Hardly pausing to take breath, he rushed about the shop as he discoursed, lugging out, from old chests and drawers, piles of old newspapers and reviews, pointing me out a passage here in which the estimate of the writer pleased him, a passage there which showed how perfectly the critic had mistaken the scope of his poetic philosophy, and exclaiming, with the most perfect _naivete_, how mortifying it was for men of original and profound genius to be misconceived and misrepresented by pigmy whipper-snapper scamps of journalists. There was one review of his works, published in a London "_Recueil_," as he called it, to which Jasmin referred with great pleasure. A portion of it had been translated, he said, in the preface to a French edition of his works; and he had most of the highly complimentary phrases by heart. The English critic, he said, wrote in the _Tintinum_; and he looked dubiously at me when I confessed that I had never heard of the organ in question. "_Pourtant_," he said, "_je vous le ferai voir_:" and I soon perceived that Jasmin's _Tintinum_ was no other than the _Athenæum_. In the little back drawing-room behind the shop, to which the poet speedily introduced me, his sister, a meek, smiling woman, whose eyes never left her brother, following him as he moved with a beautiful expression of love and pride in his glory, received me with simple cordiality. The walls were covered with testimonials, presentations, and trophies, awarded by cities and distinguished persons, literary and political, to the modern Troubadour. Not a few of these are of a nature to make any man most legitimately proud. Jasmin possesses gold and silver vases, laurel branches, snuff-boxes, medals of honour, and a whole museum of similar gifts, inscribed with such characteristic and laconic legends as--"_Au Poete, Les Jeunes filles de Toulouse reconnaissantes_----." The number of garlands of _immortelles_, wreaths of ivy-jasmin (punning upon the name), laurel, and so forth, utterly astonished me. Jasmin preserved a perfect shrubbery of such tokens; and each symbol had, of course, its pleasant associative remembrance. One was given by the ladies of such a town; another was the gift of the prefect's wife of such a department. A handsome full-length portrait had been presented to the poet by the municipal authorities of Agen; and a letter from M. Lamartine, framed, above the chimney-piece, avowed the writer's belief that the Troubadour of the Garonne was the Homer of the modern world. M. Jasmin wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and has several valuable presents which were made to him by the late ex-king and different members of the Orleans family. I have been somewhat minute in giving an account of my interview with M. Jasmin, because he is really the popular poet--the peasant poet of the south of France--the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc. His songs are in the mouths of all who sing in the fields and by the cottage firesides. Their subjects are always rural, _naive_, and full of rustic pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me, he sings what the hearts of the people say, and he can no more help it than can the birds in the trees. Translations into French of his main poems have appeared; and compositions more full of natural and thoroughly unsophisticated pathos and humour it would be difficult to find. Jasmin writes from a teeming brain and a beaming heart; and there is a warmth and a glow, and a strong, happy, triumphant march of song about his poems, which carry you away in the perusal as they carried away the author in the writing. I speak of course from the French translations, and I can well conceive that they give but a comparatively faint transcript of the pith and power of the original. The _patois_ in which these poems are written is the common peasant language of the south-west. It varies in some slight degree in different districts, but not more than the broad Scotch of Forfarshire differs from that of Ayrshire. As for the dialect itself, it seems in the main to be a species of cross between old French and Spanish--holding, however, I am assured, rather to the latter tongue than the former, and constituting a bold, copious, and vigorous speech, very rich in its colouring, full of quaint words and expressive phrases, and especially strong in all that relates to the language of the passions and affections. I hardly know how long my interview with Jasmin might have lasted, for he seemed by no means likely to tire of talking, and his talk was too good and too curious not to be listened to with interest; but the sister, who had left us for a moment, coming back with the intelligence that there was quite a gathering of customers in the shop, I hastily took my leave, the poet squeezing my hand like a vice, and immediately thereafter dashing into all that appertains to curling-irons, scissors, razors, and lather, with just as much apparent energy and enthusiasm as he flung into his rhapsodical discourse on poetry and language. Hereabouts you begin to become sensible of a change in the cookery at the _table-d'hôtes_; and in the gradually increasing predominance of oil and garlic, you recognise the kitchen influences of the sweet south. Garlic is a word of fear--of absolute horror to a great proportion of our countrymen, whose prejudices will permit them to learn no better. I admit that the first whiff of the odorous root coming upon inexperienced nostrils is far from pleasant; indeed, I well remember being once driven from the table in a small _gasthoff_ at Strasbourg by the fumes of a particularly strong sausage. Now, however, I think I should know better. A relish for garlic, in fact, is one of those many acquired tastes which grew upon us with curious rapidity. You turn from the first garlicky dish with dismay; the second does not appear quite so bad; you muster up courage, and taste the third. A strange flavour certainly--nasty, too--but still--not irredeemably bad--there is a lurking merit in the sensation--and you try the experiment again and again--speedily coming to Sir Walter Scott's evident opinions touching the _petit point d'ail_, "which Gascons love and Scotsmen do not despise." Indeed, your friends will probably think it well if you content yourself with the _petit point_, and do not give yourself up to a height of seasoning such as that which I saw in the _salle à manger_ at Agen, drive two English ladies headlong from the room. Every body in the South eats garlic, and you will find it for your interest, if but in self-defence, to do the same; while the oil eating is equally infectious: you enter Provence, able just to stand a sprinkling upon your salad--you depart from it, thinking nothing of devouring a dish of cabbage, chopped up, and swimming in the viscous fluid. The peasants all through the South eat and drink oil like so many Russians. Wandering through the dark and narrow streets of Agen--for we have now reached the point where the eaves of the roofs are made to project so far as to cast a perpetual shade upon the thoroughfare beneath--I came upon a group of tiny urchins, clustered round a grocer's shop, in great admiration of a row of clear oil-flasks displayed in the window. "_Tiens_," said one. "_C'est de l'huile ça--de l'huile claire--ça doit etre bon su' le pain--ça!_" The little gourmand looked upon oil just as an English urchin would upon treacle. It was from the heights above Agen--studded with the plum-trees which produce the famous _prunes d'Agen_--that I caught my first glimpse of the Pyrenees. I was sitting watching the calm uprising of the light smoke from the leaf-covered town beneath, and marking the grand panorama around me--the masses of luxuriant vines climbing up the plum and fig-trees, and the earth frequently yellow with the bursting beds of huge melons and pumpkins--when, extending my gaze over the vast expanse of champagne country, watered by the winding reaches of the Garonne, I saw--shadowy as the phantoms of airy clouds, rising into the far bright air--faintly, very faintly traced, but still visible, a blue vision of sierrated and jagged mountain peaks, stretching along the horizon from east to west, forming the central portion of the great chain of peaks running from Perpignan to Bayonne, and certainly, at least, one hundred and twenty miles distant from me as the crow flies. There they stood,--Louis Quatorze to the contrary, notwithstanding--one of the great landmarks of the world; a natural boundary for ever; dividing a people from a people, a tongue from a tongue, and a power from a power! Below me, at the back of the town, once rose the ancient castle of Agen. Its ruins were demolished, with those of a cathedral, at the time of the Revolution; but its memory recalls a very curious story, developing the true character of the Black Prince, and shewing that, chivalrous and daring as he was, his tongue had in it an occasional smack of the braggart, and that the Foremost Knight of all the World could occasionally do uncommonly sneaking things. Thus it fell out:--In the year 1368, the Lord of Aquitaine announced that he would raise a hearth-tax throughout Guienne. The measure was, of course, unpopular, and the Gascon lords appealed to the King of France, as Feudal Superior of the Prince; and the King sent, by two commissioners--a lawyer and a knight--a summons to Edward, to appear and answer before the Parliament of Paris. The emissaries were introduced in High Court, at Bordeaux, told their tale, and exhibited their missives. The Black Prince heard in silence, and then, after a long pause, he sternly and solemnly replied: "Willing shall we be to attend on the appointed day at Paris, since the King of France sends for us; but it will be with the helmet on our head, and sixty thousand men behind us." The envoys fell on their knees, and bowed their heads to the ground. After the Prince had retired, they were assured that they would get no better answer; and so, after dinner, they set forth on the road to Toulouse, where the Duke of Anjou lay, to convey to him the defiance of the Englishman. Meantime, however, Edward began rather to repent the unconditional style of his reply, and to wish the ambassadors back again. Perhaps, after all, he had been a little too hasty, and had gone a little too far; so he called together the chief of his barons, and opened his mind to them. "He did not wish," he said, "the envoys to bear his cartel to the King of France." In the opinion of the straightforward practitioners whom he consulted, the means of prevention were easy: what more practicable and natural than to send out a handful of men-at-arms--catch the knight and the lawyer, and then and there cut their throats? But Edward refused to commit unnecessary slaughter; and possibly exclaiming, as gentlemen in a drama and a dilemma always do--"I have it"--he gave some private instructions to Sir William le Moine, the High Steward of Agenois, who immediately set forth at the head of a plump of spears. Meantime, the envoys were quietly jogging along, when, what was their horror and surprise at being suddenly pounced upon by the Lord Steward, and arrested, upon the charge of having stolen a horse from their last baiting place. It was in vain that the unfortunate pair offered to bring any evidence of the falsity of the charge; Sir William had as many witnesses as he commanded men-at-arms, and the victims were hurried to the castle of Agen, and left to their own reflections in the securest of its dungeons. When they got out again, or whether they ever got out at all, Froissart does not condescend to inform us; but surely the story shews the Black Prince in a new and not exactly favourable light. We would hardly have expected to find the "Lion whelp of England" stooping to trump up a false accusation against innocent men, in order to shuffle out of the consequences of his own brag. I found it no easy matter to get comfortably from Agen to Pau: cross-country diligences are most untrustworthy conveyances. The pace at which they crawl puts it out of the question that they should ever see a snail which they did not meet; while the terribly long stages to which the horses are doomed, keeps one in a constant state of moral discomfort. However, I managed to get rattled and jangled on to Auch, on the great Toulouse road, one of those towns which you wonder has been built where it chances to lie, rather than anywhere else; and boasting a grand old Gothic cathedral church, which Louis Quatorze, in the kindest manner, enriched with a hugely clumsy Grecian portico, supported on fat, dropsical pillars. The question was now, how to get on to Pau. The Toulouse diligence passed every day, but was nearly always full; I might have to wait a week for a place. A _voiturier_, however, was to start in the evening, and he faithfully promised to set me down at Tarbes, whence locomotion to Pau is easy, in time for a late supper; and so with this worthy I struck a bargain. He shewed me a fair looking vehicle, and we were to start at six. Punctually to the time, I was upon the ground, but no conveyance appeared. The place was the front of a carrier's shed, with an army of _roulage_ carts drawn up before it. I kicked my heels there in vain, for not a bit could I see of _voiture_ or _voiturier_. Seven struck--half-past seven--the north wind was bitterly cold, and a sleety rain began to fall. Had I absolute powers for ten minutes, like Abou Hassan, sorrowful would have been the fate of that _voiturier_. As it was, the wind got colder and colder; the streets became deserted, and the rain and sleet lashed the rough pavement with a loud, shrieking rattle, when a wilder gust than common came thundering up the narrow street. At length, sick of cursing the scoundrel, I turned, for warmth, into a vast, broad-eaved _auberge_, the house of call, I supposed, for the carriers; and entering the great shadowy kitchen, almost as big and massive looking a room as an old baronial hall, a voice I knew--the voice of the rascally _voiturier_ himself--struck my ear, exclaiming with the most warm-hearted affability, "_Entrez, monsieur; entrez._ We were waiting for you." Waiting for me! Surrounded by a group of men in blouses, and two or three fat women, who were to be my fellow-passengers, there was the villain, discussing a capital dinner--the bare-armed wenches of the place rushing between the vast fireplace and the table, with no end of the savouriest and the most garlicky of dishes, and the whole party in the highest state of feather and enjoyment. The cool impertinence of the greeting, however, tickled me amazingly; and room being immediately made, I was entreated to join the company, and exhorted to eat, as it would be a good many hours before I had another chance. This looked ominous; and besides, the whole meal, full of nicely browned stews, was so appetising, that I fear I committed the enormity of making a very tolerable second dinner; and so about half-past eight we at last got under weigh. But not in the vehicle which I had been shown. There was some cock-and-bull story of that having been damaged; and we were squeezed--six of us, including the fat ladies--into a dreadful square box, with our twelve legs jammed together like the sticks of a faggot, in the centre. Oh, the woes of that dreary night!--the gruntings and the groanings of the fat ladies--the squabbles about "making legs," and, notwithstanding our crowded condition, the intensity of the pinching cold--one window was broken, another wouldn't pull up, and the whole vehicle was full of cracks and crevices. Outside, the gale had increased to a hurricane; the rain and sleet lashed the ground, so that you could hardly hear the driver shouting at the full pitch of his voice to the poor jades, who drearily dragged us through the mire. After an hour or two's riding, the water began to trickle in on all sides. The fat ladies said they could not possibly survive the night; and a poor thin slip of a soldier next me accepted half a railway wrapper with the most vehement "_Merci-bien merci!_" I ever heard in my life. About one in the morning we pulled up at a lone public-house, in the kitchen of which the passengers refreshed themselves with coffee, and I myself, to their great surprise, with a liberal application of cognac and hot water. But the French have no notion of the mellow beauties of toddy. The rest of the night wore slowly and wretchedly on. I believe we had the same horses all the way. Day was grey around us when we heard the voices of the market people flocking in to Tarbes; and looking forth, after a short, nightmareish dose, I beheld around me a wide champaign country, as white with snow as Nova Zembla at Christmas. And this was the boasted South of France, and the date was the twentieth of October! [Illustration: CASTLE OF PAU.] CHAPTER VII. PAU--THE ENGLISH IN PAU--ENGLISH AND RUSSIANS--THE VIEW OF THE PYRENEES--THE CASTLE--THE STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE--HIS BIRTH--A VISION OF HIS LIFE--ROCHELLE--ST. BARTHOLEMEW--IVRY--HENRI AND SULLY--HENRI AND GABRIELLE--HENRI AND HENRIETTE D'ENTRAGUES--RAVAILLAC. Excepting, perhaps, the famous city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pau is the most Anglicised town in France. There are a good many of our countrymen congregated under the old steeples of Tours which every British man should love, were it only for Quentin Durward; but they do not leaven the mass; while in Pau, particularly during the winter time, the main street and the _Place Royale_ look, so far as the passengers go, like slices cut out from Weymouth, Bath, or Cheltenham. You see in an instant the insular cut of the groups, who go laughing and talking the familiar vernacular along the rough _pavé_. There is a tall, muscular hoble-de-hoy, with red hair, high shirt collar, and a lady on each arm--fresh-looking damsels, with flounces, which smack unmistakeably of England. It is a young gentleman with his sisters. Next come a couple of wonderfully well-shaved, well buttoned-up, fat, elderly, half-pay English officers, talking "by Jove, sir," of "Wilkins of ours;" and "by George, sir," of what the "old Duke had said to Galpins of the 9th. at the United Service." An old fat half-pay officer is always a major. I do not know how it happens, but so it is; and when you meet them settled abroad, ten to one they have been dragged there by their wives and daughters. "By Jove, sir!" said one of these veterans to me at Pau--he was very confidential over a glass of brandy and water at the _café_ on the _Place_--"By Jove, sir, for myself, I'd never like to go further from Pall Mall than just down Whitehall, to set my watch by the Horse Guards' clock; but the women, you know, sir, have a confounded hankering for these confounded foreign places; and, by Jove, sir, what is an old fellow who wants a quiet life to do, sir?" The colony of our country folks at Pau keep, as usual, very much together, and try to live in the most English fashion they may; ask each other mutually to cut mutton; display joints instead of _plats_, and import their own sherry; pass half their time studying _Galignani_, and reading to each other long epistles of news and chat from England--the majors and other old boys clustering together like corks in a tub of water; the young people getting up all manner of merry pic-nics and dances, and any body who at all wishes to be in the set, going decorously to the weekly English service. "_Tenez_," said a Pau shopkeeper to me; "your countrymen enjoy here all the luxuries of England. They have even an episcopal chapel and a pack of fox-hounds." Of course, the prosperity of Pau mainly depends upon its English residents, who are generally well-to-do people, spending their money freely. Shortly before my visit, however, a Russian prince, who had established himself in a neighbouring chateau, had quite thrown the English reputation for wealth into the shade. His equipages, his parties, the countess's diamonds, had overblazed the grandeur of the English all put together; and the way in which he spent money enraptured the good folks of the old capital of Bearne. The Russians, indeed, wherever they go on the continent, deprive us of our _prestige_ as the richest people in the world--an achievement for which they deserve the thanks of all Englishmen with heads longer than their purses. "_Ah, monsieur!_" I was once told, "_la pluie de guineés, c'est bonne; mais le pluie de roubles, c'est une averse--un deluge!_" Gaston Phoebus, Count de Foix, was a sad Bluebeard of a fellow, but he showed his taste in pitching upon a site for the castle of Pau. He reared its towers on the edge of a rocky hill. Far beneath sparkle the happy waters of the Gave--appearing and disappearing in the broken country--a tumbling maze of wooded hill, green meadow, straggling coppice, corn-fields, vineyards, and gardens--verily a land flowing with milk and honey. Further on, sluggish round-backed hills heave up their green masses, clustered all over with box-wood; and then come--cutting with many a pointed peak and jagged sierra--the bright blue sky--the glorious screen of the Pyrenees. From the end of the _Place_, which runs to the ridge of the bank on which stands the town, you may gaze at it for hours--the hills towering in peak and pinnacle, sharp, ridgy, saw-like--either deeply, beautifully blue, or clad in one unvarying garb of white; and beyond that, Spain. The same view from the castle is even still finer, as you are more elevated; and the sheer sink of the wall and rock below you, makes, as it were, a vast gulf, across which the mind leaps, even over the green stumbling landscape of the foreground to the blue or white peaks beyond. [Illustration: STATUE OF HENRI QUATRE.] But the feature--the characteristic--the essence--the very soul of Pau--is neither the fair landscape, nor the rushing Gave, nor the stedfast Pyrenees. It is the memory of the good King Henri Quatre, which envelopes castle and town--which makes haunted holy stones of these grim grey towers--which gives all its renown and glory to the little capital of Bearne. Look up at the "Good King" in his bronze effigy in the _Place_. These features are more familiar to you than those of any foreign potentate. You know them of old--you know them by heart--a goodly, honest, well-favoured, burly face--a face with mind and matter in it--a face not of an abstract transcendental hero, but emphatically of a MAN. Passion and impulse are there, as in the jaw of Henry VIII.; energy and strong thought, as in the brow of Cromwell; a calm, and courtly, and meditative smile over all, as in the face of Charles I. The stubbly beard grizzling round the firm and close-set lips, and worn by the helmet, speaks the soldier--the conqueror of Ivry; the high, broad forehead and the quick eye tell of the statesman--he who proclaimed the edict of Nantes; the frank, gallant, and blithsome expression of the whole face--what does it tell of--of the gallant, whose mingled sagacity and debonnair courage won La Reine Margot from the intrigues of Catherine; whose impulsive heart and fiery passions cast him at the feet of Gabrielle d'Estrees; and whose weakness--manly while unmanly--made him for a time the slave of Henriette d'Entragues. There is an encyclopædia of meaning in the face, and even in the figure, of Henri. He had a grand mind, with turbulent passions; he was deeply wise, yet frantically reckless; he had many faults, but few vices. If he gave up a religion for a throne, he never claimed to be a martyr or a saint. Indeed, he was the last man in the world deliberately to run his head against a wall. He thought that he could do more for the Huguenots by turning Catholic and King, than by remaining Protestant and Pretender; and he did it. Yet for all--for the men of Rome and the men of Geneva--he had a broad, genial, hearty sympathy. Were they not all French?--all the children of a king of France? Henri had not one morsel of bigotry in his soul: his mind was too clear, and his heart too big. And yet, with the pithiest sagacity--with the sternest will--with the most exalted powers of calm comprehension--and the most honest wish to make his good people happy--he could be recklessly vehement--Quixotically generous--he could fling himself over to his passions--do foolish things, rash things--insult the kingdom for which he laboured, and which he loved--and thunder out his wrath at the grey head of the venerable counsellor who stood by him in field and hall, and whose practical wisdom it was which trimmed and shaped Henri's grand visions of majestic politics and astounding plans for national combinations. In the face, then, and in the figure of the Good King, you can trace, I think, some such mixture of qualities. Neither are beau ideals. You are not looking at an angel or an Apollo--but a bold, passionate, burly, good-humoured man, big in the bone, and firm in muscle, with plenty of human flesh and its frailties, yet with plenty of mind to shine through, and elevate them all. Let us enter the castle of his birth. Thanks to Louis Philippe, it has been rescued from the rats and the owls, and re-fitted as exactly as possible in its ancient style. Mounting the grand staircase, we see everywhere around, on walls and vaulted ceiling, the gilt cyphers, "H. M."--not, however, meaning Henri and Margot, but the grandfather of the King of France--the stern, old Henri D'Albret, King of Navarre, and Margaret his wife--_La Marguerite des Marguerites_, the Pearl of Pearls. Pass through a series of noble state-apartments, vaulted, oak-pannelled, with rich wooden carved work adorning cornice and ceiling, and we stand in the room in which Henri saw the light. Jeanne D'Albret's bed, a huge structure, massive and carven, and with ponderous silken curtains, still stands as it did at the birth of the king. And what a strange coming into the world that was. The Princess of Navarre had travelled a few days previously nearly across France, that the hoped-for son and heir might be a Bearnais born. Old Henri, her father, was waiting and praying in mortal anxiety for the event. "My daughter," said the patriarch, "in the hour of your trial you must neither cry nor moan, but sing a song in the dear Bearnais tongue; and so shall the child be welcomed to the world with music, and neither weep nor make wry faces." The princess promised this, and she kept her word; so that the first mortal sound which struck Henri Quatre's ear was his mother's voice feebly chanting an old pastoral song of the shepherds of Bearne. "Thanks be to God!--a man-child hath come into the world, and cried not," said the old man. He took the infant in his arms, and, after the ancient fashion of the land, rubbed its lips with a clove of garlic, and poured into its mouth, from a golden cup, a few drops of Jurancon wine. And so was born Henri Quatre. Stand for a moment in the shadow of these tapestried curtains, and call up in the gloom a vision of the grandly eventful life which followed. An army is drawn up near Rochelle, and a lady leads a child between the lines. Coligni and the Condé head the group of generals who, bonnet in hand, surround the lady and the child; and then Jeanne D'Albret, lifting up her clear woman's voice, dedicates the little Henri to the Protestant cause in France; and with loud acclamations is the gift received, and the leader accepted by the stern Huguenot array.--The next picture. An antique room in the Louvre. The bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois is pealing a loud alarm; arquebus shots ring through the streets, and cries and clamour of distress come maddening through the air. Pale, but firmly resolute, stands Henri, beside a young man richly, but negligently, dressed, who, after speaking wildly and passionately to him, snatches up an arquebus--stands for a moment as though about to level it at his unshrinking companion, and then exclaiming like a maniac, "_Il faut que je tue quelq'un_," flings open the lattice, and fires without. Henri and Charles IX. on the night of the St. Bartholemew.--Another vision. A battle-field: Henri surrounded by his eager troops--the famous white plume of Ivry rising above his helmet: "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet of a more bloody fray; Charge where you see this white plume shine amid the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to day, the helmet of Navarre." --Solemn organ music floating through cathedral aisles must introduce the next scene. The child who was dedicated to the cause of Protestantism kneels before a mitred priest. "Who are you?" is the question put. "I am the king." "And what is your request?" "To be admitted into the pale of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church."--Again a change. Henri the King of France, and Rosny, Duke de Sully, labouring amid papers, calculations, and despatches, to elevate and make prosperous the great kingdom of France. "I would," said the king, "that every subject of mine might have a fat fowl in his pot every Sunday."--Take another: a gay and courtly scene. A glittering mob of courtiers surround a plain ferryman, who, in answer to the laughing questions of the monarch, whom the boatman does not know, admits that "the king is a good sort of fellow enough, but that he has a jade of a mistress, who is continually wanting fine gowns and trumpery trinkets, which the people have to pay for;--not, indeed, that it would signify so much if she were but constant to her lover; but they did say that----." Here a lady, with burning cheeks, and flashing eyes, exclaims: "Sire, that fellow must be hanged forthwith!" "Sire!"--the boatman gazes in astonishment on his questioner. "Tut, tut," is the reply; "the poor fellow shall no longer pay _corvée_ or _gabelle_, and so will he sing for the rest of his days, Vive Henri--Vive Gabrielle!"--Another scene: in the library and working room of the great king, and his great minister. The monarch shews a paper, signed with his name, to his counsellor. It is a promise of marriage to Henriette d'Entragues. Sully looks for a moment at his master, then tears up the instrument, and flings the fragments on the earth. "Are you mad, duke?" shouts Henri. "If I am," was the reply, "I should not be the only madman in France." The king takes his hand, and does him justice.--Yet one last closing sketch. In a huge gilded coach in the midst of a group of splendidly dressed courtiers, sits the king. There is an obstruction in the street. The _cortège_ stops; the lackeys leave it to clear the way; when a moody-browed fanatic, with flaming eyes, and red hair all on end, bounds into the carriage--a poniard gleaming above his head--and in a moment the Good King, stabbed with three mortal wounds, has gone home to his fathers. All is over: Henri Quatre is historical! CHAPTER VIII. THE VAL D'OSSAU--THE VIN DE JURANCON--THE OLD BEARNE COSTUME--THE DEVIL AND THE BASQUE LANGUAGE--PYRENEAN SCENERY--THE WOLF--THE BEAR--A PYRENEAN AUBERGE--THE FOUNTAIN OF LARUNS, AND THE EVENING SONG. The valley of Ossau, one of the finest and most varied of the clefts running deep into the Pyrenees, opens up behind Pau, and penetrates some thirty miles into the mountains, ending in two narrow horns, both forming _cul de sacs_ for all, save active pedestrians and bold muleteers, the bathing establishment of Eaux Bonnes being situated in one, and that of Eaux Chaudes in the other. I was meditating as to my best course for seeing some of the mountain scenery, as I hung over the parapet of the bridge beneath the castle, and watched the pure, foaming waters of the Gave bursting over their rocky bed beneath, when a little man, with a merry red face, and a wonderfully long mouth, continually on the grin, dressed in a species of imitation of English sporting costume--in an old cut-away coat, and what is properly called a bird's-eye choker--the effect of which, however, was greatly taken off by sabots--addressed me, half in French, half in what he called English:--Did I wish to go to the baths, or anywhere else in the hills? The diligences had stopped running for the season; but what of that? he had plenty of horses and vehicles: he would mount me for the fox-hounds, if I wished. Oh, he was well known to, and highly respected by, Messieurs les Anglais; and it was therefore a fortunate thing for me to have fallen in with him. The upshot of a long conversation was, that he engaged to drive me up the glen with his own worshipful hands, business being slack at the time, and that he was to be as communicative as he might touching the country, the people, their customs, and all about them. The little man was delighted with this last stipulation, and observed it so faithfully, that for the next two days his tongue never lay; and as he was a merry, sensible little fellow enough, and thoroughly good-natured, I did not in the least repent my bargain. Off we went, then, in a lumbering old nondescript vehicle, drawn by a raw-boned white horse, who, however, went through his work like a Trojan. My driver's name was M. Martin; and the first thing he did was to pull up at the first public-house outside of Pau. "Look up there!" he said, pointing to a high-wooded ridge to the right; "there are the Jurancon vineyards--the best in the Pyrenees; and here we shall have a _coup-d'étrier_ of genuine old Jurancon wine." Remembering Henri Quatre's first beverage, I had no objection. The wine, which is white, tastes a good deal like a rough _chablis_, and is very deceptive, and very heady: I would advise new-comers to the Pyrenees to use it but gingerly. The garrison of Pau was changed while I was there, and the new soldiers were going rolling about the streets--some of them madly drunk, from the effects of this fireily intoxicating, yet mildly tasting wine. Our road lay along the Gave--a flashing, sparkling mountain-stream, running amid groups of trees, luxuriant coppice-wood, and small fields of yellow Indian corn. Many were the cottages and clusters of huts, half-hidden amid the vines, which are trailed in screens and tunnels from stake to stake, and tree to tree; and, on each side of the way, hedges of box-wood, growing in luxuriant thickets, which would delight the heart of an English gardener--gave note of one of the characteristic natural harvests of the Pyrenees. The soil and the climate are, indeed, such, that the place which, in more northern mountain regions, would be occupied by furze and heather, is hereabouts taken up by perfect thickets and jungles of thriving box-wood; while the laurel and rhododendron grow in bushy luxuriance. Charming, however, as is the landscape, and thoroughly poetic the first aspect of the cottages, they are in reality wretched, ricketty, and unwholesome hovels. In fact, poor huts, and a mountain country, go almost invariably together. In German Switzerland, the cottages are miserable; and every body knows what an unwindowed stye is a Highland turf-built bothy. So of the Pyrenean cottages: many of them--mere hovels of wood and clay, so rickety-looking, that one wonders that the first squall from the hills does not carry them bodily away--are composed of one large, irregular room, having an earthen floor, with black, smoky beams stretching across beneath the thatch. Two or three beds are made up in the darkest corners; festoons of Indian corn, onions, and heads of garlic are suspended from the rafters; and opposite the huge open fireplace is generally placed the principal piece of furniture of the apartment--a lumbering pile of a dresser, garnished with the crockery of the household. In a very great proportion of cases, the windows of these dwellings are utterly unglazed; and when the rough, unpainted outside shutters are closed, the whole interior is in darkness. The people, however, seem better fed and better clothed than the German Switzers. In the vicinity of Pau, the women wear the brightest silk handkerchiefs on their heads, are perfectly dissipated in the matter of gaudy ribbons, and cut their petticoats of good, fleecy, home-spun stuff, so short as to display a fair modicum of thick rig-and-furrow worsted stockings. The men, except that they wear a blue bonnet--flat, like that called Tam O'Shanter in Scotland--are decently clad in the ordinary blouse. It is as you leave behind the influence of the town, that you come upon the ancient dresses of the land. Every glen in Bearne has its distinguishing peculiarities of costume; but cross its boundary to the eastward, and you relapse at once into the ordinary peasant habiliments of France--clumsy, home-cut coats only being occasionally substituted for the blouse. The old Bernais costume is graceful and picturesque; and as we made our way up into the hills, we soon began to see specimens; and hardly one of these but was borne by a fine-looking, well-developed man, or a black-eyed and stately stepping woman. The peasantry of Ossau are indeed remarkable, notwithstanding their hard work and frequent privations, for personal beauty. They have little or no real French blood in their veins; indeed, I believe the stock to be Spanish, just as the beauties of Arles, out of all sight the finest women in France, are in their origin partly Italian, partly Saracen. The women of Ossau are as swarthy as Moors, and have the true eastern dignity of motion, owing it, indeed, to the same cause as the Orientals--the habit of carrying water-vases on their heads. Their faces are in general clearly and classically cut--the nose thin and aquiline--the eye magnificently black, lustrous, and slightly almond-shaped--another eastern characteristic. The dress, as I have said, is graceful, and the colours thoroughly harmonious. A tight-fitting black jacket is worn over a red vest, more or less gaudily ornamented with rough embroidery, and fastening by small belts across the bosom. On the head, a sort of capote or hood of dark cloth, corresponding to that of the jacket and petticoat, is arranged. In good weather, and when a heavy burden is to be carried, this hood is plaited in square folds across the crown of the head, forming a protection also from the heat of the sun. In cold and rainy days, it is allowed to fall down over the shoulders, mingling with the folds of the drapery beneath. Both men and women wear peculiarly shaped stockings, so made as to bulge over the edges of the sabot, into which the naked foot is thrust. The dress of the men is of a correspondingly quaint character. On their heads they invariably wear the flat, brown bonnet, called the _beret_, and from beneath it the hair flows in long, straight locks, soft and silky, and floating over their shoulders. A round jacket, something like that worn by the women, knee-breeches of blue velvet--upon high days and holidays--and, like the rest of the costume, of coarse home-spun woollen upon ordinary occasions, complete the dress. The capa, or hood, is worn only in rough weather. In the glens more to the westward, low sandals of untanned leather are frequently used, the sole of the foot only being protected. Sandals have certain classic associations connected with them, and look very well in pictures, but they are fearfully uncomfortable in reality. I saw half-a-dozen peasants tramping in this species of _chaussure_ through the wet streets of Pau amid a storm of snow and rain, and a spectacle full of more intensely rheumatic associations could no where be witnessed. As we jogged along behind the grey horse, the facetious M. Martin had a joke to crack with every man, woman, and child we encountered; and the black eyes lighted up famously, and the classic faces grinned in high delight, at the witticisms. "I suppose you are speaking Bearne?" I said. "The fine old language of the hills, sir. French!--no more to be compared with it than skimmed milk with clotted cream." "And you speak Spanish, too?" "Well, if a gentleman contrabanda, who takes walks over the hills in the long dark nights, with a string of mules before him, wished to do a small stroke of business with me, I daresay we could manage to understand each other." And therewith M. Martin winked first with one eye, and then with the other. "And Basque," said I, "you speak that also?" M. Martin recoiled: "No man who ever did live, or will live, could learn a word of that infernal jargon, if he were not a born Basque. Learn Basque, indeed!--_Mon Dieu, monsieur!_ Don't you know that the Devil once tried, and was obliged to give it up for a bad job? I don't know why he wanted to learn Basque, unless it were to talk to the fellows who went to him from that part of the country; and he might have known that it was very little worth the hearing they could tell him. But, however, he spread his wings, and flew and flew till he alighted on the top of one of the Basque mountains, where he summoned all the best Basque scholars in the country, and there he was for seven years, working away with a grammar in his hand, and saying his lessons like a good little boy. But 'twas all no use; he never could keep a page in his head. So one fine morning he gave a kick to the books with one foot, and a kick to the masters with the other, and flew off--only able to say 'yes' and 'no' in Basque, and that with such a bad pronunciation that the Basques couldn't understand him." This authentic anecdote brought us to that portion of the valley in which we enter really into the Pyrenean hills. Up to this point we have been traversing a gloriously wooded, and beautifully broken, country. Ridges of forests, vineyard slopes, patches of bright-green meadow land, steep, tumbling hills, wreathed with thickest box-wood, have been rising and falling all around. Lateral glens, each with its foaming torrent and woodland vista opening up, have been passed in close succession. Scores of villages, ricketty and poverty-struck, even in this land of fertility, have been traversed, until, gaining the height of a ridge which seems to block the way, we saw before us what appears to be another valley of a totally different character--stern, solitary, wild--a broad, flat space, lying between the hills, yellow with maize-fields, the river shining in the midst, and on either side the mountain-slopes--no mere hills this time, but vast and stately Alps, heaving up into the regions of the mist, rising in long, uniform slopes, stretching away and away, and up and up--the vast sweeps green with a richness of herbage unknown in the Alps, and faintly traced with ancient mountain-paths, leading from chalet to chalet; here and there a gully or wide ravine breaking the Titanic embankment; silver threads of waterfalls appearing and disappearing in the black jaws; and over the topmost clefts, glimpses of the snowy peaks, to which these stretching braes lead upwards. The mist lies in long, thin wreaths upon the bosom of the hills immediately around you, and you see their bluff summits now rising above it, and then gradually disappearing in the rising vapour. The general atmosphere is brighter and clearer than in the Alps, and you imagine a peak a long day's march from you within an easy climb; cottages, and even hamlets, appear perched at most impracticable heights; and every now and then, a white gash in the far-up hill-side announces a marble-quarry, and you see dark dots of carts toiling up to it by winding ways. These hills are but partially wooded. The sombre pine here begins to make its appearance, sometimes scattered, sometimes growing thickly--for all the world like the wire-jags set round the barrel of a musical snuff-box. The lateral valleys are, however, frequently masses of forest, and it is high up in these little frequented passes, that Bruin, who still haunts the Pyrenees, most often makes his appearance. "But he is going," said M. Martin--"going with the wild cats and the wolves. The Pyrenees are degenerating, monsieur; you never hear of a man being hugged to death now. Poor Bruin! For, after all, monsieur, he is a gentlemanly beast; he never kills the sheep wantonly. He always chooses the best, which is but natural, and walks off with it. But the wolf--_sacré nom du diable!_--the wolf--a _coquin_--a brigand--a _Basque tonnere_--he will slaughter a flock in a night. _Mon Dieu!_ he laps blood till he gets drunk on it. A _voleur_--a _mauvais sujet_--a _cochon_--a dam beast!" "But do the Pyrenean wolves ever attack men?" "_Sacré! Monsieur; tenez._ There was Jacques Blitz--an honest man, a farmer in the hills; he came down to Pau, when the snow was deep, and the winter hard. I saw him in Pau. Well, in the afternoon he started to go home again. It looked threatening, and people advised him to stay; but no; and off he went. Monsieur, that night in his cottage they heard, hour by hour, the howling of the wolves, and often went out, but could see nothing. Poor Jacques did not return, and at sunrise they were all off in search; and sure enough they found a skeleton, clean picked, and the bones all shining in the snow. Only, monsieur, the feet were still whole in the sabots: the wolves had gnawed the wood, but could not break it. 'Take off the sabots!' screamed the wife. And they did so: and she gave a shuddering gasp, and said, 'They are Jacques' feet!' and tumbled down into the snow. _Sacré peste_, the cannibals! Curse the wolves--here's to their extirpation!" And M. Martin took a goodly pull at a bottle of Jurancon we had laid in at the last stage. He went on to tell me that sometimes a particular wolf is known to haunt a district, perhaps for years, before he gets his _quietus_; most probably a grey-haired, wily veteran, perfectly up to all the devices of the hunter, who can seldom get a shot at him. Bears flourish in the same fashion, and come to be so well known, as to be honoured with regular names, by which they are spoken of in the country. One old bear, of great size, and of the species in question, had taken up his head-quarters upon a range of hills forming the side of a ravine opening up from the valley of Ossau. He was called Dominique--probably after his fellow Bruin, who long went by the same appellation in the Jardin des Plantes, and was known by it to every Parisian. The Pyrenean Dominique was a wily monster, who had long baffled all the address of his numerous pursuers; and as his depredations were ordinarily confined to the occasional abstraction of a sheep or a goat, and as he never actually committed murder, he long escaped the institution of a regular battue--the ordinary ending of a bear or wolf who manages to make himself particularly conspicuous. At length the people of the district got absolutely proud of Dominique. Like the Eagle in Professor Wilson's fine tale, he was "the pride and the pest of the parish," and might have been so yet, were it not that on one unlucky day he was casually espied by the _garde forestiere_. This is a functionary whose duty it is to patrol the hills, taking note that the sheep are confined to their proper bounds on the pastures. The man had sat down to his dinner on a ledge of rock, when, looking over it, whom should he see but the famous Dominique sunning himself upon the bank below. The _garde_ had a gun, and it was not in the heart of man to resist the temptation. He fired, Dominique got up on his hind legs, roaring grimly, when the contents of the second barrel stretched him on the earth. So great, however, was the _garde's_ opinion of the prowess of his victim, that he kept loading and firing long after poor Dominique had quitted this mortal scene. The carcase was too heavy to be moved by a single man, but next day it was carried to the nearest village by a funeral party of peasants, not exactly certain as to whether they ought to be glad or sorry at the catastrophe. As we were now well on in October, and as the weather had greatly broken up, much of the pleasure of my Pyrenean rambles being indeed marred by lowering skies and frequent and heavy rains--which were snow upon the hills--the flocks were fast descending from the upland pastures to their winter quarters in the valley and the plain. Every couple of miles or so, in our upward route, we encountered a flock of small, long-eared, long and soft woolled sheep, either trotting along the road or resting and grazing in the adjacent fields. The shepherds stalked along at the head of the procession, or, when it was stationary, stood statue-like in the fields. They were great, gaunt, sinewy men, wearing the Ossau costume, but one and all enveloped in a long, whitish cloak, with a peaked hood, flowing to the earth, which gave them a ghastly, winding-sheet sort of appearance. When a passing shower came rattling down upon the wind, the herdsmen, stalking slowly across the fields, enveloped from head to foot in these long, grey, shapeless robes, looked like so many Ossianic ghosts flitting among the mountains. Each man carried, slung round him, a little ornamented pouch, full of salt, a handful of which is used to entice within reach any sheep which he wishes to get hold of. One and all, like their brethren of the Landes, they were busy at the manufacture of worsted stockings, and kept slowly stalking through the meadows where their flocks pastured, with the lounging gait of men thoroughly broken in to a solitary, monotonous routine of sluggish life. Many of these shepherds were accompanied by their children--the boys dressed in exact miniature imitation of their fathers. Indeed, the prevalence of this style of juvenile costume in the Pyrenees makes the boys and girls look exactly like odd, quaint little men and women. The shepherds are assisted by a breed of noble dogs, one or two of which I saw. They are not, however, generally taken down to the low grounds, as they are frequently fierce and vicious in the half-savage state in which it is of importance to keep them, in respect to their avocations amid the bears and wolves. Among themselves, I was told that they fought desperately, occasionally even killing each other. The dogs I saw were magnificent looking fellows, of great size and power, their chests of vast breadth and depth, and their limbs perfect lumps of muscle. They appeared to me to be of a breed which might have been originated by a judicious crossing of first-rate Newfoundlands, St. Bernard mastiffs, and thorough old English bulldogs; and I could easily believe that one wrench from their enormous square jaws is perfectly sufficient to crash through the neck vertebræ of the largest wolf. As we neared Laruns, the mountain-slopes grew steeper and higher, and more barren and rugged; the precipices became more fearful; the mountain gorges more black and deep; and at length we appeared to be entering the deep pit of an amphitheatre dug in the centre of a group of stormy and precipitous mountains. Down in this nest lies the little mountain-town of Laruns; the steep slope of the heathy hill rising on one side of the single street from the very backs of the houses. M. Martin, on the Irish principle of reserving the trot for the avenue, whipped up the good old grey, and we rattled at a canter through the miriest street I ever traversed, driving throngs of lean, long-legged pigs right and left, and dispersing groups of cloaked, lounging men, with military shakos, and sabres--in whose uniform, indeed, I recognised that of my old friends, the _Douaniers_ of Boulogne and Calais; for true we were approaching, not indeed an ocean, but a mountain frontier, and Spanish ground was not so distant as Shakspeare's Cliff from Cape Grinez. We stopped in the little Place opposite a pretty marble fountain, and at the door of a particularly modest-looking auberge. As I was getting out, M. Martin stopped me: "Wait," he said, "and we will drive into the house--don't you see how big the door is?" As he spoke, it opened upon its portals. The old grey needed no invitation, and in a moment we found ourselves in a huge, dark vault, half coach-house, half stable. Two or three loaded carts were lying about, and lanterns gleamed from the gloomiest corners, and horses and mules stamped and neighed as they were rubbed down, or received their provender. "But where is the inn?" "The inn! up-stairs, of course." And then I beheld a rough, wooden staircase, or, rather, a railed ladder, down which came tripping a couple of blooming girls to carry up-stairs our small amount of luggage. Following their invitation, I soon found myself in a vast parlour and kitchen and all--a great shadowy room, with a baronnial-looking fireplace, and a couple of old women sitting in the ingle-nook, plying the distaff. The fireplace and the kitchen department of the room were in the shadow at the back. Nearer the row of lozenge-pane windows, rose a dais--with a long dining-table set out--and smaller tables were scattered around. Above your head were mighty rafters, capitally garnished with bacon and hung-meat of various kinds. The floor rose and fell in small mountains and valleys beneath your feet; but, notwithstanding this evidence of rickettyness, every thing appeared of massive strength, and the warmth of the place, and the savour of the _cuisine_--for a French kitchen is always in a chronic state of cookery--made the room at once comfortable and appetising--ten times better than the dreary _salle_ of a barrack-like hotel. [Illustration: A PYRENEES PARLOUR.] In a few minutes, Martin, having attended to the grey, joined me, rubbing his hands. "This was the place to stop at," he said. "No use of going further. The mountains beyond were just like the mountains here; but the people here were far more unsophisticated than the people beyond. They hav'nt learned to cheat here, yet," he whispered. "And, besides, you see a good Pyrenean auberge, and at the Wells you would only see a bad French hotel, which, I daresay, would be no novelty; while, as for price--pooh! you will get a capital dinner here for what they would charge you for speaking to the waiter there." And so it proved. Pending, the preparation of this dinner, however, I strolled about Laruns. It is a drearily-poor place, with the single recommendation of being built of stone, which can be had all round for the carrying. The arrangement of turning the ground-floor into a stable is universal in the houses of any size, and as these stables also serve for pig-styes, sheep-folds, and poultry-yards, and as cleaning-day is made to come round as seldom as possible, it may be imagined that the town of Laruns is a highly scented one. Through some of the streets, brooks of sparkling water flow, working the hammers of feeble fulling mills. Webs of the coarse cloth produced are hung to dry from window to window, and roof to roof, and beneath them congregate groups of old distaff-plying women, lounging _duaniers_, and no end of geese standing half asleep on one foot, until a headlong charge of pigs being driven afield, or driven home, comes trampling through the mire, and clears the way in a moment. The auberge dinner was worthy of M. Martin's anticipations. Delicately-flavoured soup, and trout of the genuine mountain-stream breed--the skin gaily speckled, and the flesh a deep red, were followed by a roasted _jigot_ of mutton, flavoured as only mutton can be flavoured which has fed upon the aromatic herbage of the high hills--the whole finished off with a capital omelette, tossed jauntily up by the neat-handed Phillis who waited upon us, and joked, and laughed, and was kept in one perpetual blush by M. Martin all through dinner-time. At length, through all this giggling, a plate was broken. "There's bad luck, Jeanne," said Martin. "You know nothing about it," replied Jeanne, pertly. "Any child knows that to break a plate is good luck: it is to smash a dish which brings bad luck." "They have all sorts of omens here in the hills," said my companion. "If a hare cross the path, it is a bad omen; and if a cow kick over the milking-pail, it is a bad omen. And they are always fancying themselves bewitched----" "No, that we are not," interrupted Jeanne; "so long as we keep a sprig of _vervene_ over the fire, we know very well that there's not a _sorciere_ in all the Pyrenees can harm us." I thought of the old couplet-- "Sprigs of vervain, and of dill, Which hinder witches of their will." As the evening closed, the little Place became quite thronged with girls, come to wash their pails and draw water from the fountain. Each damsel came statelily along, bearing a huge bucket, made of alternate horizontal stripes of brass and tin, upon her head, and polished like a mirror. A half-hour, or so, of gossipping ensued, frequently broken by a pleasant chorus, sung in unison by the fresh, pure voices of the whole assembly. The effect, when they first broke out into a low, wailing song, echoing amongst the high houses and the hill behind, was quite electrifying. Then they set to work, scrubbing their pails as if they had been the utensils of a model dairy, and at length marched away, each with the heavy bucket, full to the brim, poised upon her head--and with a carriage so steady and gracefully unswerving that, to look at the pails, you would suppose them borne in a boat, rather than carried by a person walking. At night, after I had turned into as snug a bed, with as crisp, and white, and fresh linen as man could wish for, I was long kept awake by the vocal performances of a party of shepherds, who had just arrived from the hills, and who paraded the Place singing in chorus, long after the cracked bell in the little church had tolled midnight. Nine-tenths of these people have capital voices. Their lungs and throats are well-developed, by holding communication from hill to hill; and they jodle or jerk the voice from octave to octave, just as they do in the Alps. This said jodling appears, indeed, to be a natural accomplishment in many mountain countries. The songs of the shepherds at Laruns had jodling chorusses, but the airs were almost all plaintive minors, with long quavering phrases, clinging, as it were, to the pitch of the key-note, and only extending to about a third above or below it. The music was always performed in unison, the words sometimes French, and sometimes Bearnais. The single phrase in the former language, which I could distinguish, and which formed the burden of one of the ditties, was, "_Ma chere maitresse_." This "_chere maitresse_" song, indeed, appeared the favourite. Over and over again was it sung, and there was a wild, melancholy beauty which grew more and more upon you, as the mellow cadence died away again and again in the long drawn out notes of "_Ma chere maitresse_." CHAPTER IX. RAINY WEATHER IN THE PYRENEES--EAUX CHAUDES OUT OF SEASON, AND IN THE RAIN--PLUCKING THE INDIAN CORN AT THE AUBERGE AT LARUNS--THE LEGEND OF THE WEHRWOLF, AND THE BARON WHO WAS CHANGED INTO A BEAR. I wakened next morning to a mournful _reveillé_--the pattering of the rain; and, looking out, found the Place one puddle of melting sleet. The fog lay heavy and low upon the hills, and the sky was as dismal as a London firmament in the dreariest day of November. Still, M. Martin was sanguine that it would clear up after breakfast. Such weather was absurd--nonsensical; he presumed it was intended for a joke; but if so, the joke was a bad one. However, it must be fine speedily--that was a settled point--that he insisted on. Breakfast came and went, however, and the rain was steady. "Monsieur," said Jeanne, "has lost the season of the Pyrenees." "Is there not the summer of St. John to come yet?" demanded Martin. "Yes; but it will rain at least a week before then." What was one to do? There clearly was no speedy chance of the clouds relenting; and what was sleet with us, was dry snow further up the pass. The Peak du Midi, with visions of which I had been flattering myself, was as inaccessible as Chimbarozo, Spain, of which I had hoped to catch at least a Pisgah peep--for I did want to see at least a barber and a priest--was equally out of the question. During the morning a string of mules had returned to Laruns, with the news that the road was blocked up; and truly I found that, had it not been so, my first step towards going to Spain must needs have been in the direction of Bayonne, to have my passports _visèd_--those dreary passports, which hang like clogs to a traveller's feet. And so then passed the dull morning tide away, every body sulky and savage. Peasants, with dripping capas, stumbled up stairs, and sat in groups smoking over the fire; the two old women scolded; Jeanne grew quite snappish; and M. Martin ran out every moment to look at the weather, and came back to repeat that it was no lighter yet, but that it soon must clear up, positively. At length my companion and I determined upon a sally, at all events--a bold push. Let the weather do what it pleased, we would do what we pleased, and never mind the weather. So old grey was harnessed in the stable; we blockaded ourselves with wraps, and started bravely forth, a forlorn hope against the elements. We took the way to Eaux Chaudes; and the further we went, the heavier fell the rain--cats and dogs became a mild expression for the deluge. The mist got lower and lower; the sleet got colder and colder; old grey snorted and steamed; we gathered ourselves up under the multitudinous wrappers; the rain was oozing through them--it was trickling down our necks--suddenly making itself felt in small rills in unexpected and aggravating places, which made sitting unpleasant--collecting in handsome lakes at our feet, and pervading with one vast, clammy, chilly, freezing dampness body and soul. The whole of creation seemed resolved into a chaos of fog, mire, and rain. We had passed into what would be called in a pantomime "the Rainy Realms, or the Dreary Domains of Desolation;" and what comfort was it--soaked, sodden, shivering, teeth chattering--to hear Martin proclaim, about once in five minutes, that the weather would clear up at the next turn of the road? The dreary day remains, cold and clammy, a fog-bank looming in my memory ever since. I believe I saw the _établissment_ of Eaux Chaudes; at least, there were big drenched houses, with shutters up, like dead-lights, and closed doors, and mud around them, like water round the ark. They looked like dismal county hospitals, with all the patients dead except the madmen, who might be enjoying the weather and the situation; or like gaols, with all the prisoners hung, and the turnkeys starved at the cell doors for lack of fees. I remember hearing a doleful voice, like that of Priam's curtain drawer, asking me if I wouldn't get out of the vehicle; but to move was hideous discomfort, bringing new wet surfaces into contact with the skin; so I croaked out, "No, no; back--back to the fire at Laruns." And so honest grey, all in a steam, splashed round through the mud; and back we went as we had come--rain, rain, rain, pitiless, hopeless rain--the fog hanging like a grey winding sheet above us--the zenith like a pall above that, leaden and drear, as on a Boothia Felix Christmas Day. There was nothing for it but the fireside. The very _douaniers_ had abandoned the street--the pigs had retreated--the donkeys brayed at intervals from their ground-floor parlours; and only the maniac geese sat on one leg, croaking, to be rained on, and the marble fountain, so pretty yester-evening in a gleam of sunshine, spouted away, bringing "coals to Newcastle," with an insane perseverance which it made me sad to contemplate. Dinner was ordered as soon as it could be got ready; we felt it was the last resource. I fortunately had a change of clothes. Martin had not; but he retired for awhile, and reappeared in a home-spun coat and trowsers, six inches too long for him, which he was fain to hold up, to the enormous triumph and delight of Jeanne. At length, then, that neat-handed Phillis announced dinner. "Stay a moment!" exclaimed Martin; "I am just going to see whether it is likely to clear up." Out he went into the mud, and returned with the announcement that it would be summer weather in five minutes; he knew, by some particular movement of the mist. But poor Martin's weather predictions had ceased to command any credit; and the peasants around the fire shrugged their shoulders and laughed. The dinner passed off like a funeral feast. I looked upon the Place--still a puddle, and every moment getting deeper. No songs--no jodling choruses to-night, maidens of Laruns! Sitting gloomily over the Jurancon wine, and looking at the fire, I saw a huge cauldron put on, and presently the steam of soup began to steal into the room. Martin and Jeanne were holding confidential intercourse, which ended in my squire's coming to me, and announcing that there was to be held a grand _épeluche_ of the Indian corn, and that the soup was to form the supper of the work-people. Presently, sure enough, a vast pile of maize in the husk was brought up, and heaped upon the floor; and as the dusk gathered, massive iron candlesticks with tapers which were rather rushlights than otherwise, were set in due order around the grain. Then in laughing parties, drenched but merry, the neighbours poured in--men, women, and children--and vast was the clatter of tongues in Bernais, as they squatted themselves down on stools and on the floor, and began to strip off the husks of the yellow heads of corn, flinging the peeled grain into coarse baskets set for the purpose. The old people deposited themselves on settles in the vast chimney-nook; and amongst them there was led to a seat a tall blind man, with grizzly grey hair, and a mild smiling face. "Ask that man to tell you a story about any of the old castles or towns hereabouts," whispered Martin; "he knows them all--all the traditions, and legends, and superstitions of Bearne." This council was good. So, as soon as the whole roomful were at work--stripping and peeling--and moistening their labours by draughts of the valley vine--I proceeded to be introduced to the patriarch, but, ere I had made my way to him: "Pere Bruniqul," said a good-humoured looking matron; "you know you always give us one of your tales to ease our work, and so now start off, and here is the wine-flask to wet your lips." All this, and the story which followed, was spoken in Bernais, so that to M. Martin I am indebted for the outlines of the tale, which I treat as I did that of the Baron of the Chateau de Chatel-morant:-- * * * * * "Sir Roger d'Espaigne," said the lady of the knight she addressed--holding in her hand the hand of their daughter Adele, a girl of six or seven years of age--"where do you hunt to day?" "Marry," replied her husband, "in the domains of the Dame of Clargues. There are more bears there than anywhere in the country." "But you know that the Dame of Clargues loves her bears, and would not that they should be hurt; and besides, she is a sorceress, and can turn men into animals, if she will. Oh, she practices cunning magic; and she is also a wehr-wolf; and once, when Leopold of Tarbes struck a wolf with an arblast bolt, and broke its right fore-leg, the Dame of Clargues appeared with her right-arm in bandages, and Leopold of Tarbes died within the year." But Sir Roger was not to be talked to. He said the Dame of Clargues was no more a witch than her neighbours; and poising his hunting-spear, away he rode with all his train--the horses caracolling, and the great wolf and bear-hounds leaping and barking before them. They passed the castle of the Dame of Clargues, and plunged into the forests, where the wolves lay--the prickers beating the bushes, and the knights and gentlemen ready, if any game rushed out, to start in pursuit with their long, light spears. For more than half the day they hunted, but had no success; when, at last, a huge wolf leaped out of a thicket, and passed under the very feet of the horses, which reared and plunged, and the riders, darting their spears in the confusion, only wounded each other and their beasts, while three or four of the best dogs were trampled on, and the wolf made off at a long gallop down the wood. But Sir Roger had never lost sight of her, and now followed close upon her haunches, standing up in his stirrups, and couching his lance. Never ran wolf so hard and well, and had not Sir Roger's horse been a Spanish barb, he had been left far behind. As it was, he had not a single companion; when, coming close over the flying beast, he aimed a blow at her head. The spear glanced off, but blood followed the stroke, and at the same moment the barb swerved in her stride, and suddenly stopping, fell a trembling, and laid her ears back, while Sir Roger descried a lady close by, her robes rustling among the forest-herbs. Instantly, he leaped off his horse, and advanced to meet and protect the stranger from the wolf; but the wolf was gone, and, instead, he saw the Dame of Clargues with a wound in her left temple, from which the blood was still flowing. "Sir Roger d'Espaigne," she said, "thou hast seen me a wolf--be thou a bear!" And even as she spoke, the knight disappeared, and a huge, brown bear stood before her. "And now," she cried, "begone, and seek thy kindred in the forest-beasts--only hearken: thou shalt kill him who killest thee, and killing him, thou shalt end thine own line, and thy blood shall be no more upon the earth." When the chase came up, they found the Spanish barb all trembling, and the knight's spear upon the ground; but Sir Roger was never after seen. So years went by, and the little girl, who had beheld her father go forth to hunt in the Dame of Clargues' domain, grew up, and being very fair, was wooed and wedded by a knight of Foix, who was called Sir Peter of Bearne. They had been married some months, and there was already a prospect of an heir, when Sir Peter of Bearne went forth to hunt, and his wife accompanied him to the castle-gate, even as her mother had convoyed her father when he went on his last hunting party to the woods of the Dame of Clargues. "Sir Peter," said the lady, "hast thou heard of a great bear in the forest, which, when he is hunted, the hunters hear a doleful voice, saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee any harm?'" "Balaam, of whom the clerk tells us, ought to have that bear to keep company with his ass," said the knight, gaily, and away he rode. He had hunted with good success most of the day, and had killed both boars and wolves, when he descried, couched in a thicket, a most monstrous bear, with hair of a grizzly grey--for he seemed very old, but his eyes shone bright, and there was something in his presence which cowed the dogs, for, instead of baying, they crouched and whined; and even the knights and squires held off, and looked dubiously at the beast, and called to Sir Peter to be cautious, for never had such a monstrous bear been seen in the Pyrenees; and one old huntsman shouted out aloud, "My lord, my lord--draw back, for that is the bear which, when he is hunted, the hunters hear a doleful voice, saying, 'Hurt me not, for I never did thee any harm!'" Nevertheless, the knight advanced, and drawing his sword of good Bordeaux steel, fell upon the beast. The dogs then took courage, and flew at him; but the four fiercest of the pack he killed with as many blows of his paws, and the rest again stood aloof; so that Sir Peter of Bearne was left face to face with the great beast, and the fight was long and uncertain; but at last the knight prevailed, and the bear gave up the ghost. Then all the hunt rushed in, and made a litter, and with songs and acclamations carried the dead bear to the castle, the knight, still faint from the combat, following. They found the Lady Adele at the castle-gate; but as soon as she saw the bear, she gave a lamentable scream, and said, "Oh! what see I?" and fainted. When she was recovered, she passed off her fainting fit upon terror at the sight of such a monster; but still, she demanded that it should be buried, and not, as was the custom, cut up, and parts eaten. "Holy Mary!" said the knight, "you could not be more tender of the bear if he were your father." Upon which, Adele grew very pale; but, nevertheless, she had her will, and the beast was buried. That night Sir Peter de Bearne suddenly rose in his sleep, and, catching up arms which hung near him, began to fight about the room, as he had fought with the bear. His lady was terrified, and the varlets and esquires came running in, and found him with the sweat pouring down his face, and fighting violently--but they could not see with what. None could approach him, he was so savage, and he fought till dawn, and returned, quite over-wearied, to his bed. Next morning he knew nothing of it; but the next night he rose again; and the next, and the next--and fought as before. Then they took away his weapons, but he ranged the castle through, till he found them, and then fought more furiously than ever, till, at length, he was accustomed to fall on his knees with weakness and fatigue. Before a month had passed, you would not have known Sir Peter: he seemed twenty years older; he could hardly drag one foot after the other; and he fell melancholy and pined--for at last he knew that the curse of the bear was upon him, and that he was not long for this world. Many then advised to send for the Dame of Clargues, who was still alive, but old, and who was more skilful in such matters than any priest or exorcist on this side of Paris: and at last she was sent for, and arrived. The scar upon her forehead was still to be seen; her grey hair did not cover it. "Lady," said she to the Lady of Bearne, "did you ever see your father?" "Yes, truly; the very day he went forth a-hunting and never returned, I saw him, and I yet can fancy the face before me." "Thou wilt see it to-night." "Then my foreboding--that strange feeling--was true. Oh! my father--my husband." Midnight came, and, worn and haggard, Sir Peter de Bearne rose again to renew his nightly combat. He staggered and groaned, and his strength was spent, and those who stood round sang hymns and prayed aloud. At length the knight shrieked out with a fearful voice--the first time he had spoken in all his dreary sleep-fighting--"Beast, thou hast conquered!" and fell back upon the floor, his limbs twisting like the limbs of a man who is being strangled; and Adele screamed aloud. "Look, minion, look!" exclaimed the Dame of Clargues to the lady--passing at the same time her hand over the lady's eyes. "O God!" cried Adele--"my father kills my husband;" and she fell upon the floor, and she and the unborn babe died together, and Sir Peter de Bearne was likewise lifted lifeless from the spot. [Illustration] CHAPTER X. TARBES--BAGNERRE DE BIGORRE--PIGEON-CATCHING--FRENCH COMMIS VOYAGEURS--THE KING OF THE PYRENEAN DOGS--THE LEGEND OF ORTHON, WHO HAUNTED THE BARON OF CORASSE. The next day by noon--still raining--I was at Pau; and having bidden adieu to M. Martin, started for Bagnerre de Bigorre by Tarbes, the great centre of Pyrenean locomotion. Here, as at Bordeaux, you are on ancient English ground. The rich plain all around you is the old County of Bigorre, which was given up to England as portion of the ransom of King John of France; and here to Tarbes came, with a gallant train, the Black Prince, to visit the Count of Argmanac--the celebrated Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix--leaving his strong Castle of Orthon, to be present at the solemnity. The life and soul of Tarbes now consist of the scores of small cross-country diligences, which start in every direction from it as a common centre. The main feature of the town is a huge square, nine-tenths of the houses being glaring white-washed hotels, with _messageries_ on the groundfloors. Diligences by the score lie scattered around; and every now and then the dogs'-meat old horses who draw them go stalking solemnly across the square beneath the stunted lime-trees. There is an adult population of conductors, with silver ear-rings, and their hands in their pockets, always lounging about; and a juvenile population of shoe-blacks, who swarm out upon you, and take your legs by storm. Tarbes is the best place--excepting, perhaps, Arles--for getting your boots blacked, I ever visited. If you were a centipede, and had fifty pairs of Wellingtons, they would all be shining like mirrors in a trice. How these boys live, I cannot make out, unless, indeed, upon the theory that they black their shoes mutually, and keep continually paying each other. Bagnerre is about sixteen miles distant; and a mountain of a diligence, not so much laden with luggage as freighted with a cargo, conveyed me there in not much under four hours; and I repaired--it was dusk, and, of course, raining--to the Hotel de France--one of the huge caravansaries common at watering-places. A buxom lass opened the wicket in the Porte Cochere. "I can have a room?" "Oh, plenty!" And we stepped into the open court-yard. The great hotel rose on two sides, and a small _corps de logis_ on the two others. "Wait," said the girl, "until I get the key." And off she tripped. The key! Was the house shut up? Even so. I was to have a place as big as a hospital to myself. The door opened; all was darkness and a fusty smell. The last family had been gone a fortnight. Our footsteps echoed like Marianne's. It was decidedly a foreign edition, uncarpeted and waxy-smelling, of the "Moated Grange." I was ushered into a really splendid suite of rooms--of a decidedly grander nature than I ever occupied before, or ever occupied since. "The price is the price of an ordinary bedroom. Monsieur may choose whatever room he pleases; and the _table-d'hôte_ bell rings at six." This, at all events, was reassuring. Then my conductress retreated; the doors banged behind her, and I felt like a man shut up in St. Peter's. The silence in the house was dreadful. I was fool enough to go and listen at the door: dead, solemn silence--a vault could not be stiller. I would have given something handsome for a cat, or even a mouse; a parrot would have been invaluable--it would have shouted and screamed. But no; the hush of the place was like the Egyptian darkness--it was a thick silence, which could be felt. At length the _table-d'hôte_ bell rang. The _salle à manger_ was in the building across the yard. Thither I repaired, and found a room, or rather a long corridor, big enough to dine a Freemason's or London Tavern party, with a miraculously long table, tapering away into the distance. Upon a few square feet of this table was a patch of white cloth; and upon the patch of cloth one plate, one knife and fork, and one glass. This was the _table-d'hôte_, and, like Handel, "I was de kombany." Next day the weather was no better; but I was desperate, and sallied out in utter defiance of the rain; but such a dreary little city as Bagnerre, in that wintry day, was never witnessed. I never was at Herne Bay in November, nor have I ever passed a Christmas at Margate; but Bagnerre gave me a lively notion of the probable delights of the dead season at either of these favourite watering-places. The town seemed defunct, and lying there passively to be rained on. Half the houses are lodging-places and hotels; and they were all shut up--ponderous green outside shutters dotting the dirty white of the walls. Hardly a soul was stirring; but ducks quacked manfully in the kennels, and two or three wretched donkeys--dreary relics of the season--stood with their heads together under the lime-trees in the Place. I retreated into a _café_. If there were nobody in France but the last man, you would find him in a _café_, making his own coffee, and playing billiards with himself. Here the room was tolerably crowded; and I got into conversation with a group of townspeople round the white Fayence stove. I abused the weather--never had seen such weather--might live a century in England, and not have such a dreary spell of rain--and so forth. The anxiety of the good people to defend the reputation of their climate was excessive. They were positively frightened at the prospect of a word being breathed in England against the skies of the Pyrenees in general, and those of Bagnerre in particular. The oldest inhabitant was appealed to, as never having remembered such weather at Bagnerre. As for the summer, it had been more than heavenly. All the springs were delightful; the autumns were invariably charming; and the winters, if possible, the best of the four. The present rain was extraordinary--exceptional--a sort of phenomenon, like a comet or a calf with two heads. One of these worthies, understanding that however strong my objections were to fog and drizzle, I was not by any means afraid of being melted, recommended me to make my way to the Palombiere, and see them catch wild pigeons, after a fashion only practised there and at one other place in the Pyrenees. Not appalled, then, by the prospect of a three-mile pull up-hill, I made my way through the narrow suburban streets, and across the foaming Adour, here a glorious mountain-stream, but already made useful to turn numerous flour-mills, and to drive the saws and knives by which the beautiful marble of the Pyrenees is cut and polished. Hereabouts, in the straggling suburbs, the whole female and juvenile population were clustered, just within the shelter of the open doors, knitting those woollen jackets, scarfs, and so forth, which are so much in vogue amongst the visitors in the season. There was one graceful group of pretty girls, the eldest not more than four years of age, pursuing the work in a shed open to the street, seated round a loom, at which a good-natured-looking fellow was operating. "That is a beautiful scarf," I said to the girl next me; "how much will they give you for making it?" The weaver paused in his work at this question. "Tell the gentleman, my dear, how much Messieurs So-and-so give for knitting that scarf." "Two liards," said the little girl. Two liards, or half a solitary sous! This was worse than the shirt-makers at home. "It is a bad trade now," said the weaver. "She is a child; but the best hands can't make more than big sous where they once made francs; but all the trades of the poor are going to the devil. I don't think there will be any poor left in twenty years--they will be all starved before then." This led to a long talk with my new friend, who was a poor, mild, meek sort of man--a thinker, after his fashion, totally uninstructed--he could neither read nor write--and a curious specimen of the odd twists which unregulated and unintelligent ponderings sometimes give a man's mind. His grand notion seemed to be, that whatever might be the isolated crimes and horrors now and then committed upon the earth, the most terrible and malignant species of perverted human ingenuity was--the employment of running streams to work looms. "Was water made to weave cloth?" he asked. "Did the power that formed the Adour intend its streams to be made use of to deprive an honest man of his daily bread? He would uncommonly like to find the orator who would make that clear to his mind. It was terrible to see how men perverted the gifts of Nature! How could I, or any one else, prove to him that the water beside us was intended to take the place of men's arms and fingers, and to be used, as if it were vital blood, to manufacture the garments of those who lived upon its banks?" I ventured to hint, that running water might occasionally be put to analogous, yet by no means so objectionable uses; and I instanced the flour and maize mill, which was working merrily within a score of paces of us. For a moment, but for a moment only, my antagonist was staggered. Then recovering himself, he inquired triumphantly whether I meant to say that the process of grinding corn was like the process of weaving cloth? It was curious to observe the confusion in the man's mind between _analogy_ and _resemblance_. As I could not but admit that the two operations were conducted quite in a different fashion, my gratified opponent, not to be too hard upon me, warily changed the immediate subject of conversation. I was not a native of this part of France? Not a native of France at all? Then I came from some place far away? Perhaps from across the sea? From England! Ah! well, indeed, there was an English lady married, about five miles off--Madame----. Of course I knew her? No? Well, that was odd. He would have thought that, coming from the same place, I ought to know her. However--were there many handloom weavers like himself in England? No, very few indeed. What! did they weave by water-power there, too? were the folks as bad as some of the people in his country? I explained that, not being so much favoured in the way of water-privilege, the people of England had resorted to steam. The poor weaver was quite overcome at this crowning proof of human malignity. It was more horrible even than the water-atrocities of the Pyrenees. "Steam!"--he repeated the word a dozen times over, shaking his head mournfully at each iteration,--"Steam! Ah, well, what is this poor unhappy world coming to?" Then rousing himself, and sending the shuttle rattling backwards and forwards through the web, he added heartily: "After all, their moving iron and wood will never make the good, substantial, well-wearing cloth woven by honest, industrious flesh and blood." Who would have the heart to prescribe cold political economy in such a case? I left the good man busily pursuing his avocation, and lamenting over the perversity of making broad-cloth by the aid of boiling water. Stretching manfully up hill, by a path like the bed of a muddy torrent, I was rewarded by a sudden watery blink of sunshine. Then the wind began to blow, and vast rolling masses of mist to move before it. From a high ridge, with vast green slopes, all dotted with sheep, spreading away beneath until they blended with the corn-land on the plain, Bagnerre appeared, the great white hotels peeping from the trees, and the whole town lying as it were at the bottom of a bowl. It must be fearfully hot in summer, when the sun shines right down into the amphitheatre, and the high hills about, deaden every breeze. At present, however, the wind was rising to a gale, and blowing the heavy clouds right over the Pyrenees. Attaining a still greater height, the scene was very grand. On one side was a confused sea of mountain-peaks and ridges, over which floated masses of wreathing fog, flying like chased phantoms before the northern wind. Now a mountain-top would be submerged in the mist, to re-appear again in a moment. Anon I would get a glimpse of a long vista of valley, which next minute would be a mass of grey nonentity. The mist-wreaths rose and rolled beneath me and above me. Sometimes I would be enveloped as in a dense white smoke; then the fog-bank would flee away, ascending the broad breast of the hill before me, and wrapping trees, and rocks, and pastures in its shroud. All this time the wind blew a gale, and roared among the wrestling pines. Sometimes the sun looked out, and lit with fiery splendour the rolling masses of the fog, with some partial patch of landscape; and, altogether, the effect, the constant movement of the mist, the wild, hilly landscape appearing and disappearing, the glimpses occasionally vouchsafed of the distant plain of Gascony, sometimes dimly seen through the driving vapours, sometimes golden bright in a partial blaze of sunshine,--all this was very striking and fine. At length, however, I reached the Palombiere, situated upon the ridge of the hill--which cost a good hour and a half's climb. Here grow a long row of fine old trees, and on the northern side rise two or three very high, mast-like trees of liberty, notched so as to allow a boy as supple and as sure-footed as a monkey to climb to the top, and ensconce himself in a sort of cage, like the "crow's nest" which whalers carry at their mast-heads, for the look-out. I found the fowlers gathered in a hovel at the foot of a tree; they said the wind was too high for the pigeons to be abroad; but for a couple of francs they offered to make believe that a flock was coming, and shew me the process of catching. The bargain made, away went one of the urchins up the bending pole, into the crow's-nest--a feat which I have a great notion the smartest topman in all Her Majesty's navy would have shirked, considering that there were neither foot-ropes or man-ropes to hold on by. Then, on certain cords being pulled, a whole screen of net rose from tree to tree, so that all passage through the row was blocked. "Now," said the chief pigeon-catcher, "the birds at this season come flying from the north to go to Spain, and they keep near the tops of the hills. Well, suppose a flock coming now; they see the trees, and will fly over them--if it wasn't for the _pigeonier_." "The _pigeonier_! what is that?" "We're going to show you." And he shouted to the boy in the crow's nest, "Now Jacques!" Up immediately sprang the urchin, shouting like a possessed person--waving his arms, and at length launching into the air a missile which made an odd series of eccentric flights, like a bird in a fit. "That is the pigeonier," said the fowler; "it breaks the flight of the birds, and they swoop down and dash between the trees--so." He gave a tug to a short cord, and immediately the wall of nets, which was balanced with great stones, fell in a mass to the ground. "Monsieur will be good enough to imagine that the birds are struggling and fluttering in the meshes." [Illustration: MARBLE WORKS AT BAGNERRE.] At Bagnerre there is a marble work--that of M. Géruset--which I recommend every body to visit, not to see marble cut, although that is interesting, but to pay their respects to, I believe, the grandest dog in all the world--a giant even among the canine giants of the Pyrenees. I have seen many a calf smaller than that magnificent fellow, who, as you enter the yard, will rise from his haunches, like a king from his throne, and, walking up to you with a solemn magnificence of step which is perfect, will wag his huge tail, and lead you--you cannot misunderstand the invitation--to the counting-house door. For vastness of brow and jaw--enormous breadth and depth of chest, and girth of limb, I never saw this creature equalled. The biggest St. Bernard I ever came across was almost a puppy to him. A tall man may lay his hand on the dog's back without the least degree of stoop; and the animal could not certainly stand erect under an ordinary table. "I suppose," I said to the clerk who showed me the works, "you have had many offers for that dog?" "My employer," he replied, "has refused one hundred pounds for him. But, even if we wished, we could not dispose of him: he is fond of the place and the people here; so that, though we might sell him, he wouldn't go with his new master; and I would like to see any four men in Bagnerre try to force him." That evening I fortunately did not include the whole company at the _table-d'hôte_. There was a young gentleman very much jewelled, and an elderly lady also very strongly got up in the way of brooches and bracelets, to whom the young gentleman was paying very assiduous but very forced attention. The lady was sulky, and sent _plat_ after _plat_ untasted away; and when her companion, as I thought, whispered a remonstrance, she snubbed him in great style; at which he bit his lip, turned all manner of colours, and then got moodily silent. I suspected that the young gentleman had married the old lady for her money, and was leading just as comfortable a life as he deserved. But, besides them, we had a couple of the gentlemen who are to be more or less found in every hotel in France--_commis voyageurs_, or commercial travellers. By the way, the aristocratic Murray lays his hand, or rather his "Hand-book," heavily about the ears of these gentlemen--castigating them a good deal in the Croker style, and with more ferocity than justice: "A more selfish, depraved, and vulgar, if not brutal set, does not exist;" "English gentlemen will take good care to keep at a distance from them," and "English ladies will be cautious of presenting themselves at a French _table-d'hôte_, except"--in certain cases specified. Now, I agree with Mr. Murray, that commercial travellers, French and English, are not distinguished by much polish of manner, or elegance of address; on the contrary, the style of their proceedings at table is frequently slovenly and coarse, and their talk is almost invariably "shop." In a word, they are not educated people, or gentlemen. But when we come to such expressions as "selfish, brutal, and depraved," I think most English travellers in France will agree with me, that the aristocratic hand-book maker is going more than a little too far. I have met scores of clever and intelligent _commis voyageurs_--hundreds of affable, good-humoured ones--thousands of decent, inoffensive ones. In company with a lady, I have dined at every species of _table-d'hôte_, in every species of hotel, from the Channel to the Mediterranean, and the Bay of Biscay to the Alps, and I cannot call to mind one instance of rudeness, or voluntary want of civility, from one end of our journey to the other; while scores and scores of instances of attention and kindness--more particularly when it was ascertained that my companion was in weak health--come thronging on me. I know that the French _commis voyageur_ looks after his own interest at table pretty sharply, and also that he is quite deficient in all the elegant little courtesies of society; but to say that he is brutal or depraved, because he is not a _petit maître_ and an _elegant_, is neither true nor courteous. If there be any set of Frenchmen to whose conduct at _table-d'hôtes_ strong expressions may be fairly applied, it is French officers, who sprung from a rank often inferior to that of the bagman, and, with all the coarseness of the barracks clinging to them, frequently cluster together in groups of half-a-dozen--scramble for all that is good upon the table--eat with their caps on, which the _commis voyageur_ only does in winter, when the bare and empty _salle_ is miserably cold--and in general behave with a coarse rudeness, and a tumultuous vulgarity, which I never saw private soldiers guilty of, either here or in France. But I must hurry my Pyrenean sketches to an end. The true South--I mean the Mediterranean-washed provinces--still lie before me; and I must perforce leap almost at a bound over a long and interesting journey through the little-known towns of the eastern Pyrenees--quiet, sluggish, tumble-down places, as St. Gaudens, St. Girons, and St. Foix, possessed neither of pump-rooms, nor warm-springs, but vegetating on, lazily and dreamily, in their glorious climate--for, after all, it does sometimes stop raining, and that for a few blazing months at a time, too. I would like to sketch St. Gaudens, with its broad-eaved, booth-like shops, and the snug town-hall, with pictures of old prefects and wigged _fermiers generaux_, into which they introduced me, and where they set all their municipal documents before me, when I applied for some information as to the landholding of the district. I would like to sketch at length a curious walled village on the head waters of the Garonne--a dead-and-gone sort of place, of which I asked an old man the name. "A poor place, sir," he said; "a poor place. Not worth your while looking at. All poor people here, sir--poor people; not worth your while speaking to. And the name--oh, a poor name, sir--not worth your while knowing; but, if you insist--why, then, it's Valentine." I would like to sketch the merry population in the hills round that dead-and-gone village--half farmers, half weavers, like the Saddleworth peasants, in Yorkshire--a jolly set--all sporting men, too, who give up their looms, and go into the woods after bears as boldly as Sir Peter de Bearne. And I would like, too, to try to bring before my reader's eye the viney valley of the Ariege, and the deep ravines through which the stream goes foaming, spanned by narrow bridges, each with a tower in the centre, where the warder kept his guard, and opened and shut the huge, iron-bound doors, and dropped and raised the portcullis at pleasure. And these old feudal memorials bring me to the castles and ruined towers so thickly peopling the land where lived the bands of adventurers, as Froissart calls them, by whom the fat citizens of the towns were wont to be "_guerroyés et harriés_," and most of which have still their legends of desperate sieges, and, too often, of foul murders done within their dreary walls. Pass, as I perforce must, however, and gain Provence--there is yet one legendary tale I cannot help telling. It is one of the best things in Froissart, and a little twisting would give it a famous satiric significance against a class of bores of our own day and generation. It relates to the lord of a castle not far from Tarbes, and was told to Froissart by a squire, "in a corner of the chapel of Orthez," during the visit paid by the canon to Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix--who, I am sorry to say, has been puffed, and most snobbishly exalted by the great chronicler into the ranks of the most noble chivalry, in return for splendid entertainment bestowed; whereas, in fact, Gaston Phoebus was a reckless murderer, possessed of neither faith nor honour. But, alas, the Canon of Chimay sometimes descended into the lowest depths of penny-a-lining, and "coloured" the cases just as a bribed police reporter does when a "respectable" gentleman gets into trouble. Gaston stabbed his son to death, in a dungeon; and the bold Froissart has actually the coolness to assert that the death of the heir took place, inasmuch as his father, in a rage, because he would not eat the dainties placed before him, struck him with his clenched fist, holding therein a knife with which he had been picking his nails, but the blade of which, says the lame apologist, only protruded a "groat's breadth" from his fingers,--the result being that the steel unfortunately happened to cut a vein in young Gaston's throat. The simple truth of the matter is, that the count was jealous of his son's being a favourite of the boy's mother, from whom he (the count) was separated--that he dreaded lest the wrongs of his wife might be avenged by her brother, the King of Navarre--and that he determined to starve the boy in a dungeon; but the child not dying so soon as was expected, his father went very coolly in to him, and cut his throat. "To speak briefly and truly," says Froissart, "the Count de Foix was perfect in body and mind, and no contemporary prince could be compared to him for sense, honour, and liberality." "To speak briefly and truly, Sir John Froissart," I reply, "you have written a charming and chivalrous chronicle; but you could take a bribe with any man of your time, and having done so, you could attempt to deceive posterity, and write down what you knew to be a lie, with as gallant a grace and easy swagger as the great Mr. Jonathan Wild himself." However, there are black spots in the sun--to the legend which I promised. The Lord of Corasse--a castle, by the way, in which Henri Quatre passed some portion of his boyish days--the Lord of Corasse had a quarrel touching tithes with a neighbouring priest, who being unable to obtain his dues by ordinary legal or illegal remedies, sent a spirit to haunt the castle of Corasse. This spirit proceeded to perform his mission by making a dreadful hallabuloo all night long, and breaking the crockery--so that very soon the Lord and Lady of Corasse had to dine without platters. At length, however, the Baron managed to come to speaking terms with the demon, who was invisible, and found out that his name was Orthon, and that the priest had sent him. "But Orthon, my good fellow," said the sly Lord of Corasse, "this priest is a poor devil, and will never be able to pay you handsomely. Throw him overboard at once, therefore, and come and take service with me." Orthon must have been the most fickle of all the devils, for he not only acceded to the proposition with astonishing readiness, but took such an affection to his new lord, that he could not be got out of his bedroom at night, to the sore discomfiture of the baroness, "who was so much frightened that the hairs of her head stood on end, and she always hid herself under the bed-clothes;" while the too familiar demon, never seen, but only heard, insisted on keeping his friend, the baron, chatting all night. But the charms of Orthon's conversation at length palled, particularly as they kept the baron night after night from his natural rest; so he took to despatching the demon all over Europe, collecting information for him of all that was going on in the courts and councils of princes, and at the scene of war where there happened to be fighting. Still, as Orthon moved as fast as a message by electric telegraph, the baron found him nearly as troublesome as ever. He was eternally coming in with intelligence which he insisted upon telling, until the Lord of Corasse's head was fairly turned by the amount of news he was obliged to listen to. Never had there been so indefatigable an agent. He would have been invaluable to a newspaper--but he was boring the Lord of Corasse to death. A loud thunder at the door at midnight. The baron would groan, for he knew well who was the claimant for admission. "Let me in, Let me in. I have news for thee from Hungary or England," as the case might be; and the baron, groaning in soul and body, would get up and let the demon in; while the latter would immediately commence his recitation: "Let me sleep. Let me sleep, for Heaven's sake!" the victim would exclaim. "I have not told thee half the news," would be Orthon's reply; "I will not let thee sleep until I have told thee the news;" and he would go on with his budget of foreign intelligence till the day scared him, and left the baron and the baronness to broken and unrefreshing slumbers. Froissart narrates that at length the demon consented to appear in a visible form to the baron; that he took the shape of a lean sow, upon which the Lord of Corasse ordered the dogs to be let loose upon the animal, which straightway disappeared, and Orthon was never seen after. I suspect, however, that Sir John was hoaxed in this respect. He clearly did not see the fun of the story, which is very capable of being resolved into an allegory--the fact being that the demon was some gentleman of the priest's acquaintance, with supernatural powers of boring whom he let loose upon the recalcitrant tithe-payer, until the arrears were at length paid up. The sow which disappeared was clearly no other than a tithe-pig. CHAPTER XI. LANGUEDOC--THE "AUSTERE SOUTH"--BEZIERS AND THE ALBIGENSES--THE FOUNTAIN OF THE GREVE AND PIERRE PAUL RIQUET--ANTICIPATIONS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN--THE MISTRAL--THE OLIVE COUNTRY ABOUT BEZIERS--THE PEASANTS OF THE SOUTH--RURAL BILLIARD-PLAYING. Again in the banquette of the diligence, which, rolling on the great highway from Toulouse to Marseilles, has taken me up at Carcassone, and will deposit me for the present at Beziers. We have entered in Languedoc, the most early civilised of the provinces which now make up France--the land where chivalry was first wedded to literature--the land whose tongue laid the foundations of the greater part of modern poetry--the land where the people first rebelled against the tyranny of Rome--the land of the Menestrals and the Albigenses. People are apt to think of this favoured tract of Europe as a sort of terrestrial paradise--one great glowing odorous garden--where, in the shade of the orange and the olive-tree, queens of love and beauty, crowned the heads of wandering Troubadours. The literary and historic associations have not unnaturally operated upon our common notions of the country; and for the "South of France," we are very apt to conjure up a brave, fictitious landscape. Yet this country is no Eden. It has been admirably described, in a single phrase, the "Austere South of France." It _is_ austere--grim--sombre. It never smiles: it is scathed and parched. There is no freshness or rurality in it. It does not seem the country, but a vast yard--shadeless, glaring, drear, and dry. Let us glance from our elevated perch over the district we are traversing. A vast, rolling wilderness of clodded earth, browned and baked by the sun; here and there masses of red rock heaving themselves above the soil like protruding ribs of the earth, and a vast coating of drowthy dust, lying like snow upon the ground. To the left, a long ridge of iron-like mountains--on all sides rolling hills, stern and kneaded, looking as though frozen. On the slopes and in the plains, endless rows of scrubby, ugly trees, powdered with the universal dust, and looking exactly like mopsticks. Sprawling and straggling over the soil beneath them, jungles of burnt-up, leafless bushes, tangled, and apparently neglected. The trees are olives and mulberries--the bushes, vines. Glance again across the country. It seems a solitude. Perhaps one or two distant figures, grey with dust, are labouring to break the clods with wooden hammers; but that is all. No cottages--no farmhouses--no hedges--all one rolling sweep of iron-like, burnt-up, glaring land. In the distance, you may espy a village. It looks like a fortification--all blank, high stone walls, and no windows, but mere loop-holes. A square church tower gloomily and heavily overtops the houses, or the dungeon of an ancient fortress rears its massive pile of mouldering stone. Where have you seen such a landscape before? Stern and forbidding, it has yet a familiar look. These scrubby, mop-headed trees--these formal square lines of huge edifices--these banks and braes, varying in hue from the grey of the dust to the red of the rock--why, they are precisely the back-grounds of the pictures of the renaissance painters of France and Italy. I was miserably disappointed with the olive. It is one of the romantic trees, full of association. It is a biblical tree, and one of the most favoured of the old eastern emblems. But what claim has it to beauty? The trunk, a weazened, sapless-looking piece of timber, the branches spreading out from it like the top of a mushroom, and the colour, when you can see it for dust, a cold, sombre, greyish green. One olive is as like another as one mopstick is like another. The tree has no picturesqueness--no variety. It is not high enough to be grand, and not irregular enough to be graceful. Put it beside the birch, the beech, the elm, or the oak, and you will see the poetry of the forest and its poorest and most meagre prose. So also, to a great extent, of the mulberry. I had a vague sort of respect for the latter tree, because one of the Champions of Christendom--St. James of Spain, I think--delivered out of the trunk of a mulberry an enchanted princess; but the enforced lodgings of the captive form just as shabby and priggish-looking a tree as the olive. The general shape--that of a mop--is the same, and a mutual want of variety and picturesqueness, afflict, with the curse of hopeless ugliness, both silk and oil-trees. The fig, in another way, is just as bad. It is a sneaking tree, which appears as if it were growing on the sly, while its soft, buttery-looking branches--bending and twisting, swollen and unwholesome-looking--put you somehow in mind of diseased limbs, which the quack doctors call "bad legs." In fact, it seems as if the climate and soil of Provence and Languedoc were utterly unfavourable to the production of forest scenery. One of our noble clumps of oak, beech, birch, and elm, at home, is worth, for splendid picturesqueness and rich luxuriance of greenery, every fig-tree which ever grew since fig-leaves were in vogue; every olive which ever grew since the dove from the ark plucked off a branch; and every mulberry which ever grew since St. James of Spain cut out the imprisoned princess. The menestrals of Languedoc no doubt gave our early bards many a poetic lesson; but I can imagine the hopeless stare of the Southern when the Northern rhymer, in return, would chant him a jolly Friar of Copmanhurst sort of stave about the "merry greenwood," and the joys of the "greenwood tree." As we roll along the dusty highway, intersecting the dusty fields, the dusty olives, and the dusty vines, I pray the reader to glance to the right, towards the summit of a chain of jagged, naked hills. These go by the name of the Black Mountains--a good "Mysteries of Udolpho" sort of title--and they form part of a range which separates the basin of the streams which descend to the north, and form the head waters of the Garonne, and those which descend to the south, and form the head waters of the Aude. Somewhere about 1670, the scattered shepherds who dwelt in these hills frequently observed a stranger, richly dressed, attended by two labouring-looking men, who paid him great reverence. The little party toiled up and down in the hills, and frequently erected and gathered round magical-looking instruments. "Holy Mary!" said the peasants, "they are sorcerers, and they are come to bewitch us all!" For years and years did the richly dressed man and the two labourers haunt the Black Mountains, wandering uneasily up and down, climbing ridges, and plunging into valleys, and always seeming to seek something which they could not find. At length, upon a glaring hot summer day, they came suddenly upon a young peasant, who was quenching his thirst at a fountain. The cavalier glanced at the spring, and caught the shepherd by his home-spun jacket. The boy thought he was going to be murdered, and screamed out; but a Louis-d'or quieted him in a moment. Then the cavalier, trembling with anxiety, exclaimed: "What fountain is this?" "The fountain of the Greve," said the boy. "And it runs both ways along the ridge of the hill?" "Ay; any fool may see that half of the water goes north, and half goes south--any fool knows that." "And I only discovered it now. Thank God!" We shall see who the cavalier, the discoverer of the fountain of the Greve, was, when we arrive at Beziers. Meantime the reader may be astonished that, after the cold frost and snow of the Pyrenees, a week or two later in the season brought me into a region of dry parched land, the sky blue and speckless from dawn to twilight--the sun glaringly hot, and the flying dust penetrating into the very pores of the skin. But we have left the mist-gathering and rain-attracting mountains, and we have entered the "austere South," where the sky for months and months is cloudless as in Arabia--where, at the season I traversed it, the sun being hot by day does not prevent the frost from being keen at night; and where the mistral, or north wind, nips your skin as with knives; while in every sheltered spot the noon-day heat bakes and scorches it. But such is Languedoc. As the evening closed in, we saw, duskily crowning a hill before us, a clustered old city, with grand cathedral towers, and many minor church steeples, cutting the darkening air. This is Beziers, where took place the crowning massacre of the Albigenses--the most learned, intellectual, and philosophic of the early revolters from the Church of Rome, and whom it is a perfect mistake to consider in the light of mere peasant fanatics, like the Camisards or the Vaudois. In this ancient city, beneath the shadow of these dim towers, more than twenty thousand men, women, and children, were slaughtered by the troops of orthodox France and Rome, led on and incited to the work by the Bishop of Beziers, one of the most black-souled bigots who ever deformed God's earth. When the soldiers could hardly distinguish in the darkness the heretics from the orthodox--although, indeed, they might have solved the problem by cutting down every intelligent man they saw--the loving pastor of souls roared out, "_Coedite omnes, coedite; noverit enim Dominus qui sunt ejus!_" It is to be fervently hoped, that, for the sake of the Bishop of Beziers, a certain other personage has long ago proved himself equally perspicuous and discriminating. We pulled up at Hotel du Nord, at Beziers, just as the _table-d'hôte_ bell was ringing; and I speedily found myself sitting down in a most gaily lighted _salon_, to a capital dinner, in the midst of a merry company. For the last ten miles of the way, I had been amusing myself by catching glimpses of a distant lighthouse; for I knew that it shone from a headland jutting into the Mediterranean. And the first glance at the Mediterranean was now my grand object of interest, as the first glance at the Pyrenees had been; and as, I remember, long ago, the first glance of France, of the Rhine, and the Alps, had each their turn. When, therefore, a dish of soles (stewed in oil, as the Jews cook them here--and the Jews are the only people in England who can cook soles,) was placed before me, I asked the waiter where the fish came from? "_Mais, monsieur_, where should they come from, but from the sea?" "You mean the Mediterranean?" "_Mais certainment, monsieur_; there is no sea but the Mediterranean sea." An observation which, coinciding with my own mental view for the moment, I quietly agreed in. In the market-place of Beziers stands the statue of a thoughtful and handsome man, dressed in the costume of the early period of Louis Quatorze, with flowing love-locks and peaked beard. His cloak has fallen unheeded from his shoulders, as he eagerly gazes on the ground--one hand holding a compass, the other a pencil. This is the statue of Pierre Paul Riquet, feudal seigneur of Bonrepos, and the cavalier who discovered the fountain of the Greve. That fountain solved a mighty problem--the possibility of connecting, by means of water communication, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean--the Garonne flowing into the one, with the Aude flowing into the other; and the formation of the Canal du Midi, doubled at a stroke the value of the Mediterranean provinces of France. Francis I., although our James called him a "mere fechting fule," dreamt of this. Henri and Sully projected the scheme; but it was only under Louis and Colbert that it was executed; and the bold and resolute engineer--he lived three quarters of a century before Brindley--was Pierre Paul Riquet. This man was one of those chivalric enthusiasts for a scheme--one of those gallant soldiers of an idea--who give up their lives to the task of making a thought a fact. He had laboured at least a dozen of weary years ere the court took up the plan. He had demonstrated the thing again and again to commissioners of notabilities, ere the first stone of the first loch was laid. The work went on; twelve thousand "navvies" laboured at the task; Riquet had sunk his entire fortune in it. In thirteen years, the toil was all but accomplished. In the coming summer the Canal du Midi would be opened--when Riquet died--the great cup of his life's ambition brimming untasted at his lips. Six months thereafter, a gay company of king's commissioners, gracefully headed by Riquet's two sons, rode through the channel of the water-courses from Beziers to Toulouse, and returned the next week by water, leading a jubilant procession of twenty-three great barges, proceeding from the west with cargoes for the annual fair held on the Rhone, at Beaucaire. Since Riquet's days, all his plans have been, one by one, carried out. His canal now runs to Agen, where it joins the Garonne; while at the other end, it is led through the chain of marshes and lagoons which extend along the Mediterranean, from Perpignan to the delta of the Rhone, joining the "swift and arrowy" river at Beaucaire. I have mentioned the mistral. I had heard a great deal previously about this wind, and while at Beziers, had the pleasure of making its personal acquaintance. This mistral is the plague and the curse of the Mediterranean provinces of France. The ancient historians mention it as sweeping gravel and stones up into the air. St. Paul talks of the south wind, which blew softly until there arose against it a fierce wind, called Euroclydon--certainly the mistral. Madame de Sevigne paints it as "_le tourbillon, l'ouregan, tous les diables dechainés qui veulent bien emporter votre chateau_;" and my amazement is, that the hurricane does not sometimes carry bodily off, if not a chateau, at least the ricketty villages of the peasants. I had but a taste of this wild, gusty, and most abominably drying and cutting wind; for the gale which blew for a couple of days over Beziers formed, I was told, only a very modified version of the true mistral; but it was quite enough to give a notion of the wind in the full height of its evil powers. The whole country was literally one moving cloud of dust. The roads, so to speak, smoked. From an eminence, you could trace their line for miles by the columns of white powdered earth driven into the air. As for the paths you actually traversed, the ground-down gravel was blown from the ruts, leaving the way scarred, as it were, with ridgy seams, and often worn down to the level of the subsidiary stratum of rock. The streaky, russet-brown of the fields was speedily converted into one uniform grey. Never had I seen anything more intensely or dismally parched up. As for any tree or vegetable but vines and olives--whose very sustenance and support is dust and gravel, thriving under the liability to such visitations--the thing was impossible. Nor was the dust by any means the only evil. The wind seemed poisonous; it made the eyes--mine, at all events--smart and water; cracked the lips, as a sudden alternation from heat to cold will do; caused a little accidentally inflicted scratch to ache and shoot; and finally, dried, hardened, and roughened the skin, until one felt in an absolute fever. The cold in the shade, let it be noted, was intense--a pinching, nipping cold, in noways frosty or kindly; while in sheltered corners the heat was as unpleasant, the blaze of an unclouded sun darting right down upon the parched and gleaming earth. All this, however, I was told, formed but a modified attack of mistral. The true wind mingles with the flying dust a greyish or yellowish haze, through which the sun shines hot, yet cheerless. I had, however, a specimen of the wind, which quite satisfied me, and which certainly enables me to affirm, that the coldest, harshest, and most rheumatic easterly gale which ever whistled the fogs from Essex marshes over the dripping and shivering streets of London, is a genial, balmy, and ambrosial zephyr, compared with the mistral of the ridiculously bepuffed climate of the South of France. Wandering about Beziers, so as to get the features of the olive country thoroughly into my head, I had a good deal of conversation with the scattered peasantry--a fierce, wild-looking set of people, dressed in the common blouse, but a perfectly different race from the quiet, mild, central and northern agriculturists. Their black, flashing eyes, so brimful of devilry--their wild, straight, black hair, shooting in straggling masses over their shoulders, and the fierce vehemence of gesticulation--the loud, passionate tone of their habitual speech--all mark the fiery and hot-blooded South. Go into a cabaret, into the high, darkened room, set round with tables and benches, and you will think the whole company are in a frantic state of quarrel. Not at all--it is simply their way of conversing. But if a dispute does break out, they leap, and scream, and glare into each other's eyes like demons, and the ready knife is but too often seen gleaming in the air. Here in the South you will note the change in the style of construction of the farmhouses, which are clustered in bourgs. Everything is on a great scale, to give air, the grand object being to let the breeze in, and keep the heat out. Shade is the universal desideratum. Every auberge has its huge _remise_--a vast, gloomy shed, into which carts and diligences drive, where the mangers of the horses stand, and where you will often see the carriers stretched out asleep. In large, messagerie hotels, these _remises_, ponderously built of vast blocks of stone, look like enormous catacombs, or vaults; and the stamping and neighing of the horses, and the rumbling of entering and departing vehicles, roll along the roof in thunder. Near Beziers, I came upon a good specimen of the South of France bourg, or agricultural village. Seen from a little distance, it had quite an imposing appearance--the white, commodious-looking mansions gleaming cheerily out through the dusky olive-grounds. A closer inspection, however, showed the real nakedness of the land. The high, white mansions became great clumsy barns--the lower stories occupied as living places, the windows above bursting with loads of hay and straw. The crooked, devious streets were paved with filthy heaps of litter and dung. Dilapidated ploughs and harrows--their wooden teeth worn down to the stumps--lay hither and thither round the great gaunt, unpainted doorways. The window-shutters of every occupied room were shut as closely as port-holes in a gale of wind, and here and there a wandering pig or donkey, or a slatternly woman sifting corn upon a piece of sacking stretched before her door, or a purblind old crone knitting in the sun, formed the only moving objects which gave life to the dreary picture. In this village, however, dreary as it was, I found a _café_ and a billiard-table. Where, indeed, in France will you not? Except in the merest jumble of hovels, you can hardly traverse a hamlet without seeing the crossed cues and balls figuring on a gaily painted house. You may not be able to purchase the most ordinary articles a traveller requires, but you can always have a game at pool. I have frequently found billiard-rooms in filthy little hamlets, inhabited entirely by persons of the rank of English agricultural labourers. At home, we associate the game with great towns, and, perhaps, with the more dissipated portion of the life of great towns. Here, even with the thoroughly rustic portion of the population, the game seems a necessary of life. And there are, too--contrary to what might have been expected--few or no make-shift-looking, trumpery tables. The _cafés_ in the Palais Royal, or in the fashionable Boulevards, contain no pieces of furniture of this description more massive or more elaborately carved and adorned than many I have met with in places hardly aspiring to the rank of villages. It has often struck me, that the billiard-table must have cost at least as much as the house in which it was erected; but the thing seemed indispensable, and there it was in busy use all day long. A correct return of the number of billiard-tables in France would give some very significant statistics relative to the social customs and lives of our merry neighbours. It would be an odd indication of the habits of the people, should there be found to be five times as many billiard-tables in France as there are mangles; and I for one firmly believe that such would be the result of an impartial perquisition. Besides the _billard_ and the newspapers--little provincial rags, with which an English grocer would scorn to wrap up an ounce of pigtail--there are, of course, cards and dominoes for the frequenters; and they are in as great requisition all day as the balls and cues. I like--no man likes better--to see the toilers of the world released from their labours, and enjoying themselves; but after all there is something, to English ways of thinking, desperately idle in the scene of a couple of big, burly working men, sitting in the glare of the sunlight the best part of the day, wrangling over a greasy pack of cards, or rattling dominoes upon the little marble tables. I once remarked this to an old French gentleman. "True--too true," he replied; "it was Bonaparte did the mischief. He made--you know how great a proportion of the country youth of France--soldiers. When they returned--those who did return--they had garrison tastes and barrack habits; and those tastes and habits it was which have brought matters to the pass, that you can hardly travel a league, even in rural France, without hearing the click of the billiard balls." CHAPTER XII. THE TRACK-BOAT ON THE CANAL DU MIDI--APPROACH TO THE MEDITERRANEAN--SALT-MARSHES AND SALT-WORKS--A CIRCUS THRASHING-MACHINE--THE MEDITERRANEAN AND ITS CRAFT--CETTE AND ITS MANUFACTURED WINES, WITH A PRIEST'S VIEWS ON GOURMANDISE. I left Beziers for the Mediterranean, by Pierre Paul Riquet's canal. The track-boat passes once a-day, taking upwards of thirty-five hours to make the passage from Toulouse to Cette. The Beziers station is about a mile from the town; and on approaching it early in the morning, I found a crowd of people collected on the banks, looking at men dragging the canal with huge hooks at the end of poles. They were searching for the body of a poor fellow from Beziers, who had drowned himself under very remarkable circumstances; and just as the packet-boat came up, the corpse was raised, stark and stiff, almost from beneath it. The deceased was a _decrotteur_, or boot-cleaner, and a light porter at Beziers--a quiet, inoffensive man, who, by dint of untiring industry, and great self-denial, had scraped together upwards of two hundred and fifty francs, all of which he lent another _decrotteur_, without taking legal security for the money. After the stipulated term for the loan had elapsed, the poor lender naturally pressed for his cash. He was put off from month to month with excuses; and when, at length, he became urgent for repayment, the debtor laughed in his face, told him to do his best and his worst, and get his money how he could. The _decrotteur_ went away in a state of frenzy, and procured and charged a pistol, with which he returned to the rascal borrower. "Will you pay me?--ay or no?" he said. "No," replied the other; "go about your business." The creditor instantly levelled his pistol and fired. Down went his antagonist, doubled up in a heap on the road, and away went the assassin as hard as his legs could carry him, to a bridge leading over the canal, from the parapet of which he leaped into the water; while, as he disappeared, the _quasi_ murdered man got up again, with no other damage than a face blackened by the explosion of the pistol. He had fallen through terror, for he was absolutely unscathed. The travelling by the Canal du Midi is a sleepy and monotonous business enough. Mile after mile, and league after league, the boat is gliding along between grassy or rushy banks, and rows of poplar, and sometimes of acacia trees, the monotonous tramp of the team upon the bank mingling with the endless gurgle of the waters beneath. The towing paths are generally very lifeless. Now and then a solitary peasant, with his heavy sharp-pointed hoe--an implement, in fact, half hoe and half pick-axe--upon his shoulder, saunters up to see the boat go by; or a shepherd, whistling to his flock, paces slowly at their head, wandering to and fro in search of the greenest bits of pasture; or a handful of jabbering women, from some neighbouring bourg, will be squatted along the water's edge, certainly not obeying Napoleon's injunction to wash their _linge sale en famille_, but pounding away at sheets and shirts with heavy stones or wooden mallets--the counterparts of the instruments used in Scotland to "get up" fine linen, and there called "beetles." The bridges are shot cleverly. At a shout from the steersman, the postillion, who rides one of the hindmost horses of the team, jumps off, casts loose the tow-line, runs with the end of it to the centre of the bridge, drops it aboard as the boat comes beneath, catches it up again on the opposite side, flies back after his horses which have trotted very tranquilly ahead, hooks on the rope again, jumps into his saddle, cracks his long whip, and the boat is off again in full career long ere she has lost her former headway. Little of the country can be seen from the deck, but along the southern and eastern half of the canal you seldom lose sight of the dusty tops of the formal olive groves, varied now and then by a stony slope covered with ugly, sprawling vines, and as you approach the sea, dotted with white, little country houses--of which more hereafter--the glimpses of the changing picture being continually set in a brown frame of sterile hills. The boats are long and narrow; the cabins like corridors, but comfortably cushioned and stuffed, so that you can sleep in them, even if the boat be tolerably crowded, as well as in a diligence. If there be few passengers, you will have full-length room. The _restaurant_ on board is excellent--as good as that on the Garonne boats, and very cheap. Let all English travellers, however, beware of the steward's department on the Loire and Rhone steamers, in both of which I have been thoroughly swindled. The style of people who seemingly use the track-boat on the Canal du Midi, are the _rotonde_ class of diligence passengers. Going down to Cette, there were two or three families, almost entirely composed of females, aboard; the elder ladies--horrid, snuffy old women, who were always having exclusive cups of chocolate or coffee, or little basins of soup, and who never appeared to move from the spots on which they were deposited since the voyage began. Two of these families had canaries in cages, a very common practice in France, where the people continually try, even in travelling, to keep their household gods about them. Look at the baggage of your Frenchman _en voyage_. All the old clothes of the last dozen of years are sure to be lugged about in it. There is, perhaps, a pormanteau, exclusively devoted to old boots, and half-a-dozen pasteboard hat-boxes, with half-a-dozen hats, utterly beyond wearing. The plague of all this baggage is dreadful; but the proprietor would go through any amount of inconvenience rather than lose one stitch of his innumerable old _hardes_. After passing the headland and dull old town of Agde, the former crowned by the lighthouse I had seen from the road to Beziers, we fairly entered into the great zone of salt swamps which here line the Mediterranean. It was a desolate and dreary prospect. The land on either side stretched away in a dead flat; now dry and parched, again traversed by green streaks of swamp, and anon broken by clear, shallow pools of water. Sometimes, again, you entered a perfect jungle of huge bulrushes, stretching away as far as the eye could follow, and evidently teeming with wild ducks, which rose in vast coveys, and flew landward or seaward in their usual wedge-shaped order of flight. The sea, to which we were approaching at a sharp angle, was still invisible, but you felt the refreshing savour of the brine in the air, and now and then you caught, sparkling for a moment in the bright, hot sunshine, a distant jet of feathery spray, as a heavier wave than common came thundering along the beach. Presently, the brown waste through which we were passing became streaked with whitish belts and patches--the salt left by the evaporation of the brine, which now begins to soak and well through the spongy soil, and presently to expand into lakes and shallow belts of water. Across these, long rows of stakes for nets, stretched away in endless column, and here and there a rude, light boat floated, or a fisherman slowly waded from point to point. Great herons and cranes stood like sentinels in the shallow water, and flocks of sandpipers and plovers ran along the white salt-powdered sand. Then came on the left, or landward side, a series of tumuli of pyramidical form, some of them white, others of a dark brown, scattered over a space of scores of square miles. I wondered who were the inhabitants of this lake of the dismal swamp, and accordingly pointed out the houses, as I conceived them, to the captain. "Houses, monsieur!" he said; "these are all salt heaps. Salt is the harvest of this country, and they stack it in these piles, just as the people inland do their corn. When the heap is not expected to be wanted soon, they thatch it with reeds and grass; but if they expect to get a quick sale, they don't take the trouble. So you see that some of the heaps are dark, and the others like snow-balls." "But if there come rain?" "Not much fear of that in this part of the world. There may be a shower, but the salt is so hard and compacted, that it will do little more than wash the dirt off." [Illustration: THRASHING CORN.] Presently we came to the salt-making basins--great shallow lakes, divided by dykes into squares somewhat in the style of a chess-board; and here the solitude of the expanse was broken by the figures of the workmen clambering along the narrow dykes to watch and superintend the progress of evaporation. By the side of these lakes, rows of ugly rectangular cottages were erected, and slight carts drawn by two horses, one ahead of the other, moved the loads of salt from the pans, or pools, to the heaps in which it was stored. Here and there, where the ground rose a little, a thin crop of maize, or barley, appeared to have been cultivated; and it was probably some such harvest that I saw being thrashed by the peculiar process in use all through Provence and southern Languedoc. There are very few thrashing mills, even in the best cultivated parts of France. Over the vast proportion of the kingdom, the orthodox old flail bears undisturbed sway; but the farmer of the far South chooses rather to employ horse than human muscles in the work. He lays down, therefore, in a handy spot, a circular pavement, generally of brick, a little larger than the ring at Astley's. All along the swampy shores of the Mediterranean, traversed by the delta of the Rhone, and stretching westward towards Spain, there feed upon the scanty herbage great herds of semi-wild horses, said to have been originally of Arabian descent. These creatures are caught, when needed, much in the style of the Landes desert steeds, and every farmer has a right to a certain number corresponding with the size of his farm. When, then, the harvest has been cut, and the thrashing time comes on, you may see, approaching the steeding, an unruly flock of lean, lanky, leggy horses, most of them grey, driven by three or four mounted peasants--capital cavaliers--each with a long lance like a trident held erect, and a lasso coiled at the saddle-bow. Then work commences: the wild steeds are tolerably docile, although shy and skittish. A heavy bit is forced into the mouth of each, with a long bridle attached. The creatures are arranged in a circle on the edge of the brick flooring, exactly as when Mr. Widdicombe or M. Franconi prepare for an unrivalled feat of horsemanship upon eight bare-backed steeds by the "Whirlwind Rider," surnamed the "Pet of the Ring," or the famous artiste, "Herr Bridleinski, the Hungarian Tamer of the Flying Steeds." The sheaves of corn are placed just where the active grooms at Astley's rake the sawdust thickest; and then, in answer to the thundering exhortations of Mr. Widdicombe and his coadjutors in the centre of the ring, and the cracking of the whips, the horses, held by their long bridles, go plunging and rearing round the arena, and, after more or less obstreperousness, settle into a shambling trot, treading out the corn as they go, and preserving the pace for a wonderful length of time. At night, the creatures are released, and left to shift for themselves. They seldom stray far from the farm, and are easily recaptured and brought back to work next day. The four-legged thrashers, I am sorry to say, are rather scurvily treated, for they get nothing in return for their labour better than straw--a poor diet for a day's trot. The first time I saw this equestrian thrashing-machine in motion, the effect was very odd. I could not dissociate it from the equestrian performance of some wandering company of high-bred steeds and "star riders." The only thing that seemed strange was, that there should be no spectators; and, after a little time, that there should be no human performers. Round and round, at a long, irregular trot, went the lanky brutes--sometimes breaking out--plunging, and taking it into their heads, as their Rochester cousin, hired by Mr. Winkle, did, to go sideways, but always reduced to obedience by a few smacking persuaders from the whip. But where was the illustrious Whirlwind Rider, who should have stood on all their necks at once, or the famous Bridleinski, who should have stood on all their haunches? No shrill clown's voice echoed from the circus. The stolid, bloused, straw-hatted master of the ring was a perfect disgrace and reproach to Mr. Widdicombe, who, if he had been on board the boat, would infallibly have taken refuge in the run, rather than contemplated such a melancholy mockery of his mission and his functions. At length there gleamed before us a noble sheet of water, ruffled by a steady breeze, before which one of the Lateen-rigged craft of the Mediterranean was bowling merrily, driving a rolling wave of foam on either side of her bluff bows. This was the Lagoon, or Etang, of Thau, a salt-water lake about a dozen of miles long, and opening up by a narrow channel--on both banks of which rises the flourishing town of Cette--into the Mediterranean. For the greater part of its length, only a strip of sand and shingle interposes between the lake and the sea, and as the steamer to which we were transferred, at the end of the canal, paddled its way to Cette, we could see every moment the surf of the open ocean rising beyond the barrier. The passage along the Etang is pretty and characteristic. On the left lie, in a long, blue chain, the hills of the Cevennes--distance hiding their barren bleakness from the eye--while along the inland edge of the water, village after village, the houses sparklingly white, are mirrored in the lake, with a little fleet of lateen-rigged fishing boats, the sails usually very ragged, pursuing their occupation before each hamlet. Now and then we were passed by huge feluccas, rolling away before the wind, and bound for the Canal du Midi, with great cargoes of hay and straw, heaped up half as high as the mast--the lateen-sail having to be half furled in consequence, and the captain shouting his orders to the steersman as from the top of a stack in a barnyard. The scene reminded me greatly of the hay-barges of the Thames bringing up to London the crops of Kent and Essex. At length we were landed among groups of Mediterranean sailors, with Phrygian caps--otherwise conical red night-caps--and ugly-looking knives in their belts. The women had the usual Naiad peculiarity of short petticoats, and wore them, too, of a showy, striped stuff, which reminded me of the Newhaven fish-wives, near Edinburgh. This Phrygian cap, by the way, is the prototype of the ordinary cap of liberty, which our good neighbours are so fond of sticking on the stumps of what they call "trees of liberty"--of painting, of carving, of apostrophising, of waving, of exalting--which, in short, they are so fond of doing everything with--but wearing. The effect, as a head-dress, on the Cette fishermen, was not unpleasant. The long, conical top, and tassel, give a degree of drapery to the figure, and the cap itself seems luxuriously comfortable to the head. A well-appointed little omnibus rattled me through busier streets than I had seen for many a day, by open counting-houses, and under the great lateen yards of feluccas lying in rows, with their bows to the quays, and across a light, wooden swing-bridge, haunted by just such tarry mortals as you see about St. Katherine's docks; and at length I was set down at the wide portal of the Hotel de Poste--a straggling, airy hostelry, such as befits the hot and glaring South. Still, I had not seen the Mediterranean. The great _coup_ was yet unachieved: so, getting five words of instruction from a waiter, I hurried through some narrow streets, crossed two or three more swing-bridges, skirted half-a-dozen boat-building yards, very like similar establishments in Wapping, and then suddenly emerged upon the open beach, with sand-hills, and long bent, or seagrass, rustling in the soft southern wind, with the blue of the great inland sea stretching away, deep and lovely, before me; and with the hissing water and foam-laced inner wavelets of the surf creaming to my feet. A sensation, it will be admitted, is a pleasant thing in these _blasé_ days, and the Mediterranean afforded one. There came on me a vague, crowded, and indistinct vision, at once, of schoolboy recollections and many a subsequent day-dream--of Roman galleys, _triremes_ and _quadremes_, with brazen beaks and hundred oars, moving like the legs of a centipede; of all the picturesque craft of the middle-ages; of the fleets of Venice; the argosies and tall merchant-barks which carried on the rich commerce of northern Italy; of the Algerine corsairs, which so often bore down upon the Lion of St. Marks; of the quick-pulling piratical craft; the rovers who pillaged from the mouths of the Nile to the Pillars of Hercules; and of the whole tribe of modern Mediterranean vessels, which thousands and thousands of pictures have made classic, with their high peaked sails, and striped gaudy canvass; the whole tribe of feluccas and polacres, whereof, as I gazed, I could see here and there the scattered sails, gleaming like bird-wings upon the sea. The Mediterranean is, after all, the sea of the world: we associate it with everything classic and beautiful, either in art or climate; and although we know well that its lazy, saint-ridden seamen, and its picturesque, but dirty and ill-sailed, vessels would fly before a breeze which a North-sea fisherman or a Channel boatman would consider a mere puff,--still there is something racily and specially picturesque about the black-eyed, swarthy, copper ear-ringed rascals, and something dearly familiar about the high, graceful peaks of the sails around which they cluster. From the beach I went to the harbour, which was crowded almost to its entrance, but, for reasons to be presently alluded to, I was not sorry to recognise not one union-jack among the Stars and Stripes--Dutch and Brazilian ensigns, which were flying from every mast-head. Few Mediterranean harbours are savoury places. It will be remembered that "there shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea;" and accordingly, when the drainage of a town or a district is led into the harbours, there it stays. Marseilles enjoys a most unenviable notoriety in this respect. The horrible fluid beneath you becomes, in the summer time, despite its salt, absolutely putrid; and I was told that there had been instances in which it bred noisome and abhorrent insects and reptiles--that, literally and absolutely, "slimy things did crawl, with legs, upon the slimy sea." As for the stench, the richness of the steam of fat gases perpetually rising, must be smelt to be appreciated. The Marseillaise, however, have sturdy noses, which do not yield to trifles. They say the dirt preserves the ships, and besides, adds Dumas--a great favourer of the ancient colony of the Greeks--"what a fool a man must be, who, under such a glorious sky, turns his eyes down to gaze on mud and water!" The harbour of Cette is not quite so bad, but it has no particular transparency of water to recommend it. Brave its foulness, however, and go and visit the quays for the fishing-boats, as they are returning from their night's toil. Mark the Catalan craft--you will perhaps remember that the redoubted Monte Christo's first love was a Catalan girl, of a Catalan village near Marseilles:--did you ever see more exquisitely-formed boats afloat on the water? They swim apparently on the very surface--the curve of the gunwale rising to a gondola peak at stem and stern; but yet they are most buoyant sea-boats, and I suspect their speed, particularly in light winds, would put even that of the Yankee pilot-boats to a severe test. Look, too, at their cargoes, as the slippery masses are being shovelled up in glancing, gleaming spadefuls, to the quays. Did you ever see such odd fish? Respectable haddocks, decent and well-to-do cods, and unpretending soles, would never be seen in such strange, eccentric company--among fellows with heads bigger than bodies, and eyes in their backs, and tails absurdly misplaced, and feelers or legs where no fish with well-regulated minds would dream of having such appendages--never was there seen such a strange _omnium gatherum_ of piscatory eccentricities as the fishes of the Mediterranean. I said that it was good--good for our stomachs--to see no English bunting at Cette. The reason is, that Cette is a great manufacturing place, and that what they manufacture there is neither cotton nor wool, Perigord pies, nor Rheims biscuits,--but wine. "_Ici_," will a Cette industrial write with the greatest coolness over his Porte Cochere--"_Ici on fabrique des vins._" All the wines in the world, indeed, are made in Cette. You have only to give an order for Johannisberg, or Tokay--nay, for all I know, for the Falernian of the Romans, or the Nectar of the gods--and the Cette manufacturers will promptly supply you. They are great chemists, these gentlemen, and have brought the noble art of adulteration to a perfection which would make our own mere logwood and sloe-juice practitioners pale and wan with envy. But the great trade of the place is not so much adulterating as concocting wine. Cette is well-situated for this notable manufacture. The wines of southern Spain are brought by coasters from Barcelona and Valencia. The inferior Bordeaux growths come pouring from the Garonne by the Canal du Midi; and the hot and fiery Rhone wines are floated along the chain of etangs and canals from Beaucaire. With all these raw materials, and, of course, a chemical laboratory to boot, it would be hard if the clever folks of Cette could not turn out a very good imitation of any wine in demand. They will doctor you up bad Bordeaux with violet powders and rough cider--colour it with cochineal and turnsole, and outswear creation that it is precious Chateau Margaux--vintage of '25. Champagne, of course, they make by hogsheads. Do you wish sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Levant? The Cette people will mingle old Rhone wines with boiled sweet wines from the neighbourhood of Lunel, and charge you any price per bottle. Do you wish to make new Claret old? A Cette manufacturer will place it in his oven, and, after twenty-fours' regulated application of heat, return it to you nine years in bottle. Port, Sherry, and Madeira, of course, are fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap wine and brandy, for a stock, and with half the concoctions in a druggist's shop for seasoning. Cette, in fact, is the very capital and emporium of the tricks and rascalities of the wine-trade; and it supplies almost all the Brazils, and a great proportion of the northern European nations with their after-dinner drinks. To the grateful Yankees it sends out thousands of tons of Ay and Moet, besides no end of Johannisberg, Hermitage, and Chateau Margaux, the fine qualities and dainty aroma of which are highly prized by the transatlantic amateurs. The Dutch flag fluttered plentifully in the harbour, so that I presume Mynheer is a customer to the Cette industrials--or, at all events, he helps in the distribution of their wares. The old French West Indian colonies also patronise their ingenious countrymen of Cette; and Russian magnates get drunk on Chambertin and Romanee Conti, made of low Rhone, and low Burgundy brewages, eked out by the contents of the graduated phial. I fear, however, that we do come in--in the matter of "fine golden Sherries, at 22_s._ 9-1/2_d._ a dozen," or "peculiar old-crusted Port, at 1_s._ 9_d._"--for a share of the Cette manufactures; and it is very probable that after the wine is fabricated upon the shores of the Mediterranean, it is still further improved upon the banks of the Thames. At dinner-time, I found myself placed by the side of a benevolent-looking old priest, with white hair, but cheeks and gills of the most approved rubicund hue, who first eyed the dishes through a pair of vast golden spectacles, and meditated profoundly ere he made a choice--waving away the eternal _bouilli_ with an expression which showed that he was not the man to spoil a good appetite with mere boiled beef. This worthy, hearing me making interest with the waiter for a peculiar bottle of wine, not of native manufacture, smiled paternally, and with an approving countenance: "I would recommend," he said, softly, and in a fat voice, "you to try Masdeu; and, if you please, I will join you. I know Gilliaume (the waiter) of old. _C'est un bon enfant._" And then, in a severe voice, "_The_ Masdeu, William." The priest was clearly at home; and presently the wine came. It had the brightly deep glow of Burgundy, a bouquet not unlike Claret, and tasted like the lightest and purest Port glorified and etherealised; in fact, it was a rare good wine. "Ah!" said the priest, pouring out a second glass; "the vineyard where this was grown once belonged to the Church. The Knights of the Temple once drank this wine, and the Knights of St. John after them. It is a good wine." "The Church understood the grape," I remarked. "I have drunk Hermitage where the recluse fathers tended the vines, and have always looked upon Rhone wine as one of the reasons why the Holy Father at Avignon was long so loath to be the Holy Father at Rome." "Wine," replied my compotator, "is not forbidden, either by the laws of God or the Church; and never was. Only the Vulgate denounces mixed wines." "By the mixed wines prohibited in Holy Writ," said I, "I presume you understand adulterated, not watered liquors. If so, we are in a sad city of sinners." The priest smiled, but changed the topic. "Masdeu," he said, "is Catalan; you know the wine is grown not far from Perpignan, where the people are half Spanish. Do you know the meaning of Masdeu? It is a very old name for the vineyard, and it signifies 'God's field.'" I thought of the difference of national character between the French and the Germans--"God's field" in France, a vineyard; "God's field" in Germany, a churchyard. "The ancient Romans," continued my friend, "liked the wines, the sweet wines of this country, better than any other growths in Gaul." "The Romans," I said, "had a most swinish taste in wines, and dishes too. The Falernian was boiled syrup, cooked up with drugs, and tempered with salt water. Only think of mixing brine with your tipple; or of placing it in a _fumarium_, to imbibe the flavour of the smoke! The Romans were mere liqueur drinkers. Aniseed, or maraschino, or parfait amour, or any trash of that kind, would have suited them better than genuine, fine-flavoured wine." "_Pourtant_;" said my friend; "you go too far; maraschino and parfait amour are not trash. Although I agree with you, that the palate which eternally appeals for sweets is in a morbid condition. But the Romans, after all, must have had tongues of peculiar nicety for some savours. A Roman epicure could tell, by the relative tenderness, the leg upon which a partridge had been in the habit of sitting at night, and whether a carp had been caught above or below a certain bridge." "Or was it not," I asked, with hazy reminiscences of Juvenal floating about me,--"was it not a certain sewer--the Cloaca Maxima, perhaps?" "Only," argued the priest in continuation, "I could never understand their fondness for lampreys." "Perhaps," said I, "it is because you never tasted them after they had been fattened on slaves." "Perhaps it is," replied the good man, musing. By this time dinner was over, and the guests gone. We had the remains of the dessert, the pick-tooths, and another bottle of the Catalan wine to ourselves. "You French," I ventured, "hardly seem worthy of your fine wines. You never appear to care about them; you seldom sit a moment after dinner to enjoy them; and if you relish anything more than another, it is Champagne, which, after all, is but a baby taste. All your very best wine goes to England; most of your second-class growths to Russia; and your lower sorts to the northern nations on the Baltic. I don't think there is anything like a generally cultivated taste for good wine in France, and yet you are supreme in the _cuisine_." "It was the _fermiers generaux_, and the _financiers_," replied the priest, "who made French cookery what it is. They tried to outshine the old noblesse at table; they revived truffles, and they had the first dishes of green pease, at eight hundred francs a _plat_. Next to the financiers were the chevaliers and the abbés. _Oh, mon Dieu! qu'ils étaient gourmands ces chers amis_; the chevaliers all swagger and dash; the sword right up and down--shoulder-knot flaunting--a bold bearing and a keen eye. The abbés, in velvet and silk--as fat as carps, as sleek as moles, and as soft-footed as cats--little and sly--perfect enjoyers of the gourmandise. Oh, there was nothing more snug than an _abbé commanditaire_! He had consideration, position, money; no one to please, and nothing to do." "These were the good old times," I said. "_Ma foi!_" replied the clerical dignitary; "they were bad times for France in general; but they were rare times for the few who lived upon it. There were Frenchmen, at any rate, then, who understood wine; at least, they drunk enough of it to understand the science, from the alpha to the omega." We parted, after a proper degree of hand-shaking; and a quarter of an hour afterwards I was rattling along the Montpellier and Cette railway, with a ticket for Lunel in my pocket. CHAPTER XIII. MORE ABOUT THE OLIVE-TREE--THE GATHERING OF THE OLIVES--LUNEL--A NIGHT WITH A SCORE OF MOSQUITOES--AIGUES-MORTES--THE DEAD LANDSCAPE--THE MARSH FEVER--A STRANGE CICERONE--THE LAST CRUSADING KING--THE SALTED BURGUNDIANS--THE POISONED CAMISARDS--THE MEDITERRANEAN. Passing, for the present, Montpellier, where people with consumptions used to be sent to swallow dust, as likely to be soothing to the lungs, and to breathe the balmy zephyrs of the whispering mistral, I made straight for Lunel, in order to get from thence to one of the strangest old towns in France--Aigues-Mortes. All around us, as we hurried on, were vines and olives--a true land of wine and oil. The olive-tree did not improve on acquaintance--it got uglier and uglier--more formal, and more cast-iron looking, the more you saw of it. And then it was invariably planted in rows, at regular intervals, so as to give the notion of a prim old garden--never of a wood. Like all fruit-trees in France, the olive is most carefully trimmed, and clipped, and tortured, and twisted into the most approved or fashionable shape. The man who can make his _oliviers_ look most like umbrellas is the great cultivator; and the services of the peasants who have got a reputation for olive dressing are better paid than those of any agricultural labourers in France. They are eternally snipping and slashing, and turning and twisting the tree, until the unfortunate specimens have had any small degree of natural ease and harmony which they possessed assiduously wrenched out of them. And yet there are people in the South of France who are enthusiastic on the hidden beauty of the olive. There are technical terms for all the particular spreads and contortions given to the branches; and the olive amateur will hold forth to you by the hour upon the subtle charms of each. A gentleman from beyond Marseilles has dilated with rapture to me on his delight, after a residence in Normandy, in returning again to the hot South, and revisiting the dear olives, so prim, and orderly, and symmetrical--not like the huge, straggling, sprawling oaks and elms of the North, growing up in utter defiance of all rule and system. The olives of France, this gentleman informed me, are very inferior to the trees of a couple of generations ago. Towards the close of the last century, there was a winter night of intense frost; and when the morning broke, the trees were nearly smitten to the core. That year there was not an olive gathered in Provence or Languedoc. The next season, some of the stronger and younger trees partially revived, and slips were planted from those to which the axe had been applied; but the entire species of the tree, he assured me, had fallen off--had dwindled, and pined, and become stunted; and the profits of olive cultivation had faded with it. The gentleman spoke on the subject with a degree of unction which would have suited the fall, not of the olive, but of man. It was a catastrophe which coloured his whole life. He was himself an olive proprietor; and very likely his fortunes fell on the fatal night as many points as the thermometer. On our way to Lunel we saw the olive-gathering just beginning; but, alas! it had none of the gaiety and bright associations of the vintage. On the contrary, it was as business-like and unexciting as weeding onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants--the country people hereabouts are poorly dressed--were clambering barefoot in the trees, each man with a basket tied before him, and lazily plucking the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the olive-gatherers had spread a white cloth beneath the tree, and were shaking the very ripe fruit down; but there was neither jollity nor romance about the process. The olive is a tree of association, but that is all. Its culture, its manuring, and clipping, and trimming, and grafting--the gathering of its fruits, and their squeezing in the mill, when the ponderous stone goes round and round in the glutinous trough, crushing the very essence out of the oily pulps--while the fat, oleaginous stream pours lazily into the greasy vessels set to receive it;--all this is as prosaic and uninteresting as if the whole Royal Agricultural Society were presiding in spirit over the operations. And, after all, what could be expected? "Grapes," said a clever Frenchman, "are wine-pills"--the notion of conviviality and mirth is ever attached to them; and the vintagers, when stripping the loaded branches, have their minds involuntarily carried forward to the joyous ultimate results of their labours. But who--our friends the Russians, and their cousins the Esquimaux excepted--could possibly be jolly over the idea of oil? It may act balsamically and soothingly; and the idea of the olive saucer, green amongst the bright decanters, does approach, in some respect, towards the production of a pleasant association of ideas; but still the elevated and poetic feelings connected with the tree are remote and dim. It was Minerva's tree. When the gods assembled to decide the dispute between Pallas and Neptune, as to which should baptize the rising Athens, it was determined that the honour should belong to whichever of the twain presented the greatest gift to man. Neptune struck the earth, and a horse sprung to day. Minerva waved her hand, and the olive-tree grew up before the conclave. The goddess won the day, inasmuch as the sapient assemblage decided that the olive, as an emblem of peace, was better than the horse, as an emblem of war. Now, I would put this question to Olympus:--How could the olive or the horse be emblems before they were created? And, even if they were emblems, was not the point at issue the best gift--not the best allegorical symbol? I beg, therefore, to assure Neptune that I consider him to have been an ill-used individual, and to express a hope that, if he should ever again come into power, he will not forget my having paid my respects to him in his adversity. I do not know if I have anything particular to record respecting Lunel, which is a quiet, stupid, shadowy place, but that I passed the night engaged in mortal combat with a predatory band of mosquitoes. I was warned, before going to bed, to take care how I managed the operation, and to whip myself through the gauze curtains so as to allow nothing to enter _en suite_. The bed--I don't know why--had been placed in the middle of the room, and the filmy net curtains, like fairy drapery, were snugly tucked in beneath the bedding. Looking at them more particularly, I distinguished a little card, accidentally left adhering to the net, which informed me that it was the fabrication of those wondrous lace-machines of Nottingham; and I trusted that as Britannia rules the waves, she would also baffle the mosquitoes. Perhaps it was my own fault that she did not. I remembered Captain Basil Hall's admirable description of doing the wretched insects in question by leaping suddenly into bed, like harlequin through a clock-dial, and frantically closing up the momentary opening, and I performed the feat in question with as much agility as I could. But what has befallen the gallant captain, also on that night befell me. Mosquitoes shoot into a bed like the Whigs into office--through the most infinitesimal crevices--but with the entrance the resemblance ceases--once in office, with the country sleeping tolerably comfortably, the Whigs do nothing. Not so, the mosquitoes. Their policy is perfectly different, and their energies vastly greater. For a true sketch of the style of mosquito administration, I must again refer to Hall. His picture is true--true to a bite, to a scratch, to a hum. I might paint it again, but any one can see the original. So I content myself with simply stating that from eleven o'clock, P.M., till an unknown hour next morning, I was leaping up and down the bed, striking myself furious blows all over, but never, apparently, hitting my blood-thirsty enemies, and only now and then occasionally sinking into a momentary doze to be roused by that loud, clear trumpet of war--the very music of spite and pique and greediness of blood, circling round and round in the darkness, and ever coming nearer and nearer, till at last it ceased, and then came--the bite, as regularly as the applause after the cavatina of a prima donna. I made my appearance next morning, looking exactly as if I had been attacked in the night by measles, the mumps, swollen face, and erysipelas. Between Aigues-Mortes and Lunel, there is no public vehicle, because there is no travelling public; and so I hired a ricketty, shandry-dan looking affair, to take me on; and away we started, under a perfect blaze of hot, sickly sunshine. The road ran due south, through the vineyards and olives, but they gradually faded away as the soil got more and more spongy, and presently we saw before us a waste of the same sort as that which I have described on approaching the sea by the Canal du Midi. Shallow pools, salt marshes, and bulrush jungles, lay flat and silent, glaring in the sunshine--the watchful crane, the sole living creature to be seen amid these desolate swamps. It struck me that John Bunyan, had he ever seen a landscape like this strange, stagnant expanse of dreariness, would have made grand use of it in that great prose poem of his. Perhaps he would have called it "Dead Corpse Land," or the Slough--not of Despond, but of Despair. Presently we found the road running upon a raised embankment, with two great lakes, spotted with rushy islands on either hand, and before us a grim, grey tower, with an ancient gateway--the gates or portcullis long since removed, but a Gothic arch still spanning the roughly-paved causeway. As we rattled beneath it, two or three lounging _douaniers_ came forth, and looked lazily at us; and presently we saw the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes rising, massive and square, above the level lines of the marshes, fronted by one lone minaret, called the "Tower of Constance"--a gloomy steeple-prison, where, in the time of the Camisards, a crowd of women were confined--the wives and daughters of the brave Protestants of the Cevennes, who fought their country inch by inch against the dragoons of Louis Quatorze, and who--the prisoners, I mean--were forced to swallow poison by the agents of that right royal and religious king, the pious hero and Champion of the Faith, as it is in the Vatican. Outside the town looks like a mere fortification--you see nothing but the sweep of the massive walls reflected in the stagnant waters which lie dead around them. Not a house-top appears above the ramparts. It is only by the thin swirlings of the wood-fire smoke that you know that human life exists behind that blank and dreary veil of stone. We entered by a deep Gothic arch, and found ourselves in narrow, gloomy, silent streets, the houses grey and ghastly, and many ruinous and deserted. The rotten remnants of the green _jalousies_ were mouldering week by week away, and moss and lichens were creeping up the walls; many roofs had fallen, and of some houses only fragments of wall remained. The next moment we were traversing an open space, strewn with rubbish of stone, brick, and rotten wood, with patches of dismal garden-ground interspersed, and all round the dim, grey, silent houses, dismal and dead. Aigues-Mortes could, and once did, hold about ten thousand people. It was a city built in whim by a king, the last of the royal crusaders, Louis IX. of France. By him and his immediate descendants, it was esteemed a holy place--the crusading port. The walls built round it, and which still remain--as the empty armour, after the knight who once filled it is dead and gone--were erected in imitation of those of the Egyptian town of Damietta, and all sorts of privileges were granted to the inhabitants. But one privilege the old kings of France could not grant: they could not, by any amount of letters patent, or any seize of seals, confer immunity from fever; and Aigues-Mortes has been dying of ague ever since it was founded. In its early times, the influence of royal favour struggled long and well against disease: one man down, another came on. What loyal Frenchman would refuse to go from hot fits to cold fits of fever, for a certain number of months, and then to his long home, if it were to pleasure a descendant of St. Louis? But the time and the influences of the Holy Wars went by, and the kings of France withdrew their smiles from Aigues-Mortes; so that their royal brother, King Death, had it all his own way. Funerals far outnumbered births or weddings, and gradually the life faded and faded from the stone-girt town, as the ebbing tide leaves a pier. Cette gave it the finishing stroke. A crowd of the inhabitants emigrated _en masse_ to Riquet's city; and here now is Aigues-Mortes--coffin-like Aigues-Mortes--with about a couple of thousand pallid, shaking mortals, striving their best against the marsh fever, among the ruined houses and within the smouldering walls of this ancient Gothic city. In a solemn, shady street, I found a decentish hotel, not much above the rank of an auberge, and where I was about as lonely as in the vast caravansary at Bagnerre. The landlord himself--a staid, decent man--waited at my solitary dinner. "Monsieur," he said, "is an artist, or a poet?" "What made him think so?" "Because nobody else ever came to Aigues-Mortes--no traveller ever turned aside across the marshes, to visit their poor old decayed town. There was no trade, no _commis voyageurs_. The people of Nismes and Montpellier were afraid of the fever; and even if they were not, why should they come there? It was no place for pleasure on a holiday--a man would as soon think of amusing himself in a hospital or a morgue, as in Aigues-Mortes." I inquired more particularly about the fever, for I felt it difficult to conceive how people could continue to remain in a place cursed by nature with a perpetual chronic plague. My host informed me that those who lived well and copiously, were well clothed, well lodged, and under no necessity to be out early and late among the marshes, fared tolerably. They might have an ague-fit now and then, but when once well-seasoned they did pretty well. It was the poorer class who suffered, particularly in spring and autumn, when vegetation was forming and withering, and the steaming mists came out thickest over the fens. People seldom died with the first attack; but the subtle disease hung about them, and returned again and again, and wore, and tugged, and exhausted their energies--kept nibbling, in fact, at body and soul, till, in too many cases, the disease-besieged man surrendered, and his soul marched out. I asked again, then, how the poor people remained in such a hot-bed of pestilence? "_Que voulez vous_," was the reply--"the greater part can't help it; they were born here, and they have a place here;--at Nismes, or Marseilles, or Montpellier, they would have no place. Besides, they are accustomed to it; they look upon fevers as one of the conditions of their lives, like eating and drinking; and, besides, they have no energy for a change. The stuff has been taken out of them; you will see what a sallow, worn-out people we have at Aigues-Mortes. They can get a living here, but they would be overwhelmed anywhere else." The landlord had previously recommended a _cicerone_ to me, assuring me that I would not find him an ordinary man, that he was a sort of half-gentleman, and a scholar, and that he knew everything about Aigues-Mortes better than anybody else in it. Accordingly, I was presently introduced to M. Auguste Saint Jean, an old, very thin man, dressed in rusty black, and wearing--hear it, ye degenerate days!--powdered hair and a queue. M. Saint Jean looked like a broken-down schoolmaster, some touches of pedantry still giving formality to the humble sliding gait, and bent, bowing form. His face was nearly as wrinkled as Voltaire's, but he had black eyes which gleamed like a ferret's when you show him a rabbit. In company with this old gentleman I passed a wandering day in and round Aigues-Mortes, rambling from gate to gate, scrambling up broken stairs to the battlements, and threading our way amid dim lanes, half choked up with rubbish, from one ghastly old tower to another. All this while my guide's tongue was eloquent. He gesticulated like the most fiercely fidgetty member of young France, and the ferret's eye gleamed as though upon a whole warren of rabbits. Aigues-Mortes seemed his one great subject, his one passion, his own idea. Aigues-Mortes was the bride of his enthusiasm, the soul of his body. He had been born in Aigues-Mortes; he had lived in it; he had the fever in it; and he hoped to die in it, and be buried among the stilly marshes. How well he knew every crumbling stone, every little Gothic bartizan, every relic of an ancient chapel, every gloomy tower haunted by traditions, as it might be by ghosts. His mind flew back every moment to the days of the splendid founding of Aigues-Mortes--to the crusading host, whose glory crowded it with armour, and banners, and cloth of gold, assembled round their king, St. Louis, and bound for Palestine. On the seaward side of the walls, Auguste shewed me rings sunk in the stone, and to these rings, he said, the galleys and caravels of the king had been fastened. The sea is about two miles and a half distant, but the traces of the canal which led to it are still visible amid the marsh and sand, so that, right beneath the walls, upon the smooth, unmoving _aguæ mortes_--whence, of course, Aigues-Mortes--floated the fleet of the Crusade, made fast to the ramparts of the fortress of the Crusade. And so Saint Louis sailed with a thousand ships, standing proudly upon the poop, while the bishops round him raised loud Latin chants, and the warriors clashed their harness. The king wore the pilgrim's scrip and the pilgrim's shell. Long and earnestly did my _cicerone_ dilate upon the evil fortunes of the Crusade--how, indeed, in the beginning it seemed to prosper, and how Damietta was stormed;--but the Saracens had their turn, and the King of France, and many of his best paladins were soon prisoners in the Paynim tents. Question of their ransom being raised, "A king of France," said Louis, "is not bought or sold with money. Take a city--a city for a king of France." The sentence and the sentiment are picturesque; but, after all, there is not much in one or the other. However, the followers of Mahound agreed. Louis was restored to France, and Damietta to its former owners; the rest of the European prisoners being thrown into the bargain for eight thousand gold bezants. Saint Louis, however, was too holy and too restless a personage to remain long at home, so that Aigues-Mortes soon saw him again; and this time he departed waving above his head the crown of thorns. The infidels had laid hands on him the first time, but a fiercer enemy now grappled with the king--the plague clutched him; and though a monarch of France could not be bought or sold for any number of gold bezants, the plague had him cheap--in fact, for an old song. "He died," says that bold writer, M. Alexandre Dumas, who spins you off the most interesting history, all out of his own head--"he died on a bed of ashes, on the very spot where the messenger of Rome found Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage"--an interesting topographical fact, seeing that nobody, now-a-days, knows where Carthage stood at all--always saving and excepting M. Alexandre Dumas. We stood before a grey, massive tower--a Gothic finger of mouldering stone. "Louis de Malagne," said my old _cicerone_, "a traitorous Frenchman, delivered these holy walls to our enemies of Burgundy, and a garrison of the Duke's held possession of the sacred city of Aigues-Mortes. But the sacrilege was fearfully avenged. The oriflamme was spread by the forces of the king, and the townspeople rose within the walls, and, step by step, the foreign garrison were driven back till they fought in a ring round this old tower. They fought well, and died hard, but they did die--every man--always round this old tower. So, when the question came to be, where to fling the corpses, a citizen said, 'This is a town of salt; salt is the harvest of Aigues-Mortes--let us salt the Burgundians.' And another said, 'Truly, there is a cask ready for the meat;' and he pointed to the tower. Then they laid the dead men stark and stiff, as though to floor the tower. Then they heaped salt on them, a layer two feet thick; then they put on another stratum of Burgundian flesh, and another stratum of salt--till the tower was as a cask--choke-full--bursting-full of pickled Burgundians." Much more he told me of the early fortunes of the Place--how here Francis I. met his enemy, Charles V., in solemn conference, each monarch utterly disbelieving every sacred word uttered by the other; and how the celebrated Algerine pirate, Barbarossa, who was the very patriarch of buccaneers--the Abraham of the Mansveldts, and Morgans, and Dampiers, and who invented, and emblazoned upon his flags the famous motto, "The Friend of the Sea, and the Enemy of All who sail upon it"--how this red-bearded rover once cast anchor off the port, and by way of notifying to France that their ally against the Spaniard had arrived, set fire to a wood of Italian pine on the margin of the marshes, and lighted up the whole country by the lurid blaze. Of the Camisards, of whom I was more anxious to hear--of the poisoning in the tower of St. Constance, and of the band of braves who descended from the summit upon tattered strips of blankets--he knew comparatively little. His mind was mediæval. Aigues-Mortes in the day of Louis Quatorze, was a declining place. The glory had gone out of it, and the unappeasable fever was slowly, but surely, claiming its own. Indeed, for a century it had been master. Aigues-Mortes will probably vanish like Gatton and Old Sarum. A pile of ruins, girdled in by crumbling walls, will slowly be invaded by the sleeping waters of the marsh; and the heron, and the duck, and the meek-eyed gull wandering from the sea, will alone flit restlessly over the city built by Louis the Saint, walled by Philip the Bold, and blessed by one of the wisest and the holiest of the Popes. Reboul, the Nismes poet--I called upon him, but he was from home--is a baker, and lives by selling rolls, as Jasmin is a barber, and lives by scraping chins. Reboul is, like M. Auguste Saint Jean, an enthusiastic lover of the poor, dying, fever-struck Gothic town. Let me translate, as well as I may, half-a-dozen couplets in which he characterises the dear city of the Crusades. The poetry is not unlike Victor Hugo's--stern, rich, fanciful, and coloured, like an old cathedral window. "See, from the stilly waters, and above the sleepy swamp, Where, steaming up, the fever-fog rolls grim, and grey, and damp: How the holy, royal city--Aigues-Mortes, that silent town, Looms like the ghost of Greatness, and of Pride that's been pulled down. See how its twenty silent towers, with nothing to defend, Stand up like ancient coffins, all grimly set on end; With ruins all around them, for, sleeping and at rest, Lies the life of that old city, like a dead owl in its nest-- Like the shrunken, sodden body, so ghastly and so pale, Of a warrior who has died, and who has rotted in his mail-- Like the grimly-twisted corpse of a nun within her pall, Whom they bound, and gagged, and built, all living, in a wall." From the town, we partially floated, in a boat, and partially toiled through swamp and sand to the sea--Auguste constantly preaching on the antiquarian topography of the place, upon old canals, and middle-aged canals--one obliterating the other; on the route which the galleys of St. Louis followed from the walls to the ocean; on a dreary spot between sand-hills, which he called _les Tombeaux_, and where, by his account, the Crusaders who died before the starting of the expedition lie buried in their armour of proof. Then we toiled to a little harbour--a mere fisherman's creek--where it is supposed the ancient canal of St. Louis joined the sea, and which still bears the name of the _Grau Louis_, or the _Grau de Roi_--"grau" being understood to be a corruption of _gradus_. At this spot, rising in the midst of a group of clustered huts, the dwellings of fishermen and aged _douaniers_, one or two of whom were lazily angling off the piers--their chief occupation--there stands a lighthouse, about forty feet high. "Let us climb to the lantern," said Auguste, "and you will then see our silent land, and our poor dear old fading town lying at our feet." Accordingly up we went; only poor Auguste stopped every three steps to cough; and before we had got half way, the perspiration came streaming down his yellow face, proving what might have been a matter of dispute before--that he had some moisture somewhere in his body. From the top we both gazed earnestly, and I curiously, around. On one side, the sea, blue--purple blue; on the other side, something which was neither sea nor land--water and swamp--pond and marsh--bulrush thickets, and tamarisk jungles, shooting in peninsular capes, points, and headlands, into the salt sea lakes; in the centre of them--like the ark grounding after the deluge--the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes. Between the great _mare internum_ and the lagoons, rolling sand-hills--the barrier-line of the coast--and upon them, but afar off, moving specks--the semi-wild cattle of the country; white dots--the Arab-blooded horses which are used for flails; black dots--the wild bulls and cows, which the mounted herdsmen drive with couched lance and flying lasso. "Is it not beautiful?" murmured Auguste; "I think it so. I was born here. I love this landscape--it is so grand in its flatness; the shore is as grand as the sea. Look, there are distant hills"--pointing to the shadowy outline of the Cevennes--"but the hills are not so glorious as the plain." "But neither have they the fever of the plain." "It is God's will. But, fever or no fever, I love this land--so quiet, and still, and solemn--ay, monsieur, as solemn as the deserts of the Arabs, or as a cathedral at midnight--as solemn, and as strange, and as awful, as the early world, fresh from the making, with the birds flying, and the fish swimming, on the evening of the fifth day, before the Lord created Adam." CHAPTER XIV. FLAT MARSH SCENERY, TREATED BY POETS AND PAINTERS--TAVERN ALLEGORIES--NISMES--THE AMPHITHEATRE AND THE MAISON CARRÉE--PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC--THE OLD RELIGIOUS WARS ALIVE STILL--THE SILK WEAVER OF NISMES AND THE DRAGONNÆDES. As Launcelot Gobbo had an infection to serve Bassanio, so I somehow took ill with an infection to walk, instead of ride, back to Lunel. I suppose that Auguste had innoculated me, in some measure, with his mysterious love for the boundless swamps and primeval jungles of bulrush around; so that I felt a sort of pang in leaving them, and would willingly depart lingeringly and alone. Sending on my small baggage, then, by _roulage_, I strode forth out of the dead city, and was soon pacing alone the echoing causeway, like an Arab steering by the sun in the desert. There is one dead and one living English poet who would have made glorious use of this fen landscape, so repulsive to many, but which did, after all, possess a strange, undefinable attraction for me. The dead poet is Shelley, who had the true eye for sublimity in waste. Take the following picture-touch:-- "An uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons; and no other object breaks The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes, Broken and unrepaired; and the tide makes A narrow space of level sand thereon." This is the sort of landscape, too, which, in another department of art, Collins delighted in representing. But Shelley's picture of the luxuriant rush and water-plant vegetation would have been magnificent. Listen how he handles a theme of the kind: "And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth-- Prickly and pulpous, and blistering and blue, Livid and starred with a lurid dew; Spawn-weeds, and filth, and leporous scum, Made the running rivulet thick and dumb; And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes." Tennyson is the living poet who would picture with equal effect the region of swamp, and rush, and pool. Brought up in a fen district, his eye and feeling for marsh scenery and vegetation are perfect. Remember the marish mosses in the rotting fosse which encircled the "Moated Grange." Musing thus of the Poet Laureate, I would assign to this landscape embodiment of King Death, I passed the half-way tower, where three _douaniers_, seated in chairs, were fishing and looking as glum and silent as their prey, and began to discern the gravelly, shingly land of vines and olives again before me. The clear air of the South cheats us northerns like a mirage. You see objects as near you as in England they would be brought by a very fair spy-glass, and the effect, before you began to make allowances for the atmospheric spectacles, is to put you dreadfully out of humour at the length of the way, before you actually came up with the too distinct goal. So was it strongly with me in pedestrianising towards Lunel. Lunel seemed retreating back and back, so that my consolation became that it would be surely stopped by the Cevennes, even if the worst came to the worst; and go where it would, I was determined to come up with it somehow. Entering the region of the vine, the moppy olive, and the dust which was flying about in clouds, I halted at a roadside auberge to wash the latter article out of my throat, and reaped my reward in the sight of a splendid cartoon suspended over the great fireplace, which represented, in a severe allegory, "The Death of Credit killed by bad Payers." The scene was a handsome street, with a great open _café_ behind, at the _comptoir_ of which sat Madam Commerce aghast at the atrocity being committed before her. In a corner are seen a group of _gardes de commerce_--in the vernacular, bailiffs--lamenting over their ruined occupation. I came to know the profession of these gentlemen, from the fact that their style and titles were legibly imprinted across their waistcoats. In the foreground, the main catastrophe of the composition was proceeding. Credit, represented by a fat, good-natured-looking, elderly gentleman in a blue greatcoat, was stretched supine upon the stones, while his three murderers brandished their weapons above him. The delineation of the culprits was anything but flattering to the three classes of society which I took them to represent. The "first murderer," as they say in _Macbeth_, was a soldier. His sabre was deep in poor Credit's side. The second criminal must have been a musician, for he has just hit Credit a superhuman blow on the head with a fiddle--not a very deadly weapon one would suppose; while the third assassin, armed with a billiard cue, seemed to typify the idler portion of the community in general. Between them, however, there could be no doubt that Credit had been fairly done to death--the grim intimation was there to stare all topers in the face. The fact is, indeed, that all over rural France, in the places of public entertainment, poor M. Credit is in exceedingly bad odour. I have seen dozens of pictorial hints, conveying with more or less delicacy the melancholy moral of that just described. Sometimes, however, the landlord distrusts the pencil, puts no faith in allegory, and stern and prosaic--with a propensity to political economy--and giving rise to dark suspicions of a tendency to the Manchester school, writes up in sturdy letters, grim and hopeless-- "ARGENT COMPTANT." At other times, cast in a more genial mould, he deviates into what may be called didactic verse--containing, like the "Penny Magazine"--useful knowledge for the people, and hints poetically to his customers, the rule of the establishment--taking care, however, to intimate to their susceptible feelings that generous social impulses, rather than sombre commercial necessity, are at the bottom of the regulation. Thus it is not uncommon to read the following pithy and not particularly rhythmical distich:-- "Pour mieux conserver ses amis, Ici on ne fait pas de credit." At last Lunel was fairly caught, and an hour of the rail brought me to Nismes and to the Hotel de Luxembourg, running out at the windows with swarms of _commis voyageurs_, the greater number connected with the silk trade. One of these worthies beside whom I was placed at dinner, told me that he intended to go to London to the Exhibition, and that he had a very snug plan for securing a competent guide, who would poke up all the lions; this guide to be a "_Marin du port de Londres; car tenez ils sont des galliards futés, les marins du port de Londres_." I had all the difficulty in the world in making the intending excursionist aware of the probable effects of hiring, as a west-end guide, the first sailor or waterman he picked up at Wapping. The great features of Nismes are, as every body knows, the features which the Romans left behind them. Provence and Languedoc were the regions of Gaul which the great masters of the world liked best, probably because they were nearest home; and obscure as was the Roman Nismes--for I believe that Nimauses lays claim to no historic dignity whatever--it must still have been a populous and important place: the unmouldering masonry of the Roman builders proves it. I had never seen any Roman remains to speak of, and, to tell the truth, had never been able to work up any great enthusiasm about the fragments of the ancient people which I had come across. I had bathed in all the Roman baths wherewith London abounds, but found no inspiration in the waters--I had stood on grassy mounds of earth, believed to have been Roman camps; traced like the Antiquary, the _Ager_, with its corresponding _fossa_--marked the _porta sinistra_ and the _porta dextra_--and stood where some hook-nosed general had reclined in the _Pretorium_; but I again confess that my imagination did not fly impulsively back, and bury itself among _patres conscripti_, togas, vestal virgins, lictors, patricians, equites, and plebeians. And, in fact, such mere vague traces and memorials as baths, bits of pavement, and dusty holes, with smouldering brick-basements, which people call "Roman villas,"--are not at all fitted, whatever would-be classicists may pretend, to stir up the strong tide of enthusiastic association. These are but miserable odds and ends of fragments, from which you can no more leap to the dignity and the grandeur of the Romans, than you could argue, never having seen a man, from finding a cast-away tooth-pick, up to the appearance and nature of the invisible owner. But let us see a great specimen of a great Roman work, and then we are in the right track. Any builder could have made you a bath--any sapper and miner could have traced you out a camp--any of the small architects with whom we are infested could have knocked you up a villa--but give us a characteristic bit of the great people who are dead and gone, and then we can, or, at all events, we will try, to take their measure. The amphitheatre or arena at Nismes rose on me like a stupendous spectre, and frowned me down. I was smote with the sight. The size appalled me: mightiness--vastness--massiveness were there together--a trinity of stone, rising up, as it were, in the middle of my little preconceived and pet notions, and shivering and dispersing them, as the English three-decker in the _Pilot_ came bowling into view, driving away the fog in wreaths before her and around her. First I walked about the great stone skeleton; but though the symmetrical glory of the architecture, its massive regularity, and what I would call soldier-like precision of uniformity, kept urging my mind to look and admire; still the impression of vastness was predominant, and all but drove out other thoughts. And yet it was not until I had entered, that impression reached its profoundest depth. [Illustration: AMPHITHEATRE AT NISMES.] As I emerged from the vaulted and cavern-like corridor, through which a garrulous old woman led me, into the blaze of keen sunshine, that fell upon a mighty wilderness of stone; and as instinctively I laid my hand upon the nearest ponderous block, the full and perfect idea of size and power closed on me. _Roma!--Antiqua Roma!_--had me in her grasp; and as I felt, I remembered that Eothen had described a similar sensation, as produced by the bigness of the stones of the great pyramid. My old woman having, happily, left me, I was alone within that enormous gulf--that crater of regularly rising stone. Round and round, in ridges where Titans might have sat and seen, megatheria combat mastadons, mounted up the mighty steps of grey, dead stone--sometimes entire for the whole round--sometimes splintered and riven, but never worn, until your eye--now stumbling, as it were, over rubbish-heaps--now striding from stone ledge to stone ledge--rested upon the broken and jagged rim, with a hoary beard of plants and long dry weeds standing rigidly up between you and the blue. I turned again to the details of the building--to the vastness of the blocks of stone, and to the perfect manipulation which had placed them. If the Romans were great soldiers, they were as great masons. They conquered the world in all pursuits in which enormous energy and iron muscularity of mind could conquer. The universe of earth, and stone, and water was theirs. But they were not cloud compellers. They had none of the great power over the essences of the brain. Beauty was too subtle for them; and they only got it, incidentally, as an element--not a principle. The arena in which I stood was sternly beautiful; but it was the beauty of a legion drawn up for battle--iron to the backbone--iron to the teeth--the beauty of that rigid symmetric inflexibility which sat upon the bronze faces which, when Hannibal, encamped on Roman ground set up for sale, and grimly and unmovedly saw bought, at the common market rate, the patch of earth on which the Carthaginian lay entrenched. I remained in the amphitheatre for hours--now descending to the arena, where the men and beasts fought and tore each other--now scrambling to the highest ridge, and watching, with a calmness which soothed and lulled the mind, the vast bowl which lay beneath--so massive, so silent, and so grey. You can still trace the two posts of honour--the royal boxes, as it were--low down in the ring, and marked out by stone barriers from the general sweep. Each of them has an exclusive corridor sunk in the massive stone; and behind each are vaulted cells, which you will be told were used as guard-houses by the escort of soldiers or lictors. Tradition assigns one of these boxes to the proconsul--the other to the vestal virgins; but the latter, if I remember my Roman antiquities aright, could have no business out of Rome. There were no subsidiary sacred fire-branch establishments, like provincial banks, to promulgate the credit of the "central office,"--kindled in the remote part of the empire. The holy flame burnt only before the mystic palladium, which answered for the security of Rome. Whoever occupied the boxes in question, however, were no doubt what one of Captain Marryatt's characters describes the Smith family to be in London--"quite the topping people of the place;" and up to them, no doubt, after the gladiator had received the steel of his antagonist, and the thundering shout of "Habet!" had died away, the poor Scythian, or Roman, as the case might be, turned a sadly inquiring eye--intent upon the hands of the great personages on whom his doom depended--on the upturned or the downturned thumb. A very interesting portion of the arena is the labyrinth of corridors, passages, and stairs, which honeycomb its massive masonry, and into which, in the event of a shower, the whole body of spectators could at once retreat, leaving the great circles of stone as deserted as at midnight. So admirable, too, are the arrangements, that there could have been very little crowding. The vomitories get wider and wider as they approach the entrance, where the people would emerge on every side, like the drops of water flung off by the rotatory motion of a mop. There was an odd resemblance to the general disposition of the opera corridors and staircases, which struck me in the arrangement of the lobbies and passages behind. One could fancy the young Roman men about Nemauses, in their scented tunics, clasped with glittering stones and their broad purple girdles--the Tyrian hue, as the poets say--gathering in knots, and discussing a blow which had split a fellow-creature's head open, as our own opera elegants might Grisi's celebrated holding-note in _Norma_, or Duprez' famous _ut du poitrine_. The execution of a _débutant_ with the sword might be praised, as the execution now-a-days of a _prima donna_. Rumours might be discussed of a new net-and-trident man picked up in some obscure arena, as the _cognoscenti_ now whisper the reported merits of a tenor discovered in Barcelona or Palermo; and the _habitués_ would delight to inform each other that the spirited and enterprising management had secured the services of the celebrated Berbix, whose career at Massilia, for instance, had excited such admiration--the _artiste_ having killed fifteen antagonists in less than a fortnight. And then, after the pleasant and critical chat between the acts, the trumpets would again sound, and all the world would turn out upon the vast stone benches--the nobles and wealthy nearest the ring, as in the stalls with us, and the lower and slave population high up on the further benches, like the humble folks and the footmen in the gallery--and then would recommence that exhibition of which the Romans could never have enough, and of which they never tired--the excitement of the shedding of blood. From the arena I walked slowly on to the Maison Carrée. All the great Roman remains lie upon the open Boulevard, on the edge of the stacked and crowded old town, while without the circle rise the spacious streets of new _quartiers_ for the rich, and many a long straggling suburb, where, in mean garrets and unwholesome cellars, the poor handloom weavers produce webs of gorgeous silk which rival the choicest products of Lyons. Presently, to the left, appeared a horribly clumsy theatre; and, to the right, the wondrous Maison Carrée. The day of which I am writing was certainly my day of architectural sensation. First, Rome, with her hugeness and her symmetric strength, gripped me; and now, Greece, with her pure and etherial beauty, which is essentially of the spirit, enthralled me. The Maison Carrée was, no doubt, built by Roman hands, but entirely after Greek models. It is wholly of Athens: not at all of Rome--a Corinthian temple of the purest taste and divinest beauty--small, slight, without an atom of the ponderous majesty of the arena--reigning by love and smiles, like Venus; not by frowns and thunder, like Jove. Cardinal Alberoni said that the Maison Carrée was a gem which ought to be set in gold; and the two great Jupiters of France--Louis Quatorze and Napoleon--had both of them schemes for lifting the temple bodily out of the ground and carrying it to Paris. The building is perfectly simple--merely an oblong square, with a portico, and fluted Corinthian pillars--yet the loveliness of it is like enchantment. The essence of its power over the senses appears to me to consist in an exquisite subtlety of proportion, which amounts to the very highest grace and the very purest and truest beauty. How many _quasi_ Grecian buildings had I seen--all porticoed and caryatided--without a sensation, save that the pile before me was cold and perhaps correct--a sort of stone formulary. I had begun to fear that Greek beauty was too subtle for me, or that Greek beauty was cant, when the Maison Carrée in a moment utterly undeceived me. The puzzle was solved: I had never seen Grecian architecture before. The things which our domestic Pecksniffs call Grecian--their St. Martin's porticoes, and St. Pancras churches--bear about the same relation to the divine original, as the old statue of George IV. at King's Cross to the Apollo Belvidere. Of course, these gentry--of whom we assuredly know none whose powers qualify them to grapple with, a higher task than a dock-warehouse or a railway tavern--have picked all manner of faults in the divine proportions of this wondrous edifice. There is some bricklaying cant about a departure from the proportions of Vitruvius, which, I presume, are faithfully observed in the National Gallery, and some modification of them, no doubt, in the Pavilion at Brighton--which variations are gravely censured in the Maison Carrée; while, in order, doubtless, to shew our modern superiority, the French hodmen have erected a theatre just opposite the Corinthian temple, with a portico--heavens and earth! such a portico--a mass of mathematical clumsiness, with pillars like the legs of aldermen suffering from dropsy. Anything more intensely ugly is not to be found in Christendom. It actually beats the worst monstrosity of London; and this dreadful caricature of the deathless work of the glorious Greeks is erected right opposite to, perhaps, the most perfect piece of building and stone-carving in the world. I believe that it requires neither art-training nor classic knowledge to enjoy the unearthly beauty of the Corinthian temple. Give me a healthy-minded youth, who has never heard of Alcibiades, Themistocles, Socrates, or Æschylus, but who has the natural appreciation of beauty--who can admire the droop of a lily, the spring of a deer, the flight of an eagle--set him opposite the Maison Carrée, and the sensation of divine, transcendant beauty, will rush into his heart and brain, as when contemplating the flower, or beast or bird. The big man in the parish at home will point you out the graces of the new church of St. Kold Without, designed after the antique manner, by the celebrated Mr. Jones Smith, and because you hesitate to acknowledge them, will read you a benignant lecture on the impossibility of making people, with uneducated taste, fully appreciate what he will be sure to call the "severity" of Greek architecture; the worthy man himself having been dinned with the apocryphal loveliness in question until he has come actually to believe in it. Never mind the grave sermons preached about educating and training taste. An educated and trained taste will, no doubt, admire with even more fond appreciation and far higher enjoyment; but he who cannot, at the first glance, see and feel the perfect grace of pure Grecian art, must be insensible to the blue of the sky, to the beauty of running water, to the song of the birds and the silver radiance of moonlight. I never revisited the amphitheatre while I remained in Nismes, but I haunted the temple. The grandeur, and the massiveness of the Roman work, was like the north wind. It rudely buffeted the wayfarer, but he clung to his cloak. The Grecian trophy shone out like the gentle sun, and the traveller doffed mantle and cap to pay it adoration. Nismes, as most people know, is one of the points of France where Protestantism and Catholicism still glare upon each other with hostile and threatening eyes. The old Catholic and Huguenot hatred has descended lineally from the remote times of the Albigenses, and at this moment broods as bitterly over the olive city as when Raymond of Toulouse proclaimed a crusade against the Paulician heretics, and twenty thousand people were slaughtered under the pastoral care of the Bishop of Beziers. That the animosity, however, has not died out centuries ago, we have to thank the pious precautions of Louis XIV., Madame de Maintenon, and the priest, who waged as bitter war upon the Huguenots of the Cevennes as ever their fathers of these same mountains had been exposed to. The dragoonades are still fiercely remembered in the South. The old-world stories in Scotland of the cruelties of Claverhouse and his life-guards, have well-nigh ceased to excite anything like personal bitterness; but in portions of Languedoc, the animosity between neighbour and neighbour--Catholic and Protestant--is still deepened and widened by the oft-told legends of those wretched religious wars. Nismes is the head quarters of the sectarianism--Catholics and Protestants are drawn up in two compacted hostile bodies, living, for the most part, in separate _quartiers_; marrying each party within itself; scandalising each party the other whenever it has a chance; and carrying, indeed, the party spirit so far as absolutely to have established Protestant _cafés_ and Catholic _cafés_, the _habitués_ of which will no more enter the rival establishments than they would enter the opposition churches. The day after my arrival, I had a singular opportunity of becoming acquainted with the spirit of the place. North from Nismes rises a species of chaos of steep hills and deep valleys, or rather ravines, composed almost entirely of shingle and rock, covered over, however, with olive-groves and vines, and dotted with little white summer-houses, to which almost the entire middle and working class population retire upon Sundays to pass the day, partly in cultivating their patches of land--there is hardly a family without an allotment--and partly to amuse themselves after the toils of the week. Rambling among these rugged hills and dales, I chanced to ask my way of a person I met descending towards Nismes. He was a tall, ungainly, raw-boned man--pallid and worn, as if with sedentary labour; but he seemed intelligent, and was very polite--pointing out a number of localities around. Presently, he told me that he had been up to his _cabane_, or summer-house; that he was a silkweaver in Nismes; that his wages were so poor, that he had a hard struggle to live; but that he still managed to give up an hour's work or so a-day to go and feed his rabbits at the _cabane_. As we talked, he inquired whether I were not a foreigner--an Englishman--and, with some hesitation, but with great eagerness--a Protestant? My affirmative answer to the last interrogatory produced a magical effect. The man's face actually gleamed. He jumped off the ground, let fall his apronful of melons and fresh figs, while he clutched both of my hands in his, and exclaimed, "A Protestant! _Dieu merci! Dieu merci!_ an English Protestant! Oh, how glad I am to see an English Protestant! Listen, monsieur. We are here. We of the religion (the old phrase--as old as Rosny and Coligni), we are here fifteen thousand strong--fifteen thousand, monsieur. Don't believe those who say only ten. Fifteen thousand, monsieur--good men and true. All ready--all standing by one another--all _braves_--all on the _qui vive_--all prepared, if the hour should come. We know each other--we love each other, and we hate"--a pause; then, with a significant grin--"_les autres_. You will tell that, in England, monsieur, to our brothers. Fifteen thousand, monsieur; and every man, woman, and child, true to the cause and the faith." The whole tone of the orator did not appear to me to be so much a matter of religious bitterness, as it marked a hatred of race. The two contending parties at Nismes were evidently of different blood: their religious animosities had gradually divided them into two distinct and hostile peoples. "See!" said the weaver; "this is the Protestant side of the valley,--all Protestants here. Not a Catholic _cabane_--no, no! they must go elsewhere,--we have nothing to do with them,--we shake off the dust of our feet upon them and theirs. You and I are one, upon our own ground--Protestant ground--staunch and true;" and he stamped with his foot upon the pebbles. "Monsieur must absolutely go with me to my _cabane_, and drink a glass of wine to the good cause; and see my rabbits--Protestant rabbits." Who could resist this last attraction? We turned and toiled up the flinty paths together; my acquaintance informing me, with great pride, that M. Guizot was a good Protestant of Nismes, as his father, who had fallen, _dans le terreur_, was before him. He understood that M. Guizot was then in England, and he was sure that he would be delighted at seeing such a fine Protestant country, and such a staunch Protestant people. Stopping at length at an unpainted door, in the rough, unmortared wall, my friend opened it, and we stepped into a little patch of garden, planted with olives and straggling vine-bushes. "They are much better cultivated, and give better oil and better wine," he said, "than the Catholic grounds;" and I am sure he believed the asseveration. Having duly inspected the "Protestant rabbits," we entered the _cabane_, a bare, rough, white-washed room, with a table, a few chairs, and unglazed lattices. Unless when the mistral blows, the open air is seldom or never unpleasant; and then wooden shutters are applied to the windward side of the houses. On this occasion, however, there was not a breath stirring amid the silvery grey leaves of the olives. The grasshoppers--fellows of a size which would astound Sir Thomas Gresham--chirped and leaped in the grass at the foot of the wall; scores and scores of lithe, yellow lizards, with the blackest of eyes, flashed up and down over the rough stones, and shot in and out of the crevices; but, excepting these sights and sounds, all around was hushed and motionless; and the sun, wintry though it was, flooded all the still, brown valley with a deluge of pure, hot light. The weaver filled a very comfortable couple of glasses with a small, but not ill-tasted, wine. "Here's to----;" he uttered a sentiment not complimentary to the Catholic Church, and, indeed, consigning it to the warmest of quarters, and took off his liquor with undeniable unction. I need not say whether I drunk the toast: anyhow, I drunk the wine. "And now look there," continued my host, pointing with his empty glass through the open window, to the north. The bare, blue hills of the Cevennes lay--a long ridge of mountain scenery, stretching from the valley of the Rhone as far and farther than the eye could follow them--towards that of the Garonne. "There it was," he said, "that were fought the fiercest battles, in those cruel times, between the people of the religion and the troops of the king. Can you see a valley or a ravine just over the olive there? My eyes are too much worn to see it; but we look at it every Sunday--my wife and my children. That was the valley, monsieur, where my family lived for ages and ages, weaving the rough cloth that they made in those days, and tending their flocks upon the hill. Early in the troubles, their cottage was beset by the dragoons of the king. The mother of the family was suckling her child. They bound her to the bed-post, and put the child just beyond her reach, and told her that not a drop more should pass its lips till she cried _Ave Maria_ and made the sign of the cross. They took the father and hung him by the feet, head downward, from the roof-tree, and he died hanging. The children they ranged round the mother, and tied matches between their fingers; and, when the first match burned down to the flesh, the mother cried _Ave Maria_ and made the sign of the cross. Then they released her, and held an orgie in the cottage all night long, and the widow and the children served them. Next morning, the woman was mad, and she wandered away into the woods with her baby at her breast, and no one heard of her more. The children were scattered over the country; and, whether they lived or died, I know not; but one of them, monsieur, the eldest girl, whose name was Nicole, became a famous prophetess. Yes, monsieur, she was inspired, and taught the people among the rocks and the wild gorges of the hills. First, she had _l'avertissement_--that is, the warning, or first degree of inspiration; and then the _souffle_, or the breath of the Lord, came on her, and she spoke; at last, she was endowed with _la prophetie_, and told what would come to pass. Yes, monsieur; and many of her prophecies are yet preserved, and they came true; for, in times like these, God acts by extraordinary means. The people, monsieur, loved her, and honoured her, and kept her so well, and hid her so closely, that the persecutors could never seize her; and she survived the troubles; and I, monsieur, a poor weaver of Nismes, have the honour to be her descendant." That night I walked late along the Boulevards. Protestant _cafés_ and Catholic _cafés_ were full and busy, and, no doubt, resounding with the polemics of the warring creeds. Outside all, the by turns straggling and crowded town lay, bathed in the most glorious flood of moonlight, poured down, happily, alike upon Papist and Protestant, lighting up the grey cathedral with its Gothic arches, and the heathen temple with its fluted columns, and surely preaching by the universal-blessing ray that sermon--so continuous in its delivery, yet so little heeded by the congregation of the world--the sermon which enjoins charity and forbearance, and love and peace, among all men. CHAPTER THE LAST. AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE--ITS BACKWARD STATE--CENTRALISING TENDENCY--SUBDIVISION OF PROPERTY--ITS EFFECTS--FRENCH "ENCUMBERED ESTATES." In the foregoing pages I have sketched, with as much regard to a readable liveliness, and to vivid local colouring as I could command, the features and incidents of part--the most interesting one--of an extended journey through France. My primary purpose in undertaking the latter was, to prepare a view of the social and agricultural condition of the peasantry, for publication in the columns of the _Morning Chronicle_; and accordingly a series of letters, devoted to that important subject, duly appeared. These communications, however, were necessarily confined to statements of agricultural progress, and the investigation of solid social subjects, to the exclusion of those matters of personal incident and artistic, literary, and legendary significance, which naturally occur in the prosecution of a desultory and inquiring journey. To this latter field--that of the tourist rather than the commissioner--then, I have devoted the foregoing chapters; but I am unwilling to send them forth without appending to them--extracted from my concluding Letter in the _Morning Chronicle_--a summary of my impressions of the social condition of the French agricultural population, and the effects of the system of the infinitesimal division of the land. These impressions are founded upon a five months' journey through France, keeping mainly in the country places, being constantly in communication with the people themselves, and hearing also the opinions of the priests and men of business engaged in rural affairs, as well as reading authors upon all sides of the question. My conclusions I have summed up carefully, and with great deliberation; and I offer them as an honest, and not ill-founded estimate of the present state and future prospects of rural France. The French are undoubtedly at least a century behind us in agricultural science and skill. This remark applies alike to breeding cattle and to raising crops. Agriculture in France is rather a handicraft than what it ought to be--a science. As a general rule, the farmers of France are about on a level with the ploughmen of England. When I say this, I mean that the immense majority of the cultivators are unlettered peasants--hinds--who till the land in the unvarying, mechanical routine handed down to them from their forefathers. Of agriculture, in any other sense than the rule-of-thumb practice of ploughing, sowing, reaping, and threshing, they know literally nothing. Of the _rationale_ of the management of land--of the reasons why so and so should be done--they think no more than honest La Balafrè, whose only notion of a final cause was the command of his superior officer. Thus they are bound down in the most abject submission to every custom, for no other reason than that it is a custom: their fathers did so and so, and therefore, and for no other reason, the sons do the same. I could see no struggling upwards, no longing for a better condition, no discontent, even with the vegetable food upon which they lived. All over the land there brooded one almost unvaried mist of dull, unenlightened, passive content--I do not mean social--but industrial content. There are two causes principally chargeable with this. In the first place, strange as it may seem in a country in which two-thirds of the population are agriculturists, agriculture is a very unhonoured occupation. Develop, in the slightest degree, a Frenchman's mental faculties, and he flies to a town as surely as steel filings fly to a loadstone. He has no rural tastes--no delight in rural habits. A French amateur farmer would, indeed, be a sight to see. Again, this national tendency is directly encouraged by the centralizing system of government--by the multitude of officials, and by the payment of all functionaries. From all parts of France, men of great energy and resource struggle up and fling themselves on the world of Paris. There they try to become great functionaries. Through every department of the eighty-four, men of less energy and resource struggle up to the _chef-lieu_--the provincial capital. There they try to become little functionaries. Go still lower--deal with a still smaller scale--and the result will be the same. As is the department to France, so is the arrondissement to the department, and the commune to the arrondissement. Nine-tenths of those who have, or think they have, heads on their shoulders, struggle into towns to fight for office. Nine-tenths of those who are, or are deemed by themselves or others, too stupid for anything else, are left at home to till the fields, and breed the cattle, and prune the vines, as their ancestors did for generations before them. Thus there is singularly little intelligence left in the country. The whole energy, and knowledge, and resource of the land are barrelled up in the towns. You leave one city, and, in many cases, you will not meet an educated or cultivated individual until you arrive at another--all between is utter intellectual barrenness. The English country gentleman, we all know, is not a faultless character, but his useful qualities far prevail over his defects; and it is only when traversing a land all but destitute of any such order that the fatal effects of the blank are fully realized. Were there more country gentlemen in France, there would be more animal food and more wheaten bread in the country. The very idea of a great proprietor living upon his estates implies the fact of an educated person--an individual more or less rubbed and polished and enlightened by society--taking his place amongst a class who must naturally look up to him, and whose mass he must necessarily, to a greater or less degree, leaven. It is easy to joke about English country gentlemen--about their foibles, and prejudices, and absurd points; but to the jokers I would seriously say, "Go to France; examine its agriculture, and the structure and calibre of its rural society, and see the result of the utter absence of a class of men--certainly not Solomons, and as certainly not Chesterfields, but, for all that, most useful personages--individuals with capital, with, at all events, a certain degree of enlightenment--taking an active interest in farming--often amateur farmers themselves--the patrons of district clubs, and ploughing matches, and cattle-shows--and, above all, living daily among their tenantry, and having an active and direct interest in that tenantry's prosperity." I do not mean to say that here and there, all over France, there may not be found active and intelligent resident landlords, nor that, in the north of France, there may not be discovered intelligent and clear-headed tenant-farmers; but the rule is as I have stated. Utterly ignorant boors are allowed to plod on from generation to generation, wrapped in the most dismal mists of agricultural superstition; while what in America would be called the "smart" part of the population, are intriguing, and constructing and undoing _complots_, in the towns. To all present appearance, a score of dynasties may succeed each other in France before La Vendée takes its place beside Norfolk, or before Limousin rivals the Lothians. A word as to the subdivision of property. I know the extreme difficulties of the subject, and the moral considerations which, in connection with it, are often placed in opposition to admitted physical and economical disadvantages. I shall, therefore, without discussing the question at any length, mention two or three personally ascertained facts:-- The tendency of landed properties, under the system in question, is to continual diminution of seize. This tendency does _not_ stop with the interests of the parties concerned--it goes on in spite of them. And the only practical check is nothing but a new evil. When a man finds that his patch of land is insufficient to support his family, he borrows money and buys more land. In nine cases out of ten, the interest to be paid to the lender is greater than the profit which the borrower can extract from the land--and bankruptcy, and reduction to the condition of a day-labourer, is sooner or later the inevitable result. The infinitesimal patches of land are cultivated in the most rude and uneconomical fashion. Not a franc of capital, further than that sunk in the purchase of spades, picks, and hoes, is expended on them. They are undrained, ill-manured, expensively worked, and they would often produce no profit whatever, were it not that the proprietor is the labourer, and that he looks for little or nothing save a recompense for his toil in a bare subsistence. It is easy to see how the consumer must fare if the producer possess little or no surplus after his own necessities are satisfied. It is not to be supposed from the above remarks, that I conceive that in no circumstances, and under no conditions, can the soil be advantageously divided into minute properties. The rule which strikes me as applying to the matter is this:--where spade-husbandry, can be legitimately adopted, then the extreme subdivision of land loses much, if not all, of its evils. The reason is plain: spade-husbandry, while it pays the proprietor fair wages, also, in certain cases, develops in an economical manner the resources of the soil. The instance of market-gardens near a populous town is a case in point. But in a remote district, removed from markets, ill provided with the means of locomotion--where cereals, not vegetables, must be raised--spade-labour is so far mere toil flung away. Near Nismes I found a man digging a field which ought to have been ploughed. He told me that the spade produced more than the plough. Then why did not the farmers use spade-husbandry? "Because, although spade-husbandry was very productive, it was still more expensive. It paid a small proprietor who could do the work himself, but not a large proprietor, who had to remunerate his labourers." Herein, then, lies the fallacy. Truly considered, a mode of cultivation unprofitable for the great proprietor, must be unprofitable, in the long run, for the small proprietor also. The former, by spade-husbandry, loses his profit by paying extravagantly for labour; the latter must pay for labour as well, but he pays himself, and is therefore unconscious of the outlay--an outlay which is, nevertheless, not the less real. If the plough, at an expense of 5_s._, can produce 20_s._ worth of produce--and if the spade, at an expense of 20_s._, can produce 30_s._ worth of produce--the difference between the proportionate outlays is so much deducted from the resources of the country in which the transaction takes place; and this because that difference of labour, or of money representing labour, if otherwise applied--as by the agency of the plough it would be free to be applied--might, profitably to its proprietor, still raise the sum total of the production to the stated amount of 30_s._ Are small properties, then, in cases in which spade-husbandry cannot be economically applied, injurious to the social and industrial interests of the community in which they exist? The following propositions appear to me to sum up what may be said on either side of the question: Small landed holdings undoubtedly tend to produce an industrious population. A man always works hardest for himself. Small landed holdings tend to breed a spirit of independence, and wholesome moral self-appreciation and reliance. On the other hand-- Small landed holdings, by breeding a poor and ignorant race of proprietors, keep back agriculture, and injure the whole community of consumers; and-- Small landed holdings tend to grow smaller than it is the interest of their owners that they should become. Capital, borrowed at usurious rates of interest, is then had recourse to for the purpose of enlarging individual properties--and the result is the production of a race of involved, mortgaged, and frequently bankrupt proprietors. At this present moment, I believe the proprietorship of France to be as bankrupt as that of the south-west of Ireland. The number of "Encumbered Estates" across the Channel would stagger the stoutest calculator. The capitalists, notaries, land-agents, and others in the towns, and not the peasantry, are the real owners of the mortgaged soil. The nominal proprietors are sinking deeper and deeper at every struggle, and they see no hope before them--save one--Socialism. French Socialism is simply the result of French poverty. A ruined labourer has no resource but casual charity. No law stands between him and starvation. He has no right to his life unless he can support himself; and as the ponderous machine of the law gradually grinds down his property to an extent too small for him to exist on, and as the increasing interest swallows up the comparatively diminishing products, he sees nothing for it but a scramble. There is property--there is food--and it will go hard but he shall have a share of them. Herein is the whole problem of the dreaded Socialism. I cannot put the matter better than in the words of the old song-- "Moll in the wad and I fell out, And this is what it was all about, She had money, and I had none, And that was the way the row begun." Whether a Poor-law, and a change in the law of heritage might not check the evil, I am not, of course, going to inquire; but the present state of rural France--all political considerations left aside--appears to me to point to the possibility, if not the probability, of the world seeing a greater and bloodier _Jacquerie_ yet than it ever saw before. THE END. HENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET, LONDON. 
48759	----	Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed. The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. * * * * * THE RURAL MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY EVENING FIRE-SIDE. VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA, _Fifth Month, 1820. No. 5_. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. THE DESULTORY REMARKER. No. IV. Spring, that delightful visiter, to whom beauty and melody, Zephyrus and Flora, pay their opulent but willing tribute, has once more arrived. Let us welcome the enchanting stranger with joyful hearts, and let feelings of gratitude ascend to the bountiful source of all our enjoyments. Nature is now All beauty to the eye, and all music to the ear. It is said by an eminent historian, in his memoirs of his own life, that the disposition to "see the favourable rather than the unfavourable side of things, is a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year." Such a temper is not only a prolific source of complacency to the individual who cherishes it, but by all who move within the circle of its influence, its amiable and excellent effect is felt and acknowledged. What a fortunate circumstance would it be for the luckless wight, denominated by that pure and fascinating writer Dr. GOLDSMITH, a _Magaziner_, as well as for his correspondents, should none but critics, under the influence of this temper, undertake to adjust their humble claims to merit. They are frequently selected, by those who have not even read what they undertake to condemn, as the objects of illiberal and unmeaning censure. The right to criticise, is unquestionably perfectly valid; but, like other rights, it is liable to abuse. By accustoming himself to indulge a querulous, fault-finding propensity, on all occasions, even the most distinguished orator may descend from the high station claimed for him by his friends, to that of an inconsistent, petulant declaimer. And notwithstanding the alternate epigrammatic point of his wit, and the brilliant coruscations of his fancy, his speeches may at length scarcely be heard with patience. Courteous reader! if thou desirest to make the most of human life, and to realize its positive blessings which are placed within thy reach, listen to the counsels of experience, and pursue an opposite course of conduct. Sedulously avoid the indulgence of a splenetic humour, consult thy own gratification, and the happiness of those by whom thou art surrounded, in contemplating The gayest, happiest attitude of things. If thou art now scanning our present number, with no other object than to detect errors and expose omissions; if thou art pre-determined to censure, be pleased to defer a further examination, until thou art more disposed to view the "_favourable side of things_:" when this is the case, the editors will be delighted to pay the most respectful attention to any judicious suggestions, promotive of improvement, either in the plan or conduct of this Miscellany. If thou art placed in the truly responsible situation of head of a family, thy children and domestics, if thy deportment convey to them the beautiful moral lesson, afforded by a uniform contemplation of the "_favourable side of things_," will derive from it the most substantial advantages. Domestic happiness is of such an exquisite and sensitive organization, that it cannot endure, no not for a moment, the scowling visage of harshness or discord. In the ordinary daily intercourse of life, nothing conduces more to smooth the rugged path of existence, than urbanity and mutual indulgence. We are so constituted, that the influence of our conduct, whether exemplary or otherwise, is powerful on that of those with whom we associate. It should, therefore, be our object to cultivate the habit of viewing, on all occasions, the most "_favourable side of things_." Opinion is so much the child of education, of association, and of other adventitious causes, that it is next to impossible to find two individuals, whose sentiments on all subjects are perfectly coincident. In politics, and on a subject which is infinitely more important, religion itself, different sentiments as to minor points are no doubt _honestly_ entertained. Let us, therefore, avoid impugning the motives of those from whom we differ, particularly where no conclusive evidence appears as to the absence of integrity of intention, with an eye of charity. Let us in this instance, also, contemplate the most "_favourable side of things_." When overtaken by adverse circumstances, we are too prone, without hesitation, to assume the privilege of complaint and to infer that we are indeed peculiarly unfortunate. But how frequently have incidents of this character been subsequently ascertained to be blessings, although disguised in the most repulsive form.--When they occur, instead of being overwhelmed with despondency, it is wise to dwell on the more "_favourable side of things_." When public measures receive the sanction of the civil government, which are deemed destructive to the best interests of the nation, and in utter hostility to every principle of morality and religion,--disheartening as the fact may be, this consolation still remains to the humble and sincere believer in the superintendence of an overruling Providence, that truth and virtue will eventually be signally triumphant. This cheering conviction, where there is a consciousness of duty faithfully performed, will gild with radiance the most gloomy prospect. The present is emphatically the season of genial feelings, and nothing imparts a livelier relish for its beauties, than that amiable temper of mind which on all occasions delights to dwell on the most "_favourable side of things_." FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. THE VILLAGE TEACHER. The three great periods of life have each their natural and appropriate characteristic. The eager expectation, the buoyant hope and elastic energy, which lend their own joyous brilliancy to every object around them, and build in the unknown future so fair and beautiful a fabric of happiness, last not beyond the period of youth. The anxious brow, the cold and untrusting prudence, which succeed, but too surely indicate how many of our fairy visions have become dim in the reality; while the steady industry and calculating foresight with which manhood pursues more practical and perhaps grovelling objects, stamp upon it a peculiar character of strength, and seriousness, and sternness. As this relaxes in the course of years, our ability and inclination for active pursuits give way; and as the termination of our journey is approached, the hope of future distinction ceases, and we naturally fill up the void which is thus left in the mind, by a retrospect of our past actions.--Thus it is that the seasons of life, like those of the year, are each most beautiful in its own proper adornings, and that there is none more delightful or endearing than reverend age. The long experience which has tried the worthlessness of so many empty and vanishing hopes, and which can pronounce with certainty respecting that which remaineth; the knowledge of those past events, that form the link as it were between us and history, and which not only aids us in deciphering the past, but is endued with a prophetic gift; the attempered zeal, the tranquil repose of the passions, so finely and happily compared to the decline of day--impart their pure and elevated feelings to the mind of the beholder. It is in such society that youth may best learn to prune the luxuriance of its hopes, and manhood to elevate its views beyond the narrow scene of action where they now expatiate. It is in age that the noble instinct of immortality is most conspicuous, that we feel most surely that the horizon of this life cannot bound our mental vision. The consolations of youth and manhood may have no higher source than in surrounding objects--in love, or friendship, or ambition; but age is dead to these impulses, and must be reanimated and warmed by the influences of the life which is to come. Such an old age is that of my friend Parmenio. He has survived nearly all the companions of his childhood, and seen successive generations swept away before him. After a life of useful and honourable enterprise, he has retired to end his days in our little hamlet amidst the scenes of his earliest youth. He has dandled on his knee the fathers of many who now look up to him for counsel and friendship, yet is there no supercilious air of dignity or reserve about him. His placid eye bespeaks the serenity of his soul, and the hope which abideth there; and though you see in his sprightliness and activity the energy of his earlier life, it is most happily blended with the meekness and tranquillity of age. He wears away his remaining years in the social converse of his children and their friends, and looks forward to his close without fear or anxiety. I often meet him in my solitary evening walks, and we usually finish them together. We were loitering one evening on the brow of the hill which overlooks the course of a beautiful stream that flows at a small distance from the village, and marking the glories of an autumnal sunset.--"The sands," said he, "are fast ebbing in my glass, and I feel that my allotted days are but few. I have past a life of bustling activity, and seen a thousand forms of hope and happiness rise and vanish before me. They have all vanished--all, but that which is centered in heaven. I am not a votary of that vain philosophy which would pronounce all things to be vanity; yet could my voice be heard by the myriads of human beings who are wasting the sinews of life in the pursuit of wealth and power, I would warn them, from my own experience, that happiness is not in these things. Were I to guide the course of a young person, I would bid him extend this view, from the first, beyond the horizon of this world. I would tell him of the utter emptiness of all human distinctions. I would bid him pursue his avocations as a means only of health and support, and of invigorating his mind. I would turn his feet from the paths of fame and wealth, to those of retirement and privacy, and would there feed his soul with immortal contemplations. Thus would I fit him to ennoble his youth, to preserve his manhood unspotted, and to enjoy his age. How many events are there in the course of my own life, which I would now give the world to have prevented--duties undone, labour misapplied, talents wasted, feelings perverted; and all from sharing in the delusions to which the world around me is a victim. In how many events which I once thought were accidents or misfortunes, do I now trace an invisible hand, guiding me against my will, and pointing to that path of unostentatious virtue which He delights to bless. These things, however, cannot be recalled; and as yonder sun, after a cold and cloudy career, is setting at last in serene and tranquil beauty, and throwing his own glorious hues upon the clouds which darkened his mid-day splendour; so do I feel that my latter days are peaceful, and that the lights of experience and wisdom, though late, are yet illuminating my past errors, and enabling me to point them out as beacons and waymarks to those that surround me." _Extract of a Letter from William Coxe, Esq. on the Cultivation of the Sugar Maple._ BURLINGTON, March 7th, 1820. DEAR SIR--I understand that you have been directing your attention to the Sugar Maple, in the belief that it will be found an advantageous substitute for the several varieties of poplars, as a useful as well as ornamental tree; and that you are desirous of obtaining any information respecting its culture, or properties, that I may be able to communicate. I have for some time been convinced that none of the poplars would prove a beneficial kind of timber to our farmers, from their disposition to extend their roots, and propagate suckers at a great distance, and from the offensive cotton which is produced by the Athenian and Georgia varieties--and I have made many experiments in the hope of discovering a tree, valuable for its timber, and clean and ornamental in its foliage, which could be propagated by seedlings. Among others, I planted the Sugar Maple and am happy to find it one of the hardiest and handsomest trees, even on the light sandy soil around my house; capable of withstanding the severity of the drought of the last and preceding summers, the most intense that are recollected in our country. Of eighteen trees I lost but two, while the native chesnuts, raised from the nut, all perished; and little better success was experienced in a variety of trees planted on the same ground, such as the pine, sycamore, larch, spruce, &c. The American elm is thought to be a hardy tree, but with me it proved less so than the sugar maple. It is generally believed that all the varieties of the maple require a damp soil: this is the case with several of them, but the _acer saccharum_ flourishes in a loamy wheat soil, in many districts of our western and northern country. The facility by which it may be propagated from the seed, renders its diffusion through our country, to any extent, very easy and cheap. Few of our native trees are more useful for fuel, and the manufacture of potash; and as the means of affording a great and almost inexhaustible supply of sugar, it becomes an object of great importance, even to the farmer, who is desirous of transmitting a valuable inheritance to his children. It is my intention to plant this tree in the place of a line of the Athenian poplars, which I have been obliged to cut down after eight years luxuriant growth, from their injurious effect on the adjoining fields, by the extension of their roots to sixty and seventy feet, throwing up a little forest of suckers. _Treatise on Agriculture._ SECT. III. Theory of Vegetation. 3d. Of _air_, and its agency in vegetation: A seed deprived of air will not germinate; and a plant placed under an exhausted receiver, will soon perish. Even in a close and badly ventilated garden, vegetables indicate their situation; they are sickly in appearance, and vapid in taste.--These facts sufficiently shew the general utility of air to vegetation: but this _air_ is not now the simple and elementary body, that the ancient chymist described it to be. Priestly first,[1] and Lavoisier after him, analyzed it, and found, that when pure, it consisted of about 70 parts of azote, 27 of oxygen, and 2 of carbonic acid. In its ordinary (or impure) state, it is loaded with foreign and light bodies; such as mineral, animal and vegetable vapours, the seeds of plants, and the eggs of insects, &c. Is it to this _aggregate_, that vegetation owes the services rendered to it by air? And if not, to _how many_, and to _which_, of its regular constituents, are we to ascribe them? This inquiry will form the subject of the present article. [1] See Priestly's Experiments and Observations on different kinds of Air, begun in 1767. All vegetables in a state of decomposition, give _azote_; and some of them (cabbages, radishes, &c.) give it in great quantity. This abundance, combined with the fact, that vegetation is always vigorous in the neighbourhood of dead animal matter, led to the opinion, that azote contributed largely to the growth of plants: but experiments, more exactly made and often repeated, disprove this opinion, and shew that in any quantity it is unnecessary, and that in a certain proportion it is fatal to vegetation. In _hydrogen gas_, plants are found to be variously affected, according to their local situation; if inhabitants of mountains, they soon perish--if of plains, they shew a constant debility--but if of marshy grounds, their growth is not impeded. _Carbonic acid_ is formed and given out during the process of fermentation, putrefaction, respiration, &c. and makes 28 parts out of 100 of atmospheric air. It is composed (according to Davy) of oxygen and carbon, in the proportion of 34 of the former to 13 of the latter. It combines freely with many different bodies; animals and vegetables are almost entirely composed of it; for the _coal_ which they give, on combustion, is but _carbon_ united to a little oxygen, &c.--Priestly was the first to discover, that plants _absorbed carbonic acid_; and Ingenhouse, Sennebier, and De Sausure have proved, that _it_ is their _principal aliment_. Indeed the great consumption made of it, cannot be explained by any natural process, excepting that of vegetation. On this head, we cannot do better than digest the experiments of these chymists into a few distinct propositions:[2] [2] Recherches chemiques sur la vegetation, chap. ii. 1. In pure carbonic acid gas, seeds will swell, but not germinate. 2. United with water, this gas hastens vegetation. 3. Air containing more than one twelfth part of its volume of carbonic acid, is most favourable to vegetation. 4. Turf, or other carbonaceous earth, which contains much carbonic acid, is unfavourable to vegetation until it has been exposed to the action of atmospheric air, or of lime, &c. 5. If slacked lime be applied to a plant, its growth will be impaired, until the lime shall have recovered the carbonic acid it lost by calcination. 6. Plants kept in an artificial atmosphere, and charged with carbonic acid, yield, on combustion, more of that acid than plants of the same kind and weight growing in atmospheric air. 7. When plants are exposed to air and sunshine, the carbonic acid of the atmosphere is consumed, and a portion of oxygen left in its place. If new supplies of carbonic acid be given to the air, the same result follows; whence it has been concluded, that air furnishes carbonic acid to the plant, and the plant furnishes oxygen to the air.--This double function of absorption and respiration, is performed by the green leaves of plants.[3] 8. Carbon is to vegetation, what oxygen is to animal life; it gives support by purifying the liquids, and rendering the solids more compact. [3] This was a discovery of Sennebier. 4th. Of _light_, _heat_, and _electricity_, and their agency in vegetation: When deprived of light, plants are pale, lax and dropsical; restored to it, they recover their colour, consistency and odour. If a plant be placed in a cellar, into which is admitted a small portion of light through a window or cranny, thither the plant directs its growth, and even acquires an unnatural length in its attempt to reach it.[4] These facts admitted, no one can doubt the agency of light in vegetation; but in relation to this agency, various opinions exist; one, that light enters vegetable matter, and combines with it; another, that it makes no part either of the vegetable or of its aliment, but directly influences substances which are alimentary;[5] and a third, that besides the last effect, it stimulates the organs of plants to the exercise of their natural functions.[6] [4] It is by a knowledge of this fact, that gardeners bleach chicony and cellery, &c. [5] See Fourcroy, vol. viii. [6] See Chaptal on vegetation. Without doing more than state these opinions, we proceed to offer the results of many experiments on this subject. 1st. That _in the dark_, no oxygen is produced, nor any carbonic acid absorbed; on the contrary, oxygen is absorbed and carbonic acid produced. 2d. That plants exposed to _light_, produce oxygen gas in water. 3d. That _light_ is essential to vegetable transpiration; as this process never takes place during the _night_, but is copious during the _day_; and, 4th. That plants raised _in the dark_, abound in watery and saccharine juices--but are deficient in woody fibre, oil, and resins; whence it is concluded, that saccharine compounds are formed in the _night_, and oil, resins, &c. in the _day_. When the weather is at or below the freezing point, the sap of plants remains suspended and hardened in the albumum;[7] but on the application of _heat_, whether naturally or artificially excited, this sap is rendered fluid, is put into motion, and the buds begin to swell. Under the same impulse, through the medium of the earth, the roots open their pores, receive nutritive juices, and carry them to the heart of the plant. The leaves, being now developed, begin and continue the exercise of their functions, till winter again, in the economy of nature, suspends the operations of the machine. Nor is its action confined to the circulation of vegetable juices. Without vapour (its legitimate offspring) the fountain and the shower would be unknown--nor would the great processes of animal and vegetable fermentation and decomposition go on. Without rain or other means ameliorating the soil, what would be the aspect of the globe? what the state of vegetation? what the situation of man? [7] Knight's Observations, &c. The diffusion of _electrical_ matter, found in the air and in all other substances, furnishes a presumption, that it is an efficient agent in vegetation. Nollet and others have thought that, artificially employed, it favoured the germination of seeds and the growth of plants; and Mr. Davy "found, that corn sprouted more rapidly in water, _positively_ electrified by the voltaic battery, than in water _negatively_ electrified."[8] These opinions have not escaped contradiction, and _we_ do not profess to decide where doctors disagree. [8] Davy's Elements. 5th. Of _stable yard manures_, _lime_, _marl_, and _gypsum_, and their agency in vegetation: We have already said, that vegetables in the last stage of decomposition, yield a black or brown powder, which Mr. Davy calls "_a peculiar extractive matter, of fertilizing quality_," and which the chymists of France have denominated _terreau_. This vegetable residuum is the simple mean employed by nature to re-establish that principle of fertility in the soil, which the wants of man and other animals are constantly drawing from it. It was first analyzed by Hassenfratz, who found it to contain an oily, extractive and carbonaceous matter, charged with hydrogen; the acetates and benzoates of potash, lime and ammoniac; the sulphates and muriates of potash, and a soupy substance, previously noticed by Bergman.--Among other properties (and which shows its combustible character) is that of absorbing, from atmospheric air, its oxygen, and leaving it only azote. This was discovered by Ingenhouse, who, with De Sausure and Bracconnet, pursued the subject by many new and interesting experiments, the result of which is-- 1. That the oxygen thus absorbed, deprives the terreau of part of its carbon, which it renders soluble and converts into mucilage; and 2. That the carbonic acid, formed in the process, combines with the mucilage, and with it is absorbed by the roots of plants. If we put a plant and a quantity of slacked lime under the same receiver, the plant will perish; because the lime will take from the atmospheric air all the carbonic acid it contains, and thus _starve_ the plant. Vegetables, placed near heaps of lime in the open air, suffer from the same cause and in the same way; but though lime, in _large_ quantities, destroys vegetation, in _small_ quantities it renders vegetation more vigorous. Its action is of two kinds--mechanical and chymical; the first is a mere division of the soil by an interposition between its parts; the second, the faculty of rendering soluble vegetable matter, and reducing it to the condition of terreau. The _mechanical_ agency ascribed to lime, belongs also to _marle_ and to _ashes_, and in an equal degree--but their _chymical_ operation, though similar, is less.[9] [9] Vegetable ashes are _lime_, combined with an earthy saline matter. _Gypsum_ is composed of lime and sulphuric acid. Mayer was the first to present to the public a series of experiments upon it, in its relation to agriculture. Many chymists have followed him, and a great variety of opinion yet exists with regard to its mode of operation. Yvart thinks that the action of gypsum is exclusively the effect of the sulphuric acid, which enters into its composition; and founds this opinion upon the fact, that the ashes of turf, which contain sulphate of iron and sulphate of alumina, have the same action upon vegetation as gypsum. Laysterie, observing that plants, whose roots were nearest the surface of the soil, were most acted upon by plaster, concludes, that gypsum takes from the atmosphere the elements of vegetable life and transmits them directly to plants. Bose intimates, that the _septic_ quality of gypsum (which he takes for granted) best explains its action on vegetation; but this opinion is subverted by the experiments of Mr. Davy, who found, that of two parcels of minced veal, the one mixed with gypsum, the other left by itself, and both exposed to the action of the sun, the _latter_ was the first to exhibit symptoms of putrefaction. Mr. Davy's own belief on this subject is, that it makes part of the food of vegetables, is received into the plant and combined with it. The last opinion we shall offer on this head, is that of the celebrated Chaptal. "Of all substances, gypsum is that of whose action we know the least. The prodigious effect it has on the whole race of trefoils, (clover, &c.) cannot be explained by any _mechanical_ agency--the quantity applied being so small--or by any _stimulating_ power--since gypsum, raw or roasted, has nearly the same effect; nor by any _absorbent_ quality, as it only acts when applied to the leaves. If permitted to conjecture its mode of operation, we should say, that its effect being greatest when applied to the _wet_ leaves of vegetables, it may have the faculty of absorbing and giving out water and carbonic acid, little by little, to the growing plant. It may also be considered as an _aliment in itself_--an idea much supported by Mr. Davy's experiments, which shew, that the ashes of clover yield gypsum, though the clover be raised on soils not naturally containing that substance." [_Alb. Argus._ (To be continued.) MANURES OF GREEN CROPS. All _green succulent plants_ contain saccharine or mucilaginous matter, with woody fibre, and readily ferment. They cannot, therefore, if intended for manure, be used too soon after their death. When _green crops_ are to be employed for enriching a soil, they should be ploughed in, if it be possible, when in flower, or at the time the flower is beginning to appear, for it is at this period that they contain the largest quantity of easily soluble matter, and that their leaves are most active in forming nutritive matter. Green crops, pond weeds, the paring of hedges or ditches, or any kind of fresh vegetable matter, requires no preparation to fit them for manure. The decomposition slowly proceeds beneath the soil; the soluble matters are gradually dissolved, and the slight fermentation that goes on, checked by the want of a free communication of air, tends to render the woody fibre soluble without occasioning the rapid dissipation of elastic matter. When old pastures are broken up, and made arable, not only has the soil been enriched by the death and slow decay of the plants which have left soluble matters in the soil; but the leaves and roots of the grasses living at the time, and occupying so large a part of the surface, afford saccharine, mucilaginous, and extractive matters, which become immediately the food of the crop, and the gradual decomposition affords a supply for successive years. [_Davy's Agric. Chem._ ESSAY ON AGRICULTURE. The judicious and increasing attention of our citizens to agricultural pursuits, must be regarded, by every enlightened friend of his country, as among the happiest presages of its future prosperity. Agriculture, the most ancient and useful of the arts, the inseparable companion, if not the parent, of civilization, is rapidly obtaining that rank in public estimation, to which its intimate connexion with the cardinal interests of every well regulated community gives it so unquestionable a claim. The absurd prejudice, which has associated the cultivation of the soil with the idea of an ignoble servitude, is fast disappearing under the influence of milder systems of government, and has already ceased to operate on minds having the least pretensions to discrimination or enlargement of view.--The Patriarch of the human race was commanded by his Creator to "_replenish the earth, and to subdue it_;" we may, therefore, infer, that a limited attention to agriculture was among the happy employments of Adam, in the days of primeval innocence. But, in the language of a distinguished prelate, that original transgression which banished man from Paradise, banished Paradise from the earth. The primal curse is still in unmitigated operation, and, without "_the sweat of the brow_," the least reluctant soils will yield but scanty fruits for the sustenance and the comfort of man. Toil is an indispensable pre-requisite in every department of life, where wealth, or honour, or even _daily bread_, is sought with a reasonable prospect of success. The scholar, amid the lofty abstractions of the closet, when fatigued by incessant vigils, realizes the painful truth, that "_much study is a weariness of the flesh_." The merchant, though stimulated by the incitements of enterprise and the bustle of occupation, must occasionally feel the energies of his body and mind relax under the pressure of business, without variety and without remission. And how grievous are the toils of those _choice spirits_ who discover no enterprise but in the pursuit of pleasure--who disdain to "_eat the bread of carefulness_," and seek, amid the fugitive joys of sensuality, a temporary refuge from the torpor of dejection, or the oppressive listlessness of voluntary inaction. Let not the unobtrusive husbandman fear to compare his lot with that of those whose proud externals and apparent exemption from toil are extremely fallacious indications of their just rank on the scale of human happiness. Living in a land of promise and of plenty, and under the government of mild equal laws, the American Farmer must exult in the consciousness that "_the lines are fallen to him in pleasant places_"--that his is, in truth, a goodly heritage. He loves the soil, because it is the legacy of his fathers, and because he derives from its fruitful bosom the means of sustaining life, and protecting his feelings and opinions from the dictation of arrogance and the various temptations of penury. His quiet and unsophisticated modes of thinking and living, indispose him to listen with eagerness to the solicitations of intrigue or sedition, and it is proverbial that the contagious frenzy of revolution, extends not without difficulty, to the cautious, reflective, and well balanced mind of the farmer. [_R. I. American._ ON DRESSING FLAX. _Extract of a Letter from R. H. Harrison, Esq. to J. Wood, Corresponding Secretary of the Cayuga Agricultural Society, N. Y. dated_ NEW YORK, March 27, 1820. DEAR SIR--Every farmer is acquainted with the method of raising flax, and also of _rotting_ it; or, as it is generally called, water and dew _retting_, and the method of separating the boon, or woody matter, from the harle, or useful fibre. Flax has deservedly the character of being one of the most impoverishing crops, in the present method of treating it: it makes no return, either as animal food, or as manure, to the land; it is therefore surprising that a discovery which was to obviate all these disadvantages should only have been brought into practice within a few years. A Mr. James Lee, in England, discovered that the process of steeping and dew retting flax, or hemp, was not necessary; and that if treated and dressed dry, it will be superior in every respect, produce more, and make considerable return to the land, as fodder for cattle and as manure. A patent was granted to him in 1812; and of such importance was it considered, that he obtained an act of parliament to keep his specification secret for seven years. This may be a reason why so little has been known of it in this country. I have, however, one of his machines in my possession, and have dressed flax with it. It consists of a break, or as he called it, a scraper, to separate the boon out of the stem, &c.--it is then passed through a pair of finely fluted rollers, and is finished and ready for the hackle. The flax plants, when ripe, are to be pulled, to be spread and dried the same as hay, laying the roots in one direction; when dry, to be carried into the barn: And from the report of a committee of the house of commons on the petition of James Lee, and also on petition of Lee and Bundy, respecting their new machine for this purpose, it appears that the following are the results of Mr. Lee's discovery: 1st. That preparing flax and hemp, in a dry state, for spinning, answered most completely; the cost of preparing is less, it avoids the risk of steeping, and saves _time_ and _material_. 2d. The _strength_ and quality of the cloth is much superior to that from flax, water steeped or dew rotted. 3d. The great advantage from the quantity of food for cattle, and also manure obtained by this new method, the boon, or outer coat of the flax, containing a sixth of the gluten of oats, the woody part being excellent for manure. It also appeared in evidence before the committee, that 100 _lbs._ flax, in a dry state, produced one fourth, 25 lbs. fibre 100 _lbs._ flax, dew retted, produced one eleventh, 9 1-1/2 ________ Excess, _lbs._ 15 14-1/2 or a saving in proportion as 90 to 33. In confirmation of this I can only say, I procured some flax, in its dry state, which had been thrown away as not worth _retting_--4 lbs. of dry flax produced 1 _lb._ of fibre fit for the hackle: when dressed in Lee's machine, the samples of flax, tow, and thread, though, from the poor quality of the flax, inferior to some samples of English flax dressed in the same manner, were greatly superior to any that had been retted. I have, however, never made the experiment of weighing the flax, and then ascertaining its produce when retted; but from the knowledge of those who gave evidence to this point, have no doubt of its correctness. There is another advantage; the flax dressed in a dry state becomes much whiter, and is easier bleached--merely washing it in soap and water makes it white: the finest particles of flax are also saved, which are essential to the manufacture of lace, or very fine linen: the seed is also all preserved. Mr. Brande, professor of chymistry at the Royal Institution, made some experiments on the nutritious quality of the chaff: the result was, an eighth of nutritious matter. Mr. Lee says, it is equal to a crop of oats for feeding cattle; and it appeared also, that horses, when accustomed to it, prefer it to clover chaff. Having thus briefly stated the advantages of the dry method of dressing flax, I will proceed to give some account of the machines for preparing it, which have been invented since Mr. Lee's. The best appears to be Hill and Bundy's, for which Mr. Bundy obtained a patent, in England. It consists of two machines, a breaker and a rubber; the first for separating the harle from the boon; the second cleanses it from small particles of wood and bark, left by the breaker. The breaker consists of fine fluted rollers, so disposed as to draw the flax through them, at the same time to take off the woody parts from it; once passing through is generally sufficient. It is a machine combining great mechanical skill, and on an entirely different principle from Mr. Lee's, and is not liable to get out of order. The rubber is made to have the same effect as rubbing by hand would, to cleanse the fibre, and open and subdivide it, to produce the finest thread. Mr. Lee has invented a new machine, consisting of fluted rollers, to work by water or horse power: it is different from Hill and Bundy's, which is worked by hand; and the rollers work differently. From experiments made by the different machines, it appears by the report of the committee of the house of commons, that in Hill and Bundy's, one breaker and two rubbers would produce 80 _lbs._ of prepared flax in a day, and would require one man or woman and three children: the work is light--a man can turn two breakers and two rubbers. Lee's machine would produce about 11 _lbs._ a day; his new machine, worked by water, will product 50 _lbs._ in a day, and requires three men or women to attend it. Having never made any of the machines, I can only state the probable cost. Hill and Bundy's one breaker and two rubbers, could be furnished for about $200. Lee's machine, at from 60 to $70. His new machine I have never seen a draft of, and could not tell the cost. The high cost of Hill and Bundy's machine will prevent our farmers generally from obtaining it. But what better business can be done, than purchasing the flax, in its dry state, from the farmer, to manufacture it in this way; and every town might employ its paupers in dressing flax by these machines: they might also be introduced into our state prisons and penitentiaries with good effect. Having given you this hasty sketch of the recent improvement in dressing flax, I would suggest to our agricultural societies generally, to procure one of the machines, as there can be no doubt of their answering. The general introduction of them would not only promote greatly our agricultural prosperity, but also the domestic manufactures of this state. _To dress Flax to look like Silk._--Take one part lime and between two or three parts of wood ashes; pour over them a due proportion of water to make a strong ley, after they have stood together all night, which must be poured off when quite clear. Tie handfuls of flax at both ends, to prevent its entangling, but let the middle of each be spread open, and put it in a kettle, on the bottom of which has been first placed a little straw, with a cloth over it, then put another cloth over the flax, and so continue covering each layer of flax with a cloth, till the kettle is nearly full. Pour over the whole the clear ley, and after boiling it for some hours, take it out, and throw it in cold water: this boiling, &c. may be repeated, if requisite. The flax must be each time dried, hackled, beaten and rubbed fine; and, at last, dressed through a large comb, and through a very fine one. By this process the flax acquires a bright and soft thread. The tow which is off, when papered up and combed like cotton, is not only used for many of the same purposes, but makes lint for veterinary surgeons, &c. [_Am. Farmer._ AGRICULTURAL MEMORANDA. _Caterpillars._--Hemp is a great enemy to caterpillars. By surrounding a bed of cabbages with a row of hemp, the cabbages will be preserved. _Churning._--After churning some time, throw into the churn one spoonful of distilled vinegar for every gallon of cream. When churning proves tedious, this will greatly hasten the separation of the butter. _To cure Hams Westphalia fashion._--Sprinkle your ham with common salt for one day; then wipe it dry. Take 1 _lb._ brown sugar, 1/4 _lb._ saltpetre, 1/2 pint bay salt, and 3 pints common salt. Stir these well together in an iron pan over the fire till moderately hot. The ham to lie in this pickle for three weeks. _Rue._--The growth of this plant ought to be cherished in every stock yard; nothing being more salutary or even pleasant to fowls. _Guinea Corn._--The stalks of this grain, if pressed, are said to yield a juice sweeter and of greater body than the sugar cane. _Carrots._--According to some agricultural reports, carrots will yield 600 or even 900 bushels per acre. At the last meeting of _The Columbian Institute_, some valuable specimens of _American plants_, beautifully preserved, were presented by Dr. _Darlington_, a representative in Congress from Pennsylvania; and several fine specimens of _American minerals_, chiefly collected in the valley of the Mississippi, by Mr. _Schoolcraft_, the ingenious author of a work which has lately appeared on the lead mines of Missouri, and natural history, &c. of the western country. _To make fat Lamb._--"To make or fatten lamb for the market, let your ewes be well attended to, and fed upon a patch of rye; upon turnips, or other corresponding food; affording abundant milk. As fast as your lambs fall, and can run well alone, all you have are to be shut up together in a dark pen or stall, of proportionate size to the number of lambs you expect, having a narrow trough, breast high to them, to be daily supplied with Indian corn meal; with the bran in it; and hanging up within their reach one or more wisps or small bundles of fine hay for them to nibble, at. This stall must communicate with, or adjoin, a larger apartment, into which you are to turn ewes twice or thrice a day, to suckle their lambs, and to sleep all night with them.--Before turning the ewes out to pasture, each time, the lambs must be lifted into their small dark pen, or stall, (one six or eight feet square, is sufficiently large for thirty lambs or more,) where they will have no room to skip or play their fat away; here they will nibble so much of the fine hay, and eat so much of the dry Indian corn meal, from want of other employment, as to render themselves voraciously thirsty against the next meal of milk from their dams; which, with the other causes mentioned, makes them grow surprisingly large and fat in a short time. Lambs thus educated, will often promiscuously suck the ewes, without knowing or being attached to their own dams.--Hence a very great advantage: for when all grow large and strong, they become capable of consuming more milk than a single ewe can afford; and more especially those ewes which have two or more lambs each. For upon killing off all the lambs of a ewe, that ewe continues to give suck to the other lambs promiscuously as before, to the great advantage of the surviving lambs, now requiring additional nourishment. This is not the case when lambs run out at large with their dams." _New method of inoculating trees._--A common method of inoculating is by making a transverse section in the back of the stock and a perpendicular slit below it; the bud is then pushed down to give it the position which it is to have. This method is not always successful; it is better to reverse it, by making the verticle slit above the transverse section, and pushing the bud upwards into its position--a method which rarely fails of success; because as the sap descends by the bark, as has been ascertained, and does not ascend, the bud thus placed above the transverse section, receives abundance, but when placed below, the sap cannot reach it. _Grape Vines._--About one month since, I trimmed a very luxurious grape vine, calculating that I was early enough to allow the wound made by the cutting to heal before the sap began to rise; but to my surprise I found, three days since, the sap issuing from every part where the knife had been used, the ground was completely wet with it: I tried rosin and other things to stop it, without avail. In conversation with a neighbour he informed me, that to stick a potato on the part would stop the sap. I tried it and found it to succeed completely. Apprehending that many persons may, at this season, have vines similarly situated with mine, I thought communicating the above might give them an opportunity of benefiting by the information. A. B. [_N. Y. Daily Adv._ _To dry Peaches._--The following mode of drying peaches is adopted by Thomas Belanjee, of Egg Harbour, New Jersey:--He has a small house with a stove in it, and drawers in the sides of the house, lathed at their bottoms. Each drawer will hold nearly half a bushel of peaches, which should be ripe, and not peeled, but cut in two, and laid on the laths with their skins downwards, so as to save the juice. On shoving the drawer in they are soon dried by the hot air of the stove and laid up. Peaches thus dried are clear from fly dirt, excellently flavoured, and command a high price in market. Pears thus dried eat like raisins. With a paring machine, which may be had for a dollar or two, apples or pears may be pared, and a sufficient quantity dried, to keep a family in pies, and apple bread and milk, till apples come again. With a paring machine, one person can pare for five or six cutters. CANKER ON PLUM TREES. _Lansingburg, April 5, 1820._ S. SOUTHWICK, Esq. _Sir_--I observe in your _Plough Boy_ of the 1st inst. some observations on the disease in Plum Trees, called _Canker_, wherein the writer states that the disease is probably caused by the trees being bark-bound. I have had sufficient proof to convince me that it is caused by insects only. From a variety of observations and experiments, I find that when young shoots are throwing out of the trees, they are stung by a species of fly, and a number of eggs or nits are deposited through the tender bark, where they remain until the tree commences growing the next season; those places then begin to swell, and after a few weeks, small worms can be distinctly observed by the naked eye, which, after about one month more is elapsed, eat out of the protuberances, then become black, take to themselves wings, and commence operations as before stated. The only remedy that I can discover, is to cut off every limb affected, on its first appearance; and if the tree be so much affected as to be past cure, it should be totally cut down, in order to destroy the whole race of insects which cause the disease. The first discovery of this complaint was on the sea-board: and it has advanced north about twenty miles a year. At present nearly all the bearing trees on the sea coast to the southeast, are totally destroyed, and it pervades all this part of the country. The poorest natural blue plums are first attacked--the dark coloured grafts, next--and lastly, the light coloured fruit fall victims. Some few kinds as yet withstand their attacks. By observing the above caution, my trees are entirely free from them, and bear abundantly. I am, Sir, Yours, &c. ARBOREUM. ON DOMESTIC MANUFACTURES. SIR--The Montgomery Agricultural Society have announced the following 40 premiums to be awarded to ladies in October, 1820. As some of them are novel, their publication in the Plough Boy, I am persuaded, will have an excellent effect, as an example. W. * * * * * To the lady who shall produce the best piece of cloth, made of merino wool, spun in the family, not less than 15 yards, $8 2d best do. 6 For the best piece of cloth made of common wool, spun in the family, not less than 15 yards, 6 2d best do. 4 For the best piece of flannel, spun in the family, of merino wool, not less than 20 yards, 6 2d best do. 4 For the best piece of flannel made of common wool, spun in the family, not less than 20 yards, 5 2d best do. 4 For the best pair of rose blankets, spun and made in the county, 5 2d best do. 4 For the best piece of carpeting, spun in the family, 6 2d best do. 5 For the best external covering for beds, spun in the county, 4 2d best do. 3 For the best hearth rug, spun and made in the family, 3 2d best do. 2 For the best pair of worsted stockings, made and knit in the family, 1 2d best do. 75 cents For the best pair of woollen stockings, spun and knit in the family, 1 2d best do. 75 cents For the best pair of cotton stockings, knit in the family, 1 2d best do. 75 cents For the best pair of linen stockings, spun and knit in the family, 1 2d best do. 75 cents For the best half pound of sewing linen thread, spun in the family, 4 2d best do. 3 For the best pair half stockings, knit by a girl not over 14 years of age, 1 2d best do. 75 cents For the best 15 runs of linen yarn, spun by a girl not over 14 years of age, 4 2d best do. 3 3d best do. 2 For the best pair of double mittens, spun and knit by a girl not over 14 years of age, $1 2d best do. 75 cents For the best table linen, not less than 15 yards, 6 2d best do. 4 For the best piece of linen, not less than 15 yards, spun in the family, 6 2d best do. 4 For the best Lady's straw or grass bonnet, made in the county, of materials of the growth of the state, 8 2d best do. 7 3d best do. 6 To the Lady who shall attend the next annual fair in the best homespun dress, 20 2d best do. 18 3d best do. 16 4th best do. 14 5th best do. 12 6th best do. 10 WOODEN SOALED SHOES. Mr. Custis of Arlington, near Alexandria in a letter to the editor dated 1st Feb. last, observes--"Wooden soaled shoes are the very best for labourers that I ever met with. They keep the feet warm and dry in ditching, and in all kinds of labour, to be performed out of doors in winter, and are a saving in expense of fully 80 per cent. My people are all shod in this way, and themselves declare that they never were so comfortable in their feet before, while my leather bill from $100, has been reduced to scarce $20. You form the soal, after the appearance of the leather soal and heel, the wood about half or three fourths of an inch in thickness, around the upper edge, is cut a rabbit, into which is nailed (with ordinary sized tacks) the upper leather.--Not a particle of thread is needed, except to close the two parts of upper leather.--Every man may be his own shoemaker, and a man would put together a dozen pair a day. In slippery weather, small plates of iron are nailed around the toes and heels, and frost nails driven in them, which also protects tects the soal from wear. Gum, ash, or dogwood, are best for the soals, and about two sets will last the winter.--The feet are never cold, or wet, and hence will be remedied those chronic pains and evils, to which labourers are subject, from exposure to cold and wet. For any purpose but a foot race, these are the very best shoes, and I doubt whether even Sir Humphrey Davy has made a more useful discovery in the last twenty years." [_Am. Farmer._ _Republican Manners._--A gentleman, who lately visited the Atheneum at Boston, told us, that he saw a book there, on the title page of which was written these words, by the hand of Mr. Jefferson-- "_From Thomas Jefferson to his friend John Adams._" Now, to my way of thinking, all the flowers of rhetoric might be culled, and yet be wanting of the "sublime and beautiful" that irresistibly attaches itself to this little sentence--"Thomas Jefferson to his friend John Adams." It affords a practical result of our glorious system of government, more "precious than rubies." It is a diamond of the finest water, which the republican should hug to his bosom as a rich legacy to his children and his children's children "to the thousandth generation"--an evidence in favour of the simplicity of the truth never to be parted with, while the mighty Mississippi rolls her floods to the ocean! It is worthy of the best days of Greek or Roman history; and there is, doubtless, a sincerity in it that Greece or Rome hardly knew to exist between men so illustrious. The time has passed away in which either of those venerable men can be regarded as at the head of a party in the state, however much they were once opposed. They are preparing "for another and a better world;" but, like the patriarchs of old, with joyous hearts, survey the rich fruits of independence, planted by their toil and nurtured by their care. Passion has long ceased to influence either; oblivion has passed over their political differences of opinion; ancient friendships are renewed, and a spirit of harmony and reciprocal esteem prevails in each bosom. What a magnificent sentence--"from Thomas Jefferson to his friend John Adams!" Let us consider how great a space those men have filled in the world. Each has been the rallying point of simultaneously contending parties--each filled the highest office in the gift of the only free people existing, to relieve the sombre despotism of the civilized world.--Each has lived to see his early vows to the republic fulfilled; and their present good understanding affords us a delightful proof of the inestimable aphorism, that "a difference of opinion is not a difference of principle." What are now John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, so recently the leading politicians of the day, the heads of mighty parties?--private citizens, wholly abstracted from the bustle of the times, and leaning on their good intentions, like Jacob on his staff, to offer up thanksgivings to the Most High for the benefits which He has been pleased to bestow upon their beloved country! Neither holds a court, or is courted with sinister views; for it is well understood that both have retired from the influence that might have attached itself to them;--but the trace of their footsteps are as blessed by a grateful people, and a good old age has come upon them in peace! May we imitate the plainness and sincerity of this little sentence! What could ten thousand high-sounding titles add to the reputation, or contribute to the internal satisfaction of these sages? Yet we practise them and there are hundreds of little things among us, creatures of the moment--here to-day and gone to-morrow, and forgotten, who feel insulted if they are not called of men _honourable_, written at full length, as if the title made them so. I believe I never wrote this word, as prefixed to a man's name, but once, and think that, while I preserve my reason and sense of moral _honesty_, I never will write it again, to a fellow citizen. It would not do any _harm_ if there was much more of this magnificent simplicity at the seat of government, where comfort is often sacrificed to form, and chilling etiquette keeps back from those in office the very persons that they ought to have familiar communication with. It is the yeomanry of the country, who are to carry to the chiefs of the government, the feelings and wishes of the nation: but they are frozen by the ceremony of their introduction to men in power--congressmen and others. It is hateful even to some who _seemingly_ exact it--because _it is "the rule."_ Why not abrogate the rule, and while impertinent intrusion is kept at a distance, receive honest worth on the level, as man should receive man? A little anecdote, which I have recently heard, may illustrate this remark--a certain gentleman, who now is a quaker, or at least conforms to many of their manners, a veteran of the revolution, and one of Mr. Monroe's earliest friends, having business at Washington, was specially sent for by the president, who had not seen him for more than forty years. The old man went to the president's house; he was met in the hall by the servants, who separately asked him for his cane, his coat, and his hat. The latter he would not part with, and it was intimated to him that he could not go into the president's room unless he dispossessed himself of it; but he observed, 'if he couldn't go in, he could go out,' and began to prepare for his departure. Then it was said, he might go in with his hat on, if he was willing in risk it! He was willing, and entered, and was received by the president as a true friend ought to be received; and they had a very interesting interview, grateful to one another. How much pleasure was nearly denied to Mr. Monroe for a matter of form!--for, if the sturdy old republican had once left the house, they never could have prevailed upon him to enter it again! All _mere_ ceremonies are easy, and even in matters of the highest import, become mechanical to those accustomed to perform them daily--but are always irksome to those who never went through them--nor do they form any part of our habits of thinking and acting, as conformable to the nature of our institutions. I am apprehensive that they are on the increase, though well convinced that they are not desired by the president himself, and others that I could name. But they are _fashionable_; and it is easier to correct a positive vice than to do away an idle fashion. This fashion keeps no one from the presence of influential persons who has sinister designs to accomplish, but checks the warm flow of the blood with which an honest farmer or mechanic would meet his own elected rulers, and prevents that freedom of discussion by which truth is manifested. Let us all endeavour to imitate the simplicity and frankness of Jefferson--under this solemn assurance, that the further we are removed from this plainness, the greater is the danger of despotism. I am very far from being an enemy to what are called the elegancies of life, and am quite willing that, if a couple of dancing masters meet, they should bow to each other, "according to rule," for half an hour before they approached near enough to touch the tip of each other's finger, as the _sign_ of shaking hands! Let those enjoy it who can, and practice it who may--but it is not the _manner_ in which sincerity is shown, or good fellowship promoted. The homage of the heart, such as the republican will feel in reading the _text_ of this article, is worth more than all the forms of etiquette ever devised. It is as a rock in the midst of the sea--faction assails it in vain; it is _principle_ only that takes effect upon it. The tide of popularity may rise and fall, but the foundation is not to be shaken. [_Niles' Reg._ _On the Importance of Manner._ To exasperate is not the way to convince: nor does asperity of language or of manner necessarily belong to the duty of plain dealing. So far otherwise, a scolding preacher, or a snarling reprover, betrays alike a gross ignorance of the philosophy of the human mind, and the absence of Christian meekness; and how zealous soever be his aim to do good, the provokingness of his manner will defeat the benevolence of his intentions. The following remarks are from the pen of a man as distinguished for Christian piety as for superiour genius--the immortal Cowper. "No man" (says that _evangelical_ poet) "was ever scolded out of his sins. The heart, corrupt as it is, and because it is so, grows angry if it be not treated with some management and good manners, and scolds again. A surly mastiff will bear perhaps to be stroked, though he will growl under that operation, but if you touch him roughly, he will bite. There is no grace that the spirit of self can counterfeit with more success than that of zeal. A man thinks he is fighting for Christ, when he is fighting for his own notions. He thinks that he is skillfully searching the hearts of others, when he is only gratifying the malignity of his own, and charitably supposes his hearers destitute of all grace, that he may shine the more in his own eyes by comparison." Nor is scolding, or ridicule either, the proper way to cure men of their religious prejudices: for, by inflaming their anger, it renders their prejudices the more stubborn and inveterate. It is no matter how absurd or even how monstrous their errors and prejudices; if you offend them by the grossness of your manner, there is little hope of your convincing them afterwards by the cogency of your reasoning. The Baptist Missionaries in India, at the first insulted, as we are told, the superstition which they attacked, and ridiculed and reviled the Bramins in the streets, and at their festivals, when the passions of the blinded and besotted populace were most likely to be influenced. But experience taught those pious and apostolical men, that this was not the right way to make converts: for which reason, in 1805, they made a declaration of the great principles upon which they thought it their duty to act. "It is necessary," say they, "in our intercourse with the Hindoos, that, as far as we are able, we abstain from those things which would increase their prejudices against the gospel. Those parts of English manners which are most offensive to them should be kept out of sight; nor is it advisable at once to attack their prejudices, by exhibiting with acrimony, the sins of their gods; neither should we do violence to their images, nor interrupt their worship." Now if this forbearance from every thing provoking, whether in language or manner, was expedient in dealing with the errors of the grossly idolatrous pagans, it is assuredly not less expedient for fellow Christians, in their treatment of the real or supposed religious errors of one another. Bitter revilings and contumelious denouncements always provoke, but never convince. If they are used instead of argument, they betray a conscious weakness; for it is much easier to revile and denounce than to argue. And furthermore, we are quite as apt to be furiously in the wrong, as to be furiously in the right: or even if we know ourselves to be right as to matter, we put ourselves in the wrong as to manner, if we make use of foul weapons rather than those which the armoury of reason supplies. _Manner_ is to be carefully studied by every one, whether in a public or a private station, who undertakes to reclaim the vicious, or to convince the erring: for what would be beneficial if done in one manner, would be worse than labour lost, if done in another. A haughty, supercilious manner never wins, seldom convinces, and always disgusts; whereas that which indicates meekness and unmingled benevolence and compassion, rarely fails of some salutary impression; especially if suavity of manner be accompanied with force of reasoning, and a due regard be had to time, place, and circumstances. No very long while ago, Mr. ----, an American clergyman, as distinguished for pious zeal as for eminent parts, was passing a river in a ferry boat, along with company of some distinction, among which was a military officer who repeatedly made use of profane language: Mr. ---- continued silent till they had landed, when taking him aside, he expostulated with him in such a moving manner, that the officer expressed his thanks, and his deep sorrow for the offence; but added withal: "_Sir, if you had reproved me before the company, I should have drawn my sword upon you._" There are some who glory in it, that by their plain dealing they wound the pride of those they deal with. Peradventure with greater pride they do it. Often, we are so little aware of the obliquities of our own hearts, that we may be feeding and nourishing pride within ourselves whilst we are zealously aiming our blows at the pride of others. Our love of chiding, our coarse bluntness, which we fondly term an honest plain heartedness, or a warmth of zeal, may possibly spring from other motives than those of pure Christian benevolence. EXTRACT FROM WILKINSON'S MEMOIRS. _Sentiments of an Old Soldier._ Let those parents who are now training their children for the military profession, let those misguided patriots, who are inculcating principles of education subversive of the foundations of the republic, look at this picture of distress, taken from the life of a youth in a strange land, far removed from friends and relations, comingled with the dying and the dead, himself wounded, helpless, and expiring with agony, and then should political considerations fail of effect, I hope the feelings of affection, and the obligations of humanity, may induce them to discountenance the pursuits of war, and save their offspring from the seductions of the plume and the sword, for the more solid and useful avocations of civil life; by which alone peace and virtue, and the republic, can be preserved and perpetuated. A dupe during my whole life, to the prejudices I now reprobate, I speak from experience, and discharge a conscientious duty, when I warn my country against military enthusiasm, and the pride of arms; and against the arts and intrigues by which the yeomanry, the palladium of the republic, are depreciated, and standing armies and navies are encouraged. For what would it avail the citizens of the United States, if in a political frenzy, they should barter their rights and liberties for national renown? And who would exchange the blessings of freedom, for the repute of having eclipsed the whole human race in feats of valour and deeds of arms? This is a serious question! It affects the vital interests of every freeman; and the course of the government makes it proper and necessary, that these states should pause and reflect, before it be too late. We have escaped from one war with a crippled constitution; the next will probably destroy it; therefore let the motto of the state be--PEACE. DR. FRANKLIN. _Extracts from a letter of Mr. Jefferson, dated December 4th, 1818, respecting Dr. Franklin._ "Dr. Franklin had many political enemies, as every character must, which, with decision enough to have opinions, has energy and talent to give them effect on the feelings of the adversary opinion. These enmities were chiefly in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. In the former they were merely of the proprietary party: in the latter they did not commence till the revolution, and then sprung chiefly from personal animosities, which spreading by little and little, became at length of some extent. Dr. ---- was his principal calumniator; a man of much malignity, who, besides enlisting his whole family in the same hostility, was enabled, as the agent of Massachusetts with the British government, to infuse it into that state with considerable effect. Mr. Jay, Silas Deane, Mr. Laurens, his colleagues also, ever maintained towards him unlimited confidence and respect. That he would have waived the formal recognition of our independence, I never heard on any authority worthy notice. As to the fisheries, England was urgent to retain them exclusively, France neutral, and I believe that had they been ultimately made a _sine qua non_, our commissioners (Mr. Adams excepted) would have relinquished them rather than have broken off the treaty. To Mr. Adams' perseverance alone on that point, I have always understood we were indebted for their reservation. As to the charge of subservience to France, besides the evidence of his friendly colleagues before named, two years of my own service with him at Paris, daily visits, and the most friendly and confidential conversations, convince me it had not a shadow of foundation. He possessed the confidence of that government in the highest degree, insomuch that it may truly be said that they were more under his influence, than he under theirs. The fact is, that his temper was so amiable and conciliatory, his conduct so rational, never urging impossibilities, or even things unreasonably inconvenient to them; in short, so moderate and attentive to their difficulties, as well as our own, that what his enemies called subserviency, I saw was only that reasonable disposition, which, sensible that advantages are not all to be on one side, yielding what is just and liberal, is the more certain of obtaining liberality and justice.--Mutual confidence produces of course mutual influence, and this was all which subsisted between Dr. Franklin and the government of France. "I subjoin a few anecdotes of Dr. Franklin, within my own knowledge. "Our revolutionary process, as is well known, commenced by petitions, memorials, remonstrances, &c. from the old Congress. These were followed by a non-importation agreement, as a pacific instrument of coercion. While that was before us, and sundry exceptions, as of arms, ammunition &c. were moved from different quarters of the house, I was sitting by Dr. Franklin, and observed to him that I thought we should except books: that we ought not to exclude science, even coming from an enemy. He thought so too, and I proposed the exception, which was agreed to. Soon after it occurred that medicine should be excepted, and I suggested that also to the doctor. 'As to that,' said he, 'I will tell you a story. When I was in London, in such a year, there was a weekly club of physicians, of which Sir John Pringle was president, and I was invited by my friend Dr. Fothergill, to attend when convenient. Their rule was to propose a thesis one week, and discuss it the next. I happened there when the question to be considered was, Whether physicians had on the whole, done most good or harm? The young members, particularly, having discussed it very learnedly and eloquently till the subject was exhausted, one of them observed to Sir John Pringle, that, although it was not usual for the president to take part in a debate, yet they were desirous to know his opinion on the question. He said, they must first tell him whether, under the appellation of physicians, they meant to include _old women_; if they did, he thought they had done more good than harm; otherwise more harm than good.' "The Confederation of the States, while on the carpet before the old Congress, was strenuously opposed by the smaller States, under the apprehension that they would be swallowed up by the larger ones. We were long engaged in the discussion; it produced great heats, much ill humour, and intemperate declarations from some members. Dr. Franklin at length brought the debate to a close with one of his little apologues. He observed, that 'at the time of the union of England and Scotland, the Duke of Argyle was most violently opposed to that measure, and among other things predicted that, as the whale had swallowed Jonas, so Scotland would be swallowed by England. However,' said the doctor, 'when Lord Bute came into the government, he soon brought into its administration so many of his countrymen, that it was found, in the event, that Jonas swallowed the whale.' This little story produced a general laugh, restored good humour, and the article of difficulty was passed. "When Dr. Franklin went to France on his revolutionary mission, his eminence as a philosopher, his venerable appearance, and the cause on which he was sent, rendered him extremely popular; for all ranks and conditions of men there, entered warmly into the American interest. He was therefore feasted and invited to all the court parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of Bourbon, who being a chess-player of about his force, they very generally played together. Happening once to put her king into _prise_, the Doctor took it. 'Ah,' says she, 'we do not take kings so.' 'We do in America,' said the doctor. "At one of these parties, the Emperor Joseph II., then at Paris, _incog._ under the title of Count Falkenstein, was overlooking the game, in silence, while the company was engaged in animated conversations on the American question. 'How happens it, M. Le Comte,' said the Duchess 'that while we all feel so much interest in the cause of the Americans, you say nothing for them?' 'I am a king by trade,' said he. "When the Declaration of Independence was under the consideration of Congress, there were two or three unlucky expressions in it, which gave offence to some members. The words 'Scotch and other auxiliaries,' excited the ire of a gentleman or two of that country. Severe strictures on the conduct of the British king, in negativing our repeated repeals of the law which permitted the importation of slaves, were disapproved by some southern gentlemen, whose reflections were not yet matured to the full abhorrence of that traffic. Although the offensive expressions were immediately yielded, these gentlemen continued their depredations on other parts of the instrument. I was sitting by Dr. Franklin, who perceived that I was not insensible to those mutilations. 'I have made it a rule,' said he, 'whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you. When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprentice hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome sign-board, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words:--'John Thompson, _Hatter_, _makes_ and _sells hats for ready money_,' with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to, thought the word '_hatter_' tautologous, because followed by the words 'makes hats,' which shew he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word '_makes_' might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats; if good and to their mind, they would buy, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said, he thought the words '_for ready money_,' were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit: every one who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood, 'John Thompson sells hats.' '_Sells_ hats?' says his next friend; 'why nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word?' It was stricken out, and '_hats_' followed it, the rather, as there was one painted on the board; so his inscription was reduced ultimately to 'John Thompson,' with the figure of a hat subjoined.' "The Doctor told me, at Paris, the following anecdote of the Abbé Raynal.--He had a party to dine with him one day, at Passy, of whom one half were Americans, the other half French; among the last was the Abbé. During the dinner he got on his favourite theory of the degeneracy of animals, and even of man, in America, and urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor at length noticing the accidental stature and position of his guests, at table, 'Come,' said he, 'M. l'Abbé, let us try this question by the fact before us. We are here one half Americans, and one half French; and it happens that the Americans have placed themselves on one side of the table, and our French friends are on the other. Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side nature has degenerated.' It happened that his American guests were Carmichael, Harmer, Humphreys, and others of the finest stature and form; while those of the other side were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbé himself, particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried the appeal however, by a complimentary admission of exceptions, among which the Doctor himself was a conspicuous one." _An Act for the Appraisement of Estates taken in execution._ SECT. 1. _Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania in general assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same_, That in all cases where lands, tenements or hereditaments, have been or hereafter shall be levied on, by virtue of any writ of _fieri facias_ or other writ of execution, and an inquest of twelve men summoned by the sheriff or coroner of any of the cities or counties agreeably to the existing laws of this commonwealth, shall find that the rents, issue, and profits of such property, are not sufficient, beyond all reprises, within the space of seven years to satisfy the damages and costs or the debt, interest and cost in such writ mentioned, it shall be the duty of the same inquest to value and appraise the said property. And in all cases where the defendant or defendants shall consent to a condemnation agreeable to an act entitled "a supplement to the act, entitled, An act for taking lands in execution for the payment of debts," passed on the sixth day of March, one thousand eight hundred and twenty, and in any case where an inquisition and condemnation of such estate as aforesaid shall not be deemed necessary in law, it shall be the duty of the sheriff or coroner of the proper county to summon an inquest of twelve good and lawful men of his bailiwick, who shall be under oath or affirmation, and shall receive the same pay as jurors are entitled to in similar cases, to value and appraise the same; and the sheriff or coroner shall make return of such valuation or appraisement, with the writ aforesaid, to the court from which the same issued, and which valuation or appraisement shall be conclusive in any future execution which may be levied on the same property; and in case any writ of _venditioni exponas_ or other writ shall issue for the sale of said lands, tenements or hereditaments, and the same cannot be sold at public vendue or outcry for two-thirds or more of such valuation or appraisement: that then and in such case the sheriff or coroner shall not make sale of the premises, but shall make return of the same accordingly to the court from which the execution process issued, and that thereupon all further proceedings for the sale of such lands, tenements or hereditaments, shall be stayed for one year from and after the return day of the _venditioni exponas_, or other writ for the sale of the premises: _Provided_, That the sheriff or coroner, shall not be entitled to poundage unless in those cases where a sale of the property shall take place. SECT. 2. _And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid_, That in all cases where lands, tenements or hereditaments, have been heretofore levied on and condemned in virtue of any writ of _fieri facias_, and in all cases where any lands, tenements or hereditaments, have been or hereafter shall be seized or levied on by virtue of any writ of _levari facias_, it shall be the duty of the sheriff or coroner, before exposing the said property to sale pursuant to any writ for that purpose issued, or in pursuance of such writ of _levari facias_, to summon twelve good and lawful men of his bailiwick, who, being first sworn or affirmed, shall make a true valuation or appraisement of the property aforesaid, and the same proceedings shall be had as is directed by the first section of this act. SECT. 3. _And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid_, That in all cases where a life estate, or for a term of years, in any lands, tenements, or hereditaments, have been or shall be seized and levied on by virtue of any writ of execution, it shall be the duty of the sheriff or coroner, before he shall proceed to advertise and sell the premises aforesaid, to summon an inquest of twelve good and lawful men of his bailiwick, who, being first duly sworn or affirmed, shall make a true valuation and appraisement of the same. And if such life estate, or for term of years as aforesaid, after having been advertised and offered for sale by public vendue or outcry, according to the laws of this commonwealth, cannot be sold for two thirds or more of the amount of the valuation and appraisement aforesaid, the sheriff or coroner shall make return accordingly; and thereupon all further proceedings for the sale of the said premises shall be stayed for one year from the return day of the said execution process. SECT. 4. _And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid_, That in all cases where personal property shall be taken in execution by virtue of any writ of _fieri facias_ issued out of any court of common pleas in this commonwealth, or by virtue of any execution issued by a justice of the peace, it shall be the duty of the sheriff, coroner, constable or other person, to whom such writ shall be directed, respectively, when it shall be requested by the debtor, to summon three respectable freeholders or citizens of the vicinage, who, being first duly sworn or affirmed by the said officer, shall value and appraise the personal property aforesaid, for which service they each shall be entitled to receive fifty cents per day; which valuation or appraisement, signed by the appraisers, together with a schedule of the property taken in execution, shall be annexed to the return of said writ. And in case said personal property, or any part thereof, cannot be sold for two thirds of the amount of said valuation or appraisement, at a public vendue of the same, of which notice shall be given to the plaintiff or plaintiffs, his, her or their agent or attorney, agreeably to the direction of the first section of this act, that then the sale of such property shall be stayed for the term of twelve months from that date: _Provided_, That the said defendant or defendants shall execute and deliver to the sheriff, coroner or constable, as the case may be, a bond, with one or more sufficient sureties, in a penalty double the amount of the said valuation or appraisement, conditioned for the faithful forthcoming and delivery of all and every part of the said personal property, upon the expiration of the said stay of execution, to the proper sheriff, coroner or constable, or his successor in office, in like good order and condition as when the same was so as aforesaid offered for sale, or other personal property equal in value and like good order, to be ascertained in the manner aforesaid; or in default thereof, for the payment of the amount of the appraisement or valuation, with interest and costs, or the amount of the debt, interest and cost, for which the levy was made. And upon the execution and delivery of such bond, the said personal property shall be returned and redelivered into the possession of the said defendant or defendants: _Provided also_, That nothing in this act contained, shall be construed to prevent any judgment creditor or creditors from having the property of any debtor or debtors exposed to sale, in the usual manner, at any time, and as often as he, she or they may think proper, after it may have once been exposed to sale as aforesaid, by paying all the costs which may accrue in consequence thereof, except the time which a sale may be effected, which cost shall be paid out of the proceeds of the sale as in other cases. SECT. 5. _And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid_, That this act shall be and continue in force for the term of one year and no longer. MORTGAGES. The Legislature of Pennsylvania, at their late session, passed the following act relative to Mortgages. SECT. 1. _Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in general assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same_, That from and after the first day of October next, all mortgages, or defeasible deeds in the nature of mortgages, made or to be made or executed for any lands, tenements or hereditaments within this commonwealth, shall have a priority according to the date of recording the same, without regard to the time of making or executing such deeds. And it shall be the duty of the recorder to endorse the time upon the mortgages or defeasible deeds when left for record, and to number the same according to the time they are left for record, and if two or more are left upon the same day, they shall have priority according to the time they are left at the office for record. And that no mortgage, or defeasible deed in the nature of a mortgage, shall be a lien until such mortgage or defeasible deed shall have been recorded, or left for record as aforesaid. _Provided_, That no mortgage given for the purchase money of the land so mortgaged shall be affected by the passage of this act, if the same be recorded within sixty days from the execution thereof. SECT. 2. _And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid_, That the governor be, and he is hereby requested to cause this act to be published immediately after the passage of the same, in such newspapers and for such a length of time as he may think most proper for the information of the citizens of this commonwealth. _Whimsical conflict._--It would be well for society, if all duellists were to find themselves in the same predicament as did the celebrated poet, Dr. Akenside, and a gentleman of the bar by the name of Ballow. A challenge had passed from the former--but they did not get into the field; for one would not consent to fight in the morning, and the other was equally determined not to do so in the evening! The one wished to fall in a blaze of glory, mingled with the brilliant rays of the rising sun, a very fanciful and poetic notion; and the other, with perhaps an equal degree of poetic feeling and imagination, thought the shades of eve more congenial with the work of death and the hour of dissolution. Whether serious or affected, the difference was perhaps a happy one for the lovers of literature, who might otherwise have lost the keen and inexpressible delight which ever flows from the perusal of Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination--a work which will charm and instruct mankind through every age, so long as learning, taste, and genius, shall have a votary or a favourite to relish so rich a banquet. The hand of blood, that had deprived the republic of letters of that incomparable poem, would have well deserved everlasting execration. [_Plough Boy._ LAW-SUIT. The longest law-suit ever heard of in England, or perhaps in the world, was between the heirs of Sir T. Talbot; Viscount Lisle, on the one part, and the heirs of Lord Berkeley on the other, respecting certain possessions not far from Wotton-under-Edge, in the county of Gloucester. The suit was commenced at the end of Edward IV. and was depending till the reign of James I. when a compromise took place, it having lasted above a hundred and twenty years. THE CAMERONIANS. From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1819. For the Cameronians, those relicks of the stern enthusiastic Covenanters--those resolute maintainers of the unblemished purity and rights of the reformed church--those dwellers on the misty mountain tops--I entertain the greatest respect and reverence. It was my lot to pass the early part of my life in the neighbourhood of their hill of worship--often in the company of their leading men, and most admired professors--and at all times in the society of a portion of their number. They had hovered for many years about the mountainous regions of the parish of Kirkmahoe, in Dumfries-shire; and as they began to confide in the kindness of their less rigid brethren, they commenced descending, step by step, from a large hill to a less, till they finally _swarmed_ on a small sterile mount, with a broomy glen at its foot, beside a little village, which one of their number named "Graceless Quarrelwood." Quarrelwood is a long straggling village, built in open hostility to regular lines, or the graceful curves of imaginary beauty. The cottages which compose it are scattered as if some wizard had dropt them down by random; and through the whole a streamlet winds, and a kind of road infinitely more crooked than the stream. This lane is fringed chiefly by old plum-trees, and seeks its way to the eastern extremity of the village, with a difficulty which a stranger will soon be sensible of, should he be so hardy as to endeavour to thread this Cameronian labyrinth. There is also a wide wilderness of gardens, hemmed in by strong walls of rough free-stone. It is a very defensible position; and, in case of retreat, the deep channels of two scanty streams present direct openings to the upland holds; and these are covered ways--for the brooks contrive to maintain as many stately trees and flourishing bushes on their steep and impassable banks, as would do honour to mightier streams. To this rural encampment several hundreds resorted weekly to hear their pastor's instructions; and at their great midsummer Festival of the Sacrament, several thousands usually assembled, many of them from distant parts, even from Fife and Banff. All around were objects to cherish their ancient spirit, and remind them of other days. The seat of their bitter persecutor, General Dalzell, was within two short miles--the grave of the cruel Laird of Lagg was visible from their mount; and in the church-yard of Dumfries, in the moors of Irongray, and the moorlands of Nithsdale, were buried, under broad and inscribed stones, some of the most renowned of the martyrs. With two of their preachers I had the pleasure of being acquainted; and I have also heard several of the western professors preach during the continuance of the sacramental holydays. Of their professors I shall endeavour to render some account. I still remember, with reverence, the thin long snowy hair and bald shining crown, and primitive look of the patriarchal Farely; and it is impossible I should ever forget the familiar and fervent eloquence of that delightful old pastor. Towards the close of his life, which was unusually long, he was accused of cheering his decaying spirits with other beverage than what cold brooks afforded. Of this infirmity I have heard some of the sternest of his flock speak with unlooked-for gentleness; and I believe none of his fellow-preachers chose to rebuke him for this indulgence, from a just dread of his powers for keen dry sarcasm. He was a great favourite with the Cameronian ladies, old and young, and his reputation with them was not at all diminished, by the renown he acquired by his ability in inflicting the discipline of his sect on fair trespassers. Of John Curtis, the regular pastor of the flock, I do not remember so much as I do of Mr. Farely. He was a man unaffectedly pious, rather than eloquent, and was deservedly and warmly beloved. He adorned his discourses with that melodious tone which some call the Cameronian drawl, and which the pious Cowper complained of in the Conventicles. Each sentence has a kind of starting note; and I can discover remains of this old puritanical fashion in the eloquence of Wilberforce and also Lord Milton. It would require some constraint in a pious stranger to listen, without an inward smile at least, to this continually recurring chorus.--With a gifted preacher it is less ungraceful, for he contrives to make it tell in better time than an ordinary man--still it might be spared; but a very sensible divine told me, he dared as soon renounce predestination as part with the "twang;" it was as dear to his flock as the memory of Richard Cameron. John Curtis, for he abominated the prelatical designation of "Master," was not an unfrequent, or unwelcome guest at my father's house. His coming was a visitation, for it came over our mirth as a cloud. He invariably was invited on week days; Sunday was a day that had higher duties. His coming was the signal for seven children, I was one of them, to cease their play and pranks, and mix trembling with their mirth. We became as quiet as a brood of chickens, over which the hawk is hovering. Even the nuts or raisins which filled the pockets of this primitive person, and which he divided among us with many a clap on the head and benediction, failed to inspire confidence. The chief revolution in the affairs of the Cameronians of Dumfriesshire, was effected at the death of John Curtis. They had been driven by persecution to preach on the mountains, and though persecution had ceased, on the mountains they remained. It was certainly a beautiful and impressive sight to see a congregation worshipping God on a mountain side or a wild glen; to see the upright pulpit-rows of bared, and white, and bald heads decently ranged around--and more extended ranks of beautiful women and active men drawn up in a regular confusion--the whole listening to the eloquence of my old friend Farely. This, with a clear day and a bright sun, must make an impression of devotion on the most obtuse intellect. But as the mason said of the wise man who sung, "Snow is beautiful in its season," "My certes," said he, "it was easy for him, with his lasses and his wine to sing so; had he been a poor free-stone mason, he would have sung another sang." For the weather seemed sometimes to inherit the rancour of the bloody Claverhouse, or the renowned chieftain of Lagg, to this persecuted race; and, instead of June giving one of her brightest and balmmiest days for the Sacrament, I have witnessed the heavy rain come down sans intermission for four stricken hours, as if ambitious to measure its mercies by the length of the "Action Sermon." By some this circumstance was hailed as a divine acknowledgment of their presence and influence; and after some very dry weather I have heard Mr. Farely turn a timely thunder shower to good account, by apostrophizing the Deity for his kindness to "this dry barren land." On another occasion--the morning was serene during the introductory discourse, and just as my friend Farely began to administer the sacrament, a huge black cloud sailed from the westward, and hung heavy and ominous over the congregation. Ere the ladies could raise their plaids, it descended perpendicular plump down, and the huge drops splashed off the bald crown of the preacher, in a manner that Kemble would have envied in acting King Lear. A Cameronian with an umbrella, at that time an unusual thing in the country, arose and stretched it over the Professor's head, regardless of himself. At this visible interposition between him and heaven, the preacher was wroth, and said audibly, "Take the Pope's cap off me," and his conduct was highly applauded. To such a congregation, after the decease of John Curtis, my friend of the umbrella made a proposition to have a chapel erected. And I question much if a proposal to go to mass would have excited a stronger commotion--particularly among those whom the measure meant to protect--the old and infirm. He of the umbrella offered to subscribe largely himself, and promote the subscription among others, hinting that many of the members of the kirk favoured the cause, and would be glad of an opportunity to display it. The motion was well timed too, namely, at the close of one of those four-hours benedictions from a thunder cloud, which had urged its way through the broad bonnets and thick plaids of the most obstinate believers. I cannot enumerate to you all the bitter and brief exclamations of dismay and indignation which this proposal excited. The decided wrath of one old moorland dame I shall long remember, "Foul fall ye," said she, starting up and hurling her heavy clasped black print Bible at the proposer's head, "foul fall ye, ye deserve to be brained with the word ye hae abused;" and had he of the umbrella not caught this religious missile, as the Curtal fryar's dogs caught the outlaw's arrows, namely, as it flew, he might have been numbered with the martyrs. "Shall _we_," said she, "who were hounded like deer to the mountains, there to worship God in fear of evil men, shall _we_, whom he marvellously protected there, doubt his providence, and descend to keep yer coupled timber--yer covered cushions--and yer canopied, fringed, and painted prelatical pulpits--and yer walls of hewn stane--far frae me--fit places are they, not for the word, but for ye ken what;"--and so she sat down. The more sensible part reflecting, however, that the showers of spring were cold--that the winds of autumn were not always gentle--and that winter indulged them with various and dubious blessings, under the resemblance of snows and sleets, and sudden thaws, resolved, that the erection of a house of worship was a justifiable measure; and a house was accordingly built. But the eloquent dame of the moorlands introduced a salvo, by which the sacrament was directed to be administered in the open air, and so it still continues. The religious festival of the sacrament is commenced after due private preparation by prayers of unwonted length, and the lonely broomy hollow where it is held, exhibits on Sabbath morn to a stranger a grand and solemn spectacle. The last time I was present at this meeting I was invited to breakfast at the house of a respectable and recently converted member of the "Broken Remnant," a warm-hearted weaver, a man of rare conversation--ready wit, and cutting dry sarcasm. He was also as much celebrated for his poetry as the unrivalled productions of his loom. His birds-eye, his barley-pickle, his lowland plaiden, and fine linen, were the theme of praise among the young maids in danger of being married--and to their praise I add mine. I have proved his hospitality, and proved the labours of his loom. I sat down to an ample breakfast with this Cameronian worthy--his wife lively always, and once handsome--his two sons, inheriting their father's powers even to overflowing, and a solemn browed Cameronian from the borders of the moorlands. This family auxiliary undertook to pronounce a blessing on our good cheer; a serious trial of my patience and appetite. I endured his sermon for many minutes; it was in its nature controversial. He touched on the adventure at Drumclog, and addressed Providence in strong and familiar term anent the disaster at Bothwell Brig. I looked piteous but resigned, and the good housewife poured forth the tea. But then there came headings and hangings, and finings and confinings, and sad travels and sore tortures. The goodwife placed a plate of smoking savoury cake before him, but he was not to be tempted; he threw a passing curse or two on patronage, still he was distant from our day half a century at least. I looked with an imploring eye, and my entertainer closed his; but I could see by the sarcastic curl at the corners of his mouth that he was inwardly enjoying my misery. Once I stretched my hand, for I had half a mind, like the renowned and impatient good man of Drumbreg, on a time of similar trial, to seize my cup with a cry of "Ye have done brawly man," and cut short all explanation by falling to. I endured it to an end however, and an excellent breakfast enabled me to endure the infliction of a "return thanks," eminently curious and controversial. We then sallied forth to the preaching--the pastor had already commenced; it might be half past 9 o'clock. I was struck with the magnitude and repose of the congregation. Besides the sodded seats which held the oldest and most respectable members, the broom then, I think, in full bloom, with all its perfume about it, was bent down for many acres to form rural seats to Cameronian dames, and dames indeed of all persuasions.--There were many dressed in the latest fashion; the old simple mode of dress however prevailed. Though all shewed deep symptoms of devotion, and many of awe, the young women by no means confined their eyes, and many had bright ones, to the contemplation of the preacher. This festival always attracts an immense multitude, and though the Cameronians are the only communicants, all sects and denominations of Presbyterians crowd to the place, and occupy the vacant ground. I saw many of the Cameronians with whom I had a personal acquaintance, and a silent squeeze of the hand, or an acknowledgment, an austere one, of the eye, was all the recognition to be obtained. The list of offences and sects excluded from communication is extensive and curious--they call it "debarring"--Socinians, Arminians, Unitarians, Episcopalians, false teachers, promiscuous dancers, and playhouse frequenters. I cannot inflict the whole of this tremendous catalogue upon you. One prudent and warning exclusion I cannot omit to mention, namely, that of all wives who disobey their husbands. In the green hedge-row lane, leading to the tent of the preacher, various stalls were established by persons who thought--as godliness was great gain, great gain was godliness. Here refreshments of all kinds, particularly liquid consolation, abounded, and one tent, rivalling in dimensions the tabernacle of the preacher, looked presumptuously down from the very crest of the hill on its more devout neighbour below. Here the owner of a neighbouring public house had established himself, and into this canvass mansion, in a moment of weakness, I was tempted to enter. I had sundry reasons for this piece of backsliding;--first, I had become wearied with the unexampled length and tediousness of the before-mentioned four hour's sermon; secondly, I was desirous to partake of either Ram-Jam, Mid-Row, or Pinkie, three denominations of ale, for which the landlord was become deservedly famous, and in the brewing of which, weak nerves, as well as a good head, had been doubtlessly consulted--and; thirdly and lastly, a dark-eyed damsel from the mountains wished for my private opinion anent the sinfulness of dancing, and to instruct me in a near road over the hills to her father's house, which stood in a remote glen on the stream of Ae. While deeply employed in taking a chart of this desart path, I could not avoid remarking with what particular gravity all were drinking, and many getting drunk. Consolation had been poured forth in no stinted tide, for a huge wall of empty vessels flanked the entrance. The proprietor of this house of call for the thirsty, was a ruddy carroty-headed rustic, who had contrived to draw down his cheeks for the occasion, in a manner unusually solemn. He sat apart busied, or apparently busied, with that chief of all sage books, the Young Man's Best Companion; while his daughter, as active a girl as ever chalked a score to a thirsty man, managed the business. But his mind had wandered into a long and studious calculation of the probable profit in his fermentations, and the Book, which was only put there as a decoy to the godly, was neglected. I contrived to withdraw it unperceived from before him, and for this feat I was rewarded by a grim smile from a broad bonneted son of Cameron, and a snuff from a tuphorn with a silver lid. On returning to the meeting, the stars were beginning to glimmer, amongst the thin mist of the summer evening, and I could see groupes, already at some distance, of the spectators retiring home. Far differently demeaned themselves the pious remnant. They crowded round their preacher's tent after the repose of a brief intermission, and I left them enjoying a mysterious lecture on Permission, Predestination, Free Grace, The Elect, and Effectual Calling. I am now, and I say it with sorrow, far removed from the society of those exemplary and pious people; and I heard, I confess, with something of an old Cameronian spirit and regret, that a proposition has been made to remove the meeting house into the neighbouring town of Dumfries. Of my old favourites, few I understand survive, and year after year lessens the number of those devout men who regularly passed my father's window on the Sabbath morn. Mr. Farely has long since been numbered with the blessed--and Jean Robson, a very singular and devout character, has also rested from her labour of instructing the youth of the Cameronians. She taught the writer of this imperfect account to read--the Bible, and the famed Prophecies of Alexander Peden. She tore the leaf from the Bible which said, "James, by the Grace of God, Defender of the Faith," and denounced the name of _Sunday_ as Popish, or what was worse, Prelatical, and caused us all to call it the Sabbath. She died 83 years old. She used to flog her scholars, and exclaim,--"Thou art an evil one--a worker of iniquity," while the tawse and tongue kept time and told sharply. The Cameronians make few converts--few people are fond of inflicting on themselves willingly the penance of controversial prayers and interminable sermons. There is a falling off in the amount of the flock.--My friend, the weaver, became a convert from conviction. Another of the converts joined the cause in the decline of life, not without suspicion of discontent, because his gifts had been overlooked by the minister of the parish kirk, in a recent nomination of elders. He was fond of argument, and seemed not unwilling to admit the potent auxiliaries of sword and gun on behalf of the cause. On one occasion, he grew wroth with the ready wit of a neighbouring peasant, on the great litigated point of patronage--and seizing the readiest weapon of his wrath, a hazel hoop--for he was a cooper--exclaimed, "Reviler--retire--else I'll make your head saft with this rung." On another time, he became exasperated at the irreverent termination of an epigram on a tippling blacksmith, which was attributed to Burns, who then resided within sight--at Elisland. On the last day, When sober men to judgment rise, Go drunken dog, lie still incog. And dinna stir if ye be wise. The honest Covenanter, after three days and three nights meditation, brought forth his expostulation with the mighty bard of Caledonia. It commenced thus-- Robert Burns ye were nae wise To gie to Rodds sic an advice. It has lost all its attraction since the voice of its author is mute, for who can repeat it as he did--the pithy preliminary remarks on the great poet's morals--the short Cameronian cough--the melodious trail of the tongue--and the frequent intrusion of explanatory notes, which the uninspired could not always distinguish from the poem itself, all these things are departed and passed away, and the verses sleep as quietly as the dust of the poet. Two other occasional converts scarcely deserve notice--one of them was saved from thorough conviction by the well-timed exaltation to a neighbouring precentorship, and the other has returned to his seat in the kirk, since the dark-eyed daughter of an adjacent Cameronian gave her hand, and it was a white one, to one of the chosen who was laird of an acre of peat-moss--and I have not heard of any other damsel of the covenant having caused him to relapse. SHEPHERD'S DOG. (From the London Sportsman's Cabinet.) This dog is the most timid, obedient, placid, serene and grateful in the creation. He seems studiously conscious of the purposes for which he was formed, and is never so perceptibly gratified, as when affording the most incessant proofs of his unsullied integrity.--Instinctively prone to industry, he is alive to the slightest sensation of his employer, and would rather double and treble the watch line of circumspection, than be seen indulging in a state of neglectful indolence.--The breed is propagated and preserved with the greatest respect to purity in the northern parts of the kingdom of England, as well as in the highlands of Scotland, where, in the extensive tracts and uncultivated wilds, their services exceed description. Constitutionally calm, patient, and philosophic, the sheep dog seems totally lost to every appearance of novelty, and insensible to every attraction beyond the protection and indefatigable preservation of the flock committed to his charge.--In the most sequestered and remote spots, dreary wilds and lofty mountains, almost inaccessible to man, this dog becomes an incredible and trusty substitute; for once initiated in the ground-work of his office, he soon acquires a perfect knowledge of the extent of his walk, as well as every individual of his flock: and will as regularly select his own, and disperse intruders, as the most faithful and attentive shepherd in existence. This becomes the more extraordinary to the contemplative mind, when it is recollected what immense flocks are seen to cover the downy hills of Hants and Wilts, as far as the eye can reach, without control; and to know that by a single signal from the shepherd, this faithful, sagacious animal, replete with energy, vigilance, and activity, will make his circle, so as to surround a flock of hundreds, and bring them within any compass that may be required. The sheep dog is so completely absorbed in what seems to be the sole business and employment of his life, that he does not bestow a look, or indulge a wish, beyond the constant protection of the trust reposed in him, and to execute the commands of his master; which he is always incessantly anxious to receive, and in fact is invariably looking for by every solicitous attention it is possible to conceive.--Inured to all weathers, fatigue and hunger, he is the least voracious of the species, subsists upon little, and may be justly considered truly emblematic of content. Though there is the appearance of a somniferous indolence in the exterior, it is by no means a constitutional mark of habitual inability; on the contrary, the sagacity, fidelity, and comprehensive penetration of this kind of dog, is equal to any other, but that there is a thoughtful or expressive gravity annexed to this particular race, as if they were absolutely conscious of their own utility in business of importance, and the value of the stock so confidently committed to their care. Amidst the infinity of cases so constantly issuing from the press, in which proofs almost incredible are authentically adduced of the courage, sagacity, fidelity, gratitude, and self-denial of different kinds of dogs, many are to be found appertaining to this particular race; if they are not so numerous as some other sorts, it may be fairly attributed to the little proportional chance they have (from their remote and sequestered employment) of displaying those powers in an equal degree with dogs more engaged in the bustle of human society. Dr. Anderson (in his translation from Dr. Pallas) introduces the following instance of sagacity in a shepherd's dog, which he considers truly astonishing; and it will create no surprise with those who are in the least acquainted with their perfections. "The owner himself having been hanged some years ago for sheep stealing, the following fact, among others, respecting the dog, was authenticated by evidence upon his trial. When the man intended to steal any sheep, he did not do it himself, but detached his dog to perform the business. With this view, under pretence of looking at the sheep with an intention to purchase them, he went through the flock with the dog at his feet, to whom he secretly gave a signal, so as to let him know the individuals he wanted, to the number of ten or twenty, out of a flock of some hundreds; he then went away, and at a distance of several miles sent back the dog by himself in the night time, who picked out the individual sheep that had been pointed out to him, separated them from the flock, and drove them before him by himself, till overtaking his master, to whom he relinquished them." The shepherd's dog rather shuns than seems anxious to obtain the caresses of strangers, of whom he always appears to be shy and suspicious; it being remarkable, that when refreshing upon a journey with the flock, he seldom reposes but close to the feet or body of his master; who well knows if he but deposits his coat or his wallet, and gives the animal the accustomed signal; when the sheep are at pasture, he may absent himself for hours, and at his return find the whole as safe and regular as if it had been under his own inspection. Although it is already observed, these dogs afford no evident external proof of quick conception, or rapid execution (except in all matters relative to the flock, to which their every faculty appertains) yet their sagacity and fidelity is found equal to every other branch of the species, when necessarily brought into useful action. "In the month of February, 1795, as Mr. Boulstead's son, of Great Salkeld, in Cumberland, was attending the sheep of his father upon Great Salkeld's common, he had the misfortune to fall and break his leg.--He was then at the distance of three miles from home, no chance of any person's coming, in so unfrequented a place, within call, and evening very fast approaching: in this dreadful dilemma, suffering extreme pain from the fracture, and laying upon the damp ground at so dreary a season of the year, his agitated spirit suggested to him the following expedient: Folding one of his gloves in his pocket handkerchief, he fastened it round the neck of the dog, and rather emphatically ordered him "home."--These dogs, trained so admirably to orders and signals during their attendance upon the flock, are well known to be under the most minute subjection, and to execute the commands of their masters with an alacrity scarcely to be conceived. Perfectly convinced of some inexplicable disquietude from the situation in which his master lay, he set off at a pace, which soon brought him to the house, where he scratched with great violence at the door for immediate admittance. This obtained, the parents were in the utmost alarm and consternation at his appearance, but more particularly when they had examined the handkerchief and its contents. Instantly concluding beyond a doubt, that some accident had befallen their son, they did not delay a moment going in search of him; and the dog, apparently conscious the principal part of his duty was yet to be performed, anxiously led the way and conducted the agitated parents to the spot where their son lay overwhelmed with pain, increased by the awful uncertainty of his situation.--Happily this was effected just at the close of day, when being immediately removed, and the necessary assistance procured, he soon recovered, and was never more pleasingly engaged than when reciting the sagacity and gratitude of his faithful follower, who then became his constant companion." * * * * * The instances of intelligence in the shepherd's dog are recorded in all books treating of the manners and habits of the dog tribe. One more may be mentioned from a recent publication. It is given for the purpose of stimulating the American farmer to possess himself of one of the breed as soon as possible.--Speaking of the "Currack of Kildare," the author says, "The commonage is stocked by a prescriptive proportion, attached to the adjacent farms: every sheep owner has a particular raddled mark; the shepherd's dogs are so trained, that if a sheep, with a strange mark, comes on his master's front, the dog will single him out and worry him off."--See Statistical Survey of the County of Kildare, by T. J. Rawson, Dublin, 1807. p. 121. J. M. _The new steam ship Robert Fulton._--This ship is intended to ply as a regular packet between New York and New Orleans. She is said to be, in every respect, one of the finest vessels ever built in that city. A communication in the Gazette gives the following description of this beautiful vessel: "This ship is a splendid piece of naval architecture--the most perfect model I ever beheld, and does great credit to her builder, Mr. Eckford. She is upwards of 750 tons, of a very great length, rigged with lug sails; has three kelsons, (the centre one large enough for a ship of the line,) together with bilge ways, and the whole secured and bolted in a very extraordinary manner, perhaps the most so of any vessel ever built. Her frame timber and plank are of live oak, locust, cedar, and southern pine, copper bolted and coppered. "She will afford accommodation for more than 200 persons, is fitted up with high and airy state rooms, thoroughly ventilated by means of sky lights the whole length of the cabin, which is very extensive. Her after cabin is neatly arranged for the accommodation of ladies, and separated by means of folding doors, in the modern style. She has also a range of births fore and aft, together with a commodious fore cabin. And what adds to the greatest comfort and security of all, her engine and other machinery are completely insulated and unconnected, as it were, with the other part of the ship. In the centre, lengthwise, is a kind of well-hole, or square trunk, made both fire and water proof; no possible accident, therefore, by the bursting of the boiler, can reach either of the cabins. This trunk or well-hole being enclosed by very thick plank, caulked and leaded, may be inundated with water at pleasure, without any inconvenience to the passengers. "The furnace is also completely surrounded by the continuation of the boiler, so that no part of the fire can ever come in contact with the wood. There is a space of about 9 or 10 inches filled in with materials, non-conductors of heat, which answer the double purpose of excluding the heat from the cabin, and at the same time deadening the disagreeable noise of the engine. She is also provided with a leather hose, similar to those used by our fire engine companies in this city, which will enable the hot or cold water to be conveyed to any part of the ship, and furnishing at the same time the great conveniency to the passengers of a warm or cold bath, at pleasure. Her engine was constructed by Mr. Allaire, and is supposed to be the most powerful and most exact piece of workmanship ever turned out in this country; and her boiler is said to be the largest ever known to have been made in this or any other country. Take her all in all, she certainly presents a spectacle altogether _unique_." MISCELLANY. _Public Lands._--The highly important bill, for changing the mode of disposing of Public Lands, so that hereafter they shall be offered for sale in half quarter sections, the minimum price to be one dollar and twenty-five cents, and all to be paid in cash, has _passed both Houses of Congress_, by great majorities, and now wants only the signature of the President to become a law.--This bill is to take effect from the 1st of June next. From a late London paper it appears, that a new and easy method has lately been discovered, in England, of preventing the destruction of the young turnip plants by the fly, and for which the discoverer was rewarded with 200 guineas. It is merely to sow about 2 _lbs._ of radish seed on every acre of turnip land, with the turnip seed; the fly, preferring to feed on the radish plants, will, in such case, leave the turnip plants unmolested. One of the most effectual methods of preventing the ascent of insects on fruit trees, in the spring, is to draw a streak of tar round the body of the tree; but the surface of this soon becomes incrusted by the warmth of the atmosphere, and then the insects are enabled to pass this barrier. To remedy this, mix a proportion of oil with the tar, which will prevent the hardening of the exterior for a considerable length of time; and when the effects of the oil are dissipated, let the exterior be again softened with oil.--This plan is certainly one of the most efficacious for preventing insects from ascending the bodies of fruit trees. _The scab in sheep._--The shepherds, in Spain, cure this disease with an ointment made of the trunk and roots of the juniper, by breaking them in small pieces, and infusing them in water. The sheep of this country are, however, but little liable to the scab. It is a fact well ascertained, that when apple trees are in bloom, if the _farina_ be gathered from the blossoms of a tree bearing sour fruit, and scattered on those of a tree bearing sweet, the apples produced from these blossoms will partake of the flavour of both trees. In this way the flavour of fruit may be changed for the better--a matter worthy of note, though perhaps not very profitable in practice. From Munich, Germany, we learn that Dr Vogel has announced the important discovery, that sulphuric acid, diluted with a certain proportion of water, and then applied to saw dust, to old linen, to paper, &c. will change these substances into gum and saccharine matter. M. Chaptal, somewhere in his book on chymistry, has ventured to offer his opinion, very modestly however, that even the chemical art of making gold (the great secret of the philosopher's stone) will yet be discovered--that chymists will yet be convinced that all matter is the same, only different modifications. _Calculation of the Period of a Second Deluge._--According to the calculations of the learned astronomer of Bremen, M. Olbers, after a lapse of 83,000 years, a comet will approach to the earth in the same proximity as the moon; after 4,000,000 years it will approach to the distance of 7,700 geographical miles, and then, if its attraction equals that of the earth, the waters of the ocean will be elevated 13,000 feet, and a deluge will necessarily ensue! after a lapse of 220,000,000 years, it will clash with the earth. During the late inundation of the Rhine, a hare, dislodged by the water took refuge in a tree. One of the boatmen who were traversing the inundated country, in canoes, to pick up the sufferers, observed the hare, steered for the tree, and without making his boat fast, climbed hastily up to seize the poor animal. The hare perceiving his danger, sprang from the tree into the boat, which was put in motion by the leap of the hare, and floated down the stream, leaving the boatman in his place upon the tree, in the disagreeable necessity of watching the rise of the waters. The Rhetorical Society at Cortryk, in the Netherlands, has lately offered a gold, and a silver medal, as a prize for a poem of 100 lines, and an epitaph of 12 lines, upon Kotzebue. From a London paper we have the following advertisement--A _new species of man_. Among the wonders of nature none have exceeded this extraordinary phenomenon--a man covered with scales, that rattle at the touch, is now in exhibition at the public rooms, 23, Bond Street. Physicians and natural philosophers will find an extensive field open for their inquiries. By another of a late date it appears, that in Dublin a _steam coach_ is advertised to commence running between that city and Belfast, on the 1st Feb. and is to run from one city to the other, and return every day. It is calculated to run at the rate of about 13 Irish (equal to about 20 English) miles an hour. It is to carry the mail between the two cities. It is calculated that it will be found a safer mode of conveyance for passengers than carriages drawn by horses. The whole weight of the carnage and apparatus is estimated at about 4 tons. _Fires._--A letter from St. Thomas, of the 2d March, mentions that the whole city of Ponce, in Porto Rico, with the exception of one church, was destroyed by fire on the 27th of the preceding month. On the 1st of January last, a fire broke out at Smyrna, which consumed 1500 buildings. On the night of the 2d March, a spacious hotel in Lexington, (Ken) was consumed--loss estimated at 40,000 dollars. From Pittsburg, it appears that a part of the vast beds of coal in the hills surrounding that place, has been on fire for about 25 years past; that the fire has, until lately, remained in a smouldering state, but has at length got vent, and that during the night it now exhibits the appearance of flame like a volcano. It is apprehended that much of the valuable material of coal, in the vicinity of that place, will probably be consumed before the fire will become extinguished. At Canton, the imports from the U. States, for the last season, are stated at 7,414,000 dollars, in specie, and 2,693,011 dollars, in merchandize; exceeding that of the English Company three or four millions. Congress have passed a law for taking another census of the United States. The enumeration to commence on the first Monday of August next, and to be completed in six months thereafter. Accounts of manufacturing establishments, and of the numbers is employed therein, are to be duly noted. _A Check to Intemperance._--The select men in Bedford, (Mass.) have posted up, at the tavern in the town, a list of the names of persons notoriously addicted to drunkenness, and forbidden the sale of liquor to them, under penalty of the laws of that state against intemperate drinking. The steam-boat Swift, rigged as a brig, is to depart from New York, _for Rio de Janeiro_, on the 5th of May--is now advertising for freight and passengers. The grand jury of Putnam county, (Geo.) lately presented, as a grievance existing there, (and probably not less there than in many places elsewhere) the practice, indulged in by the bar of villifying, without sufficient cause, the characters of suitors and witnesses. They request the aid of the court in discountenancing insolence of this kind. From a late Petersburgh, (Va.) paper, we have the following account of part of the remains of the formidable confederate tribes of Indians, found in Virginia when Sir Walter Raleigh first ascended St. James' river, at the head of which confederacy was Powhattan, the father of the celebrated Pocahontas. These remains are a few of the tribes of the Nottoways, to which tribe Powhattan belonged, the Panunkies and a few of the Mattahonies. Of the Nottoways, says the account, only 27 now remain, at the head of which is a woman, styled their queen, of the name of Edie Turner, of the age of about 60, and said to be quite intelligent, though illiterate. She is comfortably situated in a cottage, with the necessaries of life about her, and her share of the lands, (about 7000 acres, on Nottoway river,) tolerably well cultivated. The language of her tribe is only spoken by her and two others. It is said to be of Celtic origin, and as harmonious and expressive as the Erse, Irish, or Welch. _'Benefit of Clergy.'_--Paper was not made earlier than the fourteenth century--and printing in the century following. The art of reading made a very slow progress. To encourage it in England, the capital punishment of death was remitted if the criminal could read, which is termed 'Benefit of Clergy.' Yet so small an edition of the Bible as 600 copies translated into English in the time of Henry VIII. was not wholly sold off in three years. _Nugæ Antiquæ._--Before A. D. 1545, ships of war in England had no port-holes for guns; they had only a few cannon placed on the deck. There is no mention of writing in the time of Homer. Ciphers, invented in Hindoostan, were brought into France from Arabia about the end of the tenth century. _Respiration in Frogs._--It appears from a series of curious experiments, performed by M. Edwards, that frogs, toads, and lizards, are preserved alive and in health under water for weeks, by means of the air contained in the water, which they abstract, not by the lungs but by the skin. _Chinese Alphabet._--The Chinese have 11,000 letters in use, and in maters of science they employ 60,000, but their articulate sounds do not exceed thirty. _Method of rendering Glass less brittle._--Let the glass vessel be put into a vessel of cold water, and let this water be heated boiling hot, and then allowed to cool slowly of itself, without taking out the glass. Glasses treated in this way may, while cold, be suddenly filled with boiling hot water without any risk of their cracking. The gentleman who communicates the method, says, that he has often cooled such glasses to the temperature of 10°, and poured boiling water in them without experiencing any inconvenience from the suddenness of the change. If the glasses are to be exposed to a higher temperature than that of boiling water, boil them in oil. POULTRY. From the European Magazine. SIR--As the following account, together with the few observations I have made on the management and feeding of fowls, may prove acceptable, and afford some useful hints to many among the numerous readers of your entertaining and widely-circulated miscellany, you will oblige me by giving them a place in your work. I procured two pullets of the black Spanish kind, which were hatched in June, 1818, and fed them constantly myself twice a day, alternating their food, that is, I gave them corn in the morning, and in the afternoon boiled potatoes mixed with _fresh_ bran, but I never allowed them to take a _full meal_ of corn. They had a small orchard to range in, where, in the course of the day, they occasionally picked up worms and other insects; and, I have observed that poultry of all kinds eagerly seek for animal food even after they have satiated themselves with corn: indeed, I conceive a portion of animal food essentially requisite to preserve them in a healthy state. The above-mentioned pullets began to lay about the middle of November, and continued to do so till within the last ten days, when they began to moult their feathers, having produced _three hundred and sixty-seven eggs much larger and finer than those of the common fowl_. Seven eggs weigh 1 pound avoirdupois, so that I have been furnished with the astonishing weight of more than 53 pounds of nutritious and wholesome food from _two hens_. They were never _broody_, nor shewed a disposition to sit at any time during the whole season, and I understand this property is peculiar to this species of fowl: it is, however, an advantage than otherwise, as the common kinds can incubate their eggs, and foster their young. G. C. JENNER. _October 14th, 1819._ _Ancient Advice to Parents._ TEACH CHILDREN Obedience, } and they shall {bless thee. Modesty, } {not be ashamed. Gratitude, } { receive benefits. Charity, } {gain love. Temperance,} {have wealth. Prudence, } and {Fortune will attend {them. Justice, } {they will be honoured {by the world. Sincerity, } {own hearts will not {reproach them. Diligence, } and their {Wealth will increase. Benevolence, } {Minds will be exalted. Science, } {Lives will be useful. Religion, } {Death will be happy. _Comfortable Discovery._--"Laugh and grow fat" was the grand ancient specific for long life--"every sigh and groan drove a nail into our coffins," whilst a contrary excitation of the risible organs drew one out.--Truly every generation groweth wiser, and we may live to witness ocular proofs that pain is merely an alleviator of indigestion, and the repudiation of a limb, under the doctor's saw, a pleasant and exhilarating morning exercise; in short, what may we not expect after reading the following: A French surgeon has published a long dissertation on the beneficial influence of groaning and crying on the nervous system. He contends that groaning and crying are the two grand operations by which nature allays anguish; and that he has uniformly observed, that those patients who give way to their natural feelings, more speedily recover from accidents and operations, than those who suppose that it is unworthy a man to betray such symptoms of cowardice as either to groan or to cry. He is always pleased by the crying and violent roaring of a patient during the time he is undergoing a surgical operation, because he is satisfied that he will thereby so sooth his nervous system, as to prevent fever and ensure a favourable termination.--From the benefit hysterical and other nervous patients derive from crying or groaning, he supposes that "by these processes of nature," the superabundant nervous power is exhausted, and that the system is in consequence rendered calm, and even the circulation of the blood diminished. He relates a case of a man, who, by means of crying and bawling, reduced his pulse from 120 to 60 in the course of two hours. That some patients often have a great satisfaction in groaning, and that hysterical patients often experience great relief from crying, are facts which no person will deny. As to the restless hypochondriacal subjects, or those who are never happy but when they are under some course of medical or dietetic treatment, the French surgeon assures them that they cannot do better than groan all night and cry all day. By following this rule, and observing an abstemious diet, a person will effectually escape disease, and may prolong life to an incredible extent. _Oats 1000 years old._--In the highest point of a field, a mile south from Forfar, Scotland, there was a druids' place of worship, consisting of a circle of large stones, with one (the largest) in the middle. The field was fallowed last year, and this temple trenched, from which a very great quantity of stones were turned up. Nothing particular, however, appeared, except a few bones that went to dust. The field this year was sown with barley, and this trenched part with the rest: so far as this trench extended, there are considerable quantities of oats, of various kinds, sprung up among the barley, the seeds of which must have remained there more than 1000 years. Without the trenched ground there is not a head of oats to be seen. Orders have been given to preserve these oat plants. _State of the Rain Guage in Philadelphia._ January, 1 inch 40-1/100 February, 2 68 March, 5 70 _Longevity._--In the parish of Acton, Middlesex, still exist the lineal posterity of the famous Bishop Cranmer, who was burnt at the stake by order of Queen Mary, nearly 300 years ago. One of them, an old lady, named Whytell, has completed her 112th year, and retains her intellectual and bodily faculties to a surprising extent. _West's Painting._--The Earl of Egremont has purchased the celebrated easel study of "_Death upon the Pale Horse_;" painted by Mr. WEST; one of the most sublime productions of modern art. MARRIED, In Hebron, Connecticut, the celebrated LORENZO DOW, to Miss LUCY DOALBEAR, of Montville. At Harrisburg, Dr. PHINEAS JENKS, a member of the House of Representatives, from Bucks County, to Miss AMELIA, only daughter of the late governor Snyder. _Deaf and Dumb Marriage._--Nov. 20, 1819, a singular marriage was solemnized at Kirkheaton, near Huddersfield, between Joshua Barker and Mary Moorehouse. The man being deaf and dumb, could not repeat the necessary forms of the marriage ceremony; but this difficulty was obviated in an ingenious manner; as he was able to read, the book was presented to him, and he traced the words over with his finger. DIED, On the 4th instant, in Tewksbury, near New Germantown, (N. J.) FREDERICK PICKLE, aged 100 years. When he was 94 years of age, he cut with a cradle 500 sheaves of rye in a day. At 97 he went into the woods and split 100 chesnut rails in less than a day. He was regular and temperate in his habits, and enjoyed good health until within about a year before his death. His widow is 90, and they have lived in the marriage state 70 years. TIME. I saw him hasting on his way, And mark'd his lightning flight, Where'er he mov'd, there stern decay Spread its destructive blight. Rapid the gloomy phantom hied, Envelop'd in the storm-- His eyes shone out in sullen pride, And fearful was his form. I saw him grasp the Warrior's wreath, Won in the gory fray-- The laurel withering sunk in death, Its beauty fled away, That wreath was stained with bloody dew, Unhallowed was its bloom-- It met the phantom's chilling view, And bow'd beneath its gloom. I saw him pass by Beauty's bower, And listen to her lay; Around the spot was many a flower Blooming its summer day; With icy heart the spectre came, Her lovely form compress'd; She met his lurid eye of flame-- The tombstone tells the rest. On Youth's warm brow his hand he prest, 'Twas cold as mouldering clay-- He laid his hand on Manhood's breast, The life-pulse ceas'd to play. His fell siroc o'er Nature passed, And low she drooped her head-- Her blossoms withered in the blast, And all her verdure fled. FLORIO. [_Hudson Whig._ WINTER EVENING'S AMUSEMENT FOR JANE AND ME. In summer days I till the ground, And tug and toil and get my bread-- No interval can there be found, Between my labour and my bed, My wife declines to knit by night, And I to read by candle-light. But when the south receives the sun Beyond the equinoctial line-- When all my summer work is done Substantial pleasures then are mine, Then Jane begins to knit at night, And I to read by candle-light. I'm then content, and never sigh, Nor fly from home some bliss to find; And Jane is pleased as well as I, It so completely feasts her mind, To sit her down to knit by night, And hear me read by candle-light. For when I read she always hears, And what she hears, she tries to scan; When ought to her obscure appears, Then I explain it if I can, O how she loves to knit by night And hear me read by candle-light! But when she drops a stitch, and gapes, Soon gapes again, and nods her head, I close my book, and say, perhaps 'Tis time, my dear, to go to bed-- So knit again to-morrow night, And hear me read by candle-light. [_Olive Branch._ YOUTH AND OLD AGE. Days of my youth! ye have glided away; Hairs of my youth! ye are frosted and gray; Eyes of my youth! your keen sight is no more Cheeks of my youth! ye are furrow'd all o'er; Strength of my youth! all your vigour is gone; Thoughts of my youth! your gay visions are flown. Days of my youth! I wish not your recal; Hairs of my youth! I'm content you should fall; Eyes of my youth! ye much evil have seen; Cheeks of my youth! bathed in tears have ye been; Strength of my youth! why lament your decay; Thoughts of my youth! ye have led me astray; Days of my age! ye will shortly be past; Pains of my age! yet awhile ye can last; Joys of my age! in true wisdom delight; Eyes of my age! be religion your light; Thoughts of my age! dread ye not the cold sod; Hopes of my age! be ye fixed on your God! CURE FOR TROUBLE. BY S. OSBORNE. Ben Brisk a philosopher was, In the genuine sense of the word; And he held that repining, whatever the cause, Was unmanly, and weak, and absurd. Tom Tipple, when trouble intruded, And his fortune and credit were sunk, By a too common error deluded, Drown'd trouble, and made himself drunk. But Ben had a way of his own, When grievances made him uneasy; He bade the blue devils begone! Brav'd trouble, and made himself--_Busy_. When sorrow imbitters our days, And poisons each source of enjoyment, The surest specific, he says, For trouble and grief, is--_Employment_. LINES, Inscribed to William Willtshire, Esq. Heaven's noblest attribute! a richer gem Than ever deck'd the monarch's diadem, Art thou sweet mercy! yet alas, how rare, Amid this world of crime, thy triumphs are! How dimly burns thy pure etherial fire! How seldom does its warmth the clay wrapt heart inspire! Yet, now and then, upon the path of time, It blazes forth with dazzling ray sublime; Sheds o'er this vale of tears it's heaven lit flame; And throws a halo round the human name. See! on the desert's verge, those wasted forms, Which life's expiring spark but feebly warms; Wore down by pain, toil, care, and wretchedness, And clad in squalid misery's abject dress: And mark the hectic flush, the broken sigh, And the wild glance that lights each sunken eye-- The thrilling pulse of hope--the withering fear That checks the quick throb in its full career-- The eager, half form'd question, and the start, As if the accents shook the bursting heart-- "Oh! Heavens! and will he come, and shall we be Restor'd once more to life, and liberty? Or must we in our galling bonds remain?-- But hush!--hark!--Lo a horseman on the plain!" 'Tis he! he comes, he pities, succours, saves The captives from their chains, the dying from their graves. Thine, Willtshire, was the deed; and oh! to thee Is due the tribute of the brave and free!-- Noble, and generous! round thy brow shall twine A fairer wreath, a laurel more divine, Than that which e'er the blood stain'd hero wore: Or science' sons in proudest moment wore. And when the sculptur'd bust, the burnish'd urn, The victor's trophies shall to dust return: When gone are all that wealth and power bestow; Thy fame, undimm'd, shall shine--thy worth shall brighter glow. N. [_N. Y. Evening Post._ ON INTEMPERANCE. ----"But, at last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder."--Prov. O, Take the maddening bowl away! Remove the poisonous cup! My soul is sick--its burning ray Hath drunk my spirit up: Take--take it from my loathing lip Ere madness fires my brain; Take--take it hence! nor let me sip Its liquid death again. O dash it on the thirsty earth, For I will drink no more: It cannot cheer the heart with mirth That grief hath wounded sore; For serpents wreath its sparkling brim, And adders lurk below: It hath no soothing charms for him Who sinks oppress'd with wo. Say not, "Behold its ruddy hue-- O press it to thy lips!" For 'tis more deadly than the dew That from the Upas drips; It is more poisonous than the stream Which deadly nightshade leaves: Its joys are transient as the beam That lights its ruddy waves. Say not "It hath a powerful spell To sooth the soul of care;" Say not, "It calms the bosom's swell And drives away despair!" Art thou its votary?--ask thy soul-- Thy soul in misery deep-- Yea, ask thy conscience if the bowl Can give _eternal sleep_! Then, hence, away! thou deadly foe Of happiness the whole; Away--away!--I feel thy blow, Thou _palsy_ of the soul! Henceforth I ask no more of thee, Thou bane of Adam's race, But to a heavenly fountain flee, And drink the _dews of grace_. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. HOPE. For we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities: but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Heb. iv. 15. When gathering clouds around I view, And days are dark, and friends are few, On him I lean, who, not in vain, Experienc'd every human pain, He sees my wants, allays my fears, And counts and treasures up my tears. If aught should tempt my soul to stray, From heavenly virtue's narrow way, To fly the good I would pursue, Or do the sin I would not do, Still he who felt temptation's power, Shall guard me in that dangerous hour. If wounded love my bosom swell, Deceiv'd by those I priz'd too well, He shall his pitying aid bestow, Who felt on earth severer wo; At once betrayed, denied, or fled, By all that shar'd his daily bread. When vexing thoughts within me rise, And, sore dismay'd my spirit dies, Yet he who once vouchsaf'd to bear, The sickening anguish of despair, Shall sweetly sooth; shall gently dry, The throbbing heart, the streaming eye. When sorrowing o'er some stone I bend, Which covers all that was a friend, And from his voice, his hand, his smile, Divides me--for a little while-- Thou, Saviour see'st the tears I shed, For thou didst weep o'er Lazarus dead. And O, when I have safely past, Through every conflict--but the last, Still, still unchanging, watch beside, My painful bed--for thou hast died; Then point to realms of cloudless day, And wipe the latest tear away. A. B. C. TO MY WIFE, _On the Anniversary of her Wedding-day which was also her Birth-day._ BY SAMUEL BISHOP. "Thee, Mary, with this ring I wed"-- So, fourteen years ago, I said.-- Behold another ring!--"for what?" "To wed thee o'er again?"--Why not? With that first ring I married youth, Grace, beauty, innocence, and truth; Taste long admir'd, sense long rever'd, And all my Molly then appear'd. If she, by merit since disclos'd, Prove twice the woman I suppos'd, I plead that double merit now, To justify a double vow. Here then to-day, (with faith as sure, With ardour as intense, as pure, As when, amidst the rites divine, I took thy troth, and plighted mine,) To thee, sweet girl, my second ring A token and a pledge I bring: With this I wed, till death us part, Thy riper virtues to my heart; Those virtues, which before untried The wife has added to the bride: Those virtues, whose progressive claim, Endearing wedlock's very name, My soul enjoys, my song approves, For Conscience' sake, as well as love's. And why?--They shew me every hour, Honour's high thought, Affection's power, Discretion's deed, sound Judgment's sentence, And teach me all things--but repentance. THE ICELANDER'S SONG. From a MS. Volume of Poems, by Mr. G. RATHBONE. The southern may talk of his meads crown'd with flow'rs, Where the gale, breathing incense, unceasingly flies; He may vaunt the rich hue of his rose-tangled bowers Or the sapphire and gold of his bright sunny skies; But it is not a theme that will light up emotion In an Icelander's breast; since his pride and his boast Are his hoar-cover'd mountains, that frown on the ocean, Lit up with the ice-blink that girdles the coast. When the winter of night darkles round him all dreary, And his snow-bosom'd hills mourn the absence of day, With a heart void of care, and with limbs seldom weary, He launches his bark in pursuit of his prey; Rough is his bed, and uneasy his pillow, When far off in ocean he rambles from home; Blithe scuds his boat, as her prow cleaves the billow Of the gem-spangled brine, with its ridges of foam. Dear is the dawn of the fork'd northern light, That illumines old Hecla's broad cone with its rays; And dearer its splendour, increasingly bright, When the peaks of the ice-bergs appear in the blaze: Brightly it plays on his dart's glossy pride, When it flies, steep'd in spray, on the snake's scaly crest, To bury its point in the whale's finny hide, Or flesh its curv'd barb in the sea-lion's chest. Dear is the summer of day, when the fountains, Unfetter'd and free, pour the bright crystal stream; Dear is the cataract's leap in the mountains, When sparkling at night in the moon's silver beam; Dear are the shoals where the sea-horse is bounding, With his icicled mane and his eyeballs of fire; But dearer than all, is the comfort surrounding The wife of his choice, and the hearth of his sire. TO THE SNOW-DROP. Joyous Herald of the Spring, Pretty snow-drop, hail! With thee, modest trembler, bring Summer's balmy gale. Com'st to tell us Winter's fled? Bright informer, hail! Welcome guest, why hang thy head. Why thy cheek so pale? Dost thou droop thy head in wo, Poor glory of an hour? Since not the Summer's heat shall glow For thee, thou short-liv'd flow'r Thou art only come, alas! To tell us spring is near; Like a fleeting shade to pass, Droop, and disappear. Thus some son of Virtue may, Tread his bright career, Guide by mild Religion's ray, Erring Mortals here: Ere his Winter toils are done, Or Summer hopes arise, Sinks he, youth and vigour gone, Points to heav'n--and dies.--HELEN. * * * * * PHILADELPHIA, PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY RICHARDS & CALEB JOHNSON, _No. 31, Market Street_, At $3.00 per annum. * * * * * GRIGGS & DICKINSON--_Printers, Whitehall_. 
48760	----	Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed. The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. Page 203: After the following line there is a hand symbol pointing to the right: "With firm, undazzled eye behold!" * * * * * THE RURAL MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY EVENING FIRE-SIDE. VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA, _Sixth Month, 1820._ _No. 6._ FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. THE DESULTORY REMARKER. No. V. This mournful truth is every where confess'd, _Slow rises worth, by poverty depress'd._ Dr. Johnson. Numerous and important are the boasted advantages of our free government. Men and things are professedly estimated, in this region of sturdy republicanism, in exact accordance with their true character. Our just and beautiful theories inculcate the doctrine, that VIRTUE and TALENT are the only proper grounds of distinction in society; and if this were faithfully illustrated in practice, merit would not be opposed by serious obstacles, in emerging from obscurity. If such a desirable state of things were realized, how rapidly would our country advance in prosperity! Monarchical institutions, which sanction the hereditary descent of RANK and DISTINCTION, would contrast very unpleasantly with those which are bottomed on the cardinal principle, that all men are by NATURE CREATED EQUAL. It becomes us therefore to inquire, whether the fancied superiority, which in relation to this subject, we arrogate to ourselves, be in reality any thing but in name. In prosecuting this inquiry, let personal observation, and personal experience, be candidly consulted. If we have voluntarily substituted, for what in other countries results from the exercise of despotic power, an idol of our own creation, and bow to it with the same deference and fealty, what becomes of our claim to the title of independence? The effect of such a deception will be no less productive of mental and moral degradation, than if the laws of the land had authorized the establishment of PRIVILEGED ORDERS. The real republican character is particularly distinguished by its simplicity. The inroads of luxury, and the inordinate influence of wealth, are anxiously to be deprecated, as destructive to rational liberty. Titles of nobility are not within our reach; but the glitter of wealth may equally awaken our ambition, and monopolize our attention. Here there is danger, against the approach of which it is the part of prudence and of wisdom to be vigilant. When an individual is supposed to be affluent, have we ever known his merit to be unjustly overlooked or disregarded? Are not riches uniformly invested with the magic power of extenuating the faults, and magnifying the good qualities of their possessor? The answers to these questions will at once be given without hesitation, For virtue, glory, beauty, all divine And human powers, immortal Gold! are thine. The complexion of society in Philadelphia, is considered, in many respects, of that chastened and respectable character, which is well becoming the nature of our institutions. Our metropolis has always been distinguished for _Benevolence_, of which, as well as of other good qualities, honourable mention might be made. But indiscriminate approbation must be withheld, if we maintain our allegiance to truth. There is in this city an aristocracy of wealth, which has a withering and destructive effect on the best interests of social life.--Wealth, in certain circles, is considered an indispensable recommendation; and perhaps in some instances, the only one its possessor is required to prefer! It is not pretended, that this golden qualification should be contemned in the abstract; for, when not abused, it furnishes the means not only of procuring many valuable and rational gratifications, but of extensive utility to others. But we err egregiously, in permitting it to supplant, in our estimation, the only distinctions of real value;--those which have been indicated above. Such a blind devotion to its charms, casts a reflection upon our character for good sense, equally just and severe with that which properly belongs to a retailer of the stale and pointless bon-mots of monarchs, for wit, merely because they issue from the fountain of royalty. This slavish subserviency, is altogether unworthy of freemen; they must, if true to themselves, discard the influence of PRIVILEGED ORDERS, and view things as they really are.--Many an individual, who now fills a large space in the public eye, would, if overtaken by adversity, scarcely be discerned at all without the aid of a microscope. He would, when deserted by prosperity, return to his native insignificance, and assume his proper station in life. Our conduct to all men should be friendly and decorous, but to those who are struggling with adverse circumstances, and who possess sterling recommendations to our notice, it should be zealously and liberally extended. The great man, to whom we are indebted for our motto, knew what it was to be beset by those potent adversaries,--griping poverty, and chilling neglect. He concluded one of his letters to CAVE, the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, in these remarkable words, "I am yours IMPRANSUS." If by this he intended to convey the idea, that he was fasting because he had not the means of procuring a dinner, what a melancholy reflection does it suggest to the mind. Even Lord CHESTERFIELD himself, whose delicate nerves were so dreadfully shocked by the "_savageness_" of JOHNSON, had he been acquainted with the circumstance, and foreseen his future celebrity, would have hastened to his relief. Who that beheld Dr. FRANKLIN, in the garb of a printer's boy, walking up Market Street, eating one of his rolls of bread, and carrying the other under his arm, could have believed, that at a future period he would become one of the most celebrated men of the age. So deceptive are external appearances, and so irresistible must be the conclusion, that VIRTUE and TALENT are not excluded from the humblest walks of life.--Hence the folly and injustice of establishing PRIVILEGED ORDERS. So long ago as the days of HORACE, the seductive power of gold was considered as directly hostile to the cause of virtue. The following lines are extracted from his ode to his friend SALLUST, as translated by Dr. FRANCIS. Virtue, to crowds a foe profest, Disdains to number with the blest, Phraates, by his slaves ador'd, And to the Parthian crown restor'd, And gives the diadem, the throne, And laurel wreath, to him alone, _Who can a treasur'd mass of gold With firm, undazzled eye behold!_ THE VILLAGE TEACHER. It was finely remarked by an Indian, that the white man has not so deep and intimate a sense of his dependence upon God as the Indian. He owes more, apparently, to himself and his fellows. Entrenched in his palaces of stone, he can smile at the pitiless storm, and defy the blasts of winter. The great business of his early life, is to provide against its decline. He has artisans to administer to every want, and to alleviate every pain. Hence his own importance is magnified in his view; and he thinks less frequently of the great Being, from whom all his comforts spring. The Indian, on the other hand, leads a life of privation and adventure. He wanders alone through the forest; and seeks companionship and communion with nature. He looks abroad on the majesty of creation, and feels that there must be a Deity. In the uncertainty of his supplies of food, he knows that he is at the mercy of an invisible Protector; and the feeling of gratitude for unexpected relief, is more vivid than can enter into the heart of the civilized man. Without stopping to inquire into the justice of the Indian's remark, I shall go on to observe, that there is a like difference between the occupations of the city and country. Every thing in a great metropolis is artificial. As the division of labour is the great secret of national wealth, so it is carried to its greatest extent in the capital. The members of the community are there more interlocked with each other, more helpless by themselves, than is the case with us. Accordingly they look to each other for the principal part of their enjoyments. To begin with the most necessary things of life, a citizen is dependant upon a dozen tradesmen, perhaps, for those articles of food and clothing, which a farmer works up at home. He accomplishes himself for one object of pursuit; and although profoundly ignorant of all others, is enabled thereby to fill his station, to keep his place as a key-stone in the arch of society. It never occurs to him how helpless and impotent he would be by himself. He is accommodated to things around--the artificial creature of an artificial system. Nor is it only in this dependence upon his fellows, that, the citizen differs from the countryman. His contrivances against the unavoidable evils and calamities of life, are more numerous, and cast a veil, in some degree, between him and his Creator. The overruling of that hand, which dispenses and withholds the rain and the harvest, affect him, as it were, but at a distance.--His merchandise is the product of art. His system of credit equalizes, if I may use the expression, the dispensations of Providence. The tempest may bury his wealth in the bosom of the deep; but an insurance office repairs the ravage of the elements. Every means in his power is used to thwart the original decree, "By the sweat of thy brow," &c.--He looks into futurity, and calculates the unfruitfulness of the seasons--not as a motive to humble dependence--not as an incentive to prayer and repentance--but that he may build his fortune upon the wants and the casualties of his fellow creatures. He even grapples with death itself--calculates with unfeeling selfishness the days and the infirmities of his neighbours, and wagers upon the length of his life. All his arrangements are predicated upon this artificial system. The thought, if it ever occur to him, of the great God of nature, is as much shut out by it, as the fair face of creation from the alleys and courts of the city. And in proportion as he becomes impressed with a deep sense of that overruling Providence, will these things become hateful in his eyes. No doubt the mind is, as Milton has it, "its own place," and can transform the natural aliment of vice into a medicament of virtue. The noblest examples of active goodness are generally to be found in a large metropolis; for it must be virtue of a superior cast that can resist the temptations which are there presented.--But minds of a contemplative turn may be allowed to shun the combat which they find it so hard to sustain, and to seek for aids to their good resolutions in external circumstances. To all such I may venture to recommend the pursuits of a country life as eminently salutary. Every month and week has there its appropriate labours, which cannot be neglected; and it is from this cause a life of activity and variety. The events of the season are full of interest, and it is peculiarly delightful to observe how Providence still delights to bless. Shortsighted and presumptuous that we are, we are constantly auguring this or that misfortune--lamenting the unpropitiousness in some respect or another of the year; and yet from harvest to harvest are our barns filled, and our granaries laden. The labours of the country do not, like those of the city, deform the body, and undermine the constitution; and there is in its clear atmosphere, and silent serenity, an influence as invigorating to the soul as the touch of earth to Antæus. In the country, the silent and manifest workings of the Deity are constantly before us, and meet our eyes in every phase of organized life: The mind must be worse than insensible that does not feel and respond to the voice of praise, which seems to be constantly ascending, as from one great altar. Some philosophers have placed virtue in a state of lofty contemplation; and others, of continued activity. The truth seems to be, that they are both essential to the perfect character.--He who gives himself up to indolent meditation, will become a prey to the enemies of his own household, and will fall by a servile foe. He who never retires to "plume his feathers, and let grow his wings," will find himself less and less able to sustain his flight; and discover, perhaps, when it is too late, that he has lost the energy of virtue, and the love of moral beauty. But as the temptations of the more selfish passions are the strongest, that state of society in which we are the most exposed to them, is the most dangerous; and we have more need of having our eyes and our hearts fixed upon pure and lofty objects, than of having excessive stimulants applied to that activity, of which every condition in life requires a steady and vigorous application. To reflecting minds, therefore, the labour and the relaxation which the country holds out, are both more salutary and invigorating, than that which is required amid the smoke, and bustle, and jarring interests of a great metropolis. AN ACCOUNT _Of the Agricultural School at Hofwyl, in Switzerland._ (From the Edinburgh Review.) Mr. de Fellenberg was first known merely as an agriculturist, and still keeps up his original establishment of husbandry at Buchsie, an old chateau near Hofwyl; but agriculture was always with him a secondary object, and subservient to that system of education to which his thoughts were very early directed. He is a man of an unusually ardent as well as persevering turn of mind, and conceals a character of deep and steady enthusiasm, under a very calm exterior and manners. Although born to patrician rank in his own country, he early imbibed those political doctrines of which such tremendous misapplication was so soon to be made in his neighbourhood: and the disappointment filled his mind with melancholy views of the moral state and future prospects of mankind. It appeared to him, that the world was blindly hurrying on to irretrievable ruin; and that a sounder system of education for the great body of the people, could alone stop the progress of error and corruption. He has sometimes mentioned in conversation the particular circumstances, which finally determined him to the course he has since pursued. In the year 1798 or 1799, he happened to be at Paris as one of the commission sent by the provisional government established in Switzerland after the French invasion; and in that capacity he had an official conversation with the Director Reubel, at his country-house near Paris,--in the course of which he laid before him, in glowing colours, a picture of the miserable state to which his country was reduced, and which might soon lead to a _Vendean_ war, destructive to both parties. The Director appeared for some time to listen with profound attention, and Mr. de Fellenberg ascribed his silence to conviction of the truths he urged, and something like a feeling of compunction,--when, all at once, the worthy republican throwing open a window, called aloud to one of his servants--'_Jacques! apportez moi Finette!_' A little spaniel was brought accordingly with its litter of young ones in a basket--and there was no chance of his hearing another word about Switzerland or liberty! After this rebuff, he gave up the idea of serving his country as a politician; and, asking for his passport the next day, made the best of his way home, determined to set about the slow work of elementary reformation, by a better mode of education, and to persevere in it for the rest of his life! It is now upwards of twelve years since Mr. de Fellenberg undertook to systematize domestic education, and to show on a large scale how the children of the poor might be best taught, and their labour at the same time most profitably applied: in short, how the first twenty years of a poor man's life might be so employed as to provide for his support and his education. The peasants in his neighbourhood were at first rather shy of trusting their children for a new experiment; and being thus obliged to take his pupils where he could find them, many of the earliest were the sons of vagrants, and literally picked up on the highways; and this is the case with one or two of the most distinguished. He had very soon, however, the good fortune of finding an excellent co-operator in the person of a young man of the name of Vehrli, the son of a schoolmaster of Thurgovia, who, coming to Hofwyl in 1809, to see the establishment and inform himself of the mode of teaching, was so struck with the plan of the _school of industry_, that he offered his son, then about 18, as an assistant. This young man devoted himself from that moment to the undertaking.----Although admitted at first to Mr. de Fellenberg's table, he soon left it for that of his pupils, with whom he has ever since lived night and day. Working with them in the fields, their playfellow in their hours of relaxation,--and, learning himself what he is to teach as a master, his zeal has not cooled a moment during a trial of more than ten years' unremitting exertions, under the guidance of his patron, and assisted now by four other masters. The number of his pupils has increased successively to 43: They obey him as well as Mr. de Fellenberg, entirely from love and a sense of duty:--punishment has been inflicted only twice since the beginning; and their treatment is nearly that of children under the paternal roof. They go out every morning to their work soon after sunrise--having first breakfasted and received a lesson of about half an hour. They return at noon. Dinner takes them half an hour,--a lesson of one hour follows; then to work again till six in the evening. On Sunday, the different lessons take six hours instead of two; and they have butcher's meat on that day only. They are divided into three classes, according to age and strength; an entry is made in a book, every night, of the number of hours each class has worked, specifying the sort of labour done, in order that it may be charged to the proper account, each particular crop having an account opened for it, as well as every new building, the live stock, the machines, the schools themselves, &c. &c. In winter, and whenever there is no out-of-doors' work, the boys plait straw for chairs; make baskets; saw logs with the cross saw, and split them; thrash and winnow corn, grind colours, knit stockings, or assist the wheel-wright and other artificers, of whom there are many employed on the establishment. For all which different sorts of labour an adequate salary is credited each boy's class. Mr. de Fellenberg indeed observes, that the boys being most of them only just come to the age of productive labour, it is presumed the Establishment will not only support itself in future, but repay past expenses; particularly as certain outfits charged to the first years will not recur again.--He observes also, that several grown boys have been suffered to go away, and have been replaced by young children, to the great injury of the Establishment. It may be added, that the pupils have been indulged of late with better clothes than formerly, or than is strictly necessary, as well as a better table; and that, from attention to their feelings, the cast-off clothes of the _school of the rich_ are not turned to their use, but given away to the poor of the neighbourhood, that they may not appear in the light of dependants on any but their adoptive father and their own labour. It is undoubtedly a very striking circumstance, that only one, out of the whole number of boys admitted into this school since the beginning, has been dismissed as irrecoverably vicious; all the others have got rid of their former habits;--and, when final sentence was passed upon the unfortunate boy, the others begged leave to contribute each one _batz_ towards a present to him, that he might remember them with kindness. The labours of the field, their various sports, their lessons, their choral songs, the necessary rest, fill the whole circle of the twenty-four hours; and judging from their open, cheerful, contented countenances, nothing seems wanting to their happiness.--But it is a great point gained, to have brought young men to the age of 18 or 20, uncontaminated by the general licentiousness which prevails in the country. When their time is out, and they mix with other people, they will no doubt marry; but the probability is, they will be more difficult in their choice than other men of the same rank, and will shrink from vulgarity and abject poverty. Long habits of self-restraint, too, will enable them to look out with comparative patience for a suitable establishment, before they burden themselves with a family. In short, if the only check of the mild kind to an excessive increase of population is self-restraint, from motives of prudence and morality, where may we look for it with better hopes than among the pupils of Mr. de Fellenberg? We shall now proceed, however, to lay before our readers a more detailed account of the internal management of the school of industry. The lessons are given mostly _viva voce_, and various questions continually interposed, respecting measures of capacity, length and weight, and their fractional parts; the cubic contents of a piece of timber, or a stack of hay; the time necessary to perform any particular task, under such or such circumstances; the effects of gravitation; the laws of mechanics; rules of grammar and different parts of speech, &c. &c. The boys endeavour to find the solution of arithmetical and mathematical problems without writing, and at the same time to proceed with the mechanical processes in which they may happen to be engaged. Aware of the difficulties with which they are thus made to grapple, as it were, without assistance, they are the more sensible of the value of those scientific short cuts, which carry you in the dark indeed, but safely and speedily, to your journey's end, and the more delighted with their beauty as well as their use. They acquire the _rationale_ of the thing, together with the practice; their understandings are exercised, and their attention kept awake. None of them are ever seen to look inattentive or tired, although just returned from their day's labour in the fields. Contrivance, and some degree of difficulty to overcome, is a necessary condition, it would seem, of our enjoyments. The pupils are not always questioned, but, in their turn, propose questions to the masters, and difficulties to be solved, which they do sometimes with considerable ingenuity.--They draw outlines of maps, from memory, exhibiting the principal towns, rivers, and chains of mountains; they draw correctly from nature, and in perspective, all sorts of machines for agriculture; and are very fond of trying chymically the different sorts of soil, and have tables of them very well arranged. Various gymnastic games are also practised occasionally; but mental exercises find their place better after hard labour: They do indeed in the fields full as well as on the benches of the school. For instance, when the boys are employed in digging trenches to irrigate a meadow, and while directing the water along artificial ridges, and round hills, so as to regulate the fall and distribute the moisture equally, they put each other in mind of what they have heard about the laws of hydraulics. When they clear a field of the stones turned up by the plough, and are directed to separate those which are calcareous, in order to be burned into lime, they know and practise the different tests by which their nature is ascertained, and can point out in the horizon, the particular mountains which have furnished these various fragments. In order to encourage the attachment to property acquired by our own industry, the pupils are allowed certain emoluments, such as the proceeds of the seeds they collect, some part of their gleanings, and what they raise in a small garden of their own; all which accumulates, and forms a fund for the time of their going away. No ambitious views are fostered by this mode of training the poorest class, beyond that of being good husbandmen. The pupils of the _school of industry_ are not raised above their station; but their station, dignified and improved, is raised to them. It has been remarked before, that men born in the poorest class of society, constituted as it is at present, especially those who subsist in part on public charity, find it almost as difficult to get out of their dependant situation as a Hindoo to leave his cast,--kept down as they are by a sort of inbred ignorance and improvidence, and, above all, by their multitude; which is one of the worst consequences of that improvidence. The higher and middling ranks scarcely keep up their numbers any where; while multiplication goes on, unrestrained by any consideration of prudence, precisely among those who are least able to support a family. The poor may, in the bitterness of want, exclaim against taxes and ill government, and certainly not always without reason;--but the worst government is their own of themselves. _Agricultural labour_ is not the only occupation which can be made the base of such an education. _Manufactures_, with all their disadvantages, might answer the purpose, provided the children were not collected together in vast numbers in the same rooms--provided they were under the care of intelligent and kind masters and overseers, and were allowed gardens of their own, and a certain number of hours each day to work in them, or take exercise in the open air--all which must abridge necessarily the time allotted to productive labour, or to learning. One of the great advantages of husbandry is, that it affords sufficient exercise, and leaves more time for mental improvement. Such of Vehrli's pupils as have a turn for any of the trades in demand at Hofwyl--wheelwright, carpenter, smith, &c. tailor or shoemaker--are allowed to apply to them. These boys will leave the Institution at the age of one-and-twenty, understanding agriculture better than any peasants ever did before, besides being practically acquainted with a trade, and with a share of learning quite unprecedented among the same class of people; and yet as hard-working and abstemious as any of them, and with the best moral habits and principles. It seems impossible to desire or imagine a better condition of the peasantry. Public education, Mr. de Fellenberg observes, is too generally a uniform process, imposed indiscriminately, and by force, upon every variety of disposition, talents, and character. His object, on the other hand, is to suit the education to the pupil, and not the pupil to the education.--A good preceptor should be an experienced friend, who guides,--not a master who commands, and, above all, not an irascible master. Punishments and rewards he considers as equally objectionable: for fear makes slaves, and the love of distinction unfolds, in the end, most of the bad passions. _Do as you would be done by_ is, he maintains, the only safe rule of conduct to inculcate; a lively feeling of right and wrong, goodwill and kindness to all men, the only sentiments fit to be encouraged. Emulation, perhaps, is too powerful and universal a stimulant to be altogether excluded; but it needs more frequently to be repressed than excited. Such a vigilant and cautious system of training would be best carried on certainly under the parental roof, in a well regulated and united family; and therefore he wishes a school to resemble as nearly as possible such a family, and to be as unlike as possible to a mere manufactory of learning. The whole course of studies may be considered as divided into three periods, of three years each. In the first, they study Greek and the Grecian History, the knowledge of animals, plants, and minerals. In the second, Latin, Roman History, and the Geography of the Roman world. And in the third, Modern Languages and Literature, Modern History to the last century, and Geography--the Physical Sciences, and Chymistry. During the whole nine years, they apply to Mathematics, Drawing, Music, and Gymnastic Exercises. The geometrical representation of near objects--the house, the garden, the course of the river, the surrounding country, the mountains beyond it, taken by approximation in the shape of a map--is the natural introduction to Geography. When the pupils feel a curiosity to know more of the world than they can see, maps are then laid before them, and the globe and its uses are explained. They are made to delineate correctly, from memory, the shape of continents and seas; and to place and name the principal chains of mountains, the course of rivers, the boundaries of states, their provinces and capitals;--and this leads to an inquiry into the particular history of each, and their natural productions. Drawing is early cultivated, from natural objects first, then by copying, and finally by composing characteristic heads, or rather endeavouring to imitate the effect of passions on the human countenance. The execution is generally correct, but hard and dry--in the style of Perugino certainly, rather than of Rembrandt. Music likewise is much practised; not however with a view to execution, but for the sake of the Poetry of music, and its Piety--as an elevated language, in which certain ideas and feelings are expressed, which no other human means can reach or convey. The gymnastic exercises have for their object, health, and the dexterous use of the bodily faculties; but they never are exhibited in public, and made an occasion of show and display. It is the endeavour of the master to encourage his pupils to express freely, both in writing and conversation, the opinions and feelings which have been suggested by their reading; and thus to enable them to rectify their mistakes, either as to facts or inferences; never dictating to them what they should think, and yet restraining and directing the flights of a young imagination. The pupils do not read the history of the last century before their twentieth year, when judgment is sufficiently matured; and even then, all reference to the politics of the day is avoided, that they may enter the world with minds wholly free from party spirit, and able to form unprejudiced opinions. Common newspapers and political pamphlets are never seen at Hofwyl. The study of Mathematics continues during the whole period of education, to an extent determined entirely by the individual capacity and disposition of each pupil, who is not hurried on or retarded for the sake of keeping pace with others. Every problem is analyzed and explained thoroughly before passing to another. The interest and attention of those of ordinary abilities, is kept up by practical applications of the science; and none but those properly qualified apply to the pure mathematics: In doing so, they are carefully guarded against the pride of successful calculation, which is apt to overlook Divine power in the consideration of its own. At the same time that Mr. de Fellenberg dwells with delight and confidence on the natural proofs of the existence of the Supreme Being, he admits fully, and establishes the necessity of a Revelation to supply the insufficiency of human reason. Socrates himself, he observes, did not know how to establish the dogma of the unity of God. His pupils, brought up in purity and simplicity of heart, under the influence of reason and kindness, are in a great degree Christians before they are taught Christianity,--and best prepared, therefore, to understand and receive the Divine doctrine; but all dogmatic points are reserved for the ministers of their respective communions, who are to instruct them; and controversial disputes are unknown and interdicted. It has been said also that Mr. de Fellenberg's husbandry is ruinous. This would only add to the wonder of his being able to do what he does by his own slender means; but, in point of fact, his farm affords a very considerable profit. We have, upon this point, the evidence of a gentleman well versed in those matters, Mr. Crud of Genthod, one of the commissioners appointed by the Swiss Diet to inquire into the agricultural establishment at Hofwyl, the result of whose statements is, that the farm (214-1/2 poses, equal to about 172 English acres) has produced _net_ in 4 years from 1810 to 1814, 56,705_l._ Swiss money, and for one year 14,176_l._ which, deducting interest at 6 per cent. on 14,382_l._ the average value of stock on the farm, or 843_l._, leaves a clear profit of 13,313_l._, equal to 3_l._ 17s. 6d. Sterling a pose (nearly equal to 4/5ths of an English acre;)[1] and, valuing the farm at the high price of 750_l._ a pose, (47_l._ Sterling,) gives something more than 8-1/4 per cent. interest, net of all charges. The farm is undoubtedly benefited by the Institution, which affords a ready market for its produce, and perhaps by the low price at which the labour of Vehrli's boys is charged: But the farm, on the other hand, affords regular employment to the boys; and also enables Mr. de Fellenberg to receive his richer pupils at a lower price than he could otherwise do. Hofwyl, in short, is a great whole; where 120 or 130 pupils, more than 50 masters and professors, as many servants, and a number of day-labourers, six or eight families of artificers and tradesmen, altogether about 300 persons, find a plentiful, and in many respects a luxurious subsistence, exclusive of education, out of the produce of 170 acres, and a money income of six or seven thousand pounds, reduced more than half by salaries, affords a very considerable surplus to lay out in additional buildings. [1] The pose is 40,000 square feet of Berne, equal to 32,500 of Paris, and about 35,000 English feet, that is, equal to about 4/5ths of an English acre. Not satisfied with what we had ourselves learned and thought on this subject, we have been anxious to learn what was thought of it in the neighbourhood, and by persons not particularly friendly to the Institution. We have scarcely heard an objection against the _School of Industry_. The opinion is _universally_ favourable to it; and though there is more difference of sentiment as to the _higher school_, the worst we have heard is, that the pupils are not so advanced in any one science as some young men brought up in other schools are. It is admitted that they are eminently moral and amiable in their deportment; that they are very intelligent; and that their ideas have a wide range. In short, the objection, as it appears to us, is, that they are likely to become liberal-minded gentlemen, but not professors. Hofwyl is not a college where the only object is learning;--still less a monastery, where an austere and uniform rule prevails;--it is a little world, composed of different ranks and professions, and where individuality of character is preserved, and a variety of talents unfolded. The patricians of Berne have been generally, from the beginning, unfavourable to the Institution; yet several of them have their sons in it, and many more are now endeavouring to procure admittance. We have learned very lately, that a decided and active enemy, many years first magistrate of the district where Hofwyl is situated, and lately dead, enjoined expressly in his last-will, that his sons should, if possible, be educated exclusively at Hofwyl! _Treatise on Agriculture._ SECT. IV. Of the Analysis of Soils, and of the agricultural relations between soils and plants. We have seen that the earths have a threefold capacity; that they receive and lodge the roots of plants and support their stems; that they absorb and hold air, water and mucilage--aliments necessary to vegetable life; and that they even yield a portion of themselves to these aliments. But we have also seen, that they are not equally adapted to these offices; that their parts, texture and qualities are different; that they are cold or warm, wet or dry, porous or compact, barren or productive, in proportion as one or other may predominate in the soil; and that to fit them for discharging the various functions to which they are destined, each must contribute its share, and all be minutely divided and intimately mixed. In this great work nature has performed her part, but as is usual with her, she has wisely and benevolently left something for man to do. This necessary march of human industry, obviously begins by ascertaining the _nature of the soil_. But neither the touch, nor the eye, however practised or acute, can in all cases determine this. _Clay_, when wet, is cold and tenacious--a description that belongs also to magnesian earths: _sand_ and _gravel_ are hard and granular; but so also are some of the modifications of lime: _vegetable mould_ is black and friable, but not exclusively so; for schistous and carbonaceous earths have the same properties. It is here, then, that chemistry offers herself to obviate difficulties, and remove doubts; but neither the apparatus nor process of this science, are within the reach of all who are interested in the inquiry, and we accordingly subjoin a method, less comprehensive, but more simple and sufficiently exact, for agricultural purposes, and which calls only for two vases, a pair of scales, clean water and a little sulphuric acid. "1st. Take a small quantity of earth from different parts of the field, the soil of which you wish to ascertain, mix them well together and weigh them; put them in an oven, heated for baking bread, and after they are dried, weigh them again; the difference will show the _absorbent power of the earth_. When the loss of weight in 400 grains, amounts to 50, this power is great, and indicates the presence of much animal or vegetable matter; but when it does not exceed twenty, the absorbent power is small, and the vegetable matter deficient.[2] [2] See Davy's Elements. "2d. Put the dried mass into a vase with one fourth of its own weight of clear water; mix them well together: pour off the dirty water into a second vase, and pour on as much clean water as before; stir the contents, and continue this process until the water poured off, is as clear as that poured on the earth. What remains in the first employed vase is _sand_, _silicious_ or _calcareous_. "3d. The dirty water, collected in the second vase, will form a deposit, which (after pouring off the wa-ter) must be dried, weighed and _calcined_. On weighing it _after_ this process, the quantity lost will show the portion of _animal_ and _vegetable mould contained in the soil_; and, "4th. This calcined matter must then be carefully pulverised and weighed, as also the first deposit of sand, but without mixing them. To these, apply (separately) sulphuric acid, and what they respectively lose in weight, is the portion of _calcareous_ or _aluminous earths_ contained in them. These last may be separated from the mass by soap lie, which dissolves them."[3] [3] This manner of analysing soils is that described by M. Rose, member of the institute of France, &c. and recommended to French agriculturists. Here is the light we wanted. In knowing the disease, we find the cure. Clay and sand qualify each other; either of these will correct an excess of lime; and magnesian earth, when saturated with _carbonic acid_, becomes fertile. But entirely to alter the constitution of a soil, whether by mechanical or other means, is a work of time, labour and expense, and little adapted to the pecuniary circumstances of farmers in general. Fortunately, a remedy, cheaper, more accessible and less difficult, is found in that _great diversity_ of habits and character, which mark the vegetable races. We shall, therefore, in what remains of this section, indicate the principal of these, as furnishing the basis of all rational agriculture. 1st. _Plants have different systems of roots, stems and leaves, and adapt themselves accordingly to different kinds of soils:_ the Tussilago prefers clay, the Spergula sand; Asparagus will not flourish on a bed of granite nor Musus Islandicus on one of alluvion. It is obvious, that _fibrous rooted_ plants, which occupy only the surface of the earth, can subsist on comparatively stiff and compact soils in which those of the leguminous and cruciform families would perish, from inability to penetrate and divide. 2d. _Plans of the same, or of a similar kind, do not follow each other advantageously in the same soil._ Every careful observer must have seen how grasses alternate in meadows or pastures, where nature is left to herself. At one time, timothy, at another clover, at a third red-top, and at a fourth blue grass prevails. The same remark applies to forest trees; the original growth of wood, is rarely succeeded by a second of the same kind; pine is followed by oak, oak by chesnut, chesnut by hickory. A young apple tree will not live in a place where an old one has died; even the pear tree does not thrive in succession to an apple tree, but stone fruit will follow either with advantage. "In the Gautinois (says Bosc,) saffron is not resumed but after a lapse of twenty years; and in the Netherlands, flax and colzat require an interval of six years. Peas, when they follow beans, give a lighter crop than when they succeed plants of another family."[4] [4] The ill effect of a succession of crops of the same kind was not unknown to the Romans. We have proof of this in the following passage of Festus: "Resistilibus ager fit qui continuo biennio seseritur farreo spico id est aristato, quad ne fiat _solent, qui pradia locant, excipere_." 3d. _Vegetables, whether of the name family or not, having a similar structure of roots, should not succeed each other._ It has been observed, that trees suffer considerably by the neighbourhood of sainfoin and lucern, on account of the great depth to which the roots of these plants penetrate--whereas culmiferous grasses do them no harm. 4th. _Annual or biennial trefoils, prevent the escape of moisture by evaporation, or filtration, from sandy and arid soils_, and should constantly cover them in the absence of other plants;[5] while _drying and dividing crops_, as beans, cabbages, chickory, &c. &c. _are best fitted to correct the faults of stiff and wet clays_. [5] The "Sterilis tellus medio versatur in æstu" of Virgil, shows the opinion he entertained of a husbandry that left the fields without vegetation. 5th. _When plants, are cultivated in rows or hills, and the ground between them is thoroughly worked, the earth is kept open, divided and permeable to air, heat and water, and accordingly receives from the atmosphere nearly as much alimentary provision as it gives to the plant._ This principle is the basis of the drill husbandry. 6th. _All plants permitted to go through the phases of vegetation (and of course to give their seeds) exhaust the ground in a greater or less degree; but if cut green, and before seeding, they take little from the principle of fertility._ 7th. _Plants are exhausters in proportion to the length of time they occupy the soil._ Those of the culmiferous kinds (wheat, rye, &c.) do not ripen under ten months, and during this period, forbid the earth from being stirred: while, on the other hand, leguminous plants occupy it but six months, and permit frequent ploughings. This is one reason why culmiferous crops are greater exhausters than leguminous; another is, that the stems of culmiferous plants become hard and flinty, and their leaves dry and yellow, from the time of flowering till the ripening of the seed--losing their inhaling or absorbing faculties--circulating no juices, and living altogether in their roots, and on aliments exclusively derived from the earth, whereas leguminous or cruciferous plants, as cabbages, turnips, &c. &c. have succulent stems, and broad and porous leaves, and draw their principal nourishment from the atmosphere. The remains of culmiferous crops, also are fewer, and less easily decomposed, than those of the leguminous family. 8th. _Meadows, natural and artificial, yield the food necessary to cattle, and, in proportion as these are multiplied, manures are increased and the soil made better._ Another circumstance that recommends them is, that so long as they last, they exact but little labour, and leave the whole force of the farmer to be directed to his arable grounds.[6] [6] The good effect of these mixtures was known to the ancients, from whom the practice has descended to us. 9th. _Grasses are either fibrous or tap-rooted, or both. The remarks already made in articles 1, 2 and 3, apply also to them._ Timothy, red-top, oat-grass and rye-grass, succeed best in stiff, wet soils. Sainfoin does well on soils the most bare, mountainous and arid; lucern and the trefoils, (or clovers,) only attain the perfection of which they are susceptible, in warm, dry, calcareous earth. 10th. _The ameliorating quality of tap-rooted plants is supposed to be in proportion to their natural duration_; annual clover, (lupinella) has less of this property than biennial, (Dutch clover,) biennial less than sainfoin, and sainfoin less than lucern. 11th. _Any green crop, ploughed into the soil, has an effect highly improving_; but for this purpose, lupins and buckwheat (cut when in flower) are most proper. 12. _Mixed crops_ (as Indian corn, pumpkins, and peas and oats,) _are much and profitably employed_, and _with less injury to the soil than either corn or oats alone_. SECTION V. Of Practical Agriculture, and its necessary Instruments. We begin this part of our subject with a few remarks on the instruments necessary to agriculture, which may be comprised under the well known names of the plough, the harrow, the roller, the threshing-machine, and the fanning mill. I. Of the plough: It is among the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, that the arts most useful to man, have been of later discovery--of slower growth, and of less marked improvement, than those that aimed only at his destruction.--At a time, when the phalanx and the legions were invented and perfected, and when the instruments they employed were various and powerful, those of agriculture continued to be few, and simple, and inefficient. Of the Greek plough, we know nothing; and the general disuse of that described by Virgil and Pliny, furnishes a degree of evidence, that experience has found it incompetent to its objects.--With even the boasted lights of modern knowledge, scientific men are not agreed upon the form and proportion, most proper for this instrument. As in other cases, so in this, there may be no _abstract perfection_; what is best in one description of soil, may not be so in another; yet, as in all soils, the office of the plough is the same, viz. to _cleave_ and _turn over the earth_, there cannot but be some definite shape and proportions, better fitted for these purposes, and at the same time less susceptible of resistance, than any other. This beau ideal, this suppositious excellence, in the mechanism of a plough, has been the object of great national, as well as individual research. In Great Britain, high prizes have been established for its attainment; and in France, under the ministry of Chaptal, 10,000 francs, or $2000, were offered for this object, by the agricultural society of the Seine. In both countries, the subject has employed many able pens; those of Lord Kaimes, of Mr. Young, of Mr. Arbuthnot, of Lord Somerville, and of Messieurs Duhamel, Chateauvieux, Bosc, Guillaume, &c. It is not for us, therefore, to do more than assemble and present such rules for the construction of this instrument, as have most attained the authority of maxims. 1st. The beam, or that part of the plough which carries the coulter, and furnishes the point of draft, should be as near that of resistance as possible; because the more these are approached, the less is the moving power required. Even the shape of the beam is not a matter of indifference. In the old ploughs, it was generally straight, but a small curve is now preferred; because it has the effect of strengthening the coulter, by shortening it. 2d. The _head_ of the plough, is the plain on which it moves. This should be concave, because that form offers fewer points of friction, and, of course, less resistance. Between the beam and the head, is an angle, on which depends the principal office of the plough; the making, at will, a deep or a shallow furrow. If you wish a deep furrow, diminish the angle, and vice versa: but this angle should, in no case, exceed from 18 to 24 degrees. The resistance made to the plough being produced less by the weight of the earth, than by the cohesion of its parts, it is evident, that the head should be shod with iron, and rendered as smooth as possible. This remark applies equally to the soc and to the mould board. 3d. The soc, in its widest part, should be larger than the head. It has different shapes in different countries. In some is given to it that of an isosceles triangle; in others, that of the head of a lance; in Biscay, that of a crescent; and in Poland, of a two pronged fork. But, whatever be its shape, it should be well pointed and polished--enter the earth with facility, and cut it easily. 4th. To the _mould board_, some workmen give the shape of a prismatic wedge; others make the upper part convex, and the lower concave; while many make it entirely flat. In stiff soils, the _semi cycloid_ is the form to be preferred, and in loose friable soils the _semi-ellipsis_.[7] The iron mould boards have great advantages over the wooden, particularly when they, the shear and the soc, form one piece, as in the plough of Mr. Cook. [7] See Arbuthnot on Ploughs. It is a general opinion, that a heavy plough is more disadvantageous than a light one; because the draft of the former, being greater, will be more fatiguing to the cattle: but the experiments of the agricultural society in London, establish a contrary doctrine, and show, that in light grounds, the labour is more easily and better performed, with a heavy, than with a light plough. 5th. The _coulter_ is a species of knife inserted in the beam, and so placed before the soc, as to cut the sod. It is susceptible of being raised or depressed at will. 6th. The handles of the plough ought to be made of some kind of heavy wood, that they may operate as a counter-weight to the head, the soc and the mould-board. To these remarks we subjoin two sets of experiments made with the most approved French and English ploughs; that of Guillaume, and Small's _Rotheram plough improved_, which furnish a means of comparison between the best ploughs of Europe and those of this country. The resistance (stated in these tables) was measured and ascertained by a _dynonometer_, a machine, indispensable to those who would make correct observations on the relative advantages of different ploughs. _The French Plough._ _The English Plough._ Resistance in pounds. Resistance in pounds. 1st experiment 200 1st experiment 360 2d do. 240 2d do. 380 3d do. 200 3d do. 480 4th do. 220 4th do. 460 5th do. 220 5th do. 400 ---- 6th do. 400 Divided by 5)1080 7th do. 420 ---- 8th do. 386 Average, 216 9th do. 440 ---- Divided by 9)3720 ---- Average, 413 II. _The Harrow._ This is of different kinds--the triangular and the square, the single and the double. But of whatever form, its uses are the same; to smooth the field after ploughing, to break and pulverize the clods, and to cover the seed.--These uses sufficiently indicate the propriety of employing two in succession; one of heavy frame, with few and long teeth, like the Scotch brake; the other, of lighter constitution, with more and shorter teeth. Our own experience leads us to believe, that the common harrow covers the seed too much, because small seeds will not vegetate at a depth greater than three inches. III. _The Roller_ is a cylinder of heavy wood, turning on gudgeons, or on an axle, and placed in a frame, to which is attached a shaft; it is of different dimensions, but need not exceed that which may be drawn by one, or at most by two horses or oxen. This instrument is indispensable in good husbandry, yet is rarely used in ours. Its offices are three-fold--to render loose soils more compact; to break the clod on stiff ones, and on both, to compress the earth, (after seeding) so that it be every where brought in contact with the grain. It is also usefully employed in reinstating the roots of meadow grasses, loosened and raised by the alternate freezing and thawing of the ground, and, with similar view, may be passed over winter crops early in the spring. Its clod-breaking and pulverizing property is much increased, by surrounding the roller with narrow bands of iron, two inches broad, three inches thick, and six inches asunder; or by studding it with iron points, resembling harrow teeth, and projecting three or four inches. IV. _The Threshing Machine_ is of English invention, and may be well enough adapted to the taste and circumstances of rich amateurs, but not at all to those of farmers in general. Our objections to it are three--the first cost, which is great; the quantum of moving power employed, which is equal to that of six horses, and the number of hands required to attend it, which is not less than four. We have seen, in France, a machine for the same purpose, but of much simpler structure--called the "_Rouleau de depiquer_" which is only a _fluted cylinder_; yet simple and cheap as this was, it could not maintain itself against the more ancient instruments--the flail and the horse. Still it is to be hoped, that new experiments may succeed better and abridge the manual labour usually given to this branch of husbandry, and, that the mechanical genius of our own country (which is not inferior to that of any other) may be the first to combine _power_ and _cheapness_ in this machine. This hope is probably suggested, by the description of a new invented threshing machine, now before me, and which I may be permitted to transcribe from the letter of the inventor. "The machine I have built, is three feet wide. One horse will thresh with much ease, as much wheat as can be laid on it, by one man, (the straw to be taken away by another,) say, from _fifty_ to _one hundred bushels in a day_, and the saving of grain will pay for the labour; for, I think, that with good attendance, not a particle of grain can escape with the straw.--The expense of the machine will be from _fifty_ to _seventy dollars_, exclusive of the moving power, which is a wheel, about ten feet diameter, on an upright shaft, to which a lever is fixed to hitch the horse. Into this main wheel, a small one should be made to work, about two feet diameter, on a shaft carrying a drum, four feet wide. With this simple gearing, and drawn by a horse that walks well, the machine will give about eighteen hundred strokes in a minute, and if fully attended, will, without hard labour for the horse, thresh a _bushel every three_ or _four minutes_. It stands in my barn, and may be seen and examined by any one."[8] [8] Mr. Levi M'Keen, of Poughkeepsie. V. _The Fanning Mill_. Other things being equal, the cleanest wheat is most easily preserved, and, on manufacture, gives the best flour, and in the largest quantity. These considerations offer inducement enough for the employment of this machine, which, however, besides doing its business well, saves a great deal of time. It is too well known to require description. ON BONES, &c. AS MANURE. The carbon and hydrogen abounding in oily substances fully account for their effects; and their durability is explained from the gradual manner in which they change by the action of air and water. _Bones_ are much used as a manure in the neighbourhood of London.--After being broken and boiled for grease, they are sold to the farmer. The more divided they are, the more powerful are their effects. The expense of grinding them in a mill would probably be repaid by the increase of their fertilizing powers; and in the state of powder they might be used in the drill husbandry, and delivered with the seed in the same manner as rape cake. Bone dust, and bone shavings, the refuse of the turning manufacture, may be advantageously employed in the same way. The basis of bone is constituted by earthy salts, principally phosphate of lime, with some carbonate of lime and phosphate of magnesia; the easily decomposed substances in bone are fat, gelatine and cartilage, which seems of the same nature as coagulated albumen. According to the analysis of Fourcroy and Vauquelin ox bones are composed Of decomposable animal matter, 51 phosphate of lime, 37.7 carbonate of lime, 10 phosphate of magnesia, 1.3 ----- 100. ----- M. Merat Guillot has given the following estimate of the composition of the bones of different animals. Phosphate of lime. Carbonate of lime. Bone of Calf, 54 Horse, 67.5 1.25 Sheep, 70 5 Elk, 90 1 Hog, 52 1 Hare, 85 1 Pullet, 72 1.5 Pike, 64 1 Carp, 45 5 Horses' Teeth, 85.5 25 Ivory, 64 1 Hartshorn, 27 1 ---- ---- The remaining parts of the 100 must be considered as decomposable animal matter. _Horn_ is a still more powerful manure than bone, as it contains a larger quantity of decomposable animal matter. From 500 grains of ox-horn, Mr. Hatchett obtained only 1-5 grains of earthy residuum, and not quite half of this was phosphate of lime. The shaving or turnings of horn form an excellent manure, though they are not sufficiently abundant to be in common use. The animal matter in them seems to be of the nature of coagulated albumen, and it is slowly rendered soluble by the action of water. The earthy matter in horn and still more that in bones, prevents the too rapid decomposition of the animal matter, and renders it very durable in its effects. --[_Davy's Ag. Chem._ FRENCH AGRICULTURE. The Moniteur contains a very long report by Decaze, which is published, as having been approved of by the king on the state of agriculture in France. It appears from this document that the fostering care of the government is steadily, and in most instances, successfully, exercised in promoting every branch of cultivation adapted to the French soil and climate. One branch, that of the culture of the beet root, which it was supposed would have languished on the restoration of the sugar colonies, is stated to be gradually but firmly extending itself, and its encouragement is recommended to the government, among other considerations, on the special ground on which it was originally introduced, that of rendering France independent of foreign supplies of sugar in a period of war. It has been affirmed, that those who manufacture into sugar beet root, raised on their own farms, realized a profit of 25 per cent.; and on the supposition that a quantity were raised adequate to supply the total consumption of sugar in France, it is said that the refuse of the beet root would of itself suffice to fatten for the market annually 120,000 head of cattle.--There are now about twenty beet root sugar refineries in full activity. GEORGETOWN, (S.C.) April 20. _An Agricultural Prize worth winning._--We are informed by a gentleman from Stateburg, that fourteen or more members of the Claremont Agricultural Society, of that neighbourhood, have agreed to plant, each an acre of ground in corn, to be manured and cultivated at pleasure.--The planter producing the most neat corn to the acre, (as a reward for his superiour farming) is to receive the produce of every other acre. The land to be planted must be high land, and have been cleared at least five years. A committee of five members were appointed to approve of the land, to superintend the gathering and measuring the corn, and to report to the Society at its meeting in the fall, when we will be able to inform our readers of the successful planter, and the neat product of each acre. ON THE CULTURE OF THE SUGAR MAPLE. This valuable tree seems to be equally well adapted for ornament and for profit. No tree, of the deciduous class, is more elegant in appearance, and but few grow more rapidly, or live to a greater length of years. Its shade is but little injurious to the growths of grain, and still less to those of grass. For fuel it is inferiour to no wood whatever. It may be cultivated in mowing and pasture lands, probably as closely as at the rate of 20 trees on an acre, without any essential injury to the pasture, or growth of the meadow. The quantity of sugar to be made yearly from the sap of the tree must, however, depend on its size, and on the rapidity of its growth. The quicker its growth, the more sap may be extracted from it, because the alburnum (sap wood) is always in the greatest proportion where the tree is most flourishing. The rapidity of the growth of young trees, when transplanted, depends very essentially on the manner of performing that operation. The greater the depth and superficial extent, to which the ground is loosened, round where a young tree is to be set, the more rapid will be its growth when placed in this bed of loosened earth. Let one young tree, for instance, be set in a hole dug only 18 inches in diameter, and a foot in depth, and let another be set in a hole dug 6 feet wide, and 2 feet deep, and the latter will, for a number of succeeding years, grow with more than double the rapidity of the former. In order, then, to give the young maples a rapid start, so as to have them soon fitted for affording considerable supplies of sap, let due attention be paid to this particular. Let the holes for the trees be dug, say, a foot in depth, and five in diameter, and then spade or loosen the ground at the bottoms to the depth of 8 or 10 inches more before the young trees are to be set in. In addition to planting maples in grounds intended as permanent pastures, and mowing grounds, each side of the highway, leading through any farm, might be profitably occupied and adorned with these trees, set at the distance of about every two rods. Suppose also that the farm house were placed in a spacious court yard, say of an acre in extent, and this planted with a suitable number of maples, could any thing confer more of an air of pleasantness and elegance to the mansion? I shall not attempt any computation of the probable profits to be derived from this proposed improvement in rural affairs, but doubtless the gain would be very considerable. Every farmer might, in this way, stock his lands with a permanent growth that would afford him a plentiful supply of sugar, that would at times afford him additions of fuel, and that would eminently serve as an embellishment of his domain, and all these essential advantages would be derived without any essential diminution of the usual products of his lands. It is probable that if the young trees be planted in the manner just mentioned, they would attain a size fit for tapping in about 15 years, after which they would probably afford yearly supplies of sap for more than a century, if tapped in the manner least calculated to injure them. This is to be performed, not by cutting large gashes in them with an axe, but by boring one or more holes in them, with a small auger, to the depth of about 3 inches, or at all events not beyond the extent of the sap wood. The holes should be made every year in different parts of the trees, sometimes higher and sometimes lower, and after the sap has ceased running for the season, they should be filled with pieces of durable wood, drove in, in order that the wounds may be soon healed over by the subsequent growth of the trees. J. N. [_Plough Boy_. FLEMISH HUSBANDRY. From the Plough Boy. Sir--Much has been said in praise of English husbandry, though it is a well known fact, that this vaunted system is surpassed in many countries which do not possess equal natural advantages. In Scotland, agriculture has progressed at least half a century beyond that of England, where the soil and climate is far more congenial to the productions of the earth than the "bleak mountains of Caledonia." But no where in the world is the contrast so marked as that between the Flemish and English mode of cultivation. The average produce of a crop of wheat, in England, is 24 bushels per acre. In Flanders, it is 32 bushels. In England, the system of _fallows_ almost universally prevails. In Flanders, it has been unknown from time immemorial; two crops, in many cases three, being uniformly raised annually upon the same field. The following comparative tables, as exhibited in "Vanderstracten's sketch of the Flemish system," shew clearly and correctly its superior advantages over that of England. _Produce of the Flemish farmer | _Produce of the English farmer, from one acre, for 12 | according to the Norfolk years._ | course, for the same period._ | Wheat, 32 bush. per | Wheat, 24 bush. per acre 4 crops | acre, 3 crops Barley, do. do. 4 do. | Barley, 32 do. do. 3 do. Flax, hemp, coleseed | Turnips, 3 do. & potatoes, 4 do. | Clover, 3 do. Roots and vegetables | for the food | of cattle, 10 do. | -------- | -------- | In 12 years, 24 crops | In 12 years, 12 crops This immense difference in favour of the produce of Flanders, does not arise, as might be supposed, from its possessing a better natural soil, or a milder climate, than England; but entirely from the different mode of cultivation pursued in these two countries. At no very distant period, the fields of Flanders, now so productive, were little else but loose sand and gravel, whereas the soil of England, was always naturally fertile, and in part, lies under a more southerly parallel than Flanders. The rich, abundant, and healthy crops obtained by the Flemish farmers, may be traced to the following causes: I. The abundance and judicious application of manure. II. Digging all the lands on their farms with the spade, every six or every three years. III. The complete extirpation of weeds and noxious roots. IV. Regular and repeated hoeing. V. A careful choice, and alternation, of grain and seeds for sowing. VI. An improved rotation of crops. "The whole secret (observes Vanderstracten) respecting the superiority of Flemish agriculture, consists in this; the farmers procure plenty of food for their cattle--food which, excepting clover, is raised from the same lands which have already yielded their crops of grain, &c. They keep the greatest possible number of cattle, feed them in the stables plentifully, and render their food palatable. They collect the greatest possible quantity of manure, of which they preserve the fertilizing salts by a suitable process of fermentation.--They weed their grounds thoroughly and repeatedly. They totally extirpate noxious plants and roots, every six or every three years, by digging all the lands on their respective farms--an operation by which they revert to the surface a stratum of fresh soil, that for three or for six years has been absorbing the salts of manure as they filtrated to the bottom of the roots: a stratum of soil which has produced no crop during the same period. They, moreover, dress their grounds to the precise point of perfect pulverization. These are inestimable advantages, which cannot be obtained by any plough whatever; hence the drift of the Flemish adage--"Never to let the naked ground lie open to the sun in summer for more than three days." "In truth, to say that there exists a vast province, in which the price of lands has been quadrupled within fifty years, and which is neither placed under a more favourable climate, nor enjoys a greater fertility of soil, than England; from which fallows in general have been banished from time immemorial; in which the greater part of the lands produce in 9 years at least 15 harvests, of which those of grain yield, one year with another, as high as 32 bushels of wheat per acre; those of barley, 60 bushels; and those of oats, 90 bushels; and where the borders of the fields are planted with trees, in such numbers, that by their sale the proprietors acquire, every 40 years, a sum of money equal to the soil; to say this, appears, to other than English readers, to repeat a tissue of fables.[9] The less informed attribute this uninterrupted succession of harvests to the inexhaustible fertility of the soil; but intelligent and well-informed travellers attribute it, on the contrary, and with the best reason, to the indefatigable industry of the inhabitants, and to a highly improved mode of culture, of the details of which they themselves are ignorant, and which beside, from their complication, and the great variety of the productions of the soil, require a profound study, of many years duration, to which few of them have either the inclination or the leisure to apply." [9] In Flanders, wheat yields 20; rye, 26; barley, 26; and oats, 40, for one.--Wheat holds only the fifth rank in value in the harvest of Flanders. In England, wheat never yields more, on an average, than 10 or 11 for one; barley, something less than 10 to 1; and oats only between 8 and 9 for one. In some highly ameliorated farms in the county of Suffolk, Arthur Young reports a produce of 36 bushels of wheat, and 64 bushels of barley to the acre; and that in the county of Kent, soils of middling quality, equally ameliorated, yield per acre 52 bushels of wheat, and the same quantity of barley. But in Flanders, there are soils which yield much more than this--namely, 72 bushels of wheat, 120 of barley, 128 of beans, and 72 of coleseed.--These, however, are extreme cases, which do not affect the general question of comparative growths; while, however, they shew that the amelioration of land, in any country, is calculated greatly to increase its productiveness. This correct, though "bird's eye" view, of Flemish husbandry, merits farther amplification, in order to furnish distinct data to the intelligent and enterprising agriculturist. My subsequent communications will be directed to that subject. Respectfully, yours, GEO. HOUSTON. _New York, April 18, 1820._ _From the Raleigh Star._ LINCOLN CORN POUNDER. The usual mode of feeding Indian corn to cattle and hogs, is wasteful in the extreme. The cob is not eaten, and the corn is neither ground nor boiled. It is a well established physiological fact, that the good health of animals requires, that the aliments for the stomach should afford both nutriment and mechanical distention in due proportions. In the usual method of feeding, these proportions do not exist, and besides the nutritious quality is only partially extracted. The grinding of corn is sometimes practised by those who have mills, and boiling by those who have not. Meal is sometimes mixed with hot water and fermented. All these are improvements in feeding, but these are not sufficient. Lately, a mill of cast iron has been invented, which converts both corn and cob into meal, and is used also by tanners in grinding their bark. This improvement is valuable. The cob, while it affords in itself much nutriment, furnishes a degree of distension to the stomach, which is necessary to its proper action. If to this grinding of the cob and grain is superadded fermentation, or boiling, the economical process is nearly complete. I have not time to say what the subject requires in regard to fermentation. Boiling not only renders the articles acted on soluble in the stomach, but it does more--it adds nutriment furnished by the water itself. The experiments of Count Rumford are full and satisfactory on this head. Let those who doubt the nutritive qualities of water be reminded that many kinds of fish live, grow and fatten in pure water, without any other food whatever.---Every one has seen the gold fish, which have lived for years in globes of pure water, that are sometimes put by the curious into cages of canary birds. Water and air constitute the entire aliment of vegetables, and give them bulk without diminishing at all the quantity of soil in which they grow. The perfection of feeding corn consists in preserving the cob, grinding the whole into meal, and in the cookery. The iron mill is excellent, but too expensive for most farmers. What is wanting, then, is to have the corn, with its cob, powdered by some cheap and simple method, that every one may avail themselves of. Such a one, accident lately made me acquainted with; and I think it is so valuable that I am desirous of seeing it introduced into general use, and shall attempt a description of the machine by which the process was effected. This machine I saw last summer in operation, on the road between Lincolnton and Morgantown. It was a horizontal shaft with a beater at one end, poised by the weight of water falling into an excavation at the other. The shaft or helve was about fourteen, possibly sixteen feet long. At two thirds of its length from the beater, it rested by a notch across the sharpened edge of a piece of timber lying in a transverse direction, serving as a pivot or fulcrum for the shaft to move on. The beater was a piece of wood two feet, or rather more, in length, fixed by a mortice and tennon to the end of the shaft; its face was about two inches and a half in diameter, and plated with iron. The mortar which received this pestal, or beater, was the hollowed end of a log, wide at top, narrower at bottom, and would contain nearly a bushel. The other, or shorter end of the shaft, was excavated into a trough about three feet long, eight inches wide, and the same in depth. The extreme inner end of the trough formed an angle of ascent from the line of the bottom of about 35 degrees, affording thereby an easy exit to the water when depressed by its weight. This very simple machine, for I have described the whole of it, was placed upon the small run of a spring branch, where there was a descent of about two feet. The water was conveyed into the trough by a spout which approached it at right angles, and the trough was filled and discharged about twice in a minute. Every morning, and again at evening, this mortar was filled with ears of corn, which in twelve hours were found reduced to a very fine meal. It was capable of converting to meal three or four mortars full in a day, but two were sufficient for the use of the plantation, and the mortar was attended to only when it could be done with convenience. In a wet season, when the spring run afforded more water, it moved with increased celerity, and was capable of increased work. The machine was without cover, and I observed barn-door fowls around it, but afraid of the motion of the shaft, they never ventured to purloin from the mortar. The whole expense of this, I think, could not have exceeded four or five dollars. I know not the inventor of this machine. There were a few others, I was told, in Lincoln and Burke. Its extreme simplicity, cheapness and utility, and the means afforded to almost every one of putting it in motion, ought to recommend it to general use. I am persuaded this method of pounding corn, united to boiling or fermentation, would double the value of crops for feeding. No rule is necessary to be observed with regard to the dimensions, or proportions of the machine. It must duly be noticed that the trough filled with water is heavy enough to raise the bearer; and this can be ascertained, and the proportions duly adjusted by experiment.----If Mr. Henderson think but half as favourably of this machine as I do, he will give the foregoing a place in his useful paper. CALVIN JONES. _Raleigh, Dec. 20, 1820._ TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. _An improved method of cultivating the Alpine Strawberry._----The strawberry is a fruit which is agreeable to the palate of so many persons, and which disagrees with the constitution of so few, that any means of improving the culture of it, and of prolonging the season of its maturity and perfection, will be acceptable to the Horticultural Society: I am therefore induced to send an account of an improved method of cultivating the _Alpine Strawberry_, that is, I believe, little if at all known, and that I have practised with the best possible success. Though the flavour of the Alpine varieties is generally approved, they are not much thought of while the larger varieties continue in perfection, and are valued only as an autumnal crop. I was therefore led to try several different methods of culture, with a view to obtain plants that would just begin to blossom when the other varieties cease; conceiving that such plants, not having expended either themselves, or the virtue of the soil, in a previous crop of fruit, would afford the best and most abundant autumnal produce. Under this impression, I sowed the seeds of the best Alpine variety that I had ever been able to obtain, in pots of mould, in the beginning of August, the seeds of the preceding year having been preserved to that period; and the plants these afforded were placed, in the end of March, in beds to produce fruit. This experiment succeeded tolerably well; but I was not quite satisfied with it; for though my plants produced an abundant autumnal crop of fruit, they began to blossom somewhat earlier than I wished, and before they were perfectly well rooted in the soil. I therefore tried the experiment of sowing some seeds of the same variety early in the spring, in pots which I placed in a hotbed of moderate strength in the beginning of April, and the plants thus raised were removed to the beds in which they were to remain in the open ground as soon as they had acquired a sufficient size. They began to blossom soon after midsummer, and to ripen their fruit towards the end of July, affording a most abundant crop of very fine fruit. The powers of life in plants thus raised, being young and energetic, operate much more powerfully than in the runners of older plants, or even in plants raised from seeds in the preceding year; and therefore I think the Alpine strawberry ought always to be treated as an annual plant. OILING FRUIT TREES. Sir George M'Kenzie has discovered that oil rubbed upon the stems and branches of fruit trees destroys insects, and increases the fruit buds. Mr. John Linning has added to the discovery, by using it successfully upon the stems of carnations, to guard them against the depredations of the ear-wig. The coarsest oil will suit, and only a small quantity is required. CULTURE OF FOREST TREES. Sir Watkin Williams Wynn has planted within the last 5 years, in the mountainous lands in the vicinity of Langollen, situated from 12,000 to 14,000 feet above the level of the sea, 39,000 oaks, 63,000 Spanish chesnuts, 102,000 spruce firs, 110,000 Scotch firs, 90,000 larches, 30,000 wych elms, 35,000 mountain elms, 80,000 ash, and 40,000 sycamores, all of which are at this time, in a healthy and thriving condition. TO PREVENT DECAY IN TREES. When old chesnut or other trees are rotted within the trunk, and threaten with speedy destruction by the progress of the carious taint, it may be stopped by applying fire to the decayed part, so as to _char_ the whole of the neighbouring surfaces. By this management the life of a favourite tree may often be preserved. [_Chaptal's Chemistry_. ON PLASTER. I have just received my _plaster_ from the mill. I remarked to the man who brought it, that it was too coarse. He replied that all our farmers preferred it coarse, and assigned this reason--that in grinding it fine, _it becomes so heated as to injure it_. I delay not a moment in expostulating against a doctrine so unphilosophical, and so injurious to the interests of agriculture. Every farmer knows that _grain_, as _food_ for _animals_ cannot be made too fine. Upon the same principle, _plaster_, which is _food_ for _vegetables_, affords the most nutriment when reduced to the finest powder. _Heat_ so far from injuring the properties of plaster, is the best agent for bringing them into action. This theory is the result of repeated experiment. Calcined plaster, which is produced by a process of _intense heat_, is found much more invigorating, and more permanently beneficial, than plaster in its simple state. While on this subject, I will suggest for consideration, whether our farmers, generally spread a sufficient quantity of plaster particularly on their grass land. Mr. Silas Gates, a well known farmer in Marlborough, informed me, that he directed one of his men to spread on a certain piece of mowing land, the usual quantity, (if I mistake not, at the rate of one bushel to the acre.) He had gone over about half the ground, at this rate, when other calls prevented his finishing it. Soon after the business of plastering was consigned to another, who, not knowing that any had been spread, went over the ground, giving one half a double portion.--The result was nearly a double portion of hay, which continued until the surface was changed by a rotation of crops. Your obed't, O FISKE. Worcester, April 17, 1820. [_Mass. Spy._ CATERPILLARS. Farmers who are in the habit of _rearing_ CATERPILLARS, for _ornament_ and _use_, will doubtless be gratified to learn, that the late favourable weather has produced a goodly show of their favourite vermin. They are already basking in the sun, and expanding by the nutricious aliment of foliage and fruit buds; and if not prematurely molested, (which there is little reason to apprehend) we may, in due time, taste from our kneading troughs the former repasts of Egypt. Judging from the produce of last year, it may be fairly calculated that many of our farmers, (and some who _do not belong to the Agricultural Society_) will, this year, raise double as many bushels of _caterpillars_ as of _apples_. Those (and there are some,) who prefer the appearance and flavour of the latter, will do well to look to their trees immediately. A thimble full of these reptiles, which can now be destroyed in an instant, would fill a hat a month hence, and would require tenfold the labour to subdue them. Every farmer's common sense will suggest the best method of extirpation.--_Ibid._ _A method of taking the Honey without destroying the Bees._--The common practice of killing the bees, in order to obtain the honey, few can witness without some little compunction; and as there is a very simple method of effecting the object without any injury to this most interesting little animal, (which, on the score of interest, as well as humanity, claims regard,) I beg leave to communicate it through your paper, should you deem it worthy a place in it. In the evening, when the bees have retired, take the hive gently from the stand; spread a table cloth on the ground; set the hive on it, placing something under to raise it three or four inches; then draw up the corners of the cloth, and fasten them tight around the middle of the hive, leaving it so loose below, that the bees will have sufficient room between it and the hive--then raise the lid of the hive a little, and blow in the smoke from a segar; a few puffs of which, as it is very disagreeable, will drive them down: continue raising the lid gradually, blowing in the smoke all around, and in a few minutes it will be found that they have all gone out of the hive. You may then take off the lid, and cut away as much of the honey as you may think proper. If the operation be performed the beginning of July, you may take nearly all, as there will be time enough to provide a sufficiency for their support during the winter. As soon as you have taken the honey, put on the lid, loosen the cloth, and spread it out, and in an hour or two the bees will have returned into the hive. It may then be replaced on the stand, and on the following day they will be found at work as usual. This method is very simple, and preferable to that sometimes practised, of driving the bees into another hive; as you get all the honey, and moreover the new comb, which is still empty; and the young bees, not yet out of the cells, are preserved. There is also danger in driving, of their not liking their new habitation, and, in that case, of their sallying out and making war on their neighbours. The above method has frequently been practised by myself and others, and we have always found it to do well. AMATOR MELLIS. _Washington, June, 1819._ [_Am. Farm._ _Conversion of Rags into Sugar._--We find this is no joke. There is in the _Annales de Chemie_ a long and very circumstantial account, from the pen of M. Henry Braconnot, of Geneva, of the whole process of this singular discovery; and are now so well satisfied there is nothing of "pleasantry" in the matter, as at first sight appeared to many, that, should we be told to-morrow that, as linen may be converted into its constituent principle, sugar--(a piece of fine Irish linen into a loaf of double refined!)--so may wool be converted into its constituent principle, fat--(an old threadbare coat into a basin of fine gravy soup!)--we shall be prepared to look quite grave at the announcement. "The conversion of wood into sugar (says M. Braconnot) will, no doubt, appear remarkable; and when persons not familiar with chemical speculations are told that a pound weight of rags can be converted into _more_ than a pound of sugar, they may regard the statement as a piece of pleasantry, though nothing can be more real." The agent in making this wonderful conversion is sulphuric acid, and those to whom it may not be enough to know that the thing can be done, will find ample directions as to the _modus operandi_ in M. Braconnot's Memoir. We shall content ourselves here with one extract: "I made these 359.2 gr. of sugary matter (obtained from old cloth well dried) into the consistency of sirup; at the end of twenty-four hours it began to crystallize; and some days after, the whole was solidified into a single mass of crystallized sugar, which was pressed strongly between several folds of old cloth; crystallized a second time, this sugar was passably pure; but, treated with _animal_ charcoal, it became of a shining whiteness.--The crystals were in spherical groupes, which appear to be formed by the union of small diverging and unequal plates. They are fusible at the temperature of boiling water. This sugar, of a fresh and agreeable flavour, produced in the mouth a slight sensation of coolness. It dissolves in hot alcohol, and crystallizes by cooling. Dissolved in water, and mixed with a little yeast, it fermented; the vinous liquor which resulted, furnished alcohol by distillation. Burned with potash, and its charcoal washed with diluted nitric acid, it yielded a fluid not troubled by nitrate or barytes. It would be useless to insist farther on the properties of this sugar: it is evident that it is perfectly identical with the sugar of grapes or of starch." RUTA BAGA EXPERIMENTS. 1819, July 27--Sowed three fourths of an acre of Ruta Baga, in ground prepared as follows, viz.--Stubble turned in deep--harrowed fine--furrowed deep at four feet distance--filled the furrows with _earth burnt ashes_, (burnt according to the plan prescribed by Mr. Cobbett, in his "Year's Residence,") which I covered by turning a furrow over them on each side; this formed a ridge about eighteen inches broad at top, which being smoothed a little with a hoe, and a drill made along the middle of it with the same instrument; I then sowed the seed and covered it with a hoe, from one to two inches deep; it came up on the 7th of August. When the roots were nearly a fourth of an inch thick, I thinned them to about a foot distance in the rows, and kept them free from weeds by two good ploughings and hoeings, (they would have been the better for a third) notwithstanding the unexpected dry season;--the last of November, many of them would measure fifteen inches in circumference--I left them to stand in the ground all winter. I was off the state, from the middle of December to the middle of February; on my return at the latter period, the snow had just disappeared, when I found my turnips had grown at least one fifth larger, since I saw them in December; many of them measuring six to seven inches diameter. The latter part of February was unusually warm for the season. The tops began to grow rapidly, but the severe cold nights of the early part of March, first freezing, and the warmth of the middle of the day, as often thawing them; many rotted in the ground--had they been pulled when the warm weather _commenced_, this would have been prevented. They are the cheapest, and with the exception of corn, they are the best food for milch cows and hogs, I ever met with--I have been feeding mine upon them for the last 6 weeks. Within a week past, I had them all pulled, (except those left for seed,) and thrown in heaps. Should the weather prove too warm, I shall spread them, in which way they will keep good until midsummer. Having repeatedly heard it asserted, that horses would not eat them, I determined to ascertain the truth of the assertion; accordingly, a parcel of them were washed and cut in pieces, and each horse served with about 3 galls. of them, when two out of five eat them greedily, two others eat them, but with less appetite, and the fifth refused. They had no other food allowed them for the night, and the next morning not the smallest piece was to be found in their trough. [_Am. Far._ THE FRUIT GARDEN. Mr. Southwick, The art of inoculating or budding fruit trees, (although the simplest and easiest of all things,) appears to be deemed a mystery by most of our farmers, and is too generally neglected, under a belief that it is a difficult or expensive operation. If the following short directions should prove the means of changing even one thorn bush into a pear or quince tree, I shall be fully paid for the trouble of scribbling them down. In the month of August and fore part of September, cut from the tree you wish to increase some of the young wood of the last summer's growth, (the cuttings should be thrifty and healthy) cut the leaves off, leaving about half an inch of the foot stalk on the cutting; at the foot, and immediately above the foot stalk, _lies the bud_; with a keen knife begin to cut half an inch above the bud, and bring out the knife a little below, taking about half the woody substance with it; then separate the bark from the wood, carefully observing that the bud be not injured in the operation. If the operation be properly performed, the bud will be separated from the wood, and remain unbroken and entire in the bark: this bark and bud is now to be speedily inserted into the tree you wish to change. Choose a smooth spot in some young and healthy branch, or sprout, and with a keen knife cut gently through the bark, about one inch in length, and a small cross cut near the upper end; separate the bark gently from the wood at this cross cut, being careful not to wound the bark or wood, and immediately insert the bud, laying it smooth and even under the bark of the tree; with a string of bass wood bark, or woollen yarn, tie it in so as to hold it close to the wood, being careful not to injure the bud nor foot stock--and the operation is done.--In two or three weeks after, the bud will have united to the wood, and the tyings should be loosened or taken away. The bud will remain dormant until the next spring. In April following, they should be examined, and if the buds then appear healthy and vigorous, the branch should be cut off immediately above the bud, and removed: in a few weeks this bud will take place of the old branch, and in two years produce fruit of the kind you wish. By this simple operation, the ordinary sour peach tree, which is an incumberer of the ground, may be made to yield the delicious Rare Ripe, the Early Ann, or other favourite peaches; or may be converted into a plum tree: and the ordinary _wild plum tree_ may be made to yield the richest and most delicious of our cultivated plums and peaches; our thorn bushes may be made to yield the rich and luscious pear; and our crab apple stalks be loaded with the finest varieties of our cultivated apples and cherries; apricots and nectarines are equally susceptible of improvement by the same easy means; nay, our wild gooseberry bushes may be converted into the best varieties, and our native grape may be made to yield an elegant dessert fruit.--All which I know by EXPERIENCE. [_Plough Boy_. THE PEAR TREE. A pear tree, brought from Holland, and planted in the year 1647, is now in full bloom, standing in the Third Avenue at the intersection of Thirteenth Street, New York. This is probably the oldest fruit tree in America. About 70 years ago the branches of the tree decayed and fell off, and at that time it was supposed the tree was dying; but without any artificial means being resorted to, new shoots germinated and gradually supplied the room of their predecessors. The tree now is in full health and vigour, and appears to be not more than 30 years old; the fruit ripens the latter part of August, has a rich succulent flavour, and has been known by the name of the spice pear. [_Evening Post._ _On raising young Potatoes in the Winter months._--In the beginning of May, lay a quantity of the largest ox-noble Potatoes, on a dry cellar floor, two or three deep, and turn them over once in about three weeks, rubbing off all the white sprouts as they appear, but not the spawn or rudiments of the young potatoes. At the end of September, have ready a few boxes; at the bottom of each put six inches of decayed leaves, dried to a vegetable mould, and place upon it a single layer of potatoes, close to each other; then put another layer of the same mould, six inches deep, then another of potatoes, and so on till the boxes are full.--Set the boxes in a dry covered place, free from frost, never giving them any water.--They will produce good fine young potatoes in December; and those which are ready may be taken off, and the old potatoes replaced until the remainder of the produce shall be ready. _Cure for foundered horses, by a surgical operation._--"The operation has succeeded admirably and will probably lead to a similar practice in the human subject. It has hitherto failed frequently in the _Tic Doloureux_ and other diseases, either from the regeneration of the divided nerve producing a union and restoration of sensation, or from the effect being produced by the swelling of the ends of the cut nerve sufficient to effect the union. But the excision of two inches in length effectually prevents such a restoration of feeling. Mr. Sewell, the well known assistant professor at the Veterinary College, who has the exclusive claim to this improvement, in the course of the last eighteen months, performed this operation on above 100 horses, with uniform success, except perhaps two or three cases, in which there was great organical disease of the foot. Although the operation requires the skill of Mr. Sewell, it is very simple. It consists in cutting down upon the trunks of the nerves which enter the foot in contact with the arteries, on each side of either the small or large pastern joint, and then removing a piece of the nerve. A few minutes after the operation, the animal walks and trots like a sound horse, which just before could scarcely move at all, and then in extreme pain. The principle is obvious--it is that of removing the conductors of sensation from the seat in the disease to the brain. The division of the arteries accompanying the nerves is carefully avoided."--_Journ. Arts and Science._ _To destroy insects which infest fruit trees._--Take a small quantity of unslackened lime, mix it with soft water, to the consistency of very thin whitewash--apply this mixture with a brush, to the trees, as soon as the sap begins to rise, and wash the stems and large boughs with it, taking care to have it done in dry weather, that it may adhere and withstand rain. In the course of the ensuing summer, this will be found to have removed all the moss and insects, and give to the bark a fresh and green appearance. The trial is simple, and not attended with much trouble, expense, or danger. AGRICULTURAL MEMORANDA. _Oranges, &c._--If the cuttings of _Lemons_ or _Oranges_ are placed in a pot, or box, so as to _touch_ the bottom of it, it will considerably facilitate their growth. _To preserve Peaches from frost._--After a cold night when there is any appearance of frost on the _bloom_, or _young fruit_ of peach trees--wet it thoroughly with cold water. Even if the blossoms are discoloured, this operation recovers them, provided it is done in the morning before the sun shines upon them.[10] [10] This seems to be analogous to the condition of a frost bitten joint or limb, which is recovered by the application of cold water; but injured, sometimes destroyed, by being brought near a fire, or the influence of sudden warmth. _Method of forcing Fruit Trees to bear fruit._--With a sharp knife make a cut in the bark of the branch, which you mean to force to bear, and not far from the place where it is connected with the stem; or if it be a small branch, or shoot, near where it is joined to the larger bough. The cut is to go round the branch, or to encircle it, and to penetrate to the wood. A _quarter of an inch_ from this cut, you make a second cut, like the first, round the branch, so that by both encircling the branch, you have marked a ring upon the branch a quarter of an inch broad, between the two cuts. The bark between these two cuts you take clean away, with the knife, down to the wood, removing even the fine inner bark which lies upon the wood; so that no connection whatever remains between the two parts of the bark, but the bare and naked wood appears white and smooth. But this bark ring, which is to compel the tree to bear, must be made at the right time, that is, when in all nature the buds are strongly swelling, or are breaking out into blossom. In the same year a callus is formed at the edge of the ring, on both sides, and the connexion of the bark that had been interrupted, is restored again without any detriment to the tree, or the branch operated upon, in which the artificial wound soon again grows over. _New mode of preparing Indian Corn._--Take the corn in its green state, when it is fit to eat; boil it; then cut it off the cob--spread it on a cloth in the sun to dry--put it in bags, and when boiled again, it is as sweet and good as when first pulled. THE GREAT LAKES. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A Table, shewing the quantity of water contained in the St. Lawrence, and all its tributary Lakes and Rivers. (From Darby's Tour.) ---------------------+-------+-------------------+-------------------- |_Medium| | LAKES |depth._|_Superficial Area._| _Solid Contents._ ---------------------+-------+-------------------+-------------------- | Feet. | Feet. | Feet. ---------------------+-------+-------------------+-------------------- Superior, | 900 | 836,352,000,000 | 752,716,800,000,000 Huron, | 900 | 527,568,000,000 | 501,811,200,000,000 Michigan, | 900 | 376,898,400,000 | 59,208,560,000,000 Erie, | 120 | 418,176,000,000 | 50,181,120,000,000 Ontario, | 492 | 200,724,480,000 | 98,756,444,160,000 St. Lawrence, and } | | | other rivers and } | " | 41,176,000,000 | 83,520,000,000 smaller lakes, } | | | ---------------------+-------+-------------------+--------------------- | | 2,430,894,880,000 |1,742,757,644,160,000 ---------------------+-------+-------------------+--------------------- Lake Superior, in its greatest length, is 381 miles; its breadth is 161; and its circumference is little less than 1152 miles--it is as remarkable for the transparency of its waters as for its extraordinary depth. Lake Huron, from west to east, is 218 statute miles long; at its western extremity it is less than one hundred miles broad; and, at about one hundred miles from its eastern shore, it is barely 60 miles broad; but near the centre it suddenly bends away to the southward, and is a hundred miles in breadth; making a circumference of little less than 812 miles. Lake Michigan deepens into a bay of 262 miles in length, by sixty-five in breadth; and its entire circumference is 731 miles. _Slave Trade._--A letter from Sierra Leone, dated Dec. 14, states, that there was more slave-dealing carried on at that period in the neighbouring rivers, than when it was allowed by the British government. From the Boston Gazette. HISTORICAL SKETCHES, &c. The first Americans who are known to have visited the Western country, were James M'Bride, and several others, who in the year 1754 descended the Ohio river, as far as the mouth of Kentucky river. In 1769, Colonel Daniel Boon, and a few others, undertook to explore this vast wilderness, then so little known. After many hardships and fatigues, they reached the neighbourhood of Lexington, where they remained until 1771. In 1775, Colonel Boon, with a party of soldiers and emigrants, built fort Boonsborough, which was the first settlement made in the state of Kentucky. Notwithstanding many obstacles, the inhabitants of Kentucky were estimated, in 1784, at 12,000 souls.--No settlements were made north of the Ohio, until three or four years afterwards. On the 1st of March, 1786, the "Ohio Company" was formed at Boston, consisting of officers and soldiers of the Revolution, who, by an act of Congress, were entitled to a military grant of land, in the territory northwest of the Ohio. This company completed a contract with Congress for one million five hundred thousand acres, on the 27th of Nov. 1787. An association of 46 men, under Gen. Rufus Putnam, proceeded to take possession of the purchase; and on the 7th April following, they pitched their camp and cleared the ground where Marietta now stands. In 1788, Congress passed an ordinance establishing a colonial government over the Northwest Territory. Arthur St. Clair was appointed governor. Cincinnati was first called Losantiville, but Governor St. Clair, in 1790, altered its name. In 1789, the population of this place consisted of only eleven families. In 1792, a Presbyterian church was erected at Cincinnati; and the citizens were compelled by law, to take their fire arms with them, when they attended church. The first school was also established this year, and consisted of about 30 scholars. In 1792, the small pox broke out among the soldiers at Fort Washington, and one third of the citizens and soldiers fell victims to its ravages.--[This was the same year it spread throughout Boston.] Since the above period, the western country has increased in a ratio "truly astonishing." In 1810, the population of Cincinnati was estimated at 2300; in 1813, at about 4000; and in 1819, at more than 10,000; "an increase truly astonishing." The greatest part of the population are stated to be from the middle and northern states; but there is also a mixed assemblage of emigrants, "from almost every part of Christendom; and it is not uncommon to hear three or four different languages spoken in the streets at the same time." In 1819, in Cincinnati, there were 1890 buildings, many of brick and stone, of two stories and upwards; 10 places of public worship, a college, five banks, court-house, jail, two market houses, several manufactories, &c. Some of the religious societies were formed in Cincinnati, with only ten members; and all have been created within 16 years. There are also several Bible societies, Sabbath school societies, a medical society, humane society, &c. Since the introduction of steam-boats, considerable attention has been paid at Cincinnati to exportation; and from October, 1818, to March, 1819, it amounted to $1,334,080, and consisted of flour, pork, bacon, lard, tobacco, &c.; while the amount of imports, for the same period, amounted to only $500,000. In 1817, the imports amounted to $1,442,266, and in 1818, to $1,619,000! They seem to be convinced that the only way to relieve the western states from their "present embarrassments," is to _export more and import less_, which will soon effect a rapid change in their affairs. About 60 steam-boats, from 25 to 700 tons, and many of them finished in a style of elegance and taste, are now in successful operation, and most of them have been built within two or three years. There are three auctioneers in Cincinnati, 25 attorneys, 22 physicians, 3 companies of "Independent Military," handsomely uniformed, whose appearance is "nowise inferior to the Eastern Military." Three newspapers are now printed at Cincinnati, all upon an imperial sheet. It is estimated, that 120,000 bushels of salt are sold annually at Cincinnati, which at $1.50 amounts to $180,000. The various kinds of lumber sold are estimated at $150,000 a year. We might enlarge these items, and several other articles worthy of record, but our limits will not permit. THE ROBBER DISAPPOINTED. A few months ago, a farmer living a few miles from Easton, sent his daughter on horseback to that town, to procure from the bank smaller notes in exchange for one of one hundred dollars. When she arrived there the bank was shut, and she endeavoured to effect her object by offering it at several stores, but could not get her note changed. She had not gone far on her return, when a stranger rode up to the side of her horse, and accosted her with so much politeness that she had not the slightest suspicion of any evil intention on his part. After a ride of a mile or two, employed in very social conversation, they came to a retired part of the road, and the gentleman commanded her to give him the bank note. It was with some difficulty that she could be made to believe him in earnest, as his demeanour had been so friendly; but the presentation of a pistol placed the matter beyond a doubt, and she yielded to necessity. Just as she held the note to him, a sudden puff of wind blew it into the road, and carried it gently several yards from them. The discourteous knight alighted to overtake it, and the lady whipped her horse to get out of his power, and the other horse who had been left standing by her side, started off with her. His owner fired a pistol, which only tended to increase the speed of all parties, and the young lady arrived safely at home with the horse of the robber, on which was a pair of saddlebags. When these were opened, they were found to contain, besides a quantity of counterfeit bank notes, _fifteen hundred dollars in good money_! The horse was a good one, and when saddled and bridled, was thought to be worth at least as much as the bank note that was stolen. As this story is somewhat wonderful, I enclose you my name as a voucher for the truth of it, and am yours, &c. [_Nat. Recorder_. MARIVAUX. The following anecdotes from _Esprit de Marivaux_, a book, probably, not known to many of your readers, may serve to amuse some of them. Marivaux was scarcely less remarkable for his indolence than his wit.--He was said to be "by nature the laziest creature in the world;" but his goodness appeared on the most trifling circumstances. He was one day setting out for the country with Mad. Lallemand de Bez. Marivaux and the lady's sister were already in the coach; she staid behind to give some orders to her domestics. In this interval, a sturdy young fellow, about eighteen or twenty, plump and fresh coloured, came to the coach door begging. Marivaux, struck with the contrast between the appearance and profession of the man, looked out, and reproved him. "Are you not ashamed," said he, "a young fellow in perfect health and vigour, to have the meanness to beg your bread, when you might procure it by honest labour?" The fellow, struck with this rebuke, was, at first, confounded and silent; but presently afterwards, scratching his head, exclaimed with a shrug and a sigh, "_Ah! sir, if you did but know--I am so lazy!_" Marivaux, who was himself sensible of the pain of labour, was so pleased with the fellow's confession, that he gave him a crown. Fontenelle having heard that Marivaux was sick, and having just reason to fear that he, who never laid by any money, might be in want of it at such an exigence, went to him, and when they were alone, told him his suspicions. "Perhaps," says he, "more money may be convenient to you than you have by you.--Friends should never wait to be solicited; here is a purse with a hundred louis d'ors, which you must permit me to leave at your disposal."--"I consider them (said Marivaux) as received and used; permit me now to return them with the gratitude that such a favour ought to excite."--"What benevolence and generosity, in one of these friends," says the author, "what delicacy and greatness of mind in the other!" [_Nat. Gaz._ _A curious phenomenon._--Extract of a letter dated May 4th, 1820, from a respectable physician of Northumberland, Pennsylvania, to an eminent member of the faculty in this city. "About twelve years ago the wife of the parish minister had twins. She was a debilitated nervous woman. Her mother a healthy old lady of seventy-five, who firmly believed the prayers of the faithful could remove mountains, began to think what a comfortable thing it would be, if she could nurse one of the twins. The consequence was, that her breasts filled with milk, and she nursed it for twelve months, affording all that time an abundant supply, to the great relief of the mother. "This story cannot be contradicted; for the most respectable persons in Northumberland have related it to me, persons who could not be deceived, and would not deceive me. They say that she often carried the child abroad in the course of her visiting, telling the wonder wherever she went, and giving her friends ocular demonstration of the lactiferous miracle." [_Ibid_. _Works of Fiction._--Hannah More, in her last work, remarking on the subject of "unprofitable reading," observes, "many works of fiction may be read with safety, some even with profit; But the constant familiarity even with such as are not exceptionable in themselves, relaxes the mind that wants hardening, dissolves the heart which wants fortifying, stirs the imagination which wants quieting, irritates the passions which want calming, and, above all, disinclines and disqualifies for active virtues, and for spiritual exercises. The habitual indulgence in such reading is a silent, mining mischief. Though there is no act, and no moment, in which any open assault on the mind is made, yet the constant habit performs the work of a mental atrophy; it produces all the symptoms of decay, and the danger is not less for being more gradual, and, therefore, less suspected." GREENSBOROUGH, _(Pa.) May 5, 1820_. _Law Case._--JACK VS. MAUNS.--The plaintiff brought suit against defendant for a rifle gun, which defendant had exchanged for a horse. The defendant insisted on the bargain being annulled, on the ground of a special agreement, that if he did not like the horse, he should be returned within a stipulated time. The cause was referred to arbitrators, who awarded, that the plaintiff should take back the horse, and the defendant his gun, the spectators pay the drink, and the justice the cost of arbitrators. Judgment on the award--_parties satisfied_. THE SPANISH INQUISITION. During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and in the Pontificate of Innocent VIII. the Inquisition was established for the prosecution of heretics. It was originally intended to take cognizance of only the Jews and Moors--but so rapidly did it extend its influence, that during the sway of Torquemada, the first Inquisitor-General, it was calculated that 6000 persons were burnt by his order; and upwards of 20,000 fell victims in various other ways. From the above period to the present time, it is impossible to calculate the number of persons who have fallen victims to its horrid cruelties. The late revolutions in Spain have abolished the Inquisition, opened the doors of its prisons, and set the captives free. This measure alone is a subject of the highest congratulation to the friends of freedom throughout the world. [_N. Y. D. Adv._ _Mr. Ellery._--The venerable Mr. Ellery, the subject of the extract which we give below, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and upwards of ninety years old when he died. The writer of the letter is a gentleman of Rhode Island, of much distinction, who was intimately acquainted with the deceased. _Extract of a letter, dated Newport, (R. I.) March 14, 1820_. "Old Mr. Ellery died like a philosopher. In truth death, in its common form, never came near him. His strength wasted gradually for the last year, until he had not enough left to draw in his breath, and so he ceased to breathe. The day on which he died, he got up and dressed himself, took his old flag-bottomed chair, without arms, in which he had sat for more than half a century, and was reading Tully's Offices in the Latin without glasses, though the print was as fine as that of the smallest pocket Bible. Dr. W. stopped in on his way to the Hospital, as he usually did; and on perceiving the old gentlemen could scarcely raise his eyelids to look at him, took his hand, and found that his pulse was gone. After drinking a little wine and water, Dr. W. told him his pulse beat stronger. "O yes, Doctor, I have a charming pulse. But," he continued, "it is idle to talk to me in this way. I am going off the stage of life, and it is a great blessing that I go free from sickness, pain and sorrow." Some time after, his daughter, finding him become extremely weak, wished him to be put to bed, which he at first objected to, saying he felt no pain, and there was no occasion for his going to bed. Presently after, however, fearing he might possibly fall out of his chair, he told them they might get him upright in the bed, so that he could continue to read. They did so, and he continued reading Cicero very quietly for some time; presently they looked at him and found him dead, sitting in the same posture, with the book under his chin, as a man who becomes drowsy and goes to sleep." _[National Gazette_. _Benjamin West._--This distinguished American artist died in London at the advanced age of 82, being born on the 10th of October, 1738, in Chester county, Pennsylvania. His genius and industry as a painter have never been surpassed, and his productions will long be admired for their great and unrivalled merit. He was much attached to his native country, and took great pleasure in conversing with his fellow citizens, and giving every facility to American artists--he viewed our progress in arts and in science, with deep interest, and his long absence did not alienate his affections from his native land. "Yesterday," said he to an American, "was fifty years since I first arrived in London--I remember travelling on the top of the Canterbury coach, and stopping about two miles from London, at a mean tavern, and taking a dinner before I entered the metropolis to seek my fortune; and I could not avoid yesterday going to the same tavern, calling for a dinner alone in the same room, looking back on the fifty years I had spent, the progress I had made in my profession, the friends I possessed, and the adventures I had met with." This was a singular epoch in the life of an individual. [_Nat. Advocate._ MISCELLANY. _Other people's eyes the cause of ruin._--Almost all the parts of the body, says Dr. Franklin, require some expense. The feet demand shoes; the legs stockings; the rest of the body, clothing; and the stomach a good deal of victuals. Our eyes, though exceedingly useful, ask, when reasonable, only the cheap assistance of spectacles, which would not much impair our finances. But the eyes of _other people_ are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine house nor fine furniture. _Enormous Bird._--Mr. Henderson has discovered, in New Siberia, the claws of a bird, measuring each a yard in length; and the Yaknts assured him they had frequently in their hunting excursions, met with skeletons, and even feathers of this bird, the quills of which were large enough to admit a man's arm. This is a fact in support of the tradition, that the earth was formerly inhabited by giants, for men, not exceeding ourselves in stature, would have been helpless against birds of prey of this magnitude. _Martial glory._--In the Edinburgh Review of Dr. Seybert's "Statistical Annals of the United States," there is an admonition to the Americans to abstain from martial glory. "We can inform them," (says the Reviewer) "what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory. Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot--taxes upon every thing which is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste--taxes upon warmth, light, or locomotion--taxes on every thing on earth, and the waters under the earth--of every thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at home--taxes on the raw material--taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of men--taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health--on the ermine which decorate the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal--on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice--on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride--at bed or at board, couchant or levant, we must pay! The school boy whips his taxed top--the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon which has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent.--makes his will on an 8l. stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary, who has paid 100l. for the privilege of putting him to death.--His whole property is then taxed from 2 to 10 per cent., besides the probate. Large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more." _Law Intelligence.--R. & C. Rhodes, vs. Peleg Congdon._ The court are of opinion that the legal mode of computing interest, where there have been partial payments, is, to cast the interest on the principal, up to the time of the first payment, which add to the principal; and from this sum deduct the payment, and so on through all the endorsements when one year or more intervenes between the payments, provided the sum paid is greater than the sum due for interest, when the payment is made; if less than such sum is paid, to be applied towards the payment of interest; and where the note or mortgage has not run one year, then, cast the interest tin the payment, as well as the principal, up to the end of the year.--The above decision was made by the Supreme Court, at their late April term, in Kent, Maryland. _On Books._--Dr. Aikin in his valuable letters from a Father to a Son, thus elucidates the value of a Library:--"Imagine (says he) that we had it in our power to call up the shades of the greatest and wisest men that ever existed, and obliged them to converse with us on the most interesting topics--what an inestimable privilege should we think it!--how superior to all common enjoyments! But in a well furnished library we, in fact, possess this power. We can question Xenophon and Cæsar on their campaigns--make Demosthenes and Cicero plead before us--join in the audiences of Socrates and Plato, and receive demonstrations from Euclid and Newton. In books we have the choicest thoughts of the ablest men in their best dress. We can, at pleasure, exclude dulness and impertinence, and open our doors to wit and good sense alone. Without books, I have never been able to pass a single day to my entire satisfaction; with them, no day has been so dark as not to have had its pleasure. Even pain and sickness have for a time been charmed away by them. By the easy provision of a book in my pocket, I have frequently worn through long nights and days in the most disagreeable parts of my profession, with all the difference in my feelings between calm content and fretful impatience." _European Literature._---The catalogue of the fair of Leipsic, for 1819, contains one thousand two hundred and sixteen new works, in Greek, Latin, and German; thirty-eight novels, thirty dramatic pieces, twenty-seven geographical maps, fifty-nine pieces of music; and seventy-seven works in foreign languages, the French, Italian, Polish, Bohemian, Danish, and Spanish. _Egypt._--The last news from this country, of inexhaustible curiosity, contains information respecting the labours of that magnificent undertaking, the Grand Canal of Alexandria. Already the primary effects of it have given an impulse to agriculture and industry, such as might be expected from it. The culture of cotton, of the sugar cane, of the mulberry tree, is beginning to assume a degree of activity, as also the rearing of silkworms; and some important new manufactories are already at work, holding out the promise of future commercial prosperity. _Lakes in New Holland._--It appears that two large seas or sheets of water have been discovered in the interior of New Holland, supplied chiefly by two considerable rivers, whose sources are on the western side of the Blue Mountains. _Missions in India._--The Reverend James Bryce, in a sermon preached in Calcutta, March, 1818, said, "Zeal the most active and disinterested, and diligence the most assiduous, have not been spared by the Christian missionary, in his pious attempts to convert the natives of India. But, alas! it may be doubted, if at this day he boasts a single proselyte to his creed, over whom he is warranted to rejoice." _Increase of Taxes in England._--A meeting of the magistrates, and other owners and occupiers of land in Monmouthshire, was held lately at Abergavenny, for the purpose of petitioning Parliament for relief. The 1st clause of the petition states, "That the farmer at this time can obtain but little more for his corn than in the year 1793, although the taxes are increased _four fold_, and the poors' rates above trebled, since that period." _British Exports._--The exports of white and plain calicoes from Great Britain, were--In 1814, 58,928,174 yards; in 1815, 65,669 930; in 1816, 50,251,102; and in 1817, 63,525,555. _Scull of king Robert the Bruce._--Lately in the church of Dumfermline, the grave of the celebrated warrior king Robert the Bruce was opened, in presence of a numerous assemblage of men of rank and science. The scull, and various parts of the skeleton, were in a state of preservation: now that the opinions of Gall and Spurzheim are not passed over as mere pieces of quackery, the curiosity of anatomists, and even of the public in general, was excited by this invaluable opportunity of inspecting and examining such a scull as that of king Robert the Bruce. We are told, that several of the propensities of this great man, were strongly expressed in the eminences of the scull--in particular, that the organ of _combativeness_ was the most prominent of the whole. _Power of Ice._--The following singular account of the power of ice, is taken from an English periodical publication, of January 1820. "Huyghens, in order to try the force with which ice would expand itself when confined, filled a cannon, the sides of which were an inch thick, with water, and then closed the mouth and touch hole so that none could escape. The instrument, thus filled was exposed in a strong freezing air. In less than twelve hours the water within was frozen, and began to dilate itself with such force, that it actually burst the piece in two different places. Mathematicians have calculated the force of the ice on this occasion; such a force, they say, would raise a weight of 27,730 pounds. From hence, therefore, we need not be surprised at the effects of ice destroying the substance of vegetables, trees, and even splitting rocks, when the frost is carried to excess. "The late frost produced quite a phenomenon at the back of the Cold-Bath-Fields prison, where the New River Water Company's leading iron pipes cross the Fleet Ditch. The pipes not having been properly cemented, or the cement having worn away, the water had spouted up high in the air: and when the very severe weather was, it commenced freezing, and continued to freeze till a large cascade or fountain of ice was actually formed, as white as snow, about ten feet above the pipe, and reaching in large icicles concocted together nearly to the water in the ditch below. The bank was covered with a thick coat of ice from the spray, which blew from the water-fall. The circumference of the frozen pile could not be less than eight or ten feet, at half that height from the pipe. At a distance it was not possible to distinguish it from water spouting and falling down; and when close to it the ice looked so clear and beautiful, and the rarity of such an object being considered, made every one behold it with wonder and admiration." _Ingenious Machine._--The National Fire and Life Insurance Association, (London) have introduced a newly invented machine, which possesses the following properties: In case of fire, it instantly awakens the party in whose sleeping room it is placed--immediately lights a lamp--makes known the hour of the night, and not only that a fire has commenced, but in what room. _Chinese Superstition._--The following article, which gives some idea of Chinese superstition, is taken from a Peking Gazette:--"The 1st of May, 1818, there arose suddenly at Peking, a tempest, that obscured the heavens and filled the air with sand and dust. The Emperor, thinking it was a judgment from heaven, was very much alarmed, and very anxious to know what it meant: he assembled his ministers of state, and commanded them to endeavour to discover the cause of it: he then reprimanded his astronomers for not having foretold it to him. 'You announced to me,' said he to them, 'three days ago, the happy influence the stars had over me, foretelling a long and prosperous life; this was mere flattery, while you either would not or could not tell me of this impending misfortune.' Three of those _sages_ gave their opinion, that the cause of this tempest was the dismissal of the late chief minister, _Sung Tajin_, and advised him to recall him; but his Majesty, far from approving their proposal, reprimanded them for having the presumption to meddle with the royal prerogative. The body of mathematicians gave in their opinion, assuring him that if this whirlwind, accompanied with dust, continued during the whole day, it indicated a perverse conduct and variance of opinion between the sovereign and his ministers, as well as a great drought and famine. If the wind disturbed the sand, moved the stones, and made much noise, inundations were to be expected; and if the dust continued to fall one hour more, the plague would rage in the southern regions, and half the inhabitants to the southeast would be sick." The Gazette expresses his Majesty's uneasiness at this long drought. His Majesty has ordered his sons to fast, to pray, and offer sacrifices to heaven, to earth, and to the god of wind. There was to be a solemn festival on the 25th of May, 1819, at which all the princes, ministers, and nobles, were to appear in procession, wearing mourning as a mark of their contrition! _To Farmers' Wives._--A most excellent method of making BUTTER, is now practised in England, which effectually prevents its changing and becoming rancid.--The day before churning, scald the cream in a clean iron kettle, over a clear fire, taking care that it does not boil over. As soon as it begins to boil, or is fully scalded, strain it, when the particles of milk, which tended to sour and change the butter, are separated and left behind. Put the vessel into a tub of water, in a cellar, till the next morning, when it will be ready for churning, and become butter in less than quarter of the time required in the common method. It will also be hard, with peculiar additional sweetness, and will not change. The labour in this way is less than the other, as the butter comes so much sooner, and saves so much time in working out the buttermilk.--By this method good butter may be made in the hottest weather. DIED, In the parish of Aiglish, in the vicinity of Killarney, Ireland, at the very advanced age of _one hundred and fifteen years_, THEODORE O'SULLIVAN, the celebrated Irish Bard.--This extraordinary man, who was a great composer in his native language, expired suddenly, in April last, whilst sowing oats in the field of his great grand children, and retaining his faculties to the last moment! He is said to have sung to the plough one of his favourite lyrics, and actually breathed his last at the final stanza of his national melody. The deceased also followed the occupation of a cooper, and is said to have made a churn, from which butter was taken for the christening of his 26th great grand child. Lately, at the hospital at Bourges, France, aged 103 years, and 13 days, ETIENNE DELAMETAIRE. He was born blind, and employed for upwards of 60 years in turning a grindstone. FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE. The more disinterested our benevolence, the nearer we approach to the gods, was the sentiment of a reflecting heathen, who lived at a remote period of antiquity. Disinterested benevolence, though of rare occurrence, is nevertheless, to the honour of human nature, sometimes witnessed. 'When it is, the effect, like that produced by beholding an island of verdure in a sandy desert, or a retiring evergreen in the wintry waste, is in the highest degree cheering and delightful. DAVID G. SEIXAS, a young man of this city, of limited pecuniary resources, but of truly philanthropic and elevated views, has for some time past gratuitously instructed a number of deaf and dumb children, with singular success. His unobtrusive merit has at length in some measure become cognisant to the public; and as it is ascertained that there is a considerable number of unfortunate individuals, of this description, in the city _and its vicinity_, an association has been formed, under the most respectable auspices, for establishing an Institution for their instruction.[11] It is hoped and believed, that exertions to promote so excellent an object, will be aided with ample and willing patronage. [11] This truly laudable enterprise, as well as many others of a similar character, (without derogating from the important services of others,) is most essentially indebted to the enlightened zeal, and public spirited benevolence of one of the Vice-Presidents, ROBERTS VAUX, Esq.--The justice of this small tribute to distinguished worth, although dictated by friendship, will be cheerfully acknowledged by his fellow citizens generally. THE DEAF AND DUMB BOY! When smiles play around thee, why sad and forlorn, Amid all the transports thy fellows enjoy; In life's cheerful morning what prompts thee to mourn?-- Alas! he is SILENT--poor sad-fated BOY! When nature is robed in her mantle of green, And winter has fled with his vapours & snows, Every bough has its vocalist gladd'ning the scene, He naught of this soul-cheering melody knows! His ear never welcom'd the music of sound, His tongue never utter'd the wonders of thought, His DUTIES and END wrapt in darkness profound, Have ne'er to this child of misfortune been taught. Perchance ere the period when heart-rending woes, To a premature grave had a fond mother brought, As maternal affection more fervidly glows, When our path through existence with sorrows is fraught! Life's gath'ring ills were dispell'd by her smiles, For love an inaudible language can speak; But bereft of that friend who all suffering beguiles, The tear of affliction now traces his cheek. His wants disregarded, his wishes unknown, Yet generous bosoms with sympathy feel, When they make his condition--a moment their own, His eloquent, silent, resistless appeal. Though drear be his prospects, we view with delight, His sorrowing features now bright'ning with joy, For Mercy descending in vesture of white, Will solace the SPEECHLESS AND DESTITUTE BOY. E. TO THE EDITORS OF THE RURAL MAGAZINE. The following is a copy of Verses which I took from a manuscript above forty years ago. I think them good, and as I have never seen them in any printed book, I infer they are very rarely to be met with. From your friend and well-wisher, _May_ 8, 1820. C. E. ON MAN'S DEPENDANCE ON HIS CREATOR. Through all the various shifting scenes Of life's mistaken ill or good, The hand of God conducts, unseen, The beautiful vicissitude. He portions with paternal care, Howe'er unjustly we complain, To each his necessary share Of joy and sorrow, health and pain. Trust we to youth, or friends, or power, Fix we our foot on fortune's ball; When most secure, the coming hour, If he sees fit, can blast them all. When lowest sunk with grief or shame, Gorged with affliction's deepest cup, Lost to relations, friends, or fame, His powerful hand can raise thee up. Before his throne the poor, opprest With slanderous rage, acquitted stand; He guides the exile to his rest, And country, in a foreign land. His powerful consolations cheer, His smiles erect the afflicted head; His hand can wipe away the tear That secret wets the widow'd bed. All things on earth, and all in heaven, On his eternal will depend; And all for greater good were given, Would man pursue th' appointed end. This be my care. To all beside, Indifferent let my wishes be; Passions be calm, and dumb be pride, And fix'd my soul, my God, on thee. TO THE EDITORS OF THE RURAL MAGAZINE. My leisure hours are mostly employed in holding a sort of literary _chit-chat_ with some favourite author or editor; but I am never more agreeably entertained than at your _Evening Fire-side_, by the various topics there introduced and discussed. The Essayist _remarks_ the pride, extravagance, and vices, which at present prevail, and _teaches_ us that these are unworthy of rational beings, and that their opposites, humility, prudence, and virtue, with the exercise of charity and forbearance, can alone ensure us felicity. The Agriculturist descants on the improvement of the soil, the rearing of flocks and herds, and the enviable pleasures of rural occupations. The Mechanic sets forth the superior advantages of some new invention; while the man of science communicates the result of ingenious experiments in the particular branches of knowledge which have engaged his attention. And last, though not less a favourite than the rest, is the Bard, whose title to poetic inspiration is not unfrequently evinced by his giving ----"_to airy nothing "A local habitation and a name_." While thus highly amused and instructed myself, I am unable, being of humble capacity, to contribute in return to the edification of others, unless by occasionally communicating what I may chance to glean in the course of some of my _literary_ peregrinations. As this may not be unacceptable, I send you, as a token of my good will, and desire for the prosperity of your interesting Miscellany, a _scrap_ of American poesy, which, though published a few years since in some of the public journals, it is believed will be new to many of your readers. The writer is a young lady of Virginia, by the name of HENNING, who thus modestly speaks of a production, which, it must be admitted, is alike creditable to herself, her sex and country:--"The subject which I have selected, has already employed the talents of an eminent poet, (_Akenside_,) and as he has gathered in the rich harvest which it presented to the sickle of his genius, I must, like Ruth of old, be content to collect the scattered ears, not however expecting the same result to my employment as that which attended my fair-famed predecessor."--Your friend, X. ODE TO IMAGINATION. Oh thou! whose power inspires the minstrel's song. And pours the tide of tuneful verse along, Whose rapid wings through ether speed their flight, While earth extended lies beneath thy sight, Send one bright beam of that celestial blaze, That round thy brow in dazzling lustre plays, One ray, to gild the gloom of mental night, And burst its shroud with thy refulgent light! By thee each scene, that meets the gazing view, Is cloth'd in beauty's bright attractive hue: 'Tis thine to wake the bold exalted thought, With splendour graced, with mental ardour fraught; The lofty strain of eloquence is thine, By thee its torrent rolls, its beauties shine; Thy power directs the mind's adventurous flight, And guides its course to Grandeur's lofty height. 'Tis thine fair Beauty's brightest forms to trace, Adorned with charms and rich in every grace, By thee the painter's mimic canvas shows A youthful form where each attraction glows; By thee the eye its seeming lustre sheds, By thee the rose the snowy cheek o'erspreads, Till to the sight the lovely semblance seems A living goddess, sung in fabled themes. Nor does the strain whose headlong torrent falls, While sounding echoes strike the lofty walls, Nor Venus robed in heavenly charms alone, The potent magic of thine influence own. Oft have thy visions cheered the drooping breast, By anguish pierced, by gloomy cares opprest, A while suppressed the deep complaining sigh, And wiped the tear from sorrow's streaming eye. The lonely exile, forced afar to roam, And leave for ever his lamented home, Though foreign scenes to meet his view arise, By thee transported, sees his native skies. Each scene, that gave his youthful heart delight, Again salutes his fond enraptured sight, And Friendship's voice, which once he loved to hear, In tender accents meets his listening ear. But who can tell how wide thine influence reigns? The weary captive, bound in galling chains, Cheered by thy light, forgets his dungeon's gloom, And seems to gaze on Nature's vernal bloom, The leafy grove, the blue ethereal sky, The flowery field, delight his wondering eye, While Nature's music breathes its thrilling notes, And on his ear in melting softness floats. Fair Queen of Visions! I invoke thine aid, Whose wondrous force, what strain has e'er display'd? For who can trace thy wild eccentric course, Or paint of mental light the lovely source? As well might Art with feeble skill essay To paint the warm enlivening orb of day, With mimic hues its sparkling beams to light, And pour its radiance on the aching sight! E'en though I gained that mountain's fabled height, Where Music breathes the soul of warm delight, I'd ask not power thy wondrous might to sing, So far beyond my thought's sublimest spring, But send one beam of that celestial blaze, That round thy brow in dazzling lustre plays, One ray to gild the gloom of mental night, And burst its shroud with thy refulgent light. AN INVOCATION TO POVERTY. BY CHARLES JAMES FOX, ESQ. Oh, Poverty! of pale, consumptive hue, If thou delight'st to haunt me still in view; If still thy presence must my steps attend, At least continue as thou art--my friend! Whene'er example bids me be unjust, False to my word--or faithless to my trust; Bid me the baneful error quickly see, And shun the world, to find repose in thee: When vice to wealth would turn my partial eye, Or interest shut my ear to sorrow's cry, Or courtiers' custom would my reason bend, My foe to flatter--or desert my friend; Oppose, kind Poverty, thy tempered shield, And bear me off unvanquished from the field. If giddy Fortune e'er return again, With all her idle, restless, wanton train; Her magic glass should false Ambition hold; Or Avarice bid me put my trust in gold; To my relief, thou virtuous goddess, haste, And with thee bring thy daughters ever chaste, Health! Liberty! and Wisdom! Sisters bright! Whose charms can make the worst condition light, Beneath the hardest fate the mind can cheer, Can heal Affliction, and disarm Despair! In chains, in torments, Pleasure can bequeath, And dress in smiles the tyrant hour of Death! GLORY TO GOD. To thee, PROTECTIVE God, I owe, All that I have, or hope, or know, Each ray of mind that seems to shine Is but a clouded gleam from thine. The lust'red heavens present thy zone, The peopled earth thy living throne, The globe, which nature holds of thee, Is bound by thy infinity. Poor, and unbless'd, not mine the power To shield from want one frugal hour, Yet from thy rich regard I drew, The bread of peace, and promise too. How vain the pride of man appears, How weak the vigour of his years; But thou one _vital spark_ has given To light, and lead _his hope_ to Heaven. PRAYER AND PRAISE TO GOD. O Thou, who ere the lapse of time Wert glorious, with unfading prime. Enduring God! thy pity give To me who but a moment live. Thy strength the elements controls, And rest the axis of the poles, To me in sinful suffering weak, The words of pardoning mercy speak. Thou Light of Worlds! whose quenchless ray Blooms in the brilliant blush of day, On me, in darkest error blind, Pervading pour the all-seeing mind. Parent of Life to thee we owe The nerves that thrill, the veins that glow; Me, who descend the oblivious grave, May thy absolving goodness save. Immortal Being! God alone, All-giving Nature is thy own, To Thee her wandered race restore, And bid her breathing world adore. [_P. Folio._ PRICES CURRENT, _At Philadelphia, May 25, 1820._ D. C. D. C. Beef, Philad. Mess,} (plenty,) } _bbl._ 13.00 to 13.50 Butter, Fresh _lb._ 0.25 " 0.31-1/4 Cotton Yarn, No. 10, " 0.36 Flax, Clean (scarce) " 0.16 " 0.18 Flour, Wheat Superfine } (dull,) } _bbl._ 4.75 " 5.00 Firewood--Hickory, _cord,_ 6.00 Oak, " 3.00 " 3.75 Grain--Wheat, _bush._ 1.00 Rye, " 0.55 " 0.60 Corn, Penn. " 0.55 " 0.60 Barley, " 0.75 " 0.85 Oats, " 0.37 " 0.42 Hams, _lb._ 0.11 " 0.13 Hemp, Kentucky, _ton._ 200.00 Plaster of Paris, " 4.50 Leather, Soal _lb._ 0.24 " 0.80 Pork, Jersey and } Penn. Mess } _bbl._ 15.50 " 16.00 Shingles, Cedar 1000 25.00 " 27.00 Molasses, S. H. _gal._ 0.10 " 0.15 Nails of all sizes, _lb._ 0.07-1/2 " 0.12 Seed, Clover _bush._ 8.50 " 9.00 Wool--Merino, clean _lb._ 0.75 } Do. in grease " 0.50 }Rising. Common " 0.50 } It is generally believed, we have not had a rain for several years so beneficial in its consequences as the late one, taking into consideration the season, the dry state of the ground and the quantity fallen. An accurate Rain Guage is kept at the office of the Board of Health, in Philadelphia, from which the following is extracted. In. Hun May 6, Shower, 0 .12 " 11, do. 0 .25 " 12, do. 0 .15 " 14, do. 0 .03 " 16-17, Rain, 0 .40 " 17-18, do. 0 .16 " 18-19, do. 0 .80 " 19-20, do. 0 .40 " 20-22, do. 0 .45 " -24, Shower, 0 .32 --------- 3 .08 _State of the_ THERMOMETER AT PHILADELPHIA, _For the last Month._ Days. 9 o'cl. 12 o'cl. 3 o'cl. 1 65 76 77 2 60 65 65 3 57 69 69 4 60 70 73 5 66 72 72 6 62 63 51 8 58 66 69 9 65 68 68 10 64 73 76 11 62 67 70 12 70 75 73 13 68 75 68 15 62 67 67 16 56 59 57 17 50 51 51 18 53 56 55 19 50 52 52 20 55 56 58 22 62 69 70 23 68 75 79 24 76 80 74 25 68 72 71 26 55 54 53 27 60 BANK NOTE EXCHANGE, _At Philadelphia, May 25, 1820._ Disc't. U. S. BRANCH BANK Notes, 1/2 RHODE ISLAND--generally, 1 CONNECTICUT--generally, 2 MASSACHUSETTS--Boston, 1 Country generally, 4-6 NEW YORK--City Bank Notes, par. Country generally, 2-3 NEW JERSEY--generally, par. PENNSYLVANIA--Farmer's Bank, of } Lancaster; Easton; Montgomery } County; Farmer's }par. Bank, Buck's County; Delaware } Bank, at Chester, } Northampton, 2-1/2 New Hope Bridge Co. 1 Susquehanna, 3 Farmer's Bank at Reading, 7-1/2 Lancaster Bank; York Bank; } 3 Gettysburg, } Northumberland; Union, 17 Greensburg; Brownsville, 12-1/2 Farmers & Mechanics' Bank } 30 at Pittsburg, } DELAWARE--generally, par. Excepting the Commercial } Bank of Delaware; } 5 and Branch Bank, do. at } Wilmington, } Laurel Bank, 50 MARYLAND--Baltimore Banks, 1/2 Baltimore City Bank; Annapolis; } 2-3 Hagerstown, } Cumberland Bank of Allegany; } 50 Snowhill, } Elkton, 37-1/2 VIRGINIA--Richmond and Branches, 1-1/2 Country generally, 2-1/2-3 N. W. Bank, at Wheeling, 10-12-1/2 COLUMBIA DISTRICT--Mech. Bank } 5 of Alexandria, } Country generally, 1 NORTH CAROLINA--generally, 6 SOUTH CAROLINA--State Banks, generally, } 2 GEORGIA--State Banks, generally, 2 Augusta Bridge Company, 50 KENTUCKY--No sales. OHIO--Marietta; Stubenville, 15 Bank of Chillicothe, 5 Country generally, 25-50 TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS. We present you with the SIXTH number of the RURAL MAGAZINE. You will recollect the terms of subscription. We were now to receive the first year's payment--THREE dollars; and annually, from this time, the same sum. Your punctuality will confer on us an additional favour, and afford a criterion by which we may, in part, judge of our future support. We contemplate no material alteration in our plan. In the first part of each number we shall present you, as heretofore, with essays of different kinds; in the second, with agricultural subjects; and in the third, or last division, with a miscellany made up of every variety that presents. Our present list of subscribers is about what we had anticipated, but is not yet sufficiently large. We calculate, however, before the close of the year, to see it so increased as to support us in our hope of success. This will, in some measure, depend on those who have seen and desire the continuance of the work. Could each of you procure among your neighbours two or three, or even one additional subscriber, our purpose would be answered. We therefore request your assistance in this way, and enclose a subscription paper. Subscribers will be expected to take the numbers from the beginning of the year. A complete index and title-page will be furnished for each volume. RICHARDS & CALEB JOHNSON. PHILADELPHIA, PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY RICHARDS & CALEB JOHNSON, _No. 31, Market Street_, At $3.00 per annum. * * * * * GRIGGS & DICKENSON, _Printers--Whitehall_. 
59579	----	THE AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. [Illustration] Agriculture is the most healthful, the most useful, and the most noble employment of Man.--_Washington._ VOL. II. NEW YORK, DECEMBER, 1843. NO. XI. A. B. ALLEN, Editor. SAXTON & MILES, Publishers, 205 Broadway. FATTENING POULTRY. As Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, are fast approaching, when the demand for poultry is at its greatest height, and the quality of it is more curiously considered than at other seasons of the year, in order to obtain something choice for the festive days, we have thought a few words upon the fattening and preparation of it for market might now very appropriately be given, and perhaps interest our readers more than at another time. The fowls being in good condition a fortnight to one month previous to the time they are wanted for killing, shut them up in a roomy, dry, well-ventilated, and warm building, with either a ground, stone, or plank floor, as is most convenient. This should be cleaned every day, and straw several inches thick spread over a part of it, especially where geese and ducks are shut up, for the purpose of giving them good beds to sit in. As often as the litter gets soiled, remove it, and put clean straw in its place. A constant supply of food and water should now be kept before them, allowing the fowls to eat and drink as often and as much as they please. Gravel is indispensable for their health, and charcoal, together with a little lime or ground bones, is beneficial. Fowls fat better when they can get at their food as often as they please, and are not so apt to gorge themselves and become surfeited. For feed we prefer corn mostly; a little wheat, rye, or barley, is also very well as a change; oats have rather too much husk about them. In addition to these, boiled potatoes, sweet apples, pumpkins, and sugar beet, are excellent food, especially when mixed with a due proportion of mush or hasty pudding. Where sweet potatoes abound, they are an excellent substitute for the last. To the above, add daily a little lean meat, that which is cooked is preferred; and the last week of their fattening, for a finishing process, rice boiled in milk and sweetened with molasses, is very excellent. This may be called an expensive method; but our readers may be assured that the fowls will be enough better to pay for it. Meat derives much of its taste from the kind and quality of food that the animals consume; hence gross, fatty substances, fish, or anything that is disagreeable to the taste should be avoided in the food given to fowls during the fattening process, as these invariably impart more or less of their disagreeable flavor to the flesh of the poultry fed upon them. It is well known that the celebrated canvass-back duck derives its delicacy of taste from feeding on the bulbous roots of a peculiar grass growing in the Chesapeake bay, and that other kinds of ducks are scarcely eatable, in consequence of their living almost entirely upon fish. These remarks will hold good to most kinds of birds, both of the water and land, and, indeed, of all animals; accordingly as their food is good or bad, so will be the quality of the milk, meat, or eggs. We recollect when a boy, of having occasionally seen geese and ducks nailed through the webs of their feet to planks and floors, and hens and turkeys tied up and so closely confined to stakes, that they could not exercise. This was done so that they might fat the faster! How shockingly barbarous, and any one guilty of such a practice in these days, ought to be indicted, and severely punished for their cruelty and cupidity. We are totally opposed to the close confinement of beast or bird. Without exercise, the system can not be in a healthy state; and the meat of close confined animals is never as good, to say the least of it, as when they have plenty of fresh air, and are allowed to move moderately about. The best method of killing fowls, is to cut their heads off at a single blow with a sharp axe, and then hang them up and allow them to bleed freely. By this process they never know what hurts them, or endure pain for a second. Wringing the necks of poultry is almost as shocking as nailing their feet to planks for the purpose of fattening them, and follows in the same barbarous category. Scalding the fowl previous to picking, injures the feathers, and makes it troublesome to dry them, and we think the quality of flesh is somewhat injured by this process, especially if the weather be not pretty cold at the time. They should be picked as soon as possible after being killed, and their offal taken from them; be clean rinsed then in cold water, and hung up to dry, and kept as separate as possible till sold; packing them together in heaps injures the flesh. To be hung up and frozen for a few days, or even weeks before eating, makes the flesh more tender. To keep them the same length of time after roasting, especially if well stuffed, also adds to their delicacy of taste and tenderness. When the bird is brought on to the table, it is perfectly shocking to see its head, legs, and feet, left upon it, though we know in many places this is fashionable, and considered highly genteel; but for our own part we detest such offal, and the sight of them frequently destroys our appetite for the time being. The process of carving also at the table is a dead bore. We like the French fashion of cutting up the bird in the kitchen or at a side table, and having it passed round on the dish, every one then helping himself to such pieces as he likes best. FERTILITY OF SEA-MUD. SEA-MUD varies greatly in its composition, dependant something upon the soil of the neighboring uplands. It is considered a valuable manure in Europe, and is sought for with avidity, and transported not unfrequently considerable distances into the interior. We have seen it used with good effect in the United States, from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania; and are told that in Delaware and Maryland, and even farther south, it is highly prized by those who have tried it. On Long Island, the past summer, we were occasionally shown the fertilising results, not only of sea-mud, but of the marsh soil also, applied to the uplands a little removed from the borders of the marshes and the seashore. Our intelligent correspondent, Mr. Partridge, informs us he has used beach-mud in various ways with good effect; and that the past summer, two gentlemen whose country seats border his mill, were allowed to make use of the sediment from the tide mill-pond, and they found it added greatly to the productiveness of their gardens. Sea-mud may be applied in different ways, according to its constituents. If it abounds with clay, it should be taken in the fall of the year, and spread broad-cast upon the land, and thus lie exposed to the action of the frost all winter. This pulverises it well, and in the spring of the year the roller should be passed over it in dry weather, followed by the harrow, and if any lumps remain after this operation, let them be beaten fine with the dung-beater. This is considered one of the best top dressings for grass land which can be given; it also answers well to be plowed in for either grain or root crops. Where the mud abounds more with sand, it is an excellent thing to put into barn yards and pig-styes, to be incorporated with the litter and manure; it may likewise be thrown into a heap until it becomes completely pulverised, and then spread upon the land. As air-slacked lime or small broken lime can be obtained in this city for about half the price of quick lime, Mr. Partridge suggests that it would be an excellent ingredient to mix with the sea-mud, for the purpose of forming a compost. A bushel or two of the lime, to a cart-load of the mud, he thinks a good mixture. When it abounds with considerable vegetable matter, we would recommend a greater proportion of lime, say from one to ten or twenty parts. Ashes and charcoal dust are excellent ingredients to mix with sea-mud, and when either of these or lime is used to form a compost, they make it much more lasting. It is less labor to transport the sea-mud directly to the place where it is to be used, and spread it broad-cast at once upon the land; and as the saving of labor is quite an object in our country, we have found that this method of applying it is the most generally practised. With the exception of a few of our more intelligent farmers, sea-mud and marsh-mud as fertilizers, are not valued as highly as they ought to be in the United States. They exist in immense quantities all along our seaboard, and may be had in an unlimited extent for the mere labor of transportation. We hope that some experiments may hereafter be made with them by some of our readers on the different kinds of crops, and that they will give us the results. The time, we think, is approaching, when sea-mud and marsh-soil will be as highly prized here as they now are in Europe. SKETCHES OF THE WEST.--NO. II. PLANTATION OF MR. GREY.--One of the best plantations, especially for its farm-buildings, which we visited in Kentucky, was that of Mr. Benjamin Grey of Versailles. The house, as is usual in the more southern states, stands near the centre of the domain on rising ground, and commands a fine view of the country around. It is in cottage style, large and roomy, and flanked by thick, strong chimneys, built up outside of the gable ends. A pretty yard of smooth green-sward, decked with shrubbery and evergreens, is enclosed around with pointed white palings, and adjoining this is a noble park, formed by merely underbrushing and thinning out a few of the trees of the original forest. These are usually termed wood-land pastures in Kentucky; yet in most instances, they better deserve the name of park, than many of those on noblemen's estates in Europe. CROPS.--Mr. Grey's farm being principally devoted to stock, and what is rather unusual here, dairy products, the crops are but a secondary consideration. Hemp is the main one to which he gives his attention; and in addition to this, he raises a sufficiency of corn and the smaller grains for his own consumption. The rotation is much like that described in our first volume, under head of Tours in Kentucky. STOCK.--This is very fine indeed, Mr. Grey having been highly spirited in this matter. His Short-Horns are choice, and quite numerous. We particularly admired the cow Mary Ann, with the calf at her foot. She has a fashionable and airy form; an up-head, and deer-like action; handles well, and in addition to all these, we were informed that she is an excellent milker. Three heifers of her produce we also admired; the two youngest were strikingly like their dam. After the Short-Horns, we were shown a few good Cotswold, and South-Down sheep, imported direct from England by Messrs. Bagg & Wait of Orange Co., in this state. The stock-hogs are a cross of the Berkshire upon the Thin-Rinds, (a grade Chinese), and they make excellent porkers. FARM BUILDINGS.--These are among the most complete we have seen in any place, and we speak of them with the more pleasure, because they are blameably deficient in farm buildings throughout the whole southwest. The climate here, it is true, is warmer and much more open than at the north; but it is in this _very openness_, that consists the principal suffering of the stock. The ground during this time is muddy, cold, and damp; and worse, consequently, for animals to repose upon, than when frozen dry, or covered with snow. Sudden changes are continually taking place. Mild weather prevails for a few days, relaxing the system; this is then followed not unfrequently by intense cold; the thermometer sinking in 48 hours from 55° or 60° above, to zero, and sometimes 8° to 10° below it. These sudden changes are very injurious to man and beast, and far more to be dreaded than the steady cold of northern latitudes; and for this reason, more attention should be paid to the warmth of their dress on the part of the people here, and to the housing of stock, than is generally done. It would lessen disease, add to their longevity, and give a handsomer, fuller, and more healthful physical appearance. But to return more immediately to our subject. With the exception of the usually reserved gangway on the barn-floor, the lower story is devoted to stables. These are planked, and each animal is accommodated with a separate stall. Behind them is a shallow gutter, running the whole length of the stable, which conducts the liquid falling from the animals into a cess-pool in the yard, and is there absorbed by muck. The solid manure is also equally carefully saved and applied to the land, and notwithstanding the proverbial fertility of the soil of Kentucky, Mr. Grey assured us that he considered himself well paid in the increase of his crops, for the labor employed in thus saving and applying his manure. Over-head in the barn are lofts for hay and straw; a straw-cutter to prepare them for feeding; cribs and bins for grain; and a large square box with heavy wooden pounders, for the hands to pound up corn and cob into meal on rainy days, when they can do nothing else. This cob-meal is usually mixed up with water, and allowed to stand till it ferments, and is then fed to the stock. THE DAIRY.--This is a sufficiently roomy building, of one story, situated in a little dell a short distance from the mansion. One of the gable ends abuts against a nearly perpendicular cliff, out of which bursts a clear gurgling spring, that takes its course through the centre of the rocky floor of the dairy, and then finds its way into the valley below. Here is every convenience for making butter and cheese, in which Mr. Grey excels. We have dwelt thus minutely on the plantation, stock, and buildings of Mr. Grey, because we consider them an excellent example to follow in Kentucky; and also for the purpose of giving our northern readers a general idea of the husbandry at the west, of which the great majority entertain the most indefinite notions imaginable. MR. HART'S PLANTATION.--After taking an early dinner, Mr. Grey ordered up his buggy, and we started for Mr. Nathaniel Hart's. This was some few miles off, yet in order to get there we paid no attention to the public roads, but took our way over gentle hill and dale, through woodland-pastures, and among fields containing a hundred acres or more in each, under a single fence. For the purpose of opening and shutting the field-gates as we passed, we were accompanied by an ebony urchin, as out-rider, mounted on the bare back of a high-spirited gray nag, which he rode with no little address. This seemed quite a gala business for him; and bare-headed, with his thick woolly locks fluttering in the wind, and his shirt-collar wide open, he went grinning along, now advancing at a hard gallop, and anon closing up at a fast trot, swinging open and shutting to the gates, shaking his pate, and hallooing to every animal that he thought did not move with sufficient alacrity from our destined path. "Yo! ho! So you no move, Misser Cow--then Pompey make you," and at her he charged, brandishing a long stick, like a Cossack of the Don with his spear, the gray nag at the same time laying back his ears, and opening his mouth, and showing his teeth, as if grinning in fiery sympathy with his redoubtable rider, and ready to devour the animal that so sluggishly obstructed the path. But one look from the cow, or whatever beast it might be, at the horse and boy, seemed quite enough; and without waiting further hints, they would shake their tails, then give them a slight curl, and set off at a round scamper, the triumphant Pompey following up their career a short distance, singing with high satisfaction:-- I tell you so, now Misser Cow; Yo, ho, you go, bow wow, bow wow. Mr. Hart's plantation is a very fine one, and he is one of the largest hemp-growers in Kentucky. He has done much to introduce a system of water-rotting hemp in ponds, which we think is the best and most simple of the kind yet tried. He has promised us a description of this, with his late improvements, and we trust that we shall be favored with it soon, for the benefit of those desirous of preparing their hemp for market by the pond-water-rotting process. There is so much in common with Kentucky plantations, that it is unnecessary to dwell further upon particulars. Mr. Hart's stock of cattle is principally derived from the first importation of the Short-Horns into Kentucky, in 1817. He keeps a flock of about 800 Merino sheep, which, low as wool is, he thinks make him as good, if not a better return, than anything else which his plantation produces. Sheep-husbandry is attracting much attention at present in Kentucky. It is a very superior region indeed, for sheep, and if the planters would go judiciously into the fine-woolled breeds, wool would soon become an article of large export with them, and a source of considerable profit. Let it be remembered, that the cheaper and better wool can be produced, the more there will be consumed of it; and the cheaper and better, woollen cloths will be furnished in return. We need not fear overstocking the country in our generation. Mr. Hart keeps quite a herd of deer in his park, and several head of elk. These last, with their large branching horns, and lofty, erect heads, have a noble appearance. He formerly had a few buffaloes, but they became so troublesome in breaking down fences, and sallying out whenever they pleased, to the great terror of the country round, that he was at last obliged to kill them. Buffalo bulls get somewhat ferocious as they grow old, and are rather dangerous animals on the plantation. While in Kentucky, we picked up some comic anecdotes of their doings as they turned out; but a feather's weight in the other scale might have made them equally tragical; and upon the whole, unless enclosed within a fence that they could not break down, we should advise our friends to eschew keeping buffaloes. BREEDS OF FOWLS. IN perusing the American Poultry Book, which we noticed in our October No., we find the following recommendation for selecting a stock for the poultry-yard:-- The better practice would seem to be, in order to make the poultry-yard most profitable, to select _no particular breed_. Commence with pullets and cocks of the first year, of all the breeds mentioned above, except bantams, and without any regard to color excepting those of a pure white. It would be well, if possible, to select the cocks from the same yard. Every year exchange a nest-full of eggs with your neighbors, or such as have good fowls. By pursuing steadily this practice of exchanging eggs, you will yearly infuse new blood into your stock, and avoid the inconvenience of breeding in and in. Without being aware of this fact, many farmers find their stock _running out_, &c. Now the above plan for forming a stock for the poultry-yard we hold to be perfectly absurd, and one might with just the same propriety, advise mingling all the different breeds of horses or cattle together, for the purpose of forming a good stock, as the different varieties of fowls; and we need only consider for one moment, the incongruity of the materials which form them, to be convinced of this. There is the pugnacious Gamecock; the pheasant-shaped Top-knot; the coarse Malay; the thick-skinned Negro-fowl; the tender Chinese or Merino; the tailless Rumpless; the Friesland, with reversed feathers; the short-legged Creeper; the five-toed Dorking; &c., &c.; all thrown into one helter-skelter mass, the progeny of which would prove as contemptible a race of mongrels as ever graced a dung-hill, and beyond the precincts of a dung-hill they would scarcely be worth removing. Those who have most eminently succeeded in breeding fowls, have adopted the same course in doing so, which is followed by judicious breeders of animals; and that is, by sticking to the breed, when it is a good one, in its utmost purity; choosing the best of the flock from which to propagate, and thus continuing. In-and-in breeding, to a certain extent, when pursued by those who thoroughly understand their business, has been productive of the best results. The finest, the largest, and the most _indomitable_ game-cocks have thus been bred; and if we possessed a good breed of poultry of any kind, we should be very careful how we exchanged eggs with our neighbors for the purpose of improving them. If they had a superior stock to our own, of the same breed, we would select from among them grown birds only; we should then know what we got, and be able to make improvements upon those we already possessed. It is by mingling all sorts of breeds together, without any definite notion as to the results, that "many farmers find their stock _running out_"; and if every one were to follow this course, we should soon be without a single good fowl in our poultry-yards. We really regret to see a book like this on American Poultry, which in the main is a good little work, recommend such a course of breeding; for in our humble judgment it is the very worst which could be pursued. We can not say that we much like the author's advice either, as to the choice of a cock. Why he should be "restless, not very large, with a thick and stout bill, long spurs," &c., we can not divine. The best cocks we ever kept, and those of the most indomitable courage, when fighting was necessary, were the most quiet, attentive, and polite in their seraglio: they were also of rather large size for their breed; with fine heads, bills, feet, and legs. NEW YORK FARMERS' CLUB. THE FARMERS' Club resumed their meetings, on Tuesday, Nov. 13th, at the Repository of the American Institute. The meeting commenced by reading a communication from the President of the Manhattan Gas Light Company, David C. Colden, Esq., inviting the attention of farmers, and all interested in agriculture, to the value of the refuse of gas-works as manure. Extracts from the works of Liebig, and Johnston were then read, setting forth the powerful fertilizing properties of ammoniacal liquor, with which the refuse of gas-works is found to be strongly impregnated. After some conversation on the subject, in which Mr. Stevens, Commodore De Kay, Mr. Meigs, and Mr. Wakeman, took part, as to the best method of disposing of this communication, it was resolved that it be referred to a committee consisting of Gen. Tallmadge, Mr. Prince, Gen. Johnson, Col. Clarke, and Mr. Townsend, to report at the next meeting of the club. Mr. William R. Prince, of Flushing, presented to the meeting, specimens of nineteen different varieties of apples, among which were several of very large size and superior quality. Mr. Meigs presented seeds of a new variety of squash, the _Cucurbitur bicolor_. Mr. Ward, cuttings from a vine which produced ripe Isabella grapes on the 5th September. A desultory conversation then ensued as to the future proceedings of the club. Much diversity of opinion appeared to exist as to the propriety of holding the meetings weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, when a committee was appointed to report upon the subject. Dr. Field next called the attention of the club to a subject which he considered deserving their serious attention, viz: the present condition of the children now in the alms-house on Long Island. He thought they might be employed advantageously to themselves and the public, either in the cultivation of the mulberry, and general management of silk, or in horticultural occupations. He then proceeded to describe with feeling eloquence, their present deplorable condition, both morally and physically, arising from the system of idleness they are now allowed to pursue. He was followed by Mr. Stevens, and Mr. Carter, who both agreed that it was high time some steps should be taken to ameliorate the condition of the poor children, and it was finally resolved: That a committee consisting of Dr. Field, Mr. Stevens, and Mr. Carter, be appointed to investigate the subject, and petition the corporation that the pauper children of this city, now on the Long Island farm, be employed in horticultural pursuits generally, and also in the raising and manufacture of silk. Mr. Stevens then made some remarks on the subject of wax-flowers and fruits, a specimen of which was exhibited by Mr. Lane. Mr. Stevens thought that a model of every new variety of fruit ought to be taken in wax, and preserved at the Repository of the Institute. A motion was made and carried that the executive committee be instructed to consider the subject. Gen. Tallmadge suggested that a list of donors of fruits, &c., be kept by the secretary, and placed on the records of the club at every meeting, which was unanimously agreed to. The meeting then adjourned to Tuesday, the 28th November. The following are the extracts on refuse gas, sent to the club by the President of the Manhattan Gas-Light Company:-- "If the properties of manure, and its agency upon the growth of the vegetable world, can be explained by chemistry, we shall find the ammoniacal liquor produced in gas-works, to be a valuable substitute for those manures, by the application of which it is intended to supply the soil with nitrogen. "One of the most valuable manures is urine, and its excellence depends almost entirely upon the ammoniacal salts which it holds in solution. The relative value of urine as manure, depends upon the quantity of nitrogen the different kinds yield. Thus human urine is the most esteemed, and that of horned animals the least."--_Clegg's Treatise on Gas-Making._ According to Liebig, 547 pounds of human excrement contain 16.41 pounds of nitrogen; a quantity sufficient to yield the nitrogen of 800 pounds of wheat, rye, oats, or of 900 pounds of barley. How much more, then, will be supplied from an equal weight of ammoniacal liquor! Mr. J. Watson, the manager of the gas-works at Kirriemuir, has favored me with the following facts:-- "The ammoniacal liquor on the surface of the tar-well has been found a very great improvement as a manure for raising crops of grass in this quarter, by being sprinkled on the field in the same way as water is put on public streets in large towns, to keep down dust in dry weather. I have myself seen an experiment of this tried, and can say that part of a field of grass sprinkled in this way, after the first cutting, was far superior to any other part of the field receiving manure of any other kind, and that the part so sprinkled, or showered over, was ready to be cut down a second time in the course of between fourteen days and three weeks; whereas, the other part of the field cut at the same time, was only beginning to spring or rise from the roots in that time. It must be mixed up before use with four parts of common water. In particular, the said experiment of the gas-water has been used by David Nairn, Esq., Doumkilba, near Meigle, in this neighborhood, with success; and I am informed that he has purchased and taken a lease of the ammoniacal liquor from different gas-companies in this country. "I am convinced much good might be derived from different qualities of the refuse products of gas-works as manure. An inquiry into this subject would remunerate the engineer or agriculturist to the full, and would besides confer a considerable benefit upon his fellows, and give that practical proof of the correctness of a theory so welcome to the man of science." "The fertilizing power of gypsum has been explained by its supposed action on the ammonia which is presumed to exist in the atmosphere. If this be the true explanation, a substance containing ammonia should act _at least_ as energetically. At all events, the action of foldyard manure and of putrid urine, is supposed to depend chiefly on the ammonia they contain or give off. "Now among the substances containing ammonia in large quantity, the ammoniacal liquor of the gas-works is one which can easily be obtained, and can be applied in a liquid state at very little cost. It must be previously diluted with water till its taste and smell become scarcely perceptible. "I would propose therefore, as a further experiment, that along with one or more of the substances above mentioned, the ammoniacal liquor of the gas-works should be tried, on a measured portion of ground, and, if possible, in the same field. "Soot as a manure is supposed to act partly, if not chiefly in consequence of the ammonia it contains. In Gloucestershire, it is applied to potatoes and to wheat, chiefly to the latter, and with great success. In the wolds of Yorkshire it is also applied largely to the wheat-crop. In this country it is frequently used on grass land. I am not aware that it is extensively used on clover. I am inclined to anticipate that the sulphur it contains, in addition to ammonia, would render it useful to this plant. At all events comparative experiments in the same field with the gypsum and the ammoniacal liquor, are likely to lead to interesting results. * * * "Of ammoniacal liquor 100 or 200 gallons per acre, according to its strength, for this is constantly varying. It must also be diluted with so large a quantity of water as will render it perfectly tasteless, and is likely to prove most beneficial if laid on at several successive periods."--_Johnston's Agricultural Chemistry_, part 1. "Sal ammoniac is probably too expensive an article to be employed; but sulphate of ammonia may be had of the wholesale chemist at a price considerably more reasonable, and the ammoniacal liquor of the gas-manufactories, through the distillation of coal, is a still cheaper commodity."--_Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry._ "Its efficacy as a manure is vouched for by many who have made trial of it upon their land. See a communication by Mr. Paynter on gas-water as a manure."--_Journal Royal Ag. Soc._, No. 1. THE NEXT ANNUAL SHOW OF THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. As the annual show of the New York State Agricultural Society is now sure to bring fifteen to twenty thousand strangers into the place where it may be held, to pass three or four days there, and spend their money pretty freely, it has become quite an object with the different towns situated on the great thoroughfares, to have the exhibitions within their boundaries as often as possible. Strong movements will be made for these hereafter; but we trust that the Society will weigh well the different claims preferred for its favor, and that no other consideration than the public good, and the spread of its influence, will have weight in its decisions. Albany, Syracuse, and Rochester, each having had the advantage of one of these meetings, other towns now are soliciting the like favor; and among those which are preferring their claims for the show of 1844, we understand that Buffalo, Utica, and Poughkeepsie, are the most prominent. Perhaps as the northern and western parts of the State have now had the benefit of three of the exhibitions of the Society, it is no more than fair that some attention be paid to the southern and eastern portions. We have heard this city named as a very suitable place for the show of next year, and the only objection we can anticipate to it is, that it is an extreme end of the State. Granted; and is not Buffalo the same? Yet, notwithstanding this, we contend that New York or Buffalo is just as fairly entitled in their turn to one of the exhibitions of the Society, as Albany, Syracuse, or Rochester. However, as our own interests might be somewhat served by a meeting of the State Society in this city, we shall waive advocating its claims to one for the present, and content ourselves with stating those of Poughkeepsie. 1. This town is 210 miles by the usual travelled route, northwest from Montauk Point, the southeast end of the State. This is as great a distance as from Poughkeepsie to Syracuse, and 41 miles further than the railroad route, though a circuitous one, from Syracuse to Buffalo; so that it may fairly be said to be the hither-end of a third-part of the limits of the State. 2. The population, from Dutchess county, south and east, includes about one fourth of that of the whole State. 3. Poughkeepsie is easy of access by land or water, and being situated on the Hudson, hundreds of strangers from the neighboring States, especially the southern ones, would visit a show here, when they could hardly be induced to go farther north or west, and as these visiters are always purchasers to a greater or less extent, it is quite an object to get them to attend. 4. This town is the capital of one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most populous counties of the State, and the one whose general system of agriculture is probably more highly advanced than any other. Dutchess, and the neighboring counties, have also considerable improved stock--much more than we had any idea of till our recent excursions in these parts. Durham, Devon, and Ayrshire cattle abound; superior road and blood horses; Cotswold, Leicester, South Down, and numerous flocks of Merino sheep; the products of the dairy; agricultural implements, and roots, seeds, fruits, flowers, and domestic fabrics. 5. Poughkeepsie is ready at her own expense, to build pens for the stock, and furnish all other needful accommodation for the Society, which will be a saving of expense to it of at least $1,000. Lastly, there is more accumulated wealth in the southern, than other parts of the State, and the Society, by holding a fair proportion of its shows in this quarter, will make itself many staunch friends, and be introduced to thousands, who would otherwise be ignorant of its great public merits. The Agricultural Society of the State of New York is looked up to as an example throughout the country, and it should be careful to avoid even the appearance of being partial or local in its proceedings. The national societies of Great Britain and Ireland, adopt the course of holding their shows in, not only the central, but the extreme parts of the kingdom; and this is one great reason of their popularity among all classes. Tour in England. No. 15. THINKING that our readers had become somewhat satiated with so much upon foreign matters as have hitherto found place in this journal, we had desisted for several months past, giving sketches of the agriculture of England; but having recently received so many solicitations to continue them, we again take up the subject, and shall pursue it pretty regularly through the whole of our third volume, if such seems to be the pleasure of a majority of our subscribers. Perhaps, to these, we may also add sketches of some things we saw in Russia, the recollections of which are very pleasant, at least to us, yet whether we shall make them equally so in relating them to others, remains to be seen. CHATSWORTH, SEAT OF THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE.--In returning from Yorkshire to London on the North Midland railroad, we stopped at the Chesterfield station, for the purpose of making an excursion to Chatsworth, to view the celebrated gardens and immense conservatory of this superb place. It was a raw morning in August, and as we jumped from a confined seat in the rail-coach, we were glad to be on our feet once more, and have an opportunity of rousing our blood by a smart walk from the station into the town. We stopped at the Angel inn, took a hearty breakfast, and while waiting a gig being made ready to convey us to Chatsworth, stepped out for a stroll over the place. Chesterfield is a dingy old town, of about 6,000 inhabitants, and has little to recommend it to the notice of strangers, save the spire of All Saints' Church. This rises to the height of 230 feet, is curiously channeled, and covered with lead, and is so much out of perpendicular, as to attract marked attention in passing it, even when at a considerable distance. It being market-day, the town was thronged with farmers from the country, exposing stock and agricultural products in the square for sale. There was little in these, however, deserving particular attention, and after giving them a hasty look, we returned to the inn. As we came up, a dapper waiter announced the "oss and gig as _h_all ready;" when in we jumped, and set out for Chatsworth at a round pace, distant, if we recollect right, about 8 miles. Derbyshire possesses the wildest and most broken scenery of any county in England, and after passing over the flat surface of Yorkshire, it was quite a relief to find ourselves trotting up and down along a road winding picturesquely around high hills, and over deep narrow dales. An hour's drive or so, brought us to the pretty little village of Edensor, close by the inn of which, is the entrance to Chatsworth. The village is situated within the park, and is the property of the Duke, and certainly it is the most charming one we ever saw. Every cottage is of stone, and no two alike in their architecture. One is a mimic Gothic castle; another a cottage ornèe; a third in the Elizabethan, a fourth in the Swiss, and perhaps a fifth in the Tudor style. Everything then was so complete about them--the pretty gardens full of flowers--the hedges so neatly trimmed--the yards, laid down with the greenest and softest of turf, and the shrubbery so tastefully planted! These were the residences of the laborers on the estate, the possession of which any one might envy them, and desire to be able to call his home. Attached to the village is a fine old church, and around it an ample yard, handsomely walled in with strong mason-work. Altogether, this village is quite a gem in its way, and we were going to add, an epitome of its owner's heart; for on all his estates, whether in England or Ireland, the Duke of Devonshire has made it a point to protect and bountifully provide for his people. There is no want, or suffering, or seeking the poor-house, by the tenantry, allowed by this kind-hearted, benevolent man. Turning from Edensor, and ascending a mound-like hill to the left of the carriage-road, the palace and the grounds of Chatsworth appear to the greatest advantage. Immediately below is the river Derwent, tracing its sparkling course through a rich vale, where were perhaps 1,500 deer browsing or taking their gambols. A handsome stone bridge spans the river, and just beyond, the ground rises in terraces to a narrow plain, where stand the noble palace, with its out-buildings, and the immense conservatory, in magnificent grandeur. Back of these rises a lofty hill, the steep sides of which are thickly planted with forest-trees, and the summit is crowned with a high tower of octagonal shape, built of stone. We were received at the palace-gate by a servant in handsome livery, and passing into the gallery of the court, a fine hearty girl made her appearance to conduct us over the building. The front of the palace is 350 feet, and one of the side wings about 400 feet long, and this whole area contains a series of apartments called the drawing-room suite. An entire number of this paper would hardly suffice to give the reader a complete description of these magnificent rooms, and the treasures of art they contain, we therefore pass them over in silence. From these we strolled into the orangery, which is about 30 feet wide, and 200 feet long. It is full of beautiful exotics, and among them were several specimens of the Rhododendron Arboreum, which bore, the preceding summer, over 2,000 flowers. We now walked out to the lawn in front of the palace, where one of the under-gardeners appeared to conduct us over the grounds. These are extremely beautiful, with walled terraces in the Italian style, and fountains. One jet d'eau throws up a column 90 feet high. But the great show here in the way of water-works, is the cascade. It is entirely artificial, and must have been made at a great expense. The water rushes out from a series of lakes on top of the hill, and comes pouring down its side, taking a leap of about 80 feet from one of the arches, and then falls for a length of 300 yards over a series of 24 ledges, and disappears amidst masses of rock, on the edge of the lawn. Here it finds a subterranean passage to the river Derwent. These water-works are looked upon by some critics with affected contempt; not so with us, however, we greatly admired them in their way; and yet we have seen Niagara a thousand times, and had a peep at most of the other water-falls worth looking at in the United States. We have no sympathy with such hypercritics as profess a distaste to the cascade at Chatsworth: as a work of art, it is a magnificent thing, and to our eye, in keeping with the palace and grounds; and we viewed it with interest. A bronze tree a little farther on, excited still greater curiosity with us than the cascade, for it was made to act the part of a fountain, by throwing water from a thousand sprigs and leaves all around in a shower of spray. But leaving this and the exquisite scenery of the lawn, we passed on by a winding carriage-road to a short distance to the conservatory. This was 350 feet long, 150 feet wide, and nearly 70 feet high; and when fully completed, is to have an additional length of 150 feet. The roof is an arch, and is covered with plate glass of the best kind, and so thick as to resist the heaviest hail. It is heated by iron tubes of hot water, and to these are added others for cold water, and the whole, if stretched out to a single length, we were informed would extend nearly six miles. The plants and trees here are distributed in open borders, each class being placed in the soil most proper for it, and the temperature so regulated as to suit their natural state as nearly as possible. Not far from the centre is an immense rockery rising about 50 feet high, and from the fissures of the thick slabs of stone that compose it, the cactus and other plants grow out as in their natural state. Half way up this huge precipice is a little lake with islets, and in this, water-lilies and other aquatic plants of the rarest and most beautiful kinds. A wild goat path leads to the top of the rockery, and beneath it is a wide, deep cave. The variety of shrubs and plants in this immense conservatory is very great; some of the trees already reach nearly to the top of the roof, and others presented dimensions gigantic in the extreme for those within a green-house. There are wide folding-doors at each end of the conservatory, and any time he pleases, the Duke can have a drive with his coach and four horses through it. Taking it altogether, it is by far the most magnificent thing of the kind we have ever seen. The whole cost of it is not less than half a million of dollars, which is but a little over the present annual income of its wealthy possessor. After leaving the conservatory, we took a zig-zag road, and ascended through the forest to the crown of the hill by the octagonal tower. A peasant family was residing here, who permitted us to ascend it to the top. The view from this is no less extensive than beautiful, of Chatsworth and the wild broken country around. Descending from this high perch we had quite a chat with the peasant's wife. She informed us that the tower was built by a predecessor of the present Duke, for the purpose of giving the ladies at the palace an opportunity of seeing the fox-hunting which formerly took place at Chatsworth. Upon taking leave, the good woman directed a little rosy-faced daughter to show us the lakes on the hill, the sources of the cascade and fountains below. After something of a stroll through the woods, we found two large expanses of water belted in by thick rows of the larch and fir, and apparently as isolated as if in a wild forest of our own country. The white swan and the black are kept here, and most other kinds of curious water-fowl. Our pretty guide answered all our inquiries with intelligence, and at parting we gave her a small guerdon, for which she returned a grateful "thank'e zur" and a low courtesy, and then, with the lightness of a young fawn, skipped into the woods, and immediately disappeared. Descending the hill toward the palace we came to the stables. These are very extensive, of quadrangular shape, and large courtyards within. At a distance, with their imposing architecture, they might almost pass for the palace itself. We now bent our steps to the house of the celebrated Mr. Paxton, the head gardener of the Duke of Devonshire, editor of the Magazine of Botany which bears his name, and one of the first botanists of England. His residence is within the park, about a quarter of a mile from the palace, and is a roomy, beautiful cottage, completely enveloped in flowers and flowering shrubbery, with a handsome little conservatory at the end. Much to our regret, he was not at home; but a sub-gardener, quite an intelligent man, volunteered to show us the gardens. They occupy 12 acres, and are enclosed by a thick, brick wall, about twelve feet high. Here are the experimental and kitchen gardens, and hundreds of fruit-bearing espaliers, trained up the walls. In addition to these there are forcing pits in abundance, and upward of 20 hot-houses, about 300 feet long each, devoted to different purposes, one of the most extensive of which is the growing of pine apples. All these things may be considered very extravagant, but in supporting them, the Duke of Devonshire has done much for the cause of science, and has conferred a lasting benefit on his country. We left Chatsworth with regret; the day we spent there we would have gladly prolonged to a week, and then we should have gained but an imperfect knowledge of the treasures of nature and art which are stored up here for the admiration of thousands of visiters. Mary Queen of Scots was some time a prisoner here; so also was Marshal Tallard, who was captured at the battle of Blenheim. What were the thoughts of the beautiful Queen upon taking leave of it, history does not record; but the Marshal, no less gracefully than happily, said: "When I return to France and reckon up the days of my captivity in England, I shall leave out all those I have spent at Chatsworth." And so thought we, pausing on the mound-like hill again, as we retraced our steps to Edensor, and cast a last lingering look upon the park, and palace, and forest hills in the background, lit up by the clear, glorious sun just sinking beneath the horizon. AGRICULTURAL SHOWS. THE PHILADELPHIA SOCIETY held its annual show at the Lamb tavern, October 4, 5, and 6. The Germantown Telegraph states, in the _Report of the Committee of Arrangements_, that the display of horses was unusually attractive, exhibiting the various breeds for the turf, road, and farm, in considerable numbers. The Durham cattle seem at last to be getting the better of prejudice in that quarter, and in their superior forms and deep milking qualities, have shamed nearly everything else from the ground, save a few fine Devons and capital grade Durham milkers. Of sheep and swine, there were very few present, which is the more to be regretted, as these animals exist in considerable numbers and of superior breeds throughout the neighboring counties of Montgomery, Delaware, Chester, and Lancaster. Of Agricultural Implements and Products there was a good show, and the Plowing-Match proved an interesting affair. Peter A. Browne, Esq., delivered the address, which we find at length in the Farmers' Cabinet. Among other things, he contends no less strenuously than justly for the establishment of Agricultural schools and Professorships. From another part of the address we subjoin a few suggestions. First, then, it is feared that our agricultural friends have not yet paid _all_ the attention that the subject demands, to a judicious rotation of crops, adapted to our climate; particularly in regard to _roots_. Second. Much has been done, that is beyond all praise, in insuring the best breeds of cattle. While we hear pronounced with gratitude, the names of Mease, Powell, Brantz, Clay, Gowen, and Kelley, let us not forget that the task is not finished. Third. Soiling, it is apprehended, has been too much neglected by most American husbandmen. Fourth. Irrigation has also been too little attended to in the United States. Fifth. Proper care and precaution have not been sufficiently bestowed upon the selection of seeds. This is a subject of the greatest importance. Sixth. Much is yet to be learned in regard to the preservation and economical use of manure. Seventh. The introduction, more generally, of labor-saving machinery, and particularly of the itinerant thrashing-machine, deserves to be mentioned. Eighth. Gardening and raising fruit are much neglected by our farmers. It is respectfully suggested that special committees might, with advantage, be raised upon these and other useful topics, to report at the next annual meeting. Pennsylvania contains nearly thirty millions of acres. According to the census of 1840, she had a population of one million seven hundred and odd thousands, which is nineteen acres and a fraction for each inhabitant. In 1842, she raised, of grains of all kinds, upward of sixty millions of bushels; of potatoes, nearly thirteen millions of bushels; of hay, upward of two millions and a quarter of tons; of flax and hemp, upward of three thousand three hundred tons; of tobacco, four hundred and eighty thousand tons; of silk, upward of twenty-one thousand pounds; of sugar, nearly three millions and a half of pounds; and of wines, nearly eighteen thousand gallons. THE HENRICO SOCIETY held its third annual show at Richmond, Virginia, November 1st. The proceedings are published in the Richmond Enquirer. The Executive Committee reports, that although there is a falling off in its receipts, there is an increased interest and attention to its proceedings by the planters. Mr. C. T. Botts, Editor of the Southern Planter, made the address, from which we subjoin an extract. This society was organized and has been chiefly supported by a few public-spirited gentlemen in the neighborhood. Its beneficial effects are felt and seen by all of you. To form a proper appreciation of them, you have only to ride in any direction about the suburbs of the city. Rude grounds have been converted into productive gardens, and barren wastes into smiling fields. I recollect a lady's saying to me last summer, that she meant to make her husband become a member of this society, because it had done so much to beautify the rides and walks about the city. She declared the time had been when it gave her a fit of the horrors, (she was a nervous lady,) to order her carriage for an evening drive; but that now, there was nothing that she and her children enjoyed so much. But this is not all. Let him who has been familiar with your market for the last eight or ten years, compare its present abundant supplies of the finest fruits and vegetables, with the meager exhibition of former days; and, after all, let us be as sentimental as we will, a good market plays a very important part in the comedy of human happiness. Our merchants and mechanics too should remember, that these exhibitions are annually becoming more and more attractive, and that they are by no means inefficient in increasing the trade of the city. But, over and above all considerations of dollars and cents, let us, one and all, come forward and enrol our names as members of this association, which represents the great agricultural interest of the state, and which should be the pride and ornament of its metropolis. LAKE COUNTY SOCIETY.--The show of this society took place at Medina, Ohio, and a complete account of its proceedings may be found in the Painsville Telegraph. In addition to the usual show of stock, &c., an extensive procession was got up of wagons and carriages, preceded by bands of music. One of these held no less than 35 ladies, engaged in the laudable occupations of knitting, sewing, spinning, and various other domestic employments. We wish we could chronicle more such industrial displays, for we consider them an excellent feature in agricultural shows. BOURBON COUNTY SOCIETY OF KENTUCKY.--We learn from the Paris Citizen, that the Eighth Annual show of this Society took place near Paris, and continued three days, and is said to be the largest and most varied ever held in Kentucky. The first two days were devoted to the exhibition of domestic animals, agricultural products, and farming implements; the third day, to that of domestic manufactures. The show of horses present was considered very superior; they were of all varieties, from the mettlesome thorough-bred, to the enormous cart-horse. The Durhams and other horned stock were well represented, and gave evidence in their splendid proportions of the superiority of Kentucky pastures. The descendants are said to be an improvement over the original importations from England. Mr. Clay was present, and had a superb pair of blankets presented him by Mrs. James Hutchcraft. These were made from the wool of Leicester sheep, and were of uncommon size and thickness, weighing 23 lbs. the pair. On the presentation of these blankets, Mr. Clay was addressed by the Hon. Garrett Davis, M. C., and he replied in his usual elegant and happy manner. HAMPSHIRE, HAMPDEN, AND FRANKLIN SOCIETY, MASSACHUSETTS.--The united show for the three wealthy and populous counties above, came off at the beautiful town of Northampton, on the 18th and 19th October, and we much regret on more accounts than one, that we could not, be present. The Boston Cultivator furnishes a full report. A large number of working-oxen of course were present, and to these were added some superb fat oxen, exhibited by Mr. Sumner Chapin. The committee who reported upon this subject, attributes the superiority of the cattle to the large infusion of Short-Horn blood in their veins, and hence their fine symmetry, light offal, and increased weight of flesh on the more valuable parts, as compared with native stock when fattened for the shambles. Mr. Paoli Lathrop exhibited some choice Short-Horns. Of native cows the committee thus speak:-- Of the ten cows entered for the premium as _native_ animals, nearly or all have an intermixture of Short-Horn or other foreign blood. We awarded to Mr. Minor Hitchcock the first premium in this class. In his written statement to us it appears that her average product in milk for the six months, ending 1st October, was 49 lbs. per day, and in the months of June and July, 58 lbs. per day. In butter, her average product in the same time was more than 11 lbs. per week, and in the month of July alone, nearly 14 lbs. per week; yet in the same time he used the necessary milk and cream for his family of four persons. Your committee have entire confidence in the statement of Mr. Hitchcock; yet it is proper here to remark, that from his account of her, and though awarded, a premium as a native animal, she partakes highly of the blood of the Short-Horns. In the two classes of animals entered as of _native and foreign origin_ it is obvious that a proper discrimination was not made; for in some of the former there is evidently more of the blood of distinct imported races than the latter. Yet your committee deemed it their duty to award the premiums of the society to the two classes as they found them. Now here it is, most everywhere that our native cows are found excelling as milkers, we can trace a portion of their blood, (usually the greatest share,) to the Durhams, and yet there are those who are constantly decrying the Short-Horns for not being _milkers_. Verily a few particular people are very hard to be convinced. It is our intention hereafter to make up a table of the milking qualities of the Short-Horns and their grades, and any one possessing information upon this subject, we shall be glad by their communicating the same to us. Mr. Paoli Lathrop of South Hadley took the first premiums on Durham bulls and heifers. Mr. Ira Fenton of Belchertown on Durham cows. Mr. Sumner Chapin of Springfield, the first premiums on Fat Cattle and Working-Oxen. SALE OF RAMBOUILLET MERINOS. --Mr. Nathaniel Hart, Jr., of Kentucky, has just passed through this city on his way home, having in company with him three Rambouillet Merino bucks, purchased of Mr. D. C. Collins of Hartford, Connecticut. Mr. Hart has kept a large flock of the old-fashioned Merinos for some time, on his plantation at Versailles, Woodford county, and has purchased these fine bucks, as the best animals which could be found, for the purpose of making improvements upon them. Kentucky will have in these Rambouillets a valuable addition to her sheep stock, and we recommend their produce in advance, to the breeders of the western country. We understand Mr. Collins has recently met with a great demand for his sheep, and that he has now disposed of all he has to spare this year. We congratulate him upon it, and take some credit to ourselves, for calling public attention to his very valuable imported flock. SHEEP-DOGS. --The price of a well-broke sheep-dog is $25 to $30. They ought always to be accompanied by their shepherds, as they are taught to manage sheep in a peculiar way, which none but regularly-bred shepherds understand. ANNUAL MEETING OF THE N. Y. STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. --The annual meeting of the New York State Agricultural Society, will be held at the Society's room in the Old State Hall, Albany, on the 3d Wednesday, (the 17th,) of January, 1844, at 10 o'clock, A. M. Persons intending to compete for the Society's premiums on field-crops, essays, &c., are reminded that their statements and essays must be sent to the Recording Secretary, Albany, before the first of January. Presidents of County Agricultural Societies are also requested to transmit the reports required by the statute, to the Recording Secretary, previous to the annual meeting. LUTHER TUCKER, Rec. Sec'y. LIST OF PREMIUMS _Of the American Institute._--_Continued_. FLOWERS. William Kent, Brooklyn, L. I., for superior dahlias, including some extra-fine American seedlings--gold medal. George C. Thorburn, 15 John street, N. Y., for a rich display of dahlias--gold medal. Daniel Boll, Bloomingdale, N. Y., for a fine assortment of dahlias, including some fine American seedlings--silver medal. Thomas Hogg & Sons, 79th street, N. Y., for a good assortment of dahlias--Mrs. Loudon's Flower Garden. William R. Prince, Flushing, L. I., for numerous varieties of dahlias--Downing's Rural Architecture. Thomas Addis Emmet, Mount Vernon, N. Y.--T. Cremmins, gardener--for a superior display of dahlias--Downing's Cottage Architecture. William Phelan & Sons, 5th street, N. Y., for a fine display of dahlias--Hovey's Magazine. William Reid, 34th street and 4th avenue, N. Y., for an excellent assortment of dahlias--Bridgeman's Gardeners' Assistant. William Laird, 17th street, N. Y., for an ornamental frame, decorated with flowers--Hovey's Magazine. James L. L. F. Warren, Brighton, Mass., for a beautiful bouquet of flowers--silver medal. Mrs. Jeremiah Brown, Brooklyn, L. I., for a beautiful vase of flowers--Mrs. Loudon's Flower Garden. J. B. Mantel, 46th street, N. Y., for an ornamental frame, decorated with flowers--American Flower-Garden Directory. Daniel Boll, Bloomingdale, N. Y., for numerous varieties of the rose, and other rare flowers--Mrs. Loudon's Flower Garden. Samuel M. Cox, Bloomingdale road, N. Y., for a beautiful stand of flowers--American Flower-Garden Directory. William Beekman, 110 Ninth street, N. Y., for a fine supply of dahlias--Hovey's Magazine. Isaac Buchanan, 29th street, N. Y., for two vases of rare flowers--1 Vol. of American Agriculturist. To Alfred Bridgeman, J. Boyce, A. P. Cummings, William Davison, J. Ettringham, William V. Legget, Mrs. McFarlane, George Maine, William Ross, Samuel Ruth, Grant Thorburn, Jr., L. Van Wyck, Edward White, and John W. Wood, for supplies of flowers for ornamenting the Horticultural room, to each a copy of the Report of the American Institute, on the subject of Agriculture. VEGETABLES. Robert L. Pell, Pelham, Ulster co., N. Y., for the choicest assortment of culinary vegetables--silver medal. John Beekman, 61st street, N. Y., for the best and greatest variety of vegetable roots for cattle--silver medal. Joseph Clowes, Harsimus, N. J., for twelve superior blood beets--United States Farmer. Robert L. Pell, Pelham, Ulster co., N. Y., for twelve superior sugar beets--1 vol. American Agriculturist. John Beekman, 61st street, N. Y., for twelve superior mangel-wurtzel beets--1 vol. of the Cultivator. Christopher Allen, Staten Island, N. Y., for six fine heads of cauliflower--Buel's Farmers' Companion. Peter Hulst, gardener to Lambert Wyckoff, Bushwick, L. I., for the best field of cabbage--silver medal. L. Wyckoff, Bushwick, for twelve large heads of the drum-head cabbage--Transactions of the State Agricultural Society. Thomas Bridgeman, Jr., Dutch Kills, L. I., for twelve fine heads of Savoy cabbage--Faulkner's Farmers' Manual. Thomas Prosser, Paterson, N. J., for twelve superior carrots for the table--United States Farmer. J. Clowes, Harsimus, N. J. for twelve fine roots of white celery--Transactions of State Agricultural Society. Frederick Bonnicamp, Harsimus, N. J., for twelve fine roots of red celery--Dana's Muck Manual. Robert L. Pell, Pelham, Ulster co., N. Y., for six large egg-plants--Bridgeman's Gardeners' Assistant. John Brill, Jersey city, N. J., for a peck of superior yellow onions--Faulkner's Farmers' Manual. William Ross, Ravenswood, Queens co., N. Y., for a peck of superior red onions--Smith's Productive Farming. Joseph Clowes, Harsimus, N. J., for twelve fine parsneps for the table--American Agriculturist. J. Beekman, 61st street, N. Y., for twelve large parsneps for cattle--United States Farmer. Alexander Walsh, Lansingburgh, for superior seedling potatoes--Bridgeman's Gardeners' Assistant. T. B. Wakeman, Bergen, N. J., for superior Mercer potatoes--silver medal. William J. Townsend, Newtown, Queens co., for a superior lot of table potatoes--Bridgeman's Gardeners' Assistant. S. B. Townsend, Newtown, L. I., for three large cattle pumpkins--Buel's Farmers' Companion. R. L. Colt, Paterson, N. J., for a peck of superior potatoes for cattle--1 vol. of Cultivator. John P. Haff, Yorkville, N. Y., for a peck of superior white flat turneps--1 vol. of Cultivator. Peter Wyckoff, Bushwick, Kings co., for twelve superior roots of long white turneps--Bridgeman's Gardener's Assistant. S. Pabor, Harlem, N. Y., for superior cream pumpkins--Smith's Productive Farming. F. O. Wakeman, Bergen, N. J., for twelve superior roots of salsify--American Agriculturist. John Brill, Harsimus, N. J., for three fine winter squashes--Faulkner's Farmers' Manual. John A. Miller, Little Falls, N. J., for a fine large Valparaiso squash--Dana's Muck Manual. H. W. Tibbets, Yonkers, N. Y., for half a peck of large tomatoes--United States Farmer. Robert L. Pell, Pelham, Ulster co., for a fine sample of hops--American Agriculturist. Robert L. Pell, Pelham, N. Y., for superior specimens of sweet potatoes--diploma. P. Hegone, 206 Greenwich street, for superior specimens of pickles and catsup--diploma. FRUITS. R. L. Pell, Pelham, Ulster co., N. Y., for the best fruit farm--gold medal. R. T. Underhill, Croton Point, N. Y., for successful vineyard-culture of the native grape--silver medal. J. L. L. F. Warren, Brighton, Mass., for twelve superior table apples--Bridgeman's Gardeners' Assistant. R. L. Pell, Pelham, Ulster co., N. Y., for twelve superior winter apples--Kenrick's American Orchardist. T. H. Perkins, Brookline, Mass., for twelve superior varieties of house-grapes--gold medal. R. S. Field, Princeton, N. J., for three superior varieties of house-grapes--silver medal. J. F. Allen, Salem, Mass., for six varieties of superior house-grapes--Downing's Cottage Architecture. Rev. Dr. Wm. Patton, 110 Sullivan street, N. Y., for fifty-two superior bunches of Isabella grapes--Downing's Rural Architecture. R. T. Underhill, Croton Point, N. Y., for superior specimens of Catawba grapes--Kenrick's American Orchardist. J. L. L. F. Warren, Brighton, Mass., for twelve superior peaches (freestone)--Kenrick's American Orchardist. John J. Van Wyck, 140 Twenty-first street, N. Y., for twelve superior peaches (clingstones)--Bridgeman's Gardeners' Assistant. M. P. Wilder, Dorchester, Mass., for sixty-five choice varieties of pears--silver medal. George C. DeKay, 25th street, Seventh avenue, N. Y., for a superior lot of table pears--Kenrick's American Orchardist. D. Henderson, Jersey City, N. J., for twelve fine magnum-bonum plums--Buel's Farmers' Companion. C. M. Graham, Jr., Content, Harlem lane, N. Y., for fifty-five quinces gathered from one tree--Kenrick's American Orchardist. Jacob Hendrer, Glenham, Dutchess co., N. Y., for fine specimens of grapes--Bridgeman's Gardeners' Assistant. J. W. Hayes, Newark, N. J., for a lot of grapes and fine pears--Farmers' Companion. John Couzens, Dobb's Ferry, Westchester co., N. Y., for superior specimen of grapes--United States Farmer. Wm. R. Prince, Flushing, L. I., for two bunches of native grapes, and fine specimen of apples--Hovey's Magazine. William Reid, 37th street, 4th avenue, for a fine collection of pears and apples--American Agriculturist. Charles M. Graham, Jr., Content, Harlem lane, for a fine lot of Isabella grapes--Transactions of State Agricultural Society. J. J. Morris, Batavia, N. Y., for fine specimen of pears--Farmers' Manual. Nicholas Wyckoff, Jr., Bushwick, for fine specimens Isabella grapes--The Planters' Guide. J. B. Mantel, 46th street, N. Y., for 53 varieties of pears and other fruit--two vols. of the Transactions of the State Agricultural Society. Joseph L. Franklin, Flushing, L. I., for twelve extra large apples--Dana's Muck Manual. H. & L. Hotchkiss, New Haven, Conn., for one pear weighing 33 oz.--1 vol. of the Cultivator. Samuel Walker, Roxbury, Mass., for superior varieties of pears--silver medal. Henry Steel, Jersey City, N. J., for a lot of extra-fine early grapes--Bridgeman's Gardeners' Assistant. Miss Louisa Bennett, L. I., for a basket of native strawberries--Bridgeman's Florist's Guide. MAKING CAPONS. THE following article on making capons, is the best within our recollection. It is taken from the directions accompanying the sets of instruments for caponising, made by Mr. John Mendenhall, Philadelphia:-- FOWLS intended to be cut, must be kept at least twenty-four hours without food, otherwise the entrails will fill the cavity of the belly and render it almost impossible to complete the operation; besides, when they have been starved the proper length of time, they are less liable to bleed. The chicken is taken at any age, from five days old until it begins to crow, or even after. Lay the fowl on its left side on the floor, draw the wings back, and keep it firm by resting the right foot on its legs, and the other foot or knee on its wings. (The table with the apparatus does away with the necessity of this stooping position.) Be careful that the head of the fowl is not held down, or even touched during the operation, as it would be sure to cause it to bleed. Pluck the feathers off from its right side near the hip joint, in a line between that and the shoulder joint; the space uncovered should be a little more than an inch square. Make an incision between the two last ribs, having first drawn the skin of the part backward, so that when left to itself it will cover the wound in the flesh. In some fowls the thigh is so far forward that it covers the two last ribs; in which case, care must be taken to draw the flesh of the thigh well back, so as not to cut through it, or else it would lame the fowl, and perhaps cause its death in a few days after the operation, by inflaming. The ribs are to be kept open by the hooks--the opening must be enlarged each way by the knife, if necessary, until the testicles, which are attached to the back bone, are entirely exposed to view, together with the intestines in contact with them. The testicles are enclosed in a thin skin, connecting them with the back and sides--this must be laid hold of with the pliers, and then torn away with the pointed instrument; doing it first on the upper testicle, then on the lower. (The lower testicle will generally be found a little behind the other--that is, a little nearer the rump.) Next introduce the loop; (which is made of a horse-hair or a fibre of cocoa-nut;) it must be put round the testicle which is uppermost, in doing which the spoon is serviceable to raise up the testicle and push the loop under it, so that it shall be brought to act upon the part which holds the testicle to the back; then tear it off by pushing the tube toward the rump of the fowl, at the same time drawing the loop. Then scoop it and the blood out with the spoon, and perform the same operation on the other testicle. Take away the hooks, draw the skin over and close the wound; stick the feathers that you pulled off before on the wound, and let the bird go. REMARKS.--If the operation be performed without sufficient skill, many of the fowls will prove not to be capons; these may be killed for use as soon as the head begins to grow large and get red, and they begin to chase the hens. The real capon will make itself known by the head remaining small, and the comb small and withered; the feathers of the neck or mane will also get longer, and the tail will be handsomer and longer: they should be kept to the age of fifteen or eighteen months, which will bring them in the spring and summer, when poultry is scarce and brings a high price. Take care, however, not to kill them near moulting time, as all poultry then is very inferior. The operation fails, principally, by bursting the testicle, so that the skin which encloses the soft matter, remains in the bird, and the testicle grows again. Birds of five or six months are less liable to have the testicles burst in the operation than younger fowls, but they are also more apt to bleed to death than those of from two to four months old. A skilful operator will always choose fowls of from two to three months;--he will prefer also, to take off the lower testicle first, as then the blood will not prevent him from proceeding with the other; whereas, when the upper one is taken off the first, if there should be any bleeding, he has to wait before he can take off the lower testicle. The large vein that supplies the entrails with blood passes in the neighborhood of the testicles; there is danger that a young beginner may pierce it with the pointed instrument in taking off the skin of the lower testicle, in which case the chicken would die instantly, for all the blood in its body would issue out. There are one or two smaller veins which must be avoided, which is very easy, as they are not difficult to see. If properly managed, no blood ever appears until a testicle is taken off: so that should any appear before that, the operator will know that he has done something wrong. If a chicken die, it is during the operation by bleeding; (of course it is as proper for use as if bled to death by having its throat cut;) they very seldom die after, unless they have received some internal injury, or the flesh of the thigh has been cut through, from not being drawn back from off the last two ribs, where the incision is made; all of which are apt to be the case with young practitioners. If the testicles be found to be large, the bamboo tube should be used, and it should have a strong cocoa-nut string in it,--for small ones the silver tube with a horse-hair in it, is best. When a chicken has been cut, it is necessary before letting it run, to put a permanent mark upon it; otherwise it would be impossible to distinguish it from others not cut. I have been accustomed to cut off the outside or the inside toe of the left foot,--by this means I can distinguish them at a distance. Another mode is to cut off the comb, then shave off the spurs close to the leg, and stick them upon the bleeding head, where they will grow and become ornamental in the shape of a pair of horns. This last mode is perhaps the best, but it is not so simple and ready as the first. Which ever mode is adopted, the fowl should be marked before performing the operation, because the loss of blood occasioned by cutting off the comb or a toe, makes the fowl less likely to bleed internally during the operation. It is very common, soon after the operation, for the chicken to get wind in the side, when the wound is healing, between the flesh and the skin; it must be relieved by making a small incision in the skin, which will let the wind escape. Those fowls make the finest capons which are hatched early in the spring; they can be cut before the hot weather comes, which is a great advantage. Never attempt to cut a full-grown cock; it is a useless and cruel piece of curiosity. I have never known one to live. Be not discouraged with the first difficulties; with practice they will disappear; every season you will find yourself more expert, until the cutting of a dozen fowls before breakfast will be a small matter. It may be well to give a warning against becoming dissatisfied with the tools. A raw hand, when he meets with difficulties, is apt to think the tools are in fault, and sets about to improve them and invent others; but it is only himself that lacks skill, which practice alone can give. I have spent money, besides wasting my time in this foolish notion, but have always found that the old, original tools, which came from China, and where this mode of operating was invented, are the best. Take care that the tools are not abused by ignorant persons attempting to use them; they will last a person's life-time if properly used; but if put out of order, none but a surgical instrument maker can repair them properly. The object in giving publicity to this, is to have the markets of Philadelphia well supplied with capons: they have ever been esteemed one of the greatest delicacies, preserving the flavor and tenderness of the chicken, with the juicy maturity of age. In the Paris and London markets, double the price of common poultry is obtained for capons. Considering the abundance and excellence of poultry in the United States, it seems surprising that the art of making capons should be almost entirely unknown--it is hoped that this deficiency will now be supplied. GRAFTING AND BUDDING. For what follows on grafting and budding, we are indebted to that excellent family paper, the New World. The article was prepared for it by J. S. Skinner, Esq., of the Post Office Department, Washington, from an English work, which, he adds, "is not published or much known in this country." GRAFTING.--The process of grafting consists in taking off a shoot from one tree, and inserting it into another, in such a manner as that both may unite closely, and become one tree; the shoot or cutting thus employed is called a _scion_, and the tree on which it is inserted or grafted, a stock. The process of budding has precisely the same object in view as that of grafting, differing from the latter process only in the insertion of a bud, instead of a shoot or cutting, into the bark of another tree. To execute either process with adroitness and success, considerable practice is required. To excel in either, instructions should be received from some competent person, who is both willing and able to impart the necessary information. More knowledge can be acquired in a short time in this manner than can possibly be attained by the most attentive perusal of any treatise expressly written upon the subject. Impressed with the difficulty of the task, many writers have indeed asserted, that description alone must ever fail to convey an adequate knowledge of the process; but the intelligent author of the English Gardener has, with his usual ability, treated the subject in so clear and comprehensive a manner that we are induced to give the details of the process in the author's own language. Before entering upon the subject of grafting and budding, there is one thing which is equally applicable to both processes, and that is, that the _stock_ ought to stand the whole summer upon the spot where it is grafted, before that operation is performed upon it. If stocks be planted out in the fall, the sap does not rise vigorously enough in the spring to afford a fair chance to the growing of the graft; another remark of equal importance is, that fruit-trees stand only _one summer_ on the spot whence they are to be removed to their final destination; because, if they stand longer than this, they will have large and long roots, great amputation must take place, and the trees suffer exceedingly. _The Time of Grafting_ is generally from the beginning of February to the end of March,[1] beginning with the earliest sorts of trees, as plums, cherries, and pears; and ending with the latest, as apples. But seasons are different, and in a backward season, the season for grafting will be backward; and in such case, the fulness and bursting appearance of the buds of the stocks, and the mildness of the weather must be our guides. However, it is certain that the mild weather, with occasional showers, is the best time for grafting. [1] In this climate, April and May are the best months.--ED. AM. AG. _The Mode of Preparing the Scion_ comes next. Take from the tree from which you mean to propagate, as many branches of last year's wood as will cut into the quantity of scions that you want; but in choosing what branches to take, let the vigor of the tree guide you, in some measure. If it be a healthy, flourishing, and young tree, take your branches from the outside shoots, for the upright ones at the top, or those near the middle, are more likely to produce wood than fruit. Yet do not take branches from the very lowest part of the tree, if you can avoid it, as these are sure to be more puling in their nature. In case the tree be old or weakly, then choose the most vigorous of its last year's shoots, no matter where they grow. Keep these branches uncut until you arrive at the season for grafting, keeping them, in the meanwhile, buried in dry mould; and when that season arrives, take them up and cut them into the proper lengths for grafting. The middle part of each branch will generally be found to be the best; but your branches may be scarce and few in number, and then make use of every part. Each scion should have from three to six eyes on it, but six will, in all cases, be quite enough, as there is no use in an extraordinary length of scion; but, on the contrary, it may be productive of much mischief, by overloading the head with young shoots and leaves as summer advances, and thereby making it more subject to accident from high winds or heavy rains. _The Operation of Grafting_ is performed many ways, though none of them differs from any of the others in the _main principle_, which is that of bringing the under or inner bark of the scion to bear upon the same bark of the stock. The sap of the stock flows upward toward the scion, and it will flow on into the scion, provided it find no interruption. Here, therefore, is the nicety--to fit those two barks so closely, the one upon the other, that the sap shall proceed onward into the scion, just as it would have done into the amputated branch, causing the scion to supplant the branch. I shall only mention and illustrate two modes of grafting, viz., _tongue-grafting_ and _cleft-grafting_. These two it is necessary for me to speak of separately, and thoroughly to describe, for they are not both of them applicable in all cases; the former being used in grafting on small-sized stocks and small branches of trees, and the latter on large stocks and large branches. [Illustration: TONGUE-GRAFTING.--(FIG. 58.)] _Tongue-Grafting._--Suppose you have your stock of the proper age for grafting, you cut it off at three or four inches from the ground, and with a very _sharp, straight, and narrow-bladed grafting-knife_, cut a thin strip of bark and wood upward, from about two inches below your already shortened stock. Make this cut at one pull of the knife, inserting the edge rather horizontally, and when it has gone through the bark and into the wood a little short of the middle, pull straight upward, (2, _a, b_;) then at rather less than half way down this cut, and with the blade of your knife across the cut, and downward, cut a very _thin tongue_ of not more than three eighths of an inch long, (2, _c_.) Proceed nearly in the same way with the bottom part of the scion; cut first a narrow strip of wood and bark out, but not putting the knife in horizontally, as you have done with regard to the stock, (at 2, _a_,) nor bringing it out straight to the end, to make a shoulder or angle, as you have done at (2, _a b_;) but make a sloping cut (1, _a b_,) of about the same length as the cut in the stock, or rather a little less if anything; then make a tongue (1, _c_) to correspond with that of the stock, but recollect that this must be cut _upward_ instead of _downward_; then place the scion upon the stock, inserting the tongue of the scion into the tongue of the stock. Bring the four edges of bark, that is, the two edges of the cut in the top of the stock, and the two corresponding edges of the cut in the bottom of the scion, to meet precisely; or, if the scion be, in diameter, a smaller piece of wood than the stock, so that its two edges of bark can not both meet those of the stock, then let only one meet, but be sure that one meets precisely. But observe, that this can never be unless the first cut in the stock and that in the scion (2, _a b_,) and (1, _a b_,) be as even as a die, and performed with a knife scarcely less sharp than a razor. Take a common pruning-knife, and attempt to make a cut of this kind, and you will find when you come to fit the scion on, that, squeeze them together as you may, you will, in most cases, see light between the parts of the stock and the scion that you are trying to join, so effectually, as that the sap shall flow out of the one into the other, unconscious of any division at all! But I will not suppose anybody so ungain (as it is called in Hampshire) as to go about so nice an operation as this without being prepared with the proper instruments for performing it; and therefore, I now suppose the scion put on properly, and presenting the appearance as in (3, _a_.) But this is not all; the operation is not yet complete. The two parts thus joined must be bound closely to one another with matting, or bass, as the gardeners call it, (4.) A single piece tied on to the stock, will, if well done, almost insure the junction; but lest parching winds should come and rip up all vegetation, it is usual to put on besides the bandage of matting, a ball of well-beaten clay sprinkled over with a little wood-ashes or the fine siftings of cinders, to cover completely the parts grafted, that is, from an inch below them to an inch or so above them, (5;) and, even to prevent this ball of clay from being washed off by heavy rains, it is well to tie around it a covering of coarse canvass, or else to earth up the whole plant as you do beans or peas, drawing a little mound around it so as to reach nearly the top of the clay. Mr. Harrison prepares his grafting clay in the following manner: Take two parts of clay and one of horse-dung, free from straw, mix them together, and beat the mass until the whole is thoroughly incorporated, then temper it with a little water till it is reduced to the consistence of stiff paste. This composition _never cracks_ on drying! _Future Treatment._--Something now remains to be said on the future treatment of the grafted plant. In a month's time at least, you will see whether the scion has taken; it will then be either bursting forth into leaf or be irrecoverably dead. In this latter case, take off immediately the canvass, clay, bandage, and dead scion, and let the stock push forth what shoots it pleases, and recover itself. In the former case, however, you must, as soon as the scion is putting forth shoots, cut off, or rub off, all shoots proceeding from the stock between the ground and the clay, as these, if suffered to push on, would divert the sap away from the scion, and probably starve it; then carefully stake the plant, that is, put a small stick into the ground at within three inches, or thereabouts, of the root, and long enough to reach a few inches above the scion, which you will tie to it slightly with a piece of wetted matting. This is really necessary, for when the shoots proceeding from the scion become half a foot long, they, with the aid of their leaves, become so heavy as, when blown to and fro by the wind, to break off immediately above the clay, or become loosened down at the part joined to the stock. The staking being done, you need do nothing more till near the end of June, when you should take off the whole mass of canvass, clay, and bandage, but be careful in taking off the clay not to break off the plant at the junction. It should be done by a careful hand, and after a day or two of rainy weather, as then the clay is moist and comes off without so much danger to the plant as when it is not. On taking off the clay, there is found a little sharp angle, left at the top of the stock; this should now be cut smooth off. The bark of the stock and that of the scion will heal over this, and the union is then complete. Lastly, it is frequently found that mould, and sometimes small vermin, have collected around the heretofore covered parts of the plant, according as the clay has been cracked by the sun. Rub off all mould with your fingers, (no instrument does it so well,) and kill all vermin in the same way; and it is not amiss to finish this work by washing the joined parts with a little soap and water, using a small paint-brush for the operation. All these things done, you have only to guard against high winds, which, if the plant be not staked, as is above described, will very likely be broken off by them; and, in this work of destruction, you will have the mortification of seeing the finest of your plants go first. [Illustration: CLEFT-GRAFTING.--(FIG. 59.)] _Cleft-Grafting._--This is a species of grafting adopted in cases where the stock is large, or where it consists of a branch or branches of a tree headed down. In either of these cases, saw off horizontally, the part you wish to graft, and smooth the wound over with a carpenter's plane, or a sharp, long-blade knife, (1.) Prepare your scion in this manner: At about, an inch and a half from the bottom, cut it in the form of the blade of a razor; that is, make it sharp on one side, and let it be blunt at the back, where you will also take care to leave the bark whole, (2, _a_.) Having thus prepared the scion, make a split (1) in the crown of the saw-cut downward for about two inches, taking care that the two sides of this be perfectly even. Hold it then open, by means of a chisel or a wedge, (or when the stock is but a small one, your knife,) and insert the scion, the sharp edge going inward, and the bark side or razor-back remaining outward, so that, on taking out the wedge or chisel, the cleft closes firmly on the scion, (3,) the two edges of bark formed by the cleft, squeezing exactly upon the two edges of bark formed by the blunt razor-back. To make the two barks meet precisely is the only nicety in this operation; but this is so essential, that the slightest deviation will defeat the purpose. In this sort of grafting, the stock on which you graft is generally strong enough to hold the scion close enough within its cleft, without the aid of binding, and then it is better not to bind; but as it is also necessary to prevent air circulating within the wounded parts both of the stock and the scion, use grafting-clay to cover them over so as to effectually exclude the air; and cover the clay with a piece of coarse canvass, wetting it first, and then binding it on securely. In this way, the stock being strong, you may insert several scions on the same head, by making several different clefts, and putting one scion in each; but this can only be to insure your having two to succeed, for if all the scions that you put on one head take, you must choose the two most eligible, and sacrifice the rest, as more than two leading limbs from such head ought not to be encouraged. The season for performing this sort of grafting, and the mode of preparing the scion, and the future treatment of the tree, are precisely the same as in _tongue-grafting_. _Crown, or Bark-Grafting_ is a very ready method of grafting upon large, uneven, old stocks and branches. It is practised somewhat later than the methods above described, that is, from the end of March to the third week in April, because, in that period, the separation of the bark from the wood is more easily affected; a circumstance of primary importance in this case. The tree is to be headed down, the cut being made horizontally, and the section bored quite even and smooth; then make a slit in the bark two inches in length, next with the handle of a budding-knife, carefully open the bark for about a quarter of an inch; then cut the scion about two inches in a sloping direction, in the form of a tongue, leaving the bark entire on the outside. The scion thus prepared, is pressed downward between the bark and the wood as far as the incision in the stock extends; the bark of the stock readily yields to the pressure employed, and the scion is supported in its situation by a few coils of bass-matting, the whole being surrounded by clay. _Dove-Tail Grafting._--This is a very neat and successful mode of grafting, originating with Mr. Malone, who gives the following directions for its performance. The scion is to be selected so as to have two or three buds above where the knife is to be inserted to prepare it for the operation; a slip is cut off the end of the scion, sloping it to the bottom as long as it may be decided to insert it into the stock. On each side of the cut, as far as it extends, a part of the bark is to be taken off, leaving the under part broader than the upper, on which upper or back part always contrive to leave a bud. The stock or branch to be worked is thus prepared: Being first cut off smooth and straight, two parallel slits, distant from each other nearly the width of the scion and the length of its cut part, are then made in the bark of the branch, observing particularly to slope the knife, so that the under edge of the cut next the wood may be wider than the outer edge. The piece of bark between the slits must then be taken out, separating at the bottom by a horizontal cut. The scion will then slide into the dove-tail groove thus formed, and, if the work is well performed, will fit neatly and tightly. A small quantity of the grafting-clay must then be carefully applied, securing it on with list, or any other convenient bandage, fastening it at the end with two small nails. The top of the stock should be entirely covered with clay, sloping it well up to the grafts, and should be examined often to see if any cracks or openings appear, which should be immediately filled up with some very soft clay. The proper time for performing the operation is from the beginning of April till the middle of May, or earlier if the sap is in motion. (Gardener's Magazine, Vol. VII.) [Illustration: BUDDING.--(FIG. 60.)] BUDDING.--Budding is performed for precisely the same purpose as grafting, and, like grafting, it is performed in many different ways; and as long experience has ascertained the best method, namely, that of T budding, (1,) so called from the form of the two cuts that are made in the bark of the stock to receive the bud, or _shield-budding_, as it is sometimes called from the form of the piece of bark (2) on which the bud is seated, assuming the shape of a shield when it is prepared to be inserted within the T cut in the stock. The only solid difference between budding and grafting is this, that whereas in grafting you insert on the stock a _branch_ already produced, in budding, you insert only the _bud_. I shall proceed, in treating of this matter, in the same way that I did in the preceding article, namely, _as to the season proper for budding, the choosing and preparing of the bud, the operation of budding, and the future treatment of the plant budded_. _The Season for Budding_ is generally from the latter end of July to the latter end of August, the criterions being a plump appearance of the buds formed on the spring shoot of the same year, seated in the angle of a leaf, and a readiness in the bark of the stock to separate from the wood. _In Choosing and Preparing the Bud_, fix on one seated at about the middle of a healthy shoot of the mid-summer growth--these are, generally speaking, the most inclined to fruitfulness. Choose a cloudy day, if you have a choice of days at this season, and if not, perform your work early in the morning, or in the evening. The time being proper, you sever the branch on which you find the buds to your liking. Take this with you to the stock that you are going to bud, holding the branch in your left hand, the largest end downward; make a sloping cut from about an inch and a half below the bud to about an inch above it, suffering your knife to go through the bark, and about half way into the wood, cutting out wood and all. This keeping of the wood prevents the bud and its bark from drying while you are preparing the incision in the stock, and if you wish to carry buds of scarce sorts to any distance, you may do so safely by putting their ends in water, or in damp moss, but it is always safer, as well in grafting as in budding, to perform the operation with as much expedition as possible, but particularly it is so in budding. _Operation of Budding._--Cut off the leaf under which the bud is situated, but leave its foot-stalk, (2, _a_,) and by this hold it between your lips, while with your budding-knife you cut two straight lines in the stock at the place where you wish to insert the bud, and this should be where the bark is smooth, free from any bruises or knots, and on the side rather from the mid-day suns. Of these lines let the first be horizontal, (1,) and let the next be longitudinal, beginning at the middle of the first cut and coming downward. Let them, in short, describe the two principal bars of the Roman letter T. You have now to take out from the bark on which the bud is, the piece of wood on which the bark is, and which has served you, up to this time, to preserve the bud and bark from drying and shrinking. But this is a nice matter. In doing it you must be careful not to endanger the root of the bud, as it is called, because in that is its existence. The bark, (if the season be proper for budding,) will easily detach itself from this piece of wood, but still it requires a very careful handling to get it out without endangering the root of the bud. Hold the bud on your fore-finger, and keep your thumb on the wood opposite; then with the fore-finger and thumb of the other hand, bend backward and forward the lower end of the shield, and thus coax the wood to disengage itself from the bark; and when you find it decidedly doing so, remove your thumb from it, and the whole piece of wood will come out, leaving you nothing but a piece of bark of about two and a half inches long, with a bud and foot-stalk of a leaf on it. If the root of the bud be carried away with the piece of wood, you will perceive a small cavity where it ought to be. In this case, throw away the bud and try another. Having succeeded in the second attempt, now open the two sides of the longitudinal bar of the T with the ivory haft of your budding-knife, but in doing this, raise the bark clearly down to the wood, for the inside of the piece of bark belonging to the bud must be placed directly against this. Having opened these sides wide enough to receive the longest end of the bark, insert it nicely, taking especial care that its inner side be flatly against the wood of the stock. Then cut the upper end of the bark off, so that its edge shall meet precisely the edge of the horizontal bar of the T (3, _a_.). With your finger and thumb bring the two sides of the longitudinal bar over the bark of the bud, or rather the shield, and with a piece of well-soaked matting, begin an inch below this bar and bind firmly all the way up to an inch above the horizontal bar, taking good care to leave the bud peeping out. Bind in such a way as to exclude the air, for that is the intent of binding in this case. Tie your piece of matting on first, and wind it round and round the stock as you would a riband, taking care not to twist the matting; wind it slowly, and every time you have gone completely round, give a gentle pull to make it firm. _Future Treatment._--In a fortnight's time from the operation, you will discover whether the bud has taken, by its roundness and healthy look; and, in a fortnight after that, loosen the bandage to allow the plant to swell, and in about five weeks from the time of budding, take away the bandage altogether. In this state, the plant passes the winter, and just as the sap begins to be in motion in the following spring, you head down the stock at about an inch above the bud, beginning behind it, and making a sloping cut upward to end above its point. Some gardeners leave a piece of the stock about six inches long for the first year, in order to tie the first summer's shoot to it to prevent its being broken off by the wind. This may be well when the plant is exposed to high winds, but even then, if you see danger, you may tie a short stick on the top part of the stock, and to this tie the young shoot, and then the sap all goes into the shoot from the bud, instead of being divided between it and six inches of stock left in the other way. There are some advantages which budding has over grafting, and these I think it right to mention. In the first place, universal experience has proved that certain trees succeed much better when budded, than the same trees do when grafted, such are the peach, nectarine, apricot, plum, and cherry; indeed, the rule is, that all stone-fruits do better budded than grafted, that they are, when budded, less given to gum, a disease peculiar to stone-fruits, and often very pernicious to them. You may also, by budding, put two more branches upon a stock that would be too weak to take so many grafts, and you may bud in July when grafting has failed in March and April. The disadvantage of budding is that the trees are rendered one year later in coming into bearing than when you graft. Mr. Knight has recommended a mode of budding, (Hort. Trans., vol. I.). He thus describes the process: In the month of June, as the luxuriant shoots of my peach-trees were grown sufficiently firm to permit the operation, I inserted buds of other varieties into them, employing two distinct ligatures to bind the buds in their places. One ligature was first placed above the bud inserted, and upon the transverse section through the bark; the other which had no further office than that of securing the bud, was applied in the usual way. As soon as the buds had attached themselves, the ligatures last applied were taken off, but the others were suffered to remain. The passage of the sap upward, was in consequence much obstructed, and the inserted bud began to vegetate strongly in July, and when these had afforded shoots about four inches long, the remaining ligatures were taken off to admit the excess of sap to pass on, and the young shoots were nailed to the wall, being there properly exposed to light, their wood ripened well, and afforded blossoms in the succeeding spring. * * * * * We should be pleased if any of our readers could give us further information about the shrub described below. _From the Yankee Blade._ HIGH CRANBERRY. A gentleman of this place having occasion some twenty years ago, to make an excursion into the northern part of the state, near Lake Umbagog, where the Magalloway empties into the Androscoggin, passed through a large piece of low land, comprising many acres, which was covered with the high cranberry as far as the eye could see, exhibiting the most beautiful and splendid appearance, perhaps, ever displayed from any of the spontaneous productions of the forests of New England. He says that some shrubs which had acquired the magnitude of trees of several inches diameter, were literally bent to the ground, under the weight of their luxuriant fruit; and such was their abundance, that a single individual might have gathered more than thirty bushels in a day. The high cranberry in dense forests, sometimes acquires the respectable altitude of 15 or 20 feet; but in more open places, its height is generally from 6 to 8 or 10 feet. Its stem and leaf very much resemble those of the snow-ball; and the flower, while it lasts, is but little inferior in elegance and beauty to the flower of that highly ornamented and much esteemed shrub. The fruit is smaller than that of the running cranberry, of a bright red color when ripe, and grows in large, flat clusters on the ends of the branches. Its taste is very acid, and rather austere. It contains a large, hard, flat seed, which is an objection to the use of it without sifting or straining; but being sifted or strained after stewing, it is excellent for sauce, pies, and tarts. Prepared with sugar, in the usual way, it makes a most delicious jelly. ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. _For the American Agriculturist._ FINE WOOL SHEEP. _Buskirk's Bridge, October, 1843._ I HAVE read the article headed "Sheep, Paular Merinos," over the signature of Examiner, in the May number, page 52 of your paper, purporting to give us plain farmers an insight into sheep breeding, &c.; and what fine flocks used to be, when the "old fashioned Merino sheep" were in their "glory." What they were a quarter of a century ago, I cannot say, that was before I had any thing to do with sheep in this country; but I presume that _fine_ flocks were then not so numerous as they are now. I can not agree with the writer, "that the fine flocks of the United States are sadly deteriorated, indeed, nearly run out." Since 1825, I have been acquainted with fine sheep in this country, and I venture to say, that there are three, four, or five, and in this section, _ten_, fine flocks, where there was but one 18 years ago. If Examiner will honor me with a visit, an invitation I herewith cordially tender to him, I will show him _fine_ flocks, consisting of more than a few individuals--a dozen or two, or may be a few scores, of picked sheep together, and kept in the very highest possible condition; no, but flocks from 500 to 1,000--even more--which might alter his judgment, if that is not swayed by prejudice. Many of these large flocks shear on an average 3 lbs. and over, of wool, well washed on the sheep's back, the quality of which is superior to the "Paular," and "old-fashioned Merinos;" and I doubt not, should Examiner make a comparison between the two kinds himself, he would pronounce it _superfine_; and besides the quality, he would also discover a great difference in the condition and cleanliness of the wool. These flocks are high-grade Saxons, and show a result not quite so "unfortunate" as Examiner would make us believe. My own flock of 240 ewes and lambs and a few bucks, pure, unmixed Saxons, whose pedigree can be traced back to the importations of the Elector of Saxony, from the royal flocks of Spain, sheared this year 2 lbs. 13 oz. per head; last year 2 lbs. 14 oz. clean wool. If I had had a proportionate number of weathers among them, the average would have been at _least_ 3 lbs. I repeat then, that the wool of the "Paular," or "old fashioned Merinos," does not compare with the Saxons and their crosses in quality and condition. If the fleeces from the former are heavier than from the latter, let it be borne in mind that they contain more _gum_, and _yolk_, dirt, &c.,; are not so fine, and that the sheep _consume a greater quantity of feed_. These are facts well known to every good judge of wool, and to every experienced, practical shepherd. I would ask whether Examiner had his eyes closed against them when he was examining the fine-wooled flocks of the United States, and declared them "sadly deteriorated, indeed, nearly run out." I do not pretend, Mr. Editor, that I am acquainted with all "the fine flocks of the United States, but allow me to say, that my acquaintance among the wool-growers is pretty extensive. I am a purchaser, as well as a grower of wool, and handle no inconsiderable quantities yearly. My purchases this year amount to over 130,000 lbs., and I have examined at least 300,000 lbs., and a great variety of flocks of different grades and character, have come under my observation--sheep kept in the very lowest up to the very highest condition. I have always found, that where the blood of the "old fashioned Merinos, Paulars," or whatever their possessors are pleased to call them, predominated, there also I found _gum_, yolk, dirt, and other substances adhering to the wool, in great abundance, _unfit to make cloth_ of, which goes far to make up the greater weight of fleece over the Saxony. Indeed, sir, when gentlemen talk of fine fleeces weighing 8, 9, or 10 lbs. they forget to mention "_including gum, yolk, dirt, and other substances adhering to the fleece_." Some years since, I saw a lot of "old fashioned Merino" wool at a factory in Massachusetts, which the manufacturer assured me would lose 55 per cent. in cleansing. "Indeed," said he, "we can never estimate the dirt in such wool correctly; it always exceeds our estimate, and we invariably suffer loss." And recently, a gentleman, a dealer in wool, told me that he sent this season, a large quantity to Boston to be sold, and that on making sale of some 36,000 lbs., the manufacturer who bought it, rejected all gummy, dirty fleeces, declaring that he would not have them, as such wool would lose more than 50 per cent. in cleansing. And to use the gentleman's own words, "there it lies, in a corner of the wool room, and I do not know what to do with it;" observing at the same time, that the manufacturers were "getting more cunning." There was a time when the supply fell short of the demand, and almost any wool, however gummy and dirty, found ready purchasers; for manufacturers were often compelled to buy it, in order to keep their machinery in operation; but that time has gone by, and they are now more choice in their selections, and when they come across a lot of such wool they pass it by, with observations like these: "I do not want it, it is too dirty, let him keep it for some body else"! In your July number, page 130 and 131, Mr. Editor, you have made a calculation of the number of sheep, and the quantity of wool obtained therefrom. The census of 1840 shows, say 20,000,000 in the United States. Of this number you estimate only 11,000,000 shorn sheep, yielding 24,500,000 lbs. of wool, and the lambs at 9,000,000.--With due deference to your superior opportunities for information, I beg leave to say that you are over estimating the number of lambs, for every practical wool-grower knows, that that proportion is too large--if you had said one third, you would have come nearer the truth. I think you are mistaken also that the census of 1840 included lambs, it was exclusive of lambs.(_a_) You are, however, perfectly safe in estimating the average weight of fleece in the United States at 2¼ lbs. This is certainly too low by one fourth of a pound.(_b_) In this region it exceeds 2¾ lbs. Then you say, that by producing a superior quality of wool, its value would be increased nine cents per pound; this certainly is attainable; but the way in which you propose to bring it about, namely, by crossing with the "Paular, or old-fashioned Merinos," you would not obtain that end, thousands of fine flocks would be reduced in quality.(_c_) In this section it would reduce the quality as much as you wish to improve it. Coarse sheep would be improved by the cross; but to apply it to all the sheep in the United States, as I understand you to say, you would find yourself very much mistaken in the result. I venture to say, that on the same quantity of feed, you can not increase the heft of fleece of a fine flock shearing from 2¾ to 3 lbs., by your cross up to 3¾ to 4 lbs. per head, and have the wool in equally good condition.(_d_) An increase of feed will do much toward increasing the heft of fleece. A few words more and I have done. Examiner, page 52, says: "As to Paular Bucks, it strikes me that you might, for any practical purpose, just as well have advised a cross of the fabulous Unicorn, for it would be just as easy to find the one as the other at the present time in the United States; for depend upon it, there is no such thing now existing, as _a Paular Buck_, nor _any thing deserving the name_ in the whole country." And you say that "there are still large and valuable flocks scattered over the country."(_e_) H. D. GROVE. (_a_) Immediately upon the receipt of this letter of Mr. Grove's we wrote on to Washington to ascertain the facts in the case, but were answered that the census bureau was abolished, and they could not tell. We know that when the person for taking the census in the district in which we were then residing, called upon us, he required the number of colts, calves, lambs, and pigs, although some of them were only three days old at the time; and to our objection of rendering an account of such young stock, he remarked, "never mind, they will be grown when the census appears, and it is the law." Most of those to whom we have put the question about rendering an account of the lambs in their flocks, say they did so; others do not recollect. If there has been irregularity with sheep-owners in giving an account of their lambs, of course we are incorrect; and we think, upon reflection, we may have estimated the number of lambs too high; though, on the other hand, we are quite certain Mr. Grove has set them down as entirely too few; for we know flocks that produce within a fraction as many lambs annually as there are breeding ewes. (_b_) Perhaps when Mr. Grove has travelled south and west more extensively, and seen in the months of March and April, as many half-bare sheep as we have, which shed their wool from disease, want of care, &c., he may come to a different conclusion. We have often seen flocks in the same condition at the north too, leaving many of our farmers little to boast of in this respect. (_c_) We have turned to the article to which Mr. Grove alludes, but really, we do not find that we used the expressions attributed to us. We said "Spanish Merino," also, "unadulterated Merino;" meaning thereby, the Rambouillets more particularly. We also spoke in general terms, in recommending the use of these. Such a flock of Saxons as Mr. Grove's we would _especially except_; and if the accounts which we hear of them be correct, and we have no doubt they are, we would not cross them with anything less fine than themselves. They are unquestionably superior animals, as is proved by their superior weights of fleece, and the high price the wool commands; and we wish, since the name of Saxon has been so basely misused in this country by miserable counterfeits, that Mr. Grove would give his flock the name of Electoral; for they and their descendants are probably the only ones entitled to it in the United States. With this name, they would then fairly stand aloof from the common herd, as they deserve, and not be associated in idea hereafter, with the miserable riff-raff of the country, passing under the general name of Saxons. It is our intention next season to call and see Mr. Grove's flock. (_d_) We meant to be understood as alluding to a cross on the coarser and more restiff sheep of the country, when we spoke of obtaining an increase of weight of wool on the same food, and we know that this can be done. (_e_) True enough, but we did not say these valuable flocks were Paulars; nor did we go so far as to assert that they were pure Merinos of any distinct name. We wish it understood, that we do not endorse all the opinions of Examiner any more than we do other correspondents--he speaks for himself, and we for ourselves. * * * * * _For the American Agriculturist._ SEA-MUD AS A FERTILIZER. _Flushing, L. I., November 8th, 1843._ CAN you inform me whether the sea-mud which is found on the shore, below high-water mark, is of any value to the farmer; and if it is, in what way would you advise that it should be applied? Do you think that it would answer in a compost heap, or would it be preferable to put it into the cattle-yard or hog-pen? I have thought that the only objection to using it would be on account of the great quantity of salt, which it contains; although Leibig and other celebrated writers, speak in very favorable terms upon the application of salt. And here arises another question. Are not those farms which are situated upon the sea-shore sufficiently supplied with salt by the winds which are constantly sweeping over them? Johnson remarks that this is the case, and if this is so, would not the application of this sea-mud be too strong? although I am inclined to believe that by drying the mud, much of the virtue of the salt would necessarily be destroyed, and as sea-water contains, as Leibig states, many very fertilizing qualities, this mud which perhaps has been accumulating for ages, must have imbibed a large quantity of all those properties, of which sea-water is composed. By answering these questions you will greatly oblige one of your subscribers. R. B. C. For an answer to the above see page 322. * * * * * The following communication was read before the New York Farmers' Club by the Hon. Henry Meigs at its meeting August 29, and is obligingly furnished us for publication. _For the American Agriculturist._ FARM OF HUGH MAXWELL, Esq. GOOD EFFECTS OF MARL.--In a conversation with Hugh Maxwell, Esq., some short time since, he stated some facts in relation to the fertilising power of a red marl abundantly existing at Nyack, which induced me to visit the spot. I found Mr. Maxwell's farm of 110 acres bounded by the Hudson, well worth a visit. The whole was in excellent fence, made of the loose stones found on the land, neatly piled about 4½ feet high, forming fields of from 4 to 8 acres. The formation of these fences has used nearly all the stones which were on the surface of the lands. And in this it would seem as if Divine Providence had caused the rocks to be distributed of the proper size for fencing. Had the pieces been much larger or smaller they would not have answered the purpose so well as they now do. If they had been planted two feet under ground, or had been piled in larger masses, the labor of fencing would have been very greatly increased. This farm, as well as all those about Nyack, lies on the singular mass of sandstone included by a front of about five miles on the river. All the surrounding rocks are of other materials. This sandstone, when quarried, exhibits strata of a kind of red marl of many feet in thickness, lying between strata of the sandstone. The quarry-men throw it out of their way, and millions of loads are lying near the water's edge, so that in many places vessels can lie alongside a bed of it, and slide it on board. On Mr. Maxwell's farm, the former proprietor, desirous of making extensive hard walks through his garden, caused this marl to be put upon them about one foot deep. Soon after this was finished, the walks began to produce clover; the white in such profusion and persevering succession, that all prospect of using the paths in that condition was abandoned: they could not be kept in order by the hoe. Mr. Maxwell being strongly impressed by this occurrence, determined on applying it to the surface of his farm. I saw a field of corn of several acres which had been top-dressed this year with the red marl, now bearing not less than 80 bushels of shelled corn to the acre--as great a product as is obtained from the best city manure, costing at Nyack nearly 37 cents per load. I saw an upland field of wheat, on which, as an experiment, Mr. Maxwell had top-dressed with this marl a space of three rods by two, from which I pulled an average bunch of straw-stubble, that is more than double the size and weight of any like parcel of stubble, to be found in the whole field of several acres. Unfortunately the husbandman had cradled all the wheat indiscriminately, which prevented Mr. Maxwell from examining the separate product of the wheat. I should not hesitate to pronounce it a double product. Mr. M. top-dressed a field of oats with this marl, and the yield was 70 bushels per acre. He top-dressed a field of clover with it the third year from the seeding, and the product is heavier than the crop of the _second year_. This field was dressed with ten loads of marl per acre. The corn is large 12-row yellow, and the stalks are about 10 feet high. The corn-blades never curled during the late drought, while other fields all curled. The corn was worked with the hand-harrow once, with the cultivator twice, and was hoed twice. No plowing between the hills. Mr. M. thinks that in dry weather it is very injurious to run the plow through, for it cuts the smaller roots of the corn. He has tried 25 bushels of hickory ashes, against 25 of anthracite coal ashes, and found no perceptible difference in the result. The general effect of this red marl is perceptible in almost every plant and tree in that vicinity. Fruit-trees are especially vigorous and free from disease. Flowering shrubs, roses particularly, seem not to have been touched by any insect. I pulled up a mullein stalk growing on a naked mound of this marl, which measures nine feet in height, and the flower stem, which is covered with buds, is four feet in extent. The trees, excepting peach alone, are more thriving than those I have anywhere seen. The peach-trees have the yellows. Moss roses growing in rich grass are remarkably strong; Mr. M. finds that they do better closely surrounded by grass than in clear ground. He has ten kinds of healthy cherry-trees, including the red and white ox-heart, and the bull's eye. He has freely given, and wishes to distribute buds and grafts to all those who ask for them. Mr. M. has very healthy apricots, which have yielded fine fruit. _He smoked the blossoms with sulphur and pitch_, and all the fruit was perfect. _This smoking was done in the evening._ Some of the fields had never been but partially cultivated, on account of being so swamped that cattle mired in them. He made in one four-acre field a drain ten rods long, and three feet deep, filled in with coarse stone. This drain formed a _perpetual spring for his cattle_, and this barren field has now buckwheat of at least _thirty bushels per acre_. _One and a half bushels_ of seed was sowed per acre. No manure needed. This drain cost $1.75. Twelve acres were drained in the same style at a cost of $150; this field is now fine, and asks for no manure from New York, or Nyack marl. He prefers the same amount of marl to best New York city manure for all grains and grapes. Mr. M. has the old English yew thriving in open air in winter. The European mountain ash, white and red linden, red maple, weeping ash, weeping beech, weeping elm, Madeira nut, (one five years old bearing fruit,) Spanish chestnut now in fruit, (this tree has also some blossoms on it at this time.) Apricots grafted on plum stock are very thrifty. A REMARKABLE HORSE.--In passing through Mr. Maxwell's barn-yard, I noticed a couple of horses, one of which was hoppled with a strong iron chain. What mischievous young horse have you there? He replied, it is my old family mare Kate, who has carried me, and my wife and children, safely for the last one and twenty years! I bought her when she was about four years old, but she will break fences now (wooden ones) with her irons on, she is so active and cunning. LOCUST EGGS.--I remarked at Nyack the work of the locust, and Mr. M. and Thomas Addis Emmet, Esq., examined with a good microscope, a twig worked by the little insect. The twig being split in the line of the work, exhibited the whole process of the egg deposite. The twig is pierced nearly to its centre at every three quarters of an inch, or nearly so; the wood is rendered fibrous, it is then lifted up, and the eggs, which are of a long, oval form, are deposited side by side at an angle of about 45 degrees to the grain of the twig, and the fibrous tuft of wood placed over them, with its end sticking out; these incisions being repeated every inch on a line for some few inches in each twig. With the microscope, we saw the eyes of the young locusts always heads to the centre. The general outline of the young animal was perceptible through its delicate membranous cover. They moved slightly on being disturbed. Almost every twig so operated on by the locust was entirely dead. The magnifying power of the microscope was perhaps 40 or 50. VALUE OF AN ORCHARD.--I visited an apple orchard at Nyack, which arrested my attention by its regular and healthy appearance. I found young Van Houton at home, who, with perfect good feeling and true politeness, gave me the account of the orchard which I desired. When his father was about fifty years of age, he undertook to plant 150 winter pippin-trees on that spot. His neighbors thought him an old fool to plant twigs of apple at his time of day. Young Van Houton, then about 16 years of age, held the little nurslings in the holes while his father filled in the soil. The old gentleman continued to prune them, so that they are widely branched and open for air and sun within the mass of branches. For twenty or twenty-two years past, the old gentleman has often received $1,000 a year for his apples. Sometimes $6 per barrel; sometimes sold in the orchard for $1 per barrel. That old gentleman and his wife are now, between them, 174 years old. Let no man be afraid to plant winter pippins because he is fifty or sixty years of age. I have been highly pleased with my excursion. When gentlemen of high rank in learned professions are found turning that intellectual force which has influenced the most wealthy and intelligent portion of mankind, from law, politics, &c., to that greatest, best of all arts--agriculture, I look for good results and I find them. The old world is hard at work in this direction, and I hope that we shall watch her operations with the eye of our own bird, and see to it, that we be not excelled in any good thing. * * * * * _For the American Agriculturist._ MEDITERRANEAN WHEAT. _Wheatland, Va., November 2, 1843._ I have noticed your remarks in the October No. of your paper, on the Mediterranean wheat. Your views coincided with mine when I first sowed this variety of wheat; but I have sown it now for two seasons, and the change has been so great in the color, as to convince me that by cultivating it here, it will lose its dark color, and become as good in that respect, and yield as much flour as any wheat we have. The two seasons I have raised it, it has been the best wheat I had. I have doubts whether it will tiller as much as some other varieties, and therefore sow it much thicker. ROBERT L. WRIGHT. * * * * * _For the American Agriculturist._ TOPPING COTTON--MARL. _Sumpter District, S. C., Nov. 4th, 1843._ IN those excellent matter-of-fact articles on the cultivation of cotton, which have appeared in the late numbers of your paper, by Dr. Philips of Miss., and which, by the way, are the best I have ever seen on the subject, I do not recollect that he has touched upon the subject of topping cotton. I have made one experiment in this, and was pleased with the result. Some planters north of us, I understand, have also tried this method, and find the cotton is not so apt to shed, as when it is not topped, especially in wet seasons. Ordinarily we reckon the first week in August the best time for topping; but this, of course, will depend upon the season, and the forwardness of the crop--for sometimes it must be earlier, and sometimes later. I tried the effects of what I suppose to be marl, on a small spot in one of my fields, say about one acre. The marl I judge to be of poor quality, yet can not say, positively, as I have no analysis of it. I dug it out in January last, and spread it broad-cast, at the rate of 30 loads to the acre, as large as an ordinary pair of mules would carry. It seemed to pulverize well, exposed to the severe frost of last winter, and I plowed it in deeper than I usually plow, and harrowed the land well. The result is, I shall get full one third if not one half more cotton off of this piece than any other part of the field, which more than pays me for the trouble. I need not say that we read the articles on manures in the Agriculturist with much interest; for many of us are beginning to learn that it is not only easier and better, but even _cheaper_ to renovate our old lands, than emigrate to a new country and bring new lands into cultivation. C. MCD. * * * * * _For the American Agriculturist._ HINTS ON THE CULTIVATION OF WHEAT. _Buffalo, October 25th, 1843._ THERE are four conditions that modify the value of a wheat crop. One may not only be larger in measure than another, but heavier for the same measure; yielding more flour from a given weight; and lastly, affording a greater proportion of gluten from the same quantity of flour. It is necessary for the farmer to have each of these considerations in view, if he would attain the utmost success in the cultivation of this invaluable grain. My object, in this brief article, will be, to afford some helps to the agriculturist in increasing the ultimate value of his crop. As a starting point, it will, perhaps, be most instructive to inquire, what are the constituent elements of wheat? Sprengel has analyzed both grain and straw, and the following is the result:--1000 lbs. of wheat afford 11·77 lbs. and of wheat straw, 35·18 lbs. of ash, consisting of Grain of wheat. Straw of wheat. Potash 2·25 lbs. 0·20 lbs. Soda 2·40 ·29 Lime ·96 2·40 Magnesia ·90 ·32 Alumina with a trace of iron ·26 ·90 Silica 4·00 28·70 Sulphuric acid ·50 ·37 Phosphoric acid ·40 1·70 Chlorine ·10 0·30 ----- ----- 11·77 35·18 This analysis shows an amount of ash far below the average. Davy found 15·5 lbs. of ash in 100 lbs. of ripe wheat straw; and Johnstone, in one variety, grown on a soil abounding in limestone, 16·5 per cent. of ash. Thus it will be seen, according to the above analysis of Sprengel, that of the total of grain, less than 1½ per cent., and of straw, rather more than 3½ per cent. is earthy or inorganic matter; while all the remainder is composed of the organic materials, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, of which carbon alone constitutes about one half. All these constituents are absolutely essential to the perfection of the crop. In the natural condition of a fertile soil when first reclaimed, these materials are usually found in sufficient abundance to produce wheat. Such was the condition of nearly all the land in New England, and the eastern portion of our own state; but a few years of careless, unscientific cropping, has exhausted one or more of those constituents which may have existed in an available form; and much of it, after a very few of the first years of its cultivation, has been of little or no value for wheat, under the system of tillage there adopted. It has been asserted by Dr. Dana, that in a soil purely granitic (and much of the land in that region partakes of this character), there is potash enough for successive crops of wheat for 3,000 years, and lime enough to last more than twice that period. But the result is the same for the growing vegetation, whether the materials do not exist at all, or are locked up beyond the reach of it. It is absolutely certain, if wheat will not grow with care and industry, and all the usual appliances of good husbandry, where it once nourished successfully, there is one or more ingredients wanted, in such a condition, that the plants can appropriate them to their own nourishment. And first of the inorganic matters. The proportion of straw will vary from 2 to 3½ times the weight of the grain. Suppose the quantity taken off the land be estimated at 2½ times the weight of the grain. In a series of crops averaging 20 bushels of wheat per acre, for 30 years, we shall have as the result 36,000 lbs. of grain, and 90,000 lbs. of straw carried off the soil, charged with all the materials above enumerated, and probably sufficient to reduce the land to a very small capacity for production. Some limited portions of the earth, as the plains of Babylon, when under skilful cultivation, the valleys of the Indus and the Nile, and the fields of Sicily, almost since the days of the flood, have produced luxuriantly, without the aid of manure to any extent; but it must be remembered the former have their fertility annually renewed by the rich overflowings of the rivers, which are charged with all the materials necessary to restore exhausted nature; while the soil of the last, being wholly of basaltic origin, is rich in the alkalies, which a year or two of rest, is sufficient to replenish in a soluble state, to be again taken up by the luxuriant crop. Hence, we have witnessed a drainage of nearly all the products from these fertile regions, for thousands of years, with impunity. But they are exceptions which only go to prove the general rule. The farmer must look to it, that all the ingredients that enter into his crops, are supplied by the materials in his soil, or a deficiency, or entire failure, will be the inevitable result. Although all the constituents entering into the straw and grain, are absolutely essential to their perfection, they are not all equally essential to be contained in the soil. It is indispensable, however, that the earthy or inorganic portion of them be there, for these can not be obtained elsewhere. How shall they be best supplied? Ashes, it is believed, afford the cheapest, as well as one of the most effectual applications that can be made for grain. Of the ten fixed ingredients enumerated as entering into wheat, ashes yield potash, soda, lime, magnesia, sulphuric and phosphoric acids, in large proportions, and silica and iron in smaller. The chemical operation of the potash, and carbonate and sulphate of lime, however, when added to the soil, is to supply the silica, in a soluble state, from its natural condition, (it being found in abundance for this object in every soil, except in such as are formed almost exclusively of peat,) for the demands of the crop. An increased supply of lime and gypsum, beyond what is found in the ashes, is frequently advantageous; and when the latter is beneficial, as it generally is, it should never be withheld to an extent in the highest degree useful. Of the operation of this last material, beyond yielding a portion of its sulphur to the gluten, we have as yet no satisfactory explanation. In respect to the theory of its concentrating ammonia in the soil from the atmosphere, we have very contradictory authority. Liebig asserts it, Johnstone questions it, and Dana denies it; yet the increasing fertility its application produces, would seem to give the weight of experience in favor of Liebig's views. The chlorine and soda, if not furnished by the ashes in proportions sufficiently large, may be procured by the application of common salt, which yields both. The phosphoric acid may be obtained in any required quantity, by the addition of bones, which, dry or calcined, yield both that acid and lime, phosphate of lime constituting 86 per cent. of bones. Most soils contain alumina in abundance to furnish the food requisite for wheat; yet as it is one of the most valuable soils for this grain, both as seizing upon and retaining ammonia, and furnishing a firm foothold for the roots of the plants, it is important that lands intended for this purpose, should be adequately supplied with alumina as a top-dressing, if naturally deficient in it. We have, then, above, all the inorganic materials for the purpose required. But there is about 97 per cent. of the crop yet to be made up of the organic constituents, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen. How shall they be provided for? First, by the selection of a calcareous or clay soil, which will furnish a proper bed for the roots of the plant, and by their peculiar mechanical texture and chemical composition, will not only hold the manures incorporated with them, but also draw some of the requisite constituents largely from the air; the former absorbing carbonic acid, and the latter ammonia. Second, by the liberal application of common farm-yard manure, to a crop preceding that of wheat, which will leave a rich mould highly conducive to an abundant yield of perfect grain. An instance has been recently given, of a Maryland farmer raising large successive crops of wheat, by the application of putrescent manure directly upon the grain, and all injurious effects were obviated by the use of a moderate quantity of lime. This is a practice, however, which has not been found generally to be successful, causing either blight, or such rapid and luxuriant growth, as to crinkle and lodge. This effect is also produced in peaty and rich alluvial soils, where the silicate of potash, so essential to the formation of a strong, upright stalk, is not furnished in a quantity large enough for the object. Third, the liberal use of charcoal scattered through the soil. It is claimed from its use, that the wheat crop of France has been largely augmented within the few past years. Several instances of its greatly beneficial effects, have been noticed in this country; though its influence has not hitherto been felt on wheat, by an extensive Virginia planter, in two or three recent experiments. The great power of condensing gases peculiar to charcoal, was noticed by some of the early chemists. Murray mentions it, and Saussure gives a table of results, in which he shows that perfectly dry charcoal from boxwood, will absorb 90 volumes of ammonia; 85 of muriatic acid; 65 of sulphurous acid; 55 of sulphuretted hydrogen; 35 of carbonic acid, &c. This condensation takes place in its pores, and does not produce any alteration, or new chemical compounds of the gases thus stored up; but their use in an agricultural point of view, is invaluable; for while the coal yields no fertilizing matter from its own substance, being nearly indestructible, it takes from the atmosphere in great abundance, and hoards up for the future use of the plants, one of the most evanescent, as well as most useful materials for their perfection, viz., the nitrogen contained in the ammonia. A fourth means for procuring a good yield of wheat, is by alternating with clover, and turning in a liberal share of it as a preparation for the wheat. This is practised extensively throughout the wheat districts of the United States, and has resulted in great benefit; for besides yielding a portion of food to the grain, it keeps the ground in the best possible mechanical condition. A fifth means, is to return all the straw and chaff to the soil, as they contain a large quantity of the identical materials required for a succeeding crop. With the foregoing causes in full action, and an adequate supply of moisture, whether from rains, dews, or artificial irrigation, the crop will draw largely from the atmosphere for the supply of its required organic constituents. Carbon will be furnished from its carbonic acid; nitrogen from its ammonia; hydrogen from its vapor, dews, and ammonia; and oxygen from air, water, and soil. The use of all these materials, _together with the selection of the best varieties of seed_, will give the first three requisites of a wheat crop; large measure, heavy weight, and much flour. Manures peculiarly adapted to the object, will tend in the highest degree to produce the greatest quantity of _gluten_, the most valuable portion of the flour. It is true, that climate has much to do in condensing, and of course, improving the value of wheat. It is a general principle, that the warmer and drier the climate where it is grown, the more valuable the grain. Wheat from the south of Europe, is worth more than when grown in the north; and that from any portion of the United States, owing to our superior dryness of climate, is more nutritive than what is produced in Great Britain. This difference is increased from 8 to 14 per cent. in favor of the American. Gluten varies in wheat from 8 to 35 per cent.; in rye, 9 to 13; barley, 3 to 6; and oats 2 to 5. The _quality_ of wheat with regard to the quantity of gluten it contains, is nicely estimated and fully regarded by accomplished bakers. The nitrates of potash, or soda, are frequently used in England to increase not only the quantity, but especially the quality of their flour, a practice the high prices of land and produce may render profitable there, though it is hardly to be expected they could generally be used in this country to a profit. In an experiment lately tried in England, one acre of wheat dressed with one cwt. of nitrate of soda, gave 42½ bushels, weighing 60¾ lbs. per bushel; another acre dressed with two cwt. yielded 47-3/8 bushels, weighing 60½ lbs.; while an undressed acre, in every other respect similar to the others, yielded only 27-7/8 bushels, weighing 61 lbs. Numerous other instances could be given equally conclusive. Although we may not be justified in using these somewhat expensive salts, so highly charged with nitrogen, there are sources of supply within our reach, especially rich in this material, and abounding in many of the other ingredients of fertility. These are animal manures of all kinds, but more particularly urine, human excrements, and the offal of animals, such as uncalcined bones, horns, hair, hides, flesh, blood, &c. All of these contain large proportions of nitrogen, and if carefully incorporated into the soil, would tend largely to the increased production and value of the wheat crops throughout the country. An experiment was made in manuring wheat with cow dung, which contains the smallest proportion of nitrogen, and this yielded 11·95 per cent. of gluten. Another parcel, grown on land manured with human urine, gave 35·1 per cent. Thus it will be seen, that the maximum of value in wheat, may be reached, by the application of an article, almost everywhere wasted in the United States. It is by skilfully feeding the wheat plant with all the nourishment that it can take up, that the crops may be indefinitely increased. Lord Hardwicke stated, in a speech before the Royal Ag. Soc. of England, that the fine Suffolk wheat had produced 76 bushels per acre; and another and more improved variety had yielded the astonishing quantity, of 82 bushels per acre. There is no comparison between the capacity of an animal and seeds, to produce results; for while the former is limited to a definite growth, which no effort of science or skill can augment, a seed may multiply beyond almost any assignable limit. We have been shown a stool of wheat, originating from a single seed, the growth of the present season, with 30 stalks, averaging from 100 to 110 grains on each head. Over 3,000 perfect grains, is thus the product of a single parent in one season. It requires, then, but the proper pabulum to produce good wheat, within the wheat latitudes, in every portion of the Union. Some of our worn-out eastern lands may be so totally unsuited to its growth, as not to justify the efforts of reclaiming or fitting them for this object, especially, while we have a region in the west, every way adapted by nature, to its most successful cultivation. But we can not for a moment doubt, that when those western fields become comparatively full, industry and science will combine to clothe again those hills and valleys (now but partially robed with a scanty herbage), with teeming crops of wheat, such as gave to them, in their pristine days, a fame for fertility seldom exceeded. R. L. ALLEN. * * * * * _For the American Agriculturist._ A PENNSYLVANIA DAIRY. _Philadelphia, Nov. 6th, 1843._ NOTICING in your October number an account of a dairy on Long Island, I am induced to give you a description of one in this vicinity. Mr. Henry Charley has a dairy farm near Laurel Hill, where he keeps from 40 to 50 cows, consisting of Ayrshire, Holderness, Alderny, Durham, and a few natives; but mostly crossed with a fine, thorough-bred Short-Horn bull, and is raising full bloods, and high grades of this breed as fast as possible. He makes veal of his bull-calves, and raises all his best heifer-calves from his best cows for his own use. I found the cows luxuriating in a rich clover pasture when I visited them last summer between 2 and 3 o'clock, the hour for afternoon milking, from which they were taken by the herdsman, and driven half a mile to the barn. This is a stone building 100 feet long, 46 feet wide, with a wing of 60 feet, the same width as the barn, high walls, and steep roof, which make it capable of holding a great quantity of fodder, consisting last year mostly of cornstalks, (some of which he bought very cheap of his neighbors, while others let theirs stand in the field and this spring raked them up and burned them,) rye straw, and oats unthrashed, all of which he cuts and steams--sometimes with a little hay cut also and mixed with the above articles. These are all steamed together, or each separately, (as best suits the appetites of the cows) in a large vat, connected with a pipe through which the steam passes from the boiler, which stands in a room adjoining with stone or ground floor. The chimney is of sheet-iron running up through the roof, and coal used for fuel, renders the risk for insurance at a very low rate. The water is supplied from a spring running into the yard, and thence through a pipe into the boiler. The cows are also watered from the same when the weather is stormy in winter, and they are not allowed to go out. But to return from this digression. After the fodder is sufficiently cooked, which takes but a short time, it is taken out into other larger vats or troughs, with scoop shovels, and there left to cool; then a suitable portion of Indian meal or ground rye, buck-wheat, or oats, or any two or all four mixed and ground together, (which in my opinion would be better,) adding a portion of ship-stuffs, shorts, or even bran. This is the food for the cows at all seasons, except when there is a full supply of grass. They are driven to a woods pasture for exercise and air when there is little or no grass. Air and exercise are indispensably necessary for the health of cows, and without these, the milk will always be more or less unhealthy, according to the nature of their confinement. When the cows were brought into the yard, I was puzzled to know how they were to be handled; but the stable doors being thrown open, each cow entered the door nearest her stall, and went to it with as much regularity as a young miss goes to her seat in a boarding-school. There is a drop in the floor immediately behind the cows, 14 inches wide and 4 inches deep; into this all the excrements fall, the water running off immediately to a reservoir prepared for the purpose of receiving it; this, together with all the manure, was taken away daily, and put upon the land or crops or in a heap to make compost; so that the premises were kept perfectly clean and sweet. The floor was covered with a thin bed of cut straw, which was passed off with the manure as it became soiled, and by being cut, worked immediately into and incorporated itself with the manure, without vexing the husbandman or gardener as long green manure so frequently does. The floor behind the cows, between the trough to catch the liquid and the wall, is six feet wide, with strong plank platforms or tables on which to set the vessels containing the milk. There is an open space directly over the vat for steaming, where all the feed is cut and passed down through a hopper into the vat; also, hoppers or spouts leading from the meal room over head directly into the vats, which contain the steamed feed for cooking. The mangers in which the cows are fed are broad, so that the food may be thrown into them with scoop shovels without waste, of which I found nothing of the kind about the whole premises. If a little too much feed is given to one animal, and consequently left, it is carefully scraped out and fed to one having a better appetite; thus the mangers were kept clean and sweet. Mr. Charley feeds roots, but to what extent I did not learn. I hope he may be induced to write you a letter, giving a description of his cutting machine, which does its work better than any one I have ever seen; having two blades coming together like shears, cutting corn-stalks through their joints with as much apparent ease as a pair of tailor's shears would cut a thread. There is a stable for dried cows which were feeding for the butcher. Box stalls are provided for cows about to calve; the young cattle are kept by themselves, as are also the calves. Mr. Charley was not at home when I visited his dairy; but this disappointment to me was made up by the kind Mrs. C., who, with justifiable pride, showed me her spring house with its large copper caldron for scalding her milk tubs, pans, pails, churns, &c. &c., in the best of order, all of which she personally superintends and looks after; and whenever there is an overstock of milk for city customers, it is here converted into butter of the choicest quality, and each market-day finds her at her stand with her butter and lots of garden vegetables, the raising of which she also superintends and takes into the city at the dawn of day. That some families are sick and others miserably poor, is not strange, to one who looks behind the curtain and sees what can never otherwise be described. S. A. * * * * * _For the American Agriculturist._ REPLY TO THE GARDENER'S CHRONICLE. _New-York, 14th November, 1843._ THE Gardeners' Chronicle, published in England, has the following criticism on my essay of dock-mud, inserted in your April number of this year, page 13:-- "We trust the editor is more correct in his other statements than in this, concerning the percentage of sea-salt in guano, which contains little more than a trace of it." I have never analysed the guano, but depended on one or two analyses given by Professor Johnston, reader of chemistry in the University of Durham, England, in the appendix to his Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry. He gives tables of contents of two parcels, the first containing 30.3 per cent., the second rather more than 11 per cent. of sea-salt. I took the larger quantity, to prove that if dock-mud contained sea-salt, it could be no objection to it as a fertilizer. It is highly important that the tables of analysis of celebrated manures should be correctly given, and if the editor of the Chronicle can furnish correct tables, he will be conferring an important boon on the agricultural community of the whole world. WM. PARTRIDGE. * * * * * _From the American Agriculturist Almanac._ SOUTHERN CALENDAR FOR DECEMBER. THE closing month of the year is one in which every agriculturist should take an interest, and for many useful hints we will refer the reader to the Northern Calendar for this month. Cotton-picking will probably occupy this month until Christmas, when this business will have been completed, if the culture has been well managed, and the season favorable. It would be well to start your plows and break up ground for corn; let nothing but cotton prevent--not even cleaning; for plowing is only one job; yet, if done soon, it is generally advantageous, and if bad weather should set in when it must be done, time will be lost, and a drawback ensue, whereas by plowing in time, cleaning can be done later. In weather not employed about other labor more important, manure and trim all kinds of vines and fruit-trees, except the orange tribe. Transplant evergreens and other trees, sweet briers, honeysuckles, jasmines, &c.; sow late peas and beans, and set out onions for seed; set all hands at work in cleaning up for other crops, picking up limbs, grubbing, cleaning up hollows, sides of bayous, cutting down corn-stalks with hoes, gathering materials for making manure, &c., &c. If you do not live in the immediate vicinity, say five or six miles, from a sugar-plantation, by all means keep bees. This can be rendered one of the most productive branches of business of the day. Procure a few swarms at first, and they will soon multiply to any extent required. Use sections of hollow logs, four or five feet long, for hives, if you have no other more convenient materials to make them of, and allow the bees to work over the honey a second time, that you may avoid the injurious effects in eating honey which may have been gathered from poisonous flowers. If the above-named class of hives be used, there will be no necessity for killing the bees; for when the hives are filled with honey, they can be removed without harm from the end opposite to that in which the bees are at work, and they will immediately go to work and fill the vacancy. In most parts of the Southern States bees maybe kept at work during the winter. If there are not flowers for them, they can be made to work over the bad honey collected the season before. This is also a busy month for the sugar-planter. He will be active in cutting and carting his cane with all possible despatch; and he should employ one or more practical and intelligent men to conduct the operations of the mill. In the manufacture of sugar, we know of no better method than that given by Professor Mapes in a letter to Hon. H. L. Ellsworth, from which we make the following extract:-- 1. To cut the cane as ripe as possible, but before any acetic acid is formed; litmus paper, touched to the fresh-cut cane, will turn red if acid. 2. Express the juice without loss of time, as every moment after cutting will deteriorate its quality. 3. A small quantity of clear lime-water, say one quart to a hundred gallons of juice, should be added the moment it is expressed, unless the juice shows acidity with litmus paper; in that case, no lime should be used, but a solution of sal-soda or soda ash should be added, until it is precisely neutral. 4. When the juice is neutral, free from excess of acid or alkali, it should be evaporated in such an apparatus as would finish its charge in 30 minutes; if the boiling power is too small, good crystallization can not possibly be obtained. The whole time occupied, from the cutting of the cane to finishing its boiling, should not exceed one hour. 5. To know when the boiling is finished, place a thermometer in the kettle, and continue to evaporate until it stands at 239° Fahrenheit. If, when placed to run off after cooling, it should be found too freely boiled, the next time boil to 240°, or, if too light to run off, to 238°, and so on. 6. The kettle or boiler should be so arranged, that the moment it is done its charge should be thrown into a cooler, capable of holding a number of charges. The first charge should be left in the cooler with stirring, until the second charge is thrown in; then with an oar scrape the crystals found on the side and bottom of the cooler loose, and gently stir the whole mass together: the less stirred the better; so continue at the letting in of each charge, to stir gently; and when all is in the cooler, let the whole stand until it cools down to 175°; then fill out into sugar-moulds of a capacity not less than 14 gallons. When cooled in the mould sufficiently, say fourteen hours, pull the plug out of the bottom of the mould, and insert a sharp point, nearly as large as the hole, some six inches; withdraw the point, and stand the mould on a pot to drip. 7. If the sugar is intended to be brown, leaving it standing on the pot for a sufficient length of time, in a temperature of 80°, will run off its molasses, and leave it in a merchantable shape; it will probably require twenty days. It can then be thrown out of the moulds, and will be fit for use. When moulds can not be obtained, conical vessels of wood or metal, with a hole at the apex, will answer equally well. D. * * * * * _From the American Agriculturist Almanac._ NORTHERN CALENDAR FOR DECEMBER. SETTLE all your accounts, collect what is due you, and pay what you owe. "Short settlements make long friends." Examine your farm statistics, and see what have been the results of your experiments with the different kinds of manures, seeds, modes of tillage, &c., &c.; and note them well for future use. No farmer ought to be without such a book, in which all experiments should be carefully recorded at the time, and the results carried into a separate book for his own use hereafter; and if new and valuable discoveries are obtained, communicate them to some agricultural periodical for the benefit of the world. Recollect, you have the experience of thousands to guide your operations, and, by contributing to the general stock whatever may be useful, you are but returning to mankind a part of the benefits you have derived from them. But avoid twaddle and humbuggery, and oft-published statements, and prolix or tedious narration, and give all the circumstances material to the subjects in the briefest, plainest, simplest language possible. Above all things, send in your subscription to one or more valuable agricultural papers, and get as many of your neighbors to subscribe as possible; and consider, in so doing, you are benefiting yourself by it ten times as much as you are the publishers. Summer is peculiarly the time for making observations and experiments, and winter the time for communicating them. _Remember the poor_, not only in this month, but every month through the year, and especially during the inclemency of winter. You need not give so much to them outright, but endeavor to put them in a way of making themselves comfortable, by affording them employment, by which, you may be benefited, while doing them good. You thus confer on them a triple benefit, by furnishing them the means of comfortable subsistence, teaching them to help themselves, and avoiding the habit of receiving _charity_, which insensibly weakens their sense of self-dependance. Stock now requires increased attention: they must be well housed, or at least protected against wind, with a shelter to which they can resort in storms, well supplied with salt, and abundance of water, if possible, in the yard, where they can get it when they want, and without wearying themselves in looking for it, and wasting their manure by dropping it in the road, or by a running stream or pond, where it will all be lost. Their feed should be regular, and given to them as near stated times as possible. They look for their food then at certain hours, and are not uneasy and fretful till the customary period arrives, when they again fill themselves, and rest quietly, digesting their food till it is time to look for another supply. If brought up in regular habits, brutes are much better time-keepers than many are disposed to consider them who have not observed closely their intelligence. Now is a good time to break steers and colts, while the roads are smooth and hard. They ought to be early accustomed to handling and the halter, and be gently treated, by which they are more disposed to yield to the wishes of their master. If they have been always used to good treatment, they will acquire a confidence in their keepers, and the more readily submit to their guidance. 'Tis always better to train them with strong, well-broken animals. Sympathy has more to do with the brute creation than they have credit for generally; and the good habits and orderly behavior of the older animals, they have been accustomed to treat with deference, will not be without their wholesome effect on them. This is the best month for spreading out hemp for dew-rotting, in the latitudes below 40°, as it gets a whiter and better rot than if spread earlier. KITCHEN-GARDEN.--Every fine day uncover the frames in which are lettuce and cauliflower plants; otherwise they will become spindling, from want of air. Hot-beds can now be made, for forcing asparagus for the table in January. If the ground is open, continue trenching for spring crops. When the ground is frozen, cart manure, repair fences, clean seeds, prepare tools for spring. Provide pea-sticks, bean-poles, &c., and finish all that will be required in the spring, and which can be done when the ground is frozen. FRUIT-GARDEN AND ORCHARD.--Finish those things which may have been omitted the previous month. If the weather continues open, digging and plowing may be done advantageously. Perform any work that may tend to forward your business in the spring. FLOWER-GARDEN AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS.--Continue to protect your beds of bulbs, and also flower-beds and shrubs as directed in last month. Should the weather continue open in the early part of this month, bulbs may still be planted. They should not be left as late as this, but if such has been the case, they had better be planted now than left until spring. Now carefully protect seedling bulbs. The more tender kinds of trees can have their roots protected from frost by laying manure or long litter about them. FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL NEWS. BY the steamship Caledonia, we are favored by the receipt of our European journals up to the 4th November. MARKETS.--_Ashes_, both pots and pearls, have advanced, and were brisk of sale. _Cotton_ had declined 1/8d. per lb. The recent advices from Bombay and Calcutta of the East India crop, were not quite so favorable. The stock of Cotton on hand at Liverpool on the 1st November, was 720,000 bales, against 520,000 at same period last season. _Flour_ was flat, and little doing in it. _Naval Stores_, declining. _Provisions_ were about the same as by our last advices, with the exception of Cheese, the finer qualities of which were of quick sale. _Tobacco_, steady and firm. _Money_ still plenty, and the low rates of interest prevail. _American Stocks_ continue nearly the same as at our last. Very few recent transactions. _Agricultural School._--We see by the Berwick Warder, that an Agricultural School is established in Aberdeenshire, by the practical farmers of that county, which promises to be a very useful institution. It is superintended by Mr. R. O. Young, and we like its arrangements better than anything of the kind we have yet seen. To explain these, we make a few quotations from the prospectus. The young gentlemen who may be intrusted to Mr. Young's charge for the purpose of being instructed in the principles and practice of Scottish agriculture, will have daily opportunities of witnessing the regular routine of farming operations going on at the farm, and of taking an active part in these operations. They will be required to keep, in a farm-book, a daily record of what has been done on the farm. Explanations will be given of the principles upon which the different operations are conducted, and upon which they will be examined at stated times. Regular minutes will be kept by the pupils of all such explanations, as well as of any facts that may come to their knowledge through their occasional intercourse with the farmers of the country. There will be stated times set apart for reading, as text-books, the most approved agricultural works of the day; and on the subjects of their reading Mr. Y. will minutely examine the young gentlemen, and will also require them to write exercises upon given agricultural topics--particularly those that bear on practice. While it will be Mr. Y.'s care to direct the attention of the pupils to chemistry and geology in their application to practical agriculture, a branch of study until lately very little attended to, he will make arrangements for procuring the services of the professor of agriculture in the University of Aberdeen, for a few weeks every summer, to give lectures and conduct experiments on the analysis of soils, manures, &c.--thus securing to the pupils more than a mere theoretical knowledge of this important branch of agricultural education. As nothing is so much calculated to impress any subject upon the youthful mind, as to invest it with a _personal interest_, Mr. Y. proposes to devote to the exclusive use of his pupils, a small farm, of about 50 acres in extent, adjoining to his other farm. This small farm contains a variety of soils, upon which experiments of different kinds may be conducted, on a small scale. It will be possessed and managed by the pupils, under Mr. Y.'s direction, and upon certain equitable rules as to each pupil's share of the concern. Each pupil will be required to keep regular books, exhibiting all disbursements and receipts, and the results of all experiments tried, with every particular connected with such experiments. Each pupil will be required to take his share of management, &c., and the profits of the concern, after paying a certain moderate rent, will, at each term, be divided among the young gentlemen, in proportion to their respective interests. It is conceived that such a plan will have a strong tendency to promote exactness, regularity, and business habits; but, without the consent of their parents or guardians, pupils will not be asked to join in this scheme. FARMERS' MAGAZINE.--_Meat-Salting Instrument._--The instrument resembles a common syringe of more than ordinary dimensions, and, although not quite so simple in its construction, it is intended to be used in the same way as the syringe, provided the point or tube be not exposed to the air. The advantages to be derived from the use of the instrument are explained by the fact that a joint of meat may, in the simplest manner, be properly salted in less than ten minutes. The brine is made of the usual ingredients, and after the salt and other substances are completely dissolved, the liquid is poured into the machine, and the nipple or tube (the circumference of which is perforated with three small holes) is inserted into the most solid part of a joint of meat, and the contents are, by a very strong pressure, forced through the fibres until the brine is seen to escape on the surface. For this purpose a smaller quantity of pickle is used than is employed in the ordinary method of curing meat, and the bone (if there be any,) in the centre becomes thoroughly impregnated with the fluid. By the present mode of salting meat, it is a matter of some difficulty to inject the brine into the innermost part of a large joint, whereas by the process which is adopted in the use of Mr. Carson's instrument, the size or substance of the meat presents no additional trouble to the operator. _Prince Albert's Annual Sale of Live Stock._--Since Prince Albert has turned farmer, he has an annual sale of his fat stock, and is said to realize from 50 to 60 per cent. profit on it. The last took place in October, at which time 417 sheep, 55 oxen, and 9 cows and heifers, were disposed of, realising him £1,743, (about $8,000;) a clever sum for fat sheep and cattle. _Produce of Ewes._--Count de Gourcey states in that part of his Agricultural Tour in Europe, just received, that Mr. Walker, manager of the late Duke of Gordon's estates, in Scotland, informed him that from 200 Leicester ewes, and as many Southdowns, they _bring up on an average_, 450 lambs. We wish we had possessed this information when writing our notes to Mr. Grove's letter in this paper, as it would have been something of an argument in our favor, regarding the difference of opinion existing between us about the number of lambs bred in the United States. NEW FARMERS' JOURNAL.--_Exportation of Cattle to Prussia._--One bull and eight heifers have been recently purchased in England, for the Royal Agricultural Society of Prussia. NETTING FOR SHEEP-FOLDS.--The fibre of the cocoa-nut is said to make the most durable netting for sheep-folds; it out-wearing several sets of tarred-hemp netting, and is so light, that a herdsman can with ease carry 200 yards of it. _Soiling._--Feeding animals in the summer-season with green food, cut daily, and given them in stalls or yards, is far preferable to grazing--First, because the food is consumed with less waste; secondly, because rest is an equivalent for food. The bodies of animals do not remain stationary, but are constantly wasting in proportion to the amount of exercise they undergo--hence, while they rove at large, they must receive from time to time new supplies in the shape of food, to make up for this waste, which are not needed when they are at rest, and consequently, by the system of soiling, less food will be required to fatten them. Thirdly, because by soiling there is an increase of valuable manure, which, by the old method of grazing, was nearly altogether lost. _American Provisions._--Within the last few days, 204 boxes of American cheese have been received in Liverpool. Every year the quality of the American cheese improves. Another article, which is arriving in very large quantities, is American lard, which is coming into use for many purposes for which salt and even fresh butter has been employed. Very excellent salted beef has come from the United States in considerable quantities. _Epidemic among Cattle._--This has broken out again in a most virulent shape in the north of England. JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE.--_Miller's Safety Reins._--These consist of gut covered with leather, and are, therefore, proof against fracture; and being round, and of neat light appearance, form a rather ornamental and sporting-like appendage to harness or saddle. They are mounted in this way:--They pass through a hook placed on the head of the harness-bridle, and through a leather loop on the head of the riding-bridle, and come down on each side of the neck. About middle-way down the neck is a coupling with two swivels, which receive the reins from the head, and they then pass through the dees of the harness, and through the turrets of the harness-saddle, and along to the front of the splashboard to a rein-holder, by which they are held always ready for use. The head of the horse and the turrets of the saddle being both higher than the throat, and the coupling being short, and having leave to traverse the reins on each side of the neck, it settles on that part of the throat at which the reins, on being pulled, exert the greatest force, when, the windpipe being forcibly compressed, the horse becomes affected in his respiration, and, therefore, stands still, or slackens his pace for breath, which he immediately obtains on the reins being slackened. Thus, feeling he is mastered, the horse shows no farther inclination to run off again; but in case he should renew symptoms of starting off, a few firm grips of the coupling on the throat will let him feel the futility of his attempts. In explanation of the origin of the invention, Mr. Miller stated that he was a farmer's son, and that, in his youth, he used to be employed at times to assist in catching horses at grass, by means of surrounding them with a rope, borne by a person at each end of it. He remarked that, in this service, although no restraint was laid upon the horses when the rope rested on their chests, yet, whenever it could be got upon their throats, they instantly stood still and allowed themselves to be taken. The idea which this recollection suggested, of the probable effect of pressure on the throat in stopping a runaway horse, led Mr. Miller to the contrivance of his safety-reins. In his first experiment, the band which connects the reins under the neck was attached to the headstall by hooks and straps; but it has been considered an improvement to allow it to move freely upon the reins, on which it settles in contact with the throat, in a proper position for use when required. Our communications with Mr. Miller impressed us favorably in regard to his contrivance; but, wishing to see it in practice we availed ourselves of an offer by him to afford us an opportunity of judging of it in operation. We, accordingly, on a day appointed, accompanied him in a carriage drawn by one horse, for the purpose of trial; and we witnessed as spectators, as well as made ourselves, repeated tests of the reins, with the horse going at a smart canter, both on a level road and on a descent, and we invariably observed that the tightening of the reins caused the horse immediately to stop. No injurious effect seemed to be produced on the horse by the interruption of his respiration. He always appeared to breathe freely, and to be ready to resume his work, as soon as the tension of the reins was relaxed. Upon the whole, therefore, we consider Mr. Miller's invention to be a neat and simple, as well as, to appearance, an effective contrivance for the accomplishment of its important object, in the prevention of the disastrous accidents which not unfrequently occur from horses running away; and we think it reflects much credit on the ingenuity of its inventor. GARDENERS' CHRONICLE.--_Rhododendron._--There is a variety of the Rhododendron ponticum growing here, which appears to be different from any of the others. It comes into flower about the same time as the others, but instead of unfolding its blossoms at the same rate as its neighbors, it only opens a few at a time, and continues long in flower. It did not cease flowering this season the whole month of August; consequently was nearly a month longer in bloom than the others. It has a southern exposure, and is sheltered from the north and east. _Blight on Grain from the Barberry._--In the Chronicle of August 19, under the head of "Vulgar Errors," we read as follows: "People still maintain that the barberry blights their grain." This is, nevertheless, a matter deserving attention; for in this, as in many other instances, a popular prejudice has been founded on truth, although the real cause has been often overlooked. Some writers have treated this subject with respect, and among them is Dr. Thornton. The latter says that the "leaves are very subject to the _rubigo_, which will infect the grain in the neighborhood." Here the secret is at once explained, and the aversion of farmers to the barberry-bush at once justified. The vulgar notion is, that the barberry exercises some evil agency upon grain within a certain distance, and accordingly farmers will never suffer it to grow near their fields. They are right as to the effect, but they attribute it to a wrong cause. I have seen some remarkable instances of grain perishing in a semicircle, in front of a barberry-bush, and extending a good way into a field. Any one who has but superficially noticed the barberry, must have observed that the leaves and young shoots of the shrub were covered with a peculiar kind of blight or mildew. Now it is by no means extraordinary that this should be carried by the wind into grain-fields, and infect the grain so as to cause its destruction. This is the true explanation of the mischief caused by the barberry to grain in its neighborhood. [This is the common explanation, but if any one will take the trouble to examine the parasitical plant which attacks the barberry, and that of grain, he will find that they are totally different things. One is the Æcidium Berberidis, and the other some species of Uredo or Puccinia, for it is sometimes one and sometimes the other. We should as soon believe that a hen's egg would be hatched into toads, as that the seed of an Æcidium would produce an Uredo or Puccinia. We are aware of the facts mentioned by Mr. Wighton, for we have seen them ourselves, and they form a curious problem yet to solve.] REVIEW OF THE MARKET. PRICES CURRENT IN NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 28, 1843. ASHES, Pots, per 100 lbs. $4 62 to $4 68 Pearls, do. 5 12 " 5 18 BACON SIDES, Smoked, per lb. 3½ " 4½ In pickle do. 3 " 4 BALE ROPE do. 6 " 9 BARK, Quercitron per ton 23 00 " 24 50 BARLEY per bush. 52 " 56 BEANS, White do. 1 12½ " 1 25 BEEF, Mess per bbl. 6 00 " 7 00 Prime do. 4 00 " 5 00 Smoked per lb. 6 " 7½ Rounds, in pickle do. 4 " 5½ BEESWAX, Am. Yellow do. 28 " 30 BOLT ROPE do. 12 " 13 BRISTLES, American do. 25 " 65 BUTTER, Table do. 12 " 15 Shipping do. 6 " 10 CANDLES, Mould, Tallow do. 9 " 12 Sperm do. 32 " 38 Stearic do. 20 " 25 CHEESE do. 4 " 7 CIDER BRANDY, Eastern per gal. 35 " 40 Western do. 28 " 35 CLOVER SEED per lb. 8½ " 9½ COAL, Anthracite 2000 lbs. 5 00 " 6 00 Sidney and Pictou per chal. 7 00 " 7 50 CORDAGE, American per lb. 11 " 12 CORN, Northern per bush. 56 " 58 Southern do. 54 " 56 COTTON per lb. 6 " 11 COTTON BAGGING, Amer. hemp per yard. 16 " 18 American Flax do. 15 " 16 FEATHERS per lb. 27 " 31 FLAX, American do. 8 " 8½ FLAX SEED, rough per 7 bush. 8 75 " 9 00 clean do. -- -- " -- -- FLOUR, Northern and Western per bbl. 4 56 " 4 75 Fancy do. 5 50 " 5 62½ Southern per bbl. 4 50 " 4 75 Richmond City Mills do. 5 50 " 5 62 Rye do. 3 00 " 3 12 HAMS, Smoked per lb. 5 " 7½ Pickled do. 4 " 5 HAY per 100 lbs. 40 " 45 HIDES, Dry Southern per lb. 9 " 11 HEMP, Russia, clean per ton. 185 00 " 190 00 American, water-rotted do. 140 00 " 180 00 do dew-rotted do. 90 00 " 140 00 HOPS per lb. 6 " 8 HORNS per 100 1 25 " 5 00 LARD per lb. 5½ " 7 LEAD do. 3½ " 4 Sheet and bar do. 4 " 4½ MEAL, Corn per bbl. 2 75 " 3 00 Corn per hhd. 12 50 " 13 00 MOLASSES, New Orleans per gal. 23 " 25 MUSTARD, American per lb. 16 " 31 OATS, Northern per bush. 30 " 32 Southern do. 26 " 28 OIL, Linseed, American per gal. 75 " 80 Castor do. 90 " 1 00 Lard do. 55 " 65 OIL CAKE per 100 lbs. 1 00 " -- -- PEAS, Field per bush. 1 25 " -- -- PITCH per bbl. 1 12½ " 1 37 PLASTER OF PARIS per ton. 2 00 " 2 25 Ground, in bbls. per cwt. 50 " -- -- PORK, Mess per bbl. 10 50 " 11 38 Prime do. 9 25 " 10 12 RICE per 100 lbs. 2 75 " 3 12 ROSIN per bbl. 65 " 95 RYE per bush. 65 " 66 SALT per sack 1 35 " 1 50 SHOULDERS, Smoked per lb. 3 " 4½ Pickled do. 3 " 4 SPIRITS TURPENTINE, Southern per gal. 38 " 40 SUGAR, New Orleans per lb. 6 " 7½ SUMAC, American per ton 25 00 " 27 50 TALLOW per lb. 7 " 7½ TAR per bbl. 1 25 " 1 50 TIMOTHY SEED per 7 bush. 13 00 " 14 00 TOBACCO per lb. 3 " 6½ TURPENTINE per bbl. 2 62 " 2 87 WHEAT, Western per bush. 1 00 " 1 05 Southern do. 90 " 1 00 WHISKEY, American per gal. 23 " 25 WOOL, Saxony per lb. 35 " 50 Merino do. 30 " 35 Half-blood do. 25 " 27 Common do. 18 " 22 ADVERTISEMENTS New York Cattle Market--November 27. At market, 1,150 beef Cattle, (110 from the south), 35 Cows and Calves, and 2,350 Sheep and Lambs. PRICES.--_Beef Cattle_ have slightly improved, and we quote $4.25 a $5 to $5.25 a $5.50 for the best. 1,101 unsold. _Cows and Calves._--All taken at $18 a $27. _Sheep and Lambs._--Sales of Lambs at $1 a $2, and of Sheep at 1.37½ a $3.50. 100 unsold. _Hay_.--Sales at 62½ a 75 cents per cwt. * * * * * REMARKS.--_Ashes_, since the late news from Europe, have been in good request. _Candles_, especially those made of stearic, are brisk. _Cotton_. The day after the arrival of the Caledonia with advices of a fall in England, this article receded nearly ¼ of a cent per lb.; but a brisk demand springing up for export, it has recovered, and is about the same now as before the reception of the late news. We hear nothing particularly new from the south regarding the picking, the weather upon the whole supposed to be more favorable. Export from the United States since 1st September last, 62,450 bales; same time last year, 113,301; same time year before, 99,904. _Flour_. The continued navigation on the canals, has brought us an unprecedented supply, and a large quantity has gone into store; a good business, however, continues to be done in it. The total arrivals this season have been 1,440,000 brls. _Rye-flour_ is dull. _Buckwheat_, very scarce and advancing. _Cornmeal_, dull. _Wheat_ is in good demand, and prices stiff. _Rye_, declining. _Barley_, _Oats_, and _Corn_, in fair demand. _Hemp_, dull. _Hops_, improving. _Molasses_, not much inquired for. _Beef_ and _Pork_, quiet, and little doing at present in them. _Lard_, much wanted. _Hogs_. Extreme rates now in Cincinnati are from $2.25 to $2.75; we are free to repeat, however, that we believe the first quality of hogs will be worth $3 by Christmas. _Rice_, of the better qualities, scarce. _Seeds_, especially Timothy, in good request. _Sugar_, quite inactive. _Tobacco_, fine Kentucky, scarce and wanted; stems, none in market. _Wool_ seems to have taken a fresh start again, and prices have an upward tendency. _Stocks_. A large business continues to be done in these, and they are still gradually advancing. _Money_ plenty, and seeking investment at the usual low rates. _Real Estate_ seems at last to have come into demand, and considerable sales in this species of property have recently taken place at good prices. It must henceforth advance. Our population and wealth have increased in an unprecedented ratio within the past four years, and there is no reason why real estate should remain at its late low prices, and transactions in it any longer stagnant. _Business generally_, the past season, has been extremely good; and we do not hesitate to say, few years can show a greater amount of substantial profits. We consider the days of darkness as passed, and we may now look forward to the future with the brightest anticipations. _Packing Pork._--On this subject we quote from the Cincinnati Chronicle of 22d November. For the benefit of our distant readers, who may be disposed to send their orders here for pork, we give below the pork-merchant's prices for _packing_ this season, based upon 60 cents per bushel for Turk-Island salt, 87½ cents for bbls., 28 cents per bushel for Kenhawa fine salt, and 75 cents to $1.50 per day, for laborers. For receiving, weighing, and cutting the hogs, a block-fee of 5 cents each. For packing per bbl., including all charges, $1.60 _a_ $1.75. For salting 100 lbs. in bulk, including saltpetre for the joints, $1.62 _a_ $1.75. Smoking per 1.000 lbs., including washing, $1.25. Rendering lard, 37 _a_ 50 cents per 100 lbs., which does not include the price of the keg or barrel--2 to 5 cents is also charged on each keg or barrel, for nailing the hoops, boring, weighing, and marking. The cooperage is charged at cost. TO CORRESPONDENTS. --A. B. Your package of Essays is sent to T. C. R. of P., as directed, and we have written you in full in it. The sheep-articles shall be condensed as you suggest, if we can possibly find room, and papers in any event sent to the gentlemen whose names are given. Good South-Downs, or Merinos, can be had from $10 to $20 each. It is not worth while to transport lower-priced animals such a distance. For Rambouillets, $30 to $50 each. See Mr. Collins' letter, Sept. No., page 166. Henry A. Field, J. W. Stuart, S. B. Parsons, James Bates, and D. K. Minor, in our next. ACKNOWLEDGMENT. --From some unknown friend, we have received a tin case containing two fine paintings of cattle, sheep, &c. We should be pleased to know to whom we are indebted for these, for no note accompanied them, and we can hardly guess. * * * * * BLACK GALLOWAY CATTLE. A pure-bred imported cow, and a bull of the Galloway or Kyloe breed of Scotch Highland cattle, are for sale in this vicinity. These animals are very fine of their kind, and were chosen from one of the most celebrated breeders of this stock in Scotland. The cow took several prizes at the agricultural shows before being shipped to this country, and gives a superior quality of milk. The bull is quite equal to the cow, and they will be sold at a reasonable price. Apply, post paid, to the Editor of this paper. * * * * * FARMING LANDS FOR SALE. For sale, about 500 acres of choice farming lands, lying on the Erie canal and Niagara river, 5 miles from Buffalo, and one mile below the Hydraulic Works in Black Rock. There is a due proportion of cleared and timber land, and the soil is equally adapted for grain, grass, and roots. Its proximity to an extensive and growing market, as well as the convenience, beauty, and healthfulness of the location, render this one of the most desirable situations in western New York. The most liberal credit will be given to purchasers. Address, post paid, R. L. ALLEN, 156 Main st., Buffalo. * * * * * LINNÆAN BOTANIC GARDEN AND NURSERY--LATE PRINCE'S. FLUSHING, L. I., NEAR NEW YORK. The New Descriptive Catalogue, not only of Fruit, but also of Ornamental Trees, Shrubs, and Plants, cultivated and for sale at this ancient and celebrated Nursery (known as Prince's, and by the above title for nearly fifty years), with directions for their culture, may be had _gratis_ on application to the new proprietors by mail, post paid. The collection at this establishment is unrivalled, and prices generally very much reduced; and the proprietors flatter themselves that the catalogue will be found to surpass in extent of information and usefulness, anything of the kind ever before presented to the public, and to be worthy of a permanent place in the library of the horticulturist. Orders will be promptly executed. WINTER & Co., Proprietors. Flushing, Oct. 24th, 1843. * * * * * A STOCK MAN WANTED TO GO SOUTH. A planter, in the state of Georgia, wishes to engage a faithful competent man to take charge of his stock. If he be married, and his wife be a good dairywoman, she will also find employment. The situation is in the interior of the country, and quite healthy. None need apply if above middle age, or who have not had some experience in their business in this country, and can bring the best of references. Address the Editor of this paper. * * * * * BUSINESS AGENCY. The Subscriber will attend promptly to the execution of all orders for the purchase of stock, agricultural implements, or merchandise of any kind; also the negotiation of loans, sales of lands, payment of taxes, &c. He has been more or less engaged in mercantile pursuits in this city for ten years, and has an extensive acquaintance with moneyed men, and a thorough knowledge of business in general. Cash or produce must invariably be in hand, before orders for purchases can be executed. A. B. ALLEN. 205 Broadway, New York. * * * * * CHEAP CASH BOOKSTORE, 205 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. Saxton & Miles, Publishers, and dealers in Books in every department of Literature, at very reduced prices for _cash_. S. & M. publish the following Book, which should be in every family in the United States: GUNN'S DOMESTIC MEDICINE, or the Poor Man's Friend. Among the many publications of more than doubtful utility, with which our presses groan, it is pleasant to offer to the public one which, while it can not injure the mental and moral powers, is capable of improving our health and prolonging our days. It is now about ten years since this work was first published, since which time it has passed through many large editions, and the astonishing number of _one hundred thousand_ copies has been sold in the southern and western states, and the demand is increasing. It has just been revised and corrected, containing 900 pages, and executed in superior style. People may be disposed to smile when we tell them that they can save money by purchasing this book, but we think we can satisfy them that such is the fact, In every family more or less is paid yearly for doctor's bills. A child is taken with a fever, or some other complaint, and from ignorance nothing is or can be done effectually to check it. The physician is called, and a large bill is contracted; whereas, had GUNN'S DOMESTIC MEDICINE been on hand, a remedy could easily have been found which would have checked the disease in its first stage, and not only have saved the purse, but perhaps the life. * * * * * American Agriculturist Almanac for 1844. This work comprises 64 pages, double columns octavo, with numerous wood cuts, price $8 per hundred, 12½ cents each. In the contents will be found--Agricultural Statistics of the United States--Aspects and Nodes--Astronomical Calendars for Montreal, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and New Orleans--Characters and Names of the Planets, &c.--Farmers' Northern Calendars, with particular directions for the management of the Farm, Cattle, Fruit and Flower Garden, &c.--Southern Calendars for the Planter and Farmer, with explicit directions for the culture and harvesting of Cotton, Rice, Tobacco, &c., &c. THE AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. Published Monthly, each number containing 32 pages, royal octavo. TERMS--One Dollar per year in advance; single numbers, Ten Cents; three copies for Two Dollars; eight copies for Five Dollars. Each number of the Agriculturist contains but One sheet, subject to newspaper postage only, which is _one cent_ in the State, or within 100 miles of its publication, and _one and a half cents_, if over 100 miles, without the State. ADVERTISEMENTS will be inserted at One Dollar, if not exceeding twelve lines, and in the same proportion, if exceeding that number. [Symbol] _Remit through Postmasters, as the law allows._ Editors of Newspapers noticing the numbers of this work monthly, or advertising it, will be furnished a copy gratis, upon sending such notice to this Office. Volume I of THE AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, with table of contents complete, for sale at $1; handsomely bound in cloth, $1 25. It is a neat and tasteful book, and makes a handsome premium for distribution with Agricultural Societies; to which, when several copies are ordered, a liberal discount will be made. [Symbol] To prevent confusion, all letters merely ordering this work, or enclosing money for subscriptions, should be addressed to Saxton & Miles, 205 Broadway, post-paid or franked by the Postmaster. Communications for publication, to be directed to the Editor; and all _private_ letters, or those on business disconnected with the paper, should be addressed, simply, A. B. Allen, 205 Broadway. New York. * * * * * STOCK FOR SALE. R. H. Hendrickson & Co., of Middletown, Butler county, Ohio, will promptly attend to orders for Short-Horn Cattle, Bakewell, Merino, South-Down, and Saxon Sheep; also for Berkshire pigs from Windsor Castle, imported from England, and twenty choice Berkshire sows, a part of which were also imported. Windsor Castle stands 3 feet high, and is estimated by competent judges to weigh 1000 lbs. Pigs of crosses with the imported Kenilworth, the large Miami, Byfield, and Grazier stocks, will likewise be furnished. None but choice specimens of any of the above stock will be supplied, and at prices corresponding with the times. Address, post paid, as above. Oct. 12th, 1843. R. H. HENDRICKSON & Co. AGENTS FOR THE AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. John Halsall, Bookseller, St. Louis, Mo. G. S. Taintor, Bookseller, Natchez, Miss. S. F. Gale & Co., Chicago, Ill. John J. Herrick, Detroit, Mich. J. B. Steele, New Orleans. C. M. Hovey, Boston, Mass. Saxton, Peirce, & Co., Boston. Arthur D. Phelps, Boston. R. H. Hendrickson, Middletown, Ohio Andrew Campbell. E. Cornell, Ithaca, N. Y. H. Kirkland, Northampton, Mass. John Bonner, White Plains, Georgia. * * * * * CONTENTS OF DECEMBER NUMBER. EDITORIAL. Page. Fattening Poultry, 321 Fertility of Sea-Mud, 322 Sketches of the West, No. 2, 323 Breeds of Fowls, } 325 New York Farmers' Club, } Next Annual Show of the State Ag. Society, 327 Tour in England, No. 15, 328 Agricultural Shows, 330 Sale of Rambouillet Merinos, } Price of Sheep Dogs, } Annual Meeting of the New York State Ag. Society, } 332 List of Premiums of the American Institute (continued), } Foreign Agricultural News, 349 Review of the Market, } To Correspondents, } 351 Acknowledgment, } Terms and list of Agents, 352 EXTRACTS. Making Capons, 334 Grafting and Budding, 335 High Cranberry, 339 ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. H. D. Grove, Fine-Wool Sheep, 340 R. B. C, Sea-Mud as a Fertilizer, 341 Henry Meigs, Farm of Hugh Maxwell, Esq., 342 Robert L. Wright, Mediterranean Wheat, } C. McD., Topping Cotton-Marl, } 343 R. L. Allen, Hints on the Cultivation of Wheat, 344 S. A., A Pennsylvania Dairy, 346 Wm. Partridge, Reply to the Gardeners' Chronicle, } 347 Amer. Ag. Almanac, Southern Calendar for December, } do. do. Northern do. do. 348 Transcribers notes: A mixture of archaic and modern spelling is used. For example; visiters and visitors. This is retained. Inconsistent hyphenation is retained. Italics are shown thus: _sloping_. Small capitals have been capitalised. 
4509	----	version by Al Haines. THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY BY BOLTON HALL AUTHOR OF "THINGS AS THEY ARE," "THRIFT," ETC. REVISED EDITION _"A sower went out to sow and he sowed that which was in his heart--for what can a man sow else!"_ From "THE GAME OF LIFE." Or, as the Vulgate has it,-- _"Exitt qui seminat seminare semen suum."_ NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918 All rights reserved._ Copyright 1907 and 1918 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1907. Reprinted April, July, 1907; March, 1908; June, September, 1910; April, 1912; April 1914. New edition, revised February, 1918. FOREWORD We are not tied to a desk or to a bench; we stay there only because we think we are tied. In Montana I had a horse, which was hobbled every night to keep him from wandering; that is, straps joined by a short chain were put around his forefeet, so that he could only hop. The hobbles were taken off in the morning, but he would still hop until he saw his mate trotting off. This book is intended to show how any one can trot off if he will. It is not a textbook; there are plenty of good textbooks, which are referred to herein. Intensive cultivation cannot be comprised in any one book. It shows what is needed for a city man or woman to support a family on the proceeds of a little bit of land; it shows how in truth, as the old Book prophesied, the earth brings forth abundantly after its kind to satisfy the desire of every living thing. It is not necessary to bury oneself in the country, nor, with the new facilities of transportation, need we, unless we wish to, pay the extravagant rents and enormous cost of living in the city. A little bit of land near the town or the city can be rented or bought on easy terms; and merchandising will bring one to the city often enough. Neither is hard labor needed; but it is to work alone that the earth yields her increase, and if, although unskilled, we would succeed in gardening, we must attend constantly and intelligently to the home acres. Every chapter of this book has been revised by a specialist, and the authors wish to express their appreciation of the aid given them, particularly by Mr. E. H. Moore, Arboriculturist in the Brooklyn Department of Parks; Mr. Collingwood of the Rural New Yorker and Mr. George T. Powell; and to thank Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, and also Mr. Joseph Morwitz, for many valuable suggestions; also all those from whom we have quoted directly or in substance. We have endeavored in the text to give full acknowledgment to all, but in some cases it has been impossible to credit to the originator every paragraph or thought, since these have been selected and placed as needed, believing that all true teachers and gardeners are more anxious to have their message sent than to be seen delivering it. In truth, teaching is but another department of gardening. Practical points and criticisms from practical men and women, especially from those experiences in trying to get to the land, will be welcomed by the authors. Address in care of the publishers. The Report of the Country Life Commission, with Special Message from the President of the United States, is especially important as showing the connection of Intensive Cultivation with Thrift for war time. It tells us that: "The handicaps (on getting out of town) that we now have specially in mind may be stated under four heads: Speculative holding of lands; monopolistic control of streams; wastage and monopolistic control of forests; restraint of trade. "Certain landowners procure large areas of agricultural land in the most available location, sometimes by questionable methods, and hold it for speculative purposes. This not only withdraws the land itself from settlement, but in many cases prevents the development of an agricultural community. The smaller landowners are isolated and unable to establish their necessary institutions or to reach the market. The holding of large areas by one party tends to develop a system of tenantry and absentee farming. The whole development may be in the direction of social and economic ineffectiveness. "A similar problem arises in the utilization of swamp lands. According to the reports of the Geological Survey, there are more than 75,000,000 acres of swamp land in this country, the greater part of which are capable of reclamation at probably a nominal cost as compared to their value. It is important to the development of the best type of country life that the reclamation proceed under conditions insuring subdivision into small farms and settlement by men who would both own them and till them. "Some of these lands are near the centers of population. They become a menace to health, and they often prevent the development of good social conditions in very large areas. As a rule they are extremely fertile. They are capable of sustaining an agricultural population numbering many millions, and the conditions under which these millions must live are a matter of national concern. The Federal Government should act to the fullest extent of its constitutional powers in the reclamation of these lands under proper safeguards against speculative holding and landlordism. "The rivers are valuable to the farmers as drainage lines, as irrigation supply, as carriers and equalizers of transportation rates, as a readily available power resource, and for raising food fish. The wise development of these and other uses is important to both agricultural and other interests; their protection from monopoly is one of the first responsibilities of government. The streams belong to the people; under a proper system of development their resources would remain an estate of all the people, and become available as needed. "River transportation is not usually antagonistic to railway interests. Population and production are increasing rapidly, with corresponding increase in the demands made on transportation facilities. It may be reasonably expected that the river will eventually carry a large part of the freight that does not require prompt delivery, while the railway will carry that requiring expedition. This is already foreseen by leading railway men; and its importance to the farmer is such that he should encourage and aid, by every means in his power, the large use of the rivers. The country will produce enough business to tax both streams and railroads to their utmost. "In many regions the streams afford facilities for power, which, since the inauguration of electrical transmission, is available for local rail lines and offers the best solution of local transportation problems. In many parts of the country local and interurban lines are providing transportation to farm areas, thereby increasing facilities for moving crops and adding to the profit and convenience of farm life. However, there seems to be a very general lack of appreciation of the possibilities of this water-power resource as governing transportation costs. "The streams may be also used as small water power on thousands of farms. This is particularly true of small streams. Much of the labor about the house and barn can be performed by transmission of power from small water wheels running on the farms themselves or in the neighborhood. This power could be used for electric lighting and for small manufacture. It is more important that small power be developed on the farms of the United States than that we harness Niagara. "Unfortunately, the tendency of the present laws is to encourage the acquisition of these resources on easy terms, or on their own terms, by the first applicants, and the power of the streams is rapidly being acquired under conditions that lead to the concentration of ownership in the hands of the monopolies. This constitutes a real and immediate danger, not to the country-life interests alone, but to the entire nation, and it is time that the whole people become aroused to it. "The forests have been exploited for private gain not only until the timber has been seriously reduced, but until streams have been ruined for navigation, power, irrigation, and common water supplies, and whole regions have been exposed to floods and disastrous soil erosion. Probably there has never occurred a more reckless destruction of property that of right should belong to all the people. "The wood-lot property of the country needs to be saved and increased. Wood-lot yield is one of the most important crops of the farms, and is of great value to the public in con trolling streams, saving the run-off, checking winds, and adding to the attractiveness of the region. [Taken up in a special chapter of this book.] "In many regions where poor and hilly lands prevail, the town or county could well afford to purchase forest land, expecting thereby to add to the value of the property and to make the forests a source of revenue. Such communal forests in Europe yield revenue to the cities and towns by which they are owned and managed." These revenues would furnish good roads even in the poorest and most sparsely settled districts. There are a number of other reasons why people do not like to live outside of cities--or do not succeed in farm work. There is the difficulty of finding help. This, however, rejoices the heart of the modern sociologist. Consider--we first teach our children independence and train them for everything but farm help or household services. Then we degrade the "help" below a mill "hand" so that people will not even sit at table with them at an hotel. Next we fix a theory of conduct for them that keeps them constantly under orders and pay them wages that make it hardly possible for them to rise above the station to which we have appointed them. Finally, when we move away from the haunts of men out to Sandtown-by-the-Puddle we blame them that they do not rush to join us. Most of them would be happier in penal servitude than in the country. The work is as hard and requires as much skill as a mechanic's work, besides personal qualities that are demanded of no mechanic, and commands half its wages. Those who, like Henry Ford, can afford to pay mechanics' wages for help can get all they want. Many people go to the country without plan, preparation, or vocation, to make a living. They usually start to build a bungalow but seldom get further than the bungle. Don't build anything without plan. Get a comfortable house proof against cold and heat as soon as possible and, above all, well ventilated. At present the air in the country is good, because the farmers shut all the bad air up in their bedrooms. They say "The farmer works from sun to sun For the summer's work is never done." We might add, it's never even half done--naturally. A donkey engine can work like that, but then it hasn't any brains. No man can work from sun to sun all summer and think at all or be good for anything at the end of it. Above all things don't work long hours, even in learning, with the idea of saving that way. All up-to-date employers are agreed that an eight-hour day produces more and better results than a ten-hour day and that a twelve-hour day brings sheriffs and suicides instead of profits. That's just as true of the individual worker as it is of the factory "hand." Yet most men and a few women proudly say that they "work like a horse" (it's usually not true). They don't; a horse won't work and can't work over eight hours a day steadily. Neither can you: you may keep buzzing around much longer--but the best work requires the best conditions and the best hours. You think, or you flatter yourself that you think, that it is necessary; but nothing is necessary that is stupid and wrong. It is hardly too much to say that when we are tired out or ill either we have been doing the wrong thing or doing it wrong. There is besides, as an anti-rusticant, railroad discrimination in favor of long hauls, but the main reason that the small farms of the Eastern Coast are less settled than those farther west is the great difficulty in getting farm loans or loans on farm buildings. New York companies and others in the great cities will loan on farms west of the Alleghenies, but even the otherwise excellent eastern Building Loan Associations usually restrict themselves to places within twenty-five miles of a city. The Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society will help approved Jewish farmers to buy and build: and there is a Federal Land Bank in Springfield, Mass., which lends to some Farmers' Associations, of which some four thousand are already formed. It is hoped that the State Land Bank of New York City may improve the situation in New York for Farmers' Organizations, but "generally nearly all available funds of the local banks seem to be drawn off for investments in Wall Street." However, it is not to be forgotten that this difficulty is reflected in the lower prices of eastern Land. One more thing that keeps many people from the country and drives some people back to the city is the mosquito (of course there are mosquitoes in town, but we are not out as much, so we notice them less). Mosquitoes breed or rather we breed them, in still water in which there are no fish, in pools, hollows in trees, wells, etc., and above all in old tin cans. They can no more breed without water than sharks could. Mosquitoes do not breed in grass, but rank growths of weeds or grass may conceal small breeding puddles, and form a favorite nursery for Mamma Skeet. A teacupful of water standing ten days is enough for 250 wrigglers; their needs are modest. Different species of mosquitoes have as well-defined habits as other birds and are classified as follows: Domestic, Migratory, and Woodland. The common domestic or pet species breed in fresh water, usually in the house yard, fly comparatively short distances, and habitually enter houses. They winter in cellars, barns, and outhouses. Some of them are conveyors of malaria. The Migratory Species breed on the salt marshes, fly long distances, do not habitually enter houses, and are not carriers of diseases so far as known. Certain varieties of Woodland Mosquitoes breed only in woodland pools, appearing in the early spring, and travel a greater distance than the domestic species. They are not usually troublesome indoors. It has been proved that malaria is transmitted only by certain species of Anopheles, one of which is the domestic mosquito. Eliminate this one species of mosquito and the disease will disappear as a direct consequence. So if you hear that pretty little song in the house, don't swear, thank the Lord that effects always follow causes. You need never be without a bite in the house if you have a nice cesspool handy for Sis Mosquito, for each one will have a first-class feed with you every second or third day. They are needless and dangerous pests or pets. Their propagation can be prevented by draining or filling wet areas, by emptying or screening water receptacles, and by spraying with oil where better measures are not available. Oil should be sprinkled in any cesspools, sewers, and catch basins, rain barrels, water troughs, roof gutters, marshes, swamps, and puddles that cannot be done away with. All ponds and large bodies of water should have clean sharp edges, because in shallow, grassy edges larvae of the malarial species are commonly found. Large ponds with clean edges, inhabited by fish or predatory insects, are safe; smaller ponds, if wind swept, and all ponds in the "ripple area" are safe. All rain pools, stagnant gutters, overgrown edges of large ponds, and all receptacles holding water not constantly renewed, are dangerous. You raise most of your own mosquitoes. Now a word specially concerning this revised edition. The farm papers are supported mainly by men with large acreage, it is the rise in value of these acres more than the rise in farm products that has pulled the land-owning farmers out of the hole that they were in up to about the year 1900. Farmers' knowledge, liking, and equipment was for big fields, half cultivated, and at first they did not like to hear that they had been wasting so much of the labor that had bent their backs. Nor did they want to hear that it would have been far more profitable to them to have cultivated a few acres and left the goats and hogs or sheep to attend to the rest as wild land until the long-expected settlers came along to buy the land at dreamland prices. Consequently, all the faults in the book there were, and some more besides, have been picked out by these critics. It is surprising as well as a notable compliment to the agricultural experts who revised the first edition that, with one exception, no material error or omission has been pointed out. The more so because there is absolutely no limit to the advances in methods and results in doing things, and in growing things, all born of intelligent toil. Your suggestions may help the world to better and bigger things. If you will listen at the 'phone you may sometime hear a conversation like this: "Hello, this is Mrs. Wise, send me two strawberries, please." "You'd better take three, Madam, I've none larger than peaches to-day." "All right; good-bye." You may sometime see that kind of strawberry in New Jersey at Kevitt's Athenia, or Henry Joralamon's, or in the berry known by various names, such as Giant and different Joe's. But lots of people have failed in their war garden work even on common things; lots more ought to have failed but haven't--yet. Years ago, we, the book and its helpers, started the forward-to-the-land movement which has resulted in probably two million extra garden patches this war year. I have had carloads of letters, at least hand carloads, about the book, but not one worker who even tried to follow its counsels has reported failure. So don't let us have a wail from you because your "garden stuff never comes up." Of course it doesn't; you have to bring it up, just like a baby. That's what I've been crying for long years in the wilderness ever since the first edition of this book. The Three Acres may be bought on credit but eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty and crops. To raise good crops costs time and attention and sweat of body and of brains. Here is a chunk of wisdom out of the excellent Garden Primer (which you can get free by asking me for it): "One hour a day spent in a garden ten yards long by seven wide will supply vegetables enough for a family of six"; but the value of this remark lies in the application of it. If you figure a bit on that you will find that ten minutes a day will provide enough for one person, but six hours once a week won't do. Six hours a day will bring up a baby; but two days a week is criminal neglect for the other five days. If you once let the weeds get a good start, say after a rain, they will make even the angels swear. It's regular attention that the baby and the garden and your education and your best girl will require. If you want more minute instructions about how to grow each vegetable, put in words that anybody can understand without getting a headache or a dictionary, look up "The Garden Yard" by the Author. It is in nearly all libraries now, and it is the only book that makes perfectly plain everything that a plain man needs to know about growing plain things. So there is little to add in this new edition except to reinforce what was not strong enough. In the present jumping market to revise the prices quoted would be absurd, but it may be noted that, as in the prices of 'cowers, the minimum prices are still about correct, but the maximum prices have jumped almost out of sight. Every year there are more and more very wealthy people who will pay nearly any price for the very best. The world seems to be dividing into those who have to count their pennies and those who couldn't count their thousands. Of course, where war has prohibited the importation of the strong bulbs and roots needed for forcing flowers, the prices are about what any one who has any chooses to ask. Monopoly can always get its own price. This New Edition does not attempt to bring prices quoted up to date. In these times not even a stock exchange telegraph ticker can do that. Prices of goods in general have advanced at least 80 per cent. By the day that this book is off the press they may have decreased, or more likely advanced some more. The next day they may slump. Prices of labor advance more slowly and do not slump so fast. Wages of men gardeners have risen perhaps 50 per cent in the last ten years, but women and children have learned to do much of the work. They do the work cheaper because most of them have some one on whom they can partly depend for support. Similarly, when an example of total product given in the earlier edition is still typical and has stood investigation, it is not discarded in favor of a more modern instance. It would have been easy to have revised all the figures, but of little advantage to our readers. For example, it is encouraging to the citizen to know that the average wheat yield per acre has increased more than two bushels since the first edition of this book, but it would not help the garden maker. The increase of possible products tends to counterbalance the increased cost of labor. So only the musty parts have been cut out of the book, which is more needed now than ever. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I: Making a Living--Where and How Chapter II: Present Conditions Chapter III: How To Buy The Farm Chapter IV: Vacant City Lot Cultivation Chapter V: Results To Be Expected Chapter VI: What An Acre May Produce Chapter VII: Some Methods Chapter VIII: The Kitchen Garden Chapter IX: Tools And Equipment Chapter X: Advantages From Capital Chapter XI: Hotbeds And Greenhouses Chapter XII: Other Uses Of Land Chapter XIII: Fruits Chapter XIV: Flowers Chapter XV: Drug Plants Chapter XVI: Novel Live Stock Chapter XVII: Where To Go Chapter XVIII: Clearing The Land Chapter XIX: How To Build Chapter XX: Back To The Land Chapter XXI: Coming Profession For Boys Chapter XXII: The Wood Lot Chapter XXIII: Some Practical Experiments Chapter XXIV: Some Experimental Foods Chapter XXV: Dried Truck Chapter XXVI: Home Cold Pack Canning Chapter XXVII: Retail Cooperation Chapter XXVIII: Summer Colonies For City People CHAPTER I MAKING A LIVING--WHERE AND HOW By thought and courage, we can help ourselves to own a home, surrounded by acres of fruit and vegetables, flowers and poultry, and learn the best methods so as to insure success. In olden times any one could "farm," but it is necessary to-day to teach people to obtain a livelihood directly from the earth. Scientific methods of agriculture have revealed possibilities in the soil that make farming the most fascinating occupation known to man. People in every city are longing for the freedom of country life, yet hesitate to enter into its liberty because no one points the way. Most sociologists are agreed that the great problem of our day is to stop the drift of population toward the cities. Seeing the overcrowding, the want and misery of our great towns, the philanthropist chimes in with "Get the people to the country, that is the need." But there is no such need. Man is a social animal, he naturally goes in flocks, he earns more and learns more in crowds. To transport him to the country, even if he would stay, which happily he won't, would be to doctor a symptom. As in typhoid, what is needed is not to suppress the fever, that is easy, but to remove the cause of it. It is not the growth of the cities that we want to check, but the needless want and misery in the cities, and this can be done by restoring the natural condition of living, and among other things, by showing that it is easier and making it more attractive to live in comfort on the outskirts of the city as producers, than in the slums as paupers. We know already that the natural and healthy life is, that in the sweat of our faces we should eat bread. We observe that everything we eat or use or make comes from the earth by labor; but no one knows how abundantly the Mother can supply her children. It is well said that no man yet knows the capacity of a square yard of earth. The farmer thinks that he has done well if he gets a hundred and fifty or two hundred bushels of potatoes from an acre; he does not know that others have gotten 1284 bushels. ("Mr. Knight, whose name is well known to every horticulturist in England, Once dug out of his fields no less than 1284 bushels of potatoes, or thirty-four tons and nine hundreds weight (about 34 bushels to the ton), on a single acre; and at a recent competition in Minnesota, 1120 bushels, or thirty tons, could be ascertained as having been grown on one acre." P. Kropotkin's "Fields, Factories and Workshops," page 114.) Let us realize what an acre means. An acre is a square about 209 feet each way, 4840 square yards of land. A New York City avenue block is about 200 feet long from house corner to house corner. It has eight city lots 25 X 100 in its front; about double that space (17-2/5 lots) makes an acre. An ordinary one-horse cart holds twenty bushels, so then a full crop of potatoes from that space would fill 56 carts. To raise potatoes as an ordinary farmer raises them, requires him to go over the ground not less than a dozen times, plowing, harrowing, marking, planting, cultivating, three times weeding, three times for bugs, and digging; it would pay him to go over it much oftener. If he plants his rows of potatoes three feet apart, to allow for horse cultivation, he has 69 rows of 200 feet each; which makes him walk at least thirty-three miles over each acre. If he has a twenty-acre lot in potatoes, he walks each year more than 650 miles over the field and gets, let us say, 150 bushels of poor potatoes per acre, or 3000 bushels off his twenty-acre field. Now suppose he cultivates the soil, instead of just "raising a crop," and gets 600 bushels of fine potatoes to the acre, he need plant only five acres, walk only 200 miles, and, because his potatoes are choice and early, get many times the price that his pedestrian neighbor gets. It is much easier to grow 200,000 lb. of feed on one acre than to grow them on ten acres. To cultivate is to watch the soil as you would watch your cooking and to tend the crop as you would tend your animals. The crop is as alive as the stock and as easily gets sick. If an ordinary farmer rents 60 acres at $5.00 per acre, a moderate rent for good land, he pays out in cash $300, besides farm wages. If he buys it, his interest and taxes will amount to nearly as much; but if he tills but five acres intelligently, he can get as much out of it as out of an ordinary farm, and even if his rent be as high as $30 per acre for well situated land, he is $150 to the good; besides, doing the work himself, he has no drain of capital for wages. Large barns and shelter for help being unnecessary, he can live in a cheap shack till he accumulates enough for proper buildings. Many of the successful vacant lot farmers live in a tent or in shanties made of old boxes and such like. Of course, if we have the knowledge and ability and the capital and can give it the attention, it is more profitable to cultivate on a large scale than on a small one, because in that case each worker necessarily produces more than he gets as wages--and we pocket the difference. Most American farmers are holding land that somebody ought to pay them a bonus for working, else they must come out of the little end of the horn. They get poor or poorly situated land, because it costs less, and then put three or four hundred dollars' worth of labor and money a year into the land and take out four or five hundred dollars' worth of crops. The farmer thinks he must have big fields to feed his cattle, and that he must have cattle to keep the big fields fertilized, so he raises hay. In that he makes two mistakes; hay, like most other low-priced crops, is risky--the cost of harvesting is high and the margin of profit small. A week of wet weather at cutting time or the impossibility of getting enough men and machines in the week when it should be cut, may make a loss. But the scientific dairy man does not take that risk, nor let his cattle use up this fodder by wandering over the fields in search of tid-bits of grass or clover, or, goaded by the flies, trampling more grass than they eat and wasting their manure. He keeps the cows in cool sheds, feeds them on cut fodder, and saves every ounce of the manure. The modern cow is a ruminating machine for producing milk and cares little for exercise and needs little. To exploit the cattle as employers exploit the factory hands, he gives the cows a cool, shady place and food, and they stand there all day long to their profit and his. (United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 22 says: "The New Jersey Experiment Station has been conducting a practical trial in soiling dairy cows for a number of years past, and finds that complete soiling is entirely practicable, i.e. that green foliage crops may serve as the sole food of the dewy herd, aside from the grain ration, without injury to the animals and with a considerable saving in the cost of milk. "Under the soiling system a large number of animals can be kept upon a given acreage and by allowing open-air exercises in a large yard or pasture the practice has been demonstrated as entirely feasible for dairy animals. "One acre of soiling crops produced sufficient fodder for an equivalent of 3 cows for six months. Rye, corn, crimson clover, alfalfa, oats and peas, and millets have been found to furnish food more economically than any other green crops in that locality. A grain rotation was always fed in addition to the soiling crops.") Although we can feed a cow on less than an acre by raising forage crops, she needs to be milked every day at regular hours, and the milk, as well as the cans and the cow, need to be cared for--and she cannot wait. The stock-raiser has a different proposition; he needs fields and grass; but if time and available labor is limited, we had better specialize on the garden--unlike the farmers. The farmers are not to blame that they do not usually cultivate the land intelligently. They are mostly cut off from the educational advantages of the cities by distance and by bad roads. Usually, that is because, desirable land being held at speculative prices, they are forced to places where the farm itself is worth less than the good improvements on it cost. Sometimes it is because, also, the land is poor or worn out; more often because it is thoughtlessly managed, nearly always because the land-hungry farmer has taken ten times as much land as he needs for farming. In the hope of a rise that often does not come, nearly all have bought more land than they can take good care of with limited capital and scarcity of help. In addition, the farms have held out such poor prospects of fortune that the smarter and more enterprising boys and girls have left them for the towns, leaving behind the duller and more conservative to the mercy of the railroads and other monopolies. What wonder, then, that the overworked and struggling farmer finds little chance to study, or to investigate and invest in fertilizers or even in modern methods of agriculture. No wonder farming does not pay if a "farmer" means a stupid man with neither training for, nor knowledge of, his business. Those who have the knowledge seldom have the experience and those who have the experience seldom have the knowledge. The bonanza farms of the West are other samples of great areas of the most productive land in the United States being used most unscientifically. By the methods used, the land produces less per acre than land in the East which is not so good. Accordingly, we find that the bonanza farm plan, where great areas of wheat are worked by machines with labor employed only in the seed time and harvest, is rapidly breaking up. As the land becomes valuable and is taxed, such wasteful, wholesale methods do not pay as well as it pays to rent or sell the land to farmers, who each for themselves attend to details of the business. Consequently, most of those farms are being sold off. The whole amount of wheat ever raised on them, however, is small compared to the rice, millet, and wheat raised in China, India, and Russia, and is insignificant compared to the amount of produce grown on the myriad little farm plots. A comparison of productions as taken from the 12th and 13th United States Censuses in the bonanza farm states shows that the yield of wheat was: while New England shows 23.5 bu. per acre. In 1899 In 1909 Minnesota 14.5 bu. per acre 17.4 North Dakota 13.5 bu. per acre 14.3 South Dakota 10.5 bu. per acre 14.6 By 1917 these largely increased, but the differences remain. "The average extent of land tilled by one family in Japan does not exceed one hectare" (2.471 acres), less than two and a half acres. ("Japan in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century," page 89. Published by the Department of Agriculture and Commerce of Japan.) "Farm households contain on an average 5.8 persons, of whom two and a half persons per family may be regarded of an age capable of doing effective work." "So that here we have more than one person working on each acre and each acre supporting more than two persons, notwithstanding that their 22,000,000 tenant farmers pay sometimes four fifths of their product as rent." (Same, page 103.) Denmark, one of the best agricultural countries and probably one of the happiest communities on earth, reported 1,900 farms of 250-300 acres, 74,000 farms averaging 100 acres, 150,000 farms averaging 7 to 10 acres, 1,050 cooperative dairies, and so on. And so impressed has the ruling class there become with the advantage of this that the Government will supply the poor worker nine tenths of the means necessary to buy a small farm. Says Kropotkin, "the small island of Jersey, eight miles long and less than six miles wide, still remains a land of open field culture; but, although it comprises only 28,707 acres (nearly 45 square miles), rocks included, it nourishes a population of about two inhabitants to each acre, or 1300 inhabitants to the square mile, and there is not one writer on agriculture who, after having paid a visit to this island, does not praise the well-being of the Jersey peasants and the admirable results which they obtain in their small farms of from five to twenty acres--very often less than five acres--by means of a rational and intensive culture. "Most of my readers will probably be astonished to learn that the soil of Jersey, which consists of decomposed granite, with no organic matter in it, is not at all of surprising fertility, and that its climate, though more sunny than the climate of the British Isles, offers many drawbacks on account of the small amount of sun heat during the summer and of the cold winds in spring." ("The successes accomplished lately in Jersey are entirely due to the amount of labor which a dense population is putting on the land; to a system of land-tenure, land-transference, and inheritance very different from those which prevail elsewhere; to freedom from State taxation; and to the fact that communal institutions have been maintained down to quite a recent period, while a number of communal habits and customs of mutual support, derived there-from, are alive to the present time." ("Fields, Factories and Workshops.") "It will suffice to say that on the whole the inhabitants of Jersey obtain agricultural products to the value of $250 to each acre of the aggregate surface of land." (Same, page 113.)) In a small plot the character of the soil is of little consequence. We hear of one garden in New York City on the roof of a big building where the janitor smuggled up the needed soil in baskets. The school gardens in New York City, some in a space as small as a hearth rug, one yard by two, show how to use a very small patch of land to the best advantage. Nor need it take more time than you can afford. "Some of the cultivators of city lots on Long Island who kept count of the number of days they worked, show the surprising conclusion that they earned, not farm wages (seventy-five cents a day with board and lodging for the worker), but mechanics' wages (four dollars per day) for every working day; as, for instance, a stone-cutter, assisted by his two boys, worked fifty hours and made $120.23." ("Cultivation of Vacant Lots, New York," page 12); and four city lots is a very little farm. But though one may not own even a little farm, almost any one who wants to can have a home garden--it needs but a small plot of land. Nor need we be discouraged because acquaintances who play at gardening tell us that their vegetables cost them more than if they bought them. They naturally would, with thoughtless methods of cultivation, with the selection of crops and the purchase of seeds left to an uneducated man who does all his work the way he saw his grandfather do it. Nor are we to be discouraged even by the "gentleman farmer" who runs a model farm, a model of how not to do it, for, notwithstanding its large capital, it seldom pays. I am passing such a farm now as I write in the train--it is surrounded by a cut stone wall. Do you suppose the owner business would pay if it were run in the same way that his farm is run? We know the story of the white sparrow to find which would bring luck to the farm--but it was out only at daybreak; the farmer got up each morning to find the sparrow and found a lot of other things to attend to, which did bring luck to the farm. I don't think the owner of that wall worked at it, at daybreak. The time is not far distant when the builders of homes in our American cities will be compelled to leave room for a garden, in order to meet the requirements of the people In the mad rush for wealth we have overlooked the natural state, but we see a healthy reaction setting in. With the improvements in steam and electricity, the revolutionizing of transportation, the cutting of the arbitrary telephone charges, it is becoming possible to live at a distance from our business. May we not expect in the near future to see one portion of our cities devoted entirely to business, with the homes of the people so separated as to give light, sunshine, and air to all, besides a piece of ground for a garden sufficient to supply the table with vegetables? You raise more than vegetables in your garden: you raise your expectation of life. Life belongs in the garden. Do you remember--the first chapters of Genesis show us our babyhood in a garden--the garden that all babyhood remembers, and the last chapter of the Apocalypse leaves us with the vision of the garden in the Holy City, on either side of the river, where the trees yield their fruits every month and bear leaves of universal healing. Just so will it be in our holy cities of the future--the garden will be right there "in the midst." CHAPTER II PRESENT CONDITIONS Up to the Civil War and for some years after, our people were almost wholly agricultural. National activity contented itself with settling and developing the vast areas of the public lands, whose virgin richness cried aloud in the wilderness for men. The policy of the government, framed to stimulate rapid occupation of the public lands, had attracted hordes of settlers over the mountains from the older states, and immigration flowed in a steady stream into the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. A system had grown up in the South almost patriarchal, based upon cultivation by slave labor of enormous areas devoted exclusively to cotton. In the North, New England had developed some few centers of industry, drawing their support from the manufacture of the great Southern staple. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were growing as outlets for foreign commerce, but as yet manufacturing flourished but feebly and in few localities. Such manufacturing and commercial enterprises as existed had been laboriously built up by long years of honest working. The free lands of the government, by giving laborers an alternative, kept up wages, forcing employers to bid against each other for labor; and monopoly thus being checked, individual equality was possible. The mineral resources of Pennsylvania and Ohio were all but unsuspected, and the calm of a people devoted to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture rested over the country. Railroads were few and inefficient: telegraph lines but in their infancy. Intercourse among the people, outside of a narrow fringe on the Atlantic coast, was cumbersome, and impeded by many obstacles. Primitive conditions everywhere prevailed, and communities brooded in silence, growing stragglingly in sluggish indifference, content with coarse food and coarser living. Such, in general, were the conditions up to 1861. Then came the storm of shot and shell, the rain of blood, the elemental rage of passion called the Civil War. There was a total upset of business. Such periods of hard times as had occurred prior to that time had been caused by the tinkering of untrained minds with the money system or by land speculation, and not by lack of access to the riches of nature. After four years our people awoke, as from a nightmare, to find the old life swept away forever. In the South, the Confederates, bitter and sullen, groping amid the ruins of their institutions, sought to find some substitute for the agricultural despotism exercised for generations by their slaveholding families. In the East, the first families of the Revolution, secure in their preeminence, assumed again the manufacturing-banking-social prestige. The far West was still almost unknown, and remained in possession of the buffalo and the Indian. Settlers poured, in increasing numbers on to the unappropriated lands still left in the states of the central West, and the center of political power shifted rapidly to this fertile region. Already men of keen insight foresaw a time when oil, timber, coal, and iron must become the stay of a vastly expanding industrial system, and bent their energies to secure the chief sources of supply. From the nature of their work the men who built railways first became aware of the riches of nature, and aided by an enormous public sympathy with their efforts, monopolized all the natural opportunities of value. Coupled with industrial development was the gradual appropriation of the land. The time soon arrived when the late comers either stayed in the manufacturing centers at the railways terminals or were pushed farther and farther away from the centers. As the landowning families multiplied, the young men were confined to the same choice. Forced off the land, the tendency has been to crowd the brainiest blood of America into the cities. In addition, the competition of the new Western lands, brought into use by railway development, has exiled the youth of New England, who found in their rocky acres no incentive to toil. They, too, joined the ever-increasing flow to the cities, and entered into the savage competition of our great towns. In our time the pendulum has swung to its extreme. At every depression of business, armies of the unemployed perish in sight of the land they abandoned in the hope of a brighter future. Their children have forgotten the traditions of the soil, and the energies of our people must now be concentrated to reverse the aimless tide of human sufferers, which under stress continues to flow city-ward, and to send it to repeople the silent places whence it came. The fight will not be easily won. Changes in the national land policy are imperative. To give one generation privileges which enslave all who succeed it, is intolerable and will not be permanently endured. It is easy to determine upon a policy in the quiet of the study; different is the problem of applying a comprehensive scheme to repeople the idle land. In the first place, where is the idle land? In all parts of our country it exists in abundance. Almost every state in the Union has lands which either have never been alienated, or which have reverted to the state through nonpayment of taxes. In the East, particularly, the competition of Western lands, aided by discriminating freight rates, now so notorious, has resulted in the abandonment to the mortgagee of vast areas in New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and to some extent in New Jersey. These are now largely resold. Declining fertility and exorbitant and oppressive transportation charges have helped to keep these lands out of use, and some still lie idle and neglected, to excite the wonder of the social and economic student. To use the abandoned lands of the East, equal rates on agricultural products is a basic necessity. The first step, now well under way, is railroad control by the Government. Equal access to transportation is as essential as equal access to land, for transportation is indeed an attribute of land. Extending the inquiry westward, the coal and oil areas of Pennsylvania and Ohio are all controlled by a few hands. The original fertility of the farming areas of these states, together with the fact that they have been producing for only about a century, has enabled them to hold their own until recently, but now only the best located tracts are in maximum production, and this can be maintained only by the most advanced agricultural science. In spite of greater advantages, the crowded cities and deserted country districts are beginning to repeat in the fertile alluvial valleys of the interior, the tragic story of the East. In the Mississippi valley, conditions seem better. Values of farming lands are increasing rapidly; the farms are rich and growing richer; food products are cheap and abundant; certain staples are produced in enormous quantities and sent to feed the cities of the East and the industrial population of Europe. The railroads transport these products nearly one thousand miles for the same prices as they charge in the East for transporting them one hundred miles. Wealth, activity, and political power concentrate at the inlet and outlet of the railway funnel, leaving vast areas of unused and unusable land between the terminals. Access to markets determines value. That is why the favored lands of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin, one to two thousand miles from market, have risen in value to as high as three hundred dollars per acre, and the lands of New England, New York, and New Jersey go begging at twenty to sixty dollars per acre, unless they lie within the artificial prosperity of the cities. Farther west in the irrigated regions of Colorado and Utah, restricted areas are held for special fruit crops, at prices ranging from three hundred to two thousand dollars and up, per acre. But here, again, monopoly, now a monopoly of natural opportunity, is a factor in creating prices; on this, however, the vast irrigation projects of the government, bringing into use larger and larger areas of these favored lands, were expected to exercise a check. Up to 1918 little has been sold. Their reclamation cost too much. The willingness of the Southern planters to sell their lands, and so to release them for intensive cultivation, has partly turned the tide of immigration from the Eastern ports to the South, and the market garden system is reaching increasing areas. The development of factories to make cotton fabrics and to utilize the formerly wasted cotton seed by turning it into meal for cattle and other animals, as well as into the various food products, such as cotton-seed oil, cottolene, etc., has stimulated the use of the waste land around these budding factory centers, thus tending to encourage intensive use of small, well-located tracts. With a climate much milder and more equable than that of the Northern states, with a potential fertility of soil, equally great under proper management, the South is making greater strides than any other part of the country. The foregoing shows that in every section opportunities of getting the people to the land exist. Where a man should go is determined by a variety of things. If he be a newly arrived immigrant used to land work in Southern Europe, he would find his best chance in the South; if a German or Russian, or from any of the Northern European countries, he would find the beet-sugar sections of Michigan Colorado, or California more to his liking; if American born, without much knowledge of out-door work, and feeling the need of social life, the cheap farms of New York, New Jersey, and New England would probably be most attractive. Many persons write me that I say it is necessary to get good land near population or with cheap and assured transportation facilities--and that it must not cost more than it is worth for gardening. "I find," they say, "that such acres are held as 'lots' at wildly speculative prices" and they ask "Where can I find such land?" But this is a book on agricultural use of land. Why land costs too much and where the remedy lies are other questions, dealt with in my "Things as They Are." However, probably the best chances now for intensive cultivation are in New Jersey, in the backwoods of the Middle states now made accessible by cheap autos--and in the South. What can be undertaken with good prospects of success will be outlined in the following chapters. CHAPTER III HOW TO BUY THE FARM Before the purchase of the land for a home in the country, some consideration ought to be given to probable increase in land values. Even if you are primarily interested in your early sales of produce, you will not object to reaping an additional profit from the presence of other people. Inasmuch as density of population determines land values, it follows that vacant land near a large city at $100 per acre may be cheaper than similar land at a distance would be at $10 per acre. If you buy real estate, you become a silent partner who does nothing, but takes most of the profits of the business of others. Some persons see so clearly that money is often easily gotten by investing in land, that sometimes they make mistakes, in trying to get in. It is as easy to be a lamb in the real estate market as it is in the stock market. Foresight, judgment, and experience or luck are essential to success in real estate dealing, but help, at least in keeping out of danger, may be had by following a few simple rules, if one can command a little capital, borrowed or owned. The following points, suggested by a professional land shark, will certainly be of interest and possibly of profit to the intending buyer. I believe myself that they contain the whole philosophy of land speculation. For a sure profit buy low-priced land, keeping as near the "raw material" as possible; high-priced property is risky and expensive to carry. An acre which costs one or two hundred dollars, or ten dollars per lot, will cost but six to twelve dollars per year to carry and half a dollar for taxes, and if a stable does come next you, why, you can sell your land for a blacksmith shop. Besides this, a ten-dollar lot, if restricted for residence or available for business, often advances to $100 in a year; one good house which some one else built near it may raise its value that much. If the land _is_ high priced, see that there is some kind of a building on it; even a shanty will usually bring in enough or save you enough by its use to pay the taxes; so you will have that working for you whilst you are away. If possible, buy at auction and of reputable people who are not boomers, or at least buy at forced sale; that is how real estate is sold when it must be sold. Choose lots level with the curb and on high ground, lest the expense of grading and sewering eat up your profit. Keep in mind that in buying land for speculation one really buys the opportunity to tax other people, by taking part of their earnings in the shape of rent or price. Do not then be deluded by boom schemes in inaccessible or desolate places; choose rather that land which in the natural course of events others must have in order to work or to live. Home buying in small communities is safer than in the outskirts of a large city, because public improvements are much less costly. If you put $500 in a $5000 home and carry the balance on mortgage, an assessment of $1000 for streets or sewers, which helps the vacant lots, will probably put you out of business. Whether for use or speculation, buy in an established neighborhood or where the circumstances and neighbors are such that restrictions or expenditures will make its character sure. The increase in your land value depends first upon the presence, then upon the efforts, of others; it is by their labor you hope to profit. Therefore, buy property on leading thoroughfares; except in a very small section devoted to the residence of millionaires, the price of residence property has a limit; even there the merest accident or the whim of fashion may destroy the value, but there is no telling what figure business property may reach. Do not build unless you have to. It is rare that a building pays five per cent net on the value of the land and the cost of the house. "Who buys a house already wrought, gets many a brick and nail for naught." If, however, you can get a piece of ground in a growing neighborhood and live on it till you can sell at an advance, that is the safest, and surest of investments. It delivers you from the power of the landlord. Lastly--in real estate--don't bite off more than you can chew. Most of these rules apply to the purchase of suburban land. In farm buying, keep as close to your market as you can. See that railway facilities are all right; get land likely to be needed for other purposes. The best way to begin is by securing all information possible from state agricultural departments. Write to the industrial agents of important railroads traversing the section in which you want to locate. They have detailed information regarding land, markets, social conditions, etc.; get from the United States Agricultural Department a map showing the soil survey of the section of your choice. It must be borne in mind that personal aid is not to be expected from State Agricultural Departments, Bureaus of Immigration, railway companies, or any public agency. From the big farm agencies run for profit you can get lists of thousands of properties for sale. Some State Agricultural Departments cooperate with real estate men in their own states, by referring inquiries for farms to them. Some states issue from time to time lists of "abandoned farms," but these change so constantly that they help but little except in the way of suggestion. When you start farm-hunting take along a good map. Then you will know a few things on your own account. Verify railroad maps and "facts," as they are often biased. Don't waste your time wandering around a strange locality by yourself. The local real estate man knows more about his community than you can learn in five years. In trying to find out things for yourself you will waste in aimless journeys, undertaken in ignorance of real conditions, more time and money than a real estate man's commission amounts to. The only way to form a correct idea of the production of any given section is to examine a particular farm in detail. Within well-recognized limits, all the farms thereabouts will be found of similar character. Before spending money to look at land, learn all you can by correspondence. Whether it is more profitable in the long run to buy that good plot of land in a high state of cultivation with good buildings on it, at a high price, than to buy this exhausted piece of land with poor buildings or none at all, is a question for the individual to decide. It depends on your energy, grit, age, and how much money you have. It is much easier to take advantage of what the other fellow has done, than it is to build from the stump. You must bear in mind, however, that well kept land in a high state of cultivation seldom goes begging in the market. On the whole, if you have the capital to do it, you can make the biggest wages by buying rough or neglected land, and hewing it into shape. If you have a knowledge of soils, you may be able to find land that will grow something that no one supposes it will grow. This will be particularly useful in the case of land thought to be valueless. The lands about Miles, Michigan, were considered sterile until some one found out that they would grow mint, a valuable crop, which made the land salable at high prices. Get hold of a desirable bit of the earth. All that men wear or eat or use; everything--shelter, food, tools, and toys comes from the land by labor. Even the capital used to make more of those things is taken from the land. The employer and the capitalist are, at bottom, only men who control the land or its products, who own rights of way, mining rights, or the fee of valuable lands. Thousands have "made" money by finding unexpected products in their land or of their lands, oil, coal, mineral, plants; thousands more because their land was needed by some one else, and they were paid to get out of the way. To speculate on these chances is risky business; to keep land that enables you to make good pay while you wait, is profitable. CHAPTER IV VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION In this book, necessarily, we have to take much upon the reports of others, checking them by our own judgment and experience. The startling accounts of what has been done and is being done on plots of about a quarter acre to each family, however, can be easily re-verified by any one who will go or write to Philadelphia, or examine any present experiment or model gardens. These show what can be done even by unskilled labor, with hardly any capital, on small plots where the soil was poor, but which are well situated. The directors say: "The first Vacant Lot Cultivation Associations were organized when relief agencies were vainly striving to provide adequate assistance for the host of unemployed. The cultivation of vacant city lots by the unemployed had already been tried successfully in other cities. The first year we provided gardens, seeds, tools, and instruction only, for about one hundred families on twenty-seven acres of ground. At a total cost to contributors of about $1800, our gardeners produced $46,000 worth of crops." The applicant is allowed a garden on the sole condition that he cultivate it well through the season, and that he do not trespass upon his neighbors. He must respect their right to what their labor produces. A failure to observe these rules forfeits his privilege. During twenty years, more than eight thousand families have been assisted, many old people who could no longer keep up the rapid pace of our industrial life, cripples whose physical condition held them back in the race for work, persons who on account of sickness or other misfortunes have been thrown out of the competition in modern business, and unfortunate beings who, though clear in mind and strong in muscle, have been forced to the ranks of the unemployed--these have all had an opportunity opened to them: opportunity to enjoy all of the fruits from nature's great storehouse which their own labor and skill might secure. The war has forced France, Italy, and England similarly to utilize natural opportunities for subsistence in their enormous tracts of unproductive lands. In Mexico all proprietors will be required to designate what they propose to cultivate and the remainder will either be allotted temporarily for agricultural purposes to those desiring them or it will be cultivated under government management. There is no remedy like that for poverty. The first man who applied for a vacant lot garden came to the Philadelphia office after the announcement in the papers, so weak and emaciated that the doctor was afraid the poor fellow would be unable to get out of his office without assistance. He was a widower with three girls and a boy, the oldest girl about seventeen. He received a garden which contained only about one fifth of an acre. Later he observed that a part of another little farm was left untouched on account of being very rough, full of holes, and covered with stone and bricks. Part of this farm was below the street grade and subject to overflow, but it was larger than the others--nine tenths of an acre. He offered to exchange, saying he did not mind the extra work. His offer was accepted. In a few days the stones and bricks had been thrown into the holes and covered with dirt. The low places had been filled in. It was a work in which the whole family joined. A small house was rented in the immediate neighborhood in lieu of their one room near the foul alleys of the city slum. Every inch of the soil was utilized. A rosy hue took the place of the pale, wan cheek of a few months before. And now the harvest has come, and the winter's store can be enumerated. Thirty bushels of potatoes, four bushels of turnips, one bushel of carrots, thirty gallons of sauerkraut, fifteen gallons of catsup, five gallons of pickled beans, one hundred quarts of canned tomatoes, fifty quarts of canned corn, twenty quarts of beans, one thousand or more fine celery stalks, and many other things. Warm clothing has replaced the badly worn garments of nine months ago. A few pieces of furniture have been added. The boy has been provided with a small capital for his little business. ("Vacant Lot Cultivation," Reprint from N. Y. _Charities Review._) Better labor would of course get even better results. The personal benefits that have come to a few individual cases, are largely the same that all the gardeners enjoyed in New York and elsewhere. An old colored woman--a grandmother--who had just been released from one of the hospitals where she had been treated for a long time for pleurisy, asked for a garden. It was more than a mile to the nearest plot, but she was quite willing to go even that distance if she could get a garden. At first, owing to her weakened condition, she was forced to work slowly and for short periods only, but a little assistance enabled her to get a garden started. The work proceeded so well that more land was added to her small holding, and most of her waking hours were now spent either in or near the garden, working among the tender plants or watching them grow. Before the season was half spent she had developed one of the best gardens in the whole plot. Her surplus produce became so large that she had to devote most of her time to gathering and selling it. Finally she rented a small shed on a prominent street and passers-by often stopped, and regular customers came to buy the freshly gathered produce, the supply being not only abundant, but of great variety. One of the best gardens, from the standpoint of value of produce as well as for the varieties of products it contained and the artistic arrangement, was worked by a man who had but one arm. Many other successful and profitable gardens were cultivated by men and women of an age when we generally expect them to depend entirely upon others for support. Many incidents were found where such habits as drinking and loafing around saloons and clubs and abusing the family have been checked on account of the gardener's time and attention being occupied in the little farm. One of the workers came for work in a condition of mind and body which rendered his services almost worthless. He was scarcely able to carry on his work for a minute beyond what he was shown. Each new move had to be explained constantly, and even then he was often found doing the work in the wrong way only a few minutes afterwards. Before long, however, he began to see that his place had its responsibilities and that the work of Mother Nature depended on his doing his part and doing it well. By the time the crops were ready to gather and market he came to realize that the cost of production must come under the amount received from the sale of the produce so as to prevent loss. By the end of the season he had learned so to utilize his time and to organize his work and execute our plans that we were able to recommend him to a farmer who was looking for a handy man about the place. In twenty years our Associations have made demonstrations of the following facts, each demonstration proving more clearly than the former ones: First. That many people out of employment must have help of some kind. Second. That a great majority of them prefer self-help, and many will take no other. Nearly all are able and willing to improve any opportunities open to them. Third. That to open opportunities to them does not pauperize or degrade, but has the opposite effect of elevating and ennobling. It quickly establishes self-respect and self-confidence. The best and most effective way of helping people in need is to open a way whereby they may help themselves. The most effective charity is opportunity accompanied with kindly advice and a personal interest in those less fortunate than ourselves. Fourth. That the offering of gardens to the unemployed with proper supervision and some assistance by providing seeds, fertilizers, and plowing accompanied with instruction, is the cheapest and easiest way of opening opportunities yet devised. Fifth. That it possesses many advantages in addition to providing profitable employment; among others, that the worker must come out into the open air and sunshine; must exercise, and put forth exertion,--all of which are conducive to health, and, most important of all, he knows that all he raises is to be his own. This is the greatest incentive to industry. The Vacant Lot Cultivation system is a school wherein gardeners are taught a trade (to most of them a new trade), farming, which offers employment for more people than all the other trades and professions combined: a trade susceptible of wide diversification and offering many fields for specializing. But little capital is required; any other field would require large outlay. Its greatest advantage, however, is that the idle men and the idle land are already close to each other--the men can reach their gardens without changing their domiciles or being separated from their families. It was not until after several years that the full effect of the work was realized. A few gardeners each year from the beginning have, after one or two years' experience, taken small farms or plots of land to cultivate on their own account, or have sought employment on farms near the city; but the number is quite small compared to the whole number helped. Now more than ten per cent of those that had gardens previously have for the last two years been working on their own account. Out of nearly eight hundred gardeners, more than eighty-five either rented or secured the loan of gardens that season and cultivated them wholly at their own expense, and many others would have done so had suitable land been available. The number of gardens forfeited on account of poor cultivation or trespassing was only two out of 800 plots given out. The first important advance was early in the spring of 1904, when it became known that a large tract of land that had been in gardens for several years would be withdrawn from use. A number of the gardeners came together to talk over the situation. One proposed that they form a club to lease a tract of land and divide it up among themselves. The plan was readily agreed to, and a nine-acre tract on Lansdowne Avenue was rented at $15 per acre per annum. Some sixteen families became interested' and Mr. D. F. Rowe, who had been one of the most successful gardeners, became manager They had the land thoroughly fertilized and plowed, and then subdivided. Some took separate allotments, as under the Vacant Lot Association's plan, and others worked for the manager at an agreed rate of wages per hour. The whole nine acres were thoroughly well cultivated, and a magnificent crop harvested. As soon as there was produce for sale, a market was established on the ground and a regular delivery system organized which later attracted much attention. It was carried on by the children, of nine to twelve years of age, from the various families. Each child was provided with a pushcart. There were many and various styles, made from little express wagons, baby coaches, and produce boxes. The children built up their own routes, and went regularly to their customers for orders. They made up the orders, loaded them into their little pushcarts, charged themselves up with the separate amounts in a small book, and at the end of each day's sales each child settled with the manager and was paid his commission (twenty per cent of the receipts) in cash. These little salesmen and salesgirls often took home four to five dollars per week and yet never worked more than three to five hours per day. The work was done under such circumstances that to them it was not work but play. You can get the full report from the Philadelphia "Vacant Lot Cultivation Associations." It's interesting. "The greatest value that our little garden has brought us," said a French woman, mother of a goodly number of rather small children, "has not been in the fine vegetables it has yielded all summer, or the good times that I and the children have had in the open air, but in the glasses of beer and absinthe that my husband hasn't taken." "Quite right, mother, quite right," came from a man near by. "The world can never know the evil we men don't do while we are busy in our little gardens." Further, pillage of crops, which was always urged as an objection to raising fruits or truck on open grounds, has proved to be a baseless fear. Where any of the gardeners are allowed to camp or put up shacks on the patches, theft does not occur and various superintendents repeat that "the few and trivial cases of stealing from vacant lot plots or school gardens were almost all at the places that were fenced." Perhaps our locks and bolts tend to suggest breaking in. The Garden Primer issued by the New York City Food Supply Committee gives simple but incomplete directions for planting and tending a vegetable garden. For those who need that sort of thing, these are just the sort of thing they need. They will be useful if you do not follow them. The Primer tells you how to get some kind of parsnips, chard, spinach, common onions, radishes, cabbage, lettuce, beets, tomatoes, beans, turnips, peas, peppers, egg plants, cucumbers, corn, and potatoes. Don't grow these things, unless it be for your own immediate use. Every one grows them and ripens them all at the same time. In many places these are given away or thrown away this year. Grow anything that every one wants and has not got, like okra, small fruits, etc.; you can get a much better return in cash or in trade than by spending your time "like other folks" who do not think. So I refer to these directions for their instruction, and for your warning However, they give the following admirable injunctions. "Help Your Country and Yourself by Raising Your Own Vegetables." As we will likely have to send to Europe in coming years as much or even more food than we did last year, there is only one way to avoid a shortage among our own people, that is by raising a great deal more than usual. To do this we must plant every bit of available land. (Of course, we can't; the owners won't let us. Ed.) If you have a back yard, you can do your part and help the world and yourself by raising some of the food you eat. The more you raise the less you will have to buy, and the more there will be left for some of your fellow countrymen who have not an inch of ground on which to raise anything. If there is a vacant lot in your neighborhood, see if you cannot get the use of it for yourself and your neighbors, and raise your own vegetables. An hour a day spent in this way will not only increase wealth and help your family, but will help you personally by adding to your strength and well-being and making you appreciate the Eden joy of gardening. An hour in the open air is worth more than a dozen expensive prescriptions by an expensive doctor. The only tools necessary for a small garden are a spade or spading fork, a hoe, a rake, and a line or piece of cord. First of all, clear the ground of all rubbish, sticks, stones, bottles, etc. (especially whisky bottles). Choose the sunniest spot in the yard for your garden. Dig up the soil to a depth of 6 to 10 inches, using a spade or spading fork. (Deeper for parsnips and some other roots. Ed.) Break up all the lumps with the spade or fork. If you live in a section where your neighbors have gardens, you might club together to hire a teamster for a day to do the plowing and harrowing for you all, thus saving a large amount of labor. After your garden has been well dug, it must be fertilized before any planting is done. In order to produce large and well-grown crops it is often necessary to fertilize before each planting. Very good prepared fertilizers can be bought at seed stores, but horse or cow manure is much better, as it lightens the soil in addition to supplying plant food. Use street sweepings if you can get them. The manure should be well dug into the ground, at least to the full depth of the top soil. The ground should then be thoroughly raked, as seeds must be sown in soil which has been finely powdered. Lay out the garden, keeping the rows straight with a line. Straight rows are practically a necessity, not only for easier culture but for economy in space. After you have marked all of your rows, the next step is opening the furrow. (A furrow is a shallow trench.) That is done with the hoe. (Best and quickest with a wheel hoe. Ed.) After the furrow is opened, it is necessary that the seed be sown and immediately covered before the soil has dried In covering the seeds the soil must be firmly pressed down with the foot. This is important. In buying seed it is best to go to some well-established seed house, or, if that can't be done, to order by mail rather than to take needless chances. With most kinds of seeds a package is sufficient for a twenty-foot row. Begin to break up the hard surface of the soil between the plants soon after they appear, using a hand cultivator or hoe, and keep it loose throughout the season. This kills weeds; it lets in air to the plant roots and keeps the moisture in the ground. By constantly stirring the top soil after your plants appear, the necessity of watering can be largely avoided except in very dry weather. An occasional soaking of the soil is better than frequent sprinkling. Water your garden either very early in the morning or after sundown. It is better not to water when the sun is shining hot. The planting scheme can be altered to suit your individual taste. For instance, peas and cabbage are included because almost everybody likes to have them fresh from their garden; but they occupy more space in proportion to their value than beets and carrots. Therefore a small garden could be made more profitable by omitting them altogether, or cutting them down in amount and increasing the amount of carrots, beets, and turnips planted; or any of the vegetables mentioned which may not be in favor with the family can be left out. The kind of season we have would change the date of planting. In raising vegetables, as in everything else, one should use one's common (or garden variety of) sense. A good rule is to wait until the ground has warmed up a bit. Never try to work in soil wet enough to be sticky, or muddy; wait until it dries enough to crumble readily. Gardening is not a rule of thumb business. Each gardener must bring his plants up in his own way in the light of his own experience and in accordance with the conditions of his own garden. A garden lover who has a bit of land will speedily learn if his eyes and his mind, as well as his hands, are always busy, no matter how meager his knowledge at the beginning. There is plenty of land--if you can only get it. Says Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, in regard to the food problem: "Millions of acres of farm land are being held out of use and other millions of acres are being cultivated on a wasteful and inefficient basis. Land values have risen at an unprecedented rate. They are based not upon what the farm will earn at the present time, but on an expectancy of what it will be worth in the future. The farmer's son or the tenant farmer, with little or no capital, cannot hope to acquire possession of a farm w hen the price of land is SO high that his earnings would not pay the interest on the investment. The result is that land remains idle or in the hands of tenants, and thousands of farmers' boys desert the country for the city. ". . . . What we need, and need badly, is a program of taxation which, without throwing additional burdens on the bona fide farmer, will place land now idle within the reach of men of limited means who possess the ambition and the ability to cultivate it." You can see that poor ignorant people, women, boys, cripples, old men, often on less than 100 X 150 feet each, not only in Philadelphia, but as war gardeners in New York, and most other towns, have been able to support themselves by their work on the land. You can do much better. To be sure, they had valuable land and often seeds free, but for such little pieces of land these are small items, and many of them had no certainty of having the land even for a second year, consequently they could not have hotbeds or any permanent improvement. You can make all these things. Then what can you do? Only remember they had intelligent instruction and did the work themselves, and got the whole product; often the children helped--they thought it fun. It does not pay to farm a small piece of land where all the workers have to be hired. Nor does it pay if one calculates merely to stick in seeds with one hand and pull out profits with the other. CHAPTER V RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED. "If we get every one out on the farms, then there will be an over-production of farm products and a fall in prices." True, but there are farmers who could do better in towns; what we want to do is to make it easy for people to get on the land about the cities, then it would be equally easy for those farmers who are better adapted for city life to get near the cities. Under present conditions, where the worker is forced out fifteen or twenty miles from the town by the high price of land and the large amount of land required, the farmer is as much cut off from the city as the city dweller is cut off from rural life. We need not be afraid to teach men better ways; there will always be plenty too stupid or too old or too isolated to learn; these will remain a bulwark against too sudden change. Dr. Engel, former head of the Prussian Statistical Bureau, informs us that "Scientific farming succeeds because a given amount of effort, when more intelligently directed, produces greater results. Inasmuch, then, as the amount of food which the world can consume is limited, the smaller will be the number of farmers required to produce the needed supply, and the larger will be the number driven from the country to the city. It has already been observed that if 34 scientific methods were universally adopted in the United States, doubtless one half of those now engaged in agriculture could produce the present crops, which would compel the other half to abandon the farm." This is "Engel's Law." This "argument" assumes that we are now utilizing all the land possible and that every one is fully supplied with food. But when we consider the great masses of people in the slums of all cities who are always underfed and whose constant thought is about their next meal; when we see hundreds of able-bodied men waiting in line until midnight for half a loaf of stale bread, surely it seems that there is a possibility of keeping all of the present farmers at work, if not of finding new fields for others, if we make our conditions such that there will be opportunities for every able-bodied worker to labor at remunerative employment. Professor L. H. Bailey, a most industrious and accurate observer, says: "Dr. Engel's argument rests on the assumption that agriculture produces only or chiefly food; but probably more than half of the agricultural products of the United States is not food. It is cotton, flax, hemp, wool, hides, timber, tobacco, dyes, drugs, flowers, ornamental trees and plants, horses, pets, and fancy stock, and hundreds of other non-edible commodities. The total food produce of the United States, according to the twelfth census, was $1,837,000. The cost of material used in the three industries of textile, lumber and leather manufactories alone was $1,851,000,000. "Dr. Engel thinks that the outlay for subsistence diminishes as income increases; but comforts and luxuries increase in intimate ratio with the income, and the larger part of these come from the farm and forest. Dr. Engel, in fact, allows this, for he says that 'sundries become greater as income increases."' We have already abundance of information about almost every county in the Union, published by Boards of Trade and land boomers, like the following about "Oxnard, Ventura County, the center of the famous lima bean district in California. For a year the returns from farm products alone, in this vicinity, are estimated at over $2,000,000. The sugar factory, which uses 2000 tons of beets every twenty-four hours, requires the yield of about 1900 acres every season. The beet crop is rotated with beans, and the factory's supply is kept good by systematic methods. Two thousand head of cattle are being fattened at the present time in the company's yard on the beet pulp. Much of the pulp is also sold to local stockmen, who value it highly for feed. The factory turns out 5000 bags of sugar every day." And again: "Eastern farm lands steadily declined in price up to about 1902, so that Eastern land sold for less than Western land of the same quality and of like situation; but the tide seems at last to have turned, and much money is now being made in buying up cheap farms and especially in sub-dividing them for small cultivators." That sort of thing is interesting; but it is not what a man wants to know--he is anxious to learn how much he can make and where and how to do it. The man who seeks a comfortable living will do better to rent on long lease or buy a few acres convenient to trolley or railroad communication with a city; besides the returns which will come to the farmer from the use of a few acres, if he is the owner he will get a constant increase in the value of the land, due to the growth of the city. If the city grows out so that the land becomes too valuable to farm, he will be well paid for leaving. (Although progress is continually forcing laborers back upon less desirable land, their loss, unless they are the owners, is the landowner's gain.) The amount of product to be grown for one's own use depends on the size of the family and its fondness for vegetables. "An area of 150X100 feet [about two fifths of an acre] is generally sufficient to supply a family of five persons with vegetables, not considering the winter supply of potatoes; but the acres must be well tilled and handled." (Bailey, "Principles of Vegetable Gardening.") "The produce that could thus be obtained from an acre of land well situated would abundantly supply with nearly all the vegetables named, nineteen families, comprising in all 114 individuals." In our garden we must know what we want and know how to get it. (It is impossible to treat exhaustively of the various crops in a book of this kind. On onion culture alone there are four standard books, besides seven or eight recent experimental station bulletins. "In a family garden 100 X 150 feet (which equals six New York City lots), the rows running the long way of the area, eight or ten feet may be reserved along one side for asparagus, rhubarb, sweet herbs, flowers, and possibly a few berry bushes. A strip twenty feet wide may be reserved for vines, as melons, cucumbers and squashes. There remains a strip seventy feet wide, or space for twenty rows three and one half feat apart. This area is large enough to allow of appreciable results in rotation of crops; and i! it is judiciously managed, it should maintain high productiveness for a lifetime." (Bailey, "Principles of Vegetable Gardening.")) "The things to be considered in the home garden are: (1) a sufficient product to supply the family; (2) continuous succession of crops; (3) ease and cheapness of cultivation; (4) maintenance of the productivity of the land year after year. "The ease and efficiency of cultivation are much enhanced if all crops are in long rows, to allow of wheel-tool tillage either by horse or wheel-hoe." The experience of the Vacant Lot Gardeners (Chapter IV) shows that if the land be near a large market where the product can be peddled or sold by the producers or by those (as in Mr. Rowe's case), with whom he directly deals, more than twenty-five dollars capital is not necessary, but Peter Henderson ("Gardening for Profit") estimates that to get the best results, $300 capital per acre is required for anything less than ten acres. Where the land is favorably situated a fortune may be made in cultivation of a few acres--with brains. Quinn says ("Money in the Garden") that he knows a large number of market gardeners worth from ten to forty thousand dollars each, none of whom had five hundred dollars to begin with. If one has not enough money to get all that can be gotten out of his plot, it is best to put part of the land into clover to fit it for later use or to use it for raising grass. Results undoubtedly come from hard work; but it is not necessary, in order to cultivate a little land successfully, that you should work all day on your hands and knees; if you can raise fruit or nuts, this is not needed at all. But for vegetables a certain amount of it is necessary--when there is a large job of that kind of weeding to be done, you can hire Italians or other foreigners to do it better and cheaper than you can do it yourself. Those who will read this book can earn more with their heads than their hands; but when weeding is needed after a sudden shower and there is no one else, you must do some of it yourself; the weather will not wait for you to "get a man," and if you are not willing to do such things, your chances of success are greatly lessened. Here is the experience of one who "got a man": "My garden, to begin with, was in the most rudimentary condition, having been allowed to run to grass. After digging up a spot about ten feet square in the turf, taking the early morning for the work, I decided that it would require all summer to get the garden fairly spaded up, so I hired a stalwart Irishman to do the work for me, which he did in a week, charging me nine dollars for the job. As he professed to be also an expert in planting vegetables, I bought a supply of seeds in the city and intrusted them to him, assuring myself that once in the ground the rest of the work would fall to me; if I could not keep a garden patch fifty feet square clear of weeds, I had better abandon the business at once, and all hopes of making a living out of scientific gardening. The beginning was an unfortunate one. The weather happened to be first very wet, and then so dry and hot that my vegetables were unable to break their way through the baked earth. When my peas and beans still gave no signs after being in the ground for two weeks, I discovered that the whole work would have to be done over again. A Presidential campaign was beginning, which kept me in town often late at night, so that the chief labor of the garden fell to my faithful Irishman, who got far more satisfaction out of it than I did. The vegetables finally did come up above the surface, and many an evening I finished a hard day's work by pumping and carrying hundreds of gallons of water to pour upon potato plants, tomatoes, beans, and other things which a friend of mine, an expert in such matters, assured me were curiosities of malformation and backwardness. My Irishman told me that it was all for want of manure, and by his advice I bought six dollars' worth of manure from a neighboring stable, and had it spread over the ground. The bills for my garden were meanwhile mounting up. I had begun the spring with a garden ledger, keeping an accurate account of every penny spent, and hoping to put on the other side of the page a tremendous list of fine vegetables. The accounts are before me now, and I presume that every one who has been through the same experience has preserved some such record." (Naturally, if he began that way.) ("Liberty and a Living," by P. G. Hubert.) If your idea of farming is to bury "some seeds" in untilled ground, regardless of suitability, and "wait till they come up," you will wait in vain for a decent crop. Says Professor Roberts in the "Farmstead" (Macmillan), "Mushrooms sell at fifty cents per pound; maize for one half cent per pound. Why? Because anybody, even a squaw, can raise maize, but only a specially skilled gardener can succeed in mushroom culture." But enough has been said to show that you must cultivate with brains. The Germans say, "What your head won't do, your legs have to." "We'll have a little farm, A pig, a horse and cow And you will drive the wagon While I drive the plow," is very pretty. The horse and the pigs are practical, if you can take care of them yourself; pigs are good farm catch-alls. If you have to pay a man to do it, you had better hire your horses and buy your pork. Two well-groomed, healthy cows, one calving in the spring and one in the autumn, can be made a source of profit, and of valuable manure, if you have land enough in a neighborhood where up-to-date parents are willing to pay ten to twenty cents a quart for pure milk for their infants or even for family use. But your land and your own baby's care and milk will probably be enough for you to attend to promptly and thoroughly every day--and night. It is an age-old experience that if we take care of a little land, the land will take care of us. In Ferrero's "Grandezza e Decadenza di Roma" is an interesting account of Marcus Terentius Varro's "De Re Rustica." Varro wrote in the year 37 B.C., and as he was then eighty years old, he had seen the transformation of Italy from an agricultural to a manufacturing, trading community and the accompanying wreck of the old agricultural system, which, of course, he laments. The growth of vast landed estates largely held by imperial favorites, as Pliny said, destroyed Italy. So fearful has the destruction been that it is only in our generation that the Campagna at Rome, which was once an intensely fruitful quilt of garden patches, has been reclaimed from the fever-smitten swamp to which vast landlordism had reduced it. In the third book of "De Re Rustica," Varro recommends as his remedy, intensive cultivation close to the cities, and the breeding of "fancy stock," including pigeons' snails, peacocks, deer, and wild boars. He tells how an aunt of his made 60,000 sesterces ($3000) in one year by raising thrushes for the Roman market, at a time when an excellent farm of about 200 acres only yielded 30,000 sesterces per annum. He quotes another case of one who made 40,000 sesterces per annum from a flock of one hundred peacocks, by selling the eggs and the young. Those old Roman women weren't so slow. Ferraro calls Varro's work one of the most important for the history of ancient Italy and says historians have made a mistake in not reading it. At the time of the migration of the barbarians (350 to 750 A.D.), the lot of each able-bodied man was about thirty morgen (equal to twenty acres) on average lands, on very good ground only ten to fifteen morgen (equal to seven or ten acres), four morgen being equal to one hectare. Of this land, at least a third, and sometimes a half, was left uncultivated each year. The remainder of the fifteen to twenty morgen sufficed to feed and fatten into giants the immense families of these child-producing Germans, and this in spite of the primitive technique, whereby at least half the productive capacity of a day was lost. (From "The State," by Franz Oppenheimer, p. 11.) In the Orange Judd prize contest, merely for the clearest account of a garden, not for results at all, a number of the contestants raised produce at the rate of $150 to $400 per acre and over, even in semi-arid regions; for instance, L. E. Burnham says that he raised on his first garden of about one third of an acre in eastern Massachusetts, garden stuff which he sold to summer cottagers for $61.69. This took about eight days' work, nearly all with a wheel hoe. Remember about the present increased and changing prices and costs? At the present writing, 1917, the advances in costs and prices would probably average about three quarters, and those of common labor perhaps one third over those given in the text. In other respects, the instances and authorities, still pertinent, have been retained in this revision. It would have been waste, not thrift, to get a new authority to tell us that straw makes the cleanest mulch for strawberries; that's the reason they were called strawberries; and they grew just the same way ten years ago. L. E. Dimosh of Connecticut raised on one quarter of an acre $146.21, of which over $85 was profit. In other cases the profits were $142 (Gianque, Nebraska) per acre; and over $295 (Dora Dietrich, Pennsylvania); with the rather exceptional profit at the rate of $570 (Mrs. Hall, Connecticut). Some showed a loss. Some of the town or city lots yielded very high profits; one of a third of an acre gave a profit of $224.33 (Edge Darlington, Md.). The summary "based upon the reports of five hundred and fifteen gardens in nearly every state and territory and in Canada and the provinces, may be considered accurate and reliable. Covering such a vast territory local conditions are avoided." It shows that "the average size of farm gardens was 24,372 square feet, or about half an acre, the average labor cost $26.34, the average value of product was at the rate of $170 per acre, and the net profit over $80 per acre." To get results we must first learn and then teach what we know. The finest game in the world is to teach. No one ever knows anything thoroughly till he tries to teach it. When you tell a person how to do a thing, he doesn't know how to do it himself. When you show him how to do it, still he doesn't know that he could do it himself. But when you get him to do it himself, then he knows. Country boys will believe that early tomatoes can be raised by starting them in the house; but like the rest of us they don't know how to do it, and when spring comes and it is time to do such things, they are busy on the farm. There are several schools trying the experience of allowing the children to plant in window boxes in early April and are showing them how to do it. But as there is not room for all the children to plant in these window boxes, there is a new idea which originated in the country, where the children are engaged in the fall and the spring assisting their parents at agricultural work. It was hard to get up any interest in school gardens, but it was all the more important that they should have agricultural instruction in the winter time. At Berkeley Heights, N. J., we devised this simple plan, and it works. We made a number of wooden boxes, one foot wide, two feet long, so they will just fit on the ledge of a school desk. They are only three inches deep, with a bottom of tin, turned up at the edges, or of well painted pine, white-leaded at the joints. There is no drainage, since we discovered that if they are not watered too much, they do better without drainage. The holes usually made in the bottoms of flower boxes carry off a lot of plant food with the water that runs through. Now, how to store these boxes when they are not in the sunny places near the windows? Why, we set up four posts of one-inch stuff at the four corners, so that the box looks like a kitchen table turned upside down (see illustration). Now the boxes filled with earth and with the young plants growing can be stored at night, one on top of the other, by the wall of the schoolroom. If it is going to be cold, and over Sundays, the pile of them can be covered with newspapers, which keep them from getting chilled and from drying up, or the boxes can be covered and carried home by the children. We found that for most plants nine inches is high enough for the posts, and that well-seasoned one-inch lumber is heavy enough not to warp if it is painted inside and out, and it is not too heavy to lift. By the way, better paint the joints before the sides are nailed together. It makes them more water-tight. Four screws at the corners will make them still tighter. The scholars raise lettuce, parsley, onions, and strawberries, and all kinds of small plants, as well as flowers, in the winter; and when the plants get too big or two crowded for the boxes, they are separated and transplanted into other boxes to be taken home. This was so successful that we devised a big window box which is suited for home use also; it is just as wide as the window and half as long again as it is wide. But this box does not stand outside on the window sill; if it did, the plants would freeze. One end only rests on the inside window sill where it gets the sun; the end is supported by two legs of the same height that the window sill is from the floor. When a nice warm day comes, the other end of the box is pushed out of the window and the sash closed down on it to keep it from falling out. A couple of cleats or nails in the window jamb help to hold it in place. Of course, the box has to be watched and taken in if it turns cold, but it's astonishing how much can be raised and how much more can be learned out of season by the school desk boxes and the home window sliding boxes. Try it and see for yourself. The children can learn as much about some things from a box 2X1 ft. as they can from a children's garden. Here are a couple of samples of what the kids themselves in a city school think of it. "DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION _"Office of the Principal of Public School No. 7_ "VAN ALST AVE., ASTORIA, QUEENS "I inclose a few compositions that were written by some of our boys and girls of the Fourth Year. You will recognize the descriptions of your Garden Trays for classroom use Unfortunately the free space in the classroom is limited, so we have found it necessary to allow each pupil only part of a box. "The children themselves are delighted, as you can see by their compositions. "Very sincerely yours, (Signed)" AGNES A. CORDING "Asst. Principal." P. S. No. 7 Grade 4 A--April 2l, 1915. Arthur Miller, Age 10 OUR GARDEN At first we planted radishes then onions and lettuce and beans and sunflowers. Each one of us have 1/4 of a box. When we had finished that we brought them up to the front of the room and then watered them and went home. Anna Duerr, Age 8 MY GARDEN I have a garden. It is a box. I have a quarter of a box for my very own. My garden has five rows. In the first there are radishes, in the second lettuce, in the third onions, in the fourth beans, in the fifth sunflowers. I hope my garden grows up. Of course these are only preparatory for profitable work. We have cases in which $2000 has been recorded from sales in one year from one acre, and many cases in which at least $1000 worth of produce has been sold from an acre. These are sales, not profits. Such results are not due to the boundless and fertile soil of the new world nor to small farming alone--they are due to intelligence. Professor Ronna gives the following figures of crops per acre at Romford (Breton's Farm): 28 tons of potatoes (say 952 bushels), 16 tons of marigold, 105 tons of beets, 110 tons of carrots, 9 to 20 tons of various cabbages, and so on. It was suggested to the Agricultural Department that it might fix standards of what is a good attainable crop. On every golf links we have what is called a Bogie score posted up. That is a score that a certain mythical Captain Bogie, supposed to be an average good player, could make on those links. On one typical club-course, for instance, the Bogie score is 42. Though it has been done in 37, the ordinary player congratulates himself when he gets down to the Bogie score. Now, if there were standards attainable to ordinary intelligent and good cultivation set in each section, it would enormously encourage farmers to reach them, which may be of great importance. One of the heads of the Department replied as follows: '"In regard to fixing a standard for each farmer to strive to attain, I think that a very good idea; but the standard for each crop in each particular locality would necessarily be somewhat different from that in every other locality. Persons who have had experience in experimental work keenly appreciate these points. The work which is done upon one soil formation under different climatic conditions in one season, does not necessarily find a duplicate in any other locality, and the experience is that what is accomplished in one year would not be duplicated on the same soil and under the same management again in several years, for the conditions under which agriculture is carried on are so many of them outside of the control of the operator that it is very difficult to predict results or to attain any fixed standard. This is necessarily so with an operation which has so many uncertain factors to deal with as agriculture. Humidity of the atmosphere and of the soil, the available plant food in the soil, methods of tillage, fertilizers used, recurrence of frosts, amount of sunlight, the altitude and latitude of different localities, all have a bearing upon crop production. It is, therefore, very difficult to fix any approximate standard or average production for any particular locality without basing it upon a long series of years. I think, however, that it is a subject worthy of agitation, and it might inspire agriculturists to better work were such an ideal fixed upon." This indicates that each experiment station or progressive farmer or teacher of agriculture might advantageously establish the local "Bogie score" of what might fairly be expected. We know how misleading averages are. The man who tried to wade across a stream whose average depth was two feet, was drowned. "The writer used to go to a fishing club of which Cornelius Vanderbilt was a member. One of the standard jokes there was that the thirty members are worth on an average over two million apiece, that is, Cornelius sixty millions, and the rest of us (comparatively) nothing. Which are you to be? A Vanderbilt among cultivators, or the other fellow who makes the 'average'?" ("Money Making in Free America," by the Author.) But even making all allowances we see that we must cultivate much better than the "average," to make anything more than the farmer's hard living off the land. Peter Dunne tells us what kind of a grind that is. "This pa-aper says th' farmer niver sthrikes. He hasn't got th' time to. He's too happy. A farmer is continted with his farm lot. There's nawthin' to take his mind off his wurruk. He sleeps at night with his nose against th' shingled roof iv his little frame home an' dhreams iv cinch bugs. While th' stars are still alight he walks in his sleep to wake th' cows that left th' call f'r four o'clock. Thin it's ho! f'r feedin' th' pigs an' mendin' th' reaper. Th' sun arises as usual in th' east, an' bein' a keen student iv nature he picks a cabbage leaf to put in his hat. Breakfast follows, a gay meal beginnin' at nine an' endin' at nine-three. Thin it's off f'r th' fields where all day he sets on a bicycle seat an' reaps the bearded grain an' th' Hessian fly, with nawthin' but his own thoughts an' a couple iv horses to commune with. An' so he goes an' he's happy th' livelong day if ye don't get in ear-shot iv him. In winter he is employed keeping th' cattle fr'm sufferin' his own fate an' writin' testymonyals iv dyspepsia cures." ("Mr. Dooley Says.") CHAPTER VI WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE We have shown what an acre has produced. You must figure out for yourself what you can make your acres produce and what the product can be sold for. All progress in agriculture has come heretofore through experiments, made mostly by uninformed and untrained men. What may not be done by practical learning and applied intelligence? The wonderful recent advances have been made in just that way. "The modern improved methods in agriculture, known collectively as intensive farming, have nearly all had their origin in the hands of truck farmers and market gardeners. No class of the rural population is more alert in utilizing the newest researches and discoveries in all lines of agricultural science, and none keeps in closer touch with the agricultural colleges and experiment stations." ("Development of the Trucking Interests," by F. S. Earle.) Still, it is not advisable for the ordinary city dweller, however intelligent, without other means and without either experience or study, to cast himself upon a small patch of ground for a living; but if he can give it most of his time mornings and evenings, or if he sees, as many do, that he will be forced out of a position, it would be well for him seriously to consider intensive cultivation as a resource. It would be the greatest blessing to our day laborers if they could secure an acre of land which they could till in conjunction with their other labor. If time and change 90 works upon society as to put the laborer out of a job, he will be safe in his acre home and can live from it and be happy and contented. The time required to cultivate an acre is much less than is generally supposed. The maximum time required seems to be that given in the University of Illinois Experiment Station at Urbana, Bulletin 61, by J. W. Lloyd, at the rate of 140 hours (say 14 days) with one horse and 250 hours (say 25 days) for hand labor. With a great variety of crops, or with poor labor add one half to this time allowance. The results vary greatly. An acre of northeastern Long Island will produce 250 to 400 bushels of potatoes at a selling price of fifty to seventy five cents per bushel, which wholesale, at those figures much below present prices, bring an income of $125 to $300 to the grower. The actual cash outlay in one instance was: Seed Potatoes $10.00 Commercial Fertilizer 13.00 Spraying for blight and pests 4.00 TOTAL $27.00 250 bu. selling at the minimum price $125.00 Less the cash outlay 27.00 Income to the grower from an acre $98.00 A production of 400 bushels costs no more cash outlay per acre, while the income is big wages to the farmer. If but one acre be grown and hand labor is used, the labor might cost an average of $40 per acre, with wages at $1.35 to $1.50 per day, and if the produce is shipped any distance by rail and consigned, it would cost $40 to $50 to pay selling charges, leaving you a profit of about $30 per acre on this crop. Other crops in the rotation might not be so profitable, hence it is not fair to figure an income on one. But, of course, in the above estimate, we are considering mainly the cases where the gardener does the work and earns the wages himself. An acre will bear if devoted to each crop, of: Blackberries, 10,000 qt., which at 7 cent a qt., would bring $700.00 Dewberries, 9,000 qt., say at 7 cent a qt. 630.00 Gooseberries, 250 bu. at $2.00 a bu. 500.00 Strawberries, 8,000 qt. at 5 cent a qt. 400.00 Currants, 3000 plants yield 6000 bu. 200.00 Raspberries, per acre 200.00 to 600.00 Peaches, per acre 200.00 to 400.00 Pears, per acre 200.00 to 500.00 Apples, per acre 100.00 to 500.00 Grapes 100.00 Five, or even three acres will give a good living if this can be approximated: An acre will produce in vegetables--either Asparagus, 3000 bunches at 20 cent a bunch, would be $600.00 Cauliflower, 100 to 300 bbl. at $1.50, say 450.00 Onions, 600 bu. at 75 cent per bu. 450.00 Cabbage Seed, 1000 lb., at 40 cent a lb. 400.00 Brussels sprouts, 3000 qt. at 10 cent a qt. 300.00 Celery, 600 bunches at 5 cent a bunch 300.00 Parsnips, 300 bu. at 1.00 a bu. 300.00 Lettuce, 9000 heads at 3 cent a head 270.00 Lima Beans, 50 bu. at $5.00 a bu. 250.00 We may hope to get from an acre, respectively in Potatoes, 300 bu. at 75 cent a bu, would be $225.00 Cabbages, 20 tons at $10.00 a ton 200.00 Carrots and Beets, 200 to 400 bu 150.00 Tomatoes, 200 crates at 75 cent a crate 150.00 Early Peas, 50 bu. at $2000 a bu. 100.00 Turnips, 400 bu. at 25 cent a bu 100.00 Spinach, 100 bbl. at 50 cent a bbl. 50.00 Mr. D. L. Hartman, whose experience in the North is given on a later page, has since moved to Little River, Florida. He writes in 1917: "I have recently sold the last strawberries of a small plot. Owing to a combination of circumstances it produced, I think, the largest value per area of any crop I have ever cultivated. The main factors were high prices realized and heavy yield. Area of plot, a trifle over one fifth acre. Total yield, 2295 quarts, total receipts, $ 4703.80. First berries picked January 2nd; last berries picked June 26th; Variety, Brandywine. "This shows a yield of 11,107 quarts per acre worth at the same rate, $3398.00. "The fruit was all sold to stores in Miami (five miles distant) and brought an average you notice of 30-2/3 cents per quart for the crop, the highest bringing fifty cents per quart. The average price during the ordinary seasons is about twenty cents per quart. My ordinary average yield is less than half of this yield or about 5000 quarts per acre, and that is much above the average of most yields of other growers. The crop was started with northern plants, set just as for matted rows in the North, then early in November plants were dug up and set out in order in rows 12 inches apart and 8-1/2 inches apart in the row, leaving every fifth row vacant for paths. It is super close culture; one plant per square foot for the total area or a little more. "I often think that if I were operating in the North again I would like to try strawberries the same way, except that I would do the transplanting September 1st instead of November 1st as here, since I would expect them to grow larger and of course I would plan to mulch them during the winter. It would take a lot of planting but I think it would insure a tremendous yield. I find that the digging and planting including watering of 1500 plants makes ten hours' work with elimination of all waste motion." You will not get as good results as Mr. Hartman's average, unless you learn as much as he has learned; he has succeeded by well-directed work in different places and circumstances. The South and West are not the only places in the United States where a man can live on one acre of ground, by intensive culture and with irrigation. The Eastern and Middle States can present just as good, if not better, opportunities, especially where land in small tracts is available near the large cities. _The Farmers' Advocate_ (Topeka, Kansas) says of lands which ten years ago were among the much advertised "abandoned farms" of the eastern states: "All over the eastern states where farming twenty years ago was pronounced a failure under Western competition there has sprung up this intensive cultivation. Violets are grown in one place and tuberoses by the acre in another. Celery is making one man's large profit near Williamsburg. Special fruits are cultivated. Currants are grown by the ton and sold by the pound, yielding a profit. This is in progress over the entire range of farming." At Hyde Park, a little village three miles north of Reading, Pa., there is a small farm owned by Oliver R. Shearer, who may be said to be one of the most successful farmers in the United States. This farm contains 3-1/2 acres, only 2-1/2 of which are cultivated, but they yield the owner annually from $1200 to $1500. From the profits of his intensive farming, Mr. Shearer has paid $3800 for his property, which, besides the land, consists of a modern two-story brick house, with barn, chicken-yard, and orchard, the whole surrounded by a neat fence. He has also raised and educated a family of three children. There are no secrets, Mr. Shearer says, about his method of farming. A study of conditions, the application of common-sense methods and untiring energy, he asserts, will enable others to do what he has done, but that most men would kill themselves with the work. In an agricultural exchange a small farmer tells that he makes a living and saves some money from a ten-acre farm. Before he was through paying for his land, which cost $100 an acre, building his house, fences, and outbuildings, he went in debt $1300, having about the same amount to start with. He is near a good market, and in five years has paid off the debt, and has been getting ahead ever since. He raises poultry and small fruits, and says that it is a good combination, as most of the work with poultry comes in winter, while he can do nothing out of doors. He maintains that a ten-acre farm rightly managed will bring a good living, including the comforts and some of the luxuries of life, and says: "This I have fully demonstrated, and what I have done others may do." _Maxwell's Talisman_ says: "E. J. O'Brien of Citronelle, Alabama, received $170 clear from an acre of cucumbers shipped to the St. Louis market. He was two weeks late in getting them on the market. He says those two weeks would have meant nearly double the net returns. He does not consider this an extraordinary return and hopes to do better next year." "Professor Thomas Shaw writes of a plot of ordinary ground in Minnesota comprising the nineteenth part of an acre, which for years kept a family of six matured persons abundantly supplied with vegetables all the year, with the exception of potatoes, celery, and cabbage. In addition, much was given away, more especially of the early varieties, and in many instances much was thrown away." "In the market-gardens of Florida we see such crops as 445 to 600 bushels of onions per acre, 400 bushels of tomatoes, 700 bushels of sweet potatoes; which testify to a high development of culture." We select from Bailey's "Principles of Vegetable Gardening" the following general estimates: _Beets--_Average crop is 300-400 bushels per acre. _Carrots--_Good crop is 200-300 bushels per acre. _Cabbage--_8000 heads per acre. _Potatoes--_The yield of potatoes averages about 75 bushels per acre, but with forethought and good tillage and some fertilizer the yield should run from 200 to 300 bushels, and occasionally yields will much exceed the latter figure. _Rhubarb--_From 2 to 5 stalks are tied in a bunch for market, and an acre should produce 3000 dozen bunches. _Salsify--_Good crop 200-300 bushels per acre. _Onions--_A good crop of onions is 300-400 bushels to the acre, but 600-800 are secured under the very best conditions. The price per ton for horseradish varies from ten to fifty dollars, and from two to four tons should be raised on an acre, the latter quantity when the ground is deep and rich and when the plants do not suffer for moisture. Averages are very misleading and it would be better to pay little attention to them. They are like the average wealth possessed by a class of twenty schoolchildren. The schoolmaster who had $20 asked what was the average wealth of each, if the total wealth of the class was $20. The brightest boy answered, "One dollar." The schoolmaster asked Tommy at the foot of the class if he did not think they would be a prosperous class. He answered, "It depends on who has the 'twenty.'" But, all the more, good averages imply some wonderful yields. The following are actual averages in the United States Twelfth and Thirteenth Census Report, respectively. Flowers and plants, $2014 and $1911; nursery products, $170 and $261; sugar cane, $87 (4 tons per acre) and $5540; small fruits, $81 and $110; hops, $72 (885 lb. per acre) and $175; sweet potatoes, $37 (79 but per acre) and $55; hemp, $34 (794 lb. per acre) and $54; potatoes, $33 (96 bu. per acre) and $45; sugar beets, $30 (7 tons per acre) and $54; sorghum cane, $21 (1 ton per acre) and $23; cotton, $15 (4-10 bale per acre) and $25.70 flaxseed, $9 (9 bu. per acre) and $14; cereals, $8 and $11.40. Specialties, however, often do much better. For example, R. B. Handy, in Farmers' Bulletin No. 60, United States Department of Agriculture, tells us that a prominent and successful New Jersey grower says: "I cannot give the cost in detail of establishing asparagus beds, as so much would depend upon whether one had to buy the roots, and upon other matters. Where growers usually grow roots for their own planting the cost is principally the labor, manure, and the use of land for two years upon which, however, a half crop can be had. "The cost of maintaining a bed can only be estimated per acre as follows: Manure (applied in the spring) $25.00 Labor, plowing, cultivating, hoeing, etc 20.00 Cutting and bunching 40.00 Fertilizer (applied after cutting) 15.00 Total $100.00 "An asparagus bed well established, say five years after planting, when well cared for should, for the next ten or fifteen years, yield from 1800 to 2000 bunches per annum, or at 10 cents per bunch (factory price) $180 to $200." "If the rent, labor, etc., for a crop of asparagus is $200 per acre, and the crop is three tons of green shoots at $100 per ton, on the farm, the profit is $100 per acre. If we get six tons at $100 per ton, the profit, less the extra cost of labor and manure, is $400 per acre." ("Food for Plants," by Harris and Myers, page 19.) Around Bethlehem, Indiana, the farmers raise hundreds of tons of sunflower seed every year, and the industry pays better than anything else in the farming line. A good deal of the seed is made into condition powder for stock, occasionally some is made into so-called "olive oil" which is said to surpass cotton-seed oil. Large quantities are used for feeding parrots and poultry, or consumed by the Russian Hebrews who eat them as we would eat peanuts. A careful investigation made in 1898 of the value of certain productions taken from farms in New York State shows that the culture of apples is very profitable. From twenty adjoining farms in one neighborhood in western New York, the report gave an average annual return of $85 per acre at the orchard, covering a period of five years. Another report gave an average of $110 annual income per acre for three years, and these results were obtained where only ordinary care was given to the orchard. But note this.-- One orchard, where the trees had been well sprayed to protect the fruit from insect injuries, and the soil well cultivated and properly fertilized, gave a return in one year of $700 per acre, and for three years an average income of $400 per acre. One man bought a farm of 100 acres in Central New York with a much-neglected orchard upon it of 30 acres, paying $5000 for the whole. He cultivated the orchard, pruned and sprayed the trees thoroughly, and in seven months from the time he purchased the farm, sold the apple crop from it for $6000 cash. "Peanuts: Culture and Uses," by R. B. Handy in Farmers' Bulletin No. 25 of the United States Department of Agriculture says: "According to the Census the average yield of peanuts in the United States was 17.6 bushels per acre, the average in Virginia being about 20, and in Tennessee 32 bushels per acre. This appears to be a low average, especially as official and semiofficial figures give 50 to 60 bushels as an average crop, and 100 bushels is not an uncommon yield. Fair peanut land properly manured and treated to intelligent rotation of crops should produce in an ordinary season a yield of 50 bushels to the acre and from 1 to 2 tons of excellent hay. (Of course better land with more liberal treatment and a favorable season will produce heavier crops, the reverse being true of lands which have been frequently planted with peanuts without either manuring or rotation of crops.) Besides the amount of peanuts gathered, there are always large quantities left in the ground which have escaped the gathering, and on these the planter turns his herd of hogs, so that there is no waste of any part of the plant." Tobacco is a paying crop if the soil is just right. Two thousand pounds per acre can be raised on favorable sites. Connecticut tobacco brings, in ordinary times, from twenty to thirty cents a pound; from four to over six hundred dollars being the possible return. Some Connecticut soils raise Sumatra tobacco equal to the imported crop that sells in this country at fancy prices. The Department of Agriculture claims that the Cuban type of tobacco can be closely approximated in Pennsylvania and Ohio. But it must be remembered that the soil is of paramount importance in tobacco raising. The Department has prepared soil maps of most of the important tobacco districts of the United States. If you think your land may be suited to tobacco, apply there for information. You may make your land invaluable. D. L. Hartman, _Rural New Yorker,_ gave the following facts and figures: "During last season the sales from one acre of early tomatoes amounted to $454, and from a trifle more than two and one half acres, including the acre of 'earlies,' the remainder mid-season and late plantings, the total sales amounted to over $900. From a little less than one acre and a half $555 worth of strawberries were sold, while the returns from early cabbages during the last few years have been at the rate of about $300 per acre. These statements are not made in the spirit of challenge. The results are gratifying to me, because larger than anticipated; but much greater values can be and are produced. In fact, the limit of value that may be grown on an acre of land no one can tell. I have a small plot of ground containing less than one sixth of an acre, planted one year with radishes and lettuce, followed by eggplant and cauliflower, and the next year to radishes alone, followed by egg-plant, and each year the total sales amounted to over $200, at the rate of $1200 per acre. Greatly exceeding even this was a smaller plot, measuring 20 X 65 feet, last year, planted first to pansies, plants sold when in bloom, followed by radishes, of which one half proved to be a worthless variety (it lay idle long enough to have produced another crop of radishes), then half was planted to late lettuce, the other half being sown for winter cabbage, plants yielding no cash return. Yet the total sales for the season from this small plot, less than one thirty-second of an acre, was $86.78 at the rate of the surprising sum of $2780 per acre, and could easily have been raised to the rate of $4,000, and that without the use of any glass whatever, Truly the possibilities of the soil are unknown." The cooperative features used by Northeastern Long Island intensive farmers are worthy of imitation. In the community of Riverhead a club buys at wholesale rates commodities which the farm and household require. The club does a large business, and has a high rating in the commercial agencies. In another instance at Riverhead an association markets the crop of cauliflower, sending cars of such produce to Cincinnati and Chicago. These are the best forms of cooperation. "In the market-gardening sections the banks show prosperity. In the towns of Riverhead and Southold there are savings banks with deposits of $4,000,000 each, and five business banks which are doing a thriving business. In this stretch of thirty miles on eastern Long Island the farms are mostly free from encumbrance of any kind. "It should be noted, however, that their towns have the open Sound with its bays which furnish open ways for transportation and an unowned field for work." (From circular of the Long Island Guild of New York City.) CHAPTER VII SOME METHODS We must not put all our time into one crop unless we are rich enough to do our own insurance; for drought, or damp; or accident, ill-adapted seed, or general unfavorable conditions may make failures of one or more crops. But in variety and succession of crops is safety and profit. In order to succeed, crop must be made to follow crop, so that the ground is used to its full capacity. To leave it fallow for even a week is to invite weeds and to lose much of the advantage of tillage, as well as so much time. In the North, seeds of many kinds should be sown from the first of March to the first of August; in the South they should be sown in every month. By following the simple time tables for planting you will find work ready and crops maturing and ready for sale in every month in the year. There is an admirable table of the time to plant, given in "How to Make a Vegetable Garden," though it does embrace some weird vegetables, explaining, for instance, that pats-choi is used like chards, and that "Scolymus is sowed like Scorzonera." One can live while waiting for the crops to come up, for many crops mature rapidly. Specialties give employment only during a few months of each year and bring returns only at periods of the year, but the returns can be made almost immediate and the work almost continuous. Long Island and Jersey farmers in marketing their crops sell Spinach and Radishes in April Peas, Early Onions, and Lettuce in May Asparagus and Strawberries in June Tomatoes, Cucumbers, and Cabbage Seeds in July Early Potatoes, Peaches, and Beans in August Onions and Potatoes in September Celery in October Cauliflower in November Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts in December Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts in January Brussels Sprouts in February Brussels Sprouts in March This order of crops can be varied to suit conditions. "The old practice of growing vegetables in beds usually entails more labor and expense than the crop is worth; and it has had the effect of driving more than one boy from the farm. These beds always need weeding on Saturdays, holidays, circus days, and the Fourth of July. Even if the available area is only twenty feet wide, the rows should run lengthwise and be far enough apart (from one to two feet for small stuff) to allow of the use of the hand wheelhoes, many of which are very efficient. If land is available for horse tillage, none of the rows should be less than thirty inches apart, and for late growing things, as large cabbage, four feet is better. If the rows are long, it may be necessary to grow two or three kinds of vegetables in the same row; in this case it is important that vegetables requiring the same general treatment and similar length of season be grown together. For example, a row containing parsnips and salsify, or parsnips, salsify, and late carrots would afford an ideal combination; but a row containing parsnips, cabbages, and lettuce would be a very faulty combination. One part of the area should be set aside for all similar crops. For example, all root crops might be grown on one side of the plot, all cabbage crops in the adjoining space, all tomato and eggplant crops in the center, all corn and tall things on the opposite side. Perennnial crops, as asparagus and rhubarb, and gardening structures, as hotbeds and frames, should be on the border, where they will not interfere with the plowing and tilling." ("Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 31.) Usually where large acreages are worked there is a tendency to devote a greater portion of the land to one crop and sometimes a failure in this crop will mean ruin to the farmer, whereas, where small areas are used, there is generally a diversity of the higher-priced crops and a failure in one is not so likely to be disastrous. To get the greatest production from the soil two crops can be grown in the same soil at the same time--one of which will mature much earlier than the other, thereby giving its place up just about the period of growth when the second crop would need more room. This is known as companion cropping. "In companion cropping there is a main crop and a secondary crop. Ordinarily the main crop occupies the middle part and later part of the season. The secondary crop matures early in the season, leaving the ground free for the main crop. In some cases the same species is used for both crops, as when late celery is planted between the rows of early celery. Following are examples of some companion crops: Radishes with beets or carrots. The radishes can be sold before the beets need the room. Corn with squashes, citron, pumpkin, or beans in hills. Early onions and cauliflower or cabbage. Horseradish and early cabbage. Lettuce with early cabbage." ("Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 184.) If fruit trees be planted, vegetables may be grown in rows. As soon as the early vegetables mature they are removed, and a midsummer crop planted. These are followed by a fall or winter crop. Radishes, lettuce, and cabbage grow at the same time and on the area formerly used for one crop. Early potatoes and early cauliflower are followed by Brussels sprouts and celery, two crops being as easily grown as one by intelligent handling. The best beans are grown among fruit trees. The principles of "double-cropping" are summarized by Professor Thomas Shaw, in _The Market Garden._ "Onion sets may be planted early in the season and onion seeds may then be sown. Between the rows cauliflower may be planted. Later between the cauliflower, two or three cucumber seeds may be dropped. The onion sets up around the cauliflower may be taken out first, and the cauliflowers in turn may be removed in time to let the cucumbers develop. "Midway between the rows of onions grown from seeds, we can plant radishes, lettuce, peppergrass, spinach, or some other early relish, which will have ample time to grow and to be consumed before harm can come to the onions from the shade of any one of these crops. When the onions are well grown, turnips can be sown midway between their rows." So we get two crops of onions, besides cauliflowers, cucumbers, and turnips off the same place. Weeds won't have much chance in soil treated like that. "Multum in Parvo Gardening" (Samuel Wood) claims L 620 ($3100) from one acre by the expenditure of considerable capital in growing fruit against brick walls--it cost over $3100 to prepare the land, of which the walls cost $2300. In this system the fruit trees are pruned and trained till they look like firemen's ladders. "In the suburbs of Paris, even without such costly things with only thirty-six yards of frames for seedlings, vegetables are grown in the open air to the value of L 200 per acre." ("Fields, Factories and Workshops," page 80.) "At the present time, for fully 100 miles along the Rhone, and in the lateral valleys of the Ardeche and the Drome, the country is an admirable orchard, from which millions worth of fruit is exported, and the land attains the selling price of from L 325 ($1625) to L 400 ($2000) the acre. Small plots of land are continually reclaimed for culture upon every crag." (Same, page 133.) In California we hear (from George P. Keeney) that while good truck and fruit lands usually sell for $25 to $350 per acre, the land with full-bearing fruit or nut trees often sells at $1000, and even up to $2000 per acre. There is no reason why any intelligent persons should not make their land increase in the same way. The London Daily News reports that in one year, which was not a good season for all crops, on a half acre of land, Mr. Henry Vincent, of Brighton, England, raised the following products: 2660 cabbages, 70 bushels spinach, 950 cauliflowers, parsley, 1460 lettuces, 660 broccoli, 16 bushels potatoes, 19-1/4 bushels Brussels sprouts, 106-1/2 gallons peas, 120 gallons artichokes, flowers, 267 vegetable marrows, 2976 carrots, 264 bundles radishes, 14 gallons French beans, 12 gallons currants' 95-1/2 punnets mustard, 27 pounds mushrooms, rhubarb, 948 bushels sprout tops, 38 dozen leeks, 1150 plants, 11-1/4 gallons broad beans, 97 bundles sea-kale, 978 bundles of asparagus-kale, 504 beet roots, 2913 gallons gooseberries, 219 bundles mint, 20 bundles sage, 18 bundles of fennel, thyme, besides one cartload of stones. Mr. Vincent explains how he came to go into intensive cultivation: "A few years ago the doctors said if I did not go out more I could not live. Very well, just at that time there was an outcry about the land not paying for cultivation. I could not understand this, for as a boy at seven years of age I had to go out to farm work, therefore I never went to school. Anyhow I thought something was very wrong if the land would not pay; so, to compel myself to go out in the fresh air, I took an allotment on the Sussex Downs to work in the early morning before my daily duties began. I might say that I am a waiter, and have been in my present situation forty years, so you can understand I could not know much of land or garden work I could not see my way clear in the few spare hours I get to take more than half an acre of land to garden early, especially as I started knowing practically nothing about such work, but I can manage to do my half acre all alone. "My garden is situated on the Brighton Race Hill ridge, and twelve years ago it was but four inches of soil on chalk, but I now have a foot of soil on the whole of the half acre, and year by year my profits increase. "Yes, get the men to stop on the land in this country. We ought not to have workhouses. Every man could live, and live well, if he could get the land, and would work it as it should be worked. "Farmers and landowners grumble because the land does not pay. Now for the fault. It is quite evident it is not the land, therefore, it must be the fault of the man. Very well, get the land from these landed proprietors, by sale preferred, and let it out to men, not by 1000 acres, as no man can farm well a thousand acres in England; let the farms be greatly reduced, and then the land can be treated as it should be. Most of us have children, and we all know how we love and treat them. Treat the land in the same manner, feed it, and keep it clean, and you will have no cause to complain. The land of old England is as good as it ever was. "I have serious thoughts of opening a kind of school for people who would like to make $500 a year on an acre. It is to be done, and done easily. I do know that one man alone can manage two acres, and at the end of this year I shall be able to tell how much more he can manage alone, so under my system one can gain L 4 a week off two acres and do all one's self. "If the land will produce over one hundred pounds per year per acre, is it not wrong for a man to have, say, 500 or 1000 acres which in no way can he properly manage; as, in the first place, he cannot feed such an acreage, let alone keep it clean and gather in his crops?" In truth, what an acre may produce depends on time, place, and circumstances The product of the best acre of land so situated that its product could be sold at retail in a near-by market, and which has been cultivated under the best management for a term of years, would provide a very comfortable living. The product of other acres, measured by what they produce to the cultivator in living, declines through various grades down to almost nothing on the acre far from railroads or difficult of access. While in quantity and quality the least favored acre could be made to produce as much as one best situated, yet, almost none of its production would be available to sell, while the product of the favorably located acre could be sold as rapidly as grown. CHAPTER VIII THE KITCHEN GARDEN The aim of the kitchen garden is to provide an abundance and variety of food for the family. As the object of the cultivator is to get the largest product for his labor, he ought to produce all that he can consume on the least possible area. Though one may go into mushrooms or frog raising as a money crop, the kitchen garden is the first indispensable and should first be given attention. For a garden choose a piece of land with a southern exposure, sheltered on the north and west by woods, buildings, hedge, or any kind of a windbreak. This arrangement will give the earliest garden, for it gets all the sun there is. By running the rows north and south, the rays of the sun strike the eastern side of the row in the morning, and the western side in the afternoon. The best time to take hold of a piece of land is in the fall, because then it can be plowed ready for the spring planting. The alternate freezing and thawing during the winter breaks up the sod and the stiff lumps thrown up by the plow, so rendering the soil pliable and easily worked. This is especially true of land that has been reclaimed from the forest, or which has not been farmed for many years. Before the plowing is done, the land for the garden should be manured at the rate of twenty-five large wagon loads to the acre. If you can get a suitable plot that has been in red clover, alfalfa, soy beans, or cowpeas for a number of years, so much the better. These plants have on their roots nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which draw nitrogen from the air. Nitrogen is the great meat-maker and forces a prolonged and rapid growth of all vegetables. After manuring and plowing, harrow repeatedly with a disk or cutaway harrow until the soil is as fine as dust. Then you have a seed bed which will give the fine roots a chance to grow as soon as the seeds sprout. Too much stress cannot be laid upon the importance of thoroughly working the soil at this time. Every stone, weed, or clod that is left in the soil destroys to that extent the source from which the plants can get their food. A quarter-acre garden, which is big enough to supply the whole family with a succession of vegetables for summer and fall, as well as some potatoes and turnips for winter, will take a diligent workman about four days to dig over and three days to plant. The four days' work of digging will need to be done only once. The time spent upon planting succession crops will depend upon the amount of the garden reserved for rotation. The part kept for lettuce, radishes, spinach, beets, Swiss chard, peas, string and wax beans may be digged over in a favorable season for three successive plantings, while the part devoted to early potatoes would need to be digged only twice--once when the planting is done, and again when crop is gathered and the ground be prepared for a crop of late cabbage or turnips. A planting table for vegetables, which is complete and comprehensive, is distributed free by the National Emergency Food Garden Commission at Washington, D.C. It is far more important to plant seeds at the proper depth than that they should be planted thinly or thickly, for if they are planted too thin, it makes a sort of advantage by giving the individual plants ample room to develop to large size; and if planted too thick, the evil can easily be remedied by thinning or transplanting. After the seeds come up, the size of almost all the vegetables can be increased by transplanting, in favorable soil, which gives each plant room for complete development. It is too expensive to risk part of the land being unused or half used on account of seeds dying, or to put in so many seeds in order to insure growth that they will crowd one another. Where possible, therefore, seeds should be sprouted and planted, not "sown." Lima beans planted on edge with eye down will come up much sooner than if dropped in carelessly so they have to turn themselves over. In a small garden the time saved by such planting will repay the extra trouble. In some things like onions and radishes, however, it is better to sow them thick, and then thin them out, so as to get the effect of transplanting without so much labor. In others, like lettuce and all the salad plants, transplanting gives new life and energy and develops the individual plants in a way that will astonish those not familiar with what free development means. It is wise to plant corn after lettuce and radishes are gathered, and more lettuce, corn, or salad, after the beans are picked. Then late crops, cabbage, cauliflower or spinach, can go where early corn grew, so that the small patch may earn your living and pay big dividends. Do not let two vegetables of the same botanical family follow each other. For instance, lima beans should not follow green beans or peas, as all the family draw about the same elements from the soil, and are likely to have the same insects and diseases. Do not plant cucumbers, squash, or pumpkins too near each other, as they will often inter-impregnate and produce uneatable hybrids. Decide what you are going to do with your crop before you plant it, whether to sell it, at wholesale or at retail, to eat it, or to feed it to stock. C. E. Hunn, in the Garden Magazine, gives the following arrangement: "For the beginner who wants to get fresh vegetables and fruits from May until midwinter, a space 100 X 200 feet is enough. "1. Plant in rows, not beds, and avoid the backache. "2. Plant vegetables that mature at the same time near one another. "3. Plant vegetables of the same height near together--tall ones back. "4. Run the rows the short way, for convenience in cultivation and because one hundred feet of anything is enough. "5. Put the permanent vegetables (asparagus, rhubarb, sweet herbs) at one side, so that the rest will be easy to plow. "6. Practice rotation. Do not put vines where they were last. Put corn in a different place. The other important groups for rotation are root crops (including potatoes and onions); cabbage tribe, peas and beans, tomatoes, eggplant and pepper, salad plants. "7. Don't grow potatoes in a small garden. They aren't worth the bother. "By training on trellis or wire, the smaller fruit plantings can be made much closer. "If fruits are wanted in the garden, plant a row of apple trees along the northern border, plums and pears on the western sides, cherries and peaches on the eastern side. Next the apple trees run a grape trellis; and then in succession east and west, run a row of blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and currants. These rows, with the apple trees, form a windbreak, and besides adding to the income, protect the vegetables. Next to the bush fruits, between them and the ends of the vegetable rows, put rhubarb, asparagus, and strawberries." Insect pests must be watched for and their destructive work checked. Ashes, slaked lime, or any kind of dust or powder destroy most insects which prey on the leaves of plants. The reason for this is that the dust closes the pores through which the insects breathe. It should therefore be applied when the leaves are dry. Cutworms can be destroyed by winter plowing. Rotation of vegetables will reduce the damage from insects, because each family has its peculiar bugs. By constant change to new soil, the pests have no opportunity to get a foothold. With bugs, as with boys, only those who are interested in them and therefore understand them can manage them. It is fun to study the insects--and it pays. Here's another use of "land." Maybe a pool in your garden or a dam in a little brook in it may help out your home garden bank account. Of course a pond a few square yards in extent will give even better returns if you can sell its produce at retail near by. W. B. Shaw, a seventy-year-old veteran who lost his right arm during the Civil War, lives in Kenilworth, D. C., and clears $1500 an acre every year out of mud puddles--if mud puddles can be measured by the acre. Mr. Shaw is a pond lily farmer, and despite his lack of his good right arm, he poles his boat about his mud puddles and gathers in the pond lilies. His is not exactly a "dry farm" and neither wet nor cloudy weather bothers him. Furthermore, the demand for his pond lilies in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, and even New York, and Chicago, is greater than he can supply. Mr. Shaw secured this swamp for almost nothing, as it was considered worthless. He divided it into fifteen pools with little dams between them, and rollers on the dams to enable him to drag his boat from one to the other. From May to late in September he is busy every morning gathering lilies. His average is about 500 a morning, which he ships in little galvanized iron tanks with wet moss. Many school children know how to get results on a little land. Mr. Mahoney, Superintendent of the Fairview Garden School, Yonkers, New York, estimates that the total value of produce grown on the 250 gardens, composing the school plot, in all about one and one quarter acres of land, was $1308, or at the rate of more than a thousand dollars per acre. When it is taken into consideration that all the labor was done by boys ranging in age from eight to twelve years, this result is truly astonishing. What may not adult skilled labor produce when applied freely to the land. CHAPTER IX TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT--SPECIALIZED CROPS To subdue the land with an ax, a plow and a spade is possible; millions of acres have been so subdued. This method, however, is the most expensive of all, as in our times, markets won't wait, and the man who wants to get on must produce as quickly as possible. To do so, he must have the best tools. They will pay for themselves many times over in a single year. For the farm, the following list, in addition to a well-stocked tool chest (hammer, saw, plane, ax, etc.) covers the indispensible: 1 team horses (these may be hired) $200.00 1 walking plow 10.00 1 disk or cutaway harrow 25.00 1 farm wagon 50.00 1 cultivator (two horse) 25.00 1 one-horse cultivator 8.00 Shovels, pick, mattock or grubbing hoe 10.00 Work harness for two horses 25.00 TOTAL $353.00 These things you must have to get the land in proper shape for seeds or plants; but special crops require special tools. A scythe is good to keep weeds away from fences. A sickle is handy to keep down grass. To reduce living expenses, a cow for $60, and fifty hens at fifty cents each, say $25, will supply a large family with milk and eggs. Most people make the mistake of buying too many things and these poorly selected. It is better to have too few tools than too many, for tools are often dropped where last used, and so are lost. Then if money is scarce, you may not be able to make a shelter for your machines and tools, and they will rust through the winter. Many farmers, through neglect, have to replace their tool equipment every four or five years, but with attention and care, the original equipment, even to the team, ought still to be in use twenty years after their purchase. I know many instances where this is true. The above equipment is the minimum for beginning work. The character of additions to it will depend much upon the crops which you select as the money getters. For general market gardening and the kitchen garden too, the following tool list, together with the above, will include everything absolutely necessary. Wheel hoe $6.00 Spade and fork, each $1.00 2.00 Push hoe .65 Watering can .60 Rake and common hoe 1.00 Bulb sprayer .25 Trowel .10 TOTAL $10.60 The wheel hoe is a great saver--of backache, especially to the beginner; as Warner says, "at the best you will conclude that for gardening purposes a cast-iron back with a hinge in it is preferable to the ones now in use." The dibble, an old tool handle, or a bit of broomstick sharpened, and garden lines to get the rows straight, labels, tomato supports, plant protectors and stakes earl all be homemade out of old material. The full outfit would include the following: Roller $8.00 Wheel-hoe with seeder 8.50 Sprayer 3.75 Wheelbarrow 4.00 Crowbar 1.50 Weeder .35 For such crops as admit of horse cultivation a horse hoe will save a great deal of time. The weeder is a cousin to the push hoe and has a zigzag blade for cutting off young weeds which are just starting above ground. It is pushed backward and forward and cuts both ways. It is very good for soft ground; on a harder patch use the push hoe. A market garden is really a big kitchen garden, from which the cultivator supplies not only his own family, but his neighbors, the public. To run a successful market garden for profit, land suitably situated near transportation and markets, a large supply of stable manure, hotbeds for raising plants, crates for shipping, wagons for delivering, and a complete outfit of tools are necessary. You must raise all sorts of vegetables and salad plants in quantities sufficiently large to justify you in giving your whole time to the work. An acre devoted to general market gardening could be attended to by two men with some extra help for marketing. To get a place fully established on new, rich land requires two or three years. On worn-out land it would take longer to build it up to the high fertility needed for maximum production. Crops like asparagus and rhubarb take two years to establish on a remunerative basis. If bush fruits are raised, three years are required to get maximum results. So in starting, land should be bought outright or leased for ten years. In market gardening for profit, one acre might be devoted to vegetables, one acre to small fruits; strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, etc. and one acre kept for buildings, poultry, etc. An energetic man could clear one thousand dollars a year besides his living, after he got a start, and be absolutely independent; that is, unless some predatory railroad corporation could confiscate his profits before his product reached the market. Some persons are just naturally so successful with plants that if they stuck an umbrella in the ground we should expect to see it blossom out into parasols--but they don't know why it does, and they can't teach any one else how to do it. Any fool can sneer at "book farming" or at anything else, but you can hardly succeed without the best books by practical men. Do not let some experienced ignoramus talk you out of experimenting under their guidance. You will learn little without experience, and unless you have the grower's instinct, you will learn less without books. Don't be hypnotized by long experience or by success. Hardly anybody knows his own business. You must have noticed that few of the people you buy of or sell to, know any more of their goods than you do. It is just the same with trades. Hardly a barber knows that he should not shave you against the grain of the skin. Even the cat won't stand being rubbed up the wrong way; but the barber never thought of that. We lawyers and the doctors are supposed to be thorough in our own field--I said lately to one of the ablest men at the New York Bar, "About one lawyer in a hundred knows his business." He said, "That is a gross overestimate." Shortly after I talked with three Judges, one of the City Court, one of the Supreme Court, and one of the United States Circuit, and they each agreed that my friend's remark was about true, and that in most cases litigants would do as well without lawyers as with them. If that is true, what chance is there that an uneducated man who has "raised garden sass ever since he was a boy, and seen his father do it before him," can teach you correctly? Men learn very slowly by experience, because no two experiences are exactly alike, unless they perceive and apply the principles under the experience. An intelligent man accustomed to investigation can learn more about a specialty in a week's study than an untrained practitioner can believe in a year. What the untrained teacher can tell us is of little account; what he shows us is another matter. Therefore get help who know that they don't know anything about a garden and who consequently will do with a will exactly what you tell them to do; such labor is cheap--why should you pay extravagant prices for skill to a man who has succeeded so poorly that he can only earn day's wages? You can get much better knowledge at less cost from a book. Study and put your knowledge into practice yourself, where you see promise of a profit. Almost every crop can be made a specialty. In proportion as special crops are profitable when conditions are right, so are they sources of loss when things go wrong. If, after your first season in the country, some special crop takes your fancy, give extra space and time to it the second year and see if you are successful in handling an eighth or a quarter acre. If so, you may extend your operations as rapidly as purse and market permit. Before concentrating upon any crop as the chief source of income, a careful study must be made of all the conditions surrounding its production; a crop is not produced in the broad meaning of that term until it is actually in the hands of the consumer. Potatoes, for instance, are grown by the hundred acres in sections adapted to their growth, and special machinery costing hundreds of dollars is used in planting, cultivating, and harvesting the crop. The good shipping and keeping qualities of the potato enable it to be raised far from markets and so brings into competition cheap land worked in large areas, with large capital. In spite of this, however, the small cultivator can usually make money if he can sell his potatoes directly to the consumer. If your land is so situated that you can put your individuality into the crop and can control all the circumstances, preparation of land, planting, cultivation, harvesting, and marketing, your chances of success are immeasurably increased. As soon as any important part must be trusted to some one beyond your control, danger arises. Assiduous care in planting, cultivating, and packing will avail nothing if the product falls into the hands of transportation companies or commission merchants indifferent as to what becomes of it. It is therefore better to be quite independent, sell your own crop, and have the whole operation in your own hands from the very beginning. Generally speaking, seed growing for the market is a highly developed special business which is usually carried on by companies operating with large capital, able to employ the best experts, and to avail themselves of all the advantages of scientific methods in culture, regardless of expense. So uncertain is the business, that even with all these facilities, they rarely guarantee seeds. It is obvious that the amateur has little chance of succeeding in such a difficult business. Nevertheless, he will be able after a few seasons of increasing experience to gather seeds from selected plants and so furnish his own supply. It must be borne in mind, however, that plants can be improved by cross breeding and that by keeping a variety too long on the same ground its quality deteriorates, and the plant tends to revert to the type natural to it before domestication. When land is cropped every season, the nitrogen, potash, and phosphorus removed from the soil must be replaced in some form, otherwise you have diminishing returns, while the expense for labor is the same. In farming small areas for specialties you cannot easily invoke the principle of rotation by enriching the land with legumes, to be plowed under while green, the bacteria on the roots of which gather nitrogen from the air, but you must get stable manure or buy chemical fertilizers to maintain the fertility. Special crops divide themselves naturally into two classes: those raised for immediate shipment to market, and those to be hauled to canneries. The first type are generally prepared in a more expensive way, and need more care and attention. Each class requires its own special forms of packing to conform to market peculiarities fixed by the taste of consumers. For the cultivation of all specialties, many items of preparation are identical. Land must be well drained, it must contain a sufficient amount of humus, or decaying vegetable matter, to make it loose and porous; it must be free from sticks and stones or any foreign matter likely to impede cultivation or obstruct growth. The proper formation of a seed bed is a prime prerequisite to successful cropping. After the land is manured and plowed it should be gone over in all directions with a disk and smoothing harrow, until it is of a dustlike fineness. In thorough cultivation before the crop is planted, lies the secret of many a success, and in its neglect the cause of many failures. Intelligent handling of crops is in a large measure knowledge of the influence of wind and rain, sunshine and darkness, on the particular nature of the plant Delicate plants, for example, ought to be grown where buildings or forests break the force of prevailing winds. Sheltered valleys in irrigated sections have proved the best for intensive cultivation. For thousands of years in China and Japan the conditions of successful intensive cultivation have been well understood, and to-day the most efficient gardeners are the Chinese. In some parts of Mexico, for the same reasons, intensive cultivation has reached a high development. In our own West we are catching up on vegetables and fruits. CHAPTER X THE ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL We have seen what a worker with very little money can do and how he can succeed. A small capital, however, can be used to increase the returns to as great advantage on a small farm as large capital can be used on a large farm and with much less risk. Stable manure is still the favorite article with the masses of gardeners. One ton of ordinary stable manure contains about 1275 pounds of organic matter, carrying eight pounds of nitrogen, ten pounds of potash, and four pounds of phosphoric acid. When thoroughly rotted, the manure acquires a still larger percentage of plant food; it is more valuable, not only for that reason, but also on account of its immediate availability. Further, the mechanical effect of this manure in opening and loosening the soil, allowing air and warmth to enter more freely, adds greatly to its value. It is easily gotten and often goes wholly or in part to waste. On the outskirts of some towns may be seen a collection of manure piles that have been hauled out and dumped in waste places. The plant food in each ton of this manure is worth at least two dollars--that is the least Eastern farmers pay for similar material, and they make money doing it. Yet almost every liveryman has to pay some one for hauling the manure away. This is simply because farmers living near these towns are missing a chance to secure something for nothing--because, perhaps, the profit is not directly in sight. But from most soils there is a handsome profit possible from a very small application of stable manure. While writing this, I saw a man in New Rochelle, N. Y.; dumping a load of street sweepings into a hole in a vacant lot. It would have been less wasteful to have dumped a bushel of potatoes into the hole. Commercial fertilizers are coming more and more in use by market gardeners, and with reason. If we examine a good fertilizer, analyzing five per cent available nitrogen, six per cent phosphoric acid, and 8 per cent potash, we shall find that one ton of it contains, besides less valuable ingredients: 100 lb. nitrogen, 120 lb. phosphoric acid, 160 lb. potash. Such fertilizers probably retail at forty to sixty dollars per ton, and are fully worth it. All this plant food, and perhaps one half more, can be drawn in a single load, while it will take ten such loads of stable manure to supply the same amount of plant food. There is no reason to be afraid of too much fertilizer, provided it is evenly distributed and thoroughly mixed through properly prepared soil. Stinginess in this item is poor economy. Nitrogen is the most essential food for plant growth. It is an important element of plant food in manure. In ordinary manure most of the value is due to the nitrogen, although phosphoric acid and potash are also present. It is found in the most available form in nitrate of soda. Nitrate of soda will benefit all crops, but it does not follow that it will pay to use it on all crops. Its cost makes it unprofitable to use on cheap crops; but on those that yield a large return nitrate of soda is a very profitable investment. "It is shown in the experiments conducted with nitrate of soda on different crops that in the case of grain and forage crops, which utilized the nitrate quite as completely as the market garden crops, the increased value of crops due to nitrate does not in any case exceed $14 per acre, or a money return at the rate of $8.50 per 100 pounds of nitrate used, while in the case of the market-garden crops the value of the increased yield reaches, in the case of one crop, the high figure of over $263 per acre, or at the rate of about $66 per 100 pounds of nitrate." (New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Stations, page 8, No. 172.) Professor Voorhees, of the same station, experimented with tomatoes, with these results: Manure and Fertilizer Used Cost Per Acre Value of Crop No manure $271.88 30 tons barnyard manure $30.00 291.75 8 tons manure and 400 lb. fertilizer 15.00 317.63 160 pounds nitrate of soda alone 4.00 361.13 Such common crops as tomatoes, cabbage, turnips, beets, etc., in order to be highly profitable, must be grown and harvested early; any one can grow them in their regular season; their growth must be promoted or forced as much as possible, at the time when the natural agencies are not active in the change of soil nitrogen into available forms, and the plants must, therefore, be supplied artificially with the active forms of nitrogen, if a rapid and continuous growth is to be maintained. It is quite possible to have a return of $50 per acre from the use of $5 worth of nitrate of soda on crops of high value, as, for example, early tomatoes, beets, cabbage, etc. This is an extraordinary return for the money and labor invested; still, if the increased value of the crop were but $10, or even $8, it would be a profitable investment, since no more land and but little additional capital was required in order to obtain the extra $5 or $8 per acre. The results of all the experiments conducted in different parts of the country and in different seasons, show an average gain in yield of early tomatoes of about fifty per cent, with an average increased value of crop of about $100 per acre. The rest of the report shows similar results with other crops. (New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 172.) Joseph Harris says, "Some years ego we used nitrate of soda cautiously as a top dressing on the celery plants. The effect was astonishing. The next year, having more confidence, we spread the nitrate at the time we sowed the seed, and again after the plant came up, and twice afterward during a rain. "Instead of finding it difficult to get the plants early enough for the celery growers who set them out, they were ready three weeks before the usual time of transplanting. "At the four applications, we probably used 1600 lb. of nitrate of soda per acre, and this would probably furnish more nitric acid to the plants than they could get from five hundred tons of manure per acre, provided it had been possible to have worked such a quantity into the soil. Never were finer plants grown. As compared with the increased value of the plants, the cost of the nitrate is not worth taking into consideration." As a means of fertilization without the use of artificial fertilizer, soil inoculation has come. It has grown out of the discovery of the dependence of leguminous plants on bacteria which live on their roots. The discovery is one of the most important of those made in modern agriculture. It has received its greatest impetus in America, under the experiments of Professor Moore of the United States Agricultural Department. The Department supplied free to farmers the bacteria for inoculation. Now they supply it only for experimental purposes. A laboratory has been fitted up for the work. The method is to propagate bacteria for each of the various leguminous plants such as clover, alfalfa, soy beans, cow peas, tares, and velvet beans. All of these plants are of incalculable value in different sections of the country as forage for farm animals. In the West, alfalfa is the main reliance for stockraisers. The farmers of the East are trying to establish it, but meet with difficulty chiefly for want of the special bacteria which should be found on the roots. The function of these bacteria is to gather the nitrogen of the air and supply it as plant food. Without the bacteria the plant can get only the nitrogen which is supplied from the soil in fertilizers. With the aid of the bacteria the growing plant can derive the greater part of its food from the air. Here is one of the results of the use of inoculated seed as reported by the United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 214. G. L. Thomas, experimenting with field peas on his farm near Auburn, Me., made a special test with fertilized and unfertilized strips, and stated that "inoculated seed did as much without fertilizers of any kind, as uninoculated seed supplied with fertilizer (phosphate) at the rate of 800 pounds and a ton of barnyard manure per acre." This seems to be only in its infancy. The Department warns us that nitrogen inoculation is useless where the soil already has enough nitrogen and where other plant foods are absent. The experiments are most important, and we are probably on the eve of as great advances in agriculture as in electricity, but the human race has a great love for "inoculation," and indeed for all unnatural processes. You remember the story of the wonderful coon that Chandler Harris tells? No? They were constantly seeing this enormous coon, but always just as they almost got their hands on him, he disappeared. One night the boys came running in to say that the wonderful coon was up in a persimmon tree in the middle of a ten-acre lot; so they got the dogs and the lanterns and guns and ran out, and sure enough they saw the wonderful big coon up in a fork of the tree. It was a bright moonlight night, but to make doubly sure they cut down the tree and the dogs ran in--the coon wasn't there. "Well, but, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, "I thought you said you saw the coon there." "So we did, Honey," said the old man, "so we did; but it's very easy to see what ain't there when you're looking for it." Another method of increasing fertility at increased expense deserves notice. The vacant public lands are for the most part desert-like, and their utilization can come about only through irrigation. This land can be made to produce the finest crops in the world; and the tremendous volumes of water that flow from the mountains to the sea, once harnessed and piped or ditched to this land, will transform it into beautiful gardens and farms. With the work being done by the United States Government, and that of the various states, we may look forward in the not distant future to this land being made habitable to man. It is well known that with the dry, even climate and with an abundance of water applied as vegetation needs, this now arid waste is far more productive than the Eastern states, where the crops are at the mercy of the elements, sometimes having too much moisture and at other times not having enough. "Irrigation offers control of conditions such as is found nowhere except in greenhouse culture. The farmer in the humid country cannot control the amount of starch in potatoes, sugar in beets, protein in corn, gluten in wheat, except by planting varieties which are especially adapted to the production of the desired quality. The irrigation farmer, on the other hand, can produce this or that desirable quality by the control of the moisture supply to the plant. He can hasten or retard maturity of the plant, produce early truck or late truck on the same soil, grow wheat or grow rice as he deems advisable." "On the irrigated fields of the Vosges, Vaucluse, etc., in France, six tons of dry hay becomes the rule, even upon ungrateful soil; and this means considerably more than the annual food of one milch cow (which can be taken as a little less than five tons) grown on each acre." "The irrigated meadows round Milan are another well known example. Nearly 22,000 acres are irrigated there with water derived from the sewers of the city, and they yield crops of from eight to ten tons of hay as a rule; occasionally some separate meadows will yield the fabulous amount--fabulous to-day but no longer fabulous to-morrow--of eighteen tons of hay per acre; that is, the food of nearly four cows to the acre, and nine times the yield of good meadows in this country." ("Fields, Factories, and Workshops," pages 116-117.) "If irrigation pays"--and no one now questions that--"the whole Western country of rich soil, which asks but a drink now and then, will be turned into a Garden of Eden." _(Maxwell's Talisman.)_ Agriculture may be revolutionized with the advent of irrigation. A new method of disposing of sewage and at the same time irrigating the soil, has come into use recently, and will be found valuable to those who are situated so that they can make use of it. The sewage from buildings is drained into a large tank where the heavier matter can settle to the bottom. When the water rises nearly to the top of the tank it is siphoned into another tank, and from there it is piped about the field. The piping is very simple--ordinary drain tile conveys the water. Beginning at the highest point of the field to be irrigated, a six-inch (or larger) line of tile should be laid along the highest ground with a fall of not over one inch to each ten feet. From this main trunk should be branch lines of "laterals," laid from eight to twelve feet apart, as they would be laid for draining a field. These branch lines may be laid at an angle to the main trunk as may be most convenient; all the joints must be covered so as to keep out the flirt. The whole system should be laid deep enough in the ground to be secure from frost; but to be most effective it should not be over fourteen to sixteen inches below the surface, hence sub-irrigation cannot be used very successfully in the Northern states. In a sandy loam soil with a clay subsoil it works best at sixteen to twenty-four inches. This is substantially Colonel Waring's method of sewage disposal. To get the best use of it for plants, the water should be assembled and kept in the sun for ten to twelve days, then turned into the pipes until the ground is well soaked, and then shut off and not allowed in the pipes again for ten to fifteen days, according to the weather and condition of moisture in the soil. The crop should be cultivated between each watering. However, as Bailey says, "Evidently in all regions in which crops will yield abundantly without irrigation, as in the East, the main reliance is to be placed on good tillage." "Most vegetable gardeners in the East do not find it profitable to irrigate. Now and then a man who has push and the ability to handle a fine crop to advantage, finds it a very profitable undertaking." ("Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 174.) Bailey, however, was not thinking of "overhead irrigation." The late J. M. Smith, Green Bay, Wisconsin, was one of the expert market gardeners of his region. "The longer I live," wrote Mr. Smith, then in the midst of a serious drought, "the more firmly am I convinced that plenty of manure and then the most complete system of cultivation make an almost complete protection against ordinary droughts." (Same, page 330.) If the soil is cultivated carefully and intensively, it will hold water within itself and carry a storage reservoir underneath the growing crop. Finely pulverizing and packing the seed bed, makes it retain the greatest possible percentage of the moisture that falls, just as a tumbler full of fine sponge or of birdshot will retain many times the amount of water that a tumbler full of buckshot will. The atmosphere quickly drinks up the moisture from the soil unless we Prevent it. This we do by means of a soil "blanket," called a "mulch" This finely pulverized surface largely prevents the moisture below from evaporating, and at the same time keeps the surface in such condition that it readily absorbs the dew and the showers. Water moves in the soil as it does in a lamp wick, by capillary attraction; the more deeply and densely the soil is saturated with moisture, the more easily the water moves upward, just as oil "climbs up" a wet wick faster than it does a dry one. One can illustrate the effect of this fine soil "mulch" in preventing evaporation by placing some powdered sugar on a lump of loaf sugar and putting the lump sugar in water. The powdered sugar will remain dry even when the lump has become so thoroughly saturated that it crumbles to pieces. "We have no useless American acres," said Secretary Wilson. "We shall make them all productive. We have agricultural explorers in every far corner of the world; and they are finding crops which have become so acclimated to dry conditions, similar to our own West, that we shall in time have plants thriving upon our so-called arid lands. We shall cover this arid area with plants of various sorts which will yield hundreds of millions of tons of additional forage and grains for Western flocks and herds. Our farmers will grow these upon land now considered practically worthless." In this way it has been estimated that in the neighborhood of one hundred million acres of the American desert can be reclaimed to the most intensive agriculture. (See a study of the possible additions to available land in Prof. W. S. Thompson's "Population, a Study of Malthusianism": Col. U, 1915.) Frederick V. Coville, the chief botanist of the Department of Agriculture, does not hesitate to say that in the strictly arid regions there are many millions of acres, now considered worthless for agriculture, which are as certain to be settled in small farms as were the lands of Illinois. Land that was thought to be absolute desert has been made to yield heavy crops of grain and forage by this method without irrigation. Macaroni wheat will grow with ten inches of rainfall, and yield fifteen bushels to the acre. This however is less than the average wheat yield in the United States. Much can be done by dry farming; that is, by plowing the soil very deep and cultivating six or eight times a season, thus retaining all the moisture for the crops and reducing evaporation to a minimum. There are thousands of acres in different sections of Montana that grow good crops without irrigation. In Fergus County, for instance, the wonderful yield of 45 bushels of wheat per acre is grown without irrigation. Heavy crops of grain and vegetables are grown in the vicinity of Great Falls by the dry farming system. The money and time spent in spraying is also well invested. The New York Agricultural Experiment Station began a ten-year experiment in potato-spraying to determine how much the yield can be increased by spraying with Pyrox or with Bordeaux mixture. In 1904 the gain due to spraying was larger than ever before. Five sprayings with Bordeaux increased the yield 233 bushels per acre, while three sprayings increased it 191 bushels. The gain was due chiefly to the prolongation of growth through the prevention of late blight. The sprayed potatoes contained one ninth more starch and were of better quality. The average increase of profit per acre from spraying potatoes was figured to be about $22 on each acre. The result was arrived at from experiment, two thirds of which was by independent farmers. (Particulars will be found In Bulletin No. 264, issued by the Department.) In fourteen farmers' business experiments, including 18 acres of potatoes, the average gain due to spraying was 62-1/2 bushels per acre, the average total cost of spraying 93 cents per acre; and the average net profit, based on the market price of potatoes at digging time, $24.86 per acre. "One class of gardeners," Burnet Landreth explains, "may be termed experimental farmers, men tired of the humdrum rotation of farm processes and small profits, men looking for a paying diversification of their agricultural interests. Their expenses for appliances are not great, as they have already on hand the usual stock of farm tools, requiring only one or two seed drills, a small addition to their cultivating implements, and a few tons of fertilizers. Their laborers and teams are always on hand for the working of moderate areas. In addition to the usual expense of the farm, they would not need to have a cash capital of beyond 20 to 25 dollars per acre for the area in truck." "Other men, purchasing or renting land, especially for market gardening, taking only improved land of suitable aspect, soil, and situation, and counting in cost of building, appliances, and labor, would require a capital of $80 to $100 per acre. For example, a beginner in market gardening in South Jersey, on a five-acre patch, would need $500 to set up the business, and run it until his shipments began to return him money. With the purpose of securing information on this interesting point, the writer asked for estimates from market gardeners in different localities, and the result has been that from Florida the reports of the necessary capital per acre, in land or its rental (not of labor), fertilizers, tools, implements, seed and all the appliances, average $95, from Texas $45, from Illinois $70, from the Norfolk district of Virginia the reports vary from $75 to $125, according to location, and from Long Island, New York, the average of estimates at the east end is $75, and at the west end $150." I have before me now one of the roseate advertisements, which we so often see in the newspapers, telling how fortunes can be made by investing a few dollars in a tropical plantation in Mexico. It gives what are supposed to be startling yields per acre, and yet the returns, which must necessarily be taken with considerable allowance, are only from $580 to $1087 per acre on various plantations. There are market gardeners and nurserymen near New York City who are making their acres produce better returns than this. It is not necessary to go off into the tropical wilderness seeking a fortune which is usually a gold brick that some fellow is trying to sell you, when as good results can be secured right at home. Market gardeners in and near Philadelphia pay $25 to $50 an acre and upwards rent for land, and work from five to forty acres. This is as much as similar land in many parts of the country could be bought for. But it is not a high rent when they are right at the market--one man makes the round trip in two and one half hours--manure costs them nothing--for years they have been using the excavations from the old style privy wells, which has been hauled to their farm and deposited where they wished it, free. They have modern facilities, such as trolley and telephone, and are as much city men as any clerk in an office. They clear far higher profits from an acre than the average farmer, raising never less than two, and often three crops in a season. They employ several men to the acre, and at certain times many more, working the men in gangs. Only the difficulty of getting good help at their prices prevents them from using twice the number. However, the possibilities of putting capital into land at a profit are still infinite. What chiefly attracts the gardener to the great cities is stable manure; this is not wanted so much for increasing the richness of the soil--one ninth part of the manure used by the French gardeners would do for that purpose--but for keeping the soil at a certain temperature. Early vegetables pay best, and in order to obtain early produce, not only the air, but the soil as well, must be warmed; that is done by putting great quantities of properly mixed manure into the soil; its fermentation heats it. But with the present development of industrial skill, heating the soil could be done more economically and more easily by hot-water pipes. Consequently, the French gardeners begin more and more to make use of portable pipes, or thermosiphons, provisionally established in the cool frames. Competition that stands in with the railroads can be met only by being near the market or having water transportation. Indeed, the erect of water transportation in getting manure, and in delivering the produce from the railroads, appears in the early history of trucking. The railroads often crush out boat competition by absorbing docks and standing in with the commission men. This could be met by such cooperative selling agencies as the flower growers already have. "One of the earliest centers for the development of truck farming in its present sense was along the shores of Chesapeake Bay, where fast sailing oyster boats were employed for sending the produce to the neighboring markets of Baltimore and Philadelphia. In a similar way the gardeners about New York early began pushing out along Long Island, using the waters of the Sound for transporting their produce. The trucking region on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan is another sample of the effect of convenient water transportation in causing an early development of this industry. The building of the Illinois Central railroad opened up a region in southern Illinois that was supposed to be particularly adapted to fruit growing." ("Development of the Trucking Interests," by F. S. Earle, page 439.) If one goes into the trucking business on so large a scale as to be able to make deals with the railroads, such as The Standard Oil Company has made, of course additional prices could be gotten, owing to the possibility of putting competitors at a disadvantage. That business is a large one. In doing business on this scale, much will depend on your ability as a merchant. "It is useless to grow good crops unless they can be sold at a profit; yet it is safe to say that ten men grow good truck crops for one who markets them to the best advantage." Three Acres and Liberty: Ch. XI-XV CHAPTER XI HOTBEDS AND GREENHOUSES Whether to get an early start on the garden or for raising plants for field crops, a hotbed is all but indispensable. In making a hotbed what we seek to do is to imitate Nature at her best, so get the best soil and the sunniest spot you can find. In all hotbeds the underlying principle is the same: They are right-angled boxes covered with glass panes set in movable frames and placed over heated excavations. The bed may be of any size or shape, but the standard one is six feet wide, since the stock glass frames are usually six feet long by three feet wide. You can have any length needed to supply your requirements. "Tomato Culture," by A. J. Root, tells us that the cheapest plan is to get some old planks, broken brickbats or stone, and piece together a box-like affair in proper shape: to provide drainage, the front should be at least ten inches above the ground and the rear fourteen inches. A hotbed knocked together in this way is all right to start with, if you cannot do any better, but will last only two or three seasons. For a permanent bed, probably the best way is to make cement walls extending to the bottom of the manure. The bed ought to face south or southeast and be well protected on the north. It should be banked all around with earth or straw to keep out the cold, and mats or shutters should be provided for extra cold weather. The best material for heating the bed and the most easily obtained, is fresh horse manure in which there is a quantity of straw or litter. This will give out a slow, moist heat and will not burn out before the crops or the plants mature. Get all the manure you need at one time. Pile it in a dry place and let it ferment; every few days work the pile over thoroughly with a dung fork; sometimes two turnings of the manure are enough, but it is better to let it stand and heat three or four times. "You can make a hotbed also on top of the ground without any excavation. Spread a layer of manure evenly one foot in depth and large enough to extend around the frame three feet each way. Pack this down well, especially around the edge, put on a second and third layer until you have a well-trodden and compact bed of manure at least two and one half feet in depth. Place the frame in the center of this bed and press it down well." A two-inch layer of decayed leaves, cut straw, or corn fodder, spread over the manure in the frame and well packed down, will help to retain the heat. Ventilate the bed every day to allow steam and ammonia fumes to pass off. "The soil inside should be equal parts of garden loam and well-rotted barnyard manure. Tramp well the first layer of three inches. To make it entirely safe for the plant seeds in the hotbed, add another layer of the same depth. Use no water with garden loam and manure if you can possibly help it." "Before sowing any seeds put a thermometer in the bed three inches deep in the soil. If it runs over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, do not sow. If below 55 degrees it is too cold; you will have to fork it over and add more manure. If the bed gets too hot, you can ventilate it with a sharp stick by thrusting it down into the soil." Another way that the old gardeners have to make a hot bed is with fire. On a large scale this is cheaper, though more complicated than the fermentation of manure. In making this kind choose your location and build the frames as before. "Cut a trench with a slight taper from the east end of the plot to the end of the hotbed, and on under the ground to about four feet beyond the end of the bed. This taper to the outlet will create a draught and so keep a better fire. Arch this over with vitrified tile. The furnace end where the fire is should be about six feet away from the bed. When the trenches are completed, cover over with the dirt that was taken out of them. Two such trenches under the frames will make a good hotbed. Anyone can do this sort of work." A hotbed can also be heated by running steam pipes through the ground, but unless you happen to be where exhaust steam could be used, this method is not economical except for big houses. The care and expense of a separate steam plant would be too great to pay, unless for growing winter vegetables for market or flower culture. If you go into that on a scale large enough to pay, new problems at once demand solution. Vegetables under glass have kept pace with other crops. Within fifteen miles of Boston are millions of square feet of glass devoted to vegetables, chiefly lettuce. There are more than five million feet in the United States used for other crops. Ordinarily, under favorable conditions, glass devoted to this work will yield an average of fifty cents per year per square foot. About the lowest estimate of cost per sash is five dollars; this amount includes the cost of one fourth of the frame and covers. There are usually four sashes to one frame. A well-made mortised plank frame costs four to six dollars. A sash, unglazed, costs from one to two dollars. Glazing costs seventy-five cents. Mats and shutters cost from fifty cents to two dollars per sash, depending upon the material used. Double thick glass pays better in the end as being less liable to breakage. These prices vary greatly, however. The following sample estimate by a gardener is for a market garden of one acre, in which it is desired to grow a general line of vegetables. It supposes that half of the acre is to be set with plants from hotbeds. One eighth acre to early cauliflower and cabbage, about 2000 plants, if transplanted, would require two 6 X 12 frames, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty plants being grown under each sash. These frames may be used again for tomato plants for the same area, using about 450 plants. This will allow a sash for every 55 plants. One frame should be in use at the same time for eggplants and peppers, two sashes of each, growing fifty transplanted plants under each sash. Two frames will be required for cucumbers, melons, and early squashes; for extra early lettuce, an estimate of sixty to seventy heads should be made to a sash. It is assumed that celery and late cabbages are to be started in seed beds in the open. In the fashionable suburbs of Boston "one hotbed 3 X 6 feet was used in which to start the seeds of early vegetables. Plantings were made in the open ground as soon as the weather permitted, and were continued at intervals throughout the season whenever there was a vacant spot in the garden. The following varieties of vegetables, mostly five-and ten-cent packets, were planted: Pole and wax beans, beets, kale, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, corn, cucumbers, corn salad, endive, eggplant, kohlrabi, lettuce, muskmelon, onions, peppers, peas, salsify, radish, spinach, squash, tomatoes, turnips, rutabagas, escarole, chives, shallot, parsley, sweet and Irish potatoes, and nearly a dozen different kinds of sweet herbs." "In the larger garden, tomatoes followed peas, turnips the wax beans, early lettuce for fall use took the place of Refugee beans. Corn salad succeeded lettuce." "The spinach was followed by cabbage, while turnips, beets, carrots, celery, and spinach gave a second crop in the plot occupied by Gardus peas and Emperor William beans." "Winter radishes came after telephone peas, Paris Golden celery was planted in between the hills of Stowell's blanching. The plot of early corn was sown to turnips. The hotbed was used during the late fall and winter to store some of the hardy vegetables, and the latter part of October there was placed in it some endive, escarole, celeriac, and the remaining space was filled up by transplanting leeks, chives, and parsley." (Bailey, "Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 38.) "If spinach is grown in frames, the sash used for one of the late crops above may be used through the following winter. "This, like the last case, makes a total of five frames, the cost, depending on make and material, from one to five dollars; twenty sash and covers, at, say, $2.75, $55; manure at market price, calculating at least three or four loads per frame. This is a liberal estimate of space, and should allow for all ordinary loss of plants, and for discarding the weak and inferior ones. It supposes that most or all of the plants are to be transplanted once or more in the frames. Many gardeners have less equipment of glass." (Same, pages 49-50 ) Growing vegetables under glass gives smaller returns than flowers; as, for instance, a head of lettuce brings much less than a plant of carnations, and suffers more from the competition of southern crops. Nevertheless, the greenhouse-grown vegetables have come into prominence lately because they can be raised in houses that are not good enough for flowers. Lettuce and tomatoes are the principal crops; some growers raise thousands of dollars' worth each year. The greenhouse is also used for forcing plants which are afterwards transplanted to the open air. This develops them at a time when they could not grow outdoors and gives them such a start that they are very early on the market, thereby realizing the highest prices. "Nearness to market is the most important feature in a greenhouse. In large cities, manure, which is the chief fertilizer, can be had in most cases for the hauling. The short haul is an important item, and, most important of all, the gardener who is near the market can take advantage of high prices, if the grower is near enough to the city to make two or three trips; in such a fluctuating market as New York, it is to his advantage." Some kind of a greenhouse is necessary, but one large enough to produce a living would cost a very large sum. Vegetable raising under glass has been made profitable in special localities where nearly the whole community gives its time to building up the industry, but complete success can be attained only by having absolute control of all the conditions entering into production, and giving assiduous and undivided attention to detail. Leonard Barron, in the _Garden Magazine,_ says: "The best type of greenhouse for all-round purposes is unquestionably what is known as the even span--that is, a house in which the roof is in the form of an inverted V, so as to be exposed as much as possible to sunlight, and having the ridge-pole in the center. All other types of houses are modifications from the simplest form, and are designed in some way or other to fit some special requirements. These requirements may be: the cultural necessities for some particular crop; a desire to have the atmospheric conditions inside more or less abnormal at given seasons (as in a forcing house); or an adaptation to some peculiarity of the situation, as when a greenhouse is built as an adjunct to other buildings." "It is plain common sense that the ideal greenhouse is one in which the light is most nearly that which exists outside, and in which the heat is as evenly distributed. It is practical experience that a structure with as few angles and turns m it as possible and with a minimum of woodwork in its superstructure, best answers these conditions.... Greenhouse building has developed into a special industry, and the modern American greenhouse is the highest type of construction. It is built with as careful calculation to its situation and its requirements as is the country dwellinghouse. Such a thing naturally is not cheap." "The low-priced 'cheap greenhouse' is a makeshift of some sort. Perhaps its roof is constructed of hotbed sash, a perfectly feasible method of construction, which for ordinary, commonplace gardening will answer admirably. Or, its foundation is merely the plain earth. Such a building does admirably in the summer time, and even in the late spring and early autumn; but woe betide the enthusiastic amateur in winter, who, being possessed of one of these light greenhouse structures, has indulged in a few costly, exotic plants. They will be frozen, to a certainty! It is economy to pay a fair price in the beginning to secure a properly built greenhouse that will withstand the trials of winter." "If iron frame is used instead of wood there is greater durability, and the structure being more slender, will admit more light, but the cost will be increased." "It makes very little difference in cost what shape of house is to be erected. The cost per lineal foot for an even span is practically the same as for a lean-to of the same length and width. In the lean-to, in order to get the sufficient bench and walk space inside, it is necessary to carry the roof to a point much higher than in the even span. The extra framework and material for the roof cost a good deal, yet add practically nothing to the efficiency of the house." "Heating of greenhouses is best done by hot water, and in a small house the pipes may well be connected with the heating system used for the dwelling, if the greenhouse and the home are within any sort of reasonable distance from each other. For large houses, or ranges of several houses together, the independent heating plant is necessary. Steam is used for heating by commercial florists, but it is economical only on a large scale." "As a uniform temperature must be maintained in the house, the fires, where steam is used, need watching continuously during cold weather, for the moment the water ceases to boil, the pipes cool off and a considerable time is consumed in starting the heat running again. With hot water there is much more latitude in attention, for though the fires dwindle' the water which fills the pipes will carry heat for a long time, and it will circulate until the last degree is radiated. But a hot-water system costs in the installation about one fourth more than steam. Very small houses may be successfully heated by kerosene stoves, which may be placed inside the house. A much better way would be to use oil heaters for an inside water circulation, carrying off all products of combustion by means of a flue. Coal stoves should never be installed inside the house. It has been done successfully by some amateurs, but the danger of coal gas being driven back into the house by a down draft in the chimney is too great a risk. Coal gas and illuminating gas are two virulent poisons to plants." It is obvious that the amateur must proceed with great caution in undertaking intensive cultivation under glass. Build at first the simplest and least expensive kind of hotbeds or greenhouses. It takes three to five seasons to train even an experienced farmer along these special lines. Separate crops require special treatment. Do not experiment, but follow well-tried procedure. It is comparatively easy to farm an acre under glass, but it should be worked up to, each step being taken only after a solid foundation is ready to build on. Learn by your mistakes. Don't get discouraged by failure. By not making the same mistake twice, you will soon learn by experience just what is essential to production. The more you learn about the way nature does things, the more likely you will be to succeed when you seek to imitate her. CHAPTER XII OTHER USES OF LAND We had intended to write an interesting chapter on the use of a few acres of land for poultry, and another on raising a vast drove of rabbits, both from practical men, but a good average man, just such as this book is written for, sent the following: "I am very sorry that I cannot comply with your request to write a chapter on poultry for your new book. It is true that I am physically and mentally capable of performing that feat, and it would be possible for me to prepare an essay that might entertain the reader, and even make him believe that there is money in commercial poultry. I prefer, however, to leave that sort of romancing to the poultry journals who, by much practice, are adepts in the art. The fact is, I did not make poultry raising pay, and had I remained on my chicken ranch, I would have gone broke. I do not mean to say, however, that there is no money in poultry, but merely that I could not get it out. Perhaps others who are better equipped for the work can make a success of such an undertaking, but I could not. The numerous poultry journals are filled with instructions how to do it and with letters from people who assert that they have done well with poultry; but, really, during the four years that I was in the business I cannot recall a single case of success, and, on the other hand, I learned of failures without end. I had the reputation of having the best planned and most completely equipped in this part of Washington, and perhaps in the entire state. My stock was thoroughbred and healthy, and they seemed to attend to business strictly. I devoted about all my waking hours to them, did everything that seemed necessary that was suggested by my own success, and yet I could not make it go, am glad I am clear of it, and have no desire to try it again. I am perfectly willing to admit my possible unfitness for the business, but I am also compelled to admit that I could not succeed and that no advice of mine could help others." Although many, either under exceptional circumstances or because of exceptional ability, have made a success of wholesale poultry raising, it seems on reflection that Mr. Wolf's ideas are in the main correct. The price of chickens is fixed, like all other prices, by supply and demand, and toward the supply every farmer contributes his chickens and their eggs which cost him practically nothing; at least he counts that they cost him nothing. Now it is clear that if you considerably increase the supply at any place, the price will fall, and the farmer, whose chickens and eggs cost him almost nothing in money, will sell them low enough to command a market and will continue to raise them, however little he gets for them. So you are against inexhaustible competitors who can neither be driven out nor combined with. It is worse than competing with bankrupt dealers. To make much money you must have at least some monopoly, and even a little bit of the earth that is well suited to your purpose where there is no unreasonable and unreasoning competition, will give you a chance. But while it is true that the farmer's subsidized hens have a very disastrous effect at times upon the market, the fact is that, notwithstanding the tariff, we import millions of dozens of eggs laid each year by the pauper hens of Canada and often of Denmark. Another fact to be considered is, that it is when eggs are most plentiful that the farmers depress the market. With their ways of handling their poultry, their hens lay only when conditions are most favorable, and in the winter when eggs are as high as fifty cents a dozen in cities, they have no eggs to market. Like the market gardener, to be timely in market is to succeed. A week may mean an annihilation of profits. It is a different proposition to raise a few chickens as a side line as the farmers do. A workman at the Connecticut place of one of the experts who has revised this book had a bit of land not more than 100 X 200 feet, and for several years cleared $100 a year by raising eggs and broilers, doing the work together with that of a little garden of small fruits before and after working hours The chickens fed largely on green food in summer. In selling your surplus at a profit, the same principles apply as in raising a surplus to sell at a profit. While poultry and egg raising does not require that you must be first, it does require that you market your produce at a time when the prices are highest. You must hatch at a time which will allow the young hens to begin laying as winter approaches; the food must keep up animal heat and the house must be warm enough to make the hens comfortable, and the conditions must be such as to keep them laying. As an experiment, we once raised six pullets. They were hatched in May, and in December they began laying. All during the winter they laid never less than four and some times six eggs a day, and kept this up until spring. They were fed on wheat and corn and plenty of meat scraps and green food. They were kept in what was practically a glass house, receiving the benefit of the sun during the day, and were protected from the winds. The effect was to bring as near as possible the condition of the warm months; these paid very well. Ducks are less frequently raised than chickens and often realize good returns. The popular fallacy that ducks require a stream or pond is gradually passing away. There was a time when nearly all ducks were raised in this way, feeding on fish as the principal diet, but experience has proved that ducks raised without a stream or pond tend to put on flesh instead of feathers, and they have not the oily, fishy flavor of those raised on the water. Nearly all of the successful duck raisers now use this method. This is bringing the duck more into prominence as an article of food; as James Rankin says in "Duck Culture," "People do not care to eat fish and flesh combined. They would rather eat them separate." The white pekins are the popular birds, because they are larger, have white meat, and are splendid layers. They lay from 100 to 165 eggs in a season and are the easiest to raise. They can do entirely without water; and Rankin tells of selling a flock to a wealthy man, who afterwards wrote asking him to take them back, because he had bought them for an artificial lake in front of his house, so that his wife and children could watch them disporting in the water. He complained that they would not go into the water unless he drove them in and would remain only so long as he stood over them. Ducks are easier to raise than any other fowl and are freer from disease. They are ready for market when eight weeks old. The industry is assuming large proportions, and ranches are now raising ducks by the tens of thousands and are finding better markets each year. In starting any poultry business, it is better to begin with twenty-five fowls and master details with those, then double the number as fast as they have been made to return profits. The Atlantic Squab Company, of Hammonton, N. J., says "it is a simple matter for the beginner to figure out on paper net profits of four or five dollars per year from each pair of breeders, but we doubt if it can be made. It is, however, 'pigeon nature' to lay ten or eleven times a year, but hardly natural to presume that each and every egg will ultimately mean a Jumbo squab in the commission man's hands. "A loft [that is, a pair] of high-class Homers, properly mated, should average six pair of squabs per year. For one year our squabs averaged us a fraction over 60 cent per pair; say $3.60 has been the returns from each pair of breeders. It has cost us 90 cent per pair to feed for twelve months; remember, we buy in large quantities; it would cost the small breeder $1 a year per pair to feed. It would be well to allow 60 cent a pair for labor and supplies, such as grit, charcoal, tobacco stems, etc., although the bird manure, which we find ready sale for at 55 cent. per bushel, has covered these incidental expenses for us. The inexperienced beginner, with good management and close attention to details, should clear $2 a year from each pair of birds, provided he starts with well-mated pure Homer stock." Pigeons are particular about their mates, and will rather go single than take a disagreeable partner. Raising Belgian hares at one time promised to be a most profitable industry. The Belgian hare is a distant relation of the ordinary rabbit. Its flesh is white, close-grained, and tender, resembling the legs of the frog, and has a very savory flavor. It is considered by many superior to poultry, and the rapidity with which they breed gave promise of fortunes. The doe brings forth a litter of about eleven every sixty days, and with prices ranging from $1.50 to $2.50, as they were about the year 1900, with the cost of raising from thirty to forty cents, the reason for this promise is evident. In Southern California thousands turned their attention to it, and some firms entered the business with equipment to the value of fifty thousand dollars. Besides the ordinary market prices realized for the hares, some went extensively into breeding fancy stock, and realized from $50 to $250 apiece for them. This industry had indications of becoming extensive and enduring, but by 1900 so many went into the business that the markets became glutted and prices fell with disastrous effect. Whether it will pay you depends largely on the attitude of your customers toward the hare as a food product. Bee-keeping offers an interesting and remunerative field of employment. More than the average living awaits those only who will make a careful and intelligent study of bees and their habits and will give them the proper care and attention. One need not be a practical bee-keeper to enter this field. He can purchase even one hive and, while increasing from this, he can gain an experience that he could get in no other way. How shall one start bee-keeping? Get one hive or a few hives. If you have no room in the yard, put them upon the roof. One man in Cincinnati, Ohio, makes his living from bees kept on the roof of his house. Wm. A. Selzer, a large dealer in bee-keepers' supplies, in Philadelphia, established many colonies on the roof of his place right in the heart of the business district, where it would seem impossible for bees to find a living. Very little space is required for bee-keeping; hives can be set two feet apart in rows, and the rows six to ten feet apart. No pasture need be provided for them. There are always fields of flowers to supply the nectar. White clover produces a large yield of nectar of very fine flavor. The basswood or linden tree blossom produces a fine nectar which some consider better than white clover. Buckwheat also gives a good yield of nectar, but it is dark in color and brings a lower price for that reason. There are other plants which yield large quantities of nectar, and it would be necessary to know the locality to say what would be the best plants; but as white clover is found almost everywhere in the northern states, it is safe to say this will be the best producer in the spring, and goldenrod, where found, the best for the fall supply. Frank Benton, in United States Department of Agriculture Bulletin 59, says: "It may be safely said that any place where farming, gardening, or fruit raising can be successfully followed is adapted to the profitable keeping of bees." There is always a farmer here and there who keeps a few hives of bees. These often can be purchased at a very reasonable price, but unless they are Italian bees and are in improved hives, it would be better to purchase from some dealer. He may sell you a very weak colony, but after the first year these ought to be as strong as any. Start in the spring; when you have your bees, read good literature on the subject. A. I. Root's "A B C of Bee Culture" is good for beginners; subscribe for the _American Bee Journal,_ of Chicago, or _Gleanings in Bee Culture,_ Medina, Ohio. They are full of the latest ideas on the subject. A yield of fifty pounds of honey in a season can be obtained from one hive of bees in almost any locality. In fact, this is often done where bees are kept in built up cities. One hundred pounds would be considered a very small yield by many apiarists, and twice this amount is often gathered in favored localities where up-to-date methods are followed. One man can take care of two hundred hives or colonies, as they are termed, if he is working for comb honey, and perhaps twice that number if for extracted honey. Comb honey is stored usually in one-pound boxes set in a super or small box over the main hive body, which is itself a box about seventeen inches long, eleven inches wide, and ten inches deep into which frames of comb are slid side by side. These combs are accessible and can be lifted out, exposing to view the inner workings of the hive. It is in these combs that the queen lays as many as three thousand eggs some days, and in which the young bees are hatched. They are also used for storing honey for winter use. The extractor has been invented to remove this honey without damaging the comb. The economy of this can readily be seen, as ten pounds of honey can be stored while one pound of comb is being built. This leaves the bees free to gather honey instead of using a portion of their force to build comb, as is necessary when comb honey is desired. The extractor is a round tin can on a central pivot with a revolving mechanism. Into this the full combs of honey are placed and are whirled around, throwing the honey out into the can by centrifugal force. It is then run out at the bottom into bottles or barrels, and the empty combs are replaced in the hive for the bees to fill again. Twice as many pounds of honey can be produced by this method; but the price of extracted honey is much less than that of comb honey. Adulteration of extracted honey with glucose is becoming so prevalent that it threatens to ruin this branch of the industry. But there will always be a good market for honey sold direct by the producer to residents, or even through storekeepers, in medium size towns, where customers can be sure that the honey is pure. The average wholesale prices of honey are about fifteen cents a pound for extracted and twenty cents for fancy comb, so if the apiarist with two hundred hives produces the small average of fifty pounds of comb honey and sells it at fifteen cents a pound, he will receive $1500 for his season's work. If he goes in for extracted honey and produces one hundred pounds per hive, he will receive even more. Of course, expenses will have to come out of this. That this has been done over and over again is proved by men who started in with only a few hives and have accumulated considerable property from the business. But no one need expect to do this unless he is willing to give the bees the attention which they will require. To neglect them once means often a total loss. Most of the work will have to be done during the swarming season in May, June, and July. There has been so much written on the subject and so many inventions and improvements made in the hives that bee-keeping more than any other branch of similar employment has been reduced to a science, and any one can thoroughly master it in two or three years. It is because its possibilities are not generally recognized that so few are now engaged in it. The fear of stings will always deter many from entering this business and so check competition from forcing prices down. The price of honey makes it a luxury, and there will be an unlimited opportunity in the crop as long as the price does not get near the cost of producing, which is far below the present prices. To use land directly is to open almost infinite opportunities. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 204, says: "In the United States the term 'mushroom' refers commercially to but a single species _(Agaricus Campestris)_ of the fleshly fungi, a plant common throughout most of the temperate regions of the world, and one everywhere recognized as edible." It is unfortunate that the commercial use of the term "mushroom" restricts it to a single species. There are about twenty-five common varieties of edible fungi in the Northern states. The successful cultivation of mushrooms in America has not been so general as in most European countries. It is in France and in England that the mushroom industry has been best developed. France is the home of the industry. Unusual interest has been shown in the United States in the growth of mushrooms within the past few years, and it is to be hoped and expected that within the next ten years the industry will develop to the fullest limit of the market demands. The demand will, of course, be stimulated by the increasing popular appreciation of this product. In some cities and towns there is already a good market for mushrooms, while in others they may be sold directly to special customers. This should be borne in mind by prospective growers. While many American growers have been successful, a much larger number have failed. In most cases their failures have been due to one or more of the following causes: (1) Poor spawn, or spawn which has been killed by improper storage. (2) Spawning at a temperature injuriously high. (3) Too much water either at the time of spawning or later. (4) Unfavorable temperature during the growing period. It is therefore important to the prospective grower that careful attention be given to the general discussion of conditions which follow. Mushrooms may be grown in any place where the conditions of temperature and moisture are favorable. A shed, cellar, cave, or vacant space in a greenhouse may be utilized to advantage for this purpose. The most essential factor, perhaps, is that of temperature. The proper temperature ranges from 53 degree to 60 degree F., with the best from 55 degree to 58 degree F. It is unsafe to attempt to grow mushrooms on a commercial basis, according to our present knowledge of the subject, in a temperature much less than 50 degree or greater than 63 degree F. Any severe changes of temperature would entirely destroy the profits of the mushroom crop. From this it is evident that in many places mushrooms may not be grown as a summer crop. With artificial heat they may be grown almost anywhere throughout the winter. Moreover, it is very probable that in this country open-air culture must be limited to a few sections. A second important factor is moisture. The place should not be very damp, or constantly dripping with water. Under such conditions successful commercial work is not possible. A place where it is possible to maintain a fairly moist condition of the atmosphere, and having such capability for ventilation as will cause at least a gradual evaporation, is necessary. With too rapid ventilation and the consequent necessity of repeated applications of water to the mushroom bed, no mushroom crop will attain the highest perfection. Even a little iron rust in the soil is reported as fatal to the Campestris, the only fungus so far successfully propagated. If other fungi than the Campestris come up wild, don't throw them away as worthless. Many are better eating than the one you seek, and you can avoid the risk of poisonous ones by learning to recognize the dangerous family--send for the Agricultural Department's Bulletin No. 204. Meanwhile, (1) all mushrooms with pink gills, (2) all coral-like fungi, (3) all that grow on wood, and (4) all puffballs, are good to eat if they are young and tender--only don't mistake an unspread Aminita for a puffball. An ingenious person may find other sources of income in the country. A young hotel porter in Ulster County, New York, bought seventy acres of mountain woodland four miles from the railroad for two hundred and fifty dollars, and puts in his winters cutting barrel hoops, at which he makes two dollars a day. Meanwhile the land is maturing timber. That is hard work, but to gather wild mushrooms or to cut willows, or sweet pine needles to make cushions, or to catch young squirrels for sale, is lighter, if less steady employment. And with all our uses of land, we must not forget a little corner for the hammock and the croquet hoops for the wife and the children. In the Province of Quebec, where the land is held in great tracts under the Seigniors, I have seen croquet grounds no bigger than a bed quilt in front of the little one-room cottages. The Frenchman knows the importance of such things as that, has meals out of doors in fine weather, goes on little picnics, and keeps madame contented in the country. A swing, or a seesaw, and a tether ball (a ball swinging from the top of a pole eight feet high) for the children will help to keep the family peace. CHAPTER XIII FRUITS Fruit raising can succeed in either of two ways. Either planting the orchard in some one fruit and specializing thereon, or diversifying the operation to cover many varieties. In the first way it is usual to establish orchards in favorable localities without special regard to nearness to market; because in these days of refrigerator car lines the product of an orchard in any part of the country can be sent to market quickly enough to avoid loss. Where many varieties are grown, the best site is usually near a large city where the grower can market his own product on wagons and get the benefit of retail prices. Remember that it is far more profitable to raise twenty baskets of fine, well-shaped, clean, handsome apples or peaches or any other hand-eaten fruit, than to raise a hundred barrels of stuff that is good only for the common drier or for the mill or hogpen. Care and common sense are the jackscrews to use in raising fine fruit. The apple is the great American fruit for extensive orcharding. The question is whether there is a profit in apple growing. The answer is, where the conditions are favorable and when the business is well conducted there is. Under average conditions, with poor business management, there is little or none. As Professor S. T. Maynard in _Suburban Life_ tells us, "In a suburban garden of one of our Eastern cities are seven Astrachan trees, about twenty years old, from which have been sold in a single season over one hundred dollars' worth of fruit. A friend near Boston put three thousand barrels of picked Baldwins into cold storage. None of the fancy apples sold for less than three dollars a barrel, and the others netted more than two dollars. They were the product of less than forty acres of trees which had been planted about twenty-five years. Another fruit grower showed me several returns of commission men of five, six, and even seven dollars a barrel for fancy Baldwins. At such prices, and under such conditions, there is a large profit in apple growing." "The other side of the picture, however, is the more common one. A friend sent fifty barrels of fancy Baldwins to a commission house, to be shipped to European markets, the returns for which were just enough to pay for the barrels. The majority of apples grown in the United States are sold to buyers, one buyer in each section, for a dollar to two dollars for No. 1 quality, and a dollar for No. 2. With the cost of barrels at about forty cents, labor for picking, sorting, and packing, these prices leave little or nothing for the use of the land, cost of fertilizers, spraying, thinning, etc., all of which are necessary for growing fruit of the best quality." Holmes further says, in substance, that we must make the trees grow vigorously, whether upon poor or good soil. Growth is the first requirement. To do this, we need a strong, deep, moist soil,--good grass land well underdrained makes the best. If this is on an elevation with a northern or western exposure, it will be better than a southern or an eastern one. While apple trees will grow on a thin soil, so much care and fertilizing is required that the crop will be of little or no profit upon such land. Lastly, we must protect our fruit from insect and fungous pests. On land that is free from stones and not too steep, thorough and frequent cultivation will give the quickest and largest returns. On such land, hoed garden or farm crops may be profitable while the trees are small, but after five or six years it will generally be found best to cultivate it entirely for the growth of trees. Organic matter in the form of stable manure or cover crops will be needed, and must be applied in the fall or very early in the spring to keep up the supply of humus in the soil. Stony land that cannot be plowed or cultivated except at a great cost may be made to grow good crops of fruit. While the trees are young, the soil should be worked about them for the space of a few feet and then the moisture retained by a mulch system, making use of any waste organic matter like straw, leaves, meadow hay, brush, and weeds cut before they seed. Most of the first prize apples at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo were grown under the "turf-culture" system. Unless you have trees already on your land, it is too long to wait six or seven years for a crop. We can graft good fruit on almost any tree, though the new dwarf trees will bear much sooner, and if we have trees we need not even wait for the harvest of our crop, since the windfalls will keep us in apple sauce, jellies, and pies, for no apple is too green for apple sauce, not even the ones that the boys can't bite. The greatest difficulty in the profitable growth of the apple is the market. Much of the profit in apple growing, whether in the East or the West, will depend upon the extent of the business done, especially if one is a considerable distance from markets. The above are the essentials noted by this practical scientist. Next to the apple crop, perhaps the most important fruit crop for shipping is the peach. The locality is perhaps the most important consideration in a peach orchard. In the Eastern and Southern states, and in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and, of late years, Georgia, peaches flourish and produce enormous crops. As a general rule, the nearer the orchard is to large bodies of water, the more likely one is to get a crop, as the temperature of the water prevents a too early budding out in the spring and delays killing autumn frosts. Generally speaking, a sandy, porous soil is best for peaches, but they may be raised on clay lands if provided with plenty of humus. Another fruit which is profitable in districts suited to its growth is the grape. Bulletin No. 153, Cornell Experiment Station, says: "Grapes are a dessert fruit. They are not used to a large extent in the kitchen (though they might be), so there are few incidental or secondary products; that is, they are not dried, canned, made into jellies, and the like, to any extent, that is, in the United States. The grape is peculiarly a sectional product. Central New York has a large area devoted to it. In northern Ohio, a strip along Lake Erie, and some of its islands, are devoted almost exclusively to grape vineyards. In districts where grapes are intensively grown, a great part of the crop is used for wine, and American wine is extensively sold m our home markets, although it frequently has foreign labels. Any one purchasing a farm should plant some grapevines for home use. Grape juice is easily made and kept and is a pleasing beverage. Grape jelly is excellent and could be readily marketed in any nearby town, since there is very little, comparatively, on sale. A grape arbor gives shade, needs little care, and can be planted near the house where it will not interfere with the crops. For you cannot cultivate all of your land; some grassy space must be left around the house if only for drying clothes. But if ground is scarce, vines or lima beans can be trained up the back porch or up the sunny side of the house; or a few climbing nasturtiums will give decorations without care, while the young leaves make a good salad. Of home orchard fruits, the plum, pear, and quince are all profitable specialties, especially for intensive acre raising. In general, the same remark may be made of them as of the other fruits, that they need careful selection of land to get the best results. The cherry has recently come to be recognized as a good commercial specialty. Mr. George T. Powell, in _The American Agriculturist,_ says: "The crop is a precarious one to market.... The risk and loss may be largely reduced by making a proper selection of site for the orchard. This should be on high ground where the air generally circulates freely. This is especially necessary for sweet varieties. The soil should be rich, with naturally good drainage." He says: "I have had Rockport trees produce four hundred pounds each and the fruit net ten cents a pound for the entire crop. The English Morello trees may be grown fifteen feet apart each way, which will allow two hundred trees to the acre. The larger trees ought to be planted somewhat thinner.... Cherries are packed largely in eight-pound baskets and in strawberry quarts. Each basket is filled with carefully assorted fruit, every imperfect specimen being taken out, after which they are faced by placing the stems downward so that the cherry shows in regular rows upon the face. Girls and women do this work. The Eastern fruit grower must bear in mind that he has to meet in his market the competition of the Pacific coast growers, who excel in fine packing; and although our Eastern grown cherries are of a finer flavor, they are sent to the market in such a crude manner and in such unattractive condition that they sell for much less than the California fruit." Regarding bush berries, he says, you will get a small crop the second year after planting and for the third and subsequent years a full crop. The important thing is to keep the dead canes well pruned out, as the cane borer is one of the worst insect pests. When they appear they can be stopped by cutting off the shoot several inches below the puncture as soon as it begins to droop, and burning the part cut off. Again, Mr. Powell says, "Currants require rich soil. A clay or heavy loam is better than a heavy dry soil. They should be planted in the fall. The average from ten thousand bushes should be about four quarts each. The cherry currant is perhaps the largest in size, but not so prolific as some others. Currants are shipped and sold in thirty-two quart crates and have to be carefully packed to get to market in good condition." Gooseberries are raised by the acre. Mr. A. M. Brown, Kent County, Delaware, in _The American Agriculturist,_ tells of a plantation in Central Delaware where over twenty four thousand pounds were gathered from a scant four acres. The product was sold to the Baltimore canners for six cents a pound, making $1440 in all. In addition to the gooseberries grown on six acres, a large crop each of apples and pears were grown on the same ground. Like currants, the gooseberry must be sprayed to destroy the worms, and cut back and burnt to destroy the cane borer. There is little special knowledge required, however, in raising this fruit, and it is well adapted for growers with small acreage and little money. In going into the cultivation of bush fruits, it is usually best to grow them in great variety near the market where they are to be sold. The bush fruits are then uniformly profitable. In _Suburban Life_ Mr. E. C. Powell tells us that the spring is the best time for planting raspberries and blackberries, just as soon as the ground is dry enough to work. The first season the plots should be well tilled. It is possible to grow vegetables between the rows the first year before the berries begin to bear, but unless pressed for space, it probably doesn't pay. Perhaps the best of small fruits, however, and most largely used is the strawberry. The strawberry can be planted by the acre. The ground must be rich loam and plenty of humus, well drained, with a southern exposure. Well-grown plants set out in the open will bear a small crop the first season, but will not become of maximum bearing till the second year. After the crop is taken off in the fall a mulch of straw or leaves should be placed over the plants to protect them during the winter. The strawberries are picked by boys and girls. The strawberry is an exceedingly profitable crop if properly handled, and is one of the best small fruits for people with little capital. While the price in the general market varies from fifteen to thirty cents per quart, they sometimes run as high as fifty in the early spring; yet it is possible to grow strawberries worth six dollars a quart by intensive culture in greenhouses. Mr. S. W. Fletcher, in _Country Life in America,_ says: "The forcing of strawberries is a specialized industry of the highest type. Everybody cannot make it pay everywhere.... Strawberries are forced in pots or in benches. The pot method is preferred by those who find a demand for the highest quality of fruit regardless of expense.... If fruit is desired for Christmas, the plants are not checked to any extent, but are kept in continuous growth. The conditions of springtime are simulated as far as possible. At Christmas time a quart box of forced Marshall strawberries sells at from one-fifty to eight dollars per quart, averaging about four dollars." Our most valuable allies against the insect armies are toads, bats, wasps, dragon flies, and birds; they enjoy the battle. There cannot be too many toads or bats. Toads will eat all sorts of flies, potato bugs, squash bugs, rose bugs, caterpillars, and almost anything that crawls. If the wasps become a nuisance, it is easy to poison them; but the birds are often a nuisance--the robins eat the strawberries and cherries the instant they are ripe. They soon get used to scarecrows; and to cover the fruit with nets gives the insects a free hand. Some growers raise sweet cherries or other fruits specially to feed up the birds so that they will let the rest alone. Early rising and a plenty of cats is about the best remedy. A man, or even a woman, working on the land is the best scarecrow. There are a few other fruits that grow wild in certain sections and are gathered and sent to market. Among these the cranberry is the most important. It grows in nearly inaccessible bogs, principally in New Jersey, and the usual custom is for owners of land on which there are cranberry bogs to let out the bog to pickers on a percentage basis. Cranberries can be cultivated, and there is a considerable profit in the business. The swampy nature of the ground needed, however, will deter all except the most persistent from this industry. Some cranberry bogs bring as high as a thousand dollars an acre. The blueberry or huckleberry, or, as we call it in Ireland, the bilberry, or frohen, grows wild in the northerly states, and is much sought after in the market. Many efforts have been made to grow the blueberry commercially; but, as is well said by Mr. J. H. Hale in the _Rural New Yorker,_ "The blueberry proved to be a good deal like Indians--it would not stand civilization, and was never satisfactory, although I monkeyed with it for a period of about ten years." Mr. Fred W. Card, of Rhode Island, in the same issue reports a similar experience. With our present knowledge of the blueberry, it is doubtful if it can be made a commercially cultivated crop. Lately, however, it is claimed that it can be grown in very poor, non-nitrogenous soil. A variety, however, called the Garden Blueberry, gives almost incredible yields, five bushels being reported from sixty plants. It keeps all winter _on the branches,_ if stored in a cellar, and is of fine flavor and especially good for preserves. A little frost improves it. But wild berries, crab apples, and elderberries and others, are good to preserve and find a ready sale if attractively put up; they also help out the table greatly. Then think of the fun! In recent years, certain varieties of nuts, like the English walnut, the pecan, and the hickory nuts have been grown commercially. In the South particularly, the pecan has been found a good crop to plant on cotton plantations which have been overworked. In the _Rural New Yorker,_ Mr. H. E. Vandevan gives an account of an old cotton plantation of 2250 acres Iying on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. The pecan tree was indigenous to the land, and the wooded portion of the plantation has thousands of giant pecan trees growing on it. The previous owners of this plantation had done all in their power to destroy these trees, but they flourished in spite of that. Mr. Vandevan, however, saw in the pecan a large profit, and he has planted ten thousand trees on six hundred acres, all in a solid block. The trees are set fifty feet apart both ways, except where a roadway is left. Between the pecan trees Mr. Vandevan has planted fig trees for early returns, with the intention of canning the fruit. The English walnut is grown principally in California. Its value has been recognized only recently, as all of the nut crops take a good many years before the trees begin to bear. Nut growing on a small scale is not of much value to a man with a little bit of land, except as an additional source of income. If you find a sweet chestnut tree or a shell-bark hickory or two in your wood lot, they will well repay protection and careful cultivation. If you don't, why--there are great promises in quick maturing nut trees. There is now an English walnut which is claimed to bear the third or even the second year after setting out. My own small experience with these in New Jersey, however, has not been a success. CHAPTER XIV FLOWERS Every city in the United States affords an opportunity for flower gardening and nurseries, but a study must be made of the market in order to know what is best to raise and where to raise it. The choice of crops depends on the popular taste. The flowers which are now in greatest demand are the rose, carnation, violet, and chrysanthemum. Near every large city there are hundreds of florists with glass houses, some covering twenty acres or more. There were over 2000 acres of flower land under glass reported at the last census. As almost all industries to-day are specialized, so is floriculture; in one place we see ten acres of glass given over to the rose, in another thousands of dollars devoted to the carnation or the violet, while one grower in Queens, Long Island, has 75,000 square feet of glass for carnations. The specialist who devotes his thoughts and energies to raising one flower can produce better results than if he raised a variety. He has only one crop to market, and can do it more successfully than with a number of crops. If he raises enough to make himself a factor in the market, he can sell direct instead of sending his product to a commission man, thereby receiving better prices. Little capital is required to start; intelligent effort is the road to success. Very few, indeed, who are now leaders in floriculture, started with more than $500 capital, and many with much less. One of the largest growers of roses in the United States, whose plant covers more than ten acres, did not have $500 when he started, and many others not so well known are making handsome livings and have accumulated thousands of dollars of property from a start of less than $500. But practical knowledge is much more necessary than in raising vegetables, as small mistakes will have more serious results. Therefore, if you have some capital and wish to go into flower raising, it will pay you, if circumstances permit, to hire out to a florist, even at small wages, till you have learned the business--even though you have raised flowers successfully in a home garden. Mr. Frank Hamilton, manager of C. W. Ward's of Queens, tells of at least a dozen men, who have been in their employ during his twenty-five years' experience, some of whom got only twenty dollars a month at first, and afterwards started in a small way for themselves, who are now making a substantial living. Although the market depends largely on the wealthy class in the large cities, many florists devote considerable time and space to flowers which are bought by the poorer class of city dwellers who have no space or time to raise their own. There are always good markets somewhere for the crop, and it is not an uncommon thing to ship flowers from New York to Chicago, Buffalo, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, or vice versa. The chances of success for a lover of flowers are better in this business than in any in which one with a like amount of capital can engage. If the business at first is not large enough to use all his time he will find no trouble in securing employment in his immediate vicinity. There are always some who want such a person to care for their lawns or to give some time to their conservatories. In the last ten years the business has doubled, and while many have gone into it, the profit they are making indicates that supply has not kept pace with demand, and that it is not likely to be overdone the near future. Professor B. T. Galloway, in an article in _The World's Work,_ says, "An acre of soil under glass pays fifty times as much as an acre outdoors. There are annually sold in this country six to seven million dollars' worth of carnation flowers There are no less than eight to ten million square feet of glass in the United States devoted to this flower alone." Although Mr. Rockefeller's place at Tarrytown is the largest competitor in the New York market for violets, there is no local monopoly in that, and the local producer with personal attention can do well. In the _Country Gentleman_ an account is given of a violet farm on the north shore of Illinois, where two women are supplying local florists.. One of them says: "We started our farm last spring in the face of most discouraging prophecies from our friends and the keenest competition of violet growers of New York. But we believed we could be successful. We had studied the best scientific methods of growing the plants, had imported the best soil obtainable, and built a greenhouse fully adapted to our needs, so we just went ahead and we found it to be a paying proposition. "Our first experiment was in using cuttings from the violet farm of a lady at Lansing, Michigan, who has been a most successful grower. These did not thrive, and we next imported 3000 cuttings from the Tarrytown neighborhood, where violet culture has been most successful. "The first rule is to keep the temperature of the greenhouse between forty-five and fifty degrees. Violets are spring flowers, and wither and droop if the temperature is not at the right degree. Most people think the double violets have no fragrance because most of those that we get lose their fragrance in transit. "We supply 2000 flowers a week, and as they reach our patrons within two or three hours at the most from the time of cutting, they retain their fragrance. They are also larger and of a deeper color than the New York flowers. Next year we hope to go in on a much larger scale. "While the work is not hard, it requires infinite care and vigilance when the little plants are growing. As a career for a woman, violet growing offers greater inducements than anything I can think of." Then, surely, others can succeed in other flowers at other places. While there is little choice between the standard styles of greenhouses for violets, there should be abundant provision for supplying fresh air, either from the sides or top, whichever is chosen. The system of ventilation should admit of operation either from the inside or the outside of the house, as fumigation with hydrocyanic acid gas is sometimes necessary, in the fumes of which it is impossible to enter, unless with a gas mask. The arrangement of the house should secure the greatest possible supply of sunshine in December and January, and the least possible during the growing season, when, as Miss Howard points out, it is necessary to secure as low a temperature as possible, so as to obtain good, vigorous, healthy-growing plants. The best site is a level piece of ground, or one sloping gently to the south. Of the diseases to which cultivated violets are subject Mr. P. H. Dorsett, of the Department of Agriculture, names four as especially dangerous: Spot disease, producing whitish spots on the foliage; root rot, apt to attack young plants transplanted in hot, dry weather; wet rot, a fungus apt to appear in too moist air or where ventilation is insufficient; and yellowing, of the cause of which little is known. Any of these diseases is difficult to exterminate when it once gains a foothold. The best thing to do is to get strong, vigorous cuttings, and then to give careful attention to watering, cultivation, and ventilation, and the destruction of dead and dying leaves and all runners as fast as they appear. Among insect enemies, the aphids, red spiders, eel worms, gall flies, and slugs may be mentioned. Most of these can be easiest controlled by hydrocyanic acid gas treatment. Chrysanthemums, especially of preternatural size and bizarre colors--the college colors at football games, for instance--are in great demand. They are extremely decorative, and their remarkable lasting quality insures their permanent popularity. I have heard that the unexpanded bud can be cooked like cauliflower for the table; but we have not learned to use them in that way. In Japan and China the leaves of the chrysanthemum are esteemed as a salad. One attempt has been made by English gardeners to introduce this use of them into England, but it was unsuccessful. The annual shows of chrysanthemums and of roses indicate the importance of the business. It is not generally known, but the poppies are coming into favor for cut flowers in spite of the fact that they do not keep very well. Miss Edith Granger avoids this difficulty, as she explains in the _Garden Magazine,_ "by picking off all blooms that have not already lost their petals in the evening, so that in the morning all the open flowers will be new ones. These are cut as early as possible, even while the dew is still upon them, and plunged immediately into deep water." You need not be discouraged by the low prices at which flowers, especially violets and roses, are often offered in the streets. Those flowers are the discarded stock or delayed shipments of the swell florists. You will find that those flowers are fading, or revived with salt, and will not keep. That they are so peddled, shows that everybody, at hotels, dinners, funerals, weddings, in the home, and the young men for the young women, want flowers, the loveliest things ever made without souls. We have only to supply such a want to find our place in life. As a side line the common flowers will bring good prices; mignonette, bachelor buttons, cosmos, and even nasturtiums, which you can't keep from growing if you just stick the seed in the ground, or lilies of the valley, which you can hardly get rid of once they start, never go begging, if they are fresh. A favorite flower with many is the sweet pea, which can be grown out of doors in the summer time where you have a good depth and quality of soil. I have seen May blossoms and autumn leaves on the branch and even goldenrod brought into town and sold at good prices. Enterprises often look attractive at a distance; for instance, raising orchids, especially as some of the flowers remain on the plants ready for market for weeks and bring high prices. But to ship flowers at a profit they must be in quantities, else the expenses eat up the returns, and they must be shipped with considerable regularity, else you lose your customers. To get such a supply of orchids would take a very large capital and involve so much labor that it is doubtful if more than good interest could be realized on it. Many florists make money by keeping constantly on hand ferns, palms, and other plants like rubber trees, which they rent out for social functions, weddings, and other occasions. Most florists in the larger cities have also quite a thriving business in tree planting, which is everywhere on the increase. A highly specialized department of horticulture is that of raising young trees and plants to sell for improving grounds, planting orchards, or similar uses. The nursery business bears much the same relation to the commercial florist or orchardist as seed growing does to the market gardener. Certain communities, through favorable soil or climate, are best adapted to the production of nursery stock. Consequently, one finds this industry most highly developed in scattered localities. It is true that people with small capital should not tackle a business so technical as this. The business of bulb production is another highly specialized department. In certain sections of Holland large areas of the rich lowlands are given over to bulbs of various kinds of lilies, nearly all of which are propagated in that manner. To attain perfection, at least in the North, most bulbs require deep, rich, warm, and highly manured soils; and assiduous attention at every stage. In many plant specialties, the gardeners of Europe still far surpass our own, because conditions there have forced them to make use of every available means to increase production. The immense price that European gardeners have to pay for land has been a most potent factor in forcing them to seek out and apply the most ingenious forcing methods. The time is upon us here in America also when we must find out the highest use of land and apply it to that use. As the aesthetic qualities of our people become more highly developed, the business of raising flowers must become of increasing importance, and will readily reward any one who goes into it conscientiously. Flower growing is peculiarly adapted to women, since the work is light There are few disagreeable features, unless it be the handling of the manure incidental to the best results. Still, the enjoyments of agriculture depend upon individual tastes. I have seen "lady gardeners" picking strawberries with the footman holding up an umbrella to screen them from the sun. Some women would like that, some not. CHAPTER XV DRUG PLANTS A source of profit from land to which little attention has been given in the United States is collecting or raising plants, some part of which may be used for medicinal purposes. We condense from Farmers' Bulletin No. 188, United States Department of Agriculture: Certain well-known weeds are sources of crude drugs at present obtained wholly or in part from abroad. Roots, leaves, and flowers of several of the species most detrimental in the United States are gathered, cured, and used in Europe, and supply much of the demands of foreign lands. Some of these plants are in many states subject to anti-weed laws, and farmers are required to take measures toward their extermination. The prices paid for crude drugs from these sources save in war time are not great and would rarely tempt any one to this work as a business. Yet if in ridding the farm of weeds and thus raising the value of the land the farmer can at the same time make these pests the source of a small income instead of a dead loss, something is gained. One rather alluring fact contained in an article by Dr. True, is that a shortage has become keenly felt in "Golden Seal," which the early American settlers learned from the Indians to use as a curative for sore and inflamed eyes, as well as for sore mouth. The plant grows in patches in high open woods, and was formerly found in great abundance in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, but is now so rare that its price has risen from thirty-five cents wholesale in 1898 to over seventy-five cents a pound. Persons in different parts of the country have undertaken the production of Golden Seal on a commercial scale. More than six hundred dollars' worth can be grown on an acre: so a crop this year would be a fortune. The methods of raising it can be ascertained upon application to the Department of Agriculture. Ginseng is one of the drug crops which paid handsome returns a few years ago, perhaps because it takes from five to seven years to grow from seeds; but so many went into that line that few men to-day make anything at it. Furthermore, the Chinese, who use a large part of it, will buy only the wild roots--and they know the difference. Those who control the trade have burned quantities in the effort to keep up the price. There are some drug plants which might be raised with success by those who would specialize in one plant, but the lesson we learn from ginseng should act as a warning. Raising drugs is one of those things that seems to be more profitable to teach others to do than to do yourself. A well known Professor said to me: "If I were twenty-five and knew what I know about drugs and the market for them, I should go into the drug-raising business. But I should expect to lose money for some years. If I were a small clerk, say, or an old man who wanted to get out of city life, and I had $500 I really wanted to venture in drug raising, I should divide it in half--half I should put in the bank and the other half I should throw into the Hudson River. Then I should be sure of $250 instead of being drawn on to spend it all." "Most of the people who have been in the business, notably the Shakers, who used to do the most of it, are gradually getting out of it. The few men who make money raising drugs keep it to themselves." In many cases when weeds have been dug the work of handling and curing them is not excessive and can readily be done by women and children. Too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the importance of carefully and thoroughly drying all crude drugs, whether roots, herbs, leaves, barks, flowers, or seeds, and putting them under cover at nightfall. If poorly dried, they will heat and become moldy in shipping, and the collector will find his goods rejected by the dealer and have all his trouble for nothing. Leaves, herbs, and flowers should never be washed. It is important also to collect in proper season only, as drugs collected out of season are unmarketable on account of inferior medicinal qualities, and there will also be a greater shrinkage in a root dug during the growing season than when it is collected after growth has ceased. The roots of annual plants should be dug in the autumn of the first year just before the flowering period, and those of biennial and perennial plants in the fall of the second or third year, after the tops have dried. After the roots have been dug the soil should be well shaken from them, and all foreign particles, such as dirt, roots, and parts of other plants, should be removed. If the roots cannot be sufficiently cleared of soil by shaking, they should be thoroughly washed in clean water. Drugs must look wholesome at least. It does not pay to be careless in this matter. The soil increases the weight of the roots, but the purchaser is not willing to pay by weight for dirt, and grades the uncleaned or mixed drugs accordingly. It is the bright, natural looking root, leaf, or plant that will bring a good price. After washing, the roots should be carefully dried by exposing them to light and air, on racks or shelves, or on clean well-ventilated barn floors, or lofts. They should be spread out thinly and turned occasionally from day to day until completely cured. When this point is reached, in perhaps three to six weeks, the roots will snap readily when bent. If dried out of doors they should be placed under shelter at night and upon the approach of rain. Some roots require slicing and removing fibrous rootless. In general, large roots should be split or sliced when green in order to facilitate drying. Barks of trees should be gathered in spring, when the sap begins to flow, but may also be peeled in winter. In the case of the coarser barks (as elm, hemlock, poplar, oak, pine, and wild cherry) the outer layer is shaved off before the bark is removed from the tree, which process is known as "rossing." Only the inner bark of these trees is used medicinally. Barks may also be cured by exposure to sunlight, but moisture must be avoided. Leaves and herbs should be collected when the plants are in full flower. The whole plant may be cut and the leaves may be stripped from it, rejecting the coarse and large stems as much as possible, and keeping only the flowering tops and more tender stems and leaves. Both leaves and herbs should be spread out in thin layers on clean floors, racks, or shelves, in the shade, but where there is free circulation of air, and turned frequently until thoroughly dry. Moisture will darken them. Flowers are collected when they first open or immediately after, not when they are beginning to fade. Seeds should be gathered just as they are ripening, before the seed pods open, and should be winnowed in order to remove fragments of stems, leaves, and shriveled specimens. The collector should be sure that the plant is the right one. Many plants closely resemble one another, and some "yarbs," contrary to the popular impression, are deadly poison--nightshade (belladonna) and the wild variety of parsnips, for instance. Therefore, where any doubt exists, send a specimen of the entire plant, including leaves, flowers, and fruits, to a drug dealer or to the nearest state experiment station for identification. Samples representative of the lot of drugs to be sold should be sent to the nearest commission merchant, or drug store, for inspection and for quotation on the amount of drug that can be furnished, or for information as to where to send the article. In writing to the different dealers for information and for prices, which vary greatly, it should be stated how much of a particular drug can be furnished and how soon this can be supplied, and postage should always be inclosed for reply. The collector should bear in mind that freight is an important item, and it is best, therefore, to address the dealers accessible to the place of production. The package containing the sample should be plainly marked with contents and the name and address of the sender. When ready for shipment crude drugs may be tightly packed in burlap or gunny sacks, or in dry, clean barrels. Burdock root brings from three to eight cents per pound, and seed five to ten cents. About fifty thousand pounds of the root is imported annually, and the best has come from Belgium. Of dock roots, about 125,000 pounds are imported annually, at from two to eight cents. The field for the sale of dandelion root is large. Of couch grass, the roots of which cause much profanity in this country, there are some 250,000 pounds annually imported at from three to seven cents per pound. A common weed with which there is a considerable trouble is the pokeweed, the root of which brings from two to five cents per pound and the dried berries five cents per pound. Forty to sixty thousand pounds of foxglove are imported from Europe. Analysis has shown that the leaves of the wild American foxglove are as good as the European article, the price of which per pound ranges from six to eight cents. Of mullein flowers about five thousand pounds used to be imported, chiefly from Germany. The leaves are also imported. Dried leaves and tops of lobelia bring from three to eight cents per pound, while the seed commands fifteen to twenty cents per pound. Of tansy about thirty-five thousand pounds have been imported annually at a price rallying from three to six cents. The flowering tops and leaves of the gum plant are used as drug. They bring from five to twelve cents per pound. Boneset leaves and tops bring from two to eight cents per pound. Catnip tops and leaves two to eight cents per pound. Of horehound about 125,000 pounds are imported annually, prices being three to eight cents per pound. Blessed thistle is cultivated in Germany, and it is imported to a limited extent. Yarrow is a weed common from the New England states to Missouri. It is imported in small quantities, and brings from two to five cents per pound. Canada fleabane brings from six to eight cents per pound. Of jimsonweed, leaves are imported, from 100,000 to 150,000 pounds annually, and 10,000 pounds of seed. Leaves bring two and one half to eight cents per pound, and seeds from three to seven cents per pound. Of poison hemlock, seeds are imported from ten to twenty thousand pounds annually. Price for the seed is three cents per pound, for the leaves about four cents. The flowers are also used. The American wormseed has been naturalized from tropical America to New England; the seed commands from six to eight cents per pound; the oil distilled from this seed brings one dollar and a half per pound. Black mustard, which is a troublesome weed in almost every state in the Union, is nevertheless imported in enormous quantities, the total imports of the seeds of the black and white mustard amounting annually to over five million pounds, the prices being from three to six cents per pound. All these prices and quantities were before the war and may greatly change after it. In studying the wild drug plants, one may learn the immense variety of field salads and greens. On a visit to the Spirit Fruit Society at Ingleside, Illinois, one of the girls took me out to gather wild vegetables for dinner. We pulled up about a dozen varieties out of the corners of a field; two or three of the nice looking ones that I gathered the young lady threw out, saying she did not know them; but it seemed to me that she took almost anything that was not too tough. The following are commonly used as salads: Dandelion, yellow racket, purslane (pusley), watercress, nasturtium; and the following as greens for cooking: narrow or sour dock, stinging nettle, pokeweed, pigweed or lamb's quarters, black mustard. Young milkweed is better than spinach, and also makes an excellent salad. Probably all the salad leaves could be cooked to advantage. Rhubarb leaves and horseradish tops are garden greens usually neglected most unfairly. Osage Orange _(maclura aurantiaca)_ is generally supposed to be poison, and is described in Webster's dictionary as "a hard and inedible fruit," but I have found one kind, at least, superior to quinces. Capsicum or red pepper, licorice (the imports of which have all been in the hands of one person), camphor, belladonna, henbane, and stramonium are possible fields for culture; but they are all experiments. If you are growing poppies for the flowers it might be worth while to gather some opium, especially if the new process succeeds in separating morphine directly from the plant. Caraway seeds, anise, coreander, and sage are common garden plants that may be sold as drugs. CHAPTER XVI NOVEL LIVE STOCK Occasionally we hear stories of the wealth which is being made on a frog farm here or there. But as a rule little commercial success has attended attempts in this direction. The difficulty lies in feeding them. A single frog can be fed by dangling a piece of meat before it, but it would be impossible to feed thousands this way. There are so many enemies that few tadpoles become adult frogs; besides, the frog is a cannibal and will eat not only the larvae or eggs, but the tadpoles and young frogs as well. Frog culture is successful in some places where ponds are large enough to be partitioned, separating the tadpoles and young frogs from the old ones, and where insects are abundant enough to supply food naturally for them. Near San Francisco there are a number of frog ranches. Even in 1903, according to Mary Heard in _Out West,_ one ranch sold to San Francisco markets 2600 dozen frogs' legs, netting $1800. This was considered poor. Frogs' legs are sold to hotels and restaurants, and bring in New York, according to size and season, from fifty cents to a dollar a pound. Tons of frogs come to New York markets each year from Canada, Michigan, and from the South and West. Few people outside of the cities eat them. The United States Fish Commissioners reported the product in one year: Arkansas, 58,800 lb., valued at $4162; Indiana, 24,000 lb., valued at $5026; Ohio, 14,000 lb., valued at $2340; Vermont, 5500 lb., valued at $825, etc.--a total of $22,953. The enormous and increasing prices of large diamond backed turtles, and the cheapness of little ones shows that maturing, at least, if not actually breeding them, would be well worth investigation. Many wealthy New Yorkers send direct to Maryland for their supplies. Where turtle meat is bottled or canned, the snapping turtle and the common box tortoise are sometimes used as "substitutes." Both are capital eating. The carp is one of the most excellent fresh water fish, and is of great value on account of the facility of culture and the enormous extent to which this is carried on. "In Europe some artificial ponds comprise an area of no less than 20,000 acres, and the proceeds amount to about 500,000 pounds of carp per annum." (Hessel, in "Carp and Its Culture.") It attains the weight of three to four pounds in three years without artificial feeding, and much more under more favorable conditions. It lives to a great age and continues to grow all the while. "In Europe it is common to see carp weighing from thirty to forty pounds and more, measuring nearly three and one half feet in length and two and three quarters feet in circumference." It lives on vegetable food, insects, larvae, and worms, and will not attack other fishes or their spawn. It is easy to raise, and, provided certain general rules are followed, success will attend its culture. The localities best adapted to a carp pond are those in which there is sufficient water at hand for the summer as well as the winter. A mud or loam soil is best adapted for such a pond. A rocky, gravelly ground is not suited for carp; the water should be the same depth all the year, as variation has an injurious effect on the fish. Carp spawn in the spring. In stocking a pond three females are calculated to two males. The females lay a great number of eggs, but only a small number are impregnated. The most liberal estimate will not exceed from 800 to 1000 to one spawner, the aggregate per acre amounting to from 4000 to 5000. The large cities containing large numbers of Europeans furnish the principal markets for carp. The Jewish people will not, as a rule, buy carp unless they are alive, so it is not an uncommon thing to see fish dealers in the Hebrew quarters pushing through the streets carts constructed as tanks and peddling the carp alive. Some years ago carp ponds were quite a fad among farmers of the Central West. Americans have been slow to adopt the German carp as a food fish. Trout, of course, can be raised, and the high prices which they bring, both in market and for fishing privileges, make them very attractive; but the cold running water needed makes opportunity for breeding them with access to a good market generally unavailable to owners of five acres. There is another fish, famous for its eating qualities, which well repays effort put upon its production. I refer to the black bass. It is indigenous to the waters of the Eastern states, where it is usually found in creeks or rivers. It can be successfully bred in properly constructed ponds. Mr. Dwight Lyell, in Forest and Stream, has this to say about a breeding place for the small-mouthed black bass. "The pond should be six feet deep in the center and two feet around the edge; the bottom should be of natural sand; water plants should be growing in profusion, particularly such aquatic plants as the Daphnia, Bosmina, and the Corix, to furnish food for the young bass. A good size for a breeding pond is 100 X 100 feet." For spawning, artificial nest frames are built in rectangular form. They are made two feet square without bottoms. On two adjoining sides these frames are four inches high and on the other two adjoining sides sixteen inches high. These frames are made because the bass needs a barrier behind which the spawning may be done and which will protect the nest when made. For raising the fish to a size large enough for food, ponds can be of any convenient size. In order to keep the water in healthful condition the pond must be fed by a flowing brook with some provision to prevent the water being disturbed by freshets. This can usually be arranged by a sluice to carry off the surplus water during heavy rains. Black bass raised in shallow ponds will take the fly all summer, so that considerable may be made from fishing privileges. In the absence of minnows, which are the food of the bass, they must be fed on fresh liver cut in threads like an angle worm to tempt the fish. Even then the liver diet must be varied by feeding minnows from September until the bass goes into winter quarters. In no other way can fertile eggs be assured for the spring hatching. Minnows left in the pond all winter will breed and so furnish fry on which the young bass can feed the next summer." What has been said refers particularly to the small-mouthed black bass. The conditions are substantially the same for the large-mouthed bass (which grows to a much larger size), except that the bottom may be made of Spanish moss imbedded in cement. There is a growing market for the young bass or fingerlings to stock streams and ponds. The relation between the producer of stock fish and those who expect to raise bass of a marketable size is about the same as exists between the professional seed grower and the market gardener. It is much better for the small farmer who has or can make an artificial pond to buy his fingerlings from the professional breeder, who has facilities which are too elaborate to be duplicated on a small scale. Fish culture, except under government auspices, is little known in the United States. _American Homes and Gardens_ has an account of the breeding of pheasants, which is of interest. That it is possible to breed pheasants, even around an ordinary suburban home, is shown by Mr. Homer Davenport, the famous cartoonist, who succeeded in breeding and raising some of the choicest pheasants on his place at Morris Plains, New Jersey. A great variety of species are commonly bred, but all of them came from China or India. The pheasant can be tamed by careful handling, but cats and dogs and other small animals must be kept away. The pheasantry should be placed on high, well-drained ground with a southern exposure, where the soil is good enough to raise clover, oats, and barley. The quarters for pheasants and the management are very much like those for fancy chickens. The yard should be inclosed by wire netting both on sides and top to keep the birds from wandering away; and there should be houses for roosting and breeding with nesting quarters attached. In Central Park, New York, the running space allotted to three or four birds is not more than ten by twenty feet, and Mr. George Ethelbert Walsh tells of a case where sixty pheasants were kept in excellent condition in a house ten by fifty feet, with five yards attached, averaging 10 X 25 feet. However, with pheasants, as with all the bird family, especially turkeys, the more ground they have for ranging the less liable they will be to disease. The chief difficulty in breeding game birds like the pheasant is to secure the insects, such as flies, maggots, and ant eggs, which are the natural food of the young. Sufficient green food like lettuce, turnip tops, cabbage, etc., must also be provided. There is always a market at fancy prices for more of the matured birds than can possibly be supplied. Some people make money in breeding or training fancy birds like canaries, mocking birds, finches, parrots, and so on; but this industry can be carried on almost as well in rooms in the city as in the country. Specializing on any kind of animal rearing must be gone into with extreme caution, because in the breeding of animals there are many factors to be dealt with which do not confront the breeder of plants. Make haste slowly, and before branching out be sure that you master each step in its turn. An industry which is practically unknown in this country, but which flourishes in Burgundy, France, is the raising of snails for food. Those who are shocked by this will be surprised to learn that snail culture was practiced by the Romans at the time of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey, as Jacques Boyer says in_ American Homes and Gardens._ The snail lays from fifty to sixty eggs annually. They are deposited in a smooth hole prepared for them in the ground and hatched within twenty days. So rapidly do they grow that they are ready for market six or eight weeks after hatching. The snail park is made by inclosing a plot of damp, limy soil with smooth boards coated with tar to prevent the snails climbing out, and held in place by outside stakes strong enough to withstand the wind. The boards must penetrate the soil to the depth of eight inches at least, and at a level with the ground they must have a sort of shelf to prevent the snails from burrowing under them. When the snail encounters an obstacle in its path, it lays its eggs, sensible beast. Ten thousand snails can be raised on a plot of land one hundred by two hundred feet. The ground is plowed deeply in the spring, the snails are placed on it and covered with from two to four inches of moss or straw which is kept damp. They must be fed daily with lettuce, cabbage, vine leaves, or grass; as they eat at night, they are fed shortly before sunset. Aromatic herbs, like mint, parsley, etc., are planted in the inclosure to improve the flavor of the snails. In October, the snails having become fat through the summer, retire into their shells, the mouths of which they close with a thin gelatinous covering. They are now ready for picking, and are put on screens or trays which are piled together in storehouses, where they remain several months without food. When the fast has been sufficiently prolonged, the shells are brushed up and the snails cooked in salt water in a great pot holding about ten thousand. When cooked, they are immediately sent to the consumer in wooden boxes holding from fifty to two hundred. The business is a very profitable one, as the snail is considered a great delicacy by epicures. Perhaps the silkworm is not exactly in place in a chapter on Novel Live Stock. It is at present not much more than an interesting experiment, but there will be money in silkworm culture as soon as a market for the product is developed. The main difficulty is lack of food, as the worm thrives best on the leaf of the white mulberry tree. Until a substitute is found, it will be necessary therefore to set out young trees, which in two years will bear enough leaves to supply food. The labor of silkworm rearing all comes in one month. It can be carried on in any large, airy room The eggs are hatched by the summer heat, and the worm does not become a heavy eater until the last two weeks. It sheds its skin four times, and after the final moult it climbs into loose brush prepared for it and spins the cocoon. These are then dried and shipped. At the South, where the climate is well suited for silk culture, an obstacle has been found in the unadaptability of the cheap labor, particularly colored labor, to the delicate handling, and especially winding of the silk from the cocoons. Many people make money by breeding dogs. Not much land is required and very little capital, as kennels can be multiplied as demand increases. There is always a profitable market for dogs, and some of the lap species, like the King Charles spaniel, bring fabulous prices. Hunting dogs, such as setters, pointers, retrievers, really require a game country and a practical hunter who can train the puppies, to make much of a success of it; with these, if properly handled, the business is a safe one, as there is little other technical skill required beyond ordinary care, such as is given to domestic animals. Cats are a better venture than dogs because they are sold to women who will pay any price for what strikes their fancy. Fashions in cats change about as fast as fashions in coats, but cats breed faster than coats wear out, so it is quick business. Just now, coon cats, tortoise-shell cats, and bizarre colors of Persian cats are mostly in vogue, but the tailless Manx cat, and even freaks like the six-toed cat and Iynx cats always find a ready market. Of course, these can be raised in the city, but if it is done in a large enough way to make a living out of it, the Board of Health and the neighbors will raise--something else. Fishing and hunting are primitive industries of which we think only in connection with wild land. But every bay and pond and wood will supply at least some subsistence or profit to the intelligent seeker. Oysters, clams, crabs, mussels, frogs, and common fish are found in abundance in many places, and help out with table expenses. Even English sparrows are delicious. Almost any wild animal is much more wholesome to eat than pork. Squirrels and even weasels are cleaner feeders than pigs, and the Indians eat them with great relish, while everybody knows the keenness of the darkies for "coon." Most snakes are better eating than eels and not near so repulsive--when you get used to them. The woodchuck is a nuisance to the farmer, covering his field with loads of subsoil from the burrow and then eating the tender sprouts; and the farmer does not know enough to eat his tender corpse, but he is good to eat. If a rabbit and a chicken could have young, it would taste like a woodchuck. Muskrats, mink, raccoons, and gray and fox squirrels are easily trapped; and the skins of those killed in that way find a steady market. Skins of poisoned animals do not sell so well, as they are rough and dry. In order to be profitable, these do not need to pay very well in proportion to the time they take, since they are hunted as recreation and at odd times. But there is a larger field in raising wild animals, which our Western people have not been slow to avail themselves of, and we hear of men being prosecuted for breeding wolves, coyotes, and bobcats, a kind of lynx, to get the government bounty for the snouts or scalps. In a legitimate way profit may be had from such animals. Ernest Thompson Seton has an article in _Country Life in America,_ on raising fur-bearing animals for profit; this offers a good chance for small capital and large intelligence. He suggests the beaver, mink, otter, skunk, and marten, and says that whoever would begin fur farming is better off with five acres than with five hundred. He describes two fox ranches at Dover, Maine. They raise twenty to forty silver foxes a year, on a little more than half an acre of land. The silver fox's fur is one of the most valuable on the market and sells at an average of $150 a pelt, that is, $3000 to $6000 gross for the year's work. Foxes are not expensive to breed, their food consisting chiefly of sour milk and cornmeal or flour made into a cake, and a little meat about once a week. The capital required is small. A fence for the inclosure should be of one and a half inch mesh No. 16 galvanized wire, ten feet high, with an overhang of eighteen inches to keep the foxes from escaping, and is about the only outlay except for purchase of stock. Stakes should be driven close to the fence to keep them from burrowing out. They are naturally clean animals, and with careful attention are free from disease. Mr. Stevens reports that in his two years' experience he has had twenty to thirty foxes and lost none by disease, while Mr. Norton, with five years' experience, carrying thirty to forty, reports that one to two die each year. They breed as well in captivity as in their wild state, usually bringing forth a litter of six or seven in the spring. These breed the following spring and their fur is ready for market the following December. And now breeders sell fine stock to other breeders who are entering the industry, sometimes getting three to four hundred dollars per pair. Mr. Seton remarks, "I am satisfied that any man who has made a success of hens can make a success of foxes, with this advantage for the latter a fox requires no more space or care than a hen, but is worth twenty times as much, and so gives a chance for returns twenty times as large." This is an infant industry, but if others can get the same results, it will pay handsomely. To get the best furs, however, requires a district where the winters are cold and long. There are a few skunk farms in the West. It is said that the scent gland can be taken out, though that is not necessary, and that the farms do well. Their oil is also said to be valuable. But while skunks are so common there cannot be much in breeding them. If your fancy goes to "critters" rather than crops it is much better to raise game birds. Wild turkeys raised under a hen or in an incubator and made pretty tame (if too tame they do not thrive so well in a small area), "wild" ducks, grouse, partridges, quails, even wood ducks which build their nests in trees are no longer experiments. All the common enemies you have to contend against are foxes, dogs, cats, rats, mink, skunks, hawks, owls, crows, frogs, turtles, snakes, poachers, game legislators, and disease. It has been calculated that one pair of quails and its progeny would produce five or six million birds in eight years if there were no losses. But so would chickens; and probably you will not get that many. All about these game birds is set forth in an advertising booklet called, "Game Farming" of the Hercules Powder Co., which has offices in a dozen cities, so we need not enlarge. CHAPTER XVII WHERE TO GO Intensive cultivation, raising a big crop on little land, can be carried on most profitably near areas of dense population; for perishable products, like fruits and vegetables, can be best marketed near the consumer. The limit for delivery by auto is about fifteen to twenty miles, and then only if roads are good; if the land selected lies on the line of a railroad which gives equal terms to way freight and to through freight, you will fare nearly as well. Railroads control agricultural development. Sparsely settled regions always practice extensive cultivation, raising light crops on big farms, because only such crops can be grown as can be raised on large areas by machinery, and are not perishable. Staples like corn, wheat, pork, and beef are transported at low prices for long distances by the railroads. This forces the settlers in newly opened portions of the country to sell in a market created by the railroads, in competition with what is produced within the areas of intensive cultivation, that is, with access to adjacent markets. So we find the bonanza wheat farms of California, the Dakotas, and the Canadian Northwest, the pampas of the Argentine, the Steppes of Russia, and the Indian uplands devoted to wheat raising; in the United States corn belt, fields of from five to twenty thousand acres are still not uncommon. Conversely, intensive cultivation is most advanced in China, where a dense population forced the people long ago to bring into use every foot of tillable soil that is left open to them. Near the towns of the United States a few market gardeners supply such vegetables as the people do not raise for themselves. The states along the Atlantic seaboard have all the facilities for successful intensive cultivation--a dense population and idle, cultivable land. In choosing a location, the home crofter should well consider his experience, and try to enter a community where he can engage in analogous pursuits. Dairy regions never have enough men who understand cattle and horses; fruit-growing districts always need experienced pickers; market garden regions need men who understand rotating crops and making hotbeds, transplanting, etc. If you have a little money, you can probably do best by buying and draining some swamp land, which is the most productive of all, as it contains the washings of the upland for centuries. Swamp land can usually be cleared and drained for from thirty to forty dollars per acre. It can be bought very cheap and when ready to cultivate will have increased many times in value. The next best is the "abandoned" or worn-out farm. Proper methods of cultivation will bring it back to more than its original fertility. The Eastern states from Maine to Virginia abound with them at from five to twenty-five dollars per acre. In many cases the buildings are worth more than the whole price asked. The nearest land easily available in the East is in the state of New York. The writer believes it is true that "there are twenty thousand farms for sale in this state, and nearly, all at such low prices and upon such favorable terms as to make them available for any one desiring to engage in agriculture or have a farm home. The soil of these farms is not exhausted, but on the contrary is, with proper cultivation, very productive. Nearly all have good buildings and fences, are supplied with good water and plenty of wood for farm purposes, and in nearly all cases have apple and other fruit trees upon them." (List of Farms, occupied and unoccupied, for sale in New York State. Bureau of Information and Statistics, Bulletin, State of New York, Department of Agriculture.) These farms are distributed all over the state, some in nearly every county. In Sullivan County, for example, there are farms for sale ranging in price from ten to one hundred dollars per acre. These can, almost without exception, be bought by small payments, balance on long mortgages, and it is wonderful how cheap they are. In Ulster County thirty farms, some of which I have seen, are offered for sale at trifling prices. Of course, many of these farms have been sold since the first editions of this book, and the prices have advanced, perhaps on the average doubled; but cheap automobiles have improved roads and have made others available that were useless ten years ago. The development of the Southern states, with eradication of the cattle tick (the cause of "Texas Fever") and irrigation and rotation of crops, has opened up new countries. N. O. Nelson writes he has bought many Louisiana farms for his cooperative enterprise for about what the improvements are worth. Cut over woodlands which we have learned to make produce incomes of about five dollars each year per acre by intelligent forestry, as well as swamp lands which we now know how to make healthful by drainage and by the extinction of mosquitoes, can still be had at low prices in New York and other states. Numerous others are in the market from five dollars per acre up, and so it goes through the state, from Wyoming County in the extreme western end, where farms ranging from thirty to three hundred acres are in the market at from thirty to forty dollars per acre, to St. Lawrence County in the north, where land can be bought as low as fifteen dollars per acre. When it is considered that these lands are within easy access to established markets with transportation and mail facilities, rural delivery, and telephone a proper idea may be formed of their value in opportunity. The authority quoted further states that "probably fifty thousand agricultural laborers can find employment on the farms of New York at good wages. Families particularly are wanted to rent houses and work farms on shares." Wages for new hands run from twenty to thirty dollars and upwards per month with board. Men who know how to milk are especially in demand throughout the dairy regions. These conditions make it possible for experienced farmers, although entirely without money, to get to the soil. Over three hundred thousand aliens annually settled in the cities of New York State during some years in the last decade. These people could be got out of the cities, where in normal times they are little needed, into adjacent country districts where they are much needed. In the _Real Estate Record and Guide,_ Mr. A. L. Langdon says: "It is most remarkable that there are on Long Island, within from thirty-five to seventy miles of New York, thousands of acres of land which have never been cultivated, which have for years produced nothing but cordwood, and which the owners allow to be overrun with fire almost every year. A large part of this land has soil two or three feet deep underlaid with gravel. The best water in the world is abundant and the climate is more equable than on the mainland, and in each locality where any reasonable effort has been made to cultivate the soil, it has produced plentifully of all fruits and vegetables which can be grown in this latitude." Long Island should produce all the fruit, vegetables, poultry, eggs, and milk needed by its own residents, with a large surplus for the city markets, instead of getting, as it does, a large part of its supply of these things from the city. When it is considered that about a quarter of a million acres of this land so close to the city is now scrub oak and uncultivated waste, and that there are about a million adult workers in the city, the importance of the experiment is obvious; especially as we learn from the United States census that over ten thousand of these workers are already in agricultural pursuits within the city limits. "Here midway on Long Island, and just beyond the limits for a man to locate who expects to earn his living by daily work in the city, is a territory about forty miles long and ten miles wide which by intensive farming would yield a good living for more than two hundred thousand inhabitants. In this agricultural section, a man of small means who expects to live on the land the year round, should purchase a plot not too small to produce enough to support himself and family and a surplus to sell, not less than six acres. Probably all men have more or less land hunger a desire to own land and it is a worthy object to encourage to the extent of inducing a man to purchase what he can pay for and be satisfied with, but it is a shameful thing to induce a poor man, who has to earn his living in New York, to buy on the installment plan a small lot so far from his place of employment that he cannot live on it and travel to and from his work every day, and where there is the strongest probability that he will never make more than two or three payments, and will consequently lose what he does pay." The writer hears of one plot which was sold nineteen times and the contracts defaulted on after payments, before any one took title. If the seeker is not satisfied with the opportunities which the state of New York offers, he may turn to New Jersey, equally accessible and equally rich in chances. New Jersey Year-Book: "There are in the southern part of the State large tracts of land which are still uncleared, or covered with brushwood, and which are adapted to tillage and capable of producing large crops of small fruits and market garden vegetables. The wood on them is mainly scrub oak, with some dwarfed pitch pine and yellow pine, and hence they are called oak lands to distinguish them from the more sandy lands and tracts on which the pitch pine grows almost exclusively. The latter are known as pine lands. The total area of cleared (farm) lands in the southern division of the State, southeast of the marl belt, is about 450,000 acres. The pineland belts have an aggregate area of 486,000 acres, making at least 800,000 acres accessible by railways from the large cities and also near to tidewater navigation. The maps of the Geological Survey show the location and the extent of these lands, their railway lines, and their relation to the settlements already made and to the cities. "The soils of these tracts are sandy and not naturally so rich and fertile as the more heavy clay soils of the limestone, the red shale, and the marl districts of the State, but they are not so sandy and so coarse-grained as to be non-productive, like some of the pineland areas. The latter are often deficient in plant food and are deservedly characterized as pine barrens, being too poor for farm purposes. The growth of oak and pine, as well as chemical analyses, shows that the oak-land soils contain the elements of plant production. They are not so well suited to pasturage or to continuous cropping as naturally rich virgin soils; they are better fitted for raising vegetables, melons, sweet potatoes, small fruits, peaches, and pears than wheat, Indian corn, hay, and other staples. The eminent superiority of this kind of farming in New Jersey over the old routine of wheat, corn, hay, and potatoes is well known. These South Jersey soils are easily cleared of brushwood or standing timber, and of stumps, with a hand or horse-power puller which is a cheap affair, and the wood is salable in all this part of the State at remunerative prices, often bringing more than the original cost of the land. The long working season and the short and mild winter favor the arrangement of work, so that all is done with the least outlay for help. They also favor the mosquitoes. "The success of Hammonton, Egg Harbor City, Vineland, and other places is notable, and equally good results are to be had at a hundred or more places as well situated as they are. These lands are sold at low figures, and the settler saves in capital and interest account. Only the difficulty of getting money to help in building interferes with rapid settlement. "The West Jersey Railway, the Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia and Reading's Atlantic City Railroad, the Philadelphia and Seashore Railway, the New Jersey Southern Railroad, and other branch roads afford excellent facilities for access to New York, Philadelphia, and the cities of the State. The Cohansey, Maurice, and Mullica rivers head well up near the northwest limits of these lands, and their navigable reaches run for miles across them. The waters of the Delaware Bay and the ocean are within a few miles of a large part of this oak-land domain. "The advantages of an old settled and Eastern State, within easy reach of these large markets, of land which is easily tilled and generous and quick in its response to feeding, and at low prices, make them equal to, if not better than, the rich prairie soils of a new West, or the low prices and cheap lands of the abandoned hillsides of New England." Wages for unskilled farm labor are about the same as for New York--twenty to twenty-five dollars per month. The canning and fruit industries make room for a large number of people in the late summer and fall, who may thus, by taking a temporary place, kind some permanent location where they may improve their health and fortunes. "Delaware also offers unequalled opportunities to immigrants. It is ideally situated on the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware Bay, and is penetrated by numerous creeks and rivers. "The railroad, steam, and electric facilities of the State are developing steadily year by year, while every section of the State possesses easily navigable streams, with vessels for carrying freight and passengers. "Over fifteen millions of people live within a radius of three hundred miles; the large majority reside in cities and towns and furnish the finest markets in the world. Within five hundred miles are more than one third of the people of all North America. "Wilmington is a city of seventy-five thousand people, is growing rapidly, and is becoming a great manufacturing place. "These people may be reached in one day by the luscious fruits that grow in Delaware, and every one of them is perfectly happy when he gets a Delaware peach. Many other Delaware products are as good as the peaches. "As cattle and wheat raising developed in the great West, Delaware people thought that they were ruined. They did not change at once, but slowly discovered that the light lands are wonderfully productive of fruits and vegetables, and that they pay much better than cattle and grain ever could. But these new methods have not been adopted in all parts of the State, so that land neglected and unprofitable is for sale. The tides of immigration have swept westward and left Delaware untouched. Men, money, and enterprise are needed. "There are few unoccupied or 'abandoned' farms in Delaware." The land is mostly held by descendants of the early settlers, who form a species of landed aristocracy. Lately, owing to the younger members of these families having become established in the newer states and on account of the death or incapacity of the older members left in possession, there has been a marked tendency to sell off these farms. However, "a large proportion of the farms in Delaware are not for sale at any price. Some of them have been in the same family for generations, and if put on the market would sell for from one to two hundred dollars per acre." The soil is all the way from a heavy white oak clay, which is too stiff and too sticky for most crops, to very light sand. The heaviest clay is made lighter and more porous, and the lightest sand is readily made retentive of moisture and extremely productive, by plowing in different kinds of crops as green manure, such as cow peas, soy beans, the vetches, etc.; crimson clover, winter oats, rye, turnips, and numerous other crops may be sown in August or later, and produce a fine crop for turning under early in the spring. Crimson clover grows nearly all winter. Pure cold water is reached at from twenty to fifty feet by dug or driven wells. The climate is good; there are no cyclones. There is some damp weather in winter, but there are no malignant fevers, and there is little or no malaria, except in a few marshy places. There are some mosquitoes and flies, but they are not especially troublesome, and there are no poisonous reptiles. The population is mostly native, five sixths white, one sixth colored. The white population is almost entirely of Anglo Saxon descent. "Perfect titles may be secured, but all titles everywhere should always be searched by a competent lawyer, the usual fee for which is ten to twenty dollars. "Farm hands receive from twenty to twenty-five dollars per month and board, for a season of nine or ten months, sometimes for the whole year. Day hands receive from seventy-five cents to two dollars per day and board themselves." Those who are tempted by the advertisements for fruitpickers should beware. Delaware, like some other states, allows fees to constables and to the "squires"--Justices of the Peace they would be elsewhere--for arrests, and it is a common practice to advertise for fruit pickers, then arrest them as tramps when they come, and the next day release them on condition that they will leave the county at once--and leave the trap open for the next comer. Delaware peaches have made fortunes for many, but will make still greater fortunes in the future for the owners of the land. Pears, plums, grapes, watermelons, and cantaloupes thrive, and find an ideal home, and small fruits all flourish. Sweet potatoes yield bountifully and are of the finest quality. Asparagus and early white potatoes pay handsome profits. Tomatoes, the great canning crop, are grown by the thousands of acres. "The grasses and clovers grow in luxuriance, and hence dairying and beef production are profitable. Poultry pays as well as anywhere else; chickens often run on green clover all through the open winter. "The game consists of various species of ducks, quails, reed birds, hares, marsh rabbits, and other small creatures. Shad, trout, herring, crocus, black bass, pike, white fish, rock fish, oysters, clams, crabs, and terrapin are abundant in Delaware waters." The tax in the rural counties is generally sixty cents on the hundred dollars. Besides this there are taxes on business and a very light school tax. There is no state tax, yet the state makes large appropriations for the support of the public schools, which are free to everybody. Maryland has established a State Bureau of Immigration in Baltimore to give information to home seekers, and advise them as to choice of location, opportunities for getting started in agricultural production, and aid them in any way consistent with a State Bureau. Most of these facts are taken from such reports. Southern Maryland and the eastern shore are especially adapted to gardening and trucking, as well as fruit growing. Land is cheap and can be purchased in tracts of any size from an acre upwards, at from ten to fifty dollars per acre. Farms from twenty acres to seven hundred acres and up are for sale in nearly every county in the state. The removal of a large part of the negro population from the country to the cities has resulted in the partition of the large estates into smaller farms, thus affording an opportunity for home seekers who are seeking cheap land amid congenial surroundings. Nearly all of these farms have buildings, some in need of repair, others in very good condition. For those who wish to avoid the hard work of breaking woodlands, the eastern and western shores offer abundant well-cultivated lands with buildings, orchards, and woods, in the immediate vicinity of navigable rivers and railways, on good roads at from twenty dollars per acre upwards. That seems cheap. For settlers who are accustomed to mountainous regions, western Maryland has land for sale at even cheaper rates. "There are many large tidal marshes in Maryland, as might be expected in a territory watered like this state. They are of the richest soil to be found, because the Chesapeake Bay is a great river valley, receiving the drainage of a vast area of fertile land, comprising nearly one third of New York and nearly all of the great agricultural states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Every year this drainage brings down a black sediment, called oyster mud, which is deposited on the marshlands and enriches the soil, making it, with proper cultivation, of productivity like that of the rice and wheat fields of Egypt. These unreclaimed lands are used chiefly for grain." Proper drainage of small tracts of this land would bring unsurpassed and absolutely untouched fertility. The Chesapeake River valley is not so large as that of the Nile or Ganges, but is of enough consequence to play an important part in human affairs and to support in comfort and prosperity a population as large as that of many famous states. "The eastern shore is uniformly level, with good roads. The proximity of the ocean and the bay greatly modifies the temperature. It has a great trunk railway, with connections along its entire length, called the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania railroad, which furnishes direct transportation to Philadelphia, New York, and other northern cities." "On the eastern shore there are many thousand acres of land devoted to garden truck, and the strawberry crop has of late years become of importance. Over one hundred carloads of strawberries are shipped daily during the season to the Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston markets." Land properly cultivated will yield four thousand quarts of strawberries to an acre. The canning of various fruits and vegetables has grown to be larger than that of any other state and is one of the most profitable of the industries of Maryland. The principal articles canned are peaches, peas, and tomatoes. The tomato crop is also profitable to the grower. The young plants are set out in the spring; many do this with a machine, but two persons can easily plant seven acres in a day by hand. An acre will produce from six to eighteen tons of tomatoes, according to the quality of the soil. All such products bring better prices now in Maryland markets than they did before canning was resorted to. The Maryland tin can is known wherever civilization reaches. Tobacco is extensively produced only in southern Maryland, although it can be raised in any section of the state. In the neighborhood of the larger cities trucking and fruit growing are profitable, combined with poultry raising, often on farms of not more than five or ten acres. Many farmers devote part of their time successfully to bees, and there is nowhere a better climate for flowers than that of Maryland. Two English florists who have settled in Baltimore County, ten and thirteen miles northeast of the city, daily send to all parts of the United States and even to Canada many large boxes of beautiful roses, carnations, violets, and other choice flowers. Both of these men began on a small scale and have prospered. The farmer who has a couple of thousand dollars to pay cash for a small farm in Maryland is assured of a good living. But also a less favored settler, if he has only from four to eight hundred dollars, can have a good start in Maryland, and probably as good a chance for independence and prosperity as anywhere. Families of immigrants when traveling to the Western, Northwestern, and Southern states of America have to spend from one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars for railroad tickets from New York to their destination; by going to these adjoining states they can save all that money, and invest it in land. The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration also publishes information for the home seeker. To most people the name Virginia carries with it limitless vistas of tobacco fields covered with darkies plying the hoe, or picking off the ubiquitous worm. Before the War this picture would have been a true one; but since the awakening of the younger generation to a better understanding of her resources, together with the withdrawal of large numbers of the colored people into industrial occupations, no state offers more attractive inducements to the homecrofter than Virginia. In climate, diversity of soils, fruits, forests, water supply, mineral deposits, including mountain and valley, she offers unsurpassed advantages. Truly did Captain John Smith, the adventurous father of Virginia, suggest that "Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation." Virginia lies between the extremes of heat and cold, removed alike from the sultry, protracted summers of the more southern states, and the longer winters and devastating storm and cyclones of the North and Northwest. Its limits north and south correspond to California and southern Europe. The climate is mild and healthful. The winters are less severe than in the Northern and Northwestern states, or even the western localities of the same latitude, while the occasional periods of extreme heat in the summer are not more oppressive than in many portions of the North. Tidewater Virginia, or the Coastal Plain, as it is sometimes called, receives the name from the fact that the streams that penetrate it feel the ebb and flow of the tides from the ocean up to the head of navigation. It consists chiefly of broad and level plains, while a considerable portion, nearest to the bay, has shallow bays and estuaries, and marshes that are in most instances reached only by the ocean tides. These marshes abound with wild duck and sora. Tidewater is mainly an alluvial country. The soil is chiefly light, sandy loam, underlaid with clay. Its principal productions are fruits and early vegetables, which are raised in extensive "market gardens," and shipped in large quantities to Northern cities. The fertilizing minerals--gypsum, marl, and greensand--abound, and their judicious use readily restores the lands when exhausted by improvident cultivation. Middle Virginia is a wide, undulating plain, crossed by many rivers that have cut their channels to a considerable depth and are bordered by alluvial bottom lands that are very productive. The soil consists of clays with a subsoil of disintegrated sandstone rocks, and varies according to the nature of the rock from which it is formed. The principal productions of middle Virginia are corn, wheat, oats, and tobacco. The tobacco raised in this section and in Piedmont, known as the "Virginia Leaf," is the best grown and the best known in the United States. In this section, as in Tidewater, the low bottom lands formed by the sediment of the waters are exceptionally productive. The Piedmont section is diversified and surpassingly picturesque. The soil is heavier than that of middle Virginia, the subsoil being of stiff and dark red clay. On the slopes of the Blue Ridge grapes of delicious flavor grow luxuriantly. These produce excellent wines, and the clarets have a wide fame. The pippin apples of this section are of unrivaled excellence. The "Great Valley," as it is descriptively called, is in the general configuration one continuous valley, included between the two mountain chains that extend throughout the state; it is one of the most abundantly watered regions on the face of the globe. Deep limestone beds form the floor of the Great Valley, and from these beds the soil derives an exceeding fertility, peculiarly adapted to the growth of grasses and grain, and it bears the name of the "garden spot" of the state. Five trunk lines of railroads penetrate and intersect the state. The lines of steamboats that ply the navigable streams of eastern Virginia afford commercial communication for large sections of the state with the markets of this country and of Europe. Norfolk and Newport News maintain communication with the European markets by steamers and vessels, while from these ports is also kept up an extensive commerce along the Atlantic seaboard. The seaports are nearer than is New York to the great centers of population, and areas of production, of the West and Northwest. Market garden crops of every description can be grown. The following result was obtained on a four-acre patch near Norfolk: "The owner stated that in September he sowed spinach on four acres. Between Christmas and the first of March following he cut and sold the spinach at the rate of one hundred barrels to the acre, at a price ranging from two to seven dollars per barrel--an average of $4.50 per barrel. Early in March the four acres were set out to lettuce, setting the plants in the open air with no protection whatever, 175,000 plants on the four acres. He shipped 450 half-barrel baskets of lettuce to the acre, at a price ranging from $2 to $2.75 per basket. "Early in April, just before the lettuce was ready to ship, he planted snap beans between the lettuce rows; and today, June 2d, these are the finest beans we have seen this season. "The last week in May he planted cantaloupes between the bean rows, which, when marketed in July, will make four crops from the same land in one year's time. The cantaloupes will be good for 250 crates to the acre, and the price will run from $1 to $1.50 per crate. A careful investigation of these 'facts, figures, and features' will show that his gross sales will easily reach $2000 per acre; his net profits depend largely upon the man and the management; but they surely should not be less than $1000 clear, clean profit to the acre." "This is for farming done all out of doors. No hothouse or hotbed work--not a bit of it, with no extra expense for hotbeds, cold frames, or hothouses." "Intensive," thorough tillage and care of the soil will probably pay as well here as at any point in the United States. Apples are the principal fruit crop of the state. There is a yearly increasing number of trees. In one of the valley counties a seventeen-year-old orchard of 1150 trees produced an apple crop as far back as 1905 which brought the owner $10,000, another of fifty twenty-year-old trees brought $700. Mr. H. E. Vandeman, one of the best-known horticulturists in the country, says that there is not in all North America a better place to plant orchards than in Virginia; on account of its "rich apple soil, good flavor and keeping qualities of the fruit, and nearness to the great markets of the East and Europe." The trees attain a fine size and live to a good old age, and produce abundantly. In Patrick County there is a tree nine feet five inches around which has borne 110 bushels of apples at a single crop; other trees have borne even more. One farmer in Albemarle County has received more than $15,000 for a single crop of Albemarle Pippins grown on twenty acres of land. This pippin is considered the most delicious apple in the world. The fig, pomegranate, and other delicate fruits flourish in the Tidewater region. New England, from Maine to Rhode Island, is suffering from one disease--lack of intelligent labor. Thirty years ago the sons and daughters who, in the natural course of events, would have stayed to cultivate the home acres, left to form a part of the westward throng making for the level, untouched prairies of Illinois and Iowa. The old folks have died or become incapacitated. New interests chain their children to adopted homes. Result,--unoccupied lands by the hundred thousand acres, awaiting energy, skill, and faith. Ten dollars an acre is a common price for the rocky hills of New England. The choice river bottoms, and land near the larger cities is as high priced as similar land anywhere else. Intending settlers can buy small areas for little money; usually the smallest farms have good buildings worth in many cases more than the price asked for the whole farm. Climatic conditions are not favorable to single cropping. In the old days general farming, grain, beef, sheep, and hogs were the rule; nowadays, special crops, dairying, fruit growing, etc. Tobacco is the great staple in the rich Connecticut River bottoms, and even on the uplands, if properly manured, it pays from one to three hundred dollars per acre. Tobacco can be raised on small areas far from the railroad, as, when properly cured and packed for shipment, it is not perishable. To many the worst feature of New England is the climate--long, cold winters and short summers. Maine being farthest north suffers most in this respect, but that does not prevent her producing hundreds of thousands of tons of sweet corn for canning and vast quantities of eggs and butter. Fruit does well on the lower coast; a small orchard of peaches or plums will in three or four years from planting make a comfortable living. Bush fruits grow in abundance and give never-failing crops. Poultry is peculiarly successful on the rocky hills, because they are nearly always dry or well drained. Dairying can be made to pay if near a creamery, or where milk can be sold at retail. The prospective settler here should bear in mind that wherever he goes, the first year will produce little more than a kitchen garden; the second enable him barely to pull through, and the third give him a start at a permanent income. In farming, as in all other businesses, only those will succeed who know what they want and how to get it; who have selected with care the locality best suited to the special crops they intend to raise; and after having once made a selection, stick until they have compelled success. The lure of the vast West and of the new South is not forgotten; but the time has passed when the young man could go West to take a farm of Uncle Sam's. Desirable land is too expensive for the pioneer, and the constant toil and comparative isolation of the prairie farm offers but a poor sort of liberty, though it still affords a living. But close to the growing towns in those states small plots of land can still be had to work with the same bright prospects that are offered near the great metropolis. In nearly all the sections within the area of intensive cultivation, timber is still plentiful enough to make it the cheapest building material; and persons who really want to get to the land can contrive a sufficient shelter, like a pioneer's, for from two to five hundred dollars. CHAPTER XVIII CLEARING THE LAND It is pretty good fun to hack at bushes and to chop trees down and then to chop them up. If there is only a small part of the land to be cleared, a man can easily learn skill with the ax and do it at odd times, but he was a wise old man of whom his little girl said, "When grandpa wants anything, that moment he wants it." It is now that we need the land; but even if it is covered with trees, there is no cause for discouragement. Lumber is so high that the local or portable sawmill men will buy the timber by the acre. They will cut the trees and haul the logs. If you decide to cut a tree yourself, a little inquiry will show for what purpose it will bring the highest price. Locust sticks, for example, four to six inches thick, will bring in New York ten or fifteen cents a running foot for insulator pinions. If a maple proves to be either "curly" or "bird'seye" (this depending not on the variety, but on the accidental undulations of the fiber), it will be in demand for the manufacture of furniture. Sugar maples ten or fifteen feet high can be transplanted or sold. Nut and fruit trees will nearly always be worth keeping. Cedar sticks fourteen feet long will bring twenty cents in most places for hop and bean poles. See what can be sold instead of burned, and don't cut down recklessly; an unsalable tree may be valuable as a windbreak or as shade for your house. The wrong tree for shade is the dense foliaged, low-branched tree which forms a solid dome from the ground up. The right tree, in the opinion of Henry Hicks (in _Country Life in America),_ is the American elm, which ought to be called the umbrella tree. Pliny speaks of the plane tree, our sycamore or buttonwood, as excellent, because of the horizontal branches which, like window blinds, allow free passage of the breezes while intercepting the heat of the sun. The ideal shade tree is a canopy like a parasol over the house, with high, leafy branches that do not shut off light and air from the windows. This cools a house by keeping the sun off and cools the air by the rapid evaporation from its leaves, and will make it ten to fifteen degrees cooler in summer. It will be cheaper and more effective than a combination of awnings, piazza, and eaves. Woodman, spare that tree. Stumps may be burned out To get a good draught, bore a hole in a slanting direction far down among the roots. The smoke goes through the hole first and then the flame, boring the body to the roots deep enough to plow. Land can also be cleared by dynamite. We condense from Edith Loring Fullerton in _Farming,_ on what has been done. To go into the desolate, uncultivated, burned over "waste lands" near a great city and put ten acres under cultivation in the shortest possible space of time was our problem. We undertook it at short notice in an uncertain season--the autumn--with the determination to get at least a portion of the land seeded down to winter rye before cold weather prohibited further work. United to this problem was that of working a small farm to its utmost capacity rather than half cultivation of a large one, which is difficult to handle from lack of time and labor and an unwise proposition for the East under the most favorable circumstances. Ten acres of scraggy-looking woodland was purchased, sixty-eight miles from New York City on the north shore of Long Island. The plot had a few second and third growth oak and chestnut trees and "sprouts" along the borders. All else had been burned, and the center of the acreage exhibited the mangled and blackened remains of a once thrifty woodland. We proceeded to choose as our helpers native Long Islanders whom we were desirous of allowing to work. We succeeded by strenuous efforts in getting together a "gang" of both colored and white men to the stupendous number of eight. They fell to work with a right good will, at first cutting down here and trimming up there as directed. However, after giving them a fair trial, we decided that they must be replaced by Italians. The question of housing the eighteen Italians soon came up. Tents might be adopted or even the unsanitary "dugout" be allowed to mar the landscape. A shanty was entirely too ugly to suit our tastes, and also expensive, and useless when the men were through with it. Tents were too airy, as we knew the work would continue until freezing weather, and perhaps well into the winter. We "passed" on the "dugout." The ideal was something that would be of use after the work of clearing was completed, and for that purpose we decided upon "condemned freight cars." They cost but ten dollars each, the railroad being glad to get rid of them. We bought two, ultimately using one for a chicken house and the other as a barn. In the meantime it was decided to remove the stumps by dynamite, as trying to yank them out by stump pullers or by mattock and plow was both slow and brutal. The ordinary custom of allowing nature to work six years at the stumps and gradually eliminate them by decay was not to be thought of. Dynamiter Kissam, a Long Island expert, arrived and set to work, using fuses for small stumps up to two feet in diameter. With the advent of the Italians work began in earnest; they cleared out every useless tree, cutting cord wood where any could be obtained and burning the branches and charred trees as they went. They also cleared out all underbrush thoroughly. The dynamiter with his helper followed them up. This is the most exciting and interesting part of clearing land by modern methods. The dynamite is put up in half-pound sticks. They are a little larger than an ordinary candle and are wrapped in heavy yellow paraffined paper. One folded end of this paper is opened up and a hole made by a wooden skewer into the dynamite stick, which is plastic and resembles graham bread in color and consistency. For magneto-battery work where several charges are required, a copper cap in which is a minute quantity of fulminate of mercury, and which is exploded by a spark, is attached to fine electric wires and sealed by sulphur. This cap is placed in holes in the sticks of dynamite, and then securely tied by drawing string tightly around the paper which is raised to admit the cap. In preparing a charge for fuse ignition, the cap is crimped to the end of a piece of mining fuse and this is inserted in the dynamite stick and securely fastened as previously described. These prepared charges are placed in a basket and carried very tenderly to the stumps which have been prepared by the dynamiter's assistant. All the work is handled very carefully, for while there is not much danger of an accident unless fire is placed near the explosive, nevertheless extreme caution is used at all times. It requires a nature serene, calm, and deliberate. Deep oblique holes were then made with a round crowbar under the stump singled out for execution. This hole should be as nearly horizontal as possible and directly under the stump so that all the explosive force may be expended on the wood and not on the earth between the dynamite and the stump. The earth acts as a cushion and the natural tendency of dynamite to exert force downward is counteracted. As soon as a small strip was blown, the Italians, gathering up all the stumps, roots, and fragments, removing any pieces that were loosened but not completely torn out, and piling them at intervals, immediately burned them. This cannot be done when stumps are removed by any other method, for by the digging process the earth must be picked and scraped from them and ultimately the stump hacked in pieces before it will burn. By our method the stump is burned and the finest kind of unleached wood ashes--containing lime to "sweeten" and potash and phosphoric acid to furnish plant food--are spread upon the ground a few hours after the stumps are blown out. These ashes would under other circumstances have to be purchased at a cost of perhaps two dollars a barrel, and as five barrels at least to the acre are required for good fertilization, these ashes gave us the first credit upon the books. Following the burners came the manure spreaders; five carloads of manure had been purchased and was delivered before it was needed. When the manure was spread upon the land (one half carload to the acre), the plow started its work smoothly and with none of the strain and jerk on man and beast usual in new land. The soil was turned over with the greatest ease, for the explosions had shivered and torn out even the smallest roots, so the plow ran through the ground much more easily than in sod land. Our friable, sandy loam, with a light admixture of clay, pulverized and aerated by the explosions, was in market garden condition at once and without the year's loss of crops assured by old methods. A tooth harrow was next run over the plowed section, and gleaners followed the harrow, picking up the fine roots as they were brought to the surface. As piles of these fine roots grew, they were burned and the ashes immediately spread upon the land. The tooth harrow was run again across the rows, the disk harrow following chopped and pulverized the earth into the finest possible condition. Thirty five and one half working days after Larry and his gang arrived, rye was drilled into three and one half acres. The condemned freight cars were placed upon skids and drawn to the desired position over soaped planks. They were raised from the ground to give good under ventilation. The north and east sides are filled or banked up with sand which came out of the well. This keeps out the cold winds, and, in the case of the chicken-house car, allows the fowls a shaded shelter on hot summer days. The chicken-house car was placed facing the southeast. The western end has a large glazed sash placed on it, and two in the southern side. One half the car was partitioned off for roosting quarters, while the other half serves as a laying and scratching house. This farm keeps only a few chickens for family use. The artesian well was started in October. The well was, naturally, a necessity, but there was much to be considered in regard to the method of pumping. Under ordinary circumstances a windmill would do, and is generally a good auxiliary; a ten-foot iron tower and a ten-foot fan wheel cost about fifty dollars, but our farm is not to be allowed to be a failure for lack of water in a dry season. In case of drought (and every summer brings one of greater or less duration) water must be on hand, and as a drought usually is accompanied by windless weather, the windmill could not be depended upon. An engine was obviously necessary. Both gasoline and kerosene engines were closely investigated, with the result that a kerosene oil engine was decided upon. (The new style of heavy oil engine is better and cheaper to run. Ed.) An advantage of the engine over a windmill is that it will furnish power for cutting wood, grinding grain, or lighting the buildings, a two and one half horsepower engine running twenty-five 16 c.p. lights easily. The rye was turned under green in the spring to furnish humus, the greatest and only vital need of this particular spot of virgin soil. Since that was written an excellent and cheap stump puller has been introduced, but the account of work is still typical. Dynamiting is still the modern way to clear land as well as to break up a stiff subsoil or hardpan, so as to loosen the earth to let deep roots like trees or alfalfa go down and to secure drainage. Primitive American man regarded trees as "lumber" instead of as timber and still destroys countless millions in valuable wood as he "clears the ground." After it is cleared, it is vital to keep it cleared of weeds, which worse garroters of crops than trees. To do that we don't need to bow to the Earth, nor to hammer her with a hand hoe. "The Man with the Hoe" began to be a back number when Arkwright invented the ark or the mule or whatever he did invent. The man with the wheel hoe is the man that is "It." A wheel hoe costs from $6 to $12, and will do the work of several men without breaking the heart or even the back of one of them. It has as many attachments as a summer girl and is equally versatile. It must be run between the rows as soon as the ground is dry after every rain, so as to slay the weeds before they are born. If you don't they will slay your profits, if not yourself. Crops grown on that experimental farm are: Asparagus, berries, beans, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, carrots, cucumbers, corn, eggplant, endive, fruit trees, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, limes, melons, martynias, onions, okra, parsley, parsnips, peas, potatoes (sweet and white), pumpkins, radishes, rhubarb, salsify, squash, tomatoes, etc. Marketed strictly choice radishes May 18, peas June 10, lettuce June 21, beans June 29, beets July 8, carrots July 10, cabbage July 11. Surely a rapid result. Hemp is hardly worth your growing for itself under ordinary circumstances; the returns per acre are not sufficient. But Charles Richard Dodge, in one of the United States Yearbooks of the Department of Agriculture, says that as a weed killer it has practically no equal. In proof of this, a North River farmer stated that thistles heretofore had mastered him in a certain field, but after sowing it with hemp not a thistle survived; and while ridding the land of this pest, the hemp yielded him nearly sixty dollars an acre, where previously nothing valuable could be produced. As it grows from Minnesota to the Mississippi Delta, its value for this purpose is considerable. But there is a way easier and cheaper of clearing land than by blasting, if we can afford to wait a little; and Mr. George Fayette Thompson, in Bulletin No. 27, Bureau of Animal Industry, tells us how, giving some interesting facts about Angora goats, of which the following is a condensation: To people taking up raw land, particularly where there is a heavy undergrowth to be cleared away, goats of some kind are an invaluable aid. In its browsing qualities the common goat is as good as any, but, aside from the clearing of the land, the profit in his keep is very little, though some demand is growing up for goat's milk for infants and for some fancy cheeses. A much better animal from the standpoint of profit, while in use as a scavenger, is the Angora goat. Their long, silky hair has been used for centuries in making blankets, lap robes, rugs, carpets, and particularly the "cashmere" shawls, formerly a great luxury in this country. Much of the camel's hair dress goods is in reality made from the hair of the Angora goat, or mohair, as it is called. Angora goats thrive best in high altitudes with dry climates. They exist in greatest number in the United States in California, New Mexico, and Texas. They have been used successfully in the Willamette Valley of Oregon to eat the underbrush off the land, doing for nothing that for which the farmers pay Chinese laborers twenty-five to forty dollars per acre. The cost of Angora goats is about ten to thirty dollars each for does, with bucks at fifty to two hundred dollars, so that even with a small area of land to clear it would pay to buy a little flock for that purpose. Dr. Shandley, of Iowa, says that two to three goats to the acre is sufficient for cleaning up land, and that in two years the goats will eat all of the underbrush from woodland, such as briers, thistles, scrub oak, sumac, and, in fact, any shrub undergrowth. They need no other food than what they can secure from the woods themselves. Consequently, the income from the sale of mohair is nearly net. The more nearly thoroughbred the goats are, the better the mohair and the higher the price. The meat of the Angora goat is superior to mutton, although if sold in the market under the name of goat meat, it commands only half the price of mutton. As an example of the Angora's utility in cleaning up land, the Country Gentleman says: "Mr. Landrum exhibited ten head at the Oregon State Fair. In order to demonstrate their effectiveness as substitutes for grubbing, he left them on three acres of brush. At the end of the second year the land was mellow and ready for the plow." It might be possible to build up a business in clearing lands for others by means of a herd of Angoras. CHAPTER XIX HOW TO BUILD If you find an "abandoned farm" on which the buildings are worth more than the whole price asked, as frequently happens, you are all right. Even if the buildings are somewhat dilapidated, you can fix them up for a few dollars. But in buying small plots of ground, larger farms have to be broken up. If you buy from the resident owner, he may sell you five acres off his larger tract, and keep his house to live in. Certain it is that if a farm of 100 acres is subdivided into twenty five-acre farms, at least nineteen new houses must be built, although sometimes an old barn can be made into a fair residence. If you can do no better, it is possible to start by tenting. An outfit large enough for a family of six would be about as follows: 1 wall tent with fly, 10 X 14, for sleeping 1 wall tent with fly, 10 X 14, for dining 1 old cook stove (to be erected outdoors), 2 floors, 10 X 14, at $5 each Brown tents, at least for the sleeping rooms, are best; they last longer, are cooler, and do not attract the flies; though indeed we need not have house flies if we keep the horse manure covered up--they are all bred in that. If the tents are in the shade, the cost of the cover or fly can be saved in the dining tent; but it is necessary in the living tent, because wet canvas will leak when touched on the inside. To make the tent warm for the winter, we must bank up to the edges of the platform with earth and cover the whole with another tent of the same shape, but a foot larger in every dimension. These are commonly used in Montana. It is to be presumed that no one would attempt moving in without household utensils, which may be as simple or elaborate as you please. If there is a sawmill in the vicinity, a temporary shack for winter, say 22 X 30 feet, could be built for from $400 to $600, depending on the interior finish. Partitions can be made very cheap by erecting panels covered with canvas, burlap, old carpet, etc. Such a building does not need to be plastered, but can be made warm enough by an inside covering of burlap, heavy builders' paper, or composition board. Tar paper laid over solid sheeting makes a roof that will last for two or three years. For such a shack draw the plans yourself. All you really need is a living room, bedroom, and kitchen. A cheap and effective water supply can be gotten from a driven well, which in most places costs about one dollar per foot. Have it where the kitchen is to be, so that the water can be pumped into a barrel or other tank over the stove. With a good range you can have as good a supply of hot and cold water as you had in the city. If so fortunate as to find a piece of land with a good spring on it, you can lay pipes and draw the water from that. If you can get twelve or fifteen feet fall from the spring to the kitchen, you don't need a pump at all. For a toilet closet, build a shed four feet wide, six feet long, and eight feet high. Use a movable pail or box. Lime slaked or unslaked or dry dust or ashes must be scattered every time the closet is used. Always clean before it shows signs of becoming offensive: keep it covered fly tight and mix the contents with earth or litter, and scatter on the garden. A shack can be built of logs which will do for comfort and will look dignified. Horace L. Pike, in _Country Life in America,_ says: "The lot on which we meant to build our log house stood thirty-five feet above the lake. The problem was how to build a cabin roomy, picturesque, inexpensive, and all on the ground. "The ground dimensions are thirty-two by thirty feet outside. This gives a living room sixteen by fourteen; bedrooms twelve by twelve, twelve by ten, and nine by seven; kitchen eleven by nine; a five-by four-foot corner for a pantry and refrigerator; closet four by six, front porch sixteen by six feet six inches, and rear porch five by five--705 square feet of inside floor space and 130 square feet of porch. "A dozen pine trees stand on the lot, and maneuvering was required to set a cottage among them without the crime of cutting one. The front received the salutes of a leaning oak, the life of which was saved by the sacrifice of six inches from the porch eaves, the trunk forming a newel post for the step railing. "We closed the contract immediately for 120 Norway or red pine logs, thirty feet long and eight by ten inches diameter at butts. The price was low--one or two dollars their like should have brought. We used, however, only eighty-one logs; forty thirty-foot, fourteen eighteen-foot, thirteen sixteen-foot, and fourteen fourteen-foot. "Work was begun on April 22. Two days sufficed for the owner and one man to clear and level the ground, dig post holes, set posts, and square the foundation. The soil was light sand with a clay hardpan three feet down. "Twenty-seven days each were put in by two men from start to finish, with assistance rendered by the owner. There were seven days by the mason, eight by carpenters, and four teen and one half by other labor. On June 4 the cabin was ready for occupancy, and the family moved in. The prices, as in most cases cited, are higher to-day. Cheaper transportation or lower tariff may reduce them again. "Making allowances for increased cost of logs and differences in any of the material cost, this cabin can be duplicated for less than $700 by any one who has the ground, a few tools, and some building ability. It is compact, convenient, and more roomy than a superficial glance reveals, and it can be occupied (slight care is required) from April to November with only the kitchen stove and the fireplace supplying the heat. The same plan can be used for an all-frame structure, perhaps at less cost. It could be sheathed and slab covered in a locality where slabs, edged to six or eight inches wide, could be had; or slabs could be used perpendicularly in the gable ends and on the outside of the rear extension." We must not overlook the differences in cost of lumber and labor in different places, sometimes more than doubling nor the fact that different contractors will vary often twenty-five per cent in their bids. A mere cabin, like a wooden tent, 12 X 10 with a platform adjoining, will accommodate one or even two persons and can be built by a contractor even at war prices for about fifty to one hundred dollars. This will serve for tool house or storeroom when a more convenient residence can be afforded. A number of such can be seen at "Free Acres," New Jersey, an hour from New York City on the D. L. & W. Railroad. Thoughtful provision and planning will go far to reduce costs. A stove pipe which should run up inside the house, not outside, so as to conserve heat and fuel, serves as chimney and fireplace. A Franklin stove, practically an open fireplace set out entirely inside the house, is a practical device, though it costs from $18 to $30. It gives a cheerful open fire to burn wood or coal and has a flat top to keep things hot, a clutch oven of sheet iron, and a bob can be attached to the front of the grate. But remember that though you may have trees or fallen wood for the cutting it takes a lot of time to cut it. A cylindrical self-feeding coal burner is most economical for heating and a lined sheet iron cooking stove for the kitchen. A fireless cooker, which retains the heat all day by means of soapstone or insulation and slowly cooks the food without losing the juices, is an economical device. It can be made at home by copying what you see in the stores or by getting directions from the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Don't forget double windows at least toward the north; and on all windows have heavy holland shades which make an air space between the cold windowpanes and the atmosphere of the room. Portable houses sound attractive, but they do not pay unless you will need to move them. Manifestly it costs more to make a house like a trunk than like a shed. The houses shipped ready made of the "Aladdin" type, with all the parts ready marked to be nailed together by unskilled labor are a much better investment and are not shaky. It is true that living is expensive in the train suburbs, when almost all that is eaten comes from the city, with freight and monopoly rates added. But one can raise most of what the family eats, and save besides in car fares and doctor's bills. The rent, perhaps a quarter of the income, that was paid for a place so small that the cat had to jump on a chair when the baby sat down, will be a clear gain. Mrs. Warrington's cottage at Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, forms a very interesting subject, and is built from designs of well-known architects of Philadelphia, who have taken up building small, inexpensive modern houses in a practical manner. The house is built with a stone foundation and a wooden superstructure with exterior walls covered with metal lath and cement stucco which is stained a cream color. The trimmings are stained a soft brown and the sashes are painted white. The roof is covered with shingles, and is left to weather finish. The front porch, from which a vestibule leads into the house, has a hooded cover formed by the main roof sweeping down sufficiently to form a protection. The vestibule forms an entrance to both the living room and the kitchen; the kitchen is at the front of the house, allowing the main rooms and a private porch to be at the south side. The interior throughout is trimmed with cypress and stained a soft brown. The second floor joists are exposed to view and are stained in a similar manner, while the ceiling space between the joists is plastered. A broad archway separates the living and the dining rooms, and while it forms a separation, it does not preclude the possibility, when desired, of throwing the two rooms into one large apartment. The large, open fireplace is built of clinker brick, and its facings extend from the floor to the ceiling; it has a wooden shelf supported on corbeled brackets. A semi-boxed stairway rises out of the living room to the second floor. There are three bedrooms with good-sized closets, and a bathroom on the second floor. A cellar, under the entire house, has a cemented bottom, and contains a laundry. This house costs about $2000 complete. Houses built of cement blocks are growing in favor. Cement blocks can be made anywhere by unskilled labor. All that is needed is a competent foreman to direct the making and seasoning of the blocks and laying them in the walls. The cost of concrete compared to frame or brick structures is, if anything, all things considered, in favor of concrete. Houses built of wood are likely to become increasingly expensive because of the deforesting which is going on in all parts of the United States. There are abundant books of plans and costs published, showing what may be built, and several responsible publishers recklessly offer to refund the cost of the plans if the expense of building the house exceeds their estimates. There are also a number of manufacturers of ready-made portable houses, running in cost from about three hundred dollars for four rooms, upward. Some of these are adapted to all-the-year-round use and may be used where land is taken experimentally. CHAPTER XX BACK TO THE LAND "Life, to the average man, means hard, anxious work, with disappointment at the end, whereas it ought to mean plenty of time for books and talk. There is something wrong about a system which condemns ninety-nine hundredths of the race to an existence as bare of intellectual activity and enjoyment as that of a horse, and with the added anxiety concerning the next month's rent. Is there no escape? Through years of hard toil I suspected that there might be such an escape. Now, having escaped, I am sure of it, so long as oatmeal is less expensive than Hour, so long as the fish and the cabbage grows, I shall keep out of the slavery of modern city existence, and live in God's sunshine." (Hubert, "Liberty and a Living.") The wealthy class are taking up farming as a healthy and beautifying diversion, and we may expect others to follow, as it certainly promotes happiness and adds to the attractions of those who adopt it. With the aids which science has given, a farmer can now make good profits with less labor than was formerly necessary to get a bare living. The amount that a single well-managed, well-tilled acre will produce in a season is simply incredible. This accounts for the increased demand for farming lands wherever they are to be had on reasonable terms. The wage earners are learning this, and it is only a question of a little time when manufacturing plants will have to be convenient to lands where the families of the hands can have a small tract of land to cultivate. This requires good transportation facilities from the homes to the factories. Corporate operation has been a great aid to human progress. Organization is man's orderly way of following the Divine Plan for his economic salvation vet the far mer has profited less by organization than trades unions. Where farmers have organized to aid each other to buy and sell, they have gained wonderfully, but a beginning in this direction has but served to show how much more is needed. To the individual farmer with large area and small means, the improvements in machinery that cheapen his production are not at present available. The discoveries in methods of fertilization of the soil only make it more difficult for him to earn a living in competition with those whose ample capital increases production by its use. Improvements in fruits and vegetation, by hybridization and various methods that add wealth to those of means, only add to the troubles of our present small farmers. Hitherto corporate operation has been mainly for the benefit of stockholders. The cases where those whose labor creates dividends get more than wages have been rare. "A living wage" has been the ambition of labor itself: all profit beyond this is supposed to be the right of capital. There is with some persons an unconscious reluctance to share profits with labor lest the laborers become independent, and thus reduce their number to an extent to raise the labor market, so that it is difficult to get fair consideration of any business proposition that promises better conditions for the producer or independence for the laborer. This is undoubtedly short sighted, as the higher intelligence of the people who have land increases production and gives enlarged opportunities for the profitable employment of money. However, if capitalists persist in this narrow view, the money of the people when they learn and think, can be applied to this purpose instead of being deposited in savings banks, where much of it is used in increasing the wealth of those who already have abundance. The idea of "helping others to help themselves" finds a responsive chord in the hearts of many wealthy people. But the question is, how can all be helped? No business method by which this can be accomplished has, as yet, been practically demonstrated. In no field does corporate operation promise more for the betterment of human conditions, for a higher standard of morals and of education, or great certainty of profit for capital, than by systematically aiding men to obtain farms. Progress proceeds on the line of returns for expenditure. When a man's economic condition permits, his first thought is to give his children an education and a better chance in life than he had. Those who extol the simple life as the ideal condition of happiness do not mean that want and deprivation of necessities is the ideal condition. If they did, they would put their children in that condition to make them happy. Both extremes of wealth and of poverty are burdens and retard mental and moral progress. The ideal condition is to be found on a farm where the land is paid for and ample means are at hand to supply the necessities for physical demands, with leisure to learn and enjoy those pleasures of the mind which come with knowledge of Nature's laws, and wisdom to live in harmony with them, and in a measure comprehend the purposes of creation. Mr. G. W. Smith, founder of the Hundred Year Club, suggests that there is an opening in intensive farming for the benevolent but canny wealthy who are interested in the soil and want to combine philanthropy and percentage. His plan is to get capital to secure land and all the necessary means, give to each approved applicant perpetual leases of land for a small farm and a lot in a village site convenient thereto, with a house merely sufficient for shelter, requiring as a first payment sufficient to secure capital against loss in case the farmer forfeits his contract, say $100. Let the company provide scientific supervision and conduct the operation mainly as though the farmers were employees, all the necessaries to be charged to each with only sufficient profit to pay the expense and a fair interest on the capital employed. Through a purchasing and sales department all products should be sold in the best market and each farmer credited with the net result of his productions until the agreed sale price is received, when title should pass in fee to the farmer, who, during the time, has become scientific so far as that piece of land is concerned, and in future can operate it with the advantages which progress has made. A public building would be necessary for a storehouse, in which rooms for meetings of various kinds should be provided, also such shelter as might be necessary for assembling and storage of products for shipment. The expense of public buildings and other utilities could be paid for out of the increased value that they bring to the land. The company should have a nursery to provide fruit tree, etc., the growth of which, with the increase of population would make the farms, when paid for, worth far more than their cost. Such opportunities as this, opened to all, would do away with the tramps who are now able to live on the charitable, only because of the known difficulties of finding work. The farmers should be utilized as far as possible in the purchasing and sales department, and should divide into committees to try various experiments connected with their business, that through their reports all may be benefited by the knowledge gained. Dairying and large orchards on land suitable and not of use in the general farming plan could be conducted by the community, each farmer being a stockholder. The labor performed on these cooperative undertakings should be paid for and charged to cost of production, each one who performs a share of the labor participating in the profits as near as may be. As money is received by the company from products, it can be used in similar operations. When the farms are paid for, the farmers can continue the cooperative features that experience has proved useful and extend the business principle to other fields, such as heating, light, and power by electricity, machinery for preparing products for market, drying, canning, etc., as well as for the cultivation of the soil. Where the land is level the farms can be laid out on a general plan that will admit of the use of steam plows to reduce the cost of plowing, save hard labor, and reduce the number of work animals. Among the multitude of advantages the individual would have in these communities, social, educational, and economic, health and physical development appear as not the least. The farm, as it is, still furnishes a horde of recruits for insane asylums; its isolation and monotony of everyday life, with its lack of social intercourse and educational advantages, nearly counterbalance the strain and poverty of the cities. But the greatest difficulty is the growing inability of the farmers' sons to secure land and the means to cultivate it when they arrive at a marriageable age. Those who have seen for threescore years the ever-increasing flow of boys and girls from the farms to the cities, greater in proportion to the rural population than in any other age, realize the necessity for aid in this direction. While it is true that the farm has contributed largely to the numbers of our successful city men, the fact remains that the mass of boys who come to the cities as well as the city born, lack the faculty to grab or save, and fail, while the healthy girls swell the ranks of prostitution, where an average of eight years lands them in a pauper's grave. Our soldiers, as well as those of other countries, are not up to former physical standards. Degeneracy, disintegration is apparent in every direction. The power of a nation depends on the physical and mental condition of the great mass of people, and to leave the people in ignorance that they may be controlled by the intelligent few who understand their needs and may have their welfare at heart, is a mistake that other nations than Russia have made. The law of the survival of the fittest has wiped out races and nations who have ignored this fundamental law, that all men must progress together. A race or civilization with such a basis of farmers as this plan would create would be enduring. The nation or race, like the individual, must have intelligent organization and live in harmony with the laws of nature in order to survive. Opposition to them means destruction Cooperation is constructive. If we are to profit by this lesson, it is necessary that we improve the conditions surrounding our lower classes. That this is recognized by a large number of leading minds is proved by the efforts of the many who are engaged in educational and other social movements, most of which result in little net good to the wage-earners. Obstacles to small farming near large cities are that farms of three to ten acres with buildings are not plentiful, and that mortgage loans are hard to get in the East and loans to help in building are hardly to be had at all. Land is either held intact as large farms or is sold entire to speculators who hold it until it can be divided into city lots. Here, it would seem, is an opportunity for those who are interested in bettering the condition of their fellow men by wholesale, and can invest large capital, but little time, in the work. Let them buy up land in large acreages and cut it up into small plots of from one to ten acres, charging enough advance to return interest on the money invested and to meet the necessary expenses in such operation. Then make liberal building loans to buyers. Inquiries among real estate men show that they always have a larger demand for small acreage than they can meet, so an immediate market with large profits would await those who are first in this field. There is no use in blaming people for not leaving the cities to go to the farms; they don't know enough to go, they don't know enough to make a living if they do go, and they don't know enough to enjoy it. Besides this, they have not the capital. We must teach them and help them. George H. Maxwell's Homecrofters' Guild at Watertown, Mass., where boys are taught what to do with the earth and how to do it, is worth whole shelves of books on "The Exodus to the Cities" or the "Prosperity of the Settler." It is reported that the state of Texas offered six million acres of land for sale to settlers, at one dollar per acre. It has been suggested that it would be better that the states should rent out the land at four per cent of the sale price. This would leave more money in the hands of settlers and enable many to get farms who cannot pay the price and have enough left to raise a crop. In reality it would be better for the state to help farmers get a start rather than to tax them one dollar per acre to begin with. However, under our system of government, we permit only those who have money to have land. There can be no doubt that the state of Texas and her people would be better off if the land were leased than to have it sold. Probably a tax on the value of the land instead of a rent would be the best for all the people, especially as it would check speculation. CHAPTER XXI THE COMING PROFESSION FOR BOYS In order that as little as possible may seem to be taken for granted or as mere expressions of the opinions of the author, we cite the views of specialists as to the possibilities of this field, so new in this country, of intensive agriculture. These will show that the conviction has become general that, as workers, as teachers, and as discoverers, there is no career more inviting or more lucrative or more dignified than that of the skillful foster-father of plants. "Children brought up in city tenements tend to become vicious and sickly, but if transported to country homes they may grow up strong and self-respecting men and women. "There are hundreds of applicants for every position in the cities, and competition forces the pay down to the lowest level. Living expenses are heavier. The risk to health from sedentary occupations, long hours in ill-ventilated offices, stores, and workshops is serious. "There are few inducements to out-door exercise. Even if he lives at home, the boy who is forced to the street or into the factory before he has the strength or education to do good work remains an unskilled worker all his life. "Manufacturing is upon a larger and larger scale. The division of labor is greater and greater. Not only does the gulf between capitalist and laborer widen, but with it the gulf between skilled and unskilled labor." ("What Shall Our Boys Do for a Living?" Charles F. Wingate.) It is the city that breeds or attracts most of the pauperism and crime. The country has its own healthy life. Every one is born with some natural gift, and it is a good thing to discover early in life what one's natural gifts are so that each may be educated in the direction suited to natural capacity. How are you to treat a lad who has naturally an inclination for the work on the farm? In the first place do not provide him with any spending money unless he earns it. The prime thing necessary is to give the boy a personal interest in what is going on upon the farm. Give him a plot of land as his own, let him understand that anything he may grow upon this land shall belong to him, but do not give him this plot and say, "There, take that; do as you like with it," he will wonder what to do with it. He will need somebody to help him by teaching him what he is to do. Enter into a partnership with him at the start, give him some instruction as to what it is best for him to do with his plot. Find out his inclinations; give him sympathy and help. Bring out his natural aptitude for farming life, teach him method in his work; teach him to think his way out; and, best of all, teach him to work for definite results; that is what is wanted in any line of life, especially in farm life. Let the work of the boy have a meaning and a purpose. Let him understand that certain results cannot be accomplished in any other way, and give him chances to go outside and see what other people are doing. Let him see good scientific agriculture and be encouraged to pursue such methods. Provide for him the very best reading that can be found in agricultural journals and books. Let him have three or four years at an agricultural college. All the influences there point to agriculture as the best calling for a young man who is fit for it, whereas in other colleges the influences are all in the opposite direction. At our agricultural colleges a youth has all the necessary advantages of general education, and also an education in the lines fitting him especially for the calling he has selected. (United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 138, condensed.) "Among farmers and gardeners not enough thought is given to the whys and wherefores, or cause and effect; as a rule, they go on year after year without profiting by the personal opportunity afforded them of observation, or by the results of experiments at scientific stations. "With rare exceptions the young farmer and gardener takes up his work, not from the scientific side, but strictly from the labor side; and he begins at the bottom, meeting the same difficulties as did his father and too often not acquiring information beyond what his father possessed. "This should not be; agriculture should be taught in all our public schools in country districts, as it has been taught for years in Germany and Austria. It should be elevated as an art; in its higher estate it is already an art. No pursuit possesses a greater scope for development; the field is almost unoccupied by leaders, scientific and practical." (Burnett Landreth, in _999 Queries and Answers._) In accordance with these ideas, the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School at Woodbine, New Jersey, is giving practical courses in agriculture to Jewish boys, on the principle of individual plots--all free where necessary. The trustees of the State Agricultural College of New Jersey, at New Brunswick, have established winter courses in agriculture, open to all residents of New Jersey over sixteen years of age. Courses will be for twelve weeks, and only a small entrance fee is required; few books will be needed. Other states are doing likewise; all will need many teachers and experimenters. At present all who know anything about intensive agriculture are snapped up by the numerous government experiment stations at good salaries. The land like that of the Rockefellers, the Paynes, the Cuttings, on which farming is carried on by unnecessarily expensive methods, needs the services of trained agriculturists and professional foresters. The Division of Forestry at the start employed eleven persons, but now it has in the field as many hundreds of employees, including a lot of trained foresters. The railroads also see the profit in teaching farming, and are devoting more and more money to experiments and lectures to show the farmers that they can get more and better crops with the same effort by intelligent selection of seeds. The Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railway Company ran its first Seed and Soil Special over the entire system in the winter of 1904-1905, and has lectured to hundreds of thousands of farmers since. They report to us that "there is no doubt that the lectures did a great deal of good, and necessarily the larger increase of crops which followed is due to the scientific methods of farming expounded by the various professors." The late President James J. Hill wrote much about the small farms' large yields. The hundreds of thousands of "war gardens" unskillfully conducted and glutting the local markets with crops all matured at about the same local time will unreasonably disgust many with intensive cultivation, especially those who work but do not think. The remedy is more instruction. The effect the agricultural colleges and experiment stations is plain to the eye in the better appearance of farms as we near the centers of instruction. Some years ago a clergyman published a book upon the Adirondacks; it was full of poetry, and he sent men up there who afterwards became known as "Murray's Fools." They knew nothing about the life and had no suitability and little preparation for it. We do not wish to bring out a crop of "Three Acres and Liberty Fools." We are telling what has been done and what can be done again. It does not follow that every man can or will do it, much less teach it or advance the art, but the field is a large one and holds out great promise to those who persevere and excel in it. If any one thinks that the profit of the earth will come to the cultivator without very intelligent and steady work, he is mistaken. No owner of land, unless others require it to live upon, can make money by neglecting it. Says _Maxwell's Talisman:_ "The greatest good that can be done to the American farmer to-day is to teach him to make the greatest possible profit from the smallest tract of land from which a family can be supported in comfort. A great influence operating to-day against keeping the boys in the country is that the boy does not have money enough to buy a farm. It is unfortunately true that in some places there is a trend in the direction of absorbing farms into still larger farms with a consequent diminution of population, as in Iowa and other sections. The remedy for this is to demonstrate that if the value is in the boy rather than in the farm, and the boy is taught intensive, diversified, scientific farming, a good living with a surplus profit that will provide amply for old age, may be made from a comparatively small tract of land. The tract may be, say, ten acres, with ample cultivation, irrigation, and fertilization, or even without irrigation because a hoe and a cultivator in the hands of a scientific farmer may bring as good and better results in providing moisture for growing plants as can be had from a ditch and unlimited water in the hands of an ignorant farmer." The field of discovery is always limitless, and it is to those boys or girls who devote their attention to this that the greatest return will come. "What a fine thing it would be to find even one plant free from rust in the midst of a rusted field. It would mean a rust-resistant plant. Its off-spring would probably be also rust resistant. If you should ever find such a plant, be sure to save its seed and plant in a plot by itself. The next year again save seed from those plants least rusted. Possibly you can develop a rust proof race of wheat! Keep your eyes open." ("Agriculture for Beginners," by Burkett, Stevens, and Hill, pages 76-78.) So you may pluck gain out of loss. If you want to do experiments, the influence of ether on plants is one new and wonderful field. It seems to induce artificial rest, so that lilacs, for instance, can be made to bloom twice by a treatment, the last time near Christmas. E. V. Wilcox says in _Farming_ that in 1899 a small quantity of durum or macaroni wheat was introduced into this country for trial. It was found profitable in localities where there was too little rain for ordinary wheat. Six years later, 20,000,000 bushels per year of the wheat was grown in the United States. Its production has increased greatly every season and has added materially to the total of the wheat crop.. Thorough fall cultivation has been found to increase the yield, and in some parts of the wheat belt one in five of the farmers has already adopted the practice. In certain states where manuring has been thought unnecessary, experiments have demonstrated that the yield may be increased 60 per cent by this simple practice. The wheat production of Nebraska was increased more than 10,000,000 bushels by the introduction of a hardy strain of Turkey red wheat. Swedish select oats in Wisconsin have greatly augmented the oat yield of the state. In 1899 six pounds of the seed was brought to the state and from this small beginning a crop of 9,000,000 bushels was harvested five years later. "Mr. Gideon, of Minnesota, planted many apple seeds, and from them all raised one tree that was very fruitful, finely flavored, and able to withstand the cold Minnesota winter. This tree he multiplied by grafts and named it the Wealthy apple. It is said that in this one apple he benefited the world to the value of more than one million dollars. You must not let any valuable bud or seed variant be lost." ("Agriculture for Beginners," page 61.) "This fact ought to be very helpful to us next year when planting corn. We should plant seed secured only from stalks that produced the most corn. If we follow this plan year by year, each acre of land will be made to produce more kernels and hence a larger crop of corn, and yet no more expense will be required to raise the crop." (Same, page 71.) _The World's Work_ tells how the country got a new industry. Mr. George Gibbs, of Clearbrook, Wash., has made his "stake" by growing tulip and hyacinth bulbs. He had a little place on Orcas Island, in Puget Sound. He did not know anything about growing flowers, but he did know that certain varieties of bulbs brought good prices in the East. He was observant enough to see that the moist, warm, climate and rich soil of the Puget Sound country were peculiarly favorable to flowers. He had bad luck with his bulbs; that only meant that he still had something to learn. He kept his nerve even when he went bankrupt. His friends told him he was wasting time, but they could not shake his faith. In twelve years he found that he was right. His wonderful gardens were making him rich. Other men have gone into the business, but he was first and has kept his lead. He has made the Puget Sound country the greatest rival of Holland in the sale of flowering bulbs. Quantities of wild herbs, fruits, and roots that no one eats are good; the Jesuits had a list of over two hundred kinds that the Indians ate, but it was lost. Some one can do a great service by making it up again by research and experiment. Thousands more of the wild things must be good for dyes, fabrics, and fodder. Fame like Burbank's and fortune awaits the one who is a good self-advertiser and can find the use of the poetic daisies, goldenrod, and thistle, the all-pervading "pusley," and such other vegetable vermin. An interesting experiment is conducted in growing tea with colored child labor, at Tea, South Carolina, by the aid of education and machinery and the cooperation of the Agricultural Department at Washington, who will furnish particulars. Whatever may be its outcome, this will give an opening to some intelligent cultivators, and it points the way to other fields. Those who are first in raising new or improved plants find a waiting market for them. _The Market Growers Gazette,_ of London, England, reports that Mr. A. Findlay, Mairsland, Auchtermuchty, Scotland, sold one season to five leading growers whose names are given five seed potatoes at L 20 each (which would be, perhaps, $500 a peck). He says enthusiastically: "It is as perfectly round-shaped a potato as can be imagined. There is a slight dash of pink on the outer rim of the eye. My stock of it is very small, only 126 lb. and I do not care to sell any. If next year's crop yields as well as this year's, we shall have twenty times that quantity." Mr. Findlay has other seed potatoes, just as high priced, for which he wants $125 per lb., which, he says, "means that I do not want to sell any." This shows what progressive people think of the real value of good seed. It is worth mentioning that "The land on which these are grown is not highly manured; the only artificial manure that it has received is about 200 lb. of potash per acre. It has the drawback of being rather stony." Of course this is "a fad"; it is doubtful if it will pay any one to give such prices for seed except to sell to some bigger fool than himself. Of course, also, the market for a particular fancy thing may soon be overstocked, but it seems to be a nice thing for the Findlays meanwhile, and it does good in teaching people to appreciate good things. Yet the average potato patcher prudently saves his small potatoes for next year's seed, which is just as if a breeder were to keep the colts that were too poor to sell, to be the parents of his herd. In the dark ages of farming--to wit, in 1881, for this is a true story--a minister of the Gospel came into possession, by inheritance, of a fifteen-acre farm a short way from Philadelphia. He found the soil a reddish, somewhat gravelly clay, and so worn out from years of cropping that it did not support two cows and a horse. City born and bred, he was encumbered with no knowledge of agriculture which had to be unlearned. He began a careful and systematic study of the agricultural literature, and ultimately developed a novel system of dairy farming to which he adhered religiously. The farm Iying near the city is high-priced land; for this reason, and because of the limited acreage, the cows were kept in the barn the year round. For six years his bill for veterinary services was $1.50, while the income from the milk of his seventeen cows was about $2400 a year. In addition, from four to six head of young cattle were sold annually, netting about $500 a year. As the stock on the farm was stall fed every particle of plant food contained in the stable manure, liquid as well as solid, was utilized. No fertilizer was ever purchased. Yet all of the "roughage" for thirty head of stock was raised on the thirteen acres of available soil. Only $625 a year was expended for concentrated feeding stuffs. The net earnings of the farm for the period averaged more than $1000 a year. And this was during the early days of his experience; later he made more. Professor W. J. Spillman, of the Agricultural Department, visited him in 1903, and studied the methods employed. Then, he says, the rush to see the farm became so great that the owner had to give it up. Few people who know nothing about it, and won't learn, can take even three acres and make anything off it. To get the phenomenal yields takes capital--sometimes large capital, wisely spent. Sometimes we read of immense products "per acre"; this often means the product of a single rod of ground, this gives at the rate of so much "per acre," or might, if extended. But any one can take a little bit of ground and use it thoroughly and increase his borders and his knowledge as he goes on. He will find plenty to pay him for doing or teaching whatever he has learned to do that no one else has done "If a man make but a mousetrap better than his fellows, though he makes his tent in the wilderness, the world will beat a path to his door." The mission of this book is accomplished if it interests you to consider the possibilities of making a living on a few acres and leads you to investigate. It is not written as a textbook, for, as has been shown, there are authorities enough cited to supply all the technical information needed. Its sole object is to show what has been done and what can be done on small areas and to show that life in the country need not be so laborious if the same methods are used which make successes of business in other lines. If it does this and is the means of checking in any degree the reckless trend of people from the country to the cities, the author will feel that his efforts have been well repaid. CHAPTER XXII THE WOOD LOT If you have a bit of woods on your little farm, take care of it. By intelligent thinning you can make an average income of five dollars per acre from ordinary second growth wild woods. The cord wood, barrel hoops, fence posts, and so on will decrease your expenses, while the timber will increase in value. That lot is the place to start your boy as a forester. Instructions how to treat the trees can be obtained from your State Forestry Department or from the National Forest Service at Washington: the care of growing timber is a big subject and requires study, but don't sell your standing timber without their advice. Forestry can hardly be made to pay on a small lot with hired labor or hired teams, and you must not pay much for your wood lot, else interest and taxes will eat up the returns. To be of high quality, timber must be, to a considerable proportion of its height, free of limbs, which are the cause of knots; it must be tall; and it must not decrease rapidly in diameter from the butt to the top of the last log. In a dense stand of timber there is very great competition for sunlight among the individual trees, with the result that height growth is increased. Trees in crowded stands are taller than those in uncrowded stands of the same age. When the trees are crowded so that sunlight does not reach the lower branches, these soon die and become brittle they then fall off or are broken off by the wind, snow, or other agencies. By this process trunks are formed which are free from limbs, and hence of high quality. It is evident, therefore, that trees in the wood lot should be so crowded that the crown or top of each individual tree may be in contact with those of its nearest neighbors. A crowded stand of trees produces not only a larger number but also a greater proportion of high quality sawlogs than an uncrowded stand. So vital a matter is their forest shade that it does not do to set out young trees which have grown in the forest. Ordinarily, the exposure to the sunlight stunts them and often kills them. Nursery trees are best; the next best are trees that have grown at the edge of the woods. The actual value of woodland as pasture is small. One dollar per acre per year is probably a liberal estimate of the value of its forage. Thrifty fully stocked stands of timber will grow at the rate of 250 or more board feet of lumber per year. Adopting only 250 board feet as the growth and assuming the value of the standing timber to be from $5 to $8 per 1000 feet board measure, the value of the timber growth is from $1.25 to $2 per acre per year. If the timber is given good care, moreover, the growth should be as much as 500 board feet per acre per year. The larger value of the wood lot for growing timber, as compared to the value of its forage only, is therefore apparent. It must not be thought possible to secure this growth of timber and utilize the wood lot for pasture at the same time, because the stock eat the seedlings and damage the trees. If shade, however, rather than forage is the wood lot's chief value to stock, it can doubtless be provided by allowing the stock to range in only a portion of the lot. The remainder can more profitably be devoted to the production of wood. Owners are doubtless in some instances indifferent about fires in their wood lots, because they do not realize that these may do great harm without giving striking evidence of the fact. They burn the fallen leaves and accumulated litter of several years, thus destroying the material with which trees enrich their own soil. The soil becomes exposed, evaporation is greater, and more of the rain and melted snow runs off the surface. The roots may also be exposed and burned. The vitality of the trees is weakened and their rate of growth decreased. Don't burn leaves or waste growth: it is dangerous and they are valuable for mulch and for manure. It has been found in the prairie region that through the protection afforded by the most efficient grove windbreaks, the yield in farm crops is increased to the extent of a crop as large as could be grown on a strip three times as wide as the height of the trees. At present the following states maintain nurseries and distribute young trees either free or practically at cost to planters within the state: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Dakota, and Kansas. The names of nurseries which handle stock of certain trees and their quoted prices for all the more important species can be secured from the Forest Service, Washington, D. C. Whether your wood lot pays a profit or not, like the profit from the rest of your land, depends largely on how it is taxed. The higher it is taxed the harder it is to make it pay. In most states timberland is assessed on the basis of its value, timber and land together. Woodland assessed on this basis is overtaxed as compared with land assessed on the basis of what it produces each year. The value of plowland for farm purposes is established by what it will earn. If the owner can make $10 an acre a year over all expenses by growing say wheat, corn, cotton or alfalfa on it, his land will have a value of perhaps $150 an acre. If it took two years to grow a crop, the land would be worth only half as much. Its owner in that case would kick vigorously if he could not get his assessment lowered. He would kick still more vigorously if he had to pay a tax also on the value of the standing crop, after having to pay too much on the land. "The Lord loveth a cheerful kicker." With woodland the case is still worse. Each year the owner may have to pay a tax on the merchantable crops of many past years. It is as though the owner of plowland had to pay a tax on the value of his field crops twice a week throughout the growing season. When a full-grown tree is cut down or burned up in a forest fire, it may have been taxed 40 or 50 times over. Each year the land on which it grew has been valued not on the basis of its earning power, but on the basis of what it would bring if sold, timber and all. A tax levied on the income-earning value of the land would be much more equitable. Certain states have applied this principle by legislation under which land to be used for growing timber can be classified so that the timber can be taxed separately from the land. The land there is taxed annually on its value, without timber. The tax on the timber is not paid until the crop is harvested. It is therefore a tax on the yield. In New York this yield tax is 5 per cent of the value of the crop harvested; Michigan 5 per cent of it; Massachusetts 6 per cent; and Vermont, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania 10 per cent, with different provisions for forests already established. Such a method is much better than that adopted by a number of states which exempt, under certain conditions, reforested or reforesting lands for a term of years, or allow rebates or bounties on such lands. The profit of a growing forest crop will depend largely on relief from excessive taxation. It is unthrifty public policy to discourage putting waste land to work. ("The Farm Woodlot Problem," by Herbert A. Smith, Editor Forest Service--from Yearbook of Department of Agriculture for 1914.) CHAPTER XXIII SOME PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS The Department of Agriculture at Washington, also Cornell University and various other schools publish special studies and monographs of different branches. For some a small charge is made, but they are mostly distributed free. Many of them are very valuable. The United States Department's pamphlet on the Diseases of the Violet is a notable example. The average person does not know how these can be obtained or even that they exist. The Department's Year Books are most interesting reading, and both its Professors and the state colleges will answer particular questions of citizens. These and the various United States and State Experiment Station publications will serve instead of most books (except this one), if properly filed, indexed, and crossindexed so that you can readily turn to all the information on a given subject--on bugs, for instance, before the insects have harvested your crop. I am trying only to suggest things, not to advise, nor to induce my readers to try to do anything that they don't like or have no capacity for. It is difficult to make people understand that. One reader of this book, a dear creature, wrote her experience for a Crafts magazine. She got the acres, built her house, and raised one fine crop of--swans? nuts grafted on wild trees? partridge berries? No--three tons of hay! She called it "Three Acres and Starving"; I called it "Three Acres and Stupidity." She didn't eat the hay, and the Editor wouldn't publish my reply. Everybody raises hay and potatoes; so don't you raise any unless for your own use. Potatoes are a laborious crop, requiring constant care, manuring, cutting the seed eyes (on which there is much uncertain lore), hilling up or down according to drainage and rainfall, spraying with Pyrox or dusting with Paris green, and, neither least nor last, bug hunting. The seed is expensive, but for your own use you may plant from whatever seed, otherwise wasted, may grow on the potato vine, on the tops of the plants. The crop will be small potatoes and all kinds of varieties, which won't sell in the market but which make each dinner a surprise party. You may strike a new and improved strain, though there are over a thousand varieties of potato listed already. New creations of merit bring good returns, and 'tis the enterprising experimenter that reaps the honor and the harvest, and he is worthy of his reward. To select the most productive plants and breed again from these is, however, a more promising profit plan. Even then don't plant the tubers unless you will take the pains to soak the seed potatoes in scab preventer. If you won't, likely you will raise mostly scab, and the spores thereof will spoil your ground for potatoes for years. It costs little in money to make it--half a pint of formalin to fifteen gallons of water. Not guessed but measured gallons. Then soak for an hour and a half by the Ingersoll. Don't reckon that one little hour or a few will do just as well. With one hour they will be under-done and spotty, with three over-done and weakly. There is lots to be discovered yet about "the spuds." Sawdust is an excellent mulch for them, as for small fruits. When you store any seeds to plant, put carbolic moth balls with them. It checks insects and mice and helps to protect the planted seeds from birds. In a general way, with potatoes and with other things that you want good and plenty, get specific directions and follow them. Most people won't read directions; more can't follow them. Those people have their knives out for "book farmers and professors," but you can't improve on experience and experiment by the light of laziness or of nature. A delicate jelly is made out of the red outer pulp of rose berries. It would be romantic to develop a Rose fruit from those seed pods, as the peach was developed from the almond. We have invented stranger fruits than that, such as the Logan-berry and the pomato. But there is better chance for profit in doing the old things better, especially when the experiment costs little or nothing. You can have a strawberry garden on your roof or even on a balcony. This need not be costly. Clinch all the nails on the inside of a stout barrel. Bore half a dozen two-inch holes in the bottom, or put in a layer of stones, for drainage. Bore a row of eight holes about eight inches from the bottom of the barrel and about eight inches apart. Eight inches above this bore a second row of holes "staggered," and a third eight inches above those. Pile several old tomato cans with perforated bottoms one on the other in the center of the barrel: these should be the height of the barrel and placed upright in its middle. This is the conductor down which water should be poured at intervals before the soil gets quite dry. Fill the barrel with soil made of one half loam and one half well-rotted manure. Be sure the manure is not fresh. A little bone meal is a good addition. Now plant the first row of strawberry plants ("ever-bearing" are best, though they don't ever-bear). Put each plant inside, spread the roots, and pull the leaves of each out through one of the holes. Press the soil down firmly around each root. Repeat the process for the other two rows; fill the barrel and set say six plants on the top. That will give you thirty plants, which should grow ten to twenty-five quarts of fine berries, or more. The illustration makes the holes twelve inches apart--for big leafy plants. If there are any more, those will be you. Anyhow, you will know a lot about strawberries at the end of the season. Other things can be grown in the same way. Better than growing vegetables, or where dry land can't be obtained, is to raise some crop like water cress that usually comes from a distance. Often an otherwise poor season will help a specialty. One year wet weather jumped the price of mint and it sold at double prices. Hot, dry weather is required to make it produce its best. Most of the mint produced in this country for peppermint oil is grown in Michigan. More than 4000 acres are reported from a single county. Mint oil is worth about $3.50 a pound and costs about a dollar to produce. Nice bright dried leaves sell for about 15 cent a pound. The production of mint is sometimes as high as fifty pounds of oil to the acre. The bulk of it is grown on marshlands, which a few years ago were nowhere worth more than a few dollars an acre. The mint is sent to the manufacturers, where it is purified and made into flavoring extract or used in chewing gum, etc. Why should we, with our infinite variety of climates, soils, and labor, import from England the coarser varieties of seeds of the cabbage family, savoy, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, or kale? We owe England enough already for the seed of Liberty we got from her. California now supplies some seed for onions, carrots, parsnips, and a few others. The finest cauliflower comes mostly from Denmark now. Turnip seed, too, mangel-wurzel and swedes, onion, pea, bean, carrot, parsnip, radish, and beet seeds could be grown here by the same skill, care, and training as they are grown abroad. An interesting method of forcing plants by the use of hot water baths is described in _La Nature_ (Paris), by Henri Coupin. The process is much simpler than others now in use and may be employed by any one who has a small greenhouse, no expert treatment being necessary. Says Mr. Coupin: "Most trees in our countries undergo a period of rest, during which all growth appears to be suspended. Branches do not enlarge and the buds on them remain as they are. They do not arouse from their torpor until spring, first, because they then find the conditions necessary for their development, and again, because, during the period of rest, chemical changes have taken place in them. These are indispensable, because if they did not occur, the trees, even in the most favorable conditions, would not open their buds. For example, plant branches that have quite recently dropped their leaves, in a warm greenhouse. They will not bud; but make the same experiment at the end of several months and the buds will appear. "There are several ways of shortening this period of rest, some of which are rather odd. The best known is the process of etherification, which has been so much discussed recently, and which consists in placing the plants to be forced in the vapor of ether or chloroform for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Afterwards when placed in a hothouse, the branches begin to develop almost immediately. "A very ingenious botanist, Hans Molisch, professor in the University of Prague, has devised a method of forcing, simpler still and quite as effective. It consists in plunging the branches into warm water during a time that varies with the species. The best method is to plunge the plants in a reservoir of warm water, head downward, without moistening the roots, which would injure them. After a certain time, the plants are withdrawn, turned right side up with care, and placed in a greenhouse, where they develop at once. "The duration of the warm bath should be nine to twelve hours at most. The best temperature is 30 degree to 35 degree [86 degree to 95 degree F] . . . That is to say, in the majority of cases, one may simply employ the water available in hothouses, which is just at the proper temperature. The process is thus at the disposal of all gardeners. "It should be said that the good effects of the hot baths are confined to the parts actually immersed and do not extend to the whole plant. Thus, on the same stem we may see developing only the branches that have been treated with the bath, while the others remain torpid. This is easy to verify with the lilac or the willow. "If Lobner is to be believed, we may substitute for the water bath one of steam. He has obtained good results with the lily of the valley. The thing is possible, but the method used by Molisch is more practical. "How shall we explain the good effect of warm water on branches in a resting state? We are absolutely ignorant of its mechanism, as we are also in the case of etherification. But if we knew everything, science would be no longer amusing!"--Condensed, from _THE LITERARY DIGEST._ There are many new uses for water: It will not be long before every truck and every commercial flower garden will have overhead irrigation. This is merely gas pipes ("seconds" rejected for blow holes or porosity are usually used) supported on posts say six feet above the ground. They are usually placed parallel about fifty feet apart, which will make four to the acre square, and have a single row of holes and a handle on each pipe, so that the spray can be turned in either direction; with a high-water pressure, often supplied by gravity, they may be farther apart with larger holes. These not only have saved us from fear of drought, but they supply the moisture in the natural manner and at the right time and increase fertility to an astonishing degree. When you take a shower bath yourself, that is overhead irrigation. The gasoline, kerosene, or heavy oil one man farm tractor, so made that it can be used to plow, to climb a side hill, to run a saw or a pump, is the coming factor in garden and farm advance. Huge fortune awaits the first manufacturer who will standardize it, cheapen it, and specialize on it. The horse is the greatest care and the greatest risk on the little farm. He costs more than a tractor would, he is eating his head off half the time, he can't he worked overtime without injury, not even as much as a man can be; all too soon he dies, more missed than any member of the family. When this is popularized the "Three Acres" can well be extended to five. CHAPTER XXIV SOME EXPERIMENTAL FOODS FIFTY-EIGHT years ago Abraham Lincoln said "Population must increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose every member possesses this art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms. Such community will alike be independent of crowned kings, money kings, and land kings." The future, it seems, has many strange dishes in store for the American stomach. Whether you are rich or one of the plain people that have to work, whether the idea of new fantastic food appeals to your palate or to your pocketbook, you will be attracted by the array of foreign viands with curious names which have already been successfully introduced and are now beginning to be marketed in this country. Mr. William N. Taft, in the Technical World Magazine, presents the following wild menu for the dinner table: Jujube Soup Brisket of Antelope Boiled Petsai Dasheen au Gratin Creamed Udo Soy Bean and Lichee Nut Salad Yang Taw Pie Mangoes Kaki Sake. This, he assures us, is not the bill of fare of a Chinese eating house, nor yet of a Japanese restaurant, it is the daily meal of an American family two decades hence, if the Department of Agriculture succeeds in its attempt to introduce a large number of new foods to this country for the dual purpose of supplying new dainties and reducing the cost of living. Uncle Sam has determined to decrease the price of food as much as possible, and, for this purpose, delegated Dr. David S. Fairchild, Agricultural Explorer in charge of the Foreign Plant Section of the Bureau of Plant Industry, in particular, to see what can be done about it. More than 30,000 fruits and vegetables have been tested by Uncle Sam's experts and, according to Dr. Fairchild, a goodly portion of the foodstuffs which have been regarded as staples since the days of the first settler are doomed. Consider for example "Jujube Soup!" Mention that to the average person and he will answer: "But I thought the jujube was a fruit, like an apple. How can you make soup of it?" The average person is right. The jujube is a fruit--but a most remarkable one. "It is about the size and appearance of a crab apple, but contains only a single seed. It grows on a spiny tree, long and bare of trunk, with its foliage cropping out at the very top like a royal palm of the tropics. The jujube itself has been used for years to flavor candies and other confections. But the essence is very expensive and comparatively rare, despite the profusion with which the fruit grows in its native habitat. "Dr. Fairchild, however, imported several specimens for the Department's gardens in California, where they are bearing prolifically. The arid sands of the southwest, where nothing but cactus and sage-brush formerly would grow, have been found to be excellent soil for the jujube, and it is the hope of Uncle Sam's food experts to see the entire Arizona and New Mexico deserts dotted with jujube orchards, with income to their owners. The jujube is delicious eaten raw, but it may be cooked in any manner in which apples are prepared, used as a sauce or for pie, preserved or dried. Finally, its juice may be used as a delicious and highly nutritive fruit broth." Petsai, or, as the Chinese have it, Pe-tsai, is a substitute for the cabbage. In appearance it is as different from cabbage as can be imagined. It is tall and cylindrical and its leaves are narrow, delicately curled, with frilled edges. The petsai can, however, be grown on any soil where the ordinary cabbage could be cultivated and in many sections where the native vegetable would languish. We are told it is no uncommon thing for a petsai to reach sixty pounds in weight. Department of Agriculture officials, however, advise that it be plucked when about eight pounds in weight, its flavor being then the most delicate and appealing. This new importation, Uncle Sam's experts hope, will cause a drop in the price of dinners. Cabbage long ago ceased to be a cheap dish. But petsai requires none of the care which has to be lavished on cabbage and will thrive in almost any climate and any soil. The soy bean, once started, grows wild and yields several crops a season. It can be prepared in a multitude of ways, from baking to a delicious salad. According to Doctor Yamei Kin, the head of the Women's Medical School near Pekin, milk can be made from it to cost about six cents a quart and equal to cows' milk. It would be a blessing if we could get rid of the sacred but unclean cow. One of the state dairy inspectors told me, "We consider milk a filthy product." It may be remembered that, only twenty years ago, almost all the dates consumed here came from the oases of Arabia and the valley of the Euphrates. To-day there are more than a hundred varieties successfully produced in California and Arizona. The wonders of today are the commonplaces of to-morrow, and there is no telling to what apparently impossible lengths science will go to relieve people of the burden they now bear in the price of food. It has scoured the ends of the earth for new delicacies and now experts will do their best to teach the people to use them. Have you ever heard of _"Whitloof"_ or _"Belgian Chicory"_ or have you ever dined in one of the better restaurants of large city where they have served during the winter months a salad composed of golden blanched oblong leaves about 2 inches wide and 5 inches long, only the outer edges showing a faint green? It is as delicate as the perfume of roses, as crisp as young lettuce, as delicious as asparagus, and as ornamental upon the table as the freshest fruit. In former years this salad had to be imported and you had to pay dear for a portion of it, a good reason why so few people know it. A Belgian farmer located near New York has grown many thousands of these plants this past summer. How would you like to grow this dainty salad right in your living room and cut several crops from a single planting lasting nearly three months? Secure an 8-inch pot and plant in it 12 roots packed in light sandy soil or pure sand. Invert another but empty 8-inch pot over this to keep out the light, place in a heated room, water daily, and in from three to four weeks you will find full-grown crowns, beautifully blanched ready for cutting. Six of such crowns make a large portion, sufficient for an entire family. In cutting, do not cut too close to the root, for another growth is made directly after the cutting, which matures in from three to four weeks, and still two other crops can be grown in this way, so that from a single planting four full crops can be had. Considering, then, that eight such treats can be had for the cost of a single dozen roots, we can all now enjoy what was formerly a luxury. This method is most interesting, for you can watch the daily progress of the growth of the roots, fascinating to young and old, and with three weekly plantings of a pot each this treat can be enjoyed twice a week from the 1st of February until May. For those who wish to enjoy it more often or in larger quantities, we suggest the following: Prepare a bed of soil 12 inches deep in your cellar in a dark place where the temperature is always above freezing. Plant the roots as close as their size will permit and cover the crowns with at least 3 inches of soil. On top of this put straw so that when the crowns come through the soil they will not strike the light. When ready to cut, remove the soil as far back as the original root so that you can intelligently cut the growth to produce the crops to follow. As a substitute for the potato of commerce the "Dasheen" long ago passed the experimental stage. It has been served at a number of banquets in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. While the tops of potatoes are useless as food, the tops of the dasheen make delicious greens, and tests indicate that good growers can depend on a crop of from four hundred to four hundred and fifty bushels per acre. The Udo is the plant intended by the Department of Agriculture as a substitute for asparagus, a delicacy which it closely resembles. It is more prolific than asparagus, grows in the same soil, and requires less attention. Not only plants but animals are experimented with by Uncle Sam's experts. Officials of the Bureau of Animal Industry claim that before long we will partake of antelope steak. For the antelope has been found to be particularly adapted to the more arid western sections of the country. And beyond that the gastronomist of the future will have to reckon with loin of hippopotamus! The lower valley of the Mississippi is admirably suited to these huge beasts, the flesh of one of which equals a score of cattle. African traveled epicures maintain that hippopotamus steak is as tender and inviting as the choicest beef. "For those who like that sort of thing, it is just the sort of thing they would like." It seems a bit remote to urge hippopotamus on us who do not yet know enough to eat sharks, tortoises, painted turtles, or even English sparrows. Anyhow the small gardener is more likely to succeed raising pheasants than to muss with a hippopotamus, at least in the suburbs. Pigs are more practical and make prettier pets. Our population bids fair to approximate two hundred million within the next fifty years, and, because of the exigencies of business, an increasing number of people will be engaged in non-food-producing vocations. These people, however, are all consumers and must be fed and clothed, and even now America offers the greatest market for the produce of the farm that any farmer in any country has ever had in all history. One of the coming ways of feeding them is the discovery and use of new foods. As in other things, after the war, whether we live in a better world or not, we shall live in an entirely different world, new ways, strange thoughts, and other foods. For the most of the following, _Business America_ and _Current Opinion_ are responsible. For the creation of new crop varieties or the improvement of those now in use we must depend upon the practical scientists who are engaged in plant breeding. The work of one of these, Professor Buffum, has been accomplished in a region that is apparently sterile and where plants grow only by coaxing through artificial moisture. His plant-breeding farms near Worland in the Big Horn Basin of Northern Wyoming lie at an elevation of 4000 feet, in a region of almost total natural aridity. After twenty years' work in Western agricultural colleges and Government Experiment Stations, Professor Buffum chose his present location because nowhere in the United States could he find conditions of soil and climate that induce to such a remarkable degree the breaking up of species, and mutation or "sporting" of plants. When the modern plant breeder seeks to produce something new by cross-fertilization a problem is encountered. For many years we were ignorant of the principle upon which nature operated in these hybrids or crosses. Finally a Bohemian priest named Mendel discovered the law. The central principle is that when the seed produced from a cross between two different species is planted, the progeny breaks up into well-defined groups. A certain percentage of the plants resemble one of the parents, a smaller percentage are like the other parent, and the rest seem to be a blend of both parents. These intermediates will not breed true to themselves, however; if seed from them is planted the progeny will split up into groups, showing the same percentages as the first generation to which they belonged. This has been generally accepted by scientists. In many of his productions Professor Buffum apparently has set the Mendelian law at defiance, for, by cross-fertilization, he has evolved plants which breed true to themselves, and their progeny does not break up into groups, according to the accepted theory. They show specimens resembling each parent, with the third composed of seemingly, but not really, blended specimens. These results are particularly vital in the development of plants adapted by selection for semi-arid agriculture. The Professor believes that the great areas of high plain country to be found from Canada to Mexico can be made more productive through planting crop varieties that have been bred to withstand the existing conditions which produce meagre returns from the vast expanse of territory under the present methods. In place of corn, which is difficult to mature even at moderate elevations, Professor Buffum has introduced improved emmers and the various hybrids resulting from crosses with other grains. Emmer itself is not a new grain, having been grown for centuries in Russia and southern Europe, and it is believed to have been the corn of Pliny, which he said was used by the Latins for several centuries before they knew how to make bread. Several years ago emmer began receiving attention as a stock food. The first planting of the grain at Worland resulted in some exceptional "sports," seemingly of a different type, with coarse straw and very large heads. With this as a basis, the seed was replanted and subjected to many experiments to increase its drouth and winter resisting qualities. Continued selections have shown, a yield of from a third more to twice as much as corn, that it is thirty per cent more valuable than oats for feeding horses, and that for stock fattening it is equal to corn, pound for pound. It is the most drouth-resistant and prolific of small grains, has been successfully raised from Montana to Mexico, and is being planted in Louisiana to replace oats because it is not affected by rust. Some of the yields recorded are enormous, varying from 40 to 104 bushels per acre under dry farming, and as high as 152 bushels under irrigation. One stalk of Turkey red wheat was noticed as differing in many ways from all varieties, principally that the head was over eight inches in length, whereas the ordinary Turkey red wheat commonly used in the West has a head of only four or five inches. From this one stalk has been developed the Buffum No. 17 Winter wheat. The heavy beards were eliminated and the grains or kernels in each spikelet increased from the normal number of three to five, seven, and even nine. The hardiness of the new variety, together with its remarkably large head, means that when it is placed on the market the farmers who sow it need not fear winter killing and will have a splendid flouring grain, which will produce nearly double the average crop per acre. It is said that if a single kernel could be added to each head of wheat, the increase in annual production of this country would amount to over fifteen million bushels. If fodder crops can be substituted for a part of the corn now used for stock, it will be a great gain. In his alfalfa-breeding garden, Professor Buffum is raising over seventy different kinds, gathered from all parts of the world, showing that the plant is capable of wide variations. One hybrid has been obtained by crossing sweet clover with alfalfa; the clover grows wild in every state in the Union. There seems to be no limit to man's ingenuity and skill in plant improvement. Perhaps sometime we will try it with our children. In thirty years an exceptional ear of dent corn, through continued planting and careful selection each succeeding season, resulted in a few days' shortening of the growing period and an increased resistance to the cool nights of the higher elevation where it was under improvement; to-day, this corn matures about the middle of August at an altitude of 4000 feet, and has been yielding forty to sixty bushels per acre. CHAPTER XXV DRIED TRUCK As a war measure the surplus vegetables in many city markets have been forced by the governments into large municipal drying plants. Community driers have been established in the trucking regions and even itinerant drying machines have been sent from farm to farm drying the vegetables which otherwise would have gone to waste. The drying of vegetables may seem strange to the present generation, but we are very young; to our grandmothers it was no novelty. Many housewives even to-day prefer dried sweet corn to the canned, and find also that dried pumpkin and squash are excellent for pie making. Snap beans often are strung on threads and dried above the stove. Cherries and raspberries still are dried on bits of bark for use instead of raisins. This country is producing large quantities of perishable foods every year, which should be saved for storage, canned, or properly dried. Drying is not a panacea for the waste evil, nor should it take the place of storing or canning to any considerable extent where proper storage facilities are available or tin cans or glass jars can be obtained cheap. For the farmer's wife the new methods of canning are probably better than sun drying, which requires a somewhat longer time. But dried material can be stored in receptacles which cannot be used for canning. Then, too, canned fruit and vegetables freeze and cannot be shipped as conveniently--in winter. Dried vegetables can be compacted and shipped or stored with a minimum of risk. String them up to the ceiling of the storeroom or attic. A few apples or sweet potatoes or peas or even a single turnip can be dried and saved. Even when very small quantities are dried at a time, a quantity sufficient for a meal will soon be secured. Small lots of dried vegetables, such as cabbage, carrots, turnips, potatoes, and onions, can be combined to advantage for soups and stews. In general, most fruits or vegetables, to be dried quickly, must first be shredded or cut into slices, because many are too large to dry quickly, or have skins the purpose of which is to prevent drying out. If the air applied at first is too hot, the cut surfaces of the sliced fruits or vegetables become hard, or scorched, covering the juicy interior so that it will not dry. Generally it is not desirable that the temperature in drying should go above 140 deg to 150 deg F., and it is better to keep it well below this point. Insects and insect eggs are killed by the heat. It is important to know the degree of heat in the drier, and this cannot be determined accurately except by a thermometer. Inexpensive oven thermometers can be found on the market, or an ordinary chemical thermometer can be suspended in the drier. Drying of certain products can be completed in some driers within two or three hours. When sufficiently done they should be so dry that water cannot be pressed out of the freshly cut pieces, they should not show any of the natural grain of the fruit on being broken, and yet not be so dry as to snap or crackle. They should be leathery and pliable. When freshly cut fruits or vegetables are spread out they immediately begin to evaporate moisture into the air, and if in a closed box will very soon saturate the air with moisture. This will slow down the rate of drying and lead to the formation of molds. If a current of dry air is blown over them continually, the water in them will evaporate steadily until they are dry and crisp. Certain products, especially raspberries, should not be dried hard, because if too much moisture is removed from them they will not resume their original form when soaked in water. The rotary hand slicer is adapted for use on a very wide range of material. Don't slice your hand with it. From an eighth to a quarter of an inch is a fair thickness for most of the common vegetables to be sliced. To secure fine quality, much depends upon having the vegetables absolutely fresh, young, tender, and perfectly clean; one decayed root may flavor several kettles of soup if the slices from it are scattered through a batch of material. High-grade "root" vegetables can only be made from peeled roots. Blanching consists of plunging the vegetables into boiling water for a short time. Use a wire basket or cheesecloth bag for this. After blanching as many minutes as is needed, drain well and remove the surface moisture from vegetables by placing them between two towels or by exposing them to the sun and air for a short time. A mosquito net is thrown over the product to protect the slices from flies and other insects. Fruits and vegetables, when dried in the sun, generally are spread on large trays of uniform size which can be stacked one on top of the other and protected from rain by covers made of oilcloth, canvas, or roofing paper. A very cheap tray can be made of lath three fourths of an inch thick and 2 inches wide, which form the sides and ends of a box, and smoothed lath which is nailed on to form the bottom. As builders' laths are 4 feet long, these lath trays are most economical of material when made 4 feet in length. A cheap and very satisfactory drier for use over the kitchen stove can be made by any handy man of small-mesh galvanized-wire netting and laths or strips of wood about 1/2 inch thick and 2 inches wide. By using two laths nailed together the framework can be stiffened and larger trays made if desirable. This form can be suspended from the ceiling over the kitchen range or over a clear burning oil, gasoline, or gas stove, and it will utilize the hot air which rises during the cooking hour. It can be raised out of the way or swung to one side by a pulley or by a crane made of lath. When the stove is required for cooking, the frame is lowered or swung back to utilize the heat which otherwise would be wasted. Still another home drier is the cookstove oven. Bits of food, left overs, especially sweet corn, can be dried on plates in a very slow oven or on the back of the cookstove and saved for winter use. Where the electric "juice" is not monopolized, an electric fan in drying is economical, especially for those who already have a fan. Many sliced fruits placed in long trays 3 by 1 foot and stacked in two tiers, end to end, before an electric fan can be dried within twenty-four hours. Some require much less time. For instance, sliced string beans and shredded sweet potatoes will dry before a fan running at a moderate speed within a few hours. The dried fruit or vegetables must be protected from insects and rodents, also from the outside moisture, and will keep best in a cool, dry, well-ventilated place. In the more humid regions, moisture-tight containers should be used. If a small amount of dried product is put in each receptacle, just enough for one or two meals, it will not be necessary to open a large container. Your American ingenuity and the American practice of reading will show you a lot of ways of saving waste: for example, frozen potatoes are not necessarily spoiled, we are told by Mr. de Ronsic, a writer in the _Reveil Agricole_. They may be dried and then cooked as usual. The _Revue Scientifique_ (Paris), abstracting the article in question, says: "The potatoes must be dried to prevent decomposition, which takes place very rapidly after they have thawed out. . . ." The oven should be heated as for baking bread. Then, when it has reached the necessary temperature, which is easily recognized, the potatoes are put in, cutting up the largest. They are spread out in a layer so that evaporation may easily take place, the door of the oven being left open. From time to time the mass is stirred up with a poker to facilitate the evaporation. When the drying has gone far enough, the potatoes having become hard as bits of wood, they are withdrawn to make room for others. "Potatoes thus dried may be boiled with enough water to make a paste similar to that which they would have furnished if mashed in the ordinary manner, and which will answer very well, at least to feed stock. The potatoes will be found to have lost none of their nutritive value." Even if you haven't any acres--yet, there isn't any law against drying in the city. Either in sales or in saving it will help to pay for the country place later and the country place can be made to pay it back again. Call your product say "Landers' Desiccated Beans" or "Glory's Dehydrated Corn." They will sell better, they may even taste better, trying to live up to the description. There's dollars in a name. As a preservative ice must not be neglected. The _Country Gentleman_ says: While the temperature is below the freezing point we should take advantage of even short frosts to lay up ice for next summer. The man without an ice pond need not be, without ice--he can freeze it in pans outdoors. An ice plant of this sort will cost from fifteen to twenty dollars. A double tank should be made of galvanized iron. The inner compartment of this tank should be ten feet long, two feet wide, and twelve inches deep. The top of the tank should be slightly wider than the bottom. The inner tank should be divided into six compartments by means of galvanized iron strips. The double tank should be placed near the outdoor pump, or stream, where it can easily be filled. Being exposed on all sides, the water will freeze in from one hour to three hours. A bucket of hot water poured into the space between the tanks will loosen the cakes of ice, each weighing 200 pounds. Four tons of ice will last the average family a year. The cakes may be packed away in the icehouse as they are frozen. CHAPTER XXVI HOME COLD-PACK CANNING To save vegetables and fruits by canning is a patriotic duty. The war makes the need for food conservation more imperative than at any time in history. America is mainly responsible for the food supply of the world. In this way the abundance of the summer may be made to supply the needs of the winter. By the modern cold-pack method it is as easy to can vegetables as to can fruits. Some authorities say it is easier. At any rate, it is more useful. In the cold-pack method of canning, sterilization does away with the danger of spoilage by fermentation or "working." Sterilization consists in raising the temperature of the filled jar or can to a germ-killing point and holding it there until bacterial life is destroyed. The word "container" is used to designate either the tin can or the glass jar. Single-period cold-pack canning, as distinguished from old-fashioned preserving, offers a saving in time, labor, and expense, and satisfactory results. As the foodstuffs are placed in the containers before sterilization, they are cold and may be handled quickly and easily. Then the sterilization period is frequently short. This is time-saving. Finally, no rich preservatives, such as thick syrups or heavily spiced solutions, are required. Fruits may be put up in thin syrups. Vegetables require only salt for flavoring and water to fill the container. Another advantage of this method is that it is practicable to put up food in small quantities. It pays to put up even a single container. Thus, when there is a small surplus of some garden crop, or something left over from the order from the grocer's, one can take the short time necessary to place this food in a container and store it for future use. This is true household efficiency--the kind which, if practiced on a national scale, will conserve our war food supply and will, after the war, cut heavily into the high cost of living. There are five principal methods of canning: (1) the cold-pack, single-period method; (2) the intermittent, or fractional sterilization method; (3) the cold-water method; (4) the open kettle or hot-pack method; and (5) the vacuum-seal method. Of these the one worked out on scientific lines by leading experts and used by many commercial canners is so much the best method for home canning, because of its simplicity and effectiveness, that it is recommended by the National Emergency Food Commission and the details are explained in their manual. The cold-water method can be used effectively in putting up rhubarb, green gooseberries, and a few other sour berry fruits. The process is simple. The fruit is first prepared and washed and then blanched, and finally packed practically raw in containers, which are next filled with cold water and then sealed. Some sour fruits packed in this way will keep indefinitely. A serviceable outfit may be made of materials found in any household. All that is necessary is a vessel to hold the jars or cans--such as a wash boiler or a large tin pail. This should have a tight-fitting cover. Provide a false bottom of wood or a wire rack to allow for free circulation of water under the containers. While suburban gardeners with large surplus of vegetables find it desirable to use tin cans, being more easily handled for commercial purposes, most of us find glass jars the more satisfactory and economical containers for canned vegetables and fruits. This is especially true when there is a shortage of tin cans. All types of jars that seal perfectly may be used. Use may be made of those to which one is accustomed or which may be already on hand. The rubbers must be sound but the glass jars may be used indefinitely. Glass jars are adapted for use in any of the cold-pack canning outfits. Be sure that no jar is defective. For use in the storing of products which are already sterilized, such as jellies, jams, and preserves, and the bottling of fruit juices, housewives may practice effective thrift by saving all jars in which they receive dried beef, bacon, peanut butter, and other products and bottles that have contained olives, catsup, and kindred goods. Blanching is important with most vegetables and many fruits. It consists of plunging them into boiling water for a short time. Spinach and other greens should be blanched in steam. To do this, place them in an ordinary steamer or suspend them in a tightly closed vessel above an inch or two of boiling water. Blanching should be followed by the cold dip, plunging into cold water after removal from the hot water. Cold dipping hardens the pulp and preserves the original color, enhancing the appearance. Blanching cleanses the articles and removes excess acids and strong flavors and odors. It also causes shrinkage, so that a larger quantity may be packed in a container. After blanching and cold dipping, surface moisture should be removed by placing the vegetables or fruits between two towels or by exposure to the sun. All this is so simple and the directions so easily followed that the average 12-year-old may successfully can vegetables or fruits. The steps and the precautions are: 1. Select sound vegetables and fruits. (If possible can them the same day they are picked.) Wash, clean, and prepare them. 2. Have ready, on the stove, a can or pail of boiling water. 3. Place the vegetables or fruits in cheesecloth, or in some other porous receptacle--a wire basket is excellent--for dipping and blanching them in the boiling water. 4. Put them whole into the boiling water. The Commission gives a time-table for blanching. After the water begins to boil, begin to count the blanching time; this varies from one to twenty minutes, according to the vegetable or fruit. 5. When the blanching is complete, remove the vegetables or fruits from the boiling water and plunge them a number of times into cold water, to harden the pulp and check the flow of coloring matter. Do not leave them in cold water. 6. The containers must be thoroughly clean. It is not necessary to sterilize them in steam or boiling water before filling them, as in the cold-pack process both the insides of containers and the contents are sterilized. The jars should be heated before being filled, in order to avoid breakage. 7. Pack the product into the containers, leaving about a quarter of an inch of space at the top. 8. With vegetables add one level teaspoonful of salt to each quart container and fill with boiling water. With fruits use syrups. 9. With glass jars always use a good rubber. Test the rubber by stretching or turning inside out. Fit on the rubber and put the lid in place. If the container has a screw top do not screw up as hard as possible, but use only the thumb and little finger in tightening it. This makes it possible for the steam to escape and prevents breakage. If a glass top jar is used, snap the top bail only, leaving the lower bail loose during sterilization. Tin cans should be completely sealed. 10. Place the filled and capped containers on the rack in the sterilizer. If the homemade or commercial hot-water bath outfit is used, enough water should be in the boiler to come at least one inch above the tops of the containers, and the water, in boiling out, should never be allowed to drop to the level of these tops. Begin to count processing time when the water begins to boil. At the end of the sterilizing period remove the containers from the sterilizer. Fasten covers on tightly at once, turn the containers upside down to test for leakage, leave in this position until cold, and then store in a cool, dry place. Be sure that no draft is allowed to blow on glass jars, as it may cause breakage. 11. If jars are to be stored where there is strong light, wrap them in paper, preferably brown, as light will fade the color of products canned in glass jars, and sometimes deteriorate the food value. That's the whole trick. CHAPTER XXVII RETAIL COOPERATION COOPERATION in buying supplies at wholesale, in standardizing and shipping crops, in keeping grain in elevators, and fruit and some meats and poultry in cold storage has reached a high development among the farmers largely in the Northwest, much ahead of us "city folks." There are more than five thousand active Farmers' Cooperation Associations in the United States. Minnesota alone has over six hundred cooperative creameries, some of which have a laundry annex. The associations have six hundred and sixty thousand members and do a business of nearly a thousand dollars a year for each member. These are the people that we call "hayseeds"; if we could plant some more such "seeds," it would be a good job. But in cooperative retail domestic supply we are far behind England and other countries, even behind Russia. That is partly because our better retail business methods leave less room for the savings. A simple and easy but important beginning of cooperation was where each one took turns in delivering the milk and fetching supplies. One farmer might do it all every day for a small charge. The new South is developing a great business in this line. When you go to New Orleans look up the stores whose letter head reads: NELSON CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATION, INC. _Food Suppliers_ OFFICE, 506 So. PETERS STREET. CREAMERY, ERATO ST. WAREHOUSE, 511 SO. PETERS ST. BAKERY, ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE. 61 RETAIL STORES 4 MEAT MARKETS In August, 1917, N. O. Nelson of the above concern writes in answer to my request: "It does not take 2500 words to tell all I know about Cooperation. I trust the inclosed may be serviceable for your book, and shall feel proud if it is. "I am doing my job here for two very practical reasons; first, the immediate service of reducing the cost of living to say 15,000 families, mostly poor; second, to introduce economy in retailing. "The readers of such a book as yours are well aware of the wasteful ways of retailing goods. In every town and city there is a multiplication of stores, advertising clerks, teams, and other incidentals. "Likewise there is a lot of middle men and drummers, the buyers at the producer's end, the wholesalers or middle men at the consumer's end, with speculator and landowner at both ends. All of these have to be supported by the system, and the dear consumer pays for it. "The Cooperative store system, which was started in England 73 years ago, eliminates most of these waste expenses. The system has kept spreading at an astonishing rate; in Great Britain there are now 3 1/2 million members, and more than a billion of sales a year. Other European countries are full of these stores. Many of the retail stores have from twelve thousand to fifty thousand members; their sales run into the millions. They are federated in a wholesale agency which buys for them and manufactures on an extensive scale. "By the economies thus introduced they are able to save regularly about 15%, besides paying interest on the capital employed, and accumulating a liberal surplus. It is simply a question of people getting together (all civilization is), contributing their own money and their trade, and thus avoiding all the waste expenses. "It is a very democratic plan; anybody is welcome to join it; every member has one vote and no more, they elect their directors, the directors elect the managers, and the managers employ the clerks. They sell at the market prices and every three or six months take account of stock and rebate the profits in proportion to each member's purchases, with half rate to non-members. "It appeals to the economical sense of the ordinary housekeeper, and to the ethical sense of those who want no advantage of their neighbor. It prevents some from getting unduly rich and it helps to keep many from being unduly poor. "The same principle has spread into farmer's work, especially Creameries. In Cooperative Creameries and Stores Russia has grown faster in the last 15 years than any other country, having at last reports over thirteen million members. This orderly getting together for common social needs has much to do with the orderliness of the Russian Revolution. "The United States has made large progress in producers' cooperative associations, but not much in stores. "I have in New Orleans a system of 65 stores on a modified system; it is a cooperative association but we sell at as low prices as can be afforded, for cash in hand. The sales amount to about 2 1/2 millions, the most of it in the winter. The Association owns a Bakery, a Creamery, Condiment Factory; and Coffee Factory, and a 1550-acre plantation. We are able to undersell the market about 20%. "People anywhere can make a cooperative store if they take it seriously. There should be about 200 members and $2000 in cash to start with: then get an honest and intelligent manager; start with a grocery, buy and sell for cash, either on the Rochdale plan of selling at full market prices and dividing the profits periodically, or on my plan of selling as cheaply as can be afforded. In either plan it works out into producing a large part of the goods sold, thus eliminating entirely the superfluous middleman. "Three acres and Liberty is the correct way of producing a living; with the adjunct of a cooperative store to do the selling of the surplus produced and the buying of goods needed, the small farmer is free from all the waste and trammels of trade." Now what's the matter with your helping your county and country and humanity by organizing those two hundred waiting buyers in your own town? You can be the "honest and intelligent manager" at a decent salary. If, later, the cooperators want another manager, why you can easily organize another store. The best information on this subject is the Cooperative News, Manchester, England; subscription two dollars. Evidence is daily accumulating that the food and farm problem is not so easy as many thought it to be a few months ago. This is made clear when economists say: "The really important question in the food problem is not distribution, it is production." It is unfortunate that this statement should gain belief at this time, when those who prey upon the producer are watching for any support from whatever direction. Passing by the obvious fact that production must precede distribution, notice that, with all the energy that has been devoted to production of farm products by the government experts, it is clear that not only is there a shortage, but that it has required all kinds of inducements, from the President down, to get the farmers to increase their output, the most potent of all being the cry of patriotism. Some explain this by showing how land monopoly prevents men going back to the farms. While this is perfectly true, it does not answer the question why farmers now in possession of farms are not working them near their capacity. The answer of the ordinary man to this is inefficiency on the part of the farmer, and up to the present this idea has passed as sufficient to account for the situation. The publicity given the whole farm question during the past six months, however, has to a large extent dispelled the inefficiency answer, as the farmer has responded so completely to the call, and the amateurs are beginning to realize that there is something in farming besides tickling the earth with a feather. All the facts so far brought out show the farmer abundantly able to produce all the foodstuffs needed, provided he has a reasonable certainty that he will be able to dispose of his produce at a price that will give him a fair return for his labor. This being the case, it is easy to see that putting more men back on farms would not remedy the condition we are now in; but would rather increase the difficulty. The fact is, the two blades of grass theory has been exploded, the increased production cry has been tried out, carried to its logical conclusion, and found wanting, and the inefficiency explanation has been proved a falsehood on its face. It is, therefore, obvious that with a proper system of distribution, the entire question of production will take care of itself; but just so long as the producers find it unprofitable to produce food, just so long will they have to figure carefully not to grow too much, or it would be better for them had they grown nothing at all. The reason why we have such divergent ideas on this subject is that so many people write about it who have had no experience in farming, while on the other hand there are few farmers who can state the case so the public can grasp the most obvious facts. Finally, it is a question of the government doing what it ought not to have done and leaving undone those things it ought to have done. It has granted to a few monopolies transportation and terminal facilities which enable them to hold up deliveries and thus control prices. The remedy lies in seeing that the government attend to its own business, which is securing equality of opportunity for all, and special privileges to none. It follows that cooperation should not stop either at production or at distribution. It must embrace the source of both, nor even stop at governmental plans of small holdings. As a business enterprise, combining philanthropy and percentage, capital has an opportunity. Accordingly an option should be secured upon a large piece of land not over forty miles from a large city, near a railroad station. The transportation at first is not important, as the new commuters will make a demand for it, and cheap autos will largely fill the gap; it will improve rapidly. If possible it should have a lake or a fair stream on it for irrigation and small water power; the soil should be examined by experts, to see that it is suitable for trucking and market gardening. The object should be to make a sort of vacant lot gardening plan on a grand scale. Heretofore the trouble has been that we have been unable to get land where there was any assurance that we could have it again the second year, and that the limited amount of land makes it impossible to give the men as much as they ought to have. They do not need much land, because a man working at intensive culture with only the rough plowing done for him cannot take good care of much more than one acre of land. He will probably make as much money out of one acre of land as he will out of two. Those who are willing to work should be given one acre of land, with the assurance that they can have it as long as they work it faithfully and comply with the simple rules which we have found so effective in the Vacant Lot Gardening work,--which are practically, that a man should attend to business and not annoy his neighbors. No contract or lease should be given the men, or indeed the women, for both work such gardens, as they have been doing for the past twenty years in several large cities, making at least a living upon the land and often a very large return. There must be a competent superintendent, for everything depends upon him, who would show the men what land they should use, what they should put in, instruct them how to do it, and market their products cooperatively. Experience in Philadelphia, and in some score of other cities where they have established Vacant Lot Gardens, shows that about ten per cent annually of the people prefer to work for others, and consequently take places in the country after they have learned to do market gardening. Some others, being dissatisfied with so little land, and wanting to own their own place, go off and buy land or lease it for themselves. This makes a constant drain from the gardens, leaving openings for others who will learn in time their trade; it is possible to make in this way a steady drain out of the cities to the country, and what is better still, an automatic drain. The land must be so near to a center of population that it may be possible to take a gang of men down there in the morning, show them what it is, and send back those who do not seem likely to make good, or who are dissatisfied; and that when men get their gardens successfully running, they may be able to bring their friends there to see what they have done, and say to them, "Go thou and do likewise." I have been at Trudeau, Saranac Lake, and at Stony Wold, the consumptive sanitariums, and found there both by observation and by testimony that to send back the convalescents to the bench or the workshop from which they came is practically to repronounce upon them the sentence of death from which the sanitarium has offered them a reprieve. The only practical thing to do with such convalescents, and with such persons who are not capable of their ordinary avocations, is to get them in some way upon the land. There is a large demand for persons who understand the new intensive gardening, and places can be found for more than we can hope to educate in that line. There should be buildings upon the land sufficient to bunk one hundred to one hundred and fifty men; accommodations could be made with the small timber for a considerable number. Many of these men would need some help, but most of them would shift for themselves if only they could get the opportunity to build upon the land and to have a secure tenure of it. A mere tenant knows that it is bunkum when he says "Our Country." It is perfectly practicable to sell about one half of the land in a year or two, and have a thousand acres or more left free and clear, which will cost the promoters nothing. Renting this out or selling it will repay the whole cost, and probably bring a large profit besides. This is no experiment, it is only to do the thing that we have been doing under various conditions with various sorts of men in different localities for the past twenty years in the Vacant Lot Gardens: namely, to give men the opportunity of living upon and cultivating land, putting up their own tents, shacks, or bungalows, and giving them such instruction and such help as does not cost anything more than the salary of the superintendent. There are abundant men who can make good and shift for themselves under those circumstances; the men who are available are single men, such men as those for whom Mr. Hallimond, a clergyman working in the Bowery, has been finding rural employment in the past ten years. Also many families will come to us through the Vacant Lot Gardens and the Little Land agitation. People such as these will increase the land value, for every decent man carries around with him at least five hundred dollars' worth of increase in land values which his presence adds to somebody's holdings of land. The struggle to pocket this increase accounts for much of the human drift from the field to the factory. God made the country; man made the city--and the devil made the suburbs, by the aid of the speculator. Alpha of the Plough says in the London _Star:_ "I was walking with a friend along the Spaniards-road the other evening talking on the inexhaustible theme of these days, when he asked, 'What is the biggest thing that has happened to this country as the outcome of the war?' "'It is within two or three hundred yards from here,' I replied. 'Come this way and I'll show it to you.' "He seemed a little surprised, but accompanied me cheerfully enough as I turned from the road and plunged through the gorse and the trees towards Parliament Fields, until we came upon a large expanse of allotments, carved out of the great playground, and alive with figures, men, women, and children, some earthing up potatoes, some weeding onion beds, some thinning out carrots, some merely walking along the patches, and looking at the fruits of their labor springing from the soil. 'There,' I said, 'is the most important result of the war.' "He laughed, but not contemptuously. He knew what I meant, and I think he more than half agreed. "And I think you will agree, too, if you will think what that stretch of allotments means. It is the symptom of the most important revival, the greatest spiritual awakening this country has seen for generations. Wherever you go, that symptom meets you. Here in Hampstead allotments are as plentiful as blackberries in autumn. A friend of mine who lives in Beckenham tells me there are fifteen hundred in his parish. In the neighborhood of London there must be many thousands. In the country as a whole there must be hundreds of thousands. If dear old Joseph Fels could revisit the glimpses of the moon and see what is happening, see the vacant lots and waste spaces bursting into onion beds and potato patches, what joy would be his! He was the forerunner of the revival, the passionate pilgrim of the Vacant Lot: but his hot gospel fell on deaf ears, and he died just before the trumpet of war awakened the sleeper. "Do not suppose that the greatness of this thing that is happening can be measured in terms of food. That is important, no doubt, but it is not the most important thing. I am confident that it will add more than anything else to the spiritual resources of the nation. It is the beginning of a war on the disease that is blighting our people. What is wrong with us? What is the root of our social and spiritual ailment? Is it not the divorce of the people from the soil? For generations the wholesome red blood of the country has been sucked into the great towns, and we have built up a vast machine of industry that has made slaves of us, shut out the light of the fields from our lives, left our children to grow like weeds in the slums, rootless and waterless, poisoned the healthy instincts of nature implanted in us, and put in their place the rank growths of the streets. Can you walk through a working-class district or a Lancashire cotton town, with their huddle of airless streets, without a feeling of despair coming over you at the sense of this enormous perversion of life into the arid channels of death? Can you take pride in an Empire on which the sun never sets when you think of the courts in which, as Will Crooks says, the sun never rises? "And now the sun is going to rise. We have started a revolution that will not end until the breath of the earth has come back to the soul of the people. The tyranny of the machine is going to be broken. The tyranny of the land monopoly is going to be lifted. Yes, you say, but these people that I see working on the allotments are not the people from the courts and the slums; but professional men, the superior artisan, and so on. That is true. But the movement must get hold of the _intelligenzia_ first. The important thing is that the breach in the prison is made; the fresh air is filtering in; the idea is born--not still-born, mind you, but born a living thing. It is a way of salvation that will not be lost, and that all will travel. "We have found the land, and we are going back to possess it. Take a man out of the street and put him in a garden, and you have made a new creature of him. I have seen the miracle again and again. I know a bus conductor, for example, outwardly the most ordinary of his kind. But one night I mentioned allotments, touched the key of his soul, and discovered that this man was going about his daily work irradiated by the thought of his garden triumphs. He had got a new purpose in life. He had got the spirit of the earth in his bones. It is not only the humanizing influence of the garden, it is its democratizing influence too. "When Adam delved and Eve span Where was then the gentleman?' You can get on terms with the lowliest if you will discuss gardens." CHAPTER XXVIII SUMMER COLONIES FOR CITY PEOPLE (Condensed from the Annual Report of the U. S. Department of the Interior of the Commissioner of Education. Vol. 2, now out of print.) BERLIN has not been boastful of a new sociological feature which it has developed within the last fifteen years, a feature so revolutionary in its bearing upon education and upon the general health of future generations, that it should be made known to the world. As yet little has been said about this new agency. It may be because it is not a governmental institution, but the result of self-help and of the recognition of a plain necessity. It may be assumed that if the summer colonies had been instituted by the government for the great majority who are poor it would not have succeeded so well as it has. The teachers, seeing that the horizon of their pupils was limited by brick and mortar (for open park spaces are rare in Berlin), came to the conclusion that only by giving their pupils opportunity to live in the open air could they lay a sound foundation of knowledge of natural objects and processes as a basis for school studies. The teachers of themselves, however, could apply only palliative remedies, such as having sent to them, from the botanical gardens, thousands of specimens of plants, twigs, flowers, fruit, etc., for nature study in the schoolroom; planting flower beds around the schoolhouses; also, brief excursions into parks, and hanging up before the class colored pictures of landscapes and rural scenery. While in many cases, especially in large cities, the necessity was recognized of getting the children out of the great desert of brick and mortar into the open air and into companionship with life in the field, the garden, the brooks, and the woods, it had nowhere resulted in a systematic effort to aid the children of an entire city in that way until it was tried in Berlin. Of course it is well understood, not only abroad, but in New York and in other large cities of this country, that something must be done to alleviate the want of space and fresh air, and so recreation piers and roof gardens are provided, excursions of schools into parks are undertaken, open-air playgrounds are instituted, and similar efforts are made tending to mitigate the evil effects of city life; but all these efforts are merely sporadic or temporary; they do not attack the evil at the roots; moreover they are only drops in the bucket when compared with that which is necessary. This tendency to cooperative and collective action has resulted in this particular case in thousands of the children's _"Arbor Gardens"_ round about the city. It is an experience "en gros," one of such dimensions that cavil ceases and admiration rises supreme. The German poor are very poor indeed, but parents were induced to rent, at a price of 4 marks ($1) or about 20 cents a month from May to October for the summer season, a patch of land in the suburbs of Berlin unfit for farmland because cut up by railroad tracks and newly laid-out streets. On one of these patches a family might erect an arbor, or a small structure of boards with a wide veranda and a corrugated iron roof, for housing themselves and children during the summer months. The dwellings are of the most primitive kind and rather flimsy; no permanent structure can be allowed, for at any time the owner of the land may give notice to vacate for the purpose of erecting a row of houses, railroad buildings, or other permanent structures. The tenants themselves build fences of wire or plant hedges to keep the different plots apart. On these patches the children, under the guidance of teachers, parents, and appointed guardians, began to sow flower seeds, plant shrubs, vines, and trees, or raise kitchen vegetables, each group or family according to its own desires and needs. Since the "arbors" are small they do not decrease the arable land of the allotments much, and there is still room left for swings, gymnastic apparatus, and similar contrivances, as well as bare sandy spots for little tots to play in. The various allotments are mostly uniform in size and are reached by narrow three- or four-foot lanes, on which occasionally are seen probationary officers or guardians who keep the peace and settle cases of disturbance. The "arbor gardens" are established on every square rod of unused land round about the city, on vacant lots, far out to the borders of the well-trained woods and royal forests. Small tradesmen, laboring men, civil officials of low degrees, etc., have found it profitable to forsake their tenements in the city and move kith and kin into those "arbor colonies." The tenements in Berlin are as bad as in our own big cities, only better policed. Not all of these arbor gardens are occupied by families during the night. Thousands return to their city homes evenings. Some parents, unable to free themselves from toil in town, send their children under guidance of servants, and spend only occasional Sundays and holidays with them. The people, especially the children, getting some information concerning the treatment of the crops from competent advisers in school and out in the arbor colonies, derive great good from their horticultural and floricultural work. Families who are aesthetically inclined devote their space to flowers and trailing vines exclusively; others, utilitarians from necessity, plant potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets, beans, strawberries, and the like. The feeling of ownership being strongly developed in the children in seeing the results of their own labor, the crops are respected by the neighbors and pilfering rarely occurs, except perhaps in a case of great hunger. Several hundred or a thousand of such patches of land, or gardens, situated in close proximity to each other, form an arbor colony, which has a governor, or mayor, who is an unpaid city official. He arranges the leasing of the land, collects the rents, and hands them over to the gratified landowners who don't even have to collect them. There is always a retired merchant or civil officer to fill the office, to which is attached neither title, emolument, nor special honor. He is assisted by a "colonial committee" of trustees selected from the colonists, who act as justices of the peace, in case disturbances should arise. If colonists prove frequent disturbers of the peace or are found incapable of living quietly, their leases are not renewed. Of course there are such cases, but they are rare. Since the size of an "arbor garden" is from about two sixteenths to three sixteenths of an acre, say two or three New York City Lots, those forming a colony make a considerable community, in which the authority of the committee, or board of trustees, is absolute, and the few cases they have had to adjudicate have generally been caused by nagging women. It is claimed in the press that these colonists are literally without scandals, and that the life led by young and old is a most peaceful and happy one. People who are hard at work are not likely to be quarrelsome: good wholesome food, much exercise in play and labor, and an abundance of fresh air and sunshine are conducive to happiness, especially as the clothing may be of a primitive kind, or need not conform to the dictates of fashion. A teacher remarked: "It is noticeable that since these school children are engaged in lucrative work which does not go beyond their strength, and since they see with their own eyes the results of their labor, a sense of responsibility is engendered which has a beneficial influence upon school work also. Respect for all kinds of labor and a decrease in the destructiveness so often found among boys are unmistakable effects of the arbor gardens. It is not easy work which the children perform, for spade and rake require muscular effort; but it is ennobling work, for it leads to self-respect, self-dependence, and respect for others, as well as willingness to aid others. The most beautiful sight is afforded when, on a certain date agreed on by the members of a colony, a harvest festival is held. Then flag raisings and illuminations and singing and music make the day a memorable one." Most of the families had not the means to buy the lumber and hardware to erect an "arbor," and yet they were the very ones to whom the life in the open would be of the greatest benefit. Hence philanthropy erected the structures. The Patriotic Woman's League of the Red Cross built half of all the "arbors" of the colony found on the "Jungfernheide." Many colonies reach into the woods, and naturally are of a different character from those in the open, for there tents are used instead of wooden structures. For protection during the night watchmen pace up and down the lanes; this before the war entailed a cost of 7 1/2 cents a month to each family. The season lasts from May 1 to October 1. The school-going population meanwhile attend their schools, which used to be reached by means of the elevated cars or surface tramways for 2 1/2 cents and much cheaper if they have commuters' tickets. Many schools are near enough to be reached on foot. The children do not loiter on the way, but when school is out they hurry "home" to begin work in the garden, or to sit down to a meal on the veranda, which is relished far more than a meal in a city tenement house filled with fetid air and wanting in light. Nearly every one of these gardens has a flagpole, and at night a Japanese paper lantern with a tallow dip in it illuminates the veranda. These, with flags by day, make a festive appearance. The teachers find that city children who spend the five months in the open air are well equipped with elementary ideas in physical geography and astronomy. Their mental equipment is better, indeed, in all fields of thought, their physical health is improved, as well as their ethical motives and conduct. To realize the full extent of these wholesale efforts (for put children into close contact with nature and they will improve in all directions), it is well to take a ride on the North belt line (elevated steam railroad), the trains of which start from the Friedrich's street depot and bring one back after a ride of an hour and a half. Then one may do the same on the South belt line. On these two trips one will see, not hundreds, but tens of thousands of such "arbor gardens" full of happy women and children at work or play. The men come out on the belt line when their work in town is done. The writer was riding through the city on an open cab, and seeing hardly any children on the streets and in the parks, he asked, "How is it that we see no children out?" "Ah, sir," was the reply, "if you will see the children of Berlin you must go out to the arbor colonies outside of the city. There is where our children are." Subsequent visits to these colony gardens showed that Berlin is by no means a childless city. To judge from the multitudinous arbors to be seen from the windows of the belt line cars there must be 50,000 to 75,000 of them. As far as the eye reaches the flagpoles, the orderly fences, and the little structures can be seen; and since the city has 2,000,000 inhabitants, it is very likely that an estimate made by a city official of several hundred thousands of children thus living in the open air, is not excessive. The most beautiful and best-arranged gardens are not found in the vicinity of railroads, but several miles out toward the north and the south of the city. Here, where the soil is better, fine crops are raised. If we turn our eyes homeward and contemplate the many thousands of small efforts made in this country toward the alleviation of city children's misery, we can say truthfully that we in America are perhaps fully alive to the necessity which has prompted the people of Berlin to action; we only need to be reminded of Mayor Pingree's potato patches on empty city lots, our children's outing camps, our occasional children's excursions, and the like. Still, there is nothing in this country to compare with the thousands of Berlin "arbor gardens" and their singularly convincing force. Like a circus, all this is supposed to be for the children, though it usually seems to need about two grown people to escort each child. The elders enjoy the gardens even more than the circus. The arbor gardens of Berlin should not be mistaken for the numerous "forest schools" (Waldschulen) in Germany. These schools "in the woods" are for sickly children, both physically crippled and mentally weak. The pupils have their lessons in the open, and the teachers live, play, and work with them; long recesses separate the various lessons and a two-hour nap in the middle of the day out in the open is on the time-table of every one of these schools. These special open-air schools for weaklings and defectives are now found in many parts of Germany, notably in Charlottenburg, Strassburg, and the industrial regions of the Rhineland. The example of Berlin has been followed in other German cities, such as Munich, notably in Dusseldorf on the Rhine, where the arbor gardens are called "Schreber gardens" in honor of the man who promoted their establishment. There is a large colony of such gardens along the Hans-Sachs street, where Lima beans, peas, lettuce, cucumbers, potatoes, and many other garden vegetables are raised; even strawberries, raspberries, and fruit trees are found here. But the city being more lavishly provided with parks and open spaces than others of its size, the necessity for open-air life has not made itself felt as forcibly as in Berlin. And think of the cleansing influence of all this. Light and air and labor--these are the medicines not of the body only, but of the soul. It is not ponderable things alone that are found in gardens, but the great wonder of life, the peace of nature, the influences of sunsets and seasons and of all the intangible things to which we can give no name, not because they are small, but because they are outside the compass of our speech. The God that dwells in gardens is sufficient for all our needs--let the theologians say what they will. "'Not God! in gardens? When the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign-- 'Tis very sure--God walks in mine.'" 
45154	----	THE CHILDREN'S LIBRARY OF WORK AND PLAY CARPENTRY AND WOODWORK By Edwin W. Foster ELECTRICITY AND ITS EVERYDAY USES By John F. Woodhull, Ph.D. GARDENING AND FARMING By Ellen Eddy Shaw HOME DECORATION By Charles Franklin Warner, Sc.D. HOUSEKEEPING By Elizabeth Hale Gilman MECHANICS, INDOORS AND OUT By Fred T. Hodgson. NEEDLECRAFT By Effie Archer Archer OUTDOOR SPORTS, AND GAMES By Claude H. Miller, Ph.B. OUTDOOR WORK By Mary Rogers Miller WORKING IN METALS By Charles Conrad Sleffel. [Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke. Harvesting Nature's Crops] _The Library of Work and Play_ OUTDOOR WORK BY MARY ROGERS MILLER [Illustration] GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1911 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO EIGHT BROTHERS AND SISTERS WHO SENT ONE ANOTHER TO COLLEGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Acknowledgment is due to the expert writers of United States government and state experiment station bulletins from which much practical information has been gained by the author; to the boys and girls who wrote for this book the stories of their success in several kinds of outdoor industry; to Dr. Burton N. Gates, State Inspector of Apiaries in Massachusetts, and Prof. James E. Rice of the Department of Poultry Husbandry at Cornell University for reading the chapters on their specialties and for numerous suggestions which make those chapters valuable; and to many others from whom helpful ideas have come in letters. A WORD TO PARENTS There are two sovereign cures for the ills of modern life: Work and outdoors. It is the purpose of this book on "Outdoor Work for Young People" to teach the gospel of these two remedies, not in lessons nor sermons, but in the form of confidential talks, which are intended to be both practical and inspiring. The guiding principles in the preparation of this book are three: 1, to help young people to earn money; 2, to help them build character; 3, to help them make better citizens. 1. The most obvious reason why children wish to work is that they "want to earn money," to spend as they like. Here is a great opportunity and a considerable danger. The opportunities are to help support the family, to learn self-reliance, to gain in efficiency, to appreciate the sacrifices made by parents, to purchase innocent pleasures, and to save toward a college education. The dangers are that children may become too commercially minded, grasping, even dishonest, make dull playmates, and become stunted in character for lack of play and wholesome stimulus to the imagination. If you will analyze these dangers you will find that they are all the results of overdoing good things. The old rule of the Greeks, "Nothing too much" is the golden rule to measure perfect commercial relations between parents and children. 2. But far more important than money making is character making. And therefore one of the principles of this book is to suggest in a thousand ways that money making may go too far. For example, I would encourage boys to gather and sell nuts, but not to take nuts from a neighbour's trees without permission nor destroy young trees whose future crops belong to a future generation of boys. I encourage trapping but urge the use of humane traps to avoid cruelty. I encourage the gathering and selling certain wild flowers, if abundant, but warn against the danger of exterminating species, or of robbing the public of pleasure. I have gone over all of the things that children do out of doors and have tried to select the best occupations. I have studied the worst things they do and have suggested their opposites--constructive work that earns money, develops character, or preserves public property. For example, instead of collecting birds' eggs I suggest methods of attracting birds, building houses for them, and providing food and protection from enemies. 3. The book is addressed to the citizens of nineteen hundred and twenty. Will not busy boys and girls make better citizens than idle ones? Practical patriotism becomes second nature to children who learn early to regard the rights of others, to respect the laws, and to protect public property. The boy who raises wild fowl and liberates them or refrains from mutilating for purely selfish ends a fine tree is doing his share in the great work of conservation. But the young workers cannot do it all. You will be disappointed if you give this book to a child for a birthday or Christmas present and expect him to "do the rest," without further help. There is no substitute for affectionate parental interest. This book will surely fail you if you do not thoroughly believe in the dignity of manual labour and experience the uplift that rewards work with your own hands. Although in theory we may all believe in the dignity of labour (for other people), many of us make mental reservations to suit our own cases and persist in regarding certain forms of labour as distinctly beneath our dignity. Children see through that attitude every time. When I used to be acquainted with the citizens of the George Junior Republic, they had a saying that even the President and the Judge could not maintain standing with the others unless they took their turn now and then working in the ditch. And so I say, work with your children, with common tools, out in the dirt. The scratches will heal and the dirt will wash off, but the sense of kinship with workers will stay. Have a "You and I" club, with you and the children for members. Meet once a week to discuss schemes for earning money to buy what the children want. It is easier to go out and earn the money and give it to them to spend, but where do they come in? Read parts of this book aloud when outside information or suggestion is needed. Make a list of your children's occupations; consider whether they are the best ones. If you know any better ones than I have put into this book please tell me, for I, too, have children and I wish them to have the very best works and plays that children in this world can have. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Best Ways of Earning Money 3 II. Harvesting Nature's Crops 9 Wild berries--Wild fruits--Nuts--Tree seeds--Christmas greens--Medicinal plants--Walking sticks--Wild flowers for city children--Corn husks--Fragrant herbs and grasses--Balsam leaves--Birch bark--Porcupine quills--Maple sugar--Wild rice--Spruce gum--Mushrooms. III. Raising Domestic Animals 101 Colts--Sheep--Goats--Calves--Pigs--Chickens--Guinea fowls--Turkeys--Peacocks--Ducks--Squabs for market--Pheasants. IV. Raising Animals for Pets 203 Shetland ponies--Rabbits, guinea pigs, and cavies--Fancy pigeons--Bantams--Fancy fowls--Dogs--Goldfish. V. Work and Play with Trained Animals 241 Dairy cows--Training pet animals--Training young horses--Treadmills and cranks--Making animals happy--Taming wild animals. VI. Making Brooks and Springs Useful 271 Reclaiming a trout stream--Reclaiming a Spring--Making a swimming pool. VII. Keeping Bees 287 VIII. Raising Silkworms 338 IX. Making Collections 350 Plants--Shells--Insects. X. Odd Jobs 405 Kindling-wood--Cleaning a carriage--Work in the orchard--Making rustic furniture--Selecting seed corn--Making cider vinegar--Making grape juice--Making leaf mould--Making lavender sticks--Drying corn--Making a tennis court--Shovelling snow--Mowing lawns--Utilizing wood ashes--Planting crocuses in the lawn--Making ice--Cutting seed potatoes--Pruning--Cleaning rugs. XI. Making the Country a Better Place to Live In 450 Improving home grounds--Outdoor clubs--Attracting birds--Domesticating wild game--Protecting wild flowers--Preventing forest fires--Killing weeds--Getting rid of poison ivy--Lessening the plague of mosquitoes--Fighting flies--Trapping--Curing and tanning skins. Appendix Free Printed Matter: How to Get It 514 List of Books and Bulletins by Experts on Outdoor Work 518 ILLUSTRATIONS Harvesting Nature's Crops _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Gathering Wild Flowers for City Children 62 "Big Boy Blue" Looks After the Sheep 106 Feeding the Goats 114 The Shetland Pony is the Ideal Pet 204 Holding a Conversation 242 Gyp Has an Ax to Grind 250 A Group of Happy Farm Animals 256 The Skunk is an Amiable and Well-mannered Pet 266 The Crow May be Tamed when Young 266 A "Bottle Baby" 268 Plenty of Trout in This Stream When Grandfather was a Boy 272 An Odd Job that is Never Out of Date 404 Is this Work or Play? 452 OUTDOOR WORK I THE BEST WAYS OF EARNING MONEY Couldn't you use more money if you had it? There are several million American boys and girls just like you. They want a lot of things, a lot of good things. Wouldn't you like a half dollar once a year for a circus ticket, a quarter now and then for a box of candy, or ten dollars for a new dress or some music lessons? You'd be glad to buy your own clothes, and select them too, if you had the cash. That would be a big help in thousands of families. Parents sometimes wish that their children could "leave out" in new clothes in spring, like the trees. If you could begin to earn money at twelve you could save toward a college education, too. Lots of boys and girls are earning their way. You can. You can earn money between twelve and twenty years of age without interfering with your schooling. What kind of stories do you like best? Isn't it inspiring to read about the boyhood of our great men. Do you remember young Abe Lincoln splitting rails? Garfield drove mules on a tow path. The men and women who are doing great things now started as boys and girls with work to do. They washed dishes and split kindlings and fed chickens and milked cows and dug potatoes. Now they are tunnelling mountains, building bridges, helping make the world better in all sorts of courageous ways. Don't you like to hear engineers, miners, sailors, inventors, animal trainers, cowboys, foresters, and other workers talk about their work? The only really happy people are the ones who have found the work they love best. I have put some stories in this book. These are told by real boys and girls who were successful in earning money. Can you beat them at their own game? Will you try? There are thousands of ways for young people in their teens to earn money. I believe the best are the outdoor ways. I have suggested a list of occupations, the best I can think of. Of course, no one person could try them all. Circumstances must decide. You will succeed best with the work which you like best. You must not let outside work interfere with your studies. You must not undertake work that is too hard for your strength or unsuited to your disposition. Maybe this list will help you choose. OCCUPATIONS SUITED TO THE FOUR SEASONS AND SOME THAT GO THROUGH THE YEAR _Summer._--Gathering berries, tree seeds, bulbs and roots, wild flowers and ferns, balsam leaves, medicinal plants, pine cones, making collections, mowing lawns, marking tennis courts, sawing wood, cleaning rugs, drying herbs, corn and fruits, raising queen bees, collecting bait, rearing butterflies for museum specimens, gathering clam shells for button factories, shocking grain, "toting" water. _Fall._--Gathering fruit, nuts, making corn husk mats and baskets, shelling corn, making leaf mould, clearing a field of stones, making stone fence, making grape juice and cider vinegar, collecting bayberries, painting barns and outbuildings, packing fruit, cleaning farm implements, gathering faggots, collecting cocoons, collecting insect homes for nature study. _Winter._--Gathering spruce gum, collecting Christmas greens, shovelling snow, pruning shrubs, vines and trees, trapping, tanning skins, making candles, selecting seed corn, pruning and tying grapevines, transplanting trees and shrubs, feeding birds. _Spring._--Cutting seed potatoes, budding, grafting, cutting dandelions from lawns, killing weeds, oiling ponds and ditches to kill mosquitoes, shelling corn, starting silkworms, trout, frog and toad culture, attracting birds, fighting flies. _Year-Round Occupations._--Keeping bees, raising goldfish, training animals, raising colts, sheep, pigs, goats, dogs, chickens and other poultry, rabbits and other pets, collecting wood for kindling, turning grindstone, milking, taming wild creatures, raising prize corn, potatoes, or cotton. THINGS WORTH THINKING ABOUT Don't think only of the money you can earn. There's no use talking, the work you do and the way you do it is going to have an influence on your character. Do a good job! If you slight your work you cheat your employer. You know it, if he doesn't. You cheat yourself, too. And when you are working for yourself, you are the one who is doubly cheated by slack methods. That's plain. Don't choose an occupation you are doubtful about. Most occupations are perfectly honourable. Dishonesty comes in methods. The grown-up grafters, ten to one, were cheaters at games, and sneaks about work. When in doubt, ask advice. Don't you like to be asked for your opinion? Everybody does. Ask your parents' advice about the work you think of undertaking, and the methods of carrying on the business side. What will please them more than to know that you have a keen sense of honour? This is my word of encouragement and inspiration to the boys and girls who read this book. There are a hundred perfectly good reasons why you should have more money of your own. And there are a thousand ways to earn it. Every one of you can earn a college education. Choose the best work _for you_, and do it with enthusiasm. If you want my advice about your work or any information I can get for you, nothing would please me more than to hear from you. II HARVESTING NATURE'S CROPS PICKING BERRIES The berry picking season begins "'long about knee-deep in June" with the first wild strawberries. It does not end till the last cranberry is harvested on the eve of Thanksgiving Day at the end of the drowsy Indian summer. There is money to be earned at this occupation wherever there is ambition to overcome difficulties and force of character enough to step aside from the beaten paths. Fortunately berries are ripe in vacation time. For some people berry picking has almost if not quite the fascination of fishing. It lacks the objectionable features of hunting, fishing and trapping. Guns, tackle, and traps are unnecessary in this gentler sport. No costly tools are required. A light pail, flaring somewhat at the top, is a good receptacle. A wire bent into an S-shaped hook is handy to swing the pail over the forearm while the ambidextrous picker almost doubles the day's harvest if the fruit is extra plentiful. There is hardly a state in the Union which has not plenty of wild fruits. The young citizens of each state should know these fruits and make the most of them. Some states or regions have fruits peculiar to themselves. Wouldn't it be worth while for the domestic science or cookery teacher in a country school to show her pupils how to utilize these home products? We hear talk about the cost of materials for use in classes in cookery. To let our wild fruits go to waste is poor economy whichever way we look at it. Wouldn't you, if you live in northern Michigan, like to exchange a pot of thimbleberry jam for one made in North Carolina from persimmons? Or if you live in Montana would you exchange buffalo berry marmalade with a Florida friend for guava jelly or preserved cumquats? WILD RASPBERRIES Just the other day a girl from the shore of Lake Superior told me of a camping trip on a part of the lake shore inaccessible except by water. A storm on the lake kept them from going home when they had expected so they gathered raspberries and canned and jammed them till their sugar gave out, then until every available cooking utensil, even the coffee pot, was full and the supply of berries was as unlimited as ever. These great, luscious fruits, she said, were as big as the end of her thumb, and fairly falling off the bushes with the weight of juice. Doesn't it make your mouth water? The pickers who live near the woods up there bring berries to town in milk pails. The fruit box may be more elegant, but there is a bountiful sound about the milk pail that takes my fancy. Of course, one gets scratched while berry-picking; but in what a good cause. Is there something wrong about boys and girls who prefer boxed berries and smooth hands to wild fruits and scratches? There are thousands of dollars wasted every year that might be working on some boy's or girl's schooling, just because nature's crop of raspberries isn't half harvested. Wild raspberries should be canned, jellied, or jammed by the regulation methods. With a good oil stove all the work can be done in the open air. THIMBLEBERRY Do you know the thimbleberry? Some call it the flowering raspberry. You will know by its shape and general look that it is a cousin to the black raspberry although it is flatter, seedier, and more sharply acid. It grows on a bush or shrub somewhat like a raspberry, but its leaves are broad, like grape leaves. Instead of thorns its twigs are clothed with sticky hairs. The colour of the fruit is pinkish purple. Thimbleberries grow often along woods margins, just back of the fringe of wild red raspberries. You are lucky if you get two cupfuls of the thimbleberries while your companion is picking two quarts of the raspberries. Yours pack more closely and the fruit is not so abundant. The number of people who have tasted thimbleberry jam is small. I am told by one who has made it that you can get any price you ask for tiny glasses of it, even a dollar a glass, from people who "must have it." Made just as one does other jams, equal parts of fruit and sugar, there is nothing tastes quite like it. BLUEBERRIES Blueberry pie was a staple and justly popular dessert in a certain college dining-room, where I first made its acquaintance. It was, of course, made of canned blueberries, and we used to wonder where they all came from. We certainly never saw them growing in the Mississippi Valley. The blueberry belt is a wide one and includes all the eastern and central states. I first saw them growing on Cape Ann, and later on the New Hampshire hills. The women and children used to bring them in small pails to sell at the doors of their less enterprising neighbours. But the price was always high and the berries not first class, unless we gathered them ourselves. It takes a lot of picking to get two quarts. One gets an entirely wrong impression of the blueberry business from these experiences. The great canning factories do not depend on a haphazard crop. In New England and the eastern states there are thousands of acres of waste land, shorn of its forest, where blueberries grow in greatest abundance. It is not possible to estimate with any accuracy the value of this wild crop. Pickers get from one and one-half to three cents a quart, and the boxes sell in retail market at from twelve and one-half cents to eighteen cents a box. Northern Michigan shipped five thousand bushels one year. They ship better than softer fruits, but the price is always high and the supply small because the canning factories are near the fields, and shipping is expensive. One large factory uses seven hundred bushels a day. The total product of the Maine canneries ten years ago was worth over one hundred thousand dollars. That must be where our college cook got her supply. Huckleberry and blueberry are the names used most commonly and you will meet people who know one from the other. But as both are blue and there are high bush and low bush huckleberries, as well as high and low bush blueberries, it is useless to discuss the names. Both are right and a huckleberry in Ohio may be a blueberry in Maine. A sort of rake to gather blueberries is used for the low bushes. But hand picking is best. The rake tears the bushes so, and the berries have to be put through a fanning mill twice to free them from leaves and rubbish. This process fits them for the canners who are not as particular as we wish they were. The blueberry bush is a kind of Indian. It does not take kindly to gardens and other civilized places. It thrives and yields abundantly if given a chance on its native hillsides, and comes up by the million wherever the cutting of the timber lets in the light. By burning over the blueberry land in very early spring while the ground is wet, those in charge can keep down the alder, poplars, birches, and other non-money-making growths, and this is taken by the blueberries as their chance. They come right up, and deliver a tremendous crop the first year after the burning. WILD GRAPES We used to gather wild grapes along the river bottoms in the middle West when we went nutting. Sometimes our nutting excursion turned out to be a grape harvest. These grapes were small, almost black under their thin coat of bloom, in clusters like miniature garden grapes. Oh, but they were puckery when green, but the frost sweetened them. The vines grew tremendously, way to the tops of the trees, their stems like great ropes, which we used for swings. The grapes were really mostly seed and skin, but there was juice enough to stain our aprons, and give the teeth and tongue an unmistakable telltale hue. There was juice enough for a kind of jelly which I believe had the peculiarity of never "jelling" properly. It is good, though, and they were well worth the sugar to make them edible. I was surprised at their size when I first saw the big summer grapes of the eastern hedge-rows and banks. But their flavour is no great improvement over that of the frost grape. There is more pulp, though. My barberry gathering friend, who admits that she is "fond of all sorts of woodland flavours," gathers these grapes in August before they begin to change colour. She makes the only really green grape jelly I have seen. This is her receipt: Wash the stemmed grapes very carefully to rid them of dust and possible taint from poison ivy, with which they often associate. Put them into a preserving kettle with a very little boiling water, cover and let them steam till tender. (No boiling here.) Strain to get rid of seeds and skins. (Work fast at this point, because delay may cause the change of colour we wish to avoid.) Weigh the juice and an equal amount of white sugar. Heat sugar and juice separately, without scorching. Stir the hot sugar into the boiling juice, let boil up, skim, and put into dry, hot glasses. If it boils a long time it loses the green colour, and its flavour of the wild out-of-doors. Green grape jelly that is really green is a triumph. It would bring a price. ELDERBERRIES Elderberries have almost gone out of fashion in these days of refrigerator cars and cold storage, when fruits from all parts of the world are brought to our doors. But I am antiquated enough to like the rather flat, seedy things, and the "runny" jelly is of a wonderful colour and flavour. Best of all is the fun of gathering the broad, flat clusters, always seeing a finer one just a few steps farther on or just over the fence. The golden-rod is brilliant in the September sunshine, the asters like star stuff sifted in every fence corner, while the fox grapes clambering over stray trees along the line fence fill the air with fragrance. Perhaps I could get on without the elderberries, but the New England conscience requires some practical excuse for traipsing off over the fields when there is useful work to be done indoors. Elderberries canned in a thin syrup, one cup of water, two of sugar, and all the berries the jar will hold, are excellent for steamed pudding. Drain off the juice, and stir the berries into the batter just as you would blueberries, mulberries, or any other fruit. The colour of the pudding will be awe-inspiring but with the juice for sauce it is good, really. BARBERRIES Our Westchester County hostess always took a basket on her arm when she went for a walk. She had an unusual taste for wild flavours of all sorts and her guests were always sure of some delightful surprise at her table. In September there is a choice of wild fruits, and everybody recognized the necessity for a basket. I wondered, though, when we passed, unnoticed, bushels of elderberries, and rods of browning grapes, and headed for a group of dogwood trees. But although the berries were thicker than I ever saw on the dogwood, they were only admired and left for the sun to burnish. High on a bare hilltop we sat where the view was panoramic. The lady with the basket betook herself to a fringe of tall, ruddy bushes on the brow of the hill, and I found her busily filling her basket with barberries. She did not wait to pick them singly but snipped off the laden twigs with scissors, avoiding thus the angry thorns. "What are they good for?" I asked, as I tasted again the sharp, astringent flavour and felt that indescribable pucker on tongue and lips that goes with it. The barberry had long been a favourite with me; the bush for its wayward grace and its cunning flowers, the berries for their exquisite bloom and for tasting so unlike any cultivated thing. But I had never dreamed of making jelly of them. "Jelly," said our hostess. "It's particularly good with game." Of course it would be good with game, but can you imagine eating barberry jelly with corn-fed pork or with fat mutton? The berries should be gathered before they are fully ripe and treated like currants, although the yield of juice is meagre. Add a little water and heat slowly. Strain and add "pound for pound" of sugar. Put in tiny glasses. Any one in search for a unique Christmas gift for an epicurean uncle would find barberry jelly fills the bill. In Salem, Mass., I saw barberries for sale in the market. They looked mightily out of place along with pineapples, watermelons, grapes, peaches, Japanese plums, and other conventional market fruits. BAYBERRIES Two friends of mine, summering on Cape Ann, discovered there to their delight, a low shrub, growing in great profusion on the rocky hills. The foliage was of a rich green colour, of a leathery texture, and was possessed of an aromatic odour at once delightful and wholesome to their senses. They were seized with a great desire to take home with them a quantity of this plentiful foliage to make into pillows or to feed the fire on the hearth that they might inhale its fragrance, and be reminded of Cape Ann and the summer sea. So they procured huge gunny sacks which they were at some pains to stuff to their utmost capacity. They have a snapshot of themselves, bent double under the weight of the great sacks. With the help of a friendly native they succeeded in transporting the burdens to the express office, and addressed them home. We cheerfully paid the expressman's charges at the home end, having been advised that the bags were coming, and carried them to the attic floor where they were to be spread to cure. But when the contents came tumbling out, its pent-up fragrance was familiar. Then was it possible those blessed geese had been spending their precious vacation days gathering bay berry leaves? It was even so, and we had paid nearly two dollars express on the bags--and our woods were full of it! What a laugh we had at their expense when they came to reimburse us. The bayberry shrub is also called wax myrtle and it is easy to see why, when you find the berries in October. They are gray, almost white, and you see that each one is covered with tiny drops of wax that has oozed out of the berry and dried on its surface. Bayberry is called candleberry, too, because of the use our great-grandmothers made of the wax. Bayberry dips have come into fashion again and people who make them skilfully find a ready sale for their product. MAKING BAYBERRY DIPS To make bayberry candles you must first gather the wax-covered berries. Get them early, for, as cold weather comes on, the pellets of wax drop off. Two quarts make only a little ball of wax, so you must gather an enormous quantity of the berries. Put them into water and bring it to a boil, stirring well to be sure that all the wax is melting. Being lighter than water the wax will rise to the surface. When you think all the berries are bare, take them from the fire. As the water cools, the wax hardens on top. If the berries do not all go to the bottom you will have to melt the wax again over a slow fire or in a double boiler until the wax rises clean at the top; all dirt and refuse on its lower surface can be scraped off. Do not let the wax burn. Smoke is a sure sign that it is too hot. In a double boiler there is no danger. To make the dips, take regular candle wicking, a soft, white, loosely twisted cord, cut it twice the desired length for the candle. Double it and twist enough to hold it together. The loop at one end is convenient to hold it by. Dip into the hot wax and then as it cools draw the wick down with finger and thumb so that it hangs straight and kinkless. A second dip adds a little to the diameter of the candle, the third another layer and so on till your first bayberry dip is finished. If the first effort is not a good shape and has to go back into the pot you needn't be discouraged. Didn't the first chocolate cream you ever made look like a chestnut gone wrong? But with patience it is possible for even a beginner to produce very shapely candles. They do not need to be absolutely regular. Paraffin or tallow candles, moulded just alike by the hundred thousand dozen, may be as round and perfect as machinery can make them. Part of the charm of the bayberry dips is in these slight irregularities of shape and size. WILD CRAB APPLES Thickets of small trees, bearing little solid green apples are a feature of almost every farm in the prairie states. They are common also on the hilly pastures of Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and New York. The South, too, has its native crab apple. School children the country over loved in my day to fill their pockets with the hard, sour, little fruits and nibble at them surreptitiously under cover of a broad geography. But perhaps children's tastes have changed since that far time. Modern geography must be different, anyhow. I saw one the other day shaped just like a fifth reader or history or any other. It just looked like any book, not one bit like a g'ography. The little crabs were made into sauce or "butter," by pioneers of the prairie states. We washed, quartered, and cut out the wormy places, stewed them till soft with a little water, then put them through a coarse sieve to take out seeds, cores, and skin. The pulp was then sweetened with sorghum molasses and boiled; stirring is necessary to prevent burning. The appetites of those days did not demand dainty fare. Well do I remember a small visitor to whom our cookery was new whose demand for crab-apple-sauce-if-you-please was hard to satisfy. I believe crab apple jelly would be regarded a great delicacy by people of good taste, if once they had a try at it. PERSIMMONS The children of the persimmon belt, which includes a much larger part of the eastern half of the United States than many suppose, all know that the fruit of some trees is better than that of others. The 'possum knows, too, and lucky is he who finds both "fruits" on the same tree. There is a market for persimmons if they are gathered after frost, and a greater demand may be created. Seeing an unfamiliar fruit in the market is very likely to awaken the interest. Whether the buyer will want a second basket or not depends entirely upon the cleverness of the person that supplies the demand. The thoroughly ripe fruit is, according to an experienced traveller, "entirely without bitterness or astringency, sweet, rich, and juicy." What more can you say about watermelon or strawberries? But if you who gather the fruits persist in hurrying them green into market you may expect that the prejudice against persimmons will grow stronger. HAWS Is there any good reason why some of the people who used to be boys should never have a chance to taste any thorn apples now that they are older? Perhaps these grown-up boys deserve to be punished for deserting the old haunts, but give them a taste of what the open road has to offer and maybe they will be tempted back to a simpler life. The fruit of the May haw or apple haw of the far South is sold in the markets of some cities and is made into preserves and jelly. The Washington thorn which grows wild in Virginia and the other states not far from the capital city is also cultivated in many gardens farther north. It has run wild from these gardens and ranges over New York, Pennsylvania and neighbouring states. Though usually small, its berries are a beautifully shining scarlet and very numerous. It is worth risking a pound or so of sugar just to see what jelly they would make. The pear haw has a thick, juicy flesh, and some of the yellow ones are equally good. WILD PLUMS The wild plums of the East did not strike the early settlers as very much worth while. They were almost all seed and skin and the rest was "pucker." Quite naturally the plums of the mother country were preferred and sprouts were brought over and set in the gardens of our forefathers. These plum emigrants did so well in the new country that they escaped from the gardens into the pastures and roadsides, coming up wherever seeds were dropped. In such places they still flourish and are thought of as wild plums. They are gathered for market, but compare unfavourably, except with very old-fashioned people, with the garden-grown fruits of the same or similar varieties. The pioneers of the middle West, however, found very fine plums growing wild in plentiful thickets. We used to gather these native plums in the Mississippi Valley, in great tubfuls. We not only appreciated the crop nature provided for us every year, but were far-sighted enough to realize that the time would come when the march of civilization would tramp out the plum thickets. So we planted them in orchards and gardens, taking those trees that had given us the best crops of the biggest, finest fruit. In fact, the pioneers did just what we ought to be doing all over our country with other wild fruits and with nuts. The wild goose plum is a native which has founded a race of which there are many named varieties, much bigger and finer than the little, old, wild grandmother of the plum thicket, but they all have still that same tart tang, just under the skin, that gave to our wild plum "jell" its incomparable flavour. Are the wild plums all forgotten? Must all fruit come out of boxes and have that stale taste of the town? Must it lose its characteristic aroma and give off only that general "markety" smell? Is "goin' plummin'" entirely out of fashion, even in the prairie states? I don't believe it is as bad as that. Do you believe that moving pictures or shoot the shoots or merry-go-rounds can begin to compare with such simple pleasures as plumming, graping, berrying, and nutting? I have tried both, and give me the old, homely pleasures every time. The following extract from "The Tree Book" so well describes an annual outing of pioneer children that it is quoted in full: "'Do you calculate to go a-plummin' this fall?' The question was quietly put in father's judicial tones, but it sent an electric thrill from head to toes of every youngster. Mother's reply sent an answering current, and the enthusiasm of the moment burst all bounds. 'Well, you better go this afternoon. I can spare the team and wagon, and I guess John is big enough to drive. There's no use goin' at all if you don't go right off.' "So mother and the children rode out of the yard, she sitting with her young driver on the spring seat, the rest on boards laid across the wagon box behind. What a jouncing they got when the wheels struck a stone in a rut! But who cared for a trifle like that? John's reckless driving but brought nearer the goal of their heart's desire. "A lurid colour lightened the plum thicket as it came in sight. The yellow leaves were falling and the fruit glowed on the bending twigs. Close up the wagon is drawn; then all hands pile out, and the fun really begins. How large and sweet they are this year! Mother knows how to avoid the puckery, thick skin in eating plums. The youngsters try to chew two or three at once and their faces are drawn into knots. But they soon get used to that. "Now the small folks with pails are sent to pick up ripe plums under the trees, and warned against eating too many. 'Remember last year,' says mother, and they do remember. The larger boys spread strips of burlap and rag carpet under the fullest trees, in turn, and give their branches a good beating that showers the plums down. With difficulty the boys and girls make their way into the thicket; but torn jackets and aprons and scratched hands can be mended--such accidents are overlooked in the excitement of filling the grain sacks with ripe fruit. How fine 'plum butter' will taste on the bread and butter of the noon lunch when winter comes and school begins. (The Pennsylvanian's love for 'spreads' on his bread leavened the West completely.) "Other neighbours have come, and started in with a vim. It seems unreasonable to take any more. The bags are full, and there are some poured loose into the wagon box. Besides, everybody is tired, and John shouts that the hazel-nuts are ripe on the other side of the log road. "A great grape vine, loaded with purple clusters, claims mother's attention. There will probably be no better chance for grapes this fall, and the sun is still an hour high. John chops down the little tree that supports it and the girls eagerly help to fill the pails with the fruit of the prostrate vine, while John goes back to command the hazel-nut brigade and sees that no eager youngster strays too far. "Mother's voice gives the final summons, and the children gather at the wagon, tired but regretful for the filled husks that they must leave behind on the hazel bushes. A loaded branch of the grape vine is cut off bodily, and lifted into the wagon. The team is hitched on, and the happy passengers in the wagon turn their faces homeward." Such was the poetry of pioneer life. Pleasures were simple, primitive, hearty--like the work--closely interlinked with the fight against starvation. There was nothing dull or uninteresting about either. The plums and grapes were sweetened with molasses made from sorghum cane. Each farmer grew a little strip, and one of them had a mill to which every one hauled his cane to be ground "on the shares." Who will say that this "long sweetenin'" was poor stuff, that the quality of the spiced grapes suffered for lack of sugar, or that any modern preserves have a more excellent flavour than those of the old days made out of the wild plums gathered in the woods? And this is also true: There is no more exhilarating holiday conceivable than those half days when mother took the children and "went a-plummin'." NUTS The wild nuts gathered in this country for sale or home use in the North are chestnuts, hickory nuts, black walnuts, butternut, hazel-nut, beechnut; in the South, the pecan and the chinquapin; in the far West, the pine nut. The least known of these in eastern markets are the pine nuts, which form a very staple article of food for many tribes of Indians in the Great Basin. John Muir says that there are tens of thousands of acres covered with nut pines. An industrious Indian family can gather fifty or sixty bushels in a month if the snow does not catch them. The little cones are beaten off with poles as the trees are not high, and are heated till they open and the nuts fall out from under the scales. I have eaten pine nuts in Turkish restaurants. They came as a surprise in a dish of eggplant stuffed with chopped meat, raisins, nuts, bread crumbs, and I know not what all else. The native chestnut, though smaller, is far sweeter than the popular Spanish one. But it looks as if some foreigner must take the place of our native chestnuts in the woods as well as in the market. The chestnut disease which has driven the trees out of the parks and wood lots near New York City is baffling the scientists. Every year the deadline moves westward and southward and northward from its center. Perhaps a cure will be found before all the chestnuts are gone. If any region has a few trees which seem to withstand the disease while all the rest die, those trees should be preserved and used to propagate a race of chestnuts which would be immune. It may be that the Spanish and Japanese chestnuts will prove hardier than our own. These are being grown quite extensively in some Eastern states. They bear when remarkably young. Japanese chestnuts begin to bear, according to the nurserymen, "at three years of age, bear from three to seven nuts in a bur, each nut measuring from four to five inches in circumference." Trees five years old bear two or three quarts each and the yield increases rapidly from year to year. These bring fancy prices in city markets and are eaten either raw or cooked. In growing chestnuts it is the practice first to cut down the old native trees. As in all likelihood these would be dead in a few years anyhow, this is economical. Dead lumber is not as valuable as live lumber. The first year after a chestnut is cut, a crop of young suckers come up around the stump. These shoots are grafted with scions of a desired variety. There is a good story of a lad of twelve years of age who asked his father to graft a chestnut tree. Although the man was grafting apple trees at the time he laughed at the boy's idea. The lad did not forget and years after he put his idea into practice and now owns a chestnut grove which brings him an income of thousands of dollars. His chestnut groves are on waste land unfit for ordinary farm purposes. If one farm boy in every county would take an interest in growing the nuts that belong to his region, think how the value of the nut crop would increase. Every boy knows that the hickory nuts on one particular shell-bark are bigger and sweeter than on every other one he knows of. He and his friends try to get there first, before the "other gang" do, and make sure of their share. But does he ever plant any big sweet nuts along a fence row and take care of the young trees till they are big enough to take care of themselves? In the seventeenth century there was a law in certain European countries that every young man should plant a certain number of walnut trees. Unless he could prove that he had complied with the law, he couldn't marry. What a good idea! With such a law we might have more fine trees and fewer hasty marriages. CHINQUAPINS A coloured girl brought me a pint of chinquapins from her home in Ca'line County, Virginia; I sampled them eagerly, taking great pleasure in their diminutive prettiness, tidy shape, and rich, dark colouring. I kept a handful securely tied in the little salt bag in which they had made the journey and took them to my native state to show to the children, who had never seen a chestnut tree of any kind. When I took the bag from the trunk, there was a dustiness about the feel of it that aroused my suspicions. I emptied the contents into a flat dish. There were my nuts, their glossy brown shells as smooth as ever, but empty. Rolling about amongst them were a lot of the plumpest little white grubs, fairly bent double with corpulency. There must have been one for each nut, for not a sound kernel was left. I learn from chestnut-wise people that these weevils are another great enemy of chestnut culture, no remedy having been found. The chinquapin is the Southern child's chestnut. It is sometimes a tree, but more often a low shrub. The bur is round and has only one nut in it. A good many are marketed, especially in Southern cities, and bring a good price when fresh. The weevils enter the nuts before they are mature and it is difficult to find the bad nuts till too late to prevent a disagreeable impression. This interferes with the popularity of the chinquapin as a dessert nut. HAZEL-NUTS The American hazel-nut flourishes over the eastern half of the United States. It is a sweet little nut, much more to my taste than the bigger filbert, which is so popular in our markets. We used to gather hazel-nuts in the edge of woods which fringe the little rivers of the Mississippi Valley. The bushes grew in thickets and while the big brothers and sisters gathered the nuts from among the closely interlaced branches that grew scarcely higher than their heads, the smaller fry crept in underneath and getting about on the floor of the woods searched for nuts that had ripened early and dropped from the browning husk. There is no progress in simply going out in the fall and taking what nature furnishes. Unaided, the good mother goes on producing the same small nuts, caring just as patiently for the inferior ones and even encouraging the nut weevils to prey upon them. But I wonder if some boy or girl who thinks there isn't any interesting work to be done on the farm, could not make some experiments in hazel-nut culture. The bushes grow readily from seed, but seedlings do not always produce as fine nuts as those that were planted. For this reason one can save time by selecting the bushes that bear the largest crop of fine nuts and propagating those. They grow in any well drained, fairly rich soil and I know of hundreds of miles of fence rows answering these requirements, which now produce poison ivy, cat brier and other harmful crops. Hazel bushes make a beautiful fence row, and yield a salable crop. Hazel bushes propagate naturally by suckers and layers. By manuring well in summer long shoots for layering will be forced. "These should be staked down in winter or spring and covered with earth. They may be removed to nursery rows or orchard at the end of the first season." So says W. A. Taylor in the "Cyclopædia of American Horticulture." The same writer gives directions for pruning as follows: Strong shoots should be headed back to promote spur formation (the nuts are borne on short side shoots) and old wood that has borne fruit should be removed annually. Suckers should be kept down unless wanted for propagation. March or April is the best time to prune as they blossom very early and one must avoid cutting off either the young nuts or the pollen-bearing flowers. The nuts should be gathered when the husk begins to brown at the edges. If left longer, as is most often done, in the case of wild nuts, a large proportion of the crop falls to the ground and is lost. Beside, the dried hulled nuts do not bring as high a price as the fresh unhusked ones. If kept long in the husk they will mould, unless dried thoroughly. The nuts, however, will keep through the season in a cool place. WALNUTS The fruit of the black walnut is enclosed in a globe-shaped husk. All country boys and girls know how that husk smells and how it stains the fingers. The nuts are very oily and must be treated carefully. They should be dried, preferably on the garret floor, hulled and stored in a cool, dry place. If for market, they should be sold immediately. They are very likely to grow rancid if kept. Billy, in the "Limberlost" story, had a piece of heavy plank with a hole in it, just big enough to let the husked nut through. He put an unhulled nut over the hole, then with a wooden mallet, he drove it through the hole. It came through clean. The butternut or oilnut is from a tree closely related to the black walnut. It is called also white walnut. The husk is not so thick as that of the black walnut and adheres stubbornly to the nut if left to dry. The nuts get rancid if kept warm and should be marketed as soon as dry or kept stored in the cold and eaten before spring. Pickled walnuts are a highly prized delicacy in households where "culturine" has not taken the place of old-fashioned household arts. The nuts are gathered when green, before the shell has hardened. If a knitting needle can be pushed clear through the nut, it is not too old for pickling. You will be fortunate if you can get a receipt from some housewife who has time for real culture as well as for making pickles. _Receipt for Pickled Walnuts._--(From my great aunt's cook-book.) Ingredients: One hundred walnuts, salt and water, one gallon of vinegar, two ounces of whole black pepper, half an ounce of cloves, one ounce of allspice, one ounce of root ginger sliced, one ounce of mace. Gather the nuts in July when they are full grown. They should be soft enough to be pierced all through with a needle. Prick them all well through. Let them remain nine days in brine (four pounds of salt to each gallon of water), changing the brine every third day. Drain them, and let them remain in the sun two or three days until they become black. Put them into jars, not quite filling them. Boil the vinegar and spices together ten minutes, and pour the liquid over the walnuts. They will be fit for use in a month, and will keep for years. BEECHNUTS The boys of your neighbourhood may not know that the smooth, gray-barked trees with very long, slender, pointed buds are beeches. They may never have noticed the wonderful gray-green colour nor delicate texture of the newly opened leaves, nor the soft, silky flower head that bears the pollen. Too many boys think these preliminaries are of no importance. The chances are strong that when October ripens the nuts, nobody has any difficulty in locating beech trees, if there are any in the vicinity. Usually, in the wild woods, they grow in large groups of various sizes; the big trees sheltering the little ones until they are strong enough to live in the full sunlight. Do boys and girls find the beeches by instinct just as the mice, the blue jays, the squirrels, and the foraging hogs do? Do you know why it takes so much longer to gather a pint of beechnuts than the same amount of hazel-nuts? They are pretty small; yes, but there's another reason. If you were to count your beechnuts, you would find it takes many more of them by count to make a pint than of the round nuts, because of their triangular shape. They fit so snugly that your pint measure of beechnuts is almost solid nuts. They are about the sweetest of the wild nuts. They are very rich in fat too, and in olden times an oil for table use was made from beechnuts. Olive oil takes its place now and costs less. There is a market for all the beechnuts you can gather. Dealers in tree seeds often have difficulty in filling orders. As the nuts do not germinate till April they may be gathered at any time during the winter, unless the wild folks have gathered them all. The chances are that to get any you would have to go early and search sharply. Once or so in a lifetime the burrow of a white-footed mouse is discovered near beech woods. Are you hard hearted enough not only to break and enter, but also to burgle his hoard? Rather admire the little creature's industry and resolve to go and do likewise. HICKORY NUTS America is the only country that has native hickory nuts. Of these the best nut producers are the shagbarks and the pecans. These two nuts are increasingly popular. People are planting these nuts and experimenting with new varieties, with grafting and cultivation, as never before. Pecan orchards are being planted in many regions and hickory nuts are being studied with a view to improving the kernel and reducing the hardness of the shell. The value of hickory wood in the making of tools and for fuel has made the lumber more profitable than the nuts. But with improved varieties this may not be true. The poor quality of the wood of the pecan has saved these native trees from destruction. Hickory nuts have a husk as every country child knows; but the husk has a good-natured habit of splitting neatly into four equal parts which fall away from the nut when dry. There are several kinds of hickory which produce sweet, edible nuts, but the nuts of the true shagbark are the best. They grow on low hills near streams or swamps in good soil in the Eastern and Middle states as far south as Florida, and as far west as Kansas. The king nuts of the Mississippi are bigger, but not so good, although the price you get for them is good and the baskets fill faster than with the little shagbarks. PECANS This nut tree grows in the South, and as the wood is too brittle to be very valuable nobody has cut it for lumber. Tremendous interest has been aroused during the past ten years in pecan growing. Pecan orchards are being planted in all sorts of soil, good, bad, and indifferent. The wisest planters have gone to nature to learn what kind of conditions the pecan requires. By cultivation and fertilizing and otherwise improving good natural conditions, many growers are succeeding. By planting nuts from trees that produce fine ones abundantly every year, and by budding these trees with scions from still finer specimen trees great improvement has been made. I have a picture of a pecan tree in Georgia, sixteen years old, which is nearly fifty feet high. It has borne already three hundred and fifty pounds of nuts and this year's crop will be over a hundred pounds. This tree has never had to fight weeds, has always had plenty to eat and drink, was protected in winter while young, and now it is ready to foot all its own bills and give a fine profit. How many of us are ready to do that at sixteen years? The cultivation of pecans is only just begun. Very little of the annual crop of these nuts is harvested in orchards. In "The Tree Book" the author says that ninety-five per cent. of the crop is still gathered in the woods. The annual crop is tremendous, and the pickers get only three to ten cents a pound for the ungraded nuts. For the very best nuts, mainly sold for seed, the retail price is from fifty cents to a dollar a pound, which is from one to two cents per nut. Who picks all these nuts in the woods? Surely, the boys and girls of the pecan belt do their share. Do they do it in a primitive way or are their methods worthy of the up-to-date American youngster? Professor Hume of the Florida Agriculture Experiment Station (Bulletin No. 85, 1906) gives suggestions for gathering the pecan crop in the orchard which ought to be useful to the "wild picker." The nuts ought to be gathered as soon as the most of the burs have opened. In orchards, the pickers use ladders for young trees and climb the big ones and gather the nuts by hand into sacks. Beating and shaking the trees is only resorted to for the nuts that are entirely out of reach. If allowed to fall on the ground so many of the nuts are lost that the profits are materially lessened. If practicable a large sheet should be placed under the tree to save this loss. The nuts should be spread under some sort of roof to cure, which requires ten days or two weeks. Have you ever tried the experiment of sorting and grading the nuts you gather? The fruits of wild trees vary greatly in their size and general appearance. The wholesale dealer who buys nuts undoubtedly grades them and gets a fancy price for the big ones. Why should you not benefit by this? Pecans are graded by sifting them through screens, the mesh of which lets only those of small size through. You might build up a private trade in wild nuts by packing your best nuts in attractive pasteboard boxes and charging a good retail rate for them. The inferior nuts you could well afford to sell at the lowest wholesale price as your average would be higher than the wholesaler would pay for unsorted nuts. Your fancy nuts would have to be polished in order to compete with the nuts sold in city markets. The polishing does not make the meat any sweeter, but it does make a more attractive dessert nut, especially now that folks are used to seeing them polished. This is done by putting some dry sand into a barrel with the nuts and rolling the barrel about till the nuts are polished. If you have a worn out barrel or box churn, as we once had, that would be just the thing. Fancy packages of five to ten pounds would be very much in demand at Christmas. The big cities are well supplied with this sort of thing, but in the smaller cities and larger towns there are always some people who know a good thing when they see it and to whom the local markets often fail to supply these little luxuries. NUT GROWING In Bulletin No. 125 of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station published in 1908 you may read: "The young and middle-aged should not only plant nut trees themselves, but should encourage the children to do likewise. Every farm boy ought to have a small nut nursery and be taught to plant and care for nut trees. Nothing more creditable could be done in the schools than to interest the boys and girls in the possibilities of nut production and to celebrate Arbor Day with the planting of nut trees." Doesn't that read like sound advice? Think of the land on your father's farm to-day that is not working. Or if there isn't any idle land can you not persuade him to lend you an acre or so for experimental purposes? The chances are that he will encourage and help you because he wants you to be interested in the farm. But you may say to yourself: "Not much! I don't mean to stay on the farm. I'm going to work hard and get an education. I want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a banker." Nevertheless, you take the Maryland man's advice and set out some nut trees. Let us say you start your nut orchard at age fourteen when you have three years yet in the high school. Your trees will be set so far apart that some other crops will be grown between them; corn, potatoes, melons, or anything that requires good cultivation and fertilization. When you finish the high school your nut trees will not look very big, but promising. You go on to college and in four years you will see a big change. No crop is in sight yet but you are only twenty-one and ready to go to work. You may forget all about those nut trees for a few years but they are not forgetting their business. They will bear a few nuts some year, as if to try their hand at a new enterprise. Some day when you are needing a sum of money to start in business for yourself, and you are wondering who will lend you that much, you will get word from the folks at home that they have harvested your first crop of pecans or English walnuts or Spanish chestnuts and have deposited a thousand dollars in the bank in your name as the net profits. Will you try it? Before planting nut trees it is important to learn all you can by reading and by correspondence with your Experiment Station experts about the kinds that will do best in your region and on your soil. If more boys used a little forethought we should have fewer young college men struggling along on small salaries in work they dislike, just for lack of a tidy sum of ready money to set them on their feet at the critical time. There are good reasons for this greater interest in nut growing in the United States. The use of nuts is more common than formerly but they are still a luxury. Wild nuts are scarcer, owing to the destruction of the trees for lumber. The food value of nuts is better understood than formerly, and many articles of food are manufactured now from nuts. Nuts as meat substitutes have come into prominence within a few years. This creates a demand which will increase. There is no danger of over-production. Now is the time to get into the nut business. TREE SEEDS In his book on "Forestry" Professor Gifford says: "Collection of tree seeds should yield good returns if properly conducted." That is good news, for if ever a crop was allowed to go to waste it is this crop of tree seeds. Any one who has seen a forest of young maples cut down by lawn mowers in the helplessness of their seed-leaf stage realizes that with any sort of forethought those seeds might have been made a source of income. Professor Gifford says a little farther on that many of the seeds of our native trees can be more easily obtained in Europe than in America. We may learn many lessons in economy from our neighbours over there. But who is going to harvest the tree seeds? A mechanic who earns a good wage cannot afford to gather tree seeds; neither can a bank clerk unless he does the work in his vacation. But our boys and girls are often at a loss to find ways of earning money. Here is a crop they can gather without danger of trespassing. There is a market for this harvest. Some tree seeds are difficult to get and expensive; red pine for instance. Spruce trees produce seed only once in seven years. This keeps the supply short. In a spruce seed year every seed should be gathered. Pecks of hard maple seeds are swept up by street cleaners every year on our home street. They are worth a lot of money, yet the boys on the street never have all the cash they want to buy baseball gloves and circus tickets and bicycles. No enterprising reader of this book need ever lack for pocket money. Remember, Professor Gifford said, "Collection of tree seeds should yield good returns _if properly conducted_." Every business to be successful must be conducted properly. There are some simple principles. You need not be an expert forester but the more you know about trees the better. If a dealer buys six quarts of _red_ maple seeds of you he will be disappointed if you send him _silver_ maple, discouraged if you send him _sugar_ maple, and disgruntled if you send him _ash_. Furthermore, he will not send you the money nor any orders for more. If there is a maple tree with a peck of seed on it in your yard, in five minutes or less time you can find out what kind it is with "The Tree Book." Before the seeds are ripe write to a several seed men and tell them what you have; ask if they want any, at what price, and on what date. Some trees ripen their seeds in the spring, shake them off, and let the wind scatter them. In the case of some kinds, the seeds sprout within a few days after they reach the ground. These should be gathered as soon as ripe, spread out to dry for a few days, and planted within a few weeks at latest. Seeds of other kinds do not grow till the following spring. None of these should be allowed to dry too thoroughly. Nuts and acorns for seed should not be allowed to get dry over winter. These should be packed in moist sand and kept cool but not frozen. Cherry, plum and peach pits are better for being frozen. The supply of white pine seed is never equal to the demand. The market price is said to vary from two dollars fifty cents to four dollars fifty cents per pound. You get a little over a pound of seeds from a bushel of unopened cones. White pine trees require two years to mature their cones and they set seed only once in every four or five years. But every year there will be some trees bearing seed. Nineteen hundred and four was a big "on" year in the New York white pine forests. You can tell when the tiny cones first appear that a crop is coming. The cones should be watched as August wanes and gathered before they open. September is the month as a general thing. Boys can earn thirty cents or so a bushel gathering the full cones. But I should not be satisfied to let the other fellow get all the profits just because he knows how to cure and market the seed. That is easy. Spread the cones out in the barn to dry. Slat trays are best to get free circulation of air. You can make these at odd times before the crop is ready. A fanning mill comes in handy to thrash and free them from rubbish and imperfect seed. Market them immediately to avoid loss. If you are to keep the seed for home consumption, mix with dry sand and store in a cool but not too dry place. If allowed to dry or freeze and thaw they lose their vitality. Tree seeds need pretty careful handling. Any one interested in gathering tree seeds should get information from books and bulletins on forestry. He should write to firms who make a specialty of selling tree seeds and they will help him by giving directions about the treatment of seeds. Did you ever wonder where the nursery men get the thousands of apple trees they sell every year? Go a step back of the budding or grafting that is done in the nursery. Where did the little tree come from whose top was cut off after the first bud was set? It came from a seed; just any apple seed. And where do apple seeds come from? From apples? Yes, just any apples. Did you ever make cider on your farm? You put in whole apples, skin, core, stem, seeds, and all; shovelled them into the hopper. The pulp was squeezed dry and thrown away, wasn't it, at your cider mill? That is proof of the wastefulness of some good farmers. If the pulp were washed in tubs, the seeds would find the bottom (or the top) and they would bring a good price per pound. COLLECTING CHRISTMAS GREENS Once upon a time everybody who wanted Christmas greens had the fun of gathering his own. That was in the generation when all the grandmothers lived in the country and only the plain fathers and mothers and children lived in the cities. But now we children have grown up and our children want to go to grandmother's house for Christmas just as we did. Can't you imagine how surprised and disappointed they are to find their grandmothers living in city houses, even in flats? Didn't we tell them about going out to gather holly and mistletoe and ground pine and hemlock and even how we used to cut the Christmas tree itself in grandpa's woods? In the middle West where Christmas trees do not grow in the woods we used to choose a shapely young oak. To make it look like an evergreen we used to get grandpa to go out with his big jack-knife and cut off the largest branches he could spare from the evergreens in the door yard. With good, strong twine we tied these to the branches of the oak. When all the decorations were on and the oranges and the apples and the popcorn strings and the candles _and_ the presents, we children who had never seen a real live Christmas tree couldn't have told the difference. We didn't even mind the fact that some of the oak's outer branches were pine, some were spruce, some were cedar. It was all evergreen to us and all Christmassy. We were easy to please. But now--alas! The gathering of Christmas greens has been commercialized. It has ceased to be fun, and has become a business. The boys and girls may share in the profits and perhaps get some fun out of it if they go about it right. Holly, which of all the Christmas greens is the most popular, is a hardy and beautiful tree, which grows wild in great numbers in the Southern states and in the Chesapeake region. Many country boys and girls make easy Christmas money from the holly trees in their own woods. To these boys and girls I want to say "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg." A tree with fine berries on it this year will, if treated right, produce a good crop again in a few years. Pruning is good for a tree, but brutally hacking its head out destroys the tree's future, and the boy who does it is not a good citizen. Holly wood is close grained, light, and tough and is valuable in some forms of cabinet work. Here is an industry that might be developed as a side issue in the holly trade. The best market calls for holly wreaths. I have a picture of a girl of fourteen who can make sixty wreaths in a day and she gets six and a half cents for each. That is good wages for a girl of her age, but she must get pretty tired making wreaths every minute all day long. If she could help her brothers gather the holly for part of the time, it would be easier on her back. The wreaths are made on frames of twigs, twisted into circles, and tied. Young twigs of any flexible shrub are used. Somebody has to gather these. It is a wonder that more holly trees are not planted in door yards. And wouldn't it be a good idea for some boys to begin a plantation of holly now so they can reap the harvest later? Holly will not go out of fashion in a great many years. But at the present rate the supply cannot last. The amount used every year is past belief. From one small railway station 150,000 wreaths! One year, several carloads were burned because the market was overstocked. The time has come already when raising Christmas trees is necessary. They still come up like weeds in the woods where enough mature ones are left to seed the bared hillsides. The harvest begins in November and the trees are cut and sorted, roped to preserve their branches, in bundles of eight or less or singly, and stacked along the roads to await shipment. Hundreds of thousands are harvested every year. "No-Christmas-tree" clubs are being formed now to try to stop this wastefulness. We go too much to extremes. One Christmas tree used to be enough for all the grandchildren; but nowadays every one must have his own. If our children's children are to have real Christmas trees the boys of to-day must plant the seeds of the beloved balsam fir. The man who discovers and makes popular a new kind of Christmas greens does everybody a good turn. One of the most remarkable "ten-strikes" ever made along this line was a sort of accident. A man who calls himself "Caldwell, the woodsman," describes his experience as follows: "It was several weeks before I found the evergreen that was to make the town of Evergreen, Ala., famous throughout the decorative world. Wandering through the woods one day, my attention was attracted to a beautiful green vine hanging from the topmost limb of a small dead oak. I caught hold of the vine and pulled it down, and was much astonished at the ease with which it came out of the tree, and the fact that it seemed in no way injured by my rough treatment. On carrying it to my new home, I arranged it around the mirror in my room, and, after leaving it there for about a week or ten days, found that it was as fresh and green as ever." Mr. Caldwell saw that in wild Southern smilax he had found a plant that possessed all the good points required for wholesale decorations. It is used everywhere now. City florists cannot get enough of it. The plant is a perennial, renewing itself every year, and grows in greatest profusion in its wild habitat. He had an uphill job, though, convincing the fashionable florists of the value of this plant. But he persevered and now he ships five thousand cases of it a year at an average profit of one dollar per case. Young long-leaf pines grow in the South and are now used extensively for Christmas decoration in the North. It seems a pity to kill a pine tree every time one of these is cut, but in places where the seedlings come up too thick for good forest growth cutting out some is a benefit. If only the gatherers would be conservers as well! The collecting of ferns in the woods is a business suited to the country boys and girls. This has grown to a really great enterprise since the rage for country things has struck city people. There is some sham about every fad of this kind, but the fern gatherers are not shamming. They do the real work. To succeed in this, one must not work haphazard. He must know just what his customer wants, and the buyer must know just what the collector can supply. _Ferns_ is a big group of plants, and some of them you couldn't sell. If Christmas ferns grow plentifully in your woods, you can gather them by the thousand fronds. But will the florist buy those leaves which have the brown spots (or spores) on the under side? Find out before you waste your time. Those spores are more valuable in the woods than on the garbage heap. The boys who pull the plants up by the roots are killing their own goose. The fern can spare all the perfect leaves you find on it in the fall without much if any damage. A new crop will be forthcoming next year if the roots are undisturbed. Scissors and care used in gathering only good leaves will pay now, as well as in the future. There are a number of wild things that deserve more popularity. Bitter-sweet is lovely and lasts forever, nearly. You seldom see it in the market, though. Sumach too, has great decorative value, yet whoever saw it in a florist's window? Cattails, pussy willows, spice bush, dogwood flowers and berries, Solomon's seal, and a score of other wild flowers are already in use. But there are others you may be able to introduce to city people. It is surprising what they will buy and admire if it comes from the country. I rode on a suburban car one day behind an armful of poison ivy. It was brilliantly beautiful and I suspect the gatherer wished I had kept still when I told her what it was. If she hadn't had a child with her, I should have let her risk it. Maybe she was immune. Most people are. The funniest thing I ever saw for sale was a basket of skunk-cabbage flowers on Broadway. The shrewd old farmer who had them for sale got a quarter for two. He called them Japanese lilies. I wonder that the winter berry has not found more favour for decoration. Two kinds of shrubs with this name are common in our Northern woods. They are both hollies, but, unlike the Southern holly, lose their leaves. One has bright orange-coloured berries, the other is covered with a great profusion of bright scarlet fruits. Nothing could be more effective in a large vase in a dark corner. They light up handsomely at night or in the sunlight. MEDICINAL PLANTS There are a good many kinds of aromatic roots and medicinal plants which are kept in stock at drug stores. Some of them are rare and bring a good price; like golden seal at a dollar or over per pound. Digitalis in the drug store is foxglove in the garden; but who ever thinks of gathering its leaves and finding a market for them? Somebody must or the supply would run out. The leaves of the second year's growth are dried for medicinal uses. Wild ginger root is used in preserves and for confectionery. I have seen it in market and wondered who gathered it. Preserved calamus root, too; who buys that unless it is Br'er Rabbit? There is a Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture on "Weeds Used in Medicine" that you ought to have. The list of weeds used in medicine will certainly surprise the unenlightened. How do you know that your doctor isn't dosing you with burdock, dandelion, dock, pokeweed, foxglove, mullein, tansy, boneset, catnip, horehound, fleabane, yarrow, or jimson weed? All these and many more common weeds are collected by somebody, dried, and used in medicine. POKEWEED Pokeweed roots are poisonous. The berries are not. They are used to make a syrup with which to colour frosting for cakes and the like. Receipts for this are to be found in many cook books. But the best part of pokeweed is not the fruit. In early spring, when asparagus is expensive and scarce, the pokeweed shoots grow rank and as thick as your thumb in fence corners. They will take entire possession of a large garden in two years if given the least encouragement. I cut the stems when about a foot in height. They are covered with short leaves which are best removed except at the end of the shoot. Cook exactly like asparagus, and dress with butter or cream. They resemble asparagus somewhat, but are more delicate in flavour and less woody in texture. WALKING STICKS I once knew a stubborn man who was convinced that an unproductive orchard full of old gnarled trees on his place was good for nothing but firewood. He had the trunks cut into stove lengths and then burned the brush in ten huge piles. As the last pile was about to be fired, a manufacturer of umbrella handles offered him ten dollars for what was left. Imagine his feelings! Thousands of handsome walking sticks and umbrella handles are made of apple, cherry, and such woods. The makers cannot get enough of it and yet every year how much salable wood must be burned in the form of prunings. There is a true story of a young man in Florida who paid his way through college by collecting orange wood suitable for walking sticks. This wood is still popular for the same purpose, and the idea is worth passing along. Roots of quaint or grotesque shape are often found in the woods and may be used as handles of umbrellas or walking sticks. I have a stick made of a small sapling upon which a branch of bitter-sweet had entwined. As the sapling grew in circumference, the coils of the climber had not been loosened but had become imbedded in the wood of the little tree. The long vine was not cut off, but trimmed and wound round and round at the head of the stick to make it large enough to grasp comfortably. Such a stick is an interesting gift for a friend. [Illustration: Walking sticks decorated by nature] Another pretty bit of nature's handiwork is a walking stick engraved by the engraver beetle. These little insects make their burrows just under the bark and they often work on small branches of a great variety of forest trees. Remove a bit of loose bark and ten to one you will find it carved with a more or less intricate design by the engraver beetle. Could you do as neat a piece of work? A thorough brushing and oiling are all that such a stick needs to make it an ornament to the hat-rack. Sticks intended for handles or canes cannot be bent when dry. They should be steamed until flexible or buried in hot, wet sand till you can shape them. Boiling for a half-hour will sometimes make a piece supple. Fasten in the desired shape with stout cords and dry thoroughly before releasing. Sticks that are slightly crooked may be straightened by putting them into a bundle with perfectly straight pieces and winding with strong rope; let them dry in this bundle. Sticks which are to be peeled should be partially dried first but not by artificial heat. Rapid drying is likely to split the stick. WILD FLOWERS FOR CITY CHILDREN Children who live in the country part or all of the year do not know how much pleasure they might give if they would gather wild flowers and send them to city children. There is a society which distributes flowers thus collected in New York but maybe there is none in the city near you. The commonest flowers, even the weeds like daisies and dandelions and black-eyed Susans, are eagerly taken home by children who are so poor that they never even saw a park, much less a meadow. In one city school over two hundred children had never seen a dandelion. A lady once started with a bunch of daisies to give to a city friend. She was met at the ferry with, "Please give me a flower." She went on up the street. "Won't chu gimme one o'yer flowers?" Children seemed to appear from every direction; maybe they were always there and she had not noticed them before. The grown-up friend did not get any flowers but she got a good story instead. Mr. Jacob Riis founded a flower mission on a similar experience. It is fun to gather flowers anyhow, and if you can make some other child happy even for a few minutes it would be even more fun. This is only a hint. SHELF FUNGI Have you seen those outgrowths on dying and dead trees which stand out like a shelf? They are called bracket or shelf fungi. If you have an artist friend who can make beautiful things on these by carving them with little engraving tools, gather all you see for her. [Illustration: Photograph by Verne Morton. Gathering Wild Flowers for City Children] DANDELION GREENS Do your folks cook dandelion greens? Mine never did but since seeing them for sale at so much per half-peck I have come to think that they must be eatable and have wished we had gathered and sold the bushels that grew in our lawn. CORN HUSKS Corn husks is a crop that used to be more eagerly harvested than now. In the corn belt, where the husking is done in the field, the husk is left on the stalk and would therefore be hard to get. But where corn is snapped, husk and all, and left to be husked at leisure in field or barn, the husks can be saved with profit. For summer beds they are cheaper and softer than hay. For porch cushions they are far superior to excelsior. For braiding into mats they are really valuable, and well-made ones bring a good price. Cornstalks yield another crop that is little known. Collectors of insects use thin sheets of cornstalk pith to line their insect boxes. It is peculiarly adapted to this purpose. They cannot get a large supply of it, yet what boy in any great corn state could not get a ton of it if he had the gumption. Ask the entomology man in your state Experiment Station, if he needs cornstalk pith. If you live in a cactus country, ask him if he could use thin slices of the pith from the flower stalk of the giant cacti. FRAGRANT HERBS AND GRASSES Of the fragrant herbs, grasses, and shrubs which nature provides, nothing is more in demand than sweet grass. In the parts of the country where it is abundant, people still gather and cure it and make useful baskets and mats of it. Sometimes it is combined with birch bark or porcupine quills or both by skilful Indian women who learned how from their grandmothers. The good market for such things will keep the art of basket making from becoming a lost one. Indian maidens are not the only ones who have learned basket weaving. Indeed this has almost taken the place of patchwork, for girls, except in very old-fashioned families. Clever girls will not be content to use only such conventional materials as raffia and reeds. Often the colours of those you buy are so crude that you cannot make really artistic things of them. Some of the native grasses, flower stalks, strips of palmetto, rushes, soft inner corn husks, cat-tail leaves, and sedges are used. One basket maker has used the shiny brown stems of maidenhair ferns and the effect is very pretty. Another uses long pine needles in her weaving. Most of these materials are unfit for use when dry and brittle, but books on basketry tell just how they can be made pliable. Grasses are usually at their best just after flowering. The dried leaves of sweet fern, sweet clover in blossom, balsam fir, and bayberry make sweet smelling cushions and bags for bureau drawers and couches. BALSAM LEAVES In gathering what you hear called "pine needles" for pillows be sure you have the right kind of trees before you begin to gather the leaves. Pine needles are long and stiff and sharp. A pillow made of dried ones would not be a very fragrant nor a very comfortable thing. What you want is the short, soft leaves of balsam fir. These retain their wholesome odour after being dried. In five minutes you can learn to tell the balsam from spruce, hemlock, and cedar, the other common short-leaved native evergreens. BIRCH BARK Camping parties often leave a trail of devastation behind them which would shock the most hardened and wasteful one of the lot. This is largely if not entirely because they are ignorant, not because they are intentionally breakers of the laws of the woods. Indeed they are probably very ardent believers in the theory of conservation. Has it never occurred to them to practise it? In the matter of collecting birch bark much damage has been done. Some people in whom you have confidence say: "Oh, no. It doesn't hurt the tree." So you strip off layer after layer; such a fascinating occupation, I do not wonder you hardly know when to stop. But read what Miss Rogers says in "The Tree Book:" "The feminine tourist in Northern woods loses no time in supplying herself with birch bark note-paper. The bark is usually removed in thick plates, from which the thin sheets may be stripped at leisure. These sheets are orange-coloured, with a faint purplish bloom upon them and darker purplish lines. Alas! for the zeal of these tourists. They usually cut too deep, and the strip that tears off so evenly girdles and kills the tree, because nothing is left to protect the living cambium. A black band (of mourning) soon marks the doomed tree, and it eventually snaps off in the wind." I know a girl who killed thirty-seven beautiful birch trees before any one showed her how she could get plenty of bark and leave some for the tree beside. She was perfectly horrified when she realized what she had done. So few people know that the live part of the tree is not at the heart--that is quite dead--but just under the skin. Cut off the bark in any large quantities and your tree falls an easy prey to disease. Hiawatha was not the first Indian to use the canoe birch for practical purposes. His ancestors used this bark for all sorts of utensils, dishes, baskets, buckets, and for their canoes. They sewed the pieces together with fibrous roots and filled the cracks with wild gum or pitch. The Indians of nowadays have degenerated and the things they make have become less artistic. I lately saw a buckskin pouch, decorated with exquisitely woven bead work, in simple but charming design. It was a piece of real Indian handiwork, but the whole effect was spoiled by a lining of coarse red and blue and green gingham and the pouch flap was secured by a thong looped over a large white agate shirt button! In trying to imitate the Indians at their game of making things out of birch bark, quills, sweet grass, and other natural materials, let us keep clear of the shops and use only what combines naturally and artistically. PORCUPINE QUILLS "Give me of your quills, O hedgehog!" Hiawatha was talking to a porcupine, for the chances are that he never saw a hedgehog. Poets ought to know better than to confuse their "critters." A real Indian boy in the woods knows that porcupines give up their quills all too willingly. It is strange that the wild beasts of prey and the domestic dogs cannot learn this and let the porcupine alone. They have no quarrel with him. He eats the bark of trees, and goes about his own affairs. There isn't a word of truth in the story of his shooting his quills. No doubt he would if he could, if sore pressed, but he can't. He bristles them up when attacked and then woe be to the tender nose that touches the sharp points! The quills let go of their original owner very easily, but being barbed on their outer end they bury themselves in the soft parts of the attacking animal. With no thought of revenge in his rather witless head, the porcupine may pronounce the death sentence on his captor. Porcupines are hunted for their quills and easily captured by men as they are slow and awkward. The quills take a pretty polish and their cream white and shaded brown colours blend softly with the tints of birch bark and wild grasses with which they are combined by basket and mat weavers. MAPLE SUGAR MAKING Most of the fifty million or so pounds of maple sugar made in this country is made in six states, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. The boys and girls of these states have exceptional opportunities of studying the mysteries of tree life and of sharing the bounty the maples provide. I was not brought up in any one of the above-named states, yet I remember the maple sugar making in the woods along the river. One of my early recollections is of a party of Indian women, on piebald ponies, bringing fascinating heart-shaped cakes of maple sugar to exchange at the farm for fresh meat. Theirs were no pale, anæmic, delicate squares of creamy texture, but ruddy and hard. Less discriminating than now, we children ate with relish the coarse sugar almost black from the bits of bark, chips of leaves, and twigs which had undoubtedly been boiled with it. Nor did we innocents turn from it with loathing when told by a teasing uncle that its colour was due to the sirup having been strained by the Indians through their blankets. We didn't believe it then and I don't yet. How very bad for the blankets! The Indians discovered the maple sugar industry long before they themselves were discovered by white people. They taught our New England ancestors how to tap the trees and boil down the sirup and how to "sugar off." They had little or no sugar except what the maples supplied. The Indians had very primitive ways of tapping the trees, collecting the sap, boiling, and sugaring. These ways have been improved in the last three hundred years. Although wooden buckets and home-made spiles made of sumach branches may still be used where only a few trees are tapped, the up-to-date sugar maker has modern, patent, covered buckets, spouts, and evaporators. He uses a thermometer and knows "for sure" when to shut off his fire if he wants to make sirup, and how high the temperature may go to make the best sugar. He knows, too, whether he can afford to make sugar which tests eighty per cent. or ninety per cent. pure and get the bounty, if his state pays one, or if it costs him less labour and expense to sell his entire product in the form of sirup. But scientific methods can never take away the charm of maple sugar making. There is so much yet to be learned from the trees about the whys and wherefores of their behaviour during the harvest, that our interest in maple products increases as our interest in mere "sweets" decreases. If you have a "sugar bush" planted by your great-grandfather, the chances are that you have had annual opportunities to help in making sugar, ever since you could drive a horse on frosty mornings to collect the sap. But I am going to suppose that during the winter you have been reading "Trees Every Child Should Know" and have been identifying the trees about your home. The maples are about the easiest trees to identify when leafless. Suppose you have found several maple trees, good big ones, right in your own door yard. The hard or sugar maple is the one most frequently used for sugar making, but experiments show that soft maples make good sugar too. It isn't worth while to tap trees in winter. The sugar is in them all right because the leaves were storing up the starch all summer. This starch has been changed to sugar in the living cells of the wood. But you couldn't get any of it until the sap begins to run. It does this with the first warm, sunny days of February. After locating all the trees you expect to tap, you must make some preparations so that you will not lose any time at the critical moment. I knew one boy who got his bit and brace out the first thing, bored a hole in the tree trunk, and lost about a gallon of sap before he could get a spile and a pail ready to catch it. You want a spile or spout for every pail and a pail for every tree. The patent spouts have a hook upon which the bucket hangs. If you use sumach spiles you may have to set the bucket on the ground where it is likely to get dirt in it, tip over, and it is so far from the spile that the wind blows the sap away from the pail entirely. The pails should be generous in size unless you expect to collect the sap more than once a day. An average yield per day is five quarts per hole. The pails and spiles should be in readiness before "sugar weather" begins. Beside the pails and spouts you need a wooden mallet, and a bit and brace or small auger for the outdoor work; a kettle for boiling down, a large jar to put the fresh sap in, and a dipper to dip it out, a strainer and a skimmer for the indoor work. If you boil your sap outdoors using cheap fuel you will make more out of your enterprise than if you use coal or gas. A good sap-running day is a warm, sunny day after a frosty night. While the days and nights are about the same temperature the sap does not run much. The best place to tap a tree is about four feet from the ground, and fortunately that is the easiest place to work with the auger or bit. The bit should be bright and sharp; a dull, rusty bit makes a shabby hole in the wood with a lot of woody shreds which clog the flow of sap. Clean out the hole, as any chips left in stop the flow in the same way. The bit or auger used should be about one half inch in diameter. A bigger hole might give more sap but would injure the tree more. The tree fills up the smaller hole in a few years with new tissue. The hole should not be deeper than three inches. It is a mistake to think that the centre of the tree holds the sap. As a matter of fact there is less there than anywhere else and more as you near the surface. The living, active part of the tree is just under the bark. It is necessary to say this over and over again so that people will get it into their minds. The Indians used to tap the trees on the south side because they said more sap came from that side. Experiments show that on warm, sunny days, this is the case. On cloudy days, however, sap comes about equally from holes on all sides. If the trees have been tapped before, it is best to tap at some distance from the old places. The size of the auger and spile should be the same and the latter should be forced in tightly, and not fall out when the pail is full. Pure sap makes the clearest sirup and the lightest-coloured sugar. Every bit of dust, leaves, twigs, or bark that gets into the pail leaves its mark on the sugar even though strained out. So covers on the pails are preferred if one can afford them. Most of the sap runs between nine o'clock in the morning and noon. It has been found by tests that this morning sap has more sugar in it than that which runs later in the day. It is the custom in some places to throw away the ice if the sap freezes. This is very wasteful, for this ice contains about thirty per cent. of the sugar. Of course, melting ice is expensive business so one must try not to let his sap freeze. The sap in the storage jar or tank must not be allowed to get warm, though, as it may sour. It should be boiled as soon after gathering as possible to ensure best results. Maple sap contains other ingredients beside water and sugar. In boiling, the water passes off in steam and the sugar and other solids remain. The changes in colour from clear sap to dark brown sugar is caused by the action of the heat upon the sugar and other substances. All sugar makers know that the lightest coloured sirup and sugar can be made from the earliest run of sap. That is because, as the season advances, more of the lime, potash, magnesia, and other substances are present in the sap. You see the tree does not stop work just because you tap it; and the sap is changing every day until, by the time the buds begin to open, the sap is so changed that it does not make good sugar at all. Water boils when it reaches two hundred and twelve degrees, Fahrenheit, as any thermometer will tell you. In fact, you cannot heat water hotter than two hundred and twelve degrees, for at that temperature the water becomes steam. A mixture of sugar and water will not boil at two hundred and twelve degrees but requires a higher temperature. Therefore, as the water passes off the sap in boiling, and as the amount of sugar per gallon increases, it gets hotter and hotter. It is necessary to watch boiling sap carefully to avoid burning. In making sirup it is important to have it just thick enough to taste right and not so thick that it will granulate. Sirup that weighs eleven pounds to the gallon has long been considered as "just right," and it has been found by testing that if you take the sirup off the fire just as soon as the thermometer registers two hundred and nineteen degrees it will weigh eleven pounds to the gallon and will not granulate. If you take it off when the thermometer says two hundred and sixteen degrees your sirup will be a pretty fair article, but you cannot expect to get as good a price for it, because it has more water in it than there should be in a prime article. When the sirup has boiled down to nearly two hundred and nineteen degrees, it is necessary to pour it off or strain it through thick cloths to take out the dark-coloured impurities. After this the sirup is heated again to boiling point and sealed in jars or cans. A gallon of sirup will make between eight and ten pounds of sugar. Can you afford to make your sirup into sugar at this rate? It will depend upon the relative price of sugar and sirup, the cost of your fuel and the value of your time and whether your market wants sugar or sirup. There is a good and increasing demand for pure maple products, especially in the form of confectionery. If you can work up a market for fancy maple sugar in the form of bonbons it will bring a fancy price. This is not so hard as it sounds but it takes enterprise and gumption and perseverance and knack. Here is a job where brothers and sisters can work together to very great advantage and add to their store of college money by discovering and harvesting a crop right at home which in many cases has been neglected for decades. If you have city cousins they will help you sell your products among their mates. It will pay you to prepare small sample parcels, enough to whet the appetite but not enough to satisfy. I remember receiving a number of packages of maple cream from a Vermont friend. The price per pound was equal to that of the finest candy and I wanted to share with all my friends. But I couldn't afford to give away pound packages to everybody. I might have created a large demand for this delicious confectionery, had I been able to get sample packages to give to friends. This year I am to have them. It adds wonderfully to the attractiveness of maple sugar to have each cake or bonbon wrapped in its own piece of waxed paper. This is a kind of guarantee of dainty handling that is appreciated by the purchaser. A shoe box is hardly a dainty parcel, yet I know of one unimaginative maple sugar man who packs his cakes in just such boxes. There is a chance for some one to "make a hit" in this line. WILD RICE Wild rice sells for two or three times the price of ordinary rice and the supply never meets the demand. "But who wants it and what for?" Wild rice is not likely to become a popular breakfast food except among the Ojibways, yet a lot of time and effort have been spent on trying to find out how to grow crops of it. The reason for this is that nothing fattens wild ducks, geese, and other game birds quite so satisfactorily. Where the wild rice flourishes there is the hunter's paradise in September. This is reason enough for wanting to grow wild rice. When our true American sportsmen awoke to the fact that game was scarce and realized why, they set about protecting the wild fowl and studying their habits so as to better supply ideal conditions for the remnant to increase. This is conservation and boys that help in such enterprises are truly patriotic citizens. Wild rice grows in swamps, shallow lakes, and sluggish rivers covering immense areas in the Mississippi Valley and the middle North-western states. Mud is a necessity to its growth. It grows taller than a man's height above the water and its seed comes in a loose spray at the very top of each stalk. The plants die every year and new ones come up from seed. The grain begins to ripen early in September and keeps on until heavy frosts. This is all right for ducks but it makes harvesting a very difficult task. The Indian women of the wild rice regions go out and shake the heads over their boats. They have to go again and again. If they left it till all the grain had ripened they would get very little seed, because the wild rice falls as soon as it is ripe and lies in the mud till spring. The long-hid secret of the many failures to get wild rice to grow from seed was discovered by some scientist to be this habit of lying in the mud over winter. Thoroughly dried seed does not germinate. Wild rice is queer looking stuff. The grains are black and very long and slender. Some of them are an inch long. It is said by some to be very good eating, especially as prepared by the Indians. They parch it usually, but sometimes it is made into a sort of porridge and eaten with maple sugar. Practically, the best market for wild rice will always be amongst the wild fowl and it is a sportsman-like act to gather the seed and propagate it for their sake. GATHERING SPRUCE GUM If spruce gum were used only in the manufacture of "chewing-gum" we had much better let the crop go unharvested. It serves a useful purpose in the tree which produces it. When you have a cut or bruise you like to put something on it that excludes the air. The tree acts on the same principle. The live part of the tree is just underneath the bark. Trees are liable to many kinds of injuries. The winter winds strain them sometimes to the point of splitting, a heedless woodsman blazes the bark in passing, wild creatures gnaw or scratch the trunks, a woodpecker digs a hole through the bark. Any injury of the living layer is like a "hurry call" to the cells where the resin is stored. These cells are the health department. They send out to the injured part a covering of balm, a salve which seals the wound effectually from contact with the air. We cannot say that the tree knows that the air is full of the germs of decay and that to let them get a foothold means decay and sure death; but the tree has something that serves the same purpose as knowledge. Physicians make use of the resinous gums in preparing medicines, and druggists always try to keep a stock of spruce gum on hand. Collectors find their best market for it in the drug trade. The best quality brings as high as one dollar and fifty cents a pound, while one dollar a pound is not too much to expect for the average collection. All the spruces yield gum, but the best quality is said to come from the white spruce. The first thing to do then is to learn to recognize this tree on sight. It will take you and a tree book together about five minutes to distinguish between the three short-leaved evergreens which look so much alike to a novice, the firs, the hemlocks, and the spruces. When once you know the spruces by the looks or the feel, you will begin to know the white from the red and black spruce by the colour. Everything about the white spruce is paler than the others. The foliage is light, almost pea-green, and the bark is not ruddy but grayish-brown. There are thousands of acres of spruce woods in our northern Central and New England states. Boys and girls on camping trips can sometimes collect spruce gum enough to pay expenses and have fun doing it. The only equipment necessary is a heavy pocket knife, a gum spud, a canvas sack, a strong hand, and a pair of sharp eyes. The eyes will get sharper as the knife gets dull and the tree you found nothing on in the morning of your first day may yield a good harvest on the return trip. You will not be able to buy a gum spud, but a tinsmith can make one for you at small cost, according to these directions: Solder a piece of galvanized iron into a funnel six inches deep, three inches across the top, and one inch in diameter at the bottom. A ferrule two or three inches deep and an inch in diameter is fitted into the bottom of the funnel and soldered in tight. Fit a long handle into this affair and your spud is ready. You may count on a good majority of the gum you find being out of reach of the knife but the spud gets it down very successfully. The best place to find spruce gum is undoubtedly in woods where no one has been "gummin'" before, at least not for five years or so. The most plentiful supply is said to be on slopes where the trees have a southern exposure, and the smaller trees yield more gum than the big ones. Your work is not done with collecting, for in order to get the best price you must present a fancy grade to the market. If your gum is all thrown in together, good, bad, and indifferent, your average price is pretty sure to be less than for a carefully cleaned and sorted lot. Spruce gum can be collected in summer or winter. Which time is better for you depends on circumstances. There is a peculiar charm about gum hunting on snow-shoes. A young man suffering from too little fresh air and attendant ills might find his health among the spruce trees while the gum paid the bills. MUSHROOMS "Are you sure these are good mushrooms?" I asked my seven-year-old daughter. "Yes. I'm sure. Don't you know Aunt J---- says that all the _Coprinæ_ are edible?" This is a true story and it only goes to show that even a small child can learn that there are a small number of unmistakable mushrooms, which are edible and there is never any danger of being wrong about them. The puff-balls, for example, are all good to eat. When we found the neighbour's children kicking great white spongy puff-balls in the pasture we begged them to let us have them instead. "Pap says they're p'ison" was their reply, but we heeded them not for their "pap" was no oracle of ours. We were quite willing the children should go on thinking puff-balls were poison, if only they would not use them for foot-balls. Nobody in his senses would try to eat puff-balls after they have begun to turn black or brown. But when they are white and tender they are very good. Skin the ball, slice thin, add water and a little salt, and stew for twenty minutes or so. Drain and dress with cream sauce. No doubt puff-ball slices broiled over a camp fire with bacon would be good. I wish I had tried it, but I never have. We will agree that no puff-ball can compare with the pink-gilled meadow mushroom, but we make no such claims for it. The best place to look for puff-balls is in old pastures in late summer and early fall. The giants are sometimes as big as a milk pail. The pear-shaped ones grow on tree stumps and are as big as your fist or smaller. There is an endless variety of tiny ones of all sorts which are either too tough or too small to bother with. But no puff-ball is "p'ison," not one. Boys and girls who like to harvest nature's crops are missing a lot of fun besides many pecks of delicious food by neglecting the common edible mushrooms. If you know a few good ones you are perfectly safe. When you have seen them a few times and gathered them a few times and compared them with photographs you are ready to eat them. I should advise always to go mushroom hunting first with some experienced person. Personally I take no risks. For instance if my book tells me that "dangerous fungi resembling this species and sometimes found in company with it--etc.," that's enough. Say no more. I let that one alone. I do not like the company it keeps, and it may be a sheep in wolf's clothing. In my list of edible fungi, common in New York and New Jersey, there are less than a dozen kinds. No one of these looks enough like any other fungus to be mistaken for it. A few good looks at them will fix them in the memory. These are morels, meadow mushrooms, shaggy-manes, inky-caps, oyster mushroom, puff-balls, coral fungi, and chanterelles. The open season for morels is in early spring, when arbutus is blossoming, and later. Coral fungi and chanterelles are at their finest in midsummer, puff-balls in September, inky-caps and shaggy-manes in October, and we ate oyster mushrooms on January first one year, though they appear earlier. The meadow mushroom with white flesh and pink gills is grown indoors and is seen in the market from fall till spring, but nature's crop must be harvested in fall before frost. _Morels._--Morels look like nothing else. When full sized they are six inches high. The hollow stalk is as large as your finger and about half the length of the whole. The top or cap is brownish and so covered with ridges and wrinkles that it would never be mistaken for anything else in the world. You ought to see a picture of it because it is difficult to describe so irregular an object. Look it up in some mushroom book or bulletin in your library. [Illustration] You never know just where morels may appear. We found them in our garden once. They come up right among the weeds or dead leaves. I have often found them along forest by-paths, especially in wet weather in spring. They are delectable. Perhaps you have eaten delicately broiled slices of tenderloin of young pig. Morels do not taste like this--they look a little like it--they taste very much better. You taste them. _Coral Fungi._--The coral fungi that I eat look like chunks of pinkish or cream white organ pipe coral. They are fleshy, soft, yet firm enough to keep their shape, and the whole mass is made up of tiny thread-or rod-like parts of many branches. There is a fine one which looks like a cauliflower though more yellow. I have found the pink and creamy ones on fallen and decayed tree trunks in deep, cool woods in midsummer. Others equally good grow in thin woods or open places. They vary in size from chunks as big as a walnut to those as big or bigger than your fist. They need careful cleansing under a faucet. Some cooks soak them first in cold water into which they put a little vinegar or lemon juice. They then fry in butter. Another way is to stew till tender in water with lemon juice in it. Then drain and dress with cream sauce. _Puff-balls._--What country child has not puffed the "smoke" from the hole in the top of the tough-skinned little brown balls they find in the fields in autumn? Children generally believe them to be deadly poison and call them "devil's snuff-boxes." Their life history is very like that of other fungi. The most of the year these flowerless and leafless plants spend underground. They spread in a tangle of fine threads all through the soil wherever they find decaying vegetable matter upon which to feed. When their time comes, little white balls push out and up from the threads. These come to the surface and we know them by their shapes and sizes as our different kinds of puff-balls, mushrooms, or other fungi. The puff-balls are white and look like fine cream cheese when they first appear. Their business is to ripen their spores, scatter them, and disappear. The brown smoke or dust of the ripe puff-ball is blown about by the wind and finds its way into the earth in time; each tiny spore or grain of dust can start a new mat of threads down underground. When you puff the devil's snuff-box you are doing the plant just the kindness it was waiting for. When a cow steps on a ripe giant puff-ball a great smoke goes up, and the breeze catches the dust. Some of the spores may be carried on the wind or on the cow's foot to far distant pastures, there to settle down and start a new puff-ball colony. It is just so with all the fungi. All the puff-balls are edible but one of the most eatable is _the giant_, which is found in August or September in pastures or other grassy places. When right to eat it is grayish on the outside and pure white clear through. In size this giant varies from six or eight inches through to two feet. Specimens of ten pounds' weight are not rare, and there is record of some twice that size. When yellow or brown inside, the giant is past eating. The _pear-shaped_ puff-ball is the commonest one. This is a sort of dirty brown colour outside, pure white inside. It is found on old wood or on the ground as early as July and as late as October. In size the balls vary from thimble size to that of a big pear. They grow in companies, sometimes scores together. The _brain_ puff-ball is larger than the pear-shaped. The top is wrinkled or corrugated, and grayish or reddish in colour. _Chanterelles._--Chanterelles are found in late summer in the woods amongst moss where it is damp and cool. They are red or yellow and look as if you had put your thumb in the middle of the top and pushed it down so that the network of gills appear on the outside. The name means a little goblet, and the perfect ones are goblet-shaped. If you go camping in the woods in summer you are almost sure to find chanterelles. _Meadow Mushrooms._--The wild meadow mushroom usually appears in large numbers after the autumn rains have renewed the pastures. They frequently come up alongside of an old dried patch of cow manure. To make myself familiar with this pink-gilled variety I visited a large market where they had them for sale in all stages, from the little round buttons to the big flat broilers which are turning brown. They are just right when the cap has spread so as to burst the delicate white veil which covers the gills. The flesh is white and the gills a delicate pink. The skin peels off easily like that of a ripe peach. Look them over with great care when preparing for the table. The early worm which is on hand to get a first bite of everything sometimes honeycombs the whole plant. The stems of young ones are tender at the top. _Inky Caps._--You never expect to gather your dinner from an ash heap? Neither did I; but in the edge of the woods nearest us the public used to be allowed to dump ashes. It is now overgrown with golden-rod, iron weed and various other coarse plants. A path leads through it. Last fall we discovered that the place was fairly swarming with _Coprinus comatus_, the shaggy mane mushroom. This does not look like anything else on land or sea and is delicious. Its relative, the inky cap is just as good to eat, but not so handsome. Both melt away into black ink as they grow old. They should be cooked as soon as possible after gathering. We kept some over night once. Such a sight! They looked like black corn smut. The _Coprinæ_ push up in such tight clumps sometimes that their heads are all out of shape. They rise literally over night. Sometimes one comes up singly and grows tall and perfect, a truly lovely object, pure white, six inches tall, its shaggy head held high, its silver-white gills delicate as tissue paper. A few hours later you will see a ragged bit of pulp rapidly dissolving in a pool of black ink. _Oyster Mushrooms._--The oyster mushroom comes out like the shelf fungi on decaying tree stumps or logs. They are ashy colour or dull white, solid and rather tough, and vary in breadth from two to five inches. As to why they are called oyster mushrooms, opinions differ. The flavour is not oyster-like, though the flesh is about as tough as a boiled oyster. The shape does suggest an oyster shell; perhaps that is the best reason for the name. One edible relative of the oyster mushroom grows usually on decaying elm stumps as late in the year as November. The first thing to do if you get interested in mushrooms is to get some good illustrated book on them. The chances are that your State Experiment Station has issued a bulletin on the subject. If not you can get those published by the United States Department of Agriculture or perhaps those issued by some neighbouring state. What you want is information on wild fungi, especially the edible ones, not directions about growing the market varieties. When you write for bulletins state just what you are looking for. Pictures, especially photographs, are of the greatest use in identifying specimens. Compare the descriptions and pictures with your mushrooms and do not use them if there is any question in your mind as to what they are. The books mentioned in the appendix of this book have been of help to me. CONSERVING NATURE'S CROPS The harvesting of nature's crops is a most fascinating occupation. As boys and girls we do not ask why; we only know what fun it is. If the time ever comes when you wish to forget that you are grown up, nothing will help you like going into the woods, the fields, or the hedge-rows to help the birds and the little fur-coated animals harvest the crops of nuts or berries or other fruit that grow in nature's orchards. With your sack of nuts or plums on your arm, or your pail full of berries, you can easily forget that you live in a flat or work in an office or a factory. Some people think when they see how much over-ripe fruit is falling to the ground, and how much more there is than can ever be gathered by human hands, that nature is wasteful. Perhaps this is why these same people and others who did not think at all, have been so very wasteful of our country's natural resources, and brought about such a really alarming state of things in our forests. Those who do stop to think will see that although she is lavish, nature is never wasteful. The berries must decay in order that the seeds may germinate, and in moulding they nourish the fungi which are just as important in nature's eyes, so to speak, as the berries are. Nothing is _wasted_ in nature. On the contrary, everything is _saved_ and is made over into some other form. Nothing stands still; transformation goes on continuously. What was soil yesterday is fruit to-day and is built into our muscles and nerves and brains to-morrow. Every boy or girl that helps to harvest nature's crops can do a little to assist in our great national work of preserving the country's natural resources. Would you ruin a fine young tree just beginning a life of usefulness? By mutilating it past recognition, you may add a few nuts to your this year's store. But what an injustice you are doing to the next generation of boys and girls. You are robbing them. I have heard men say: "When I was a boy we used to bring home arbutus by the wagon load from Coy Glen. But it's hard to find any there now. It must have winter-killed or blighted." My tongue burned to tell them that they themselves were the blight that winter-killed the arbutus and robbed me of my right to gather a few sprays. They had torn it up by the roots in their greed to fill their wagons, and then they cut out all the trees, and the sunlight destroyed all the shade-loving things. Boys and girls of a more enlightened generation know better ways and will not leave behind them a record of selfishness. THE STORY OF THE CREATION OF A NEW INDUSTRY I am glad to tell the methods by which I have developed a good business in collecting and growing California bulbs, as I believe my success can be duplicated in other parts of the country--in fact, one man already makes a good living by exploiting the wild flowers of the Rocky Mountains, several people are exporting the cacti of our desert, and there are several nurseries in the southern Appalachians for the interesting plants of North Carolina. In 1870, when I was nine years old, my family moved to Ukiah Valley in north-western California, and there I have lived ever since. My early home was a farm, and my first work to raise hops and a mortgage. My education was such as the district school and an abundance of good reading could give me. At eighteen I began to teach school. I was always a lover of nature and fond of wandering about the hills. In Mendocino County in 1870 the country was just emerging from the cowboy era, and little attention was paid to vegetable gardening, while flower gardens were all but unknown. HOW THE LIFE WORK WAS DETERMINED There was one notable exception to the indifference to flowers. Alexander MacNab, a Scotchman who had been forced by declining health to leave Glasgow, had found new vigour in California's mountains. The property which he had purchased for a stock range is one of the most picturesque in northern California, and there he built a modest but ideal home. He sent everywhere for flowers, and I know of no place in these later days where more flowers are well grown. He gave to his flowers not only money, but love and himself, and few gardeners were more successful. I often visited there in my boyhood days and the inspiration that I received from this place and from another source determined my life work. I had a sister a few years older than myself who had been in the East for some years and whose failing health forced her to return to California. She was a flower-lover and soon called upon me to begin a garden on the bare hill where our very plain home stood. It was a work of love, for all of the new soil was carried in buckets, and the water which our hot climate made necessary was carried from a well, but it was a great success. My Scotch friend was most liberal with both plants and instruction, and between the two my bent was well fixed. THE BEGINNING OF THE INDUSTRY It was through Mr. MacNab that I got started in the collection of native plants. Woolson and Company, then of Passaic, N. J., were the first American firm to take up the culture of our native American plants as a specialty. They wrote to Mr. MacNab, asking him to secure the native plants and offering to pay for them in eastern grown plants. My love for flowers had interested me in botany, and it was quite natural that the letter should be turned over to me. In my first letter to Woolson I sent a pressed flower of _Colochortus pulchellus_ and received in return an order for one hundred bulbs, which they said they would pay for in cash. This order was filled and it was the beginning of my bulb business. My first idea was to earn money to buy plants with, but before long I saw that a small business might be built up. My progress as a collector went hand in hand with my education in botany. My method was this: First to find something of sufficient beauty to make it probable that it would be wanted; next, to find its name, and then to offer it to some one of the very few firms then interested in such things. Such was the first stage in the development of a new industry, but the latter was no less important, for it involved knowing the plant at every stage of its growth, finding when it could best be handled, and how best packed for shipment. Almost from the beginning I tried to grow the native plants, and botanical study, collection, and cultivation have gone hand in hand since. METHODS OF COLLECTING Every year I took longer trips. I went alone, with the lightest of camping outfits, slept on the ground, and penetrated the wildest regions, learning where the desirable flowers grew, and collecting those in demand, at the same time studying the general flora. When I had learned the flora of a region, I tried to train some resident as a permanent collector, for not all of these long trips could be made every year. My horizon fast widened, and through friends, by letters to others, and often by the migration of men whom I had trained, new fields were opened, and later I had men who had been trained under me to send to distant points. Before I began to collect, others had been in the field, but they were principally wandering botanists who seldom collected over the same ground for two years in sequence. Their collections were of stuff of all grades, often made at the wrong season, and there was no demand except from a few special lists. At first I shared their faults, but after a few years I saw the necessity of making a reputation for reliability, for thoroughly learning the art of packing, and for such grading as would insure uniform quality. ESTABLISHING A NURSERY BUSINESS As time went on, collection became less important and culture the central feature of my work. My first garden was at the farm home; later I spent much time and money in experiments in a reclaimed lake bed near Ukiah, still later at my Ukiah home, and since 1897 in the mountains about eight miles east of Ukiah. Each experiment had its value. No one had grown Californian bulbs in California, and everything had to be learned experimentally. I now have two nurseries. One of them is at Lyons Valley, a lovely spot in the highest part of that branch of the Coast Range which I found six years ago was specially adapted to lily culture. About three quarters of a mile away, at "The Terraces," nature has provided endless variations of soil, climate, moisture, sun, and shade. Here I grow a great variety of bulbs. In 1886 I sold about seven thousand plants of all sorts; in 1888, two hundred and fifty thousand, and the difference was on business principles. CARL PURDY III RAISING DOMESTIC ANIMALS RAISING COLTS Every farm boy I ever knew was ambitious to own horses. Before my eldest brother was twelve he had traded pigs with our father for calves, then heifers for a horse, and his favourite air castles were great luxurious barns inhabited by blooded horses of his own raising. If your colt's mother is dutiful, and they mostly are, the youngster will have plenty to eat for the first few weeks. Petting is a good thing for little colts; never a cuff nor a harsh word. Their confidence won, their education is begun. While still dependent on the mother for milk the young colt begins to nibble hay from the manger, and gets a taste of the oats in the feed box, too, and finds them good. Oats and clover hay, a little bran and shorts, a run in the pasture every fine day all winter, will usually keep the colt growing and healthy. A warm stable with plenty of dry bedding, preferably in a stall with another colt, is necessary at night. Colts need a plentiful supply of cool, clean water in summer, but in winter, water should be heated just enough to take off the chill. It is bad for a colt to drink at meal-time. (That sounds like a rule for boys and girls.) A chunk of rock salt handy for colts to lick at helps keep the appetite normal. An ordinary farm colt at three or four months old is worth only thirty or forty dollars. Two years later, with the right kind of care and teaching, the same colt will bring four times that price. What other farm crop will do as much? The mother of a baby colt once died on our farm. My father felt very badly over it; losing the old mare was misfortune enough, but the colt was a noble-looking little fellow, highly bred. We girls had been foster-mothers to almost everything; cats, pups, and pigs were easy, and calves. But what of a colt? "Let's try if we can't raise him on the bottle," said our mother. The experiments we tried with that colt were many. We gave him "half and half" at first--a cup full of milk to one of water. Our small cousin had once been fed on mare's milk, much to our disgust, but it gave us ideas for our colt. Mother read somewhere that cow's milk was not so sweet, but was richer than mare's milk. So we patched our bits of hearsay together and made up our colt's ration about like this: First week: half sweet milk, half water, a teaspoonful of sugar to each pint, ten times a day--always warm--last feeding at ten P. M.--not very much at a time. Second and third weeks less water, six feedings a day, warm and sweet as before. Fourth to tenth week: increase quantity gradually, give warm--not very rich--milk three times a day. We gave him a bottle at first with a nipple made of a goose-quill wrapped each time with clean, soft rags. Everything about his food had to be kept sweet. We scalded the bottle and the quill and washed them in water and baking soda, just as mother said. Then we taught him to drink from a pail. He followed us about like a dog and was very playful and frisky. We fed him a little hay and oats and grass when he was old enough. My little sister wanted us to give him less milk so that he would grow up into a pony, but when he begged for food, she was the first to go for his bottle. He grew up and developed just like any horse and father said he was the easiest two-year-old he ever had to teach to work. He paid us seventy-five dollars for the colt when he was eight months old and ready to shift for himself with the other colts. RAISING SHEEP Every boy on the farm ought to have his own particular hobby in the line of stock. It is far easier to keep account of your own if they are entirely different from the animals raised by the other members of the family. An account should be kept with the animals, to learn whether they pay or not. It is only by this business-like method that the young farmer, or the older one for that matter, can know whether his animals are visitors or boarders. If the mother keeps poultry, the boys pigs, and the father raises horses and cows, then why should not the girls raise sheep? There is room on every fair-sized farm for a flock. There is nothing about the care of sheep that a strong, healthy girl may not do if she is not needed to help with housework. Her father will teach and advise her. Tending sheep is far more healthful occupation and more remunerative than embroidering sofa pillows or knitting "fancy work." Whoever undertakes the sheep raising must know first some of the needs of his favourites. They are grazers. They will glean a good living in stubble fields and crop grass in pastures where cows would starve; they will bite the weeds in the fence corners down to the quick nor leave one stalk to blossom or set seed. They are among the best and cheapest of lawn-mowers, enriching the ground they feed over. They are easy to care for, as they can take care of themselves most of the year. What a joy it is to take a quiet walk over the hills of a Sunday morning to salt the sheep! They are trustful, playful, docile creatures, and their presence undeniably adds to the picture of content and comfort that every homestead should present. While it is true that sheep will keep fat on good pasture with plenty of water and a semi-weekly supply of salt, it is not to be supposed that they can pick up a living the whole year round in a cold climate. They do not need stuffing in cold weather, but they do need plenty of good hay in early winter and nourishing food like bran, oats, barley, and clover hay toward spring. Alfalfa is ideal, but many people succeed with sheep who fail on alfalfa. Sheep will over-feed if not restrained. They should have exercise and fresh air in plenty all winter. They should go out every day to pasture, except during storms, until snow covers the ground. Ewes fed but not over-fed over winter and sheltered under some kind of rain-proof roof will be strong and healthy mothers. A new-born lamb is about as weak and wobbly and inefficient as a human baby. The weakest ones seem bent on dying, but a little coddling and care will put them on their feet. They should be taught how to take nourishment and whoever takes this in hand should use patience and insist that the lesson be learned. I have known of many a good shepherd who sat up late and got up early and visited the sheep at midnight in lambing time and so saved all his lambs. There is something so appealing about a lamb that no owner would like to remember that he slept comfortably through a stormy night while a new-born lamb starved in the presence of plenty or was chilled past help while its mother could only bleat helplessly for the slothful shepherd. Lambs should not follow their mothers to pasture until the grass is grown enough to be really long and nourishing. They should be out in the barnyard on warm, sunny days, and not weaned until near six months old. After August they will fatten on clover pasture and be ready for market before Christmas. Sheep are sheared in spring, about April first, but this depends on the climate. Most farm crops are fall or winter affairs. Like maple sirup, wool is a spring cash crop, which is a great convenience. An eight-pound fleece is worth nearly half as much as the sheep it grew on, and the lambs will soon be worth as much as their mothers. So we have a double chance to make good in sheep raising. Sheep are so hardy, so harmless, and so easily managed that the only wonder is that any farm is without a flock. Men who know say that the farm dog is to blame for this. How about the farm dog, boys and girls? Honestly, now, is your dog worth his keep? No matter how much better he is than the neighbours' dog. How about your dog? You like him, of course, but is he a loafing, worthless, sneaking, sheep-killing dog? Look between his teeth before you deny that he is a sheep-killer. Are you a good citizen if you let such a dog run at large? If you raise sheep you will need a dog, and remember that a good collie will protect your sheep from all the roving, bloodthirsty dogs in the neighbourhood. [Illustration: Photograph by Julian A. Dimock. "Big Boy Blue" Looks After the Sheep] RAISING GOATS Boys, are you really serious about making some money? Do you live on a farm where the hills are too steep to plow and the only crop that amounts to anything is the crop of stones? Are those steep hills covered with brush and good-for-nothing trees that look too hopeless? Don't grind your teeth and say "There's no chance here. I'm going to buy a ticket for the city." Glance at the heading on this page and don't smile derisively nor turn on to some new chapter. "Goats! Humph!" If you never heard of anybody making anything out of goats, here's your chance to hear something new. People can and do make money out of goats and so can you. Why, it is too easy! Here, read these facts about goats: Goats _prefer_ rough, rocky, wild, and hilly land. Goats _always thrive_ if allowed considerable range. Hilly, _bushy_ land is _best_ for goats. The feed of _one_ cow will keep _twelve_ goats. _Temperature_ need not be considered. Goats thrive where temperatures are _extreme_. The Angora goat _fleece_ is cut annually and is _very valuable_. We import over one million pounds a year. Skins of common goats are in _great demand_ for leather. We imported sixteen million dollars' worth in 1898 and more every year since. _Goat manure_ is as valuable as that of sheep. Angora _venison_ cannot be told from lamb. Goats _scorn_ to eat fresh grass if _coarse weeds_ like wild carrot, mullein, dock, etc., are in sight. _Every part_ of a goat is _salable_. Fleece, milk, cheese, skin, flesh, tallow, bones, hoofs, horns, and manure. Goats _improve land_. They are "lifelong scavengers," and can put land covered with useless underbrush into shape for pasture more cheaply and more quickly than dynamite. A herd of _common goats_ can be built up in _a few years_. They breed at one year and usually have twins. Goats are _hardy_; less subject to disease than sheep. A good goat is a _money-maker_. These statements are quoted directly from the writings of men and women of experience. They have no goats to sell, so you can take their word. The requirements for successful goat raising are few and easy to provide. They are these: (1) _Space._--Goats do not take kindly to herding nor to small fields. If they have only a small enclosure they are likely spend more time trying to get at what is outside than in browsing. To meet a wire fence every few steps makes a goat restive. (2) _Housing._--Goats must be kept dry overhead and under foot. The shelter for goats should be high and dry. They will not thrive in wet, marshy land, nor keep well if their shed is muddy. They dislike filth and will not stand in it nor touch soiled food. They prefer to sleep on the roof of the barn, you know, but if a clean, dry bed in an airy place is provided they will not roost so high. (3) _Water._--Plenty of clean fresh water should always be available. If you can supply these three essentials, you are ready to raise goats. There are two well-marked lines of business in goat raising. Which shall you follow? Angoras are raised for their fleece; common goats either for leather or for milk. Angoras are not much good for milk and their skins are not so fine nor durable as those of common goats. The Angora is free from the offensive odour of common male goats. The greatest demand for goat products in our markets to-day is for Angora fleece and for common goat skins. The other products, like flesh, hoof, bones and horns, tallow, cheese, milk, and manure, can easily be marketed and should pay most of the expenses. The main products should be clear profit. BUILDING UP A HERD There is a slow way and a quick way to build up a herd of goats. As usual the slow way requires less capital. If you have but a few dollars you will have to begin with cheap goats, but to keep a poor goat is poor business. You can buy good, common goats for one dollar and a half or two dollars each and with time and patience build up from them a herd of Angoras by crossing. If capital is easier to command than years of time, you will begin with good Angora does which cost from eight dollars upward. If you begin with common ones, choose white, short-haired individuals. Keep only the best does in your herd for breeders; you will soon learn how to judge them by the quality of their fleece and the price it brings you per pound. In five or six years it is possible to build up a herd of fine mohair producers from common goats. The hair grows coarser as the goat passes six years of age, so it does not pay to keep one too long. Buy young does. A goat's teeth tell its age up to the fourth year. If all the eight teeth are full-sized the goat is certainly four to five years old, it may be more. CARE OF KIDS A young kid is not a very sturdy youngster. Good care should be given both doe and kid at this time. A warm shelter should be provided. May is the best month for kids to come, in the North. Extra feeding should be given the doe and plenty of water. If possible each doe with her kid should have a separate stall or pen so that the doe will know her own young one. If you can arrange that each pen in the kid stable can have an outdoor entrance the mother can come and go at will. A board a foot to eighteen inches high across this entrance will keep the kid from following his mother. When about six weeks old the kid will jump this board. By this token you will know that he is strong enough to jump about over the stones wherever his mother leads him. FOOD OF GOATS The comic papers may be right about some things, but they are wrong about goats. A diet of newspapers and tin cans will not keep a goat healthy nor produce a salable fleece of fine mohair. Angoras like common goats are browsers, not grazers like sheep. They eat coarse vegetation such as weedy growths and the twigs and leaves of underbrush, rather than grass. Besides this, particularly in winter, they should have other food. Leaves, table scraps like potato and fruit parings, turnips and other roots, and cabbage are all acceptable if clean. Parings and roots should be washed; if you expect goats to eat swill you deserve to be disappointed. Dirty carrots, rotten apples, sour or mouldy refuse do not tempt a self-respecting pig; much less an Angora. Oats in the sheaf are very good fodder for them. Grain is not required if clover hay, alfalfa, or cowpea stubble is plentiful. Too much grain makes a lazy goat and a lazy goat will not produce a handsome fleece. Bran may be fed for a change, and a little cotton seed or corn may be given, but sparingly. Leaves or other coarse food should be given plentifully at night, as Angoras relish a midnight lunch beside their three square meals a day. A supply of rock salt should be kept where goats can get it whenever they want it. If it is given only at long intervals they may over-indulge. Water should be warmed slightly in winter if practicable. SHELTER AND ENCLOSURE Hardy as they are, goats cannot stand exposure to storms. They abhor wet. Cold rain or sleet storms are really dangerous to their health. Goats will go the long way round every time rather than get into mud. Mud is very bad for the fleece, too. Buyers refuse to pay for dirt. Goat shelters should be dry, but they need not be tight except overhead. In fact many goats die of suffocation when huddled in close quarters. If the roof is just high enough from the floor for goats to go under, it can be open all round except perhaps on the side where the prevailing wind and storms would beat in. No other animals should be quartered with goats. Experience shows this. Goats prefer hard beds. Chaff or straw enough to absorb the liquid manure is all that should be put on the floor. Trees are the best shade from the hot sun, but if none are growing in the goats' pasture other shelter should be provided. It is true that goats thrive best when unconfined. But this does not mean that your goats should be allowed to range on other people's domains. They are a very real nuisance in orchards and gardens, and if your place is small it is no place for goats. A fence need not be very high to restrain a flock of goats. They are climbers and once in a while there is one who would take a prize for the "high jump." Ordinarily a fence three and a half feet high is all that is necessary. Boards, rails, or wire will make a good goat fence. It should go close to the ground to prevent crawling under. If wire is used, take care that the mesh is too small for a goat's head. You must take your market's demands into consideration when deciding whether to breed Angoras or common goats. An Angora fleece weighs from four to eight pounds. This can be cut every year for ten or twelve years. The common goat's skin is valuable, but he has only one! This makes the Angora look like the best business proposition, although requiring more capital to start, as the care required is about the same and the value of by-products practically equal. THE COMMON GOAT Two arguments may be brought forward in favour of the common goat. In the first place, the herd increases much faster as the Angora doe usually has only one kid, while twins are the rule with common goats. There is a decidedly growing demand for goats' milk near large cities, especially for hospitals. We all know how commonly goats' milk is used in foreign countries. We Americans have a rather silly prejudice against it, but we will get over this when we realize how often goats' milk saves the lives of babies and invalids. The following statements are vouched for by physicians and others of experience: [Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke. Feeding the Goats] Goats' milk is more easily digested than cows' milk. Analysis shows goats' milk has a marked similarity to human mothers' milk and is more readily assimilated by infants. Goats' milk is generally claimed to be free at all times from germs of tuberculosis. Cannot be told from cow's milk by taste. Excellent for coffee and in cooking. The goat is claimed by its friends to be greatly the superior of the cow for milk, for the following reasons: The goat is naturally cleanly. The goat is easy to keep clean because of her small size. Goats can be and are put into tubs and scrubbed and sterilized when being used as foster-mothers in baby hospitals. But no such treatment is possible with a cow. A goat can easily be taken from place to place with a family. A cow could not be transported without great expense. Goats eat far less than cows. Eight milch goats can be kept on the food of one milch cow. The same quality of food should be furnished. I believe there is a great future in America for the milch goat. TWENTY ACRES REDEEMED: THE STORY OF A SATISFACTORY EXPERIMENT WITH GOATS IN NEW ENGLAND In January, 1902, I bought seventy-five Angoras, as I had about twenty acres of brush land that I wanted to reclaim. I kept the goats in sheds until May. I had to put up a wire fence to keep them from visiting my neighbours, and in early May turned them into the first section, about one half of the piece. I built a shed for them to stay in nights and during rains. The work they did was marvellous. In less than a month this section had the appearance of having been struck by a cyclone, and it was evident that the goats would soon require more territory. Consequently I wired the other section of this twenty-acre piece, and when finished allowed them the range of the other piece, to which they marched in military precision daily, returning to the shed at night or during the approach of rain, which they seemed to foretell as accurately as a barometer. It was not long before it developed that they would require fresher fields or I must reduce my flock, as this ground was all that I had of that kind. Consequently I sold all but twenty-five, retaining twelve registered does, twelve kids, and one buck. For the does I paid ten dollars each, and my buck, which was a kid, cost twenty-five dollars. I had some grades that I sold at eight dollars and eight dollars and twenty-five cents each, and also some wether kids that I sold at five dollars each. I have this same flock now, with the addition of ten kids born this spring from these twelve does, which had twelve kids, two having died, leaving thirty-five now in the field. During the past winter I have handled more than six hundred that were sent here from the West. The test that I was anxiously watching for at the advent of spring was to see the effect of their work done last season, and I must say I am very agreeably surprised. In the first lot fenced there is scarcely a brush left, no briers, and not even Canada thistles. The entire field between the rocks came out this spring with beautiful, thick, green, grassy foliage, mostly white clover. On the other lot, part of the brush tried hard to show its tenacity of life by coming out with green leaves, but at this writing the shrubs have fallen prey to the devouring Angora, and green grass is coming out in about all the ground that they have trod. This alone to me is a satisfactory commercial experience. W. O. CORNING RAISING CALVES Feeding the calves is always the boy's job or the girl's. Usually the milk is prepared by their mother, but the responsibility for the calves' welfare is left to the youngsters. If you look upon calf feeding as nothing but a chore to get over with as soon as possible, you get very little fun out of it. But if you see in those calves the beginning of your own fortune or the foundation of your college fund they look different. Whether the calves are yours or your father's, they are living creatures, capable of appreciating proper care and repaying it. They are just as capable of showing neglect. If you are going to feed the calves, make a study of calf nature, know what kind of animals you want to make of them, find out how to accomplish your purpose, and then keep a straight course. Find out first the parentage of the calf. Then inquire if it is to be a beef animal or a dairy cow. Knowing its past and its future you can provide wisely for the present. A new-born calf should stay with the mother from twelve to twenty-four hours. The fluid she gives first is not milk, but is just what the calf needs to prepare its digestive organs for milk. If left longer with the mother it will be more bother to train. The calf should be fed sweet, whole milk for two weeks. If put immediately onto a diet of skim-milk, indigestion is likely to result, and the calf gets a setback from which it may never recover. When a young calf is taken from its mother, it knows nothing about drinking. The best practice is to let it fast for from twelve to twenty-four hours till it gets good and hungry. It is then in a state of mind to learn anything rather than go without any longer. [They treat human babies the same way if need be.] If started right, a young calf learns to drink in a day or two. Holding the pail with one to two quarts of warm, fresh, whole milk in your left hand, stand beside the calf and put your right hand over its nose. Insert two fingers into its mouth. Did you ever feel anything so funny? The calf will suck your fingers hungrily. Gently push its nose down into the warm milk with your fingers still in its mouth. After a while gently pull out one finger. If he misses it put it back and later try again. In a few lessons the calf will drink readily. Patience and kindness must be exercised if one little scamp proves dull. A calf that gets a slap for not drinking will come to think that the two disagreeable things always come together and his education and his growth will be delayed. For the first ten to twelve days the calf should have about five quarts of milk a day, divided into three feedings. This should be warmed to blood heat, ninety-five to a hundred degrees Fahr. At two weeks you can begin to substitute skim-milk. A half-pint a day at first is about right. Watch the effect on the calf. Increase the quantity gradually, until at a month or six weeks old the calf is getting seven to eight quarts per day of skim-milk, always warm and perfectly sweet. The worst disease of calf-hood is scours, and this disease is caused by feeding cold, unclean, or sour milk. I'd be ashamed to have a calf of mine sick with the scours! To cure it, add lime-water to the milk or mix a teaspoonful of dried blood in a small amount of water, then stir into the milk. Or an ounce of wheat bran or kaffir corn meal stirred into the milk will be helpful. Some recommend oat or corn meal fed dry, or a little linseed meal mixed in a little water and then stirred into the milk. If your calves are all heifers to be added to the dairy herd, you do not want them to lay on great amounts of fat, but to grow strong and be able to digest great amounts of hay. If they are to be beef, they need more fat. Grain is fattening, especially corn. Begin to feed hay as soon as the calf will take it. Clean, dry clover is best, but any good hay will help prepare their stomachs for the work which is expected of them later. Milk and hay are best for growing calves. Grain, oil-meal, and pasture furnish variety. Have you seen a wild-eyed cow being literally dragged behind a wagon, scared past endurance and behaving like a savage creature? There is not the slightest excuse for that sort of thing. What fun it is to slip a halter on a calf to-day and let him get accustomed to it; to-morrow lead him about a little with coaxing. In a few days he will lead like an old horse. He will learn to expect only kindness from his feeder and trainer. It would be well to accustom the calves to the presence of your dog, too. There are men who think a frightened animal is a humourous sight. But such a man is "no gentleman" and I certainly would never think of trusting him to drive my horses, or milk my cows, or even feed my pigs. Our calves were kept in an old orchard, convenient to the house, with good pasture, plenty of sun and shade, and a suitable fence. A shed for wet weather is essential, for a clean, dry bed must be provided. Calves have no way of cleaning themselves, therefore they must not be allowed to get dirty. Milk should be fed until the calves are four months old, and may be continued longer. After the first few weeks, when they have begun to take some hay and grass, the milk may be given in two feedings. Water should be given freely especially in hot weather. If your pasture has a clear running brook, your calves are in luck and so are you, for carrying water for a bunch of calves is no joke. A garden hose or a series of v-shaped troughs from pump to pen saves a lot of time and backache. A calf whose mother has a record for milk rich in butter fat and a sire of good family has in it the possibilities of a prize-winner. Whether she will earn seventy-seven cents a year over and above her keep, like those one thousand and twenty poor cows that Illinois boys and girls know about, or thirty dollars a year, like the twenty-five good cows, depends very much on the care she gets. No amount of care given to a cow will make up for neglect to the calf. There's a big responsibility on the boys and girls of the farms, for calf feeding is their job. THE STORY OF TWO BOYS AND A COW The suggestion that the suburban home might be a money-making investment would strike the average suburbanite as ridiculous. But a few moments of careful calculation may put preconceived notions to flight and show how considerable money may be made--or saved, which is quite as important. Some years ago a family, which included two boys of eleven and thirteen years, took a house in the outskirts of a good-sized town, about thirty minutes' ride from the city. The father was a buyer for an importing house, and absent from home for several months of each year. His salary was large, as such salaries go, but there were seven children to be raised and educated, several of them with marked abilities that needed the very best possible instruction to bring them to their highest development. The boys spent one summer vacation at the country house of an old friend of the family and got ideas. They talked them over, went back to their friend for counsel, then turned their batteries on their parents to gain their consent to an important new enterprise. Attached to the house was about an acre of ground, three fourths of which was old pasture grown to weeds and a tangle of brier bushes. By promising to work for a farmer during the coming vacation the boys arranged to have the field, which they cleared and made ready, ploughed, harrowed, and marked in the most thorough fashion. They planted it with the best variety of mid-season sweet corn. The farmer cultivated it, and the boys hoed it and kept it in almost perfect condition. The season was very dry, but they laid a hose so as to start a stream of water into the lines between the rows of corn; then with a good pump they filled the trenches they had dug and completely irrigated the entire field. The crop was a great success. The boys picked and sold at retail prices to private customers twelve hundred dozen ears of the finest corn raised in that section. As it averaged twenty cents a dozen, it footed up the very comfortable sum of two hundred and forty dollars with small ears and left-overs quite sufficient for the use of the family. Two weeks from the first picking the stalks were cut and set up to cure for the cow that was really the object of their endeavour. The friend of the family selected the cow. She was a fine, fresh, young Jersey and Alderney cross--a high-grade animal, good for quality as well as quantity of milk and cream. There was small, well-built barn on the place, and here the cow was stabled. Cleanliness was the first, last, and intermediate law in and about the place. The boys had clothes expressly for barn wear and white aprons with long sleeves to put on when milking. Such unusual attention to details attracted customers until the demand went far ahead of the supply. For the first six months the cow gave, on an average, sixteen quarts a day, fourteen of which were sold to persons who came for it, thereby saving all trouble and cost of delivery. Two quarts were kept for the family. For the next four months the sales were twelve quarts a day. Feed for the cow cost one dollar a week, besides hay and corn-stalks. The cow was bought late in July, and by the first of August the milk trade was well established. After ten months' experience the boys made up a statement to show to their father when he returned from a trip to Europe. CREDIT 1,200 doz. corn at 20 cts. a doz. $240.00 Stalks 20.00 Milk, 184 days, 14 qts. at 8 cts. a qt. 206.08 " 120 " 12 " " " " " 115.20 -------- $581.28 DEBIT 1 cow, $60.00; 1 ton hay, $18.00; feed, $40.00 $118.00 -------- Profit, cash on hand $463.28 Value of 1 cow 60.00 -------- Total assets $523.28 NELSON S. STONE RAISING PIGS When I was nine years old I laid the foundation of my college fund. My grandmother had a flock of twenty or thirty geese which were kept for the pillows and feather beds they filled. Great was my delight when grandma told me that she would give me a pig if I would help her pick the geese. Helping her would have been reward enough, for I was a great grandma girl, but the ambition of my childhood was to own a pig. Did not my elder brother now own a beautiful mare and colt, and had he not started with a pig? Wednesday was the day set for plucking the geese and all my leisure on Monday and Tuesday was spent in building a pen. Plenty of material from which to construct this edifice was found about the place. I wisely located it at the back of the henhouse which left me only three sides to build. One corner was roofed with the best boards I could find, for I didn't wish my precious pig to suffer from sunstroke or have his bed transformed into a mud-hole when it rained. When the geese were picked to the last feather they could spare, I went with grandmother to select my pig from the litter of sucklings now ready to begin taking their food from the trough. She generously allowed me my choice, and if I did not get the pick of the bunch it was not her fault. I wonder how a girl of nine succeeded in transporting a lusty pig the three quarters of a mile between grandmother's house and ours. I should not like to undertake it now, but my confidence in my ability to do what I wanted done in those days was unlimited. A piece of rope, a stout cudgel, a pair of strong, young arms, and a high disregard of appearances sustained me. I got my treasure home and into his pen--no mean triumph even as viewed by my elder brother who had passed by the pig stage and even the calf stage and entered into the exalted realm of horse ownership. My father was not the "your shoat, my hog" kind of a father. There came a time when he used to say that the girls owned all the cattle and the boys all the horses on the farm. When my pig grew up, I traded it to my father for a fine calf. This calf was the nucleus of my "herd," for I never owned a horse. All through my college course when I needed money, I used to write to father to sell "Rowena" or "Corinne" or "Natty Bumpo." (We named our calves after the people we read about.) There was always a buyer ready at hand and the price paid was strictly in accord with the market quotations. The cow which bought my graduation cap and gown was the last of her race, "Betsy Bobbett," one of the great-great-granddaughters of the calf for which I traded that original pig. No one can deny or doubt that there is profit in pig raising. Pork "on the hoof" is ten cents a pound even as I write these words, with prospects good for going higher. A profit of one hundred per cent. is recorded by growers when the price is only six cents a pound. With the one exception of poultry, hogs bring the quickest returns for investment of any live stock. It is poor economy to keep any animal which cannot pay its board, except for sentiment, and few people keep pigs on that account. If I were beginning again I should not trade my pig for a calf but should raise pigs. In selecting a mother for my family of hogs I should care more about her individual character than about her breed. A good brood sow ought to have a good disposition, which means a good digestion, and respond quickly to kindness. Nervous, irritable sows often develop vicious habits. A short, broad face, a wide space between the eyes, a deep chest, broad back, and large hams with rather short legs are all considered good points. A good-natured, healthy pig has a bright, friendly manner when accosted and a look of shrewd though guileless interest in his master. "Dirty as a pig" is a slander on the pig and a censure on its owner. Pigs and goats are more particular about their beds than either horses or cows. Success with porkers is spelt _c-l-e-a-n-l-i-n-e-s-s_. They like to wallow in the edge of a sluggish stream on a warm day. Well, so do you. Mud is not dirty unless mixed with foul manure and decaying vegetable matter. All feeding troughs, floors, and beds should be thoroughly scraped, swept, and dried if the pigs are to be healthy, happy, and comfortable. Under no other conditions does keeping pigs pay. You will be very fortunate if your young sow's first litter numbers ten or a dozen lively youngsters. Six or eight will not be bad if she raises them all, and with care she ought to. Improper care and feeding before the pigs come are usually responsible for any cannibalistic habits developed by the sow. Corn alone is not a good ration except for fattening. Used with wheat, middlings, bran, and ground oats, with plenty of clover or alfalfa hay, corn is all right. The sow should be put into a pen by herself before farrowing time. The best bedding is clean wheat or rye straw, which should not be left until it is wet and filthy. Sprinkle air-slaked lime in the sleeping pen under the fresh bedding. A sick pig means a neglectful owner. Pigs ought to grow fast and without any check. At six months old they should weigh two hundred pounds, an average gain you see, of over a pound a day. With a good, healthy mother little pigs need no extra feeding the first month. The sow should be given nourishing food, bran and ground oats and rye, lots of skim-milk and an abundance of clean, fresh water. If the pigs seem hungry when only a couple of weeks old a little, new trough should be made for them. A small quantity of boiled corn and skim-milk should be put into this trough where the little fellows can get to it but the sow cannot. They may not take much at first, but several hours later the trough should be rinsed and a fresh supply given. Sour, dirty milk may produce serious sickness in young pigs and check growth. The sow will wean them when she gets ready, and they will not know the difference if they get used to their trough early. It is possible to raise and fatten pigs in pens, but it is not economical. Pasture is essential to their best growth. It gives them exercise, and the green food not only nourishes them, but aids in the digestion of the more concentrated foods. The expression, "Pigs in clover," is based on fact. A happy, healthy, money-maker is the pasture-fed pig. He will put on his ten cents' worth a day of bone, muscle and fat at less expense in a clover patch than elsewhere. Alfalfa or cow peas will serve him about as well. Fruit windfalls are good for him, too. If you live on a place where grain or fruit are the main crops and a few cows are kept, you are losing a great opportunity if you are not raising a few pigs. They dispose of the surplus on such farms, as well as the unsalable garden crops and weeds, and pay their board day by day. The owner should keep a close account with his pigs. If they eat what would otherwise be wasted you are so much to the good. What you sell them for, less what you have paid out for food, equals what you get for your time. RAISING CHICKENS Success with chickens does not depend upon the breed, nor upon any patent devices for hatching and brooding, nor on any special mixture of feed. You can find frenzied advertisers trying to disprove these statements, but do not your own observations bear me out? However, I venture to say that with common-sense and gumption, and a real liking for chickens, success in this line is nearly certain. There are dozens of good stories of boys who have begun chicken raising at twelve to fourteen years of age and have made money at it, beside training themselves at the same time in business methods and efficiency. There are no good reasons why girls also should not succeed. There are certain principles of poultry culture upon which most people agree. These are based on a knowledge of hen nature and are the result of study and experience. We will discuss them under the following heads: 1, Housing and Care; 2, Food and Feeding; 3, Raising Young Stock; 4, Business Methods. HOUSING [Illustration: Frame for eleven-dollar chicken house] This first department properly includes not only the house proper with all its interior fixtures and its care, but the runs, the scratching shed, and all that has to do with the supply of air, warmth and sunshine and the protection of the flock from disease and vermin. No matter how plain and ordinary your chicken house is, the test of your fitness for the business comes with its care, not once a month, but day by day. [Illustration: Chicken house a boy can build] Many people have an idea that the only way to keep hens healthy and productive is to let them range. Of course it is true that chickens on the farm seem to pick up a free living, but it is equally true that, as a general thing, the farmer does not keep any account with his chickens, and if they get into the corn crib or granary he does not know how much grain they eat and how much they waste. If they hide their nests and the eggs spoil, or if they sit and the chicks do not live to get to the barnyard, the owner is unaware of his loss. If, having no house and nest boxes, the hens lay in the weeds, in the wood pile, in the straw stack, in the haymow, it's no loss, for the women and children hunt the eggs and their time isn't worth anything! But do you believe there are any farm hens whose portraits will appear in the big magazines? Did you see that one last year in _Collier's Weekly_? Do you suppose there are many 200-eggers on farms with all their supposed advantages? I don't. But we shall never know, because no accurate records can be kept of chickens that run at large. I shall take it for granted that you expect to begin in a small way with very little to invest. Remember that a few hens pay better per hen than a large number, but on the other hand it takes about as much time to care for a dozen as it does for one hundred. You will therefore look forward with satisfaction to increasing your flock as your capital grows and your time becomes more valuable. Have you a suitable place for chickens? It should be dry, sunny, though with some shade, protected from severe winds and storms. The sun is the greatest purifier and disinfector in the universe, and you must have your house face the south or east if possible. Whether your first house is made of store boxes or of expensive matched lumber the principles are the same. To make the house _dry_ it should be built on well-drained soil and should sit up six inches from the surface of the ground so that air can circulate freely beneath. The only heat in the hen house comes from the hens and the sunshine. Therefore, to make the house _warm_ you should have it small enough so that your hens can generate heat enough to keep warm in winter. The exposure should be such that the sun can get into it. If possible it should be shaded by trees or other buildings against storms and summer sun. Every hen needs from four to five square feet of floor space and only eight to ten cubic feet of air space. Square houses are more economical to build. Figure out with diagrams and drawings to scale just how large a building is needed to house your flock when you get it. How low at the back can you make it without bumping your head when you go inside? How high in front must it be to provide space for your door and window? What shaped roof will be easiest to build, most economical of lumber, and most satisfactory as a rain shed? [Illustration: Self-feed grit box] Consider many things in the selection of material. Rough boards are a little cheaper, but how they do ruin good paint and whitewash brushes! Matched boards are cheaper and tighter than unmatched boards with strips nailed over the cracks. For the roof some kind of waterproof roofing material will keep the house warm and dry. If you have ever seen a chicken house with a cement floor you will be determined to have that kind. At first the expense may be greater than for boards, but if you live in your own home you can afford to put a cement floor in the chicken house sooner or later, especially if you do the work yourself. If you are a renter you will not feel like putting in expensive, permanent improvements. It will be warm and dry, saving many losses from wet feet and diseases brought on by dampness and cold. It is easy to clean. It will do away with the rat problem, and last forever. You can put it in after the house is built. Figure out the cost of a layer of cement one and one half inches thick laid on a bed of gravel and small stones. The cement is mixed as follows: one part Portland cement, three parts clean sand, five parts gravel. Mix the cement pretty thick, tamp it down conscientiously until perfectly level, then with a trowel smooth it and smooth it, over and over, until the surface is free from anything like a stone or large pebble. The door to the chicken house should be well hung, easy to open, shut, and lock. The window is to admit light and sunshine, especially the latter. Very small panes may be cheap but they shut out the sun; twelve eight by ten panes in a single sash make a window of convenient size. The window should be placed so that the sun can get way back to the very farthest corner of the house. A high window is better for this than a low one. The diagram shows why. [Illustration: The windows should be placed high enough to let the sun in to the back of the house] Sunshine and exercise are necessary for healthy fowls. They can stand cold weather well, if they are kept dry and active. Scratching sheds or open-front pens provide sunshine and exercise. Scratching for food in the litter keeps hens moving and they get to be very athletic, jumping up to cabbages and fresh meat or grain self-feeders hung just out of reach. Scratching sheds in the North need adjustable curtains of coarse muslin to keep out driving rain, snow, and sleet. The State Agricultural Experiment Station at Orono, Maine, has made valuable studies of curtained sheds, and the use of this form of poultry house has found favour all over the country. [Illustration: Grain self-feeder for fowls] The furniture of the hen house consists of roosts, dropping board, nests, dust box, and utensils to hold ground feed, grit, shell, and water. In making and erecting each piece ask yourself, "Will this be easy to clean?" The roosts should be in the corner farthest from door and window, out of all draughts. There should be enough of them to provide each fowl with six to eight inches of room and they should be set at least a foot apart. Do not have the roosts at different levels. It is hen nature to want the highest place, and they will fight and crowd and worry each other if there is a higher roost. Pieces of two by two, with the upper edge rounded, make good perches. As the floor of the chicken house is also the dining table for the occupants it is extremely important that there should be a well-built platform under the roosts for droppings, in order to keep the floor clean. There should be space enough between this board and the perches to allow you to clean it frequently without difficulty. [Illustration: Corner in chicken house, showing up-to-date furniture] If you ever tried to clean a range of wall nests you know why the up-to-date poultry men are discarding them as unsanitary. Many are now placing their nests under the dropping board. They are out of the way here, not too high for the hens, nor too low for you. Square nests, fourteen inches each way and at least a foot from the droppings platform, are satisfactory. A long door hinged at the top and hooked at the bottom should form the back of a row of nests. You open this to gather eggs and to clean the nests. The front, where the hens enter, should be in behind under the platform. As it is rather dark in there, the hens are pleased, because they like to preserve the old-time fiction that they are hiding their nests away. The nest should be five or six inches deep. Straw is the best nesting material. Short hay is next best. A hen cannot be happy with excelsior twisted round her toes and an unhappy hen is an unproductive hen. The dust bath must be provided. Most baths are wet but hens are dry cleaners. The dust bath must be dry to be of any use; the lighter, finer, and dryer the better. A sunny corner of the house or shed is the best place. Sifted coal ashes and street dust is a good mixture. Allow just as much space for the runs as you can afford to fence. If possible divide the enclosure in two and keep one part seeded to clover while the chickens are in the other. The heavier fowls usually make very little trouble flying over a fence of five foot wire netting even though it have no top strip. Clipping one wing may be necessary to restrain some individuals. Small trees in the runs are most desirable. Plant there such small fruit trees as plum or cherry and the hens will help to keep insects in check. [Illustration: Covered dust bath in sunny corner] One of the biggest items of work in the chicken business is keeping the house clean. The health, comfort, happiness, and the very life of the hens, as well as the business, depend on this. Many a boy with a sort of natural knack at carpentry can build a chicken house out of second-hand lumber or out of a couple of piano boxes. But it takes a long distance form of gumption to keep any chicken house sanitary. The droppings should be cleaned up often and right here a word to the wise. Hen manure is a valuable garden fertilizer _if_ it is sprinkled with land plaster while fresh. Otherwise it may become very nearly worthless. So if you have a garden or can dispose of your fertilizer every day or two you can make something extra on this by-product by a semi-weekly cleaning of roosts and droppings board. Litter is not dirt in the chicken house but it ought to be dry, fresh litter. It is not enough that the house should look clean. The obvious dirt, bad as it is, does less harm than the almost invisible vermin that lurk in the crevices of roosts, nests, and walls. Whitewash is a very wholesome finish for the interior and should be put on at least twice a year. This is not enough however. Every square inch of surface should be wet thoroughly with some liquid which is sure death to vermin. Spray or brush may be used. I wonder if this could be done too often in hot weather. Once a month is probably often enough if good insect powder is used on the hens and in the nests. In winter the vermin are less active, but it is not safe to neglect them even then. FOOD AND FEEDING Hens are known to be omnivorous. They must have animal and mineral as well as vegetable food. They need these things in variable quantities depending on their occupation. The hen's main duties are growing, laying, brooding, moulting, fattening. She needs a great variety of these three classes of foods throughout her life. Study your flock, read of the experiences of others in magazines, bulletins, and books, follow their advice, and work out mixtures and methods to suit your conditions after you gain experience. The hens will give you many a hint. Let them out of the pen now and then just before feeding time and see how they make for the grass. In the evening the earthworms are near the surface. The hens devour them greedily. You can get the flock back easily if you have a call, whistle, or other signal which they associate with grain-scattering, but they will go in at twilight anyhow. Sitting hens need less food because of their sedentary occupation. The main thing is to keep food and fresh water where they can get it when they want it, or see that they go to it regularly. Broody hens are a trial. The common practices of starving them, ducking them, and otherwise subjecting them to indignities, are little short of cruel and often fail to cure their natural desire to sit. Stop and reason not with, but about, the hen. Having laid all the eggs nature has provided during the spring, the hen's instinct is to brood and rear a nestful. She has worked hard and maybe is run down physically. Feel her bones. What you want from her is more eggs. Instead of wasting time "getting even" with her for being a nuisance, try some rational way of breaking up her desire to sit. Remove her immediately from the nest to a coop. Instead of starving her give her a plentiful supply of the diet you have found best for layers. She will probably soon begin to lay again if treated sensibly. [Illustration: Racks over feed pans prevent waste and soiling food] Moulting is a perfectly natural process but it occurs at the end of the season and the chickens are often in a low state of vitality. For this reason it is a critical time. Study the hens. Find out what their physical condition is at moulting season. The best condition is half-way between fat and thin. If they are thin, provide a wholesome diet rich in fatty foods, as corn, oats, sunflower, and some flaxseed, with bran, meat scraps, and clover. If heavy with fat from too rich a diet in the summer, less of the fat-producing foods makes a better moulting diet. The quality and flavour of the eggs and meat depend pretty much on the kind of food given. If filth is taken into the hen's system it affects her general health and efficiency. There is an opinion that hens and pigs are by nature dirty. We will not stop to argue that, but your hens will eat nothing but clean food if nothing else is provided. That's certain! Look to your feeding racks and watering pans. Use water freely and a stiff brush or cloth. Clean water is positively necessary. All sorts of diseases lurk in dirty houses, filthy runs, and stale, unclean feeding and drinking pans. Regularity in feeding is important. Do not go into this business if you expect frequently to be otherwise employed at feeding time. The main feedings are two, morning and late afternoon, for whole or cracked grain scattered in the litter. Ground grain should be there, in a hopper, at all hours in summer and all the afternoon the rest of the year. The exercise they must take to get the grain keeps the hens from getting fat and lazy. A busy hen is a happy hen and a productive hen. Hang a half cabbage up just out of reach in the house on a stormy day and see them train for the standing broad jump! If you can get what is known as "the haslet," really the lungs, heart, and liver of a porker or lamb, you can suspend this in the same way and they will work all the better for it. RAISING YOUNG CHICKENS [Illustration: Model chicken coop--open on pleasant days] It is poor practice to set your hens in the chicken house. Prepare as many fresh nests as you expect to need. Put them in the cellar, unused shed, under the porch, or any convenient and protected place. Doors of wire netting or slats are a great convenience. When a hen is broody, take her off the nest the first night and put her into the new place with an artificial egg or two. Ten to one she will stay all right. If not, do not waste time with her. When assured that her mind is unalterably made up, give her thirteen eggs and close the door on her again. Set two or three the same day and later combine the flocks under one hen. Select the eggs with reference to their shape, size, and quality of shell. Misshapen, very large, or very small eggs or those with thin shells are worthless for setting. Set the eggs of the best layers. Every morning take sitters off nests, leave food and water for them, and return in half an hour. Usually they are all back in their places in less time than that. If not, you can replace and shut them in again. In eighteen to twenty-one days the eggs will hatch. Probably more little chicks die from lice than from any other cause. Preventive measures must begin early. Get fresh, dry insect powder and treat the nest and hen about the third, the ninth, and the fifteenth day of incubation. Rub the powder all through the feathers. Fine dust obstructs the breathing pores of the lice and kills them. When you take the chicks from the nest examine the head, neck, and vent regions of every one. If lice are present a drop of melted lard will put an end to them. Constant vigilance and nothing short of it, will prevent death from lice. [Illustration: Prop the door open, thus, in rain, wind, or too hot sun] A good home-made lice powder, costing only about four cents a pound, may be made as follows: Mix together one quarter pint crude carbolic acid (90 per cent. pure), and three quarters of a pint of gasolene. Stir into this enough plaster of Paris to take up the liquid, (about two and one half pounds). Mix thoroughly and rub through a wire mosquito screen to break the lumps. This can be used to dust through the feathers, the day after it is made. Keep in a tight jar or box. This powder is the invention of an expert in poultry husbandry. The coops for hen and chicks need not be ponderous, but they should be rain proof. A coop two and one half feet square with removable roof and floor is not too heavy to handle and answers every purpose. A wire netting run three or four feet long attached to each coop is necessary and this combination will house a hen and from fifteen to twenty chickens. [Illustration: Closed for the night. Vermin-proof, weather-proof. Screen-covered ventilator on one side] [Illustration: Bottom of model coop can be cleaned by lifting up the coop] All the food a young chick needs the first twenty-four hours is provided by nature. After that it is "up to you." Their first meal may be hard-boiled eggs minced finely, shells and all, and mixed with oatmeal or custard made of milk and eggs baked hard, or it may be baked and crumbled corn bread. By the third day they will be ready for raw broken grain. There are many good commercial kinds: less trouble than making your own mixtures. The chicks will learn to scratch for this in a week or two. The hen is their teacher. Fine grit, charcoal, and clean water must be kept where they can get what they want. Soft food should not be fed in unlimited quantities; give what they will eat in five or ten minutes, then take it away. They are likely to over-eat of wet mashes, but what they have to work for is not likely to give them indigestion. When chickens are two months old they no longer need wet mash. They should now have access to food whenever they want it. A mixture of cracked corn, wheat, beef scrap, bone, grit, shell, and other grains, with dry middlings and bran, may be put into a slatted self-feeder, like the illustration, easily constructed by yourself. It is not much trouble to see that this is never empty. If fed only at intervals they rush at you, bolt the biggest grains, stuff their crops, crowd away weak or modest ones; result, some are under-fed, others are over-fed. If food is kept where they can get it whenever they happen to think of it they take a reasonable amount, then visit the growing clover or grass, pick up a casual pebble, take a drink of water, scratch out a worm, and return to the feed tray, all in natural course of the day's work. You will want to get rid of most of your young cockerels as soon as they are marketable. Broilers bring highest prices. To put them in tip-top condition they should be fattened for about two to three weeks when they are four months old. There is nothing better for fattening than a mash made of equal parts finely ground corn meal and wheat middlings with one fourth the quantity of meat meal. This should be wet with sour skim-milk or buttermilk and fed in a semi-liquid condition, about the consistency of pancake batter. Ground oats may be added. The product is known in the highest priced city hotels as "milk fed" or even "cream fed" chicken. If you can get skim-milk cheap why not buy a bunch of young cockerels and stuff them for market? They have been known to put on a pound for every five pounds of this mixture eaten. BUSINESS METHODS The day you drive your first nail into what is to be your chicken house you should start an account. Every item should go down, cost of materials, cost of stock, cost of feed. Economize where you can by utilizing vacant space for growing clover for summer feed and some root crop like mangolds for winter supply. Apples are fine in winter for hens. You can often get bushels of windfalls for the picking. Sunflowers are easy to grow and their heads hold a tremendous lot of chicken feed. Table scraps ground with a hand mill vary the hen's diet, but do avoid sloppy messes. There are two sides to every account. If you charge the chickens with what they cost you, it is only fair to yourself and to them to credit them with the eggs and meat they furnish, as well as with increase of stock, etc. [Illustration: Trap-nest open. The hen's weight shuts the door behind her] In every flock there are some idlers. They lay only a hundred or so eggs, they leave their eggs too long when sitting, or they never put on any weight. You want to be rid of all such. You can mark the bad sitters, and send them to the pot, as well as those whose habits are such as to make them a nuisance. But you need to know which fowls lay the biggest and best eggs and which lay the largest number. For market in our country where eggs are sold by the dozen it is numbers that count, but for breeding you want eggs of good size and shape. You also want to set the eggs of the good layers. These eggs taste no better in cake or omelet, but by careful selection you can breed a strain of extra good layers, right in your hen house. The device known as a trap-nest is the thing you will need if you go at it scientifically. You want it in winter, too, to prevent killing your best hens for potpie, while the idlers cheerfully eat your grain without recompense. The simpler the mechanism of the trap-nest the better. It must stand open until the hen enters, then close without frightening her. Most of them keep the hen a prisoner until you go and examine the nest, credit the hen by her leg-band number, and release her. By following the drawings in the bulletins of the New York and Maine Experiment Stations referred to in the list of bulletins on chickens you can construct your own trap-nests. [Illustration: Trap-nest closed after hen has gone in] There are people who claim that "common chickens" or mixed breeds are hardier than pure bred fowls and better all around producers. How many can show records to make good that claim? American boys and girls who go into chicken raising will want to breed from good pure stock. Nothing is too good for them. Did you ever hear any one show any enthusiasm when passing a flock of mongrels? Contrast this with the delight you and all your friends take in the sight of a hundred fowls all white, all red, all spangled, all black, all piebald, all blue, or all speckled, as alike as peas in a pod! I vote for the pure stock every time. You can keep it pure and strong by exchanging cockerels with other breeders of the same variety and with similar ideals and practices. Keeping chickens isn't mere child's play. There's lots to be done. You must be carpenter, gardener, breeder, merchant, and even doctor, all rolled into one. But there is fun in it and profit in it. Better than all, there is a satisfaction in doing a good job and doing it well, and it keeps a boy out of doors where he belongs if he's a healthy boy. EGG RECORDS HOUSE NO. MATCHED BIRD NO. PEN NO. VARIETY +======+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+=====+====+ | DATE |NOV.|DEC.|JAN.|FEB.|MAR.|APR.|MAY |JUNE|JULY|AUG.|SEPT.|OCT.| +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 1 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 2 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 3 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 4 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 5 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 6 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 7 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 8 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 9 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 10 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 11 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 12 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 13 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 14 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 15 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 16 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 17 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 18 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 19 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 20 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 21 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 22 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 23 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 24 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 25 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 26 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 27 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 28 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 29 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 30 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | 31 | | | | | | | | | | | | | +------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |TOTALS+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +======+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+====+=====+====+ The egg record is the up-to-date way of keeping tab on idlers. It goes with the trap-nest. [Illustration: A useful hen gate] As with many other products of home industry the first and best market is the home market. Credit the hens with every pound of meat you furnish for the table and every egg consumed by the family. But you will soon need to extend your market. Across the street, up and down on both sides, you can find people who like "personally conducted" eggs and prefer that the fowls served on their tables should be acquaintances rather than the embalmed kind. You must be business man enough to work up a trade for fresh, clean eggs in attractive packages, and for wholesome meat. It would be a good stroke of business to date your eggs if you know what demand you can depend on. That would help impress the idea of real freshness on the consumer's mind. If you pluck fowls for market it will interest you to know that feathers have a market value. They should be plucked dry and the wing and tail feathers kept separate. Any large city dealer in chickens will probably take your feathers. By-products often make the difference between plus and minus in a year's business. The winner of the first prize of one hundred dollars in the Junior Poultry Contest of the Oregon Agricultural College tells this story: RAISING CHICKENS Boys and girls should raise chickens in the city as well as on the farm because it pays and is a fine occupation. It is a work that never grows tiresome and new experiences are always awaiting you. Various theories are advocated as to the proper manner of feeding and housing to get the best results but simple rules are the best to begin with. Plenty of clean water, clean houses and yards and good feed are needed to get the best results. Spade up a little in the chicken yard every day that is pleasant, but if it is cold and in wet weather provide a scratching shed. Keep the hens busy. Read the bulletins furnished free by the government and the various experiment stations. Also subscribe to a good poultry paper. The ideas you will get from these together with your own experience will make you a successful poultry raiser. By doing all that was stated above I was able to win first prize in the poultry contest just closed. CLARENCE A. HOGAN SUCCESS WITH CHICKENS The contest of the Portland Junior Poultry Association has closed. It lasted a whole year, and it seemed as if it would never come to an end. But if it had not been for the contest I would never have known many of the interesting things I now know about chickens. I had twelve white Leghorn hens and a cock entered. They were all little beauties and I enjoyed working with them very much. They laid one thousand six hundred twenty-two eggs during the year. The eggs were worth from twenty-five to sixty cents a dozen. We fed them wheat, corn, barley, oats, and bran in which table scraps were mixed, oyster shells, grit, prepared beef scraps, charcoal, and green foods such as grass from the lawn, cabbage, kale, and lettuce and other green things from the garden. Each hen made us a profit of two dollars and seventy-two cents for the year. Chickens need lots of care. Their house must be cleaned out, there should be some fresh ground dug up in the yard, and they need some green food every day. Papa took care of the house, and I mowed the lawn and gave them the clippings and gathered cabbage leaves, kale leaves, and lettuce leaves out of the garden and gave them each day. In the spring time we let them out a few minutes every morning to get bugs and worms. They soon had all the bugs and worms scratched out of the garden and then they ran out in the yard and scratched up the flower beds, which did not please mamma very well. After that they wanted to go to the neighbour's yard but we had to keep them up. This was before we made the garden. Chickens make nice pets. They are much nicer than dogs or cats, and if you take good care of them they will pay well beside. I had a nice little white Leghorn hen I called "Petty." When she was a little chicken I would catch her every day and play with her. She would go in the nest and wait for some one to take her out and pet her. She got so tame that I could catch her any place in the yard. I would go in the yard and get her and take her out in the garden and dig for her and let her find the bugs and worms. I had another little chicken that I called "Jim." He was a cute little rooster. When he was just a little chicken I would put him to bed every night and when he grew a little older he would not go to bed alone. One night we weren't at home at his bedtime and when we came home that night we heard a funny little noise in the back yard. It was raining and Jim had gone under the sweet pea vines to sleep instead of going into his box. The first little chicks we hatched we took away from the hen and raised them by hand. For about a week after they were hatched we put them in a basket and covered them over with warm, woollen cloths and set them by the stove to keep warm over night. I had a peach box with a wire covering to keep them in, in the daytime. On sunshiny days we set them out in the sunshine but after about a week they were not satisfied with that. I decided that what they wanted was to get out and run for bugs. So one afternoon when I came home from school it was nice and sunshiny and I let them out of their box. When they first stepped into the grass they were surprised. That was the first time they had ever stepped on the lawn. They ran right to a rose bush and stayed right there all the time picking off bugs. Each evening I let them out they would go a little farther away from home. At last they had caught all the bugs around the place and if we did not watch, they would run over to the neighbour's yard. I am anxious for the time to come when we will have more little chicks. RUTH HAYES The girl who tells this story is thirteen years old. She won second prize, fifty dollars. ANOTHER PRIZE WINNER'S STORY During the time that I have been taking care of poultry I have been successful. I only had six chickens in the Oregon Junior Poultry Contest, five hens and a rooster, but I have about fifty other chickens to take care of. The chickens that I had in the contest were Black Minorcas, but I also raise White Wyandottes. I seem to have better success with my White Wyandottes than with my Black Minorcas. The house I have for the contest chickens is twelve feet wide and six feet long. The place they roost in is four feet by six and the rest is a scratching shed, which is eight feet by six. The house is open front and has a ground floor, which is dry and the chickens can dust in it. I feed them three times a day, grain morning and noon, which I feed in litter, and a warm mash at night so they can go to roost warm. I also keep bran, charcoal, and grit before them all the time. I have a bone cutter, and feed cut bone to my chickens once a week. I clean off the drop board every morning, and once a week I coal-oil the roost and where the roost rests. During this cold weather I do not let the chickens out very early and when it is raining I do not let them out at all. Every night after the chickens have gone to roost I go out and throw a little grain in their litter and that gives them something to do the first thing in the morning. I am sorry that I did not have a photograph of myself to send you. FRANK MITCHELL A BOY FEEDS SIX THOUSAND HENS IN HALF AN HOUR What do you know about that? I saw this feat done last winter by a fourteen-year old California boy, and I took his photograph as he was doing it. What can a boy not do if he has the opportunity? There are other boys who find it a harder task and a more disagreeable one to feed half a dozen hens. A boy can feed six thousand hens and gather two or three thousand eggs a day and go to school. This California boy had a gray pony to help him, but what enabled him to perform this feat day after day was system. His uncle, the owner of the farm, had planned the work to make it easy. The farm contains one hundred and twenty acres, and the six thousand hens are scattered over the whole farm in colony houses. The system of feeding was a liberal feed of soft mash in the morning. Three colony houses were placed together. The middle one was a laying house; the other two, roosting houses. In one end of the laying house there was a wheat bin holding several sacks of wheat. The bin was a self-feeding hopper. After dinner the fourteen-year old boy jumped on his gray horse and made the rounds of the houses, opening a door to the hopper of wheat, so that the hens could eat at will during the afternoon. It took just a moment to jump off of his horse, open the door, and jump on again, the horse going on the lope between the houses. He made the rounds in less than half an hour. About three or four o'clock he hitched his pony to a low wagon and visited all the houses, gathering the eggs. This was a bigger job than feeding the hens; he could not go as fast with the eggs. In the morning, about seven o'clock, he makes the rounds of the houses, and without getting off his horse opens the doors to the laying houses, and does it all in fifteen minutes. What do you know about that? JAMES DRYDEN AN AMATEUR'S EXPERIENCE In April, nineteen hundred and one, I purchased four broody hens, two settings of White Wyandotte eggs, and two of Plymouth Rock. I live in a suburban district where dogs and cats abound and poultry cannot have free range. I therefore made two wire-covered board runs, six feet by eight, eighteen inches high, and against a six-inch hole sawed in one end of each I placed a box turned on its side for a coop. Of twenty-eight Wyandotte eggs, twenty-six hatched, and three chicks died. Of twenty-six Plymouth Rocks only three hatched, and these I put with the Wyandottes in care of the two most motherly hens. Every morning I fed a mash of meal, shorts, and beef scraps, in equal parts, mixed dry with boiling water; at noon and night oatmeal, cracked wheat, or occasionally cracked corn, and clean table scraps at any time. Oyster shells and fresh water were always before them. Mothers and children ate together, each taking what she liked best. As often as they soiled the grass I shifted the runs, and on fine days I let the families out for an hour before dark into an adjoining field, keeping an eye on their wanderings. October first I sold the four hens, which had laid meanwhile fifteen and a half dozen eggs. Twelve chicks were cockerels, which were killed as needed. November first I reduced the daily feed to two meals--a warm mash at half past eight A.M. so that they would scratch awhile before being fed, and for supper grain, generally oats, scattered about the yard, with a few handfuls inside the house to induce more scratching. They had all they would eat, but if they left any food I skipped the next meal and let them get hungry. The water was renewed often, dishes kept clean, and field excursions continued occasionally. November sixth I sold the first dozen eggs, and for eleven months the supply never failed. The eggs were large, and the hens were active, healthy, and happy. Any success I attribute to moderate feeding, exercise, and cleanliness. _May 1, 1901, to August 15, 1902_ EXPENSES Eggs, White Wyandotte $2.00 Express .25 Eggs, Plymouth Rock 1.00 4 hens 2.60 Boards, net, and boxes 1.22 Grain, 15½ months 31.41 ------ $38.48 RECEIPTS Eggs, 14 pullets, 162 dozen $47.33 Eggs, 4 hens, 15½ dozen 3.92 12 cockerels, 55¼ pounds 10.35 4 hens 2.00 14 hens (sold by reason of my illness) 8.00 2 barrels dressing 1.50 Runs, etc., on hand 1.00 ------ $74.10 38.48 ------ Profit $35.62 BELLE S. CRAGIN HOW I STARTED WITH HENS I am a boy, thirteen years old, and have always been very fond of farm animals, especially chickens. I like the White Wyandottes best for all-around, general-purpose fowls. They lay well, and when they are dressed for market there are no dark pin-feathers to spoil their looks. In April, nineteen hundred and five, I purchased two settings of White Wyandotte eggs at the Rhode Island College, and borrowed two broody hens. I bought one of these hens later, but she soon died. I fixed up an old pig house that was on the place, and set the hens in this house. While they were sitting, papa helped me make two coops and pens for them. For the coop I took a dry-goods box, about four feet by one and one half feet by fifteen inches, and made a door in one corner large enough to admit a hen. In one end I bored some holes and covered them with wire netting, for ventilation. For the pen I took four pieces of scantling and a good supply of laths. I used the pieces of scantling for the corner-posts and nailed the laths on the sides, top, and one end. I did not put anything on the other end except the top and bottom strips. The pen is just the length of a lath, but the width is a little less. The open end is placed against the front of the coop; the hen can then come out into the pen, and the chicks can go anywhere. After awhile the chicks hatched and there were sixteen of them. At first I fed them a mash of corn meal and bran and later a little cracked corn and wheat. They grew finely, but I raised only thirteen of them, eight of which were pullets. I fed them in the back yard for a while, but they dug the grass up so that I had to stop it. Then I built a scratching-pen by the wood shed, to feed them in. In the summer the chickens were roosting in the trees, and when cold weather came and I wanted them to roost in the hen house they would not do it. I tried feeding them there, and driving them in; but that did not work very well, because I could not drive them all in at once, and when I drove some in and tried to get the rest, the first ones would come out again. So I had my brother help me, and every night we would carry them down to the hen house. After a time they learned to roost there. The pullets began to lay early in November and laid well all winter. I am proud of one of my hens. She laid two hundred and thirty-eight eggs from the eighth of November, nineteen hundred and five, to the fifth of August, nineteen hundred and six. I think this is a very good record, considering that during the most of that time she was fed nothing but cracked corn. During the first part of the winter of nineteen hundred and six to nineteen hundred and seven the hens did not lay very well, and I asked one of the poultry men at the Rhode Island College what to feed them to make them lay. He told me what he had fed with good success, and as it made my hens lay, it may make somebody else's hens lay. GRAIN { Whole corn Equal parts, by weight, of { Wheat { Oats MASH { Bran Equal parts, by weight, of { Middlings { Corn meal { Beef scraps This means that they will get more wheat and oats than corn, and more bran and middlings than corn meal. I feed the grain morning and night, and the mash at noon. The mash may be fed either wet or dry. I have tried it both ways but I like to feed it dry fully as well for two reasons: First the hens cannot gobble it up so fast and all get an equal share; second, the hens lay just as well and it saves labour. Feed is expensive here and it cost me three dollars and thirty-nine cents for one hundred pounds of both kinds. I think I shall continue to feed it till I find something better, and I would recommend it to any one who desires a good, satisfactory feed. My poultry record for one year is as follows: POULTRY ACCOUNT DR. CR. Jan., feed $3.15 Jan., eggs $2.63 March, feed .24 Jan., roaster .75 April, shells .20 Feb., eggs 2.28 May, feed 1.85 March, eggs 1.88 June, feed 1.26 April, eggs 1.41 July, feed 1.28 May, eggs 1.96 Aug., feed 3.38 June, eggs 2.32 Oct., feed 1.24 July, eggs 1.85 Nov., feed 1.24 Aug., eggs .63 ------ Sept., eggs 1.12 Total $13.84 Sept., roaster .65 Oct., eggs 1.32 Oct., premium .75 Nov., eggs .38 ------ $19.93 ------ Profit $6.09 Two of my hens died during the first year, leaving six, hence these six paid a profit of one dollar and one and one half cent each, above cost of feed. LESLIE E. CARD HOW ONE YOUNG WOMAN MADE A START WITH POULTRY We had long dreamed of a country home, my mother and I--of a place where living expenses would be lessened and which would be pleasant during the summer for my sisters, who teach eight months of the year--a place where we could add materially to our income by keeping chickens. After discarding the idea of buying near New York City, because of the higher value of land and greater cost of living, we chose a place of twelve acres on the edge of an aristocratic old town in western New York. Being within the corporation limits we have water and sewer connections, hardware and lumber delivered (which is quite an item when one is building poultry houses); and, best of all, the expressman comes for all eggs and poultry. A woman intending to go into the poultry business will certainly find such a location a great advantage over being farther from town. The increase in taxes is slight. The cost of expressage is, of course, greater than if we had located near New York City, but grain is cheaper. We purchased the place in the fall to have possession the following March. During the winter, I took the three months' Poultry Course at Cornell University. The course is comprehensive and very practical. Beside learning the principles of poultry husbandry, I gained confidence and courage. We paid two thousand six hundred dollars for the property and spent four hundred dollars more in plumbing and repairs on the house. The place consists of about twelve acres of very good land, especially suited for poultry, being somewhat sandy and sloping enough for drainage. The house is small but well built. The view is magnificent, and the place is easily adaptable to some charming bits of landscape gardening which good taste and personal supervision can accomplish without expensive gardener's fees. We first built some brooder houses, gasolene heated, as used at Cornell, and purchased day-old chicks of a good laying strain. Late in the summer we built a five-pen laying house, the pens being twenty by twenty feet, using one pen for a feed room. The entire first year we took care of the poultry ourselves, with the assistance of a schoolboy who worked for his board. Most of the land was in hay, which we hired cut and sold, and we raised some corn. I knew nothing about farming, and was so interested in chickens that I had little time to study; however, I got the Cornell bulletins on alfalfa and started an acre according to their suggestions. This has been successful and is fine feed for poultry. The second spring we hired a man by the month. One man can take care of twelve hundred hens and the horse, carry coal, and drive for us some of the time. The regular farm work we hire done by the day. A woman needs to pay special attention to keeping down the labour expenses. The laying hens have about three acres for yards. This is divided into three different yards, one for the four hundred best pullets which I take the time to trap-nest, and the third one to be alternated with the other two so that they can all be ploughed and seeded, in order to keep the ground from becoming contaminated. I have planted cherry trees in one yard and will in the others later, to furnish shade for the fowls. I chose cherries for various reasons. They can stand the enrichment and the treatment of the land necessary for poultry; also, if they are well cared for, sprayed, etc., I can get a fancy market for them at home. The place had been noted in former years for its fine cherry orchard, so I believed the soil and location to be well adapted to them. We felt we could not afford to build an incubator cellar, so we moved the furniture from a north-east bedroom where we placed three four-hundred-egg incubators. We closed the east shutters so that the morning sun would not interfere with the temperature and used the north window for ventilation. It was successful and convenient. The brooder houses are located near the house as long as the little chicks need heat. I have started a hedge for a windbreak in front of them, which will also screen the poultry part of the plantation from the house. When the chicks no longer need heat the hovers of the brooder houses are removed and roosts put in. The houses, which are on runners, are drawn to a cornfield as soon as the corn has grown enough not to be injured by the chicks. Here they have free range all summer. By moving the first hatches to some shack houses, which are cheaply built, when the chicks no longer need heat the brooder houses can be used once again. There are two cornfields for growing the pullets, to be used in alternate years so the ground will be fresh. The corn gives shade and a sense of security, besides furnishing a considerable part of the winter feed. I hope to be able to grow corn for several successive years on the same ground by sowing either clover or rape at the last cultivation to furnish humus for the land. The following were our initial expenses: 3 400-egg incubators $111.00 8 brooder houses 320.00 4 shack houses 60.00 Laying pen for 1,200 hens 1,500.00 Fences 94.00 Tools and equipment for poultry 100.00 --------- Total $2,185.00 Last year I cleared two dollars over the cost of feed from each of my layers, from the sale of eggs alone. The pleasure and freedom of country life are worth much. A garden with high quality vegetables, fruit of all kinds and varieties, fresh eggs and poultry, goes a long way in making the cost of living less. (We save cracked, small, or misshapen eggs for our own use.) With a saddle horse and a tennis court, life in the country is far from dull. AVA HOOKER PRESERVING EGGS FOR WINTER USE When eggs are cheap and plenty is the time when it will pay to preserve some for winter use. Remember, though, that no amount of preserving, or cold storing will make a fresh egg out of an old egg. As infertile eggs keep better than fertile ones, it is well to separate the laying hens from the roosters when the hatching season is over. Cold storage is undoubtedly the best method for keeping eggs in wholesale quantities, but for home consumption there is nothing more satisfactory than a preservative called water glass which is _sodium silicate_ and can be bought in crystal or liquid form at drug stores. Prof. J. E. Rice of Cornell University says that "the liquid form is very much to be preferred owing to the fact that it is very difficult to dissolve the crystal. One part of water glass to nine parts of water makes a liquid having a consistency not quite heavy enough to cause the eggs to come to the surface, but still sufficiently strong to furnish the coating which prevents the air from entering the shells." Stone jars are recommended as inexpensive and not likely to leak. Eggs taken out after nearly a year in the water glass and washed look like fresh eggs. As to taste, a very fastidious person might find the flavour not quite right when served as boiled eggs. In all other ways they are entirely satisfactory. With water glass, eggs can be preserved for less than two cents a dozen. In communities where the price of eggs varies from a cent apiece to four cents apiece it would be very profitable to preserve all the surplus. RAISING GUINEA FOWL What would you expect if you ordered "American pheasant" from a bill of fare in a London restaurant? No matter what you expected, when the bird came onto the table it would be guinea hen! This is a dish you probably never ate at home unless you live in the South, "where they know what's good," or make a practice of dining at fashionable hotels where they serve fancy game and poultry. Most of the guinea fowls marketed in this country are put into cold storage and sent to England. They also bring a good price in city markets in this country. Farm boys and girls all over the country are familiar with the strident squawk and the furtive, hunching trot of the speckled guinea fowl. I doubt if any farmer could tell why he harbours one on the premises, unless it is to warn his chickens of the presence of danger. I know of very few people in the North who eat either eggs or birds (if they know it), and the young are very seldom seen. Here is a really valuable game bird which silly prejudice is depriving of its fair share of attention. If farm boys realized that there is a good and growing market for guinea fowls, eggs, and birds, they would read this: A fashionable New York hotel served three thousand of these birds between January first and April thirteenth, nineteen hundred and five. Listen to the prices: from one dollar to one dollar and a half per pair for young broilers in midwinter in the large Northern cities. Eggs twice the price of hens' eggs. Taking into consideration the fact that they are hardier even as chicks than ordinary poultry and that the market is strictly fancy and not oversupplied, the chances for success in guinea raising are good. In beginning this branch of business it is not best to buy old fowls. They are swift of wing, and they are extremely likely to take "French leave" unless closely confined for a week or more to their new quarters. This confinement is not very good for them. My advice is to begin with a setting of fifteen eggs under a common hen in May or June. The eggs are smaller than hens' eggs and have good, strong shells. They take from twenty-six to thirty days to hatch. The treatment and care of young guinea fowls varies from that given to young chickens in a few particulars only, _e. g._, the chicks should be fed very _soon_ after hatching and need a large percentage of animal food when first hatched. Dry bread crumbs and hard-boiled eggs minced finely or pieces of cooked meat cut very fine are a good first meal. Bread and milk and finely chopped lettuce, cress, or other vegetation should be given a day or two later. They will pick up innumerable insects if allowed the privileges of the garden or fruit plantation. Little guineas should have access to feed all the time as a few hours without food is very likely to prove fatal. Like little pheasants they require a greater percentage of animal food than chickens because if in the wild they would eat little else. Soft grains should follow the earlier rations, and the mixtures given to ordinary poultry should gradually take the place of these. Old guinea fowls have the reputation for making very tough meat. For this reason it is better to market them while the breast bone is still tender, the claws still short and sharp, and before the crest or helmet has reached its full size or changed colour. In young birds the helmet is nearly black, growing lighter with age. Ordinarily it is more economical when raising a few guinea fowls not to confine them to runs, in which they are less hardy. Partial confinement, such as coming to the barn yard to roost and appearing regularly to be fed, is more practical. If kept in runs it is necessary to cover the pens. High roosts should be provided. During the laying season the hens are almost certain to hide their nests and need close watching. They may lay in nest boxes if these are in dim, secluded corners. Guinea hens are very wary and may resent having their nests visited, by quitting. Also, the hens seem to be able to count and will usually desert their own nests if all but one or two eggs are taken away. They are rather impatient sitters, often leaving the nest when the eggs are half incubated or when the first chick is ready to go, even though they have a dozen pipped eggs. The little ones are, like little turkeys, susceptible to dampness and cold. Very early and very late hatchings are undesirable. RAISING TURKEYS Among the pictures which my memory calls up is that of an old bushel basket by the kitchen stove on a damp spring morning. From the comforting folds of an old flannel petticoat in the depths of the basket came the feeble "peep-peawp" of a dozen or more miserable little turkey chicks rescued from the shower. What a chase they had given us through the wet tangles of grass, weeds, and bushes, scooting to cover like partridges, hidden by their colouring almost as effectually as their wild cousins. We shall never be quite sure that we got them all, for we weren't certain how many there were originally. If the chill had not penetrated to their vitals, and these important organs lie disastrously near the pin-feathers, we had been in time to save them. Experiences like these impress upon the minds of farm children much that is characteristic of the turkey. As grown-ups we read of the precautions necessary in raising turkeys and realize that we knew all that years ago. A turkey hen will stay close around the barn yard eating and drinking with the other fowls all winter, roosting in convenient tree tops, and giving no hint of wildness or firmness of purpose. But in April you miss her. She may return about meal time, take a dust bath perhaps, then she is off again. Now you must test your wits against her instincts and see if you can find her nest. She may have secreted her eggs in a perfectly safe barrel, provided with straw and cunningly secluded in the shrubbery. She is likely, though, to go far afield and give you a merry chase. It is wise to take away the eggs each day until she has finished and wishes to sit. Then you may give her a nestful, fifteen to eighteen, or you can set the eggs under hens and when the turkey's broody spell is over she will lay again. Four weeks is the time required to hatch turkey eggs. Newly hatched turkeys are far from spry. They have no interest in food nor in the world about them. It is forty-eight hours or even longer before they begin to take notice. Hard-boiled eggs chopped fine is a good first meal for them. Some growers take a pint of sweet milk in a saucepan, let it come to a boil, and stir into it two eggs well beaten. This makes a sort of custard and this quantity is said to be enough for fifty new turkey chicks. Cottage cheese without salt is recommended. A dusting of black pepper in the food is good for week-old turkeys, especially in cool weather. Two deadly enemies of little turkeys are lice and wet. These are responsible for the high rate of mortality in flocks of all breeds. Keep them free from these by all known methods and with ordinary care in other details your profits are safe. If you tide over the first two months you will see the delicate chicks transformed into hardy little poults, holding their own with any kind of fowls. I don't know of any one who ever made a success of turkeys on a small lot. Their habit of ranging can be restrained to the extent of keeping them off the neighbours, but close cooping opposes their natural instincts. They are great insect eaters and will pick up a fair living away from the feed trough. It is best to train them by a regular evening feeding to roost at home. You will want to count them frequently, especially as November draws near and the price begins to soar. There are a number of breeds in cultivation. The biggest and perhaps the hardiest is the bronze turkey. Some consider their flesh less delicate than that of the smaller kinds. There is always a good market for any size. If all your neighbours have bronze turkeys and the flocks are always getting mixed, why not try the buff or black or the white Holland? The latter are almost as beautiful an ornament to the country home as peacocks, and can be seen at a great distance because of their brilliant white plumage. If one wants to get enthusiastic over turkeys let him drive through a thrifty farming community in the fall and catch glimpses of the sunshine reflected from the burnished backs of the great flocks which ornament every farm yard. Or, if inclined to a meal of turkey, just inquire the price on the farm or in the market, and you will decide to raise some for your own use next year, and a few to sell. RAISING PEACOCKS We have it on the authority of the curator of birds of the New York Zoölogical Garden, Mr. C. William Beebe, that peafowls are not difficult to raise if the owner is watchful. Wouldn't it be a triumph to raise a family of these wonderful birds? Mr. Beebe says also that "peacocks are so common that we sometimes fail to appreciate their really wonderful colours." I wonder if that can be true. They were so uncommon in the Mississippi Valley when I was a child that I never saw one; it was less than ten years ago that I saw for the first time this regal bird spread his wonderful tail in the full sunlight. It was one of Mr. Beebe's own pets and I shall never forget nor fail to appreciate the sight. A peahen lays fewer eggs than most birds of her size. She will lay three times a year if you succeed in "changing her current of thought" when she is broody. She usually wishes to sit on the first six eggs and as she has pretty good judgment in placing her nest and is a patient and courageous mother, you had better trust her to bring up her family, unless you wish to raise the first lot under hens or turkey mothers. Like young turkeys, the little peachicks are very tender and susceptible to dampness. Woe unto them if the chill of an early May rain gets into their bones! This is the time when watchfulness on the owner's part is necessary. For newly hatched peachicks a few meals of finely chopped, hard-boiled eggs and minced lettuce are right. As they develop appetites, feed some of the mixtures prepared for game, pheasants, etc. By all means let them have space to run in; a little coop is bad for their health. Make it twelve feet long at least. They will eat quantities of insects and will need feed only morning and evening after the first month or two. Corn, wheat, barley, and millet make a good mixture. No regular house is required for peafowls, though shelter must be provided against rain. They prefer to roost high, where the air is fresh and cool. Wind and cold weather they like. Indian peacocks cost twenty dollars to thirty dollars a pair. You can grow them for far less from eggs and sell the birds. They live to be twenty or thirty years old. If you are convinced that you want to try your hand at any of these kinds of fancy poultry, collect all the information you can first. Visit some successful poultry plant, ask questions, take notes. Get all the government and state experiment station bulletins available. Breeders often publish information about rearing birds. They are glad to help any one who is interested. It increases their business. Write to your agricultural college for information. They may not have a bulletin on the subject, but the men in their poultry department are glad to answer questions. Giving advice is part of their business and you can count on it being good advice. RAISING GEESE March is a good month to set goose eggs. As it takes them a little over a month to hatch, they will come out in April and the early birds catch the best prices. It is really surprising that more farmer's boys and girls do not raise geese. They will "board themselves" if given a chance at pasture, but need fattening with ground grain if held for Christmas trade. Goslings can be raised under hens, six eggs in a nest, but the goose is an admirable mother. Unlike most of his feathered kindred the gander is a true helpmate, often "spelling" his mate during the sitting period and caring for the young afterward with great solicitude. Watchful care is needed to prevent the damp, cold April from getting the best of little goslings. They should begin their careers with a meal of bread crumbs, scalded meal, and hard-boiled eggs, chopped vegetable tops and grass included in the mash. They eat small quantities at a time, but need it frequently to stay their stomachs. Water for drinking should be accessible, clean, and fresh always. Many a sick gosling can trace his disorder directly to the bad water. A large tub of water for bathing, too, is advisable for geese after they are feathered. Toulouse and Embden geese are tremendous creatures, even reaching the enormous weight of twenty-five pounds. Their meat is highly prized in European countries and is becoming popular in America so that a good market is assured. The business of fattening geese for market is quite specialized now. Men engaged in this business visit the farms where a few geese are kept and buy the eight-weeks old goslings for seventy-five cents to one dollar and a half apiece. If you can get this price your profit is fair and certain and your work ended. You can put your cash into some other business. Raising geese is a good summer vacation job. On a goose fattening farm near a good Eastern city market as many as fifteen or twenty thousand geese are fattening at one time. Geese on farms when I was a girl were kept principally for their feathers which found their way into the pillows and feather beds then used. The best pillows in my house are filled with the feathers plucked from geese with which I was personally acquainted. These feathers have a high market value, higher when you buy than when you sell to be sure, but you may be able to supply a local market and thus get a better price. Geese, like all the other feathered tribes, moult naturally in late summer. If the live geese are to be plucked, it should be done very carefully, three or four feathers at a time. The geese do not show evidence of minding much when they find that your designs are peaceable. Only the breast feathers and the smallest ones from the back are ordinarily taken for home use. Avoid the feathers with coarse stiff shafts. No down should be removed. Goose quills make good toothpicks, cleaned and scalded and trimmed into shape. Or they may be sold separately as feathers. Geese are plucked before sending to market. Most of the feathers and some of the down now extensively used by manufacturers of bed clothing comes from the marketed geese. RAISING DUCKS Probably in many neighbourhoods you would be laughed at if you tried to raise ducks without a pond or stream of water. It is not customary. True, if you have them for ornament principally, they look best disporting themselves in what seems to be their natural element. But if you believe there is money in raising ducks for market, nothing is easier than to prove that the people who laughed were not up to date. You have heard the old saying on a very wet day, "Good weather for ducks." Don't you believe it. If you go into duck raising you must be just as careful about ducks getting wet as you are about your chicks. The duck must have plenty of water inside, all he will drink, but keep him dry outside. Little ducks are hardy if kept dry and warm. Even cold drinking water will give them cramps and should be avoided. The drinking vessels should be so covered that the duckling can get only the bill wet. The advantage of ducks over chicks is this: they do not bring quite so big a price per pound, but they grow so much faster during the first two months of their lives. Ducks should be marketed at eight to ten weeks old. At ten weeks old a good broiler will weigh about two pounds and will sell for seventy-five cents, but a duckling will weigh four to five pounds, which at twenty-five cents a pound will give you from one dollar to one dollar and twenty-five cents. The cost of feeding the two will be about the same. Ducks have other advantages over chickens. They are not nearly so subject to vermin, though lice sometimes attack their heads. They seem to thrive in confinement and cost less to house than chickens. Their feathers will bring a good price, and eggs of pure breeds for hatching are in demand. They are excellent layers, even better than some hens, as experience will show. If a duck lays nine dozen eggs at four dollars a dozen, and raises a family, she does a pretty good year's work, and is more profitable to keep than some cows. She eats grubs and insects, too, and grass and surplus from the vegetable garden. The commonest practice for beginners is to set duck eggs under hens in April and May. The biggest varieties are the best to raise as all are hardy, fast growers, and good layers. The eggs take about twenty-eight days to incubate. Treat the hen and nest for lice just as when sitting on hens' eggs. When ducklings are twenty-four hours old, they are ready for their first meal. Mashed potatoes mixed with meal of corn or oats and middlings are good for them. Milk, too, is excellent as for all fowls. Begin to stuff them immediately; you will find them quite agreeable. Green food of all kinds--grass, lettuce, cabbage, vegetable tops--all chopped small, fills them up and is good for them. Such things as turnips and potatoes should be cooked. Ground meat should be fed three times a week. Have the feeding troughs so arranged that they can get their shovels into it but cannot walk over the food and foul it; same thing with the water. Feed four times a day. They must not get empty. Growth will not be rapid unless continuous. Grit should be supplied. On duck farms one hundred ducklings are kept in brooders five by seven feet, with yards five by sixteen feet. They are kept absolutely clean and dry. Those you keep over winter for next year's egg supply should have access to a pond and grass. Old ducks do not bring high prices for table use and do not put on weight very fast. It was perhaps a young Boston housekeeper who asked when her market man offered her Pekin ducks for her table, "How are they esteemed?" He replied, "Oh, my wife, she don't never steam ducks. She just stuffs 'em like you would a chicken and bakes 'em." RAISING SQUABS FOR MARKET A few years' experience in raising fancy pigeons for pets is the best kind of training for a young man who wants to raise squabs for market. This business on a small scale ought not to take all one's time and can easily be combined with some other business or profession or with attending college. But your experience, varied though it may be, has not acquainted you with all that is worth knowing on the subject. The time has gone by when a man can afford to ignore books and bulletins even on a subject upon which he may himself be an authority. A library of pigeon literature will increase your wisdom. A practical man writing of his experience in your business may save you hundreds of dollars if you heed his advice. Don't scoff at college bulletins as your grandfather probably did. He had reason, but the bulletin is not what it was. Great strides forward have been made. Visit some big squab raiser's plant and take mental and written notes of significant facts observed. The colour of his pigeon loft does not affect the price he gets for his squabs, but the quality of the grain he feeds has a direct influence on the fullness of his wallet. Full-blooded homers are declared by many to be the best, all things considered, for table use. Good, mated birds of this variety can be bought for about two dollars a pair. They are hardy, bright, active on their feet, and the squabs have a larger breast than some of the other sorts. Homers are not all the same colour; some are white, others black, reddish, and mixed colours. Good stock will rear six or eight pairs of squabs in a year, while some exceptionally good ones will raise ten pairs. If you make a clear profit of one dollar and twenty-five cents per year on an average from each pair you should do well. It is not profitable to keep birds which produce less than five pairs a year. A record must be kept in order to weed out worthless birds. You do not wish to spend your leisure running a free boarding house for pigeons. You must know which are the big producers and keep only their young as breeders. Nests should be numbered and every bird have a leg label with a number corresponding to a numbered description in your book of records. This is good economics. Squabs of homers should be ready for selling at four weeks old; they should be fully feathered but still in the nest. The heaviest grade weigh eight pounds per dozen and these bring highest market prices. Lighter birds are considered poor quality and bring a correspondingly low price. Prices vary from four dollars and fifty cents to one dollar and seventy-five cents per dozen. Dispose of pairs which habitually produce light-weight squabs as indicated by your records. Minute directions for killing and dressing squabs for market are given in Farmers' Bulletin No. 177, which every squab raiser should have in his library. There is, as yet, no indication of over-production in squab raising; although many more are grown every year, the demand is still on the increase. It is a good business for two people to go into together, a brother and sister, two brothers, or adjoining neighbours. Descriptions of house and furnishings, fly, foods and feeding, and details of care are given in Chapter IV under "Raising Fancy Pigeons." RAISING PHEASANTS The young people on a big ranch or estate with its up-to-date poultry plant, raising not only plain and fancy chickens, but pigeons, ducks, geese, turkeys, and guinea fowl, all attended by men hired for the purpose, may look about in vain for a chance to try their hands at raising anything with feathers. To such boys and girls I say, "Did you ever see any pheasants?" "At the Zoölogical Gardens, yes." Aren't they beauties? How would you like to grow pheasants? There is a line that has not been overworked. Profit in it, too. Look at prices you must pay for birds and get an idea of how yours will sell later. Numerous experiments in pheasant growing have been tried in this country. It is well to know of these and to profit by them. Some men raise many varieties, importing them from every quarter of the globe. Their ideal is to have a complete collection. A visit to a large aviary will give you some idea of what a gorgeous family of birds the pheasants make. They are highly prized as game birds. In Germany they are served in a most surprising way. The edible parts are cooked and arranged on a platter on a bed of parsley. At one end of the platter the cook puts the head with its beautiful neck ruff and at the other end the tail feathers. Imagine the waiter's triumphant entrance into the dining-room, platter held aloft, and the pheasant's brilliant tail feathers streaming far behind like pennants from a mast top! The pheasant most easily grown in the United States is the ringneck or Mongolian pheasant imported from its home in China. There is hardly a state in the Union where no attempt has been made to raise pheasants. It is an industry that appeals to sportsmen everywhere. Massachusetts, Ohio, New York, Indiana, Illinois, California, New Jersey, and some other states have made pheasant rearing a part of the work of their Fish and Game Commissions. The state of Oregon is the only one where a remarkable success has been won. Evidently the climate and conditions there were ideal. About three dozen pheasants were set free in the Willamette Valley in eighteen hundred and eighty-one. So rapid was the increase that when the first open season of two and one half months was declared eleven years later it was estimated that fifty thousand birds were shot the first day! They have continued to increase in that state and towards the north, and many other states get their supply for propagation from Oregon. The first thing to do after becoming interested in pheasants is to learn something about their nature and needs and to consider whether your conditions are such as would make the business possible or profitable. They are not domestic fowls but more like the jungle fowl from which, in all likelihood, our barn yard fowls are descended. But they can be raised in captivity if due regard is taken of their habits and characteristics. Books and bulletins are mentioned in the appendix of this book. In some respects pheasants are very like chickens, being especially susceptible to the diseases of the poultry yard. In England, pheasant rearing is quite common. One sees in open meadow land on great estates the tidy coops where anxious biddies cluck after their wayward foster children. It is a pretty sight to see the fifteen or twenty brown-striped birds scuttling wildly to her protecting wing at the approach of danger. Pheasants' eggs for shipping should be most carefully packed in cotton, hay, or excelsior to insure safety from jar. You do not have to begin with grown birds which cost five dollars a pair for ring-necks, as the eggs are best set under hens. The eggs should be set in late April or early May for best results. Bantams are often preferred, but any good mother will do if she is cleanly and not too clumsy. Great precautions should be taken that the nest be clean, and that the hen should have all the comforts of home, _e. g._, a dust bath, clean water, and regular feeding. Can you afford to run the risk of young chickens getting lice as soon as they are hatched? Well, you simply can't take any chances with baby pheasants. Hens should be dusted three times during incubation with insect powder. Visit an aviary or a pheasantry if you can and ask questions and take observations on how to make nests, coops, and pens. Study your books, too, and be guided by the experience of others. While you wait for your young pheasants to hatch there is plenty to do in preparing coops and learning what to feed them when they arrive. Much of our lack of success in rearing all sorts of wild game is because we know so little about what they eat. We probably make lots of mistakes with the animals we have domesticated but the more adaptable of them have grown accustomed to civilized food, and thrive. There could be no better place for a rearing ground for young pheasants than an orchard where clover abounds. Coops, like chicken coops, should be rain proof, well ventilated, bottomless, and so built that they can be closed to keep out vermin and to shut the chicks in when the grass is wet. Pheasants are omnivorous but they need more fresh animal food than is supplied by ordinary "chick mixtures," to balance their ration. Probably they share with other young birds a relish for insects and while their mothers do not actually bring this food to the open bills of their young, they take the flock to the feeding ground and show them how to find worms, bugs, caterpillars, etc., by scratching. There are ways employed by experienced pheasant growers of raising a supply of meal worms, maggots, and ant pupæ for their flocks, but cheap, fresh meat ground very fine furnishes suitable animal food. During the first three or four days after feeding is begun a custard made of ten eggs to a quart of milk, baked well, is their best food. Hard-boiled eggs finely minced (put through a potato ricer), fine bread crumbs, and fresh vegetables cut into small bits can be given during the first week. Later, small grains of a great variety of kinds. A sprinkle of red pepper in their food during cold, damp days is good for half-grown chicks. The young pheasants must have access to fine grit and gravel and they must have fresh, cool water all the time. In building pens for pheasants we should take into consideration their habits, their safety, and their lack of hardiness in domestication. Select the site for the pens after due thought. There must be both shade and sunshine. The soil should be well drained and rich enough to grow grass and clover. Each run should be at least ten feet by ten with netting of medium mesh for sides, eight feet high, cover of the same. A house is an unnecessary expense, as it is pheasant nature to stay in the open or seek a covert of brush. A rain proof shed, where they can retire when it rains, and where a dust bath will always be in readiness, is a necessity. Wild birds of prey evidently consider it perfectly legitimate to visit pheasant runs. Raccoons, foxes, rats, and mink, too, may work ruin there. The cover of netting protects from above and it may be necessary, where burrowing animals abound, to dig a trench a foot deep and set the netting down in the ground that far. A few steel traps set unbaited along the outside of the runs may prevent a serious loss and provide you with a handsome mink or raccoon fur skating or motoring cap. Severe cold, even storms, are not fatal to pheasants. Provide perches in the pen as well as in the shed and they will usually choose those in the open air. Because of their great timidity the birds should be disturbed as little as possible. Unfamiliar sights and sounds alarm and distress them. What a triumph it would be to induce your pheasants to eat from your hand! It can be done by exercising great patience, gentleness, and perseverance. All you know about chicken raising will be useful now. Make up your mind that everything that is bad for chicks is simply fatal to young pheasants; for instance, wet feet, lice, dirty, or sun-warmed water, over-feeding, wrong feeding. If you play this game you must expect a constant succession of hazards, of narrow escapes, and losses. But it is a noble game. IV RAISING ANIMALS FOR PETS SHETLAND PONIES The perfect pet is the Shetland pony. This diminutive horse is a model of gentleness, patience, good-nature, and horse sense. One writer says of him: "If more than eight children get on his back he will shake himself like a wet Newfoundland dog and then stand motionless, while they pick themselves up and out from among his four hoofs." So many generations of ponies have lived right in the family circles of their cold little island that children do not make them nervous. Is there a prettier sight than a well-groomed Shetland pony, a carriage made in Lilliput, and a small driver, and a reasonable number of little passengers of assorted sizes? A goat team is a joke, a dog team is impracticable, a team of young oxen is too plodding and lacks style. The pony outfit is charming and always delights everybody. But who likes to see a grown man in a pony carriage? A small grown person may be necessary, especially if the baby is to be taken for a drive, but a full-sized adult makes a pony carriage look top heavy. The Shetland pony is a sort of "boy horse" so far as work is concerned. (Some say, too, that he gets out of as much work as possible.) There is no better helper at light jobs than the pony. Like the yak: "He will carry and fetch You may ride on his back Or lead him about with a string." Indeed he will follow his master about without a string and can carry a good load. With a light cart or wagon suited to his build and a boy to do the rest, one of these hardy little fellows will be of greatest help in doing the endless odd jobs that always fall to the boy's lot. The pony will more than earn his board if the boy earns his. [Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke. The Shetland Pony is the Ideal Pet] A thoroughbred Shetland pony should be less than forty-five inches high and weigh less than three hundred pounds. Many are raised in this country. A boy is lucky who has a chance to train a pony colt. Training should be begun early. One successful breeder says that his children do all the training of his ponies. His boy, seven years old, broke the first one they raised to drive to a little wagon. Little boys and girls under ten take entire care of the ponies in another man's herd. No doubt their father or mother oversees the work, but it is fun for the children to groom and feed and pet these wee horses. Breeding Shetland ponies is a very practical way to make a few hundred dollars a year. They eat less than full-sized horses and will keep fat on grass from frost till frost. The price of ponies is 25 per cent. higher than it was five years ago. This makes the cost of going into this business higher, but the sales begin the second year and selling prices are higher, too. Shetlands are hardy and require shelter only in bitter cold weather. Ponies of various sorts are becoming far commoner here than formerly, so the demand is increasing. I wish every boy and every girl whose heart is set on having a pony could have one. Let us all raise ponies until there are enough for every one. RABBITS, GUINEA PIGS, AND CAVIES Rabbits, guinea pigs, and cavies are not poultry, yet there is always a department devoted to them in the great Poultry Show at Madison Square Garden in New York. It was there that I first made the acquaintance of these three kinds of popular pets. Many a boy has made a neat little addition in two figures, at least, to his college fund, by raising hares, rabbits, guinea pigs, white rats, fancy mice, or cavies. Common white rabbits can be bought for one dollar a pair, but these days it is not uncommon for a breeder to pay from fifteen dollars to twenty-five dollars for wearers of blue ribbons. If you had guinea pigs for sale you would be glad that the best ones cannot be bought for less than ten dollars apiece. Rabbits are the most popular of these pets, while cavies come next. There is just now a great demand for cavies. They are odd little creatures, neither intelligent nor affectionate. Neither are they very hardy; in the North they have to be kept indoors in cold weather. Cavies are easy enough to feed, for they eat everything that is set before them, and keep at it all the time. All sorts of vegetables, bread and milk, and corn are the "chief of their diet." Before going into the business of raising any of these creatures it is well to consult some other boy who has had some experience and find out if there are any peculiar difficulties he can help you provide for. Maybe your locality and conditions are better fitted for one than the other. A dealer will often be able to give you valuable information about the different sorts of pets, and may be able to recommend the best book on the subject. FANCY PIGEONS If I were a boy or a girl to-day there is nothing I should so much like to do as to raise pigeons. Not that I think it an easy job. (Wouldn't you almost as soon work as to look for an easy job, anyhow?) There are lots of disappointments, discouragements, and hard labour about pigeon rearing. But young folks with hobbies like this are getting more fun out of life than the idle ones. Pigeons are hardy, easily tamed, prolific, and can be made to pay their own way. It would be impossible to associate with them, care for them, learn their nature and habits, without becoming thoroughly interested in them. No pets could be more gentle, more beautiful, more docile than pigeons. Success in rearing them will not be immediate, but will come with experience. The business of raising fancy pigeons for pets is quite distinct from squab raising, treated in the chapter on poultry, and is far more likely to interest boys and girls. If you were to go to a big poultry show you would be bewildered at the number of breeds of fancy pigeons. The pouters, the tumblers, the barbs, the dragoons, nuns, helmets, the fantails, and carriers are all there in endless variety. What you like will be different from what I like, probably, so it is not easy to recommend. Beginners would do well to choose some one variety and try their hand at that before investing very extensively. The flying tumbler is recommended by many good authorities. These are not difficult to breed, are small eaters, do not need to be caged continually, and although they are to be had in nearly all the colours of the rainbow they are not very expensive. It is not good economy to buy cheap stock, in anything. Though by getting good ones you must start with a single pair, it is the best economy. Your increase will be very much more valuable. You should ask the breeder for a written guarantee that the pigeons are as represented, healthy, young, mated stock. If he does not care to give the guarantee, I should not consider him reliable. Pigeons are not much influenced by elaborate dovecotes. They are quite as happy living the simple life in a dry-goods box, provided it contains the conveniences they require, and is placed where the light will be plentiful, the air pure, and the roof rain proof. City boys and girls need not sigh and give up the idea because they have no place for pigeons. The attic or the roof serves them just as well as the barn yard, perhaps better, as mice and rats are less likely to disturb them on housetops. Every precaution should be taken however against these vermin. Cracks, doors and ventilators should be covered with fine wire netting. Even the entrances, holes six inches high by four in width, should be protected by tin guards which rats and mice cannot creep over. [Illustration: Net for capturing pigeons] [Illustration: Pigeon roost] Each pair of pigeons will need two nesting compartments. A good kind is described in Farmers' Bulletin No. 177, and is constructed as follows: Inch boards, twelve inches wide, with parallel cross cleats nailed on nine inches apart, are set upright full twelve inches apart against one wall, and securely fastened at top and bottom. Cut twelve-inch squares of inch boards for the bottoms of the nest boxes. It is easy to see how convenient these sliding bottoms will be to clean. Provide small earthenware dishes as nests, with a foundation of tobacco stems, to discourage lice. The birds will build nests of straw above the tobacco stems, the male bringing the material which the female arranges to suit her ideas of house furnishing. Some growers use sawdust in the nest. If your pigeons are allowed their liberty with no shelter save the pigeon loft, perches will be needed inside. As the pigeon's feet are formed for perching on flat surfaces instead of on rounded branches like many of their feathered relatives, you should provide what suits their needs. A good form of perch is made as follows. Cut half-inch, dressed material four or five inches wide into five or six-inch lengths. Nail together two of these pieces in v-shape. This can be nailed to a square foundation piece and hung angle up on the wall of the loft. The slanting sides afford no lodging for droppings and as only one bird at a time can perch on so small a place, quarrelling is avoided. Iron brackets with perches attached are also used. Two nest dishes are provided for each pair, as very often the hen will lay a second pair of eggs before the earliest young ones are ready to leave the nest. The male pigeon is untiring in his devotion to the young and their mother, taking his turn on the nest regularly during the seventeen days of incubation, doing his share of the work, and even beating his wife if she shows any disposition to slight her duties. If the pigeons are confined in a wire fly, perches should be provided there, and board walks for them to alight upon and walk about on should be placed at a distance of four or five feet from the ground. Nothing in the shape of roosts or cross pieces should be put in the fly, as the pigeons need all the space in which to exercise their wings. [Illustration: A fly for pigeons. Put no roosts across the fly. Flying against these would injure the birds] For one hundred birds the fly should be thirty-two feet long, eight feet high, and the entire width of the house. It will be a fine problem in practical arithmetic to figure how much netting will be required to cover the frame of this fly, how many posts, and how much one by four-inch stuff will be needed to complete the frame. The advice of some one who has built a pigeon fly would be most valuable to the inexperienced person, and the pictures in books, bulletins, and magazine articles will be helpful in making your plans. Holes, at least two, rounded at the top and six inches each way, provide for the going and coming of the birds between house and fly. For yourself, an outside door into the fly is a necessity, of course. Before installing your pigeons in their house, use the whitewash brush there freely. Into each gallon of your mixture of lime and water put a half-teaspoonful of crude carbolic acid. Clean sand is recommended for the floor of both fly and house. It is very bad practice to scatter food for pigeons on the floor or ground. You will see, if you try it, how much is wasted; any that they leave becomes soiled, moulds, or sours, and if eaten in that condition is nearly sure to injure the birds. A shallow feeding trough should be placed near the centre of the house. Fine charcoal, table salt, and cracked oyster shells should be kept permanently before the birds, the boxes cleaned out at least weekly. Clean water in stone or galvanized iron fountains should always be there, too. Daily or semi-daily is none too frequent to clean these vessels. Pigeons are not gluttonous feeders but "they want what they want, when they want it." In other words, regularity is important to their well-being. An early morning feed, six-thirty in summer, seven in winter, of equal parts cracked corn, wheat, and peas, and an afternoon feed, at four in summer, three in winter, of equal parts cracked corn (with no fine meal in it), kaffir corn, millet seed, and peas, is a fair ration. Pigeons like a variety but not as a steady diet. Hemp may be substituted for millet once or twice a week; a little broken rice, green vegetable food, like lettuce and onions, will be taken sparingly, and tiny bits of fat bacon seem to be acceptable. Nothing but first-class grain should ever be set before pigeons. The quantity needed should be determined by watching. If food is left in trough, feed less next time. Water for bathing is as necessary for pigeons as the dust bath is for hens. A broad galvanized iron pan three inches deep makes a first-rate bathtub. Although fancy plumbing is out of place in a pigeon house, it is the greatest convenience to have running water passing through a trough constantly; this solves completely the problem of sanitary drinking water. The best fanciers clean their houses weekly. With a few birds this may not be necessary. But when your nose gives unmistakable evidence that it is time, do not put it off. A spade to scrape the floor, an old knife for the nest boxes, and a broom are necessary utensils. Mated birds will choose a nesting box after becoming accustomed to their new quarters. The nest pans, with their foundation of tobacco stems cut in six-inch lengths, should be in place, and a supply of short hay or straw where it can be found. Two eggs are usually laid, with a day between and sitting begins as soon as the second egg is laid. If the sight of a young squab does not make you sick of your choice of a hobby, you are a hopeless case, and I predict great success for you. Young robins are not beautiful to behold, but squabs are such ghastly looking little beasts, with nothing to recommend them except their entire helplessness. Evidently the parents are well satisfied with the appearance of their offspring which look just as they expected, no doubt, and begin almost immediately to feed them. "Pigeon milk" is injected into their open throats by the parent birds, in whose stomachs it has been manufactured. The squabs gain rapidly after a few days of this "milk" diet; pin-feathers replace the scanty yellow down in about a week. At three weeks they are able to walk, but are still fed by their parents, although grain is brought to them instead of the predigested food. Although they are hardy, do not suppose that pigeons have no diseases. However, the author of a government bulletin on squab raising says that with "wholesome food, proper housing, and proper care, very little disease is usually encountered." To prevent disease, and avoid dampness in house and fly, keep the food and water untainted, and the house clean. It is very desirable, whether raising squabs for market or for pets, to keep a record of the performance of each pair. This is usually done by the use of numbered tags on the birds' legs. The record makes it possible to prevent inbreeding, gives you knowledge of whether certain pairs are profitable, and keeps up your own interest far more than haphazard methods do. BANTAMS Almost every family that keeps chickens has two or three "banties" for the children. What an amusing sight it is to see a tiny fuss-budget clucking and bristling to protect a half-dozen lubberly Plymouth Rock "broilers" that she has been inveigled into rearing. But the raising of pigmy fowls is not confined to the child's play of the chicken yard. At the big poultry shows almost every breed of fowl from Brahma to Silkie has a diminutive mimic, and the requirements for the dwarfs are just as rigid as for the big fellows. To be just right a bantam ought not to weigh much over a pound, the cock should be impetuous, pugnacious, and haughty; the hen should be smaller than her lord, and meek in demeanour except when her flock is in danger. Bantams are very popular with amateurs who regard them as a sort of joke, but the poultry fanciers take them quite seriously. It is not unusual for the prize-winning bantams to bring as high prices as the heavy weights. Game bantams are great favourites with fanciers. They are easily recognized by their game-fowl characteristics: tall, upright carriage, oval body tapering from shoulder to tail, very long legs and neck, small head, and almost no show of comb. There are eight standard varieties in America, and the Game Bantam Club is interested in improving the breeds and increasing the popularity of the birds. As the varieties of bantams are pretty thoroughly mixed, it is no simple matter to breed birds fit for exhibition. But after all there is so much fun for boys and girls in growing any sort of pigmy chickens and such a good market for both eggs and pairs for pets that I wonder that more young people do not go into the business. Bantams take less room than ordinary chickens which is an advantage on a small place. Care should be taken to save for setting eggs of none but the smallest and most perfect members of the flock, and to dispose of any which are larger than the standard or poor in shape or colour or in any characteristics peculiar to bantams. If you start with eggs of some fine breed, try to keep your stock pure, and improve it by selecting the best individuals for breeding. In matters of housing, feeding, cleanliness, and care, bantams should be treated just like other chickens. The young of some varieties are exceedingly delicate and cannot stand the least neglect. These are more like little wild things, partridges or quail, than like domestic fowls. Other varieties are as hardy as Plymouth Rocks, but any one who has tried it knows that raising Plymouth Rocks is no mere joke, especially in a cold, damp spring. If your father objects to your going into the bantam business instead of raising standard size fowls bring these arguments to bear upon him: Bantams occupy one fourth the space. Their food costs one fifth as much. Their eggs are two thirds as big. Pairs can easily be sold without expensive advertising. FANCY FOWLS If you want to make the neighbour boys open their eyes, and the passers-by stand still to admire, try the experiment of raising fancy fowls. Growing them for exhibition purposes is such a separate and distinct department of the poultry business and demands familiarity with many "show standards," "tricks of the trade," and special practices in breeding and grooming to bring a fowl up to a high score, that it may be best not to undertake to compete with more experienced breeders. A visit to a fancy poultry exhibition is like a trip to Wonderland. Just looking at the pictures of the prize winners, and studying the alluring advertisements arouses enthusiasm. But to read the accounts of the fanciers, or to hear them talk about the merits of their favourites makes a chicken lover fairly thrill with ardour. How to decide upon which variety to try is a hard problem. Take a lot of things into consideration. Discount what the enthusiasts say about the one they have for sale; they mean every word of it, but they are prejudiced. Don't be influenced to select one breed when you really prefer another. Here is a department where personal preference should cast the deciding vote; the one you like best is the best one for you. It is not well known except by specialists that there are so many distinct varieties in breeds of fowls. For example take the Polish. There are blue Polish, plain white, golden, white-crested, black, buff-laced, and silver; of the Hamburgs there are black, silver-and gold-spangled, silver-and golden-penciled white, and so on through the list. The Polish and the Houdans are remarkable for their tremendous top knots, the Hamburgs, Lakenvelders, and many others for their wonderful plumage and colour combinations, while the most astonishing creatures in the whole chicken tribe are the Yokahamas whose snow-white tail feathers trail gracefully behind them like a bride's gown and veil at a fashionable wedding. These must be the originals of the extraordinary fowls represented on Japanese and Filipino pottery and embroidery. It is not much wonder that fancy breeds are growing more popular in our country. Although as a rule they are non-sitters, they are all described by their advocates as prize layers, some hens even reaching the remarkable record of two hundred eggs a year. The Hamburgs, for example, are called "Dutch Everlasting Layers." Their eggs are smooth and "satiny white"; Polish eggs are very large and snow-white, but they are not winter layers; Houdans lay white eggs of great size and almost certain fertility, and are, besides, excellent table fowls; the Lakenvelders rank with Leghorns as layers and their eggs are also "of a porcelain whiteness" which insures a fancy market in New York where the preference is for white eggs. Do not think that you can just as well house your fancy breeds in with your ordinary chickens. It is a mistake. They should be kept apart from the beginning. Light hens of commoner breeds are successfully employed as foster-mothers for the fancy fowls, but it is important to provide separate pens even for the young. If young chicks are kept in the same run with those somewhat older, they are crowded away from the feeding dishes; chicks with top knots should never be raised with other sorts. The crest interferes with their sight, and they are not fighters and will allow themselves to be driven away from the food. Crested chicks should be treated with a grease lice-destroyer at least once a fortnight. A little of the lard or sweet oil is enough but it should be worked into the feathers to be effectual. Use powder on the hens, but not while the chicks are oily. Making the neighbours gape in open-eyed astonishment is not all there is to raising fancy chickens. With a few years' experience in chicken raising back of you, it would not be risky to raise them for commercial purposes. The popularity of fancy chickens is just beginning in this country. There is a fine market for eggs for hatching, but as it is extremely important to keep the breeds pure your fancy birds should be kept by themselves practically the year round. Most of the breeds mentioned are quite hardy, and the same care required for ordinary poultry as to housing, food, prevention of disease, cleanliness, and records will insure a good measure of success with fancy fowls. DOGS Raising dogs may prove a profitable business for any one who likes dogs, understands them, and is willing to doctor them when they are sick, and train them to good habits. An untrained dog is a nuisance, however well bred he may be. To start a small kennel does not require any more room than to start in the chicken business in a small way. Just now the prices are so absurdly high on high-bred dogs of popular varieties that few but fanciers can afford to own the best stock. Why is it not better to raise some first-rate but not fashionable breed, and not enter into competition with men whose living depends on the number of blue ribbons they can win at dog shows? Buy a young female dog, teach her, and train her. Get experience with one dog and her young ones before you put in much capital. Find out by going to a good dog show what are the points of a good dog of your chosen breed, make out a score card, and mark your own dogs. Sell for pets those which do not come up to the mark. I have before me a balance sheet made out by a young man who began raising white English bull terriers in nineteen hundred and three. In spite of a lot of bad luck, which, with better arrangements, need not have happened, he netted nearly a hundred dollars the first year and over two hundred the second year. This young man kept chickens, too, beside his regular business which kept him at an office seven hours a day; and he found dogs better money makers than chickens. In raising puppies there are three important essentials: the right sort of food, fresh, clean water to drink, and exercise. I believe more dogs get sick from water or lack of it than from any other one cause. If a dog's dish is not clean enough for you to drink out of yourself, then it is not fit for your pups. Keep that in mind. Fresh air and sunshine are as necessary for puppies as for children. Kennels should be airy, face the south, and have shavings or straw bedding. Authorities differ about a dog's food. It is safe to feed him about as you would a growing boy. Like the boy he may overeat of his favourite dish. For breakfast, oatmeal or other cereal with milk and no sugar; for lunch, some dry dog biscuit or stale bread; for afternoon tea, soup or gravy thickened with boiled rice or corn mush. But a puppy's supper ought to be a good square meal because he is an outdoor sleeper, and it is easy for dogs to take cold on an empty stomach. For supper, then, give the puppies some bits of cooked meat, stale bread, and gravy or cooked vegetables. "Never feed a puppy hot bread or any rich, greasy, or highly seasoned foods. Avoid all sweets." Doesn't that sound like a book on what children should eat? But it is quoted right out of a dog book. If your dogs get sick, eczema, distemper, or fits, consult a veterinary surgeon. A good book on dogs and their care will be of greatest value to you for such minor troubles as dogs are heir to. Full-grown dogs do not need more than two meals a day. Most dogs are over-fed, under exercised, and are therefore unhealthy beings. Dogs eat slowly and should not be hurried. They should be fed regularly but not fussed over. A word to boys and girls who own pets: if you live cooped up on a small lot you have no right to keep a dog, much less dogs. If you have a dog and let him run at large, you will probably lose him, and you deserve to. Nobody has any right, law or no law, to allow his live stock, let them be chickens, dogs, cats, or children, to annoy the neighbours. A dog or a cat, a rabbit, or a family of chickens can do more damage in a garden than anybody would believe,--except the gardener. Your dog may be worth ten dollars; he may do ten dollars' worth of damage in ten different bulb beds in ten days. A thirty-cent cat can frighten away more birds in five days than an owner can attract to his garden in a whole season. Be fair to yourself, your neighbour, and your animals, and keep them on your own place. If you are out with your dogs, that is a different matter; if you have them trained "to heel," people will welcome you. GOLDFISH I have already said that the Shetland pony is the ideal pet. That is true still, but I should have said "for out of doors." Of all the candidates for the office of ideal indoor pet, I believe goldfish would get the most votes. They are peaceful and innocent, their needs are few, and their manners engaging. They are attractive in colour, shape, and movements and never get under foot. Above all they have no bad habits. They neither squawk nor whistle, bark, sing, nor howl. They never stay out late nights, nor make trouble with the neighbours. They require a minimum of attention and a minimum of expense both for quarters and for food. For developing a sense of responsibility in children they serve a good purpose, and they can even be taught. It is very evident that they have memory as well as sight, hearing, sense of smell, touch, and taste. They easily learn, if patiently taught, to know their master's voice and to come when he signals. They will learn their feeding time and place and seem to enjoy attention. Just as with horses, dogs, or elephants, the first essential in teaching goldfish is to gain their confidence. This can only be done by patience and gentleness. A restless, nervous goldfish rushing from one side of the tank to another when any one approaches tells its own story. Teased, frightened, neglected, and unhappy they are indeed in a sorry plight, for they are, even more than some other pets, utterly at the mercy of their owners. The sooner they die and pass into oblivion, the better! But what a pretty sight it is to see a well-balanced aquarium, water plants spreading their delicate fronds, a clean, pebbly bottom, and bright-coloured, healthy, happy, care-free goldfish glancing in and out in the sunshine. China is the greatest place for goldfish. Rearing them there has been reduced to a science. We find them running wild in our waters, but they are not native to America. Under ideal natural conditions they are said to live to be a hundred years old. Many are known to have lived to the age of ten years in one aquarium. Goldfish are hardy, live in sluggish streams or ponds, and eat all sorts of vegetable matter. They also eat soft-bodied insects, worms, and small fish, even their own spawn and young. For directions for keeping goldfish happy and healthy in an aquarium in the living room of your home, I must refer you to various books and articles on aquaria and on how to make and maintain them. Raising goldfish for profit is "a horse of quite another colour." Goldfish are sold by the thousand in department stores as well as in shops which deal wholly in pets. Some fish are imported, but the bulk of them are grown in this country. One of the most scientific growers in this country is Mr. Hugo Mulertt, whose book on the subject is quite enough to make its readers enthusiastic fish culturists. The best markets are in cities, and transportation is difficult and expensive. Fancy varieties would not be in demand except in large cities. One can begin goldfish growing in a small way at very small expense. Four tanks or reservoirs are required. Any boy who can make a hotbed frame can make these. They should be in a series: No. 1, spawning pond; No. 2, rearing pond; No. 3, storage pond; No. 4, winter pond. Whether one makes artificial tanks or utilizes a natural valley, separated by little dams, it is essential that the four ponds should be so fitted that they can be emptied at will. They should be sheltered from cold winds and from direct summer sun. The spawning pond should be built first, and furnished with water plants as much like nature as possible. Female fish ready to spawn can be bought from growers. These men are reliable and know how to advise you. It is to their advantage to increase the interest in goldfish. While building tank No. 2, keep watch for eggs in the spawning tank. Laying begins late in April or early in May outdoors. The egg is no bigger than a pinhead, yellow, or cream-coloured. Look for them on the plants. Snip the twigs off with great care and transfer the eggs, twigs and all, into large candy jars in clean water; one hundred eggs is enough for a gallon jar. Be careful that the water is of the same temperature in the jar as in the tank. Eggs should be kept not lower than sixty degrees Fahr., and not higher than ninety degrees Fahr. They hatch in two or three days or at most in less than a week. Do not disturb the water. Sudden changes of temperature will kill the young fish. When the fish are three days old, they are pretty lively and will soon begin to need other food than that supplied by the egg. To transfer them from the "incubator" to the rearing tank is a delicate operation. Mr. Mulertt advises putting the tiny fish into a small, shallow, "nursery" tank first to make the change more gradual. The jar can be emptied very gently, fish and all, into this tank. Prepare the rearing tank, taking every precaution against enemies. It should be covered with a screen to keep the dragon flies from laying their eggs in the tank. Dragon fly nymphs are death on new-hatched goldfish. If the fish get a good start they will hold their own. Let me warn you again to take great precaution against chilling the fish. A few degrees difference may be fatal. When the fish are a week to ten days old, they should be about a half-inch long, darting swiftly about in the nursery tank. Be sure the temperature of the water is right, then set a wide-mouthed pail or jar full of water down in the tank with the fish, and dip the biggest one at a time with a little hand net of soft material. Do not crowd the fish in the transfer pail, but rather make more frequent trips. Extremely delicate handling is absolutely necessary. Do not dip the fish out of the jar, but put it down in the water deep enough so they can swim out of their own accord. They are to stay a long time in the rearing pond so must not be crowded. In a tank covering an area of one hundred and sixty square feet, two hundred to three hundred fish can be reared. When they are only one half an inch long, the tank looks thinly settled, but they soon grow. The young are silver-gray at first. They usually get their permanent colour before reaching the age of two months. In warm ponds, in sunny weather, goldfish may grow to be six inches long in the first summer, but between two and three inches is more normal. Goldfish in outdoor rearing ponds do not require artificial feeding. Nature supplies them with their natural food. The storage tank is simply to keep the fish in while awaiting purchasers. It should be divided by partitions into small compartments. It is convenient to sort the fish taken from the rearing tank, so that those of one size or colour or variety can be separated and buyers can readily see the stock. It is easier to catch them in the small tank also. In the storage tank some feeding is usually needed. Fresh, dry bread crumbs are recommended by most fish growers; feed small amounts until they get used to it and until you know just how much they require. The winter pond costs the most to build. It should be three feet or more deep, lined with boards or cement, and located so that water will be moving through it, in and out slowly all winter, to prevent freezing. It should be covered during storms. Growers plan to get rid of their stock except breeders before winter sets in. One can dispense entirely with a winter tank if he can establish a house aquarium successfully for wintering the fish from which he expects to obtain spawn the following spring. As might be expected of animals which have for so many centuries been associated with man, goldfish have a good many diseases. Their ill-health can almost invariably be traced to neglect or ignorance on the part of the person upon whom they are dependent. The signs of ill-health are usually quite noticeable. They are: Faded colours, bloody streaks, coated or inflamed fins, and swollen gill covers. Most of the troubles have to do with air supply. When a fish loses colour and appetite, has a slimy coating, and acts weak and dejected, it should be put into a "hospital" aquarium where plenty of plants are flourishing, at a temperature of seventy to eighty degrees Fahr. One teaspoonful of salt to each gallon of water will be good for the fish, but no food should be offered for several days. This remedy will usually restore the fish if its trouble is asphyxia or itch and has not gone too far. In the open water conditions right themselves more readily, but fish acting queerly should be taken out from among the others. The greatest harm may result from hail storms and heavy rains on unprotected tanks. The natural enemies of goldfish inhabit the same ponds and to succeed one must daily wage war against crayfish, tadpoles, salamanders, snakes, fish-eating birds, muskrats, and aquatic insects. Toad and frog spawn found in goldfish ponds should be removed to some other pond to mature. These creatures are useful as destroyers of insects but you can dispense with them in goldfish tanks. THE STORY OF A BOY'S ANIMAL CAGE Two years ago, when I was ten years old, my father built me a house for my animals. It is twenty feet square and ten feet high. The framework is of wood. The walls are covered with wire netting. In winter they are boarded in. Last winter we had a fire in a stove in the passageway, but we decided that the animals were better off without it. The pen cost about one hundred and fifty dollars. I keep in it three 'coons, ten to thirty rabbits, and about twenty pigeons. Two 'coons, Tom and Jerry, I have had three years; the other one, Pauline, I have had two years. My oldest rabbits, Harry and Lily, I have had six years. The 'coon pens and the passageway have wooden floors. The walls of the 'coon pen have double wire to prevent the 'coons from grabbing the other animals. Their pens go up to the roof of the house. The rabbit pens are separated by movable wire panels six feet high. On this side of the house there is a second story for the rabbits and pigeons. This is reached by a step-ladder, and is divided by movable panels. The pigeons' house is over the passageway. There are shelves with nappies in them for nests. It is open at both ends in summer. I have kept crows and white rats; they were not a success. The crows killed the rabbits, and the rats smelled bad. I feed the rabbits morning and night and water them once. Their feed is oats in the morning and hay at night. They have from two to eight little ones in a litter. When they multiply too fast we eat them. Their meat is like chicken. The only way to distinguish it is by the bones. I feed and water the 'coons twice a day. They have a sort of cake made of corn meal. They grow very fat in the fall, but in the spring and summer they get very thin. They are not of any use except to look at. I did play with them until they bit my sister. Since then I have been timid about playing with them. I feed wheat to the pigeons once a day. I have tumblers and magpie pigeons. Both kinds are great fighters. I have four ducks, also, two Mallards and two Pekins. Their pen is outside of the rabbit pen. In summer I keep them shut up here. In coldest winter weather I keep them in the barn. The rest of the year they wander about as they please. They have a tub, which I keep filled with water, where they can bathe. I feed them corn. They are much more interesting pets than hens. A STORY OF SUCCESS WITH DOGS Some years ago two young women, one a bookkeeper, the other a stenographer, decided to exchange city for country life. Born and reared on farms, they secured seven acres of farm land, with cottage, but sixteen miles from Chicago, and started a chicken business. This did not prove entirely successful, mainly, as the now prosperous farmers admit, because of ignorance and inexperience. Meantime the fine collie dog, kept as guard and companion, was bringing many requests for good puppies, and it was determined to raise collies instead of chickens. So Daisy Rightaway, an English champion, was purchased, later being joined by imported Master Clinker, son of the famous Wishaw Clinker, which was brought from England about three years ago by J. Pierpont Morgan at a fabulous price. Warned by the trying chicken experience, Miss Porter, who conducts the farm while Miss Benson retains her business position and looks after the "city end" of affairs, resolved to "make haste slowly" in the new direction. Few, but good, animals were chosen, only the best of the young stock was placed on the market, and if the farm books at first showed but small profits, the upward trend, both in cash and reputation, was gratifyingly steady. With less than four years of professional dog rearing behind them, and with all buildings, runs, etc., originally lacking, the pleased proprietors of "Sylvan Farm" rejoice in promising financial statistics for the last half of that time. About two years ago came, apparently by chance, that branch of the business which has, perhaps, proved most lucrative, and which is especially worthy of note by other women with country homes, love for and some knowledge of dogs, and a desire to make money. A friend who owned fine collies envied the splendid environment under which the "Sylvan" canines flourished, and asked permission to board some of his young puppies with "Porter and Benson," to give the young women their official title. The dogs sent thrived remarkably, and he mentioned the matter to other dog fanciers, and they to still others. Almost without knowing how it happened, the delighted farmers soon found themselves caring regularly for from forty to seventy-five well bred dogs. Only collies were at first accepted, but business and accommodations alike gradually widened until practically all kinds of dogs are now handled, in a most progressive and hygienic manner. An isolation house for dogs when first received or suspected of illness; heated homes for young mothers, puppies, and lapdogs; winter houses, with shelters for open-air exercise in bad weather; commodious separate runs--these are among the conveniences now enjoyed by the happy "visitors" whose owners are off for the summer or winter or are otherwise unable to care for their cherished pets. The Desplaines River runs by the farm and a picturesque "river run" is much appreciated by water dogs and those enjoying an occasional frolic in cool water. Two fine cows provide fresh milk in abundance for the nursing mothers and young puppies. Every dog, whether boarder or family resident, is personally and intimately known to Miss Porter, who takes sole care of them with the aid of an intelligent boy to perform the rougher tasks. Five dollars monthly is charged for the board of healthy dogs, with special rates for those needing special care. The standard dietary, varied to suit individual and class needs and varying occasions, is composed of soup made of meat and vegetables, meat jelly, rice, plenty of bones, and dog biscuit, with warm milk every two hours for the young mothers and puppies. The other dogs are fed twice daily--to the minute. In this incessant, indispensable care is found the chief drawback of the business for those fond of personal freedom, since the important duties of feeding, inspection, etc., seldom can be delegated to those not personally interested in the dogs. The little farm provides all the vegetables needed and some corn, but all other food supplies must be purchased. With more ground the recurring feed bills might be made smaller, but the labour outlay would be correspondingly augmented. Eliminating unnecessary details, the financial situation for the two years in which the dog experiment has been successfully running stands thus: EXPENDED Stock, buildings, and fences $785 Miscellaneous expenses, labour, etc. 286 Feed 815 Cash on hand 716 ------ Total $2,602 RECEIVED Original investment $400 Sale of puppies 990 Board of dogs 1,212 ------ Total $2,602 The balance of seven hundred and sixteen dollars does not represent a bad profit in less than three years made from an investment of four hundred dollars, and while the young farmers feel that perhaps in other lines of work such increase might have been more quickly and easily acquired, they feel that perhaps in no other field could they have received such high dividends of health, happiness, and independence. The work is hard but enjoyable, while its widening scope and success bring true satisfaction. Sylvan Farm now receives dogs from, and sends dogs to, all parts of the United States, and the "farm family" of high-bred animals from time to time receives judicious addition. Some famous canines have been raised, welcomed, and boarded, and one young puppy, born on the place, recently sold for one thousand dollars. V WORK AND PLAY WITH TRAINED ANIMALS DAIRY COWS If the boys and girls of the farms are looking about for a big thing to do, the very best place for them to look is at their father's herd of cows. Even if it isn't a strictly dairy herd it is kept partly for dairy purposes. Every cow demands stabling, pasture, feed, and attention. She is supposed to give value received for all this. But how many cow owners know which cows pay their board with a bonus, which barely keep even, and which are eating their heads off? The margin of profit when feed is high is too small to risk feeding an unproductive animal. If your father has not been in the habit of keeping accounts with his cows, you can make him open his eyes. You do not need ledgers and daybooks for your simple statement of facts. Bring every animal face to face with her record. On one side of the account put the cost of what you give each cow. On the other side what she gives in return. You will have a page like this: _Roberta Grade Holstein 5 years_ DEBIT To feed (at prices you would have to pay if you bought it) $ To stabling, estimate $ To care (so much an hour) $ CREDIT To milk, so many qts. at so much $ To calf $ To compost $ You will have to reduce the item "feed" to many items, and remember that hay produced at home is not free hay. It is worth to feed to Roberta just what you would have to pay wholesale for it if you had to go to the feed store, minus the cost of cartage. To work this out is good arithmetic, better than covering acres of blackboard space with examples in "partial payments." Now Roberta may give a good quantity of milk but of poor quality. At first you might think that didn't matter; it brings just as much a quart. But does it, when your mother and sisters make it into butter, for example? Or, if you sell cream, wouldn't you want a cow whose milk tested high in butter fat? Your customers would, whether they bought milk or cream, I know. [Illustration: Photograph by Julian A. Dimock. Holding a Conversation] The boys and girls in many of the great dairying states, notably Illinois and Wisconsin and New York, are learning in school how to test milk for the butter fat it contains and the chances are that every agricultural college in the United States is ready to instruct boys and girls by letter in this important part of dairying. Many of them send out printed lessons giving careful directions about using the Babcock testing apparatus, and I have seen a class of boys and girls in a country school testing milk from their fathers' cows. It is astonishing how many cows are kept on farms purely for ornament--or maybe to give the boys plenty of chores. These cows consume as much food as good ones, but they are idlers. It isn't their fault but the farmer's. Can your father or you afford to keep money invested in any cow that returns him less than a dollar a year over and above the expense of feed? A good cow may cost twice as much to buy, but a good cow will make thirty or forty dollars a year clear gain. These figures are not guess-work but facts. So I say again to the farm boy and girl--if you want to do a big thing for your home place and for the neighbourhood, reform the dairy herd. Keep a record for every cow. Weigh the milk of each one separately every day for a week, then again two months later, and so on through her milking days. Take an average of all these weights as the weekly weight of milk and multiply by the number of weeks the cow gave milk. This will give the total number of pounds produced. Learn how to test for butter fat. Your neighbourhood creamery tests the milk with a Babcock test and you can learn how. Persuade your father to sell all the cows which fall below a fair standard and buy good ones. Test the milk of the cows he thinks of buying. A poor cow often looks as well as a good one. The Illinois Experiment Station shows by tests that twenty-five of the best cows in the state produce as much butter fat as ten hundred and twenty-one of the poorest cows, while eating only one fortieth as much food, to say nothing of the stable room, the time spent in milking, etc. And a quarter of the million cows in the state of Illinois are making their owners only seventy-seven cents a year apiece. Can your father afford to keep that kind of a cow? CLEAN HOME MILK I know what milking is on the farm. Take it on a frosty October morning about sun-up, when you make the cow get up from her bed so that you can stand in the "warm spot" to warm your feet. It gets no better from that time on, even if you do milk in the cow stable. But the boys that do the milking do not realize how perfectly filthy the milk often is when it gets to the house. Take a milk pail from the shelf, go down to the cow barn. There is the cow. Throw her down an armful of hay to chew on while you milk, brush off the stool, rub off the cow's bag with a wisp of hay if she is especially dirty, never mind your hands or the open pail, throw a stream of milk onto each palm and begin. Is there a little hay and dust in the pail? Never mind; it will strain out. When you get through, set the pail down while you drive the cows out to pasture. To be sure, they will raise a lot of cow-stable dust and the smell is pretty bad in there, but if you set it outside the pigs would get into it. It is nearly school time and you have other chores to do. Take it to the house and strain it. Mother always doubles the strainer cloth, but it takes an awful time for it to run through that way. There, you said the dirt would strain out, and look at it there in the cloth! This is a cold-hearted picture of one of the chores the farm boy particularly hates. Compare each item with your own methods and improve on each. Home milk is not always clean milk. [Illustration: Sanitary milk pail] The boy that milks ought to do a better job than this. He ought to bring clean milk into the house. How shall he do it? A clean place to milk, a clean cow, a clean boy, and a sanitary milk pail; these four things are within the reach of every farm that can afford a cow. I have seen a good many patent milk pails, mostly in stores, seldom on farms. The sanitary milk pails _keep the dirt out_, they don't strain it out. Here is one described by the man who invented it for his own use. This pail is tin, holds ten quarts or so. On one side is a spout two and a half inches in diameter and three inches long. The spout has a tin cover like a baking powder can cover. To keep the dirt out of the top of the pail the man bought a tin pan, just the size to fit tight into the top of the pail. Just above the bottom of the pan on one side he had a tinner cut eight or ten small holes, like a collander. Scald the pail, double the strainer cloth and lay it across the top of the pail. Press the pan down on the cloth till it goes down into the pail tight, taking care that the edge of the cloth comes up all round. Do all this at the house. With this pail, a clean milker can milk a clean cow in a sweet smelling place, and get clean milk. This may look like a pound of prevention, but think of the tons of cure it will save. MARKETING MILK There are lots of boys delivering milk in towns and cities. Most of them do their part well. But I believe they would like to do it better. Driving from one house to another is pretty dull business for a live boy and unless he has something to think about his mind wanders. Why not put some thought on the very business he is engaged in? Does he know what milk is? That children's lives depend upon the care he gives it? Does he know that dirt in ice and dust from streets may be deadly if they get into milk? If dust gets into that little puddle that ought not to be on top of the bottles does he wipe it off with a dirty rag, ignorant of the danger? If he thought of these things and studied out ingenious ways of keeping his bottles free from dust, life would no longer be dull but interesting. He would be well started toward good citizenship. TRAINING PET ANIMALS Trained pets have a greater market value than those which have no education. Parrots, for example, with nothing but their native harsh squawk, can be bought for very little. But every word added to Polly's vocabulary can be expressed in dimes added to her price. There are very few domesticated or tamed animals so lacking in wit that they cannot be taught. But it takes a particular kind of patience and persistence. Some animals learn very quickly; mice for instance. One trainer has taught them to walk the tight rope, climb ladders, swing in a trapeze, pull tiny wagons, and do other little tricks. We have all seen trained animals in shows and have marvelled at them. It is hard to believe that they are real. It takes genius to train fleas, for example, or geese, yet these animals are tamed. Every boy has a little spark of such genius and with use the spark would grow. Dogs are about the easiest animals to train. Teach a dog first to obey. He must learn to understand just as a baby does. How long does it take a baby to learn what "no, no" means? A bright dog will learn to "charge" about as quickly. When he knows what you mean and that you really do mean it and are not fooling, he will suit the action to the word or signal. A little training every day will do the business. Rewards in the form of food or caresses appeal to the dog's understanding. Never forget to give the reward. You may sometimes have to punish a dog, but you should be careful to make certain that he associates the punishment with the crime. Whipping a dog to "get even" with him is not the way to make him a good dog. He may take his chance to "get even" some day. Do you blame him? Most children expect a dog to learn too fast. For instance, a boy wants his dog to draw a wagon or sled. The dog is big and strong and there are leaves to be gathered or kindling to be brought in. Don't make a harness, force it onto the dog, hitch him up regardless of his protests, and expect him to trot off like a pony. Ponies are trained to the feel of the harness from their youth up. Your dog will rebel, not angrily, but none the less emphatically. He will lie down or slip the harness or otherwise rid himself of the burden. Or he will balk. Train him gradually, just as you would a colt or calf. He will learn faster than either. Dogs are sometimes trained to carry baskets or bundles and can even be trusted to go on errands alone, if, by going over the same route daily, their minds are impressed sufficiently. Training a dog should begin in puppyhood. Make commands in single words and accompany the word with a sign. Use always the same easily interpreted sign with the command word. Teach him his name first, then to come when called. After these commands are thoroughly learned, teach him to come "to heel," "charge," and similar commands. A poor teacher will make a poor dog, so teach yourself patience. Your voice should be firm but never loud or high-pitched. A young dog will learn to herd cattle, sheep, or goats more easily from an old dog than from you. He will follow his leader at first, then later he can go on ahead driving the herd on his own responsibility or in obedience to a command. [Illustration: Photograph by George G. McLean. Gyp Has An Ax to Grind] Did you try to teach your dog to retrieve by ducking him? How silly! How soon would you learn to swim by that method? Begin by letting him think he is bringing you his play-ball, although really you are pulling it by an attached string. Insist on his giving up the ball every time. Do it again and again till he is out of the primer class. Throw the ball a few feet at first, then farther and farther away till he has that trick "down fine." When the water is well warmed by the spring sunshine, take him to the shore and repeat the same lessons patiently, a little each day. If you have an old retriever with you the youngster will be ambitious to "go him one better" and will learn more quickly. It is necessary in training dogs to consider the inborn instincts of the breed. A terrier is a "nat'ral ratter" and needs little training for that, but you would have to train a long time to get a spaniel to catch rats. A dog on the farm can be trained to save the boys a lot of steps. We had a shepherd dog once which was a famous runner. When my father suspected that the cattle were breaking into the cornfield, he would go first to the top of the knoll by the house, hold Nimp up in his arms, point in the direction of the cows. Nimp would whimper and squirm and when let down was off like a streak of brown lightning. He would not go in a bee-line, but followed first the road, then the line fence to where the marauding cattle were at work. By the time my father or one of the boys on horseback reached the break in the fence the fleet-footed dog would be hustling those cows. If he didn't actually get them back into pasture he kept them moving so that they got no more green corn than was good for them. "Good old dog" was all Nimp expected for little deeds of kindness like this. He wagged his head, hung out his long pink tongue, and almost smiled with satisfaction. There was no doubt that he was pleased with having outwitted the cows, for which he had small respect. Teaching a collie to herd sheep or goats is a special sort of business; experienced shepherds can teach you how it is done. Training hunting dogs is also a work for experts. Anybody knows that a poorly trained dog makes the difference between real sport and disgusting failure. A young man with a real aptitude for training dogs for various forms of hunting can find opportunities to turn this genius into cash. TRAINING YOUNG HORSES "Breaking colts" is a phrase handed down to us, I think, from the days way back when our pioneer ancestors used to go out and catch a wild horse and break it to saddle and harness. On ranches where colts range over vast areas and never get acquainted with human beings except at branding time, it is little wonder that they must be broken. They do a little breaking on their own account, too. But on the small farm where three or four colts a year or fewer are raised, no colt should need to be "broken." All should be trained, which is one way of saying taught or educated. Everything depends upon the colt's learning each thing right first. If you put an old, worn strap on him, or a fraying rope which he can break, he will just as likely as not become a halter and bridle breaker. A little colt starts out without any habits. All the bad ones as well as all the good ones are learned. Every bad habit harks right back to some mistake. You can manufacture balky horses by overloading a wagon for your team of colts. I have seen boys tease a colt "just to see him kick." That strikes me as lacking in "horse sense." Every time you go out with your father to visit the two-year-olds and the yearlings, be sure that you pet and caress them. Don't attempt to mount one till you have accustomed him to the feel of a burden on his back, a very small weight first, then the saddle of an old harness, then a very light saddle. Don't act as if you were in desperate need of a saddle horse. His training cannot all be done in one visit. A yearling must be taught to lead, then to be driven. After a two-year old has been accustomed to the feel of a harness, one part at a time, he can safely be hitched with some old stager to a light wagon, and taught what pulling means. He should already know that a pull on the right rein means "gee" and on the left means "haw"; never give the command "whoa" to a colt, unless you have the muscle to make your command good. A runaway may not break any harness, nor any vehicle, nor any bones, _this_ time, but a runaway horse is an ill-trained horse. It is almost an impossible thing to train an old, high-spirited horse to regard an automobile or a trolley car with anything but disfavour. A young horse can learn easily. Soon after a colt is well "halter-broke" he should be led around where the farm machinery is at work. He must be held with a strong hand and not be allowed to bolt when the mowing machine starts. Break the automobile to him gently. Lead him up to a quiet one. Have a bit of his favourite dainty to offer him from the seat and see to it that he is convinced that the automobile is harmless. (Would that it were true!) Speak reassuringly to him. If he jerks back, don't get mad and whack him, just to vent your impatience. He will associate your whack with the automobile, and you will have your work to do over again. I have known of a colt being made "trolley-wise" in an hour and he never has forgotten; he would no more shy when one whirls by than he would at his own mother hitched to a load of hay. TREADMILLS AND CRANKS How a boy does hate the sight of a crank. Turning the grindstone, running the washing machine and churning are part of a country boy's daily life. He may do these things cheerfully, because he knows they are boys' jobs or because he hates to see his mother doing them even worse than he hates doing them himself. But that doesn't prove that the boy's tastes run to crank turning. Why not train a dog or a sheep to turn the crank? That's a scheme. It's fun to train an animal and then it will be more fun to see him do the work while you read a book and watch him. Here is a picture of a big wheel from which a belt runs to a grindstone out under a tree. In the wheel stands a good dog; by his bright eyes, his erect carriage, and the "near-smile" on his face, you can see that he is no brow-beaten labourer. A man at the grindstone holds the axe and the wheel is ready to turn. This fine dog knows that a certain signal means work. He does not skulk off and hide, nor yawn and look limp. He steps up into the wheel, waits for the signal, then begins a steady tread. On Mondays he does the washing, on Tuesdays and Fridays he churns, on other days he helps grind the axe, the sickle, the scythe, or the butcher knife. When the job is done, at a well-known signal, the dog stops, steps off the wheel, and waits for the kindly pat of his mistress or the "Good old fellow" of his master. MAKING ANIMALS HAPPY In training any domestic animal you will find their greatest weakness is fear, just as with wild animals. You do not want to develop this but to win their confidence. With horses taken right from the range or wild, the men who are most successful are those who train by kindness. A horse whose spirit is broken and who does his task because he is afraid not to is not a safe horse. I wouldn't trust him in an emergency. A horse who lives in a state of fear has very little sense. [Illustration: Photograph by Julian A. Dimock. A Group of Happy Farm Animals] One blow, yell, jerk, or even a threatening motion will often obliterate all the work you have done. So the animal trainer must not lose his temper, especially with dogs and horses. The more intelligent the animal, the more kindness and gentleness are required. On one farm, you will see the calves trembling when coming for their food, trying to keep one eye out for sudden blows while drinking; the horses jerking timidly up as if expecting their tender mouths to be yanked; the cows kicking the milkers; the colts hard to toll in from pastures; the dog with tail between his legs; the cat on her way up a tree. Do you know the owners of such animals? How are the boys of the family liked in the neighbourhood? Are the girls popular and good-natured? Has the mother the sweet and patient look that the best mothers have? Every domestic animal ought to be kept happy. A happy hen will lay eggs, a happy cat will purr and rub your leg in passing, not because she wants anything out of you, but because she thinks you are a good fellow and that's her way of expressing herself; she will catch mice for you, too. A happy cow will give down her milk; a happy pig will lay on fat faster than a miserable one, a happy horse will almost trot at the plough. So really it pays to keep animals happy. Having creature comforts alone is not enough for most animals. They like attention, caresses, and even seem to enjoy and understand conversation. Boys that train animals will find that the animals train them. If you have a hot temper and can keep it in enough to train a dog to draw a wagon, you will find it isn't so hard to hold in when you are playing ball. Self-control is one of the biggest things in life. The training of a calf or colt should begin early, just as with other animals. If the animal has never been frightened the task is easy. Begin gradually. Petting for a day or two will get him used to being handled. A rope may be knotted round his neck and worn for a day or two, or a rope halter put over the head; something that slips on easily so that you don't have to hold the youngster's head. When he is accustomed to the feel of the halter, you can lead him to his food without his realizing it. Unconsciously he gets used to the pull on the rope. A pair of well-matched oxen, trained by kindness, taught to "gee" and "haw" at the word without reins or goad, with no bad habits like kicking or turning in the yoke, are worth between two and three hundred dollars. They started out worth four or five dollars a head for veal. Training and grass have done most of the rest. If trained in kindness, they are docile, gentle, industrious, and though less spirited than horses, they are also steadier and far better suited to many heavy farm tasks than horses. The harness for oxen is very simple, costs little, and seldom needs mending. Every county fair ought to offer prizes for animals trained by boys and girls. I believe boys train animals more often than girls do. I wonder how that comes. Practise on the hens, girls, and on the cat. I know of a cat which picks up nuts and puts them in a basket quite as a child might. This cat treads a wheel, too, to turn the churn. If all the animals were happy and earned their living, helping do the work, as well as reproducing their kind, farm life would be less dreary and hardships would seem less hard and the country would be a better place to live in. TAMING WILD ANIMALS All little children are interested in animals. It does not take much argument to convince a boy that he needs a dog or the girl that she needs a canary bird. If, as they grow older, they seem to lose their pleasure in the companionship of animals, it means that something is wrong. Probably home conditions are such that an intimate acquaintance with any animal is inconvenient or else some unnatural lessons in natural history have been forced upon the children at school and their interest in the real things has been deadened. I have heard many boys and girls say that they dislike zoölogy. Take these same boys and girls out on an excursion, with an opera glass or with an insect net, or show them a rabbit's tracks in the new snow, and who will say they are not awake and interested? The first thing you want to know about an animal is its name. The same is true of a new neighbour or a new schoolmate. The name does not tell you much about the animal or the boy. When you know them better you will give them names that fit. The new boy's name may be Reginald. When the boys get to know him they may call him "Piggy," or "Chief," depending on what kind of a boy he is. But a name is a great convenience. Next after the name you want to know where he lives, how he lives, and above all what he can do. After all "what he can do" is the boy, and the same is true of other animals. How are boys and girls going to find out what animals can do, how they live, how they make a living? The good old natural way to find out what an animal can do and will do is to catch him and watch him. Some small neighbours of mine did not catch grasshoppers and throw them into the water because they were cruel, although their mother berated them for cruelty. They wanted to find out whether grasshoppers could swim or not. The boys who catch squirrels and rabbits and birds and put them in cages want to take care of them and teach them tricks. But, seeing the wild ones unhappy and drooping, most boys will voluntarily let them go. There is no good word to be said for the practice of caging wild creatures merely for the entertainment their misery will afford an irresponsible and curious crowd. I am glad to know that those horrid whirling cages in which squirrels used to be shut have become less common. In these days of hunting without guns, there is also a good deal of taming without cages. This is the real thing, and has everything in its favour. There are two sides to it. From the animal's side the tamed one has nothing to lose. He, and for his sake, all his fellows, receive protection, consideration, care. If he tells any secrets, his confidence is not betrayed to the enemy. He comes and goes at will and pays his debts by keeping true that balance which existed in nature before mankind upset it. From the human side taming wild things is a delightful though not an easy way to learn to be patient, persevering, and gentle. You simply have to practise these virtues or you will fail. Furthermore, the domestication of wild animals useful to man results in very great practical value. From the naturalist's point of view, this is a most fruitful method of discovering the true habits of the wild creatures, about which so much is yet to be learned. Most efforts to tame full-grown animals result in complete failure. Taken when young, almost any of them can be tamed. No one ought ever to have a pet of any kind unless he sees one thing clearly: Forcing his pet to become dependent upon his protection and care involves a real responsibility. When I consider the number of cases of neglected pets I am inclined to discourage children from keeping them. It is a very good method of developing responsibility, but, if the method fails, the innocent pet suffers. The uncaged pet has an advantage over the caged one in that he can, if neglected, return to the wild and shift for himself. BIRDS A great many famous people have made friends with our native birds. John Burroughs could depend on an audience of robins to perch on his knee. They would listen politely while he remonstrated with them for stealing his grapes, well assured that the next forkful of earth he turned would yield worms enough to repay them for waiting. It is not uncommon to see photographs of birds perching on the hands of children or grown people. One noted naturalist is pictured with a piece of bread in his mouth, out of which a bird is taking a bite. To really tame a full-grown bird is practically impossible. To gain its confidence is difficult. It means that the person has never in its presence made a motion sufficiently sudden to startle the timid creature nor lost his patience or self-control once during many trials. A bird is not tamed in an hour nor a day. A quick wave of the arm or a sharp noise is enough to undo all that has been accomplished in long, patient hours spent in establishing friendly relations. The photographs are records of triumphs. Professor Hodge encourages the taming of young birds in the interest of increasing our valuable bird life. He says: "It is a rare lesson in gentleness to capture a young bird without frightening it, but, if successfully done, your bird is practically tame. If even a young bird is caught after a severe chase, it is likely to be days, weeks, and even months, before the effects of its fright can be obliterated. If they can be picked up without frightening them, they will often immediately perch on the finger and feed from the hand. I have tested this with young vireos, chipping sparrows, orioles, grackles, and repeatedly with young robins, which some even put down in their books as untamable. Think what a monster the open hand must seem to a bird!" Those of you who have read Mrs. Stratton-Porter's story of Freckles will remember how he tamed the wild birds. They were residents of the great primeval woodland and had not learned yet from sad experience to hide from men. They swarmed about the gentle Irish lad because he had made himself a part of the forest. To them he was like some new kind of beneficent tree, yielding nuts for the nut-eaters, grain for the grain-eaters, and bits of suet or scraps of meat for all who came for it. He called them all, "Me chickens." Was there anything wonderful in this? Yes; so thought the Scotch woodsman with whom Freckles lived. And no, because anybody can do the same who will follow the same tactics. If you read on in the story, you will readily believe that his relations with the birds and the forest helped make Freckles the lovable boy and the fine, sweet-natured man he grew up to be. How to do something toward domesticating wild birds in order to make the country a better place to live in is treated more fully in a later chapter. Humming-birds are said to be entirely without fear if tamed when nestlings. They sometimes fall from the nest and are, of course, helpless so far as feeding themselves is concerned. They will take sweetened water from a spoon, but should not be expected to thrive on this diet alone. Their natural food while growing, and probably afterward, too, is largely insects. A supply of these should be given the young birds. They become very tame and perch on the hand and on the flowers in vases. They will visit your best hat, too, if it has flowers on it, and will even try to collect nectar from the flowers on wall-paper or curtains. TOADS AND THEIR KIN One is really surprised at the long list of wild animals that have been successfully tamed. That is, they are sufficiently tame to come to the tamer, eat from his hand, nestle in his pocket, follow him about--in short, to show perfect confidence and little or no fear. The toad for example, "ugly and venomous," (we have Shakespeare's word for that, but he was mistaken)--, a very useful animal and absolutely without disagreeable traits. It has been carefully estimated that every toad is worth twenty dollars to the garden he lives in. Yet how seldom one hears of a tame toad. At best they are tolerated, but not often encouraged by protection or by a little attention. To tame a toad, one only needs to feed him. Frogs, salamanders, newts, snakes, turtles, and fish have all been tamed in the same fashion. As nearly all are insect eaters, we are benefiting mankind when we encourage them. [Illustration: Photograph by Charles W. Miller. The Crow May Be Tamed When Young] [Illustration: Photograph by Chester K. Reed. The Skunk is an Amiable and Well-Mannered Pet] SQUIRRELS Tame squirrels are amusing. It takes very little encouragement to make them tame enough to eat from the hand and even to rummage the pockets for nuts. I remember a case when the red squirrels made so free with the books in a great man's study that he became positively annoyed, although he had himself encouraged them and had enjoyed their friendliness and tameness. The case got so bad that he was forced either to vacate or to get rid of the squirrels. He finally had a trap set. The first squirrel that came in ran straight into the trap. The great man had really not counted on any such circumstance. He was nonplussed. In all his diplomatic career no such a situation had arisen. He gave the matter earnest thought. He considered all the _pros_ and _cons_. He weighed all the evidence. The squirrel was guilty! When asked by a friend what penalty he pronounced, the great man replied: "I read him such a lecture as he will never forget--and turned him loose!" The relations of the red squirrel with the birds are such that we are pretty sure they should be discouraged. They are, alas! egg-suckers and nest-robbers. The gray squirrel has not been caught in this nefarious occupation. If plenty of nuts, fruit, and water were supplied for red squirrels, maybe they could be cured of their bad habits. The flying squirrel is to me the most beautiful member of his family. He is said to tame easily, but I remember the only pair we ever caught were shut in a convenient closet "till morning." When morning came there were only a little pile of gnawings and a hole under the door to tell the story. They had flown, nor could I blame them. RACCOONS, WOODCHUCKS, AND SKUNKS A raccoon is a most satisfactory pet and will afford about as much amusement in the back yard as a cage of monkeys. Raccoons are more numerous, especially in New England, than formerly. They are extremely fond of green corn, but corn in any form is eaten greedily. Also, I regret to say, they are nest-robbers. In fact, they will eat fish, flesh, and fowl, as well as vegetables and insects. This makes the food problem for a pet 'coon a very simple one. But we can not afford to encourage them, because of their bird-eating habits. Sometimes a hunter finds a suckling 'coon in the woods. He cannot let the helpless thing starve, as it certainly would if left. When he gets it home, he will realize that its natural food is 'coon's milk. Some bright member of the family will suggest that a bottle of cow's milk with rubber nipple will do the trick. Having no such convenience as a rubber nipple, we once successfully brought up a baby pig on a bottle. We took a goose quill and wrapped it with a strip of clean old cotton cloth till we made a stopper for the bottle. This was fine, and I can recommend it for suckling lambs, pigs, fawns, 'coons, and other young mammals. There are well-authenticated stories of baby 'coons being adopted by cats whose young have been "disposed of." [Illustration: Photograph by E. S. Kane. A Bottle Baby] A 'coon is a most mischievous creature, and if you tame one you should really not expect your mother to feel all the enthusiasm you do about him, for his mischief is sometimes exasperating. An animal enclosure in the back yard may be necessary, but that means more work for you to keep the 'coon and his mates happy. Tame woodchucks are said by experienced boys to be a great success. Young ones are easy to capture, for they are not allowed to "hang around" the home nest after the parents decide that they are big enough to earn their own way. In "American Animals" there is a good story of a tame 'chuck for which the author traded an old fish line with a broken hook and thirteen cents "to boot." This little chap was brought up by hand and developed most interesting traits. He made life miserable for the family tabbies by nipping their heels, and he tunnelled under the door step till he made the earth cave in. A wild woodchuck will show fight when in danger of capture, but the tamed ones are not vicious. The last creature I should ever think of becoming familiar with is the skunk. Yet I have a photograph of a lady feeding a full-sized one from her hand. The account that went with the picture said that this skunk was in "perfectly good working order," too. Several naturalists have tamed these little animals, and there is no doubt that they make amusing and well-behaved pets. Prairie dogs, chipmunks, badgers, fawns, 'possums, crows, and many other native wild animals have been successfully tamed. You may have read of "Red" Saunders's pets, the bob-cat, the snake, and Judge, the hawk. Whether you would call them tame or not depends. They certainly had "wild, wild ways," though they frequented the kitchen and slept under the stove, one at a time. The same methods must be employed, no matter what the creature is. Gentleness, patience, and common sense will succeed almost every time with young animals. VI MAKING BROOKS AND SPRINGS USEFUL RECLAIMING A TROUT STREAM "I used to ketch trout that 'ud weigh two pound in that little crick back of my pasture when I 'uz a boy." Who has not heard old men say that? They seem to have just accepted the lack of trout as one other piece of bad luck, like wormy apples, blighted wheat, and other dispensations of Providence. The younger generation are not satisfied with this view. If good wheat can be grown by modern methods, and wormy apples prevented by spraying, why shouldn't trout be caught in grandpa's old brook? No reason in the world. In between you and grandpa there was a generation of neglect. Your father and his brothers probably went to town to seek their fortunes. Anyhow, everybody was too busy to fish, and something went wrong with the brook that needs to be righted. Any stream that has been a trout stream once can be so again, provided that the water is not fed with poisoned drainage from some mill or factory. If the forest has been removed and natural conditions so changed that the brook that used to be perennial is now only semi-annual, going dry in time of drought, it will be necessary to build a series of dams to make sure that the water will always be deep enough for trout. A spring-fed brook is best; it is cool and constant. Lower the channel by digging where refuse has choked the natural course of the stream, but don't tidy it up enough to make it artificial. The ideal brook, and the country is full of them, has gravelly or sandy stretches which serve as spawning beds, swift rapids where exercise is necessary, and deep pools for rest and quiet, shallow places where insects lurk in the overhanging vegetation, and once in a great while a real little waterfall where the water gets well churned and mixed with air. The brook ought to supply enough food for all, but I have seen fish so plentiful in well-cared-for streams that it was necessary to feed them. We would take great pans of specially prepared food to the water's edge; as we threw it broadcast on the surface the trout would leap entirely out of the water in their eagerness to get the morsels. We did not feed them liver because the epicure does not like his trout to have a liver flavour. The natural food of the trout should be encouraged to breed in the trout stream. You can restock your stream with the little crustaceans, insect nymphs, and similar fish food from other streams if you think it necessary. A few pails full of mud carried across will start them. [Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke. Plenty of Trout in This Stream When Grandfather Was a Boy] The greatest necessity is to protect your fish from their natural enemies. Big fish will eat little fish, trout will eat trout, so will bass, pickerel, and suckers. You can keep the big fish out by screening the spillway at the upper dam. There is good fun to be had in raising trout from the egg. This work has been regarded by most people as too complicated and too difficult for any but an expert. As a matter of fact, it is no more difficult than many of the occupations boys engage in, chicken raising, bee-keeping, and photography, for instance. Visit a fish hatchery if you have one near, get all the government bulletins on the subject, and, if you have available running water, you can try your hand at trout growing. It would not appeal to many, but it is really fascinating work. SPRINGS FOR TROUT CULTURE If there are constant, cold springs on your place, you are neglecting a golden opportunity for earning money in an easy and delightful way. A spring is capable of furnishing living room for a large family of trout. You can sell live trout at sixty-five cents to a dollar a pound to a first-class hotel. The big fish bring the smaller prices per pound, those weighing from half a pound to a pound being most popular. Clean out your spring first and make a basin ten to twenty feet square, the bigger the better. Put a fine, galvanized iron netting over the overflow of your reservoir. Young fish can be bought from a fish hatchery in the form of eggs, fry, fingerlings, yearlings, or even larger. The government will stock your streams for you free, but it imposes certain conditions, which is quite just and proper. Get all the information you can from state fish hatcheries or the United States Bureau of Fisheries, before you decide finally. RECLAIMING A SPRING There is often a neighbourhood tradition concerning a wonderful spring somewhere near, a spring that never ceases to flow, no matter how complete the drought. The water is pure, cold, and clear; maybe the oldest inhabitant had it from his grandfather how the Indians used always to camp near it on their cross-country marches from the Catskills to the Blue Ridge. They call it "The Old Indian Spring." Sometimes they tell hair-raising tales of midnight adventures and hair-breadth escapes, till you wonder that the spring itself never turned red with the spilt blood. From stories of early pioneer days one gets a good idea of the very great importance of the ever faithful spring. With the certainty of a pure water supply for family and beasts, a man might safely carve a home in a primeval forest. Without it, he must push on yet another lap toward the wilderness. I remember such a spring. Generations of red men, trekking from one hunting-ground to another or maybe waging their own peculiar war in the enemy's country, have depended on this spring for their success. Later generations of pioneers have passed that way and refreshed themselves with its sweet water. As years went by, the spring fell into disuse and gushed on forgotten. But forty years ago it was re-discovered by a searching party, identified as an historic spot, reclaimed, and made permanently useful and beautiful by public spirit. Nobody knows just how to appreciate a spring except the person who discovers it, reclaims it, and makes it do his bidding. No bit of his own ingenuity pleases the householder quite as much as his spring, his piping, his reservoir, and his little hydraulic ram, yet one of the last springs I visited was in a New England pasture. Its only protection was a sort of fence of poles to keep the cattle out. To approach it you had to leap from hillock to hillock, in constant danger of losing your balance and sinking in a deep mud hole. The spring bubbled up clear as crystal in a most unromantic hole in the ground; its overflow simply spread out on the ground between the hummocks. It didn't look thrifty to me. Two days' work would have laid a basin rim of small stones about that spring with a piece of tile for an overflow pipe, and a shallow channel might have been dug to carry the surplus to the edge of the slope where another basin for the cattle might have been made, or to a trough. The water of a spring ought to be analyzed by a chemist before it is used for drinking. Nobody knows what contamination is possible to a spring whose sources are mystery. Campers ought to be particularly careful in this, especially if their camp is near settlements. The first step in reclaiming a spring is to dig out a basin. The chances are that the one made by the water is too shallow for practical purposes. Compute the number of gallons you want in reserve and take out enough cubic feet of soil to make a basin of that capacity. Decide next what to do with the surplus. Your basin is not designed to hold the spring's daily output. If the spring is in a ravine, nothing is simpler than to lay a tile drain from the basin down to the stream bed. By damming the stream you can make a pond for waterfowl, for trout raising, or for a swimming hole: but that is another story. The basin should have a protecting rim. For a number of reasons this should be solid and permanent. You are sure to want to sit on it and watch the water, for one thing. Then, too, you want a protection against surface water. All sorts of decaying animal and vegetable matter must be kept out of the spring, so cover it tightly. MAKING A SWIMMING POOL In a country where wooded brooks are plentiful there is absolutely no good reason why boys shouldn't have a swimming pool. It needn't cost a thousand dollars, either. Every outdoor club ought to have one as a special feature. The same dam that holds back the water for the skating pond may serve in summer to make the swimming hole. It is really fun to build a dam. Your father or the other boy's father will know how. You can dig out the stream at low water, and make the pool deep enough for diving. High banks make the place more private; trees and underbrush serve the same purpose. But if the banks are not high naturally, and the trees have been cut away you have no idea how quickly you can make a natural screen. Willows love the margin of streams and they grow tremendously. A frame of poles covered with wild cucumber or morning glory will make a good screen the first season while the permanent trees and shrubs are growing. You don't need to swim all your spare time, so you can give some time to making the pool more secluded. Move a few big bushes from the woods in winter. They will never know the difference if you transplant them while their roots are frozen in a big ball of earth. Let me make a suggestion to you. You believe everybody ought to know how to swim, don't you? That includes your father, of course, who taught you. Does it include your sisters and the other boys' sisters? "Everybody" is a big word, now you think of it. Why it includes even your mother! Do mothers know anything about swimming? Some of them do, already, only they never get a chance to keep in practice; but they like it. It is precisely as natural for girls and mothers to enjoy the water as it is for boys and fathers. Just be generous and let it be understood that a certain day in the week is ladies' day, and turn the pool over to them. Their bathing suits may not be in the latest fashion, but you won't be there to criticize nor to see how well they really swim. A HOME-MADE SKATING POND The family who own a tennis court and enjoy no skating in the winter have their own want of ingenuity to blame, if they live in the Jack Frost belt. Any level piece of ground, even the grass plot in the back yard, can be skated on. You need first to set a six-inch board on edge all round the level plot. This board should be three inches in the ground and three inches out. As winter approaches, rig a trough from the pump to the pond-to-be or have the hose where it can be attached to the spigot at a moment's notice. Wait for a hard freeze. When it comes, and the ground is like rock, give the word "all hands to the pumps." Let on enough water to cover the surface, then let it freeze. If you get a smooth surface the first go you are luckier than most boys. Cover the first coat with a second and that with a third layer until you have smooth ice. Then skate. On cold nights spray the worn places if you use a hose, or run on another half-inch of water. A good skating pond can be made by boys with a little ingenuity, which in this case means engineering ability, by damming a brook until it floods a naturally flat area above its own level. Or by damming the outlet of a pond before dry weather comes on and holding the water at a higher level than it would naturally have. It is perfectly astonishing what a small dam will do, if cleverly placed. Study the work of beavers if you know of any. You can get pointers from mill-dams built by your great-grandsires, if there are any in your vicinity. In one of the books for boys, mentioned in the book list, are practical suggestions about building dams. Sometimes boys think nature has not done as much for them as for boys who have a natural swimming pool, a skating pond, or a trout brook. Maybe if you helped her out a little, nature would do her part in your case, too. THE STORY OF RECLAIMING A SPRING When I was fourteen years old my father bought his property in Ithaca, N. Y., on which we live. That part of it on which there is now a fine spring was considered worthless. Through this property ran a well-wooded glen, the upper end of which was very wet and swampy. This condition was due to several small springs emerging from the ground at the head of the glen. All of these springs joined and flowed down through the glen, forming a fairly large stream. This stream flowed continually throughout summer and winter, without change of volume. The first step in the reclaiming of this spring was to collect all the water through tile drains into a large, concrete reservoir. This reservoir, which was four feet wide, four feet high, and twelve feet long, was constructed about two feet under ground. An open spring basin was connected with this reservoir by a two and one-half inch iron pipe. This basin was made of rough stones laid in cement, and the back side of it arched over a foot or more, forming a partial roof. On the open side is a concrete seat where one can conveniently sit and get a drink. My father and I did all the work except part of the ditch digging. From this basin was laid a one and a quarter-inch iron pipe which carried the water down the glen a distance of about sixty feet to a hydraulic ram. This ram is always running, and is made to go by the constant pressure of the water from the spring basin. The water is forced through a half-inch iron pipe to a large tank in the attic of the house situated on the hill above. The tank, which holds about five hundred gallons, supplies the house with pure, cold water for all purposes. As the water is always flowing into the tank it is provided with an inch and a half overflow pipe, which carries the surplus water back into the glen. Thus, through a series of pipes and a ram, the water is conveyed from the reservoir throughout the house. By building a small dam farther down, we made a fair-sized pond on which to domesticate some wild fowl. The ground drained by concentrating the springs was well adapted because of its fertility for the growing of shrubbery and flowers of many sorts. In the wetter places, ferns and pink and yellow lady slippers were planted, and in the dryer area shrubbery, such as the red bud and azalea. Thus, what was once a mud hole was transformed into a useful piece of ground. JOHN NEEDHAM A BACK YARD SWIMMING POOL Somewhere and somehow our boys came into possession of the idea that they could make a swimming pool. I think the original suggestion came from _Country Life in America_, wherein was described, with beautiful pictures, a swimming pool that cost five thousand dollars or six thousand dollars. The boys had land a-plenty, water, too, and a will to work if they were shown what to do. With the decision made that a swimming pool must be had, a council was held to decide on ways and means. The oldest boy, aged thirteen, stoutly maintained that he could do the entire work himself, while the youngest, aged four, was equally confident that the job was entirely within his capacity. It was finally agreed that I should stake out the ground and furnish the material, and the boys would do the work. With some slight modifications this plan was followed throughout. It was decided to make the pool twenty-five feet long, ten feet wide, and four feet deep. The ground was thereupon staked off and the boys fell to with a will removing the earth. It was hard digging, but the youngsters stuck to the work and finished within a week. Earth to the depth of three feet was removed, and by piling this around the entire margin of the excavation the level was raised about one and one half feet for a distance of eight feet on all sides. This plan avoided the necessity of hauling away the earth, gave the desired depth, and provided a flat surface eight feet wide all around the pool. The rough digging being finished, the sides of the excavation were trimmed with a spade to an angle of about forty-five degrees. Rough two by four-inch studding was then cut into lengths of four and one half feet and placed four feet apart all around the banks. Where each piece of studding was set, the earth was removed, so that the timber was made flush with the soil. The end of each piece of timber was also sunk in the earth at the bottom of the pit for about three inches, in order that it might be held firmly against the bank. Rough pine boards, free from cracks and knot holes, were then nailed to the timbers at the top only. These boards were twelve inches wide, and thus formed a border or rim all around the upper portion of the pit, one foot in width. At right angles to the twelve-inch rough boards others of the same size were nailed, the last projecting out on the level ground, thus forming a boardwalk around the excavation. The main object of these boards was to keep the waves from washing the banks and to give a clean place upon which to stand or sit while not actually in the water. The boards being up, there was still left about three feet of the sides, and the entire bottom of the excavation, without covering of any kind. It was decided to cover the sides and bottom with cement, plastering this material directly upon the earth. The cement was mixed with sand, one part cement and two parts of sand, and was spread on with a mason's trowel. Two and a half barrels of cement and about four barrels of sand were used. Toward the last, pure cement was applied as a thin wash to the entire surface. The cementing was a pretty tough job, but with the help of an old coloured man the work was finally done in a thorough manner, and the pit was then as tight as a jug. It was allowed to dry for two days; then the water was turned in. The water was supplied from the service pipe of our home near by, and as it is furnished by meter, we had no qualms as to the quantity used. The pool holds about eight thousand gallons and requires from twelve to fifteen hours to fill it through a three-quarter inch pipe. The entire cost of the work, not counting the boys' time, was as follows: 12 boards, 1 � 12 � 16 $2.25 8 pieces rough pine, 2 � 4 � 16 1.05 2½ barrels cement at $1.50 per barrel 3.75 ------ Total $7.05 The pool was located in the shade of some willows on ground slightly higher than the adjacent territory. Every few days some of the water was siphoned off through a piece of hose and fresh water run in. Once a week, however, about a handful of copper sulphate was tied up in a piece of cheese cloth and thrown into the pool, where it was whipped up and down in the general fun until all the copper was dissolved. The copper kept the water absolutely pure and sweet throughout the entire season, and not a sign of algæ appeared. The pool was a source of constant delight, not only to our youngsters, but to those of our neighbours. All but the four-year-old learned to swim, and by the end of the season even he could make some preliminary moves in that direction. The moral of the story is that if you have some youngsters, a back yard and a city water pipe you do not need to go to the seashore for fun. Give the boys a chance to make a swimming pool and they will enjoy it all the more if it is the result of their handiwork. BEVERLY T. GALLOWAY VII KEEPING BEES I picked up a number of the _Bee-Keeper's Review_ one day and my eye caught this surprising headline: "A BOY'S BUSINESS WORTH $1000" I opened my eyes and read on in astonishment about a boy who started with no more capital than any boy could get together, and, without sacrificing his school or college plans, built up a bee business which he sold for one thousand dollars. In the meantime his bees had not only paid their own board but his as well. If one boy can make a success like that, other boys can. So can girls, for bee-keeping is a form of outdoor work which seems admirably suited to sensible, nature-loving girls. HOW TO BEGIN There are a good many ways to begin this like any other business, but there is probably a _best_ way for each person. Fortunately one does not have to begin on a large scale. In my opinion the only way to learn how to keep bees right is to keep them. Experienced bee-keepers advise young people to visit a practical apiary and watch the owner among his bees, taking note of what he does and says. Offer your services if he needs help, asking him to explain what he is doing and what for. Stay a few days or a week if he will keep you and learn all you can. One young woman spent a summer vacation on a farm where twenty or thirty colonies of bees were kept, and helped whenever anything was to be done with the bees. When she went home she took a colony of bees with her, and now she is manager of her own apiary with a larger income than the average teacher and ten times the leisure. For beginners the cheaper bees are satisfactory. Later, nothing will be too good. A stand of bees can be bought for two dollars or three dollars, but a colony of choice Italians in a modern hive with tested queen may come as high as fifteen dollars. Better have them to sell than to buy at that price. There are cheaper ways of getting them than buying them. If a runaway swarm which no owner claims, alights in your yard the bees may be yours by right of discovery and if you hive them successfully, by right of possession. This method though practised by some has not the sanction of the golden rule, and is not here recommended. What fun it would be, though, to secure a runaway swarm and make the visitors comfortable in a temporary hive. You would probably find they belonged in the apiary nearest you and ten to one the owner would just as soon you kept them unless they were a very choice kind. He will be so pleased that you were able to hive them that he will offer you something substantial for your work. He may give you the bees, and your bee-keeping will begin "by accident" as did the life-work of the famous veteran apiarist, Mr. A. I. Root. Make a small beginning. Many successful bee-keepers had less than twenty dollars to begin with. One colony is a start. It is astonishing how quickly bees begin to "pay their way" and this test ought to be applied in all your ventures. Keep a strict account of all your expenditures in supplies, and credit the bees with all the honey you take off and with the new swarms. If I say this often, it is because it must be repeated to fix its importance in the mind. If you make good interest on your money you know it is safely invested. If, however, you charge up your time against the bees you must credit them with the fun you have, the outdoor exercise you get in caring for them and the consequent freedom from doctor bills. THE BEST PLACE FOR BEES You will read of keeping bees on a city roof, in a suburban attic, and on boats; but the most natural place for them is in the village or country, where fields of clover, groves of basswood, and patches of buckwheat abound. An orchard or large garden is incomplete without a few hives. The young bee-keeper with these advantages is to be congratulated; the conditions are ideal. All he needs is a liking for bees and spunk. Before you get the first colony decide where your apiary is to be located. Even one hive must have a place and you must plan for increase. An orchard is a fine place, and the hives should be at least fifty feet from the street or road, because bees do not recognize the laws of the open road and turn neither to the right nor to the left. If necessary to put them next the street or close to a neighbour's garden, there should be tall bushes, a hedge, or a high fence to protect the passers-by. Otherwise your venture into bee culture may make you "bad friends" with the neighbours and even carry you before the justice of the peace. In very hot weather some shade is necessary for beehives, but too much shade may result in failure. The morning sun and the late afternoon sun are good for bees, but the heat of the mid-day sun may cause the comb to melt and bring disaster to bees young and old. As moving the active colonies is not always safe, it pays to make a plan in the beginning for the whole number you expect to have. This is a case where it is justifiable to "count your chickens before they are hatched." It will not take much imagination to draw a plan on paper locating the principal objects in and near the apiary-to-be, and to sketch in the location of the ten, fifteen, or twenty hives you are likely to have five years from now. If you have no large, deciduous trees to offer ideal shade you needn't give up the idea of keeping bees. With the modern ventilated covers, bees are successfully kept out in the sun, if protected from wind and storms. A grape arbour affords good protection. It should run from east to west. Any trellis with quick growing vines like hops, Virginia creeper, or grapes, will serve well. Grapes give best return as they bear fruit and their blossoms supply honey in season. Where no natural shade is possible a shade board or air-spaced cover supplies the lack. A shade board can be made of any old box material. Lay a couple of sticks across the top of the hive to rest the shade board on and to let the air circulate. Wind is worse for bees than too much sun. Bless the pioneers of the windy country if, by reason of their forethought, you have a real evergreen windbreak on your place. If you have not this ideal windbreak, a building will serve, or your hedge or high board fence should be on the windy side. If you start, as many have, with one or two colonies let them face the south or east and leave space enough between the hives to run a lawn mower. As your number increases, your original plan may be changed, but it always pays to make the plan. Try to consider, in the arrangement of the hives, not only convenience but beauty. If a board fence is necessary, train vines to cover its bare ugliness; a fringe of low shrubs will help make it beautiful. As your apiary grows, experience will teach you how to group the hives to get the best results. Twenty hives grouped in fives under the north side of four big, spreading apple trees would be the ideal I would set for myself if the orchard was ready for occupancy. If I began at the age of fourteen years, I could easily reach this ideal in six years and keep my other duties up, too. By that time I should know whether I wanted to be a bee-keeper or not. A great many people find that the chicken business combines well with some other business or profession. It is surprising that more people do not consider bee-keeping in the same way. Barring accidents, bees are far easier to handle, cleaner, and they board themselves. You can leave them over Sunday without any qualms of conscience and without arranging with somebody to feed and water them. The bees will not get out and scratch up your garden or your neighbour's, but they will do work in the garden that is too fine for your hands to tackle, and your crops will be bigger because of their visits. Chicken owners always sleep with one ear open, expecting night prowlers to appear and carry off their best stock. But who ever heard of a burglar alarm on a beehive? There are honey thieves, but they are not common. Beehives look best on a carpet of grass, but if you have to be away during much of the summer wide rough boards should be placed in front of the entrance to the hives to keep the grass down. A bee is likely to come home heavily laden and pretty well fagged out with a long flight. If she should settle in a tangle of grass she would be likely to give up the struggle and fail to answer to roll call the next morning. Keep the grass short in front of the hives, then, if you have to cut it with shears, which is not as dangerous as it sounds, once you get used to it. This is best done on cold or wet days when few bees are going in and out. Salt, ashes, or gravel may be sprinkled close up to the hives to kill the grass. BUYING BEES Even the people with bees to sell advise beginners to buy from some one in their neighbourhood. It is not safe, though, to move bees less than a mile and a half as they are likely to return to their old location. Buy from an up-to-date apiary if you can, and get standard hives; the old box hives are not worth anything; neither are fancy hives of complicated structure. The entrance to the hive should be closed with wire cloth after the bees all get home in the early evening. If closed in the middle of the day you are cheated. In warm weather the cover should be taken off; in its place should be put the super over which wire-cloth has been tacked. Strips of wood can be nailed on top of this to which the cover can be fastened. By this arrangement ventilation is secured. We once lost a colony shipped by express without any provision for the circulation of air. Night is the best time to move the bees, though it can be done in the daytime; a cold day is best. Remove the wire cloth the first night after placing in permanent location. Spring is the best season to buy your first colony. The price may be higher but the risk is less. Get a strong colony that has wintered well, which contains, on the average, twenty-five thousand to thirty-five thousand worker bees. It would be well just here for the beginner to get acquainted with the opinions of the best bee-keepers about the kinds of bees. There are varieties among bees as well as among hens, pigeons, dogs, and horses. Americans like to be "hail, fellow, well met" with all their live stock, and although even the best tempered bee might resent a cordial slap on the flank, there are bee-lovers who tell of stroking their little winged friends with a grass stem. It requires real sympathy to succeed with bees just as it does with chickens or cows. No one can work long with them without becoming intensely interested. Most people learn to love them and find absorbing occupation in studying their ways. Two races of hive bees are common here, though none are native: German, or black, and Italian. All the books and magazines as well as bee-lovers unhesitatingly recommend the latter as the more good-tempered, being at the same time hardy, prolific, and industrious. Good hybrids, that is, a mixture of black and Italian blood, may do almost as well as pure stock, but pure-bred queens are a necessity to keep the grade up. When you hear of people who gather bees by handfuls into aprons or baskets you may be sure that those concerned are all thoroughbreds. If there are no bees for sale near by, the best plan is to order from a dealer in the spring what is known as a nucleus. This is a very small colony, about a quart of bees (three thousand two hundred), should be accompanied by a tested queen, and housed in a modern hive with three frames of comb. The queen sets to work laying eggs in the cells, new frames should be added as needed, and if pollen and nectar are plentiful the hive will soon be full of busy young workers. By fall the frames should be stored with the honey needed for the winter. Your first expense after securing a colony will not be for "mixed grain" or "middlings," but for a smoker, a bee veil and gloves, extra hives for your swarms, honey sections, and other supplies. Don't buy everything that looks useful or is highly recommended by the salesman. Maybe he never saw a bee. Sometimes an old spoon or other cheap utensil can be made into a more useful tool than the one he wants fifty cents for. The following list includes the supplies you are pretty sure to need the first year: One colony of bees, in an up-to-date though simply constructed hive. On the whole, the ten-frame hive seems to me to have advantages over a smaller one. A deep telescope cover gives room for two supers on top at once. The only advantage in the chaff hives seems to be that winter protection is not needed for bees housed in them. The obvious disadvantage is their greater cost, size, and weight. Single walled hives are so easily made weatherproof, (see Wintering) that the expense of the chaff hive is not necessary. Three extra hives. Two supers; four super covers. Two to five hundred section boxes for comb honey. You will not need very many of these the first year, but they come cheaper in larger lots. One smoker. Of the several kinds offered, you may safely choose the one that you have seen used successfully. One pair bee gloves; one bee veil. One pound brood foundation, for the new swarms to begin on. Two pounds thin super-foundation for starters in the honey sections. One foundation fastener. One experienced bee-keeper tells me that he likes the "Dewey" best. Others prefer the "Daisy." One Porter bee escape. One bee brush. One queen and drone trap. The new Alley trap is made with bars instead of perforated zinc, and works better. A bee-keeper's guide. (See list of books in the appendix.) Complete directions for putting together the hives, etc., should accompany the filled order, and the novice should work with one eye on the printed page. A good book on bee-keeping should be included in the beginner's order. Those recommended in the book list in the appendix are all good books for beginners. BEES AS WAGE EARNERS Average American boys and girls are a pretty sensible crowd and they don't expect to get much for nothing. If they make money they like to see "for value received" written on it. They may get enthusiastic over the work they undertake, but there is a difference between enthusiasm and gush. Enthusiasm helps you do the hard part of your job. Gush only makes you ridiculous. Is there anything worth doing that doesn't take time and work? The honey-producing business is no exception. But the people who keep bees like their job. "Yes," they say, "it takes thought and energy and some hard work, but it is _such fun_." The "little people" are so interesting that you forget that it is work. Compared to "butter money," "egg money," and "fruit money," the women of the household regard "honey money" as "easy." How much can you count on your bees earning? General statements will give you some idea. You may do better or not so well as the average. A good colony ought to turn out thirty or forty pounds of comb honey a year beside what they need for winter, which is fifteen or twenty-five pounds if wintered in a cellar, twenty-five or thirty-five pounds if wintered outdoors. The best market for honey is the home market, and the price is the best. You get the commission man's profit and the retailer's profit as well as the grower's. The last honey I bought was twenty-five cents a pound. If I bought your thirty pounds at that price you can see for yourself what you would get per hive. The new swarms add to your assets and you are out nothing except for supplies. Compare this with the expense of going into chicken or squab raising. The following is quoted from a good authority: "Two dollars a year clear profit per hive is the very lowest estimate and twenty to thirty hives infringe very little on one's time. This many colonies may easily be managed by a woman or by the younger members of the family." The United States has to import two and a half million pounds of honey annually, and a half million pounds of beeswax. Will not our bees work just as cheaply as those in foreign countries? Let us have more bee-keepers. HIVES Little flat-topped white houses varying in height, standing under the trees in back yards are not an unfamiliar sight to most of us. We say as we pass on the road, "Those people keep bees," and our mouths begin to water. But what do the hives look like inside? They are not mere hollow boxes. Wild bees are content with a hollow tree, but modern domesticated bees require a special kind of furniture. The first eaters of honey were simply robbers of the wild bees. When man began to domesticate bees, and that was so long ago that we cannot stop to count the centuries, there came to be two sides to the bargain. In return for a share in their stores he kept them in clean quarters, provided abundant pasture, protected them from their enemies and from the weather. The old-fashioned hives were very picturesque affairs; you see them in pictures, and when you travel in Europe you may see them still in use. Those skeps do not encourage doing much with the bees or knowing what is going on in the dark hive. I wonder how the folks ever got any honey to eat. The modern bee-keeper wants to open his hive for a good many reasons. He not only wants honey when the bees have an over-supply, but he wants to know what is doing. He wants to know if his expensive queen is doing her duty; he wants to know if too many young queens are being developed; he wants to know if any diseases or other enemies are present. He therefore must have a hive that permits frequent and minute inspection of its interior. "But," said one boy, "I don't intend to open my hives and get stung all over." Now who expects to get stung all over? There's no denying that bees sometimes sting, cats often scratch, dogs sometimes bite, goats butt, cows hook, horses kick, and so on. Some method of self-defence is their right, and I doubt if we should find bees so interesting if they did not carry concealed weapons. We certainly respect their rights as we might not if they were defenceless. A bee sting is uncomfortable while it lasts, but people afraid of bees get very little sympathy from me. Rest assured that you will open your hives often and the less said about being stung the better. [Illustration: Modern hive, showing parts in their correct order] If possible examine at a dealer's or at some apiary an empty hive. Learn the uses and names of the parts. The bottom board represents the foundation, the brood chamber is the living room, and the supers are the attic store rooms. The flat cover is the rain-proof roof. The hive must be a good home for the bees and easily handled by the operator. The bottom board should not rest directly on the ground because of dampness, which rots the wood and is not good for the bees. Some use hive stands, others set the hives on a platform, supported by wooden blocks or on tiles as illustrated here. Beehives, like cottages nowadays, must have all the modern conveniences, and up-to-date furniture. In the brood chamber there are movable frames into which the bees build the combs where the young are reared. With the introduction of these movable frames by Langstroth, fifty years ago, a new era in bee culture began. The furniture of the second-story rooms consists of rows of little section boxes, empty at first, but ready to be stored with comb honey. When nectar is plentiful and the brood-chambers are full to overflowing with honey, the workers are quick to take the hint and begin to store their surplus in the section boxes. You will notice that there is just one entrance to the hive. This front door is sacred to the occupants. When going among his hives, the bee-keeper who knows his place keeps to the rear. If you respect their privacy to this extent, the bees will come out in front, rise, and sail off above your head without taking the slightest notice of you. WHAT GOES ON IN THE BROOD CHAMBER? Bees are the most public-spirited of creatures. They devote their time to the service of their colony. Their industries are all directed towards one end: the increase of the number of bees in the world. When the hive gets too full of bees, the colony divides and a "swarm" is the result. Thus two colonies are established where there was but one, and the number of individuals goes on increasing twice as fast. The honey bee, like its wild cousin the bumble bee, passes through four changes of form during its development. These are the _egg_, the _larva_, the _pupa_, and the _adult_. The queen is no ruler, but she is the mother-bee, and upon her depends the future of the bee colony. Dealers in bees rear some of her young before selling each queen, in order to be sure that she has mated with a pure-blooded drone. These are called tested queens. Their progeny can be depended upon to possess the good qualities of both parents. If the eggs of fine Italian queens develop into nervous, lazy, black-coated, and black-tempered workers, you may safely say, "They take after their father's family." The egg-laying begins in the spring and at the height of honey harvest the queen bee may lay as many as three thousand eggs every day. She hurries over the open comb inserting her body into the empty cells, and leaves an egg stuck fast at the bottom of each. The worker bees grow from egg to maturity in small, hexagonal, or worker cells. Three or four days in the egg, six days as a footless grub or larva floating serenely in a tiny well of liquid food supplied her by the nurse bees, twelve days wrapped in a silk coverlet of her own spinning, the young worker bee passes through her four stages of growth. At the end of her three weeks some inner impulse tells her to be up and doing, and she obeys the stern call. She cuts a hole in the cap of her cell, sheds her skin for the last time (she did this five or six times during the larval or growing stage), and comes forth. It takes her about one day to dry her "feathers," adjust herself to her environment, and "get busy." She finds many little open wells of unsealed honey, and as nobody pays any attention to her she drinks her fill. A round of duties await her, and she goes at them without being told how. She must do nursing, comb-building, cell-capping, and general housework, and all without the least training. After about a week of this, the young worker goes out to play, and then to work. She is young, inexperienced, and self-conceited, and tries to call attention to herself like any vain young miss. When she brings in her first load of pollen she fairly swaggers with importance. Mr. Root says, "Her first load of pollen is just what the first pair of pants is to a boy baby." When a bee is a month old, she is in the prime of life. Three or four months of hard work in summer means old age for the workers, but in the bee colony there is no such thing as an old ladies' home. With their wings worn to stumps, their once velvety backs rubbed shiny, they may be seen creeping away from the hive to die, having given their very lives in willing and faithful service of the commonwealth. Of the unexplained wonders of the development of queens and drones, the mystery of the laying workers, and the other many and varied activities of the hive, we cannot tell much in detail here. Your own book on bee-keeping and larger books of reference will be mines of information. But there are undiscovered North Poles in the bee world, and the young bee-keepers of to-day may be the Greeleys and the Pearys and the Shackletons of this new-old science. SWARMING Did you ever wonder why bees swarm? They have no regular dates for doing things. Although they have been known to swarm in May, and even in April, you are not likely to get a swarm before June. Early swarms are the most valuable, therefore you should be ready, for bees are like time and tide. Have the hive fitted with frames and keep it in a cool place. Bees swarm to increase the number of colonies. The date of swarming depends on local conditions and nobody can tell but the bees themselves, and they won't, what these conditions are exactly. If there are too many bees, too much honey stored, thousands of workers hatching daily, many young queens ready to emerge, the bees are likely to swarm. The bee-keeper is on the lookout after he knows the signs and can guess pretty shrewdly whether the swarm will be out in a few days or later. He gets his apparatus together and his hives ready. Bees often "hang out" on the outside of the hive, and we used to think that was a "sure sign," but it often fails. It is the old queen that leaves the hive, but the bees that go out with her are a mixture of young and old ones. No one knows how the decision is made as to who shall go and who shall stay behind, but there is never any indecision in the community that we can reckon with. Some hot Sunday you will be roused from your book by the excited cry: "The bees! Look, there they go! The air's full of them. They're swarming. I'll bet they get away. No, they're settling." Meantime, if you are the boy who owns the bees, you are getting ready to hive your first swarm. It's no joke, for thrills will be chasing up your spine, and if you didn't have so much to do you would be as excited as the rest. But success may depend on your keeping cool. You have probably already instructed the family in modern methods so that no one will be raising a din by beating an old wash boiler, etc. If you have a garden hose handy, let some one play a fine spray on the whirling bees. Nothing brings them to time more quickly. When the bees have settled, place the hive conveniently near them, with a sheet or hive cover in front. Cut the branch on which the bees are clustered and shake them off into or in front of the hive. If well disposed they will go in promptly. If high trees and no shrubbery is the rule in the vicinity of your hives, you will probably need your long-handled swarm-catcher. Or you will very soon begin the practice of clipping the wings of your queens. When the clipped queen brings out a swarm she hops about near the hive. She may climb into a shrub if one is near by. Why not provide her with a still more convenient forked stick as some bee-keepers do? She climbs up this, calls her family together, and you do the rest. You may prefer to capture the queen in your little queen trap, and place her at the entrance to a new hive which you should place on the stand where the old hive was. The bees will return to their old location when they discover that the queen is not with them. The new hive will receive them and the queen when released will go in with her family. If the bees refuse to stay in the new hive, it may be because the hive is too hot. Prop up both hive and cover to allow extra ventilation. MAKING APPARATUS While I do not advise any amateur bee-keeper to try to construct his own hives and frames, I do think it is a fine idea to begin right away to study how to improve the appliances now in use. You will have to discard many of your own ideas as useless when you come to try to apply them to practical use. There are lots of patented appliances for sale that make an experienced bee-keeper smile. He undoubtedly knows a clever boy at home who can rig up a home-made contraption that will cost nothing at all, and do the work better than the expensive tool. A boy that keeps bees will find a knowledge of tools and wood-working of great advantage to him, and a girl's deft fingers will know how to put materials together that a professional would never think of. In this connection I will here describe a swarm-catcher, devised by a practical bee-keeper many years ago and recommended by an expert in Apiculture of the United States Department of Agriculture. The construction is so simple that I believe I could make one myself! Though home-made, it is interesting to see how thoroughly scientific are the essential features of this device, all based on a knowledge of bee instincts. This description is adapted from an article by Dr. B. N. Gates in one of the annual reports of the Maryland Bee-Keepers' Association. The accompanying drawing was made from a picture of the swarm-catcher in the same report. The apparatus consists of a box with one end open and supported on a pole. The materials required are nails, a large wire hook, some thin boards, and two or three poles of different lengths. A saw, a bit and brace, and a hammer are the only tools required for making it. [Illustration: Swarm-catcher that works like magic. Any handy boy can make it] It is bee nature to try to get into some small hole. To take advantage of this instinct the five sides of the swarm-catcher are perforated with holes about one half an inch in diameter. While the framework of the box should be light, it should also be strong and the materials good so that the swarm-catcher will last for years. A convenient size has been found to be eight by eight by sixteen. A hole to fit the size of the poles should be bored in the centre of the top and one at the bottom. The big wire hook should be screwed into the top far enough from the centre so that it will not be interfered with by the projecting end of the pole. A slot should be cut lengthwise of the top, sufficiently large to allow a frame of honey-comb to be put in so that it hangs down inside to attract the bees. This honey bait is essential to the successful working of the swarm-catcher. You can devise other ways of suspending it to the top inside of the box. It is thought that a coat of green paint on the outside and one of black on the inside induces the bees to enter the box more readily. A swarm-catcher like this cuts out all the loss of time and danger of losing a valuable swarm of bees while preparations to hive them are going on. And you can practically catch a swarm anywhere with this device. If they light on a stone wall, a tree trunk, or on the ground, you simply brush a pint or so of them into the box, stick the sharp lower end of the pole into the ground near by, and go off and leave them to go in at their leisure. A whiff or so of smoke is needed when you first go up before beginning to wield the brush. For swarms hanging in the ordinary way from limbs of trees or vines, while the bees are clustering, take a frame from one of the hives and hang it in the swarm-catcher. It is best to take a comb containing developing brood and some honey. This forms a well-nigh irresistible lure for the swarming bees. One look at the pendant mass of bees will tell you what length of pole you need in the box. Put on your veil and gloves and hoist the box up into the tree. Put the open end of the box up against the mass of bees and get as many of them into it or onto it as possible. Catch the branch with the hook on the box and give it a vigorous shaking. This unsettles the rest of the bees and they will be attracted instinctively to follow the rest into the box where the brood cells are. Once the bees are safely clustered in and on the box there is no rush about hiving them. They are safe to be left hanging by the hook within ten feet or so of their original clustering place or with the pole stuck in the ground near by. They are secure there for hours, even for days, but one usually has time to hive them the same day. The swarm should not be left in the hot sun. Hiving is done in the usual way. After the hive is prepared with combs or foundation, shake the bees from the swarm-catcher either into or in front of the hive. With large swarms it is advisable to prop the hive body up slightly from the bottom board to enlarge the entrance. The "marching in" is a wonderful sight. An established colony of bees cannot be moved five feet without causing them confusion. Before the newly hived bees have had time to locate themselves and set to work at honey gathering, the hive should be moved to its permanent location. It is not safe to delay longer than twilight of the day they are hived. When once they get a location fixed they return to it and are lost. If they refuse to be reconciled in a new hive, put in a frame of young brood from some other hive and try them again. They seldom desert an obvious duty like the caring for young. OPENING THE HIVE The modern art of bee-keeping was made possible by the invention of the hive with movable frames. Some of the many reasons for opening the hive are: 1. To take off honey. 2. To see if enough honey has been stored for winter. 3. To find the queen. 4. To introduce a new queen. 5. To examine the brood. Before opening the hive know just what you are going to look for. Get the smoker well going; shavings, punk, excelsior, or chips crowded in make a good smudge; you want much smoke and little fire. Put on your bee veil. For a greeting, blow a little smoke in at the entrance of the hive you are going to open. Loosen the cover which you will find to be glued tight with propolis by the bees. A dull putty knife or screw-driver is a good tool for this job. As fast as you unseal the cracks, blow smoke into them. At this juncture it is well to close the hive for a few minutes to give the bees time to "think it over." The better the grade of bees the less smoke is required. Take your time. Keep your nerve steady and the smoker handy. Loosen the frames and take them out one by one. In order to see what is going on in the frames you must clear off the bees. Do this in such a way that you will not endanger the queen if she should be on the frame. Poke the bees off so that they fall bewildered back into the hive. Set the frame down against the outside of the hive and take out another. There are cells of three sizes in the brood combs. Queen cells are large, standing out from the surface of the comb quite prominently. The drone and worker closely resemble one another, but the drone cells are the larger. Honey is stored in both drone and worker cells. If you wish to destroy the queen cells to prevent swarming you will find it a ticklish job, even with a sharp, slender knife, not to ruin a lot of comb. [Illustration: Drone and queen trap at hive entrance] It is often important to locate the queen. If you wish to clip her wings, find her you must. She is usually near the middle of the hive, surrounded by her court, a rosette of workers. She is quite different in shape from the workers. It is well to study her picture before going to look for her. A queen's wings are not much to cut, but you will need a steady nerve if you do it free hand. Many devices are to be had to make the operation less difficult and to insure safety to the rest of the queen. The danger is all to her, for although she is armed she will not sting you. She reserves her sting for some rival in her own class. Harvesting any crop has interesting features, but nothing has the peculiar charm of taking off honey. Loosen the cover, puff in a little smoke, lift the cover, then the whole super off. Put on a new super and replace the cover. Have your bee brush ready and as you lift the fitted sections out of the super, brush the bees that cling to them down to the entrance to the hive. This is the old way and is fraught with dangers. Moreover, the bees may regard one robbery as sufficient excuse for another. Robbery is a serious matter in the apiary. The modern way is to use the Porter bee-escape. This device obviates all the difficulties and once you have "got the hang of it," you will have no further trouble getting honey from your hives. STINGS: PREVENTION AND CURE The bee mittens, the veil, and the smoker are all preventive measures. A good deal depends on the way you behave when working with bees. If you are nervous and anxious you probably will act that way and the bees have a way of understanding and are likely to find you. Remove the sting by a scraping motion with a knife blade or some hive tool you happen to have handy. If you use the thumb and finger you squeeze the tiny bulb at the outer end of the sting, and inject the poison into your blood. Experts have little or no faith in cures which are rubbed on. They underestimate the comfort one gets "doing something" for a spot that hurts so mighty bad. So go ahead and put on alcohol or baking soda or ammonia; you can't do a bit of harm that way. In the meantime nature is busy neutralizing the acid the bee punished you with. Mrs. Comstock, in "How to Keep Bees," gives these maxims for opening the hive: Have the smoker ready to give forth a good volume of smoke. Use the smoker to scare the bees rather than to punish them. Do not stand in front of the hive lest the bees passing out and in take umbrage. Be careful not to drop any implements with which you are working; take hold of all things firmly. Move steadily and not nervously. Do not run if frightened, for the bees understand what running away means as well as you do. If the bees attack you, move slowly away, smoking them off as you go. If a bee annoys you by her threatening attitude for some time, kill her ruthlessly. WINTERING Before buying your hives you must decide where your bees are to winter. If you have a suitable shelter you can use the ordinary hives; but if your bees are to winter outside, you may decide that you want the great chaff-packed, double hives. As the summer wanes every hive must be examined to make sure that the colony is strong and that the supply of honey is not short. If the season has been a bad one for flowers, or if the region provides few blossoming fields it may be necessary to feed the bees. Special directions are needed and any bee book will supply them. A strong swarm, supplied with twenty-five pounds to thirty-five pounds of honey, will winter without serious loss in a chaff hive. Other protection than that afforded by a good windbreak is unnecessary. In our furnace-heated houses no part of the cellar is cool enough all the time for the bees. The temperature should not go above forty-eight degrees Fahr., nor below forty degrees; forty-three degrees is considered just right. Sudden changes are bad for bees. [Illustration: Beehive covered with newspapers and waterproof paper for wintering outdoors] Many experienced bee-keepers winter their colonies successfully outdoors with home-made protection. The ordinary hives, with the covers on but with the supers off, of course, are put into winter quarters in this way: Fold seven or eight thicknesses of newspaper over the top of the cover and sides. Make a neat job of this as if you intended to send the box by mail. Use a few tacks if needed. Over this fold a large piece of tar or other waterproof paper. There is a right way to fold the ends of this outer wrapper, and a wrong way. The illustration shows the right way. If the paper is brought down from the top first and round the ends from the sides over that (the wrong way), pockets will be formed which hold snow and water. Nail thin pieces of wood on to hold the folds securely. The entrance to the hive should not be closed as bees come out more or less on warm days in winter. Be sure that the entrance is always free from dead bees. Another way to protect hives from the cold when wintering outside is to construct a packing case three and a half inches bigger in all dimensions than the hive. Set one of these down over each hive and pack the space between hive and case with any kind of dry packing material, such as shavings, sawdust, cork chips, dry leaves. Any of these materials used wet would do more harm than good. Some sort of shelf or projection should be so placed over the entrance as to keep it open as with other forms of winter protection. FEEDING In the spring, bees need water. If the tree blossoms are late in coming out, sirup is often fed to the bees to give them a start. Patented feeding devices are not necessary. A flat tin pan works admirably. The best sirup for all purposes is plain granulated sugar and water, made cold. Stir in all the sugar that the water will hold. Fill the feeding pan with excelsior first, then sirup, and place it in the super. Little ladders leading up to the top of the pan will help the bees get at the sirup. Feeding is also practised in the fall if the amount of stored honey is short. The feeding of honey is likely to start the bees to robbing. Under no circumstances should "market" honey be fed to bees. Diseases are transmitted by this practice. PLANTS THAT FURNISH HONEY OR POLLEN OR BOTH gill-over-the-ground } shadbush } tulip tree } willow } grape } sorrel } spring. elm } maple } dandelion } hawthorn } red bud } fruit trees } clovers (cultivated) } alfalfa } wild sweet clover } raspberry } bee-balm } blueberry } chestnut } corn } summer. fig-wort } locust } basswood } catnip } horse mint } mustard } sage } sumach } buckwheat } spider flower } sunflowers } fireweed } smartweed } fall. milk-weed } golden-rod } aster } rape } THE PRODUCTS OF THE HIVE Besides honey, bees make use of wax to construct combs, bee-bread for larvæ food, and propolis for glue. If you think the bees gather honey from the flowers you are greatly mistaken. Nobody knows yet quite how honey is made. Chemists say that it has in it water, grape sugar, a little formic acid, some mineral matter, albuminoids, and essential oils. But this list leaves us little the wiser. No chemist has been able to combine these materials into honey. The nectar gathered by bees passes directly into a receptacle, the honey-sack or honey-stomach, which is used for that purpose only. It does not go the same road as the bee's food. The notion that bees swallow the nectar and then unswallow it is as erroneous as it is unappetizing. The flavour, body, and colour of honey depend on the source of the nectar, the age, the amount of chemical change wrought by the bees, and the completeness of the ripening process which goes on in the hive before the cells are capped. Honey is a very wholesome sweet, far more easily digested than cane or grape sugar. If the making of honey is mysterious, what can we say of wax production? In the height of the honey season we can watch the bees making wax through a glass-sided hive. Mrs. Comstock says: "A certain number of self-elected citizens gorge themselves with honey and hang up in chains or curtains, each bee clinging by her front feet to the hind feet of the one above her, like Japanese acrobats; and there they remain sometimes for two days until the wax scales appear pushed out from every pocket." Sometimes a honey-and pollen-laden bee will come home from pasture with flakes of wax exuding from the wax plates on her abdomen. But this happens only when wax is needed for comb making. At other times no amount of honey gorging will produce a scrap of wax. Does this not hint at mystery and something higher than mere intelligence? You would think in such a perfectly organized community there would be something like specialization. Such appears not to be the case. All the workers seem to do all the different kinds of things. Let us say a bee goes out and gets a load of honey the first thing in the morning. When she comes in she goes to the comb to deposit her honey, then to the brood cells where she combs the pollen off her legs into a cell where it is stored to feed the young bees later. Perhaps she sees in passing some cells which need capping, does that, then away to gorge herself with honey and make wax, then builds her own or her neighbour's wax onto the comb. If the day is hot it may occur to her and a thousand others to construct a living fan and keep the air stirring inside the hive by waving their wings. In a system like this there is no resting, no play, no shirking, no specializing. There is always work to do and always somebody doing it with a will in the perfect socialism. Many boys and girls of these days are fortunate in having had at school an observation hive. No bee-keeper will be long without one if he has any curiosity about what is going on in the dark hive, or if he is ambitious to solve some of the mysteries. An ordinary hive can be made into a good observation hive by putting a pane of glass in the sides and top. There should be hinged doors to fit tightly over the glass. A two-frame hive devised by Prof. V. L. Kellogg has both sides of glass so that the whole domestic economy of the bee family can readily be observed. DISEASES AND ENEMIES You will not be in the bee business long before you learn that bees have diseases and enemies. In fact, it is better to face that fact at the beginning and learn how to recognize and combat the troubles. Carelessness along this line is inexcusable and will surely cause failure. Several states have official inspectors whose business it is to know bee diseases and methods of controlling them. He is required to inspect apiaries where diseases are suspected, and the best thing to do is to interest him in your work and get all the help from him you can. An ounce of prevention will save a pound of cure, every time. If there is a Bee-Keepers' Association in your county, by all means join it and help make it a live, active organization. The United States Department of Agriculture can give you much needed information as to who the men are in your locality who are officers in the associations and official inspectors. MARKETING HONEY The best honey market is the home market as I have said. You may have to work up a demand in your neighbourhood and there are many ways to do this which ingenious boys and girls will devise. Most of us, if we can afford to use honey at all, know it only as a "spread" for hot biscuits or griddle cakes. But not every one knows that honey is a very much more wholesome sweet than cane sugar. Many people cannot eat sugar at all, but find honey does not cause indigestion. If you could persuade your neighbours to buy your honey for their children instead of candy, "all-day-suckers" coloured with cheap dyes, and sirups made of nobody knows what, you would be doing something worth while. Honey is used in cooking too, in many ways. Get your mother or sister interested in trying some receipts in which honey takes the place of sugar. If you make a success of this you can get other people to making honey cakes, thus creating a demand for your product. One enterprising chap made a great success by first going from house to house and giving away samples of his honey. He also left a self-addressed postal card with prices and order blank printed on one side, and nine out of ten of the people he called on sent orders. It seemed a pity to waste a good postal card and everybody likes to help a bright boy along; and beside they wanted the honey! It might be well to have a little pamphlet telling about your honey and of the many uses it may be put to, with a receipt for honey cake, perhaps. You will get a reputation, if you try, for pure products, neat packages and courteous dealings. As your output increases from year to year your market will grow, until you, like the boy we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, have a business worth at least a thousand dollars. MY EXPERIENCE WITH HONEY BEES It was just by chance that I ever got started in keeping bees. There were several boys about my size in the neighbourhood at my home and we used to go swimming and play ball together. One fine spring day a few of us were walking down the road toward the swimming pool when we found a swarm of bees on a fence post. One of the fellows knew how to hive the swarm, so we got a box from the store and watched while he got the bees into it. It was the first time that I had seen a swarm hived and the performance proved very interesting to me. I bought that swarm in the old box for seventy-five cents, very well satisfied with the bargain, for of course the box would be full of honey in a short time! The colony was placed upon a bench in the front yard. One night the old bull got out and upset the bench. The bees were ready to sting anything next day. I bundled up until I was sting proof and then got them straightened up. The combs were broken which gave the bees a setback from which they did not recover. I did not get any honey from them and they died out in the winter. An old bee-keeper who lived near us gave me two swarms the next spring. One of them left the hive and flew to the woods and the other was weak and died. It began to seem as though bees were hard to keep. I got a book called "A B C of Bee Culture," and read it. I soon learned that bees should be kept in movable frame hives so they could be easily handled. I had no bees now, but, although we were laughed at, my father and I entered into a partnership. He furnished the hives and implements and I furnished the bees and labour. We were to divide profits equally. We bought two hives, a smoker, and a bee veil. I caught one swarm in the woods and bought another. They were both late swarms and died in the winter. Success was still far off and things did not look very bright, but I had learned how not to do lots of things. The two hives we had were not the best, so we sold them and bought five of a different kind for the next spring. The outlay was large and no profits, but I was determined to succeed. In the spring I caught a swarm early in the season and it made a few pounds of surplus honey which we used at home. During the latter part of August my chum and I were out squirrel hunting and he found a swarm that had built combs on the limb of a large tree. We got it into a hive and I bought his share of the swarm. This colony needed feeding, so I fed it on sugar and water. Both colonies lived through the winter and made a strong start in the spring. Each gave a swarm and I caught both. The book and the old bee-keeper taught me that Italian bees were better than the wild bees, so I invested in two Italian queens which I got by mail from a queen breeder. I killed the old queens in two of the colonies and introduced the new ones. They did some good work that summer and lived through the winter. The next spring I had two colonies of black or wild bees and two of Italians. The blacks together made about twenty pounds of surplus honey, while the two Italians made nearly two hundred pounds. This showed me that there was a great difference in bees. Each colony swarmed once, making eight in all. We had now made a success and the business was on a good footing even after four years of failure. That last honey crop was worth about thirty dollars, and the bees and hives were worth about forty-five dollars. We were encouraged. That fall I was sixteen years old and had decided to go to college. The president of the agricultural college in this state offered me a chance to work my way through college by taking charge of the bees on the college farm. I gladly accepted it and sold my bees at home. Life at college was very different from home life, but the bees always furnished a source of pleasure and recreation during my spare moments on week days and on Saturdays. In the summer months I either worked with the government bee-men or for the college. The bees have not only given me lots of pleasure, but they have made it possible for me to pay my entire tuition and expenses for five years at college. Besides studying and attending to my bees, I have had time for much other fun, and this year I made the 'varsity football team and played in every game. Some people think that the honey is not worth the stings, but my advice is to get a colony and try your hand. SYDNEY S. STABBLER HOW I EARNED TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS I had helped with the bees more or less all my life, so that I already knew how to handle them when my high school course was broken into by illness and I had an enforced vacation of one year and a half. I was able at this time to devote to the bees one full season, that is, from April through July. My father allowed me the use of bees, hives, combs, etc., for queen rearing. The queens I sold for seventy-five cents and one dollar each, according to the grade. To my father I furnished one hundred queens at the reduced price of fifty cents each as rent for the bees, hives, etc. I had about ninety nuclei of two frames each. During the swarming season I used a good many natural cells from the better colonies. Later I used artificial, dipped cells which I made myself. In the latter case I took larvæ from the very best queens in the apiary and placed the cells in queenless colonies to be developed, or sometimes in colonies which were superseding their queens. When the cells were nearly ready to hatch they were placed in the nuclei where the young queens remained until they commenced laying, when they were ready for sale. Altogether I made a little over one hundred dollars that season. I was then eighteen years old and determined to go to college. Two years later I began my studies at the University of California, working for my board in a private family and drawing from the one hundred dollars for incidentals. Clothing I had received at home and had made myself for the most part. The San Francisco earthquake occurred on the eighteenth of April, in the spring of my freshman year, and college was closed immediately, so that I was able to enter again into the queen rearing business. That season I sent out advertising cards to the members of the California Bee-Keepers' Association and sold nearly all my queens to them. The financial result was nearly the same as for the former season. So in all I made about two hundred dollars, which paid for the incidentals during three years of my college career which is as far as I have gone. By "incidentals" I mean books, paper, and such necessities, also subscriptions to the college daily paper, class and association dues, tickets to college jinks, theatricals, games, etc. I also spent a good deal for tickets to concerts, plays, etc., as that was my first opportunity to hear the great musicians and actors and I considered that a part of my education. FLORA MCINTYRE PROFITS OF BEE-KEEPING I have been asked to tell something of my early experiences as a bee-keeper, for boys and girls who may become interested in this very fascinating, and, I may say at the same time, profitable, pursuit. I think it may be said of bee-keeping as sailors say of seafaring--once a bee-keeper always a bee-keeper. I should like to tell you in a few words what can be expected from a dozen and a half hives of bees with an average of one and one half days a week spent in the apiary. I believe really, though, that when I began keeping bees it was not because I expected to make much money. The whole story of the bee life, as read from different books which I secured after becoming interested, was so wonderful and fascinating that I could hardly wait until spring so that I might study the two hives acquired through the winter. That first spring and summer there were only those old box hives, which could not be opened for inside study, and all observations had to be confined to watching the bees from the outside. The next summer some modern hives that could be taken apart and every nook and corner laid open to observation were bought. In the fall I was very fortunate in securing eighteen colonies of bees at an auction sale, paying therefor only fifty cents a colony, much to my satisfaction and my neighbours' amusement. Most of the hives were frame, but of an undesirable sort of frame. The next summer these colonies were transferred to up-to-date hives. That summer, and for the next succeeding six summers, these colonies did not fail to yield on an average about seventy dollars' worth of honey and wax. Counting out winter losses the number of colonies per year would average twelve, the number of pounds of honey about three hundred and seventy-five, worth twenty cents a pound. The bees received only a small part of my time each day. Later, when a student at the Ohio State University, as manager of the apiary there, about the same results were obtained, so that an average of about five dollars a hive is a conservative estimate. If one begins in a small way, in a few years he should be able to manage one hundred colonies. But it should be remembered that the yield per hive may decrease somewhat as the number of colonies increases, because of the danger of launching in the business on a large scale. The best insurance against loss is a thorough study and understanding of all the details by the practice of bee-keeping on a small scale for a term of years first. I may say that the income from the bees aided not a little in helping me through college, and I may say, also, without exaggeration that this interest in bees by one enthusiastic student helped in no small degree toward the inauguration of a course in bee-keeping at our own Ohio State University. To make the story complete I think I should add that the writer of this article is at present engaged as assistant in apiculture, doing experimental work in apiculture in the government apiaries at Washington, D. C. There is opportunity for those who wish to take up some problem relating to apiculture as a subject of investigation, and the agricultural colleges and experiment stations will no doubt in the future give more and more attention to the investigation of problems related to this interesting and profitable pursuit. ARTHUR H. MCCRAY VIII RAISING SILKWORMS Although silkworms are not actually reared in the open air, there is so much outdoor work and moderate exercise connected with their care that the subject may properly be included in a book on outdoor work. The best food for silkworms is the leaf of the white mulberry. If you have already a hedge of this or several trees you can begin at once. If not, several years must elapse while you raise your preliminary crop of mulberry trees from seeds or cuttings. It is useless to buy silkworm eggs if you have not the wherewithal to feed your infant caterpillars. You may not think of going into silkworm rearing in a commercial way but only as an interesting bit of nature study. Why not make up some neat attractive cases, each containing a little collection illustrating the four stages of the growth of this insect? Heat a few eggs to destroy life, then glue them to a card; preserve a caterpillar in a vial of alcohol; glue a cocoon to a card; pin and spread two of the moths, a male and a female, and pin them into the box. From such a box school children will get a far more definite idea of insect metamorphosis than they will ever get from a book on zoölogy. Such little collections ought to sell well in schools where nature study, zoölogy, or agriculture is taught. The mulberry silkworm makes the best silk, although it is by no means the only silk-spinning insect. Every now and then we read of some one who is experimenting with the silk of our American or giant silkworms, the _Promethea_ or the _Cecropia_, or with the silk spun by spiders. But none as yet compares with _Bombyx mori_ in either quantity or quality of its product or in ease of rearing or in reeling of the silk. The adult moth lays between three and seven hundred eggs during the first three days after she emerges from her cocoon. In a week or ten days she dies, her work finished. Moths in the wild state are at some pains to deposit their eggs on the favourite food plant of their young, but in the case of _Bombyx mori_ this instinct has been lost in the countless years of domestication. The eggs, when laid, are moist with a sort of glue which secures them to the surface upon which they are deposited. The winter is passed in the egg stage. A cool, dry place is safest for them, where no sudden changes of temperature are possible. A steady temperature of thirty-five degrees is ideal, and they must be enclosed in something that is mouse proof, though not air-tight. A perforated tin box is right for this purpose. Silkworm eggs for study may be obtained from dealers in miscellaneous insects, birds, animals, etc. As spring approaches you must watch the mulberry leaves and make your preparations. Any room in which temperature and ventilation can be regulated will serve for rearing silkworms. You should have some racks made of lattice work, and shelves, open to the air, on which to place them. I have seen a clothes-horse, with racks resting upon the rungs, used for this. A supply of cheap wrapping paper or newspapers should be on hand to put on the shelves, and some coarse netting, the use of which will be described later. Do not make the mistake of getting too many eggs. An ounce does not seem like very much, but the well-grown worms from an ounce of eggs ought to have at least seventy-five square yards of shelf space. They will require during the first six days only eleven pounds of leaves, six meals a day, but during the eight days just before spinning they will require over half a ton of food. Imagine lugging in two hundred weight of fresh mulberry leaves five times a day to feed these ravenous things so dependent upon you! [Illustration: Movable frame and light shelves for feeding silkworms] Warmth and moisture are required for hatching the eggs. As the spring advances and the mulberry shows signs of putting forth its leaves, the silkworm eggs should be spread thinly on sheets of paper on the shelves in a temperature of about fifty-five degrees Fahr. The temperature should be increased after three or four days and gradually raised to seventy-three degrees Fahr. Sprinkle the floor to make the air moist, but do not wet the eggs. At this temperature hatching will take place after about ten days' time. Watch the eggs. When they begin to whiten you must get to work, as the first worms will soon be out. Take two thicknesses of coarse tulle or bobinet cut the size of the racks. Chop some young, tender mulberry leaves very fine. Scatter a thin layer of these bits over the cloth and lightly lay it over the hatching eggs. No sooner do the young silkworms become aware of the presence of their favourite vegetable than they make their way to it, coming up through the holes of the bobinet as easily as "rolling off a log." They are tiny creatures. Eight of them laid end to end would hardly measure an inch. As hatching usually takes place in the morning, by ten o'clock the worms will all have crawled through the netting to the leaves on the upper layer of the net. This can now be transferred to the rearing shelf. The netting should be kept well stretched, as the worms may be injured if buried down amongst the leaf bits. All through life silkworms must be handled with extreme care. If necessary to lift any individual from one shelf to another it should be done with tenderest touch. Rough treatment is fatal. [Illustration: A clothes-horse fitted with racks for feeding silkworms] For young worms the newly opened leaves are the best. As they grow older their tastes change and the more mature leaves may be given. A quantity of leaves may be gathered at one time and kept fresh. The leaves themselves should never be put into water. Prepare the food by removing the foliage you intend to feed from the stems. Then chop or cut it into fine shreds. Six times a day a small quantity of the prepared leaf should be sprinkled lightly over the netting. Like other caterpillars, silkworms shed their skins at certain intervals. The six-day period between hatching and the first moult is called "the first age." On the fourth day it is best to change the beds, as the droppings from the worms and the litter of uneaten leaves are not healthy for the moulting caterpillars. Spread fresh leaves on nets and place over the worms in the evening. By morning all will be ready for the clean shelf and doubled space. As the sixth day approaches, the worms lose appetite and cease to move about. Finally the skin whitens, the head seems to grow larger, and each little creature pulls himself out of his old skin and finds himself clad in a new suit. I imagine he must feel very much as a boy does when on the first really warm day in April his mother allows him to shed his winter underwear, get his hair cut short, and wear his summer blouse and knickers. The young worm, however, does not feel very lively at first. No food should be given for several hours. When signs of waking are evident, food should be given and the worms transferred to clean shelves by means of the nets. On the third day they should be changed to fresh papers. Four meals a day are needed by the caterpillars at this time. The second age is shorter than the first, being only four or five days. The skin now changes in colour from gray to yellowish white. After the second moult their food need not be cut much, but they require a lot of it, as they should double their size during the third age, which lasts six or seven days. If the weather is pretty warm their development is faster. They should never be crowded nor allowed to go hungry. Always change to clean shelves when the dead leaves and excrement become the least offensive. This odour, which you can escape by leaving the room, may be deadly to your pets. They are helpless to escape it, and are entirely at your mercy. During the fourth age, _i. e._, after the third moult, give more space and feed small branches with leaves on. Always remove every berry from the mulberry branches or the worms will eat them and be made sick. Their appetites are enormous, their growth rapid. Change the beds four times during this period of nine days. [Illustration: A rack or ladder for silkworms to spin on] After the fourth moult the worms pass into the last age. Five or six days of voracious feeding brings them near that most dramatic event in their lives--the cocoon spinning. For three days, now, instead of eating steadily they wander aimlessly about, as if seeking they know not what; they wag their heads; they behave in an altogether restless and uncertain way. Is it some mortal ailment or mere "weakness of intellect?" You are expecting this and have prepared for it beforehand. They will not need to search long for a place to mount and spin in safety and security their cocoon of shining silvery silk. Farmers' Bulletin, No. 165, recommends the use of small, clean, leafless brush tied together into bundles and fastened between the shelves in rows a foot or so apart. Some use a sort of rack or ladder of narrow strips of wood which should be placed upright on the shelf where the worms can easily find it. They spin between the slats. Any worms which seem not to be ready to spin with the others should be fed until they, too, feel the impulse to travel. As the process of spinning takes some hours, there will be no difficulty in observing it from start to finish. You are entitled to this exhibition, for, without your constant care and feeding, these creatures would not have been able to develop. The dull, inactive silkworm has acquired wonderful agility, and without practice is able to weave himself into his sleeping bag with astonishing celerity, reeling out his twelve hundred or sixteen hundred yards of silk in one continuous thread. There are no knots or kinks in it. It is inaccurate as well as rather silly to refer to the cocoon as a shroud or burial casket, as some do. The creature inside is just as much alive as ever it was. The cocoons with the live pupæ inside are called green cocoons. To prepare them for market they are usually subjected to heat either in the oven or by steaming. No water should touch the cocoons, neither should the oven be hot enough to brown them. After heating they should be dried in the sun or other heat. Open one when you think they may be dry; if they are, the pupæ inside can be rubbed into powder with the fingers. A good price per pound is paid for dried cocoons, but it takes five hundred or more to weigh a pound. If you have never seen a moth emerge from its cocoon you should keep several of your cocoons. In eighteen or twenty days the moth comes out, usually in early morning. Invite your friends to have a look, too. Must the moth break the threads in getting out, or is the cocoon woven in a manner to provide a gateway when it shall be needed? How does the creature get out anyway, and what is it like when it first arrives in the open? Wonderful happenings must have been going on inside to make a winged moth out of that naked caterpillar. Something left in the cocoon rattles when you shake it. Examine the dried ball and you will recognize in it the cast-off clothes, hat, coat, socks, and boots that he had on when he shut himself in. There, too, is the brown shell he wore as a pupa. You may think you know these things by reading about them, but you do not, really. Hearsay is not the real thing in any realm of life, least of all in the realm of nature. IX MAKING COLLECTIONS PLANTS Collecting plants has always been an important feature of practical scientific work. Great sums of money and many years of time have been spent in searching through little-explored countries for new plants. Agents of many governments, representatives of great nursery companies of this and other countries are all the time looking, looking, often at the cost of the greatest hardship, for new plants. Why is this? Not as you will readily conclude, merely to add new specimens to museum collections, nor merely to find and name a new species, though some collectors are in the field for these purely scientific reasons. But our Department of Agriculture is on the lookout for new plants from foreign parts which will be commercially valuable to us. Our enterprising nurserymen are after the same game. At the present time very great interest is being taken in plants from western China, a vast and little-explored region. Strangely enough, the plants from that far away country seem to be peculiarly fitted to thrive here, and while the government and the nurserymen are telling the people about these new plants, the botanists are trying to discover the reasons why Asiatic plants fit our conditions better than the plants of Europe seem to. The making of collections of plants, then, is a big, important work, and well worth the while of any boy or girl. If you would read stories of exciting adventures, narrow escapes, thrilling encounters amid romantic surroundings, read some of the accounts of scientific explorations. The collectors of plants and insects in the Philippines, Central Asia, little-known islands of the far East, and such "wild nations," must needs be men of valour, and to know any one of them is a liberal education. Making a collection of plants is probably not the best way to arouse an interest in outdoor life. Indeed it was made such a deadly dull business for me that my early interest was entirely "nipped in the bud" and lay dormant many, many years. Collecting is one of the recognized and useful ways of introducing ourselves to our neighbours of the vegetable kingdom. Living in a plant-infested world as we are elected to do, eating plants, wearing their products, utilizing them in all our arts, buying and selling them daily, unable to get through an hour of the day without being constantly reminded of our entire dependence upon the members of the vegetable kingdom, what is more natural than that we should wish to know them? To know their names is not the end and aim of plant study. The name is a convenient handle for a plant. It enables you to talk about the plant to others without the necessity of a lengthy description. It enables you to read understandingly what other students have said about the plant in books. It is only the beginning, like the introduction to a stranger. To make of a stranger a friend, you must know something of his family, of his relation to the rest of the world, how he lives, gets a living, how he makes use of his faculties, what are his peculiarities, his habits, his environment, in fact all about him. In discovering the name of a plant by use of a botanical key you learn a few but not all of these things. As with some people so with some plants, the more you know of them the less you think of them; the less you wish to have to do with them. Take poison ivy for an example. Knowing its characteristics you pass it by without touching it. You observe it from afar off, so as to be able to warn others of its whereabouts. On the other hand, if you had only known well the giant puff-ball you so wantonly crushed under your heel, you might have enjoyed a delicious supper of creamed mushrooms. Making a collection of plants is an extremely simple job. The materials needed are not expensive nor hard to get. Here is a list of what is required for a beginner's collection: (1) A dozen or so newspapers. (2) Driers, two or three dozen, 12 � 18 inches. (3) Two boards, 12 � 18 inches. (4) A stone of twenty to thirty pounds weight. (5) Mounting paper. (6) Genus covers. Cut the newspapers into half sheets. Each specimen is to be placed in a folded piece of this. The driers may be cheap blotting paper or pieces of carpet felt, cut to the desired size. Arrange a specimen just as it was taken from the ground, inside of one of the half pages of newspaper. While it is not desirable to put too much time on the arrangement of each specimen, it is as well to place it in a natural position and in such a way that the leaves will not lie all over each other and the flowers be crowded so that the appearance will be awkward. But do not overdo this: if a flower droops naturally, do not make it stick upright. With one of the boards as a foundation build your pile of pressing plants up as follows: Lay on two or more driers, then a folded newspaper holding a specimen, then a drier or two. (If the specimen is a juicy thing, several blotters are needed between it and the next one.) Now another specimen, a drier, a specimen, etc., until you are through with the day's collecting, or until the pile begins to topple. Finish with a drier, then put on the other board, and weight it with your big stone. The driers must be changed every day. Do not disturb the specimens, but lift each folded newspaper from the old to the new pile, building up with fresh driers as before. In a week or ten days most plants will be thoroughly dry. If at all moist they are likely to mould after being mounted and your work will be spoiled. A dried specimen is brittle and needs careful handling. Mounting paper, to be standard and uniform, should be white, plain paper of a very heavy quality. It costs a cent a sheet, size eleven and one half by sixteen and one fourth inches. No other size would be acceptable if you wish at some later time to donate your collection to the local museum or to sell it to some school. There are several ways of fastening specimens to the sheet. Some like to use little strips of gummed paper or court-plaster, but old-fashioned glue is about the most satisfactory stuff. It is mussy to work with till you get your hand in, but it holds the plants fast to the sheet, and "that's the intintion." It is best to keep the specimens in the newspaper wrappers until you have a lot ready to mount. Then with a pot of glue, a dry cloth, a damp one, and a small brush you are ready for business. Lift the specimen from the newspaper and lay it first on the mounting sheet to get some idea beforehand of how you will place it. You may have to prune it some to get it all on, but this is not likely as your drying sheets are the same size as your mounting paper. Having decided at what angle to place it, lay the specimen back on the newspaper upside down. With your brush wet, but not dripping, with glue, brush the stems, buds, leaves, and flowers lightly over the back. Lift it again, turning it over as you transfer it to the white sheet. With a light pressure make the parts fast and lay the sheet aside for the glue to dry. Small specimens should occupy a place just a little below the centre of the sheet, and if more than one specimen is required to show all parts they may be arranged on the sheet as their various shapes and sizes look best. [Illustration: Plants should be mounted on paper 16¼ � 11½ inches] A few facts should accompany each plant to refresh your memory of that specimen when you come to study it later. These facts should have been recorded by you in whatever way you like and referred to the specimen by a number while in the press. Finally each mounted specimen should have its label, bearing the name of the plant, the collector's name, the date collected, locality, and any useful information regarding it. Glue the label into the lower right-hand corner, which should always be reserved for that purpose. These loose sheets, covered with mounted specimens, must not be allowed to lie in a shelf or drawer unprotected. Each group of them should be put into a folded sheet of manilla paper. Such a holder is called a "genus cover." Its size, folded, is eleven and three fourths by sixteen and one half inches. This word "genus" suggests that in time the collector is going to be able so to classify his specimens that each genus cover may contain only plants so closely related one to another that they are of the same botanical genus. The beginner need not be seriously disturbed if there are many plants in his collection that he does not know the names of yet. The collection is for study or it is worth nothing. Knowing plants is more important than knowing names. You cannot handle plants much and observe them in their places without noticing how different they are. Then you begin to see that some are more like than others. This is the beginning of classification. You need not know even the common names of the plants to do this, although you will know some, of course. Professor Bailey says: "Learn first to classify plants; names will follow. Look for resemblances, and group plants round some well-known kind. Look for sunflower-like plants, lily-like, rose-like, mint-like, mustard-like, pea-like, carrot-like plants. These great groups are families." After you have handled your common plants a good deal you will be surprised to find how easily you can guess at one's family, and guess right. When you have reached this stage in your collecting you will feel that you need some book to guide you and act as a check on your studies. All the books mentioned in the lists in this book are useful for beginners. If you find a book which pretends to take the place of the plants themselves, you would better throw your money away than buy it. Instead of helping it will hinder your progress. You will find in beginners' botanies what is known as a "key." Now, a key is obviously to unlock something with. If you had a door key which turned with difficulty, or fitted the lock imperfectly you would be sure to have it repaired or get a more modern one. Some of the old botanical keys seem to be rusty and it is difficult to use them. Choose the key that works most easily. In making a key for classifying plants one begins by dividing the whole vegetable kingdom into two big departments, thus: A. Plants which never have flowers. AA. Plants which do have flowers. As your specimens are all of the flowering kind we shall for the present forget all about the others and begin to divide our big group AA into smaller groups. This is how it is done: AA. Flowering plants. B. Flowers not showy, seeds in cones (usually), leaves needle--or scale-like, evergreen (usually). BB. Flowers showy, seeds not in cones, leaves of various shapes, deciduous (usually). You will see that in dividing a group it is important that A is just the opposite of AA, and B is just the opposite of BB, and that the place to look for BB is just the same distance over from the margin of the page as B although it may not be on the same page, if there are a great many divisions under B. These little things make the key easier to use than the old-fashioned ones were. Some people still use botanical keys as mental gymnastics but I do not believe in that. After all you are studying plants not keys. You will want to go back to the group we called A, for to the non-flowering plants belong the lovely ferns which must certainly grace your collection. This is a delightful group to study and it is possible with a reasonable amount of persistence and by exchanging with fern collectors in other parts of the country to get a very nearly if not quite, complete collection of native forms. Only one hundred and sixty-five of the four thousand species of ferns are native to the United States. Such a collection should be very valuable. Some boys and girls lose interest in collecting plants after the first season, especially if they have done well the first year and secured most of the species in their locality. If the opportunity to collect elsewhere does not come the next spring there can be nothing more interesting than to try to get the same things you already have, but in some other stage of their growth. For example: most collections will have several kinds of violets, blue, white and yellow, in all the beauty of their flowering. But whoever thought of getting one that showed the seed pods? What is a violet's seed pod like anyhow? Is the seed pod of the white one like that of the yellow? Are the seed pods of one plant all alike? When do the pods open and how? How do the seeds germinate and when? These and other questions are waiting to be answered by every plant in your collection. Would it not be fine to know the pure white trillium in midsummer when it has grown a leaf nearly a foot across and has a red fleshy seed case thrust up where it will be conspicuous? Some plants are far more showy in fruit than in flower and you will begin to see why these and other things are true as you carry on your studies throughout the year. Many a teacher of botany is forced to depend upon pictures when she wishes to teach children to discriminate between two kinds of leaves, kinds of roots, kinds of stems, kinds of inflorescence. What a boon to those teachers would be a collection put up to illustrate the lessons as they came along! I wonder if there is not a market for such collections in schools where no herbariums are made or kept. For little children, making blue prints is delightful occupation. I knew a child of four who learned to recognize the leaves of most of the common trees one spring by means of this work, and she did every bit of it alone. A small printing frame, blue print paper of the required size, and plenty of water is all that is required. A child soon learns to use good judgment in printing, exposing the frame just long enough to get a fine blue. The outline of the leaf comes out distinctly in white against a blue background. The prints should be thoroughly washed and may be dried on panes of glass. The blue prints of leaves and of flowers do not show anything but the outlines, of course. Leaf prints of other kinds are made which bring out the veining as well. The outfit for this work is simple. Two print rollers, a pane of glass, and a tube of printers' ink, sheets of paper to print upon, and leaves. Put a small quantity of the ink on the clean glass, and work it into a thin film over the surface. Lay a leaf upon this film of ink and go over it with the inky roller. Transfer the leaf to a sheet of paper and cover with a second sheet. One whirl of the clean roller ought to give you the desired print. It is surprising how delicate and true these are and how perfectly they show the characteristic margin, indentations, venation, and even something of the texture of each leaf. A little practice makes one able to make impressions which are like leaf shadows, so delicate and lace-like can these prints be made. It is an excellent way of fixing the leaf forms in the memory, as well as in the note-book. In making a collection of plants the same "rules of the game" should hold good as in collecting insects and other natural objects. Take only what you need. Do not uproot and leave to die the near neighbours of the specimens you select. The taking of rare specimens is discouraged. I shall never forget the look of indignation our dear old professor gave an ambitious youth who had uprooted for his paltry collection every plant of a species of rare fern which the professor had been trying for years to re-establish in its old location. After all is said and done, a live plant is better than a dead one. This is all a part of the great spirit of conservation that has so taken possession of our people of late years. Out of these little acts of preserving our resources will grow a more beautiful America and a better appreciation of all things beautiful. COLLECTING SEA-WEEDS Every child ought to be familiar with that musical poem of Percival's beginning: "Deep in the sea is a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove." And then when the child grows bigger he should have an opportunity to go out in a glass-bottomed boat, at Santa Catalina Island or elsewhere, and see for himself that those "yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean," "bending like corn on the upland lea," are not pictures from a poet's dream, but beautiful realities. Sea-weeds are exquisite things and few people can resist the temptation to collect them when spending a vacation at the beach. When going on a collecting trip for these it is well to take a net and two pails, one small enough to hold the smaller things and carried inside the larger. A heavy knife may be useful, too. The best time is after the spring-tides, because at the lowest ebb of the water one may find forms of great beauty and brighter colours than elsewhere. The rocks, the rubbish left by the tide, the pools, the piles, the sea-wall, the surface of the waves themselves, are all good places to look for sea-weeds. They are fewer on sandy beaches than elsewhere. They vary in size from great, coarse, leathery rock-weeds to those so delicate as hardly to be seen at all. Sea-weeds are real plants, belonging to that great group of non-flowering plants mentioned before. They are called algæ. They do not have true stems and leaves, neither do they feed by means of roots. Many of them are so shaped that they appear to have stems, roots, and leaves, but as these parts do not do the work of true stems, roots, and leaves they are not classed as such. The root-like parts of a sea weed are usually simply hold-fasts, which anchor the plant to the rocks. Algæ which live in sea-water get their nourishment from the water which washes their entire surface. When collecting algæ, every specimen which is intended for immediate mounting should be kept continuously in sea-water. This is what the pails are for. Every part of the plant should be taken, as the attachment to the rocks is as valuable as the rest. The knife is useful here, or a staff with a metal point, for scraping the weeds off the rocks. The natural element of the sea plant is sea-water. Do not put your specimens into fresh water even to wash or rinse them, as they will lose some of their beauty. Unless dried soon after gathering they will decay and fade. In collecting, try and get plants of various sizes even though they look alike. The larger ones may be in the fruiting stage. Do your mounting out of doors if possible, where you can have all the basins of sea-water you want and need not be careful about spilling. If your collection of sea weeds is for a regular herbarium you should by all means have mounting paper of the standard size and quality; heavy white, unruled paper, of a quality which will stand wetting without being spoiled, eleven and one half by sixteen and one fourth inches. If you are merely making a few souvenirs of your summer at the shore, your own taste is the only thing to be considered. You will require genus covers, labels, etc., just as for flowering plants. For the work of mounting you will want plenty of driers, some pieces of muslin the same size, sheets of standard size mounting paper as described above, a heavy needle fitted into a wooden handle, a pair of forceps, scissors, two smooth boards, and weights. For complete enjoyment of the work you will surely have a little magnifying glass, for your pressed specimens will never be as beautiful as the fresh ones. [Illustration: Sea weed mounted on paper of standard size] With several shallow dishes of sea-water within easy reach of your hands, and your pails of specimens floating in sea-water, you are ready to begin. Select your first specimen and lift it with care from the water. Dip it up and down gently in clean water. Every bit of matter that does not belong strictly to that plant must come off, and all the sand or other dirt. Let it spread out naturally in the water and with your scissors prune it to suit your purpose. Some grow in such a bunch that they will not show well on the paper, others may have to be trimmed to get them onto the page. Do not, of course, trim them down to look alike but preserve their peculiarities and characteristics. The great charm in a collection of this kind is in its variety. When the plant is absolutely clean, float it in a dish of clean water. This last dish should be a broad one for now you are to slip your sheet of mounting paper right into the water and get the plant onto it, floating it out in a natural attitude. This takes a knack, you may be sure, but the knack can be acquired with practice. If you can provide yourself with a pane of glass to lay the sheet upon when you take it from the water you will have the best conditions. Some people get along very well with a shallow plate. Some of the delicate parts will be certain to cling together as you lift them out of the water, but you can remedy that by dipping a few drops of water onto them and with your needle you can arrange them as you wish. Take your time. This is not a job for a person in a hurried mood. Examine and admire each piece as you work at it. Make it yours for all time, although you may sell it the following day and never see it again. Lay one of your driers on the lower board, put a mounted specimen all wet as it is, on this, then spread over the sheet a piece of muslin, lay on another drier, mount another sea-weed, cover it with cloth and so on you may build up your pile. Top it with a drier, put on the second board, and your weight, of ten pounds or so. Coarse, thick algæ should not be pressed in the same pile with the fine ones as they would make the pressure uneven. Blotters and cloths must be changed every day at first, dried in the sun to be ready for the next day. After two or three days the cloths may be taken off, and the plants left in press at least a week longer, changing driers every day. If you can set aside a regular time each day for this job, it is not so likely to be forgotten. Moulding specimens are very disappointing. After one has made a little collection of sea-weeds all the stories about the wonders of the deep will take on a reality. You will want to read all you can find about the Sargasso Sea, which sounds like a fairy story. Maybe you have a specimen of this sea-weed in your collection, maybe you have been fortunate enough to sail through that "vast acreage of vegetation as large as the continent of Europe, lying southwest of the Azores!" Do you wonder that the first navigators, sailing uncharted seas, were alarmed by this vast expanse and thought of course there were concealed shallows beneath the feathery fronds of this gulf weed? You must read, too, of some of the giants of the sea-weed tribe; the "devil's apron," the "sea-otter's cabbage," with its air-vessel as big as a hogshead, and its stalk a slender cord hundreds of feet in length. These are all algæ, and so are the microscopic plants which produce that wonderful phosphorescence on the surface of the ocean. There are still unsolved mysteries about these plants and there is always a chance that the boys and girls who collect sea-weeds to-day on the beach may in the years to come read some of the secrets now hidden from all eyes. It is well worth while to keep such a big thought in mind even while doing the simple and easy work of mounting specimens. COLLECTING SHELLS Of all the kinds of collections of natural objects that I have seen, there is none that has quite so much beauty, in itself, as a collection of shells. How easily they can be displayed in a cabinet for our friends to enjoy, too, and they are never attacked, so far as I know, by what we call museum pests, those destructive little creatures which make life a burden to the owners of collections of insects, plants, stuffed birds, and the like. Perhaps the products of the sea possess an especial charm to the "landlubber," but most people admire shells and love to handle them and to wonder where they came from and what kind of creatures built them. Did any one ever visit the shore and come home without a pocket bulging with shells? Or a big handful tied up in a grimy handkerchief? Probably that is the way most of the great collections in the country were begun. You can begin one this summer or any time that you visit a beach, and add to it daily if you are spending the summer on the shore. As your collection and your interest grow, you can exchange specimens common on your coast with collectors who live on the other oceans and the Gulf. Remember that every shell is rare until you get it in your cabinet and what is common as the sand on your coast may be a rarity in other parts of the world. You will probably begin your collection by picking up empty shells of various sizes, colours and shapes. Sometimes you will find a pair still held together by the tough tendon that worked the hinge when the bivalve that built the shell was alive and going about his affairs. Many of these will be worn by their daily encounter with the tide, and some will be pierced with small round holes too neatly ground to have been made by accident. These holes give you a hint as to why this shell is empty for they are the work of a band of little pirates which live by boring into their neighbours and sucking their life-blood. Many of the dead shells are those of animals which live far out at sea or in the deep water and have been washed ashore when the tide was high. Search along the shore where the water has drifted a line of sea-wrack. It looks like rubbish at first glance but it is almost sure to hold many small shells you will want, some even from far-off coasts. The collector will not long be satisfied to gather only such shells as he finds on the beach. His eyes are opened. What seemed to him at first a flat, smooth surface of sand strewn with bits of rubbish and a few shells, most of them not worth picking up, has awakened into life. Every pool has become as a village, its inhabitants engaged in a variety of occupations. The smooth sand is inhabited. The centre of population is down at the low-water line. The rocks, the bridge piers, the wharf piles, and the sea-walls are seen to be covered with living things. Now collecting begins in good earnest. On the sandy beach one needs a net, a sieve, and a shovel. The best costume for such work is the same as that worn when bathing. You will need to be in the water part of the time and will not wish to be hampered by anxiety as to clothing. The best time to go is the time you can go, of course, but you are more likely to find a great variety of things at the very lowest tide. You have heard of planting "by the moon" and you are right in supposing that the moon has little influence on potatoes and cabbages. But to go collecting on the sea-shore "by the moon" is quite reasonable. When the moon is full and when it is new they have what are called spring tides at which times the ebb is lower than ordinarily. After a storm is a fine time to look for things which have been dragged by the force of the water from their anchorage in the depths, and tossed ashore. When you arrive on the sand all will appear to be quiet. Your best plan is to sit still and wait for some signs of life. In a moment some clam may send a jet of water into the air near you. If you are quick enough with your shovel you may catch the joker, but he has had more practice in the game than you and will probably elude you. Watch for bubbles and jets of water and dig frantically. You will be able to work up speed after a few trials and land your "fish." After some practice you will be able to unearth many living things you little suspected of being there. Crabs of various kinds are common and sea-worms of rainbow colours and curious forms. Creatures in snail-like shells, little and big, are common in the sand of our coast. As you shovel away try to have presence of mind enough to throw the sand into your sieve. Take this to the water's edge and wash it. You will in this way get many small things which you otherwise would not see. Do not discard anything about which you have an unanswered question. Many of the mollusks leave egg cases on the sand or these are washed in by the tides. They are no less wonderful than the shells, for they are chapters in the same story. The egg-cases of the whelk are common. Those of the skate are called "devil's pocket-books" by natives. Muddy shores have their own special forms, while rocky coasts differ from all the rest. Some creatures, like the hermit crab, are abundant everywhere. You can read the story of this fellow in any book on shells. Take some of the stories about him with a grain of salt. He may not be as bad as he is painted for much of the gossip about him has never been proven. His affairs need investigation. The creatures which build the shells are for the most part soft bodied and can not be preserved except in some liquid like alcohol or formalin. These would be difficult to transport but will be of greatest value if you are studying the structure of the mollusks. If you wish to preserve the shells only, you should take great care to free every part from any animal matter that adheres to them. Boiling the shell will usually accomplish this. Labels should be used and record made of the locality, date, collector's name, and other interesting data. Every naturalist of any experience has the note-book habit. Many a collector who trusts to his memory finds himself sadly at a loss when he comes to work with his specimens and especially when he wants to write about them. If his note-book tells him the story he will be able to make his account accurate as well as interesting. COLLECTING INSECTS The two principal reasons for making insect collections are first, to study, second, to sell. The beginner's outfit will be the same whichever reason is his. Time was when any one carrying an insect net was looked on with a sort of pitying suspicion. He or she was thought to be the victim of a mild form of lunacy, which might or might not take violent shape. All that is past now that insect study has grown so important and popular. It is quite safe to conclude that the hundreds of trained scientists employed by the government to investigate the problems involving insect life all started their studies by making a collection. Probably the easiest kind of collection to make is one of plants. Once you see them, their fate is sealed. Escape is impossible. But collecting wild plants about your own door yard and in the woods is tame work compared to insect capturing. Your eye marks a butterfly or a dragon fly for your own, but you have him yet to reckon with and his wings may carry him far beyond your reach. The outfit necessary to an insect collector is simple and inexpensive. For general collecting, and that is the best for a beginner, you need: 1. A net. 2. A killing bottle. 3. Insect pins. 4. Insect boxes. While you can add to your collection almost every day in the year when once "you have the fever," the best time to begin is summer. More insects are in evidence then, and their active flight, their beautiful colours, and wonderful variety of form all help arouse the interest. As the collection grows you will find that many insects can be captured without a net, but as you will want every new butterfly, moth, dragon fly, and grasshopper that comes into your line of vision you must certainly have a net the first thing. The materials needed for a net are these: 1. A smooth, light, but strong handle about three feet in length. (An old broom handle will answer.) 2. A strip of tin, four inches wide, and long enough to fit around the handle. (Why not use a piece of a tin can if you have strong shears?) 3. Three and a half feet of heavy wire. (No. 3 galvanized is the thing.) 4. A piece of cheese cloth, three fourths of a yard. (Get a good grade to stand a season's wear.) Almost every boy knows a tinsmith and when it comes to putting these materials together, the services of a skilled workman are very valuable. If pocket money is scarce, there are any number of jobs a boy can do for the tinsmith in exchange for his help in making the net. That piece of wire is to form the ring which holds the cheese cloth bag; the ring must be fastened securely into the end of the handle. Bend the wire into a circle a foot in diameter, then bend back three inches of both ends and force them into the end of the handle, a hole for the purpose first having been made by burning or boring. Bend the tin round the handle at the net end to keep it from splitting when in use, and tack it on tight. [Illustration: Insect net] If you know how to sew you are more fortunate than most of the boys I know, although why should not a boy learn to use a sewing machine? The bag ought to be sewed on the machine. You must first lay the finished edge or selvedge around the wire to make sure that it goes around and has a little extra for the seam. Pin the cloth together where it meets around the wire, then lay it on a table, double. Cut the bag, rounding the bottom neatly. Cheese cloth is the worst stuff to ravel, and if you sew the bag with a single seam you will soon be sorry. Pin the cloth so that the two edges are exactly together and sew a seam about a quarter of an inch wide all the way round. Now turn the bag inside out and fold it so that the seam you just made will be right on the edge. Sew another seam, three eighths of an inch deep this time. The ragged edge of the goods will now be inside of this second seam and can not fray out and make a nuisance of itself. If all this is worse than Dutch to you, take the bag to your sister. She is not so much cleverer than you but the chances are that if you ask her to sew you a French seam, she will make it just as I have described. Sew the finished bag onto the wire with heavy double thread and your net is ready for use. Materials to make a killing bottle: 1. A wide-mouthed bottle. (I advise every collector to have two bottles, one to carry in the pocket all the time, the other for special trips for large things. For the first a small olive oil bottle, a test tube, or any convenient sized bottle with a mouth nearly or quite as large as the body of the bottle. A fruit jar, pint size, does well for the very large things.) 2. A cork which fits the bottle tightly, and is an inch long. A cork any shorter than this is an aggravation as it is so unhandy. 3. A lump of cyanide of potassium as big as a hickory nut for the small bottle, two or a little more for the big bottle. Yes, cyanide is a deadly poison, and the druggist will not sell it to you and your father will not let you buy it. But if you convince your mother that she can trust you to use a cyanide bottle as it is intended to be used, her objections will melt away. Just as likely as not she and your father, too, and your teacher, and maybe the druggist all made insect collections when they were your age and one or the other will make your cyanide bottles for you following these directions: [Illustration: Killing bottle] 4. A teacup full of plaster of Paris. Handle the cyanide with a couple of sticks or drop the lumps from the paper into the bottles so as not to touch them with your fingers, mix a little of the plaster of Paris and water till it is like a thin paste and pour enough in on the lumps of cyanide to entirely cover them. Put in on top of this all the dry plaster of Paris the water will take up. Let the bottle stand open for an hour or so, then wipe it out with a rag, which may be burned afterward. Put in the cork and your killing bottle is ready to do its share toward making a collection for you. Don't forget to label your bottles "poison," and always be careful not to inhale the fumes. The smell of the breath of the bottle will be enough to remind you. It was a Japanese student, who, when he found one of his pinned moths had come to life and beaten its wings to pieces in the box, said: "It ought-a be dead. He in cy'ni' bot'l' a' night." I should not wish to be quite so stoical. His bot'l' was probably an old one, which did its work too slowly. MOUNTING INSECTS The first insects I ever saw in a collection were a sorry sight. Beautiful as the specimens had been, they were all spoiled by the collector. The moths were all out of shape, wings half folded, the pins used were short common pins, and every specimen was disfigured with masses of verdigris, they were pinned into rough boxes in higgledy-piggledy fashion, and showed every sign of neglect and careless handling. My interest in insect collecting did not date from that hour but from a look I had at a friend's cabinet years later. The first mistake a beginner makes is to use common pins. Really, before you begin to collect, you ought to send away for a supply of German insect pins. These can be bought from dealers in entomological supplies and a hundred each of Nos. 3 and 5 will cost thirty cents. With them your collection may be salable, and you may exchange your duplicates with other collectors, while if you use common pins your specimens will have no commercial value, and will soon be spoiled, by the corroding of the pins. [Illustration: Cross-section of spreading-board, showing construction] The first insect you get will probably be a butterfly, or a moth, for these showy ones are all you are able to see. Later the smaller ones will attract your attention. Therefore you will not be able to mount your first specimen properly without a spreading-board. The drawing of one which appears on this page will tell you more about how to make as well as how to use it than any amount of description. If you can earn seventy-five cents more easily than by making a set of three of these in assorted sizes, you can buy for that amount an adjustable one which will serve you for all winged insects of all sizes. [Illustration: Spreading-board, in use] I will suppose that you have captured your first butterfly. Do get a good sized one first as it will be easier to learn on that than on a small one. An hour in a freshly made cyanide jar is long enough to insure a painless death. If any one calls you a cruel boy at this time, assure the person that butterflies are very short-lived and that this one would have been eaten by a bird within an hour or two anyhow. The cyanide is the least painful form of dying for the butterfly. Its work is probably done, already. You can prove that you do not kill insects for the fun of seeing them die, by putting the bottle back in your pocket where they can die in private, and by never killing any unless you need them for your collection. A few duplicates for exchange is also legitimate. It does not injure a specimen to leave it in the jar over night. If you cannot spread it immediately, do not take it from the jar, as when dried they cannot be spread, as they are very brittle. If you never looked at a butterfly before, you will look at this one. You will note that it has four broad wings attached to a rounded body. The portion of the body to which the wings are fastened is called the thorax. For a medium-sized insect, a No. 3 pin should be taken. The butterfly should be pinned through the thorax, half way between the front wings. Direct the pin so that it will come out in the middle on the under side of the thorax. One fourth of the pin's length should remain above the insect. This may seem a small matter but insects unevenly pinned look badly, and it spoils their salability. You will want some black-headed pins for use on the spreading-board. Common pins hurt the fingers, insect pins are too flexible and expensive. Pin strips of paper on to hold the wings in place. With the picture of butterflies on a spreading-board as a model, you will, after some experience, get so that you can do this well. It is no job for an impatient person, though. Leave the butterfly on the board until it is thoroughly dry, which takes three days. Put the board where the air can have free circulation around it, but not the mice. [Illustration: Showing how to pin common insects] The only insects that are not pinned through the middle of the thorax are the beetles, those hard-shelled creatures like June bugs (which ought to be called May beetles), and potato bugs (which are also beetles). If you put a pin through the centre of a beetle's thorax, it spreads the wings out in an unnatural way. So collectors agree to pin them through the right wing-cover. [Illustration: Pin butterflies through the thorax, between the front pair of wings] Your next requirement will be boxes to put the specimens in. Many a fine collection has been begun in ordinary cigar boxes. At first you will probably try to pin the insects right into the bottom of the box. After you have spoiled two or three of your rarest ones, bent a dozen or so expensive pins, you will conclude that the wood is too hard and does not hold the pins well. Be warned in time to save yourself this bother. The boxes should be lined with a thin layer of some material which, though soft enough to push a pin into easily, must at the same time be elastic and firm enough to hold the pins. Cork, linoleum, and slices of pith are all used. You may have noticed, though, if you have been to a large, up-to-date museum, that the specimens of insects are all pinned into solid blocks of wood. Many an hour I have spent pinning specimens into blocks in their permanent places in a great museum collection. It is hard work and has to be done with a tool. When once fastened on a block the insect is supposed to be a fixture; when it moves the block goes along. But the material you use in your boxes ought to be soft enough to make shifting of specimens easy. For example, at first you will get a great assortment. A butterfly to-day, a beetle or two to-morrow, a pair of moths the next day, some crickets, a dragon fly, a cicada, a waterbug, and so on. Take everything unless you already have it. That is the only way to collect. If you say, "Oh, I'll get a better one to-morrow," the chances are that the season will go by and you will not get that variety at all. [Illustration: Glass-topped insect case] CLASSIFICATION Your first box full will be a varied assortment. When you have all you can conveniently pin into three boxes without crowding, you will want to arrange them. If you have begun to study science you will know what "classify" means. Every school is made up of classes. So with insects. You will know by the looks of the insects that certain ones belong together. A good way to start is to put all the butterflies and moths into one box. You may not know what you have done, but you have simply separated the members of the order _Lepidoptera_ from all the others. Look over those that are left and you will see that some, like the blundering June bug, have their wings so placed that a straight line appears down the middle of the back. These belong together, regardless of their colour, size, shape, habits, or other considerations. They belong to the order _Coleoptera_. Grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets belong to another group and can be pinned together. All the flies have two wings, and belong in a group apart from all the four-winged ones. The dragon flies go together. You will have representatives of other orders, less easy to distinguish, but by the time your collection has grown to this extent you will be ready for some beginner's book on entomology, which will make further classification simple enough. As you shift your specimens from one box to another observe a certain regularity of arrangement. The heads should all point in one direction. When pinning a group all of which are about one size, set the pins all in line, in military fashion. How much better they look! This neat, formal arrangement of the specimens adds greatly to your satisfaction and enjoyment of your collection. Avoid crowding and breakage. A dried specimen is almost everlasting, but at the same time it is the most fragile thing you can imagine. As your collection grows in size, value, and interest, you will certainly want wooden cases. Perhaps your manual training teacher will be willing to let you build a box under his direction. A cabinet-maker can make them at one dollar or less, apiece, of well-seasoned basswood. Before you have been collecting long, you will have learned by observation quite a lot about insects and their ways. You will know that some localities are very poor collecting ground, that other places yield an abundant variety; that the best time for butterflies is in a sunny forenoon; while moths are abroad in the early twilight and later. You will see that dragon flies are fond of flying about over streams or ponds and you may wonder why as you try in vain to net a fine one without getting your feet wet. Other insects are frankly aquatic and you can get them only by dipping your net in. It is well to have a second net if you expect to do much water collecting as the cloth is hard to smooth out after a wetting. As a majority of insects are vegetarian you will naturally seek among plants for specimens. If the winged forms are not eating the foliage you may discover that they are laying eggs on the leaves of the food plant on which their young must develop. If you live in town you will find it worth while to carry your bottle with you when you go out in the evening. Nocturnal insects of all kinds are attracted to electric lights, many of them to their death, as you will see. A candle in your open window will attract some valuable additions to your collection and also some you will sleep better without. Some collectors care nothing for a specimen unless it is rare. A better way is to regard them all as rare until you secure a specimen for your box, and of equal value towards building up a complete collection. A LIFE HISTORY COLLECTION You can not collect insects very long before you begin to see a lot of things you never noticed before. You see leaves cut or eaten in strange forms, or you find a cluster of tiny eggs on a leaf, or several leaves sewed or stuck together with strands of silk. Perhaps you find strange abnormal growths on certain plants, swellings on their stems, leaves transformed into balls, or pod-like or cone-like affairs which do not look natural. These things are sure to arouse your curiosity. Sometimes the answer to your question is right there. Cut open a swollen golden-rod stalk and you will find the culprit which caused the plant to grow that way. But how did the footless, helpless grub get there and when? You break down the mud-dauber wasp's nest from among the rafters of some building. What is that yellowish object that rolls from among the ruined adobe walls? Look! It is a spider. What business has a spider in the wasp's nest, if it is her nest? Spiders have none too good a reputation, but this spider does not act very spry. Seems to be alive, yet not alive. The secret of the relation between the spiders and the wasps you can read in many a book. You might even guess at it, but there was no guess work about the observer who first studied out this secret. He did not get his knowledge from books. He patiently watched the mud-dauber going about her house building. He knew that her painstaking labour could have but one meaning. She was building not a home for herself, but for her children. The wasp's children are not little wasps, yet they are none the less young wasps for being footless, colourless, wingless, stingless grubs. They are eggs at first of course, just as all insects are. When the mother wasp has one cell of her apartment house finished she concerns herself immediately with stocking the larder. Knowing the tastes of her yet unborn young, she leaves for a time the mud hole, and visits the haunts of certain spiders. Finding one to her liking, she captures it. Not appreciating the fact that the law forbids the use of preservatives in meats, she injects a drop of some wonder-working fluid into the spider and preserves the creature, not only fresh but alive, though paralyzed. Upon the inert body she places an egg, then seals the cell, well assured in her mind that when the grub hatches it will find the food just as she left it and just enough to nourish the young one to maturity. Before your first season of collecting is past you will find yourself bringing home as specimens many insects which you will see are not fully grown. Little grasshoppers, scarcely bigger than a fly yet possessed of such strength of leg that they can hurl themselves into the air for a distance equal to twenty times their own length. How do you know that they are young grasshoppers and not fully grown ones of some tiny race? Look at one closely and you will see a look of youth about him that is unmistakable. He is fuzzy, his head is too big for him, his legs out of all proportion to the rest of him. Then, too, he has no wings, just little buds where the wings will be some day. By these tokens you will know him for a baby. You can find them in all sizes and can have a series to show the stages of growth. This is one of the first steps in the making of a "Life History Collection," far more valuable to the naturalist than a collection containing only mature insects. Generally speaking, all adult insects have wings, and all winged insects are adults. There are exceptions to this, but they will take their places when the time comes. The young of the insects belonging to certain orders resemble their parents enough so as to be placed where they belong at a glance. This is true of the grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets, of the true bugs which include the squash-bugs, the chinch-bug, the stink-bug and others. Of most of the other orders this is not true. The young do not look at all like the adults. In many cases as, for example, the dragon fly and the mosquito, they are fitted in the immature stages to a life in the water. They must, on this account, have organs for swimming, for aquatic breathing, and for getting a living in the water. The forms of these young insects are just as varied as those of the adults, but they do not resemble the winged ones in the least. The life history collection must contain specimens of the immature forms of insect life as well as adults if it is to be most useful and complete. Some orders of insects, as for example the moths, butterflies, beetles, flies, bees, wasps, ants, and others pass through four distinct changes of form. They always follow the same order. Every generation, beginning with the egg, passes next to the larva (called caterpillar or incorrectly worm, or grub, or maggot), on to the pupa, then to the adult. The egg of an insect is often a most beautiful object. With a hand lens, which every collector will surely need, one can see its delicate colouring, its pearl-like shell, its curiously carved or sculptured surface. To get some idea of the great variety in form, colour, shape, and markings of insects' eggs, ask at your library for a book on butterflies, with coloured plates, and the chances are that you will be surprised. The second or larval stage of the insect's life is the eating, growing stage. During this stage the young bee, butterfly, ant, or moth moults several times. In this process the entire old skin is shed, an operation well worth seeing. Under the old coat a new one has formed, which being larger, accommodates itself to the insect's increased size. The larval stage is in the case of many insects the active time when, if they are vegetable feeders, they injure crops. When the larva has completed its growth it changes into a pupa. Some insects pass this third stage inside of silken cases they spin about themselves, others, after shedding the larval skin, find themselves each clad in a sort of horny coat of mail. We call these chrysalides. Some larvæ creep away into the ground, there to shed their old coats and rest inside of the pupa cases which nature provides. Each one follows the fashion of his own family and is in no danger of being mistaken for any one else. Out of the pupa, whether it be cocoon, chrysalis, or just plain pupa case, comes the adult. The main business of adult insects is to reproduce their kind. After the eggs are laid there is little excuse for their living. In the case of a great many kinds of insects death follows soon after. There are some noted exceptions to this rule as for instance the wasps which build with so much skill and patience the homes in which to rear their young, the ants and the bees, both social and solitary, which carry on such a complicated home life. Of these highly "civilized" insects only a word can be spoken here. From the chapter on "Bee-Keeping" and from other books you may learn of the wonders they perform. We must return now to our life history collection. How the subject opens as we add specimens of cocoons and pupa cases to the collection! To get a complete series illustrating the life, let us say, of one of our common butterflies, the monarch or milk-weed butterfly, you should visit the clusters of milk-weed along the roadside or anywhere, in the forenoon of a sunny July or August day. A few butterflies are probably flitting about in rather casual fashion. Watch them light on the leaves, mark the leaf with your eye and hurry to the spot. Search well. The tiny speck of pale yellow may be a drop of milk but if it stands up on the leaf it is likely to be a butterfly's egg. Your lens will tell you. Having made sure of one you will find others. You may find a young caterpillar lunching on the leaf. If just out of the egg it is a dull lead colour, but when half grown a young monarch is striped with rings of greenish yellow and black. Though handsome as to colour scheme, this caterpillar has manners unbecoming a plain citizen, let alone a monarch. Touch its back with a grass stem and see what happens. If time permits you should visit your clump of milk-weed daily or better still take home the eggs and the young caterpillars. Keep the food plant fresh in a jar of water and get more when needed. As you want a specimen of the egg-shell for your collection, you must be on the spot when the young caterpillars come out. They sometimes eat the shell the first thing. It is a delicate operation to glue a thing as frail as this shell onto a dried milk-weed leaf, and you may have to content yourself with making a sketch of it on a small square of drawing paper. Pin the leaf or the drawing in the box. It is not easy to keep specimens of caterpillars. There is a method of preparing the inflated skins, but as the process is a difficult as well as a ghastly one, you can wait till you go to college to learn it. For the milk-weed caterpillar I suggest instead, a coloured drawing. When your caterpillars are full-sized they will transform into chrysalides. It is worth sitting up all night to see a sight like this. When a caterpillar spins a little mat of silk and suspends itself by a tail-hook, you will know that the performance is about to begin. The chrysalis is a lovely light green with spots of gold upon it. All this beauty was hidden under the skin of the caterpillar. With an egg, a caterpillar, a chrysalis, and an adult you have all four stages of the monarch's life represented. INSECT HOMES Nothing in the insect world interests me more than their homes. The collector sees many of these in his rounds, and begins to consider how he can complete his series by adding samples of them as specimens to his collection. I was lucky enough to find, when on a collecting trip one day, a curious structure made of mud on a weed stem. It was declared by the professor to be an ants' "cow-shed." Knowing that the museum specimen was in a bad state of repair I readily offered my find to replace it. The professor refused the gift, but offered me what he thought it was worth. I accepted and bought a pair of shoes with the money, which shows that these things have a market value. It is well to press a specimen of the favourite food plant of a species of insect and make it a part of the collection. But dried butterflies, fastened in utterly unnatural attitudes upon dried plants they would scorn to eat in life, framed or put under glass globes on the parlour table do not appeal to the naturalist. They are "fakes" pure and simple. There will be a few among the many who begin to make collections of various kinds who will keep at it. I know one young man who sold his stamp collection for enough to take him on his first trip abroad. Six hundred dollars was the sum realized, I believe. Those of you who have read Mrs. Gene Stratton-Porter's story "The Girl of the Limberlost" remember that "the girl" sold Indian relics and insects enough to send herself to high school and start a college fund. She made up little life history collections to illustrate the talks she gave as special teacher of nature study in the grades in a city school system. The Limberlost girl had an offer of three hundred dollars for a complete collection of the butterflies and moths of the United States. She had a wonderful collecting ground in and about the big swamp, and she had enough duplicates to exchange with other collectors for things she could not get at home. In order to have perfect specimens, both male and female, she made breeding cages and reared the moths and butterflies. She dug in the earth about the tree roots and other "likely" places for pupæ, she searched the shrubs and vines and trees for hanging cocoons, she brought in innumerable eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalides and the story of her successes and failures fills many delightful pages. It all rings so true that you can't help hoping that you may see her insect collection some day, and hear her tell how she brought this butterfly up "by hand," how she had to wait a year to get a male to complete one series, how narrowly she escaped the quicksands in a wild chase she had for another, and other details of her occupation. REARING INSECTS [Illustration: Bandbox breeding-cage for insects] Breeding insects is easy. Look at the home-made breeding-cage illustrated on this page. Materials needed: One round or oval hat box, a strip of wire screen, two and a half feet wide or so and long enough to fit around the inside of the box and lap three inches. Either sew the screen together in the form of a cylinder or fasten it every six inches with paper fasteners. (Any way to keep it together good and tight.) Push the screen down inside the box till it touches the bottom, put the lid on and you are ready for business. If the screen is too wide you will have trouble in reaching to the bottom of the box which you will have to do sometimes, for one reason or another. Into breeding-cages made on this general plan you can put all sorts of material while waiting developments, and get many additions to your collection that you would otherwise miss entirely. Some surprising facts are often discovered by accident. A breeding-cage containing a female _Cecropia_, one of our largest and most beautiful moths, was accidentally left near an open window over night. The next morning between twenty and thirty moths of that species were found fluttering about the cage. They had evidently been attracted from some distance, but found their way to their imprisoned sister unerringly. Collectors have many ways of capturing night flying moths. One way is known as "sugaring." This consists of daubing a sticky, sweet preparation on the trunks of trees and visiting the baits later in the evening with cyanide jars and capturing the specimens which are attracted by the odour to the feast set for them. It is unsportsmanlike and entirely unnecessary to put any poisonous substance in the bait and this practice should be darkly frowned upon. The best places for sugaring are these: a strip of woodland edging a stream, the rim of the woods adjoining an open field or pasture, old roadways through woods of beech, oak, chestnut, or any mixed growth, wooded slopes in city parks where there is some protecting undergrowth, anywhere about the old groves surrounding country homes. Windy or wet nights are not the best for sugaring, neither are moonlight nights. The ideal night for this is the evening after a hot, sticky day in late summer, the sky overcast and dark but not foggy. You will need a lantern to work by. Keep calm. Quick, nervous movements frighten away more moths than the light. The following is the unspeakable concoction recommended by one collector as "the best ever" for baiting moths: Four pounds darkest sugar. One quart New Orleans molasses. One pint stale beer or ale. (This should have been allowed to stand uncorked in a warm place for a week, before using it.) Mix all together and heat gradually. Boil till about as thick as varnish, which takes about five minutes. When cool add four ounces of Jamaica rum. Cork loosely and keep in a cool place. The strong odour of this mixture pervades the air for a long distance, and proves attractive to the olfactories of moths though none of us would care to have it about. A good evening's work at sugaring ought to furnish moths enough to keep you busy spreading all the next forenoon. A night in the cyanide jar will do them no injury. It is well to have a pair of light pincers to take specimens out with. If all are emptied out at once some will dry too much before you are ready to spread them. Every time they are handled they lose part of the scales and become slightly defective. If practical, put the very large specimens into the jar hinder end first. This will make it easier to get them out head first. It is almost inevitable that the inveterate collector of insects shall become a naturalist. By constant watching, he discovers how insects live, and how they affect plants. He will witness many a tragedy. He will find that there are among them thieves and robbers, pirates, cannibals, assassins, scavengers, and disease carriers. He will witness many acts of heroic self-denial, some feats of strength, endurance tests, and acrobatic turns. He will admire the ingenious architecture and wonder at the never ending variety of forms, colours, and markings they exhibit. Many questions will come up in the course of his studies. He may seek the books in vain for information on some of the commonest insects of the garden. Entomology is a new science. Boys and girls who begin the study by collecting their first insect to-day may, before they stop, discover some important fact to add to the sum of human knowledge and make the world a better place to live in. X ODD JOBS KINDLING WOOD Cutting kindling wood was ever a boy's job. Most set tasks have little to them but drudgery. But cutting kindling used to be interesting. What is there about it? The struggle to master a stubborn stick, the danger that a slip may bring the axe down elsewhere than on the stick, or that a careless blow may cause the stick to rebound, leap into the air, and give the chopper a whack on the head? Scarcely a boy but can show a hatchet's scar on the foot and I know a girl who will always carry one in the place where most people carry a corn. The problem of a source of kindling supply on the farm is never one to be reckoned with. There are always old fences going to pieces, old buildings being torn down, and the problem is rather how to store the supply where it can be had when needed. In town things are different. The fences, if any, are iron, the buildings are few and kept in repair because they cost so much to build. There are practically no loose boards lying around and kindling has to be bought outright. The ex-farmer always resents this as an uncalled-for expense. But kindling is a necessity wherever fires are to be made. No patent article quite fills the bill. [Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke. An Odd Job That is Never Out of Date] Why should grown men monopolize the kindling business? Because there is good money in it? But any boy can go into this business, if he has any spunk. The capital required is very small. If your credit is good you can borrow a hatchet. The chances are that spunk will supply the wood. It may be rotting in somebody's wood lot waiting till the right boy comes along. Boys in the South are lucky. They can get fat pine which is in great demand both North and South. Some say the supply has given out, but who believes such tales? The demand for this will never be less than now and there is no substitute for fat pine. Collecting driftwood is another occupation for boys, sea-coast boys, this time. A kind of substitute for this is being sold. It is a mixture of chemicals and does very well for toy fireplaces in city apartments. But the real thing will always bring a fancy price. It is the common practice of American lumbermen to regard no part of the tree as valuable, but the trunk. All the rest is rubbish and the expense of trimming off the branches reduces the amount of profit on every log. Some day when our young foresters get enough experience to see all round the great subject they are working at, they will think out ways of disposing economically of the tops and branches of the cut trees. This is one of the big problems of forestry for these reasons: (1) The huge amount of this refuse wood chokes out the young growth and the forest cannot renew itself as it would naturally. (2) The brush dries quickly and whenever a small fire gets started there is fresh food for it everywhere. (3) The brush prevents the fighters from making their way to the threatened district. They have to fight the brush piles before they get to the fire. This refuse wood might be put to a number of uses, e. g., for pulp wood, thus saving the trunks for lumber; for fuel, nothing makes better fires than the smaller limbs; for kindling, the branches which are too small to use for stove wood make splendid kindling, particularly for fireplaces. Some of us think gathering faggots too slow and laborious. But we needn't make work of it. When I see men, women and children poking over the masses of evil-smelling rubbish on the mammoth dump-heaps that deface the landscape near some of our great cities, or going from house to house collecting old iron or rubber or newspapers, or picking over the slag along the railways for chance lumps of coal, I wish that there were some way of getting them away into the woods where firewood is rotting and doing harm besides, a waste that works both ways, you see. There is no excuse for the poor people of a village near woods suffering for fuel. They needn't steal. Let them get permission from the owner to clean up his wood lot. It will be good for the wood lot and the owner knows it if he is an intelligent man. The boys and girls are much safer gathering faggots in the woods than coal along the tracks. Faggots for kindlings bring a fair price, too, and I recommend it as a way of earning money out of your father's wood lot if he has one. In some villages in Germany the people have the right to break off in the forest all the branches that they can reach when standing on the ground. In those forests there is never any loss of life, nor lumber, by fires, no choking out of young growth by brush piles. You could walk through the forest there and see in every direction miles and miles of clean trunked trees of varying ages, but no underbrush, no rubbish, no decaying logs, no diseased wood. Maybe those thrifty German people made mistakes when their country was as young as ours. But they found out the way to take care of their forests hundreds of years ago and we can learn how from them. CLEANING A CARRIAGE If you get home late at night after a drive in the mud the chances are that you will not clean the carriage till the next day. But if thin mud is allowed to dry on a varnished surface it will be sure to leave spots. Water is the "first aid to the injured" in cleaning highly polished vehicles. Plenty of it should be flushed onto the varnish, the mud washed off by the force of the water rather than being rubbed off or scraped off. Keep your buggy out of the bright sunlight when not in use, especially when it is wet. Slow drying is better for the varnish. A coarse sponge is a good thing to wash a carriage with; this should be thoroughly rinsed after each rub to free it from grit. Never use soap on varnish. It may be used on the metal parts of the carriage. Prepared chalk is the best for polishing the ornamental parts. For glass, clean water and a cloth or chamois skin are all you need. WORK IN THE ORCHARD [Illustration: Shield-budding] Many are the light jobs in the orchard or fruit plantation, which fall to the boys. I know a boy who at thirteen was his father's expert budder. There are high school boys in localities where nurseries and orchards are plentiful who follow this as a trade, making good wages at it. It is a wonderful thing to do, a very neat job in handicraft, and while a book might tell how it is done, nobody could learn how to bud or graft without seeing it done and then trying, till the trick is learned. Boys also follow the grafter and tie in the bud or wax the graft. Boys are often employed in vineyards to follow the pruners and tie the vines to the trellis or wire with rags or raffia. They become very expert and tie an incredible number in a day. In fact many of the light jobs grow pretty heavy after eight or nine hours. MAKING RUSTIC FURNITURE Collecting material for making rustic furniture is a pastime that is suggested by walks in the woods. Sometimes a bit of twisted branch may look like the arm of a settee or the leg of a tea-table. Procuring the first part suggests the quest for the other pieces and the fitting them together to make a natural looking, balanced, artistic piece. Rustic furniture to be good, should appear to have grown that way. There is too much of the kind that looks as if it were made to sell. The truth is that the more truly artistic it is the better price it will bring in the right market. Laurel wood is particularly adapted for rustic furniture. SELECTING SEED CORN By a careful study of what experts have to say about the best corn for seed, and of the photographs of ears of prize corn, any young man of intelligence may learn to select from his father's field the best corn for seed. It may be that your father buys his seed corn from a seedsman. My experience is that seed corn bought in bulk contains a large number of poor grains. They probably shell the whole ear. The best farmers never plant grains from tips or butts of ears, since it costs just as much to plant and cultivate and harvest a runty corn stalk bearing a nubbin as it does a lusty, towering stalk with two good ears of corn on it. [Illustration: Prize seed corn] Find out what a good ear of corn looks like. Make note of all the points to be encouraged. The habit of producing two good ears of corn is a good one to establish. Go through the field when the corn is ripe, before the huskers, and select the best ears, with all the points you have learned in mind. Take off the outer husks and draw the rest back, exposing the entire ear. When you have ten or a dozen ears braid the husks together, starting with three ears, adding one after another to the braid till all are secure. Fasten with strong twine and make a loop to hang the bunch by. Seed corn should hang for a few weeks in the open to cure, but should be taken inside before snow. You will have to use a good deal of ingenuity to keep chickens, rats, squirrels, and other thieves away from your seed corn. When spring comes the corn should be shelled, and every imperfect grain should be discarded. By selecting the seed in this way, demanding of each ear that it shall be perfect, you find the crop will improve, if cultivation is good, the soil well enriched, and the season normal. Every time a farmer boy uses his mind first in connection with any kind of work, the quality of work improves and his interest in his work increases. Selecting seed not only gives better corn but it helps make a better farmer. MAKING CIDER VINEGAR Every good apple year there are thousands of bushels of apples that go to waste. It doesn't pay to pick and put them into barrels when the price of barrels is more than you can get for the apples. The farmer is the last man to learn how to make use of what ordinarily goes to waste. Nature is lavish always, but wastes nothing. The farmer has learned to be lavish and wasteful too. They say that every part of the pig is utilized in the packing house except the squeal. That is the principle which the farmer will have to live by if he would succeed. What can be done with those wasting apples? Let the boys have them to make into pure cider vinegar. Every one knows how vinegar has been adulterated, and now the law-makers have put their veto on the practice and a penalty to match the crime. There is nothing very difficult about the physical part of vinegar making. Nature does the hard work but we can aid nature by providing the ideal conditions for making the product we want. The best apples for making pure cider vinegar are clean, ripe apples. If you use green, dirty, decayed, or over-ripe apples, your vinegar will probably not meet the lawful tests and your time and work will be wasted. Green apples have not enough sugar in them. The same is true of over-ripe apples. "But there isn't much sugar in cider vinegar," you say. No, that is true, but without sugar in the cider you wouldn't get any vinegar. If you were a chemist you could find out just how much sugar was contained in the juice of your apples. Unless the cider has 85 per cent. of sugar it will not make vinegar good enough to satisfy the requirements of the law. However, plenty is found in cider made from sound, ripe apples, and he who makes cider out of anything else deserves to fail. Expose any fruit juice to the air and it will change. We say, "Oh, that is fermented," and throw it away. But what is this ferment? Set a glass of fresh apple juice in the sun and watch it. In a few days you can actually see that some change is taking place. It is "working," as they say. The sugar is changing to alcohol; so the chemists tell us. What makes it do this? The chemists must answer again. They say that there are yeast plants in the apple juice. How did they get there? We did not put yeast in the apple juice. No, but the air is full of the spores of wild yeast plants so the juice does not have to wait till we put in domesticated yeast from a little "silver" wrapper. As these yeast plants grow they cause the sugar in the juice to change to alcohol. There are lots of other wild spores in the air and in the dirt which collects on the apples if they are left out very long. Some of these spores may be of a kind that would delay the fermentation. For this, if for no better reason, we should wash our cider apples. In a glass of cider set out in the sun it does not take long for the yeast plants to convert all the sugar to alcohol, because warmth hastens the work. In the barrel set in a cool cellar it takes longer, about six months. But you have no vinegar yet. You have nothing but "hard" cider which isn't fit for anything. But in the barrel along with the yeast plants are lots of other bacteria, to be seen under the microscope. Among them is a kind that causes alcohol to change to acetic acid. Did you ever pour off the vinegar from a jug and find a mass of jelly-like substance stopping the mouth of the jug? They called it "mother" didn't they? This mother contains great numbers of acetic acid makers and if placed in your barrels will hasten the changes that fit the hard cider for use on the table. The making of cider vinegar is almost all profit for there is very little outlay for materials and very little work is required. It does take some knowledge of what to do and when. A little study and experience makes success almost certain. A bulletin of the New York State Experiment Station at Geneva gives the following directions, somewhat abbreviated here, for making good cider vinegar at home: "Use sound ripe apples, picked before they have become dirty or crushed. Observe ordinary precautions to secure cleanliness in grinding and pressing, and use no water. Let the juice stand a few days to settle, then draw off the clear liquid into barrels that have been cleansed and treated with steam or boiling water. Do not fill more than three fourths full. Put a loose plug of cotton into the bung hole. If kept at a temperature of fifty to forty-five degrees Fahr. the alcoholic fermentation will be complete in about six months. This time can be shortened to three months by keeping a temperature of sixty-five to seventy degrees in the storage room and by adding one cake of Fleischmann's compressed yeast dissolved in a little water, to every five gallons of juice. When the cider stops 'working' you will know that the sugar has all been changed to alcohol. The clear liquid should now be drawn off, the barrels rinsed and filled again. To each barrel should now be added from two to four quarts of good vinegar containing some 'mother.' If kept at a temperature of sixty-five to seventy degrees Fahr. the vinegar may be ready for use in six months. If kept very cool it may be two years. When sour enough to be 'just right' the barrels should be filled as full as possible and tightly corked or the sourness may disappear." MAKING GRAPE JUICE Any girl with a little experience in canning fruit can make for home use and for sale a harmless and delectable beverage out of the surplus grapes. Every good grape year on the farm there comes the question of what to do with the grapes. A little jelly is made when the grapes are green but most people prefer currant jelly or blackberry or crab apple. Canned grapes are pronounced "no good" by all the family, and grape marmalade is full of "splinters of glass," though how they got there who can say? The housekeeping magazines give receipts for preserving grapes but cold storage alone gives good results and few farms have cold storage plants. Those grapes hang there by the bushel and try as you may you do not get them all eaten fresh. Grape juice is not wine. If you should try to make wine you would probably fail. But unfermented grape juice is easier to make than jelly and as it needs no sugar your investment is small. Grape juice has food value, as it contains more solid matter than milk, and is recommended as a drink for children and for invalids. In many European countries "grape cures" have long been popular. In the pure, unadulterated, unfermented juice of the grape we have a palatable, nourishing food and a refreshing drink in one. It is highly recommended as a preventive of some diseases, a cure for others, and as a restorative of general health. So much for the product. Now how is it made? It is possible to make grape juice from start to finish in the open air. If the grapes grow on an arbour what more delightful occupation can you imagine than spending a day or two converting the perfect fruit into nectar? Idling in a hammock may appeal to some, but a row of shining fruit jars worth seventy-five cents apiece looks better to an enterprising girl than a finished novel. You will need a table, a rocking chair, a large basket and scissors, granite pans and double boiler, an oil or gasolene stove, clean jelly bag and flannel filter, jars or bottles, corks, rubbers, etc. When the grapes are just right to eat out of hand they are right for grape juice. Green or over-ripe grapes are not worth working over. Discard all unsound fruit, wash, and crush. Put into a freshly washed bag of coarse, strong muslin, tie securely and twist and squeeze it until the juice is all out. Two people can work to advantage at this job. The juice should now be put into a stone jar set in a pan of water or heated in a double boiler. It is just at this point that most people make a mistake and destroy the fine flavour of the grape by boiling the juice. _It should never boil._ If you have a thermometer use it now. The object of heating this juice is to destroy the yeast spores and other organisms which have alighted on the grapes as they hung in the arbour and which are so small that they came right through the mesh of the muslin bag. A temperature of one hundred and eighty degrees to two hundred degrees Fahr. is high enough. Take the juice from the fire when the two hundred Fahr. is reached. A thermometer is not absolutely necessary. When the juice begins to steam it is getting close up to two hundred and twelve degrees Fahr., the boiling point, which you must avoid. Making prime quality unfermented grape juice requires two forenoons. If you want your jars to be clear from top to bottom instead of muddy with sediment you will set the juice away in an enamelled or glass vessel until morning, when you will see why this precaution is necessary. With greatest care dip the clear liquid off and filter it. A flannel bag made in the shape of a cone with a stiff wire or wooden ring at the top to hold it open, is the best filter. Several thicknesses of flannel or felt are better than one. All the tiny particles of sediment will be caught in the woollen meshes and the juice will be pure. The last traces of settlings, will be removed and the liquid will be clear. The colour and flavour will depend on the kind of grape used. Put the filtered juice into bottles or fruit jars that have been sterilized by boiling in water. Do not fill them quite full. Wiping is unnecessary. Fit a false bottom made of a thin board or slats into the bottom of the washboiler and set the jars of grape juice with rubbers and covers on but not screwed down in on this. Put water into the boiler till it comes up to the shoulders of the jars. Heat now until the water is on the point of boiling, but do not let it boil. Remove jars from the water and screw down the covers. If bottles are used, clean, sterilized corks must be put in, while the juice is still in the hot water. If the corks are very tight further sealing is not required, but wax or paraffine is put over them by cautious persons to make assurance doubly sure. Quart jars are probably most economical and will find a ready sale. Grape juice will ferment very soon after unsealing and should be used immediately. Even a small family will have no difficulty in consuming a quart if given the opportunity. Many delicious desserts can be made with this juice combined with sugar, eggs, gelatine, cream, lemons, and other fruits. MAKING LEAF MOULD Every year I see boys and girls raking leaves from the lawns and either piling them in the street or in the back yard and then burning them. Nobody likes an outdoor fire more than I do, whether it is a real camp fire, a little back yard faggot fire just enough to roast a few potatoes and onions and play gypsy, or a big blazing bonfire, almost dangerous and wholly splendid. What I don't like is a sickly, smouldering pile of leaves sending out a suffocating smudge, bursting with sudden flame at night and having to be put out after you had your slippers on and had begun a new book. Such a fire is a nuisance to you and to the neighbourhood and no satisfaction. Burning leaves is like burning money. That is quite another way of looking at it. "Why, most people have to pay out money to get their leaves taken away," you say. True, but that is because we are such a lot of wasters. We are just beginning to learn to be economical, because we must. To make a long story short, turn your leaves into money by composting them. For greenhouse work pure leaf mould is a necessity and the supply of the real article is never equal to the demand. Ask the florist in your town where he gets leaf mould and how much it costs him. Making leaf mould is simple. All you have to do is to rake the leaves into a pile where they can lie still and rot. To make a really neat job and lose none of your work or leaves make a frame of boards a foot high or so and as large as you think your leaves will require. Set this frame in some part of the yard where it will not look unsightly but as near the source of leaf supply as is permissible. If you have to carry the leaves by wheelbarrow you will see the force of this. Use a pony and cart for the job if you have them. A big box or barrel on a wheelbarrow is better than the wheelbarrow alone. Get a layer of leaves a foot deep, then tramp it. If water is handy, wetting them with a few pailfuls would make them pack well. Put on layer after layer of leaves if pure leaf mould is to be made. Lay boards over the top to hold the leaves down or the autumn winds will scatter them for you. Forking over a few times will hasten the process of decay. A very small quantity of leaf mould for home use can be made in a store box or barrel. This should not be water tight. Let the leaves be exposed to all the elements; the rain, the air, freezing and thawing, help on the process of decay. Leaves are a very valuable ingredient in the making of compost for the garden. I have from an expert gardener this receipt for his favourite "GARDEN FRUIT CAKE" Three parts selected leaves. Three parts cow manure. Two parts garden soil. One part kitchen refuse and weeds. One part pasture sod. Compost these in alternating layers for one, two, or three years under cover. The result is a rich, brown, moist compound which, added to common garden soil at suitable times, is warranted to raise flowers and vegetables fit for the queen's table. Now then, instead of burning your leaves, go out and gather all you can from the neighbour's yard as well as your own and make leaf mould. Combine the boys on the street into a "Leaf Mould Syndicate" and get the local florists interested in a home-made product. MAKING LAVENDER STICKS The weaving of lavender sticks has been described to me as "the harmless occupation of old-fashioned fingers." In these days when the revival of old-time industries is so often undertaken, it is well to learn from our aunts or our great-aunts some of the fancy work that employed their elegant leisure when they were girls. The lavender stick is such a sweet and dainty object that I hope for it a renewed popularity. It is one of the always acceptable gifts the Pacific coast can send to the Atlantic where it is so hard to make lavender grow. I might say here that there is good reason to advise the growing of lavender in the light limestone soil of some of our Southern states. Immense quantities are used in the manufacture of lavender water and perfumery, and although the dried flowers are retailed as a preventive for clothes moths, I have grave doubts about that. The best way to learn how to make lavender sticks is to have some dear old lady show you. Failing this you may try to follow these directions and the picture that goes with them. Late June is the best time, September the next best. The lavender must be in full flower. If too young the stems will cure limp. The finest odour passes with the going to seed. Cut the flower stalks in clear weather and before the heat of the day. [Illustration: A lavender stick] As some lavender sticks should be shorter and some longer to suit their various purposes, you should next sort the stalks into groups according to length. For a handkerchief box nine short ones would be right. To make a large "stick" for a linen closet shelf choose twenty-five of the longest, heaviest heads. Always have an odd number. Strip off the leaves, draw the stems down till the heads are all on a level, then tie them "gently but firmly, under their chins" with soft cotton yarn that will hold but not cut. Use plenty of string and leave very long ends. Build the thistle-like head into a shapely oval--but not with cotton, after the way of the Philistines. Plump it out with a little sheaf made of the heads that are too small to use, and add a few leaves to round it out. With those long string ends wind the head, now, and tie securely. The next step is one where skill and care are necessary. Each stem is to be bent directly backward at a sharp angle and it will be a wonder if you do not break every other one. Crease each stem over your thumb-nail before turning it back over the head. When all are safely reversed, double one end of a bolt of lavender ribbon over one stalk, close to the top and begin to weave. The simplest weaving is the most artistic, under one stalk and over the next, passing round and round till the head is covered. At this point it is best to fasten the end of the ribbon, wind the stems with common string and begin on another till you have brought all to the same stage. Lay them all away for a month to cure. You will find that the weaving will then have to be tightened about the head. Now wind the ribbon tightly round the handle and fasten it there. A tuft of loops at the end is a simple and old-timey finish. The less attempt at decoration the better. A lavender stick is a very acceptable gift for one who is fond of its perfume and can detect the aroma of homely sentiment that mingles with its sweetness. DRYING CORN In my girlhood the surplus sweet corn was not left to dry on the stalks. It does not make very good fodder. The best ears were marked and left to ripen for seed, but the surplus green corn was dried. The boys would bring in a bushel or so of ears in the husk. We prepared these as carefully as if for immediate use on the table. Every silk was removed. The ears were then put into boiling water a few at a time and left only five or six minutes, just long enough to "set" the milk. As soon as the corn had cooled sufficiently we began to cut it off, with thin, sharp knives. With the butt of the ear resting on the flattest big platter, one sliced from top to bottom. We had orders not to cut deep the first time--just to take off the tops of the grains. The next cut was thin, too, and came off in a slice which fell apart. We cut three slices, at least, before we came to the cob. By this means we obtained a final product far superior to that of the neighbours who made one cut suffice. When a platter was full, the corn was spread evenly and put out in the sun, on a long table and covered with netting to keep off flies. When partially dry we transferred it to a large cloth and continued the drying until every vestige of moisture was gone from it. It was then put into a loose muslin bag and hung up near the ceiling where mice and dampness could not get at it. I have eaten evaporated corn, and find it a poor substitute for the sun-dried article. To prepare dried corn for the table wash well, soak over night, and then steam slowly on the back of the kitchen stove from morning till late afternoon, with salt to taste. By this time most of the water will have been absorbed or evaporated. The corn will be soft and all its native sweetness will be right there. Add a generous libation of cream, a lump of butter, a whisk of pepper, and you have a delectable dish. MAKING A TENNIS COURT The largest item in all the estimates for making a tennis court is for labour. If a boys' club can supply this they can have a court without expense except for the wire netting and the necessary posts. A standard double court is seventy-eight feet by thirty-six. Choose a well-drained piece of ground; the more nearly level the better. Locate the courts with reference to the time of day when they will be most used and the direction of the sun's beams at that hour. The first job is to get rid of the grass and weeds, root and branch. If a plough is used do not begin the levelling until every root is gone. Turning grass under is bad practice. Some kinds of grass can grow no matter which end is up. Next with rakes make the surface fairly level. _Level_ is one of those adjectives that can not be compared. If a court is level it can't be any leveller, and to be right it must be done with a straight edge and a spirit level. If there is one boy in whom you all have confidence, it is a good plan to elect him boss of the job and follow his instructions. "Team work" is the right thing in this kind of a job, just as in games. When the court is level it must be rolled and rolled and rolled again, with the heaviest roller you can get. A surface of ordinary dirt does not wear well. Some people prefer to spread on a layer of ashes, next three inches of sand, soil, and clay mixed. Roll each layer thoroughly. For a top finish a very fine gravel is used on some courts, sand is used on others. You will probably use that which is most available. Clay is hard to work with, but when overlaid with fine sand makes a hard court on which the swiftest experts can play with enjoyment. The care of the court should be taken week about, two boys working together. The roller should be used often, especially after a rain, and worn spots mended immediately before they get bigger. Most clubs count in an expensive marker when estimating the cost of tennis. An ingenious boy can make one for nothing. A square varnish tin or olive oil can holding a gallon or more can easily be held by a framework upon a wheelbarrow or wheel hoe in such a way that the drip from two nail holes will fall upon the broad rim of the wheel. Fold a piece of paper into funnel shape, fill the can with thin whitewash and paint mixed and you are as well equipped as if you had spent five dollars for a marker. If conditions favour a grass court the sod should be taken off and the ground beneath spaded, raked, and made level. Then the sod should be matched and laid accurately, then rolled, sprinkled, and rolled again; for three days at least the rolling and sprinkling should be repeated. SHOVELLING SNOW The boys of our neighbourhood made an abundance of pocket-money in the winter time by combining into a "Snow Shovellers Union." Most of the men on our street take early trains and have very little time, and even less inclination to shovel snow. The boys are out early before the snow gets packed on the sidewalks. They work by the job or by the hour, whichever the employer prefers. At first the boys expected the employers to furnish the tools. But that didn't work very well. To make work a pleasure one must have his tools right and an expert snow shoveller does not want to use a dilapidated spade on one job, a short-handled shovel here, and a long-handled one there. He wants snow shovelling tools and after a little experience he knows what he wants. The tools can be made by the boys. Our boys made a most efficient plough for walks, out of cheap store boxes, and a scraper for steps that fit every corner accurately so that one scrape did the trick and no false motions to waste time and strength. For informal paths to chicken house, garden, etc., a shovel made of light barrel staves sawed in halves was found to be better than an expensive iron-bound shovel from the department store. If there is a lame boy on your street take him into the Union too; although he can't keep up with you at the shovel, he can have a book, keep track of the time each boy can work, call at patrons' doors to arrange about their work, and these things are just as important as the actual shovelling. MOWING LAWNS In summer the Snow Shovellers Union can reform into the "Lawn Mowers and Irrigators, Limited." Every year I used to send my lawn mower to a "tinker" who charged me one dollar and twenty-five cents for _sharpening_ it. I learned one day and it made me sad, that a lawn mower properly cared for keeps itself sharp. Any boy who is strong enough to run a lawn mower ought to be smart enough to take care of one. He needs to know how the machine is put together, what parts do the work and where the wear comes on the parts. The directions which come with a good machine are worth reading. The man who sells the mower may not be able to explain any part you don't understand. His business may be to sell, only. If you go into the hardware store and find the man who knows all about lawn mowers, he will be only too glad to show you how to run the machine so that it will do its work and last. It is to his interest to have you recommend his machine. Make yourself familiar with a machine in perfect working order. Your ears and your eyes ought to tell you when it is going wrong. It is, above all, of greatest importance to know how to adjust a lawn mower. A wrench, a screw-driver, and an oil can should be your constant companions. Go over the machine before you begin and put it in shape. It is ten minutes well spent. Tighten screws, oil the parts that rub, adjust the knife to the kind and condition of the grass. When the job is done, look the mower over. If a screw is lost be sure to supply a new one before the next using; clean the machine and put it away in a dry place. UTILIZING WOOD ASHES Boys who have as part of their daily work the cleaning out of ashes would do well to stop and consider before they dump their pails. Coal ashes are as nearly worthless as anything I know of although they can be used in making a tennis court, and are even advised by some for a very stiff garden soil. A garden must be pretty bad off to be improved by coal ashes. But there are thousands of cords of wood burned every year and wood ashes are very valuable. There is no fertilizer equal to them for certain purposes. Not only are they valuable at home, but they are an article of commerce, and have a market value. Who has a better right to the ashes than the boy who manages the ash pan? Barrels are the most convenient receptacles to store ashes in. Cheap boxes come next. They should be tight and kept under cover. Leaching takes the value out of wood ashes. PLANTING CROCUSES ON THE LAWN Did you ever see crocuses, yellow, lavender, and white, scattered informally in the lawn, coming into blossom with the earliest springing grass. One fall we tried the experiment of poking a crocus bulb down in the hole where we took out a dandelion and the result was charming. There are philosophers who profess to a liking for dandelions in the lawn. Perhaps it is Hobson's choice with them, as with many, but although the dandelion flower is bright as gold the leaves are a real nuisance. They are coarse and rank and they resist the lawn-mower, and discourage the fine grasses. Except when in blossom they are a disfiguring feature. Crocuses are certainly more delicate in flower than dandelions and their leaves are more like grass. Moreover they die down early and are out of the way of the lawn mower. So instead of just digging out a dandelion or a thistle and leaving a bare hole, I recommend that you poke in a crocus bulb next fall. Your reward will come in gold and purple. MAKING ICE Lots of us get along without ice in winter because we cannot afford to buy it all the year round. We put things outside and they freeze, we keep them in the kitchen and they spoil. The butter is either too hard or too soft all the time. Boys and girls like ice-cream the year round and yet many of us do without it in the winter time because the iceman does not come around. Sometimes you may have thought when you broke the ice in the watering trough that there was nearly enough to make a freezer of ice-cream. Did it not occur to you that you could make home-made ice, supply the refrigerator in coldest weather, and make ice-cream whenever you want it? All you need is the cold weather and a heavy tin pail. Fill the pail with clean water some clear, cold night and stand it where it will get the greatest exposure. If the mercury is a little below zero it will freeze a coat of ice two or more inches thick on top and sides of the pail. Turn the pail upside down on a bench and turn enough hot water over it to loosen the pail; then take it off. The ice on the bottom will be thin. Break this and dip out all of the water, but about two inches. This will freeze very quickly in cold weather and you can put in more. Keep filling it up until your ice pail is solid. It is then ready for the refrigerator. From making one block of ice in a heavy tin pail it is an easy step to making a winter supply to store in sawdust where the sun cannot melt it during a thaw and where you can get at it when needed. From this the logical conclusion is that a man and his boys could make a supply of ice for both summer and winter by following the same tactics. How well I remember the hardships of the ice harvesters of my home neighbourhood. The ice had to be cut in the river three miles away, and hauled up a bad hill. If the roads were good the ice was bad as a rule. Good sleighing meant ice covered with snow. There was always anxiety for fear we should not get a supply, and often the houses were filled with thin cakes, for fear the cold weather was over for the year. Then the hauling and the cutting in the bitter weather was bad for men and teams. The ice was river ice and we knew it was unsafe. A writer in _Country Life_ describes how he made his supply of home-made ice. He first had a tinner make heavy tin boxes of a size convenient to handle. He had them made an inch smaller at the bottom than at the top and the top was bound over a heavy wire. When the cold weather came the clean pans were filled from the well. The cakes were turned out of the pans next day and dipped and filled just as described above, as solid cakes formed. These were packed in the ice house for the summer's supply as fast as made. The cost was less in time and cash, than putting up "wild ice," even including the cost of pans, which can, of course, be used over and over, year after year. CUTTING SEED POTATOES [Illustration: For cutting seed potatoes] Cutting seed potatoes is a job that most boys and girls dislike and no wonder. It takes so long, is so dirty, your thumb gets so scored and even cut seriously. But most fathers want the potatoes cut before planting and who is to do it but the boys and girls? Two ingenious boys invented a contraption which decreased the time and labour to a minimum and almost made the job a pleasure. This description of their potato cutter is adapted from _Farming_ for April, nineteen hundred and seven. A dry goods box holding several bushels was fitted with four strong legs, just long enough to lift the box to a height convenient to sit by. At the bottom of one side of the box a board was removed to let the potatoes roll out on a shelf attached beneath the opening. The shelf should have a rim two or three inches high and there should be a crack where shelf and box come together to let the dust sift down. The knife is driven into the end of a short piece of plank and held with fence staples. The boy sits on the plank. The potato is pushed forward against the sharp blade and the pieces drop into the basket. A man can cut forty bushels of potatoes in a day with this outfit. The work ought to be done out under a tree, and if the boys want to wear gloves to keep their hands clean and smooth for more delicate work, I should encourage them to do so. PRUNING [Illustration: Rosebush before pruning] When I see a lot of ignorant labourers put onto the job of pruning trees, my blood fairly boils. Their work, unless overseen by an expert, is pure butchery. Many a noble tree has been so mangled by saw and axe that it has become an easy prey to all sorts of diseases. [Illustration: Rosebush after pruning] Pruning is work that requires intelligence. In orchard and door yard any one with the strength to wield a saw or shears can do the annual pruning. A woman can do it as I can testify, except occasionally where large limbs are to be handled. Such occasions seldom arise on a well-cared-for place. It is impossible to treat the whole subject of pruning in one short chapter, but there is nothing difficult to understand about the principles or practice. In ten minutes an expert grape pruner could show a pupil how to prune a grape-vine so as to produce the best and largest crop. Each kind of shrub whether for fruit or flowers requires its special treatment. It takes experience to acquire judgment but the principles are easy to learn and to practise. You should go to a book on pruning to learn just how to prune the various kinds of shrubs, vines, and trees. [Illustration: The right way. The wound is healing] [Illustration: The wrong way. The stub prevents healing] But if there is a limb to be cut off a tree in the door yard who is likely to be delegated to the job? Every boy ought to know how to do this right. You may be acquainted with the boy who sat on the limb and sawed between the tree and himself, but you will certainly not share his fate. When you use the pruning shears on the branches and twigs of a tree or shrub you are, so to speak, cutting its fingernails or hair: but when you go up with a saw you are performing a far more serious operation. Do not forget that the life processes of the tree, the circulation of the blood, the assimilation of the food, the respiration, all go on right under the bark. The "heart" of the tree is a misnomer. That fresh moist layer which is uncovered by the skinning of a tree is the only part of the tree which is really actively alive and at work. This layer, called the cambium, extends like a tight-fitting garment over the entire tree. Every tiny twig and spur is overlaid with it. If you ever had an "infected" finger from a scratch or pin prick or cut you have some idea of the danger the tree is exposed to when the cambium layer is laid bare and the wound neglected. Compare the two drawings on this page. Look at the trees in your yard. Are there some like No. 1 and others like No. 2? In No. 1 the pruner cut a branch off close up to the main trunk. The wound was dressed with thick paint to close the pores. All around the edge of the wound was the cut edge of the cambium layer. A roll of new tissue formed there, covering a part of the wound the first year. In a year or two more the roll became broad enough to close over the smooth base where the severed limb was. The wound is healed. But look at the long stubs of No. 2. That was the work of a "tree butcher." Already the stub has begun to rot and the injury has gone far into the tree, past cure. You have seen a fine board ruined by a knot hole? That knot hole was made by careless pruning. Have you seen beautiful "curly" places in fine woodwork? Those curls or "eyes" are made by the healing over of places where limbs came off. As the cambium adds layer after layer over it, the base of the old limb becomes more and more deeply buried in the wood. Learn the principles of pruning: cut off the branch, no matter how small, close to the trunk or larger branch from which it grew; cover the wound with a dressing to prevent decay. Trees, shrubs, vines, and bushes should be pruned every year. Cut out all dead wood, and then prune to shape the tree or shrub as you want it or to produce the greatest quantity of fruit, blossoms or branches. CLEANING RUGS The sanitary home has never a carpet these days, but rugs on bare floors. These rugs, if small enough to handle every week, make the semi-annual old bugbear of house-cleaning a thing of the past. What could be more dreary than to come home from school some afternoon and find the floors littered with flattened old straw, so gray with dust as to be scarcely recognizable? Getting that straw out was the boys' work, the girls did the sweeping and mother washed the floor. How cheerless the days that followed! How damp the floors, how extra careful we had to be not to carry in dirt on our way to bed! The whole house wore a dejected expression reflected by the family. All because of those miserable carpets. They had to be beaten, too, and the clouds of dust that had to be breathed before we heard the welcome call, "That's enough now. Don't whip that carpet all to pieces. Fold it up and bring it in." As we folded it we realized how far from clean it really was and how we longed to _turn the hose on it_. But no one had the courage to suggest such an unorthodox proceeding. Probably the colour would all run and the carpet would shrink and everything. But anyhow we wished it was really clean, now that so much discomfort had been endured to clean it. Rugs on bare floors are preferable. They can be swept and beaten every week and they can be washed. No rug should be hung on a line to be beaten. It is bad for the rug and a waste of energy. A rug-beating rack can be made which will save the wear on the rugs and get them more nearly clean than any other dry method I know of. It is described, by Mr. W. C. Egan, who devised it, as follows: [Illustration: Rug-beating frame up against the barn] Make a frame of four by four pine timbers, braced across the corners. It should be somewhat bigger than the biggest rug you expect to beat. Stretch galvanized iron fencing over this frame and staple it securely all round. The best place for this frame is at the side of the barn. Strong strap hinges should be used to attach it to a piece of four by four spiked to the barn at a height convenient for your beating. When the frame is not in use it is pushed up and rests against the side of the barn, held in place by hooks. A rope and two pulleys enable one to raise and lower the frame easily. When down, the frame rests on swinging legs made of inch iron pipe and attached to the frame at the outer corners. The rug should be laid on the netting pile downward. Rug-beating is hard work no matter what kind of tools one has. But who does not love to ply the hose? I made up my mind once that a rug that had to have an expensive compressed air bath or stay dirty was not living up to its function as a sanitary floor covering. I experimented with an all-wool rug, some good white soap, warm rain water, and a scrubbing brush. A good lather was laid first on the back, then I threw discretion to the winds and lathered the face of the thing. I scrubbed it as if my life depended upon making the colours run, if they would. Then I let the children turn the hose on it. We turned it over and over and over again, till it was very, very wet. It was also clean. We left it on the grass in the shade the first day. Then we laid it still damp, face down, on the clean, dry floor of the porch where the sun could get at it and the breeze. It was dry by the night of the second day and so clean that it was a real joy to handle it. One by one we put every rug in the house through the same course of treatment. A couple of Wiltons, a few of Brussels carpeting, some that were woven out of old ingrain carpets, the rag ones, and finally the precious Orientals went through the water cure. Before I dared do this last act, I got advice from a rug man, who said that really good rugs would suffer no harm from such treatment. But one never believes until he tries it, and now we all believe, and our rugs are more beautiful than before. We treated the best rugs very gently, of course, but none the less thoroughly, and we dried them face up on the hard floor right in the sun part of the time. It takes about three days and nights to get the dampness all out. [Illustration: Rug-beating frame, down in use] Good rugs ought never to be treated roughly. They should be swept gently _with the nap_, and never beaten with a whip, hung on the line, or shaken. Lay on a soft carpet of grass or on a rug-beating frame and beat gently with a flat rattan beater. When rolled, roll with the nap; never fold them. XI MAKING THE COUNTRY A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE IN I once asked Professor Bailey, "What is the most important farm crop raised in the United States?" Without a moment's hesitation he answered, "Boys and girls." Of course they are. The best farmers, the real bone and sinew of the country, are the kind that raise the crops themselves, without much help from the outside. They grow nearly every thing they eat, and exchange their surplus for the food and clothing that they can't raise. There is a type of farm life where the family is brought up on the principle that what is too poor to sell is good enough to eat. The boys and girls of such a family are too good for such a life. They do not stay in the country. Like the big apples, the prize potatoes, and the gilt-edge butter, though raised on the farm, they are consumed in the city. The country is the best place in the world for boys and girls to grow up in, just because it is the country. But there are ways in which country life can be improved and if the grown folks are too busy raising crops, the young folks must head the campaign which is to make the country a better place to live in. Since this is a book on outdoor work we cannot consider ways of making the life indoors more attractive, more comfortable, more convenient, and more sanitary, but concern ourselves with outdoor problems only. Boys and girls, stop and think. What can you do to make your own particular corner of the country a better place for you and your companions to live in? When a crowd of boys meet together, what do they talk about? Are they interested in local affairs or do they tell each other of the great things they expect to do when they get away? A wise old man once said, "In a republic you ought to begin to train a child for good citizenship on the day of its birth." Are you going to be a good citizen? Are you patriotic? Do you salute the flag at school, and then go out and break the game laws? Train now for citizenship. There is more patriotism in obeying the laws of your home, your school, your town, and your state than there is in parading with flags and band in the National Guards. Good citizenship begins at home. How can you make your own home a more desirable place for your brothers and sisters to live in? Take a look at the house. Is it plain and unadorned and uncomfortable? Are the surroundings bare and ugly? Have you had experience in building, painting, and planting? If you can help build a corn crib, you can make a porch over the front door or a sidewalk connecting the back door with the pump or the milk house. If you can help paint the barn, why not the house? If you can plant trees in the orchard, why not shrubs in the door yard, and vines over the porch? Don't think you must have expensive pillars and fancy railings. They will not look as well as rustic work or pillars of home-made cement. The vines will soon cover the porch with their greenery if given half a chance. OUTDOOR CLUBS Have you a boys' club in your neighbourhood? Or a girls' club? You used to have a literary society in school, and it failed? Why was that? The boys didn't take any interest in it. Why not have a club that the boys will take an interest in and a club that the girls will take an interest in? What kinds of clubs do boys like? Athletic clubs where they wrestle, box, turn handsprings, have jumping, skating, walking, and running matches, and play such games of skill and endurance as hare and hounds, pitching horseshoes, and baseball. They like all sorts of clubs that get real things done, like raising prize corn or cotton or pigs or training colts or steers or dogs. Boys and girls like to compete for prizes. How boys or girls will work to do something so much better than any other boy or girl in the crowd that the judges will award the prize to them. It is hard in contests like these to be able to walk up like a true sportsman and congratulate the winner. But a boy can learn to do it; so can a girl. All over the United States boys are banding together to raise better corn, better cotton, better chickens, better fruit. North, west, east, and south, thousands of boys are raising corn. They test their seed, prepare the soil, plant, cultivate, and harvest the crop, weigh it, take it to the exhibition where they compare it with other boys' crops, and see for themselves who has the best yield. One boy, a member of the Winnebago County Farmer Boys' Experiment Club took first prize of fifteen dollars in gold for the best ten ears of corn. This club has about eleven hundred members. There is a Winnebago County Girls' Home Culture Club with an equally large membership. These boys and girls are growing up to be good citizens right there in the country, where they were born. They don't have to go to the city to find education or good manners or a good time. The fathers and mothers, the school teachers, the ministers, and the county superintendent of schools all work together in Winnebago County, Ill., and they can everywhere. [Illustration: Photograph by Helen W. Cooke. Is This Work or Play?] The boys in your home school can form a Boys' Agricultural Club now. The first thing you need is information about other clubs. Your club will not be just like the others. It ought not to be. But if you know how the others are managed it will help you to manage yours. Send to the Secretary of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., and ask for Farmers' Bulletin No. 385 on Boys' and Girls' Agricultural Clubs. On page fifteen of this bulletin are suggestions as to an invitation to be sent out for the first meeting. If your teacher is willing you can hold the first meeting some Friday afternoon in the early spring at the school-house. If the teacher is not yet interested hold the meeting at some home in the neighbourhood. If you are acquainted with the county superintendent or the school commissioner, tell him about the club you want to start, and maybe he will arrange for the first meeting and get all the boys and girls in the county organized. You could have a local chapter of the club, with local exhibits and local prizes; then you could have a space at the county fair, and members of different clubs all over the county could compete for first prize. The bulletin gives suggestions for a constitution, enrollment of members, and a scheme for cards on which to keep a record of the crop you are going to grow. There are rules, too, that each person who competes for prizes must observe. A good many boys' clubs start in with growing a crop of corn, and girls' clubs with bread-making. They need not do these same things every year, although one can learn something new about growing corn, raising chickens, or making bread every year. The country would be a better place to live in, if there were more boys' and girls' clubs. ATTRACTING BIRDS The country would be a better place to live in if there were more song birds there. I know of a shrewd firm of real estate men, who wished to attract a certain class of residents to their suburban section, knowing that others would follow and property become more valuable. They laid out the woodsy tract with as little change from the natural conditions as they could, and still have a sanitary, convenient, and comfortable suburb. They did not chop down the trees in order to run straight roads through, nor did they fill in the small gully that wanted to be a brook. They encouraged the brook and ran their roadways so as to avoid the big trees and give each building site a character of its own and privacy. Then they put a man in charge with strict orders to make the place attractive to song birds; to protect and feed them; to destroy their enemies. He was also to foster and encourage such wild flowers and ferns as grew naturally in the woods, and to propagate and increase them so as to make the place a paradise. The man entered into the spirit of their idea and succeeded wonderfully. The real estate men advertised and the right people came and were convinced and bought homes there and "lived happy ever after." BRINGING BACK THE SONG BIRDS How can boys and girls bring back our song birds? I will not say much about why we want them, for in enlightened America we take it for granted. Some people still want to be convinced that birds are of practical value. I will say only that the damage to crops by insects in nineteen hundred and four, is estimated at nine hundred and seventy-five million dollars. Investigations by scientists in state and nation all go to prove that a vast percentage of this loss could have been saved by birds. I wish every child would be ambitious to increase the bird life on every farm, on every village block. Here are some facts that ought to be convincing. I take them at random from my notes: Kingbirds kill bot-flies. Brown thrashers feed mostly on insects, especially white grubs and curculios. Cat-birds, cuckoos and orioles are very important enemies of gypsy moth. The red-eyed vireos are "premium caterpillar hunters." Bluebirds board themselves. Eat cut-worms, furry caterpillars, and grasshoppers. Wrens' food is ninety-eight per cent. animal matter. Warblers, titmice, creepers, and nut hatches eat lice. A pair of robins fed their nestlings this menu in three hours, bringing food every three minutes: sixty-one earth-worms, sixteen yellow grubs, thirty-eight other insects. Also four grasshoppers, several dragon flies, and a few moths. Robins rank first as enemies of white grub. Kingbirds protect poultry by driving away hawks; ninety-eight per cent. of their food is insects, mostly injurious sorts. Woodpeckers destroy grubs in living trees. Phoebes catch flies, lighting on backs of cattle so as to be handy; also elm-leaf beetle, adults of canker-worms, cut-worms and gypsy. Baltimore orioles are worth their weight in gold as destroyers of gypsy and brown-tail moths. Rose-breasted grosbeaks cleaned out potato beetles. Scarlet tanagers ate gypsy moths at the rate of thirty-eight per minute for eighteen consecutive minutes. Thirty cedar waxwings will destroy ninety thousand canker-worms in a month. So we can pile up the evidence in favour of the birds. HOW TO ATTRACT BIRDS Two words tell us what to do to increase bird life: provide and protect. We must provide food, water, and nesting places. We must protect from disturbance, from natural enemies, from destruction by hunters who sell the feathers. [Illustration: A birds' table hung with wires] All over the country, laws to protect birds are being introduced into legislatures. Boys and girls may think that they cannot do much to help make laws. They can if their fathers are in the legislature as lots of fathers are, take the country over. Maybe your father does not know how much birds are worth. Get him to read the bulletins issued by the government. The boys who protect the birds around home will be the law makers some fine day themselves. They'll "see to it," then. But now what can you do to-day? Is it winter? Feed the birds. There are many winter bird residents. Where are the insects in winter? Have they gone south? Not a bit of it. They lurk under the bark on your apple trees. They hide on the fence rails and under the leaves. Trust the birds to find them unless snow prevents. The extra feeding you give them will not toll them away from the insect food they love, but will keep them "on the job" and will keep them from starving in stormy weather. Water, too, they often suffer for in winter. Supply it in shallow basins and slightly warmed. Tie suet to the trees; sacks made of loose netting will hold nut meats for them. Scatter grain for the grain eaters on a platform. In spring furnish nesting places and material, protection from cats and distressing disturbances; mud for robins, string for orioles, floss, feathers, and straw for others. Do something every day for your birds. Drinking fountains are a necessity, especially in towns where there is no running water. Shallow basins are best. They will often come right to the door and drink or bathe, unless frightened by some real or fancied danger. To make the birds tame you must make them feel safe, and supply their wants. THE TRAFFIC IN BIRD SKINS Not many girls wear birds' feathers in their hats. But many women do, and girls get to be women very soon. No one knows how many birds are slaughtered in America each year for hat trimmings. A few facts are available such as: seventy thousand skins were sent in four months from a small district on Long Island; one New York house contracts to furnish to Paris forty thousand skins in one season; four hundred thousand bird skins from America sold in one London auction room in three months. These numbers fairly stagger the reader. I don't know one American girl who would kill a bird. If every one of them would refuse ever to wear any bird feathers there would be a great falling off in this traffic. Collecting birds' eggs and nests is still quite common, and should be discouraged. The present state of the bird population does not warrant the destruction of any except for the big museums. Their collectors are trained experts who collect only such birds as are needed for scientific purposes. They go at the right season to do the least damage, and they do not slaughter by wholesale. Besides cats, which can be regulated to a certain extent in our homes, birds have other enemies. Crows, though valuable insect eaters, are bad nest robbers and have been caught in the act of killing nestlings and even small adult birds. Snakes eat both eggs and young. Guards for cats will keep out squirrels which molest the birds' nests. Ground nesting birds may be protected with wire netting. Where this has been tried, in no case did it cause birds to desert the nests. Birds need thickets, hedge-rows and shrubbery for nesting places, hiding places, and shelter from storms. Every farmer who kills the birds on his place justifies the destruction by the evidence that they eat fruit. True, some of them do. But if water is provided many of them prefer it to fruit juice. To preserve our strawberries and cherries, we should plant June berry and Russian mulberry, which the birds like better. Chokeberry, buckthorn, elder berry, and mulberry will attract birds away from blackberry and raspberry patches. Wild cherry will protect the grapes, as both ripen late. DOMESTICATING WILD GAME The country would be a more attractive place to live in if there were more wild game. Thirty years ago, when I was a little girl in the middle West, my brothers used to shoot "prairie chickens" (grouse), quail (bob-white), wild geese, brant, wild ducks, and even bigger birds. But now the guns are all rusty, and the powder flask is empty. I came across the old wad-cutter in the attic and hardly recognized it. Efforts are being made in several states to rear wild fowl in the barn yard. Bob-white, grouse, mallard, wood ducks, and Canada geese are being experimented upon. A measure of success has already been achieved, but more experience is necessary especially with regard to the feeding of the young birds. [Illustration: A wood duck will nest in a box like this] Probably the wild fowl for young hunters to experiment with is wood duck or mallard. A man whose ten years' experience with raising wild fowl has earned him the title of expert, writes as follows: "I think it would be a most useful work to educate our young people up to the fact that with a little patience and a small outlay they can help to increase our supply of wild birds. For raising wood ducks, all one needs is a small pond or even an artificial tank surrounded by a few bushes enclosed by a wire fence. In one corner, place a box on a post three feet high with a cleated boardwalk leading up to a platform from which they can reach the entrance, which should be a round hole. Turn a pair of wood ducks into the enclosure the first of March, and with luck your duck will build her nest, and lay from eight to twelve eggs. In about four weeks the eggs will hatch and the troubles commence." He goes on to say that some kinds of wild geese are comparatively easy to raise and that they do not require much of a pond, but ample grazing facilities, like their domestic relatives. Mallards, also, are very easy to raise. As wild fowl bred in captivity bring a very good price and the demand is increasing with the spreading interest in the subject, raising wild fowl might be a source of income to an enterprising young man or woman. All spring shooting of wild fowls ought to stop. Don't say, "If I don't shoot them, somebody else will." That is not the attitude of a good sportsman. Public opinion among boys can only be established by boys. If you don't believe in hunting in spring, when the ducks are laying or brooding the young, you can not only stop doing it, but you can influence others. Will you do this? To kill one mother duck this year means eight or ten less next year. It is a plain example in arithmetic to see what a big blunder you make if you shoot in spring. A GAME PRESERVE If you live on a big farm or ranch well wooded and watered, your conditions are ideal for creating a private game preserve. If a few wild birds are known to be already at home on your place, encourage them. Let them breed in security and plant their favourite food crops. Small areas of land in various out of the way places can be ploughed and planted in spring to buckwheat and millet, wheat, rye, and barley. The bob-white has become so rare that you will probably have to plant some seed birds, as they say. They can be bought for five to ten dollars a dozen. Care should be taken that the birds are not frightened when liberated. To spend ten dollars for birds, only to lose them by carelessness, is poor business. These suggestions are given by an experienced game warden: "Take the boxed birds out near some good, thick shelter where they can hide and gain confidence. Attach a long rope to a soap box, scatter grain about near the end of the box nearest the cover, and scatter sheaf grain along toward the cover. Take only three cocks and three hens from the shipping box and put them in the liberating box. Go some distance off and be deliberate. Let the quail get rested and quiet. Pull the long rope, lifting the box gently and steadily. The birds will see the grain and hop out. Watch them from your safe distance following the wheat toward the cover. Keep up the supply of wheat until they are accustomed to their new home, and can find their way back after roaming. Birds should not be planted later than May first." PROTECTING THE WILD FLOWERS The country would be a better place to live in the whole or part of the year or to visit for a day or a week or a month if there were more wild flowers there. Even the man who doesn't know one flower from another will acknowledge, if asked, that wild flowers make the woods and the roadsides and the meadows prettier to look at. The country over, our loveliest wild flowers have met the same fate as the bright-feathered birds. They have been hunted for their blossoms and the gatherers have not cared whether they pulled the plants up by the roots or not. The case of trailing arbutus is a particularly sad one. In localities where it used to flourish, selfish and wanton hands have literally rooted it out until none remains. Only lately has any effort been made to protect the wild flowers and multiply them. Now, in the general awakening of the public to the fact that we are blundering and wasteful, a widespread interest has grown up in saving the wild flowers. In your own locality you can help this good work. Refrain from destroying the plants yourself. When you gather flowers in woods or meadow do so in moderation. A few loose, graceful sprays will give you as much pleasure as a huge bunch inartistically crowded into a vase. Have you not often seen children returning from a walk in the woods bearing handfuls of columbine? These frail blooms wilt in the hot sun, and the roadway is often strewn with forlorn bunches of them, dropped by tired children. How much better that each child should gather a few and put them all in a botanical case or wet paper to be distributed when they reach home. Those hundreds on the dusty road will never be visited by the ruby-throated humming-bird, nor set any seed for next year's flowers. Older boys and girls can do much to influence the younger ones to gather sparingly. Another way to increase the wild flowers in your locality is to propagate them. Gather their seeds and plant them in your garden where you can protect the young seedlings from harm. Where they are big enough, set them out where they will have natural conditions. Or undertake a bit of wild gardening right in the woods or the roadside where the plants grow naturally. Clear out less desirable sorts, lessening the struggle for your favourites. Cultivate them a little. See that they do not suffer from too much sun or rain or drought. If you know of a plot of woodland soon to be denuded or a piece of wild land to be improved, get permission to gather bulbs, roots, and plants there. If you know the flowers the year 'round, you will be able to recognize the lilies, the orchids, the blood roots, the wild ginger, hepatica, violets, and can transplant them to your own woods or garden. PREVENTING FOREST FIRES It is October now, and this morning's paper had accounts of terrible forest fires raging in Minnesota. Hundreds dead, thousands homeless, and millions of dollars' worth of property wiped out. Nobody knows, who has not fought fire, what a fiend the foresters have to deal with. I have looked up many forest fire statistics and I find always noted among the "sources of fires," this item: _Forest Fires Set By Children_. There may not be much that boys and girls can _do_ to put in practice the big things we hear talked about under the name of conservation, but one thing you can certainly refrain from doing, and that is, setting a forest fire. A person who makes a fire in the woods is responsible to the community for that fire and its consequences. To boil a coffee pail, to broil bacon, to bake biscuits, to fry fish, to give comfort to the hunter, trapper, camper, or picnicker, many are the legitimate uses of a fire in the woods. No real sportsman forgets his fire. His last act before leaving a camp is to see that no vestige of it remains. He makes sure every spark is dead, then throws on another pail of water, and goes on with a light heart and a clear conscience. If you have ever left a fire in the woods, anywhere, your conscience ought to give you a good jab when you read of forest fires, though distant, a jab that will prevent your repeating the offence. KILLING WEEDS Weeding is the boy's job, isn't it? If only one could get some kind of inspiration into weeding, so as to rob the work of its drudgery! If we must serve our time at weeding, let us at least weed intelligently. What is a weed anyhow? In Germany, I am told, the peasants call weeds "_Unkraut_". Since "_Kraut_" is cabbage, "_Unkraut_" must be weeds. A weed is really a plant growing where we don't want it. The worst weed in a hill of four corn stalks is the fourth stalk of corn that crowds the others. The worst weeds in a row of beets are the little beet plants that crowd each other. What a plague they are! Some of the plants we usually include among our "coarse native weeds" are grown in gardens in Europe. Mullein, for example, over there is called "the American velvet plant" and a well-grown specimen is really handsome. If weeds are plants out of place there is much to be done by boys and girls in the way of ridding gardens, lawns, school grounds, and village streets of their overgrowth of weeds. If you clear out one thing put in something better or nature may put in some plant that will not please you. Save seeds from your own garden and drop them along the roadside. The school grounds are the particular province of the school boys and girls. Join together to make the grounds more beautiful and there is no end to the improvements that will follow. A lecturer once visited the school in a small village in the state of New York. On his way from the village to the school-house he was impressed with two things: first, the wonderful size and vigour of the burdocks that seemed to have possession of even the front yards on the business streets; and, second, the quantity of rubbish accumulated on the margin of the pretty little stream which wandered under the bridges of the town. Do boys and girls know what public spirit is? Do you know how your little village strikes a stranger? The lecturer was so struck by the sad state of the town that he made up his mind to talk to the school about it. He did. He found that public spirit was not dead there; it was only dormant. The boys and girls had passed by the burdocks so often during their growth that they had taken them for granted. They had so often thrown papers, broken dishes, worn-out baskets, barrels, and rubbish over the bridges that they forgot to notice how it looked. What else is an old creek like that good for anyhow? Can't go swimmin' in it. Before the man finished his sociable little talk with the boys and girls he had organized the younger ones into brigades of twenty to make war on the burdocks. With the help of teachers and boys he mapped out the town and assigned given localities to certain groups. Each group had a captain with orders. The lecturer had a burdock plant brought in, a tremendous one, root and all, from the school yard. He showed the boys and girls how well adapted this weed is to make a living, how by means of burs it steals rides, travelling from place to place, dropping a few seeds here and a few there. He showed them the tough, long root and told them the plant's life history. Has the burdock any vulnerable spot they wondered? The only time when burdock is weak is when it comes up as a seedling. One scrape of the hoe would kill hundreds then. Hearing what was up at school, an enterprising business man offered to give ten dollars to the squad of pupils who brought in the largest number of burdock plants. This added zest to the work and a generous emulation. Before the week was up, the town was rid of burdocks, and there were wagon loads of them withering on the vacant lot near the school. The squad that won the prize brought in upwards of seven hundred plants, root and branch. They donated the money to the school library. The boys and girls in that village didn't need to be waked up but once. They went to work on the little stream. They had bonfires at the water's edge. They planted willows and other water loving trees on the banks, they asked the selectmen to pass a law to forbid the throwing of rubbish and sewage into the stream. They enforced the law themselves. Then they built two little dams, and made a skating pond right near the school house. GETTING RID OF POISON IVY If there is any one thing that would make the country a better place to live in for some people, it would be to eradicate poison ivy. When it once gets possession of a fence row, it is an awful job to get it out. Cutting off the tops is about as effectual as cutting your hair. It grows again thicker than ever. The roots and the creeping stems run under ground and every cubic inch of soil has to be gone over. A great many beautiful plants will have to be destroyed in our fence rows in getting out the poison ivy. But we can replace these, and by constant watchfulness keep the ivy out. In some localities the village selectmen have seriously undertaken the eradication. Any one who has ever suffered will agree that the work ought to be taken hold of in a public way. Many people are immune. Those who know themselves to be so should undertake the work. A bounty is offered by some towns for uprooted plants. The hands should be washed frequently with hot water and plenty of soap when working on poison ivy. Washable overalls and shirt should be worn, as the oil of the ivy gets on the garments and may poison any one who handles them. LESSENING THE PLAGUE OF MOSQUITOES Every boy and girl in the "mosquito belt" realizes keenly that the towns as well as the country would be better places to live in if there were no mosquitoes. Some people do not believe that it is possible to lessen this plague, much less end it. But such a belief is pure ignorance. I know of an army post where in one season the mosquitoes were eradicated. It was easy there, because the post was isolated and because, when the commandant issued a general order that all rain barrels were to be covered or emptied, the people went right out and obeyed. You see, army people get a fixed habit of obedience. Then the health officer, who really had the matter most at heart, though backed by his superior, had squads of prisoners at work gathering up and carting off tin cans or other rubbish capable of holding water. Pools were drained. Sewer openings and ponds were oiled. Before the mosquitoes had fairly got out of winter quarters all the stagnant water was coated with an oil film. There was no use trying to lay eggs under those conditions, so they left for parts unknown. As mosquitoes cannot fly far unless carried by the wind, they undoubtedly perished just outside the gates, and the people came out and sat on their porches safe and happy. They were ashamed that they had grumbled when the orders came to cover the rain water barrels. Mosquitoes breed in water. The wigglers of the watering trough or rain barrel are young mosquitoes. You can raise your own mosquitoes as well as your own chickens and pigs. A little precaution would save much annoyance. Neighbourhoods should unite to rid themselves of the pest. Boys can do the work required. The school children in Worcester, Mass., wage very effective war against mosquitoes every year under the guidance of their teachers. The saving in cost of netting and wire screens would almost pay the expense of a campaign against mosquitoes and flies. After emptying or covering all the water receptacles on the place, it is well to place a few decoy pails in promising situations. When the mosquitoes have deposited their eggs, tip over the pails and that is the end of that lot. One female can produce four hundred eggs, so you see what a calamity it is for her young to come to maturity, which they may do in eight to ten days. Mosquitoes have their natural enemies. Where areas of water are too large to oil, we should see to it that fish are plentiful, especially goldfish, sunfish, roaches, killies, and minnows. Toads, frogs, and lizards also prey on mosquitoes as do the nymphs of dragon flies and other water insects. Swallows and purple martins catch mosquitoes on the wing. FIGHTING FLIES The house fly is no longer a mere nuisance, but is a menace to health. He is well named the typhoid fly and the filth fly. The boys and girls who help rid their neighbourhood of these disease-carrying pests are real patriots. Flies are not a heaven-sent plague in this day and generation. Flies in the milk, flies in the pantry, flies on the kitchen door, flies buzzing about the table, are the obvious result of carelessness and mismanagement. What is more, the remedies are not hard to apply. The typhoid fly (house fly) breeds in horse manure. The adult fly feeds upon every known variety of filth as well as upon good food, but the undeveloped fly is a footless maggot and it breeds in your own and your neighbour's stable yard. People will go on buying fly paper, fly poison, fly traps, screen doors, and window netting to keep flies out, but the very fly that has visited a typhoid patient to-day may to-morrow leave the imprint of his foul feet on the baby's face, or drown himself, but not his germs, in your gravy. What does your father have a manure pile for? If he is a frugal farmer he expects to put it on his fields when the other work is out of the way, and plough it in. He knows the value of manure on fields. But does he realize that the best time to carry the manure out is while it is new? Every expert will tell him so and why. In the pile by the barn it lies and burns. Have you seen it smoke? Burnt manure is wasted fertilizer. When it rains, the valuable elements needed by the soil leach out and nourish the crop of "jimson weeds" and burdocks that will crowd round the barn yard next year. Meantime the flies buzz round the manure pile. The worse it smells the better they like it. They are there for business. Eggs, thousands upon thousands of tiny flies' eggs, are deposited by industrious and prolific flies. A fly's egg! The hired man will laugh at you for bothering over a thing so insignificant. But when his wife comes down with typhoid and the flies come in and worry her, he will complain of his luck and drive out the flies, which go merrily forth to start little private epidemics all over the neighbourhood. Destroy their breeding places. That is one remedy for flies. Trap them, poison them, discourage them. Is it worth while for you to do this when the rest of the people do not? Yes, indeed. If you have very near neighbours, their flies may get to you to some extent, but with nothing to furnish breeding places, and no foul-smelling swill or decaying animal or vegetable stuff around, they will not be attracted to your place. Awaken the neighbour's interest in your "fly-destroying crusade." If you can reach results best by forming a club, organize and pass resolutions and wake people up to their responsibilities. This is practical work for a boys' good citizenship club. TRAPPING I know a city boy who is fortunate enough to have a farm home to go to as soon as school closes in the summer. With his parents and brothers and sisters he lives the life of the farm boy, with enough of gardening, a little of chicken raising, one cow to milk, and a chance to measure his cunning against that of many "varmints" which would otherwise destroy his garden and steal his chickens. He knows how to use a gun, and when, and where. He can make a good trap, a scientific and humane trap, and he knows the ways of the two-or four-or six-footed enemies he is at war with. Between them and him there is a fair field and no favours, just as between one wild creature and another. If to-day he outwits a crow, to-morrow a skunk pays the crow's score with heavy interest by making a meal of a nestful of young chickens. This boy has learned enough of the art of preparing skins to make those he gets salable, and he exhibits with just pride a handsome fur skating cap made by his mother out of skins of mink he has taken. His traps add something every year to his growing college fund. [Illustration: Simple box-trap] There are a great many things about the business of trapping that seem very horrible and brutal to a sensitive person. Because many cruel men have gone into that life, which is a life of the greatest hardship and has little in it to encourage gentleness, we have rather taken it for granted that all trapping is unjustifiable and that a boy who wants to set traps is an inhuman monster and not to be tolerated in a civilized home. If fathers and mothers were all like my young friend's parents, they would see that trapping ought to be a part of a boy's training, just like using an axe, or a saw, or a gun. Trapping everything would be bad business. You would not catch squirrels in a trap any more than you would shoot bluebirds or brown thrashers. One could easily damage his neighbourhood and himself by trapping the wrong things or trapping in the wrong way. A trapper who is a sportsman will see to it that his traps are of the right kind. I would not have a mouse-trap in the house that made a practice of catching mice by the foot or tail. There are traps of many kinds for a variety of purposes and the trapper must either catch his prey alive and provide a way of despatching it humanely or use a trap which is instantaneous in its deadly work. [Illustration: Box-trap and figure 4] Boys who have learned to trap in the natural, legitimate way do not become "fish butchers" or "game hogs" when they grow up. I once saw a picture of a game warden standing triumphantly beside a mound of dead crows, two thousand and twelve was the number, I believe. He had cunningly learned to imitate their call so successfully that they could not resist coming within range of his deadly weapon. Crows may be harmful to wild fowl but no boy with right instincts would be guilty of an act so base as this, so unbecoming a sportsman and a gentleman. Getting rid of the animals which prey upon orchard, garden, and chicken roost is, without question, one of the ways of making the country a better place to live in. Trapping may be regarded as clean sport when done for this purpose, or for food when needed. Catching animals alive for the sake of taming and training them as pets is treated in another chapter and has its own rules. There are a number of fur-bearing animals which, though too shy to venture inside the barn yard, prey so successfully upon the less fortunate ones, that it has become our duty to take up warfare against them. This duty is all the more heavily laid upon us because, in the act of civilizing the woods and converting the hills and valleys into cultivated fields and pastures, we have destroyed the natural hiding places of the wild things and "upset the balance." If we were suddenly to abandon this country, it would not be many generations before the buffalo, the wild pigeon, and the wild turkey would return to their haunts, the forests would recover the hills, the potato beetle would go back to its Colorado weed, and some natural enemy would control the San José scale and the English sparrow and reduce them to their natural places. In some localities trapping of fur-bearing animals is still a money-making small industry and if properly carried on will lead to no evil results. The more a boy knows about the habits of the animals he seeks to outwit, the greater will be his chances of a capture, and when he knows a little he will want to know more. He will learn that there are rules in this game as well as in games with his human fellows, and that there are things "that no man would do," and pretend to self-respect. A knowledge of woodcraft is indispensable to the trapper and helps him to take care of himself and act with good judgment in cases of emergency. A boy that sets a trap takes a certain responsibility. If he fails to visit his traps he breaks a rule of the game. A live animal in a cage trap begins to suffer very soon for water and for food. An animal in a steel trap, if not dead, will often pull or even gnaw off his injured leg, and escape. His tragic story may often be read in his footprints in the snow. If trapping for skins you must take them off while fresh, as they taint very quickly and may be ruined by delay. TRAPPING MINK The boy that catches a mink is a pretty lucky boy in these days when those wily little robbers have grown so scarce. The price of mink fur made into muffs and collars is so high as to make a mink skin worth trying for. I can imagine the surprise and well-earned triumph of my young trapping friend when, after trying for a year or two to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his thoroughbred chickens, he finally succeeded in capturing a fine mink. A friend of his to whom he had taught all he could of the art of trapping caught another. And this happened within the city limits of the nation's capital! Who says now that the mink has disappeared? The mink is a flesh-eater, and lives on what he can catch, varying his bill of fare with frogs, snakes, birds, mice, muskrats, and fish. It is always open season for trout in the mink's code of laws and though he is not a water animal his home is more than likely to be near a trout stream, on the bank, in a well-concealed place. It is not fair to trap mink in the breeding season, which is April or May. The young are at the mercy of all sorts of flesh-eaters, including their own fathers, who are a most undiscriminating sort. There ought to be some form of guarantee to a mink mother that while she is foraging for food for her young she will not be enticed into a trap. Later, when she goes a-hunting on her own account and the chances are even, she is legitimate prey for the trapper. Steel traps are best, say the experts, and they should be cunningly concealed. Gouge out a sort of hole in the bank, conceal the trap at the front, and put the bait farther in so that the trap must be passed to reach the bait. Muskrat flesh, fish, or other meat is the bait used. A common practice is to scorch the bait, to make the odour more pervasive and attractive. The price of fresh mink skins varies according to size and condition from two dollars and a half to four dollars. TRAPPING SKUNKS The last thing you would expect of a skunk is that he should be popular among the girls. But under the seductive title of Alaska sable, the fur of the plain Jersey or York State skunk is worn with satisfaction by ladies of good sense and good taste. A skunk's pelt is worth two dollars and a half or more and although he is of undoubted value to the farmer as a destroyer of insect pests, I shall not undertake his defence. A cloud of witnesses would rise up to recount their losses from the marauding skunk. His fondness for poultry would be mere circumstantial evidence that he is an enemy of the wild birds as well, but we have direct evidence enough to convict and condemn him. Because of his unusual weapon, used only when hard-pressed in an unequal battle, a good deal of special precaution has to be taken when trapping _Mephitis_ for his fur. The least taint of the unmistakable odour ruins the skin, as no cleansing compound has been invented strong enough to remove it or drown it. It is said on good authority that the skunk seldom besprinkles itself when discharging its "rear battery." Skunks are not very clever nor very swift. They go about at night for the most part, or early evening. The young are born, six to nine in a litter, in April or May. The nests are hidden in holes in hollow trees, among rocks, or in the ground. The young ones frequently follow the old ones all summer or even longer, little realizing that this is a dangerous habit. By tracking them from the scene of their nocturnal visit to or from the stream they run to daily for water, one may find the hiding place. A clever trapper succeeds in capturing a whole family ofttimes by simply making the path the skunks follow more distinct, treading down the grass, and even setting up sticks to guide them along toward the place they wish to go. Traps with bits of meat for bait are set at intervals along the path. A snare and spring pole are said to insure no bad consequences. One author advises the hunter that striking a sudden blow near the tail paralyzes the ejecting muscles. No doubt! But in the meantime what is the skunk doing? [Illustration: Deadfall trap] The white stripe on the skunk's back, while a valuable warning to all of what is approaching, is a disadvantage from the trapper's viewpoint. This stripe varies in length and some varieties are without it entirely. There is a story of the days when the Indians in western New York used to bring in many skunk skins to the local fur-buyer. One red man, a notorious cheat, came in one day with a single skin to sell. "Long stripe or short stripe," said the buyer, whose prices varied with the length of the white stripe on the skunk's back. "Ver' short stripe. How much pay?" said the Indian. "Let's see the skin," said the buyer. The Indian showed the skin, which was that of a young animal, and very small, the stripe extending the entire length of the skin. "You said short stripe," said the indignant buyer, pointing the finger of scorn at the runty little skin. "Short skunk, short stripe," said the Indian with a shrug. "What you pay?" I cut out an item from the daily paper last week which had this headline: "Skunks sent him to college." Can you draw your own inferences? The fur of skunks is very valuable now and in many fashionable Paris shops it is advertised with large placards printed distinctly for their English-speaking customers, "_Veritable Skong_." TRAPPING WOODCHUCKS Judging by the tales they tell, New England boys of the passing generation spent most of their time trying to outwit the woodchucks which infested their farms. If all their tales were true, the barn doors of their respective states must have needed stretching to hold all the skins of all those woodchucks, and no boy could possibly have been long without that valuable possession, a whiplash made of woodchuck hide. This little cousin of the squirrels is neither very fleet nor very cunning. He has, though, very quick ears and quicker eyes, and knows that his hole is the safest place for him when boys are around. The only excuse for hunting woodchucks is that they sometimes get so numerous as to do real damage in the garden, either by their holes and the mounds of earth they throw out, or by eating more vegetables than can reasonably be spared. A better game than hunting them would be to discover how they build their underground galleries. Are these mere holes deep enough to crawl into for safety? Is there more than one tunnel? Has the owner an exit as well as an entrance to his home? Has he a nest, and where and what is it? Does he hoard for winter, or hibernate? TRAPPING MOLES It is hard to get a new point of view. Having been brought up in the belief that the mole is a nuisance, pure and simple, I find myself unable on short notice to believe that this little blind miner is actually useful. If only he would confine his sphere of usefulness to some other neighbourhood than our lawn! We all think that his underground passages disfigure the lawn. But does the grass die where the tunnels run? I think not. You see patches of dead grass on many lawns, but do you find moles at work in these same lawns? In fact, the brown, dead patches of grass are probably killed by the white grub, arch enemy of grass roots. The mole is arch enemy to the white grub and others of his ilk. According to people who know about moles, we ought to decorate them with medals instead of trapping them and decorating the barn door with their tiny skins. The first mole I ever saw was one brought in by our old cat. She laid it down with a sort of shamefaced air as much as to say, "Things have come to a pretty pass when a self-respecting cat is obliged to bring in the likes of that. It fair turns my stomach!" It was not an attractive object, but we children turned it over and over with a stick. What an odd shape, so unlike the animals familiar to us. Its nose like a gimlet, its fore feet like little shovels; no wonder it could tunnel. No eyes, no ears; but what use has a mole for either? Do you know what Oliver Herford said of the mole? "See, children, the misguided mole, He lives down in a deep, dark hole; Sweetness and light and good fresh air Are things for which he does not care. But say not that he has no soul, Lest haply we misjudge the mole." No one can say that the mole has not a redeeming feature. Surely there is no creature clad in a coat of more surpassing softness and fineness than the mole. Are the exquisite "moleskin" garments sometimes seen in furriers' windows really made of tiny skins of this despised little quadruped? It is not likely that any of us will ever catch many moles. If they are troublesome in your lawn, you and the neighbour boys can do some trapping with mole traps. They are of a kind specially fitted to outwit the mole in his tunnel, and directions accompany each trap. Every boy knows what "knuckle down" means and how sore your knuckles get in marble time. There is usually one boy in the crowd who is lucky enough to have a knuckle dabster, made of moleskin. "There, use that. Soft as velvet, eh? Nope, don't want to sell it. Caught a mole last summer, tanned the skin myself and my mother made this for me, like the one in 'The Boy's Own Book.' Wouldn't take a dollar for it." TRAPPING MUSKRATS The first fur collar I ever had was sold to me as "electric seal." There was no deception practised on me, for I knew that the fur was neither electric nor seal. But I didn't know then that it was muskrat fur. They call it Hudson seal nowadays, I believe. These small relatives of the beaver have so few natural enemies, and are so prolific that they are in no danger of disappearing from our ponds and sluggish streams. The beaver, on the other hand, is supposed to be protected by law. Until it is against the law to sell and to wear beaver skins, trappers will evade the law and escape the fines. Muskrat fur is not so fine nor thick as that of the beaver and not nearly so expensive. A fresh skin is worth twenty-five to forty cents. They are more in demand now than ever, owing to the fashionable demand for furs and the scarcity of other fur-bearing animals. There are many ways of trapping them. As they are aquatic and active in the winter they are often taken through the ice. Muskrat trappers are always good skaters. A hard blow on the ice will stun the rat, which is pulled out through a hole. They are sometimes speared through holes in the ice. A boy might develop enough patience and perseverance, as well as skill and alertness, in a job like this to make it pay better in some other field than the sale of the skins. Muskrats are often caught in traps, too. To be successful at this it is necessary to learn a great deal about the little fellow's habits of life, his house, his food and his ways of escaping enemies. It is well to know his enemies, too. These are the fox, the mink, and the otter. You would be a lucky boy, indeed, if instead of common little musquash you bagged an otter whose pelt is worth fifteen or twenty dollars. My father has an otter skin cap about which he and my uncle tell a truly exciting story. They caught an otter, but that was sixty odd years ago. Muskrats are the greatest nuisance in ornamental grounds where there are large water features. They have an unfortunate fondness for lily bulbs. The boy who can outwit them will win favour with the gardener and the garden's owner, with the muskrat skins thrown in. TRAPPING GOPHERS Our old dog Nimp was convinced that the way to get a gopher was to dig him out. Doctor Hornaday tells an amusing story about his having that same conviction when a boy. Many a night Nimp would come home from the pasture, panting, his coat all rough with the reddish soil that we knew had come out of a gopher hole. Weary, yes, but discouraged, never. The old dog would go back to his job morning after morning. Sometimes we would try to help by carrying buckets full of water and "drowning him out." Never did Nimp scent a gopher near the cattle well but once, and then the boys drowned him out with a vengeance. The hunted little creature leaped out of a hole so unexpectedly near where the boys sat that one turned a complete somersault and landed in the last pailful of water. Nimp was quicker than his masters and soon laid the bedraggled little miner at our feet. We felt pretty small. Very little can be said in defence of the gopher. He is an undeniable nuisance and helps to bring the farmer's crop down to a lower figure than it ought to be. Traps and poisoned vegetables are swifter methods of dealing with the case than digging, for the gopher is himself past master in the art of digging. TRAPPING THE WEASEL One of the natural enemies of the pocket gopher is the weasel. If only we could set the weasel on the gopher and then had something like a mongoose to keep down the weasels! I never yet heard a good word for the weasel. He seems to be the embodiment of all that is mean and sly and hateful. It is undeniable that he does not obey the laws of the woods, that he kills for the mere joy of killing, and that is a high crime. Men with weasel-like ways get to have the same blood-thirsty look. The weasel is a savage, hunting every wild creature in the woods, rabbits, mice, chipmunks, moles, rats, grouse, chickens, and ducks, and even insects. He robs the nests of birds, eats eggs and young, and even the old birds are not safe from him. I just read in a book that "weasels are so small that their fur has little value, but the time will come when it will be eagerly sought and used." Well, that time has come, but, who ever went to a shop and asked for a weasel tippet? But ask for ermine and they will show any quantity of it. The price! Well, wouldn't the weasel be surprised to find himself so popular. It all comes about because of that interesting habit of his, changing colour in the winter. The weasel is a sort of peculiar shade of brown as you can testify if you have caught one; the ermine is pure white all but the tippest tip of the tail which is dead black; yet they are one and the same. Weasel in summer and ermine in winter. The weasel, the mink, and the marten are all enemies of the native wild game, and efforts to exterminate them are always applauded by sportsmen. Much is yet to be learned of their habits. Trappers have succeeded in keeping the mink and marten in check, but the weasel goes his murderous way, feared and hated by everybody. TRAPPING RATS There is no pest around the farm yard or barn yard anywhere so hard to cope with when once they get a foothold, as rats. Finding them numerous in the barn once, we put chicken feed in the uncemented cellar of the house. Before the end of the first winter of that arrangement we were praying for a visit from the Pied Piper. The rats took possession. They broke dishes, seemingly for the fun of it; they gnawed the softened woodwork around the kitchen sink and held high carnival at midnight throughout the spaces between the walls; they all but bit the babies in their cradles and defied all our efforts to outwit them. Traps, cats, poison, we tried everything, but they outstayed us. If ever we get into a like case again I shall be tempted to try ferrets or cyanide. Some people are successful trappers of rats, and these suggestions come from them. Set a trap in a pan of meal or bran, cover with same and put it in a runway. Make the runway easy to pass through by placing boards or boxes along near the walls. Cover a trap with thin brown paper or cloth and set it in the runway. Smoke the trap over the fire and heat it hot (not hot enough to draw the temper of the steel), after each setting. Change the place of the trap very often. Wear gloves to keep the odour of your hands from the trap. The rat is the very wisest of all his family, his behaviour seems to be the result of impish intelligence rather than mere instinct for self-preservation. No true sportsman will allow his antipathy to rats or weasels to lead him to commit acts of cruelty. Fighting them with their own methods makes you into a human rat or weasel. TRAPPING RABBITS There are times when rabbits get too numerous, and times when they are needed to eat, and times when you want to try your hand at taming a wild one. Under these circumstances it is legitimate sport to hunt or trap them. If damage is being done to crops in the spring we shall be forced to wage war against them in self-defence during their breeding season. Otherwise no sportsman would do it. If there is so little legitimate rabbit food in winter that they are driven to destroy fruit trees to get a little bark, then the inference is that there are too many rabbits. Study the rabbit's ways of living, and learn his weak points. Find out if he has a "tendon of Achilles" or vulnerable spot. Look one over. What are his conspicuous characteristics? Is it not evident that his life is one long series of narrow escapes? He has few, if any, wits; how low his forehead. Timid eyes. But ears! Can he not hear you coming a mile off? And LEGS! Did you ever see a greater development in that direction? Yes, in a grasshopper, but nowhere else. The rabbit is a perfect mammalian grasshopper. When you stop to think of it you will see a certain pathetic side to its life. The rabbit has its wild enemies, ever watchful, ever close on its trail. The hawk, the mink, the weasel, the fox, the lynx, and others are rabbit hunters. Besides his quick hearing, and his swiftness, Br'er Rabbit has a wonderful power of becoming invisible. His nondescript colour, combined with his ability to "freeze," serve him as well as a cloak of darkness. The cotton-tail rabbit is commonest in the Middle and Southern states, while his bigger cousin, the varying hare, overlaps the rabbit's territory in the colder parts, and takes his place in the most Northern states. The varying hare is called also the snow-shoe rabbit and the white hare, but in summer he is dull russet brown. You may have heard of the wonderful change of colour of this and other animals. Interesting stories are told of the sudden blanching of the fur, of its turning white, "in a single night," like the locks of the prisoner of Chillon. Not a word of truth in that story. Why do people, whose only fitness for telling stories lies in their having an imagination, make up such yarns about real things? They could invent an animal and then tell as many wonderful tales as they liked and nobody would be deceived. The truth about animals is wonderful enough. If writers would only take pains to find out the truth instead of repeating fancies! Suppose the early ancestor of the white hare had a grayish-brownish coat, just the thing to protect him from his enemies in a world all full of grayish-brownish things. But one day there came a snow storm, and all the gray-brown things were covered with whiteness, except the poor hare. Suddenly he became the most noticeable object in the woods. Then all his neighbours saw him and wanted him, and mostly they got him. It was about then that the hare began to be the "varying hare." A law of nature came to his rescue. Some hares there were which were not so dark coloured as others. They may have been longer winded and swifter footed, too, but anyhow they escaped and lived to bring families into the world. As like breeds like, these young hares took after their parents, and because they were lighter coloured in the winter they in turn escaped and carried this peculiarity into the next generation. It took endless years, and innumerable generations of hares, varying this way and that to fulfill this natural law, and fix the habit. But now that it is fixed we may well view it with wonder, and call it an example of the law of the "survival of the fittest." How is the change brought about? Just as the chickens and the birds moult, and the horse sheds, so do the rabbits. Their summer coats are thinner and brown. One by one the brown hairs fall out in the fall till finally the new coat is there, which is white. It is not like the human hair changing from brown to white. In the fall and then again in the spring there is a time when the varying hare is a variegated hare, his coat being mottled with white and brown. Rabbits are hunted with dogs and their trails in the new snow are easily followed by the hunter alone. They are caught in traps and snares of various kinds. In one of his lessons in woodcraft, Mr. Seton describes a rabbit snare as follows: "String, a shoe-lace, a buckskin thong, or even a strip of clothing may be used as a snare. There are many ways of making a rabbit snare, but the simplest is the best. The essentials are, first, the snare--an ordinary running noose; second, a twitch-up--that is a branch bent down or a pole set in the crotch of a sapling. The snare is fast to the end of the pole, and spread open in a well worn runway. The loop is about four inches across and placed four inches from the ground. The pole twitch-up is held down by placing the cross-piece of the snare under some projecting snag. The rabbit bounding along, puts his head in the noose, the slight jerk frees the cross-piece from its holder, and in a moment the rabbit is dangling in air." Rabbit fur is not very durable but is much used for the manufacture of less expensive fur garments. Under the name of "French seal" it finds a ready market and is really soft and pretty. TRAPS THAT BOYS CAN MAKE There are a number of traps and snares that boys can make. Descriptions of these are to be found in books on amateur carpentry, manual training, and books for boys of various kinds. The illustrations in this chapter are intended to give a few suggestions. MONEY AND RECREATION IN TRAPPING I shall not attempt to go at this subject from a professional side, as I think no boys care to trap for a living. Whatever may be said about the boy having a gun in a thickly settled suburb, nothing can be offered against his trapping if he goes at it in an amateur way and with no intent to exterminate the animals (which only a shrewd trapper could do). I will presume the boy to be attending a neighbouring school either on the edge of a city or in a town. Under these circumstances he must attend to his traps early in the morning or after school. At first there may be no more than enough money in it to cover the cost of traps, but nevertheless the recreation which it offers will appeal to the average boy. As his knowledge of animals becomes greater with time, he will get more and more pocket money. When he starts in, the other boys may laugh at him and say that there is nothing to trap. In most cases they would make a big mistake, because there often are, on the edge of a city, more fur-bearing animals than in the surrounding country. This for the reason that the professional trapper is not present and most of the city boys do not know how to trap. There are, say, muskrats and an occasional mink along the rivers and streams. The swamps usually abound in muskrats. In the woods and fields are squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, opossums, and (in the North) woodchucks. It is legitimate to catch the water animals in ordinary steel traps because, if set right, the captive is instantly drowned. For dry land the steel jaw-trap is not suitable, because it will rarely kill the animal, but cause him much suffering as it usually breaks his leg. Often in such case the trapper will only find a foot in his trap, the animal having gnawed or twisted his body free. Nevertheless any trap is humane which kills the animal instantly. There are many new traps on the market which will do this, but on account of their being patented and high-priced they are not extensively used. The traps which are most commonly used for this purpose are the deadfalls and snares. The muskrat lives wherever there is a body of water. He feeds chiefly on vegetable matter which he obtains in the swamps or digs on the banks, although he frequently visits a cornfield or vegetable garden. Only in cases of extreme hunger, as happens when they are frozen in, have they been known to eat their own kin. In swamps they have houses made of rushes and twigs, standing in a rounded shape about two feet above the water. To trap in the swamps one must have high rubber boots and if the water is deep a small boat is necessary. A home-made flat-bottomed canoe, made of canvas, will be found to answer the purpose admirably. Where it is shallow enough to use the boots, a long, heavy staff should be carried, as the mud is very often treacherous and interwoven with muskrat runways. I might as well say in the beginning that the intending trapper should take a friend into his confidence and the two set out to trap together, for in this way they can help each other out of difficulties. (My friend had to do some pretty stiff pulling once to get me out of a mud hole into which I had recklessly plunged, having only in my mind to get to my traps quickly.) Along the rivers the muskrats live in holes in the banks. In trapping in such places one may walk along the bank or use a boat, setting the traps in the entrances of houses or in the runs. Before the trapping season begins it is very wise to go over the territory and locate the different houses, runways, and feeding places. This will save time when trapping begins, which should not be before December, because up to this time the pelts are not in their prime. The trapping season lasts for about three months or until the ice breaks up in the spring. If the water is not yet iced over, the muskrats can be caught with the steel jaw-traps. They should be set in the runs or at the entrances of houses so that they are just under the surface of the water. The chain should be staked in the water as far out as possible. The muskrat will in every instance try to swim out into deep water and the weight of the trap on his foot will pull him down and drown him. Traps may be baited with apples, carrots, turnips, and nearly any vegetable or fruit. The bait should be stuck on a slanting stick so that it will hang about a foot above the pan of the trap. [Illustration: "Stop thief" trap] When the water is frozen over, other methods must be followed. Many trappers cut the houses open and set the traps on the inside, but those who wish to keep the muskrats in the vicinity will not do this, because it destroys their homes and causes them to seek new shelter. For my own use I have "stop thief" traps which kill instantly and are not very expensive. A hole is cut in the ice and the trap set before the house entrance or in a swimway. In going through, the muskrat puts his foot on lever _a_, which releases _b_, and this in turn lets down lever _c_, which strikes him over the neck or back, breaking it instantly. As shown, the trap is fastened with staples to a wooden prong, one end of which is stuck in the mud at the bottom and the other fits just under the ice. Mink are rarely caught, because they are very crafty and keen to the scent of a human being. Once in a while they are caught in a trap set in the water or in the entrance to a muskrat house. This is accounted for by the fact that the mink preys largely upon these weaker animals in the winter when food is scarce. Sometimes they can be lured with a muskrat carcass or a dead bird. If the trap is not set under water there is little probability of getting the mink. The trapping of mink should be encouraged, because they kill not only muskrats, but chickens and other domestic fowl as well. One must use his own judgment and set his trap in a place frequented by the mink. Prime mink skins usually bring three or four dollars from any local fur dealer. On the other hand muskrats are more plentiful and bring only about thirty cents. Thus it is that some boys prefer to keep the muskrat skins and tan them at home. From these skins they make comfortable caps and gloves. [Illustration: Stretchers for skins. The narrow one for mink, the other for muskrat] To skin the muskrat and mink, commence on the hind legs. The skin is slit down one leg and up the other. With muskrats the tail is cut away from the rest of the skin. The mink's tail adds greatly to the value of the skin, so the bone is carefully extracted with a pair of pincers and the tail left on the skin. The skin is then gradually peeled down over the body and head. It is then stretched with the fur side inward on a board as shown in the figure on this page. After this it is hung in a dry, airy place to dry, away from the sun. For home tanning a fresh pelt needs only salt, but the following solution gives somewhat better results and makes the skin more pliable: Salt, two pounds. Sulphuric acid (com.) two ounces. Rain water, one gallon. The pelt should remain immersed in the solution for about two days. When taken out it must be first nearly dried and then the flesh side scraped and rubbed until soft with some dull steel instrument, such as an old blunt chisel. Care should be taken not to break the skin as it is very fragile in some places, especially on the belly. [Illustration: Snare with carrot bait] The land animals can be caught in snares or deadfalls. Very likely most boys know of these, but I have illustrated them here in the forms which I think have served me best. Usually only the smaller animals are caught in the snare, such as rabbits and squirrels. To bait for either of these corn or apple is commonly used, although onion makes a good scent bait to draw rabbits from afar. Besides these named nearly any green vegetable or fruit will answer very well. These animals being maybe the least wary of them all are therefore very easy to catch. For an opossum green corn and a little raw meat is all that is necessary, while for a raccoon a crawfish may be added. This latter is considered the best, and hardly ever fails to lure the raccoon. The skins of the raccoon and opossum bring about a dollar and a half, and half a dollar, respectively. [Illustration: Deadfall] Rabbits and squirrels are caught as game, while raccoons together with opossum are considered eatable by most trappers. The up-to-date people who order "marsh rabbits" at the most fashionable restaurants are eating no other than muskrat. These they eat with a great relish under the new name. I will add that it makes a great difference in eating a muskrat whether you let your imagination get the best of you. Many times I have eaten muskrat with quite as much comfort as though I were eating rabbit. Naturally the meat has a very strong taste which must be removed before cooking, by soaking over night in salt water. Young fat woodchucks are also frequently eaten. It is hard to set down on paper just how and where to set the traps and it can only be learned from another trapper or by experience. The most important thing is to observe closely and learn the habits of the animals. STANLEY COVILLE CURING AND TANNING SKINS The boy trapper must know how to take the skins from the animals he traps, and how to treat them to preserve their beauty and value. The skin should be taken off before it becomes tainted, and with greatest care not to injure it. Some skins are exceedingly tender. Be careful to remove bits of fat or flesh; left to dry on the skin, these detract from its value. No artificial dressing is needed to cure or dry a skin. The fresh skin should be tacked to a smooth board or drawn over a stretcher, fur side in, so that the air can get at it freely. It should not be put in the sun, or rain, or artificial heat. When thoroughly dry, the skin is ready for market or it may be tanned at home. A boy fortunate enough to obtain a valuable pelt like that of marten, mink, or otter, will certainly want to try his hand at tanning. You want first to be sure to use a mixture which will not injure the fur but will fix it more firmly in its place. Never put any dressing on the fur itself. You also want the skin to be soft and pliable so that it can be made up into some form of garment. The following directions are adapted from "The Tricks of Trapping" by W. Hamilton Gibson, a reliable source of all trapping lore for American boys: "After every particle of loose flesh and fat is removed from the skin, it should be soaked for a couple of hours in warm water. While waiting, prepare this mixture: Take equal parts of saltpetre, borax, and sulphate of soda. Mix with enough water to make a thin batter. Paint the wet skin over thickly on the flesh side. Fold the skin flesh side in and lay in an airy place, for twenty-four hours. "On the following day prepare a second mixture consisting of two parts sal-soda, three parts borax, four parts castile soap. Melt these together over a slow fire. Apply this mixture in the same manner as the first, twenty-four hours later. Fold skin as before and leave another twenty-four hours. Make a third mixture of equal parts of common salt and alum, dissolved in warm water and thickened with coarse flour to the consistency of thin paste. Allow this to dry on, then stretch the skin lightly and scrape off the hardened paste with the bowl of a spoon. Sometimes a second or even a third treatment with the last mixture is required to make the skin absolutely pliable, after which it should be finished with sand-paper and pumice stone. A skin thus dressed should be soft as velvet. The alum and salt set the hair securely." APPENDIX FREE PRINTED MATTER. HOW TO GET IT There are three principal sources of free printed matter on outdoor work subjects. These are (1) the United States Department of Agriculture. (2) State Agricultural Experiment Stations. (3) Commercial houses who sell supplies for outdoor occupations. (1) The Farmers' Bulletins are the ones which will be most useful to outdoor workers. They are written in plain language and treat every subject in a practical way. To get them, you should address a postal card thus: Secretary of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. On the other side of the card write as follows: Please send me the list of publications for free distribution sent out by your department, and oblige, Sign your name and address distinctly. In a few days you will get a printed circular giving the numbers and titles of all the Farmers' Bulletins and other free literature they have. Choose the ones you want and address another postal card to the Secretary of Agriculture. Ask for the bulletins wanted by number and title both, to avoid mistakes. Some of the bulletins of the United States Department of Agriculture are not for free distribution. They are too valuable. A charge is made to cover cost of printing. To get any bulletin mentioned in this list _with its price_, address a letter to Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C., and enclose the amount in money order or coin. Do not send stamps. (2) To get the bulletins of your own State Experiment Station you have only to address another postal card; this time to the Director of State Experiment Station, with the name of the post-office and state. If not sure of the title and number of the bulletin you want, tell the director what phase of the subject you are interested in. For instance, one experiment station issues several poultry bulletins. Do you want the one on "House Construction" or the one on "Feeding Pullets?" The more definite you are in your requests the more likely you are to get exactly what you need most. To get the bulletins of another station than your own is not quite so simple. They have no fund for distributing bulletins in other states. But I have never failed to get them by asking for just the thing I need. It is well to offer to pay for these; the price is always small. Some of them are republished by the United States Department of Agriculture and appear in their free list as Experiment Station Work, I, II, III, etc. (3) The booklets and catalogues sent out free by seedsmen and other commercial houses are mines of information, condensed and well arranged. You may be sure that the advice they give is good, too, as it is to their interest to have their patrons succeed. You can tell the difference very quickly between the "hot air" of advertising matter and the practical advice to beginners given in catalogues. I most earnestly advise every one of you who is engaged in a money making enterprise to subscribe for some good periodical. There are good magazines devoted to many of the occupations, and some of the general magazines have special departments which are full of up-to-date suggestions which have not yet been put into books. The latest and best word on your subject is none too good and may make a difference of dollars in or out of pocket. If you devise any new apparatus or discover any time or money saving methods, don't keep these things to yourself. Help the world along by writing to some magazine about it. They are on the lookout for valuable novelties. The stories told by boys and girls in this volume have almost all appeared in a magazine first. THE OUTDOOR WORKER'S LIBRARY The following is a list of useful books, magazines, and bulletins on all sorts of outdoor occupations, written by experts. They are here arranged by subjects under eleven of the chapters of this book. N. B. Some of these books are expensive. Get them from your library if you can. The librarian will usually order a good book which is in demand. CHAPTER II. United States Department of Agriculture: Farmers' Bulletin No. 332. Nuts and Their Uses as Food. " " No. 188. Weeds Used in Medicine. " " No. 252. Maple Sugar and Sirup. Plant Industry Bulletin No. 107. Root Drugs. Price 15c. Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin No. 105. Maple Sap Flow. Vermont Experiment Station Bulletin No. 26. Maple Sugar. Practical Forestry. Gifford. D. Appleton & Co. Mushrooms, Edible and Otherwise. Hard. Mushroom Publishing Co., Columbus, O. CHAPTER III. Farmers' Bulletin No. 22. The Feeding of Farm Animals. " " No. 205. Pig Management. " " No. 49. Sheep Feeding. " " No. 137. The Angora Goat. " " No. 64. Ducks and Geese. " " No. 234. Guinea Fowl. " " No. 357. Methods of Poultry Management at the Maine Experiment Station. " " No. 177. Squab Raising. Price 5c. " " No. 390. Pheasant Rearing in the United States. Bureau of Animal Industry Bulletin No. 68. Milch Goats. Price 13c. Cornell University Rural School Leaflet. Vol. 4. No. 1. Horses. Ithaca, N. Y. Poultry Bulletins Nos. 240, 282, 274, 249. Cornell University. The Poultry Book. Doubleday, Page & Co. CHAPTER IV. The Poultry Book. Doubleday, Page & Co. Our Home Pets. O. T. Miller. Harper & Bros. The Self-Supporting Home. St. Maur. The Macmillan Co. Goldfish Culture. Mulertt. H. Mulertt, publisher, 289 Fennimore St., Brooklyn, N. Y. CHAPTER V. Illinois Agricultural College Extension Course. Dairy Lessons for Use in Public Schools. Farmers' Bulletin No. 413. Care of Milk in the Home. " " No. 196. Usefulness of the American Toad. " " No. 328. Silver Fox Farming. " " No. 330. Deer Farming in the United States. CHAPTER VI. American Boys' Handy Book. Beard. Harper & Bros. Bound Volumes of_ Country Life in America_. Articles on Swimming Pools, Springs, etc. Farmers' Bulletin No. 138. Irrigation in Field and Garden. CHAPTER VII. Farmers' Bulletin No. 397. Bees. A B C of Bee Culture. Root. A. I. Root Co., Medina, O. How to Keep Bees. Comstock. Doubleday, Page & Co. CHAPTER VIII. Farmers' Bulletin No. 165. Silk-worm Culture. CHAPTER IX. Botany. Bailey. The Macmillan Co. The Sea Beach at Ebb-tide. Arnold. The Century Co. Cornell Nature Study Leaflets. How to Make a Collection of Insects. Comstock. J. B. Lyon, Albany, N. Y. United States National Museum Bulletin 39. Collecting Fossils, Plants, Insects, Shells, Arrowheads, etc. CHAPTER X. Farmers' Bulletin No. 415. Seed Corn. " " No. 175. Unfermented Grape Juice. New York Experiment Station at Geneva. Bulletin No. 258. (Popular edition.) Making Cider Vinegar at Home. CHAPTER XI. Farmers' Bulletin No. 185. Beautifying the Home Grounds. " " No. 134. Tree Planting on Rural School Grounds. " " No. 155. How Insects Affect Health in Rural Districts. " " No. 385. Boys' and Girls' Agricultural Clubs. " " No. 368. The Eradication of Bind Weed or Wild Morning Glory. " " No. 369. How to Destroy Rats. " " No. 383. How to Destroy English Sparrows. " " No. 396. The Muskrat. " " No. 99. Insect Enemies of Shade Trees. " " No. 28. Weeds: How to Kill Them. " " No. 54. Common Birds in Their Relation to Agriculture. Price 6c. Biological Bulletin No. 24. Grouse and Wild Turkeys in the United States. Price 10c. Bureau of Entomology Bulletin No. 25. Mosquitoes. Price 10c. Bureau of Entomology Circular No. 11. House Flies. 1909 Year Book of Department of Agriculture. Plants Useful to Attract Birds and Protect Fruit Trees. New Jersey Experiment Station Bulletin No. 216. The House Mosquito. Circulars issued by The Audubon Society. New York. How to Attract the Birds. Blanchan. Doubleday, Page & Co. Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping. Gibson. Harper & Bros. Trappers' Guide. Newhouse. (Try to get this book from a library.) Transcriber's Notes: Spelling appears to be evolving between US/UK e.g. both color and colour are seen. Some page numbers in contents list are incorrect, these have been left as given. CH II is p. 8. (TOC has 9) CH II is 100 (101) CH VIII is 337 (338) CH IX is 349 (350) CH X is 404 (405) CH XI is 449 (450) Appendix is 513 (514) Book list is 516 (518) Corrected obvious typos and inconsistencies, otherwise spelling has been left as printed: p. 149 gasoline -> gasolene. "skim milk" -> "skim-milk". p. 163 "Wynadottes" -> "Wyandottes". p. 181 "precentage" -> "percentage". p. 228 "vak" -> "yak". p. 247 "belive" -> "believe". p. 341 "at" -> "as". p. 485 "noctural" -> "nocturnal". 
47264	----	generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 47264-h.htm or 47264-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47264/47264-h/47264-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47264/47264-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/argentinerepubli00deniuoft Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). A carat character is used to denote superscription. Characters enclosed by curly braces following the carat are superscripted (example: 2^{nd}). A transcriber's note follows the text. THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC +----------------------------------------------+ | _BY PIERRE DENIS_ | | | | BRAZIL | | | | Translated, and with an Historical | | Chapter by BERNARD MIALL. | | With a Supplementary Chapter | | by DAWSON A. VINDIN, | | a Map and 36 Illustrations | | | | _Cloth, 15/- net. Third Impression_ | | | | | | "Altogether the book is full of information, | | which shows the author to have | | made a most careful study of the | | country."--_Westminster Gazette._ | | | | T. Fisher Unwin Ltd London | +----------------------------------------------+ [Illustration: THE FALLS OF THE YGUASSU. _Thirteen miles above the confluence with the Paraná. Like the Paraná at the Salto Guayra, the river cuts through a layer of basalt intercalated in the red sandstone. The forest of the province of Misiones has a tropical character near the river. The araucarias cover only the higher parts of the tableland._ PLATE I. Frontispiece.] THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC Its Development and Progress by PIERRE DENIS, D. ES L. Agrégé d'Histoire et de Géographie Translated by Joseph McCabe T. Fisher Unwin Ltd London: Adelphi Terrace First published in English in 1922 (All rights reserved) INTRODUCTION In the following chapters I have endeavoured to indicate the essential aspects of colonization in modern Argentina: the conquest of the soil by man, the exploitation of its natural resources, the development of agriculture and cattle-breeding, and the growth of the population and enlargement of the urban centres. For a new country like Argentina it is not convenient to adopt the strictly regional plan which seems to be the best means of giving a complete and methodical description of the historic countries of western Europe, where it is the only way to keep in close touch with the geographical facts. In western Europe each region is really an independent unity. It has for ages lived upon its own resources; each population-group has its horizon definitely limited; and the complex action of the environment upon man, and of man upon the country, has proceeded in each district rather on the lines of an isolated and impassioned dialogue between the two. It is quite different in Argentina. There, many of the facts which we have to record consist in an expansion of the population, a spread of methods of exploitation from zone to zone of the country, and the influence upon colonization of commerce and of the varying needs of the markets of the world. It may be well to reply in advance to a criticism which my Argentine friends are sure to make. They will complain that I have paid no attention to the people of Argentina, the creators of the greatness of the country. It is true that I have deliberately refrained from any reference to the political and moral life of the Republic, the national character and its evolution, the stoicism of the gaucho, the industry of the colonist and the merchant, or the patriotism of the Argentinians generally. My work is not a study of the Argentine nation, but a geographical introduction to such a study. I began the work during a stay in Argentina which lasted from April 1912 to August 1914. In the course of these two years I was able to visit most parts of the country; and, as the information I gathered during my travels is one of my chief sources, I give here a summary of my itineraries. _October-November 1912_: Rosario--Region of the colonies of Santa Fé--Forestry-industries of the Chaco Santiagueño--Bañados of the Rio Dulce--Salta--Jujuy--Sierra de la Lumbrera. _November-December 1912_: Tucumán--Valley of Tapi--Santa Maria to the west of Aconcagua--Cafayate (Valley of Calchaqui). _December 1912-January 1913_: Catamarca--Andalgala--Valley of Pucara--Córdoba--Villa Maria. _January-February 1913_: Region of the Pampas (Province of Buenos Aires, south of Córdoba and of S. Luis, district of the Central Pampa). _March 1913_: Corrientes--Posadas--Asunción--Forest-industries of the Chaco of Santa Fé. _August 1913_: Region of the Pampas (Province of Buenos Aires). _March 1914_: Lake Nahuel Huapi--Valcheta--San Antonio--The Rio Negro. _April 1914_: Rioja--Sierra de los Llanos--San Juan--Mendoza. _July 1914_: Entre Rios. These journeys, by rail or on well-known roads, were not supposed to be for the purpose of exploration or discovery. Their one object was to enable me to make a provisional classification of the chief types of country and forms of colonization, and to draw up a methodical programme for more thorough research. The work which I trusted to do in a more leisurely way was, however, suspended in 1914, and, in spite of my very strong desire to do so, I was unable to resume it on the spot in 1919. I have therefore been compelled to publish my first observations, completing them, as well as I could, by a bibliographical study of the country. I have made use of some fragments of a popular work which I began, at the request of the Argentine Commission, for the International Exhibition at San Francisco, of which several chapters were published in my absence by the University of Tucumán (Pierre Denis, _Modern Argentina: Chapters of Economic Geography_. Publications of the University during the Centenary of the Congress of Tucumán of 1816. Buenos Aires, 1916).[1] [1] I take the opportunity to thank M. J. B. Teran, who undertook to edit these chapters, and to express, with him, my satisfaction that events have falsified his rather pessimistic predictions as regards the author. My knowledge of the publications on Argentina has two conspicuous gaps. The first is deliberate. I declined to study at second hand the documents and chronicles which are our sources, to the end of the eighteenth century, for the history of the various provinces that were to form Argentina. Hence the historical data on colonization which will be found in the following chapters relate almost entirely to the nineteenth century. The second gap I was, to my great disappointment, unable to fill up. A large part of the local publications--official or other--maps, statistics, etc., never reached Europe, and Buenos Aires is the only place where one can make a thorough study of them. These publications were available to me until 1914. Since then I have been restricted to the resources of the Paris and London libraries, which are very scanty; and less has been sent from Argentina since the war. I have not the complete statistics up to date. I trust, however, that this picture of Argentina has much more than a retrospective character; that it is not out of date before it is published. I may add that no statistics would enable one to solve the problem which Argentina in 1920 presents to an observer. Has the European War merely retarded the economic evolution of the country, or has it given that evolution a new direction? Will or will not the relations which Argentina is now resuming with the rest of the world be of the same character as the pre-war relations? The effects of the war upon the life of the country must not all be put on the same footing. That some of the exporters to Argentina have gained by the war and others lost--that the share of the United States, and even of Japan, has greatly increased--is a fact that may be regarded from the Argentinian point of view as of secondary importance. The war has, moreover, had the effect of disorganizing marine transport and bringing about a sort of relative isolation which is not yet quite over. The reduction in the imports of English coal has made the petroleum wells of Rivadavia of greater value to the country. It has compelled the Argentinians to make a hurried inventory of their natural resources in the way of fuel. Local industries have tried to meet the needs of the Argentinian market, where they had no longer to bear the competition of European goods. The grave disturbance of prices has enabled them to export certain products which had hitherto been confined to home markets. The war has, moreover, not interfered with the existing streams of export on a large scale from Argentina. The Republic continues to send its cereals, meat, hides and wool to Europe; and there is no reason to suppose that the competition of buyers is likely to diminish, or that the cultivation of wheat and lucerne must become less profitable. The two essential effects of the war seem to have been the stopping of the stream of immigration and the progressive reduction of the support which Europe gave to the work of colonization in the form of advances of capital. From 1914 to 1918 only 272,000 immigrants landed at Buenos Aires, while 482,000 emigrants left the country. In 1918 the figure of immigration and emigration was only 47,000, less than a tenth of what it was in a normal year before the war. The withdrawal of European capital was felt from the very beginning of the war, and it has gone on uninterruptedly, capital from North America not being enough to supply the deficiency entirely. At the same time the extraordinarily favourable balance of trade has led to the storing of an ample reserve of capital in the country. Argentina has, in a very short time, won a financial independence which, in normal conditions, would have entailed long years of work and prosperity. However it may seem, these two facts--the interruption of immigration and the accumulation of capital--cannot be considered independently of each other. The inquiry opened by the Social Museum of Argentina (_La inmigración después de la guerra_, Museo Social Argentino, "Bol. Mensual," viii, 1919, nos. 85-90) show that a speedy restoration of immigration is expected in the Republic. Certainly it seems clear that the political and social insecurity in Europe, the misery of the old world, will probably enhance the attractions of Argentina. We must remember, however, that the stream of emigration from Europe to the Republic in the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth, century was provoked by a complex combination of economic conditions which were closely related to each other. High wages in Argentina were connected with the high interest on money; that is to say, in other words, with the scarcity of capital. The future will decide whether immigration, and the rapid progress of colonization and production, which characterize pre-war Argentina can be adjusted to the policy of accumulation of capital to which the war has condemned the country. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 5 CHAPTER I THE NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA 17 The physical environment--Colonization and the natural regions--The struggle with the Indians--Argentine unity--Argentina and the world. CHAPTER II THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST 36 The inhabited zones of the Andes in the north-west--_Valles_, _Quebradas_, _Puna_--The irrigation of the _valles_--The historic routes--Convoys of stock--The breeding of mules and the fairs--The struggle of the breeders against drought--The Sierra de los Llanos. CHAPTER III TUCUMÁN AND MENDOZA 68 Tucumán and the road to Chile--The climate and the cultivation of the sugar-cane--The problem of manual labour--Irrigation at Mendoza--Water-rights--Viticulture--Protection and the natural conditions. CHAPTER IV THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS 96 Manual labour on the _obrajes_--The land of the _bañados_ and the agricultural cantons of Corrientes--The timber-yards of the Chaco and the tannic-acid works of the Paraná--The exploitation of the _maté_--The forestry industry and colonization. CHAPTER V PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING 119 The arid tableland and the region of glacial lakes--The first settlements on the Patagonian coast and the indigenous population--Extensive breeding--The use of pasture on the lands of the Rio Negro--Transhumation. CHAPTER VI THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS 161 The limits of the prairie--The rains--The wind and the formation of the clay of the Pampas--The wind and the contour--The zones of colonization on the Pampas--Hunting wild cattle and primitive breeding--The sheep-farms--The ranches--The region of "colonies"--The region of lucerne, maize, and wheat--The combination of agriculture and breeding--The economic mechanism of colonization--The exchanges between the different zones of the Pampas. CHAPTER VII ROADS AND RAILWAYS 209 Roads on the plain--The salt road--The "trade route"--Transport by ox-waggons--_Arrieros_ and _Troperos_--Railways and colonization--The trade in cereals--Home traffic and the reorganization of the system. CHAPTER VIII THE RIVER-ROUTES 234 The use of the river before steam navigation--Floods--The river plain--The bed of the Paraná and its changes--The estuary and its shoals--Maritime navigation--The boats on the Paraná. CHAPTER IX THE POPULATION 260 The distribution of the population--The streams of emigration to the interior--Seasonal migrations--The historic towns--The towns of the Pampean region--Buenos Aires. BIBLIOGRAPHY 277 INDEX 291 ILLUSTRATIONS PLATE I. THE FALLS OF THE YGUASSU _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE II. THE ARID ANDES-- PUNTA VACAS, ON THE TRANS-ANDEAN RAILWAY 22 QUEBRADA DE IRUYA 22 III. THE PATAGONIAN ANDES 38 IV. VEGETATION OF THE INTERIOR VALLEYS (ANDES OF THE NORTH-WEST) 48 FOREST ON THE OUTER SLOPE OF THE SUB-ANDEAN CHAINS 48 V. DRY SCRUB OF THE CENTRAL CHACO 58 MARSHES (ESTEROS OR CAÑADAS) OF THE EASTERN CHACO 58 VI. THE _VALLE_ OF SANTA MARIA, NORTH-WEST OF MOUNT ACONCAGUA 70 THE OASIS OF ANDALGALA 70 VII. THE OASIS DEL RINCON, BELOW SAUJIL (ANDALGALA LINE, PROVINCE OF CATAMARCA) 82 THE MONTE AT EL YESO 82 VIII. A VINEYARD AT SAN JUAN 92 A VINEYARD AT MENDOZA 92 IX. THE LAND OF THE BAÑADOS 100 LORETO: FARMING BY INUNDATION 100 X. LORETO: THE RIO PINTO IN THE DRY SEASON 112 LA BANDA (SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO) 112 XI. QUEBRACHO TRUNKS LYING AT THE STATIONS 116 XII. YOKE OF CREOLE OXEN USED FOR THE TRANSPORT OF TIMBER ON THE EASTERN CHACO, OR CHACO OF SANTA FÉ 128 WORKS AT TARTAGAL (EASTERN CHACO) FOR MAKING TANNIC ACID 128 XIII. THE VOLCANO PUNTIAGUDO 142 CERCAS ON THE LIMAY (RISING IN LAKE NAHUEL HUAPI), NEAR THE CONFLUENCE OF THE TRAFUL 142 XIV. THE PATAGONIAN TABLELAND (NEUQUEN) 154 XV. THE PAMPEAN PLAIN-- TRES ARROYES (BUENOS AIRES PRAIRIE BETWEEN THE SIERRA DE TANDIL AND THE SIERRA DE LA VENTANA) 166 TOAY, ON THE CENTRAL PAMPA (590 FEET) 166 XVI. THE PAMPEAN PLAIN-- THE RIO BAMBA (IN THE SOUTH OF THE CÓRDOBA PROVINCE, 500 FEET ABOVE SEA-LEVEL) 182 BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN LUIS PROVINCE, 1,166 FEET ELEVATION) 182 XVII. THE PAMPEAN PLAIN-- BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN LUIS PROVINCE) 194 JUNIN (150 MILES WEST OF BUENOS AIRES, 330 FEET ELEVATION) 194 XVIII. AN OX WAGON 210 THE MAIL COACH 210 XIX. THRESHING ON THE PAMPA 220 SACKS OF WHEAT READY FOR LOADING ON THE RAILWAY 220 XX. CONFLUENCE OF THE YGUASSU AND THE PARANÁ 236 XXI. THE PARANÁ AT CORRIENTES 244 THE BARRANCA AT PARANÁ (ENTRE RIOS), LEFT BANK 244 XXII. THE PARANÁ ABOVE THE ESTUARY 250 XXIII. THE OLDER INDUSTRIES OF THE PAMPA-- DRYING HIDES 262 DRYING SALT MEAT 262 XXIV. A HERD OF CREOLE CATTLE 268 A HERD OF DURHAM CATTLE 268 MAPS I. ARGENTINA: THE NATURAL REGIONS 28 II. IRRIGATION IN THE WEST AND NORTH-WEST OF ARGENTINA 52 III. THE CATTLE-BREEDING AREAS 188 IV. DENSITY OF THE MAIZE CROP 198 V. DENSITY OF THE WHEAT CROP 200 VI. THE RAILWAYS 226 VII. ESTUARY OF THE RIO DE LA PLATA 254 The Argentine Republic CHAPTER I THE NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA The physical environment--Colonization and the natural regions--The struggle with the Indians--Argentine unity--Argentina and the world. The South-American continent is divided, from west to east, into three great zones. The lofty chains of the Andes stretch along the Pacific coast; at the foot of these are immense alluvial tablelands; further east are the level plains of the Atlantic coast. The eastern zone, the tablelands, ends southward at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. It enters Argentine territory only in the north-east corner of the province of Misiones. Below 35° S. lat. the alluvial plains open freely upon the ocean. The position of Buenos Aires, in the threshold of the plain of the Pampas, is somewhat like that of Chicago at the beginning of the prairies; if you imagine the north-eastern States and eastern Canada struck off the map, and the sea penetrating inland as far as the Lakes. The three essential aspects of Argentine scenery are mountain, plain, and river. The Paraná, indeed, is a whole natural region in itself, with its arms and its islands, and the ever-changing low plain over which its floods spread, as one sees it from the top of the clay _barrancas_ (cliffs); though it is so broad that one cannot see the opposite bank. It wanders over the plain like a foreigner, an emissary from tropical America; for it has a flora of its own and tepid waters which often cause a fog over the estuary where they mingle with the waters of the sea. From the general mass of the Argentine plains, we must set apart the region between the Paraná and the Uruguay, which Argentinians call "Mesopotamia." While æolian clays form the soil of the Pampa on the right bank of the Paraná, fluvial deposits--sands and gravel, in which it is impossible to distinguish the contribution of the Uruguay from that of the Paraná--cover a great part of Mesopotamia. The earlier beds of the rivers may be traced here, not only by the alluvial deposits they have left, but by the lagoons which still mark their course. Running waters have shaped the landscape and scooped out a system of secondary valleys, and these reflect the history of the river itself and the variations of base-level which led to alternate periods of erosion and deposit. On the right bank, on the contrary, the Paraná has no tributaries of any importance except at the extreme north of the country. The scarcity of running water is, in fact, one of the characteristic features of the plain of the Pampas. Except in the east, along the Paraná, where a network of permanent streams develops on a comparatively impermeable and fairly humid soil, and except at the foot of the mountains, where irregular torrents and streams, swollen after a storm and scanty in the dry season, disappear, as a rule, within sight of the hills that gave them birth, there is no superficial organized drainage. As a whole, the alluvial covering of the Pampas, the upper beds of which are cut through by the _barranca_ of the Paraná, is not of river origin; it was brought and distributed by the wind, which took the place of running water. The clay of the Pampas is a present from the winds. The increasing dryness of the climate toward the west, as one approaches the Cordillera, explains the feebleness of the erosion by water and the extent of the erosion by wind. It is aridity, too, that gives their particular character to the Argentine Andes. They have little trace of perpetual snow, the lower limit of which approaches to within about four miles of the Bolivian frontier. There are no glaciers there; they reappear in the south only in the latitude of San Juan and Mendoza, on the flanks of the three giants of the southern Cordillera, Mercedario, Aconcagua, and Tupungato. Below the small number of steep furrows which the glaciers have carved, and usually up to the top of the mountain, there spreads what has been called, very expressively, "the zone of rubbish." In this the winter's snows, fretted by the sun in that clear atmosphere, form those multitudes of narrow pyramids which the Argentinians compare to processions of white-robed pilgrims. The underlying rock is rarely visible. It is covered with a thick cloak of rubbish, split off by the frost, which the slow-moving waters released by the melting of the snows heap up at the foot of the slopes, at the bottom of depressions. The half-buried summits are succeeded by basins of accumulation. In the valleys round the mountains there are immense beds of detritic, half-rounded shingle. The torrents have cut their way through the alluvial mass, and they flow at the foot of high terraces which mark the sites of former valleys. The spread of colonization toward the south during the last generation has extended Argentine territory beyond the limits of these classic scenes. The Patagonian Andes differ profoundly from the Northern Andes; and the change is not more sudden than that of the climate, to which it is due. Going toward the south, one passes, almost without a break, from the Atlas Mountains to Scandinavia. The moisture increases in proportion as the mean temperature falls. The mountains are covered with snow, and the glaciers lengthen. In one part of Patagonia they still form a continuous cap, an "inland sea," concealing the rock over the entire central zone of the Cordillera; though they are only the shrunken remainder of a glacial cap which was once far more extensive. Here ice was the chief sculptor of the scenery. It has made elevated tablelands, broadened the deep valleys which cut the flank of the mountain, polished their sides, and deposited at the point where they open out the amphitheatres of the moraines, behind which the waters have accumulated and formed lakes; and these lakes stretch back like fiords to the heart of the Cordillera, and are the pride of Patagonia. The waters of these moisture-laden mountains have, to the east, carved out the Patagonian tableland. It is crossed by broad and boldly cut valleys, several of which, abandoned by the rivers which scoured them, are now dead valleys. The rubbish from the wearing down of the mountains and the glacial moraine has been spread over the whole face of the tableland in the form of beds of gravel. But the rivers that rise in the Andes cross a country of increasing aridity as they descend eastward. There is no tributary to add to their volume. There is none of that softening of lines, of that idle flow of a meandering stream which characterizes the final stage of a river in a moist district. Their inclination remains steep, and their waters continue to plough up coarse sediment; and everywhere, up to the fringes of the valleys, the fluting of the sandstone and steepness of the cliffs bear witness, like the edges of the _hamadas_ of the Sahara, to some other form of erosion than that effected by running water--the influence on the country of the westerly winds. On the tableland the wind polishes the rounded pebbles, makes facets on them, and gives them the colouring of the desert. Thus from the north to the south of Argentina there is a complete contrast in the way in which the controlling forces of the landscape are distributed. In the north the moist winds come from the east; the rains lessen as they pass westward. The clays, capped with black soil, of Buenos Aires are æolian deposits, brought by the wind from the desolate steppes which close the Pampa to the west, fixed and transformed by the vegetation of a moister region. In the south, on the contrary, the rains come from the Pacific, and the fluvio-glacial alluvial beds of the Patagonian tableland are evidence of copious reserves of moisture in the Andes; but the arid climate in which the waters have left them has made its mark upon their surface. This diversity of the physical environment is only fully brought out by colonization. It is colonization, the efforts and attempts of human industry to adjust agricultural or pastoral practices to the natural conditions, which enable us to assign the limits of the natural regions. In this differentiation it is essential to notice the historical element. The introduction of new crops gives a geographical meaning, which had hitherto escaped observation, to climatological limits such, for instance, as the line of 400 millimetres of rainfall which is the western frontier of the region of cereals. These limits of crops remain uncertain for a time, then experience and tradition gradually fix them. They always keep a certain elasticity, however, advancing or receding according as the market for the particular produce is favourable or unfavourable. Improvement in the methods of exploiting the soil--the adoption of better agricultural machinery, dry farming, etc.--usually leads to the extension of the sphere of a particular type of colonization, as it enables this type to overcome some natural obstacle which restricted its expansion. Sometimes, however, it brings to light a new obstacle and creates a new geographical limit. To this category belongs the northern limit of the belt of selective breeding, which slants across the plain of the Pampas from the Sierra de Córdoba to the Paraná. The more or less degenerate cattle of the natives had spread over the whole of the South American continent, except the tropical forests, since the seventeenth century, adapting themselves easily to very different climatic conditions, from the Venezuelan _llanos_ to the _sertao_ of Bahía and the plains of Argentina. But pedigree animals, more valuable and more delicate, introduced on to the Pampas fifty years ago, are not able to resist the malady caused by a parasite called the _garrapate_. Hence the southern limit of the _garrapate_ suddenly became a most important element in the economic life of the Republic. It would lose its importance if we discovered a serum that would give the animals immunity against Texas fever. The range of one and the same cause varies infinitely with the circumstances. The limit of the prairie, as of the scrub (_monte_) which surrounds it on every side, and keeps it at a distance of 320 to 440 miles from Buenos Aires, had no decisive influence on primitive colonization. Whether covered with grasses or brushwood, the plain is equally suitable for extensive breeding. The ranches are the same on both sides of the border. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, when the area of cultivation increased, the prairie was at once found to be superior. The labour required for clearing the brushwood before the plough can work is enough to divert from it, at least for some time, the stream of agricultural colonization. While the population of the _monte_, wood-cutters and breeders, are indigenous, the prairie has absorbed the immigrants from Europe, and the border of the scrub has become in many places an ethnographical frontier.[2] [2] See E. A. S. Delachaux, "Las regiones físicas de la República Argentina," _Rev. Museo Plata_, XV, 1908, pp. 102-131. [Illustration: THE ARID ANDES. PUNTA VACAS, ON THE TRANS-ANDEAN RAILWAY. _The bottom of the valley is 8,000 feet above sea-level; the sides buried under rubbish. It is especially in this latitude, above a height of 10,600 feet, in the zone where the moisture falls as snow even in summer, that the rock is everywhere buried under its own rubbish. This is Keidel's_ Schuttzone. _It extends to the foot of the Alpine peaks, carved by glaciers._ Photograph by Moody, Buenos Aires.] [Illustration: QUEBRADA DE IRUYA. _Eastern slope of the Sierra de Santa Victoria, 65 miles from the Bolivian frontier, in the zone of summer rain. The valleys have been filled with an enormous mass of torrential alluvia. The water afterwards made a course through the mobile deposits._ Photograph by Keidel, Mines Division. PLATE II. To face p. 22.] The changes which man has made in the floral landscape are, as a rule, slight. The limits of the forest zone have scarcely been altered. The beech forest of the southern Andes seems to be less tenacious than the _monte_ which surrounds the Pampa, and it has been ravaged by fire along the whole edge of the southern steppe at 37° S. lat. The work of man is generally confined to changing the primitive complexion of the natural formations, without altering their general appearance. Thus valuable essences are disappearing from the forest and the scrub, the larch and the cypress from the district of the Patagonian Lakes, and the red _quebracho_ from Santiago del Estero. A change that is scarcely visible, but is of considerable economic importance, thus takes place in the vegetation of the prairie owing to the presence of herds. The _pasto fuerte_, composed of rough grasses, which is the natural vegetation, is being succeeded by the _pasto dulce_, in which annual species, soft grasses, leguminous plants, etc., predominate. It is mainly composed of plants of European origin. The difference between the _pasto dulce_ and the _pasto fuerte_ or _duro_ is so important for the farmer that there is hardly a single work on Argentina which does not dwell on it. The idea, however, that the _pasto dulce_ has advanced steadily westward, starting from the vicinity of Buenos Aires and constantly enlarging its domain, is not strictly accurate. In 1895 Holmberg[3] traced the western limit of the zone of the _pasto dulce_ through Pergamino, Junin, Bragado, Azul, Ayacucho, and Mar Chiquita. When we compare this with earlier observations, we see that in the course of the nineteenth century the zone of the _pasto dulce_ has extended by about a hundred miles on the southern Pampa. When Darwin travelled from Bahía Blanca to Buenos Aires in 1833, he found no _pasto dulce_ except round Monte, on the right bank of the Salado. Further north, on the other hand, the extent of the _pasto dulce_ does not seem to have altered appreciably. The expedition to the Salt Lakes in 1778 found that there were already thistles beyond the line of the ranches, and these are characteristic of the _pasto dulce_ in the Chivilcoy region on the Salado, which was then abandoned to herds of wild cattle. "There was thistle enough to cook," says the journal of the expedition. The difference is connected with the history of colonization in the province of Buenos Aires, where ground was gained only toward the south between 1800 and 1875. Since 1895 the _pasto duro_ has been eliminated by agriculture rather than by the feet of the herds. Hence the advance of the _pasto dulce_ is no longer in a continuous line moving toward the west. It is sporadic, depending upon the construction of new railways which open up the plain to the plough.[4] [3] Holmberg, "La Flora de la República Argentina," in the _Secundo Censo de la República Argentina_, vol. i. (Buenos Aires, 1898). [4] _Diario de la expedition de 1778 a las Salinas_ (Coll. de Angelis, iv.). Colonization does more than emphasize the individuality of each of the natural regions. It connects together different features, and blends them in a complex vital organism which goes on evolving and renewing itself. The occupation of the whole of the soil of Argentina by white colonists is quite a recent event. The second half of the nineteenth century was characterized by a rapid territorial expansion, and over more than half the country the expression "new land" must be taken literally. It is only one generation since it was taken from the Indians. There can be no question here of tracing the history of the relations between the white population and the free Indians of the Chaco and the Pampa. The most formidable of these were, in the north, the Abipones and the Tobas. On the Pampa, the foes of the colonists were Indians of Araucanian descent, Ranqueles, Pehuenches, etc., who came down from the mountains and took to horses. At the close of the eighteenth century the frontier of Buenos Aires was on the nearer side of the Salado, and was bordered on the south-east and north-west by the fortresses of Chascomus, Monte, Lobos, Navarro, Areco, Salto, Rojas, and Melincue. The proposal of D'Azara to extend it as far as the Salado was not carried out, and it was not until 1828 that there was a fresh advance westward.[5] [5] _F. de Azara, Diario de un reconocimiento de las guardias y fortines que guarnecen la linea frontera de Republica Argentina_ (1796, Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi.). The documents collected by de Angelis show clearly that there had been some idea in the middle of the eighteenth century of occupying the whole plain to the east of the Sierra de Tandil. These ideas of expansion, of which D'Azara's plan is another instance, were interrupted by the Revolution (_Diario de D. Pedro Pablo Pabon_, Coll. de Angelis, iv. etc.). The new frontier, which would not be altered until 1875, passed by Veinte Cinco de Mayo and Blanca Grande, at the north-western extremity of the Sierra de Tandil. It included the entire region which lies between the Sierra de Tandil and the lower Salado, where the village of Tandil had been established in 1823. In addition, a line of forts stretched from Blanca Grande in the south-west to Bahía Blanca. The expedition sent in search of a port south of the mouth of the Plata had not found any nearer site that was suitable. But Bahía Blanca was to remain an isolated advance post until 1880, sharply separated from both the colonized zone of the Pampas and the establishments on the Patagonian coast. While the cultivated area was thus growing toward the south, it was being reduced in the north of the province of Buenos Aires and the south of Córdoba. The lands of the lower Rio Cuarto were not occupied. About 1860 (Martin de Moussy) the farthest establishments in this sector were S. José de la Esquina and Saladillo on the Tercero. The road to Chile by the Rio Cuarto, Achiras, and San Luis was threatened. The advance of colonization in this zone was at first in the west to Villa Mercedes on the Rio Quinto. The line of the Rio Cuarto by Carlota was reoccupied, and before 1875 the frontier had been pushed back to the Rio Quinto, where it joined the forts of southern Buenos Aires by way of Sarmiento, Gainza, and Lavalle. At last, in 1878, General Roca abandoned the classical methods of fighting the Indians, and took the offensive. He deprived the Indians of their refuges to the south of San Luis and the Central Pampa, and threw them back toward the desert. The Argentine troops followed in their steps as far as the Andes and the Rio Negro. There are to-day few traces in the immense territory that was won of the indigenous population. Its extreme mobility had masked its numerical inferiority.[6] [6] M. J. Olascoaga gives (_La conquête de la Pampa: Recueil de documents relatifs à la campagne du Rio Negro_, Buenos Aires, 1881) valuable documents concerning both the details of the fight with the Indians and the distribution of their _invernadas_ (common lands) in the region of the Pampas. Olascoaga translates it "winter quarters"; it was pasturage on which they kept their cattle and from which they set out on their expeditions. The history of the northern frontier is much the same. At the end of the eighteenth century the Spanish outposts ran along the course of the Salado. To the north of Santa Fé, at Sunchales, Soledad, and San Javier, they protected the direct route from Santa Fé to Santiago del Estero. These outposts were abandoned during the revolutionary period, and the Indians advanced as far as the suburbs of Santa Fé. The roads both to Santiago and, by the Quebracho Herrado, to Córdoba were cut.[7] Urquiza reorganized the Santa Fé frontier, first as far as San Javier, then below 29° S. lat. between Arroyo del Rey on the Paraná and Tostado on the Salado. The expedition of 1884 brought the Argentine army as far as the Bermejo, and broke the resistance of the Tobas. The forts which, more to the north, guarded the province of Salta, on the further side of the Sierras de la Lumbrera and Santa Barbara, had been dismantled at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as the tribes in this part of the Chaco were not hostile.[8] [7] See Thomas J. Hutchinson, _Buenos Aires and Argentine Gleanings_. [8] See Geronimo de la Serna, "Expedición militar al Chaco," _Bol. I, Geog. Argentino_, xv. 1894, pp. 115-79. The memory of the fights with the Indians is so completely blotted out to-day, and the menace of invasion by the tribes has been so rapidly extinguished, that it is difficult to realize fully the profound influence they once had on colonization. The line of forts was a frail barrier that was constantly broken through. The Indians of the Pampa stole cattle from the ranches of Buenos Aires, and sold them in Chile. Colonel Garcia calculates in 1816 that about 40,000 animals were stolen every year.[9] Colonel Roca gives the same figure in 1876. The Pampa put no natural difficulties in the way of the movements of the Indians, no points which might serve as bases for the frontier. D. Pedro Pablo Pabon points out that the proximity of the Sierra, instead of giving protection to outposts in the Tandil region, would be an additional source of insecurity, as it increased the difficulty of keeping watch. In the north the Indian incursions followed the clearings in the scrub, avoiding the dense and impenetrable parts. The lagoon of Mar Chiquita, to the west of Santa Fé, was a valuable rampart, in the shelter of which a fairly large population had established itself round Concepción del Tio. [9] _Nuevo plan de fronteras de la provincia de la Republica Argentina_ (Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi). The enlargements of the frontier were sometimes due to expansive movements of colonization, the breeders occupying new land beyond the line of forts and demanding protection, and sometimes to the arbitrary action of a Government which was eager to extend its territory, though it was still without the means of exploiting it. Roca has well shown the defects of this system of premature military occupation. "To go far away from the populated districts in acquiring new territory is, in my opinion, only an aggravation of the inconveniences of defensive war, and it places a desert between the new lines and the settled regions.... Invasions occur at once."[10] We should therefore be likely to make serious mistakes if we were to identify the history of colonization with that of military occupation. Moreover, the garrisons of the forts did not take a very active part in the exploitation of the soil. The plan which D'Azara proposed, of making _blandengues_ (lancers) colonists and rooting them to the soil by distributing it amongst them, seems to have been purely Utopian. His description of the frontier shows clearly how slight a hold the early colonization had on the Pampa, where the only relatively industrious element was represented by the groups of civilians (_paisanos_) who gathered about the works and moats of the forts. It was different on the Santiago del Estero frontier, where there was agriculture as well as breeding. Here the fort was identical with the village, and each soldier had his plot of wheat, maize, or water-melons.[11] [10] Letter to the Minister of War, October 19, 1875. [11] See the curious picture, which Hutchinson gives us, of military life on the Rio Salado de Santiago about the middle of the nineteenth century. The provinces which were to combine in forming the Argentine Republic had no economic unity. They were really two countries, two separate worlds, the coast regions and the mountain regions (_de arriba_), joined together, but not blended, by the main road from Buenos Aires to Peru, by way of Córdoba, Tucumán, and Salta. They represented two different branches of Spanish colonization. "Two human streams," says Mitre, "contributed to the peopling of the vice-royalty.... The first came directly from Spain, the mother country. It occupied and peopled the banks in the basin of the Rio de la Plata, in the name of the right of discovery and conquest, and fertilized them by its labour. The other stream came from the ancient empire of the Incas, already subdued by the Spanish armies. This spread toward the interior of the country as it passed from the Pacific to the Atlantic, occupied the land in virtue of the same rights, and exploited it by means of a feudal system.... The same year, 1535, saw the foundation of the two towns, Buenos Aires and Lima, and was the centre of these two cycles of discoveries and conquests. Thirty-eight years later, in the same year, 1573, the Conquistadores who came from Peru founded the town of Córdoba, two hundred miles away from the Paraná, while those who came from the Rio de la Plata founded the town of Santa Fé on the banks of that river."[12] [12] Mitre, _Historia de Belgrano_, I, ch. i. pp. 4 and 5. [Illustration: MAP I.--ARGENTINA. THE NATURAL REGIONS. _The map shows the distribution of the natural regions--the dry Andes in the north-west, with irrigated cultivation; the monte, or brush, which is still used for extensive breeding; and the Pampa, with its great areas of cereals and lucerne. The line marking the frontier of 1875 shows the speed at which colonization has developed in the western half of the plain of the Pampas. The only regions not given on the map are the plateau of Misiones, with its tropical forests, and the wet Andes of Patagonia._ To face p. 28.] Tucumán and Salta were established by conquerors from Peru, while San Juan and Mendoza were built by the Chilean Spaniards. The line of demarcation between the two zones of colonization crosses the immense desert plains of the interior, not the elevated tablelands of the Andes. The two types of Argentinians differed in every respect, in blood as well as in environment. The indigenous race, which was eliminated on the coast, mingled intimately with the conquering race in the interior. The establishments on the Rio de la Plata had originally been merely stages on the road to Peru, and had no value of themselves. The elevated tablelands of the Andes long remained the economic centre of Spanish America, and the provinces of the interior, which sold them cattle and mules, depended very closely upon them. The end of the eighteenth century was marked by more rapid progress in the region of the Pampas. The vice-royalty of La Plata was created. Freedom of trade was secured between Buenos Aires and the Spanish ports. The export of hides increased. The influence of Buenos Aires spread over the interior and, in spite of the Córdoba tariff, reached the regions of the north-west. "The creation of the vice-royalty," says Dean Funes, "and the new direction taken by commerce had the effect that Buenos Aires became the centre of considerable and important business."[13] [13] D. Gregorio Funes, _Ensayo de la historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos Aires, y Tucumán_ (Buenos Aires, 3 vols., 1816). This commercial development, which seemed destined to bring closer together the two halves of Argentinian territory, was interrupted in the first half of the nineteenth century. This did not, however, break the connections between the provinces to the north-west of the tableland and those on the Pacific slope, and indeed, they became more varied and more binding. Packs of mules, carrying the ore of San Juan and La Rioja to the foundries of the Chilean side, added life to the Cordillera. When Chile, transformed into an agricultural country, could not meet its own demand for cattle, the oases of the Argentine side were sown with lucerne for fattening the cattle which were to cross the mountains. The provinces of Mendoza, San Juan, La Rioja, Catamarca, Tucumán, and Salta were held within the orbit of the Andes districts.[14] There are historical reasons for this set-back to the influence of Buenos Aires. The wars of the revolutionary period and the conflicts between the Buenos Aires Government and the maritime powers checked the commercial enterprise on the banks of the Plata. This political isolation of the province of Buenos Aires, under the Rosas Government, lasted until 1853. Poncel gives us statistics of the imports of Catamarca which show the great importance of this date in the history of Argentine commerce: [14] The Woodbine Parish map (1839) puts Tinogasta eighty miles out of its proper position, at the very foot of the Come Caballos range, thus reducing by one half its distance from Copiapo, on the Chilean slope. Imports into the Province of 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 Catamarca: From the Pacific across the Cordillera (in millions of 72 50 71 40 12 piastres) From the Atlantic (Buenos Aires or Rosario) 11 7 20 64 116[15] [15] B. Poncel, _Mes itinéraires dans les Provinces du Rio de la Plata, Province de Catamarca_ (Paris, 1864). In 1854-5 the Cordillera route definitely ceased to be of commercial importance to Catamarca, and it was afterwards used merely for the export of cattle. But the attraction of Buenos Aires after 1853 was not merely due to its commercial life and its intermediate position between the provinces of the interior and Europe. It was chiefly based upon the economic development of the region of the Pampas, which began about this date, and altered the balance between the two halves of Argentina. The exploitation of the Pampa, the improvement in breeding methods, and the introduction and expansion of agriculture on the plain of the Pampa, which fill all publications on modern Argentina, are in themselves one of the great events in the economic history of the nineteenth century. They had also an indirect but profound influence upon the life of other parts of Argentina. The consuming capacity of the Pampa increased simultaneously with its wealth and population. It absorbed the products of the neighbouring provinces and in turn made customers of them, distributing amongst them, according to the services they rendered, part of the gold it obtained from beyond the Atlantic. One after the other the provinces lost the relations which had hitherto connected them with foreign lands. There was the same development all over the zone of cereals and lucerne--the direction of the stream of commerce was reversed. In some places, as at Tucumán and Mendoza the change was accomplished a generation ago. In other places, as at Salta and San Juan, it is still going on. In yet other places, the more remote valleys, like Jachal and Santa Maria, it will occur in the near future. By a singular anomaly the Far West of North America, which sprang up half a century ago, tends to withdraw more and more from the influence of the eastern States, which provided it with capital and immigrants, while the Far West of Argentina, which is just as old as the east and by no means a creation of the east, since it developed in isolation and freedom, and was already adult and rich when they came into contact, has nevertheless fallen into complete dependence upon the east in the course of a few years. The life of the whole country depended upon the great colonization movement which transformed the plain of the Pampas. This brought about an economic unity which was at once reflected in the political world. The railway from Buenos Aires reached Tucumán before 1880; Mendoza, San Juan, Salta, and Catamarca before 1890; and La Rioja before 1900. The establishment of closer economic relations between the coast and the provinces of the interior has nearly always inaugurated a period of great prosperity for the latter. In every case the influence of Buenos Aires vitalized them, put an end to their slumbers, and made them rich. Not only did the coast take for itself the products of the western provinces, which had hitherto found their way to other markets, but new centres of production had to be created to meet its needs. The forests of the Chaco received a great influx of wood-cutters, to provide the sleepers for the railways. The valley of the Rio Negro was planted with vines, to provide the wines of the colonies in the district of Bahía Blanca. The attraction of the Pampa was felt as far as the frontiers. Paraguay competed with Corrientes in the supply of tobacco and oranges; with Misiones in the supply of _yerba maté_. Each district chose the particular crop which was best suited to its climate, in order to secure the highest possible advantage from its relations with Buenos Aires. The two most brilliant satellites of the Pampa, the most important productive centres of the interior, are Tucumán and Mendoza. All the other important towns of Argentina belong themselves to the region of the Pampas. Tucumán and Mendoza, which live by supplying the Pampa with sugar and wine, have become in turn secondary centres of attraction. They are a sort of regional capitals, and they have their own spheres of economic influence. A network of commercial streams has developed about them, and this has led to the formation of new roads. These lines of local interest are easily recognized on a map of the railways, where one sees them superimposed upon the regular fan of lines which converges toward Buenos Aires. La Rioja provides the props for the vines of San Juan and Mendoza. From the north of Córdoba to Salta, a distance of about 250 miles, the wood is cut for the fuel of the sugar-works of Tucumán. Santiago dries the fodder for its troops of mules. The prairies of Catamarca, which once fattened the cattle that were intended for Chile, and often came even from Tucumán, now sell their beasts to the butchers of Tucumán. The wines of San Juan find their best customers at Tucumán. Even the nearest portions of the plain of the Pampas, to the north-east of Santa Fé and the south of San Luis, supply maize and wheat to Tucumán and Mendoza, instead of sending them to the ports for export. While Argentina lives on the Pampa, the Pampa lives on export. It has been developed through the inflow of European immigrants, and Europe pays by sending its manufactured products and capital. Except as regards emigration, the United States had, before the war, much the same relation to Argentina as the countries of Western Europe. Thus the economic prosperity of the Republic binds it more and more closely to the life of the whole world. Its position in the temperate zone of South America had retarded its entrance into world-commerce, and this explains the slowness with which its colonization proceeded at first. Its climate and products were too similar to those of Spain. Not only the mining and metallurgical centres of the Andes and of Mantiqueria, but even the sugar and cotton regions of Brazil, the Antilles, and the Guianas, were developed before the plains of the Pampas. The turn of the Argentine Republic did not come until the growth of population in the industrial countries of Europe made them dependent upon foreign lands for their food, and until the application of steam to ships made it possible to export wool, meat, and cereals on a large scale. When we compare the economic organization of Argentina with that of the United States, we see that it is both less complex and less capable of being self-contained. The difference is due to the architecture of the country. I said at the beginning of this chapter that Argentina has no equivalent for the zone of the Atlantic tablelands, which is now the great industrial region of North America. The industrial prosperity of eastern North America provides a safe home market for the farmers of the west, and relieves them of the need of exporting their produce. Moreover, the Atlantic tablelands, the original centres of population, where the first generations of colonists lived on land that was often poor, have seen the gradual formation of reserves of labour and capital which were afterwards used in colonizing the west. The east sifted, in a sense controlled, the influence of modern Europe in the colonization of the United States. It classified and assimilated the new emigrants who set out for the west, mingled with the troops of native pioneers on their way to the prairies. In the same way, when European capital flowed into the United States, it found in the eastern cities a large treasury and a body of financiers in whose hands it had to remain. In Argentina, on the contrary, everything speaks of the close and direct dependence of the country upon oversea markets. The soil itself bears the marks of this solidarity. It is seen in the network of the railways, the concentration of the urban population in the ports, and the distribution of the cultivated districts in concentric circles which are often limited, not by a physical obstacle, but by the cost of freightage between the productive centre and the port. Thus we get a geographical expression of facts which seem at first sight to belong to the purely economic or sociological order. CHAPTER II THE OASES OF THE NORTH-WEST AND PASTORAL LIFE IN THE SCRUB The inhabited zones of the Andes in the north-west--_Valles_, _Quebradas_, _Puna_--The irrigation of the _valles_--The historic routes--Convoys of stock--The breeding of mules and the fairs--The struggle of the breeders against drought--The Sierra de los Llanos. The whole life and wealth of the arid provinces of north-western Argentina depend upon irrigation; the water-supply definitively settles the sites of human establishments. The water resources are irregularly distributed. They are especially abundant in the south (San Juan, Mendoza, and San Rafael), where the torrents of the Cordillera are fed by the glaciers, and on the outer fringe of the hills above the Chaco, at the foot of Aconcagua, which gathers masses of cloud and rain on its flanks (Tucumán). In the intermediate district, on the contrary, in the regions of La Rioja and Catamarca, and in the interior of the hilly zone to the north-west of Tucumán, the amount of available water is small; the oases shrink into small spots far removed from each other. This natural inequality was not felt at first. For a long time the spread of cultivation and the progress of wealth were restricted only by the scarcity of population, the difficulties of transport, and the inadequacy of the markets. The best endowed oases paid no attention to the surplus supply of water, for which they had no use. We have to come down to the close of the nineteenth century to find men reaching the limits which nature has set to colonization, and mapping out their domain. It is not until then that La Rioja ceases to compete with Mendoza, or Catamarca with Tucumán. While large industrial enterprises develop at Mendoza and Tucumán, strong centres of urban life arise, the population increases, and immigrants stream in, the oases of the interior scarcely change. Their population does not keep its level. Life has an archaic character that one finds nowhere else in Argentina. The physical conditions have retarded, one would almost say crystallized, the economic development. The living generation exploits the soil in ways that to some extent go back as far as the indigenous tribes, the masters of their Spanish conquerors in the art of irrigation. The industry of fattening and convoying cattle, which was once the chief source of wealth of the whole country, is still alive in those districts. The zone of the elevated tablelands of the Andes without drainage toward the sea--the Puna--has still, below 22° S. latitude on the northern frontier of Argentina, a width of about 250 miles. This breadth steadily contracts southward as far as 28° S. latitude, where the Puna ends about the level of the road from Tinogasta to Copiapo. To the east and south of the Puna the Argentine Andes are cut from north to south by a series of long gullies and large basins, between which there are lofty and massive chains with steep flanks. Some of these lie in the heart of the mountains, while others often open like gulfs upon the edge of the plain. These depressions with rectilinear contours are a common feature of the topography of the Andes in this latitude. The central plain of Chile is closely related to them. In the Argentine speech they are called _valles_: Valle de Lerma, Valle Calchaqui, Valle de Iglesias, de Calingasta, d'Uspallata. They are, however, not "valleys" in the sense of hollows made by erosion by running water. They owe their formation to tectonic movements, subsidences of the surface. The scanty rivers of the arid Anacs are not capable of doing work of that kind. When they enter the already formed bed of a _valle_, they seem to be lost in the immense space. Often they dry up in it, leaving behind the sediment and salts with which the water was laden. In other places they cut at right angles across the _valle_, escaping by narrow breaches in it, while the depression continues its course on either side, taking in sections of a number of independent streams. Opposed to the _valle_ is the eroded ravine, carved out by water, the _quebrada_. It opens upon a _valle_ with a V-shaped mouth, which widens out at the top, and one can recognise at sight the various slopes and the successive stages of erosion. Narrow and winding, a level bed of shingle filling the entire base of the valley, it rises rapidly toward the mountains and provides a route from the _valle_ to the _puna_. These _valles_, _quebradas_ and _puna_ are the three inhabited zones of the Andes. The first is the richest. The inhabitant of the _valle_, proud of his comparative comfort, has for his neighbour in the _quebrada_ or the _puna_--the _coyada_--a contempt such as one finds the inhabitants of the good land in Europe feeling for the people in poorer districts. The narrower the _valle_, the less rain there is. The observations give 112 millimetres of rain per year at Tinogasta, 290 at Andalgala, and 200 at Santa Maria. Salta and Jujuy have a much moister climate, and have no less than 570 and 740 millimetres of rain annually. This is because the eastern chain of the Andes, which stretches from the Sierra de Santa Victoria on the Bolivian frontier to Aconcagua, sinks lower at the latitude of Salta, and lets in the moisture of the Chaco to the heart of the zone of the Andes. The rains of Salta and Jujuy are suspended during the winter, but they are so heavy during the summer months (November to March) that maize, which needs only the summer rain, can be cultivated without irrigation. But when we follow the Valle de Lerma southward from Salta the maize harvest becomes more and more uncertain, and it is no longer sown in dry soil when we get to about twenty miles from Salta, in the latitude of the confluence of the Arias and the Juramento. However, the summer rains, which are good for maize, are very injurious to the vine; they spoil the grapes. Thus the southern limit of the cultivation of maize in dry soil almost coincides with the northern limit of the vine. At that point we have the real beginning of the typical scenery of the _valles_. [Illustration: THE PATAGONIAN ANDES. _Mount Tronador (11,500 feet) on the Chilean frontier, dominating the road from Lake Nahuel Huapi to Chile. The glaciers still reach the bottom of the valley, which they filled at one time. A burnt forest in the foreground._ PLATE III. To face p. 38.] The need of irrigation is due to the scarcity of rain, but it is accentuated by a number of causes which tend to increase the aridity. The _valles_ are the scene of scorching day-winds, the _zonda_, like the _Föhn_ of the Swiss Alps, which, there being no snow, dry up the water of the springs and of the irrigation trenches, or use the deposits left by the waters to form dunes, which they push southward, sometimes like veritable glaciers of sand. Moreover, the soil of the _valles_ is generally composed of coarse and permeable alluvial deposits, which absorb the rain-storms immediately. There is at the foot of both sides of the hills which enclose each _valle_ an immense and far-lying bed of imperfectly rounded shingle. This double zone of detritus is strangely desolate, for the vegetation on it is restricted to isolated bushes of _jarilla_ and _tola_. From the sheepfolds on the mountains to the oases in the valleys one hardly meets a single house. The bed of the valley is not so desolate. A broad ribbon of sand marks the dry bed of a torrent, and on the clays of its banks, if the sheet of water underground is not too deep, one finds, in spite of the goats and asses and charcoal-burners, little forests of _algarrobas_, which the foundries use for fuel. The modern alluvial beds, gravel and sand, represent the upper stratum of a considerable series of continental deposits which lie on the Paleozoic crystalline rock of the Andes.[16] They chiefly consist of red sandstone and coloured marls, which crop up here and there through the alluvial covering and give the landscape a rugged character, worn by water and wind. There is no trace of humus: nothing to soften the vivid colours of the rock. Bodenbender, to whom we owe the first general attempt to classify the series, points out the importance of distinguishing the different strata in connection with the question of water supply and the conditions of human life.[17] A complete geographical study would have to follow the geological description in detail. In places--on the eastern edge of the Sierra de los Llanos--the fine modern clays are in contact with the granites of the hills and form above them a thick bed that is rich in fresh water. In other places--south-westward of the Sierra de la Famatina, as far as the Bermejo--the outcrop is of red sandstone only. The tablelands of Talampaya and Ischigualasta, which are cut across by the gorges of the tributaries of the Bermejo, form one of the most conspicuously desert regions in the whole Republic. Wherever the gypsiferous marls of the Calchaqui are near the surface, the springs are saline. The undulations of the impermeable rocky substratum bring to light the water that gathers in the alluvial beds. Thus the streams which come down the Famatina range in the west disappear in the alluvial beds on the fringe of the Sierra, but re-appear presently in the oasis of Pagancillo. [16] This series, stretching from the Permian to the Tertiary, also includes, especially in the region of the sub-Andean chains, on the fringe of the Chaco, a number of marine strata (see Bonarelli, _Las sierras subandinas del Alto y Aguaragüe y los yacimientos petroliferos del distrito minero de Tartagal_ "Ann. Min. Agric.," Seccion Geologia, Mineralogia, y Mineria, viii. No. 4: Buenos Aires, 1913). [17] G. Bodenbender, _Parte meridional de la Provincia de la Rioja y regiones limitrofes_ (Ann. Min. Agric., Seccion Geol., Minerol., y Mineria, vii. No. 3: Buenos Aires, 1912). Hence the _valles_ are by no means wholly productive. The oases represent only a limited portion of them. It would be impossible to imagine a more striking contrast than that of the freshness and life of the oases compared with the surrounding desert. Screens of poplars shelter them from the _zonda_. The water runs along trenches paved with round pebbles under the spreading vines, at the foot of which, to economize water and space, lucerne is sown. Each garden feeds a family. Near the raw-brick houses there are large earthenware vessels, as tall as a man, in which the corn is kept. The hammering of the cooper fills the air. In places the oasis is watered by a stream. In those cases there is on each side of the bed of the stream a narrow fringe, a continuous ribbon, of smiling gardens, which hide the path. Above and below Santa Maria a trench is opened every mile in the wet sands of the Rio. The water rises in it and fills it, and is directed by it toward one of the banks, where it is jealously collected and distributed. The water which flows from the irrigated fields and returns to the river, as well as that which the porous side of the trench has permitted to escape, goes to fill another trench and supply other fields farther on. The region of Los Sauces, in the northern part of the province of La Rioja, to the south of Tinogasta, shows a different type of irrigated cultivation, on account of the sandy course of the stream. The fields follow the feeding artery for about fifty miles. It is bled at the beginning of each bend, the waters remaining underground like hidden wealth. In most cases however, the _valle_ has no running water. What reaches it from the lateral _quebradas_ is lost in the alluvial beds accumulated at the point where the _quebrada_ enters the _valle_. In order to make use of it the cultivated areas are grouped on the cone of deposition; at least, that is the position in the great majority of the oases. A _costa_ is a line of separate oases with their backs to the same slope. When the _valle_ is narrow, the _costas_ on either side of the sterile depression face each other, like two parallel roads. The water of the _quebrada_ is never sufficiently abundant to irrigate the whole of the cone of the torrent. In order to create an oasis there, they have selected the most easily cultivable zone, which is usually the foot of the cone, where the deposits are finer and more fertile, retain the moisture better, and require less watering. The summit of the cone is composed of coarse stones, the first to be dropped by the torrent as it loses its strength. These are bad lands, where the water is wasted. To meet the occasional drought and the danger of sudden floods in this fluvial zone, which is entirely the domain of the torrent, there is need of constant care and ingenuity. At Colalao del Valle the cultivated fields are five or six miles from the summit of the cone. After a number of successive years of drought the stream of water which reached them on the flanks of the cone lost half its volume and threatened to disappear altogether. They then built a stone dam at the outlet of the _quebrada_, and the water accumulates behind this during the night. At three o'clock in the morning the sluices are opened, and the stream, having thus nursed its strength, reaches the fields down below about seven o'clock. Then the sun and the wind rise, just at the time when the reservoir is empty, and by the middle of the day the stream ceases, and irrigation is suspended. At Andalgala, above which rises the glittering crest of Aconcagua, the waters of the melting snows which feed the torrent have not time to be "decanted" before they reach the valley. They come down laden with mud and sand. Above the points where the irrigation-channels begin the people make, in the bed of the torrent, a dam of branches of trees which filters the water. It is swept away by every flood that occurs, and is at once restored. What is even more admirable than the ingenuity of the _vallista_ in utilizing the natural resources is the minute detail of the water-rights. It seems as if the _vallista_ is even more cunning in protecting himself from his neighbour than in dealing with nature. The water-customs of these Andean valleys are worth an extensive study. The water does not belong to the State, and is not used by concession from the State. It is private property. The owner uses or abuses it as he pleases on the lands which he has selected. A man may be poor in land and rich in water, which he accordingly sells. There are frequent business deals in regard to water-rights, just as in regard to the soil and its produce. Appropriation of water often precedes appropriation of the soil. Many oases are communities where the non-irrigated lands are common to the whole population, and the irrigated fields alone are divided. A primary group of customs regulates the relations to each other of communities higher up and lower down the same stream. At Catamarca the water of a certain stream is shared by Piedra Blanca and Valle Viejo. Piedra Blanca, in the upper part, absorbs the whole of the water for a week, but it must then suspend its irrigation during the following week and permit the stream to flow down the valley. The same evening, or the next morning, according to the season, the water reaches Valle Viejo. It is a custom known as the _quiebras_ in the southern valleys of the desert side of Peru, where it allows different stages of cultivation to proceed simultaneously. In the same way, above Santa Maria, where several communities (S. José, Loro Huasi, etc.) receive the water brought by a channel from the Rio Santa Maria, each of them has a right to the full output of the channel for three days. At the end of that time the sluices are closed, and the water passes to the next community. There is grave trouble for any oasis that has its rights infringed or does not compel the communities higher up to respect them. Amongst individuals the water-right is generally defined by a measurement of time, a certain number of days or hours--during which the owner controls the entire flow of the spring or stream. It is only when the water is more abundant that we find another method of fixing the right of water, defining it by bulk. The water is then said to be _demarcada_, as the unit is customarily the _marco_, or the volume which passes through an opening about twenty-one centimetres in width and eight in height. The _marco_ has infinite divisions, and each subdivision has its own name--the _naranja_, the _bombilla_, the _paja_, and so on. As all the water is utilized, and the rights of all are equally entitled to respect, the division of the water into _marcos_ (_demarcacion_) is in practice merely a proportional distribution of it amongst those who have rights to it. If the sum total of rights expressed in _marcos_ represents something like the total flow of a stream during an average season, in the time of low water it is disproportionate, and the water no longer flows to the tops of the _marcos_. In other words, the quantity of water granted to each rises or falls with the rise or fall of the stream itself. Theoretically, when the water-right is defined in _marcos_ it is permanent. Often, however, it is impossible to grant each proprietor a permanent title to the water. Even in oases where the water is "demarked," the _turno_--that is to say, the turn of the proprietors to have water--which is the absolute rule in the poorest oases, reappears during the months of scarcity, in winter, when there is no rain, and at the beginning of summer. It reappears also when the right of ownership has been broken up into fractions that are too small, and it is better to grant a larger volume of water for several hours instead of a constant stream of water which would be too scanty for profitable use. At Andalgala the "turn" is sometimes obligatory, and regulated by custom, in channels where the irrigating proprietors are too numerous; at other times optional, and settled by convention amongst the owners themselves, when water is scanty. At Valle Viejo (Catamarca), when the water runs low, they set up the _mita_; that is to say, the sluices remain closed in each channel during four days out of eight, each proprietor in turn giving up his right to a permanent supply in order to have a double allowance when his turn comes. The _turno_ is, therefore, a general practice. Everywhere we can see the farmers on the watch along the _acequias_, waiting for the moment to close their neighbour's trench with a pellet of clay and to let the stream into their own trenches with a blow of the spade. The most minute precautions are taken in order that no one shall suffer injury. As the irrigation is always slower and less thorough during the night, they take it in turns to have the day and the night alternately. When the community receives the water from another community higher up the stream, the succession of "turns" amongst its members differs every time. The water comes down charged with sediment, pushing in front of it a mass of liquid mud, as the flush of a torrent does. It takes some time for the stream to become regular and clear. The first irrigator therefore exercises his right under unfavourable conditions. In the local phraseology the _volcada de agua_ is not as good as the _corte de agua_, which means the irrigation that begins when the _acequia_ is full. Irrigation entails the services of quite a staff of arbitrators and administrators. The head men, who have jurisdiction of a higher order and secure the accurate distribution of the water amongst a number of channels or communities, are now, as a rule, officials of the administration, appointed by the provincial authorities (_juez de Irrigacion_ at Catamarca, _juez de rio_ at Rosario de Lerma). But the _juez de agua_ of each community or each channel is a syndic elected by the interested parties. At Santa Maria the _juez de agua_ is elected by the owners and confirmed by the Government. He controls irrigation throughout the department, settling all differences, submitting plans of work to a meeting of the owners, and assigning their respective charges in labour and contributions according to their rights. * * * * * This land of customs and traditions is also a land of lively movement. The briskness of the traffic is primarily due to continuous exchange between the various zones of the mountainous district. This large trade, so scattered that the railways could not dream of satisfying its needs, is carried, in the old fashion, on the backs of mules. The lively aspect of the roads between the tableland and the lower valleys of the region, the brisk interchange of goods between zones with different climates, is one of the common features of life on the Andes. But the classic spectacle presents a different aspect in different latitudes. In Peru, and in southern Bolivia, the higher valleys--Jauja, Cuzco, the Pampas of Cochabamba and Sucre--have centres of dense population and agricultural wealth at a height of between 9,000 and 11,000 feet. They raise cereals, and receive from the tropical districts (_montañas and yungas_) sugar, cane-brandy, cocoa, and coca-leaf. The valleys of the Argentine Andes are usually at a less elevation than the _yungas_ and _montañas_ of Bolivia and Peru. But they are not hot districts, and have not tropical vegetation. Frost prevents the harvesting of sugar-cane at Salta, at a height of 4,000 feet. As to the coca-leaf, which is not as much used here as in the north, the Argentine _valles_ do not send it to the tableland, but receive it indirectly from there, through the southern _yungas_. In default of tropical crops, the Argentine _valles_ sow wheat and maize, which they sell to the Indians of the cold districts of the Puna for wool and salt. These commercial currents are of very ancient, probably pre-Columbian origin. Boman has discovered ears of maize in the prehistoric tombs of the Puna de Atacama.[18] The Puna, at a height of 11,000 to 12,000 feet, is permanently inhabited, unlike the high valleys of the Cordillera de San Juan, which are occupied only during the summer season by Chilean shepherds. It is primarily a pastoral and mining region, but it has some tilled land, at more than 6,700 feet above the level of the valleys. The higher limit of annual cultivation in the cold districts, which is fixed by the summer temperature, does not fall in the same way as that of arboriculture in warm districts, because trees suffer from the winter frosts. The Indians of Cochinoca and Susques sow lucerne and barley for fodder, and the _quinoa_ and potato for food. Transport between the Puna and the _valles_ is carried on by the inhabitants of the Puna, and is not shared by the _vallistas_. They are especially active in the north, in the province of Jujuy. Belmar shows how important the sales of the Puna woollen goods were by the middle of the nineteenth century.[19] These fabrics were used by the mill-owners of the Rio Grande de Jujuy to pay for the work of the Indians of the Chaco, whom they employed in the sugar-cane harvest. The competition of the manufactured products of Europe now menaces the domestic weaving of the Puna, just as the competition of the flour of the Pampa menaces the cultivation of cereals in the _valles_. [18] Eric Boman, _Antiquités de la région andine de la République Argentine et de la Puna de Atacama: Mission scient. G. de Créqui-Montfort et E. Sénéchal de la Grange_ (Paris, vols. i. and ii. 1908). [19] Belmar, _Les provinces de la Fédération argentine_ (Paris, 1856). Besides this traffic of local interest the _valles_ serve for a traffic of a higher, almost a continental character. It seems certain that during the pre-Spanish period the road from the Peruvian tablelands to Chile avoided the inhospitable desert of the Puna de Atacama, entered the region of the _valles_ to the east, and crossed the Cordillera in the latitude of Tinogasta, or even a little further south. That was the route of the armies of the Incas, which in the fourteenth century came as far as Maule. The pre-Columbian roads, of which Boman has found traces between the Valle de Lerma and the Valle Calchaqui, seem to correspond with this direction of traffic. By this route the long _quechua_ passed amongst the Diaguites populations. The conquerors followed the Indian guides. Almagro, in going from Peru to Chile, passed through the _valles_ at the eastern edge of the Andes. Later the _valles_ were incorporated in the many variations of the historic high road, one of the first and busiest of Spanish America, which goes from the Rio de la Plata to Lima: a route both for armies and merchants. The plan proposed by Matienzo (1566) to make a road from the silver mines to the estuary of the Paraná, through the Valle de Calchaqui, seems to have been intended merely to improve a line of communication that had already been in use. Buenos Aires for a long time received European goods by this road. About 1880 the Salta route recovered for a time its continental importance, during the Pacific War and the occupation by the Chileans of the maritime provinces of Bolivia.[20] At that time it was the only outlet for Bolivia. [20] See Brackebusch, "Viaje a la provincia de Jujuy," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, iv. 1883, pp. 9-17. [Illustration: VEGETATION OF THE INTERIOR VALLEYS (ANDES OF THE NORTH-WEST). _Descent of Tafi del Valle, going to Santa Maria. The ravine is excavated out of the mass of coarse deposits which forms a fringe between the mountain and the valley. On this permeable soil the vegetation is particularly thin. Cactus._ Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: FOREST ON THE OUTER SLOPE OF THE SUB-ANDEAN CHAINS. _Sierra de San Antonio (Salta province). Perennial foliage, creepers, ferns._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE IV. To face p. 48.] But of all the forms of traffic that have enlivened the _valles_ the most constant, and the form that has had the most profound influence on their existence, is the movement of cattle. The cattle trade has been of fundamental importance in the history of the colonization of South America. Animals were the only goods that could be conveyed any great distance. At the beginning of the conquest the productive regions of the continent, which supplied the export trade with Europe, were very limited in extent. Pastoral colonization began at once, and spread over a very wide area. Herds of oxen, for meat or draught, horses, and mules, made their way toward the centres of consumption: towns like Lima, Bahía, and Rio, the Peruvian mines, and the sugar-refineries of the north-east of Brazil, and later toward the _yerbales_ of Paraguay or the seaports of the Caribs and the Rio Grande do Sul, where the jerked meat industry developed. The cattle routes converge upon these centres. The export of cattle and mules from the Argentine plains to Peru was fully established by the close of the sixteenth century, and it seems to have continued without interruption ever since. Upper Peru is, however, not the only market on which the Argentine breeders lived. At the end of the eighteenth century D'Azara demanded that they should permit the sale of horses and mules to Brazil, for use in the mines. The cattle traffic with Portuguese territory had not then assumed the form of a regular commerce, and the Brazilians made raids on the north-eastern provinces for the animals they needed--60,000 a year, D'Azara says.[21] The export of cattle to Paraguay and Misiones was, on the other hand, of substantial economic importance in the eighteenth century. Before the Revolution, Rengger says, as many as 200,000 head of cattle passed yearly from Corrientes to Paraguay, which paid for them in _maté_ and tobacco.[22] This trade was kept up intermittently in the nineteenth century. The exports from Corrientes were especially important at the time when the Paraguay stock was reconstituted after the war (40,000 head of cattle in 1875). [21] _Memorias sobre el estado rural del rio de la Plata en 1801, Escritos postumos de D. Felix de Azara_, published by D. Augustin de Azara (Madrid, 1847). [22] A. Rengger, _Reise nach Paraguay in den Jahren 1818 bis 1826_ (Aarau, 1835). Finally, the Chilean market was opened to the Argentine breeders about the middle of the nineteenth century. In the time of Martin de Moussy the convoys of cattle to Chile were so numerous that the lucerne fields of both slopes were stripped bare at the very beginning of the season; and they were rented at a high price.[23] Not only the mining provinces of the north, but central Chile also, bought Argentine cattle. The opening of the Chilean market was followed by a remarkable expansive movement in the pastoral colonization of Argentine territory. We can follow the progress of this not only in Martin de Moussy's book, but in all contemporary works of travel. Its chief theatres are the provinces of San Luis and of Santiago del Estero, north of the Rio Dulce, where Hutchinson, in particular, describes the activity of the ranches.[24] Finally, after the Pacific War (1880) the nitrate district, taken from Bolivia and Peru by Chile, received a great influx of population, and works sprang up in the midst of the desert. The nitrate fields, wholly barren and doomed, under their shroud of grey dust, to an unalterable desolation, became at once one of the chief centres of consumption for Argentine stock. [23] The fattening of cattle for Chile was no longer done in the _invernadas_ of Mendoza at the beginning of the nineteenth century. See an article on Mendoza in the _Telegrafo Mercantil_, January 31, 1802, which tells of the development of ranches on the Tunuyan. Mendoza and San Juan were their only markets, and they did not sell cattle to Chile. [24] T. J. Hutchinson, _Buenos Aires y otras Provincias argentinas_ (translated by L. Varela, Buenos Aires, 1866). It is difficult to give accurate details of the volume of trade in cattle in colonial Argentine. However, the facts given by travellers (though they often merely borrow from each other) suffice to show how important this traffic was in the life of the country and the extent of the zone that was occupied with it. As early as the middle of the seventeenth century Córdoba seems to have exported to Peru as many as 28,000 to 30,000 mules annually.[25] At the close of the eighteenth century, we read in D'Azara, 60,000 mules were exported; and Helms gives the same figure.[26] The mules were bought young by Córdoba dealers at Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, and Corrientes, reared at Córdoba, and then sent to Salta, where they were sold in their third year to mule-dealers from Peru. [25] Azcarate de Biscay, quoted in H. Gibson, _La evolucion ganadera_ in _Censo agropecuario nacional_, Buenos Aires, 1909, vol. iii. [26] A. Z. Helms, _Voyage dans l'Amérique méridionale_ (Paris, 1812). The journey was in 1788. An article in the _Telegrafo Mercantil_ of September 9, 1801 (reproduced in the _Junta de Historia y Numismatica americana_, Buenos Aires, 2 vols., 1914-5) contains very valuable information in regard to the mule trade. From 1760 to 1780 Salta sent between 40,000 and 50,000 mules annually to Peru. At Salta they were worth ten piastres each before they were broken in, and thirteen or fourteen afterwards; and they were sold at the age of four years. The _arrieros_, who conveyed European goods and home products (_ropas y frutas_), bought a large number of them. The _Telegrafo_ complains that this trade has been gradually transformed. The mules now came from Santa Fé and Córdoba to Salta two years old, and after the _invernada_ they were still, at fair time, barely three years old. They suffered much during the long journey to Lima, and the losses of the caravans were heavy. They could not be loaded for the journey, and, as the _arrieros_ could no longer secure adult and strong animals, the freight to the tableland had risen, to the serious loss of merchants on the coast. The reply of a Potosi mule-dealer (December 13th) clearly shows that the last years of the eighteenth century had been marked by increasingly heavy demands from Peru for Argentine mules. In order to meet these demands the Córdoba breeders had developed production. The buyers, coming to Salta from Lima, Cuzco, and Arequipa, took, without discussion or examination, the batches that were offered them. The correspondent of the _Telegrafo_ complains bitterly of these _caballeritos_ who came from Peru with their 100,000 piastres, and raised the price at Salta, alleging that their instructions were to get mules at any cost. Robertson gave in 1813 the recollections of a mule-dealer as to the convoys of mules between Santa Fé and the Andes, which had already ceased at that time. Each convoy or _arreo_ comprised 5,000 to 6,000 mules. They came from Entre Rios, or even from the Uruguay, whence they were brought, after crossing the Paraná, to the Santa Fé ranches. The Santa Fé breeders owned the best part of the land on the left bank of the river. The expedition also included thirty waggons of goods and 500 draught-oxen; and fifty _gauchos_ were in charge of it. The main expense was then tobacco and _yerba_. One feature of this mule traffic that is emphasized in all the descriptions is that it was divided into two stages, with an interval between them, for breaking in. As we have already learned from Azcarate, Córdoba, Santa Fé, Santiago, and Salta kept the mules for two or three years before sending them to Peru. Córdoba and Santiago del Estero seem to have been important in connection with the industry of breaking in the mules. The sending of cattle on foot to Bolivia and Chile is now only a subsidiary element of the national economy, but it is not yet quite extinct, as the table on p. 53 shows. Whatever its point of departure, the traffic in stock always passed through the _valles_. Transport of cattle was particularly difficult in the Argentine Andes. The chief obstacles were not the elevation of the passes or the steepness of the roads, but the scarcity of water and the extent of the _travesias_, which were equally poor in pasturage and water, and had to be crossed rapidly by doubling the stages. The difficulties of the journey were very profitable to the oases that lay along the route. The cattle-driver could not dispense with the hospitality of the _vallista_ or dispute the price he cared to charge. [Illustration: MAP II.--IRRIGATION IN THE WEST AND NORTH-WEST OF ARGENTINA. _Extent of the irrigations in the north (zone of the great summer rains), and the south (glacier zone) The historic industry of fattening cattle in the invernadas and the export of cattle to the Andean regions only survive in part. On the other hand large modern industries have developed at Tucumán, Jujuy (sugar-cane), Mendoza, and San Juan (vines), and they supply the Buenos Aires market._ To face p. 52.] The length of the journey and the difficulty of keeping the animals in good condition in the poor pastures of the breeding districts made it advisable to stay longer in the oases. There thus arose lucerne-farms--the _invernadas_--to receive and fatten the cattle which passed through. Lucerne is the characteristic and most profitable produce of the _valles_. It is grown wherever there is an assured supply of water, and is invariably found in the upper section of the system of irrigation-channels; the cereals are sown lower down, and are the first to suffer from drought. In the _quebradas_, where space is more limited, the lucerne-fields cover the entire oasis. Every cattle track has a corresponding line of _invernadas_, which is often completed on the opposite slope by a last group of lucerne-farms where the beasts recover from the journey before they are sold and dispersed. 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 Export of Cattle: To Bolivia 3,600 6,600 6,200 6,300 4,800 To Chile 61,200 87,500 68,400 58,000 28,300 Export of Mules: To Bolivia 2,700 4,600 7,900 8,300 2,500 To Chile 2,300 3,200 5,000 2,600 3,500 Export of Asses: To Bolivia 9,000 10,500 15,000 15,600 14,400[27] [27] Imperfect statistics given by Poncel for the province of Catamarca give us some idea of the respective shares of the various Andean districts in the export of Argentine cattle about the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1855 the province of Catamarca sold 2,700 head of cattle (1,300 to Chile, 200 to Bolivia, 600 to San Juan and Mendoza), 3,200 mules (2,500 to Bolivia 600 to Salta--which also were for Bolivia), and 1,200 asses (700 to Bolivia and 400 to Salta). Besides the official routes there have for a long time been clandestine tracks, through more difficult ravines, by which stolen cattle were conveyed with impunity. Guachipas was the gathering place for cattle of suspicious origin, and, to avoid being seen in Salta and Jujuy, they passed through the Quebrada del Toro or the Quebrada d'Escoïpe. When Brackebusch visited Guachipas in 1880 the inhabitants still kept something of their reputation as smugglers. A map of the cattle-tracks which are still used in the Argentine Andes is a complicated network in which we can trace two main directions, crossing each other at right angles. One set of tracks leads to the west, toward the Pacific coast, the other set to the north, toward the Bolivian tableland. The cattle traffic is now restricted to Chile. It survives at San Juan, Jachal, Vinchina, and Tinogasta. The cattle descend to Chile about Coquimbo, Vallenar, or Copiapo. But the trade is now busiest in the region of the saltpetre-beds. The roads lead from the Valle de Lerma and the Valle Calchaqui toward the tableland by the Quebrada del Toro or the Quebrada de Cachi or de Luracatao, crossing lofty passes at the foot of the Nevados of Acay and Cachi, and reuniting between Santa Rosa de Pastos Grandes and San Antonio de los Cobres to cross the Puna de Atacama. _Vegas_ (pastures) and fresh water are scarce here. The track passes interminably by depressions covered with a carpet of glistening salt, dominated by volcanic crests. It is used in every season of the year, but in winter the caravans are exposed to the cold wind laden with snow, the _viento blanco_. San Pedro is the port in this desolation. Here there are, on the flanks of the enormous cone of Licancour, fields of lucerne and groups of figs and _algarrobas_. The cattle are left there for a few days' rest, to prepare them for the last stage, the Calama oasis on the Antofágasta railway. The centre of this trade is Salta, or, rather, the little village of Rosario de Lerma, nine miles south of it, where most of the caravans are formed. The saltpetre works make yearly contracts in advance with the Rosario dealers, fixing the number and price of the beasts to be delivered at Calama. The cost of transport includes, besides the pay of the cattle-drivers--eighty to a hundred piastres a journey--the shoeing of the mules, the rent of pasture at San Pedro, and the value of the beasts which die on the way. In 1913 the number of animals exported by this route was put at 30,000. The saltpetre works buy also draught-mules for their waggons. Draught-mules must be heavy, and only animals over five feet in height are sent to Chile. Bolivia is now the only market for the smaller mules and for asses. The trade in mules in its traditional form and the industry of breaking-in still flourish at Santa Maria. The mule-dealer's business is very different from that of the cattle-dealer. The mules are so tough that it is possible to send them by roads which would be unsuitable for cattle.[28] The journeys are longer, and the contracts are less settled in advance. Moreover, breaking-in is a delicate operation that requires experience. The survival of the mule-trade at Santa Maria is an example of the maintenance of an industry owing to the presence of skilled handicraft. The men who break in the mules at Santa Maria have a remarkable caste-pride. Their first job is to go to Santiago or Córdoba to buy the mules. They bring them back to Santa Maria by way of Catamarca or the valley of Tafi. At Santa Maria the mules are broken in, then taken to the lucerne-farms at Poma to be put into good condition. There they remain in pasture for several months; and at length, when the season is suitable, the little band of Santa Marieños gathers together and, driving the now docile beasts in front of them, and putting no loads on them in order that they may keep fresh, make for the fair at Huari in Bolivia, or even as far as Sucre. There they sell at a hundred and fifty piastres each the animals which they had bought for half that price before being broken in. The number of mules hibernating at Poma is about 4,000. [28] For instance, herds of mules are taken from Abrapampa, on the line of the Quiaca, to the saltpetre mines of Antofágasta, whereas every effort to convey cattle by this route has failed. The business done in the fairs of the southern Andes is very varied in character, but their main function was always as markets for stock.[29] They are held in March or April, when the rains do not fall, but pasture is still abundant and travelling easy. The fair at Vilque, north of Lake Titicaca, is no longer visited by dealers in Argentine mules. The Salta fair which was held at Sumala, near Rosario de Lerma, has ceased to be important; at the close of the eighteenth century it was the chief centre of the mule-trade. The fair held at Jujuy is still, like the annual pilgrimage to the Virgen del Valle de Catamarca, one of the great dates in the life of the Andes. In the eighteenth century it was mainly a cattle-fair, but it is now frequented only by mule-dealers. The development of the railways is gradually causing it to decline. [29] There is an interesting study of fairs on the elevated tableland by G. M. Wrigley, "Fairs of the Central Andes," in the _Geographical Review_ (New York), vii. 1919, pp. 65-80. The cattle-trade has long been really a form of barter. The Argentinians who took their herds to Peru brought back with them European goods that had come via Panama and the Pacific. At Jachal direct communication with Argentina is still so costly that they prefer to get many manufactured articles from Chile. Everywhere else, however, the sellers of stock take payment in cash. The Santa Marieños bring back from Bolivia only a few bags of coca and, for chief payment, letters of exchange, which they cash in the Salta banks when they return. Their gains swell the profits of the merchants of Salta, Catamarca, and Jujuy, who get their goods at the large importing houses of Buenos Aires. It is the first form under which the influence of Buenos Aires reaches the _valles_. It gets their custom before it begins to absorb their produce. A large proportion of the stock sent to Chile now comes from the Andean valleys themselves. The most arid and desolate regions round the oases breed only goats and asses; but as soon as the soil improves sufficiently to give a better vegetation, it is found good enough for a hardy and tenacious breed of horned cattle. The land is divided into large ranches, and the owners have also lucerne-farms, either individually or communally, the tillers of the oasis each putting in their beasts, which wander about in small groups without control. During the summer they go of their own accord up to the _cerros_, where the rains have brought out the vegetation, and drinking-water is found in the ravines for several months. In the winter they return to the valley, within range of the reservoirs and permanent _acequias_. Bodenbender gives us a few details about movements from place to place owing to such differences, as they are in vogue in the western part of the province of La Rioja, in the district of Guandacol. There the herds are taken during years of drought up to the mountains of the west. Apart from the Andes, the zone which used to feel the influence of the trans-Andean markets has been steadily reduced in the last forty years. At one time it comprised the whole range of the scrub, and even overflowed upon the prairie region, but it is now limited to the nearest cantons to the fringe of the mountains. Over the greater part of the _monte_ the cattle are now sent in other directions; either to Buenos Aires or to other Argentine towns with a growing population, such as Córdoba, Mendoza, and Tucumán. The rupture of commercial relations with Chile has, however, not made any notable change in the pastoral industry. Pastoral life in the scrub has very uniform characters. It is chiefly dominated by the question of water-supply. Natural open water is scarce, and the cattle can drink only where man's industry makes it possible. The problem of taming the beasts, which the breeders on the prairies have not always been able to solve, is simplified by the scarcity of water. There is no need to hunt the cattle, no periodical _rodeos_, when the herd is drawn in every night by thirst to the water-supply. Advance in colonization means the provision of wells and reservoirs (_baldes_ and _represas_), without which the breeders cannot occupy the plain permanently, but have to fall back during the dry season upon the few streams that cross it. The word _balderia_ means districts where the presence of a sheet of water not far underground has enabled them to form a system of wells. The best known is the Balderia Puntana, in the northern part of the province of San Luis. Of the regions apart from the Andes which still depend on the Chilean market it will be enough to mention two, which may be regarded as typical. The first is the Chaco Salteño, on the eastern slope of the Sierra de la Lumbrera. The Lumbrera is a lofty anticlinal range of limestones and red sandstones, which pass to the west underneath the clay of the Chaco plain, and separate it from the great longitudinal sub-Andean corridor, which was followed by the old road, and is now followed by the railway from Tucumán to Jujuy. Colonization began beyond the Lumbrera in the eighteenth century by passing round it, from south to north, by the valleys of the Juramento and the San Francisco (which joins the Bermejo). The ranches, which employed the Indians--the occupation of the Chaco at this point being pacific--bordered the Bermejo and the Rio del Valle, which flows from the Lumbrera range toward the former bed of the Bermejo, and washes the foot of the range at the edge of the plain. [Illustration: DRY SCRUB OF THE CENTRAL CHACO. _On the Añatuya line (province of Santiago del Estero). Cactus. The leafless tree in the foreground is a red_ quebracho. _The leafy trees are white_ quebrachos. Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: MARSHES (ESTEROS OR CAÑADAS) OF THE EASTERN CHACO. _On the Tartagal line (province of Santa Fé). It is by means of these marshes, which form in the forest, that this part of the plain is drained._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE V. To face p. 58.] The cattle live in the scrub during the summer, when the rains have brought out the grasses. In winter they go up to the moist forest, with perennial vegetation, which covers the flanks of the range.[30] The comparative abundance of water lessens the labour of the breeders and, at the same time, the discipline of the herds. When the time comes, the whole ranch is mobilized for the purpose of collecting the adult cattle and making a convoy of them. Horsemen, with the double leather apron which hangs at the saddle-bow to protect them from the branches, ride up the range with their dogs and plunge into the scrub. The savage beasts are rounded up and held at bay. The procession is formed, and sets out, either by the rugged paths across the forest and mountain or along the easier tracks over the plain to Embarcación or Lumbreras, where they reach the railway. If buyers from the sugar-refineries at Jujuy do not take them, the cattle are put into trucks and sent to the Salta market, where there are sales all the year round. At Salta the beasts are fattened on the lucerne-farms before crossing the Cordillera. There is hardly any tillage, either because the winter drought makes the result dubious or because the breeders are not good at agricultural work. [30] On Aconcagua also the moist forest serves as winter pasture for the cattle from the ranches. The Sierra de los Llanos in La Rioja is another centre for extensive breeding. From the railway, which follows the range at some distance, between Chañar and Puntá de los Llanos, before it reaches La Rioja, no one would have the least suspicion of the importance and life of the region. It is, nevertheless, one of the main foci of Argentine history. It has proved a cradle of population and wealth. It was there that Quiroga and, later, the strange adventurer who was known by the nickname of the "Chacho" gathered the strength that enabled them to dominate part of Argentina. Colonization is even older here than in the Chaco Salteño. It occupied two distinct periods, separated by a long interval. At first it advanced from north to south, passing round the foot of the Sierra. It is marked by a line of springs, poor but permanent, the waters of which are absorbed as soon as they flow down to the porous alluvial beds of the plain. They appear much in the names of the district--_agüitas_, _aguaditas_, and so on, abound. The road from La Rioja to San Luis passed these springs, and some population grew up about them. Thus the two sides of the range--the _costa baja_ in the east and the _costa alta_ in the west--became inhabited. The estate of Facundo is one of these _aguaditas_ of the _costa alta_. The two _costas_ form the historic territory of the Llanos. It was from there that colonization swarmed over the plain long afterwards. This expansive movement began about 1850; that is to say, at a time when the breeders enjoyed comparative peace and security, and especially when the _invernadas_ of San Juan and Mendoza were developed, together with the export of cattle to the agricultural provinces of Chile. The price of stock rose, and the unoccupied land became of value. The occupation and exploitation of the plain was the work of the last two generations. They pushed on to the very edge of the salt lakes, leaving no vacant space. The _travesias_ which surrounded the narrow inhabited zone of the _costas_ were filled with life. The Sierra and its two _costas_ are no longer an oasis in the desert, as they were in the time of Sarmiento; though they still differ from the remainder of the pastoral zone in the density of their population and the variety of their resources. The early date of the colonization may be traced in a special system of tenure, though this is also found in parts of the provinces of Catamarca and Santiago del Estero. On the plain the right of ownership was obtained in the nineteenth century by purchase or by concessions of public lands which belonged to the provincial Government. They were allotted in very large estates, and these, intact or broken up, are the actual ranches. In approaching the foot of the range one passes estates in the _mercedes_. The name indicates concessions that date from the colonial epoch, and they are, in all parts of South America that were early colonized, the source of land-ownership. But what is peculiar to the _mercedes_ of the Llanos is that they have never been divided amongst the heirs of the first owner.[31] Sometimes the number of co-proprietors is small. They are conscious of their relationship to each other and know the value of the rights of each. The _merced_ is in that case only an undivided property held in common. Sometimes, however, the numbers of _comuneros_ is so great that they have lost count of the exact share of the _merced_ which belongs to each of them. The _merced_ feeds a whole population, legitimate heirs and usurpers mixed together. In these cases it is a real communal property, and one might compare it, in spite of its different origin, with the Indian communities which exist in Argentine territory as well as that of most of the other Andean States. [31] The title of the _merced_ often shows clearly the attraction which the springs at the foot of the Sierra had for colonists. The land of the _merced_ of Ulapes is defined thus: "The spring and the land within two leagues of it in every direction." The spring is the centre. There its protecting deities live. The economy of the Llanos is less simple than that of the Chaco Salteño. There is agriculture as well as breeding. There is not much rain, and it is confined to the summer months. The mean rainfall is, no doubt, higher than what we find at La Rioja (about 30 centimetres), but it is not good enough to dispense with irrigation. The _aguadas_, springs and brooks at the foot of the range, are the only provision of permanent water, and it is very limited. The oases watered by these springs and brooks cover only a few acres at the foot of the steep cliffs of the range. It has not been possible to cultivate the land far from the mountains. At Chamical a trench that was made to convey water to the railway dried up. All that can be done is to follow for a few miles with a line of wells a subterranean stream of fresh and not very deep water. At Bella Vista a _comunero_ has dug an _acequia_ several miles long, and he sells the water at a rate of five piastres for forty-eight hours. But when it reaches the end of the _acequia_, it is lost between the trench and the field to which they would conduct it. At Ulapes, though it is one of the chief centres, it takes the full outflow of the spring during sixteen hours to irrigate one _cuadra_ (a little over two acres), and each man's "turn" is for seventeen days. The entire oasis measures about fifty acres. At Olta the thin stream of water is surrounded by so many cupidities that the "turn" comes only every fifty-eight days, so that each field has to live fifty-eight days on one watering. At Catuna where a trickle of brackish water is eagerly collected at the foot of a dejection-cone, the water-right is regulated by an arrangement of turns that covers ninety days, so that plants die of thirst in the interval. The plots vary according to the quantity, quality, and regularity of the water. The orange-tree is the most exacting, the fig the most tenacious, of the trees. The poorest oases consist only of a few gardens of dusty fig-trees. However small it is, the oasis always stands for a rudiment of communal life, a _poblado_, a centre round which life is organized in this pastoral, anarchic, amorphous world. Land that has a water-right is regarded as detached from the _merced_ and never remains undivided. Besides these properly irrigated lands there are the _bañados_: cultivated plots in the hollows, where the moisture left by the storms is concentrated and preserved. These are much more extensive, and they are very irregularly distributed. Inequalities of the alluvial ground that almost escape the eye are sufficient to direct the streaming of the water after rain, and it is quickly absorbed. Man assists nature as well as he can, and one sees everywhere tiny ridges of earth across the paths, for the purpose of diverting the water to the plots. These are the _tomas_. When you follow a _toma_ downward, you see it after a time pass under a hedge of dry thorn, and this encloses a field, a _cerco_. The crops have to be jealously guarded against the cattle which roam in the scrub. The _cercos_ are sometimes so numerous that they give the impression of a regular agricultural district. Most of them are planted with maize. The maize harvest rarely fails in the summer, for it is then, on account of the regular rains, that the maize grows and ripens. When the ears have been gathered, the cattle are let into the _cerco_, as maize-straw is excellent fodder. But wheat also grows well in the _bañados_. Provided the year has had a few late showers, the wheat sown in autumn stands the winter drought more or less well, and ripens after the early rains, at the beginning of summer. The Llanos produce a hard wheat; it is not milled, but eaten, like rice, in the grain. There have been times when the Llanos have exported wheat. The census of 1888 gives the Department of General Belgrano, on the eastern slope of the Llanos, an area of 900 acres under maize and 1,900 under wheat. When the Chilecito railway was constructed, this wheat competed with that brought on mules from Jachal, in the mining district of the Famatina range. Like the gardens in the oases, the _cercos_ may be divided, and they are the personal property of those who cultivate them. Sowing and reaping are, however, mere episodes in the life of the _Llanero_. He is mainly occupied with cattle-breeding. The quality of the pasture differs considerably according to the nature of the soil and the good and bad character of the season. Sometimes it forms a thick carpet under the brushwood, but in other places it is poor and there is nothing but the leaves and pods of the _algarroba_. If the herd is too large, the grass will not grow again; the breeder recognizes at a glance the _campo recargado_--the field which has had its capacity overstrained. The pasture has to be carefully nursed. But the most urgent problem is to get a supply of water for the cattle. Round the Sierra the underground water is often fresh, and there are plenty of wells. Still, in order to avoid having to draw the water, they dig large trenches at suitable spots in the clay, and round these they arrange the earth that has been dug out, with an opening toward the hills to catch the water when it is raining. These are the _represas_. As in the case of the _bañados_, ridges of earth direct the stream to the _represa_. It is surrounded by a hedge as carefully as the field is. On the plain rain is rare, and the _represas_ are usually the only reserve. They have to last the whole year; even two years if there is a particularly dry summer that prevents re-filling. Thus they become sometimes veritable lakes. From a distance you can see, above the top of the brushwood, the bald curve of the mound of beaten earth which encircles them. The water flows over it when there has been much rain. The mound is sometimes 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 yards high; as it is at Tello, between the Sierra d'Ulapes and the Sierra de los Llanos, where the San Juan coach used to change horses. The _represa_ is the real centre of the estate. The house is built near it, and guards the entrance. From early morning until dusk the cattle come to it, singly or in groups. The rancher admits them, lets them drink, and closes the gate behind them. If the thirsty cattle have not his mark and belong to a neighbour, he sends them to drink at their own _represa_; but he gives water to lost beasts, from a distance, whose owner will presently come for them. Near the _represa_ is the enclosure (_potrero_) for calves that have just been born. The cows come there every morning, and they are milked for a few months to make cheese. Like the _cerco_, the _represa_ is the personal property of the man who made it, or of one who has inherited it and sees to its upkeep. The cattle of the Llanos move a good deal. There are certain irregular migrations, and others that are periodic or connected with the seasons. Everywhere on the fringe of the Sierra the cattle remain in the ravine and on the foot-hills during the winter. In the summer they return of themselves to their _querencia_ on the plain. The irregular migrations are due to scarcity of water or pasture. Driven by hunger, the beasts travel a long distance of their own accord. They mingle with other herds, sometimes so far from the ranches where they were born that no one recognizes their mark. Sometimes, again, the rancher himself goes, when his _represa_ is dry, to ask hospitality in some more favoured canton. He is fortunate if the drought has not been general; if part of the country has been spared and can offer a refuge. But it sometimes happens that the whole district has suffered, and the land is naked and scorched everywhere. There is then no help except a long journey, to San Luis or to the lucerne-farms of San Juan, for the cattle. The misfortune of the Llanos sends up at once the rent of the _invernadas_ all round. A general evacuation of the cattle is a desperate remedy, and is, in fact, often impracticable. During the whole summer the men wait patiently, hoping for the end of the drought. There is room for hope until April, when storms are still possible. If the month ends without rain, it is too late to remove the exhausted cattle; the stages across the desolated country are too severe. The memory of the worst years of drought--the "epidemics," as the Llanero calls them--lives for a long time. They make a deep impression on the popular imagination, and legend makes plagues of them, in the Biblical way. The drought of 1884 was particularly disastrous. The herds were destroyed, and families that had been wealthy the day before set out on foot, "having nothing to put a saddle on": a touching picture of misery for this race of centaurs, people who feel themselves mutilated when they are not on horse. The rain returns next year. The pasture grows all the better because the herd is smaller, and the Llanos give the traveller who crosses them an exaggerated impression of their natural wealth. Until quite a recent date the cattle reared in the Llanos were destined exclusively for Chile. Dealers from Jachal or Tinogasta came in the autumn, and the cattle passed the winter in the _invernadas_ at the foot of the Cordillera. From the Sierra d'Ulapes, which is a southward continuation of the Llanos, the cattle destined for Chile were first sent to San Juan. They took one or two weeks to reach it. Five men were needed for a herd of a hundred beasts: eight for a herd of two hundred. The caravan was directed by an _estanciero_ (rancher) or his _capataz_, or by dealers who came originally from the Llanos. Exports to Chile have not entirely ceased. In 1913 the dealers from Tinogasta and Jachal, who had not appeared in 1912, came back. The southern part of the Sierra d'Ulapes, which is some distance from the railway, reserves its cattle for San Juan. The cattle are, however, more and more sent by rail to the coast. In the Sierra d'Ulapes the dealers from Villa Mercedes, which has become one of the great markets of Argentina, come every year, rent an enclosure (_protrero_), and collect in it, one by one, a herd of cattle, which they then take away on foot. They are sold at the fair at Villa Mercedes, and they disperse in every direction toward the fattening zones of the Pampa. This commercial revolution has led to a rise in the price of cattle, and this in turn has raised the value of land. When the value of the land rises, the methods of working it are necessarily improved, there is greater security, and thefts of cattle (_cuatrerismo_) become impossible. The farmers are not content merely to enlarge their _represas_ or dig deeper wells. They divide the fields by fences--cheap iron wire stretched on home-made posts, or hedges of spines like those which protect the _bañados_. Thus pasture can be reserved untouched for the difficult months. This subdivision of the land by fences began in the south, in the Ulapes district, in touch with the richer districts of San Luis and Córdoba. In the Llanos proper the practice has scarcely begun. At Ulapes it is even done on the _mercedes_. Each _comunero_, without opposition, encloses as much space as he can, and leaves his cattle outside, on the common land, as long as possible. He only brings them into his enclosed land when the common pasture is exhausted. This will bring about the end of the _mercedes_; and, indeed, communal ownership is not suited to modern conditions. The latest sign of progress is the appearance of lucerne fields. Lucerne can be grown on the _bañados_ wherever anything else can be grown; and the creation of lucerne-farms will give the pastoral industry a security and stability it never had before, besides enabling the breeders to collect stores of dry forage and exploit the full pastoral capacity of the _monte_. CHAPTER III TUCUMÁN AND MENDOZA THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES Tucumán and the road to Chile--The climate and the cultivation of the sugar-cane--The problem of manual labour--Irrigation at Mendoza--Water-rights--Viticulture--Protection and the natural conditions. The great industrial forms of cultivation, the sugar-cane and the vine, gave a new aspect to the scenery of Tucumán and Mendoza at the end of the nineteenth century. The increase of population and wealth which they entailed was so sudden, the economic advance so swift, that the owners of vineyards and the sugar-makers have now lost all recollection of the primitive industries which gave life to colonial Tucumán and Mendoza, and were maintained until the last generation. Nevertheless, if one compares Tucumán or Mendoza with some centre of irrigated tillage in north-west Argentina, one quickly perceives the original features which three centuries of history have given them. The system of land-tenure, water-rights, the distribution of the cultivated zones, and a thousand other features, show that the colonization is old. The exploitation of the soil and utilization of the water have not proceeded on a methodical plan, conceived in advance, which would make each piece of work--the dams and channels of distribution, for instance--subordinate to the whole. The engineers who constructed the great modern dams of Mendoza, San Juan and Sali, had not to create a region of new estates, but merely to improve the water-supply, which was used wastefully by the existing estates. There is nothing more suggestive than the contrast between these stone dams, built according to all the rules of hydraulics, and the network of irregular channels, following the accidental variations of the land and the slope, which preceded them, and to which they have been accommodated as far as possible. In some cases the primitive _acequias_ could not be altered so as to start from the dam. The accumulations of water succeed each other down the slope, held up by a simple barrier of branches and earth which is periodically destroyed by floods. The modern flood-proof dam (_dique nivelador_), which cuts the torrent in its entire width, and enables them to make use of its whole volume, allows a certain amount of water to pass, for the use of the _acequias_ lower down. This falls back into the broad, stony bed, exposed to evaporation and infiltration as it was before. * * * * * Long before the development of the sugar industry on a large scale, there was a typically urban life, added to the common fund of pastoral life, at Tucumán. The neighbouring cantons of the scrub--Trancas, Burruyacu, and Graneros--sent cattle and mules to Peru and Chile, like the other Argentine plains. But Tucumán drew still greater profit from its position as chief stage on the high road to Peru, at the point where the plain passes into the mountain. Primitive Tucumán was an excellent type of high-road village. The road determined its position at the point where the Sali had to be crossed. The first site of the town, near Monteros, was abandoned in the eighteenth century, when the high road to Peru settled in the sub-Andean region and ceased to run through the Calchaqui valley. The road sustained its chief industries, tanning and harness-making for the muleteers of the Andes, and waggon-making for the _troperos_ of the plain. The road and the people travelling along it afforded an outlet for its wheat and flour, and facilitated the export of its tobacco to the coast-provinces. The waggon-owners were really contractors, conveying stuff at their own cost. Moreover, part of Bolivia came to make its purchases at the shops (_tiendas_) of Tucumán, and the merchants of the town took in exchange Bolivian ore for export. Thus the road built up a nucleus of available capital at Tucumán. This capital was invested, at the close of the nineteenth century, in sugar; and it has increased a hundredfold. Most of the works still belong to old families of the town. The sugar-region is comparatively small. It covers an area which has exceptional climatic features, owing to the vicinity of Mount Aconcagua. While the higher chains of the Andes further north are separated from the Chaco plain by lower ranges, on which the east winds leave their stores of moisture less freely, Tucumán has on its west the great mass of Aconcagua. It rises, a giant landmark, at the beginning of the plains, from which there is nothing to separate it, and gathers the clouds round it. [Illustration: THE VALLE OF SANTA MARIA, NORTH-WEST OF MOUNT ACONCAGUA. _At the bottom of the valle one can see the sandy bed of the river as a white line in the foreground. Zone of torrential terraces, which follows the edge of the valle._ Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: THE OASIS OF ANDALGALA. _At the western foot of Aconcagua, the snowy crest of which can be seen._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE VI. To face p. 70.] On the eastern slope of Aconcagua is the limit of the crescent of tropical forest, which begins about three thousand miles away, on the flank of the Venezuelan and Colombian Cordilleras, and is connected in the centre, in the equatorial zone, from Guaviare to Mamore, with the forests of the Amazon region. At its two ends it is reduced to a narrow belt which does not reach, in the east, the alluvial plains, the savannahs of the Orinoco and the scrub of the Chaco. The humid forest of the Argentine Andes is nowhere more luxuriant than near its southern limit, above Tucumán. There are no palms or tree-ferns, but the convolvulus abounds, and the evergreen trees are covered with epiphytes. Aconcagua is one of the sharpest climatological limits in the world. In the latitude of Salta one has only to go about 150 miles to pass from the moist forests of the sub-Andean chain of the Lumbrera to the arid valley of Cachi. On both sides of Aconcagua there are less than fifty-five miles between the sugar-cane fields won from the forest and the oasis of Andalgala, or that of Santa Maria, which are right in the desert zone. According as one approaches Aconcagua from the east or the west, one finds, from base to summit, either the successive stages of vegetation of the humid Andes--from forest to grain-sown prairie (_paramo_ or _pajonal_)--or those which are characteristic of the arid Andes, from the spiny scrub of the valleys to the fields of resinous _tola_ of the Puna. The contrast of climates is repeated in the character of the soils. Aconcagua contains in itself the entire Andes in miniature. At the foot of the narrow zone of Alpine crests, in the few square miles of the elevated valleys of Tafi and Pucara, there is a small agricultural and pastoral world, in a temperate climate, that has nothing quite like it elsewhere, narrowly confined between the forest and the desert.[32] [32] The higher valleys of Aconcagua offer inexhaustible interest to the visitor. At Sancho (Pucara valley) there is a group of Italian colonists who grow maize and wheat: a unique fact, I believe, in the whole of this part of Argentina. The Tafi valley is mainly pastoral, the pastures of the valley being used in summer and the forest for winter pasture. The sugar district of Tucumán is not, properly speaking, an oasis; that is to say, it is not an irrigated canton in the midst of a desert, but a moist patch in the heart of a less favoured region. The traveller who comes from the Chaco finds that the dust disappears from the moister air as he approaches Tucumán. The rainfall approaches 974 millimetres at Tucumán. Irrigation is a valuable aid to the farmer, but it is not indispensable. Maize is generally raised without watering, and part even of the sugar-cane crop is raised on land that is not irrigated. It is not the relatively heavy rainfall that has led to the development of the sugar-cane estates at Tucumán, but the evenness of the temperature, together with the atmospheric moisture and the rareness of frost. The mists which develop at the foot of Aconcagua form a protecting mantle above Tucumán which prevents nocturnal radiation. The nearer one gets to the mountain, the later, rarer, and lighter the frosts are. If, on the contrary, one goes out some distance westward toward the plain, the frost becomes more severe, and it is impossible to grow sugar-cane. Not only the humidity, but the contour also, has some influence on the changes of temperature and the distribution of frost. The depressions in which the cold air accumulates, in virtue of the well-known meteorological phenomenon of inversion of temperature, are more exposed than sloping districts, where the air circulates regularly and freely. The eastern limit of the zone spared by the frosts passes about thirty-five miles from the foot of Aconcagua. It has only been made clear by experiment, and one can still see there the traces of abandoned plantations. The water-supply in the Tucumán district consists, primarily, of numerous evenly flowing streams which come down the eastern flank of Aconcagua (Lules, Famailla, Angostura, Gastona, Medinas, etc.). They join the Sali to the south of Tucumán. The Sali is an irregular torrent which rises in the sub-Andean depression to the north and Tucumán, and, after squeezing Aguadita between the north-eastern extremity of Aconcagua and the sub-Andean chain of Burruyacu, enters the plain at Tucumán. It then flows southward, meandering over a large bed of shingle in which it has not had force enough to excavate a valley, and the inclination of the land on its left bank (to the east) is toward the east and south-east. The lands on the right bank of the Sali are consequently better provided with water than those on the left bank. The difference is so marked that, as the estates on the right bank get most of their supply elsewhere, the water of the Sali nearly all goes to the left bank. In 1912 a siphon was actually constructed underneath the bed of the Sali to convey the unused water of the Rio Lules to the right bank. Lastly, to the north of Tucumán the Sierra de Burruyacu provides a few intermittent streams of water, which the _estancias_ (ranches) formerly conducted, with great labour, to their _represas_. These do not suffice for irrigation on a large scale. The sugar-cane was first grown at the gates of the town and, to the east, at Cruz Alta, on the left bank of the Sali. These were some distance from the mountain because, as there was less rain and the soil was fairly dry, the natural vegetation was less luxuriant, and it cost less to prepare the ground.[33] The Central Córdoba Railway, which passes along the right bank of the Sali south of Tucumán, is the axis of another zone of cultivation and of old factories. Colonization afterwards went further west. A new provincial railway, describing a section of a circle, was grafted at Tucumán (1888-90) and Madria upon the Central Córdoba line. It keeps close to the foot of the range, the _falda_, and enables farmers to settle on it. The new estates have not confined themselves to the alluvial plain; they have crept up the foot hills, and are constantly going higher. In the latitude of Tucumán the mountain approaches within eight or twelve miles of the Sali, and the possibilities of extension westward are strictly limited; indeed, they are already exhausted. Further south, on the contrary, the plain extends more than fifteen miles to the east of the provincial railway. West of Monteros, Concepción, and the existing line of works, there is a reserve of available land; there is room for a fresh advance westward. There is also room for expansion to the north-east, at the foot of the sub-Andean chain of Burruyacu, where the frosts are slight. It is in this direction that most of the clearing is now going on. [33] In 1894 it was calculated that ground that was not yet cleared was worth 100 to 150 piastres a hectare at Cruz Alta, and the cost of clearing 150 to 200 piastres, whereas in the moist forest at the foot of the Sierra the land was worth only 75 to 100 piastres, the cost of clearing it was double (300 to 350 piastres). These various districts do not offer quite the same conditions to the farmer. The _Falda_ is the most suitable, not only on account of the rareness of frost, but because of the fertility of the soil, as the tropical forest has accumulated inexhaustible stores of humus. The sugar-cane returns are higher there than anywhere else. Irrigation is not necessary, but, on the other hand, the humidity reduces the proportion of sugar in the cane. Irrigation is the rule in the next belt, between the local railway and the Central Córdoba line (on the right bank of the Sali). On the left bank a large number of the estates must still do without watering. The most original feature of the organization of the sugar industry at Tucumán is the maintenance of a class of independent cultivators, the _cañeros_, side by side with the large enterprises. This survival of small and medium properties is a fact to which we find no parallel in the other sugar districts of tropical America.[34] Everywhere else, in Brazil and in the Antilles, the farms which worked up their own produce, on primitive methods, have been absorbed by the central works. The home-worker has lost his land as well as been ruined in his industry by the competition of the modern factory. At Tucumán, on the contrary, the sugar industry never passed through the stage of domestic production. It was set up in full development, some devoting their capital to building works, others to growing the cane. Irrigation seemed from the first to dictate a concentration of ownership; the refineries at Cruz Alta constructed costly special canals to bring the water of the Sali. It is only large proprietors who have the resources needed to carry out work of this kind, and sufficient influence to secure permission to conduct the water over adjoining estates. However, the law of 1897 reorganized irrigation and withdrew the water-supply from the control of a few privileged big capitalists. Public works, undertaken by the provincial authorities, brought the water within the reach of every farmer. Since 1897 the number of water-concessions has risen from 230 to nearly 2,000. [34] Except, perhaps, in Barbadoes. The interests of the factory (_ingenio_) and the farmers (_cañeros_) are not indissolubly connected. Their respective parts in the final product of the sugar industry are not invariable. The increase in the number of factories means an increase in the number of cane-buyers, and so tends to raise the price. During the years antecedent to 1895 the refineries improved their machinery, and their productive capacity increased faster than the cultivated acreage. The price of the cane then rose to about twenty piastres a ton. As this figure is far above the net cost, the refineries endeavoured to profit themselves by the advantages that accrued to the _cañeros_, and they bought land for cultivation. It is to this period that the big concerns of Cruz Alta belong. Afterwards the production of cane increased, and nearly met the demands of the refineries, so that their competition relaxed. They ceased to buy land, and the price of cane was lowered. The refineries now deal with cane which they grow themselves, with paid workers of their own; with cane that they buy at a reduced price from tenants (_colonos_), who grow it on their own estates; and with cane sold them by _cañeros_ who own their own fields. The range of the country absorbed by each refinery is often very extensive. The Sugar Congress of 1894 estimated that half the cane-harvest was transported by rail, and that freight from one canton to another in the sugar district brought the railways more than a third of what they got for conveying sugar from Tucumán to the coast. Each railway company tries to keep along its own line the cane it carries to the refineries, so that the transport of the sugar when it is made will fall to itself. Thus the cane-market is divided into two separate compartments, with very little exchange between them. The first comprises the zone that depends on the Central Argentine and the State Railway; the second is the zone of the Central Córdoba and the old local line bought by the Central Córdoba. Certain parts, such as Cruz Alta and the district round the town, have too many works in proportion to their production of cane, and they are centres of import. The price of the cane is always higher here than in the agricultural districts. Each works has its customers. At the stations it instals weighing machines for receiving and weighing the cane. It is only the more important _cañeros_ who have the privilege of selling by the truck-load, or selling to distant works. The small growers are compelled to deal with the local refinery. They sell it their canes direct, or, sometimes, through agents and dealers. In the days when the works were competing for cane it became the custom to sign the purchase-contracts as early as possible; sometimes at the beginning of October, as soon as the harvest of the year is over. In order to make sure of the loyalty of the _cañero_ the manufacturers advance money to him, in proportion to their difficulty in getting cane. _Cañeros_ and mill-owners have had to work together to settle the problem of labour. There was not enough at hand, and it had to be recruited elsewhere. Agents were sent all round--to Catamarca and Santiago del Estero, and even to the province of Córdoba--to collect and bring gangs of workers. They were a mixed, unsteady, undisciplined lot. The owners of the works advanced them money in order to keep them, and then, fearing to lose the money advanced, would not dismiss them for laziness and irregularities. These troubles are not felt as much now as they were at the time when the industry was expanding. The population of immigrant workers has settled down and taken root. Besides creoles it includes a small number of Italians and Spaniards; but while the creoles have been definitely incorporated in the sugar industry, the European immigrants use their savings to buy a bit of land and take to farming. In normal times Tucumán has all the labour it requires, but the harvest always compels it to seek help in other provinces. In May and June the agents, well supplied with money, set out for the Salado, the districts round the Sierra d'Ancasti, etc. The temporary attraction of Tucumán at this season is felt over a considerable distance. At Santa Maria, on the far side of Mount Aconcagua, 600 people--men, women, and children--emigrate for five months, and live on the cane-fields. The merchants of Santa Maria make them advances, in the name of the refiners, to the amount of about sixty piastres per worker. Further north the Tucumán _enganchadores_ come into collision with those from Salta and Campo Santo, and they divide the available labour between them. Some of the temporary immigrants settle down permanently every year, and swell the normal population of the sugar industry. Outside the Tucumán district an unfortunate attempt was made to plant the sugar industry at Santiago del Estero, and large works were constructed. But the frost is severe there. For some years they tried to keep the Santiago works going with cane brought from Tucumán, but the freight was too heavy, and the works had to be abandoned, or else dismantled and set up elsewhere. The valley of the Rio Grande, from Jujuy to 200 miles north of Tucumán, in the sub-Andean depression between the Sierra de Zenta and the Lumbrera, has, on the other hand, suitable conditions for the cultivation of the cane. Frost is rare. The climate is warmer than at Tucumán, the canes ripen more quickly, and the average return is higher. The water-supply also is good. There have long been plantations in this region. Their first market was the region of the tableland and the valleys, where they chiefly sold brandy: a traffic of long standing, which one always finds round the cold districts of the Andes, from Colombia to the north of Argentina. The modern refineries of Ledesma and San Pedro took the place of the primitive mills as soon as the railway approached Jujuy, and even before it entered the valley of the Rio Grande. They then sent their sugar by waggon in November and December, between the close of the sugar season and the commencement of the rains, which spoil the roads. The sugar district of Jujuy now has a very different economic and social organization from that of Tucumán. Here there are no farmer-proprietors. Each centre is a large estate, in the midst of the forest, where the workers are lodged and fed by the works that employs them. The contractors who clear the ground for them are obliged by the terms of their contract to import their workers directly from the south, so that they will not take any away from the farming. There is no available labour, no free market, on the spot. Since the completion of the Quebrada de Humahuaca line, however, there has been a good deal of immigration, to settle or temporarily, of the mountaineers of the tableland. The sphere of influence of San Pedro now extends as far as Bolivia. For the harvest, which, like that of Tucumán, requires a good deal of additional manual labour, the works look to the wild Indians of the Chaco. This curious stream of seasonal migration, which the sugar campaign of Jujuy provokes every winter outside the zone of white colonization, is of very old date, going back more than sixty years. Belmar notices it about the middle of the nineteenth century. The recruiting agents of San Pedro and Ledesma set out from Embarcación, where the railway ends, and enter the Chaco, from which each of them brings a troop of some hundreds of natives between March and June. The number of these temporary immigrants seems to be about 6,000. The Chiriguanos of the north leave their families on the Chaco, and the men come alone. The Matacos immigrate in whole tribes. They camp in huts like those of their own villages, under the shelter of the works, and are paid in maize, meat, and cigars. In October, when the _algarroba_ flowers and makes them dream of their own country, they receive the remainder of their pay in money, and spend it in brandy, clothing, knives, and firearms. The history of Mendoza resembles that of Tucumán in many ways. In the province of Cuyo, as at Tucumán, urban life has been precocious. In the middle of the eighteenth century Mendoza and San Juan exported wines, dried fruit (_pasas_ and _orejones_), and flour to the coast and to Paraguay. Part of the so-called "Chilean flour" consumed on the Pampa, really came from Jachal and Mendoza. This trade ceased in the nineteenth century, but San Juan and Mendoza found another source of wealth in fattening cattle and sending them to Chile. Belmar, in 1856, estimates the extent of the lucerne farms of Cuyo to have been 150,000 _cuadres_(440,000 acres).[35] As at Tucumán, the present period is characterized by a rapid expansion of cultivation and a rapid growth of population. But, whereas at Tucumán the neighbouring provinces have provided the whole of the manual labour required, and the actual population is essentially creole, at Mendoza there has been a larger number of foreign immigrants. In 1914, foreigners were 310 per 1,000 of the entire population of Mendoza: a larger proportion than for the whole country. The immigrants going straight to Mendoza from the ports numbered 12,000 in 1911, and 15,000 in 1912; almost as much as for the province of Santa Fé, and more than for the province of Córdoba. Thus Mendoza plays a part of its own in the charm which Argentina has for the imagination of Europe. When we examine a chart of the population of South America, we notice that the oases of Cuyo contain the only important groups of European population at any distance from the coast. [35] A few convoys of cattle still use the Uspallata road, especially over the Espinacito pass in the Cordillera de San Juan. The prosperity of Mendoza to-day depends upon the cultivation of the vine, just as that of Tucumán depends upon sugar. The cultivation of the vine is possible in the greater part of Argentina. In the early days of colonization there were vineyards as far as the Paraguay. They still flourish at Concordia on the Uruguay and at San Nicolas on the lower Paraná. But the wet summers of the eastern provinces are not suitable for them. The climate for them improves as one goes westward, and there is less rain. The dry zone of eastern Argentina is the special field of the vine. There it has spread over nearly twenty degrees of latitude, and it depends, like other cultivation, upon irrigation. In the Andean valleys of the north-west it rises to a height of 7,500 feet. South of Mendoza the higher limit of the vine sinks rapidly, and there are no vineyards in the mountainous district itself. On the other hand, its range increases; in the east it spreads as far as the Atlantic coast, in the valley of the Rio Negro. The former centres of viticulture in the north-west, in the oases of the _costas_ of La Rioja, Catamarca, and Salta, have scarcely been affected by the advance; and, in any case, their extent is very limited. The vine-district of the Rio Negro is only in process of creation, and its output is still small. Thus the area of production on a large scale is limited to the three oases of San Juan, Mendoza, and San Rafaël, which in 1913 yielded 4,750,000 hectolitres, out of the total Argentine production of 5,000,000 hectolitres. These three centres differ from each other to-day rather in their economic development than in their physical conditions. At San Juan, the transformation of the earlier methods of production and the traditional creole industries is only now taking place. At Mendoza it is quite finished. The San Rafaël centre, on the other hand, is of recent origin; it was created on the site of a fortress which guarded the Indian frontier until 1880. Cultivated areas have appeared on virgin soil, in the midst of the desert. These different circumstances account for diversities which, though they will disappear in the course of time, are still obvious to the traveller. The general scene is the same everywhere. Arid and desolate mountains close the horizon in the west; at their feet spreads the immense alluvial deposit on which the vineyards, surrounded by rows of poplars, grow wherever water is to be found. There are so few gaps in the lower slopes of the Cordillera that the available water is gathered at a small number of points. The Rio San Juan alone drains a belt of the Cordillera at least 140 miles broad. Each of the two oases, Mendoza and San Rafaël, has two streams of water to feed it. The Mendoza and the Tunuyan at Mendoza, and the Diamante and the Atuel at San Rafaël, approach each other, when they leave the mountains, so closely that the estates they water blend into a continuous area. Then, however, instead of uniting, they diverge and are lost, separately, in the plain. These streams have less fall than the thinner torrents of the oases of the north-west, and the average inclination of the dejection-cones which bear the vineyards is slight. The upper slopes of the cone, where thin beds of clay lie upon shingle, give clear wines of excellent aroma. Hence, in the Mendoza district, the vineyards of Lujan and, further down, of Godoy Cruz, Guaymallen, and Maipu produce choice brands. On the plain, to the east of Mendoza, at San Martin and Junin, the harvest is larger, but the wine is rough, and one can often taste the saltpetre of the clayey soil. There is the same difference between the upper and lower district at San Juan and San Rafaël. The oases of San Juan and San Rafaël spread evenly over the most suitable parts of the alluvial talus, but the oasis of Mendoza has a peculiar shape which can only be explained by historical causes. The cultivated belt is a narrow strip along the Tunuyan, for more than sixty miles, as far as the heart of the plain, out of sight of the Cordillera. It is one instance, out of a thousand, of the influence of traffic on colonization. As a matter of fact, the road from Mendoza to the coast, by which the cattle convoys of San Luis went to the _invernadas_, passes along the Tunuyan. The estates grew up by the side of it. The villages of Santa Rosa, Las Catitas, and La Paz, which mark the various stages of it, are all of ancient origin. Strangers are rarely found there. One still sees in them very old houses, built before the railway was made, dating from the days of the _carril_ or waggon-road. The importance of this line of water across the desert is clearly seen on the Woodbine Parish map. The use of irrigation in this district raised different technical problems from those of the north-western provinces. In this latitude the torrents of the Andes are formidable when the snows melt, at the beginning of summer. The flood is all the greater and more sudden as the heat is late. From all the ravines of the mountains the muddy waters then converge toward the valley. The flood scours the bed of the river, erodes its banks, and threatens to find a way amongst the estates. Even the towns of Mendoza and San Juan have more than once been in danger. The fear of diverting the flood and of bringing it upon themselves compelled them to be content with raising only light and frail dams in the path of the torrent. At San Juan they used, for a long time, the waters of the Arroyo del Estero, a small brook fed by infiltration from the Valle de Zenda, and it was some time before they ventured to draw upon the river itself. [Illustration: THE OASIS DEL RINCON, BELOW SAUJIL (ANDALGALA LINE, PROVINCE OF CATAMARCA). _The dejection-cone, at the foot of which is the very small oasis, is seen resting against the Sierra d'Ambato._ Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: THE MONTE AT EL YESO. _Zone of clay hills at the foot of the Sierra de San Antonio, at the edge of the Chaco. Corral (cattle park) made from tree-trunks._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE VII. To face p. 82.] Another problem, which the smaller oases of the north-west hardly know--the problem of drainage--is of paramount importance at San Juan and Mendoza, as far as a large part of the irrigated surface is concerned. The water infiltrating into the soil forms a subterranean sheet which approaches more or less to the surface according to the topography. It comes to the surface at the foot of the cone, where the slope diminishes and the cone gradually passes into the plain. Hence the cone has, at its base, a belt of marshes (_ciénagas_), and sometimes a line of good springs (_barbollon_). At San Juan, if you move far enough away to get a comprehensive view of the whole of the estates, you see that they occupy the middle belt, half-way down the cone, the top of which is composed of coarse shingle, while the bottom is too wet. The advance of the plots upward and the steadily increasing use of the available water tends to raise the level of the underground sheet and enlarge the area of marsh. There is a fine black soil, very fertile when it is drained, and no irrigation is needed; as it is possible, according to the depth of the drainage-trenches, to regulate the level of the underground water so as to make it reach and feed the roots. The draining of the marshes, again, opens up a field for the further expansion of the estates, especially at San Juan, where it has scarcely begun. Moreover, the water that is obtained by draining the marshes enables them to create new irrigated estates further on. At Mendoza there is already a considerable area irrigated by drainage-canals (_desagüe_). The level of the water in the marshes sinks in the summer and rises in winter, at the time when the irrigation of the upper districts is suspended or greatly reduced, and when the surplus of the _acequias_, which the fields no longer take, flows or infiltrates downward in any way that it can. Thus, contrary to the torrent itself, it is in winter that the drainage-canals are at their fullest. At Barriales (Mendoza), and on the lower course of the Zanjon canal, thousands of acres, watered by the drainage-canals and exposed to drought in the summer, have the right to take water from the river or the canal during the three summer months, from November to January. During the remainder of the year they are restricted to the use of the drainage-canals. This sort of concession seems to provide a means of using the surplus of the river during the summer. With this exception there are no temporary rights limited to the high-water season and enabling them to raise quick crops, that ripen in a few months, round the area of perennials. At least, the expansion of the estates and the wish to use the full water-supply have led to the creation of eventual rights, besides the definitive rights. They do not come into play, theoretically, until the definitive rights have had their full supply, and then only in a fixed order. They are subordinated to the ordinary rights, and the market value of land with eventual water-rights is much lower than that of land with definitive rights.[36] At San Rafaël, where colonization preceded the systematic inventory of the natural resources, the concession of eventual water-rights was a means of facilitating the development of estates; though they were very badly informed as to the surplus of the Atuel and the Diamante and the area that the new land might cover. [36] There are at present in the Mendoza province 275,000 hectares with a definitive right, and 303,000 with an eventual right. The concessions fed by the Diamante and the Atuel at San Rafaël, which amount to 120,000 hectares with a definitive right and 150,000 with an eventual right, are not yet entirely developed. In practice, the co-existence of eventual and definitive rights presents many difficulties, and more than one pretext for fraud. Sometimes the owners of eventual rights have access to the river higher up than the older intakes, which ought to be served first. A whole group of canals feeding land with eventual rights is in this way grafted upon the Tunuyan above La Paz, the rights of which are definitive and ancient. At Mendoza and San Juan the water-rights, codified in provincial laws which date, like the dams, from the end of the nineteenth century, are very different from the water-rights which hold in the Andean provinces of the north-west. The variety of the physical conditions is reflected in the institutions. Here water is not an object of private ownership independently of the soil. The concession of water is assigned to a definite estate, and it is formulated in superficial measurements. The law fixes the volume of water that goes with each unit of surface. If the output of the river is not large enough to provide the volume stated in the law to the whole of the irrigated district, all the lands with definitive rights receive at least an equal amount, and the available water is shared by the canals in proportion to the extent of the surface they irrigate. No law could secure for the farmers of Cuyo, even those with definitive rights, a constant supply of water, or save them from suffering in common from the variation in the volume of the torrents, and it was not even possible to guarantee them water in any permanent fashion. The _turno_ is used everywhere when the water is low. Lower down, where the drought lasts nearly the whole year, the _turno_ is the standing rule. At La Paz, on the fringe of the irrigated area, it has to be applied rigorously. The turn of each owner comes every eight, ten, or twelve days. In normal times he receives the _suerte de agua_; that is to say, the output of a sluice of a fixed size during a half-hour for each hectare (a little over two acres) of land. But if the river runs low, it becomes impossible to supply several neighbours simultaneously, and, in order to avoid making the interval between supplies too long, the duration of the _suerte de agua_ is reduced by half or three-quarters. The oases of Cuyo are like the small oases of the north-west as regards the function of those who are engaged in the administration of irrigation. The water-laws give the provincial functionaries general directions. Below them, however, to arrange the distribution of the water and the upkeep of the canals in detail, they have allowed to survive, and have merely regulated, certain primitive democratic organisms. At San Juan the superintendence of the irrigation is entrusted to elected municipal councils and the governor of the department. At Mendoza, the owners appoint a council of three delegates and an inspector for each canal, and these settle the annual budget of the canal, submit it to the provincial authorities, receive the taxes, carry out the necessary repairs, and so on. The great subdivision of property and the large number of electors make these little republics very lively; and they are very jealous of their autonomy.[37] [37] There are more than 6,000 owners at San Juan to 91,000 hectares, and more than 9,000 at Mendoza (zone of the rivers Mendoza and Tunuyan) to 130,000 hectares (statistics compiled in 1899). Even within the narrow limits of the Cuyo district the climatological conditions, which control the growth of the vine, are not everywhere the same. The opening of the vineyards varies by several weeks, according to the locality.[38] The northern slope of the cone, exposed to the sun and protected from the southern winds, is more precocious. Some districts, poorly sheltered from the southern winds, and very liable to have late frost, have not been planted with vines (district of the Tucuyan below San Carlos, to the south of Mendoza). Everywhere the dryness of the atmosphere causes the ripe grapes to remain long on the vine, so that the harvest may last two months or more without any harm. It thus requires a relatively small supplement of manual labour, and does not necessitate seasonal migrations. The length of the harvest, moreover, facilitates the trade in grapes, which is one of the special features of the Argentine vine-industry. [38] The difference is much greater at a distance from the Cuyo province. Catamarca, which specializes in the production of grapes for the table, is invaded by buyers from Buenos Aires, and begins to send grapes in December, two full months before the harvest begins in Mendoza. The climate is not so suitable for making wine as it is for growing vines. The temperature is high at the time of the harvest, and it retards fermentation in the cellars. The grapes have too much sugar and too little acid for the transformation of the must to proceed of itself. Hence it is necessary to have an expensive equipment, improved cellars, and skilled workers. This industrial organization is beyond the reach of the small cultivators. The cultivation of the vine and the making of wine are, therefore, not always associated. They are taken up by two different classes of the population. Tucumán has its _cañeros_ and factories, and Mendoza, by a division of labour which seems to the European visitor as strange as the climate which partly explains it, has its vine-growers (_viñateros_) and its manufactures (_bodegueros_).[39] [39] While the cultivation of the cane has, for the most part, become dependent upon the sugar industry, which represents large capital, wine-making is, on the contrary, usually regarded as merely an annex of wine-growing. Each of these two classes has had its share in the common work. The _viñatores_ have created the vineyard. The creole vine, imported into Peru from the Canaries and spreading over the whole of the southern Andes, yields great quantities of a sugary, but rough fruit, which does not lend itself to imitating the wines of Europe. At Mendoza it has almost entirely disappeared, though it survives at San Juan. It is grown on trellis-work, wooden frames resting on forked branches of _algarroba_; though sometimes the strong stems rise without support to a height of about six feet and are crowned with shoots and leaves. The new vine has been grown from French cuttings. While the creole vines look like orchards, the French vines are grown in rows of iron wire. The plantations were first made by creole workmen, who were paid by the day. Afterwards, as immigration from Europe increased, long-term contracts came into vogue, in virtue of which the colonist received the bare land and undertook to have it planted with vines at the end of three, four, or five years. The owner supplied the material, and at the end of the contract the colonist received a few _centavos_ for each vine, or sold the whole or part of the first harvest. On account of these contracts there were always a great many foreigners in the districts where vineyards were in course of formation. The proportion is now less at Mendoza than at San Rafaël, where colonization is more recent. Whenever they could, the owners left to the colonists, not only the business of planting the vines, but the upkeep of adult vineyards. In those cases the colonist receives a fixed sum per hectare (100 piastres, for instance), and has to dig, prune, irrigate, etc. A large number of these agricultural workers and small contractors have saved a small capital, and purchased land of their own. This they have planted, and they thus form a new class of working owners. While the _viñatores_ were multiplying vineyards, the _bodegueros_ were transforming the methods of making wine. The weakness of imperfectly fermented wines, which turn sour and evaporate quickly, was all the worse for the growers of the colonial period because transport was slow, and there was no protection against the sun, which cooked the _algarroba_ casks or the leather bottles on the backs of the mules. The vineyard-owners often preferred to distil their wine and export brandy, flavoured with aniseed, to the Andean tablelands or the coast. The climate and the risks of transport had brought into existence an astonishing variety of methods of treating the must. Sometimes it was concentrated by boiling until it became a thick syrup (_arrope_), something like, apparently, the thick wines of the Mediterranean in former times. At other times the must was cooked without thickening it, to prevent immediate fermentation, as is done with the _chicha_ in Chile to-day; or sour wines were mixed with boiled must and ashes of the shoots, which masked the acidity. These traditions are now lost, but it is curious to see the _bodegueros_ still endeavouring to meet the taste of the creole population of the north-west, which has retained the preference for sweet and fruity wines. San Juan, which caters to these customers, manufactures _mistelas_--fresh boiled must with an addition of alcohol--which are mixed with mature wines in order the imitate the imperfect fermentation of earlier days. Perhaps there is no part of the world where the art of wine-making has been pushed so far as in the _bodegas_ of Mendoza. The correction of the must, and the analysis and treatment of diseased wines, follow the most modern of methods. The _bodegas_ produce a very steady wine, which is guaranteed by their trade marks. The wine of the Mendoza type, which they endeavour to produce, is a strong red wine, of heavy colour, with twelve or thirteen per cent. of alcohol. It may euphemistically be called a blended wine, but is in reality diluted wine. Argentina does not produce very light wines, and has no use for diluted wine. The number of wine-making cellars in 1913 was 997 at Mendoza and 336 at San Juan. But they differ very much from each other in size. Most of them have only a small equipment and modest capital. Some, on the other hand, are large enterprizes which could produce enough to supply a city: vast constructions of brick or _adobe_, with light roofs as a precaution against earthquakes. The owners of the cellars almost always have their own vineyards, but they also buy the harvests of cultivators who have not cellars. In 1908 it was calculated that 140,000 tons of grapes were sent to the press by the owners and 175,000 tons bought by the _bodegueros_.[40] [40] More recent statistics are not to hand. The proportion differs a little every year according to the prices of wine and grapes. The conflicts of the interests of the _viñateros_ and the _bodegueros_ are the very woof of life at Mendoza. The price of grapes is infinitely more variable than that of wine, and the _viñatero_ who has no cellar is at the mercy of the _bodeguero_. If he does not want to see his harvest go to waste, he has to accept unconditionally the price that is offered him. The _bodeguero_ has, moreover, the advantage of disposing of the grapes grown on his own estates. If the circumstances do not encourage him to produce all he can, he sends to the press merely his own harvest and will not buy any other. Thus the whole burden of commercial crises falls upon the vineyard with no cellar. The prices paid for the grapes differ a little for different parts of the vineyard, but the variation is more due to the number of _bodegas_ in the district and their capacity than to the quality of the grapes. Transport of the grapes to a great distance is very expensive. In exceptional times grapes have been brought from San Rafaël to the Mendoza cellars, but each _bodega_ gets its supply as far as possible from its own district. At San Juan the capacity of the cellars is proportionately less than at Mendoza, and the _bodegueros_ have imposed very hard conditions on the growers. The price fixed in the purchase-contract does not of itself give a complete idea of the benefits which the _bodeguero_ enjoys. The grapes are purchased by weight, but the _bodeguero_ reserves the right to say at what date they are to be delivered. He begins to harvest his own vines when the fruit is scarcely ripe, but he puts back the harvesting of the grapes he buys as far as possible, even to April or May. These grapes exposed on the plant to the heat of the sun, become overripe; they gain in sugar and lose in weight. They make wines with a higher percentage of alcohol, and with these he can correct the lighter wines made during the preceding weeks. Finally, the _bodeguero_ does not advance money to the _viñatero_, as the manufacturer does to the _cañero_ in the sugar industry. The only safeguard of the vine-growers is the lack of understanding between the _bodegueros_ and the competition between them. Although there are conventions amongst the _bodegueros_ which lay down officially, before the vintage, the basis of all transactions, they are not respected except in so far as they serve a man's interest. If it is expected that the wine will easily be sold, and that grapes will be short, buyers are abundant, and contracts are signed before the fruit appears. It is a sort of gamble, as in the case of wheat and cotton. Bulls and bears struggle for the market. If the bulls win, the _viñateros_ grow rich.[41] [41] Besides the causes of a geographical nature which I have indicated, the separation of cultivation from wine-making has other economic grounds, but they do not fall within the range of this book. The large _bodega_ is better situated than the small cultivator for organizing the sale of his wines on the distant market of Buenos Aires. Also, the _bodegueros_ alone are able to meet the competition of Buenos Aires merchants who import European wines and make adulterated wines. When we compare the diagrams which show the production of wine and sugar in Argentina during the last thirty years, we see that they clearly illustrate the condition of dependence of the vineyard industry and the sugar industry as regards the home market. The prosperity of the region of the Pampas, especially during the years before 1914, is reflected at Mendoza and Tucumán. The expansive movement of the estates is similarly bound up with the construction of railways to connect them with the coast. Industry, on a large scale, began at Tucumán in 1876: that is to say, at the opening of the Central Córdoba line. The area planted with cane rose from 2,200 hectares in 1876 to 14,800 in 1886. The production of sugar was trebled in four years, from 1876 to 1880. But the Central Córdoba was a narrow-gauge line, expensive to use and necessitating a transfer of goods at Córdoba. In 1891 the broad-gauge line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was extended to Tucumán; and in 1892 the narrow-gauge line from Rosario to Santa Fé, San Cristobal, and Tucumán was also brought into use. The following years were marked by rapid advances of the sugar industry. From 1891 to 1895 the area planted with canes rose from 14,200 to 40,700 hectares, and the manufacture of sugar from 31,000 to 135,000 tons. At Mendoza, also, the development of the vineyards dates from the completion of the San Luis Railway in 1885. Plantations were at once started, and three years later they came into touch. In 1887, the railway carried 27,000 hectolitres of wine from Mendoza to the coast; in 1890-91 it carried 268,000 hectolitres. Production had increased tenfold in that short space of time. As the home-production of wine and sugar increased, the imports from abroad fell. As early as 1885 Tucumán was able to meet the home demand for raw sugar, and refined only was imported. In 1888, a refinery was erected at Rosario to deal with Argentine sugar which came by rail, and foreign sugar which came up the river. Import ceased at this date, or there have since only been occasional years of import, to meet a scarcity. The imports of ordinary foreign wines continued to increase until 1890 (800,000 hectolitres), or as long as the wine produced at Mendoza did not suffice to meet the demand. They have steadily declined since that date (350,000 hectolitres in 1913), and are now only seven per cent. of the national production. We should add that, even in regard to ordinary wines, the Mendoza and the imported wine are not strictly comparable, that the competition between them is not simply a matter of price, and that some customers continue to prefer foreign wine. [Illustration: A VINEYARD AT SAN JUAN. _Trellissed creole vines._ Photograph by Boote, Buenos Aires.] [Illustration: A VINEYARD AT MENDOZA. _French vines on wire. An irrigation-trench along the path. In the foreground (left) a wine-cellar_(bodega). Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados, Buenos Aires. PLATE VIII. To face p. 92.] The elimination of foreign wines and sugar and the development of Mendoza and Tucumán were facilitated by a Protectionist tariff. The details of this are very curious, as they had to be adjusted to the natural conditions. The need of protection is chiefly due to the distance of the market from the productive centres. Mendoza is 650 miles from Buenos Aires, Tucumán more than 750 miles. Freightage on the railways is dear. It is thirty-five piastres a ton for wine between Mendoza and Buenos Aires, or nearly double the normal maritime freight for the European wines sent from Bordeaux or Genoa. The charge for sugar is about thirty piastres a ton between Tucumán and Buenos Aires. Thus the cost of transport is nearly one sixth the entire cost of production. In spite of this common burden, the need of protection is not at all the same in Mendoza and Tucumán. The climate of Mendoza is excellent for the vine. The dryness of the atmosphere keeps down cryptogamic diseases, and the risks of cultivation are slight. The crop is abundant, the frosts late, and not serious. Hail is frequent, it is true, at the mouths of the Cordillera valleys, but it is never general; it affects only a small part of the harvest. The curve of production is very regular. It rises every year very gradually, and in proportion to the increase of the cultivated area. As a result of all this, the wine market has a stability which the vine-growing countries of Europe, with their less reliable climate, do not enjoy. The protective tariff, therefore, remains fixed. The duty on foreign wines in the cask--eight centimes (gold) per litre--has not been altered since the introduction into Argentina of the wine-industry on a large scale.[42] [42] Mendoza is further protected by law against fraud. This legislation is partly national and partly provincial. The national law, which takes into account the interests of the merchants of Buenos Aires, permits the manufacture of artificial wines. The provincial law, in the special interests of the productive districts, is more stringent. It prohibits the manufacture of artificial wines. It also fixes the minimum percentage of alcohol, and prevents the dispatch from Mendoza to Buenos Aires of alcoholic wines to mix with must. Finally, it defends the _viñatero_ against the _bodeguero_ by fixing the quantity of grapes to be used in making a hectolitre of wine and so prevents fraud at the _bodega_. The curve of sugar-production is just as irregular as that of wine-production is regular. From one year to another the output may vary by as much as 100 per cent., and the changes cannot be predicted: 147,000 tons in 1912, 335,000 tons in 1914, 150,000 tons in 1915. The reason is that the sugar output depends upon the season. Canes which have been touched by frost go sour and ferment in the ground. They have to be milled quickly, and the harvest must not be prolonged. Even in good years the costly equipment of the works is active during only three months (July to September, but at Jujuy, July to October). This irregularity of production, which makes protection inevitable, also complicates it infinitely in practice. Sometimes the harvest is not large enough to meet home demands, and imports have to be permitted. Sometimes production is far beyond the home demand, and the sugar-manufacturers have to export the surplus so as to prevent a slump in prices on the overloaded home market. In order to meet these very different situations, the protecting tariff has had to be repeatedly modified and complicated. But it is impossible for us to give the history of it in detail here. The duties on foreign sugar were fixed, in successive instalments, between 1883 and 1891; and special protective measures were taken in the interest of the refiners in 1888. Over-production appeared for the first time in 1895. Export at a loss, to relieve the home market, was at first organized by an association of the producers themselves (in 1896). But in 1897 the Government developed it by putting a premium on export. The export period lasted from 1897 to 1904. The law of 1912, which gives its latest form to the Protectionist regime, gives the Government the right to suspend for a time the duties on imports and allow foreign sugar to come in. As at Mendoza, the provincial Government intervenes as well as the national. The alternation of bad and exceptionally good harvests leads to the appearance of all sorts of unforeseen laws, modifying the bases of taxation, regulating production in the works, and restricting the acreage of cultivation.[43] Thus Tucumán has lived in an atmosphere of storm and uncertainty and unceasing discussion, of discouragement and insecurity; the price of its geographical position at the extreme limit of the area in which cane can be grown. [43] Especially during the crisis of 1902-3. CHAPTER IV THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS Manual labour on the _obrajes_--The land of the _bañados_ and the agricultural cantons of Corrientes--The timber-yards of the Chaco and the tannic-acid works of the Paraná--The exploitation of the _maté_--The forestry industry and colonization. From the Andes of Tucumán and Salta to the banks of the upper Paraná in the province of Misiones the north of Argentina is now a vast timber-yard for the exploitation of the forests. It resounds everywhere with the axe. This exploitation of the forest is of early origin on the river; in the eighteenth century Buenos Aires was supplied with wood from the Paraná. In the western Chaco the difficulty of transport by land retarded the development of the forestry industry. The only market for the timber of Tucumán was the Andean region. It was not sent to Mendoza after the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the willow was acclimatized in the oases of Cuyo. Below Rosas the wood of the _quebracho_ was at first taken in waggons from Santiago to Buenos Aires, but this traffic ceased when the river-route was reopened, and we do not find it resumed until recent times, when railways were constructed. The outer fringe of the forest and the scrub where the industry has had to find labour, is inhabited by a very sparse pastoral population. There are, however, besides the thinly populated districts of the farms, certain busy hives which lend animation to the scrub. These over-populated cantons are districts of cultivation by _bañados_, or the cultivation of flood-lands. There is constant intercourse between these ancient centres of creole life and the timber-yards of the forest. The forestry industry recruits its workers there, on temporary contracts. The wages paid are brought back to these centres and spent there. They help to maintain social groups of an archaic type, which the meagreness of their production would otherwise doom to extinction. The _bañados_ are scattered over the range of all the sierras within the limits reached by the torrents from the mountains before they are lost. They also stretch along the two rivers that are considerable enough to cross the scrub, the Salado and the Dulce. The course of the Bermejo, where the natural conditions are much the same, lies outside the sphere of primitive creole colonization. The tilled lands are not continuous on the Salado or the Dulce. There are no _bañados_ wherever the bed of the river is enclosed by high banks which prevent flooding. The course of the Salado threads together, in the manner of a rosary, three main groups of _bañados_ below 26° S. lat., (Matoque and Boqueron) between 27° and 28° S. lat. (Brea), and between 28° and 29° S. lat. (Le Bracho and Navicha). But the classic country of the _bañados_, where they cover the widest extent and sustain the most considerable body of population, is the interior delta of the Rio Dulce below Santiago del Estero, in the departments of Loreto, Atamisqui, and Salavina. Santiago is situated almost at the top of it. In its upper part the Rio Dulce is enclosed between high clay cliffs (department of the Rio Hondo). Below Santiago the river seems to run to the top of a sort of flattened alluvial cone, over which it wanders. Instances of the migration of rivers during the historical period are plentiful in the north of the Argentine plain. The scrub is scored east of the Salado with a network of dry beds, the edges of which gradually disappear as the vegetation extends over them. But there is no other part where the erratic nature of the waters is so marked, the vagabondage so considerable, as in this section of the basin of the Rio Dulce. The small towns of Atamisqui and Salavina, which lived on the waters of the Dulce, were suddenly ruined in 1825, when the river, in consequence of a particularly violent flood, turned away to the south and lost itself in the Salinas Grandes. A canal was dug in 1897 to irrigate the district of Loreto, on the left bank of the Dulce, but the entrance was badly protected, and the flood of 1901 swept into it, and, guided by it, reached the bed it had abandoned a century before, going south-eastward toward Atamisqui. That town and Salavina recovered their prosperity, while it was necessary to abandon the farms on the Rio des Salines, which now has water only during high floods. Actual beds, old beds that are always ready to serve again, and traces of canals changed and cut by the stream, form a great network in the midst of the plain; and the flood rolls to one side or the other according to the road open to it, and the facility with which the various elements of the network lend themselves to the passage of the water. Such is the land of the _bañados_. You enter it to-day at Loreto station, where the line from Santiago to Frias approaches within a few miles of it. This station is erected in the midst of the arid _monte_, and owes its existence to the neighbouring _bañados_. Turning eastward from the railway, as soon as one has crossed the broad, sandy bed of the Rio des Salines, one finds oneself in the heart of the _bañados_ farms. The road passes between hedges (_cercas_), over the top of which one sees the green of the wheat and lucerne. The plots are very small: gardens rather than fields. In clearing the ground they have preserved the best-situated trees, and the light foliage gives a useful shade to the crops. The crown of the _algarrobas_ rises everywhere above the top of the hedges. The fields do not cover the whole area of the annual inundations. They are confined to the part where the flood is fertilizing; where it leaves behind it a fine, useful clay which keeps the store of moisture for several months. In other places the current is too rapid. It furrows the soil, leaves large holes in it like the _lônes_ in the flood-area of the Rhone, and sweeps away the barriers; or the water brings sterile sand which it deposits in long stretches; or again, if it is not drained away in time and evaporates on the spot, it deposits the salts it contains, and the land, looking as if it had a white leprosy, becomes unfit for vegetation. The floods begin in summer, during November or December. They are caused by the rain-storms in the Tucumán district, and are very irregular. Some of the houses are evacuated, and others are protected by walls of earth, which are raised from hour to hour according to the rise of the waters. Behind these walls the people await the abatement of the flood. When the mud which is left behind has the proper consistency, they till it and sow wheat. The wheat grows in the winter, and is harvested in November quickly, so that the fresh flood may not overtake it. The caprices of the flood compel them frequently to change the sites of their houses and fields. The ancient village of Loreto was evacuated after a flood, and is now merely a mass of deserted ruins. Round the naked trunks of the _algarrobas_, killed by excessive deposits of sand or salt, are uniform colonies of plants of the same age and the same species, which invade the area where the adult scrub has been destroyed. The mill has been rebuilt less than a mile away, and has not lost its customers, who have raised their _ranchos_ some distance away. The insecurity of the plots has prevented the development of small ownership. The farmers are tenants of the ranches, which stretch from the river to a considerable distance in the interior. The use of _bañados_ for agriculture is of long standing. It probably goes back to the pre-Columbian period. Father Dobritzhoffer, who is the first to refer clearly to it, compares the Rio Dulce to the Nile[44]; and in point of fact, the _bañados_ have some resemblance to farming in Pharaonic Egypt, while there is nothing like them in the irrigated zones of the Andean valleys. The _bañados_ were then devoted to the cultivation of wheat and pumpkins. The pumpkin, which is of American origin, had not yet been eliminated by wheat, which was introduced by the Spaniards. The wheat produced in the _bañados_ maintained a fairly active export trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the _bañados_ were at times called, with some exaggeration, the "granary of the Vice-royalty." It is difficult to trace accurately the movements of the population of the _bañados_ because of the constant changes of the administrative areas in the province of Santiago. The total population of the province is not now more than three per cent. of the total population of Argentina, but its comparative importance was much greater in the middle of the nineteenth century (nearly eight per cent. at the census of 1861). The departments of Loreto, Atamisqui, and Salavina on the Rio Dulce, which live mainly on the estates of the _bañados_, comprised 46,000 inhabitants in 1861, and only 43,000 in 1895. The Woodbine Parish map and Hutchinson's description clearly give one an impression of a dense population in the area of the _bañados_. I refer elsewhere to the antiquity and constancy of the streams of temporary immigration which spread the population of the _bañados_ over a large part of the territory of Argentina.[45] The temporary emigration of the Santiagueños is distributed amongst most of the provinces of central and northern Argentina, but it is chiefly of interest in connection with the frontier region. The Santiagueño is a woodman above all else, and the forest area has the advantage over the other labour-markets of wanting workers at all seasons, summer or winter, whereas the sugar-cane harvest at Tucumán and the harvest in the south only last a few months. They emigrate from the _bañados_ to Tucumán in May; to Córdoba and Santa Fé in October, November and December; but to the forests of the Chaco all the year round. [44] _Historia de Abiponibus._ [45] See the chapter on population. [Illustration: THE LAND OF THE BAÑADOS. _On the Rio Dulce, near Loreto, in the dry season. Its actual bed, excavated at a recent date by a flood in soft clay, is not yet stable._ Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: LORETO: FARMING BY INUNDATION. _In the zone of the scrub, where the floods of the Rio Dulce spread. The interior delta of the Rio Dulce is one of the earliest centres of population in Argentina._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE IX. To face p. 100.] Apart from the _bañados_ of the Dulce and the Salado, the province of Corrientes contains the main reservoir from which the timber industry drew its manual workers. Just as at Santiago del Estero, one finds at Corrientes also the opposition between agricultural and breeding districts which is so common in the older colonized regions of South America. The _estancieros_ (ranchers), who are breeders, are the masters of Corrientes, but the line of low hills of sand and red clay, punctuated by lagoons, which crosses the north-western corner of the province, is not subject to their domination. There the land is subdivided; there are once more fields. Tobacco was an article of export for this fraction of Corrientes, especially after the political isolation of Paraguay, the chief producer of tobacco in the nineteenth century. During the whole of the first half of the nineteenth century the tobacco-buyers travelled all over Corrientes after the harvest, in January and February. The fertile soil, moreover, with a mild climate in which tropical plants flourish as well as those of the temperate zone, provides the elements of a local comfort which is complete in itself. Here again agricultural colonization has created a relatively dense nucleus of population, capable of great increase. Although the administrative divisions do not exactly correspond with the natural divisions, the unequal distribution of the population in Corrientes is made plain by the figures given in the census of 1895. The density rises in the agricultural areas to eight inhabitants per square kilometre, in the department of Bellavista; ten at San Cosma; fourteen at Lomas; thirty at San Roque. It is only between one and two in the purely pastoral departments (Concepción and Mercedes). Corrientes also has its forests, and in these we find most of the species of the forests of the Chaco, in straight lines, along the water-courses, and in somewhat larger patches on the tablelands which separate the lower valleys near the Paraná. They at first supplied the Curupai bark which was used in the Corrientes tanneries. The yards for the construction of river-boats emigrated from Paraguay to Corrientes at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at the same time and for the same reasons as the tobacco trade. The exploiting of the red _quebracho_ did not begin until about 1850. In 1887 Virasoro relates that fifty ships are engaged in loading with Nandubai timber on the banks of the Rio Corrientes and transporting it to Rosario.[46] Born on the left bank of the Paraná, the forestry industry emigrated toward the end of the century to the right bank, whither the workers of Corrientes followed it. [46] Val. Virasoro, "Los esteros y lagunas del Ibera" in _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._ (vi. 1887; pp. 305-31). We find the same movement further north, on the Paraguay. The exploitation of the woods is in that case a very old industry on the tributaries of the left bank. D'Azara draws attention to its importance.[47] Robertson found, when he went from Corrientes to Asunción in 1814, a population of wood-cutters in the marshy belt near the river. During floods they took refuge in the agricultural cantons of the frontier on high ground, where they were well received. It seems, then, that wood-cutting was already a seasonal industry at this time. The exploitation of the forests is now rapidly invading the right bank, which was long abandoned to the wild Indians. [47] _Diario de la navegacion y reconocimiento del Rio Tibicuari_ (Coll. de Angelis, vol. ii.). * * * * * The Santiagueños and Correntinos do not mix. The two zones of expansion and of forestry, of which they are the pioneers, are independent of each other. The _quechua_, which is the language of the _bañados_ of the Rio Dulce, is spoken in the timber-yards of the Chaco de Santiago; the _guarani_, the language of Corrientes and the Paraguay, is most common along the river, in the Chaco de Santa Fé. Their respective spheres will not come into touch with each other until the Quimili branch of the Central Norte Railway, which comes from the Santiago province, joins the line of penetration at Resistencia, on the Paraná, in the west. The forestry industry of the interior and that of the river-districts differ not only in the character of the workers, but in their organization and their market. The variety of red _quebracho_ which is exploited in the west is not quite the same as the variety that is found in the east. Each has a name of its own--_quebracho santiagueño_ and _quebracho chaqueño_. The former contains ten per cent. of tannin, the latter thirty per cent. The former is cut down for timber, the latter in order to extract the tannic acid. The one is sold in Argentina, and the other sent abroad. The working of the timber at Santiago has remained in the hands of a number of small capitalists and contractors who do not own the land and do not work there. They are content to buy in small amounts and according to the demand at the moment, the right to exploit the forests (_derecho de monte or derecho de leña_). The trunks of exceptionally large _quebracho_ provide logs that are sold by cubic measurement, but the district of the _quebracho santiagueño_ mainly exports sleepers. _Quebracho_ sleepers have been used in constructing the railways, both narrow and broad gauge, during the last twenty years on the Pampa. Tall and thin trees make telegraph posts; the smaller branches make stakes for wire fences. In parts of the bush where there is no red _quebracho_, the _retamo_ is used, to make posts for enclosures, and also the white _quebracho_, which is sold in round logs. Finally, the forests provide wood for fuel. The works at Tucumán, and the locomotives over a good part of the land, use wood-fuel. The wood of the red _quebracho_, if left for some years in the yards where the sleepers are made and is rid of the sap-wood, which rots and falls out--the _leña campana_--is excellent fuel. Charcoal is cheaper to transport than the wood, and can therefore be sent farther over the whole prairie district. It is made in the _monte_, along all the railways, and especially in the thinner forests on the edge of the prairie. The forestry of the interior is unstable as well as scattered and primitive. The equipment--saws that are easily taken down and set up--is not costly, and does not require much capital. When one canton of the forest has been exhausted, the saws are taken down and removed. The cuttings are not made in such a way as to allow the forest to recover, and so permit a continuous exploitation. Everything of any value is taken. The _quebracho_ is, moreover, a tree of slow growth. The forestry industry has at times returned, after an interval, to land that had been stripped, but that is not because they had planted a new generation of trees. It is because it became profitable, as the state of the market and the cost of transport changed, to cut down the small trees which had not been considered good enough on the earlier occasion. When the master _obrajero_ removes, he is followed by the greater part of the workers. But to induce them to emigrate, or to recruit cutters in the _bañados_ who will agree to work in remote or new districts, he has to be liberal and offer higher wages. Hence the conditions of work and the rate of wage are not the same in every part of the forest. The oldest area of working, which is crossed by the Central Córdoba, between the provinces of Catamarca and Santiago del Estero, has a surplus of good workers. On the other hand, the _obrajeros_ of the valley from San Francisco to Jujuy, where the exploitation is more recent, have only a moderate amount of labour at their command. The returns are not higher there than in the south, though the forests are incomparably denser and richer. It has been very expensive to bring about a continuous stream of immigration toward the main region of forest work, which is now called the Chaco, along the railway that starts from Añatuya and goes about 130 miles further north. As the worker is on piece-work, the price per sleeper when the work was begun on the Chaco had to be double, on the Añatuya line, what was paid in the older line from Santiago to Frias, close to the _bañados_. The work is profitable only within a short distance from the railways. Waggon transport raises the price rapidly. Moreover, the forestry industry is just as dependent on the railways for provisions as it is for the carriage of its wood. The _obraje_ has no source of food-supply on the spot. The marshy estates which begin to spread in the area of irrigation-canals at Banda, eastward of Santiago del Estero, supply only their customers at Añatuya and the Chaco line. Sometimes the railway has to bring water as well as food. Over a great part of the Chaco de Santiago there is no running water, and the underground sheets are little known, or inaccessible, or salty. The _obraje_ is a land of thirst. In order to meet the demand for water they dig reservoirs like the _represas_ on the ranches, which are filled by the rains. But as soon as the dry season sets in they become stagnant green pools, and the men have to rely on waggon-cisterns. While the Chaco de Santiago is now a democracy of small _obrajeros_ and contractors, the eastern Chaco, along the Paraná, has quite a different type of society. It is entirely in the hands of the big tannic-acid factories, where the _quebracho_ trunks are stripped and boiled, and their sap is concentrated in a viscous resin. The lofty chimneys of these works rise above the forest at intervals. Here the work assumes a capitalistic and industrial character which it has not in other places. It is controlled by powerful concerns, highly organized, which conduct it on a pre-arranged plan. It is true that the works do not deal with the entire output of _quebracho_,[48] but they almost control the market, even as regards the unworked wood which is exported, and they reserve a good deal of it for their branches in Europe. In order to secure the heavy loans which the works represent, the companies that have built them have been obliged to take over large forests, and they have come to own these. The concentration of the area in their hands goes on daily, and the number of companies is reduced by amalgamation or by the purchase of rival concerns and their estates. On the territory of the Chaco, where the administration of public lands was in the hands of the Federal Government, some precautions were taken to prevent the monopoly of the country; but the forests of the province of Santa Fé belong entirely to two firms. [48] It is more and more necessary to deal with the extract of the _quebracho_ on the spot the further north one goes toward the interior of the continent because the freights to the exporting ports rise higher and higher. The eastern Chaco has received from Europe, not only the capital that was needed for the construction of works, but also a number of workers, either for administration or for technical direction. These have proved more exacting than the creoles of the Santiago saw-mills. Beside most of the works there are now comfortable villas and brick towns for the workers. The expense was quite prudently incurred, as the industry is less erratic in this region. A tannic-acid factory cannot be removed like a saw-mill. When the timber-supply is exhausted in the district, the works gets its material from a distance, as long as the freightage permits. It depends on the railway, not only for the carriage of its products, as the saw-mills do, but for the supply of raw material. The works are not all equally wealthy. They are scattered over about ten degrees of latitude, north of 30° S. lat., within reach of the river, which keeps them in communication with the world, and at the same time has enabled them to tackle the full breadth of the forest. The _quebracho_ is particularly abundant north of Santa Fé and south of the Argentine part of the Chaco, where it is the life and soul of the forest. The works which have been set up there, in the midst of the denser forests, have plenty of capital, and this enables them to nurse their supplies and buy timber at a distance. The forest is still almost virginal at their gates, so that they have a long future in front of them. On the other hand, the oldest works, on the southern fringe of the forest, and that of Corrientes, on the left bank of the Paraná, are already paralysed for want of timber. The works are all at a short distance from the river; not only for convenience of exporting their products, but because this is the only part of the Chaco where one can find fresh water. And the tannic-acid factory needs a great deal of fresh water. Along the river, in a belt about thirty to sixty miles wide, we find a permanent hydrographic network such as is found nowhere else on the plain. It consists of long series of marshes covered with rushes (_cañadas_), and in places they become at their mouths regular streams with well defined beds. The underground water also is generally fresh and plentiful, whether it is due to the abundant rain or to infiltration from the Paraná, and many of the works have successfully bored for it. In these parts one suffers from too much water as frequently as from thirst. On these immense and almost horizontal surfaces the water spreads from the _cañadas_ over the whole forest. The railway, and even the houses, then stand out of a sheet of stagnant water, which takes months to disappear. Trunks which are badly placed, lying in the stations to be removed--sometimes, according to the market, lying there for years--are half buried in the mud. The waggons find it hard to move in the roads. Mules, which pay very well in the dry forests of the west, could not make the effort that is required here, and they use oxen--the finest beasts for a muddy country. The long-horned, lean creole cattle drag the waggons with difficulty, and a _correntino_, with long slender legs, shod with mud, guides and urges them, looking like a crane with his slow and cautious steps. The work of these drivers is much harder than that of the wood-cutters. They earn nearly twice as much, and it is the difficulty of getting enough men for this work that keeps down production. The importance and stability of the large works has fixed the labour market on the right bank of the Paraná, and there is no need to go to Corrientes to look for men. They come of their own accord. A daily service of small steamers brings them to all the ports which dispatch _quebracho_. The left bank, on Argentine territory, has also no hiring centre, such as there still are at Asunción and Concepción in Paraguay. Even on its own land the works leaves the working of the forest to contractors, from whom it buys the timber. But the _obrajeros_, whether they work in the company's forests or their own, are very dependent upon the works. The contracts vary according as they are owners or otherwise; according to whether they undertake to deliver the timber at the stations or leave it where it is felled; and according to whether they have the requisite oxen and waggons or have to loan these from the company. They draw advances from the company, and, on the other hand, they pledge themselves to purchase what they require for their workers at the company's stores. The profit of these sales increases the revenue of the works. The company monopolizes all trade, both import and export. It exercises an absolute sovereignty over the forest. It has merely deigned to grant the railway company space enough to construct its lines and its stations. The last forestry centre in modern Argentina is in the province of Misiones on the upper Paraná. Posadas is its chief station, and protects its southern outlet. Its influence extends beyond the Argentine frontier, over a small part of Brazil and Paraguay. In Misiones there are two types of forest, which differ a good deal from each other, while neither resembles the _quebracho_ forest. One is the forest of araucarias (_pinos_) which covers the elevated tablelands at a height above 2,000 feet. The other is the tropical forest, rich in essences and of perennial vegetation, which fills the bottoms and slopes of the valleys. The pine, which is also much worked on the Brazilian tableland, yields an excellent white wood, suitable instead of the northern pine. It would find a ready market at Buenos Aires, but it has never been worked on Argentine territory because of the great distance of the woods from a navigable river. On account of its position on the tableland the araucaria has to wait for the railways of some future date.[49] As to the leafy tropical forest it includes a number of useful varieties (_timbo_, _lapacho_, _etc._), but the most esteemed of all is the cedar. Its wood is rose-coloured, scented, and fine-grained, and very suitable for furniture. At the time of D'Orbigny's travels the inhabitants of Corrientes were looking out for cedars from the mountains brought down the river when in flood. The _obrajes_ of cedar-wood now extend twenty miles or so on the Argentine bank, and forty miles in the Paraguay bank, which is more even and better for transport. The trunks are floated in rafts down to Posadas; as the cedar, which is less dense than the _quebracho_, not only floats, but is improved by parting with sap in the water. At Posadas the rafts are taken to pieces, and the trunks are delivered to the saw-mills. [49] In Brazil the saw-mills for the araucarian pines are established along the São Paolo-Rio Grande Railway. But timber is not the chief forest industry in Misiones, as it is on the Chaco. Beside the _obraje_ in the forest there is the _yerbal_, a works for dealing with the _maté_ (_Ilex paraguayensis_). It is well known that an infusion of _maté_ (a kind of tea) is an important element in the food of the western States of South America. Gathering the leaves of the _maté_ has been a profitable occupation for centuries: a unique instance, perhaps, in the forest industries of South America. It has never been interrupted, though it has often changed its locality. The plantations made by the Jesuits were abandoned when the missionaries were dispersed. After the close of the eighteenth century Paraguay became the chief area of production. Villa Rica seems to have been the most prolific centre of the _yerba_. After that date, however, the Jujuy basin, further north, was exploited, and the _yerbateros_, who came from Curuguati, advanced eastward as far as the Falls of the Guayra on the Paraná. In the nineteenth century the trade in Paraguay _maté_ seems to have suffered less than the tobacco trade from the policy of isolation adopted by the Dictators of Paraguay. The descriptions given by Mariano Molas, Demersay, and others, show that the business continued fairly actively. It even extended northward, and reached as far as the Rio Apa. Villa Concepción became a rival _yerba_ market to Villa Rica. The monopoly exercised by the Paraguay Government, however, and the restrictions put upon the navigation of the river, led to the development of the _yerba_ industry in the eastern Misiones on the left bank of the Uruguay. Itaquy served as port of embarkation. In the last third of the nineteenth century the yards moved from the left to the right bank of the Uruguay. Since 1870 the Paraná has supplanted the Uruguay, and the _yerba_ trade has concentrated at Candelaria. This meant the resurrection of Misiones. In 1880 San Javier, on the Uruguay, worked up 800 tons of _yerba_, and Candelaria more than 1,000 tons. The _yerbales_ round San Javier began to run out, and the _yerbateros_ had to go further and further up the Uruguay, toward the _yerbales_ of the tableland of Fracan and San Pedro. Candelaria was mainly fed by the _yerbales_ of the right bank of the Paraná, on Paraguayan territory. Posadas has now succeeded Candelaria, and the _yerbales_ that depend upon it are scattered over both banks up the Paraná. The _yerbales_ of Misiones lie outside the tropical forest proper. They are on the lower fringe of the pine-forest, and begin at some distance from the river, with which they are connected by muddy and difficult mule-tracks. _Maté_ can bear a cost of transport that would be fatal to timber. At the point where these tracks reach the river, the river-steamers stop at the foot of a shed that is almost hidden in the foliage. These are the "ladders" of the _yerbales_. Work in the _yerbales_ lasts six months out of the twelve. The pruners who collect the bunches of leaves and bring them to the furnaces, where they are dried, include Brazilians, Paraguayans and Argentinians. The Brazilians go to the _yerbal_ to offer their services. The Paraguayans and Argentinians, nearly all from the province of Corrientes, are recruited at Posadas and the sister-town of Encarnación, which is opposite to it on the Paraguay bank. The hiring at Posadas is done according to a traditional custom that does not seem to have changed for more than a century. The description given by D'Azara is not yet out of date. "The people of Villa Rica," he says, "depend mainly on being hired for the _yerbales_. The _yerba_ industry is sometimes profitable to the masters, but never to the natives, who work cruelly without any profit. Not only are they paid in goods for the _yerba_ they gather, but the goods are put at so high a price that it is terrible. They have even to pay for the hire of a bill for cutting the _maté_.... The natives contract as much debt as they can before they start for the _yerbales_, and as soon as they have done a little work, they say good-bye to the _yerbatero_, who loses his money. And the _yerbatero_ in turn is exploited by the merchants who control him." Before he starts for the _yerbal_, says Robertson, the contractor (_habilitado_) gets an advance of four or five thousand piastres. With this he hires about fifty workers, supplies their needs, and gives them two or three months' pay in advance. The three essential and inseparable elements of the _maté_ business are the _yerbal_ in the forest, a shop at Posadas for hiring and paying wages in advance, and a _yerba_ mill at Rosario or Buenos Aires. * * * * * The forestry industry in its various forms is not a definite occupation of the soil by man. After having stripped the forest, it leaves, and the land is open for colonization. Nearly everywhere there is a complete separation between forestry and permanent colonization. They do not employ the same workers; the wood-cutter (_hachador_) and the charcoal-burner are not the men who clear the soil. The clearing away of the stumps, which must precede agricultural work, is not their business, but the work of diggers. At Tucumán, where most of the workers in the cane-fields are Santiagueños, Italians and Spaniards are used for clearing the soil. The gangs of Mendocinos who go to cut crops in the bush round Villa Mercedes will not sign on for clearing the ground in order to plant lucerne. [Illustration: LORETO. THE RIO PINTO IN THE DRY SEASON. _One of the arms through which the flood of the Dulce flows._ Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: LA BANDA (SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO). _Irrigated lucerne fields on the left bank of the Rio Dulce. Zone of modern colonization: a contrast with the older farms of the flood-zone._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE X. To face p. 112.] The history of forestry and colonization is one of the most diversified chapters in the general economic history of modern Argentina. Round the region of the Pampas, the first point where agricultural colonization came into touch with the forest belt is the district of the older colonies of Santa Fé. There it found the forestry industry already long established, on the banks both of the Salado and of the Paraná. The export of timber and charcoal to Buenos Aires and the lime-kilns of Entre Rios was at this time one of the few elements of economic life which Santa Fé had preserved. The colonists did not enter the forest, and did not mingle with the charcoal-burners, but they profited indirectly from their presence by selling them maize. Later, agricultural work spread over the Central Pampa and the province of Córdoba, as far as the edge of the scrub in all parts of the prairie. Wood-cutting is carried on there, on a small scale, everywhere, at Toay as well as at Villa Mercedes and Villa Maria. The price of the wood he sells is a small supplementary income to the farmer, and clearing the soil helps to fill up his time during the dead season for agriculture. The lands covered with brushwood remained for a long time at a lower price than cleared land. They thus formed a sort of reserve which partly escaped the speculations in land, and on which small owners can find a footing more easily than on the Pampa. There is to-day a movement of Santa Fecinos eastward and southward in the belt of scrub to the south of Mar Chiquita along the line from Lehmann to Dean Funes. The forest area of the Chaco, in northern Argentina, between the Andes and the Paraná, seems on the other hand to be intended for pastoral colonization. In point of fact, the forest of the Chaco, as well as the lighter scrub which is its southern extension, can be used for breeding without preliminary labour. The Indians have fed cattle and horses on it since the seventeenth century. The herds find food on every side, both in the very numerous clearings (_abras_) which cross the forest and in the forest itself, where the underwood and the herbaceous carpet grow fairly thick beneath the scanty foliage of the mimosas and quebrachos. Over a good deal of the western Chaco pastoral colonization is earlier than the forestry. In the district of Santiago del Estero the farmers had advanced far beyond the wood-cutter and the railway; beyond the Salado, almost as far as the existing line from Añatuya to Tintina, where there are sheets and wells of fresh water. The old ranches go as far as Alhuampa. The old pastoral population has taken very little part in the forestry industry. It has been content to profit by it by renting the scrub to the _obrajes_. It was a sheer gift to them, as the felling of a few trees does not in the least lower the value of the pasture. The forestry has not entailed any change in the ownership of the land or in the breeding methods. The _obrajes_ are merely passing guests whose traces are quickly obliterated. In the eastern Chaco, however, the wood-cutters are real pioneers. It is they who have made the conquest of the forest, often in direct touch with the Indians, and the ownership of the land fell to them. They have themselves played an essential part in the actual development of breeding. Leaving the river and travelling toward the forest on the west, one first crosses a narrow belt of estates which form an almost unbroken line from San Javier to Resistencia. These are old colonies, mostly founded about 1870, at the same time as the first colonies in the centre of Santa Fé. They had the advantage of being within reach of the river-route, the network of railways that serves the colonies of Santa Fé not being constructed until after 1880. They have not shown the same capacity for extension as the colonies on the prairie, but they are firmly rooted, on high and well-drained land, very different from the clays of the Chaco, where the alluvial beds of the Paraná alternate with stuff that seems to come from the left bank. They grow flax, earth-nuts, sugar cane, and cotton. Behind this slight agricultural façade are the large estates of the factories. In the division of the land the industrial firms sought the districts which were richest in _quebracho_. Buyers of land who had no industrial plans--foreign capitalists and Porteños--and who obtained large concessions in little-known regions, sold back to the factories the plots where there was plenty of wood, after they had taken stock of their property. They converted the remainder into _estancias_ (ranches). The district to the north of the Central Norte Railway, from San Cristobal to Tostado, where the forest, which will presently yield to the plain, breaks into patches and looks like a park, includes a number of these modern _estancias_, in which lucerne is beginning to replace the grasses of the natural vegetation. [Illustration: QUEBRACHO TRUNKS LYING AT THE STATIONS. _Eastern Chaco, on the Resistencia line (Santa Fé province). Here the quebracho is exploited for tannic acid, not sleepers_. Photographs by the Author. PLATE XI. To face p. 116.] When one passes to the interior, the pastoral industry at once assumes a more primitive character. The _quebracho_ concerns themselves go in for breeding, in order to make use of their large estates, when the timber has been removed but the works have not yet been set up. They need a large number of cattle, both for moving the timber and feeding their workers, and they endeavour to meet their needs themselves. In this district the forest is capable of feeding a far heavier herd than is the more arid scrub of the eastern Chaco. There are often a thousand head of cattle to 2,500 hectares. To the north and west of that part of the forest where the big companies have taken over the whole of the land, in the province of Chaco, a fairly large number of estates has been created. Further still, on either side of the Bermejo, cattle from Corrientes and the Paraguay have been put on the public lands by men with no rights. As their future is uncertain, they cannot do any expensive work, such as making wells, reservoirs, and enclosures. Sometimes they are compelled by drought to fall back upon the river. Conditions are quite different in the forests of Misiones. The damp forest of Misiones does not lend itself to breeding. While the forest-workers on the west of the Paraná eat fresh meat, thanks to the proximity of the breeders, in the _yerbales_ and _obrajes_ of Misiones, the use of dried or "jerked" meat (_carne seca_), which is brought some distance, has remained the common practice, as it is in most parts of tropical America. On the other hand, there is now developing in Misiones an agricultural colonization of an original kind, quite distinct from the ordinary Argentinian type. This is because Misiones is a province apart in Argentina. It really belongs, by its geological structure and its climate, to the Brazilian tableland. The colonies in Misiones are merely an extension into Argentine territory of the great belt of colonies of southern Brazil, which stretches from the neighbourhood of Santa Catalina and the Rio Grande do Sul to the River Paraguay. The Brazilian type of colonization is based upon work with the hoe, in clearings that have been made in the forest by the axe and by fire. Ordinary farming would be impracticable between the large stumps which the clearers have to leave in the ground, to rot there slowly. It would, moreover, be useless, as the land, though rich in humus, is light and aërated. The red soil, a decomposition-product of the diabases which are at the root of all agricultural wealth in southern Brazil, covers a great part of Misiones. The economic inferiority of this agricultural colonization in the forest to the Pampean type which has conquered the grassy plains of the Rio de la Plata, is twofold. On the one hand, the surface that a man can develop is very small. The plots of the Brazilian colonies are ten times smaller than the average estate on the Pampa. On the other hand, it is difficult to get about in the forest, and this hinders the export of the produce. The colonies in Misiones are still confined to the edge of the great forest, into which they will advance as the agricultural population grows. They form two groups: one on the river above Posadas (Candelaria, Bonpland, Corpus, San Ignacio, and Santa Ana), the other on the slopes of the hills, above the line from Posadas to Uruguay (San José and Apostoles). Foodstuffs, tobacco, fowl and eggs, which they now send by rail as far as Buenos Aires, are their chief resources. As it is possible for them to reach the big markets of the Pampas, by river or rail, they have a certain advantage over the Brazilian colonies. On the other hand, the various elements of their population are inferior. They are very mixed, comprising aboriginals--relics of the ancient Indian or half-breed population of Misiones who have got land but are in no hurry to cultivate it--Poles (grouped in a few villages, such as Apostoles and San José), and German-Brazilians from the left bank of the Uruguay. At the present time there is a constant stream of German-Brazilians through the province of Misiones, to embark at Posadas, sail up the Paraná, and settle, further north, in Matto Grosso. No doubt it would be possible to induce part of them to settle on Argentinian territory by offering them suitable land. These peasant clearers of the land rarely find means to sell their timber. The tropical forest has an immense variety of species, but only a few of these are of value. The _obrajero_ does not cut down the whole forest; he chooses his victims. In the waste land of the colonist it is by no means possible to utilize everything. Even in the area where the forestry industry flourishes, trunks with no faults, felled in order to make room for farming, are pitilessly burned and destroyed. Yet the indirect advantages of the forestry to agriculture are numerous. Just as in the whole of southern Brazil, it affords a good market for agricultural produce. The crops from the colonies are stored in the shops at Posadas, and from there they go to the _obrajes_ and _yerbales_. In addition, the industry finds work for more men. On the Rio Grande do Sul, and later on the Paraná, the wages paid for collecting _maté_ have long been the surest resource of the colonies, and it is this that enabled them to subsist during the difficulties of their early period. In Misiones the attraction of the _yerbales_ is not so strongly felt by the inhabitants. There are comparatively few colonists who are willing to leave their plots and hire themselves for distant work. The _yerbales_ find their recruits, not amongst the immigrants from Europe, but amongst the ancient _pobladores_; that is to say, men who hold land without a title, whose position was recognized when the colony was formed--a floating population, not deeply rooted in the soil. Agricultural colonization in turn will react upon the forestry industry in developing the cultivation of _maté_. Large plantations of _ilex_ have already been established above Posadas. Already they enter the common life. They are scattered either over the estates of the national colonies or over the larger estates of the richer colonists; for planting demands a considerable expenditure. Some of them belong to dealers who also work natural _yerbales_ elsewhere. They are, if possible, set up in the forest, or at least on the fringe of it, in order to have a good supply of wood to dry the leaves. Thus the primitive industry of collecting _maté_ is undergoing transformation while the natural growths are disappearing. CHAPTER V PATAGONIA AND SHEEP-REARING The arid tableland and the region of glacial lakes--The first settlements on the Patagonian coast and the indigenous population--Extensive breeding--The use of pasture on the lands of the Rio Negro--Transhumation. The northern limit of the Patagonian region passes to the north of the Colorado, in the latitude of the Cerro Payen and of the ridge which leads from Malarüe to the Rio Grande in the sub-Andean zone (36° S. lat)., and to the Sierra de Lihuel Calel in the southern part of the Pampa province. South of this line, from the Andes to the Atlantic, on the territory of the Neuquen, the Rio Negro, the Chubut, and the Santa Cruz, is the region of the sheep farms, their refuge since more profitable branches of farming have driven the sheep from the Pampa. The extensive breeding practised on these poor lands is not profitable enough to justify much expenditure, and is therefore all the more controlled by the physical conditions. It is true that cattle-breeding was once undertaken in the Spanish settlements of the lower Negro, and still exists in western Patagonia at the foot of the Andes, but one never finds there the particular combination of cattle-breeding and sheep-breeding which is characteristic of the Pampean region, in which the main function of the cattle is to improve the pasture and make it ready for sheep. The climate is trying. The west winds are violent during the greater part of the year, especially on the coast, and merely relax a little in the winter. The mean temperature on the Atlantic coast falls nearly one degree for each degree of latitude (14.6° at San Antonio, below 41° S. lat.; 8.5° at Santa Cruz, below 50° S. lat.; and 5.3° at Ushuaia, below 55° S. lat.). The summer temperature falls even more steeply, but the difference is less notable in winter (21.4° at San Antonio, 14° at Santa Cruz, and 9.2° at Ushuaia). The low summer temperature does not allow cereals to ripen south of the Chubut. In the sub-Andean valleys the summer is comparatively warm (16° in January at Diez y seis de Octubre at a height of 1,800 feet), but there is severe frost, especially at the beginning of the winter, and no month of the year is quite free from it. Rain is plentiful in the Cordillera, and on its western border: 800 millimetres at Junin, nearly two metres at San Martin (which the wet westerly winds reach by the gap of Lake Lacar), and nearly a metre at Bariloche, on Lake Nahuel Huapi. It diminishes rapidly, however, as soon as one leaves the mountainous region and goes further east over the tableland. The whole tableland has a rainfall of less than 200 millimetres (Las Lajas 180, Limay 150, San Antonio 180, Santa Cruz 135). It is only south of the Rio de Santa Cruz that the rainfall rises once more (Gallegos 400 millimetres, Ushuaia 500 millimetres). Hence Patagonia as a whole is, with the exception of a narrow belt at the foot of the Andes, a semi-arid region with a sub-desert climate. In the Patagonian Andes the rain falls, as on the coast of Chile, mainly in winter. Between Mendoza, which has the summer-rain feature of central and tropical Argentina, and Chosmalal, in the Neuquen Andes, the contrast is absolute. The summer months there (January and February) are dry, and the rain is confined to the winter months, from May to August. It is the same further south, at Bariloche and at Diez y seis de Octubre. On the Atlantic coast the winter-rain feature is less regular and uniform. At San Antonio the heaviest rains fall in autumn (April and May). There is a secondary maximum in August, and a few more showers in the spring (September and October). South of San Antonio the winter maximum, which is always marked, is cut by a short dry period (July and August at Camerones, June at Deseado and Santa Cruz).[50] In the interior, on the other hand, the winter-rain system remains unchanged. The predominance of the precipitations of the cold season is of great importance to the breeders. As a rule, they come down in the form of snow, which melts slowly, and the small quantity of moisture is at least all absorbed in the soil. South of the Santa Cruz the humidity increases, but the rainy season alters. At Gallegos the wettest month is December; at Ushuaia, the rains last from September to March. The snow-season (May-August) is the dry season, and the snowfalls are not heavy enough to interfere with breeding. [50] This anomaly is doubtless due to the proximity of the sea and the respite of the westerly winds in winter. The coast, with its cold waters and the land-winds causing the deeper water to rise, has a special climate of fogs and mists. These, which remind us of the _garuas_ of the coast of Peru, do not penetrate into the interior. The surface of the Patagonian tableland is very uneven, though it bears traces of having been much worn by the agencies of its desert climate, which seems to have lasted through the whole Tertiary Era. Going up the Rio Negro, one sees the grey sandstones and Tertiary tufas which form the cliffs, on both sides of the lower valley. They give place higher up to the variegated marls and red sandstones of the Cretaceous which form the tableland at the foot of the first Andean chains. The core of ancient granites and porphyries crops up at places from under the mantle of Cretaceous and Tertiary sandstones. The horizon of the peneplain passes from the Tertiary and Cretaceous tableland to level masses of crystalline rock, the contour of which has been almost entirely effaced. Volcanic eruptions have occurred until quite recent times, and so eruptive areas are the salient features of the tableland, at Añecon and at Somuncurra, south of the district of the Rio Negro, in the ridge on the left bank of the middle Senguerr, in the Chubut province. The basalts have spread out in sheets, the surface of which seems to have cooled not long ago. Basalt flows are found as far as northern Patagonia, south of Valcheta and Maquinchao; but their chief seat is in eastern Patagonia. They cover the inhospitable tablelands to the east of Lakes Buenos Aires and Pueyrredon. The Rio Chico and the Santa Cruz cross them for the upper two-thirds of their course, South of Coile and Gallegos they spread almost to the coast, and the Tertiary Pampas in this part are dominated by an archipelago of small volcanic cones. The tableland is crossed from west to east by deep and broad valleys, enclosed between high cliffs, often strangled by ridges of basaltic or crystalline rock, and very little ramified. The ravines (_cañadones_), which make breaches in their cliffs on both sides, go only a little way into the sandstone Pampa or the lava tableland. Only a certain number of these valleys are occupied by important rivers (the Rio Negro and the Santa Cruz, for instance) which are born in the Andes, but receive little addition from the light rains of eastern Patagonia. Most of the valleys have only intermittent streams (Sheuen, Coile) or are altogether dry and sown with salt lakes (Deseado). The west wind is now the ruler of this network of fossil valleys. It carves their slopes, and brings into them sand, with which it makes dunes. We must not confuse with these dead valleys the long depressions, with no outlet, which are scattered over the granite and sandstone tableland (_bajos_, _valles_, _cuencas_). Some have obstinately, but wrongly, sought in these the traces of rivers that have disappeared; and the _bajos_ of Gualicho and Valcheta have wrongly been regarded as the former bed of the Rio Negro and the Limay. Erosion by wind seems to have had something to do with these depressions. Their persistence, at all events, is one of the effects of the aridity which prevents normal erosion from moulding the surface of the tableland. The chief of them are centres for collecting running water. There is a group of valleys all round them, and alluvial beds accumulate in them. The climate determines the character of the soil in Patagonia. The rounded pebbles of granite and eruptive rock, so often described since the time of Darwin, sometimes free and sometimes embedded in red sand or limestone,[51] are spread over the tableland like aureoles round the masses of rock, and they are particularly abundant in the coast region. On the Rio Negro they seem to be confined to the vicinity of the valley; they disappear as one goes away from it. The progressive reduction in the volume of the Rio Negro gravels, as one goes downward, has been observed to begin in the Andean zone, and it is from the Andes that they come. South of Santa Cruz, in a moister climate, in which the circulation of the water is less localized, the bed is more continuous, and it covers the Tertiary sandstones and clays. It is of fluvio-glacial origin, and comes from the destruction of the old moraines, before the excavation of the actual valleys. But it is the wind that explains the concentration of the gravel at the surface. It separates the pebbles from the more mobile material about them. Wherever the outcrop-strata contain pebbles, the wind eventually converts the place into a field of shingle. It has done this with the terraces of the Limay. The Tertiary marine deposits of the coast region also are rich in pebbles torn from the rocky promontories of the shore; hence the extent of stony soils in the coast region. The wind similarly strips naked the angular stones, of local origin and incompletely worn, round the isolated rocks of the desert tableland or on the flanks of the secondary ravines. [51] The calcareous flag-stone of La Tosca, which is characteristic of the south-west province of the plain of the Pampa, stretches in the south as far as the Rio Negro in the coast-district. On the other hand, it is almost entirely absent a hundred miles to the west, between the Colorado and the Rio Negro, along the line of the railway from Fortin Uno to Choele Choel. On the other hand, the bedding action of the wind creates deposits consisting of small and uniform elements from the sands of the dunes to the finest dust. The lightest particles, caught up repeatedly by the squalls and carried to a great height in the atmosphere, go beyond the Patagonian region and reach the bottom of the Atlantic or the plain of the Pampa. Some of this, however, is deposited in the depressions of the tableland, where the moisture fixes it and prevents the wind from regaining it. These æolian deposits in the depressions, a dark-grey clay, which hardens when it is dry, but is softened by water, form two entirely different kinds of soil. If the depression is closed in, or if the circulation of the water is too slight, there is a concentration of the mineral salts; this is the _salitral_, either naked or sustaining a halophytic vegetation, which the saline efflorescences cover with a white coat during the dry season. If on the other hand, the underground waters have a free course, the æolian clay forms the _mallin_. Bushes and fine grasses grow on it, and, as they decay, gradually give it a darker shade and modify its composition. The soil above the _mallin_ is rich in organic elements. It covers the bottom of the valleys between low terraces, covered with faceted pebbles, and dominated by the vertical cliffs of tufa and lava. The contrast between the verdure of the _mallin_ and the arid, dusty, yellow steppe of the tableland is one of the most characteristic features of Patagonian scenery. The area in which _mallin_ has been formed coincides with the most humid districts in the vicinity of the Andes and round the higher hills. On the road that runs along the right bank of the Limay, at some distance from the river, on the surface of the tableland, the limit between the country of the _salitrales_ and that of the _mallinas_ passes between Tricaco and Chasico, a hundred miles south-east of Neuquen; it almost tallies with the curve of a 200 millimetres rainfall.[52] Though the word _mallin_ is not used at Santa Cruz, similar æolian soils are found in the western part of the tableland up to this latitude. Further south glacial deposits, clays with moraine-blocks, fill the valleys, and from Gallegos onward, cover the greater part of the tableland. [52] G. Rovereto, "Studi di geomorfologia argentina: la valle del Rio Negro," _Bull. Soc. Geol. Ital._, xxxi. 1912, pp. 101-142 and 181-237. On the eruptive flows of recent date the rock is naked. The wind carries away the products of its decomposition, and the dust accumulates only in the fissures. Traffic is difficult, sometimes impossible. * * * * * Toward the west the tableland is separated from the Cordillera by a longitudinal depression, though the continuity of this has been exaggerated. This depression, which outlines the contact between the folded zone of the Andes and the flat zone of the tableland, is very important from the point of view of colonization. Just at the frontier of the steppe and the forest, it is the most hospitable part of Patagonia, the richest in natural resources. Amidst the glacial lacustrine deposits which are accumulated on it there rise masses of different kinds of rock which break it up into compartments, granitic ridges of laccolites exposed to view, eruptive structures that have been dismantled. In the south the sub-Andean depression forms a broad passage between Lake Maravilla and Puntá Arenas, about two hundred miles long, enclosed between the basalt cliffs of the tableland on the east and the mountains of the Brunswick Peninsula and William IV Land. The bottom of it is a singular glacial landscape, sown with lagoons, punctuated by scattered hills, with an impermeable soil of drift and mud. From Lake Argentina to Lake Buenos Aires the elevated tablelands, which rise to a height of 5,000 feet, back upon the Cordillera, and the sub-Andean depression is interrupted. Similarly, between Lake Buenos Aires and Lake General Paz the contour of the Patagonian tableland is not very marked above the sub-Andean zone. The glacial alluvia at the foot of the Cordillera rise to the level of the tableland, which sinks steadily eastward toward the Genua and the Senguerr. To the north, between Carrenleufu and Lake Nahuel Huapi, the retreat of the lakes has left long narrow beds right in the Cordillera, such as the Valle Nuevo del Bolson, the bed of which has been taken over by the Futaleufu west of the Cerro Situación. Further east the topographical features of the edge of the tableland (the valleys of the Chubut, Tecka, and Norquineo) lie from north to south. Hence within a space of little more than a hundred kilometres the sub-Andean zone has a series of parallel roads, communicating with each other by means of broad, transverse gaps, which at one time were occupied by the lower lobes of the glaciers. The sub-Andean depression does not go north of Lake Nahuel Huapi. The morphological features of the Patagonian Andes begin at 36° S. lat.[53] The edge of the Cordillera, in the Malargüe depression, below 35° S. lat., still presents the typical scenery of the central Andes. The dejection-cone of the Atuel resembles that of the Mendoza. The fringe of torrential deposits, distributed in cones over which the waters spread, is due to the rapidity of the disintegration of the rocks in a desert climate. Keidel has pointed out the part played by the summer rains in transporting mobile elements, which the water drops as soon as the slope diminishes; the amount of precipitation being too slight to permit the formation and spread over the plain of a regular network of streams. From the Rio Grande onward the dejection cones disappear. The streams tend to become permanent, and sink into narrow valleys. The summer rains cease, and the water produced by the melting of the snows has only a feeble capacity for transporting stuff. The soil of the Cordillera is protected by a denser vegetation. The first thickets of _molle_ appear in the valleys, the first scattered cypresses on the slopes, at the Rio Agrio, a tributary of the Neuquen. Then the forest invades the mountain: at first, from 38° S. lat. to 39° 30' S. lat., a resinous forest of araucarias. At length, at Lake Nahuel Huapi, the forest assumes the general appearance which it has as far as the Magellan region. It is chiefly made up of different kinds of beeches. The _coihue_ (_Notofagus dombeyi_) is the most conspicuous for about three quarters of a mile, rising above an impenetrable undergrowth of bamboo. Higher up the domain of the _lenga_ (_Notofagus pumilio_) extends as far as the fringe of the Alpine forests. The forest does not reach the eastern limit of the lakes. In the sub-Andean depression it is reduced to thickets of _ñirre_ (_Notofagus antarctica_) and _mayten_ and clumps of _calafate_ (something like myrtles). [53] The great mass of the Patagonian Andes differs considerably in geological structure from the Argentinian Andes. The Paleozoic sedimentary rocks and the lofty chains of the pre-Cordillera cease at 36° S. lat. The Mesozoic beds--variegated breccie and porphyritic conglomerates, sandstones, limestones, and marls--which form the western slope of the Andes in central Chile, pass to the eastern slope at 35° S. lat., where they develop in regular folds, in the direction south-south-east, obliquely to the general line of the range. These folds account for the orientation of the interior valleys, which is remarkably uniform from the Rio Negro to the Collon Cura. They pass in the south-west under the sandstones of the tableland. West of this sedimentary zone, the zone of the sub-Andean granites and diorites, which have not been exposed further north except at the base of the western slope, opens out in the Patagonian Andes, of which it is the main body between Lake Lacar and the Gulf of Ultima Esperanza. In fine, the Patagonian Andes are characterised by volcanic formations. They are seen on the eastern slope about 36° S. lat., in the lava-flows and ashes of Payen and Tromen. Further south volcanoes with acid lava and characteristic cones are restricted to the central zone (Lanin, etc.) and the Chilean flank, but flows of fluid basic lava cover enormous stretches at the eastern fringe of the Andes, and they have spread over a good deal of the Patagonian tableland outside the Andean region. It is on the Alumine, about 39° S. lat., that we find traces of glacial erosion, as they spread over the landscape. At present there is no ice on the mountain except on the peaks of Lanin and Tronador, but from the Rio Puelo onward (42° S. lat.), glaciers clothe all the summits which rise above 6,500 feet. North of the Aisen they form a narrow, but almost continuous, line. From the Aisen to the Calen fiord, and beyond the gap of the fiord as far as 52° S. lat., the ice spreads in a considerable sheet which in some places attains a breadth of eighty miles. The tongues of the glaciers reach the Pacific below 46° S. lat., and Lake San Martin on the Argentine slope below 49° S. lat. In Tierra del Fuego the snow-line is at 2,300 feet, and the glaciers which the snows feed, reach as far as the fiords and Lake Fagnano. Lake Carri Lauquen, on the Barrancas (36° 20' S. lat.), which was almost entirely drained in 1914 through the breaking down of the natural dam of soft earth which confined its waters, is not a glacial lake.[54] The chain of glacial lakes stretches from the Alumine to the Seno de la Ultima Esperanza, and is continued southward by Skyring Water, Otway Water, and Useless Bay--genuine lakes in communication with the Pacific by means of narrow channels. The lakes sometimes lie in a narrow and deep glacial valley, the bottom of which they fill; sometimes they branch out into the neighbouring valleys; at other times they advance eastward beyond the zone of the mountains and spread into round basins surrounded by circles of moraines. The largest of them include groups of ramified fiords, which represent their western half, while the eastern half spreads between lower banks.[55] [54] Pablo Groeber, _Informe sobra las causas que han producido las crecientes del Rio Colarado en_ 1914. Dir. Gen. de Minas, Geol. e Hidrol., Bol. No. 11, series B, Geologia (Buenos Aires, 1916). [55] Most of the lacustrine depressions are continued eastward across the Patagonian tableland in the shape of distinct valleys. The eastern part of the Straits of Magellan is merely a submerged valley on the axis of Otway Water. Useless Bay also is continued eastward by the hollow which ends in the Bay of San Sebastian. Sometimes the waters of the lakes flow eastward, toward the Atlantic, along these valleys. Generally, however, the lakes of the western slope are drained on the west by means of narrow defiles across the Cordillera, or on the north and south by rivers which follow the sub-Andean depression and thread them together in the manner of a rosary. The valley which joins the lake to the Atlantic is in those cases a dead valley, and the inter-oceanic dividing line of the waters is marked by the frontal moraine of the old glacier, which confines the lake on the east. This arrangement is found, with surprising regularity, from the Alumine and the Lacar to the Neuquen, and as far as Lake Buenos Aires and the Seno de la Ultima Esperanza at Santa Cruz. The capture of the waters of the eastern slope by the rivers of the Pacific across the Cordillera is fairly ancient, and certainly pre-glacial. But during the Glacial Period the glaciers obstructed the transverse valleys of the Cordillera, and the waters of the eastern slope found their way to the Atlantic once more. With the retreat of the glaciers the valleys of the Cordillera were successively cleared. The lakes, dammed by the glaciers, were suddenly released and their level lowered. The valleys of the Patagonian tableland were finally abandoned, and the topographical accident of secondary importance, which the ancient frontal moraine of the glacier represents, came to mark the limit of the domain of the Pacific. The freshness of the contours of the dead valleys of Patagonia bears witness to the recent date of this conquest, which was too sudden or rapid to be called a "capture" in the proper sense. It has not been accomplished everywhere. From Lake San Martin to Lake Buenos Aires all the lakes of the eastern slope are drained into the Pacific by rivers which flow into the Culen fiord. But further south, Lakes Viedma and Argentino are still tributaries of the Atlantic. They correspond to the zone of the Patagonian Andes which is still covered by inland ice. To the north, in the basin of the Puelo and the Yelcho, where the trans-Andean valleys long ago ceased to be obstructed by ice, the lakes of the eastern slope which drain toward the Pacific are small in size. Their level to-day is much lower than it used to be, and a network of streams has developed east of them, on the earlier lacustrine region, which is now dry. [Illustration: YOKE OF CREOLE OXEN USED FOR THE TRANSPORT OF TIMBER ON THE EASTERN CHACO, OR CHACO OF SANTA FÉ. _On the Central (or Santiago) Chaco mules are used for transport._ Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: WORKS AT TARTAGAL (EASTERN CHACO) FOR MAKING TANNIC ACID. _These works, built by powerful firms, are permanent centres, drawing timber from a great stretch of forest, while the saw-mills of the Central Chaco move about freely, to be near the felling sites._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE XII. To face p. 128.] Pastoral colonization has now spread over almost the entire surface of Patagonia. The parts that are not yet occupied are of slight extent; they consist only of the most desolate regions in the south of the Rio Negro district and north of Santa Cruz. The expansion of white colonization began only about 1880. Until then the interior was abandoned to the indigenous tribes and was almost entirely unknown. The Atlantic coast alone had been explored. The travels of Villarino along the Rio Negro and the Limay as far as Lake Nahuel Huapi had left only a faded memory.[56] North of the Rio Negro, Woodbine Parish (1859), making use of the notes left by Cruz, who had crossed the Andes and the Indian territory between Antuco and Melincue in 1806, was the first to publish definite information, to which no addition would be made during the next forty years.[57] [56] _Diario de D. Basilio Villarino del reconocimiento que hizo del Rio Negro en el año de_ 1782 (Coll. de Angelis, vi). [57] It is Woodbine Parish who corrects Villarino's mistake in confusing the Neuquen, at its confluence with the Limay, with the Rio Diamante, known in the south of the Mendoza province. The settlements founded on the coast by the Spaniards at the close of the eighteenth century (S. José and P. Deseado) were ephemeral. Only one of them maintained an obscure existence, Carmen de Patagones, some miles above the mouth of the Rio Negro. One of its chief resources was the export of salt. Expeditions for this purpose began on the Patagonian coast about the middle of the eighteenth century (_Journey from San Martin to Puerto San Julian about_ 1753, Coll. de Angelis, V). After the revolution, Buenos Aires finally abandoned these costly expeditions by land to the salt districts of the Pampa, and was supplied with salt by schooners from Carmen. During the war with Brazil and the blockade of the Rio de la Plata, Carmen, protected by the bar of the Rio Negro, and the Bay of San Blas were the harbours in which Argentine, English and French privateers concealed their prizes and did their repairs after the storms of the Gulf of Santa Catarina. D'Orbigny visited Carmen during this period of equivocal prosperity. One of the most curious effects of the hospitality offered to the privateers was the unloading upon the Patagonian coast of blacks, intended for Brazil, who were taken from the slave-traders. Thus an unforeseen eddy brought to the south of the Pampean region part of the current of the slave-trade intended for the sugar-cane plantations in tropical America. A number of the Carmen ranches had coloured workers at this time. Breeding, in fact, was just beginning to spread in the neighbourhood of Carmen at the time. The cattle had been brought by land from Buenos Aires, and had multiplied along the coast and the river above Carmen. South of Carmen, at San José, the cattle had run wild after the fort was abandoned. The Carmen herds were estimated, before the revolution, at 40,000 head. They disappeared during the revolutionary period, but were reconstituted immediately afterwards, and even during the war with Brazil there was an active export of hides and salt beef. Carmen profited mainly by trade with the Indians. It lived in terror of them, and had garrisons to give the alarm on the routes by which they could approach. But this state of chronic warfare did not prevent trade. Near Carmen there was a group of peaceful Indians who served as intermediaries with the tribes of the interior, who were jealous and hostile. Guides and interpreters were found in this colony, and through it came the first news of the interior. The traffic with the Indians continued for a long time to be of great use to the colonists. In 1865 the Welsh colony established on the Chubut, which had many difficulties at first, was saved from complete disaster by its trade with the Indians. The indigenous population comprised two groups: the Tehuelches, or Patagonians proper, men of tall stature, and the Araucans, the Ranqueles, the Pehuenches and the Pampas. There was no fixed geographical limit between them. The Tehuelches lived in southern Patagonia; but the Araucans advanced eastward as far as the Pampas region and southward beyond the Chubut. The Indian population of the valley of the Genua and the Sanguerr, south of the colony of San Martin, comprised in 1880,[58] and still comprises,[59] a mixture of Araucans and Tehuelches. The Araucans were acquainted with agriculture, but, once they had tamed the horse, they became mainly a pastoral and hunting people, like the Tehuelches. [58] Carlos M. Moyano, "Informe sobre un viaje a traves de la Patagonia," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, ii. 1881, pp. 1-35. [59] W. Vallentin, _Chubut_ (Berlin, 1906). In so far as they were hunters, the Indians of Patagonia were nomadic. The taming of the horse only made it easier for them to shift from place to place, and gave them a greater range. Their nomadism has too often been regarded as an aimless wandering. They had laws, settled by the physical conditions; and we can gather a few of these. They kept away from the coastal districts except in winter; that is the season when the rains provide water-courses there. It has been observed that names of Indian origin are lacking on the coast of Patagonia. The Spanish navigators who landed there during the summer found the country deserted and the camps abandoned. On the other hand, the share of the Indians in giving names is very considerable in the interior, as far as the foot of the Andes. During the summer the Indians approached the mountains, where they found good hunting grounds. In particular they chased the young guanacos in the breeding season, December and January. Popper has indicated similar migrations amongst the Onas of Patagonia; they approach the coast in winter, and leave it in summer, to hunt in the interior.[60] The district of Lake Nahuel Huapi and Collon Cura had some attraction from afar. The forest of araucarias produced seeds (_pinones_) which the Indians went to gather; and they also liked the wild apples which ripened on the former estates of the old Jesuit missions. The clusters of bamboo on the Cordillera provided the lances of the Aucas and Tehuelches. [60] J. Popper, "Exploracion de la Tierra del Fuego," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, viii. 1887, pp. 74-93. Lake Nahuel Huapi is the first stage of the busiest of the routes used by the Indians. It came from the lower Santa Cruz, went up the Rio Chico, and from there northward followed the foot of the Cordillera. D'Orbigny was told about it: "All the Indians who live near the Andes go along the eastern foot of the mountains in their journeys, because they find water there, whereas they would find none if they went by the coast; in that way they travel from the Straits of Magellan to the Rio Negro." The Indian track only left the sub-Andean depression between the Rio Chico and Lake Buenos Aires, in the district where the high basalt _mesetias_ extend as far as the Cordillera, and on the Pampa of the Sanguerr. From Lake Nahuel Huapi the Indians of the south descended the Limay and the Rio Negro, and reached the island of Choele Choel, some 230 miles above Carmen, where they met the Aucas and Puelches. There they exchanged their _guanacos_ hides for woollen fabrics made by the Aucas. Choele Choel was the only large, purely indigenous market; the whites never visited it. Geographical reasons fixed the site of this market of the nomads. In the latitude of Choele Choel the Rio Negro approaches the Colorado and the archipelago of the Sierras of the southern Pampa, which mark so many stages on the routes from the Pampa to the Andes. To the south the coast-route, less exposed to snow than the sub-Andean track, began from Choele Choel. The Indians followed this to reach the Gulf of San Jorge and the Santa Cruz in winter, during the rainy season. Darwin notes the importance of the site and the ford of Choele Choel. Villarino had suspected it, and had, as early as 1782, pleaded for the building of a fort there. By holding this point, he said, they could prevent the tribes from attacking Buenos Aires, or from approaching the Patagonian coast in the district of San José.[61] [61] _Informe de D. Basilio Villarino à Fr. de Viedma_, Coll. de Angelis, v. As far back as we can go, the life of the Indians seems to have been deeply influenced by their relations with the whites. The Aucas brought to Choele Choel, not only the products of their industry, but also objects stolen or bought from the Christians on the Pampa. The report of Musters, who followed a Tehuelche tribe from Santa Cruz to the country of the Manzanas ("land of apples"), shows clearly that the attraction of the Nahuel Huapi region for the Indians was less due to its natural resources than to the presence of the Chilean settlements at Valdivia, from which came across the passes of the Cordillera certain quantities of brandy. The Indian never took to cattle-breeding. His herd never consisted of more than mares and a few sheep. But trade in stolen cattle quickly became the chief occupation of the tribes. It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that the thievish Indian was merely and always a dreaded enemy of the ranches of Carmen. They sometimes had recourse to his services and profited by his misdeeds. After the Revolution, it was the Indians who helped to fill once more the ranches of the Rio Negro, bringing runaway cattle which had remained in the San José district. Later, Carmen bought the cattle stolen by the Indians at Buenos Aires. From 1823 to 1826 the number of the cattle sold by the Indians to the colonists on the Rio Negro is estimated at 40,000. Hence the breeders of Carmen had, as regards the Indians, alternate periods of armed conflict and complicity. But Chile was always the great market for stolen cattle. Raids (_malones_) and the crossing of the Cordillera by convoys began in the eighteenth century, and continued throughout the nineteenth, until 1880, when the consolidation of Argentine authority on the eastern side gave a more regular form to the cattle-trade. The convoys came to a halt at Antuco and Chillan from which the Chilean buyers sometimes accompanied the Indian tribes as far as the _tolderias_ on the edge of the Pampa. The trade in stolen cattle made use of all the passes of the Cordillera, from the Planchon pass below 35° S. lat., which Roca had covered in 1877 by the fortress of Alamito, to the source of the Bio Bio. The one most used was the Pichachen or the Antuco pass. On the tableland the cattle-tracks formed a regular network with innumerable strands, spreading over a width of about two hundred miles. The most northern route started east of the Poitague district and, after fording the Salado and the Atuel, and passing the _aguadas_ of Cochico and Ranquilco, entered the Cordillera at the bend of the Rio Grande. Another track ascended the Colorado and then reached the high valley of Neuquen. A third crossed from the Colorado to the Rio Negro, and, above the confluence of the Limay, to the Rio Agrio or the Alumine. The first exact information about the range of the Patagonian Indians is supplied by a group of bold travellers who followed their tracks from 1870 to 1880: Musters, Moreno, Moyano, Ramon Lista, etc. Their discoveries had already outlined the geographical survey of Patagonia when the campaign of 1879-1883 opened it to colonization. The story of white colonization since 1880 shows us several distinct streams of population. The first, starting from the region of the Pampa, went from north to south along the Atlantic coast, and gradually extended its sphere toward the interior. The breeders used the sea-route, the ancient Indian track with recognized sources of water, to convey their first herds. In 1884, the only spot inhabited on the coast between the Rio Negro and the Deseado was the Welsh colony on the Chubut. In 1886 Fontana reports ranches in the Puntá Delfin district, south of the Chubut.[62] About 1890 the whole district round the Gulf of San Jorge was occupied; and a little later the stream from the north met the stream from the south about San Julian and Santa Cruz. The expansion of colonization was less rapid in the interior. Ambrosetti tells us of the establishment of the first ranches round the Sierra de Lihuel Calel in 1893,[63] and at the same time Siemiradzki still found few traces of colonization on the Colorado.[64] [62] L. J. Fontana, "Exploracion en la Patagonia austral," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, vii, 1886, pp. 223-239. [63] J. B. Ambrosetti, "Viage a la Pampa central," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, xiv. 1893, pp. 292-368. [64] J. V. Siemiradzki, _Eine Farschungsreise in Patagonien_, Petermann's _Mitteilungen_, xxxix. 1893, pp. 49-62. The second stream of colonization came from the Magellan region. It started in Chilean territory, about Puntá Arenas. It was about 1878 that sheep-breeding spread round Puntá Arenas, and between 1885 and 1892 was the most rapid growth of the ranches of the Magellan district. North of the Straits they occupied the lowlands round Skyring Water and Otway Water, then the plateau south of Gallegos. They spread along the Atlantic as far as the Santa Cruz. In 1896 the limit of the sheep-region was on the Santa Cruz about forty miles from the coast.[65] To the west, Puerto Consuelo was founded in 1892, and in 1896 colonization came up against the mountain barrier which the Cerro Payen and the basalt tableland of the Cerro Vizcachas interpose between Lake Argentine and Ultima Esperanza fiord. [65] J. B. Hatcher, _Reports of the Princeton University expeditions to Patagonia_ 1896-9 (_Narrative of the Expeditions_ and _Geography of Southern Patagonia_, Princeton, 1903). The spheres of primitive colonization in southern Patagonia on the coast still differ from each other in regard to density of population. But breeders in search of unoccupied land have not hesitated to push beyond. In 1895 and 1900 they passed west of the Gulf of San Jorge toward the basin of the Sanguerr and the Genua, (establishment of the Sarmiento colony, south of Colhuapi, 1897: establishment of San Martin on the Genua 1900). Since 1900 the population has also advanced up the Santa Cruz and the Rio Chico as far as the zone of the Andes, and the lagoon which still existed twenty years ago, between the district of the Sanguerr and that of Lake Argentino, and is easily recognized on the maps of the Frontier Commission, has been almost entirely filled up. The story of colonization in the northern part of the Patagonian Andes is more complicated. Immediately after the campaign of 1883 the valleys of the Neuquen were invaded by Chilean immigrants, half-breeds of the frontier, who cannot always be easily distinguished from pure Araucans. A certain number of Chilotes, and even Germans from the southern colonies of Chile, were mixed with the half-breeds. This stream of immigration had begun before the conquest. As early as 1881 Host notices that there are at Chosmalal various families of Chilean farmers who held their lands from the Indian _cacique_. During the summer they took care of the migratory herds from the Chilean plain. Once the country was pacified, they grew rapidly in number. It was they who provided the manual labour for the placer miners of the Neuquen, where gold began to be worked in 1890. The area of Chilean colonization extends from the Rio Atuel, where Villanueva found Chilean immigrants in 1884, to the south of Lake Nahuel Huapi, where Chileans were still met by Vallentin in 1906, on the Rio Pico, close to 44° S. lat.[66] South of Nahuel Huapi there is no regularly used route across the Cordillera.[67] The Chilean colonists of the southern zone came from the north, therefore, along the eastern foot of the Andes. Bailey Willis calculated that there were 2,000 Chileans in a total population of 3,500 in the sub-Andean area from Nahuel Huapi to Diez y seis de Octubre. The total number of Chilean immigrants may be about 20,000. It is not on the increase, as immigration from Chile was suspended from 1890 to 1895. Since the reconstruction of the frontier the Chilean Government has tried to bring back part of the emigrants to its own territory. Many have gone to settle in the valley of the Lonquimay. In 1896 Moreno saw traces everywhere in the valley of the Collon Cura of the departure of Chilean colonists who had left the country. [66] C. Villanueva, "De Mendoza a Narguin," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, v. 1884, pp. 171-4. [67] Chilean woodcutters have sometimes got as far as the eastern valleys in search of larch, but these were nomads who did not settle. At first it was only the Argentinians of the western provinces, San Juan and Mendoza, who vied with the Chileans for the soil. It is they whom Furque found in 1888 at Roca, on the Rio Negro. But beginning with 1890-95, immigrants of various nationalities have settled on the Neuquen and the Negro.[68] Foreign capitalists organized their first ranches there. In 1888, on the other hand, the Welsh of the lower Chubut, led by Indian guides, went from the coast to the sub-Andean region, and settled in the valley of Diez y seis de Octubre. Between 1895 and 1900 the neighbouring valleys began to be inhabited, and the colonization areas of Nahuel Huapi and the Sanguerr came into contact.[69] [68] Furque, "Descripción del Pueblo General Roca," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, ix. 1888, pp. 124-132. [69] In spite of their importance we must regard as mere episodes in the story of Patagonian colonization the influx of population caused on the eastern coast by the discovery of placer-gold at Cape Virgenes and on the Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego (1884), and the discovery of petroleum at Rivadavia (1907) in the course of drilling in search of water. Rivadavia is already, with its 3,000 inhabitants, one of the chief centres in Patagonia. * * * * * The most striking feature of colonization in Patagonia is the very low density of population. The Census of 1914 gives 81,000 inhabitants altogether for the territories of the Rio Negro, the Neuquen, the Chubut, the Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego. A well-kept ranch of 25,000 square kilometres has only a staff of about a hundred men at the most, counting strangers, settled on its land; three hundred inhabitants, or scarcely more than one to ten square kilometres. This population falls into two distinct classes. One is the class of proprietors with regular titles: a rooted and stable class. At first the Government granted enormous concessions, which were taken up especially by English buyers, but it now seeks to break up the land, and the plots which it puts on the market for new pastoral colonies have not more than 625 hectares. This is too small for breeding, no matter how good the situation may be, and there will inevitably be, one would think, a concentration of estates in the hands of a few proprietors. The other part of the population occupy lands which they do not own. They are displaced steadily as the regular concessions are sold to new ranches. They live, so to say, on the margin of colonization, and are more and more restricted to the poorest lands. Sometimes these _intrusos_ or _pobladores_ get hospitality for their herds on the land of some ranch in return for their services. They have little capital, and never make material improvements. They take no care to nurse the pasture, and it matters little to them if it is impoverished. The climate divides Patagonia into two distinct regions. In the west, the moist Andean zone is suitable for cattle-breeding. About 1870 the Chileans of Valdivia hunted wild cattle in the Nahuel Huapi district. Similarly the Frontier Commission met large herds of wild cattle on the shores of Lake San Martin, which were not yet occupied. Sheep do not get on well in the moist zone, where the rains have washed out the soil and carried away the salts which seem to be indispensable to the sheep. It is the arid tableland that is the land of the sheep. There it has displaced cattle, even in the area which the early breeders at the end of the eighteenth century had filled with cattle. Between the sheep-area and the cattle-area is a mixed region, where the two are combined. It extends more or less according as the transition from a moist to a desert climate is gradual or sudden. It is especially important in the districts where colonization is already old, as in the Fuegian and Neuquen regions. It is lacking in districts where the colonization is recent (Chubut and Santa Cruz), where the sheep-breeders have had a free run as far as the Andes. The ranches of the Cordillera, which specialize in cattle-breeding, all have small flocks of sheep for their own use, their staff being so small that it does not pay to kill the cattle. The sheep-area is by far the more extensive of the two. The patches of agricultural colonization are very scattered and small on its surface. They are restricted to the river-oases of the Rio Negro and the Chubut. These small tilled districts have preserved a remarkable economic independence as regards the pastoral zone, in which they seem lost. Thus the farmers on the Chubut exported their wheat to Buenos Aires until about 1900, and they still send their bales of dry lucerne there. Some of the ranches have tilled small oases in suitable places, but these are merely intended to increase their stores of fodder; not for their flock of sheep, but for the saddle-horses used in watching the estate and the draught-horses used for transport. The pastoral capacity of the Patagonian scrub is, on the average, from 800 to 1,200 head of sheep to 25 square kilometres: less than a tenth that of the prairies of the eastern Pampa. The ranch fixes its residence in the best part of the estate, where there is least fear of a shortage of water, and where pasture is most plentiful. To this the sheep are brought periodically to receive disinfecting baths against the scab, and for shearing. These incessant movements toward the centre of the ranch cause an almost permanent strain on the pasture, and this is one of the chief anxieties of the breeder. The area of the estate is divided as soon as possible into sections (_potreros_) by steel-wire fences, which enables them to watch over the reproduction and improvement of the flock and make the best use of the pasture. Fencing is more advanced near the Cordillera, as timber for the posts is found there. Certain districts are still uninhabited on account of the lack of water. Some of the sources of water are permanent. The water issues at the base of the volcanic rocks, when the underlying rock is impermeable, and above the various levels of the marl in the Patagonian swamps; for instance, in the _cañadones_ round the Gulf of San Jorge. Besides this, the rain and melting snow leave on the surface of the tableland a great number of pools, which evaporate in the dry season. These are temporary supplies, the _manantiales_, to which the breeders are reduced over large areas of the tableland. Most of the stagnant sheets of water which are permanent are saline. The proportion of salt in them is very variable, and changes in each case according to the cycle of dry and wet years. The water of the Carilaufquen was fresh in 1900, and in 1914 it had become brackish, though it could still be used for the flocks. Finding permanent sources of water is the first concern of the breeder. In some districts he has succeeded in tapping sheets of fresh water by means of wells. There are none of these wells in the crystalline zones, the closed hollows, where the sheets of water are often large, but they are always saline. Neither are there any in the red sandstone district, the dryest of all. In the western region the wells are sunk in the arid valleys, along the track of the underground stream. Thus the Picun Leufu, the visible course of which is lost seventeen miles above its confluence with the Limay, may be traced by a continuous line of wells. It is especially in the coastal districts that the wells have transformed the conditions of breeding. Water was first discovered at the foot of the dunes, along the coast itself (district of Viedma, San José, etc.). Since then deep borings have been made over the whole of the Tertiary platform on both sides of the lower part of the Rio Negro, north of San Antonio. There every ranch has its sheet-iron tank, sheltered by a clump of tamarinds, with a windmill to fill it. All pastures are not equally available in every season. Those which are at a height of more than 4,000 feet in the north, and 2,300 to 2,600 feet in the south, are covered in winter with a thick mantle of snow. These are summer pastures. During the winter the animals are brought down to the principal valleys or to sheltered _cañadones_ below the level of the tableland. The _mallin_ is, as a rule, a winter pasture. When it is too wet, however, it is treacherous, and the animals are buried in it. They have to wait for fine weather before going into it. The pastures, too, which have no permanent water supply, or have only _manantiales_, which dry up at the beginning of summer, can only be used during the winter. Hence each ranch has to have, besides its assured water supply, a suitable combination of summer and winter pasturage, and it is far from certain that this will be found on every estate, cut up geometrically for colonization, as they were, by the administration of lands. [Illustration: THE VOLCANO PUNTIAGUDO. _On the Chilean side, to the north of the road from Lake Nahuel Huapi. The glaciers come down lower on the western side, as the moist winds come from the west, and the rain becomes less and less frequent as one goes eastward toward the Patagonian tableland._] [Illustration: CERCAS ON THE LIMAY (RISING IN LAKE NAHUEL HUAPI), NEAR THE CONFLUENCE OF THE TRAFUL. _Here the Limay enters the sub-desert tableland. Last trees (cypresses) in the valley in the foreground._ Photograph by Bailey Willis. PLATE XIII. To face p. 142.] The constitution of the flock and the first occupation of the land have compelled breeders to undertake difficult journeys, and more than one of these proved disastrous. The earliest arrivals, driving their sheep along little-known tracks, could not avoid losses in crossing the arid parts of the tableland: parts which D'Orbigny, translating literally the Spanish word _travesia_, calls "crossings."[70] When the ranch is established, the breeding does not necessitate any further movements of the flocks to a great distance, apart from certain special migrations, or "transhumations," which I will consider later. It is on each ranch, sometimes on each group of ranches combined in a single estate, that they pass alternately from winter to summer pasture. The only transport necessary is that of wool. The fleeces, which the west wind has heavily laden with dust, are collected in the sheds belonging to the ranch, or, in the case of the _intrusos_, on the premises of certain small traders (_bolicheros_) who are scattered over the tableland even at its extreme limits. Convoys of wagons then take them to the ports on the coast. [70] The search for possible routes for cattle in the districts that were not yet colonized helped in the study of Patagonia. Moyano was doing this when he explored the route from Santa Cruz to Lake Nahuel Huapi. For some years now, however, wool has ceased to be the sole product of the ranches. A little before 1895 the first slaughter-houses, for killing the older sheep that were no longer fertile, were erected on the Straits of Magellan. Refrigerators have succeeded these, and were opened at Puerto Callegos and San Julian. A third refrigerator is being constructed (1915) at Puerto Deseado. In southern Patagonia, also, part of the flock is sent to the refrigerators or to the slaughter houses of the Pampean region. The creation of the refrigerator has compelled breeders to adapt their work to the new economic conditions. The merino breed is being eliminated by the Lincoln in all districts which feel the influence of the refrigerator; the Lincoln is of greater weight and quicker growth, but the merino survives in arid northern Patagonia. Besides this, the establishment of the refrigerators has caused important movements of transport. The flocks which are to go to the refrigerators or the northern railways are moved in the good season, after the shearing, from November to April. The routes they take are not invariable. One of the most frequented, leading from the sub-Andean tablelands to San Julian, follows the Santa Cruz valley. When the land was cut up, there was no reason to foresee these movements, and nothing was done to facilitate them. The roads cross the ranches, which are compelled to allow it. It is a serious burden for some of them, unless they can make a profit out of their situation on the road by hiring pasture for the flocks as they pass. The Andean zone itself is still mainly pastoral, but it is nevertheless far more varied and richer in possibilities of development than the tableland. Agriculture is already combined with breeding in that area. The name _vegas_, which in the Puna and at San Juan means alpine pasture, is applied here to tilled patches in the Andean valleys. They are found in the north in the valley of the Neuquen, round Chosmalal. In the south, the valley of the Rio Pico marks the limit of cultivation. Irrigation is almost always necessary north of Lake Nahuel Huapi, where the _vegas_ have, as a rule, a soil of coarse alluvia or permeable tufa, which dries up quickly. Water is plentiful, it is true, and increases in quantity rapidly as one travels southward. The chief obstacle to the extension of cultivation is the frequency of frost in spring and summer. The deep hollows of the sub-Andean depression south of Lake Nahuel Huapi, the height of which drops to 1,000 feet at the Bolson, and 1,600 feet at Diez y seis de Octubre, have no frosts in summer, and they sustain small agricultural communities. At higher levels, in the basin of the lake or on the _vegas_ of the Traful and Lake Lacar, at an altitude of about 2,600 feet, the distribution of the summer frosts is closely related to the contour and lie of the land, which may facilitate or impede the circulation of the layers of cold air, and the play of what has been called atmospheric drainage. The valleys which are very open from west to east, at the outlet of the lakes, where the west winds have a free passage, are little liable to frost. Wherever frost is frequent, cultivation has to be restricted to fodder plants. The more favoured cantons, which grow wheat, rye and potatoes, help to feed the local pastoral population, and export part of their produce to some distance on the tableland. Cattle-breeding is, like sheep-breeding on the tableland, practised both by the _pobladores_ on public lands and by ranchers who have settled on regular concessions, which they have worked up and fenced round. The high alpine pastures, above the fringe of the forest, are partly used, from December to March, as summer-pasture. The forest also serves for pasture; it is a sort of common land, available both in winter and summer. Below the height of 3,500 feet the clumps of bamboos in the underwood provide shelter during the winter and fodder which is not buried under snow. The fires lit by the breeders have changed part of the primitive forest into a scrub which has been invaded by a leguminous climbing fodder, and it has superior pastoral capacity to the forest. East of the forest, the prairie, which is too much exposed to the winds, is not generally suitable for winter-pasture. The cattle take refuge in sheltered valleys and in the _mayten_ thickets which follow the depressions. Bailey Willis puts the pastoral capacity of the virgin forest at 400 cattle to each 2,500 hectares, 600 for the burnt forest, and 350 for the sub-Andean prairies. The essential problem in connection with the question of completely developing the pastoral resources of the sub-Andean region is the problem of transit. There are no roads from one district to another and to the higher prairies. The fallen trunks which lie about the forest obstruct the way of the cattle. Collecting the animals for sale and watching them are both difficult. It seems that the profit of exploiting the timber must necessarily be small. The forest, thinned by fire and difficult of access, is partly composed of trees that are too old. The _libocedrus_ has disappeared from one-third of it. The larch, which is the most valuable, passes into Argentine territory at few places. Saw-mills are not so numerous on the eastern slope of the Andes as they are in the Magellan area. The essential function of the forest is, according to Argentine experts on forestry, to control the water-circulation. In this land of glacial erosion and recent captures, where the water-courses have always a great variety of form, and there are lakes to make their output more regular, it is particularly easy to make use of hydraulic power. "White coal" will, Bailey Willis says, make a great industrial region of it, and plant an urban life in it. Bailey Willis, whose optimism and prophetic gift will not fail to surprise the European reader, has drawn the plans in detail of a future town of 40,000 souls at the eastern end of Lake Nahuel Huapi. The Patagonian land will supply the raw material of its industries; timber, leather, and wool. One, at least, of the indispensable conditions of the development of urban life is fully realized in the district of Lake Nahuel Huapi and the Limay. It is a remarkable meeting-place of natural roads, and its economic value will increase in the future. It is the point where the road from eastern Patagonia by the sub-Andean depression, from the Gulf of San Antonio on the Atlantic, and from the Rio Negro by the Limay, and the roads that lead to Chile across the Cordillera, meet. The whole zone of the Andes between 36° S. lat. and 42° S. lat., the latitude of the southern part of the Chilean plain, has numerous and easy passes. There has always been close communication between the two slopes, and people have emigrated freely from one to the other. But north of 39° S. lat. the passes are rarely lower than 5,000 feet. They are covered with snow in the winter, and can be used for traffic only in certain seasons. It is not the same south of the volcano Lanin. That is the beginning of the glacial valleys which go to the heart of the Cordillera, some of them crossing the mountains from east to west. They have not yet been entirely explored. The Bariloche pass, south of the Tronador, by which the Chilean missionaries reached Nahuel Huapi in the eighteenth century, is no longer used. The Cajon Negro pass, west of Lake Traful, through which Bailey Willis traces the line of a southern trans-Andean railway, was only recently discovered, and the valleys which run into it on the Chilean side are not yet well known. The two best-known trans-Andean routes to-day are the Perez Rosales road, which leads from Chile to Nahuel Huapi by the north of the Tronador, and further north, the road from Lake Lacar to San Martin. Both these have received some attention, and the lakes are connected by telegraph or telephone. The frequent need to unload and reload makes the traffic costly, but it is permanent and is not interrupted in winter. The reduction of the export of cattle to Chile has cut down the traffic for a time, but it is sure to recover. The permanent importance of it is one of the facts most clearly written by nature upon the soil of South America. * * * * * It is not easy, in the absence of documents, to attempt to give for Patagonia as a whole a detailed description of the pastoral industry, and to follow step by step on the spot its efforts to adjust itself to the natural conditions. But the analysis may be attempted in regard to the region between San Antonio and Lake Nahuel Huapi south of the Rio Negro,[71] the valley of the Rio Negro, and the tableland which stretches westward between the Neuquen and the Limay. This part of Patagonia is now easily accessible, and it is entered by two parallel railways. One starts from San Antonio on the Atlantic, and goes westward to Lake Nahuel Huapi. It has (1914) reached Maquinchao, on the tableland, mid-way across the Andes. The other starts from Bahía Blanca. At Choele Choel it enters the valley of the Rio Negro, and ascends it as far as the confluence of the Neuquen. Then it goes 130 miles westward as far as Zapala, at the foot of the first sub-Andean chains. Each of these lines is ambitious to attract the trans-Andeans. At all events, they are in a hurry to reach the humid zone at the foot of the Andes, which could maintain a busier traffic than the desolate tableland. [71] This was the area studied by the Commission of which Bailey Willis was chairman. The railway from San Antonio, and the road which is a continuation of it west of Maquinchao, cover a distance of 320 miles from the Atlantic to the Andes, and cross five distinct regions. The first is the coastal plain, composed of horizontal marine Tertiary sedimentary rocks, both of sand and clay. The plain rises slowly toward the west, and it attains a height of 650 feet at a distance of seventy miles from the coast. This coastal platform divides, on the north-west, the enclosed hollow of the Bajo del Gualicho from the Gulf of San Antonio. Its surface is very even. The gravel on it has formed a sort of conglomerate, and in spite of appearances, this gravelly soil is not bad for vegetation. It quickly absorbs the rain-water, which thus escapes evaporation. The vegetation is comparatively rich. There are no springs, but the autumn rains sustain _manantiales_ in the marly surface, and these do not dry up until the spring. During the summer the plain is deserted, and there is no water. But the flocks return in the winter and remain there until spring. There is very little snow, as the temperature is moderate. In spite of the density of the pastoral population in winter, the pasturage is not injured. The grass grows plentifully amongst the thickets. This is because the flocks leave the district before the season when the grasses flower and reproduce, so the next generation is secured. Part of the flocks which winter on the coastal plain pass the summer in the south-west, on the high basaltic tablelands of Somuncura. However, the whole of the surface of the tableland cannot be used permanently, or during the entire summer. There is plenty of water in spring, when the snows have melted. In the middle of the summer the flocks collect round the permanent springs, and they scatter once more over the mountain pastures during the autumn rains, before they return to the plain. The second region is that of Valcheta. From Aguada Cecilia to Corral Chico the railway follows for sixty miles the edge of the outpour of lava from the south, which covers the Tertiary clays. In front of the basalt cliff the land dips in the north toward a closed depression, the Bajo de Valcheta, the bottom of which consists of clays impregnated with salt. Tertiary marine strata surround this hollow in the west and north, where they divide it from the Bajo del Gualicho, but here they form only a thin skin which covers the crystalline platform. The line of contact of the basalt and the Tertiary marls is marked by a series of good springs, and these give rise to permanent streams, such as the Arroyo Valcheta and the Nahuel Niyeu. At first they flow in a narrow valley crowned by basalts, with peaty prairies at the bottom, then over Tertiary marls, and, in the latitude of the railways, they pass into a gorge cut through the granites before losing themselves to the north in the _salitral_. A small agricultural oasis is sustained by the waters of the Valcheta. The site of Valcheta has an exceptional importance in the story of Patagonian colonization. It marks a necessary stage in the Indian track from the Atlantic to Nahuel Huapi, which is now followed by the line of the railway. Musters halted there. The track from Choele Choel, on the Rio Negro, to the southern coast and the Santa Cruz also passed by there. It was so much used, says Ezcurra, that the hoofs of the horses had hollowed it.[72] The Argentine village dates from 1890. At first it lived by supplying fodder to the convoys of wagons which carried the wool. The railway has suppressed this traffic, and the only outlet of the oasis to-day is the small port of San Antonio, where the wool is shipped, and where the district is unsuitable for any kind of cultivation. [72] Pedro Ezcurra, "Camino indio entre los rios Negro y Chubut: la travesia de Valcheta," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, xix. 1898, pp. 134-38. Like the coast region, the Valcheta district seems marked out by its moderate altitude to serve as winter pasture. In point of fact, it is used during the whole year. The springs do not dry up in summer. The streams which flow from the south toward the Bajo de Valcheta are permanent. In addition, a few wells have been bored in the Tertiary strata. Contrary to experience on the coast, therefore, cattle can be kept here during the summer. There is less chance for the grasses to reproduce, and the pasture tends to become impoverished. The third zone, 130 miles from the coast, is that of the tableland of the Cerros Colorados, where low masses of red granite rise like an archipelago amongst the Tertiary formations deposited in the intervening depressions. In the west its altitude rises from 650 to 1,300 feet. It is one of the poorest parts of the tableland, and the size of the flock is reduced to 600 head to the square league. The naked rock crops up, not covered, as it is further east, by a bed of gravel. In the valleys there is little water, and it lies very deep. There are no periodical removals of the animals. Winter and summer they remain within range of a few poor springs, which are caused by various outcrops of lava of limited extent; and they leave these, and wander over the tableland, only in the rainy season. Beyond the Cerros Colorados the line rises rapidly, and at Maquinchao it reaches the basin of Lake Carilaufquen. This occupies the bottom of a closed depression, at an altitude of 3,000 feet, dominated on every side by a plateau of lava, toward which, in the south, a number of important valleys run (Nahuel Niyeu, Quetriquile, Maquinchao). These valleys rise in the south in the basalt plateau, at a height of 4,000 and 4,700 feet, and have no running water except at their upper ends. South of Carilaufquen they open upon a broad plain, round which there is a sombre cornice of lava, about 350 feet high. Water has collected on the plain, which consists of alluvial beds redistributed by wind: angular pebbles from the terraces, fine dust from the _mallinas_, and sand from the dunes round the lake. This region is much better than that of the Cerros Colorados. There are many springs at the base of the lava-flows, on the sides of the valleys, and it has as yet not been necessary to look for the subterranean sheets which accompany some of the valleys. The elevated basin of the Quetriquile, though it is only occupied by _intrusos_, seems to have a particularly high pastoral density, and, I am told, feeds 500,000 sheep. In the western part of the region the spring is late, and there is risk of snow during the lambing season. There are, however, no rams there; the lambs are brought from Maquinchao. This arrangement of special zones for the multiplication of the flock enables them rapidly to improve the breed. Here again there are no removals of the animals to a great distance in order to use the pasture. The vegetation of the valleys suffered from the continuous presence of the flocks during the years of drought before 1914; the reproduction of useful grasses was prevented. There is, however, less danger here than on the Cerros Colorados, because the _mallinas_ are extensive, and they suffice for feeding the sheep during the periods when the _manantiales_ of the tableland dry up, and the animals are confined to the valleys. The fifth region comprises the high ridge which divides the basin of the Carilaufquen from Nahuel Huapi, the water of which flows northward toward the Limay and southward toward the Chubut: successive eruptions have covered the surface with lava and ash, which at Añecon rise to a height of 6,700 feet. The granite platform which emerges in the north, at the Cerro Aspero and the Quadradito, rises to a height of 4,400 and 4,700 feet, and in some places presents a bold and rejuvenated aspect. The whole has been cut up in all directions by erosion, and it affords comparatively easy means of getting about, which the Indian tracks have followed. Below the higher slopes the valleys deepen into gorges, and these broaden out in the soft tufa and are lost at the cross-streams of lava or the outcrops of the granite. In so varied a land, with such marked differences of altitude, the winter and summer pastures are always close together. Precipitation is more plentiful than at a distance from the Cordillera; the pasturage is richer, and the size of the flock rises to 1,600 sheep to the league. The sheep pass the winter on the lower slopes, where they are sheltered from the winds and the snow. They descend to the _mallin_ when the dry season sets in and makes the soil firm. In summer they go on to the tablelands, where the pastures extend to a height of 5,000 feet. Bailey Willis, studying the improvements that might be made in the pastoral processes, concluded that the essential point was to use each pasturage in its best season, and establish a carefully considered rotation on the various lands. This system, which alone would enable them to nurse the natural resources of the scrub in the way of plants for fodder, is used to-day in only a small number of districts--in the east, where the flocks winter on the coastal plain and spend the summer on the Somuncura tableland, and in the west, round the Añecon, where the summer and winter pastures are not far from each other. The custom ought to be general. The area which ought to be reserved for winter pasture comprises the coastal plains, the whole of the low-lying district round Valcheta, and the lower part of the valleys to the south of the Carilaufquen. They are less extensive than the available summer pastures, but their capacity could be enlarged by developing the irrigated areas in the Bajo de Valcheta, and sowing lucerne in the _mallinas_ of the basin of the Carilaufquen. The low valleys round the Carilaufquen ought to be reserved for winter pasture. In the summer the sheep would be taken south to the higher-level valleys, which afford permanent pasture. From there they would spread after the melting of the snow, and after the first rains in autumn, over the high tablelands which surround them. This plan is obstructed in the first place by the actual terms of ownership, which were imprudently fixed before the examination of the country in detail had been concluded. Thus the Maquinchao ranch, in the lower valley, does not own the upper valley with the summer pastures that ought to belong to it. A more serious obstacle is that it is extremely difficult to remove the sheep. It is not merely roads that are wanting, but a water supply at the various stages.[73] [73] The district of the Rio Negro is not the only part of Patagonia which faces the problem of increasing the winter pasture. Attention has been drawn to the possibility of enlarging the lucerne farms in the district of Colonia Sarmiento, south of Lake Musters, and making this a great wintering area for the Santa Cruz flocks. Between the railway that runs from San Antonio to Lake Nahuel Huapi and the Rio Negro, there is a desert region about seventy miles in width. Red sandstone predominates in it, and it remains uninhabited. North of this _travesia_ the valley of the Rio Negro opens. Its width between Neuquen and Patagones ranges from five to fifteen miles. Its slope diminishes gradually toward the bottom (from 0.67 to 0.49 per 1,000 above Chelfaro; from 0.45 to 0.29 per 1,000 above Conesa). The sandstone and marl cliffs which enclose it become gradually lower as one goes downward. They dominate the valley at a height of 650 feet at the confluence of the Neuquen, and are only 100 to 130 feet high at Patagones. At the foot of them are broad terraces cut by dissymetrical ravines, in which the beds of sandstone outcrop on the western slope, exposed to the winds, while the eastern slopes are covered with gravel. On the banks of the river there is a strip about two miles wide with abundant herbaceous vegetation between lines of willows. This is covered by the normal floods. The remainder of the river plain, to the foot of the cliffs, has only a thin scrub, with dunes at intervals. Saline clays here overlie the river gravels. The level of the underground water, which is fed by the river, sinks lower as one goes from the banks toward the cliffs. Few parts of the tableland have so desolate an aspect as the bottom of these great Patagonian valleys, when they have not been transformed by irrigation. The pasturage is poor. At Conesa, however, the valley (_costa_) is used as summer pasture when there is a shortage of water on the surrounding tableland (_planeza_). The water-supply is good, the volume of the river ranging from 200 to 900 cubic metres a second. Low water lasts from February to April (end of the summer). From May to July the river has sudden and violent floods--an effect of the autumn rains. The curve sinks again in August and September, to rise once more in October and December, when the snow melts on the Andes. The Limay, the upper basin of which contains large, lacustrine sheets, is more regular than the Neuquen, which has very pronounced low-water, as well as dangerous floods in the autumn. The first attempts at irrigation date from 1885, when the canal of the Roca colony was dug. Others were made lower down at a later date. The co-operative groups organized for the administration of the canals have not been quite as successful as might have been expected. The advance of agricultural colonization has been slow. Costly preparatory work is needed to level the ground and organize the drainage, otherwise saline patches form and spread like leprosy at the expense of the cultivable areas. Lastly, the centre of the valley is exposed to floods.[74] [74] The work now (1914) in hand will reduce the risk of floods, and will enable them to enlarge considerably the extent of the tilled land. The Cuenca Vidal, which opens amongst the sandstone, below the level of the valley, on the tableland to the north of the Neuquen, will be arranged so as to absorb the flood-water, and it will feed a canal which will serve the left bank over an area of 100 miles. The waters of the Limay will be available for the lower valley. [Illustration: THE PATAGONIAN TABLELAND (NEUQUEN). _Indigenous vegetation. Rocks eroded by wind._ Photographs by Windhausen, Mining Division. PLATE XIV. To face p. 154.] The chief crops are lucerne, cereals, and the vine. All the efforts and hopes of the colonists are now centred upon the vine. It is for the purpose of extending the vineyards that they are endeavouring to secure more workers. These are a singularly mixed lot, Chileans from the Neuquen rubbing shoulders with Latin immigrants (Italian and Spanish) from the region of the Pampas. The lucerne is made up in bales and exported by rail to Bahía Blanca and Buenos Aires. The economic life of the agricultural oasis of the Rio Negro is no more connected with that of the pastoral tableland than is life on the Chubut. Neither sheep nor cattle are fattened on the Rio Negro. It is a curious contrast to the spectacle offered by the Andean regions of western and north-western Argentina, where for generations there has been a close association between the breeding industry of the scrub and the fattening on the lucerne-farms. This is because the currents of the cattle-trade are not here as permanent and stable as they are in the north. The time when the convoys of Pampean cattle bound for Chile used the valley of the Rio Negro preceded the agricultural colonization of the banks of the river. The conquest of Patagonia put an end to this traffic. There was an interval of twenty-five years between the period of the export of Pampean cattle to Chile and the export of cattle from the Neuquen to Buenos Aires, to which I will refer presently. As to sheep-breeding, it did not for a long time rear the animals for the meat-market, and it is only a few years since it found transport necessary. The farmers of the Rio Negro, who have little capital, and who sell and are paid in advance for their dry fodder, have not yet been able to take advantage of the reorganization of the cattle-trade. West of the confluence of the Neuquen and the Limay the railway ascends the sandstone tableland, from 1,700 to 3,000 feet high, and goes as far as the foot of the first sub-Andean chain, the Zapala ranch. The eruptive rocks here have thrown up the sandstone, and the profiles raised north and south of Zapala, across the Sierra de la Vaca Muerta and the Cerro Lotena, cut through folds of Mesozoic strata which have been reduced by erosion to the level of the plateau. One already feels the vicinity of the Cordillera. Pasture is plentiful, the _mallin_ is thick, and springs abound. The sheep-area stretches westward of Zapala, as far as the Rio Cataluin and the Rio Agrio. East of Zapala, on the other hand, the desolate condition of the country gets worse and worse. The supplies of water dry up in the summer, and the entire zone that lies east of 70° W. long. is useless, on account of the lack of permanent water, except as winter commonage. Hence, transhumation is here indispensable. It has been practised for a long time on the Chilean slope of the Cordillera from the latitude of Coquimbo and San Juan to the north of Lake Quillen. At present it tends to disappear from the Andes of the Neuquen.[75] But there is still transhumation on the Argentine side. The sheep of the plateau, driven from their winter pasture when the water dries up, ascend the Cordillera. Sometimes the mountains are not yet free from snow. In that case the journey is delayed, and the sheep feed on the way, to the great detriment of the land they cross. [75] As a matter of fact, of recent years there has been a practice on this slope of disguising the smuggling of animals under the name of "transhumation," as the removal of the sheep facilitated it and helped to maintain it. The shepherds got certificates exaggerating the number of their sheep from the Chilean officials before they crossed the frontier, and under cover of these they came back to Chile with additions to their flocks which they had bought on Argentine territory. There are many routes, and frequently they coincide with those which were formerly taken by the cattle of the Pampas in ascending to the passes of the Cordillera. Groeber mentions a transhumation track south of the Rio Barrancas and Lake Carri Lauquen. From the left bank of the Neuquen the flocks ascend by Chosmalal and Butamallin to the pasture of the Pichachen pass, or by Las Lajas to the Pino Hachado pass. From Zapala and the tableland further south they go to spend the summer in the Cataluin Cordillera, where the number of sheep in summer is calculated to be 70,000. Others go still further, to the source of the Alumine and the Arco pass. The volcano Lanin almost marks the southern limit of the zone of transhumation. The chief group of migrating sheep comes from the district of the Coyunco, the Cañadon Grande, and the Picun Leucu. Transhumation is practised only by the _intrusos_. They go from the unowned lands of the tableland to the unowned lands of the Cordillera. The renting of winter pasture to owners is quite exceptional. The concessions of land granted by the Argentine Government are steadily reducing the area of the migrators in the Cordillera, and also the ways of communication between the tableland and the mountains. The proprietors do not care to receive the migrating flocks, and they put obstacles in their way by enclosing the land. The routes of the transhumation are now fixed by the spaces which remain open between the enclosed ranches. Moreover, the migrating _intrusos_ are haunted by the fear of finding the winter pasture occupied by others during their absence, and they have no proprietary title. The splitting up of the land and the organization of ownership will before long lead to the extinction of the practice of transhumation, and the greater part of the winter pasturage will be turned into permanent pasture by boring wells and nursing the water-supply. The district round the Zapala ranch has become very busy since the construction of the railway, which has deeply affected the conditions of life there. It has made a sort of capital of Zapala. It is curious to contrast the renaissance which has followed upon the appearance of the railway in this district with the much less material changes which it has made at Maquinchao. The life which the railway concentrates at Zapala includes not only the wool trade, as at Maquinchao, but also the cattle trade. The herds which are to be exported gather round the ranch at the same time as the _tropas_ of wagons, and a good price is paid for the right of pasturage. While the Maquinchao line ends at the port of San Antonio, which is merely fitted up for the export of wool, the Zapala railway feeds the refrigerator at Bahía Blanca. It joins up with the network of railways of the Pampa. Sheep arrive at Zapala, not only from the surrounding district and from the Neuquen, but from a good part of the Rio Negro, and even the Chubut. The convoys of animals coming from the south find it best to keep near the Cordillera, where the pasturage is better. Only a few of them descend the Limay as far as Senillosa. From Zapala to Senillosa there is no suitable road in connection with the railway, and further east it is necessary to go as far as Choele Choel to find tracks which lead to it. The exporting of the sheep lasts five months, from November to March. Zapala station is also a point of convergence of herds of cattle. There are people at Zapala who still remember the time when the cattle brought from the Pampa to go to Chile passed through their valley. Although these exports of Pampean cattle to Chile ceased after 1885, the whole Andean region of the Neuquen still lived entirely on the Chilean market until very recently. The attraction of the Chilean market is one of the reasons for the survival of transhumation. It was to the advantage of the Argentine breeders to keep near the Cordillera and the passes through which the buyers came from Chile in the summer. The life of the small centres in the upper valleys which developed rapidly after the conquest (Chosmalal, Ñorquin, Codihue, Junin, and San Martin) was bound up with the Chilean cattle trade, and was reflected on the opposite side of the Andes in the prosperity of the corresponding markets in Chile. In the years immediately preceding 1914, a sudden revolution upset the cattle traffic on the Neuquen, and the attraction of Buenos Aires took the place of that of the Chilean market. The commercial influence of Buenos Aires was first felt in the wool-market. The _tropas_ of wagons which brought wool to Zapala loaded up, in exchange, with the flour and salt that were needed for sheep-breeding in the pastures of the Cordillera (_pastos dulces_). The import trade followed the path traced by the export trade. The small Chilean wagons which still cross the Cordillera now only bring to the Neuquen the coarse flour of Chile, haricot beans, and wine. They return empty to Chile. After the wool-buyers, the cattle-merchants of Buenos Aires next found their way to the Cordillera. The centres where the sales of cattle for Chile used to be held are now in decay, and have lost part of their population. The cattle are sent to the fattening centres on the Pampa, or to the Bahía Blanca and Buenos Aires markets. Thus we have under our eyes, unexpectedly, in the north of Patagonia a transformation that occurred gradually half a century ago in all the western and north-western parts of Argentina. In its many forms it is the essential fact in the modern history of Argentine colonization. The more distant provinces are detached in succession from foreign markets, and the whole national life is being organized round the great economic focus which the region of the Pampas has become. CHAPTER VI THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS The limits of the prairie--The rains--The wind and the formation of the clay of the Pampas--The wind and the contour--The zones of colonization on the Pampas--Hunting wild cattle and primitive breeding--The sheep-farms--The ranches--The region of "colonies"--The region of lucerne, maize, and wheat--The combination of agriculture and breeding--The economic mechanism of colonization--The exchanges between the different zones of the Pampas. The Pampean landscape is doubtless one of the most uniform in the world. Its monotony is tiring to the eye; it is partly responsible for the mediocrity of most of the descriptions of the Pampas. But this uniformity is an advantage for the purpose of colonization. Attention has often been drawn to the rapidity with which plants and animals introduced by Europeans spread in the Buenos Aires district, and, pushing ahead of the breeders and farmers, colonized the Pampas. In the second half of the nineteenth century, when the whole extent of the plain beyond the ancient Indian frontier was occupied, the development of it was so much easier because it was possible to use simpler and more uniform methods of exploitation. It needed neither large capital nor long personal experience on the part of the immigrant. Basques and Italians who had only just landed could take an active part in it almost without apprenticeship. The primitive groups of population could advance from one zone of the plain to another and take with them their own methods of farming and breeding, their own form of rural economy. A close study will, however, enable us to detect appreciable physical differences in the Pampean plain. Neither climate nor soil is the same all over it. The name "Pampa" chiefly means a vegetal growth, a prairie. Its limits are the frontier of the scrub (_monte_), and strange as it may seem, it is still difficult to trace them exactly. North of Santa Fé, between the Salado and the Paraná, the Pampa stretches as far as Fives-Lille, a little beyond 30° S. lat.[76] On the Central Norte and the Central Argentine lines the fringe of the _monte_ reaches to Fuertin Inca and Malbran, about 170 miles north-west of Santa Fé. It then turns south-east and south, passing round the entire depression of Los Porongos and Mar Chiquita; and the line from Santa Fé to Córdoba crosses it at Francia and approaches the Rio Secundo. South of the Rio Secundo it goes westward and joins the foot of the Sierra de Córdoba south of the Rio Tercero (at the stream Tequia). From this point to La Cambre, some sixteen miles east of San Luis, the prairie extends as far as the edge of the sierras, and penetrates into the southern half of the Conlara depression, between the hills of Córdoba and of San Luis (Pampa de Naschel). The mimosa forest enters the steppe in narrow belts along the Rio Quinto to within a few leagues below Villa Mercedes, along the Rio Tercero as far as the confluence of the Saladillo, and along the Salado to the south of Santa Fé. There are, in addition, many isolated clumps of _chañares_ and more extensive patches of wood in the north-west corner of the prairie (Santa Fé province). The _monte_ along the Salado is continued south of Santa Fé along the Paraná, as far as the point where the chief arm of the river reaches the cliffs on the right bank, at San Lorenzo. This is the domain of the _ombu_, a tree with thick trunk and naked roots which is found scattered over the prairie in the Paraná region as far as south of Buenos Aires. [76] On the left bank of the Salado, west of the Resistencia railway, a great gulf of low prairie penetrates into the forest of the Chaco in the north, almost as far as 28° S. lat., but it has rather the character of one of the floodable clearings of the Chaco (_esteros_) than of the temperate Pampa. In the west, between San Luis and the mouth of the Colorado, the transition from the Pampa to the _monte_ is gradual. Just as at Santa Fé, the approach of the _monte_ is announced by the appearance of _chañares_, in the south-west corner of the Córdoba province and on the southern slope of the Sierra de la Ventana. The _monte_, properly so called, though impoverished, invaded by the _jarilla_, and mainly composed (as in northern Patagonia) of dwarf mimosas, covers the area of the Pampean sierras on the left bank of the Chadi Leuvu and the Colorado. Between this area and a line passing through Rancul, Anguil, Atreuco, and Bernasconi, where the naked prairie begins, there is a mixed zone which one may call the _calden_ zone. This mimosa, a near relative of the _algarroba_, which has a wider range than the other plants of the _monte_ in this latitude, forms woods at intervals in the south of the San Luis province and on the flanks of the parallel valleys of the central Pampa. Between these woods the tableland is generally covered by the prairie, with occasional patches of _chañares_. About twenty-five miles east of Buena Esperanza the line from San Rafael touches the far corner of a forest of _caldenes_, which stretches south-westward, and reaches the Rio Salado about 35° 30' S. lat. Beyond Buena Esperanza it keeps on the prairie as far as the crossing of the Salado, which here marks the limit of the _monte_. The Rio Negro line passes directly from the prairie to the Patagonian scrub mid-way between Bahía Blanca and the Colorado. Within these limits the prairie extends without a break. The sierras of the Buenos Aires province have no arborescent vegetation. The zone of the prairie, intermediate between tropical Argentina and the sub-desert regions of western Patagonia, has a medium rainfall. It decreases gradually from north-east to south-west. There is a rainfall of 1,200 to 1,000 millimetres on the lower Paraná, and only 400 to 600 millimetres on the western edge of the Pampa. The zone which lies between the 800 millimetres and 600 millimetres average is more than 270 miles in breadth. But what is most characteristic of the climate of the Pampa is the equal distribution of the rain throughout the year, and the absence of a real dry season. In this the Pampa differs from the surrounding regions, both in the south-west and the north. At Buenos Aires the six months of the (relatively) dry season yield, nevertheless, 44 per cent. of the total rainfall, and at Bahía Blanca 40 per cent. This regularity diminishes in proportion as one approaches the coast. At Rosario the six months of the dry season only yield 30 per cent. of the year's rain; at Villa Mercedes (San Luis province) 25 per cent. When one goes beyond the limits of the prairies the ratio of rain in the dry season decreases rapidly; it is only 20 per cent. at Córdoba and 18 per cent. at San Luis. At Córdoba, the curve of the rainfall indicates a typical tropical regime, with a summer maximum and a very low minimum in winter. Passing south-eastward from Córdoba, at Bellville, Villa Maria and especially Rosario, the dryness of the winter diminishes, and at the same time a secondary minimum appears in the middle of summer (January-February). At Buenos Aires, the form of the curve changes completely. The summer minimum is almost as low as the winter minimum, and most of the rainfall is in the spring (September) and the beginning of the autumn (March).[77] [77] Argentine Mesopotamia, which is a continuation of the Pampean region from the climatological point of view, is also, even in its northern part, without the rigorous dry seasons of the Chaco. Ascending the Paraná, from Corrientes to Posadas, just as in passing from Córdoba to Buenos Aires, one notices that the winter minimum decreases, and a secondary maximum appears in the spring. The predominance of the spring rains, which is a characteristic of southern Brazil, is conspicuous on the middle Uruguay. On the lower part of that river the rain-system approaches that of Buenos Aires, with maxima in spring and autumn, a principal minimum in winter, and a secondary minimum in summer. These various shades of the Pampean climate are of essential importance in the history of colonization and the spread of cultivation. The belt of summer rain is the belt of maize-growing, whereas the cultivation of wheat requires spring rain and a comparatively dry summer. While the isohyetic curves, which represent the precipitation for the whole year, are orientated from north-west to south-east, the curves of rainfall during the cold season, from April to September (dry season in the north), cut diagonally across the preceding, and are oriented directly north and south. Bahía Blanca receives in winter as much rain as Rosario, and General Acha (in the district of the central Pampa) as much as Córdoba. Unless one attends to this, one cannot explain the extension of wheat-growing, in the south-west, as far as the 400 millimetre curve, and even beyond it on the Atlantic coast. * * * * * The relief of the Pampean plain is known fairly accurately, thanks to the observations made along the railways. The ground rises slowly toward the west. The 100-metre curve describes a deep gulf some 300 miles west-south-west of Buenos Aires. The belt comprised between 100 and 150 metres above sea-level is more than sixty miles broad in the latitude of Santa Fé, and 130 miles in the latitude of Buenos Aires. Beyond the 150-metre curve the land rises rapidly toward the west and north-west, and reaches 400 metres in the Córdoba district and 500 in the Villa Mercedes district. It is at the altitude of 150 metres, and the break in the inclination which this marks, that the Rio Quinto is lost, near Amarga, south of General Lavalle. The ridge between the Pampa and the basin of the Salado in the south of the San Luis province is about 450 metres above sea-level. South of the province of Buenos Aires the Sierras de Tandil and de la Ventana are joined together by a ridge which does not fall below 200 metres. Certain irregularities of the surface, such as the depression of Mar Chiquita to the east of Córdoba, the thrust of the plateau on the right bank of the Paraná, south of Villa Constitución and San Nicolas, can, apparently, only be explained by recent tectonic movements. The Pampean deposits which cover the plain rest upon a rocky base of which the salient representatives are the sierras of the province of Buenos Aires and the hills at Córdoba and San Luis. This base also appears east of the Pampean basin in the granite island of Martin Garcia, in the middle of the estuary of the Plata, and in the hills on the coast of Uruguay.[78] [78] While the Pampean deposits lie immediately on the crystalline and Paleozoic formations in the sierras of the lower Colorado and of the central Pampa, in the south of the province of Buenos Aires and in Uruguay, they are, on the eastern edge of the Sierra de Córdoba, separated from it by red sandstones and conglomerates of uncertain age, perhaps synchronous with the continental red sandstones of Corrientes which outcrop east of the Paraná and have been known since D'Orbigny's time as "granitic sandstones." Underneath the even sheet of the alluvial deposits the surface of the sub-Pampean platform is very irregular. Its shape has been discovered by deep borings in search of arterial waters. It has been warped and cut up by faults, some of these deformations being probably synchronous with the formation of the Pampean deposits which have concealed them as they have been produced. A subterranean rocky ridge continues the Sierra de Córdoba southward and joins it with the sierras of the Colorado. The granite emerges at Chamaico, on the western railway, and on both sides the borings have passed through great depths of clay and sand.[79] This ridge isolates the eastern Pampa from the sub-Andean chains, and marks the limit of the area with sheets of underground water. In the north of the Pampean region, between the Sierra de Córdoba and the Paraná, the loose continental formations are more than 2,000 feet thick at Bellville, and more than 3,500 feet north-west of Santa Fé (fodder farms of San Cristobal and El Tostado). At Buenos Aires the granite has been found 985 feet below the surface. [79] At Rancul, in the east, 660 feet of loess overlying red sandstone: at Telen, in the west, 2,800 feet of sand, marl, sandstone and gravel. [Illustration: THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. TRES ARROYES (BUENOS AIRES PRAIRIE BETWEEN THE SIERRA DE TANDIL AND THE SIERRA DE LA VENTANA). _Zone of wheat and oats on large scale. The Pampa is a tableland here (400 feet above sea-level), with clay overlying the limestone of the Tosca. The valleys are well marked._ Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. TOAY, ON THE CENTRAL PAMPA (590 FEET). _The tableland, with a strong framework of limestone Tosca, is cut across by well-marked dry valleys which sink lower toward the east. At the edges of the valleys the sand is the prey of the winds. Here we are near the limit of the wheat belt._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE XV. To face p. 166.] The Pampean formation consists almost entirely of loose deposits, sand and clays of various sorts. There is no gravel.[80] Even in the vicinity of the sierras the beds of gravel, with round or angular pebbles, are almost always covered by clay, and are exposed only in the banks of the streams. Olascoaga mentions the surprise of the _gauchos_ of General Roca's army when they found Patagonian pebbles on the ground during their stay at Choele Choel on the Colorado, in the course of the campaign on the Rio Negro. Officers and soldiers dismounted to pick them up. Sand and clay form a thick bed of continental alluvia. The Tertiary maritime transgressions, which have left their mark in the clays and limestones of the left bank of the lower Paraná, and the layers of shells at San Pedro on the right bank, never penetrated far into the interior of the Pampean region, and one finds no trace of them when one leaves the coast or the river. [80] Roth claims to have found gravel in the San Nicolas _barranca_ on the Paraná. I have myself found small rounded flints in the clay of the Chaco at Tartagal. But these deposits probably come from the left bank of the Paraná, where the beds of river gravel are considerable. The source of the elements which compose the Pampean alluvia is very uncertain. Their composition does not clearly show their origin. The clays are comparatively rich in calcareous matter, which seems to indicate that they do not come from tropical America or the upper basin of the Paraná. Wright and Fenner insist upon the high proportion of siliceous glass of volcanic origin which they contain, which points to an intense eruptive activity during or before their formation.[81] Doering had already noticed in the Córdoba region the prevalence of beds of volcanic ash, which become thicker as one approaches the sierra. It is certain that the Pampean sierras have had their share in the formation of the Pampean beds. But the main mass is probably of Andean origin. However that may be, as soon as one gets away from the fringe of the mountains, the only variety noticeable in the lands of the Pampa is that which they owe to the conditions in which they have been deposited. [81] In Ales Hrdlicka, _Early Man in South America_ (Smithsonian Instit. Bull., 52, Washington, 1912). River deposits strictly so called, estuary deposits, lagoon deposits, æolian deposits, æolian deposits redistributed by water, river deposits redistributed by wind--all these different types are represented in the Pampean formation, but their relative importance is still disputed.[82] [82] Many attempts have been made to classify the Pampean lands, but the results cannot be regarded as final. Ameghino, who is first and foremost a palæontologist, has done a service in showing the futility of these geological divisions based upon the actual surface of the deposits (colour, fineness, etc.). But even palæontology gives rather uncertain results, as it is impossible to recognize and follow step by step the various stages of the movement of the fossils. All the classifications of the Pampean are based upon a study of two groups of sections. The first group comprises the cliff on the right bank of the Paraná from Rosario to Buenos Aires and the coastal cliff which is a continuation of it, with a break from Enseñada at Mar Chiquita to Bahía Blanca. Ameghino has recognized there a thick series of æolian deposits separated by several discordances, the oldest elements of which, at Bahía Blanca, belong to the Miocene. The second group comprises the cliffs which enclose the valley of the Rio Primero above and below Córdoba. Doering and Bodenbender in this case describe two stages of æolian loess, each covered by torrential gravel. From the study of these sections geologists have drawn certain conclusions as to the movements which have affected the soil of the Pampa and the changes which the climate has experienced. These conclusions have in each case only a local value, and they have not yet been co-ordinated. The majority of the observers, from Doering to Bailey Willis and Rovereto, seem not to have taken into account sufficiently the fact that in the continental formations the most diverse deposits may come next to each other in the same series, according to the particular process of deposition, and that their alternation does not imply a general change in the conditions of erosion. When we confine ourselves to studying the actual conditions in which the deposits were formed, we are first struck by the poverty of the hydrographic network of the Pampa. It is slight except in the vicinity of the sierras, where the slope of the ground is pronounced, and in the eastern area, on the right bank of the Paraná and Entre Rios, where the climate is more humid, and the streams flowing over an impermeable soil more numerous. The only one of the streams born in the Pampean sierras that reaches the Paraná is the Rio Tercero or Carcaraña. All the others dwindle as they descend, and disappear in a low-lying district marked by lagoons which they only reach in time of flood. The floods themselves never bring the Rio Cuarto and the Rio Quinto and the Salado de Buenos Aires into touch with each other. The waters of the northern slope of the Sierra de Tandil, and even those of the Sierra de Curumalal, on the other hand, reach the Salado after the rains, either by way of streams which drain the strings of lagoons, or by flood-sheets, which spread over large areas. The watercourses of the plain are unstable in their direction. The traces of their wanderings remain in the form of stretches of alluvial sand crossing the fine æolian clays. These river sands sometimes spread over extensive areas, the distribution depending upon a hydrographic scheme which is now partially effaced. The sands of the departments of General Lopez (south of the Santa Fé province) and General Arenales (Buenos Aires province), where the Salado is now developed, were probably brought by the Rio Cuarto, and mark an earlier junction of the Cuarto and the Salado. These sands run along the Salado as far as the confluence of the Saladillo, and the contrast between the light soil and the clay of the bank of the Paraná is so striking that the sand has long been regarded as a marine deposit, indicating an ancient shore. Along the Saladillo also, north-west of the Guamini lagoons, there is a sandy belt which corresponds with an important direction taken by the actual flow of the river, crossing the Bolivar and Veinte Cinco de Mayo departments. While the agency of running water in transporting alluvia is confined to certain sections of the plain, the action of the wind is seen over its entire surface. The wind everywhere supplements or replaces running water. Like running water, it classifies the elements it conveys, and selects them according to their weight and size, the finest clays being deposited in the moist eastern zone and the coarsest sands in the sub-desert zone of the west. The mechanism of erosion explains this contrast. The grains of sand that are driven by the wind travel at the surface of the ground as long as the vegetation is too sparse to fix them. If one goes further east, to a moister district with a thicker vegetal carpet, the grains of sand no longer move at the surface of the ground, but the wind still carries fine particles of clay, which it bears to a great height. The bed of clay does not at all imply an arid climate, as is said sometimes, but corresponds to the region of the steppes, with moderate rainfall. It is, however, during dry seasons that the deposition of clay is at its greatest. Darwin mentions that after the droughts of 1827-1830 in the area round the Paraná, the marks were buried under dust to such an extent that one could no longer recognize the limits of the various lands. Apart, however, from these sorts of floods or storms of dust caused by the _pampero_, the summer atmosphere is clearly laden with dust, which colours the skies in the east of the Buenos Aires province, as far as Entre Rios. The contour of the plain bears, like the soil, the double marks of erosion by running water and æolian erosion. The rivers of the Pampa, when they leave the sierras, flow between high cliffs, the height diminishing as one goes downward. Presently these _barrancas_ become low, approach each other, and at last merely mark the banks of a larger bed which the floods fill. There is no trace of valleys. Bailey Willis, surprised at this weakness of watercourses that have, nevertheless, an appreciable fall, attributes it to the fact that the cycle of erosion opened by the last upheaval of the Pampa has not yet had time to penetrate into the interior. In reality, it means that here we are at the limit of the zone of erosion by running water, and that in this climate the essential factor in shaping the landscape is the wind. The region of the right bank of the Paraná (east of the Salado), which alone has a complete hydrographic network, must be considered apart. From the latitude of Rosario to that of Buenos Aires it is cut by flat-bottomed valleys which are sometimes a hundred feet deep. The excavation of these valleys is due to an upheaval which raised this part of the Pampa above the base-level. The rapids of the lower Carcaraña also bear witness to this resumption of excavation. Farther on an inverse movement has put the bottom of the valleys below this level, and led to their being filled up (lagoon deposits of the Lujanense of Ameghino). South of Buenos Aires the upheaval has been less important, and the valleys are not so deep. Some of them (middle Salado and its tributaries on the left bank) are now occupied by long lagoons with steep banks, branching along the side-valleys, and these owe their origin to the same negative movement, subsequent to the excavation of the valleys. The upheaval did not extend to the eastern part of the province of Buenos Aires south of the Salado, a low-lying flat area, badly drained, exposed to floods, the contour of which has been minutely studied in connection with the construction of a great network of drainage-canals. North of Rosario, on the only slightly permeable clay, the water circulates, after rain, not by means of valleys in the proper sense, but along broad and almost imperceptible depressions (_cañadas_) where the current is slow, and the water dries up in the dry season. Their general relations are not yet known. The loose deposits of the Pampean offer little resistance to erosion. The cycles are run through rapidly, and the traces of earlier cycles are faint, and are soon effaced.[83] [83] Certain features of the hydrographic network clearly have the character of having been superimposed: that is to say, the path of the watercourses has been bequeathed to the actual plain by former erosion-surfaces, which have now disappeared, on which the valleys were originally imposed. That is why in the district of the confluence of the Colorado and the Chadi-Leuvu the valleys pass from Pampean deposits to the crystalline sierras, which were at one time entirely covered with water. An ancient erosion-surface, dissected by the existing valleys, has survived in the south-west of the Pampean plain, thanks to the presence on the surface of a sheet of hard limestone, the _tosca_. The _tosca_ is the result of the concentration of calcareous elements contained in clay at the surface in a dry climate. The formation of it implies a prolonged stability of the surface on which it has accumulated. Like the deep decomposition-soils in moister regions, it indicates a peneplain on which erosion has ceased. The bed of _tosca_ covers the whole district between the Sierra de Tandil and the Sierra de la Ventana, the south-western slope of the Ventana, and most of the area of the central Pampa. In the north it does not go beyond the line from Buenos Aires to San Rafael. Its eastern limit goes almost by Ingeniero Malmen, Monte Nievas, and Atreuco, where it joins the southern bank of the lagoons of Carhue and Guamini in the east.[84] In some places the tosca is about forty feet thick. [84] In the vicinity of San Luis and Córdoba the hard strata which are called _tosca_ are beds of eruptive ashes. To-day the region of the _tosca_ forms a plateau cut by narrow valleys, sometimes 200 feet deep, west of the Sierra de la Ventana and in the central Pampa. These parallel valleys, with few ramifications, generally lying south-west to north-east, open to the east upon the Pampean plain about the frontier of the Buenos Aires province. On the other hand, the southernmost of them begin at the foot of the Ventana, and seem to blend in the south-west with a general depression that is still little known, though it appears to end at the bottom of the estuary of Bahía Blanca. None of them has permanent running water.[85] The origin of the dry valleys of the _tosca_ is one of the most obscure problems of the morphology of the Pampean plain. Perhaps they are due to æolian erosion, like the depressions which are found on the plateau of the Colorado and the Rio Negro further south. [85] The surface of the _tosca_ tableland is further punctuated by a great number of closed depressions of various depths: long tunnels (_dolines_) which can only be explained, apparently, as an effect of the dissolving of the limestone by water. The action of the wind in shaping the landscape is more clearly seen in the formation of the dunes. When one starts from Buenos Aires or Rosario, and gets beyond the region of the level Pampas, the dunes are the first feature to meet the eye on the surface of the plain. The first fresh dunes are encountered at Carlota, on the line from the Rio Cuarto; at Lavalle on the line from Villa Mercedes; and at Trenque Lauquen on the line from Toay. The dunes spread northward as far as the latitude of Mar Chiquita, but do not enter the Chaco. They are also found in parts of the scrub on the west, but their proper domain is the western border of the steppe, the upper part of the plain at the foot of the Sierra de Córdoba, the south of the San Luis province, and the central Pampa. Any accident that causes the vegetal covering to disappear, such as the tread of cattle near a drinking place or an enclosure, is enough to set æolian erosion at work. The wind raises the sand in a sort of tossing sea. Then the dune assumes a circular shape. A depression appears in the centre, and it deepens until it reaches the average level of the plain. Frequently there is a little lake in it. From this point onward the deformations are less rapid. The vegetation again creeps over the ground, and the dune falls a prey to the rains, which slowly reduce its mass. In the central Pampa, where the elevation is considerable, the dunes do not form separate circular patches, but stretch in lines parallel to the valleys--sometimes in the heart of the valley, at other times backing against one of its slopes. Far to the east of the zone of the quick dunes, in the south of the Córdoba province and the centre of the Buenos Aires province, there are certain soft undulations, covered with vegetation, with a sandier soil than that of the plain around them. These are dead dunes. The district of the dead dunes is characterized by the extreme irregularity of the surface-soil, the humus, which gains in richness and depth, as a general rule, as one goes eastward, because there it is in some places covered by recent æolian deposits. The distribution of the dead dunes is connected with the stretches of river sand across the Pampa, which have offered an easy victim to the winds. A line of dead dunes follows the upper course of the Salado in the district of Junin and Bragado. On the line from Buenos Aires to San Luis one crosses it between Chacabuco and Vedia, and then one comes again upon the horizontal plain, which has fresh dunes, only further west, at 120 miles from Villa Mercedes. Its elevation is so conspicuous on the level plain that the first breeders who used its pasturage gave it the emphatic name of the _cerillada_. D'Azara correctly appreciated the nature of it. "It is," he says, "only a dune of very fine sand." It is only a few yards high. The dead dunes of the Bolivar and Veinte Cinco de Mayo departments, which Parchappe described, have a more conspicuous relief, and in their disposition sometimes remind us of the fresh circular dunes with a central lagoon. The lines of coastal dunes in the eastern part of the Buenos Aires province obstruct the proper flow of the water there, and form a group apart, which must be clearly distinguished from the dunes on the plain.[86] [86] Outside the districts with quick and dead dunes, a frequent type of landscape on the Pampa is a plain thinly sown with very small lagoons, generally circular, between which develop a series of barely perceptible undulations. The inequality is at times so slight that one only notices it by the contrast between the vegetation of the lower and the higher ground. This type of landscape, which is especially seen in the district of Lincoln or of Nueve de Julio, is due to the action of the wind on a plain where the level of the underground water is near the surface. This level marks a limit below which æolian erosion does not take place: a sort of base-level. The periodic variations of level of the underground water reduce or enlarge the undulations of the surface. Thus the impression of monotony which the Pampa makes in us is corrected to some extent by close observation. High and low land alternate on it. Parchappe himself had noticed the contrast between the area that stretches from Buenos Aires to the Salado, with its soft undulations and its well-developed hydrographic network, the horizontal plains on the right bank of the Salado, with their irregular dunes, and the southern plateau of the _tosca_ between the Sierra de Tandil and the Sierra de la Ventana. * * * * * We may now distinguish the following regions in the Pampa as a whole: 1. The central part of the Santa Fé province forms what is called the district of the "colonies": that is to say, the domain of the colonies established two generations ago, and the zone in which the type of cultivation introduced by them took root. The chief crops here are wheat and flax. Hedges of service trees (_paraisos_) surround the fields. In contrast with the parts of the Pampa which have remained naked, the region of the colonies seems a veritable grove. It stretches westward beyond the frontier of the Córdoba province, and it reaches the fringe of the _monte_ between San Francisco and Mar Chiquita. For the north, Miatello gives 30° S. lat. as the normal limit of the wheat-growing area; beyond this it suffers both from the low rainfall of winter and the excessive rainfall in summer. As a matter of fact, the large estates only reach this latitude on the line from San Francisco to Ceres. On the Resistencia line, north of Santa Fé, they stop at 30° 30' S. lat. In the intervening district the limit of the region of the colonies almost coincides with that of the department of Castellanos, about 30° 45' S. lat. The area lying between this line and the northern edge of the Pampa is given up to breeding. In the south the region of the colonies stretches as far as Las Bandurias and Irigoyen. 2. South of the region of the colonies, the tableland on the right bank of the Paraná, west of Rosario and San Nicolas, is the maize region, the corn belt of Argentina. Flax is generally cultivated as well as maize. It is the agricultural country _par excellence_ of Argentina. The soil, of fine clay, dark red in colour and retentive of moisture, and the abundant summer rains, are very suitable for maize. The limits of the maize region describe an arc of a circle round Rosario with a radius of 60 to 100 miles. They do not quite reach the frontier of Córdoba in the west, and they leave out the entire south-western corner of the Santa Fé province. The maize belt touches the Paraná between 32° S. lat. and the Baradero. In the north it passes suddenly into the region of the colonies. In the south, on the other hand, there is at the edge of the corn belt an extensive transition-area, where maize and wheat occupy pretty much the same surface; it stretches as far as the Rio Salado de Buenos Aires. 3. The region of the lucerne farms is much larger. It comprises the whole north-west corner of the Buenos Aires province, from the Salado, in the district of Junin, to the southern limit of the Nueve de Julio and Pehuajo departments, and as far as the latitude of Guamini. The limit of the lucerne farms does not include the lands of the central Pampa, but advances westward and takes in part of the Pedernera department in the San Luis province. The lucerne farms run along the San Rafael line to Batavia, and at this point they reach the limits of the colonized zone. In addition, the zone of the lucerne farms includes the whole south-eastern part of the Córdoba province, as high up as the line from Villa Mercedes to Villa Maria, and the southern part of the Santa Fé province. In the whole of this area, fifteen to twenty-five per cent. of the surface is planted with lucerne. The conditions required for its cultivation are a moderate depth of the underground water and a light soil that allows the roots to penetrate easily. The eastern belt of clays is not good for lucerne, which survives there for much less time than in the west, where it may live fifteen or twenty years. The lucerne belt is above all a great breeding area for horned cattle, as sheep-pasturage injures the lucerne. It is not nearly so monotonous, however, as the preceding regions. In the south-east, in the Buenos Aires province, the creation of the lucerne farms was undertaken at a time when agricultural colonization had already begun. We therefore find two types of exploitation side by side. The cultivation of maize enters it in the south-west, in spite of the comparatively unfavourable climatic conditions. The centre of the lucerne area in the south of the Córdoba province is also a great agricultural zone; but there agriculture is directly connected with the creation of the lucerne estates. It is, in fact, entrusted to colonists who till the ground for four or five years, and restore it to the owners sown with lucerne at the expiration of their lease. The crops consist almost exclusively of wheat and flax. Lastly, in the west (San Luis province and extreme south-west of Córdoba province) the soil gets increasingly more sandy, and the climate drier. A single tillage suffices to destroy the natural vegetation and clear the place for lucerne. The lucerne fields have been created by the breeders themselves, the sole masters of the region, without the aid of the colonists. 4. Beyond the lucerne belt, at the point where the plain rises toward the Sierra de San Luis and the Sierra de Córdoba, the subterranean water sinks deeper. This zone at the foot of the ranges, unsuitable for lucerne, yet with a soil comparatively rich in humus, has been taken up by agricultural workers. The wheat area extends, in the San Luis province, as far as Fraga and Naschel, in the Conlara depression. The maize area extends to Oncativo, in the Córdoba province, between the Tercero and Secundo rivers, where the summer rainfall is heavier. Thanks to the nearness of the mountains, this area has a water-supply for irrigation, and this sustains several small centres of good farms. 5. The south of the Buenos Aires province and the central Pampa are the wheat zone. The bed of _tosca_, which is not far below the soil, does no harm to the wheat except in years of drought. The valleys, where the _tosca_ is interrupted, and the dunes, where the soil is deep, are very carefully used for lucerne fields of limited extent. Wheat-growing seems now, both in this and the preceding zone, to have reached its limit, as the dryness makes it improbable that there will be any extension westward. 6. Lastly, the east of the Buenos Aires province, the centre of which is fairly indicated by the little town of Dolores, is the only part of the Pampean plain which has not been reached by agricultural colonization. The land lies low, and is badly drained. The only change that has taken place in the vegetation is a progressive improvement due to the hoofs of the cattle during their long stays there. This pastoral area is clearly limited in the south by the Sierra de Tandil. In the north it is continued in the more varied region that lies between Buenos Aires and the lower Salado, where the alternation of winter pasture on the dry lands and summer pasture in the valleys, encourages the best methods of breeding, and has made it the region of the dairy industry. In the Entre Rios province the limit of the large estates of wheat and flax is marked by 32° S. lat. The part of Entre Rios which extends north of 32° and the Corrientes province do not strictly belong to the Pampean region. * * * * * Extensive breeding was the first form taken by white colonization on the Pampa. The word breeding is, in fact, hardly the correct name for an industry that mainly consisted of hunting, and was wholly distinct from the patient and advanced methods used at the same time in the northern provinces. "The real wealth of the province of Buenos Aires," says Dean Funes, "was, and always will be, the trade in hides" (_la pellejería_).[87] A good part of the hides exported came from the hunting of the wild cattle and horses which had grown numerous on the area of the Pampa beyond the Rio Salado.[88] It was mainly after 1778, when trade with Spain had been authorized and there was an increased demand for hides, that the hunting of these ownerless beasts was taken up. Two thousand Spaniards from Buenos Aires, Santa Fé and Mendoza hunted every day, says D'Azara, killing an animal for each of their meals in addition to those they killed for hides. From 1775 to the Revolution, the Spanish Government made continuous efforts to regulate and reduce the massacre of the herds. It laid down penalties for every person selling hides that did not bear his own mark; it farmed out the right to hunt animals with no mark, and organized the destruction of wild dogs, etc. The ranches developed under shelter of this legislation. Still, the Revolution did not witness the end of this cattle-hunting. D'Orbigny took part in 1828 in two hunts of wild horses (_baguales_) in Entre Rios. The Argentine _gaucho_ long retained the ways of a hunter rather than those of a breeder in the strict sense; witness Urquiza's soldiers who, says Demersay, during the campaign of 1846, when they could not find trees to which they could fasten their horses, killed cattle and tied the reins to their horns. [87] _Ensayo de la historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos Aires, y Tucumán_ (3 vols, in 16^{mo}) Buenos Aires, 1816, t. iii, p. 214. [88] The number of wild animals and the area over which they roamed have often been exaggerated. It does not look as if they ever covered the whole of the Pampean plain. A salter who crossed Patagonia and the whole of the Pampa in 1753 (_Voyage du San Martin au fort de San Julian_, Coll. de Angelis, v.) only found wild herds near the Salado frontier, and he knew by this that he was close to the ranches. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were no wild cattle left on the right bank of the Paraná. There were still some in Entre Rios. Passing from the hunting country to the zone of ranches, one notices that the main work of the breeder is to prevent his cattle from running wild. "The ranches of this country," said Dean Funes, "having been set up on immense plains, on which it was not easy to confine the herds within fixed limits, it sometimes happened that the animals went vast distances in search of water or pasture, and ended by being regarded as wild and ownerless," When D'Azara wants to show that the ranches of Paraguay are superior to those of Buenos Aires, he is content to say that there the animals are tamer (_mansos_). With the wild animal (_alzado_) is contrasted the _de rodeo_ animal: that is to say, the cattle which are rounded up periodically in the centre of the ranch to be taken to the pasture where they must live (_aquerenciar_). It is the difficulty of preventing the dispersal of the herd that fixes the price of the _rincones_ (surrounded by inundated areas) of Corrientes, in which the animals are captives. MacKann's description of pastoral life in the Buenos Aires province in the middle of the nineteenth century give us a very clear impression of the stage of transition between exploiting the natural increase of a herd that multiplies without man's intervention, and breeding in the strict sense. The value of a horse in the former case is almost exclusively the cost of breaking it in. The breeder is actually anxious when he sees his horses increase, as he fears he may not have the resources for breaking them in. The most formidable of the dangers that threatened the feeble discipline of the herd was drought. That in the year 1827 was a disaster. The animals left the ranches in a body to go southward, where they mixed.[89] [89] The water problem is not as important for the history of colonization in the Pampean region as in the north. Primitive breeding was confined to natural supplies of water, lagoons or streams, and to shallow wells (_jagueles_) dug down to the superficial sheet, which is generally not deep, but is liable to dry up. As colonization improved, the breeder, and subsequently the farmer, were better equipped for boring wells, and no longer feared drought. They got down to the deeper waters, semi-artesian (Buenos Aires district) or artesian (west of the Santa Fé province, round San Francisco). In other places the superficial waters, which are fresher than the deeper layers, were used by adapting new types of filters to the wells (Buena Esperanza district). The only two districts where the quest of water offered any difficulty are the south-west corner of the Pampean region and the northern extremity of the prairie in the Santa Fé province. The sheets of water are very irregular there, often saline, and it was a long time before the ranches got an assured supply. One remarkable circumstance is the importance of the dunes in connection with the distribution of the underground water. The rain-water accumulates in the dunes and flows slowly through the sand to the sub-soil. The level of the underground sheet in the clay on which the dune rests is always nearer the surface in the neighbourhood of the dune. The dune itself has often a greener vegetation than the land around it. Nothing is more surprising than to find at Medanos (west of Bahía Blanca), in the middle of a plain of arid aspect, fields of lucerne and orchards lodged in the hollows of dunes that are still fresh. In the whole of the Buenos Aires province the dead district of the dunes is, on account of its water-supply, a good place for habitation. D'Azara notices the numerous water-spots which ran along the foot of the dead dunes of the Cerillada. All round were the white bones of the _baguales_. In the valleys of the central Pampa, where the sheet of water in the centre of the valley is often saline, the underground water improves gradually as one approaches the line of the dunes. Revolutions and wars interrupted the work of taming the cattle. When Galvez went from the Córdoba province to Buenos Aires at the end of the Rosas Government, he was struck by the condition of the ranches.[90] Many of them had been confiscated, or their owners driven into exile. Cattle were no longer marked, and they had become wild. The troubles of the emancipation-period were much less injurious to the Buenos Aires breeders than to those of Entre Rios. The Entre Rios herd was almost annihilated during the revolution, and some of the ranchers of the left bank crossed to the right bank of the Paraná. After 1823 the pastoral wealth of Entre Rios was rapidly restored, thanks to raids on Brazilian territory. They were so profitable that the whole population took part in them. In 1827 the inhabitants of Bajada went there in such numbers that the town was half deserted. Every day thousands of cattle were collected on the bank of the Uruguay, and crossed the river. Some of them were even taken beyond the Paraná, to the Santa Fé province. Woodbine Parish confirms this rapid restoration of Entre Rios, of which D'Orbigny was a witness. But this period of prosperity did not last long. The war with Uruguay, under Rosas, again ruined the Entre Rios ranches, and the drought of 1846 helped to scatter the remaining herds. Extensive breeding is only lightly rooted in the soil. The chief centres of production change their locality, as the political circumstances change, from one part of the Pampean plain to another. [90] V. Galvez, _Memorias de un viejo_ (Buenos Aires, 3 vols, in 16^{mo}, 4th ed, 1889). [Illustration: THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. THE RIO BAMBA (IN THE SOUTH OF THE CÓRDOBA PROVINCE, 500 FEET ABOVE SEA-LEVEL). _Small circular lagoons. The underground water, which comes from the Sierras to the north-west, here reaches the surface. Zone of lucerne farms._ Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN LUIS PROVINCE, 1,166 FEET ELEVATION). _The plain is sown with quick and dead dunes, often shaped in a circle round a lagoon. A dune invaded by vegetation._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE XVI. To face p. 182.] Primitive breeding affords few examples of periodical migration for the better use of pasturage. In 1822, in the course of a journey amongst the Sierras de Tandil and de la Ventana, Colonel Garcia noticed that the Indians kept their cattle round the temporary lagoons of the plain in the winter, and went up to the mountain-streams in summer. Transhumation movements of this kind were difficult for the creole ranchers, whose fairly large herds could not be handled easily. The Chascomus breeders, however, at the close of the eighteenth century, drove their cattle to the low banks of the Salado during the dry season.[91] Garcia also notices the importance of the Salado pastures for the ranches of Salto, Areco, and Lujan.[92] The need to remove the herds in the dry season, and to find _invernadas_ within reach of the former ranches, was due to the change brought about in the natural vegetation of the Pampa and the spread of the _pasto dulce_. The annual herbs which compose the _pasto dulce_ die and disappear after fertilization. Until the autumn rain they leave the ground quite naked, whereas the tough grasses of the _pasto duro_ afforded a thin but permanent pasture. [91] _Diario de un reconocimiento de las guardias y fortines que garnecen la linea de frontera de Buenos Aires_ (1796), by D. Felix de Azara (Coll. de Angelis, vi.). [92] _Nueva plan de fronteras de la Provincia de Buenos Aires por el Colonel Garcia_ (1816, Coll. de Angelis, vi.). * * * * * The first improvements of the pastoral industry of the Pampa are connected with the development of sheep-breeding. Exports of wool began about 1840, and made great progress after 1855 (17,000 tons in 1860, 65,000 tons in 1870). From 1850 to about 1890 the economic returns on sheep-breeding were far better than on cattle-breeding. During the whole of this period the multiplication of sheep farms was only restricted by the supply of workers. The first shepherds had been Basques, in the south of the Buenos Aires province, and Irish, in the north. The owner settled them as small farmers in the _puestos_ on the edge of the ranch, the central part of which was devoted to cattle. They could thus, while they guarded their sheep, see that the limits of the estate were respected, and prevent the cattle from roaming. Wool was for a long time the only product of the sheep-rearing industry. From 1866 onward it was decided to use the hides and tallow also. As the material of the grease-works was cheap, they spread all over the sheep zone. Many ranches had works of their own. From 1867 to 1877 the _saladeros_ that had been built long before for killing cattle undertook the slaughter of sheep on a large scale. The number of sheep sold to the _saladeros_ rose to 3,000,000 a year. In 1880 the first cargoes of frozen mutton were sent abroad. The creation of the grease-works had made no difference to the breeding, but the building of the refrigerators brought about a rapid transformation of the flock. The Lincoln breed, heavier and more meaty, displaced the fine-wool Merinos. This substitution of Lincolns for Merinos is now complete throughout the Pampean region. Until 1880 sheep-rearing was concentrated east of the Salado, north and south of Buenos Aires, beginning with a line that passes through Quilmes, San Vicente, Pilar, and Campana, which marks the limit of the suburban zone. In addition it had spread on the right bank of the lower Salado as far as the foot of the Sierra de Tandil, in an area where the first stations date from 1823, though the population did not make much progress until after 1855. About 1880, after the pacification of the Pampa, the sheep-farms began to expand westward. It was then that the wool of the _pasto fuerte_ appeared on the Buenos Aires market. It came from the Azal district in 1870, from Olavarria in 1880, from Bolivar in 1885, and from Villegas in 1890. The Census of 1889 ascribes 51,000,000 sheep to the province of Buenos Aires; that of 1895 gives much the same figure (52,000,000). Detailed comparison of the two enumerations shows that the expansive movement to the west continued, and was completed during this period. The flocks in the north-west zone of the province (Lincoln, Villegas, Trenque, Lauquen) more than doubled; the flocks of the south-west area (Alsina, Puan, Bahía Blanca, Villarino) continued to grow, and increased by a third. Those on the lands of the central Pampa increased threefold. On the other hand, in the departments north and south of the Sierra de Tandil, where colonization is older, sheep-breeding is stationary. The north-east and south-east areas, between the Paraná and the Salado, have diminished: one losing a fifth, and the other a half, of its flocks. From 1895 onward the number of flocks of sheep on the Pampean plain decreased rapidly. The number of sheep had sunk from 34,000,000 in 1908 to 18,000,000 in 1915 for the Buenos Aires province; from 2,800,000 in 1908 to 2,300,000 in 1914 for the central Pampa. The reduction was general, and found in every district; but it was not equally great everywhere, and did not begin at the same date in every district. Sheep-breeding has almost entirely disappeared from the eastern belt, east of the Salado, which was its cradle. South of Buenos Aires the sheep are giving place to horned cattle, and they had almost disappeared by 1908. North of Buenos Aires they survived long, but the reduction of the flocks has only been the more rapid since 1908. This corresponds with the advance of maize-growing. In six years the Bartolome Mitre and Pergamino departments have lost, respectively, four-fifths and five-sixths of their sheep. In the north-west of the Buenos Aires province the sheep began to be reduced at the time when the lucerne farms were founded, about 1900. The decrease has since gone on uninterruptedly. The actual flocks represent one-fourth of the flocks of 1895. In the south-west (wheat belt) there was a rapid shrinkage before 1908, but it seems to have almost been arrested since then, thanks to the combining of sheep-rearing with wheat and oats. The actual flocks are about one-half the flocks of 1895. Finally, in the area north of the Sierra de Tandil the sheep retreat before the cattle, as they do further north, but they are not so completely wiped out as in the lucerne belt, and the flocks are still two fifths of the flocks of twenty years ago. In the province of Entre Rios and south of Corrientes the number of sheep continued to rise until 1908, but the increase is only in the northern departments, outside the agricultural belt. The southern departments, which are large growers of wheat and flax, lost one-third of their flocks between 1895 and 1908. Cattle-breeding was restricted for a long time by the difficulty of disposing of its products. The hides alone found ready buyers. The making and export of salt beef dates from the eighteenth century, and it was to help this industry that the expeditions to the salt-beds of the Pampa and the journeys of salters to the Patagonian coast were organized. From 1792 to 1796 no less than 39,000 quintals of jerked beef were sent from the Rio de la Plata to Havana. But the market for salt meat (_tasajo_) was always limited. It consisted only of the Antilles and Brazil, and the _saladeros_ never fully exploited the meat-producing capacity of the Argentine herds. The crisis of the _saladeros_ occurred before the time when the refrigerators began to compete with them. By 1889 there were only three left in the province of Buenos Aires. Although the price of cattle was not very remunerative, and provided no incentive to improve the breeding; although the _saladero_ was not at all exorbitant, merely asking for animals in good condition, the improvement of the herd by introducing selected pedigree-breeders had begun about the middle of the nineteenth century. The Basque dairies established in the district near Buenos Aires sold pedigree-calves to the ranches, and these were used for breeding purposes.[93] About 1880 the advance of sheep-breeding pressed the cattle-ranches back and disputed the space with them more and more, within the ancient Indian frontier. The smallness of the market for cattle and their slight mercantile value were very favourable circumstances for the occupation of the new lands, thrown open at this date by the submission of the Indians. The herds which found no buyers were sent to the _campos de afuera_. The ranches developed very rapidly. Daireaux has very accurately described this period of pastoral colonization, and the starting of convoys that were intended to give a population to the west of the Pampa. Cattle were there several years before sheep. As a matter of fact, breeders do not regard cattle as having a value of their own. They are merely auxiliaries that must improve the pasture and prepare the ground for sheep. The cattle themselves are preceded by troops of half-wild horses which first take possession of the virgin field and begin the transformation of it. [93] This is, in a special form, the first instance of specialization, in the cantons of the Pampean region, in the breeding industry, properly so called (producing breeders). The number of cattle increases rapidly. In 1875 it was estimated that there were 5,000,000 head of cattle in the province of Buenos Aires. In 1889 there were 8,500,000. Since that date the variations have been comparatively slight. The Census of 1895 gives 7,700,000; that of 1908 gives 10,300,000; that of 1914 gives 9,000,000; and that of 1915 gives 11,300,000.[94] But the value of the cattle has gone up rapidly. The exports of live meat, which lasted from 1889 to 1900, were the beginning of the rise. It was strengthened when the refrigerators ceased to confine themselves to killing sheep and began to buy cattle. The exports of chilled or frozen beef increased after 1898. The value of them rose to 10,000,000 gold piastres in 1904, double that in 1909, and more than quadruple in 1914. [94] The variations in number are less considerable for the Pampean region than for the whole of Argentina. It is better supplied with capital than the other breeding districts, and can rapidly replace the losses caused by excessive export by buying cattle in the adjoining provinces. The difference between the price paid by the refrigerators for pedigree-cattle and the price of animals of creole blood, which the local market takes, hurries up the transformation of the herd. In order to watch reproduction and nurse the pasture, the ranches put up wire-fences. But the breeding methods are especially modified by the introduction of lucerne. It spread in the south of Córdoba and west of the Buenos Aires province from 1895 onward, and from 1905 onward in part of the San Luis province. There were already small lucerne farms in the Buenos Aires province. A description that was written at the end of the eighteenth century speaks of lucerne farms round the town which were reserved for feeding draught cattle.[95] But the area from which the cultivation of lucerne started at the close of the nineteenth century is the district of the Córdoba province that is crossed by the line from Rosario to Córdoba, completed about 1870 to Bellville and Villa Marina. The lucerne farms there were not created by the breeders, and the lucerne was at first intended for export to Rosario and Buenos Aires in the form of dry fodder. The trade in dry fodder has remained good there. The 1908 Census gives 128 square kilometres of lucerne for cutting in the Tercero Abajo department (Villa Maria) and 267 square kilometres in the Union department (Bellville).[96] [95] Fernando Barrero, _Descripción de las provincias del Rio de la Plata_ (published by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos Aires, 1911). [96] Amongst the specialized industries connected with the development of the lucerne farms we must mention the growing of lucerne for seed, which has settled in the dry zones, where the lucerne is not so much invaded by other species; for instance, the district of Madanos, west of Bahía Blanca. [Illustration: MAP III.--THE CATTLE-BREEDING AREAS. _The density of the herd is slight in the maize belt. It is considerable in the centre and east of the Pampean region, which supply the refrigerators with pedigree stock of good weight. The density is considerable also in the north of Mesopotamia, but the cattle there are less valuable and are taken by the saladeros of the Uruguay. The presence of the tick, which inoculates cattle with Texas fever, is the chief obstacle to the improvement of the herd in the north of Argentina._ To face p. 188.] The lucerne spread southward and south-westward from this point; and the improvement of the herds kept pace with it. I have shown elsewhere how this improvement was checked north of a line along the course of the Paraná, the northern frontier of the Constitución and General Lopez departments, in the province of Santa Fé and on the Rio Cuarto, and in the Córdoba province, by the presence of the _garrapate_, which inoculates the cattle with a dreaded disease, Texas fever. The creole cattle are immunized against the _garrapate_, but pedigree cattle quickly succumb to it. In order to protect the southern zone, where the _garrapate_ does not reproduce, the Argentine Government imposes severe restrictions on the transport of cattle from north to south; the cattle have to have disinfectant baths at the frontier-stations. This cuts pastoral Argentina in two. While the Durham cattle of the south are intended for the refrigerators, the creole cattle of the north still supply the _saladeros_, which have disappeared from Buenos Aires, but survive on the Uruguay. Yet the advantages of crossing with European breeds are such that the northern breeders, in spite of the risk and the expense, have not given up all hope of accomplishing it. The transformation of the herd, however, is bound to be very slow. Pedigree breeders are brought from the south and kept in the stable. Their progeny, born on the spot, resist Texas fever better and can be put out to pasture. There has been more progress in the contaminated zone on the right bank of the Paraná than in Entre Rios and Corrientes. Pedigree animals have been introduced at Santa Fé, not only in the region of the colonies, but further north, in the extreme northern corner of the Pampa (San Cristobal department), colonized by ranchers from the north of Buenos Aires and the south of Santa Fé, who were ousted by the progress of maize. They have brought with them to the new lands the cultivation of lucerne and the methods they followed on their former property. At Corrientes, on the other hand, breeding is an historic industry. The staff of the ranches is indigenous. The pastoral traditions are unchanged. When we study the variations in the numbers of cattle in different parts of the Pampa, by comparing the results of recent Censuses we find that the number has risen rapidly since 1895 in the whole of the eastern area, north of the Sierra de Tandil. The increase is particularly conspicuous north of the Rio Salado, in the dairy district. (Mean density in 1915, 40 to 60 horned cattle per square kilometre.) In the south-west region (wheat belt) the density has always been low (12 per square kilometre), and it shows no tendency to increase. In the north and western region of Buenos Aires (lucerne belt) there has been a rapid increase, especially between 1895 and 1908 (creation of the lucerne farms), and it has not been interrupted since (density 50 to the square kilometre). There is the same increase in the whole area of the lucerne farms in the Córdoba, Santa Fé, and San Luis provinces, where the herds doubled between 1895 and 1908. Only two regions have suffered a reduction: the agricultural area of the centre (Chacabuco, Chivilcoy), where there has been a decrease since 1895, and the maize district (north of Buenos Aires), where cattle-rearing did not diminish until after 1908. * * * * * Agriculture had begun to develop by the end of the eighteenth century in the district round Buenos Aires. D'Azara admits the enormous preponderance of breeding, but mentions that the right bank of the Paraná exported flour to the left bank, which was exclusively pastoral. Barrero also observes that between the belt of orchards and lucerne fields, about a league in width, which surrounded Buenos Aires, and the area of the ranches, which did not begin for six or eight leagues, there was an agricultural belt, the district of the _chacras de pan llevar_. The main crop was wheat, and the tillage was chiefly done in the rich soils at the bottom of the valleys, which are called _cañadas_ in the local dialect (cañada de Moron, cañada du Rio Lujan, etc.). It was, however, not at Buenos Aires, but in the Santa Fé province, that modern agricultural colonization began in the nineteenth century. It goes back to the foundation (in 1854) of the colony of Esperanza, west of Santa Fé, from which it was separated by the strip of forest which follows the course of the Salado. European immigrants--Swiss, French, and Piedmontese--had settled there. The early years of colonization at Santa Fé were difficult, and the colonies did not begin to develop rapidly until after 1870. About that date we can distinguish three nuclei of agricultural colonization at Santa Fé. The first group of colonies was settled in the north, on the bank of the Paraná. In the centre the Esperanza group advanced steadily westward. A third group of colonies lay along the Central Argentine railway from Rosario to Córdoba. The Esperanza colonists had at first grown maize, but the prosperity of the colonies was mainly due to wheat. Zeballos, who visited the colonies in 1882, describes them as a vast lake of wheat. Wheat predominates, not only in the department of Las Colonias, west of Santa Fé, where it survives in full strength, but further north, at Garay, whence it has since been displaced by flax and earth-nuts, and in the south, round Rosario, in the belt which is now given up to maize. It is for the wheat that the mills of Carcaraña and the granaries of Rosario have been built. The land sown with wheat at Santa Fé rose in 1882 to 102,000 hectares out of a total of 127,000 hectares of cultivated land.[97] By 1889 the area of wheat was quadrupled. It spread like a drop of oil, reaching Rafäela and Castellanos on the west. In 1895 the advance was still more rapid. Wheat-growing has crossed the Córdoba frontier, and spread round San Francisco and east of Mar Chiquita (departments of San Justo and Marcos Juarez). The agricultural regions in the centre of the Santa Fé province and those of the Central Argentine have met, and the wheat has invaded the whole of the San Martin department. It extends even south of the old colonies of the Central Argentine toward the south-west of Santa Fé, in the General Lopez department. [97] The population of the Santa Fé colonies in 1882 was 52,000, of whom 12,000 were in the colonies of the San Javier, north of the town of Santa Fé. The 1908 Census shows a very different state of things. The density of the wheat-cultivation has continued to grow appreciably in the whole of the northern region, and also in the south-west of the province, at some distance from the Paraná (General Lopez department). On the other hand, it has been reduced in the adjoining district of Rosario (departments of Iriondo, Belgrana, Caseros, and Constitución), where maize-growing has developed. Maize has won part of the wheat belt. ----------------+----------------------+--------------------- | Wheat Area | Maize Area | (in kilometres). | (in kilometers). Departments.[98]|------+-------+-------+------+------+------- | 1889 | 1895 | 1908 | 1889 | 1895 | 1908 ----------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+------- Las Colonias }|1,623{| 1,307 | 1,621 |} 82 |{ 24 | 31 Castillanos }| {| 1,845 | 3,425 |} |{ 4 | 7 S. Jeronimo }| 664{| 854 | 849 |} 65 |{ 15 | 264 S. Martin }| {| 964 | 1,884 |} |{ 22 | 35 _Iriondo_ }| 971{| 929 | 442 |} 65 |{ 81 | 641 _Belgrano_ }| {| 1,137 | 638 |} |{ 37 | 296 _S. Lorenzo_ }| 652{| 387 | 1,390 |} 178 |{ 150 | 1,169 _Caseros_ }| {| 1,139 | 468 |} |{ 83 | 970 Gal. Lopez }| 12{| 888 | 1,370 |} 51 |{ 373 | 1,558 _Constitución_ }| {| 227 | 165 |} |{ 575 | 736 S. Justo }| 12{| 732 | 2,345 |} 48 |{ 7 | 34 M. Juarez }| {| 1,504 | 1,442 |} |{ 53 | 92 ----------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+------- Restricted in the south by the extension of the maize belt, the region of the colonies has now a very distinctive character amongst the agricultural areas of the Pampa. [98] The names of departments which belong in their entirety to the maize region are given in italics. The department of San Jeronimo straddles the maize region and the region of the colonies. The General Lopez territory also extends, in the south-west, far beyond the limit of the maize belt. This originality is not so much in virtue of its crops (hard wheat and flax) as on account of the age of colonization and the division of property. Most of the colonists are owners, and estates of 50 to 200 hectares are the rule. The houses are comfortable; they are surrounded by orchards and kitchen-gardens. Moreover, the rural economy has been complicated, and it has assumed a familiar aspect for the European observer, owing to the introduction of cattle-rearing on a small scale by the farmers. The number of horned cattle doubled between 1908 and 1914 in the Castellanos department, and increased by a third in Las Colonias. The area of lucerne has extended in proportion. The farms have been multiplied on the low lands (_cañadas_), unsuitable for wheat, which the older colonists had disdained; but they are now regarded as the best bits of land. The recent rise in the value of land in the region of the colonies is connected, not with an increase of agricultural production, but a development of breeding. A few co-operative dairy societies have been established. In general, however, breeding is solely for the meat-market. The cattle-trade goes on very different lines from those of the large estates and ranches. It has remained in the hands of small dealers (Jews of Moïsesville). Agricultural colonization in the Buenos Aires province was at first entirely independent of the Santa Fé colonization. The crops of the adjoining region of Buenos Aires never disappeared altogether. In the period to which Daireaux's description of the economic life of the Pampa refers (1880-89), the farmers disputed with the breeders a belt some ten leagues broad round the capital. But sheep-breeding left no place for agriculture in the next belt, which enclosed the first on every side, and extended almost as far as the Salado. Agricultural colonization had found free land only beyond the sheep-farm area, 170 miles west of Buenos Aires, round Chivilcoy, Chacabuco, and Bragado. As early as 1872 the Chivilcoy district produced 130,000 hectolitres of wheat; or nearly half the total production of the Buenos Aires province. In 1889 it formed a comparatively dense agricultural patch, the cultivated area being devoted half to wheat and half to maize. Wheat. Maize. Chivilcoy 307 kms. 399 kms. Chacabuco 155 " 164 " Bragado 147 " 261 " At that date the whole west and south of the Buenos Aires province was exclusively pastoral. There were only two isolated nuclei of agricultural colonization. The first was round Olavarria, on the old Indian frontier, where Russo-German colonies had been established in 1878. The second was in the Suarez department, at the extreme north of the Sierra de la Ventana, where a group of French colonists settled five years later, at Pigüe.[99] The opening of the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca ought, one would think, to have prepared the way for agricultural colonization in this section. However, the 1895 Census shows a check to these first attempts at tillage in the south. It fell by one half at Suarez, and by three-fourths at Olavarria. The Pigüe colonists have succeeded in keeping to their lands, but those of Olavarria have abandoned them, and most of them have emigrated to the Entre Rios province. [99] Wheat-area in 1889 in the Olavarria department, 319 square kilometres; in the Suarez department, 118 square kilometres. [Illustration: THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. BUENA ESPERANZA (SAN LUIS PROVINCE). _The first_ chañares. Photograph by the Author.] [Illustration: THE PAMPEAN PLAIN. JUNIN (150 MILES WEST OF BUENOS AIRES, 330 FEET ELEVATION). _The clays. A line of dead dunes crosses the Junin district, following the course of the Salado. They are indicated by light, sandy soil, very different from the clays of the north of Buenos Aires province._ Photograph by the Author. PLATE XVII. To face p. 194.] On the other hand, colonization has kept the land won in the district of the middle Salado, and it extends in a sporadic way toward the south-west and west. (Nueve de Julio, 252 square kilometres of wheat and 400 of maize: Veinte Cinco de Mayo, 84 square kilometres of wheat and 218 of maize: Junin, 197 square kilometres of wheat and 204 of maize in 1895). It has been maintained ever since, with slow progress, but without being ousted by breeding. This is one of the regions of the Pampa where the most different types of rural exploitation are mingled together. Agricultural colonization has been carried on both by small proprietors and farmers or tenants. Wheat and maize seem to be permanently associated, and the climate is equally good for both; the maize crop being the better if the summer is wet, and the wheat crop when the summer is dry. The two cereals follow each other on the same land, in rotation, the wheat being helped by the constant weeding and clearing which the maize requires. The colonists use oxen in the work, and fatten them afterwards.[100] [100] Draught animals in 1908: at Chivilcoy, 17,000 cattle and 10,000 horses; at Junin, 15,000 cattle and 6,000 horses; at Nueve de Julio, 15,000 cattle and 6,000 horses. In the region of the Santa Fé colonies: at Castellanos, 17,000 cattle and 54,000 horses; at Las Colonias, 6,000 cattle and 35,000 horses. In the wheat belt (South of Buenos Aires): at Puan, (no cattle) 29,000 horses. At the sierras (no cattle), 14,000 horses. Agricultural colonization in the lucerne region dates from 1895 to 1905: ------------------+----------------+---------------- | Wheat Area | Flax Area |(in kilometres).|(in kilometres). +-------+--------+-------+-------- | 1895 | 1908 | 1895 | 1908 ------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------- Buenos Aires: | | | | Lincoln | 152 | 819 | -- | 100 Pehuajo | 106 | 727 | -- | -- Guamini | 20 | 528 | -- | -- Trenque Lauquen | 100 | 1,439 | -- | 59 Villegas | 4 | 812 | 1 | 84 Pinto | -- | 469 | -- | 60 Córdoba: | | | | Gal. Roca | -- | 1,009 | -- | 89 Rio Quarto | 5 | 1,156 | -- | 172 Juarez Celman | 144 | 1,679 | -- | 183 Union | 373 | 2,548 | 12 | 316 ------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------- Ihave shown how this was bound up with the development of the lucerne farms themselves. The extreme west of the lucerne belt (Pedernera department and San Luis) is the only place where the cultivated area was reduced. The contracts by which the ranchers entrust their lands to the colonists, on condition of returning them sown with lucerne, were gradually modified as the stream of colonization developed. The land was at first left to the colonist rent free, the rancher being paid by the creation of the lucerne fields. But in proportion to the increasing volume of the stream of immigrants, and the keener competition of the colonists, the rancher asked better terms. There are similar contracts in regard to the restoration of lucerne fields which have been worn out by pasturage, so that the land has to be ploughed up periodically. The men who clear the land in the lucerne belt have mostly been recruited in the district of the old colonies of Santa Fé, where the new generation had begun to feel the pinch. The crops which they raise during the four or five years of their lease are chosen without any idea of sparing lands which they are not to keep. Wheat succeeds wheat, and the first and last crop is often flax. The proportion of flax is lower only in the southern part of the lucerne belt. In the Buenos Aires province the colonist grows lucerne on his own account, either to sell as dry fodder or for breeding or fattening. Colonization does not in these parts correspond with the division of property. Not only does the farmer not become the owner of the soil, but he does not live on it permanently; he is a veritable nomad. His house has a temporary look that strikes one at the first glance. The area cultivated is almost stable, if the region is considered as a whole. But cultivation passes periodically from one section to another, and its removals cause sudden alterations or crises in the railway traffic and the development of the urban centres. The lucerne belt has been peopled by Santafecinos, and it has in turn sent colonists to the western agricultural belt at the foot of the Sierras de San Luis and de Córdoba. They have less suitable climatological conditions, but they have the advantage of greater stability, as the breeders do not dispute the land with them. While agricultural colonization has been an aid to pastoral colonization in the north-west of Buenos Aires, it tends to displace breeding, or restrict its sphere, in the north-east and the south. Maize-growing started on the banks of the Paraná, where it was already paramount in 1889, between Campana (north of Buenos Aires) and San Nicolas. In 1895 it advanced up the Paraná as far as the Santa Fé province (Constitución) and spread over the interior for some sixty miles in the Salto department. In the next few years it made rapid progress toward the west and north-west, covering the departments of Pergamino, Rojas, and Colon, and part of General Lopez, San Lorenzo, and Constitución in the province of Santa Fé. ---------------+-----------------+------------------ | Maize Area. | Flax Area. |-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------ | 1889| 1895| 1908| 1889| 1895| 1908 ---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------ Campana | 67 | 45 | 22| 15 | 31 | 17 Baradero | 339 | 260 | 291| 26 | 78 | 173 S. Pedro | 398 | 353 | 420| 5 | 73 | 235 Arrecifes | 124 | 126 | 155| 15 | 50 | 265 Salto | 16 | 326 | 236| 13 | 3 | 75 Gal. Lopez } | 51 |{373 |1,538| -- | 70 | 752 Constitución } | |{575 | 736| -- | 270 | 404 Pergamino | 168 | 160 | 340| 50 | 30 | 275 Rojas | 86 | 81 | 247| 4 | 23 | 275 Colon | -- | 44 | 126| -- | 14 | 78 S. Lorenzo | 178 | 150 |1,169| 11 | 36 | 450 Caseros | -- | 83 | 990| -- | 13 | 319 ---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------ Export of Argentine maize on a large scale began in 1895. Flax-growing was not added to maize until 1900. The heavy land requires a good deal of harrowing, and the weeding and harvesting of the maize give employment to a comparatively large staff. The estates are of moderate size, often only 50 hectares. Ownership was not divided at the period of colonization, the land, thanks to the breeders, having already acquired so high a value that the colonists could not buy it. On the lands which have been farmed out there has developed a rural, and often far from docile, proletariat. It is in the maize region that the worst agricultural strikes have taken place. The struggles of the owners and the colonists are the more prolonged because the sowing of the maize can be put back to the end of the spring without much harm being done. The adjoining zone of the Paraná produced some of the _maiseros_ who have scattered over the north-west. But the modern colonies include, in addition, a large proportion of immigrants who have recently landed from Italy and Spain. The maize growers do not mix with the wheat-growers. Each group has its own area. The increase of wheat-growing in the south dates only from 1898: ------------------+---------------------------- | Wheat Area (in kilometres). |------------+--------------- | 1895 | 1908 ------------------+------------+--------------- Alsina | 45 | 1,296 Puan | 52 | 1,321 Suarez | 104 | 978 La Madrid | 75 | 249 Pringles | 13 | 724 Darrego | -- | 885 Terr. de la Pampa | -- | 1,731 ------------------+------------+---------------- [Illustration: MAP IV.--DENSITY OF THE MAIZE CROP. _As it needs more heat and moisture than wheat, the maize does not go so far to the west and south. It is concentrated for export at the ports of the Rio de la Plata and the Paraná, especially at Rosario. The Argentine "corn belt," the chief maize area, extends back of Rosario and San Nicolas to beyond Casilda and Pergamino._ To face p. 198.] Wheat first spread along the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca, west of the Sierra de la Ventana, then in the coastal district, east of Bahía Blanca. These two wheat-areas became connected after 1904, when the opening of the direct line from Olavarria to Buenos Aires facilitated the development of the intermediate region (Pringles-Laprida). From Bahía Blanca it spread to the west and north-west along the Toay line, and southward as far as Colorado on the coast. In the whole area of the Central Pampa it is still possible to distinguish two strata of immigrants, of different dates, one superimposed upon the other: the sheep-breeders and the farmers. Round Toay the contrast between the two elements of the population is even more striking, because the first pastoral colonization, which dates from 1890, was to a great extent the work of creole _puntanos_ (from the San Luis province). The actual agricultural colonies, on the other hand, include recent European immigrants and colonists from other parts of the provinces of Buenos Aires and Entre Rios. The yield of the wheat grows less and less as one goes westward. The harvest may be injured either by late frost or drought, or, especially, by hot winds which scorch the plants and blight the half-realized hopes of the farmers in the weeks just before the harvest. But the relative poorness of the return is compensated by the extent of the farms and the cheapness of labour. The harvest is often done with machines that peel and pack the wheat, and the workers are not compelled, as they are at Santa Fé, to wait for the threshing machine. The aridity does not permit flax-growing, but oats can be grown, especially between the Sierra de la Ventana and the Sierra de Tandil; and it is good to sow oats when the land has been impoverished by consecutive crops of wheat. Exports of oats through Bahía Blanca began in 1906. The displacement of breeding by farming is less thorough than in the maize belt. Oats, sown about the beginning of autumn, serve for fodder. The animals are kept in the fields during the winter, and the oats are cut and put into the mill, without being threshed, as a reserve fodder. Moreover, the wheat farmers have themselves taken to rearing sheep, and the sheep feed in the stubble and fallow. * * * * * From this short account of the history of colonization we draw certain important conclusions. At the time when agricultural colonization began, it was admitted that farming was the best way to exploit the soil, and that the Pampa would sooner or later pass from the pastoral to the agricultural cycle; or, to use the local phraseology, that the "colony" would replace the ranch everywhere. This idea was wrong. The only area in which the facts seem to give it any support is the corn belt. The general rule is, on the contrary, that in its progress colonization develops a mixed type of exploitation, combining farming and breeding; either one alternates with the other in a sort of periodic rotation, as in the lucerne area, or both proceed together, the farmers including breeding amongst their occupations, as in the district of the Santa Fé colonies or in the wheat area in the south of the Buenos Aires province. It seems, moreover, that the development of colonization depends not only upon physical conditions, but upon factors of a purely economic or social character, which the geographer must not overlook. It will be enough here to indicate the chief of these. We have seen the part that has been played in the exploitation of the soil by groups of colonists who swarm from one area to another. Whether we think of the ranchers of the eastern part of Buenos Aires transplanting themselves to Córdoba or north of Santa Fé, the sheep-breeders moving westward, or the Santa Fé colonists settling in the lucerne area, they all take with them their own habits and methods of work, and they take time to adjust them to a new environment. [Illustration: MAP V.--DENSITY OF THE WHEAT CROP. _The wheat belt stretches in a broad section of a circle from Bahía Blanca to Santa Fé, which is now reached by maritime vessels. The cultivation of wheat crosses the line of 600 millimetres of rainfall, and even the 400-millimetre line, in proportion as one passes from the area of summer rain to that of spring and autumn rain._ To face p. 200.] The colonist, whether breeder or farmer, is not left to himself. Colonization is sustained and directed by speculation in land, and is influenced by it. Speculation discounts the work of the colonist, and attaches to the land a value which is not based upon the revenue it has produced, but upon that which the speculator calculates that it may produce in the future. If the speculator is audacious, he does not let himself be discouraged by initial bad experiences; it takes repeated checks to exhaust his optimism. The colonist, even if his farming accounts do not show a profit, may nevertheless gain something if the value of his land goes up. The increase of his capital conceals from him the smallness of his returns, especially as he can easily get advances on the value of his property from the banks, and this enables him to draw upon his wealth every year. Speculation is concerned with new lands on the fringe of the area already colonized, where the soil is, as a general rule, already in the hands of the exploiters themselves. The speculators, having paid a high price for these lands, try to organize the development of them. It is partly owing to their influence that colonization continuously enlarges its domain, instead of concentrating its labour in the older districts where it might sometimes be more productive. In fine, speculation in land has a profound influence on the conditions of colonization, making it more difficult for the colonist to buy the land he is developing. The owner who grants him the use of the land means to keep for himself any increment of its value. He rents, but he will not sell. Thus the history of colonization cannot be separated from the traffic in land. The special features of this traffic in the Pampean region--its concentration at Buenos Aires; the creation of a land-market resembling a stock market; the practice of selling on the instalment plan, which enables small capitalists to enter the market; the repeated transfers of pieces of land which the buyers have never seen and which they know only from plans--are one of the most original aspects of modern Argentina. They are partly due to a fact of a geographical nature--the uniformity of the Pampean plain, on which every piece of land is worth about as much as the adjoining piece. Colonization is easy and rapid in proportion as it requires less capital and labour. The expansion of breeding in the west between 1880 and 1890 was facilitated by the low market price of cattle at that time. Breeding has the advantage over farming of not needing so large a staff, but it requires a larger capital. Of the crops, assuming that the conditions of soil and climate are equally favourable, wheat is better than maize for colonization, because the preparing of the soil and the harvest can be done more speedily, and the same number of hands can plant a larger area with wheat than with maize. The action of the Argentine Government and the provincial authorities has been restrained, apart from the earliest period of the establishment of the Santa Fé colonies, both as regards the securing of immigrants, the distribution of lands, and the administration of the colonies.[101] Colonization has been, on the whole, a private affair. The work of organizing colonization has at times been undertaken by the proprietors themselves; they leased pieces of land and got a good price for them, at the same time increasing the surplus value of the plots they kept for themselves by promoting the increase of population. Sometimes it was undertaken by Colonization Companies, which bought land to divide and sell. More frequently it was undertaken by merchants who advanced credit to the colonists they settled, on condition that the colonists bought what they needed of the merchants, and entrusted them with the sale of their crops. The migration of the Santa Fé colonists was partly due to, and sustained by, a corresponding migration of merchants who had acquired wealth in the older colonies, and who thus got a larger body of customers. The merchant who organizes colonization often acts as the intermediary between the owner and the colonist, guaranteeing the owner a fixed rent for his land and receiving so much per cent. of his harvest from the farmer. This system is very widespread in the corn belt, but it is found all over the plain of the Pampas. It tends to disappear when the colony is older and deeper-rooted, as the colonist gradually earns his independence; he buys his lease, his equipment, and his furniture, and controls the sale of his own crops. In the districts where he has not become owner, the leases are generally variations of two types: farming leases, where the colonist has capital enough for working, and renting leases, where the capital is provided by the owner or the middleman. [101] The Agricultural Centres Law, passed in 1887 by the province of Buenos Aires to encourage colonization, has not had good results. By the terms of this law, owners who professed themselves willing to devote their lands to colonization received an advance on the value of the lands in the form of mortgages, the interest and repayment of the mortgage being charged to the colonists. Many owners took advantage of the law, but, after a pretence of colonization, kept the ownership of their lands. Lastly, colonization can make no progress unless it finds markets on which it can put its produce. Up to the present western Europe has been the chief market for the wool, leather, meat, and cereals of the Pampean region; tropical America absorbs part of the output of the _saladeros_, flour, and dry fodder; and North America has recently begun to compete with Europe for wool, leather, and frozen meat. The facility with which the products of the Pampa have found their way into the world's markets, as is seen in the comparative stability of the returns, explains the continuous advance of colonization and the short duration of the crises which have disturbed it. The home market, however, has had an importance in connection with colonization that must not be overlooked. When wheat-growing spread at Santa Fé the crop was at first devoted to supplying Buenos Aires, and as late as 1883 Zeballos thought that the essential result of agricultural colonization was the fact that Chilean flour was beaten off the Argentine market. Even to-day the districts on the outskirts of the cereal area depend upon the home market. The Villa Mercedes mill supplies Mendoza. Córdoba and Santa Fé send their flour to Tucumán. The price of cereals still shows slight fluctuations in these parts as compared with prices in Buenos Aires. _Table of Exports of the Chief Products of the Pampean region_ (_in thousands of tons_): ---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- | 1901 | 1905 | 1910 | 1913 | 1914 ---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Wheat | 904 | 2,868 | 1,883 | 2,812 | 980 Maize | 1,112 | 2,222 | 2,660 | 4,806 | 3,542 Flax | 338 | 654 | 604 | 1,016 | 841 Flour | 71 | 144 | 115 | 124 | 67 Wool | 228 | 191 | 150 | 120 | 117 Salted hides | 28 | 40 | 61 | 65 | 63 Dried hides | 26 | 24 | 29 | 21 | 14 Chilled beef | 44 | 152 | 253 | 306 | 368 Chilled mutton | 63 | 78 | 75 | 45 | 58 ---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- The heading "cereals" appears in the statistics of Argentine exports in 1882. In 1900 the value of the agricultural produce exported is equal to that of the products of breeding. In 1904 it is higher. Pastoral colonization, again, has not been entirely independent of the home market. Martin de Moussy says, it is true, that the area which sent the products of breeding to Europe in 1865 extended as far as the Sierra de Córdoba. But this statement needs correction. The hides from the whole of this zone were, in point of fact, sent down to the ports on the Rio de la Plata, but live animals were sent to Chile from the whole of the north-west of the Pampean region. It was for the purpose of selling cattle to Chile that ranches were multiplied about 1860 in the neighbourhood of Villa Mercedes and lower down, on the Rio Quinto. Jegou's description shows that even in 1883 the breeders of the San Luis province devoted themselves exclusively to supplying the Chilean market.[102] Buyers from Chile and the Andean provinces still visit Villa Mercedes, and until a recent date they came to Villa Maria, in the province of Córdoba. The Santa Fé ranches found their customers, until the opening of the Córdoba line (1870) amongst the _troperos_, who bought draught oxen for their waggons. The loss of these customers and the crisis that followed are one of the reasons why agricultural colonization met with so little resistance on the part of the breeders, and was able to take root so easily at Santa Fé. In the San Cristobal department the breeders who settled there after 1890 found their first market in the _obrajes_ of the neighbouring forest. The opening of the railway to Tucumán afterwards enabled them to send their cattle to the provinces of the north-west. The Buenos Aires buyers were late in this remote canton of the Pampean plain. They did not arrive until 1911. [102] A. Jegou, "Informe sobre la provincia de San Luis," _Ann. Soc. Cientifica Argentina_, xvi. 1883, pp. 140-152, 192-200, and 223-230. The importance of the Pampean region itself as a market of consumption grew in proportion to the increase of its population. The extent to which it absorbs the products of breeding and agriculture varies a good deal. For some of them it is paramount. Horse-breeding, for instance, which is still one of the great industries of the Pampa, has never contributed to the export trade. It is the same with regard to potatoes, which are concentrated in two strictly limited districts, round Rosario and north of the Sierra de Tandil. Only a small part of the dry fodder is exported. As regards cereals, a comparison of the statistics of production with the statistics of export shows that the home consumption is about one-third of the production. It is almost nil for flax, and nearly fifty per cent for wheat. The average of production and export for the years 1912, 1913, and 1914, in thousands of tons, is: ------------+--------+--------+-------+----------------- | | | | Total | Wheat. | Maize. | Flax. |(including Oats). ------------+--------+--------+-------+----------------- Production | 4,241 | 6,398 | 931 | 12,662 Export | 2,140 | 4,227 | 790 | 8,038 ------------+--------+--------+-------+----------------- As the chief centres of consumption are the ports themselves, it follows that the commercial currents that have to supply them are confused with the currents which maintain the exports. The exchanges between the various regions of the Pampa are more interesting to the geographer. In their tendency to specialize, these regions have ceased to be self-contained, and they have to look to adjoining regions. The feeding of the mills necessitates the transport of wheat in different directions. The chief mills are at Buenos Aires, where they are suitably located to work both for the home market and for export; and the mills in the interior have some difficulty in competing with them. Some of these, however, are still active. They mix hard wheat, bought in the district of the Santa Fé colonies, with the soft wheat that is grown in the middle and south of Buenos Aires province. But this inter-regional transport of cereals is a small thing in comparison with the transport of cattle. The extension of the lucerne farms has developed the fattening industry in many districts, while others still confine themselves to breeding in the ordinary sense, and they feed the other centres. The most specialized fattening district is that of Villa Mercedes and the western part of the lucerne belt, while the eastern part of the province of Buenos Aires and Entre Rios are still areas of production. The differentiation of the pastoral zones can be gathered from a study of the statistics. According to the 1908 Census, milch cows represent 53 per cent. of the whole of the cattle in all the departments which form the heart of the breeding area east of Buenos Aires, and only 45 per cent. in the departments of the north-west of Buenos Aires and south of Córdoba and in the Pedernera department of San Luis, where fattening is common. According to the 1914 Census oxen are 24 per cent. of the herd in the same departments of eastern Buenos Aires; 24 per cent. also in Entre Rios; and the proportion rises to 31 per cent. in the lucerne area. Dolores department (eastern Buenos Aires) has 64 per cent. milch cows and 21 per cent. oxen. Pedernera department (San Luis, in the lucerne area) has 49 per cent. cows and 38 per cent. oxen. General Roca department (Córdoba) has 48 per cent. cows and 34 per cent. oxen. Arenales (Buenos Aires) has 39 per cent. cows and 46 per cent. oxen.[103] [103] For Argentina as a whole the percentage is: milch cows, 55 per cent.; oxen, 26 per cent. Oxen intended for the refrigerators are bought either on the ranches or at Buenos Aires, where beasts in good condition are consigned to buyers, but oxen for fattening are bought at fairs which are held periodically in the towns of the interior. Another transaction at these fairs is the trade in pedigree breeders. The best known of them is held at Villa Mercedes (province of San Luis), where 8,000 oxen are sold every month. At the Mercedes fairs one may see Durham steers from the east of Buenos Aires which are to be fattened and sent back to the refrigerators or the slaughter-houses of Buenos Aires. There are also creole cattle from the north of the San Luis province and Rioja which will later be eaten in Mendoza or in Chile. There is, in fact, on the western frontier of the Pampa no line of demarcation corresponding to that set up in the north by the limit of the area contaminated by the _garrapate_, separating the district of creole breeding from that of selective breeding. There is free communication here between the two zones, and the lucerne fields for fattening at Villa Mercedes are used in common by the breeders of the Pampa and of the bush.[104] [104] A large number of the cattle which are to be fattened are bought at the market in Buenos Aires; but these do not, as a rule, come from the Pampean region. _Cultivated Areas in the Argentine Republic_ (_in square kilometres, almost exclusively in the Pampean region_). -----+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------- | Wheat. | Maize. | Oats. | Flax. | Lucerne. -----+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------- 1896 | 25,000 | 14,000 | -- | 5,600 | 8,000 1900 | 33,000 | 12,000 | -- | 6,000 | 15,000 1902 | 36,000 | 18,000 | -- | 15,000 | 17,000 1905 | 56,000 | 22,000 | 700 | 10,000 | 29,000 1910 | 62,000 | 32,000 | 8,000 | 15,000 | 54,000 1912 | 69,000 | 38,000 | 12,000 | 17,000 | 59,000 1913 | 65,000 | 41,000 | 11,600 | 17,000 | 66,000 1914 | 62,000 | 42,000 | 11,400 | 17,000 | -- -----+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------- _Exports for 1913, 1914, and 1915 at each port._ --------------+------+-------+-----+-----+-------+-------- |Wheat.| Maize.|Flax.|Oats.|Totals.|Average. --------------+------+-------+-----+-----+-------+-------- {| 782 | 1,757 | 275 | 13 | 2,829 |} Rosario {| 242 | 1,952 | 248 | 1 | 2,445 |} 2,716 {| 717 | 1,790 | 366 | -- | 2,875 |} | | | | | | {| 441 | 1,389 | 246 | 240 | 2,318 |} Buenos Aires {| 297 | 906 | 55 | 78 | 1,537 |} 2,051 {| 511 | 1,349 | 342 | 96 | 2,299 |} | | | | | | {| 927 | 2 | -- | 462 | 1,393 |} Bahía Blanca {| 241 | -- | -- | 222 | 463 |} 1,075 {| 921 | -- | -- | 442 | 1,364 |} | | | | | | {| 5 | 910 | 74 | -- | 989 |} S. Nicolas {| 1 | 430 | 60 | -- | 492 |} 651 {| 5 | 420 | 48 | -- | 474 |} | | | | | | {| 333 | 358 | 14 | 170 | 876 |} La Plata {| 160 | 51 | 16 | 49 | 278 |} 459 {| 152 | 45 | 6 | 16 | 222 |} | | | | | | {| 265 | 51 | 158 | -- | 476 |} Santa Fé {| 7 | 23 | 128 | -- | 159 |} 278 {| 114 | 7 | 77 | -- | 199 |} --------------+------+-------+-----+-----+-------+-------- CHAPTER VII ROADS AND RAILWAYS Roads on the plain--The salt road--The "trade route"--Transport by ox-waggons--_Arrieros_ and _Troperos_--Railways and colonization--The trade in cereals--Home traffic and the reorganization of the system. The chapter devoted to primitive breeding and the transport of cattle contains a sketch of the network of routes over the Andes. One cannot expect to find in the scheme of routes over the Argentine plains the stern and obvious influence of natural conditions. The surface of these plains is, as a whole, broadly open to traffic. Still, the map of the roads bears much evidence of geographical exigencies. The hills which rise like islands out of the alluvial plain are not all incapable of being crossed, and the roads do not always skirt them. The road from Buenos Aires to Peru runs north of 30° 40' S. lat. on the very axis of the granite peneplain which forms the northern part of the Sierra de Córdoba. The Dean Funes ridge, which begins with an altitude of 2,500 feet between the Sierra Chica and these tablelands, has always been used for communication between Córdoba and the north-western provinces. There the railway has taken the place of the primitive track. Another important track crosses the Sierra de Córdoba in the north of the Pampa de Achala, and used to join Córdoba with Villa Dolores and the north of the San Luis province. The southern part of the Sierra de Córdoba and the Sierra de San Luis are, on the other hand, an insurmountable obstacle, which diverts southward the high road to Chile _via_ Achiras, San José, del Morro, and San Luis. The sierras of the Buenos Aires province are not so high and extensive. They are, moreover, broken into isolated hills with the plain passing between them. As early as 1822 Colonel Garcia pointed out the importance, in connection with the migrations of the Indian tribes, of the passage between the Sierra Amarilla and the Sierra de Curaco, that is to say, the Olavarria ridge. It is there that the first railway between Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca crosses the line of sierras. It then skirts the Sierra de la Ventana, to the north, by the Pigüe ridge, between the mass of Curumalan and the Puan hills. The dunes of the western Pampa also are an impediment to traffic, not so much because of their height as because of the looseness of the ground. The strip between General Acha and Toay was very trying for the stage-coaches. Travellers had to cross the dunes on foot during the winter season, when the horses were in a bad condition.[105] Natural supplies of water increase in number as one gets away from the Andean zone toward the east. Still, the chief work, often the only work, to be done in making a road is the arrangement of permanent supplies of water. Martin de Moussy mentions the digging of wells on the new road from Córdoba to Rosario, which was opened about 1860. The _aiguade_ was generally a _represa_, a reservoir, where the water accumulated behind a barrier of earth raised across the course of an intermittent stream. The upkeep of the _represa_ is the chief duty of the post-master. The edge of the sierras and the opening point of the ravines which come down them is a good place for making _represas_, and the roads frequently keep to these (variant of the road from Córdoba to Tucumán _via_ Totoral, Dormida, Rio Seco and Sumampa, on the eastern edge of the Sierra de Córdoba, etc.) Long stages with no water supplies, the _travesías_, are not found on the made roads, as a rule, except west of the meridian, of Córdoba. However, the direct road from Santa Fé to Santiago del Estero by the lagoon of Los Porongos, which was used in the eighteenth century, seems to have been abandoned afterwards, as much on account of the difficulty of supplying water as because it was exposed to attack from the Indians. [105] J. B. Ambrosetti, "Viàje a la Pampa central," _Bol. Instit. Geog. Argent._, xiv. 1893, pp. 292-368. [Illustration: AN OX WAGON. Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.] [Illustration: THE MAIL COACH. _The horses saddled with the_ cincha. Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados. PLATE XVIII. To face p. 210.] The only difficulty which the caravans encountered on the roads over the plain was the crossing of the rivers. They were forded. Fords with a muddy bottom on the lower course of the rivers, such as that on the Saladillo near the confluence of the Rio Tercero, were more difficult for wagons than the fords with sandy bottoms in the upper course, near the fringe of the mountains, such as those of the Rio Tercero on the Córdoba road, or of the Rio Cuarto on the road to Chile. After rain, certain parts of the plain are flooded and impassable. That is the case in the district to the south of the lower Salado, at the very spot where Père Cardiel notices the lack of water in the dry season (1747). The direct road from Buenos Aires to the sierras was at that point exposed, alternately, to drought and flood. The line of the Southern railway, which crosses this low district, is still cut periodically on both sides of Las Flores by floods. The lack of an organized network of streams, the irregularity of the rains, the difficulty of ascertaining the inclination, and the flow of the waters over a plain which seems to the eye to be perfectly level, have led to more than one miscalculation on the part of the railways, which were constructed hurriedly, and before the general survey of the Pampa was finished. Some lines, on the Pampa or on the Chaco, have had to be partially reconstructed, and raised higher, after a series of rainy years.[106] [106] Certain duplications in the actual scheme of the railways are due to this need to correct a line that had been planned hastily and was useless. The line from Justo Daract to La Paz (1912), on the Pacific railway, avoids the steep inclinations of the first line, which followed the course of the wagon-road _via_ San Luis. The interpretation of the relief is particularly difficult in a country which has not been shaped by normal erosion. Blunders detected by later topographical inquiries were similarly committed in constructing the Patagonian railways. The colonization of that part of the plain which actually constitutes the province of Buenos Aires was late. It belongs to the era of the railways. There is only one historic road crossing this area, which remained until the last third of the nineteenth century in the hands of the Indian tribes. This is the salt road. We do not know exactly when it began to be used. In the eighteenth century, in spite of the competition of salt from Cadiz and Patagonia, imported by sea, the Pampa salt was the main part of the supply of Buenos Aires. The salt road was not abandoned until after 1810. We still have the diary of several journeys from Buenos Aires to the salt-pits. They were military expeditions. Hundreds of wagons, with a strong escort, collected at Lujan and Chivilcoy, and they reached Atreuco, west of the Guamini and Carbuë lakes, after a fifteen to twenty-five days' march. The itinerary was fixed in detail. In 1796 D'Azara noticed the wells sunk by the salters, north of the Palentelen lagoon (Bragado), when they found the lagoon dry. From Palentelen south-westward the salt road followed the track used by the Indians of the south-west in their expeditions against the ranches of the Buenos Aires frontier. Near Lake Epecuen, north of Carbuë, it was joined by another track which came from Olavarria, the stages of which were marked by the streams that came from the Sierra de Curumalan. The Carbuë district, the cross-roads of the tracks, was one of the places where the tribes collected. "This place," says the diary of the 1778 expedition, "is the first point where the hostile Indians meet and rest when they leave the Sierra and on returning from their invasions. They not only rest there, but have their winter pasture there" (in the dry season).[107] Zeballos has described the Indian track, the _rustrillada_, between Epecuen, Atreuco and Traru Lauquen, where the _travesia_ on the road to Chile began.[108] It was not less than 1,000 feet in width. At the foot of the dunes there were deep parallel grooves made by the feet of the raided cattle, which were taken away by the "Chileños." [107] Coll. de Angelis, v. [108] Est. Zeballos, _Descripción amena de la Republica Argentina_, vol. i, "Viàje al païs de los Araucanos" (Buenos Aires, 1881). The two main roads of the colonial period are the roads to Chile and Peru. On leaving Buenos Aires there was one road for a distance of about 320 miles. The "trade road" passed through Lujan, Areco and Sauce, and reached the Carcaraña, or Rio Tercero, at Esquina. It therefore kept at some distance from the Paraná (32 to 16 miles), on the tableland, crossing the valleys which were embedded in it and represented so many bad parts. It then ascended the Tercero on the right bank as far as the Paso Fereira, at the spot where Villa Maria is to-day. At Esquina de Medrano (Villa Maria) the road to Chile branched off to the south-east, reached San Luis by following the Rio Cuarto, going through Achiras and San José del Morro, and, after a _travesia_ seventy-eight miles in length, came to the Rio Tunuyan at La Paz, and ascended the river to Mendoza.[109] [109] Martin de Moussy says that a more direct route, avoiding the detour to the north by the Rio Tercero, was followed in the eighteenth century between Buenos Aires and San Luis, by way of Salto and the Rio Quinto as far as the latitude of fort Constitución (Villa Mercedes). Woodbine Parish's map (1839) and Napp's map (1876) both show a road by way of Salto and Melincue to the Rio Cuarto, where it joins the ordinary road. However that may be, these roads were never used regularly, from fear of the Indians or--which comes to the same thing--because the area they cross, in the south of the actual territory of the provinces of Santa Fé and Córdoba, was not yet colonized. From Esquina de Medrano the Peru road made for Córdoba in the north-west. From the tablelands which continue the Sierra de Córdoba northward it descended toward the Rio Dulce, which it reached west of Atamisqui, and which it followed as far as Santiago del Estero, where it crossed to the north bank. It crossed the Sali in the latitude of Tucumán, and, passing through Tracas and Metan, followed the depression which separates the Andes from the sub-Andean chains. From Salta it went north to Jujuy, and passed through the Quebrada de Humahuaca to reach the Puna. The influence of rivers is not much seen in the scheme of the primitive roads. There were in the sixteenth century many routes from Peru to the Paraguay, across the Chaco, but not a permanent road in the strict sense. In the eighteenth century there was a direct road from Santa Fé to Tucumán, by the north of the Los Porongos lagoon and the course of the Rio Dulce. There was another from Santa Fé to Córdoba. These roads were not exclusively used for conveying cattle. The river route which they joined at Santa Fé provided them with a certain amount of traffic coming from the higher provinces. Paraguayan _maté_ reached the Andean regions by this road, and in return the boatmen at Santa Fé loaded up with the wines and dried fruit of the Andean provinces to take to Asunciôn. The question of joining the road on to a river was not of very great importance until the time when the Paraná began to be used for Argentine imports and exports, and to maintain the communication of the interior provinces with Europe. This question of connection with a river controls the history of the construction of the railway system. But the great importance of it can be seen from the first half of the nineteenth century. D'Orbigny had a presentiment of it. Speaking of the future of Santa Fé, he says: "When peace is restored, it is certain that the wares of Córdoba may, instead of going by land from that town to Buenos Aires, be sent to Santa Fé, where shipping them to the Argentine capital will reduce to one-third the journey by land, which is always more costly than going by water." Martin de Moussy, foreseeing the making of a road across the Chaco from Tucumán to the Paraná, in the latitude of Corrientes, calculates that Corrientes may later serve as port for part of the west and north of Argentina. At the date of the publication of his book, however, it was neither Santa Fé nor Corrientes, but the new town Rosario, that began to play the part of interior port, and led to the construction of a new system of roads. Traffic between Rosario and Córdoba at first followed the old road from Buenos Aires to Peru, which one struck after leaving Rosario and making a detour to the south-west, on the right bank of the Carcaraña (at Rio Tercero). But this itinerary was presently replaced by a direct road to the west-northwest, following the line which the railways would adopt.[110] [110] Between 1852 and 1862, during the period when relations were suspended between the Argentine Confederation and Buenos Aires, there was a beginning of a general reorganization of the roads in harmony with the new political conditions. The road from Santa Fé and Paraná to Concepción (in Uruguay) across the Entre Rios tablelands, and from there to Montevideo, had owed its initial importance to the closing of the lower Paraná under Rosas, and Woodbine Parish records that there was already a good deal of smuggling there. This road became an essential artery when Paraná made itself the federal capital under Urquiza. He intended to connect Paraná with the western provinces, and he created a mail service from Santa Fé to Córdoba. Ephemeral as the good fortune of Paraná was, its influence on the organization of the roads of Argentina was too material to be ignored by the geographer. In the greater part of Argentina transport was by means of wagons before railways were constructed. The limit between the area of wagon-transport and the area in which goods were conveyed on the backs of animals is quite stable. It is still of some significance, in spite of the development of the railways; wagons and mules are used at each station to collect and distribute goods. The area of farming and of selective breeding on the Pampa, the sheep-area in Patagonia, and the timber belt on the Chaco, still make use of wagons; and goods are carried on the backs of mules in the Andean area. The Peru road was, broadly speaking, fit for wagons as far as Salta, but it is rough between Tucumán and Salta, and wagons that used it generally stopped at Salta. In this way wagons avoided the ford of the Sali, which was easier for mules. On the plain itself the water-sources were often so distant from each other, and the stages so long, that mules had to be used instead of wagons. Wagons could easily get to Mendoza by the road along which the Tunuyan runs at its driest section, but all the convoys from Córdoba to San Juan, or Rioja to Catamarca, were composed of mules. Hence Córdoba was, like Tucumán, a station for changing on the road from Buenos Aires to the north-west. Lastly, while the scrub presented no insuperable obstacle to wagons, they could not enter the humid tropical forest, where the soil never dries. On the fringe of the Misiones forest, the wagons that came from San Tome unloaded at San Javier, and mules took the goods on to the _yerbales_. The two areas of different kinds of transport were not sharply distinct. The muleteers (_arrieros_) sometimes avoided the domain of the wagoners, and competed with them as far as the banks of the Paraná. In 1860 (Hutchinson) the muleteers carried about a fifth, in weight, of the goods from the interior to Rosario, and they got more than a third of the transport from Rosario to the interior. They had, however, to offer to carry goods at two-thirds the price charged by the wagoners. It appears that this invasion by the muleteers is connected with a transport-crisis in the Andean area, which left a number of the San Juan muleteers without work. It did not last. By 1862 mule-back transport between Rosario and the interior was almost over. The wagons of the Argentine plain have often been described by travellers. They were heavy vehicles, carrying 150, sometimes 180, _arrobes_ (1,725 to 2,070 kgs.), covered with a leather hood stretched on hoops. A long spur decorated with ostrich feathers was balanced on a ring fixed in the roof, and was used to guide the front pair of oxen. An earthenware pot containing water enough for each stage hung between the rear uprights. As a rule, three pair of oxen were yoked to it, one pair being in the shafts. At Corrientes it was necessary to cross the marshes and _esteros_, and a special type of wagon had been evolved. It had a sort of horizontal division forming an upper story, and the driver sat in this. Everywhere, on the Pampa as well as at Corrientes, the wheels were enormous; sometimes, as Darwin says, ten feet in diameter. They were, therefore, able to get through the bad parts. Mud was, as a matter of fact, the worst enemy of the convoys. The soil of the Pampa is clayey and soft in the districts near the river. As the road was not limited in width, the wagons turned to the right or the left when the ruts became too deep, and the track in time covered a broad belt of ground. This, however, could not be done in the vicinity of towns, where the traffic was concentrated. Buenos Aires came to be surrounded by formidable quagmires that dried up only in the summer. The paving of the streets and environs was becoming a problem of national importance when the construction of the railway began. Wagons did not travel singly. The _tropero_, or contractor for transport, organized caravans. In peaceful districts, where no military escort was required, the convoys could be split up; they consisted, as a rule, of from fifteen to fifty wagons. Besides the six oxen yoked to the wagon, there had to be others for relief as well as horses for the staff. Usually they allowed ten oxen to each wagon; in exceptional cases twenty.[111] The convoy to the salt-lakes in 1778 had no less than 12,000 oxen to 600 wagons. There was a driver to each wagon, but there had also to be drivers for the starting animals, and carpenters to make repairs. The leader of the caravan, the _capataz_, was generally a master-carpenter. He looked after the interests of the _tropero_. There were about three men to each wagon. The _carreros_ were an original type, nomadic, and very different in costume and character from the _gauchos_ (breeders) of the plain. At the close of the eighteenth century Buenos Aires had more than a thousand wagons employed in the traffic to Mendoza and Tucumán (Borrero). [111] According to the details given us by De Angelis (1837, Introduction to the _Diario del viaje al Rio Bermejo de Fray Francisco Moritto_, Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi) a convoy of fourteen wagons from Salta to Tucumán required three relays of oxen. The first, comprising a hundred animals, went from Salta to Tucumán; the second, of 130 animals, went from Tucumán to the Buenos Aires frontier; the third (84 animals), went on to the capital. The first and last relays were hired animals, the second alone being the property of the _tropero_. The stages were rarely more than four or five leagues of five kilometres each (thirteen to sixteen miles). At this rate it took a convoy forty to fifty days to go from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, thirty days from Rosario to Tucumán, three months (with the necessary rests) from Buenos Aires to Salta.[112] When water ran short, the journey might be greatly prolonged, as the animals could do less work, or not work at all if the _aiguades_ had dried up. The season was a matter for consideration. In the Buenos Aires district the winter made the ground sodden and traffic difficult. Farther north, winter is the dry season, so that pasture was scarce, and it was difficult to feed the _tropas_. The summer had difficulties of its own. In January and February the floods of the Rio Dulce often made it impossible to cross the ford at Santiago. The carriers preferred to start from the northern provinces about the end of the summer, in April or May. The best season for leaving Buenos Aires was the spring, from August to November. In this way each _tropa_ could make the double journey once a year. [112] Thirty days from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, and seventy days from Buenos Aires to Jujuy, says Barrero (F. Barrero, _Descripción de las Provincias del Rio de la Plata_, end of the eighteenth century, published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Buenos Aires, 1911). There had been attempts to speed up the transport before the railways were made. The _galera_ (diligence), with its swarm of horses harnessed with the _cincha_ (saddle to which the lasso was attached), did not carry goods. It did not replace the convoy of wagons, but the _tropilla_ of spare horses which travellers on the plain drove before them. The _galera_ went from Rosario to Córdoba in three days and to Mendoza in ten days, and from Córdoba to Salta in fourteen days. About 1860 a quicker goods service was organized, light wagons drawn by mules replacing the ox-wagons. They made the journey from Rosario to Córdoba in six days. Similarly, on the Pampa, the ox-wagons had been replaced before 1889 by quicker wagons, drawn by horses, to convey wool from the ranches to the railway stations. The cost of transport by wagon was, naturally, high. It also varied a good deal, but we cannot possibly go into these variations here. It will be enough to give, by way of illustration, the details which Hutchinson gives for the year 1862. The freightage was fixed either for a complete load of 150 _arrobes_ (1,725 kgs.) or so much per _arrobe_ (11-1/2 kgs.). Conveying a load from Rosario to Córdoba cost forty to fifty piastres (eight to ten pounds). The cost of carrying an _arrobe_ from Rosario to Mendoza was five to six _reales_ (about two shillings to two-and-six); from Rosario to Tucuman nine _reales_ (three shillings and fourpence); from Rosario to Salta eighteen _reales_ (seven shillings and sixpence). The tropas were, therefore, quickly ousted by the railways. In a few places they made a very unequal fight against the railways. The _Memoria del departemento de Ingenieros de la Nacion_ of 1876, quoted by Rebuelto, mentions the competition of the _tropas_ with the Andino railway, opened from Villa Maria to the Rio Cuarto in 1873 and to Villa Mercedes in 1875. The merchants of San Juan and Mendoza continued to use them. The railway had to sign a contract with the _troperos_ by which wagons were to bring goods as far as Villa Mercedes, where they could be entrained. The total freight was fifty Bolivian _centavos_ (about two shillings) per _arrobe_ from Mendoza to Rosario, and sixty _centavos_ from San Juan. Of this the share of the railway was fifteen _centavos_. * * * * * The first Argentine railway was opened in 1859, between Buenos Aires and Maron, a distance of about thirteen miles. In 1870 the Argentine railways formed two independent systems. The first radiated fan-wise from Buenos Aires (Western line, open as far as Chivilcoy in 1870, and Southern line, open as far as Chascomus in 1865). Farther north a line (the Central Argentine) started from Rosario, and reached Bellville in 1866 and Córdoba in 1870. [Illustration: THRESHING ON THE PAMPA. Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.] [Illustration: SACKS OF WHEAT READY FOR LOADING ON THE RAILWAY. _There are elevators only in a few of the ports._ Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados. PLATE XIX. To face p. 220.] The political isolation of Buenos Aires between 1852 and 1862, during the time when the first concessions were issued, made upon the railway system an impression that would not be effaced until twenty-five years afterwards. It was not until 1886 that Rosario was connected by rail with Buenos Aires. The line to Mendoza and Chile, begun in 1870 (F. C. Andino), joins the line from Rosario to Córdoba. It reached Mendoza at the foot of the Andes before going on to Buenos Aires; and it was in 1888 that the Pacific railway was completed between Buenos Aires and Villa Mercedes, and established direct communications between the capital and the province of Cuyo. The line from Rosario to Córdoba is, therefore, the chief branch round which the Argentine system developed. It is remarkable that at the time of the original concession in 1855 a westward extension was contemplated, and that there was some idea of making it a stage in a trans-Andean. The first concessionaire, Wheelwright, had made the oldest railway in South America, from Caldera to Copiapo, in Chile in 1851. The 1855 concession authorized Wheelwright to extend the Córdoba line westward and link it with the Copiapo line. When he opened the Córdoba station in 1870, Wheelwright, not suffering himself to be discouraged at the slowness with which the line had crossed the Pampa, still said that the goal was the Pacific, by way of Rioja, Copacabana and the San Francisco pass. This ambitious programme deserves to be recalled, if only as a reminiscence of the former orientation of the trade of Rioja and Tinogasta toward the Pacific, and as a proof of the importance, in the imagination of the men of that generation, of the old trans-Andean roads from north-western Argentina. Even before the Rosario line had reached Córdoba, it had been continued northward as far as Tucumán. The work was pushed vigorously, and Tucumán was reached in 1875. The Córdoba-Tucumán line was the first to be constructed entirely in the region of the scrub, and _quebracho_ sleepers were then used for the first time. The earliest lines of the Buenos Aires province and the Argentine had, on the model of the Indian railways, a gauge of 5 feet 8 inches, but the Central Córdoba, from Córdoba to Tucumán, had a narrow gauge of forty inches. Hence goods coming from Tucumán had to be transferred at Córdoba. At the same time (1875) the line from Concordia to Monte Caseros was opened, and this made it possible to avoid the rapids of the Uruguay, which was to be a source of supply to the whole Mesopotamian system. Its gauge was fifty-seven inches. Differences of gauge are, and will continue to be, one of the characteristics of the Argentine system. During the period from 1875 to 1890 were constructed the main lines which took the place of the old roads from province to province. The Andean railway reached San Luis in 1882 and Mendoza and San Juan in 1885. Branches of the Central Córdoba reached Santiago del Estero in 1884 and Catamarca in 1889. In 1891 the Central Argentine opened a new direct broad-gauge line from Rosario to Tucumán; and almost at the same time the narrow-gauge line of the Central Norte, from Santa Fé to Tucumán, was finished further north. The Tucumán line was continued northward to the foot of the Andes as far as Salta. In the province of Buenos Aires the Bahía Blanca line was opened in 1884. Since 1900 the railways have pushed on to the frontiers and are linked in various directions with those of the adjoining countries. The Cumbre tunnel on the Mendoza trans-Andean was completed in 1910, and traffic with Chile by rail is now permanent. The Salta line was continued in 1908 to the Bolivian tableland. In Mesopotamia, in fine, the north-eastern line reached Posadas in 1911 and effected a junction with the Paraguay line. These details, however, give a very imperfect idea of the history of the development of the Argentine railway system. It has not merely been superimposed upon the old roads, but has, on the other hand, helped to open up and develop new lands, which could not have been colonized without it. As early as 1883 Valiento Noailles, examining the general plan of the system, noticed the profound difference between the railways of Argentine and those of Europe. "In Europe," he said, "the railways are constructed to serve existing centres of production and consumption.... Our Argentine railways are to facilitate colonization." Corresponding to each occupation of a new area of the Pampean plain by the farmer or the breeder is the construction in that area of a new network of lines which are fed by its traffic and in turn help it to increase its production. The more productive the region is, the closer are the meshes of this network. They are wider in the pastoral than in the agricultural areas. The period of the development of the southern lines in the province of Buenos Aires corresponds with the expansion of breeding when the Pampa had been pacified. The railway reached Azul in 1876. The Ayacucho branch was opened in 1880, and continued as far as Tres Arroyos in 1887. The completion of the Bahía Blanca line, via Azul and Olavarria, in 1884, is itself merely one of the dates in this colonizing period. The great period of agricultural colonization at Santa Fé and the construction of the system of lines that serve it begin a little later, and last from 1880 to 1890 (extension of the Central Argentine system, the railways of the province of Santa Fé, and the narrow-gauge railway from Rosario to Córdoba). The part that the railway has played in colonization is plainly seen in the present completion of the system which has developed freely on the even surface of the Pampean plain. The lines radiate round the port of Buenos Aires and, in a less degree, round the ports of Rosario and Bahía Blanca. What seems at first sight to be the symmetry of the railway map will be found on closer examination to be less perfect; while the Atlantic coast between La Plata and Bahía Blanca has no ports, the Paraná has quite a number of suitable places for shipping cereals. La Plata, San Nicolas and Villa Constitución are served by lines which cut across the lines going to Rosario and Buenos Aires. This complexity of the system west of the Paraná continues to the north of Rosario, where the lines that go to Santa Fé cut across all the lines going to Rosario. The lines which run along the southern frontier of the province of Buenos Aires (at Juancho, Necochea, etc.) have, unlike the lines serving the secondary parts of the Paraná, all their traffic directed toward the interior, and they serve only to bring to Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanco the crops of the districts they cross. They are dependencies of the main lines of the southern system, and not rival lines. When the most fertile part of the Pampean plain, on which there is a regular rainfall to guarantee the crops, had been completely colonized and covered with railways, the national Government took up the policy of colonization by rail in the national territories. The minister Ramos Mejia has attached his name to this work. It has been suspended since the beginning of the war, but it filled the last period of construction of the Argentine railways. Ramos Mejia's railways include the lines penetrating the Chaco opened toward the north-west from Resistencia and Formosa, and the lines leading to the interior of Patagonia from the ports of San Antonio, Puerto Deseado, and Rivadavia. We must add the line from Neuquen to the Andes, made by the Southern Company, but with a Government subvention.[113] These lines, serving districts with little population and inadequate resources, will not for a long time make any profit.[114] [113] The line from Bahía Blanca to the Rio Negro, of which the Neuquen line is a continuation, was constructed in 1896. [114] The continuation of many of these lines was contemplated for the future, so as to secure for them at a later date a long-distance traffic. The Resistencia and Formosa lines, which reach the Andes, may compete for traffic with the Rosario and Tucumán lines. In Patagonia, the continuation across the Andes of the line from San Antonio to Lake Nahuel Huapi has been considered. A pass has been found at a height of 4,000 feet. When this plan is carried out, the Trans-Andean from Nahuel Huapi would be in a position to compete successfully with the Trans-Andean from Uspallata, which is condemned by its elevation to remain a passenger line. These plans, still far from realization, do not deprive the Ramos Mejia lines of their character as colonization lines, entirely devoted at present to conveying the timber of the Chaco and the wool of Patagonia. Hence railway construction must be regarded in modern Argentina as one of the aspects of the problem of developing the soil. The railway companies have been compelled to intervene directly in the work of colonization. In 1863 the Central Argentine received from the Government a strip of land three miles wide on each side of the line it was making, between Rosario and Córdoba, on condition that it colonized the land. The company had its own immigration agents and its colonizing staff, and it opened its first colonies west of Rosario between 1870 and 1872. This kind of concession is exceptional in Argentina. On the other hand, the irrigation law of 1909 obliges the railway companies to undertake, on behalf of the Government, the work that is necessary to develop irrigation in the areas they serve, such work being immediately reflected in an increase of population and traffic. In compliance with this law the Southern railway is constructing a canal which will water the whole valley of the Rio Negro below the confluence of the Neuquen. The Central Argentine and the Pacific also have undertaken to construct dams on the Rio Tercero and Rio Quinto, in the provinces of Córdoba and San Luis. As it is the essential function of a railway to convey the produce of the area it serves to the exporting port, the problem of the relations between the administration of railways and the administration of ports is of primary importance. The chief ports served by different companies, such as Rosario and Buenos Aires, may maintain their independence, but a secondary port will be at the mercy of the single line which conveys goods to it. In such circumstances the ports have become, in many cases, mere dependencies of the railways. The port of Colastiné belongs to the railways of the Santa Fé province. The port of Bahía Blanca consists of a number of distinct ports constructed by the different railway companies, and run by them. Each of them ships the goods which it brings. The port Ingeniero White, which belongs to the Southern Company, was constructed in 1885, immediately after the opening of the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca. Puerto Galvan belongs to the Pacific Company. Puerto Belgrano is the port of the line from Rosario to Bahía Blanca. At Buenos Aires the Southern Railway Company has acquired control of the Buenos Aires Southern Dock Company. At La Plata it manages the docks. The spread of agricultural colonization was at first hampered by the cost of freightage which cereals could bear over an area with a radius of about 200 miles from the ports. That is the figure given by Girola in the _Investigación Agricola_ of 1904. The period 1895-1905 saw the birth of a series of plans for making canals in the Pampean region for the purpose of transporting grain in the area which the railway did not seem able to serve economically. Not one of them was carried out, but the railways quickly enlarged their sphere of influence in the interior. There is, however, a reminiscence of this pause in colonization in what Argentinians call "the parabolic tariffs." The Argentine railways practically, apart from cases of competition with rival lines, use proportional tariffs up to a distance of 218 miles, and degressive tariffs beyond that limit. In this way the railways have helped in the conquest of the west. Degressive tariffs have certainly played a part in the spread of colonization during the years antecedent to 1912. They have helped to mask the inferiority of the new land to the better land in the east.[115] [115] J. Lopez Mañan, _El actual problema agrario_ (Buenos Aires, 1912, Ministerio de agricultura, Dirección General de agricultura y defensa agricola). [Illustration: MAP VI.--THE RAILWAYS. _It is impossible to give the entire system. Only the main lines are given. Of the narrow-gauge lines of the Pampean region only those which connect the system of northern Argentina with Buenos Aires are given. The map shows the double direction of the Pacific system from Villa Mercedes, to Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca. It gives only an imperfect idea of the way in which the lines ending at the ports of the Paraná and the Rio de la Plata (Santa Fé, Rosario, San Nicolas, Buenos Aires and La Plata) overlap and cross each other._ To face p. 226.] The rise in the value of land and the advance of colonization led, at each of those crises of development which characterize the recent history of Argentina, to a multiplication of railway concessions granted by the national Government and the various provincial authorities. These have to be bought up by the leading companies, as each of them wanted to keep exclusive control of the region in which it had established itself. This concentration could not be accomplished in a perfectly methodical way, and the various systems now overlap, which is not to the interest of the companies. Thus Villa Maria, on the Central Argentine line from Rosario to Córdoba, is also served by a line belonging to the Santa Fé railways and by a line of the Pacific Company which puts it in communication with Buenos Aires. On the other hand, the Central Argentine penetrates to the very heart of the area of the Pacific at Junin. However, competition between the various companies has had the effect of dividing the Pampean plain into three great spheres of influence. The first, in the north, is that of the Central Argentine and the Buenos Aires y Rosario line. In 1908 the Argentine Government officially sanctioned the fusion of the two companies, though it had really been accomplished a few years before. The second sphere, in the south, is that of the Pacific, the attraction of which was the line from Buenos Aires to Villa Mercedes, and which in 1907 bought the line from Villa Mercedes to Mendoza and the Trans-Andean, a natural continuation of its system. Moreover, in 1904 the Pacific absorbed the line from Bahía Blanca to the north-west, which has been linked up once more with its original system at Villa Mercedes. It thus has two outlets, to Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca, and completely encloses the third sphere with its branches. The third sphere, which comprises the centre and south of the Pampean plain, is the domain of the Southern and Western Companies. In 1912 these two companies asked the Argentine Government to authorize them to amalgamate. Although they withdrew their proposal in 1914, in face of the conditions imposed upon them, they are still closely associated. Part of the traffic of the western lines of the Western passes over Southern lines at Carbuë, and is shipped at the port Ingeniero White. At Buenos Aires also, and at La Plata, part of the Western Company's traffic in cereals and cattle uses the premises of the Southern Company. The Western and the Southern, jointly, bought in 1908, before it was finished, the narrow-gauge Midland of Buenos Aires line at Carbuë, which was to cross their sphere of influence. It was opened in 1911. The importance of the transport of cereals in the life of the leading Argentine systems will be seen from the following figures. In percentages of the total of goods carried, both from the interior to the ports and _vice versa_, the tonnage of exported cereals was:-- ---------------+--------+--------+--------+---------- | 1913 | 1914 | 1916 | Average. ---------------+--------+--------|--------|---------- Southern | 31.0 | 34.3 | 32.5 | 32.6 Western | 58.3 | 61.7 | 55.1 | 58.4 Pacific | 29.0 | 41.8 | 33.8 | 35.0 Central | 36.5 | 46.6 | 34.8 | 39.5 ---------------+--------+--------+--------+---------- The figures are rather less for the Southern, which covers an area that has remained chiefly pastoral and, by means of its Rio Negro line, serves for part of the transport of cattle from Patagonia (cattle-transport on the Southern, average for the years 1913, 1914 and 1916: 17.2 per cent. of the total tonnage, 19 per cent. of total receipts; 1.4 per cent. of tonnage and 6.5 per cent. of receipts). They are higher for the Western, the only system that lies entirely in the Pampean region and has no continuations beyond it, as the Pacific has to Mendoza and the Central to Tucumán. The share of each company in the total traffic varies from year to year according to the harvest. Of the four to ten million tons of cereals carried every year, the greater part--about a third--falls to the Central Argentine, and one-sixth to the Southern. The Central Argentine carries the greater part of the maize and flax, the maize alone representing 26 per cent. of the total tonnage carried by the line, and the flax 5.6 per cent. Of the other lines the Western alone carries any appreciable quantity of maize, which comes from the Junin district (19 per cent. of its tonnage, but only 12 per cent. of its receipts, because of the slight distances the stuff is carried). The transport of wheat is about equally divided amongst the four leading lines, but the proportion of it to total traffic is highest in the case of the Western (34.4 per cent. of total traffic). The Southern is the chief carrier of oats (9.8 per cent. of the total tonnage). The tonnage carried annually is particularly irregular in the case of the Central, on account of the irregularity of the maize crops, and the Pacific, because its lines north-west of Buenos Aires serve a wheat-area that is exposed to drought (wheat carried by the Pacific in 1913, 15.9 per cent. of the total tonnage; in 1914, 27.2 per cent.). The clearing of the cereals gives the Argentine railways a delicate problem in the organization of traffic. The crops of flax, wheat and oats must be cleared in the four to six months following the harvest (December-January). The maize harvest, which is later, is also much slower; it lasts the whole of the autumn. Hence the removal of the maize is spread over a long period, and sometimes the work of one year runs into that of the next. This gives the Central an advantage over the other lines. The wool also must, on account of its great value, be transferred to the ports speedily after the shearing; but this is only a matter of about a hundred thousand tons.[116] [116] The war and the difficulties of marine freightage have lessened the seriousness of the problem of carrying goods rapidly by rail in Argentina. Export, however, is by no means the one source of traffic on the Argentine railways. Transport of goods for home consumption is chiefly a question of a large part of the wheat crop. Building materials also--bricks, lime and stone--are an important item on the various lines which link Buenos Aires with the Sierra de Córdoba and the Sierra de Tandil. In 1913 the Southern line carried 1,134,000 tons of minerals, including 997,000 tons of stone and 101,000 tons of lime from the Sierra de Tandil and 34,000 tons of salt from the salt-mines of Lavalle, between Bahía Blanca and the Colorado. In the same year, the Pacific, Central Argentine, Central Córdoba and State railway carried 880,000 tons of minerals (half being lime) from the Sierra de Córdoba.[117] All the timber carried on the lines of northern Argentina, except the _quebracho_ from the banks of the Paraná, is for home use: sleepers, fence-posts, firewood and charcoal are the chief items on most of the lines in the scrub. The war has checked railway construction and reduced the use of sleepers, but it has also deprived Argentina of combustible minerals and increased the transport of firewood. Even on railways like the Pacific and Central Argentine, which have very few of their lines on the scrub, the tonnage of wood carried is 6 per cent. of the whole (average for 1913, 1914 and 1916), and the proportion rises to 30 per cent. of the total tonnage on the Central Córdoba. For several companies the sugars of Tucumán and the wines of Mendoza are an important element of their receipts, not so much on account of the tonnage as the high cost of freightage and the great distance to the centres of consumption in the Pampean region. The carriage of wine and casks brings the Pacific 38.3 per cent. of its receipts (1913-14-16). The transport of sugar on the Central Argentine in a normal year amounts to 5 per cent. of its receipts. On the Central Córdoba the tonnage of sugar-cane and sugar carried amounted in 1914, a year of exceptional harvest, to 42 per cent. of the total tonnage, and was still 20 per cent. in 1916, a year of very poor crop. The supplying of meat to the market of Buenos Aires and the Pampean area, with its dense population, means a good deal of long-distance traffic in cattle; the refrigerators taking the better cattle of the adjoining region for the foreign market, and the slaughter houses of Buenos Aires being forced to content themselves with inferior beasts reared in the provinces and the adjoining districts. [117] The transport of mineral stuff, apart from salt, has been greatly reduced by the war. In 1916 it was only 637,000 tons for the Southern and 157,000 tons for the whole of the lines of the Central Argentine, Pacific, Central Córdoba, and State. The importance of these currents of internal traffic has made itself felt in the organization of the Argentine system. It has made it necessary for each system to have not only an outlet to an exporting town, but a direct connection with the chief centre of home consumption, Buenos Aires. The narrow-gauge system, which until the end of the nineteenth century had been restricted to the northern half of Argentine territory, north of the latitude of Rosario, developed in the province of Buenos Aires after 1900, and ventured to compete in the carriage of cereals with the broad-gauge system (Company of the Province of Buenos Aires and Provincial railway of La Plata). This system connected with the narrow-gauge lines of the north. The Central Córdoba, which had reached Rosario in 1912 and so had escaped the need to transfer its export-traffic at Córdoba to the broad-gauge, began immediately afterwards to effect a direct communication with Buenos Aires (Central Córdoba, extension to Buenos Aires, opened in 1913). The line from Rosario to Buenos Aires of the Province of Buenos Aires Company also serves to carry trains of the Province of Santa Fé Company, which is closely associated with it. The medium-gauge lines of Mesopotamia also have effected a communication with Buenos Aires by means of a ferry-boat that plies on the Paraná between Ibicuy and Zarate, and by using a section of the Buenos Aires Central. The concentration of narrow-gauge and medium-gauge lines seemed to be issuing in a complete fusion of their interests in 1913. The Argentine Railway Company got control of the lines of Entre Rios, Corrientes and the Paraguay. It promoted the development and extension of the Central Córdoba, and it also had large interests in the French companies of the Buenos Aires and Santa Fé provinces. All the narrow-gauge lines would have concentrated in its hands if it had been able to get the State railway. The broad-gauge line from Rosario to Puerto Belgrano had, as its interest conflicted with those of the great broad-gauge English systems, joined the narrow-gauge group engineered by the Argentine railway. But the amalgamation attempted by the Argentine railways did not succeed, and, after its failure, the companies it had temporarily brought together resumed their independence. The river-route of the Paraná has sometimes been an auxiliary, at other times a rival, of the railways. Until the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was opened in 1886, the navigation of the Paraná was the only link between the system of northern Argentina and that of the Buenos Aires province. Before the line was completed, the company had established a service of boats on the Paraná, and in this way it kept up a traffic in goods consigned to stations on the Central Argentine, to be transferred at Rosario. These combinations of railway and river service disappeared when the line from Buenos Aires to Rosario was finished. In regard to export traffic the railways have not attempted to compete with the river anywhere where it is open to maritime navigation; they have merely been concerned to connect with it. On the other hand, the railway and the river are rivals for the home traffic and the traffic of the upper districts which sea-going boats do not reach. Before the time of the railways the river had taken all the goods traffic, but had tolerated on its left bank a post-road between Santa Fé, Corrientes and Asunción. The railway still has the advantage over the river in regard to speed (in carrying passengers between Rosario and Buenos Aires, and live cattle from the Chaco and the Paraguay for Buenos Aires or the salting works of the lower Uruguay). Even in regard to certain kinds of heavy goods--_quebracho_ timber--the river has not secured a monopoly, and there is a good deal of transport by rail. CHAPTER VIII THE RIVER-ROUTES The use of the river before steam navigation--Floods--The river plain--The bed of the Paraná and its changes--The estuary and its shoals--Maritime navigation--The boats on the Paraná. The problem of the use of the river-routes of the Paraná and the Paraguay is not of interest to Argentina alone. It affects the whole history of colonization in South America. The very name of the Rio de la Plata is a reminiscence of the anxieties of the early navigators who landed there, chiefly in search of a route to the mineral districts of the Andes [Plata = silver]. It is remarkable that the Amazon, which opens a more direct and better route to the Andes, was never used for reaching Peru. It was at the most, and only occasionally, used as a return-route, whereas expeditions to the Cordillera were organized on the banks of the Paraná during the whole of the sixteenth century. The routes linking the Paraná and the Paraguay with the tableland furrow the whole plain of the Pampa and the Chaco, from the latitude of the estuary to about 16° S. lat. (expedition of Ñuflo de Chavez in 1557). An especially close network starts from the river between 18° and 22° S. lat. and ends at Santa Cruz, the most northern centre established by the Spaniards on the plain, at the foot of the Andes, as a consequence of the use of the Paraná.[118] [118] There is still a certain amount of goods traffic in this latitude between the river and the Santa Cruz district by the Puerto Suarez and Puerto Pacheco tracks. Spanish colonization, however, did not succeed in making permanent settlements on the Chaco. The Indians, who were masters of it, disputed their passage, and the only practicable route was the southernmost of the roads to the tableland, south of the Rio Salado, which ends at the estuary. From this time onward the prosperity of Buenos Aires eclipsed that of Asunción. The river ceased to be a great continental route. The division of the Paraná between the Spanish and the Portuguese was a check upon the full development of the river-route. The Portuguese held the upper part of its basin, which now belongs to Brazil. They expelled the Spanish missionaries from the upper Paraná about the middle of the seventeenth century, and made themselves masters of the Paraguay north of 20° S. lat. Their forts at Coimbre and Albuquerque prevented any from ascending. D'Azara insists that it would have been Spain's interest to disarm these forts; it would have enabled them to go up the river as far as the Spanish missions to the Mojos and the Chiquitos. On their side, the Portuguese only used the upper section of the river, where it is joined by the Paulist road north of the Coimbre, as a means of access to the gold mines of the Matto Grosso. Even now, although the Paraná is open to every flag, the development of the river-route is not independent of political conditions. In making the railway from Saint Paul to Corumba, and so creating on its own territory a means of direct communication with the upper Paraguay, Brazil diverts from the lower districts part of the traffic which ought normally to go there. Again, the ports of southern Brazil and the lines which go to them try to attract to the Atlantic the produce of the basins of the Uruguay and the upper Paraná, which would have followed the thread of the river to foster the trade of Buenos Aires if the frontiers had been fixed otherwise. Before the Revolution the river-trade was confined to exchanges between the Misiones and Paraguay on the one hand, and Buenos Aires and the Andean provinces on the other. After the extinction of the missions Paraguay was the chief centre of traffic on the river. At the close of the eighteenth century it had a fairly large population. According to D'Azara, it amounted to 97,000, and 47,000 for the area of the former Missions (Misiones), while Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Entre Rios and Corrientes had not more than 103,000 inhabitants collectively. Paraguay exported tobacco, _maté_ and timber by the river. The Buenos Aires Estano received 800 tons of tobacco a year. The exports of _maté_ from Paraguay to Peru, Chile and the interior provinces amounted to 1,725 tons, and 2,250 tons went to Buenos Aires. The timber came mostly from the Tebicuary, where the _angadas_ (loads of timber) were formed. The chief constructive sheds also were on the Tebicuary. Boats of twenty to 200 tons were launched there; and they had armed boats, when they went down the river, to detect ambushes of the Indians, who were masters of the right bank north of Santa Fé. The development of navigation on the Paraná during the first half of the nineteenth century was checked by the disturbances and wars of the period of the emancipation and unification of Argentina. The river was blockaded several times and traffic interrupted. Only a few smuggling schooners succeeded in getting through the side branches, which the ships stationed in the river could not watch. Robertson escaped the Spanish vessels in this way. The picture which D'Orbigny has given us of the life of the river belongs to the year 1827. At that time the estuary was blockaded by the Brazilian fleet in the whole area of the delta as far as San Pedro. Piracy was so rife, and the insecurity so great, on the Uruguay and the Paraná, that few ventured as far as Buenos Aires, the ships being linked in convoys. Up stream, Corrientes was the limit of navigation. The dictator Francis closed the Paraguay, and even the small boats no longer sailed on the upper Paraná, along the frontier of Paraguay. The Correntinos, who spoke _Guarani_, could merely get permission at rare intervals to send a few boats up river. Armed boats convoyed these as far as Neembucu, and they returned with hides and _maté_. Corrientes thus became the market-centre of the upper river and replaced Asunción in the trade. The flotilla on the Paraná included flat-bottomed barges, which were only used in coming down, and strong keeled ships--schooners, sloops and brigs--with their ropes made of leather. Down stream there was a little more diversity in the traffic. The island sent cargoes of firewood and charcoal to Santa Fé and Buenos Aires. The orchards of the delta provided Buenos Aires with oranges and peaches. Hides for export were shipped at Goya and Santa Fé. But the chief freight was lime from La Bajada, which was burned in the kilns on the Barranca, at the outcrops of the beds of conchiferous limestone. [Illustration: CONFLUENCE OF THE YGUASSU AND THE PARANÁ. _In the foreground is the left bank of the Yguassu, on Argentine territory. The right bank is Brazilian territory. At the back, on the right bank of the Paraná, is Paraguayan territory._ PLATE XX. To face p. 236.] The navigation was fairly easy, the journey from Corrientes to Buenos Aires (675 miles) lasting, as a rule, from fifteen to twenty days. Going up, the time was more irregular. They had to stop when there was no south wind, or a little progress was made by hauling (_silgar_). D'Orbigny took a month to travel up.[119] In 1822, before the war with Brazil, there were 651 boats entered at Buenos Aires for coasting trade on the rivers and 1,035 at San Fernando or on the Tigre, the advance port of Buenos Aires. In 1833 Isabelle put at one thousand the number of vessels at work on the Paraná and the Uruguay. [119] The local south winds which help the voyage upward below Rosario may be due to the high temperature of the water of the river; this also gives rise on the lower Paraná to thick fog of which warning is given. In 1841 Rosas forbade navigation on the river. There was then a double blockade checking the trade of Argentina. The Franco-British fleet closed the Rio de la Plata and blockaded Buenos Aires, where the Government of Rosas was established. In addition, Rosas's troops on the _barranca_ of the right bank prevented any from going up the Paraná, and cut off the interior provinces from the rest of the world. The injury then done to interests which were already fully self-conscious may be gathered from the agitation provoked by the decision of France and England in 1845 to break the blockade of the river. A convoy was at once organized at Montevideo, consisting of no less than ninety-eight ships, of 6,900 tons in all (MacKann). It went up the Paraná under the protection of war-ships, which removed the chains slung across it by Rosas. The convoy dispersed up river as soon as it was out of range of Rosas. But it had needed so great an effort that the attempt could not be made again before the fall of Rosas. The closing of the Paraná compelled a diversion of the trade of Paraguay toward the south-east. It crossed the isthmus of Misiones, between the Paraná and the Uruguay, and passed down the Uruguay. At this time the whole commercial activity of Paraguay was concentrated at Itapua, on the upper Paraná. The prosperity of the Uruguay was some compensation for the misery that reigned on the Paraná. The populations of Paysandu and Montevideo greatly increased. In 1852, at the fall of Rosas, the modern period began for the Paraná. The river-population changed rapidly. It ceased to be exclusively creole. Basques, and later Italians, had settled upon the Uruguay ten years before, and they now spread along the Paraná. In 1850 MacKann found fifty vessels, of 20 to 100 tons, belonging to Italians at Santa Fé. This wave of immigration coincided with the development of relations between the Paraná and the port of Montevideo. From 1852 to 1860 Buenos Aires was isolated, and it remained outside the economic life of Argentina. Montevideo took its place. Urquiza's administration sought, in addition, to establish direct maritime communication between over-seas ports and the ports on the river: Gualeguy in Entre Rios, and Rosario in Santa Fé. Under a system of preferential duties (1857-59), which reduced the burden on goods carried by the river, Rosario grew rapidly, and between 1853 and 1858 increased its population from 4,000 to 22,700. The period from 1852 to 1860 was also the time when steam-navigation was developing, and this doubled the value of the river-route. From 1860 onward Buenos Aires was connected by regular services of steamboats with Rosario, Santa Fé, Corrientes, Asunción and Cuyaba. On the upper Paraná goods (timber, tobacco and oranges) were still carried by sailing boats between Corrientes and Apipé, where they stopped at the commencement of the rapids. Steamboats did not sail up the rapids of Apipé until 1868.[120] From 1850 to 1860 there were repeated explorations of the Salado and the Bermejo, as the interior provinces hoped to be able to find a connection with the vivifying artery of the Paraná (voyage of Page on the Salado from Salta in 1855, and of Lavarello on the Bermejo in 1855 and 1863). [120] According to Rengger, sailing ships sometimes succeeded in crossing the Salto d'Apipé. In 1860 the entry of Buenos Aires into the Confederation re-established the normal condition of free competition between Buenos Aires and Rosario. From that time the life of the river reflects the advance of colonization in the Pampean region. The Paraná became the highway for the export of cereals. The two rivers, of which the Rio de la Plata forms the common estuary, differ considerably in their features. The Uruguay has irregular floods, especially in autumn (May) and at the end of the winter (August-October). Low water is in summer (January-February). Its basin belongs to the temperate zone, and does not extend northward as far as the area of tropical summer-rain. The Uruguay also differs from the Paraná in its low capacity for transport and alluvial deposit. While the Paraná has built up a vast deltaic plain, the Uruguay ends in an ordinary estuary, with rocky or sandy bed and clear water. The estuary of the Uruguay is 130 miles long and five or six miles wide. The eastern shore is rocky and broken. The Argentine shore is low. It is formed in the south by the deposits of the delta of the Paraná, while further north, from Gualeguacha to Concepción, the hills of Entre Rios are hidden behind a screen of flat islands covered with palms, formed by the stuff brought by the streams of Entre Rios. The river-floods are lost in the great sheet of the estuary. The tide in the estuary or a flood in the Paraná is enough to turn the current. Maritime navigation goes beyond the estuary and beyond Paysandu, as far as the rapids which prevent further advance at Salto. The twin towns of Concordia (right bank) and Salta (left bank) mark the limit of navigation on the inner course of the river. It begins again above the falls, at Monte Caseros, from which the river-boats go to San Tomé and occasionally to Concepción. Small ships go higher, as far as Salto Grande in Misiones (27° 20' S. lat.).[121] [121] At one time the boats on the upper Uruguay saved transport by going from Salto to Arapehy, midway between Monte Caseros and Concordia (see Isabelle). The navigable system of the Paraná is four times as large. The first survey of the river was made about the middle of the nineteenth century by the British Navy. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Argentine Government took up the study of the bed and the peculiarities of the Paraná, and the Ministry of Public Works published a map, on the scale 1:100,000, of the course of the river between Posadas and San Pedro, at the beginning of the delta. A precise survey was made, and twenty-six fluvio-metrical scales were established, the zero of which represents mean low-water.[122] Transverse soundings were taken at equal distances of 670 and 1,000 feet, the distance being reduced to 160 and even 80 feet at critical points. Thanks to this work, the Paraná is now, no doubt, the best known of all rivers of that size. [122] It is as well to notice that the profile determined by the altitude of the zero of these different scales, or the low-water profile, is of a purely theoretical character. The river is never at low-water over its whole course. The real profile is always varied by slight movements of flood and ebb. Its output is estimated at 6,000 cubic metres a second at mean low-water, in the latitude of Rosario, and 25,000 to 30,000 cubic metres a second during flood at a height of six metres above low-water.[123] Its features bear the mark of its tropical origin. The tropical character is typical on the Paraguay, which is, by its situation in the central South-American plain, the real continuation of the lower Paraná. The slightness of the fall of the Paraguay, however, and the extent of the marshes over which it spreads in Brazil and Paraguay, have the effect of regulating and retarding the flood, which only attains its maximum at Asunción in May. The flood of the Paraguay extends the period of high water on the lower Paraná until the end of autumn. The upper Paraná has most of its basin in the tropical zone of summer rain. But its behaviour is also influenced by the spring or autumn rains of the southern part of the Brazilian tableland. Its floods are sudden and violent. They reach a height of sixty or seventy feet in the region of the confluence of the Yguassu. They sweep rapidly down stream, and reach the lower Paraná before the flood of the Paraguay, which they hold back. [123] Observations of the sediment held in the water have been made at Campana, 32 miles from the estuary. At this point the Paraná only holds in suspension fine particles of clay, but sand travels slowly along its bed. The weight of the clay in suspension varies from 179 grammes per cubic metre in March during the flood, to 42 grammes at low-water in July. The stuff mostly comes from the Bermejo, which carries 5 kilogrammes of sediment per cubic metre. The load of the Paraná is much heavier than that of the Uruguay, but far lower than that of the Mississippi. From Posadas the flood-waves reach Corrientes in five days (235 miles). From Corrientes they reach Paraná in eight days (380 miles), travelling about two miles an hour. That is one-third the speed of the current, as the flood is retarded, and more or less absorbed, by the ramifications of the broader bed in which it moves. At Bajada Grande the lowest water is in September. The flood appears in December or January, though sometimes in October or November. The maximum is in March or April. The rise is rapid at first, but it gradually moderates, and the level of the water is raised about one metre per month during three months. It then sinks in corresponding order. The ebb is often interrupted in June, and sometimes as late as August, by a sudden leap upward of the curve, representing an ascensional movement of the water three times as rapid as that of the main flood (one metre in ten days). The level reached in this late flood is sometimes higher than that of the normal flood in April or May. The range of the ordinary flood-movements is from ten to sixteen feet. Exceptional floods rise to a height of twenty-three feet above the low-water mark. The curves established for the years 1908 to 1910 by the Argentine hydrographical service enable us to analyse the mechanism of the flood with a good deal of confidence. The beginning of the flood at Bajada Grande in October corresponds to the first flood of the upper Paraná. During this first phase the curve of the Bajada is parallel (thirteen days later) to that of Posadas. There is the same parallelism in November, December and January. If the summer rains are light on the upper Paraná, the flood is late on the lower Paraná, and the water is still low there in December (0.20 below the low-water mark on December 31, 1910). At the beginning of March, before the maximum of the flood, the curve of Bajada Grande differs from the curve of Posadas. It is the time when the flood of the lower river is caused by the rise of the Paraguay. The secondary floods of June and July again have their origin in the upper Paraná, but, as they are added to the flood of the Paraguay on the lower river, they reach a higher level there than at Posadas; the difference gradually disappears as the flood of the Paraguay subsides. It is the addition of the late floods of the upper Paraná to the flood of the Paraguay that causes on the lower river the abnormal floods that occur there at irregular intervals (in 1825, 1833, 1858, 1878, 1905 and 1917). Below the Bajada the height of the floods progressively declines. On the estuary they are no longer perceptible; variations of level are due entirely to the tides. In the channels of the delta of the Paraná the tide does not reverse the current as it does in the estuary of the Uruguay, but it causes a slight rise of the water; and this has been observed sometimes, at very low water, as far as Rosario. It is near Corpus, about forty miles above Posadas, that the upper Paraná escapes from the restraint of the Brazilian tableland, which imprisons its valley, from the falls of the Guayra, in a deep fissure between lofty basalt cliffs. Below Posadas the river leaves the region of hills and red earth. Below Corrientes it flows everywhere over its own alluvia. Even above Corrientes its form has surprising characteristics of youth. The precise survey done on its banks has brought to light a very distinct break of its fall above Villa Urquiza, about 400 miles from Buenos Aires. The fall, which from Corrientes onward remains between sixty and forty millimetres per kilometre, sinks suddenly to thirteen over a stretch of twenty-five miles, and then rises again to thirty to forty-five millimetres.[124] Below Rosario the mean descent is twelve millimetres to the kilometre, below San Pedro only six. [124] The district on the right bank of the Paraná, above Santa Fé and Paraná, seems to be due to a recent subsidence. The river is, on the other hand, compelled to effect active erosion in crossing the high lands between Santa Fé and Buenos Aires. It is curious that the break or fall at Villa Urquiza occurs precisely above the bend of the Paraná. A less marked break has been recognized further north, in the latitude of Lavalle, above the Goya bend. It seems that the diminution in the excavation of the valley is due to the erosion which the current effects laterally on the cliffs of the left bank. Above Corrientes the width of the main arm of the Paraná varies, as a rule, from 2,600 to 6,500 feet. The width of the river-plain over which the floods spread is still more irregular. Between Santa Fé and Paraná, where it is especially narrow, it is still ten miles wide. Lower down it gradually broadens to a width of sixty-five miles at the head of the estuary. The scenery is not the same in all sections of it. The vegetation on the islands is richer and more varied up river, and tropical essences (laurel-timbo) are found below the Bajada, forming clumps of trees covered with creepers. [Illustration: THE PARANÁ AT CORRIENTES. _Banks and islands partially fixed by vegetation._ Photograph by Widmayer.] [Illustration: THE _BARRANCA_ AT PARANÁ (ENTRE RIOS), LEFT BANK. _It is composed of clays and of beds of conchiferous terrestrial limestone, which have supplied the lime-kilns for more than a century._ Photograph by Boote. PLATE XXI. To face p. 244.] But the different scenes of the river region are most of all due to different conditions of erosion and formation. Above Rosario the configuration is due to floods. Each succeeding flood alters it and leaves some trace of itself in the topography. The beds of sand that it lays down are fixed by rushes and floating weeds, then by willows (_Salix humboldtiana_). This screen of vegetation encourages accretion, and the edges tend to rise higher. In the middle of the island are low, marshy lands. The irregularity of the alluvial deposits causes marked undulations in the whole region of the river, and everywhere gives rise to alternate beds of clay and sand. Below Rosario the river gradually loses its power. The islands become more stable and flatter. Clumps of willow and spiny _ceibos_ (_Erythrina cristagalli_) still cover the edges of them, and sometimes spread over the interior. But as the climate is now less humid, the vegetation fixes the soil less firmly, and the wind becomes the chief sculptor of the landscape. It heaps up the sand during the low-water season, and makes dunes which rise above the level of the greatest floods. These dunes form an unbroken line along the land in the southern part of Entre Rios, in the north of the main arm, with ridges at right angles, advancing toward the south, which rest upon the river clay; like the one which the Ibicuy railway follows across the floodable area. The cattle of the district take refuge on the dunes during floods. During periods of drought, on the other hand, they retain a quantity of water, and this is drawn from surface-wells at their base. The limits of the zone of the river are clearly marked on the whole of the lower Paraná. It is enclosed on both sides by high _barrancas_ (cliffs), vertical in places where the main current washes their feet, but sloping slightly where there is only a secondary arm with little erosive power. The cliff is broken only at the confluences of small valleys, the flat, filled-up bottoms of which are on the level of the alluvial plain of the Paraná. The cliffs are at their highest in the district of Villa Paraná, where they rise in places to a height of 300 feet. On the right bank the cliffs show a section of the upper layers of the Pampean clays. On the left bank there are æolian clays only at the top of them. Below these are Tertiary marine strata (marls and sandstones with beds of shells). The cliffs of the left bank stretch northwards, with a few breaks, as far as Corrientes, and even into Misiones. Their height gradually diminishes, and the Tertiary marine strata are replaced by granitic red sandstone.[125] On the right bank the height of the cliffs gradually diminishes up river. They are still conspicuous at the confluence of the Carcaraña, but at Santa Fé they rise only about thirty-four feet. North of 31° S. lat., and for some distance beyond Pilcomayo, the plain of the Chaco is very low, and it is impossible to define exactly the limit of the alluvial zone of the Paraná. The fine clays, grey and white, which form the soil of the Chaco, reach the left bank north of Corrientes, in the _esteros_ of Neembucu. The red sandstone hills of the Asunción district rise like an archipelago out of this level bed of lacustrine deposits. [125] In the space between the frontier of Entre Rios and the Rio Empedrado, south of Corrientes, the cliffs expose, above the red sandstone, beds of sand and clay, fluvial alluvia left by former beds of the Paraná, the traces of which can be followed from the north-east to the south-west diagonally across the province of Corrientes. There is no obstacle to navigation in the entire stretch from Posadas to the falls of the Guayra on the Paraná and the Salto Grande on the Yguassa. Sixteen miles below Posadas the Paraná passes through a series of graduated rapids for about sixty miles (1,467 kil. to 1,558 kil. from Buenos Aires) wrongly called the Salto de Apipé. The current then rises to a speed of eight knots, and the depth is three feet at low water. These rapids are due to beds of melaphyre, which emerge amongst the granitic sandstone, and the water makes its way between large rocky islands. At Ituzaingo (1,455 kil.) the current loses force. There is, however, still a rocky bottom lower down, for ninety miles, at a depth of five feet. Below this the rock only appears on the left bank, and in a few ridges near the bank, or in isolated reefs which it has been easy to mark with buoys. From Corrientes to La Paz the river flows from north to south at the feet of the Corrientes cliffs. These line the main stream between Corrientes and Empedrado, and for thirty-five miles south of Bellavista. In the latitude of Riachucho, especially about Bellavista, the cliffs form a series of creeks and capes, in which the west winds create a heavy sea that was dreaded by ships of light draught coming down the river. North of Bellavista, and for more than a hundred miles south of Goya, the main stream is separated from the cliff by a series of alluvial islands; behind these are lateral arms (_riachos_) into which pour the rivers of Corrientes. These arms were much used by the early navigators. Between Esquina and La Paz the main bed, which is not in touch with the land on either of its banks, flows in a meandering path for some seven miles, the scale of the bends being double that of the meandering of the Paraguay north of the confluence. The islands are very small, and are strung in a rosary at the top of each bend. The depth is sixty feet at the top of the bend. The shallows are in a line with the islands at the point where the current runs evenly again before the next curve. The depth here is seven, and sometimes even five feet.[126] These shallows change their places quickly, and it is not always the same bad spot that determines the maximum draught for ships that are to be used in this section. This migration of the shallows is very different from the permanence of the rocky bottom of the stretch between Corrientes and Posadas. [126] In point of fact, the ridge is lower at the time of low water, when the current is concentrated in the main channel, so that one always finds one or two feet greater depth there at low water than soundings taken at high water would lead one to expect. From La Paz to Paraná the main course is outlined by the Entre Rios cliffs. There is no further meandering. The cliffs of hard rock offer far more resistance than the soft alluvia over which the river wanders freely. The permanence of the bed in front of the cliffs leads to a depth of as much as eighty feet. Only here and there a fringe of alluvial stuff separates the channel for a time from the cliff. These curves seem, as a rule, to coincide with the confluence of rivers, which bring a heavy load of clay from the tableland; as, does, for instance, the San Feliciano, north of Hernandarias. They are marked by shallows, in strong contrast to the great depths of the straight sections. The San Feliciano _paso_, which is twelve feet broad to-day, was only six feet broad in 1908. It appeared on Sullivan's map in 1847.[127] [127] A little above its actual position. Below Paraná, as far as the estuary, the careful observations that have been made since 1903 on the movement of the river have enabled us to learn some of its laws.[128] We can distinguish four sections of unequal length. From Paraná to Diamante the river remains in touch with the cliffs of the left bank. It is not straight; it describes a series of linked crescents of equal radius, which seem to be traces of so many meanders. Only one in two of the windings of the cliff is followed by the channel. The wandering of the river is confined within limits as in a fixed mould. The Paracao shallow, which for a long time prevented ships from reaching Santa Fé (gradually deepened by dredging from eight to nineteen feet between 1907 and 1911) is at the angle where two of these curves meet. On the right bank the secondary arms continue to follow the river (Paraná viejo, Riacho de Coronda).[129] [128] In studying the variations of the bed of the Paraná it is necessary to avoid comparing maps drawn at dates separated by long intervals. The differences of such maps are such that they do not enable us to follow the processes by which the actual forms have been derived from earlier forms. The analogies which they show are sometimes due, not to the permanence of the topography, but to the return of a complete cycle of changes, or of conditions analogous to the earlier conditions. [129] The secondary arms of the right bank, north of Santa Fé, were not explored until 1870. Sullivan's map (1847) only mentions the Riacho de San Jeronimo, which is visible for a short distance below 20° S. lat. The right bank was the domain of the Indians, and the Correntinos would not venture near it. In 1870 ships began to use the San Javier arm, on which many colonies arose. Further north the Paraná Mini has been used since 1890 for exporting _quebracho_ timber. Below Diamante the river leaves the cliff on the left bank and slants across the alluvial plain to the cliff on the right bank, which it reaches at San Lorenzo. Over the whole of its thirty miles width it resumes the freedom and regularity of features which it had above La Paz. A comparison of the successive maps of the river shows that the scheme of its movements, which one would be tempted to draw up with a regular migration of the islands and loops down river, would not be accurate. The changes of the bed of the river are essentially due to variations in the volume of the different arms, which are constantly changing their size and adapting their shape to the body of water that flows in them. The radius of the curve of each arm is proportional to its volume. A long island is formed between two arms of equal size which both describe symmetrical curves. If the volume of one of them is reduced, its original curve is replaced by sinuosities of smaller radius, and these nibble the edges of the island and give it an irregular shape. If the volume increases again, the winding bed is abandoned and becomes a dead bed, and a larger meander begins. The track followed by the ships then breaks up into a series of meanders over a course of about eight miles and a half, and this means the concentration in a single channel of the greater part of the water of the river, and in narrower bends in the sections where the current is divided between several arms. From San Lorenzo to San Pedro the river flows by the cliff of the right bank. It is remarkably regular, and has only one slight bend: an exceptionally good site, on which the town of Rosario is built. At almost equal intervals, differing by only about ten to thirteen miles, the river leaves the cliff, and is separated from it by an alluvial strand, or by an insular zone a few miles in width.[130] Below this bend the current again touches the cliff and landing is easy. The small, older ports of the Paraná--Constitución, San Nicolas, Puerto Obligado and San Pedro--are built on similar sites. It does not seem that the islands at the foot of the cliff tend to extend downward in front of these ports; the points where the river reaches the cliff are fixed. The depth is often considerable at the foot of the cliff (138 feet opposite Puerto Obligado). The shoals are distributed irregularly at the bends, where the channel moves away from the cliff. They all have to-day a minimum depth of twenty-one feet.[131] On the left bank the secondary arms sprawl over the alluvial plain for thirty-five miles north of the river. [130] As between La Paz and Paraná, it seems possible to show some relation between these alluvial stretches at the foot of the cliff and the confluence of the small valleys of the Pampean plain. [131] The Paso Paraguayo, which has cost the Argentine hydrographic service most work, did not exist at the middle of the nineteenth century. It seems that the channel then kept to the cliff as far as Benavidez, and was continued as far as the source of the Paraná Pavon by a very pronounced buckle, of which the Monriel lagoon is a scar. In 1895 the Paso was only fifteen feet deep. The delta begins at San Pedro. The Paraná Guazu, or main arm, leaves the cliff on the right bank and passes to the Uruguayan bank opposite Carmelo. The Paraná de las Palmas, which branches off from it to the south and passes before Campana and Zarate at the foot of the tableland, is deep and easy to navigate, but it is closed at the bottom of the estuary by a six-foot bar, which makes it a sort of blind alley opened only above. The arms of the zone of the delta differ from those of the river-zone proper in the irregularity of their course. Flowing between long islands, they sometimes lie in straight stretches and at other times in meanders or almost perfect buckles. The channels of the southern part of the delta, near Buenos Aires, are called _caracoles_ (snails) on account of their winding shape. The weakness of the current, which is held up by the tide, is seen also in the distribution of the greater depths; they are no longer uniformly found along the concave edge of the bends, but are scattered irregularly. On the Paraná Guazu a depth of 130 feet has been ascertained. Its minimum depth is twenty-two feet. [Illustration: THE PARANÁ ABOVE THE ESTUARY. _Right bank. The river has moved away from the_ barranca, _leaving at its foot an alluvial plain of imperfect spiral form_. PLATE XXII. To face p. 250.] The study of the estuary may be taken separately from that of the river. It consists of three parts, unequal in size, which open with increasing breadth toward the Atlantic. The upper Rio de la Plata, above Colonia and Puntá Lara, has a width of about thirty-five miles. The middle Plata, twice as wide, extends to the latitude of Montevideo and Puntá de las Piedras. Then the outer harbour opens between Maldonado and Puntá Rasa. The water is still fresh in the middle estuary up to eighty miles below Buenos Aires. The bottom is alluvial except in the channels between Martin Garcia and Colonia.[132] Differently from up the river, where the channels have sandy bottoms, while the banks are of fine clay, the channels of the estuary have bottoms of mud and clay. In the outer harbour the pilots recognize the approach of banks by the sand which is brought up by the sounding-lead. The action of the waves, which is not found in the river, accumulates stuff of comparatively large size and weight on the banks. [132] The granite which outcrops at Martin Garcia also forms the platform of the English Bank in the outer harbour. In spite of the conclusions embodied in the nautical instructions, which describe the estuary as a theatre of rapid changes "occasioned by the continual deposits of sand brought down by the Paraná and the Uruguay,"[133] the estuary is, as a matter of fact, in a remarkable state of equilibrium, and there is no trace of a gradual accumulation of alluvia, or of important changes of channel. The shore of the delta north of the Paraná de las Palmas, covered with rushes which protect it from the attack of the waves, shows neither advance nor retreat. The broad lines of the hydrography of the Rio de la Plata are plainly indicated on Woodbine Parish's map. The English Navy map of 1869 (on the basis of observations in 1833, 1844 and 1856) only differs in detail from the present map. The stability of the channels is surprisingly different from the changes in the bed of the river in the flood-zone. The permanence of the bottom, in spite of the loose deposits of the estuary, is explained by the regularity of the currents. These currents, which determine the submarine topography of the Rio de la Plata and the distribution of the banks, are not of river origin. They are tidal currents. [133] The water in the estuary, worked up by waves and tide, contains more sediment than the water of the river. There are two groups of shoals in the estuary. The first, the Playa Honda, occupies the whole western part of it up to a line drawn from Buenos Aires to Colonia. These banks leave a narrow passage in the north, opposite the Uruguayan shore, and this is followed by ships going to Uruguay and the Paraná Guazu. The second group of shoals is the Ortiz Bank, triangular in shape, which rests in the north on the Uruguay coast below Colonia, while its point extends south-eastward to eighteen miles north of the Puntá de las Piedras. It keeps the zone of deepest water in the middle estuary to the south, near the Argentine shore. In the latitude of the point of the Ortiz Bank, on a line from Montevideo to Puntá de las Piedras, the middle estuary is separated from the outer harbour by a bar (_barra del Indio_) with thirty-eight feet of water, caused by the transverse currents which circulate from point to point inside the English Bank. The tide in the estuary is very irregular. The south-east winds increase the flow and retard the ebb. When they are blowing, it often happens that the level of the water in the upper estuary keeps up from one tide to the next, sometimes for several days. The tide, which is slight at Montevideo, is greater at the bottom of the harbour on the Barra del Indio, sometimes rising nearly forty inches there. From there it advances with difficulty northward, over the Ortiz Bank, along the Uruguayan shore, whereas it passes freely into the deeper zone on the Argentine side.[134] At Buenos Aires it still has a depth of thirty inches. From there it advances northward by the Martin Garcia channels beyond the Playa Honda. The channel of the Pozos del Barca Grande, which crosses the Playa Honda bank from north to south, parallel to the edge of the delta, is oriented in conformity with the tidal currents and maintained by them. It is not attached to the river, and it is separated from the mouths of the Paraná de las Palmas or the Paraná Mini by shallows which are navigable only to small boats. The _Rias_ of the Uruguay, where the tide raises the water twelve inches, forms a sort of reservoir which, at the ebb, feeds a strong current round Martin Garcia and sweeps the channels there. [134] The current at high tide is stronger than at low tide, and it has shifted to the north-east the streams which find an outlet on this side. The work done for the improvement of the estuary includes the deepening to thirty feet of the Barra del Indio and the dredging of a straight channel from that point to Buenos Aires. Steamers of large tonnage going up the Paraná leave this channel twenty-six miles east of Buenos Aires, and turn north in order to pass east of Martin Garcia, and enter the river by the Paraná Guazu or the Paraná Bravo. Since 1901 the Argentine Government has considered a plan of opening a direct route from Buenos Aires to the Paraná de las Palmas, either by cutting an artificial canal at the foot of the cliffs, across the Tigre archipelago, or by using the channel of the Pozos del Barca Grande and cutting the narrow bar which closes the Paraná de las Palmas below. If this were done, the ports of the Paraná de las Palmas would have direct access to the sea. Moreover, the new route from the Paraná to the Atlantic would be entirely within Argentine territory, out of range of the Uruguayan shore, and Buenos Aires would become a necessary port of call both on departure and return. Above the estuary, the work for the improvement of the Paraná began in 1904 and 1905. Since 1910 the material dredged from the bed of the river has risen to 3,500,000 cubic metres a year on the average. The experience gained in the course of this work has enabled the Argentine hydrographic service to adjust its methods to the incomparable force of the river. It is impossible to maintain a general rectification of the bed and the banks, as is possible with European rivers. The only thing to do is to submit quietly to the plan which the river sketches for itself, and be content to deepen the difficult passages on the line of the main arm. Suction dredges, which work easily in the sand, attack each ridge or _paso_ from below, making a channel into which the waters flow, so that it tends to enlarge itself up stream. The dredges are shifted from bank to bank according as the soundings tell of the formation of fresh obstacles to navigation. They were at first concentrated below Rosario, where the Argentine Government had to carry out certain engagements contracted with the Port Company; then they were scattered as far up as Santa Fé. The actual equipment suffices to carry out the programme that had been drawn up--to maintain a depth of twenty-one feet as far as Rosario and of nineteen feet as far as Santa Fé. [Illustration: MAP VII.--ESTUARY OF THE RIO DE LA PLATA. _The channels of the estuary are parallel to the direction of the tidal currents, which account for their depth. Those which cross the shoals of the Playa Honda, at the bottom of the estuary, finish as no-thoroughfares, and do not give access to the southern arms of the river. From Buenos Aires ships going up the river have to go round by Martin Garcia and the mouths of the Paraná Guazu._ To face p. 254.] As regards the section above Santa Fé, the engineer Repossini advises that, instead of adopting a programme of expensive dredging with uncertain results, they should first think of adjusting navigation to the natural conditions, and they are such as would be considered very favourable in Europe. The hydrographic service would, however, still have two functions: in the first place, the topographical study of the river and the constant placing of buoys, and, in the second place, the observation of its behaviour and anticipation of variations of level. The utility of the work of foreseeing floods, which has been carried on since 1907, has been abundantly proved. It published a daily bulletin of forecasts, based upon observation of the pluviometric scales of the upper river, which is equally valuable to the navigators and to breeders in the floodable area. It enables the breeders to get their cattle into safety before the floods come. On the other hand, the ship can, thanks to the bulletin, foretell what depth of water it will find at critical passages, and calculate exactly the load it can carry, and so complete its cargo lower down. The service of forecast of floods has morally improved navigation on the Paraná by suppressing every possible pretext for wilful stranding, which had become a current form of speculation. * * * * * Nothing is more varied than the fleet which now serves the Paraná. It includes tramps, and long, slim European ships, which load up with cereals and meat; large river boats, luxurious and light; barges and tugs, lighters and schooners, which have compensation for their slowness in their cheapness. As regards navigation, the river is now divided into three sections. Maritime navigation ascends as far as Santa Fé. At Rosario and Santa Fé it goes right to the heart of the zone of cereals and to the fringe of the forest area. The upper section, between Rosario and Santa Fé, is less safe than the lower section, and this is reflected in the cost of freightage from Santa Fé. The ports of the lower Paraná, between Santa Fé and Buenos Aires, may be classed in three categories. The ports of the first group are built on low land that is liable to be flooded. Every year the floods threaten their traffic. That is the character of Colastiné, east of Santa Fé, which specializes in shipping _quebracho_ timber, or Ibicuy, on the Paraná Pavon, in the south of the province of Entre Rios, which, however, is protected by excellent works. The small ports of the _barranca_ of the southern bank, on the main river and on the Paraná de las Palmas, form a second group. They ship meat (Campana and Zarate) and cereals (San Nicolas and Villa Constitución), and they are admirably adapted for this by their natural situation. Steamers come right up to the cliff without any need of special works on the shore. The sacks of wheat are let into the ships down sloping gangways from stores excavated in the cliff or from wagons. None of these ports are equipped for receiving imports. The third group comprises ports with complete apparatus for both export and import. The chief of these is Rosario. It was the increase of imports between 1850 and 1860 that stimulated its early progress. To-day the tonnage of the goods unloaded at Rosario is nearly one-half the tonnage of the cereals shipped there. Yet, in spite of appearances, it is the imports that account mainly for the busy life of its quays. The port company does the unloading itself, as well as the handling and storing of the goods imported, but it is content to receive dues on all exports within the area for which it has a monopoly. Only a small part of the cereals exported uses its elevators. A deep-water port, equipped like that at Rosario for import and export, has just been constructed at Santa Fé. Already it competes with Colastiné for the export of _quebracho_. Its import trade is still small, as such trade requires large capital and a whole network of relations with the adjoining country, and that is not the work of a day. The second section of the river stretches from Santa Fé to Corrientes, and is continued up the Paraguay. The transport of _quebracho_ timber and tannic acid is the chief item of its trade. The maximum draught of the vessels it admits at normal low water is six feet. Some of the ports on the left bank (Esquina, Goya) and all the ports on the right bank (Reconquista, Barranqueras, etc.) are at some distance from the main bed, or lateral arms. The Chaco works have generally a flotilla of steamers and barges. It is the exporters of timber and extract of _quebracho_ to Europe who most strongly demand the deepening of the bed of the Paraná above Santa Fé. Sailing ships share with the river steamers the transport of the products of the Paraguay and of Corrientes (hides, tobacco and _maté_). The transport of oranges alone from San Antonio, Villeta, Pilar and Humaïta represents an item of tens of thousands of tons. The third section of the river stretches from Corrientes to Posadas, and beyond. Sailing ships have disappeared from this section, as they cannot make the Apipé rapids. Steamers of four and a-half feet draught and 150 tons are now used on it, but they cannot proceed at low water. They provide a direct service between Buenos Aires and Posadas, though the service is not very economical, because it does not permit them to use to the full the transport-capacity of the river below Corrientes. Most of the goods for Posadas are, therefore, trans-shipped at Ituzaingo, below the rapids, or at Corrientes. The steamboat companies which serve Posadas are obliged, in order to secure the economical transport of goods shipped on the upper Paraná, to maintain lines which go up the Paraguay as far as Asunción, and take on at Corrientes the goods that come from Posadas. Higher up, the falls of the Guayra and the Yguassu set an impassable limit to the enterprise of Argentine vessels. Boats on the stretch above Yguassu on the Paraná feed the railways of the Brazilian tableland. The traffic of the upper Paraná consists chiefly of _maté_ from Misiones and cedar-planks from the Posadas saw-mills. Rafts of timber are stopped at Posadas and rarely follow the river further. The Argentine statistics of navigation are obscure. They confuse under one heading the river-traffic between Posadas and Brazilian territory, or between Corrientes and the Paraguay, and the exports of the Pampean region to Europe. It is difficult to get from them an idea of the real traffic, or to distinguish the tonnage loaded or unloaded at each port from that which merely touches its quays in ships going up or coming down the river. They credit a score of ports with a total tonnage of (entries and clearances together) more than 500,000 tons. At all events, they do enable us to distinguish between ports exclusively devoted to river traffic and those with direct relations to oversea ports. Nearly all the boats destined for the Paraná touch at Buenos Aires, which remains the chief importing centre, on the way up, and unload there. They then go empty to Rosario, San Nicolas, or Santa Fé to take on a full cargo of cereals or timber, and set out down the Paraná for Europe without calling at Buenos Aires. Clearances for interior navigation at the port of Buenos Aires are far more numerous than entries. From 1912 to 1914 Buenos Aires received on the average, coming from interior ports, 1,750,000 tons, of which 1,635,000 were cargo. It cleared for the same ports ships totalling 3,275,000 tons, of which 1,580,000 were in ballast. The latter figure fairly represents the tonnage of sea-going ships sent up river empty after discharging on the quays of Buenos Aires. At Rosario, San Nicolas and San Pedro, on the other hand, the tonnage of clearances for Argentine ports is much less than the tonnage of entries.[135] The total movement of goods at the port of Rosario is 410,000 tons entries and 375,000 tons clearances for interior navigation, and 1,100,000 tons entries and 1,824,000 tons clearances for navigation abroad. [135] Movement of internal navigation at Rosario (average 1912-1914): entries, 1,108,000 tons, of which 690,000 in ballast; clearances, 580,000 tons. At San Nicolas: entries, 400,000 tons, of which 440,000 in ballast; clearances, 4,000 tons. The difference between the entries and the clearances represents ships starting straight for Europe. According to Repossini's calculations the tonnage of exports on the lower Paraná south of Santa Fé rose in 1910 to 4,000,000 or 4,500,000. The imports, almost entirely confined to Rosario, were about a fourth of this figure. For the middle and upper Paraná, Repossini estimated the volume of the traffic at 800,000 tons, of which _quebracho_ was two-fifths. The navigation of the Paraná is one of the chief sources of the prosperity of Buenos Aires. Even if the development of the import trade at Rosario or Santa Fé is partly at the expense of the capital, and the boats laden with cereals do not stop at its quays, still the coasting traffic on the river is in great part meant for Buenos Aires. In returning, rather than go empty, the boats take cargoes of European products bought from the Buenos Aires importers. By means of the Paraná the import-trade sphere of influence of Buenos Aires reaches beyond the frontiers of Argentina, as far as Paraguay and part of Brazil. Buenos Aires is, moreover, the main centre for equipping the steamboats of the river. Its capital dominates the Paraná. Lastly, the Paraná supplies it with an export freight which must not be overlooked. It is at Buenos Aires that the hides, tobacco and timber and extracts of _quebracho_ for oversea markets, shipped on schooners in the upper reaches of the river which are impassable for steamers, are trans-shipped for abroad. CHAPTER IX THE POPULATION The distribution of the population--The streams of emigration to the interior--Seasonal migrations--The historic towns--The towns of the Pampean region--Buenos Aires. A large-scale chart of the mean density of the population for each province--like those which were published in the latest Argentine Census-reports--has no geographical value for the west and north-west, where oases of slight extent are separated by vast desolate stretches, deserted because of the lack of water. In the Pampean region, on the other hand, the population is distributed in a very regular manner, and the mean densities calculated fairly represent the facts. To the several types of exploitation, of which we have studied the distribution on the Pampa, there correspond unequal densities of population. Cattle-breeding, for instance, requires only a thin population. The early pastoral colonization of the plain on the west of the Salado was carried out, between 1880 and 1890, with a very small number of workers. A large ranch of 400 square kilometres on the northern edge of the Pampa (the Tostado ranch) only employs about a hundred men, or one for four square kilometres. The density increases appreciably for sheep-breeding on the _pastos tiernos_ of Buenos Aires province, where a ranch of a hundred square kilometres, devoted to producing wool, with fifty or sixty shepherds, sustains at least 200 persons, or two to the square kilometre.[136] The density is not appreciably greater in the area of wheat-growing on a large scale, where the extent cultivated by one family reaches, including fallow, 200 hectares. But it may, even apart from the urban population, be more than ten to the square kilometre in the maize belt. [136] The density is twenty times less in the ranches which use the meagre pastures of the Rio Negro. The growth of the population of Argentina can be followed closely from the middle of the eighteenth century. A Census taken in 1774 gives the Buenos Aires district within the first line of forts 6,000 inhabitants. At the end of the eighteenth century (Census of 1797, quoted by D'Azara) the population of the province of Buenos Aires, without the town, was a little over 30,000 souls, the zone occupied having been extended in the meantime, at least in part, as far as the Salado. Woodbine Parish estimates the population at 80,000 in 1824, at the time when the expansion southward, beyond the Salado, as far as the Sierra de Tandil, began. It doubled between 1824 and 1855. The northern departments then counted 45,000 inhabitants, the western 58,000 and the southern 63,000. The density was still a little greater in the north, along the road to Peru, but the advance of sheep-rearing in the south was beginning to change the centre of gravity of colonization. The first regular Census of the Argentine Republic in 1869 showed a still more rapid advance. The population of the Buenos Aires province had grown to 315,000 inhabitants. The increase was greatest in the west, where tillage began to extend round Chivilcoy, beyond the pastoral area, and in the south, where sheep-farms multiplied. The population of the southern departments more than doubled in fourteen years (137,000 inhabitants to 70,000 square kilometres in occupation, or two to the square kilometre). However, the Pampean region--Buenos Aires (including the capital), Santa Fé, and the southern part of Córdoba--still had a smaller population than that of the northern and north-western provinces: 626,000 as compared with 813,000. The Mesopotamian provinces had then 263,000 inhabitants. The proportion was reversed twenty-five years later at the 1895 Census. The population of the Pampas had increased threefold, and was more than a half of the entire population of the country. That of the western and north-western provinces was about a third of the whole, and had only increased by fifty per cent. If one considers in detail the distribution of the population of the Pampean plain in 1895, one sees that beyond the suburbs of Buenos Aires the area of greatest density--five to eight per square kilometre--was in the north-west, between San Andres de Giles and Pergamino, a district of advanced methods, where the cultivation of maize was beginning to occupy a good part of the land. The population was confined to the west of the preceding zone, in the agricultural area of Junin, Chacabuco and Chivilcoy. This area, where maize and wheat were next each other, already embraced Viente Cinco de Mayo (five to the square kilometre) on the west and Nueve de Julio (2.5). In the south of Buenos Aires, the departments of the left bank of the Salado, which were entirely given up to breeding, but long colonized, had a density of three to five per square kilometre. The region lying between the lower Salado and the Sierra de Tandil, a sheep-breeding area, then giving good returns but of recent colonization, had not more than three. The density falls rapidly as one goes westward. It sinks to less than one in the north-west and west of the Buenos Aires province, in the area where the cattle-breeders from the east had settled. At Santa Fé, the region of the colonies, at the level both of Rosario and Santa Fé, had five inhabitants per square kilometre. But beyond the Córdoba frontier the density falls to two in the San Justo department, and still less further south, at Marcos Juarez, Union and General Lopez. [Illustration: THE OLDER INDUSTRIES OF THE PAMPA: DRYING HIDES. Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados.] [Illustration: DRYING SALT MEAT. Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados. PLATE XXIII. To face p. 262.] In 1914 the density was more than fifteen in the whole of the maize area in the Buenos Aires and Santa Fé provinces, and it approached this figure in the departments of the old agricultural colonies on the middle Salado. In the region of the lucerne farms it was three to five, except in the south-east (departments of Veinte Cinco de Mayo, Nueve de Julio and Bolivia), where it rose, thanks to the co-existence of ranches and of wheat and maize. It sank to between two and three in the wheat area in the south and south-east of Buenos Aires. At Santa Fé the district of the colonies had seven to the square kilometre. The growth of the population is partly explained by immigration from Europe. Foreigners were, in 1914, 30 per cent. of the total population.[137] The proportion of foreigners to the total population is one of the indications by which we can best follow the advance of colonization. As soon as it relaxes in any region, the number of immigrants diminishes. (The children born of foreign colonists in Argentina are considered indigenous in Argentine statistics.) In 1869 the proportion of foreigners rose to 417 per 1,000 in the province of Buenos Aires (without the capital). This was the great period of pastoral colonization and the development of sheep-breeding. It was then only 156 per 1,000 at Santa Fé. In 1895 the proportion of foreigners sank to 309 per 1,000 at Buenos Aires, but rose to 419 at Santa Fé, where the date almost marks the end of the great period of agricultural colonization. In 1914 the proportion of foreigners at Buenos Aires rose to 340 per 1,000 (development of the maize region and the southern wheat area). It sank at Santa Fé (350 per 1,000), in spite of considerable immigration in the southern maize-growing departments. At the same time there was a great influx of foreign population in the province of Córdoba (200 per 1,000) and in the area of the Central Pampa (360 per 1,000).[138] [137] All Europeans, except a few tens of thousands of Bolivians in the Salta and Jujuy provinces, a few thousand Brazilians in Misiones, and a few thousand Chileans at Neuquen. [138] I have referred elsewhere to the magnitude of the stream of European immigration at Mendoza. In Patagonia (territory of the Rio Negro, the Neuquen, the Chubut, the Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego, of which the total population is only 104,000) sheep-breeding has attracted a considerable number of immigrants (428 foreigners per 1000 in 1914). The recent enumerations also enable us to follow the displacements of the indigenous population on Argentine territory and the part this has had in colonization. Outside the Pampean region the parts of the country which have proved centres of attraction for the Argentine population are the sugar provinces of Tucumán and Jujuy and the province of Mendoza. In 1895 Tucumán had 40,000 inhabitants who had been born in other provinces, Jujuy 15,000 and Mendoza 19,000. The attraction of Tucumán was mainly felt in the adjoining province of Santiago (12,000 immigrants) and Catamarca (12,000). At Mendoza the immigrants came mainly from San Juan (7,000) and San Luis (3,000). The attraction of the timber region is more difficult to estimate, because most of the _obrajes_ are in the province of Santiago, which found the workers itself, and the enumerations have not taken into account displacements within each province. Nevertheless, immigration into the land of the _quebracho Chaqueño_, along the Paraná, can be recognised from 1895 onward. It was maintained by the Corrientes province. Santa Fé has 10,000 immigrants from Corrientes, of whom 6,500 are in the forestry departments of Reconquista and Vera. The Chaco region maintains 2,000 Corrientes wood-cutters and several hundred from Santiago and Salta. Corrientes has also sent 5,000 emigrants to Misiones. In the Pampean region the population of Buenos Aires in 1895 included very few who came from other provinces. The population of Santa Fé was more mixed. The attraction of the agricultural colonies had brought 65,000 Argentine immigrants. They came mainly from the left bank of the Paraná and Córdoba. The immigrants from Córdoba are localized along the railway from Rosario to Córdoba, in the Belgrano and Iriondo departments and the town of Rosario. The migration of the Santa Fé colonists to the new lands in the west had scarcely begun at that time. They were still only 3,000 in the Buenos Aires province, and 5,000 at Córdoba; most of them were in departments adjacent to the old colony area. The colonization of Córdoba began simultaneously in the east, toward Santa Fé, and in the south-west, in the Rio Cuarto department, to which the breeders from San Luis went. Similarly, the Argentine population of the Central Pampa includes elements from the east as well as European colonists and elements from the north-west (10,000 immigrants from the Buenos Aires province, 3,000 from San Luis). The 1914 Census has less complete details in regard to interior immigration than its predecessor. The migrations had not ceased. The attraction of Tucumán and Mendoza had, in fact, decreased. The province of Tucumán had 55,000 Argentine immigrants, the province of Jujuy 15,000, the province of Mendoza 34,000. The provinces of Mendoza and Corrientes remained nuclei of considerable immigration (38,000 and 63,000 immigrants). At Santa Fé the number of emigrants who left the province to settle at Córdoba and in the remainder of the Pampean region rose from 14,000 to 87,000. The Patagonian territory also had a large excess of immigrants from other provinces. Periodic migrations with no definitive change of residence are not given in the official statistics. The importance of these migrations in northern Argentina has been noted in the chapters we devoted to Tucumán and the forestry industry. They occur also in the Pampean region, where they are due chiefly to the need of labour for the harvest and the threshing of wheat and flax, and for reaping the maize. Miatello has given us a detailed analysis of the phenomenon for the province of Santa Fé in 1904. The period when the wheat and flax growers need help is from November to February. It begins in March for the maize farmers, and lasts so much longer when the harvest is good. The temporary immigrants come partly from Europe. Not only is the stream of immigration to Argentina fuller during the months which precede the harvests, while the stream of re-emigration to Europe is greatest in the autumn, but it is not a rare thing for Italians to go every year to Argentina merely to stay there during the harvest, when wages are high. This seasonal immigration from Italy is of long standing; it is mentioned by Daireaux in 1889. These foreigners, however, are only part of the adventurous crowd enlisted for the harvests on the Pampean plain. Seasonal migration is everywhere a national practice. The labour employed in reaping the maize includes elements borrowed from the towns near the maize belt. But all the provinces round the Pampean region send their contingent of temporary immigrants. Some even come from the valley of the Rio Negro at Bahía Blanca, from San Luis, and even from Mendoza to the Central Pampa and the Córdoba province. The oldest, and still the largest, stream is that which comes from the Santiago province. D'Orbigny notices in 1827 the temporary streaming of Santiagueños to the coast. In that year slow progress was made with the wheat-harvest of Buenos Aires because of the shortage of labour. "The forced levies for the army prevented the Santiagueños from going to hire themselves, as was their custom, in fear lest they should be compelled to serve."[139] [139] D'Orbigny, _Voyage dans l'Amérique méridionale_, vol. i. p. 528. Temporary emigration began, no doubt, with the journeys which brought the northerners to Buenos Aires as drivers of convoys of wagons. Santiagueños were numerous amongst these _troperos_. Lorenzo Fazio collected reminiscences of these journeys in the land of the _bañados_.[140] They go back to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the period before the diversion of the Rio Dulce and the ruin of Salavina and Atamisqui. "My father," said one of his informants, "drove wagons of wheat to Córdoba, and sometimes to Buenos Aires, where he sold them and bought goods-stuffs in exchange. He bought the wheat at Loreto, Atamisqui or Salavina. It was a year before he got back, because it was necessary to wait for the rain and the growth of the vegetation, otherwise his animals would have died of thirst or hunger on the road." The journeys of the _troperos_ meant a long spell of idleness in the Pampean region, precisely at the harvest season. Naturally, they would lend a hand in it. [140] Lorenzo Fazio, _Memoria descriptiva de la provincia de Santiago del Estero_ (Buenos Aires, 1889). The temporary emigration of the Santiagueños continued throughout the nineteenth century. It was maintained even during the disturbances under the government of Rosas, which almost entirely put an end to commercial relations between Buenos Aires and the northern provinces. When Galvez passed through the villages on the Rio Dulce he noticed that there were few men in them. They had scattered over the roads or were, as he says, _andariegos_. Only the women remained. The province of Buenos Aires received the Santiagueños in crowds, offering their services. Chivilcoy and the whole region of the _chacras_ of maize and wheat received their caravans for the harvest, and some were kept for the sowing. Even the ranchers took advantage of this reinforcement, and hired the men for marking. In the autumn they went back with their _tropillas_, much dreaded by the breeders whose land they crossed, stealing any horses that were not well guarded. The province of Santa Fé, especially in the agricultural departments of the north-west, is now the chief theatre in the Pampean region for the immigration of the Santiagueños. It does not always come by rail, but has to some extent preserved its primitive and picturesque features. The immigrants arrive in troops on mules and horses, and scatter in November over the colonies. The population of Argentina has also felt the attraction of the urban centres. The growth of the towns is due to both foreign and national immigration. The development of urban life, which is one of the characteristic features of modern Argentina, is a recent phenomenon. There was no indication of its coming in the eighteenth century. D'Azara was, on the contrary, struck by the absence of communal life (_pueblos unidos_). The scattering of the population was a result of the predominance of breeding. "If these people found profit in agriculture, one would see them gather together in villages, instead of the whole population being dispersed in ranches."[141] It is this scattering of the population rather than an absolute numerical inferiority--the solitude, "the desert, the universal horizon that forced itself into the very entrails of the land"[142]--that moulded the fiery soul of the _gaucho_. [141] F. de Azara, _Memorias sobre el estado rural del río de la Plata en 1801_, p. 10. [142] Sarmiento, _El Facundo_, p. 19. [Illustration: A HERD OF CREOLE CATTLE. Photograph by Widmayer.] [Illustration: A HERD OF DURHAM CATTLE. Photograph by Soc. Fotografica de Aficionados. PLATE XXIV. To face p. 268.] The primitive urban sites were all either on the river or on the historic roads to Chile and Peru. The only towns of the Paraná region at the end of the eighteenth century were Buenos Aires, Santa Fé and Corrientes. As to towns in the interior, Helms's journey in 1778 gives us some idea of their size. Córdoba, at the crossing of the Peru road and the tracks to the province of La Rioja, had then 1,500 white inhabitants and 4,000 blacks. As it was near the Sierra, which provided granite and lime, it had some semblance of architecture, and had paved streets, which struck even the traveller from Buenos Aires. The attraction of its schools was felt over a wide area. We still have a list of students from Paraguay who studied at Córdoba University in the eighteenth century.[143] Tucumán and Salta, especially Salta, also were busy centres. Salta had 600 Spanish families and 9,000 inhabitants in all, and its influence extended as far as Peru and Chile. Jujuy, on the other hand, was a very small town. Helms mentions the decay of Santiago del Estero. The trade which had once flourished there had, he says, gone in a different direction. The prosperity of Santiago was, as a matter of fact, connected with traffic on the direct route from Santa Fé to Tucumán, which ceased at the close of the eighteenth century. Santa Fé also was a decaying town at the close of the eighteenth century, and would remain such until the middle of the nineteenth. Its distress was due, not merely to the suspension of its direct trade with Peru, but also to the decay and isolation of Paraguay, which had provided most of its trade and for which it acted as intermediary with the Andean provinces. [143] Published by the _Revista del Instituto Paraguayo_ (vol. iv. p. 334). The great development of urban life in Argentina dates from the time of the colonization of the Pampean region. The ratio of the urban population has risen considerably during the last twenty-five years. In 1895, 113 centres with more than 2,000 inhabitants comprised 37 per cent. of the total population of Argentina; in 1914 the number of urban centres was 322, and they comprised 53 per cent. of the population. The population of towns with 5,000 to 20,000 inhabitants has increased threefold in twenty years, rising from 312,000 in 1895 to 977,000 in 1914. Large new towns like Rosario and Bahía Blanca were created. The relative sizes of the older towns changed rapidly. Tucumán and Mendoza (121,000 and 92,000 inhabitants) shot beyond Santiago and Salta (22,000 and 28,000 inhabitants). The towns of the north-west, Catamarca and Rioja, are, on the other hand, scarcely developed. When one examines a chart of the urban population of the Pampean region, one finds that colonization has led to the creation in it of ten chief centres, of from 15,000 to 25,000 inhabitants, and some fifty secondary centres, of from 5,000 to 12,000 inhabitants, which all have a distinctly urban character. This association of urban centres and a scattered agricultural or pastoral population is one of the original features of the way in which the Pampa was peopled. There is no village, or purely rural group. The distribution of these centres on the plain is fairly regular. They are a little closer together in the districts near the Paraná, to the north of Buenos Aires, where the population is older, and where the density, even of the rural population, is at its highest. The territory of the Pampa is divided between the spheres of influence of these various centres. Their radius is as low as ten miles in the north-west, and is about twenty miles in the south of Buenos Aires and twenty-five in the extreme west. A secondary railway nucleus has generally settled the sites of them (San Francisco-Pergamino, Junin). Their population comprises all the workers needed for the flow of the economic life of the Pampa: agents for the exporters of cereals, merchants who supply the colonies with imported goods--especially agricultural machinery--bankers and insurance companies, surveyors and lawyers. Those which have the best service of trains have a certain amount of industry--mills and breweries--the products of which are absorbed locally. These towns derive all the elements of their life from the Pampean region itself, and have no direct relations either with foreign markets or with other parts of Argentina.[144] [144] Only two of them, Villa Mercedes and Villa Maria, are on the edge of the Pampa. We have seen elsewhere the part which the extensive breeding of the north-west plays in the business of the Villa Mercedes cattle-market. Villa Maria also derives some advantage from its nearness to the scrub. Its limekilns receive limestone from the Sierra de Córdoba, but they get their fuel locally, from the men who clear the scrub. But the towns of the Pampa which have grown most rapidly are the ports. Rosario rose from 23,000 inhabitants in 1869 to 91,000 in 1895 and to 245,000 in 1914; Bahía Blanca from 9,000 in 1895 to 62,000 in 1914. The actual population of the Pampa ports is not at all in proportion to the part which each plays in the export of Pampean products:-- _Export of Cereals in thousands of tons._ (Average for 1913-1915) Buenos Bahía San Nicolas. La Santa Aires. Blanca. Rosario. Plata. Fé. 2,716 2,051 1,075 651 459 278 Population in 1914. 245,000 1,575,000 62,000 19,000 137,000 64,000 Some centres, such as Campana, Zarate, San Pedro or San Nicolas, which load up meat or grain in great quantities, have nevertheless remained small towns. Neither the trade in meat nor that in cereals is enough of itself to sustain a busy urban life. In point of fact, the growth of the Pampa ports is mainly connected with their function as importing ports and markets of capital. The close dependence of Bahía Blanca upon Buenos Aires in both these respects seems to forbid it all hope of ever becoming the equal of Rosario. The prosperity of Rosario was founded during the time when Buenos Aires was isolated, between 1853 and 1860; this enabled them to organize an import trade there and to accumulate a nucleus of independent capital.[145] [145] Buenos Aires and Rosario alone have independent grain markets, though it is differently organized in each case. At Buenos Aires the exporters have entered into direct relations with the producers and eliminated intermediaries. At Rosario they have to use the services of a strong body of agents. * * * * * The development of Buenos Aires must be studied separately. It does not merely reflect the success of the colonization of the Pampa; it is a phenomenon of a national order. The attraction of Buenos Aires has been felt throughout the whole land. In 1895, of a total population of Argentine birth of 318,000 souls, more than a half--167,000--were born in the provinces.[146] The way in which the prosperity of Buenos Aires is bound up, not only with that of the adjacent territory but with that of the whole country, is seen in the stability of the figure representing the number of the inhabitants who have come from foreign lands. While the proportion of foreigners in each of the provinces varies from one census to another, according to the displacements of the stream of colonization, it remains almost the same at Buenos Aires: 496 per 1,000 in 1869, 520 in 1895, 493 in 1914. [146] The 1914 Census does not give reliable details on this point. The population of the city of Buenos Aires was estimated by Helms in 1788 to be between 24,000 and 30,000. D'Azara put it at 40,000 in 1799. The Revolution did not interrupt its growth. According to the estimate of Woodbine Parish the city had 81,000 inhabitants in 1824. On the other hand, the Rosas Government involved a period of stagnation (90,000 inhabitants in 1855). But after 1855 Buenos Aires resumed its progress, even before the political unity of Argentina was re-established, and has never since relaxed. Its population has doubled almost regularly at intervals of fifteen years: 177,000 in 1869, 433,000 in 1887, 663,000 in 1895, and 1,575,000 in 1914. The latter figure, in fact, is inadequate. Greater Buenos Aires, including the outlying parts, has really 1,990,000 inhabitants. The site on which the city is built is a regular plateau, sixty-five feet above sea level, cut by flat-bottomed, marshy valleys. The Riachuelo, at the mouth of one of these valleys, provided Buenos Aires with its first port. The low and badly drained lands of the valleys are occupied by the poorest quarters. Their sides, the _barrancas_, bear the aristocratic residences, and the gardeners have been able to use the sites to great advantage in their plans. As a whole, the growth of Buenos Aires presents the same feature of regularity, on account of the uniformity of the soil, as the spread of colonization over the plain of the Pampas. The city is distributed in concentric zones, and it is thus a model on a small scale of the distribution of the various types of exploitation on the Pampa which surrounds it. The central nucleus, the business quarter, contains not only the offices, but the warehouses of imported goods. Round this centre, with a radius of one to three miles, are the residential quarters in which the density is greatest (250 to 350 to the hectare). Beyond this the density sinks to less than 200 per hectare and less than fifty on the outskirts. The central quarters developed the maximum density after 1900. Those of the first outer zone have gained greatly between 1904 and 1909. Since the latter date, the progress of these quarters has been arrested in turn, and the recent growth is mainly in the remote working-class suburbs in the south and on the bank of the Riachuelo. Buenos Aires has preserved in its central district, and reproduces in all its outer districts, the primitive draught-board plan of a Spanish colonial city. This plan is not suited to its needs to-day. The rapid growth of the city and its expansion--the mean density is not more than fifty-four inhabitants to the hectare, as against 360 at Paris--complicate the problem of transport. At the present time the city is considering plans for reconstructing its thoroughfares and making diagonal streets, starting from the centre and following the direction of the main streams of traffic. In this way the city would reproduce the fan-wise distribution of railways over the Pampean plain. Buenos Aires is the intermediary between the provinces and oversea countries. It has three titles to this profitable part. In the first place, it is the chief centre of the import trade. The merchants of the cities in the interior are customers of the Buenos Aires importers, and are closely bound to them by a system of long-term credit. Buenos Aires is, secondly, the centre for the distribution of the European capital which has been used in the development of the country. Lastly, it divides immigrant workers amongst the provinces, just as it divides capital. As an immigration port its position is unrivalled. The efforts that were made to divert part of the immigrants to Bahía Blanca failed, and direct immigration to the Santa Fé province ceased at the close of the first period of colonization, about 1880. It is also at Buenos Aires that immigrants who are not going to settle in Argentina embark; re-emigration, which is regarded as a national plague by Argentine economists, is another source of profit to the capital. Hence the fortune of Buenos Aires is due in the first place to the close contact between the economic life of Argentina and that of Europe and North America. But its very growth has led to a gradual change in the part it plays in the interior of the country. In proportion as its population and wealth grew, it became a great national market. The products of the provinces go to it, not merely to meet its own needs as consumer, but in order to be distributed over the entire country. The figures of the cattle trade on the Buenos Aires market are instructive in this respect. From January to July 1919 there were 1,130,000 head of cattle sold, 240,000 being for the supply of the capital and 700,000 for the refrigerators.[147] Of the remainder, 120,000 were bought for fattening and 40,000 by the butchers of other towns. The capital of its own which has accumulated at Buenos Aires is invested either in real estate or in industry, which has found great profit both in the development of local consumption and in the great stock of labour provided by immigration. Buenos Aires is not now content to be merely an intermediary between the country and foreign lands. It contributes by its own resources and work to the task of colonization and the supply of manufactured articles to the agricultural and pastoral districts. It is, finally, a luxurious city, with every opportunity for the men who have grown rich by the rise in the price of lands to spend their income, and providing pleasure for the country folk who come up occasionally, tired of their laborious, rough and solitary existence. [147] During the same period the Argentinian refrigerators killed 1,490,000 head of cattle. Therefore, about half of these were bought at Buenos Aires. BIBLIOGRAPHY I give here only the most important and most recent works. A list of the articles I have consulted would be long and uninteresting, while a complete list of those which might have been consulted, and from which information might have been gleaned, is impossible. For a work of this character there is no account of travel, no study of the soil, the climate, or the vegetation, no statistical document or journal or purely historical text, that has not a perfect right to be regarded as a source. 1. PERIODICALS. Of the periodicals published in Argentina, and partly or wholly devoted to the study of the land and its development, the principal are:-- _Boletin del Instituto Geografico Argentino_ (Buenos Aires, since 1879; vol. i, 1879, vol. ii, 1881; one vol. yearly from 1881 to 1901; has appeared irregularly since). _Anales de la Sociedad Cientifica Argentina_ (Buenos Aires, 2 vols, yearly from 1876). _Revista de la Sociedad Geografica Argentina_ (Buenos Aires, only appeared from 1883 to 1889). _Boletin de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Córdoba_ (Córdoba, since 1874, 23 vols. to 1918). The publications of the Buenos Aires and La Plata museums also contain, besides copious anthropological, archæological, palæontological, and historical material, a large number of articles of interest to geographers:-- _Anales del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Buenos Aires._ Begins 1864, 25 vols., folio and quarto, to 1914. _Anales del Museo de la Plata._ First series 1890-1900, second series from 1907. _Revista del Museo de la Plata._ From 1890-1891, 17 vols. to 1910-1911. All these reviews contain especially articles on the parts of the country which were last explored--Patagonia, Chaco, Misiones. They contain little about the parts that were early colonized, though these are not always the best known. 2. MAPS. The maps published in the eighteenth century (D'Anville's map, 1733, in the _Lettres édifiantes_, 19th collection, Paris, 1734: Bellin's map in vol. ii of the _Histoire du Paraguay_ of the R.P.P.F.X. de Charlevoix, Paris, 1756, 3 vols., etc.) are based upon information collected by the Jesuit missionaries. D'Azara's map (1809) shows a remarkable advance. Important corrections of D'Azara's map are found in Woodbine Parish's map (1838). Brackebusch's two maps are essential documents: _Mapa del interior de la Republica Argentina_, por el Dr. L. Brackebusch, 1:1,000,000 (Gotha, 1835) and _Mapa geologico del interior de la Republica Argentina_, 1:1,000,000 (Gotha, 1890). The results of earlier work have been used in the _Atlas de la Republica Argentina construido y publicado por el Instituto Geografico Argentino_ (Buenos Aires, 1894), which includes a list of its sources. Since that date many maps have been published: maps of the various provinces and surveys drawn up by the railway companies, the Chile Frontier Commission (see Patagonia), the Mines Division (see Natural Regions), and the Ministerio de Obras Publicas (see River Routes). A brief account of the history of Argentine cartography and a list of maps of provinces will be found in Colonel B. Garcia Aparicio, _La carta de la Republica (Anuario del Instituto Geografico Militar_, i, 1912, Buenos Aires, pp. 1-27). The Military Geographical Institute has itself published a large number of maps, either on the basis of fresh surveys or by compiling earlier work, chiefly:-- About thirty sheets on the scale 1:25,000 (Pampean region) since 1904, interesting for studying the relief of the plain. "Governacion de la Pampa," 1:500,000 (Estado Mayor, 3A Division, Buenos Aires, 1909). Three sheets on the scale 1:1,000,000 (Buenos Aires, Concordia, and Corrientes). Buenos Aires, provisional edition 1911 of a map of Argentina on the scale 1:1,000,000, which is to comprise twenty-one sheets. A convenient reference map, though of no scientific value, is the map of the railways, on the scale 1:2,000,000, in three sheets, published in 1910 by the Ministerio de Obras Publicas. 3. STATISTICS. A summary of the chief statistics is published annually in _The Argentine Yearbook_ (from 1902 at Buenos Aires; from 1909 at Buenos Aires and London). The _Anuario de la Dirección General de Estadistica_, which has appeared since 1880 in one, two or three vols. quarto, gives the figures of trade, immigration, agriculture, railways, navigation, etc. (last volume consulted is for 1914, Buenos Aires, 1915). In the third volume of the _Anuario_ for 1912 will be found a list of the publications of the Dirección de Estadistica. Besides the _Anuario_ the Dirección publishes a bulletin with commercial statistics (last number consulted 181, "El comercio exterior Argentino en los primeros trimestres de 1918 y 1919," Buenos Aires, 1919). _Boletin_ 176 contains a review of Argentine trade from 1910 to 1917. The statistical department of the Ministry of Agriculture, under the direction of E. Lahitte, publishes the _Boletin Mensual de Estadistica Agricola_ (last volume consulted, xxi, 1919). 4. GENERAL DESCRIPTIONS.[148] [148] Besides the publications of the Jesuits, which can easily be consulted, a fairly large number of texts bearing upon the history of colonization have been published or re-published in the nineteenth and the twentieth century. See especially: _Relaciones Geograpicas de Indias_ (vol. i, 1881; vol. ii, 1885, Madrid). _Anales de la Biblioteca National, Buenos Aires, Publicación de documentos relativos al Rio de la Plata_ (from 1900). Publications of the _Junta de Historia y Numismatica Americana_ (Buenos Aires, 7 vols., octavo, from 1905 to 1915). Valuable notes on some of the most important historical documents will be found in E. Boman, _Antiquités de la region andine_ (see North-West Argentina). The most curious collection of all for the geographer is: Pedro de Angelis, _Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua y moderna de las provincias del Rio de la Plata_ (Buenos Aires, 1837, 6 vols, octavo, containing many itineraries, journals of expeditions, etc., together with notes by D'Azara). The scientific study of this part of South America may be traced back as far as D'Azara. His observations are collected in Don Felix de Azara, _Voyages dans l'Amérique méridionale_, published by Walckenaër (Paris, 1809, 4 vols. in 12^{mo} and atlas) and _Descripción e historia del Paraguay y del Rio de la Plata_, published by D. Agustin de Azara (Madrid, 1847, 2 vols. octavo). The _Voyage dans l'Amérique méridionale_ of Alcide d'Orbigny contains his observations on the Paraná, the province of Corrientes, the Pampa (Parchappe's voyages), and Patagonia (1828). (Historical section, vol. i, Paris, 1835; vol. ii, Paris, 1839-43; vol. iii, third part, geology, Paris, 1842). Darwin also visited the coast of Patagonia and crossed the Pampa (1833): _Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.S. "Adventure" and "Beagle"_ ... vol. iii, as _Journal_ and _Researches_ (London, 1839). Sir Woodbine Parish's work, _Buenos Aires and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata_ (London, 1838), is remarkably well-informed, and is based upon a thorough study of previous publications and archives. W. MacKann's _Ten Thousand Miles' Ride through the Argentine Republic_ (London, 1855, 2 vols.) is interesting, and the work of a close observer. Martin de Moussy, _Description géographique et statistique de la Confédération argentine_ (Paris, 1858, 3 vols. octavo and atlas), is unequal, but full of information. The work of H. Burmeister, _Description physique de la République argentine_ (Paris, 2 vols., 1876), is of little value, and has been overrated. Richard Napp, _Die Argentinische Republik_ (Buenos Aires, 1876, I vol. octavo), includes a valuable chapter by P. G. Lorentz on the flora ("Vegetationsverhaeltnisse Argentiniens," pp. 87-149). The second volume ("Territoire") of the _Second recensement de la République argentine_ (Buenos Aires, 1898) includes a joint geographical study by a number of writers. _Géologie_, by J. Valentin. _Climat_, by G. G. Davis. _Flore_, by E. L. Holmberg. Some attempt at a general consideration of our geographical knowledge of Argentina has been made by E. A. S. Delachaux, "Las regiones físicas de la Republica Argentina" (_Rev. Mus. Plata_, xv, 1908, pp. 102-131). Our physical knowledge of Argentina has been greatly promoted by the work of the Dirección de Minas. The results are summarized in the _Memorias de la Dirección general de Minas, Geologia, e Hidrologia_, published from 1908 onward (_Anales del Ministerio de Agricultura, Sección geologia, mineralogia, y mineria_: last volume published for the year 1915, Buenos Aires, vol. xii, No. 2). Special works are published in the same section of the _Anales del Min. Agric._, and in the _Boletines de la Dirección de Minas, Geologia, e Hidrologia_. See, especially, series B (Geologia). These reports and the accompanying maps are the basis of all work on the geography of Argentina. They already cover a great deal of Argentine territory. The work of Keidel, in particular, which is an essential contribution to the geological history of the South-American continent, and that of Windhausen, are largely concerned with physical geography, the study of the relief, and the influence of the climate on the landscape. A summary of the history of study of the soil of Argentina will be found in E. Hermitte, _La geologia y mineria Argentina in 1914_ (_Tercer Censo Nacional_, vol. vii, pp. 407-494). As to climate: Buenos Aires Ministerio de Agricultura, _Servicio Meteorologico Argentino, Historia y Organisacion, con un resumen de los resultados_, preparado bajo la dirección de G. G. Davis (Buenos Aires, 1914, quarto), dispenses one from consulting any previous works. There is a very complete bibliography of works on the botany and geographical botany of Argentina in F. Kurtz, "Essai d'une bibliographie botanique de l'Argentine" (2nd edition, _Bol. Acad. Nac. Ciencias Córdoba_, xx, 1915, pp. 369-467). There is a convenient summary of our knowledge of the primitive population in Felix F. Outes and Carlos Bruch, _Los aborigenes de la Rep. argentina_ (Buenos Aires, 1910). 5. NORTH-WEST ARGENTINA. The most complete general work on irrigation is that of E. A. Soldano, _La irrigación en la argentina_ (Buenos Aires, 1910, octavo). See also C. Wouters, "La irrigación en el valle de Lerma" (_An. Soc. Cient. Argentina_, lxvi, 1908, pp. 117-145). The best description of the Puna de Atacama and the country of the Valles is in Eric Boman, "Antiquités de la région andine de la Republique Argentine et du désert d'Atacama" (_Mission scientifique G. de Crequi, Montfort, et E. Senechal de la Grange_, Paris, 1908, 2 vols.). L. Brackebusch, "Ueber die Bodensverhaeltnisse des nordwestlichen Teiles der Argentinischen Republik mit Bezugnahme auf die Vegetation" (_Petermann's Mitteilungen_, 1893, p. 153) is a general description of the whole of north-western Argentina; but Brackebusch's description of his journey, "Viaje a la provincia de Jujuy" (_Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._, iv, 1883, pp. 9-17, 204-211, and 217-226) is fresher and more useful. I have mentioned in the note to p. 40 Bodenbender's work on the province of La Rioja. Of the various articles, from all quarters, on North-Western Argentina the following may be noticed:-- J. B. Ambrosetti, "Viaje a la Puna de Atacama de Salta a Caurchari" (_Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._, xxi, 1900, pp. 87-116). F. Kühn, "Descripción del camino desde Rosario de Lerma hasta Cachi" (_Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._, xxiv, 1910, pp. 42-50). H. Seckt, "Contribución al conocimiento de la vegetación del Nordeste de la Rep. Arg.--Valles de Calchaqui y Puna de Atacama" (_An. Soc. Cient. Arg._, lxxiv, 1912, pp. 185-225). Juan F. Barnabe, "Informe sobre el distrito minero de Tinogasta" (_An. Min. Agric., Seccion Geol. Mineralogia y Mineria_, x, No. 4, Buenos Aires, 1915). On the Puna de Atacama: L. Caplain, "Informe sobre el estado de la mineria en el Territorio de los Andes" (_An. Min. Agric., Seccion Geol. Mineralogia y Mineria_, vii, No. 1, Buenos Aires, 1912). On the sub-Andean chains:-- Guido Bonarelli, "Las Sierras subandinas del Alto y Aguaragüe y los yacimientos petroliferos del distrito minero de Tartagal" (_ibid._, viii, No. 4, Buenos Aires, 1913). See also Dirección General de Minas, Geol., e Hidrol, _Boletin_, series B, No. 9 (Buenos Aires, 1914). On the Chaco Salteño:-- L. Arnaud, "Expedición al Chaco" (_Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._, vi, 1885, pp. 201-210). On the part of the San Luis province that lies in the zone of the scrub:-- Avé-Lallemant, "Datos orograficos e hidrograficos sobre la Provincia de San Luis" (_Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._, v, 1884, pp. 191-196, and 222-224), and "Apuntes sobre represas y baldes en San Luis" (_An. Soc. Cient. Arg._, xi, 1881, pp. 178-188). A. L. Cravetti, "Investigación agricola en la Provincia de San Luis" (Buenos Aires, 1904, _An. Min. Agric._, Sección Agric., Botanica, y Agronomia, vol. i, No. 5). On the scrub south of Mar Chiquita:-- H. Frank, "La repoblación forestal en la region de la Mar Chiquita" (_Bol. Dep. gen. Agric. y Ganaderia_, Prov. Córdoba, ii, 1912, pp. 52-57), and "Contribución al conocimiento de la Mar Chiquita" (_ibid._, pp. 87-101). 6. TUCUMÁN AND MENDOZA. On Tucumán see Emilio Lahitte, _La industria azucarera, apuntes de actualidad_ (Buenos Aires, 1902). The best source of the economic history of the sugar industry is the file of the _Revista azucarera_ ("organa de los cultivadores de caña y fabricantes de azucar," Buenos Aires). On Mendoza, "Investigación vinicola" (Buenos Aires, 1903, _Anales_, Min. Agric., Sección Comercio, Industrias, y Economia, i, No. 1). 7. FORESTRY INDUSTRIES. Rudolf Leutgens, "Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Quebracho-Gebietes in Argentinien und Paraguay" (_Mitteil. Geogr. Ges. Hamburg_, xxv, 1911, pp. 1-70). 8. PATAGONIA. _A. The Tableland._ Apart from Villarino's journey on the Rio Negro in the eighteenth century, the first journey across the Patagonian tableland is that of G. Chaworth Musters, _At Home with the Patagonians_ (London, 1871). In the early volumes of the _Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._ will be found the results of various explorations between 1878 and 1885 by Argentine travellers. With this group of documents, which provided the first material for his conclusions, we may associate the geological studies of Florentino Ameghino, "L'âge des formations sédimentaires de Patagonie" (_An. Soc. Cient. Argentina_, l, 1900, pp. 109-130, 145-160, and 209-229; li, 1901, pp. 20-39 and 65-90; lii, 1901, pp. 189-197 and 244-250; liii, 1902, pp. 161-181, 220-249 and 282-342) and "Les formations sédimentaires du crétacé supérieur et du tertiaire en Patagonie" (_An. Mus. Nac. Buenos Aires_, series ii, vol. viii, 1906, pp. 1-568). On the southern part of Patagonia, south of 50° S. lat.:-- _Svenska Expeditionen till Magellanslaenderna (Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Schwedischen Expedition nach den Magellans Laendern_, 1895-1897, unter Leitung von Dr. Otto Nordenskjoeld, Band I, Geologie, Geographie und Anthropologie, Stockholm, 1907). On the Magellan region and that of the Santa Cruz:-- _Reports of the Princeton University Expeditions to Patagonia_, 1896-9, i, J. B. Hatcher, _Narrative of the Expeditions, Geography of Southern Patagonia_ (Princeton and Stuttgart, 1903). On the Rio Negro district:-- S. Roth, "Apuntes sobre la Geologia y la Paleontologia de las Territorios del Rio Negro y Neuquen" (_Rev. Mus. Plata_, ix, 1899, pp. 141-196). Of more recent works we must especially notice those of the engineers of the Dirección de Minas:-- R. Stappenbeck y F. Reichert, "Informe preliminar relativo a la parte sudeste del Territorio del Chubut" (_An. Min. Agric._, Sección Geol. Mineral., y Minas, vol. ix, No. 1, Buenos Aires, 1909). Ricardo Wichmann, various studies of the eastern part of the plateau of the Rio Negro (_ibid._, xiii, Nos. 1, 3 and 4, Buenos Aires, 1918 and 1919). A. Windhausen, studies on the Rio Negro and the Neuquen (_ibid._, x, No. 1, Buenos Aires, 1914). The geological results of Windhausen's work are summarized in articles that appeared in the _American Journal of Science_ (4th series, xlv, 1918, pp. 1-53) and in the _Bol. Acad. Nac. Ciencias Córdoba_ (xxiii, 1918, pp. 97-128 and 319-364). We must add G. Rivereto, "La valle del Rio Negro" (_Bol. Soc. Geologica Ital._, xxxi, 1912, pp. 181-237, and xxxii, 1913, pp. 101-142). _B. The Andes._ Numerous articles in the _Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._ and the _An. Soc. Cient. Argentina_, immediately after the military expedition of 1879-1880 (Host, Avé-Lallemant, etc.). A detailed study of the Andean region was undertaken at the time of the frontier-quarrel between Argentina and Chile, and this led to a number of publications. The work done by the Argentinians under F. P. Moreno is used in _Frontera Argentina-Chilena, Memoria presentada al tribunal nombrado por el Gobernio de su Majestad Britanica_ (London, 1902, 2 vols. quarto, 1 vol. maps, and 1 vol. photographs), and in the _Breve Replica a la memoria Chilena_ (London, 1 vol. quarto, 1902). See a summary of the results in L. Gallois, "Les Andes de Patagonie" (_Annales de Géographie_, x, 1901, pp. 232-259). In the _Revista_ and the _Anales_ of the La Plata Museum will be found part of the research made during this period (1897-1900) by Argentine experts; especially the work of Burckhardt and Wehrli on the Neuquen Cordillera. The Chilean work which served as the basis of the _Statement presented on behalf of Chile in reply to the Argentine Report_ (London, 1902, 4 vols. and 2 vols. as appendices) is, on the whole, less valuable. Of later travellers we must mention P. D. Quensel, "On the influence of the Ice Age on the continental watershed of Patagonia" (_Bull. Geol. Inst. Univ. Upsala_, ix, 1908-9, pp. 60-92), and "Geologisch-petrographische studien in der Patagonischen Cordillera" (_ibid._, xi, 1912, pp. 1-114). Very important surveys in the Cordillera and on the plateau of the Rio Negro were made under the direction of Bailey Willis (_Northern Patagonia_, Ministry of Public Works, Bureau of Railways, Argentine Republic; text and maps by the Comisión de Estudios hidrologicos, Bailey Willis Director, 1911-1914, New York, 1914, 1 vol and atlas). On the Patagonian forest (Argentine slope from 40° S. lat. to Cape Horn) see Max Rothkugel, _Los Bosques Patagonicos_ (Minist. Agric., Dirección Gen. Agric. y Defensa Agricola: Officina de Bosques y Yerbales, Buenos Aires, 1916). 9. THE PAMPEAN REGION. The occupation of the western part of the Pampa between 1875 and 1880 led to a fairly large amount of research. The most important work is the _Informe oficial de la Comisión cientifica agregada al Estado Mayor General de la Expedición al Rio Negro_, vol. iii, _Geologia_, by Dr. Ad. Doering (Buenos Aires, 1882). We must also notice G. Avé-Lallemant, "Excursión al Territorio indio del Sud" (_Bol. Inst. Geogr. Argent._, ii, 1881, pp. 41-49); D. Dupont, "Notas geograficas sobre el païs de los Ranqueles" (_Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._, 1790, pp. 47-56); and Est. Zeballos, _Descripción amena de la Republica Argentina_, vol. i, _Viaje al païs de las Araucanos_ (Buenos Aires, 1881). Of general works on the Pampa and the Pampean deposits: Fl. Ameghino, _La formación Pampeana_ (Paris and Buenos Aires, 1881), and "Las formaciones sedimentarias de la región litoral de Mar del Plata y Chapalmalan" (_An. Mus. Nac. Buenos Aires_, series ii, vol. x, 1908, pp. 348-428). G. Bodenbender, "La cuenca del valle del rio Primero en Córdoba: Descripción geologica del valle del rio Primero desde la Sierra de Córdoba hasta la Mar Chiquita" (_Bol. Acad. Nac. Ciencias Córdoba_, xii, 1890, pp. 1-54); and "Die Pampa Ebene in Osten der Sierra von Córdoba in Argentinien" (_Petermann's Mitteilungen_, 1893, pp. 201-237 and 258-264). Santiago Roth, "Beobachtungen ueber Entstehung und Alter der Pampasformationen in Argentinien" (_Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geol. Ges._, xi, 1888, pp. 375-464); "Beitrag zur Gliederung der Sedimentablagerungen in Patagonien und der Pampas Region" (_Neues Jahrbuch für Min., Geol., und Paläont._, Beilage, Band xxvi, Stuttgart, 1908, pp. 92-150); and "La construcción de un Canal de Bahía Blanca a las provincias andinas bajo el punto de vista hidrogeologico" (_Rev. Museo de la Plata_, xvi, 1909). _Nouvelles recherches sur la formation pampéenne et l'homme fossile de la Republique argentine._ A collection of scientific articles published by R. Lehmann-Nitsche (_Rev. Mus. Plata_, xiv, 1907, pp. 143-488), which contains, especially, one by C. Burckhardt, "La formation pampéenne de Buenos Aires et Santa Fé," and one by Ad. Doering, "La formation pampéenne de Córdoba." Ales Hrdlicka, _Early Man in South America_ (Smithsonian Institution, Bull. 52, Washington, 1912--geological part by Bailey Willis). On the district of the Central Pampa, R. Stappenbeck, "Investigaciones hidrogeologicas de los valles de Chapalco y Quehuë y sus alrededores" (Min. Agric., Dir. Gen. Minas, Geol., e Hidrol., Bol. No. 4, Buenos Aires, 1913). On various points in detail one may consult:-- Lavalle y Medici, "Las nivelaciones de la Provincia" (_Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._, vii, 1866, pp. 57-71). P. A. Bovet, _El Problema de los Medanos en el Pais_ (Buenos Aires, 1910). R. Velasco, "Los Medanos de la Provincia de Córdoba" (_Bol. Dep. Gen. Agric. y Ganaderia_, Prov. Córdoba, i, pp. 155-173). Among descriptions of an economic character, which are generally of poor value, we must make an exception in favour of Emile Daireaux, _La vie et les moeurs à la Plata_ (Paris, 1889). A few useful notes on colonization will be found in Teod. Morsbah, "Estudios economicos sobre el Sud de la Provincia de Buenos Aires" (_Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._, ix, 1888, pp. 143-151) and in E. Segui, "La provincia de Buenos Aires" (_Bol. Inst. Geog. Argent._, xix, 1898, pp. 419-440). A very useful summary of the results of a general inquiry into agriculture will be found in "Investigación agricola en la Rep. argent." (_Anales Min. Agric. Agronomia_, vol. i, No. 1, 2 and 3, Buenos Aires, 1904: "Preliminares," by Carlos D. Girola, "Investigación agricola en la region septentrional de la Provincia de Buenos Aires," by Ricardo J. Huergo, and "Investigación agricola en la Provincia de Santa Fé," by Hugo Miatello). With this inquiry is associated G. D. Girola, _El cultivo del trigo en la provincia de Buenos Aires_ (Buenos Aires, 1904). Agricultural censuses have been taken repeatedly. For 1888 F. Latzina, _L'agriculture et le bétail dans la République argentine_ (Paris, 1889). For 1895 (_Secundo censo_, see Population) the results are given in C. P. Salas, _Bureau central de Statistique de la province de Buenos Aires_ and _L'agriculture, l'élevage, et le commerce dans la province en 1895_ (La Plata, 1897; maps by Delachaux). For 1908, _Censo agro-pecuario nacional_. _La ganaderia y la agricultura en 1908_ (Buenos Aires, 3 vols. quarto, 1909). Vol. iii contains a series of monographs dealing not only with the Pampean region, but the economic history of the whole country. For 1914 (_Tercer censo_, see Population) the publication of vol. v, relating to agriculture, is unfortunately delayed. There is also available a census of cattle made in 1915 for the Buenos Aires province, _Provincia de Buenos Aires, Min. Obras Publicas, Censo Ganadero_ (1916). 10. THE RAILWAYS. For the history of the railways see Rebuelto, "Historia del desarollo de los ferrocarriles argentinas" (_Bol. Obras Publicas_, vol. v, 1911, pp. 113-172, vol. vi, 1913, pp. 1-48 and 81-110, and vol. viii, 1913, pp. 1-32), and the entire series of the _Boletin de Obras Publicas_. A sort of annual of the Argentine railways has been published every year since 1906 under the title _Killik's Argentine Railway Manual_ (London, 1 vol. with map, last issue 1918). 11. THE PARANÁ. E. A. S. Delachaux, "Los problemas geograficos del territorio Argentino" (_Rev. Univ. Buenos Aires_, 1906, v), includes a study of the floods of the Paraná. The chief source is the memoir of Repossini, "Memoria sobre el rio Paraná" (_Bol. Obras Publicas_, vol. vi, 1912, pp. 141-168 and 254-264, vol. vii, 1912, pp. 31-48 and 163-186, and vol. viii, 1913, pp. 33-99). It contains on a reduced scale the map issued by the Ministry of Public Works, which is not available in France. The defect is supplied by the English Admiralty Charts, "Rio de la Plata," 1869 (No. 2544 in the Catalogue of Admiralty Charts), and "River Paraná," parts i, ii, iii, iv, v, and vi of 1905 (Nos. 1982/A and 1982/B). There is an interesting economic summary in W. S. Barclay, "The River Paraná, an economic survey" (_Geogr. Journal_, xxxiii, 1909, pp. 1-10). On the estuary:-- Alej. Foster, "Regimen del Rio de la Plata y su corrección" (_An. Soc. Cient. Argent._, lii, 1901, pp. 209-234). G. Rovereto, "Studi di geomorfologia argentina," ii, "Il rio della Plata" (_Bol. Soc. Geol. Ital._, xxx, 1911). 12. POPULATION. Besides municipal and provincial censuses, there have been three general censuses: First census made in 1869, one folio volume published in 1872. I have only been able to consult _Oficina del Censo_. _Informe sobre la operación y resultado del Primer censo argentino_ (Buenos Aires, 1870, octavo). Second census of the Argentine Republic, May 10, 1895 (2 vols, quarto, Buenos Aires, 1898). _Tercer Censo Nacional levantado el 1º de junio de 1914_ (10 vols, quarto, Buenos Aires, 1916-1917). Only the fifth volume, on agriculture, is not yet to hand. A geographical interpretation of the distribution of the population was attempted by E. A. S. Delachaux, "La población de la Rep. Argent." (_Rev. Univ. Buenos Aires_, iii, 1905). INDEX Abipones, the, 24 _Acequia_, the, 45, 69, 83 Aconcagua, 19, 38, 59, 70, 71 Æolian deposits, 21, 124, 170 Agricultural Centres Law, the, 202 _Aguadas_, 61, 210 _Algarrobas_, 39, 54, 64 Alhuampa, 113 Alumine, the, 128, 129 Ambrosetti, J. B., 136, 282 Ameghino, F., 168 Andalgala, 42 Andes, the Argentine, 19, 37, 46, 54, 57, 70, 126 Andes, the Patagonian, 19, 120, 126, 129 Añecon, 122, 151 Antofágasta, 54, 55 Apipé rapids, the, 239 Apostoles, 116 Araucanians, the, 24, 121 Argentine hydrographic service, 254 _Arrieros_, the, 51, 216, 217 Arroyo del Rey, 26 Asses, trade in, 53 Atamisqui, 97, 98 Atuel, the, 81, 84 Azcarate, 51, 52 Bahía Blanca, 25, 32, 148, 155, 164, 168, 173, 198, 223, 227, 271 Bajada Grande, the, 242, 243 Bamboo, 133 _Bañados_, the, 62, 63, 67, 97, 98, 101 Barra del Indio, the, 253 Barrancas, 17, 245 Basalt, 122, 125, 149 Basques in Argentina, 183, 186 Bellavista, 246 Bellville, 167, 188 Bermejo, the, 40, 115 _Bodegueros_, 87-90 Bodenbender, G., 40, 57, 168, 286 Bolivia, relations with, 48, 50, 52, 53, 70 Boman, E., 47, 282 Brackebusch, L., 48, 54, 278, 282 Brazil, 109, 116, 182, 235 Breeding, 22, 131, 179, 188, 189 British Navy in Argentine waters, 238, 248, 252 Buenos Aires, 17, 29, 30, 32, 57, 109, 112, 155, 159, 164, 184, 209, 218, 220, 239, 254, 259, 272-275 Burruyacu, Sierra de, 72, 73 Calchaqui, 48, 54 _Caldenes_,163 _Cañadas_, 107 _Cañadones_, 122-141 Candelaria, 110, 116 _Cañeros_, the, 74, 75 Carcaraña, the, 171, 212, 246 Carilaufquen, the, 141 Carmen, 130 Carri Lauquen, Lake, 128, 151, 157 Catamarca, 31, 43, 45, 55, 80 Cattle, creole, 22, 131, 179-183, 189 Cattle, pedigree, 22, 188, 189 Cattle fairs, 209 Cattle trade, the, 48, 50, 53, 66, 80, 131, 179-189, 206-208 Catuna, 62 Cedar-forests, 109 Central Argentine Railway, 76, 191, 220, 225 Central Córdoba, 74, 76, 91, 104, 221 Central Norte Railway, 114 _Cerco_, the, 63 Cerro Payen, the, 119, 136 Cerros Colorados, 150, 151 Chaco, the, 32, 78, 96, 104-115 Chaco, Salteño, the, 58-60 Chamical, 62 _Chañares_, 163 Charcoal-burners, 112 Chicago and Buenos Aires, 17 Chile, relations with, 25, 29, 30, 48, 49, 53, 54, 57, 134, 137, 138, 204, 205, 210 Chile road, the, 210, 213 Chilean flour, 79 Chiriguanos, the, 79 Chivilcoy, 190, 194, 195, 212, 263 Choele Choel, 133, 134, 149 Chosmalal, 120, 137, 144 Chubut, the, 138, 140, 155 Climate, 46, 70, 71, 72, 77, 80, 92, 119, 120, 139 _Coilrue_, the, 127 Colalao del Valle, 42 Colastiné, 226, 253 Colonia, 251, 252 Colonies, the, 191, 193, 195, 196 Colonization Companies, 202 _Colonos_,75 Colorado, the, 172 Conlara, 178 Cordillera, the, 19, 20, 48, 81, 121, 126, 129 Córdoba, 29, 33, 50, 57, 164 Córdoba, Sierra de, 209 Corrientes, 32, 49, 102, 107, 108, 189, 215, 257, 269 _Costa_, the, 41, 42, 60 Cruz Alta, 73, 74, 75 Cuarto, the Rio, 25, 211 Cuenca Vidal, 155 Cumbre Tunnel, 222 Cuyo, 79, 85, 86, 96 Cypresses, 127 Daireaux, E., 187, 193, 287 Dairies, 186, 190, 193 Dams, 69-70 Darwin, C, 23, 123, 133, 170, 217, 280 D'Azara, F., 25, 28, 49, 102, 174, 180, 212, 279, 280 Dead valleys, 122, 129 _Demarcación_, 44 Diamante, 248, 249 Diamante, the, 81, 84 Diez y seis de Octubre, 120, 144 Doering, A., 168, 286 Dolores, 178 D'Orbigny, A., 130, 131, 133, 142, 180, 236, 237, 280 Drainage, 83 Drought, 65, 66, 105, 120 Dulce, the Rio, 97, 98 Dunes, 173, 174, 181 Durham cattle, 189, 207 English Bank, the, 252 Entre Rios, 169, 182, 186, 194 Epecuen Lake, 212 Exhibition, San Francisco, 7 _Falda_, the, 73, 74 Famatina, Sierra de la, 40 Fiords, the Patagonian, 20, 128 Flax, 176, 196, 197 Floods, 97, 99, 211 Floods on the rivers, 240, 241 Forests, 23, 96-118 Forts, the early, 26, 27 Frontiers, early, 25 Funes, Dean G., 30, 179 _Galeria_, the, 218 Gallegos, 120, 121, 136 Garcia, Colonel, 27, 182, 183, 210 _Garrapate_, the, 22, 189, 207 _Gauchos_, 218 Gauge, differences of, 221, 222, 231, 232 General La valle, 165 Geological formations, 40, 121, 122, 124-126, 129, 166, 168 Glaciers, the Patagonian, 19, 36, 123, 128, 129 Gold, 138 Goods, traffic, analysis of, 228-231 Granite, 121, 125, 149 Guapichas, 54 Guayra, the, 246 Harvest, labour and the, 266 Helms, A. Z., 51 Hides, 178-180 Holmberg, E. L., 23, 281 Hrdlicka, A., 168, 287 Huari, 56 Hutchinson, F. J., 50 Immigration, 9, 116, 137, 191, 263, 264 Indians, relations with the, 24-28, 47, 131-135 Indians, the Patagonian, 131-135 Ingeniero White, 226 _Intrusos_, 139, 157 _Invernadas_, the, 51, 53, 60, 65, 183 Irrigation, 36, 41-46, 61, 64, 74, 83-86, 144, 154 Itinerary of author, 6 Ituzaingo, 246, 257 Japan, trade with, 8 Jegou, A., 205 Jerked meat, 115 Jesuit missions, 110 Jujuy, 38, 56, 77 Junin, 194 Labour-supply, 76, 77, 79, 88, 108-111 Lacar, Lake, 144 Land-ownership, 61, 201-203 Land, speculation in, 201 Lanin, Mount, 128-147 Larch, the, 146 La Rioja, 32, 33, 59, 80, 209 Ledesma, 78 _Lenga_, the, 127 Lima, 29, 48 Limay, the, 120, 123, 124, 130, 146, 154 Lincoln sheep, 184 Los Sauces, 41 Lucerne-farms, 53, 67, 155, 176-178, 196 Lumbrera, Sierra de la, 58, 70, 77 MacKann, W., 180, 280 Maize, 71, 192-194, 197, 198, 230 _Mallin_, 124, 125, 142, 151 _Manantiales_, 142, 148 Maquinchao, 148, 150, 151, 153, 158 Mar Chiquita, 113, 162, 173, 176, 191 Markets, Argentine, 203-210 Martin Garcia, 166, 251, 253 Matacos, the, 79 _Maté_, 33, 109-112, 117 Matto Grosso, 117, 235 _Mayten_, 128 Mejia, Ramos, 224 Mendoza, 19, 32, 33, 50, 57, 79-93, 218, 270, 271 _Merced_, the, 61, 67 Mercedario, 19 Merino sheep, 184 Mesopotamia, the Argentine, 18 Miatello, 176 Migrations of cattle, 65, 143, 157-159 Migrations of indigenous population, 264-267 Misiones, 33, 109-112, 115 _Molle_, 127 _Monte_, the, 22, 96 Montevideo, 238, 251 Moussy, Martin de, 25, 50, 204, 210 Muleteers, the, 216-7 Mule-trade, the, 49, 51-2, 53, 55 Nahuel Huapi, Lake, 120, 126, 127, 130, 132, 133, 144, 225, 245, 247 Navigation, statistics of, 258 Negro, the Rio, 32, 80, 119, 121, 130, 153 Negroes captured, 131 Neuquen, the, 129, 130, 137, 138, 153 Oases, 36, 41, 86 Oats, 199 _Obrajes_, the, 103-105, 107 Olavarria, 194 Olta, 62 _Omber_, the, 163 Ortiz Bank, the, 252 Otway Water, 129, 136 Pagancillo, 40 Pampa, the, 17, 21, 33, 161-208, 261, 262 Pampa, extent of the, 102 Parabolic tariffs, 226 Paracao, 248 Paraguay, 109, 110, 236, 269 Paraguay, the river, 116, 165, 235, 241, 247 _Paraisos_, 175 Paraná, the, 17, 26, 111, 112, 171, 214, 234, 236-50 Paraná de las Palmas, the, 250, 252, 253 Paraná Guazu, the, 251 Paraná Mini, the, 253 Parish, Sir Woodbine, 30, 100, 130, 182, 213, 215, 261, 280 Paso Paraguayo, the, 250 _Pasto dulce_, 23, 24, 183 _Pasto duro_, 23, 24, 183 _Pasto fuerto_, 23 Patagones, 153, 154 Patagonia, 119-160 Pehuenches, the, 24, 131 Peru, relations with, 28, 29, 49, 51 Peru road, the, 209, 210, 213, 214, 216 Piedra Blanca, 43 Pine forests, 109 Plata, Rio de la, 28, 29, 234, 239 Playa Honda, the, 252, 253 Poma, 56 Poncel, B., 31, 53 Population, growth of, 261-263 Ports, 225 Portuguese, relations with the, 235 Posadas, 111, 116, 242, 248, 249 Potatoes, 205 Pozos del Barca Grande, 253 Protectionism, 93, 94 Puerto Belgrano, 232 Pumpkin, the, 100 _Puna_, the, 37, 38 Puna de Atacama, 47, 48 Punta Arenas, 136 _Quebracho_, the, 23, 96, 103, 256-7 Quebracho Herrado, 26 _Quebradas_, 38, 41, 53 Quetriquile, 151 Quinto, the Rio, 26 Quiroga, 59 Railways, 74, 76, 91, 104, 114, 191, 211, 220-233 Railway tariffs, 226 Rainfall, 21, 38, 39, 71, 72, 80, 120-121, 164 Ranqueles, the, 24, 131 Refrigerators, 143, 187, 188, 209 Repossini, 254 _Represa_, the, 64, 210 Riachucho, 247 Rincones, 180 River-floods, 240, 241, 243 River-traffic, 235-258 Roads, 210-220 Roca, General, 26, 27 Rosario, 92, 164, 171, 173, 191, 215, 221, 239, 245, 253 Rosario de Lerma, 55, 56 Rosas, General, 30, 238 _Saladeros_, 184, 189 Salado, the, 23, 26, 112, 171 Sali, the, 69, 77 _Salitral_, 124, 149 Salt Lakes, the, 24 Salt Road, the, 212 Salta, 29, 32, 33, 38, 46, 48, 51, 59, 70, 214, 218 San Cristobal, 114 San Feliciano, 248 San Javier, 110, 114, 249 San José, 116, 134 San Juan, 19, 32, 33, 50, 66, 79, 82 San Lorenzo, 249 San Luis, 33 San Pedro, 78, 289, 250 San Rafaël, 80, 81, 82, 172, 177 Sancho, 71 Santa Cruz, the, 120, 121, 122 Santa Fé, 26, 52, 112, 114, 175, 191, 196, 198, 253 Santa Maria, 55, 56, 77 Santiago del Estero, 26, 28, 50, 60, 77, 97, 113 Saw-mills, 106-8 Scrub, the, 22, 96 Seasonal migrations, 266 Selective breeding, 21, 179, 188, 189 Sheep-breeding, 139-144, 183-186 Shipping, 236, 240, 253-259 Sierra de los Llanos, 59-63, 67 Sierra d'Ulapes, 66 Somuncura, 122, 152 Spaniards, the early, 28, 29, 48 Stage-coaches, 210 Straits of Magellan, 129 Sugar-industry, the, 69-79 _Suerte de agua_, the, 85 Tablelands, the alluvial, 17, 37 Tandil, Sierra de, 25, 172, 179, 182, 184, 190 Tannin, 102, 105, 106, 107 Tehuelches, the, 131 Texas fever, 22, 189 Teran, M. J. B., 7 Tercero, the Rio, 211, 213 Tierra del Fuego, 128, 140 Tinogasta, 48 Tobacco, 101 Tobas, the, 24, 26 _Toma_, the, 63 _Tosca_, the, 123, 172, 173, 178 Tostado, 114 Trans-Andean railway, 220, 221, 222 Transhumation, 143, 156-159, 182 Transport, evolution of, 215-220, 228 Travelling, early difficulties of, 211-219, 237-238 _Travesias_, the, 52, 60, 142, 211 Tronador, Mount, 128, 147 _Troperos_, the, 217-19 Tucumán, 29, 32, 33, 69-79, 218, 221, 270, 271 Tunuyan, the, 81, 82 Tupungato, 19 _Turno_, the, 44, 85, 86 United States, comparison with 32, 34 United States, trade with, 8 Urban centres, 268, 269 Urquiza, 26, 180, 215 Uruguay, 116 Uruguay, the river, 110, 235, 238, 259 Useless Bay, 129 Valcheta, 122, 123, 149, 150, 153 Valle de Lerma, 48, 54 Valle Viejo, 43, 45 _Valles_, 37-48 _Vegas_, 54, 144 Veinte cinco de Mayo, 194, 262 Ventana, Sierra de, 172, 182, 198, 199 Villa Concepción, 110 Villa Maria, 113, 213 Villa Mercedes, 25, 66, 113, 164, 174, 177, 207, 221 Villa Paraná, 245 Villa Rica, 110, 111 Villarino, 130, 133 Villa Urquiza, 244 Vilque, 56 _Viñatores_, 87-93 Vineyards, 80-93 _Volcada de agua_, 45 Volcanic eruptions, 122, 125 Wagons, travel by, 216, 217 War, the European, effect of, 8 Water-power in Patagonia, 146 Water-rights, 43-46, 61, 64, 84-86 Water-supply, 36, 38, 39, 41-46, 61, 64, 72, 83-86, 141, 154, 181 Welsh in Patagonia, 138 Wheat, 190-192, 194, 198, 199, 230 Wheelwright, 221 Wild cattle, 179-181 Willis, Bailey, 138, 146, 147, 152, 171 Wind, action of the, 20, 124, 170 Wine-industry, the, 80-95 Wool, 139, 183-185 _Yerbales_, the, 49, 109-112, 115, 117 Yguassu, the, 242, 246, 257 Zapala, 156, 158 Zeballos, 204, 213 _Zonda_, the, 41 _Printed in Great Britain by_ UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, LONDON AND WOKING * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Small capitals have been rendered as ALL CAPITALS. Apparent printer's errors have been corrected. The following table lists changes made by the transcribers. +----+---------------+---------------+ |PAGE| CHANGED TO | ORIGINAL | +----+---------------+---------------+ | 9| inmigración | immigración | | 9| después | despues | | 14| Santa | Sante | | 22| físicas | fisicas | | 22| República | Republica | | 23| República | Republica | | 23| República | Republica | | 52| Córdoba, | Córdoba | | 82| melt | meet | | 82| Estero | Eestero | | 91| wines | vines | | 84| Sometimes | Somtimes | | 91| regards | regrads | | 103| Santa | Sante | | 103| quebracho | quebraco | | 105| small | mall | | 105| alongs | along | | 112| crops | props | | 113| quebrachos | quegrachas | | 114| Santa | Sante | | 136|Forschungsreise|Farschungsreise| | 142| than | that | | 157| are | are are | | 167| campaign | compaign | | 175| enlarge | enlarges | | 181| Santa | Sente | | 193| dairy | diary | | 219| galera | galeria | | 266| the | he | | 291| 248 | 24 | | 287| Hrdlicka | Hrdlicker | | 295| 240 | 740 | |----+---------------+---------------+ 
5350	----	This eBook was created by Steve Solomon (www.soilandhealth.org) and Charles Aldarondo (pg@aldarondo.net). FARMERS OF FORTY CENTURIES OR PERMANENT AGRICULTURE IN CHINA, KOREA AND JAPAN By F. H. KING, D. Sc. 1911 PREFACE By DR. L. H. BAILEY. We have not yet gathered up the experience of mankind in the tilling of the earth; yet the tilling of the earth is the bottom condition of civilization. If we are to assemble all the forces and agencies that make for the final conquest of the planet, we must assuredly know how it is that all the peoples in all the places have met the problem of producing their sustenance out of the soil. We have had few great agricultural travelers and few books that describe the real and significant rural conditions. Of natural history travel we have had very much; and of accounts of sights and events perhaps we have had too many. There are, to be sure, famous books of study and travel in rural regions, and some of them, as Arthur Young's "Travels in France," have touched social and political history; but for the most part, authorship of agricultural travel is yet undeveloped. The spirit of scientific inquiry must now be taken into this field, and all earth-conquest must be compared and the results be given to the people that work. This was the point of view in which I read Professor King's manuscript. It is the writing of a well-trained observer who went forth not to find diversion or to depict scenery and common wonders, but to study the actual conditions of life of agricultural peoples. We in North America are wont to think that we may instruct all the world in agriculture, because our agricultural wealth is great and our exports to less favored peoples have been heavy; but this wealth is great because our soil is fertile and new, and in large acreage for every person. We have really only begun to farm well. The first condition of farming is to maintain fertility. This condition the oriental peoples have met, and they have solved it in their way. We may never adopt particular methods, but we can profit vastly by their experience. With the increase of personal wants in recent time. the newer countries may never reach such density of population as have Japan and China; but we must nevertheless learn the first lesson in the conservation of natural resources, which are the resources of the land. This is the message that Professor King brought home from the East. This book on agriculture should have good effect in establishing understanding between the West and the East. If there could be such an interchange of courtesies and inquiries on these themes as is suggested by Professor King, as well as the interchange of athletics and diplomacy and commerce, the common productive people on both sides should gain much that they could use; and the results in amity should be incalculable. It is a misfortune that Professor King could not have lived to write the concluding "Message of China and Japan to the World." It would have been a careful and forceful summary of his study of eastern conditions. At the moment when the work was going to the printer, he was called suddenly to the endless journey and his travel here was left incomplete. But he bequeathed us a new piece of literature, to add to his standard writings on soils and on the applications of physics and devices to agriculture. Whatever he touched he illuminated. CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA TO HONGKONG AND CANTON UP THE SI-KIANG, WEST RIVER EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND TEXTILE MATERIALS TRAMPS AFIELD THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT SILK CULTURE THE TEA INDUSTRY ABOUT TIENTSIN MANCHURIA AND KOREA RETURN TO JAPAN INTRODUCTION A word of introduction is needed to place the reader at the best view point from which to consider what is said in the following pages regarding the agricultural practices and customs of China, Korea and Japan. It should be borne in mind that the great factors which today characterize, dominate and determine the agricultural and other industrial operations of western nations were physical impossibilities to them one hundred years ago, and until then had been so to all people. It should be observed, too, that the United States as yet is a nation of but few people widely scattered over a broad virgin land with more than twenty acres to the support of every man, woman and child, while the people whose practices are to be considered are toiling in fields tilled more than three thousand years and who have scarcely more than two acres per capita,* more than one-half of which is uncultivable mountain land. *[Footnote: This figure was wrongly stated in the first edition as one acre, owing to a mistake in confusing the area of cultivated land with total area.] Again, the great movement of cargoes of feeding stuffs and mineral fertilizers to western Europe and to the eastern United States began less than a century ago and has never been possible as a means of maintaining soil fertility in China, Korea or Japan, nor can it be continued indefinitely in either Europe or America. These importations are for the time making tolerable the waste of plant food materials through our modern systems of sewage disposal and other faulty practices; but the Mongolian races have held all such wastes, both urban and rural, and many others which we ignore, sacred to agriculture, applying them to their fields. We are to consider some of the practices of a virile race of some five hundred millions of people who have an unimpaired inheritance moving with the momentum acquired through four thousand years; a people morally and intellectually strong, mechanically capable, who are awakening to a utilization of all the possibilities which science and invention during recent years have brought to western nations; and a people who have long dearly loved peace but who can and will fight in self defense if compelled to do so. We had long desired to stand face to face with Chinese and Japanese farmers; to walk through their fields and to learn by seeing some of their methods, appliances and practices which centuries of stress and experience have led these oldest farmers in the world to adopt. We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps thirty or even forty centuries, for their soils to be made to produce sufficiently for the maintenance of such dense populations as are living now in these three countries. We have now had this opportunity and almost every day we were instructed, surprised and amazed at the conditions and practices which confronted us whichever way we turned; instructed in the ways and extent to which these nations for centuries have been and are conserving and utilizing their natural resources, surprised at the magnitude of the returns they are getting from their fields, and amazed at the amount of efficient human labor cheerfully given for a daily wage of five cents and their food, or for fifteen cents, United States currency, without food. The three main islands of Japan in 1907 had a population of 46,977,003 maintained on 20,000 square miles of cultivated field. This is at the rate of more than three people to each acre, and of 2,349 to each square mile; and yet the total agricultural imports into Japan in 1907 exceeded the agricultural exports by less than one dollar per capita. If the cultivated land of Holland is estimated at but one-third of her total area, the density of her population in 1905 was, on this basis, less than one-third that of Japan in her three main islands. At the same time Japan is feeding 69 horses and 56 cattle, nearly all laboring animals, to each square mile of cultivated field, while we were feeding in 1900 but 30 horses and mules per same area, these being our laboring animals. As coarse food transformers Japan was maintaining 16,500,000 domestic fowl, 825 per square mile, but only one for almost three of her people. We were maintaining, in 1900, 250,600,000 poultry, but only 387 per square mile of cultivated field and yet more than three for each person. Japan's coarse food transformers in the form of swine, goats and sheep aggregated but 13 to the square mile and provided but one of these units for each 180 of her people while in the United States in 1900 there were being maintained, as transformers of grass and coarse grain into meat and milk, 95 cattle, 99 sheep and 72 swine per each square mile of improved farms. In this reckoning each of the cattle should be counted as the equivalent of perhaps five of the sheep and swine, for the transforming power of the dairy cow is high. On this basis we are maintaining at the rate of more than 646 of the Japanese units per square mile, and more than five of these to every man, woman and child, instead of one to every 180 of the population, as is the case in Japan. Correspondingly accurate statistics are not accessible for China but in the Shantung province we talked with a farmer having 12 in his family and who kept one donkey, one cow, both exclusively laboring animals, and two pigs on 2.5 acres of cultivated land where he grew wheat, millet, sweet potatoes and beans. Here is a density of population equal to 3,072 people, 256 donkeys, 256 cattle and 512 swine per square mile. In another instance where the holding was one and two-thirds acres the farmer had 10 in his family and was maintaining one donkey and one pig, giving to this farm land a maintenance capacity of 3,840 people, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs to the square mile, or 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs to one of our forty-acre farms which our farmers regard too small for a single family. The average of seven Chinese holdings which we visited and where we obtained similar data indicates a maintenance capacity for those lands of 1,783 people, 212 cattle or donkeys and 399 swine,--1,995 consumers and 399 rough food transformers per square mile of farm land. These statements for China represent strictly rural populations. The rural population of the United States in 1900 was placed at the rate of 61 per square mile of improved farm land and there were 30 horses and mules. In Japan the rural population had a density in 1907 of 1,922 per square mile, and of horses and cattle together 125. The population of the large island of Chungming in the mouth of the Yangtse river, having an area of 270 square miles, possessed, according to the official census of 1902, a density of 3,700 per square mile and yet there was but one large city on the island, hence the population is largely rural. It could not be other than a matter of the highest industrial, educational and social importance to all nations if there might be brought to them a full and accurate account of all those conditions which have made it possible for such dense populations to be maintained so largely upon the products of Chinese, Korean and Japanese soils. Many of the steps, phases and practices through which this evolution has passed are irrevocably buried in the past but such remarkable maintenance efficiency attained centuries ago and projected into the present with little apparent decadence merits the most profound study and the time is fully ripe when it should be made. Living as we are in the morning of a century of transition from isolated to cosmopolitan national life when profound readjustments, industrial, educational and social, must result, such an investigation cannot be made too soon. It is high time for each nation to study the others and by mutual agreement and co-operative effort, the results of such studies should become available to all concerned, made so in the spirit that each should become coordinate and mutually helpful component factors in the world's progress. One very appropriate and immensely helpful means for attacking this problem, and which should prove mutually helpful to citizen and state, would be for the higher educational institutions of all nations, instead of exchanging courtesies through their baseball teams, to send select bodies of their best students under competent leadership and by international agreement, both east and west, organizing therefrom investigating bodies each containing components of the eastern and western civilization and whose purpose it should be to study specifically set problems. Such a movement well conceived and directed, manned by the most capable young men, should create an international acquaintance and spread broadcast a body of important knowledge which would develop as the young men mature and contribute immensely toward world peace and world progress. If some broad plan of international effort such as is here suggested were organized the expense of maintenance might well be met by diverting so much as is needful from the large sums set aside for the expansion of navies for such steps as these, taken in the interests of world uplift and world peace, could not fail to be more efficacious and less expensive than increase in fighting equipment. It would cultivate the spirit of pulling together and of a square deal rather than one of holding aloof and of striving to gain unneighborly advantage. Many factors and conditions conspire to give to the farms and farmers of the Far East their high maintenance efficiency and some of these may be succinctly stated. The portions of China, Korea and Japan where dense populations have developed and are being maintained occupy exceptionally favorable geographic positions so far as these influence agricultural production. Canton in the south of China has the latitude of Havana, Cuba, while Mukden in Manchuria, and northern Honshu in Japan are only as far north as New York city, Chicago and northern California. The United States lies mainly between 50 degrees and 30 degrees of latitude while these three countries lie between 40 degrees and 20 degrees, some seven hundred miles further south. This difference of position, giving them longer seasons, has made it possible for them to devise systems of agriculture whereby they grow two, three and even four crops on the same piece of ground each year. In southern China, in Formosa and in parts of Japan two crops of rice are grown; in the Chekiang province there may be a crop of rape, of wheat or barley or of windsor beans or clover which is followed in midsummer by another of cotton or of rice. In the Shantung province wheat or barley in the winter and spring may be followed in summer by large or small millet, sweet potatoes, soy beans or peanuts. At Tientsin, 39 deg north, in the latitude of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Springfield, Illinois, we talked with a farmer who followed his crop of wheat on his small holding with one of onions and the onions with cabbage, realizing from the three crops at the rate of $163, gold, per acre; and with another who planted Irish potatoes at the earliest opportunity in the spring, marketing them when small, and following these with radishes, the radishes with cabbage, realizing from the three crops at the rate of $203 per acre. Nearly 500,000,000 people are being maintained, chiefly upon the products of an area smaller than the improved farm lands of the United States. Complete a square on the lines drawn from Chicago southward to the Gulf and westward across Kansas, and there will be enclosed an area greater than the cultivated fields of China, Korea and Japan and from which five times our present population are fed. The rainfall in these countries is not only larger than that even in our Atlantic and Gulf states, but it falls more exclusively during the summer season when its efficiency in crop production may be highest. South China has a rainfall of some 80 inches with little of it during the winter, while in our southern states the rainfall is nearer 60 inches with less than one-half of it between June and September. Along a line drawn from Lake Superior through central Texas the yearly precipitation is about 30 inches but only 16 inches of this falls during the months May to September; while in the Shantung province, China, with an annual rainfall of little more than 24 inches, 17 of these fall during the months designated and most of this in July and August. When it is stated that under the best tillage and with no loss of water through percolation, most of our agricultural crops require 300 to 600 tons of water for each ton of dry substance brought to maturity, it can be readily understood that the right amount of available moisture, coming at the proper time, must be one of the prime factors of a high maintenance capacity for any soil, and hence that in the Far East, with their intensive methods, it is possible to make their soils yield large returns. The selection of rice and of the millets as the great staple food crops of these three nations, and the systems of agriculture they have evolved to realize the most from them, are to us remarkable and indicate a grasp of essentials and principles which may well cause western nations to pause and reflect. Notwithstanding the large and favorable rainfall of these countries, each of the nations have selected the one crop which permits them to utilize not only practically the entire amount of rain which falls upon their fields, but in addition enormous volumes of the run-off from adjacent uncultivable mountain country. Wherever paddy fields are practicable there rice is grown. In the three main islands of Japan 56 per cent of the cultivated fields, 11,000 square miles, is laid out for rice growing and is maintained under water from transplanting to near harvest time, after which the land is allowed to dry, to be devoted to dry land crops during the balance of the year, where the season permits. To anyone who studies the agricultural methods of the Far East in the field it is evident that these people, centuries ago, came to appreciate the value of water in crop production as no other nations have. They have adapted conditions to crops and crops to conditions until with rice they have a cereal which permits the most intense fertilization and at the same time the ensuring of maximum yields against both drought and flood. With the practice of western nations in all humid climates, no matter how completely and highly we fertilize, in more years than not yields are reduced by a deficiency or an excess of water. It is difficult to convey, by word or map, an adequate conception of the magnitude of the systems of canalization which contribute primarily to rice culture. A conservative estimate would place the miles of canals in China at fully 200,000 and there are probably more miles of canal in China, Korea and Japan than there are miles of railroad in the United States. China alone has as many acres in rice each year as the United States has in wheat and her annual product is more than double and probably threefold our annual wheat crop, and yet the whole of the rice area produces at least one and sometimes two other crops each year. The selection of the quick-maturing, drought-resisting millets as the great staple food crops to be grown wherever water is not available for irrigation, and the almost universal planting in hills or drills, permitting intertillage, thus adopting centuries ago the utilization of earth mulches in conserving soil moisture, has enabled these people to secure maximum returns in seasons of drought and where the rainfall is small. The millets thrive in the hot summer climates; they survive when the available soil moisture is reduced to a low limit, and they grow vigorously when the heavy rains come. Thus we find in the Far East, with more rainfall and a better distribution of it than occurs in the United States, and with warmer, longer seasons, that these people have with rare wisdom combined both irrigation and dry farming methods to an extent and with an intensity far beyond anything our people have ever dreamed, in order that they might maintain their dense populations. Notwithstanding the fact that in each of these countries the soils are naturally more than ordinarily deep, inherently fertile and enduring, judicious and rational methods of fertilization are everywhere practiced; but not until recent years, and only in Japan, have mineral commercial fertilizers been used. For centuries, however, all cultivated lands, including adjacent hill and mountain sides, the canals, streams and the sea have been made to contribute what they could toward the fertilization of cultivated fields and these contributions in the aggregate have been large. In China, in Korea and in Japan all but the inaccessible portions of their vast extent of mountain and hill lands have long been taxed to their full capacity for fuel, lumber and herbage for green manure and compost material; and the ash of practically all of the fuel and of all of the lumber used at home finds its way ultimately to the fields as fertilizer. In China enormous quantities of canal mud are applied to the fields, sometimes at the rate of even 70 and more tons per acre. So, too, where there are no canals, both soil and subsoil are carried into the villages and there between the intervals when needed they are, at the expense of great labor, composted with organic refuse and often afterwards dried and pulverized before being carried back and used on the fields as home-made fertilizers. Manure of all kinds, human and animal, is religiously saved and applied to the fields in a manner which secures an efficiency far above our own practices. Statistics obtained through the Bureau of Agriculture, Japan, place the amount of human waste in that country in 1908 at 23,950,295 tons, or 1.75 tons per acre of her cultivated land. The International Concession of the city of Shanghai, in 1908, sold to a Chinese contractor the privilege of entering residences and public places early in the morning of each day in the year and removing the night soil, receiving therefor more than $31,000, gold, for 78,000 tons of waste. All of this we not only throw away but expend much larger sums in doing so. Japan's production of fertilizing material, regularly prepared and applied to the land annually, amounts to more than 4.5 tons per acre of cultivated field exclusive of the commercial fertilizers purchased. Between Shanhaikwan and Mukden in Manchuria we passed, on June 18th, thousands of tons of the dry highly nitrified compost soil recently carried into the fields and laid down in piles where it was waiting to be "fed to the crops." It was not until 1888, and then after a prolonged war of more than thirty years, generaled by the best scientists of all Europe, that it was finally conceded as demonstrated that leguminous plants acting as hosts for lower organisms living on their roots are largely responsible for the maintenance of soil nitrogen, drawing it directly from the air to which it is returned through the processes of decay. But centuries of practice had taught the Far East farmers that the culture and use of these crops are essential to enduring fertility, and so in each of the three countries the growing of legumes in rotation with other crops very extensively for the express purpose of fertilizing the soil is one of their old, fixed practices. Just before, or immediately after the rice crop is harvested, fields are often sowed to "clover" (Astragalus sinicus) which is allowed to grow until near the next transplanting time when it is either turned under directly, or more often stacked along the canals and saturated while doing so with soft mud dipped from the bottom of the canal. After fermenting twenty or thirty days it is applied to the field. And so it is literally true that these old world farmers whom we regard as ignorant, perhaps because they do not ride sulky plows as we do, have long included legumes in their crop rotation, regarding them as indispensable. Time is a function of every life process as it is of every physical, chemical and mental reaction. The husbandman is an industrial biologist and as such is compelled to shape his operations so as to conform with the time requirements of his crops. The oriental farmer is a time economizer beyond all others. He utilizes the first and last minute and all that are between. The foreigner accuses the Chinaman of being always long on time, never in a fret, never in a hurry. This is quite true and made possible for the reason that they are a people who definitely set their faces toward the future and lead time by the forelock. They have long realized that much time is required to transform organic matter into forms available for plant food and although they are the heaviest users in the world, the largest portion of this organic matter is predigested with soil or subsoil before it is applied to their fields, and at an enormous cost of human time and labor, but it practically lengthens their growing season and enables them to adopt a system of multiple cropping which would not otherwise be possible. By planting in hills and rows with intertillage it is very common to see three crops growing upon the same field at one time, but in different stages of maturity, one nearly ready to harvest one just coming up, and the other at the stage when it is drawing most heavily upon the soil. By such practice, with heavy fertilization, and by supplemental irrigation when needful, the soil is made to do full duty throughout the growing season. Then, notwithstanding the enormous acreage of rice planted each year in these countries, it is all set in hills and every spear is transplanted. Doing this, they save in many ways except in the matter of human labor, which is the one thing they have in excess. By thoroughly preparing the seed bed, fertilizing highly and giving the most careful attention, they are able to grow on one acre, during 30 to 50 days, enough plants to occupy ten acres and in the mean time on the other nine acres crops are maturing, being harvested and the fields being fitted to receive the rice when it is ready for transplanting, and in effect this interval of time is added to their growing season. Silk culture is a great and, in some ways, one of the most remarkable industries of the Orient. Remarkable for its magnitude; for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest China at least 2700 years B. C.; for having been laid on the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; and for having lived through more than 4000 years, expanding until a million-dollar cargo of the product has been laid down on our western coast and rushed by special fast express to the cast for the Christmas trade. A low estimate of China's production of raw silk would be 120,000,000 pounds annually, and this with the output of Japan, Korea and a small area of southern Manchuria, would probably exceed 150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value of perhaps $700,000,000, quite equaling in value the wheat crop of the United States, but produced on less than one-eighth the area of our wheat fields. The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great industries of these nations, taking rank with that of sericulture if not above it in the important part it plays in the welfare of the people. There is little reason to doubt that this industry has its foundation in the need of something to render boiled water palatable for drinking purposes. The drinking of boiled water is universally adopted in these countries as an individually available and thoroughly efficient safeguard against that class of deadly disease germs which thus far it has been impossible to exclude from the drinking water of any densely peopled country. Judged by the success of the most thorough sanitary measures thus far instituted, and taking into consideration the inherent difficulties which must increase enormously with increasing populations, it appears inevitable that modern methods must ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety can be secured only in some manner having the equivalent effect of boiling drinking water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races. In the year 1907 Japan had 124,482 acres of land in tea plantations, producing 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea. In China the volume annually produced is much larger than that of Japan, 40,000,000 pounds going annually to Tibet alone from the Szechwan province and the direct export to foreign countries was, in 1905, 176,027,255 pounds, and in 1906 it was 180,271,000, so that their annual export must exceed 200,000,000 pounds with a total annual output more than double this amount of cured tea. But above any other factor, and perhaps greater than all of them combined in contributing to the high maintenance efficiency attained in these countries must be placed the standard of living to which the industrial classes have been compelled to adjust themselves, combined with their remarkable industry and with the most intense economy they practice along every line of effort and of living. Almost every foot of land is made to contribute material for food, fuel or fabric. Everything which can be made edible serves as food for man or domestic animals. Whatever cannot be eaten or worn is used for fuel. The wastes of the body, of fuel and of fabric worn beyond other use are taken back to the field; before doing so they are housed against waste from weather, compounded with intelligence and forethought and patiently labored with through one, three or even six months, to bring them into the most efficient form to serve as manure for the soil or as feed for the crop. It seems to be a golden rule with these industrial classes, or if not golden, then an inviolable one, that whenever an extra hour or day of labor can promise even a little larger return then that shall be given, and neither a rainy day nor the hottest sunshine shall be permitted to cancel the obligation or defer its execution. I FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN We left the United States from Seattle for Shanghai, China, sailing by the northern route, at one P. M. February second, reaching Yokohama February 19th and Shanghai, March 1st. It was our aim throughout the journey to keep in close contact with the field and crop problems and to converse personally, through interpreters or otherwise, with the farmers, gardeners and fruit growers themselves; and we have taken pains in many cases to visit the same fields or the same region two, three or more times at different intervals during the season in order to observe different phases of the same cultural or fertilization methods as these changed or varied with the season. Our first near view of Japan came in the early morning of February 19th when passing some three miles off the point where the Pacific passenger steamer Dakota was beached and wrecked in broad daylight without loss of life two years ago. The high rounded hills were clothed neither in the dense dark forest green of Washington and Vancouver, left sixteen days before, nor yet in the brilliant emerald such as Ireland's hills in June fling in unparalleled greeting to passengers surfeited with the dull grey of the rolling ocean. This lack of strong forest growth and even of shrubs and heavy herbage on hills covered with deep soil, neither cultivated nor suffering from serious erosion, yet surrounded by favorable climatic conditions, was our first great surprise. To the southward around the point, after turning northward into the deep bay, similar conditions prevailed, and at ten o'clock we stood off Uraga where Commodore Perry anchored on July 8th, 1853, bearing to the Shogun President Fillmore's letter which opened the doors of Japan to the commerce of the world and, it is to be hoped brought to her people, with their habits of frugality and industry so indelibly fixed by centuries of inheritance, better opportunities for development along those higher lines destined to make life still more worth living. As the Tosa Maru drew alongside the pier at Yokohama it was raining hard and this had attired an army after the manner of Robinson Crusoe, dressed as seen in Fig. 1, ready to carry you and yours to the Customs house and beyond for one, two, three or five cents. Strong was the contrast when the journey was reversed and we descended the gang plank at Seattle, where no one sought the opportunity of moving baggage. Through the kindness of Captain Harrison of the Tosa Maru in calling an interpreter by wireless to meet the steamer, it was possible to utilize the entire interval of stop in Yokohama to the best advantage in the fields and gardens spread over the eighteen miles of plain extending to Tokyo, traversed by both electric tram and railway lines, each running many trains making frequent stops; so that this wonderfully fertile and highly tilled district could be readily and easily reached at almost any point. We had left home in a memorable storm of snow, sleet and rain which cut out of service telegraph and telephone lines over a large part of the United States; we had sighted the Aleutian Islands, seeing and feeling nothing on the way which could suggest a warm soil and green fields, hence our surprise was great to find the jinricksha men with bare feet and legs naked to the thighs, and greater still when we found, before we were outside the city limits, that the electric tram was running between fields and gardens green with wheat, barley, onions, carrots, cabbage and other vegetables. We were rushing through the Orient with everything outside the car so strange and different from home that the shock came like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky. In the car every man except myself and one other was smoking tobacco and that other was inhaling camphor through an ivory mouthpiece resembling a cigar holder closed at the end. Several women, tiring of sitting foreign style, slipped off--I cannot say out of--their shoes and sat facing the windows, with toes crossed behind them on the seat. The streets were muddy from the rain and everybody Japanese was on rainy-day wooden shoes, the soles carried three to four inches above the ground by two cross blocks, in the manner seen in Fig. 2. A mother, with baby on her back and a daughter of sixteen years came into the car. Notwithstanding her high shoes the mother had dipped one toe into the mud. Seated, she slipped her foot off. Without evident instructions the pretty black-eyed, glossy-haired, red-lipped lass, with cheeks made rosy, picked up the shoe, withdrew a piece of white tissue paper from the great pocket in her sleeve, deftly cleaned the otherwise spotless white cloth sock and then the shoe, threw the paper on the floor, looked to see that her fingers were not soiled, then set the shoe at her mother's foot, which found its place without effort or glance. Everything here was strange and the scenes shifted with the speed of the wildest dream. Now it was driving piles for the foundation of a bridge. A tripod of poles was erected above the pile and from it hung a pulley. Over the pulley passed a rope from the driving weight and from its end at the pulley ten cords extended to the ground. In a circle at the foot of the tripod stood ten agile Japanese women. They were the hoisting engine. They chanted in perfect rhythm, hauled and stepped, dropped the weight and hoisted again, making up for heavier hammer and higher drop by more blows per minute. When we reached Shanghai we saw the pile driver being worked from above. Fourteen Chinese men stood upon a raised staging, each with a separate cord passing direct from the hand to the weight below. A concerted, half-musical chant, modulated to relieve monotony, kept all hands together. What did the operation of this machine cost? Thirteen cents, gold, per man per day, which covered fuel and lubricant, both automatically served. Two additional men managed the piles, two directed the hammer, eighteen manned the outfit. Two dollars and thirty-four cents per day covered fuel, superintendence and repairs. There was almost no capital invested in machinery. Men were plenty and to spare. Rice was the fuel, cooked without salt, boiled stiff, reinforced with a hit of pork or fish, appetized with salted cabbage or turnip and perhaps two or three of forty and more other vegetable relishes. And are these men strong and happy? They certainly were strong. They are steadily increasing their millions, and as one stood and watched them at their work their faces were often wreathed in smiles and wore what seemed a look of satisfaction and contentment. Among the most common sights on our rides from Yokohama to Tokyo, both within the city and along the roads leading to the fields, starting early in the morning, were the loads of night soil carried on the shoulders of men and on the backs of animals, but most commonly on strong carts drawn by men, bearing six to ten tightly covered wooden containers holding forty, sixty or more pounds each. Strange as it may seem, there are not today and apparently never have been, even in the largest and oldest cities of Japan, China or Korea, anything corresponding to the hydraulic systems of sewage disposal used now by western nations. Provision is made for the removal of storm waters but when I asked my interpreter if it was not the custom of the city during the winter months to discharge its night soil into the sea, as a quicker and cheaper mode of disposal, his reply came quick and sharp, "No, that would be waste. We throw nothing away. It is worth too much money." In such public places as rail way stations provision is made for saving, not for wasting, and even along the country roads screens invite the traveler to stop, primarily for profit to the owner more than for personal convenience. Between Yokohama and Tokyo along the electric car line and not far distant from the seashore, there were to be seen in February very many long, fence-high screens extending east and west, strongly inclined to the north, and built out of rice straw, closely tied together and supported on bamboo poles carried upon posts of wood set in the ground. These screens, set in parallel series of five to ten or more in number and several hundred feet long, were used for the purpose of drying varieties of delicate seaweed, these being spread out in the manner shown in Fig. 3. The seaweed is first spread upon separate ten by twelve inch straw mats, forming a thin layer seven by eight inches. These mats are held by means of wooden skewers forced through the body of the screen, exposing the seaweed to the direct sunshine. After becoming dry the rectangles of seaweed are piled in bundles an inch thick, cut once in two, forming packages four by seven inches, which are neatly tied and thus exposed for sale as soup stock and for other purposes. To obtain this seaweed from the ocean small shrubs and the limbs of trees are set up in the bottom of shallow water, as seen in Fig. 4. To these limbs the seaweeds become attached, grow to maturity and are then gathered by hand. By this method of culture large amounts of important food stuff are grown for the support of the people on areas otherwise wholly unproductive. Another rural feature, best shown by photograph taken in February, is the method of training pear orchards in Japan, with their limbs tied down upon horizontal over-bead trellises at a height under which a man can readily walk erect and easily reach the fruit with the hand while standing upon the ground. Pear orchards thus form arbors of greater or less size, the trees being set in quincunx order about twelve feet apart in and between the rows. Bamboo poles are used overhead and these carried on posts of the same material 1.5 to 2.5 inches in diameter, to which they are tied. Such a pear orchard is shown in Fig. 5. The limbs of the pear trees are trained strictly in one plane, tying them down and pruning out those not desired. As a result the ground beneath is completely shaded and every pear is within reach, which is a great convenience when it becomes desirable to protect the fruit from insects, by tying paper bags over every pear as seen in Figs. 6 and 7. The orchard ground is kept free from weeds and not infrequently is covered with a layer of rice or other straw, extensively used in Japan as a ground cover with various crops and when so used is carefully laid in handfuls from bundles, the straws being kept parallel as when harvested. To one from a country of 160-acre farms, with roads four rods wide; of cities with broad streets and residences with green lawns and ample back yards; and where the cemeteries are large and beautiful parks, the first days of travel in these old countries force the over-crowding upon the attention as nothing else can. One feels that the cities are greatly over-crowded with houses and shops, and these with people and wares; that the country is over-crowded with fields and the fields with crops; and that in Japan the over-crowding is greatest of all in the cemeteries, gravestones almost touching and markers for families literally in bundles at a grave, while round about there may be no free country whatever, dwellings, gardens or rice paddies contesting the tiny allotted areas too closely to leave even foot-paths between. Unless recently modified through foreign influence the streets of villages and cities are narrow, as seen in Fig. 8, where however the street is unusually broad. This is a village in the Hakone district on a beautiful lake of the same name, where stands an Imperial summer palace, seen near the center of the view on a hill across the lake. The roofs of the houses here are typical of the neat, careful thatching with rice straw, very generally adopted in place of tile for the country villages throughout much of Japan. The shops and stores, open full width directly upon the street, are filled to overflowing, as seen in Fig. 9 and in Fig. 22. In the canalized regions of China the country villages crowd both banks of a canal, as is the case in Fig. 10. Here, too, often is a single street and it very narrow, very crowded and very busy. Stone steps lead from the houses down into the water where clothing, vegetables, rice and what not are conveniently washed. In this particular village two rows of houses stand on one side of the canal separated by a very narrow street, and a single row on the other. Between the bridge where the camera was exposed and one barely discernible in the background, crossing the canal a third of a mile distant, we counted upon one side, walking along the narrow street, eighty houses each with its family, usually of three generations and often of four. Thus in the narrow strip, 154 feet broad, including 16 feet of street and 30 feet of canal, with its three lines of houses. lived no less than 240 families and more than 1200 and probably nearer 2000 people. When we turn to the crowding of fields in the country nothing except seeing can tell so forcibly the fact as such landscapes as those of Figs. 11, 12 and 13, one in Japan, one in Korea and one in China, not far from Nanking, looking from the hills across the fields to the broad Yangtse kiang, barely discernible as a band of light along the horizon. The average area of the rice field in Japan is less than five square rods and that of her upland fields only about twenty. In the case of the rice fields the small size is necessitated partly by the requirement of holding water on the sloping sides of the valley, as seen in Fig. 11. These small areas do not represent the amount of land worked by one family, the average for Japan being more nearly 2.5 acres. But the lands worked by one family are seldom contiguous, they may even be widely scattered and very often rented. The people generally live in villages, going often considerable distances to their work. Recognizing the great disadvantage of scattered holdings broken into such small areas, the Japanese Government has passed laws for the adjustment of farm lands which have been in force since 1900. It provides for the exchange of lands; for changing boundaries; for changing or abolishing roads, embankments, ridges or canals and for alterations in irrigation and drainage which would ensure larger areas with channels and roads straightened, made less numerous and less wasteful of time, labor and land. Up to 1907 Japan had issued permits for the readjustment of over 240,000 acres, and Fig. 14 is a landscape in one of these readjusted districts. To provide capable experts for planning and supervising these changes the Government in 1905 intrusted the training of men to the higher agricultural school belonging to the Dai Nippon Agricultural Association and since 1906 the Agricultural College and the Kogyokusha have undertaken the same task and now there are men sufficient to push the work as rapidly as desired. It may be remembered, too, as showing how, along other fundamental lines, Japan is taking effective steps to improve the condition of her people, that she already has her Imperial highways extending from one province to another; her prefectural roads which connect the cities and villages within the prefecture; and those more local which serve the farms and villages. Each of the three systems of roads is maintained by a specific tax levied for the purpose which is expended under proper supervision, a designated section of road being kept in repair through the year by a specially appointed crew, as is the practice in railroad maintenance. The result is, Japan has roads maintained in excellent condition, always narrow, sacrificing the minimum of land, and everywhere without fences. How the fields are crowded with crops and all available land is made to do full duty in these old, long-tilled countries is evident in Fig. 15 where even the narrow dividing ridges but a foot wide, which retain the water on the rice paddies, are bearing a heavy crop of soy beans; and where may be seen the narrow pear orchard standing on the very slightest rise of ground, not a foot above the water all around, which could better be left in grading the paddies to proper level. How closely the ground itself may be crowded with plants is seen in Fig. 16, where a young peach orchard, whose tree tops were six feet through, planted in rows twenty-two feet apart, had also ten rows of cabbage, two rows of large windsor beans and a row of garden peas. Thirteen rows of vegetables in 22 feet, all luxuriant and strong, and note the judgment shown in placing the tallest plants, needing the most sun, in the center between the trees. But these old people, used to crowding and to being crowded, and long ago capable of making four blades of grass grow where Nature grew but one, have also learned how to double the acreage where a crop needs more elbow than it does standing room, as seen in Fig. 17. This man's garden had an area of but 63 by 68 feet and two square rods of this was held sacred to the family grave mound, and yet his statement of yields, number of crops and prices made his earning $100 a year on less than one-tenth of an acre. His crop of cucumbers on less than .06 of an acre would bring him $20. He had already sold $5 worth of greens and a second crop would follow the cucumbers. He had just irrigated his garden from an adjoining canal, using a foot-power pump, and stated that until it rained he would repeat the watering once per week. It was his wife who stood in the garden and, although wearing trousers, her dress showed full regard for modesty. But crowding crops more closely in the field not only requires higher feeding to bring greater returns, but also relatively greater care, closer watchfulness in a hundred ways and a patience far beyond American measure; and so, before the crowding of the crops in the field and along with it, there came to these very old farmers a crowding of the grey matter in the brain with the evolution of effective texture. This is shown in his fields which crowd the landscape. It is seen in the crops which crowd his fields. You see it in the old man's face, Fig. 18, standing opposite his compeer, Prince Ching, Fig. 19, each clad in winter dress which is the embodiment of conversation, retaining the fires of the body for its own needs, to release the growth on mountain sides for other uses. And when one realizes how, nearly to the extreme limits, conservation along all important lines is being practiced as an inherited instinct, there need be no surprise when one reflects that the two men, one as feeder and the other as leader, are standing in the fore of a body of four hundred millions of people who have marched as a nation through perhaps forty centuries, and who now, in the light and great promise of unfolding science have their faces set toward a still more hopeful and longer future. On February 21st the Tosa Maru left Yokohama for Kobe at schedule time on the tick of the watch, as she had done from Seattle. All Japanese steamers appear to be moved with the promptness of a railway train. On reaching Kobe we transferred to the Yamaguchi Maru which sailed the following morning, to shorten the time of reaching Shanghai. This left but an afternoon for a trip into the country between Kobe and Osaka, where we found, if possible, even higher and more intensive culture practices than on the Tokyo plain, there being less land not carrying a winter crop. And Fig. 20 shows how closely the crops crowd the houses and shops. Here were very many cement lined cisterns or sheltered reservoirs for collecting manures and preparing fertilizers and the appearance of both soil and crops showed in a marked manner to what advantage. We passed a garden of nearly an acre entirely devoted to English violets just coming into full bloom. They were grown in long parallel east and west beds about three feet wide. On the north edge of each bed was erected a rice-straw screen four feet high which inclined to the south, overhanging the bed at an angle of some thirty-five degrees, thus forming a sort of bake-oven tent which reflected the sun, broke the force of the wind and checked the loss of heat absorbed by the soil. The voyage from Kobe to Moji was made between 10 in the morning, February 24th, and 5 .30 P. M. of February 25th over a quiet sea with an enjoyable ride. Being fogbound during the night gave us the whole of Japan's beautiful Inland Sea, enchanting beyond measure, in all its near and distant beauty but which no pen, no brush, no camera may attempt. Only the eye can convey. Before reaching harbor the tide had been rising and the strait separating Honshu from Kyushu island was running like a mighty swirling river between Moji and Shimonoseki, dangerous to attempt in the dark, so we waited until morning. There was cargo to take on board and the steamer must coal. No sooner had the anchor dropped and the steamer swung into the current than lighters came alongside with out-going freight. The small, strong, agile Japanese stevedores had this task completed by 8:30 P. M. and when we returned to the deck after supper another scene was on. The cargo lighters had gone and four large barges bearing 250 tons of coal had taken their places on opposite sides of the steamer, each illuminated with buckets of blazing coal or by burning conical heaps on the surface. From the bottom of these pits in the darkness the illumination suggested huge decapitated ant heaps in the wildest frenzy, for the coal seemed covered and there was hurry in every direction. Men and women, boys and girls, bending to their tasks, were filling shallow saucer-shaped baskets with coal and stacking them eight to ten high in a semi-circle, like coin for delivery. Rising out of these pits sixteen feet up the side of the steamer and along her deck to the chutes leading to her bunkers were what seemed four endless human chains, in service the prototype of our modern conveyors, but here each link animated by its own power. Up these conveyors the loaded buckets passed, one following another at the rate of 40 to 60 per minute, to return empty by the descending line, and over the four chains one hundred tons per hour, for 250 tons of coal passed to the bunkers in two and a half hours. Both men and women stood in the line and at the upper turn of one of these, emptying the buckets down the chute, was a mother with her two-year-old child in the sling on back, where it rocked and swayed to and fro, happy the entire time. It was often necessary for the mother to adjust her baby in the sling whenever it was leaning uncomfortably too far to one side or the other, but she did it skillfully, always with a shrug of the shoulders, for both hands were full. The mother looked strong, was apparently accepting her lot as a matter of course and often, with a smile, turned her face to the child, who patted it and played with her ears and hair. Probably her husband was doing his part in a more strenuous place in the chain and neither had time to be troubled with affinities for it was 10:30 P. M. when the baskets stopped, and somewhere no doubt there was a home to be reached and perhaps supper to get. Shall we be able, when our numbers have vastly increased, to permit all needful earnings to be acquired in a better way? We left Moji in the early morning and late in the evening of the same day entered the beautiful harbor of Nagasaki, all on board waiting until morning for a launch to go ashore. We were to sail again at noon so available time for observation was short and we set out in a ricksha at once for our first near view of terraced gardening on the steep hillsides in Japan. In reaching them and in returning our course led through streets paved with long, thick and narrow stone blocks, having deep open gutters on one or both sides close along the houses, into which waste water was emptied and through which the storm waters found their way to the sea. Few of these streets were more than twelve feet wide and close watching, with much dodging, was required to make way through them. Here, too, the night soil of the city was being removed in closed receptacles on the shoulders of men, on the backs of horses and cattle and on carts drawn by either. Other men and women were hurrying along with baskets of vegetables well illustrated in Fig. 21, some with fresh cabbage, others with high stacks of crisp lettuce, some with monstrous white radishes or turnips, others with bundles of onions, all coming down from the terraced gardens to the markets. We passed loads of green bamboo poles just cut, three inches in diameter at the butt and twenty feet long, drawn on carts. Both men and women were carrying young children and older ones were playing and singing in the street. Very many old women, some feeble looking, moved, loaded, through the throng. Homely little dogs, an occasional lean cat, and hens and roosters scurried across the street from one low market or store to another. Back of the rows of small stores and shops fronting on the clean narrow streets were the dwellings whose exits seemed to open through the stores, few or no open courts of any size separating them from the market or shop. The opportunity which the oriental housewife may have in the choice of vegetables on going to the market, and the attractive manner of displaying such products in Japan, are seen in Fig. 22. We finally reached one of the terraced hillsides which rise five hundred to a thousand feet above the harbor with sides so steep that garden areas have a width of seldom more than twenty to thirty feet and often less, while the front of each terrace may be a stone wall, sometimes twelve feet high, often more than six, four and five feet being the most common height. One of these hillside slopes is seen in Fig. 23. These terraced gardens are both short and narrow and most of them bounded by stone walls on three sides, suggesting house foundations, the two end walls sloping down the hill from the height of the back terrace, dropping to the ground level in front, these forming foot-paths leading up the slope occasionally with one, two or three steps in places. Each terrace sloped slightly down the hill at a small angle and had a low ridge along the front. Around its entire border a narrow drain or furrow was arranged to collect surface water and direct it to drainage channels or into a catch basin where it might be put back on the garden or be used in preparing liquid fertilizer. At one corner of many of these small terraced gardens were cement lined pits, used both as catch basins for water and as receptacles for liquid manure or as places in which to prepare compost. Far up the steep paths, too, along either side, we saw many piles of stable manure awaiting application, all of which had been brought up the slopes in backets on bamboo poles, carried on the shoulders of men and women. II GRAVE LANDS OF CHINA The launch had returned the passengers to the steamer at 11:30; the captain was on the bridge; prompt to the minute at the call "Hoist away" the signal went below and the Yamaguchi's whistle filled the harbor and over-flowed the hills. The cable wound in, and at twelve, noon, we were leaving Nagasaki, now a city of 153,000 and the western doorway of a nation of fifty-one millions of people but of little importance before the sixteenth century when it became the chief mart of Portuguese trade. We were to pass the Koreans on our right and enter the portals of a third nation of four hundred millions. We had left a country which had added eighty-five millions to its population in one hundred years and which still has twenty acres for each man, woman and child, to pass through one which has but one and a half acres per capita, and were going to another whose allotment of acres, good and bad, is less than 2.4. We had gone from practices by which three generations had exhausted strong virgin fields, and were coming to others still fertile after thirty centuries of cropping. On January 30th we crossed the head waters of the Mississippi-Missouri, four thousand miles from its mouth, and on March 1st were in the mouth of the Yangtse river whose waters are gathered from a basin in which dwell two hundred millions of people. The Yamaguchi reached Woosung in the night and anchored to await morning and tide before ascending the Hwangpoo, believed by some geographers to be the middle of three earlier delta arms of the Yangtse kiang, the southern entering the sea at Hangchow 120 miles further south, the third being the present stream. As we wound through this great delta plain toward Shanghai, the city of foreign concessions to all nationalities, the first striking feature was the "graves of the fathers", of "the ancestors". At first the numerous grass-covered hillocks dotting the plain seemed to be stacks of grain or straw; then came the query whether they might not be huge compost heaps awaiting distribution in the fields, but as the river brought us nearer to them we seemed to be moving through a land of ancient mound builders and Fig. 24 shows, in its upper section, their appearance as seen in the distance. As the journey led on among the fields, so large were the mounds, often ten to twelve feet high and twenty or more feet at the base; so grass-covered and apparently neglected; so numerous and so irregularly scattered, without apparent regard for fields, that when we were told these were graves we could not give credence to the statement, but before the city was reached we saw places where, by the shifting of the channel, the river had cut into some of these mounds, exposing brick vaults, some so low as to be under water part of the time, and we wonder if the fact does not also record a slow subsidence of the delta plain under the ever increasing load of river silt. A closer view of these graves in the same delta plain is given in the lower section of Fig. 24, where they are seen in the midst of fields and to occupy not only large areas of valuable land but to be much in the way of agricultural operations. A still closer view of other groups, with a farm village in the background, is shown in the middle section of the same illustration, and here it is better seen how large is the space occupied by them. On the right in the same view may be seen a line of six graves surmounting a common lower base which is a type of the larger and higher ones so suggestive of buildings seen in the horizon of the upper section. Everywhere we went in China, about all of the very old and large cities, the proportion of grave land to cultivated fields is very large. In the vicinity of Canton Christian college, on Honam island, more than fifty per cent of the land was given over to graves and in many places they were so close that one could step from one to another. They are on the higher and dryer lands, the cultivated areas occupying ravines and the lower levels to which water may be more easily applied and which are the most productive. Hilly lands not so readily cultivated, and especially if within reach of cities, are largely so used, as seen in Fig. 25, where the graves are marked by excavated shelves rather than by mounds, as on the plains. These grave lands are not altogether unproductive for they are generally overgrown with herbage of one or another kind and used as pastures for geese, sheep, goats and cattle, and it is not at all uncommon, when riding along a canal, to see a huge water buffalo projected against the sky from the summit of one of the largest and highest grave mounds within reach. If the herbage is not fed off by animals it is usually cut for feed, for fuel, for green manure or for use in the production of compost to enrich the soil. Caskets may be placed directly upon the surface of a field, encased in brick vaults with tile roofs, forming such clusters as was seen on the bank of the Grand Canal in Chekiang province, represented in the lower section of Fig. 26, or they may stand singly in the midst of a garden, as in the upper section of the same figure; in a rice paddy entirely surrounded by water parts of the year, and indeed in almost any unexpected place. In Shanghai in 1898, 2,763 exposed coffined corpses were removed outside the International Settlement or buried by the authorities. Further north, in the Shantung province, where the dry season is more prolonged and where a severe drought had made grass short, the grave lands had become nearly naked soil, as seen in Fig. 27 where a Shantung farmer had just dug a temporary well to irrigate his little field of barley. Within the range of the camera, as held to take this view, more than forty grave mounds besides the seven near by, are near enough to be fixed on the negative and be discernible under a glass, indicating what extensive areas of land, in the aggregate, are given over to graves. Still further north, in Chihli, a like story is told in, if possible, more emphatic manner and fully vouched for in the next illustration, Fig. 28, which shows a typical family group, to be observed in so many places between Taku and Tientsin and beyond toward Peking. As we entered the mouth of the Pei-ho for Tientsin, far away to the vanishing horizon there stretched an almost naked plain except for the vast numbers of these "graves of the fathers", so strange, so naked, so regular in form and so numerous that more than an hour of our journey had passed before we realized that they were graves and that the country here was perhaps more densely peopled with the dead than with the living. In so many places there was the huge father grave, often capped with what in the distance suggested a chimney, and the many associated smaller ones, that it was difficult to realize in passing what they were. It is a common custom, even if the residence has been permanently changed to some distant province, to take the bodies back for interment in the family group; and it is this custom which leads to the practice of choosing a temporary location for the body, waiting for a favorable opportunity to remove it to the family group. This is often the occasion for the isolated coffin so frequently seen under a simple thatch of rice straw, as in Fig. 29; and the many small stone jars containing skeletons of the dead, or portions of them, standing singly or in rows in the most unexpected places least in the way in the crowded fields and gardens, awaiting removal to the final resting place. It is this custom, too, I am told, which has led to placing a large quantity of caustic lime in the bottom of the casket, on which the body rests, this acting as an effective absorbent. It is the custom in some parts of China, if not in all, to periodically restore the mounds, maintaining their height and size, as is seen in the next two illustrations, and to decorate these once in the year with flying streamers of colored paper, the remnants of which may be seen in both Figs. 30 and 31, set there as tokens that the paper money has been burned upon them and its essence sent up in the smoke for the maintenance of the spirits of their departed friends. We have our memorial day; they have for centuries observed theirs with religious fidelity. The usual expense of a burial among the working people is said to be $100, Mexican, an enormous burden when the day's wage or the yearly earning of the family is considered and when there is added to this the yearly expense of ancestor worship. How such voluntary burdens are assumed by people under such circumstances is hard to understand. Missionaries assert it is fear of evil consequences in this life and of punishment and neglect in the hereafter that leads to assuming them. Is it not far more likely that such is the price these people are willing to pay for a good name among the living and because of their deep and lasting friendship for the departed? Nor does it seem at all strange that a kindly, warm-hearted people with strong filial affection should have reached, carry in their long history, a belief in one spirit of the departed which hovers about the home, one which hovers about the grave and another which wanders abroad, for surely there are associations with each of these conditions which must long and forcefully awaken memories of friends gone. If this view is possible may not such ancestral worship be an index of qualities of character strongly fixed and of the highest worth which, when improvements come that may relieve the heavy burdens now carried, will only shine more brightly and count more for right living as well as comfort? Even in our own case it will hardly be maintained that our burial customs have reached their best and final solution, for in all civilized nations they are unnecessarily expensive and far too cumbersome. It is only necessary to mentally add the accumulation of a few centuries to our cemeteries to realize how impossible our practice must become. Clearly there is here a very important line for betterment which all nationalities should undertake. When the steamer anchored at Shanghai the day was pleasant and the rain coats which greeted us in Yokohama were not in evidence but the numbers who had met the steamer in the hope of an opportunity for earning a trifle was far greater and in many ways in strong contrast with the Japanese. We were much surprised to find the men of so large stature, much above the Chinese usually seen in the United States. They were fully the equal of large Americans in frame but quite without surplus flesh yet few appeared underfed. To realize that these are strong, hardy men it was only necessary to watch them carrying on their shoulders bales of cotton between them, supported by a strong bamboo; while the heavy loads they transport on wheel-barrows through the country over long distances, as seen in Fig. 32, prove their great endurance. This same type of vehicle, too, is one of the common means of transporting people, especially Chinese women, and four six and even eight may be seen riding together, propelled by a single wheelbarrow man. III TO HONGKONG AND CANTON We had come to learn how the old-world farmers bad been able to provide materials for food and clothing on such small areas for so many millions, at so low a price, during so many centuries, and were anxious to see them at the soil and among the crops. The sun was still south of the equator, coming north only about twelve miles per day, so, to save time, we booked on the next steamer for Hongkong to meet spring at Canton, beyond the Tropic of Cancer, six hundred miles farther south, and return with her. On the morning of March 4th the Tosa Maru steamed out into the Yangtse river, already flowing with the increased speed of ebb tide. The pilots were on the bridge to guide her course along the narrow south channel through waters seemingly as brown and turbid as the Potomac after a rain. It was some distance beyond Gutzlaff Island, seventy miles to sea, where there is a lighthouse and a telegraph station receiving six cables, that we crossed the front of the out-going tide, showing in a sharp line of contrast stretching in either direction farther than the eye could see, across the course of the ship and yet it was the season of low water in this river. During long ages this stream of mighty volume has been loading upon itself in far-away Tibet, without dredge, barge, fuel or human effort, unused and there unusable soils, bringing them down from inaccessible heights across two or three thousand miles, building up with them, from under the sea, at the gateways of commerce, miles upon miles of the world's most fertile fields and gardens. Today on this river, winding through six hundred miles of the most highly cultivated fields, laid out on river-built plains, go large ocean steamers to the city of Hankow-Wuchang-Hanyang where 1,770,000 people live and trade within a radius less than four miles; while smaller steamers push on a thousand miles and are then but 130 feet above sea level. Even now, with the aid of current, tide and man, these brown turbid waters are rapidly adding fertile delta plains for new homes. During the last twenty-five years Chungming island has grown in length some 1800 feet per year and today a million people are living and growing rice, wheat, cotton and sweet potatoes on 270 square miles of fertile plain where five hundred years ago were only submerged river sands and silt. Here 3700 people per square mile have acquired homes. The southward voyage was over a quiet sea and as we passed among and near the off-shore islands these, as seen in Japan, appeared destitute of vegetation other than the low herbaceous types with few shrubs and almost no forest growth and little else that gave the appearance of green. Captain Harrison informed me that at no time in the year are these islands possessed of the grass-green verdure so often seen in northern climates, and yet the islands lie in a region of abundant summer rain, making it hard to understand why there is not a more luxuriant growth. Sunday morning, March 7th, passing first extensive sugar refineries, found us entering the long, narrow and beautiful harbor of Hongkong. Here, lying at anchor in the ten square miles of water, were five battleships, several large ocean steamers, many coastwise vessels and a multitude of smaller craft whose yearly tonnage is twenty to thirty millions. But the harbor lies in the track of the terrible East Indian typhoon and, although sheltered on the north shore of a high island, one of these storms recently sunk nine vessels, sent twenty-three ashore, seriously damaged twenty-one others, wrought great destruction among the smaller craft and over a thousand dead were recovered. Such was the destruction wrought by the September storm of 1906. Our steamer did not go to dock but the Nippon Yusen Kaisha's launch transferred us to a city much resembling Seattle in possessing a scant footing between a long sea front and high steep mountain slopes behind. Here cliffs too steep to climb rise from the very sidewalk and are covered with a great profusion and variety of ferns, small bamboo, palms, vines, many flowering shrubs, all interspersed with pine and great banyan trees that do so much toward adding the beauty of northern landscapes to the tropical features which reach upward until hidden in a veil of fog that hung, all of the time we were there, over the city, over the harbor and stretched beyond Old and New Kowloon. Hongkong island is some eleven miles long and but two to five miles wide, while the peak carrying the signal staff rises 1,825 feet above the streets from which ascends the Peak tramway, where, hanging from opposite ends of a strong cable, one car rises up the slope and another descends every fifteen to twenty minutes, affording communication with business houses below and homes in beautiful surroundings and a tempered climate above. Extending along the slopes of the mountains, too, above the city, are very excellent roads, carefully graded, provided with concrete gutters and bridges, along which one may travel on foot, on horseback, by ricksha or sedan chair, but too narrow for carriages. Over one of these we ascended along one side of Happy Valley, around its head and down the other side. Only occasionally could we catch glimpses of the summit through the lifting fog but the views, looking down and across the city and beyond the harbor with its shipping, and up and down the many ravines from via-ducts, are among the choicest and rarest ever made accessible to the residents of any city. It was the beginning of the migratory season for birds, and trees and shrubbery thronged with many species. Many of the women in Hongkong were seen engaged in such heavy manual labor with the men as carrying crushed rock and sand, for concrete and macadam work, up the steep street slopes long distances from the dock, but they were neither tortured nor incapacitated by bound feet. Like the men, they were of smaller stature than most seen at Shanghai and closely resemble the Chinese in the United States. Both sexes are agile, wiry and strong. Here we first saw lumber sawing in the open streets after the manner shown in Fig. 33, where wide boards were being cut from camphor logs. In the damp, already warm weather the men were stripped to the waist, their limbs bare to above the knee, and each carried a large towel for wiping away the profuse perspiration. It was here, too, that we first met the remarkable staging for the erection of buildings of four and six stories, set up without saw, hammer or nail; without injury to or waste of lumber and with the minimum of labor in construction and removal. Poles and bamboo stems were lashed together with overlapping ends, permitting any interval or height to be secured without cutting or nailing, and admitting of ready removal with absolutely no waste, all parts being capable of repeated use unless it be some of the materials employed in tying members. Up inclined stairways, from staging to staging, in the erection of six-story granite buildings, mortar was being carried in baskets swinging from bamboo poles on the shoulders of men and women, as the cheapest hoists available in English Hongkong where there is willing human labor and to spare. The Singer sewing machine, manufactured in New Jersey, was seen in many Chinese shops in Hongkong and other cities, operated by Chinese men and women, purchased, freight prepaid, at two-thirds the retail price in the United States. Such are the indications of profit to manufacturers on the home sale of home-made goods while at the same time reaping good returns from a large trade in heathen lands, after paying the freight. Industrial China, Korea and Japan do not observe our weekly day of rest and during our walk around Happy Valley on Sunday afternoon, looking down upon its terraced gardens and tiny fields, we saw men and women busy fitting the soil for new crops, gathering vegetables for market, feeding plants with liquid manure and even irrigating certain crops, notwithstanding the damp, foggy, showery weather. Turning the head of the valley, attention was drawn to a walled enclosure and a detour down the slope brought us to a florist's garden within which were rows of large potted foliage plants of semi-shrubbery habit, seen in Fig. 35, trained in the form of life-size human figures with limbs, arms and trunk provided with highly glazed and colored porcelain feet, hands and head. These, with many other potted plants and trees, including dwarf varieties, are grown under out-door lattice shelters in different parts of China, for sale to the wealthy Chinese families. How thorough is the tillage, how efficient and painstaking the garden fitting, and how closely the ground is crowded to its upper limit of producing power are indicated in Fig. 36; and when one stops and studies the detail in such gardens he expects in its executor an orderly, careful, frugal and industrious man, getting not a little satisfaction out of his creations however arduous his task or prolonged his day. If he is in the garden or one meets him at the house, clad as the nature of his duties and compensation have determined, you may be disappointed or feel arising an unkind judgment. But who would risk a reputation so clad and so environed? Many were the times, during our walks in the fields and gardens among these old, much misunderstood, misrepresented and undervalued people, when the bond of common interest was recognized between us, that there showed through the face the spirit which put aside both dress and surroundings and the man stood forth who, with fortitude and rare wisdom, is feeding the millions and who has carried through centuries the terrible burden of taxes levied by dishonor and needless wars. Nay, more than this, the man stood forth who has kept alive the seeds of manhood and has nourished them into such sturdy stock as has held the stream of progress along the best interests of civilization in spite of the driftwood heaped upon it. Not only are these people extremely careful and painstaking in fitting their fields and gardens to receive the crop, but they are even more scrupulous in their care to make everything that can possibly serve as fertilizer for the soil, or food for the crop being grown, do so unless there is some more remunerative service it may render. Expense is incurred to provide such receptacles as are seen in Fig. 37 for receiving not only the night soil of the home and that which may be bought or otherwise procured, but in which may be stored any other fluid which can serve as plant food. On the right of these earthenware jars too is a pile of ashes and one of manure. All such materials are saved and used in the most advantageous ways to enrich the soil or to nourish the plants being grown. Generally the liquid manures must be diluted with water to a greater or less extent before they are "fed", as the Chinese say, to their plants, hence there is need of an abundant and convenient water supply. One of these is seen in Fig. 38, where the Chinaman has adopted the modern galvanized iron pipe to bring water from the mountain slope of Happy Valley to his garden. By the side of this tank are the covered pails in which the night soil was brought, perhaps more than a mile, to be first diluted and then applied. But the more general method for supplying water is that of leading it along the ground in channels or ditches to a small reservoir in one corner of a terraced field or garden, as seen in Fig. 39, where it is held and the surplus led down from terrace to terrace, giving each its permanent supply. At the upper right corner of the engraving may be seen two manure receptacles and a third stands near the reservoir. The plants on the lower terrace are water cress and those above the same. At this time of the year, on the terraced gardens of Happy Valley, this is one of the crops most extensively grown. Walking among these gardens and isolated homes, we passed a pig pen provided with a smooth, well-laid stone floor that had just been washed scrupulously clean, like the floor of a house. While I was not able to learn other facts regarding this case, I have little doubt that the washings from this floor had been carefully collected and taken to some receptacle to serve as a plant food. Looking backward as we left Hongkong for Canton on the cloudy evening of March 8th, the view was wonderfully beautiful. We were drawing away from three cities, one, electric-lighted Hongkong rising up the steep slopes, suggesting a section of sky set with a vast array of stars of all magnitudes up to triple Jupiters; another, old and new Kowloon on the opposite side of the harbor; and between these two, separated from either shore by wide reaches of wholly unoccupied water, lay the third, a mid-strait city of sampans, junks and coastwise craft of many kinds segregated, in obedience to police regulation, into blocks and streets with each setting sun, but only to scatter again with the coming morn. At night, after a fixed hour, no one is permitted to leave shore and cross the vacant water strip except from certain piers and with the permission of the police, who take the number of the sampan and the names of its occupants. Over the harbor three large search lights were sweeping and it was curious to see the junks and other craft suddenly burst into full blazes of light, like so many monstrous fire-flies, to disappear and reappear as the lights came and went. Thus is the mid-strait city lighted and policed and thus have steps been taken to lessen the number of cases of foul play where people have left the wharves at night for some vessel in the strait, never to be heard from again. Some ninety miles is the distance by water to Canton, and early the next morning our steamer dropped anchor off the foreign settlement of Shameen. Through the kindness of Consul-General Amos P. Wilder in sending a telegram to the Canton Christian College, their little steam launch met the boat and took us directly to the home of the college on Honam Island, lying in the great delta south of the city where sediments brought by the Si-kiang--west, Pei-kiang--north, and Tung-kiang--east--rivers through long centuries have been building the richest of land which, because of the density of population, are squared up everywhere to the water's edge and appropriated as fast as formed, and made to bring forth materials for food fuel and raiment in vast quantities. It was on Honam Island that we walked first among the grave lands and came to know them as such, for Canton Christian College stands in the midst of graves which, although very old, are not permitted to be disturbed and the development of the campus must wait to secure permission to remove graves, or erect its buildings in places not the most desirable. Cattle were grazing among the graves and with them a flock of some 250 of the brown Chinese geese, two-thirds grown, was watched by boys, gleaning their entire living from the grave lands and adjacent water. A mature goose sells in Canton for $1.20, Mexican, or less than 52 cents, gold, but even then how can the laborer whose day's wage is but ten or fifteen cents afford one for his family? Here, too, we saw the Chinese persistent, never-ending industry in keeping their land, their sunshine and their rain, with themselves, busy in producing something needful. Fields which had matured two crops of rice during the long summer, had been laboriously, and largely by hand labor, thrown into strong ridges as seen in Fig. 40, to permit still a third winter crop of some vegetable to be taken from the land. But this intensive, continuous cropping of the land spells soil exhaustion and creates demands for maintenance and restoration of available plant food or the adding of large quantities of something quickly convertible into it, and so here in the fields on Honam Island, as we had found in Happy Valley, there was abundant evidence of the most careful attention and laborious effort devoted to plant feeding. The boat standing in the canal in Fig. 41 had come from Canton in the early morning with two tons of human manure and men were busy applying it, in diluted form, to beds of leeks at the rate of 16,000 gallons per acre, all carried on the shoulders in such pails as stand in the foreground. The material is applied with long-handled dippers holding a gallon, dipping it from the pails, the men wading, with bare feet and trousers rolled above the knees, in the water of the furrows between the beds. This is one of their ways of "feeding the crop," and they have other methods of "manuring the soil." One of these we first met on Honam Island. Large amounts of canal mud are here collected in boats and brought to the fields to be treated and there left to drain and dry before distributing. Both the material used to feed the crop and that used for manuring the land are waste products, hindrances to the industry of the region, but the Chinese make them do essential duty in maintaining its life. The human waste must be disposed of. They return it to the soil. We turn it into the sea. Doing so, they save for plant feeding more than a ton of phosphorus (2712 pounds) and more than two tons of potassium (4488 pounds) per day for each million of adult population. The mud collects in their canals and obstructs movement. They must be kept open. The mud is highly charged with organic matter and would add humus to the soil if applied to the fields, at the same time raising their level above the river and canal, giving them better drainage; thus are they turning to use what is otherwise waste, causing the labor which must be expended in disposal to count in a remunerative way. During the early morning ride to Canton Christian College and three others which we were permitted to enjoy in the launch on the canal and river waters, everything was again strange, fascinating and full of human interest. The Cantonese water population was a surprise, not so much for its numbers as for the lithe, sinewy forms, bright eyes and cheerful faces, particularly among the women, young and old. Nearly always one or more women, mother and daughter oftenest, grandmother many times, wrinkled, sometimes grey, but strong, quick and vigorous in motion, were manning the oars of junks, houseboats and sampans. Sometimes husband and wife and many times the whole family were seen together when the craft was both home and business boat as well. Little children were gazing from most unexpected peek holes, or they toddled tethered from a waist belt at the end of as much rope as would arrest them above water, should they go overboard. And the cat was similarly tied. Through an overhanging latticed stern, too, hens craned their necks, longing for scenes they could not reach. With bare heads, bare feet, in short trousers and all dressed much alike, men, women, boys and girls showed equal mastery of the oar. Beginning so young, day and night in the open air on the tide-swept streams and canals, exposed to all of the sunshine the fogs and clouds will permit, and removed from the dust and filth of streets, it would seem that if the children survive at all they must develop strong. The appearance of the women somehow conveyed the impression that they were more vigorous and in better fettle than the men. Boats selling many kinds of steaming hot dishes were common. Among these was rice tied in green leaf wrappers, three small packets in a cluster suspended by a strand of some vegetable fiber, to be handed hot from the cooker to the purchaser, some one on a passing junk or on an in-coming or out-going boat. Another would buy hot water for a brew of tea, while still another, and for a single cash, might be handed a small square of cotton cloth, wrung hot from the water, with which to wipe his face and hands and then be returned. Perhaps nothing better measures the intensity of the maintenance struggle here, and better indicates the minute economies practiced, than the value of their smallest currency unit, the Cash, used in their daily retail transactions. On our Pacific coast, where less thought is given to little economies than perhaps anywhere else in the world, the nickel is the smallest coin in general use, twenty to the dollar. For the rest of the United States and in most English speaking countries one hundred cents or half pennies measure an equal value. In Russia 170 kopecks, in Mexico 200 centavos, in France 250 two-centime pieces, and in Austria-Hungary 250 two-heller coins equal the United States dollar; while in Germany 400 pfennigs, and in India 400 pie are required for an equal value. Again 500 penni in Finland and of stotinki in Bulgaria, of centesimi in Italy and of half cents in Holland equal our dollar; but in China the small daily financial transactions are measured against a much smaller unit, their Cash, 1500 to 2000 of which are required to equal the United States dollar, their purchasing power fluctuating daily with the price of silver. In the Shantung province, when we inquired of the farmers the selling prices of their crops, their replies were given like this: "Thirty-five strings of cash for 420 catty of wheat and twelve to fourteen strings of cash for 1000 catty of wheat straw." At this time, according to my interpreter, the value of one string of cash was 40 cents Mexican, from which it appears that something like 250 of these coins were threaded on a string. Twice we saw a wheelbarrow heavily loaded with strings of cash being transported through the streets of Shanghai, lying exposed on the frame, suggesting chains of copper more than money. At one of the go-downs or warehouses in Tsingtao, where freight was being transferred from a steamer, the carriers were receiving their pay in these coin. The pay-master stood in the doorway with half a bushel of loose cash in a grain sack at his feet. With one hand he received the bamboo tally-sticks from the stevedores and with the other paid the cash for service rendered. Reference has been made to buying hot water. In a sampan managed by a woman and her daughter, who took us ashore, the middle section of the boat was furnished in the manner of a tiny sitting-room, and on the sideboard sat the complete embodiment of our fireless cookers, keeping boiled water hot for making tea. This device and the custom are here centuries old and throughout these countries boiled water, as tea, is the universal drink, adopted no doubt as a preventive measure against typhoid fever and allied diseases. Few vegetables are eaten raw and nearly all foods are taken hot or recently cooked if not in some way pickled or salted. Houseboat meat shops move among the many junks on the canals. These were provided with a compartment communicating freely with the canal water where the fish were kept alive until sold. At the street markets too, fish are kept alive in large tubs of water systematically aerated by the water falling from an elevated receptacle in a thin stream. A live fish may even be sliced before the eyes of a purchaser and the unsold portion returned to the water. Poultry is largely retailed alive although we saw much of it dressed and cooked to a uniform rich brown, apparently roasted, hanging exposed in the markets of the very narrow streets in Canton, shaded from the hot sun under awnings admitting light overhead through translucent oyster-shell latticework. Perhaps these fowl had been cooked in hot oil and before serving would be similarly heated. At any rate it is perfectly clear that among these people many very fundamental sanitary practices are rigidly observed. One fact which we do not fully understand is that, wherever we went, house flies were very few. We never spent a summer with so little annoyance from them as this one in China, Korea and Japan. It may be that our experience was exceptional but, if so, it could not be ascribed to the season of our visit for we have found flies so numerous in southern Florida early in April as to make the use of the fly brush at the table very necessary. If the scrupulous husbanding of waste refuse so universally practiced in these countries reduces the fly nuisance and this menace to health to the extent which our experience suggests, here is one great gain. We breed flies in countless millions each year, until they become an intolerable nuisance, and then expend millions of dollars on screens and fly poison which only ineffectually lessen the intensity and danger of the evil. The mechanical appliances in use on the canals and in the shops of Canton demonstrate that the Chinese possess constructive ability of a high order, notwithstanding so many of these are of the simplest forms. This statement is well illustrated in the simple yet efficient foot-power seen in Fig. 42, where a father and his two sons are driving an irrigation pump, lifting water at the rate of seven and a half acre-inches per ten hours, and at a cost, including wage and food, of 36 to 45 cents, gold. Here, too, were large stern-wheel passenger boats, capable of carrying thirty to one hundred people, propelled by the same foot-power but laid crosswise of the stern, the men working in long single or double lines, depending on the size of the boat. On these the fare was one cent, gold, for a fifteen mile journey, a rate one-thirtieth our two-cent railway tariff. The dredging and clearing of the canals and water channels in and about Canton is likewise accomplished with the same foot-power, often by families living on the dredge boats. A dipper dredge is used, constructed of strong bamboo strips woven into the form of a sliding, two-horse road scraper, guided by a long bamboo handle. The dredge is drawn along the bottom by a rope winding about the projecting axle of the foot-power, propelled by three or more people. When the dipper reaches the axle and is raised from the water it is swung aboard, emptied and returned by means of a long arm like the old well sweep, operated by a cord depending from the lower end of the lever, the dipper swinging from the other. Much of the mud so collected from the canals and channels of the city is taken to the rice and mulberry fields, many square miles of which occupy the surrounding country. Thus the channels are kept open, the fields grow steadily higher above flood level, while their productive power is maintained by the plant food and organic matter carried in the sediment. The mechanical principle involved in the boy's button buzz was applied in Canton and in many other places for operating small drills as well as in grinding and polishing appliances used in the manufacture of ornamental ware. The drill, as used for boring metal, is set in a straight shaft, often of bamboo, on the upper end of which is mounted a circular weight. The drill is driven by a pair of strings with one end attached just beneath the momentum weight and the other fastened at the ends of a cross hand-bar, having a hole at its center through which the shaft carrying the drill passes. Holding the drill in position for work and turning the shaft, the two cords are wrapped about it in such a manner that simple downward pressure on the hand bar held in the two hands unwinds the cords and thus revolves the drill. Relieving the pressure at the proper time permits the momentum of the revolving weight to rewind the cords and the next downward pressure brings the drill again into service. IV UP THE SI-KIANG, WEST RIVER On the morning of March 10th we took passage on the Nanning for Wuchow, in Kwangsi province, a journey of 220 miles up the West river, or Sikiang. The Nanning is one of two English steamers making regular trips between the two places, and it was the sister boat which in the summer of 1906 was attacked by pirates on one of her trips and all of the officers and first class passengers killed while at dinner. The cause of this attack, it is said, or the excuse for it, was threatened famine resulting from destructive floods which had ruined the rice and mulberry crops of the great delta region and had prevented the carrying of manure and bean cake as fertilizers to the tea fields in the hill lands beyond, thus bringing ruin to three of the great staple crops of the region. To avoid the recurrence of such tragedies the first class quarters on the Nanning had been separated from the rest of the ship by heavy iron gratings thrown across the decks and over the hatchways. Armed guards stood at the locked gateways, and swords were hanging from posts under the awnings of the first cabin quarters, much as saw and ax in our passenger coaches. Both British and Chinese gunboats were patrolling the river; all Chinese passengers were searched for concealed weapons as they came aboard, even though Government soldiers, and all arms taken into custody until the end of the journey. Several of the large Chinese merchant junks which were passed, carrying valuable cargoes on the river, were armed with small cannon and when riding by rail from Canton to Sam Shui, a government pirate detective was in our coach. The Sikiang is one of the great rivers of China and indeed of the world. Its width at Wuchow at low water was nearly a mile and our steamer anchored in twenty-four feet of water to a floating dock made fast by huge iron chains reaching three hundred feet up the slope to the city proper, thus providing for a rise of twenty-six feet in the river at its flood stage during the rainy season. In a narrow section of river where it winds through Shui Hing gorge, the water at low stage has a depth of more than twenty-five fathoms, too deep for anchorage, so in times of prospective fog, boats wait for clearing weather. Fluctuations in the height of the river limit vessels passing up to Wuchow to those drawing six and a half feet of water during the low stage, and at high stage to those drawing sixteen feet. When the West river emerges from the high lands, with its burden of silt, to join its waters with those of the North and East rivers, it has entered a vast delta plain some eighty miles from east to west and nearly as many from north to south, and this has been canalized, diked, drained and converted into the most productive of fields, bearing three or more crops each year. As we passed westward through this delta region the broad flat fields, surrounded by dikes to protect them against high water, were being plowed and fitted for the coming crop of rice. In many places the dikes which checked off the fields were planted with bananas and in the distance gave the appearance of extensive orchards completely occupying the ground. Except for the water and the dikes it was easy to imagine that we were traversing one of our western prairie sections in the early spring, at seeding time, the scattered farm villages here easily suggested distant farmsteads; but a nearer approach to the houses showed that the roofs and sides were thatched with rice straw and stacks were very numerous about the buildings. Many tide gates were set in the dikes, often with double trunks. At times we approached near enough to the fields to see how they were laid out. From the gates long canals, six to eight feet wide, led back sometimes eighty or a hundred rods. Across these and at right angles, head channels were cut and between them the fields were plowed in long straight lands some two rods wide, separated by water furrows. Many of the fields were bearing sugar cane standing eight feet high. The Chinese do no sugar refining but boil the sap until it will solidify, when it is run into cakes resembling chocolate or our brown maple sugar. Immense quantities of sugar cane, too, are exported to the northern provinces, in bundles wrapped with matting or other cover, for the retail markets where it is sold, the canes being cut in short sections and sometimes peeled, to be eaten from the hands as a confection. Much of the way this water-course was too broad to permit detailed study of field conditions and crops, even with a glass. In such sections the recent dikes often have the appearance of being built from limestone blocks but a closer view showed them constructed from blocks of the river silt cut and laid in walls with slightly sloping faces. In time however the blocks weather and the dikes become rounded earthen walls. We passed two men in a boat, in charge of a huge flock of some hundreds of yellow ducklings. Anchored to the bank was a large houseboat provided with an all-around, over-hanging rim and on board was a stack of rice straw and other things which constituted the floating home of the ducks. Both ducks and geese are reared in this manner in large numbers by the river population. When it is desired to move to another feeding ground a gang plank is put ashore and the flock come on board to remain for the night or to be landed at another place. About five hours journey westward in this delta plain, where the fields lie six to ten feet above the present water stage, we reached the mulberry district. Here the plants are cultivated in rows about four feet apart, having the habit of small shrubs rather than of trees, and so much resembling cotton that our first impression was that we were in an extensive cotton district. On the lower lying areas, surrounded by dikes, some fields were laid out in the manner of the old Italian or English water meadows, with a shallow irrigation furrow along the crest of the bed and much deeper drainage ditches along the division line between them. Mulberries were occupying the ground before the freshly cut trenches we saw were dug, and all the surface between the rows had been evenly overlaid with the fresh earth removed with the spade, the soil lying in blocks essentially unbroken. In Fig. 43 may be seen the mulberry crop on a similarly treated surface, between Canton and Samshui, with the earth removed from the trenches laid evenly over the entire surface between and around the plants, as it came from the spade. At frequent intervals along the river, paths and steps were seen leading to the water and within a distance of a quarter of a mile we counted thirty-one men and women carrying mud in baskets on bamboo poles swung across their shoulders, the mud being taken from just above the water line. The disposition of this material we could not see as it was carried beyond a rise in ground. We have little doubt that the mulberry fields were being covered with it. It was here that a rain set in and almost like magic the fields blossomed out with great numbers of giant rain hats and kittysols, where people had been unobserved before. From one o'clock until six in the afternoon we had traveled continuously through these mulberry fields stretching back miles from our line of travel on either hand, and the total acreage must have been very large. But we had now nearly reached the margin of the delta and the mulberries changed to fields of grain, beans, peas and vegetables. After leaving the delta region the balance of the journey to Wuchow was through a hill country, the slopes rising steeply from near the river bank, leaving relatively little tilled or readily tillable land. Rising usually five hundred to a thousand feet, the sides and summits of the rounded, soil-covered hills were generally clothed with a short herbaceous growth and small scattering trees, oftenest pine, four to sixteen feet high, Fig. 44 being a typical landscape of the region. In several sections along the course of this river there are limited areas of intense erosion where naked gulleys of no mean magnitude have developed but these were exceptions and we were continually surprised at the remarkable steepness of the slopes, with convexly rounded contours almost everywhere, well mantled with soil, devoid of gulleys and completely covered with herbaceous growth dotted with small trees. The absence of forest growth finds its explanation in human influence rather than natural conditions. Throughout the hill-land section of this mighty river the most characteristic and persistent human features were the stacks of brush-wood and the piles of stove wood along the banks or loaded upon boats and barges for the market. The brush-wood was largely made from the boughs of pine, tied into bundles and stacked like grain. The stove wood was usually round, peeled and made from the limbs and trunks of trees two to five inches in diameter. All this fuel was coming to the river from the back country, sent down along steep slides which in the distance resemble paths leading over hills but too steep for travel. The fuel was loaded upon large barges, the boughs in the form of stacks to shed rain but with a tunnel leading into the house of the boat about which they were stacked, while the wood was similarly corded about the dwelling, as seen in Fig. 44. The wood was going to Canton and other delta cities while the pine boughs were taken to the lime and cement kilns, many of which were located along the river. Absolutely the whole tree, including the roots and the needles, is saved and burned; no waste is permitted. The up-river cargo of the Nanning was chiefly matting rush, taken on at Canton, tied in bundles like sheaves of wheat. It is grown upon the lower, newer delta lands by methods of culture similar to those applied to rice, Fig. 45 showing a field as seen in Japan. The rushes were being taken to one of the country villages on a tributary of the Sikiang and the steamer was met by a flotilla of junks from this village, some forty-five miles up the stream, where the families live who do the weaving. On the return trip the flotilla again met the steamer with a cargo of the woven matting. In keeping record of packages transferred the Chinese use a simple and unique method. Each carrier, with his two bundles, received a pair of tally sticks. At the gang-plank sat a man with a tally-case divided into twenty compartments, each of which could receive five, but no more, tallies. As the bundles left the steamer the tallies were placed in the tally-case until it contained one hundred, when it was exchanged for another. Wuchow is a city of some 65,000 inhabitants, standing back on the higher ground, not readily visible from the steamer landing nor from the approach on the river. On the foreground, across which stretched the anchor chains of the dock, was living a floating population, many in shelters less substantial than Indian wigwams, but engaged in a great variety of work, and many water buffalo had been tied for the night along the anchor chains. Before July much of this area would lie beneath the flood waters of the Sikiang. Here a ship builder was using his simple, effective bow-brace, boring holes for the dowel pins in the planking for his ship, and another was bending the plank to the proper curvature. The bow-brace consisted of a bamboo stalk carrying the bit at one end and a shoulder rest at the other. Pressing the bit to its work with the shoulder, it was driven with the string of a long bow wrapped once around the stalk by drawing the bow back and forth, thus rapidly and readily revolving the bit. The bending of the long, heavy plank, four inches thick and eight inches wide, was more simple still, It was saturated with water and one end raised on a support four feet above the ground. A bundle of burning rice straw moved along the under side against the wet wood had the effect of steaming the wood and the weight of the plank caused it to gradually bend into the shape desired. Bamboo poles are commonly bent or straightened in this manner to suit any need and Fig. 46 shows a wooden fork shaped in the manner described from a small tree having three main branches. This fork is in the hands of my interpreter and was used by the woman standing at the right, in turning wheat. When the old ship builder had finished shaping his plank he sat down on the ground for a smoke. His pipe was one joint of bamboo stem a foot long, nearly two inches in diameter and open at one end. In the closed end, at one side, a small hole was bored for draft. A charge of tobacco was placed in the bottom, the lips pressed into the open end and the pipe lighted by suction, holding a lighted match at the small opening. To enjoy his pipe the bowl rested on the ground between his legs. With his lips in the bowl and a long breath, he would completely fill his lungs, retaining the smoke for a time, then slowly expire and fill the lungs again, after an interval of natural breathing. On returning to Canton we went by rail, with an interpreter, to Samshui, visiting fields along the way, and Fig. 47 is a view of one landscape. The woman was picking roses among tidy beds of garden vegetables. Beyond her and in front of the near building are two rows of waste receptacles. In the center background is a large "go-down", in function that of our cold storage warehouse and in part that of our grain elevator for rice. In them, too, the wealthy store their fur-lined winter garments for safe keeping. These are numerous in this portion of China and the rank of a city is indicated by their number. The conical hillock is a large near-by grave mound and many others serrate the sky line on the hill beyond. In the next landscape, Fig. 48, a crop of winter peas, trained to canes, are growing on ridges among the stubble of the second crop of rice, In front is one canal, the double ridge behind is another and a third canal extends in front of the houses. Already preparations were being made for the first crop of rice, fields were being flooded and fertilized. One such is seen in Fig. 49, where a laborer was engaged at the time in bringing stable manure, wading into the water to empty the baskets. Two crops of rice are commonly grown each year in southern China and during the winter and early spring, grain, cabbage, rape, peas, beans, leeks and ginger may occupy the fields as a third or even fourth crop, making the total year's product from the land very large; but the amount of thought, labor and fertilizers given to securing these is even greater and beyond anything Americans will endure. How great these efforts are will be appreciated from what is seen in Fig. 50, representing two fields thrown into high ridges, planted to ginger and covered with straw. All of this work is done by hand and when the time for rice planting comes every ridge will again be thrown down and the surface smoothed to a water level. Even when the ridges and beds are not thrown down for the crops of rice, the furrows and the beds will change places so that all the soil is worked over deeply and mainly through hand labor. The statement so often made, that these people only barely scratch the surface of their fields with the crudest of tools is very far from the truth, for their soils are worked deeply and often, notwithstanding the fact that their plowing, as such, may be shallow. Through Dr. John Blumann of the missionary hospital at Tungkun, east from Canton, we learned that the good rice lands there a few years ago sold at $75 to $130 per acre but that prices are rising rapidly. The holdings of the better class of farmers there are ten to fifteen mow--one and two-thirds to two and a half acres--upon which are maintained families numbering six to twelve. The day's wage of a carpenter or mason is eleven to thirteen cents of our currency, and board is not included, but a day's ration for a laboring man is counted worth fifteen cents, Mexican, or less than seven cents, gold. Fish culture is practiced in both deep and shallow basins, the deep permanent ones renting as high as $30 gold, per acre. The shallow basins which can be drained in the dry season are used for fish only during the rainy period, being later drained and planted to some crop. The permanent basins have often come to be ten or twelve feet deep, increasing with long usage, for they are periodically drained by pumping and the foot or two of mud which has accumulated, removed and sold as fertilizer to planters of rice and other crops. It is a common practice, too, among the fish growers, to fertilize the ponds, and in case a foot path leads alongside, screens are built over the water to provide accommodation for travelers. Fish reared in the better fertilized ponds bring a higher price in the market. The fertilizing of the water favors a stronger growth of food forms, both plant and animal, upon which the fish live and they are better nourished, making a more rapid growth, giving their flesh better qualities, as is the case with well fed animals. In the markets where fish are exposed for sale they are often sliced in halves lengthwise and the cut surface smeared with fresh blood. In talking with Dr. Blumann as to the reason for this practice he stated that the Chinese very much object to eating meat that is old or tainted and that he thought the treatment simply had the effect of making the fish look fresher. I question whether this treatment with fresh blood may not have a real antiseptic effect and very much doubt that people so shrewd as the Chinese would be misled by such a ruse. V EXTENT OF CANALIZATION AND SURFACE FITTING OF FIELDS On the evening of March 15th we left Canton for Hongkong and the following day embarked again on the Tosa Maru for Shanghai. Although our steamer stood so far to sea that we were generally out of sight of land except for some off-shore islands, the water was turbid most of the way after we had crossed the Tropic of Cancer off the mouth of the Han river at Swatow. Over a sea bottom measuring more than six hundred miles northward along the coast, and perhaps fifty miles to sea, unnumbered acre-feet of the richest soil of China are being borne beyond the reach of her four hundred millions of people and the children to follow them. Surely it must be one of the great tasks of future statesmanship, education and engineering skill to divert larger amounts of such sediments close along inshore in such manner as to add valuable new land annually to the public domain, not alone in China but in all countries where large resources of this type are going to waste. In the vast Cantonese delta plains which we had just left, in the still more extensive ones of the Yangtse kiang to which we were now going, and in those of the shifting Hwang ho further north, centuries of toiling millions have executed works of almost incalculable magnitude, fundamentally along such lines as those just suggested. They have accomplished an enormous share of these tasks by sheer force of body and will, building levees, digging canals, diverting the turbid waters of streams through them and then carrying the deposits of silt and organic growth out upon the fields, often borne upon the shoulders of men in the manner we have seen. It is well nigh impossible, by word or map, to convey an adequate idea of the magnitude of the systems of canalization and delta and other lowland reclamation work, or of the extent of surface fitting of fields which have been effected in China, Korea and Japan through the many centuries, and which are still in progress. The lands so reclaimed and fitted constitute their most enduring asset and they support their densest populations. In one of our journeys by houseboat on the delta canals between Shanghai and Hangchow, in China, over a distance of 117 miles, we made a careful record of the number and dimensions of lateral canals entering and leaving the main one along which our boat-train was traveling. This record shows that in 62 miles, beginning north of Kashing and extending south to Hangchow, there entered from the west 134 and there left on the coast side 190 canals. The average width of these canals, measured along the water line, we estimated at 22 and 19 feet respectively on the two sides. The height of the fields above the water level ranged from four to twelve feet, during the April and May stage of water. The depth of water, after we entered the Grand Canal, often exceeded six feet and our best judgment would place the average depth of all canals in this part of China at more than eight feet below the level of the fields. In Fig. 51, representing an area of 718 square miles in the region traversed, all lines shown are canals, but scarcely more than one-third of those present are shown on the map. Between A, where we began our records, before reaching Kashing, and B, near the left margin of the map, there were forty-three canals leading in from the up-country side, instead of the eight shown, and on the coast side there were eighty-six leading water out into the delta plain toward the coast, instead of the twelve shown. Again, on one of our trips by rail, from Shanghai to Nanking, we made a similar record of the number of canals seen from the train, close along the track, and the notes show, in a distance of 162 miles, 593 canals between Lungtan and Nansiang. This is an average of more than three canals per mile for this region and that between Shanghai and Hangchow. The extent, nature and purpose of these vast systems of internal improvement may be better realized through a study of the next two sketch maps. The first, Fig. 52, represents an area 175 by 160 miles, of which the last illustration is the portion enclosed in the small rectangle. On this area there are shown 2,700 miles of canals and only about one-third of the canals shown in Fig. 51 are laid down on this map, and according to our personal observations there are three times as many canals as are shown on the map of which Fig. 51 represents a part. It is probable, therefore, that there exists today in the area of Fig. 52 not less than 25,000 miles of canals. In the next illustration, Fig. 53, an area of northeast China, 600 by 725 miles, is represented. The unshaded land area covers nearly 200,000 square miles of alluvial plain. This plain is so level that at Ichang, nearly a thousand miles up the Yangtse, the elevation is only 130 feet above the sea. The tide is felt on the river to beyond Wuhu, 375 miles from the coast. During the summer the depth of water in the Yangtse is sufficient to permit ocean vessels drawing twenty-five feet of water to ascend six hundred miles to Hankow, and for smaller steamers to go on to Ichang, four hundred miles further. The location, in this vast low delta and coastal plain, of the system of canals already described, is indicated by the two rectangles in the south-east corner of the sketch map, Fig. 53. The heavy barred black line extending from Hangchow in the south to Tientsin in the north represents the Grand Canal which has a length of more than eight hundred miles. The plain, east of this canal, as far north as the mouth of the Hwang ho in 1852, is canalized much as is the area shown in Fig. 52. So, too, is a large area both sides of the present mouth of the same river in Shantung and Chihli, between the canal and the coast. Westward, up the Yangtse valley, the provinces of Anhwei, Kiangsi, Hunan and Hupeh have very extensive canalized tracts, probably exceeding 28,000 square miles in area, and Figs. 54 and 55 are two views in this more western region. Still further west, in Szechwan province, is the Chengtu plain, thirty by seventy miles, with what has been called "the most remarkable irrigation system in China." Westward beyond the limits of the sketch map, up the Hwang ho valley, there is a reach of 125 miles of irrigated lands about Ninghaifu, and others still farther west, at Lanchowfu and at Suchow where the river has attained an elevation of 5,000 feet, in Kansu province; and there is still to be named the great Canton delta region. A conservative estimate would place the miles of canals and leveed rivers in China, Korea and Japan equal to eight times the number represented in Fig. 52. Fully 200,000 miles in all. Forty canals across the United States from east to west and sixty from north to south would not equal, in number of miles those in these three countries today. Indeed, it is probable that this estimate is not too large for China alone. As adjuncts to these vast canalization works there have been enormous amounts of embankment, dike and levee construction. More than three hundred miles of sea wall alone exist in the area covered by the sketch map, Fig. 52. The east bank of the Grand Canal, between Yangchow and Hwaianfu, is itself a great levee, holding back the waters to the west above the eastern plain, diverting them south, into the Yangtse kiang. But it is also provided with spillways for use in times of excessive flood, permitting waters to discharge eastward. Such excess waters however are controlled by another dike with canal along its west side, some forty miles to the east, impounding the water in a series of large lakes until it may gradually drain away. This area is seen in Fig. 53, north of the Yangtse river. Along the banks of the Yangtse, and for many miles along the Hwang ho, great levees have been built, some-times in reinforcing series of two or three at different distances back from the channel where the stream bed is above the adjacent country, in order to prevent widespread disaster and to limit the inundated areas in times of unusual flood. In the province of Hupeh, where the Han river flows through two hundred miles of low country, this stream is diked on both sides throughout the whole distance, and in a portion of its course the height of the levees reaches thirty feet or more. Again, in the Canton delta region there are other hundreds of miles of sea wall and dikes, so that the aggregate mileage of this type of construction works in the Empire can only be measured in thousands of miles. In addition to the canal and levee construction works there are numerous impounding reservoirs which are brought into requisition to control overflow waters from the great streams. Some of these reservoirs, like Tungting lake in Hupeh and Poyang in Hunan, have areas of 2,000 and 1,800 square miles respectively and during the heaviest rainy seasons each may rise through twenty to thirty feet, Then there are other large and small lakes in the coastal plain giving an aggregate reservoir area exceeding 13,000 square miles, all of which are brought into service in controlling flood waters, all of which are steadily filling with the sediments brought from the far away uncultivable mountain slopes and which are ultimately destined to become rich alluvial plains, doubtless to be canalized in the manner we have seen. There is still another phase of these vast construction works which has been of the greatest moment in increasing the maintenance capacity of the Empire,--the wresting from the flood waters of the enormous volumes of silt which they carry, depositing it over the flooded areas, in the canals and along the shores in such manner as to add to the habitable and cultivable land. Reference has been made to the rapid growth of Chungming island in the mouth of the Yangtse kiang, and the million people now finding homes on the 270 square miles of newly made land which now has its canals, as may be seen in the upper margin of Fig. 52. The city of Shanghai, as its name signifies, stood originally on the seashore, which has now grown twenty miles to the northward and to the eastward. In 220 B. C. the town of Putai in Shantung stood one-third of a mile from the sea, but in 1730 it was forty-seven miles inland, and is forty-eight miles from the shore today. Sienshuiku, on the Pei ho, stood upon the seashore in 500 A. D. We passed the city, on our way to Tientsin, eighteen miles inland. The dotted line laid in from the coast of the Gulf of Chihli in Fig. 53 marks one historic shore line and indicates a general growth of land eighteen miles to seaward. Besides these actual extensions of the shore lines the centuries of flooding of lakes and low lying lands has so filled many depressions as to convert large areas of swamp into cultivated fields. Not only this, but the spreading of canal mud broadcast over the encircled fields has had two very important effects,--namely, raising the level of the low lying fields, giving them better drainage and so better physical condition, and adding new plant food in the form of virgin soil of the richest type, thus contributing to the maintenance of soil fertility, high maintenance capacity and permanent agriculture through all the centuries. These operations of maintenance and improvement had a very early inception; they appear to have persisted throughout the recorded history of the Empire and are in vogue today. Canals of the type illustrated in Figs. 51 and 52 have been built between 1886 and 1901, both on the extensions of Chungming island and the newly formed main land to the north, as is shown by comparison of Stieler's atlas, revised in 1886, with the recent German survey. Earlier than 2255 B. C., more than 4100 years ago, Emperor Yao appointed "The Great" Yu "Superintendent of Works" and entrusted him with the work of draining off the waters of disastrous floods and of canalizing the rivers, and he devoted thirteen years to this work. This great engineer is said to have written several treatises on agriculture and drainage, and was finally called, much against his wishes, to serve as Emperor during the last seven years of his life. The history of the Hwang ho is one of disastrous floods and shiftings of its course, which have occurred many times in the years since before the time of the Great Yu, who perhaps began the works perpetuated today. Between 1300 A. D. and 1852 the Hwang ho emptied into the Yellow Sea south of the highlands of Shantung, but in that year, when in unusual flood, it broke through the north levees and finally took its present course, emptying again into the Gulf of Chihli, some three hundred miles further north. Some of these shiftings of course of the Hwang ho and of the Yangtse kiang are indicated in dotted lines on the sketch map, Fig. 53, where it may he seen that the Hwang ho during 146 years, poured its waters into the sea as far north as Tientsin, through the mouth of the Pei ho, four hundred miles to the northward of its mouth in 1852. This mighty river is said to carry at low stage, past the city of Tsinan in Shantung, no less than 4,000 cubic yards of water per second, and three times this volume when running at flood. This is water sufficient to inundate thirty-three square miles of level country ten feet deep in twenty-four hours. What must be said of the mental status of a people who for forty centuries have measured their strength against such a Titan racing past their homes above the level of their fields, confined only between walls of their own construction? While they have not always succeeded in controlling the river, they have never failed to try again. In 1877 this river broke its banks, inundating a vast. area, bringing death to a million people. Again, as late as 1898, fifteen hundred villages to the northeast of Tsinan and a much larger area to the southwest of the same city were devastated by it, and it is such events as these which have won for the river the names "China's Sorrow," "The Ungovernable" and "The Scourge of the Sons of Han." The building of the Grand Canal appears to have been a comparatively recent event in Chinese history. The middle section, between the Yangtse and Tsingkiangpu, is said to have been constructed about the sixth century B. C.; the southern section, between Chingkiang and Hangchow, during the years 605 to 617 A. D.; but the northern section, from the channel of the Hwang ho deserted in 1852, to Tientsin, was not built until the years 1280-1283. While this canal has been called by the Chinese Yu ho (Imperial river), Yun ho (Transport river) or Yunliang ho (Tribute bearing river) and while it has connected the great rivers coming down from the far interior into a great water-transport system, this feature of construction may have been but a by-product of the great dominating purpose which led to the vast internal improvements in the form of canals, dikes, levees and impounding reservoirs so widely scattered, so fully developed and so effectively utilized. Rather the master purpose must have been maintenance for the increasing flood of humanity. And I am willing to grant to the Great Yu, with his finger on the pulse of the nation, the power to project his vision four thousand years into the future of his race and to formulate some of the measures which might he inaugurated to grow with the years and make certain perpetual maintenance for those to follow. The exhaustion of cultivated fields must always have been the most fundamental, vital and difficult problem of all civilized people and it appears clear that such canalization as is illustrated in Figs. 51 and 52 may have been primarily initial steps in the reclamation of delta and overflow lands. At any rate, whether deliberately so planned or not, the canalization of the delta and overflow plains of China has been one of the most fundamental and fruitful measures for the conservation of her national resources that they could have taken, for we are convinced that this oldest nation in the world has thus greatly augmented the extension of its coastal plains, conserving and building out of the waste of erosion wrested from the great streams, hundreds of square miles of the richest and most enduring of soils, and we have little doubt that were a full and accurate account given of human influence upon the changes in this remarkable region during the last four thousand years it would show that these gigantic systems of canalization have been matters of slow, gradual growth, often initiated and always profoundly influenced by the labors of the strong, patient, persevering, thoughtful but ever silent husband-men in their efforts to acquire homes and to maintain the productive power of their fields. Nothing appears more clear than that the greatest material problem which can engage the best thought of China today is that of perfecting, extending and perpetuating the means for controlling her flood waters, for better draining of her vast areas of low land, and for utilizing the tremendous loads of silt borne by her streams more effectively in fertilizing existing fields and in building and reclaiming new land. With her millions of people needing homes and anxious for work; who have done so much in land building, in reclamation and in the maintenance of soil fertility, the government should give serious thought to the possibility of putting large numbers of them at work, effectively directed by the best engineering skill. It must now be entirely practicable, with engineering skill and mechanical appliances, to put the Hwang ho, and other rivers of China subject to overflow, completely under control. With the Hwang ho confined to its channel, the adjacent low lands can be better drained by canalization and freed from the accumulating saline deposits which are rendering them sterile. Warping may be resorted to during the flood season to raise the level of adjacent low-lying fields, rendering them at the same time more fertile. Where the river is running above the adjacent plains there is no difficulty in drawing off the turbid water by gravity, under controlled conditions, into diked basins, and even in compelling the river to buttress its own levees. There is certainly great need and great opportunity for China to make still better and more efficient her already wonderful transportation canals and those devoted to drainage, irrigation and fertilization. In the United States, along the same lines, now that we are considering the development of inland waterways, the subject should be surveyed broadly and much careful study may well be given to the works these old people have developed and found serviceable through so many centuries. The Mississippi is annually bearing to the sea nearly 225,000 acre-feet of the most fertile sediment, and between levees along a raised bed through two hundred miles of country subject to inundation. The time is here when there should he undertaken a systematic diversion of a large part of this fertile soil over the swamp areas, building them into well drained, cultivable, fertile fields provided with waterways to serve for drainage, irrigation, fertilization and transportation. These great areas of swamp land may thus be converted into the most productive rice and sugar plantations to be found anywhere in the world, and the area made capable of maintaining many millions of people as long as the Mississippi endures, bearing its burden of fertile sediment. But the conservation and utilization of the wastes of soil erosion, as applied in the delta plain of China, stupendous as this work has been, is nevertheless small when measured by the savings which accrue from the careful and extensive fitting of fields so largely practiced, which both lessens soil erosion and permits a large amount of soluble and suspended matter in the run-off to be applied to, and retained upon, the fields through their extensive systems of irrigation. Mountainous and hilly as are the lands of Japan, 11,000 square miles of her cultivated fields in the main islands of Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku have been carefully graded to water level areas bounded by narrow raised rims upon which sixteen or more inches of run-off water, with its suspended and soluble matters, may be applied, a large part of which is retained on the fields or utilized by the crop, while surface erosion is almost completely prevented. The illustrations, Figs. 11, 12 and 13 show the application of the principle to the larger and more level fields, and in Figs. 151, 152 and 225 may be seen the practice on steep slopes. If the total area of fields graded practically to a water level in Japan aggregates 11,000 square miles, the total area thus surface fitted in China must be eight or tenfold this amount. Such enormous field erosion as is tolerated at the present time in our southern and south Atlantic states is permitted nowhere in the Far East, so far as we observed, not even where the topography is much steeper. The tea orchards as we saw them on the steeper slopes, not level-terraced, are often heavily mulched with straw which makes erosion, even by heavy rains impossible, while the treatment retains the rain where it falls, giving the soil opportunity to receive it under the impulse of both capillarity and gravity, and with it the soluble ash ingredients leached from the straw. The straw mulches we saw used in this manner were often six to eight inches deep, thus constituting a dressing of not less than six tons per acre, carrying 140 pounds of soluble potassium and 12 pounds of phosphorus. The practice, therefore, gives at once a good fertilizing, the highest conservation and utilization of rainfall, and a complete protection against soil erosion. It is a multum in parvo treatment which characterizes so many of the practices of these people, which have crystallized from twenty centuries of high tension experience. In the Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces as elsewhere in the densely populated portions of the Far East, we found almost all of the cultivated fields very nearly level or made so by grading. Instances showing the type of this grading in a comparatively level country are seen in Figs. 56 and 57. By this preliminary surface fitting of the fields these people have reduced to the lowest possible limit the waste of soil fertility by erosion and surface leaching. At the same time they are able to retain upon the field, uniformly distributed over it, the largest part of the rainfall practicable, and to compel a much larger proportion of the necessary run off to leave by under-drainage than would be possible otherwise, conveying the plant food developed in the surface soil to the roots of the crops, while they make possible a more complete absorption and retention by the soil of the soluble plant food materials not taken up. This same treatment also furnishes the best possible conditions for the application of water to the fields when supplemental irrigation would be helpful, and for the withdrawal of surplus rainfall by surface drainage, should this be necessary. Besides this surface fitting of fields there is a wide application of additional methods aiming to conserve both rainfall and soil fertility, one of which is illustrated in Fig. 58, showing one end of a collecting reservoir. There were three of these reservoirs in tandem, connected with each other by surface ditches and with an adjoining canal. About the reservoir the level field is seen to be thrown into beds with shallow furrows between the long narrow ridges. The furrows are connected by a head drain around the margin of the reservoir and separated from it by a narrow raised rim. Such a reservoir may be six to ten feet deep but can be completely drained only by pumping or by evaporation during the dry season. Into such reservoirs the excess surface water is drained where all suspended matter carried from the field collects and is returned, either directly as an application of mud or as material used in composts. In the preparation of composts, pits are dug near the margin of the reservoir, as seen in the illustration, and into them are thrown coarse manure and any roughage in the form of stubble or other refuse which may be available, these materials being saturated with the soft mud dipped from the bottom of the reservoir. In all of the provinces where canals are abundant they also serve as reservoirs for collecting surface washings and along their banks great numbers of compost pits are maintained and repeatedly filled during the season, for use on the fields as the crops are changed. Fig. 59 shows two such pits on the bank of a canal, already filled. In other cases, as in the Shantung province, illustrated in Fig. 60, the surface of the field may be thrown into broad leveled lands separated and bounded by deep and wide trenches into which the excess water of very heavy rains may collect. As we saw them there was no provision for draining the trenches and the water thus collected either seeps away or evaporates, or it may be returned in part by underflow and capillary rise to the soil from which it was collected, or be applied directly for irrigation by pumping. In this province the rains may often be heavy but the total fall for the year is small, being little more than twenty-four inches hence there is the greatest need for its conservation, and this is carefully practiced. VI SOME CUSTOMS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE The Tosa Maru brought us again into Shanghai March 20th, just in time for the first letters from home. A ricksha man carried us and our heavy valise at a smart trot from the dock to the Astor House more than a mile, for 8.6 cents, U. S. currency, and more than the conventional price for the service rendered. On our way we passed several loaded carryalls of the type seen in Fig. 61, on which women were riding for a fare one-tenth that we had paid, but at a slower pace and with many a jolt. The ringing chorus which came loud and clear when yet half a block away announced that the pile drivers were still at work on the foundation for an annex to the Astor House, and so were they on May 27th when we returned from the Shantung province, 88 days after we saw them first, but with the task then practically completed. Had the eighteen men labored continuously through this interval, the cost of their services to the contractor would have been but $205.92. With these conditions the engine-driven pile driver could not compete. All ordinary labor here receives a low wage. In the Chekiang province farm labor employed by the year received $30 and board, ten years ago, but now is receiving $50. This is at the rate of about $12.90 and $21.50, gold, materially less than there is paid per month in the United States. At Tsingtao in the Shantung province a missionary was paying a Chinese cook ten dollars per month, a man for general work nine dollars per month, and the cook's wife, for doing the mending and other family service, two dollars per month, all living at home and feeding themselves. This service rendered for $9.03, gold, per month covers the marketing, all care of the garden and lawn as well as all the work in the house. Missionaries in China find such servants reliable and satisfactory, and trust them with the purse and the marketing for the table, finding them not only honest but far better at a bargain and at economical selection than themselves. We had a soil tube made in the shops of a large English ship building and repair firm, employing many hundred Chinese as mechanics, using the most modern and complex machinery, and the foreman stated that as soon as the men could understand well enough to take orders they were even better shop hands than the average in Scotland and England. An educated Chinese booking clerk at the Soochow railway station in Kiangsu province was receiving a salary of $10.75, gold, per month. We had inquired the way to the Elizabeth Blake hospital and he volunteered to escort us and did so, the distance being over a mile. He would accept no compensation, and yet I was an entire stranger, without introduction of any kind. Everywhere we went in China, the laboring people appeared generally happy and contented if they have something to do, and showed clearly that they were well nourished. The industrial classes are thoroughly organized, having had their guilds or labor unions for centuries and it is not at all uncommon for a laborer who is known to have violated the rules of his guild to be summarily dealt with or even to disappear without questions being asked. In going among the people, away from the lines of tourist travel, one gets the impression that everybody is busy or is in the harness ready to be busy. Tramps of our hobo type have few opportunities here and we doubt if one exists in either of these countries. There are people physically disabled who are asking alms and there are organized charities to help them, but in proportion to the total population these appear to be fewer than in America or Europe. The gathering of unfortunates and habitual beggars about public places frequented by people of leisure and means naturally leads tourists to a wrong judgment regarding the extent of these social conditions. Nowhere among these densely crowded people, either Chinese, Japanese or Korean, did we see one intoxicated, but among Americans and Europeans many instances were observed. All classes and both sexes use tobacco and the British-American Tobacco Company does a business in China amounting to millions of dollars annually. During five months among these people we saw but two children in a quarrel. The two little boys were having their trouble on Nanking road, Shanghai, where, grasping each other's pigtails, they tussled with a vengeance until the mother of one came and parted their ways. Among the most frequent sights in the city streets are the itinerant vendors of hot foods and confections. Stove, fuel, supplies and appliances may all be carried on the shoulders, swinging from a bamboo pole. The mother in Fig. 63 was quite likely thus supporting her family and the children are seen at lunch, dressed in the blue and white calico prints so generally worn by the young. The printing of this calico by the very ancient, simple yet effective method we witnessed in the farm village along the canal seen in Fig. 10. This art, as with so many others in China, was the inheritance of the family we saw at work, handed down to them through many generations. The printer was standing at a rough work bench upon which a large heavy stone in cubical form served as a weight to hold in place a thoroughly lacquered sheet of tough cardboard in which was cut the pattern to appear in white on the cloth. Beside the stone stood a pot of thick paste prepared from a mixture of lime and soy bean flour. The soy beans were being ground in one corner of the same room by a diminutive edition of such an outfit as seen in Fig. 64. The donkey was working in his permanent abode and whenever off duty he halted before manger and feed. At the operator's right lay a bolt of white cotton cloth fixed to unroll and pass under the stencil, held stationary by the heavy weight. To print, the stencil was raised and the cloth brought to place under it. The paste was then deftly spread with a paddle over the surface and thus upon the cloth beneath wherever exposed through the openings in the stencil. This completes the printing of the pattern on one section of the bolt of cloth. The free end of the stencil is then raised, the cloth passed along the proper distance by hand and the stencil dropped in place for the next application. The paste is permitted to dry upon the cloth and when the bolt has been dipped into the blue dye the portions protected by the paste remain white. In this simple manner has the printing of calico been done for centuries for the garments of millions of children. From the ceiling of the drying room in this printery of olden times were hanging some hundreds of stencils bearing different patterns. In our great calico mills, printing hundreds of yards per minute, the mechanics and the chemistry differ only in detail of application and in dispatch, not in fundamental principle. In almost any direction we traveled outside the city, in the pleasant mornings when the air was still, the laying of warp for cotton cloth could be seen, to be woven later in the country homes. We saw this work in progress many times and in many places in the early morning, usually along some roadside or open place, as seen in Fig. 65, but never later in the day. When the warp is laid each will be rolled upon its stretcher and removed to the house to be woven. In many places in Kiangsu province batteries of the large dye pits were seen sunk in the fields and lined with cement. These were six to eight feet in diameter and four to five feet deep. In one case observed there were nine pits in the set. Some of the pits were neatly sheltered beneath live arbors, as represented in Fig. 66. But much of this spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing of late years is being displaced by the cheaper calicos of foreign make and most of the dye pits we saw were not now used for this purpose, the two in the illustration serving as manure receptacles. Our interpreter stated however that there is a growing dissatisfaction with foreign goods on account of their lack of durability; and we saw many cases where the cloth dyed blue was being dried in large quantities on the grave lands. In another home for nearly an hour we observed a method of beating cotton and of laying it to serve as the body for mattresses and the coverlets for beds. This we could do without intrusion because the home was also the work shop and opened full width directly upon the narrow street. The heavy wooden shutters which closed the home at night were serving as a work bench about seven feet square, laid upon movable supports. There was barely room to work between it and the sidewalk without impeding traffic, and on the three other sides there was a floor space three or four feet wide. In the rear sat grandmother and wife while in and out the four younger children were playing. Occupying the two sides of the room were receptacles filled with raw cotton and appliances for the work. There may have been a kitchen and sleeping room behind but no door, as such, was visible. The finished mattresses, carefully rolled and wrapped in paper, were suspended from the ceiling. On the improvised work table, with its top two feet above the floor, there had been laid in the morning before our visit, a mass of soft white cotton more than six feet square and fully twelve inches deep. On opposite sides of this table the father and his son, of twelve years, each twanged the string of their heavy bamboo bows, snapping the lint from the wads of cotton and flinging it broadcast in an even layer over the surface of the growing mattress, the two strings the while emitting tones pitched far below the hum of the bumblebee. The heavy bow was steadied by a cord secured around the body of the operator, allowing him to manage it with one hand and to move readily around his work in a manner different from the custom of the Japanese seen in Fig. 67. By this means the lint was expeditiously plucked and skillfully and uniformly laid, the twanging being effected by an appliance similar to that used in Japan. Repeatedly, taken in small bits from the barrel of cotton, the lint was distributed over the entire surface with great dexterity and uniformity, the mattress growing upward with perfectly vertical sides, straight edges and square corners. In this manner a thoroughly uniform texture is secured which compresses into a body of even thickness, free from hard places. The next step in building the mattress is even more simple and expeditious. A basket of long bobbins of roughly spun cotton was near the grandmother and probably her handiwork. The father took from the wall a slender bamboo rod like a fish-pole, six feet long, and selecting one of the spools, threaded the strand through an eye in the small end. With the pole and spool in one hand and the free end of the thread, passing through the eye, in the other, the father reached the thread across the mattress to the boy who hooked his finger over it, carrying it to one edge of the bed of cotton. While this was doing the father had whipped the pole back to his side and caught the thread over his own finger, bringing this down upon the cotton opposite his son. There was thus laid a double strand, but the pole continued whipping hack and forth across the bed, father and son catching the threads and bringing them to place on the cotton at the rate of forty to fifty courses per minute, and in a very short time the entire surface of the mattress had been laid with double strands. A heavy bamboo roller was next laid across the strands at the middle, passed carefully to one side, back again to the middle and then to the other edge. Another layer of threads was then laid diagonally and this similarly pressed with the same roller; then another diagonally the other way and finally straight across in both directions. A similar network of strands had been laid upon the table before spreading the cotton. Next a flat bottomed, circular, shallow basket-like form two feet in diameter was used to gently compress the material from twelve to six inches in thickness. The woven threads were now turned over the edge of the mattress on all sides and sewed down, after which, by means of two heavy solid wooden disks eighteen inches in diameter, father and son compressed the cotton until the thickness was reduced to three inches. There remained the task of carefully folding and wrapping the finished piece in oiled paper and of suspending it from the ceiling. On March 20th, when visiting the Boone Road and Nanking Road markets in Shanghai, we had our first surprise regarding the extent to which vegetables enter into the daily diet of the Chinese. We had observed long processions of wheelbarrow men moving from the canals through the streets carrying large loads of the green tips of rape in bundles a foot long and five inches in diameter. These had come from the country on boats each carrying tons of the succulent leaves and stems. We had counted as many as fifty wheelbarrow men passing a given point on the street in quick succession, each carrying 300 to 500 pounds of the green rape and moving so rapidly that it was not easy to keep pace with them, as we learned in following one of the trains during twenty minutes to its destination. During this time not a man in the train halted or slackened his pace. This rape is very extensively grown in the fields, the tips of the stems cut when tender and eaten, after being boiled or steamed, after the manner of cabbage. Very large quantities are also packed with salt in the proportion of about twenty pounds of salt to one hundred pounds of the rape. This, Fig. 68, and many other vegetables are sold thus pickled and used as relishes with rice, which invariably is cooked and served without salt or other seasoning. Another field crop very extensively grown for human food, and partly as a source of soil nitrogen, is closely allied to our alfalfa. This is the Medicago astragalus, two beds of which are seen in Fig. 69. Tender tips of the stems are gathered before the stage of blossoming is reached and served as food after boiling or steaming. It is known among the foreigners as Chinese "clover." The stems are also cooked and then dried for use when the crop is out of season. When picked very young, wealthy Chinese families pay an extra high price for the tender shoots, sometimes as much as 20 to 28 cents, our currency, per pound. The markets are thronged with people making their purchases in the early mornings, and the congested condition, with the great variety of vegetables, makes it almost as impressive a sight as Billingsgate fish market in London. In the following table we give a list of vegetables observed there and the prices at which they were selling. ----------------------------------------------------------- LIST OF VEGETABLES DISPLAYED FOR SALE IN BOONE ROAD MARKET, SHANGHAI, APRIL 6TH, 1900, WITH PRICES EXPRESSED IN U. S. CURRENCY.-- --------------------------------------------------------- Cents Lotus roots, per lb. 1.60 Bamboo sprouts, per lb. 6.40 English cabbage, per lb. 1.33 Olive greens, per lb. .67 White greens, per lb. .33 Tee Tsai, per lb. .53 Chinese celery, per lb. .67 Chinese clover, per lb. .58 Chinese clover, very young, lb. 21.33 Oblong white cabbage, per lb. 2.00 Red beans, per lb. 1.33 Yellow beans, per lb. 1.87 Peanuts, per lb. 2.49 Ground nuts, per lb. 2.96 Cucumbers, per lb. 2.58 Green pumpkin, per lb. 1.62 Maize, shelled, per lb. 1.00 Windsor beans, dry, per lb. 1.72 French lettuce, per head .44 Hau Tsai, per head .87 Cabbage lettuce, per head .22 Kale, per lb. 1.60 Rape, per lb. .23 Portuguese water cress, basket 2.15 Shang tsor, basket 8.60 Carrots, per lb. .97 String beans; per lb. 1.60 Irish potatoes, per lb. 1.60 Red onions, per lb. 4.96 Long white turnips, per lb. .44 Flat string beans, per lb. 4.80 Small white turnips, bunch .44 Onion stems, per lb. 1.29 Lima beans, green, shelled, lb. 6.45 Egg plants, per lb. 4.30 Tomatoes, per lb. 5.16 Small flat turnips, per lb. .86 Small red beets, per lb. 1.29 Artichokes, per lb. 1.29 White beans, dry, per lb. 4.80 Radishes, per lb. 1.29 Garlic, per lb. 2.15 Kohl rabi, per lb. 2.15 Mint, per lb. 4.30 Leeks, per lb. 2.18 Large celery, bleached, bunch 2.10 Sprouted peas, per lb. .80 Sprouted beans, per lb. .93 Parsnips, per lb. 1.29 Ginger roots, per lb. 1.60 Water chestnuts, per lb. 1.33 Large sweet potatoes, per lb. 1.33 Small sweet potatoes, per lb. 1.00 Onion sprouts, per lb. 2.13 Spinach, per lb. 1.00 Fleshy stemmed lettuce, peeled, per lb. 2.00 Fleshy stemmed lettuce, unpeeled, per lb. .67 Bean curd, per lb. 3.93 Shantung walnuts, per lb. 4.30 Duck eggs, dozen 8.34 Hen's eggs, dozen 7.30 Goat's meat, per lb. 6.45 Pork, per lb. 6.88 Hens, live weight, per lb. 6.45 Ducks, live weight, per lb. 5.59 Cockerels, live weight, per lb. 5.59-- --------------------------------------------------------- This long list, made up chiefly of fresh vegetables displayed for sale on one market day, is by no means complete. The record is only such as was made in passing down one side and across one end of the market occupying nearly one city block. Nearly everything is sold by weight and the problem of correct weights is effectively solved by each purchaser carrying his own scales, which he unhesitatingly uses in the presence of the dealer. These scales are made on the pattern of the old time steelyards but from slender rods of wood or bamboo provided with a scale and sliding poise, the suspensions all being made with strings. We stood by through the purchasing of two cockerels and the dickering over their weight. A dozen live birds were under cover in a large, open-work basket. The customer took out the birds one by one, examining them by touch, finally selecting two, the price being named. These the dealer tied together by their feet and weighed them, announcing the result; whereupon the customer checked the statement with his own scales. An animated dialogue followed, punctuated with many gesticulations and with the customer tossing the birds into the basket and turning to go away while the dealer grew more earnest. The purchaser finally turned back, and again balancing the roosters upon his scales, called a bystander to read the weight, and then flung them in apparent disdain at the dealer, who caught them and placed them in the customer's basket. The storm subsided and the dealer accepted 92c, Mexican, for the two birds. They were good sized roosters and must have dressed more than three pounds each, yet for the two he paid less than 40 cents in our currency. Bamboo sprouts are very generally used in China, Korea and Japan and when one sees them growing they suggest giant stalks of asparagus, some of them being three and even five inches in diameter and a foot in height at the stage for cutting. They are shipped in large quantities from province to province where they do not grow or when they are out of season. Those we saw in Nagasaki referred to in Fig. 22, had come from Canton or Swatow or possibly Formosa. The form, foliage and bloom of the bamboo give the most beautiful effects in the landscape, especially when grouped with tree forms. They are usually cultivated in small clumps about dwellings in places not otherwise readily utilized, as seen in Fig. 66. Like the asparagus bud, the bamboo sprout grows to its full height between April and August, even when it exceeds thirty or even sixty feet in height. The buds spring from fleshy underground stems or roots whose stored nourishment permits this rapid growth, which in its earlier stages may exceed twelve inches in twenty-four hours. But while the full size of the plant is attained the first season, three or four years are required to ripen and harden the wood sufficiently to make it suitable for the many uses to which the stems are put. It would seem that the time must come when some of the many forms of bamboo will be introduced and largely grown in many parts of this country. Lotus roots form another article of diet largely used and widely cultivated from Canton to Tokyo. These are seen in the lower section of Fig. 70, and the plants in bloom in Fig. 71, growing in water, their natural habitat. The lotus is grown in permanent ponds not readily drained for rice or other crops, and the roots are widely shipped. Sprouted beans and peas of many kinds and the sprouts of other vegetables, such as onions, are very generally seen in the markets of both China and Japan, at least during the late winter and early spring, and are sold as foods, having different flavors and digestive qualities, and no doubt with important advantageous effects in nutrition. Ginger is another. crop which is very widely and extensively cultivated. It is generally displayed in the market in the root form. No one thing was more generally hawked about the streets of China than the water chestnut. This is a small corm or fleshy bulb having the shape and size of a small onion. Boys pare them and sell a dozen spitted together on slender sticks the length of a knitting needle. Then there are the water caltropes, grown in the canals producing a fruit resembling a horny nut having a shape which suggests for them the name "buffalo-horn". Still another plant, known as water-grass (Hydropyrum latifolium) is grown in Kiangsu province where the land is too wet for rice. The plant has a tender succulent crown of leaves and the peeling of the outer coarser ones away suggests the husking of an ear of green corn. The portion eaten is the central tender new growth, and when cooked forms a delicate savory dish. The farmers' selling price is three to four dollars, Mexican, per hundred catty, or $.97 to $1.29 per hundredweight, and the return per acre is from $13 to $20. The small number of animal products which are included in the market list given should not be taken as indicating the proportion of animal to vegetable foods in the dietaries of these people. It is nevertheless true that they are vegetarians to a far higher degree than are most western nations, and the high maintenance efficiency of the agriculture of China, Korea and Japan is in great measure rendered possible by the adoption of a diet so largely vegetarian. Hopkins, in his Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture, page 234, makes this pointed statement of fact: "1000 bushels of grain has at least five times as much food value and will support five times as many people as will the meat or milk that can be made from it". He also calls attention to the results of many Rothamsted feeding experiments with growing and fattening cattle, sheep and swine, showing that the cattle destroyed outright, in every 100 pounds of dry substance eaten, 57.3 pounds, this passing off into the air, as does all of wood except the ashes, when burned in the stove; they left in the excrements 36.5 pounds, and stored as increase but 6.2 pounds of the 100. With sheep the corresponding figures were 60.1 pounds; 31.9 pounds and 8 pounds; and with swine they were 65.7 pounds; 16.7 pounds and 17.6 pounds. But less than two-thirds of the substance stored in the animal can become food for man and hence we get but four pounds in one hundred of the dry substances eaten by cattle in the form of human food; but five pounds from the sheep and eleven pounds from swine. In view of these relations, only recently established as scientific facts by rigid research, it is remarkable that these very ancient people came long ago to discard cattle as milk and meat producers; to use sheep more for their pelts and wool than for food; while swine are the one kind of the three classes which they did retain in the role of middleman as transformers of coarse substances into human food. It is clear that in the adoption of the succulent forms of vegetables as human food important advantages are gained. At this stage of maturity they have a higher digestibility, thus making the elimination of the animal less difficult. Their nitrogen content is relatively higher and this in a measure compensates for loss of meat. By devoting the soil to growing vegetation which man can directly digest they have saved 60 pounds per 100 of absolute waste by the animal, returning their own wastes to the field for the maintenance of fertility. In using these immature forms of vegetation so largely as food they are able to produce an immense amount that would otherwise be impossible, for this is grown in a shorter time, permitting the same soil to produce more crops. It is also produced late in the fall and early in the spring when the season is too cold and the hours of sunshine too few each day to permit of ripening crops. VII THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND TEXTILE MATERIALS With the vast and ever increasing demands made upon materials which are the products of cultivated fields, for food, for apparel, for furnishings and for cordage, better soil management must grow more important as populations multiply. With the increasing cost and ultimate exhaustion of mineral fuel; with our timber vanishing rapidly before the ever growing demands for lumber and paper; with the inevitably slow growth of trees and the very limited areas which the world can ever afford to devote to forestry, the time must surely come when, in short period rotations, there will be grown upon the farm materials from which to manufacture not only paper and the substitutes for lumber, but fuels as well. The complete utilization of every stream which reaches the sea, reinforced by the force of the winds and the energy of the waves which may be transformed along the coast lines, cannot fully meet the demands of the future for power and heat; hence only in the event of science and engineering skill becoming able to devise means for transforming the unlimited energy of space through which we are ever whirled, with an economy approximating that which crops now exhibit, can good soil management be relieved of the task of meeting a portion of the world's demand for power and heat. When these statements were made in 1905 we did not know that for centuries there had existed in China, Korea and Japan a density of population such as to require the extensive cultivation of crops for fuel and building material, as well as for fabrics, by the ordinary methods of tillage, and hence another of the many surprises we had was the solution these people had reached of their fuel problem and of how to keep warm. Their solution has been direct and the simplest possible. Dress to make fuel for warmth of body unnecessary, and burn the coarser stems of crops, such as cannot be eaten, fed to animals or otherwise made useful. These people still use what wood can be grown on the untillable land within transporting distance, and convert much wood into charcoal, making transportation over longer distances easier. The general use of mineral fuels, such as coal, coke, oils and gas, had been impossible to these as to every other people until within the last one hundred years. Coal, coke, oil and natural gas, however, have been locally used by the Chinese from very ancient times. For more than two thousand years brine from many deep wells in Szechwan province has been evaporated with heat generated by the burning of natural gas from wells, conveyed through bamboo stems to the pans and burned from iron terminals. In other sections of the same province much brine is evaporated over coal fires. Alexander Hosie estimates the production of salt in Szechwan province at more than 600 million pounds annually. Coal is here used also to some extent for warming the houses, burned in pits sunk in the floor, the smoke escaping where it may. The same method of heating we saw in use in the post office at Yokohama during February. The fires were in large iron braziers more than two feet across the top, simply set about the room, three being in operation. Stoves for house warming are not used in dwellings in these countries. In both China and Japan we saw coal dust put into the form and size of medium oranges by mixing it with a thin paste of clay. Charcoal is similarly molded, as seen in Fig. 72, using a by-product from the manufacture of rice syrup for cementing. In Nanking we watched with much interest the manufacture of charcoal briquets by another method. A Chinese workman was seated upon the earth floor of a shop. By his side was a pile of powdered charcoal, a dish of rice syrup by-product and a basin of the moistened charcoal powder. Between his legs was a heavy mass of iron containing a slightly conical mold two inches deep, two and a half inches across at the top and a heavy iron hammer weighing several pounds. In his left hand he held a short heavy ramming tool and with his right placed in the mold a pinch of the moistened charcoal; then followed three well directed blows from the hammer upon the ramming tool, compressing the charge of moistened, sticky charcoal into a very compact layer. Another pinch of charcoal was added and the process repeated until the mold was filled, when the briquet was forced out. By this simplest possible mechanism, the man, utilizing but a small part of his available energy, was subjecting the charcoal to an enormous pressure such as we attain only with the best hydraulic presses, and he was using the principle of repeated small charges recently patented and applied in our large and most efficient cotton and hay presses, which permit much denser bales to be made than is possible when large charges are added, and the Chinese is here, as in a thousand other ways, thoroughly sound in his application of mechanical principles. His output for the day was small but his patience seemed unlimited. His arms and body, bared to the waist, showed vigor and good feeding, while his face wore the look of contentment. With forty centuries of such inheritance coursing in the veins of four hundred millions of people, in a country possessed of such marvelous wealth of coal and water power, of forest and of agricultural possibilities, there should be a future speedily blossoming and ripening into all that is highest and best for such a nation. If they will retain their economies and their industry and use their energies to develop, direct and utilize the power in their streams and in their coal fields along the lines which science has now made possible to them, at the same time walking in paths of peace and virtue, there is little worth while which may not come to such a people. A Shantung farmer in winter dress, Fig. 18, and the Kiangsu woman portrayed in Fig. 73, in corresponding costume, are typical illustrations of the manner in which food for body warmth is minimized and of the way the heat generated in the body is conserved. Observe his wadded and quilted frock, his trousers of similar goods tied about the ankle, with his feet clad in multiple socks and cloth shoes provided with thick felted soles. These types of dress, with the wadding, quilting, belting and tying, incorporate and confine as part of the effective material a large volume of air, thus securing without cost, much additional warmth without increasing the weight of the garments. Beneath these outer garments several under pieces of different weights are worn which greatly conserve the warmth during the coldest weather and make possible a wide range of adjustment to suit varying changes in temperature. It is doubtful if there could he devised a wardrobe suited to the conditions of these people at a smaller first cost and maintenance expense. Rev. E. A. Evans, of the China Inland Mission, for many years residing at Sunking in Szechwan, estimated that a farmer's wardrobe, once it was procured, could be maintained with an annual expenditure of $2.25 of our currency, this sum procuring the materials for both repairs and renewals. The intense individual economy, extending to the smallest matters, so universally practiced by these people, has sustained the massive strength of the Mongolian nations through their long history and this trait is seen in their handling of the fuel problem, as it is in all other lines. In the home of Mrs. Wu, owner and manager of a 25-acre rice farm in Chekiang province, there was a masonry kang seven by seven feet, about twenty-eight inches high, which could be warmed in winter by building a fire within. The top was fitted for mats to serve as couch by day and as a place upon which to spread the bed at night. In the Shantung province we visited the home of a prosperous farmer and here found two kangs in separate sleeping apartments, both warmed by the waste heat from the kitchen whose chimney flue passed horizontally under the kangs before rising through the roof. These kangs were wide enough to spread the beds upon, about thirty inches high, and had been constructed from brick twelve inches square and four inches thick, made from the clay subsoil taken from the fields and worked into a plastic mass, mixed with chaff and short straw, dried in the sun and then laid in a mortar of the same material. These massive kangs are thus capable of absorbing large amounts of the waste heat from the kitchen during the day and of imparting congenial warmth to the couches by day and to the beds and sleeping apartments during the night. In some Manchurian inns large compound kangs are so arranged that the guests sleep heads together in double rows, separated only by low dividing rails, securing the greatest economy of fuel, providing the guests with places where they may sit upon the moderately warmed fireplace, and spread their beds when they retire. The economy of the chimney beds does not end with the warmth conserved. The earth and straw brick, through the processes of fermentation and through shrinkage, become open and porous after three or four years of service, so that the draft is defective, giving annoyance from smoke, which requires their renewal. But the heat, the fermentation and the absorption of products of combustion have together transformed the comparatively infertile subsoil into what they regard as a valuable fertilizer and these discarded brick are used in the preparation of compost fertilizers for the fields. On account of this value of the discarded brick the large amount of labor involved in removing and rebuilding the kangs is not regarded altogether as labor lost. Our own observations have shown that heating soils to dryness at a temperature of 110 deg C. greatly increases the freedom with which plant food may be recovered from them by the solvent power of water, and the same heating doubtless improves the physical and biological conditions of the soil as well. Nitrogen combined as ammonia, and phosphorus, potash and lime are all carried with the smoke or soot, mechanically in the draft and arrested upon the inner walls of the kangs or filter into the porous brick with the smoke, and thus add plant food directly to the soil. Soot from wood has been found to contain, as an average, 1.36 per cent of nitrogen; .51 per cent of phosphorus and 5.34 per cent of potassium. We practice burning straw and corn stalks in enormous quantities, to get them easily out of the way, thus scattering on the winds valuable plant food, thoughtlessly and lazily wasting where these people laboriously and religiously save. These are gains in addition to those which result from the formation of nitrates, soluble potash and other plant foods through fermentation. We saw many instances where these discarded brick were being used, both in Shantung and Chihli provinces, and it was common in walking through the streets of country villages to see piles of them, evidently recently removed. The fuel grown on the farms consists of the stems of all agricultural crops which are to any extent woody, unless they can be put to some better use. Rice straw, cotton stems pulled by the roots after the seed has been gathered, the stems of windsor beans, those of rape and the millets, all pulled by the roots, and many other kinds, are brought to the market tied in bundles in the manner seen in Figs. 74, 75 and 76. These fuels are used for domestic purposes and for the burning of lime, brick, roofing tile and earthenware as well as in the manufacture of oil, tea, bean-curd and many other processes. In the home, when the meals are cooked with these light bulky fuels, it is the duty of some one, often one of the children, to sit on the floor and feed the fire with one hand while with the other a bellows is worked to secure sufficient draft. The manufacture of cotton seed oil and cotton seed cake is one of the common family industries in China, and in one of these homes we saw rice hulls and rice straw being used as fuel. In the large low, one-story, tile-roofed building serving as store, warehouse, factory and dwelling, a family of four generations were at work, the grandfather supervising in the mill and the grandmother leading in the home and store where the cotton seed oil was being. retailed for 22 cents per pound and the cotton seed cake at 33 cents, gold, per hundredweight. Back of the store and living rooms, in the mill compartment, three blindfolded water buffalo, each working a granite mill, were crushing and grinding the cotton seed. Three other buffalo, for relay service, were lying at rest or eating, awaiting their turn at the ten-hour working day. Two of the mills were horizontal granite burrs more than four feet in diameter, the upper one revolving once with each circuit made by the cow. The third mill was a pair of massive granite rollers, each five feet in diameter and two feet thick, joined on a very short horizontal axle which revolved on a circular stone plate about a vertical axis once with each circuit of the buffalo. Two men tended the three mills. After the cotton seed had been twice passed through the mills it was steamed to render the oil fluid and more readily expressed. The steamer consisted of two covered wooden hoops not unlike that seen in Fig. 77, provided with screen bottoms, and in these the meal was placed over openings in the top of an iron kettle of boiling water from which the steam was forced through the charge of meal. Each charge was weighed in a scoop balanced on the arm of a bamboo scale, thus securing a uniform weight for the cakes. On the ground in front of the furnace sat a boy of twelve years steadily feeding rice chaff into the fire with his left hand at the rate of about thirty charges per minute, while with his right hand, and in perfect rhythm, he drew back and forth the long plunger of a rectangular box bellows, maintaining a forced draft for the fire. At intervals the man who was bringing fuel fed into the furnace a bundle of rice straw, thus giving the boy's left arm a moment's respite. When the steaming has rendered the oil sufficiently fluid the meal is transferred, hot, to ten-inch hoops two inches deep, made of braided bamboo strands, and is deftly tramped with the bare feet, while hot, the operator steadying himself by a pair of hand bars. After a stack of sixteen hoops, divided by a slight sifting of chaff or short straw to separate the cakes, had been completed these were taken to one of four pressmen, who were kept busy in expressing the oil. The presses consisted of two parallel timbers framed together, long enough to receive the sixteen hoops on edge above a gap between them. These cheeses of meal are subjected to an enormous pressure secured by means of three parallel lines of wedges forced against the follower each by an iron-bound master wedge, driven home with a heavy beetle weighing some twenty-five or thirty pounds. The lines of wedges were tightened in succession, the loosened line receiving an additional wedge to take up the slack after drawing back the master wedge, which was then driven home. To keep good the supply of wedges which are often crushed under the pressure a second boy, older than the one at the furnace, was working on the floor, shaping new ones, the broken wedges and the chips going to the furnace for fuel. By this very simple, readily constructed and inexpensive mechanism enormous pressures were secured and when the operator had obtained the desired compression he lighted his pipe and sat down to smoke until the oil ceased dripping into the pit sunk in the floor beneath the press. In this interval the next series of cakes went to another press and the work thus kept up during the day. Six hundred and forty cakes was the average daily output of this family of eight men and two boys, with their six water buffalo. The cotton seed cakes were being sold as feed, and a near-by Chinese dairyman was using them for his herd of forty water buffalo, seen in Fig. 78, producing milk for the foreign trade in Shanghai. This herd of forty cows one of which was an albino, was giving an average of but 200 catty of milk per day, or at the rate of six and two-thirds pounds per head! The cows have extremely small udders but the milk is very rich, as indicated by an analysis made in the office of the Shanghai Board of Health and obtained through the kindness of Dr. Arthur Stanley. The milk showed a specific gravity of 1.028 and contained 20.1 per cent total solids; 7.5 per cent fat; 4.2 per cent milk sugar and .8 per cent ash. In the family of Rev. W. H. Hudson, of the Southern Presbyterian Mission, Kashing, whose very gracious hospitality we enjoyed on two different occasions, the butter made from the milk of two of these cows, one of which, with her calf, is seen in Fig. 79, was used on the family table. It was as white as lard or cottolene but the texture and flavor were normal and far better than the Danish and New Zealand products served at the hotels. The milk produced at the Chinese dairy in Shanghai was being sold in bottles holding two pounds, at the rate of one dollar a bottle, or 43 cents, gold. This seems high and there may have been misunderstanding on the part of my interpreter but his answer to my question was that the milk was being sold at one Shanghai dollar per bottle holding one and a half catty, which, interpreted, is the value given above. But fuel from the stems of cultivated plants which are in part otherwise useful, is not sufficient to meet the needs of country and village, notwithstanding the intense economies practiced. Large areas of hill and mountain land are made to contribute their share, as we have seen in the south of China, where pine boughs were being used for firing the lime and cement kilns. At Tsingtao we saw the pine bough fuel on the backs of mules, Fig. 80, coming from the hills in Shantung province. Similar fuels were being used in Korea and we have photographs of large pine bough fuel stacks, taken in Japan at Funabashi, east from Tokyo. The hill and mountain lands, wherever accessible to the densely peopled plains, have long been cut over and as regularly has afforestation been encouraged and deliberately secured even through the transplanting of nursery stock grown expressly for that purpose. We had read so much regarding the reckless destruction of forests in China and Japan and had seen so few old forest trees except where these had been protected about temples, graves or houses, that when Rev. R. A. Haden, of the Elizabeth Blake hospital, near Soochow insisted that the Chinese were deliberate foresters and that they regularly grow trees for fuel, transplanting them when necessary to secure a close and early stand, after the area had been cleared, we were so much surprised that he generously volunteered to accompany us westward on a two days journey into the hill country where the practice could be seen. A family owning a houseboat and living upon it was engaged for the journey. This family consisted of a recently widowed father, his two sons, newly married, and a helper. They were to transport us and provide sleeping quarters for myself, Mr. Haden and a cook for the consideration of $3.00, Mexican, per day and to continue the journey through the night, leaving the day for observation in the hills. The recent funeral had cost the father $100 and the wedding of the two sons $50 each, while the remodeling of the houseboat to meet the needs of the new family relations cost still another $100. To meet these expenses it had been necessary to borrow the full amount, $300. On $100 the father was paying 20 per cent interest; on $50 he was compelled to pay 50 per cent interest. The balance he had borrowed from friends without interest but with the understanding that he would return the favor should occasion be required. Rev. A. E. Evans informed us that it is a common practice in China for neighbors to help one another in times of great financial stress. This is one of the methods: A neighbor may need 8000 cash. He prepares a feast and sends invitations to a hundred friends. They know there has been no death in his family and that there is no wedding, still it is understood that he is in need of money. The feast is prepared at a small expense. The invited guests come, each bringing eighty cash as a present. The recipient is expected to keep a careful record of contributing friends and to repay the sum. Another method is like this: For some reason a man needs to borrow 20,000 cash. He proposes to twenty of his friends that they organize a club to raise this sum. If the friends agree each pays 1000 cash to the organizing member. The balance of the club draw lots as to which member shall be number two, three, four, five, etc., designating the order in which payments shall be made. The man borrowing the money is then under obligation to see that these payments are met in full at the times agreed upon. Not infrequently a small rate of interest is charged. Rates of interest are very high in China, especially on small sums where securities are not the best. Mr. Evans informs me that two per cent per month is low and thirty per cent per annum is very commonly collected. Such obligations are often never met but they do not outlaw and may descend from father to son. The boat cost $292.40 in U. S. currency; the yearly earning was $107.50 to $120.40. The funeral cost $43 and $43 more was required for the wedding of the two sons. They were receiving for the services of six people $1.29 per day. An engagement for two weeks or a month could have been made for materially lower rates and their average daily earning, on the basis of three hundred days service in the year, and the $120.40 total earning, would be only 40.13 cents, less than seven cents each, hence their trip with us was two of their banner days. Foreigners in Shanghai and other cities frequently engage such houseboat service for two weeks or a month of travel on the canals and rivers, finding it a very enjoyable as well as inexpensive way of having a picnic outing. On reaching the hill lands the next morning there were such scenes as shown in Fig. 82, where the strips of tree growth, varying from two to ten years, stretched directly up the slope, often in strong contrast on account of the straight boundaries and different ages of the timber. Some of these long narrow holdings were less than two rods wide and on one of these only recently cut, up which we walked for considerable distance, the young pine were springing up in goodly numbers. As many as eighteen young trees were counted on a width of six feet across the strip of thirty feet wide. On this area everything had been recently cut clean. Even stumps and the large roots were dug and saved for fuel. In Fig. 83 are seen bundles of fuel from such a strip, just brought into the village, the boughs retaining the leaves although the fuel had been dried. The roots, too, are tied in with the limbs so that everything is saved. On our walk to the hills we passed many people bringing their loads of fuel swinging from carrying poles on their shoulders. Inquiries regarding the afforestation of these strips of hillside showed that the extensive digging necessitated by the recovery of the roots usually caused new trees to spring up quickly as volunteers from scattered seed and from the roots, so that planting was not generally required. Talking with a group of people as to where we could see some of the trees used for replanting the hillsides, a lad of seven years was first to understand and volunteered to conduct us to a planting. This he did and was overjoyed on receipt of a trifle for his services. One of these little pine nurseries is seen in Fig. 84, many being planted in suitable places through the woods. The lad led us to two such locations with whose whereabouts he was evidently very familiar, although they were considerable distance from the path and far from home. These small trees are used in filling in places where the volunteer growth has not been sufficiently close. A strong herbaceous growth usually springs up quickly on these newly cleared lands and this too is cut for fuel or for use in making compost or as green manure. The grass which grows on the grave lands, if not fed off, is also cut and saved for fuel. We saw several instances of this outside of Shanghai, one where a mother with her daughter, provided with rake, sickle, basket and bag, were gathering the dry stubble and grass of the previous season, from the grave lands where there was less than could be found on our closely mowed meadows. In Fig. 85 may be seen a man who has just returned with such a load, and in his hand is the typical rake of the Far East, made by simply bending bamboo splints, claw-shape, and securing them as seen in the engraving. In the Shantung province, in Chihli and in Manchuria, millet stems, especially those of the great kaoliang or sorghum, are extensively used for fuel and for building as well as for screens, fences and matting. At Mukden the kaoliang was selling as fuel at $2.70 to $3.00, Mexican, for a 100-bundle load of stalks, weighing seven catty to the bundle. The yield per acre of kaoliang fuel amounts to 5600 pounds and the stalks are eight to twelve feet long, so that when carried on the backs of mules or horses the animals are nearly hidden by the load. The price paid for plant stem fuel from agricultural crops, in different parts of China and Japan, ranged from $1.30 to $2.85, U. S. currency, per ton. The price of anthracite coal at Nanking was $7.76 per ton. Taking the weight of dry oak wood at 3500 pounds per cord, the plant stem fuel, for equal weight, was selling at $2.28 to $5.00. Large amounts of wood are converted into charcoal in these countries and sent to market baled in rough matting or in basketwork cases woven from small brush and holding two to two and a half bushels. When such wood is not converted into charcoal it is sawed into one or two-foot lengths, split and marketed tied in bundles, as seen in Fig. 77. Along the Mukden-Antung railway in Manchuria fuel was also being shipped in four-foot lengths, in the form of cordwood. In Korea cattle were provided with a peculiar saddle for carrying wood in four-foot sticks laid blanket-fashion over the animal, extending far down on their sides. Thus was it brought from the hills to the railway station. This wood, as in Manchuria, was cut from small trees. In Korea, as in most parts of China where we visited, the tree growth over the hills was generally scattering and thin on the ground wherever there was not individual ownership in small holdings. Under and among the scattering pine there were oak in many cases, but these were always small, evidently not more than two or three years standing, and appearing to have been repeatedly cut back. It was in Korea that we saw so many instances of young leafy oak boughs brought to the rice fields and used as green manure. There was abundant evidence of periodic cutting between Mukden and Antung in Manchuria; between Wiju and Fusan in Korea; and throughout most of our journey in Japan; from Nagasaki to Moji and from Shimonoseki to Yokohama. In all of these countries afforestation takes place quickly and the cuttings on private holdings are made once in ten, twenty or twenty-five years. When the wood is sold to those coming for it the takers pay at the rate of 40 sen per one horse load of forty kan, or 330 pounds, such as is seen in Fig. 87. Director Ono, of the Akashi Experiment station, informed us that such fuel loads in that prefecture, where the wood is cut once in ten years, bring returns amounting to about $40 per acre for the ten-year crop. This land was worth $40 per acre but when they are suitable for orange groves they sell for $600 per acre. Mushroom culture is extensively practiced under the shade of some of these wooded areas, yielding under favorable conditions at the rate of $100 per acre. The forest covered area in Japan exclusive of Formosa and Karafuto, amounts to a total of 54,196,728 acres, less than twenty millions of which are in private holdings, the balance belonging to the state and to the Imperial Crown. In all of these countries there has been an extensive general use of materials other than wood for building purposes and very many of the substitutes for lumber are products grown on the cultivated fields. The use of rice straw for roofing, as seen in the Hakone village, Fig. 8, is very general throughout the rice growing districts, and even the sides of houses may be similarly thatched, as was observed in the Canton delta region, such a construction being warm for winter and cool for summer. The life of these thatched roofs, however, is short and they must be renewed as often as every three to five years but the old straw is highly prized as fertilizer for the fields on which it is grown, or it may serve as fuel, the ashes only going to the fields. Burned clay tile, especially for the cities and public buildings, are very extensively used for roofing, clay being abundant and near at hand. In Chihli and in Manchuria millet and sorghum stems, used alone or plastered, as in Fig. 88, with a mud mortar, sometimes mixed with lime, cover the roofs of vast numbers of the dwellings outside the larger cities. At Chiao Tou in Manchuria we saw the building of the thatched millet roofs and the use of kaoliang stems as lumber. Rafters were set in the usual way and covered with a layer about two inches thick of the long kaoliang stems stripped of their leaves and tops. These were tied together and to the rafters with twine, thus forming a sort of matting. A layer of thin clay mortar was then spread over the surface and well trowelled until it began to show on the under side. Over this was applied a thatch of small millet stems bound in bundles eight inches thick, cut square across the butts to eighteen inches in length. They were dipped in water and laid in courses after the manner of shingles but the butts of the stems are driven forward to a slope which obliterates the shoulder, making the courses invisible. In the better houses this thatching may be plastered with earth mortar or with an earth-lime mortar, which is less liable to wash in heavy rain. The walls of the house we saw building were also sided with the long, large kaoliang stems. An ordinary frame with posts and girts about three feet apart had been erected, on sills and with plates carrying the roof. Standing vertically against the girts and tied to them, forming a close layer, were the kaoliang stems. These were plastered outside and in with a layer of thin earth mortar. A similar layer of stems, set up on the inside of the girts and similarly plastered, formed the inner face of the wall of the house, leaving dead air spaces between the girts. Brick made from earth are very extensively used for house building, chaff and short straw being used as a binding material, the brick being simply dried in the sun, as seen in Fig. 89. A house in the process of building, where the brick were being used, is seen in Fig. 90. The foundation of the dwelling, it will be observed, was laid with well-formed hard-burned brick, these being necessary to prevent capillary moisture from the ground being drawn up and soften the earth brick, making the wall unsafe. Several kilns for burning brick, built of clay and earth, were passed in our journey up the Pei ho, and stacked about them, covering an area of more than eight hundred feet back from the river were bundles of the kaoliang stems to serve as fuel in the kilns. The extensive use of the unburned brick is necessitated by the difficulty of obtaining fuel, and various methods are adopted to reduce the number of burned brick required in construction. One of these devices is shown in Fig. 79, where the city wall surrounding Kashing is constructed of alternate courses of four layers of burned brick separated by layers of simple earth concrete. In addition to the multiple-function, farm-gown crops used for food, fuel and building material, there is a large acreage devoted to the growing of textile and fiber products and enormous quantities of these are produced annually. In Japan, where some fifty millions of people are chiefly fed on the produce of little more than 21,000 square miles of cultivated land, there was grown in 1906 more than 75,500,000 pounds of cotton, hemp, flax and China grass textile stock, occupying 76,700 acres of the cultivated land. On 141,000 other acres there grew 115,000,000 pounds of paper mulberry and Mitsumata, materials used in the manufacture of paper. From still another 14,000 acres were taken 92,000,000 pounds of matting stuff, while more than 957,000 acres were occupied by mulberry trees for the feeding of silkworms, yielding to Japan 22,389,798 pounds of silk. Here are more than 300,000,000 pounds of fiber and textile stuff taken from 1860 square miles of the cultivated land, cutting down the food producing area to 19,263 square miles and this area is made still smaller by devoting 123,000 acres to tea, these producing in 1906 58,900,000 pounds, worth nearly five million dollars. Nor do these statements express the full measure of the producing power of the 21,321 square miles of cultivated land, for, in addition to the food and other materials named, there were also made $2,365,000 worth of braid from straw and wood shavings; $6,000,000 worth of rice straw bags, packing cases and matting; and $1,085,000 worth of wares from bamboo, willow and vine. As illustrating the intense home industry of these people we may consider the fact that the 5,453,309 households of farmers in Japan produced in 1906, in their homes as subsidiary work, $20,527,000 worth of manufactured articles. If correspondingly exact statistical data were available from China and Korea a similarity full utilization of cultural possibilities would be revealed there. This marvelous heritage of economy, industry and thrift, bred of the stress of centuries, must not be permitted to lose virility through contact with western wasteful practices, now exalted to seeming virtues through the dazzling brilliancy of mechanical achievements. More and more must labor be dignified in all homes alike, and economy, industry and thrift become inherited impulses compelling and satisfying. Cheap, rapid, long distance transportation, already well started in these countries, will bring with it a fuller utilization of the large stores of coal and mineral wealth and of the enormous available water power, and as a result there will come some temporary lessening of the stress for fuel and with better forest management some relief along the lines of building materials. But the time is not a century distant when, throughout the world, a fuller, better development must take place along the lines of these most far-reaching and fundamental practices so long and so effectively followed by the Mongolian races in China, Korea and Japan. When the enormous water-power of these countries has been harnessed and brought into the foot-hills and down upon the margins of the valleys and plains in the form of electric current, let it, if possible, be in a large measure so distributed as to become available in the country village homes to lighten the burden and lessen the human drudgery and yet increase the efficiency of the human effort now so well bestowed upon subsidiary manufactures under the guidance and initiative of the home, where there may be room to breathe and for children to come up to manhood and womanhood in the best conditions possible, rather than in enormous congested factories. VIII TRAMPS AFIELD On March 31st we took the 8 A. M. train on the Shanghai-Nanking railway for Kunshan, situated thirty-two miles west from Shanghai, to spend the day walking in the fields. The fare, second class, was eighty cents, Mexican. A third class ticket would have been forty cents and a first class, $1.60, practically two cents, one cent and half a cent, our currency, per mile. The second class fare to Nanking, a distance of 193 miles, was $1.72, U. S. currency, or a little less than one cent per mile. While the car seats were not upholstered, the service was good. Meals were served on the train in either foreign or Chinese style, and tea, coffee or hot water to drink. Hot, wet face cloths were regularly passed and many Chinese daily newspapers were sold on the train, a traveler often buying two. In the vicinity of Kunshan a large area of farm land had been acquired by the French catholic mission at a purchase price of $40, Mexican, per mow, or at the rate of $103.20 per acre. This they rented to the Chinese. It was here that we first saw, at close range, the details of using canal mud as a fertilizer, so extensively applied in China. Walking through the fields we came upon the scene in the middle section of Fig. 92 where, close on the right was such a reservoir as seen in Fig. 58. Men were in it, dipping up the mud which had accumulated over its bottom, pouring it on the bank in a field of windsor beans, and the thin mud was then over two feet deep at that side and flowing into the beans where it had already spread two rods, burying the plants as the engraving shows. When sufficiently dry to be readily handled this would be spread among the beans as we found it being done in another field, shown in the upper section of the illustration. Here four men were distributing such mud, which had dried, between the rows, not to fertilize the beans, but for a succeeding crop of cotton soon to be planted between the rows, before they were harvested. The owner of this piece of land, with whom we talked and who was superintending the work, stated that his usual yield of these beans was three hundred catty per mow and that they sold them green, shelled, at two cents, Mexican, per catty. At this price and yield his return would be $15.48, gold, per acre. If there was need of nitrogen and organic matter in the soil the vines would be pulled green, after picking the beans, and composted with the wet mud. If not so needed the dried stems would be tied in bundles and sold as fuel or used at home, the ashes being returned to the fields. The windsor beans are thus an early crop grown for fertilizer, fuel and food. This farmer was paying his laborers one hundred cash per day and providing their meals, which he estimated worth two hundred cash more, making twelve cents, gold, for a ten-hour day. Judging from what we saw and from the amount of mud carried per load, we estimated the men would distribute not less than eighty-four loads of eighty pounds each per day, an average distance of five hundred feet, making the cost 3.57 cents, gold, per ton for distribution. The lower section of Fig. 92 shows another instance where mud was being used on a narrow strip bordering the path along which we walked, the amount there seen having been brought more than four hundred feet, by one man before 10 A. M. on the morning the photograph was taken. He was getting it from the bottom of a canal ten feet deep, laid bare by the out-going tide. Already he had brought more than a ton to his field. The carrying baskets used for this work were in the form of huge dustpans suspended from the carrying poles by two cords attached to the side rims, and steadied by the hand grasping a handle provided in the back for this purpose and for emptying the baskets by tipping. With this construction the earth was readily raked upon the basket and very easily emptied from it by simply raising the hands when the destination was reached. No arrangement could be more simple, expeditious or inexpensive for this man with his small holding. In this simple manner has nearly all of the earth been moved in digging the miles of canal and in building the long sea walls. In Shanghai the mud carried through the storm sewers into Soochow creek we saw being removed in the same manner during the intervals when the tide was out. In still another field, seen in Fig. 93, the upper portion shows where canal mud had been applied at a rate exceeding seventy tons per acre, and we were told that such dressings may be repeated as often as every two years though usually at longer intervals, if other and cheaper fertilizers could be obtained. In the lower portion of the same illustration may be seen the section of canal from which this mud was taken up the three earthen stairways built of the mud itself and permitted to dry before using. Many such lines of stairway were seen during our trips along the canals, only recently made or in the process of building to be in readiness when the time for applying the mud should arrive. To facilitate collecting the mud from the shallow canals temporary dams may be thrown across them at two places and the water between either scooped or pumped out, laying the bottom bare, as is often done also for fishing. The earth of the large grave mound seen across a canal in the center background of the upper portion of the engraving had been collected in a similar manner. In the Chekiang province canal mud is extensively used in the mulberry orchards as a surface dressing. We have referred to this practice in southern China, and Fig. 94 is a view taken south of Kashing early in April. The boat anchored in front of the mulberry orchard is the home of a family coming from a distance, seeking employment during the season for picking mulberry leaves to feed silkworms. We were much surprised, on looking back at the boat after closing the camera, to see the head of the family standing erect in the center, having shoved back a section of the matting roof. The dressing of mud applied to this field formed a loose layer more than two inches deep and when compacted by the rains which would follow would add not less than a full inch of soil over the entire orchard, and the weight per acre could not be less than 120 tons. Another equally, or even more, laborious practice followed by the Chinese farmers in this province is the periodic exchange of soil between mulberry orchards and the rice fields, their experience being that soil long used in the mulberry orchards improves the rice, while soil from the rice fields is very helpful when applied to the mulberry orchards. We saw many instances, when traveling by boat-train between Shanghai, Kashing and Hangchow, of soil being carried from rice fields and either stacked on the banks or dropped into the canal. Such soil was oftenest taken from narrow trenches leading through the fields, laying them off in beds. It is our judgment that the soil thrown into the canals undergoes important changes, perhaps through the absorption of soluble plant food substances such as lime, phosphoric acid and potash withdrawn from the water, or through some growth or fermentation, which, in the judgment of the farmer, makes the large labor involved in this procedure worth while. The stacking of soil along the banks was probably in preparation for its removal by boat to some of the mulberry orchards. It is clearly recognized by the farmers that mud collected from those sections of the canal leading through country villages, such as that seen in Fig. 10, is both inherently more fertile and in better physical condition than that collected in the open country. They attribute this difference to the effect of the village washing in the canal, where soap is extensively used. The storm waters of the city doubtless carry some fertilizing material also, although sewage, as such, never finds its way into the canals. The washing would be very likely to have a decided flocculating effect and so render this material more friable when applied to the field. One very important advantage which comes to the fields when heavily dressed with such mud is that resulting from the addition of lime which has become incorporated with the silts through their flocculation and precipitation, and that which is added in the form of snail shells abounding in the canals. The amount of these may be realized from the large numbers contained in the mud recently thrown out, as seen in the upper section of Fig. 95, where the pebbly appearance of the surface is caused by snail shells. In the lower section of the same illustration the white spots are snail shells exposed in the soil of a recently spaded field. The shells are by no means as numerous generally as here seen but yet sufficient to maintain the supply of lime. Several species of these snails are collected in quantities and used as food. Piles containing bushels of the empty shells were seen along the canals outside the villages. The snails are cooked in the shell and often sold by measure to be eaten from the hand, as we buy roasted peanuts or popcorn. When a purchase is made the vender clips the spiral point from each shell with a pair of small shears. This admits air and permits the snail to be readily removed by suction when the lips are applied to the shell. In the canals there are also large numbers of fresh water eel, shrimp and crabs as well as fish, all of which are collected and used for human food. It is common, when walking through the canal country, to come upon groups of gleaners busy in the bottoms of the shallow agricultural canals, gathering anything which may serve as food, even including small bulbs or the fleshy roots of edible aquatic plants. To facilitate the collection of such food materials sections of the canal are often drained in the manner already described, so that gleaning may be done by hand, wading in the mud. Families living in houseboats make a business of fishing for shrimp. They trail behind the houseboat one or two other boats carrying hundreds of shrimp traps cleverly constructed in such manner that when they are trailed along the bottom and disturb the shrimps they dart into the holes in the trap, mistaking them for safe hiding places. On the streets, especially during festival days, one may see young people and others in social intercourse, busying their fingers and their teeth eating cooked snails or often watermelon seeds, which are extensively sold and thus eaten. This custom we saw first in the streets of a city south of Kashing on the line of the new railway between Hangchow and Shanghai. The first passenger train over the line had been run the day before our visit, which was a festival day and throngs of people were visiting the nine-story pagoda standing on a high hill a mile outside the city limits. The day was one of great surprises to these people who had never before seen a passenger train, and my own person appeared to be a great curiosity to many. No boy ever scrutinized the face of a caged chimpanzee closer, with purer curiosity, or with less consideration for his feelings than did a woman of fifty scrutinize mine, standing close in front, not two feet distant, even bending forward as I sat upon a bench writing at the railway station. People would pass their hands along my coat sleeve to judge the cloth, and a boy felt of my shoes. Walking through the street we passed many groups gathered about tables and upon seats, visiting or in business conference, their fingers occupied with watermelon seeds or with packages of cooked snails. Along the pathway leading to the pagoda beggars had distributed themselves, one in a place, at intervals of two or three hundred feet, asking alms, most of them infirm with age or in some other way physically disabled. We saw but one who appeared capable of earning a living. Travel between Shanghai and Hangchow at this time was heavy. Three companies were running trains, of six or more houseboats, each towed by a steam launch, and these were daily crowded with passengers. Our train left Shanghai at 4:30 P. M., reaching Hangchow at 5:30 P. M. the following day, covering a distance along the canal of something more than 117 miles. We paid $5.16, gold, for the exclusive use of a first-cabin, five-berth stateroom for myself and interpreter. It occupied the full width of the boat, lacking about fourteen inches of footway, and could be entered from either side down a flight of five steps. The berths were flat, naked wooden shelves thirty inches wide, separated by a partition headboard six inches high and without railing in front. Each traveler provided his own bedding. A small table upon which meals were served, a mirror on one side and a lamp on the other, set in an opening in the partition, permitting it to serve two staterooms, completed the furnishings. The roof of the staterooms was covered with an awning and divided crosswise into two tiers of berths, each thirty inches wide, by board partitions six inches high. In these sections passengers spread their beds, sleeping heads together, separated only by a headboard six inches high. The awning was only sufficiently high to permit passengers to sit erect. Ventilation was ample but privacy was nil. Curtains could be dropped around the sides in stormy weather. Meals were served to each passenger wherever he might be. Dinner consisted of hot steamed rice brought in very heavy porcelain bowls set inside a covered, wet, steaming hot wooden case. With the rice were tiny dishes, butterchip size, of green clover, nicely cooked and seasoned; of cooked bean curd served with shredded bamboo sprouts; of tiny pork strips with bean curd; of small bits of liver with bamboo sprouts; of greens, and hot water for tea. If the appetite is good one may have a second helping of rice and as much hot water for tea as desired. There was no table linen, no napkins and everything but the tea had to be negotiated with chop sticks, or, these failing, with the fingers. When the meal was finished the table was cleared and water, hot if desired, was brought for your hand basin, which with tea, teacup and bedding, constitute part of the traveler's outfit. At frequent intervals, up to ten P. M., a crier walked about the deck with hot water for those who might desire an extra cup of tea, and again in the early morning. At this season of the year Chinese incubators were being run to their full capacity and it was our good fortune to visit one of these, escorted by Rev. R. A. Haden, who also acted as interpreter. The art of incubation is very old and very extensively practiced in China. An interior view of one of these establishments is shown in Fig. 96, where the family were hatching the eggs of hens, ducks and geese, purchasing the eggs and selling the young as hatched. As in the case of so many trades in China, this family was the last generation of a long line whose lives had been spent in the same work. We entered through their store, opening on the street of the narrow village seen in Fig. 10. In the store the eggs were purchased and the chicks were sold, this work being in charge of the women of the family. It was in the extreme rear of the home that thirty incubators were installed, all doing duty and each having a capacity of 1,200 hens' eggs. Four of these may be seen in the illustration and one of the baskets which, when two-thirds filled with eggs, is set inside of each incubator. Each incubator consists of a large earthenware jar having a door cut in one side through which live charcoal may be introduced and the fire partly smothered under a layer of ashes, this serving as the source of heat. The jar is thoroughly insulated, cased in basketwork and provided with a cover, as seen in the illustration. Inside the outer jar rests a second of nearly the same size, as one teacup may in another. Into this is lowered the large basket with its 600 hens' eggs, 400 ducks' eggs or 175 geese' eggs, as the case may be. Thirty of these incubators were arranged in two parallel rows of fifteen each. Immediately above each row, and utilizing the warmth of the air rising from them, was a continuous line of finishing hatchers and brooders in the form of woven shallow trays with sides warmly padded with cotton and with the tops covered with sets of quilts of different thickness. After a basket of hens' eggs has been incubated four days it is removed and the eggs examined by lighting, to remove those which are infertile before they have been rendered unsalable. The infertile eggs go to the store and the basket is returned to the incubator. Ducks' eggs are similarly examined after two days and again after five days incubation; and geese' eggs after six days and again after fourteen days. Through these precautions practically all loss from infertile eggs is avoided and from 95 to 98 per cent of the fertile eggs are hatched, the infertile eggs ranging from 5 to 25 per cent. After the fourth day in the incubator all eggs are turned five times in twenty-four hours. Hens' eggs are kept in the lower incubator eleven days; ducks' eggs thirteen days, and geese' eggs sixteen days, after which they are transferred to the trays. Throughout the incubation period the most careful watch and control is kept over the temperature. No thermometer is used but the operator raises the lid or quilt, removes an egg, pressing the large end into the eye socket. In this way a large contact is made where the skin is sensitive, nearly constant in temperature, but little below blood heat and from which the air is excluded for the time. Long practice permits them thus to judge small differences of temperature expeditiously and with great accuracy; and they maintain different temperatures during different stages of the incubation. The men sleep in the room and some one is on duty continuously, making the rounds of the incubators and brooders, examining and regulating each according to its individual needs, through the management of the doors or the shifting of the quilts over the eggs in the brooder trays where the chicks leave the eggs and remain until they go to the store. In the finishing trays the eggs form rather more than one continuous layer but the second layer does not cover more than a fifth or a quarter of the area. Hens' eggs are in these trays ten days, ducks' and geese' eggs, fourteen days. After the chickens have been hatched sufficiently long to require feeding they are ready for market and are then sorted according to sex and placed in separate shallow woven trays thirty inches in diameter. The sorting is done rapidly and accurately through the sense of touch, the operator recognizing the sex by gently pinching the anus. Four trays of young chickens were in the store fronting on the street as we entered and several women were making purchases, taking five to a dozen each. Dr. Haden informed me that nearly every family in the cities, and in the country villages raise a few, but only a few, chickens and it is a common sight to see grown chickens walking about the narrow streets, in and out of the open stores, dodging the feet of the occupants and passers-by. At the time of our visit this family was paying at the rate of ten cents, Mexican, for nine hens' and eight ducks' eggs, and were selling their largest strong chickens at three cents each. These figures, translated into our currency, make the purchase price for eggs nearly 48 cents, and the selling price for the young chicks $1.29, per hundred, or thirteen eggs for six cents and seven chickens for nine cents. It is difficult even to conceive, not to say measure, the vast import of this solution of how to maintain, in the millions of homes, a constantly accessible supply of absolutely fresh and thoroughly sanitary animal food in the form of meat and eggs. The great density of population in these countries makes the problem of supplying eggs to the people very different from that in the United States. Our 250,600,000 fowl in 1900 was at the rate of three to each person but in Japan, with her 16,500,000 fowl, she had in 1906 but one for every three people. Her number per square mile of cultivated land however was 825, while in the United States, in 1900, the number of fowls per square mile of improved farm land was but 387. To give to Japan three fowls to each person there would needs be an average of about nine to each acre of her cultivated land, whereas in the United States there were in 1900 nearly two acres of improved farm land for each fowl. We have no statistics regarding the number of fowl in China or the number of eggs produced but the total is very large and she exports to Japan. The large boat load of eggs seen in Fig. 97 had just arrived from the country, coming into Shanghai in one of her canals. Besides applying canal mud directly to the fields in the ways described there are other very extensive practices of composting it with organic matter of one or another kind and of then using the compost on the fields. The next three illustrations show some of the steps and something of the tremendous labor of body, willingly and cheerfully incurred, and something of the forethought practiced, that homes may be maintained and that grandparents, parents, wives and children need neither starve nor beg. We had reached a place seen in Fig. 98, where eight bearers were moving winter compost to a recently excavated pit in an adjoining field shown in Fig. 99. Four months before the camera fixed the activity shown, men had brought waste from the stables of Shanghai fifteen miles by water, depositing it upon the canal bank between layers of thin mud dipped from the canal, and left it to ferment. The eight men were removing this compost to the pit seen in Fig. 99, then nearly filled. Near by in the same field was a second pit seen in Fig. 100, excavated three feet deep and rimmed about with the earth removed, making it two feet deeper. After these pits had been filled the clover which was in blossom beyond the pits would be cut and stacked upon them to a height of five to eight feet and this also saturated, layer by layer, with mud brought from the canal, and allowed to ferment twenty to thirty days until the juices set free had been absorbed by the winter compost beneath, helping to carry the ripening of that still further, and until the time had arrived for fitting the ground for the next crop. This organic matter, fermented with the canal mud, would then be distributed by the men over the field, carried a third time on their shoulders, notwithstanding its weight was many tons. This manure had been collected, loaded and carried fifteen miles by water; it had been unloaded upon the bank and saturated with canal mud; the field had been fitted for clover the previous fall and seeded; the pits had been dug in the fields; the winter compost had been carried and placed in the pits; the clover was to be cut, carried by the men on their shoulders, stacked layer by layer and saturated with mud dipped from the canal; the whole would later be distributed over the field and finally the earth removed from the pits would be returned to them, that the service of no ground upon which a crop might grow should be lost. Such are the tasks to which Chinese farmers hold themselves, because they are convinced desired results will follow, because their holdings are so small and their families so large. These practices are so extensive in China and so fundamental in the part they play in the maintenance of high productive power in their soils that we made special effort to follow them through different phases. In Fig. 101 we saw the preparation being made to build one of the clover compost stacks saturated with canal mud. On the left the thin mud had been dipped from the canal; way-farers in the center were crossing the foot-bridge of the country by-way; and beyond rises the conical thatch to shelter the water buffalo when pumping for irrigating the rice crop to be fed with this plant food in preparation. On the right were two large piles of green clover freshly cut and a woman of the family at one of them was spreading it to receive the mud, while the men-folk were coming from the field with more clover on their carrying poles. We came upon this scene just before the dinner hour and after the workers had left another photograph was taken at closer range and from a different side, giving the view seen in Fig. 102. The mud had been removed some days and become too stiff to spread, so water was being brought from the canal in the pails at the right for reducing its consistency to that of a thin porridge, permitting it to more completely smear and saturate the clover. The stack grew, layer by layer, each saturated with the mud, tramped solid with the bare feet, trousers rolled high. Provision had been made here for building four other stacks. Further along we came upon the scene in Fig. 103 where the building of the stack of compost and the gathering of the mud from the canal were simultaneous. On one side of the canal the son, using a clam-shell form of dipper made of basket-work, which could be opened and shut with a pair of bamboo handles, had nearly filled the middle section of his boat with the thin ooze, while on the other side, against the stack which was building, the mother was emptying a similar boat, using a large dipper, also provided with a bamboo handle. The man on the stack is a good scale for judging its size. We came next upon a finished stack on the bank of another canal, shown in Fig. 104, where our umbrella was set to serve as a scale. This stack measured ten by ten feet on the ground, was six feet high and must have contained more than twenty tons of the green compost. At the same place, two other stacks had been started, each about fourteen by fourteen feet, and foundations were laid for six others, nine in all. During twenty or more days this green nitrogenous organic matter is permitted to lie fermenting in contact with the fine soil particles of the ooze with which it had been charged. This is a remarkable practice in that it is a very old, intensive application of an important fundamental principle only recently understood and added to the science of agriculture, namely, the power of organic matter, decaying rapidly in contact with soil, to liberate from it soluble plant food; and so it would be a great mistake to say that these laborious practices are the result of ignorance, of a lack of capacity for accurate thinking or of power to grasp and utilize. If the agricultural lands of the United States are ever called upon to feed even 1200 millions of people, a number proportionately less than one-half that being fed in Japan today, very different practices from those we are now following will have been adopted. We can believe they will require less human bodily effort and be more efficient. But the knowledge which can make them so is not yet in the possession of our farmers, much less the conviction that plant feeding and more persistent and better directed soil management are necessary to such yields as will then be required. Later, just before the time for transplanting rice, we returned to the same district to observe the manner of applying this compost to the field, and Fig. 105 is prepared from photographs taken then, illustrating the activities of one family, as seen during the morning of May 28th. Their home was in a near-by village and their holding was divided into four nearly rectangular paddies, graded to water level, separated by raised rims, and having an area of nearly two acres. Three of these little fields are partly shown in the illustration, and the fourth in Fig. 160. In the background of the upper section of Fig. 105, and under the thatched shelter, was a native Chinese cow, blindfolded and hitched to the power-wheel of a large wooden-chain pump, lifting water from the canal and flooding the field in the foreground, to soften the soil for plowing. Riding on the power-wheel was a girl of some twelve years, another of seven and a baby. They were there for entertainment and to see that the cow kept at work. The ground had been sufficiently softened so that the father had begun plowing, the cow sinking to her knees as she walked. In the same paddy, but shown in the section below, a boy was spreading the clover compost with his hands, taking care that it was finely divided and evenly scattered. He had been once around before the plowing began. This compost had been brought from a stack by the side of a canal, and two other men were busy still bringing the material to one of the other paddies, one of whom, with his baskets on the carrying pole appears in the third section. Between these two paddies was the one seen at the bottom of the illustration, which had matured a crop of rape that had been pulled and was lying in swaths ready to be moved. Two other men were busy here, gathering the rape into large bundles and carrying it to the village home, where the women were threshing out the seed, taking care not to break the stems which, after threshing, were tied into bundles for fuel. The seed would be ground and from it an oil expressed, while the cake would be used as a fertilizer. This crop of rape is remarkable for the way it fits into the economies of these people. It is a near relative of mustard and cabbage; it grows rapidly during the cooler portions of the season, the spring crop ripening before the planting of rice and cotton; its young shoots and leaves are succulent, nutritious, readily digested and extensively used as human food, boiled and eaten fresh, or salted for winter use, to be served with rice; the mature stems, being woody, make good fuel; and it bears a heavy crop of seed, rich in oil, which has been extensively used for lights and in cooking, while the rape seed cake is highly prized as a manure and very extensively so used. In the early spring the country is luxuriantly green with the large acreage of rape, later changing to a sea of most brilliant yellow and finally to an ashy grey when the leaves fall and the stems and pods ripen. Like the dairy cow, rape produces a fat, in the ratio of about forty pounds of oil to a hundred pounds of seed, which may be eaten, burned or sold without materially robbing the soil of its fertility if the cake and the ashes from the stems are returned to the fields, the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen of which the oil is almost wholly composed coming from the atmosphere rather than from the soil. In Japan rape is grown as a second crop on both the upland and paddy fields, and in 1906 she produced more than 5,547,000 bushels of the seed; $1,845,000 worth of rape seed cake, importing enough more to equal a total value of $2,575,000, all of which was used as a fertilizer, the oil being exported. The yield of seed per acre in Japan ranges between thirteen and sixteen bushels, and the farmer whose field was photographed estimated that his returns from the crop would be at the rate of 640 pounds of seed per acre, worth $6.19, and 8,000 pounds of stems worth as fuel $5.16 per acre. IX THE UTILIZATION OF WASTE One of the most remarkable agricultural practices adopted by any civilized people is the centuries-long and well nigh universal conservation and utilization of all human waste in China, Korea and Japan, turning it to marvelous account in the maintenance of soil fertility and in the production of food. To understand this evolution it must be recognized that mineral fertilizers so extensively employed in modern western agriculture, like the extensive use of mineral coal, had been a physical impossibility to all people alike until within very recent years. With this fact must be associated the very long unbroken life of these nations and the vast numbers their farmers have been compelled to feed. When we reflect upon the depleted fertility of our own older farm lands, comparatively few of which have seen a century's service, and upon the enormous quantity of mineral fertilizers which are being applied annually to them in order to secure paying yields, it becomes evident that the time is here when profound consideration should be given to the practices the Mongolian race has maintained through many centuries, which permit it to be said of China that one-sixth of an acre of good land is ample for the maintenance of one person, and which are feeding an average of three people per acre of farm land in the three southernmost of the four main islands of Japan. From the analyses of mixed human excreta made by Wolff in Europe and by Kellner in Japan it appears that, as an average, these carry in every 2000 pounds 12.7 pounds of nitrogen, 4 pounds of potassium and 1.7 pounds of phosphorus. On this basis and that of Carpenter, who estimates the average amount of excreta per day for the adult at 40 ounces, the average annual production per million of adult population is 5,794,300 pounds of nitrogen; 1,825,000 pounds of potassium, and 775,600 pounds of phosphorus carried in 456,250 tons of excreta. The figures which Hall cites in Fertilizers and Manures, would make these amounts 7,940,000 pounds of nitrogen; 3,070,500 pounds of potassium, and 1,965,600 pounds of phosphorus, but the figures he takes and calls high averages give 12,000,000 of nitrogen; 4,151,000 pounds of potassium, and 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus. In 1908 the International Concessions of the city of Shanghai sold to one Chinese contractor for $31,000, gold, the privilege of collecting 78,000 tons of human waste, under stipulated regulations, and of removing it to the country for sale to farmers. The flotilla of boats seen in Fig. 106 is one of several engaged daily in Shanghai throughout the year in this service. Dr. Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, taking his data from their records, informed us that the human manure saved and applied to the fields of Japan in 1908 amounted to 23,850,295 tons, which is an average of 1.75 tons per acre of their 21,321 square miles of cultivated land in their four main islands. On the basis of the data of Wolff, Kellner and Carpenter, or of Hall, the people of the United States and of Europe are pouring into the sea, lakes or rivers and into the underground waters from 5,794,300 to 12,000,000 pounds of nitrogen; 1,881,900 to 4,151,000 pounds of potassium, and 777,200 to 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus per million of adult population annually, and this waste we esteem one of the great achievements of our civilization. In the Far East, for more than thirty centuries, these enormous wastes have been religiously saved and today the four hundred million of adult population send back to their fields annually 150,000 tons of phosphorus; 376,000 tons of potassium, and 1,158,000 tons of nitrogen comprised in a gross weight exceeding 182 million tons, gathered from every home, from the country villages and from the great cities like Hankow-Wuchang-Hanyang with its 1,770,000 people swarming on a land area delimited by a radius of four miles. Man is the most extravagant accelerator of waste the world has ever endured. His withering blight has fallen upon every living thing within his reach, himself not excepted; and his besom of destruction in the uncontrolled hands of a generation has swept into the sea soil fertility which only centuries of life could accumulate, and yet this fertility is the substratum of all that is living. It must be recognized that the phosphate deposits which we are beginning to return to our fields are but measures of fertility lost from older soils, and indices of processes still in progress. The rivers of North America are estimated to carry to the sea more than 500 tons of phosphorus with each cubic mile of water. To such loss modern civilization is adding that of hydraulic sewage disposal through which the waste of five hundred millions of people might be more than 194,300 tons of phosphorus annually, which could not be replaced by 1,295,000 tons of rock phosphate, 75 per cent pure. The Mongolian races, with a population now approaching the figure named; occupying an area little more than one-half that of the United States, tilling less than 800,000 square miles of land, and much of this during twenty, thirty or perhaps forty centuries; unable to avail themselves of mineral fertilizers, could not survive and tolerate such waste. Compelled to solve the problem of avoiding such wastes, and exercising the faculty which is characteristic of the race, they "cast down their buckets where they were", as *A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; Send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon river. *Booker T. Washington, Atlanta address. Not even in great cities like Canton, built in the meshes of tideswept rivers and canals; like Hankow on the banks of one of the largest rivers in the world; nor yet in modern Shanghai, Yokohama or Tokyo, is such waste permitted. To them such a practice has meant race suicide and they have resisted the temptation so long that it has ceased to exist. Dr. Arthur Stanley, Health officer of the city of Shanghai, in his annual report for 1899, considering this subject as a municipal problem, wrote: "Regarding the bearing on the sanitation of Shanghai of the relationship between Eastern and Western hygiene, it may be said, that if prolonged national life is indicative of sound sanitation, the Chinese are a race worthy of study by all who concern themselves with Public Health. Even without the returns of a Registrar-General it is evident that in China the birth rate must very considerably exceed the death rate, and have done so in an average way during the three or four thousand years that the Chinese nation has existed. Chinese hygiene, when compared with medieval English, appears to advantage. The main problem of sanitation is to cleanse the dwelling day by day, and if this can be done at a profit so much the better. While the ultra-civilized Western elaborates destructors for burning garbage at a financial loss and turns sewage into the sea, the Chinaman uses both for manure. He wastes nothing while the sacred duty of agriculture is uppermost in his mind. And in reality recent bacterial work has shown that faecal matter and house refuse are best destroyed by returning them to clean soil, where natural purification takes place. The question of destroying garbage can, I think, under present conditions in Shanghai, be answered in a decided negative. While to adopt the water-carriage system for sewage and turn it into the river, whence the water supply is derived, would be an act of sanitary suicide. It is best, therefore, to make use of what is good in Chinese hygiene, which demands respect, being, as it is, the product of an evolution extending from more than a thousand years before the Christian era." The storage of such waste in China is largely in stoneware receptacles such as are seen in Fig. 109, which are hard-burned, glazed terra-cotta urns, having capacities ranging from 500 to 1000 pounds. Japan more often uses sheltered cement-lined pits such as are seen in Fig. 110. In the three countries the carrying to the fields is oftenest in some form of pail, as seen in Fig. 111, a pair of which are borne swinging from the carrying pole. In applying the liquid to the field or garden the long handle dipper is used, seen in Fig. 112. We are beginning to husband with some economy the waste from our domestic animals but in this we do not approach that of China, Korea and Japan. People in China regularly search for and collect droppings along the country and caravan roads. Repeatedly, when walking through city streets, we observed such materials quickly and apparently eagerly gathered, to be carefully stored under conditions which ensure small loss from either leaching or unfavorable fermentation. In some mulberry orchards visited the earth had been carefully hoed back about the trunks of trees to a depth of three or four inches from a circle having a diameter of six to eight feet, and upon these areas were placed the droppings of silkworms, the moulted skins, together with the bits of leaves and stem left after feeding. Some disposition of such waste must be made. They return at once to the orchard all but the silk produced from the leaves; unnecessary loss is thus avoided and the material enters at once the service of forcing the next crop of leaves. On the farm of Mrs. Wu, near Kashing, while studying the operation of two irrigation pumps driven by two cows, lifting water to flood her twenty-five acres of rice field preparatory to transplanting, we were surprised to observe that one of the duties of the lad who had charge of the animals was to use a six-quart wooden dipper with a bamboo handle six feet long to collect all excreta, before they fell upon the ground, and transfer them to a receptacle provided for the purpose. There came a flash of resentment that such a task was set for the lad, for we were only beginning to realize to what lengths the practice of economy may go, but there was nothing irksome suggested in the boy's face. He performed the duty as a matter of course and as we thought it through there was no reason why it should have been otherwise. In fact, the only right course was being taken. Conditions would have been worse if the collection had not been made. It made possible more rice. Character of substantial quality was building in the lad which meant thrift in the growing man and continued life for the nation. We have adverted to the very small number of flies observed anywhere in the course of our travel, but its significance we did not realize until near the end of our stay. Indeed, for some reason, flies were more in evidence during the first two days on the steamship, out from Yokohama on our return trip to America, than at any time before on our journey. It is to be expected that the eternal vigilance which seizes every waste, once it has become such, putting it in places of usefulness, must contribute much toward the destruction of breeding places, and it may be these nations have been mindful of the wholesomeness of their practice and that many phases of the evolution of their waste disposal system have been dictated by and held fast to through a clear conception of sanitary needs. Much intelligence and the highest skill are exhibited by these old-world farmers in the use of their wastes. In Fig. 113 is one of many examples which might be cited. The man walking down the row with his manure pails swinging from his shoulders informed us on his return that in his household there were twenty to be fed; that from this garden of half an acre of land he usually sold a product bringing in $400, Mexican,--$172, gold. The crop was cucumbers in groups of two rows thirty inches apart and twenty-four inches between the groups. The plants were eight to ten inches apart in the row. He had just marketed the last of a crop of greens which occupied the space between the rows of cucumbers seen under the strong, durable, light and very readily removable trellises. On May 28 the vines were beginning to run, so not a minute had been lost in the change of crop. On the contrary this man had added a month to his growing season by over-lapping his crops, and the trellises enabled him to feed more plants of this type than there was room for vines on the ground. With ingenuity and much labor he had made his half acre for cucumbers equivalent to more than two. He had removed the vines entirely from the ground; had provided a travel space two feet wide, down which he was walking, and he had made it possible to work about the roots of every plant for the purpose of hoeing and feeding. Four acres of cucumbers handled by American field methods would not yield more than this man's one, and he grows besides two other crops the same season. The difference is not so much in activity of muscle as it is in alertness and efficiency of the grey matter of the brain. He sees and treats each plant individually, he loosens the ground so that his liquid manure drops immediately beneath the surface within reach of the active roots. If the rainfall has been scanty and the soil is dry he may use ten of water to two of night soil, not to supply water but to make certain sufficiently deep penetration. If the weather is rainy and the soil over wet, the food is applied more concentrated, not to lighten the burden but to avoid waste by leaching and over saturation. While ever crowding growth he never overfeeds. Forethought, after-thought and the mind focused on the work in hand are characteristic of these people. We do not recall to have seen a man smoking while at work. They enjoy smoking, but prefer to do this also with the attention undivided and thus get more for their money. On another date earlier in May we were walking in the fields without an interpreter. For half an hour we stood watching an old gardener fitting the soil with his spading hoe in the manner seen in Fig. 26, where the graves of his ancestors occupy a part of the land. Angleworms were extremely numerous, as large around as an ordinary lead pencil and, when not extended, two-thirds as long, decidedly greenish in color. Nearly every stroke of the spade exposed two to five of these worms but so far as we observed, and we watched the man closely, pulverizing the soil, he neither injured nor left uncovered a single worm. While he seemed to make no effort to avoid injuring them or to cover them with earth, and while we could not talk with him, we are convinced that his action was continually guarded against injuring the worms. They certainly were subsoiling his garden deeply and making possible a freer circulation of air far below the surface. Their great abundance proved a high content of organic matter present in the soil and, as the worms ate their way through it, passing the soil through their bodies, the yearly volume of work done by them was very great. In the fields flooded preparatory to fitting them for rice these worms are forced to the surface in enormous numbers and large flocks of ducks are taken to such fields to feed upon them. In another field a crop of barley was nearing maturity. An adjacent strip of land was to be fitted and planted. The leaning barley heads were in the way. Not one must be lost and every inch of ground must be put to use. The grain along the margin, for a breadth of sixteen inches, had been gathered into handfuls and skillfully tied, each with an unpulled barley stem, without breaking the straw, thus permitting even the grains in that head to fill and be gathered with the rest, while the tying set all straws well aslant, out of the way, and permitted the last inch of naked ground to be fitted without injuring the grain. In still another instance a man was growing Irish potatoes to market when yet small. He had enriched his soil; he would apply water if the rains were not timely and sufficient, and had fed the plants. He had planted in rows only twelve to fourteen inches apart with a hill every eight inches in the row. The vines stood strong, straight, fourteen inches high and as even as a trimmed hedge. The leaves and stems were turgid, the deepest green and as prime and glossy as a prize steer. So close were the plants that there was leaf surface to intercept the sunshine falling on every square inch of the patch. There were no potato beetles and we saw no signs of injury but the gardener was scanning the patch with the eye of a robin. He spied the slightest first drooping of leaves in a stem; went after the difficulty and brought and placed in our hand a cutworm, a young tuber the size of a marble and a stem cut half off, which he was willing to sacrifice because of our evident interest. But the two friends who had met were held apart by the babel of tongues. Nothing is costing the world more; has made so many enemies, and has so much hindered the forming of friendships as the inability to fully understand; hence the dove that brings world peace must fly on the wings of a common language, and the bright star in the east is world commerce, rising on rapidly developing railway and steamship lines, heralded and directed by electric communication. With world commerce must come mutual confidence and friendship requiring a full understanding and therefore a common tongue. Then world peace will be permanently assured. It is coming inevitably and faster than we think. Once this desired end is seriously sought, the carrying of three generations of children through the public schools where the world language is taught together with the mother tongue, and the passing of the parents and grandparents, would effect the change. The important point regarding these Far East people, to which attention should be directed, is that effective thinking, clear and strong, prevails among the farmers who have fed and are still feeding the dense populations from the products of their limited areas. This is further indicated in the universal and extensive use of plant ashes derived from fuel grown upon cultivated fields and upon the adjacent hill and mountain lands. We were unable to secure exact data regarding the amount of fuel burned annually in these countries, and of ashes used as fertilizer, but a cord of dry oak wood weighs about 3500 pounds, and the weight of fuel used in the home and in manufactures must exceed that of two cords per household. Japan has an average of 5.563 people per family. If we allow but 1300 pounds of fuel per capita, Japan's consumption would be 31,200,000 tons. In view of the fact that a very large share of the fuel used in these countries is either agricultural plant stems, with an average ash content of 5 per cent, or the twigs and even leaves of trees, as in the case of pine bough fuel, 4.5 per cent of ash may be taken as a fair estimate. On this basis, and with a content of phosphorus equal to .5 per cent, and of potassium equal to 5 per cent, the fuel ash for Japan would amount to 1,404,000 tons annually, carrying 7020 tons of phosphorus and 70,200 tons of potassium, together with more than 400,000 tons of limestone, which is returned annually to less than 21,321 square miles of cultivated land. In China, with her more than four hundred millions of people, a similar rate of fuel consumption would make the phosphorus and potassium returned to her fields more than eight times the amounts computed for Japan. On the basis of these statements Japan's annual saving of phosphorus from the waste of her fuel would be equivalent to more than 46,800 tons of rock phosphate having a purity of 75 per cent, or in the neighborhood of seven pounds per acre. If this amount, even with the potash and limestone added, appears like a trifling addition of fertility it is important for Americans to remember that even if this is so, these people have felt compelled to make the saving. In the matter of returning soluble potassium to the cultivated fields Japan would be applying with her ashes the equivalent of no less than 156,600 tons of pure potassium sulphate, equal to 23 pounds per acre; while the lime carbonate so applied annually would be some 62 pounds per acre. In addition to the forest lands, which have long been made to contribute plant food to the cultivated fields through fuel ashes, there are large areas which contribute green manure and compost material. These are chiefly hill lands, aggregating some twenty per cent of the cultivated fields, which bear mostly herbaceous growth. Some 2,552,741 acres of these lands may be cut over three times each season, yielding, in 1903, an average of 7980 pounds per acre. The first cutting of this hill herbage is mainly used on the rice fields as green manure, it being tramped into the mud between the rows after the manner seen in Fig. 114. This man had been with basket and sickle to gather green herbage wherever he could and had brought it to his rice paddy. The day in July was extremely sultry. We came upon him wading in the water half way to his knees, carefully laying the herbage he had gathered between alternate rows of his rice, one handful in a place, with tips overlapping. This done he took the attitude seen in the illustration and, gathering the materials into a compact bunch, pressed it beneath the surface with his foot. The two hands smoothed the soft mud over the grass and righted the disturbed spears of rice in the two adjacent hills. Thus, foot following foot, one bare length ahead, the succeeding bunches of herbage were submerged until the last had been reached, following between alternate rows only a foot apart, there being a hill every nine to ten inches in the row and the hands grasping and being drawn over every one in the paddy. He was renting the land, paying therefor forty kan of rice per tan, and his usual yield was eighty kan. This is forty-four bushels of sixty pounds per acre. In unfavorable seasons his yield might be less but still his rent would be forty kan per tan unless it was clear that he had done all that could reasonably be expected of him in securing the crop. It is difficult for Americans to understand how it is possible for the will of man, even when spurred by the love of home and family, to hold flesh to tasks like these. The second and third cuttings of herbage from the genya lands in Japan are used for the preparation of compost applied on the dry-land fields in the fall or in the spring of the following season. Some of these lands are pastured, but approximately 10,185,500 tons of green herbage grown and gathered from the hills contributes much of its organic matter and all of its ash to enrich the cultivated fields. Such wild growth areas in Japan are the commons of the near by villages, to which the people are freely admitted for the purpose of cutting the herbage. A fixed time may be set for cutting and a limit placed upon the amount which may be carried away, which is done in the manner seen in Fig. 115. It is well recognized by the people that this constant cutting and removal of growth from the hill lands, with no return, depletes the soils and reduces the amount of green herbage they are able to secure. Through the kindness of Dr. Daikuhara of the Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station at Tokyo we are able to give the average composition of the green leaves and young stems of five of the most common wild species of plants cut for green manure in June. In each 1000 pounds the amount of water is 562.18 pounds; of organic matter, 382.68 pounds; of ash, 55.14 pounds; nitrogen, 4.78 pounds; potassium, 2.407 pounds, and phosphorus, .34 pound. On the basis of this composition and an aggregate yield of 10,185,500 tons, there would be annually applied to the cultivated fields 3463 tons of phosphorus and 24,516 tons of potassium derived from the genya lands. In addition to this the run-off from both the mountain and the genya lands is largely used upon the rice fields, more than sixteen inches of water being applied annually to them in some prefectures. If such waters have the composition of river waters in North America, twelve inches of water applied to the rice fields of the three main islands would contribute no less than 1200 tons of phosphorus and 19,000 tons of potassium annually. Dr. Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, informed us that in 1908 Japanese farmers prepared and applied to their fields 22,812,787 tons of compost manufactured from the wastes of cattle, horses, swine and poultry, combined with herbage, straw and other similar wastes and with soil, sod or mud from ditches and canals. The amount of this compost is sufficient to apply 1.78 tons per acre of cultivated land of the southern three main islands. From data obtained at the Nara Experiment Station, the composition of compost as there prepared shows it to contain, in each 2000 pounds, 550 pounds of organic matter; 15.6 pounds of nitrogen; 8.3 pounds of potassium, and 5.24 pounds of phosphorus. On this basis 22,800,000 tons of compost will carry 59,700 tons of phosphorus and 94,600 tons of potassium. The construction of compost houses is illustrated in Fig. 116, reproduced from a large circular sent to farmers from the Nara Experiment Station, and an exterior of one at the Nara Station is given in Fig. 117. This compost house is designed to serve two and a half acres. Its floor is twelve by eighteen feet, rendered watertight by a mixture of clay, lime and sand. The walls are of earth, one foot thick, and the roof is thatched with straw. Its capacity is sixteen to twenty tons, having a cash value of 60 yen, or $30. In preparing the stack, materials are brought daily and, spread over one side of the compost floor until the pile has attained a height of five feet. After one foot in depth has been laid and firmed, 1.2 inches of soil or mud is spread over the surface and the process repeated until full height has been attained. Water is added sufficient to keep the whole saturated and to maintain the temperature below that of the body. After the compost stacks have been completed they are permitted to stand five weeks in summer, seven weeks in winter, when they are forked over and transferred to the opposite side of the house. If we state in round numbers the total nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium thus far enumerated which Japanese farmers apply or return annually to their twenty or twenty-one thousand square miles of cultivated fields, the case stands 385,214 tons of nitrogen, 91,656 tons of phosphorus and 255,778 tons of potassium. These values are only approximations and do not include the large volume and variety of fertilizers prepared from fish, which have long been used. Neither do they include the very large amount of nitrogen derived directly from the atmosphere through their long, extensive and persistent cultivation of soy beans and other legumes. Indeed, from 1903 to 1906 the average area of paddy field upon which was grown a second crop of green manure in the form of some legume was 6.8 per cent of the total area of such fields aggregating 11,000 square miles. In 1906 over 18 per cent of the upland fields also produced some leguminous crop, these fields aggregating between 9,000 and 10,000 square miles. While the values which have been given above, expressing the sum total of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium applied annually to the cultivated fields of Japan may be somewhat too high for some of the sources named, there is little doubt that Japanese farmers apply to their fields more of these three plant food elements annually than has been computed. The amounts which have been given are sufficient to provide annually, for each acre of the 21,321 square miles of cultivated land, an application of not less than 56 pounds of nitrogen, 13 pounds of phosphorus and 37 pounds of potassium. Or, if we omit the large northern island of Hokkaido, still new in its agriculture and lacking the intensive practices of the older farm land, the quantities are sufficient for a mean application of 60, 14 and 40 pounds respectively of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium per acre, and yet the maturing of 1000 pounds of wheat crop, covering grain and straw as water-free substance, removes from the soil but 13.9 pounds of nitrogen, 2.3 pounds of phosphorus and 8.4 pounds of potassium, from which it may be computed that the 60 pounds of nitrogen added is sufficient for a crop yielding 31 bushels of wheat; the phosphorus is sufficient for a crop of 44 bushels, and the potassium for a crop of 35 bushels per acre. Dr. Hopkins, in his recent valuable work on "Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture" gives, on page 154, a table from which we abstract the following data: APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OF NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND POTASSIUM REMOVABLE PER ACRE ANNUALLY BY Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, pounds. pounds. pounds. 100 bush. crop of corn 148 23 71 100 bush. crop of oats 97 16 68 50 bush. crop of wheat 96 16 58 25 bush. crop of soy beans 159 21 73 100 bush. crop of rice 155 18 95 3 ton crop of timothy hay 72 9 71 4 ton crop of clover hay 160 20 120 3 ton crop of cow pea hay 130 14 98 8 ton crop of alfalfa hay 400 36 192 7000 lb. crop of cotton 168 29.4 82 400 bush. crop of potatoes 84 17.3 120 20 ton crop of sugar beets 100 18 157 Annually applied in Japan, more than 60 14 40 We have inserted in this table, for comparison, the crop of rice, and have increased the crop of potatoes from three hundred bushels to four hundred bushels per acre, because such a yield, like all of those named, is quite practicable under good management and favorable seasons, notwithstanding the fact that much smaller yields are generally attained through lack of sufficient plant food or water. From this table, assuming that a crop of matured grain contains 11 per cent of water and the straw 15 per cent, while potatoes contain 79 per cent and beets 87 per cent, the amounts of the three plant food elements removable annually by 1000 pounds of crop have been calculated and stated in the next table. APPROXIMATE AMOUNTS OF NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND POTASSIUM REMOVABLE ANNUALLY PER 1,0000 POUNDS OF DRY CROP SUBSTANCE Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, pounds. pounds. pounds. Cereals. Wheat 13.873 2.312 8.382 Oats 13.666 2.254 9.580 Corn 13.719 2.149 6.676 Legumes. Soy beans 30.807 4.070 14.147 Cow peas 25.490 2.745 19.216 Clover 23.529 2.941 17.647 Alfalfa 29.411 2.647 14.118 Roots. Beets 19.213 3.462 30.192 Potatoes 15.556 3.210 22.222 Grass. Timothy 14.117 1.765 13.922 Rice 9.949 1.129 6.089 From the amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium applied annually to the cultivated fields of Japan and from the data in these two tables it may be readily seen that these people are now and probably long have been applying quite as much of these three plant food elements to their fields with each planting as are removed with the crop, and if this is true in Japan it must also be true in China. Moreover there is nothing in American agricultural practice which indicates that we shall not ultimately be compelled to do likewise. X IN THE SHANTUNG PROVINCE On May 15th we left Shanghai by one of the coastwise steamers for Tsingtao, some three hundred miles farther north, in the Shantung Province, our object being to keep in touch with methods of tillage and fertilization, corresponding phases of which would occur later in the season there. The Shantung province is in the latitude of North Carolina and Kentucky, or lies between that of San Francisco and Los Angeles. It has an area of nearly 56,000 square miles, about that of Wisconsin. Less than one-half of this area is cultivated land yet it is at the present time supporting a population exceeding 38,000,000 of people. New York state has today less than ten millions and more than half of these are in New York city. It was in this province that Confucius was born 2461 years ago, and that Mencius, his disciple, lived. Here, too, seventeen hundred years before Confucius' time, after one of the great floods of the Yellow river, 2297 B. C., and more than 4100 years ago, the Great Yu was appointed "Superintendent of Public Works" and entrusted with draining off the flood waters and canalizing the rivers. Here also was the beginning of the Boxer uprising. Tsingtao sits at the entrance of Kiaochow Bay. Following the war of Japan with China this was seized by Germany, November 14, 1897, nominally to indemnify for the murder of two German missionaries which had occurred in Shantung, and March 6th, 1898, this bay, to the high water line, its islands and a "Sphere of Influence" extending thirty miles in all directions from the boundary, together with Tsingtao, was leased to Germany for ninety-nine years. Russia demanded and secured a lease of Port Arthur at the same time. Great Britain obtained a similar lease of Weihaiwei in Shantung, while to France Kwangchow-wan in southern China, was leased. But the "encroachments" of European powers did not stop with these leases and during the latter part of 1898 the "Policy of Spheres of Influence" culminated in the international rivalry for railway concessions and mining. These greatly alarmed China and uprisings broke out very naturally first in Shantung, among the people nearest of kin to the founders of the Empire. As might have been expected of a patriotic, even though naturally peaceful people, they determined to defend their country against such encroachments and the Boxer troubles followed. Tsingtao has a deep, commodious harbor always free from ice and Germany is constructing here very extensive and substantial harbor improvements which will be of lasting benefit to the province and the Empire. A pier four miles in length encloses the inner wharf, and a second wharf is nearing completion. Germany is also maintaining a meteorological observatory here and has established a large, comprehensive Forest Garden, under excellent management, which is showing remarkable developments for so short a time. Our steamer entered the harbor during the night and, on going ashore, we soon found that only Chinese and German were generally spoken; but through the kind assistance of Rev. W. H. Scott, of the American Presbyterian Mission, an interpreter promised to call at my hotel in the evening, although he failed to appear. The afternoon was spent at the Forest Garden and on the reforestation tract, which are under the supervision of Mr. Haas. The Forest Garden covers two hundred and seventy acres and the reforestation tract three thousand acres more. In the garden a great variety of forest and fruit trees and small fruits are being tried out with high promise of the most valuable results. It was in the steep hills about Tsingtao that we first saw at close range serious soil erosion in China; and the returning of forest growth on hills nearly devoid of soil was here remarkable, in view of the long dry seasons which prevail from November to June, and Fig. 118 shows how destitute of soil the crests of granite hills may become and yet how the coming back of the forest growth may hasten as soon as it is no longer cut away. The rock going into decay, where this view was taken, is an extremely coarse crystalline granite, as may be seen in contrast with the watch, and it is falling into decay at a marvelous rate. Disintegration has penetrated the rock far below the surface and the large crystals are held together with but little more tenacity than prevails in a bed of gravel. Moisture and even roots penetrate it deeply and readily and the crystals fall apart with thrusts of the knife blade, the rock crumbling with the greatest freedom. Roadways have been extensively carved along the sides of the hills with the aid of only pick and shovel. Close examination of the rock shows that layers of sediment exist between the crystal faces, either washed down by percolating rain or formed through decomposition of the crystals in place. The next illustration, Fig. 119, shows how large the growth on such soils may be, and in Fig. 120 the vegetation and forest growth are seen coming back, closely covering just such soil surfaces and rock structure as are indicated in Figs. 118 and 119. These views are taken on the reforestation tract at Tsingtao but most of the growth is volunteer, standing now protected by the German government in their effort to see what may be possible under careful supervision. The loads of pine bough fuel represented in Fig. 80 were gathered from such hills and from such forest growth as are here represented, but on lands more distant from the city. But Tsingtao, with its forty thousand Chinese, and Kiaochow across the bay, with its one hundred and twenty thousand more, and other villages dotting the narrow plains, maintain a very great demand for such growth on the hill lands. The wonder is that forest growth has persisted at all and has contributed so much in the way of fuel. Growing in the Forest Garden was a most beautiful wild yellow rose, native to Shantung, being used for landscape effect in the parking, and it ought to be widely introduced into other countries wherever it will thrive. It was growing as heavy borders and massive clumps six to eight feet high, giving a most wonderful effect, with its brilliant, dense cloud of the richest yellow bloom. The blossoms are single, fully as large as the Rosa rugosa, with the tips of the petals shading into the most dainty light straw yellow, while the center is a deep orange, the contrast being sufficient to show in the photograph from which Fig. 121 was prepared. Another beautiful and striking feature of this rose is the clustering of the blossoms in one-sided wreath-like sprays, sometimes twelve to eighteen inches long, the flowers standing close enough to even overlap. The interpreter engaged for us failed to appear as per agreement so the next morning we took the early train for Tsinan to obtain a general view of the country and to note the places most favorable as points for field study. We had resolved also to make an effort to secure an interpreter through the American Presbyterian College at Tsinan. Leaving Tsingtao, the train skirts around the Kiaochow bay for a distance of nearly fifty miles, where we pass the city of the same name with its population of 120,000, which had an import and export trade in 1905 valued at over $24,000,000. At Sochen we passed through a coal mining district where coal was being brought to the cars in baskets carried by men. The coal on the loaded open cars was sprinkled with whitewash, serving as a seal to safe-guard against stealing during transit, making it so that none could be removed without the fact being revealed by breaking the seal. This practice is general in China and is applied to many commodities handled in bulk. We saw baskets of milled rice carried by coolies sealed with a pattern laid over the surface by sprinkling some colored powder upon it. Cut stone, corded for the market, was whitewashed in the same manner as the coal. As we were approaching Weihsien, another city of 100,000 people, we identified one of the deeply depressed, centuries-old roadways, worn eight to ten feet deep, by chancing to see half a dozen teams passing along it as the train crossed. We had passed several and were puzzling to account for such peculiar erosion. The teams gave the explanation and thus connected our earlier reading with the concrete. Along these deep-cut roadways caravans may pass, winding through the fields, entirely unobserved unless one chances to be close along the line or the movement is discovered by clouds of dust, one of the methods that has produced them, and we would not be surprised if gathering manure from them has played a large part also. Weihsien is near one of the great commercial highways of China and in the center of one of the coal mining regions of the province. Still further along towards Tsinan we passed Tsingchowfu, another of the large cities of the province, with 150,000 population. All day we rode through fields of wheat, always planted in rows, and in hills in the row east of Kaumi, but in single or double continuous drills westward from here to Tsinan. Thousands of wells used for irrigation, of the type seen in Fig. 123, were passed during the day, many of them recently dug to supply water for the barley suffering from the severe drought which was threatening the crop at the time. It was 6:30 P. M. before our train pulled into the station at Tsinan; 7:30 when we had finished supper and engaged a ricksha to take us to the American Presbyterian College in quest of an interpreter. We could not speak Chinese, the ricksha boy could neither speak nor understand a word of English, but the hotel proprietor had instructed him where to go. We plunged into the narrow streets of a great Chinese city, the boy running wherever he could, walking where he must on account of the density of the crowds or the roughness of the stone paving. We had turned many corners, crossed bridges and passed through tunneled archways in sections of the massive city walls, until it was getting dusk and the ricksha man purchased and lighted a lantern. We were to reach the college in thirty minutes but had been out a full hour. A little later the boy drew up to and held conference with a policeman. The curious of the street gathered about and it dawned upon us that we were lost in the night in the narrow streets of a Chinese city of a hundred thousand people. To go further would be useless for the gates of the mission compound would be locked. We could only indicate by motions our desire to return, but these were not understood. On the train a thoughtful, kindly old German had recognized a stranger in a foreign land and volunteered useful information, cutting from his daily paper an advertisement describing a good hotel. This gave the name of the hotel in German, English and in Chinese characters. We handed this to the policeman, pointing to the name of the hotel, indicating by motions the desire to return, but apparently he was unable to read in either language and seemed to think we were assuming to direct the way to the college. A man and boy in the crowd apparently volunteered to act as escort for us. The throng parted and we left them, turned more corners into more unlighted narrow alleyways, one of which was too difficult to permit us to ride. The escorts, if such they were, finally left us, but the dark alley led on until it terminated at the blank face, probably of some other portion of the massive city wall we had thrice threaded through lighted tunnels. Here the ricksha boy stopped and turned about but the light from his lantern was too feeble to permit reading the workings of his mind through his face, and our tongues were both utterly useless in this emergency, so we motioned for him to turn back and by some route we reached the hotel at 11 P. M. We abandoned the effort to visit the college, for the purpose of securing an interpreter, and took the early train back to Tsingtao, reaching there in time to secure the very satisfactory service of Mr. Chu Wei Yung, through the further kind offices of Mr. Scott. We had been twice over the road between the two cities, obtaining a general idea of the country and of the crops and field operations at this season. The next morning we took an early train to Tsangkau and were ready to walk through the fields and to talk with the last generations of more than forty unbroken centuries of farmers who, with brain and brawn, have successfully and continuously sustained large families on small areas without impoverishing their soil. The next illustration is from a photograph taken in one of these fields. We astonished the old farmer by asking the privilege of holding his plow through one round in his little field, but he granted the privilege readily. Our furrow was not as well turned as his, nor as well as we could have done with a two-handled Oliver or John Deere, but it was better than the old man had expected and won his respect. This plow had a good steel point, as a separate, blunt, V-shaped piece, and a moldboard of cast steel with a good twist which turned the soil well. The standard and sole were of wood and at the end of the beam was a block for gauging the depth of furrow. The cost of this plow, to the farmer, was $2.15, gold, and when the day's work is done it is taken home on the shoulders, even though the distance may be a mile or more, and carefully housed. Chinese history states that the plow was invented by Shennung, who lived 2737-2697 B. C. and "taught the art of agriculture and the medical use of herbs". He is honored as the "God of Agriculture and Medicine." Through my interpreter we learned that there were twelve in this man's family, which he maintained on fifteen mow of land, or 2.5 acres, together with his team, consisting of a cow and small donkey, besides feeding two pigs. This is at the rate of 192 people, 16 cows, 16 donkeys and 32 pigs on a forty-acre farm; and of a population density equivalent to 3072 people, 256 cows, 256 donkeys and 512 swine per square mile of cultivated field. On another small holding we talked with the farmer standing at the well in Fig. 27, where he was irrigating a little piece of barley 30 feet wide and 138 feet long. He owned and was cultivating but one and two-thirds acres of land and yet there were ten in his family and he kept one donkey and usually one pig. Here is a maintenance capacity at the rate of 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs on a forty-acre farm; and a population density of 3840 people, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs per square mile. His usual annual sales in good seasons were equivalent in value to $73, gold. In both of these cases the crops grown were wheat, barley, large and small millet, sweet potatoes and soy beans or peanuts. Much straw braid is manufactured in the province by the women and children in their homes, and the cargo of the steamer on which we returned to Shanghai consisted almost entirely of shelled peanuts in gunny sacks and huge bales of straw braid destined for the manufacture of hats in Europe and America. Shantung has only moderate rainfall, little more than 24 inches annually, and this fact has played an important part in determining the agricultural practices of these very old people. In Fig. 123 is a closer view than Fig. 27 of the farmer watering his little field of barley. The well had just been dug over eight feet deep, expressly and solely to water this one piece of grain once, after which it would be filled and the ground planted. The season had been unusually dry, as had been the one before, and the people were fearing famine. Only 2.44 inches of rain had fallen at Tsingtao between the end of the preceding October and our visit, May 21st, and hundreds of such temporary wells had been or were being dug all along both sides of the two hundred and fifty miles of railway, and nearly all to be filled when the crop on the ground was irrigated, to release the land for one to follow. The homes are in villages a mile or more apart and often the holdings or rentals are scattered, separated by considerable distances, hence easy portability is the key-note in the construction of this irrigating outfit. The bucket is very light, simply a woven basket waterproofed with a paste of bean flour. The windlass turns like a long spool on a single pin and the standard is a tripod with removable legs. Some wells we saw were sixteen or twenty feet deep and in these the water was raised by a cow walking straight away at the end of a rope. The amount and distribution of rainfall in this province, as indicated by the mean of ten years' records at Tsingtao, obtained at the German Meteorological Observatory through the courtesy of Dr. B. Meyermanns, are given in the table in which the rainfall of Madison, Wisconsin, is inserted for comparison. Mean monthly rainfall. Mean rainfall In 10 days. Tsingtao, Madison, Tsingtao, Madison, Inches. Inches. Inches. Inches. January .394 1.56 .131 .520 February .240 1.50 .080 .500 March .892 2.12 .297 .707 April 1.240 2.62 .413 .840 May 1.636 3.62 .545 1.207 June 2.702 4.10 .901 1.866 July 6.637 3.90 2.212 1.300 August 5.157 3.21 1.719 1.070 September 2.448 3.15 .816 1.050 October 2.258 2.42 .753 .807 November .398 1.78 .132 .593 December .682 1.77 .227 .590 ------------ Total 24.682 31.65 While Shantung receives less than 25 inches of rain during the year, against Wisconsin's more than 31 inches, the rainfall during June, July and August in Shantung is nearly 14.5 inches, while Wisconsin receives but 11.2 inches. This greater summer rainfall, with persistent fertilization and intense management, in a warm latitude, are some of the elements permitting Shantung today to feed 38,247,900 people from an area equal to that upon which Wisconsin is yet feeding but 2,333,860. Must American agriculture ultimately feed sixteen people where it is now feeding but one? If so, correspondingly more intense and effective practices must follow, and we can neither know too well nor too early what these Old World people have been driven to do; how they have succeeded, and how we and they may improve upon their practices and lighten the human burdens by more fully utilizing physical forces and mechanical appliances. As we passed on to other fields we found a mother and daughter transplanting sweet potatoes on carefully fitted ridges of nearly air-dry soil in a little field, the remnant of a table on a deeply eroded hillside, Fig. 124. The husband was bringing water for moistening the soil from a deep ravine a quarter of a mile distant, carrying it on his shoulder in two buckets, Fig. 125, across an intervening gulch. He had excavated four holes at intervals up the gulch and from these, with a broken gourd dipper mended with stitches, he filled his pails, bailing in succession from one to the other in regular rotation. The daughter was transplanting. Holding the slip with its tip between thumb and fingers, a strong forward stroke plowed a furrow in the mellow, dry soil; then, with a backward movement and a downward thrust, planted the slip, firmed the soil about it, leaving a depression in which the mother poured about a pint of water from another gourd dipper. After this water had soaked away, dry earth was drawn about the slip and firmed and looser earth drawn over this, the only tools being the naked hands and dipper. The father and mother were dressed in coarse garb but the daughter was neatly clad, with delicate hands decorated with rings and a bracelet. Neither of the women had bound feet. There were ten in his family; and on adjacent similar areas they had small patches of wheat nearly ready for the harvest, all planted in hills, hoed, and in astonishingly vigorous condition considering the extreme drought which prevailed. The potatoes were being planted under these extreme conditions in anticipation of the rainy season which then was fully due. The summer before had been one of unusual drought, and famine was threatened. The government had recently issued an edict that no sheep should be sold from the province, fearing they might be needed for food. An old woman in one of the villages came out, as we walked through, and inquired of my interpreter if we had come to make it rain. Such was the stress under which we found these people. One of the large farmers, owning ten acres, stated that his usual yield of wheat in good season was 160 catty per mow, equivalent to 21.3 bushels per acre. He was expecting the current season not more than one half this amount. As a fertilizer he used a prepared earth compost which we shall describe later, mixing it with the grain and sowing in the hills with the seed, applying about 5333 pounds per acre, which he valued, in our currency, at $8.60, or $3.22 per ton. A pile of such prepared compost is seen in Fig. 126, ready to be transferred to the field. The views show with what cleanliness the yard is kept and with what care all animal waste is saved. The cow and donkey are the work team, such as was being used by the plowman referred to in Fig. 122. The mounds in the background of the lower view are graves; the fence behind the animals is made from the stems of the large millet, kaoliang, while that at the right of the donkey is made of earth, both indicative of the scarcity of lumber. The buildings, too, are thatched and their walls are of earth plastered with an earthen mortar worked up with chaff. In another field a man plowing and fertilizing for sweet potatoes had brought to the field and laid down in piles the finely pulverized dry compost. The father was plowing; his son of sixteen years was following and scattering, from a basket, the pulverized dry compost in the bottom of the furrow. The next furrow covered the fertilizer, four turned together forming a ridge upon which the potatoes were to be planted after a second and older son had smoothed and fitted the crest with a heavy hand rake. The fertilizer was thus applied directly beneath the row, at the rate of 7400 pounds per acre, valued at $7.15, our currency, or $1.93 per ton. We were astonished at the moist condition of the soil turned, which was such as to pack in the hand notwithstanding the extreme drought prevailing and the fact that standing water in the ground was more than eight feet below the surface. The field had been without crop and cultivated. To the question, "What yield of sweet potatoes do you expect from this piece of land?" he replied, "About 4000 catty," which is 440 bushels of 56 pounds per acre. The usual market price was stated to be $1.00, Mexican, per one hundred catty, making the gross value of the crop $79.49, gold, per acre. His land was valued at $60, Mexican, per mow, or $154.80 per acre, gold. My interpreter informed me that the average well-to-do farmers in this part of Shantung own from fifteen to twenty mow of land and this amount is quite ample to provide for eight people. Such farmers usually keep two cows, two donkeys and eight or ten pigs. The less well-to-do or small farmers own two to five mow and act as superintendents for the larger farmers. Taking the largest holding, of twenty mow per family of eight people, as a basis, the density per square mile would be 1536 people, and an area of farm land equal to the state of Wisconsin would have 86,000,000 people; 21,500,000 cows; 21,500,000 donkeys and 86,000,000 swine. These observations apply to one of the most productive sections of the province, but very large areas of land in the province are not cultivable and the last census showed the total population nearly one-half of this amount. It is clear, therefore, that either very effective agricultural methods are practiced or else extreme economy is exercised. Both are true. On this day in the fields our interpreter procured his dinner at a farm house, bringing us four boiled eggs, for which he paid at the rate of 8.3 cents of our money, but his dinner was probably included in the price. The next table gives the prices for some articles obtained by inquiry at the Tsingtao market, May 23rd, 1909, reduced to our currency. Cents Old potatoes, per lb 2.18 New potatoes, per lb 2.87 Salted turnip, per lb .86 Onions, per lb 4.10 Radishes, bunch of 10 1.29 String beans, per lb 11.46 Cucumbers, per lb 5.78 Pears, per lb 5.73 Apricots, per lb 8.60 Pork, fresh, per lb 10.33 Fish, per lb 5.73 Eggs, per dozen 5.16 The only items which are low compared with our own prices are salted turnips, radishes and eggs. Most of the articles listed were out of season for the locality and were imported for the foreigners, turnips, radishes, pork, fish and eggs being the exceptions. Prof. Ross informs us that he found eggs selling in Shensi at four for one cent of our money. Our interpreter asked a compensation of one dollar, Mexican, or 43 cents, U. S. currency, per day, he furnishing his own meals. The usual wage for farm labor here was $8.60, per year, with board and lodging. We have referred to the wages paid by missionaries for domestic service. As servants the Chinese are considered efficient, faithful and trustworthy. It was the custom of Mr. and Mrs. League to intrust them with the purse for marketing, feeling that they could be depended upon for the closest bargaining. Commonly, when instructed to procure a certain article, if they found the price one or two cash higher than usual they would select a cheaper substitute. If questioned as to why instructions were not followed the reply would be "Too high, no can afford." Mrs. League recited her experience with her cook regarding his use of our kitchen appliances. After fitting the kitchen with a modern range and cooking utensils, and working with him to familiarize him with their use, she was surprised, on going into the kitchen a few days later, to find that the old Chinese stove had been set on the range and the cooking being done with the usual Chinese furniture. When asked why he was not using the stove his reply was "Take too much fire." Nothing jars on the nerves of these people more than incurring of needless expense, extravagance in any form, or poor judgment in making purchases. Daily we became more and more impressed by the evidence of the intense and incessant stress imposed by the dense populations of centuries, and how, under it, the laws of heredity have wrought upon the people, affecting constitution, habits and character. Even the cattle and sheep have not escaped its irresistible power. Many times in this province we saw men herding flocks of twenty to thirty sheep along the narrow unfenced pathways winding through the fields, and on the grave lands. The prevailing drought had left very little green to be had from these places and yet sheep were literally brushing their sides against fresh green wheat and barley, never molesting them. Time and again the flocks were stampeded into the grain by an approaching train, but immediately they returned to their places without taking a nibble. The voice of the shepherd and an occasional well aimed lump of earth only being required to bring them back to their uninviting pastures. In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces a line of half a dozen white goats were often seen feeding single file along the pathways, held by a cord like a string of beads, sometimes led by a child. Here, too, one of the most common sights was the water buffalo grazing unattended among the fields along the paths and canal banks, with crops all about, One of the most memorable shocks came to us in Chekiang, China, when we had fallen into a revery while gazing at the shifting landscape from the doorway of our low-down Chinese houseboat. Something in the sky and the vegetation along the canal bank had recalled the scenes of boyhood days and it seemed, as we looked aslant up the bank with its fringe of grass, that we were gliding along Whitewater creek through familiar meadows and that standing up would bring the old home in sight. That instant there glided into view, framed in the doorway and projected high against the tinted sky above the setting sun, a giant water buffalo standing motionless as a statue on the summit of a huge grave mound, lifted fully ten feet above the field. But in a flash this was replaced by a companion scene, and with all its beautiful setting, which had been as suddenly fixed on the memory fourteen years before in the far away Trossachs when our coach, hurriedly rounding a sharp turn in the hills, suddenly exposed a wild ox of Scotland similarly thrust against the sky from a small but isolated rocky summit, and then, outspeeding the wireless, recollection crossed two oceans and an intervening continent, bringing us back to China before a speed of five miles, per hour could move the first picture across the narrow doorway. It was through the fields about Tsangkow that the stalwart freighters referred to, Fig. 32, passed us on one of the paths leading from Kiaochow through unnumbered country villages, already eleven miles on their way with their wheelbarrows loaded with matches made in Japan. Many of the wheelbarrow men seen in Shanghai and other cities are from Shantung families, away for employment, expecting to return. During the harvest season, too, many of these people go west and north into Manchuria seeking employment, returning to their homes in winter. Alexander Hosie, in his book on Manchuria, states that from Chefoo alone more than 20,000 Chinese laborers cross to Newchwang every spring by steamer, others finding their way there by junks or other means, so that after the harvest season 8,000 more return by steamer to Chefoo than left that way in the spring, from which he concludes that Shantung annually supplies Manchuria with agricultural labor to the extent of 30,000 men. About the average condition of wheat in Shantung during this dry season, and nearing maturity, is seen in Fig. 127, standing rather more than three feet high, as indicated by our umbrella between the rows. Beyond the wheat and to the right, grave mounds serrate the sky line, no hills being in sight, for we were in the broad plain built up from the sea between the two mountain islands forming the highlands of Shantung. On May 22nd we were in the fields north of Kiaochow, some sixty miles by rail west from Tsingtao, but within the neutral zone extending thirty miles back from the high water line of the bay of the same name. Here the Germans had built a broad macadam road after the best European type but over it were passing the vehicles of forty centuries seen in Figs. 128 and 129. It is doubtful if the resistance to travel experienced by these men on the better road was enough less than that on the old paths they had left to convince them that the cost of construction and maintenance would be worth while until vehicles and the price of labor change. It may appear strange that with a nation of so many millions and with so long a history, roads have persisted as little more than beaten foot-paths; but modern methods of transportation have remained physical impossibilities to every people until the science of the last century opened the way. Throughout their history the burdens of these people have been carried largely on foot, mostly on the feet of men, and of single men wherever the load could be advantageously divided. Animals have been supplemental burden bearers but, as with the men, they have carried the load directly on their own feet, the mode least disturbed by inequalities of road surface. For adaptability to the worst road conditions no vehicle equals the wheelbarrow, progressing by one wheel and two feet. No vehicle is used more in China, if the carrying pole is excepted, and no wheelbarrow in the world permits so high an efficiency of human power as the Chinese, as must be clear from Figs. 32 and 61, where nearly the whole load is balanced on the axle of a high, massive wheel with broad tire. A shoulder band from the handles of the barrow relieves the strain on the hands and, when the load or the road is heavy, men or animals may aid in drawing, or even, when the wind is favorable, it is not unusual to hoist a sail to gain propelling power. It is only in northern China, and then in the more level portions, where there are few or no canals, that carts have been extensively used, but are more difficult to manage on bad roads. Most of the heavy carts, especially those in Manchuria, seen in Fig. 203, have the wheels framed rigidly to the axle which revolves with them, the bearing being in the bed of the cart. But new carts of modern type are being introduced. In the extent of development and utilization of inland waterways no people have approached the Chinese. In the matter of land transportation they have clearly followed the line of least resistance for individual initiative, so characteristic of industrial China. There are Government courier or postal roads which connect Peking with the most distant parts of the Empire, some twenty-one being usually enumerated. These, as far as practicable, take the shortest course, are often cut into the mountain sides and even pass through tunnels. In the plains regions these roads may be sixty to seventy-five feet wide, paved and occasionally bordered by rows of trees. In some cases, too, signal towers are erected at intervals of three miles and there are inns along the way, relay posts and stations for soldiers. We have spoken of planting grain in rows and in hills in the row. In Fig. 130 is a field with the rows planted in pairs, the members being 16 inches apart, and together occupying 30 inches. The space between each pair is also 30 inches, making five feet in all. This makes frequent hoeing practicable, which is begun early in the spring and is repeated after every rain. It also makes it possible to feed the plants when they can utilize food to the best advantage and to repeat the feeding if desirable. Besides, the ground in the wider space may be fitted, fertilized and another crop planted before the first is removed. The hills alternate in the rows and are 24 to 26 inches from center to center. The planting may be done by hand or with a drill such as that in Fig. 131, ingenious in the simple mechanism which permits planting in hills. The husbandman had just returned from the field with the drill on his shoulder when we met at the door of his village home, where he explained to us the construction and operation of the drill and permitted the photograph to be taken, but turning his face aside, not wishing to represent a specific character, in the view. In the drill there was a heavy leaden weight swinging free from a point above the space between the openings leading to the respective drill feet. When planting, the operator rocks the drill from side to side, causing the weight to hang first over one and then over the other opening, thus securing alternation of hills in each pair of rows. Counting the heads of wheat in the hill in a number of fields showed them ranging between 20 and 100, the distance between the rows and between the hills as stated above. There were always a larger number of stalks per hill where the water capacity of the soil was large, where the ground water was near the surface, and where the soil was evidently of good quality. This may have been partly the result of stooling but we have little doubt that judgment was exercised in planting, sowing less seed on the lighter soils where less moisture was available. In the piece just referred to, in the illustration, an average hill contained 46 stalks and the number of kernels in a head varied between 20 and 30. Taking Richardson's estimate of 12,000 kernels of wheat to the pound, this field would yield about twelve bushels of wheat per acre this unusually dry season. Our interpreter, whose parents lived near Kaomi, four stations further west, stated that in 1901, one of their best seasons, farmers there secured yields as high as 875 catty per legal mow, which is at the rate of 116 bushels per acre. Such a yield on small areas highly fertilized and carefully tilled, when the rainfall is ample or where irrigation is practiced, is quite possible and in the Kiangsu province we observed individual small fields which would certainly approach close to this figure. Further along in our journey of the day we came upon a field where three, one of them a boy of fourteen years, were hoeing and thinning millet and maize. In China, during the hot weather, the only garment worn by the men in the field, was their trousers, and the boy had found these unnecessary, although he slipped into them while we were talking with his father. The usual yield of maize was set at 420 to 480 catty per mow, and that of millet at 600 catty, or 60 to 68.5 bushels of maize and 96 bushels of millet, of fifty pounds, per acre, and the usual price would make the gross earnings $23.48 to $26.83 per acre for the maize, and $30.96, gold, for the millet. It was evident when walking through these fields that the fall-sowed grain was standing the drought far better than the barley planted in the spring, quite likely because of the deeper and stronger development of root system made possible by the longer period of growth, and partly because the wheat had made much of its growth utilizing water that had fallen before the barley was planted and which would have been lost from the soil through percolation and surface evaporation. Farmers here are very particular to hoe their grain, beginning in the early spring, and always after rains, thoroughly appreciating the efficiency of earth mulches. Their hoe, seen in Fig. 132, is peculiarly well adapted to its purpose, the broad blade being so hung that it draws nearly parallel with the surface, cutting shallow and permitting the soil to drop practically upon the place from which it was loosened. These hoes are made in three parts; a wooden handle, a long, strong and heavy iron socket shank, and a blade of steel. The blade is detachable and different forms and sizes of blades may be used on the same shank. The mulch-producing blades may have a cutting edge thirteen inches long and a width of nine inches. At short intervals on either hand, along the two hundred and fifty miles of railway between Tsingtao and Tsinan, were observed many piles of earth compost distributed in the fields. One of these piles is seen in Fig. 133. They were sometimes on unplanted fields, in other cases they occurred among the growing crops soon to be harvested, or where another crop was to be planted between the rows of one already on the ground. Some of these piles were six feet high. All were built in cubical form with flat top and carefully plastered with a layer of earth mortar which sometimes cracked on drying, as seen in the illustration. The purpose of this careful shaping and plastering we did not learn although our interpreter stated it was to prevent the compost from being appropriated for use on adjacent fields. Such a finish would have the effect of a seal, showing if the pile had been disturbed, but we suspect other advantages are sought by the treatment, which involves so large an amount of labor. The amount of this earth compost prepared and used annually in Shantung is large, as indicated by the cases cited, where more than five thousand pounds, in one instance, and seven thousand pounds in another, were applied per acre for one crop. When two or more crops are grown the same year on the same ground, each is fertilized, hence from three to six or more tons may be applied to each cultivated acre. The methods of preparing compost and of fertilizing in Kiangsu, Chekiang and Kwangtung provinces have been described. In this part of Shantung, in Chihli and north in Manchuria as far as Mukden, the methods are materially different and if possible even more laborious, but clearly rational and effective. Here nearly if not all fertilizer compost is prepared in the villages and carried to the fields, however distant these may be. Rev. T. J. League very kindly accompanied us to Chengyang on the railway, from which we walked some two miles, back to a prosperous rural village to see their methods of preparing this compost fertilizer. It was toward the close of the afternoon before we reached the village, and from all directions husbandmen were returning from the fields, some with hoes, some with plows, some with drills over their shoulders and others leading donkeys or cattle, and similar customs obtain in Japan, as seen in Fig. 134. These were mostly the younger men. When we reached the village streets the older men, all bareheaded, as were those returning from the fields, and usually with their queues tied about the crown, were visiting, enjoying their pipes of tobacco. Opium is no longer used openly in China, unless it be permitted to some well along in years with the habit confirmed, and the growing of the poppy is prohibited. The penalties for violating the law are heavy and enforcement is said to be rigid and effective. For the first violation a fine is imposed. If convicted of a second violation the fine is heavier with imprisonment added to help the victim acquire self control, and a third conviction may bring the death penalty. The eradication of the opium scourge must prove a great blessing to China. But with the passing of this most formidable evil, for whose infliction upon China England was largely responsible, it is a great misfortune that through the pitiless efforts of the British-American Tobacco Company her people are rapidly becoming addicted to the western tobacco habit, selfish beyond excuse, filthy beyond measure, and unsanitary in its polluting and oxygen-destroying effect upon the air all are compelled to breathe. It has already become a greater and more inexcusable burden upon mankind than opium ever was. China, with her already overtaxed fields, can ill afford to give over an acre to the cultivation of this crop and she should prohibit the growing of tobacco as she has that of the poppy. Let her take the wise step now when she readily may, for all civilized nations will ultimately be compelled to adopt such a measure. The United States in 1902 had more than a million acres growing tobacco, and harvested 821,000,000 pounds of leaf. This leaf depleted those soils to the extent of more than twenty eight million pounds of nitrogen, twenty-nine million pounds of potassium and nearly two and a half million pounds of phosphorus, all so irrecoverably lost that even China, with her remarkable skill in saving and her infinite patience with little things, could not recover them for her soils. On a like area of field might as readily be grown twenty million bushels of wheat and if the twelve hundred million pounds of grain were all exported it would deplete the soil less than the tobacco crop in everything but phosphorus, and in this about the same. Used at home, China would return it all to one or another field. The home consumption of tobacco in the United States averaged seven pounds per capita in 1902. A like consumption for China's four hundred millions would call for 2800 million pounds of leaf. If she grew it on her fields two million acres would not suffice. Her soils would be proportionately depleted and she would be short forty million bushels of wheat; but if China continues to import her tobacco the vast sum expended can neither fertilize her fields nor feed, clothe or educate her people, yet a like sum expended in the importation of wheat would feed her hungry and enrich her soils. In the matter of conservation of national resources here is one of the greatest opportunities open to all civilized nations. What might not be done in the United States with a fund of $57,000,000 annually, the market price of the raw tobacco leaf, and the land, the labor and the capital expended in getting the product to the men who puff, breathe and perspire the noxious product into the air everyone must breathe, and who bespatter the streets, sidewalks, the floor of every public place and conveyance, and befoul the million spittoons, smoking rooms and smoking cars, all unnecessary and should be uncalled for, but whose installation and up-keep the non-user as well as the user is forced to pay, and this in a country of, for and by the people. This costly, filthy, selfish tobacco habit should be outgrown. Let it begin in every new home, where the mother helps the father in refusing to set the example, and let its indulgence be absolutely prohibited to everyone while in public school and to all in educational institutions. Mr. League had been given a letter of introduction to one of the leading farmers of the village and it chanced that as we reached the entrance way to big home we were met by his son, just returning from the fields with his drill on his shoulder, and it is he standing in the illustration, Fig. 131, holding the letter of introduction in his hand. After we had taken this photograph and another one looking down the narrow street from the same point, we were led to the small open court of the home, perhaps forty by eighty feet, upon which all doors of the one-storied structures opened. It was dry and bare of everything green, but a row of very tall handsome trees, close relatives of our cottonwood, with trunks thirty feet to the limbs, looked down into the court over the roofs of the low thatched houses. Here we met the father and grandfather of the man with the drill, so that, with the boy carrying the baby in his arms, who had met his father in the street gateway, there were four generations of males at our conference. There were women and girls in the household but custom requires them to remain in retirement on such occasions. A low narrow four-legged bench, not unlike our carpenter's sawhorse, five feet long, was brought into the court as a seat, which our host and we occupied in common. We had been similarly received at the home of Mrs. Wu in Chekiang province. On our right was the open doorway to the kitchen in which stood, erect and straight, the tall spare figure of the patriarch of the household, his eyes still shining black but with hair and long thin straggling beard a uniform dull ashen gray. No Chinese hair, it seems, ever becomes white with age. He seemed to have assumed the duties of cook for while we were there be lighted the fire in the kitchen and was busy, but was always the final oracle on any matter of difference of opinion between the younger men regarding answers to questions. Two sleeping apartments adjoining the kitchen, through whose wide kang beds the waste heat from the cooking was conveyed, as described on page 142, completed this side of the court. On our left was the main street completely shut off by a solid earth wall as high as the eaves of the house, while in front of us, adjoining the street, was the manure midden, a compost pit six feet deep and some eight feet square. A low opening in the street wall permitted the pit to be emptied and to receive earth and stubble or refuse from the fields for composting, Against the pit and without partition, but cut off from the court, was the home of the pigs, both under a common roof continuous with a closed structure joining with the sleeping apartments, while behind us and along the alley-way by which we had entered were other dwelling and storage compartments. Thus was the large family of four generations provided with a peculiarly private open court where they could work and come out for sun and air, both, from our standards, too meagerly provided in the houses. We had come to learn more of the methods of fertilizing practiced by these people. The manure midden was before us and the piles of earth brought in from the fields, for use in the process, were stacked in the street, where we had photographed them at the entrance, as seen in Fig. 135. There a father, with his pipe, and two boys stand at the extreme left; beyond them is a large pile of earth brought into the village and carefully stacked in the narrow street; on the other side of the street, at the corner of the first building, is a pile of partly fermented compost thrown from a pit behind the walls. Further along in the street, on the same side, is a second large stack of soil where two boys are standing at either end and another little boy was in a near-by doorway. In front of the tree, on the left side of the street, stands a third boy, near him a small donkey and still another boy. Beyond this boy stands a third large stack of soil, while still beyond and across the way is another pile partly composted. Notwithstanding the cattle in the preceding illustration, the donkey, the men, the boys, the three long high stacks of soil and the two piles of compost, the ten rods of narrow street possessed a width of available travelway and a cleanliness which would appear impossible. Each farmer's household had its stack of soil in the street, and in walking through the village we passed dozens of men turning and mixing the soil and compost, preparing it for the field. The compost pit in front of where we sat was two-thirds filled. In it had been placed all of the manure and waste of the household and street, all stubble and waste roughage from the field, all ashes not to be applied directly and some of the soil stacked in the street. Sufficient water was added at intervals to keep the contents completely saturated and nearly submerged, the object being to control the character of fermentation taking place. The capacity of these compost pits is determined by the amount of land served, and the period of composting is made as long as possible, the aim being to have the fiber of all organic material completely broken down, the result being a product of the consistency of mortar. When it is near the time for applying the compost to the field, or of feeding it to the crop, the fermented product is removed in waterproof carrying baskets to the floor of the court, to the yard, such as seen in Fig. 126, or to the street, where it is spread to dry, to be mixed with fresh soil, more ashes, and repeatedly turned and stirred to bring about complete aeration and to hasten the processes of nitrification. During all of these treatments, whether in the compost pit or on the nitrification floor, the fermenting organic matter in contact with the soil is converting plant food elements into soluble plant food substances in the form of potassium, calcium and magnesium nitrates and soluble phosphates of one or another form, perhaps of the same bases and possibly others of organic type. If there is time and favorable temperature and moisture conditions for these fermentations to take place in the soil of the field before the crop will need it, the compost may be carried direct from the pit to the field and spread broadcast, to be plowed under. Otherwise the material is worked and reworked, with more water added if necessary, until it becomes a rich complete fertilizer, allowed to become dry and then finely pulverized, sometimes using stone rollers drawn over it by cattle, the donkey or by hand. The large numbers of stacks of compost seen in the fields between Tsingtao and Tsinan were of this type and thus laboriously prepared in the villages and then transported to the fields, stacked and plastered to be ready for use at next planting. In the early days of European history, before modern chemistry had provided the cheaper and more expeditious method of producing potassium nitrate for the manufacture of gunpowder and fireworks, much land and effort were devoted to niter-farming which was no other than a specific application of this most ancient Chinese practice and probably imported from China. While it was not until 1877 to 1879 that men of science came to know that the processes of nitrification, so indispensable to agriculture, are due to germ life, in simple justice to the plain farmers of the world, to those who through all the ages from Adam down, living close to Nature and working through her and with her, have fed the world, it should be recognized that there have been those among them who have grasped such essential, vital truths and have kept them alive in the practices of their day. And so we find it recorded in history as far back as 1686 that Judge Samuel Lewell copied upon the cover of his journal a practical man's recipe for making saltpeter beds, in which it was directed, among other things, that there should be added to it "mother of petre", meaning, in Judge Lewell's understanding, simply soil from an old niter bed, but in the mind of the man who applied the maternity prefix,--mother,--it must have meant a vital germ contained in the soil, carried with it, capable of reproducing its kind and of perpetuating its characteristic work, belonging to the same category with the old, familiar, homely germ, "mother" of vinegar. So, too, with the old cheesemaker who grasped the conception which led to the long time practice of washing the walls of a new cheese factory with water from an old factory of the same type, he must have been led by analogies of experience with things seen to realize that he was here dealing with a vital factor. Hundreds, of course, have practiced empyrically, but some one preceded with the essential thought and we feel it is small credit to men of our time who, after ten or twenty years of technical training, having their attention directed to a something to be seen, and armed with compound microscopes which permit them to see with the physical eye the "mother of petre", arrogate to themselves the discovery of a great truth. Much more modest would it be and much more in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due to admit that, after long doubting the existence of such an entity, we have succeeded in confirming in fullness the truth of a great discovery which belongs to an unnamed genius of the past, or perhaps to a hundred of them who, working with life's processes and familiar with them through long intimate association, saw in these invisible processes analogies that revealed to them the essential truth in such fullness as to enable them to build upon it an unfailing practice. There is another practice followed by the Chinese, connected with the formation of nitrates in soils, which again emphasizes the national trait of saving and turning to use any and every thing worth while. Our attention was called to this practice by Rev. A. E. Evans of Shunking, Szechwan province. It rests upon the tendency of the earth floors of dwellings to become heavily charged with calcium nitrate through the natural processes of nitrification. Calcium nitrate being deliquescent absorbs moisture sufficiently to dissolve and make the floor wet and sticky. Dr. Evans' attention was drawn to the wet floor in his own house, which be at first ascribed to insufficient ventilation, but which be was unable to remedy by improving that. The father of one of his assistants, whose business consisted in purchasing the soil of such floors for producing potassium nitrate, used so much in China in the manufacture of fireworks and gunpowder, explained his difficulty and suggested the remedy. This man goes from house to house through the village, purchasing the soil of floors which have thus become overcharged. He procures a sample, tests it and announces what he will pay for the surface two, three or four inches, the price sometimes being as high as fifty cents for the privilege of removing the top layer of the floor, which the proprietors must replace. He leaches the soil removed, to recover the calcium nitrate, and then pours the leachings through plant ashes containing potassium carbonate, for the purpose of transforming the calcium nitrate into the potassium nitrate or saltpeter. Dr. Evans learned that during the four months preceding our interview this man had produced sufficient potassium nitrate to bring his sales up to $80, Mexican. It was necessary for him to make a two-days journey to market his product. In addition he paid a license fee of 80 cents per month. He must purchase his fuel ashes and hire the services of two men. When the nitrates which accumulate in the floors of dwellings are not collected for this purpose the soil goes to the fields to be used directly as a fertilizer, or it may be worked into compost. In the course of time the earth used in the village walls and even in the construction of the houses may disintegrate so as to require removal, but in all such cases, as with the earth brick used in the kangs, the value of the soil has improved for composting and is generally so used. This improvement of the soil will not appear strange when it is stated that such materials are usually from the subsoil, whose physical condition would improve when exposed to the weather, converting it in fact into an uncropped virgin soil. We were unable to secure definite data as to the chemical composition of these composts and cannot say what amounts of available plant food the Shantung farmers are annually returning to their fields. There can be little doubt, however, that the amounts are quite equal to those removed by the crops. The soils appeared well supplied with organic matter and the color of the foliage and the general aspect of crops indicated good feeding. The family with whom we talked in the village place their usual yields of wheat at 420 catty of grain and 1000 catty of straw per mow,--their mow was four-thirds of the legal standard mow--the grain being worth 35 strings of cash and the straw 12 to 14 strings, a string of cash being 40 cents, Mexican, at this time. Their yields of beans were such as to give them a return of 30 strings of cash for the grain and 8 to 10 strings for the straw. Small millet usually yielded 450 catty of grain, worth 25 strings of cash, per mow, and 800 catty of straw worth 10 to 11 strings of cash; while the yields of large millet they placed at 400 catty per mow, worth 25 strings of cash, and 1000 catty of straw worth 12 to 14 strings of cash. Stating these amounts in bushels per acre and in our currency, the yield of wheat was 42 bushels of grain and 6000 pounds of straw per acre, having a cash value of $27.09 for the grain and $10.06 for the straw. The soy bean crop follows the wheat, giving an additional return of $23.22 for the beans and $6.97 for the straw, making the gross earning for the two crops $67.34 per acre. The yield of small millet was 54 bushels of seed and 4800 pounds of straw per acre, worth $27.09 and $8.12 for seed and straw respectively, while the kaoliang or large millet gave a yield of 48 bushels of grain and 6000 pounds of stalks per acre, worth $19.35 for the grain, and $10.06 for the straw. A crop of wheat like the one stated, if no part of the plant food contained in the grain or straw were returned to the field, would deplete the soil to the extent of about 90 pounds of nitrogen, 15 pounds of phosphorus and 65 pounds of potassium; and the crop of soy beans, if it also were entirely removed, would reduce these three plant food elements in the soil to the extent of about 240 pounds of nitrogen, 33 pounds of phosphorus and 102 pounds of potassium, on the basis of 45 bushels of beans and 5400 pounds of stems and leaves per acre, assuming that the beans added no nitrogen to the soil, which is of course not true. This household of farmers, therefore, in order to have maintained this producing power in their soil, have been compelled to return to it annually, in one form or another, not less than 48 pounds of phosphorus and 167 pounds of potassium per acre. The 330 pounds of nitrogen they would have to return in the form of organic matter or accumulate it from the atmosphere, through the instrumentality of their soy bean crop or some other legume. It has already been stated that they do add more than 5000 to 7000 pounds of dry compost, which, repeated for a second crop, would make an annual application of five to seven tons of dry compost per acre annually. They do use, in addition to this compost, large amounts of bean and peanut cake, which carry all of the plant food elements derived from the soil which are contained in the beans and the peanuts. If the vines are fed, or if the stems of the beaus are burned for fuel, most of the plant food elements in these will be returned to the field, and they have doubtless learned how to completely restore the plant food elements removed by their crops, and persistently do so. The roads made by the Germans in the vicinity of Tsingtao enabled us to travel by ricksha into the adjoining country, and on one such trip we visited a village mill for grinding soy beans and peanuts in the manufacture of oil, and Fig. 136 shows the stone roller, four feet in diameter and two feet thick, which is revolved about a vertical axis on a circular stone plate, drawn by a donkey, crushing the kernels partly by its weight and partly by a twisting motion, for the arm upon which the roller revolves is very short. After the meal had been ground the oil was expressed in essentially the same way as that described for the cotton seed, but the bean and peanut cakes are made much larger than the cotton seed cakes, about eighteen inches in diameter and three to four inches thick. Two of these cakes are seen in Fig. 137, standing on edge outside the mill in an orderly clean court. It is in this form that bean cake is exported in large quantities to different parts of China, and to Japan in recent years, for use as fertilizer, and very recently it is being shipped to Europe for both stock food and fertilizer. Nowhere in this province, nor further north, did we see the large terra cotta, receptacles so extensively used in the south for storing human excreta. In these dryer climates some method of desiccation is practiced and we found the gardeners in the vicinity of Tsingtao with quantities of the fertilizer stacked under matting shelters in the desiccated condition, this being finely pulverized in one or another way before it was applied. The next illustration, Fig. 138, shows one of these piles being fitted for the garden, its thatched shelter standing behind the grandfather of a household. His grandson was carrying the prepared fertilizer to the garden area seen in Fig. 139, where the father was working it into the soil. The greatest pains is taken, both in reducing the product to a fine powder and in spreading and incorporating it with the soil, for one of their maxims of soil management is to make each square foot of field or garden the equal of every other in its power to produce. In this manner each little holding is made to yield the highest returns possible under the conditions the husbandman is able to control. From one portion of the area being fitted, a crop of artemisia had been harvested, giving a gross return at the rate of $73.19 per acre, and from another leeks had been taken, bringing a gross return of $43.86 per acre. Chinese celery was the crop for which the ground was being fitted. The application of soil as a fertilizer to the fields of China, whether derived from the subsoil or from the silts and organic matter of canals and rivers, must have played an important part in the permanency of agriculture in the Far East, for all such additions have been positive accretions to the effective soil, increasing its depth and carrying to it all plant food elements. If not more than one-half of the weight of compost applied to the fields of Shantung is highly fertilized soil, the rates of application observed would, in a thousand years, add more than two million pounds per acre, and this represents about the volume of soil we turn with the plow in our ordinary tillage operations, and this amount of good soil may carry more than 6000 pounds of nitrogen, 2000 pounds of phosphorus and more than 60,000 pounds of potassium. When we left our hotel by ricksha for the steamer, returning to Shanghai, we soon observed a boy of thirteen or fourteen years apparently following, sometimes a little ahead, sometimes behind, usually keeping the sidewalk but slackening his pace whenever the ricksha man came to a walk. It was a full mile to the wharf. The boy evidently knew the sailing schedule and judged by the valise in front, that we were to take the out-going steamer and that he might possibly earn two cents, Mexican, the usual fee for taking a valise aboard the steamer. Twenty men at the wharf might be waiting for the job, but he was taking the chance with the mile down and back thrown in, and all for less than one cent in our currency, equivalent at the time to about twenty "cash". As we neared the steamer the lad closed up behind but strong and eager men were watching. Twice he was roughly thrust aside and before the ricksha stopped a man of stalwart frame seized the valise and, had we not observed the boy thus unobtrusively entering the competition, he would have had only his trouble for his pains. Thus intense was the struggle here for existence and thus did a mere lad put himself effectively into it. True to breeding and example he had spared no labor to win and was surprised but grateful to receive more than he had expected. XI ORIENTALS CROWD BOTH TIME AND SPACE Time is a function of every life process, as it is of every physical, chemical and mental reaction, and the husbandman is compelled to shape his operations so as to conform with the time requirements of his crops. The oriental farmer is a time economizer beyond any other. He utilizes the first and last minute and all that are between. The foreigner accuses the Chinaman of being always "long on time", never in a fret, never in a hurry. And why should he be when he leads time by the forelock, and uses all there is? The customs and practices of these Farthest East people regarding their manufacture of fertilizers in the form of earth composts for their fields, and their use of altered subsoils which have served in their kangs, village walls and dwellings, are all instances where they profoundly shorten the time required in the field to affect the necessary chemical, physical and biological reactions which produce from them plant food substances. Not only do they thus increase their time assets, but they add, in effect, to their land area by producing these changes outside their fields, at the same time giving their crops the immediately active soil products. Their compost practices have been of the greatest consequence to them, both in their extremely wet, rice-culture methods, and in their "dry-farming" practices, where the soil moisture is too scanty during long periods to permit rapid fermentation under field conditions. Western agriculturalists have not sufficiently appreciated the fact that the most rapid growth of plant food substances in the soil cannot occur at the same time and place with the most rapid crop increase, because both processes draw upon the available soil moisture, soil air and soluble potassium, calcium, phosphorus and nitrogen compounds. Whether this fundamental principle of practical agriculture is written in their literature or not it is most indelibly fixed in their practice. If we and they can perpetuate the essentials of this practice at a large saving of human effort, or perpetually secure the final result in some more expeditious and less laborious way, most important progress will have been made. When we went north to the Shantung province the Kiangsu and Chekiang farmers were engaged in another of their time saving practices, also involving a large amount of human labor. This was the planting of cotton in wheat fields before the wheat was quite ready to harvest. In the sections of these two provinces which we visited most of the wheat and barley were sowed broadcast on narrow raised lands, some five feet wide, with furrows between, after the manner seen in Fig. 140, showing a reservoir in the immediate foreground, on whose bank is installed one of the four-man foot-power irrigation pumps in use to flood the nursery rice bed close by on the right. The narrow lands of broadcasted wheat extend back from the reservoir toward the farmsteads which dot the landscape, and on the left stands one of the pump shelters near the canal bank. To save time, or lengthen the growing season of the cotton which was to follow, this seed was sown broadcast among the grain on the surface, some ten to fifteen days before the wheat would be harvested. To cover the seed the soil in the furrows between the beds had been spaded loose to a depth of four or five inches, finely pulverized, and then with a spade was evenly scattered over the bed, letting it sift down among the grain, covering the seed. This loose earth, so applied, acts as a mulch to conserve the capillary moisture, permitting the soil to become sufficiently damp to germinate the seed before the wheat is harvested. The next illustration, Fig. 141, is a closer view with our interpreter standing in another field of wheat in which cotton was being sowed April 22nd in the manner described, and yet the stand of grain was very close and shoulder high, making it not an easy task either to sow the seed or to scatter sufficient soil to cover it. When we had returned from Shantung this piece of grain had been harvested, giving a yield of 95.6 bushels of wheat and 3.5 tons of straw per acre, computed from the statement of the owner that 400 catty of grain and 500 catty of straw had been taken from the beds measuring 4050 square feet. On the morning of May 29th the photograph for Fig. 142 was taken, showing the same area after the wheat had been harvested and the cotton was up, the young plants showing slightly through the short stubble. These beds had already been once treated with liquid fertilizer. A little later the plants would be hoed and thinned to a stand of about one plant per each square foot of surface. There were thirty-seven days between the taking of the two photographs, and certainly thirty days had been added to the cotton crop by this method of planting, over what would have been available if the grain had been first harvested and the field fitted before planting, It will be observed that the cotton follows the wheat without plowing, but the soil was deep, naturally open, and a layer of nearly two inches of loose earth had been placed over the seed at the time of planting. Besides, the ground would be deeply worked with the two or four tined hoe, at the time of thinning. Starting cotton in the wheat in the manner described is but a special case of a general practice widely in vogue. The growing of multiple crops is the rule throughout these countries wherever the climate permits. Sometimes as many as three crops occupy the same field in recurrent rows, but of different dates of planting and in different stages of maturity. Reference has been made to the overlapping and alternation of cucumbers with greens. The general practice of planting nearly all crops in rows lends itself readily to systems of multiple cropping, and these to the fullest possible utilization of every minute of the growing season and of the time of the family in caring for the crops. In the field, Fig. 143, a crop of winter wheat was nearing maturity, a crop of windsor beans was about two-thirds grown, and cotton had just been planted, April 22nd. This field had been thrown into ridges some five feet wide with a twelve inch furrow between them. Two rows of wheat eight inches wide, planted two feet between centers occupied the crest of the ridge, leaving a strip sixteen inches wide, seen in the upper section, (1) for tillage, (2) then fertilization and (3) finally the row of cotton planted just before the wheat was harvested. Against the furrow on each side was a row of windsor beans, seen in the lower view, hiding the furrow, which was matured some time after the wheat was harvested and before the cotton was very large. A late fall crop sometimes follows the windsor beans after a period of tillage and fertilization, making four in one year. With such a succession fertilization for each crop, and an abundance of soil moisture are required to give the largest returns from the soil. In another plan winter wheat or barley may grow side by side with a green crop, such as the "Chinese clover" (Medicago denticulata, Willd.) for soil fertilizer, as was the case in Fig. 144, to be turned under and fertilize for a crop of cotton planted in rows on either side of a crop of barley. After the barley had been harvested the ground it occupied would be tilled and further fertilized, and when the cotton was nearing maturity a crop of rape might be grown, from which "salted cabbage" would be prepared for winter use. Multiple crops are grown as far north in Chihli as Tientsin and Peking, these being oftenest wheat, maize, large and small millet and soy beans, and this, too, where the soil is less fertile and where the annual rainfall is only about twenty-five inches, the rainy season beginning in late June or early July, and Fig. 145 shows one of these fields as it appeared June 14th, where two rows of wheat and two of large millet were planted in alternating pairs, the rows being about twenty-eight inches apart. The wheat was ready to harvest but the straw was unusually short because growing on a light sandy loam in a season of exceptional drought, but little more than two inches of rain having fallen after January 1st of that year. The piles of pulverized dry-earth compost seen between the rows had been brought for use on the ground occupied by the wheat when that was removed. The wheat would be pulled, tied in bundles, taken to the village and the roots cut off, for making compost, as in Fig. 146, which shows the family engaged in cutting the roots from the small bundles of wheat, using a long straight knife blade, fixed at one end, and thrust downward upon the bundle with lever pressure. These roots, if not used as fuel, would be transferred to the compost pit in the enclosure seen in Fig. 147, whose walls were built of earth brick. Here, with any other waste litter, manure or ashes, they would be permitted to decay under water until the fiber had been destroyed, thus permitting it to be incorporated with soil and applied to the fields, rich in soluble plant food and in a condition which would not interfere with the capillary movement of soil moisture, the work going on outside the field where the changes could occur unimpeded and without interfering with the growth of crops on the ground. In this system of combined intertillage and multiple cropping the oriental farmer thus takes advantage of whatever good may result from rotation or succession of crops, whether these be physical, vito-chemical or biological. If plants are mutually helpful through close association of their root systems in the soil, as some believe may be the case, this growing of different species in close juxtaposition would seem to provide the opportunity, but the other advantages which have been pointed out are so evident and so important that they, rather than this, have doubtless led to the practice of growing different crops in close recurrent rows. XII RICE CULTURE IN THE ORIENT The basal food crop of the people of China, Korea and Japan is rice, and the mean consumption in Japan, for the five years ending 1906, per capita and per annum, was 302 pounds. Of Japan's 175,428 square miles she devoted, in 1906, 12,856 to the rice crop. Her average yield of water rice on 12,534 square miles exceeded 33 bushels per acre, and the dry land rice averaged 18 bushels per acre on 321 square miles. In the Hokkaido, as far north as northern Illinois, Japan harvested 1,780,000 bushels of water rice from 53,000 acres. In Szechwan province, China, Consul-General Hosie places the yield of water rice on the plains land at 44 bushels per acre, and that of the dry land rice at 22 bushels. Data given us in China show an average yield of 42 bushels of water rice per acre, while the average yield of wheat was 25 bushels per acre, the normal yield in Japan being about 17 bushels. If the rice eaten per capita in China proper and Korea is equal to that in Japan the annual consumption for the three nations, using the round number 300 pounds per capita per annum, would be: Population. Consumption. China 410,000,000 61,500,000 tons Korea 12,000,000 1,800,000 tons Japan 53,000,000 7,950 000 tons ----------------------- Total 475,000,000 71,250,000 tons If the ratio of irrigated to dry land rice in Korea and China proper is the same as that in Japan, and if the mean yield of rice per acre in these countries were forty bushels for the water rice and twenty bushels for the dry land rice, the acreage required to give this production would be: Area. Water rice, Dry land rice, sq. miles. sq. miles. In China 78,073 4,004 In Korea 2,285 117 In Japan 12,534 321 ------- ------ Sum 92,892 4,442 Total 97,334 Our observations along the four hundred miles of railway in Korea between Antung, Seoul and Fusan, suggest that the land under rice in this country must be more rather than less than that computed, and the square miles of canalized land in China, as indicated on pages 97 to 102, would indicate an acreage of rice for her quite as large as estimated. In the three main islands of Japan more than fifty per cent of the cultivated land produces a crop of water rice each year and 7.96 per cent of the entire land area of the Empire, omitting far-north Karafuto. In Formosa and in southern China large areas produce two crops each year. At the large mean yield used in the computation the estimated acreage of rice in China proper amounts to 5.93 per cent of her total area and this is 7433 square miles greater than the acreage of wheat in the United States in 1907. Our yield of wheat, however, was but 19,000,000 tons, while China's output of rice was certainly double and probably three times this amount from nearly the same acreage of land; and notwithstanding this large production per acre, more than fifty per cent, possibly as high as seventy-five per cent, of the same land matures at least one other crop the same year, and much of this may be wheat or barley, both chiefly consumed as human food. Had the Mongolian races spread to and developed in North America instead of, or as well as, in eastern Asia, there might have been a Grand Canal, something as suggested in Fig. 148, from the Rio Grande to the mouth of the Ohio river and from the Mississippi to Chesapeake Bay, constituting more than two thousand miles of inland water-way, serving commerce, holding up and redistributing both the run-off water and the wasting fertility of soil erosion, spreading them over 200,000 square miles of thoroughly canalized coastal plains, so many of which are now impoverished lands, made so by the intolerable waste of a vaunted civilization. And who shall venture to enumerate the increase in the tonnage of sugar, bales of cotton, sacks of rice, boxes of oranges, baskets of peaches, and in the trainloads of cabbage, tomatoes and celery such husbanding would make possible through all time; or number the increased millions these could feed and clothe? We may prohibit the exportation of our phosphorus, grind our limestone, and apply them to our fields, but this alone is only temporizing with the future. The more we produce, the more numerous our millions, the faster must present practices speed the waste to the sea, from whence neither money nor prayer can call them back. If the United States is to endure; if we shall project our history even through four or five thousand years as the Mongolian nations have done, and if that history shall be written in continuous peace, free from periods of wide-spread famine or pestilence, this nation must orient itself; it must square its practices with a conservation of resources which can make endurance possible. Intensifying cultural methods but intensifies the digestion, assimilation and exhaustion of the surface soil, from which life springs. Multiple cropping, closer stands on the ground and stronger growth, all mean the transpiration of much more water per acre through the crops, and this can only be rendered possible through a redistribution of the run-off and the adoption of irrigation practices in humid climates where water exists in abundance. Sooner or later we must adopt a national policy which shall more completely conserve our water resources, utilizing them not only for power and transportation, but primarily for the maintenance of soil fertility and greater crop production through supplemental irrigation, and all these great national interests should be considered collectively, broadly, and with a view to the fullest and best possible coordination. China, Korea and Japan long ago struck the keynote of permanent agriculture but the time has now come when they can and will make great improvements, and it remains for us and other nations to profit by their experience, to adopt and adapt what is good in their practice and help in a world movement for the introduction of new and improved methods. In selecting rice as their staple crop; in developing and maintaining their systems of combined irrigation and drainage, notwithstanding they have a large summer rainfall; in their systems of multiple cropping; in their extensive and persistent use of legumes; in their rotations for green manure to maintain the humus of their soils and for composting; and in the almost religious fidelity with which they have returned to their fields every form of waste which can replace plant food removed by the crops, these nations have demonstrated a grasp of essentials and of fundamental principles which may well cause western nations to pause and reflect. While this country need not and could not now adopt their laborious methods of rice culture, and while, let us hope, those who come after us may never be compelled to do so, it is nevertheless quite worth while to study, for the sake of the principles involved, the practices they have been led to adopt. Great as is the acreage of land in rice in these countries but little, relatively, is of the dry land type, and the fields upon which most of the rice grows have all been graded to a water level and surrounded by low, narrow raised rims, such as may be seen in Fig. 149 and in Fig. 150, where three men are at work on their foot-power pump, flooding fields preparatory to transplanting the rice. If the country was not level then the slopes have been graded into horizontal terraces varying in size according to the steepness of the areas in which they were cut. We saw these often no larger than the floor of a small room, and Professor Ross informed me that he walked past those in the interior of China no larger than a dining table and that he saw one bearing its crop of rice, surrounded by its rim and holding water, yet barely larger than a good napkin. The average area of the paddy field in Japan is officially reported at 1.14 se, or an area of but 31 by 40 feet. Excluding Hokkaido, Formosa and Karafuto, fifty-three per cent of the irrigated rice lands in Japan are in allotments smaller than one-eighth of an acre, and seventy-four per cent of other cultivated lands are held in areas less than one-fourth of an acre, and each of these may be further subdivided. The next two illustrations, Figs. 151 and 152, give a good idea both of the small size of the rice fields and of the terracing which has been done to secure the water level basins. The house standing near the center of Fig. 151 is a good scale for judging both the size of the paddies and the slope of the valley. The distance between the rows of rice is scarcely one foot, hence counting these in the foreground may serve as another measure. There are more than twenty little fields shown in this engraving in front of the house and reaching but half way to it, and the house was less than five hundred feet from the camera. There are more than eleven thousand square miles of fields thus graded in the three main islands of Japan, each provided with rims, with water supply and drainage channels, all carefully kept in the best of repair. The more level areas, too, in each of the three countries, have been similarly thrown into water level basins, comparatively few of which cover large areas, because nearly always the holdings are small. All of the earth excavated from the canals and drainage channels has been leveled over the fields unless needed for levees or dikes, so that the original labor of construction, added to that of maintenance, makes a total far beyond our comprehension and nearly all of it is the product of human effort. The laying out and shaping of so many fields into these level basins brings to the three nations an enormous aggregate annual asset, a large proportion of which western nations are not yet utilizing. The greatest gain comes from the unfailing higher yields made possible by providing an abundance of water through which more plant food can be utilized, thus providing higher average yields. The waters used, coming as they do largely from the uncultivated hills and mountain lands, carrying both dissolved and suspended matters, make positive annual additions of dissolved limestone and plant food elements to the fields which in the aggregate have been very large, through the persistent repetitions which have prevailed for centuries. If the yearly application of such water to the rice fields is but sixteen inches, and this has the average composition quoted by Merrill for rivers of North America, taking into account neither suspended matter nor the absorption of potassium and phosphorus by it, each ten thousand square miles would receive, dissolved in the water, substances containing some 1,400 tons of phosphorus; 23,000 tons of potassium; 27,000 tons of nitrogen; and 48,000 tons of sulphur. In addition, there are brought to the fields some 216,000 tons of dissolved organic matter and a still larger weight of dissolved limestone, so necessary in neutralizing the acidity of soils, amounting to 1,221,000 tons; and such savings have been maintained in China, Korea and Japan on more than five, and possibly more than nine, times the ten thousand square miles, through centuries. The phosphorus thus turned upon ninety thousand square miles would aggregate nearly thirteen million tons in a thousand years, which is less than the time the practice has been maintained, and is more phosphorus than would be carried in the entire rock phosphate thus far mined in the United States, were it all seventy-five per cent pure. The canalization of fifty thousand square miles of our Gulf and Atlantic coastal plain, and the utilization on the fields of the silts and organic matter, together with the water, would mean turning to account a vast tonnage of plant food which is now wasting into the sea, and a correspondingly great increase of crop yield. There ought, and it would seem there must some time be provided a way for sending to the sandy plains of Florida, and to the sandy lands between there and the Mississippi, large volumes of the rich silt and organic matter from this and other rivers, aside from that which should be applied systematically to building above flood plain the lands of the delta which are subject to overflow or are too low to permit adequate drainage. It may appear to some that the application of such large volumes of water to fields, especially in countries of heavy rainfall, must result in great loss of plant food through leaching and surface drainage. But under the remarkable practices of these three nations this is certainly not the case and it is highly important that our people should understand and appreciate the principles which underlie the practices they have almost uniformly adopted on the areas devoted to rice irrigation. In the first place, their paddy fields are under-drained so that most of the water either leaves the soil through the crop, by surface evaporation, or it percolates through the subsoil into shallow drains. When water is passed directly from one rice paddy to another it is usually permitted some time after fertilization, when both soil and crop have had time to appropriate or fix the soluble plant food substances. Besides this, water is not turned upon the fields until the time for transplanting the rice, when the plants are already provided with a strong root system and are capable of at once appropriating any soluble plant food which may develop about their roots or be carried downward over them. Although the drains are of the surface type and but eighteen inches to three feet in depth, they are sufficiently numerous and close so that, although the soil is continuously nearly filled with water, there is a steady percolation of the fresh, fully aerated water carrying an abundance of oxygen into the soil to meet the needs of the roots, so that watermelons, egg plants, musk melons and taro are grown in the rotations on the small paddies among the irrigated rice after the manner seen in the illustrations. In Fig. 153 each double row of egg plants is separated from the next by a narrow shallow trench which connects with a head drain and in which water was standing within fourteen inches of the surface. The same was true in the case of the watermelons seen in Fig. 154, where the vines are growing on a thick layer of straw mulch which holds them from the moist soil and acts to conserve water by diminishing evaporation and, through decay from the summer rains and leaching, serves as fertilizer for the crop. In Fig. 155 the view is along a pathway separating two head ditches between areas in watermelons and taro, carrying the drainage waters from the several furrows into the main ditches. Although the soil appeared wet the plants were vigorous and healthy, seeming in no way to suffer from insufficient drainage. These people have, therefore, given effective attention to the matter of drainage as well as irrigation and are looking after possible losses of plant food, as well as ways of supplying it. It is not alone where rice is grown that cultural methods are made to conserve soluble plant food and to reduce its loss from the field, for very often, where flooding is not practiced, small fields and beds, made quite level, are surrounded by low raised borders which permit not only the whole of any rain to be retained upon the field when so desired, but it is completely distributed over it, thus causing the whole soil to be uniformly charged with moisture and preventing washing from one portion of the field to another. Such provisions are shown in Figs. 133 and 138. Extensive as is the acreage of irrigated rice in China, Korea and Japan, nearly every spear is transplanted; the largest and best crop possible, rather than the least labor and trouble, as is so often the case with us, determining their methods and practices. We first saw the fitting of the rice nursery beds at Canton and again near Kashing in Chekiang province on the farm of Mrs. Wu, whose homestead is seen in Fig. 156. She had come with her husband from Ningpo after the ravages of the Taiping rebellion had swept from two provinces alone twenty millions of people and settled on a small area of then vacated land. As they prospered they added to their holding by purchase until about twenty-five acres were acquired, an area about ten times that possessed by the usual prosperous family in China. The widow was managing her place, one of her sons, although married, being still in school, the daughter-in-law living with her mother-in-law and helping in the home. Her field help during the summer consisted of seven laborers and she kept four cows for the plowing and pumping of water for irrigation. The wages of the men were at the rate of $24, Mexican, for five summer months, together with their meals which were four each day. The cash outlay for the seven men was thus $14.45 of our currency per month. Ten years before, such labor had been $30 per year, as compared with $50 at the time of our visit, or $12.90 and $21.50 of our currency, respectively. Her usual yields of rice were two piculs per mow, or twenty-six and two-thirds bushels per acre, and a wheat crop yielding half this amount, or some other, was taken from part of the land the same season, one fertilization answering for the two crops. She stated that her annual expense for fertilizers purchased was usually about $60, or $25.80 of our currency. The homestead of Mrs. Wu, Fig. 156, consists of a compound in the form of a large quadrangle surrounding a court closed on the south by a solid wall eight feet high. The structure is of earth brick with the roof thatched with rice straw. Our first visit here was April 19th. The nursery rice beds had been planted four days, sowing seed at the rate of twenty bushels per acre. The soil had been very carefully prepared and highly fertilized, the last treatment being a dressing of plant ashes so incompletely burned as to leave the surface coal black. The seed, scattered directly upon the surface, almost completely covered it and had been gently beaten barely into the dressing of ashes, using a wide, flat-bottom basket for the purpose. Each evening, if the night was likely to be cool, water was pumped over the bed, to be withdrawn the next day, if warm and sunny, permitting the warmth to be absorbed by the black surface, and a fresh supply of air to be drawn into the soil. Nearly a month later, May 14th, a second visit was made to this farm and one of the nursery beds of rice, as it then appeared, is seen in Fig. 159, the plants being about eight inches high and nearing the stage for transplanting. The field beyond the bed had already been partly flooded and plowed, turning under "Chinese clover" to ferment as green manure, preparatory for the rice transplanting. On the opposite side of the bed and in front of the residence, Fig. 156, flooding was in progress in the furrows between the ridges formed after the previous crop of rice was harvested and upon which the crop of clover for green manure was grown. Immediately at one end of the two series of nursery beds, one of which is seen in Fig. 159, was the pumping plant seen in Fig. 157, under a thatched shelter, with its two pumps installed at the end of a water channel leading from the canal. One of these wooden pump powers, with the blindfolded cow attached, is reproduced in Fig. 158 and just beyond the animal's head may be seen the long handle dipper to which reference has been made, used for collecting excreta. More than a month is saved for maturing and harvesting winter and early spring crops, or in fitting the fields for rice, by this planting in nursery beds. The irrigation period for most of the land is cut short a like amount, saving in both water and time. It is cheaper and easier to highly fertilize and prepare a small area for the nursery, while at the same time much stronger and more uniform plants are secured than would be possible by sowing in the field. The labor of weeding and caring for the plants in the nursery is far less than would be required in the field. It would be practically impossible to fit the entire rice areas as early in the season as the nursery beds are fitted, for the green manure is not yet grown and time is required for composting or for decaying, if plowed under directly. The rice plants in the nursery are carried to a stage when they are strong feeders and when set into the newly prepared, fertilized, clean soil of the field they are ready to feed strongly under these most favorable conditions Both time and strength of plant are thus gained and these people are following what would appear to be the best possible practices under their condition of small holdings and dense population. With our broad fields, our machinery and few people, their system appears to us crude and impossible, but cut our holdings to the size of theirs and the same stroke makes our machinery, even our plows, still more impossible, and so the more one studies the environment of these people, thus far unavoidable, their numbers, what they have done and are doing, against what odds they have succeeded, the more difficult it becomes to see what course might have been better. How full with work is the month which precedes the transplanting of rice has been pointed out,--the making of the compost fertilizer; harvesting the wheat, rape and beans; distributing the compost over the fields, and their flooding and plowing. In Fig. 160 one of these fields is seen plowed, smoothed and nearly ready for the plants. The turned soil had been thoroughly pulverized, leveled and worked to the consistency of mortar, on the larger fields with one or another sort of harrow, as seen in Figs. 160 and 161. This thorough puddling of the soil permits the plants to be quickly set and provides conditions which ensure immediate perfect contact for the roots. When the fields are ready women repair to the nurseries with their low four-legged bamboo stools, to pull the rice plants, carefully rinsing the soil from the roots, and then tie them into bundles of a size easily handled in transplanting, which are then distributed in the fields. The work of transplanting may be done by groups of families changing work, a considerable number of them laboring together after the manner seen in Fig. 163, made from four snap shots taken from the same point at intervals of fifteen minutes. Long cords were stretched in the rice field six feet apart and each of the seven men was setting six rows of rice one foot apart, six to eight plants in a hill, and the hills eight or nine inches apart in the row. The, bundle was held in one hand and deftly, with the other, the desired number of plants were selected with the fingers at the roots, separated from the rest and, with a single thrust, set in place in the row. There was no packing of earth about the roots, each hill being set with a single motion, which followed one another in quick succession, completing one cross row of six hills after another. The men move backward across the field, completing one entire section, tossing the unused plants into the unset field. Then reset the lines to cover another section. We were told that the usual day's work of transplanting, for a man under these conditions, after the field is fitted and the plants are brought to him, is two mow or one-third of an acre. The seven men in this group would thus set two and a third acres per day and, at the wage Mrs. Wu was paying, the cash outlay, if the help was hired, would be nearly 21 cents per acre. This is more cheaply than we are able to set cabbage and tobacco plants with our best machine methods. In Japan, as seen in Figs. 164 and 165, the women participate in the work of setting the plants more than in China. After the rice has been transplanted its care, unlike that of our wheat crop, does not cease. It must be hoed, fertilized and watered. To facilitate the watering all fields have been leveled, canals, ditches and drains provided, and to aid in fertilizing and hoeing, the setting has been in rows and in hills in the row. The first working of the rice fields after the transplanting, as we saw it in Japan, consisted in spading between the hills with a four-tined hoe, apparently more for loosening the soil and aeration than for killing weeds. After this treatment the field was gone over again in the manner seen in Fig. 166, where the man is using his bare hands to smooth and level the stirred soil, taking care to eradicate every weed, burying them beneath the mud, and to straighten each hill of rice as it is passed. Sometimes the fingers are armed with bamboo claws to facilitate the weeding. Machinery in the form of revolving hand cultivators is recently coming into use in Japan, and two men using these are seen in Fig. 14. In these cultivators the teeth are mounted on an axle so as to revolve as the cultivator is pushed along the row. Fertilization for the rice crop receives the greatest attention everywhere by these three nations and in no direction more than in maintaining the store of organic matter in the soil. The pink clover, to which reference has been made, Figs. 99 and 100, is extensively sowed after a crop of rice is harvested in the fall and comes into full bloom, ready to cut for compost or to turn under directly when the rice fields are plowed. Eighteen to twenty tons of this green clover are produced per acre, and in Japan this is usually applied to about three acres, the stubble and roots serving for the field producing the clover, thus giving a dressing of six to seven tons of green manure per acre, carrying not less than 37 pounds of potassium; 5 pounds of phosphorus, and 58 pounds of nitrogen. Where the families are large and the holdings small, so they cannot spare room to grow the green manure crop, it is gathered on the mountain, weed and hill lands, or it may be cut in the canals. On our boat trip west from Soochow the last of May, many boats were passed carrying tons of the long green ribbon-like grass, cut and gathered from the bottom of the canal. To cut this grass men were working to their armpits in the water of the canal, using a crescent-shaped knife mounted like an anchor from the end of a 16-foot bamboo handle. This was shoved forward along the bottom of the canal and then drawn backward, cutting the grass, which rose to the surface where it was gathered upon the boats. Or material for green manure may be cut on grave, mountain or hill lands, as described under Fig. 115. The straw of rice and other grain and the stems of any plant not usable as fuel may also be worked into the mud of rice fields, as may the chaff which is often scattered upon the water after the rice is transplanted, as in Fig. 168. Reference has been made to the utilization of waste of various kinds in these countries to maintain the productive power of their soils, but it is worth while, in the interests of western nations, as helping them to realize the ultimate necessity of such economies, to state again, in more explicit terms, what Japan is doing. Dr. Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, taking his data from their records, informed me that Japan produced, in 1908, and applied to her fields, 23,850,295 tons of human manure; 22,812,787 tons of compost; and she imported 753,074 tons of commercial fertilizers, 7000 of which were phosphates in one form or another. In addition to these she must have applied not less than 1,404,000 tons of fuel ashes and 10,185,500 tons of green manure products grown on her hill and weed lands, and all of these applied to less than 14,000,000 acres of cultivated field, and it should be emphasized that this is done because as yet they have found no better way of permanently maintaining a fertility capable of feeding her millions. Besides fertilizing, transplanting and weeding the rice crop there is the enormous task of irrigation to be maintained until the rice is nearly matured. Much of the water used is lifted by animal power and a large share of this is human. Fig. 169 shows two Chinese men in their cool, capacious, nowhere-touching summer trousers flinging water with the swinging basket, and it is surprising the amount of water which may be raised three to four feet by this means. The portable spool windlass, in Figs. 27 and 123, has been described, and Fig. 170 shows the quadrangular, cone-shaped bucket and sweep extensively used in Chihli. This man was supplying water sufficient for the irrigation of half an acre, per day, lifting the water eight feet. The form of pump most used in China and the foot-power for working it are seen in Fig. 171. Three men working a similar pump are seen in Fig. 150, a closer view of three men working the foot-power may be seen in Fig. 42 and still another stands adjacent to a series of flooded fields in Fig. 172. Where this view was taken the old farmer informed us that two men, with this pump, lifting water three feet, were able to cover two mow of land with three inches of water in two hours. This is at the rate of 2.5 acre-inches of water per ten hours per man, and for 12 to 15 cents, our currency, thus making sixteen acre-inches, or the season's supply of water, cost 77 to 96 cents, where coolie labor is hired and fed. Such is the efficiency of human power applied to the Chinese pump, measured in American currency. This pump is simply an open box trough in which travels a wooden chain carrying a series of loosely fitting boards which raise the water from the canal, discharging it into the field. The size of the trough and of the buckets are varied to suit the power applied and the amount of water to be lifted. Crude as it appears there is nothing in western manufacture that can compete with it in first cost, maintenance or efficiency for Chinese conditions and nothing is more characteristic of all these people than their efficient, simple appliances of all kinds, which they have reduced to the lowest terms in every feature of construction and cost. The greatest results are accomplished by the simplest means. If a canal must be bridged and it is too wide to be covered by a single span, the Chinese engineer may erect it at some convenient place and turn the canal under it when completed. This we saw in the case of a new railroad bridge near Sungkiang. The bridge was completed and the water had just been turned under it and was being compelled to make its own excavation. Great expense had been saved while traffic on the canal had not been obstructed. In the foot-power wheel of Japan all gearing is eliminated and the man walks the paddles themselves, as seen in Fig. 173. Some of these wheels are ten feet in diameter, depending upon the height the water must be lifted. Irrigation by animal power is extensively practiced in each of the three countries, employing mostly the type of power wheel shown in Fig. 158. The next illustration, Fig. 174, shows the most common type of shelter seen in Chekiang and Kiangsu provinces, which are there very numerous. We counted as many as forty such shelters in a semi-circle of half a mile radius. They provide comfort for the animals during both sunshine and rain, for under no conditions must the water be permitted to run low on the rice fields, and everywhere their domestic animals receive kind, thoughtful treatment. In the less level sections, where streams have sufficient fall, current wheels are in common use, carrying buckets near their circumference arranged so as to fill when passing through the water, and to empty after reaching the highest level into a receptacle provided with a conduit which leads the water to the field. In Szechwan province some of these current wheels are so large and gracefully constructed as to strongly suggest Ferris wheels. A view of one of these we are permitted to present in Fig. 175, through the kindness of Rollin T. Chamberlin who took the photograph from which the engraving was prepared. This wheel which was some forty feet in diameter, was working when the snap shot was taken, raising the water and pouring it into the horizontal trough seen near the top of the wheel, carried at the summit of a pair of heavy poles standing on the far side of the wheel. From this trough, leading away to the left above the sky line, is the long pipe, consisting of bamboo stems joined together, for conveying the water to the fields. When the harvest time has come, notwithstanding the large acreage of grain, yielding hundreds of millions of bushels, the small, widely scattered holdings and the surface of the fields render all of our machine methods quite impossible. Even our grain cradle, which preceded the reaper, would not do, and the great task is still met with the old-time sickle, as seen in Fig. 176, cutting the rice hill by hill, as it was transplanted. Previous to the time for cutting, after the seed is well matured, the water is drawn off and the land permitted to dry and harden. The rainy season is not yet over and much care must be exercised in curing the crop. The bundles may be shocked in rows along the margins of the paddies, as seen in Fig. 176, or they may be suspended, heads down, from bamboo poles as seen in Fig. 177. The threshing is accomplished by drawing the heads of the rice through the teeth of a metal comb mounted as seen at the right in Fig. 178, near the lower corner, behind the basket, where a man and woman are occupied in winnowing the dust and chaff from the grain by means of a large double fan. Fanning mills built on the principle of those used by our farmers and closely resembling them have long been used in both China and Japan. After the rice is threshed the grain must be hulled before it can serve as food, and the oldest and simplest method of polishing used by the Japanese is seen in, Fig. 179, where the friction of the grain upon itself does the polishing. A quantity of rice is poured into the receptacle when, with heavy blows, the long-headed plunger is driven into the mass of rice, thus forcing the kernels to slide over one another until, by their abrasion, the desired result is secured. The same method of polishing, on a larger scale, is accomplished where the plungers are worked by the weight of the body, a series of men stepping upon lever handles of weighted plungers, raising them and allowing them to fall under the force of the weight attached. Recently, however, mills worked by gasoline engines are in operation for both hulling and polishing, in Japan. The many uses to which rice straw is put in the economies of these people make it almost as important as the rice itself. As food and bedding for cattle and horses; as thatching material for dwellings and other shelters; as fuel; as a mulch; as a source of organic matter in the soil, and as a fertilizer, it represents a money value which is very large. Besides these ultimate uses the rice straw is extensively employed in the manufacture of articles used in enormous quantities. It is estimated that not less than 188,700,000 bags such as are seen in Figs. 180 and 181, worth $3,110,000 are made annually from the rice straw in Japan, for handling 346,150,000 bushels of cereals and 28,190,000 bushels of beans; and besides these, great numbers of bags are employed in transporting fish and other prepared manures. In the prefecture of Hyogo, with 596 square miles of farm land, as compared with Rhode Island's 712 square miles, Hyogo farmers produced in 1906, on 265,040 acres, 10,584,000 bushels of rice worth $16,191,400, securing an average yield of almost forty bushels per acre and a gross return of $61 for the grain alone. In addition to this, these farmers grew on the same land, the same season, at least one other crop. Where this was barley the average yield exceeded twenty-six bushels per acre, worth $17. In connection with their farm duties these Japanese families manufactured, from a portion of their rice straw, at night and during the leisure hours of winter, 8,980,000 pieces of matting and netting of different kinds having a market value of $262,000; 4,838,000 bags worth $185,000; 8,742,000 slippers worth $34,000; 6,254,000 sandals worth $30,000; and miscellaneous articles worth $64,000. This is a gross earning of more than $21,000,000 from eleven and a half townships of farm land and the labor of the farmers' families, an average earning of, $80 per acre on nearly three-fourths of the farm land of this prefecture. At this rate three of the four forties of our 160-acre farms should bring a gross annual income of $9,600 and the fourth forty should pay the expenses. At the Nara Experiment Station we were informed that the money value of a good crop of rice in that prefecture should be placed at ninety dollars per acre for the grain and eight dollars for the unmanufactured straw; thirty-six dollars per acre for the crop of naked barley and two dollars per acre for the straw. The farmers here practice a rotation of rice and barley covering four or five years, followed by a summer crop of melons, worth $320 per acre and some other vegetable instead of the rice on the fifth or sixth year, worth eighty yen per tan, or $160 per acre. To secure green manure for fertilizing, soy beans are planted each year in the space between the rows of barley, the barley being planted in November. One week after the barley is harvested the soy beans, which produce a yield of 160 kan per tan, or 5290 pounds per acre, are turned under and the ground fitted for rice, At these rates the Nara farmers are producing on four-fifths or five-sixths of their rice lands a gross earning of $136 per acre annually, and on the other fifth or sixth, an earning of $480 per acre, not counting the annual crop of soy beans used in maintaining the nitrogen and organic matter in their soils, and not counting their earnings from home manufactures. Can the farmers of our south Atlantic and Gulf Coast states, which are in the same latitude, sometime attain to this standard? We see no reason why they should not, but only with the best of irrigation, fertilization and proper rotation, with multiple cropping. XIII SILK CULTURE Another of the great and in some ways one of the most remarkable industries of the Orient is that of silk production, and its manufacture into the most exquisite and beautiful fabrics in the world. Remarkable for its magnitude; for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest China, at least 2600 years B. C.; for having been founded on the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; and for having lived through more than four thousand years, expanding until a $1,000,000 cargo of the product has been laid down on our western coast at one time and rushed by special fast express to New York City for the Christmas trade. Japan produced in 1907 26,072,000 pounds of raw silk from 17,154,000 bushels of cocoons, feeding the silkworms from mulberry leaves grown on 957,560 acres. At the export selling price of this silk in Japan the crop represents a money value of $124,000,000, or more than two dollars per capita for the entire population of the Empire; and engaged in the care of the silkworms, as seen in Figs. 184, 185, 186 and 187, there were, in 1906, 1,407,766 families or some 7,000,000 people. Richard's geography of the Chinese Empire places the total export of raw silk to all countries, from China, in 1905, at 30,413,200 pounds, and this, at the Japanese export price, represents a value of $145,000,000. Richard also states that the value of the annual Chinese export of silk to France amounts to 10,000,000 pounds sterling and that this is but twelve per cent of the total, from which it appears that her total export alone reaches a value near $400,000,000. The use of silk in wearing apparel is more general among the Chinese than among the Japanese, and with China's eightfold greater population, the home consumption of silk must be large indeed and her annual production must much exceed that of Japan. Hosie places the output of raw silk in Szechwan at 5,439,500 pounds, which is nearly a quarter of the total output of Japan, and silk is extensively grown in eight other provinces, which together have an area nearly fivefold that of Japan. It would appear, therefore, that a low estimate of China's annual production of raw silk must be some 120,000,000 pounds, and this, with the output of Japan and Korea, would make a product for the three countries probably exceeding 150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value of perhaps $700,000,000; quite equalling in value the wheat crop of the United States, but produced on less than one-eighth of the area. According to the observations of Count Dandola, the worms which contribute to this vast earning are so small that some 700,000 of them weigh at hatching only one pound, but they grow very rapidly, shed their skins four times, weighing 15 pounds at the time of the first moult, 94 pounds at the second, 400 pounds at the third, 1628 pounds at the fourth moulting and when mature have come to weigh nearly five tons--9500 pounds. But in making this growth during about thirty-six days, according to Paton, the 700,000 worms have eaten 105 pounds by the time of the first moult; 315 pounds by the second; 1050 pounds by the third; 3150 pounds by the fourth, and in the final period, before spinning, 19,215 pounds, thus consuming in all nearly twelve tons of mulberry leaves in producing nearly five tons of live weight, or at the rate of two and a half pounds of green leaf to one pound of growth. According to Paton, the cocoons from the 700,000 worms would weigh between 1400 and 2100 pounds and these, according to the observations of Hosie in the province of Szechwan, would yield about one-twelfth their weight of raw silk. On this basis the one pound of worms hatched from the eggs would yield between 116 and 175 pounds of raw silk, worth, at the Japanese export price for 1907, between $550 and $832, and 164 pounds of green mulberry leaves would be required to produce a pound of silk. A Chinese banker in Chekiang province, with whom we talked, stated that the young worms which would hatch from the eggs spread on a sheet of paper twelve by eighteen inches would consume, in coming to maturity, 2660 pounds of mulberry leaves and would spin 21.6 pounds of silk. This is at the rate of 123 pounds of leaves to one pound of silk. The Japanese crop for 1907, 26,072,000 pounds, produced on 957,560 acres, is a mean yield of 27.23 pounds of raw silk per acre of mulberries, and this would require a mean yield of 4465 pounds of green mulberry leaves per acre, at the rate of 164 pounds per pound of silk. Ordinary silk in these countries is produced largely from three varieties of mulberries, and from them there may be three pickings of leaves for the rearing of a spring, summer and autumn crop of silk. We learned at the Nagoya Experiment Station, Japan, that there good spring yields of mulberry leaves are at the rate of 400 kan, the second crop, 150 kan, and the third crop, 250 kan per tan, making a total yield of over thirteen tons of green leaves per acre. This, however, seems to be materially higher than the average for the Empire. In Fig. 188 is a near view of a mulberry orchard in Chekiang province, which has been very heavily fertilized with canal mud, and which was at the stage for cutting the leaves to feed the first crop of silkworms. A bundle of cut limbs is in the crotch of the front tree in the view. Those who raise mulberry leaves are not usually the feeders of the silkworms and the leaves from this orchard were being sold at one dollar, Mexican, per picul, or 32.25 cents per one hundred pounds. The same price was being paid a week later in the vicinity of Nanking, Kiangsu province. The mulberry trees, as they appear before coming into leaf in the early spring, may be seen in Fig. 189. The long limbs are the shoots of the last year's growth, from which at least one crop of leaves had been picked, and in healthy orchards they may have a length of two to three feet. An orchard from a portion of which the limbs had just been cut, presented the appearance seen in Fig. 190. These trees were twelve to fifteen years old and the enlargements on the ends of the limbs resulted from the frequent pruning, year after year, at nearly the same place. The ground under these trees was thickly covered with a growth of pink clover just coming into bloom, which would be spaded into the soil, providing nitrogen and organic matter, whose decay would liberate potash, phosphorus and other mineral plant food elements for the crop. In Fig. 191 three rows of mulberry trees, planted four feet apart, stand on a narrow embankment raised four feet, partly through adjusting the surrounding fields for rice, and partly by additions of canal mud used as a fertilizer. On either side of the mulberries is a crop of windsor beans, and on the left a crop of rape, both of which would be harvested in early June, the ground where they stand flooded, plowed and transplanted to rice. This and the other mulberry views were taken in the extensively canalized portion of China represented in Fig. 52. The farmer owning this orchard had just finished cutting two large bundles of limbs for the sale of the leaves in the village. He stated that his first crop ordinarily yields from three to as many as twenty piculs per mow, but that the second crop seldom exceeded two to three piculs. The first and second crop of leaves, if yielding together twenty-three piculs per mow, would amount to 9.2 tons per acre, worth, at the price named, $59.34. Mulberry leaves must be delivered fresh as soon as gathered and must be fed the same day, the limbs, when, stripped of their leaves, at the place where these are sold, are tied into bundles and reserved for use as fuel. In the south of China the mulberry is grown from low cuttings rooted by layering. We have before spoken of our five hours ride in the Canton delta region, on the steamer Nanning, through extensive fields of low mulberry then in full leaf, which were first mistaken for cotton nearing the blossom stage. This form of mulberry is seen in Fig. 43, and the same method of pruning is practiced in southern Japan. In middle Japan high pruning, as in Chekiang and Kiangsu provinces, is followed, but in northern Japan the leaves are picked directly, as is the case with the last crop of leaves everywhere, pruning not being practiced in the more northern latitudes. Not all silk produced in these northern countries is from the domesticated Bombyx mori, large amounts being obtained from the spinnings of wild silkworms feeding upon the leaves of species of oak growing on the mountain and hill lands in various parts of China, Korea and Japan. In China the collections in largest amount are reeled from the cocoons of the tussur worm (Antheraea pernyi) gathered in Shantung, Honan, Kweichow and Szechwan provinces. In the hilly parts of Manchuria also this industry is attaining large proportions, the cocoons being sent to Chefoo in the Shantung province, to be woven into pongee silk. M. Randot has estimated the annual crop of wild silk cocoons in Szechwan at 10,180,000 pounds, although in the opinion of Alexander Hosie much of this may come from Kweichow. Richard places the export of raw wild silk from the whole of China proper, in 1904, at 4,400,000 pounds. This would mean not less than 75,300,000 pounds of wild cocoons and may be less than half the home consumption. From data collected by Alexander Hosie it appears that in 1899 the export of raw tussur silk from Manchuria, through the port of Newchwang by steamer alone, was 1,862,448 pounds, valued at $1,721,200, and the production is increasing rapidly. The export from the same port the previous year, by steamer, was 1,046,704 pounds. This all comes from the hilly and mountain lands south of Mukden, lying between the Liao plain on the west and the Yalu river on the east, covering some five thousand square miles, which we crossed on the Antung-Mukden railway. There are two broods of these wild silkworms each season, between early May and early October. Cocoons of the fall brood are kept through the winter and when the moths come forth they are caused to lay their eggs on pieces of cloth and when the worms are hatched they are fed until the first moult upon the succulent new oak leaves gathered from the hills, after which the worms are taken to the low oak growth on the hills where they feed themselves and spin their cocoons under the cover of leaves drawn about them. The moths reserved from the first brood, after becoming fertile, are tied by means of threads to the oak bushes where they deposit the eggs which produce the second crop of tussur silk. To maintain an abundance of succulent leaves within reach the oaks are periodically cut back. Thus these plain people, patient, frugal, unshrinking from toil, the basic units of three of the oldest nations, go to the uncultivated hill lands and from the wild oak and the millions of insects which they help to feed upon it, not only create a valuable export trade but procure material for clothing, fuel, fertilizer and food, for the large chrysalides, cooked in the reeling of the silk, may be eaten at once or are seasoned with sauce to be used later. Besides this, the last unreelable portion of each cocoon is laid aside to be manufactured into silk wadding and into soft mattresses for caskets upon which the wealthy lay their dead. XIV THE TEA INDUSTRY The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great industries of these nations, taking rank with that of sericulture, if not above it, in the important part it plays in the welfare of the people. There is little reason to doubt that the industry has its foundation in the need of something to render boiled water palatable for drinking purposes. The drinking of boiled water has been universally adopted in these countries as an individually available, thoroughly efficient and safe guard against that class of deadly disease germs which it has been almost impossible to exclude from the drinking water of any densely peopled country. So far as may be judged from the success of the most thorough sanitary measures thus far instituted, and taking into consideration the inherent difficulties which must increase enormously with increasing populations, it appears inevitable that modern methods must ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety must be secured in some manner having the equivalent effect of boiling water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races, and which destroys active disease germs at the latest moment before using. And it must not be overlooked that the boiling of drinking water in China and Japan has been demanded quite as much because of congested rural populations as to guard against such dangers in large cities, while as yet our sanitary engineers have dealt only with the urban phases of this most vital problem and chiefly, too, thus far, only where it has been possible to procure the water supply in comparatively unpopulated hill lands. But such opportunities cannot remain available indefinitely, any more than they did in China and Japan, and already typhoid epidemics break out in our large cities and citizens are advised to boil their drinking water. If tea drinking in the family is to remain general in most portions of the world, and especially if it shall increase in proportion to population, there is great industrial and commercial promise for China, Korea and Japan in their tea industry if they will develop tea culture still further over the extensive and still unused flanks of the hill lands; improve their cultural methods; their manufacture; and develop their export trade. They have the best of climatic and soil conditions and people sufficiently capable of enormously expanding the industry. Both improvement and expansion of methods along all essential lines, are needed, enabling them to put upon the market pure teas of thoroughly uniform grades of guaranteed quality, and with these the maintenance of an international code of rigid ethics which shall secure to all concerned a square deal and a fair division of the profits. The production of rice, silk and tea are three industries which these nations are preeminently circumstanced and qualified to economically develop and maintain. Other nations may better specialize along other lines which fitness determines, and the time is coming when maximum production at minimum cost as the result of clean robust living that in every way is worth while, will determine lines of social progress and of international relations. With the vital awakening to the possibility of and necessity for world peace, it must be recognized that this can be nothing less than universal, industrial, commercial, intellectual and religious, in addition to making impossible forever the bloody carnage that has ravaged the world through all the centuries. With the extension of rapid transportation and more rapid communication throughout the world, we are fast entering the state of social development which will treat the whole world as a mutually helpful, harmonious industrial unit. It must be recognized that in certain regions, because of peculiar fitness of soil, climate and people, needful products can be produced there better and enough more cheaply than elsewhere to pay the cost of transportation. If China, Korea and Japan, with parts of India, can and will produce the best and cheapest silks, teas or rice, it must be for the greatest good to seek a mutually helpful exchange, and the erection of impassable tariff barriers is a declaration of war and cannot make for world peace and world progress. The date of the introduction of tea culture into China appears unknown. It was before the beginning of the Christian era and tradition would place it more than 2700 years earlier. The Japanese definitely date its introduction into their islands as in the year 805 A. D., and state its coming to them from China. However and whenever tea growing originated in these countries, it long ago attained and now maintains large proportions. In 1907 Japan had 124,482 acres of land occupied by tea gardens and tea plantations. These produced 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea, giving a mean yield of 489 pounds per acre. Of the more than sixty million pounds of tea produced annually on nearly two hundred square miles in Japan, less than twenty-two million pounds are consumed at home, the balance being exported at a cash value, in 1907, of $6,309,122, or a mean of sixteen cents per pound. In China the volume of tea produced annually is much larger than in Japan. Hosie places the annual export from Szechwan into Tibet alone at 40,000,000 pounds and this is produced largely in the mountainous portion of the province west of the Min river. Richard places her direct export to foreign countries, in 1905, at 176,027,255 pounds; and in 1906 at 180,271,000 pounds, so that the annual export must exceed 200,000,000 pounds, and her total product of cured tea must be more than 400,000,000. The general appearance of tea bushes as they are grown in Japan is indicated in Fig. 192. The form of the bushes, the shape and size of the leaves and the dense green, shiny foliage quite suggests our box, so much used in borders and hedges. When the bushes are young, not covering the ground, other crops are grown between the rows, but as the bushes attain their full size, standing after trimming, waist to breast high, the ground between is usually thickly covered with straw, leaves or grass and weeds from the hill lands, which serve as a mulch, as a fertilizer, as a means of preventing washing on the hillsides, and to force the rain to enter the soil uniformly where it falls. Quite a large per cent of the tea bushes are grown on small, scattering, irregular areas about dwellings, on land not readily tilled, but there are also many tea plantations of considerable size, presenting the appearance seen in Fig. 193. After each picking of the leaves the bushes are trimmed back with pruning shears, giving the rows the appearance of carefully trimmed hedges. The tea leaves are hand picked, generally by women and girls, after the manner seen in Fig. 194, where they are gathering the tender, newly-formed leaves into baskets to be weighed fresh, as seen in Fig. 195. Three crops of leaves are usually gathered each season, the first yielding in Japan one hundred kan per tan, the second fifty kan and the third eighty kan per tan. This is at the rate of 3307 pounds, 1653 pounds, and 2645 pounds per acre, making a total of 7605 pounds for the season, from which the grower realizes from a little more than 2.2 to a little more than 3 cents per pound of the green leaves, or a gross earning of $167 to $209.50 per acre. We were informed that the usual cost for fertilizers for the tea orchards was 15 to 20 yen per tan, or $30 to $40 per acre per annum, the fertilizer being applied in the fall, in the early spring and again after the first picking of the leaves. While the tea plants are yet small one winter crop and one summer crop of vegetables, beans or barley are grown between the rows, these giving a return of some forty dollars per acre. Where the plantations are given good care and ample fertilization the life of a plantation may be prolonged continuously, it is said, through one hundred or more years. During our walk from Joji to Kowata, along a country road in one of the tea districts, we passed a tea-curing house. This was a long rectangular, one-story building with twenty furnaces arranged, each under an open window, around the sides. In front of each heated furnace with its tray of leaves, a Japanese man, wearing only a breech cloth, and in a state of profuse perspiration, was busy rolling the tea leaves between the palms of his hands. At another place we witnessed the making of the low grade dust tea, which is prepared from the leaves of bushes which must be removed or from those of the prunings. In this case the dried bushes with their leaves were being beaten with flails on a threshing floor. The dust tea thus produced is consumed by the poorer people. XV ABOUT TIENTSIN On the 6th of June we left central China for Tientsin and further north, sailing by coastwise steamer from Shanghai, again plowing through the turbid waters which give literal exactness to the name Yellow Sea. Our steamer touched at Tsingtao, taking on board a body of German troops, and again at Chefoo, and it was only between these two points that the sea was not strongly turbid. Nor was this all. From early morning of the 10th until we anchored at Tientsin, 2:30 P. M., our course up the winding Pei ho was against a strong dust-laden wind which left those who had kept to the deck as grey as though they had ridden by automobile through the Colorado desert; so the soils of high interior Asia are still spreading eastward by flood and by wind into the valleys and far over the coastal plains. Over large areas between Tientsin and Peking and at other points northward toward Mukden trees and shrubs have been systematically planted in rectangular hedgerow lines, to check the force of the winds and reduce the drifting of soils, planted fields occupying the spaces between. It was on this trip that we met Dr. Evans of Shunking, Szechwan province. His wife is a physician practicing among the Chinese women, and in discussing the probable rate of increase of population among the Chinese, it was stated that she had learned through her practice that very many mothers had borne seven to eleven children and yet but one, two or at most three, were living. It was said there are many customs and practices which determine this high mortality among children, one of which is that of feeding them meat before they have teeth, the mother masticating for the children, with the result that often fatal convulsions follow. A Scotch physician of long experience in Shantung, who took the steamer at Tsingtao, replied to my question as to the usual size of families in his circuit, "I do not know. It depends on the crops. In good years the number is large; in times of famine the girls especially are disposed of, often permitted to die when very young for lack of care. Many are sold at such times to go into other provinces." Such statements, however, should doubtless be taken with much allowance. If all the details were known regarding the cases which have served as foundations for such reports, the matter might appear in quite a different light from that suggested by such cold recitals. Although land taxes are high in China Dr. Evans informed me that it is not infrequent for the same tax to be levied twice and even three times in one year. Inquiries regarding the land taxes among farmers in different parts of China showed rates running from three cents to a dollar and a half, Mexican, per mow; or from about eight cents to $3.87 gold, per acre. At these rates a forty acre farm would pay from $3.20 to $154.80, and a quarter section four times these amounts. Data collected by Consul-General E. T. Williams of Tientsin indicate that in Shantung the land tax is about one dollar per acre, and in Chihli, twenty cents. In Kiangsi province the rate is 200 to 300 cash per mow, and in Kiangsu, from 500 to 600 cash per mow, or, according to the rate of exchange given on page 76, from 60 to 80 cents, or 90 cents to $1.20 per acre in Kiangsi; and $1.50 to $2.00 or $1.80 to $2.40 in Kiangsu province. The lowest of these rates would make the land tax on 160 acres, $96, and the highest would place it at $384, gold. In Japan the taxes are paid quarterly and the combined amount of the national, prefectural and village assessments usually aggregates about ten per cent of the government valuation placed on the land. The mean valuation placed on the irrigated fields, excluding Formosa and Karafuto, was in 1907, 35.35 yen per tan; that of the upland fields, 9.40 yen, and the genya and pasture lands were given a valuation of .22 yen per tan. These are valuations of $70.70, $18.80 and $.44, gold, per acre, respectively, and the taxes on forty acres of paddy field would be $282.80; $75.20 on forty acres of upland field, and $1.76, gold, on the same area of the genya and weed lands. In the villages, where work of one or another kind is done for pay, Dr. Evans stated that a woman's wage might not exceed $8, Mexican, or $3.44, gold, per year, and when we asked how it could be worth a woman's while to work a whole year for so small a sum, his reply was, "If she did not do this she would earn nothing, and this would keep her in clothes and a little more." A cotton spinner in his church would procure a pound of cotton and on returning the yarn would receive one and a quarter pounds of cotton in exchange, the quarter pound being her compensation. Dr. Evans also described a method of rooting slips from trees, practiced in various parts of China. The under side of a branch is cut, bent upward and split for a short distance; about this is packed a ball of moistened earth wrapped in straw to retain the soil and to provide for future watering; the whole may then be bound with strips of bamboo for greater stability. In this way slips for new mulberry orchards are procured. At eight o'clock in the morning we entered the mouth of the Pei ho and wound westward through a vast, nearly sea-level, desert plain and in both directions, far toward the horizon, huge white stacks of salt dotted the surface of the Taku Government salt fields, and revolving in the wind were great numbers of horizontal sail windmills, pumping sea water into an enormous acreage of evaporation basins. In Fig. 196 may be seen five of the large salt stacks and six of the windmills, together with many smaller piles of salt. Fig. 197 is a closer view of the evaporation basins with piles of salt scraped from the surface after the mother liquor had been drained away. The windmills, which were working one, sometimes two, of the large wooden chain pumps, were some thirty feet in diameter and lifted the brine from tide-water basins into those of a second and third higher level where the second and final concentration occurred. These windmills, crude as they appear in Fig. 198, are nevertheless efficient, cheaply constructed and easily controlled. The eight sails, each six by ten feet, were so hung as to take the wind through the entire revolution, tilting automatically to receive the wind on the opposite face the moment the edge passed the critical point. Some 480 feet of sail surface were thus spread to the wind, working on a radius of fifteen feet. The horizontal drive wheel had a diameter of ten feet, carried eighty-eight wooden cogs which engaged a pinion with fifteen leaves, and there were nine arms on the reel at the other end of the shaft which drove the chain. The boards or buckets of the chain pump were six by twelve inches, placed nine inches apart, and with a fair breeze the pump ran full. Enormous quantities of salt are thus cheaply manufactured through wind, tide and sun power directed by the cheapest human labor. Before reaching Tientsin we passed the Government storage yards and counted two hundred stacks of salt piled in the open, and more than a third of the yard had been passed before beginning the count. The average content of each stack must have exceeded 3000 cubic feet of salt, and more than 40,000,000 pounds must have been stored in the yards. Armed guards in military uniform patrolled the alleyways day and night. Long strips of matting laid over the stacks were the only shelter against rain. Throughout the length of China's seacoast, from as far north as beyond Shanhaikwan, south to Canton, salt is manufactured from sea water in suitable places. In Szechwan province, we learn from the report of Consul-General Hosie, that not less than 300,000 tons of salt are annually manufactured there, largely from brine raised by animal power from wells seven hundred to more than two thousand feet deep. Hosie describes the operations at a well more than two thousand feet deep, at Tzeliutsing. In the basement of a power-house which sheltered forty water buffaloes, a huge bamboo drum twelve feet high, sixty feet in circumference, was so set as to revolve on a vertical axis propelled by four cattle drawing from its circumference. A hemp rope was wound about this drum, six feet from the ground, passing out and under a pulley at the well, then up and around a wheel mounted sixty feet above and descended to the bucket made from bamboo stems four inches in diameter and nearly sixty feet long, which dropped with great speed to the bottom of the well as the rope unwound. When the bucket reached the bottom four attendants, each with a buffalo in readiness, hitched to the drum and drove at a running pace, during fifteen minutes, or until the bucket was raised from the well. The buffalo were then unhitched and, while the bucket was being emptied and again dropped to the bottom of the well, a fresh relay were brought to the drum. In this way the work continued night and day. The brine, after being raised from the well, was emptied into distributing reservoirs, flowing thence through bamboo pipes to the evaporating sheds where round bottomed, shallow iron kettles four feet across were set in brick arches in which jets of natural gas were burning. Within an area some sixty miles square there are more than a thousand brine and twenty fire wells from which fuel gas is taken. The mouths of the fire wells are closed with masonry, out from which bamboo conduits coated with lime lead to the various furnaces, terminating with iron burners beneath the kettles. Remarkable is the fact that in the city of Tzeliutsing, both these brine and the fire wells have been operated in the manufacture of salt since before Christ was born. The forty water buffalo are worth $30 to $40 per head and their food fifteen to twenty cents per day. The cost of manufacturing this salt is placed at thirteen to fourteen cash per catty, to which the Government adds a tax of nine cash more, making the cost at the factory from 82 cents to $1.15, gold, per hundred pounds. Salt manufacture is a Government monopoly and the product must be sold either to Government officials or to merchants who have bought the exclusive right to supply certain districts. The importation of salt is prohibited by treaties. For the salt tax collection China is divided into eleven circuits each having its own source of supply and transfer of salt from one circuit to another is forbidden. The usual cost of salt is said to vary between one and a half and four cash per catty. The retail price of salt ranges from three-fourths to three cents per pound, fully twelve to fifteen times the cost of manufacture. The annual production of salt in the Empire is some 1,860,000 tons, and in 1901 salt paid a tax close to ten million dollars. Beyond the salt fields, toward Tientsin, the banks of the river were dotted at short intervals with groups of low, almost windowless houses, Fig. 199, built of earth brick plastered with clay on sides and roof, made more resistant to rain by an admixture of chaff and cut straw, and there was a remarkable freshness of look about them which we learned was the result of recent preparations made for the rainy season about to open. Beyond the first of these villages came a stretch of plain dotted thickly and far with innumerable grave mounds, to which reference has been made. For nearly an hour we had traveled up the river before there was any material vegetation, the soil being too saline apparently to permit growth, but beyond this, crops in the fields and gardens, with some fruit and other trees, formed a fringe of varying width along the banks. Small fields of transplanted rice on both banks were frequent and often the land was laid out in beds of two levels, carefully graded, the rice occupying the lower areas, and wooden chain pumps were being worked by hand, foot and animal power, irrigating both rice and garden crops. In the villages were many stacks of earth compost, of the Shantung type; manure middens were common and donkeys drawing heavy stone rollers followed by men with large wooden mallets, were going round and round, pulverizing and mixing the dry earth compost and the large earthen brick from dismantled kangs, preparing fertilizer for the new series of crops about to be planted, following the harvest of wheat and barley. Large boatloads of these prepared fertilizers were moving on the river and up the canals to the fields. Toward the coast from Tientsin, especially in the country, traversed by the railroad, there was little produced except a short grass, this being grazed at the time of our visit and, in places, cut for a very meagre crop of hay. The productive cultivated lands lie chiefly along the rivers and canals or other water courses, where there is better drainage as well as water for irrigation. The extensive, close canalization that characterizes parts of Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces is lacking here and for this reason, in part, the soil is not so productive. The fuller canalization, the securing of adequate drainage and the gaining of complete control of the flood waters which flow through this vast plain during the rainy season constitute one of China's most important industrial problems which, when properly solved, must vastly increase her resources. During our drive over the old Peking-Taku road saline deposits were frequently observed which had been brought to the surface during the dry season, and the city engineer of Tientsin stated that in their efforts at parking portions of the foreign concessions they had found the trees dying after a few years when their roots began to penetrate the more saline subsoil, but that since they had opened canals, improving the drainage, trees were no longer dying. There is little doubt that proper drainage by means of canals, and the irrigation which would go with it, would make all of these lands, now more or less saline, highly productive, as are now those contiguous to the existing water courses. It had rained two days before our drive over the Taku road and when we applied for a conveyance, the proprietor doubted whether the roads were passible, as he had been compelled to send out an extra team to assist in the return of one which had been stalled during the previous night. It was finally arranged to send an extra horse with us. The rainy season had just begun but the deep trenching of the roads concentrates the water in them and greatly intensifies the trouble. In one of the little hamlets through which we passed the roadway was trenched to a depth of three to four feet in the middle of the narrow street, leaving only five feet for passing in front of the dwellings on either side, and in this trench our carriage moved through mud and water nearly to the hubs. Between Tientsin and Peking, in the early morning after a rain of the night before, we saw many farmers working their fields with the broad hoes, developing an earth mulch at the first possible moment to conserve their much needed moisture. Men were at work, as seen in Figs. 200 and 201, using long handled hoes, with blades nine by thirteen inches, hung so as to draw just under the surface, doing very effective work, permitting them to cover the ground rapidly. Walking further, we came upon six women in a field of wheat, gleaning the single heads which had prematurely ripened and broken over upon the ground between the rows soon to be harvested. Whether they were doing this as a privilege or as a task we do not know; they were strong, cheerful, reasonably dressed, hardly past middle life and it was nearly noon, yet not one of them had collected more straws than she could readily grasp in one hand. The season in Chihli as in Shantung, had been one of unusual drought, making the crop short and perhaps unusual frugality was being practiced; but it is in saving that these people excel perhaps more than in producing. These heads of wheat, if left upon the ground, would be wasted and if the women were privileged gleaners in the fields their returns were certainly much greater than were those of the very old women we have seen in France gathering heads of wheat from the already harvested fields. In the fields between Tientsin and Peking all wheat was being pulled, the earth shaken from the roots, tied in small bundles and taken to the dwellings, sometimes on the heavy cart drawn by a team consisting of a small donkey and cow hitched tandem, as seen in Fig. 202. Millet had been planted between the rows of wheat in this field and was already up. When the wheat was removed the ground would be fertilized and planted to soy beans. Because of the dry season this farmer estimated his yield would be but eight to nine bushels per acre. He was expecting to harvest thirteen to fourteen bushels of millet and from ten to twelve bushels of soy beans per acre from the same field. This would give him an earning, based on the local prices, of $10.36, gold, for the wheat; $6.00 for the beans, and $5.48 per acre for the millet. This land was owned by the family of the Emperor and was rented at $1.55, gold, per acre. The soil was a rather light sandy loam, not inherently fertile, and fertilizers to the value of $3.61 gold, per acre, had been applied, leaving the earning $16.71 per acre. Another farmer with whom we talked, pulling his crop of wheat, would follow this with millet and soy beans in alternate rows. His yield of wheat was expected to be eleven to twelve bushels per acre, his beans twenty-one bushels and his millet twenty-five bushels which, at the local prices for grain and straw, would bring a gross earning of $35, gold, per acre. Before reaching the end of our walk through the fields toward the next station we came across another of the many instances of the labor these people are willing to perform for only a small possible increase in crop. The field was adjacent to one of the windbreak hedges and the trees had spread their roots far afield and were threatening his crop through the consumption of moisture and plant food. To check this depletion the farmer had dug a trench twenty inches deep the length of his field, and some twenty feet from the line of trees, thereby cutting all of the surface roots to stop their draft on the soil. The trench was left open and an interesting feature observed was that nearly every cut root on the field side of the trench had thrown up one or more shoots bearing leaves, while the ends still connected with the trees showed no signs of leaf growth. In Chihli as elsewhere the Chinese are skilled gardeners, using water for irrigation whenever it is advantageous. One gardener was growing a crop of early cabbage, followed by one of melons, and these with radish the same season. He was paying a rent of $6.45, gold, per acre; was applying fertilizer at a cost of nearly $8 per acre for each of the three crops, making his cash outlay $29.67 per acre. His crop of cabbage sold for $103, gold; his melons for $77, and his radish for something more than $51, making a total of $232.20 per acre, leaving him a net value of $202.53. A second gardener, growing potatoes, obtained a yield, when sold new, of 8,000 pounds per acre; and of 16,000 pounds when the crop was permitted to mature. The new potatoes were sold so as to bring $51.60 and the mature potatoes $185.76 per acre, making the earning for the two crops the same season a total of $237.36, gold. By planting the first crop very early these gardeners secure two crops the same season, as far north as Columbus, Ohio, and Springfield, Illinois, the first crop being harvested when the tubers are about the size of walnuts. The rental and fertilizers in this case amounted to $30.96 per acre. Still another gardener growing winter wheat followed by onions, and these by cabbage, both transplanted, realized from the three crops a gross earning of $176.73, gold, per acre, and incurred an expense of $31.73 per acre for fertilizer and rent, leaving him a net earning of $145 per acre. These old people have acquired the skill and practice of storing and preserving such perishable fruits as pears and grapes so as to enable them to keep them on the markets almost continuously. Pears were very common in the latter part of June, and Consul-General Williams informed me that grapes are regularly carried into July. In talking with my interpreter as to the methods employed I could only learn that the growers depend simply upon dry earth cellars which can be maintained at a very uniform temperature, the separate fruits being wrapped in paper. No foreigner with whom we talked knew their methods. Vegetables are carried through the winter in such earth cellars as are seen in Fig. 88, page 161, these being covered after they are filled. As to the price of labor in this part of China, we learned through Consul-General Williams that a master mechanic may receive 50 cents, Mexican, per day, and a journeyman 18 cents, or at a rate of 21.5 cents and 7.75 cents, gold. Farm laborers receive from $20 to $30, Mexican, or $8.60 to $12.90, gold, per year, with food, fuel and presents which make a total of $17.20 to $21.50. This is less for the year than we pay for a month of probably less efficient labor. There is relatively little child labor in China and this perhaps should be expected when adult labor is so abundant and so cheap. XVI MANCHURIA AND KOREA The 39th parallel of latitude lies just south of Tientsin; followed westward, it crosses the toe of Italy's boot, leads past Lisbon in Portugal, near Washington and St. Louis and to the north of Sacramento on the Pacific. We were leaving a country with a mean July temperature of 80 deg F., and of 21 deg in January, but where two feet of ice may form; a country where the eighteen year mean maximum temperature is 103.5 deg and the mean minimum 4.5 deg; where twice in this period the thermometer recorded 113 deg above zero, and twice 7 deg below, and yet near the coast and in the latitude of Washington; a country where the mean annual rainfall is 19.72 inches and all but 3.37 inches falls in June, July, August and September. We had taken the 5:40 A. M. Imperial North-China train, June 17th, to go as far northward as Chicago,--to Mukden in Manchuria, a distance by rail of some four hundred miles, but all of the way still across the northward extension of the great Chinese coastal plain. Southward, out from the coldest quarter of the globe, where the mean January temperature is more than 40 deg below zero, sweep northerly winds which bring to Mukden a mean January temperature only 3 deg above zero, and yet there the July temperature averages as high as 77 deg and there is a mean annual rainfall of but 18.5 inches, coming mostly in the summer, as at Tientsin. Although the rainfall of the northern extension of China's coastal plain is small, its efficiency is relatively high because of its most favorable distribution and the high summer temperatures. In the period of early growth, April, May and June, there are 4.18 inches; but in the period of maximum growth, July and August, the rainfall is 11.4 inches; and in the ripening period, September and October, it is 3.08 inches, while during the rest of the year but 1.06 inch falls. Thus most of the rain comes at the time when the crops require the greatest daily consumption and it is least in mid-winter, during the period of little growth. As our train left Tientsin we traveled for a long distance through a country agriculturally poor and little tilled, with surface flat, the soil apparently saline, and the land greatly in need of drainage. Wherever there were canals the crops were best, apparently occupying more or less continuous areas along either bank. The day was hot and sultry but laborers were busy with their large hoes, often with all garments laid aside except a short shirt or a pair of roomy trousers. In the salt district about the village of Tangku there were huge stacks of salt and smaller piles not yet brought together, with numerous windmills, constituting most striking features in the landscape, but there was almost no agricultural or other vegetation. Beyond Pehtang there are other salt works and a canal leads westward to Tientsin, on which the salt is probably taken thither, and still other salt stacks and windmills continued visible until near Hanku, where another canal leads toward Peking. Here the coast recedes eastward from the railway and beyond the city limits many grave mounds dot the surrounding plains where herds of sheep were grazing. As we hurried toward the delta region of the Lwan ho, and before reaching Tangshan, a more productive country was traversed. Thrifty trees made the landscape green, and fields of millet, kaoliang and wheat stretched for miles together along the track and back over the flat plain beyond the limit of vision. Then came fields planted with two rows of maize alternating with one row of soy beans, but not over twenty-eight inches apart, one stalk of corn in a place every sixteen to eighteen inches, all carefully hoed, weedless and blanketed with an excellent earth mulch; but still the leaves were curling in the intense heat of the sun. Tangshan is a large city, apparently of recent growth on the railroad in a country where isolated conical hills rise one hundred or two hundred feet out of the flat, plains. Cart loads of finely pulverized earth compost were here moving to the fields in large numbers, being laid in single piles of five hundred to eight hundred pounds, forty to sixty feet apart. At Kaiping the country grows a little rolling and we passed through the first railway cuts, six to eight feet deep, and the water in the streams is running ten to twelve feet below the surface of the fields. On the right and beyond Kuyeh there are low hills, and here we passed enormous quantities of dry, finely powdered earth compost, distributed on narrow unplanted area over the fields. What crop, if indeed any, had occupied these areas this season, we could not judge. The fertilization here is even more extensive and more general than we found it in the Shantung province, and in places water was being carried in pails to the fields for use either in planting or in transplanting, to ensure the readiness of the new crops to utilize the first rainfall when it comes. Then the bed of a nearly dry stream some three hundred feet wide was crossed and beyond it a sandy plain was planted in long narrow fields between windbreak hedges. The crops were small but evidently improved by the influence of the shelter. The sand in places had drifted into the hedges to a height of three feet. At a number of other places along the way before Mukden was reached such protected areas were passed and oftenest on the north side of wide, now nearly dry, stream channels. As we passed on toward Shanhaikwan we were carried over broad plains even more nearly level and unobstructed than any to be found in the corn belt of the middle west, and these too planted with corn, kaoliang, wheat and beans, and with the low houses hidden in distant scattered clusters of trees dotting the wide plain on either side, with not a fence, and nothing to suggest a road anywhere in sight. We seemed to be moving through one vast field dotted with hundreds of busy men, a plowman here, and there a great cart hopelessly lost in the field so far as one could see any sign of road to guide their course. Some early crop appeared to have been harvested from areas alternating with those on the ground, and these were dotted with piles of the soil and manure compost, aggregating hundreds of tons, distributed over the fields but no doubt during the next three or four days these thousands of piles would have been worked into the soil and vanished from sight, to reappear after another crop and another year. It was at Lwanchow that we met the out-going tide of soy beans destined for Japan and Europe, pouring in from the surrounding country in gunny sacks brought on heavy carts drawn by large mules, as seen in Fig. 203, and enormous quantities had been stacked in the open along the tracks, with no shelter whatever, awaiting the arrival of trains to move them to export harbors. The planting here, as elsewhere, is in rows, but not of one kind of grain. Most frequently two rows of maize, kaoliang or millet alternated with the soy beans and usually not more than twenty-eight inches apart, sharp high ridge cultivation being the general practice. Such planting secures the requisite sunshine with a larger number of plants on the field; it secures a continuous general distribution of the roots of the nitrogen-fixing soy beans in the soil of all the field every season, and permits the soil to be more continuously and more completely laid under tribute by the root systems. In places where the stand of corn or millet was too open the gaps were filled with the soy beans. Such a system of planting possibly permits a more immediate utilization of the nitrogen gathered from the soil air in the root nodules, as these die and undergo nitrification during the same season, while the crops are yet on the ground, and so far as phosphorus and potassium compounds are liberated by this decay, they too would become available to the crops. The end of the day's journey was at Shanhaikwan on the boundary between Chihli and Manchuria, the train stopping at 6:20 P. M. for the night. Stepping upon the veranda from our room on the second floor of a Japanese inn in the early morning, there stood before us, sullen and grey, the eastern terminus of the Great Wall, winding fifteen hundred miles westward across twenty degrees of longitude, having endured through twenty-one centuries, the most stupendous piece of construction ever conceived by man and executed by a nation. More than twenty feet thick at the base and than twelve feet on the top; rising fifteen to thirty feet above the ground with parapets along both faces and towers every two hundred yards rising twenty feet higher, it must have been, for its time and the methods of warfare then practiced, when defended by their thousands, the boldest and most efficient national defense ever constructed. Nor in the economy of construction and maintenance has it ever been equalled. Even if it be true that 20,000 masons toiled through ten years in its building, defended by 400,000 soldiers, fed by a commissariat of 20,000 more and supported by 30,000 others in the transport, quarry and potters' service, she would then have been using less than eight tenths per cent of her population, on a basis of 60,000,000 at the time; while according to Edmond Théry's estimate, the officers and soldiers of Europe today, in time of peace, constitute one per cent of a population of 400,000,000 of people, and these, at only one dollar each per day for food, clothing and loss of producing power would cost her nations, in ten years, more than $14,000 million. China, with her present habits and customs, would more easily have maintained her army of 470,000 men on thirty cents each per day, or for a total ten-year cost of but $520,000,000. The French cabinet in 1900 approved a naval program involving an expenditure of $600,000,000 during the next ten years, a tax of more than $15 for every man, woman and child in the Republic. Leaving Shanhaikwan at 5:20 in the morning and reaching Mukden at 6:30 in the evening, we rode the entire day through Manchurian fields. Manchuria has an area of 363,700 square miles, equal to that of both Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa combined. It has roughly the outline of a huge boot and could one slide it eastward until Port Arthur was at Washington, Shanhaikwan would fall well toward Pittsburgh, both at the tip of the broad toe to the boot. The foot would lie across Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and all of New England, extending beyond New Brunswick with the heel in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Harbin, at the instep of the boot, would lie fifty miles east of Montreal and the expanding leg would reach northwestward nearly to James Bay, entirely to the north of the Ottawa river and the Canadian Pacific, spanning a thousand miles of latitude and nine hundred miles of longitude. The Liao plain, thirty miles wide, and the central Sungari plain, are the largest in Manchuria, forming together a long narrow valley floor between two parallel mountain systems and extending northeasterly from the Liao gulf, between Port Arthur and Shanhaikwan, up the Liao river and down the Sungari to the Amur, a distance of eight hundred or more miles. These plains have a fertile, deep soil and it is on them and other lesser river bottoms that Manchurian agriculture is developed, supporting eight or nine million people on a cultivated, acreage possibly not greater than 25,000 square miles. Manchuria has great forest and grazing possibilities awaiting future development, as well as much mineral wealth. The population of Tsitsihar, in the latitude of middle North Dakota, swells from thirty thousand to seventy thousand during September and October, when the Mongols bring in their cattle to market. In the middle province, at the head of steam navigation on the Sungari, because of the abundance and cheapness of lumber, Kirin has become a shipbuilding center for Chinese junks. The Sungari-Milky-river, is a large stream carrying more water at flood season than the Amur above its mouth, the latter being navigable 450 miles for steamers drawing twelve feet of water, and 1500 miles for those drawing four feet, so that during the summer season the middle and northern provinces have natural inland waterways, but the outlet to the sea is far to the north and closed by ice six months of the year. Not far beyond the Great Wall of China, fast falling into ruin, partly through the appropriation of its material for building purposes now that it has outlived its usefulness, another broad, nearly dry stream bed was crossed. There, in full bloom, was what appeared to be the wild white rose seen earlier, further south, west of Suchow, having a remarkable profusion of small white bloom in clusters resembling the Rambler rose. One of these bushes growing wild there on the bank of the canal had over spread a clump of trees one of which was thirty feet in height, enveloping it in a mantle of bloom, as seen in the upper section of Fig. 204. The lower section of the illustration is a closer view showing the clusters. The stem of this rose, three feet above the ground, measured 14.5 inches in circumference. If it would thrive in this country nothing could be better for parks and pleasure drives. Later on our journey we saw it many times in bloom along the railway between Mukden and Antung, but nowhere attaining so large growth. The blossoms are scant three-fourths inch in diameter, usually in compact clusters of three to eleven, sometimes in twos and occasionally standing singly. The leaves are five-foliate, sometimes trifoliate; leaflets broadly lanceolate, accuminate and finely serrate; thorns minute, recurrent and few, only on the smaller branches. In a field beyond, a small donkey was drawing a stone roller three feet long and one foot in diameter, firming the crests of narrow, sharp, recently formed ridges, two at a time. Millet, maize and kaoliang were here the chief crops. Another nearly dry stream was crossed, where the fields became more rolling and much cut by deep gullies, the first instances we had seen in China except on the steep hillsides about Tsingtao. Not all of the lands here were cultivated, and on the untilled areas herds of fifty to a hundred goats, pigs, cattle, horses and donkeys were grazing. Fields in Manchuria are larger than in China and some rows were a full quarter of a mile long, so that cultivation was being done with donkeys and cattle, and large numbers of men were working in gangs of four, seven, ten, twenty, and in one field as high as fifty, hoeing millet. Such a crew as the largest mentioned could probably be hired at ten cents each, gold, per day, and were probably men from the thickly settled portions of Shantung who had left in the spring, expecting to return in September or October. Both laborers and working animals were taking dinner in the fields, and earlier in the day we had seen several instances where hay and feed were being taken to the field on a wooden sled, with the plow and other tools. At noon this was serving as manger for the cattle, mules or donkeys. In fields where the close, deep furrowing and ridging was being done the team often consisted of a heavy ox and two small donkeys driven abreast, the three walking in adjacent rows, the plow following the ox, or a heavy mule instead. The rainy season had not begun and in many fields there was planting and transplanting where water was used in separate hills, sometimes brought in pails from a nearby stream, and in other cases on carts provided with tanks. Holes were made along the crests of the ridges with the blade of a narrow hoe and a little water poured in each hill, from a dipper, before planting or setting. These must have been other instances where the farmers were willing to incur additional labor to save time for the maturing of the crop by assisting germination in a soil too dry to make it certain until the rains came. It appears probable that the strong ridging and the close level rows so largely adopted here must have marked advantages in utilizing the rainfall, especially the portions coming early, and that later also if it should come in heavy showers. With steep narrow ridging, heavy rains would be shed at once to the bottom of the deep furrows without over-saturating the ridges, while the wet soil in the bottom of the furrows would favor deep percolation with lateral capillary flow taking place strongly under the ridges from the furrows, carrying both moisture and soluble plant food where they will be most completely and quickly available. When the rain comes in heavy showers each furrow may serve as a long reservoir which will prevent washing and at the same time permit quick penetration; the ridges never becoming flooded or puddled, permit the soil air to escape readily as the water from the furrows sinks, as it cannot easily do in flat fields when the rains fall rapidly and fill all of the soil pores, thus closing them to the escape of air from below, which must take place before the water can enter. When rows are only twenty-four to twenty-eight inches apart, ridging is not sufficiently more wasteful of soil moisture, through greater evaporation because of increased surface, to compensate for the other advantages gained, and hence their practice, for their conditions, appears sound. The application of finely pulverized earth compost to fields to be planted, and in some cases where the fields were already planted, continued general after leaving Shanhailkwan as it had been before. Compost stacks were common in yards wherever buildings were close enough to the track to be seen. Much of the way about one-third of the fields were yet to be, or had just been, planted and in a great majority of these compost fertilizer had been laid down for use on them, or was being taken to them in large heavy carts drawn sometimes by three mules. Between Sarhougon and Ningyuenchow fourteen fields thus fertilized were counted in less than half a mile; ten others in the next mile; eleven in the mile and a quarter following. In the next two miles one hundred fields were counted and just before reaching the station we counted during five minutes, with watch in hand, ninety-five fields to be planted, upon which this fertilizer had been brought. In some cases the compost was being spread in furrows between the rows of a last year's crop, evidently to be turned under, thus reversing the position of the ridges. After passing Lienshan, where, the railway runs near the sea, a sail was visible on the bay and many stacks of salt piled about the evaporation fields were associated with the revolving sail windmills already described. Here, too, large numbers of cattle, horses, mules and donkeys were grazing on the untilled low lands, beyond which we traversed a section where all fields were planted, where no fertilizer was piled in the field but where many groups of men were busy hoeing, sometimes twenty in a gang. Chinese soldiers with bayonetted guns stood guard at every railway station between Shanhaikwan and Mukden, and from Chinchowfu our coach was occupied by some Chinese official with guests and military attendants, including armed soldiers. The official and his guests were an attractive group of men with pleasant faces and winning manners, clad in many garments of richly figured silk of bright, attractive, but unobtrusive, colors, who talked, seriously or in mirth, almost incessantly. They took the train about one o'clock and lunch was immediately served in Chinese style, but the last course was not brought until nearly four o'clock. At every station soldiers stood in line in the attitude of salute until the official car had passed. Just before reaching Chinchowfu we saw the first planted fields littered with stubble of the previous crop, and in many instances such stubble was being gathered and removed to the villages, large stacks having been piled in the yards to be used either as fuel or in the production of compost. As the train approached Taling ho groups of men were hoeing in millet fields, thirty in one group on one side and fifty in another body on the other. Many small herds of cattle, horses, donkeys and flocks of goats and sheep were feeding along stream courses and on the unplanted fields. Beyond the station, after crossing the river, still another sand dune tract was passed, planted with willows, millet occupying the level areas between the dunes, and not far beyond, wide untilled flats were crossed, on which many herds were grazing and dotted with grave mounds as we neared Koupantze, where a branch of the railway traverses the Liao plain to the port of Newchwang. It was in this region that there came the first suggestion of resemblance to our marshland meadows; and very soon there were seen approaching from the distance loads so green that except for the large size one would have judged them to be fresh grass. They were loads of cured hay in the brightest green, the result, no doubt, of curing under their dry weather conditions. At Ta Hu Shan large quantities of grain in sacks were piled along the tracks and in the freight yards, but under matting shelters. Near here, too, large three-mule loads of dry earth compost were going to the fields and men were busy pulverizing and mixing it on the threshing floors preparatory for use. Nearly all crops growing were one or another of the millets, but considerable areas were yet unplanted and on these cattle, horses, mules and donkeys were feeding and eight more loads of very bright new made hay crossed the track. When the train reached Sinminfu where the railway turns abruptly eastward to cross the Liao ho to reach Mukden we saw the first extensive massing of the huge bean cakes for export, together with enormous quantities of soy beans in sacks piled along the railway and in the freight yards or loaded on cars made up in trains ready to move. Leaving this station we passed among fields of grain looking decidedly yellow, the first indication we had seen in China of crops nitrogen-hungry and of soils markedly deficient in available nitrogen. Beyond the next station the fields were decidedly spotted and uneven as well as yellow, recalling conditions so commonly seen at home and which had been conspicuously absent here before. Crossing the Liao ho with its broad channel of shifting sands, the river carrying the largest volume of water we had yet seen, but the stream very low and still characteristic of the close of the dry season of semi-arid climates, we soon reached another station where the freight yards and all of the space along the tracks were piled high with bean cakes and yet the fields about were reflecting the impoverished condition of the soil through the yellow crops and their uneven growth on the fields. Since the Japanese-Russian war the shipments of soy beans and of bean cake from Manchuria have increased enormously. Up to this time there had been exports to the southern provinces of China where the bean cakes were used as fertilizers for the rice fields, but the new extensive markets have so raised the price that in several instances we were informed they could not then afford to use bean cake as fertilizer. From Newchwang alone, in 1905, between January 1st and March 31st, there went abroad 2,286,000 pounds of beans and bean cake, but in 1906 the amount had increased to 4,883,000 pounds. But a report published in the Tientsin papers as official, while we were there, stated that the value of the export of bean cake and soy beans from Dalny for the months ending March 31st had been, in 1909, only $1,635,000, gold, compared with $3,065,000 in the corresponding period of 1908, and of $5,120,000 in 1907, showing a marked decrease. Edward C. Parker, writing from Mukden for the Review of Reviews, stated: "The bean cake shipments from Newchwang, Dalny and Antung in 1908 amounted to 515,198 tons; beans, 239,298 tons; bean oil, 1930 tons; having a total value of $15,016,649 (U. S. gold)". According to the composition of soy beans as indicated in Hopkins' table of analyses, these shipments of beans and bean cake would remove an aggregate of 6171 tons of phosphorus, 10,097 tons of potassium, and 47,812 tons of nitrogen from Manchurian soils as the result of export for that year. Could such a rate have been maintained during two thousand years there would have been sold from these soils 20,194,000 tons of potassium; 12,342,000 tons of phosphorus and 95,624,000 tons of nitrogen; and the phosphorus, were it thus exported, would have exceeded more than threefold all thus far produced in the United States; it would have exceeded the world's output in 1906 more than eighteen times, even assuming that all phosphate rock mined was seventy-five per cent pure. The choice of the millets and the sorghums as the staple bread crops of northern China and Manchuria has been quite as remarkable as the selection of rice for the more southern latitudes, and the two together have played a most important part in determining the high maintenance efficiency of these people. In nutritive value these grains rank well with wheat; the stems of the larger varieties are extensively used for both fuel and building material and the smaller forms make excellent forage and have been used directly for maintaining the organic content of the soil. Their rapid development and their high endurance of drought adapt them admirably to the climate of north China and Manchuria where the rains begin only after late June and where weather too cold for growth comes earlier in the fall. The quick maturity of these crops also permits them to be used to great advantage even throughout the south, in their systems of multiple cropping so generally adopted, while their great resistance to drought, being able to remain at a standstill for a long time when the soil is too dry for growth and yet be able to push ahead rapidly when favorable rains come, permits them to be used on the higher lands generally where water is not available for irrigation. In the Shantung province the large millet, sorghum or kaoliang, yields as high as 2000 to 3000 pounds of seed per acre, and 5600 to 6000 pounds of air-dry stems, equal in weight to 1.6 to 1.7 cords of dry oak wood. In the region of Mukden, Manchuria, its average yield of seed is placed at thirty-five bushels of sixty pounds weight per acre, and with this comes one and a half tons of fuel or of building material. Hosie states that, the kaoliang is the staple food of the population of Manchuria and the principal grain food of the work animals. The grain is first washed in cold water and then poured into a kettle with four times its volume of boiling water and cooked for an hour, without salt, as with rice. It is eaten with chopsticks with boiled or salted vegetables. He states that an ordinary servant requires about two pounds of this grain per day, and that a workman at heavy labor will take double the amount. A Chinese friend of his, keeping five servants, supplied them with 240 pounds of millet per month, together with 16 pounds of native flour, regarded as sufficient for two days, and meat for two days, the amount not being stated. Two of the small millets (Setaria italica, and Panicum milliaceum), wheat, maize and buckwheat are other grains which are used as food but chiefly to give variety and change of diet. Very large quantities of matting and wrappings are also made from the leaves of the large millet, which serve many purposes corresponding with the rice mattings and bags of Japan and southern China. The small millets, in Shantung, yield as high as 2700 pounds of seed and 4800 pounds of straw per acre. In Japan, in the year 1906, there were grown 737,719 acres of foxtail, barnyard and proso millet, yielding 17,084,000 bushels of seed or an average of twenty-three bushels per acre. In addition to the millets, Japan grew, the same year, 5,964,300 bushels of buckwheat on 394,523 acres, or an average of fifteen bushels per acre. The next engraving, Fig. 205, shows a crop of millet already six inches high planted between rows of windsor beans which had matured about the middle of June. The leaves had dropped, the beans had been picked from the stems, and a little later, when the roots had had time to decay the bean stems would be pulled and tied in bundles for use as fuel or for fertilizer. We had reached Mukden thoroughly tired after a long day of continuous close observation and writing. The Astor House, where we were to stop, was three miles from the station and the only conveyance to meet the train was a four-seated springless, open, semi-baggage carryall and it was a full hour lumbering its way to our hotel. But here as everywhere in the Orient the foreigner meets scenes and phases of life competent to divert his attention from almost any discomfort. Nothing could be more striking than the peculiar mode the Manchu ladies have of dressing their hair, seen in Fig. 206, many instances of which were passed on the streets during this early evening ride. It was fearfully and wonderfully done, laid in the smoothest, glossiest black, with nearly the lateral spread of the tail of a turkey cock and much of the backward curve of that of the rooster; far less attractive than the plainer, refined, modest, yet highly artistic style adopted by either Chinese or Japanese ladies. The journey from Mukden to Antung required two days, the train stopping for the night at Tsaohokow. Our route lay most of the way through mountainous or steep hilly country and our train was made up of diminutive coaches drawn by a tiny engine over a three-foot two-inch narrow gauge track of light rails laid by the Japanese during the war with Russia, for the purpose of moving their armies and supplies to the hotly contested fields in the Liao and Sungari plains. Many of the grades were steep, the curves sharp, and in several places it was necessary to divide the short train to enable the engines to negotiate them. To the southward over the Liao plain the crops were almost exclusively millet and soy beans, with a little barley, wheat, and a few oats. Between Mukden and the first station across the Hun river we had passed twenty-four good sized fields of soy beans on one side of the river and twenty-two on the other, and before reaching the hilly country, after travelling a distance of possibly fifteen miles, we had passed 309 other and similar fields close along the track. In this distance also we had passed two of the monuments erected by the Japanese, marking sites of their memorable battles. These fields were everywhere flat, lying from sixteen to twenty feet above the beds of the nearly dry streams, and the cultivation was mostly being done with horses or cattle. After leaving the plains country the railway traversed a narrow winding valley less than a mile wide, with gradient so steep that our train was divided. Fully sixty per cent of the hill slopes were cultivated nearly to the summit and yet rising apparently more than one in three to five feet, and the uncultivated slopes were closely wooded with young trees, few more than twenty to thirty feet high, but in blocks evidently of different ages. Beyond the pass many of the cultivated slopes have walled terraces. We crossed a large stream where railway ties were being rafted down the river. Just beyond this river the train was again divided to ascend a gradient of one in thirty, reaching the summit by five times switching back, and matched on the other side of the pass by a down grade of one in forty. At many of the farm houses in the narrow valleys along the way large rectangular, flat topped compost piles were passed, thirty to forty inches high and twenty, thirty, forty and even in one case as much as sixty feet square on the ground. More and more it became evident that these mountain and hill lands were originally heavily wooded and that the new growth springs up quickly, developing rapidly. It was clear also that the custom of cutting over these wooded areas at frequent intervals is very old, not always in the same stage of growth but usually when the trees are quite small. Considerable quantities of cordwood were piled at the stations along the railway and were being loaded on the cars. This was always either round wood or sticks split but once; and much charcoal, made mostly from round wood or sticks split but once, was being shipped in sacks shaped like those used for rice, seen in Fig. 180. Some strips of the forest growth had been allowed to stand undisturbed apparently for twenty or more years, but most areas have been cut at more frequent intervals, often apparently once in three to five, or perhaps ten, years. At several places on the rapid streams crossed, prototypes of the modern turbine water-wheel were installed, doing duty grinding beans or grain. As with native machinery everywhere in China, these wheels were reduced to the lowest terms and the principle put to work almost unclothed. These turbines were of the downward discharge type, much resembling our modern windmills, ten to sixteen feet in diameter, set horizontally on a vertical axis rising through the floor of the mill, with the vanes surrounded by a rim, the water dropping through the wheel, reacting when reflected from the obliquely set vanes. American engineers and mechanics would pronounce these very crude, primitive and inefficient. A truer view would regard them as examples of a masterful grasp of principle by some, man who long ago saw the unused energy of the stream and succeeded thus in turning it to account. Both days of our journey had been bright and very warm and, although we took the train early in the morning at Mukden, a young Japanese anticipated the heat, entering the train clad only in his kimono and sandals, carrying a suitcase and another bundle. He rode all day, the most comfortably, if immodestly, clad man on the train, and the next morning took his seat in front of us clad in the same garb, but before the train reached Antung he took down his suitcase and then and there, deliberately attired himself in a good foreign suit, folding his kimono and packing it away with his sandals. From Antung we crossed the Yalu on the ferry to New Wiju at 6:30 A. M., June 22, and were then in quite a different country and among a very different people, although all of the railway officials, employes, police and guards were Japanese, as they had been from Mukden. At Antung and New Wiju the Yalu is a very broad slow stream resembling an arm of the sea more than a river, reminding one of the St. Johns at Jacksonville, Florida. June 22nd proved to be one of the national festival days in Korea, called "Swing day", and throughout our entire ride to Seoul the fields were nearly all deserted and throngs of people, arrayed in gala dress, appeared all along the line of the railway, sometimes congregating in bodies of two to three thousand or more, as seen in Fig. 207. Many swings had been hung and were being enjoyed by the young people. Boys and men were bathing in all sorts of "swimming holes" and places. So too, there were many large open air gatherings being addressed by public speakers, one of which is seen in Fig. 208. Nearly everyone was dressed in white outer garments made from some fabric which although not mosquito netting was nearly as open and possessed of a remarkable stiffness which seemed to take and retain every dent with astonishing effect and which was sufficiently transparent to reveal a third undergarment. The full outstanding skirts of five Korean women may be seen in Fig. 209, and the trousers which went with these were proportionately full but tied close about the ankles. The garments seemed to be possessed of a powerful repulsion which held them quite apart and away from the person, no doubt contributing much to comfort. It was windy but one of those hot sultry, sticky days, and it made one feel cool to see these open garments surging in the wind. The Korean men, like the Chinese, wear the hair long but not braided in a queue. No part of the head is shaved but the hair is wound in a tight coil on the top of the head, secured by a pin which, in the case of the Korean who rode in our coach from Mukden to Antung, was a modern, substantial tenpenny wire nail. The tall, narrow, conical crowns of the open hats, woven from thin bamboo splints, are evidently designed to accommodate this style of hair dressing as well as to be cool. Here, too, as in China and Manchuria, nearly all crops are planted in rows, including the cereals, such as wheat, rye, barley and oats. We traversed first a flat marshy country with sandy soil and water not more than four feet below the surface where, on the lowest areas a close ally of our wild flower-de-luce was in bloom. Wheat was coining into head but corn and millet were smaller than in Manchuria. We had left New Wiju at 7:30 in the morning and at 8:15 we passed from the low land into a hill country with narrow valleys. Scattering young pine, seldom more than ten to twenty-five feet high, occupied the slopes and as we came nearer the hills were seen to be clothed with many small oak, the sprouts clearly not more than one or two years old. Roofs of dwellings in the country were usually thatched with straw laid after the manner of shingles, as may be seen in Fig. 210, where the hills beyond show the low tree growth referred to, but here unusually dense. Bundles of pine boughs, stacked and sheltered from the weather, were common along the way and evidently used for fuel. At 8:25 we passed through the first tunnel and there were many along the route, the longest requiring thirty seconds for the passing of the train. The valley beyond was occupied by fields of wheat where beans were planted between the rows. Thus far none of the fields had been as thoroughly tilled and well cared for as those seen in China, nor were the crops as good. Further along we passed hills where the pines were all of two ages, one set about thirty feet high and the others twelve to fifteen feet or less, and among these were numerous oak sprouts. Quite possibly these are used as food for the wild silkworms. In some places appearances indicate that the oak and other deciduous growth, with the grass, may be cut annually and only the pines allowed to stand for longer periods. As we proceeded southward and had passed Kosui the young oak sprouts were seen to cover the hills, often stretching over the slopes much like a regular crop, standing at a height of two to four feet, and fresh bundles of these sprouts were seen at houses along the foot of the slopes, again suggesting that the leaves may be for the tussur silkworms although the time appears late for the first moulting. After we had left Seoul, entering the broader valleys where rice was more extensively grown, the using of the oak boughs and green grass brought down from the hill lands for green manure became very extensive. After the winter and early spring crops have been harvested the narrow ridges on which they are grown are turned into the furrows by means of their simple plow drawn by a heavy bullock, different from the cattle in China but closely similar to those in Japan. The fields are then flooded until they have the appearance seen in Fig. 12. Over these flooded ridges the green grass and oak boughs are spread, when the fields are again plowed and the material worked into the wet soil. If this working is not completely successful men enter the fields and tramp the surface until every twig and blade is submerged. The middle section in this illustration has been fitted and transplanted; in front of it and on the left are two other fields once plowed but not fertilized; those far to the right have had the green manure applied and the ground plowed a second time but not finished, and in the immediate foreground the grass and boughs have been scattered but the second plowing is not yet done. We passed men and bullocks coming from the hill lands loaded with this green herbage and as we proceeded towards Fusan more and more of the hill area was being made to contribute materials for green manure for the cultivated fields. The foreground of Fig. 211 had been thus treated and so had the field in Fig. 212, where the man was engaged in tramping the dressing beneath the surface. In very many cases this material was laid along the margin of the paddies; in other cases it had been taken upon the fields as soon as the grain was cut and was lying in piles among the bundles; while in still other cases the material for green manure had been carried between the rows while the grain was still standing, but nearly ready to harvest. In some fields a full third of a bushel of the green stuff had been laid down at intervals of three feet over the whole area. In other cases piles of ashes alternated with those of herbage, and again manure and ashes mixed had been distributed in alternate piles with the green manure. In still other cases we saw untreated straw distributed through the fields awaiting application. At Shindo this, straw had the appearance of having been dipped in or smeared with some mixture, apparently of mud and ashes or possibly of some compost which had been worked into a thin paste with water. After passing Keizan, mountain herbage had been brought down from the hills in large bales on cleverly constructed racks saddled to the backs of bullocks, and in one field we saw a man who had just come to his little field with an enormous load borne upon his easel-like packing appliance. Thus we find the Koreans also adopting the rice crop, which yields heavily under conditions of abundant water; we find them supplementing a heavy summer rainfall with water from their hills, and bringing to their fields besides both green herbage for humus and organic matter, and ashes derived from the fuel coming also from the hills, in these ways making good the unavoidable losses, through intense cropping. The amount of forest growth in Korea, as we saw it, in proximity to the cultivated valleys, is nowhere large and is fairly represented in Figs. 210, 213 and 214. There were clear evidences of periodic cutting and considerable, amounts of cordwood split from timber a foot through were being brought to the stations on the backs of cattle. In some places there was evident and occasionally very serious soil erosion, as may be seen in Fig. 214, one such region being passed just before reaching Kinusan, but generally the hills are well rounded and covered with a low growth of shrubs and herbaceous plants. Southernmost Korea has the latitude of the northern boundary of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, while the northeast corner attains that of Madison, Wisconsin, and the northern boundary of Nebraska, the country thus spanning some nine degrees and six hundred miles of latitude. It has an area of some 82,000 square miles, about equaling the state of Minnesota, but much of its surface is occupied by steep hill and mountain land. The rainy season had not yet set in, June 23rd. Wheat and the small grains were practically all harvested southward of Seoul and the people were everywhere busy with their flails threshing in the open, about the dwellings or in the fields, four flails often beating together on the same lot of grain. As we journeyed southward the valleys and the fields became wider and more extensive, and the crops, as well as the cultural methods, were clearly much better. Neither the foot-power, animal-power, nor the wooden chain pump of the Chinese were observed in Korea in use for lifting water, but we saw many instances of the long handled, spoonlike swinging scoop hung over the water by a cord from tall tripods, after the manner seen in Fig. 215, each operated by one man and apparently with high efficiency for low lifts. Two instances also were observed of the form of lift seen in Fig. 173, where the man walks the circumference of the wheel, so commonly observed in Japan. Much hemp was being grown in southern Korea but everywhere on very small isolated areas which flecked the landscape with the deepest green, each little field probably representing the crop of a single family. It was 6:30 P. M. when our train reached Fusan after a hot and dusty ride. The service had been good and fairly comfortable but the ice-water tanks of American trains were absent, their place being supplied by cooled bottled waters of various brands, including soda-water, sold by Japanese boys at nearly every important station. Close connection was made by trains with steamers to and from Japan and we went directly on board the Iki Maru which was to weigh anchor for Moji and Shimonoseki at 8 P. M. Although small, the steamer was well equipped, providing the best of service. We were fortunate in having a smooth passage, anchoring at 6:30 the next morning and making close connection with the train for Nagasaki, landing at the wharf with the aid of a steam launch. Our ride by train through the island of Kyushu carried us through scenes not widely different from those we had just left. The journey was continuously among fields of rice, with Korean features strongly marked but usually under better and more intensified culture, and the season, too, was a little more advanced. Here the plowing was being done mostly with horses instead of the heavy bullocks so exclusively employed in Korea. Coming from China into Korea, and from there into Japan, it appeared very clear that in agricultural methods and appliances the Koreans and Japanese are more closely similar than the Chinese and Koreans, and the more we came to see of the Japanese methods the more strongly the impression became fixed that the Japanese had derived their methods either from the Koreans or the Koreans had taken theirs more largely from Japan than from China. It was on this ride from Moji to Nagasaki that we were introduced to the attractive and very satisfactory manner of serving lunches to travelers on the trains in Japan. At important stations hot tea is brought to the car windows in small glazed, earthenware teapots provided with cover and bail, and accompanied with a teacup of the same ware. The set and contents could be purchased for five sen, two and a half cents, our currency. All tea is served without milk or sugar. The lunches were very substantial and put together in a neat sanitary manner in a three-compartment wooden box, carefully made from clear lumber joined with wooden pegs and perfect joints. Packed in the cover we found a paper napkin, toothpicks and a pair of chopsticks. In the second compartment there were thin slices of meat, chicken and fish, together with bamboo sprouts, pickles, cakes and small bits of salted vegetables, while the lower and chief compartment was filled with rice cooked quite stiff and without salt, as is the custom in the three countries. The box was about six inches long, four inches deep and three and a half inches wide. These lunches are handed to travelers neatly wrapped in spotless thin white paper daintily tied with a bit of color, all in exchange for 25 sen,--12.5 cents. Thus for fifteen cents the traveler is handed, through the car window, in a respectful manner, a square meal which he may eat at his leisure. XVII RETURN TO JAPAN We had returned to Japan in the midst of the first rainy season, and all the day through, June 25th, and two nights, a gentle rain fell at Nagasaki, almost without interruption. Across the narrow street from Hotel Japan were two of its guest houses, standing near the front of a wall-faced terrace rising twenty-eight feet above the street and facing the beautiful harbor. They were accessible only by winding stone steps shifting on paved landings to continue the ascent between retaining walls overhung with a wealth of shrubbery clothed in the densest foliage, so green and liquid in the drip of the rain, that one almost felt like walking edgewise amid stairs lest the drip should leave a stain. Over such another series of steps, but longer and more winding, we found our way to the American Consulate where in the beautifully secluded quarters Consul-General Scidmore escaped many annoyances of settling the imagined petty grievances arising between American tourists and the ricksha boys. Through the kind offices of the Imperial University of Sapporo and of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, Professor Tokito met us at Nagasaki, to act as escort through most of the journey in Japan. Our first visit was to the prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station at Nagasaki. There are four others in the four main islands, one to an average area of 4280 square miles, and to each 1,200,000 people. The island of Kyushu, whose latitude is that of middle Mississippi and north Louisiana, has two rice harvests, and gardeners at Nagasaki grow three crops, each year. The gardener and his family work about five tan, or a little less than one and one-quarter acres, realizing an annual return of some $250 per acre. To maintain these earnings fertilizers are applied rated worth $60 per acre, divided between the three crops, the materials used being largely the wastes of the city, animal manure, mud from the drains, fuel ashes and sod, all composted together. If this expenditure for fertilizers appears high it must be remembered that nearly the whole product is sold and that there are three crops each year. Such intense culture requires a heavy return if large yields are maintained. Good agricultural lands were here valued at 300 yen per tan, approximately $600 per acre. When returning toward Moji to visit the Agricultural Experiment Station of Fukuoka prefecture, the rice along the first portion of the route was standing about eight inches above the water. Large lotus ponds along the way occupied areas not readily drained, and the fringing fields between the rice paddies and the untilled hill lands were bearing squash, maize, beans and Irish potatoes. Many small areas had been set to sweet potatoes on close narrow ridges, the tops of which were thinly strewn with green grass, or sometimes with straw or other litter, for shade and to prevent the soil from washing and baking in the hot sun after rains. At Kitsu we passed near Government salt works, for the manufacture of salt by the evaporation of sea water, this industry in Japan, as in China, being a Government monopoly. Many bundles of grass and other green herbage were collected along the way, gathered for use in the rice fields. In other cases the green manure had already been spread over the flooded paddies and was being worked beneath the surface, as seen in Fig. 216. At this time the hill lands were clothed in the richest, deepest green but the tree growth was nowhere large except immediately about temples, and was usually in distinct small areas with sharp boundaries occasioned by differences in age. Some tracts had been very recently cut; others were in their second, third or fourth years; while others still carried a growth of perhaps seven to ten years. At one village many bundles of the brush fuel had been gathered from an adjacent area, recently cleared. A few fields were still bearing their crop of soy beans planted in February between rows of grain, and the green herbage was being worked into the flooded soil, for the crop of rice. Much compost, brought to the fields, was stacked with layers of straw between, laid straight, the alternate courses at right angles, holding the piles in rectangular form with vertical sides, some of which were four to six feet high and the layers of compost about six inches thick. Just before reaching Tanjiro, a region is passed where orchards of the candleberry tree occupy high leveled areas between rice paddies, after the manner described for the mulberry orchards in Chekiang, China. These trees, when seen from a distance, have quite the appearance of our apple orchards. At the Fukuoka Experiment Station we learned that the usual depth of plowing for the rice fields is three and a half to four and a half inches, but that deeper plowing gives somewhat larger yields. As an average of five years trials, a depth of seven to eight inches increased the yield from seven to ten per cent over that of the usual depth. In this prefecture grass from the bordering hill lands is applied to the rice fields at rates ranging from 3300 to 16,520 pounds green weight per acre, and, according to analyses given, these amounts would carry to, the fields from 18 to 90 pounds of nitrogen; 12.4 to 63.2 pounds of potassium, and 2.1 to 10.6 pounds of phosphorus per acre. Where bean cake is used as a fertilizer the applications may be at the rate of 496 pounds per acre, carrying 33.7 pounds of nitrogen, nearly 5 pounds of phosphorus and 7.4 pounds of potassium. The earth composts are chiefly applied to the dry land fields and then only after they are well rotted, the fermentation being carried through at least sixty days, during which the material is turned three times for aeration, the work being done at the home. When used on the rice fields where water is abundant the composts are applied in a less fermented condition. The best yields of rice in this prefecture are some eighty bushels per acre, and crops of barley may even exceed this, the two crops being grown the same year, the rice following the barley. In most parts of Japan the grain food of the laboring people is about 70 per cent naked barley mixed with 30 per cent of rice, both cooked and used in the same manner. The barley has a lower market value and its use permits a larger share of the rice to be sold as a money crop. The soils are fertilized for each crop every year and the prescription for barley and rice recommended by the Experiment Station, for growers in this prefecture, is indicated by the following table: FERTILIZATION FOR NAKED BARLEY. Pounds per acre. Fertilizers. N P K Manure compost 6,613 33.0 7.4 33.8 Rape seed cake 330 16.7 2.8 3.5 Night soil 4,630 26.4 2.6 10.2 Superphosphate 132 9.9 ---------------------- Sum 11,705 76.1 22.7 47.5 FERTILIZATION FOR PADDY RICE. Manure compost 5,291 26.4 5.9 27.1 Green manure, soy beans 3,306 19.2 1.1 19.6 Soy bean cake 397 27.8 1.7 6.4 Superphosphate 198 12.8 ---------------------- Sum 9,192 73.4 21.5 53.1 ====== ===== ==== ===== Total for year 20,897 149.5 44.2 100.6 Where these recommendations are followed there is an annual application of fertilizer material which aggregates some ten tons per acre, carrying about 150 pounds of nitrogen, 44 pounds of phosphorus and 100 pounds of potassium. The crop yields which have been associated with these applications on the Station fields are about forty-nine bushels of barley and fifty bushels of rice per acre. The general rotation recommended for this portion of Japan covers five years and consists of a crop of wheat or naked barley the first two years with rice as the summer crop; in the third year genge, "pink clover" (Astragalus sinicus) or some other legume for green manure is the winter crop, rice following in the summer; the fourth year rape is the winter crop, from which the seed is saved and the ash of the stems returned to the soil, or rarely the stems themselves may be turned under; on the fifth and last year of the rotation the broad kidney or windsor bean is the winter crop, preceding the summer crop of rice. This rotation is not general yet in the practice of the farmers of the section, they choosing rape or barley and in February plant windsor or soy beans between the rows for green manure to use when the rice comes on. It was evident from our observations that the use of composts in fertilizing was very much more general and extensive in China than it was in either Korea or Japan, but, to encourage the production and use of compost fertilizers, this and other prefectures have provided subsidies which permit the payment of $2.50 annually to those farmers who prepare and use on their land a compost heap covering twenty to forty square yards, in accordance with specified directions given. The agricultural college at Fukuoka was not in session the day of our visit, it being a holiday usually following the close of the last transplanting season. One of the main buildings of the station and college is seen in Fig. 217, and Figs. 218, 219 and 220, placed together from left to right in the order of their numbers, form a panoramic view of the station grounds and buildings with something of the beautiful landscape setting. There is nowhere in Japan the lavish expenditure of money on elaborate and imposing architecture which characterizes American colleges and stations, but in equipment for research work, both as to professional staff and appliances, they compare favorably with similar institutions in America. The dormitory system was in vogue in the college, providing room and board at eight yen per month or four dollars of our currency. Eight students were assigned to one commodious room, each provided with a study table, but beds were mattresses spread upon the matting floor at night and compactly stored on closet shelves during the day. The Japanese plow, which is very similar to the Korean type, may be seen in Fig. 221, the one on the right costing 2.5 yen and the other 2 yen. With the aid of the single handle and the sliding rod held in the right hand, the course of the plow is directed and the plow tilted in either direction, throwing the soil to the right or the left. The nursery beds for rice breeding experiments and variety tests by this station are shown in Fig. 222. Although these plots are flooded the marginal plants, adjacent to the free water paths, were materially larger than those within and had a much deeper green color, showing better feeding, but what seemed most strange was the fact that these stronger plants are never used in transplanting, as they do not thrive as well as those less vigorous. We left the island of Kyushu in the evening of June 29th, crossing to the main island of Honshu, waiting in Shimonoseki for the morning train. The rice-planted valleys near Shimonoseki were relatively broad and the paddies had all been recently set in close rows about a foot apart and in hills in the rows. Mountain and hill lands were closely wooded, largely with coniferous trees about the base but toward and at the summits, especially on the South slopes, they were green only with herbage cut for fertilizing and feeding stock. Many very small trees, often not more than one foot high, were growing on the recently cut-over areas; tall slender graceful bamboos clustered along the way and everywhere threw wonderful beauty into the landscape. Cartloads of their slender stems, two to four inches in diameter at the base and twenty or more feet long, were moving along the generally excellent, narrow, seldom fenced roads, such as seen in Fig. 223. On the borders and pathways between rice paddies many small stacks of straw were in waiting to be laid between the rows of transplanted rice, tramped beneath the water and overspread with mud to enrich the soil. The farmers here, as elsewhere, must contend against the scouring rush, varieties of grass and our common pigweeds, even in the rice fields. The large area of mountain and hill land compared with that which could be tilled, and the relatively small area of cultivated land not at this time under water and planted to rice persisted throughout the journey. If there could be any monotony for the traveller new to this land of beauty it must result from the quick shifting of scenes and in the way the landscapes are pieced together, out-doing the craziest patchwork woman ever attempted; the bits are almost never large; they are of every shape, even puckered and crumpled and tilted at all angles. Here is a bit of the journey: Beyond Habu the foothills are thickly wooded, largely with conifers. The valley is extremely narrow with only small areas for rice. Bamboo are growing in congenial places and we pass bundles of wood cut to stove length, as seen in Fig. 224. Then we cross a long narrow valley practically all in rice, and then another not half a mile wide, just before reaching Asa. Beyond here the fields become limited in area with the bordering low hills recently cut over and a new growth springing up over them in the form of small shrubs among which are many pine. Now we are in a narrow valley between small rice fields or with none at all, but dash into one more nearly level with wide areas in rice chiefly on one side of the track just before reaching Onoda at 10:30 A. M. and continuing three minutes ride beyond, when we are again between hills without fields and where the trees are pine with clumps of bamboo. In four minutes more we are among small rice paddies and at 10:35 have passed another gap and are crossing another valley checkered with rice fields and lotus ponds, but in one minute more the hills have closed in, leaving only room for the track. At 10:37 we are running along a narrow valley with its terraced rice paddies where many of the hills show naked soil among the bamboo, scattering pine and other small trees; then we are out among garden patches thickly mulched with straw. At 10:38 we are between higher hills with but narrow areas for rice stretching close along the track, but in two minutes these are passed and we are among low hills with terraced dry fields. At 10:42 we are spinning along the level valley with its rice, but are quickly out again among hills with naked soil where erosion was marked. This is just before passing Funkai where we are following the course of a stream some sixty feet wide with but little cultivated land in small areas. At 10:47 we are again passing narrow rice fields near the track where the people are busy weeding with their hands, half knee-deep in water. At 10:53 we enter a broader valley stretching far to the south and seaward, but we had crossed it in one minute, shot through another gap, and at 10:55 are traversing a much broader valley largely given over to rice, but where some of the paddies were bearing matting rush set in rows and in hills after the manner of rice. It is here we pass Oyou and just beyond cross a stream confined between levees built some distance back from either bank. At 11:17 this plain is left and we enter a narrow valley without fields. Thus do most of the agricultural lands of Japan lie in the narrowest valleys, often steeply sloping, and into which jutting spurs create the greatest irregularity of boundary and slope. The journey of this day covered 350 miles in fourteen hours, all of the way through a country of remarkable and peculiar beauty which can be duplicated nowhere outside the mountainous, rice-growing Orient and there only during fifteen days closing the transplanting season. There were neither high mountains nor broad valleys, no great rivers and but few lakes; neither rugged naked rocks, tall forest trees nor wide level fields reaching away to unbroken horizons. But the low, rounded, soil-mantled mountain tops clothed in herbaceous and young forest growth fell everywhere into lower hills and these into narrow steep valleys which dropped by a series of water-level benches, as seen in Fig. 225, to the main river courses. Each one of these millions of terraces, set about by its raised rim, was a silvery sheet of water dotted in the daintiest manner with bunches of rice just transplanted, but not so close nor yet so high and over-spreading as to obscure the water, yet quite enough to impart to the surface a most delicate sheen of green; and the grass-grown narrow rims retaining the water in the basins, cemented them into series of the most superb mosaics, shaped into the valley bottoms by artizan artists perhaps two thousand years before and maintained by their descendants through all the years since, that on them the rains and fertility from the mountains and the sunshine from heaven might be transformed by the rice plant into food for the families and support for the nation. Two weeks earlier the aspect of these landscapes was very different, and two weeks later the reflecting water would lie hidden beneath the growing and rapidly developing mantle of green, to go on changing until autumn, when all would be overspread with the ripened harvest of grain. And what intensified the beauty of it all was the fact that only along the widest valley bottoms were the mosaics level, except the water surface of each individual unit and these were always small. At one time we were riding along a descending series of steps and then along another rising through a winding valley to disappear around a projecting spur, and anywhere in the midst of it all might be standing Japanese cottages or villas with the water and the growing rice literally almost against the walls, as seen in Fig. 226, while a near-by high terrace might hold its water on a level with the chimney-tops. Can one wonder that the Japanese loves his country or that they are born and bred landscape artists? Just before reaching Hongo there were considerable areas thrown into long narrow, much-raised, east and west beds under covers of straw matting inclined at a slight angle toward the south, some two feet above the ground but open toward the north. What crop may have been grown here we did not learn but the matting was apparently intended for shade, as it was hot midsummer weather, and we suspect it may have been ginseng. It was here, too, that we came into the region of the culture of matting rush, extensively grown in Hiroshima and Okayama prefectures, but less extensively all over the empire. As with rice, the rush is first grown in nursery beds from which it is transplanted to the paddies, one acre of nursery supplying sufficient stock for ten acres of field. The plants are set twenty to thirty stalks in a hill in rows seven inches apart with the hills six inches from center to center in the row. Very high fertilization is practiced, costing from 120 to 240 yen per acre, or $60 to $120 annually, the fertilizer consisting of bean cake and plant ashes, or in recent years, sometimes of sulphate of ammonia for nitrogen, and superphosphate of lime. About ten per cent of the amount of fertilizer required for the crop is applied at the time of fitting the ground, the balance being administered from time to time as the season advances. Two crops of the rush may be taken from the same ground each year or it is grown in rotation with rice, but most extensively on the lands less readily drained and not so well suited for other crops. Fields of the rush, growing in alternation with rice, are seen in Fig. 45, and in Fig. 227, with the Government salt fields lying along the seashore beyond. With the most vigorous growth the rush attain a height exceeding three feet and the market price varies materially with the length of the stems. Good yields, under the best culture, may be as high as 6.5 tons per acre of the dry stems but the average yield is less, that of 1905 being 8531 pounds, for 9655 acres, The value of the product ranges from $120 to $200 per acre. It is from this material that mats are woven in standard sizes, to be laid over padding, upholstering the floors which are the seats of all classes in Japan, used in the manner seen in Fig. 228 and in Fig. 229, which is a completely furnished guest room in a first class Japanese inn, finished in natural unvarnished wood, with walls of sliding panels of translucent paper, which may open upon a porch, into a hallway or into another apartment; and with its bouquet, which may consist of a single large shapely branch of the purple leaved maple, having the cut end charred to preserve it fresh for a longer time, standing in water in the vase. "Two little maids I've heard of, each with a pretty taste, Who had two little rooms to fix and not an hour to waste. Eight thousand miles apart they lived, yet on the selfsame day The one in Nikko's narrow streets, the other on Broadway, They started out, each happy maid her heart's desire to find, And her own dear room to furnish just according to her mind. When Alice went a-shopping, she bought a bed of brass, A bureau and some chairs and things and such a lovely glass To reflect her little figure--with two candle brackets near-- And a little dressing table that she said was simply dear! A book shelf low to hold her books, a little china rack, And then, of course, a bureau set and lots of bric-a-brac; A dainty little escritoire, with fixings all her own And just for her convenience, too, a little telephone. Some oriental rugs she got, and curtains of madras, With 'cunning' ones of lace inside, to go against the glass; And then a couch, a lovely one, with cushions soft to crush, And forty pillows, more or less, of linen, silk and plush; Of all the ornaments besides I couldn't tell the half, But wherever there was nothing else, she stuck a photograph. And then, when all was finished, she sighed a little sigh, And looked about with just a shade of sadness in her eye: 'For it needs a statuette or so--a fern--a silver stork Oh, something, just to fill it up!' said Alice of New York. When little Oumi of Japan went shopping, pitapat, She bought a fan of paper and a little sleeping mat; She set beside the window a lily in a vase, And looked about with more than doubt upon her pretty face: 'For, really--don't you think so?--with the lily and the fan. It's a little overcrowded!' said Oumi of Japan." (Margaret Johnson in St. Nicholas Magazine) In the rural homes of Japan during 1906 there were woven 14,497,058 sheets of these floor mats and 6,628,772 sheets of other matting, having a combined value of $2,815,040, and in addition, from the best quality of rush grown upon the same ground, aggregating 7657 acres that year, there were manufactured for the export trade, fancy mattings, having the value of $2,274,131. Here is a total value, for the product of the soil and for the labor put into the manufacture, amounting to $664 per acre for the area named. At the Akashi agricultural experiment station, under the Directorship of Professor Ono, we saw some of the methods of fruit culture as practiced in Japan. He was conducting experiments with the object of improving methods of heading and training pear trees, to which reference was made on page 22. A study was also being made of the advantages and disadvantages associated with covering the fruit with paper bags, examples of which are seen in Figs. 6 and 7. The bags were being made at the time of our visit, from old newspapers cut, folded and pasted by women. Naked cultivation was practiced in the orchard, and fertilizers consisting of fish guano and superphosphate of lime were being applied twice each year in amounts aggregating a cost of twenty-four dollars per acre. Pear orchards of native varieties, in good bearing, yield returns of 150 yen per tan, and those of European varieties, 200 yen per tan, which is at the rate of $300 and $400 per acre. The bibo, so extensively grown in China was being cultivated here also and was yielding about $320 per acre. It was here that we first met the cultivation of a variety of burdock grown from the seed, three crops being taken each season where the climate is favorable, or as one of three in the multiple crop system. It is grown for the root, yielding a crop valued at $40 to $50 per acre. One crop, planted, in March, was being harvested July 1st. During our ride to Akashi on the early morning train we passed long processions of carts drawn by cattle, horses or by men, moving along the country road which paralleled the railway, all loaded with the waste of the city of Kobe, going to its destination in the fields, some of it a distance of twelve miles, where it was sold at from 54 cents to $1.63 per ton. At several places along our route from Shimonoseki to Osaka we had observed the application of slacked lime to the water of the rice fields, but in this prefecture, Hyogo, where the station is located, its use was prohibited in 1901, except under the direction of the station authorities, where the soil was acid or where it was needed on account of insect troubles. Up to this time it had been the custom of farmers to apply slacked lime at the rate of three to five tons per acre, paying for it $4.84 per ton. The first restrictive legislation permitted the use of 82 pounds of lime with each 827 pounds of organic manure, but as the farmers persisted in using much larger quantities, complete prohibition was resorted to. Reference has been made to subsidies encouraging the use of composts, and in this prefecture prizes are awarded for the best compost heaps in each county, examinations being made by a committee. The composts receiving the four highest awards in each county are allowed to compete with those in other counties for a prefectural prize awarded by another committee. The "pink clover" grown in Hyogo after rice, as a green manure crop, yields under favorable conditions twenty tons of the green product per acre, and is usually applied to about three times the area upon which it grew, at the rate of 6.6 tons per acre, the stubble and roots serving for the ground upon which the crop grew. On July 3rd we left Osaka, going south through Sakai to Wakayama, thence east and north to the Nara Experiment Station. After passing the first two stations the route lay through a very flat, highly cultivated garden section with cucumbers trained on trellises, many squash in full bloom, with fields of taro, ginger and many other vegetables. Beyond Hamadera considerable areas of flat sandy land had been set close with pine, but with intervening areas in rice, where the growers were using the revolving weeder seen in Fig. 14. At Otsu broad areas are in rice but here worked with the short handled claw weeders, and stubble from a former crop had been drawn together into small piles, seen in Fig. 230, which later would be carefully distributed and worked beneath the mud. Much of the mountain lands in this region, growing pine, is owned by private parties and the growth is cut at intervals of ten, twenty or twenty-five years, being sold on the ground to those who will come and cut it at a price of forty sen for a one-horse load, as already described, page 159. The course from here was up the rather rapidly rising Kiigawa valley where much water was being applied to the rice fields by various methods of pumping, among them numerous current wheels; an occasional power-pump driven by cattle; and very commonly the foot-power wheel where the man walks on the circumference, steadying himself with a long pole, as seen in the field, Fig. 231. It was here that a considerable section of the hill slope had been very recently cut over, the area showing light in the engraving. It was in the vicinity of Hashimoto on this route, too, that the two beautiful views reproduced in Figs. 151 and 152 were taken. At the experiment station it was learned that within the prefecture of Nara, having a population of 558,314, and 107,574 acres of cultivated land, two-thirds of this was in paddy rice. Within the province there are also about one thousand irrigation reservoirs with an average depth of eight feet. The rice fields receive 16.32 inches of irrigation water in addition to the rain. Of the uncultivated hill lands, some 2500 acres contribute green manure for fertilization of fields. Reference has been made to the production of compost for fertilizers on page 211. The amount recommended in this prefecture as a yearly application for two crops grown is: Organic matter 3,711 to 4,640 lbs. per acre Nitrogen 105 to 131 lbs. per acre Phosphorus 35 to 44 lbs. per acre Potassium 56 to 70 lbs. per acre These amounts, on the basis of the table, p. 214, are nearly sufficient for a crop of thirty bushels of wheat, followed by one of thirty bushels of rice, the phosphorus being in excess and the potassium not quite enough, supposing none to be derived from other sources. At the Nara hotel, one of the beautiful Japanese inns where we stopped, our room opened upon a second story veranda from which one looked down upon a beautiful, tiny lakelet, some twenty by eighty feet, within a diminutive park scarcely more than one hundred by two hundred feet, and the lakelet had its grassy, rocky banks over-hung with trees and shrubs planted in all the wild disorder and beauty of nature; bamboo, willow, fir, pine, cedar, red-leaved maple, catalpa, with other kinds, and through these, along the shore, wound a woodsy, well trodden, narrow footpath leading from the inn to a half hidden cottage apparently quarters for the maids, as they were frequently passing to and fro. A suggestion of how such wild beauty is brought right to the very doors in Japan may be gained from Fig. 232, which is an instance of parking effect on a still smaller scale than that described. On the morning of July 6th, with two men for each of our rickshas, we left the Yaami hotel for the Kyoto Experiment station, some two miles to the southwest of the city limits. As soon as we had entered upon the country road we found ourselves in a procession of cart men each drawing a load of six large covered receptacles of about ten gallons capacity, and filled with the city's waste. Before reaching the station we had passed fifty-two of these loads, and on our return the procession was still moving in the same direction and we passed sixty-one others, so that during at least five hours there had moved over this section of road leading into the country, away from the city, not less than ninety tons of waste; along other roadways similar loads were moving. These freight carts and those drawn by horses and bullocks were all provided with long racks similar to that illustrated in Fig. 108, page 197, and when the load is not sufficient to cover the full length it is always divided equally and placed near each end, thus taking advantage of the elasticity of the body to give the effect of springs, lessening the draft and the wear and tear, One of the most common commodities coming into the city along the country roads was fuel from the hill lands, in split sticks tied in bundles as represented in Fig. 224; as bundles of limbs twenty-four to thirty inches, and sometimes four to six feet, long; and in the form of charcoal made from trunks and stems one and a half inches to six inches long, and baled in straw matting. Most of the draft animals used in Japan are either cows, bulls or stallions; at least we saw very few oxen and few geldings. As early as 1895 the Government began definite steps looking to the improvement of horse breeding, appointing at that time a commission to devise comprehensive plans. This led to progressive steps finally culminating in 1906 in the Horse Administration Bureau, whose duties were to extend over a period of thirty years, divided into two intervals, the first, eighteen and the second, twelve years. During the first interval it is contemplated that the Government shall acquire 1,500 stallions to be distributed throughout the country for the use of private individuals, and during the second period it is the expectation that the system will have completely renovated the stock and familiarized the people with proper methods of management so that matters may be left in their hands. As our main purpose and limited time required undivided attention to agricultural matters, and of these to the long established practices of the people, we could give but little time to sight-seeing or even to a study of the efforts being made for the introduction of improved agricultural methods and practices. But in the very old city of Kyoto, which was the seat of the Mikado's court from before 800 A. D. until 1868, we did pay a short visit to the Kiyomizu temple, situated some three hundred yards south from the Yaami hotel, which faces the Maruyaami park with its centuries-old giant cherry tree, having a trunk of more than four feet through and wide spreading branches, now much propped up to guard against accident, as seen in Fig. 233. These cherry trees are very extensively used for ornamental purposes in Japan with striking effect. The tree does not produce an edible fruit, but is very beautiful when in full bloom, as may be seen from Fig. 234. It was these trees that were sent by the Japanese government to this country for use at Washington but the first lot were destroyed because they were found to be infested and threatened danger to native trees. Kyoto stands amid surroundings of wonderful beauty, the site apparently having been selected with rare acumen for its possibilities in large landscape effects, and these have been developed with that fullness and richness which the greatest artists might be content to approach. We are thinking particularly of the Kiyomizu-dera, or rather of the marvelous beauty of tree and foliage which has overgrown it and swept far up and over the mountain summit, leaving the temple half hidden at the base. No words, no brush, no photographic art can transfer the effect. One must see to feel the influence for which it was created, and scores of people, very old and very young, nearly all Japanese, and more of them on that day from the poorer rather than from the well-to-do class, were there, all withdrawing reluctantly, like ourselves, looking backward, under the spell. So potent and impressive was that something from the great overshadowing beauty of the mountain, that all along up the narrow, shop-lined street leading to the gateway of the temple, seen in Fig. 235, the tiniest bits of park effect were flourishing in the most impossible situations; and as Professor Tokito and myself were coming away we chanced upon six little roughly dressed lads laying out in the sand an elaborate little park, quite nine by twelve feet. They must have been at it hours, for there were ponds, bridges, tiny hills and ravines and much planting in moss and other little greens. So intent on their task were they that we stood watching full two minutes before our presence attracted their attention, and yet the oldest of the group must have been under ten years of age. One partly hidden view of the temple is seen in Fig. 236, the dense mountain verdure rising above and beyond it. And then too, within the temple, as the peasant men and women came before the shrine and grasped the long depending rope knocker, with the heavy knot in front of the great gong, swinging it to strike three rings, announcing their presence before their God, then kneeling to offer prayers, one could not fail to realize the deep sincerity and faith expressed in face and manner, while they were oblivious to all else. No Christian was ever more devout and one may well doubt if any ever arose from prayer more uplifted than these. Who need believe they did not look beyond the imagery and commune with the Eternal Spirit? A third view of the same temple, showing resting places beneath the shade, which serve the purpose of lawn seats in our parks, is seen in Fig. 237. That a high order of the esthetic sense is born to the Japanese people; that they are masters of the science of the beautiful; and that there are artists among them capable of effective and impressive results, is revealed in a hundred ways, and one of these is the iris garden of Fig. 238. One sees it here in the bulrushes which make the iris feel at home; in the unobtrusive semblance of a log that seems to have fallen across the run; in the hard beaten narrow path and the sore toes of the old pine tree, telling of the hundreds that come and go; it is seen in the dress and pose of the ladies, and one may be sure the photographer felt all that he saw and fixed so well. The vender of Oumi's lily that Margaret Johnson saw, is in Fig. 239. There another is bartering for a spray of flowers, and thus one sold the branch of red maple leaves in our room at the Nara inn. His floral stands are borne along the streets pendant from the usual carrying pole. When returning to the city from the Kyoto Experiment Station several fields of Japanese indigo were passed, growing in water under the conditions of ordinary rice culture, Fig. 240 being a view of one of these. The plant is Poligonum tinctoria, a close relative of the smartweed. Before the importation of aniline and alizarin dyes, which amounted in 1907 to 160,558 pounds and 7,170,320 pounds respectively, the cultivation of indigo was much more extensive than at present, amounting in 1897 to 160,460,000 pounds of the dried leaves; but in 1906 the production had fallen to 58,696,000 pounds, forty-five per cent of which was grown in the prefecture of Tokushima in the eastern part of the island of Shikoku. The population of this prefecture is 707,565, or 4.4 people to each of the 159,450 acres of cultivated field, and yet 19,969 of these acres bore the indigo crop, leaving more than five people to each food-producing acre. The plants for this crop are started in nursery beds in February and transplanted in May, the first crop being cut the last of June or first of July, when the fields are again fertilized, the stubble throwing out new shoots and yielding a second cutting the last of August or early September. A crop of barley may have preceded one of indigo, or the indigo may be set following a crop of rice. Such practice, with the high fertilization for every crop, goes a long way toward supplying the necessary food. The dense population, too, has permitted the manufacture of the indigo as a home industry among the farmers, enabling them to exchange the spare labor of the family for cash. The manufactured product from the reduced planting in 1907 was worth $1,304,610, forty-five per cent of which was the output of the rural population of the prefecture of Tokushima, which they could exchange for rice and other necessaries. The land in rice in this prefecture in 1907 was 73,816 acres, yielding 114,380,000 pounds, or more than 161 pounds to each man, woman and child, and there were 65,665 acres bearing other crops. Besides this there are 874,208 acres of mountain and hill land in the prefecture which supply fuel, fuel ashes and green manure for fertilizer; run-off water for irrigation; lumber and remunerative employment for service not needed in the fields. The journey was continued from Kyoto July 7th, taking the route leading northeastward, skirting lake Biwa which we came upon suddenly on emerging from a tunnel as the train left Otani. At many places we passed waterwheels such as that seen in Fig. 241, all similarly set, busily turning, and usually twelve to sixteen feet in diameter but oftenest only as many inches thick. Until we had reached Lake Biwa the valleys were narrow with only small areas in rice. Tea plantations were common on the higher cultivated slopes, and gardens on the terraced hillsides growing vegetables of many kinds were common, often with the ground heavily mulched with straw, while the wooded or grass-covered slopes still further up showed the usual systematic periodic cutting. After passing the west end of the lake, rice fields were nearly continuous and extensive. Before reaching Hachiman we crossed a stream leading into the lake but confined between levees more than twelve feet high, and we had already passed beneath two raised viaducts after leaving Kusatsu. Other crops were being grown side by side with the rice on similar lands and apparently in rotation with it, but on sharp, narrow close ridges twelve to fourteen inches high. As we passed eastward we entered one of the important mulberry districts where the fields are graded to two levels, the higher occupied with mulberry or other crops not requiring irrigation, while the lower was devoted to rice or crops grown in rotation with it. On the Kisogawa, at the station of the same name, there were four anchored floating water-power mills propelled by two pair of large current wheels stationed fore and aft, each pair working on a common axle from opposite sides of the mill, driven by the force of the current flowing by. At Kisogawa we had entered the northern end of one of the largest plains of Japan, some thirty miles wide and extending forty miles southward to Owari bay. The plain has been extensively graded to two levels, the benches being usually not more than two feet above the rice paddies, and devoted to various dry land crops, including the mulberry. The soil is decidedly sandy in character but the mean yield of rice for the prefecture is 37 bushels per acre and above the average for the country at large. An analysis of the soils at the sub-experiment station north of Nagoya shows the following content of the three main plant food elements. Nitrogen Phosphorus Potassium Pounds per million In paddy field Soil 1520 769 805 Subsoil 810 756 888 In upland field Soil 1060 686 1162 Subsoil 510 673 1204 The green manure crops on this plain are chiefly two varieties of the "pink clover," one sowed in the fall and one about May 15th, the first yielding as high as sixteen tons green weight per acre and the other from five to eight tons. On the plain distant from the mountain and hill land the stems of agricultural crops are largely used as fuel and the fuel ashes are applied to the fields at the rate of 10 kan per tan, or 330 pounds per acre, worth $1.20, little lime, as such, being used. In the prefecture of Aichi, largely in this plain, with an area of cultivated land equal to about sixteen of our government townships, there is a population of 1,752,042, or a density of 4.7 per acre, and the number of households of farmers was placed at 211,033, thus giving to each farmer's family an average of 1.75 acres, their chief industries being rice and silk culture. Soon after leaving the Agricultural Experiment Station of Aichi prefecture at An Jo we crossed the large Yahagigawa, flowing between strong levees above the level of the rice fields. Mulberries, with burdock and other vegetables were growing upon all of the tables raised one to two, feet above the rice paddies, and these features continued past Okasaki, Koda, and Kamagori, where the hills in many places had been recently cut clean of the low forest growth and where we passed many large stacks of pine boughs tied in bundles for fuel. After passing Goyu sixty-five miles east from Nagoya, mulberry was the chief crop. Then came a plain country which had been graded and leveled at great cost of labor, the benches with their square shoulders standing three to four feet above the paddy fields; and after passing Toyohashi some distance we were surprised to cross a rather wide section of comparatively level land overgrown with pine and herbaceous, plants which had evidently been cut and recut many times. Beyond Futagawa rice fields were laid out on what appeared to be, similar land but with soil a little finer in texture, and still further along were other flat areas not cultivated. At Maisaka quite half the cultivated fields appear to be in mulberry with ponds of lotus plants in low places, while at Hamamatsu the rice fields are interspersed with many square-shouldered tables raised three to four feet and occupied with mulberry or vegetables. As we passed upon the flood plain of the Tenryugawa, with its nearly dry bed of coarse gravel half a mile wide, the dwellings of farm villages were, many of them surrounded with nearly solid, flat-topped, trimmed evergreen hedges nine to twelve feet high, of the umbrella pine, forming beautiful and effective screens. At Nakaidzumi we had left the mulberry orchards for those of tea, rice still holding wherever paddies could be formed. Here, too, we met the first fields of tobacco, and at Fukuroi and Homouchi large quantities of imported Manchurian bean cake were stacked about the station, having evidently been brought by rail. At Kanaya we passed through a long tunnel and were in the valley of the Oigawa, crossing the broad, nearly dry stream over a bridge of nineteen long spans and were then in the prefecture of Shizuoka where large fields of tea spread far up the hillsides, covering extensive areas, but after passing the next station, and for seventeen miles before reaching Shizuoka we traversed a level stretch of nearly continuous rice fields. The Shizuoka Experiment Station is devoting special attention to the interests of horticulture, and progress has already been made in introducing new fruits of better quality and in improving the native varieties. The native pears and peaches, as we found them served on the hotel tables in either China or Japan, were not particularly attractive in either texture or flavor, but we were here permitted to test samples of three varieties of ripe figs of fine flavor and texture, one of them as large as a good sized pear. Three varieties of fine peaches were also shown, one unusually large and with delicate deep rose tint, including the flesh. If such peaches could be canned so as to retain their delicate color they would prove very attractive for the table. The flavor and texture of this peach were also excellent, as was the case with two varieties of pears. The station was also experimenting with the production of marmalades and we tasted three very excellent brands, two of them lacking the bitter flavor. It would appear that, in Japan, Korea and China there should be a very bright future along the lines of horticultural development, leading to the utilization of the extensive hill lands of these countries and the development of a very extensive export trade, both in fresh fruits and marmalades, preserves and the canned forms. They have favorable climatic and soil conditions and great numbers of people with temperament and habits well suited to the industries, as well as an enormous home need which should be met, in addition to the large possibilities in the direction of a most profitable export trade which would increase opportunities for labor and bring needed revenue to the people. In Fig. 242 are three views at this station, the lower showing a steep terraced hillside set with oranges and other fruits, holding out a bright promise for the future. Peach orchards were here set on the hill lands, the trees six feet apart each way. They come into bearing in three years, remain productive ten to fifteen years, and the returns are 50 to 60 yen per tan, or at the rate of $100 to $120 per acre. The usual fertilizers for a peach orchard are the manure-earth-compost, applied at the rate of 3300 pounds per acre, and fish guano applied in rotation and at the same rate. Shizuoka is one of the large prefectures, having a total area of 3029 square miles; 2090 of which are in forest; 438 in pasture and genya land, and 501 square miles cultivated, not quite one-half of which is in paddy fields. The mean yield of paddy rice is nearly 33 bushels per acre. The prefecture has a population of 1,293,470, or about four to the acre of cultivated field, and the total crop of rice is such as, to provide 236 pounds to each person. At many places along the way as we left Shizuoka July 10th for Tokyo, farmers were sowing broadcast, on the water, over their rice fields, some pulverized fertilizer, possibly bean cake. Near the railway station of Fuji, and after crossing the boulder gravel bed of the Fujikawa which was a full quarter of a mile wide, we were traversing a broad plain of rice paddies with their raised tables, but on them pear orchards were growing, trained to their overhead trellises. About. Suduzuka grass was being cut with sickles along the canal dikes for use as green manure in the rice fields, which on the left of the railway, stretched eastward more than six miles to beyond Hara where we passed into a tract of dry land crops consisting of mulberry, tea and various vegetables, with more or less of dry land rice, but we returned to the paddy land again at Numazu, in another four miles. Here there were four carloads of beef cattle destined for Tokyo or Yokohama, the first we had seen. It was at this station that the railway turns northward to skirt the eastern flank of the beautiful Fuji-yama, rising to higher lands of a brown loamy character, showing many large boulders two feet in diameter. Horses were here moving along the roadways under large saddle loads of green grass, going to the paddy fields from the hills, which in this section are quite free from all but herbaceous growth, well covered and green. Considerable areas were growing maize and buckwheat, the latter being ground into flour and made into macaroni which is eaten with chopsticks, Fig. 243, and used to give variety to the diet of rice and naked barley. At Gotenba, where tourists leave the train to ascend Fuji-yama, the road turns eastward again and descends rapidly through many tunnels, crossing the wide gravelly channel of the Sakawagawa, then carrying but little water, like all of the other main streams we had crossed, although we were in the rainy season. This was partly because the season was yet not far advanced; partly because so much water was being taken upon the rice fields, and again because the drainage is so rapid down the steep slopes and comparatively short water courses. Beyond Yamakita the railway again led along a broad plain set in paddy rice and the hill slopes were terraced and cultivated nearly to their summits. Swinging strongly southeastward, the coast was reached at Noduz in a hilly country producing chiefly vegetables, mulberry and tobacco, the latter crop being extensively grown eastward nearly to Oiso, beyond which, after a mile of sweet potatoes, squash and cucumbers, there were paddy fields of rice in a flat plain. Before Hiratsuka was reached the rice paddies were left and the train was crossing a comparatively flat country with a sandy, sometimes gravelly, soil where mulberries, peaches, eggplants, sweet potatoes and dry land rice were interspersed with areas still occupied with small pine and herbaceous growth or where small pine had been recently set. Similar conditions prevailed after we had crossed the broad channel of the Banyugawa and well toward and beyond Fujishiwa where a leveled plain has its tables scattered among the fields of paddy rice, this being the southwest margin of the Tokyo plain, the largest in Japan, lying in five prefectures, whose aggregate area of 1,739,200 acres of arable lands was worked by 657,235 families of farmers; 661,613 acres of which was in paddy rice, producing annually some 19,198,000 bushels, or 161 pounds for each of the 7,194,045 men, women and children in the five prefectures, 1,818,655 of whom were in the capital city, Tokyo. Three views taken in the eastern portion of this plain in the prefecture of Chiba, July 17th, are seen in Fig. 244, in two of which shocks of wheat were still standing in the fields among the growing crops, badly weathered and the grain sprouting as the result of the rainy season. Peanuts, sweet potatoes and millet were the main dry land, crops then on the ground, with paddy rice in the flooded basins. Windsor beans, rape, wheat and barley had been harvested. One family with whom we talked were threshing their wheat. The crop had been a good one and was yielding between 38.5 and. 41.3 bushels per acre, worth at the time $35 to $40. On the same land this farmer secures a yield of 352 to 361 bushels of potatoes, which at the market price at that time would give a gross earning of $64 to $66 per acre. Reference has been made to the extensive use of straw in the cultural methods of the Japanese. This is notably the case in their truck garden work, and two phases of this are shown in Fig. 245. In the lower section of the illustration the garden has been ridged and furrowed for transplanting, the sets have been laid and the roots covered with a little soil; then, in the middle section, showing the next step in the method, a layer of straw has been pressed firmly above the roots, and in the final step this would be covered with earth. Adopting this method the straw is so placed that (1) it acts as an effective mulch without in any way interfering with the capillary rise of water to the roots of the sets; (2) it gives deep, thorough aeration of the soil, at the same time allowing rains to penetrate quickly, drawing the air after it; (3) the ash ingredients carried in the straw are leached directly to the roots where they are needed; (4) and finally the straw and soil constitute a compost where the rapid decay liberates plant food gradually and in the place where it will be most readily available. The upper section of the illustration shows rows of eggplants very heavily mulched with coarse straw, the quantity being sufficient to act as a most effective mulch, to largely prevent the development of weeds and to serve during the rainy season as a very material fertilizer. In growing such dry land crops as barley, beans, buckwheat or dry land rice the soil of the field is at first fitted by plowing or spading, then furrowed deeply where the rows are to be planted. Into these furrows fertilizer is placed and covered with a layer of earth upon which the seed is planted. When the crop is up, if a second fertilization is desired, a furrow may be made alongside each row, into which the fertilizer is sowed and then covered. When the crop is so far matured that a second may be planted, a new furrow is made, either midway between two others or adjacent to one of them, fertilizer applied and covered with a layer of soil and the seed planted. In this way the least time possible is lost during the growing season, all of the soil of the field doing duty in crop production. It was our privilege to visit the Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station at Nishigahara, near Tokyo, which is charged with the leadership of the general and technical agricultural research work for the Empire. The work is divided into the sections of agriculture, agricultural chemistry, entomology, vegetable pathology, tobacco, horticulture, stock breeding, soils, and tea manufacture, each with their laboratory equipment and research staff, while the forty-one prefectural stations and fourteen sub-stations are charged with the duty of handling all specific local, practical problems and with testing out and applying conclusions and methods suggested by the results obtained at the central station, together with the local dissemination of knowledge among the farmers of the respective prefectures. A comprehensive soil survey of the arable lands of the Empire has been in progress since before 1893, excellent maps being issued on a scale of 1 to 100,000, or about 1.57 inch-to the mile, showing the geological formations in eight colors with subdivisions indicated by letters. Some eleven soil types are recognized, based on physical composition and the areas occupied by these are shown by means of lines and dots in black printed over the colors. Typical profiles of the soil to depths of three meters are printed as insets on each sheet and localities where these apply are indicated by corresponding numbers in red on the map. Elaborate chemical and physical studies are also being made in the laboratories of samples of both soil and subsoil. The Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station is well equipped for investigation work along many lines and that for soils is notably strong. In Fig. 246 may be seen a portion of the large immersed cylinders which are filled with typical soils from different parts of the Empire, and Fig. 247 shows a portion of another part of their elaborate outfit for soil studies which are in progress. It is found that nearly all cultivated soils of Japan are acid to litmus, and this they are inclined to attribute to the presence of acid hydro-aluminum silicates. The Island Empire of Japan stretches along the Asiatic coast through more than twenty-nine degrees of latitude from the southern extremity of Formosa northward to the middle of Saghalin, some 2300 statute miles; or from the latitude of middle Cuba to that of north Newfoundland and Winnipeg; but the total land area is only 175,428 square miles, and less than that of the three states of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Of this total land area only 23,698 square miles are at present cultivated; 7151 square miles in the three main islands are weed and pasture land. Less than fourteen per cent of the entire land area is at present under cultivation. If all lands having a slope of less than fifteen degrees may be tilled, there yet remain in the four main islands, 15,400 square miles to bring under cultivation, which is an addition of 65.4 per cent to the land already cultivated. In 1907 there were in the Empire some 5,814,362 households of farmers tilling 15,201,969 acres and feeding 3,522,877 additional households, or 51,742,398 people. This is an average of 3.4 people to the acre of cultivated land, each farmer's household tilling an average of 2.6 acres. The lands yet to be reclaimed are being put under cultivation rapidly, the amount improved in 1907 being 64,448 acres. If the new lands to be reclaimed can be made as productive as those now in use there should be opportunity for an increase in population to the extent of about 35,000,000 without changing the present ratio of 3.4 people to the acre of cultivated land. While the remaining lands to be reclaimed are not as inherently productive as those now in use, improvements in management will more than compensate for this, and the Empire is certain to quite double its present maintenance capacity and provide for at least a hundred million people with many more comforts of home and more satisfaction for the common people than they now enjoy. Since 1872 there has been an increase in the population of Japan amounting to an annual average of about 1.1 per cent, and if this rate is maintained the one hundred million mark would be passed in less than sixty years. It appears probable however that the increased acreage put under cultivation and pasturage combined, will more than keep pace with the population up to this limit, while the improvement in methods and crops will readily permit a second like increment to her population, bringing that for the present Empire up to 150 millions. Against this view, perhaps, is the fact that the rice crop of the twenty years ending in 1906 is only thirty-three per cent greater than the crop of 1838. In Japan, as in the United States, there has been a strong movement from the country to the city as a natural result of the large increase in manufactures and commerce, and the small amount of land per each farmer's household. In 1903 only .23 per cent of the population of Japan were living in villages of less than 500, while 79.06 per cent were in towns and villages of less than 10,000 people, 20.7 per cent living in those larger. But in 1894 84.36 per cent of the population were living in towns and villages of less than 10,000, and only 15.64 per cent were in cities, towns and villages of over 10,000 people; and while during these ten years the rural population had increased at the rate of 640 per 10,000, in cities the increase had been 6,174 per 10,000. Japan has been and still is essentially an agricultural nation and in 1906 there were 3,872,105 farmers' households, whose chief work was farming, and 1,581,204 others whose subsidiary work was farming, or 60.2 per cent of the entire number of households. A like ratio holds in Formosa. Wealthy land owners who do not till their own fields are not included. Of the farmers in Japan some 33.34 per cent own and work their land. Those having smaller holdings, who rent additional land, make up 46.03 per cent of the total farmers; while 20.63 per cent are tenants who work 44.1 per cent of the land. In 1892 only one per cent of the land holders owned more than twenty-five acres each; those holding between twenty-five acres and five acres made up 11.7 per cent; while 87.3 per cent held less than five acres each. A man owning seventy-five acres of land in Japan is counted among the "great landholders". It is never true, however, except in the Hokkaido, which is a new country agriculturally, that such holdings lie in one body. Statistics published in "Agriculture in Japan", by the Agricultural Bureau, Department of Agriculture and Commerce, permit the following statements of rent, crop returns, taxes and expenses, to be made. The wealthy land owners who rent their lands receive returns like these: For paddy field, For upland field, per acre. per acre. Rent $27.98 $13.53 Taxes 7.34 1.98 Expenses 1.72 2.48 Total expenses $9.06 $4.46 Net profit 18.92 9.07 It is stated, in connection with these statistics, that the rate of profit for land capital is 5.6 per cent for the paddy field, and 5.7 per cent for the upland field. This makes the valuation of the land about $338 and $159 per acre, respectively. A land holder who owns and rents ten acres of paddy field and ten acres of upland field would, at these rates, realize a net annual income of $279.90. Peasant farmers who own and work their lands receive per acre an income as follows: For paddy field, For upland field, per acre. per acre. Crop returns $55.00 $30.72 Taxes 7.34 1.98 Labor and expenses 36.20 24.00 ------- ------- Total expense $43.54 $25.98 Net profit 11.46 4.74 The peasant farmer who owns and works five acres, 2.5 of paddy and 2.5 of upland field, would realize a total net income of $40.50. This is after deducting the price of his labor. With that included, his income would be something like $91. Tenant farmers who work some 41 per cent of the farm lands of Japan, would have accounts something as follows: For paddy field, For upland field, 1 crop. 2 crops. per acre. per acre. Crop returns $49.03 $78.62 $41.36 Tenant fee 23.89 31.58 13.52 Labor 15.78 25.79 14.69 Fertilization 7.82 17.30 10.22 Seed .82 1.40 1.57 Other expenses 1.69 2.82 1.66 ------------- ------- Total expenses $50.00 $78.89 $41.66 Net profit --.97 --.27 --.30 This statement indicates that tenant farmers do not realize enough from the crops to quite cover expenses and the price named for their labor. If the tenant were renting five acres, equally divided between paddy and upland field, the earning would be $73.00 or $99.73 according as one or two crops are taken from the paddy field, this representing what he realizes on his labor, his other expenses absorbing the balance of the crop value. But the average area tilled by each Japanese farmer's household is only 2.6 acres, hence the average earning of the tenant household would be $37.95 or $51.86. A clearer view of the difference in the present condition of farmers in Japan and of those in the United States may be gained by making the Japanese statement on the basis of our 160-acre farm, as expressed in the table below: For paddy field. For upland field. Total. For 80 acres. For 80 acres. 160 acres. Crop returns $4,400.00 $2,457.60 $6,857.60 ---------- ---------- ---------- Taxes $587.20 $158.40 $745.60 Expenses 1,633.60 744.80 2,378.40 Labor 1,262.40 1,175.20 2,437.60 ---------- ---------- ---------- Total cost $3,488.20 $2,078.40 $5,561.60 Net return 916.80 379.20 1,296.00 Return including labor 2,179.20 1,554.40 3,783.60 In the United States the 160-acre farm is managed by and supports a single family, but in Japan, as the average household works but 2.6 acres, the earnings of the 160 acres are distributed among some 61 households, making the net return to each but $21.25, instead of $1296, and including the labor as earning, the income would be $39.96 more, or $60.67 per household instead of $3733.60, the total for a 160-acre farm worked under Japanese conditions. These figures reveal something of the tense strain and of the terrible burden which is being carried by these people, over and above that required for the maintenance of the household. The tenant who raises one crop of rice pays a rental of $23.89 per acre. If he raises two crops he pays $31.58; if it is upland field, he pays $13.52. To these amounts he adds $10.33, $21.52 or $13.45 respectively for fertilizer, seed and other expenses making a total investment of $34.22, $53.10 or $26.97 per acre, which would require as many bushels of wheat sold at a dollar a bushel to cover this cost. In addition to this he assumes all the risks of loss from weather, from insects and from blight, in the hope that he may recoup his expenses and in addition have for his services $14.81, $25.52 or $14.39 for the season's work. The burdens of society, which have been and still are so largely burdens of war and of government, with all nations, are reflected with almost blinding effect in the land taxes of Japan, which range from $1.98, on the upland, to $7.34 per acre on the paddy fields, making a quarter section, without buildings, carry a burden of $300 to $1100 annually. Japan's budget in 1907 was $134,941,113, which is at the rate of $2.60 for each man, woman and child; $8.90 for each acre of cultivated land, and $23, for each household in the Empire. When such is the case it is not strange that scenes like Fig. 248 are common in Japan today where, after seventy years, toil may not cease. There is a bright, as well as a pathetic side to scenes like this. The two have shared for fifty years, but if the days have been full of toil, with them have come strength of body, of mind and sterling character. If the burdens have been heavy, each has made the other's lighter, the satisfaction fuller, the joys keener, the sorrows less difficult to bear; and the children who came into the home and have gone from it to perpetuate new ones, could not well be other than such as to contribute to the foundations of nations of great strength and long endurance. Reference has been made to the large amount of work carried on in the farmers' households by the women and children, and by the men when they are not otherwise employed, and the earnings of this subsidiary work have materially helped to piece out the meagre income and to meet the relatively high taxes and rent. 
5152	----	This eBook was produced by David Schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>. One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered By E. J. Wickson Professor of Horticulture, University of California; Editor of Pacific Rural Press; Author of "California Fruits and How to Grow Them" and "California Vegetables in Garden and Field," etc. Foreword This brochure is not a systematic treatise in catechetical form intended to cover what the writer holds to be most important to know about California agricultural practices. It is simply a classified arrangement of a thousand or more questions which have been actually asked, and to which answers have been undertaken through the columns of the Pacific Rural Press, a weekly journal of agriculture published in San Francisco. Whatever value is claimed for the work is based upon the assumption that information, which about seven hundred people have actually asked for, would be also interesting and helpful to thousands of other people. If you do not find in this compilation what you desire to know, submit your question to the Pacific Rural Press, San Francisco, in the columns of which answers to agricultural questions are weekly set forth at the rate of five hundred or more each year. This publication is therefore intended to answer a thousand questions for you and to encourage you to ask a thousand more. E. J. Wickson. Contents Part I. Fruit Growing Part II. Vegetable Growing Part III. Grain and Forage Crops Part IV. Soils, Irrigation, and Fertilizers Part V. Live Stock and Dairy Part VI. Feeding Animals Part VII. Diseases of Animals Part VIII. Poultry Keeping Part IX. Pests and Diseases of Plants Part X. Index Part I. Fruit Growing Depth of Soil for Fruit. Would four feet of good loose soil be enough for lemons? Four feet of good soil, providing the underlying strata are not charged with alkali, would give you a good growth of lemon trees if moisture was regularly present in about the right quantity, neither too much nor too little, and the temperature conditions were favorable to the success of this tree, which will not stand as much frost as the orange. Temperatures for Citrus Fruits. What is the lowest temperature at which grapefruit and lemons will succeed? The grapefruit tree is about as hardy as the orange; the lemon is much more tender. The fruit of citrus trees will be injured by temperature at the ordinary freezing point if continued for some little time, and the tree itself is likely to be injured by a temperature of 25 or 27° if continued for a few hours. The matter of duration of a low temperature is perhaps quite as important as the degree which is actually reached by the thermometer. The condition of the tree as to being dormant or active also affects injury by freezing temperatures. Under certain conditions an orange tree may survive a temperature of 15° Fahrenheit. Roots for Fruit Trees. I wish to bud from certain trees that nurseries probably do not carry, as they came from a seedling. Is there more than one variety of myrobalan used, and if so, is one as good as another? If I take sprouts that come up where the roots have been cut, will they make good trees? I have tried a few, now three years old, and the trees are doing nicely so far, but the roots sprout up where cut. I am informed that if I can raise them from slips they will not sprout up from the root. Will apricots and peaches grafted or budded on myrobalan produce fruit as large as they will if grafted on their own stock? Experience seems to be clear that from sprouts you will get sprouts. We prefer rooted cuttings to sprouts, but even these are abandoned for seedling roots of the common deciduous fruits and of citrus fruits also. The apricot does well enough on the myrobalan if the soil needs that root; they are usually larger on the peach root or on apricot seedlings. The peach is no longer worked on the myrobalan in this State. One seedling of the cherry plum is about as good a myrobalan as another. What Will the Sucker Be? I have a Japanese plum tree which bears choice plums. Three years ago a strong young shoot came up from the root of it, which I dug out and planted. Will it make a bearing tree in time and be of like quality with the parent? It will certainly bear something when it gets ready. Whether it will be like the parent tree depends upon the wood from which the sucker broke out. If the young tree was budded very low, or if it was planted low, or if the ground has been shifted so as to bring the wood above the bud in a place to root a sucker, the fruit will be that of the parent tree. If the shoot came from the root below the bud, you will get a duplication of whatever stock the plum was budded on in the nursery. It might be a peach or an almond or a cherry plum. Of course you can study the foliage and wood growth of the sucker, and thus get an idea of what you may expect. Tree Planting on Coast Sands. I wish to plant fruit trees on a sandy mesa well protected from winds about a mile from the coast. The soil is a light sandy loam. I intend to dig the holes for the trees this fall, each hole the shape of an inverted cone, about 4 feet deep and 5 feet across, and put a half-load of rotten stable manure in each hole this fall. The winter's rains would wash a large amount of plant food from this manure into the ground. In March I propose to plant the trees, shoveling the surrounding soil on top of the manure and giving a copious watering to ensure the compact settling of the soil about and below the roots. The roots would be about a foot above the manure. On such a light sandy soil you can use stable manure more safely than you could elsewhere, providing you have water handy to use if you should happen to get too much coarse matter under the tree, which would cause drying out of the soil. If you do get plenty of water to guard against this danger, you are likely to use too much and cause the trees to grow too fast. Be very sure the manure is well rotted and use one load to ten holes instead of two. Whether you kill the trees or cause them to grow aright depends upon how you use water after planting. A Wrong Idea of Inter-Planting. What forage plant can I grow in a newly planted orchard? The soil is on a gently inclined hillside - red, decomposed rock, very deep, mellow, fluffy, and light, and deep down is clayish in character. It cannot be irrigated, therefore I wish to put out a drought-resisting plant which could be harvested, say, in June or July, or even later. I find the following plants, but I cannot decide which one is the best: Yellow soja bean, speltz, Egyptian corn, Jerusalem corn, yellow Milo maize, or one of the millets. What do you think? Do not think for a moment about planting any such plant between orchard trees which are to subsist on rainfall without irrigation. Your trees will have difficulty enough in making satisfactory growth on rainfall, and would be prevented from doing so if they had to divide the soil moisture with crops planted between them. The light, deep soils which you mention, resulting from decomposed rock, are not retentive enough, and, even with the large rainfall of your region, may require irrigation to carry trees through the latter summer and early fall growth. What Slopes for Fruit? I want to plant some apples and berries. One man says plant them on the east or south slope of the hill and they will be ripe early. Another man says not to do that, for when the sun hits the trees or vines in the morning before the frost is off, it will kill all the blossoms, and as they would be on the warm side of the hill they would blossom earlier and there will be more frosts to injure them. I am told to plant them on the north or west side of the hill, where it is cold, and they will blossom later and will therefore have less frosts to bother them, and the frost will be almost off before the sun hits them in the morning. Fruit is grown on all slopes in our foothills, depending on local conditions. On the whole, we should choose the east and north slopes rather than the east and south, because there is less danger of injury from too great heat. In some cases what is said to you about the less danger of injury from frosts on the north and west slopes would be true. All these things depend upon local conditions, because there is so much difference in heat and frost and similar slopes at different elevations and exposures. There can never be a general rule for it in a State so endowed with varying conditions as California is. Trees Over Underflow. I have planted fruit trees near the creek, where they do not have to be irrigated as the ground there holds sufficient moisture for them, but a neighbor tells me that on account of the moisture being so near the surface the trees will not bear fruit well, although they will grow and have all the appearances of health. Shallow soil above standing water is not good for fruit trees. A shallow soil over moving water or underflow, such as you might expect from a creek bank, is better. The effect of water near the surface depends also upon the character of the soil, being far more dangerous in the case of a heavy clay soil than in the case of a light loam, through which water moves more readily and does not rise so far or so rapidly by capillary action. If the trees are thrifty they will bear when they attain a sufficient age and stop the riotous growth which is characteristic of young trees with abundant moisture. If trees have too much water for their health, it will be manifested by the rotting of their roots, the dying of their branches, the cropping out of mushroom fungi at the base and other manifestations of distress. So long as the tree is growing well, maintains good foliage to the tip of the branches and is otherwise apparently strong, it may be expected to bear fruit in due time. The "June Drop." I am sending four peaches which are falling off the trees. Can you tell me how to prevent falling of the fruit next year and what causes it? It is impossible to tell from the peaches which you send what caused their falling. Where fruit passes the pollination stage successfully, as these fruits have, the dropping is generally attributed to some conditions affecting the growth of the tree, which never have been fully determined. It is of such frequent occurrence that it is called the June drop, and it usually takes place in May in California. As the cause is not understood no rational preventive has been reached. A general treatment which consists in keeping the trees in good growing condition late enough during the previous season, that is, by seeing to it that they do not suffer from lack of moisture which causes them to close their growing season too soon before preparation for the following year's crop is made, is probably the best way to strengthen the tree for its burden. Trees Over a Gravel Streak. I have an apricot orchard seven years old. Most of the land is a fairly heavy clay with a strip of gravel in the middle running nearly north and south. The trees on the clay bear good crops, but those on the gravel are usually much lighter in bearing and this year had a very light crop. Can you tell me of anything I can do to make them bear? The trees are large and healthy looking, and grow big crops of brush. We should try some water in July on the gravel streak, hoping to continue activity in the tree later to induce formation of strong fruit for the following year. On the clay loam the soil does this by its superior retentiveness. Fruit and Overflow. I have 16 acres of rich bottom-land that overflows and is under water from 24 to 48 hours. I would like to set the ground to fruit trees, either prunes, pears, apricots, or peaches. Would it be safe to set them on such land? Fruit trees will endure overflowing, providing the water does not exclude the air too long and providing the soil is free enough so that the soil does not remain full of water after the surface flow disappears. If the soil does not naturally drain itself and the water is forced to escape by surface evaporation, probably the situation is not satisfactory for any kind of fruit trees. Overflow is more likely to be dangerous to fruit trees during the growing season than during the dormant season, and yet on well-drained soil even a small overflow may not be injurious on a free soil, if not continued too long. Prunes on plum root, and pears will endure wet soil better than apricots or peaches. Fruit Trees and Sunburn. How long is it wise to leave protection around young fruit trees set out in March in this hot valley? The trees are doing well, but we could not tell when to take away protection. It is necessary to maintain the protection from sunburn all through the autumn, for the autumn sun is often very hot, and as the sap flow lessens, the danger of burning is apparently greater. The bark also must be protected against the spring sunshine, even before the leaves appear. So long as the sun has a chance at the bark, you must protect it from sunburn. Replanting in Orchard. Is it considered a good plan to set the tree at once in the place where one has died, or is it better to wait a year before replacing? It is not necessary to wait a year in making a replanting. Get out all the old roots you can by digging a large hole, fill in with fresh soil, and your tree will accept the situation. Whole Roots or Piece Roots. For commercial apple orchards which is preferable, trees grafted on piece roots or on whole roots? On behalf of the piece-root trees it is claimed they sprout up less around the tree. On the other hand, it is claimed they never make a vigorous tree. What is the truth? Value depends rather upon what sort of a growth the tree makes afterward than upon what it starts upon. Theoretically perhaps a whole-root tree may be demonstrated to be better; practically, we cannot see that it becomes so necessarily, because we have trees planted at a time when the root graft on a piece was the general rule in propagation. After all, is it not more important to have soil conditions and culture of such character that a great root can grow in the orchard than to have a whole nursery concentrated in the root of the yearling tree? As for the claim that a root graft on a piece-root never makes a vigorous tree, we know that is nonsense. Planting Deciduous Fruit Trees. In order to gain time, I have thought of planting apples and pears this fall, in the belief I would be just that much nearer a crop, than though I waited until next spring. The land is sandy loam; no irrigation. Would you advise fall or spring planting? If fall, would it be best to plow the land now, turning in the stubble from hay crop, or wait until time to plant before plowing? You will not be any nearer a crop, for next summer's growth will be the first in either case. On land not liable to be too wet in winter, it is, however, best to plant early, say during the month of December, if the ground is in good condition and sufficiently moist. If the year's rainfall has been scant, wait until the land is well wet down, for it is never desirable to plant when the soil is not in the right condition, no matter what the calendar may say. On a sandy loam early planting is nearly always safe and desirable. On lands which are too wet and liable to be rendered very cold by the heavy January rains, planting had better be deferred until February, or as soon as the ground gets in good condition after these heavy rains. Whenever you plant, it will be desirable to plow the land either in advance of the rains, if it is workable, or as soon as rain enough comes to make it break up well. It is very seldom desirable to postpone plowing until the actual time of planting comes. Budding Fruit Trees. Is it better to bud in old bark of an old tree or in younger wood bark? How do you separate old bark without breaking it in lifting the bark? Buds may be placed in old bark of fruit trees to a certain extent. The orange and the olive work better that way than do the deciduous trees, although buds in old bark of the peach have done well. They should, however, be inserted early in the season while the sap flow is active and the old bark capable of lifting; if the bark sticks, do not try budding. In spite of these facts, nearly all budding of deciduous trees is done in bark of the current year's growth. Starting Fruit Trees from Seed. How shall I start, and when, the following seeds: Peach, plums, apricots, walnuts, olives and cherries? In the East we used to plant them in the fall, so as to have them freeze; as it does not freeze enough here, what do I have to do? Do just the same. In California, heat and moisture cause the parting of the seed-cover, more slowly perhaps, but just as surely as the frost at the East. Early planting of all fruit pits and nuts is desirable for two reasons. First, it prevents too great drying and hardening and other changes in the seed, because the soil moisture prevents it; second, it gives plenty of time for the opening and germination first mentioned. But early planting must be in ground which is loamy and light rather than heavy, because if the soil is so heavy as to become water-logged the kernel is more apt to decay than to grow. Where there is danger of this, the seed can be kept in boxes of sand, continually moist, but not wet, by use of water, and planted out, as sprouting seeds, after the coldest rains are over, say in February. Cherry and plum seeds should be kept moist after taking from the fruit; very little is usually had from dry seeds. The other fruits will stand considerable drying. Very few olives are from the seed, because of reversion to wild types - also because it is so much easier to get just the variety you want by growing trees from cuttings. Mailing Scions. Which is the best way to send scions by mail? Wax the ends of mature cuttings, remove the leaves and enclose in a tight tin canister with no wet packing material. Nursery Stock in Young Orchard. How will it do to raise, for two or three years, a lot of orange seedlings between the rows of young three-year-old orange trees? I see that a nurseryman near me has done this, and his trees are more flourishing than mine. It can be done all right, as your own observation affirms. The superior appearance of the trees may be due to the additional water, and fertilizer probably, used to push the seedlings; possibly also to extra cultivation given them. It all depends upon what policy is observed in growing the seedlings; if something more than usual is done for their sakes, the trees may get their share and manifest it. If not, the trees will be robbed by the seedlings, and there is likely to be loss by both. There is no advantage in the mere fact that both are grown; there may be in the way they are grown. Whether there is money value in the operation or not depends upon how many undertake it. Square or Triangular Planting. What is your opinion on triangular planting as compared with square planting? Planting in squares is the prevailing method. The triangular plan is not a good one when one contemplates removing trees planted as fillers. The orchard should either be planned in the square or quincunx form. In the latter case individual trees can be easily removed; in the other case rows can be removed - leaving the rows which you wish to keep equidistant from each other. Killing Stumps by Medication. Will boring into green stumps and inserting a handful of saltpeter kill the roots and cause the stump to readily burn up a few months later? We have tried all kinds of prescriptions and have never killed a stump which had a mind to live. Many trees can be killed by cutting to stumps when in full growth, whether they are bored or not. Others will sprout in spite of all medicinal insertions we know of when these are placed in the inner wood of the stump. We believe a stump can be killed by sufficient contact with the inner bark layer of arsenic, bluestone, gasoline, and many other things, but it is not easy to arrange for such sufficient contact, and it would probably cost more than it would to blow or pull out the stump. One reader, however, assures us that he has killed large eucalyptus stumps by boring three holes in the stump with an inch auger, near the outer rim of the stump, placing therein a tablespoonful of potassium cyanide and saltpeter mixture (half and half), and plugging tightly. Another says: Give the stumps a liberal application of salt, say a half-inch all over the top, and let the fog and rain dissolve and soak down, and you will not have much trouble with suckers. Planting Fruit Trees on Clearings. We wish to plant orchard trees on land cleared this winter: manzanita and chaparral, but also some oaks and large pines and groves of small pines. We have been told that trees planted under such conditions, the ground containing the many small roots that we cannot get out, would not do well. Are the bad effects of the small roots liable to be serious; also, would lime or any other common fertilizer counteract the bad effects? Proceed with the planting, as you are ready for it, and take the chances of root injury. It may be slight; possibly even absent. Carefully throw out all root pieces, as you dig the hole, and exclude them from the earth which you use in filling around the roots, and in the places where large trees stood, fill the holes with soil from a distance. Much depends upon how clean the clearing was. No considerable antiseptic effect could be expected from lime and the soil ought to be strong enough to grow good young trees without enrichment. The pear, fig and California black walnut are some of the most resistant among fruit-bearing trees, and these may usually be planted with safety. The cherry is the most resistant of the stone fruits. The "toadstool" disease occasionally affects young apple trees recently set out, but it is not usually serious on established trees. Dipping Roots of Fruit Trees. In planting an almond orchard would it be of any benefit to dip the young trees in a solution of bluestone and lime dissolved? We doubt if it would serve any good purpose. If done at all the dip should be carefully prepared in accordance with the formula for bordeaux mixture, for excess of bluestone will kill roots. Healthy trees do not need such treatment, and we doubt if unhealthy ones can be rendered safe or desirable by it. Preparing for Fruit Planting. What effect will a crop of wheat have on new cleared land, to be planted in fruit trees later on? One crop of wheat or barley will make no particular difference with the cleared land which you expect to plant to fruit later. It would be better to grow a cultivated crop like corn, potatoes, beets, squashes, etc., because this crop would require summer cultivation which would kill out many weeds or sprouts and leave your land in better shape for planting. Depth in Planting Fruit Trees. I have been advised to plant the bud scar above ground in a wet country. Is that right? On ordinary good loam, plant the tree so that it will stand about the same as it did in the nursery: a little lower, perhaps, but not much. The bud scar should be a little above the surface. It is somewhat less likely to give trouble by decay in the upset tissue. If the soil is heavy and wet, plant higher, perhaps, than the nursery soil-mark, but not much. In light, sandy soil, plant lower - even from four to six inches lower - than in the nursery sometimes. In this case the budscar is below the surface, but that does not matter in a light, dry soil which does not retain moisture near the surface. Fruit Trees in a Wet Place. One part of my orchard is low and wet, much scale and old trees loose. Will much spraying be a cure and can I use posts to hold the old trees firm, or would you take out and put in Bartlett pears! Spraying would kill the scale but no spraying will make a tree satisfactory in inhospitable soil. As pears will endure wet places better than apples, it would seem to be wise to make the substitution, providing the situation is not too bad for any fruit tree. In that case you can use it for a summer vegetable patch. Cutting Back at Planting. I have planted a lot of one-year-old cherry trees and would like to know if I should cut them down the same as the apple tree? I have also planted a lot of walnut trees. Shall I cut them off? Yes for the cherries and no for the walnuts - although we have to admit that some planters hold for cutting back the walnuts also. If you do cut back the walnuts, let them have about twice the height of stem you give the cherries and cover the exposed pith with wax or paint. Branching Young Fruit Trees. It is the practice in this locality to wrap all young trees to a point 24 inches above the bud, for the purpose of protection against rabbits, to protect the bark from the sun and to prevent growth of sprouts. These wrappings are kept on indefinitely, the rule being that no sprouting is to be permitted below the 24-inch murk. Is there any virtue in this, and why is it done? The wrapping is desirable both to protect them from rabbits and from sunburn, and either this or whitewash or some other form of protection should certainly be employed against the latter trouble. It is not desirable to have all the branches emerge at the same point, either 24 from the ground or at some lower level, as is preferable in interior situations, but branches should be distributed up and down and around the trunk so as to give a strong, well-balanced, low-headed tree. So far as wrapping interferes with the growth of shoots in this manner it is undesirable. Coal Tar and Asphaltum on Trees. What is the effect of coal tar or asphaltum applied to the bark of trees? The application of coal tar to prevent the root borers of the prune which operate near the surface of the ground was found to be not injurious to the trees, although there was great apprehension that there would be. The application of asphaltum, what is known as "grade D," has been also used to some extent in the Santa Clara valley without injury. Of course, in the use of any black material, you increase the danger of sunburn, if applied to bark which is reached by the sun's rays. Whitewashing Fruit Trees. When is the proper time to whitewash walnut trees to prevent sun scald? How high up is it advisable to apply the wash? Whitewash after heavy rains are over and before the sun gets very hot; near the coast see that it is on early in April; in the interior it should be in place in March. Do not wait until all the rains are over, because there is a great chance of bark-burning between rains in the spring. Whitewash the trunk and the larger limbs - wherever the sun can reach the bark; being careful to keep the surface white where the 2 o'clock sun hits it. Be particular to whitewash, or otherwise protect by "protectors" or burlap wrappings, all young trees; the young tree is more apt to be hurt than an old one, but bark seems never to get too old to burn if the sun is hot enough. Shaping a Young Tree. In shortening back long, slim limbs the side shoots come out, and one soon has a lot of ugly, crooked limbs to look at. There are a number of orchards here being spoiled in that way. How is this avoided? You cannot secure a low-heading, well-shaped tree without cutting back the branches. Afterward you can improve the form by selecting shoots which are going in directions which you prefer, or you can cut back the shoots afterward to a bud which will start in the direction which you desire. In this way the progressive shaping of the tree must be pursued. If you only have a few trees and can afford the time, you can, of course, bend and tie the branches as they grow, so that they will take directions which seem to you better, but this is not practicable in orcharding on a commercial scale. There is no disadvantage in crooked branches in a fruit tree, but they should crook in desirable directions, and that is where the art in pruning comes in. Pruning Times. What is the best time to prune the French prune and most other trees? In Santa Clara volley they prune as soon as leaves are off; in the mountains they prune later, say in February and March, and finish after bloom is started and of course when sap is up. Which is right? You can prune French prunes and other deciduous trees at any time during the winter that is most convenient to you. It does not make any particular difference to the tree, nor does it injure the tree at all if you should continue pruning after the bloom has started. In fact, it is better to make large cuts late in the winter, because they heal over more readily at the beginning of the growing period than at the beginning of the resting season. It is believed that early pruning may cause the tree or vine to start growth somewhat sooner and this may be undesirable in very frosty places. Grafting Wax. How shall I make grafting wax for grafting fruit trees? There are many "favorite prescriptions" for grafting wax. One which is now being largely used in fruit tree grafting is as follows: Resin, 5 lbs.; beeswax, 1 lb.; linseed oil, 1 pint; flour, 1 pint. The flour is added slowly and stirred in after the other ingredients have been boiled together and the liquid becomes somewhat cooler. Some substitute lampblack for flour. This wax is warmed and applied as a liquid. Plowing in Young Orchard. How near can I plow to two-year-old orange trees safely? You can plow young orange orchards as close to the trees as you can approach without injuring the bark, regulating depth so as not to destroy main roots. Destruction of root fibers which have approached too near the surface is not material. It is very desirable that the soil around and near the tree be as carefully worked as possible without injury to the bark of the tree. How far that can be done by horse work and how much must be done by hand must be decided by the individual judgment of the grower. Crops Between Fruit Trees. What would be best to grow between fruit trees, while the trees are growing, and what to alternate each season, so as not to use up the soil without putting back into it? Where one is bringing along a young orchard, without irrigation, it is doubtful whether it is not better policy to give the trees all the advantage of clean cultivation and ample moisture than to undertake intercropping. If you live on the place and wish to grow vegetables between the rows, the thorough cultivation to bring the vegetables along satisfactorily would help to preserve moisture enough both for the vegetables and for the trees, but this is very different from growing a field crop by ordinary methods of cultivation. Select a crop which will require summer cultivation, like corn, potatoes, squashes, and beans, and never a hay or grain crop which takes up moisture without working the soil for the greater moisture conversation which hoed crops require. In choice of hoed crops be governed by what you can use to advantage, either for house or the feeding of animals, or what you can grow that is salable with least loss of moisture in the soil. The choice is governed entirely by local conditions, except that leguminous plants - peas, beans, vetches, clovers, etc. - do take nitrogen from the atmosphere and can thus be grown with least injury and sometimes with a positive benefit to the fertility of the soil. Regular Bearing of Fruit Trees. How can trees be induced to bear regularly instead of bearing excessively on alternate years? The most rational view is that in order to bear regularly the tree must be prevented from overbearing by thinning of the fruit; also that the moisture and plant-food supply must be regularly maintained, so that the tree may work along regularly and not stop bearing one year in order to accumulate vigor for a following year's crop. There is some reason to believe that some trees which seem to overbear every year can be prolonged in their profitable life and made to produce a moderate amount of fruit of large size and higher value by sharp thinning to prevent overbearing at any time. This is found clearly practicable in the cases of the apricot, peach, pear, apple, table grape, shipping plum, etc., because the added value of larger fruits is greater than the cost of removing the surplus. Scions from Young Trees. I have bought some one-year-old apple trees that are certified pedigree trees. Would it be practical to take the tops of these trees and graft on one-year seedlings and get the same results as from the trees I bought? Will they bear just as good, or is it necessary to take the scions from old bearing trees? They will bear exactly the same fruit as the young trees will, but you cannot tell how good that will be until you get the fruit. The advantage of scions from bearing trees is that you know exactly what you will get, for, presumably, you have seen and approved it. Late Pruning. Will I do injury to my peach trees if I delay pruning until the last of February, or until the sap begins to run and the buds to swell? It will not do any particular harm to let your peach pruning go until the buds swell or even after the leaves appear. Late pruning is not injurious, but rather more inconvenient. Avoiding Crotches in Fruit Trees. How can I avoid bad crotches in fruit trees? Crotches, which means branches of equal or nearly equal size, emerging from a point at a very acute angle, should be prevented by cutting out one or both of them. The branching of a lateral at a larger angle does not form a crotch and it usually buttresses itself well on the larger branch. That is a desirable form of branching. Short distances between such branchings is desirable, because it makes a stronger and more permanently upright limb, capable of sustaining much weight of foliage and fruit. Build up the young tree by shortening in as it grows, so as to get such a strong framework. Crotch-Splitting of Fruit Trees. I have a young fig tree that is splitting at the crotches. I fear that when the foliage appears, with the force of the winds the limbs will split down entirely. Perhaps you have been forcing the trees too much with water and thus secured too much foliage and weak wood. Whenever a tree is doing that, the limbs ought to be supported with bale rope tied to opposite limbs through the head, or otherwise held up, to prevent splitting. If splitting has actually occurred, the weaker limb should be cut away and the other staked if necessary until it gets strength and stiffens. If the limbs are rather large they can be drawn up and a 3/16 inch carriage bolt put through to hold both in place; but this is a poor way to make a strong tree. We should cut out all splits and do the best we could to make a tree out of what is left. Then do not make them grow so fast. Strengthening Fruit Trees. I have read that some trees are propped by natural braces; that is, by inter-twining two opposite branches while the tree is young, so that in time they grow together. What is your idea regarding the practicability of such an idea in a large commercial orchard? Twining branches for the purpose indicated is frequently commended, but it seems best for the use of ingenious people with plenty of time and not many trees. To prune trees to carry their fruit so far as one can foresee, and to use props or other supports when a tree manifests need of a particular help which was not foreseen is the most rational way to handle the proposition on a large commercial scale. Time for Pruning. What is the proper time for pruning pear and apricot trees? Ordinary deciduous fruit trees can be successfully pruned from the time the leaves begin to turn yellow and fall, until the new foliage is appearing in the late winter or spring. Grape Planting. What is the proper time for planting grape vines? Grape vines are most successfully planted after the heavy rains and low temperatures are over and before the growth starts: This will usually be whenever the soil is in good condition, during the months of February and March. Covering Tree Wounds. What is the best stuff to use on wounds and large cuts on my fruit trees? I have used grafting wax, but it is expensive and not altogether satisfactory. Amputation wounds on trees can be more successfully treated with lead and oil paint than with grafting wax. Mixed paint containing benzine would not be so good as pure lead and oil mixed for the purpose and then carefully applied as to amount so as not to run. "Asphaltum Grade D" may also be used in the same way. Covering Sunburned Bark. Would asphaltum do to use an sunburned bark? Owing to the attraction of the heat by the black color, asphaltum would increase the injury by absorption of more heat. Some white coating is altogether best for sunburn injuries, because it will reflect and not absorb heat, and a durable whitewash applied as may be needed to keep the white covering intact is undoubtedly the best treatment. Where the bark has been actually removed, white paint would be superior to whitewash to keep the wood from checking while the wound was being covered laterally by the growth of new bark. Too Much Pruning. Same peach trees entering the third year were pruned early in the winter very severely. The pruner merely left the trunk and the three or four main laterals, the latter about one foot in length. A large proportion of these trees have not sprouted as yet, though alder and better pruned trees are all sprouted in the same vicinity. The bark is green and has considerable sap. Will the trees commence to grow? The trees will sprout later, after they have developed latent buds into active form. The pruning probably removed all the buds of recent growth. After starting they will make irregular growth, starting too many shoots in the wrong places, etc., and considerable effort will be necessary to get well-shaped trees by selection of shoots in the right places and thinning out those which are not desirable. For Broken Roots. When the root of an orange or other fruit tree is exposed or brakes by the cultivator, what is the best way to treat that root? Where a root is actually broken it is best to cut it off cleanly above the break. This will induce quick healing over and the sending out of other roots. Where there is only a bruise on one side, all the frayed edges of the wound should be cleanly cut back to sound bark, which will have a tendency to promote healing and prevent decay. Pruning in Frosty Places. This appears to be a frosty section. Pruners are at work continuously from the time the apricots are harvested until spring arrives. From what is said in "California Fruits?" I judge late winter pruning would be best far apricots and peaches. Am I correct? In frosty places it is often desirable to prune rather late, because the late-pruned tree usually starts later than the early pruned, and thus may not bloom until after frost is over. Low Growth on Fruit Trees. Should the little twigs an the lower parts of young fruit trees be removed or shortened? An important function which these small shoots and the foliage which they will carry perform is in the thickening of the larger branches to which they are attached and overcoming the tendency of the tree to become too tall and spindling. This can be done at any time, even to the pinching of young, soft shoots as they appear. It must be said, however, that in ordinary commercial fruit growing little attention is paid to these fine points, which are the great enjoyment of the European fruit-gardeners and are of questionable value in our standard orcharding. It is, however, a great mistake to clear away all low twigs, for such twigs bring the first fruit on young trees. Are Tap-Roots Essential? Is it better to plant a nut or seed or to plant a grafted root; also is it better to allow the tap-root to remain or not in event of planting a grafted root? It does not matter at all whether the tree has its original tap-root or not. All tap-roots are more or less destroyed in transplanting and the fact that not one per cent of the walnut trees now bearing crops in California consist of trees grown from the nut itself planted in place, is sufficient demonstration to us that it is perfectly practicable to proceed with transplanting the trees. It is more important that the tree should have the right sort of soil and the right degree of moisture to grow in than that it should retain the root from which the seedling started. The removal of the tap-root does not prevent the tree from sending out one or several deep running roots which will penetrate as deeply as the soil and moisture conditions favor. This is true not only of the walnut but of other fruit trees. Transplanting Old Trees. Can I transplant fruit trees 2 to 3 inches through the butt, about one foot from the ground? Varieties are oranges, lemons, pears, apples and English walnuts nearly 4 inches through the butt. I wish to move them nearly a mile. What is the best way and what the best month to do the work, or are trees too large to do well if moved? The orange and lemon will do better in transplanting than the others. Take up the trees when the soil becomes warmed by the sun after the coldest weather is over. This may be in February. Cut back the branches severely and take up the trees with a good ball of earth, using suitable lifting tackle to handle it without breaking. Settle the earth around the ball in the new place with water, and keep the soil amply moist but not wet. Whitewash all bark exposed to the sun by cutting back. You can handle the walnut the same way, but it would, however, probably get such a setback that it might be better to buy a new tree two or three years old and plant that. The apples and pears we would not try to transplant, but would rather have good new yearlings than try to coax them along. Transplanting deciduous trees should be done earlier in the winter than evergreens. Dwarfing a Fruit Tree. I am told that by pruning the roots of a young tree after the root system is well started (say three years old) that as a result this will produce a tree that is semi-dwarfed or practically a dwarfed fruit tree. Yes; cutting back the roots in the winter and cutting back the new growth in the summer will have a dwarfing effect. The best way to get a dwarfed garden tree is to use a dwarfing root. You can get trees on such roots at the nurseries. Seedling Fruits. I have been growing seedlings from the pits of some extra fine peaches and plums with a view to planting them. A man near San Jose advised me that I would get good results, but since then I have met others who say that the fruit trees that spring from planted seeds yield only poor fruit. It is the tendency of nearly all improved fruit to revert to wild types, more or less, when grown from the seed. The chances are, then, that nine-tenths or more of the seedlings which you grew for fruiting might be worthless. A few might be as good as the fruit from which you took the pits; possibly one might he better. For these reasons the growing of fruit trees from pits and seeds is only used for the purpose of getting a root from which a chosen variety may be gotten by budding and grafting. Grafting. I did a little grafting last spring, and as it was my first attempt, about ten per cent of the scions failed to grow. Now shall I saw the stub off lower down and try again, or bud into one of the sprouts that have grown around the cut end? The trees are pear and cherry. You did very well as a beginner not to lose more than one-tenth. Saw off below and graft again. You might have budded into one of those shoots last July, and if you fail again, bud into the new shoots next summer. Filling Holes in Trees. I have a number of trees that, on account of poor pruning and improper care, are decaying in the center. Many of them are hollow for a foot or more down the trunk. Excavate all the decayed wood with a chisel or gouge or whatever cutting tool may work well and fill the cavity with Portland cement in such a way as to exclude moisture. This will prolong the life and productiveness of the trees for many years if other conditions are favorable. Deferring Bloom of Fruit Trees. Have any experiments ever been carried on definitely to decide what causes early blossoming of fruit trees? For instance, have adjacent trees of the same variety been treated definitely by putting a heavy mulch around one to hold the cold temperature late in the spring, leaving the other tree unmulched so the roots could warm up? It has been definitely determined by the experiments of Professor Whidden of the Missouri Experiment Station that the swelling of the buds and starting of the foliage of fruit trees is due to the action of heat upon the aerial parts of the trees; that is, growth is not caused by increasing the temperature of the ground and cannot be retarded by cooling the ground. Experiments with the use of snow and ice under trees by which the ground has been kept at a low temperature have not prevented the activity of the tree. The only way known to retard activity is to spray the tree with whitewash so that the white color may reflect the heat and prevent the absorption of it by the bark, which is usually of a dark color and therefore suited to heat absorption. Retarding of growth is possible in this way for a period of six to ten days, which, of course, in some cases might be of value, but the lengthened dormancy is probably too small to constitute it of general value. In whitewashing, to determine what advantage there is in it in retarding growth, the tree should be thoroughly sprayed with whitewash so as to cover all the wood some time before the buds swell. In fact, it is to prevent the early swelling of the buds that the whitewashing is resorted to. It is better to make the application, therefore, a little too early than too late. A specific date cannot be given for it that would be right in all localities. Repairing Rabbit Injuries. Your book says in Pruning young trees for the first time, about four main branches should be left and these cut back to 10 or 12 inches. Now, where the rabbits have pruned back to 4 or 5 inches the very ones I wanted, what should be done? Some say, cut these back to the stem, allowing new shoots to start from the base of branches so removed. Cut back to a bud near the stem, or if you do not see any, cut back near to the stem, but not near enough to remove the bark at the base of the shoot, for there are the latent buds which should give you the growth. This should be watched, and the best shoot selected from each point to make a strong branch, pinching back or removing the others. For a Bark Wound. What is best to do with an apricot or prune tree when it has been hit with an implement and the bark knocked off? Cut around the bark wound with a sharp knife so as to remove all frayed edges. Cover the exposed wood with oil and lead paint to prevent cracking, and the wound will soon be covered with new bark from the sides. Bridging Gopher Girdles. How shall I make the bridge-graft or root-graft over the trunks of trees girdled by gophers? Has this method proved successful in saving trees three or four inches in diameter, and how is it done? The bridging over of injury by mice by grafting has been known to be successful for decades in countries where this trouble is encountered. Undoubtedly the same plan would work in the case of all bark injuries which can be bridged. The plan is to take good well-matured shoots which are a little longer than the injury which has to be spanned, making a sloping cut on both ends, also a cut into the healthy bark above and below the injury, and slip the cut ends of the cutting into the cuts in the bark so that the ends go under the bark above and below, and the cut ends are closely connected with the growing layer of the stock. If the cutting is made a little longer than the distance to be spanned, the tendency of the cutting by straightening is to hold itself in place. When in place, the connections should he covered with wax to prevent drying out. Soil-Binding Plant for Winter. What would be the best to plant in an orchard on ground of a light sandy sediment which, after plowing, will move with the strong winds? I would like to plant something that will benefit the ground. The winds are the strongest from December to April. This is in the irrigated district and I need something that will make a sod during that period. We would, in all the valleys, advise a fall irrigation (if the rains are late) and the sowing of burr clover, which when started in September will have the ground well covered by December, if you keep the moisture right to push it. Disking or plowing this under in March (or April, according to locality) will hold the sand and afterward enrich it. You can do this every year, but probably you will not need to seed it more than once. Bananas in California. Is there any reason why bananas would not grow and bear in the vicinity of Merced if they had plenty of water? Or would the cool nights at certain seasons keep them from bearing? Would they do better in the Imperial valley? Bananas would suffer too severely from frost to be profitable at any point in the interior valleys of California. A plant would be killed to the ground at least every year unless under glass or other protection. There are a few places practically frostless where bananas can be grown in this State, but there is no promise in commercial production because they can be so cheaply imported from the tropics. Carobs in California. Will the carob tree (St. John's Bread) do well in the Sacramento valley, and is it a desirable tree for lining a driveway? Carobs have been grown in California for thirty years or more and they will make a handsome driveway and give a lot of pods for the kids and the pigs - for they are "the husks which the swine did eat," and both like them. They ought to be much more widely planted in California because they grow well and are good to look upon. Spineless Cactus Fruit. I have about two acres of high land in Fresno county that can't be irrigated. It is red adobe soil and there is hardpan in it. Which kind of fruit trees will grow and pay best? How near may the hardpan be to the surface before I have to blast it? It is a hard fruit proposition. Try spineless cactus, the fruits of which are delicious. Blasting would help if there is a moist substratum below the hardpan and might enable you to grow many fruits. If your land is hard and dry all the way down, blasting would not help you unless you can get irrigation. Presumably your rainfall is too small for fruit unless you strike underflow below the hardpan. Cleaning Fruit Trays. What do you advise for killing and removing the whitish mold that forms on trays used for drying prunes? Would sunning the trays be effective, or washing in hot water, or is there some suitable fungicide? Good hot sun and dry wind will kill the mold. The spores of such a common mold are waiting everywhere, so that your fruit would mold anyway if conditions were right. Still, scalding the trays for cleanliness and a short trip through the sulphur box for fungus-killing is commended. Killing Moss on Old Trees. I have some Bartlett pear trees that are covered with moss and mold, and the bark is rough and checked. I have used potash (98%), 1 pound to 6 gallons spray. It kills the long moss, but the green mold it does not seem to affect. The trees have been sprayed about one week. Some trees have been sprayed with a 1 pound to 10 gallons solution by mistake. Shall I spray these again with full strength, and when? You have done enough for the moss at present. Even the weaker solution ought to be strong enough to clean the bark. Wait and see how the bark looks when the potash gets through biting; it will keep at it for some time, taking a fresh hold probably with each new moisture supply from shower or damp air. The spray should have been shot onto the bark with considerable force - not simply sprinkled on. Shy-Bearing Apples. I have some apple trees 10 and 12 years old that do not bear satisfactorily, but persist in making 5 to 6 feet of new wood each year. If not cut back this winter, will they be more likely to make fruit buds? Yes, probably. Certainly you should try it. You should also cultivate less and slow down the growth. If they then take to bearing, you can resume moderate pruning and better cultivation. This is on the assumption that your trees are in too rich or too moist a place. But you should satisfy yourself by inquiry and observation as to whether the same varieties do bear well in your vicinity when conditions are such that slower growth is made. If the variety is naturally shy in bearing, or if it requires cross-pollination, the proposed repressive treatment might not avail anything. In that case you can graft over the tree to some variety which does bear well or graft part of the trees to another variety for cross-pollination. No Apples on Quince. How large a tree will the Yellow Bellefleur apple make if grafted or budded on quince root at the age of 15 years? I have been trying to get some information about dwarf fruit trees, but it is difficult to get. No wonder the information is hard to get. The Yellow Bellefleur will not grow upon the quince at all, or at least not for long. In growing dwarf apples the Paradise stock is used, while the quince is used for dwarfing the pear, and many varieties of pears will accept the quince root which the apple rejects. Stock for Apples. Do you recommend French seedling stock as greatly to be preferred to that grown in this country? French seedling stock is generally used because it is graded and furnished in uniform sizes; also, because it can usually be purchased for less than seedlings can be grown under our labor conditions. Locally grown apple seedlings are apt to be irregular in size and, as already stated, cost more than the properly graded imported stock. Apples and Alfalfa. I have recently come across a proposition to sow apple orchards in the interior of southern California with alfalfa. The apples are said to be superior and the crop heavier, to say nothing of a half or two-thirds of an alfalfa crop in addition to the crop of apples. What do you know about it? Is alfalfa being used by others in this way? It is perfectly rational to grow alfalfa in fruit orchards if the water supply is ample for both the trees and the intercrop and the owner will not yield to the temptation to waterlog his trees for the sake of getting more alfalfa. It is even more desirable in the interior than near the coast, probably. In Arizona some growers have for a number of years practiced growing alfalfa in orchards, cutting the alfalfa without removing it, counting that clippings are worth more to them through their decay and the increase of the humus content of the soil. Even where this is not done, the alfalfa will add to the humus of the soil by its own wastes both from root and stem. The presence of an alfalfa cover reduces the danger of leaf and bark burning either by reflected or radiated heat from a smooth ground surface, and some trees are very much benefited by this protection in regions of high temperature. This might be expected to be the case with the apple, which is somewhat subject to leaf burning in our interior valleys. Top Grafting. In grafting over apple and pear trees to some other variety, is it advisable to cut off and graft the entire tree the first year where the trees are from 7 to 15 years old, or would it be better to cut off only a part of the top the first year and the rest the following year? In the coast region it is a good practice to graft over the whole tree at one time, cutting, however, above the forks and not into the main stem below the forking. This gives many scions which seem able to take care of the sap successfully. In the interior valleys, it is rather better practice to leave a branch or two, cutting them out at the following winter's pruning, for probably the first year's grafts will give you branches enough. This has the effect of preventing the drowning out of the scions from too strong sap-flow. Cutting back and regrafting of old trees should be done rather early, before the most active sap-flow begins. The later in the season the grafting is done, and the warmer the locality, the more desirable it seems to be to leave a branch or two when grafting. Apple Budding. What is the best time to bud apples? Apples are budded in July and August and remain dormant until the following spring. Mildew on Apple Seedlings. Why do young apple plants in the seed bed became mildewed? They are in a lath house. Because too much moisture was associated with too much shade. More sunshine would have prevented mildew, and if they had enjoyed it the seedlings could have made better use of the water probably. Pruning Apples. Young apple trees set two years ago were cut back to 14 to 18 inches and cared for as to low branching, proper spacing, etc., but the desired branches were allowed to make full growth to the present time. They have mode great growth and if allowed to continue will make too tall trees. We understand that your trees have made two summers' growth since pruning. We should cut back to a good lateral wherever you can find one running at the right direction at about three to four feet from the last cut, and shorten the lateral more or less according to the best judgment we could form on sight of the tree. In this way you can take out the branches which are running too high and make the framework for a lower growth. Do not remove the small twigs and spurs unless you have too many such shoots. Cutting Back Apples and Pears. "California Fruits" says the "apple does not relish cutting back, nor is it desirable to shorten in the branches." But when a three-year-old tree gets above 12 feet high, as many of mine are doing, what are you going to do? I cut these back same last year, but up they go again with more branches than ever. The pears are getting too tall, also. Should not both apple and pear trees be kept down to about ten feet? The quotation you make refers to old bearing trees, and indicates that their pruning is not like that of the peach, which is continually shortened in to keep plenty of new wood low down. Of course, in securing low and satisfactory branching on young apples, pears, etc., there must be cutting back, and this must be continued while you are forming the tree. If you mean that these trees are to be permanently kept at ten feet high, you should have planted trees worked on dwarfing stocks. Such a height does not allow a standard tree freedom enough for thrift; as they become older they will require from twice to thrice the altitude you assign to them, probably. Pears can be more successfully kept down than apples, but not to ten feet except as dwarfs. Pruning Old Apple Trees. How would you prune apple trees eight or nine years old that have not been cut back? There are a great many that have run up 20 feet high with twelve or fifteen main limbs and very few being more than two or three inches in diameter. Remove cross branches which are interfering with others and thin out branches which seem to be crowding each other at their attachments to the trunk, by removing some of them at the starting point. Having removed these carefully so as not to knock off spurs from other branches, study the tree as it is thus somewhat opened up and see where remaining branches can be shortened to overcome the tendency to run too high. Do not shear off branches leaving a lot of stubs in the upper part of the tree, but always cut back a main branch to a lateral and shorten the lateral higher up if desirable. This will keep away from having a lot of brush in the top of the tree. Study each tree by itself for symmetry and balance of branches and proceed by judgment rather than by rules anyone can give you. Top-Grafting Apples. Can I graft over a few Ben Davis apple trees 25 years old or thereabouts, but thrifty and vigorous? It is certainly possible, by the old top-grafting method which has been used everywhere with apples for centuries. Graft during the winter. Work on the limbs above the head so as to preserve the advantage of the old forking, using a cleft graft and waxing well. It is usually best to graft over a part of the limbs and the balance a year later. Will the Apples Be the Same Kind? I have a mixed orchard, mostly Gravensteins, and I want to graft all the other trees into a Gravenstein top if I can do so and at the same time get the early Gravenstein bloom and the fruit would be as satisfactory as though on other roots. The new tree grown from the grafts will behave just like the tree from which the scions were taken if similarly thrifty. Places for Apples. What quality is it in the soil in the vicinity of Watsonville that makes that country peculiarly adapted to the culture of apples? Are there not other portions of the State where apples could be produced on a commercial basis? It is not alone quality in the soil, but character of the climate that underlie success in the Watsonville district. Apples can be and are grown on a commercial scale through the coast district of Sonoma, Mendocino, and Humboldt counties; also in suitable situations in the coast counties south of Santa Cruz county. Along the coast, as far as deep retentive soil and the cool air of the ocean extend, one may expect to get apples similar to those produced in the Watsonville district. In the interior valleys, on suitable soils with adequate moisture, early apples are profitably grown, while in the higher foothill and mountain valleys in all parts of the State, where moisture is sufficient, late keeping apples of high quality are produced. Summer-pruning Apples. Will summer pruning cause apple trees to bear fruit instead of growing so much new wood? Over-growth can be repressed by summer pruning, and if done just at the right time bearing is increased and late new growth is avoided, but it is not easy to determine exactly the right time, and it has to be fixed according to local conditions of length of growing season and growth condition of the tree itself also. It is better for some varieties than others, and, in fact, has to be done wisely. A summer slashing of apple trees, simply because some one says so, is not only expensive, but may do more harm than good. Therefore, those inclined to it, should try a few trees at first and note results. Grafting Apple Seedlings in Place. I want to plant apple trees for home use. I have an idea to plant apple seeds instead of trees: planting three or four seeds for each hill, right in the place where I would grow the trees, and select the best one to graft on. I will take seed of Bellefleurs, which are vigorous growers. What do you think? Will the seed germinate readily and when is the right time to plant? Select plump, well ripened seed, keep them in damp sand until the ground begins to get warm in January or February, according to location. But such an undertaking will cost you vastly more in time, in labor, and waste of land than it would to buy well-grown nursery trees budded with the variety which you desire. Such trees would give you practically a uniform lot of trees in your orchard while planting seedlings and grafting afterward would give you very irregular and for the most part unsatisfactory results - providing you get any seeds to grow at all in the open ground, which is doubtful. Resistant Apple Roots. A few apple trees which are almost dead from ravages of the woolly aphis. I am going to dig them out and plant in their places other apple trees on woolly aphis-proof root. Will it be necessary to use measures to exterminate the woolly aphis in the old roots or their places in the ground before planting new trees in the places of the removed trees? It is not necessary to undertake to kill aphis in the ground when you are planting apple trees on resistant roots. It will give your trees a better start to dig large holes, throw out the old soil, and fill in with some new soil from another part of the land to be planted, but it has been demonstrated that these roots are resistant, no matter if planted in the midst of infestation. Apples and Cherries for a Hot Place. What kind of apple do you think would do best in a dry, hot climate? What do you think of the Early Richmond cherry in such a place? Apples most likely to succeed in a dry situation are those which ripen their fruit very early. The Red Astrachan is on the whole the most satisfactory, but there are many places which are altogether too dry and hot for any kind of apple. Whether cherries would succeed or not you can only tell by trying. Possibly the trees would not live through the summer if your soil becomes very dry. The most hardy cherries are the sour or pie cherries and the Early Richmond is one of this group. Die-back of Apple Trees. What causes the death of the top shoots in apple trees? New wood is sometimes diseased by mildew, but die-back is usually due to two different causes: One, the accumulation of water in the soil during the excessive rains of mid-winter; second, the occurrence of low temperatures, including frosts, after the sap has risen. Which of these causes operate in a certain case depends, of course, upon whether the soil was heavy and inclined to retain standing water too long, or whether there were such frosts at about the time when the leaves should start. Sometimes, of course, both of these conditions worked in the same place; sometimes one and sometimes the other, but certainly both of them are capable of causing the trouble. There seems to be no specific disease; it is rather a matter of unfavorable conditions for growth. Storage of Apples. We desire to store two or three thousand boxes of apples for three or four months and propose to do it in this way: Make an excavation in dry earth, putting at the bottom of the excavation straw. Upon this straw place the apples, then dry straw over the apples, and upon the top of this two or three feet of dry earth. Will it be a good plan to pour on water from time to time over the top of this to keep the apples and all wet, or should the apples be kept dry? Putting down loose apples in a straw-lined pit would be very expensive. It would invite decay by bruising the fruit, and the result would probably be a worthless mixture of rotten fruit and straw. The fruit should be stored in boxes or shallow trays to reduce pressure and promote ventilation, and not in bins or large piles. Apples will keep for a long time in good condition if the boxes are put in piles in the shade, covered with straw, which should be slightly moistened from time to time; but in that case there would not be such an accumulation of moisture and there would be ventilation at all times. Apples should be kept dry, but they will shrivel and become unmarketable unless the air in which they are stored is kept reasonably moist. This is generally accomplished by making apple houses with double walls and roof to exclude heat and with an earth or concrete floor which can be sprinkled from time to time with a hose. Apple Root-grafts. I have an old apple orchard and would like to have two or three of the best varieties positively identified, so that I can order these kinds from the nursery for next year's planting. Old California apple orchards have many varieties no longer propagated largely. If you greatly desire to have a few trees of exactly the varieties which you are now growing, you run some risk of mistake in ordering by name, but if you make some root-grafts by taking a piece of the smaller roots of the tree, which you can dig out, say about the size of a pencil, and graft scions upon them, you can secure root-grafts for planting in nursery this year and in that way be sure to have trees of exactly the same kind. Root-grafts can be made in the winter, placed in sand which is kept moist and not wet, planted out as soon as the ground warms up, and you will get immediate and very satisfactory growth in that way. Pruning Old Apple Trees. I have an old orchard containing some apple trees about 40 years old - trees well shaped but with plenty of main branches and limbs all very long. The trees bear profusely in alternate years but the fruit is small. In pruning would you advise cutting out some main limbs where there are over three or four and thus making a big wood reduction (where sunburn protection can still be guarded) or would you only shorten in the branches and thin the fruit severely? Do not remove main branches unless they are clearly too numerous or have been allowed to grow to interference with each other or have become weakened or feeble in some way. In such cases the space is worth more than the branch. If the tree has a fair framework do not disturb it in order to get down to an arbitrary limit of three or four main branches; sometimes the tree can carry more. If the tree is too thick, thin it out by removing side branches of more or less size - saving the best, judging by both vigor and position. Work through the whole top in this way until you reach the best judgment you can form of enough space and light for good interior foliage and fruit. Apple branches should seldom be shortened, and when this seems desirable, cut to a side branch and not to a stub which will make a lot of weak shoots or brush in the top of the tree. Pruning Apple Trees. There is a great difference of opinion here regarding the pruning of three-year or older apple trees. Many people cut back three, four and five-year-old trees half the season's growth; others only cut back six inches. Apple trees are cut back during their early life to cause branching and to secure short distances between the larger laterals on the main branches. This secures a lower, stronger tree. Cutting back twice or three times should secure a good framework of this kind, and then the apple should not be regularly and systematically cut back as the peach and apricot are. It is not possible to prescribe definite inches, because cutting back is a matter of judgment and depends upon how thick the growth is, what its position and relation to other shoots, etc. The chief point in cutting back is to know where you wish the next laterals to come on the shortened shoot, and if you do not wish more laterals at once; do not cut back at all. Treatment, of laterals which come of themselves is another matter. Do not clip the ends of shoots unless laterals are desired. If you keep clipping the ends of apple twigs, you will get no fruit from some varieties. Grafting Almond on Peach. I had good success with the peach trees which I grafted to almond last spring, getting about 95 per cent of a stand, and many of the grafts now are one and one-half inches diameter. In each of the trees I left about a quarter of the branches, to keep up the growing process of the tree. The universal practice around here in grafting is to cut the whole top off the tree at the time of grafting, but the increased growth and vigor of the grafts I have has proved to me and other growers around, that much better results are obtained by leaving part of the top on the tree at the time of grafting. You did exceedingly well with your grafting. It seems a more rational way to proceed than by a total amputation, and yet ample success is often attained by grafting for a whole new top at once. Pruning Almonds. Should the main branches be shortened in a three-year-old almond tree? Of course, I intend to thin out the branches. Some growers here advise me to shorten the main branches; others say do not shorten them, as it tends to give the trees a brushy top. Although some growers are contending for regular shortening - in of the almond as is practiced on the peach, it is not usual to cut back almond trees after they have reached three years of age and have assumed good form. Of course, if cutting back is done, the shoots coming from near the amputation must be thinned out to prevent the brushiness your adviser properly objected to. Budding and Grafting Almonds. Is it better to bud or graft bitter almond seedlings of one year's growth, and, as they must be transplanted, would it be proper to do the work this season or defer it for another year's growth? Your almond seedlings should have been budded in July or August after starting from the nut, which would have fitted them for planting in orchard the following winter as dormant buds, as they cannot stay where they are another season. Now you can transplant to nursery rows in another place: cut back and graft as the buds are swelling, allowing a good single shoot to grow from below on those which do not start the grafts into which you can bud in June, and cut back the stock to force growth as soon as the buds have taken. In this way you will get the whole stock into trees for planting out next winter. Some will be large and some small, but all will come through if planted in good soil and cared for properly. Of course, you can plant out the seedlings and graft and bud in the orchard, but it will be a lot of trouble and you will get very irregular results. Cutting Back Almonds. I have some nice thrifty two-year-old almond trees which I did not "top" this spring. The limbs are from about four to seven or eight feet long. Would it not be best to "top" them yet? Cut them back to a shoot of this year's growth, removing about a third of last year's growth, perhaps. This will give you lower and better branching. Almond Planting. I am contemplating the planting of about five to eight acres of almonds: what variety is best to plant? Before planting so many almonds, you should determine how satisfactory the almond is in bearing in your location. Unless you can find satisfactory demonstration of this fact, it is hazardous to plant such an acreage. On the other hand, if you find that almonds are bearing satisfactorily, the kinds which are perhaps most satisfactory to plant are Nonpareil, Texas Prolific, Ne Plus Ultra and Drake's Seedling. The Texas Prolific and Drake's Seedling are abundant bearers and profitable because of the size of the crop, although the price is lower than the soft-shelled varieties, Nonpareil and Ne Plus Ultra. These two varieties are such energetic pollinizers that they not only bear well themselves, but force the bearing of the larger varieties mentioned. Every third row in your plantation should be either Texas Prolific or Drakes' Seedlings, which would give you two-thirds of the larger varieties and one-third of the smaller. There are, of course, other soft-shelled almonds which are worth planting and are being considerably planted in localities where they do well. This you can ascertain by inquiry among local growers and nurserymen. The planting of a good proportion of active pollinizers is the most important point. Almond Pollination. My almond trees look healthy but the fruit seems to be diseased. Is it necessary to have male and female trees, and how can one distinguish them? The almond is monoecious and has perfect blossoms, therefore, there is no such thing as male and female trees in the case of the almond, but most of the best soft-shelled almonds are self-sterile and need cross-pollination from another variety. This is discussed elsewhere in answer to another question. Roots for the Almond. Which is the best root to have the almond grafted on, peach or bitter almond? The soil is sandy. The bitter almond and the hard-shelled sweet almond are both used and we are not aware that any particular advantage has been demonstrated for either of them. The almond does well on peach roots also, but the almond is a better root where the soil conditions suit it. Longevity of Almond and Peach. What is difference in life of peach and almond in California? The almond is the longer-lived, but we have seen both assuming the aspect of forest trees in abandoned pioneer places. Both are apt to live longer than their planters, if soil and moisture conditions favor. Almond Seedlings. I have been told that almond trees raised from seed, no matter what kind of seed planted, will produce bitter almonds. Is this a fact? It is not a fact. The majority will probably be hard-shell, sweet and bitter, but others will be soft-shell, medium-shell, paper-shell, and everything else you ever heard of in the almond line. The almond has the sportiest kind of seedlings. Do Not Plant Almonds in Place. I have 30 acres which I intend to plant to almonds and peaches, and I thought of planting the sprouted nuts and pits where I wanted my trees, and budding the same there in orchard form. As one or two years' use of the land is not considered, what is your advice? My idea is to plant in orchard at start so as not to disturb roots, as when grown in nursery and transplanted in orchard. Would it not progress as rapidly? Would you advise budding peaches on almond roots; if not, why? My idea is that it would give a longer-lived tree. We would do nothing of the kind. If we decided it better to grow trees than to buy them, we would grow and bud the seedlings in nursery and not in the field. Field budding is open to all kinds of injuries and growth from it, when saved from cultivation and all kinds of intruders, is irregular and uncertain. As for starting the roots from the nut in plate, it is largely a fanciful consideration. We count it no gain for the walnut which makes a tap root, and still less gainful for the almond and peach, which, usually make spreading roots. To cut off a tap root does not prevent the tree from rooting deeply if the soil is favorable. As to use of the land, you lose time by growing the seedlings in place. The peach does well on the almond root if soil conditions favor the almond. Perhaps it gives longer life to the peach, but the profitable life of the peach tree in a proper soil does not depend on the root; it depends upon the treatment of the top in pruning for renewal of branches. Almond and Peach. With water-table at 18 feet, which root is best for almond trees? The experience around here is that the peach root starts best. Which root is most durable? What is the life of the peach root and of the almond? It is not merely a question of depth to water, but of character of the soil above the water. Neither of the roots will stand heavy soil which holds water too long, and both enjoy a free loam which drains readily down to the water-table or bottom water. If the soil is rather sandy, letting the water down very quickly, the almond is better in getting to it than the peach. If it is finer and still well drained the peach will do well, and the almond enjoys that also. The almond probably can be counted on to stand coarser soil and greater drouth than the peach and under such conditions will outlive the peach, probably, but both of them will live twenty to thirty years or more if pruned in the head to get enough new wood and the trunk is kept from sunburn. Aside from this choose the almond root for the almond. Pollination of Almonds. I have Drake's Seedling almonds. Some people have told me that I must plant some hardshell variety between them, otherwise they will not bear. It is not necessary to plant hardshell almonds near Drake's Seedling trees in order to have them bear. Some varieties of almonds will set few nuts unless they are cross-pollinated, but these are the paper-shell varieties, as a rule - the Nonpareil, IXL and Ne Plus Ultra - and for these the Drake's Seedling or Texas Prolific is planted as a pollenizer. The highest-priced nut of all is the Nonpareil, and it is also a good bearer when in a good location and planted with Drake's or Texas Prolific. Stick-tight Almonds. I have leased seven acres of bearing almond trees which have the appearance of being reasonably well cared for. I notice a few trees that still have almonds on ("stick-tights"). What is the cause and remedy? The occurrence of stick-tights is generally due to lack of moisture and thrifty growth, although some trees may be weak from some other cause and therefore deficient in sap-flow, which manifests itself in that way. Single nuts may also fall into that condition of malnutrition. We know no remedy except to keep the trees in good thrift by cultivation or by the use of irrigation if necessary. Shy-bearing Apricots. Why do my apricot trees not bring fruit? They seem healthy and are vigorous-looking trees. Five large trees have not borne 100 pounds of fruit in three years. The trees are not over six years old. You may have a shy-bearing kind of apricot, of which there are many, or the trees may have grown too fast to hold the fruit, or the frost or north wind may have blasted the bloom. Stop winter pruning, and summer prune to prevent excessive growth; reduce irrigation; try to convince the apricot that it is not a "green bay tree" and see what will happen. Pruning Apricots. In pruning apricots, if there should be a hollow center of a big branch in center of a seven-year-old tree, should it be cut out with summer pruning? Should heavy growing apricots be summer pruned? Would it be all right to thin out a dense growth of wood in the prune trees in September? It is always desirable to cut below a hollow in a limb if possible. Where, however, this would necessitate cutting below the desirable laterals, the cavity may be filled with cement and thus rendered serviceable for some years. Summer pruning of the apricot is desirable if the growth is heavy and the tree has reached a bearing age. Thinning out of prune trees can be undertaken in the autumn, providing the tree has practically finished its growth, as indicated by the change in the color and pose of the leaves. Apricot Propagation. Can Royal apricots be grafted into seedling apricots? Do the scions do well? What is the best time to graft them? The apricot is grafted readily by the ordinary cleft grafting, amputating above the forks if the tree is low-headed enough to allow you to work into the limbs instead of the trunk. Grafts will take all right in the trunk by bark grafting, but working in smaller limbs makes a stronger tree. This is for old trees and the grafting is done during the winter. Younger seedlings can be cleft or whip grafted in the stems, but it is better to bud into the young seedlings with plump buds of the current year's growth, in June, and by shortening in the seedling above the buds as soon as they have taken, get a growth on the bud in the latter half of the same growing season. In nursery practice, trees are usually made by budding in July or August into seedlings which are then growing from the seed planted the previous winter. Little seedlings from under old trees may be carefully transplanted to nursery rows in the spring and budded the same summer. Cultivated well and irrigated if necessary, they will not suffer from this transplanting. Renewing Old Apricots. Shall I prune back heavily a 15 to 20-year-old apricot tree which did not mature its fruit this season, I think on account of neglect? It was very poorly cultivated and not irrigated, consequently looks very sick. Cut back all the main branches to six or eight feet from the ground, leaving on whatever small growth there may be below that height. Paint the stubs and thin out the shoots next summer to get the right number of new branches properly distributed. Whether you will get a good renewal of the head depends upon whether the sickness is in the root or not. Cut back just before the buds swell toward the end of the dormant season. Summer Pruning of Apricots. Is it feasible to prune five-year-old apricot trees in August? They seem in good growth and have been irrigated three times this season, though they have never been pruned very closely. Summer pruning would be perfectly proper and advisable. Summer pruning immediately after the fruit is picked, has become much more general, and winter pruning has proportionately decreased. Young trees are winter pruned to promote low branching and short, stout limbs; bearing trees are summer pruned to promote fruit bearing and check wood growth - the excess of bearing shoots being removed by thinning during the winter. Wild Cherries. Where do the Mahaleb and Mazzard cherries grow naturally? How large are the trees, and what kind of fruit do they bear? The Mazzards, of which there are many, and some of them wild in the Eastern States, are counted inferior seedlings of the species avium, and are tall, large trees, the fruit being small and rather acrid and colors various. The Mahaleb is a European type with a smaller tree, fruit inferior to the Mazzards, and used as a root under soil and climatic conditions under which the Mazzard is not hardy and vigorous. Neither of the kinds are worth considering for their fruit. Pruning Cherries. I have some cherry trees that have not been pruned. They are beautiful trees, but it a requires a 24-foot ladder to get near the top limbs. The side limbs reach from tree to tree. They had a splendid crop this year. People here tell me never to prune cherry trees. One man who claims considerable experience with fruit says prune them as soon as the crop is off. Your cherry trees should have been pruned for the first two or three years quite severely, in order to secure better branching and strength in the main branches. If this is done, and the trees come into full bearing, very little pruning has to be done afterward, except removing diseased, interfering or surplus branches, if there are too many. It is perfectly safe to cut back the trees which you now have as you have been advised to do, after the leaves have fallen or after they have begun to turn yellow. The trees can be safely topped and thinned, for the cherry accepts pruning very readily. Even considerable amounts of the tops have been cut off at fruit-picking time from trees which have been running too high, so that the fruit could be secured, and this has not injured the trees, according to our own experience and observation. Cherries can be summer-pruned to check excessive growth and to promote fruit-bearing, but as your trees have already begun to bear well, this treatment does not seem to be necessary. You should do fall and winter pruning for the shape of the trees. Training Cherry Grafts. I have grafted a lot of seedling cherries, leaving two or three buds on each piece of grafted wood. In planting these out, shall I put the union under ground (they are grafted at the crown of the root) and shall I loosen the cloth a little later when they start to grow? How can I get the head for the tree? Should I let only one shoot form, and when it is as high as I want it, cut it off as I would a tree gotten from a nursery? If you have used waxed cloth in your grafting, it will be necessary to loosen it after the tree gets a good start. Common unwaxed cloth could be trusted to decay soon enough, probably, but it should be looked at to see that it is not binding. The union should not be placed much below the ground surface, although it can be safely covered, and the future stem may look the better for it. One shoot could be allowed to grow from each graft, choosing the best ones and pinching the others so that they will stop extension and hold leaves during the first season. These can be cleanly removed at the first winter pruning at the time you head back the main shoot to the proper height. Restoring Cherry Trees. I have about two acres of cherry trees in Sonoma county said to be about 20 years old. They are in a very neglected condition and I am desirous of putting them in good shape for next year's crop. They are in a very light sandy loam sail which is easily worked. Cherry trees under good growing conditions and proper care are very long lived in California and bear abundant crops when thirty and more years of age. In the San Jose district and elsewhere there are orchards considerably older than the limit stated and are still very profitable. If your trees have been so neglected that the branches have died back, the trees should be pruned, of course, cutting out all dead wood and shortening weak or dying branches to a point where a good strong shoot can be found. Then a good application of farmyard manure plowed in during the rainy season, followed by summer cultivation for moisture retention. Although the cherry is very hardy, it is quite likely to suffer on light soils which become too dry. On such soils as yours there is little if any danger of too much water in the winter, unless the land lies low, but the injury to the tree comes from the lack of moisture during the summer time, and this, with your abundant rainfall, you can probably assure by thorough summer cultivation. Renewing Cherry Trees. We have cherry trees set out diamond shape about 16 feet apart. We cannot take out every other tree and have any order, so we ask you if it would be possible to cut the trees back and keep them pruned down to a smaller size. The trees are about 20 years old and are dying back quite badly. If the trees are dying for lack of summer moisture it is idle to do much for them until you can give them irrigation right after the fruit ripens. The cherry tree takes kindly to cutting back and will give good new fruit-bearing shoots if the roots are in good condition. It is desirable to remove surplus branches entirely rather than to cut back everything to a definite height, the branches to be removed being those which show disposition to die back and those which are running out too far so as to reduce the space between the trees or to interfere with branches from other trees. Branches which are failing above can in some cases be cut back to a strong thrifty lateral branch below. Shortening-in branches high up is less desirable because it forces out too much new growth in the top of the tree and carries the fruit so high that picking would be expensive. All cuts of any size should be painted to prevent the wood from checking. Pruning Cherries. I have cherry trees in their third season which have been given the usual winter pruning. The trees are putting forth a great many more branches than are required, and naturally many of the branches are growing across the tree. In cutting these extra branches, I am informed that there is a way to trim them so that they will eventually form fruit spurs. I had an idea that in order to do this it would be well to cut about one inch from the main branch. Some one has told me that this would merely cause the little branch to sprout again. Cherry shoots which are not required or desired for branch-forming can be transferred into fruit spurs, if the tree is of bearing age, by shortening them in. Do not, however, cut at an arbitrary distance of one inch from the starting point, but rather save one or two buds at whatever distance from the starting point these may be growing. If the tree is too young to bear, only growth shoots may appear from these buds, but they are likely to be short and will support fruit spurs later. This practice should not be carried to excess or you will have too many small shoots which will not get light enough to bear good fruit, even if fruit spurs should appear. Pollination of Black Tartarian. There are many old Tartarian cherry trees around our district that have only borne a few cherries in years. There are Bing, Royal Ann and Early Purple Guignes here with these, but they seldom, if ever, bloom with the Tartarian at the proper time to pollinate. What varieties would cause the trees to bear? Sterility of the Black Tartarian is rather unusual. In the coast regions, Bing, Black Tartarian and Early Purple Guigne are all considered pollinizers for the Royal Ann. Inversely all these should be pollinizers for the Black Tartarian, if that variety requires such assistance, which we have all along supposed that it did not. Treatment of Fig Suckers. A few young fig trees are not growing from the tops, but are sending out suckers, in some cases above and others below the point of grafting. Had I better let these suckers grow and see what comes from them or plant new trees? Graft near the ground all those which are sending suckers from below the graft. Suckers from above grafting point can be trained into trees by selecting the best, tying to stakes to straighten up and removing all other suckers but the one selected. No Gopher-proof Fig Roots. Is it necessary that figs should be grafted in some other roots to keep the gophers from destroying the trees? What root should I order? Figs are not grown on any other than fig roots and are generally propagated by rooted cuttings for the purpose of avoiding the expense of grafting. The fruit must then be protected by killing the gophers rather than by an effort to get the tree upon a gopher-proof root. Pollination of Bartletts. Would Clapp's Favorite be a good pollinizer for the Bartlett as well as the White Doyenne? The white Doyenne and the Clapp's Favorite usually begin to bloom three or four days later than the Bartlett, but the Bartlett period extends about ten days into the blooming period of the others. Therefore, your question is to be answered in the affirmative; that is, if the Bartlett needs pollination, it will be likley to get it from either of these varieties. Comice Pears. Would you plant Comice pears instead of Bartletts, and why? What is their behavior as to bearing? Do they require any different treatment than Bartletts? What roots? Do they need other varieties for pollinizing? Do not plant Cornice instead of Bartletts except for those who have tested out the Cornice to their production and selling. Though satisfactory in some places, it makes no such wide record of success as the Bartlett and should be planted only on the basis of experience with it. Its propagation and culture are the same as other pears. It takes to the quince all right if you want dwarf trees. We have no record of its pollination needs, but as the Bartlett in California defies its Eastern reputation for self-sterility, it is likely that Cornice may also take care of itself, for it is not handicapped by such Eastern condemnation. No Pears on Peach. I saw, the other day, some Bartlett pear grafts in Salway peach trees, and the party informed me that he had seen three-year-old grafts that had pears last season. I would like your opinion, as I always thought that such a union was not possible. Our opinion is like yours, and seeing some pear grafts set in peach branches would not convince us that they would grow or bear fruit. Pigs in the Orchard. I have an orchard of Bartlett pears about fifteen years old, located on sediment land. I desire to set this to alfalfa, and to feed the alfalfa by letting hogs eat it off, thereby leaving the droppings on the land. What I wish to know is this: Will this crop be beneficial or injurious to the trees? Alfalfa can be successfully grown in an orchard, providing you have irrigation water so that the alfalfa shall not rob the trees of moisture; otherwise it is a very dangerous practice. The practice of running animals of any kind in an orchard is to be condemned. Pigs are particularly liable to injure trees by gnawing the bark, and we have seen fig trees barked clean as high as a pig could reach by standing on his hind legs. Of course, if you try an experiment for your own satisfaction, you will have to watch the pigs very carefully. It is true that growing pasture crops in an orchard and grazing, it off is injurious to trees, because the land lacks proper aeration, and good orchard cultivation is even more necessary in this State than in humid climates. Therefore, unless you are sure of a good water supply for irrigation, it would be altogether safer to give the whole land to the trees and keep them cultivated well, or else dig out the trees and use the land for other purposes. Dwarf Pears Not Commercially Grown. Will you kindly give the experience of pear growers in California who have grown the dwarfs? If you can give me the data or refer me to persons who can give data showing that the growing of dwarf pears can be made a commercial success the information will be of great value. There is no commercial growing of dwarf pears in this State, except some trees owned by the A. Block Company, Santa Clara. The late Mr. Block had an old orchard of dwarf trees, planted perhaps forty or fifty years ago, which he converted into an approach to a standard orchard by removing alternate rows, and the trees being otherwise treated like standards have been satisfactorily producing pears for many years. How far these trees are still on the dwarf roots and how far they have supplied themselves with roots from the variety growth above, we do not know. There is no disposition whatever to plant dwarf trees in this State except among a few amateurs who are making home fruit gardens. In view of the successful growth of standard trees in this State, there seem to be no adequate reasons for recourse to dwarf trees. Yield in Drying Pears. What is the loss of weight in drying Bartlett pears? They run from 7 to 8 lbs. of fresh pears to 1 lb. hard dried. There is quite wide variation according to condition of the fruit. Probably about 7 1/2 to 1 would be as near a realizable ratio as you could get by arbitrary estimate. Pear Problems. Kindly let me know the advisability of grafting Bartlett pears onto apple trees. In replanting pears in young orchard, how would it do to take rooted pear suckers, graft the Bartlett on them, and save the cost of nursery stock? Last year my five-year-old Bartlett orchard was full of blossoms, but, though many pears became as large as white beans, the majority of them dropped. The pear and apple do not make a good union. The grafts may grow for a while, but finally fail. Do not use suckers as stocks. You can dig up some year roots and use them as starters by making root-grafts with Bartlett scions and do better than with suckers, but a good pear seedling is the proper thing either for budding or root grafting. Unless you have some experience in such work, it will be cheaper in the end to buy good nursery trees. The nonbearing of your young trees is probably due to their youth and vigor. Bees and Pear Blight. A few years ago, I planted alfalfa between my pear trees and the trees bore a very heavy crop that year. Then blight made its appearance, and it was claimed that the bees carried the blight. I therefore plowed under the alfalfa and destroyed what few beehives I had. If the theory that the bees carry the blight from tree to tree is not correct, I will experiment with alfalfa again this year. It is true that bees carry pear blight. It is also true that you are not likely to get many pears without bees to pollinate the blossoms. You cannot escape the carriage of the pear blight by removing tame bees, because wild bees are abundant in all parts of the State. The way to overcome the blight is to pursue it by amputation of diseased branches continually, so that there may be no contamination for the bees to carry. You are certainly warranted in continuing your alfalfa growing without regard to this question, using water enough to keep the alfalfa growing well without saturating the soil to the injury of the trees or inducing too much summer growth on them. Forage Under Sprayed Trees. Is it safe to use arsenical sprays in a pear orchard in which alfalfa is raised between the trees and afterward cut and fed to cattle? It was fully demonstrated by experiment about 25 years ago that herbage under trees sprayed with paris green at the rate of 1 pound to 160 gallons of water was not injurious to animals pasturing upon it. We are not aware that such an experiment has been made with the more recently used arsenates - which can be used with a much higher amount of arsenic to the gallon because they do not injure the foliage - to determine whether the herbage below would be poisonous or not. Presumably not, because modern spraying does not admit as much loss from run-off as was the case with old Spraying methods. Pears on Quince. I saw some time ago a report of some French experiments in grafting the pear onto quince root. The report said the fruit produced was much larger than on any other root. Most of our common pears will take readily when grafted on the quince, but the quince transforms them into dwarfed trees. Such trees do produce, with proper care, very fine fruit. The remark about their being better than on standard trees refers, however, to other climates than ours, for California grows just as large pears on standard trees as can possibly be grown, while where conditions are harder the higher culture of the dwarf tree and the protection which it requires from climatic hardships, gives the dwarf tree the advantage. You can get pears on quince roots from most of our California nurseries. Pollination of Pears. Is it necessary in growing the Comice pear successfully, to put some other pear near for the purpose of pollination in order to make it successful? Will the ordinary Bartlett pear do for pollination? The Comice pear blooms with the Bartlett, and would therefore presumably be of pollinizing benefit to the Bartlett if the latter should require such treatment. Common experience in California, however, is that the Bartlett is self-fertile and not self-sterile as it is commonly reported in Eastern publications. California practice is, then, to plant Bartletts solidly without reference to preparation for pollination. Taking the matter the other way around, the Bartlett will do for pollination of the Comice probably, if that should be necessary. Lye-Peeling Peaches. Please give the formula for peeling peaches by dipping them in caustic soda or lye. Lye for peeling peaches is used at the rate of half to one pound to the gallon of water, according to the strength of the lye, which you can determine by the quickness with which it acts. The lye water is kept boiling, and the fruit is dipped in wire baskets, only being allowed to remain in the lye a few seconds, and is then plunged at once into fresh water. You must be careful to keep the lye boiling hot, also either to use running water for rinsing or change it very frequently, for you have to rely on fresh water to remove the lye, or the fruit is likely to be stained. Aged Peach Trees. What should be done with peach trees 35 years old which are becoming unthrifty, bearing only at the ends of the limbs, etc.? Old peach trees become bark-bound and need to be cut back to just above the crotch for the forcing out of new branches, this being facilitated, of course, by application of manure, good cultivation of the soil, use of water during the dry season, etc. The peach is, under most conditions, not a long-lived tree, and if your trees are 35 years of age, it is probable that best results could be obtained by grubbing them out and replanting with young trees on new soil if possible. The profitable life of the Eastern peach tree is put down at five or six years. In California the profitable life of the peach sometimes reaches twenty or more years, if growing under exceptionally good conditions; but 35 years would seem to be at least on the borders of decrepitude. Growing at the tips shows that you have not pruned annually to induce the growth of new wood lower down. Renewing Peach Orchard. Which is the best way to renew an old peach orchard? The trees are about 18 years old, Muirs and Fosters, and are yielding good crops, but some of the trees show decline. Is it best to replace the old ones with new trees or to plant a new orchard in between the old trees and cut out old ones when new trees are three or four years old? If the trees have sound bodies and are not badly injured by sunburn borers, do none of the things you mention, but would cut back for a new head. Cutting back should be done during the latter half of the dormant period and thinning of shoots to proper balance a new head should be carefully done the following winter. It is a hard job to get young trees to start among old trees and you are apt to get a mixed lot of trees which you will not be proud of. Cut back as suggested or rip out, plow deeply and start anew, placing the rows midway between the old rows. Will He Have Peaches? I have a young orchard between five and six years old, mostly of the Lovell variety. I didn't have much of a crop this year. Should I have a good crop next year? You ought to be able to tell now how full a set of fruit buds you have. If you do not know what the fruit buds are, ask some neighbor who knows peaches to point them out. If you have a good show of fruit buds, the question in California is not whether they will winter-kill or not, but whether the leaves held late enough the preceding summer and therefore the tree had strength enough to make good strong fruit buds. The late action of the leaves shows that the trees had enough autumn moisture. You will soon learn to recognize the condition also from the plumpness of the wood which carries the fruit buds. If all has gone well so far, the next point is to spray with the bordeaux mixture in November or December so that the new wood shall not be attacked by the peach blight or shothole fungus. This disease comes on early in the winter, sets the the new bark to gumming and endangers the crop. Then if you have San Jose scale, or if your trees showed much curl-leaf last spring, you ought to spray before the blossom buds show color with the lime-sulphur wash. Supposing that you have good buds now and are willing to protect them as suggested, your trees may be expected to come through with a good crop if seasonal moisture conditions are right. Peach Fillers in Apple Orchard. I have heard some talk against planting peach fillers in an apple orchard. What is your opinion on the subject? There is no objection providing the peach is profitable in the locality; and that point you must look into. The peach trees will not injure the apples unless they are allowed to stand too long. In that case they would interfere with the development of the apple. Grafting Peach on Almond. May I expect to get good results by grafting some kind of peach to 19-year-old almond tree? If so, what kind of peach will be best? When shall I do grafting? Peaches take to the almond all right. Cut off and graft in the branches above the main forking of the tree; leaving at least one large branch to be grafted later or to be cut out entirely if you have peach growth enough to fill the top sufficiently. Graft in any kind of peach you find to be worth growing. Graft toward the latter part of the dormant season, say when the buds are swelling for a new start. Peaches on Apricot. I have a three-year-old peach orchard grafted or budded on apricot roots, and interspersed through the orchard are young apricot trees, from half-inch to inch and a half in diameter, which sprang from the root, the peach bud or graft having died. I budded these over to peaches in summer, but the buds all died for some cause. What is now the best course to transform them into peach trees? If a graft, what form of graft, and approximately when should it be made? You can graft peach scions into the apricot sprouts by taking the peach scions of the varieties you desire while the tree is perfectly dormant, keeping them in a cool place and putting in the grafts just as the buds are beginning to swell on the apricot stock. The scions can be buried in the earth in the shade of a fence or building, selecting a place, however, which is moist enough and yet where the water does not gather. The ordinary form of top grafting in stems an inch or more in diameter will work well. The half-inch stems can be whip-grafted successfully. You will have to wax well and see that the wax coating is kept sound until the growth starts. Replanting After Root-knots. In digging out some old peach trees, I find now and then a tree affected with root knot. I am burning the root, of course, but as these trees are scattered in the orchard, I wish to plant young trees in same locations, thus preserving the rows. Can new stock be safely put in the earth from which the old tree is removed? If treatment of the soil is essential, what is recommended? Dig a good large hole, removing the earth, and fill with new earth from between the rows, and in this way healthy growth ought to be obtained, although there is always a disposition in some trees to put on knots. They should be looked at from time to time and all those affecting the larger stem should be removed and the wound painted with bordeaux mixture. Buds in Bearing Trees. In budding over some old peach trees, should I cut away the branch above the bud when the latter seems to have taken? The sap flow to the upper part of the branch should be checked by part girdling or by part breaking or bending the top above the bud, after the bud is seen to have set or taken. Do not remove the whole top until the growth on the bud has started out well or else you will "drown it" with excessive sap flow. Pollen Must Be of the Same Kind. Do peaches, nectarines and apricots set fruit with the pollen of one another, and are the various peaches, nectarines and apricots self-sterile, or will most kinds set fruit with their own pollen? We do not count upon pollination between different kinds of fruit. Most fruits are self-fertile, else we could not attain the practical results we do, because it is only in the planting of almonds, cherries, pears and apples that any regard is paid to the association of varieties for that cross-fertilization. Some fruits are more apt to be self-fertile in this State than in other States where the growing conditions are not so favorable. Peach Budding. Which is easier with the peach, grafting or budding? The peach is rather a difficult tree to graft, and budding, on the other hand, is quite easy. You can bud into new shoots of this season's growth in July, and, if necessary, you can improve the slipping of the bark by irrigation a few days before budding. Buds can also be successfully placed in June in the old bark of the peach, providing it is not too old. For this select well-matured buds from the larger shoots and use rather a larger shield than in working into new shoots. When the buds are seen to have taken, the top growth beyond it can be reduced gradually and some new growth forced on the buds the same season, if the sap flow continues as it might be expected to do on young trees well cared for. Grafting on the Peach. Will pears do to graft on the peach, or will plums do well on the peach? How soon ought they to bear when grafted on the peach which is past three years old? Pears cannot be grafted on peaches. Plums generally do well on the peach, and if the grafts are taken from bearing trees, should come into fruit the second season. The peach is more difficult to graft than other fruit trees, because of the drying back of the bark. Be extra careful in the waxing and be sure that the waxing remains good until the growth starts out well the following summer. Young Trees Failing to Start. Some peach and almond trees set out last spring lived, but made no growth. Should they be replaced with new stock? If not, what may be expected of them? If your inactive trees have good plump dormant buds (though they may not be large buds), they may make good growth the coming summer, if the land is good and the moisture right for free growth. Peach Planting in Alfalfa Sod. Is it advisable to plant canning peaches in April, and will I gain time in growth and development? I want to set out eight acres in Tuscans or Phillips on deep rich soil near Yuba City. I have a pumping plant and can irrigate. The land has been in alfalfa for several years. I have in mind setting out trees without disturbing the alfalfa - until next plowing season. Do you think it advisable to use commercial fertilizer on ten-year-old Muirs? Planting the best canning peaches on good peach soil near Yuba City seems to be about the safest line of fruit investment which can be undertaken. We doubt that you can get much growth from trees planted in an old stand of alfalfa without some effort to kill out the plant which now occupies the ground. Still, by deep digging, throwing out all the alfalfa roots and thorough hoeing during the growing season and keeping the alfalfa mowers from sawing off the tops of them, the trees may make a good start. As the alfalfa will have to be irrigated, April may not be too late to start the trees, providing you can find nursery stock which is still quite dormant. Probably ten-year-old peach trees will be very much improved by commercial fertilizers. Prune on Almond. What root is considered best for prune trees? The ranch lies above the creek. A friend is very partial to the almond root instead of the myrobalan, but I understand that the prune tree sometimes outgrows the almond root. If you have a deep rather light soil which drains well and which there is, therefore, no danger of water standing during the rainy season, the almond root is perfectly satisfactory for the prune. It is a strong-growing root and keeps pace with the top growth well. The prune, in fact, is more apt to overgrow the myrobalan than the almond, and the myrobalan will not do well on light soils likely to dry out as the almond will. Re-grafting Silver Prunes. I have five acres of Silver prunes which produce very little fruit. The trees are strong and healthy. French prune trees adjoining bear regularly and heavily. Can I graft French prunes on the Silver trees? Will Silver prune trees take other grafts, such as apricots or apples? The Silver prune is often unsatisfactory for reason of shy bearing. It is perfectly feasible to graft over the tree to the French prune and this has been done for years by different growers. Apricots will usually take on the plum stock, but are apt to over-grow it or else be dwarfed themselves, but the apricot is often worked upon a plum stock. Apples have no grafting affinity whatever for the plum. French or Italian. In the prune-growing district around Salem, Oregon, Italian prunes are grown exclusively for drying purposes. French prunes were considered worthless. Here in Sutter county, California, a great many French prunes are grown and we are advised to plant them, but would rather plant the Italian prune. Which would you advise us to set out in this part of the State? The Italian or Fellenberg prune was grown to some extent in California 40 years and abandoned; it was not so sure in bearing as the French, and it was not the type of prune which we had ambition to excel with. The prune which we grow as the French is the true prune or plum of Agen. We should plant it and let the Oregon people have the Italian. Myrobalan Seedlings. I am sending two small plums which I am told are Myrobalan plum. I desire to grow seedlings on which later to bud and graft French prunes. If these are Myrobalan plums, will trees from them be as good as trees from pits that were imported? The fruits are Myrobalan plums, and their seedlings would be suitable for the French prune, providing the trees which bear them are strong, thrifty growing trees. There is great variation in the colors of the Myrobalan seedlings, from light yellow to dark red, and it is the satisfactory growth of the tree rather than the character of the fruit which one has to bear in mind when growing seedlings from selected trees instead of depending so largely on imported seedlings. Drying Plums and Prunes. I have plum trees of various kinds that are loaded with fruit. I do not know if any are of the variety used for drying as prunes: I know nothing of the process of making or drying prunes. One man suggests that I dip them for four or live minutes in a 3 or 4 per cent solution of lye and then place them in the sun. Dipping your plums is right providing they are very sweet, as they will dry like prunes without removing the pit. If they are plums that are commercially used for shipping, without enough sugar to dry as prunes, the pit must be removed. Drying in this way, you do not need to use lye, which is simply for the purpose of cracking the skin so that the moisture can be more readily evaporated. There is no danger in using the necessary amount of lye. Less is used than in making hominy. The Sugar Prune. What is the commercial value of the Sugar prune? Is there any other early ripening variety better than the Sugar? It is selling very well as a cured prune, and growers in the northern bay counties especially have done so well that they are extending their plantings. It is coarser in flesh than the French and generally flatter in flavor when cooked and thus falls below the ideal of a cured prune, but it has compensating characters, such as early ripening, with which no other prune compares. The Sugar is also valuable as a shipping plum to Eastern markets. Glossing Dried Prunes. Will you give the method for giving the gloss to dried French prunes? There are various methods. One pound of glycerine to 20 gallons of water; a quick dip in the mixture very hot gives a good finish. Where a clear bloom rather than a shine, is desired, five pounds of common salt to 100 gallons of water, also dipped hot, gives a good effect. Some use a thin syrup made by boiling small prunes in water (by stove or steam) and thinning with water to produce the result desired. Steam cooking avoids bad flavor by burning. The salt dip is probably the most widely used. Price of Prunes on a Size Basis. Explain the grading in price of prunes. For instance, if the base price is, say, five and three-fourths cents, what size does this refer to, and how is the price for other sizes calculated? Also, what is the meaning of the phrase "four-size basis"? Prunes, after being sold to the packer, are graded into different sizes, according to the number required to make a pound, and paid for on that basis. The four regular sizes are 60-70s, 70-80s, 80-90s, and 90-100s, which means that from 60 to 70 prunes are required to make a pound, and so on. The basis price is for prunes that weigh 80 to the pound. When the basis price is 5 3/4 cents, 80-90s are worth 1/4 cent less than this amount, or 5 1/2 cents. The next smaller size, 90-100s, are worth 1/2 cent less, or 5 cents, while prunes under this size are little but skin and pit and bring much less to the grower. For each next larger size there is a difference of 1/2 cent in favor of the grower, so that on the 5 3/4-cent basis 70-80s are worth 6 cents, and 60-70s 6 1/2 cents. This advance continues for the larger sizes, 30-40s, 40-50s, etc., but these quite often command a premium besides, which is fixed according to the supplies available and the demand for the various sizes. The sizes for which no premium or penalty is generally fixed are those from 60 to 100, four sizes, so that this basis of making contracts and sales is called the "four-size basis." The advantage that results in having this method of selling prunes can be seen by the fact that on a 5 3/4-cent basis the smallest of the four sizes will bring but 5 cents a pound, while 30-40s would bring, without any premium, 8 1/2 cents, and with 1 cent premium, 9 1/2 cents. This size has this season brought as high as 10 and 11 cents a pound. It may be noted here that no prunes are actually sold at just the basis price, as they are worth either less or more than this as they are smaller or larger than 80 to the pound. No matter what the basis price is, there is a difference of one-half cent between each size and the sizes nearest to it. Pollinizing Plums. How many rows of Robe de Sergeant prune trees should be alternated with the French prune (the common dried prune of commerce) to insure perfect fertilization of the blossoms? The French prune is self-fertile; that is, it does not require the presence of other plum species for pollination of the blossoms. It is the Robe de Sergeant prune which is defective in pollination and which is presumably assisted by proximity to the French prune. If you wish to grow Robe de Sergeant prunes your question of interplanting would be pertinent, but if you desire only to grow French prunes you need not plant the Robe de Sergeant at all. Cultivating Olives. How deep should an olive orchard be plowed? I was told that by plowing deep I would injure my trees, in cutting up small rootlets and fibres which the olive extends through the surface soil. Is this so or not? Plowing olives is like plowing other trees, the purpose being to get a workable soil deep enough to stand five or six inches of summer cultivation, usually. If you have old trees which have never been deeply plowed, you would destroy a lot of roots by deep plowing, and you should not start in and rip up all the land at once. You can gradually deepen the plowing, sacrificing fewer roots at a time, without injuring the trees if they are otherwise well circumstanced. Small rootlets and fibres in the surface soil do not count; they are quickly replaced, and if you do not destroy them, the whole surface soil, if moist enough, will be filled with a network of roots which will subsequently make decent working of the soil impossible. Moving Old Olive Trees. Would there be anything gained by transplanting old olive trees 6 to 8 inches in diameter over nursery stock? They would have to be shipped from Santa Clara to Butte county and grafted. Would they come into bearing any sooner and be as good trees? Could the large limbs be used to advantage? Would the fact that they are covered with smut cause any trouble? Old olive trees can be successfully moved a long distance by cutting back, taking up a ball of earth, and possibly a short distance with bare roots if everything is favorable. But do not for a moment think them worth such an outlay for labor, freight and hauling which such a movement as you mention involves. The trees on arrival would probably only be firewood, and if they lived, the time required in getting a good growth and grafting, etc., would perhaps be as great as in bringing a young tree of the right kind to bearing, and the latter would be a better tree in every way. Large limbs can be split and used as cuttings, but the tree would be growth on one side and decay on the other. Use the smaller limbs for hard-wood cuttings and the balance for firewood. The smut shows that the trees are covered with scale insects and might indicate that it is better to burn up the whole outfit unless you learn to fight them. Darkening Pickled Olives. Is there anything that will make olives keep their black color when put into lye? When I put my first picking of ripe olives in lye, a large part of them turn green, the black leaving the fruit. My formula is one pound of lye to five gallons of water. Have you any better formula? By exposing the olives to the light and air, either during the salting or immediately after, ripe olives may be given a uniformly black color. Also, fruit which is less ripe and which shows red and green patches after processing with lye, becomes an almost uniform dark brown color. To do this, the olives are removed from the brine and exposed to light and air freely for one or two days. Your lye was stronger than necessary. With ripe olives it is desirable to use salt and lye together to prevent softening, and the common prescription is two ounces of potash lye and four ounces of salt to the gallon of water after the bitterness is largely removed by using one or two treatments with two ounces of lye to the gallon without the salt. It is necessary to draw off the solution, rinse well, and put on fresh solution several times during the process to get the best results. Seedling Olives Must Be Grafted. Will olive trees grown from the olive seed be the right thing to plant? Will they be true to the parent tree or will they have to be grafted? Olives which a seedling olive tree will bear will be, as a rule, very inferior and generally of the type of the wild olive. All such trees must be grafted in order to produce any particular variety which you desire. Olives, Oranges and Peppers. We have been told that olive trees easily become infested with a fungus disease which they then impart to the orange tree. The same objection is raised to the planting of pepper trees. May this be true in some parts of the State and not in others? The fungus of which you have heard is the "black smut." It is a result, not a cause. It grows on the honey dew exuded from scale insects and if your trees have no scale they have no fungus. The olive trees and pepper trees may communicate this trouble to citrus trees, or vice versa - whichever gets it first gives it away to the other. If you will work hard enough to kill the scale wherever it appears you can have all these trees, but, of course, it costs a lot to fight scale on big pepper trees, and it is, therefore, wisest usually to choose an ornamental tree not likely to accept the scale. Budding Olive Seedlings. I have planted olive seeds which are just sprouting now. Can these be budded next June or July in the nursery row, or can they be bench-grafted the following winter? Your seedlings may make growth enough to spur-bud this summer. The ordinary plate-bud does not take freely with the olive. Some of them may do this; other seedlings may be slow and have to be budded in the second summer. Watch the size and the sap flow so that the bark will lift well - which may not be at just the time that deciduous trees are budded. It may be both earlier or later in the season. Graft evergreens like the olive in the nursery row; not by bench grafting. Budding Old Olives. I have seedling olive trees, set out in 1904, which I wish to change over to the Ascolano variety. Which is the best way to do it, by budding or grafting, and what is the proper time? Twig-budding brings the sap of the stock to bear upon a young lateral or tip bud, which is much easier to start than dormant buds used either as buds or grafts. A short twig about an inch and a half in length is taken with some of the bark of the small branch from which it starts, and both twig and bark at its base are put in a bark slit like an ordinary shield bud and tied closely with a waxed band, although if the sap is moving freely it would probably do with a string or raffia tie. Put in such buds as growth is starting in the spring. Olives from Small Cuttings. In the rooting of small soft-wood olive cuttings is it necessary to cover same with glass - say perhaps prepare a cold-frame and put stable manure in the bottom with about eight inches of sand on top? It ceases to be a cold-frame when you cover in manure for bottom heat; it becomes a hotbed. Varieties of olives differ greatly in the readiness with which they start from small cuttings. Some start freely and grow well in boxes of sand under partial shade - like a lath house or cover. Some need bottom heat in such a hotbed as you describe with a cloth over; some start well in a cold-frame with a lath cover. To get the best results with all kinds, it is safer to use some more heat than comes from exposure to ordinary temperatures - either by concentration, as in a covered frame, or by a mild bottom heat. If you have glass frames or greenhouse, they are, of course, desirable, but much can be done without that expense. Olives from Large Cuttings. I am about to take olive cuttings from one-half to one inch thick and 54 to 20 inches long, and wish to root them in nursery rows. Please advise me if it is necessary to plant under half shade? Also, can same be planted out right away, or should they be buried in trenches for a while before setting out? Would it be best to strip all leaves or branches off, or leave one on? How many buds should be left above ground? Plant in open ground in the coast district generally; in the interior a lath (or litter shade not too dense) is desirable in places where high dry heat is expected and where sprinkling under the cover may be desirable. Plant out when the soil is right as to warmth and moisture, which is usually a little later than this in the central and northern parts of the State. Remove all leaves and twigs and plant about three-quarters of the length in the soil, which should be a well-drained sandy loam. The cuttings can be taken directly from the trees and need not be bedded. If the cuttings come some distance and get end-dried, make a fresh cut at planting. If shriveled at all, soak a few hours in water before planting out. Trimming Up Olives. Limbs are shooting out too low on my olive trees. Would it be right to trim them up while dormant this winter, or should I let them grow another year before doing so? I think I want the first limbs to start at 18 to 20 inches above the ground. Take off the lower shoots whenever your knife is sharp. Do not let them grow another year. Theoretically, the best time to remove them is toward the end of the dormant season, but if they are not large as compared with the whole growth of the tree, go to it any time. Canning Olives. What is the recipe for preserving olives by heat, and how long do they have to remain in the heated state? Canning olives is a process, not a recipe, and it has to be operated with judgment. It resembles, of course, the common process of canning other fruits and vegetables. It has been demonstrated that heating up to 175° Fahrenheit is effective to keep olives in sealed containers for over two years. The heating was done in the jars in the usual canning way for several minutes after 175° was reached, to be sure the contents were heated through. Renewing Olive Trees. I have olive trees on first-class land; no pest of any kind is apparent. The trees look healthy in every way, and average about 12 inches at the butt and 30 feet high. They have borne fruit, but for the last three years have not borne. I am advised to cut back to stumps, 5 or 6 feet high, and start new tops. Unsatisfactory olive trees may be cut back, but not to such an extent as you mention. Thin out the branches if too thick and cut back or remove those which interfere, but to cut back to a stump would force out a very thick mass of brush which you would have to afterward go into and thin out desperately. The branches which you decide to retain may be cut back to twelve or fifteen feet from the ground. This would have the effect of giving you plenty of new thrifty wood, which is desirable for the fruiting of the olive, but we cannot guarantee that this treatment will make the trees satisfactory bearers. Are you sure they are receiving water enough? If not, give them more next summer. Also give the land a good coat of stable manure and plow under when the land is right for the plow. Growing Olives from Seed. How are seedlings grown from olive seeds? Growing olives from seeds is promoted by assisting nature to break the hard shell. This can be done by pinching carefully with ordinary wire pliers until the shell cracks without injury to the kernel, or the shell may be cut into with a file, making a very small aperture to admit moisture. The French have specially contrived pliers with a stop which admits cracking and prevents crushing. Olive seeds in their natural condition germinate slowly and irregularly. They must be kept moist and planted about an inch deep in sandy loam, covering with chaff or litter to prevent drying of the surface. Before experimenting with olive pits, crack a few to see if they have good plump kernels. Seedling olives must be grafted, of course, to be sure of getting the variety you want. For this reason growth from cuttings is almost universal. Neglected Olive Trees. I have a lot of olive trees which have grown up around the old stumps. They are large trees and some of them have six or eight trunks. Should I cut away all but one trunk or let them alone? There are some of the trees with small olives; others none. If the olive trees which were originally planted were trained at first and still have a good trunk and tree form, the suckers which have intruded from below should be removed. If, however, the trees have been allowed to grow many branches from below, so that there is really no single tree remaining, make a selection of four or five of the best shoots and grow the trees in large bush form, shortening in the higher growth so as to bring the fruit within easier reach and reduce the cost of picking. You can also develop a single shoot into a tree as you suggest. Of course, you must determine whether the trees as they now stand are of a variety which is worth growing. If they are all bearing very small fruit, it would be a question whether they were worth keeping at all, because grafting on the kind of growth which you describe would be unlikely to yield satisfactory tree forms, though you might get a good deal of fruit from them. Olives from Cuttings. I have two choice olive trees on my place. I am anxious to get trees from these old ones and do not know how to go about it. Can I grow the young trees by using cuttings or slips from these old trees ? If so, when is the proper time to select the cuttings, and how should they be planted? Take cuttings of old wood, one-half or three-quarters of an inch in diameter, about ten inches long, and plant them about three-quarters of their length in a sandy loam soil in a row so water can be run alongside as may be necessary to keep the soil moist but not too wet. Such dormant cuttings can be put in when the soil begins to warm up with the spring sunshine. They can be put in the places where you desire them to grow in one or two years. Olives, like other evergreen trees, should be transplanted in the spring when there is heat enough to induce them to take hold at once in their new places, and not during the winter when dormant deciduous trees are best transplanted. Water and Frost. I have in mind two pieces of land well adapted to citrus culture. Both have the same elevation, soil, climate and water conditions, except that one piece is a mile of the Kaweah river, while the other is four or five miles distant. In case of a frost, all conditions being about the same, which piece would you consider to be liable to suffer the more? In the heavy frost of last December, while neither sustained any great damage, that portion of the ground nearer the river seemed to sustain the less. Is this correct in theory? The Kaweah river at this point is a good-sized stream of rapidly flowing water. The land near the river, conditions of elevation being similar, would be less liable to frost. There are a good many instances where the presence of a considerable body of water prevents the lowering of the temperature of the air immediately adjacent. It is so at various points along the Sacramento river, and it is recognized as a general principle that bodies of water exert a warming influence upon their immediate environment even in regions with a hard winter. How much it may count for must be determined by taking other conditions into the account also. Thinning Oranges. Is it advisable to thin fruit on young citrus trees? Our trees have been bearing about three years, but they are still small trees. The oranges and grape fruit ripen well and are large and of excellent quality, but the trees seem overloaded. The size of oranges on over-burdened trees can be increased by thinning, just as other fruits are enlarged, but it is not systematically undertaken as with peaches and apricots, because it is not so necessary and because it is easy to get oranges on young trees too large and to be discounted for over-sized coarse fruit. Removing part of the fruit from young trees is often done - for the good of the tree, not for the good of the fruit. It should be done after the natural drop takes place, during the summer. Wind-blown Orange Trees. What would you do for citrus trees five years old that have been badly blown out of shape? Such trees must be trued up by pruning into the wind; that is, cutting to outside buds on the windward side and to inside buds on the lee side; also reducing the weight by pruning away branches which have been blown too far to the leeward. Sometimes trees can be straightened by moving part of the soil and pulling into the wind and bracing there by a good prop on the leeward side, but that, of course, is not practicable if the trees have attained too much size. Handling Balled Citrus Trees. I have some orange and lemon trees which were sent me with their roots balled up with dirt and sacks. As we are still having frosts I have not wanted to set them out. Would it not be better to let them stay as they are and keep the sacks wet (they have a sack box over them) than to put them out while the frosts last? Your citrus trees will not be injured for a time unless mold should set in from the wet sacks. Get them into the ground as soon as the soil comes into good condition, and cover the top for a time after they are planted to protect them against frosts. This would be better than to hold them too long in the balls, but do not plant in cold, wet soil; hold them longer as they are. The Navel Not Thornless. I have lately purchased some Washington navel orange trees, and upon arrival I find they have thorns upon them. I thought the Washington navels were thornless. The navel orange tree is not thornless. It is described as a medium thorny variety, so that the finding of thorns upon the trees would not be in itself sufficient indication that they were not of the right variety. Over-size Oranges. I have some orange trees in a disintegrated granite with a good many small pieces of rock still remaining in the soil. What I wish to know is whether it is probably something in the soil that makes them grow too large, or is it probably the method of treatment? What treatment should be adopted to guard against this excessive growth? Young trees have a natural disposition to produce outside sizes of fruit, and this is sometimes aggravated by excessive use of fertilizers, sometimes by over-irrigation. We would cease to fertilize for a time and to regulate irrigation so that the trees will have enough to be thrifty without undertaking excessive growth. Such soil as you describe is sometimes very rich at the beginning in available plant food, and fertilization should be delayed until this excess has been appropriated by the tree. Budding or Grafting in Orange Orchard. I have land now ready to be planted to oranges, but it is impossible for me to buy the necessary budded stock now or even later this year. Would you advise me to plant the "sour stock" as it comes from the nursery and have it budded or crown-budded later? Are there any real objections to this method, and, if so, what are they? It is perfectly feasible to plant sour-stock seedlings and to graft them afterward to whatever variety of oranges you desire to grow, but it is undoubtedly better to pay a pretty good price for budded trees of the kind you desire rather than incur the delay and the irregular growth of young trees budded or grafted in the field. There is also danger of an irregular stand from accidental injuries to new growth started in the field without the protection which it finds in the nursery row. Budding Oranges. How late in the fall can budding of orange trees be done - plants that are two years old - and what advantage, if any, is late budding? What shall I do with some old trees that were budded about two months ago and are still green but not sprouted yet? The budding was done on young shoots. Late budding of the orange can be done as late as the bark will slip well; usually, however, not quite so late as this. Such buds are preferred because in the experience of most people they make stronger growth than those put in in the spring. Such buds are not expected to grow until the lowest temperatures of the winter are over. The buds which you speak of as green but still dormant are doing just what they ought to do. They will start when they get ready. Under-pruning of Orange Trees. My Washington Navels have a very heavy crop on the lower limbs, as is usual. These branches are so low down that many of the oranges lie on the ground, and it takes a good deal of time to prop them up so that they will not touch the ground. What would be the result of pruning off these low branches, after the fruit is off? Will the same amount of fruit be produced by the fruit growing on the limbs higher up? Certainly, raise the branches of the orange trees by removing the lowest branches or parts of branches which reach to the ground. A little later others will sag down and this under-pruning will have to be continuous. It would be better to do this than to undertake any radical removal of the lower branches. The progressive removal as becomes necessary will not appreciably reduce the fruiting and will be in many ways desirable. Keeping Citrus Trees Low. My tangerines last fall shot up like lemon trees - a dozen to twenty shoots two or three feet high. The trees are eight years old and are loaded with bloom and some of the shoots have buds and bloom clear to the top. Some shoots have no bloom. What should I do with these shoots? Cut them back like lemons or let them remain? You must shorten the shoots if you desire to have a low tree. This will cause their branching and it will be necessary, therefore, to remove some of the shoots entirely, either now or later, in order that the tree will not become too compact. Dying Back of Fruit Trees. I have a few orange and lemon trees that are starting to die. One tree has died on the top. What kind of spray shall I use? The dying back of a tree at the top indicates that the trouble is in the roots, and it is usually due to standing water in the soil, resulting either from excessive application of water or because the soil is too retentive to distribute an amount of water which might not be excessive on a lighter soil which would allow of its freer movement. Dig down near the tree and see if you have not a muddy subsoil. The same trouble would result if the subsoil is too dry, and that also you can ascertain by digging. If you find moisture ample, and yet not excessive, the injury to the root might be due to the presence of alkali, or to excessive use of fertilizers. The cause of the trouble has to be determined by local examination and cannot be prescribed on the basis of a description of the plant. It cannot be cured by spraying unless specific parasite is found which can be killed by it. Young Trees Dropping Fruit. I have a few citrus fruit trees about three years old. They have made a good growth and are between seven and eight feet high with a good shaped top or head. I did not expect any fruit last year and did not have any. This spring they blossomed irregularly at blooming time, but quite an amount of fruit set and grew as large as marbles, some of it the size of a walnut, but lately it has about all fallen off the trees. There is always more or less dropping from fruit trees. Some years large numbers of oranges drop. There may be many causes, and the trouble has thus far not been found preventable. When the foliage is good and the growth satisfactory, the young tree is certainly not in need of anything. It is rather more likely that fruit is dropped by the young trees owing to their excessive vegetative vigor, for it is a general fact that fruit trees which are growing very fast are less certain in fruit-setting. It is, of course, possible that you have been forcing such action by too free use of water. You will do well to let your trees go along so long as they appear thrifty and satisfactory, and expect better fruiting when they become older. Orange Training. Is not a single leader in an orange tree more desirable than the much-forked tree so commonly seen! Can a single-leader tree be made from the nursery trees which have already formed their heads, by cutting off the heads below so that only a straight stick without any branches is left? An orange tree with a central leader would not be at all satisfactory if it were carried very high. Of course, a central stem can be to advantage taken higher than it is often done, but we would not think of growing an orange tree with a central stem to the apex. The laterals would droop, crowd down upon each other badly, open the center to sunburn, and encourage also a growth of central suckers and occasion an amount of pruning altogether beyond what is necessary with a properly branched tree without a central stem. Curing Citron. I wish to know a way to cure citrons at home. I have a fine tree that has borne very fine-looking fruit for the past two years. An outline for the preparation of candied citron is as follows: The fruit, before assuming a yellow color, and also when bright yellow, is picked and placed in barrels filled with brine, and left for at least a month. The brine is renewed several times, and the fruit allowed to remain in it until required for use, often for a period of four or five months. When the citrons are to be candied they are taken from the barrels and boiled in fresh water to soften them. They are then cut into halves, the seed and pulp are removed, and the fruit is again immersed in cold water, soon becoming of a greenish color. After this it is placed in large earthen jars, covered with hot syrup, and allowed to stand about three weeks. During this time the strength of the syrup is gradually increased. The fruit is then put into boilers with crystallized sugar dissolved in a small quantity of water, and cooked; then allowed to cool, and boiled again until it will take up no more sugar. It is then dried and packed in wooden boxes. Crops Between Orange Trees. What crop can I plant between rows of young orange trees to utilize the ground as well as pay a little something? It depends not alone upon what will grow, but upon what can be profitably sold or used on the place, and unless sure of that, it is usually better not to undertake planting between young trees but rather to cultivate well, irrigate intelligently, and trust for the reward in a better growth and later productiveness of the trees. It is clear, California experience that planting between trees except to things which are demonstrated to be profitable should not be undertaken, and where one does not need immediate returns is, as a rule, undesirable. The growth of a strip of alfalfa, if one is careful not to submerge the trees by over-irrigation, would be the best thing one could undertake for the purpose of improving the soil by increasing the humus content, reducing the amount of reflected heat from a clean surface, and is otherwise desirable wherever moisture is available for it. You could also grow cow peas for the good of the land if not for other profit. You can, of course, grow small fruits and vegetables for home use if you will cultivate well. Common field crops, with scant cultivation, will generally cause you to lose more from the bad condition in which they leave the soil than you can gain from the use or sale of the crop. Navels and Valencias. Navel trees are being budded to Valencias in southern California, because of the higher price received for the late-ripening Valencias. Are the orchards in central and northern California being planted in Navels, and is there any difference in soil or climate requirements of Navels and Valencias? There is no particular difference in the soil requirements of Valencia and Navel oranges. They are both budded on the same root. The desirability of Navel oranges in the upper citrus districts arises from the fact that the policy of those districts at the present time is to produce an early orange. This they could not accomplish by growing the Valencia. The great advantage of the Valencia in southern California, on the other hand, lies in the very fact that it is late and that it can be marketed in midsummer and early autumn when there are no Navels available from anywhere. Orange Seedlings. What about planting the seed from St. Michael's oranges or of grapefruit for a seed-bed to be budded to Valencias? Good plump St. Michael's seeds would be all right if you desire to use sweet seedling stock. Grapefruit seedlings are good and quite widely used, though the general preference is for sour-stock seedlings. Acres of Oranges to a Man. In your opinion, is it possible for one man, of average strength, to take perfect care of a twenty-acre citrus orchard? Are the services of a man who takes the entire responsibility of an orchard (citrus) worth more than those of a common ranch hand? It depends upon the man, upon the age of the trees, upon the kind of soil he has to handle, upon the irrigation arrangements and upon what you mean by "perfect care." If you contract the picking and hauling of fruit, the fumigation and allow extra help when conditions require that something must be done quickly, whatever it may be, a man with good legs and arms, and a good head full of special knowledge to make them go, can handle twenty acres and if he does it right you ought to pay him twice as much as an ordinary ranch hand. Roots for Orange Trees. What are the conditions most favorable to orange trees budded upon sour stock; also upon sweet stock and trifoliata? The sour stock is believed to be more hardy against trying conditions of soil moisture - both excess and deficiency, and diseases incident thereto. The sweet stock is a free growing and satisfactory stock and most of the older orchards are upon this root, but it is held to be less resistant of soil troubles than the sour stock, and therefore propagators are now largely using the latter. The trifoliata has been promoted as more likely to induce dormancy of the top growth during cold weather, because of its own deciduous habit. It has also been advocated as likely to induce earlier maturity in the fruit and thus minister to early marketing. The objection urged against it has been a claimed dwarfing of the tree worked upon it. Citrus Budding. I wish to bud some Maltese blood orange trees to pomelos and lemons. Will they make good stock for them, and, if so, is it necessary to cut below the original bud? It is possible to bud as you propose, and it is not necessary to go back to the old stock. Work in above the forks. No Citrus Fruits on Lemon Roots. Would it be any advantage to bud the Washington Navel on grapefruit and lemon roots? The grapefruit or pomelo is a good root for the orange, and some propagators prefer it. The lemon root is not used at present, because of its effect in causing a coarse growth of tree and fruit and because it is more subject to disease than the orange root. In fact, we grow nearly all lemons on orange roots. Budding Oranges. My first attempt at budding, I cut 20 buds and immediately inserted in stock of Mexican sour orange "Amataca." I left bands on them for ten days at which time about half seemed to have "stuck," but after a few days the bark curled away and the buds dried up and died. I then tried again, but left the bands on for thirteen days and lightly tied strings around below the bud to prevent the bark from curling, and also put grafting wax in the cut and over the bud. These appeared fresh and green at time of taking off the bands, but three weeks later I found them rotted. The grafting wax used was made of beeswax, resin, olive oil and a small amount of lard to soften it. Do you think that the action of the lard on the buds would cause them to rot? Consider first whether the buds which you use are sufficiently developed; that is, a sufficient amount of hardness and maturity attained by the twig from which you took these buds. Second, use a waxed band, drawing it quite tightly around the bark, above and below the bud, covering the bud itself without too much pressure for several days, then loosening the band somewhat, but carefully replacing over all but the bud point. It is necessary to exclude the air sufficiently, but not wholly. The use of a soft fat like olive oil or lard is not desirable. If you use oil at all for the purpose of softening, linseed oil, as used by painters, is safer because of its disposition to dry without so much penetration. Having used olive oil and lard together you had too much soft fatty material. Budding Orange Seedlings in the Orchard. What are the objections or advantages of planting sour stock seedlings where one wishes the trees and one or two years later bud into the branches instead of budding the young stock low on the trunk? Planting the seedling and at some future time cutting back the branches and grafting in the head above the forks is an expensive operation and loses time in getting fruit. You will get very irregular trees and be disappointed in the amount of re-working you will have to do. Suckers must be always watched for; that has to be done anyway, but a sucker from a wild stock is worse in effects if you happen to overlook it. Avoid all such trouble by planting good clean trees budded in nursery rows. You may have to do rebudding later, if you want to change varieties, and that is trouble enough. Do not rush at the beginning into all the difficulties there are. Grapefruit and Nuts. Peaches, pears and plums predominate in this section, but would not grapefruit, almonds and English walnuts be just as profitable? What is your idea about English walnuts on black walnut root? You can expect grapefruit to succeed under conditions which favor the orange. Therefore, if oranges are doing well in your district, grapefruit might also be expected to succeed on the same soils and with the same treatment. Planting of almonds should proceed upon a demonstration that the immediate location is suited to almonds, because they are very early to start and very subject to spring frost and should not be planted unless you can find bearing trees which have demonstrated their acceptance of the situation by regular and profitable crops. English walnuts are less subject to frosts because they start much later in the season. They need, however, deep, rich land which will be sure not to dry out during the summer. English walnuts are a perfect success upon the California black walnut root. Soil and Situation for Oranges. Is it absolutely essential that orange trees be planted on a southern slope, or will they thrive as well on any slope? What is the minimum depth of soil required for orange trees? How can I tell whether the soil is good for oranges? Orange trees are grown successfully on all slopes, although in particular localities certain exposures may be decidedly best, as must be learned by local observation. How shallow a soil will suit orange trees depends upon how water and fertilizer are applied; on a shallow soil more fertilizer and more frequent use of water in smaller quantities. Any soil which has grown good grain crops may be used for orange growing if the moisture supply is never too scant and any excess is currently disposed of by good drainage. There can be no arbitrary rule either for exposure, depth or texture of soils, because oranges are being successfully grown on medium loam to heavy clay loam, providing the moisture supply is kept right. Transplanting Orange Trees. Can you transplant trees two years old with safety to another location in same grove, same soil; etc.? Yes; and you can move them a greater distance, if you like. Take up the trees with a good ball of earth, transplanting in the spring when the ground has become well warmed, just about at the time when new growth begins to appear on the tree. The top of the tree should he cut back somewhat and the leaves should be removed if they show a disposition to wilt. You should also whitewash or otherwise protect the bark from sunburn if the foliage should be removed. Protecting Young Citrus Trees. Is it necessary to have young orange trees covered or leave them uncovered during the winter months? It is desirable to cover with burlaps or bale with cornstalks, straw or some other coarse litter, all young trees which are being planted in untried places; and even where old trees are safe, young trees which go into the frost period with new growth of immature wood should be thus protected. Do not use too much stuff nor bundle too tightly. Not Orange on the Osage. Can the Navel orange be grafted on the osage orange? I understand it is done in Florida, and would like to know if it has been tried in California. It cannot. It has not been done in Florida nor anywhere else. The osage orange is not an orange at all. The tree is not a member of the citrus family. No Pollenizer for Navels. I read that the flowers of the Navel orange are entirely lacking in pollen, or only poorly supplied. If this is true, what variety of orange would you plant in a Navel grove - to supply pollen at the proper time? We would not plant any other orange near the Navel for the sake of supplying it with pollen. Pollen is only needed to make seeds, and by the same process to make the fruit set, and Navels do not make seeds, except rarely, nor do they seem to need pollen to make the fruit set. Water and Frost. From how many acres could I keep off a freeze of oranges with 1000 gallons per minute? The water is at 65 degrees. The amount of water will prevent frost over as large an area as you can cover with the water, so as to thoroughly wet the surface, but the presence of water will only be effective through about four degrees of temperature and only for a short time. If, then, the temperature should fall below 27 degrees and should remain at that point for an hour or two, it is doubtful if the water would save your fruit. Water is only of limited value in the prevention of frost, and of no value at all when the temperature falls too low. What to Do with Frosted Oranges. What is the best plan of treatment for frosted orange trees? The crop will be a total loss. It does not show any tendency to fall off the trees, however. Should it be picked off, thrown on the ground and plowed under? Should this be done right away or later? Unsound fruit should be removed as soon as its injury can be conveniently detected and worked into the soil by cultivation; never, however, being allowed to collect in masses, which is productive of decay and which may be injurious to roots. If trees are injured sufficiently to lose most of their leaves, the fruit should also be removed if it shows a disposition to hang on. This will be a contribution to the strength of the tree and its ability to clothe itself with new foliage. Pruning Frosted Citrus Trees. How shall I prune two-year-old orange orchard, also nursery stock buds that are badly injured by frost; how much to prune and at what time? As soon as you can see how far injury has gone down the branch or stem, cut below it, so that a new shoot may push out from sound wood, and heal the cut as soon as possible. This applies to growths of all ages. In the case of buds, if you can only save a single node you may get a bud started there and make a tree of that. In the case of trees, large or small, it is always desirable to cut above the forkings of the main branches, if possible, and when this much of the tree remains sound, a new tree can be formed very quickly. If the main stem is injured, bark cracked, etc., cut below the ground and put scions in the bark without splitting the root crown; wax well or otherwise cover exposed wood to prevent checking. If this is successfully done, root-rot may be prevented and the wound covered with new bark while the strong new stems are developing above. Pruning Oranges. Is it best to prune out orange trees by removing occasional branches so as to permit free air passage through the trees? Some are advocating doing so; but as I remember, the trees in southern California are allowed to grow quite dense, so that we could see into the foliage but very little. It is a matter of judgment, with a present tendency toward a more open tree than was formerly prescribed. Trees should be more thrifty and should bear more fruit deeper in the foliage-wall if more air and light are admitted. But this can be had without opening the tree so that free sight of its interior is possible. We believe thinning of the growth to admit more light and air is good, but we should not intentionally cut enough to make holes in the tree. Pecan Growing. Would you advise planting of pecans in commercial orchards here? Walnuts in their proper location constitute some of California's best improvements. After visiting some bearing paper-shell pecans here in Fresno county, I believe a pecan orchard of choice variety would be more desirable than a walnut orchard. Pecans do well on moist rich land in the interior valleys where there are sharper temperature changes than in the coast valleys, except perhaps near the upper coast. Such planting as you propose seems promising on lands having moisture enough to carry the nuts to full ripening. Growing Filberts. Please give information about growing filberts. Filberts have been largely a disappointment in California and no product of any amount has ever been made. Good nuts have been produced in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range. Theoretically, the places where the wild hazel grows would best suit the filbert, and so far this seems to be justified by the little that has actually been done, but there is very little to say about it beyond that. It requires much more experience to lift the nut out of the experimental state. Early Bearing of Walnuts. Please inform me if young walnut trees grafted on black walnut stock will produce fruit within 18 months after being planted. It is true that the French varieties of English walnuts have produced fruit the second summer of their growth. This does not mean, however, that you can count upon a crop the second year. These are usually grafts in nursery rows, and one would have to wait longer, as a rule, for trees planted out in orchards with a chance to make a freer wood growth. This is rather fortunate, because it is better to have a larger tree than to have the growth diverted into bearing a small amount of fruit while the tree is very young. We do not know any advantage in getting nuts the second year except it be to see if you really have secured the variety you desire to produce later. Handling Walnut Seedlings. What is the best time to transplant seedlings of the black walnut? Transplant during the dormant season (as shown by absence of leaves) when the soil is in good condition. Handle them just as you would an apple tree, for instance. How to Start English Walnuts. In starting English walnuts, shall we get nursery stock grafted on California black, or shall we start our black walnut seedlings in nursery plats, or plant the nuts where the tree is wanted, and graft them at two or three years? What is the advantage, if any, of the long stock from grafting high, over the grafted root? If we had the money to invest and were sure of the soil conditions, etc., we should buy grafted trees of the variety we desired, just as we would of any other kind of fruit. If we were shy of money and long on time, we would start seedlings in nursery, plant out seedlings, and graft later, because it is easier to graft when the seedling is two or three years in place. We count the planting of nuts in place troublesome and of no compensating advantage. The chief advantage known to us of grafting high and getting a black walnut trunk is the hardier bark of the black walnut. Walnut Planting. I am planning to plant walnuts on rather heavy soil. I have been told to put the nut six inches below the surface, but think that too deep, as soil is rather heavy. In a heavy soil we should not plant these nuts more than three inches below the surface, but should cover the surface with a mulch of rotten straw to prevent drying out. Pruning Grafted Walnuts. Should English walnut trees be pruned? I have along the roadside English walnuts grafted on the California black, and they have grown to very large size and the fruit seems to be mostly on the outside of the trees. English walnuts are not usually pruned much, though it is often desirable, and of course trees can be improved by removing undesirable branches and especially where too many branches have started from grafts, it is desirable that some be removed. They should be cleanly sawed off and the wound covered with wax or thick paint to prevent the wood from decaying. Pruning Walnuts. When is the best time to remove large limbs from walnut trees? This work with walnuts or other deciduous fruit trees should be done late in the winter, about the time the buds are swelling; never mind the bleeding, it does no harm, and the healing-growth over the wound is more rapid while the sap is pushing. Grafting Walnuts. In cleft grafting walnuts is it necessary to use scions with only a leaf bud, or with staminate or pistillate buds? Is cutting the pith of the scion or stock fatal to the tree? In grafting walnuts it is usual to take shoots bearing wood buds, and not the spurs which carry the fruit blossoms, although a part of the graft containing also a wood bud can be used, retaining the latter. Cutting into the pith of the scion or of the stock is not fatal, but it is avoided because it makes a split or wound which is very hard to heal. For this reason it is better to cut at one side of the pith in the stock, and to cut the scion so that the slope is chiefly in the wood at one side of the pith and not cutting a double wedge in a way to bring the pith in the center. Grafting Nuts on Oaks. I have 10 to 15 acres of black oak trees which I wish to graft over to chestnuts. Can grafting be done successfully? Some success has been secured in grafting the chestnut on the chestnut oak, but not, so far as we have heard, on the black oak. But grafts on the chestnut oak are not permanently thrifty and productive, though they have been reported as growing for some time. The same is true of English walnut grafts on some of the native oaks. Grafting Walnut Seedlings. Would it be proper to graft one-year California black walnut seedlings that must also be transplanted? As the seedlings must be moved, plant in orchard and graft as two or three-year-olds, according to the size which they attain. Pruning the Walnut. What is the proper time for pruning the walnut? Is it bad for the tree to prune during the active season? I have recently acquired a long-neglected grove in which many large limbs will have to be removed in order to allow proper methods of cultivation to be practiced, and I am in doubt as to the wisdom of doing this during the rise of sap. The best time to remove large limbs to secure rapid growth of bark from the sides of the cut, is just at the time the sap is rising. There will be some outflow of sap, but of no particular loss to the tree. As soon as the large wounds have dried sufficiently, the exposed surface should be painted to prevent cracking of the wood. Eastern or California Black Walnuts? I am told that the Eastern black walnut is a more suitable root for the low lands in California than the California black. Is this true? There has been no demonstration that the Eastern black walnut is more suitable to low moist lands than the California black walnut. Our grandest California black walnut trees are situated on low moist lands. Walnut Grove is on the edge of the Sacramento river with immense trees growing almost on the water's edge. Walnut Creek in Contra Costa county is also named from large walnut trees on the creek bank land. We have very few Eastern black walnut trees in California and although they do show appreciation of moist land, they are not in any respect better than the Californian. Ripening of Walnuts. I send you two walnuts. I am in doubt if they will mature. The nuts are well grown, the kernel fully formed in every respect. Whether they will attain perfect maturity must be determined by an observation of the fact and cannot be theoretically predicated. Where trees are in such an ever-growing climate as you seem to have, they must apparently take a suggestion that the time has arrived for maturity from the drying of the soil. The roots should know that it is time for them to stop working so that the foliage may yellow and the nuts mature. It is possible that stopping cultivation a little earlier in the season may be necessary to accomplish this purpose. Cutting Below Dead Wood. I have some seedling English walnut trees which are two years old, but they are not coming out in bud this year. They are about three feet high, and from the top down to about 10 inches of the ground the limbs are dark brown, and below that they are a nice green. I cut the top off of one of them to see what is the matter that they do not leaf out, and I found that there is a round hole right down through the center of the tree down to the green part. The hole is about three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. The pith of the limbs has been eaten away by some kind of a worm from the inside. Would it be better to cut the tree down to the green part, or let them alone? It is the work of a borer. Cut down to live wood and paint over the wound or wax it. Protect the pith until the bark grows over it or you will have decay inside. If buds do not start on the trunk, take a sucker from below to make a tree of. You could put a bud in the trunk, but it is not very easy to do it. Walnuts in Alfalfa. Will the walnut trees be injured in any way by irrigating them at the same time and manner as the alfalfa - that is, by flooding the land between the checks? Will the walnuts make as good a growth when planted in the alfalfa, and the ground cultivated two or three feet around the tree, as though the alfalfa was entirely removed? Is it advisable to plant the trees on the checks rather than between the checks? Walnut trees will do well, providing you do not irrigate the alfalfa sufficiently to waterlog the trees; providing also that you do use water enough so that the trees will not be robbed of moisture by the alfalfa. This method of growing trees will be, of course, safer and probably more satisfactory if your soil is deep and loamy, as it should be to get the best results with both alfalfa and walnuts. It would be better to have the trees stand so that the water does not come into direct contact with the bark, although walnut trees are irrigated by surrounding them with check levees. Planting walnut trees in an old stand of alfalfa is harder on the tree than to start alfalfa after the trees have taken hold, because the alfalfa roots like to hang on to their advantage. In planting in an old field, we should plow strips, say, five feet wide and keep it cultivated rather than to try to start the trees in pot-holes, although with extra care they might go that way. Walnuts in the Hills. Will walnuts grow well in the foothill country; elevation about 600 feet, soil rich, does not crack in summer and seems to have small stones in it? Walnuts will do well providing the soil or subsoil is retentive enough. If you have water available for irrigation in case the trees should need it, they would do well, but if the soil is gravelly way down and likely to dry out deeply and you have no water available an opposite result might be expected. It is a fact that on some of the uplands of the coast mountains there is a lack of moisture late in the season which interferes with the success of some fruit trees. To Increase Bearing of Walnuts. We have a walnut orchard which does not bear enough nuts. The trees are all fine, even trees, 10 and 12 years old, and we are told that the crop was light this year because the trees were growing so vigorously and put most of their energy into the new wood. Is there any special fertilizer which will make the trees bear more and not prompt such heavy growth? If your adviser is right that the trees are not bearing because of excessive growth, it would be better not to apply any fertilizer during the coming year, but allow the trees to assume more steady habit and possibly even to encourage them to do so by using less cultivation and water. If you wish to experiment with some of the trees, give them an application of five pounds of superphosphate and two pounds of potash to each tree, properly distributed over the land which it occupies. You certainly should not use any form of nitrogen. Temperature and Moisture for the English Walnut. What amount of freezing and drouth can English walnuts stand? Under what conditions is irrigation necessary? The walnut tree will endure hard freezing, providing it comes when the tree is dormant, because they are successfully grown in some parts of the Eastern States, though not to a large extent; but the walnut tree is subject to injury from lighter frosts, providing they follow temperatures which have induced activity in the tree. On the Pacific Coast the walnut is successfully grown as far north as the State of Washington, but even in California there are elevations where frosts are likely to occur when the tree is active, and these may be destructive to its profit, although they may not injure the tree. You are not safe in planting walnuts to any extent except in places where you can find trees bearing satisfactorily. Planting elsewhere is, of course, an enterprising experimental thing to do, but very risky as a line of investment. Irrigation is required if the annual rainfall, coupled with the retentiveness of the soil and good cultivation, do not give moisture enough to carry the tree well into the autumn, maintaining activity in the leaves some little time after the fruit is gathered. Walnuts from Seed. There is a reliable nursery company selling seedling Franquette walnut trees on a positive guarantee that they will come true to type. Are orchards of this kind satisfactory? Walnuts do come truer to the seed than almonds and other fruits and the Franquette has a good reputation for remembering its ancestry. Until recently practically all the commercial walnut product of California was grown on seedling trees. But these facts hardly justify one in trusting to seedlings in plantings now made. The way to get a walnut of the highest type is to take a bud or graft from a tree which is bearing that type. High-grafted Walnuts. What is the advantage of a high-grafted walnut? I am about ready to plant 10 acres to nuts and do not know whether to purchase Franquette grafted high on California Black or not. The advantage of grafting English walnut high on California Black walnut consists in securing a main trunk for the tree, which is less liable to sunburn and probably hardier otherwise than is the stem of the English walnut, and the present disposition toward higher grafting or budding seems therefore justified and desirable. Grafting and Budding the Mulberry. What is the most approved manner of grafting mulberry trees? Am told that they are very difficult to successfully graft. Most propagators find the mulberry difficult by ordinary top and cleft grafting methods. A flute or ring graft or bud does well on small seedlings - that is, removing a ring or cylinder of the bark from the stock and putting in its place a cylinder from the variety desired, cut to fit accurately. For large trees this would have to be done on young shoots forced out by cutting back the main branches, but when this is done ordinary shield budding in these new shoots would give good results. Cut back the trees now and bud in the new shoots in July or August. Hardiness of Hybrid Berries. How much cold will Phenomenal, Himalaya and Mammoth blackberries stand in winter? Is it safe to plant where the temperature goes below 32 degrees? These berries are hardy to zero at least, for they are grown in northern parts of this coast where they get such a touch once in a while. They have also endured low temperatures in the central continental plateau States and eastward. Whether they can endure the lowest temperatures of the winter-killing regions of the northern border cannot be determined in California, for we do not have the conditions for such tests. The berries are very hardy while dormant, and probably their value in colder regions would depend rather more upon their disposition to remain dormant than upon what they can endure when in that condition. Pruning Himalayas. Shall the old wood be cut away in pruning Himalayas? All the old wood which has borne fruit should be cut out in the fall and new shoots reduced to three or four from each root, and these three or four shoots should be shortened to a length of ten or twelve feet and be trained to a trellis or fence, or some other suitable support. Vines which are allowed to grow riotously as they will, are apt to be deficient in fruit bearing. Strawberries with Perfect Flowers. Has Longworth Prolific an imperfect bloom? I have Longworths in bearing which apparently are perfect. Is there another strain of Longworth that are not self-fertilizing? The Longworth Prolific strawberry has both staminate and pistillate elements. Possibly some other variety, because of its resemblance to Longworth and the popularity of it, may have been wrongly given its name. Most of the varieties which are largely grown in California are perfect in blossom, though some of the newer varieties need association with pollinizers. Pruning Loganberries. Should the new shoots of Loganberry vines, which come out in the spring, be left or cut away? If cut, will more shoots put out in the fall and be sufficient for the next year's crop? The Loganberry shoots which are growing should be carefully trained and preserved for next year's fruiting. The old canes should be cut away at the base after the fruit is gathered. The plant bears each year upon the wood which grew the previous summer. Strawberry Planting. Should I plant strawberries in the spring or fall? Whether it is wise to plant strawberry plants in the fall depends on several things, such as getting the ground in the very best of condition, abundance of water at all times, splendidly rooted plants, and cool weather (which is very rare at the time plants are to be planted, August and September). Plants may be taken with balls of earth around the roots, and water poured in the hole that receives the plant. After planting, each plant should be shaded from the sun; after this the ditches must be kept full of water so the moisture will rise to the surface; this must be done till the plant starts growth. This method can only be used in small plantings, as it is too expensive for large plantings, as is also the potted plant method where each plant is grown in a small pot and transplanted by dumping out the earth as a ball with the plant and putting directly in the ground. From potted plants, set out in the fall, one may count on a fine crop of berries the following spring. Strawberry plants are never dormant till midwinter, and there is no plant more difficult to transplant when roots are disturbed in the hot season, which usually prevails in the interior valleys of California. To have a long-lived strawberry field and to get best results, planting must be done in the spring, as soon as the soil can be put in best condition to receive plants. From this a fall crop can be expected - Answer by Tribble Bros., Elk Grove. Blackberries for Drying Only. What variety of blackberries or raspberries are the best for drying purposes? Are berries successfully dried in evaporators? This is a natural berry country. Wild blackberries are a wonder here. Transportation facilities do not allow raising for the city market. In your opinion, would the planting of ten acres in berries for drying be a success? The blackberries chiefly grown in California are the Lawton, Crandall and the Mammoth. The raspberry chiefly grown is the Cuthbert. There are very few of these berries dried. It would be better to dry them in an evaporator than in the sun, but little of it is done in this State. It is doubtful whether it would pay to plant blackberries for drying only, because there is such a large product flow in various places where the berries are either sold fresh or sold to the cannery, and drying is only done for the purpose of saving the crop if the prices for the other uses are not satisfactory. To grow especially for drying would give you only one chance of selling to advantage, and that the poorest. Planting Bush Fruits. What is the best time to set out blackberries and Loganberries? Any time after the soil is thoroughly wet down and you can get good, mature and dormant plants for transplanting. This may be as early as November and may continue until February or later in some places. Growing Strawberry Plants. In a patch of strawberries planted this spring, is it advisable to cut off runners or root some of them? In planting strawberries in matted rows, it is usual to allow a few runners to take root and thus fill the row. It is the judgment of plant growers that plants for sale should not be produced in this way, but should be grown from plants specially kept for that purpose. Strawberries in Succession. Is there any reason, in strawberry culture, when the vines are removed at the end of the fourth year, why the ground may not be thoroughly plowed and again planted to strawberries? It is theoretically possible to grow strawberries continuously on the same land by proper fertilization and irrigation. Practically, the objection is that certain diseases and injurious insects may multiply in the land, and this is the chief reason why new plantations are put on new land and the old land used for a time for beans or some root crop, so that the soil may be cleaned and refreshed by rotation and by the possibility of deeper tillage. Limitations on Gooseberries. Why is it that gooseberries are not grown more in California? Is there any reason, climatic or other, why the gooseberry should not be as successfully grown in California as elsewhere? There are two reasons. First, the gooseberry does not like interior valleys, although with proper protection from mildew or by growing resistant varieties, good fruit can be had in coast or mountain valleys. Second, practically no one cares for a ripe gooseberry in a country where so many other fruits are grown, and the demand is for green gooseberries for pies and sauce, and that is very easily oversupplied. Dry Farming with Grapes. I have heard that they are planting Muscat grapes on the dry farming plan. Will it be successful? Grapes have been grown in California on the dry farming plan ever since Americans came 60 years ago. Grapes can be successfully grown by thorough cultivation for moisture retention, providing the rainfall is sufficient to carry the plant when it is conserved by the most thorough and frequent cultivation. Unless this rainfall is adequate, no amount of cultivation will make grape vines succeed, because even the best cultivation produces no moisture, but only conserves a part of that which falls from the clouds. Whether grapes will do depends, first, upon what the rainfall is; second, upon whether the soil is retentive; third, upon whether you cultivate in such a way as to enable the soil to exercise its maximum retentiveness. These are matters which cannot be determined theoretically - they require actual test. Cutting Back Frosted Vine Canes. Vines have been badly injured by the late frosts, especially the young vines which were out the most. Is there anything to be done with the injured shoots now on the vines so as to help the prospects of a crop? If shoots are only lightly frosted they should be cut off at once as low as you can detect injury. This may save the lower parts of the shoot, from which a later growth can be made. Frosted parts ferment and carry destruction downward, and therefore should be disposed of as soon as possible. Where vines have run out considerably and badly frosted, the best practice usually is to strip off the frozen shoots so as to get rid of the dormant buds at the base, which often give sterile shoots. A new break of canes from other buds is generally more productive. Dipping Thompson Seedless. What is the process of dipping and bleaching Thompson seedless grapes? One recipe for dipped raisins is as follows: One quart olive oil; 3/4-pound Greenbank soda and 3 quarts water are made into an emulsion, and then reduced with 10 gallons water in the dipping tank, adding more soda to get lye-strength enough to cut the skins, and more soda has to be added from time to time to keep up the strength. The grapes are dipped in this solution and sulphured to the proper color. This is the general outline of the process. The ability to use it well can only be attained by experience and close observation. The Zante Currant. Is the currant that grows in the United States in any way related to the currant that grows in Greece? If so, could it be cured like the currant that comes from Greece? The dried currants of commerce are made in Greece and in California (to a slight extent) from the grape known as the grape of Corinth. They are not made from the bush currant which is generally grown in the United States, and the two plants are not in any way related. Grape Vines for an Arbor. How shall I prune grape vines, viz: Tokay, Black Cornichon, Muscat, Thompson Seedless, Rose of Peru, planted for a grape arbor? You can grow all the vines you mention with high stumps reaching part way or to the top of the arbor as you desire side or top shade or both. You can also grow them with permanent side branches on the side slats of the arbor if you desire. Each winter pruning would consist in cutting back all the previous summer's growth to a few buds from which new canes will grow for shade or fruiting, or you can work on the renewal system, keeping some of these canes long for quick foliage and more fruit perhaps and cutting some of them short to grow new wood for the following year's service, as they often do in growing Eastern grapes. Pruning Old Vines. I have some Muscat grape vines 30 years old. Can I chop off most of the old wood with a hatchet and thereby bring them back to proper bearing? Not with a hatchet. If the vines are worth keeping at all, they are worth careful cutting with a saw and a painting of all cuts in large old wood. If the vines have been neglected, you can saw away surplus prongs or spurs, reserving four or five of the best placed and most vigorous, and cut back the canes of last summer's growth to one, two or three buds, according to the strength of the canes - the thicker the canes, the more buds to be kept. It is not desirable to cut away an old vine to get a new start from the ground, unless you wish to graft. Shape the top of the vine as well as you can by saving the best of the old growth. Topping Grape Vines. Is topping grape vines desirable? Topping of vines is in all cases more or less weakening. The more foliage that is removed, the more weakening it is. Vines, therefore, which are making a weak growth from any cause whatever can only be injured by topping. If the vines are exceptionally vigorous, the weakening due to topping may be an advantage by making them more fruitful. The topping, however, must be done with discretion. Early topping in May is much more effective and less weakening than later topping in June. Very early topping before blossoming helps the setting of the blossoms. Topping in general increases the size of the berries. Bleeding Vines. Will pruning grape vines when they bleed injure them? It has been demonstrated not to be of any measurable injury. Vines and Scant Moisture. Would it be well to sucker vines and take also some bearing canes off, or in a dry year will they mature properly as in other years if the ground is in good condition? Vines usually bear drouth-stress better than bearing fruit trees. On soils of good depth and retentiveness, they are likely to give good crops in a dry year with thorough cultivation; still, lightening the burden of the vines is rational. Suckering and cutting away second-crop efforts should be done. Whether you need to reduce the first crop can be told better by the looks of the vines later in the season. Sulphuring for Mildew. For two years I have not sulphured my vineyard and had no mildew. My vines seem as healthy and thrifty as any of the neighbors' that were duly sulphured. Have I lost anything by not sulphuring? Certainly not. In sections where mildew is practically sure to come, sulphur should be used regularly as a preventive without waiting for the appearance of the disease. There are, however, many locations, especially in the interior valley, where the occurrence of mildew is rare in sufficient volume to do appreciable harm, and then sulphuring should depend upon the weather, which favors mildew or otherwise. But be always on the watch and have everything ready to sulphur immediately; also learn to recognize the conditions under which appearances of mildew become a menace. Grape Sugar in Canned Grapes. How can I prevent the formation of grape sugar in canned grapes? Take care that the syrup is of the same density as the juice of the grape when the fruit and the juice are placed together in the can. The density of the syrup and the juice are, of course, to be obtained by the use of the spindle, the same arrangement employed for determining when the percentage of sugar in the grape juice is right for raisin-making or for wine-making. Whatever the density of the juice, make the syrup the same by the use of the right amount of sugar. Part II. Vegetable Growing California Grown Seed. Which are the best garden seeds to use, those raised in Ohio and the East or those raised in Washington and Oregon or those raised in this State? It has been definitely shown by experience and experiment that is does not matter much where the seed comes from, providing it is well grown and good of its kind. There is no such advantage in changing seed from one locality to another as is commonly supposed. Besides, it is now very difficult to tell positively where seed is grown, because California wholesale seeds are retailed in all the States you mention, and the contents of many small packets of seeds distributed in California went first of all from California to the Eastern retailers, who advertise and sell them everywhere. Cloth for Hotbeds. Would cloth do to cover a hotbox to raise lettuce, radishes, etc., for winter use where we get a very heavy rainfall? Yes, if you make the cloth waterproof for its own preservation from mildew and other agencies of decay. The following recipe for waterproofing cloth is taken from our book on "California Vegetables": Soften 4 1/2 ounces of glue in 8 3/4 pints of water, cold at first; then dissolve in, say, a washboiler full (6 gallons) of warm water, with 2 1/2 ounces of hard soap; put in the cloth and boil for an hour, wring and dry; then prepare a bath of a pound of alum and a pound of salt, soak the prepared cloth in it for a couple of hours, rinse with clear water and dry. One gallon of the glue solution will soak about ten yards of cloth. This cloth has been used in southern California for several years without mildewing, and it will hold water by the pailful. Where the rain is heavy and frequent, the cloth should be well supported by slats and given slope to shed water quickly. Of course, this is only a makeshift. Glass would be more satisfactory and durable in a region of much cloudiness and scant sunshine; the greater illumination through glass will make for the greater health and growth of the plants. Soil for Vegetables. Some of my soil bakes and hardens quickly after irrigation, but I have an acre or so of sandy soil. Would this be best for garden truck and berries? Sandy, loamy soil is better than the heavy soil for vegetables and berries, if moisture is kept right, because it can be more easily cultivated and takes water without losing the friable condition which is so desirable. A heavier soil can, however, be improved by the free use of stable manure or by the addition of sand, or by the use of one or more applications of lime at the rate of 500 pounds to the acre, as may be required - all these operations making the soil more loamy and more easily handled. Vegetables in a Cold, Dark Draft. What vegetables will thrive in localities where the sun shines only part of the day? I have a space in my garden that gets the sun only between the hours of 11 and 5, thereabouts; I would like to utilise those places for vegetables if any particular kind will grow under such conditions. The soil apparently is good, of a sandy nature, with some loam. The place is high and subject to much wind. You can only definitely determine by actual trial what vegetables will be satisfactory under the shade conditions which you describe. You may get good results from lettuces, radishes, beets, peas, top onions, and many other things which do well at rather a low temperature, while tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, etc., would probably be worthless. Your soil is probably satisfactory and you can easily keep the moisture right by being careful not to use as much water as you would in open sunshine. The behavior of the plants will be directly dependent upon the temperature and the sunshine which they receive under the conditions described. Jesusalem Artichokes. What is the best time for planting Jerusalem artichokes? Jerusalem artichoke tubers are planted in the spring after the ground has become warm and the heavy frosts are over. The planting may be done in rows far enough apart for cultivation, the tubers being set about a foot apart in the row. This tuber grows like a potato, but is more delicate than the potato. It is inclined to decay when out of the ground, but will not start growth as early as the potato, and therefore it is not desirable to start it early in the winter if the winters are cold and the ground apt to be very wet. Do not cut the tubers for seed as you would potatoes. Globe Artichokes. I have land that will grow magnificent artichokes. Two plants last year (variety unknown) produced heavy crops of buds, but the scales opened too wide and allowed the center to become fibrous and were unsalable. Is this due to climate, lack of sufficient water, or to not having the right variety? Many artichokes which are planted should really be put in the ornamental class - they are either a reversion from a wilder type in plants grown from the seed or they never have been good. In order to determine which varieties you had better grow on a large scale, it is desirable to get a few plants of the different varieties as offered by seedmen. In this way you would find out just what are considered best in different parts of the State, and propagate largely the ones which are best worth to you. By subdivision of the roots you get exactly the same type in any quantity you desire - ruling out undesirable variations likely to appear in seedlings. Artichoke Growing. Is the Globe artichoke a profitable crop to raise commercially? Near Pescadero a company has been formed to raise it for Eastern shipment. Is it a very profitable crop to raise? Are certain varieties worthless? Considerable quantities of Globe artichokes are grown in southern and central California for Eastern shipment. There is a limit to the amount which can be profitably shipped, because people generally, at the East, do not know the Globe artichoke and how to eat it, but more of them are learning the desirability of it every year. There are species which are only ornamental, as a bad weed. Asparagus Growing. What is the average commercial yield of asparagus to the acre in California? Also, how long it takes asparagus to come into full bearing, and what yield could be expected after two years' growth? Is asparagus resistant to moderate quantities of alkali in the soil? The yield of asparagus is from one to four tons of marketable shoots per acre, according to age and thrift of plants, etc., the largest yields being on the peat lands of the river islands. On suitable lands one ought to get at least two tons per acre. Roots may yield a few days' cuttings during their second year in permanent place; the third year they will stand much more cutting, and for several years after that will be in full yielding. Asparagus enjoys a little salt in the land, but one would not select what is ordinarily called "alkali land" for growing it - not only because of the alkali but because of the soil character which it induces. Bean Growing. We have a small field of beans, and would like to know which is the best and most profitable way to crop them. Cultivate the beans so that the plants may have plenty of moisture to fill the pods, then let them dry and die. Gather the dry plants before the pods open much, and let them dry on a clean, smooth piece of ground or on the barn floor. When they are well dried, thresh with a flail, rake off the straw, sweep up the beans and clean by winnowing in the wind or with a fanning mill with suitable screens. Hoeing Beans. Should beans be hoed while the dew is on the vine? Beans had better be hoed with the dew on them than not hoed at all. The only objection to hoeing with the dew on is that the hoer will get his feet wet, the vines will become untidy from adhering dust, with a possible chance of the leaves becoming less effective and the pollination of the blossom rendered less liable to occur. Beans as Nitrogen Gatherers. I grow string beans in my rotation to restore nitrogen, but I see it stated that not all beans are valuable for this purpose. Are the common bush varieties nitrogen gatherers? Probably they are all doing it in various degrees. Pull up or dig up a few plants when growing actively, not too early nor too late in the season, and look for nodules on the roots. Number and size considered together will measure their activity in this line in your soil. Bean Growing. I want to plant beans of different varieties. The land is rich, black loam with a little sand. When is the best time to plant? If planted early, what shall we do to keep the weevils out of them? It is desirable to plant beans as early as you can without encountering danger of frost killing. No particular date can be mentioned for planting because the dates will vary in different locations according to the beginning of the frost-free period. The best way to escape weevil is to sell most of the beans as soon as harvested, treating those which you retain for seed, or for your own use, with bisulphide of carbon vapor or by gently heating to a temperature not above 130 degrees, which, of course, must be done carefully with an accurate thermometer so as not to injure germinating power. Unless you know that beans do well in your locality, it would be wise to plant a small area at first, because beans are somewhat particular in their choice of location in California, and one should have practical demonstration of bearing before risking much upon the crop. The Yard-Long Bean. I wish to ask about the very long bean which I think was introduced from China into California. I remember seeing one vine when I was living in California which I think must have been 20 or 30 feet long and had hundreds of pods and each of these pods were from 2 to 3 feet long. Are these beans generally considered eatable? Would they be at all suitable to get as a field bean which the hogs eat? You probably refer to the "yard-long" pole bean. It is a world variety and may have come to California from China as you suggest, but it has also been well known for generations in Europe and was brought thence to the Eastern States at some early date. It is generally accounted as an unimportant species and certainly has not risen to commercial account in California. The beans are edible and the whole plant available for stock feeding, but there is no doubt but that the growth of some of the cowpeas would be preferable as a summer field crop for hog pasture. Why the Beans are Waiting. Can you tell me why pink beans which were planted early in Merced county, irrigated four times, hoed four times and cultivated, have no beans on them? The vines look finely. Probably because you had too much hot, dry wind at the blooming. This is one of the most frequent troubles with beans in the hot valley, but the pink bean resists it better than other varieties. As the heat moderates you are likely to get blossoms which will come through and form pods, and then the crop will depend upon how long frost is postponed. You have also treated the plants a little too well with water and cultivation. You had better let them feel the pinch of poverty a little now; they will be more likely to go to work. Blackeye Beans. What is the best way to prepare land for Black-eye beans? How much seed is required per acre, and what is the estimated cost of growing them? The soil is a well-drained clay loam. The cost of growing is not particularly different from other beans, and will vary, of course, according to the capacity and efficiency of the plows, harrows, teams, tractors, men, etc. Every man has to figure that according to his conditions and methods of turning and fining the land. Sow 40 pounds per acre in drills 3 feet apart, and cultivate as long as you can without injuring the vines too much. Sowing must of course be done late, after the ground is warm and danger of frost is past, though the plowing and harrowing should be done earlier than that. Blackeye Beans are Cow Peas. I sent for some Blackeye cow peas; they look like Blackeye beans. Am sending you a sample of what I got. What are they? Yes, they are in the cow pea group, but there are other cow peas which would not be recognized as having any relation to them. All cow peas are, however, beans, and they have not much use for frost. They are not hardy like the true pea group. Growing Horse Beans. Does the soil need to be inoculated for horse beans? I intend to plant five acres about January 1, on the valley border in Placer county and they get heavy frost in the morning. Does frost hurt them? How shall I plant them? California experience is that horse beans grow readily without inoculation of the seed. Quite a good growth of the plant is being secured in many parts of the State, particularly in the coast region where the plant seems to thrive best. It is one of the hardiest of the bean family and will endure light frost. How hardy it will prove in your place could be told only by a local experiment. Whether it can be planted after frost danger is over, as corn is, and make satisfactory growth and product in the dry heat of the interior summer must also be determined by experience. The horse bean is a tall growing, upright plant which is successfully grown in rows far enough apart for cultivation, say about 2 1/2 feet, the seed dropped thinly so that the plants will stand from 6 inches to 1 foot apart in the row. Growing Castor Beans. Give information on the castor oil bean; the kind of bean best to plant, when to plant and harvest, the best soil, and where one can market them. Castor bean growing has been undertaken from time to time since 1860 in various parts of California. There is no difficulty about getting a satisfactory growth of the plant in parts of the State where moisture enough can be depended upon. Although the growing of beans is easy enough, the harvesting is a difficult proposition, because in California the clusters ripen from time to time, have to be gathered by hand, to be put in the sun to dry, and finally threshed when they are popping properly. The low price, in connection with the amount of hand work which has to be done upon the crop, has removed all the attractions for California growers. There is also, some years, an excess of production in the central West, which causes prices to fall and makes it still more impracticable to make money from the crop with the ordinary rates of labor. The oil cannot be economically extracted except by the aid of the most effective machinery and a well equipped establishment. Oil-making in the rude way in which it is conducted in India would certainly not be profitable here. Legume Seed Inoculation. Is there any virtue in inoculating plants with the bacteria that some seed firms offer? I refer to such plants as peas and beans. If the land is yielding good crops of these plants and the roots are noduled, it does not need addition of germs. If the growth is scant even when there is enough moisture present and the roots are free from nodules, the presumption is that germs should be added. Speaking generally, added germs are not needed in California because our great legume crops are made without inoculation. Presumably, burr clover and our host of native legumes have already charged the soil with them. If, however, such plants do not do well, try inoculation by all means, to see if absence of germs is the reason for such failure or whether you must look for some other reason. If the results are satisfactory, you may have made a great gain by introduction of desirable soil organisms which you can extend as you like by the distribution of the germ-laden soil from the areas which have been given that character by inoculation of the seed. Beans on Irrigated Mesas. Would white and pink beans do well on the red orange land at Palermo with plenty of water? I have in mind hill land, the hills being very red and running into a dark soil in the lower part. How many beans could I get per acre? Probably nothing would be better for the land or for the future needs of the trees than to grow beans. An average crop of beans, for the whole State and all kinds of beans, is about one ton to the acre. What you will get by irrigation on hot uplands we do not know. Beans do not like dry heat, even if the soil moisture is adequate. They do not fructify well even when they grow well. The pink bean does best under such conditions. All beans, except horse beans, must be brought up after frost dangers are all over, and this brings them into high heat almost from the start in such a place as you mention. You should find out locally how beans perform under such conditions as you have, before undertaking much investment. Leases for Sugar Beets. I have land in Yolo county that has made an average yield yearly of from 12 to 18 sacks of wheat and barley. A beet sugar company proposes renting this land and plant it to sugar beets and I would prefer not to consider any agreement of less than five years' duration. The particular point that I would like to have you advise me on is the effect sugar beet has upon the soil. You certainly have good soil, and it is not strange that a sugar company should desire to rent it for its purposes. There is, however, a great question as to whether it would be desirable to run to beets continually for five years. Beets make a strong draft on some components of the soil, and it is a common experience that they should not be grown year after year for a long period, but should take their place in a rotation, in the course of which one or two crops of beets should be followed by a crop of grain, and that if possible by a leguminous plant like alfalfa or an annual legume like burr clover used for pasturage, and then to beets again. Beets improve soil for grain, because of the deep running of the root, and because beet culture is not profitable without deep plowing and continuous summer cultivation. This deepens and cleans the land to the manifest advantage of the grain crop, but still the beet reduces the plant food in the soil and some change of crop should be made with reference to its restoration. We would much prefer to lease it for two years than for five years of beet growing. Topping Mangel Wurzels. Does it harm the mangel wurzels if their tops ore cut off once a month? Removing leaves will decrease the size and harden the tissues of the beet root. If you wish to grow the plant for the top, the root will continue to put out leaves for you for a time; if you grow it for the size and quality of the root, you need all the leaf-action you can get, therefore do not reduce the foliage. Blooming Brussels Sprouts. Are Brussels sprouts male and female? Some of my plants are flowering and show no signs of sprouts, while those that are not, show some small eyes at stem that look like young sprouts. Brussels sprouts ought to form the sprouts without flowering, just as a cabbage heads without flowering. Those plants which show flowers have been stopped by drought or otherwise, and have taken on prematurely the second stage of growth which is productive of seed and is undesirable from the point of view of growing heads. Blanching Celery. I desire to know the different methods by which the celery is bleached, and particularly whether boards or other material other than earth is used for this purpose. There is some blanching of celery with boards, cloth wrappings, boot-legs, old tiles, sewer pipes, etc., in market gardens in different parts of the State, but the great commercial product of celery for export is blanched wholly by piling the light, dry earth against the growing plant. As we do not have rains during the growing season and as the soil on which celery is chiefly grown is particularly coarse in its texture, there is no rusting or staining from this method of blanching. It shakes out clean and bright. Conditions which make earth-blanching undesirable in the humid region do not exist here. Corn in the Sacramento Valley. Is it practical to raise corn in the Sacramento volley? Are the soil and climatic conditions suitable? The success of corn on plains and uplands in the Sacramento valley has not yet been fully demonstrated, although good corn is grown on river bottom lands, and it is possible that much more may be done with this grain in the future than in the past. Corn does not enjoy the dry heat of the plains, and even when irrigated seems to be dissatisfied with it. How far we shall succeed in getting varieties which will endure dry heat and still be large and productive will ere long be determined by the experiments which are in progress. The old Sacramento valley farmer has been justified to some degree in his conclusion that his is not a corn country. Still it may appear so later. Plant Corn in Warm Ground. I also put in a lot of corn and none of it came up. The ground was damp and rather cold, as well as being alkali. Corn should never be planted in cold, wet ground - in fact, very few seeds should be. Besides, corn has no use for alkali. Sweet Corn in California. I have been informed that sweet corn cannot be raised in this part of the country, an account of worms eating the kernels before the ear has matured. Is there any method of overcoming this difficulty? You have been correctly informed concerning the difficulty in growing sweet corn. Although many experiments have been made, no method of overcoming this pest has yet been demonstrated. For this reason canning of corn is not undertaken in this State, and for the same reason most of the green corn ears sold in our markets have the tops of the ears amputated. It is sometimes possible to escape the worm by planting rather late, so that the ears shall develop after the moth, which is parent of the worm, has deposited its eggs. Forcing Cucumbers. Give information on growing hot-house cucumbers, and also if you think it would pay me to go into the business in southern California. Forcing of cucumbers has been undertaken for a number of years in California and formerly was considered unprofitable because cucumbers grown in the open air in frostless places came in before the forced product could be sold out at sufficiently high prices to make the venture profitable. Recently, however, owing to our increased population in cities and larger demand of products out of season, forcing becomes more promising and is worthy of attention. Forcing of cucumbers in California can be done at very much less expense, of course, than elsewhere, because of the abundance of winter sunshine and the fact that sufficiently high temperatures can be secured in glass houses with exceedingly little if any artificial heat: The chances of growing cucumbers out of season for shipment eastward and northward can be discussed with the officers of the California Vegetable Growers' Union, which has offices and warehouse in Los Angeles. Cucumber Growing. I have a piece of red so-called orange land which has produced excellent wheat. Will you give information about its adaptability to cucumbers? Are there pickle factories in the State which would demand them in quantities, and is there much other demand for them? About when should they be planted, and how much water would they need? The cucumber needs a retentive soil which does not crack and bake, and such a soil is made by abundance of organic matter. Your orange soil, unless heavily treated with stable manure and given plenty of time for disintegration, would probably give you distressful cucumber plants, if it has come right out of wheat-growing. Besides, cucumbers do not like dry heat, even if the soil be kept moist by irrigation. Oranges will do well under conditions not favorable to cucumbers. Cucumber plants must come up after danger of frost is over. The amount of water they require depends upon how moist the soil is naturally, and as the crop is chiefly grown on moist river lands and around the bay, it is chiefly made without irrigation. Such lands have a cucumber capacity equal to the consumption of the United States, probably, and the pickle factories can usually get all they can use at a minimum transportation cost. Large-scale plantings should only be made by men who know the crop and have definite information or contract for what they can get for it. Ginger in California. We have ginger roots in a growing condition with sprouts and bulbs growing an them, but we do not understand how to raise the plants. Growing ginger in California in a commercial way has not been worked out, although roots have been introduced from time to time. Plant your roots in the garden, just as you would callas, where you can give them good cultivation and water, as seems to be necessary, and note their behavior under these favorable conditions before you undertake any large investment in a crop. Licorice Growing in California. I have for some time been seeking far some information as to the method of preparation for market and sale of licorice roots. I have a lot of them and have never been able to find a market, and do not know how they are prepared for market. Licorice was first planted in California about 1880 by the late Isaac Lea, of Florin, Sacramento county. Mr. Lea grew a considerable amount of licorice roots and gave much effort to finding a market for it. He found that the local consumption of licorice root was too small to warrant growing it as a crop; that the high price of labor in digging the roots, and the high cost of transportation of the roots to Eastern markets would make it impossible for him to undertake competition in the Eastern markets with the Sicilian producers, unless, perhaps, he could build an extracting factory and market licorice extract, the black solid which is sold by the druggist, and which the Sicilians produce in large quantities. The preparation of licorice root is simply digging and drying, but the preparation of the extract requires steam extractors and condensers. California could produce licorice, for we have a good climate for it. If it is grown on light, sandy loams, it could be pulled from the ground by the yard at rather small expense, and yet, one should not undertake the production unless he wished to put in much time and money in working up economical production and marketing in competition with the foreign product, produced by cheap labor and with the advantage of processes well known and established by long usage. Experiments should be circumspectly undertaken, for licorice is one of the worst weeds in the world, and extremely difficult of eradication probably. Growing Lentils. Give information regarding the planting and raising of lentils. Can they be grown in the Sacramento valley in the vicinity of Colusa, and at a profit? Lentils are as easily grown in California as common peas, and will do well as a field crop if started during the rainy season, as they are hardy enough to survive our ordinary valley frosts. With respect to lentils, it may be said that excellent as these legumes are for many purposes, they do not seem to be well known to American consumers, and therefore the amount to be grown is limited, until you know who will buy larger quantities of them at a good price. Canada Peas for Seed. I want to raise Canada peas for the seed. In what month of the year is the best time to plant them; also how many pounds to the acre to be sowed broadcast on rolling land in Napa? Broadcast from 80 to 100 pounds of seed per acre as soon as you can get the ground into good condition. What you get will depend much upon how late spring rains hold this year. We should only try a small area this year to see what happens, for you probably should have started earlier in the season. On uplands it will always be a question whether your soil will hold moisture enough to mature a good seed crop. Growing Niles Peas. How shall I plant and handle a crop of Niles peas? Niles peas are hardy and will make a good crop on any good soil, if planted early in the season so as to make the main part of their growth before the heat of the summer comes on. Under garden conditions they can, of course, be grown all summer. Transplanting Lettuce. I have lettuce plants that have been transplanted to head. Occasionally I find a head that has withered away and upon examining it find it rotted away at the stem. Can you suggest a remedy for it? Your lettuce plants are destroyed by the "damping, off" fungus. It would be preventable by reducing the amount of moisture until the transplanted plant had opportunity to re-establish itself in the soil and thus come into condition to take water. The chance of it could also be reduced by using a certain amount of sand in connection with the soil, unless it is already very sandy, and by a shallow covering of sand on the surface around the plants after they are reset, in order to prevent too great accumulation of moisture. Handling Winter Melons. Give particulars regarding harvesting, storaging, and shipment of winter melons. How do you harvest and pack them for distant market? There is no particular system in the handling of winter melons. They are gathered into piles on ground where water will not gather and covered with the trash of the vines on which they grow. They will keep for months in this way, as our autumn temperatures do not freeze them. Other growers collect them in open sheds shaded from sun and rain, and still others put them into barns or shallow cellars under buildings, etc. The melons are very durable and seem disposed to keep in any old way. The melons are shipped in large packing cases with slat sides, or in the smaller slat crates that are used for summer cantaloupes. No packing is used, generally. If it seemed necessary, a little clean straw would be sufficient. Ripe Melons. How can I tell when a watermelon is fully ripe? What is the method used by growers in picking for commercial shipping? Gently press the sides of a melon and if it crackles a little bit, all right; if it makes no sound then go to another. Commercial pickers look at the little spiral between the melon and the nearest leaf. If it is withered they pick the melon, if fresh, pass it until next picking. Growing Onion Seed and Sets. Will you give localities of the leading production of onion seed or dry sets in your State? Onion seed is grown in several parts of the State, largely in the Santa Clara valley adjacent to the city of San Jose. Onion sets are largely produced in Orange county, near Los Angeles, for eastern shipment, for which purpose they are grown under contract. Ripening Onions. I am raising some onions from bottom sets and as they are growing nicely and are beginning to swell at the bulb some advise me to cut the tops off and some advise me to bend them over or tramp them down. Do not cut off the tops of the onions. If they seem to be overgrowing and not disposed to ripen the bulb, the top can be broken down, thus partly arresting the vegetative energy of the plant and causing maturity. Onions from Sets. Will onion sets planted in July grow and mature in the fall months? Good onion sets grown during the winter and spring should be mature by July and if planted after drying would proceed to make a full growth of large onions if growing conditions should be right for them; that is, the soil moist and the temperature not too high. How Many Crops of Onion Seed? Does the growing of onion seed exhaust adobe land, and if so, how many years' cropping before it requires rest or fertilizing? The growth of any seed crop, including cereal grains, of course, makes a supreme draft upon soil fertility. How long a certain soil can stand it, depends upon the amount of fertility it has when the draft begins. The best rough way to tell how it is going, is to watch the growth and crop, when moisture conditions are known to be favorable. If you get a good growth of the plant it is still good to make the seed. Onions from Seed. Will onions from seed mature the same season if they are irrigated? Some tell us they will not, so we would be very much pleased to hear from you. Onions grown from the seed do fully develop during the growing season following the planting of the seed. In fact, nearly all California onions are grown in that way. Our growing season is so long that we do not need to use onion sets to any extent, as they do in short-summer climates. Dry Farming with Chili Peppers. If I set chili pepper plants down six or eight inches lower than the surface of the ground and fill in as the plants grow larger, will this help in case I could not get water enough? My soil is a deep sandy loam. We have had between five and six inches of rain. Do you think water every fifteen days would be enough? On such light soil as you mention, the plants can be planted deeply and a certain amount of soil brought up to the plants by cultivation without injury. As this plant has a long growing season and matures its crop rather late, you will undoubtedly need irrigation. Probably irrigation twice a month will be sufficient in connection with good cultivation, but you will have to watch the plants and apply the water as it seems to be needed, rather than by a specific scheme of days. Harvesting Peanuts. I would like information regarding the curing of peanuts. Should they be bleached, and, if so, how is it done? Does bleaching affect the keeping qualities? It is not usual to bleach peanuts. They should be grown in such light soil that they will not be stained, and the common method of curing is to dig or plow up, throw the vines, with nuts attached, into windrows and allow them to lie a week or ten days for drying. Then the nuts are picked into sacks and cleaned before shipment in revolving drums, followed by a grain fan which throws out the light nuts and other rubbish. Bleaching would not destroy the keeping quality probably, but it would destroy the flavor and the germinating power. The latter would not matter, except with such nuts as you wish to keep for seed, because the roasting destroys the germinating power also, but sulphuring, which would reduce the flavor, would give the product a bad name. Possibly some growers do bleaching, but, if so, they have to be pretty careful about it. The cost of the operation would also be a bar to profit, for peanuts are grown on a narrow margin owing to competition with importations grown with cheap labor. Adobe and Peanuts. Is adobe land good for the peanut? Is it harder to start than in other soils or not? It is not good at all. Peanuts require the finest, mellowest loam with sand enough to prevent crust, and moisture even and continuous. The surface must be kept loose so that the plant can bury its own bloom stem and the under soil light and clean so that it will readily shake from the nuts and not stain them. Adobe is the worst soil you could find for peanuts. Cutting Potatoes. What would be the most profitable potato to plant in the Salinas valley, and how small can a potato be cut up for planting? How many eyes should each piece contain in order to make a good growth and be profitable? Probably the best potato for your district would be the Burbank, which is largely grown near Salinas and brings the highest price. It is customary to cut a medium-sized potato in two pieces and a large one in four pieces. One can be very economical of seed by smaller cutting, but it would require the most favorable conditions to bring a vigorous growth. Probably pieces weighing not less than two ounces would be best under ordinary conditions. Potatoes which are rather small may be used for seed if well matured and have good eyes. It is dangerous, however, to use the small stuff - too small for sale. Unless the soil and moisture conditions are extra favorable, the growth will be weak and unsatisfactory. Potato Planting. How many sacks of potatoes are to be planted to an acre, and how many eyes are to be left in a seed? If, for instance, we plant seed with three eyes, how many potatoes should we get from that vine? Potatoes are planted all the way from five to fifteen sacks to the acre, probably about ten sacks being the average. There is no particular number of eyes specified in preparing the seed, according to common practice. Good medium-sized potatoes are generally cut in two pieces crosswise, and large potatoes in four pieces, cutting both ways. There is no definite relation between the number of eyes planted and the number of potatoes coming from them. This has been the subject of innumerable experiments, and the conclusion is that the crop is more dependent upon good soil and favorable growing conditions than upon any way of preparing the seed. Northern Potatoes for Seed. Do you regard northern-grown seed potatoes sufficiently better to make it worth while paying freight on them from the State of Washington? Experience seems to indicate the superiority of northern-grown seed potatoes, not only in this State, but on the Atlantic Coast, and they are largely depended upon. Systematic demonstration by comparative tests has been made by the Vermont station and preference for northern-grown seed seems, to be justified. Potato Planting. I have ten acres of land in Placer county which I propose to put into potatoes next spring. It has been recommended to me to put potatoes in as early as January. It seems to me that January is rather early; however, it is said that this land is in the orange belt and practically free from frost. Whether you can plant potatoes to advantage in January or not depends upon the temperatures which you are likely to meet after that date, also whether the ground is warm enough in January, because there is no advantage in planting in cold ground nor in soil that is too wet at the time. The earliest potatoes, of course, come from planting much earlier than January; usually as soon as the ground is moistened enough in the autumn. The potato will stand some frost, but autumn planting is not feasible in places which are under hard freezing or receive too much cold rain water. Potatoes Should be Planted Early. I have Early Rose potatoes planted about May first. The tops look fine, but there are few potatoes and small, and, though not developed, have commenced growing a second time, sprouts starting from the new potatoes. When should I plant and what care should they have? Your potatoes act peculiarly because of intermittent moisture - the plant being arrested by drought and then starting again, which is very undesirable. To avoid this, potatoes should be planted earlier so as to get a large part of their growth during the rainy season. If planted late the ground should be well wet down by irrigation, and then plowed and cultivated, and irrigation should be used while the plant is growing well. If this is done, potatoes can be successfully grown by irrigation, but if the land is allowed to become dry the plant is arrested in its growth for a time and a second and undesirable growth is started. Potato Balls. I find in potato writings of forty years ago that the seed from the potato balls which form on the tops of the plants is recommended for growing the best potatoes. In later books I find no mention of them and all are advised how to cut the tubers to get seed potatoes. The seed of the potato plant which is found in the "balls" which develop on the tops of the plant is only valuable for the origination of new varieties, with the chance, of course, that most of them will be inferior to the tubers produced by the plant which bears the seed. Therefore, these seeds are of no commercial importance. There has also sometimes developed upon the top of the plant what is called an aerial tuber, which is even of less value than the seed ball, because it does not contain seed nor is it good as a tuber. Forty years ago there was a great demand for newer and better kinds of potatoes which has, since that time, been largely supplied, and commercial potato-growing consists in multiplying the standard varieties which best suit the soil and the market. This is done by planting the tuber itself, which is really a root-cutting and therefore reproduces its own kind. Those who are originating new kinds of potatoes still use seed from the balls, either taking their chances by natural variation or, by hybridizing the blossoms, increasing the chances for variation from which desirable varieties are taken by selection, to be afterward multiplied by growth from the tubers. Seed-Ends of Potatoes. Is it bad practice to plant the seed-ends of potatoes? The seed-end of the potato is the least valuable part of it, but it is better probably to plant than to reject it. The Moon and Potato Planting. Is there any foundation to the oft-repeated story about potatoes in the light of the moon running to tops and the dark of the moon to spuds? If we paid any attention to the moon in planting, we should plant in the dark of the moon so as to give the plant opportunity to make use of whatever additional light the full moon afforded. Planting Whole Potatoes. One man states the only way to cut seed is to take a potato and cut the ends off and not divide the potato any more; or, in other words, a whole potato for each seed. Good results are obtained by planting whole potatoes, but in that case there is no advantage in removing the ends. How to Cut Seed Potatoes. Would it pay in returns to use large potatoes for seed in preference to culls? Large potatoes are better than culls, but medium-sized potatoes are better than either. Many experiments have been made to determine this. At the Arkansas station whole tubers two to three inches in diameter yielded 18 per cent more than small whole tubers three-quarters to one and one-quarter inches in diameter, and large cut tubers yielded 15.8 per cent more than small cut tubers. Cutting Potatoes to Single Eyes. Some say only one eye to a piece; others say several eyes - which is better? In one experiment potatoes cut to single eyes with each piece weighing one-sixteenth of an ounce yielded 44 bushels to the acre, while single eyes on two-ounce pieces yielded 177 bushels to the acre. Experiments in Indiana showed that the yield usually increased with the weight of the set and that the exact number of eyes per cutting is relatively unimportant. Potato Scab. Can potatoes be treated in any way before planting to prevent the new ones from being what is called "scabby"? There are two successful treatments for scab in potatoes. One is dipping in a solution of corrosive sublimate. Dissolve one ounce in eight gallons of water and soak the seed potatoes in this solution for one and one-half hours before cutting. This treatment kills the scab spores which may be upon the exterior of the potatoes. More recently, however, to avoid danger in handling such a rank poison as corrosive sublimate, formaldehyde has been used, and one pint of commercial formaldehyde, as it is bought in the stores, is diluted with thirty gallons of water, and potatoes are soaked in this for two hours. Thirty gallons of this dip ought to treat about fifty bushels of potatoes. Double-Cropping with Potatoes. I am told that here two crops of potatoes can be raised by planting the second crop in August. I have five acres which will be ready to dig in July. Can I dig these Potatoes and use them for seed at once for another crop, or won't they grow? I have a crop of barley, and as it is heading out now, I want to put potatoes on the ground after I take the barley off. I have plenty of water to irrigate. If your potatoes ripen in July and you allow those which you desire for seed to lie upon the ground and become somewhat greenish, they are likely to sprout well for a second crop. They should not, however, be planted immediately. Whether you get a second crop successfully or not depends upon how early the frosts come in your district. Whether you get potatoes after barley or not depends also upon how much moisture there remains in the soil. By irrigating thoroughly after harvesting the grain and then plowing deeply for potatoes, you would do vastly better than to plant in dry ground and irrigate afterward. When to Plant Potatoes. I have been puzzled to understand Potato growing in California. Do you have more than one cropping season, and if so, about what dates are they due? Every month in the year potatoes are being put into the ground and being taken out of the ground somewhere in California. We have, then, practically a continuous planting and harvesting season. There is, however, a division possible to make in this way: Plantings undertaken in September and October are for winter supplies of new potatoes, which begin about the holidays and continue during the winter. There is also in southern California a planting beginning in January, which might be called the earliest planting for the main crop, and other plantings for the main crop in the central and northern parts of the State begin in February and continue until May, according to the character of the land; that is, whether it is upland, on which the planting is earlier, or whether it is lowland along the rivers where excessive moisture may render the land unsuitable until April or May. The harvesting of the main crop then begins in May and continues during the whole of the summer, according to the character of the land cropped over, lapping the planting time for early potatoes first mentioned. It is also true by use of properly matured seed one can secure, in some places, two crops a year, if there is sufficient inducement therefor. Thus it comes about that we are continually planting and digging potatoes according to local conditions and the possibility of selling advantages. Keeping Potatoes. Advise me how to keep my potatoes. What is the best way? Would a dark room be suitable? Some people are digging holes in the ground to put them in. Potatoes, if properly matured and free from disease, will keep for a considerable time in dark rooms kept as cool as possible. They must be kept away from the reach of the moth, which is parent to the worm producing long black strings inside of the potato. If they are thoroughly covered with boards or sacking or straw, so as to keep the moth from reaching the potato, they may be held for a long time in the open air, and covering with earth, as your neighbors are doing, will be all right until the rains come and cause decay by making the soil too wet. The main point is to keep the tubers as cool as possible and out of reach of the potato moth. Potato Yield. What is the yield per acre of potatoes on the best land around Stockton, Cal., where work is done properly; also what is the yield for potatoes along the coast? The average yield of potatoes in California, taking the whole acreage and product as reported by the last United States census, is 147 bushels to the acre. In Stockton district, on good new reclaimed land the yield has been reported all the way from 300 to 800 bushels per acre - the crop declining rapidly when continued on the same land. One year's crop in the Stockton district was estimated at 45,000 acres averaging 125 sacks per acre. The coast yield would be more like the general average for the State as first given. New Potatoes for Seed. Can I plant American Wonder potatoes for the first crop, and let enough of them mature to use for seed for the second crop, to be planted the first or middle of July? It is possible to use potatoes grown the same year as seed for the later crop, providing you let the potatoes mature first by the complete dying down of the vines, and second by digging the potatoes allow them to lie in the open air, with some protection against sun-burning, until the potatoes become somewhat greenish. If this is the case the eyes will develop and seed will grow, while without such treatment you might be disappointed in their behavior. Of course, the question still remains whether it would be desirable to do this or to plant some later variety earlier in the season when the growing conditions would be better. Potato Growing. In what locality are the best early potatoes grown in California? Can they be raised on wheat lands without irrigation as an early crop? Early potatoes are grown in regions of light frosts in all parts of the State - around the bay of San Francisco, on the mesas in southern California, and to some extent at slight elevations in the central part of the State. The potato endures some frost, but one has, for an early crop, to guard against the locations subject to hard freezing. Most of our potatoes are grown without irrigation because, on uplands, winter temperatures favor their growing during the rainy season. The middle-season and late potatoes are grown on moist lowlands where irrigation is not necessary. In proper situations, much of the land which is used for potatoes has at some time produced wheat or barley, corn or sorghum, and other field crops. Potatoes After Alfalfa. I have been a successful potato grower in Ohio. I have the best alfalfa soil and it is now in its fourth year of productiveness in that crop. I would like to grow potatoes in a small way. Proceed just as you would at the East in getting potatoes upon a red clover sod. Turn under the alfalfa deeply now if the soil will work well, and roll your sandy soil. You must use a sharp plow to cut and cover well. If there is moisture enough the alfalfa, plowed under in the fall, ought to be decayed by February, when you could plant potatoes safely, probably, unless your situation is very frosty. If you plant early you ought to get the crop through without irrigation if you cultivate well and keep the land flat. Flat or Hill Culture for Potatoes. Is it better to hill potatoes or not? During the dry time of the year potatoes should be grown with flat cultivation, except as it may be necessary to furrow out between the rows for the application of irrigation water. Potatoes grown during the rainy season in places where there is liable to be too much water, can often be hilled to advantage, but dry-season cultivation of practically everything should be as flat as possible to retain moisture near the surface for the development of shallow-rooting plants. Bad Conditions for Potatoes. Our potatoes were planted early and were frosted several times while young. As we come to harvest them we find them with very large green tops but the potatoes are about the size of a hen's egg and from that they run down to the size of a pea. The larger ones are beginning to send out roots, four or five to a potato. The potatoes have not been irrigated lately and the ground they are in is dry. The ugly behavior of your potatoes is doubtless due to irregularities in temperature and moisture which have forced the plants into abnormal or undesirable activity. Potatoes should have regular conditions of moisture so that they shall proceed from start to finish and not stop and start again, for this will usually make the crop unsatisfactory and worthless. Excessive moisture is not desirable, but the requisite amount in continuous supply is indispensable. Potatoes on Heavy Land. Will potatoes grow well in adobe land, or partly adobe, that has not been used for seven years except for pasturing? Although potatoes enjoy best of all a light loam in which they can readily expand, it is possible to get very good results on heavy land which has been used for pasturage for some years, providing the land is broken up early and deeply and harrowed well in advance of planting and thorough cultivation maintained while the crop is growing. The content of grass roots and manure which the land has received during its period of grazing tends to make the soil lighter and will also feed the plant well. For this reason better potatoes are had on heavy land after pasturage than could be had on the same land if continually used for grain or for some other crop which tended to reduce the amount of humus and to make the land more rebellious in cultivation. Storage of Seed Potatoes. We need potatoes for late planting and have found a good lot which is being held in cold storage at temperatures from 34 to 36 degrees F. They have not been there long, however. Would that hurt them for seed, and also how long could they be safely left there now before planting? Seed potatoes would not be injured in storage, providing the temperature is not allowed to go below the freezing point. They should not, however, be allowed to remain longer in storage, but should be exposed to the sun for the development of the eyes, even to the sprouting point being desirable before planting. The greening of the potato by the sun is no disadvantage. We would not think of planting potatoes directly from storage, because, owing to the lack of development in the eyes, decay might get the start of germination. Potatoes and Frosts. Can I keep frost off of potato tops by building smudge fires! I would like to plant about February 1, but we usually have a few light frosts here during March. If I were to turn water in the field when too cold, would that keep the frost off, and if so, would I have to turn water down each row, or would one furrow full of water to about every fourth or sixth row be enough? You can prevent frost by smudging for potatoes just as you can for other vegetables. The potato, however, needs little protection of this kind and will endure a light frost which would be destructive to tomatoes, melons, and other more tender growths. Unless you have a very frosty situation, you can certainly grow potatoes without frost protection, and they should be planted earlier than February first if the ground is in good condition. The great secret of success in growing potatoes in southern California is to get a good early start before the heat and drought come on. Water will protect from frost if the temperature only goes to about 28 degrees and does not stay there too long. The more water there is exposed the longer may be the protection, but probably not against a lower temperature. Growing Sweet Potato Plants. How shall I make a hot-bed to raise sweet potato plants? I don't mean to put glass over bed, but want full description of an up-to-date outfit for raising them. Manure hot-beds have been largely abandoned for growing sweet potato slips, though, of course, you can grow them that way on a small scale or for experiment. In the large sweet potato districts, elaborate arrangements for bottom heat by circulation of hot water or steam are in use. In a smaller way hot air works well. The Arizona Experiment Station tells how a very good sweet potato hot-bed at little cost is constructed as follows: A frame of rough boards seven feet wide, twenty feet long and fourteen inches deep is laid down over two flues made by digging two trenches one foot deep and about two feet wide, lengthwise of the bed. These trenches are covered with plank or iron roofing, and are equipped with a fire pit at one end and short smokestack at the other. Four inches of soil is filled into this bed and sweet potatoes placed upon it in a layer which is then covered with two or three inches more of soil. Large potatoes may be split and laid flat side down. The whole bed is then covered with muslin, operating on a roller by which to cover and uncover the bed. Thus prepared, the bed may easily be kept at a temperature of 60 to 70 degrees F. by smouldering wood fires in the fire boxes. The potatoes, kept moist at this temperature, sprout promptly and will be ready to transplant in about six weeks. A bed of the size mentioned will receive five to seven bushels of seed roots, which will make slips enough to plant an acre or more of potatoes. Growing Sweet Potatoes. Please inform me how to keep sweet potatoes for seed; also how many pounds it takes for one acre, and what distance apart to plant, and the time to plant. Sweet potatoes may be kept from sprouting by storage in a cool, dry place. Sweet potatoes are not grown by direct cutting of the tuber as the ordinary potato is, but the tubers are put in January or later in a hot bed and the sprouts are taken off for planting when the ground becomes warm and all danger of frost is over in the locality. The number of sprouts required for an acre is from five to ten thousand, and a bushel of small sweet potatoes will produce about two thousand sprouts if properly handled in the hot bed, which consists in removing the sprouts when they have attained a height of five or six inches, and in this way the potatoes will be yielding sprouts in succession for some time. The sprouts are planted in rows far enough apart for horse cultivation. They are usually hilled up pretty well after starting to grow well. They cannot be planted until the danger of frost is over, for they are much more tender than Irish potatoes. Sweet Potato Growing. In planting sweet potatoes, do we have to make hotbeds just like those for tomatoes, or if just a plain seed-bed will do? Is it necessary to irrigate them or not? You can bed your sweet potatoes in a warm place on the sunny side of a building or board fence, and get sprouts all right. You will, however, get them sooner and in greater numbers by using a slow hotbed in which the manure supply is not too large. The fact that sweet potato growers do use some artificial heat, either from manure or by piping bottom-heat in their propagating houses, is a demonstration that such recourse is desirable to get best results. The necessity of irrigation depends upon the soil and its natural moisture supply. On a fine retentive loam, the crop is chiefly made without irrigation, if the plants are all ready to put out in the field as soon as it is safe. If you are late in the planting, or if the soil is dry or likely to dry before the tubers are grown to good size, irrigation, some time ahead of the need of the plant, is essential. Sweet Potatoes. What kind of soil and climate does it take to grow sweet potatoes, and can I grow them in any part of Contra Costa county, and about what time is the best to plant them? Sweet potatoes do best in a light warm loam which drains well and does not bake or crust by rain or irrigation. Sprout the tubers in a hot-bed or cold-frame in February and break off the shoots and plant as soon as you are out of danger by frost. Sweet potatoes are more tender than common potatoes. There are places in Contra Costa county where they do well, though some parts of the county do not have enough summer heat. Sweet Potatoes Between Fruit Trees. I am expecting to grow a fall crop of about twenty acres of sweet potatoes. The land is a heavy, sandy loam in the interior, which has been set out this spring to almonds, apricots and prunes. I wish to grow sweet potatoes between trees. Would an irrigation every forty days be often enough? Also, if either sweet or Irish potatoes grown between rows are harmful to either of the varieties of fruit mentioned? We see no reason why you should not get your crop, providing you do not have to run the plants into the frosty period, and sweet potatoes will not, of course, stand frost as well as the common potato. The moisture which you propose to give ought to be enough for a retentive soil in connection with good cultivation until the vines cover the ground. Growing any crop between orchard trees is apt to be an injury to the trees, because of the spaces which are not and cannot be adequately cultivated, so that the ground around the trees is apt to become compacted either by the run of water or the lack of cultivation, or both. Our observation has been that Irish potatoes are no more injurious than other crops. Any crop will injure young trees if it takes moisture they ought to have or interferes with good cultivation of the land. Giant Japanese Radish. In discussing sakurajima (giant Japanese radish) Eastern publications advise planting late, about August 1, and not earlier than July 1. What can you tell me about the plant here? The Asiatic winter radishes can be successfully planted in California in July or August if the soil is thoroughly saturated by irrigation before digging and planting. It is, however, not so necessary to begin early in California as at the East, because our winter temperatures favor the growth of the plant, while at the East they have to make an early start in order to get something well grown before the ground freezes. For the growth of winter radishes, then, in California you can wait until the ground is wet thoroughly by the rain, which may be expected during September, and afterward you can make later plantings for succession at any time you desire during the rainy season. This applies to all kinds of radishes. Rhubarb Rotting. I have planted rhubarb roots in the San Joaquin valley and find the root crowns rot below the surface. The old-fashioned summer rhubarb usually goes off that way in very hot localities. If there is too much alkali or hardpan, or if planted too late, the same results will be had with any sort of rhubarb. Where it is very hot, plants, irrigated in the morning near the plants, scald at the crown and die in a few days. If irrigated in the afternoon and the ground worked before it gets hot the next day fine results are obtained. The winter rhubarb varieties do well in hot districts if the roots are planted from September 15 to May 1, while in cooler sections, April, May, June and July are the best months and will insure a crop the following winter. Squashes Dislike Hardship. What caused these squashes, of which I send you samples, to be so hard and woody? They were grown without irrigation. Your squashes were grown without irrigation under conditions which were too dry for them and became inferior in quality. Possibly the variety itself is not of good quality or the specimen from which the seed was taken may have been inferior. A squash, in order to be tender and acceptable, needs rich feeding and plenty of drink. Otherwise, it is apt to resent ill treatment by very undesirable growth. Harvesting Sunflowers. What is the method used in saving or threshing the seed from the Giant Russian sunflower? Cut off the seed heads of your sunflowers when the seed seems to be well matured but before any of it falls away from the head. Throw these heads on a smooth piece of ground or a tight floor and when they become thoroughly dry thresh out the seed with a flail, removing the coarse stuff with a rake and afterwards cleaning the seed by shoveling it into the wind so that the light stuff may be blown away. A more perfect cleaning afterwards could be secured with a grain fanning mill or a simple sieve of the right mesh. Irrigating Tomatoes. How much water does it take (in gallons or cubic feet) to properly irrigate an acre of land for tomatoes? The soil is adobe, and the customary way of planting tomatoes is 6 feet apart each way, plowing a trench of one furrow with the slope of the land for irrigating, that is, a trench between every row and a cross trench as a feeder. The land is low and in the driest part of the year the surface water is from 2 to 3 feet beneath the top of the ground. It is not possible to state a specific quantity of water for any crop, because the amount depends to such a large extent upon the retentiveness of the soil, the rate of evaporation and the kind of cultivation. The best source of information is the behavior of the plant itself, bearing in mind that tomato plants require constant but not excessive moisture supply, and that if moisture is applied in excess it will promote an excessive growth of the plant, which will cause it to drop its blossoms and therefore be unsatisfactory and unproductive. In such land as you describe no irrigation whatever would be desirable except in years of short rainfall, and such land, if properly cultivated, would always furnish moisture enough by capillary action to support the growth of the plant. Less Water and More Heat. What chemicals should I put into the soil to insure a good crop of vegetables, such as tomatoes, string beans, or other over-ground producers? Last year my tomatoes and string beans grew plentifully, but never produced any tomatoes or beans, yet turnips and parsnips were all right. Vegetables which behave like your tomatoes and string beans, making too much growth and not enough fruit, do not need fertilization. The land is perhaps too rich already, or you may have used too much water. Use less water so that the plants will make a more moderate growth, and they will be fruitful if the season is warm enough in the later part of summer. This, of course, would be one of the drawbacks to growing tomatoes and beans in San Francisco. Turnips and parsnips do well with less heat. You may have to modify the San Francisco summer climate by wind screens or glass covers. Continuous Cropping With the Same Plant. What would happen on the crops of cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplants, etc., planted on the same place continuously? There would be in time a decadence of crop from soil exhaustion, but that you could prevent by fertilization. The greatest danger from continuously growing these vegetables on the same land is the multiplication of bacteria which injuriously affect them, in the soil. The plants which you mention are all subject to "wilt" diseases from this cause, therefore, they should have new ground. If you have to use the same garden ground continuously, the plants which you mention should be rotated with root crops or with other kinds of vegetables, so as to frequently change plants and soil within the general area which has to be used for them. Big Worms on Tomatoes. I have a nice patch of tomatoes in my garden, and only recently I notice large green worms on them with one large brown horn on their head. They strip the leaves off. They look to me like a tobacco worm. They are tobacco worms; that is, they are the larvae of hawk moths, some of which take tobacco, tomatoes, grapevines and many other plants, including some of the native weeds of your valley. Pick them off and crush them, or give them a little snip with the scissors if you do not like to handle them. They are so large and easily found that such treatment is easily applied, as in "worming tobacco." Loss of Tomato Bloom. I have tomato plants which are very strong and healthy and full of blossoms, but there is something cutting the blossoms off and just about to ruin my plants. The trouble with your tomato plants is that life is too easy for them, that they have so much moisture and plant food that they can grow comfortably and rapidly without thought of the future. So, because they do not have to think of making fruit, the blossoms drop off. This is a very common occurrence with tomatoes, especially in home gardens where the owners have not the experience or the information on the subject that they might have, and give the tomatoes too much water. Many other plants act the same way and will not set fruit while they can grow easily, and only begin to produce when they have made a great growth or when moisture begins to get a little short. If you irrigate the tomatoes, stop, and put no more water on until the plant begins to set fruit as if it meant business, or gives some sign that water would be appreciated. If the ground is naturally moist you will have to wait until the plants make more growth and the weather gets drier and hotter, and the plants will then set fruit. Some growers have found that by trimming up the vine and staking it, the fruit sets much more readily. Part III. Grains and Forage Crops Wants Us to Do the Whole Thing. Can you help, me to determine a good product to plant somewhere in California; also what particular section would be most suitable for the raising of that which you would advise? I wish a crop of permanent nature (as orchard trees). I also desire advice on some product which would give a quick return while I am waiting on the more permanent one to mature and bear. I have not procured land yet, and am thinking seriously of trying to get government land, therefore, you are free to give me the best location for the raising of that which you would, suggest. I want a money-making product and one which is not already overdone. The choice of crops depends quite as much upon the market demand and opportunity as it does upon the suitability of the soil and local climate. Choice of crops indeed involves almost the whole business of farming, and although we can sometimes give a man useful suggestions as to the growth of plants and the protection of plants from enemies, we cannot undertake to plan his farming business for him. He must form his own opinions as to what will be most marketable, and therefore profitable, if he succeeds in getting a good article for sale. A wise man at the East once said: "You can advise a man to do almost anything. You can even select a wife for him, but never commit the indiscretion of advising him what to grow to make money. That is a matter he has to determine for himself." Pasturing Young Grain. Would it be advisable to herd milch cows for a few hours each day on a field of black oats which is to be grown for hay? The oats are now about four inches high and rank, as the land was pastured last year. The land is sandy, rolling soil and will soon be dry enough so that the cows would not injure the plants. The idea is that the leaves which are green now will all dry up and are really not the growth which is cut for hay; therefore, I should think it would do no harm to feed it down a bit. Over-rank grain with abundant moisture will make a more stocky growth and stand against lodging if pastured or mowed. The leaves which you speak of as being lost in the later growth of the plant serve an important purpose in making that growth, and removing them is a repressive process which is not desirable when rain is short. We should allow the plants to push along into as good a growth of hay as a dry year's moisture will give. Dry Plowing for Grain. We have land that we could very easily plow now with our traction engine and improved plows, but the people here claim that it does not pay to dry-plow, that is, before the land has had a good rain on it and the vegetation has started. I believe in dry plowing. Two of our oldest farmers in Merced county dry-plowed, that is, they commenced plowing as soon as harvesting was over. If the rainfall is small and likely to come in light showers, dry plowing, if it turns up the land in large clods, might yield poorer results than land which is plowed after rain, because there would be so much moisture lost by drying out from the coarse surface when it came in amounts not adequate for deep penetration. Plowing after the rain for the purpose of killing out the foul stuff which starts is, however, quite another consideration. It is a fact that dry plowing and sowing is not now desirable in some places where it was formerly accepted, because the land has become so foul as to give a rank growth of weeds which choke out the grain at its beginning. Such land can be cleaned by one or two shallow plowings and cultivations after there is moisture enough to start the weeds to growing. These are local questions which you will have to settle by observation. In a general way, it is true that opening the surface of the ground before the rains, reduces the run-off and loss of moisture, but whether there would be any loss of moisture by run-off or not depends upon the slope of the land and also upon the way in which the rain comes, and the total amount of moisture which is available for the season. Sub-varieties of California Barley. Can you tell where I can buy seed of varieties of California six-rowed barley, described as "pallidum" and "coerulescens," and what the seed will cost? No one knows where the six-rowed barley, known as "common" barley in this State, came from, nor when it came. It has been here since the early days and it has naturally shown a disposition to vary, so that it is quite possible to select a number of types from any large field, of it. These variations have been studied to some extent by Eastern students who are endeavoring to develop American types of barley for brewing purposes as likely to be better than the brewing varieties which are famous in Europe. In Europe brewing barleys are chiefly two-rowed. Under California conditions the plant is able to develop just as good brewing grains on a six-rowed basis, and this seems to be a commendable trait in the way of multiplying the product. The names "pallidum" and "coerulescens" indicate two of these varieties recognized by Eastern students. It is not possible at this time to get even a pound of selected grain true to this type, and no one knows when it will be worked out to available quantities. Chevalier Barley. Has Chevalier barley more value to feed hens for egg production than common feed barley or wheat? Chevalier barley is no better for chicken feed than any other barley which is equally large and plump. Brewers like Chevalier because of its fullness of starch to support the malting process; also, because it is bright, that is, white, and not stained or tinged with bluish or reddish colors. Color points do not count for chicken feed, but good plump kernels do. Besides this, however, darker kernel (not chaff) usually indicates more protein, and therefore a darker kernel of either wheat or barley might be more valuable for feeding. A hard, horny kernel is richer than a softer, more starchy one, either in wheat or barley. Barley on Moist Land. What would you do with land subject to overflow by the Sacramento when that river rises 20 feet, and which you wanted to plant to barley this season? Would you take a chance on the river rising that high this year, or wait until after that danger was over, and take a chance on not getting enough rain to make the grain come up; also, if the river did come up for 48 hours after the grain was in, but did not wash, would the grain be lost? Should the grain be planted deeper than on ordinary land, and, if so, should a drill be used? How much seed should be sown per acre on good river-bottom soil? Get the barley in and watch for the overflow rather than to fear it. An overflow for 48 hours would give you the greatest crop you ever saw, unless it should be in a settling basin and the water forced to escape by evaporation. From your description we judge that this is not so and that the land clears itself quickly from an overflow. Depth of sowing depends upon the character and condition of the soil - the lighter and drier the deeper. By all means use a drill if the soil is dry on the surface. Short rainfall makes the advantage of drill seeding most conspicuous. On the University Farm 22 trials gave an average gain of over 10 per cent in yield. The difference would be much greater in a dry year; it might be 25 per cent greater, possibly, and save high-priced seed at the same time, as about 90 pounds of seed per acre will do, instead of 120 pounds broadcast, in accordance with the approved heavy seeding practice on the river lands. Barley and Alfalfa. I have some alfalfa which is a poor stand. Can I disc it up heavily and seed in some barley for winter pasture? You can get barley into your alfalfa as you propose, but you should not seed until fall. The more barley you get into your alfalfa, however, the less alfalfa you will have afterward. If you want to improve your afalfa, keep everything else out of the field and help the plants by regular irrigations during the balance of the growing season. Beets and Potatoes. Which is the best for dairy cows, plain red mangels or a cross between these and sugar beets? Can you suggest a more profitable variety of potato than the Oregon Burbank? If you can get a cross which gives you more tonnage than a mangel and a higher nutritive content you would have something better to grow. The first point you have to determine by growing the two side by side and weighing the product; the nutritive value of each will have to be determined by chemical analysis. Until these determinations are actually made a comparison of desirability is nothing but conjecture. There are several other potatoes which are sometimes more profitable here and there for early crop when grown in an early locality. If you are not in an early locality you are obliged to produce for the main crop, and nothing, to our knowledge, sells as well as the Burbank, if you get a good one. Beets for Stock. Will sugar beets grow on black alkali land? How many pounds of seed per acre should be used and when is it time for sowing in the San Joaquin valley? Which kind would be best for cows? Beets will do more on alkali than some other plants, but too much alkali will knock them out. You must try and see whether you have too much alkali or not. You can sow at various times during the rainy season, for the beets will stand some frost. Sow 8 pounds per acre in drills 2 1/2 to 3 feet apart, so as to use a horse cultivator. For stock you had better grow large stock beets like marigolds or tankards - not sugar beets. It costs too much to get sugar beets out of the ground, because it is their habit to grow small and bury themselves for the sake of the sugar maker, while stock beets grow largely above ground. Summer Start of Stock Beets. How can I make Mangel Wurzels grow in hot weather? The land is level and can be irrigated by flooding or ditching between the rows. How often should the water be applied, and which method used? The land is in fine shape; a sandy loam bordering on to heavier land. Wet the land thoroughly; plow and harrow and drill in the seed in rows about 2 1/2 feet apart. This ought to give moisture enough to start the seed. Cultivate as soon as you can see the rows well. Irrigate in a furrow between the rows about once a month; cultivate after each irrigation. Corn Growing for Silage. With fair cultivation, will an acre produce about 10 tons of ensilage without fertilization - it being bottom land? How should it be planted? - the rows closer together than 3 feet, or should it be planted the usual width between rows, and thick in the rows? If fertilizers were to be used, what kind would you recommend? Would you recommend deep plowing followed by a packer and harrow so as to preserve the moisture? You ought to be able to get 10 tons of silage per acre from corn grown on good corn land. It can be best grown in rows sufficiently distant for cultivation, closer in the row than would be desirable for corn, and yet not too crowded, because corn for silage should develop good ears and should be cut for silage about the time when the glazing begins to appear. If your land needs fertilization, stable manure or a "complete fertilizer" of the dealers would be the proper thing to use. It would be very desirable to plow corn land deeply the preceding fall, followed by a packer or harrow to settle down the land below, but do not work down fine. Keep the surface stirred from time to time during the winter and put in the crop with the usual cultivation in the spring as soon as the frost danger is over. Irrigation for Corn. What amount of water is necessary per acre for the best possible yield of corn under acreage conditions and proper cultivation in the San Joaquin or Sacramento valleys? No one can answer such a question with anything more than a guess. It depends upon how much rain has fallen the previous winter, how retentive the soil is naturally, and what has been done to help the soil to hold it. Nearly all the corn that is grown is carried without any irrigation at all on moist lowlands, which may be too wet for winter crops. If you demand a guess, make it six acre-inches, with a good surface pulverizing after each run of water in furrows between the rows. This water would be best used in two or three applications. Eastern Seed Corn for California. The question has been raised as to Eastern-grown seed corn, comparing it with California-grown seed. Some claim that the former does not yield well the first season. We cannot give a complete refutation of the impression that Eastern seed corn does not yield well the first season in California. It is a somewhat prevalent impression. All that we can announce now is that we have grown collections of Eastern seed corn and have found the product quite as good as could have been expected, and did not encounter, apparently, the trouble of which you write. Need of Corn Suckering. To insure the best crop of corn possible, does it pay to sucker it or not? The removal of suckers is a matter of local conditions largely in California, and growers are getting out of the habit of suckering. In some places suckering is needed, and in others it apparently does not pay to do so, although with very rare exceptions a larger yield can be secured by suckering than without. Cow Peas Not Preparatory for Corn. What time of the year can cow peas be planted, and can the entire crop be plowed under in time for planting field corn? Cowpeas are very subject to frost. They are really beans, and therefore can be grown in the winter time only in a few practically frostless places. Wherever frosts are likely to occur they must be planted, like beans and corn, when the frost danger is over. Field peas, Canadian peas and vetches are hardy against frost and therefore safer for winter growth, and treated as you propose they may be preparatory for corn-growing providing you plow them under soon enough to get a month or more for decay before planting the corn. Oats and Rust Is there any variety of oats that is rust-proof, or any method of treating oats that will render them rust resistant? We are situated on a mountain, only about 12 miles from the coast, and have considerable foggy weather, which most of the farmers here say is the cause of the rust. There is no way of treating oats which will prevent smut, if the variety is liable to it. There is a great difference in the resistance of different varieties. A few dark-colored oats are practically rust-proof, and you can get seed of them from the seedsmen in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Such varieties are chiefly grown on the southern coast. Foggy weather has much to do with the rust, because it causes atmospheric moisture which is favorable to the growth of the fungus, which is usually checked by dry heat, and yet there are atmospheric conditions occasionally which favor the rust even in the driest parts of the State. The fog favors rust, but does not cause it. The cause is a fungus, long ago thoroughly understood and named puccinia graminis. Midsummer Hay Sowing. Can I sow oats or barley in July upon irrigated mesa land, with the object of making hay in the fall? Which of the two would do the better in summer time? I have plenty of water. We have never seen this done to advantage. If you desire to try it, irrigate thoroughly and plow and sow afterward. Use barley rather than oats and irrigate when the plant shades the land well, if you get growth enough to warrant it. It will be easier to get the crop than to figure a profit in it. Loose Hay by Measure. How many cubic feet should be allowed for a ton of alfalfa hay loaded on a wagon from the shock? I must sell more or less in that way, as no scales are near enough to be used. It is a proposition, as to the weight of loose hay, which could of course keep changing the higher you built the load on the wagon. It is easier to give figures on weight from a stack in which there has been something like uniform pressure for a time. In the case from a 30-day stack it is common to allow an eight-foot cube to a ton, etc. Perhaps you can guess from that. When to Cut Oat Hay. To make the best red oat hay should it be cut when in the "milk," "dough" or nearly ripe! It should be cut in the "soft dough" or, as some express it, "between the milk and the dough." This is probably as near an approach in words as can be made to that condition which loses neither by immaturity or by over-maturity from the point of view of hay which is to get as much as can be in the head without losing nutritiveness in the straw. Of course there are other conditions intruding sometimes, like the outbreak of rust or the premature ripening through drought. In such cases care must be taken not to let the plant stand too long for the sake of reaching an ideal condition in the head - which for lack of favorable growing conditions the plant may not be able to reach. Rye for Hay. When is the best time to cut rye for hay, and how should it best be handled? Would it be well to cut it up and blow it into the barn, and would it do all right for silage? Rye makes poor hay on account of its woody stems and must be cut earlier than other grains. After that it is handled as is other hay. Cutting it up would probably be more of a help than to other grain hay. It could be put into the silo, but would of course have to be cut pretty green and would have to run through a cutter and blower. Putting it in whole would be out of the question. In the silo, the fermentation would largely overcome the woodiness of the stems. It would also as a silage balance up nicely with alfalfa, and the best way to do would be to mix it with alfalfa when putting it in. Rye in California. Which kind of rye is the hardiest, the best yielding, and the best hay varieties in your State? Rye is the least grown of all the cereals in California, and no attention has been paid to selection of varieties. That which is produced is "just rye," of some common variety which came to the State years ago and still remains. No rye is grown for hay, as the toughness of the stem renders it undesirable for that purpose. There is a certain amount of rye grown for winter feeding. This is grown in the foothills principally and it serves an excellent purpose, but it is fed off before approaching maturity. That Old Seven-Headed Wheat. We are sending you some heads of grain which was grown in this county. The land was planted with an imported Australian wheat, which we believe the smaller heads to be, but the wheat is about evenly mired with grain like the large heads, which we think to be a species of barley. The grain is an old, coarse, bearded wheat which is continually appearing in fields of ordinary grain and naturally excites interest among all to whom the variety is a novelty. It is the old seven-headed Egyptian wheat, which has never proved of any cultural value, because its manifolding of the head is of no advantage. It is better to have a straight well-filled head than to have a branching head of this kind. This matter has been fully demonstrated by experience during the last thirty or forty years, not only in this State, but in other States, for the variety has a way of getting around the world, and seed has sometimes been sold at exorbitant prices to people who have been persuaded that it is of particular value. Speltz. I have heard of a Russian grain called "Speltz" or "Emmer." Can I raise it successfully and, if so, what is the very best time of year to sow some for the best crop obtainable? Can it be sown in the fall, say November? Would springtime be a better time to sow it on soil that is very soft in winter? If your land yields good crops of wheat or barley or oats, you have little to expect from speltz or emmer. This is a grain generally considered inferior to those just mentioned and advocated for conditions under which the better known grains do not do well. It is hardy against drought and frost, particularly the latter, and is, therefore, chiefly grown in the extreme north of Europe. It may be sown in the fall or in the spring in places where rains are late and carry the plant to maturity. Italian Rye Grass. What kind of grass is enclosed? Also the best method to eradicate it? The grass is the Italian rye grass, or as it is sometimes called, the Italian variety of the perennial rye grass. It is proving a very satisfactory grass in California for moderate drought resistance and for winter growing, and a great deal of it is being sown for these purposes. You can readily kill it out by cultivation, but most people are more occupied with its propagation than with its destruction. Fall Feed. Can I irrigate and plant a forage crop n July to feed dairy cows this fall and winter? Would you recommend cow peas or some kind of sugar corn? If cow peas, how many pounds to the acre? If you wet down the land thoroughly and then plow and harrow and plant either cow peas or Indian corn, you ought to get a good green crop before frost. Drill in or drop the seed in rows about three feet apart and keep cultivating and irrigating as long as you can get through without injuring the crop too much. Use about 40 pounds of cow peas to the acre. Hurry-up Pasture. What can I plant this fall which would produce pasturage for a small amount of stock this winter, and until I can get the land under irrigation and seeded to alfalfa? For quick fall and winter growth nothing is better probably than oats and vetches sown together as soon as you get rain enough to plow, but it would be a question whether it is worth while to work for that, because you ought to get your land ready for February sowing of alfalfa and that will keep the land busy after the rain gets it into working condition. Johnson Grass. I am informed that Johnson grass makes fine hay. I have not sown the seed yet, but would like to know if the hay is good and if it will grow on dry land. I have the seed on hand, but do not want to sow it if it is not good. Johnson grass is poor, coarse stuff. The plant is most valuable for grazing when young. Johnson grass will not grow on really dry land, but it will take the best moist land it can find and hold on to it. It is sensitive to frost and is not a winter grower except in the absence of frost. Improving Heavy Land for Alfalfa. My land is very heavy, red loam, and crusts over very hard in dry seasons. I would like to know if it would be best to use barnyard compost over the surface as a mulch, or would it be best to use plain straw for that purpose? A very heavy soil can be brought into better surface condition for alfalfa by plowing in stable manure as soon as possible after the fall rains, in order that the manure may have opportunity to become disintegrated and mixed with the soil by the time for alfalfa sowing, which is from February to April - whenever the heavy frosts of the locality are over. For a small piece, you might get a better stand by using a light mulch of disintegrated coarse manure or even straw, scattering it after the sowing, but for a large acreage this would involve too much labor. It is not desirable to work in much manure or other coarse stuff at the time of sowing the seed, but you can make a light surface application after the plant has made a start. Cultivating Alfalfa. When is the best time to cultivate alfalfa, and how often during the season is it advantageous to do so? Which is the best implement to use? Cultivated alfalfa is a term applied to alfalfa sown in rows and allowed to grow in narrow bands with cultivated land between, and the irrigation is then done in a furrow in the narrow cultivated strip. This will give thriftier growth and perhaps more hay to the acre than flooded, broad-casted alfalfa, but it will cost so much more that the acre profit would probably be less. This is an intensive culture of alfalfa, which is still to be tested out in California, if any one should be inclined to do it. Some one-cow suburbanite would be in condition to try the scheme first. Probably you refer to disking, and for that an ordinary disk is used with the disks set pretty straight to reduce the side cutting, and this is done at different times of the year by different growers. By doing it when the ground gets dry in the early spring much of the foul stuff is cut out before the alfalfa starts strongly. But disking seems to be good whenever in the year the soil is dry enough to take it well. Suburban Alfalfa Patch. How can we rid the alfalfa of weeds? As we are obliged to hire help, and do not succeed in getting the hay cared for until we have mostly stalks without leaves, I have put the cow on it to pasture it off. The cow knows how to handle it, but you will not get as much alfalfa as if you cut and carried it to her. If you cut sooner you will get rid of many plants which are propagated by the seeds which they produce, and you will also get better hay, more leaves and fewer stalks. Cut it about the time it begins to bloom, not waiting for the full bloom to appear. Alfalfa and Bermuda. I have land which was seeded to alfalfa some 15 years ago and has been pastured continuously until it was almost all Bermuda. I had it thoroughly plowed, disk harrowed and sowed to oats; disk harrowed in, and drag harrowed. After cutting for hay this year I intend putting it in Egyptian corn in rows, so it can be cultivated to get rid of Bermuda. I have also been advised to plow the land immediately after harvesting corn and let it lie until next January and then plow and sow to barley and alfalfa as I wish to grow alfalfa. Kindly let me know if method is right. The land is sandy loam and under irrigation. Whether you will fully succeed against Bermuda grass or not is doubtful. It is probable, however, that you can reduce the Bermuda so that other cultivated crops can be continuously grown. Common experience is that Bermuda will hold on unless you have hard freezing of the ground to a considerable depth, as they have in the northern States. The best use that you can make of land infested with Bermuda is to get as good a stand as you can of alfalfa and let the alfalfa fight for itself. The combination of alfalfa and Bermuda grass makes very good hay or pasturage. We should, however, sow the alfalfa alone and not handicap it by sowing with barley. The Bermuda will smile at that advice. Egyptian corn can be planted in rows, 2 1/2 to 3 feet between the rows to admit of easy cultivation Bermuda Grass. What is the value of Bermuda grass as a forage crop for cattle, more particularly dairy cows? Bermuda grass is generally condemned because of getting in places where it is not desirable and of being almost impossible of eradication therefrom. Still, Bermuda grass will make good pasturage on land which is too alkaline to make other crops, and therefore is highly esteemed by some owners of waste lands in the San Joaquin valley. It is good pasturage and is most easily propagated by cutting the roots up into short pieces by use of the hay-cutter, nearly all the pieces retaining an eye which will make a new plant. It is easy to get in and hard to get out. Salt Grass and Alfalfa. I have some land in Sutter county and it has some of this salt grass in spots. I am about to take a twenty-acre piece and put in alfalfa, but some old-timers tell me that the salt grass on it is bad stuff to handle. Your trouble will probably be not so much the salt grass, but the alkali in the soil which the salt grass can tolerate and which other plants cannot stand. You cannot then substitute alfalfa for salt grass without getting the alkali out of the soil, and you cannot do this without having sufficient drainage so that the rainfall may wash the alkali out from the soil and carry it away in the drainage water. You probably cannot get a satisfactory growth of alfalfa on the spots where the salt grass has established itself, although the land round about may be very satisfactory to alfalfa. Giant Spurry. I would like information about spurry. How much frost will it stand? What is time for sowing? Its value as crop to plow under? From a California point of view, spurry is a winter-growing weed which has been approved by orchardists in Sonoma county because it yields a considerable amount of vegetation for turning under with the spring plowing of the orchard. For this purpose it should be sown at the beginning of the rainy season. Its value as a crop to turn under depends upon the amount of growth you can get. It is not a legume and, therefore, does not have the value of the nitrogen-gathering plant. Still, it yields humus and, therefore, is valuable for winter growing as ordinary weeds, grasses, grains, etc., are. Light Soil and Scant Moisture. Advise me as to plowing under a crop of last year's weeds where I intend to plant beans, corn, etc. The soil is "slickens," on the Yuba river, and the weeds grew up last year in a crop of volunteer barley, which was hogged off. I expect to plow five inches deep, and calculate that the barley straw and weeds will contribute to the supply of humus, which is always deficient in most of our soils. I expect to try to grow beans without irrigation, and wonder if the trash would hold the soil too open so as to dry them out. Considering the character of the soil which you describe and the shallow plowing you intend we should certainly burn off all the trash upon the land. With deep plowing early in the season this coarse stuff could be covered in to advantage, but it would be dangerous to do it in the spring. Clean land and thorough cultivation to save moisture enough for summer's growth is the only rational spring treatment. Clovers and Drought. I have sandy loam with some alkali. In wet years it is regarded as too damp in some places. Can you give me any information on the following points? I have practically no water for irrigation and I feel sure that alfalfa would not grow without it. Do you think that clover would make one or more cuttings without water? Red and white clover are less tolerant of drought than alfalfa, which, being a deep-rooting plant, is especially commended in dry-farming undertakings. Red clover will grow better on low wet lands than will alfalfa, but the land must not dry out or the red clover will die during the dry season. None of the plants will stand much alkali. Clover for Wet Lands. What kind of alfalfa will do best on sub-irrigated land which is very wet? I have sown it in alfalfa and it grows finely for two or three years, but then the roots rot and die. It is impossible to make any kind of alfalfa grow well on very wet land, that is, where the water comes too near the surface. Alfalfa has a deep-running tap root which is very subject to standing water. You can get very good results from the Eastern red clover on such land, because the red clover has a fibrous root which is content to live in a shallow layer of soil above water. But red clover will not stand drought as well as alfalfa, because it is shallower rooting. It is necessary, therefore, that water should be permanently near the surface or surface irrigation be frequently applied, in order to secure satisfactory growth of red clover in the drier sections of California. It is also necessary that neither land nor water carry alkali. Frosted Grain for Hay. The freeze struck us pretty severely. I had 125 acres of summer-fallowed wheat which I had estimated to make 20 sacks to the acre of grain. It was breast high in places already, and was just heading out. The frost pinched the stalks of this grain in several places and the heads are now turning white. It is ruined for grain. There is lots of fodder in it, and it should be made into hay. If so, should it not be cut and cured at once? What is the relative worth of such hay as compared with more matured hay? Would the fact that it is frozen make it injurious to feed? If the whole plant seems to be getting white, the sooner it is cut the better. If the head is affected and the leaf growth continued, cutting might be deferred for the purpose of getting more of it. Hay made from such material will not be in any way dangerous, although it would be inferior as containing less nutritive and more non-nutritive matter. Such hay would seem to be most serviceable as roughage for cows or steers in connection with alfalfa hay or some other feed which would supply this deficiency. Forage Plants in the Foothills. We have 3,000 acres of foothill land and hope to be able to irrigate some land this spring and wish to know the best forage crops, for sheep and hogs, especially. Kafir corn, stock peas, rape, sugar-beets and artichokes are the varieties about which we desire information. Where you have irrigation water available in the foothills you can get a very satisfactory growth of red clover. We have seen it doing very well on sloping land in your county where water was allowed to spill over from a ditch on the ridge to moisten the slope below. Winter rye and other hardy stock feeds could also be grown in the winter time on the protected slopes with the rainfall. Some such plants are not good summer growers, owing to the drought. Rape is a good winter grower by rainfall, but not so satisfactory as vetches and kale. Sugar beets are not so good for stock purposes as stock beets, which give you much more growth for the same labor and are more easily gathered because they grow a good part out of the ground. They will stand considerable freezing and may be sown at different times throughout the year, whenever the land is moist, either by irrigation or rainfall. Artichokes are of doubtful value. We have never found anyone who continued to grow them long. Of course, on good, deep land, with irrigation, nothing can be better than alfalfa as supplementary to hill range during the summer season. Winter Forage. At what time of the year should I plant kale, Swiss chard, etc., so as to have them ready for use during the months from February to June? You should plant Swiss chard, kale, etc., as soon as the ground is sufficiently moist from the rain in the fall. In fact, it would be desirable for you to plant the seed earlier in boxes and thus secure plants for planting out when the ground is sufficiently moist. These plants are quite hardy against frost, and in order to have them available by February, a start in the autumn is essential. A Summer Hay Crop. What can I put on the land after the oat crop is taken off to furnish hay for horses during the coming winter? I had thought millet would be good. I have water for irrigation. You could get most out of the land you mention during the hot season by growing Kafir corn or milo, cutting for hay before the plant gets too far advanced. If your land can be flooded and takes water well, so that you can wet it deeply before plowing, the sorghum seed can be broadcast and the crop cut with the mower while the stalks are not more than half an inch in diameter. This makes a good coarse hay. If you have not water enough or the land does not lie right for flooding, you can grow the sorghum in drills and irrigate by the furrow method, being careful, however, not to let the crop go too far if you desire to feed it as hay. Teosinte. What about "Teosinte," its food value, method of culture, and adaptability to our climate, character of soil required? Teosinte is a corn-like plant of much lower growth than Indian corn. It may be of value as a forage plant on low, moist, interior lands in the summer season. It is very sensitive to frost and is, therefore, not a winter grower. It abhors drought and, therefore, is not a plant for plains or hillsides. It was grown to some extent in California 25 years ago and abandoned as worthless so far as tried. Bermuda Objectionable. Bermuda grass as pasture for summer to supplement burr clover and alfilaria in winter on the cheap hill pasture lands along the coast or the foothill ranges of the Sierras. Stock like it and do well on it, and I have noticed it growing in places where it had no water but the little rains of winter in southern California. So the question occurred to me, why should it not be a profitable pasture for the dry summers on the coast or foothill ranges of the State? Bermuda grass will not make summer growth enough on dry pasture land to make it worth having. It will not make much growth in the rainy season because of frost, and if it has possession of the ground it will not allow either burr clover or alfilaria to make such winter growth as they will on clean land. Besides, this grass is generally counted a nuisance, because it will get into all the good cultivated land and it is almost impossible of eradication. Bermuda grass is of some account on alkali land where it finds moisture enough for free growth. We would not plant it in any other situation. Rye Grasses Better than Brome. I see in an Eastern seed catalogue "Bromus Inermis" very highly spoken of as pasturage. Do you know anything of it, and do you think it would be suitable for reclaimed tule land in the bay section? Both English and Italian rye grasses have proved better than Bromus Inermis on such land as you mention. The latter is commonly known as Hungarian brome grass or awniess brome grass and it was introduced to this State from Europe about 25 years ago and the seed distributed by the University Experiment Station. Hungarian brome may be better on rather dry lands, although it will not live through the summer on very dry lands in this State, but we would rather trust the rye grasses or reclaimed lands, providing, of course, that they are sufficiently free from salt to carry tame grass at all. On the upper coast Hungarian brome has been favorably reported as an early-winter growing grass with comparatively low nutritive value, but is especially valuable because it will grow in poor soil. It is especially suited to sandy pasture and meadow lands and is quite resistant to drought. It is a perennial grass, reproducing by a stout rootstock, which makes it somewhat difficult to eradicate when it is not desired. It is desirable to keep stock off the fields during the first year to get a good stand. Black Medic. Will you kindly name the enclosed; also explain its value as forage! The plant is black medic. It has been very widely distributed over the State during the last few years. It is sometimes called a new burr clover, which it somewhat resembles. It is not very freely eaten by stock and is apparently inferior to burr clover for forage purposes. It is a good plant to plow under for green manure. Crimson Clover. About crimson clover in California. Has it proved satisfactory? If so, can you give me data how to plant, etc.! Crimson clover must be sown after frost, for it is tender. It will give a great show in June and July on low moist land. It is not good against either frost or drought. It has been amply tried in California and proved on the whole of little account. California Winter Pastures. We have a great deal of pasture land on which the native grasses yield less feed each year. A great part of this land can be cleared of brush and stone, ready for the plow, but what can we sow to take the place of the native pasture? The ground in many places is not level enough for alfalfa and in some places water is not available. Can we break up the land and sow pasture grasses as the farmers are exhorted to do at the East? The annual rainfall is from 12 to 15 inches. The perennial grasses which they rely upon for pasturage in the East and which will maintain themselves from year to year, will not live at all on the dry lands of California, nor has investigation of the last twenty-five or thirty years found anything better for these California uplands than the winter growth of plants which are native to them. Such lands should be better treated, first by not being overstocked; second, by taking off cattle at the time the native plant needs to make seed, because, as they are not perennial, they are dependent upon each year's seed. After the plants have seeded, the land can be pastured for dry feed without losing the seed. Of course, if one has land capable of irrigation he can grow forage plants, even the grasses which grow in moist climates, like the rye grasses, the brome grasses and the oat grasses, etc., which will do well if given a little moisture, but it will be a loss of money to break up the dryer lands with the idea of establishing perennial grasses upon them without irrigation. California pastures are naturally good. In early days they were wonderful, but they are restricted to growth during the rainy season, or for a little time after that, and are therefore suited for winter and spring pasturage, while the summer feeding of stock, aside from dry feed, should be provided from other lands where water can be used. The improvement of these wild pastures consists in a more intelligent policy for their production and preservation rather than an effort to improve them by the introduction of new plants. Pastures may, however, be often improved by clearing off the brush and harrowing in seed of burr clover, alfilaria, etc., at the beginning of the rainy season. Alfilaria and Winter Pasturage. Will alfilaria (Erodium cicutarium) grow well on the hills of Sonoma county partially covered with shrubs? I want something that will be food for stock another year. I have heard of alfilaria and that it grows well without being irrigated. Alfilaria is a good winter-growing forage plant in places where it accepts the situation. It is an annual and therefore does not make permanent pasturage except where it may re-seed itself. On the coming of the dry season it will speedily form seed and disappear. It is therefore of no summer use under the conditions which you describe, nor is it possible to secure any perennial grass which will be satisfactory on dry hillsides without irrigation. Improved winter pasturage can be secured by scattering seed of common rye at the beginning of the rainy season, or of burr clover, both of which are winter-growing plants. Pasturage is also capable of improvement by being careful not to overstock the land, so that the native annuals may be able to produce seed and provide for their own succession. The secret of successful pasturage on dry uplands is to improve the winter growth. It is too much to expect much of them for summer growth without irrigation. Grasses for Bank-Holding. We desire a grass to be used on levees, to keep from washing. Bermuda or Johnson gross are dangerous to farming lands. What we desire is a grass that will grow in good dirt with no water to support it during most of the year, except the annual rainfall of Fresno county. Of course, this grass will also have to endure a great deal of water during the flooded season of the year. We have heard that the Italian rye grass would be suitable. The rye grasses do not have running roots; therefore are not calculated to bind soil particles together as Bermuda grass does. If you want a binding grass, you must take the chances of its spreading to adjacent lands. Of course, if you could get a sod of rye grass it would prevent surface washing from overflow, etc., to a certain extent. We are not sure how far it would prevent bank cutting by the flowing water, for it makes a bunchy and not a sod-like growth. It would not live through the summer unless the levee soil keeps somewhat moist. The only way to determine whether you can get a permanent growth of it, will be by making a trial. Seed should be sown as soon as the ground becomes moistened by rain. It is a very safe proposition, because if it is willing to live through the summer, it is one of the best pasturage grasses for places in California where it will consent to grow, and it is not liable to become an annoyance by taking possession of adjacent land, because it would be readily killed by cultivation. Alfalfa and Alkali. I sowed several acres of alfalfa seed with a disc this season and none of it has come up. I think the reason for it not coming up is that the disc put it into the ground too deep. We sowed some by hand and it came up very well. Is there any probability that later in the season this seed will germinate, or has it rotted in the ground? Water stands within three feet of the surface and has considerable alkali. What can I plant on this land and get a crop? It is our intention to sow it to alfalfa next fall. The land adjoining, although higher, has a good stand of alfalfa now. You are right about covering the alfalfa seed too deeply. It is not likely to appear. Your chance of getting a durable stand of alfalfa on such shallow soil over alkali water is not good, but you can hardly determine that without trying. Sometimes conditions are better than you think; sometimes worse. The plant itself is the best judge. On your lower land you could probably get a better stand of rye grass than anything else - sowing at the beginning of the rainy season. Of course, however, even that will depend upon how much alkali you have to deal with. Alfalfa on Adobe. Is adobe land good for alfalfa? Is it harder to start than in other soils or not? How much seed is required to sow an acre? Also state what time alfalfa should be sowed. Alfalfa will thrive on an adobe soil if the moisture is kept right - especially guarding against too much water at a time. It is necessary to irrigate more frequently and apply only as much as can be absorbed by the soil before the hot sun comes on the field, for that scalds the plant badly. It is harder to get a good stand because of the cracking and hardening of the surface. Sow about 20 pounds to the acre just as soon as the soil comes into good condition - that is, moist and warm. February and March are usually the best months, according to the season in the interior valleys. Alfalfa and Soil Depth. Do you consider soil which is from 4 to 6 feet deep to hardpan of sufficient depth for alfalfa? Is there hardpan in the region of Lathrop in San Joaquin county, and can it be dissolved by irrigation, or can any good be accomplished by blowing holes at different places to allow the water to pass to lower levels? Are other crops affected by hardpan being so close to the surface? You can grow alfalfa successfully on land which is from four to six feet deep if you irrigate rather more frequently and use less amounts of water each time, so that the plant shall be adequately supplied and yet not forced to carry its roots in standing water. The Eastern alfalfa grower is fortunate when he gets half the depth you mention, although it does seem rather shallow in California. Shallow lands are distributed over the valley quite widely. A deepening of the available soil is usually accomplished by dynamiting, especially so if the hardpan is underlaid by permanent strata. Alfalfa will penetrate some kinds and thicknesses of hardpan when it is kept moist, but not too wet, to encourage root growth. Winter-growing green crops are less affected by shallow soil because they generally make their growth while the moisture is ample, if the season is good. Curing Alfalfa with Artificial Heat. It is current rumor that "out in California they are hauling alfalfa green and curing it by artificial heat," thus reducing loss through bad weather and producing a superior hay for feeding or milling purposes. It is true that alfalfa is being cut green and dried by artificial heat, but this is only being done in preparation for grinding. No one thinks of doing it for the making of hay for storage or for feeding. This method is undertaken, not because the alfalfa hay does not dry quickly enough in the field, but because after drying in the field so many leaves are lost in hauling to the mill. We have no trouble sun-drying alfalfa for ordinary hay purposes; in fact, we have to be very careful that it does not get too dry. Cheap Preparation of Land for Alfalfa. I am about to put a piece of land into alfalfa, and want to use the most economical system of preparing the land for irrigation. My neighbors tell me that it will be necessary for me to have the land leveled; at a cost of $6 to $10 per acre. Now I am informed that in Alberta, and some places in California, they do not go to the expense of leveling land, but use a system of preparing land for irrigation at a cost of about 60 cents per acre. Nothing except a highly educated gale of wind, with discriminating cutting and filling ability of a very high order, could do it for that price. The cheapest way to prepare land for irrigation is the contour check method, which is largely used, or the flooding in strips between levees at right angles to the supply ditch; but neither of these could be put in properly for that money, even if the land was naturally in such shape that a minimum amount of soil-shifting is necessary. Where Alfalfa is Grown. In what counties is alfalfa most successfully grown? By this I mean where three crops of hay may be had each growing season. Also, will corn grow good paying crops in same sections? Alfalfa is grown all through the valleys and foothills of interior California; also to a certain extent in coast valleys. On suitable lands, three crops can sometimes be secured without irrigation, while twice or three times as many cuttings are secured on irrigated lands where the frost-free season is particularly long. According to the last census, we are growing alfalfa on 19,104 farms with a total acreage of 484,098. The total value of the product is over $13,000,000. Corn is widely grown, but is small as compared with alfalfa. It is grown in alfalfa districts and in coast valleys where there is not much done with alfalfa. Sowing Alfalfa. What is the proper time to sow alfalfa? Some advocate fall and others spring sowing. What seasons are given for each sowing? We shall undoubtedly soon get to sowing alfalfa all the year round except in the short season of sharp frosts and cold wet ground in November, December and January. If you can get a good start in September and October, all right; if not, wait until February and March, according to the season. Where it is never very cold or wet, sow whenever moisture is right. There never can be any rule about it, for localities will differ. Foxtail and Alfalfa. Will foxtail choke out and exterminate alfalfa? Some fields look as though the foxtail had crowded the alfalfa out, but I hold that the alfalfa died from some other cause and the foxtail merely took its place. Foxtail will not choke out alfalfa, providing, soil and moisture conditions are right for the latter, and a good stand of plant has been secured. If anything is wrong with the alfalfa, the foxtail will be on the alert to take advantage of it. You will always have foxtail with you, and considerable quantities of it, perhaps, in the first cutting, because foxtail will grow at a lower temperature than alfalfa, and, therefore, will keep very busy during the rainy season, while the alfalfa is more or less dormant, but as the heat increases, if the soil is good and moisture ample, the alfalfa will put the foxtail out of sight until the following winter invites it to make another aggressive growth. Therefore, we answer that alfalfa does not die from foxtail, but from some condition unfavorable to the alfalfa, which must be sought in the soil, or in the moisture supply, or traced back to bad seed, and a poor stand at the beginning. Which Alfalfa is Best? I have in Stanislaus county ten acres of Arabian alfalfa, which was sown the first week in April this year. It was clipped in July and irrigated. It is now about 14 inches high, but looks sickly, turns white at the tips, and some dies down. There are several places here with the Arabian alfalfa on them and with the same trouble, while the ordinary variety is looking fine by the side of it. Arabian alfalfa usually makes a good show at first and begins to run out afterward. It does not seem to be so long-lived and satisfactory as the common variety. With this prospect ahead of you, according to present experience, it would seem to be desirable to plow the crop in and seed again with the common variety, or with the Turkestan, which is proving the most satisfactory of the recently introduced varieties. Fall Sowing of Alfalfa. We have summer-fallowed land which we know will grow good alfalfa, and as we have just had four inches of rainfall upon it, we were wondering if we could not plow the twenty acres and get a stand upon it in time to stand the cold weather this winter. Do you think this is practicable? If four inches of rain on summer fallow connects well with the lower moisture which a good summer fallow ought to conserve in the soil, such sowing is rational; but if the summer fallowing was not done well, that is, if it was rough plowing without enough harrowing, as is too often the case, the four inches of rain might not be safe because of the dry ground beneath waiting to seize the moisture and so dry the surface that sprouting alfalfa plants would perish between dry soil below and dry wind above. Fall sowing will give enough growth to resist frost killing in many places in the valley if the moisture in the soil is enough to carry the plant as well as start it, or if showers come frequently - otherwise it is dangerous, not from frost but from drouth. Alfalfa Hay and Soil Fertility. We are feeding all our hay to dairy cows, returning the manure to the soil. At present prices of hay, my neighbors who sell theirs, seem to be as well off, with considerable less work; but how about the future? Can this soil be cropped indefinitely and the crops sold, without returning anything to the land? It is a mistake to think that you can sell alfalfa hay indefinitely without reducing the soil. It may gain in nitrogen by the wastes of the plant, but it will lose in other constituents unless reinforced by fertilization. No single act can make for the maintenance of the soil as the growing and feeding of crops and return of manure does. Dry-Land Alfalfa. I am in a country of strictly dry farming. I have a wash or gulch on my place and would like to know if I could, with success, plant it to alfalfa without irrigation; soil is sandy loam, no evidences of springy moisture at all. What kind should I try? Alfalfa will endure much drouth. What it will do in a particular place can only be told by trying. Sow Turkestan alfalfa. If the rains come early so as to wet the land down in September and October, sow the seed then. The endurance of the plant will depend much upon its having a chance to root deeply before the drouth comes on. Inoculating Alfalfa. Is it profitable to inoculate alfalfa seed before planting to increase its yield? Can it be done by leaching soil from old alfalfa ground, providing it has been plowed up and allowed to stand for a year? Are commercial inoculants a safe thing to inoculate with? Apparently alfalfa does not need inoculation in this State. Probably not one acre in ten thousand now profitably growing alfalfa has ever had artificial introduction of germs. You can make germ-tea, if you wish, of the soil you describe; one year's exposure would not destroy the germs. It is safe enough to use commercial cultures. You will have to decide for yourself whether it is worth while. Irrigating Alfalfa. I am making parallel ridges for alfalfa, sending a full head of water down to the end of the field between each ridge. Should I calculate the lands to be mowed one at a time in even swaths? The mower being 5-foot cut, would you count on cutting a 4 1/2 or 5-foot swath? This soil is sandy, water percolating rapidly. The fall is 8 feet to the mile. How wide, then, would you advise making the ridges to suit the mower, and to flood economically, using from 2 to 4 cubic feet per second? The length of the lands is across 40 acres. Growing alfalfa in long parallel checks, to be flooded between the levees, is the way in which much alfalfa is being put in at the present time where the land has such a slope as you indicate. It is calculated, however, to seed the levees as well as the check bottoms, and to run the mowers across the levees, thus leaving no waste land and mowing across the whole field and not between the levees as you propose. For that purpose these levees are made low, not over a foot in height, calculating that they will settle to about six or eight inches, which is sufficient to hold the water and direct its flow gently down the slope. There is, however, a limit to the distance over which water can be evenly distributed in this way, the difference being dependent upon the character of the soil, slope, etc. A length of nine hundred feet is sometimes found too great for an even distribution, and, for this reason, supply ditches at shorter intervals are introduced. Unirrigated Alfalfa. In what part of the State does alfalfa grow best without irrigation? Obviously the parts which have the greatest rainfall in connection with retentive soil and plenty of summer heat. Alfalfa grows best without irrigation on "sub-irrigated" land where the ground water is sufficiently deep to allow a deep rooting of the plant in free soil and yet not too far down to be readily reached by the deep-running roots. Good results can be obtained with anywhere from four to ten or twelve feet of soil above water. On shallower soils the plant is apt to be short-lived through root troubles. Unirrigated alfalfa is also reduced by the incursions of gophers which flooding at least once a year will destroy. Alfalfa and Overflow. How long can alfalfa stand water without being drowned out? I have a piece of alfalfa on which the water will stand for considerable time in the winter time. Alfalfa while dormant will endure submergence for several weeks. We do not know exactly how long, but evidently for a considerable period, providing temperatures are too low to invite growth. On the other hand, growing alfalfa is quickly and seriously injured by overflow. No Nurse-Crop for Alfalfa. Is it advisable to use oats with alfalfa seeds in seeding for alfalfa? Some growers of alfalfa here advise it strongly, others advise against it. The general experience in California is decidedly against using oats, barley, or any other nursecrop with alfalfa. Get the land in the best possible condition and let the alfalfa have the full benefit of it. The ripening of the grain crop will do the young alfalfa plants more harm by robbing them of moisture than any protection which the taller plant can afford. Reseeding Alfalfa. This spring I planted alfalfa and only got about half a stand on some of the land. I want to reseed this fall and I thought of putting more seed on the ground and then disc it in. Or would you advise replanting the land? What do you think of putting manure on young alfalfa? Do you think there is any danger of burning it out? Stir it up with a spring tooth harrow or disc it lightly to make a nice seed bed and then sow your seed as if you were planting alfalfa for the first time. This will give you a good seed bed and will not hurt the alfalfa already growing. Prepare the surface first and then sow, rather than disking in the seed. The manure in moderate application would not burn out the young alfalfa if properly applied after the rains begin. Taking the Bloat Out of Alfalfa. Will Italian rye grass and red top clover be a success under irrigation as cow pasture in this county, either separately or mixed with alfalfa? To sow in bare spots in the alfalfa, would the rye grass prevent bloat? Italian rye grass and red clover will make good pasturage under irrigation and will make a fight with the alfalfa to the best of their ability. The admixture of rye grass will reduce the danger from bloating. Red clover will not have that effect, because red clover is a pretty good bloater on its own account. This seems to be the function of all the clovers according to the rankness of their growth at the time that they are grazed. The Time to Cut Alfalfa. What is the best period to cut alfalfa hay for cow feed and the best method for curing? The best time to cut alfalfa is just when new shoots are starting out at the crown. This will give the greatest yield of hay during a season, and the hay will be much more palatable than if the alfalfa is permitted to get well into the blossoming period. The leaves, which are the best part of the hay, also remain on better than if the stems are older. If a person does not care to take the trouble to find out whether the new shoots are coming out or not, he can approximate the time to cut fairly well by waiting until a blossom here and there appears, cutting immediately. It would be difficult to tell on paper exactly when alfalfa was properly cured, as that is a matter of individual judgment. It is usual to cut in the morning and rake into windrows in the afternoon. With the usual weather in interior California that stage of the curing is completed by that time. The next day it can be gathered into cocks and gotten ready to move. That is about all the curing that is done. The size of the windrows depends upon the amount of hay, as thick hay should be put up in small windrows to give plenty of circulation of air. It is considered better also to build the cocks on raked land, otherwise the hay lying flat at the bottom will not cure properly and cannot be gathered up clean. Which Crop of Alfalfa for Seed? Which cutting of alfalfa should be left for seed bearing? Which cutting is best for seed depends, of course, on the way the plant grows in your locality. Where it starts early and gives many cuttings in a season with irrigation a later growth should be chosen for seed than with a short season where fewer cuttings can be had. The second cutting is best in many places, but O. E. Lambert of Modesto after threshing about 30 lots in one year tells us that some growers had left second, some third and some fourth cuttings for seed. He found the second cutting very poor both in yield and grade, much of it not being well filled and the seed blighted, as the growth of hay was too heavy. The seed on third cutting was good both in grade and yield. Much of the seed on fourth cutting was not matured. For good results the stand should be thin. Our drier, heavier lands give the best results, sub-irrigated lands not seeding. All irrigation should stop with the previous cutting for hay. Siloing First Crop Alfalfa. How about putting first cutting of alfalfa and foxtail into the silo? Do you think there is any danger of fire in a wooden silo, and do you add salt and water when filling, and how long after it is cut would you advise putting it into the silo? Put it through the silo cutter as soon as you can get it from the field. Do not let it cure at all, and be sure to cut and pack well. If at all dry, use water at the time of filling, and some salt then also, if you desire. There is no danger of firing if you put it in with good moisture, and by short cutting and hard packing you exclude the air. If you do not do this you will get a silo full of manure, and possibly have a fire while it is rotting. Soil for Alfalfa. What kind of soil is best for alfalfa on a dairy ranch? An ideal soil for alfalfa is a deep well drained soil into which the roots can run deeply without danger of encountering standing water or alkali. Still we are finding that alfalfa is very successful on soils which are not strictly ideal, providing the moisture is supplied in such a way that the soil shall not be waterlogged nor the water be allowed to remain upon the surface during the hot weather, because this kills the plant. Handling Young Alfalfa. I have alfalfa that is doing very well for the first year. My soil is sandy loam with light traces of white alkali, although it does not seem to be detrimental to the growth thus far. I am in the dairy business and will have by winter enough manure to top-dress the field. Would it be good policy to use the manure, or would it be more satisfactory to top-dress with gypsum? Would it injure alfalfa to pasture lightly after the last cutting? Presumably your soil contains enough lime, and therefore the application of gypsum at this time of the year would not be necessary. It may be desirable to top-dress with gypsum near the end of the rainy season to stimulate the growth of the plant. Gypsum, however, has no effect upon white alkali. So far as alkali goes, gypsum merely changes black alkali into white, thus making it less corrosive. There would be no objection to pasturing lightly this fall. Be careful, however, to keep off the stock while the land is wet and not to overstock so as to injure root crowns by tramping. The manure can be used as a top dressing during the rainy season, unless you think it better to save it for the growth of other crops. Alfalfa is so deep rooting where conditions are favorable that it does not require fertilization usually on land which has been used for a long time for grain or other shallow-rooting plants. Alfalfa Sowing with Gypsum. I intend sowing alfalfa this fall on land that has some very compact hard spots. I aim to doctor these spots with gypsum at the rate of about 1000 pounds per acre and cultivate the gypsum in thoroughly two or three weeks before sowing the alfalfa seed. Would this be all right? Is there danger of injury to seed by coming in contact with gypsum? Gypsum will not hurt the alfalfa seed. It is not corrosive like an alkali. Whether it will have time enough to ameliorate the soil in the spots in the period you mention depends upon there being moisture enough present at the time. Red Clover for Shallow Land. What can you say of red clover on shallow soils in the Sacramento valley under irrigation? How many crops, etc.? Red clover is fine under the conditions you describe. We could never understand why people do not grow more of it on shallow land over hardpan which is free from alkali and not irrigated too much at a time. It is good on shallow land over water, where alfalfa roots decay, etc. Though we have no exact figures, we should expect to get about two-thirds as much weight from it as from an equally good stand of alfalfa. Clovers for High Ground-Water. Where, in California, is alfalfa being raised successfully above a water-table of, say, 4 feet or less, and are any unusual means used to accomplish this? Over a high water-table, the alfalfa plant will be shorter lived according to the shallowness of soil above water. One could get very good results at from 4 to 6 feet, whereas at 2 or 3 feet the stand of alfalfa would soon become scant through decay of its fleshy root. Where the water comes very near the surface, a more shallow and fibrous rooting plant, like the Eastern red clover, should be substituted for alfalfa in California. It is a very vigorous grower and will yield a number of crops in succession although the water might be very near the surface, as in the case of the reclaimed islands in the Stockton and Sacramento regions and in shallow irrigated soils over bedrock in the foothills or over hardpan on the valley plains. In this statement, freedom from alkali is presumed. Vetches in San joaquin. In Michigan I was familiar with the use of the sand vetch as a forage plant, for hay, for green manure, and as a nitrogen producer. In western Michigan, on the loose sandy soil, I sowed in September or October 20 pounds per acre for a seed crop and 40 pounds per acre for pasture, hay, or green manure. Can I expect good results in Fresno and Tulare counties without irrigation? Will fall seeding the same as wheat produce a seed crop? Will sand vetch grow on soil having one-half of one per cent alkali? Most of the vetches grow well in the California valleys during the rainy season; the common vetch, Vicia sativa, and the hairy vetch, Vicia hirsuta, are giving best results. The proper time to plant is at the beginning of the rainy season. They will stand some alkali, especially during the rainy season, when it is likely to be distributed by the downward movement of water, but it is very easy to find land which has too much alkali for them. These plants seed well in some parts of the valley, but a local trial must be made to give you definite information. Growing Vetch for Hay. How many pounds of vetch seed should be sown to the acre? How many tons per acre in the crop? As I desire to change my crop, having to some extent exhausted the soil with oats, how advisable will it be to sow wheat with the vetch to give it something to climb on? If so, and wheat is not desirable under the circumstances, what? In using vetch for horse fodder, how much barley should be fed with it per day for a driving horse? For a draught horse? Is vetch sown and harvested at about the same time as other crops? Except in very frosty places, vetch can be sown after the rain begins at about 40 to 60 pounds of seed to the acre. The yield will depend upon the land and on the moisture supply, and cannot be prophesied. One grower reports three tons of hay per acre near Napa. If the land usually yields a good hay crop, it should yield a greater weight of vetch. In mowing for hay purposes it is desirable to raise the vetch off the ground to facilitate the action of the mower. Oats would be better than wheat, because rather quicker in winter growth. If the vetch is to be fed green, rye is a good grain, but not good for hay purposes because of the hardness of the stem. There is no particular difference in the plant-food requirements of the different grains, so that there is nothing gained in that way in the choice of wheat. In feeding a combined vetch and barley hay, the ration is balanced; the feeding of grain would not be necessary, except in case of hard work under the same conditions grain is usually fed to horses and in about the same amounts. Vetch requires a longer season than ordinary oat or barley hay crop to make a larger growth, consequently an early sowing is desirable. Cover Crop in Hop Yard. Will you please give information concerning cow peas or the most suitable crop to sow in a hop field for winter growth, to be plowed under as a fertilizer in the spring? Also, would it injure the vines to be cut down before they die, so as to sow the mulch crop soon as possible after the hops are gathered? Cow peas would not do for the use which you propose, because they would be speedily killed by frost on low lands, usually chosen for hops, and would give you no growth during the frosty season. Probably there is nothing better than burr clover for such a winter growth. Hop vines should be allowed to grow as long as they maintain the thrifty green color, because the growth of the leaves strengthens the root. But when they begin to become weakened and yellow they can be removed without injury. It is not necessary to wait for them to become fully dead. Growing Cowpeas. What is the best variety of cow peas for a forage crap? I want a variety which with irrigation will come up after it has been cut, so as to keep growing and not be like some which I tried last year. They grew up like ordinary garden peas and were just a waste of ground. Possibly you did not get cowpeas; they do not look like garden peas at all: they look more like running beans, which they are. The crop is not counted satisfactory except on low, moist land, for on uplands, even with irrigation, it does not seem to behave right. We do not know that a second growth can be expected, for in the Southern States it is grown as a single crop, and resowing is done if a succession is desired, the point being made at the South that the plant is adapted to this method of culture because it grows so rapidly that it can be twice sown and harvested during the frost-free period. Cowpeas in the San Joaquin. How late in the season will it be profitable to plant cowpeas? What is the best manner of planting? Are there several varieties? If so, which one is best adapted to plant after oats? The land can be irrigated until about August 10. Will it be advisable to plow up a poor stand of alfalfa about July 1 and plant to cow peas? You can plant cowpeas all summer on land which is moist enough by natural moisture or irrigation to promote growth. What you will get by late planting depends upon moisture and absence of an early fall frost. If your alfalfa stand is bad enough to need re-sowing anyway, you may get a good catch crop of cowpeas by doing as you propose. If, however, you plow under much coarse stuff in putting in the peas the growth may be irregular. It can, of course, be improved by free irrigation. On clear land moderately retentive much more is being done in summer growth of cowpeas without irrigation than expected. There are several good varieties. One of these is the Whippoorwill. Cowpeas can be sown in furrows three feet apart and cultivated, using about 40 pounds of seed to the acre, or they may be broadcasted, which takes about twice as much seed. Cowpeas and Canadian Peas. Would Canadian field peas and cow peas be valuable as a forage crop for cows and hogs; also as fertilizer? Please tell us also when to plant, how to plant, etc. These plants are of high forage value as cow feed; also as a soil restorative when the whole crop is plowed under green or when the roots and manure from feeding add to the soil. But for either purpose the result depends upon how much growth you can get, and that should be told by local trial before any great outlay is undertaken. Canadian peas are hardy against frost and can be broadcasted and covered with shallow plowing as soon as the land is moist enough from fall rains - except in very frosty parts of the State. They can also be sown in drills to advantage. Cow peas are beans, and cannot be planted until frost danger is over in the spring. They are only available for summer feeding, and whether they will be worth while or not depends upon how much moisture can be held in the soil for summer growth. They should be sown in drills and cultivation continued for moisture conservation until the plants cover the ground too much to get the cultivator through. Canadian or Niles Peas. I send a sample of peas which I bought for Canada field peas, and they were so labeled. I would like to know what they are. The peas are, apparently, one kind of Canada peas. There is some variation in Canada peas, but these are peas of that class. Some of the Canada pea are hardly distinguishable from the so-called Niles pea of California growth, and it does not matter much, anyway, for one is about as good as the other. Sunflowers and Soy Beans. I would like information concerning cultivation, method of feeding and food value of soy beans. Also sunflowers. Soy beans are grown like other beans, in rows which, for convenience in field culture, should be about 2 1/2 feet apart and cultivated up to blooming time at least. They should be sown after frost danger is over and the weather is settled warm, for they enjoy heat. For feeding they can be made into hay before maturity, or the beans can be matured and prepared for feeding by grinding. As with other beans, small amounts should be used in connection with other feeds. They are a rich food and somewhat heavy on the digestion. The same is true of sunflowers, except that the seed is richer in oil than in protein, as beans are. Sunflowers in field culture are planted and cultivated like beans. The seed is flailed out of the heads after they lie for a time to dry. Jersey Kale. Please inform me how to plant Jersey or cow kale. Jersey kale can be planted by thin scattering of seeds in rows 2 1/2 feet apart so as to admit of cultivation, or the plants can be grown just as cabbage plants are and set out 2 1/2 or 3 feet apart, the squares to admit of cultivation both ways. The plant needs a good deal more space than an ordinary cabbage, for it makes a tall free growth, and space must be had for the growth of the plant and for going into the patch for stripping off leaves and cultivation. The plant can be started in the rainy season whenever the land comes into good condition. It is a winter grower in California valleys. Rape and Milo. Would rape be a good pasture crop sown broadcast? If so, at what time should it be planted? Will Milo maize grow profitable in Sonoma county? Rape can be sown as soon as the land gets moist enough from early rains to start the seed and hold the growth. It is a wintergrowing plant in this State. We believe, however, you will get better results with common vetch, which is also a winter grower and more nutritious. If you desire one of the cabbage family, kale will probably serve you better than rape. Milo is one of the sorghums and will only grow during the frostless period, like Kafir, Egyptian corn and other sorghums. It will do well with you, but probably make less growth than in the interior valleys. Sweet Clover Not an Alfalfa. I send you a sample of alfalfa which grows very vigorous here on my place spontaneously and would like you to give me all the information about it you will, as a feed for cows and hogs. The stock seem to eat it well. The plant is not alfalfa at all. It is white sweet clover (melilotus alba), and it is usually considered a great pest in alfalfa fields, because although it grows vigorously as you describe, it is not generally accepted by stock, unless once in awhile some one considers it a good thing, perhaps because he keeps stock hungry enough to enjoy it in spite of its rank taste and smell, but, usually when they can get alfalfa they will not pay much attention to this plant. It is good for bee pasturage, however, and is grown to some extent for that purpose. You probably had the seed of it in your alfalfa seed. It is a biennial and not a perennial like alfalfa. It will disappear if you can keep it from going to seed. Sweet Clover as a Cover Crop. How about melilotus as a cover crop? Last year in certain sections it proved very successful, while in others it did not give satisfaction. Melilotus, by virtue of its hardiness in growing at low temperatures, its depth of root penetration, the availability of the seed, the smallness of the seed so that the weight required for the acre is not large, is to be favored for a cover crop. The objections are two: The fact that it does not seem to grow well under some conditions; second, that when a growth is made it is coarse and rangey, and the amount of green stuff to the acre is much less than its appearance would indicate. We know of cases where what seemed to be a good stand of melilotus yielded only about ten tons of green stuff to the acre, and what appeared to be a less growth of vetches or peas yielded from fifteen to twenty tons to the acre. And yet we believe that in some places it will be found extremely desirable for a cover crop in harmony with what was reported some time ago as the result of experiments by the Arizona Experiment Station. Spineless Cactus. There seems to be two distinct kinds of cactus: One for forage, the other for fruit. It is claimed by some people that the spineless cactus is more valuable as a forage plant than alfalfa. What is your opinion? There are many varieties of smooth cacti. Some of them bear higher quality fruit than others, and some are freer growers and bear a greater amount of leaf substance for forage purposes; therefore, varieties are being developed which are superior for fruit or for forage, as the case may be. Spineless cactus is in no way comparable with alfalfa, either in nutritive content or in value of crop, providing you have land and water which will produce a good product of alfalfa. Cactus is for lands which are in an entirely different class and which are not capable of alfalfa production. Probably Not Broom-Corn. I have a side-hill ranch on which I would very much like to raise broom corn. The soil produces good grapes, fruit, corn, oats, peas, etc., and I wish to know if there are possibilities of broom-straw. All the broom-corn which has been successfully produced in California has been produced on moist, riverside land. The plant is a sorghum - consequently subject to frost injury, and can only be grown during the frostless season as Indian corn is. This makes it impossible to get the advantage of rainfall on winter upland and necessitates the use of lowlands, which carry moisture enough to secure a free growth of the brush, for poor broom-corn is worthless practically, being too low priced to be profitable for brooms and too fibrous to be of value for feeding purposes. Even in a place where the plant grows well its product is worthless unless properly treated, and that requires full knowledge and a good deal of work. The Outlook for Broom Corn. Broom corn is way up in price, but that is an indication that everyone who has ever grown broom corn is likely to plant it this year. What is the outlook in California? Nothing but a local experiment will determine whether you can get a satisfactory brush under the conditions prevailing in your vicinity. Undoubtedly, the high price of broom corn will stimulate production, but under quite sharp limitations in California, because a good, satisfactory brush cannot be grown on dry plains, although a good product is made in the river bottoms not far away. But there are so few people in California who understand how to handle broom corn to produce a good commercial article, and there are such rigid requirements in the size, quality, etc., that those who break into the business without proper knowledge cannot command even profitable prices. Therefore, if your enterprise is conducted with a full knowledge and with proper local conditions it would not encounter such a local disadvantage in the great increase of the product as one might think at first. Smutty Sorghum. The various plantings of Egyptian corn on the ranch have turned smutty, very much after the manner of wheat and barley. Is there any unusual reason for this, or could irrigation have caused it, and what is the best method of preventing it? Sorghum is affected by a smut similar to that of other grains. It is due to the introduction of the germ of the disease which comes with the use of smutty seed. Possibly the growth of the smut may have been promoted by moisture arising from soil rendered very wet by irrigation, and for this plant free irrigation should not be used, because it will do more with less water than any other plant we are growing, and is likely to be more thrifty in a drier atmosphere. Get seed for next year from an absolutely clean field; get as much growth as you can without irrigation, and then use water in moderate quantities as may be necessary, followed by a cultivation for the drying of the surface. Late-sown Sorghum. How late can Egyptian corn be planted on good sediment soil capable of growing 40 to 50 socks of barley per acre in good years with ordinary rain? The field was cut this year for hay on account of rank growth of wild oats, after irrigating; land is still moist. Can I put in Egyptian corn with on assurance of crop, or is it too late? How much seed should be planted to the acre, also should seed be drilled in or broad-casted? There is no difficulty in getting a start of Egyptian corn during the dry season providing the soil contains moisture enough to germinate the seed. Afterward the growth will be more or less according to the moisture present and will be available for forage purposes. Whether a seed crop can be had by late sowing depends upon the frost occurrence in the particular locality, for it only takes a light frost to destroy the plant. To get the best results, particularly with late sowing, the seeds should be drilled in rows far enough apart for horse cultivation; about forty pounds of seed to the acre. What you get in this way will depend upon the amount of moisture in the soil and the duration of the frost-freedom. Kaffir and Egyptian Corn. Does Kaffir corn yield as well here as Egyptian corn? The fodder is good feed and the heads stand erect and at a more even height from the ground, which makes three advantages over Egyptian. Irrigation in either case is the some. The reasons you mention have no doubt had much to do with the present popularity of an upright plant like Kafir over a gooseneck like the old dhoura or Egyptian, which was the type first introduced in California. For years there has been more gooseneck sorghum in the Sacramento valley than in any other part of the State. It may have superior local adaptions or the people may be more conservative. The way to determine which is better is to try it out, and, unless the Egyptian does better in grain and forage than the upright growers, take to the grain which holds its head up. Sorghums for Seed. Which sorghum is the most profitable to plant for the seed only White Egyptian, Brawn Egyptian or Yellow Mila? Which sorghum is best is apparently a local question and governed by local conditions to a certain extent. Egyptian corn (with the goose-neck stem) has held more popularity in your part of the Sacramento than elsewhere, while Kaffir corn (holding its head upright, as do many other sorghums) has been for years very popular in the San Joaquin. In the Imperial valley Dwarf Milo is chiefly grown for a seed crop shattering and bird invasion are very important. G. W. Dairs of the San Joaquin valley, says there is a very great difference in the different varieties regarding waste from the blackbird. The ordinary white Egyptian corn is very easily shelled, and the birds waste many times more of the grain than they eat, after it has become thoroughly ripe. The Milo maize, or red Egyptian corn, does not shell nearly so easily as the white corn, and the grain is considerably harder and less attractive to the blackbirds. In fact, blackbirds will not work in a field of this variety of corn if there is any white corn in the vicinity to be had. The dwarf Milo maize yields much more crop than the white Egyptian corn, or any other variety. Blackbirds do not damage the white Kaffir corn to the extent they do the ordinary white Egyptian corn. Sorghum Planting. What is the best time to sow Egyptian corn; also how much per acre to sow? All the sorghums, of which Egyptian corn is one, must be sown after frost danger is over - the time widely known as suitable for Indian corn, squashes and other tender plants. Sow thinly in shallow furrows or "marks," 3 1/2 or 4 feet apart and cultivate as long as you can easily get through the rows with a horse. About 8 pounds of seed is used per acre. If grown for green fodder, sow more thickly and make the rows closer, say 2 1/2 feet apart. Buckwheat Growing. Two or three farmers in this locality desire to plant buckwheat. Not having done so heretofore they are in doubt as to the soil and other conditions that go to make a successful crop. The growing of buckwheat in California is an exceedingly small affair. The local market is very limited, as most California hot cakes are made of wheat flour. There is no chance for outward shipment, and the crop itself, being capable of growing only during the frostless season, has to be planted on moist lands where there is not only abundant summer moisture but an air somewhat humid. Irrigated uplands, even in the frostless season, are hardly suitable for the common buckwheat, although they may give the growth of Japanese buckwheat for beekeepers who use dark honey for bee feeding. The Japanese buckwheat is well suited for this because it keeps blooming and produces a scattered crop of seed, but this characteristic makes it less suitable for a grain crop, and it has therefore never become very popular in this State. We consider buckwheat as not worthy of much consideration by California farmers. Variation in Russian Sunflowers. In an acre of mammoth Russian sunflowers there seems to be three varieties, some of the plants bear but one large flower; others bear a flower at the top with many other smaller ones circling it, while others have long stalks just above the leaf stems from the ground level all the way up to the largest flower, which appears at the very top. Are all these varieties true mammoth Russian sunflowers? What explanation is there for these variations? Will the seed from the variety carrying but one natural head produce seed that will reproduce true to the parent? Your sunflowers are probably only playing the pranks their grandfathers enjoyed. If seed is gathered indiscriminately from all the heads which appear in the crop, succeeding generations will keep reverting until they return to the wild type, or something near it. If there is a clear idea of what is the best type (one great head or several heads, placed in a certain way) and seed is continually taken from such plants only for planting, more and more plants will be of this kind until the type becomes fixed and reversions will only rarely appear. No seed should be kept for planting without selecting it from what you consider the best type of plant; no field should be grown for commercial seed without rogue-ing out the plants which show reversions or bad variations. If you find sunflowers profitable as a crop in your locality, rigid selection of seed should be practiced by all growers, after careful comparison of views and a decision as to the best characters to select for. Sacaline. My attention has been brought to a plant called Sacaline by an Eastern plant dealer. He states that this plant will grow in any kind of soil and needs practically no water. The plant Sacaline (Polygonum saghalience) was introduced to California as a dry-land forage plant about 1893, and has never demonstrated any particular forage value. It is a browsing shrub, making woody stem, and cattle will eat it readily when not provided with better food. It has possible value on waste land, but probably is in no sense superior to the native shrubs of California which serve that purpose. It is a handsome ornamental plant for gardens or parks. Mossy Lawns. What will destroy patches of moss which are spreading over our lawns and apparently destroying the grass? More sunlight would have a tendency to discourage the growth of moss on a lawn. If this is not feasible, irrigation less frequently but a more thorough soaking each time will give the surface a better chance to dry off, and moss will not grow on a dry surface. The frequent spraying of a lawn with just enough water to keep the surface moist and not enough water to penetrate deeply will tend to the growing of moss and to less vigor in the growth of the grass, A good soaking of the soil once a week is better than daily sprinkling, but, of course, very much more water must be used when you only sprinkle at long intervals. The drying of the surface may be assisted by sprinkling with air-slaked lime and this will discourage the growth of moss, but of course lime must not be used in excess or it will also injure the grass. Scattering Grass Seeds. We live on the west side of Sonoma valley, and want to seed some of our fields with a good wild grass. We want to carry bags of it in our pockets to scatter when we ride. Timothy we should like, but this is not its habitat, is it? Can you suggest a grass or grasses that would do well here? There are really wild grasses worthy of multiplication, but no one makes a business of collecting the seed for sale, so that such seeds are not available for such purpose as you describe. Of the introduced grasses, those which are most likely to catch from early scattered seed are Australian and Italian rye grasses, orchard grass, wild oat grass and red top. You can get seed of all these from dealers in any quantity which you desire at from 15 to 30 cents a pound, according to the variety, and make a mixture of equal parts of each grass, which you can carry and scatter as you propose. Some of them will catch somewhere, particularly in spots where the shade modifies the summer heat and where seepage moisture reduces soil drought. You are right about timothy; it is good farther up the coast and in the mountain valleys, but not in your district. Poultry Forage. I have light sandy loam on which I desire to grow forage for chickens. It lies too high for irrigation. You could probably grow alfalfa to advantage if the soil still deep and loose, getting less, of course, than by irrigation, but still an amount that would be very helpful in your chicken business. Otherwise, as the land lies higher and perhaps out of sharp frosts, you could grow winter crops of vetches and peas and thus improve the land while furnishing you additional poultry pasture. The latter purpose could also be served by growing beets, cabbage or other hardy vegetables during the rainy season. This is prescribed because of the apprehension that the soil may not contain moisture enough for summer cropping without irrigation. No Grain Elevators in California. Is California wheat shipped in bulk or in bags at the present time? There are no elevators in this State, owing to the fact that hitherto grain cargoes have been acceptable to ship only as sacked grain, because of claimed danger of shifting cargo and disaster during the long voyage around the Horn. A novel by Frank Norris, entitled the "Octopus," describes a man being killed by smothering in a grain elevator at Port Costa, but there never was an elevator at that point, and consequently there never was a man killed by getting under the spout thereof. Answering specifically your question, California grain is shipped in bags and not in bulk. It is handled in sacks from the separator to roadside or riverside storage, to the loading point into the ships and out of the ships on the other side - still in bags. New Zealand Flax. Give information about Phormiun tenax (New Zealand flax), which I see is imported to San Francisco in large quantities yearly for making cordage and binder twine, and is said also to be the best of bee pasture. Can I get the plants on the coast, and is California soil and climate adapted to the culture? New Zealand flax grows admirably in the coast region of California. You will find it in nearly all the public parks and in private gardens, for it is a very ornamental perennial. Plants can be had in any quantity from the California nurserymen and florists. It produces plenty of leaves, but we should doubt whether it is floriferous enough for bee pasturage except where it occurs wild over a large acreage. You could get vastly more honey from other plants grown for that purpose. No Home-made Beet Sugar. Is there any simple process of making sugar from beets so that I could make my own sugar at home from my own beets while sugar is so very expensive to buy? There is no simple way of making beet sugar. It can only be economically done in factories costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Don't Get Crazy About Special Crops. I want information about flax as a crop. I have been having some land graded for alfalfa and I have had to wait so long I am now doubting the advisability of seeding it all under these conditions until fall, as hot weather will soon come. I want some good crop to plant in the checks and give two good irrigations. What would you think about rye for straw for horse collars? I do not wish to consider corn, as the stalks would be troublesome. Potatoes would necessitate disarranging the land too much and would require more attention than I am in shape to give just flow. Everybody grows wheat, barley and oats. I want something that I can get a special market for. To succeed with flax, the seed ought to be sown in the fall, or early winter, in California, and the plant will make satisfactory growth under about the same conditions that suit barley or wheat. Spring sowing would not give you anything worth while except on moist bottom land. Rye is also a winter-growing grain. To grow rye straw for horse collars would be unprofitable unless you could find some local saddler who could use a little, and it is probable you could not get a summer growth of rye which would give good straw, even if you had a market for it. You could get a growth of stock beets, field squashes, or pumpkins for stock feeding. In fact, the latter would give you most satisfaction if you have stock to which they can be fed to advantage. Sorghum is our chief dry-season crop, but that makes stalks like corn and would, therefore, be open to the same objections. Has it never occurred to you that people grow the common crops, not because they are stupid, but because those are the things for which there is a constant demand and the best chance for profitable sale? Efforts to supply special markets are worth thinking of, but seldom worth making unless you know just who is going to buy the product and at what price. California Insect Powder. What part of the plant is used in making insect powder and how is it prepared? Is the plant a perennial? What soil suits it best? The plant is Pyrethrum cinerariaefolium and has a white blossom resembling the common marguerite. The powder is made of the petals and the seed capsules or heads are thoroughly dried in the sun and ground with a run of stone such as was formerly used for making flour. The powder must be finely ground, and only good powder can be made in a mill suitably equipped for that purpose. The plant is a perennial, beginning to bloom the second year from seed. It will grow in any good soil with ordinary cultivation. Twenty-five years ago it was thought that a great California industry might be established on that basis, but there is at the present time but one establishment, which grows about all the material it can use on its own ranch in Merced county, on a fine, deep loam which the plant seems to enjoy. Rotations for California. I wish to work out a practical system of crop rotation suitable to the climate and conditions obtaining in southern California. Would you recommend different systems for grain lands and irrigated lands? General schemes of rotation are hard to work out in California. They must be locally revised according to the local temperature conditions and the local market also. We should endeavor to find out what has been successfully grown on similar lands to those which you have in mind and arrange the rotation on that basis, from what we knew of the relation of the different plants to soil fertility, etc. You cannot make out a satisfactory local scheme for the seven counties in southern California, because of the widely different behavior of the separate plants in the different parts of the district. You can hardly work on the basis of soil character: moisture supply and temperatures are more determinative. Surely you should make a scheme for irrigated land different from that for dry land, and it could not only be a longer rotation, but many more plants would be available for its service. Berseem? Berseem has been introduced into this country from Egypt, and would like to know if it has been used in California, and if it has came up to expectations. Berseem is an annual clover supposed to grow only during the summer time. It has been tried widely in California, but practically abandoned because it will not grow during the rainy season. It is in no way comparable to alfalfa, which is a deep rooted perennial plant, nor would it be comparable with burr clover as a winter grower on lands which have a moderate amount of water. Heating and Fermentation. Please explain why dampness will cause anything like hay, Egyptian corn or other like products to heat. Heating is due to fermentation, which means the action upon the vegetable substance of germs which begin to grow and multiply after their kind whenever conditions favor them. The earlier stages of this action is called "sweating," and it is beneficial as in the case of hay, tobacco, dried fruits, etc., as is commonly recognized - resulting in what is known as curing - and it is the art of the handler of such products not to allow the action to go beyond what may be called the normal "sweating." If not checked by proper handling, which involves drying, cooling, etc., fermentation will continue, and other germs will find conditions suitable for them to take up their work of destruction, and this new action produces higher temperature still, and if not checked by cooling or drying or otherwise making the substance inhospitable to them, "heating" will result, and thence onward rapidly to decay, if they have everything their own way. Moonshine Farming. What influence, if any, has the moon on plant growth? Are there any reliable data of experiments available? Very prolonged investigation by the Weather Bureau determined that no difference was found in planting in different phases of the moon. If we paid any attention to it, we should plant in the dark of the moon, so as to get the plants up so that they could use the little more light which the moon gives. It is, however, more important to have the soil right than the moon. Part IV. Soils, Fertilizers and Irrigation What is Intensive Cultivation? From whom can I receive instruction or information regarding intensive cultivation? Intensive cultivation has, so far as we know, not been made the subject of any treatise or publication. Intensive cultivation means the use of a maximum amount of labor, fertilizers and water for products of high market value. There is no better example of intensive cultivation in the world than is afforded by the practice of the best market gardeners and producers of small fruit. Next to them, on larger areas, would be the policies and methods of the fruit growers of California. Intensive culture, then, is not a particular method or system, but consists in doing the best thing for maximum production of any product which is valuable enough to spend the large outlay which is required. Just how this cultivation should be done depends upon the nature of the product and the conditions of soil and climate in whatever locality intensive cultivation may be undertaken. Can a Man Farm? Is it possible for a man with a few acres well cared for and carefully tilled to make a living and pay out on a purchase of land at $123 per acre? Could a good carpenter make wages and take care of a small tract for a year or so until well under way? We consider $125 per acre for good land with a good water right a fair price. Financing a farming operation depends more upon the man than upon the good land. There are men who would, by intensive cultivation of salable stuff and right use of water, pay off the full value of the land from its produce in a couple of years. Others will never pay off. Of course, the nearer you can come to paying for the land at the beginning, and the more money you have for improvements, the more satisfactory your situation should be in every respect. There is a good chance for carpenter work in colony development, and considerable self-help could be secured in that way. You do not say whether you know anything about farming. Farming is a very complicated business and a basic knowledge derived from experience is a proper foundation to build upon in the light of the fuller application of scientific principles. Soil Depth for Citrus Trees. I have a top soil of rich loam containing small rocks and pebbles. Underneath it is washed gravel, rocks, boulders, yellow sand, etc. What is the limit as to thinness before trees will not grow, or thrive? Orange trees are growing quite successfully on shallow soil overlying clay where the use of water and fertilizers was carefully adjusted so as to keep the trees supplied with just the right amount. Under such conditions a good growth may be expected so long as this treatment is maintained. There should be, however, not less than three feet of good soil to make the large expenditure necessary to establish an orange orchard permanently productive, and all the depth you can get beyond three feet is desirable. We question the desirability of planting orange trees even on a good soil overlying gravel, rocks or sand. Roots will penetrate such material only a short distance usually. It is almost impossible with such a leachy foundation to keep the surface soil properly moistened and enriched; You are apt to lose both water and fertilizer into the too rapid drainage. Soils and Oranges. I find this entire district underlaid with hardpan at various depths, from 1 to 6 feet down, and of various thicknesses. This hardpan is more or less porous and seeps up water to some extent, but is too hard for roots to penetrate. It is represented to me that if this hard pan is down from 4 to 5 feet it does not interfere with the growth of the orange tree or its producing. Is 4 or 5 feet of the loam enough? Four or five feet of good soil over a hardpan, which was somewhat porous, is likely to be satisfactory for orange planting. There has been trouble from hardpan too near the surface and from the occurrence of a hardpan too rich in lime, which has resulted in yellow leaf and other manifestations of unthrift in the tree. Discussion of this subject is given on page 434 of the fifth edition of our book on "California Fruits," where we especially commend a good depth of "strong, free loam." This does not mean necessarily deep. The orange likes rather a heavier soil, while a deep sandy loam is preferred by some other fruits. If you keep the moisture supply regular and right and feed the plant with fertilizers, as may be required, the soil you mention is of sufficient depth - if it is otherwise satisfactory. Oranges Over High Ground Water. Does California experience show that citrus trees can be grown upon land successfully where the water-level is 6 feet from the surface; that is, where water is found at that level at all seasons and does not appear to rise higher during the rainy season? We do not know of citrus trees in California with ground-water permanently at six feet below the surface. If the soil should be a free loam and the capillarity therefore somewhat reduced, orange trees would probably be permanently productive. If the soil were very heavy, capillary rise might be too energetic and saturate the soil for some distance above the water-level. In a free soil without this danger the roots could approach the water as they find it desirable and be permanently supplied. Orange trees are largely dependent upon a shallow root system, the chief roots generally occupying the first four feet below the surface. From this fact we conclude that deep rooting is not necessary to the orange, although unquestionably deep rooting and deep penetration for water are desirable as allowing the tree to draw upon a much greater soil mass and therefore be less dependent upon frequent irrigations and fertilizations. Depth of Ground-Water. Is there probable harm from water standing 12 feet from the surface in an orchard? Also probable age of trees before any effect of said water would be felt by them? The soil is almost entirely chocolate dry bog. - W. E. Wahtoke. Water at twelve feet from the surface is desirable, and water at that point will be indefinitely desirable for the growing of fruit trees. Of course, conditions would change rapidly as standing water might approach more nearly to the surface, a condition which has to be carefully guarded against in irrigation. But it can come nearer than twelve feet without danger. Summer Fallow and Summer Cropping. I own some hill land which has been run down by continuous hay cropping. I am told that a portion must be summer-fallowed each year, but I wish to grow some summer crop on this fallow ground that will both enrich the soil and at the same time furnish good milk-producing feed for cows - thoroughly cultivating it between the rows. What crop would be best? I am told the common Kaffir or Egyptian corn are both soil enriching and milk producing. If you grow a summer crop on the summer-fallowed upland, you lose the chief advantage of summer fallowing, which is the storing of moisture for the following year's crop. A cultivated crop would waste less moisture than a broadcast crop, surely, but on uplands without irrigation it would take out all the moisture available and not act in the line of a summer fallow. Kaffir corn is not soil enriching. It has no such character. It probably depletes the soil just as much as an ordinary corn or hay crop. It is a good food to continue a milking period into the dry season, but you must be careful not to allow your cattle to get too much green sorghum, for it sometimes produces fatal results. We do not know anything which you can grow during the summer without irrigation which would contribute to the fertility of your land. If you had water and could grow clover or some legume during the summer season, the desired effect on the soil would be secured. Soils and Crop Changes. Peas and sweet peas do not grow well continuously in the same ground. I know this practically in my experience, but in no book have I ever found why they do not grow. There are two very good reasons why some classes of plants cannot be well grown continuously in the same piece of ground. One is the depletion of available plant food, the other the formation of injurious compounds by the plants, or the gradual increase of fungoid, bacterial or animate pests in the soil, which finally become abundant enough to seriously hinder growth. Different plants take the plant foods, as nitrogen, lime, potash, phosphates, etc., in different proportion. More important, perhaps, is the fact that the root acids that extract these foods are of different types and strength. Thus before many seasons it may happen that most of the plant food of one or more kinds may be nearly exhausted as far as that kind of plant is concerned that has grown there continually, while there would be plenty of easily available food for plants with a different kind of root system and different root acids, etc. This is one reason why rotation of crops is so good; it gives a combination of root acids and root systems to the soil during a term of years, and it also frees the soil from one certain kind of organism because it cannot survive the absence of the particular plants on which it thrives. Summer-Fallow Before Fruit Planting. I recently bought a ranch at Sheridan, Placer county, and was intending to put 10 acres to peaches and 50 acres to wheat or barley, but the residents tell me that the land must be summer-fallowed before I can do anything. The soil is a red loam and has not been plowed for six years. Your local advisers are probably right as to the necessity for summer-fallowing in order to conserve moisture from a previous year's rainfall and to get the land otherwise into good condition. There might be such a generous rainfall that an excellent crop might come without summer-fallowing, and the results will depend upon the rainfall. If it should be small in amount, you might not recover your seed. By the same sign you might not get much growth on your fruit trees, but you could help them by constant cultivation and by using the water-wagon if the season should be very dry. Therefore, you are likely to do better with trees than with grain without summer-fallowing, although even for trees it is a decided advantage to have more moisture stored in the subsoil and the surface soil pulverized by more tillage. Defects in Soil Moisture. I have apricot trees that appear to be almost dead; all but a very few small green leaves are gone, and they look bad, still I think they might be saved if I only knew what to do. Presumably your apricot tree is suffering from too much standing water during the dormant season, or from a lack of water during the dry season. The remedy would be to correct moisture conditions, either by underdrainage for winter excess or by irrigation for summer deficiency. When a tree gets into a position such as you describe, it should be cut back freely and irrigation supplied, if the soil is dry, in the house that the roots may be able to restore themselves and promote a new growth in the top. Dry Plowing for Soil and Weed Growth. Is there any scientific reason to support the belief that it is injurious to the soil to dry-plow it for seeding to grain this fall and winter? Will dry-plowing now cause a worse growth of filth after the rains than the customary fallowing in the spring? Should the stubble be burned, or plowed under! The points against dry-plowing to which you allude may arise from two claims or beliefs: first, that turning up land to the sun has a tendency to "burn out the humus"; second, that dry-plowing may leave the land so rough and cloddy that a small rainfall is currently lost by evaporation and leaves less moisture available for a crop than if it is plowed in the usual way after the rains. The first claim is probably largely fanciful, so far as an upturning in the reduced sunshine of the autumn goes. Whatever there may be in it would occur in vastly increased degree in a properly worked summer-fallow, and even that is negligible, because of the greater advantage which the summer-fallow yields. There may be cases in which one will get less growth on dry-plowing than on winter plowing, if the land is rough and the rain scant, and yet dry-plowing before the rains is a foundation for moisture reception and retention - if the land is not only plowed, but is also harrowed or otherwise worked down out of its large cloddy condition. When that is done, dry-plowing may be a great help toward early sowing and large growth afterward. As for weeds, dry-plowing may help their starting, but that is an advantage and not otherwise, because they can be destroyed by cultivation before sowing. If the land is full of weed seed, the best thing to do is to start it and kill it. The trouble with dry-plowing probably arises, not from the plowing, but from lack of work enough between the plowing and the sowing. Stubble should often be burned: it depends upon the soil and the rainfall. On a heavy soil with a good rainfall, plowing-in stubble is an addition to the humus of the soil, because conditions favor its reduction to that form, and there is moisture enough to accomplish that and promote also a satisfactory growth of the new crop. Treatment of Dry-Plowed Land. We are plowing a piece of light sandy mesa land, dry, which has considerable tarweed and other weeds growing before plowing. Which would be best, to leave the land as it is until the rains come and then harrow, or harrow now? Would the land left without harrowing gather any elements from the air before rain comes! The above land is for oat hay and beans next season. Roll down the 'tar-weed, if it is tall and likely to be troublesome, and plow in at once so that decay may begin as soon as the land gets moisture from the rain. It would be well to allow the land to lie in that shape, and disc in the seed without disturbing the weeds which have been plowed under. If all this is done early, with plenty of rain coming there is likely to be water enough to settle the soil, decay the weeds, and grow the hay crop. Of course, such practice could not be commenced much later in the season. The land gains practically nothing from the atmosphere by lying in its present condition. If there is any appreciable gain, it would be larger after breaking up as proposed. In dry farming, harrowing or disking should be done immediately after plowing, not to produce a fine surface as for a seed bed, but to settle the soil enough to prevent too free movement of dry air. If your rainfall is ample, the land may be left looser for water-settling. For a Refractory Soil. What can I do to soil that dries out and crusts over so hard that it won't permit vegetable growth? A liberal amount of stable manure has been applied, and the land deeply plowed, harrowed and cultivated, but as soon as water gets on it, it forms a deep crust on evaporation. Will guano help, or is sodium nitrate or potash the thing? None of the things you mention are of any particular use for the specific purpose you describe. Keep on working in stable manure or rotten straw, or any other coarse vegetable matter, when the soil is moist enough for its decay. Plow under all the weeds you can grow, or green barley or rye, and later grow a crop of peas or vetches to plow in green. Keep at this till the pesky stuff gets mellow. If you think the soil is alkaline, use gypsum freely; if not, dose it with lime to the limit of your purse and patience, and put in all the tillage you can whenever the soil breaks well. More Manure, Water and Cultivation Required. I have a small place on a hillside, with brown soil about one to two feet deep to hardpan and I am getting rather discouraged, as so many things fail to come up and others grow so very slowly after they are up. A neighbor planted some dahlia roots the same time I did. Only one of mine came up and it is not in bloom yet, while several of his have been blooming for some weeks and are ten times as large in mass of foliage as mine with its lone stalk and one little bud on the top. Peas came up and kept dying at the bottom with blossoms at the top tilt they were four or five feet high, but I never could get enough peas for a mess. Can you help me get this thing right? Use of stable manure and water freely. Your trouble probably lies either in the lack of plant food or of moisture in the soil. This, of course, is supposing that you cultivate well so that the moisture you use shall not be evaporated and the ground hardened by the process. During the summer a good surface application of stable manure to which water can be applied would be better than to work manure into the soil, which should be done at the beginning of the rainy season. As your soil is so shallow it will be well for you to stand along the side of the plant much of the time with a bucket of water in one hand and a shovel of manure in the other. Planting Trees in Alkali Soil. My land contains a considerable quantity of both the black and white alkalies, the upper two feet being a rather heavy, sticky clay, the next three feet below being fine sand, containing more or less alkali, while immediately underneath this sand is a dense black muck in which, summer and winter, is found the ground-water. Do you think the following method of setting trees would be advantageous. Excavate for each tree a hole three feet in diameter and three feet deep. Fill in a layer of three or four inches of coarse hay, forming a lining for the excavation. Then fill the hole with sandy loam in which the tree is to be set. The sandy loam would give the young tree a good start, while the lining of hay would break up the capillary attraction between the filled-in sand and the ground-water in the surrounding alkali-charged soil. The fresh soil which you put in would before long be impregnated through the surface evaporation of the rising moisture, which your straw lining would not long exclude. The trees would not be permanently satisfactory under such conditions as you describe, though they might grow well at first. It would be interesting, of course, to make a small-scale experiment to demonstrate what would actually occur and it would, perhaps, give you a chance to sell out to a tenderfoot. Planting in Mud. Why does ground lose its vitality or its growing qualities when it is plowed or stirred when wet, and does this act in all kinds of soil in the same way? We are planting a fig and olive orchard at the present time, but some were planted when the ground was extremely wet. The holes were dug before the rain and after a heavy rain they started to plant. After placing the trees in the holes they filled them half full with wet dirt, in fact so wet that it was actually slush. What would you advise under the circumstances and what can be done to counteract this? We have not finished filling in the holes since the planting was done, which was about a week ago. The soil loses its vitality after working when too wet, because it is thrown into bad mechanical (or physical) condition and therefore becomes difficult of root extension and of movement of moisture and air. How easily soil may be thrown into bad mechanical condition depends upon its character. A light sandy loam could be plowed and trees planted as you describe without serious injury perhaps, while such a treatment of a clay would bring a plant into the midst of a soil brick which would cause it to spindle and perhaps to fail outright. The best treatment would consist in keeping the soil around the roots continually moist, yet not too wet. The upper part of the holes should be filled loosely and the ground kept from surface compacting. The maintenance of such a condition during the coming summer will probably allow the trees to overcome the mistake made at their planting, unless the soil should be a tough adobe or other soil which has a disposition to act like cement. Electro-Agriculture. Kindly tell me of any one who is working upon the application of electricity to stimulating agricultural growth-especially here on the Coast. A friend who has done some work in this line seeks to interest me. I have seen notices of this work, and have read of Professor Arrhenius stimulating the mental activity of children, etc., but I desire more definite information, if possible. Does the idea seem to you to be feasible? So far as we know, there has been no local trial of the effect of electric light in stimulating plant growth. Much has been done with it in Europe and in this country. There is much about it in European scientific literature. It is perfectly rational that increased growth should be attained by continuous light in the same way, though in less degree than occurs in the extreme north during the period of the midnight sun. It is known that moonlight, to the extent of its illumination, increases plant growth, and it has been amply demonstrated that light is light, just as heat is heat, irrespective of the source thereof. Of course, the commercial advantage must be sought in the relative amount of increased growth and the selling value of whatever is gained in point of time. High Hardpan and Low Water. What detriment is hardpan if 14 inches below the surface and in some places 12 inches? I have been plowing so I could set peach trees, but I have been told that they will not grow. I would like your opinion about it. I intended to blast holes for the trees, and the water is 30 feet from surface. The top soil is red sandy and clay mixed, but it works very easily. You cannot expect much from trees on such a shallow soil over hardpan without breaking it up, because the soil mass available to the trees is small; also because the shallow surface layer over hardpan will soon dry out in spite of the best cultivation, because there is no moisture supply from below. If such a soil should be selected for fruit trees at all, the breaking through the hardpan by dynamite or otherwise is desirable, and irrigation will be, probably, indispensable. Depth of Cultivation. I would be glad to know whether in cultivating an orchard a light-draft harrow could profitably be used, which cultivates three and a half inches deep? I have used another cultivator, and try to have it go at least seven inches. A depth of 3 1-2 inches is not satisfactory in orchard cultivation, although there may be some condition under which greater depth would be difficult to obtain because of root injury to trees, which have been encouraged to root near the surface. Both experience and actual determinations of moisture in this State show that cultivation to a depth of 5 inches conserves twice as much moisture in the lower soil as can be saved by a 3-inch depth of cultivation under similar soil conditions and water supply. It is all the better to go 7 inches if young trees have been treated that way from the beginning. Alfalfa Over Hardpan. I have land graded for alfalfa and some of the checks are low and water will stand on the low checks in the winter. There is on an average from two to three feet of soil on top of hardpan and hardpan is about two feet thick. Will water drain off the low checks if the hardpan is dynamited, and will this land grow alfalfa with profit? Yes; much of the hardpan in your district is thin enough and underlaid by permeable strata so that drainage is readily secured by breaking up the hardpan. Standing water on dormant alfalfa is not injurious. Trees Over High-Water. Which are the best fruit trees to plant on black adobe soil with water table between 3 and 4 feet from surface? The soil is very rich and productive. The land is leveled for alfalfa also; will the alfalfa disturb the growth of trees? We would not plant such land to fruit at all, except a family orchard. The fruits most likely to succeed are pears and pecans. On such land alfalfa should not hurt trees unless it is allowed to actually strangle them. The alfalfa may help the trees by pumping out some of the surplus water. Soil Suitable for Fruits. I am sending samples of soil in which there are apricots and prunes growing, and ask you to examine it with reference to its suitability for other fruits. Will lemons thrive in this soil? It is not necessary to have analysis of the soil. If you find by experience that apricot and prune trees are doing well, it is a demonstration of its suitability for the orange, so far as soil is concerned. The same would also be a demonstration for soil suitability for the lemon because the lemon is always grown on orange root. The thing to be determined is whether the temperature conditions suit the lemon and whether you have an irrigation supply available, because citrus fruits, being evergreen, require about fifty per cent more moisture than deciduous fruits, and they are not grown successfully anywhere in this State without irrigation, except, possibly, on land with underflow. The matter to determine then is the surety of suitable temperatures and water supply. For Blowing Soils. I am going to dry-sow rye late this fall. I want some leguminous plant to seed with the rye for a wind-break crop, not to plow under. The land varies from heavy loam to blow-sand. I have under consideration sweet clover, burr clover, vetches. I see occasional stray plants of sweet clover (the white-blossomed) growing in the alfalfa on both hard and sandy soil. I read in an Eastern bee journal that sweet clover can be sowed on hard uncultivated land with success. Could I grow it on the hard vacant spots that occur in the alfalfa fields? You can sow these leguminous plants all along during the earlier part of the rainy season (September to December) except that they will not make a good start in cold ground which does not seem to bother rye much. But on sand you are not likely to get cold, waterlogged soil, so you can put in there whenever you like - the earlier the better, however, if you have moisture enough in the soil to sustain the growth as well as start it. We should sow rye and common vetch. Sweet clover will grow anywhere, from a river sandbar to an uncovered upland hardpan, but it will not do much if your vacant spots are caused by alkali. More Than Dynamite Needed. I have some peculiar land. People here call it cement. It does not take irrigation water readily, and water will pass over it for a long time and not wet down more than an inch or so. When really wet it can be dipped up with a spoon. Hardpan is down about 24 to 36 inches. I have tried blowing up between the vines with dynamite, and see little difference. Can you suggest anything to loosen up the soil? You could not reasonably expect dynamite to transform the character of the surface soil except as its rebelliousness might in some cases be wholly due to lack of drainage - in that case blasting the hardpan might work wonders. But you have another problem, viz: to change the physical condition of the surface soil to prevent the particles from running together and cementing. This is to be accomplished by the introduction of coarse particles, preferably of a fibrous character. To do this the free use of rotten straw or stable manure, deeply worked into the soil, and the growth of green crops for plowing under, is a practical suggestion. Such treatment would render your soil mellow, and, in connection with blasting of the hardpan to prevent accumulation of surplus water over it, would accomplish the transformation which you desire. The cost and profit of such a course you can figure out for yourself. Is Dynamite Needed? I have an old prune orchard on river bottom lands; soil about 15 or 16 feet deep. Quite a number of trees have died, I presume from old age. I desire to remove them and to replace them with prune trees. I have been advised to use dynamite in preparing the soil for the planting of the new trees. Whether you need dynamite or not depends upon the condition of the sub-soil. If you are on river flats with an alluvial soil, rather loose to a considerable depth, dynamiting is not necessary. If, by digging, you encounter hardpan, or clay, dynamiting may be very profitable. This matter must be looked into, because the failure of trees on river lands is more often due to their planting over gravel streaks, which too rapidly draw off water and cause the tree to fail for lack of moisture. In such cases dynamite would only aggravate the trouble. Dynamiting should be done in the fall and not in the spring. The land should have a chance to settle and readjust itself by the action of the winter rains; otherwise, your trees may dry out too much next summer. Improving Heavy Soils. What is adobe? What kind of plants will grow best in adobe? In this Redwood City I find clay-like soil which looks very dark and heavy. What kind of plants will grow best in this soil? The term adobe does not mean any particular kind of soil. It is applied locally to clay and clay-loam soils indiscriminately. It generally signifies the heaviest, stickiest, crackingest soil in the vicinity. Most plants will grow well on heavy soils if they are kept from getting too dry and too full of water. This is done by using plenty of stable manure and other coarse stuff to make the soil more friable, which favors aeration, drainage, root extension and plant thrift. Friability is also promoted by the use of lime and by good tillage. The particular soil to which you refer is a black clay loam which can be improved in all the ways stated. It is a good soil for most flowers and vegetables if handled as suggested. You can get hints of what does best by studying your neighbors' earlier plantings. For a Reclaimed Swamp. I have land, formerly a pond which dried up in the summer months. It has been thoroughly drained now for several years. The land surrounding it is good fertile soil and produces good crops. On this piece, however, crops come up and look fairly well until about two inches high when they turn yellow and die. Mesquite grass and strawberries seem to be the only crops that will live, and they do not do at all well. Sorrel grows abundantly in the natural state. Apparently the reclaimed land which you speak of needs liming to overcome the acidity in the soil. Common builders' lime applied at the rate of 1000 pounds to the acre at the beginning of the rainy season ought to make the land much more productive and the soil, at the same time, more friable. Deep plowing with aeration will also help the land, and this treatment can begin at once if the soil is workable. Other additions of lime can be made later as they may be required to make the improvement permanent. Improving Uncovered Subsoil. What is the best treatment for spots that have been scraped in leveling for irrigation? The land can be improved by plowing deeply and turning in stable manure or green alfalfa or any other vegetable matter which may decay, rendering the soil rich in humus and more friable. Of course, it will take some time to accomplish this improvement, and it is necessary that there be moisture enough present to cause the material to decay in order that the improvement may be secured. Sand for Clay Soils. Will beach sand do adobe or clay soil any good? It gets hard at times and I thought that if I was to put beach sand in the ground the salt in the sand would do the ground harm. It is certainly desirable to mix sand with heavy soil for the purpose of making it lighter - that is, better drained and more friable and therefore improving it for the growth of plants. Sometimes beach sand contains a good deal of salt, which, however, is readily removed by fresh water, and sand hauled and exposed to the rains rapidly loses any excess of salt it may contain. Probably with such an amount of sand as you are likely to use to mix with your adobe, there is no danger at all from salt. Even if such sand should contain considerable salt, if applied at the beginning of the rainy season it would be so quickly distributed as to not constitute a menace to the growth of plants. The worst adobe can be transformed into a most beautiful garden soil by the application of sand and stable manure. Plowing from or Towards. Which is the proper way to plow an orchard? First to plow to the trees and then to plow from them, or to plow from the trees and then to them, and your reasons? I have had many arguments with my neighbor farmers. There is difference of opinion everywhere as to whether the first plowing should be toward or away from the trees. In places where the soil is pretty heavy and the rainfall is apt to be quite large, plowing toward the trees and opening a dead furrow near the center seems to promote rapid distribution of surplus water. If the rainfall is less and arrangements for deep penetration are more necessary, the plowing can well be away from the trees, so as to direct the water toward the row. It is, of course, exceedingly important in this case, that the land should be worked back before it has a chance to dry out by exposure and this is one of the chief objections to the practice, because one is apt to let the land lie away from the trees, hoping for a late rain which may not come. Whatever theoretical advantages there may be in either of these methods, they can only be secured by the greatest care to avoid the dangers which attend them. This uncertainty is the reason why people so generally disagree as to which is the best practice, and they are right in disagreeing. Dry Plowing and Sowing. I dry-plowed my grain field to a depth averaging seven inches; it turned up very rough. I then disked and harrowed it, but it is still very rough. I intended to drill the seed, wait for sufficient rain, and harrow to a satisfactory condition, but have been advised to put no implement on after the drill, as a harrow would spoil the work done by the drill, and a slab or roller would cause the ground to bake. If I wait for rain to work the soil before drilling, it will bring the seeding too late. You have probably done a pretty good job of dry work. If the land is still too rough for the drill, we should broadcast and harrow again. It is not desirable to harrow after the drill, and to roll or rub is likely to smooth too much, because the land would bake or crust after the heavy rains. This would cause loss of moisture and it is therefore better to leave the surface a little rough. You can roll lightly after the grain is up, if the surface seems to need closing a little. Artesian Water. I have a large tract of adobe soil, a black clay top soil. For about five months in the year there is not sufficient water on the place. I have sunk wells in different parts, but with very poor results, the further we went down the drier and harder the soil got. What little water we did obtain was unfit for domestic use. Can you give me an idea as to what might be the result of an artesian well in such soil? Artesian water has nothing to do with the soils. It is a deeper proposition than that. Artesian water comes from gravel strata overlaid with impervious layers of rock or clay in such a way that water in the gravel is under pressure because the gravel leads up and away to some point where water is poured into it by rain falling or snow melting on mountain or high plateau. As the water cannot get out of this gravel until you punch a hole in its lid, its effort will be to shoot up to something less than the elevation at which it gained entrance to this gravel - as soon as your puncture gives it a chance. Geologists who know the locality may be able to tell you that you have little or no chance, but no one can tell you whether you have a good chance or not until he has tested the matter by boring. The quality of the artesian water is determined by its distant source and the bad water you have found is therefore no indication of the quality of what may be below it. No one should enter an artesian undertaking, except to tap a stratum of known depth, without a long purse. Probably one in a thousand of the bores made into the crust of the earth yields as many gallons of artesian water as gallons of various liquids used in boring it - and yet some of them are good wells to pump from because they pierce other strata carrying water, but not under pressure causing it to rise. Treatment of Alkali. I am advised that in some cases alkali may be drained and that in others it is treated with gypsum. Gypsum is not a cure for alkali, but simply a means of transforming black alkali into white, which is less corrosive and therefore less destructive to plants, but there may be easily too much white alkali present - so much that the land would be made sterile by it. You cannot remove alkali by flooding unless two conditions can be assured: first, that the water itself is free from alkali before application to the land; second, that you underdrain the land at a depth of from three to four feet with tile, so that the fresh water on the surface can flow through the soil into the drains, carrying away from the land the alkali, which it dissolves in its course. To flood land even with fresh water without making arrangements for carrying off the alkali water below, is to increase the alkali on the surface as the water evaporates, and such treatment does land injury rather than benefit. We cannot give you any estimate as to the cost of washing out. It depends altogether upon local conditions: whether you use hand work or machinery for the ditching, and what your water will cost. Alkali, Gypsum and Shade Trees. Kindly advise how to apply gypsum, and how much, to heavy, sticky soil, the worst sort of adobe and heavily saturated with alkali. We want to plant shade trees. Eucalyptus and peppers succeed fairly well after once started. Gypsum seems to help, but I don't know how much to use. The amount of gypsum required to neutralize black alkali depends upon how much black alkali there is to be neutralized, and no definite amount, therefore, can be prescribed beforehand as sufficient without a determination of the amount of alkali. In some experiments gypsum to the amount of thirty tons to the acre or more has been used just for the purpose of seeing how much the land would take, and a fine growth of grain has been secured after using that much gypsum, but that, of course, would be out of the question because the outlay would be more than the land or the crop would be worth. In the planting of trees at some distance apart, the tree can be protected from destruction and enabled to make a stand in the soil by using gypsum on the spot rather than the treatment of the whole surface. In this way five or ten pounds of gypsum could be used by mixing with the soil to fill a good-sized hole. Distribution of Alkali. I am told by all the ranchers on the east and south sides of the valley that their wells are excellent. But they all say that on the west side - they are bringing up alkali. One also said that the water level was rising throughout all the valley. Is it safe to depend on this in part, or will the alkali spread over all the valley and the foothills? It is not unusual to find people who predict the rise of alkali almost anywhere except on their own premises. No one can exactly tell where alkali will go, because no one has complete knowledge of the water movement in underlying strata. Wherever the ground water rises on lower levels because of irrigation on higher levels there is danger of the rising of the alkali, for which the only cure is underdrainage with tile so that this rising water is carried to an outflow and not allowed to approach within three or four feet of the surface. If you have such an outflow and desire to undertake the expense of tiling, you can insure yourself against a serious rise of alkali indefinitely. We do not see, however, how alkali can rise to the higher lands of the valley. Its first effect would be to make lakes or ponds in the lowest parts of the valley, and even then the surrounding mesa lands would not be injured. Plants Will Tell About Alkali. Please give information as to the application of gypsum to my soil which is somewhat alkaline. I do not care to have an analysis made of my soil, and believe that you can advise me without it. If your soil is too alkaline for the growth of plants you can demonstrate that fact by experiment, or if it is capable of being used by the application of gypsum, that also can be determined by experiment and noting the behavior of the same plants afterwards. It is rather a slow process but it is sure enough. Litmus and Alkali. Is there any simple soil test for alkali that can be made without a chemical analysis? You can ascertain the presence of alkali by using red litmus paper, which will be turned blue by the alkali in the soil, if the soil is moist enough. This does not determine the amount of alkali, but the quickness of the turning to the blue color and the depth of the color are both attained when the alkali is very strong. When there is less alkali, the reaction is slower and weaker. This test, however, gives you only a rough idea whether the soil is suitable for growing plants. You can tell that better by the appearance of the plants which you find. Any druggist can furnish the litmus paper, and give you a demonstration of how it acts on contact with alkali. Using Gypsum for Alkali. Is it better, to kill the black alkali in the soil with gypsum, just to scatter it over an alkalied spot or to plow the soil first and then use the gypsum? I am going to sow alfalfa. Use the gypsum after plowing, for it will wet down more quickly, and the gypsum has to be dissolved to act freely. The best way to cure your spot is to run an underdrain into it, if possible, so the rain-water can run through the soil freely and take the alkali with it. Blasting or Tiling. In planting trees where hardpan is four feet from the surface is it necessary to blast the hardpan, or is there no benefit derived by the blasting? If there should be a good available soil under a shallow layer of hardpan, which you say is four feet from the surface, it might be of considerable advantage to bore into the hardpan and explode a dynamite cartridge in it. But if your good soil is really only four feet deep and hardpan continuous below, the blast might cause fissures which would prevent standing water in the upper stratum. If you are sure of four feet of good soil above the hardpan you will have no difficulty in growing good trees, if you get the moisture just right and the hardpan slopes in such a way that surplus moisture will move away. If, however, you have hardpan at different depths on the tract, so that it may really make basins which will hold water, you are likely to have trouble from accumulations of water which will not only prevent the roots extending to the full depths of the soil, but will also cause some trees to die. Such a danger could be removed by draining the soil to a depth of three and a half or four feet with tile, in order to prevent accumulations at any point. This would be expensive perhaps, but you would be sure that you had rendered your four feet of soil safe and available. If you trust to blasting you will have to wait several years for the trees to tell you whether you helped them or not. Effects of Blasting. I have land which is underlaid with hardpan two or three feet deep and this in turn is underlaid with sand or sandpan. What I would like to know is whether blasting the holes before setting trees would allow more moisture coming from this sandpan, or, rather, what effect it would have as to moisture. We do not know. It might make the soil better for the trees by allowing escape for surplus water through previous layers. It might allow the tree to root more deeply for moisture in those strata. It might allow water to rise from such strata if they have water under pressure. It might do other things good or bad, according to conditions prevailing under the hardpan. If you are to irrigate the land the effects would probably be good. The Sub-soil Plow. I am contemplating using a sub-soil plow for the purpose of breaking plow-sole on grain land. This is about 4 1/2 inches below the surface and is about 5 inches thick. This soil is comparatively loose and seems to be of good quality. Do you think that the sub-soil plow run low enough to break this plow-sole will benefit the land? There can be no question about the benefit of breaking up this tight stratum, provided you use a long-tooth harrow or a subsoil packer afterward to reduce the land so that it will not be too open to loss of moisture by too free circulation of air. The best way to treat such a soil would be to use a tractor and plow to a full foot of depth, for this, followed by good harrowing, would disintegrate the hard stuff and commingle it with the loose surface soil and make it somewhat more retentive - doing this when the moisture is just right for disintegration and mixing. If you are not ready to go to this expense, a subsoiler, following the plow with another team, would put your land in better shape for dry farming or for irrigation than it is now. Starting late, however, might give you less crop the first year on such deep working than by shallow plowing if the year's rainfall should be scant. It would, however, be a good start for summer-fallowing and a big crop the next year. Sour Soil. What is "sour" soil? Is that the name by which it is commonly known, and what is the treatment for it? Sour soil is soil in which an acid is developed by plant decay and exclusion of air. The proper treatment is the application of lime, and aeration by open tillage and underdrainage. Old Plaster for Sour Land. Can house plaster be used in reclaiming sour ground and how much per acre? The ground produces some sour grass - not a great deal. The plaster is from an old building that is being torn down. House plaster is desirable as an application to land which is sour. It also adds to the mellowness of land which is hard, because of the sand contained in it. It has always been considered a good dressing for garden land. So far as the correction of sourness goes, it is much less active than fresh lime, but it acts in the same way to a limited extent. It is certainly worth using, providing it does not cost too much for delivery, and can be freely used if the land is heavy and needs friability. Application of Manure Ashes. Having recently got a lot of manure plentifully supplied with redwood shavings that had been used with the bedding, and being afraid to use the same in that shape, as it takes such a long time for the wood to rot, I reduced the pile to a heap of ashes. How can it be best applied to ornamental trees and shrubbery in a light gravelly soil? You have done unwisely in burning the manure. We would have taken the risk of a single use of shavings for the sake of the manurial matter associated with them, and this risk of too much lightening of a gravelly soil would be especially small in connection with deep rooting plants like ornamental trees and shrubbery. You have left merely the skeleton of the manure, and much of that of doubtful solubility, if the temperature ran very high by burning in a mass. You need not be fearful about using these ashes. Scatter or spread them over the ground just as you would have spread the manure, let the rains dissolve and carry down what they can and go on with your usual methods of cultivation. The Best Fertilizer for Sand. How can I best fertilize soil that is pure sand? The best fertilizer for pure sand is well-rotted stable manure, because it not only supplies all kinds of plant food, but increases the humus in the soil, which is exceedingly important in making the sand more retentive of moisture as well as more productive. Fertilizers in Tree Holes. Would it be harmful to add 2 or 3 pounds of steamed bone meal to the hole of a young tree just before planting? There would be no injury, providing you mix it with a considerable amount of soil by digging over the bottom of the hole, but our conviction is that on lands which are good enough for the commercial planting of fruit trees, it is not necessary to stimulate a young tree in this way, but that it is better to postpone the use of fertilizers until the trees come into bearing and show the desirability of more liberal feeding. Of course, if young trees do not make satisfactory growth, they may be stimulated either with some kind of a fertilizer or with a freer use of water, and it is generally the latter that they are chiefly in need of. Wood Ashes and Tomatoes. Is there any harm to vegetable growing to dig sufficient of wood ashes in for mellowing heavy soil? My tomato plants grew splendidly this year, but the fruits were all rough and wrinkled. I gave them plenty of horse and poultry manure at planting and plenty of wood ashes and falling leaves of cypress later. Wood ashes do not mellow a heavy soil. The effect of the potash is to overcome the granular structure and increase compactness. Coal ashes, because they are coarser in particles and devoid of potash, do promote mellowness, and are valuable mechanically on a heavy soil although they do not contain appreciable amounts of plant food. You are overfeeding your tomato plants, probably. The chances are that you had poor seed. There is no best tomato, because you ought to grow early and late kinds: there is also some difference in the behavior of varieties in different places. Was It the Potash or the Water? Last year the lye from the prune dipper was turned on the ground near two almond trees which seemed to be dying, and to my surprise they have taken a new lease of life. Hence my conclusion that potash was good for our soil. Your experience seems to justify the application of potash, surely, but the question still remains, how much good the potash did the trees, and how much they needed the extra water which the waste dips supplied. It would be desirable for you to make another experiment with other trees, applying wood ashes, if you have them, or about four pounds per tree of the potash which you use for dipping, scattering well and working it into the soil after it is moistened by the rains, and not using any more water than the trees ordinarily received from rainfall. After this trial you will be in a position to know whether your trees need potash or irrigation - by comparing with other trees adjacent. Besides are you sure that your lye dip was caustic potash and not caustic soda? The latter has no fertilizing value. Prunings as Fertilizer. Is orchard and vineyard brush worth enough as a fertilizer to pay for cutting or breaking and putting back on the land? We should say not. It takes too much labor to put it in any form to promote decay, and is even then too indestructible. It is also possible that its decay may induce root rot of trees. We should burn the stuff and spread the ashes. Vineyard prunings are more promising because more easily and quickly reduced by decay. Vinecane-hashers have been proposed from time to time, but we do not know anyone who long used them. Gypsum on Grain Land. Is there any profit in sowing gypsum on grain land, say on wheat or oat crop? At what stage should it be applied and in what quantity? It would have a tendency to make the surface more friable and therefore better for moisture retention, and it could be used at the rate of 1000 pounds to the acre, broadcasted before plowing for grain. As our soils are, however, usually well supplied with lime, there is a question whether there would be any profit in the use of gypsum, for, aside from lime, it contains no plant food, although it does act rather energetically upon other coil contents. Gypsum is a tonic and not a fertilizer from that point of view. The best way to satisfy yourself of its effect would be to try a small area, marked so as you could note its behavior as compared with the rest of the field. Gypsum and Alfalfa. What is gypsum composed of? Is it detrimental to land in future years? Have the lands of California any black alkali in them? I notice my neighbors who sow gypsum on their alfalfa get a very much better yield of hay than those who do not. Gypsum is sulphate of lime. It is not detrimental to the land in after years except that its action is to render immediately available other plant foods and this may render the land poorer - not by the addition of anything that is injurious but by the quicker using up of plant food which it already contains. Black alkali is very common in California in alkali lands. In lands which show their quality by good cropping, there is no reason to apprehend black alkali nor to use gypsum to prevent its occurrence. The use of gypsum does stimulate the growth of alfalfa and makes its product greater just as you observe in the experience of your neighbors, but the more they use up the land now the less they will have later, unless they resort to regular fertilization to restore what has been exhausted. But even that may be a good business proposition. What Gypsum Does. I intend to fertilize alfalfa and should like to know about gypsum. I have heard it stimulates the growth temporarily but in three or four years hurts the land. I have heavy land. The functions of gypsum are: (a) to supply lime when the soil lacks it; (b) to make a heavy soil more mellow, and (c) to act upon other soil substances to render them more available for plant food. These are some of the soil aspects of gypsum; it may have plant aspects also. It is too much to say that gypsum hurts the land; it does, however, help the plant to more quickly exhaust its fertility, and in this respect is not like the direct plant foods which comprise the true fertilizers - one of which gypsum is not. It might be best for your pocketbook and for the mechanical condition of the soil to use it, but do not think that it is maintaining the fertility of the land (a service which we expect from the true fertilizers) except as it may supply a possible deficiency of lime. How Much Gypsum? How much per acre, how frequently and what seasons of the year are the best time to apply gypsum? Of gypsum on alkali, we should begin at the rate of one ton to the acre and repeat the application as frequently as necessary to achieve the desired result. If the alkali was quite strong we would use twice as much. Without reference to an alkaline condition in the soil, and to give heavy soil a more friable character, which promotes cultivation, aeration, etc., and, therefore, ministers to more successful production, half a ton to the acre can be used, applications to be repeated as conditions seem to warrant it. Wood Ashes in the Garden. There is available in my neighborhood a free supply of wood ashes. Can you tell me how best to distribute the same in a garden (flowers and garden truck), and what, if any, treatment is to be given the ashes for the best results. Wood ashes long exposed to rain lose most of their valuable contents, and leached ashes are only of small value. If they are fresh ashes or ashes which have been kept dry, they are chiefly valuable for potash, which is good in its way, but not all that a plant needs. If, however, your soil is shy of potash, the use of ashes will notably improve growth if not applied in excess in the caustic form in which it occurs in the ashes. They require no treatment. Spread, say, a quarter of an inch thickness all over the ground and dig in deeply. It may also help you by destruction of wire worms and other ground pests. Coal Ashes in the Garden. What is the effect of coal ashes on the red clay soil of Redlands or wood and coal ashes combined? Coal ashes are exceedingly desirable upon clay land because their mechanical mixture with the fine particles of the clay renders the soil more friable, permeable and better adapted to the growth of most plants. Coal ashes, however, possess no fertilizing value - their action is merely mechanical. The wood ashes which may be combined with them are desirable as a source of potash which most plants require. Liming a Chicken Yard. I have a small family orchard of half an acre, fenced in as a chicken yard, the soil of which has become very foul. When would be the best time to apply lime and how much? Put on 500 pounds of lime and plow under as soon as you can - that is, spread the lime just before the plowing, with a shower or two on the lime before plowing, if the weather runs that way. Poultry Manure. Give directions for using chicken manure. For use of young trees, is there any difference in treatment of deciduous and citrus trees? For use in the vegetable garden and the flower garden, what should be mixed with it and in what proportions? So many people say poultry manure is so strong, I am afraid to use it. It is a fact that poultry manure, free from earth, contains even as high as four times as much plant food as ordinary stable manure. It is, therefore, to be used with proportional care, so that the plants shall not receive too much, and particularly so that there may not be too much collected in one place. Probably the best way to guard against this is to thoroughly mix the manure with three or four times its bulk of ordinary garden soil and then use this mixture at about the same rate you would stable manure. If you do not desire to go to all this trouble, make an even scattering of the manure and work it into the soil. There is no reason to fear the material; simply guard against the unwise use of it. It is good for all the plants which you mention; in fact, for any plant grown, provided it is sparingly and evenly distributed. It should be pulverized so that there shall not be lumps and masses in the same place for fear of root injury. Of course, the strength depends upon how much earth is gathered up with the manure. Sometimes there is so much waste material that it can be handled just as ordinary farm manure is. We should not use over 20 pounds of clean droppings to a young tree and should mix it with the soil for a considerable distance around the tree. Old bearing trees might stand two or three tons to the acre if distributed all over the ground. The material contains everything that is necessary for the growth of the tree and formation of the fruit. Ashes and Poultry Manure. It is said that ashes mixed with chicken manure is not good. I use ashes altogether on the drop boards because I can keep the boards cleaner. The refuse is then scattered around the fruit trees. Wood ashes and lime should never be used as you propose, because they set free the nitrogen compounds which are the most valuable content of poultry manures. This action is conditioned largely upon the presence of moisture, and if the droppings are kept dry and hurried into the soil the loss is lessened. Coal ashes, on the other hand, are a thoroughly good absorbent when the coal burns to a fine ash or is sifted. They do not act as wood ashes do, because they do not contain soluble alkali. They also have a good mellowing effect on heavy soil. Caustic Lime Not a Good Absorbent. Would air-slackened lime be suitable to sprinkle over the dropping boards in hen houses? Gypsum is greatly superior to air-slacked lime for the hen houses, as it has every beneficial effect of the latter, while the air-slacked lime will set free much of the fertilizing value of the manure, which the gypsum will not do. Too Much Chicken Manure for Young Trees. I have peach trees and apple trees, 3 to 6 years old, that are very thrifty but grow only wood. The soil was poor when planting, and I have put on plenty of sweepings from the chicken-yards. I suppose that is the cause of the trouble. Undoubtedly you have overmanured your soil with chicken manure, which is a very strong fertilizer and should only be used in limited quantities. In order to counteract any acidity or ill effects which have been produced by its excessive application, it would be desirable for you to apply about 500 to 1000 pounds per acre of common builders' lime at the beginning of the rainy season, working it into the soil with the fall or early winter plowing. Do not cut back the tree during the dormant season, although, of course, you may have to remove surplus or interfering branches for the sake of shaping the tree. Winter pruning induces a greater wood growth during the following summer; therefore, it should be avoided under such conditions as you describe. Having adopted such a policy, there is nothing for you to do but to wait for the trees to slow down and assume a normal bearing habit proper for their ages. Summer pruning is an offset for excessive wood growth. Suburban Wastes. We keep a cow and poultry and have a dry-earth toilet. We have been burying the manure in the little garden spot or along by the fences or spreading it out on the alfalfa before it is rotted, but do not get good results. How shall we apply it to get the best results ? We have a town ordinance against leaving it in piles to rot. You can compost it in a tight bin made of planks, and using enough water to prevent too rapid fermentation and loss of valuable ingredients. During the dry season you can probably use enough dry earth or road dust to render the material inoffensive, and you can also distribute it then without undesirable results. Composting Garden Wastes. You recommend making a compost of all scrapings, garbage, weeds, etc. Is there any danger in having this in a pit near the house? If you desire to put garden wastes, including manure, into a pit, the only objection would be the heavy work of digging it out again. If you allow waste water from the house to run into the pit, there would probably be not enough dry material to absorb it, and the pit would be not only objectionable on account of odors, but possibly dangerous to health. The water would also prevent decomposition, because of exclusion of air. At the same time, enough moisture to promote slow decomposition is essential. It is usually more convenient to compost garden wastes on the surface of the ground, enclosing them with a plank retainer, because moisture can easily be applied with a hose, as desirable, the material can be occasionally forked over to promote decay, and the heavy work of digging material out of a pit is avoided. Such a collection is neither offensive nor dangerous if handled right. Composting Manure. Will the dry barnyard manure, when heaped up and dampened with water, make a valuable fertilizer? For garden use, dry manure in heaps should be dampened with water from time to time so as to prevent too active fermentation. Of course, water should not be supplied so freely as to cause a leaching of the pile. It is also desirable that the material should be forked over from time to time to distribute moisture and promote decay. When this is done a thoroughly first-class fertilizer is produced. Barnyard Manure and Alkali. In spots my land is hard and has some black alkali. Will barnyard manure help the hard land if cultivated in? Use stable manure because that would not only furnish nitrogen, if your plants need any more, but it would add coarse material and ultimately humus which would overcome the tendency of your soil to become compact and thus concentrate alkali near the surface by evaporation. Mellow the soil, increase the humus, make water movement freer and good cultivation easier and alkali will become weaker by distribution through a greater mass of the soil and may be too weak at any point to be troublesome, unless you have too much to start with. Put on manure at the beginning of the rainy season and plow it under, with all the green stuff which grows upon it, during the winter or early spring. Stable Manure and Bean Straw. What are the approximate contents of common stable manure; also, how much of the above is contained in bean straw? The composition of mixed stable manure is given as containing in one ton: Nitrogen, 10 pounds; phosphoric acid, 5 pounds; potash, 10 pounds. The constituents of bean straw in one ton, are given as: Nitrogen, 28 pounds; phosphoric acid, 6 pounds; potash, 38 pounds; Of course, a large part of the difference in composition is due to the excessive amount of moisture which ordinary stable manure contains. Air dried stable manure, such as is found in a California corral, would have much higher fertilizing value than such moist manure as an Eastern chemist would be likely to handle. Roofing a Manure Pit. Is it necessary to roof a manure pit, if the pit is tight so that all rain on manure is caught in the liquid manure and nothing is lost? To secure satisfactory composting of stable manures in a pit it is necessary to be able to regulate the moisture of the mass. If it becomes too dry, too rapid fermentation takes place and the material is destroyed by what is called fire-fanging. If too much liquid enters the pit, so that the material is submerged, the air is excluded and fermentation stops. For these reasons it is necessary that a pit in the region of large rainfall be covered, and water be used from a hose or other source of supply in just sufficient quantity to keep the material right for slow fermentation. How much water should be added to bring the moisture to a right condition depends upon how much liquid waste runs into the pit, and where water is used for cleaning a stable care has to be taken that the pit is not submerged. Success with a pit is, therefore, conditioned on the amount of moisture admitted, and this cannot be controlled unless the pit has a cover fit to shed rainfall. Of course, it may be adjustable so that some rainfall may be admitted as may be desirable. Value of Animals in Manure. In the operation of our fruit and dairy ranch we have the manure from some forty head of horses and cattle, which is distributed over the place. We cut our alfalfa and feed it and do very little pasturing. In order to give our dairy the proper credit, we would kindly ask what you consider a fair price for the manure of a cow for one year. Also what would the manure from a horse for one year be worth? A compilation of a considerable number of weighings, analyses and valuations in Europe, cited by Prof. Roberts in his book on the "Fertility of the Land," gives an average value of the voidings of a cow for a year as $32.25 and of a horse at $24.06. This is based, of course, upon the collection and saving of all excrements which is never secured except in careful experimentation. The value of manure depends upon the quality of the feed. In two experiments, considered a safe substitute for the straw, apart from the fact that the gave a value in manure of $1 per ton of hay fed; cows fed on clover and bran gave value in manure of 3.80 per ton of mixed feed. Your alfalfa feeding would approach the higher value. You will have to make an estimate from the above data to serve your purpose and you can figure it either by the number of animals or by the tonnage of the feed. Value of Fresh and Dry Manure. What is the relative value of the weekly or semi-weekly corral scrapings which are tramped fine and air-dried; and of the fresh, wet manure from the stable? I do not understand that the latter has appreciable water added, and the amount of sand in the corral scrapings would be small. Fresh, mixed animal manure is usually calculated to contain about 75 per cent of water. Manure which has been quickly dried, without fermentation and without leaching by rains, may be worth four or five times as much per ton. Nothing, however, short of analysis would determine the value of any particular lot, for that depends somewhat upon the way the animals are fed, as well as upon the moisture content. Shavings in Stable Manure. Is barnyard fertilizer containing shavings instead of straw, desirable? Barnyard manure containing shavings is chiefly objectionable because of the amount of inert material. The shavings are exceedingly slow to decompose, and in light soil in considerable quantities would cause a serious loss of moisture. If applied, on the other hand, to a heavy soil and accompanied by sufficient irrigation water, the effect of making the soil more friable might be very desirable. It depends then upon circumstances whether shavings can be concited by Prof. Snyder in his "Soils and Fertilizers," cows fed on hay straw is more valuable not only because more easily decomposed, but because its content of plant food is greater. Handling Grape Pomace. In the case of grape pomace, would not the large value shown by analysis be chiefly in the seeds? My observation is that these are exceedingly slow to became available in the soil. Would composting break down the shell of the seed? Grape pomace is slowly available because of the slow disintegration you mention. It could be hastened by drying and grinding, but we doubt if this or other treatment would return its cost. Decay by moisture promoted by composting with manure, kept at a low temperature by continuous moisture would render it sooner available, but this would involve labor which, at our wage rates, would probably make the material cost more than it is worth. This is probably a cost in which time is cheaper than money. Sheep and Goat Manure. I can buy goat manure from an inclosure where this is deposited to an amount of about five carloads. Will goat manure be of great value in fertilizing an orchard? If so, how much of it should be spread an an acre? Accumulations of sheep and goat manure in a dry situation, that is, where not leached out by heavy rainfall, have been found to run as high as $13 per ton in fertilizing constituents. The average would, however, be not above $7.50, and would depend not only upon the unleached condition of the material but upon the amount of sand mixed with it. If it is in a situation where sand blows very freely, it might not be worth over $4 or $5 per ton, possibly not that much. You have, therefore, to deal with a condition largely unknown. So far as its fertilizing quality goes, however, it is freely available and directly calculated to stimulate the growth of plants, and probably four or five tons could be used to the acre without injury if well distributed over the surface of the land. Application can be made at any time of the year, for the drying will not injure it. It will not, however, become available until the soil is sufficiently moist to carry its contents to the roots of the plants. Under ordinary conditions in California, application should be made just before the beginning of the rainy season. Hog Manure and Potatoes. What is the fertilizing value of hog manure, and also what is the best fertilizer to use for potatoes? Our potatoes are planted early in January. Hog manure is rather a rank and strong fertilizer, usually very rich, although the quality of it depends upon how well the hogs have been fed - that from grain-fed hogs being notably better. The valuation of hog manure ranges from $2.50 to $3.25 per ton, according to the feeding as noted, while ordinary stable manure may be worth from $2 to $2.75 per ton. It is not a good idea to apply these organic manures directly for the growth of potatoes. It is better to apply them to the land for the growth of a grain or forage crop, plowing in the stubble and using the land for potatoes the following year. If you wish to fertilize directly for potatoes, the use of a commercial fertilizer containing a good amount of potash would be a better proposition. Fertilizer for Sweet Potatoes and Melons. I have sandy soil that has been used for sweet potatoes until it is worn out for that crop, and would like your advice as to the best fertilizer to use. Also, what fertilizer would be best for melons on land that has been planted to melons for the past three years? There is not much difference in the plant food required by the two crops you mention, but both evidently need a freshened soil and an increase of humus. We should apply a half ton to the acre of a complete fertilizer, of which any dealer can give you descriptions and prices. If you wish to do a good job, start a growth of peas or vetches or burr clover, and sow the fertilizer evenly with the seed. Plow the growth under in February and roll (as the soil is sandy) to close down and promote the decay of the green stuff, which ought to be so well accomplished by the date that it is safe to plant sweet potatoes or melons that it will give no trouble in summer cultivation. An Abuse of Grape Pomace. I got in an argument with a neighbor of mine who stated that grape pomace is not a fertilizer. Is it so? My neighbor says that two years ago he had two apricot trees in his yard, and they were fine bearing and healthy trees. After making his wine he put the pomace on the ground and they died. Could that be the cause? Yes, probably. He used too much fresh pomace and the resulting fermentation of its products may have killed the trees. But grape pomace, after going through fermentation and in the process of decay, makes humus in addition to giving potash and other desirable substances to the soil. Manuring Vineyard. Does barnyard manure have any injurious effect on the vines if applied on my vineyard? One of my neighbors claims barnyard manure burned his vines so he got no crop wherever he spread the manure, and nothing would now induce him to use it again. Barnyard manure can be safely used in a vineyard at the beginning of the rainy season, working it in with the plowing, but not using too much. Wine grapes are sometimes injuriously affected in flavor by the use of such fertilizer, but the growth of the vine itself can be stimulated by the rational use of it. Your neighbor apparently either used too much or made the application at the beginning of the dry season or made some other mistake. Bones for Grape Vines. I am going to plant out some grape vines, and would like to know if it is a good plan to put old bones, broken up fine, into the holes when planting. Yes, if you do not use too much and it is mixed with earth, a little beyond the touch of the roots at planting. You do not need to finely break the bones. The roots will take care of that. But do not put in too much coarse stuff, for fear of causing too rapid drainage. Reviving Blighted Trees. I have a couple of apple trees here that were hurt by the pear blight three years ago and were cut back since then; they come out each year, but the leaves curl up, and they do not do anything. I would like to know if putting any fertilizer around them would help them to put out their leaves, and if so what I should use? Put some stable manure on the top of the soil around your trees now so that the rains may reach the contents of the soil, then later in the season dig the manure into the soil. Apply water during the summer time and this will encourage the trees to grow, if there is any vigor remaining in them. This treatment, however, will not protect them from the blight. Fertilizing Pear Orchard. I have pear trees 15 years old which have fruited heavily for years and have never been fertilized. What is the best fertilizer for the soil which is heavy, and when is the best time to apply it? I intend planting rye to plow under in the spring, but thought possibly the fertilizer should be applied first. If you have stable manure available, nothing could be better for the feeding of the trees and for its mellowing effect upon your heavy soil. Application can be made at once, to be worked into the land when the rye is sown. It will help the trees and give you more rye which in the end will help the trees. If you have no stable manure available, what is called by the dealers a "complete fertilizer" for orchard purposes is what you should use and apply it when you work the land for rye. Fertilizing Olives. What is the best means of fertilizing an olive orchard? My orchard gives me a perfect quality of oil, but a poor quantity. My soil is dry calcareous, red and gray, and is very thin in places, therefore, it lacks moisture. An olive orchard can be fertilized with stable manure or with a "complete fertilizer," or with the special brands of different manufacturers of special fruit fertilizers. But you must be sure that your trees do not need moisture more than they need fertilizers, for without adequate moisture fertilizers cannot do their best work. The increase of the humus content of the soil, either secured by stable manure or by the plowing under of winter-grown cover crops, is desirable, as they not only give the trees more plant food, but make the soil also more retentive of moisture. You will have to experiment along this line to see just what is best for your trees. Consult the Trees. Can I send you a little soil out of my one-year-old pear orchard so that you can advise me what I can do to improve its fertility. The trees are fairly thrifty, but as fruit growing is my pleasure I wish to make it a model orchard and add whatever it requires of nitrogen, humus, etc., immediately so as to increase the growth for this summer. Next winter I intend to put manure around them and cultivate about every other month. Careful experimenting with fertilizers will teach you more than analysis would do, because the behavior of the tree under various conditions tells you more than a chemist possibly could. Besides, we are of the conviction that on good soils young fruit trees should not be pushed beyond the growth which they would naturally make with a regular and adequate moisture supply. Be careful about using fertilizers on young trees, either in the summer or in the winter. When they come to bearing age and yield large crops of fruit, that is another question. Any California soil which will not grow young fruit trees thriftily should not be used for orchard purposes unless an amateur desires to grow trees on a picturesque lot of rocks or sand. Results of Fertilizing Olives. We have 100 acres in olives about six miles northeast of Rialto in San Bernardino county. In 1908 we got about five tons from the 100 acres. We began fertilizing and cultivating in 1909, and have put on the 100 acres about the same amount of fertilizer each year. In 1909 we got 15 tons; in 1910, 116 tons, and 1911 is estimated at 325 to 350 tons. It is important that your olive trees are responding to good treatment and fertilization. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be always the case and a good many olive trees have been made into firewood because nothing seemed to bring them into satisfactory bearing. Good bearing olive trees are now among the very best of our horticultural properties, while non-bearing olive trees are worth about $7 a cord for fire wood. Nursery Fertilizers. I have light sandy loam, well drained. It has been in blackberries, and I now have it planted to nursery fruit tree stock. I have given it this spring two applications of nitrate of soda, but no other fertilizer. Will the nitrate act alone, or must I apply also the phosphate and potash to get results? Nitrate of soda will act alone and will stimulate growth, and there are cases in which there is enough phosphate and potash already in the soil to act with it. Usually, however, it is customary to use a complete fertilizer containing phosphate and potash as well as nitrogen, in order that the plant may be more roundly supplied and promoted, and one would be a little safer in using that sort of fertilizer than in relying upon the nitrate of soda alone. You will, of course, be careful not to use these fertilizers in too large amounts, for nitrate of soda is especially dangerous if used in excess. Almond Hulls and Sawdust. Is there any fertilizing value in the hulls of almonds? Would pine sawdust from the lumber mills be a good substance to mix in and plow under in a three-acre adobe patch in order to loosen and lighten the soil for truck gardening? Almond hulls have considerable fertilizing value, but they are slow to decompose, and, therefore, may be a long time unused by the plant. They also have a good feeding value for stock, and if you can expose them in the corral so the stock can eat as they like, this is the best way to get them into fertilizing form. If they can be cheaply ground their availability as a fertilizer would, of course, be quickened. Redwood sawdust is better than pine sawdust, but any kind of sawdust can be made to serve a good purpose in mellowing heavy soils if not used to excess and if there is plenty of moisture to promote decay. Fertilizing Fruit Trees. I have an orchard of prunes, apricots and cherries, which has been bearing since some 30 years ago, without fertilization, except possibly muddy sediment from occasional irrigations of mountain streams. Various people are advocating the use of nitrates and other fertilizers. Should I have samples of this earth analyzed in order to ascertain what the soil most needs? To find out whether your trees need fertilization, study the tree and the product and do not depend upon chemical analysis of the soil. If your trees are growing thriftily and have sufficiently goodsized leaves of good color, and if fruit of good size and quality is obtained, it is not necesssary to think of fertilization. If the trees are not satisfactory in all these respects, the first thing to do is to determine whether they have moisture enough during the later part of the summer. This should be determined by digging or boring to a depth or three or four feet in July or August. The subsoil should be reasonably moist in order to sustain the tree during the late summer and early fall when strong fruit buds for the coming year will be finished. If you are sure the moisture supply is ample, then fertilization either with stable manure or with commercial fertilizers containing especially nitrates and phosphates should be undertaken experimentally, in accordance with suggestions for application made to you by dealers in these articles, who are usually well informed by observation. When you have the tree to advise you of the condition of the soil, you do not need a chemist, although if the tree manifests serious distress and is unable to make satisfactory growth the suggestions of a chemist may be very helpful. Fertilizing Oranges. What is the general and what do you consider the ideal, manuring, and when applied for orange trees from 15 to 12 years old under irrigation? I use about 2 cwt. each of superphosphate, nitrate of soda and sulphate of potash per acre, but am dissatisfied with my yields as compared with yours in California. There is not only no standard for fertilizing orange trees, but there is no "ideal" which might be considered as a basis for a standard. All growers who are awake to the necessity of doing something for bearing trees, try all things and hold fast to what (they think) is good. Practically none of them has any enduring conviction or demonstration as to what is good, but they keep on trying. There is, however, one clear and enduring conviction, and that is, that continuous fertilizing must be done for profit, and our best growers are using the same materials you mention in considerably larger amounts than you apply, and use also other forms of nitrogenous fertilizers. The amounts of superphosphate and nitrate which you use would be considered homeopathic treatment by our growers. Cow Stable Drainage for Fruit. I have been told that the drainings from a cow barn make an excellent fertilizer for orange and lemon trees, in fact, anywhere on plants where manure is considered beneficial. The drainage from a cow barn is excellent for fertilizing almost any crop unless it is used in too large quantity. If it should be combined with a considerable amount of water used for cleaning out the stable, it would be excellent for the irrigation of all kinds of fruit trees. Care should be taken, however, not to oversaturate the ground, which would be the case if the washing of the stable was allowed to run continuously alongside a single row of trees. The water should be changed from row to row in succession, cultivating the ground meantime to promote aeration and to prevent too great compacting of the soil. Seed Farm Refuse as a Fertilizer. Would cleanings from sweet peas or all kinds of seeds grown on a seed farm be of any value as a fertilizer on sandy loam soil for an orchard? This has been in a pile for three years or more, and I can get it for the hauling. There are a hundred loads or more of it and not very far to haul. It would be worth more on a heavy soil, because the danger of drying out would be less and the surety of reduction to humus greater. To get the highest value from such stuff it should be composted with water and turning in heaps, but that would occasion expense beyond value probably, unless it could be composted with manure for market garden purposes. The hauling might be good work for idle teams. Spread the stuff rather thinly to be covered in with fall plowing, so that its decay could be promoted during the rainy season. Slow Stuff as a Fertilizer. How can we use sawdust and shavings from our high school shop so as to combine it with street sweepings, lawn cuttings, etc., and insure ready decay without objectionable features? Do not mix sawdust and shavings with lawn clippings and street sweepings, because of the great difference in susceptibility to decay. The lawn clippings and street sweepings, which would contain considerable horse manure, would be readily transformed into a good fertilizer by composting. Such treatment, however, would have no appreciable effect upon sawdust or shavings for a considerable period of time, and they would still be too coarse in their character to be of any value unless you have to deal with heavy clay soil, and in that case the sawdust and fine shavings might be dug in at once and trusted to decay slowly in the soil, at the same time improving its friability by their coarser particles. If, however, you are dealing with light sandy loam, such coarse material would cause too rapid drying out and injure the plant, which might be benefited by lawn clippings and street sweepings. The best way to get rid of the sawdust and shavings is to set up an altar, such as we have in our own backyard - a piece of an old boiler about two feet in diameter and two and a half feet high, in which we currently burn all rubbish which is not available for quick composting into a fertilizer. Lime on Sandy Soil. Do you think 500 pounds of lime per acre would help a sandy soil which has not been enriched by pasturing or legumes? Of course, we would not apply the lime until next fall before plowing. Lime is not usually called for in a sandy soil, which probably requires direct fertilizing with stable or commercial fertilizers. Lime on Alfalfa. What effect does putting lime on land have in holding moisture? Also, will it pay to put it on a large field of alfalfa? The land is adobe. I can get slaked lime for the hauling, distance being about five miles. The lime will make the land more friable and, therefore, less disposed to bake and lose moisture by evaporation. Alfalfa is hungry for lime and is generally advanced by the application of it. Fertilizing Alfalfa. Can new cow manure be put on alfalfa? Is not the best way to use the above as a fertilizer in form of liquid being run from barn via pipes to a settling-tank and from there via irrigation ditches to the land to be irrigated? What is the best way to get rid of cow manure so as to keep a barn sanitary and the place free from stench? Cow manure can be used to advantage on alfalfa. Corrals can be cleaned up and the manure spread at the beginning of the rainy season. During the winter the manure can be spread as it is produced and very good results will be noticed in the growth during the following summer. It is perfectly rational for you to use the liquid fertilizer as you propose in connection with irrigation water, but this is not generally done because of the cost of the outfit and the labor of handling the material in that way. The best way to keep a barn sanitary is to keep it clean, removing all the waste matter to a considerable distance daily, allowing nothing to accumulate, and have the stable drainage arranged so that the stable can be frequently flushed out into good drainage outlets, carrying the water to grass or alfalfa land if possible. Fertilizing Corn. We are going to plant about 20 acres to corn on a sidehill and intend to put some fertilizer on, but want to give it to the corn only. Would it be a good plan, after we have marked out our rows, to scatter some fertilizer in these marks and put the corn right on top of it? We take it you ask about the use of a readily soluble commercial fertilizer. If so, you can do as you propose, being careful not to use too much. The operation of planting will distribute the fertilizer through enough soil if the application is not too heavy. The effect will depend something upon what showers you get after planting. Scrap Iron as a Fertilizer. Is cast or other iron in small pieces plowed into the land of any benefit to trees as a fertilizer? If so, what would be the value as such per 100 pounds? Junk dealers sometimes offer 25 cents per 100 pounds. If it has any value as a fertilizer, I am satisfied it must be worth four times that price. We pay three cents a pound for sulphate of iron as a fertilizer. Of course, it is a salt and dissolves quickly, therefore, I believe cast iron, even if it works slowly, has some value, and at the same time farmers can clean up and get rid of a lot of rubbish. In most cases the California soils are sufficiently supplied with iron by nature. Iron scraps have a little and remote value because they are so slowly available by the process of rust disintegration. It might, therefore, be worth while for farmers to bury such scrap iron as accumulates on the place below the reach of the cultivating tools. But it would not be profitable to buy iron scraps at junk dealers' price, nor would it be profitable to haul this material any long distance, even if it could be had for nothing. Kelp as a Fertilizer. Are there ill effects from using sea kelp as a fertilizer for orange trees? There is no ill effect. Sea kelp has been dragged from the beaches at low tide, partly dried and used, for centuries perhaps, as field fertilizer for all sorts of crops in Europe, and for decades, to some extent, on the New England coast. The dangerous substance in it would seem to indicate that that is not present in sufficient quantity to cause trouble. The great difficulty lies in securing and transporting the substance, for less than its fertilizing equivalent can be obtained by purchase of other more concentrated manures. Applying Thomas Phosphate. When is the best time to apply Thomas phosphate slag on orchard land? As Thomas phosphate is slowly soluble, it can be applied at any time during the rainy season without danger of loss, and for the same fact, it should be applied early during the rainy season in order to be available to trees during the following summer's growth. It ought, perhaps, to be added that other forms of phosphate have largely displaced slag during the last few years in the United States, other forms being more available. Sugar Factory Lime for Fertilizing. Is the lime from a sugar factory a good fertilizer for either oranges or walnuts; if so, about what amount to the acre would you recommend? If your land needs lime or if it is heavy and needs to be more friable, or if you have reason to think that it may be soured by exclusion of air or by excessive use of fermenting manures, the refuse lime you speak of will do as a corrective just as other lime does, though, perhaps, not so actively. Beyond that there is nothing of great value in it. You can use two or three applications of 500 pounds to the acre without overdoing it - if your land needs it at all. Nitrate With Stable Manure. I am going to plant about 2000 plants of rhubarb. I intend to put some cow and horse manure under the plants as a fertilizer, but I do not think I will have enough for all the plants, so I bought some nitrate of lime, with the intention of mixing the cow and horse manure with the lime nitrate, which I thought would allow me to spread the manure much thinner and I could cover more surface. Now I am not sure but the nitrate of lime will burn the manure if mixed with it. You can mix either nitrate of lime or nitrate of soda with the stable manure as you propose; in fact, it is frequently done. These nitrates are neutral salts and do not act on manure as caustic lime or wood ashes would do. They are quite content to keep along without kicking their neighbors. But, of course, the more nitrate you add the more careful you must be about using too much of the mixture, and as for putting manure under any plant, at spring planting particular, it is dangerous business. Nitrate of Soda. How shall I apply nitrate of soda as fertilizer for roses and other flowers and lawns during the summer months? One has to be very careful in the use of nitrate of soda not to use too much and not to apply it unevenly, so that too much is brought in contact with the roots of particular plants. From one to two hundred pounds an acre evenly distributed is the usual prescription for nitrate of soda, although in the case of bearing orange trees considerably larger amounts have been successfully used. This would be at the rate of about one ounce to one square yard of surface. It would be a safe application to begin with and could be increased a little on the basis of observation of results. Of course, the application should be accompanied by copious irrigation in order to dissolve and distribute the substance. Fertilizing Strawberries. I have half an acre of strawberries which will fruit their second season this spring, and half an acre set last month. I had intended to use nitrate of soda on them, but was talking to a friend who told me it would kill my soil. That the first year it would produce an enormous crop and the next year I couldn't raise anything. Which would be better to use here, stable manure or commercial fertilizer? It is true that nitrate of soda is a stimulant of plants, and by rendering soil fertility immediately available may seem to reduce the supply later, and yet it is a most available forcing fertilizer if used with great caution, not over 200 pounds to the acre evenly scattered over the whole surface or a less amount, of course, if confined to particular areas. If used in excess it may actually kill the plants. Still nitrate of soda is being used actively and intelligently by nearly all growers of plants and must be counted on the whole a valuable agency. If you can get stable manure, nothing is better as a complete plant food. Application to strawberries must be made at the close of the season, rubbish scraped away and manure applied and allowed to stand on the surface during the early rains, being worked into the soil during the rainy season. If the soil is light, sandy loam, too much coarse material must be avoided. Therefore, well-rotted manure is important on such soils while on a heavy soil coarser material may be used to advantage if applied early in the rainy season. If you have no well-rotted manure, a complete commercial fertilizer will give best results. Late Applications of Nitrate. I have some prune trees which blossomed some time ago and the prunes are already set, and of small size. Would you recommend me to use an application of, say 100 pounds per acre of nitrate of soda, applied immediately, or is it a little too late in the season to get the desired result? It would be perfectly safe to use 100 pounds of nitrate of soda to the acre well distributed now; in fact, you could safely use twice as much, but we doubt if you would get any benefit from it unless you should irrigate, for there is no reason to expect showers that would have penetrating powers enough to carry the nitrate any appreciable distance into the soil. Of course, the nitrate could be plowed or cultivated in to a considerable depth, but that would probably result in losing moisture by deep opening or turning, which would do more harm than any gain which the nitrate produces, if it were to become available. Our judgment would be, then, that it is too late for any benefit to accrue unless the land can be irrigated. Charcoal is a Medicine, Not a Food. Recently a lumberyard burned, leaving quite a quantity of charcoal. I have a lot 50 x 150 feet in rhubarb. Would the charcoal be of any service on that lot as a fertilizer? I now have it well fertilized with horse manure, but would like to use the charcoal if it would be of any material assistance to the plants. Charcoal is of no value as a fertilizer. It is practically indestructible in the soil. In fact, they are digging up now charcoal in the graves of ancient Egyptians, who departed this life five thousand years ago. Charcoal has corrective influence in absorbing some substances which might make the soil sour or otherwise inhospitable to plants. It has been found desirable sometimes to mix a certain amount of charcoal with soil used in potting plants for the purpose of preventing such trouble. The only way to make your charcoal of any value as a fertilizer would be to set it on fire again and maintain the burning until it was reduced to ashes, which are a source of potash and, therefore, desirable, but it will probably cost more than the product of potash will be worth. Humus Burning Out. I would like to know whether or not dry-plowing land, in preparation for sowing oats for hay, injures the soil? I have heard that dry plowing tends to wear out the soil, as the soil is exposed to the sun a long time before harrowing. I have been dry-plowing my land to kill the, weeds, but had a light crop of hay this year. There is believed to be what is called "a burning out of humus," by long exposure of the soil to the intense heat of our interior districts. It is probable that the reduction of humus is due more to the lack of effort to maintain the supply than to the actual destruction of it by culture methods. Such a little time as might intervene between dry plowing and sowing could not be charged with any appreciable destruction of soil fertility. It is altogether more probable that your hay crop was less from loss of moisture than from loss of other plant food; and it is desirable to harrow a dry plowing, not so much to save the soil from the action of the atmosphere, as to conserve the moisture, which, as you know, will rise from below and will rapidly be evaporated from the undisturbed bases of your furrows. Therefore, we should harrow a dry plowing as soon as practicable, but with particular reference to the moisture supply rather than to other forms of fertility. Straw for Humus. Do you consider straw good to plow under for humus, and which kind, wheat, oat, or barley straw, is best? Straw, by its decay in the soil, produces humus and, therefore acts in the same way just as does the decay of other forms of vegetation. As, however, straw is less easily decomposed than fresh vegetation, it is less valuable and may be troublesome by acquiring a greater amount of moisture by interfering with cultivation or by tending to dry out the soil to the injury of other plants. If the soil is heavy and moisture abundant, straw may be desirable, while in the case of a light soil and scant moisture, may be injurious. There is no particular difference in the straw of the different grains from this point of view. The Best Legume for Cover Crop. What would you advise to sow as a crop to plow under? When should it be sowed, and when plowed under? The best crop for green-manuring in any locality is the one which will make the best growth when surplus moisture is available for it, and when its growth can be undertaken with least interference with irrigation, cultivation and other orchard operation. Generally in California, such a crop can be most conveniently grown during the rainy season, but in some parts of the State where irrigation water is available, a summer growth can be procured with very satisfactory results; so that we are now growing in California both wintergrowing legumes, like field peas, vetches, burr clover, etc., which are hardy enough to grow in spite of the light frosts which may prevail, and are also growing summer legumes which thrive under high temperature, like cowpeas and other members of the bean family, and for which water can be spared without injury to the fruit trees which share the application of the land with them. The plants which are worth trying are burr clover, common or Oregon vetch, Canadian field pea, and the common California or Niles pea. Whichever one of these makes the best winter growth so that it can be plowed under early in the spring, say in February or March, while there is still plenty of moisture in the soil for its decay, without robbing the trees or rendering the soil difficult of summer cultivation, is the plant for you to use largely. All these plants should be sown in California valleys and foothills, as soon as there is moisture enough from rainfall to warrant you in believing they will catch and continue to grow. If the land is light they can be put in with a cultivator and plowed under deeply in the spring, as stated. If the land is heavy, probably a shallow plowing would be better to begin with. Cowpeas for Cover Crop. I planted cowpeas between peach trees which I have kept irrigated; when should they be plowed under? Cowpeas will be killed by frost in most places and should, therefore, be plowed in this fall whenever you have a large growth of green stuff and the ground gets moist enough so that the trees will not be endangered by drying out of the soil, which is likely to occur after plowing in coarse material, unless the soil is kept moist by rain or otherwise. Garden Peas for Green Manure. Would it be possible to plant the Yorkshire Hero pea in on orange grove as late as December 25 and get a crop from the peas? Would this pea add much to the fertility of the soil? You can sow any garden peas as late as December 25, if the ground is in good condition and the temperature not too low. They are grown as a winter crop except when the ground freezes. You would not get as much good for the grove by growing these peas for the market as you would by plowing the whole growth under green, but you certainly will get advantage from the decomposition of the pea straw and of the root growth of the plant. Grass for Green Manuring. I wish to sow this fall some green grass to be plowed in next spring to improve the soil of part of my land. I read for that purpose a bulletin I had from the government, but the conditions are so different here in California that I am very much puzzled which kind to select. There is no grass which grows quickly enough to be worth seeding in the fall for spring plowing. It is a good deal better to use a grain, either barley or rye, for the seed is cheap, the growth quick and you can get a good deal of green stuff to plow under. Legumes are, of course, better because of their ability to absorb atmospheric nitrogen, but any plant which makes a large green growth is good, and it is better to have a heavy weight of wild vegetation than to have a light growth of an introduced legume. Manure with a Clover Crop. I have an old apple orchard in which I intend to sow burr clover. In order to get the clover to grow I know that I shall have to use fertilizer of some kind and this is what I want your advice about. If you can get it, use stable manure at the time of sowing the clover seed. Stable manure alone will restore the humus and overcome the rebellious behavior of the soil. Possibly you cannot secure sufficient quantities of it. In that case a little with the burr clover seed will give the plant a good start, or use a complete fertilizer to secure the growth of a legume in the freest and quickest way. Fenugreek as a Cover Crop. Fenugreek has been recommended to be as a nitrogen-gathering plant, but I cannot find information as to the amount of nitrogen it gathers in its roots and tops, nor the amount of crop per acre. Fenugreek is a good nitrogen gatherer and is desirable for green manuring wherever you can get a good growth of the plant. You can count it worth as much as peas, vetches, etc., if you can get as much growth of the plant. It is most largely used in the lemon district near Santa Paula. The best way to proceed would be to try a small area of all the nitrogen gathering plants of which you can get the seed easily, and determine by your own observation which makes the best growth under your conditions. Improvement of Cementing Soils. I would like some advice in handling the "cementy" gravel soil. Manure is beneficial in loosening up the soil, but there is not enough available. Would the Canadian field pea make a satisfactory growth here if sown as soon as the rains begin? I would try to grow either peas or vetch and plow under in February or March and then set trees or vines on the land. The way to mellow your soil is certainly to use stable manure or to plow under green stuff, as you propose. This increases the humus which the soil needs and imparts all the desirable characters and qualities which humus carries. You ought to get a good growth of Canadian field peas or common California field peas or the common Oregon vetch by sowing in the fall, as soon as the ground can be moistened by rain or irrigation, and, if the season is favorable, secure enough growth for plowing under in February to make it worth while. Be careful, however, not to defer planting trees and vines too late in order to let the green stuff grow, because this would hazard the success of your planting by the reduction of the moisture supply during the following summer by the amount which might be required to keep the covered-in stuff decaying, plus loss of moisture from the fact that the covered stuff prevented you from getting thorough surface cultivation during the dry season. For these reasons one is to be careful about planting on covered-in stuff which has not had a chance to decay. This consideration, of course, becomes negligible if you have water for summer irrigation, but if you expect to get the growth of your trees and vines with the rainfall of the previous winter, be careful not to waste it in either of the ways which have been indicated, and above all, do not plant trees and vines too late. Theoretically, your position is perfect. The application of it, however, requires some care and judgment. Rather than plant too late, you had better grow the green stuff the winter after the trees have been planted. Needs Organic Matter. I have what I believe to be decomposed sandstone. Many rocks are still projecting out of land which I blast and break up. The soil works freely when moist or wet, but when dry it takes a pick-axe to dig it up; a plow won't touch it. Among my young fruit trees I tried to grow peas, beans, carrots and beets, and although I freely irrigated them during the summer and fall, and although I planted at different times, my peas and beans have been a total failure, and the beets, carrots and onions nearly so. For years the land has grown nothing but weeds. Your soil needs organic matter which would make it more easy of cultivation, more retentive of moisture, and in every way better suited to the growth of plants. Liberal applications of stable manure would produce best effects. No commercial fertilizer would begin to be so desirable. If you can dig into the soil large amounts of weeds or other vegetable waste material, you would be proceeding along the same line, but stable manure is better on account of its greater fertilizing content. You ought to be thankful that the soil has spunk enough to grow weeds. The Immanent Creator is still doing the best he can to help you out; take a hand yourself on the same line. Two Legumes in a Year. I have land on which I wish to plant to fruits, and I wish to build up the soil all I can, by planting cover crops and plowing under. What would be the best to plant this fall, to be plowed under next spring, and to plant again next spring to plow under in the fall? I will not be able to plant any trees before next fall or the following spring. Get in vetches as soon as the ground is in shape in the fall. Plow them under early in the spring and close the covering and compact the green stuff by running a straight disk over the ground after plowing. This will help decay and save moisture. Follow with cow peas as soon as you are out of the frost, disking in the seed so as not to disturb the stuff previously covered in. Do not wait to put under the winter growth until it is safe to put on the cowpeas, for, if you do, you will lose so much moisture that the cowpeas will not amount to much. Handling Orchard Soil. We average about 35 inches of rainfall. With this heavy rainfall, is there any advantage to be gained by early plowing and clean cultivation right through the winter? Would such plowing and cultivation result in any serious loss of plant food? Would you advise an early or late application of nitrogen, such as nitrate or guano? If there is any loss from an early application, can it be determined by any means? The old policy of clean winter cultivation has been largely abandoned. Nearly everyone is trying to grow something green during the rainy season to plow under toward the end of it. Even those who do not sow legumes for this purpose are plowing under as good a weed cover as they can get. This improves the soil both in plant food and in friability, which promotes summer pulverization and saves moisture from summer evaporation. Much less early plowing is done than formerly unless it be shallow to get in the seed for the cover crop; the deeper plowing being done to put it under. Guano can be applied earlier in the winter than nitrate, which can be turned in with the cover crop, while the former may be sown with the seed to promote the winter growth. Whether you are losing your nitrate or not the chemist might determine for you by before-and-after analyses. If you are a good observer you may detect loss by absence of the effects you desire to secure. Soaking Seeds. Do you think it a good practice to soak seeds before planting? It is more desirable with some seeds than others and when the ground is rather dry or the sowing time rather late, than when sowing in moister ground or earlier in the rainy season, when heavy rains are to be expected. Soaking is simply a way to be sure that the seed covering has ample moisture for softening and the kernel has what it requires for awakening it germ and meeting its needs. The soil may not always have enough to spare for these purposes and germination may be delayed or started and arrested. Ordinarily seeds can be helped by soaking a few hours in water at ordinary temperatures. Some very hard seeds like those of acacia trees, etc., are helped by hot water - even near the boiling point. Irrigating Palms. My palms are quite small, but they do not seem to grow; they seem to be drying up. The growth of palms is proportional to the amount of soil moisture available, providing it is not in excess and not too alkaline. Some palms are quite drouth-resisting, but it is a mistake to think of a palm as a desert plant and try to make a desert for it. A young palm, especially, needs regular and ample water supply until it gets well established. Your plants may be drying up, or they may have had too much frost or too much alkali. If they are not too far gone, they will come out later if you give them regular moisture and cultivation. Water from Wells or Streams. One of our neighbors insists that water from a well is, in the long run, very hard on the land, and that irrigation water is much to be preferred. There is no characteristic and permanent difference between waters from wells and waters from streams so far as irrigation is concerned. The character depends upon the sources from which both are derived. Some wells may carry too much mineral matter in the form of salt, alkali, etc., and some stream waters sometimes carry considerable alkali. For this reason some wells may be better than streams and some streams better than wells. There is no general rule in the matter. Your neighbor may be right as applied to your location, and may know from his experience that the well water carries too much undesirable material. That could only be determined by analysis, and the analysis must be made when the water is rather low, because during the rainy season, or soon after it, the water may have less mineral impurity than later in the season when it may be more concentrated. Shall He Irrigate or Cultivate? Our soil is of an excellent quality, and I feel if the moisture were properly conserved by suitable methods it could be made to produce fruits or some other very much more profitable than from hay and grain crops. Whether you can grow deciduous fruits successfully without irrigation depends not only upon how well you conserve the moisture by cultivation, but also whether the total rainfall conveys water enough, even if as much as possible of it is conserved. Again, you might find that thorough cultivation will give you satisfactory young trees, but would not conserve moisture enough for the same trees when they come into bearing. This proposition should be studied locally. If you can find trees in the vicinity which do give satisfactory fruit under the rainfall, you would have a practical demonstration which would be more trustworthy than any forecast which could be prepared upon theoretical grounds. Condensation for Irrigation. If a circular funnel of waterproofed building paper, or some better cheap device, were fastened about the base of the tree in such a manner as to catch and concentrate most of the drippings from the leaves, and that water made to run down through a tube leading a suitable depth into the earth, it seems to me that the number of foggy nights that occur in many localities during the season might thus supply ample water for a tree's needs. The probability is that water would not be secured in sufficient quantities to serve any notable irrigation purposes, or if the fogs were so thick as to yield water enough, the sunshine would be too scant for the success of the plant. Put your idea to the test and see how much water you could get from a tree of definite leaf area, which could be readily estimated. Winter Irrigation. Last May I irrigated my prune trees for the first time, again during the first two weeks of last December. If no rain should come within the next two weeks, would you advise me to irrigate then? Should I plow before irrigating, or should irrigation be done before the buds swell? Unless your ground is deeply wet down by the rains which are now coming, irrigate it once, and do not plow before irrigating. The point is to get as much water into the ground and as much grass growth on top as you can before the spring plowing. Never mind about the swelling of the buds. The trees will not be affected injuriously by getting a good supply of winter water into the soil. There might be some danger with trees which bloom late in the spring, like citrus trees or olives, because by that time the ground has become warm and the roots very active. At the blooming time of deciduous trees less danger would threaten, because there is less difference between the temperature of the ground and the water which you were then applying from a running stream. If you irrigated in furrows and, therefore, did not collect the water in mass, its temperature would rise by contact with air, which would be another reason for not apprehending trouble from it. How Much Water for Oranges? How much water would you consider absolutely necessary to carry to full-bearing citrus trees an clay loam-that is, how many acres to a miner's inch, figuring nine gallons per minute to the inch? It would, of course, depend upon the age of the trees, as old bearing trees may require twice as much as young trees. We would estimate for bearing trees, on such retentive soil, 30-acre inches per year applied in the way best for the soil. Damping-off. My orange seed-bed stack has "damp-off." Same say "too much water;" "not enough water;" "put on lime;" etc. I use a medium amount of water and more of my stack is affected than that of any other grower. One man has kept his well soaked since planting, and only about six plants were affected. Another has used but little water, keeping them very dry; he has lost none. Damping-off is due to a fungus which attacks the tender growth when there is too much surface moisture. It may be produced by rather a small amount of water, providing the soil is heavy and the water is not rapidly absorbed and distributed. On the other hand, a lighter soil taking water more easily may grow plants without damping-off, even though a great deal more water has been used than on the heavier soil. Too much shade, which prevents the sun from drying the surface soil, is also likely to produce damping-off, therefore, one has to provide just the right amount of shade and the right amount of ventilation through circulation of the air, etc. The use of sand on the surface of a heavier soil may save plants from damping-off, because the sand passes the water quickly and dries, while a heavier surface soil would remain soggy. Lime may be of advantage if not used in too great quantities because it disintegrates the surface of the soil and helps to produce a dryness which is desirable. Keeping the surface dry enough and yet providing the seedlings with moisture for a free and satisfactory growth is a matter which must be determined by experience and good judgment. Irrigated or Non-Irrigated Trees. Is there any difference between the same kind of fruit trees grown without irrigation and with it? It does not make a particle of difference, if the trees are grown well and matured well. Overirrigated trees or trees growing on land naturally moist may be equally bad. Excessively large trees and stunted trees are both bad; with irrigation you may be more likely to get the first kind; without it you are more likely to get the latter. There is, however, a difference between a stunted tree and a wellgrown small tree, and as a rule medium-sized trees are most desirable than overgrown trees. The mere fact of irrigation does not make either good trees or bad trees: it is the man at the ditch. Too Little Rather Than Too Much Water. Looking through an orchard of 18-year-old prune trees on riverbottom land, I found a number of the trees had died. A well bored in the orchard strikes water at about 15 feet. I find no apparent reason far the death of these trees unless it is that the tap roots reach this body of water and are injuriously affected thereby. We do not believe that water at 15 feet depth could possibly kill a prune tree. It is more likely that owing to spotted condition of the soil, gravel should occur in different places, and with gravel three or four feet below the surface a tree might actually die although there was plenty of water at a depth of 15 feet. There is more danger that the trees died from lack of water than from an oversupply of it, and it is quite likely also that you could pump and irrigate to advantage large trees which did not seem to be up to the standard of the whole place, as manifested by lack of bearing, smallness of leaves, which would be apt to turn yellow too early in the season. Possibly Too Much Water. My trees are four years old and are as follows: Peach, fig, loquat, apple, apricot and plum. Last year they had plenty of blossoms, but I got no fruit. I always watered them twice a week in summer. You are watering your trees too much; stimulating their growth too much, and this, while a tree is young, is apt to postpone its fruit bearing. Give the soil a good soaking about once a mouth, unless you are situated in a sandy or gravelly soil, in which more frequent applications may be necessary. Too Little Water After Dynamiting. In planting almonds on a dry hard soil I dynamited the holes and ran about 200 gallons of water into each hole before planting. About 95 per cent of the trees started growth, but seem now to be in a somewhat dormant state, the leaves of some being slightly wilted. All the trees were watered since planting. I have been told I made a mistake by throwing water in the dynamited holes. When the holes were watered the ground was very dry and the water disappeared in a few minutes. You have used too little water rather than too much. Dry soil of fine texture can suck up an awful lot of moisture, which can be drawn off so far, or so widely distributed, that there will not be enough for the immediate vicinity of the roots. The dynamiting tended to deep drying and necessitated much more irrigation. Irrigating Young Trees. We have just put out 50 acres to walnuts. The party who put them out wants me to have some boxes or troughs made 15 inches long with a 3-inch opening, and put in on the slant so as to have the water hit the roots. Many such arrangements of boxes, perforated cans, pieces of tile, etc., have been proposed during the last fifty years in California for accomplishing the purposes which are mentioned in your letter, and all such devices have been abandoned as undesirable. They may bring the water to bear upon a lower level as intended, but the free access of air and the fact that, with their use, proper stirring of the soil is neglected renders them undesirable. The best way to water young trees singly is to make a trench around tree, but not allowing the water to touch the bark, applying the water and then thoroughly hoe when the surface soil comes into proper condition. Young trees treated in this way, with the surface always in good condition, do not require much water. The amount depends, of course, upon whether the soil is naturally porous or retentive. Underground Irrigation. How extensively used and with what results is the underground tile system for irrigation used, and what especial character of soil is it best suited for? Not extensively at all; in fact, if there is an acre of it which has been for three years in continuous and successful operation, it has escaped us. After forty years of trial of different systems, none has demonstrated value enough to warrant its use. Theoretically, they are excellent; in practice they are defective. Surface application in different ways, according to the nature of the soil, accompanied with thorough cultivation, is the only thing that at the present time promises satisfactory results, except that where the land suits it, irrigation by underflow from ditches on higher elevations is being successfully used on small areas in the foothills. For gardens the most promising arrangement seems to be a laying of drain tiles rather near the surface, which shall be taken up each year, cleaned of silt and plant roots, and relaid along the rows before planting; but this calls for too much labor, except perhaps for amateur gardeners. The kind of soil best suited to such a system is a medium loam which will distribute water sufficiently to avoid saturation and air-exclusion. Both a heavy soil which does this, and a coarse sandy loam which takes water down out of reach of shallow-rooting plants too rapidly and lacks capillarity to draw it up again, are ill adapted to underground distribution. Irrigation of Potatoes. Will you kindly tell me when is the proper time to irrigate potatoes, before they bloom or after they bloom, and do they require much water? It should seldom be necessary to irrigate potatoes after the bloom appears. Potatoes do not need much water, and there is danger of giving them too much. It is absolutely essential to see that there is no check in the growth of the plant, for once the growth is at all checked by drought, and irrigation is done, a new lot of potatoes start and new and old growth of tubers are worthless. Give what irrigation is needed and make cultivation do the rest. The secret of success is keeping the soil continually at the right moisture, so that the first growth of the plant may continue regularly until the tubers are brought to maturity. Irrigated or Non-Irrigated Apples. Where soil and climatic conditions are favorable to the raising of apples, what effect has irrigation an them? The commercial product of California apples is chiefly made upon deep soils in districts of ample rainfall so that the fruit can be perfected and the trees maintained in thrift by thorough cultivation and without irrigation. In the foothill and mountain regions, however, apple trees are irrigated and first-class fruit produced by the process. There is no particular virtue in the absence of irrigation nor in the presence of it. All that the tree requires is that the moisture supply should be adequate and timely. There are undoubtedly many apple orchards grown without irrigation where a little water during the latter part of the summer would be a great advantage for the perfection of winter varieties. Irrigating Walnuts-Checks or Furrows. Which is the best method to irrigate a tract of 25 acres of sandy sediment sail, nearly level, preparatory to planting walnuts? By all means use the furrow system of irrigation unless your land should be so light that the water would sink in the furrows and distribution would be very unequal without covering the whole surface as is done by filling checks. When the land cannot be covered well by the furrow system, checking is resorted to, but not otherwise. Summer and Fall Irrigation. Is it desirable to irrigate peach trees in the fall after the crop is gathered? The popularity of autumn irrigation for peaches in the San Joaquin valley is based upon the experience of the last few years where trees that have been allowed to become dormant too early in the season and have been weakened by a long period of soil-drought during the autumn, have cast their blossoms or manifested other indications of weakness during the following year. It is thoroughly rational to apply irrigation to hold the leaves and secure their service in the strengthening of bloom buds for the following year by irrigation. Such irrigation should be applied immediately after the fruit is gathered or even before that, if the yellowing of the leaves indicates lack of strength in the tree and the frequency and amount of irrigation during the autumn depends upon whether the soil will hold moisture enough to carry the tree to its proper period of dormancy. This may be determined by the aspect of the trees and by digging down two or three feet to see whether the soil carries moisture which is likely to be sufficient until the coming of the rains. Whether late irrigation will be necessary is also determinable by the character of the soil; on close retentive soil it may not be necessary, while on loose, sandy or gravelly soil it may be essential to the life of the tree. One has to settle all these matters by judgment and not by recipe. Fertilizers in Irrigation Water. Do you recommend putting fertilizers in irrigating water? I am about to water the orchard and am thinking of putting some nitrate in the water. You can distribute any soluble fertilizer by dissolving it in irrigation water, but few have ever done it because of the difficulties of getting equal strength in running water. It is much easier to distribute on land before irrigation. Irrigating Alfalfa on Heavy Soils. How does alfalfa succeed on adobe and soils slightly modified from it? Does irrigation work well an adobe planted to alfalfa? If you get the irrigation adjusted so that the soil shall not be water-logged and so that the water does not stand on the surface when the sun is hot, you can get plenty of good alfalfa on a heavy soil. Irrigation on adobe soils must be done more frequently and a less amount at each application to guard against the dangers named above. How Much Water for Crops? Same of my land is heavy but the most of it is light soil. I want alfalfa mostly, same potatoes and grain, and later oranges, olives and other fruit. How much water in inches or acre feet is required per acre per year far the irrigation of it? The amount of water required to grow different crops depends upon the crop itself, upon the time of the year in which it grows, the character of the soil, etc. There is no such thing as stating how much water would be used for all crops on all soils, and at all times of the year. The range would be from, say, ten acre inches for irrigation of deciduous fruits, which need moisture supplementary to rainfall; twice or thrice as much for citrus fruit trees; four or five times as much for alfalfa where a full number of cuttings are required. These are, of course, only rough estimates which would have to be modified according to local rainfall and soil character. Water should be applied frequently enough to keep the lower soil amply moist. A color of moisture is not enough and a muddy condition results from too much water. One has to learn to judge when there is moisture enough, and a good test of this to take up a handful of soil, squeeze it and open the hand. If the ball retains its shape it is probably moist enough. If it has a tendency to crack upon opening the hand, it is too dry. This test, of course, is somewhat affected by the character of the soil, but one has to form the best judgment possible how far allowance has to be made for that. Sewage Irrigation. What is the usefulness or harmfulness of the outflow from septic tanks for use an fruits and vegetables? There is no question as to the suitability of the affluent from a septic tank for irrigation purposes. Waste waters are sometimes injurious when they are loaded with antiseptics, but the septic tank will not work unless it has a chance for free fermentation in the absence of antiseptics, therefore, this objection against waste water does not hold with the out-flow from septic tanks. It has the advantage over straight sewage irrigation because fermentation in the septic tank is believed to free the water from many dangerous germs, though not all of them. Creamery Wastes for Irrigation. Will the waste water from a creamery, pumped into a ditch and used for irrigating sandy loam orchard land, or nursery stack, in any way be injurious to the land or the trees? It will depend upon the amounts of salt and alkaline washing materials which it carries. This would be governed, of course, by the amount of fresh water used for dilution in the irrigation ditch. There are two ways to determine the question. One would be to make an analysis of a sample of the water taken when it contains the largest amount of these materials after the dilution with ditch water. Another way would be to plant some corn, squashes, barley and other plants, so that they would be freely irrigated by the water during one growing season. This would be rather better than an analysis, because everybody could see whether the plants grew well or not, and would be apt to be better convinced by what they see than by an opinion which a chemist might give on the basis of an analysis. The use of this water on a sandy loam would obviously be less injurious than upon a heavy retentive soil. House Waste Water. Is it feasible to use wash water, etc., for watering fruit trees and vegetables? Kitchen sink water is not desirable because of its great content of grease, but wash-tub and bathtub water are good. Strong soapsuds should be mixed with considerable rinsing water to escape excessive content of alkali. Run the water in hoe-ditches, along the rows of vegetables, hoeing thoroughly as soon as the land hoes well, changing the runs of water so that the soil does not become compacted but is kept friable and lively. Draining a Wet Spot. I have a spot of about an acre that in a wet winter becomes very miry and as a rule is wet up to July. Can I put in a ditch two and one-half feet deep and fill in with small stones for a foot or a foot and a half, until I can afford to buy tiles? Drains made of small stones are often quickly filled with soil and stop running. However, it will work for a time, and such drains were formerly largely employed in Eastern situations when cash was scant and stones abundant. Dig the ditch bottom to a depth of not less than 3 or 3 1/2 feet, then put in the stones deep enough not to be interfered with by plowing. If you have flat stones you can make quite a water-way with them and fill in with small stones above it. Part V. Live Stock and Dairy Legal Milk House. What is a legal milk house in California? The State dairy law says little concerning the construction or equipment of the milk house. It says that the house, or room, shall be properly screened to exclude flies and insects, and is to be used for the purpose of cooling, mixing, canning and keeping the milk. The milk room shall not be used for any other purpose than milk handling and storing, and must be 100 feet or more distant from hogpen, horse stable, cesspool or similar accumulation of filth, and must be over 50 feet from cow stalls or places where milking is done. In regard to the size of the milk room and equipment, nothing is said provided it is large enough for the milk to be handled conveniently. Concrete milk houses, however, had best have smooth-finished floors and walls. The interior of the milk house is also to be whitewashed once in two years or oftener. If milk from the dairy is to go to a city, the requirements will be more severe than provided in the State law, and must conform to the ordinances of the city to which the milk is to be sent. Cure for a Self-Milker. What shall I do for a young cow that milks herself? Fit a harness consisting of two light side slats and a girth and neck strap in such a way that the cow cannot reach her udder. Unless she is particularly valuable for milk, it will save you a lot of worry to fix her up for beef. Strong Milk. How can I overcome strong milk in a three-quarter Jersey cow? I had been feeding alfalfa hay with two quarts alfalfa meal and one quart middlings twice a day. Thinking the strong milk came from the feed I changed to oat hay and alfalfa with a soft feed of bran and middlings. There is nothing in either ration that could cause strong milk, nor will a change of feed likely benefit the trouble. If the cow is in good physical condition the trouble probably comes from the entrance of bacteria during or after milking. Thoroughly clean up around the milking stable, followed by a disinfection of the premises. Have the flanks, udder and teats of the cow thoroughly cleaned before milking and scald all utensils used for the milk. Harmful bacteria may have gotten well established on the premises and the entrance of a few is enough to seriously affect the flavor of the milk. Once the trouble is checked it can be kept down with the usual sanitary methods. Separator as Milk Purifier. I have a neighbor who contends that a cream separator purifies the milk that passes through it. I say that it does not purify the milk. I agree that it does take out some of the heavy particles of dirt and filth, but that it cannot take out what is already in solution with the milk. The purification naturally cannot be very great, and if milk is produced in unsanitary fashion, running through the separator will do little, if any, good. Nevertheless, the separator does remove more than just the solid particles of dirt. The purifying comes by leaving behind the separator slime, so called, the slimy material left behind after a good deal of milk has been run through. In fact, some creameries separate milk, only to mix milk and cream again, largely for the purpose of removing the impurities found in the slime. In this slime are not only the impurities that fall into the milk, but also some of the fibrous matter that is part of the milk, and this gathers, being pulled out by gravity as are the fat particles, it seems to gather with it a few more bacteria than remain in the milk itself. Material in real solution, as sugar is in solution in water, naturally is practically unaffected by separation. You are, therefore, right to the extent that you cannot produce unsanitary milk and clean it with the separator, but your neighbor is right to the extent that the separator does remove some impurities and is used just for that purpose. There is also in the dairy trade a centrifugal milk clarifier which is constructed in somewhat similar manner to a cream separator, but acts differently on the milk in not interfering with cream rising by gravity when separated cream and milk are mixed after cleaning. Butter Going White. I bought some butter and during the warm weather it melted. About 40 or 50 per cent was white, while the balance was yellow and went to the top. When the butter remelted, the yellow portion melted, leaving the white portion retaining its shape. The white portion did not taste like ordinary butter. The butter made from our cows' cream melted at a higher temperature, but did not have a white portion. Why did our butter not act like the creamery butter? Samples of butter have occasionally been sent to this office that have turned white on the outside, and since the white part has a very disagreeable, tallowy flavor, people think that tallow or oleomargarine has been mixed with it, but we have never been able to find any foreign substance in any of the samples. We have found that some of the best brands of butter will turn white first on the outside and the white color will gradually go deeper if the butter is exposed to a current of air or if left in the sun a short time - F. W. Andreason, State Dairy Bureau. What Is "Butter-fat?" I would like to know what "butter-fat" means. I have asked farmers this question and no one seems to know. I suppose all parties dealing with creameries understand what the standard of measure or weight of butter-fat is, but it is my guess that there are thousands of farmers whom, if they were asked this question, would not know. We, of course, know that butter is sold by the pound and cream by the pint, quart or gallon, but what is butter-fat sold by? Butter-fat is the yellow substance which forms the larger part of butter. Besides, this fat butter is composed of 16 per cent or less of water and small amounts of salt, and other substances of which milk is composed. From 80 to 85 per cent or so of ordinary butter is the fat itself. It is sold by weight. The cream from which butter is made is taken to the creamery and weighed, not measured. A small sample is tested by the so-called Babcock test to determine the exact percentage of fat, and payment mode on this basis. For instance, if 1,00 pounds of cream is one-third butter-fat, the dairyman receives pay for 33 1/3 pounds of this substance. If it is only one-quarter fat, he receives pay for 25 pounds. Ordinary cream varies within these limits, but may be much richer or thinner. Cream after the butterfat is removed is much like skimmed milk, although it has less water in it. Why Would Not Butter Come? What is the trouble with cream that you churn on from Monday until Saturday, then have to give up in despair and turn it out to the hogs? We warmed it, and we cooled it, and used a dairy thermometer, but nothing would do. If the cream was in churnable condition otherwise, the probability is that it was too cool when you started churning. It should be about 62° Fahrenheit. Drying a Persistent Milker. My cow is to come fresh about the middle of next mouth, and in the last two weeks her milk has changed in some way so that the cream makes very yellow butter and comes to butter nearly as quick as when the cow was fresh. Would it best for her to go entirely dry before coming fresh, or will it be all right if she does not entirely dry up? If your cow has been able to pick up any special amount of grass since the rains came it might add to the color of the butter. A cow's milk also gets richer toward the end of her lactation period, which may make a richer cream and make the butter come quickly There does not seem to be anything to worry about. The cow would probably do better if she could become entirely dry before calving, but unless you can easily dry her up it would be dangerous to try to force her to do so. Butter-fat in Sweet and Sour Cream. The creamery wagon takes our cream every other day. Without ice it is almost impossible to keep the cream sweet during the hot weather. By the time the wagon gets here, several hours after the fourth milking, the cream is quite sour. Does sour cream test lower than sweet cream! Is any butter-fat lost due to evaporation in dry weather? The test of sour cream will be as accurate as of sweet cream, if properly made, but it is rather more difficult to make; or rather, to get the material into condition to work well. There is no fat lost by evaporation. Cream That Won't Whip. When I sell my cream from the separator they say they cannot whip it. Can you tell me if there is any way that I can make the cream whip? There appears to be no good reason for blaming the separator for your difficulty with the cream. Possibly the cream may be too thin, as thin cream is sometimes difficult to whip. There is also the possibility that the fat globules in the cream may be rather small, but that will be the fault of the cows, not of the separator. Another reason why the cream may not whip well may be that it is used too quickly. If the milk is all right, the cream not too thin and it is permitted to stand for 12 hours or so there should be no trouble with it. Occasionally when cream is pasteurized it will not whip well. In these cases, or any other that may develop, the application of lime water to the cream at the rate of 1 gallon to 60 will remove the difficulty. What Is Certified Milk? What process has milk to go through to be called "certified," and what demand is there for it? Certified milk is simply milk that is produced and marketed under prescribed sanitary conditions. The dairies are inspected periodically by representatives of some medical society or other organization to see that all regulations are observed, who certify that this is done; hence the name. Milk from other dairies is prohibited by law from being sold under the name "certified milk." Among the requirements in its production are that the cows must be free from tuberculosis and otherwise perfectly healthy, the stable to have a concrete floor which is washed out after each milking, the milkers to have special clothes for milking, etc. The milk is cooled and bottled immediately after milking, and kept at a low temperature until it reaches the consumer, to prevent the entrance of dirt of any kind or the development of the few bacteria that must gain entrance before it is bottled. To produce such milk requires much expensive apparatus and much more labor than to produce ordinary milk, and as a result it sells for a much higher price, both to distributor and consumer, so that the market for it is rather limited. Jersey Shorthorn Cross. If I cross Registered Shorthorns with a Jersey bull, what dairying value will the progeny have? This makes an excellent cross. Even beef-strain Shorthorns have lots of milking power if it is developed and the Jersey cross will bring it out in the progeny. The cows have excellent milking qualities and give very rich milk. They also have a big frame and fine constitution. About the finest cows in Humboldt county were of this cross although Jersey bulls have been used so long that the Shorthorn blood is almost eliminated. The first "improved" cattle in California and the first cross made for dairy purposes was Jersey bulls upon grade Shorthorn cows. Later the Holstein Friesians became popular and they and their grades are now most abundant. A Free Martin. I have a Jersey cow who has just had twin calves, a heifer and a bull. The heifer was born about five minutes before the bull and seems to be the stronger. My neighbors tell me to fatten both for the butcher, for they say the heifer will be barren. The mother is a young cow, as this is her second calf. Kindly inform if this is one of nature's laws or if there is a possibility of the heifer turning out all right? The probability is that it will be better to veal the heifer than to raise her, as most heifer calves twinned with a bull are free martins, or animals of mixed sex and no good for breeding purposes or for profitable milk production. If the bull is a good animal, he probably will be all right, as this twinning does not seem to affect a bull calf, though it does the heifer. It does not always happen that the heifer is worthless for breeding, but the probability is so great that you had better have her killed and be done with it. What Is a "Grade"? Does the term "grade" mean an animal whose sire is a thoroughbred and whose dam is a scrub, or just one who is selected from others because of her good points or those of her mother? Roughly speaking, a grade animal is one having more or less pure-bred blood, but not enough, or otherwise too irregular, for registry under the rules of the association of the breed to which it has affiliation. It does not refer to selection without use of a pure-blood sire at some point in the ancestry, but this is not a distinction of much moment, for it is hard to find animals which have not borrowed something from some cross with pure blood, though remote. The terms high and low grade are sometimes used to signify amount of pure blood recognizable by form and other characters or remembered by owners or their neighbors. Generally speaking, a grade is anything not entitled to registry, though ordinarily it refers to the offspring of a pure-bred sire and a cow of another or of no breed. The offspring of a pure-bred cow and a scrub bull would also be a grade. Breeding a Young Mare. I have a beautiful colt 22 months old that will weigh 1200 or 1300 pounds; very compactly built, and has extra health, life and vigor. I want this colt for a broodmare. Would you advise breeding at two or three years old? Authorities agree at placing the age from two to three years, according to the development of the animal and other circumstances. "To Breed in the Purple." What is meant by breeding a sow in the purple? I have seen this statement used many times by breeders who advertised "sows safe in pig bred in the purple." To be "bred in the purple" means to be of royal or princely parentage. It originally was used in reference to the nobility of Europe, as purple was the insignia of royal blood, due to the fact that purple was the rarest and most costly color and only the rich and noble could buy it. When used in referring to live stock, it signifies that the animal in question has a long line of blooded ancestry. Cows for Hill Country. What breed of dairy cows do you think would be preferable to keep for butter, at an altitude of about 1800 feet, in Nevada county - Jerseys, Guernseys or Ayrshires? I do not mean to have them to rustle for their own living, but to feed them well, house and care for them in all weather, particularly in stormy weather. The best breed for a man is the one he likes best, providing it has been bred for the purposes he desires to attain. All the breeds you mention are suited to the scheme you outline. Foothill Dairying. Is there any risk to run in taking cows to an altitude of 2000 from a much lower one? There is no quarrel between a cow and a mountain. Ever since the settlement of the State cows have been driven directly from the valley up to the mountain meadow pastures, both for butter and for beef-making, in the summer time. The foothill elevation you mention is only a starting to elevations of 6000 feet and more to which cattle are driven every season. Bad-Tempered Jerseys. Jersey bulls are apt to become vicious after a time; is it so to the same extent with bulls of the other named breeds? The Jersey bull is conceded to be crosser and more dangerous than other bulls, but no bull should ever be allowed to have a chance at a man. Never consider a bull gentle and you will be safe with him. Breeding in Line. Is it right and proper to breed a pedigreed registered bull to his daughter, who is the offspring of a grade cow? If it is not right, explain why. If it can be done, will the offspring be physically perfect and an improvement, or will it have poorer qualities than its sire and mother? If this inbreeding can be done successfully, how long can it be carried on, or, in other words, how long could one bull be bred back into his own offspring? Can a herd be perfected in this way? It is right and proper to breed a registered sire to his daughter, who is the offspring of a grade cow. The first cross is all right and the offspring ought to be physically perfect. This is a first step in what we call line breeding, but in line breeding proper, both animals must be pure bloods and registered, having ancestors on both sides which have a long line of good individuals with strong constitutions and true to type. To do this, one must have a perfect ideal in mind. This line breeding is what has developed the breeds today up to the high standard of perfection. Breeding sire to daughter, if followed along these lines, will be all right; at least, it was so in the case of Amos Cruickshank, the great shorthorn breeder. You cannot successfully breed back on the daughter's offspring, but if you use a straight out-cross on the daughter's offspring you can again use this sire on her produce with marked success. In the case of a grade cow and registered sire, there are two things which will make you either lose or win with one cross, and that is regarding the breeding of your sire. If he is just an ordinary-bred fellow it will be a hit-and-miss game, but if he is from a long line of good ancestors on his dam's side, you can very materially improve the, herd, because always keep in mind the female produce from the sire's dam will grow with age toward the sire's dam. So if your first cross from your first sire is all right, use a straight out-cross bull, but be sure he is what he ought to be, and then you can use your old bull back on his heifers. Of course, a man practicing this breeding ought to be a thorough stockman and a first-class judge of live stock. - W. M. Carruthers. Whitewashes for Stock Buildings. I desire whitewash recipes which have given durable results on outbuildings. It is so desirable to make outbuildings neat and clean, and so important to keep trees from sunburning, etc., that a durable whitewash as cheaply and easily made as possible is very important. The following are commended: No. 1 - To half a bucketful of unslaked lime add 2 handfuls of common salt, and soft soap at the rate of 1 pound to 15 gallons of the wash. Slake slowly, stirring all the time. This quantity makes 2 bucketfuls of very adhesive wash, which is not affected by rain. No. 2 - Whitewash requires some kind of grease in it to make it most durable. Any kind of grease, even though it be old and partly spoiled, will answer all right, though tallow is best. The grease imparts to the whitewash an oil property the same as in good paint. Tallow will stay right on the job for years, and the cheapest of it will do. In order to prepare this grease and get it properly incorporated into the white wash, it is necessary to put the grease in a vessel on the stove, and boil it into a part of the whitewash so as to emulsify it and get it into such condition that it can be properly incorporated with the whitewash mixture. No. 3 - For every barrel of fresh lime, add 16 pounds of tallow, 16 pounds of salt and 4 pounds of glue, dissolved. Mix all together and slack; keep covered, and let stand a few days before using. Add water to bring the right consistency to spread readily. For nice inside work strain it. When less than a barrel of lime is used, the quality of the wash does not seem so good. It is better to apply hot, but it does well cold. Government Whitewash. What is the government recipe for whitewash? "Take a half bushel of well-burned, unslaked lime, slake it with boiling water, cover during the process to keep in steam, strain the liquid through a fine sieve or strainer, and add to it 7 pounds of salt, previously dissolved in warm water; 3 pounds of ground rice boiled to a thin paste and stirred in while hot; half a pound of Spanish whiting and 1 pound of glue, previously dissolved by soaking in cold water, and then hanging over in a small pot hung in a larger one filled with water. Add 5 gallons of hot water to the mixture, stir well and let it stand for a few days, covered from dirt. It should be applied hot, for which purpose it can be kept in a portable furnace. A pint of this mixture, if properly applied, will cover a square yard." Whitewash for Spray Pump. Can you give a recipe for a durable whitewash which can be prepared simply and in large quantities? The whitewash will be applied with a spray pump. To 25 pounds of lime, whole, slacking with 6 gallons of water, add 6 pounds of common salt and 1 1/2 pounds of brown sugar. Stir and mix well and allow to cool. When cool stir in 1 ounce of ultramarine blue. Then add 2 gallons of water, and sprinkle and stir in 2 pounds of Portland cement. If two coats are to be applied, add 1 more gallon of water. Strain for work on smooth surface. Buttermilk Paint How is paint made with buttermilk for farm buildings? One gallon buttermilk, 3 pounds of Portland cement, and sufficient coloring matter to give the desired shade. Apply as soon as made, and stir a great deal while being applied. It is said to dry in about 6 hours and to be a good preservative for fences, barns and other outbuildings. Trespassing Live Stock. Is there a fence law in this State? In other words, do I have to fence against my neighbors' stock, or does the law require him to care for his stock and keep it off my property? The old "no-fence law" which was enacted during the troubles between wheat growers and stock rangers has been put out of commission by more recent legislation. The trespassing live stock is liable for damage, but just how to proceed to protect yourself you should learn from a local lawyer who knows statutes and your county ordinances also. Rat-Proof Granary. How can I make a rat-proof granary for alfalfa meal and barley? Omit all boarding of the sides below the floor level and place a heavy inverted pan, milk pan, between the top of each of the supporting posts and the floor beams. Care should be taken that the diagonal bracing of the underpinning or posts does not allow a rat to secure a foot hold near enough the floor to permit of gnawing through. Concrete Stable Floor. Is a concrete floor good for a horse stable? Concrete floors are satisfactorily used for horse stables, provided the floor is ribbed or otherwise roughened in a way to reduce the danger of slipping. Some stablemen have stall floors made that way. Some use a wooden grating over the concrete in places where the horses have to stand for any length of time. Others soften the standing by free use of bedding. Silo-Heating Not Dangerous. Is there any danger of a barn burning from spontaneous combustion due to a silo being built in the barn? There is no danger of the silo overheating and setting fire to a barn. When the ensilage is curing, it often gets warm, but never anywhere near the point of combustion. To Make Shingles Durable. What is the best material with which to coat the shingles on my barn roof? The best coating is a wood preservative, the principal ingredient of which is creosote. There are several reliable brands of preservatives and stains that may be had at a cost of about half that of paint. We must remark also the natural durability of redwood shingles in this climate if the roof has a good pitch. We reshingled our house roof after 20 years of use and found the shingles so sound that we turned them and shingled the sides and roof of a shed with them where they promise to be good for another score of years. Best Breed of Hogs. What is the best breed of hogs for pen feeding, shutting them up in small pens from the time they are little pigs and feeding them mostly on skim milk and slops? There is no best breed. It is a matter of personal preference. Any of the breeds are all right to pen up and feed. The principal thing is to see that the hogs are all pure bred and have not been crossed too often to cause deterioration. Choose one breed of hogs and keep them as pure as possible and you will have no trouble in raising them. All the breeds are good; but some are fancied more than others. Dark-colored hogs are preferred in California because less liable to sunburn. Part VI. Feeding Farm Animals Feed for Plow-Horses. While doing heavy plowing, how many pounds of rolled barley per day should I feed to keep 1300-pound horses in good condition? If I feed part oat hay and part alfalfa hay, together with rolled barley, what ration would be ample? A ration used by the California Experiment Station was 12 pounds of alfalfa hay, 11 pounds of wheat hay and 7 pounds of crushed barley for 1000 pounds of horse at hard work. The larger the horse the less food for the amount of work he does in proportion to his size, so multiplying these figures by 1.2 would bring a person somewhere near the ration for a 1300-pound horse, and an approximation is as close as one can come to any general ration. Probably more alfalfa and less of the other feeds could well be given, since many farmers are succeeding in feeding alfalfa exclusively. Vetch for Horses. Does vetch make good feed for horses? Will vetch produce a heavier crop than grain? When is the best time to sow vetch for hay, and what is the best variety? Vetch makes excellent stock feed whether used as hay or as pasturage. Vetch falls to the ground so badly that it is very difficult to cut hay from it unless some grain is planted to hold it up. Oats make an excellent hold-up crop and is more generally used. A half a bushel of vetch seed is mixed with a bushel of oats and this is enough to plant an acre. Some growers, however, prefer a bushel of vetch as that makes the stand much heavier. Sorghum Feeding. Can I allow milk cows to pasture on growing Kaffir and Egyptian corn during the summer? Which one is the best for pasture and milk? There is no difference between Kaffir corn and Egyptian corn so far as feeding goes. They are both sorghums. There is a danger in pasturing on young sorghums, because stock is often killed from overeating it, and they are quite apt to do this when they come upon it from dry feed. If you cut and wilt the young sorghum, or if it is fed sparingly with hay, etc., it becomes innocent of injury. After the sorghum has obtained considerable growth, it also loses its dangerous character. Salting Hay. What kind of salt is used for salting hay, how much to use and how to apply it? Any good commercial salt such as is used for pork or beef packing is satisfactory for salting hay. A good handful to the ton, scattering it as the hay is stocked is as good a formula as can be had. Stover. What is stover? How is it cut and handled? Stover is corn fodder after the ears are taken off. The best time to cut the corn for stover is immediately after the kernel becomes dented and the leaves or blades commence to dry. Immediately after the ears are taken off, the stalks should be cut and stacked. The size of the shock depends upon the climate. If it is a foggly climate and stalks are green, it is better to make a smaller shock, but in the interior valley where the weather is warm it is best to make large shocks, so that the stacks will not dry up very rapidly. Feed for Cows. What shall I feed cows when they are fresh and when they are dry! When they commence to freshen, give some green feed, such as alfalfa or corn; if possible, also give, say, two or three pounds of barley or bran, and gradually increase this for two or three weeks until six or seven pounds of bran or barley is being fed. Also give a small amount of hay. Bran may be rather expensive feeding and a substitute is being used. Take four parts of barley to one of bran and mix. With barley at its low price, this makes rather inexpensive feeding. Another substitute is to take the chopped alfalfa hay and barley. These are mixed thoroughly together and moistened. After the cow freshens and gives her full flow of milk, let her eat all the alfalfa hay she wants. A good ration is about 15 to 20 pounds of hay, 6 or 7 pounds of barley or bran and about 10 pounds of roots such as beets or mangels. When the cow is dry, pasture is the best food, supplemented with some green food. Sorghum Silage. Will Egyptian corn make good ensilage and at what time should it be cut to make the best feed for dairy cows? Sorghum makes good silage. It must be cut while surely juicy enough, for it is a little more apt to dry out than Indian corn. Barley for Hay Feeding. Should the barley for hog feeding be rolled, ground or fed whole, dry or wet? Also, how much should be fed and how often to get best results? To obtain the best results, the barley should be ground into a meal (not too fine) and have the hulls screened or floated out. This is best fed when made into a thick slop. Some good feeders believe in letting it stand until fermentation sets up, that is, gets a little sour. We prefer a sweet to a sour feed. However, hogs will do well on either, provided there is no change from sour to sweet. The change is the bad part. Hogs should be fed just the amount that they will clean up well, and no more. A hog should always be ready for his feed at feeding time. We would not feed oftener than twice a day: night and morning. - Chas. Goodman. Sugar Beets and Silage. Will sugar beets keep in a silo and how sugar beets rank as a hog feed? Sugar beets would probably keep all right if stored in a silo just as they might if kept in any other receptacle, but it is not necessary to store beets for stock-feeding in this State. They can be taken from the field, or from piles made under open sheds in which the beets may be put because more convenient for feeding than to take them from the field in the rainy season. Beets put whole into a silo would not make silage. For that purpose they would need to be reduced to a pulp, but there is no object in going to the expense of that operation where beets will keep so well in their natural condition and where there is no hard freezing to injure them. Beet pulp silage is made from beets which are put through a pulping process for the purpose of extraction of the sugar and, therefore, best pulp silage is only made in connection with beet-sugar factories and is a by-product thereof which is proving of large value for feeding purposes. Feeding Value of Spelt. What is the food value of spelt? It is a Russian variety of wheat, and yet, I am informed, it has about the same value as a stock food that barley has. We have no analysis of spelt at hand. It is presumably like that of barley, as you suggest, because the spelt has an adhering chaff as barley has. This fact makes it better for feeding than wheat, not in nutritive content, but because the chaff tends to distribute the starchy material, making it more easily digestible; just as barley and oats are better than ordinary wheat for stock feeding. Concentrates and Corn Stalks. Is it necessary to feed mulch cows any hay or concentrated feed in addition to green corn stalks? It is necessary. Green corn is an excellent thing for milch cows, but it is a very unbalanced ration and needs alfalfa or something else to balance it up. Green corn, for example, contains only about one per cent of digestible protein and 11.5 per cent of digestible carbohydrates and 0.4 per cent fat, or a nutritive ratio of about 1 to 12 1/2. A proper ration would be about 1 to 6 or 7, or less. To balance this up alfalfa can be fed better than anything else in California, for that is very rich in protein and the cheapest supply of protein that there is. If you give the cows a good supply of alfalfa hay with the green corn, you will have an ideal combination. Dry Sorghum Fodder. Is Egyptian corn fodder good for cows? I have been told it would dry up the milk. I have several acres and would like to feed it if it is not harmful. Dry sorghum fodder is counted about the poorest roughage that one would think of harvesting. It is much less valuable than Indian corn fodder. Egyptian corn is one of the non-saccharine sorghums which are valuable both for grain or for green feeding. We never heard of direct milk-drying effect, though such a result might be expected from feeding such innutritive material, which is also difficult of digestion. If fed for roughness it should be in connection with concentrated foods like bran or oil meal or with green alfalfa. No cow can give much milk when the feed is hardly nutritive enough to keep her alive. There seems to be, however, much difference in the dry fodders from different varieties of sorghum. One grower writes: "Kaffir corn is the only variety within our knowledge of which the fodder is of much value. We consider the fodder much more preferable than that of the ordinary Indian corn, and our stock eat it much more readily than the sweet sorghum. However, it requires a much longer season in which to ripen than does any of the other varieties, for which reason it is less desirable to plant in midsummer." Steers on Alfalfa. How much alfalfa hay will a two or three-year-old steer eat per day, and about what is the gain in weight per day? A steer will clean up about 33 pounds per day. Steers will make about 1 1/2 pounds gain in weight per day. Concentrates with Alfalfa. I have a good supply of alfalfa hay and have been feeding this as a straight feed for my dairy cows. They are not, however, doing as well as they should and I am looking for some good feed to go with it. You could probably get better returns by feeding about a pound of cocoanut meal and three of dried beet pulp than by any other combination of concentrates with straight alfalfa. If you are producing market milk or butter prices justify it, more concentrates could profitably be fed. It is an expensive proposition to build up a properly balanced ration with alfalfa and concentrates alone, and unless market milk is being sold, it usually does not pay. The cheapest way to provide a balanced ration is not by concentrates, but by wheat or other grain straw, and let the cows eat all they care for. This is very cheap and helps to balance a ration with green or dry alfalfa hay, is usually cheap, and is fine for cows. Both are much less expensive than concentrates. Chopping Hay for Horses. What saving may be made by chopping all oat hay when fed to horses? There is no particular saving in chopping hay unless the horses are worked very hard and for very long hours, as is often the case with express horses in the cities, or unless the power for cutting is very cheap and feed high. The idea is that, except in unusual cases as above mentioned, the horses can do their own grinding cheaper than it can be done by power. Somewhat less hay is wasted when fed cut than when fed long, but if they are not fed too much long hay they will waste very little. Grain for Horses. What is the best formula for feeding work horses with oat hay, alfalfa, barley (crushed) and corn as rations? Feed one-half oat hay and one-half alfalfa hay, about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds per day for each 100 pounds live weight of the horse. Add to this from 3/4 to 1 pound of rolled barley or corn for each 100 pounds live weight. If the corn is on the cob, four-fifths of its weight is corn; that is to say, 5 pounds of corn on the cob has 4 pounds of grain. Feeding Cut Alfalfa Hay. Would alfalfa hay, cut, say, from one-half to three inches in length be better than whole hay for hogs, cattle and horses, and if it is better, should it be fed wet or dry? Cattle and horses do much better when fed chopped alfalfa hay than when fed whole hay. They can eat the required amount in much less time and with less exertion. For cattle and horses the hay should be cut about one inch long and fed dry. There is no advantage in chopping alfalfa hay for hogs unless it is mixed with ground grain and made into slop. - L. P. Denny. Storing Cut Alfalfa Hay. We are planning on cutting our next season's crop of alfalfa with a feed cutter and storing it in a barn for winter feeding. The hay must, of course, be thoroughly cured, because of the great danger of heating in a tight mass. A. Balfour says: "I have been cutting alfalfa into a barn for wo seasons. It is absolutely necessary to have the sides and floor tight, and it is easier to feed it if it is in a loft. The hay is best stacked first, and must be thoroughly cured." Alfalfa Grinding. Is the curing of alfalfa for grinding different from ordinary; has it to be chopped before grinding, and what is the cost of grinding? Alfalfa hay should be cut when the very first blossoms commence to appear. At this point the plant contains the greatest amount of protein; from that time on until seed time, the protein diminishes and fiber increases. To make meal, hay should be well cured, have gone through the sweat, and should be dry, or as near dry as possible. It mills easier when dry and makes a finer product. It should be cured so as to retain the green color. To grind it, it is not necessary to cut it before grinding, it mills better if ground just as it comes from the stack. The cost of milling hay varies with the size of the machine, condition of hay, whether dry or damp, or whether tough or tender. With larger plants of a capacity of four to five tons per hour, it costs about 45 cents a ton to put it in the sack, exclusive of the cost of sacks; and with smaller, it runs from that on up to $1 to $2 per ton. Feeding Calves. How soon can calves be weaned and not hinder their growth? After weaning, what would you advise to feed them? After the calf has once nursed, it should be taken away from its mother, but fed its mother's milk for a few days, depending on the vigor of the calf. Commence to add skim-milk after a week or ten days, adding a small amount at first and increasing it daily until the calf is on an entirely skim-milk diet. The milk must be sweet, it must be as warm as its mother's milk and the calf must not have too much of it. Four quarts at a feed twice a day is sufficient for the average sized calf for the first month, then increase it accordingly. Add a spoonful of ground flaxseed to each feed and teach the calf to eat a little grain as soon as possible. Ground barley is the most economical feed to balance a ration containing so much skim-milk. If calves show a tendency to looseness of the bowels, feed less milk, and when this does not remedy the trouble, heat some skim-milk to boiling and when it is cooled to a proper temperature feed this to the calf. A good grain ration to feed calves along with skim-milk is ground barley with green alfalfa hay. When the milk is cut off, feed barley and bran soaked with molasses water. Put a pint of molasses in a pail of water and dampen feed with it. This amount will dampen three bushels of feed. - W. M. Carruthers. Winter Feed for Sheep. What would be the best to sow for sheep pasture - barley, oats, rye, vetch or rape? Of the grains, rye is usually found to be best for quick winter growth, and rye and vetches sown together are very satisfactory, because the rye holds the vetches up so that the whole growth can be more successfully handled with the mower, and if grown that way and fed green in a corral, a very large amount of good feed can be secured. Sufficient experiments have not yet been made with rape to fully demonstrate its value. Even if it grew well, it would be inferior in nutritive value to vetches and rye. Balanced Rations. What is a balanced ration for milk cows and brood sows? When plenty of alfalfa is available many dairymen feed that alone. It is better to feed a little corn, grain hay, beet pulp or the beets themselves to balance up the ration. Some of the best concentrates to feed to offset alfalfa hay are ground barley and dried beet pulp. The same thing can be said about the sows. They will consume about 10 pounds of chopped alfalfa per day and all the skim-milk that is likely to be given them. Not more than eight pounds of concentrates need be fed, of which one-fifth may be bran, the same amount, or more, of cocoanut oil cake, and the rest corn or barley. With plenty of skim-milk and alfalfa, but little grain or other concentrates will be needed. A few beets will also go well with alfalfa. Pasture and Cover Crop. I am thinking of sowing burr clover with rye to be plowed under in the spring. Is it good policy to sow rye with clover? Burr clover and rye would be very satisfactory for sowing, after the rains, to secure a winter growth for plowing under in March or April, or earlier if the growth should be large enough to warrant. Such a cover crop can be pastured lightly to advantage. Cutting Corn for Silage. What is the best time to cut corn for the silo? What length is it cut? Is water put on it when it is put in the silo? The best time to cut corn for the silo is just as the kernels are beginning to glaze. It is cut with a proper ensilage cutter into half or three-quarter inch lengths. No water is used, unless the corn should be unusually dry, with shriveled leaves; in that case, the use of water to compensate for the loss of moisture in the stalks and leaves is desirable. Fall and Winter Pasturage. What do you advise for planting in the fall for winter pasture in the Sacramento valley? Are field peas suitable? The common California field pea, called Niles pea, the Canadian pea, the common vetch (which is sometimes called the Oregon vetch because the seed is largely grown in that State) are all suitable for fall planting and winter growth because they are not injured by ordinary valley frosts. Aside from legumes, you can get winter feed from fall-sown rye, Essex rape or kale. Summer Pasture for Hogs. I want to pasture hogs in the San Joaquin valley this spring and summer. Have water for irrigation, but will not have time to get alfalfa started sufficient to pasture. Sorghum can be planted with pumpkins or some root crop between the rows. The root crop or the pumpkins could be used in the later summer, while the sorghums could come between the natural grasses of the early spring and the root crops. A strictly pasturage scheme is to sow wheat or barley and turn the hogs on this, so that they will eat within certain prescribed limits. In order to do this, the field needs a shifting fence, so that the hogs can be driven from one section to another - never letting the hogs eat too closely, as they will kill off the stand. Size of a Silo. I am planning to build a silo 8 feet high and 10 feet across. Will ensilage (corn, oats) keep well in a silo of those dimensions? The silo you are intending to build is too shallow, and would hold only a very small amount of silage. There would be several inches loss of silage before you could start feeding, and you would have to feed at least two and probably three inches off per day in order to keep the food from spoiling. Sixty inches of silage would thus only last about twenty days. Also, the deeper a silo is, the tighter the ensilage is packed and the more will be contained in a cubic foot. The following table will give suggestions as to dimensions: Diameter. Height. Capacity. Diameter. Height. Capacity. 10 feet 25 feet 36 tons 14 feet 34 feet 115 tons 10 " 28 " 42 " 15 " 34 " 131 " 11 " 29 " 60 " 16 " 35 " 158 " 12 " 32 " 73 " 20 " 35 " 258 " 13 " 33 " 83 " A cow can consume four tons of silage in 180 days and more or less as you care to feed, so by figuring out how long you will probably feed, you can see the size of silo to build at once. Soiling Crops in California. What are the dates for planting crops to be used for soiling in your State? We are using Indian corn and sorghums of various kinds for soiling to a certain extent. There is also some cutting and carrying of alfalfa, although most of the alfalfa is pastured. Dates of planting depend upon the frost-free period; sometimes beginning in April, and successive planting for later growth as water may be available for irrigation. There are places where one can see standing corn and sorghum untouched by frost as late as December 1. In other locations the growth of these plants have to be made between May and September. We have also winter-soiling practiced to a small extent in this State and for that purpose rye and barley sown at the beginning of the rainy season are used to some extent. Brewer's Grains for Cows. Are sprouted barley grains that may be had from breweries good for milch cows? Will it increase the milk, or will it dry up the cows? Professor Henry, in his standard work on "Feeds and Feedings," says: "Fresh brewer's grains constitute one of the best feeds for the dairy cow. She is fond of them and they influence most favorably the flow of milk. Fed while fresh in reasonable quantities, supplemented by bright hay or corn fodder for dry feed, the grains being kept in tight feed-boxes which can be kept clean, and with other conditions favorable to the healthfulness of the cow, no valid objection can be raised against this form of feed. From 20 to 30 pounds of wet grains should constitute a day's allowance." Feeding Pumpkins. What is the proper way to feed pumpkins to cows? Some say to cut them in halves; while others say they must be chopped fine enough so that the cows cannot choke on them. Some tell me the seeds tend to dry the cows up, and should not be fed with pumpkins. Pumpkins should be either cut in halves or broken in large fragments so that the stock can get a bite at them or else should be chopped fine, and we could never see the advantage of going to that trouble. Cutting into medium-sized pieces is dangerous because of the temptation to swallow them whole and thus getting choked. It is not necessary to remove the seeds. Feeding a Family Cow. What shall I feed family Jersey cow in addition to alfalfa hay to insure a good supply of milk? One of the best things to feed in addition to alfalfa hay is a couple of quarts of middling or bran twice a day, with which is mixed a cup of molasses with enough water to make a nice paste. Dried beet pulp is exceptionally good with alfalfa, if it is available, this also to be moistened before feeding. Rolled Barley for Cows. Will rolled barley hurt milk cows, say two light feeds a day? Will it not do about as much good as the same amount of bran? Certainly not and otherwise will be good if not used in excess to encourage fattening. Bran is a better feed for milk because it has a higher protein content. Horse Beans and Pie-melons. Would it pay me to raise horse beans for fattening hogs? Horse beans do well. Would citrons do well there without irrigation, and would they be better than stock-beets for hog feed? We do not promise anyone that anything will pay. Horsebeans are good with other feeds for hogs. Theoretically, they will balance well with pie-melons and beets, and both the latter will produce well on good land with proper cultivation in the valley you mention. Theoretically, also, we would rather have beets than pie-melons. The hogs will tell you the rest. Horse Beans. Are "horse beans" a leguminous crop and how does their feeding value for hogs compare to cowpeas and Canadian field peas? They surely are legumes, and they resemble so closely in composition the other legumes which you mention that their feeding value would be practically the same. Storing Stock Beets. What is the best method of storing stock beets and stock carrots in this climate? We can let them remain in the ground and grow until February or March and would like to preserve them for feeding as long as possible. Stock beets and carrots can be stored in California without recourse to covering with ground or use of a cellar. They keep very well during the winter if piled under cover in such a way as to keep cool and dry. Kale for Cow Feed. What is kale worth for cow feed as compared with alfalfa, also can it be cut and cured the same as alfalfa and what variety is the best? Kale is very similar to cabbage in growth, and for feeding purposes. For cow feed it would have about three-fourths the amount of digestible nutrients as green alfalfa, but would have an added value on account of its succulency. It would go especially well with alfalfa hay. The Jersey or Thousand-Headed kale is considered the standard for stock or poultry feed. It is always fed fresh and is not made into hay. What Kind of Beet for Stock? Which would be most valuable to plant on river-bottom land for cattle and hog feed, sugar beets or mangels? Grow a large stock of beet by all means - either a mangel or a tankard. Usually you will get more weight than with sugar beets; the cost of harvesting is far less, and the nutritive contents high enough. Keeping Pumpkins. What is the best way of storing pumpkins, under ordinary farm conditions, in a climate such as we have here in northern California? I have no facilities for cold storage. All you have to do in this climate to keep pumpkins is to keep them out of reach of the stock. They do not need storage of any kind, but will keep in good condition during the late autumn and winter months in any open-air place where they may be convenient for feeding purposes. In parts of California where there is hard ground freezing, protection must be given by covering with boards or straw or any other material available. We have no need for root cellars or cold storage, for our winter temperatures are neither high nor low enough to hurt them. Grape Pomace as Hog Feed. What is the value of grape pomace as a hog feed? It has been sold for 50 cents a ton as it comes from the press at the winery and when a person has not got any surplus of other feeds, it is evidently worth that and then some. The only way to feed it is to put it up in a big pile and let the hogs take it as they want it. It will help keep them growing through the winter provided they have other feed with it that might not be sufficient without the pomace. Proper Feeding of Young Pigs. If I put two 50-pound shoats to an acre of barley that will yield 10 or 12 sacks of grain, how many months could they be kept there to advantage, and what gain could I expect them to make in that time? If the pigs have been properly fed and were of good stock, they should have attained a weight of 50 pounds at three or four months of age. Pigs in this condition would be more likely to lose than gain turned on a dry barley field, even if the yield were double what you state. Barley is an excellent fattener for mature hogs, but is a poor food for young growing pigs. Young pigs should have a balanced ration, which may be defined as a little of almost all kinds of feed and not all of any one kind. We have pigs running on a barley field such as you describe, and in addition to the barley we feed them once a day a slop composed of wheat middling and bran in equal parts by measurement, to which we add about 8 per cent tankage, and they seem to be moving along nicely. Without the slop we don't think they would hold their own. - Chas. Goodman. Pie-melons and Pigs. I have 14 sows which were fed almost entirely on pie-melons and milk, not much of the latter. Out of the 14, only 3 sows have saved any pigs; the rest lost all the young they had. Four or five sows that for the last three weeks have had no melons, nothing but green grass and a little whole barley each day, are saving their pigs all right. Pie-melons are poor feed and pigs which are not given anything better ought to fail. "Green grass and a little whole barley" is much better feed than pie-melons. Pie-melons are useful fed with alfalfa hay or some richer food. Wheat or Barley for Hogs. Which would be the better grain for me to buy for hog feed; wheat at $1.30 per hundred, or barley at $1? Would it be worth paying 10 cents a hundred for rolling, and then haul the grain 8 miles by wagon? Wheat is only considered about 10 per cent more valuable as a hog feed than barley, so that in your case, barley at $1 is the cheaper. In Bulletin 80 of the Oregon Station it was found that crushed wheat was 29 per cent more efficient than the whole grain, and it is safe to say that barley will run about the same, enough so at any rate to pay the extra 10 cents a hundred for crushing and the hauling. Grain and Pasture for Pigs. What is the most profitable amount of grain to feed to spring pigs while on alfalfa pasture, from the time of weaning to the time of marketing? We doubt the profit of feeding whole grain to hogs of any age while on green pasture. On almost all kinds of land they will get enough grit to keep their teeth sore, hence they will not masticate the grain thoroughly. Perfect mastication is very essential. We would feed the pigs all the slop that they would clean up good twice a day. The slop to be composed of equal parts of corn, barley meal ground fine, and wheat middlings mixed with milk. There is nothing in all the world like milk for growing pigs. If milk is not to be had, we would add from 5 to 10 per cent meat meal, which we consider next to milk. If whole grain is to be used, it should be thoroughly cooked on account of the pigs' teeth not being in condition to chew the hard grain. - Chas. Goodman. Growing Pigs on Roots and Barley. We can raise all kinds of root crops, such as carrots, sugar beets, rutabagas, etc., and cow peas and pumpkins do wonderfully well. Will hogs do well an that kind of diet, especially if given a little barley with it? The plants that you mention are good for hog feeding and can be used to advantage with a little barley as you suggest. None of these plants are, however, rich in protein as alfalfa and the other clovers are. The reason why we get such a rapid and satisfactory growth of young hogs in California is due to the fact that they are largely kept on alfalfa and rapid growth is the product of a sufficient protein content in the fodder. Both common field peas and cowpeas do not possess this element, and if you can grow them they will serve as a substitute for the other legumes, such as alfalfa. If you are feeding skim-milk, which is rich in protein, roots and grain will go well with that. Wheat and Barley for Feeding. What is the difference in the feeding value of wheat and barley for hogs and horses? There is very little difference in the chemical composition of wheat and barley. In their physical condition there is much difference, chiefly because of the adhering chaff of the barley, which makes it more digestible because it separates the starchy mass and enables the gastric juice to work upon the particles more readily and quickly. Oats also have this character. This is very important in the case of horses, which can quickly be put out of condition by feeding wheat. For hogs and chickens it makes much less difference, and the absence of the chaff gives a greater amount of nutritive matter to the ton, so that wheat is worth more at the same ton price. But look out about giving horses too much wheat. Part VII. Diseases of Animals This division is largely compiled from the writings of Dr. E. J. Creely of the San Francisco Veterinary College. Abscess of Parotid Gland. My horse has had a bad cold and it has a large lump on its neck which keeps running and does not seem to get any better; it has been running for two weeks. This horse has an abscess of the parotid gland and the abscess should be opened large enough so that the finger can be introduced to break down adhesions, so that proper drainage can be established, after which wash out with a 5 per cent solution of permanganate of potash. As this is a dangerous location for a layman to interfere with, owing to the branching of the carotid artery, pneumogastric nerve and jugular vein, it should be done by a qualified veterinarian. Forage Poisoning. Last fall one of our horses was taken ill and had a swollen jaw. He died soon and we supposed that he had been kicked and died of lockjaw. This spring another was taken ill. He began dragging around, making an effort to eat and drink, but not being able to swallow much. Something seemed wrong with his throat and his hind legs. In two or three days he got down, seeming to have no strength in his back. He kept struggling for two days, not being able to swallow much; so we put him out of his misery. Since then two others have gone off the same way. The trouble is due to forage poisoning, caused by the eating food infested with poisonous moulds. The symptoms are inability to swallow (paralysis of the muscles of deglutition) and paresis of the hind and forequarters. When the symptoms become advanced, treatment is of little avail. However, further troubles can be prevented by ascertaining the food which is infested with this mould. Ofttimes, however, such food may be apparently clean to the eye. Make a complete change of food and a thorough cleaning of your stable and corrals of all old fodder which might be in the mangers, or in any accessible place. Very frequently old food which is left in the bottom of mangers becomes mouldy, and horses picking for grain which might be left in it, eat considerable quantities of this spoiled fodder, get poisoned. For a Scabby Swelling. One of my cows has a swelling on her hind leg with little scabs on it, first it was on the front leg. It is as big as your hand. Use the following, applied once daily: Olive oil, 1 pint; turpentine, 2 ounces; oil cedar, 2 ounces; lysol, 1 ounce; mix and apply. An Easement in Bloat. What can be done for bloating? It does not seem to be generally known that to put a bridle on a cow or put a stick in her mouth and tie tightly with a string or strap up over her head, so as to keep her jaws working, will relieve bloat. We have given common soda and salt with good results to our milk cows. Take a whip and run her around the corral, after giving the soda. This treatment causes the wind to pass off. Fatal Skin Disease. About two months ago a horse was turned out in pasture. Several of the horses in the pasture started to lose their hair. It seemed to fall away from the hide, and leave the skin exposed. The horse that was newly turned to pasture got the same disease and died. The other horses did not die. The hair on the horse that had died had fallen off from the sides and hind legs. This is gangrenous dermatis, a gangrenout inflammation of the skin. It is due to mould, must or vegetable fungi. Remove to a new pasture, give food free from the fungi, and apply the following ointment to the skin: Lanoline, 8 ounces; zinc oxide, 1 ounce; Pearson's Creoline, 1/2 ounce; tannin, 3 drachms; mix and apply once daily. Shoulder Injury on Mare. A young mare that bruised her shoulder on the point with collar. It was lanced and now has a hard lump or callous, about three inches in diameter. What is best to do? She is not lame, but it would interfere with the collar. Get a qualified veterinarian to operate and entirely remove the growth or you may use the following mixture to see if it will not cause it to partly absorb and then use a dutch collar or a specially padded collar: Compound tinct. iodine, 4 ounces; sulphuric ether, 2 ounces; oil cedar, 2 ounces; turpentine, 4 ounces; mix and apply once daily until blistered. Horse with Worms. What is the best remedy for a horse that has worms? I would like to know, as I have a horse that is getting poor with this trouble. Mix 1/2 pound pulverized and dried iron sulphate and 1/2 pound bicarbonate of soda, and give one teaspoonful each morning until the medicine is gone. After the last dose give the following: Turpentine, 2 ounces; fluid extract male fern, 1/2 ounce; Pearson's Creolins, 1 ounce; raw linseed oil, 1 pint. Mix and give all at one dose. To improve the general condition one may give artificial Carlsbad salts, 1 tablespoonful in each feed, and each dose to have added to it 3 to 5 grains arsenious acid. If plenty rock salt is allowed for horses to lick, they will be protected against intestinal parasites to a slight but useful degree. Is It Mange? We have a horse five years old that is always scratching and biting himself as if he had mange or lice. He seems to itch more on his shoulders and front legs than any other place. We have washed him with a carbolic wash, also with a tea made from tobacco, but so far have been unable to stop it. He often bites his legs below the knees until he takes off all the hair and part of the skin. None of the other horses are, troubled, although this horse has been troubled for three years. Apply the following: Lysol, 1 ounce; kerosene, 4 ounces; formalin, 2 drachms; cotton seed oil, 9 ounces. Mix and apply once daily after washing with hot sheep dip solution 10 to 100. Horse with Itch. For about a year my horse has been itching so badly that he has rubbed off all the hair on certain parts of his body. Lately he bites his tail. Whitewash the stall once weekly, scrub the harness, brushes, combs and every stable appliance that he has come in contact with. Don't use the same appliance on other animals that you use on this horse. Use the following mixture once daily on affected spots: Milk of sulphur, 4 ounces; tincture of iodine, 4 ounces; turpentine, 4 ounces; kerosene, 16 ounces; cottonseed oil, 120 ounces. For a Bowel Trouble. What can I do to relieve a horse that balls up on alfalfa at the time of the first symptoms? I have been bothered considerably with this, and although I know the symptoms, I can never seem to relieve the pain before the veterinary is called. Give the following prescription: Fluid extract Cannabis Indica, 3 ounces; sulphuric ether, 2 ounces; spirits turpentine, 3 ounces; oil peppermint, 10 drops; raw linseed oil, 24 ounces. Mix. Give one-half at once, balance in one hour. If not relieved give several hotwater soap-sud injections. Abnormal Thirst of Horse. I have a horse with an abnormal desire for water. I notice that in drinking she always wants more than the others. I also notice she perspires more freely in the harness and even will sweat in the barn at night. Your horse has kidney affection, probably due to feeding hay rich in alkalines. Treatment: Change the feed and give 1 quart of thick flaxseed tea three times daily. Scours. Kindly recommend a treatment for a horse troubled with scours. He is on dry feed, but the trouble continues. Give very little water mornings and while worked, but give plenty at night. Feed dry rolled oats, oat hay, one handful of whole flaxseed at night, and the following powder: Bismuth subgalate, 4 ounces; iron sulphate, dessicated, 8 ounces; bismuth subnitrate, 8 ounces. Mix, and give a heaping teaspoonful each morning. Depraved Appetite. I have a colt about one year old that continually delights in chewing up harness, ropes, chews on the manger and, in fact, anything it can get a hold of. This is a condition caused by something being lacking in the system (lime, salts, etc.). Give plenty of salt, good food, grain, etc. Get this prescription: Iron sulphate, 2 ounces; soda syposulphate, 4 ounces; Gentian root pulv., 2 ounces; ginger, 1 ounce. Mix and give teaspoonful daily. Good Dentist Needed. I have an old horse which has always been fat and quite full of life until right lately. Now he is getting thin and looks bad. He eats his food all right. I had his teeth fixed a few weeks ago. The man said they were bad and he fixed them as well as he could. There is probably an excessively long molar projecting into a cavity and the projecting molar should be cut off by a qualified veterinarian. The horse will begin to pick up and grow fat almost as soon as the condition is relieved. Most horse owners will permit every person with a float to ruin a horse's mouth without inquiring whether the dentist possesses proper qualifications as certified by a State license and diploma. Kidney Trouble. My horse has some trouble in passing water. What can I give him that may be put in the mash? I don't think his trouble is due all to old age, for it didn't come on gradually. Give gran. sal nitre: a teaspoonful daily in water is good to stimulate the kidneys. For Chronic Indigestion. I have given my horse condition powders for indigestion, but her hair is rough still. Do you advise feeding on the road when a horse leaves the stable at 10 a. m., traveling continually for thirty miles, returning 5:30 p. m., being fed at 7 a. m.? A great majority of condition powders contain resin and antimony. While a slight amount may be beneficial, continued use results in affection of the kidneys by over-stimulation. Give the following for indigestion: Bismuth subintrate, 1 ounce; powdered pepsine, 1 ounce; soda bi carbonate, 12 ounces; carbonate iron, 2 ounces. Mix and give a heaping teaspoon twice daily. By all means feed your horse three times daily and water as often as you can. It is unnecessary to warn you that the horse must not be overheated when you give the noonday feed. Wound Sore. My colt got its hind leg cut on barbed wire some weeks ago. There is a hole about an inch and one-half deep in the center of the sore which will not heal. The inside of the sore does not seem very tender, but the leg stays swollen all of the time and is somewhat feverish. This is probably a fistulous track that should be curetted by a veterinarian, after which the following formula could be used to heal: Acetanilide, 1/2 ounce; zinc oxide, 1/4 ounce; bismuth subgalate, 1 1/4 ounce. Mix and apply on cotton and bandage once daily after washing. Warts on Horse. How can warts be removed from a horse's hide? We use sulphuric acid. The results were favorable from the very start. The warts rapidly shrunk away and finally disappeared entirely. The acid is applied to the crown of the wart with a small swab or similar instrument, and only in sufficient quantities to wet the crown surface of the wart. It should be applied about three times a week until the wart is well reduced. Don't use too much acid, and don't keep up the application too long - A. F. Etter. Kidney Trouble in Horse. What is the remedy for a horse that stops often to urinate while working? The horse is affected by an irritation of the kidneys. Give 1 quart of flaxseed tea daily, change the food and give 1 drachm of C. P. hydro-chloric acid in one bucket of drinking water. Castration of Colt. Which is the correct and best way to castrate a yearling colt, with an emasculator or a blade, and when is the proper time? An emasculator is the only instrument to use in castrating. The object in using any instrument is to prevent a hemorrhage, and nothing works with so much certainty and quickness. The A. Hausman and Dunn emasculator is recommended. The proper time is when the weather is mild, the grass at its best and the colt in good condition. For a Chronic Cough. We have a mare seven years old that is troubled with a chronic cough, and at times shows symptoms of heaves, and also has occasionally a white foamy discharge from the nostrils. She is a greedy eater and drinker and her excreta is often very offensive. If she expels flatus when she coughs, this would indicate a predisposition to heaves. Wet all food, as dry or dusty food aggravates the cough. Give the following: Spirits camphor, 4 ounces; Fl. Ext. belladonna, 2 ounces; neutral oil, 8 ounces; oil eucalyptus, 2 ounces. Mix and give tablespoonful three times daily. Chronic Indigestion. I have a mare eleven years old. Give her plenty of oats, hay, grain and a little alfalfa hay three nights per week and leave salt where she can get at it, but she is falling off and her hair does not lie down properly. She eats well and her system seems to be in good condition. Have had her teeth attended to so she chews her food well. This condition is caused by the animal not being able to properly masticate the food. Have your dentist examine the mouth again, or you can carefully examine the feces and see if it shows whole grain, or long pieces of hay. For Short-Wind or Heaves. I have a mare that has something wrong with her wind. About six months ago I noticed her wind was not good and she had a slight cough, and about a week later, while working her, she seemed to choke down and almost died before she got her wind, and since then she sometimes takes those spells should she trot off briskly for a short distance. Give two 3/2-ounce doses of Fowler's solution arsenic daily. Dusty or musty hay will aggravate the symptoms. Thoroughly shake out the dust and wet the hay. Feed hay only at night. Give the animal as little feed and water as possible before being put to work. Continue this treatment one month if necessary. The following is a case of experience with this treatment: For a remedial agent we began to use Fowler's Solution of Arsenic, in two teaspoonful doses at first. once a day, put in the water with which the hay was moistened. These doses were given for a few days, then skipped for a day, then continued for five or six days again. This treatment has been continued. At times when the trouble was most severe, giving a great spoonful at a dose, twice a day for two days, then stopping for a day or two, always being sure to mix it with the water which the hay is moistened, so that it shall be taken into the stomach very slowly. This course of treatment has served to so relieve the disease that nature has nearly or quite overcome it. Side-Bone. I have a 1500-pound 3-year-old colt with small brittle feet that has side bone coming on left front foot caused by driving him barefoot on the road two or three months ago. A good blister of the following once every six weeks for three times will stop the side-bones from growing. Side-bones on a draft horse are not considered an unsoundness; in light fast drivers it is an incurable blemish causing lameness. Side-bones cannot be removed. Use this blister: Simple cerate, 4 ounces; cantharides, 3 drachms; bin iodide mercury, 2 drachms. Mix thoroughly and apply after clipping hair. Fungus Poisoning. One of my mares, every evening after a full day's work harrowing, stands for an hour or so with her head to the ground, shaking it frequently and not touching the feed till the spell was over. She does not seem to be any worse off, and in the morning seems to be in good shape. This is due to a mold or fungus in the earth or hay. Let them have access to plenty of water during the day. In the morning feed give a handful of sodium hyposulphate. Treatment for Horse's Feet. The soles of the fore feet of a fine 4-year-old horse, weight 1350, are rather spongy and grow down faster than the hoof, sometimes causing slight lameness. He is not on soft pasture, but is stabled all the time. Now have bar shoes on him. What treatment do you recommend? Use leather, tar and okum and a dish-shoe. For a Cleft Hoof. I have a horse with a cracked hoof. One hind foot has been in a bad condition, the other seems to be beginning to crack. Can anything be done by feeding or otherwise to toughen the hoofs and render them less liable to crack? Apply the following: Honey, 2 ounces; yellow wax, 4 ounces; tar, 2 ounces; olive oil, 8 ounces. Melt, mix and apply once daily. Stiff Joints. I have a horse that was bruised on the ankle about two years ago. This is now producing an enlargement of the bone and stiffness of the joint. Apply the following liniment: Sulphuric ether, 1 ounce; tinct. iodine, 1 ounce; pulv. camphor, 1 ounce; alcohol, ounces; turpentine, 2 ounces; oil of cedar, 2 ounces. Treatment for Nail Puncture. Our horse got a nail in his foot. It was a wire nail, rusty, entering about one inch from the point of the frog, and just puncturing far enough to reach a sensitive part of the hoof. It occurred six days ago; the nail was pulled at once, the hoof cut open, and thoroughly cleaned with turpentine (the first thing we could get), then later filled with iodine. Since then I have kept on a flaxseed poultice. The treatment with turpentine and iodine was proper and should prove a success. If the foot becomes tender and inflamed, it will be because all dirt was not removed from the wound, and the poultice should be taken off, all foreign matter removed from the wound, and the treatment repeated. In case of similar accidents, other disinfectants could be used in place of turpentine or iodine. Pregnancy of Mare. Is there any way to tell when a mare is in foal? I have had a veterinarian and he could not tell me. There is no very good way to tell whether a mare is in foal for some time. Practically speaking, the safest way to do is to have her bred every time she comes in heat until she takes the stallion no longer. Even then some mares will come in heat a couple of times after getting in foal. If the sexual excitement speedily subsides and the mare persistently refuses the stallion for a month, she is probably pregnant, though not surely so. Also if a vicious mare becomes gentle after service it is an excellent indication of pregnancy; likewise pregnant mares will very often put on fat rapidly after conception and will be unable and unwilling to do as hard work as before. Enlargement of the abdomen, especially in its lower third, with slight falling in beneath the loins and hollowness of the back are significant symptoms, though they may be entirely absent. Swelling and firmness of the udder, with the smoothing out of its wrinkles, is a suggestive sign, even though it appears only at intervals during gestation. A steady increase of weight (1 1/4 pounds daily) about the fourth or fifth month is a useful indication of pregnancy. The further along the mare is in gestation the more pronounced the symptoms become. In the early stages it is naturally much more difficult to detect, especially with the great differences in different mares. Cessation of heat and changes of disposition are about the best signs in early stages. Diseased Uterus of Mare. I have a brood mare that has given me two fine colts, but for the last two years I have not been able to get her with foal. She takes service and then refuses service for three or four months, and about the time I come to the conclusion that she is safe with foal she will pass off great quantities of mattery substance. I have had her thoroughly washed out with Lysol previous to breeding, but so far she has repeated this performance each time about three or four months after service. This is a disease of the ovaries or uterus; perhaps mumification of a foetus. Irrigate with a normal salt solution (teaspoon salt to each pint of warm water) only daily. Insert the solution through the neck of the womb into the uterus. Give internally 1/2 ounce daily of Fowler's Solution of Arsenic. Deep-Seated Abscess. I have a mule which has a swelling on the throat about where the throatlatch touches. It just seems to be swollen hard and not sore. I am using caustic liniment to fester it so it will come to a head and I can open it, but the liniment does not seem to do much good. The mule is losing flesh and does not eat much. This mule should be operated upon at once by a qualified veterinarian. The application of liniments or blisters are useless; the knife only will effect a cure. The fact that the mule is losing flesh makes the case serious. Cure for Cocked Ankles. I have a 4-year-old mare that has cocked ankles, and would like to know what treatment to give her. Cocked ankles are due to an inflammation of the tendons back of the ankle and a drawing up or contraction in consequence. Put on heel calks one inch, no toe, to rest and relieve the back tendons from strain. Apply the following liniment at night, after which put on cold-water swabs and let them remain all night: Soap liniment, 8 ounces; tincture iodine, 2 ounces; oil cedar, 4 ounces; sulphuric ether, 2 ounces. Mix and apply once daily. Dehorning. Which is the best way to dehorn cows and calves? The best time to dehorn cows is in the spring, before the fly season starts. It is best not to have a cow too far along in calf before dehorning, as she is very apt to lose her calf. It is also better to dehorn before your cows freshen, because when cows are milking and are dehorned they will go back in their milk a great deal for the first month after the dehorning has taken place. Calves can be dehorned by blistering the little buttons before they adhere to the skull. This is very simple and not painful. First clip the hair about the horns and wet the little loose button and apply caustic potash, in stick form, by rubbing it on the damp horn. Remember, this must be done before the horn adheres to the skull. Also remember not to use water enough to run the lye away from the button and rub until the skin reddens. Also, look out to keep your end of the potash stick dry or you may dehorn the tips of your fingers. Paralysis During Pregnancy. I have a cow that will freshen in a few days. About six days ago she seemed weak in her hind legs and on going downhill would drag or stumble for 10 or 12 feet, then catch herself and go on rather wobbly. Pregnant animals about to bring forth their young sometimes show a paralysis or loss of power in their hind parts due to pressure of foetus. Nature corrects this after birth. Bloody Milk. What can be done to stop bloody milk? Milk each teat in a separate glass jar, let stand to ascertain which teat the red specks are coming from, then milk the teats clean and inject the infected teat with equal parts of hydrogen dioxide and water. After a few hours inject 4 drachms of ferric chloride in 1 ounce of water. Then milk clean. To Cleanse Cows. My cows are healthy and calves all right, but seem to have trouble throwing the afterbirth. Wash out twice daily with about 1 gallon of normal salt solution (teaspoonful of salt to each pint of warm water). Give internally the following powder: Pulv. gentian, 4 ounces; puv. slippery elm, 1 ounce; puv. charcoal, 1 ounce; pulv. hyposulphate of soda. 8 ounces. Mix and give a heaping teaspoonful twice daily. Treatment for Caked Bag. I have a cow whose udder is caked hard and has been swollen from the udder to the forelegs. This latter swelling has gone down by applying equal mixture of turpentine and lard, but the udder itself still remains hard. When first noticed, one teat caked, then another, until all four are caked alike. Insert a milk tube and inject the following: Hydrogen dioxide, 8 ounces; tincture iron chloride, 1 ounce; water, 7 ounces. Inject into each affected teat. Apply the following externally: Camphorated oil, 8 ounces; tincture belladonna, 2 ounces; oil eucalyptus, 2 ounces. Mix and apply twice daily. Garget. I have a cow which gave rich milk all the time, but now every time I milk her some yellow, hard substance will come out instead of milk. First from one teat, then the next, and when I strain the milk the strainer will be full of hard yellow specks. Your cow has undoubtedly been affected with garget. This milk should not be used. The condition is best treated by massaging the udder every day with camphorated oil. It will also be necessary for you to continue to milk her regularly until about six weeks before she is due to freshen, at which time you should proceed to dry her up. Infectious Mastitis. We have a 2-year-old heifer, which, two weeks before she was due to freshen, had a large udder slightly caked. Upon pressing the teat a discharge of blood issues from each teat. This is infectious mastitis. It may be due to a bruise or blow or infection introduced through the milk duct. The first is most likely. Apply camphorated oil externally and inject into the affected udder some hydrogen dioxide (peroxide of hydrogen. - EDITOR.). After ten minutes, milk out again. Repeat once daily. A Mangy Cow. I have a milk cow with some trouble about her head, neck and shoulders, which causes her to rub herself enough to make raw spots and take off most all of the hair from the parts affected. The trouble has been standing for 18 months, but I have been using medicine at different times, which stops the rubbing, and the part will cover with hair nicely again, but in due time the trouble shows up again. This cow seems to have mange or scabbies, which is caused by a parasite and is easily spread by contact to other cattle. It should be treated by two or three applications, ten days apart, of a hot solution of creolin, well scrubbed into the skin. The solution is made by mixing five tablespoonfuls of creolin in a gallon of hot water. The treatment should be applied pretty well over the body to cover all the affected parts, and needs to be repeated in ten days to destroy the younger generation. The sheds should be cleaned and whitewashed. Irritation on Back of Udder. I have a yearling heifer which has sore teats and blotches just back of her bag which seem to itch. Her mother had a sort of eczema on her neck. I fear her sore teats will spoil her for milking when she comes in next year. The following treatment is advised: Drench with 1 pound of Epsom salts dissolved in a couple quarts of water. The sores may be treated by washing them with a 2 per cent solution of one of the coaltar disinfectants, such as creolin. After the sores have been allowed to dry naturally, a very little powdered calomel may be dusted thereon. Do this every other day for a few days. Enlarged Gland on Neck. I have a calf that has a lump on her neck, which appeared when she was two days old. The lump is getting larger. This is probably an enlarged thyroid gland. Apply the following once daily for several weeks and let it alone unless it becomes too large or gets very soft, which is unlikely. Churchill's tincture iodine, 8 ounces; turpentine, 1 ounce; sulphuric ether, 2 ounces; oil aniseed, 1/2 ounce. Mix and apply once daily. Lumpy Jaw. Some of my cows have hard lumps on their jaws, or lumpy jaw. Can that be cured, and how? This is Actinomycosis (lumpy jaw) and is due to ray fungi (actinomyces) which are found originally on plants which enter the body in various ways. The trouble usually appears in the upper or lower jaws of cattle, where it generally produces tumors of bone or soft tissues. For treatment give 1 1/2 drachms of iodide of potash in 1/2 pint of water daily for 14 days. Increase to 2 drachms for 14 more days, and then gradually decrease. Divide the tumor and insert gauze saturated with tincture of iodine for 4 days. In 8 days a visible improvement will be noticed, A Neck-Swelling. My cow has a swelling under her neck between her jaw bones about the size of a baseball and almost as hard. It is not attached to anything apparently, but largely suspended by the skin at the entrance to the throat. Cut directly through the center of the enlargement, clean to the bottom, splitting it wide open. Clean it out with peroxide of hydrogen, after which saturate absorbent cotton with tincture iodine, pack in tight and sew the skin to hold it in place. Remove the dressing in 48 hours and wash with sheep dip (tablespoon to 1 quart of warm water) twice daily. This may be tubercular, or the result of foxtail, etc. Cow Chewing Bones. One of my cows is continually chewing bones. What can I do to prevent it? Give the cow good clean hay; some root crop, cocoanut meal, bran or soy-bean meal. If the cow does not stop mix in the drinking water twice daily a little dilute hydrochloric acid. Also, have boxes arranged near feeding stalls which contain wood ashes, slaked lime and salt. Swelling on the Dewlap. I have a cow that has a large lump at the point of the breastbone, the dewlap. This lump is as large as a cocoanut, and was caused, I think, by friction against a low manger in eating. Get equal parts of tincture of iodine and soap liniment and rub onto the swelling twice daily for a week. Barren Heifers. I have three heifers, 3 years old, which have run with the bull right along and have failed with calf; have had three different bulls to them; what can be done? There is a possibility of contagious abortion causing these heifers to fail to breed. If this has occurred in the herd, the heifers are very apt to be affected. If apparently healthy, reduce me feed and make the heifers take considerable exercise to reduce flesh. Give each a dram of powdered nux vomIca and one-half dram of dried sulphate of iron once daily in a little feed. Breed to a healthy bull when the heifers come in heat. A Sterile Cow. I have a very fine Jersey cow. I have had her to the bull every month, and can't get her with calf. In an isolated case of this kind there is probably some disease of the generative organs or some condition whereby the impregnation cannot occur even when the animal is bred. The ovaries may be cystic; there may be chronic inflammation of the womb and possibly the mouth of the womb was injured at last calf birth and the scar prevents its admitting the fertilizing cells. If possible, a veterinarian should make a careful examination of this cow in order to determine what the trouble is. However, this treatment may be tried: About the time of coming in heat, give the cow a large dose of glaubers salts (one pound) and the nux vomica and iron treatment advised for "Barren Heifers" in another paragraph. Before breeding the cow, apply a little extract of belladonna and glycerine to the mouth of the womb and breed a few hours after. Supernumerary Teat. On the upper part of one of the hind teats of a young Jersey cow that freshened recently for the first time, there is a small growth from which the milk comes more plentifully than from the natural opening below. How, if at all, can this opening be closed without drying the cow? The milk from it runs all over the milker's hand and makes milking very disagreeable. The only thing that can be done until the cow is dry is to tie the small teat up before milking. This can be done with a string, rubber band, or an ordinary clamp. If it is so small that the opening cannot be tied, there is nothing to do, except, perhaps to use, her as a nurse for calves. Two of these might run with her at a time, making way for others as soon as they are able to look after themselves. Quite a number of calves can sometimes be handled in a single year by a cow affected this way and the benefit to the calves might be nearly as much as by using the cow for butter production. When the cow is dry the teat can be amputated and the opening will close when the sore heals, or a stick of lunar caustic can be inserted into it, causing a wound that will heal solid. Infection of Udder. Last year one of my cows had milk fever which affected her udder. This year after freshening she milked two months when she suddenly went dry on one side of her udder. She is now badly stiffened up in her hind quarters and off her feed. The cow has infectious mastitis due to introduction of some infection. Give a saline purge (1 pound. glauber salt), inject peroxide of hydrogen, after which pump in, sterile air. Apply externally camphorated oil once daily. Camphorated oil has a tendency to dry up the secretion of the gland and is used advisedly. Lumps in Teats. My cow has hard lumps in, her teats and lower part of the bag. These cause pain to her on milking, but there are no other symptoms of disorder. This condition has prevailed several months. Give 1 drachm. iodide potash daily for one week; 2 drachms the second week 3 drachms the third week, add reduce as you began. If tumors are small and interfere with the flow of milk they can be removed. Wound in Teat. I have a cow with an open slit about one-fourth to one-third of an inch in the side of one teat. I have lacerated the edges and stitched the slit well together many times but the milk will ooze out and prevent healing together. I have used numberless milk tubes to no avail, as the flange on the tubes loose out. When I remove the flange the tubes creep up into the udder and it is a trouble to get them out again. Wounds of a quiescent udder usually heal, but if the cow is in milk and the lesions involve the teats it is exceedingly difficult to heal the wound, as the irritation delays or interrupts the healing process. The following lotion is one of the very best to use for teat wound: Tinct. iodine, 2 ounces; tinct. arnica, 2 ounces; glycerine, 2 ounces; comp. tinct. benzoine, 2 ounces. Mix and apply twice daily after washing with 5 per cent solution carbolic acid and castile soap. Your milk tube must be an ancient one as all milk tubes of today are self-retainers and could not slip into the udder. Care must be taken to boil the tube previous to each using as you may cause an infection of the udder by a filthy tube. Injury to Udder. I have a cow which has a gathering in the back of her udder which seems to be some sort of injury. It has been there but a few days. This injury was caused by a blow or traumatism. Thoroughly scrape out the diseased tissue and after washing with sheep-dip water (tablespoon to one quart) apply the following powder: Mix the following powder and apply it to the wound: Iodoform, 1 drachm; boric acid, 1 ounce; alum, 1/2 ounce; zinc oxide, 1/2 ounce. Be sure and insert this powder into the bottom of the wound, so that it will reach all diseased parts. Blind Teat. What can I do for a "blind teat"? The cow has just freshened and that quarter of her udder is very full, but there is no milk in the teat. I have been rubbing and greasing the udder. The blind quarter is slightly inflamed. An artificial opening should be made in the teat at once. Call in the nearest physician unless you have a regular graduate veterinarian near. Cow Pox. I have a yearling heifer which is in fine condition and making good growth. But all four of her teats have sores on them and are mostly covered with scabs. It is probably cow pox. Give a physic of glauber and epsom salts mixed 4 ounces of each to the heifer and double the dose to the cow. Apply externally, once daily, after washing, the following prescription: Zinc ointment, 4 ounces; iodoform, 1/2 ounce; glycerine, 2 ounces; carbolic acid, 2 drachms. Mix thoroughly and apply. to sores. Cause of "Loss of Cud." About three months ago a pure-bred Jersey commenced to fail on her milk and soon went dry, although on good feed. Did not seem to be sick, but did not eat ravenously as she generally did, and little was thought of it. During the past six weeks she has failed rapidly. Does not chew her cud, froths at the mouth, runs at the eyes, and when she eats anything much it bloats her. In fact, she seems bloated all the time. She is lifeless and will hardly move around, getting very thin, and hair standing the wrong way. Is there such a thing as a cow losing her cud? Most people imagine a cow's cud is something material. As a matter of fact, in a certain sense the words appetite and cud are synonymous. You can say a cow has lost her appetite or a cow has lost her cud. Now, any sickness severe enough will cause a cow to lose her appetite. The bloating is caused from indigestion secondary to some organic disease, probably tuberculosis. Keep up the cow's strength by giving condensed floods or drenches of egg-nogg, gruel or greens. Give warm salt-water injections twice daily and give the following mixture: Quinine sulphate, 2 ounces; Antipyrine, 1 ounce; ammonia muriate, 3 ounces; alcohol, 1 quart; water 1 quart. Mix; give 2 ounces every four hours. Calf Dysentery. I would like to know the reason for bloody discharges from the bowels of a young six-day-old calf. There is a looseness of the bowels and the blood is intermingled with the excrement. There is not a profuse amount of blood, nor is it very dark in color, and it seems to be accompanied with mucus or light, thick substance. This is dysentery, due to scours so prevalent in calves. Give 6 ounces olive oil, 4 drachms bismuth subnitrate and 1 drachm Pearson's creoline. The discharge is very dangerous to other animals. Bovine Rheumatism. Our Jersey cow got somewhat lame one year ago in one hip or leg after calving but soon got better. Last June when she came in one leg was lame. It seems to be in the stiffle joint and the first one above. When she walks she gets real lame. Rheumatism is the trouble here. Give the following powder: Soda salicylate, 3 ounces; salol, 2 ounces; pulv. gentian root, 2 ounces. Mix and make 24 powders. Give four daily. Apply Pratt's, a good veterinary liniment. Bleeding for Blackleg. I have read several articles on blackleg, and it seems strange to me that no mention is made of an operation that is an absolute preventive, namely, bleeding in the feet. The reason that no special mention of bleeding is made is that it is not now considered the preventive that it once was. Some people appear to have fair success with it, and others no success at all. The Bureau of Animal Industry states that the evidence indicates that bleeding, nerving, roweling or setoning have neither curative nor protective value and, therefore, should be discarded for vaccination which is now widely used as a preventive. Poor Feeding, Depraved Appetite. I have three cows. They have been fed alfalfa hay all winter and are in very good condition and seem otherwise in good health, and have salt to run to. Every time they chance to come to the yard they will pick up on old bone and chew it for perhaps a half hour. I always take the bone away from them when I discover it. These cows have a depraved appetite, owing to the fact the tissues of the body are crying out for something lacking that is required in the system. Administer the following powder; also put a lump of lime in the watering trough: Pulv. gentian, 1 ounce; pulv. elm bark, 2 ounces; pulv. iron sulphate, 1 ounce; pulv. bicarb. soda, 4 ounces; pulv. aniseed, 2 ounces; pulv. red pepper 1/2 ounce; pulv. oilcake meal 10 pounds. Mix thoroughly and give a tablespoonful in scalded grain once daily. Cows Swallowing Foreign Substances. We recently lost a valuable cow, and when we opened her we found a large tumor or abscess at the top of the heart as large as a gallon jar. What caused it, or is there any danger of other cows taking it, and if so, what can we do? This is a common disease among cows and is called traumatic pericarditis. The trouble arises from the habit of the cows picking up foreign substances such as wire, nails, or hairpins, and swallowing them. They are taken into the paunch and the digestive movements of this organ cause the foreign body to penetrate the lining and enter the heart, where it gradually causes death as it enters deeper. It is very common to find nails, etc., in the stomachs of old dairy cows which are killed at the slaughter-houses. If you had examined the animal carefully, you would find that some foreign body had penetrated the heart and caused death. There is no danger of any contagion arising from your cow. Defective Urination. I have a cow that seems to be in good health and gives plenty of milk. Nearly every morning when she is being milked she seems to want to urinate and will stand letting the water drip from her. This trouble often results from the cows eating alkaline hay. Give her two quarts of flaxseed tea daily. Mix it with her food in which there has been placed one-half teaspoon of powdered Buchu. Infectious Conjunctivitis (Sore Eyes). I have several cows and heifers that are affected with sore eyes. The disease first makes its appearance by excessive watering of the eyes; then the center or pupil becomes white and later turns red of bloodshot. Bathe thoroughly with the normal salt solution (teaspoon salt to 1 pint warm water), after which place in the eye and all around the mucuous membrane of the eye the following: Twenty-five per cent solution of argyrol, one-half ounce; apply thoroughly once daily and keep out of the sunlight if possible. Another treatment is: Bathe the eyes once daily with boracic acid 1 teaspoon, water 1 pint, after which thoroughly saturate the eyelids and eyes with 1 to 10,000 solution of bichloride of mercury. You are dealing with a disease that will spread throughout your herd if you do not take proper means to separate the affected from the well ones. What to Do Against Tuberculous Milk. I should like to know what could be done with a dairy where cows are dying with tuberculosis and the owner knows, but is selling the milk. The case should be reported to F. W. Andreason, Secretary of the State Dairy Bureau, at San Francisco, for investigation by an inspector. If conditions are found as represented, the sale of milk will be prevented, as it is contrary to State law to sell milk from sick cows. County boards of health have also authority to prevent the sale of such milk in the county on the ground that this is a menace to the public health. Effects of Ill-Feeding Pigs. I have a couple of pigs, out of about 75 head farrowed last spring, which seem to have the staggers. They are looking fairly well, feed well on pasture and at feeding time are right there making as much noise as the others. They run around as if they had a shot too much. Your pigs are suffering from acute indigestion, undoubtedly due to improper feeding. Cut down the rations, especially if they are getting grain. Give sick pigs two tablespoonfuls of castor oil each. Sore Eyes in Pigs. What is the matter with young pigs when their eyes swell shut? Before they shut they look as if there was a white milky scum over them. There is some infection present, and a good cleaning up in needed. The sows and pigs should be dipped in a warm solution of some coal-tar disinfectant, and the quarters thoroughly cleaned and disinfected or changed to a dry warm place. The pigs' eyes should be washed with warm water and a few drops of the following solution dropped into eyes once a day for a few days: Have druggist prepare a 1 per cent solution of silver nitrate. After applying this the eyes had better be washed a few minutes later with water to which a little common salt has been added. Hog Cholera. I have a number of pigs which have been ailing for three weeks or so. They discharge a yellowish kind of manure at times, running of the bowels. The most striking symptom seems to be a partial paralysis of the hindquarters. The hogs will be walking along and seem to lose control of their hing legs. It seems to be spreading to the other hogs and a number have already died. Their appetite is poor. This is undoubtedly hog cholera. The owner should appeal to the Experiment Station at Berkeley for serum and treat all well hogs and clean up as thoroughly as possible. The matter should also be reported to the State Veterinarian at Sacramento. Pneumonia in Pigs. What is the disease which may be said to confine itself, with few exceptions, to young pigs weighing 100 pounds or less? Its symptoms are at first sneezing and a mild cough. These quickly change to hard coughing and labored breathing, which as the disease progresses shows evidence of much pain. The appetite is lost and the eyes become gummed and inflamed. In some cases the pig lingers on for weeks, while in others death occurs almost immediately. Vomiting sometimes occurs. It is pneumonia and in its treatment "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Once pneumonia gets a foothold in a hog, the chances are so strongly in favor of death that recovery may be considered out of the question. Since remedies are not certain in the cure of pneumonia, it will be found that the prevention of the disease is the only real way to combat it. The main causes of the disease are exposure to draughts, sudden changes in temperature, damp beds, manure heaps as sleeping quarters, and exposure to the disease itself. Pigs in thin condition or weak constitutionally are more liable to contract the trouble than pigs in good flesh and healthy specimens. Good, dry, warm, comfortable sleeping houses, well ventilated and so arranged as to prevent crowding and piling up, will, I think, do more to prevent pneumonia than any other one thing. Some such preparation as advocated by the Government for the prevention of hog cholera will help keep the stock in a good healthy condition, the better to combat exposure. It is the little attentions that keep the herd healthy and in a vigorous condition, and by using simple preventatives, remedies will he found unnecessary. - H. B. Wintringham. General Prescription for Hog Sickness. My hogs seem to be mangy and scabby, but am unable to find any lice on them. They eat well, but vomit a good deal and are falling off in flesh. They may be affected with a chronic type of cholera, and this should be determined by some one who can see the hogs. Make a general cleaning up of the hogs and quarters, using a dip and repeating in ten days. Hogs have a true mange as well as other animals. A change of feed may also be needed, depending on what is being fed and how the hogs are managed. Green alfalfa pasture with a moderate feed of shorts or middlings of wheat and ground barley made into a slop would be a good ration. Evidently there is some digestive trouble here, and a dose of croton oil (3 drops) mixed in a teaspoonful of raw linseed oil for each hog would be beneficial. Charcoal, ashes, salt and a little epsom salts would be of benefit to tone the digestion. The oil should be carefully mixed in the slop. Pigs Out of Condition. Of a litter of pigs weaned about a month several of them have itchy scabs on their legs, ears and noses, and those having white feet show reddish spots through the hoofs. They did not get it until after they were weaned. They are fed on soaked whole barley and have alfalfa pasture. Put the pigs on a slop composed of wheat middlings and barley ground fine, with the hulls removed, and milk, or, in the absence of milk about 8 or 10 per cent of meat meal to which add some good stock food. Dip them with some standard brand of dip or apply crude oil to be sure that they were free from lice, fleas, etc. Give them good, clean, comfortable sleeping quarters and trust to nature to do the rest. Paralysis of Sow. During the last few days one of my sows appears to be paralyzed in her hind quarters and now cannot use her hind legs at all. She is about a year old and is due to farrow her first litter in and about six weeks. It is paralysis due to advanced pregnancy. Give 4 ounces castor oil and 4 ounces olive oil. She will recover after parturition. Rickets in Hogs. A fine boar, 16 months old, weight about 380 pounds, well built, with little surplus fat, until lately has been very thrifty, but appears to be losing control over his legs. Can't step over the smallest stick without falling forward and acts like a foundered animal. He carries his back rather arching since this trouble came on. During my absence from home a hired man gave this boar a good beating with a pick handle, and it appears to have been the beginning of his troubles. This disease is Osteo Rachitis (rickets). The abuse has probably aggravated the symptoms: This condition is due to a lack of hardening principles in the bones. Give 4 ounces of cod liver oil daily and plenty of lime water to drink. It will be all right to use him for breeding when he recovers. In addition to good food and pure water give daily a handful of a mixture of principally ashes and burned barley (charcoal) with the usual addition of salt, sulphur and soda. This mixture is good: Pulv. dried, iron sulphate, 4 ounces; soda bi-carbonate, 8 ounces; soda salicylate, 2 drachms; pulv. aniseed, 4 ounces. Mix and give one-half teaspoonful twice daily. Pigs Losing Tails. We have five pigs, 17 days old, and when they were farrowed they had rings around the roots of their tails, and now their tails are dropping off. This is caused by interference with circulation before birth. Apply tinct. iodine around the affected parts once daily and if it shows no signs of improvement after one week amputate. Over-Fat Sow. My brood sow is awfully fat; how should I feed her so that she don't get too fat? She is bred and it will be her third litter. She was running in the vineyard all winter, and I fed her a handful of barley every day or a few potatoes. Now she has free access to my growing barley field, and I give her half a dozen potatoes every day. You need not worry about getting her thin. She simply requires less food. An animal excessively fat brings forth an inferior offspring. Musty Corn for Pigs. Would Egyptian corn that has been musty and then dried in the sun be fit for pigs? It heated and musted quite a good deal, but is dried well. The idea is, to grind it and then feed it in milk if good. It is very dangerous to feed any stock moldy or musty food, especially pregnant animals. It is this kind of food which causes a majority of the abortions. Mold or smut in food is poisonous both to man and beast. It is usually almost impossible to get out of feed because it runs throughout the structure of the hay or grain. Wounds and Wound Swellings. What is the proper treatment for a fresh wire cut on a horse? How should saddle galls be treated? Is there any way to make the hair come in its natural color where saddle galls have been? How can an enlargement of a colt's leg, caused from a wire cut, be reduced? After all foreign matter has been removed from a lacerated wound, like that made in a wire cut, the wound should be carefully fomented with warm water, to which has been added carbolic acid in the proportion of 1 part to 100 of water. It should then be bandaged to prevent infection. Zinc ointment would be a good thing to use under the bandage. For a simple saddle, or harness gall, some ointment like the following should be applied and the wound rested up: One pint alcohol in which are shaken the whites of 2 eggs; a solution of nitrate of silver, 10 grains to the ounce of water; sugar of lead or sulphate of zinc, 20 grains to an ounce of water; and so on. Or advertised gall cures may be applied. If a sitfest has developed, the dead hornlike slough must be cut out and the wound treated with antiseptics. There is no way we know of to make hair come in with natural color after a wound. The swelling on the colt's leg may he reduced by rubbing it well several times a day and at night rub in some 10 per cent iodine petrogen. Fly Repellants. Can you tell me what to use as a spray to kill the flies in my stable? In the early, morning the ceiling and sides are thickly covered with the pests partly dormant but not enough so that they can be swept down and killed. What spray can I use that will destroy them? It is difficult to kill flies by spraying them. You can, however, spray the sides and ceiling of the barn with a spray of epsom salts (sulphate of magnesia) using about a cupful to the gallon, which will prevent them from gathering there. And since prevention is better than cure, flies can be kept from gathering around by, destroying their breeding places, if those are under one's control, by having all manure and litter removed before the flies have a chance to develop. The following may be found useful to readers as a spray to keep away flies: Fish oil, 2 quarts; kerosene, 1 quart; crude carbolic acid, 1 pint; oil of pennyroyal, 1 ounce; oil of tar; 10 ounces. Mix thoroughly and apply in a fine spray. The following has been successfully used to repel flies from cows: Nitro benzine, 5 ounces; carbolic acid, 3 ounces; kerosene oil, 3 ounces; sol. formaldehyde, 1 ounce; fish oil, 1 1/2 quarts. Mix and just touch the hair with the mixture. To Destroy Fleas. My barn, is full, of fleas I tried to destroy them by using creso-dip, but did not kill them, all. Fleas can only be permanently checked by destroying their breeding places which are in the dust! and dirt that accumulate in cracks and corners around barns, sheds and dwellings. Follow the cleaning up with a thorough distribution of flake naphthalene. This is most effective where the stable or room can be closed tight for half a day, or even 24 hours; An ingenious suggestion is made that if a sheep can be let run in and around the buildings where the fleas breed, they will soon be less numerous and as new batches hatch out the sheep will soon get them picked up, and after a while the place will be entirely free of them. But the sheep must be allowed to run all around the sheds and breeding places, as the flea jumps up, gets into the wool, and can never get out again. A hog can also be used as a flea trap. One reader says: Pour a little of the crude oil on the hogs' heads and along their backs, about a gill on each hog; This would run down the sides of the hogs and kill all the fleas on them. The oil also remains on the hogs for several days, and all the fleas that jump on the hogs from the ground stick fast and never jump off again. In about three weeks the fleas all disappear and the hogs look fine and sleek from the use of the oil. Part VIII. Poultry Keeping Largely compiled from the writings of Mrs. W. Russell James and Mrs. Susan Swapgood. Teaching Chicks to Perch. What is a good method of breaking in young brooder chicks to use the roosts? At from six to eight weeks old the chicks should be taken from the brooder quarters to the colony houses and range, or wherever they are to be located, and at this time they should be taught to perch. Have the new quarters arranged with low wide perches (1 by 3-inch scantlings); also make slatted frames by nailing lath or other such narrow strips two inches apart. Set these frames against the wall so that they will extend slant-wise under the perches, and have the corners on the other side of the room cut off by nailing boards across them. The chicks will run up on the frame to find a huddling corner and land on the perches, as they cannot rest on the open slanting frame. A little care for a few evenings in putting up those that remain on the floor and straightening them out on the perches will teach them the ropes. Where there are but a few to be taught, all that is necessary is to provide the low wide perches and shut out the corners, and a few of the smart ones will soon take to the perches, and gradually others will follow until all will be roosting. Liver Disease. I have hens which seem well in every respect up to the time of their combs changing color, when they die within three days. The combs turn a faint yellow, almost white; they are heavy, have their usual appetite up to the lost 24 hours. I have treated by giving small doses of castor oil and Douglas mixture in the drinking water, feeding on dry mash with plenty of green feed. There is no tendency to lameness nor limp neck. The droppings are loose and very white. The fowls were victims of jaundice, which is a form of liver disease and caused by over-feeding on rich starchy foods that also cause fowls to become overfat. However, at the end of the laying season and the beginning of the molt the poultry keeper will lose some hens, even when kept under the best conditions, and especially hens of that age. In doctoring such cases in the way described, if the fowl does not improve in a couple of days, the hatchet cure is the most profitable. Rupture of Oviduct. I have had two other hens die suddenly when on the nest. The second one - we opened and found one egg broken near the vent and another with shell formed ready to be laid. Rupture of the oviduct was probably the cause of the hens dying on the nest and is due to the same condition in the hens; that is, the straining to expel the egg necessary in the engorged condition of the internal organs from overfatness. Melons for Fowls. Have "stock melons" or "citrons" any merit as a green food for laying hens? Are the seeds of the above injurious to hens or cows? Stock melons are desirable for chicken feeding if other succulent materials are scarce, but they are inferior to alfalfa and other clovers. Seeds are not injurious to stock unless possibly one should feed to excess by separating them from the other tissues. If melons are fed as they grow, no apprehension need be had from injury by seed. Rape and Vetch for Chickens. What time do you sow rape and vetch and are they good for chickens? They surely are good for chickens or for any other stock that likes greens. They are winter growers in California valleys and should be sown in the fall as soon as the land is moist enough to keep them growing, or just as soon as you can get it moist either by rainfall or irrigation. Neither plant likes dry heat or dry soil. Preserving Eggs. What is a good way to preserve eggs for home use? In a cool cellar, eggs will keep very well in a mixture of common salt and bran. Use equal parts, mix well, and as you gather the eggs from day to day pack with big end down in the mixture and see that the eggs are covered. Waterglass eggs are good enough for cooking purposes, but when boiled anyone that knows the taste of a strictly fresh egg can tell the difference in an instant; when fried the taste is not so pronounced, but it is there just the same; besides, when broken, they are a little watery. This watery condition passes off if left to stand for a few minutes. The best way is to use the waterglass method, is one quart of waterglass to ten quarts of water. Boil the water and put away to cool, when cold add the waterglass, mixing well, and store in 3 or 5-gallon crocks in a cool place. They will keep six months if good when put in. In all cases the eggs must be gathered very fresh, for one stale egg will spoil the whole lot, so great care is needed. Dipping Fowls. How do you dip hens to kill lice? To dip fowls you must have a very warm day, or a warm room where you can turn them in to dry. I have know people to use tobacco stems, but it requires good judgment as to the right strength to use. The dips usually sold already prepared are safer, in my opinion, because they give directions as to quantity. Get a can of "zenoleum" or "creolium" - either is good - and have the water a little over blood-heat to commence; be very careful that the liquid does not get in the fowl's throat. If there are no directions with the cans, put enough in to make the water quite milky and strong smelling. It is best to make the hen sit down and with a sponge wet the back and head thoroughly, then under the wings and breast; if there are nits, don't be in a hurry to take the hen out, but let the dip get to the nits and skin on the abdomen. If the water is too warm it will be dangerous, as some fowls have weak hearts; that is the only danger, providing you dry them quickly. Cure for Feather-Eating. What is the cure for feather-eating? Feather eating is the result of idleness or a shortage of green feed. The best way to cure it is to furnish the fowls with exercise. Boil some oats until soft, and when cooked stir in salt enough to taste and about a quart of good beef scrap; feed this for breakfast several mornings together. Make them scratch for the rest of their food in deep litter and give them sour milk to drink if you have it. If sour milk is not available, put a tablespoonful of flowers of sulphur in the boiled oats. The object is to cool the blood and furnish exercise. See that the fowls are supplied with mineral matter, such ash shells, bone meal and some, sand if it can be had. It is surprising the amount of sand that chickens will eat when carried to them in yards, so there must be a necessity for it, and if they cannot get to it, it pays to carry a good box full once in a while. Cannibal Chicks. What can I do to cure my chicks of eating each other? Some kind of animal food is necessary when the chicks begin to pick toes, wings and vents. But the meat must always be cooked, the least bit of raw meat drives them wild as does the blood they can bring on each other. For that reason a strict watch must be kept to detect any case before blood is brought. Remove all weak chicks as they always go for the weakest, and as soon as one chick is picked on for a victim, remove it at once. Some people paint the toes with tar or liquid lice paint, but I have had the best success with bitter aloes mixed with water. A nickel's worth covers a lot of toes. It is best to buy a powder, then dissolve in a little water and paint wings, vent and toes. They won't take many pecks at them when they find they are so bitter. Sunflower Seeds for Poultry. What is the food value of sunflower seed as a ration for fowls, mostly laying hens? Should it be fed whole or crushed? Sunflower seed is rich in oil, having the same proportion as flaxseed; otherwise it rates in value the same as grain. A little, not too much, fed whole is well relished by fowls and is said to give luster to the plumage in fitting birds for shows. Sunflower is greatly overrated for poultry purposes. It is an ungainly plant of no use for forage and its seed is so well liked by the sparrows that the only way to keep them till ripe is to cover the heads with netting. Clipping Hens for Cleanliness. My hens foul all the feathers below the vent; they appear healthy, but do not look nice. What can I do? Take a pair of scissors and clip the fluff away from that part of the abdomen, give a teaspoonful of olive oil, and notice of they have any discharge that is of an offensive color or odor. Sometimes it is nothing but pure laziness with hens of the large breeds that causes this matting together of the fluff below the vent. We rarely see hens of the small breeds so affected. Whenever a hen soils her feathers clip her at once, and, in fact, it is a good custom to follow in any case. When hens are very heavily fluffed it interferes with the fertility of the eggs. In such cases there is not anything for it but the scissors. Bowel Trouble in Chicks. What is the cause of bowel trouble in young chicks, and what to do for it? Bowel trouble in very young chicks is usually caused by a chill. It is very hard for us here to believe chicks get chilled because, not feeling the cold ourselves, we forget that chicks have really undergone a violent change from incubator to the outside atmosphere. In the Eastern States, great care is exercised in moving chicks from incubator to brooder oven, and also in seeing that the brooder itself is warm and fit to receive the chicks. But we are, as a rule, very careless in these little matters and the chicks feel the change and suffer from bowel trouble. Sometimes, of course, the trouble may be traced to the food, but more often it comes from a chill. The best way to cure it is to remove the chicks to new ground at once, or if in a brooder, clean it out well and spray with some disinfectant. Boil all the water that is given to the chicks and feed boiled rice once or twice a day in which a little cinnamon is mixed. Do not put in too much or they will not eat it, keep all meat away and just feed dry chick feed and boiled rice. No oatmeal or any other cereal but the rice; if chicks won't eat it, feed dry chick feed and boiled water and a little lettuce. Quick Roosters and Laying Hens. How can I get the young roosters off quick and the hens to lay in winter? These two happy results come from correct methods of poultry keeping from the ground up. To get the cockerels off quick, they must be hatched from strong-germed eggs, incubated properly and kept growing from the first jump out of the shell. To get eggs in winter the pullets must come from the same conditions. Very few hens will lay in the early winter under any conditions. The pullets must be depended upon for that season and the hens kept properly will drop in some time in January. Poultry Tonic. What is a good poultry tonic? The following is a very good tonic for general purposes: Tincture of red cinchona, 1 fluid ounce; tincture of chloride of iron, 1 fluid drachm; tincture of flux vomica, 4 fluid drachms; glycerine 2 ounces; water, 2 ounces. Mix and give one teaspoonful to a quart of water, allowing no other drink. Poultry in the Orchard. Kindly advise me about keeping hens in an orchard. I would like to know if they will injure the trees in any way if kept in large numbers. In what way would they benefit the trees? From the point of view of the trees there is no doubt that they would be advantaged by the presence of the poultry, providing the coops are not allowed to interfere with the proper irrigation and cultivation. If it is practicable to handle the fowls in coops without causing the soil around the coops to become compacted by continual tramping, and if they are not kept upon the ground long enough to cause an excessive application of hen manure, which is very concentrated and stimulating, the result would unquestionably be beneficial. From the point of view of the tree, this benefit of injury would depend upon how long the fowls were kept around the tree and the maintenance of them in such a way that the soil should not become out of condition physically or too rich chemically for the satisfactory performance of the tree. If they can be moved frequently, and if they are only put in place when the soil is in such condition that tramping around the coops will not seriously compact it, the presence of fowls would be an advantage. On the other hand, if the coops are to be kept in place for a long time and all the ground outside of them crusted and hardened by tramping and the soil under the coops overloaded with droppings, the thrift and value of the trees will be seriously interfered with. Caponizing. Can three to four month old cockerels be caponized successfully in summer, and if so, what care, feed, etc., do they require afterwards? The birds should be between two to three months, not over four, unless some very large variety that matures slowly. Size is equally important as age, and a bird to be caponized should not weigh more than one and a half pounds. The work can be successfully done in the summer season, but the fowl must be kept without food or drink for at least 24 hours, longer is better and keep in shady place. After caponizing, feed the bird what soft feed he will eat up and let him have plenty of water. Then leave him to himself as he will be his own doctor. In two or three days look them over and if there are any wind-balls, simply prick with a needle to let the air out; this may have to be done two or three times before the wound heals up, but after it has healed, treat just as you would other chickens and feed them about twice a day. There is nothing made by trying to rush nature; it takes fifteen months to grow a good capon of the large breeds. Roup Treatment. Up to a week ago the chickens had been exceptionally well in every way. Now they seem to have a cold and a running at the nose and with it a bad odor. It was suggested that this might be the beginning of roup, but I see no swell-head. The distinguishing characteristic of roup is not so-called "swell head" or other form of cold, but the offensive roupy odor. When the cold has reached this stage it is a pronounced case of roup, and highly contagious. Separate all the ailing fowls and segregate them in comfortable hospital quarters, warm but with one side partly open for fresh air. Disinfect the quarters of the well fowls by spraying with distillate or cheap-grade coal oil and sprinkling the floors and about the houses with air-slaked lime. Use some simple remedy like coal oil or permanganate of potash to cleanse the throat and nostrils. With coal oil, first wipe the eyes and bill with a clean cloth dipped in the coal oil, then inject with a sewing-machine oil can enough coal oil to open and thoroughly clean out the nostrils. If the throat is affected, give a tablespoonful of sweet oil and coal oil, half and half, two or three times a day until relieved. One of our correspondents has sent us the following treatment with permanganate of potash which he has found the best roup remedy he has ever tried: Dissolve 1 ounce of permanganate of potash in 3 pints of water, hold the fowl's head in this for a second, then open the beak and rinse out the mouth in the solution. Wipe with a clean, soft cloth and apply a very little witch hazel or carbolated salve to the eyes, nostrils and head. Repeat the operation as often as the throat and head become clogged with mucus. Until the disease is eliminated from the premises, keep permanganate of potash in the drinking water of all the fowls, both sick and well. About 1 ounce to each 2 gallons of water or enough to give the water a claret color. The sick fowls should be allowed no other feed but a little stimulating mash three times a day. Where the fowls do not show a decided improvement in the course of a few days, or where the disease has assumed a violent form, all such birds should be killed and the bodies burned at once. Bad Food for Chickens. My chicks are about three weeks old and have always been strong and sturdy, but when taken sick first appear a little dumpish, then the head seems a little heavy and the neck lengthens out. As the disease advances they become staggery. Your chicks have eaten soured food, decayed vegetables or tainted meat. Baby chicks are just like other babies and the same care should be used that their food be always sweet and fresh. Wet food should never be given chicks, nor raw meat nor anything the least bit tainted or stale. Put a teaspoon of coal oil in each pint of drinking water and see to it that the latter is kept pure and cool. Mix a teacup of sulphur with enough bran or shorts for each 100 chicks, moisten with sweet milk and feed it on clean boards, what the chicks will eat up clean in some, twenty minutes. Give them one feed of this each day for three days if the weather is dry. Clean the brooders and runs daily, then dust white with air-slacked lime and cover the lime with a sprinkling of clean sand. Rake and clean up the yards where they range and never let them eat any of their grain or food out of dirt and filth. You cannot doctor such small chicks and must depend upon the coal oil in the drinking water. Keep the water fresh, but add the coal oil until the chicks are relieved. Open-Front Chicken Houses. In what direction shall I face open-front poultry houses? North or northeast is the proper direction to face the open fronts of poultry houses and coops in the Pacific Coast climate. The prevailing winds are from the south and southeast in the winter, and from the west and southwest in the summer. The occasional north winds or "northers," may be called dry winds, in fact, are an indication of dry weather, and so do not harm the fowls even when cold. We like the upper half of the north-end or slide of our poultry houses open with inch-mesh covering the open space and the eaves extending several inches as a protection. In case of an unusual storm from that direction, one thickness of burlap may be tacked to the edge of the extending eaves, and to the lower part of the opening. This will admit plenty of fresh air while breaking the force of the wind. We also have a large trap door for the use of the fowls, in the solid lower part of the open end, and the large door, for cleaning and sunning the house, in the west side. A Point on Mating. I have fine roosters a year old this April; would you advise keeping them for mating with the same hens next season, or do you advise selling each year and getting fresh stock? The young males will be all right to mate with the same hens next season - that is, if they come through the molt with vigor. They will be just two years old and at their best. The molt is the test for both, hens and cocks. If they show no signs of ailing or weakness during that period, it is proof of the proper stamina and vigor. Age for Mating. At what age may a cockerel be mated with hens? From nine months to a year is the proper age to mate a Leghorn cockerel. Cockerels of the larger breeds should not be mated before a year old. White-Yolk Eggs. Why are eggs watery and light-colored? The trouble is in the feed somewhere. Too much green feed, especially green feed that springs from wet, soggy ground, will sometimes make the eggs watery. Or if you are feeding more mash feed than dry grain, it will have that tendency. Some people claim that the feed a hen eats does not affect the egg at all; but if it does not, why do eggs differ in color and quality? Eggs that are laid by hens fed wholly on wheat, or the by-products of wheat, such as bran, shorts or middlings, all have a pale yolk. Now feed the hens some green feed - any kind will do - and the eggs from the same hens will have a yolk several degrees or shades darker. Poultry Diarrhea. Will you kindly tell me the cause and cure for bowel trouble among hens? The "quick cure" for chick diarrhea has not yet been found. Prevention is the only sure remedy. The first treatment in diarrhea (which must not be confused with simple looseness of the bowels) should be a mild physic to clean out the digestive tract. Epsom salts is probably best for this purpose where a number of fowls are to be treated. This is usually given in the drinking water, but Dr. Morse, who has charge of the investigation of poultry diseases in the Bureau of Animal Industry, gives the following directions for administering the salts: "Clean out by giving epsom salts in an evening mash, estimating one-third to one-half teaspoonful to each adult bird, or a teaspoonful to each six half-grown chicks, carefully proportioning the amount of mash to the appetite of the birds, so that the whole will be eaten up quickly." For a few days afterward, feed only lightly with dry grain and tender greens, such as fresh-cut mustard and lettuce leaves. Keep plenty of pure, cool water, with just a thin skim of coal oil - one drop to each pint - for drinking; also plenty of sharp grit and fresh charcoal broken to the size of grains of wheat. Limber-Neck. A very peculiar disease is taking off my fowls. The head of the fowl bends down to the breast and the fowl looks like dead, there is also a slight discharge from the mouth. The head and tail droop and if the fowl could stand up they would almost touch. When a fowl loses partial or entire control of the muscles of the neck the common name of the affection is limber-neck. In medical science limber-neck is regarded as a symptom rather than a disease, and may be due to a number of causes, such as derangement of the digestive organs, intestinal worms and ptomaine poisoning. The affected fowls should be given immediately a full tablespoon of fresh melted lard or sweet oil, to which has been added a scant teaspoonful, of coal oil. In an hour repeat the dose. For a few days the fowls should be fed on some light food, such as shorts scalded with sweet milk in which has been dissolved a level teaspoonful of baking soda to every pint of milk, and also allowed plenty of crisp, tender lettuce or similar greens. A little Epsom salts should be added to the drinking water for a few days. This treatment, if resorted to at the start, will be effectual, but if the poisoning has had its course long, nothing will save the bird. Chicken Pox. My one and two-year-old fowls are getting scabby combs. It starts with a round blackish spot and swells into many spots, finally nearly covering one side of the comb. Sometimes accompanying this is the closing of one eye, and later both eyes. The trouble is chicken pox, which is a very contagious disease. A treatment which has been successful consists in bathing the sores with strong salt and water and giving the fowls a mash containing one teaspoonful of calcium sulphide for each 25 hens. With a large flock of hens the method successfully employed by one of the large coast ranches in stamping out an epidemic of the disease was to place a sulphur smudge, to which had been added a little carbolic acid, in the poultry house after the fowls had gone to roost. This was allowed to remain till the fowls began to sneeze, when it was instantly removed. The affected fowls were also treated by dipping the heads in a solution of permanganate of potash. Roup in Turkeys. My turkeys have a disease that is spreading rapidly. They commence with a running at the nose, have swelling under the eyes which are filled with pus. This is clearly a case of cold developing into roup. Get one ounce of permanganate of potash and pour a quart of boiling water over; after it is cold, bottle for use. Now take an old tin can, three parts full of warm, not hot water, and drop in enough of the permanganate of potash to make it dark red. Hold the turk's head under in this can until it needs breath then give it time to breathe, and dip again. Press the fingers along the swollen parts towards the nostrils and get out all the pus you can, then take a sewing-machine oil can and fill it with a little of the mixture, and part olive oil, inject the liquid up the nostrils and in the cleft of the mouth. Put a little of the permanganate in the drinking water for all the flock. Make the water a light red, later it will turn to a dirty brown, but don't mind that. Disinfectants. What can I use to disinfect poultry belongings? Sulphuric acid spray is good, but you will need to be very careful that you do not get it on the hands or clothing. Get 16 ounces sulphuric acid (50 per cent solution), water 6 gallons. Have the water in a wooden tub or barrel and add the sulphuric acid to the water very slowly, in order not to splash it on the flesh or clothes. But mind: nothing but wooden vessels to mix it in. When made according to directions, and of this strength it is a very valuable disinfectant, but is dangerous to use of any stronger mixing. After mixing, it can be stored in glass bottles or earthenware jugs. Another very good disinfectant for poultry houses and runs is the formaldehyde disinfectant. Formaldehyde 1 pint (40 per cent), water 2 gallons. This is fine for houses that you can shut up. Turn the fowls out of the building, close all windows, and spray thoroughly, then close the door and leave it do the work. Air well by opening windows and door several hours before the fowls go to roost. Cloth for Brooding Houses. Would some good grade of white cloth on a frame do as well, or would it be better than glass, for a brooder house, or would it keep out too much sun-heat? Cheesecloth, not heavy cloth, would be better than glass, so far as the sun is concerned. There would be none of the overheating during the middle of the day followed by the chilling at night which are caused by a large expanse of glass. On the other hand, there should not be openings on opposite sides of the house to create a draft. Also, the rat and vermin question must be considered. It might be necessary to have wire screens made to fit firmly over the cloth at night. Grains for Chickens. What variety of grain adopted for poultry food will be the best to grow, with and also without irrigation? Wheat is a standard grain for poultry feeding, and Egyptian corn is also largely used. Indian corn is also satisfactory, under the general roles for compounding poultry rations which are laid down by all authorities on the subject. Egyptian corn is very successful in the interior parts of the State, and, on lands which are winter-plowed and harrow to retain moisture, very satisfactory results can be secured by summer growth without irrigation from planting as soon as frost danger is over. Plucking Ducks and Geese. I would like to know about how, when and how often to pick old ducks so as to get the feathers for pillows and not kill the ducks, either. Will they lay any eggs while growing new feathers? Neither ducks nor geese should be plucked until after the laying season is over, which will be in July. Just before the moult, when the feathers begin to loosen, they may be plucked again. Those most considerate of their birds make only this latter plucking, which does not greatly inconvenience the fowls. At no time must they be plucked unless the feathers are "ripe"; that is, dry at the root, so that no bleeding or injury to the skin is caused. An old stocking is drawn over the head of the victim, and the bird held in the plucker's lap on a burlap apron; then the soft feathers on the body are quickly and very gently removed; but those on the side of the body which support the wings should not be taken. Great care should be exercised not to injure the skin or pinfeathers or pull the down. To grow new feathers quickly and resume laying are matters which depend largely upon the condition of the bird and the feed. The latter should consist of some 15 per cent of animal food. Feeding Hens for Hatching Eggs. Should soft feed be given to the mothers of chicks intended for broilers? How about dry mash? How would you advise feeding animal protein? Cut out all ground feed, except perhaps a little wheat bran. While you may not get quite as many eggs, they will all have good strong germs and the chicks will stand forcing to the limit, while if you force the egg output you reduce the vitality of the germs and livability of chicks hatched. The only way to feed hens whose eggs are intended for hatching chicks for broilers is to feed whole grain and make them exercise for it, good green feed, or, better still, sprouted oats, and feed beef scrap in a hopper all the time. At first, while it is new, they may eat more than you would give them but don't mind that they will regulate the quantity in a few days better than you can. Get a good grade of beef scrap and keep it in a hopper that will not let rain in or keep it under cover and feed all the wheat and oats they require; if you are short on green feed give them a bale of alfalfa hay to work on. A Dry Mash. Will you give a formula for a dry mash? Wheat bran, 500 pounds; middlings, 200 pounds; cracked corn, 200 pounds; charcoal, 20 pounds; alfalfa meal 200 pounds; bone meal, 150 pounds; blood-meal 100 pounds; meat cracklings, if ground, 200 pounds; ground oats or barley, 300 pounds. Give oyster shell separately and supply fowls with good sharp grit. Depluming Mites. My chickens are losing the feathers from their necks, some three inches down the front and then extending around the neck. The loss of feathers is probably due to the depluming mite. Dust well with buhach through the feathered portion of the bird and apply carbolated vaseline to the bare skin and the edges of the feathers where the insects work. Do this daily as long as needed. When vaseline is not on hand, a mixture of coal oil and sweet oil applied with a soft sponge squeezed nearly dry does as well. We would advise that you make a general cleaning and spraying of your poultry quarters, nest boxes, etc. Part IX. Pests and Diseases of Plants Control of Grasshoppers. This county is having trouble with the grasshoppers as are other counties. Would you kindly inform me what I could do to exterminate them on my young orchard? The best thing for grasshoppers is to fix up a lot of poison. This is made in the proportion of 40 pounds of bran, 2 pounds of molasses and 5 of arsenic, mixed together as a mash. They will take this wherever they find it, even when nice green leaves are close by, but it has to be kept moist. Grasshoppers can also be reduced by driving a "hopper doser" over ground where they are. This is made somewhat like a Fresno scraper, but is much longer and the bottom is covered with crude oil. When disturbed the hoppers jump up and fall into the oil. Besides the poison, you should also protect the trunk of the tree to prevent the hoppers from climbing up it. This can be done by applying tree tanglefoot, or putting on one of the tree guards that prevent climbing insects from passing up to the leaves. The combination of poison and tree guards will give you about all the protection you need. Sunburn and Borers. Please state the best remedy for keeping the borer out of young fruit trees. Sunburn can be prevented in many ways. The manufactured tree-protectors are good if they are light colored and are kept in place so that the sun does not scald above or below them. Wrapping spirally with narrow strips of burlap, torn from old grain sacks, from the base to the forking of the branches, is also good. A very effective and widely used method is to apply a good durable whitewash which may be made of 30 pounds of lime, 4 pounds of tallow and 5 pounds of salt, adding the salt to the water used in slaking the lime, stirring in the tallow while the slaking is in progress and hot, and then adding water to thin the wash so that it will work well with pump or brush. Gumming of Prune Trees. I write to ask for information concerning my prune trees. They are from two to six years old and the gum is exuding from them. As I notice the branches dying I cut them out, but this doesn't seem to save the tree. I would appreciate any information you can give me. This is a pretty hard matter to diagnose from a distance. There is a good probability that the trouble is caused by sunburn, a point you could determine on inspection. Whitewash would be a protection against this and more or less of a cure also. Furthermore, borers may be the cause, which can be determined by examining the points where the gum exudes, seeing if any wood grains are present. These borers should be dug out and whitewash applied, which latter also protects against this trouble. Lastly, your ground may be drying out, which also you can determine and remedy. Borers in Olive Twigs. There are quite a number of olive trees in this locality that have something wrong with them. They make a growth of five or six inches and the center twig dies back, then it sprouts out at the sides and makes another growth in the same way. This makes a thick bush instead of the tree coming up as it should. The dying back is caused by a beetle which bores into the twigs. The twigs above the point where the beetle enters dies and then, of course, buds come out from healthy wood below. No treatment has been devised against it, though its breeding ground is limited if all dead wood and brush and litter is cleaned up and twigs are cut off below the point of injury whenever the work of the insect is seen. Raspberry Cane Borer. Can you tell me what to do for my Loganberries and raspberries? A small worm got into them in the new growth of wood lost summer, right in the tips of the new growth of wood, and then worked down through the pith of the wood, and as fast as they worked down the can wilted. This is the raspberry horn-tail, or the cane-borer. The adults are wasp-like insects about a half-inch long and very active. They come out of the canes in spring and the females soon lay eggs in the tender tips of the young shoots. These eggs soon hatch and the larvae eat their way up toward the tip, which causes it to wither and die. It is this injury that causes much notice. As the tip dies, the larvae turn and go down into the canes, as in the sample sent, also injuring them greatly, though possibly not killing them for some time. The only way to attack them is to pinch the spots where the eggs were laid; then those that escape and cause the tips to wilt should be destroyed by cutting off the tips below the point of injury or cutting off the canes when they show damage. Likewise, the insects work on the wild rose, and cutting all those out around a place will prevent enough adults from developing to permit little damage to be done, always provided the berries are well looked after. Control of Red Spider. Can you give directions for the prevention of injury by the red spider to almond and other trees in the Sacramento volley? The red spider on almond and prune trees is usually controlled by the thorough application of dry sulphur to the foliage. On almonds the first sulphuring should be done as soon as the leaves appear in March. A second application is advised from the 1st to the 10th of May. A third application should be made from the 1st to the 10th of June. Prune trees should be treated as soon as the spider appears. In the Sacramento valley this usually occurs about the first week of July. Full-grown trees require about a pound of sulphur which should be thoroughly distributed throughout the foliage. The old method of throwing a handful of sulphur in the branches of the tree or on the ground under the tree is valueless. The use of a blower is economical in large orchards, but a can with perforated bottom is frequently used on young trees or small orchards with good results. In normal seasons the spider is easily, controlled by dry sulphuring. When the pest does not yield to this treatment, a spray is recommended. Liquid Spray for Red Spider. Is there any liquid spray I can use in my spraying that will kill the red spider without injuring the foliage of the almond? A liquid spray for red spider is made by taking sulphur 30 pounds; lime (reduced to milk form by water), 15 pounds; water, 200 gallons; or use commercial lime-sulphur, 4 or 5 gallons to 200 gallons of water. These sprays can be applied without injuring the foliage. They are more expensive in labor cost than dry sulphuring, but are more effective. Apple-Leaf Aphis. I am sending herewith a small piece from one of my young apple trees. If you can, will you kindly tell me what the insects are an it, and what I had better do for them? The apple twig which you send is infested with the eggs of the leaf aphis or leaf louse. These eggs are very difficult to kill. A good thorough spraying with lime-sulphur might, however, get rid of many of them and would be good for the trees otherwise - diluting according to condition of tree growth. The chief campaign against the leaf aphis, however, must be made early in the growing season, just as these pests are beginning to hatch out and to accumulate under the leaves of the new growth. They should then be attacked with properly made kerosene emulsion or tobacco extract with a nozzle suited to land the spray on the under side of the leaves. Unless these pests are attacked early in the season and repeated if necessary, your apples on bearing trees will be ruined so far as they attack them, being small, misshaped and worthless. On young trees the destruction of the foliage is fatal to good growth. Woolly Aphis. Will you kindly inform me what you consider the best treatment for apple trees affected by woolly aphis? The best way to kill the woolly aphis on the roots is to remove the earth from around the tree to a distance of one or two feet, according to the size of the tree, digging away a few inches of the surface soil, Then soak the soil around the tree with kerosene emulsion, properly made, of 15 per cent strength, and replace the earth. Be sure you get a good emulsion, for free oil is dangerous. For the insects above ground on the twigs, a good spraying while the tree is out of leaf will kill many, but some will survive for summer spraying, and for this a tobacco spray may be most convenient. Blister Mite on Walnuts. I am sending you some walnut leaves with some swellings an them. They are very plentiful on some trees here. Is the trouble serious and will it spread? This is merely Erinose, or Blister Mite, which is a very common trouble on walnuts, but does not do enough damage to call for methods of control. These swellings are caused by numerous, very small insects which live within the blisters on the under side of the leaf amongst a felt-like, heavy growth which develops there. While this effect is very common, it produces no appreciable injury and needs no treatment for its control. Scale on Apricots. I would like to know how to check the scale on apricot trees. The most common scale on apricots, the brown apricot scale, is usually held in check by the comys fusca, which is as widely distributed as the scale itself. If it gets beyond the parasite, you should spray in winter with crude oil emulsion. If some scales are punctured or have a black spot on top, the comys fusca is busy and you probably will be safe enough without doing anything. Fumigating for Black Scale. I would like to know the best method of eradicating the black scale from my orange trees, whether by spraying or fumigation? Spraying has been given up as a suitable method for controlling the black scale on citrus trees, and the only recognized method of merit where the scale is bad is by fumigation with hydrocyanic acid gas. You should communicate with your county horticultural commissioner, who, through inspectors, will see that you have a good job done, at the right time and at as moderate price as is compatible with good work. It is impossible to 'eradicate' the black scale, but there is a great difference in the amount that can be killed, and it pays to have a job done as near perfectly as possible. Similar methods of attacking other scale insects on citrus trees are used. Finding Thrips. How can the presence of pear thrips be detected in a prune orchard? Will the distillate emulsion-nicotine spray control brown scale as well as thrips? You can find thrips by shaking a cluster of blossoms, as soon as they open, over a sheet of paper or in the palm of your hand. The thrips are very minute, transparent, somewhat louse-like insects. The spray you mention would probably have little effect on the brown scale which would still be in the egg state and under cover, at the time the early spring spraying for the thrips. Control of Pear Slug. I am sending, under separate cover, some samples of cherry tree leaves that have been attacked by a small snail or slug. Kindly let me know what they are, and how to rid the trees of them. The creatures you speak of are the pear slugs, or the cherry slugs, as they are sometimes known. Although slimy, like the big yellow slug that is a pest in vegetable gardens, it is no relation thereto, but is the larva of an insect. Its olive green color, slimy appearance and the way it eats the surface of the leaves make it about the easiest of all insects to identify. Parasites and predacious insects usually keep it in fair control. Whenever artificial methods of control are needed the slugs can best be destroyed by sprinkling dust of any kind upon them. If you can get a machine for sulphuring a vineyard and use some air slaked lime or other fine dust, it will fix them quickly and inexpensively, though any way of applying dust may be used. Cutworms and Young Trees. What method should be used to protect young fruit trees from cutworms? Hoe around the trees or vines and kill the fat, greasy grubs which you will find near the foliage. Put out a poisoned bait which the worms like better than the foliage, viz. Bran, 10 pounds; white arsenic, 1/2 pound; molasses, 1/2 gallon; water, 2 gallons. Mix the arsenic with the bran dry. Add the molasses to the water and mix into the bran, making a moist paste. Put a tablespoonful near the base of the tree or vine and lock up the chickens. Control of Squash Bugs. We are troubled with pumpkin bugs. Please tell us what to do for them. When the bugs first make their appearance in the field they can be easily disposed of by hand picking and dropping into a bucket containing about two inches of water with about one-fourth inch of kerosene on top to kill the bugs. The picking should be done in the morning, as the bugs are apt to fly in the warm part of the day and scatter where already picked. Two persons can pick over an acre in one and a half hours, and two pickings are usually sufficient for a season, as after the vines begin to run over the ground pretty well the bugs will not be able to hurt them much. A pair of thin old gloves will help to keep off one's hands some of the perfume from the bugs. The sooner the work starts the fewer bugs to pick. Cleaning up of all old vines in the fall and removing litter in which the mature bugs hide for the winter will permit less eggs to be laid in the spring and there will be fewer bugs to pick as a result. The Corn Worm. Last year all my ears of corn were infested with maggot, growing fat thereon. Can you help me scare them away? You have to do with the so-called corn worm which is very abundant in this State and one of the greatest pests to corn growing. It is the same insect which is known as the boll worm of the cotton in the Southern States. No satisfactory method of controlling this has been found, although a great deal of experimentation has been done. Nearly everything that could be thought of has been tried without very satisfactory results. A late planted corn has sometimes been free, for the insect is not in the laying stage then. If it were not for this insect the canning of corn would be an important industry in this State. Melon Lice. I have in about four acres of watermelons, and there seem to be lice and a small gnat or fly, and also some small green bugs and white worms on the under part of the leaves, which seem to be stopping the growth of the vines, making them wilt and die. They seem to be more in patches, although a few on all the vines. Can you please tell me what to do for them? Melon lice are very hard to catch up with after you have let them get a start. Spraying with oil emulsions, tobacco extracts, soap solutions, etc., will all kill the lice if you get it onto them with a good spray pump and suitable nozzles for reaching the under sides of the leaves. The gnats you speak of are the winged forms of the lice; the white worms may be eating the lice; the "small green bugs" may be diabroticas. If you had started in lively as soon as you saw the first lice you could have destroyed them in the places where they started. Now your chance lies largely in the natural multiplication of ladybirds and the occurrence of hot winds which will burn up the lice. It is too late probably, to undertake spraying the whole field. Wire Worms. Is there any way to destroy or overcome the destructive work of the wireworm, which I find in some spots takes the lion's share of crops, such as beans, potatoes, onions, etc.? We do not know any easy way with wire worms. Nitrate of soda is believed to kill or repel them, but you have to be careful with it, for too much will either over-stimulate or kill the kill; about 200 pounds per acre, well distributed, is the usual prescription for the good of the plants. Wire worms can probably be killed with carbon bisulphide, using a tablespoonful poured into holes about a foot deep, three or four feet apart. The vapor would permeate the soil and kill all ground insects, but the acre-cost of such treatment must be measured in its relation to the value of the crop. The most promising policy with wire worms is rotation of crops, starving them out with a grain or grass crop and not growing such crops as you mention continually on the same land. Bean Weevil. How can I keep certain insects from getting into my dry beans? I have finished picking the crop. Every year a little, short, stubby beetle gets in them before spring and makes them unfit for use. You have to do with the bean weevil. The eggs are inserted by the insect while the beans are still green in the pods; subsequently the eggs hatch and the worm excavates the interior of the ripened beans. The beans can be protected after ripening by heating carefully to 130° Fahrenheit, which will destroy the egg, or the larva if already hatched. Of course, this heating must be done cautiously and with the aid of a good thermometer for fear of destroying the germinating power. The work of the insect can also be stopped by putting the beans in a barrel or other close receptacle, with a saucer containing about an ounce of carbon bi-sulfid to vaporize. Be careful not to approach the vapor with a light. After treatment for one-half hour, the cover can be removed and the vapor will entirely dissipate. This is a safer treatment than the heating. Similar methods of control can be used on other pea and bean weevils. Slugs in Garden. Can you advise me how I can get rid of slugs in my garden? When barriers of lime, ashes, etc., are ineffective, traps consisting of pieces of board sacking and similar materials placed about the field prove inviting to the slugs. They collect under these and by going over the field in the early morning they may be put into a salt-water solution or otherwise destroyed. Arsenical sprays applied with an underspray nozzle to the lower surface of the leaves will help control the slugs. Poison bran mash consisting of 16 pounds of coarse bran, 2 quarts of cheap syrup, and enough warm water to make a coarse mash, is very good for cutworms and should be equally effective for slugs. It should be placed in small heaps about the plants to be protected. Cabbage leaves dipped in grease drippings and placed about the fields also prove attractive bait for the slugs, which may then be collected there. If a person has a taste for poultry, the keeping of a few ducks may solve the slug problem without further bother. Cultivation or irrigation methods that give a dry surface most of the time also discourage these pests. Cause of Mottle Leaf. What is the cause and cure of mottle leaf of citrus trees? There are apparently a number of causes of this trouble, all more or less obscure and hard to overcome. It is generally thought that it is due to poor nutrition, whatever the reason for poor nutrition might be. The presence of a nematode or eel worm on the roots has found to be a cause of mottle leaf in many cases. Poor drainage, too sandy soil and a number of other things frequently cause it. Whatever the cause, no one good method of cure has been found. Potato Scab. I think most of my potatoes will have some scab. Will you please tell me if my next crop would be apt to have scab, provided I got good clean seed and planted in the same ground? It seems demonstrated that a treatment of the seed will practically insure against potato scab. One method is dipping the potatoes in a solution of corrosive sublimate. Dissolve one ounce in eight gallons of water and soak the seed potatoes in this solution for one and one-half hours before cutting. Gopher Poison. I have some alfalfa, some hogs and some gophers, also some strychnine and carrots. If I put the strychnine on the carrots, and endeavor to poison the gophers, and the hogs get hold of the poison will it kill them? You will find that hogs are liable to poison like any other animal, and the safest way to poison the gophers, while the hogs are running in the field is to bury the poisoned carrots very deeply in the gopher hole and then put a row of sticks or branches over the mouth of the hole so that the hogs cannot root around and get at the poisoned carrots. How to Make Bordeaux. Use copper sulphate (bluestone) 5 pounds; quick-lime (good stone lime), 6 pounds; water, 50 gallons. Put the bluestone in a sack and hang it so it will be suspended just under the surface of a barrel of water over night, or dissolve in hot water. Use one gallon of water to one pound of bluestone. Slake the lime in a separate barrel, using just enough water to make a smooth, clean, thin whitewash. Stir this vigorously. Use wooden vessels only. Fill the spray tank half full of water, add one gallon of bluestone solution for each pound required, then strain in the lime and the remainder of the water and stir thoroughly. The formula may be varied according to conditions, using from 3 to 8 pounds of bluestone to 50 gallons of water and an equal or slight excess of lime. Use the stronger mixture in rainy weather. Keep the mixture constantly agitated while applying. Formula for Lime-Sulphur. To make lime-sulphur take quick-lime, 20 pounds; ground sulphur, 15 pounds and water 30 gallons. Slake the lime with hot water in a large kettle, add the sulphur and stir well together. After the violent slaking subsides add more water and boil the mixture over a fire for at least one hour. After boiling sufficiently strain into the spray tank and dilute with water to the proper strength. If a steam boiler is available, this mixture may be prepared more easily on a large scale by cooking in barrels into which steam pipes are introduced. This mixture cannot be applied safely except during the winter when the trees are dormant. A large proportion of the lime-sulphur used in the State is purchased already prepared in more concentrated form. Index Fruit Growing. Almond Grafting on Peach Pruning Budding and Grafting Planting Pollination Roots for Longevity of Seedlings Do Not Plant in Place Stick-Tights And Peach Apples Shy-Bearing Not on Quince Stock For And Alfalfa Top Grafting Mildew on Seedlings Pruning Will They Be Same Kind Places for Grafting in Place Resistant Roots For Hot Place Die-Back of Storage of Root-Grafts Apricots Pruning Shy-Bearing Propagation Renewing Old Summer Pruning Bananas In California Berries Pruning Himalayas Hardiness of Hybrids With Perfect Flowers Pruning Loganberries Strawberry Planting Blackberries for Drying Planting Bush Fruits Strawberry Plants Strawberries in Succession Gooseberries, Limitations of Carobs In California Cherries For Hot Place Wild Pruning Training Grafts Restoring Tress Pollination Citron Curing Citrus Fruit Temperatures Filbert Roots Filbert Growing Figs Stickers No Gopher-Proof Roots Trays, Cleaning Fruit Trees Depth of Soil What Slopes and Overflow Roots for and Sunburn Budding Starting from Seed Square or Triangular Planting Planting on Clearings Dipping Roots of Preparing for Planting Depth of Planting In Wet Place Cutting Back at Planting Branching Young Coal Tar and Asphaltum Regular Bearing of Avoiding Crotches Crotch-Splitting Strengthening Covering Wounds Covering Sunburned Bark Gravel Streak Transplanting Old Dwarfing Seedling Filling Holes in Deferring Bloom Repairing Rabbit Injuries Crops Between Scions for Mailing Scions from Young Trees Whitewashing Deciduous Planting On Coast Sands Over Underflow Grapefruit and Nuts Grapes Dry Farming Cutting Frosted Canes Dipping Seedless Zante Currant Vines for Arbor Pruning Old Vines Bleeding Vines Scant Moisture Sulphuring for Mildew Sugar in Canned Planting Grafting Wax June Drop Killing Moss on Tree Interplanting, Wrong idea Lemons Citrus Budding No Citrus Fruits on Roots Mulberries Pruning and Grafting Nursery Stock in Young Orchard Orchard Replanting Plowing in Young Pigs in Forage Under Sprayed Trees Oranges Water and Frost Thinning Wind-Blown Trees Handling Balled Trees Navel Not Thornless Over-Size Budding or Grafting in Orchard Under-Pruning Trees Keeping Trees too Low Dying Back of Trees Young Trees Dropping Fruit Training Crops Between Trees Navels and Valencias Seedlings Acres to One Man Roots for Trees Soil and Situation Transplanting Protecting Young Trees Not on Osage No Pollenizer for Navels Water and Frost Frosted, What to do Pruning Frosted Trees Pruning Olives Cultivating Moving Old Trees Darkening Pickled Seedlings Must Be Grafted Oranges and Peppers Budding Seedlings Budding Old from Small Cuttings from Large Cuttings Trimming Up Canning Renewing Trees Growing from Seed Neglected Trees Peaches Lye-peeling Aged Trees Renewing Orchard Will He Have Fillers in Apple Orchard Grafting on Almond on Apricot Replanting after Root Knot Buds in Bearing Trees Pollen Must Be Same Kind Grafting on Young Trees Fail to Start Planting in Alfalfa Sod Pecan Growing Pears Pollination of Bartletts Comics Not on Peach Dwarf Pears Yield in Drying Problems Blight and Bees on Quince Plowing, Young Orchard Plums - Pollenizing Prunes On Almond Re-grafting Silver French or Italian Myrobalan Seedlings Drying Sugar Glossing Dried Price on Size Basis Pruning Times Shaping a Young Tree Late Too Much In Frosty Places Low Growth Are Tap-Roots Essential For a Bark Wound Bridging Gopher Girdles Roots, Whole or Piece Soil, Binding Plant for Winter Spineless Cactus Fruit Stumps, Medication to Kill Sucker, What will it Be Walnuts Early Bearing Handling Seedlings How to Start Planting Pruning Grafting on Oaks Eastern or California Blacks Ripening Cutting Below Dead Wood in Alfalfa in the Hills Increase Bearing Temperature and Moisture from Seed High-grafted Vegetable Growing. Artichokes Jerusalem Globe Growing Asparagus Growing Beets Leases for Sugar Topping Mangel Wurzels Brussels Sprouts - Blooming Bean Growing Hoeing as Nitrogen Gatherer Yard-Long Why Waiting Blackeye Are Cow-Peas Horse-Bean Growing Growing Castor Inoculation On Irrigated Mesas California Grown Seed Cloth for Hotbeds Celery, Blanching Chili Peppers Corn in Sacramento Valley in Warm Ground Sweet, in California Cucumbers Forcing Growing Continuous Cropping Ginger in California In Cold, Dark, Draft Licorice in California Lentils, Growing Lettuce, Transplanting Melons Winter Ripe Onions Seeds and Sets Ripening from Sets Crops from Seed Peas Canada for Seed Growing Niles Peanuts Harvesting and Adobe Potatoes Cutting Planting Northern Seed Planted Early Balls Seed-ends and the Moon Planting Whole How to Cut Seed Scab Double-cropping Keeping Yield New for Seed Growing After Alfalfa Flat or Hill Bad Conditions for On Heavy Land Storage for Seed and Frosts Sweet, Plant Growing Growing Between Trees Less Water, More Heat Radish, Giant Japanese Rhubarb, Rotting Soil for Vegetables Squashes Dislike Hardship Sunflowers, Harvesting Tomatoes Irrigating Big Worms Loss of Bloom Grain and Forage Crops Alfalfa Improving Land Cultivating Suburban Patch and Bermuda and Salt Grass and Alkali on Adobe and Soil Depth Irrigating Curing Preparation of Land Where Grown Sowing and Foxtail Which is Best and Dry Land Inoculating Unirrigated Time to Cut and Overflow No Nurse Crop Re-seeding Taking Bloat from What Crop for Seed Siloing First Crop Soil For Handling Young With Gypsum Alfileria, Winter Pasture Barley California Varieties Chevalier on Moist Land and Alfalfa Beet Sugar, Home-made Beets and Potatoes for Stock Stock, Summer Start Berseem Bermuda Grass Objectionable Black Medic Broom Corn Buckwheat Growing Clover and Drought for Wet Lands Crimson for Shallow Land for High Ground-Water Not an Alfalfa Sweet, Cover Crop Corn for Silage Irrigation for Eastern Seed Suckering and Cow Peas Cover Crop for Hop Yard Cow Peas in San Joaquin Cowpeas Growing and Canadian Peas Crop Rotation Dry Plowing for Grain Fall Feed Forage Plants in Foothills Winter Poultry Flax, New Zealand Grasses, for Bank-holding Grass Seeds, Scattering Hay Midsummer Sowing Loose by Measure Oat, When to Cut Rye for Frosted Grain Summer Crop Heating and Fermentation Insect Powder Johnson Grass Jersey Kale Kafir and Egyptian Corn Lawns, Mossy Moonshine Farming Oats and Rust Pasturing Young Grain Hurry-up California Winter Rape and Milo Rye in California Rye Grass, Italian better than Speltz Spurry, Giant Soil Light, Scant Moisture Sunflowers and Soy Beans Russian Spineless Cactus Sorghum Smutty Late Sown Sorghums for Seed for Planting Sacaline Special Crops Teosinte Vetches for San Joaquin for Hay Wheat, Seven-headed Soils, Fertilizing and Irrigation. Alkali Soil and Trees Treatment of and Gypsum Distribution Plants Will Tell and Litmus Alfalfa over Hardpan Ashes and Tomatoes in Garden and Poultry Manure Blasting or Tiling Effects of Barnyard Manure and Alkali Bones for Grape Vines Can a Man Farm Charcoal, Medicine, not Food Cover Crop, Best Legume Cowpeas, best cover crop Cementing Soils, Improvement Cultivation, Depth of Draining Wet Spot Dry Plowing Treatment and Sowing Dynamite, More Needed Electro-Agriculture Fenugreek as Cover Crop Fertilizer in Tree Holes Best for Sand Prunings as Suburban Wastes Composting Garden Wastes for Sweet Potatoes Pear Orchard Olives Consult Trees Nursery Almond Hulls and Sawdust Fruit Trees Oranges Seed Farm Refuse Slow Stuff Alfalfa Corn Scrap Iron Kelp as Nitrate of Soda Strawberries Ground Water Gypsum on Grain Land and Alfalfa What it Does How Much Garden Peas for Green Manure Grape Pomace Handling Abuse of Hardpan and Low Water Humus Burning Out Straw for Irrigating Palms Condensation for Winter Young Trees Alfalfa How Much for Crops Sewage Creamery Wastes House Waste Intensive Cultivation Irrigate or Cultivate Irrigation Underground of Potatoes of Apples of Walnuts Summer and Fall and Fertilizers Liming Chicken Yard Legumes, Two in Year Lime Caustic not Absorbent on Sandy Soil Alfalfa Sugar Factory Fertilizer Manure Water, Cultivation Ashes Poultry too Much Stable and Bean Straw Pit Roofing Value of Animals Fresh and Dry and Shavings Sheep, and Goat Hog and Potatoes Vineyard and Nitrate with Clover Nitrate, Late Applications of Oranges Over Ground Water Organic Matter, Needs Oranges How Much Water Damping Off Planting in Mud Potash or Water Reviving Blighted Trees Soils and Oranges Crop Changes Moisture Defects Refractory Suitable for Fruits Blowing Improving Heavy Reclaimed Swamp Improving Uncovered Sand for Clay Sour and Old Plaster Handling Orchard Depth for Citrus Summer Fallow Sub-soil, Plow for Stable Drainage for Fruit Seeds, Soaking Trees over High-water Plowing toward or from Irrigated or not Too Much Water Too Little Water Thomas Phosphate, Applying Water Artesian from Wells or Streams Live Stock and Dairy. Buttermilk Paint Butter Going White Fat, What it is Why not Come Fat in Cream Breeding Young Mare in Purple Line Cream That Won't Whip Cows in Hill Country Concrete Stable Floor Drying Persistent Milker Foot-hill Dairy Free Martin Grade, What it is Granary, Rat-proof Hogs, Best Breed Jersey Short-horn Cross Bad Tempered Legal Milk House Milk Strong Separator as Purifier Certified Self-Milker, Cure for Silos, Heating not Dangerous Shingles, Make Durable Trespassing Live Stock Whitewashes for Buildings Government for Spray Feeding Farm Animals Alfalfa and Concentrates Barley, Rolled for Cows for Hay Feeding Brewers' Grains for Cows Balanced Rations Corn Stalks and Concentrates Cut for Silage Calves, Feeding Feed for Cows Family Cow Young Pigs Grape Pomace as Hog Feed Grain for Horses Horses, Vetch for Horse Beans and Melons Hay Salting Chopping for Horses Cut Alfalfa Storing Cut Alfalfa Grinding Kale for Cow Feed Plow Horses, Feed for Pumpkins Feeding Keeping Pasture and Cover Crop Fall and Winter Summer for Hogs Pigs and Pie-Melons Grain or Pasture for Growing on Roots Sheep, Winter Feeding Sorghum, Feeding Silage 200 Dry Fodder Sugar Beets and Silage Stover Stock Beets Storing Kind of Spelt, Value of Steers on Alfalfa Silo, Size of Soiling Crops Wheat or Barley for Hogs for Feeding Diseases of Animals. Abscess of Gland Abnormal Thirst Bloat, Easement Bowel Trouble Bloody Milk Barren Heifers Blind Teat Bovine Rheumatism Bleeding for Blackleg Chronic Indigestion Castration of Colt Chronic Cough Cowpox Calf Dysentery Cleft Hoof Cocked Ankles Cleanse Cows Caked Bag Cow Chewing Bones Depraved Appetite Dentist Needed Dehorning Forage Poisoning Fungus Poisoning Fly Repellants Flea Destroyers Garget Gland Enlarged Heaves Horse with Itch Horses Feet, Treatment Hog Cholera Hog Sickness Infectious Mastitis Irritation of Udder Injury to Udder Kidney Trouble Lumpy jaw Lumps in Teat Loss of Cud Mange, Is it Mangy Cow Musty Corn for Pigs Nail Puncture Neck Swelling Pregnancy of Mare Paralysis Pneumonia in Pigs Paralysis of Sow Rickets in Hogs Scabby Swelling Skin Disease, Fatal Scours Side-bone Shoulder injury Stiff joints Swelling in Dewlap Sterile Cow Supernumerary Teat Sore Eyes in Pigs Sow, Over-fat Tuberculous Milk Uterus, Diseased Urination Defective Warts on Horse Worms in Horses Wound Sore in Teat Swellings Poultry Keeping. Bowel Trouble in Chicks Cure for Feather-Eating Cannibal Chicks Caponizing Chicken Pox Clipping Hens Dipping Fowls Disinfectants Dry Mash Feeding for Eggs Grain for Chickens Liver Disease Limber Neck Melons for Fowls Open Front Houses Roup Treatment in Turkeys Quick Roosters and Laying Hens Preserving Eggs Poultry Tonic in Orchard Point on Mating Poultry Diarrhea Rupture of Oviduct Rape for Chickens Sunflower Seeds for Chicks Teaching Chicks to Perch Pests and Diseases of Plants. Apple-Leaf Aphis Bordeaux Mixture Bean Weevil Borers on Olive Twigs Blister Mite on Walnuts Black Scale, Fumigation Cutworms in Young Trees Control of Pear Slug of Grasshoppers of Red Spider of Squash Bugs Corn Worm Gumming Prune Trees Gopher Poison Lime-Sulphate Formula Melon Lice Mottle Leaf, Cause of Potato Scab Raspberry Cane Borer Sunburn and Borers Scale on Apricots Spray for Red Spider Slugs in Garden Thrips, Finding Wooly Aphis Wire Worms